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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume
+XXI, by Robert Louis Stevenson
+
+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 Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI
+
+Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
+
+Release Date: December 11, 2009 [EBook #30650]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORKS OF STEVENSON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Marius Borror and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+      THE WORKS OF
+ ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
+
+    SWANSTON EDITION
+
+       VOLUME XXI
+
+
+
+
+_Of this SWANSTON EDITION in Twenty-five
+Volumes of the Works of ROBERT LOUIS
+STEVENSON Two Thousand and Sixty Copies
+have been printed, of which only Two Thousand
+Copies are for sale._
+
+_This is No._ ...........
+
+[Illustration: R.L.S. ON THE FORWARD DECK OF THE SCHOONER "EQUATOR"]
+
+
+
+
+THE WORKS OF
+
+ROBERT LOUIS
+STEVENSON
+
+VOLUME TWENTY-ONE
+
+LONDON: PUBLISHED BY CHATTO AND
+WINDUS: IN ASSOCIATION WITH CASSELL
+AND COMPANY LIMITED: WILLIAM
+HEINEMANN: AND LONGMANS GREEN
+AND COMPANY       MDCCCCXII
+
+
+ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  THE STORY OF A LIE
+
+  CHAPTER                                            PAGE
+
+      I. INTRODUCES THE ADMIRAL                         3
+
+     II. A LETTER TO THE PAPERS                         8
+
+    III. IN THE ADMIRAL'S NAME                         14
+
+     IV. ESTHER ON THE FILIAL RELATION                 21
+
+      V. THE PRODIGAL FATHER MAKES HIS DÉBUT AT HOME   24
+
+     VI. THE PRODIGAL FATHER GOES ON FROM STRENGTH TO
+          STRENGTH                                     31
+
+    VII. THE ELOPEMENT                                 41
+
+   VIII. BATTLE ROYAL                                  50
+
+     IX. IN WHICH THE LIBERAL EDITOR APPEARS AS
+         "DEUS EX MACHINÂ"                             60
+
+
+  THE MERRY MEN
+
+      I. EILEAN AROS                                   69
+
+     II. WHAT THE WRECK HAD BROUGHT TO AROS            76
+
+    III. LAND AND SEA IN SANDAG BAY                    89
+
+     IV. THE GALE                                     100
+
+      V. A MAN OUT OF THE SEA                         112
+
+
+  OLALLA                                              127
+
+
+  HEATHERCAT
+
+  PART I.--THE KILLING-TIME
+
+      I. TRAQUAIRS OF MONTROYMONT                     177
+
+     II. FRANCIE                                      182
+
+    III. THE HILL-END OF DRUMLOWE                     195
+
+
+  THE GREAT NORTH ROAD
+
+      I. NANCE AT THE "GREEN DRAGON"                  203
+
+     II. IN WHICH MR. ARCHER IS INSTALLED             210
+
+    III. JONATHAN HOLDAWAY                            218
+
+     IV. MINGLING THREADS                             223
+
+      V. LIFE IN THE CASTLE                           229
+
+     VI. THE BAD HALF-CROWN                           233
+
+    VII. THE BLEACHING-GREEN                          238
+
+   VIII. THE MAIL GUARD                               244
+
+
+  THE YOUNG CHEVALIER
+
+
+  PROLOGUE--THE WINE-SELLER'S WIFE                    253
+
+      I. THE PRINCE                                   263
+
+
+  FABLES
+
+      I. THE PERSONS OF THE TALE                      269
+
+     II. THE SINKING SHIP                             272
+
+    III. THE TWO MATCHES                              274
+
+     IV. THE SICK MAN AND THE FIREMAN                 275
+
+      V. THE DEVIL AND THE INNKEEPER                  276
+
+     VI. THE PENITENT                                 277
+
+    VII. THE YELLOW PAINT                             277
+
+   VIII. THE HOUSE OF ELD                             280
+
+     IX. THE FOUR REFORMERS                           286
+
+      X. THE MAN AND HIS FRIEND                       287
+
+     XI. THE READER                                   287
+
+    XII. THE CITIZEN AND THE TRAVELLER                288
+
+   XIII. THE DISTINGUISHED STRANGER                   289
+
+    XIV. THE CART-HORSES AND THE SADDLE-HORSE         290
+
+     XV. THE TADPOLE AND THE FROG                     291
+
+    XVI. SOMETHING IN IT                              291
+
+   XVII. FAITH, HALF-FAITH, AND NO FAITH AT ALL       295
+
+  XVIII. THE TOUCHSTONE                               297
+
+    XIX. THE POOR THING                               304
+
+     XX. THE SONG OF THE MORROW                       310
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF A LIE
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF A LIE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+INTRODUCES THE ADMIRAL
+
+
+When Dick Naseby was in Paris he made some odd acquaintances, for he was
+one of those who have ears to hear, and can use their eyes no less than
+their intelligence. He made as many thoughts as Stuart Mill; but his
+philosophy concerned flesh and blood, and was experimental as to its
+method. He was a type-hunter among mankind. He despised small game and
+insignificant personalities, whether in the shape of dukes or bagmen,
+letting them go by like sea-weed; but show him a refined or powerful
+face, let him hear a plangent or a penetrating voice, fish for him with
+a living look in some one's eye, a passionate gesture, a meaning or
+ambiguous smile, and his mind was instantaneously awakened. "There was a
+man, there was a woman," he seemed to say, and he stood up to the task
+of comprehension with the delight of an artist in his art.
+
+And indeed, rightly considered, this interest of his was an artistic
+interest. There is no science in the personal study of human nature. All
+comprehension is creation; the woman I love is somewhat of my handiwork;
+and the great lover, like the great painter, is he that can so embellish
+his subject as to make her more than human, whilst yet by a cunning art
+he has so based his apotheosis on the nature of the case that the woman
+can go on being a true woman, and give her character free play, and show
+littleness, or cherish spite, or be greedy of common pleasures, and he
+continue to worship without a thought of incongruity. To love a
+character is only the heroic way of understanding it. When we love, by
+some noble method of our own or some nobility of mien or nature in the
+other, we apprehend the loved one by what is noblest in ourselves. When
+we are merely studying an eccentricity, the method of our study is but a
+series of allowances. To begin to understand is to begin to sympathise;
+for comprehension comes only when we have stated another's faults and
+virtues in terms of our own. Hence the proverbial toleration of artists
+for their own evil creations. Hence, too, it came about that Dick
+Naseby, a high-minded creature, and as scrupulous and brave a gentleman
+as you would want to meet, held in a sort of affection the various human
+creeping things whom he had met and studied.
+
+One of these was Mr. Peter Van Tromp, an English-speaking, two-legged
+animal of the international genus, and by profession of general and more
+than equivocal utility. Years before he had been a painter of some
+standing in a colony, and portraits signed "Van Tromp" had celebrated
+the greatness of colonial governors and judges. In those days he had
+been married, and driven his wife and infant daughter in a pony trap.
+What were the steps of his declension? No one exactly knew. Here he was
+at least, and had been, any time these past ten years, a sort of dismal
+parasite upon the foreigner in Paris.
+
+It would be hazardous to specify his exact industry. Coarsely followed,
+it would have merited a name grown somewhat unfamiliar to our ears.
+Followed as he followed it, with a skilful reticence, in a kind of
+social chiaroscuro, it was still possible for the polite to call him a
+professional painter. His lair was in the Grand Hotel and the gaudiest
+cafés. There he might be seen jotting off a sketch with an air of some
+inspiration; and he was always affable, and one of the easiest of men to
+fall in talk withal. A conversation usually ripened into a peculiar sort
+of intimacy, and it was extraordinary how many little services Van Tromp
+contrived to render in the course of six-and-thirty hours. He occupied
+a position between a friend and a courier, which made him worse than
+embarrassing to repay. But those whom he obliged could always buy one of
+his villainous little pictures, or, where the favours had been prolonged
+and more than usually delicate, might order and pay for a large canvas,
+with perfect certainty that they would hear no more of the transaction.
+
+Among resident artists he enjoyed the celebrity of a non-professional
+sort. He had spent more money--no less than three individual fortunes,
+it was whispered--than any of his associates could ever hope to gain.
+Apart from his colonial career, he had been to Greece in a brigantine
+with four brass carronades; he had travelled Europe in a chaise and
+four, drawing bridle at the palace-doors of German princes; queens of
+song and dance had followed him like sheep, and paid his tailor's bills.
+And to behold him now, seeking small loans with plaintive condescension,
+sponging for breakfast on an art-student of nineteen, a fallen Don Juan
+who had neglected to die at the propitious hour, had a colour of romance
+for young imaginations. His name and his bright past, seen through the
+prism of whispered gossip, had gained him the nickname of "The Admiral."
+
+Dick found him one day at the receipt of custom, rapidly painting a pair
+of hens and a cock in a little water-colour sketching-box, and now and
+then glancing at the ceiling like a man who should seek inspiration from
+the muse. Dick thought it remarkable that a painter should choose to
+work over an absinthe in a public café, and looked the man over. The
+aged rakishness of his appearance was set off by a youthful costume; he
+had disreputable grey hair and a disreputable sore, red nose; but the
+coat and the gesture, the outworks of the man, were still designed for
+show. Dick came up to his table and inquired if he might look at what
+the gentleman was doing. No one was so delighted as the Admiral.
+
+"A bit of a thing," said he. "I just dash them off like that. I--I dash
+them off," he added, with a gesture.
+
+"Quite so," said Dick, who was appalled by the feebleness of the
+production.
+
+"Understand me," continued Van Tromp; "I am a man of the world. And
+yet--once an artist always an artist. All of a sudden a thought takes me
+in the street; I become its prey; it's like a pretty woman; no use to
+struggle; I must--dash it off."
+
+"I see," said Dick.
+
+"Yes," pursued the painter; "it all comes easily, easily to me; it is
+not my business; it's a pleasure. Life is my business--life--this great
+city, Paris--Paris after dark--its lights, its gardens, its odd corners.
+Aha!" he cried, "to be young again! The heart is young, but the heels
+are leaden. A poor, mean business, to grow old! Nothing remains but the
+_coup d'oeil_, the contemplative man's enjoyment, Mr. ----," and he
+paused for the name.
+
+"Naseby," returned Dick.
+
+The other treated him at once to an exciting beverage, and expatiated on
+the pleasure of meeting a compatriot in a foreign land; to hear him, you
+would have thought they had encountered in Central Africa. Dick had
+never found any one take a fancy to him so readily, nor show it in an
+easier or less offensive manner. He seemed tickled with him as an
+elderly fellow about town might be tickled by a pleasant and witty lad;
+he indicated that he was no precisian, but in his wildest times had
+never been such a blade as he thought Dick. Dick protested, but in vain.
+This manner of carrying an intimacy at the bayonet's point was Van
+Tromp's stock-in-trade. With an older man he insinuated himself; with
+youth he imposed himself, and in the same breath imposed an ideal on his
+victim, who saw that he must work up to it or lose the esteem of this
+old and vicious patron. And what young man can bear to lose a character
+for vice?
+
+As last, as it grew towards dinner-time, "Do you know Paris?" asked Van
+Tromp.
+
+"Not so well as you, I am convinced," said Dick.
+
+"And so am I," returned Van Tromp gaily. "Paris! My young friend--you
+will allow me?--when you know Paris as I do, you will have seen Strange
+Things. I say no more; all I say is, Strange Things. We are men of the
+world, you and I, and in Paris, in the heart of civilised existence.
+This is an opportunity, Mr. Naseby. Let us dine. Let me show you where
+to dine."
+
+Dick consented. On the way to dinner the Admiral showed him where to buy
+gloves, and made him buy them; where to buy cigars, and made him buy a
+vast store, some of which he obligingly accepted. At the restaurant he
+showed him what to order, with surprising consequences in the bill. What
+he made that night by his percentages it would be hard to estimate. And
+all the while Dick smilingly consented, understanding well that he was
+being done, but taking his losses in the pursuit of character as a
+hunter sacrifices his dogs. As for the Strange Things, the reader will
+be relieved to hear that they were no stranger than might have been
+expected, and he may find things quite as strange without the expense of
+a Van Tromp for guide. Yet he was a guide of no mean order, who made up
+for the poverty of what he had to show by a copious, imaginative
+commentary.
+
+"And such," said he, with an hiccup, "such is Paris."
+
+"Pooh!" said Dick, who was tired of the performance.
+
+The Admiral hung an ear, and looked up sidelong with a glimmer of
+suspicion.
+
+"Good-night," said Dick; "I'm tired."
+
+"So English!" cried Van Tromp, clutching him by the hand. "So English!
+So _blasé!_ Such a charming companion! Let me see you home."
+
+"Look here," returned Dick, "I have said good-night, and now I'm going.
+You're an amusing old boy; I like you, in a sense; but here's an end of
+it for to-night. Not another cigar, not another grog, not another
+percentage out of me."
+
+"I beg your pardon!" cried the Admiral with dignity.
+
+"Tut, man!" said Dick; "you're not offended; you're a man of the world,
+I thought. I've been studying you, and it's over. Have I not paid for
+the lesson? _Au revoir._"
+
+Van Tromp laughed gaily, shook hands up to the elbows, hoped cordially
+they would meet again and that often, but looked after Dick as he
+departed with a tremor of indignation. After that they two not
+unfrequently fell in each other's way, and Dick would often treat the
+old boy to breakfast on a moderate scale and in a restaurant of his own
+selection. Often, too, he would lend Van Tromp the matter of a pound, in
+view of that gentleman's contemplated departure for Australia; there
+would be a scene of farewell almost touching in character, and a week or
+a month later they would meet on the same boulevard without surprise or
+embarrassment. And in the meantime Dick learned more about his
+acquaintance on all sides: heard of his yacht, his chaise and four, his
+brief season of celebrity amid a more confiding population, his
+daughter, of whom he loved to whimper in his cups, his sponging,
+parasitical, nameless way of life; and with each new detail something
+that was not merely interest nor yet altogether affection grew up in his
+mind towards this disreputable stepson of the arts. Ere he left Paris
+Van Tromp was one of those whom he entertained to a farewell supper; and
+the old gentleman made the speech of the evening, and then fell below
+the table, weeping, smiling, paralysed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+A LETTER TO THE PAPERS
+
+
+Old Mr. Naseby had the sturdy, untutored nature of the upper middle
+class. The universe seemed plain to him. "The thing's right," he would
+say, or "the thing's wrong"; and there was an end of it. There was a
+contained, prophetic energy in his utterances, even on the slightest
+affairs; he _saw_ the damned thing; if you did not, it must be from
+perversity of will, and this sent the blood to his head. Apart from
+this, which made him an exacting companion, he was one of the most
+upright, hot-tempered old gentlemen in England. Florid, with white hair,
+the face of an old Jupiter, and the figure of an old fox-hunter, he
+enlivened the vale of Thyme from end to end on his big, cantering
+chestnut.
+
+He had a hearty respect for Dick as a lad of parts. Dick had a respect
+for his father as the best of men, tempered by the politic revolt of a
+youth who has to see to his own independence. Whenever the pair argued,
+they came to an open rupture; and arguments were frequent, for they were
+both positive, and both loved the work of the intelligence. It was a
+treat to hear Mr. Naseby defending the Church of England in a volley of
+oaths, or supporting ascetic morals with an enthusiasm not entirely
+innocent of port wine. Dick used to wax indignant, and none the less so
+because, as his father was a skilful disputant, he found himself not
+seldom in the wrong. On these occasions, he would redouble in energy,
+and declare that black was white, and blue yellow, with much conviction
+and heat of manner; but in the morning such a licence of debate weighed
+upon him like a crime, and he would seek out his father, where he walked
+before breakfast on a terrace overlooking all the vale of Thyme.
+
+"I have to apologise, sir, for last night----" he would begin.
+
+"Of course you have," the old gentleman would cut in cheerfully. "You
+spoke like a fool. Say no more about it."
+
+"You do not understand me, sir. I refer to a particular point. I confess
+there is much force in your argument from the doctrine of
+possibilities."
+
+"Of course there is," returned his father. "Come down and look at the
+stables. Only," he would add, "bear this in mind, and do remember that a
+man of my age and experience knows more about what he is saying than a
+raw boy."
+
+He would utter the word "boy" even more offensively than the average of
+fathers, and the light way in which he accepted these apologies cut Dick
+to the heart. The latter drew slighting comparisons, and remembered that
+he was the only one who ever apologised. This gave him a high station in
+his own esteem, and thus contributed indirectly to his better behaviour;
+for he was scrupulous as well as high-spirited, and prided himself on
+nothing more than on a just submission.
+
+So things went on until the famous occasion when Mr. Naseby, becoming
+engrossed in securing the election of a sound party candidate to
+Parliament, wrote a flaming letter to the papers. The letter had about
+every demerit of party letters in general: it was expressed with the
+energy of a believer; it was personal; it was a little more than half
+unfair, and about a quarter untrue. The old man did not mean to say what
+was untrue, you may be sure; but he had rashly picked up gossip, as his
+prejudice suggested, and now rashly launched it on the public with the
+sanction of his name.
+
+"The Liberal candidate," he concluded, "is thus a public turncoat. Is
+that the sort of man we want? He has been given the lie, and has
+swallowed the insult. Is that the sort of man we want? I answer, No!
+With all the force of my conviction, I answer, _No_!"
+
+And then he signed and dated the letter with an amateur's pride, and
+looked to be famous by the morrow.
+
+Dick, who had heard nothing of the matter, was up first on that
+inauspicious day, and took the journal to an arbour in the garden. He
+found his father's manifesto in one column; and in another a leading
+article. "No one that we are aware of," ran the article, "had consulted
+Mr. Naseby on the subject, but if he had been appealed to by the whole
+body of electors, his letter would be none the less ungenerous and
+unjust to Mr. Dalton. We do not choose to give the lie to Mr. Naseby,
+for we are too well aware of the consequences; but we shall venture
+instead to print the facts of both cases referred to by this red-hot
+partisan in another portion of our issue. Mr. Naseby is of course a
+large proprietor in our neighbourhood; but fidelity to facts, decent
+feeling, and English grammar, are all of them qualities more important
+than the possession of land. Mr. N---- is doubtless a great man; in his
+large gardens and that half-mile of greenhouses, where he has probably
+ripened his intellect and temper, he may say what he will to his hired
+vassals, but (as the Scots say)--
+
+                    here
+  He maunna think to domineer.
+
+Liberalism," continued the anonymous journalist, "is of too free and
+sound a growth," etc.
+
+Richard Naseby read the whole thing from beginning to end; and a
+crushing shame fell upon his spirit. His father had played the fool; he
+had gone out noisily to war, and come back with confusion. The moment
+that his trumpets sounded, he had been disgracefully unhorsed. There was
+no question as to the facts; they were one and all against the Squire.
+Richard would have given his ears to have suppressed the issue; but as
+that could not be done, he had his horse saddled, and, furnishing
+himself with a convenient staff, rode off at once to Thymebury.
+
+The editor was at breakfast in a large, sad apartment. The absence of
+furniture, the extreme meanness of the meal, and the haggard,
+bright-eyed, consumptive look of the culprit, unmanned our hero; but he
+clung to his stick, and was stout and warlike.
+
+"You wrote the article in this morning's paper?" he demanded.
+
+"You are young Mr. Naseby? I _published_ it," replied the editor,
+rising.
+
+"My father is an old man," said Richard; and then with an outburst, "And
+a damned sight finer fellow than either you or Dalton!" He stopped and
+swallowed; he was determined that all should go with regularity. "I have
+but one question to put to you, sir," he resumed. "Granted that my
+father was misinformed, would it not have been more decent to withhold
+the letter and communicate with him in private?"
+
+"Believe me," returned the editor, "that alternative was not open to me.
+Mr. Naseby told me in a note that he had sent his letter to three other
+journals, and in fact threatened me with what he called exposure if I
+kept it back from mine. I am really concerned at what has happened; I
+sympathise and approve of your emotion, young gentleman; but the attack
+on Mr. Dalton was gross, very gross, and I had no choice but to offer
+him my columns to reply. Party has its duties, sir," added the scribe,
+kindling, as one who should propose a sentiment; "and the attack was
+gross."
+
+Richard stood for half a minute digesting the answer; and then the god
+of fair play came uppermost in his heart, and, murmuring "Good morning,"
+he made his escape into the street.
+
+His horse was not hurried on the way home, and he was late for
+breakfast. The Squire was standing with his back to the fire in a state
+bordering on apoplexy, his fingers violently knitted under his
+coat-tails. As Richard came in, he opened and shut his mouth like a
+cod-fish, and his eyes protruded.
+
+"Have you seen that, sir?" he cried, nodding towards the paper.
+
+"Yes, sir," said Richard.
+
+"Oh, you've read it, have you?"
+
+"Yes; I have read it," replied Richard, looking at his foot.
+
+"Well," demanded the old gentleman, "and what have you to say to it,
+sir?"
+
+"You seem to have been misinformed," said Dick.
+
+"Well? What then? Is your mind so sterile, sir? Have you not a word of
+comment? no proposal?"
+
+"I fear, sir, you must apologise to Mr. Dalton. It would be more
+handsome, indeed it would be only just, and a free acknowledgment would
+go far--" Richard paused, no language appearing delicate enough to suit
+the case.
+
+"That is a suggestion which should have come from me, sir," roared the
+father. "It is out of place upon your lips. It is not the thought of a
+loyal son. Why, sir, if my father had been plunged in such deplorable
+circumstances, I should have thrashed the editor of that vile sheet
+within an inch of his life. I should have thrashed the man, sir. It
+would have been the action of an ass; but it would have shown that I had
+the blood and the natural affections of a man. Son? You are no son, no
+son of mine, sir!"
+
+"Sir!" said Dick.
+
+"I'll tell you what you are, sir," pursued the Squire. "You're a
+Benthamite. I disown you. Your mother would have died for shame;
+there was no modern cant about your mother; she thought--she said to me,
+sir--I'm glad she's in her grave, Dick Naseby. Misinformed! Misinformed,
+sir? Have you no loyalty, no spring, no natural affections? Are you
+clockwork, hey? Away! This is no place for you. Away!" (Waving his hands
+in the air.) "Go away! Leave me!"
+
+At this moment Dick beat a retreat in a disarray of nerves, a whistling
+and clamour of his own arteries, and in short in such a final bodily
+disorder as made him alike incapable of speech or hearing. And in the
+midst of all this turmoil, a sense of unpardonable injustice remained
+graven in his memory.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+IN THE ADMIRAL'S NAME
+
+
+There was no return to the subject. Dick and his father were henceforth
+on terms of coldness. The upright old gentleman grew more upright when
+he met his son, buckrammed with immortal anger; he asked after Dick's
+health, and discussed the weather and the crops with an appalling
+courtesy; his pronunciation was _point-de-vice_, his voice was distant,
+distinct, and sometimes almost trembling with suppressed indignation.
+
+As for Dick, it seemed to him as if his life had come abruptly to an
+end. He came out of his theories and clevernesses; his premature
+man-of-the-worldness, on which he had prided himself on his travels,
+"shrank like a thing ashamed" before this real sorrow. Pride, wounded
+honour, pity and respect tussled together daily in his heart; and now he
+was within an ace of throwing himself upon his father's mercy, and now
+of slipping forth at night and coming back no more to Naseby House. He
+suffered from the sight of his father, nay, even from the neighbourhood
+of this familiar valley, where every corner had its legend, and he was
+besieged with memories of childhood. If he fled into a new land, and
+among none but strangers, he might escape his destiny, who knew? and
+begin again light-heartedly. From that chief peak of the hills, that now
+and then, like an uplifted finger, shone in an arrow of sunlight through
+the broken clouds, the shepherd in clear weather might perceive the
+shining of the sea. There, he thought, was hope. But his heart failed
+him when he saw the Squire; and he remained. His fate was not that of
+the voyager by sea and land; he was to travel in the spirit, and begin
+his journey sooner than he supposed.
+
+For it chanced one day that his walk led him into a portion of the
+uplands which was almost unknown to him. Scrambling through some rough
+woods, he came out upon a moorland reaching towards the hills. A few
+lofty Scots firs grew hard by upon a knoll; a clear fountain near the
+foot of the knoll sent up a miniature streamlet which meandered in the
+heather. A shower had just skimmed by, but now the sun shone brightly,
+and the air smelt of the pines and the grass. On a stone under the trees
+sat a young lady sketching. We have learned to think of women in a sort
+of symbolic transfiguration, based on clothes; and one of the readiest
+ways in which we conceive our mistress is as a composite thing,
+principally petticoats. But humanity has triumphed over clothes; the
+look, the touch of a dress has become alive; and the woman who stitched
+herself into these material integuments has now permeated right through
+and gone out to the tip of her skirt. It was only a black dress that
+caught Dick Naseby's eye; but it took possession of his mind, and all
+other thoughts departed. He drew near, and the girl turned round. Her
+face startled him; it was a face he wanted; and he took it in at once
+like breathing air.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said, taking off his hat, "you are sketching."
+
+"Oh!" she exclaimed, "for my own amusement. I despise the thing."
+
+"Ten to one you do yourself injustice," returned Dick. "Besides, it's a
+freemasonry. I sketch myself, and you know what that implies."
+
+"No. What?" she asked.
+
+"Two things," he answered. "First, that I am no very difficult critic;
+and second, that I have a right to see your picture."
+
+She covered the block with both her hands. "Oh, no," she said; "I am
+ashamed."
+
+"Indeed, I might give you a hint," said Dick. "Although no artist
+myself, I have known many; in Paris I had many for friends, and used to
+prowl among studios."
+
+"In Paris?" she cried, with a leap of light into her eyes. "Did you ever
+meet Mr. Van Tromp?"
+
+"I? Yes. Why, you're not the Admiral's daughter, are you?"
+
+"The Admiral? Do they call him that?" she cried. "Oh, how nice, how nice
+of them! It is the younger men who call him so, is it not?"
+
+"Yes," said Dick, somewhat heavily.
+
+"You can understand now," she said, with an unspeakable accent of
+contented and noble-minded pride, "why it is I do not choose to show my
+sketch. Van Tromp's daughter! The Admiral's daughter! I delight in that
+name. The Admiral! And so you know my father?"
+
+"Well," said Dick, "I met him often; we were even intimate. He may have
+mentioned my name--Naseby."
+
+"He writes so little. He is so busy, so devoted to his art! I have had a
+half wish," she added, laughing, "that my father was a plainer man whom
+I could help--to whom I could be a credit; but only sometimes, you know,
+and with only half my heart. For a great painter! You have seen his
+works?"
+
+"I have seen some of them," returned Dick; "they--they are very nice."
+
+She laughed aloud. "Nice?" she repeated. "I see you don't care much for
+art."
+
+"Not much," he admitted; "but I know that many people are glad to buy
+Mr. Van Tromp's pictures."
+
+"Call him the Admiral!" she cried. "It sounds kindly and familiar; and I
+like to think that he is appreciated and looked up to by young painters.
+He has not always been appreciated; he had a cruel life for many years;
+and when I think"--there were tears in her eyes--"when I think of that,
+I feel inclined to be a fool," she broke off. "And now I shall go home.
+You have filled me full of happiness; for think, Mr. Naseby, I have not
+seen my father since I was six years old; and yet he is in my thoughts
+all day! You must come and call on me; my aunt will be delighted, I am
+sure; and then you will tell me all--all about my father, will you not?"
+
+Dick helped her to get her sketching traps together; and when all was
+ready, she gave Dick her hand and a frank return of pressure.
+
+"You are my father's friend," she said; "we shall be great friends too.
+You must come and see me soon."
+
+Then she was gone down the hillside at a run; and Dick stood by himself
+in a state of some bewilderment and even distress. There were elements
+of laughter in the business; but the black dress, and the face that
+belonged to it, and the hand that he had held in his, inclined him to a
+serious view. What was he, under the circumstances, called upon to do?
+Perhaps to avoid the girl? Well, he would think about that. Perhaps to
+break the truth to her? Why, ten to one, such was her infatuation, he
+would fail. Perhaps to keep up the illusion, to colour the raw facts; to
+help her to false ideas, while yet not plainly stating falsehoods? Well,
+he would see about that; he would also see about avoiding the girl. He
+saw about this last so well, that the next afternoon beheld him on his
+way to visit her.
+
+In the meantime the girl had gone straight home, light as a bird,
+tremulous with joy, to the little cottage where she lived alone with a
+maiden aunt; and to that lady, a grim, sixty years old Scotswoman, with
+a nodding head, communicated news of her encounter and invitation.
+
+"A friend of his?" cried the aunt. "What like is he? What did ye say was
+his name?"
+
+She was dead silent, and stared at the old woman darkling. Then very
+slowly, "I said he was my father's friend; I have invited him to my
+house, and come he shall," she said; and with that she walked off to her
+room, where she sat staring at the wall all the evening. Miss
+M'Glashan, for that was the aunt's name, read a large bible in the
+kitchen with some of the joys of martyrdom.
+
+It was perhaps half-past three when Dick presented himself, rather
+scrupulously dressed, before the cottage door; he knocked, and a voice
+bade him enter. The kitchen, which opened directly off the garden, was
+somewhat darkened by foliage; but he could see her as she approached
+from the far end to meet him. This second sight of her surprised him.
+Her strong black brows spoke of temper easily aroused and hard to quiet;
+her mouth was small, nervous, and weak; there was something dangerous
+and sulky underlying, in her nature, much that was honest,
+compassionate, and even noble.
+
+"My father's name," she said, "has made you very welcome."
+
+And she gave him her hand with a sort of curtsey. It was a pretty
+greeting, although somewhat mannered; and Dick felt himself among the
+gods. She led him through the kitchen to a parlour, and presented him to
+Miss M'Glashan.
+
+"Esther," said the aunt, "see and make Mr. Naseby his tea."
+
+As soon as the girl was gone upon this hospitable intent, the old woman
+crossed the room and came quite near to Dick as if in menace.
+
+"Ye know that man?" she asked, in an imperious whisper.
+
+"Mr. Van Tromp?" said Dick. "Yes; I know him."
+
+"Well, and what brings ye here?" she said. "I couldn't save the
+mother--her that's dead--but the bairn!" She had a note in her voice
+that filled poor Dick with consternation. "Man," she went on, "what is
+it now? Is it money?"
+
+"My dear lady," said Dick, "I think you misinterpret my position. I am
+young Mr. Naseby of Naseby House. My acquaintance with Mr. Van Tromp is
+really very slender; I am only afraid that Miss Van Tromp has
+exaggerated our intimacy in her own imagination. I know positively
+nothing of his private affairs, and do not care to know. I met him
+casually in Paris--that is all."
+
+Miss M'Glashan drew a long breath. "In Paris?" she said. "Well, and what
+do you think of him?--what do ye think of him?" she repeated, with a
+different scansion, as Richard, who had not much taste for such a
+question, kept her waiting for an answer.
+
+"I found him a very agreeable companion," he said.
+
+"Ay," said she, "did ye! And how does he win his bread?"
+
+"I fancy," he gasped, "that Mr. Van Tromp has many generous friends."
+
+"I'll warrant!" she sneered; and before Dick could find more to say, she
+was gone from the room.
+
+Esther returned with the tea-things, and sat down.
+
+"Now," she said cosily, "tell me all about my father."
+
+"He"--stammered Dick, "he is a very agreeable companion."
+
+"I shall begin to think it is more than you are, Mr. Naseby," she said,
+with a laugh. "I am his daughter, you forget. Begin at the beginning,
+and tell me all you have seen of him, all he said and all you answered.
+You must have met somewhere; begin with that."
+
+So with that he began: how he had found the Admiral painting in a café;
+how his art so possessed him that he could not wait till he got home
+to--well, to dash off his idea; how (this in reply to a question) his
+idea consisted of a cock crowing and two hens eating corn; how he was
+fond of cocks and hens; how this did not lead him to neglect more
+ambitious forms of art; how he had a picture in his studio of a Greek
+subject which was said to be remarkable from several points of view; how
+no one had seen it nor knew the precise site of the studio in which it
+was being vigorously though secretly confected; how (in answer to a
+suggestion) this shyness was common to the Admiral, Michelangelo, and
+others; how they (Dick and Van Tromp) had struck up an acquaintance at
+once, and dined together that same night; how he (the Admiral) had once
+given money to a beggar; how he spoke with effusion of his little
+daughter; how he had once borrowed money to send her a doll--a trait
+worthy of Newton, she being then in her nineteenth year at least; how,
+if the doll never arrived (which it appeared it never did), the trait
+was only more characteristic of the highest order of creative intellect;
+how he was--no, not beautiful--striking, yes, Dick would go so far,
+decidedly striking in appearance; how his boots were made to lace and
+his coat was black, not cut-away, a frock; and so on, and so on by the
+yard. It was astonishing how few lies were necessary. After all, people
+exaggerated the difficulty of life. A little steering, just a touch of
+the rudder now and then, and with a willing listener there is no limit
+to the domain of equivocal speech. Sometimes Miss M'Glashan made a
+freezing sojourn in the parlour; and then the task seemed unaccountably
+more difficult; but to Esther, who was all eyes and ears, her face
+alight with interest, his stream of language flowed without break or
+stumble, and his mind was ever fertile in ingenious evasions and--
+
+What an afternoon it was for Esther!
+
+"Ah!" she said at last, "it's good to hear all this! My aunt, you should
+know, is narrow and too religious; she cannot understand an artist's
+life. It does not frighten me," she added grandly; "I am an artist's
+daughter."
+
+With that speech, Dick consoled himself for his imposture; she was not
+deceived so grossly after all; and then if a fraud, was not the fraud
+piety itself?--and what could be more obligatory than to keep alive in
+the heart of a daughter that filial trust and honour which, even
+although misplaced, became her like a jewel of the mind? There might be
+another thought, a shade of cowardice, a selfish desire to please; poor
+Dick was merely human; and what would you have had him do?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+ESTHER ON THE FILIAL RELATION
+
+
+A month later Dick and Esther met at the stile beside the cross roads;
+had there been any one to see them but the birds and summer insects, it
+would have been remarked that they met after a different fashion from
+the day before. Dick took her in his arms, and their lips were set
+together for a long while. Then he held her at arm's length, and they
+looked straight into each other's eyes.
+
+"Esther!" he said,--you should have heard his voice!
+
+"Dick!" said she.
+
+"My darling!"
+
+It was some time before they started for their walk; he kept an arm
+about her, and their sides were close together as they walked; the sun,
+the birds, the west wind running among the trees, a pressure, a look,
+the grasp tightening round a single finger, these things stood them in
+lieu of thought and filled their hearts with joy. The path they were
+following led them through a wood of pine trees carpeted with heather
+and blueberry, and upon this pleasant carpet, Dick, not without some
+seriousness, made her sit down.
+
+"Esther!" he began, "there is something you ought to know. You know my
+father is a rich man, and you would think, now that we love each other,
+we might marry when we pleased. But I fear, darling, we may have long to
+wait, and shall want all our courage."
+
+"I have courage for anything," she said, "I have all I want; with you
+and my father, I am so well off, and waiting is made so happy, that I
+could wait a lifetime and not weary."
+
+He had a sharp pang at the mention of the Admiral. "Hear me out," he
+continued. "I ought to have told you this before; but it is a thought I
+shrink from; if it were possible, I should not tell you even now. My
+poor father and I are scarce on speaking terms."
+
+"Your father," she repeated, turning pale.
+
+"It must sound strange to you; but yet I cannot think I am to blame," he
+said. "I will tell you how it happened."
+
+"O Dick!" she said, when she had heard him to an end, "how brave you
+are, and how proud! Yet I would not be proud with a father. I would tell
+him all."
+
+"What!" cried Dick, "go in months after, and brag that I meant to thrash
+the man, and then didn't? And why? Because my father had made a bigger
+ass of himself than I supposed. My dear, that's nonsense."
+
+She winced at his words and drew away. "But then that is all he asks,"
+she pleaded. "If he only knew that you had felt that impulse, it would
+make him so proud and happy. He would see you were his own son after
+all, and had the same thoughts and the same chivalry of spirit. And then
+you did yourself injustice when you spoke just now. It was because the
+editor was weak and poor and excused himself, that you repented your
+first determination. Had he been a big red man, with whiskers, you would
+have beaten him--you know you would--if Mr. Naseby had been ten times
+more committed. Do you think, if you can tell it to me, and I understand
+at once, that it would be more difficult to tell it to your own father,
+or that he would not be more ready to sympathise with you than I am? And
+I love you, Dick; but then he is your father."
+
+"My dear," said Dick desperately, "you do not understand; you do not
+know what it is to be treated with daily want of comprehension and daily
+small injustices, through childhood and boyhood and manhood, until you
+despair of a hearing, until the thing rides you like a nightmare, until
+you almost hate the sight of the man you love, and who's your father
+after all. In short, Esther, you don't know what it is to have a
+father, and that's what blinds you."
+
+"I see," she said musingly, "you mean that I am fortunate in my father.
+But I am not so fortunate, after all; you forget, I do not know him; it
+is you who know him; he is already more your father than mine." And here
+she took his hand. Dick's heart had grown as cold as ice. "But I am
+sorry for you, too," she continued, "it must be very sad and lonely."
+
+"You misunderstand me," said Dick chokingly. "My father is the best man
+I know in all this world; he is worth a hundred of me, only he doesn't
+understand me, and he can't be made to."
+
+There was a silence for a while. "Dick," she began again, "I am going to
+ask a favour, it's the first since you said you loved me. May I see your
+father--see him pass, I mean, where he will not observe me?"
+
+"Why?" asked Dick.
+
+"It is a fancy; you forget, I am romantic about fathers."
+
+The hint was enough for Dick; he consented with haste, and full of
+hang-dog penitence and disgust, took her down by a back way and planted
+her in the shrubbery, whence she might see the Squire ride by to dinner.
+There they both sat silent, but holding hands, for nearly half an hour.
+At last the trotting of a horse sounded in the distance, the park gates
+opened with a clang, and then Mr. Naseby appeared, with stooping
+shoulders and a heavy, bilious countenance, languidly rising to the
+trot. Esther recognised him at once; she had often seen him before,
+though with her huge indifference for all that lay outside the circle of
+her love, she had never so much as wondered who he was; but now she
+recognised him, and found him ten years older, leaden and springless,
+and stamped by an abiding sorrow.
+
+"O Dick, Dick!" she said, and the tears began to shine upon her face as
+she hid it in his bosom; his own fell thickly too. They had a sad walk
+home, and that night, full of love and good counsel, Dick exerted every
+art to please his father, to convince him of his respect and affection,
+to heal up this breach of kindness, and reunite two hearts. But alas!
+the Squire was sick and peevish; he had been all day glooming over
+Dick's estrangement--for so he put it to himself, and now with growls,
+cold words, and the cold shoulder, he beat off all advances, and
+entrenched himself in a just resentment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE PRODIGAL FATHER MAKES HIS DÉBUT AT HOME
+
+
+That took place upon a Thursday. On the Thursday following, as Dick was
+walking by appointment, earlier than usual, in the direction of the
+cottage, he was appalled to meet in the lane a fly from Thymebury,
+containing the human form of Miss M'Glashan. The lady did not deign to
+remark him in her passage; her face was suffused with tears, and
+expressed much concern for the packages by which she was surrounded. He
+stood still, and asked himself what this circumstance might portend. It
+was so beautiful a day that he was loth to forecast evil, yet something
+must perforce have happened at the cottage, and that of a decisive
+nature; for here was Miss M'Glashan on her travels, with a small
+patrimony in brown paper parcels, and the old lady's bearing implied hot
+battle and unqualified defeat. Was the house to be closed against him?
+Was Esther left alone, or had some new protector made his appearance
+from among the millions of Europe? It is the character of love to loathe
+the near relatives of the loved one; chapters in the history of the
+human race have justified this feeling, and the conduct of uncles, in
+particular, has frequently met with censure from the independent
+novelist. Miss M'Glashan was now seen in the rosy colours of regret;
+whoever succeeded her, Dick felt the change would be for the worse. He
+hurried forward in this spirit; his anxiety grew upon him with every
+step; as he entered the garden a voice fell upon his ear, and he was
+once more arrested, not this time by doubt, but by an indubitable
+certainty of ill.
+
+The thunderbolt had fallen; the Admiral was here.
+
+Dick would have retreated, in the panic terror of the moment; but Esther
+kept a bright look-out when her lover was expected. In a twinkling she
+was by his side, brimful of news and pleasure, too glad to notice his
+embarrassment, and in one of those golden transports of exultation which
+transcend not only words but caresses. She took him by the end of the
+fingers (reaching forward to take them, for her great preoccupation was
+to save time), she drew him towards her, pushed him past her in the
+door, and planted him face to face with Mr. Van Tromp, in a suit of
+French country velveteens and with a remarkable carbuncle on his nose.
+Then, as though this was the end of what she could endure in the way of
+joy, Esther turned and ran out of the room.
+
+The two men remained looking at each other with some confusion on both
+sides. Van Tromp was naturally the first to recover; he put out his hand
+with a fine gesture.
+
+"And you know my little lass, my Esther?" he said. "This is pleasant,
+this is what I have conceived of home. A strange word for the old rover;
+but we all have a taste for home and the homelike, disguise it how we
+may. It has brought me here, Mr. Naseby," he concluded, with an
+intonation that would have made his fortune on the stage, so just, so
+sad, so dignified, so like a man of the world and a philosopher, "and
+you see a man who is content."
+
+"I see," said Dick.
+
+"Sit down," continued the parasite, setting the example. "Fortune has
+gone against me. (I am just sirrupping a little brandy--after my
+journey.) I was going down, Mr. Naseby; between you and me, I was
+_décavé_; I borrowed fifty francs, smuggled my valise past the
+concierge--a work of considerable tact--and here I am!"
+
+"Yes," said Dick, "and here you are." He was quite idiotic.
+
+Esther, at this moment, re-entered the room.
+
+"Are you glad to see him?" she whispered in his ear, the pleasure in her
+voice almost bursting through the whisper into song.
+
+"Oh yes," said Dick; "very."
+
+"I knew you would be," she replied; "I told him how you loved him."
+
+"Help yourself," said the Admiral, "help yourself; and let us drink to a
+new existence."
+
+"To a new existence," repeated Dick; and he raised the tumbler to his
+lips, but set it down untasted. He had had enough of novelties for one
+day.
+
+Esther was sitting on a stool beside her father's feet, holding her
+knees in her arms, and looking with pride from one to the other of her
+two visitors. Her eyes were so bright that you were never sure if there
+were tears in them or not; little voluptuous shivers ran about her body;
+sometimes she nestled her chin into her throat, sometimes threw back her
+head, with ecstasy; in a word, she was in that state when it is said of
+people that they cannot contain themselves for happiness. It would be
+hard to exaggerate the agony of Richard.
+
+And, in the meantime, Van Tromp ran on interminably.
+
+"I never forget a friend," said he, "nor yet an enemy: of the latter, I
+never had but two--myself and the public; and I fancy I have had my
+vengeance pretty freely out of both." He chuckled. "But those days are
+done. Van Tromp is no more. He was a man who had successes; I believe
+you knew I had successes--to which we shall refer no further," pulling
+down his neckcloth with a smile. "That man exists no more: by an
+exercise of will I have destroyed him. There is something like it in the
+poets. First, a brilliant and conspicuous career--the observed, I may
+say, of all observers including the bum-baily: and then, presto! a
+quiet, sly, old, rustic _bonhomme_, cultivating roses. In Paris, Mr.
+Naseby----"
+
+"Call him Richard, father," said Esther.
+
+"Richard, if he will allow me. Indeed, we are old friends, and now near
+neighbours; and, _ŕ propos_, how are we off for neighbours, Richard? The
+cottage stands, I think, upon your father's land, a family which I
+respect--and the wood, I understand, is Lord Trevanion's. Not that I
+care; I am an old Bohemian. I have cut society with a cut direct; I cut
+it when I was prosperous, and now I reap my reward, and can cut it with
+dignity in my declension. These are our little _amours propres_, my
+daughter: your father must respect himself. Thank you, yes; just a
+leetle, leetle tiny--thanks, thanks; you spoil me. But, as I was saying,
+Richard, or was about to say, my daughter has been allowed to rust; her
+aunt was a mere duenna; hence, in parenthesis, Richard, her distrust of
+me; my nature and that of the duenna are poles asunder--poles! But, now
+that I am here, now that I have given up the fight, and live henceforth
+for one only of my works--I have the modesty to say it is my best--my
+daughter--well, we shall put all that to rights. The neighbours,
+Richard?"
+
+Dick was understood to say that there were many good families in the
+Vale of Thyme.
+
+"You shall introduce us," said the Admiral.
+
+Dick's shirt was wet; he made a lumbering excuse to go; which Esther
+explained to herself by a fear of intrusion, and so set down to the
+merit side of Dick's account, while she proceeded to detain him.
+
+"Before our walk?" she cried. "Never! I must have my walk."
+
+"Let us all go," said the Admiral, rising.
+
+"You do not know that you are wanted," she cried, leaning on his
+shoulder with a caress. "I might wish to speak to my old friend about
+my new father. But you shall come to-day, you shall do all you want; I
+have set my heart on spoiling you."
+
+"I will take just _one_ drop more," said the Admiral, stooping to help
+himself to brandy. "It is surprising how this journey has fatigued me.
+But I am growing old, I am growing old, I am growing old, and--I regret
+to add--bald."
+
+He cocked a white wide-awake coquettishly upon his head--the habit of
+the lady-killer clung to him; and Esther had already thrown on her hat,
+and was ready, while he was still studying the result in a mirror: the
+carbuncle had somewhat painfully arrested his attention.
+
+"We are papa now; we must be respectable," he said to Dick, in
+explanation of his dandyism: and then he went to a bundle and chose
+himself a staff. Where were the elegant canes of his Parisian epoch?
+This was a support for age, and designed for rustic scenes. Dick began
+to see and appreciate the man's enjoyment in a new part, when he saw how
+carefully he had "made it up." He had invented a gait for this first
+country stroll with his daughter, which was admirably in key. He walked
+with fatigue; he leaned upon the staff; he looked round him with a sad,
+smiling sympathy on all that he beheld; he even asked the name of a
+plant, and rallied himself gently for an old town-bird, ignorant of
+nature. "This country life will make me young again," he sighed. They
+reached the top of the hill towards the first hour of evening; the sun
+was descending heaven, the colour had all drawn into the west; the hills
+were modelled in their least contour by the soft, slanting shine; and
+the wide moorlands, veined with glens and hazelwoods, ran west and north
+in a hazy glory of light. Then the painter awakened in Van Tromp.
+
+"Gad, Dick," he cried, "what value!"
+
+An ode in four hundred lines would not have seemed so touching to
+Esther; her eyes filled with happy tears: yes, here was the father of
+whom she had dreamed, whom Dick had described; simple, enthusiastic,
+unworldly, kind, a painter at heart, and a fine gentleman in manner.
+
+And just then the Admiral perceived a house by the wayside, and
+something depending over the house door which might be construed as a
+sign by the hopeful and thirsty.
+
+"Is that," he asked, pointing with his stick, "an inn?"
+
+There was a marked change in his voice, as though he attached some
+importance to the inquiry: Esther listened, hoping she should hear wit
+or wisdom.
+
+Dick said it was.
+
+"You know it?" inquired the Admiral.
+
+"I have passed it a hundred times, but that is all," replied Dick.
+
+"Ah," said Van Tromp, with a smile, and shaking his head; "you are not
+an old campaigner; you have the world to learn. Now I, you see, find an
+inn so very near my own home, and my first thought is--my neighbours. I
+shall go forward and make my neighbours' acquaintance; no, you needn't
+come; I shall not be a moment."
+
+And he walked off briskly towards the inn, leaving Dick alone with
+Esther on the road.
+
+"Dick," she exclaimed, "I am so glad to get a word with you; I am so
+happy, I have such a thousand things to say; and I want you to do me a
+favour. Imagine, he has come without a paint-box, without an easel; and
+I want him to have all. I want you to get them for me in Thymebury. You
+saw, this moment, how his heart turned to painting. They can't live
+without it," she added; meaning perhaps Van Tromp and Michelangelo.
+
+Up to that moment she had observed nothing amiss in Dick's behaviour.
+She was too happy to be curious; and his silence, in presence of the
+great and good being whom she called her father, had seemed both natural
+and praiseworthy. But now that they were alone, she became conscious of
+a barrier between her lover and herself, and alarm sprang up in her
+heart.
+
+"Dick," she cried, "you don't love me."
+
+"I do that," he said heartily.
+
+"But you are unhappy; you are strange; you--you are not glad to see my
+father," she concluded, with a break in her voice.
+
+"Esther," he said, "I tell you that I love you; if you love me, you know
+what that means, and that all I wish is to see you happy. Do you think I
+cannot enjoy your pleasure? Esther, I do. If I am uneasy, if I am
+alarmed, if----. Oh, believe me, try and believe in me," he cried, giving
+up argument with perhaps a happy inspiration.
+
+But the girl's suspicions were aroused; and though she pressed the
+matter no further (indeed, her father was already seen returning), it by
+no means left her thoughts. At one moment she simply resented the
+selfishness of a man who had obtruded his dark looks and passionate
+language on her joy; for there is nothing that a woman can less easily
+forgive than the language of a passion which, even if only for the
+moment, she does not share. At another, she suspected him of jealousy
+against her father; and for that, although she could see excuses for it,
+she yet despised him. And at least, in one way or the other, here was
+the dangerous beginning of a separation between two hearts. Esther found
+herself at variance with her sweetest friend; she could no longer look
+into his heart and find it written in the same language as her own; she
+could no longer think of him as the sun which radiated happiness upon
+her life, for she had turned to him once, and he had breathed upon her
+black and chilly, radiated blackness and frost. To put the whole matter
+in a word, she was beginning, although ever so slightly, to fall out of
+love.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE PRODIGAL FATHER GOES ON FROM STRENGTH TO STRENGTH
+
+
+We will not follow all the steps of the Admiral's return and
+installation, but hurry forward towards the catastrophe, merely
+chronicling by the way a few salient incidents, wherein we must rely
+entirely upon the evidence of Richard, for Esther to this day has never
+opened her mouth upon this trying passage of her life, and as for the
+Admiral--well, that naval officer, although still alive, and now more
+suitably installed in a seaport town where he has a telescope and a flag
+in his front garden, is incapable of throwing the slightest gleam of
+light upon the affair. Often and often has he remarked to the present
+writer: "If I know what it was all about, sir, I'll be----" in short, be
+what I hope he will not. And then he will look across at his daughter's
+portrait, a photograph, shake his head with an amused appearance, and
+mix himself another grog by way of consolation. Once I have heard him go
+further, and express his feelings with regard to Esther in a single but
+eloquent word. "A minx, sir," he said, not in anger, rather in
+amusement: and he cordially drank her health upon the back of it. His
+worst enemy must admit him to be a man without malice; he never bore a
+grudge in his life, lacking the necessary taste and industry of
+attention.
+
+Yet it was during this obscure period that the drama was really
+performed; and its scene was in the heart of Esther, shut away from all
+eyes. Had this warm, upright, sullen girl been differently used by
+destiny, had events come upon her even in a different succession, for
+some things lead easily to others, the whole course of this tale would
+have been changed, and Esther never would have run away. As it was,
+through a series of acts and words of which we know but few, and a
+series of thoughts which any one may imagine for himself, she was
+awakened in four days from the dream of a life.
+
+The first tangible cause of disenchantment was when Dick brought home a
+painter's arsenal on Friday evening. The Admiral was in the
+chimney-corner, once more "sirrupping" some brandy-and-water, and Esther
+sat at the table at work. They both came forward to greet the new
+arrival; and the girl, relieving him of his monstrous burthen, proceeded
+to display her offerings to her father. Van Tromp's countenance fell
+several degrees; he became quite querulous.
+
+"God bless me," he said; and then, "I must really ask you not to
+interfere, child," in a tone of undisguised hostility.
+
+"Father," she said, "forgive me; I knew you had given up your art----"
+
+"Oh yes!" cried the Admiral; "I've done with it to the judgment-day!"
+
+"Pardon me again," she said firmly, "but I do not, I cannot think that
+you are right in this. Suppose the world is unjust, suppose that no one
+understands you, you have still a duty to yourself. And, oh, don't spoil
+the pleasure of your coming home to me; show me that you can be my
+father and yet not neglect your destiny. I am not like some daughters; I
+will not be jealous of your art, and I will try to understand it."
+
+The situation was odiously farcical. Richard groaned under it; he longed
+to leap forward and denounce the humbug. And the humbug himself? Do you
+fancy he was easier in his mind? I am sure, on the other hand, that he
+was actually miserable; and he betrayed his sufferings by a perfectly
+silly and undignified access of temper, during which he broke his pipe
+in several places, threw his brandy-and-water into the fire, and
+employed words which were very plain although the drift of them was
+somewhat vague. It was of very brief duration. Van Tromp was himself
+again, and in a most delightful humour within three minutes of the first
+explosion.
+
+"I am an old fool," he said frankly. "I was spoiled when a child. As for
+you, Esther, you take after your mother; you have a morbid sense of
+duty, particularly for others; strive against it, my dear--strive
+against it. And as for the pigments, well, I'll use them some of these
+days; and to show that I'm in earnest, I'll get Dick here to prepare a
+canvas."
+
+Dick was put to this menial task forthwith, the Admiral not even
+watching how he did, but quite occupied with another grog and a pleasant
+vein of talk.
+
+A little after Esther arose, and making some pretext, good or bad, went
+off to bed. Dick was left hobbled by the canvas, and was subjected to
+Van Tromp for about an hour.
+
+The next day, Saturday, it is believed that little intercourse took
+place between Esther and her father; but towards the afternoon Dick met
+the latter returning from the direction of the inn, where he had struck
+up quite a friendship with the landlord. Dick wondered who paid for
+these excursions, and at the thought that the reprobate must get his
+pocket-money where he got his board and lodging, from poor Esther's
+generosity, he had it almost in his heart to knock the old gentleman
+down. He, on his part, was full of airs and graces and geniality.
+
+"Dear Dick," he said, taking his arm, "this is neighbourly of you; it
+shows your tact to meet me when I had a wish for you. I am in pleasant
+spirits; and it is then that I desire a friend."
+
+"I am glad to hear you are so happy," retorted Dick bitterly. "There's
+certainly not much to trouble _you_."
+
+"No," assented the Admiral, "not much. I got out of it in time; and
+here--well, here everything pleases me. I am plain in my tastes. _A
+propos_, you have never asked me how I liked my daughter?"
+
+"No," said Dick roundly; "I certainly have not."
+
+"Meaning you will not. And why, Dick? She is my daughter, of course; but
+then I am a man of the world and a man of taste, and perfectly qualified
+to give an opinion with impartiality--yes, Dick, with impartiality.
+Frankly, I am not disappointed in her. She has good looks; she has them
+from her mother. She is devoted, quite devoted to me----"
+
+"She is the best woman in the world!" broke out Dick.
+
+"Dick," cried the Admiral, stopping short; "I have been expecting this.
+Let us--let us go back to the 'Trevanion Arms,' and talk this matter out
+over a bottle."
+
+"Certainly not," said Dick. "You have had far too much already."
+
+The parasite was on the point of resenting this; but a look at Dick's
+face, and some recollections of the terms on which they had stood in
+Paris, came to the aid of his wisdom and restrained him.
+
+"As you please," he said; "although I don't know what you mean--nor
+care. But let us walk, if you prefer it. You are still a young man; when
+you are my age----. But, however, to continue. You please me, Dick; you
+have pleased me from the first; and to say truth, Esther is a trifle
+fantastic, and will be better when she is married. She has means of her
+own, as of course you are aware. They come, like the looks, from her
+poor, dear, good creature of a mother. She was blessed in her mother. I
+mean she shall be blessed in her husband, and you are the man, Dick, you
+and not another. This very night I will sound her affections."
+
+Dick stood aghast.
+
+"Mr. Van Tromp, I implore you," he said; "do what you please with
+yourself, but, for God's sake, let your daughter alone."
+
+"It is my duty," replied the Admiral, "and between ourselves, you rogue,
+my inclination too. I am as match-making as a dowager. It will be more
+discreet for you to stay away to-night. Farewell. You leave your case in
+good hands; I have the tact of these little matters by heart; it is not
+my first attempt."
+
+All arguments were in vain; the old rascal stuck to his point; nor did
+Richard conceal from himself how seriously this might injure his
+prospects, and he fought hard. Once there came a glimmer of hope. The
+Admiral again proposed an adjournment to the "Trevanion Arms," and when
+Dick had once more refused, it hung for a moment in the balance whether
+or not the old toper would return there by himself. Had he done so, of
+course Dick could have taken to his heels, and warned Esther of what was
+coming, and of how it had begun. But the Admiral, after a pause, decided
+for the brandy at home, and made off in that direction.
+
+We have no details of the sounding.
+
+Next day the Admiral was observed in the parish church, very properly
+dressed. He found the places, and joined in response and hymn, as to the
+manner born; and his appearance, as he intended it should, attracted
+some attention among the worshippers. Old Naseby, for instance, had
+observed him.
+
+"There was a drunken-looking blackguard opposite us in church," he said
+to his son as they drove home; "do you know who he was?"
+
+"Some fellow--Van Tromp, I believe," said Dick.
+
+"A foreigner too!" observed the Squire.
+
+Dick could not sufficiently congratulate himself on the escape he had
+effected. Had the Admiral met him with his father, what would have been
+the result? And could such a catastrophe be long postponed? It seemed to
+him as if the storm were nearly ripe; and it was so more nearly than he
+thought.
+
+He did not go to the cottage in the afternoon, withheld by fear and
+shame; but when dinner was over at Naseby House, and the Squire had gone
+off into a comfortable doze, Dick slipped out of the room, and ran
+across country, in part to save time, in part to save his own courage
+from growing cold; for he now hated the notion of the cottage or the
+Admiral, and if he did not hate, at least feared to think of Esther. He
+had no clue to her reflections; but he could not conceal from his own
+heart that he must have sunk in her esteem, and the spectacle of her
+infatuation galled him like an insult.
+
+He knocked and was admitted. The room looked very much as on his last
+visit, with Esther at the table and Van Tromp beside the fire; but the
+expression of the two faces told a very different story. The girl was
+paler than usual; her eyes were dark, the colour seemed to have faded
+from round about them, and her swiftest glance was as intent as a stare.
+The appearance of the Admiral, on the other hand, was rosy, and flabby,
+and moist; his jowl hung over his shirt-collar, his smile was loose and
+wandering, and he had so far relaxed the natural control of his eyes,
+that one of them was aimed inward, as if to catch the growth of the
+carbuncle. We are warned against bad judgments; but the Admiral was
+certainly not sober. He made no attempt to rise when Richard entered,
+but waved his pipe flightily in the air, and gave a leer of welcome.
+Esther took as little notice of him as might be.
+
+"Aha! Dick!" cried the painter. "I've been to church; I have, upon my
+word. And I saw you there, though you didn't see me. And I saw a
+devilish pretty woman, by Gad. If it were not for this baldness, and a
+kind of crapulous air I can't disguise from myself--if it weren't for
+this and that and t'other thing--I--I've forgot what I was saying. Not
+that that matters, I've heaps of things to say. I'm in a communicative
+vein to-night. I'll let out all my cats, even unto seventy times seven.
+I'm in what I call _the_ stage, and all I desire is a listener, although
+he were deaf, to be as happy as Nebuchadnezzar."
+
+Of the two hours which followed upon this it is unnecessary to give more
+than a sketch. The Admiral was extremely silly, now and then amusing,
+and never really offensive. It was plain that he kept in view the
+presence of his daughter, and chose subjects and a character of language
+that should not offend a lady. On almost any other occasion Dick would
+have enjoyed the scene. Van Tromp's egotism, flown with drink, struck a
+pitch above mere vanity. He became candid and explanatory; sought to
+take his auditors entirely into his confidence, and tell them his inmost
+conviction about himself. Between his self-knowledge, which was
+considerable, and his vanity, which was immense, he had created a
+strange hybrid animal, and called it by his own name. How he would plume
+his feathers over virtues which would have gladdened the heart of Cćsar
+or St. Paul; and anon, complete his own portrait with one of those
+touches of pitiless realism which the satirist so often seeks in vain.
+
+"Now, there's Dick," he said, "he's shrewd; he saw through me the first
+time we met, and told me so--told me so to my face, which I had the
+virtue to keep. I bear you no malice for it, Dick; you were right; I am
+a humbug."
+
+You may fancy how Esther quailed at this new feature of the meeting
+between her two idols.
+
+And then, again, in a parenthesis:
+
+"That," said Van Tromp, "was when I had to paint those dirty daubs of
+mine."
+
+And a little further on, laughingly said, perhaps, but yet with an air
+of truth:
+
+"I never had the slightest hesitation in sponging upon any human
+creature."
+
+Thereupon Dick got up.
+
+"I think, perhaps," he said, "we had better all be thinking of going to
+bed." And he smiled with a feeble and deprecatory smile.
+
+"Not at all," cried the Admiral, "I know a trick worth two of that.
+Puss here," indicating his daughter, "shall go to bed; and you and I
+will keep it up till all's blue."
+
+Thereupon Esther arose in sullen glory. She had sat and listened for two
+mortal hours while her idol defiled himself and sneered away his
+godhead. One by one, her illusions had departed. And now he wished to
+order her to bed in her own house! now he called her Puss! now, even as
+he uttered the words, toppling on his chair, he broke the stem of his
+tobacco-pipe in three! Never did the sheep turn upon her shearer with a
+more commanding front. Her voice was calm, her enunciation a little
+slow, but perfectly distinct, and she stood before him, as she spoke, in
+the simplest and most maidenly attitude.
+
+"No," she said, "Mr. Naseby will have the goodness to go home at once,
+and you will go to bed."
+
+The broken fragments of pipe fell from the Admiral's fingers; he seemed
+by his countenance to have lived too long in a world unworthy of him;
+but it is an odd circumstance, he attempted no reply, and sat
+thunder-struck, with open mouth.
+
+Dick she motioned sharply towards the door, and he could only obey her.
+In the porch, finding she was close behind him, he ventured to pause and
+whisper, "You have done right."
+
+"I have done as I pleased," she said. "Can he paint?"
+
+"Many people like his paintings," returned Dick, in stifled tones; "I
+never did; I never said I did," he added, fiercely defending himself
+before he was attacked.
+
+"I ask you if he can paint. I will not be put off. _Can_ he paint?" she
+repeated.
+
+"No," said Dick.
+
+"Does he even like it?"
+
+"Not now, I believe."
+
+"And he is drunk?"--she leaned upon the word with hatred.
+
+"He has been drinking."
+
+"Go," she said, and was turning to re-enter the house when another
+thought arrested her. "Meet me to-morrow morning at the stile," she
+said.
+
+"I will," replied Dick.
+
+And then the door closed behind her, and Dick was alone in the darkness.
+There was still a chink of light above the sill, a warm, mild glow
+behind the window; the roof of the cottage and some of the banks and
+hazels were defined in denser darkness against the sky; but all else was
+formless, breathless, and noiseless like the pit. Dick remained as she
+had left him, standing squarely on one foot and resting only on the toe
+of the other, and as he stood he listened with his soul. The sound of a
+chair pushed sharply over the floor startled his heart into his mouth;
+but the silence which had thus been disturbed settled back again at once
+upon the cottage and its vicinity. What took place during this interval
+is a secret from the world of men; but when it was over the voice of
+Esther spoke evenly and without interruption for perhaps half a minute,
+and as soon as that ceased heavy and uncertain footfalls crossed the
+parlour and mounted lurching up the stairs. The girl had tamed her
+father, Van Tromp had gone obediently to bed: so much was obvious to the
+watcher in the road. And yet he still waited, straining his ears, and
+with terror and sickness at his heart; for if Esther had followed her
+father, if she had even made one movement in this great conspiracy of
+men and nature to be still, Dick must have had instant knowledge of it
+from his station before the door; and if she had not moved, must she not
+have fainted? or might she not be dead?
+
+He could hear the cottage clock deliberately measure out the seconds;
+time stood still with him; an almost superstitious terror took command
+of his faculties; at last, he could bear no more, and, springing through
+the little garden in two bounds, he put his face against the window. The
+blind, which had not been drawn fully down, left an open chink about an
+inch in height along the bottom of the glass, and the whole parlour was
+thus exposed to Dick's investigation. Esther sat upright at the table,
+her head resting on her hand, her eyes fixed upon the candle. Her brows
+were slightly bent, her mouth slightly open; her whole attitude so still
+and settled that Dick could hardly fancy that she breathed. She had not
+stirred at the sound of Dick's arrival. Soon after, making a
+considerable disturbance amid the vast silence of the night, the clock
+lifted up its voice, whined for a while like a partridge, and then
+eleven times hooted like a cuckoo. Still Esther continued immovable and
+gazed upon the candle. Midnight followed, and then one of the morning;
+and still she had not stirred, nor had Richard Naseby dared to quit the
+window. And then about half-past one, the candle she had been thus
+intently watching flared up into a last blaze of paper, and she leaped
+to her feet with an ejaculation, looked about her once, blew out the
+light, turned round, and was heard rapidly mounting the staircase in the
+dark.
+
+Dick was left once more alone to darkness and to that dulled and dogged
+state of mind when a man thinks that Misery must have done her worst,
+and is almost glad to think so. He turned and walked slowly towards the
+stile; she had told him no hour, and he was determined, whenever she
+came, that she should find him waiting. As he got there the day began to
+dawn, and he leaned over a hurdle and beheld the shadows flee away. Up
+went the sun at last out of a bank of clouds that were already
+disbanding in the east; a herald wind had already sprung up to sweep the
+leafy earth and scatter the congregated dewdrops. "Alas!" thought Dick
+Naseby, "how can any other day come so distastefully to me?" He still
+wanted his experience of the morrow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE ELOPEMENT
+
+
+It was probably on the stroke of ten, and Dick had been half asleep for
+some time against the bank, when Esther came up the road carrying a
+bundle. Some kind of instinct, or perhaps the distant light footfalls,
+recalled him, while she was still a good way off, to the possession of
+his faculties, and he half raised himself and blinked upon the world. It
+took him some time to recollect his thoughts. He had awakened with a
+certain blank and childish sense of pleasure, like a man who had
+received a legacy overnight but this feeling gradually died away, and
+was then suddenly and stunningly succeeded by a conviction of the truth.
+The whole story of the past night sprang into his mind with every
+detail, as by an exercise of the direct and speedy sense of sight, and
+he arose from the ditch and, with rueful courage, went to meet his love.
+
+She came up to him walking steady and fast, her face still pale, but to
+all appearance perfectly composed; and she showed neither surprise,
+relief, nor pleasure at finding her lover on the spot. Nor did she offer
+him her hand.
+
+"Here I am," said he.
+
+"Yes," she replied; and then, without a pause or any change of voice, "I
+want you to take me away," she added.
+
+"Away?" he repeated. "How? Where?"
+
+"To-day," she said. "I do not care where it is, but I want you to take
+me away."
+
+"For how long? I do not understand," gasped Dick.
+
+"I shall never come back here any more," was all she answered.
+
+Wild words uttered, as these were, with perfect quiet of manner,
+exercise a double influence on the hearer's mind. Dick was confounded;
+he recovered from astonishment only to fall into doubt and alarm. He
+looked upon her frozen attitude, so discouraging for a lover to behold,
+and recoiled from the thoughts which it suggested.
+
+"To me?" he asked. "Are you coming to me, Esther?"
+
+"I want you to take me away," she repeated, with weary impatience. "Take
+me away--take me away from here."
+
+The situation was not sufficiently defined. Dick asked himself with
+concern whether she were altogether in her right wits. To take her away,
+to marry her, to work off his hands for her support, Dick was content to
+do all this; yet he required some show of love upon her part. He was not
+one of those tough-hided and small-hearted males who would marry their
+love at the point of the bayonet rather than not marry her at all. He
+desired that a woman should come to his arms with an attractive
+willingness, if not with ardour. And Esther's bearing was more that of
+despair than that of love. It chilled him and taught him wisdom.
+
+"Dearest," he urged, "tell me what you wish, and you shall have it; tell
+me your thoughts, and then I can advise you. But to go from here without
+a plan, without forethought, in the heat of a moment, is madder than
+madness, and can help nothing. I am not speaking like a man, but I speak
+the truth; and I tell you again, the thing's absurd, and wrong, and
+hurtful."
+
+She looked at him with a lowering, languid look of wrath.
+
+"So you will not take me?" she said. "Well, I will go alone."
+
+And she began to step forward on her way. But he threw himself before
+her.
+
+"Esther, Esther!" he cried.
+
+"Let me go--don't touch me--what right have you to interfere? Who are
+you, to touch me?" she flashed out, shrill with anger.
+
+Then, being made bold by her violence, he took her firmly, almost
+roughly, by the arm, and held her while he spoke.
+
+"You know well who I am, and what I am, and that I love you. You say I
+will not help you; but your heart knows the contrary. It is you who will
+not help me; for you will not tell me what you want. You see--or you
+could see, if you took the pains to look--how I have waited here all
+night to be ready at your service. I only asked information; I only
+urged you to consider; and I still urge you to think better of your
+fancies. But if your mind is made up, so be it; I will beg no longer; I
+will give you my orders; and I will not allow--not allow you to go hence
+alone."
+
+She looked at him for a while with cold, unkind scrutiny, like one who
+tries the temper of a tool.
+
+"Well, take me away then," she said, with a sigh.
+
+"Good," said Dick. "Come with me to the stables; there we shall get the
+pony-trap and drive to the junction. To-night you shall be in London. I
+am yours so wholly that no words can make me more so; and, besides, you
+know it, and the words are needless. May God help me to be good to you,
+Esther--may God help me! for I see that you will not."
+
+So, without more speech, they set out together, and were already got
+some distance from the spot, ere he observed that she was still carrying
+the hand-bag. She gave it up to him, passively, but when he offered her
+his arm, merely shook her head and pursed up her lips. The sun shone
+clearly and pleasantly; the wind was fresh and brisk upon their faces,
+and smelt racily of woods and meadows. As they went down into the valley
+of the Thyme, the babble of the stream rose into the air like a
+perennial laughter. On the far-away hills, sun-burst and shadow raced
+along the slopes and leaped from peak to peak. Earth, air, and water,
+each seemed in better health and had more of the shrewd salt of life in
+them than upon ordinary mornings; and from east to west, from the
+lowest glen to the height of heaven, from every look and touch and
+scent, a human creature could gather the most encouraging intelligence
+as to the durability and spirit of the universe.
+
+Through all this walked Esther, picking her small steps like a bird, but
+silent and with a cloud under her thick eyebrows. She seemed insensible,
+not only of nature, but of the presence of her companion. She was
+altogether engrossed in herself, and looked neither to right nor to
+left, but straight before her on the road. When they came to the bridge,
+however, she halted, leaned on the parapet, and stared for a moment at
+the clear, brown pool, and swift, transient snowdrift of the rapids.
+
+"I am going to drink," she said; and descended the winding footpath to
+the margin.
+
+There she drank greedily in her hands, and washed her temples with
+water. The coolness seemed to break, for an instant, the spell that lay
+upon her; for, instead of hastening forward again in her dull,
+indefatigable tramp, she stood still where she was, for near a minute,
+looking straight before her. And Dick, from above on the bridge where he
+stood to watch her, saw a strange, equivocal smile dawn slowly on her
+face and pass away again at once and suddenly, leaving her as grave as
+ever; and the sense of distance, which it is so cruel for a lover to
+endure, pressed with every moment more heavily on her companion. Her
+thoughts were all secret; her heart was locked and bolted; and he stood
+without, vainly wooing her with his eyes.
+
+"Do you feel better?" asked Dick, as she at last rejoined him; and after
+the constraint of so long a silence, his voice sounded foreign to his
+own ears.
+
+She looked at him for an appreciable fraction of a minute ere she
+answered, and when she did, it was in the monosyllable--"Yes."
+
+Dick's solicitude was nipped and frosted. His words died away on his
+tongue. Even his eyes, despairing of encouragement, ceased to attend on
+hers. And they went on in silence through Kirton hamlet, where an old
+man followed them with his eyes, and perhaps envied them their youth and
+love; and across the Ivy beck where the mill was splashing and grumbling
+low thunder to itself in the chequered shadow of the dell, and the
+miller before the door was beating flour from his hands as he whistled a
+modulation; and up by the high spinney, whence they saw the mountains
+upon either hand; and down the hill again to the back courts and offices
+of Naseby House. Esther had kept ahead all the way, and Dick plodded
+obediently in her wake; but as they neared the stables, he pushed on and
+took the lead. He would have preferred her to await him in the road
+while he went on and brought the carriage back, but after so many
+repulses and rebuffs he lacked courage to offer the suggestion. Perhaps,
+too, he felt it wiser to keep his convoy within sight. So they entered
+the yard in Indian file, like a tramp and his wife.
+
+The groom's eyebrows rose as he received the order for the pony-phaeton,
+and kept rising during all his preparations. Esther stood bolt upright
+and looked steadily at some chickens in the corner of the yard. Master
+Richard himself, thought the groom, was not in his ordinary; for in
+truth, he carried the hand-bag like a talisman, and either stood
+listless, or set off suddenly walking in one direction after another
+with brisk, decisive footsteps. Moreover, he had apparently neglected to
+wash his hands, and bore the air of one returning from a prolonged
+nutting ramble. Upon the groom's countenance there began to grow up an
+expression as of one about to whistle. And hardly had the carriage
+turned the corner and rattled into the high road with this inexplicable
+pair, than the whistle broke forth--prolonged, and low, and tremulous;
+and the groom, already so far relieved, vented the rest of his surprise
+in one simple English word, friendly to the mouth of Jack-tar and the
+sooty pitman, and hurried to spread the news round the servants' hall of
+Naseby House. Luncheon would be on the table in little beyond an hour;
+and the Squire, on sitting down, would hardly fail to ask for Master
+Richard. Hence, as the intelligent reader can foresee, this groom has a
+part to play in the imbroglio.
+
+Meantime, Dick had been thinking deeply and bitterly. It seemed to him
+as if his love had gone from him indeed, yet gone but a little way; as
+if he needed but to find the right touch or intonation, and her heart
+would recognise him and be melted. Yet he durst not open his mouth, and
+drove in silence till they had passed the main park-gates and turned
+into the cross-cut lane along the wall. Then it seemed to him as if it
+must be now, or never.
+
+"Can't you see you are killing me?" he cried. "Speak to me, look at me,
+treat me like a human man."
+
+She turned slowly and looked him in the face with eyes that seemed
+kinder. He dropped the reins and caught her hand, and she made no
+resistance, although her touch was unresponsive. But when, throwing one
+arm round her waist, he sought to kiss her lips, not like a lover
+indeed, not because he wanted to do so, but as a desperate man who puts
+his fortunes to the touch, she drew away from him, with a knot in her
+forehead, backed and shied about fiercely with her head, and pushed him
+from her with her hand. Then there was no room left for doubt, and Dick
+saw, as clear as sunlight, that she had a distaste or nourished a grudge
+against him.
+
+"Then you don't love me?" he said, drawing back from her, he also, as
+though her touch had burnt him; and then, as she made no answer, he
+repeated with another intonation, imperious and yet still pathetic, "You
+don't love me, _do_ you, _do_ you?"
+
+"I don't know," she replied. "Why do you ask me? Oh, how should I know?
+It has all been lies together--lies, and lies, and lies!"
+
+He cried her name sharply, like a man who has taken a physical hurt, and
+that was the last word that either of them spoke until they reached
+Thymebury Junction.
+
+This was a station isolated in the midst of moorlands, yet lying on the
+great up-line to London. The nearest town, Thymebury itself, was seven
+miles distant along the branch they call the Vale of Thyme Railway. It
+was now nearly half an hour past noon, the down train had just gone by,
+and there would be no more traffic at the junction until half-past
+three, when the local train comes in to meet the up express at a quarter
+before four. The stationmaster had already gone off to his garden, which
+was half a mile away in a hollow of the moor; a porter, who was just
+leaving, took charge of the phaeton, and promised to return it before
+night to Naseby House; only a deaf, snuffy, and stern old man remained
+to play propriety for Dick and Esther.
+
+Before the phaeton had driven off, the girl had entered the station and
+seated herself upon a bench. The endless, empty moorlands stretched
+before her, entirely unenclosed, and with no boundary but the horizon.
+Two lines of rails, a waggon shed, and a few telegraph posts, alone
+diversified the outlook. As for sounds, the silence was unbroken save by
+the chant of the telegraph wires and the crying of the plovers on the
+waste. With the approach of midday the wind had more and more fallen, it
+was now sweltering hot and the air trembled in the sunshine.
+
+Dick paused for an instant on the threshold of the platform. Then, in
+two steps, he was by her side and speaking almost with a sob.
+
+"Esther," he said, "have pity on me. What have I done? Can you not
+forgive me? Esther, you loved me once--can you not love me still?"
+
+"How can I tell you? How am I to know?" she answered. "You are all a lie
+to me--all a lie from first to last. You were laughing at my folly,
+playing with me like a child, at the very time when you declared you
+loved me. Which was true? was any of it true? or was it all, all a
+mockery? I am weary trying to find out. And you say I loved you; I loved
+my father's friend. I never loved, I never heard of, you, until that man
+came home and I began to find myself deceived. Give me back my father,
+be what you were before, and you may talk of love indeed!"
+
+"Then you cannot forgive me--cannot?" he asked.
+
+"I have nothing to forgive," she answered. "You do not understand."
+
+"Is that your last word, Esther?" said he, very white, and biting his
+lip to keep it still.
+
+"Yes; that is my last word," replied she.
+
+"Then we are here on false pretences, and we stay here no longer," he
+said. "Had you still loved me, right or wrong, I should have taken you
+away, because then I could have made you happy. But as it is--I must
+speak plainly--what you propose is degrading to you, and an insult to
+me, and a rank unkindness to your father. Your father may be this or
+that, but you should use him like a fellow-creature."
+
+"What do you mean?" she flashed. "I leave him my house and all my money;
+it is more than he deserves. I wonder you dare speak to me about that
+man. And besides, it is all he cares for; let him take it, and let me
+never hear from him again."
+
+"I thought you romantic about fathers," he said.
+
+"Is that a taunt?" she demanded.
+
+"No," he replied, "it is an argument. No one can make you like him, but
+don't disgrace him in his own eyes. He is old, Esther, old and broken
+down. Even I am sorry for him, and he has been the loss of all I cared
+for. Write to your aunt; when I see her answer you can leave quietly and
+naturally, and I will take you to your aunt's door. But in the meantime
+you must go home. You have no money, and so you are helpless, and must
+do as I tell you; and believe me, Esther, I do all for your good, and
+your good only, so God help me."
+
+She had put her hand into her pocket and withdrawn it empty.
+
+"I counted upon you," she wailed.
+
+"You counted rightly, then," he retorted. "I will not, to please you for
+a moment, make both of us unhappy for our lives; and since I cannot
+marry you, we have only been too long away, and must go home at once."
+
+"Dick," she cried suddenly, "perhaps I might--perhaps in
+time--perhaps--"
+
+"There is no perhaps about the matter," interrupted Dick. "I must go and
+bring the phaeton."
+
+And with that he strode from the station, all in a glow of passion and
+virtue. Esther, whose eyes had come alive and her cheeks flushed during
+these last words, relapsed in a second into a state of petrifaction. She
+remained without motion during his absence, and when he returned
+suffered herself to be put back into the phaeton, and driven off on the
+return journey like an idiot or a tired child. Compared with what she
+was now, her condition of the morning seemed positively natural. She sat
+cold and white and silent, and there was no speculation in her eyes.
+Poor Dick flailed and flailed at the pony, and once tried to whistle,
+but his courage was going down; huge clouds of despair gathered together
+in his soul, and from time to time their darkness was divided by a
+piercing flash of longing and regret. He had lost his love--he had lost
+his love for good.
+
+The pony was tired, and the hills very long and steep, and the air
+sultrier than ever, for now the breeze began to fail entirely. It seemed
+as if this miserable drive would never be done, as if poor Dick would
+never be able to go away and be comfortably wretched by himself; for all
+his desire was to escape from her presence and the reproach of her
+averted looks. He had lost his love, he thought--he had lost his love
+for good.
+
+They were already not far from the cottage, when his heart again
+faltered and he appealed to her once more, speaking low and eagerly in
+broken phrases.
+
+"I cannot live without your love," he concluded.
+
+"I do not understand what you mean," she replied, and I believe with
+perfect truth.
+
+"Then," said he, wounded to the quick, "your aunt might come and fetch
+you herself. Of course you can command me as you please. But I think it
+would be better so."
+
+"Oh yes," she said wearily, "better so."
+
+This was the only exchange of words between them till about four
+o'clock; the phaeton, mounting the lane, "opened out" the cottage
+between the leafy banks. Thin smoke went straight up from the chimney;
+the flowers in the garden, the hawthorn in the lane, hung down their
+heads in the heat; the stillness was broken only by the sound of hoofs.
+For right before the gate a livery servant rode slowly up and down,
+leading a saddle horse. And in this last Dick shuddered to identify his
+father's chestnut.
+
+Alas! poor Richard, what should this portend?
+
+The servant, as in duty bound, dismounted and took the phaeton into his
+keeping; yet Dick thought he touched his hat to him with something of a
+grin. Esther, passive as ever, was helped out and crossed the garden
+with a slow and mechanical gait; and Dick, following close behind her,
+heard from within the cottage his father's voice upraised in an
+anathema, and the shriller tones of the Admiral responding in the key of
+war.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+BATTLE ROYAL
+
+
+Squire Naseby, on sitting down to lunch, had inquired for Dick, whom he
+had not seen since the day before at dinner; and the servant answering
+awkwardly that Master Richard had come back, but had gone out again with
+the pony-phaeton, his suspicions became aroused, and he cross-questioned
+the man until the whole was out. It appeared from this report that Dick
+had been going about for nearly a month with a girl in the Vale--a Miss
+Van Tromp; that she lived near Lord Trevanion's upper wood; that
+recently Miss Van Tromp's papa had returned home from foreign parts
+after a prolonged absence; that this papa was an old gentleman, very
+chatty and free with his money in the public-house--whereupon Mr.
+Naseby's face became encrimsoned; that the papa, furthermore, was said
+to be an admiral--whereupon Mr. Naseby spat out a whistle brief and
+fierce as an oath; that Master Dick seemed very friendly with the
+papa--"God help him!" said Mr. Naseby; that last night Master Dick had
+not come in, and to-day he had driven away in the phaeton with the young
+lady.
+
+"Young woman," corrected Mr. Naseby.
+
+"Yes, sir," said the man, who had been unwilling enough to gossip from
+the first, and was now cowed by the effect of his communications on the
+master. "Young woman, sir!"
+
+"Had they luggage?" demanded the Squire.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+Mr. Naseby was silent for a moment, struggling to keep down his emotion,
+and he mastered it so far as to mount into the sarcastic vein, when he
+was in the nearest danger of melting into the sorrowful.
+
+"And was this--this Van Dunk with them?" he asked, dwelling scornfully
+on the name.
+
+The servant believed not, and being eager to shift the responsibility to
+other shoulders, suggested that perhaps the master had better inquire
+further from George the stableman in person.
+
+"Tell him to saddle the chestnut and come with me. And then you can
+take away this trash," added Mr. Naseby, pointing to the luncheon; and
+he arose, lordly in his anger, and marched forth upon the terrace to
+await his horse.
+
+There Dick's old nurse shrunk up to him, for the news went like wildfire
+over Naseby House, and timidly expressed a hope that there was nothing
+much amiss with the young master.
+
+"I'll pull him through," the Squire said grimly, as though he meant to
+pull him through a threshing-mill; "I'll save him from this gang; God
+help him with the next! He has a taste for low company, and no natural
+affections to steady him. His father was no society for him; he must go
+fuddling with a Dutchman, Nance, and now he's caught. Let us pray he'll
+take the lesson," he added, more gravely, "but youth is here to make
+troubles, and age to pull them out again."
+
+Nance whimpered and recalled several episodes of Dick's childhood, which
+moved Mr. Naseby to blow his nose and shake her hard by the hand; and
+then, the horse having arrived opportunely, to get himself without delay
+into the saddle and canter off.
+
+He rode straight, hot spur, to Thymebury, where, as was to be expected,
+he could glean no tidings of the runaways. They had not been seen at the
+George; they had not been seen at the station. The shadow darkened on
+Mr. Naseby's face; the junction did not occur to him; his last hope was
+for Van Tromp's cottage; thither he bade George guide him, and thither
+he followed, nursing grief, anxiety, and indignation in his heart.
+
+"Here it is, sir," said George, stopping.
+
+"What! on my own land!" he cried. "How's this? I let this place to
+somebody--M'Whirter or M'Glashan."
+
+"Miss M'Glashan was the young lady's aunt, sir, I believe," returned
+George.
+
+"Ay--dummies," said the Squire. "I shall whistle for my rent too. Here,
+take my horse."
+
+The Admiral, this hot afternoon, was sitting by the window with a long
+glass. He already knew the Squire by sight, and now, seeing him dismount
+before the cottage and come striding through the garden, concluded
+without doubt he was there to ask for Esther's hand.
+
+"This is why the girl is not yet home," he thought; "a very suitable
+delicacy on young Naseby's part."
+
+And he composed himself with some pomp, answered the loud rattle of the
+riding-whip upon the door with a dulcet invitation to enter, and coming
+forward with a bow and a smile, "Mr. Naseby, I believe," said he.
+
+The Squire came armed for battle; took in his man from top to toe in one
+rapid and scornful glance, and decided on a course at once. He must let
+the fellow see that he understood him.
+
+"You are Mr. Van Tromp?" he returned roughly, and without taking any
+notice of the proffered hand.
+
+"The same, sir," replied the Admiral. "Pray be seated."
+
+"No, sir," said the Squire, point-blank, "I will not be seated. I am
+told that you are an admiral," he added.
+
+"No, sir, I am not an admiral," returned Van Tromp, who now began to
+grow nettled and enter into the spirit of the interview.
+
+"Then why do you call yourself one, sir?"
+
+"I have to ask your pardon, I do not," says Van Tromp, as grand as the
+Pope.
+
+But nothing was of avail against the Squire.
+
+"You sail under false colours from beginning to end," he said. "Your
+very house was taken under a sham name."
+
+"It is not my house. I am my daughter's guest," replied the Admiral. "If
+it _were_ my house----"
+
+"Well?" said the Squire, "what then? hey?"
+
+The Admiral looked at him nobly, but was silent.
+
+"Look here," said Mr. Naseby, "this intimidation is a waste of time; it
+is thrown away on me, sir; it will not succeed with me. I will not
+permit you even to gain time by your fencing. Now, sir, I presume you
+understand what brings me here."
+
+"I am entirely at a loss to account for your intrusion," bows and waves
+Van Tromp.
+
+"I will try to tell you, then. I come here as a father"--down came the
+riding-whip upon the table--"I have right and justice upon my side. I
+understand your calculations, but you calculated without me. I am a man
+of the world, and I see through you and your manoeuvres. I am dealing
+now with a conspiracy--I stigmatise it as such, and I will expose it and
+crush it. And now I order you to tell me how far things have gone, and
+whither you have smuggled my unhappy son."
+
+"My God, sir!" Van Tromp broke out, "I have had about enough of this.
+Your son? God knows where he is for me! What the devil have I to do with
+your son? My daughter is out, for the matter of that; I might ask you
+where she is, and what would you say to that? But this is all midsummer
+madness. Name your business distinctly, and be off."
+
+"How often am I to tell you?" cried the Squire. "Where did your daughter
+take my son to-day in that cursed pony carriage?"
+
+"In a pony carriage?" repeated Van Tromp.
+
+"Yes, sir--with luggage."
+
+"Luggage?"--Van Tromp had turned a little pale.
+
+"Luggage, I said--luggage!" shouted Naseby. "You may spare me this
+dissimulation. Where's my son? You are speaking to a father, sir, a
+father."
+
+"But, sir, if this be true," out came Van Tromp in a new key, "it is I
+who have an explanation to demand."
+
+"Precisely. There is the conspiracy," retorted Naseby. "Oh!" he added,
+"I am a man of the world. I can see through and through you."
+
+Van Tromp began to understand.
+
+"You speak a great deal about being a father, Mr. Naseby," said he; "I
+believe you forget that the appellation is common to both of us. I am at
+a loss to figure to myself, however dimly, how any man--I have not said
+any gentleman--could so brazenly insult another as you have been
+insulting me since you entered this house. For the first time I
+appreciate your base insinuations, and I despise them and you. You were,
+I am told, a manufacturer; I am an artist; I have seen better days; I
+have moved in societies where you would not be received, and dined where
+you would be glad to pay a pound to see me dining. The so-called
+aristocracy of wealth, sir, I despise. I refuse to help you; I refuse to
+be helped by you. There lies the door."
+
+And the Admiral stood forth in a halo.
+
+It was then that Dick entered. He had been waiting in the porch for some
+time back, and Esther had been listlessly standing by his side. He had
+put out his hand to bar her entrance, and she had submitted without
+surprise; and though she seemed to listen, she scarcely appeared to
+comprehend. Dick, on his part, was as white as a sheet; his eyes burned
+and his lips trembled with anger as he thrust the door suddenly open,
+introduced Esther with ceremonious gallantry, and stood forward and
+knocked his hat firmer on his head like a man about to leap.
+
+"What is all this?" he demanded.
+
+"Is this your father, Mr. Naseby?" inquired the Admiral.
+
+"It is," said the young man.
+
+"I make you my compliments," returned Van Tromp.
+
+"Dick!" cried his father, suddenly breaking forth, "It is not too late,
+is it? I have come here in time to save you. Come, come away with
+me--come away from this place."
+
+And he fawned upon Dick with his hands.
+
+"Keep your hands off me," cried Dick, not meaning unkindness, but
+because his nerves were shattered by so many successive miseries.
+
+"No, no," said the old man. "Don't repulse your father, Dick, when he
+has come here to save you. Don't repulse me, my boy. Perhaps I have not
+been kind to you, not quite considerate, too harsh; my boy, it was not
+for want of love. Think of old times. I was kind to you then, was I not?
+When you were a child, and your mother was with us." Mr. Naseby was
+interrupted by a sort of sob. Dick stood looking at him in a maze. "Come
+away," pursued the father in a whisper; "you need not be afraid of any
+consequences. I am a man of the world, Dick; and she can have no claim
+on you--no claim, I tell you; and we'll be handsome too, Dick--we'll
+give them a good round figure, father and daughter, and there's an end."
+
+He had been trying to get Dick towards the door, but the latter stood
+off.
+
+"You had better take care, sir, how you insult that lady," said the son,
+as black as night.
+
+"You would not choose between your father and your mistress?" said the
+father.
+
+"What do you call her, sir?" cried Dick, high and clear.
+
+Forbearance and patience were not among Mr. Naseby's qualities.
+
+"I called her your mistress," he shouted, "and I might have called her a
+----"
+
+"That is an unmanly lie," replied Dick slowly.
+
+"Dick!" cried the father, "Dick!"
+
+"I do not care," said the son, strengthening himself against his own
+heart; "I--I have said it, and it's the truth."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"Dick," said the old man at last, in a voice that was shaken as by a
+gale of wind, "I am going. I leave you with your friends, sir--with your
+friends. I came to serve you, and now I go away a broken man. For years
+I have seen this coming, and now it has come. You never loved me. Now
+you have been the death of me. You may boast of that. Now I leave you.
+God pardon you."
+
+With that he was gone; and the three who remained together heard his
+horse's hoofs descend the lane. Esther had not made a sign throughout
+the interview, and still kept silence now that it was over; but the
+Admiral, who had once or twice moved forward and drawn back again, now
+advanced for good.
+
+"You are a man of spirit, sir," said he to Dick; "but though I am no
+friend to parental interference, I will say that you were heavy on the
+governor." Then he added with a chuckle: "You began, Richard, with a
+silver spoon, and here you are in the water, like the rest. Work, work,
+nothing like work. You have parts, you have manners; why, with
+application, you may die a millionaire!"
+
+Dick shook himself. He took Esther by the hand, looking at her
+mournfully.
+
+"Then this is farewell?" he said.
+
+"Yes," she answered. There was no tone in her voice, and she did not
+return his gaze.
+
+"For ever," added Dick.
+
+"For ever," she repeated mechanically.
+
+"I have had hard measure," he continued. "In time, I believe I could
+have shown you I was worthy, and there was no time long enough to show
+how much I loved you. But it was not to be. I have lost all."
+
+He relinquished her hand, still looking at her, and she turned to leave
+the room.
+
+"Why, what in fortune's name is the meaning of all this?" cried Van
+Tromp. "Esther, come back!"
+
+"Let her go," said Dick, and he watched her disappear with strangely
+mingled feelings. For he had fallen into that stage when men have the
+vertigo of misfortune, court the strokes of destiny, and rush towards
+anything decisive, that it may free them from suspense though at the
+cost of ruin. It is one of the many minor forms of suicide.
+
+"She did not love me," he said, turning to her father.
+
+"I feared as much," said he, "when I sounded her. Poor Dick, poor Dick!
+And yet I believe I am as much cut up as you are. I was born to see
+others happy."
+
+"You forget," returned Dick, with something like a sneer, "that I am now
+a pauper."
+
+Van Tromp snapped his fingers.
+
+"Tut!" said he; "Esther has plenty for us all."
+
+Dick looked at him with some wonder. It had never dawned upon him that
+this shiftless, thriftless, worthless, sponging parasite was yet, after
+all and in spite of all, not mercenary in the issue of his thoughts; yet
+so it was.
+
+"Now," said Dick, "I must go."
+
+"Go?" cried Van Tromp. "Where? Not one foot, Mr. Richard Naseby. Here
+you shall stay in the meantime! and--well, and do something
+practical--advertise for a situation as private secretary--and when you
+have it, go and welcome. But in the meantime, sir, no false pride; we
+must stay with our friends; we must sponge a while on Papa Van Tromp,
+who has sponged so often upon us."
+
+"By God," cried Dick, "I believe you are the best of the lot."
+
+"Dick, my boy," replied the Admiral, winking, "you mark me, I am not the
+worst."
+
+"Then why," began Dick, and then paused. "But Esther," he began again,
+once more to interrupt himself. "The fact is, Admiral," he came out with
+it roundly now, "your daughter wished to run away from you to-day, and I
+only brought her back with difficulty."
+
+"In the pony carriage?" asked the Admiral, with the silliness of extreme
+surprise.
+
+"Yes," Dick answered.
+
+"Why, what the devil was she running away from?"
+
+Dick found the question unusually hard to answer.
+
+"Why," said he, "you know you're a bit of a rip."
+
+"I behave to that girl, sir, like an archdeacon," replied Van Tromp
+warmly.
+
+"Well--excuse me--but you know you drink," insisted Dick.
+
+"I know that I was a sheet in the wind's eye, sir, once--once only,
+since I reached this place," retorted the Admiral. "And even then I was
+fit for any drawing-room. I should like you to tell me how many fathers,
+lay and clerical, go upstairs every day with a face like a lobster and
+cod's eyes--and are dull, upon the back of it--not even mirth for the
+money! No, if that's what she runs for, all I say is, let her run."
+
+"You see," Dick tried it again, "she has fancies--"
+
+"Confound her fancies!" cried Van Tromp. "I used her kindly; she had her
+own way; I was her father. Besides, I had taken quite a liking to the
+girl, and meant to stay with her for good. But I tell you what it is,
+Dick, since she has trifled with you--Oh yes, she did though!--and since
+her old papa's not good enough for her--the devil take her, say I."
+
+"You will be kind to her at least?" said Dick.
+
+"I never was unkind to a living soul," replied the Admiral. "Firm I can
+be, but not unkind."
+
+"Well," said Dick, offering his hand, "God bless you, and farewell."
+
+The Admiral swore by all his gods he should not go. "Dick," he said,
+"you are a selfish dog; you forget your old Admiral. You wouldn't leave
+him alone, would you?"
+
+It was useless to remind him that the house was not his to dispose of,
+that being a class of considerations to which his intelligence was
+closed; so Dick tore himself off by force, and shouting a good-bye, made
+off along the lane to Thymebury.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+IN WHICH THE LIBERAL EDITOR APPEARS AS "DEUS EX MACHINÂ"
+
+
+It was perhaps a week later, as old Mr. Naseby sat brooding in his
+study, that there was shown in upon him, on urgent business, a little
+hectic gentleman shabbily attired.
+
+"I have to ask pardon for this intrusion, Mr. Naseby," he said; "but I
+come here to perform a duty. My card has been sent in, but perhaps you
+may not know, what it does not tell you, that I am the editor of the
+_Thymebury Star_."
+
+Mr. Naseby looked up, indignant.
+
+"I cannot fancy," he said, "that we have much in common to discuss."
+
+"I have only a word to say--one piece of information to communicate.
+Some months ago, we had--you will pardon my referring to it, it is
+absolutely necessary--but we had an unfortunate difference as to facts."
+
+"Have you come to apologise?" asked the Squire sternly.
+
+"No, sir; to mention a circumstance. On the morning in question, your
+son, Mr. Richard Naseby----"
+
+"I do not permit his name to be mentioned."
+
+"You will, however, permit me," replied the Editor.
+
+"You are cruel," said the Squire. He was right, he was a broken man.
+
+Then the Editor described Dick's warning visit; and how he had seen in
+the lad's eye that there was a thrashing in the wind, and had escaped
+through pity only--so the Editor put it--"through pity only, sir. And
+oh, sir," he went on, "if you had seen him speaking up for you, I am
+sure you would have been proud of your son. I know I admired the lad
+myself, and indeed that's what brings me here."
+
+"I have misjudged him," said the Squire. "Do you know where he is?"
+
+"Yes, sir, he lies sick at Thymebury."
+
+"You can take me to him?"
+
+"I can."
+
+"I pray God he may forgive me," said the father.
+
+And he and the Editor made post-haste for the country town.
+
+Next day the report went abroad that Mr. Richard was reconciled to his
+father and had been taken home to Naseby House. He was still ailing, it
+was said, and the Squire nursed him like the proverbial woman. Rumour,
+in this instance, did no more than justice to the truth; and over the
+sick-bed many confidences were exchanged, and clouds that had been
+growing for years passed away in a few hours, and, as fond mankind loves
+to hope, for ever. Many long talks had been fruitless in external
+action, though fruitful for the understanding of the pair; but at last,
+one showery Tuesday, the Squire might have been observed upon his way to
+the cottage in the lane.
+
+The old gentleman had arranged his features with a view to self-command,
+rather than external cheerfulness; and he entered the cottage on his
+visit of conciliation with the bearing of a clergyman come to announce a
+death.
+
+The Admiral and his daughter were both within, and both looked upon
+their visitor with more surprise than favour.
+
+"Sir," said he to Van Tromp, "I am told I have done you much injustice."
+
+There came a little sound in Esther's throat, and she put her hand
+suddenly to her heart.
+
+"You have, sir; and the acknowledgment suffices," replied the Admiral.
+"I am prepared, sir, to be easy with you, since I hear you have made it
+up with my friend Dick. But let me remind you that you owe some
+apologies to this young lady also."
+
+"I shall have the temerity to ask for more than her forgiveness," said
+the Squire. "Miss Van Tromp," he continued, "once I was in great
+distress, and knew nothing of you or your character; but I believe you
+will pardon a few rough words to an old man who asks forgiveness from
+his heart. I have heard much of you since then; for you have a fervent
+advocate in my house. I believe you will understand that I speak of my
+son. He is, I regret to say, very far from well; he does not pick up as
+the doctors had expected; he has a great deal upon his mind, and, to
+tell you the truth, my girl, if you won't help us, I am afraid I shall
+lose him. Come now, forgive him! I was angry with him once myself, and I
+found I was in the wrong. This is only a misunderstanding, like the
+other, believe me; and, with one kind movement, you may give happiness
+to him, and to me, and to yourself."
+
+Esther made a movement towards the door, but long before she reached it
+she had broken forth sobbing.
+
+"It is all right," said the Admiral; "I understand the sex. Let me make
+you my compliments, Mr. Naseby."
+
+The Squire was too much relieved to be angry.
+
+"My dear," said he to Esther, "you must not agitate yourself."
+
+"She had better go up and see him right away," suggested Van Tromp.
+
+"I had not ventured to propose it," replied the Squire. "_Les
+convenances_, I believe----"
+
+"_Je m'en fiche_," cried the Admiral, snapping his fingers. "She shall
+go and see my friend Dick. Run and get ready, Esther."
+
+Esther obeyed.
+
+"She has not--has not run away again?" inquired Mr. Naseby, as soon as
+she was gone.
+
+"No," said Van Tromp, "not again. She is a devilish odd girl, though,
+mind you that."
+
+"But I cannot stomach the man with the carbuncles," thought the Squire.
+
+And this is why there is a new household and a brand-new baby in Naseby
+Dower House; and why the great Van Tromp lives in pleasant style upon
+the shores of England; and why twenty-six individual copies of the
+_Thymebury Star_ are received daily at the door of Naseby House.
+
+
+
+
+THE MERRY MEN
+
+
+   _My dear Lady Taylor_,
+
+   _To your name, if I wrote on brass, I could add nothing; it has been
+   already written higher than I could dream to reach, by a strong and a
+   dear hand; and if I now dedicate to you these tales,[1] it is not as
+   the writer who brings you his work, but as the friend who would
+   remind you of his affection._
+
+      ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+  _Skerryvore, Bournemouth._
+
+
+
+
+THE MERRY MEN
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+EILEAN AROS
+
+
+It was a beautiful morning in the late July when I set forth on foot for
+the last time for Aros. A boat had put me ashore the night before at
+Grisapol; I had such breakfast as the little inn afforded, and, leaving
+all my baggage till I had an occasion to come round for it by sea,
+struck right across the promontory with a cheerful heart.
+
+I was far from being a native of these parts, springing, as I did, from
+an unmixed lowland stock. But an uncle of mine, Gordon Darnaway, after a
+poor, rough youth, and some years at sea, had married a young wife in
+the islands; Mary Maclean she was called, the last of her family; and
+when she died in giving birth to a daughter, Aros, the sea-girt farm,
+had remained in his possession. It brought him in nothing but the means
+of life, as I was well aware; but he was a man whom ill-fortune had
+pursued; he feared, cumbered as he was with the young child, to make a
+fresh adventure upon life; and remained in Aros, biting his nails at
+destiny. Years passed over his head in that isolation, and brought
+neither help nor contentment. Meantime our family was dying out in the
+lowlands; there is little luck for any of that race; and perhaps my
+father was the luckiest of all, for not only was he one of the last to
+die, but he left a son to his name and a little money to support it. I
+was a student of Edinburgh University, living well enough at my own
+charges, but without kith or kin; when some news of me found its way to
+Uncle Gordon on the Ross of Grisapol; and he, as he was a man who held
+blood thicker than water, wrote to me the day he heard of my existence,
+and taught me to count Aros as my home. Thus it was that I came to spend
+my vacations in that part of the country, so far from all society and
+comfort, between the codfish and the moorcocks; and thus it was that
+now, when I had done with my classes, I was returning thither with so
+light a heart that July day.
+
+The Ross, as we call it, is a promontory neither wide nor high, but as
+rough as God made it to this day; the deep sea on either hand of it,
+full of rugged isles and reefs most perilous to seamen--all overlooked
+from the eastward by some very high cliffs and the great peak of Ben
+Kyaw. _The Mountain of the Mist_, they say the words signify in the
+Gaelic tongue; and it is well named. For that hill-top, which is more
+than three thousand feet in height, catches all the clouds that come
+blowing from the seaward; and, indeed, I used often to think that it
+must make them for itself; since when all heaven was clear to the sea
+level, there would ever be a streamer on Ben Kyaw. It brought water,
+too, and was mossy[2] to the top in consequence. I have seen us sitting
+in broad sunshine on the Ross, and the rain falling black like crape
+upon the mountain. But the wetness of it made it often appear more
+beautiful to my eyes; for when the sun struck upon the hillsides there
+were many wet rocks and watercourses that shone like jewels even as far
+as Aros, fifteen miles away.
+
+The road that I followed was a cattle-track. It twisted so as nearly to
+double the length of my journey; it went over rough boulders so that a
+man had to leap from one to another, and through soft bottoms where the
+moss came nearly to the knee. There was no cultivation anywhere, and
+not one house in the ten miles from Grisapol to Aros. Houses of course
+there were--three at least; but they lay so far on the one side or the
+other that no stranger could have found them from the track. A large
+part of the Ross is covered with big granite rocks, some of them larger
+than a two-roomed house, one beside another, with fern and deep heather
+in between them where the vipers breed. Any way the wind was, it was
+always sea air, as salt as on a ship; the gulls were as free as moorfowl
+over all the Ross; and whenever the way rose a little, your eye would
+kindle with the brightness of the sea. From the very midst of the land,
+on a day of wind and a high spring, I have heard the Roost roaring like
+a battle where it runs by Aros, and the great and fearful voices of the
+breakers that we call the Merry Men.
+
+Aros itself--Aros Jay, I have heard the natives call it, and they say it
+means _the House of God_--Aros itself was not properly a piece of the
+Ross, nor was it quite an islet. It formed the south-west corner of the
+land, fitted close to it, and was in one place only separated from the
+coast by a little gut of the sea, not forty feet across the narrowest.
+When the tide was full, this was clear and still, like a pool on a land
+river; only there was a difference in the weeds and fishes, and the
+water itself was green instead of brown; but when the tide went out, in
+the bottom of the ebb, there was a day or two in every month when you
+could pass dryshod from Aros to the mainland. There was some good
+pasture, where my uncle fed the sheep he lived on; perhaps the feed was
+better because the ground rose higher on the islet than the main level
+of the Ross, but this I am not skilled enough to settle. The house was a
+good one for that country, two stories high. It looked westward over a
+bay, with a pier hard by for a boat, and from the door you could watch
+the vapours blowing on Ben Kyaw.
+
+On all this part of the coast, and especially near Aros, these great
+granite rocks that I have spoken of go down together in troops into the
+sea, like cattle on a summer's day. There they stand, for all the world
+like their neighbours ashore; only the salt water sobbing between them
+instead of the quiet earth, and clots of sea-pink blooming on their
+sides instead of heather; and the great sea-conger to wreathe about the
+base of them instead of the poisonous viper of the land. On calm days
+you can go wandering between them in a boat for hours, echoes following
+you about the labyrinth; but when the sea is up, Heaven help the man
+that hears that caldron boiling.
+
+Off the south-west end of Aros these blocks are very many, and much
+greater in size. Indeed, they must grow monstrously bigger out to sea,
+for there must be ten sea miles of open water sown with them as thick as
+a country place with houses, some standing thirty feet above the tides,
+some covered, but all perilous to ships; so that on a clear, westerly
+blowing day, I have counted, from the top of Aros, the great rollers
+breaking white and heavy over as many as six-and-forty buried reefs. But
+it is nearer in shore that the danger is worst; for the tide, here
+running like a mill-race, makes a long belt of broken water--a _Roost_
+we call it--at the tail of the land. I have often been out there in a
+dead calm at the slack of the tide; and a strange place it is, with the
+sea swirling and combing up and boiling like the caldrons of a linn, and
+now and again a little dancing mutter of sound as though the _Roost_
+were talking to itself. But when the tide begins to run again, and above
+all in heavy weather, there is no man could take a boat within half a
+mile of it, nor a ship afloat that could either steer or live in such a
+place. You can hear the roaring of it six miles away. At the seaward end
+there comes the strongest of the bubble; and it's here that these big
+breakers dance together--the dance of death, it may be called--that have
+got the name, in these parts, of the Merry Men. I have heard it said
+that they run fifty feet high; but that must be the green water only,
+for the spray runs twice as high as that. Whether they got the name
+from their movements, which are swift and antic, or from the shouting
+they make about the turn of the tide, so that all Aros shakes with it,
+is more than I can tell.
+
+The truth is, that in a south-westerly wind, that part of our
+archipelago is no better than a trap. If a ship got through the reefs,
+and weathered the Merry Men, it would be to come ashore on the south
+coast of Aros, in Sandag Bay, where so many dismal things befell our
+family, as I propose to tell. The thought of all these dangers, in the
+place I knew so long, makes me particularly welcome the works now going
+forward to set lights upon the headlands and buoys along the channels of
+our iron-bound, inhospitable islands.
+
+The country people had many a story about Aros, as I used to hear from
+my uncle's man, Rorie, an old servant of the Macleans, who had
+transferred his services without afterthought on the occasion of the
+marriage. There was some tale of an unlucky creature, a sea-kelpie, that
+dwelt and did business in some fearful manner of his own among the
+boiling breakers of the Roost. A mermaid had once met a piper on Sandag
+beach, and there sang to him a long, bright midsummer's night, so that
+in the morning he was found stricken crazy, and from thenceforward, till
+the day he died, said only one form of words; what they were in the
+original Gaelic I cannot tell, but they were thus translated: "Ah, the
+sweet singing out of the sea." Seals that haunted on that coast have
+been known to speak to man in his own tongue, presaging great disasters.
+It was here that a certain saint first landed on his voyage out of
+Ireland to convert the Hebrideans. And, indeed, I think he had some
+claim to be called saint; for, with the boats of that past age, to make
+so rough a passage, and land on such a ticklish coast, was surely not
+far short of the miraculous. It was to him, or to some of his monkish
+underlings who had a cell there, that the islet owes its holy and
+beautiful name, the House of God.
+
+Among these old wives' stories there was one which I was inclined to
+hear with more credulity. As I was told, in that tempest which scattered
+the ships of the Invincible Armada over all the north and west of
+Scotland, one great vessel came ashore on Aros, and before the eyes of
+some solitary people on a hill-top, went down in a moment with all
+hands, her colours flying even as she sank. There was some likelihood in
+this tale; for another of that fleet lay sunk on the north side, twenty
+miles from Grisapol. It was told, I thought, with more detail and
+gravity than its companion stories, and there was one particularity
+which went far to convince me of its truth: the name, that is, of the
+ship was still remembered, and sounded, in my ears, Spanishly. The
+_Espirito Santo_ they called it, a great ship of many decks of guns,
+laden with treasure and grandees of Spain, and fierce soldadoes, that
+now lay fathom deep to all eternity, done with her wars and voyages, in
+Sandag Bay, upon the west of Aros. No more salvos of ordnance for that
+tall ship, the "Holy Spirit," no more fair winds or happy ventures; only
+to rot there deep in the sea-tangle and hear the shoutings of the Merry
+Men as the tide ran high about the island. It was a strange thought to
+me first and last, and only grew stranger as I learned the more of
+Spain, from which she had set sail with so proud a company, and King
+Philip, the wealthy king, that sent her on that voyage.
+
+And now I must tell you, as I walked from Grisapol that day, the
+_Espirito Santo_ was very much in my reflections. I had been favourably
+remarked by our then Principal in Edinburgh College, that famous writer,
+Dr. Robertson, and by him had been set to work on some papers of an
+ancient date to rearrange and sift of what was worthless; and in one of
+these, to my great wonder, I found a note of this very ship, the
+_Espirito Santo_, with her captain's name, and how she carried a great
+part of the Spaniards' treasure, and had been lost upon the Ross of
+Grisapol; but in what particular spot the wild tribes of that place and
+period would give no information to the king's inquiries. Putting one
+thing with another, and taking our island tradition together with this
+note of old King Jamie's perquisitions after wealth, it had come
+strongly on my mind that the spot for which he sought in vain could be
+no other than the small bay of Sandag on my uncle's land; and being a
+fellow of a mechanical turn, I had ever since been plotting how to weigh
+that good ship up again with all her ingots, ounces, and doubloons, and
+bring back our house of Darnaway to its long-forgotten dignity and
+wealth.
+
+This was a design of which I soon had reason to repent. My mind was
+sharply turned on different reflections; and since I became the witness
+of a strange judgment of God's, the thought of dead men's treasures has
+been intolerable to my conscience. But even at that time I must acquit
+myself of sordid greed; for if I desired riches, it was not for their
+own sake, but for the sake of a person who was dear to my heart--my
+uncle's daughter, Mary Ellen. She had been educated well, and had been a
+time to school upon the mainland; which, poor girl, she would have been
+happier without. For Aros was no place for her, with old Rorie the
+servant, and her father, who was one of the unhappiest men in Scotland,
+plainly bred up in a country place among Cameronians, long a skipper
+sailing out of the Clyde about the islands, and now, with infinite
+discontent, managing his sheep and a little 'long shore fishing for the
+necessary bread. If it was sometimes weariful to me, who was there but a
+month or two, you may fancy what it was to her who dwelt in that same
+desert all the year round, with the sheep and flying sea-gulls, and the
+Merry Men singing and dancing in the Roost!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+WHAT THE WRECK HAD BROUGHT TO AROS
+
+
+It was half-flood when I got the length of Aros; and there was nothing
+for it but to stand on the far shore and whistle for Rorie with the
+boat. I had no need to repeat the signal. At the first sound, Mary was
+at the door flying a handkerchief by way of answer, and the old
+long-legged serving-man was shambling down the gravel to the pier. For
+all his hurry, it took him a long while to pull across the bay; and I
+observed him several times to pause, go into the stern, and look over
+curiously into the wake. As he came nearer, he seemed to me aged and
+haggard, and I thought he avoided my eye. The coble had been repaired,
+with two new thwarts and several patches of some rare and beautiful
+foreign wood, the name of it unknown to me.
+
+"Why, Rorie," said I, as we began the return voyage, "this is fine wood.
+How came you by that?"
+
+"It will be hard to cheesel," Rorie opined reluctantly; and just then,
+dropping the oars, he made another of those dives into the stern which I
+had remarked as he came across to fetch me, and, leaning his hand on my
+shoulder, stared with an awful look into the waters of the bay.
+
+"What is wrong?" I asked, a good deal startled.
+
+"It will be a great feesh," said the old man, returning to his oars; and
+nothing more could I get out of him but strange glances and an ominous
+nodding of the head. In spite of myself, I was infected with a measure
+of uneasiness; I turned also, and studied the wake. The water was still
+and transparent, but, out here in the middle of the bay, exceeding deep.
+For some time I could see naught; but at last it did seem to me as if
+something dark--a great fish, or perhaps only a shadow--followed
+studiously in the track of the moving coble. And then I remembered one
+of Rorie's superstitions: how in a ferry in Morven, in some great,
+exterminating feud among the clans, a fish, the like of it unknown in
+all our waters, followed for some years the passage of the ferryboat,
+until no man dared to make the crossing.
+
+"He will be waiting for the right man," said Rorie.
+
+Mary met me on the beach, and led me up the brae and into the house of
+Aros. Outside and inside there were many changes. The garden was fenced
+with the same wood that I had noted in the boat; there were chairs in
+the kitchen covered with strange brocade; curtains of brocade hung from
+the window; a clock stood silent on the dresser; a lamp of brass was
+swinging from the roof; the table was set for dinner with the finest of
+linen and silver; and all these new riches were displayed in the plain
+old kitchen that I knew so well, with the high-backed settle, and the
+stools, and the closet bed for Rorie; with the wide chimney the sun
+shone into, and the clear-smouldering peats; with the pipes on the
+mantelshelf and the three-cornered spittoons, filled with sea-shells
+instead of sand, on the floor; with the bare stone walls and the bare
+wooden floor, and the three patchwork rugs that were of yore its sole
+adornment--poor man's patchwork, the like of it unknown in cities, woven
+with homespun, and Sunday black, and sea-cloth polished on the bench of
+rowing. The room, like the house, had been a sort of wonder in that
+country-side, it was so neat and habitable; and to see it now, shamed by
+these incongruous additions, filled me with indignation and a kind of
+anger. In view of the errand I had come upon to Aros, the feeling was
+baseless and unjust; but it burned high, at the first moment, in my
+heart.
+
+"Mary, girl," said I, "this is the place I had learned to call my home,
+and I do not know it."
+
+"It is my home by nature, not by the learning," she replied; "the place
+I was born and the place I'm like to die in; and I neither like these
+changes, nor the way they came, nor that which came with them. I would
+have liked better, under God's pleasure, they had gone down into the
+sea, and the Merry Men were dancing on them now."
+
+Mary was always serious; it was perhaps the only trait that she shared
+with her father; but the tone with which she uttered these words was
+even graver than of custom.
+
+"Ay," said I, "I feared it came by wreck, and that's by death; yet when
+my father died I took his goods without remorse."
+
+"Your father died a clean-strae death, as the folk say," said Mary.
+
+"True," I returned; "and a wreck is like a judgment. What was she
+called?"
+
+"They ca'd her the _Christ-Anna_," said a voice behind me; and, turning
+round, I saw my uncle standing in the doorway.
+
+He was a sour, small, bilious man, with a long face and very dark eyes;
+fifty-six years old, sound and active in body, and with an air somewhat
+between that of a shepherd and that of a man following the sea. He never
+laughed, that I heard; read long at the Bible; prayed much, like the
+Cameronians he had been brought up among; and, indeed, in many ways,
+used to remind me of one of the hill-preachers in the killing times
+before the Revolution. But he never got much comfort, nor even, as I
+used to think, much guidance, by his piety. He had his black fits when
+he was afraid of hell; but he had led a rough life, to which he would
+look back with envy, and was still a rough, cold, gloomy man.
+
+As he came in at the door out of the sunlight, with his bonnet on his
+head and a pipe hanging in his button-hole, he seemed, like Rorie, to
+have grown older and paler, the lines were deeplier ploughed upon his
+face, and the whites of his eyes were yellow, like old stained ivory, or
+the bones of the dead.
+
+"Ay," he repeated, dwelling upon the first part of the word, "the
+_Christ-Anna_. It's an awfu' name."
+
+I made him my salutations, and complimented him upon his look of health;
+for I feared he had perhaps been ill.
+
+"I'm in the body," he replied, ungraciously enough; "aye in the body and
+the sins of the body, like yoursel'. Denner," he said abruptly to Mary,
+and then ran on, to me: "They're grand braws, thir that we hae gotten,
+are they no'? Yon's a bonny knock,[3] but it'll no gang; and the
+napery's by ordnar. Bonny, bairnly braws; it's for the like o' them folk
+sells the peace of God that passeth understanding; it's for the like o'
+them, an' maybe no' even sae muckle worth, folk daunton God to His face
+and burn in muckle hell; and it's for that reason the Scripture ca's
+them, as I read the passage, the accursed thing.--Mary, ye girzie," he
+interrupted himself to cry with some asperity, "what for hae ye no' put
+out the twa candlesticks?"
+
+"Why should we need them at high noon?" she asked.
+
+But my uncle was not to be turned from his idea. "We'll bruik[4] them
+while we may," he said; and so two massive candlesticks of wrought
+silver were added to the table equipage, already so unsuited to that
+rough seaside farm.
+
+"She cam' ashore Februar' 10, about ten at nicht," he went on to me.
+"There was nae wind, and a sair run o' sea; and she was in the sook o'
+the Roost, as I jaloose. We had seen her a' day, Rorie and me, beating
+to the wind. She wasna a handy craft, I'm thinking, that _Christ-Anna_;
+for she would neither steer nor stey wi' them. A sair day they had of
+it; their hands was never aff the sheets, and it perishin' cauld--ower
+cauld to snaw; and aye they would get a bit nip o' wind, and awa' again,
+to pit the emp'y hope into them. Eh, man! but they had a sair day for
+the last o't! He would have had a prood, prood heart that won ashore
+upon the back o' that."
+
+"And were all lost?" I cried. "God help them!"
+
+"Wheesht!" he said sternly. "Nane shall pray for the deid on my
+hearth-stane."
+
+I disclaimed a Popish sense for my ejaculation; and he seemed to accept
+my disclaimer with unusual facility, and ran on once more upon what had
+evidently become a favourite subject.
+
+"We fand her in Sandag Bay, Rorie an' me, and a' thae braws in the
+inside of her. There's a kittle bit, ye see, about Sandag; whiles the
+sook rins strong for the Merry Men; an' whiles again, when the tide's
+makin' hard an' ye can hear the Roost blawin' at the far-end of Aros,
+there comes a back-spang of current straucht into Sandag Bay. Weel,
+there's the thing that got the grip on the _Christ-Anna_. She büt to
+have come in ram-stam an' stern forrit; for the bows of her are aften
+under, and the back-side of her is clear at hie-water o' neaps. But,
+man! the dunt that she cam doon wi' when she struck! Lord save us a'l
+but it's an unco life to be a sailor--a cauld, wanchancy life. Mony's
+the gliff I got mysel' in the great deep; and why the Lord should hae
+made yon unco water is mair than ever I could win to understand. He made
+the vales and the pastures, the bonny green yaird, the halesome, canty
+land--
+
+  And now they shout and sing to Thee,
+    For Thou hast made them glad,
+
+as the Psalms say in the metrical version. No' that I would preen my
+faith to that clink neither; but it's bonny, and easier to mind. 'Who
+go to sea in ships,' they hae't again--
+
+                       and in
+    Great waters trading be,
+  Within the deep these men God's works
+    And His great wonders see.
+
+Weel, it's easy sayin' sae. Maybe Dauvit wasna very weel acquaint wi'
+the sea. But, troth, if it wasna prentit in the Bible, I wad whiles be
+temp'it to think it wasna the Lord, but the muckle black deil that made
+the sea. There's naething good comes oot o't but the fish; an' the
+spentacle o' God riding on the tempest, to be shüre, whilk would be what
+Dauvit was likely ettling at. But, man, they were sair wonders that God
+showed to the _Christ-Anna_--wonders, do I ca' them? Judgments, rather:
+judgments in the mirk nicht among the draygons o' the deep. And their
+souls--to think o' that--their souls, man, maybe no' prepared! The
+sea--a muckle yett to hell!"
+
+I observed, as my uncle spoke, that his voice was unnaturally moved and
+his manner unwontedly demonstrative. He leaned forward at these last
+words, for example, and touched me on the knee with his spread fingers,
+looking up into my face with a certain pallor, and I could see that his
+eyes shone with a deep-seated fire, and that the lines about his mouth
+were drawn and tremulous.
+
+Even the entrance of Rorie, and the beginning of our meal, did not
+detach him from his train of thought beyond a moment. He condescended,
+indeed, to ask me some questions as to my success at college, but I
+thought it was with half his mind; and even in his extempore grace,
+which was, as usual, long and wandering, I could find the trace of his
+preoccupation, praying, as he did, that God would "remember in mercy
+fower puir, feckless, fiddling, sinful creatures here by their lee-lane
+beside the great and dowie waters."
+
+Soon there came an interchange of speeches between him and Rorie.
+
+"Was it there?" asked my uncle.
+
+"Ou, ay!" said Rorie.
+
+I observed that they both spoke in a manner of aside, and with some show
+of embarrassment, and that Mary herself appeared to colour, and looked
+down on her plate. Partly to show my knowledge, and so relieve the party
+from an awkward strain, partly because I was curious, I pursued the
+subject.
+
+"You mean the fish?" I asked.
+
+"Whatten fish?" cried my uncle. "Fish, quo' he! Fish! Your een are fu'
+o' fatness, man; your heid dozened wi' carnal leir. Fish! it's a bogle!"
+
+He spoke with great vehemence, as though angry; and perhaps I was not
+very willing to be put down so shortly, for young men are disputatious.
+At least I remember I retorted hotly, crying out upon childish
+superstitions.
+
+"And ye come frae the College!" sneered Uncle Gordon. "Gude kens what
+they learn folk there; it's no' muckle service onyway. Do ye think, man,
+that there's naething in a' yon saut wilderness o' a world oot wast
+there, wi' the sea-grasses growin', an' the sea-beasts fechtin', an' the
+sun glintin' down into it, day by day? Na; the sea's like the land, but
+fearsomer. If there's folk ashore, there's folk in the sea--deid they
+may be, but they're folk whatever; and as for deils, there's nane that's
+like the sea-deils. There's no sae muckle harm in the land-deils, when
+a's said and done. Lang syne, when I was a callant in the south country,
+I mind there was an auld, bald bogle in the Peewic Moss. I got a glisk
+o' him mysel', sittin' on his hunkers in a hag, as grey's a tombstane.
+An', troth, he was a fearsome-like taed. But he steered naebody. Nae
+doobt, if ane that was a reprobate, ane the Lord hated, had gane by
+there wi' his sin still upon his stamach, nae doobt the creature would
+hae lowped upo' the likes o' him. But there's deils in the deep sea
+would yoke on a communicant! Eh, sirs, if ye had gane doon wi' the puir
+lads in the _Christ-Anna_, ye would ken by now the mercy o' the seas. If
+ye had sailed it for as lang as me, ye would hate the thocht of it as I
+do. If ye had but used the een God gave ye, ye would hae learned the
+wickedness o' that fause, saut, cauld, bullering creature, and of a'
+that's in it by the Lord's permission: labsters an' partans, an'
+sic-like, howking in the deid; muckle, gutsy, blawing whales; an'
+fish--the hale clan o' them--cauld-wamed, blind-ee'd uncanny ferlies.
+Oh, sirs," he cried, "the horror--the horror o' the sea!"
+
+We were all somewhat staggered by this outburst; and the speaker
+himself, after that last hoarse apostrophe, appeared to sink gloomily
+into his own thoughts. But Rorie, who was greedy of superstitious lore,
+recalled him to the subject by a question.
+
+"You will not ever have seen a teevil of the sea?" he asked.
+
+"No' clearly," replied the other. "I misdoobt if a mere man could see
+ane clearly and conteenue in the body. I hae sailed wi' a lad--they ca'd
+him Sandy Gabart; he saw ane, shüre eneuch, an' shüre eneuch it was the
+end of him. We were seeven days oot frae the Clyde--a sair wark we had
+had--gaun north wi' seeds an' braws an' things for the Macleod. We had
+got in ower near under the Cutchull'ns, an' had just gane about by Soa,
+an' were off on a long tack, we thocht would maybe hauld as far's
+Copnahow. I mind the nicht weel; a mune smoored wi' mist; a fine-gaun
+breeze upon the water, but no steedy; an'--what nane o' us likit to
+hear--anither wund gurlin' owerheid, amang thae fearsome, auld stane
+craigs o' the Cutchull'ns. Weel, Sandy was forrit wi' the jib sheet; we
+couldna see him for the mains'l, that had just begude to draw, when a'
+at ance he gied a skirl. I luffed for my life, for I thocht we were over
+near Soa; but na, it wasna that, it was puir Sandy Gabart's deid
+skreigh, or near-hand, for he was deid in half an hour. A't he could
+tell was that a sea-deil, or sea-bogle, or sea-spenster, or sic-like,
+had clum up by the bowsprit, an' gi'en him ae cauld, uncanny look. An',
+or the life was oot o' Sandy's body, we kent weel what the thing
+betokened, and why the wund gurled in the taps o' the Cutchull'ns; for
+doon it cam'--a wund do I ca' it! It was the wund o' the Lord's
+anger--an' a' that nicht we focht like men dementit, and the neist that
+we kenned we were ashore in Loch Uskevagh, an' the cocks were crawin' in
+Benbecula."
+
+"It will have been a merman," Rorie said.
+
+"A merman!" screamed my uncle with immeasurable scorn. "Auld wives'
+clavers! There's nae sic things as mermen."
+
+"But what was the creature like?" I asked.
+
+"What like was it? Gude forbid that we suld ken what like it was! It had
+a kind of a heid upon it--man could say nae mair."
+
+Then Rorie, smarting under the affront, told several tales of mermen,
+mermaids, and sea-horses that had come ashore upon the islands and
+attacked the crews of boats upon the sea; and my uncle, in spite of his
+incredulity, listened with uneasy interest.
+
+"Aweel, aweel," he said, "it may be sae; I may be wrang; but I find nae
+word o' mermen in the Scriptures."
+
+"And you will find nae word of Aros Roost, maybe," objected Rorie, and
+his argument appeared to carry weight.
+
+When dinner was over, my uncle carried me forth with him to a bank
+behind the house. It was a very hot and quiet afternoon; scarce a ripple
+anywhere upon the sea, nor any voice but the familiar voice of sheep and
+gulls; and perhaps in consequence of this repose in nature, my kinsman
+showed himself more rational and tranquil than before. He spoke evenly
+and almost cheerfully of my career, with every now and then a reference
+to the lost ship or the treasures it had brought to Aros. For my part, I
+listened to him in a sort of trance, gazing with all my heart on that
+remembered scene, and drinking gladly the sea-air and the smoke of
+peats that had been lit by Mary.
+
+Perhaps an hour had passed when my uncle, who had all the while been
+covertly gazing on the surface of the little bay, rose to his feet and
+bade me follow his example. Now I should say that the great run of tide
+at the south-west end of Aros exercises a perturbing influence round all
+the coast. In Sandag Bay, to the south, a strong current runs at certain
+points of the flood and ebb respectively; but in this northern bay--Aros
+Bay, as it is called--where the house stands and on which my uncle was
+now gazing, the only sign of disturbance is towards the end of the ebb,
+and even then it is too slight to be remarkable. When there is any
+swell, nothing can be seen at all; but when it is calm, as it often is,
+there appear certain strange, undecipherable marks--sea-runes, as we may
+name them--on the glassy surface of the bay. The like is common in a
+thousand places on the coast; and many a boy must have amused himself as
+I did, seeking to read in them some reference to himself or those he
+loved. It was to these marks that my uncle now directed my attention,
+struggling, as he did so, with an evident reluctance.
+
+"Do you see yon scart upo' the water?" he inquired; "yon ane wast the
+grey stane? Ay? Weel, it'll no' be like a letter, wull it?"
+
+"Certainly it is," I replied. "I have often remarked it. It is like a
+C."
+
+He heaved a sigh as if heavily disappointed with my answer, and then
+added below his breath: "Ay, for the _Christ-Anna_."
+
+"I used to suppose, sir, it was for myself," said I; "for my name is
+Charles."
+
+"And so ye saw't afore?" he ran on, not heeding my remark. "Weel, weel,
+but that's unco strange. Maybe, it's been there waitin', as a man wad
+say, through a' the weary ages. Man, but that's awfu'." And then,
+breaking off: "Ye'll no' see anither, will ye?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," said I. "I see another very plainly, near the Ross side, where
+the road comes down--an M."
+
+"An M," he repeated very low; and then, again after another pause: "An'
+what wad ye make o' that?" he inquired.
+
+"I had always thought it to mean Mary, sir," I answered, growing
+somewhat red, convinced as I was in my own mind that I was on the
+threshold of a decisive explanation.
+
+But we were each following his own train of thought to the exclusion of
+the other's. My uncle once more paid no attention to my words; only hung
+his head and held his peace; and I might have been led to fancy that he
+had not heard me, if his next speech had not contained a kind of echo
+from my own.
+
+"I would say naething o' thae clavers to Mary," he observed, and began
+to walk forward.
+
+There is a belt of turf along the side of Aros Bay where walking is
+easy; and it was along this that I silently followed my silent kinsman.
+I was perhaps a little disappointed at having lost so good an
+opportunity to declare my love; but I was at the same time far more
+deeply exercised at the change that had befallen my uncle. He was never
+an ordinary, never, in the strict sense, an amiable, man; but there was
+nothing in even the worst that I had known of him before, to prepare me
+for so strange a transformation. It was impossible to close the eyes
+against one fact; that he had, as the saying goes, something on his
+mind; and as I mentally ran over the different words which might be
+represented by the letter M--misery, mercy, marriage, money, and the
+like--I was arrested with a sort of start by the word murder. I was
+still considering the ugly sound and fatal meaning of the word, when the
+direction of our walk brought us to a point from which a view was to be
+had to either side, back towards Aros Bay and homestead, and forward on
+the ocean, dotted to the north with isles, and lying to the southward
+blue and open to the sky. There my guide came to a halt, and stood
+staring for awhile on that expanse. Then he turned to me and laid a hand
+on my arm.
+
+"Ye think there's naething there?" he said, pointing with his pipe; and
+then cried out aloud, with a kind of exultation: "I'll tell ye, man! The
+deid are down there--thick like rattons!"
+
+He turned at once, and, without another word, we retraced our steps to
+the house of Aros.
+
+I was eager to be alone with Mary; yet it was not till after supper, and
+then but for a short while, that I could have a word with her. I lost no
+time beating about the bush, but spoke out plainly what was on my mind.
+
+"Mary," I said, "I have not come to Aros without a hope. If that should
+prove well founded, we may all leave and go somewhere else, secure of
+daily bread and comfort; secure, perhaps, of something far beyond that,
+which it would seem extravagant in me to promise. But there's a hope
+that lies nearer to my heart than money." And at that I paused. "You can
+guess fine what that is, Mary," I said. She looked away from me in
+silence, and that was small encouragement, but I was not to be put off.
+"All my days I have thought the world of you," I continued; "the time
+goes on and I think always the more of you; I could not think to be
+happy or hearty in my life without you: you are the apple of my eye."
+Still she looked away, and said never a word; but I thought I saw that
+her hands shook. "Mary," I cried in fear, "do ye no' like me?"
+
+"Oh, Charlie man," she said, "is this a time to speak of it? Let me be a
+while; let me be the way I am; it'll not be you that loses by the
+waiting!"
+
+I made out by her voice that she was nearly weeping, and this put me out
+of any thought but to compose her. "Mary Ellen," I said, "say no more; I
+did not come to trouble you: your way shall be mine, and your time too;
+and you have told me all I wanted. Only just this one thing more: what
+ails you?"
+
+She owned it was her father, but would enter into no particulars, only
+shook her head, and said he was not well and not like himself, and it
+was a great pity. She knew nothing of the wreck. "I havena been near
+it," said she. "What for would I go near it, Charlie lad? The poor souls
+are gone to their account long syne; and I would just have wished they
+had ta'en their gear with them--poor souls!"
+
+This was scarcely any great encouragement for me to tell her of the
+_Espirito Santo_; yet I did so, and at the very first word she cried out
+in surprise. "There was a man at Grisapol," she said, "in the month of
+May--a little, yellow, black-avised body, they tell me, with gold rings
+upon his fingers, and a beard; and he was speiring high and low for that
+same ship."
+
+It was towards the end of April that I had been given these papers to
+sort out by Dr. Robertson: and it came suddenly back upon my mind that
+they were thus prepared for a Spanish historian, or a man calling
+himself such, who had come with high recommendations to the Principal,
+on a mission of inquiry as to the dispersion of the great Armada.
+Putting one thing with another, I fancied that the visitor "with the
+gold rings upon his fingers" might be the same with Dr. Robertson's
+historian from Madrid. If that were so, he would be more likely after
+treasure for himself than information for a learned society. I made up
+my mind, I should lose no time over my undertaking; and if the ship lay
+sunk in Sandag Bay, as perhaps both he and I supposed, it should not be
+for the advantage of this ringed adventurer, but for Mary and myself,
+and for the good, old, honest, kindly family of the Darnaways.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+LAND AND SEA IN SANDAG BAY
+
+
+I was early afoot next morning; and as soon as I had a bite to eat, set
+forth upon a tour of exploration. Something in my heart distinctly told
+me that I should find the ship of the Armada; and although I did not
+give way entirely to such hopeful thoughts, I was still very light in
+spirits and walked upon air. Aros is a very rough islet, its surface
+strewn with great rocks and shaggy with fern and heather; and my way lay
+almost north and south across the highest knoll; and though the whole
+distance was inside of two miles, it took more time and exertion than
+four upon a level road. Upon the summit, I paused. Although not very
+high--not three hundred feet, as I think--it yet outtops all the
+neighbouring lowlands of the Ross, and commands a great view of sea and
+islands. The sun, which had been up some time, was already hot upon my
+neck; the air was listless and thundery, although purely clear; away
+over the north-west, where the isles lie thickliest congregated, some
+half a dozen small and ragged clouds hung together in a covey; and the
+head of Ben Kyaw wore, not merely a few streamers, but a solid hood of
+vapour. There was a threat in the weather. The sea, it is true, was
+smooth like glass: even the Roost was but a seam on that wide mirror,
+and the Merry Men no more than caps of foam; but to my eye and ear, so
+long familiar with these places, the sea also seemed to lie uneasily; a
+sound of it, like a long sigh, mounted to me where I stood; and, quiet
+as it was, the Roost itself appeared to be revolving mischief. For I
+ought to say that all we dwellers in these parts attributed, if not
+prescience, at least a quality of warning, to that strange and dangerous
+creature of the tides.
+
+I hurried on, then, with the greater speed, and had soon descended the
+slope of Aros to the part that we call Sandag Bay. It is a pretty large
+piece of water compared with the size of the isle; well sheltered from
+all but the prevailing wind; sandy and shoal and bounded by low
+sand-hills to the west, but to the eastward lying several fathoms deep
+along a ledge of rocks. It is upon that side that, at a certain time
+each flood, the current mentioned by my uncle sets so strong into the
+bay; a little later, when the Roost begins to work higher, an undertow
+runs still more strongly in the reverse direction; and it is the action
+of this last, as I suppose, that has scoured that part so deep. Nothing
+is to be seen out of Sandag Bay but one small segment of the horizon
+and, in heavy weather, the breakers flying high over a deep-sea reef.
+
+From half-way down the hill I had perceived the wreck of February last,
+a brig of considerable tonnage, lying, with her back broken, high and
+dry on the east corner of the sands; and I was making directly towards
+it, and already almost on the margin of the turf, when my eyes were
+suddenly arrested by a spot, cleared of fern and heather, and marked by
+one of those long, low, and almost human-looking mounds that we see so
+commonly in graveyards. I stopped like a man shot. Nothing had been said
+to me of any dead man or interment on the island; Rorie, Mary, and my
+uncle had all equally held their peace; of her at least, I was certain
+that she must be ignorant; and yet here, before my eyes, was proof
+indubitable of the fact. Here was a grave; and I had to ask myself, with
+a chill, what manner of man lay there in his last sleep, awaiting the
+signal of the Lord in that solitary, sea-beat resting-place? My mind
+supplied no answer but what I feared to entertain. Shipwrecked, at
+least, he must have been; perhaps, like the old Armada mariners, from
+some far and rich land over-sea; or perhaps one of my own race,
+perishing within eyesight of the smoke of home. I stood awhile uncovered
+by his side, and I could have desired that it had lain in our religion
+to put up some prayer for that unhappy stranger, or, in the old classic
+way, outwardly to honour his misfortune. I knew, although his bones lay
+there, a part of Aros, till the trumpet sounded, his imperishable soul
+was forth and far away, among the raptures of the everlasting Sabbath or
+the pangs of hell; and yet my mind misgave me even with a fear, that
+perhaps he was near me where I stood, guarding his sepulchre, and
+lingering on the scene of his unhappy fate.
+
+Certainly it was with a spirit somewhat overshadowed that I turned away
+from the grave to the hardly less melancholy spectacle of the wreck. Her
+stem was above the first arc of the flood; she was broken in two a
+little abaft the foremast--though indeed she had none, both masts having
+broken short in her disaster; and as the pitch of the beach was very
+sharp and sudden, and the bows lay many feet below the stern, the
+fracture gaped widely open, and you could see right through her poor
+hull upon the farther side. Her name was much defaced, and I could not
+make out clearly whether she was called _Christiania_, after the
+Norwegian city, or _Christiana_, after the good woman, Christian's wife,
+in that old book the "Pilgrim's Progress." By her build she was a
+foreign ship, but I was not certain of her nationality. She had been
+painted green, but the colour was faded and weathered, and the paint
+peeling off in strips. The wreck of the mainmast lay alongside,
+half-buried in sand. She was a forlorn sight, indeed, and I could not
+look without emotion at the bits of rope that still hung about her, so
+often handled of yore by shouting seamen; or the little scuttle where
+they had passed up and down to their affairs; or that poor noseless
+angel of a figure-head that had dipped into so many running billows.
+
+I do not know whether it came most from the ship or from the grave, but
+I fell into some melancholy scruples, as I stood there, leaning with one
+hand against the battered timbers. The homelessness of men, and even of
+inanimate vessels, cast away upon strange shores, came strongly in upon
+my mind. To make a profit of such pitiful misadventures seemed an
+unmanly and a sordid act; and I began to think of my then quest as of
+something sacrilegious in its nature. But when I remembered Mary I took
+heart again. My uncle would never consent to an imprudent marriage, nor
+would she, as I was persuaded, wed without his full approval. It behoved
+me, then, to be up and doing for my wife; and I thought with a laugh how
+long it was since that great sea-castle, the _Espirito Santo_, had left
+her bones in Sandag Bay, and how weak it would be to consider rights so
+long extinguished and misfortunes so long forgotten in the process of
+time.
+
+I had my theory of where to seek for her remains. The set of the current
+and the soundings both pointed to the east side of the bay under the
+ledge of rocks. If she had been lost in Sandag Bay, and if, after these
+centuries, any portion of her held together, it was there that I should
+find it. The water deepens, as I have said, with great rapidity, and
+even close alongside the rocks several fathoms may be found. As I walked
+upon the edge I could see far and wide over the sandy bottom of the bay;
+the sun shone clear and green and steady in the deeps; the bay seemed
+rather like a great transparent crystal, as one sees them in a
+lapidary's shop; there was naught to show that it was water but an
+internal trembling, a hovering within of sun-glints and netted shadows,
+and now and then a faint lap and a dying bubble round the edge. The
+shadows of the rocks lay out for some distance at their feet, so that my
+own shadow, moving, pausing, and stooping on the top of that, reached
+sometimes half across the bay. It was above all in this belt of shadows
+that I hunted for the _Espirito Santo_; since it was there the undertow
+ran strongest, whether in or out. Cool as the whole water seemed this
+broiling day, it looked, in that part, yet cooler, and had a mysterious
+invitation for the eyes. Peer as I pleased, however, I could see nothing
+but a few fishes or a bush of sea-tangle, and here and there a lump of
+rock that had fallen from above and now lay separate on the sandy floor.
+Twice did I pass from one end to the other of the rocks, and in the
+whole distance I could see nothing of the wreck, nor any place but one
+where it was possible for it to be. This was a large terrace in five
+fathoms of water, raised off the surface of the sand to a considerable
+height, and looking from above like a mere outgrowth of the rocks on
+which I walked. It was one mass of great sea-tangles like a grove, which
+prevented me judging of its nature, but in shape and size it bore some
+likeness to a vessel's hull. At least it was my best chance. If the
+_Espirito Santo_ lay not there under the tangles, it lay nowhere at all
+in Sandag Bay; and I prepared to put the question to the proof, once and
+for all, and either go back to Aros a rich man or cured for ever of my
+dreams of wealth.
+
+I stripped to the skin, and stood on the extreme margin with my hands
+clasped, irresolute. The bay at that time was utterly quiet; there was
+no sound but from a school of porpoises somewhere out of sight behind
+the point; yet a certain fear withheld me on the threshold of my
+venture. Sad sea-feelings, scraps of my uncle's superstitions, thoughts
+of the dead, of the grave, of the old broken ships, drifted through my
+mind. But the strong sun upon my shoulders warmed me to the heart, and I
+stooped forward and plunged into the sea.
+
+It was all that I could do to catch a trail of the sea-tangle that grew
+so thickly on the terrace; but once so far anchored I secured myself by
+grasping a whole armful of these thick and slimy stalks, and, planting
+my feet against the edge, I looked around me. On all sides the clear
+sand stretched forth unbroken; it came to the foot of the rocks,
+scoured into the likeness of an alley in a garden by the action of the
+tides; and before me, for as far as I could see, nothing was visible but
+the same many-folded sand upon the sun-bright bottom of the bay. Yet the
+terrace to which I was then holding was as thick with strong sea-growths
+as a tuft of heather, and the cliff from which it bulged hung draped
+below the water-line with brown lianas. In this complexity of forms, all
+swaying together in the current, things were hard to be distinguished;
+and I was still uncertain whether my feet were pressed upon the natural
+rock or upon the timbers of the Armada treasure-ship, when the whole
+tuft of tangle came away in my hand, and in an instant I was on the
+surface, and the shores of the bay and the bright water swam before my
+eyes in a glory of crimson.
+
+I clambered back upon the rocks, and threw the plant of tangle at my
+feet. Something at the same moment rang sharply, like a falling coin. I
+stooped, and there, sure enough, crusted with the red rust, there lay an
+iron shoe-buckle. The sight of this poor human relic thrilled me to the
+heart, but not with hope nor fear, only with a desolate melancholy. I
+held it in my hand, and the thought of its owner appeared before me like
+the presence of an actual man. His weather-beaten face, his sailor's
+hands, his sea-voice hoarse with singing at the capstan, the very foot
+that had once worn that buckle and trod so much along the swerving
+decks--the whole human fact of him, as a creature like myself, with hair
+and blood and seeing eyes, haunted me in that sunny, solitary place, not
+like a spectre, but like some friend whom I had basely injured. Was the
+great treasure-ship indeed below there, with her guns and chain and
+treasure, as she had sailed from Spain; her decks a garden for the
+seaweed, her cabin a breeding-place for fish, soundless but for the
+dredging water, motionless but for the waving of the tangle upon her
+battlements--that old, populous, sea-riding castle, now a reef in Sandag
+Bay? Or, as I thought it likelier, was this a waif from the disaster of
+the foreign brig--was this shoe-buckle bought but the other day and worn
+by a man of my own period in the world's history, hearing the same news
+from day to day, thinking the same thoughts, praying, perhaps, in the
+same temple with myself? However it was, I was assailed with dreary
+thoughts; my uncle's words, "the dead are down there," echoed in my
+ears; and though I determined to dive once more, it was with a strong
+repugnance that I stepped forward to the margin of the rocks.
+
+A great change passed at that moment over the appearance of the bay. It
+was no more that clear, visible interior, like a house roofed with
+glass, where the green submarine sunshine slept so stilly. A breeze, I
+suppose, had flawed the surface, and a sort of trouble and blackness
+filled its bosom, where flashes of light and clouds of shadow tossed
+confusedly together. Even the terrace below obscurely rocked and
+quivered. It seemed a graver thing to venture on this place of ambushes;
+and when I leaped into the sea a second time it was with a quaking in my
+soul.
+
+I secured myself as at first, and groped among the waving tangle. All
+that met my touch was cold and soft and gluey. The thicket was alive
+with crabs and lobsters, trundling to and fro lopsidedly, and I had to
+harden my heart against the horror of their carrion neighbourhood. On
+all sides I could feel the grain and the clefts of hard, living stone;
+no planks, no iron, not a sign of any wreck; the _Espirito Santo_ was
+not there. I remember I had almost a sense of relief in my
+disappointment, and I was about ready to leave go, when something
+happened that sent me to the surface with my heart in my mouth. I had
+already stayed somewhat late over my explorations; the current was
+freshening with the change of the tide, and Sandag Bay was no longer a
+safe place for a single swimmer. Well, just at the last moment there
+came a sudden flush of current, dredging through the tangles like a
+wave. I lost one hold, was flung sprawling on my side, and,
+instinctively grasping for a fresh support, my fingers closed on
+something hard and cold. I think I knew at that moment what it was. At
+least I instantly left hold of the tangle, leaped for the surface, and
+clambered out next moment on the friendly rocks with the bone of a man's
+leg in my grasp.
+
+Mankind is a material creature, slow to think and dull to perceive
+connections. The grave, the wreck of the brig, and the rusty shoe-buckle
+were surely plain advertisements. A child might have read their dismal
+story, and yet it was not until I touched that actual piece of mankind
+that the full horror of the charnel ocean burst upon my spirit. I laid
+the bone beside the buckle, picked up my clothes, and ran as I was along
+the rocks towards the human shore. I could not be far enough from the
+spot; no fortune was vast enough to tempt me back again. The bones of
+the drowned dead should henceforth roll undisturbed by me, whether on
+tangle or minted gold. But as soon as I trod the good earth again, and
+had covered my nakedness against the sun, I knelt down over against the
+ruins of the brig, and out of the fulness of my heart prayed long and
+passionately for all poor souls upon the sea. A generous prayer is never
+presented in vain; the petition may be refused, but the petitioner is
+always, I believe, rewarded by some gracious visitation. The horror, at
+least, was lifted from my mind; I could look with calm of spirit on that
+great bright creature, God's ocean; and as I set off homeward up the
+rough sides of Aros, nothing remained of my concern beyond a deep
+determination to meddle no more with the spoils of wrecked vessels or
+the treasures of the dead.
+
+I was already some way up the hill before I paused to breathe and look
+behind me. The sight that met my eyes was doubly strange.
+
+For, first, the storm that I had foreseen was now advancing with almost
+tropical rapidity. The whole surface of the sea had been dulled from its
+conspicuous brightness to an ugly hue of corrugated lead; already in
+the distance the white waves, the "skipper's daughters," had begun to
+flee before a breeze that was still insensible on Aros; and already
+along the curve of Sandag Bay there was a splashing run of sea that I
+could hear from where I stood. The change upon the sky was even more
+remarkable. There had begun to arise out of the south-west a huge and
+solid continent of scowling cloud; here and there, through rents in its
+contexture, the sun still poured a sheaf of spreading rays; and here and
+there, from all its edges, vast inky streamers lay forth along the yet
+unclouded sky. The menace was express and imminent. Even as I gazed, the
+sun was blotted out. At any moment the tempest might fall upon Aros in
+its might.
+
+The suddenness of this change of weather so fixed my eyes on heaven that
+it was some seconds before they alighted on the bay, mapped out below my
+feet, and robbed a moment later of the sun. The knoll which I had just
+surmounted overflanked a little amphitheatre of lower hillocks sloping
+towards the sea, and beyond that the yellow arc of beach and the whole
+extent of Sandag Bay. It was a scene on which I had often looked down,
+but where I had never before beheld a human figure. I had but just
+turned my back upon it and left it empty, and my wonder may be fancied
+when I saw a boat and several men in that deserted spot. The boat was
+lying by the rocks. A pair of fellows, bareheaded, with their sleeves
+rolled up, and one with a boat-hook, kept her with difficulty to her
+moorings, for the current was growing brisker every moment. A little way
+off upon the ledge two men in black clothes, whom I judged to be
+superior in rank, laid their heads together over some task which at
+first I did not understand, but a second after I had made it out--they
+were taking bearings with the compass; and just then I saw one of them
+unroll a sheet of paper and lay his finger down, as though identifying
+features in a map. Meanwhile a third was walking to and fro, poking
+among the rocks and peering over the edge into the water. While I was
+still watching them with the stupefaction of surprise, my mind hardly
+yet able to work on what my eyes reported, this third person suddenly
+stooped and summoned his companions with a cry so loud that it reached
+my ears upon the hill. The others ran to him, even dropping the compass
+in their hurry, and I could see the bone and the shoe-buckle going from
+hand to hand, causing the most unusual gesticulations of surprise and
+interest. Just then I could hear the seamen crying from the boat, and
+saw them point westward to that cloud continent which was ever the more
+rapidly unfurling its blackness over heaven. The others seemed to
+consult; but the danger was too pressing to be braved, and they bundled
+into the boat, carrying my relics with them, and set forth out of the
+bay with all speed of oars.
+
+I made no more ado about the matter, but turned and ran for the house.
+Whoever these men were, it was fit my uncle should be instantly
+informed. It was not then altogether too late in the day for a descent
+of the Jacobites; and maybe Prince Charlie, whom I knew my uncle to
+detest, was one of the three superiors whom I had seen upon the rock.
+Yet as I ran, leaping from rock to rock, and turned the matter loosely
+in my mind, this theory grew ever the longer the less welcome to my
+reason. The compass, the map, the interest awakened by the buckle, and
+the conduct of that one among the strangers who had looked so often
+below him in the water, all seemed to point to a different explanation
+of their presence on that outlying, obscure islet of the western sea.
+The Madrid historian, the search instituted by Dr. Robertson, the
+bearded stranger with the rings, my own fruitless search that very
+morning in the deep water of Sandag Bay, ran together, piece by piece,
+in my memory, and I made sure that these strangers must be Spaniards in
+quest of ancient treasure and the lost ship of the Armada. But the
+people living in outlying islands, such as Aros, are answerable for
+their own security; there is none near by to protect or even to help
+them; and the presence in such a spot of a crew of foreign
+adventurers--poor, greedy, and most likely lawless--filled me with
+apprehensions for my uncle's money, and even for the safety of his
+daughter. I was still wondering how we were to get rid of them when I
+came, all breathless, to the top of Aros. The whole world was shadowed
+over; only in the extreme east, on a hill of the mainland, one last
+gleam of sunshine lingered like a jewel; rain had begun to fall, not
+heavily, but in great drops; the sea was rising with each moment, and
+already a band of white encircled Aros and the nearer coasts of
+Grisapol. The boat was still pulling seaward, but I now became aware of
+what had been hidden from me lower down--a large, heavily sparred,
+handsome schooner lying-to at the south end of Aros. Since I had not
+seen her in the morning when I had looked around so closely at the signs
+of the weather, and upon these lone waters where a sail was rarely
+visible, it was clear she must have lain last night behind the
+uninhabited Eilean Gour, and this proved conclusively that she was
+manned by strangers to our coast, for that anchorage, though good enough
+to look at, is little better than a trap for ships. With such ignorant
+sailors upon so wild a coast, the coming gale was not unlikely to bring
+death upon its wings.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE GALE
+
+
+I found my uncle at the gable-end, watching the signs of the weather,
+with a pipe in his fingers.
+
+"Uncle," said I, "there were men ashore at Sandag Bay----"
+
+I had no time to go further; indeed, I not only forgot my words, but
+even my weariness, so strange was the effect on Uncle Gordon. He dropped
+his pipe and fell back against the end of the house with his jaw fallen,
+his eyes staring, and his long face as white as paper. We must have
+looked at one another silently for a quarter of a minute, before he made
+answer in this extraordinary fashion: "Had he a hair kep on?"
+
+I knew as well as if I had been there that the man who now lay buried at
+Sandag had worn a hairy cap, and that he had come shore alive. For the
+first and only time I lost toleration for the man who was my benefactor
+and the father of the woman I hoped to call my wife.
+
+"These were living men," said I, "perhaps Jacobites, perhaps the French,
+perhaps pirates, perhaps adventurers come here to seek the Spanish
+treasure-ship; but, whatever they may be, dangerous at least to your
+daughter and my cousin. As for your own guilty terrors, man, the dead
+sleeps well where you have laid him. I stood this morning by his grave;
+he will not wake before the trump of doom."
+
+My kinsman looked upon me, blinking, while I spoke; then he fixed his
+eyes for a little on the ground, and pulled his fingers foolishly; but
+it was plain that he was past the power of speech.
+
+"Come," said I. "You must think for others. You must come up the hill
+with me and see this ship."
+
+He obeyed without a word or a look, following slowly after my impatient
+strides. The spring seemed to have gone out of his body, and he
+scrambled heavily up and down the rocks, instead of leaping, as he was
+wont, from one to another. Nor could I, for all my cries, induce him to
+make better haste. Only once he replied to me complainingly, and like
+one in bodily pain: "Ay, ay, man, I'm coming." Long before we had
+reached the top I had no other thought for him but pity. If the crime
+had been monstrous, the punishment was in proportion.
+
+At last we emerged above the sky-line of the hill, and could see around
+us. All was black and stormy to the eye; the last gleam of sun had
+vanished; a wind had sprung up, not yet high, but gusty and unsteady to
+the point; the rain, on the other hand, had ceased. Short as was the
+interval, the sea already ran vastly higher than when I had stood there
+last; already it had begun to break over some of the outward reefs, and
+already it moaned aloud in the sea-caves of Aros. I looked, at first, in
+vain for the schooner.
+
+"There she is," I said at last. But her new position, and the course she
+was now lying, puzzled me. "They cannot mean to beat to sea," I cried.
+
+"That's what they mean," said my uncle, with something like joy; and
+just then the schooner went about and stood upon another tack, which put
+the question beyond the reach of doubt. These strangers, seeing a gale
+on hand, had thought first of sea-room. With the wind that threatened,
+in these reef-sown waters and contending against so violent a stream of
+tide, their course was certain death.
+
+"Good God!" said I, "they are all lost."
+
+"Ay," returned my uncle, "a'--a' lost. They hadna a chance but to rin
+for Kyle Dona. The gate they're gaun the noo, they couldna win through
+an the muckle deil were there to pilot them. Eh, man," he continued,
+touching me on the sleeve, "it's a braw nicht for a shipwreck! Twa in ae
+twalmonth! Eh, but the Merry Men'll dance bonny!"
+
+I looked at him, and it was then that I began to fancy him no longer in
+his right mind. He was peering up to me, as if for sympathy, a timid joy
+in his eyes. All that had passed between us was already forgotten in the
+prospect of this fresh disaster.
+
+"If it were not too late," I cried with indignation, "I would take the
+coble and go out to warn them."
+
+"Na, na," he protested, "ye maunna interfere; ye maunna meddle wi' the
+like o' that. It's His"--doffing his bonnet--"His wull. And, eh, man!
+but it's a braw nicht for't!"
+
+Something like fear began to creep into my soul; and, reminding him that
+I had not yet dined, I proposed we should return to the house. But no;
+nothing would tear him from his place of outlook.
+
+"I maun see the hail thing, man Charlie," he explained; and then as the
+schooner went about a second time, "Eh, but they han'le her bonny!" he
+cried. "The _Christ-Anna_ was naething to this."
+
+Already the men on board the schooner must have begun to realise some
+part, but not yet the twentieth, of the dangers that environed their
+doomed ship. At every lull of the capricious wind they must have seen
+how fast the current swept them back. Each tack was made shorter, as
+they saw how little it prevailed. Every moment the rising swell began to
+boom and foam upon another sunken reef; and ever and again a breaker
+would fall in sounding ruin under the very bows of her, and the brown
+reef and streaming tangle appear in the hollow of the wave. I tell you,
+they had to stand to their tackle: there was no idle man aboard that
+ship, God knows. It was upon the progress of a scene so horrible to any
+human-hearted man that my misguided uncle now pored and gloated like a
+connoisseur. As I turned to go down the hill, he was lying on his belly
+on the summit, with his hands stretched forth and clutching in the
+heather. He seemed rejuvenated, mind and body.
+
+When I got back to the house already dismally affected, I was still more
+sadly downcast at the sight of Mary. She had her sleeves rolled up over
+her strong arms, and was quietly making bread. I got a bannock from the
+dresser and sat down to eat it in silence.
+
+"Are ye wearied, lad?" she asked after a while.
+
+"I am not so much wearied, Mary," I replied, getting on my feet, "as I
+am weary of delay, and perhaps of Aros too. You know me well enough to
+judge me fairly, say what I like. Well, Mary, you may be sure of this:
+you had better be anywhere but here."
+
+"I'll be sure of one thing," she returned: "I'll be where my duty is."
+
+"You forget, you have a duty to yourself," I said.
+
+"Ay, man," she replied, pounding at the dough; "will you have found that
+in the Bible, now?"
+
+"Mary," I said solemnly, "you must not laugh at me just now. God knows I
+am in no heart for laughing. If we could get your father with us, it
+would be best; but with him or without him, I want you far away from
+here, my girl; for your own sake, and for mine, ay, and for your
+father's too, I want you far--far away from here. I came with other
+thoughts; I came here as a man comes home; now it is all changed, and I
+have no desire nor hope but to flee--for that's the word--flee, like a
+bird out of the fowler's snare, from this accursed island."
+
+She had stopped her work by this time.
+
+"And do you think, now," said she, "do you think, now, I have neither
+eyes nor ears? Do ye think I havena broken my heart to have these braws
+(as he calls them, God forgive him!) thrown into the sea? Do ye think I
+have lived with him, day in, day out, and not seen what you saw in an
+hour or two? No," she said, "I know there's wrong in it; what wrong, I
+neither know nor want to know. There was never an ill thing made better
+by meddling, that I could hear of. But, my lad, you must never ask me to
+leave my father. While the breath is in his body, I'll be with him. And
+he's not long for here, either: that I can tell you, Charlie--he's not
+long for here. The mark is on his brow; and better so--maybe better so."
+
+I was a while silent, not knowing what to say; and when I roused my head
+at last to speak, she got before me.
+
+"Charlie," she said, "what's right for me needna be right for you.
+There's sin upon this house and trouble; you are a stranger; take your
+things upon your back and go your ways to better places and to better
+folk, and if you were ever minded to come back, though it were twenty
+years syne, you would find me aye waiting."
+
+"Mary Ellen," I said, "I asked you to be my wife, and you said as good
+as yes. That's done for good. Wherever you are, I am; as I shall answer
+to my God."
+
+As I said the words the wind suddenly burst out raving, and then seemed
+to stand still and shudder round the house of Aros. It was the first
+squall, or prologue, of the coming tempest, and as we started and looked
+about us, we found that a gloom, like the approach of evening, had
+settled round the house.
+
+"God pity all poor folks at sea!" she said. "We'll see no more of my
+father till the morrow's morning."
+
+And then she told me, as we sat by the fire and hearkened to the rising
+gusts, of how this change had fallen upon my uncle. All last winter he
+had been dark and fitful in his mind. Whenever the Roost ran high, or,
+as Mary said, whenever the Merry Men were dancing, he would lie out for
+hours together on the Head, if it were night, or on the top of Aros by
+day, watching the tumult of the sea, and sweeping the horizon for a
+sail. After February the 10th, when the wealth-bringing wreck was cast
+ashore at Sandag, he had been at first unnaturally gay, and his
+excitement had never fallen in degree, but only changed in kind from
+dark to darker. He neglected his work, and kept Rorie idle. They two
+would speak together by the hour at the gable-end, in guarded tones and
+with an air of secrecy, and almost of guilt; and if she questioned
+either, as at first she sometimes did, her inquiries were put aside with
+confusion. Since Rorie had first remarked the fish that hung about the
+ferry, his master had never set foot but once upon the mainland of the
+Ross. That once--it was in the height of the springs--he had passed
+dry-shod while the tide was out; but, having lingered overlong on the
+far side, found himself cut off from Aros by the returning waters. It
+was with a shriek of agony that he had leaped across the gut, and he had
+reached home thereafter in a fever-fit of fear. A fear of the sea, a
+constant haunting thought of the sea, appeared in his talk and
+devotions, and even in his looks when he was silent.
+
+Rorie alone came in to supper; but a little later my uncle appeared,
+took a bottle under his arm, put some bread in his pocket, and set forth
+again to his outlook, followed this time by Rorie. I heard that the
+schooner was losing ground, but the crew was still fighting every inch
+with hopeless ingenuity and courage; and the news filled my mind with
+blackness.
+
+A little after sundown the full fury of the gale broke forth, such a
+gale as I have never seen in summer, nor, seeing how swiftly it had
+come, even in winter. Mary and I sat in silence, the house quaking
+overhead, the tempest howling without, the fire between us sputtering
+with raindrops. Our thoughts were far away with the poor fellows on the
+schooner, or my not less unhappy uncle, houseless on the promontory; and
+yet ever and again we were startled back to ourselves, when the wind
+would rise and strike the gable like a solid body, or suddenly fall and
+draw away, so that the fire leaped into flame and our hearts bounded in
+our sides. Now the storm in its might would seize and shake the four
+corners of the roof, roaring like Leviathan in anger. Anon, in a lull,
+cold eddies of tempest moved shudderingly in the room, lifting the hair
+upon our heads and passing between us as we sat. And again the wind
+would break forth in a chorus of melancholy sounds, hooting low in the
+chimney, wailing with flutelike softness round the house.
+
+It was perhaps eight o'clock when Rorie came in and pulled me
+mysteriously to the door. My uncle, it appeared, had frightened even his
+constant comrade; and Rorie, uneasy at his extravagance, prayed me to
+come out and share the watch. I hastened to do as I was asked; the more
+readily as, what with fear and horror, and the electrical tension of the
+night, I was myself restless and disposed for action. I told Mary to be
+under no alarm, for I should be a safeguard on her father; and wrapping
+myself warmly in a plaid, I followed Rorie into the open air.
+
+The night, though we were so little past midsummer, was as dark as
+January. Intervals of a groping twilight alternated with spells of utter
+blackness; and it was impossible to trace the reason of these changes in
+the flying horror of the sky. The wind blew the breath out of a man's
+nostrils; all heaven seemed to thunder overhead like one huge sail; and
+when there fell a momentary lull on Aros, we could hear the gusts
+dismally sweeping in the distance. Over all the lowlands of the Ross the
+wind must have blown as fierce as on the open sea; and God only knows
+the uproar that was raging around the head of Ben Kyaw. Sheets of
+mingled spray and rain were driven in our faces. All round the isle of
+Aros the surf, with an incessant, hammering thunder, beat upon the reefs
+and beaches. Now louder in one place, now lower in another, like the
+combinations of orchestral music, the constant mass of sound was hardly
+varied for a moment. And loud above all this hurly-burly I could hear
+the changeful voices of the Roost and the intermittent roaring of the
+Merry Men. At that hour, there flashed into my mind the reason of the
+name that they were called. For the noise of them seemed almost
+mirthful, as it out-topped the other noises of the night; or if not
+mirthful, yet instinct with a portentous joviality. Nay, and it seemed
+even human. As when savage men have drunk away their reason, and,
+discarding speech, bawl together in their madness by the hour; so, to my
+ears, these deadly breakers shouted by Aros in the night.
+
+Arm in arm, and staggering against the wind, Rorie and I won every yard
+of ground with conscious effort. We slipped on the wet sod, we fell
+together sprawling on the rocks. Bruised, drenched, beaten, and
+breathless, it must have taken us near half an hour to get from the
+house down to the Head that overlooks the Roost. There, it seemed, was
+my uncle's favourite observatory. Right in the face of it, where the
+cliff is highest and most sheer, a hump of earth, like a parapet, makes
+a place of shelter from the common winds, where a man may sit in quiet
+and see the tide and the mad billows contending at his feet. As he might
+look down from the window of a house upon some street disturbance, so,
+from this post, he looks down upon the tumbling of the Merry Men. On
+such a night, of course, he peers upon a world of blackness, where the
+waters wheel and boil, where the waves joust together with the noise of
+an explosion, and the foam towers and vanishes in the twinkling of an
+eye. Never before had I seen the Merry Men thus violent. The fury,
+height, and transiency of their spoutings was a thing to be seen and not
+recounted. High over our heads on the cliff rose their white columns in
+the darkness; and the same instant, like phantoms, they were gone.
+Sometimes three at a time would thus aspire and vanish; sometimes a gust
+took them, and the spray would fall about us, heavy as a wave. And yet
+the spectacle was rather maddening in its levity than impressive by its
+force. Thought was beaten down by the confounding uproar; a gleeful
+vacancy possessed the brains of men, a state akin to madness; and I
+found myself at times following the dance of the Merry Men as it were a
+tune upon a jigging instrument.
+
+I first caught sight of my uncle when we were still some yards away in
+one of the flying glimpses of twilight that chequered the pitch darkness
+of the night. He was standing up behind the parapet, his head thrown
+back and the bottle to his mouth. As he put it down, he saw and
+recognised us with a toss of one hand fleeringly above his head.
+
+"Has he been drinking?" shouted I to Rorie.
+
+"He will aye be drunk when the wind blaws," returned Rorie in the same
+high key, and it was all that I could do to hear him.
+
+"Then--was he so--in February?" I inquired.
+
+Rorie's "Ay" was a cause of joy to me. The murder, then, had not sprung
+in cold blood from calculation; it was an act of madness no more to be
+condemned than to be pardoned. My uncle was a dangerous madman, if you
+will, but he was not cruel and base as I had feared. Yet what a scene
+for a carouse, what an incredible vice, was this that the poor man had
+chosen! I have always thought drunkenness a wild and almost fearful
+pleasure, rather demoniacal than human; but drunkenness, out here in the
+roaring blackness, on the edge of a cliff above that hell of waters, the
+man's head spinning like the Roost, his foot tottering on the edge of
+death, his ear watching for the signs of shipwreck, surely that, if it
+were credible in any one, was morally impossible in a man like my uncle,
+whose mind was set upon a damnatory creed and haunted by the darkest
+superstitions. Yet so it was; and, as we reached the bight of shelter
+and could breathe again, I saw the man's eyes shining in the night with
+an unholy glimmer.
+
+"Eh, Charlie man, it's grand!" he cried. "See to them!" he continued,
+dragging me to the edge of the abyss from whence arose that deafening
+clamour and those clouds of spray; "see to them dancin', man! Is that no
+wicked?"
+
+He pronounced the word with gusto, and I thought it suited with the
+scene.
+
+"They're yowlin' for thon schooner," he went on, his thin, insane voice
+clearly audible in the shelter of the bank, "an' she's comin' aye
+nearer, aye nearer, aye nearer an' nearer an' nearer; an' they ken't,
+the folk kens it, they ken weel it's by wi' them. Charlie lad, they're
+a' drunk in yon schooner, a' dozened wi' drink. They were a' drunk in
+the _Christ-Anna_, at the hinder end. There's nane could droon at sea
+wantin' the brandy. Hoot awa, what do you ken?" with a sudden blast of
+anger. "I tell ye, it canna be; they daurna droon without it. Hae,"
+holding out the bottle, "tak' a sowp."
+
+I was about to refuse, but Rorie touched me as if in warning; and indeed
+I had already thought better of the movement. I took the bottle,
+therefore, and not only drank freely myself, but contrived to spill even
+more as I was doing so. It was pure spirit, and almost strangled me to
+swallow. My kinsman did not observe the loss, but, once more throwing
+back his head, drained the remainder to the dregs. Then, with a loud
+laugh, he cast the bottle forth among the Merry Men, who seemed to leap
+up, shouting to receive it.
+
+"Hae, bairns!" he cried, "there's your hansel. Ye'll get bonnier nor
+that or morning."
+
+Suddenly, out in the black night before us, and not two hundred yards
+away, we heard, at a moment when the wind was silent, the clear note of
+a human voice. Instantly the wind swept howling down upon the Head, and
+the Roost bellowed, and churned, and danced with a new fury. But we had
+heard the sound, and we knew, with agony, that this was the doomed ship
+now close on ruin, and that what we had heard was the voice of her
+master issuing his last command. Crouching together on the edge, we
+waited, straining every sense, for the inevitable end. It was long,
+however, and to us it seemed like ages, ere the schooner suddenly
+appeared for one brief instant, relieved against a tower of glimmering
+foam. I still see her reefed mainsail flapping loose, as the boom fell
+heavily across the deck; I still see the black outline of the hull, and
+still think I can distinguish the figure of a man stretched upon the
+tiller. Yet the whole sight we had of her passed swifter than lightning;
+the very wave that disclosed her fell burying her for ever; the mingled
+cry of many voices at the point of death rose and was quenched in the
+roaring of the Merry Men. And with that the tragedy was at an end. The
+strong ship, with all her gear, and the lamp perhaps still burning in
+the cabin, the lives of so many men, precious surely to others, dear, at
+least, as heaven to themselves, had all, in that one moment, gone down
+into the surging waters. They were gone like a dream. And the wind still
+ran and shouted, and the senseless waters in the Roost still leaped and
+tumbled as before.
+
+How long we lay there together, we three, speechless and motionless, is
+more than I can tell, but it must have been for long. At length, one by
+one, and almost mechanically, we crawled back into the shelter of the
+bank. As I lay against the parapet, wholly wretched and not entirely
+master of my mind, I could hear my kinsman maundering to himself in an
+altered and melancholy mood. Now he would repeat to himself with maudlin
+iteration, "Sic a fecht as they had--sic a sair fecht as they had, puir
+lads, puir lads!" and anon he would bewail that "a' the gear was as
+gude's tint," because the ship had gone down among the Merry Men instead
+of stranding on the shore; and throughout, the name--the
+_Christ-Anna_--would come and go in his divagations, pronounced with
+shuddering awe. The storm all this time was rapidly abating. In half an
+hour the wind had fallen to a breeze, and the change was accompanied or
+caused by a heavy, cold, and plumping rain. I must then have fallen
+asleep, and when I came to myself, drenched, stiff, and unrefreshed, day
+had already broken, grey, wet, discomfortable day; the wind blew in
+faint and shifting capfuls, the tide was out, the Roost was at its
+lowest, and only the strong beating surf round all the coasts of Aros
+remained to witness of the furies of the night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+A MAN OUT OF THE SEA
+
+
+Rorie set out for the house in search of warmth and breakfast; but my
+uncle was bent upon examining the shores of Aros, and I felt it a part
+of duty to accompany him throughout. He was now docile and quiet, but
+tremulous and weak in mind and body; and it was with the eagerness of a
+child that he pursued his exploration. He climbed far down upon the
+rocks; on the beaches he pursued the retreating breakers. The merest
+broken plank or rag of cordage was a treasure in his eyes to be secured
+at the peril of his life. To see him, with weak and stumbling footsteps,
+expose himself to the pursuit of the surf, or the snares and pitfalls of
+the weedy rock, kept me in a perpetual terror. My arm was ready to
+support him, my hand clutched him by the skirt, I helped him to draw his
+pitiful discoveries beyond the reach of the returning wave; a nurse
+accompanying a child of seven would have had no different experience.
+
+Yet, weakened as he was by the reaction from his madness of the night
+before, the passions that smouldered in his nature were those of a
+strong man. His terror of the sea, although conquered for the moment,
+was still undiminished; had the sea been a lake of living flames, he
+could not have shrunk more panically from its touch; and once, when his
+foot slipped and he plunged to the mid-leg into a pool of water, the
+shriek that came up out of his soul was like the cry of death. He sat
+still for a while, panting like a dog, after that; but his desire for
+the spoils of shipwreck triumphed once more over his fears; once more
+he tottered among the curded foam; once more he crawled upon the rocks
+among the bursting bubbles; once more his whole heart seemed to be set
+on driftwood, fit, if it was fit for anything, to throw upon the fire.
+Pleased as he was with what he found, he still incessantly grumbled at
+his ill-fortune.
+
+"Aros," he said, "is no' a place for wrecks ava'--no' ava'. A' the years
+I've dwalt here, this ane maks the second; and the best o' the gear
+clean tint!"
+
+"Uncle," said I, for we were now on a stretch of open sand, where there
+was nothing to divert his mind, "I saw you last night, as I never
+thought to see you--you were drunk."
+
+"Na, na," he said, "no' as bad as that. I had been drinking, though. And
+to tell ye the God's truth, it's a thing I canna mend. There's nae
+soberer man than me in my ordnar; but when I hear the wind blaw in my
+lug, it's my belief that I gang gyte."
+
+"You are a religious man," I replied, "and this is sin."
+
+"Ou," he returned, "if it wasna sin, I dinna ken that I would care
+for't. Ye see, man, it's defiance. There's a sair spang o' the auld sin
+o' the world in yon sea; it's an unchristian business at the best o't;
+an' whiles when it gets up, an' the wind skreighs--the wind an' her are
+a kind of sib, I'm thinkin'--an' thae Merry Men, the daft callants,
+blawin' and lauchin', and puir souls in the deid-thraws warstlin' the
+leelang nicht wi' their bit ships--weel, it comes ower me like a
+glamour. I'm a deil, I ken't. But I think naething o' the puir sailor
+lads; I'm wi' the sea, I'm just like ane o' her ain Merry Men."
+
+I thought I should touch him in a joint of his harness. I turned me
+towards the sea; the surf was running gaily, wave after wave, with their
+manes blowing behind them, riding one after another up the beach,
+towering, curving, falling one upon another on the trampled sand.
+Without, the salt air, the scared gulls, the widespread army of the
+sea-chargers, neighing to each other, as they gathered together to the
+assault of Aros; and close before us, that line on the flat sands, that,
+with all their number and their fury, they might never pass.
+
+"Thus far shalt thou go," said I, "and no farther." And then I quoted as
+solemnly as I was able a verse that I had often before fitted to the
+chorus of the breakers:--
+
+  But yet the Lord, that is on high,
+    Is more of might by far
+  Than noise of many waters is,
+    Or great sea-billows are.
+
+"Ay," said my kinsman, "at the hinder end, the Lord will triumph; I
+dinna misdoobt that. But here on earth, even silly men-folk daur Him to
+His face. It is no' wise; I am no sayin' that it's wise; but it's the
+pride of the eye, and it's the lust o' life, an' it's the wale o'
+pleesures."
+
+I said no more, for we had now begun to cross a neck of land that lay
+between us and Sandag; and I withheld my last appeal to the man's better
+reason till we should stand upon the spot associated with his crime. Nor
+did he pursue the subject; but he walked beside me with a firmer step.
+The call that I had made upon his mind acted like a stimulant, and I
+could see that he had forgotten his search for worthless jetsam, in a
+profound, gloomy, and yet stirring train of thought. In three or four
+minutes we had topped the brae and began to go down upon Sandag. The
+wreck had been roughly handled by the sea; the stem had been spun round
+and dragged a little lower down; and perhaps the stern had been forced a
+little higher, for the two parts now lay entirely separate on the beach.
+When we came to the grave I stopped, uncovered my head in the thick
+rain, and, looking my kinsman in the face, addressed him.
+
+"A man," said I, "was in God's providence suffered to escape from mortal
+dangers; he was poor, he was naked, he was wet, he was weary, he was a
+stranger; he had every claim upon the bowels of your compassion; it may
+be that he was the salt of the earth, holy, helpful, and kind; it may be
+he was a man laden with iniquities to whom death was the beginning of
+torment. I ask you in the sight of Heaven: Gordon Darnaway, where is the
+man for whom Christ died?"
+
+He started visibly at the last words; but there came no answer, and his
+face expressed no feeling but a vague alarm.
+
+"You were my father's brother," I continued; "you have taught me to
+count your house as if it were my father's house; and we are both sinful
+men walking before the Lord among the sins and dangers of this life. It
+is by our evil that God leads us into good; we sin, I dare not say by
+His temptation, but I must say with His consent; and to any but the
+brutish man his sins are the beginning of wisdom. God has warned you by
+this crime; He warns you still by the bloody grave between our feet; and
+if there shall follow no repentance, no improvement, no return to Him,
+what can we look for but the following of some memorable judgment?"
+
+Even as I spoke the words, the eyes of my uncle wandered from my face. A
+change fell upon his looks that cannot be described; his features seemed
+to dwindle in size, the colour faded from his cheeks, one hand rose
+waveringly and pointed over my shoulder into the distance, and the
+oft-repeated name fell once more from his lips: "The _Christ-Anna_!"
+
+I turned; and if I was not appalled to the same degree, as I return
+thanks to Heaven that I had not the cause, I was still startled by the
+sight that met my eyes. The form of a man stood upright on the
+cabin-hutch of the wrecked ship; his back was towards us; he appeared to
+be scanning the offing with shaded eyes, and his figure was relieved to
+its full height, which was plainly very great, against the sea and sky.
+I have said a thousand times that I am not superstitious; but at that
+moment, with my mind running upon death and sin, the unexplained
+appearance of a stranger on that sea-girt, solitary island filled me
+with a surprise that bordered close on terror. It seemed scarce possible
+that any human soul should have come ashore alive in such a sea as had
+raged last night along the coast of Aros; and the only vessel within
+miles had gone down before our eyes among the Merry Men. I was assailed
+with doubts that made suspense unbearable, and, to put the matter to the
+touch at once, stepped forward and hailed the figure like a ship.
+
+He turned about, and I thought he started to behold us. At this my
+courage instantly revived, and I called and signed to him to draw near,
+and he, on his part, dropped immediately to the sands, and began slowly
+to approach, with many stops and hesitations. At each repeated mark of
+the man's uneasiness I grew the more confident myself; and I advanced
+another step, encouraging him as I did so with my head and hand. It was
+plain the castaway had heard indifferent accounts of our island
+hospitality; and indeed, about this time, the people farther north had a
+sorry reputation.
+
+"Why," I said, "the man is black!"
+
+And just at that moment, in a voice that I could scarce have recognised,
+my kinsman began swearing and praying in a mingled stream. I looked at
+him; he had fallen on his knees, his face was agonised; at each step of
+the castaway's the pitch of his voice rose, the volubility of his
+utterance and the fervour of his language redoubled. I call it prayer,
+for it was addressed to God; but surely no such ranting incongruities
+were ever before addressed to the Creator by a creature: surely if
+prayer can be a sin, this mad harangue was sinful. I ran to my kinsman,
+I seized him by the shoulders, I dragged him to his feet.
+
+"Silence, man," said I, "respect your God in words, if not in action.
+Here, on the very scene of your transgressions, He sends you an occasion
+of atonement. Forward and embrace it: welcome like a father yon
+creature who comes trembling to your mercy."
+
+With that, I tried to force him towards the black; but he felled me to
+the ground, burst from my grasp, leaving the shoulder of his jacket, and
+fled up the hillside towards the top of Aros like a deer. I staggered to
+my feet again, bruised and somewhat stunned; the negro had paused in
+surprise, perhaps in terror, some half-way between me and the wreck; my
+uncle was already far away, bounding from rock to rock; and I thus found
+myself torn for a time between two duties. But I judged, and I pray
+Heaven that I judged rightly, in favour of the poor wretch upon the
+sands; his misfortune was at least not plainly of his own creation; it
+was one, besides, that I could certainly relieve; and I had begun by
+that time to regard my uncle as an incurable and dismal lunatic. I
+advanced accordingly towards the black, who now awaited my approach with
+folded arms, like one prepared for either destiny. As I came nearer, he
+reached forth his hand with a great gesture, such as I had seen from the
+pulpit, and spoke to me in something of a pulpit voice, but not a word
+was comprehensible. I tried him first in English, then in Gaelic, both
+in vain; so that it was clear we must rely upon the tongue of looks and
+gestures. Thereupon I signed to him to follow me, which he did readily
+and with a grave obeisance like a fallen king; all the while there had
+come no shade of alteration in his face, neither of anxiety while he was
+still waiting, nor of relief now that he was reassured; if he were a
+slave, as I supposed, I could not but judge he must have fallen from
+some high place in his own country, and, fallen as he was, I could not
+but admire his bearing. As we passed the grave, I paused and raised my
+hands and eyes to heaven in token of respect and sorrow for the dead;
+and he, as if in answer, bowed low and spread his hands abroad; it was a
+strange motion, but done like a thing of common custom; and I supposed
+it was ceremonial in the land from which he came. At the same time he
+pointed to my uncle, whom we could just see perched upon a knoll, and
+touched his head to indicate that he was mad.
+
+We took the long way round the shore, for I feared to excite my uncle if
+we struck across the island; and as we walked, I had time enough to
+mature the little dramatic exhibition by which I hoped to satisfy my
+doubts. Accordingly, pausing on a rock, I proceeded to imitate before
+the negro the action of the man whom I had seen the day before taking
+bearings with the compass at Sandag. He understood me at once, and,
+taking the imitation out of my hands, showed me where the boat was,
+pointed out seaward as if to indicate the position of the schooner, and
+then down along the edge of the rock with the words "Espirito Santo,"
+strangely pronounced, but clear enough for recognition. I had thus been
+right in my conjecture; the pretended historical inquiry had been but a
+cloak for treasure-hunting; the man who had played on Dr. Robertson was
+the same as the foreigner who visited Grisapol in spring, and now, with
+many others, lay dead under the Roost of Aros: there had their greed
+brought them, there should their bones be tossed for evermore. In the
+meantime the black continued his imitation of the scene, now looking up
+skyward as though watching the approach of the storm; now, in the
+character of a seaman, waving the rest to come aboard; now as an
+officer, running along the rock and entering the boat; and anon bending
+over imaginary oars with the air of a hurried boatman; but all with the
+same solemnity of manner, so that I was never even moved to smile.
+Lastly, he indicated to me, by a pantomime not to be described in words,
+how he himself had gone up to examine the stranded wreck, and, to his
+grief and indignation, had been deserted by his comrades; and thereupon
+folded his arms once more, and stooped his head, like one accepting
+fate.
+
+The mystery of his presence being thus solved for me, I explained to
+him by means of a sketch the fate of the vessel and of all aboard her.
+He showed no surprise nor sorrow, and, with a sudden lifting of his open
+hand, seemed to dismiss his former friends or masters (whichever they
+had been) into God's pleasure. Respect came upon me and grew stronger,
+the more I observed him; I saw he had a powerful mind and a sober and
+severe character, such as I loved to commune with; and before we reached
+the house of Aros I had almost forgotten, and wholly forgiven him, his
+uncanny colour.
+
+To Mary I told all that had passed without suppression, though I own my
+heart failed me; but I did wrong to doubt her sense of justice.
+
+"You did the right," she said. "God's will be done." And she set out
+meat for us at once.
+
+As soon as I was satisfied, I bade Rorie keep an eye upon the castaway,
+who was still eating, and set forth again myself to find my uncle. I had
+not gone far before I saw him sitting in the same place, upon the very
+topmost knoll, and seemingly in the same attitude as when I had last
+observed him. From that point, as I have said, the most of Aros and the
+neighbouring Ross would be spread below him like a map; and it was plain
+that he kept a bright look-out in all directions, for my head had
+scarcely risen above the summit of the first ascent before he had leaped
+to his feet and turned as if to face me. I hailed him at once, as well
+as I was able, in the same tones and words as I had often used before,
+when I had come to summon him to dinner. He made not so much as a
+movement in reply. I passed on a little farther, and again tried parley,
+with the same result. But when I began a second time to advance, his
+insane fears blazed up again, and still in dead silence, but with
+incredible speed, he began to flee from before me along the rocky summit
+of the hill. An hour before he had been dead weary, and I had been
+comparatively active. But now his strength was recruited by the fervour
+of insanity, and it would have been vain for me to dream of pursuit.
+Nay, the very attempt, I thought, might have inflamed his terrors, and
+thus increased the miseries of our position. And I had nothing left but
+to turn homeward and make my sad report to Mary.
+
+She heard it, as she had heard the first, with a concerned composure,
+and, bidding me lie down and take that rest of which I stood so much in
+need, set forth herself in quest of her misguided father. At that age it
+would have been a strange thing that put me from either meat or sleep; I
+slept long and deep; and it was already long past noon before I awoke
+and came downstairs into the kitchen. Mary, Rorie, and the black
+castaway were seated about the fire in silence; and I could see that
+Mary had been weeping. There was cause enough, as I soon learned, for
+tears. First she, and then Rorie, had been forth to seek my uncle; each
+in turn had found him perched upon the hill-top, and from each in turn
+he had silently and swiftly fled. Rorie had tried to chase him, but in
+vain; madness lent a new vigour to his bounds; he sprang from rock to
+rock over the widest gullies; he scoured like the wind along the
+hill-tops; he doubled and twisted like a hare before the dogs; and Rorie
+at length gave in; and the last that he saw, my uncle was seated as
+before upon the crest of Aros. Even during the hottest excitement of the
+chase, even when the fleet-footed servant had come, for a moment, very
+near to capture him, the poor lunatic had uttered not a sound. He fled,
+and he was silent, like a beast; and this silence had terrified his
+pursuer.
+
+There was something heart-breaking in the situation. How to capture the
+madman, how to feed him in the meanwhile, and what to do with him when
+he was captured, were the three difficulties that we had to solve.
+
+"The black," said I, "is the cause of this attack. It may even be his
+presence in the house that keeps my uncle on the hill. We have done the
+fair thing; he has been fed and warmed under this roof; now I propose
+that Rorie put him across the bay in the coble, and take him through the
+Ross as far as Grisapol."
+
+In this proposal Mary heartily concurred; and bidding the black follow
+us, we all three descended to the pier. Certainly, Heaven's will was
+declared against Gordon Darnaway; a thing had happened, never paralleled
+before in Aros: during the storm, the coble had broken loose, and,
+striking on the rough splinters of the pier, now lay in four feet of
+water with one side stove in. Three days of work at least would be
+required to make her float. But I was not to be beaten. I led the whole
+party round to where the gut was narrowest, swam to the other side, and
+called to the black to follow me. He signed, with the same clearness and
+quiet as before, that he knew not the art; and there was truth apparent
+in his signals, it would have occurred to none of us to doubt his truth;
+and that hope being over, we must all go back even as we came to the
+house of Aros, the negro walking in our midst without embarrassment.
+
+All we could do that day was to make one more attempt to communicate
+with the unhappy madman. Again he was visible on his perch; again he
+fled in silence. But food and a great cloak were at least left for his
+comfort; the rain, besides, had cleared away, and the night promised to
+be even warm. We might compose ourselves, we thought, until the morrow;
+rest was the chief requisite, that we might be strengthened for unusual
+exertions; and as none cared to talk, we separated at an early hour.
+
+I lay long awake, planning a campaign for the morrow. I was to place the
+black on the side of Sandag, whence he should head my uncle towards the
+house; Rorie in the west, I on the east, were to complete the cordon, as
+best we might. It seemed to me, the more I recalled the configuration of
+the island, that it should be possible, though hard, to force him down
+upon the low ground along Aros Bay; and once there, even with the
+strength of his madness, ultimate escape was hardly to be feared. It was
+on his terror of the black that I relied; for I made sure, however he
+might run, it would not be in the direction of the man whom he supposed
+to have returned from the dead, and thus one point of the compass at
+least would be secure.
+
+When at length I fell asleep, it was to be awakened shortly after by a
+dream of wrecks, black men, and submarine adventure; and I found myself
+so shaken and fevered that I arose, descended the stair, and stepped out
+before the house. Within, Rorie and the black were asleep together in
+the kitchen; outside was a wonderful clear night of stars, with here and
+there a cloud still hanging, last stragglers of the tempest. It was near
+the top of the flood, and the Merry Men were roaring in the windless
+quiet of the night. Never, not even in the height of the tempest, had I
+heard their song with greater awe. Now, when the winds were gathered
+home, when the deep was dandling itself back into its summer slumber,
+and when the stars rained their gentle light over land and sea, the
+voice of these tide-breakers was still raised for havoc. They seemed,
+indeed, to be a part of the world's evil and the tragic side of life.
+Nor were their meaningless vociferations the only sounds that broke the
+silence of the night. For I could hear, now shrill and thrilling and now
+almost drowned, the note of a human voice that accompanied the uproar of
+the Roost. I knew it for my kinsman's; and a great fear fell upon me of
+God's judgments, and the evil in the world. I went back again into the
+darkness of the house as into a place of shelter, and lay long upon my
+bed, pondering these mysteries.
+
+It was late when I again woke, and I leaped into my clothes and hurried
+to the kitchen. No one was there; Rorie and the black had both
+stealthily departed long before; and my heart stood still at the
+discovery. I could rely on Rorie's heart, but I placed no trust in his
+discretion. If he had thus set out without a word, he was plainly bent
+upon some service to my uncle. But what service could he hope to render
+even alone, far less in the company of the man in whom my uncle found
+his fears incarnated? Even if I were not already too late to prevent
+some deadly mischief, it was plain I must delay no longer. With the
+thought I was out of the house; and often as I have run on the rough
+sides of Aros, I never ran as I did that fatal morning. I do not believe
+I put twelve minutes to the whole ascent.
+
+My uncle was gone from his perch. The basket had indeed been torn open
+and the meat scattered on the turf; but, as we found afterwards, no
+mouthful had been tasted; and there was not another trace of human
+existence in that wide field of view. Day had already filled the clear
+heavens; the sun already lighted in a rosy bloom upon the crest of Ben
+Kyaw; but all below me the rude knolls of Aros and the shield of sea lay
+steeped in the clear darkling twilight of the dawn.
+
+"Rorie!" I cried; and again "Rorie!" My voice died in the silence, but
+there came no answer back. If there were indeed an enterprise afoot to
+catch my uncle, it was plainly not in fleetness of foot, but in
+dexterity of stalking, that the hunters placed their trust. I ran on
+farther, keeping the higher spurs, and looking right and left, nor did I
+pause again till I was on the mount above Sandag. I could see the wreck,
+the uncovered belt of sand, the waves idly beating, the long ledge of
+rocks, and on either hand the tumbled knolls, boulders, and gullies of
+the island. But still no human thing.
+
+At a stride the sunshine fell on Aros, and the shadows and colours
+leaped into being. Not half a moment later, below me to the west, sheep
+began to scatter as in a panic. There came a cry. I saw my uncle
+running. I saw the black jump up in hot pursuit; and before I had time
+to understand, Rorie also had appeared, calling directions in Gaelic as
+to a dog herding sheep.
+
+I took to my heels to interfere, and perhaps I had done better to have
+waited where I was, for I was the means of cutting off the madman's last
+escape. There was nothing before him from that moment but the grave, the
+wreck, and the sea in Sandag Bay. And yet Heaven knows that what I did
+was for the best.
+
+My Uncle Gordon saw in what direction, horrible to him, the chase was
+driving him. He doubled, darting to the right and left; but high as the
+fever ran in his veins, the black was still the swifter. Turn where he
+would, he was still forestalled, still driven toward the scene of his
+crime. Suddenly he began to shriek aloud, so that the coast re-echoed;
+and now both I and Rorie were calling on the black to stop. But all was
+vain, for it was written otherwise. The pursuer still ran, the chase
+still sped before him screaming; they avoided the grave, and skimmed
+close past the timbers of the wreck; in a breath they had cleared the
+sand; and still my kinsman did not pause, but dashed straight into the
+surf; and the black, now almost within reach, still followed swiftly
+behind him. Rorie and I both stopped, for the thing was now beyond the
+hands of men, and these were the decrees of God that came to pass before
+our eyes. There was never a sharper ending. On that steep beach they
+were beyond their depth at a bound; neither could swim; the black rose
+once for a moment with a throttling cry; but the current had them,
+racing seaward; and if ever they came up again, which God alone can
+tell, it would be ten minutes after, at the far end of Aros Roost, where
+the sea-birds hover fishing.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [1] _i.e._ the six stories which were in 1887 published in a volume
+    entitled _The Merry Men, and Other Tales and Fables_: of this volume
+    "The Merry Men" and "Olalla" formed part.
+
+  [2] Boggy.
+
+  [3] Clock.
+
+  [4] Enjoy.
+
+
+
+
+OLALLA
+
+
+
+
+OLALLA
+
+
+"Now," said the doctor, "my part is done, and, I may say, with some
+vanity, well done. It remains only to get you out of this cold and
+poisonous city, and to give you two months of a pure air and an easy
+conscience. The last is your affair. To the first I think I can help
+you. It falls indeed rather oddly; it was but the other day the Padre
+came in from the country; and as he and I are old friends, although of
+contrary professions, he applied to me in a matter of distress among
+some of his parishioners. This was a family--but you are ignorant of
+Spain, and even the names of our grandees are hardly known to you;
+suffice it, then, that they were once great people, and are now fallen
+to the brink of destitution. Nothing now belongs to them but the
+residencia, and certain leagues of desert mountain, in the greater part
+of which not even a goat could support life. But the house is a fine old
+place, and stands at a great height among the hills, and most
+salubriously; and I had no sooner heard my friend's tale than I
+remembered you. I told him I had a wounded officer, wounded in the good
+cause, who was now able to make a change; and I proposed that his
+friends should take you for a lodger. Instantly the Padre's face grew
+dark, as I had maliciously foreseen it would. It was out of the
+question, he said. Then let them starve, said I, for I have no sympathy
+with tatterdemalion pride. Thereupon we separated, not very content with
+one another; but yesterday, to my wonder, the Padre returned and made a
+submission: the difficulty, he said, he had found upon inquiry to be
+less than he had feared; or, in other words, these proud people had put
+their pride in their pocket. I closed with the offer; and, subject to
+your approval, I have taken rooms for you in the residencia. The air of
+these mountains will renew your blood; and the quiet in which you will
+there live is worth all the medicines in the world."
+
+"Doctor," said I, "you have been throughout my good angel, and your
+advice is a command. But tell me, if you please, something of the family
+with which I am to reside."
+
+"I am coming to that," replied my friend; "and, indeed, there is a
+difficulty in the way. These beggars are, as I have said, of very high
+descent, and swollen with the most baseless vanity; they have lived for
+some generations in a growing isolation, drawing away, on either hand,
+from the rich who had now become too high for them, and from the poor,
+whom they still regarded as too low; and even to-day, when poverty
+forces them to unfasten their door to a guest, they cannot do so without
+a most ungracious stipulation. You are to remain, they say, a stranger;
+they will give you attendance, but they refuse from the first the idea
+of the smallest intimacy."
+
+I will not deny that I was piqued, and perhaps the feeling strengthened
+my desire to go, for I was confident that I could break down that
+barrier if I desired. "There is nothing offensive in such a
+stipulation," said I; "and I even sympathise with the feeling that
+inspired it."
+
+"It is true they have never seen you," returned the doctor politely;
+"and if they knew you were the handsomest and the most pleasant man that
+ever came from England (where I am told that handsome men are common,
+but pleasant ones not so much so), they would doubtless make you welcome
+with a better grace. But since you take the thing so well, it matters
+not. To me, indeed, it seems discourteous. But you will find yourself
+the gainer. The family will not much tempt you. A mother, a son, and a
+daughter; an old woman said to be half-witted, a country lout, and a
+country girl, who stands very high with her confessor, and is,
+therefore," chuckled the physician, "most likely plain; there is not much
+in that to attract the fancy of a dashing officer."
+
+"And yet you say they are high-born," I objected.
+
+"Well, as to that, I should distinguish," returned the doctor. "The
+mother is; not so the children. The mother was the last representative
+of a princely stock, degenerate both in parts and fortune. Her father
+was not only poor, he was mad: and the girl ran wild about the
+residencia till his death. Then, much of the fortune having died with
+him, and the family being quite extinct, the girl ran wilder than ever,
+until at last she married, Heaven knows whom, a muleteer some say,
+others a smuggler; while there are some who uphold there was no marriage
+at all, and that Felipe and Olalla are bastards. The union, such as it
+was, was tragically dissolved some years ago; but they live in such
+seclusion, and the country at that time was in so much disorder, that
+the precise manner of the man's end is known only to the priest--if even
+to him."
+
+"I begin to think I shall have strange experiences," said I.
+
+"I would not romance, if I were you," replied the doctor; "you will
+find, I fear, a very grovelling and commonplace reality. Felipe, for
+instance, I have seen. And what am I to say? He is very rustic, very
+cunning, very loutish, and, I should say, an innocent; the others are
+probably to match. No, no, seńor commandante, you must seek congenial
+society among the great sights of our mountains; and in these at least,
+if you are at all a lover of the works of nature, I promise you will not
+be disappointed."
+
+The next day Felipe came for me in a rough country cart, drawn by a
+mule; and a little before the stroke of noon, after I had said farewell
+to the doctor, the innkeeper, and different good souls who had
+befriended me during my sickness, we set forth out of the city by the
+eastern gate, and began to ascend into the Sierra. I had been so long a
+prisoner, since I was left behind for dying after the loss of the
+convoy, that the mere smell of the earth set me smiling. The country
+through which we went was wild and rocky, partially covered with rough
+woods, now of the cork-tree, and now of the great Spanish chestnut, and
+frequently intersected by the beds of mountain torrents. The sun shone,
+the wind rustled joyously; and we had advanced some miles, and the city
+had already shrunk into an inconsiderable knoll upon the plain behind
+us, before my attention began to be diverted to the companion of my
+drive. To the eye, he seemed but a diminutive, loutish, well-made
+country lad, such as the doctor had described, mighty quick and active,
+but devoid of any culture; and this first impression was with most
+observers final. What began to strike me was his familiar, chattering
+talk; so strangely inconsistent with the terms on which I was to be
+received; and partly from his imperfect enunciation, partly from the
+sprightly incoherence of the matter, so very difficult to follow clearly
+without an effort of the mind. It is true I had before talked with
+persons of a similar mental constitution; persons who seemed to live (as
+he did) by the senses, taken and possessed by the visual object of the
+moment and unable to discharge their minds of that impression. His
+seemed to me (as I sat, distantly giving ear) a kind of conversation
+proper to drivers, who pass much of their time in a great vacancy of the
+intellect and threading the sights of a familiar country. But this was
+not the case of Felipe; by his own account, he was a home-keeper; "I
+wish I was there now," he said; and then, spying a tree by the wayside,
+he broke off to tell me that he had once seen a crow among its branches.
+
+"A crow?" I repeated, struck by the ineptitude of the remark, and
+thinking I had heard imperfectly.
+
+But by this time he was already filled with a new idea; hearkening with
+a rapt intentness, his head on one side, his face puckered; and he
+struck me rudely, to make me hold my peace. Then he smiled and shook his
+head.
+
+"What did you hear?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, it is all right," he said; and began encouraging his mule with
+cries that echoed unhumanly up the mountain walls.
+
+I looked at him more closely. He was superlatively well-built, light,
+and lithe and strong; he was well-featured; his yellow eyes were very
+large, though, perhaps, not very expressive; take him altogether, he was
+a pleasant-looking lad, and I had no fault to find with him, beyond that
+he was of a dusky hue, and inclined to hairiness; two characteristics
+that I disliked. It was his mind that puzzled, and yet attracted me. The
+doctor's phrase--an innocent--came back to me; and I was wondering if
+that were, after all, the true description, when the road began to go
+down into the narrow and naked chasm of a torrent. The waters thundered
+tumultuously in the bottom; and the ravine was filled full of the sound,
+the thin spray, and the claps of wind, that accompanied their descent.
+The scene was certainly impressive; but the road was in that part very
+securely walled in; the mule went steadily forward; and I was astonished
+to perceive the paleness of terror in the face of my companion. The
+voice of that wild river was inconstant, now sinking lower as if in
+weariness, now doubling its hoarse tones; momentary freshets seemed to
+swell its volume, sweeping down the gorge, raving and booming against
+the barrier walls; and I observed it was at each of these accessions to
+the clamour that my driver more particularly winced and blanched. Some
+thoughts of Scottish superstition and the river-kelpie passed across my
+mind; I wondered if perchance the like were prevalent in that part of
+Spain; and turning to Felipe, sought to draw him out.
+
+"What is the matter?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, I am afraid," he replied.
+
+"Of what are you afraid?" I returned. "This seems one of the safest
+places on this very dangerous road."
+
+"It makes a noise," he said, with a simplicity of awe that set my doubts
+at rest.
+
+The lad was but a child in intellect; his mind was like his body, active
+and swift, but stunted in development; and I began from that time forth
+to regard him with a measure of pity, and to listen at first with
+indulgence, and at last even with pleasure, to his disjointed babble.
+
+By about four in the afternoon we had crossed the summit of the mountain
+line, said farewell to the western sunshine, and began to go down upon
+the other side, skirting the edge of many ravines and moving through the
+shadow of dusky woods. There rose upon all sides the voice of falling
+water, not condensed and formidable as in the gorge of the river, but
+scattered and sounding gaily and musically from glen to glen. Here, too,
+the spirits of my driver mended, and he began to sing aloud in a
+falsetto voice, and with a singular bluntness of musical perception,
+never true either to melody or key, but wandering at will, and yet
+somehow with an effect that was natural and pleasing, like that of the
+song of birds. As the dusk increased, I fell more and more under the
+spell of this artless warbling, listening and waiting for some
+articulate air, and still disappointed; and when at last I asked him
+what it was he sang--"Oh," cried he, "I am just singing!" Above all, I
+was taken with a trick he had of unweariedly repeating the same note at
+little intervals; it was not so monotonous as you would think, or, at
+least, not disagreeable; and it seemed to breathe a wonderful
+contentment with what is, such as we love to fancy in the attitude of
+trees, or the quiescence of a pool.
+
+Night had fallen dark before we came out upon a plateau, and drew up a
+little after, before a certain lump of superior blackness which I could
+only conjecture to be the residencia. Here my guide, getting down from
+the cart, hooted and whistled for a long time in vain; until at last an
+old peasant man came towards us from somewhere in the surrounding dark,
+carrying a candle in his hand. By the light of this I was able to
+perceive a great arched doorway of a Moorish character: it was closed by
+iron-studded gates, in one of the leaves of which Felipe opened a
+wicket. The peasant carried off the cart to some out-building; but my
+guide and I passed through the wicket, which was closed again behind us;
+and, by the glimmer of the candle, passed through a court, up a stone
+stair, along a section of an open gallery, and up more stairs again,
+until we came at last to the door of a great and somewhat bare
+apartment. This room, which I understood was to be mine, was pierced by
+three windows, lined with some lustrous wood disposed in panels, and
+carpeted with the skins of many savage animals. A bright fire burned in
+the chimney, and shed abroad a changeful flicker; close up to the blaze
+there was drawn a table, laid for supper; and in the far end a bed stood
+ready. I was pleased by these preparations, and said so to Felipe; and
+he, with the same simplicity of disposition that I had already remarked
+in him, warmly re-echoed my praises. "A fine room," he said; "a very
+fine room. And fire, too; fire is good; it melts out the pleasure in
+your bones. And the bed," he continued, carrying over the candle in that
+direction--"see what fine sheets--how soft, how smooth, smooth"; and he
+passed his hand again and again over their texture, and then laid down
+his head and rubbed his cheeks among them with a grossness of content
+that somehow offended me. I took the candle from his hand (for I feared
+he would set the bed on fire) and walked back to the supper-table,
+where, perceiving a measure of wine, I poured out a cup and called to
+him to come and drink of it. He started to his feet at once and ran to
+me with a strong expression of hope; but when he saw the wine he visibly
+shuddered.
+
+"Oh, no," he said, "not that; that is for you. I hate it."
+
+"Very well, Seńor," said I; "then I will drink to your good health, and
+to the prosperity of your house and family. Speaking of which," I added,
+after I had drunk, "shall I not have the pleasure of laying my
+salutations in person at the feet of the Seńora, your mother?"
+
+But at these words all the childishness passed out of his face, and was
+succeeded by a look of indescribable cunning and secrecy. He backed away
+from me at the same time, as though I were an animal about to leap or
+some dangerous fellow with a weapon, and when he had got near the door,
+glowered at me sullenly with contracted pupils. "No," he said at last,
+and the next moment was gone noiselessly out of the room; and I heard
+his footing die away downstairs as light as rainfall, and silence closed
+over the house.
+
+After I had supped I drew up the table nearer to the bed and began to
+prepare for rest; but in the new position of the light, I was struck by
+a picture on the wall. It represented a woman, still young. To judge by
+her costume and the mellow unity which reigned over the canvas, she had
+long been dead; to judge by the vivacity of the attitude, the eyes and
+the features, I might have been beholding in a mirror the image of life.
+Her figure was very slim and strong, and of a just proportion; red
+tresses lay like a crown over her brow; her eyes, of a very golden
+brown, held mine with a look; and her face, which was perfectly shaped,
+was yet marred by a cruel, sullen, and sensual expression. Something in
+both face and figure, something exquisitely intangible, like the echo of
+an echo, suggested the features and bearing of my guide; and I stood a
+while unpleasantly attracted and wondering at the oddity of the
+resemblance. The common, carnal stock of that race, which had been
+originally designed for such high dames as the one now looking on me
+from the canvas, had fallen to baser uses, wearing country clothes,
+sitting on the shaft and holding the reins of a mule cart, to bring
+home a lodger. Perhaps an actual link subsisted; perhaps some scruple of
+the delicate flesh that was once clothed upon with the satin and brocade
+of the dead lady, now winced at the rude contact of Felipe's frieze.
+
+The first light of the morning shone full upon the portrait, and, as I
+lay awake, my eyes continued to dwell upon it with growing complacency;
+its beauty crept about my heart insidiously, silencing my scruples one
+after another; and while I knew that to love such a woman were to sign
+and seal one's own sentence of degeneration, I still knew that, if she
+were alive, I should love her. Day after day the double knowledge of her
+wickedness and of my weakness grew clearer. She came to be the heroine
+of many day-dreams, in which her eyes led on to, and sufficiently
+rewarded, crimes. She cast a dark shadow on my fancy, and when I was out
+in the free air of heaven, taking vigorous exercise and healthily
+renewing the current of my blood, it was often a glad thought to me that
+my enchantress was safe in the grave, her wand of beauty broken, her
+lips closed in silence, her philtre spilt. And yet I had a
+half-lingering terror that she might not be dead after all, but
+re-arisen in the body of some descendant.
+
+Felipe served my meals in my own apartment; and his resemblance to the
+portrait haunted me. At times it was not; at times, upon some change of
+attitude or flash of expression, it would leap out upon me like a ghost.
+It was above all in his ill tempers that the likeness triumphed. He
+certainly liked me; he was proud of my notice, which he sought to engage
+by many simple and childlike devices; he loved to sit close before my
+fire, talking his broken talk or singing his odd, endless, wordless,
+songs, and sometimes drawing his hand over my clothes with an
+affectionate manner of caressing that never failed to cause in me an
+embarrassment of which I was ashamed. But for all that, he was capable
+of flashes of causeless anger and fits of sturdy sullenness. At a word
+of reproof, I have seen him upset the dish of which I was about to eat,
+and this not surreptitiously, but with defiance; and similarly at a hint
+of inquisition. I was not unnaturally curious, being in a strange place
+and surrounded by strange people; but at the shadow of a question he
+shrank back, lowering and dangerous. Then it was that, for a fraction of
+a second, this rough lad might have been the brother of the lady in the
+frame. But these humours were swift to pass; and the resemblance died
+along with them.
+
+In these first days I saw nothing of any one but Felipe, unless the
+portrait is to be counted; and since the lad was plainly of weak mind,
+and had moments of passion, it may be wondered that I bore his dangerous
+neighbourhood with equanimity. As a matter of fact, it was for some time
+irksome; but it happened before long that I obtained over him so
+complete a mastery as set my disquietude at rest.
+
+It fell in this way. He was by nature slothful, and much of a vagabond,
+and yet he kept by the house, and not only waited upon my wants, but
+laboured every day in the garden or small farm to the south of the
+residencia. Here he would be joined by the peasant whom I had seen on
+the night of my arrival, and who dwelt at the far end of the enclosure,
+about half a mile away, in a rude out-house; but it was plain to me that
+of these two, it was Felipe who did most; and though I would sometimes
+see him throw down his spade and go to sleep among the very plants he
+had been digging, his constancy and energy were admirable in themselves,
+and still more so since I was well assured they were foreign to his
+disposition, and the fruit of an ungrateful effort. But while I admired,
+I wondered what had called forth in a lad so shuttle-witted this
+enduring sense of duty. How was it sustained? I asked myself, and to
+what length did it prevail over his instincts? The priest was possibly
+his inspirer; but the priest came one day to the residencia. I saw him
+both come and go after an interval of close upon an hour, from a knoll
+where I was sketching, and all that time Felipe continued to labour
+undisturbed in the garden.
+
+At last, in a very unworthy spirit, I determined to debauch the lad from
+his good resolutions, and, waylaying him at the gate, easily persuaded
+him to join me in a ramble. It was a fine day, and the woods to which I
+led him were green and pleasant and sweet-smelling, and alive with the
+hum of insects. Here he discovered himself in a fresh character,
+mounting up to heights of gaiety that abashed me, and displaying an
+energy and grace of movement that delighted the eye. He leaped, he ran
+round me in mere glee; he would stop, and look and listen, and seem to
+drink in the world like a cordial; and then he would suddenly spring
+into a tree with one bound, and hang and gambol there like one at home.
+Little as he said to me, and that of not much import, I have rarely
+enjoyed more stirring company; the sight of his delight was a continual
+feast; the speed and accuracy of his movements pleased me to the heart;
+and I might have been so thoughtlessly unkind as to make a habit of
+these walks, had not chance prepared a very rude conclusion to my
+pleasure. By some swiftness or dexterity the lad captured a squirrel in
+a tree top. He was then some way ahead of me, but I saw him drop to the
+ground and crouch there, crying aloud for pleasure like a child. The
+sound stirred my sympathies, it was so fresh and innocent; but as I
+bettered my pace to draw near, the cry of the squirrel knocked upon my
+heart. I have heard and seen much of the cruelty of lads, and above all,
+of peasants; but what I now beheld struck me into a passion of anger. I
+thrust the fellow aside, plucked the poor brute out of his hands, and
+with swift mercy killed it. Then I turned upon the torturer, spoke to
+him long out of the heat of my indignation, calling him names at which
+he seemed to wither; and at length, pointing towards the residencia,
+bade him begone and leave me, for I chose to walk with men, not with
+vermin. He fell upon his knees, and, the words coming to him with more
+clearness than usual, poured out a stream of the most touching
+supplications, begging me in mercy to forgive him, to forget what he had
+done, to look to the future. "Oh, I try so hard," he said. "Oh,
+commandante, bear with Felipe this once; he will never be a brute
+again!" Thereupon, much more affected than I cared to show, I suffered
+myself to be persuaded, and at last shook hands with him and made it up.
+But the squirrel, by way of penance, I made him bury; speaking of the
+poor thing's beauty, telling him what pains it had suffered, and how
+base a thing was the abuse of strength. "See, Felipe," said I, "you are
+strong indeed; but in my hands you are as helpless as that poor thing of
+the trees. Give me your hand in mine. You cannot remove it. Now suppose
+that I were cruel like you, and took a pleasure in pain. I only tighten
+my hold, and see how you suffer." He screamed aloud, his face stricken
+ashy and dotted with needle-points of sweat; and when I set him free, he
+fell to the earth and nursed his hand and moaned over it like a baby.
+But he took the lesson in good part; and whether from that, or from what
+I had said to him, or the higher notion he now had of my bodily
+strength, his original affection was changed into a dog-like, adoring
+fidelity.
+
+Meanwhile I gained rapidly in health. The residencia stood on the crown
+of a stony plateau; on every side the mountains hemmed it about; only
+from the roof, where was a bartizan, there might be seen, between two
+peaks, a small segment of plain, blue with extreme distance. The air in
+these altitudes moved freely and largely; great clouds congregated
+there, and were broken up by the wind and left in tatters on the
+hill-tops; a hoarse and yet faint rumbling of torrents rose from all
+round; and one could there study all the ruder and more ancient
+characters of nature in something of their pristine force. I delighted
+from the first in the vigorous scenery and changeful weather; nor less
+in the antique and dilapidated mansion where I dwelt. This was a large
+oblong, flanked at two opposite corners by bastion-like projections, one
+of which commanded the door, while both were loopholed for musketry. The
+lower story was, besides, naked of windows, so that the building, if
+garrisoned, could not be carried without artillery. It enclosed an open
+court planted with pomegranate trees. From this a broad flight of marble
+stairs ascended to an open gallery, running all round and resting,
+towards the court, on slender pillars. Thence, again, several enclosed
+stairs led to the upper stories of the house, which were thus broken up
+into distinct divisions. The windows, both within and without, were
+closely shuttered; some of the stonework in the upper parts had fallen;
+the roof, in one place, had been wrecked in one of the flurries of wind
+which were common in these mountains; and the whole house, in the
+strong, beating sunlight, and standing out above a grove of stunted
+cork-trees, thickly laden and discoloured with dust, looked like the
+sleeping palace of the legend. The court, in particular, seemed the very
+home of slumber. A hoarse cooing of doves haunted about the eaves; the
+winds were excluded, but when they blew outside, the mountain dust fell
+here as thick as rain, and veiled the red bloom of the pomegranates;
+shuttered windows and the closed doors of numerous cellars, and the
+vacant arches of the gallery, enclosed it; and all day long the sun made
+broken profiles on the four sides, and paraded the shadow of the pillars
+on the gallery floor. At the ground level there was, however, a certain
+pillared recess, which bore the marks of human habitation. Though it was
+open in front upon the court, it was yet provided with a chimney, where
+a wood fire would be always prettily blazing; and the tile floor was
+littered with the skins of animals.
+
+It was in this place that I first saw my hostess. She had drawn one of
+the skins forward and sat in the sun, leaning against a pillar. It was
+her dress that struck me first of all, for it was rich and brightly
+coloured, and shone out in that dusty courtyard with something of the
+same relief as the flowers of the pomegranates. At a second look it was
+her beauty of person that took hold of me. As she sat back--watching me,
+I thought, though with invisible eyes--and wearing at the same time an
+expression of almost imbecile good-humour and contentment, she showed a
+perfectness of feature and a quiet nobility of attitude that were beyond
+a statue's. I took off my hat to her in passing, and her face puckered
+with suspicion as swiftly and lightly as a pool ruffles in the breeze;
+but she paid no heed to my courtesy. I went forth on my customary walk a
+trifle daunted, her idol-like impassivity haunting me; and when I
+returned, although she was still in much the same posture, I was half
+surprised to see that she had moved as far as the next pillar, following
+the sunshine. This time, however, she addressed me with some trivial
+salutation, civilly enough conceived, and uttered in the same
+deep-chested, and yet indistinct and lisping tones, that had already
+baffled the utmost niceness of my hearing from her son. I answered
+rather at a venture; for not only did I fail to take her meaning with
+precision, but the sudden disclosure of her eyes disturbed me. They were
+unusually large, the iris golden like Felipe's, but the pupil at that
+moment so distended that they seemed almost black; and what affected me
+was not so much their size as (what was perhaps its consequence) the
+singular insignificance of their regard. A look more blankly stupid I
+have never met. My eyes dropped before it even as I spoke, and I went on
+my way upstairs to my own room, at once baffled and embarrassed. Yet
+when I came there and saw the face of the portrait, I was again reminded
+of the miracle of family descent. My hostess was, indeed, both older and
+fuller in person; her eyes were of a different colour; her face,
+besides, was not only free from the ill-significance that offended and
+attracted me in the painting; it was devoid of either good or bad--a
+moral blank expressing literally naught. And yet there was a likeness,
+not so much speaking as immanent, not so much in any particular feature
+as upon the whole. It should seem, I thought, as if when the master set
+his signature to that grave canvas, he had not only caught the image of
+one smiling and false-eyed woman, but stamped the essential quality of a
+race.
+
+From that day forth, whether I came or went, I was sure to find the
+Seńora seated in the sun against a pillar, or stretched on a rug before
+the fire; only at times she would shift her station to the top round of
+the stone staircase, where she lay with the same nonchalance right
+across my path. In all these days, I never knew her to display the least
+spark of energy beyond what she expended in brushing and re-brushing her
+copious copper-coloured hair, or in lisping out, in the rich and broken
+hoarseness of her voice, her customary idle salutations to myself.
+These, I think, were her two chief pleasures, beyond that of mere
+quiescence. She seemed always proud of her remarks, as though they had
+been witticisms: and, indeed, though they were empty enough, like the
+conversation of many respectable persons, and turned on a very narrow
+range of subjects, they were never meaningless or incoherent; nay, they
+had a certain beauty of their own, breathing, as they did, of her entire
+contentment. Now she would speak of the warmth, in which (like her son)
+she greatly delighted; now of the flowers of the pomegranate trees, and
+now of the white doves and long-winged swallows that fanned the air of
+the court. The birds excited her. As they raked the eaves in their swift
+flight, or skimmed sidelong past her with a rush of wind, she would
+sometimes stir, and sit a little up, and seem to awaken from her doze of
+satisfaction. But for the rest of her days she lay luxuriously folded on
+herself and sunk in sloth and pleasure. Her invincible content at first
+annoyed me, but I came gradually to find repose in the spectacle, until
+at last it grew to be my habit to sit down beside her four times in the
+day, both coming and going, and to talk with her sleepily, I scarce knew
+of what. I had come to like her dull, almost animal neighbourhood; her
+beauty and her stupidity soothed and amused me. I began to find a kind
+of transcendental good sense in her remarks, and her unfathomable
+good-nature moved me to admiration and envy. The liking was returned;
+she enjoyed my presence half-unconsciously, as a man in deep meditation
+may enjoy the babbling of a brook. I can scarce say she brightened when
+I came, for satisfaction was written on her face eternally, as on some
+foolish statue's; but I was made conscious of her pleasure by some more
+intimate communication than the sight. And one day, as I sat within
+reach of her on the marble step, she suddenly shot forth one of her
+hands and patted mine. The thing was done, and she was back in her
+accustomed attitude, before my mind had received intelligence of the
+caress; and when I turned to look her in the face I could perceive no
+answerable sentiment. It was plain she attached no moment to the act,
+and I blamed myself for my own more uneasy consciousness.
+
+The sight and (if I may so call it) the acquaintance of the mother
+confirmed the view I had already taken of the son. The family blood had
+been impoverished, perhaps by long inbreeding, which I knew to be a
+common error among the proud and the exclusive. No decline, indeed, was
+to be traced in the body, which had been handed down unimpaired in
+shapeliness and strength; and the faces of to-day were struck as sharply
+from the mint as the face of two centuries ago that smiled upon me from
+the portrait. But the intelligence (that more precious heirloom) was
+degenerate; the treasure of ancestral memory ran low; and it had
+required the potent, plebeian crossing of a muleteer or mountain
+_contrabandista_ to raise what approached hebetude in the mother into
+the active oddity of the son. Yet of the two, it was the mother I
+preferred. Of Felipe, vengeful and placable, full of starts and shyings,
+inconstant as a hare, I could even conceive as a creature possibly
+noxious. Of the mother I had no thoughts but those of kindness. And
+indeed, as spectators are apt ignorantly to take sides, I grew something
+of a partisan in the enmity which I perceived to smoulder between them.
+True, it seemed mostly on the mother's part. She would sometimes draw in
+her breath as he came near, and the pupils of her vacant eyes would
+contract as if with horror or fear. Her emotions, such as they were,
+were much upon the surface and readily shared; and this latent repulsion
+occupied my mind, and kept me wondering on what grounds it rested, and
+whether the son was certainly in fault.
+
+I had been about ten days in the residencia, when there sprang up a high
+and harsh wind, carrying clouds of dust. It came out of malarious
+lowlands, and over several snowy sierras. The nerves of those on whom it
+blew were strung and jangled; their eyes smarted with the dust; their
+legs ached under the burthen of their body; and the touch of one hand
+upon another grew to be odious. The wind, besides, came down the gullies
+of the hills and stormed about the house with a great, hollow buzzing
+and whistling that was wearisome to the ear and dismally depressing to
+the mind. It did not so much blow in gusts as with the steady sweep of a
+waterfall, so that there was no remission of discomfort while it blew.
+But higher up on the mountain it was probably of a more variable
+strength, with accesses of fury; for there came down at times a far-off
+wailing, infinitely grievous to hear; and at times, on one of the high
+shelves or terraces, there would start up, and then disperse, a tower of
+dust, like the smoke of an explosion.
+
+I no sooner awoke in bed than I was conscious of the nervous tension and
+depression of the weather, and the effect grew stronger as the day
+proceeded. It was in vain that I resisted; in vain that I set forth upon
+my customary morning's walk; the irrational, unchanging fury of the
+storm had soon beat down my strength and wrecked my temper; and I
+returned to the residencia, glowing with dry heat, and foul and gritty
+with dust. The court had a forlorn appearance; now and then a glimmer of
+sun fled over it; now and then the wind swooped down upon the
+pomegranates, and scattered the blossoms, and set the window shutter
+clapping on the wall. In the recess the Seńora was pacing to and fro
+with a flushed countenance and bright eyes; I thought, too, she was
+speaking to herself, like one in anger. But when I addressed her with my
+customary salutation, she only replied by a sharp gesture and continued
+her walk. The weather had distempered even this impassive creature; and
+as I went on upstairs I was the less ashamed of my own discomposure.
+
+All day the wind continued; and I sat in my room and made a feint of
+reading, or walked up and down, and listened to the riot overhead. Night
+fell, and I had not so much as a candle. I began to long for some
+society, and stole down to the court. It was now plunged in the blue of
+the first darkness; but the recess was redly lighted by the fire. The
+wood had been piled high, and was crowned by a shock of flames, which
+the draught of the chimney brandished to and fro. In this strong and
+shaken brightness the Seńora continued pacing from wall to wall with
+disconnected gestures, clasping her hands, stretching forth her arms,
+throwing back her head as in appeal to heaven. In these disordered
+movements the beauty and grace of the woman showed more clearly; but
+there was a light in her eye that struck on me unpleasantly; and when I
+had looked on a while in silence, and seemingly unobserved, I turned
+tail as I had come, and groped my way back again to my own chamber.
+
+By the time Felipe brought my supper and lights, my nerve was utterly
+gone; and, had the lad been such as I was used to seeing him, I should
+have kept him (even by force, had that been necessary) to take off the
+edge from my distasteful solitude. But on Felipe, also, the wind had
+exercised its influence. He had been feverish all day; now that the
+night had come he was fallen into a low and tremulous humour that
+reacted on my own. The sight of his scared face, his starts and pallors
+and sudden hearkenings, unstrung me; and when he dropped and broke a
+dish, I fairly leaped out of my seat.
+
+"I think we are all mad to-day," said I, affecting to laugh.
+
+"It is the black wind," he replied dolefully. "You feel as if you must
+do something, and you don't know what it is."
+
+I noted the aptness of the description; but, indeed, Felipe had
+sometimes a strange felicity in rendering into words the sensations of
+the body. "And your mother, too," said I; "she seems to feel this
+weather much. Do you not fear she may be unwell?"
+
+He stared at me a little, and then said, "No," almost defiantly; and the
+next moment, carrying his hand to his brow, cried out lamentably on the
+wind and the noise that made his head go round like a millwheel. "Who
+can be well?" he cried; and, indeed, I could only echo his question, for
+I was disturbed enough myself.
+
+I went to bed early, wearied with day-long restlessness; but the
+poisonous nature of the wind, and its ungodly and unintermittent uproar,
+would not suffer me to sleep. I lay there and tossed, my nerves and
+senses on the stretch. At times I would doze, dream horribly, and wake
+again; and these snatches of oblivion confused me as to time. But it
+must have been late on in the night, when I was suddenly startled by an
+outbreak of pitiable and hateful cries. I leaped from my bed, supposing
+I had dreamed; but the cries still continued to fill the house, cries of
+pain, I thought, but certainly of rage also, and so savage and
+discordant that they shocked the heart. It was no illusion; some living
+thing, some lunatic or some wild animal was being foully tortured. The
+thought of Felipe and the squirrel flashed into my mind, and I ran to
+the door; but it had been locked from the outside, and I might shake it
+as I pleased, I was a fast prisoner. Still the cries continued. Now they
+would dwindle down into a moaning that seemed to be articulate, and at
+these times I made sure they must be human; and again they would break
+forth and fill the house with ravings worthy of hell. I stood at the
+door and gave ear to them, till at last they died away. Long after that,
+I still lingered and still continued to hear them mingle in fancy with
+the storming of the wind; and when at last I crept to my bed, it was
+with a deadly sickness and a blackness of horror on my heart.
+
+It was little wonder if I slept no more. Why had I been locked in? What
+had passed? Who was the author of these indescribable and shocking
+cries? A human being? It was inconceivable. A beast? The cries were
+scarce quite bestial; and what animal, short of a lion or a tiger, could
+thus shake the solid walls of the residencia? And while I was thus
+turning over the elements of the mystery, it came into my mind that I
+had not yet set eyes upon the daughter of the house. What was more
+probable than that the daughter of the Seńora, and the sister of Felipe,
+should be herself insane? Or, what more likely than that these ignorant
+and half-witted people should seek to manage an afflicted kinswoman by
+violence? Here was a solution; and yet when I called to mind the cries
+(which I never did without a shuddering chill) it seemed altogether
+insufficient: not even cruelty could wring such cries from madness. But
+of one thing I was sure: I could not live in a house where such a thing
+was half conceivable, and not probe the matter home and, if necessary,
+interfere.
+
+The next day came, the wind had blown itself out, and there was nothing
+to remind me of the business of the night. Felipe came to my bedside
+with obvious cheerfulness; as I passed through the court the Seńora was
+sunning herself with her accustomed immobility; and when I issued from
+the gateway I found the whole face of nature austerely smiling, the
+heavens of a cold blue, and sown with great cloud islands, and the
+mountain-sides mapped forth into provinces of light and shadow. A short
+walk restored me to myself, and renewed within me the resolve to plumb
+this mystery; and when, from the vantage of my knoll, I had seen Felipe
+pass forth to his labours in the garden, I returned at once to the
+residencia to put my design in practice. The Seńora appeared plunged in
+slumber; I stood a while and marked her, but she did not stir; even if
+my design were indiscreet, I had little to fear from such a guardian;
+and turning away, I mounted to the gallery and began my exploration of
+the house.
+
+All morning I went from one door to another, and entered spacious and
+faded chambers, some rudely shuttered, some receiving their full charge
+of daylight, all empty and unhomely. It was a rich house, on which Time
+had breathed its tarnish and dust had scattered disillusion. The spider
+swung there; the bloated tarantula scampered on the cornices; ants had
+their crowded highways on the floor of halls of audience; the big and
+foul fly, that lives on carrion and is often the messenger of death, had
+set up his nest in the rotten woodwork, and buzzed heavily about the
+rooms. Here and there a stool or two, a couch, a bed, or a great carved
+chair remained behind, like islets on the bare floors, to testify of
+man's bygone habitation; and everywhere the walls were set with the
+portraits of the dead. I could judge, by these decaying effigies, in the
+house of what a great and what a handsome race I was then wandering.
+Many of the men wore orders on their breasts and had the port of noble
+offices; the women were all richly attired; the canvases, most of them,
+by famous hands. But it was not so much these evidences of greatness
+that took hold upon my mind, even contrasted, as they were, with the
+present depopulation and decay of that great house. It was rather the
+parable of family life that I read in this succession of fair faces and
+shapely bodies. Never before had I so realised the miracle of the
+continued race, the creation and re-creation, the weaving and changing
+and handing down of fleshly elements. That a child should be born of its
+mother, that it should grow and clothe itself (we know not how) with
+humanity, and put on inherited looks, and turn its head with the manner
+of one ascendant, and offer its hand with the gesture of another, are
+wonders dulled for us by repetition. But in the singular unity of look,
+in the common features and common bearing, of all these painted
+generations on the walls of the residencia, the miracle started out and
+looked me in the face. And an ancient mirror falling opportunely in my
+way, I stood and read my own features a long while, tracing out on
+either hand the filaments of descent and the bonds that knit me with my
+family.
+
+At last, in the course of these investigations, I opened the door of a
+chamber that bore the marks of habitation. It was of large proportions
+and faced to the north, where the mountains were most wildly figured.
+The embers of a fire smouldered and smoked upon the hearth, to which a
+chair had been drawn close. And yet the aspect of the chamber was
+ascetic to the degree of sternness; the chair was uncushioned; the floor
+and walls were naked; and beyond the books which lay here and there in
+some confusion, there was no instrument of either work or pleasure. The
+sight of books in the house of such a family exceedingly amazed me; and
+I began with a great hurry, and in momentary fear of interruption, to go
+from one to another and hastily inspect their character. They were of
+all sorts, devotional, historical, and scientific, but mostly of a great
+age and in the Latin tongue. Some I could see to bear the marks of
+constant study; others had been torn across and tossed aside as if in
+petulance or disapproval. Lastly, as I cruised about that empty chamber,
+I espied some papers written upon with pencil on a table near the
+window. An unthinking curiosity led me to take one up. It bore a copy of
+verses, very roughly metred in the original Spanish, and which I may
+render somewhat thus--
+
+  "Pleasure approached with pain and shame,
+  Grief with a wreath of lilies came.
+  Pleasure showed the lovely sun;
+  Jesu dear, how sweet it shone!
+  Grief with her worn hand pointed on,
+               Jesu dear, to Thee!"
+
+Shame and confusion at once fell on me; and, laying down the paper, I
+beat an immediate retreat from the apartment. Neither Felipe nor his
+mother could have read the books nor written these rough but feeling
+verses. It was plain I had stumbled with sacrilegious feet into the room
+of the daughter of the house. God knows, my own heart most sharply
+punished me for my indiscretion. The thought that I had thus secretly
+pushed my way into the confidence of a girl so strangely situated, and
+the fear that she might somehow come to hear of it, oppressed me like
+guilt. I blamed myself besides for my suspicions of the night before;
+wondered that I should ever have attributed those shocking cries to one
+of whom I now conceived as of a saint, spectral of mien, wasted with
+maceration, bound up in the practices of a mechanical devotion, and
+dwelling in a great isolation of soul with her incongruous relatives;
+and as I leaned on the balustrade of the gallery and looked down into
+the bright close of pomegranates and at the gaily dressed and somnolent
+woman, who just then stretched herself and delicately licked her lips as
+in the very sensuality of sloth, my mind swiftly compared the scene with
+the cold chamber looking northward on the mountains, where the daughter
+dwelt.
+
+That same afternoon, as I sat upon my knoll, I saw the Padre enter the
+gates of the residencia. The revelation of the daughter's character had
+struck home to my fancy, and almost blotted out the horrors of the
+night before; but at sight of this worthy man the memory revived. I
+descended, then, from the knoll, and making a circuit among the woods,
+posted myself by the wayside to await his passage. As soon as he
+appeared I stepped forth and introduced myself as the lodger of the
+residencia. He had a very strong, honest countenance, on which it was
+easy to read the mingled emotions with which he regarded me, as a
+foreigner, a heretic, and yet one who had been wounded for the good
+cause. Of the family at the residencia he spoke with reserve, and yet
+with respect. I mentioned that I had not yet seen the daughter,
+whereupon he remarked that that was as it should be, and looked at me a
+little askance. Lastly, I plucked up courage to refer to the cries that
+had disturbed me in the night. He heard me out in silence, and then
+stopped and partly turned about, as though to mark beyond doubt that he
+was dismissing me.
+
+"Do you take tobacco-powder?" said he, offering his snuff-box; and then,
+when I had refused, "I am an old man," he added, "and I may be allowed
+to remind you that you are a guest."
+
+"I have, then, your authority," I returned, firmly enough, although I
+flushed at the implied reproof, "to let things take their course, and
+not to interfere?"
+
+He said "Yes," and with a somewhat uneasy salute turned and left me
+where I was. But he had done two things: he had set my conscience at
+rest, and he had awakened my delicacy. I made a great effort, once more
+dismissed the recollections of the night, and fell once more to brooding
+on my saintly poetess. At the same time, I could not quite forget that I
+had been locked in, and that night when Felipe brought me my supper I
+attacked him warily on both points of interest.
+
+"I never see your sister," said I casually.
+
+"Oh, no," said he; "she is a good, good girl," and his mind instantly
+veered to something else.
+
+"Your sister is pious, I suppose?" I asked in the next pause.
+
+"Oh!" he cried, joining his hands with extreme fervour, "a saint; it is
+she that keeps me up."
+
+"You are very fortunate," said I, "for the most of us, I am afraid, and
+myself among the number, are better at going down."
+
+"Seńor," said Felipe earnestly, "I would not say that. You should not
+tempt your angel. If one goes down, where is he to stop?"
+
+"Why, Felipe," said I, "I had no guess you were a preacher, and I may
+say a good one; but I suppose that is your sister's doing?"
+
+He nodded at me with round eyes.
+
+"Well, then," I continued, "she has doubtless reproved you for your sin
+of cruelty?"
+
+"Twelve times!" he cried; for this was the phrase by which the odd
+creature expressed the sense of frequency. "And I told her you had done
+so--I remembered that," he added proudly--"and she was pleased."
+
+"Then, Felipe," said I, "what were those cries that I heard last night?
+for surely they were cries of some creature in suffering."
+
+"The wind," returned Felipe, looking in the fire.
+
+I took his hand in mine, at which, thinking it to be a caress, he smiled
+with a brightness of pleasure that came near disarming my resolve. But I
+trod the weakness down. "The wind," I repeated; "and yet I think it was
+this hand," holding it up, "that had first locked me in." The lad shook
+visibly, but answered never a word. "Well," said I, "I am a stranger and
+a guest. It is not my part either to meddle or to judge in your affairs;
+in these you shall take your sister's counsel, which I cannot doubt to
+be excellent. But in so far as concerns my own I will be no man's
+prisoner, and I demand that key." Half an hour later my door was
+suddenly thrown open, and the key tossed ringing on the floor.
+
+A day or two after I came in from a walk a little before the point of
+noon. The Senőra was lying lapped in slumber on the threshold of the
+recess; the pigeons dozed below the eaves like snowdrifts; the house was
+under a deep spell of noontide quiet; and only a wandering and gentle
+wind from the mountain stole round the galleries, rustled among the
+pomegranates, and pleasantly stirred the shadows. Something in the
+stillness moved me to imitation, and I went very lightly across the
+court and up the marble staircase. My foot was on the topmost round,
+when a door opened, and I found myself face to face with Olalla.
+Surprise transfixed me; her loveliness struck to my heart; she glowed in
+the deep shadow of the gallery, a gem of colour; her eyes took hold upon
+mine and clung there, and bound us together like the joining of hands;
+and the moments we thus stood face to face, drinking each other in, were
+sacramental and the wedding of souls. I know not how long it was before
+I awoke out of a deep trance, and, hastily bowing, passed on into the
+upper stair. She did not move, but followed me with her great, thirsting
+eyes; and as I passed out of sight it seemed to me as if she paled and
+faded.
+
+In my own room, I opened the window and looked out, and could not think
+what change had come upon that austere field of mountains that it should
+thus sing and shine under the lofty heaven. I had seen her--Olalla! And
+the stone crags answered, Olalla! and the dumb, unfathomable azure
+answered, Olalla! The pale saint of my dreams had vanished for ever; and
+in her place I beheld this maiden on whom God had lavished the richest
+colours and the most exuberant energies of life, whom He had made active
+as a deer, slender as a reed, and in whose great eyes He had lighted the
+torches of the soul. The thrill of her young life, strung like a wild
+animal's, had entered into me; the force of soul that had looked out
+from her eyes and conquered mine, mantled about my heart and sprang to
+my lips in singing. She passed through my veins: she was one with me.
+
+I will not say that this enthusiasm declined; rather my soul held out in
+its ecstasy as in a strong castle, and was there besieged by cold and
+sorrowful considerations. I could not doubt but that I loved her at
+first sight, and already with a quivering ardour that was strange to my
+experience. What then was to follow? She was the child of an afflicted
+house, the Seńora's daughter, the sister of Felipe; she bore it even in
+her beauty. She had the lightness and swiftness of the one, swift as an
+arrow, light as dew; like the other, she shone on the pale background of
+the world with the brilliancy of flowers. I could not call by the name
+of brother that half-witted lad, nor by the name of mother that
+immovable and lovely thing of flesh, whose silly eyes and perpetual
+simper now recurred to my mind like something hateful. And if I could
+not marry, what then? She was helplessly unprotected; her eyes, in that
+single and long glance, which had been all our intercourse, had
+confessed a weakness equal to my own; but in my heart I knew her for the
+student of the cold northern chamber, and the writer of the sorrowful
+lines; and this was a knowledge to disarm a brute. To flee was more than
+I could find courage for; but I registered a vow of unsleeping
+circumspection.
+
+As I turned from the window, my eyes alighted on the portrait. It had
+fallen dead, like a candle after sunrise; it followed me with eyes of
+paint. I knew it to be like, and marvelled at the tenacity of type in
+that declining race; but the likeness was swallowed up in difference. I
+remembered how it had seemed to me a thing unapproachable in the life, a
+creature rather of the painter's craft than of the modesty of nature,
+and I marvelled at the thought, and exulted in the image of Olalla.
+Beauty I had seen before, and not been charmed, and I had been often
+drawn to women, who were not beautiful except to me; but in Olalla all
+that I desired and had not dared to imagine was united.
+
+I did not see her the next day, and my heart ached and my eyes longed
+for her, as men long for morning. But the day after, when I returned,
+about my usual hour, she was once more on the gallery, and our looks
+once more met and embraced. I would have spoken, I would have drawn near
+to her; but strongly as she plucked at my heart, drawing me like a
+magnet, something yet more imperious withheld me; and I could only bow
+and pass by; and she, leaving my salutation unanswered, only followed me
+with her noble eyes.
+
+I had now her image by rote, and as I conned the traits in memory it
+seemed as if I read her very heart. She was dressed with something of
+her mother's coquetry and love of positive colour. Her robe, which I
+knew she must have made with her own hands, clung about her with a
+cunning grace. After the fashion of that country, besides, her bodice
+stood open in the middle, in a long slit, and here, in spite of the
+poverty of the house, a gold coin, hanging by a ribbon, lay on her brown
+bosom. These were proofs, had any been needed, of her inborn delight in
+life and her own loveliness. On the other hand, in her eyes that hung
+upon mine, I could read depth beyond depth of passion and sadness,
+lights of poetry and hope, blacknesses of despair, and thoughts that
+were above the earth. It was a lovely body, but the inmate, the soul,
+was more than worthy of that lodging. Should I leave this incomparable
+flower to wither unseen on these rough mountains? Should I despise the
+great gift offered me in the eloquent silence of her eyes? Here was a
+soul immured; should I not burst its prison? All side considerations
+fell off from me; were she the child of Herod I swore I should make her
+mine; and that very evening I set myself, with a mingled sense of
+treachery and disgrace, to captivate the brother. Perhaps I read him
+with more favourable eyes, perhaps the thought of his sister always
+summoned up the better qualities of that imperfect soul; but he had
+never seemed to me so amiable, and his very likeness to Olalla, while it
+annoyed, yet softened me.
+
+A third day passed in vain--an empty desert of hours. I would not lose a
+chance, and loitered all afternoon in the court, where (to give myself a
+countenance) I spoke more than usual with the Seńora. God knows it was
+with a most tender and sincere interest that I now studied her; and even
+as for Felipe, so now for the mother, I was conscious of a growing
+warmth of toleration. And yet I wondered. Even while I spoke with her,
+she would doze off into a little sleep, and presently awake again
+without embarrassment; and this composure staggered me. And again, as I
+marked her make infinitesimal changes in her posture, savouring and
+lingering on the bodily pleasure of the movement, I was driven to wonder
+at this depth of passive sensuality. She lived in her body; and her
+consciousness was all sunk into and disseminated through her members,
+where it luxuriously dwelt. Lastly, I could not grow accustomed to her
+eyes. Each time she turned on me those great beautiful and meaningless
+orbs, wide open to the day, but closed against human inquiry--each time
+I had occasion to observe the lively changes of her pupils which
+expanded and contracted in a breath--I know not what it was came over
+me, I can find no name for the mingled feeling of disappointment,
+annoyance, and distaste that jarred along my nerves. I tried her on a
+variety of subjects, equally in vain; and at last led the talk to her
+daughter. But even there she proved indifferent; said she was pretty,
+which (as with children) was her highest word of commendation, but was
+plainly incapable of any higher thought; and when I remarked that Olalla
+seemed silent, merely yawned in my face and replied that speech was of
+no great use when you had nothing to say. "People speak much, very
+much," she added, looking at me with expanded pupils; and then again
+yawned, and again showed me a mouth that was as dainty as a toy. This
+time I took the hint, and, leaving her to her repose, went up into my
+own chamber to sit by the open window, looking on the hills and not
+beholding them, sunk in lustrous and deep dreams, and hearkening in
+fancy to the note of a voice that I had never heard.
+
+I awoke on the fifth morning with a brightness of anticipation that
+seemed to challenge fate. I was sure of myself, light of heart and foot,
+and resolved to put my love incontinently to the touch of knowledge. It
+should lie no longer under the bonds of silence, a dumb thing, living by
+the eye only, like the love of beasts; but should now put on the spirit,
+and enter upon the joys of the complete human intimacy. I thought of it
+with wild hopes, like a voyager to El Dorado; into that unknown and
+lovely country of her soul, I no longer trembled to adventure. Yet when
+I did indeed encounter her, the same force of passion descended on me
+and at once submerged my mind; speech seemed to drop away from me like a
+childish habit; and I but drew near to her as the giddy man draws near
+to the margin of a gulf. She drew back from me a little as I came; but
+her eyes did not waver from mine, and these lured me forward. At last,
+when I was already within reach of her, I stopped. Words were denied me;
+if I advanced I could but clasp her to my heart in silence; and all that
+was sane in me, all that was still unconquered, revolted against the
+thought of such an accost. So we stood for a second, all our life in our
+eyes, exchanging salvos of attraction and yet each resisting; and then,
+with a great effort of the will, and conscious at the same time of a
+sudden bitterness of disappointment, I turned and went away in the same
+silence.
+
+What power lay upon me that I could not speak? And she, why was she also
+silent? Why did she draw away before me dumbly, with fascinated eyes?
+Was this love? or was it a mere brute attraction, mindless and
+inevitable, like that of the magnet for the steel? We had never spoken,
+we were wholly strangers; and yet an influence, strong as the grasp of a
+giant, swept us silently together. On my side, it filled me with
+impatience; and yet I was sure that she was worthy; I had seen her
+books, read her verses, and thus, in a sense, divined the soul of my
+mistress. But on her side, it struck me almost cold. Of me, she knew
+nothing but my bodily favour; she was drawn to me as stones fall to the
+earth; the laws that rule the earth conducted her, unconsenting, to my
+arms; and I drew back at the thought of such a bridal, and began to be
+jealous for myself. It was not thus that I desired to be loved. And then
+I began to fall into a great pity for the girl herself. I thought how
+sharp must be her mortification, that she, the student, the recluse,
+Felipe's saintly monitress, should have thus confessed an overweening
+weakness for a man with whom she had never exchanged a word. And at the
+coming of pity, all other thoughts were swallowed up; and I longed only
+to find and console and reassure her; to tell her how wholly her love
+was returned on my side, and how her choice, even if blindly made, was
+not unworthy.
+
+The next day it was glorious weather; depth upon depth of blue
+over-canopied the mountains; the sun shone wide; and the wind in the
+trees and the many fallen torrents in the mountains filled the air with
+delicate and haunting music. Yet I was prostrated with sadness. My heart
+wept for the sight of Olalla, as a child weeps for its mother. I sat
+down on a boulder on the verge of the low cliffs that bound the plateau
+to the north. Thence I looked down into the wooded valley of a stream,
+where no foot came. In the mood I was in, it was even touching to behold
+the place untenanted; it lacked Olalla; and I thought of the delight and
+glory of a life passed wholly with her in that strong air, and among
+these rugged and lovely surroundings, at first with a whimpering
+sentiment, and then again with such a fiery joy that I seemed to grow
+in strength and stature, like a Samson.
+
+And then suddenly I was aware of Olalla drawing near. She appeared out
+of a grove of cork-trees, and came straight towards me; and I stood up
+and waited. She seemed in her walking a creature of such life and fire
+and lightness as amazed me; yet she came quietly and slowly. Her energy
+was in the slowness; but for inimitable strength, I felt she would have
+run, she would have flown to me. Still, as she approached, she kept her
+eyes lowered to the ground; and when she had drawn quite near, it was
+without one glance that she addressed me. At the first note of her voice
+I started. It was for this I had been waiting; this was the last test of
+my love. And lo, her enunciation was precise and clear, not lisping and
+incomplete like that of her family; and the voice, though deeper than
+usual with women, was still both youthful and womanly. She spoke in a
+rich chord; golden contralto strains mingled with hoarseness, as the red
+threads were mingled with the brown among her tresses. It was not only a
+voice that spoke to my heart directly; but it spoke to me of her. And
+yet her words immediately plunged me back upon despair.
+
+"You will go away," she said, "to-day."
+
+Her example broke the bonds of my speech; I felt as lightened of a
+weight, or as if a spell had been dissolved. I know not in what words I
+answered; but, standing before her on the cliffs, I poured out the whole
+ardour of my love, telling her that I lived upon the thought of her,
+slept only to dream of her loveliness, and would gladly forswear my
+country, my language, and my friends, to live for ever by her side. And
+then, strongly commanding myself, I changed the note; I reassured, I
+comforted her; I told her I had divined in her a pious and heroic
+spirit, with which I was worthy to sympathise, and which I longed to
+share and lighten. "Nature," I told her, "was the voice of God, which
+men disobey at peril; and if we were thus dumbly drawn together, ay,
+even as by a miracle of love, it must imply a divine fitness in our
+souls; we must be made," I said--"made for one another. We should be mad
+rebels," I cried out--"mad rebels against God, not to obey this
+instinct."
+
+She shook her head. "You will go to-day," she repeated, and then with a
+gesture, and in a sudden, sharp note--"no, not to-day," she cried,
+"to-morrow!"
+
+But at this sign of relenting, power came in upon me in a tide. I
+stretched out my arms and called upon her name; and she leaped to me and
+clung to me. The hills rocked about us, the earth quailed; a shock as of
+a blow went through me and left me blind and dizzy. And the next moment
+she had thrust me back, broken rudely from my arms, and fled with the
+speed of a deer among the cork-trees.
+
+I stood and shouted to the mountains; I turned and went back towards the
+residencia, walking upon air. She sent me away, and yet I had but to
+call upon her name and she came to me. These were but the weaknesses of
+girls, from which even she, the strangest of her sex, was not exempted.
+Go? Not I, Olalla--Oh, not I, Olalla, my Olalla! A bird sang near by;
+and in that season birds were rare. It bade me be of good cheer. And
+once more the whole countenance of nature, from the ponderous and stable
+mountains down to the lightest leaf and the smallest darting fly in the
+shadow of the groves, began to stir before me and to put on the
+lineaments of life and wear a face of awful joy. The sunshine struck
+upon the hills, strong as a hammer on the anvil, and the hills shook;
+the earth, under that vigorous insolation, yielded up heady scents; the
+woods smouldered in the blaze. I felt the thrill of travail and delight
+run through the earth. Something elemental, something rude, violent, and
+savage, in the love that sang in my heart, was like a key to nature's
+secrets; and the very stones that rattled under my feet appeared alive
+and friendly. Olalla! Her touch had quickened, and renewed, and strung
+me up to the old pitch of concert with the rugged earth, to a swelling
+of the soul that men learn to forget in their polite assemblies. Love
+burned in me like rage; tenderness waxed fierce; I hated, I adored, I
+pitied, I revered her with ecstasy. She seemed the link that bound me in
+with dead things on the one hand, and with our pure and pitying God upon
+the other: a thing brutal and divine, and akin at once to the innocence
+and to the unbridled forces of the earth.
+
+My head thus reeling, I came into the courtyard of the residencia, and
+the sight of the mother struck me like a revelation. She sat there, all
+sloth and contentment, blinking under the strong sunshine, branded with
+a passive enjoyment, a creature set quite apart, before whom my ardour
+fell away like a thing ashamed. I stopped a moment, and, commanding such
+shaken tones as I was able, said a word or two. She looked at me with
+her unfathomable kindness; her voice in reply sounded vaguely out of the
+realm of peace in which she slumbered, and there fell on my mind, for
+the first time, a sense of respect for one so uniformly innocent and
+happy, and I passed on in a kind of wonder at myself that I should be so
+much disquieted.
+
+On my table there lay a piece of the same yellow paper I had seen in the
+north room; it was written on with pencil in the same hand, Olalla's
+hand, and I picked it up with a sudden sinking of alarm, and read, "If
+you have any kindness for Olalla, if you have any chivalry for a
+creature sorely wrought, go from here to-day; in pity, in honour, for
+the sake of Him who died, I supplicate that you shall go." I looked at
+this a while in mere stupidity, then I began to awaken to a weariness
+and horror of life; the sunshine darkened outside on the bare hills, and
+I began to shake like a man in terror. The vacancy thus suddenly opened
+in my life unmanned me like a physical void. It was not my heart, it was
+not my happiness, it was life itself that was involved. I could not
+lose her. I said so, and stood repeating it. And then, like one in a
+dream, I moved to the window, put forth my hand to open the casement,
+and thrust it through the pane. The blood spurted from my wrist; and
+with an instantaneous quietude and command of myself, I pressed my thumb
+on the little leaping fountain, and reflected what to do. In that empty
+room there was nothing to my purpose; I felt, besides, that I required
+assistance. There shot into my mind a hope that Olalla herself might be
+my helper, and I turned and went downstairs, still keeping my thumb
+upon the wound.
+
+There was no sign of either Olalla or Felipe, and I addressed myself to
+the recess, whither the Seńora had now drawn quite back and sat dozing
+close before the fire, for no degree of heat appeared too much for her.
+
+"Pardon me," said I, "if I disturb you, but I must apply to you for
+help."
+
+She looked up sleepily and asked me what it was, and with the very words
+I thought she drew in her breath with a widening of the nostrils and
+seemed to come suddenly and fully alive.
+
+"I have cut myself," I said, "and rather badly. See!" And I held out my
+two hands, from which the blood was oozing and dripping.
+
+Her great eyes opened wide, the pupils shrank into points; a veil seemed
+to fall from her face, and leave it sharply expressive and yet
+inscrutable. And as I still stood, marvelling a little at her
+disturbance, she came swiftly up to me, and stooped and caught me by the
+hand; and the next moment my hand was at her mouth, and she had bitten
+me to the bone. The pang of the bite, the sudden spurting of blood, and
+the monstrous horror of the act, flashed through me all in one, and I
+beat her back; and she sprang at me again and again, with bestial cries,
+cries that I recognised, such cries as had awakened me on the night of
+the high wind. Her strength was like that of madness; mine was rapidly
+ebbing with the loss of blood; my mind besides was whirling with the
+abhorrent strangeness of the onslaught, and I was already forced against
+the wall, when Olalla ran betwixt us, and Felipe, following at a bound,
+pinned down his mother on the floor.
+
+A trance-like weakness fell upon me; I saw, heard, and felt, but I was
+incapable of movement. I heard the struggle roll to and fro upon the
+floor, the yells of the catamount ringing up to heaven as she strove to
+reach me. I felt Olalla clasp me in her arms, her hair falling on my
+face, and, with the strength of a man, raise and half drag, half carry
+me upstairs into my own room, where she cast me down upon the bed. Then
+I saw her hasten to the door and lock it, and stand an instant listening
+to the savage cries that shook the residencia. And then, swift and light
+as a thought, she was again beside me, binding up my hand, laying it in
+her bosom, moaning and mourning over it, with dove-like sounds. They
+were not words that came to her, they were sounds more beautiful than
+speech, infinitely touching, infinitely tender; and yet as I lay there,
+a thought stung to my heart, a thought wounded me like a sword, a
+thought, like a worm in a flower, profaned the holiness of my love. Yes,
+they were beautiful sounds, and they were inspired by human tenderness;
+but was their beauty human?
+
+All day I lay there. For a long time the cries of that nameless female
+thing, as she struggled with her half-witted whelp, resounded through
+the house, and pierced me with despairing sorrow and disgust. They were
+the death-cry of my love; my love was murdered; it was not only dead,
+but an offence to me; and yet, think as I pleased, feel as I must, it
+still swelled within me like a storm of sweetness, and my heart melted
+at her looks and touch. This horror that had sprung out, this doubt upon
+Olalla, this savage and bestial strain that ran not only through the
+whole behaviour of her family, but found a place in the very
+foundations and story of our love--though it appalled, though it shocked
+and sickened me, was yet not of power to break the knot of my
+infatuation.
+
+When the cries had ceased, there came a scraping at the door, by which I
+knew Felipe was without; and Olalla went and spoke to him--I know not
+what. With that exception, she stayed close beside me, now kneeling by
+my bed and fervently praying, now sitting with her eyes upon mine. So
+then, for these six hours I drank in her beauty, and silently perused
+the story in her face. I saw the golden coin hover on her breaths; I saw
+her eyes darken and brighten, and still speak no language but that of an
+unfathomable kindness; I saw the faultless face, and, through the robe,
+the lines of the faultless body. Night came at last, and in the growing
+darkness of the chamber the sight of her slowly melted; but even then
+the touch of her smooth hand lingered in mine and talked with me. To lie
+thus in deadly weakness and drink in the traits of the beloved, is to
+re-awake to love from whatever shock of disillusion. I reasoned with
+myself; and I shut my eyes on horrors, and again I was very bold to
+accept the worst. What mattered it, if that imperious sentiment
+survived; if her eyes still beckoned and attached me; if now, even as
+before, every fibre of my dull body yearned and turned to her? Late on
+in the night some strength revived in me, and I spoke:--
+
+"Olalla," I said, "nothing matters; I ask nothing; I am content; I love
+you."
+
+She knelt down a while and prayed, and I devoutly respected her
+devotions. The moon had begun to shine in upon one side of each of the
+three windows, and make a misty clearness in the room, by which I saw
+her indistinctly. When she re-arose she made the sign of the cross.
+
+"It is for me to speak," she said, "and for you to listen. I know; you
+can but guess. I prayed, how I prayed for you to leave this place. I
+begged it of you, and I know you would have granted me even this; or if
+not, oh let me think so!"
+
+"I love you," I said.
+
+"And yet you have lived in the world," she said; after a pause, "you are
+a man and wise; and I am but a child. Forgive me, if I seem to teach,
+who am as ignorant as the trees of the mountain; but those who learn
+much do but skim the face of knowledge; they seize the laws, they
+conceive the dignity of the design--the horror of the living fact fades
+from their memory. It is we who sit at home with evil who remember, I
+think, and are warned and pity. Go, rather, go now, and keep me in mind.
+So I shall have a life in the cherished places of your memory; a life as
+much my own as that which I lead in this body."
+
+"I love you," I said once more; and reaching out my weak hand, took
+hers, and carried it to my lips, and kissed it. Nor did she resist, but
+winced a little; and I could see her look upon me with a frown that was
+not unkindly, only sad and baffled. And then it seemed she made a call
+upon her resolution; plucked my hand towards her, herself at the same
+time leaning somewhat forward, and laid it on the beating of her heart.
+"There," she cried, "you feel the very footfall of my life. It only
+moves for you; it is yours. But is it even mine? It is mine indeed to
+offer you, as I might take the coin from my neck, as I might break a
+live branch from a tree, and give it you. And yet not mine! I dwell, or
+I think I dwell (if I exist at all), somewhere apart, an impotent
+prisoner, and carried about and deafened by a mob that I disown. This
+capsule, such as throbs against the sides of animals, knows you at a
+touch for its master; ay, it loves you! But my soul, does my soul? I
+think not; I know not, fearing to ask. Yet when you spoke to me, your
+words were of the soul; it is of the soul that you ask--it is only from
+the soul that you would take me."
+
+"Olalla," I said, "the soul and the body are one, and mostly so in love.
+What the body chooses, the soul loves; where the body clings, the soul
+cleaves; body for body, soul to soul, they come together at God's
+signal; and the lower part (if we can call aught low) is only the
+footstool and foundation of the highest."
+
+"Have you," she said, "seen the portraits in the house of my fathers?
+Have you looked at my mother or at Felipe? Have your eyes never rested
+on that picture that hangs by your bed? She who sat for it died ages
+ago; and she did evil in her life. But, look again: there is my hand to
+the least line, there are my eyes and my hair. What is mine, then, and
+what am I? If not a curve in this poor body of mine (which you love, and
+for the sake of which you dotingly dream that you love me), not a
+gesture that I can frame, not a tone of my voice, not any look from my
+eyes, no, not even now when I speak to him I love, but has belonged to
+others? Others, ages dead, have wooed other men with my eyes; other men
+have heard the pleading of the same voice that now sounds in your ears.
+The hands of the dead are in my bosom; they move me, they pluck me, they
+guide me; I am a puppet at their command; and I but re-inform features
+and attributes that have long been laid aside from evil in the quiet of
+the grave. Is it me you love, friend? or the race that made me? The girl
+who does not know and cannot answer for the least portion of herself? or
+the stream of which she is a transitory eddy, the tree of which she is
+the passing fruit? The race exists; it is old, it is ever young, it
+carries its eternal destiny in its bosom; upon it, like waves upon the
+sea, individual succeeds to individual, mocked with a semblance of
+self-control, but they are nothing. We speak of the soul, but the soul
+is in the race."
+
+"You fret against the common law," I said. "You rebel against the voice
+of God, which He has made so winning to convince, so imperious to
+command. Hear it, and how it speaks between us! Your hand clings to
+mine, your heart leaps at my touch, the unknown elements of which we
+are compounded awake and run together at a look; the clay of the earth
+remembers its independent life and yearns to join us; we are drawn
+together as the stars are turned about in space, or as the tides ebb and
+flow; by things older and greater than we ourselves."
+
+"Alas!" she said, "what can I say to you? My fathers, eight hundred
+years ago, ruled all this province: they were wise, great, cunning, and
+cruel; they were a picked race of the Spanish; their flags led in war;
+the king called them his cousin; the people, when the rope was slung for
+them or when they returned and found their hovels smoking, blasphemed
+their name. Presently a change began. Man has risen; if he has sprung
+from the brutes, he can descend again to the same level. The breath of
+weariness blew on their humanity and the cords relaxed; they began to go
+down; their minds fell on sleep, their passions awoke in gusts, heady
+and senseless like the wind in the gutters of the mountains; beauty was
+still handed down, but no longer the guiding wit nor the human heart;
+the seed passed on, it was wrapped in flesh, the flesh covered the
+bones, but they were the bones and the flesh of brutes, and their mind
+was as the mind of flies. I speak to you as I dare; but you have seen
+for yourself how the wheel has gone backward with my doomed race. I
+stand, as it were, upon a little rising ground in this desperate
+descent, and see both before and behind, both what we have lost and to
+what we are condemned to go farther downward. And shall I--I that dwell
+apart in the house of the dead, my body, loathing its ways--shall I
+repeat the spell? Shall I bind another spirit, reluctant as my own, into
+this bewitched and tempest-broken tenement that I now suffer in? Shall I
+hand down this cursed vessel of humanity, charge it with fresh life as
+with fresh poison, and dash it, like a fire, in the faces of posterity?
+But my vow has been given; the race shall cease from off the earth. At
+this hour my brother is making ready; his foot will soon be on the
+stair; and you will go with him and pass out of my sight for ever.
+Think of me sometimes as one to whom the lesson of life was very harshly
+told, but who heard it with courage; as one who loved you indeed, but
+who hated herself so deeply that her love was hateful to her; as one who
+sent you away and yet would have longed to keep you for ever: who had no
+dearer hope than to forget you, and no greater fear than to be
+forgotten."
+
+She had drawn towards the door as she spoke, her rich voice sounding
+softer and farther away; and with the last word she was gone, and I lay
+alone in the moonlit chamber. What I might have done had not I lain
+bound by my extreme weakness, I know not; but as it was, there fell upon
+me a great and blank despair. It was not long before there shone in at
+the door the ruddy glimmer of a lantern, and Felipe, coming, charged me
+without a word upon his shoulders, and carried me down to the great
+gate, where the cart was waiting. In the moonlight the hills stood out
+sharply, as if they were of cardboard; on the glimmering surface of the
+plateau, and from among the low trees which swung together and sparkled
+in the wind, the great black cube of the residencia stood out bulkily,
+its mass only broken by three dimly lighted windows in the northern
+front above the gate. They were Olalla's windows, and as the cart jolted
+onwards I kept my eyes fixed upon them till, where the road dipped into
+a valley, they were lost to my view for ever. Felipe walked in silence
+beside the shafts, but from time to time he would check the mule and
+seem to look back upon me; and at length drew quite near and laid his
+hand upon my head. There was such kindness in the touch, and such a
+simplicity, as of the brutes, that tears broke from me like the bursting
+of an artery.
+
+"Felipe," I said, "take me where they will ask no questions."
+
+He said never a word, but he turned his mule about, end for end,
+retraced some part of the way we had gone, and, striking into another
+path, led me to the mountain village, which was, as we say in Scotland,
+the kirk-town of that thinly peopled district. Some broken memories
+dwell in my mind of the day breaking over the plain, of the cart
+stopping, of arms that helped me down, of a bare room into which I was
+carried, and of a swoon that fell upon me like sleep.
+
+The next day and the days following, the old priest was often at my side
+with his snuff-box and prayer-book, and after a while, when I began to
+pick up strength, he told me that I was now on a fair way to recovery,
+and must as soon as possible hurry my departure; whereupon, without
+naming any reason, he took snuff and looked at me sideways. I did not
+affect ignorance; I knew he must have seen Olalla. "Sir," said I, "you
+know that I do not ask in wantonness. What of that family?"
+
+He said they were very unfortunate; that it seemed a declining race, and
+that they were very poor and had been much neglected.
+
+"But she has not," I said. "Thanks, doubtless, to yourself, she is
+instructed and wise beyond the use of women."
+
+"Yes," he said, "the Seńorita is well-informed. But the family has been
+neglected."
+
+"The mother?" I queried.
+
+"Yes, the mother too," said the Padre, taking snuff. "But Felipe is a
+well-intentioned lad."
+
+"The mother is odd?" I asked.
+
+"Very odd," replied the priest.
+
+"I think, sir, we beat about the bush," said I. "You must know more of
+my affairs than you allow. You must know my curiosity to be justified on
+many grounds. Will you not be frank with me?"
+
+"My son," said the old gentleman, "I will be very frank with you on
+matters within my competence; on those of which I know nothing it does
+not require much discretion to be silent. I will not fence with you, I
+take your meaning perfectly; and what can I say, but that we are all in
+God's hands, and that His ways are not our ways? I have even advised
+with my superiors in the Church, but they, too, were dumb. It is a great
+mystery."
+
+"Is she mad?" I asked.
+
+"I will answer you according to my belief. She is not," returned the
+Padre, "or she was not. When she was young--God help me, I fear I
+neglected that wild lamb--she was surely sane; and yet, although it did
+not run to such heights, the same strain was already notable; it had
+been so before her in her father, ay, and before him, and this inclined
+me, perhaps, to think too lightly of it. But these things go on growing,
+not only in the individual but in the race."
+
+"When she was young," I began, and my voice failed me for a moment, and
+it was only with a great effort that I was able to add, "was she like
+Olalla?"
+
+"Now God forbid!" exclaimed the Padre. "God forbid that any man should
+think so slightingly of my favourite penitent. No, no; the Seńorita (but
+for her beauty, which I wish most honestly she had less of) has not a
+hair's resemblance to what her mother was at the same age. I could not
+bear to have you think so; though, heaven knows, it were, perhaps,
+better that you should."
+
+At this I raised myself in bed, and opened my heart to the old man;
+telling him of our love and of her decision; owning my own horrors, my
+own passing fancies, but telling him that these were at an end; and with
+something more than a purely formal submission, appealing to his
+judgment.
+
+He heard me very patiently and without surprise; and when I had done he
+sat for some time silent. Then he began: "The Church," and instantly
+broke off again to apologise. "I had forgotten, my child, that you were
+not a Christian," said he. "And indeed, upon a point so highly unusual,
+even the Church can scarce be said to have decided. But would you have
+my opinion? The Seńorita is, in a matter of this kind, the best judge;
+I would accept her judgment."
+
+On the back of that he went away, nor was he thenceforward so assiduous
+in his visits; indeed, even when I began to get about again, he plainly
+feared and deprecated my society, not as in distaste, but much as a man
+might be disposed to flee from the riddling sphinx. The villagers, too,
+avoided me; they were unwilling to be my guides upon the mountain. I
+thought they looked at me askance, and I made sure that the more
+superstitious crossed themselves on my approach. At first I set this
+down to my heretical opinions; but it began at length to dawn upon me
+that if I was thus redoubted it was because I had stayed at the
+residencia. All men despise the savage notions of such peasantry; and
+yet I was conscious of a chill shadow that seemed to fall and dwell upon
+my love. It did not conquer, but I may not deny that it restrained, my
+ardour.
+
+Some miles westward of the village there was a gap in the sierra, from
+which the eye plunged direct upon the residencia; and thither it became
+my daily habit to repair. A wood crowned the summit; and just where the
+pathway issued from its fringes, it was overhung by a considerable shelf
+of rock, and that, in its turn, was surmounted by a crucifix of the size
+of life and more than usually painful in design. This was my perch;
+thence, day after day, I looked down upon the plateau, and the great old
+house, and could see Felipe, no bigger than a fly, going to and fro
+about the garden. Sometimes mists would draw across the view, and be
+broken up again by mountain winds; sometimes the plain slumbered below
+me in unbroken sunshine; it would sometimes be all blotted out by rain.
+This distant post, these interrupted sights of the place where my life
+had been so strangely changed, suited the indecision of my humour. I
+passed whole days there, debating with myself the various elements of
+our position, now leaning to the suggestions of love, now giving an ear
+to prudence, and in the end halting irresolute between the two.
+
+One day, as I was sitting on my rock, there came by that way a somewhat
+gaunt peasant wrapped in a mantle. He was a stranger, and plainly did
+not know me even by repute; for, instead of keeping the other side, he
+drew near and sat down beside me, and we had soon fallen in talk. Among
+other things, he told me he had been a muleteer, and in former years had
+much frequented these mountains; later on, he had followed the army with
+his mules, had realised a competence, and was now living retired with
+his family.
+
+"Do you know that house?" I inquired at last, pointing to the
+residencia, for I readily wearied of any talk that kept me from the
+thought of Olalla.
+
+He looked at me darkly and crossed himself.
+
+"Too well," he said, "it was there that one of my comrades sold himself
+to Satan; the Virgin shield us from temptations! He has paid the price;
+he is now burning in the reddest place in hell!"
+
+A fear came upon me; I could answer nothing; and presently the man
+resumed, as if to himself: "Yes," he said, "O yes, I know it. I have
+passed its doors. There was snow upon the pass, the wind was driving it;
+sure enough there was death that night upon the mountains, but there was
+worse beside the hearth. I took him by the arm, Seńor, and dragged him
+to the gate; I conjured him, by all he loved and respected, to go forth
+with me; I went on my knees before him in the snow; and I could see he
+was moved by my entreaty. And just then she came out on the gallery, and
+called him by his name; and he turned, and there was she, standing with
+a lamp in her hand and smiling on him to come back. I cried out aloud to
+God, and threw my arms about him, but he put me by, and left me alone.
+He had made his choice; God help us. I would pray for him, but to what
+end? there are sins that not even the Pope can loose."
+
+"And your friend," I asked, "what became of him?"
+
+"Nay, God knows," said the muleteer. "If all be true that we hear, his
+end was like his sin, a thing to raise the hair."
+
+"Do you mean that he was killed?" I asked.
+
+"Sure enough, he was killed," returned the man. "But how? Ah, how? But
+these are things that it is sin to speak of."
+
+"The people of that house ..." I began.
+
+But he interrupted me with a savage outburst. "The people?" he cried.
+"What people? There are neither men nor women in that house of Satan's!
+What? have you lived here so long, and never heard?" And here he put his
+mouth to my ear and whispered, as if even the fowls of the mountain
+might have overheard and been stricken with horror.
+
+What he told me was not true, nor was it even original; being, indeed,
+but a new edition, vamped up again by village ignorance and
+superstition, of stories nearly as ancient as the race of man. It was
+rather the application that appalled me. In the old days, he said, the
+Church would have burned out that nest of basilisks; but the arm of the
+Church was now shortened; his friend Miguel had been unpunished by the
+hands of men, and left to the more awful judgment of an offended God.
+This was wrong; but it should be so no more. The Padre was sunk in age;
+he was even bewitched himself; but the eyes of his flock were now awake
+to their own danger; and some day--ay, and before long--the smoke of
+that house should go up to heaven.
+
+He left me filled with horror and fear. Which way to turn I knew not;
+whether first to warn the Padre, or to carry my ill news direct to the
+threatened inhabitants of the residencia. Fate was to decide for me;
+for, while I was still hesitating, I beheld the veiled figure of a woman
+drawing near to me up the pathway. No veil could deceive my penetration;
+by every line and every movement I recognised Olalla; and keeping
+hidden behind a corner of the rock, I suffered her to gain the summit.
+Then I came forward. She knew me and paused, but did not speak; I, too,
+remained silent; and we continued for some time to gaze upon each other
+with a passionate sadness.
+
+"I thought you had gone," she said at length. "It is all that you can do
+for me--to go. It is all I ever asked of you. And you still stay. But do
+you know, that every day heaps up the peril of death, not only on your
+head, but on ours? A report has gone about the mountain; it is thought
+you love me, and the people will not suffer it."
+
+I saw she was already informed of her danger, and I rejoiced at it.
+"Olalla," I said, "I am ready to go this day, this very hour, but not
+alone."
+
+She stepped aside and knelt down before the crucifix to pray, and I
+stood by and looked now at her and now at the object of her adoration,
+now at the living figure of the penitent, and now at the ghastly, daubed
+countenance, the painted wounds, and the projected ribs of the image.
+The silence was only broken by the wailing of some large birds that
+circled sidelong, as if in surprise or alarm, about the summit of the
+hills. Presently Olalla rose again, turned towards me, raised her veil,
+and, still leaning with one hand on the shaft of the crucifix, looked
+upon me with a pale and sorrowful countenance.
+
+"I have laid my hand upon the cross," she said. "The Padre says you are
+no Christian; but look up for a moment with my eyes, and behold the face
+of the Man of Sorrows. We are all such as He was--the inheritors of sin;
+we must all bear and expiate a past which was not ours; there is in all
+of us--ay, even in me--a sparkle of the divine. Like Him, we must endure
+for a little while, until morning returns, bringing peace. Suffer me to
+pass on upon my way alone; it is thus that I shall be least lonely,
+counting for my friend Him who is the friend of all the distressed; it
+is thus that I shall be the most happy, having taken my farewell of
+earthly happiness, and willingly accepted sorrow for my portion."
+
+I looked at the face of the crucifix, and, though I was no friend to
+images, and despised that imitative and grimacing art of which it was a
+rude example, some sense of what the thing implied was carried home to
+my intelligence. The face looked down upon me with a painful and deadly
+contraction; but the rays of a glory encircled it, and reminded me that
+the sacrifice was voluntary. It stood there, crowning the rock, as it
+still stands on so many highway sides, vainly preaching to passers-by,
+an emblem of sad and noble truths; that pleasure is not an end, but an
+accident; that pain is the choice of the magnanimous; that it is best to
+suffer all things and do well. I turned and went down the mountain in
+silence; and when I looked back for the last time before the wood closed
+about my path, I saw Olalla still leaning on the crucifix.
+
+
+
+
+HEATHERCAT
+
+A FRAGMENT
+
+
+
+
+HEATHERCAT
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+TRAQUAIRS OF MONTROYMONT
+
+
+The period of this tale is in the heat of the _killing-time_; the scene
+laid for the most part in solitary hills and morasses, haunted only by
+the so-called Mountain Wanderers, the dragoons that came in chase of
+them, the women that wept on their dead bodies, and the wild birds of
+the moorland that have cried there since the beginning. It is a land of
+many rain-clouds; a land of much mute history, written there in
+pre-historic symbols. Strange green raths are to be seen commonly in the
+country, above all by the kirkyards; barrows of the dead, standing
+stones; beside these, the faint, durable footprints and handmarks of the
+Roman; and an antiquity older perhaps than any, and still living and
+active--a complete Celtic nomenclature and a scarce-mingled Celtic
+population. These rugged and grey hills were once included in the
+boundaries of the Caledonian Forest. Merlin sat here below his
+apple-tree and lamented Gwendolen; here spoke with Kentigern; here fell
+into his enchanted trance. And the legend of his slumber seems to body
+forth the story of that Celtic race, deprived for so many centuries of
+their authentic speech, surviving with their ancestral inheritance of
+melancholy perversity and patient, unfortunate courage.
+
+The Traquairs of Montroymont (_Mons Romanus_, as the erudite expound it)
+had long held their seat about the head-waters of the Dule and in the
+back parts of the moorland parish of Balweary. For two hundred years
+they had enjoyed in these upland quarters a certain decency (almost to
+be named distinction) of repute; and the annals of their house, or what
+is remembered of them, were obscure and bloody. Ninian Traquair was
+"cruallie slochtered" by the Crozers at the kirk-door of Balweary, anno
+1482. Francis killed Simon Ruthven of Drumshoreland, anno 1540; bought
+letters of slayers at the widow and heir, and, by a barbarous form of
+compounding, married (without tocher) Simon's daughter Grizzel, which is
+the way the Traquairs and Ruthvens came first to an intermarriage. About
+the last Traquair and Ruthven marriage, it is the business of this book,
+among many other things, to tell.
+
+The Traquairs were always strong for the Covenant; for the King also,
+but the Covenant first; and it began to be ill days for Montroymont when
+the Bishops came in and the dragoons at the heels of them. Ninian (then
+laird) was an anxious husband of himself and the property, as the times
+required, and it may be said of him, that he lost both. He was heavily
+suspected of the Pentland Hills rebellion. When it came the length of
+Bothwell Brig, he stood his trial before the Secret Council, and was
+convicted of talking with some insurgents by the wayside, the subject of
+the conversation not very clearly appearing, and of the reset and
+maintenance of one Gale, a gardener man, who seen before Bothwell with a
+musket, and afterwards, for a continuance of months, delved the garden
+at Montroymont. Matters went very ill with Ninian at the Council; some
+of the lords were clear for treason; and even the boot was talked of.
+But he was spared that torture; and at last, having pretty good
+friendship among great men, he came off with a fine of seven thousand
+marks, that caused the estate to groan. In this case, as in so many
+others, it was the wife that made the trouble. She was a great keeper of
+conventicles; would ride ten miles to one, and when she was fined,
+rejoiced greatly to suffer for the Kirk; but it was rather her husband
+that suffered. She had their only son, Francis, baptized privately by
+the hands of Mr. Kidd; there was that much the more to pay for! She
+could neither be driven nor wiled into the parish kirk; as for taking
+the sacrament at the hands of any Episcopalian curate, and tenfold more
+at those of Curate Haddo, there was nothing further from her purposes;
+and Montroymont had to put his hand in his pocket month by month and
+year by year. Once, indeed, the little lady was cast in prison, and the
+laird, worthy, heavy, uninterested man, had to ride up and take her
+place; from which he was not discharged under nine months and a sharp
+fine. It scarce seemed she had any gratitude to him; she came out of
+gaol herself, and plunged immediately deeper in conventicles, resetting
+recusants, and all her old, expensive folly, only with greater vigour
+and openness, because Montroymont was safe in the Tolbooth and she had
+no witness to consider. When he was liberated and came back, with his
+fingers singed, in December 1680, and late in the black night, my lady
+was from home. He came into the house at his alighting, with a
+riding-rod yet in his hand; and, on the servant-maid telling him, caught
+her by the scruff of the neck, beat her violently, flung her down in the
+passage-way, and went upstairs to his bed fasting and without a light.
+It was three in the morning when my lady returned from that conventicle,
+and, hearing of the assault (because the maid had sat up for her,
+weeping), went to their common chamber with a lantern in hand and
+stamping with her shoes so as to wake the dead; it was supposed, by
+those that heard her, from a design to have it out with the good man at
+once. The house-servants gathered on the stair, because it was a main
+interest with them to know which of these two was the better horse; and
+for the space of two hours they were heard to go at the matter, hammer
+and tongs. Montroymont alleged he was at the end of possibilities; it
+was no longer within his power to pay the annual rents; she had served
+him basely by keeping conventicles while he lay in prison for her sake;
+his friends were weary, and there was nothing else before him but the
+entire loss of the family lands, and to begin life again by the wayside
+as a common beggar. She took him up very sharp and high: called upon
+him, if he were a Christian? and which he most considered, the loss of a
+few dirty, miry glebes, or of his soul? Presently he was heard to weep,
+and my lady's voice to go on continually like a running burn, only the
+words indistinguishable; whereupon it was supposed a victory for her
+ladyship, and the domestics took themselves to bed. The next day
+Traquair appeared like a man who had gone under the harrows; and his
+lady wife thenceforward continued in her old course without the least
+deflection.
+
+Thenceforward Ninian went on his way without complaint, and suffered his
+wife to go on hers without remonstrance. He still minded his estate, of
+which it might be said he took daily a fresh farewell, and counted it
+already lost; looking ruefully on the acres and the graves of his
+fathers, on the moorlands where the wildfowl consorted, the low,
+gurgling pool of the trout, and the high, windy place of the calling
+curlews--things that were yet his for the day and would be another's
+to-morrow; coming back again, and sitting ciphering till the dusk at his
+approaching ruin, which no device of arithmetic could postpone beyond a
+year or two. He was essentially the simple ancient man, the farmer and
+landholder; he would have been content to watch the seasons come and go,
+and his cattle increase, until the limit of age; he would have been
+content at any time to die, if he could have left the estates
+undiminished to an heir-male of his ancestors, that duty standing first
+in his instinctive calendar. And now he saw everywhere the image of the
+new proprietor come to meet him, and go sowing and reaping, or fowling
+for his pleasure on the red moors, or eating the very gooseberries in
+the Place garden; and saw always, on the other hand, the figure of
+Francis go forth, a beggar, into the broad world.
+
+It was in vain the poor gentleman sought to moderate; took every test
+and took advantage of every indulgence; went and drank with the dragoons
+in Balweary; attended the communion and came regularly to the church to
+Curate Haddo, with his son beside him. The mad, raging, Presbyterian
+zealot of a wife at home made all of no avail; and indeed the house must
+have fallen years before if it had not been for the secret indulgence of
+the curate, who had a great sympathy with the laird, and winked hard at
+the doings in Montroymont. This curate was a man very ill reputed in the
+countryside, and indeed in all Scotland. "Infamous Haddo" is Shield's
+expression. But Patrick Walker is more copious. "Curate Hall Haddo,"
+says he, _sub voce_ Peden, "or _Hell_ Haddo, as he was more justly to be
+called, a pokeful of old condemned errors and the filthy vile lusts of
+the flesh, a published whoremonger, a common gross drunkard, continually
+and godlessly scraping and skirling on a fiddle, continually breathing
+flames against the remnant of Israel. But the Lord put an end to his
+piping, and all these offences were composed into one bloody grave." No
+doubt this was written to excuse his slaughter; and I have never heard
+it claimed for Walker that he was either a just witness or an indulgent
+judge. At least, in a merely human character, Haddo comes off not wholly
+amiss in the matter of these Traquairs: not that he showed any graces of
+the Christian, but had a sort of Pagan decency, which might almost tempt
+one to be concerned about his sudden, violent, and unprepared fate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+FRANCIE
+
+
+Francie was eleven years old, shy, secret, and rather childish of his
+age, though not backward in schooling, which had been pushed on far by a
+private governor, one M'Brair, a forfeited minister harboured in that
+capacity at Montroymont. The boy, already much employed in secret by his
+mother, was the most apt hand conceivable to run upon a message, to
+carry food to lurking fugitives, or to stand sentry on the skyline above
+a conventicle. It seemed no place on the moorlands was so naked but what
+he would find cover there; and as he knew every hag, boulder, and
+heather-bush in a circuit of seven miles about Montroymont, there was
+scarce any spot but what he could leave or approach it unseen. This
+dexterity had won him a reputation in that part of the country; and
+among the many children employed in these dangerous affairs, he passed
+under the by-name of Heathercat.
+
+How much his father knew of this employment might be doubted. He took
+much forethought for the boy's future, seeing he was like to be left so
+poorly, and would sometimes assist at his lessons, sighing heavily,
+yawning deep, and now and again patting Francie on the shoulder if he
+seemed to be doing ill, by way of a private, kind encouragement. But a
+great part of the day was passed in aimless wanderings with his eyes
+sealed, or in his cabinet sitting bemused over the particulars of the
+coming bankruptcy; and the boy would be absent a dozen times for once
+that his father would observe it.
+
+On 2nd of July 1682 the boy had an errand from his mother, which must
+be kept private from all, the father included in the first of them.
+Crossing the braes, he hears the clatter of a horse's shoes, and claps
+down incontinent in a hag by the wayside. And presently he spied his
+father come riding from one direction, and Curate Haddo walking from
+another; and Montroymont leaning down from the saddle, and Haddo getting
+on his toes (for he was a little, ruddy, bald-pated man, more like a
+dwarf), they greeted kindly, and came to a halt within two fathoms of
+the child.
+
+"Montroymont," the curate said, "the deil's in 't but I'll have to
+denunciate your leddy again."
+
+"Deil's in 't indeed!" says the laird.
+
+"Man! can ye no induce her to come to the kirk?" pursues Haddo; "or to a
+communion at the least of it? For the conventicles, let be! and the same
+for yon solemn fule, M'Brair: I can blink at them. But she's got to come
+to the kirk, Montroymont."
+
+"Dinna speak of it," says the laird. "I can do nothing with her."
+
+"Couldn't ye try the stick to her? it works wonders whiles," suggested
+Haddo. "No? I'm wae to hear it. And I suppose ye ken where you're
+going?"
+
+"Fine!" said Montroymont. "Fine do I ken where: bankrup'cy and the Bass
+Rock!"
+
+"Praise to my bones that I never married!" cried the curate. "Well, it's
+a grievous thing to me to see an auld house dung down that was here
+before Flodden Field. But naebody can say it was with my wish."
+
+"No more they can, Haddo!" says the laird. "A good friend ye've been to
+me, first and last. I can give you that character with a clear
+conscience."
+
+Whereupon they separated, and Montroymont rode briskly down into the
+Dule Valley. But of the curate Francis was not to be quit so easily. He
+went on with his little, brisk steps to the corner of a dyke, and
+stopped and whistled and waved upon a lassie that was herding cattle
+there. This Janet M'Clour was a big lass, being taller than the curate;
+and what made her look the more so, she was kilted very high. It seemed
+for a while she would not come, and Francie heard her calling Haddo a
+"daft auld fule," and saw her running and dodging him among the whins
+and hags till he was fairly blown. But at the last he gets a bottle from
+his plaid-neuk and holds it up to her; whereupon she came at once into a
+composition, and the pair sat, drinking of the bottle, and daffing and
+laughing together, on a mound of heather. The boy had scarce heard of
+these vanities, or he might have been minded of a nymph and satyr, if
+anybody could have taken long-leggit Janet for a nymph. But they seemed
+to be huge friends, he thought; and was the more surprised, when the
+curate had taken his leave, to see the lassie fling stones after him
+with screeches of laughter, and Haddo turn about and caper, and shake
+his staff at her, and laugh louder than herself. A wonderful merry pair,
+they seemed; and when Francie had crawled out of the hag, he had a great
+deal to consider in his mind. It was possible they were all fallen in
+error about Mr. Haddo, he reflected,--having seen him so tender with
+Montroymont, and so kind and playful with the lass Janet; and he had a
+temptation to go out of his road and question her herself upon the
+matter. But he had a strong spirit of duty on him; and plodded on
+instead over the braes till he came near the House of Cairngorm. There,
+in a hollow place, by the burnside that was shaded by some birks, he was
+aware of a barefoot boy, perhaps a matter of three years older than
+himself. The two approached with the precautions of a pair of strange
+dogs, looking at each other queerly.
+
+"It's ill weather on the hills," said the stranger, giving the
+watchword.
+
+"For a season," said Francie, "but the Lord will appear."
+
+"Richt," said the barefoot boy; "wha're ye frae?"
+
+"The Leddy Montroymont," says Francie.
+
+"Ha'e, then!" says the stranger, and handed him a folded paper, and they
+stood and looked at each other again. "It's unco' het," said the boy.
+
+"Dooms het," says Francie.
+
+"What do they ca' ye?" says the other.
+
+"Francie," says he. "I'm young Montroymont. They ca' me Heathercat."
+
+"I'm Jock Crozer," said the boy. And there was another pause, while each
+rolled a stone under his foot.
+
+"Cast your jaiket and I'll fecht ye for a bawbee," cried the elder boy
+with sudden violence, and dramatically throwing back his jacket.
+
+"Na, I have nae time the now," said Francie, with a sharp thrill of
+alarm, because Crozer was much the heavier boy.
+
+"Ye're feared. Heathercat indeed!" said Crozer, for among this infantile
+army of spies and messengers, the fame of Crozer had gone forth and was
+resented by his rivals. And with that they separated.
+
+On his way home Francie was a good deal occupied with the recollection
+of this untoward incident. The challenge had been fairly offered and
+basely refused: the tale would be carried all over the country, and the
+lustre of the name of Heathercat be dimmed. But the scene between Curate
+Haddo and Janet M'Clour had also given him much to think of: and he was
+still puzzling over the case of the curate, and why such ill words were
+said of him, and why, if he were so merry-spirited, he should yet preach
+so dry, when coming over a knowe, whom should he see but Janet, sitting
+with her back to him, minding her cattle! He was always a great child
+for secret, stealthy ways, having been employed by his mother on errands
+when the same was necessary; and he came behind the lass without her
+hearing.
+
+"Jennet," says he.
+
+"Keep me," cries Janet, springing up. "O, it's you, Maister Francie!
+Save us, what a fricht ye gied me."
+
+"Ay, it's me," said Francie. "I've been thinking, Jennet; I saw you and
+the curate a while back----"
+
+"Brat!" cried Janet, and coloured up crimson; and the one moment made as
+if she would have stricken him with a ragged stick she had to chase her
+bestial with, and the next was begging and praying that he would mention
+it to none. It was "naebody's business, whatever," she said; "it would
+just start a clash in the country"; and there would be nothing left for
+her but to drown herself in Dule Water.
+
+"Why?" says Francie.
+
+The girl looked at him and grew scarlet again.
+
+"And it isna that, anyway," continued Francie. "It was just that he
+seemed so good to ye--like our Father in heaven, I thought; and I
+thought that mebbe, perhaps, we had all been wrong about him from the
+first. But I'll have to tell Mr. M'Brair; I'm under a kind of a bargain
+to him to tell him all."
+
+"Tell it to the divil if ye like for me!" cried the lass. "I've naething
+to be ashamed of. Tell M'Brair to mind his ain affairs," she cried
+again: "they'll be hot eneugh for him, if Haddie likes!" And so strode
+off, shoving her beasts before her, and ever and again looking back and
+crying angry words to the boy, where he stood mystified.
+
+By the time he had got home his mind was made up that he would say
+nothing to his mother. My Lady Montroymont was in the keeping-room,
+reading a godly book; she was a wonderful frail little wife to make so
+much noise in the world and be able to steer about that patient sheep
+her husband; her eyes were like sloes, the fingers of her hands were
+like tobacco-pipe shanks, her mouth shut tight like a trap; and even
+when she was the most serious, and still more when she was angry, there
+hung about her face the terrifying semblance of a smile.
+
+"Have ye gotten the billet, Francie?" said she; and when he had handed
+it over, and she had read and burned it, "Did you see anybody?" she
+asked.
+
+"I saw the laird," said Francie.
+
+"He didna see you, though?" asked his mother.
+
+"Deil a fear," from Francie.
+
+"Francie!" she cried. "What's that I hear? an aith? The Lord forgive me,
+have I broughten forth a brand for the burning, a fagot for hell-fire?"
+
+"I'm very sorry, ma'am," said Francie. "I humbly beg the Lord's pardon,
+and yours, for my wickedness."
+
+"H'm," grunted the lady. "Did ye see nobody else?"
+
+"No, ma'am," said Francie, with the face of an angel, "except Jock
+Crozer, that gied me the billet."
+
+"Jock Crozer!" cried the lady. "I'll Crozer them! Crozers indeed! What
+next? Are we to repose the lives of a suffering remnant in Crozers? The
+whole clan of them wants hanging, and if I had my way of it, they
+wouldna want it long. Are you aware, sir, that these Crozers killed your
+forebear at the kirk-door?"
+
+"You see, he was bigger 'n me," said Francie.
+
+"Jock Crozer!" continued the lady. "That'll be Clement's son, the
+biggest thief and reiver in the countryside. To trust a note to him! But
+I'll give the benefit of my opinions to Lady Whitecross when we two
+forgather. Let her look to herself! I have no patience with half-hearted
+carlines, that complies on the Lord's day morning with the kirk, and
+comes taigling the same night to the conventicle. The one or the other!
+is what I say: hell or heaven--Haddie's abominations or the pure word of
+God dreeping from the lips of Mr. Arnot,
+
+  "'Like honey from the honeycomb
+      That dreepeth, sweeter far.'"
+
+My lady was now fairly launched, and that upon two congenial subjects:
+the deficiencies of the Lady Whitecross and the turpitudes of the whole
+Crozer race--which, indeed, had never been conspicuous for
+respectability. She pursued the pair of them for twenty minutes on the
+clock with wonderful animation and detail, something of the pulpit
+manner, and the spirit of one possessed. "O hellish compliance!" she
+exclaimed. "I would not suffer a complier to break bread with Christian
+folk. Of all the sins of this day there is not one so God-defying, so
+Christ-humiliating, as damnable compliance": the boy standing before her
+meanwhile, and brokenly pursuing other thoughts, mainly of Haddo and
+Janet, and Jock Crozer stripping off his jacket. And yet, with all his
+distraction, it might be argued that he heard too much: his father and
+himself being "compliers"--that is to say, attending the church of the
+parish as the law required.
+
+Presently, the lady's passion beginning to decline, or her flux of ill
+words to be exhausted, she dismissed her audience. Francie bowed low,
+left the room, closed the door behind him: and then turned him about in
+the passage-way, and with a low voice, but a prodigious deal of
+sentiment, repeated the name of the evil one twenty times over, to the
+end of which, for the greater efficacy, he tacked on "damnable" and
+"hellish." _Fas est ab hoste doceri_--disrespect is made more pungent by
+quotation; and there is no doubt but he felt relieved, and went upstairs
+into his tutor's chamber with a quiet mind. M'Brair sat by the cheek of
+the peat-fire and shivered, for he had a quartan ague and this was his
+day. The great nightcap and plaid, the dark unshaven cheeks of the man,
+and the white, thin hands that held the plaid about his chittering body,
+made a sorrowful picture. But Francie knew and loved him; came straight
+in, nestled close to the refugee, and told his story. M'Brair had been
+at the College with Haddo; the Presbytery had licensed both on the same
+day; and at this tale, told with so much innocency by the boy, the
+heart of the tutor was commoved.
+
+"Woe upon him! Woe upon that man!" he cried. "O the unfaithful shepherd!
+O the hireling and apostate minister! Make my matters hot for me? quo'
+she! the shameless limmer! And true it is, that he could repose me in
+that nasty, stinking hole, the Canongate Tolbooth, from which your
+mother drew me out--the Lord reward her for it!--or to that cold,
+unbieldy, marine place of the Bass Rock, which, with my delicate kist,
+would be fair ruin to me. But I will be valiant in my Master's service.
+I have a duty here: a duty to my God, to myself, and to Haddo: in His
+strength, I will perform it."
+
+Then he straitly discharged Francie to repeat the tale, and bade him in
+the future to avert his very eyes from the doings of the curate. "You
+must go to his place of idolatry; look upon him there!" says he, "but
+nowhere else. Avert your eyes, close your ears, pass him by like a three
+days' corp. He is like that damnable monster Basiliscus, which
+defiles--yea, poisons!--by the sight."--All which was hardly claratory
+to the boy's mind.
+
+Presently Montroymont came home, and called up the stairs to Francie.
+Traquair was a good shot and swordsman: and it was his pleasure to walk
+with his son over the braes of the moorfowl, or to teach him arms in the
+back court, when they made a mighty comely pair, the child being so
+lean, and light, and active, and the laird himself a man of a manly,
+pretty stature, his hair (the periwig being laid aside) showing already
+white with many anxieties, and his face of an even, flaccid red. But
+this day Francie's heart was not in the fencing.
+
+"Sir," says he, suddenly lowering his point, "will ye tell me a thing if
+I was to ask it?"
+
+"Ask away," says the father.
+
+"Well, it's this," said Francie: "Why do you and me comply if it's so
+wicked?"
+
+"Ay, ye have the cant of it too!" cried Montroymont. "But I'll tell ye
+for all that. It's to try and see if we can keep the rigging on this
+house, Francie. If she had her way, we would be beggar-folk, and hold
+our hands out by the wayside. When ye hear her--when ye hear folk," he
+corrected himself briskly, "call me a coward, and one that betrayed the
+Lord, and I kenna what else, just mind it was to keep a bed to ye to
+sleep in and a bite for ye to eat.--On guard!" he cried, and the lesson
+proceeded again till they were called to supper.
+
+"There's another thing yet," said Francie, stopping his father. "There's
+another thing that I am not sure that I am very caring for. She--she
+sends me errands."
+
+"Obey her, then, as is your bounden duty," said Traquair.
+
+"Ay, but wait till I tell ye," says the boy. "If I was to see you I was
+to hide."
+
+Montroymont sighed. "Well, and that's good of her too," said he. "The
+less that I ken of thir doings the better for me; and the best thing you
+can do is just to obey her, and see and be a good son to her, the same
+as ye are to me, Francie."
+
+At the tenderness of this expression the heart of Francie swelled within
+his bosom, and his remorse was poured out. "Faither!" he cried, "I said
+'deil' to-day; many's the time I said it, and _damnable_ too, and
+_hellish_. I ken they're all right; they're beeblical. But I didna say
+them beeblically; I said them for sweir words--that's the truth of it."
+
+"Hout, ye silly bairn!" said the father, "dinna do it nae mair, and come
+in by to your supper." And he took the boy, and drew him close to him a
+moment, as they went through the door, with something very fond and
+secret, like a caress between a pair of lovers.
+
+The next day M'Brair was abroad in the afternoon, and had a long
+advising with Janet on the braes where she herded cattle. What passed
+was never wholly known; but the lass wept bitterly, and fell on her
+knees to him among the whins. The same night, as soon as it was dark, he
+took the road again for Balweary. In the Kirkton, where the dragoons
+quartered, he saw many lights, and heard the noise of a ranting song and
+people laughing grossly, which was highly offensive to his mind. He gave
+it the wider berth, keeping among fields; and came down at last by the
+water-side, where the manse stands solitary between the river and the
+road. He tapped at the back door, and the old woman called upon him to
+come in, and guided him through the house to the study, as they still
+called it, though there was little enough study there in Haddo's days,
+and more song-books than theology.
+
+"Here's yin to speak wi' ye, Mr. Haddie!" cries the old wife.
+
+And M'Brair, opening the door and entering, found the little, round, red
+man seated in one chair and his feet upon another. A clear fire and a
+tallow dip lighted him barely. He was taking tobacco in a pipe, and
+smiling to himself; and a brandy-bottle and glass, and his fiddle and
+bow, were beside him on the table.
+
+"Hech, Patey M'Brair, is this you?" said he, a trifle tipsily. "Step in
+by, man, and have a drop brandy: for the stomach's sake! Even the deil
+can quote Scripture--eh, Patey?"
+
+"I will neither eat nor drink with you," replied M'Brair. "I am come
+upon my Master's errand! woe be upon me if I should anyways mince the
+same. Hall Haddo, I summon you to quit this kirk which you encumber."
+
+"Muckle obleeged!" says Haddo, winking.
+
+"You and me have been to kirk and market together," pursued M'Brair; "we
+have had blessed seasons in the kirk, we have sat in the same
+teaching-rooms and read in the same book; and I know you still retain
+for me some carnal kindness. It would be my shame if I denied it; I live
+here at your mercy and by your favour, and glory to acknowledge it. You
+have pity on my wretched body, which is but grass, and must soon be
+trodden under: but O, Haddo! how much greater is the yearning with which
+I yearn after and pity your immortal soul! Come now, let us reason
+together! I drop all points of controversy, weighty though these be; I
+take your defaced and damnified kirk on your own terms; and I ask you,
+Are you a worthy minister? The communion season approaches; how can you
+pronounce thir solemn words, 'The elders will now bring forrit the
+elements,' and not quail? A parishioner may be summoned to-night; you
+may have to rise from your miserable orgies; and I ask you, Haddo, what
+does your conscience tell you? Are you fit? Are you fit to smooth the
+pillow of a parting Christian? And if the summons should be for
+yourself, how then?"
+
+Haddo was startled out of all composure and the better part of his
+temper. "What's this of it?" he cried. "I'm no waur than my neebours. I
+never set up to be speeritual; I never did. I'm a plain, canty creature;
+godliness is cheerfulness, says I; give me my fiddle and a dram, and I
+wouldna hairm a flee."
+
+"And I repeat my question," said M'Brair: "Are you fit--fit for this
+great charge? fit to carry and save souls?"
+
+"Fit? Blethers! As fit 's yoursel'," cried Haddo.
+
+"Are you so great a self-deceiver?" said M'Brair. "Wretched man,
+trampler upon God's covenants, crucifier of your Lord afresh. I will
+ding you to the earth with one word: How about the young woman, Janet
+M'Clour?"
+
+"Weel, what about her? what do I ken?" cries Haddo. "M'Brair, ye daft
+auld wife, I tell ye as true 's truth, I never meddled her. It was just
+daffing, I tell ye: daffing, and nae mair: a piece of fun, like! I'm no'
+denying but what I'm fond of fun, sma' blame to me! But for onything
+sarious--hout, man, it might come to a deposeetion! I'll sweir it to ye.
+Where's a Bible, till you hear me sweir?"
+
+"There is nae Bible in your study," said M'Brair severely.
+
+And Haddo, after a few distracted turns, was constrained to accept the
+fact.
+
+"Weel, and suppose there isna?" he cried, stamping. "What mair can ye
+say of us, but just that I'm fond of my joke, and so 's she? I declare
+to God, by what I ken, she might be the Virgin Mary--if she would just
+keep clear of the dragoons. But me! na, deil haet o' me!"
+
+"She is penitent at least," said M'Brair.
+
+"Do you mean to actually up and tell me to my face that she accused me?"
+cried the curate.
+
+"I canna just say that," replied M'Brair. "But I rebuked her in the name
+of God, and she repented before me on her bended knees."
+
+"Weel, I daursay she's been ower far wi' the dragoons," said Haddo. "I
+never denied that. I ken naething by it."
+
+"Man, you but show your nakedness the more plainly," said M'Brair.
+"Poor, blind, besotted creature--and I see you stoytering on the brink
+of dissolution: your light out, and your hours numbered. Awake, man!" he
+shouted with a formidable voice, "awake, or it be ower late."
+
+"Be damned if I stand this!" exclaimed Haddo, casting his tobacco-pipe
+violently on the table, where it was smashed in pieces. "Out of my house
+with ye, or I'll call for the dragoons."
+
+"The speerit of the Lord is upon me," said M'Brair with solemn ecstasy.
+"I sist you to compear before the Great White Throne, and I warn you the
+summons shall be bloody and sudden."
+
+And at this, with more agility than could have been expected, he got
+clear of the room and slammed the door behind him in the face of the
+pursuing curate. The next Lord's day the curate was ill, and the kirk
+closed, but for all his ill words, Mr. M'Brair abode unmolested in the
+house of Montroymont.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE HILL-END OF DRUMLOWE
+
+
+This was a bit of a steep broken hill that overlooked upon the west a
+moorish valley, full of ink-black pools. These presently drained into a
+burn that made off, with little noise and no celerity of pace, about the
+corner of the hill. On the far side the ground swelled into a bare
+heath, black with junipers, and spotted with the presence of the
+standing stones for which the place was famous. They were many in that
+part, shapeless, white with lichen--you would have said with age: and
+had made their abode there for untold centuries, since first the
+heathens shouted for their installation. The ancients had hallowed them
+to some ill religion, and their neighbourhood had long been avoided by
+the prudent before the fall of day; but of late, on the up-springing of
+new requirements, these lonely stones on the moor had again become a
+place of assembly. A watchful picket on the Hill-end commanded all the
+northern and eastern approaches; and such was the disposition of the
+ground, that by certain cunningly posted sentries the west also could be
+made secure against surprise: there was no place in the country where a
+conventicle could meet with more quiet of mind or a more certain retreat
+open, in the case of interference from the dragoons. The minister spoke
+from a knowe close to the edge of the ring, and poured out the words God
+gave him on the very threshold of the devils of yore. When they pitched
+a tent (which was often in wet weather, upon a communion occasion) it
+was rigged over the huge isolated pillar that had the name of
+Anes-Errand, none knew why. And the congregation sat partly clustered
+on the slope below, and partly among the idolatrous monoliths and on the
+turfy soil of the Ring itself. In truth the situation was well qualified
+to give a zest to Christian doctrines, had there been any wanted. But
+these congregations assembled under conditions at once so formidable and
+romantic as made a zealot of the most cold. They were the last of the
+faithful; God, who had averted His face from all other countries of the
+world, still leaned from heaven to observe, with swelling sympathy, the
+doings of His moorland remnant; Christ was by them with His eternal
+wounds, with dropping tears; the Holy Ghost (never perfectly realised
+nor firmly adopted by Protestant imaginations) was dimly supposed to be
+in the heart of each and on the lips of the minister. And over against
+them was the army of the hierarchies, from the men Charles and James
+Stuart, on to King Lewie and the Emperor; and the scarlet Pope, and the
+muckle black devil himself, peering out the red mouth of hell in an
+ecstasy of hate and hope. "One pull more!" he seemed to cry; "one pull
+more, and it's done. There's only Clydesdale and the Stewartry, and the
+three Bailiaries of Ayr, left for God." And with such an august
+assistance of powers and principalities looking on at the last conflict
+of good and evil, it was scarce possible to spare a thought to those
+old, infirm, debile, _ab agendo_ devils whose holy place they were now
+violating.
+
+There might have been three hundred to four hundred present. At least
+there were three hundred horses tethered for the most part in the ring;
+though some of the hearers on the outskirts of the crowd stood with
+their bridles in their hand, ready to mount at the first signal. The
+circle of faces was strangely characteristic; long, serious, strongly
+marked, the tackle standing out in the lean brown cheeks, the mouth set
+and the eyes shining with a fierce enthusiasm; the shepherd, the
+labouring man, and the rarer laird, stood there in their broad blue
+bonnets or laced hats, and presenting an essential identity of type.
+From time to time a long-drawn groan of adhesion rose in this audience,
+and was propagated like a wave to the outskirts, and died away among the
+keepers of the horses. It had a name; it was called "a holy groan."
+
+A squall came up; a great volley of flying mist went out before it and
+whelmed the scene; the wind stormed with a sudden fierceness that
+carried away the minister's voice and twitched his tails and made him
+stagger, and turned the congregation for a moment into a mere pother of
+blowing plaid-ends and prancing horses, and the rain followed and was
+dashed straight into their faces. Men and women panted aloud in the
+shock of that violent shower-bath; the teeth were bared along all the
+line in an involuntary grimace; plaids, mantles, and riding-coats were
+proved vain, and the worshippers felt the water stream on their naked
+flesh. The minister, reinforcing his great and shrill voice, continued
+to contend against and triumph over the rising of the squall and the
+dashing of the rain.
+
+"In that day ye may go thirty mile and not hear a crawing cock," he
+said; "and fifty mile and not get a light to your pipe; and an hundred
+mile and not see a smoking house. For there'll be naething in all
+Scotland but deid men's banes and blackness, and the living anger of the
+Lord. O, where to find a bield--O sirs, where to find a bield from the
+wind of the Lord's anger? Do ye call _this_ a wind? Bethankit! Sirs,
+this is but a temporary dispensation; this is but a puff of wind, this
+is but a spit of rain and by with it. Already there's a blue bow in the
+west, and the sun will take the crown of the causeway again, and your
+things'll be dried upon ye, and your flesh will be warm upon your bones.
+But O, sirs, sirs! for the day of the Lord's anger!"
+
+His rhetoric was set forth with an ear-piercing elocution, and a voice
+that sometimes crashed like cannon. Such as it was, it was the gift of
+all hill-preachers, to a singular degree of likeness or identity. Their
+images scarce ranged beyond the red horizon of the moor and the rainy
+hill-top, the shepherd and his sheep, a fowling-piece, a spade, a pipe,
+a dunghill, a crowing cock, the shining and the withdrawal of the sun.
+An occasional pathos of simple humanity, and frequent patches of big
+Biblical words, relieved the homely tissue. It was a poetry apart;
+bleak, austere, but genuine, and redolent of the soil.
+
+A little before the coming of the squall there was a different scene
+enacting at the outposts. For the most part, the sentinels were faithful
+to their important duty; the Hill-end of Drumlowe was known to be a safe
+meeting-place; and the out-pickets on this particular day had been
+somewhat lax from the beginning, and grew laxer during the inordinate
+length of the discourse. Francie lay there in his appointed hiding-hole,
+looking abroad between two whin-bushes. His view was across the course
+of the burn, then over a piece of plain moorland, to a gap between two
+hills; nothing moved but grouse, and some cattle who slowly traversed
+his field of view, heading northward: he heard the psalms, and sang
+words of his own to the savage and melancholy music; for he had his own
+design in hand, and terror and cowardice prevailed in his bosom
+alternately, like the hot and the cold fit of an ague. Courage was
+uppermost during the singing, which he accompanied through all its
+length with this impromptu strain:
+
+  "And I will ding Jock Crozer down
+    No later than the day."
+
+Presently the voice of the preacher came to him in wafts, at the wind's
+will, as by the opening and shutting of a door; wild spasms of
+screaming, as of some undiscerned gigantic hill-bird stirred with
+inordinate passion, succeeded to intervals of silence; and Francie heard
+them with a critical ear. "Ay," he thought at last, "he'll do; he has
+the bit in his mou' fairly."
+
+He had observed that his friend, or rather his enemy, Jock Crozer, had
+been established at a very critical part of the line of outposts;
+namely, where the burn issues by an abrupt gorge from the semicircle of
+high moors. If anything was calculated to nerve him to battle it was
+this. The post was important; next to the Hill-end itself, it might be
+called the key to the position; and it was where the cover was bad, and
+in which it was most natural to place a child. It should have been
+Heathercat's; why had it been given to Crozer? An exquisite fear of what
+should be the answer passed through his marrow every time he faced the
+question. Was it possible that Crozer could have boasted? that there
+were rumours abroad to his--Heathercat's--discredit? that his honour was
+publicly sullied? All the world went dark about him at the thought; he
+sank without a struggle into the midnight pool of despair; and every
+time he so sank, he brought back with him--not drowned heroism indeed,
+but half-drowned courage by the locks. His heart beat very slowly as he
+deserted his station, and began to crawl towards that of Crozer.
+Something pulled him back, and it was not the sense of duty, but a
+remembrance of Crozer's build and hateful readiness of fist. Duty, as he
+conceived it, pointed him forward on the rueful path that he was
+travelling. Duty bade him redeem his name if he were able, at the risk
+of broken bones; and his bones and every tooth in his head ached by
+anticipation. An awful subsidiary fear whispered him that if he were
+hurt, he should disgrace himself by weeping. He consoled himself,
+boy-like, with the consideration that he was not yet committed; he could
+easily steal over unseen to Crozer's post, and he had a continuous
+private idea that he would very probably steal back again. His course
+took him so near the minister that he could hear some of his words:
+"What news, minister, of Claver'se? He's going round like a roaring
+rampaging lion....
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT NORTH ROAD
+
+A FRAGMENT
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT NORTH ROAD
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+NANCE AT THE "GREEN DRAGON"
+
+
+Nance Holdaway was on her knees before the fire blowing the green wood
+that voluminously smoked upon the dogs, and only now and then shot forth
+a smothered flame; her knees already ached and her eyes smarted, for she
+had been some while at this ungrateful task, but her mind was gone far
+away to meet the coming stranger. Now she met him in the wood, now at
+the castle gate, now in the kitchen by candle-light; each fresh
+presentment eclipsed the one before; a form so elegant, manners so
+sedate, a countenance so brave and comely, a voice so winning and
+resolute--sure such a man was never seen! The thick-coming fancies
+poured and brightened in her head like the smoke and flames upon the
+hearth.
+
+Presently the heavy foot of her uncle Jonathan was heard upon the stair,
+and as he entered the room she bent the closer to her work. He glanced
+at the green fagots with a sneer, and looked askance at the bed and the
+white sheets, at the strip of carpet laid, like an island, on the great
+expanse of the stone floor, and at the broken glazing of the casement
+clumsily repaired with paper.
+
+"Leave that fire a-be," he cried. "What, have I toiled all my life to
+turn innkeeper at the hind end? Leave it a-be, I say."
+
+"La, uncle, it doesn't burn a bit; it only smokes," said Nance, looking
+up from her position.
+
+"You are come of decent people of both sides," returned the old man.
+"Who are you to blow the coals for any Robin-run-agate? Get up, get on
+your hood, make yourself useful, and be off to the 'Green Dragon.'"
+
+"I thought you was to go yourself," Nance faltered.
+
+"So did I," quoth Jonathan; "but it appears I was mistook."
+
+The very excess of her eagerness alarmed her, and she began to hang
+back. "I think I would rather not, dear uncle," she said. "Night is at
+hand, and I think, dear, I would rather not."
+
+"Now you look here," replied Jonathan, "I have my lord's orders, have I
+not? Little he gives me, but it's all my livelihood. And do you fancy,
+if I disobey my lord, I'm likely to turn round for a lass like you? No,
+I've that hell-fire of pain in my old knee, I wouldn't walk a mile, not
+for King George upon his bended knees." And he walked to the window and
+looked down the steep scarp to where the river foamed in the bottom of
+the dell.
+
+Nance stayed for no more bidding. In her own room, by the glimmer of the
+twilight, she washed her hands and pulled on her Sunday mittens;
+adjusted her black hood, and tied a dozen times its cherry ribbons; and
+in less than ten minutes, with a fluttering heart and excellently bright
+eyes, she passed forth under the arch and over the bridge, into the
+thickening shadows of the groves. A well-marked wheel-track conducted
+her. The wood, which upon both sides of the river dell was a mere
+scrambling thicket of hazel, hawthorn, and holly, boasted on the level
+of more considerable timber. Beeches came to a good growth, with here
+and there an oak; and the track now passed under a high arcade of
+branches, and now ran under the open sky in glades. As the girl
+proceeded these glades became more frequent, the trees began again to
+decline in size, and the wood to degenerate into furzy coverts. Last of
+all there was a fringe of elders; and beyond that the track came forth
+upon an open, rolling moorland, dotted with wind-bowed and scanty
+bushes, and all golden brown with the winter, like a grouse. Right over
+against the girl the last red embers of the sunset burned under
+horizontal clouds; the night fell clear and still and frosty, and the
+track in low and marshy passages began to crackle under foot with ice.
+
+Some half a mile beyond the borders of the wood the lights of the "Green
+Dragon" hove in sight, and running close beside them, very faint in the
+dying dusk, the pale ribbon of the Great North Road. It was the back of
+the post-house that was presented to Nance Holdaway; and as she
+continued to draw near and the night to fall more completely, she became
+aware of an unusual brightness and bustle. A post-chaise stood in the
+yard, its lamps already lighted: light shone hospitably in the windows
+and from the open door; moving lights and shadows testified to the
+activity of servants bearing lanterns. The clank of pails, the stamping
+of hoofs on the firm causeway, the jingle of harness, and, last of all,
+the energetic hissing of a groom, began to fall upon her ear. By the
+stir you would have thought the mail was at the door, but it was still
+too early in the night. The down mail was not due at the "Green Dragon"
+for hard upon an hour; the up mail from Scotland not before two in the
+black morning.
+
+Nance entered the yard somewhat dazzled. Sam, the tall ostler, was
+polishing a curb-chain with sand; the lantern at his feet letting up
+spouts of candle-light through the holes with which its conical roof was
+peppered.
+
+"Hey, miss," said he jocularly, "you won't look at me any more, now you
+have gentry at the castle."
+
+Her cheeks burned with anger.
+
+"That's my lord's chay," the man continued, nodding at the chaise, "Lord
+Windermoor's. Came all in a fluster--dinner, bowl of punch, and put the
+horses to. For all the world like a runaway match, my dear--bar the
+bride. He brought Mr. Archer in the chay with him."
+
+"Is that Holdaway?" cried the landlord from the lighted entry, where he
+stood shading his eyes.
+
+"Only me, sir," answered Nance.
+
+"O, you, Miss Nance," he said. "Well, come in quick, my pretty. My lord
+is waiting for your uncle."
+
+And he ushered Nance into a room cased with yellow wainscot and lighted
+by tall candles, where two gentlemen sat at a table finishing a bowl of
+punch. One of these was stout, elderly, and irascible, with a face like
+a full moon, well dyed with liquor, thick tremulous lips, a short,
+purple hand, in which he brandished a long pipe, and an abrupt and
+gobbling utterance. This was my Lord Windermoor. In his companion Nance
+beheld a younger man, tall, quiet, grave, demurely dressed, and wearing
+his own hair. Her glance but lighted on him, and she flushed, for in
+that second she made sure that she had twice betrayed herself--betrayed
+by the involuntary flash of her black eyes her secret impatience to
+behold this new companion, and, what was far worse, betrayed her
+disappointment in the realisation of her dreams. He, meanwhile, as if
+unconscious, continued to regard her with unmoved decorum.
+
+"O, a man of wood," thought Nance.
+
+"What--what?" said his lordship. "Who is this?"
+
+"If you please, my lord, I am Holdaway's niece," replied Nance, with a
+curtsey.
+
+"Should have been here himself," observed his lordship. "Well, you tell
+Holdaway that I'm aground, not a stiver--not a stiver. I'm running from
+the beagles--going abroad, tell Holdaway. And he need look for no more
+wages: glad of 'em myself, if I could get 'em. He can live in the castle
+if he likes, or go to the devil. O, and here is Mr. Archer; and I
+recommend him to take him in--a friend of mine--and Mr. Archer will pay,
+as I wrote. And I regard that in the light of a precious good thing for
+Holdaway, let me tell you, and a set-off against the wages."
+
+"But O, my lord!" cried Nance, "we live upon the wages, and what are we
+to do without?"
+
+"What am I to do?--what am I to do?" replied Lord Windermoor with some
+exasperation. "I have no wages. And there is Mr. Archer. And if Holdaway
+doesn't like it, he can go to the devil, and you with him!--and you with
+him!"
+
+"And yet, my lord," said Mr. Archer, "these good people will have as
+keen a sense of loss as you or I; keener, perhaps, since they have done
+nothing to deserve it."
+
+"Deserve it?" cried the peer. "What? What? If a rascally highwayman
+comes up to me with a confounded pistol, do you say that I've deserved
+it? How often am I to tell you, sir, that I was cheated--that I was
+cheated?"
+
+"You are happy in the belief," returned Mr. Archer gravely.
+
+"Archer, you would be the death of me!" exclaimed his lordship. "You
+know you're drunk; you know it, sir; and yet you can't get up a spark of
+animation."
+
+"I have drunk fair, my lord," replied the younger man; "but I own I am
+conscious of no exhilaration."
+
+"If you had as black a look-out as me, sir," cried the peer, "you would
+be very glad of a little innocent exhilaration, let me tell you. I am
+glad of it--glad of it, and I only wish I was drunker. For let me tell
+you it's a cruel hard thing upon a man of my time of life and my
+position, to be brought down to beggary because the world is full of
+thieves and rascals--thieves and rascals. What? For all I know, you may
+be a thief and a rascal yourself; and I would fight you for a pinch of
+snuff--a pinch of snuff," exclaimed his lordship.
+
+Here Mr. Archer turned to Nance Holdaway with a pleasant smile, so full
+of sweetness, kindness, and composure that, at one bound, her dreams
+returned to her. "My good Miss Holdaway," said he, "if you are willing
+to show me the road, I am even eager to be gone. As for his lordship
+and myself, compose yourself; there is no fear; this is his lordship's
+way."
+
+"What? what?" cried his lordship. "My way? Ish no such a thing, my way."
+
+"Come, my lord," cried Archer; "you and I very thoroughly understand
+each other; and let me suggest, it is time that both of us were gone.
+The mail will soon be due. Here, then, my lord, I take my leave of you,
+with the most earnest assurance of my gratitude for the past, and a
+sincere offer of any services I may be able to render in the future."
+
+"Archer," exclaimed Lord Windermoor, "I love you like a son. Le' 's have
+another bowl."
+
+"My lord, for both our sakes, you will excuse me," replied Mr. Archer.
+"We both require caution; we must both, for some while at least, avoid
+the chance of a pursuit."
+
+"Archer," quoth his lordship, "this is a rank ingratishood. What? I'm to
+go firing away in the dark in the cold po'chaise, and not so much as a
+game of écarté possible, unless I stop and play with the postillion, the
+postillion; and the whole country swarming with thieves and rascals and
+highwaymen."
+
+"I beg your lordship's pardon," put in the landlord, who now appeared in
+the doorway to announce the chaise, "but this part of the North Road is
+known for safety. There has not been a robbery, to call a robbery, this
+five years' time. Further south, of course, it's nearer London, and
+another story," he added.
+
+"Well, then, if that's so," concluded my lord, "le' 's have t' other
+bowl and a pack of cards."
+
+"My lord, you forget," said Archer, "I might still gain; but it is
+hardly possible for me to lose."
+
+"Think I'm a sharper?" inquired the peer. "Gen'leman's parole's all I
+ask."
+
+But Mr. Archer was proof against these blandishments, and said farewell
+gravely enough to Lord Windermoor, shaking his hand and at the same
+time bowing very low. "You will never know," says he, "the service you
+have done me." And with that, and before my lord had finally taken up
+his meaning, he had slipped about the table, touched Nance lightly but
+imperiously on the arm, and left the room. In face of the outbreak of
+his lordship's lamentations she made haste to follow the truant.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+IN WHICH MR. ARCHER IS INSTALLED
+
+
+The chaise had been driven round to the front door; the courtyard lay
+all deserted, and only lit by a lantern set upon a window-sill. Through
+this Nance rapidly led the way, and began to ascend the swellings of the
+moor with a heart that somewhat fluttered in her bosom. She was not
+afraid, but in the course of these last passages with Lord Windermoor
+Mr. Archer had ascended to that pedestal on which her fancy waited to
+instal him. The reality, she felt, excelled her dreams, and this cold
+night walk was the first romantic incident in her experience.
+
+It was the rule in these days to see gentlemen unsteady after dinner,
+yet Nance was both surprised and amused when her companion, who had
+spoken so soberly, began to stumble and waver by her side with the most
+airy divagations. Sometimes he would get so close to her that she must
+edge away; and at others lurch clear out of the track and plough among
+deep heather. His courtesy and gravity meanwhile remained unaltered. He
+asked her how far they had to go; whether the way lay all upon the
+moorland, and when he learned they had to pass a wood expressed his
+pleasure. "For," said he, "I am passionately fond of trees. Trees and
+fair lawns, if you consider of it rightly, are the ornaments of nature,
+as palaces and fine approaches----" And here he stumbled into a patch of
+slough and nearly fell. The girl had hard work not to laugh, but at
+heart she was lost in admiration for one who talked so elegantly.
+
+They had got to about a quarter of a mile from the
+
+"Green Dragon," and were near the summit of the rise, when a sudden rush
+of wheels arrested them. Turning and looking back, they saw the
+post-house, now much declined in brightness; and speeding away northward
+the two tremulous bright dots of my Lord Windermoor's chaise-lamps. Mr.
+Archer followed these yellow and unsteady stars until they dwindled into
+points and disappeared.
+
+"There goes my only friend," he said. "Death has cut off those that
+loved me, and change of fortune estranged my flatterers; and but for
+you, poor bankrupt, my life is as lonely as this moor."
+
+The tone of his voice affected both of them. They stood there on the
+side of the moor, and became thrillingly conscious of the void waste of
+the night, without a feature for the eye, and except for the fainting
+whisper of the carriage-wheels without a murmur for the ear. And
+instantly, like a mockery, there broke out, very far away, but clear and
+jolly, the note of the mail-guard's horn. "Over the hills" was his air.
+It rose to the two watchers on the moor with the most cheerful sentiment
+of human company and travel, and at the same time in and around the
+"Green Dragon" it woke up a great bustle of lights running to and fro
+and clattering hoofs. Presently after, out of the darkness to southward,
+the mail grew near with a growing rumble. Its lamps were very large and
+bright, and threw their radiance forward in overlapping cones; the four
+cantering horses swarmed and steamed; the body of the coach followed
+like a great shadow; and this lit picture slid with a sort of
+ineffectual swiftness over the black field of night, and was eclipsed by
+the buildings of the "Green Dragon."
+
+Mr. Archer turned abruptly and resumed his former walk; only that he was
+now more steady, kept better alongside his young conductor, and had
+fallen into a silence broken by sighs. Nance waxed very pitiful over his
+fate, contrasting an imaginary past of courts and great society, and
+perhaps the King himself, with the tumbledown ruin in a wood to which
+she was now conducting him.
+
+"You must try, sir, to keep your spirits up," said she. "To be sure this
+is a great change for one like you; but who knows the future?"
+
+Mr. Archer turned towards her in the darkness, and she could clearly
+perceive that he smiled upon her very kindly. "There spoke a sweet
+nature," said he, "and I must thank you for these words. But I would not
+have you fancy that I regret the past for any happiness found in it, or
+that I fear the simplicity and hardship of the country. I am a man that
+has been much tossed about in life; now up, now down; and do you think
+that I shall not be able to support what you support--you who are kind,
+and therefore know how to feel pain; who are beautiful, and therefore
+hope; who are young, and therefore (or am I the more mistaken?)
+discontented?"
+
+"Nay, sir, not that, at least," said Nance; "not discontented. If I were
+to be discontented, how should I look those that have real sorrows in
+the face? I have faults enough, but not that fault; and I have my merits
+too, for I have a good opinion of myself. But for beauty, I am not so
+simple but that I can tell a banter from a compliment."
+
+"Nay, nay," said Mr. Archer, "I had half forgotten; grief is selfish,
+and I was thinking of myself and not of you, or I had never blurted out
+so bold a piece of praise. 'Tis the best proof of my sincerity. But
+come, now, I would lay a wager you are no coward?"
+
+"Indeed, sir, I am not more afraid than another," said Nance. "None of
+my blood are given to fear."
+
+"And you are honest?" he returned.
+
+"I will answer for that," said she.
+
+"Well, then, to be brave, to be honest, to be kind, and to be contented,
+since you say you are so--is not that to fill up a great part of
+virtue?"
+
+"I fear you are but a flatterer," said Nance, but she did not say it
+clearly, for what with bewilderment and satisfaction, her heart was
+quite oppressed.
+
+There could be no harm, certainly, in these grave compliments; but yet
+they charmed and frightened her, and to find favour, for reasons however
+obscure, in the eyes of this elegant, serious, and most unfortunate
+young gentleman, was a giddy elevation, was almost an apotheosis, for a
+country maid.
+
+But she was to be no more exercised; for Mr. Archer, disclaiming any
+thought of flattery, turned off to other subjects, and held her all
+through the wood in conversation, addressing her with an air of perfect
+sincerity, and listening to her answers with every mark of interest. Had
+open flattery continued, Nance would have soon found refuge in good
+sense; but the more subtle lure she could not suspect, much less avoid.
+It was the first time she had ever taken part in a conversation
+illuminated by any ideas. All was then true that she had heard and
+dreamed of gentlemen; they were a race apart, like deities knowing good
+and evil. And then there burst upon her soul a divine thought, hope's
+glorious sunrise: since she could understand, since it seemed that she
+too, even she, could interest this sorrowful Apollo, might she not
+learn? or was she not learning? Would not her soul awake and put forth
+wings? Was she not, in fact, an enchanted princess, waiting but a touch
+to become royal? She saw herself transformed, radiantly attired, but in
+the most exquisite taste: her face grown longer and more refined; her
+tint etherealised; and she heard herself with delighted wonder talking
+like a book.
+
+Meanwhile they had arrived at where the track comes out above the river
+dell, and saw in front of them the castle, faintly shadowed on the
+night, covering with its broken battlements a bold projection of the
+bank, and showing at the extreme end, where were the habitable tower and
+wing, some crevices of candle-light. Hence she called loudly upon her
+uncle, and he was seen to issue, lantern in hand, from the tower door,
+and, where the ruins did not intervene, to pick his way over the swarded
+courtyard, avoiding treacherous cellars and winding among blocks of
+fallen masonry. The arch of the great gate was still entire, flanked by
+two tottering bastions, and it was here that Jonathan met them, standing
+at the edge of the bridge, bent somewhat forward, and blinking at them
+through the glow of his own lantern. Mr. Archer greeted him with
+civility; but the old man was in no humour of compliance. He guided the
+new-comer across the courtyard, looking sharply and quickly in his face,
+and grumbling all the time about the cold, and the discomfort and
+dilapidation of the castle. He was sure he hoped that Mr. Archer would
+like it; but in truth he could not think what brought him there.
+Doubtless he had a good reason--this with a look of cunning
+scrutiny--but, indeed, the place was quite unfit for any person of
+repute; he himself was eaten up with the rheumatics. It was the most
+rheumaticky place in England, and some fine day the whole habitable part
+(to call it habitable) would fetch away bodily and go down the slope
+into the river. He had seen the cracks widening; there was a plaguy
+issue in the bank below; he thought a spring was mining it; it might be
+to-morrow, it might be next day; but they were all sure of a come-down
+sooner or later. "And that is a poor death," said he, "for any one, let
+alone a gentleman, to have a whole old ruin dumped upon his belly. Have
+a care to your left there; these cellar vaults have all broke down, and
+the grass and hemlock hide 'em. Well, sir, here is welcome to you, such
+as it is, and wishing you well away."
+
+And with that Jonathan ushered his guest through the tower door, and
+down three steps on the left hand into the kitchen or common room of the
+castle. It was a huge, low room, as large as a meadow, occupying the
+whole width of the habitable wing, with six barred windows looking on
+the court, and two into the river valley. A dresser, a table, and a few
+chairs stood dotted here and there upon the uneven flags. Under the
+great chimney a good fire burned in an iron fire-basket; a high old
+settee, rudely carved with figures and Gothic lettering, flanked it on
+either side; there was a hinge table and a stone bench in the chimney
+corner, and above the arch hung guns, axes, lanterns, and great sheaves
+of rusty keys.
+
+Jonathan looked about him, holding up the lantern, and shrugged his
+shoulders, with a pitying grimace. "Here it is," he said. "See the damp
+on the floor, look at the moss; where there's moss you may be sure that
+it's rheumaticky. Try and get near that fire for to warm yourself; it'll
+blow the coat off your back. And with a young gentleman with a face like
+yours, as pale as a tallow-candle, I'd be afeard of a churchyard cough
+and a galloping decline," says Jonathan, naming the maladies with gloomy
+gusto, "or the cold might strike and turn your blood," he added.
+
+Mr. Archer fairly laughed. "My good Mr. Holdaway," said he, "I was born
+with that same tallow-candle face, and the only fear that you inspire me
+with is the fear that I intrude unwelcomely upon your private hours. But
+I think I can promise you that I am very little troublesome, and I am
+inclined to hope that the terms which I can offer may still pay you the
+derangement."
+
+"Yes, the terms," said Jonathan, "I was thinking of that. As you say,
+they are very small," and he shook his head.
+
+"Unhappily, I can afford no more," said Mr. Archer. "But this we have
+arranged already," he added with a certain stiffness; "and as I am aware
+that Miss Holdaway has matter to communicate, I will, if you permit,
+retire at once. To-night I must bivouac; to-morrow my trunk is to follow
+from the 'Dragon.' So if you will show me to my room I shall wish you a
+good slumber and a better awakening."
+
+Jonathan silently gave the lantern to Nance, and she, turning and
+curtseying in the doorway, proceeded to conduct their guest up the broad
+winding staircase of the tower. He followed with a very brooding face.
+
+"Alas!" cried Nance, as she entered the room, "your fire black out,"
+and, setting down the lantern, she clapped upon her knees before the
+chimney and began to rearrange the charred and still smouldering
+remains. Mr. Archer looked about the gaunt apartment with a sort of
+shudder. The great height, the bare stone, the shattered windows, the
+aspect of the uncurtained bed, with one of its four fluted columns
+broken short, all struck a chill upon his fancy. From this dismal survey
+his eyes returned to Nance crouching before the fire, the candle in one
+hand and artfully puffing at the embers; the flames as they broke forth
+played upon the soft outline of her cheek--she was alive and young,
+coloured with the bright hues of life, and a woman. He looked upon her,
+softening; and then sat down and continued to admire the picture.
+
+"There, sir," said she, getting upon her feet, "your fire is doing
+bravely now. Good-night."
+
+He rose and held out his hand. "Come," said he, "you are my only friend
+in these parts, and you must shake hands."
+
+She brushed her hand upon her skirt and offered it, blushing.
+
+"God bless you, my dear," said he.
+
+And then, when he was alone, he opened one of the windows, and stared
+down into the dark valley. A gentle wimpling of the river among stones
+ascended to his ear; the trees upon the other bank stood very black
+against the sky; farther away an owl was hooting. It was dreary and
+cold, and as he turned back to the hearth and the fine glow of fire,
+"Heavens!" said he to himself, "what an unfortunate destiny is mine!"
+
+He went to bed, but sleep only visited his pillow in uneasy snatches.
+Outbreaks of loud speech came up the staircase; he heard the old stones
+of the castle crack in the frosty night with sharp reverberations, and
+the bed complained under his tossings. Lastly, far on into the morning,
+he awakened from a doze to hear, very far off, in the extreme and
+breathless quiet, a wailing flourish on the horn. The down mail was
+drawing near to the "Green Dragon." He sat up in bed; the sound was
+tragical by distance, and the modulation appealed to his ear like human
+speech. It seemed to call upon him with a dreary insistence--to call him
+far away, to address him personally, and to have a meaning that he
+failed to seize. It was thus, at least, in this nodding castle, in a
+cold, miry woodland, and so far from men and society, that the traffic
+on the Great North Road spoke to him in the intervals of slumber.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+JONATHAN HOLDAWAY
+
+
+Nance descended the tower stair, pausing at every step. She was in no
+hurry to confront her uncle with bad news, and she must dwell a little
+longer on the rich note of Mr. Archer's voice, the charm of his kind
+words, and the beauty of his manner and person. But, once at the
+stair-foot, she threw aside the spell and recovered her sensible and
+workaday self.
+
+Jonathan was seated in the middle of the settle, a mug of ale beside
+him, in the attitude of one prepared for trouble; but he did not speak,
+and suffered her to fetch her supper and eat of it, with a very
+excellent appetite, in silence. When she had done, she, too, drew a
+tankard of home-brewed, and came and planted herself in front of him
+upon the settle.
+
+"Well?" said Jonathan.
+
+"My lord has run away," said Nance.
+
+"What?" cried the old man.
+
+"Abroad," she continued; "run away from creditors. He said he had not a
+stiver, but he was drunk enough. He said you might live on in the
+castle, and Mr. Archer would pay you; but you was to look for no more
+wages, since he would be glad of them himself."
+
+Jonathan's face contracted; the flush of a black, bilious anger mounted
+to the roots of his hair; he gave an inarticulate cry, leapt upon his
+feet, and began rapidly pacing the stone floor. At first he kept his
+hands behind his back in a tight knot; then he began to gesticulate as
+he turned.
+
+"This man--this lord," he shouted, "who is he? He was born with a gold
+spoon in his mouth, and I with a dirty straw. He rolled in his coach
+when he was a baby. I have dug and toiled and laboured since I was that
+high--that high." And he shouted again. "I'm bent and broke, and full of
+pains. D'ye think I don't know the taste of sweat? Many's the gallon
+I've drunk of it--ay, in the midwinter, toiling like a slave. All
+through, what has my life been? Bend, bend, bend my old creaking back
+till it would ache like breaking; wade about in the foul mire, never a
+dry stitch; empty belly, sore hands, hat off to my Lord Redface; kicks
+and ha'pence; and now, here, at the hind end, when I'm worn to my poor
+bones, a kick and done with it." He walked a little while in silence,
+and then, extending his hand, "Now, you Nance Holdaway," says he, "you
+come of my blood, and you're a good girl. When that man was a boy, I
+used to carry his gun for him. I carried the gun all day on my two feet,
+and many a stitch I had, and chewed a bullet for. He rode upon a horse,
+with feathers in his hat; but it was him that had the shots and took the
+game home. Did I complain? Not I. I knew my station. What did I ask, but
+just the chance to live and die honest? Nance Holdaway, don't let them
+deny it to me--don't let them do it. I've been as poor as Job, and as
+honest as the day, but now, my girl, you mark these words of mine, I'm
+getting tired of it."
+
+"I wouldn't say such words, at least," said Nance.
+
+"You wouldn't?" said the old man grimly. "Well, and did I when I was
+your age? Wait till your back's broke and your hands tremble, and your
+eyes fail, and you're weary of the battle and ask no more but to lie
+down in your bed and give the ghost up like an honest man; and then let
+there up and come some insolent, ungodly fellow--ah! if I had him in
+these hands! 'Where's my money that you gambled?' I should say. 'Where's
+my money that you drank and diced?' 'Thief!' is what I would say;
+'Thief!'" he roared, "'Thief!'"
+
+"Mr. Archer will hear you if you don't take care," said Nance, "and I
+would be ashamed, for one, that he should hear a brave, old, honest,
+hard-working man like Jonathan Holdaway talk nonsense like a boy."
+
+"D'ye think I mind for Mr. Archer?" he cried shrilly, with a clack of
+laughter; and then he came close up to her, stooped down with his two
+palms upon his knees, and looked her in the eyes, with a strange hard
+expression, something like a smile. "Do I mind for God, my girl?" he
+said; "that's what it's come to be now, do I mind for God?"
+
+"Uncle Jonathan," she said, getting up and taking him by the arm; "you
+sit down again, where you were sitting. There, sit still; I'll have no
+more of this; you'll do yourself a mischief. Come, take a drink of this
+good ale, and I'll warm a tankard for you. La, we'll pull through,
+you'll see. I'm young, as you say, and it's my turn to carry the bundle;
+and don't you worry your bile, or we'll have sickness, too, as well as
+sorrow."
+
+"D'ye think that I'd forgotten you?" said Jonathan, with something like
+a groan; and thereupon his teeth clicked to, and he sat silent with the
+tankard in his hand and staring straight before him.
+
+"Why," says Nance, setting on the ale to mull, "men are always children,
+they say, however old; and if ever I heard a thing like this, to set to
+and make yourself sick, just when the money's failing. Keep a good heart
+up; you haven't kept a good heart these seventy years, nigh hand, to
+break down about a pound or two. Here's this Mr. Archer come to lodge,
+that you disliked so much. Well, now you see it was a clear Providence.
+Come, let's think upon our mercies. And here is the ale mulling lovely;
+smell of it; I'll take a drop myself, it smells so sweet. And, Uncle
+Jonathan, you let me say one word. You've lost more than money before
+now; you lost my aunt, and bore it like a man. Bear this."
+
+His face once more contracted; his fist doubled, and shot forth into the
+air, and trembled. "Let them look out!" he shouted. "Here, I warn all
+men; I've done with this foul kennel of knaves. Let them look out!"
+
+"Hush, hush! for pity's sake," cried Nance.
+
+And then all of a sudden he dropped his face into his hands, and broke
+out with a great hiccoughing dry sob that was horrible to hear. "O," he
+cried, "my God, if my son hadn't left me, if my Dick was here!" and the
+sobs shook him; Nance sitting still and watching him, with distress. "O,
+if he were here to help his father!" he went on again. "If I had a son
+like other fathers, he would save me now, when all is breaking down; O,
+he would save me! Ay, but where is he? Raking taverns, a thief perhaps.
+My curse be on him!" he added, rising again into wrath.
+
+"Hush!" cried Nance, springing to her feet: "your boy, your dead wife's
+boy--Aunt Susan's baby that she loved--would you curse him? O, God
+forbid!"
+
+The energy of her address surprised him from his mood. He looked upon
+her, tearless and confused. "Let me go to my bed," he said at last, and
+he rose, and, shaking as with ague, but quite silent, lighted his
+candle, and left the kitchen.
+
+Poor Nance! the pleasant current of her dreams was all diverted. She
+beheld a golden city, where she aspired to dwell; she had spoken with a
+deity, and had told herself that she might rise to be his equal; and now
+the earthly ligaments that bound her down had been tightened. She was
+like a tree looking skyward, her roots were in the ground. It seemed to
+her a thing so coarse, so rustic, to be thus concerned about a loss in
+money; when Mr. Archer, fallen from the sky-level of counts and nobles,
+faced his changed destiny with so immovable a courage. To weary of
+honesty; that, at least, no one could do, but even to name it was
+already a disgrace; and she beheld in fancy her uncle, and the young
+lad, all laced and feathered, hand upon hip, bestriding his small horse.
+The opposition seemed to perpetuate itself from generation to
+generation; one side still doomed to the clumsy and the servile, the
+other born to beauty.
+
+She thought of the golden zones in which gentlemen were bred, and
+figured with so excellent a grace; zones in which wisdom and smooth
+words, white linen and slim hands, were the mark of the desired
+inhabitants; where low temptations were unknown, and honesty no virtue,
+but a thing as natural as breathing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+MINGLING THREADS
+
+
+It was nearly seven before Mr. Archer left his apartment. On the landing
+he found another door beside his own opening on a roofless corridor, and
+presently he was walking on the top of the ruins. On one hand he could
+look down a good depth into the green courtyard; on the other his eye
+roved along the downward course of the river, the wet woods all smoking,
+the shadows long and blue, the mists golden and rosy in the sun, here
+and there the water flashing across an obstacle. His heart expanded and
+softened to a grateful melancholy, and with his eye fixed upon the
+distance, and no thought of present danger, he continued to stroll along
+the elevated and treacherous promenade.
+
+A terror-stricken cry rose to him from the courtyard. He looked down,
+and saw in a glimpse Nance standing below with hands clasped in horror
+and his own foot trembling on the margin of a gulf. He recoiled and
+leant against a pillar, quaking from head to foot, and covering his face
+with his hands; and Nance had time to run round by the stair and rejoin
+him where he stood before he had changed a line of his position.
+
+"Ah!" he cried, and clutched her wrist; "don't leave me. The place
+rocks; I have no head for altitudes."
+
+"Sit down against that pillar," said Nance. "Don't you be afraid; I
+won't leave you, and don't look up or down: look straight at me. How
+white you are!"
+
+"The gulf," he said, and closed his eyes again and shuddered.
+
+"Why," said Nance, "what a poor climber you must be! That was where my
+cousin Dick used to get out of the castle after Uncle Jonathan had shut
+the gate. I've been down there myself with him helping me. I wouldn't
+try with you," she said, and laughed merrily.
+
+The sound of her laughter was sincere and musical, and perhaps its
+beauty barbed the offence to Mr. Archer. The blood came into his face
+with a quick jet, and then left it paler than before. "It is a physical
+weakness," he said harshly, "and very droll, no doubt, but one that I
+can conquer on necessity. See, I am still shaking. Well, I advance to
+the battlements and look down. Show me your cousin's path."
+
+"He would go sure-foot along that little ledge," said Nance, pointing as
+she spoke; "then out through the breach and down by yonder buttress. It
+is easier coming back, of course, because you see where you are going.
+From the buttress foot a sheep-walk goes along the scarp--see, you can
+follow it from here in the dry grass. And now, sir," she added, with a
+touch of womanly pity, "I would come away from here if I were you, for
+indeed you are not fit."
+
+Sure enough Mr. Archer's pallor and agitation had continued to increase;
+his cheeks were deathly, his clenched fingers trembled pitifully. "The
+weakness is physical," he sighed, and had nearly fallen. Nance led him
+from the spot, and he was no sooner back in the tower-stair, than he
+fell heavily against the wall and put his arm across his eyes. A cup of
+brandy had to be brought him before he could descend to breakfast; and
+the perfection of Nance's dream was for the first time troubled.
+
+Jonathan was waiting for them at table, with yellow, blood-shot eyes and
+a peculiar dusky complexion. He hardly waited till they found their
+seats, before, raising one hand, and stooping with his mouth above his
+plate, he put up a prayer for a blessing on the food and a spirit of
+gratitude in the eaters, and thereupon, and without more civility, fell
+to. But it was notable that he was no less speedily satisfied than he
+had been greedy to begin. He pushed his plate away and drummed upon the
+table.
+
+"These are silly prayers," said he, "that they teach us. Eat and be
+thankful, that's no such wonder. Speak to me of starving--there's the
+touch. You're a man, they tell me, Mr. Archer, that has met with some
+reverses?"
+
+"I have met with many," replied Mr. Archer.
+
+"Ha!" said Jonathan. "None reckons but the last. Now, see; I tried to
+make this girl here understand me."
+
+"Uncle," said Nance, "what should Mr. Archer care for your concerns? He
+hath troubles of his own, and came to be at peace, I think."
+
+"I tried to make her understand me," repeated Jonathan doggedly; "and
+now I'll try you. Do you think this world is fair?"
+
+"Fair and false!" quoth Mr. Archer.
+
+The old man laughed immoderately. "Good," said he, "very good, but what
+I mean is this: do you know what it is to get up early and go to bed
+late, and never take so much as a holiday but four: and one of these
+your own marriage day, and the other three the funerals of folk you
+loved, and all that, to have a quiet old age in shelter, and bread for
+your old belly, and a bed to lay your crazy bones upon, with a clear
+conscience?"
+
+"Sir," said Mr. Archer with an inclination of his head, "you portray a
+very brave existence."
+
+"Well," continued Jonathan, "and in the end thieves deceive you, thieves
+rob and rook you, thieves turn you out in your old age and send you
+begging. What have you got for all your honesty? A fine return! You that
+might have stole scores of pounds, there you are out in the rain with
+your rheumatics!"
+
+Mr. Archer had forgotten to eat; with his hand upon his chin he was
+studying the old man's countenance. "And you conclude?" he asked.
+
+"Conclude!" cried Jonathan. "I conclude I'll be upsides with them."
+
+"Ay," said the other, "we are all tempted to revenge."
+
+"You have lost money?" asked Jonathan.
+
+"A great estate," said Archer quietly.
+
+"See now!" says Jonathan, "and where is it?"
+
+"Nay, I sometimes think that every one has had his share of it but me,"
+was the reply. "All England hath paid his taxes with my patrimony: I was
+a sheep that left my wool on every briar."
+
+"And you sit down under that?" cried the old man. "Come now, Mr. Archer,
+you and me belong to different stations; and I know mine--no man
+better,--but since we have both been rooked, and are both sore with it,
+why, here's my hand with a very good heart, and I ask for yours, and no
+offence, I hope."
+
+"There is surely no offence, my friend," returned Mr. Archer, as they
+shook hands across the table; "for, believe me, my sympathies are quite
+acquired to you. This life is an arena where we fight with beasts; and,
+indeed," he added, sighing, "I sometimes marvel why we go down to it
+unarmed."
+
+In the meanwhile a creaking of ungreased axles had been heard descending
+through the wood; and presently after, the door opened, and the tall
+ostler entered the kitchen carrying one end of Mr. Archer's trunk. The
+other was carried by an aged beggar man of that district, known and
+welcome for some twenty miles about under the name of "Old Cumberland."
+Each was soon perched upon a settle, with a cup of ale; and the ostler,
+who valued himself upon his affability, began to entertain the company,
+still with half an eye on Nance, to whom in gallant terms he expressly
+dedicated every sip of ale. First he told of the trouble they had to get
+his Lordship started in the chaise; and how he had dropped a rouleau of
+gold on the threshold, and the passage and doorstep had been strewn with
+guinea-pieces. At this old Jonathan looked at Mr. Archer. Next the
+visitor turned to news of a more thrilling character: how the down mail
+had been stopped again near Grantham by three men on horseback--a white
+and two bays; how they had handkerchiefs on their faces; how Tom the
+guard's blunderbuss missed fire, but he swore he had winged one of them
+with a pistol; and how they had got clean away with seventy pounds in
+money, some valuable papers, and a watch or two.
+
+"Brave! brave!" cried Jonathan in ecstasy. "Seventy pounds! O, it's
+brave!"
+
+"Well, I don't see the great bravery," observed the ostler,
+misapprehending him. "Three men, and you may call that three to one.
+I'll call it brave when some one stops the mail single-handed; that's a
+risk."
+
+"And why should they hesitate?" inquired Mr. Archer. "The poor souls who
+are fallen to such a way of life, pray what have they to lose? If they
+get the money, well; but if a ball should put them from their troubles,
+why, so better."
+
+"Well, sir," said the ostler, "I believe you'll find they won't agree
+with you. They count on a good fling, you see; or who would risk
+it?--And here's my best respects to you, Miss Nance."
+
+"And I forgot the part of cowardice," resumed Mr. Archer. "All men
+fear."
+
+"O, surely not!" cried Nance.
+
+"All men," reiterated Mr. Archer.
+
+"Ay, that's a true word," observed Old Cumberland, "and a thief, anyway,
+for it's a coward's trade."
+
+"But these fellows, now," said Jonathan, with a curious, appealing
+manner--"these fellows with their seventy pounds! Perhaps, Mr. Archer,
+they were no true thieves after all, but just people who had been robbed
+and tried to get their own again. What was that you said, about all
+England and the taxes? One takes, another gives; why, that's almost
+fair. If I've been rooked and robbed, and the coat taken off my back, I
+call it almost fair to take another's."
+
+"Ask Old Cumberland," observed the ostler; "you ask Old Cumberland, Miss
+Nance!" and he bestowed a wink upon his favoured fair one.
+
+"Why that?" asked Jonathan.
+
+"He had his coat taken--ay, and his shirt too," returned the ostler.
+
+"Is that so?" cried Jonathan eagerly. "Was you robbed too?"
+
+"That was I," replied Cumberland, "with a warrant! I was a well-to-do
+man when I was young."
+
+"Ay! See that!" says Jonathan. "And you don't long for a revenge?"
+
+"Eh! Not me!" answered the beggar. "It's too long ago. But if you'll
+give me another mug of your good ale, my pretty lady, I won't say no to
+that."
+
+"And shalt have! And shalt have!" cried Jonathan. "Or brandy even, if
+you like it better."
+
+And as Cumberland did like it better, and the ostler chimed in, the
+party pledged each other in a dram of brandy before separating.
+
+As for Nance, she slipped forth into the ruins, partly to avoid the
+ostler's gallantries, partly to lament over the defects of Mr. Archer.
+Plainly, he was no hero. She pitied him; she began to feel a protecting
+interest mingle with and almost supersede her admiration, and was at the
+same time disappointed and yet drawn to him. She was, indeed, conscious
+of such unshaken fortitude in her own heart, that she was almost tempted
+by an occasion to be bold for two. She saw herself, in a brave attitude,
+shielding her imperfect hero from the world; and she saw, like a piece
+of heaven, his gratitude for her protection.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+LIFE IN THE CASTLE
+
+
+From that day forth the life of these three persons in the ruin ran very
+smoothly. Mr. Archer now sat by the fire with a book, and now passed
+whole days abroad, returning late, dead weary. His manner was a mask;
+but it was half transparent; through the even tenor of his gravity and
+courtesy profound revolutions of feeling were betrayed, seasons of numb
+despair, of restlessness, of aching temper. For days he would say
+nothing beyond his usual courtesies and solemn compliments; and then,
+all of a sudden, some fine evening beside the kitchen fire, he would
+fall into a vein of elegant gossip, tell of strange and interesting
+events, the secrets of families, brave deeds of war, the miraculous
+discovery of crime, the visitations of the dead. Nance and her uncle
+would sit till the small hours with eyes wide open: Jonathan applauding
+the unexpected incidents with many a slap of his big hand; Nance,
+perhaps, more pleased with the narrator's eloquence and wise
+reflections; and then, again, days would follow of abstraction, of
+listless humming, of frequent apologies and long hours of silence. Once
+only, and then after a week of unrelieved melancholy, he went over to
+the "Green Dragon," spent the afternoon with the landlord and a bowl of
+punch, and returned as on the first night, devious in step but courteous
+and unperturbed of speech.
+
+If he seemed more natural and more at his ease it was when he found
+Nance alone; and, laying by some of his reserve, talked before her
+rather than to her of his destiny, character, and hopes. To Nance these
+interviews were but a doubtful privilege. At times he would seem to
+take a pleasure in her presence, to consult her gravely, to hear and to
+discuss her counsels; at times even, but these were rare and brief, he
+would talk of herself, praise the qualities that she possessed, touch
+indulgently on her defects, and lend her books to read and even examine
+her upon her reading; but far more often he would fall into a half
+unconsciousness, put her a question and then answer it himself, drop
+into the veiled tone of voice of one soliloquising, and leave her at
+last as though he had forgotten her existence. It was odd, too, that in
+all this random converse, not a fact of his past life, and scarce a
+name, should ever cross his lips. A profound reserve kept watch upon his
+most unguarded moments. He spoke continually of himself, indeed, but
+still in enigmas; a veiled prophet of egoism.
+
+The base of Nance's feelings for Mr. Archer was admiration as for a
+superior being; and with this, his treatment, consciously or not,
+accorded happily. When he forgot her, she took the blame upon herself.
+His formal politeness was so exquisite that this essential brutality
+stood excused. His compliments, besides, were always grave and rational;
+he would offer reason for his praise, convict her of merit, and thus
+disarm suspicion. Nay, and the very hours when he forgot and remembered
+her alternately could by the ardent fallacies of youth be read in the
+light of an attention. She might be far from his confidence; but still
+she was nearer it than any one. He might ignore her presence, but yet he
+sought it.
+
+Moreover, she, upon her side, was conscious of one point of superiority.
+Beside this rather dismal, rather effeminate man, who recoiled from a
+worm, who grew giddy on the castle wall, who bore so helplessly the
+weight of his misfortunes, she felt herself a head and shoulders taller
+in cheerful and sterling courage. She could walk head in air along the
+most precarious rafter; her hand feared neither the grossness nor the
+harshness of life's web, but was thrust cheerfully, if need were, into
+the briar bush, and could take hold of any crawling horror. Ruin was
+mining the walls of her cottage, as already it had mined and subverted
+Mr. Archer's palace. Well, she faced it with a bright countenance and a
+busy hand. She had got some washing, some rough seamstress work from the
+"Green Dragon," and from another neighbour ten miles away across the
+moor. At this she cheerfully laboured, and from that height she could
+afford to pity the useless talents and poor attitude of Mr. Archer. It
+did not change her admiration, but it made it bearable. He was above her
+in all ways; but she was above him in one. She kept it to herself, and
+hugged it. When, like all young creatures, she made long stories to
+justify, to nourish, and to forecast the course of her affection, it was
+this private superiority that made all rosy, that cut the knot, and
+that, at last, in some great situation, fetched to her knees the
+dazzling but imperfect hero. With this pretty exercise she beguiled the
+hours of labour, and consoled herself for Mr. Archer's bearing. Pity was
+her weapon and her weakness. To accept the loved one's faults, although
+it has an air of freedom, is to kiss the chain, and this pity it was
+which, lying nearer to her heart, lent the one element of true emotion
+to a fanciful and merely brain-sick love.
+
+Thus it fell out one day that she had gone to the "Green Dragon" and
+brought back thence a letter to Mr. Archer. He, upon seeing it, winced
+like a man under the knife: pain, shame, sorrow, and the most trenchant
+edge of mortification cut into his heart and wrung the steady composure
+of his face.
+
+"Dear heart! have you bad news?" she cried.
+
+But he only replied by a gesture and fled to his room, and when, later
+on, she ventured to refer to it, he stopped her on the threshold, as if
+with words prepared beforehand. "There are some pains," said he, "too
+acute for consolation, or I would bring them to my kind consoler. Let
+the memory of that letter, if you please, be buried." And then as she
+continued to gaze at him, being, in spite of herself, pained by his
+elaborate phrase, doubtfully sincere in word and manner: "Let it be
+enough," he added haughtily, "that if this matter wring my heart, it
+doth not touch my conscience. I am a man, I would have you to know, who
+suffers undeservedly."
+
+He had never spoken so directly: never with so convincing an emotion;
+and her heart thrilled for him. She could have taken his pains and died
+of them with joy.
+
+Meanwhile she was left without support. Jonathan now swore by his
+lodger, and lived for him. He was a fine talker. He knew the finest
+sight of stories; he was a man and a gentleman, take him for all in all,
+and a perfect credit to Old England. Such were the old man's declared
+sentiments, and sure enough he clung to Mr. Archer's side, hung upon his
+utterance when he spoke, and watched him with unwearying interest when
+he was silent. And yet his feeling was not clear; in the partial wreck
+of his mind, which was leaning to decay, some afterthought was strongly
+present. As he gazed in Mr. Archer's face a sudden brightness would
+kindle in his rheumy eyes, his eyebrows would lift as with a sudden
+thought, his mouth would open as though to speak, and close again on
+silence. Once or twice he even called Mr. Archer mysteriously forth into
+the dark courtyard, took him by the button, and laid a demonstrative
+finger on his chest; but there his ideas or his courage failed him; he
+would shufflingly excuse himself and return to his position by the fire
+without a word of explanation. "The good man was growing old," said Mr.
+Archer with a suspicion of a shrug. But the good man had his idea, and
+even when he was alone the name of Mr. Archer fell from his lips
+continually in the course of mumbled and gesticulative conversation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE BAD HALF-CROWN
+
+
+However early Nance arose, and she was no sluggard, the old man, who had
+begun to outlive the earthly habit of slumber, would usually have been
+up long before, the fire would be burning brightly, and she would see
+him wandering among the ruins, lantern in hand, and talking assiduously
+to himself. One day, however, after he had returned late from the market
+town, she found that she had stolen a march upon that indefatigable
+early riser. The kitchen was all blackness. She crossed the castle-yard
+to the wood-cellar, her steps printing the thick hoarfrost. A scathing
+breeze blew out of the north-east and slowly carried a regiment of black
+and tattered clouds over the face of heaven, which was already kindled
+with the wild light of morning, but where she walked, in shelter of the
+ruins, the flame of her candle burned steady. The extreme cold smote
+upon her conscience. She could not bear to think this bitter business
+fell usually to the lot of one so old as Jonathan, and made desperate
+resolutions to be earlier in the future.
+
+The fire was a good blaze before he entered, limping dismally into the
+kitchen. "Nance," said he, "I be all knotted up with the rheumatics;
+will you rub me a bit?" She came and rubbed him where and how he bade
+her. "This is a cruel thing that old age should be rheumaticky," said
+he. "When I was young I stood my turn of the teethache like a man! for
+why? because it couldn't last for ever; but these rheumatics come to
+live and die with you. Your aunt was took before the time came; never
+had an ache to mention. Now I lie all night in my single bed and the
+blood never warms in me; this knee of mine it seems like lighted up with
+rheumatics; it seems as though you could see to sew by it; and all the
+strings of my old body ache, as if devils was pulling 'em. Thank you
+kindly; that's someways easier now, but an old man, my dear, has little
+to look for; it's pain, pain, pain to the end of the business, and I'll
+never be rightly warm again till I get under the sod," he said, and
+looked down at her with a face so aged and weary that she had nearly
+wept.
+
+"I lay awake all night," he continued; "I do so mostly, and a long walk
+kills me. Eh, deary me, to think that life should run to such a puddle!
+And I remember long syne when I was strong, and the blood all hot and
+good about me, and I loved to run, too--deary me, to run! Well, that's
+all by. You'd better pray to be took early, Nance, and not live on till
+you get to be like me, and are robbed in your grey old age, your cold,
+shivering, dark old age, that's like a winter's morning"; and he
+bitterly shuddered, spreading his hands before the fire.
+
+"Come now," said Nance, "the more you say the less you'll like it, Uncle
+Jonathan; but if I were you I would be proud for to have lived all your
+days honest and beloved, and come near the end with your good name:
+isn't that a fine thing to be proud of? Mr. Archer was telling me in
+some strange land they used to run races each with a lighted candle, and
+the art was to keep the candle burning. Well, now, I thought that was
+like life; a man's good conscience is the flame he gets to carry, and if
+he comes to the winning-post with that still burning, why, take it how
+you will, the man's a hero--even if he was low-born like you and me."
+
+"Did Mr. Archer tell you that?" asked Jonathan.
+
+"No, dear," said she, "that's my own thought about it. He told me of the
+race. But see, now," she continued, putting on the porridge, "you say
+old age is a hard season, but so is youth. You're half out of the
+battle, I would say; you loved my aunt and got her, and buried her, and
+some of these days soon you'll go to meet her; and take her my love and
+tell her I tried to take good care of you; for so I do, Uncle Jonathan."
+
+Jonathan struck with his fist upon the settle. "D'ye think I want to
+die, ye vixen?" he shouted. "I want to live ten hundred years."
+
+This was a mystery beyond Nance's penetration, and she stared in wonder
+as she made the porridge.
+
+"I want to live," he continued, "I want to live and to grow rich. I want
+to drive my carriage and to dice in hells and see the ring, I do. Is
+this a life that I lived? I want to be a rake, d'ye understand? I want
+to know what things are like. I don't want to die like a blind kitten,
+and me seventy-six."
+
+"O fie!" said Nance.
+
+The old man thrust out his jaw at her, with the grimace of an irreverent
+schoolboy. Upon that aged face it seemed a blasphemy. Then he took out
+of his bosom a long leather purse, and emptying its contents on the
+settle, began to count and recount the pieces, ringing and examining
+each, and suddenly he leapt like a young man. "What!" he screamed. "Bad?
+O Lord! I'm robbed again!" And falling on his knees before the settle he
+began to pour forth the most dreadful curses on the head of his
+deceiver. His eyes were shut, for to him this vile solemnity was prayer.
+He held up the bad half-crown in his right hand, as though he were
+displaying it to Heaven, and what increased the horror of the scene, the
+curses he invoked were those whose efficacy he had tasted--old age and
+poverty, rheumatism and an ungrateful son. Nance listened appalled; then
+she sprang forward and dragged down his arm and laid her hand upon his
+mouth.
+
+"Whist!" she cried. "Whist ye, for God's sake! O my man, whist ye! If
+Heaven were to hear; if poor Aunt Susan were to hear! Think, she may be
+listening." And with the histrionism of strong emotion she pointed to a
+corner of the kitchen.
+
+His eyes followed her finger. He looked there for a little, thinking,
+blinking; then he got stiffly to his feet and resumed his place upon the
+settle, the bad piece still in his hand. So he sat for some time,
+looking upon the half-crown, and now wondering to himself on the
+injustice and partiality of the law, now computing again and again the
+nature of his loss. So he was still sitting when Mr. Archer entered the
+kitchen. At this a light came into his face, and after some seconds of
+rumination he despatched Nance upon an errand.
+
+"Mr. Archer," said he, as soon as they were alone together, "would you
+give me a guinea-piece for silver?"
+
+"Why, sir, I believe I can," said Mr. Archer.
+
+And the exchange was just effected when Nance re-entered the apartment.
+The blood shot into her face.
+
+"What's to do here?" she asked rudely.
+
+"Nothing, my dearie," said old Jonathan, with a touch of whine.
+
+"What's to do?" she said again.
+
+"Your uncle was but changing me a piece of gold," returned Mr. Archer.
+
+"Let me see what he hath given you, Mr. Archer," replied the girl. "I
+had a bad piece, and I fear it is mixed up among the good."
+
+"Well, well," replied Mr. Archer, smiling, "I must take the merchant's
+risk of it. The money is now mixed."
+
+"I know my piece," quoth Nance. "Come, let me see your silver, Mr.
+Archer. If I have to get it by a theft I'll see that money," she cried.
+
+"Nay, child, if you put as much passion to be honest as the world to
+steal, I must give way, though I betray myself," said Mr. Archer. "There
+it is as I received it."
+
+Nance quickly found the bad half-crown.
+
+"Give him another," she said, looking Jonathan in the face; and when
+that had been done, she walked over to the chimney and flung the guilty
+piece into the reddest of the fire. Its base constituents began
+immediately to run; even as she watched it the disc crumbled, and the
+lineaments of the King became confused. Jonathan, who had followed close
+behind, beheld these changes from over her shoulder, and his face
+darkened sorely.
+
+"Now," said she, "come back to table, and to-day it is I that shall say
+grace, as I used to do in the old times, day about with Dick"; and
+covering her eyes with one hand, "O Lord," said she with deep emotion,
+"make us thankful; and, O Lord, deliver us from evil! For the love of
+the poor souls that watch for us in heaven, O deliver us from evil."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE BLEACHING-GREEN
+
+
+The year moved on to March; and March, though it blew bitter keen from
+the North Sea, yet blinked kindly between whiles on the river dell. The
+mire dried up in the closest covert; life ran in the bare branches, and
+the air of the afternoon would be suddenly sweet with the fragrance of
+new grass.
+
+Above and below the castle the river crooked like the letter "S." The
+lower loop was to the left, and embraced the high and steep projection
+which was crowned by the ruins; the upper loop enclosed a lawny
+promontory, fringed by thorn and willow. It was easy to reach it from
+the castle side, for the river ran in this part very quietly among
+innumerable boulders and over dam-like walls of rock. The place was all
+enclosed, the wind a stranger, the turf smooth and solid; so it was
+chosen by Nance to be her bleaching-green.
+
+One day she brought a bucketful of linen, and had but begun to wring and
+lay them out when Mr. Archer stepped from the thicket on the far side,
+drew very deliberately near, and sat down in silence on the grass. Nance
+looked up to greet him with a smile, but finding her smile was not
+returned, she fell into embarrassment and stuck the more busily to her
+employment. Man or woman, the whole world looks well at any work to
+which they are accustomed; but the girl was ashamed of what she did. She
+was ashamed, besides, of the sun-bonnet that so well became her, and
+ashamed of her bare arms, which were her greatest beauty.
+
+"Nausicaa," said Mr. Archer at last, "I find you like Nausicaa."
+
+"And who was she?" asked Nance, and laughed in spite of herself, an
+empty and embarrassed laugh, that sounded in Mr. Archer's ears, indeed,
+like music, but to her own like the last grossness of rusticity.
+
+"She was a princess of the Grecian islands," he replied. "A king, being
+shipwrecked, found her washing by the shore. Certainly I, too, was
+shipwrecked," he continued, plucking at the grass. "There was never a
+more desperate castaway--to fall from polite life, fortune, a shrine of
+honour, a grateful conscience, duties willingly taken up and faithfully
+discharged; and to fall to this--idleness, poverty, inutility, remorse."
+He seemed to have forgotten her presence, but here he remembered her
+again. "Nance," said he, "would you have a man sit down and suffer or
+rise up and strive?"
+
+"Nay," she said. "I would always rather see him doing."
+
+"Ha!" said Mr. Archer, "but yet you speak from an imperfect knowledge.
+Conceive a man damned to a choice of only evil--misconduct upon either
+side, not a fault behind him, and yet naught before him but this choice
+of sins. How would you say then?"
+
+"I would say that he was much deceived, Mr. Archer," returned Nance. "I
+would say there was a third choice, and that the right one."
+
+"I tell you," said Mr. Archer, "the man I have in view hath two ways
+open, and no more. One to wait, like a poor mewling baby, till Fate save
+or ruin him; the other to take his troubles in his hand, and to perish
+or be saved at once. It is no point of morals; both are wrong. Either
+way this step-child of Providence must fall; which shall he choose, by
+doing or not doing?"
+
+"Fall, then, is what I would say," replied Nance. "Fall where you will,
+but do it! For O, Mr. Archer," she continued, stooping to her work, "you
+that are good and kind, and so wise, it doth sometimes go against my
+heart to see you live on here like a sheep in a turnip-field! If you
+were braver----" and here she paused, conscience-smitten.
+
+"Do I, indeed, lack courage?" inquired Mr. Archer of himself. "Courage,
+the footstool of the virtues, upon which they stand? Courage, that a poor
+private carrying a musket has to spare of; that does not fail a weasel or
+a rat; that is a brutish faculty? I to fail there, I wonder? But what is
+courage, then? The constancy to endure oneself or to see others suffer?
+The itch of ill-advised activity: mere shuttle-wittedness, or to be still
+and patient? To inquire of the significance of words is to rob ourselves
+of what we seem to know, and yet, of all things, certainly to stand still
+is the least heroic. Nance," he said, "did you ever hear of _Hamlet_?"
+
+"Never," said Nance.
+
+"'Tis an old play," returned Mr. Archer, "and frequently enacted. This
+while I have been talking Hamlet. You must know this Hamlet was a Prince
+among the Danes," and he told her the play in a very good style, here
+and there quoting a verse or two with solemn emphasis.
+
+"It is strange," said Nance; "he was then a very poor creature?"
+
+"That was what he could not tell," said Mr. Archer. "Look at me, am I as
+poor a creature?"
+
+She looked, and what she saw was the familiar thought of all her hours;
+the tall figure very plainly habited in black, the spotless ruffles, the
+slim hands; the long, well-shapen, serious, shaven face, the wide and
+somewhat thin-lipped mouth, the dark eyes that were so full of depth and
+change and colour. He was gazing at her with his brows a little knit,
+his chin upon one hand and that elbow resting on his knee.
+
+"Ye look a man!" she cried, "ay, and should be a great one! The more
+shame to you to lie here idle like a dog before the fire."
+
+"My fair Holdaway," quoth Mr. Archer, "you are much set on action. I
+cannot dig, to beg I am ashamed." He continued, looking at her with a
+half-absent fixity, "'Tis a strange thing, certainly, that in my years
+of fortune I should never taste happiness, and now when I am broke,
+enjoy so much of it, for was I ever happier than to-day? Was the grass
+softer, the stream pleasanter in sound, the air milder, the heart more
+at peace? Why should I not sink? To dig--why, after all, it should be
+easy. To take a mate, too? Love is of all grades since Jupiter; love
+fails to none; and children"--but here he passed his hand suddenly over
+his eyes. "O fool and coward, fool and coward!" he said bitterly; "can
+you forget your fetters? You did not know that I was fettered, Nance?"
+he asked, again addressing her.
+
+But Nance was somewhat sore. "I know you keep talking," she said, and,
+turning half away from him, began to wring out a sheet across her
+shoulder. "I wonder you are not wearied of your voice. When the hands
+lie abed the tongue takes a walk."
+
+Mr. Archer laughed unpleasantly, rose and moved to the water's edge. In
+this part the body of the river poured across a little narrow fell, ran
+some ten feet very smoothly over a bed of pebbles, then getting wind, as
+it were, of another shelf of rock which barred the channel, began, by
+imperceptible degrees, to separate towards either shore in dancing
+currents, and to leave the middle clear and stagnant. The set towards
+either side was nearly equal; about one half of the whole water plunged
+on the side of the castle, through a narrow gullet; about one half ran
+lipping past the margin of the green and slipped across a babbling
+rapid.
+
+"Here," said Mr. Archer, after he had looked for some time at the fine
+and shifting demarcation of these currents, "come here and see me try my
+fortune."
+
+"I am not like a man," said Nance; "I have no time to waste."
+
+"Come here," he said again. "I ask you seriously, Nance. We are not
+always childish when we seem so."
+
+She drew a little nearer.
+
+"Now," said he, "you see these two channels--choose one."
+
+"I'll choose the nearest, to save time," said Nance.
+
+"Well, that shall be for action," returned Mr. Archer. "And since I wish
+to have the odds against me, not only the other channel but yon stagnant
+water in the midst shall be for lying still. You see this?" he
+continued, pulling up a withered rush. "I break it in three. I shall put
+each separately at the top of the upper fall, and according as they go
+by your way or by the other I shall guide my life."
+
+"This is very silly," said Nance, with a movement of her shoulders.
+
+"I do not think it so," said Mr. Archer.
+
+"And then," she resumed, "if you are to try your fortune, why not
+evenly?"
+
+"Nay," returned Mr. Archer with a smile, "no man can put complete
+reliance in blind fate; he must still cog the dice."
+
+By this time he had got upon the rock beside the upper fall, and,
+bidding her look out, dropped a piece of rush into the middle of the
+intake. The rusty fragment was sucked at once over the fall, came up
+again far on the right hand, leaned ever more and more in the same
+direction, and disappeared under the hanging grasses on the castle side.
+
+"One," said Mr. Archer, "one for standing still."
+
+But the next launch had a different fate, and after hanging for a while
+about the edge of the stagnant water, steadily approached the
+bleaching-green and danced down the rapid under Nance's eyes.
+
+"One for me," she cried with some exultation; and then she observed that
+Mr. Archer had grown pale, and was kneeling on the rock, with his hand
+raised like a person petrified. "Why," said she, "you do not mind it,
+do you?"
+
+"Does a man not mind a throw of dice by which a fortune hangs?" said Mr.
+Archer, rather hoarsely. "And this is more than fortune. Nance, if you
+have any kindness for my fate, put up a prayer before I launch the next
+one."
+
+"A prayer," she cried, "about a game like this? I would not be so
+heathen."
+
+"Well," said he, "then without," and he closed his eyes and dropped the
+piece of rush. This time there was no doubt. It went for the rapid as
+straight as any arrow.
+
+"Action then!" said Mr. Archer, getting to his feet; "and then God
+forgive us," he added, almost to himself.
+
+"God forgive us, indeed," cried Nance, "for wasting the good daylight!
+But come, Mr. Archer, if I see you look so serious I shall begin to
+think you was in earnest."
+
+"Nay," he said, turning upon her suddenly, with a full smile; "but is
+not this good advice? I have consulted God and demigod; the nymph of the
+river, and what I far more admire and trust, my blue-eyed Minerva. Both
+have said the same. My own heart was telling it already. Action, then,
+be mine; and into the deep sea with all this paralysing casuistry. I am
+happy to-day for the first time."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE MAIL GUARD
+
+
+Somewhere about two in the morning a squall had burst upon the castle, a
+clap of screaming wind that made the towers rock, and a copious drift of
+rain that streamed from the windows. The wind soon blew itself out, but
+the day broke cloudy and dripping, and when the little party assembled
+at breakfast their humours appeared to have changed with the change of
+weather. Nance had been brooding on the scene at the river-side,
+applying it in various ways to her particular aspirations, and the
+result, which was hardly to her mind, had taken the colour out of her
+cheeks. Mr. Archer, too, was somewhat absent, his thoughts were of a
+mingled strain; and even upon his usually impassive countenance there
+were betrayed successive depths of depression and starts of exultation,
+which the girl translated in terms of her own hopes and fears. But
+Jonathan was the most altered: he was strangely silent, hardly passing a
+word, and watched Mr. Archer with an eager and furtive eye. It seemed as
+if the idea that had so long hovered before him had now taken a more
+solid shape, and, while it still attracted, somewhat alarmed his
+imagination.
+
+At this rate, conversation languished into a silence which was only
+broken by the gentle and ghostly noises of the rain on the stone roof
+and about all that field of ruins; and they were all relieved when the
+note of a man whistling and the sound of approaching footsteps in the
+grassy court announced a visitor. It was the ostler from the "Green
+Dragon" bringing a letter for Mr. Archer. Nance saw her hero's face
+contract and then relax again at sight of it; and she thought that she
+knew why, for the sprawling, gross black characters of the address were
+easily distinguishable from the fine writing on the former letter that
+had so much disturbed him. He opened it and began to read; while the
+ostler sat down to table with a pot of ale, and proceeded to make
+himself agreeable after his fashion.
+
+"Fine doings down our way, Miss Nance," said he. "I haven't been abed
+this blessed night."
+
+Nance expressed a polite interest, but her eye was on Mr. Archer, who
+was reading his letter with a face of such extreme indifference that she
+was tempted to suspect him of assumption.
+
+"Yes," continued the ostler, "not been the like of it this fifteen
+years: the North Mail stopped at the three stones."
+
+Jonathan's cup was at his lip, but at this moment he choked with a great
+splutter; and Mr. Archer, as if startled by the noise, made so sudden a
+movement that one corner of the sheet tore off and stayed between his
+finger and thumb. It was some little time before the old man was
+sufficiently recovered to beg the ostler to go on, and he still kept
+coughing and crying and rubbing his eyes. Mr. Archer, on his side, laid
+the letter down, and, putting his hands in his pocket, listened gravely
+to the tale.
+
+"Yes," resumed Sam, "the North Mail was stopped by a single horseman;
+dash my wig, but I admire him! There were four insides and two out, and
+poor Tom Oglethorpe, the guard. Tom showed himself a man; let fly his
+blunderbuss at him; had him covered, too, and could swear to that; but
+the Captain never let on, up with a pistol and fetched poor Tom a bullet
+through the body. Tom, he squelched upon the seat, all over blood. Up
+comes the Captain to the window. 'Oblige me,' says he, 'with what you
+have.' Would you believe it? Not a man says cheep!--not them. 'Thy hands
+over thy head.' Four watches, rings, snuff-boxes, seven-and-forty
+pounds overhead in gold. One Dicksee, a grazier, tries it on: gives him
+a guinea. 'Beg your pardon,' says the Captain, 'I think too highly of
+you to take it at your hand. I will not take less than ten from such a
+gentleman.' This Dicksee had his money in his stocking, but there was
+the pistol at his eye. Down he goes, offs with his stocking, and there
+was thirty golden guineas. 'Now,' says the Captain, 'you've tried it on
+with me, but I scorns the advantage. Ten I said,' he says, 'and ten I
+take.' So, dash my buttons, I call that man a man!" cried Sam in cordial
+admiration.
+
+"Well, and then?" says Mr. Archer.
+
+"Then," resumed Sam, "that old fat fagot Engleton, him as held the
+ribbons and drew up like a lamb when he was told to, picks up his
+cattle, and drives off again. Down they came to the 'Dragon,' all
+singing like as if they was scalded, and poor Tom saying nothing. You
+would 'a' thought they had all lost the King's crown to hear them. Down
+gets this Dicksee. 'Postmaster,' he says, taking him by the arm, 'this
+is a most abominable thing,' he says. Down gets a Major Clayton, and
+gets the old man by the other arm. 'We've been robbed,' he cries,
+'robbed!' Down gets the others, and all around the old man telling their
+story, and what they had lost, and how they was all as good as ruined;
+till at last Old Engleton says, says he, 'How about Oglethorpe?' says
+he. 'Ay,' says the others, 'how about the guard?' Well, with that we
+bousted him down, as white as a rag and all blooded like a sop. I
+thought he was dead. Well, he ain't dead; but he's dying, I fancy."
+
+"Did you say four watches?" said Jonathan.
+
+"Four, I think. I wish it had been forty," cried Sam. "Such a party of
+soused herrings I never did see--not a man among them bar poor Tom. But
+us that are the servants on the road have all the risk and none of the
+profit."
+
+"And this brave fellow," asked Mr. Archer, very quietly, "this
+Oglethorpe--how is he now?"
+
+"Well, sir, with my respects, I take it he has a hole bang through him,"
+said Sam. "The doctor hasn't been yet. He'd 'a' been bright and early if
+it had been a passenger. But, doctor or no, I'll make a good guess that
+Tom won't see to-morrow. He'll die on a Sunday, will poor Tom; and they
+do say that's fortunate."
+
+"Did Tom see him that did it?" asked Jonathan.
+
+"Well, he saw him," replied Sam, "but not to swear by. Said he was a
+very tall man, and very big, and had a 'ankerchief about his face, and a
+very quick shot, and sat his horse like a thorough gentleman, as he is."
+
+"A gentleman!" cried Nance. "The dirty knave!"
+
+"Well, I calls a man like that a gentleman," returned the ostler;
+"that's what I mean by a gentleman."
+
+"You don't know much of them, then," said Nance. "A gentleman would
+scorn to stoop to such a thing. I call my uncle a better gentleman than
+any thief."
+
+"And you would be right," said Mr. Archer.
+
+"How many snuff-boxes did he get?" asked Jonathan.
+
+"O, dang me if I know," said Sam; "I didn't take an inventory."
+
+"I will go back with you, if you please," said Mr. Archer. "I should
+like to see poor Oglethorpe. He has behaved well."
+
+"At your service, sir," said Sam, jumping to his feet. "I dare to say a
+gentleman like you would not forget a poor fellow like Tom--no, nor a
+plain man like me, sir, that went without his sleep to nurse him. And
+excuse me, sir," added Sam, "you won't forget about the letter neither?"
+
+"Surely not," said Mr. Archer.
+
+Oglethorpe lay in a low bed, one of several in a long garret of the inn.
+The rain soaked in places through the roof and fell in minute drops;
+there was but one small window; the beds were occupied by servants, the
+air of the garret was both close and chilly. Mr. Archer's heart sank at
+the threshold to see a man lying perhaps mortally hurt in so poor a
+sick-room, and as he drew near the low bed he took his hat off. The
+guard was a big, blowsy, innocent-looking soul with a thick lip and a
+broad nose, comically turned up; his cheeks were crimson, and when Mr.
+Archer laid a finger on his brow he found him burning with fever.
+
+"I fear you suffer much," he said, with a catch in his voice, as he sat
+down on the bedside.
+
+"I suppose I do, sir," returned Oglethorpe; "it is main sore."
+
+"I am used to wounds and wounded men," returned the visitor. "I have
+been in the wars and nursed brave fellows before now; and, if you will
+suffer me, I propose to stay beside you till the doctor comes."
+
+"It is very good of you, sir, I am sure," said Oglethorpe. "The trouble
+is they won't none of them let me drink."
+
+"If you will not tell the doctor," said Mr. Archer, "I will give you
+some water. They say it is bad for a green wound, but in the Low
+Countries we all drank water when we found the chance, and I could never
+perceive we were the worse for it."
+
+"Been wounded yourself, sir, perhaps?" called Oglethorpe.
+
+"Twice," said Mr. Archer, "and was as proud of these hurts as any lady
+of her bracelets. 'Tis a fine thing to smart for one's duty; even in the
+pangs of it there is contentment."
+
+"Ah, well!" replied the guard, "if you've been shot yourself, that
+explains. But as for contentment, why, sir, you see, it smarts, as you
+say. And then, I have a good wife, you see, and a bit of a brat--a
+little thing, so high."
+
+"Don't move," said Mr. Archer.
+
+"No, sir, I will not, and thank you kindly," said Oglethorpe. "At York
+they are. A very good lass is my wife--far too good for me. And the
+little rascal--well, I don't know how to say it, but he sort of comes
+round you. If I were to go, sir, it would be hard on my poor girl--main
+hard on her!"
+
+"Ay, you must feel bitter hardly to the rogue that laid you here," said
+Archer.
+
+"Why, no, sir, more against Engleton and the passengers," replied the
+guard. "He played his hand, if you come to look at it; and I wish he had
+shot worse, or me better. And yet I'll go to my grave but what I covered
+him," he cried. "It looks like witchcraft. I'll go to my grave but what
+he was drove full of slugs like a pepper-box."
+
+"Quietly," said Mr. Archer, "you must not excite yourself. These
+deceptions are very usual in war; the eye, in the moment of alert, is
+hardly to be trusted, and when the smoke blows away you see the man you
+fired at, taking aim, it may be, at yourself. You should observe, too,
+that you were in the dark night, and somewhat dazzled by the lamps, and
+that the sudden stopping of the mail had jolted you. In such
+circumstances a man may miss, ay, even with a blunderbuss, and no blame
+attach to his marksmanship." ...
+
+
+
+
+THE YOUNG CHEVALIER
+
+A FRAGMENT
+
+
+
+
+THE YOUNG CHEVALIER
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE
+
+THE WINE-SELLER'S WIFE
+
+
+There was a wine-seller's shop, as you went down to the river in the
+city of the Anti-popes. There a man was served with good wine of the
+country and plain country fare; and the place being clean and quiet,
+with a prospect on the river, certain gentlemen who dwelt in that city
+in attendance on a great personage made it a practice (when they had any
+silver in their purses) to come and eat there and be private.
+
+They called the wine-seller Paradou. He was built more like a bullock
+than a man, huge in bone and brawn, high in colour, and with a hand like
+a baby for size. Marie-Madeleine was the name of his wife; she was of
+Marseilles, a city of entrancing women, nor was any fairer than herself.
+She was tall, being almost of a height with Paradou; full-girdled,
+point-device in every form, with an exquisite delicacy in the face; her
+nose and nostrils a delight to look at from the fineness of the
+sculpture, her eyes inclined a hair's-breadth inward, her colour between
+dark and fair, and laid on even like a flower's. A faint rose dwelt in
+it, as though she had been found unawares bathing, and had blushed from
+head to foot. She was of a grave countenance, rarely smiling; yet it
+seemed to be written upon every part of her that she rejoiced in life.
+Her husband loved the heels of her feet and the knuckles of her fingers;
+he loved her like a glutton and a brute; his love hung about her like
+an atmosphere; one that came by chance into the wine-shop was aware of
+that passion; and it might be said that by the strength of it the woman
+had been drugged or spell-bound. She knew not if she loved or loathed
+him; he was always in her eyes like something monstrous,--monstrous in
+his love, monstrous in his person, horrific but imposing in his
+violence; and her sentiment swung back and forward from desire to
+sickness. But the mean, where it dwelt chiefly, was an apathetic
+fascination, partly of horror; as of Europa in mid ocean with her bull.
+
+On the 10th November 1749 there sat two of the foreign gentlemen in the
+wine-seller's shop. They were both handsome men of a good presence,
+richly dressed. The first was swarthy and long and lean, with an alert,
+black look, and a mole upon his cheek. The other was more fair. He
+seemed very easy and sedate, and a little melancholy for so young a man,
+but his smile was charming. In his grey eyes there was much abstraction,
+as of one recalling fondly that which was past and lost. Yet there was
+strength and swiftness in his limbs; and his mouth set straight across
+his face, the under lip a thought upon side, like that of a man
+accustomed to resolve. These two talked together in a rude outlandish
+speech that no frequenter of that wine-shop understood. The swarthy man
+answered to the name of _Ballantrae_; he of the dreamy eyes was
+sometimes called _Balmile_, and sometimes _my Lord_, or _my Lord
+Gladsmuir_; but when the title was given him, he seemed to put it by as
+if in jesting, not without bitterness.
+
+The mistral blew in the city. The first day of that wind, they say in
+the countries where its voice is heard, it blows away all the dust, the
+second all the stones, and the third it blows back others from the
+mountains. It was now come to the third day; outside the pebbles flew
+like hail, and the face of the river was puckered, and the very
+building-stones in the walls of houses seemed to be curdled, with the
+savage cold and fury of that continuous blast. It could be heard to hoot
+in all the chimneys of the city; it swept about the wine-shop, filling
+the room with eddies; the chill and gritty touch of it passed between
+the nearest clothes and the bare flesh; and the two gentlemen at the far
+table kept their mantles loose about their shoulders. The roughness of
+these outer hulls, for they were plain travellers' cloaks that had seen
+service, set the greater mark of richness on what showed below of their
+laced clothes; for the one was in scarlet and the other in violet and
+white, like men come from a scene of ceremony; as indeed they were.
+
+It chanced that these fine clothes were not without their influence on
+the scene which followed, and which makes the prologue of our tale. For
+a long time Balmile was in the habit to come to the wine-shop and eat a
+meal or drink a measure of wine; sometimes with a comrade; more often
+alone, when he would sit and dream and drum upon the table, and the
+thoughts would show in the man's face in little glooms and lightenings,
+like the sun and the clouds upon a water. For a long time
+Marie-Madeleine had observed him apart. His sadness, the beauty of his
+smile when by any chance he remembered her existence and addressed her,
+the changes of his mind signalled forth by an abstruse play of feature,
+the mere fact that he was foreign and a thing detached from the local
+and the accustomed, insensibly attracted and affected her. Kindness was
+ready in her mind; it but lacked the touch of an occasion to effervesce
+and crystallise. Now Balmile had come hitherto in a very poor plain
+habit; and this day of the mistral, when his mantle was just open, and
+she saw beneath it the glancing of the violet and the velvet and the
+silver, and the clustering fineness of the lace, it seemed to set the
+man in a new light, with which he shone resplendent to her fancy.
+
+The high inhuman note of the wind, the violence and continuity of its
+outpouring, and the fierce touch of it upon man's whole periphery,
+accelerated the functions of the mind. It set thoughts whirling, as it
+whirled the trees of the forest; it stirred them up in flights, as it
+stirred up the dust in chambers. As brief as sparks, the fancies
+glittered and succeeded each other in the mind of Marie-Madeleine; and
+the grave man with the smile, and the bright clothes under the plain
+mantle, haunted her with incongruous explanations. She considered him,
+the unknown, the speaker of an unknown tongue, the hero (as she placed
+him) of an unknown romance, the dweller upon unknown memories. She
+recalled him sitting there alone, so immersed, so stupefied; yet she was
+sure he was not stupid. She recalled one day when he had remained a long
+time motionless, with parted lips, like one in the act of starting up,
+his eyes fixed on vacancy. Any one else must have looked foolish; but
+not he. She tried to conceive what manner of memory had thus entranced
+him; she forged for him a past; she showed him to herself in every light
+of heroism and greatness and misfortune; she brooded with petulant
+intensity on all she knew and guessed of him. Yet, though she was
+already gone so deep, she was still unashamed, still unalarmed; her
+thoughts were still disinterested; she had still to reach the stage at
+which--beside the image of that other whom we love to contemplate and to
+adorn--we place the image of ourself and behold them together with
+delight.
+
+She stood within the counter, her hands clasped behind her back, her
+shoulders pressed against the wall, her feet braced out. Her face was
+bright with the wind and her own thoughts; as a fire in a similar day of
+tempest glows and brightens on a hearth, so she seemed to glow, standing
+there, and to breathe out energy. It was the first time Ballantrae had
+visited that wine-seller's, the first time he had seen the wife; and his
+eyes were true to her.
+
+"I perceive your reason for carrying me to this very draughty tavern,"
+he said at last.
+
+"I believe it is propinquity," returned Balmile.
+
+"You play dark," said Ballantrae, "but have a care! Be more frank with
+me, or I will cut you out. I go through no form of qualifying my threat,
+which would be commonplace and not conscientious. There is only one
+point in these campaigns: that is the degree of admiration offered by
+the man; and to our hostess I am in a posture to make victorious love."
+
+"If you think you have the time, or the game worth the candle," replied
+the other with a shrug.
+
+"One would suppose you were never at the pains to observe her," said
+Ballantrae.
+
+"I am not very observant," said Balmile. "She seems comely."
+
+"You very dear and dull dog!" cried Ballantrae; "chastity is the most
+besotting of the virtues. Why, she has a look in her face beyond
+singing! I believe, if you was to push me hard, I might trace it home to
+a trifle of a squint. What matters? The height of beauty is in the touch
+that's wrong, that's the modulation in a tune. 'Tis the devil we all
+love; I owe many a conquest to my mole"--he touched it as he spoke with
+a smile, and his eyes glittered;--"we are all hunchbacks, and beauty is
+only that kind of deformity that I happen to admire. But come! Because
+you are chaste, for which I am sure I pay you my respects, that is no
+reason why you should be blind. Look at her, look at the delicious nose
+of her, look at her cheek, look at her ear, look at her hand and
+wrist--look at the whole baggage from heels to crown, and tell me if she
+wouldn't melt on a man's tongue."
+
+As Ballantrae spoke, half jesting, half enthusiastic, Balmile was
+constrained to do as he was bidden. He looked at the woman, admired her
+excellences, and was at the same time ashamed for himself and his
+companion. So it befell that when Marie-Madeleine raised her eyes, she
+met those of the subject of her contemplations fixed directly on herself
+with a look that is unmistakable, the look of a person measuring and
+valuing another,--and, to clench the false impression, that his glance
+was instantly and guiltily withdrawn. The blood beat back upon her heart
+and leaped again; her obscure thoughts flashed clear before her; she
+flew in fancy straight to his arms like a wanton, and fled again on the
+instant like a nymph. And at that moment there chanced an interruption,
+which not only spared her embarrassment, but set the last consecration
+on her now articulate love.
+
+Into the wine-shop there came a French gentleman, arrayed in the last
+refinement of the fashion, though a little tumbled by his passage in the
+wind. It was to be judged he had come from the same formal gathering at
+which the others had preceded him; and perhaps that he had gone there in
+the hope to meet with them, for he came up to Ballantrae with
+unceremonious eagerness.
+
+"At last, here you are!" he cried in French. "I thought I was to miss
+you altogether."
+
+The Scotsmen rose, and Ballantrae, after the first greetings, laid his
+hand on his companion's shoulder.
+
+"My lord," said he, "allow me to present to you one of my best friends
+and one of our best soldiers, the Lord Viscount Gladsmuir."
+
+The two bowed with the elaborate elegance of the period.
+
+"_Monseigneur_," said Balmile, "_je n'ai pas la prétention de m'affubler
+d'un titre que la mauvaise fortune de mon roi ne me permet pas de porter
+comme il sied. Je m'appelle, pour vous servir, Blair de Balmile tout
+court._" [My lord, I have not the effrontery to cumber myself with a
+title which the ill fortunes of my king will not suffer me to bear the
+way it should be. I call myself, at your service, plain Blair of
+Balmile.]
+
+"_Monsieur le Vicomte ou monsieur Blčr' de Balmaďl_," replied the
+new-comer, "_le nom n'y fait rien et l'on connaît vos beaux faits._"
+[The name matters nothing, your gallant actions are known.]
+
+A few more ceremonies, and these three, sitting down together to the
+table, called for wine. It was the happiness of Marie-Madeleine to wait
+unobserved upon the prince of her desires. She poured the wine, he drank
+of it; and that link between them seemed to her, for the moment, close
+as a caress. Though they lowered their tones, she surprised great names
+passing in their conversation, names of kings, the names of de Gesvre
+and Belle-Isle; and the man who dealt in these high matters, and she who
+was now coupled with him in her own thoughts, seemed to swim in mid air
+in a transfiguration. Love is a crude core, but it has singular and
+far-reaching fringes; in that passionate attraction for the stranger
+that now swayed and mastered her, his harsh incomprehensible language,
+and these names of grandees in his talk, were each an element.
+
+The Frenchman stayed not long, but it was plain he left behind him
+matter of much interest to his companions; they spoke together
+earnestly, their heads down, the woman of the wine-shop totally
+forgotten; and they were still so occupied when Paradou returned.
+
+This man's love was unsleeping. The even bluster of the mistral, with
+which he had been combating some hours, had not suspended, though it had
+embittered, that predominant passion. His first look was for his wife, a
+look of hope and suspicion, menace and humility and love, that made the
+over-blooming brute appear for the moment almost beautiful. She returned
+his glance, at first as though she knew him not, then with a swiftly
+waxing coldness of intent; and at last, without changing their
+direction, she had closed her eyes.
+
+There passed across her mind during that period much that Paradou could
+not have understood had it been told to him in words: chiefly the sense
+of an enlightening contrast betwixt the man who talked of kings and the
+man who kept a wine-shop, betwixt the love she yearned for and that to
+which she had been long exposed like a victim bound upon the altar.
+There swelled upon her, swifter than the Rhone, a tide of abhorrence
+and disgust. She had succumbed to the monster, humbling herself below
+animals; and now she loved a hero, aspiring to the semi-divine. It was
+in the pang of that humiliating thought that she had closed her eyes.
+
+Paradou--quick, as beasts are quick, to translate silence--felt the
+insult through his blood; his inarticulate soul bellowed within him for
+revenge. He glanced about the shop. He saw the two indifferent gentlemen
+deep in talk, and passed them over: his fancy flying not so high. There
+was but one other present, a country lout who stood swallowing his wine,
+equally unobserved by all and unobserving; to him he dealt a glance of
+murderous suspicion, and turned direct upon his wife. The wine-shop had
+lain hitherto, a space of shelter, the scene of a few ceremonial
+passages and some whispered conversation, in the howling river of the
+wind; the clock had not yet ticked a score of times since Paradou's
+appearance; and now, as he suddenly gave tongue, it seemed as though the
+mistral had entered at his heels.
+
+"What ails you, woman?" he cried, smiting on the counter.
+
+"Nothing ails me," she replied. It was strange; but she spoke and stood
+at that moment like a lady of degree, drawn upward by her aspirations.
+
+"You speak to me, by God, as though you scorned me!" cried the husband.
+
+The man's passion was always formidable; she had often looked on upon
+its violence with a thrill, it had been one ingredient in her
+fascination; and she was now surprised to behold him, as from afar off,
+gesticulating but impotent. His fury might be dangerous like a torrent
+or a gust of wind, but it was inhuman; it might be feared or braved, it
+should never be respected. And with that there came in her a sudden glow
+of courage and that readiness to die which attends so closely upon all
+strong passions.
+
+"I do scorn you," she said.
+
+"What is that?" he cried.
+
+"I scorn you," she repeated, smiling.
+
+"You love another man!" said he.
+
+"With all my soul," was her reply.
+
+The wine-seller roared aloud so that the house rang and shook with it.
+
+"Is this the ----?" he cried, using a foul word, common in the South;
+and he seized the young countryman and dashed him to the ground. There
+he lay for the least interval of time insensible; thence fled from the
+house, the most terrified person in the county. The heavy measure had
+escaped from his hands, splashing the wine high upon the wall. Paradou
+caught it. "And you?" he roared to his wife, giving her the same name in
+the feminine, and he aimed at her the deadly missile. She expected it,
+motionless, with radiant eyes.
+
+But before it sped, Paradou was met by another adversary, and the
+unconscious rivals stood confronted. It was hard to say at that moment
+which appeared the more formidable. In Paradou, the whole muddy and
+truculent depths of the half-man were stirred to frenzy; the lust of
+destruction raged in him; there was not a feature in his face but it
+talked murder. Balmile had dropped his cloak: he shone out at once in
+his finery, and stood to his full stature; girt in mind and body; all
+his resources, all his temper, perfectly in command; in his face the
+light of battle. Neither spoke; there was no blow nor threat of one; it
+was war reduced to its last element, the spiritual; and the huge
+wine-seller slowly lowered his weapon. Balmile was a noble, he a
+commoner; Balmile exulted in an honourable cause. Paradou already
+perhaps began to be ashamed of his violence. Of a sudden, at least, the
+tortured brute turned and fled from the shop in the footsteps of his
+former victim, to whose continued flight his reappearance added wings.
+
+So soon as Balmile appeared between her husband and herself,
+Marie-Madeleine transferred to him her eyes. It might be her last
+moment, and she fed upon that face; reading there inimitable courage and
+illimitable valour to protect. And when the momentary peril was gone by,
+and the champion turned a little awkwardly towards her whom he had
+rescued, it was to meet, and quail before, a gaze of admiration more
+distinct than words. He bowed, he stammered, his words failed him; he
+who had crossed the floor a moment ago, like a young god, to smite,
+returned like one discomfited; got somehow to his place by the table,
+muffled himself again in his discarded cloak, and for a last touch of
+the ridiculous, seeking for anything to restore his countenance, drank
+of the wine before him, deep as a porter after a heavy lift. It was
+little wonder if Ballantrae, reading the scene with malevolent eyes,
+laughed out loud and brief, and drank with raised glass, "To the
+champion of the Fair."
+
+Marie-Madeleine stood in her old place within the counter; she disdained
+the mocking laughter; it fell on her ears, but it did not reach her
+spirit. For her, the world of living persons was all resumed again into
+one pair, as in the days of Eden; there was but the one end in life, the
+one hope before her, the one thing needful, the one thing possible,--to
+be his.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE PRINCE
+
+
+That same night there was in the city of Avignon a young man in distress
+of mind. Now he sat, now walked in a high apartment, full of draughts
+and shadows. A single candle made the darkness visible; and the light
+scarce sufficed to show upon the wall, where they had been recently and
+rudely nailed, a few miniatures and a copper medal of the young man's
+head. The same was being sold that year in London, to admiring
+thousands. The original was fair; he had beautiful brown eyes, a
+beautiful bright open face; a little feminine, a little hard, a little
+weak; still full of the light of youth, but already beginning to be
+vulgarised; a sordid bloom come upon it, the lines coarsened with a
+touch of puffiness. He was dressed, as for a gala, in peach-colour and
+silver; his breast sparkled with stars and was bright with ribbons; for
+he had held a levee in the afternoon and received a distinguished
+personage incognito. Now he sat with a bowed head, now walked
+precipitately to and fro, now went and gazed from the uncurtained
+window, where the wind was still blowing, and the lights winked in the
+darkness.
+
+The bells of Avignon rose into song as he was gazing; and the high notes
+and the deep tossed and drowned, boomed suddenly near or were suddenly
+swallowed up, in the current of the mistral. Tears sprang in the pale
+blue eyes; the expression of his face was changed to that of a more
+active misery; it seemed as if the voices of the bells reached, and
+touched and pained him, in a waste of vacancy where even pain was
+welcome. Outside in the night they continued to sound on, swelling and
+fainting; and the listener heard in his memory, as it were their
+harmonies, joy-bells clashing in a northern city, and the acclamations
+of a multitude, the cries of battle, the gross voices of cannon, the
+stridor of an animated life. And then all died away, and he stood face
+to face with himself in the waste of vacancy, and a horror came upon his
+mind, and a faintness on his brain, such as seizes men upon the brink of
+cliffs.
+
+On the table, by the side of the candle, stood a tray of glasses, a
+bottle, and a silver bell. He went thither swiftly, then his hand
+lowered first above the bell, then settled on the bottle. Slowly he
+filled a glass, slowly drank it out; and, as a tide of animal warmth
+recomforted the recesses of his nature, stood there smiling at himself.
+He remembered he was young; the funeral curtains rose, and he saw his
+life shine and broaden and flow out majestically, like a river sunward.
+The smile still on his lips, he lit a second candle and a third; a fire
+stood ready built in a chimney, he lit that also; and the fir-cones and
+the gnarled olive billets were swift to break in flame and to crackle on
+the hearth, and the room brightened and enlarged about him like his
+hopes. To and fro, to and fro, he went, his hands lightly clasped, his
+breath deeply and pleasurably taken. Victory walked with him; he marched
+to crowns and empires among shouting followers; glory was his dress. And
+presently again the shadows closed upon the solitary. Under the gilt of
+flame and candle-light, the stone walls of the apartment showed down
+bare and cold; behind the depicted triumph loomed up the actual failure:
+defeat, the long distress of the flight, exile, despair, broken
+followers, mourning faces, empty pockets, friends estranged. The memory
+of his father rose in his mind: he, too, estranged and defied; despair
+sharpened into wrath. There was one who had led armies in the field, who
+had staked his life upon the family enterprise, a man of action and
+experience, of the open air, the camp, the court, the council-room; and
+he was to accept direction from an old, pompous gentleman in a home in
+Italy, and buzzed about by priests? A pretty king, if he had not a
+martial son to lean upon! A king at all?
+
+"There was a weaver (of all people) joined me at St. Ninians; he was
+more of a man than my papa!" he thought. "I saw him lie doubled in his
+blood and a grenadier below him--and he died for my papa! All died for
+him, or risked the dying, and I lay for him all those months in the rain
+and skulked in heather like a fox; and now he writes me his advice!
+calls me Carluccio--me, the man of the house, the only king in that
+king's race." He ground his teeth. "The only king in Europe! Who else?
+Who has done and suffered except me? who has lain and run and hidden
+with his faithful subjects, like a second Bruce? Not my accursed cousin,
+Louis of France at least, the lewd effeminate traitor!" And filling the
+glass to the brim, he drank a king's damnation. Ah, if he had the power
+of Louis, what a king were here!
+
+The minutes followed each other into the past, and still he persevered
+in this debilitating cycle of emotions, still fed the fire of his
+excitement with driblets of Rhine wine: a boy at odds with life, a boy
+with a spark of the heroic, which he was now burning out and drowning
+down in futile reverie and solitary excess.
+
+From two rooms beyond, the sudden sound of a raised voice attracted him.
+
+"By....
+
+
+
+
+FABLES
+
+
+
+
+FABLES
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE PERSONS OF THE TALE
+
+
+After the 32nd chapter of "Treasure Island," two of the puppets strolled
+out to have a pipe before business should begin again, and met in an
+open place not far from the story.
+
+"Good-morning, Cap'n," said the first, with a man-o'-war salute, and a
+beaming countenance.
+
+"Ah, Silver!" grunted the other. "You're in a bad way, Silver."
+
+"Now, Cap'n Smollett," remonstrated Silver, "dooty is dooty, as I knows,
+and none better; but we're off dooty now; and I can't see no call to
+keep up the morality business."
+
+"You're a damned rogue, my man," said the Captain.
+
+"Come, come, Cap'n, be just," returned the other. "There's no call to be
+angry with me in earnest. I'm on'y a chara'ter in a sea story. I don't
+really exist."
+
+"Well, I don't really exist either," says the Captain, "which seems to
+meet that."
+
+"I wouldn't set no limits to what a virtuous chara'ter might consider
+argument," responded Silver. "But I'm the villain of this tale, I am;
+and speaking as one sea-faring man to another, what I want to know is,
+what's the odds?"
+
+"Were you never taught your catechism?" said the Captain. "Don't you
+know there's such a thing as an Author?"
+
+"Such a thing as a Author?" returned John derisively. "And who better'n
+me? And the p'int is, if the Author made you, he made Long John, and he
+made Hands, and Pew, and George Merry--not that George is up to much,
+for he's little more'n a name; and he made Flint, what there is of him;
+and he made this here mutiny, you keep such a work about; and he had Tom
+Redruth shot; and--well, if that's a Author, give me Pew!"
+
+"Don't you believe in a future state?" said Smollett. "Do you think
+there's nothing but the present story-paper?"
+
+"I don't rightly know for that," said Silver; "and I don't see what it's
+got to do with it, anyway. What I know is this: if there is sich a thing
+as a Author, I'm his favourite chara'ter. He does me fathoms better'n he
+does you--fathoms, he does. And he likes doing me. He keeps me on deck
+mostly all the time, crutch and all; and he leaves you measling in the
+hold, where nobody can't see you, nor wants to, and you may lay to that!
+If there is a Author, by thunder, but he's on my side, and you may lay
+to it!"
+
+"I see he's giving you a long rope," said the Captain. "But that can't
+change a man's convictions. I know the Author respects me; I feel it in
+my bones: when you and I had that talk at the blockhouse door, who do
+you think he was for, my man?"
+
+"And don't he respect me?" cried Silver. "Ah, you should 'a' heard me
+putting down my mutiny, George Merry and Morgan and that lot, no longer
+ago'n last chapter; you'd 'a' heard something then! You'd 'a' seen what
+the Author thinks o' me! But come now, do you consider yourself a
+virtuous chara'ter clean through?"
+
+"God forbid!" said Captain Smollett solemnly. "I am a man that tries to
+do his duty, and makes a mess of it as often as not. I'm not a very
+popular man at home, Silver, I'm afraid!" and the Captain sighed.
+
+"Ah," says Silver. "Then how about this sequel of yours? Are you to be
+Cap'n Smollett just the same as ever and not very popular at home, says
+you? And if so, why, it's 'Treasure Island' over again, by thunder; and
+I'll be Long John and Pew'll be Pew, and we'll have another mutiny as
+like as not. Or are you to be somebody else? And if so, why, what the
+better are you? and what the worse am I?"
+
+"Why, look here, my man," returned the Captain; "I can't understand how
+this story comes about at all, can I? I can't see how you and I who
+don't exist should get to speaking here, and smoke our pipes for all the
+world like reality? Very well, then, who am I to pipe up with my
+opinions? I know the Author's on the side of good; he tells me so, it
+runs out of his pen as he writes. Well, that's all I need to know; I'll
+take my chance upon the rest."
+
+"It's a fact he seemed to be against George Merry," Silver admitted,
+musingly. "But George is little more'n a name at the best of it," he
+added, brightening. "And to get into soundings for once. What is this
+good? I made a mutiny, and I been a gentleman o' fortune; well, but by
+all stories, you ain't no such saint. I'm a man that keeps company very
+easy; even by your own account, you ain't, and to my certain knowledge
+you're a devil to haze. Which is which? Which is good and which bad? Ah,
+you tell me that! Here we are in stays, and you may lay to it!"
+
+"We're none of us perfect," replied the Captain. "That's a fact of
+religion, my man. All I can say is, I try to do my duty; and if you try
+to do yours, I can't compliment you on your success."
+
+"And so you was the judge, was you?" said Silver, derisively.
+
+"I would be both judge and hangman for you, my man, and never turn a
+hair," returned the Captain. "But I get beyond that: it mayn't be sound
+theology, but it's common sense, that what is good is useful too--or
+there and thereabout, for I don't set up to be a thinker. Now, where
+would a story go to if there were no virtuous characters?"
+
+"If you go to that," replied Silver, "where would a story begin, if
+there wasn't no villains?"
+
+"Well, that's pretty much my thought," said Captain Smollett. "The
+Author has to get a story; that's what he wants; and to get a story, and
+to have a man like the doctor (say) given a proper chance, he has to put
+in men like you and Hands. But he's on the right side; and you mind your
+eye! You're not through this story yet; there's trouble coming for you."
+
+"What'll you bet?" asked John.
+
+"Much I care if there ain't," returned the Captain. "I'm glad enough to
+be Alexander Smollett, bad as he is; and I thank my stars upon my knees
+that I'm not Silver. But there's the ink-bottle opening. To quarters!"
+
+And indeed the Author was just then beginning to write the words:
+
+    CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE SINKING SHIP
+
+
+"Sir," said the first lieutenant, bursting into the Captain's cabin,
+"the ship is going down."
+
+"Very well, Mr. Spoker," said the Captain; "but that is no reason for
+going about half-shaved. Exercise your mind a moment, Mr. Spoker, and
+you will see that to the philosophic eye there is nothing new in our
+position: the ship (if she is to go down at all) may be said to have
+been going down since she was launched."
+
+"She is settling fast," said the first lieutenant, as he returned from
+shaving.
+
+"Fast, Mr. Spoker?" asked the Captain. "The expression is a strange one,
+for time (if you will think of it) is only relative."
+
+"Sir," said the lieutenant, "I think it is scarcely worth while to
+embark in such a discussion when we shall all be in Davy Jones's Locker
+in ten minutes."
+
+"By parity of reasoning," returned the Captain gently, "it would never
+be worth while to begin any inquiry of importance; the odds are always
+overwhelming that we must die before we shall have brought it to an end.
+You have not considered, Mr. Spoker, the situation of man," said the
+Captain, smiling, and shaking his head.
+
+"I am much more engaged in considering the position of the ship," said
+Mr. Spoker.
+
+"Spoken like a good officer," replied the Captain, laying his hand on
+the lieutenant's shoulder.
+
+On deck they found the men had broken into the spirit-room, and were
+fast getting drunk.
+
+"My men," said the Captain, "there is no sense in this. The ship is
+going down, you will tell me, in ten minutes: well, and what then? To
+the philosophic eye, there is nothing new in our position. All our lives
+long, we may have been about to break a blood-vessel or to be struck by
+lightning, not merely in ten minutes, but in ten seconds; and that has
+not prevented us from eating dinner, no, nor from putting money in the
+Savings Bank. I assure you, with my hand on my heart, I fail to
+comprehend your attitude."
+
+The men were already too far gone to pay much heed.
+
+"This is a very painful sight, Mr. Spoker," said the Captain.
+
+"And yet to the philosophic eye, or whatever it is," replied the first
+lieutenant, "they may be said to have been getting drunk since they came
+aboard."
+
+"I do not know if you always follow my thought, Mr. Spoker," returned
+the Captain gently. "But let us proceed."
+
+In the powder magazine they found an old salt smoking his pipe.
+
+"Good God!" cried the Captain, "what are you about?"
+
+"Well, sir," said the old salt apologetically, "they told me as she were
+going down."
+
+"And suppose she were?" said the Captain. "To the philosophic eye, there
+would be nothing new in our position. Life, my old shipmate, life, at
+any moment and in any view, is as dangerous as a sinking ship; and yet
+it is man's handsome fashion to carry umbrellas, to wear indiarubber
+overshoes, to begin vast works, and to conduct himself in every way as
+if he might hope to be eternal. And for my own poor part I should
+despise the man who, even on board a sinking ship, should omit to take a
+pill or to wind up his watch. That, my friend, would not be the human
+attitude."
+
+"I beg pardon, sir," said Mr. Spoker. "But what is precisely the
+difference between shaving in a sinking ship and smoking in a powder
+magazine?"
+
+"Or doing anything at all in any conceivable circumstances?" cried the
+Captain. "Perfectly conclusive; give me a cigar!"
+
+Two minutes afterwards the ship blew up with a glorious detonation.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE TWO MATCHES
+
+
+One day there was a traveller in the woods in California, in the dry
+season, when the trades were blowing strong. He had ridden a long way,
+and he was tired and hungry, and dismounted from his horse to smoke a
+pipe. But when he felt in his pocket he found but two matches. He struck
+the first, and it would not light.
+
+"Here is a pretty state of things!" said the traveller. "Dying for a
+smoke; only one match left; and that certain to miss fire! Was there
+ever a creature so unfortunate? And yet," thought the traveller,
+"suppose I light this match, and smoke my pipe, and shake out the dottle
+here in the grass--the grass might catch fire, for it is dry like
+tinder; and while I snatch out the flames in front, they might evade and
+run behind me, and seize upon yon bush of poison oak; before I could
+reach it, that would have blazed up; over the bush I see a pine-tree
+hung with moss; that, too, would fly in fire upon the instant to its
+topmost bough; and the flame of that long torch--how would the
+trade-wind take and brandish that through the inflammable forest! I hear
+this dell roar in a moment with the joint voice of wind and fire, I see
+myself gallop for my soul, and the flying conflagration chase and
+outflank me through the hills; I see this pleasant forest burn for days,
+and the cattle roasted, and the springs dried up, and the farmer ruined,
+and his children cast upon the world. What a world hangs upon this
+moment!"
+
+With that he struck the match, and it missed fire.
+
+"Thank God!" said the traveller, and put his pipe in his pocket.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE SICK MAN AND THE FIREMAN
+
+
+There was once a sick man in a burning house, to whom there entered a
+fireman.
+
+"Do not save me," said the sick man. "Save those who are strong."
+
+"Will you kindly tell me why?" inquired the fireman, for he was a civil
+fellow.
+
+"Nothing could possibly be fairer," said the sick man. "The strong
+should be preferred in all cases, because they are of more service in
+the world."
+
+The fireman pondered a while, for he was a man of some philosophy.
+"Granted," said he at last, as a part of the roof fell in; "but for the
+sake of conversation, what would you lay down as the proper service of
+the strong?"
+
+"Nothing can possibly be easier," returned the sick man; "the proper
+service of the strong is to help the weak."
+
+Again the fireman reflected, for there was nothing hasty about this
+excellent creature. "I could forgive you being sick," he said at last,
+as a portion of the wall fell out, "but I cannot bear your being such a
+fool." And with that he heaved up his fireman's axe, for he was
+eminently just, and clove the sick man to the bed.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE DEVIL AND THE INNKEEPER
+
+
+Once upon a time the devil stayed at an inn, where no one knew him, for
+they were people whose education had been neglected. He was bent on
+mischief, and for a time kept everybody by the ears. But at last the
+innkeeper set a watch upon the devil and took him in the fact.
+
+The innkeeper got a rope's end.
+
+"Now I'm going to thrash you," said the innkeeper.
+
+"You have no right to be angry with me," said the devil. "I am only the
+devil, and it is my nature to do wrong."
+
+"Is that so?" asked the innkeeper.
+
+"Fact, I assure you," said the devil.
+
+"You really can't help doing ill?" asked the innkeeper.
+
+"Not in the smallest," said the devil; "it would be useless cruelty to
+thrash a thing like me."
+
+"It would indeed," said the innkeeper.
+
+And he made a noose and hanged the devil.
+
+"There!" said the innkeeper.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE PENITENT
+
+
+A man met a lad weeping. "What do you weep for?" he asked.
+
+"I am weeping for my sins," said the lad.
+
+"You must have little to do," said the man.
+
+The next day they met again. Once more the lad was weeping. "Why do you
+weep now?" asked the man.
+
+"I am weeping because I have nothing to eat," said the lad.
+
+"I thought it would come to that," said the man.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+THE YELLOW PAINT
+
+
+In a certain city there lived a physician who sold yellow paint. This
+was of so singular a virtue that whoso was bedaubed with it from head to
+heel was set free from the dangers of life, and the bondage of sin, and
+the fear of death for ever. So the physician said in his prospectus; and
+so said all the citizens in the city; and there was nothing more urgent
+in men's hearts than to be properly painted themselves, and nothing they
+took more delight in than to see others painted. There was in the same
+city a young man of a very good family but of a somewhat reckless life,
+who had reached the age of manhood, and would have nothing to say to the
+paint: "To-morrow was soon enough," said he; and when the morrow came he
+would still put it off. So he might have continued to do until his
+death; only, he had a friend of about his own age and much of his own
+manners; and this youth, taking a walk in the public street, with not
+one fleck of paint upon his body, was suddenly run down by a water-cart
+and cut off in the heyday of his nakedness. This shook the other to the
+soul; so that I never beheld a man more earnest to be painted; and on
+the very same evening, in the presence of all his family, to appropriate
+music, and himself weeping aloud, he received three complete coats and a
+touch of varnish on the top. The physician (who was himself affected
+even to tears) protested he had never done a job so thorough.
+
+Some two months afterwards, the young man was carried on a stretcher to
+the physician's house.
+
+"What is the meaning of this?" he cried, as soon as the door was opened.
+"I was to be set free from all the dangers of life; and here have I been
+run down by that self-same water-cart, and my leg is broken."
+
+"Dear me!" said the physician. "This is very sad. But I perceive I must
+explain to you the action of my paint. A broken bone is a mighty small
+affair at the worst of it; and it belongs to a class of accident to
+which my paint is quite inapplicable. Sin, my dear young friend, sin is
+the sole calamity that a wise man should apprehend; it is against sin
+that I have fitted you out; and when you come to be tempted you will
+give me news of my paint."
+
+"O!" said the young man, "I did not understand that, and it seems rather
+disappointing. But I have no doubt all is for the best; and in the
+meanwhile, I shall be obliged to you if you will set my leg."
+
+"That is none of my business," said the physician; "but if your bearers
+will carry you round the corner to the surgeon's, I feel sure he will
+afford relief."
+
+Some three years later, the young man came running to the physician's
+house in a great perturbation. "What is the meaning of this?" he cried.
+"Here was I to be set free from the bondage of sin; and I have just
+committed forgery, arson, and murder."
+
+"Dear me!" said the physician. "This is very serious. Off with your
+clothes at once." And as soon as the young man had stripped, he examined
+him from head to foot. "No," he cried with great relief, "there is not a
+flake broken. Cheer up, my young friend, your paint is as good as new."
+
+"Good God!" cried the young man, "and what then can be the use of it?"
+
+"Why," said the physician, "I perceive I must explain to you the nature
+of the action of my paint. It does not exactly prevent sin; it
+extenuates instead the painful consequences. It is not so much for this
+world as for the next; it is not against life; in short, it is against
+death that I have fitted you out. And when you come to die, you will
+give me news of my paint."
+
+"O!" cried the young man, "I had not understood that, and it seems a
+little disappointing. But there is no doubt all is for the best; and in
+the meanwhile, I shall be obliged if you will help me to undo the evil I
+have brought on innocent persons."
+
+"That is none of my business," said the physician; "but if you will go
+round the corner to the police office, I feel sure it will afford you
+relief to give yourself up."
+
+Six weeks later the physician was called to the town gaol.
+
+"What is the meaning of this?" cried the young man. "Here am I literally
+crusted with your paint; and I have broken my leg, and committed all the
+crimes in the calendar, and must be hanged to-morrow; and am in the
+meanwhile in a fear so extreme that I lack words to picture it."
+
+"Dear me!" said the physician. "This is really amazing. Well, well;
+perhaps if you had not been painted, you would have been more frightened
+still."
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE HOUSE OF ELD
+
+
+So soon as the child began to speak, the gyve was riveted; and the boys
+and girls limped about their play like convicts. Doubtless it was more
+pitiable to see and more painful to bear in youth; but even the grown
+folk, besides being very unhandy on their feet, were often sick with
+ulcers.
+
+About the time when Jack was ten years old, many strangers began to
+journey through that country. These he beheld going lightly by on the
+long roads, and the thing amazed him. "I wonder how it comes," he asked,
+"that all these strangers are so quick afoot, and we must drag about our
+fetter?"
+
+"My dear boy," said his uncle, the catechist, "do not complain about
+your fetter, for it is the only thing that makes life worth living. None
+are happy, none are good, none are respectable, that are not gyved like
+us. And I must tell you, besides, it is very dangerous talk. If you
+grumble of your iron, you will have no luck; if you ever take it off,
+you will be instantly smitten by a thunderbolt."
+
+"Are there no thunderbolts for these strangers?" asked Jack.
+
+"Jupiter is long-suffering to the benighted," returned the catechist.
+
+"Upon my word, I could wish I had been less fortunate," said Jack. "For
+if I had been born benighted, I might now be going free; and it cannot
+be denied the iron is inconvenient, and the ulcer hurts."
+
+"Ah!" cried his uncle, "do not envy the heathen! Theirs is a sad lot!
+Ah, poor souls, if they but knew the joys of being fettered! Poor souls,
+my heart yearns for them. But the truth is they are vile, odious,
+insolent, ill-conditioned, stinking brutes, not truly human--for what
+is a man without a fetter?--and you cannot be too particular not to
+touch or speak with them."
+
+After this talk, the child would never pass one of the unfettered on the
+road but what he spat at him and called him names, which was the
+practice of the children in that part.
+
+It chanced one day, when he was fifteen, he went into the woods, and the
+ulcer pained him. It was a fair day, with a blue sky; all the birds were
+singing; but Jack nursed his foot. Presently, another song began; it
+sounded like the singing of a person, only far more gay; at the same
+time there was a beating on the earth. Jack put aside the leaves; and
+there was a lad of his own village, leaping, and dancing and singing to
+himself in a green dell; and on the grass beside him lay the dancer's
+iron.
+
+"O!" cried Jack, "you have your fetter off!"
+
+"For God's sake, don't tell your uncle!" cried the lad.
+
+"If you fear my uncle," returned Jack, "why do you not fear the
+thunderbolt?"
+
+"That is only an old wives' tale," said the other. "It is only told to
+children. Scores of us come here among the woods and dance for nights
+together, and are none the worse."
+
+This put Jack in a thousand new thoughts. He was a grave lad; he had no
+mind to dance himself; he wore his fetter manfully, and tended his ulcer
+without complaint. But he loved the less to be deceived or to see others
+cheated. He began to lie in wait for heathen travellers, at covert parts
+of the road, and in the dusk of the day, so that he might speak with
+them unseen; and these were greatly taken with their wayside questioner,
+and told him things of weight. The wearing of gyves (they said) was no
+command of Jupiter's. It was the contrivance of a white-faced thing, a
+sorcerer, that dwelt in that country in the Wood of Eld. He was one like
+Glaucus that could change his shape, yet he could be always told; for
+when he was crossed, he gobbled like a turkey. He had three lives; but
+the third smiting would make an end of him indeed; and with that his
+house of sorcery would vanish, the gyves fall, and the villagers take
+hands and dance like children.
+
+"And in your country?" Jack would ask.
+
+But at this, the travellers, with one accord, would put him off; until
+Jack began to suppose there was no land entirely happy. Or, if there
+were, it must be one that kept its folk at home; which was natural
+enough.
+
+But the case of the gyves weighed upon him. The sight of the children
+limping stuck in his eyes; the groans of such as dressed their ulcers
+haunted him. And it came at last in his mind that he was born to free
+them.
+
+There was in that village a sword of heavenly forgery, beaten upon
+Vulcan's anvil. It was never used but in the temple, and then the flat
+of it only; and it hung on a nail by the catechist's chimney. Early one
+night Jack rose, and took the sword, and was gone out of the house and
+the village in the darkness.
+
+All night he walked at a venture; and when day came, he met strangers
+going to the fields. Then he asked after the Wood of Eld and the house
+of sorcery; and one said north, and one south; until Jack saw that they
+deceived him. So then, when he asked his way of any man, he showed the
+bright sword naked; and at that the gyve on the man's ankle rang and
+answered in his stead; and the word was still _Straight on._ But the
+man, when his gyve spoke, spat and struck at Jack, and threw stones at
+him as he went away; so that his head was broken.
+
+So he came to that wood, and entered in, and he was aware of a house in
+a low place, where funguses grew, and the trees met, and the steaming of
+the marsh arose about it like a smoke. It was a fine house, and a very
+rambling; some parts of it were ancient like the hills, and some but of
+yesterday, and none finished; and all the ends of it were open, so that
+you could go in from every side. Yet it was in good repair, and all the
+chimneys smoked.
+
+Jack went in through the gable; and there was one room after another,
+all bare, but all furnished in part, so that a man could dwell there;
+and in each there was a fire burning, where a man could warm himself,
+and a table spread where he might eat. But Jack saw nowhere any living
+creature; only the bodies of some stuffed.
+
+"This is a hospitable house," said Jack; "but the ground must be quaggy
+underneath, for at every step the building quakes."
+
+He had gone some time in the house, when he began to be hungry. Then he
+looked at the food, and at first he was afraid; but he bared the sword,
+and by the shining of the sword, it seemed the food was honest. So he
+took the courage to sit down and eat, and he was refreshed in mind and
+body.
+
+"This is strange," thought he, "that in the house of sorcery there
+should be food so wholesome."
+
+As he was yet eating, there came into that room the appearance of his
+uncle, and Jack was afraid because he had taken the sword. But his uncle
+was never more kind, and sat down to meat with him, and praised him
+because he had taken the sword. Never had these two been more pleasantly
+together, and Jack was full of love to the man.
+
+"It was very well done," said his uncle, "to take the sword and come
+yourself into the House of Eld; a good thought and a brave deed. But now
+you are satisfied; and we may go home to dinner arm in arm."
+
+"O dear no!" said Jack. "I am not satisfied yet."
+
+"How!" cried his uncle. "Are you not warmed by the fire? Does not this
+food sustain you?"
+
+"I see the food to be wholesome," said Jack; "and still it is no proof
+that a man should wear a gyve on his right leg."
+
+Now at this the appearance of his uncle gobbled like a turkey.
+
+"Jupiter!" cried Jack, "is this the sorcerer?"
+
+His hand held back and his heart failed him for the love he bore his
+uncle; but he heaved up the sword and smote the appearance on the head;
+and it cried out aloud with the voice of his uncle; and fell to the
+ground; and a little bloodless white thing fled from the room.
+
+The cry rang in Jack's ears, and his knees smote together, and
+conscience cried upon him; and yet he was strengthened, and there woke
+in his bones the lust of that enchanter's blood. "If the gyves are to
+fall," said he, "I must go through with this, and when I get home I
+shall find my uncle dancing."
+
+So he went on after the bloodless thing. In the way he met the
+appearance of his father; and his father was incensed, and railed upon
+him, and called to him upon his duty, and bade him be home, while there
+was yet time. "For you can still," said he, "be home by sunset; and then
+all will be forgiven."
+
+"God knows," said Jack, "I fear your anger; but yet your anger does not
+prove that a man should wear a gyve on his right leg."
+
+And at that the appearance of his father gobbled like a turkey.
+
+"Ah, heaven," cried Jack, "the sorcerer again!"
+
+The blood ran backward in his body, and his joints rebelled against him
+for the love he bore his father; but he heaved up the sword, and plunged
+it in the heart of the appearance; and the appearance cried out aloud
+with the voice of his father; and fell to the ground; and a little
+bloodless white thing fled from the room.
+
+The cry rang in Jack's ears, and his soul was darkened; but now rage
+came to him. "I have done what I dare not think upon," said he. "I will
+go to an end with it, or perish. And when I get home, I pray God this
+may be a dream, and I may find my father dancing."
+
+So he went on after the bloodless thing that had escaped; and in the way
+he met the appearance of his mother, and she wept. "What have you
+done?" she cried. "What is this that you have done? O, come home (where
+you may be by bedtime) ere you do more ill to me and mine; for it is
+enough to smite my brother and your father."
+
+"Dear mother, it is not these that I have smitten," said Jack; "it was
+but the enchanter in their shape. And even if I had, it would not prove
+that a man should wear a gyve on his right leg."
+
+And at this the appearance gobbled like a turkey.
+
+He never knew how he did that; but he swung the sword on the one side,
+and clove the appearance through the midst; and it cried out aloud with
+the voice of his mother; and fell to the ground; and with the fall of
+it, the house was gone from over Jack's head, and he stood alone in the
+woods, and the gyve was loosened from his leg.
+
+"Well," said he, "the enchanter is now dead, and the fetter gone." But
+the cries rang in his soul, and the day was like night to him. "This has
+been a sore business," said he. "Let me get forth out of the wood, and
+see the good that I have done to others."
+
+He thought to leave the fetter where it lay, but when he turned to go,
+his mind was otherwise. So he stooped and put the gyve in his bosom; and
+the rough iron galled him as he went, and his bosom bled.
+
+Now when he was forth of the wood upon the highway, he met folk
+returning from the field; and those he met had no fetter on the right
+leg, but, behold! they had one upon the left. Jack asked them what it
+signified; and they said, "that was the new wear, for the old was found
+to be a superstition." Then he looked at them nearly; and there was a
+new ulcer on the left ankle, and the old one on the right was not yet
+healed.
+
+"Now, may God forgive me!" cried Jack. "I would I were well home."
+
+And when he was home, there lay his uncle smitten on the head, and his
+father pierced through the heart, and his mother cloven through the
+midst. And he sat in the lone house and wept beside the bodies.
+
+MORAL
+
+  Old is the tree and the fruit good,
+  Very old and thick the wood.
+  Woodman, is your courage stout?
+  Beware! the root is wrapped about
+  Your mother's heart, your father's bones;
+  And like the mandrake comes with groans.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE FOUR REFORMERS
+
+
+Four reformers met under a bramble-bush. They were all agreed the world
+must be changed. "We must abolish property," said one.
+
+"We must abolish marriage," said the second.
+
+"We must abolish God," said the third.
+
+"I wish we could abolish work," said the fourth.
+
+"Do not let us get beyond practical politics," said the first. "The
+first thing is to reduce men to a common level."
+
+"The first thing," said the second, "is to give freedom to the sexes."
+
+"The first thing," said the third, "is to find out how to do it."
+
+"The first step," said the first, "is to abolish the Bible."
+
+"The first thing," said the second, "is to abolish the laws."
+
+"The first thing," said the third, "is to abolish mankind."
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+THE MAN AND HIS FRIEND
+
+
+A man quarrelled with his friend.
+
+"I have been much deceived in you," said the man.
+
+And the friend made a face at him and went away.
+
+A little after, they both died, and came together before the great white
+Justice of the Peace. It began to look black for the friend, but the man
+for a while had a clear character and was getting in good spirits.
+
+"I find here some record of a quarrel," said the Justice, looking in his
+notes. "Which of you was in the wrong?"
+
+"He was," said the man. "He spoke ill of me behind my back."
+
+"Did he so?" said the Justice. "And pray how did he speak about your
+neighbours?"
+
+"O, he had always a nasty tongue," said the man.
+
+"And you chose him for your friend?" cried the Justice. "My good fellow,
+we have no use here for fools."
+
+So the man was cast in the pit, and the friend laughed out aloud in the
+dark and remained to be tried on other charges.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+THE READER
+
+
+"I never read such an impious book," said the reader, throwing it on the
+floor.
+
+"You need not hurt me," said the book; "you will only get less for me
+second-hand, and I did not write myself."
+
+"That is true," said the reader. "My quarrel is with your author."
+
+"Ah, well," said the book, "you need not buy his rant."
+
+"That is true," said the reader. "But I thought him such a cheerful
+writer."
+
+"I find him so," said the book.
+
+"You must be differently made from me," said the reader.
+
+"Let me tell you a fable," said the book. "There were two men wrecked
+upon a desert island; one of them made believe he was at home, the other
+admitted----"
+
+"O, I know your kind of fable," said the reader. "They both died."
+
+"And so they did," said the book. "No doubt of that. And everybody
+else."
+
+"That is true," said the reader. "Push it a little further for this
+once. And when they were all dead?"
+
+"They were in God's hands, the same as before," said the book.
+
+"Not much to boast of, by your account," cried the reader.
+
+"Who is impious now?" said the book.
+
+And the reader put him on the fire.
+
+  The coward crouches from the rod,
+  And loathes the iron face of God.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+THE CITIZEN AND THE TRAVELLER
+
+
+"Look round you," said the citizen. "This is the largest market in the
+world."
+
+"O, surely not," said the traveller.
+
+"Well, perhaps not the largest," said the citizen, "but much the best."
+
+"You are certainly wrong there," said the traveller. "I can tell you...."
+
+They buried the stranger at the dusk.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+THE DISTINGUISHED STRANGER
+
+
+Once upon a time there came to this earth a visitor from a neighbouring
+planet. And he was met at the place of his descent by a great
+philosopher, who was to show him everything.
+
+First of all they came through a wood, and the stranger looked upon the
+trees. "Whom have we here?" said he.
+
+"These are only vegetables," said the philosopher. "They are alive, but
+not at all interesting."
+
+"I don't know about that," said the stranger. "They seem to have very
+good manners. Do they never speak?"
+
+"They lack the gift," said the philosopher.
+
+"Yet I think I hear them sing," said the other.
+
+"That is only the wind among the leaves," said the philosopher. "I will
+explain to you the theory of winds: it is very interesting."
+
+"Well," said the stranger, "I wish I knew what they are thinking."
+
+"They cannot think," said the philosopher.
+
+"I don't know, about that," returned the stranger: and then, laying his
+hand upon a trunk: "I like these people," said he.
+
+"They are not people at all," said the philosopher. "Come along."
+
+Next they came through a meadow where there were cows.
+
+"These are very dirty people," said the stranger.
+
+"They are not people at all," said the philosopher; and he explained
+what a cow is in scientific words which I have forgotten.
+
+"That is all one to me," said the stranger. "But why do they never look
+up?"
+
+"Because they are graminivorous," said the philosopher; "and to live
+upon grass, which is not highly nutritious, requires so close an
+attention to business that they have no time to think, or speak, or look
+at the scenery, or keep themselves clean."
+
+"Well," said the stranger, "that is one way to live, no doubt. But I
+prefer the people with the green heads."
+
+Next they came into a city, and the streets were full of men and women.
+
+"These are very odd people," said the stranger.
+
+"They are the people of the greatest nation in the world," said the
+philosopher.
+
+"Are they indeed?" said the stranger. "They scarcely look so."
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+THE CART-HORSES AND THE SADDLE-HORSE
+
+
+Two cart-horses, a gelding and a mare, were brought to Samoa, and put in
+the same field with a saddle-horse to run free on the island. They were
+rather afraid to go near him, for they saw he was a saddle-horse, and
+supposed he would not speak to them. Now the saddle-horse had never seen
+creatures so big. "These must be great chiefs," thought he, and he
+approached them civilly. "Lady and gentleman," said he, "I understand
+you are from the colonies. I offer you my affectionate compliments, and
+make you heartily welcome to the islands."
+
+The colonials looked at him askance, and consulted with each other.
+
+"Who can he be?" said the gelding.
+
+"He seems suspiciously civil," said the mare.
+
+"I do not think he can be much account," said the gelding.
+
+"Depend upon it he is only a Kanaka," said the mare.
+
+Then they turned to him.
+
+"Go to the devil!" said the gelding.
+
+"I wonder at your impudence, speaking to persons of our quality!" cried
+the mare.
+
+The saddle-horse went away by himself. "I was right," said he, "they are
+great chiefs."
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+THE TADPOLE AND THE FROG
+
+
+"Be ashamed of yourself," said the frog. "When I was a tadpole, I had no
+tail."
+
+"Just what I thought!" said the tadpole. "You never were a tadpole."
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+SOMETHING IN IT
+
+
+The natives told him many tales. In particular, they warned him of the
+house of yellow reeds tied with black sinnet, how any one who touched it
+became instantly the prey of Akaänga, and was handed on to him by Miru
+the ruddy, and hocussed with the kava of the dead, and baked in the
+ovens and eaten by the eaters of the dead.
+
+"There is nothing in it," said the missionary.
+
+There was a bay upon that island, a very fair bay to look upon; but, by
+the native saying, it was death to bathe there. "There is nothing in
+that," said the missionary; and he came to the bay, and went swimming.
+Presently an eddy took him and bore him towards the reef. "Oho!" thought
+the missionary, "it seems there is something in it after all." And he
+swam the harder, but the eddy carried him away. "I do not care about
+this eddy," said the missionary; and even as he said it, he was aware of
+a house raised on piles above the sea; it was built of yellow reeds, one
+reed joined with another, and the whole bound with black sinnet; a
+ladder led to the door, and all about the house hung calabashes. He had
+never seen such a house, nor yet such calabashes; and the eddy set for
+the ladder. "This is singular," said the missionary, "but there can be
+nothing in it." And he laid hold of the ladder and went up. It was a
+fine house; but there was no man there; and when the missionary looked
+back he saw no island, only the heaving of the sea. "It is strange about
+the island," said the missionary, "but who's afraid? my stories are the
+true ones." And he laid hold of a calabash, for he was one that loved
+curiosities. Now he had no sooner laid hand upon the calabash than that
+which he handled, and that which he saw and stood on, burst like a
+bubble and was gone; and night closed upon him, and the waters, and the
+meshes of the net; and he wallowed there like a fish.
+
+"A body would think there was something in this," said the missionary.
+"But if these tales are true, I wonder what about my tales!"
+
+Now the flaming of Akaänga's torch drew near in the night; and the
+misshapen hands groped in the meshes of the net; and they took the
+missionary between the finger and the thumb, and bore him dripping in
+the night and silence to the place of the ovens of Miru. And there was
+Miru, ruddy in the glow of the ovens; and there sat her four daughters,
+and made the kava of the dead; and there sat the comers out of the
+islands of the living, dripping and lamenting.
+
+This was a dread place to reach for any of the sons of men. But of all
+who ever came there, the missionary was the most concerned; and, to make
+things worse, the person next him was a convert of his own.
+
+"Aha," said the convert, "so you are here like your neighbours? And how
+about all your stories?"
+
+"It seems," said the missionary, with bursting tears, "that there was
+nothing in them."
+
+By this the kava of the dead was ready, and the daughters of Miru began
+to intone in the old manner of singing: "Gone are the green islands and
+the bright sea, the sun and the moon and the forty million stars, and
+life and love and hope. Henceforth is no more, only to sit in the night
+and silence, and see your friends devoured; for life is a deceit, and
+the bandage is taken from your eyes."
+
+Now when the singing was done, one of the daughters came with the bowl.
+Desire of that kava rose in the missionary's bosom; he lusted for it
+like a swimmer for the land, or a bridegroom for his bride; and he
+reached out his hand, and took the bowl, and would have drunk. And then
+he remembered, and put it back.
+
+"Drink!" sang the daughter of Miru. "There is no kava like the kava of
+the dead, and to drink of it once is the reward of living."
+
+"I thank you. It smells excellent," said the missionary. "But I am a
+blue-ribbon man myself; and though I am aware there is a difference of
+opinion even in our own confession, I have always held kava to be
+excluded."
+
+"What!" cried the convert. "Are you going to respect a taboo at a time
+like this? And you were always so opposed to taboos when you were
+alive!"
+
+"To other people's," said the missionary. "Never to my own."
+
+"But yours have all proved wrong," said the convert.
+
+"It looks like it," said the missionary, "and I can't help that. No
+reason why I should break my word."
+
+"I never heard the like of this!" cried the daughter of Miru. "Pray,
+what do you expect to gain?"
+
+"That is not the point," said the missionary. "I took this pledge for
+others, I am not going to break it for myself."
+
+The daughter of Miru was puzzled; she came and told her mother, and Miru
+was vexed; and they went and told Akaänga.
+
+"I don't know what to do about this," said Akaänga; and he came and
+reasoned with the missionary.
+
+"But there _is_ such a thing as right and wrong," said the missionary;
+"and your ovens cannot alter that."
+
+"Give the kava to the rest," said Akaänga to the daughters of Miru. "I
+must get rid of this sea-lawyer instantly, or worse will come of it."
+
+The next moment the missionary came up in the midst of the sea, and
+there before him were the palm-trees of the island. He swam to the shore
+gladly, and landed. Much matter of thought was in that missionary's
+mind.
+
+"I seem to have been misinformed upon some points," said he. "Perhaps
+there is not much in it, as I supposed; but there is something in it
+after all. Let me be glad of that."
+
+And he rang the bell for service.
+
+  MORAL
+
+  The sticks break, the stones crumble,
+  The eternal altars tilt and tumble,
+  Sanctions and tales dislimn like mist
+  About the amazed evangelist.
+  He stands unshook from age to youth
+  Upon one pin-point of the truth.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+FAITH, HALF-FAITH, AND NO FAITH AT ALL
+
+
+In the ancient days there went three men upon pilgrimage; one was a
+priest, and one was a virtuous person, and the third was an old rover
+with his axe.
+
+As they went, the priest spoke about the grounds of faith.
+
+"We find the proofs of our religion in the works of nature," said he,
+and beat his breast.
+
+"That is true," said the virtuous person.
+
+"The peacock has a scrannel voice," said the priest, "as has been laid
+down always in our books. How cheering!" he cried, in a voice like one
+that wept. "How comforting!"
+
+"I require no such proofs," said the virtuous person.
+
+"Then you have no reasonable faith," said the priest.
+
+"Great is the right, and shall prevail!" cried the virtuous person.
+"There is loyalty in my soul; be sure, there is loyalty in the mind of
+Odin."
+
+"These are but playings upon words," returned the priest. "A sackful of
+such trash is nothing to the peacock."
+
+Just then they passed a country farm, where there was a peacock seated
+on a rail; and the bird opened its mouth and sang with the voice of a
+nightingale.
+
+"Where are you now?" asked the virtuous person. "And yet this shakes not
+me! Great is the truth, and shall prevail!"
+
+"The devil fly away with that peacock!" said the priest; and he was
+downcast for a mile or two.
+
+But presently they came to a shrine, where a Fakeer performed miracles.
+
+"Ah!" said the priest, "here are the true grounds of faith. The peacock
+was but an adminicle. This is the base of our religion." And he beat
+upon his breast, and groaned like one with colic.
+
+"Now to me," said the virtuous person, "all this is as little to the
+purpose as the peacock. I believe because I see the right is great and
+must prevail; and this Fakeer might carry on with his conjuring tricks
+till doomsday, and it would not play bluff upon a man like me."
+
+Now at this the Fakeer was so much incensed that his hand trembled; and,
+lo! in the midst of a miracle the cards fell from up his sleeve.
+
+"Where are you now?" asked the virtuous person. "And yet it shakes not
+me!"
+
+"The devil fly away with the Fakeer!" cried the priest. "I really do not
+see the good of going on with this pilgrimage."
+
+"Cheer up!" cried the virtuous person. "Great is the right, and shall
+prevail!"
+
+"If you are quite sure it will prevail," says the priest.
+
+"I pledge my word for that," said the virtuous person.
+
+So the other began to go on again with a better heart.
+
+At last one came running, and told them all was lost: that the powers of
+darkness had besieged the Heavenly Mansions, that Odin was to die, and
+evil triumph.
+
+"I have been grossly deceived," cried the virtuous person.
+
+"All is lost now," said the priest.
+
+"I wonder if it is too late to make it up with the devil?" said the
+virtuous person.
+
+"O, I hope not," said the priest. "And at any rate we can but try.--But
+what are you doing with your axe?" says he to the rover.
+
+"I am off to die with Odin," said the rover.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+THE TOUCHSTONE
+
+
+The King was a man that stood well before the world; his smile was sweet
+as clover, but his soul withinsides was as little as a pea. He had two
+sons; and the younger son was a boy after his heart, but the elder was
+one whom he feared. It befell one morning that the drum sounded in the
+dun before it was yet day; and the King rode with his two sons, and a
+brave array behind them. They rode two hours, and came to the foot of a
+brown mountain that was very steep.
+
+"Where do we ride?" said the elder son.
+
+"Across this brown mountain," said the King, and smiled to himself.
+
+"My father knows what he is doing," said the younger son.
+
+And they rode two hours more, and came to the sides of a black river
+that was wondrous deep.
+
+"And where do we ride?" asked the elder son.
+
+"Over this black river," said the King, and smiled to himself.
+
+"My father knows what he is doing," said the younger son.
+
+And they rode all that day, and about the time of the sunsetting came to
+the side of a lake, where was a great dun.
+
+"It is here we ride," said the King; "to a King's house, and a priest's,
+and a house where you will learn much."
+
+At the gates of the dun, the King who was a priest met them; and he was
+a grave man, and beside him stood his daughter, and she was as fair as
+the morn, and one that smiled and looked down.
+
+"These are my two sons," said the first King.
+
+"And here is my daughter," said the King who was a priest.
+
+"She is a wonderful fine maid," said the first King, "and I like her
+manner of smiling."
+
+"They are wonderful well-grown lads," said the second, "and I like their
+gravity."
+
+And then the two Kings looked at each other, and said, "The thing may
+come about."
+
+And in the meanwhile the two lads looked upon the maid, and the one grew
+pale and the other red; and the maid looked upon the ground smiling.
+
+"Here is the maid that I shall marry," said the elder. "For I think she
+smiled upon me."
+
+But the younger plucked his father by the sleeve. "Father," said he, "a
+word in your ear. If I find favour in your sight, might not I wed this
+maid, for I think she smiles upon me?"
+
+"A word in yours," said the King his father. "Waiting is good hunting,
+and when the teeth are shut the tongue is at home."
+
+Now they were come into the dun, and feasted; and this was a great
+house, so that the lads were astonished; and the King that was a priest
+sat at the end of the board and was silent, so that the lads were filled
+with reverence; and the maid served them smiling with downcast eyes, so
+that their hearts were enlarged.
+
+Before it was day, the elder son arose, and he found the maid at her
+weaving, for she was a diligent girl. "Maid," quoth he, "I would fain
+marry you."
+
+"You must speak with my father," said she, and she looked upon the
+ground smiling, and became like the rose.
+
+"Her heart is with me," said the elder son, and he went down to the lake
+and sang.
+
+A little while after came the younger son. "Maid," quoth he, "if our
+fathers were agreed, I would like well to marry you."
+
+"You can speak to my father," said she; and looked upon the ground, and
+smiled and grew like the rose.
+
+"She is a dutiful daughter," said the younger son, "she will make an
+obedient wife." And then he thought, "What shall I do?" and he
+remembered the King her father was a priest; so he went into the temple,
+and sacrificed a weasel and a hare.
+
+Presently the news got about; and the two lads and the first King were
+called into the presence of the King who was a priest, where he sat upon
+the high seat.
+
+"Little I reck of gear," said the King who was a priest, "and little of
+power. For we live here among the shadow of things, and the heart is
+sick of seeing them. And we stay here in the wind like raiment drying,
+and the heart is weary of the wind. But one thing I love, and that is
+truth; and for one thing will I give my daughter, and that is the trial
+stone. For in the light of that stone the seeming goes, and the being
+shows, and all things besides are worthless. Therefore, lads, if ye
+would wed my daughter, out foot, and bring me the stone of touch, for
+that is the price of her."
+
+"A word in your ear," said the younger son to his father. "I think we do
+very well without this stone."
+
+"A word in yours," said the father. "I am of your way of thinking; but
+when the teeth are shut the tongue is at home." And he smiled to the
+King that was a priest.
+
+But the elder son got to his feet, and called the King that was a priest
+by the name of father. "For whether I marry the maid or no, I will call
+you by that word for the love of your wisdom; and even now I will ride
+forth and search the world for the stone of touch." So he said farewell,
+and rode into the world.
+
+"I think I will go, too," said the younger son, "if I can have your
+leave. For my heart goes out to the maid."
+
+"You will ride home with me," said his father.
+
+So they rode home, and when they came to the dun, the King had his son
+into his treasury. "Here," said he, "is the touchstone which shows
+truth; for there is no truth but plain truth; and if you will look in
+this, you will see yourself as you are."
+
+And the younger son looked in it, and saw his face as it were the face
+of a beardless youth, and he was well enough pleased; for the thing was
+a piece of a mirror.
+
+"Here is no such great thing to make a work about," said he; "but if it
+will get me the maid I shall never complain. But what a fool is my
+brother to ride into the world, and the thing all the while at home!"
+
+So they rode back to the other dun, and showed the mirror to the King
+that was a priest; and when he had looked in it, and seen himself like a
+King, and his house like a King's house, and all things like themselves,
+he cried out and blessed God. "For now I know," said he, "there is no
+truth but the plain truth; and I am a King indeed, although my heart
+misgave me." And he pulled down his temple and built a new one; and then
+the younger son was married to the maid.
+
+In the meantime the elder son rode into the world to find the touchstone
+of the trial of truth; and whenever he came to a place of habitation, he
+would ask the men if they had heard of it. And in every place the men
+answered: "Not only have we heard of it, but we alone, of all men,
+possess the thing itself, and it hangs in the side of our chimney to
+this day." Then would the elder son be glad, and beg for a sight of it.
+And sometimes it would be a piece of mirror, that showed the seeming of
+things; and then he would say, "This can never be, for there should be
+more than seeming." And sometimes it would be a lump of coal, which
+showed nothing; and then he would say, "This can never be, for at least
+there is the seeming." And sometimes it would be a touchstone indeed,
+beautiful in hue, adorned with polishing, the light inhabiting its
+sides; and when he found this, he would beg the thing, and the persons
+of that place would give it him, for all men were very generous of that
+gift; so that at the last he had his wallet full of them, and they
+chinked together when he rode; and when he halted by the side of the way
+he would take them out and try them, till his head turned like the sails
+upon a windmill.
+
+"A murrain upon this business!" said the elder son, "for I perceive no
+end to it. Here I have the red, and here the blue and the green; and to
+me they seem all excellent, and yet shame each other. A murrain on the
+trade! If it were not for the King that is a priest and whom I have
+called my father, and if it were not for the fair maid of the dun that
+makes my mouth to sing and my heart enlarge, I would even tumble them
+all into the salt sea, and go home and be a King like other folk."
+
+But he was like the hunter that has seen a stag upon a mountain, so that
+the night may fall, and the fire be kindled, and the lights shine in his
+house; but desire of that stag is single in his bosom.
+
+Now after many years the elder son came upon the sides of the salt sea;
+and it was night, and a savage place, and the clamour of the sea was
+loud. There he was aware of a house, and a man sat there by the light of
+a candle, for he had no fire. Now the elder son came in to him, and the
+man gave him water to drink, for he had no bread; and wagged his head
+when spoken to, for he had no words.
+
+"Have you the touchstone of truth?" asked the elder son; and when the
+man had wagged his head, "I might have known that," cried the elder son.
+"I have here a wallet full of them!" And with that he laughed, although
+his heart was weary.
+
+And with that the man laughed too, and with the fuff of his laughter the
+candle went out.
+
+"Sleep," said the man, "for now I think you have come far enough; and
+your quest is ended and my candle is out."
+
+Now when the morning came, the man gave him a clear pebble in his hand,
+and it had no beauty and no colour; and the elder son looked upon it
+scornfully and shook his head; and he went away, for it seemed a small
+affair to him.
+
+All that day he rode, and his mind was quiet, and the desire of the
+chase allayed. "How if this poor pebble be the touchstone, after all?"
+said he: and he got down from his horse and emptied forth his wallet by
+the side of the way. Now, in the light of each other, all the
+touchstones lost their hue and fire, and withered like stars at morning;
+but in the light of the pebble, their beauty remained, only the pebble
+was the most bright. And the elder son smote upon his brow. "How if this
+be the truth?" he cried, "that all are a little true?" And he took the
+pebble and turned its light upon the heavens, and they deepened about
+him like the pit; and he turned it on the hills, and the hills were cold
+and rugged, but life ran in their sides so that his own life bounded;
+and he turned it on the dust, and he beheld the dust with joy and
+terror; and he turned it on himself, and knelt down and prayed.
+
+"Now, thanks be to God," said the elder son, "I have found the
+touchstone; and now I may turn my reins, and ride home to the King and
+to the maid of the dun that makes my mouth to sing and my heart
+enlarge."
+
+Now when he came to the dun, he saw children playing by the gate where
+the King had met him in the old days; and this stayed his pleasure, for
+he thought in his heart, "It is here my children should be playing." And
+when he came into the hall, there was his brother on the high seat and
+the maid beside him; and at that his anger rose, for he thought in his
+heart, "It is I that should be sitting there, and the maid beside me."
+
+"Who are you?" said his brother. "And what make you in the dun?"
+
+"I am your elder brother," he replied. "And I am come to marry the maid,
+for I have brought the touchstone of truth."
+
+Then the younger brother laughed aloud. "Why," said he, "I found the
+touchstone years ago, and married the maid, and there are our children
+playing at the gate."
+
+Now at this the elder brother grew as grey as the dawn. "I pray you have
+dealt justly," said he, "for I perceive my life is lost."
+
+"Justly?" quoth the younger brother. "It becomes you ill, that are a
+restless man and a runagate, to doubt my justice, or the King my
+father's, that are sedentary folk and known in the land."
+
+"Nay," said the elder brother, "you have all else, have patience also;
+and suffer me to say the world is full of touchstones, and it appears
+not easily which is true."
+
+"I have no shame of mine," said the younger brother. "There it is, and
+look in it."
+
+So the elder brother looked in the mirror, and he was sore amazed; for
+he was an old man, and his hair was white upon his head; and he sat down
+in the hall and wept aloud.
+
+"Now," said the younger brother, "see what a fool's part you have
+played, that ran over all the world to seek what was lying in our
+father's treasury, and came back an old carle for the dogs to bark at,
+and without chick or child. And I that was dutiful and wise sit here
+crowned with virtues and pleasures, and happy in the light of my
+hearth."
+
+"Methinks you have a cruel tongue," said the elder brother; and he
+pulled out the clear pebble and turned its light on his brother; and
+behold the man was lying, his soul was shrunk into the smallness of a
+pea, and his heart was a bag of little fears like scorpions, and love
+was dead in his bosom. And at that the elder brother cried out aloud,
+and turned the light of the pebble on the maid, and, lo! she was but a
+mask of a woman, and withinsides she was quite dead, and she smiled as a
+clock ticks, and knew not wherefore.
+
+"O, well," said the elder brother, "I perceive there is both good and
+bad. So fare ye all as well as ye may in the dun; but I will go forth
+into the world with my pebble in my pocket."
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+THE POOR THING
+
+
+There was a man in the islands who fished for his bare bellyful, and
+took his life in his hands to go forth upon the sea between four planks.
+But though he had much ado, he was merry of heart; and the gulls heard
+him laugh when the spray met him. And though he had little lore, he was
+sound of spirit; and when the fish came to his hook in the mid-waters,
+he blessed God without weighing. He was bitter poor in goods and bitter
+ugly of countenance, and he had no wife.
+
+It fell in the time of the fishing that the man awoke in his house about
+the midst of the afternoon. The fire burned in the midst, and the smoke
+went up and the sun came down by the chimney. And the man was aware of
+the likeness of one that warmed his hands at the red peats.
+
+"I greet you," said the man, "in the name of God."
+
+"I greet you," said he that warmed his hands, "but not in the name of
+God, for I am none of His; nor in the name of Hell, for I am not of
+Hell. For I am but a bloodless thing, less than wind and lighter than a
+sound, and the wind goes through me like a net, and I am broken by a
+sound and shaken by the cold."
+
+"Be plain with me," said the man, "and tell me your name and of your
+nature."
+
+"My name," quoth the other, "is not yet named, and my nature not yet
+sure. For I am part of a man; and I was a part of your fathers, and went
+out to fish and fight with them in the ancient days. But now is my turn
+not yet come; and I wait until you have a wife, and then shall I be in
+your son, and a brave part of him, rejoicing manfully to launch the boat
+into the surf, skilful to direct the helm, and a man of might where the
+ring closes and the blows are going."
+
+"This is a marvellous thing to hear," said the man; "and if you are
+indeed to be my son, I fear it will go ill with you; for I am bitter
+poor in goods and bitter ugly in face, and I shall never get me a wife
+if I live to the age of eagles."
+
+"All this have I come to remedy, my Father," said the Poor Thing; "for
+we must go this night to the little isle of sheep, where our fathers lie
+in the dead-cairn, and to-morrow to the Earl's Hall, and there shall you
+find a wife by my providing."
+
+So the man rose and put forth his boat at the time of the sunsetting;
+and the Poor Thing sat in the prow, and the spray blew through his bones
+like snow, and the wind whistled in his teeth, and the boat dipped not
+with the weight of him.
+
+"I am fearful to see you, my son," said the man. "For methinks you are
+no thing of God."
+
+"It is only the wind that whistles in my teeth," said the Poor Thing,
+"and there is no life in me to keep it out."
+
+So they came to the little isle of sheep, where the surf burst all about
+it in the midst of the sea, and it was all green with bracken, and all
+wet with dew, and the moon enlightened it. They ran the boat into a
+cove, and set foot to land; and the man came heavily behind among the
+rocks in the deepness of the bracken, but the Poor Thing went before him
+like a smoke in the light of the moon. So they came to the dead-cairn,
+and they laid their ears to the stones; and the dead complained
+withinsides like a swarm of bees: "Time was that marrow was in our
+bones, and strength in our sinews; and the thoughts of our head were
+clothed upon with acts and the words of men. But now are we broken in
+sunder, and the bonds of our bones are loosed, and our thoughts lie in
+the dust."
+
+Then said the Poor Thing: "Charge them that they give you the virtue
+they withheld."
+
+And the man said: "Bones of my fathers, greeting! for I am sprung of
+your loins. And now, behold, I break open the piled stones of your
+cairn, and I let in the noon between your ribs. Count it well done, for
+it was to be; and give me what I come seeking in the name of blood and
+in the name of God."
+
+And the spirits of the dead stirred in the cairn like ants; and they
+spoke: "You have broken the roof of our cairn and let in the noon
+between our ribs; and you have the strength of the still-living. But
+what virtue have we? what power? or what jewel here in the dust with us,
+that any living man should covet or receive it? for we are less than
+nothing. But we tell you one thing, speaking with many voices like bees,
+that the way is plain before all like the grooves of launching: So forth
+into life and fear not, for so did we all in the ancient ages." And
+their voices passed away like an eddy in a river.
+
+"Now," said the Poor Thing, "they have told you a lesson, but make them
+give you a gift. Stoop your hand among the bones without drawback, and
+you shall find their treasure."
+
+So the man stooped his hand, and the dead laid hold upon it many and
+faint like ants; but he shook them off, and behold, what he brought up
+in his hand was the shoe of a horse, and it was rusty.
+
+"It is a thing of no price," quoth the man, "for it is rusty."
+
+"We shall see that," said the Poor Thing; "for in my thought it is a
+good thing to do what our fathers did, and to keep what they kept
+without question. And in my thought one thing is as good as another in
+this world; and a shoe of a horse will do."
+
+Now they got into their boat with the horse-shoe, and when the dawn was
+come they were aware of the smoke of the Earl's town and the bells of
+the Kirk that beat. So they set foot to shore: and the man went up to
+the market among the fishers over against the palace and the Kirk; and
+he was bitter poor and bitter ugly, and he had never a fish to sell, but
+only a shoe of a horse in his creel, and it rusty.
+
+"Now," said the Poor Thing, "do so and so, and you shall find a wife and
+I a mother."
+
+It befell that the Earl's daughter came forth to go into the Kirk upon
+her prayers; and when she saw the poor man stand in the market with only
+the shoe of a horse, and it rusty, it came in her mind it should be a
+thing of price.
+
+"What is that?" quoth she.
+
+"It is a shoe of a horse," said the man.
+
+"And what is the use of it?" quoth the Earl's daughter.
+
+"It is for no use," said the man.
+
+"I may not believe that," said she; "else why should you carry it?"
+
+"I do so," said he, "because it was so my fathers did in the ancient
+ages; and I have neither a better reason nor a worse."
+
+Now the Earl's daughter could not find it in her mind to believe him.
+"Come," quoth she, "sell me this, for I am sure it is a thing of price."
+
+"Nay," said the man, "the thing is not for sale."
+
+"What!" cried the Earl's daughter. "Then what make you here in the
+town's market, with the thing in your creel and nought beside?"
+
+"I sit here," says the man, "to get me a wife."
+
+"There is no sense in any of these answers," thought the Earl's
+daughter; "and I could find it in my heart to weep."
+
+By came the Earl upon that; and she called him and told him all. And
+when he had heard, he was of his daughter's mind that this should be a
+thing of virtue; and charged the man to set a price upon the thing, or
+else be hanged upon the gallows; and that was near at hand, so that the
+man could see it.
+
+"The way of life is straight like the grooves of launching," quoth the
+man. "And if I am to be hanged let me be hanged."
+
+"Why!" cried the Earl, "will you set your neck against a shoe of a
+horse, and it rusty?"
+
+"In my thought," said the man, "one thing is as good as another in this
+world; and the shoe of a horse will do."
+
+"This can never be," thought the Earl; and he stood and looked upon the
+man, and bit his beard.
+
+And the man looked up at him and smiled. "It was so my fathers did in
+the ancient ages," quoth he to the Earl, "and I have neither a better
+reason nor a worse."
+
+"There is no sense in any of this," thought the Earl, "and I must be
+growing old." So he had his daughter on one side, and says he: "Many
+suitors have you denied, my child. But here is a very strange matter
+that a man should cling so to a shoe of a horse, and it rusty; and that
+he should offer it like a thing on sale, and yet not sell it; and that
+he should sit there seeking a wife. If I come not to the bottom of this
+thing, I shall have no more pleasure in bread; and I can see no way, but
+either I should hang or you should marry him."
+
+"By my troth, but he is bitter ugly," said the Earl's daughter. "How if
+the gallows be so near at hand?"
+
+"It was not so," said the Earl, "that my fathers did in the ancient
+ages. I am like the man, and can give you neither a better reason nor a
+worse. But do you, prithee, speak with him again."
+
+So the Earl's daughter spoke to the man. "If you were not so bitter
+ugly," quoth she, "my father the Earl would have us marry."
+
+"Bitter ugly am I," said the man, "and you as fair as May. Bitter ugly
+I am, and what of that? It was so my fathers----"
+
+"In the name of God," said the Earl's daughter, "let your fathers be!"
+
+"If I had done that," said the man, "you had never been chaffering with
+me here in the market, nor your father the Earl watching with the end of
+his eye."
+
+"But come," quoth the Earl's daughter, "this is a very strange thing,
+that you would have me wed for a shoe of a horse, and it rusty."
+
+"In my thought," quoth the man, "one thing is as good----"
+
+"O, spare me that," said the Earl's daughter, "and tell me why I should
+marry."
+
+"Listen and look," said the man.
+
+Now the wind blew through the Poor Thing like an infant crying, so that
+her heart was melted; and her eyes were unsealed, and she was aware of
+the thing as it were a babe unmothered, and she took it to her arms and
+it melted in her arms like the air.
+
+"Come," said the man, "behold a vision of our children, the busy hearth,
+and the white heads. And let that suffice, for it is all God offers."
+
+"I have no delight in it," said she; but with that she sighed.
+
+"The ways of life are straight like the grooves of launching," said the
+man; and he took her by the hand.
+
+"And what shall we do with the horse-shoe?" quoth she.
+
+"I will give it to your father," said the man; "and he can make a kirk
+and a mill of it for me."
+
+It came to pass in time that the Poor Thing was born; but memory of
+these matters slept with him, and he knew not that which he had done.
+But he was a part of the eldest son; rejoicing manfully to launch the
+boat into the surf, skilful to direct the helm, and a man of might where
+the ring closes and the blows are going.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+THE SONG OF THE MORROW
+
+
+The King of Duntrine had a daughter when he was old, and she was the
+fairest King's daughter between two seas; her hair was like spun gold,
+and her eyes like pools in a river; and the King gave her a castle upon
+the sea beach, with a terrace, and a court of the hewn stone, and four
+towers at the four corners. Here she dwelt and grew up, and had no care
+for the morrow, and no power upon the hour, after the manner of simple
+men.
+
+It befell that she walked one day by the beach of the sea when it was
+autumn, and the wind blew from the place of rains; and upon the one hand
+of her the sea beat, and upon the other the dead leaves ran. This was
+the loneliest beach between two seas, and strange things had been done
+there in the ancient ages. Now the King's daughter was aware of a crone
+that sat upon the beach. The sea-foam ran to her feet, and the dead
+leaves swarmed about her back, and the rags blew about her face in the
+blowing of the wind.
+
+"Now," said the King's daughter, and she named a holy name, "this is the
+most unhappy old crone between two seas."
+
+"Daughter of a King," said the crone, "you dwell in a stone house, and
+your hair is like the gold: but what is your profit? Life is not long,
+nor lives strong; and you live after the way of simple men, and have no
+thought for the morrow and no power upon the hour."
+
+"Thought for the morrow, that I have," said the King's daughter; "but
+power upon the hour, that have I not." And she mused with herself.
+
+Then the crone smote her lean hands one within the other, and laughed
+like a sea-gull. "Home!" cried she. "O daughter of a King, home to your
+stone house; for the longing is come upon you now, nor can you live any
+more after the manner of simple men. Home, and toil and suffer, till the
+gift come that will make you bare, and till the man come that will bring
+you care."
+
+The King's daughter made no more ado, but she turned about and went home
+to her house in silence. And when she was come into her chamber she
+called for her nurse.
+
+"Nurse," said the King's daughter, "thought is come upon me for the
+morrow, so that I can live no more after the manner of simple men. Tell
+me what I must do that I may have power upon the hour."
+
+Then the nurse moaned like a snow wind. "Alas!" said she, "that this
+thing should be; but the thought is gone into your marrow, nor is there
+any cure against the thought. Be it so, then, even as you will; though
+power is less than weakness, power shall you have; and though the
+thought is colder than winter, yet shall you think it to an end."
+
+So the King's daughter sat in her vaulted chamber in the masoned house,
+and she thought upon the thought. Nine years she sat; and the sea beat
+upon the terrace, and the gulls cried about the turrets, and wind
+crooned in the chimneys of the house. Nine years she came not abroad,
+nor tasted the clean air, neither saw God's sky. Nine years she sat and
+looked neither to the right nor to the left, nor heard speech of any
+one, but thought upon the thought of the morrow. And her nurse fed her
+in silence, and she took of the food with her left hand, and ate it
+without grace.
+
+Now when the nine years were out, it fell dusk in the autumn, and there
+came a sound in the wind like a sound of piping. At that the nurse
+lifted up her finger in the vaulted house.
+
+"I hear a sound in the wind," said she, "that is like the sound of
+piping."
+
+"It is but a little sound," said the King's daughter, "but yet it is
+sound enough for me."
+
+So they went down in the dusk to the doors of the house, and along the
+beach of the sea. And the waves beat upon the one hand, and upon the
+other the dead leaves ran; and the clouds raced in the sky, and the
+gulls flew widdershins. And when they came to that part of the beach
+where strange things had been done in the ancient ages, lo! there was
+the crone, and she was dancing widdershins.
+
+"What makes you dance widdershins, old crone?" said the King's daughter;
+"here upon the bleak beach, between the waves and the dead leaves?"
+
+"I hear a sound in the wind that is like a sound of piping," quoth she.
+"And it is for that that I dance widdershins. For the gift comes that
+will make you bare, and the man comes that must bring you care. But for
+me the morrow is come that I have thought upon, and the hour of my
+power."
+
+"How comes it, crone," said the King's daughter, "that you waver like a
+rag, and pale like a dead leaf before my eyes?"
+
+"Because the morrow has come that I have thought upon, and the hour of
+my power," said the crone; and she fell on the beach, and, lo! she was
+but stalks of the sea tangle, and dust of the sea sand, and the
+sand-lice hopped upon the place of her.
+
+"This is the strangest thing that befell between two seas," said the
+King's daughter of Duntrine.
+
+But the nurse broke out and moaned like an autumn gale. "I am weary of
+the wind," quoth she; and she bewailed her day.
+
+The King's daughter was aware of a man upon the beach; he went hooded so
+that none might perceive his face, and a pipe was underneath his arm.
+The sound of his pipe was like singing wasps, and like the wind that
+sings in windlestraw; and it took hold upon men's ears like the crying
+of gulls.
+
+"Are you the comer?" quoth the King's daughter of Duntrine.
+
+"I am the comer," said he, "and these are the pipes that a man may hear,
+and I have power upon the hour, and this is the song of the morrow." And
+he piped the song of the morrow, and it was as long as years; and the
+nurse wept out aloud at the hearing of it.
+
+"This is true," said the King's daughter, "that you pipe the song of the
+morrow; but that ye have power upon the hour, how may I know that? Show
+me a marvel here upon the beach, between the waves and the dead leaves."
+
+And the man said, "Upon whom?"
+
+"Here is my nurse," quoth the King's daughter. "She is weary of the
+wind. Show me a good marvel upon her."
+
+And, lo! the nurse fell upon the beach as it were two handfuls of dead
+leaves, and the wind whirled them widdershins, and the sand-lice hopped
+between.
+
+"It is true," said the King's daughter of Duntrine; "you are the comer,
+and you have power upon the hour. Come with me to my stone house."
+
+So they went by the sea margin, and the man piped the song of the
+morrow, and the leaves followed behind them as they went. Then they sat
+down together; and the sea beat on the terrace, and the gulls cried
+about the towers, and the wind crooned in the chimneys of the house.
+Nine years they sat, and every year when it fell autumn, the man said,
+"This is the hour, and I have power in it"; and the daughter of the King
+said, "Nay, but pipe me the song of the morrow." And he piped it, and it
+was long like years.
+
+Now when the nine years were gone, the King's daughter of Duntrine got
+her to her feet, like one that remembers; and she looked about her in
+the masoned house; and all her servants were gone; only the man that
+piped sat upon the terrace with the hood upon his face; and as he piped
+the leaves ran about the terrace and the sea beat along the wall. Then
+she cried to him with a great voice, "This is the hour, and let me see
+the power in it." And with that the wind blew off the hood from the
+man's face, and, lo! there was no man there, only the clothes and the
+hood and the pipes tumbled one upon another in a corner of the terrace,
+and the dead leaves ran over them.
+
+And the King's daughter of Duntrine got her to that part of the beach
+where strange things had been done in the ancient ages; and there she
+sat her down. The sea-foam ran to her feet, and the dead leaves swarmed
+about her back, and the veil blew about her face in the blowing of the
+wind. And when she lifted up her eyes, there was the daughter of a King
+come walking on the beach. Her hair was like the spun gold, and her eyes
+like pools in a river, and she had no thought for the morrow and no
+power upon the hour, after the manner of simple men.
+
+
+
+
+END OF VOL. XXI
+
+
+PRINTED BY CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, LA BELLE SAUVAGE, LONDON, E.C.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson,
+Volume XXI, by Robert Louis Stevenson
+
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+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content=
+    "text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of the Works of Robert Louis Stevenson Volume XXI, by Robert Louis Stevenson.
+    </title>
+
+    <style type="text/css">
+
+    body { margin-left: 12%; margin-right: 12%; text-align: justify; line-height: 1.4em; }
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume
+XXI, by Robert Louis Stevenson
+
+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 Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI
+
+Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
+
+Release Date: December 11, 2009 [EBook #30650]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORKS OF STEVENSON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Marius Borror and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="10" style="background-color: #dcdcdc; color: #696969; " summary="TN">
+<tr>
+<td style="width:25%; vertical-align:top">
+Transcriber's note:</td>
+<td>
+A few punctuation errors have been corrected. They
+appear in the text <span class="correction" title="explanation will pop up">like this</span>, and the
+explanation will appear when the mouse pointer is moved over the marked
+passage. Hyphenation inconsistencies were left unchanged.
+<br /><br />
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<div style="padding-top: 3em; ">&nbsp;</div>
+<h4>THE WORKS OF</h4>
+
+<h3>ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON</h3>
+
+<h4>SWANSTON EDITION</h4>
+
+<h5>VOLUME XXI</h5>
+<div style="padding-top: 3em; ">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<p class="noind center"><i>Of this SWANSTON EDITION in Twenty-five<br />
+Volumes of the Works of ROBERT LOUIS<br />
+STEVENSON Two Thousand and Sixty Copies<br />
+have been printed, of which only Two Thousand<br />
+Copies are for sale.</i></p>
+
+<p class="noind center"><i>This is No. <span style="font-size: 60%;">............</span></i></p>
+
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:700px; height:442px"
+     src="images/img1.jpg"
+     alt="THE SCHOONER EQUATOR." />
+<p>ON THE FORWARD DECK OF THE SCHOONER &ldquo;EQUATOR&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+<h3>THE WORKS OF</h3>
+<h2>ROBERT LOUIS</h2>
+<h2>STEVENSON</h2>
+
+<div style="padding-top: 3em; ">&nbsp;</div>
+<h5>VOLUME TWENTY-ONE</h5>
+<div style="padding-top: 3em; ">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<h5>LONDON: PUBLISHED BY CHATTO AND<br />
+WINDUS: IN ASSOCIATION WITH CASSELL<br />
+AND COMPANY LIMITED: WILLIAM<br />
+HEINEMANN: AND LONGMANS GREEN<br />
+AND COMPANY MDCCCCXII</h5>
+
+<div style="padding-top: 3em; ">&nbsp;</div>
+<h6>ALL RIGHTS RESERVED</h6>
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<h3>CONTENTS</h3>
+
+
+<h5>THE STORY OF A LIE</h5>
+
+<table class="nobctr" width="90%" summary="Contents">
+
+<tr style="font-size: 70%; "> <td class="tc2">CHAPTER</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tc2">PAGE</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">I.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">Introduces the Admiral</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page3">3</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">II.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">A Letter to the Papers</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page8">8</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">III.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">In the Admiral&rsquo;s Name</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page14">14</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">IV.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">Esther on the Filial Relation</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page21">21</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">V.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">The Prodigal Father makes his Début at Home</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page24">24</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">VI.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">The Prodigal Father goes on from Strength to Strength</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page31">31</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">VII.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">The Elopement</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page41">41</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">VIII.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">Battle Royal</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page50">50</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">IX.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">In which the Liberal Editor appears as &ldquo;Deus ex Machinâ&rdquo;</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page60">60</a></td> </tr>
+
+
+<tr> <td class="pd2" colspan="3"><h5>THE MERRY MEN</h5> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">I.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">Eilean Aros</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page69">69</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">II.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">What the Wreck had brought to Aros</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page76">76</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">III.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">Land and Sea in Sandag Bay</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page89">89</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">IV.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">The Gale</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page100">100</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">V.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">A Man out of the Sea</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page112">112</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="pd2 tc1" style="font-size: 80%;" colspan="2"><b>OLALLA</b></td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page127">127</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="pd2" colspan="3"><h5>HEATHERCAT</h5></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td colspan="3"><h6>PART I.&mdash;THE KILLING-TIME</h6></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">I.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">Traquairs of Montroymont</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page177">177</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">II.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">Francie</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page182">182</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">III.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">The Hill-end of Drumlowe</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page195">195</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="pd2" colspan="3"><h5>THE GREAT NORTH ROAD</h5> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">I.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">Nance at the &ldquo;Green Dragon&rdquo;</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page203">203</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">II.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">In which Mr. Archer is Installed</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page210">210</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">III.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">Jonathan Holdaway</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page218">218</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">IV.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">Mingling Threads</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page223">223</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">V.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">Life in the Castle</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page229">229</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">VI.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">The Bad Half-Crown</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page233">233</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">VII.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">The Bleaching-Green</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page238">238</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">VIII.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">The Mail Guard</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page244">244</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="pd2" colspan="3"><h5>THE YOUNG CHEVALIER</h5> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="sc tc3" colspan="2">Prologue&mdash;The Wine-Seller&rsquo;s Wife</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page253">253</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">I.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">The Prince</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page263">263</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="pd2" colspan="3"><h5>FABLES</h5> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">I.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">The Persons of the Tale</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page269">269</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">II.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">The Sinking Ship</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page272">272</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">III.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">The Two Matches</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page274">274</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">IV.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">The Sick Man and the Fireman</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page275">275</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">V.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">The Devil and the Innkeeper</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page276">276</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">VI.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">The Penitent</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page277">277</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">VII.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">The Yellow Paint</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page277">277</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">VIII.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">The House of Eld</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page280">280</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">IX.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">The Four Reformers</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page286">286</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">X.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">The Man and his Friend</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page287">287</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">XI.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">The Reader</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page287">287</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">XII.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">The Citizen and the Traveller</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page288">288</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">XIII.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">The Distinguished Stranger</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page289">289</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">XIV.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">The Cart-horses and the Saddle-horse</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page290">290</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">XV.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">The Tadpole and the Frog</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page291">291</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">XVI.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">Something in it</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page291">291</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">XVII.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">Faith, Half-faith, and no Faith at all</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page295">295</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">XVIII.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">The Touchstone</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page297">297</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">XIX.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">The Poor Thing</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page304">304</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="tc2">XX.</td>
+     <td class="sc tc3">The Song of the Morrow</td>
+     <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page310">310</a></td> </tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1"></a>1</span></p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2>THE STORY OF A LIE</h2>
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page2"></a>2</span></p>
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page3"></a>3</span></p>
+<h2>THE STORY OF A LIE</h2>
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER I</h3>
+
+<h5>INTRODUCES THE ADMIRAL</h5>
+
+
+<p>When Dick Naseby was in Paris he made some odd
+acquaintances, for he was one of those who have ears to
+hear, and can use their eyes no less than their intelligence.
+He made as many thoughts as Stuart Mill; but his philosophy
+concerned flesh and blood, and was experimental as
+to its method. He was a type-hunter among mankind.
+He despised small game and insignificant personalities,
+whether in the shape of dukes or bagmen, letting them
+go by like sea-weed; but show him a refined or powerful
+face, let him hear a plangent or a penetrating voice, fish
+for him with a living look in some one&rsquo;s eye, a passionate
+gesture, a meaning or ambiguous smile, and his mind was
+instantaneously awakened. &ldquo;There was a man, there was
+a woman,&ldquo; he seemed to say, and he stood up to the task
+of comprehension with the delight of an artist in his art.</p>
+
+<p>And indeed, rightly considered, this interest of his was
+an artistic interest. There is no science in the personal
+study of human nature. All comprehension is creation;
+the woman I love is somewhat of my handiwork; and
+the great lover, like the great painter, is he that can so
+embellish his subject as to make her more than human,
+whilst yet by a cunning art he has so based his apotheosis
+on the nature of the case that the woman can go on being
+a true woman, and give her character free play, and show
+littleness, or cherish spite, or be greedy of common pleasures,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page4"></a>4</span>
+and he continue to worship without a thought of incongruity.
+To love a character is only the heroic way of
+understanding it. When we love, by some noble method
+of our own or some nobility of mien or nature in the other,
+we apprehend the loved one by what is noblest in ourselves.
+When we are merely studying an eccentricity, the
+method of our study is but a series of allowances. To
+begin to understand is to begin to sympathise; for comprehension
+comes only when we have stated another&rsquo;s
+faults and virtues in terms of our own. Hence the proverbial
+toleration of artists for their own evil creations.
+Hence, too, it came about that Dick Naseby, a high-minded
+creature, and as scrupulous and brave a gentleman as you
+would want to meet, held in a sort of affection the various
+human creeping things whom he had met and studied.</p>
+
+<p>One of these was Mr. Peter Van Tromp, an English-speaking,
+two-legged animal of the international genus, and
+by profession of general and more than equivocal utility.
+Years before he had been a painter of some standing in a
+colony, and portraits signed &ldquo;Van Tromp&rdquo; had celebrated
+the greatness of colonial governors and judges. In those
+days he had been married, and driven his wife and infant
+daughter in a pony trap. What were the steps of his
+declension? No one exactly knew. Here he was at
+least, and had been, any time these past ten years, a sort
+of dismal parasite upon the foreigner in Paris.</p>
+
+<p>It would be hazardous to specify his exact industry.
+Coarsely followed, it would have merited a name grown
+somewhat unfamiliar to our ears. Followed as he followed
+it, with a skilful reticence, in a kind of social chiaroscuro,
+it was still possible for the polite to call him a professional
+painter. His lair was in the Grand Hotel and the gaudiest
+cafés. There he might be seen jotting off a sketch with an
+air of some inspiration; and he was always affable, and one
+of the easiest of men to fall in talk withal. A conversation
+usually ripened into a peculiar sort of intimacy, and it was
+extraordinary how many little services Van Tromp contrived
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page5"></a>5</span>
+to render in the course of six-and-thirty hours.
+He occupied a position between a friend and a courier,
+which made him worse than embarrassing to repay. But
+those whom he obliged could always buy one of his villainous
+little pictures, or, where the favours had been prolonged
+and more than usually delicate, might order and
+pay for a large canvas, with perfect certainty that they
+would hear no more of the transaction.</p>
+
+<p>Among resident artists he enjoyed the celebrity of a
+non-professional sort. He had spent more money&mdash;no less
+than three individual fortunes, it was whispered&mdash;than any
+of his associates could ever hope to gain. Apart from his
+colonial career, he had been to Greece in a brigantine
+with four brass carronades; he had travelled Europe in
+a chaise and four, drawing bridle at the palace-doors of
+German princes; queens of song and dance had followed
+him like sheep, and paid his tailor&rsquo;s bills. And to behold
+him now, seeking small loans with plaintive condescension,
+sponging for breakfast on an art-student of nineteen, a
+fallen Don Juan who had neglected to die at the propitious
+hour, had a colour of romance for young imaginations.
+His name and his bright past, seen through the
+prism of whispered gossip, had gained him the nickname
+of &ldquo;The Admiral.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Dick found him one day at the receipt of custom,
+rapidly painting a pair of hens and a cock in a little water-colour
+sketching-box, and now and then glancing at the
+ceiling like a man who should seek inspiration from the
+muse. Dick thought it remarkable that a painter should
+choose to work over an absinthe in a public café, and
+looked the man over. The aged rakishness of his appearance
+was set off by a youthful costume; he had disreputable
+grey hair and a disreputable sore, red nose; but the
+coat and the gesture, the outworks of the man, were still
+designed for show. Dick came up to his table and inquired
+if he might look at what the gentleman was doing. No
+one was so delighted as the Admiral.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page6"></a>6</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A bit of a thing,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;I just dash them
+off like that. I&mdash;I dash them off,&rdquo; he added, with a
+gesture.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Quite so,&rdquo; said Dick, who was appalled by the feebleness
+of the production.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Understand me,&rdquo; continued Van Tromp; &ldquo;I am a
+man of the world. And yet&mdash;once an artist always an
+artist. All of a sudden a thought takes me in the street;
+I become its prey; it&rsquo;s like a pretty woman; no use to
+struggle; I must&mdash;dash it off.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said Dick.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; pursued the painter; &ldquo;it all comes easily,
+easily to me; it is not my business; it&rsquo;s a pleasure. Life
+is my business&mdash;life&mdash;this great city, Paris&mdash;Paris after
+dark&mdash;its lights, its gardens, its odd corners. Aha!&rdquo; he
+cried, &ldquo;to be young again! The heart is young, but the
+heels are leaden. A poor, mean business, to grow old!
+Nothing remains but the <i>coup d&rsquo;&oelig;il</i>, the contemplative
+man&rsquo;s enjoyment, Mr. &mdash;&mdash;,&rdquo; and he paused for the name.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Naseby,&rdquo; returned Dick.</p>
+
+<p>The other treated him at once to an exciting beverage,
+and expatiated on the pleasure of meeting a compatriot
+in a foreign land; to hear him, you would have thought
+they had encountered in Central Africa. Dick had never
+found any one take a fancy to him so readily, nor show it
+in an easier or less offensive manner. He seemed tickled
+with him as an elderly fellow about town might be tickled
+by a pleasant and witty lad; he indicated that he was
+no precisian, but in his wildest times had never been such
+a blade as he thought Dick. Dick protested, but in vain.
+This manner of carrying an intimacy at the bayonet&rsquo;s point
+was Van Tromp&rsquo;s stock-in-trade. With an older man he
+insinuated himself; with youth he imposed himself, and
+in the same breath imposed an ideal on his victim, who
+saw that he must work up to it or lose the esteem of this
+old and vicious patron. And what young man can bear
+to lose a character for vice?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page7"></a>7</span></p>
+
+<p>As last, as it grew towards dinner-time, &ldquo;Do you know
+Paris?&rdquo; asked Van Tromp.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not so well as you, I am convinced,&rdquo; said Dick.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And so am I,&rdquo; returned Van Tromp gaily. &ldquo;Paris!
+My young friend&mdash;you will allow me?&mdash;when you know
+Paris as I do, you will have seen Strange Things. I say
+no more; all I say is, Strange Things. We are men of
+the world, you and I, and in Paris, in the heart of civilised
+existence. This is an opportunity, Mr. Naseby. Let us
+dine. Let me show you where to dine.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Dick consented. On the way to dinner the Admiral
+showed him where to buy gloves, and made him buy
+them; where to buy cigars, and made him buy a vast
+store, some of which he obligingly accepted. At the
+restaurant he showed him what to order, with surprising
+consequences in the bill. What he made that night by
+his percentages it would be hard to estimate. And all the
+while Dick smilingly consented, understanding well that
+he was being done, but taking his losses in the pursuit
+of character as a hunter sacrifices his dogs. As for the
+Strange Things, the reader will be relieved to hear that
+they were no stranger than might have been expected,
+and he may find things quite as strange without the
+expense of a Van Tromp for guide. Yet he was a guide
+of no mean order, who made up for the poverty of what
+he had to show by a copious, imaginative commentary.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And such,&rdquo; said he, with an hiccup, &ldquo;such is Paris.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pooh!&rdquo; said Dick, who was tired of the performance.</p>
+
+<p>The Admiral hung an ear, and looked up sidelong with
+a glimmer of suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good-night,&rdquo; said Dick; &ldquo;I&rsquo;m tired.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So English!&rdquo; cried Van Tromp, clutching him by
+the hand. &ldquo;So English! So <i>blasé!</i> Such a charming
+companion! Let me see you home.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Look here,&rdquo; returned Dick, &ldquo;I have said good-night,
+and now I&rsquo;m going. You&rsquo;re an amusing old boy; I like
+you, in a sense; but here&rsquo;s an end of it for to-night. Not
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page8"></a>8</span>
+another cigar, not another grog, not another percentage
+out of me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I beg your pardon!&rdquo; cried the Admiral with dignity.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Tut, man!&rdquo; said Dick; &ldquo;you&rsquo;re not offended; you&rsquo;re
+a man of the world, I thought. I&rsquo;ve been studying you,
+and it&rsquo;s over. Have I not paid for the lesson? <i>Au revoir.</i>&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Van Tromp laughed gaily, shook hands up to the
+elbows, hoped cordially they would meet again and that
+often, but looked after Dick as he departed with a tremor
+of indignation. After that they two not unfrequently fell
+in each other&rsquo;s way, and Dick would often treat the old
+boy to breakfast on a moderate scale and in a restaurant
+of his own selection. Often, too, he would lend Van Tromp
+the matter of a pound, in view of that gentleman&rsquo;s contemplated
+departure for Australia; there would be a
+scene of farewell almost touching in character, and a week
+or a month later they would meet on the same boulevard
+without surprise or embarrassment. And in the meantime
+Dick learned more about his acquaintance on all
+sides: heard of his yacht, his chaise and four, his brief
+season of celebrity amid a more confiding population, his
+daughter, of whom he loved to whimper in his cups, his
+sponging, parasitical, nameless way of life; and with each
+new detail something that was not merely interest nor
+yet altogether affection grew up in his mind towards this
+disreputable stepson of the arts. Ere he left Paris Van
+Tromp was one of those whom he entertained to a farewell
+supper; and the old gentleman made the speech of
+the evening, and then fell below the table, weeping, smiling,
+paralysed.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER II</h3>
+
+<h5>A LETTER TO THE PAPERS</h5>
+
+
+<p>Old Mr. Naseby had the sturdy, untutored nature of the
+upper middle class. The universe seemed plain to him.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page9"></a>9</span>
+&ldquo;The thing&rsquo;s right,&rdquo; he would say, or &ldquo;the thing&rsquo;s wrong&rdquo;;
+and there was an end of it. There was a contained, prophetic
+energy in his utterances, even on the slightest affairs;
+he <i>saw</i> the damned thing; if you did not, it must be from
+perversity of will, and this sent the blood to his head.
+Apart from this, which made him an exacting companion,
+he was one of the most upright, hot-tempered old gentlemen
+in England. Florid, with white hair, the face of an
+old Jupiter, and the figure of an old fox-hunter, he enlivened
+the vale of Thyme from end to end on his big, cantering
+chestnut.</p>
+
+<p>He had a hearty respect for Dick as a lad of parts.
+Dick had a respect for his father as the best of men,
+tempered by the politic revolt of a youth who has to see
+to his own independence. Whenever the pair argued, they
+came to an open rupture; and arguments were frequent,
+for they were both positive, and both loved the work of
+the intelligence. It was a treat to hear Mr. Naseby
+defending the Church of England in a volley of oaths, or
+supporting ascetic morals with an enthusiasm not entirely
+innocent of port wine. Dick used to wax indignant, and
+none the less so because, as his father was a skilful disputant,
+he found himself not seldom in the wrong. On
+these occasions, he would redouble in energy, and declare
+that black was white, and blue yellow, with much conviction
+and heat of manner; but in the morning such a
+licence of debate weighed upon him like a crime, and he
+would seek out his father, where he walked before breakfast
+on a terrace overlooking all the vale of Thyme.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have to apologise, sir, for last night&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; he would
+begin.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course you have,&rdquo; the old gentleman would cut
+in cheerfully. &ldquo;You spoke like a fool. Say no more
+about it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You do not understand me, sir. I refer to a particular
+point. I confess there is much force in your argument
+from the doctrine of possibilities.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page10"></a>10</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course there is,&rdquo; returned his father. &ldquo;Come down
+and look at the stables. Only,&rdquo; he would add, &ldquo;bear this
+in mind, and do remember that a man of my age and
+experience knows more about what he is saying than a
+raw boy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He would utter the word &ldquo;boy&rdquo; even more offensively
+than the average of fathers, and the light way in which
+he accepted these apologies cut Dick to the heart. The
+latter drew slighting comparisons, and remembered that
+he was the only one who ever apologised. This gave him
+a high station in his own esteem, and thus contributed
+indirectly to his better behaviour; for he was scrupulous
+as well as high-spirited, and prided himself on nothing
+more than on a just submission.</p>
+
+<p>So things went on until the famous occasion when
+Mr. Naseby, becoming engrossed in securing the election
+of a sound party candidate to Parliament, wrote a flaming
+letter to the papers. The letter had about every demerit
+of party letters in general: it was expressed with the
+energy of a believer; it was personal; it was a little more
+than half unfair, and about a quarter untrue. The old
+man did not mean to say what was untrue, you may be
+sure; but he had rashly picked up gossip, as his prejudice
+suggested, and now rashly launched it on the public with
+the sanction of his name.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The Liberal candidate,&rdquo; he concluded, &ldquo;is thus a
+public turncoat. Is that the sort of man we want? He
+has been given the lie, and has swallowed the insult. Is
+that the sort of man we want? I answer, No! With all
+the force of my conviction, I answer, <span class="correction" title="added double quotes"><i>No</i>!&rdquo;</span></p>
+
+<p>And then he signed and dated the letter with an
+amateur&rsquo;s pride, and looked to be famous by the morrow.</p>
+
+<p>Dick, who had heard nothing of the matter, was up
+first on that inauspicious day, and took the journal to an
+arbour in the garden. He found his father&rsquo;s manifesto in
+one column; and in another a leading article. &rdquo;No one
+that we are aware of,&ldquo; ran the article, &rdquo;had consulted
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page11"></a>11</span>
+Mr. Naseby on the subject, but if he had been appealed
+to by the whole body of electors, his letter would be none
+the less ungenerous and unjust to Mr. Dalton. We do
+not choose to give the lie to Mr. Naseby, for we are too
+well aware of the consequences; but we shall venture
+instead to print the facts of both cases referred to by this
+red-hot partisan in another portion of our issue. Mr.
+Naseby is of course a large proprietor in our neighbourhood;
+but fidelity to facts, decent feeling, and English
+grammar, are all of them qualities more important than
+the possession of land. Mr. N&mdash;&mdash; is doubtless a great
+man; in his large gardens and that half-mile of greenhouses,
+where he has probably ripened his intellect and
+temper, he may say what he will to his hired vassals, but
+(as the Scots say)&mdash;</p>
+
+<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td>
+<div class="poemr">
+                  <p class="i7">here</p>
+<p>He maunna think to domineer.</p>
+</div>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>Liberalism,&ldquo; continued the anonymous journalist, &rdquo;is of
+too free and sound a growth,&ldquo; etc.</p>
+
+<p>Richard Naseby read the whole thing from beginning
+to end; and a crushing shame fell upon his spirit. His
+father had played the fool; he had gone out noisily to
+war, and come back with confusion. The moment that
+his trumpets sounded, he had been disgracefully unhorsed.
+There was no question as to the facts; they were one and
+all against the Squire. Richard would have given his ears
+to have suppressed the issue; but as that could not be
+done, he had his horse saddled, and, furnishing himself
+with a convenient staff, rode off at once to Thymebury.</p>
+
+<p>The editor was at breakfast in a large, sad apartment.
+The absence of furniture, the extreme meanness of the
+meal, and the haggard, bright-eyed, consumptive look of
+the culprit, unmanned our hero; but he clung to his
+stick, and was stout and warlike.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You wrote the article in this morning&rsquo;s paper?&rdquo; he
+demanded.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page12"></a>12</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You are young Mr. Naseby? I <i>published</i> it,&rdquo; replied
+the editor, rising.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My father is an old man,&rdquo; said Richard; and then
+with an outburst, &ldquo;And a damned sight finer fellow than
+either you or Dalton!&rdquo; He stopped and swallowed; he
+was determined that all should go with regularity. &ldquo;I
+have but one question to put to you, sir,&rdquo; he resumed.
+&ldquo;Granted that my father was misinformed, would it not
+have been more decent to withhold the letter and communicate
+with him in private?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Believe me,&rdquo; returned the editor, &ldquo;that alternative
+was not open to me. Mr. Naseby told me in a note that
+he had sent his letter to three other journals, and in fact
+threatened me with what he called exposure if I kept it
+back from mine. I am really concerned at what has happened;
+I sympathise and approve of your emotion, young
+gentleman; but the attack on Mr. Dalton was gross, very
+gross, and I had no choice but to offer him my columns to
+reply. Party has its duties, sir,&rdquo; added the scribe, kindling,
+as one who should propose a sentiment; &ldquo;and the attack
+was gross.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Richard stood for half a minute digesting the answer;
+and then the god of fair play came uppermost in his heart,
+and, murmuring &ldquo;Good morning,&rdquo; he made his escape into
+the street.</p>
+
+<p>His horse was not hurried on the way home, and he was
+late for breakfast. The Squire was standing with his
+back to the fire in a state bordering on apoplexy, his fingers
+violently knitted under his coat-tails. As Richard came
+in, he opened and shut his mouth like a cod-fish, and his
+eyes protruded.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Have you seen that, sir?&rdquo; he cried, nodding towards
+the paper.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; said Richard.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, you&rsquo;ve read it, have you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes; I have read it,&rdquo; replied Richard, looking at
+his foot.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page13"></a>13</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; demanded the old gentleman, &ldquo;and what
+have you to say to it, sir?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You seem to have been misinformed,&rdquo; said Dick.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well? What then? Is your mind so sterile, sir?
+Have you not a word of comment? no proposal?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I fear, sir, you must apologise to Mr. Dalton. It
+would be more handsome, indeed it would be only just,
+and a free acknowledgment would go far&mdash;&rdquo; Richard
+paused, no language appearing delicate enough to suit
+the case.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That is a suggestion which should have come from
+me, sir,&rdquo; roared the father. &ldquo;It is out of place upon
+your lips. It is not the thought of a loyal son. Why,
+sir, if my father had been plunged in such deplorable circumstances,
+I should have thrashed the editor of that vile
+sheet within an inch of his life. I should have thrashed
+the man, sir. It would have been the action of an ass;
+but it would have shown that I had the blood and the
+natural affections of a man. Son? You are no son, no
+son of mine, sir!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sir!&rdquo; said Dick.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you what you are, sir,&rdquo; pursued the Squire.
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re a Benthamite. I disown you. <span class="correction" title="corrected from 'You'">Your</span> mother would
+have died for shame; there was no modern cant about
+your mother; she thought&mdash;she said to me, sir&mdash;I&rsquo;m glad
+she&rsquo;s in her grave, Dick Naseby. Misinformed! Misinformed,
+sir? Have you no loyalty, no spring, no natural
+affections? Are you clockwork, hey? Away! This is
+no place for you. Away!&rdquo; (Waving his hands in the
+air.) &ldquo;Go away! Leave me!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>At this moment Dick beat a retreat in a disarray of
+nerves, a whistling and clamour of his own arteries, and
+in short in such a final bodily disorder as made him alike
+incapable of speech or hearing. And in the midst of all
+this turmoil, a sense of unpardonable injustice remained
+graven in his memory.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page14"></a>14</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER III</h3>
+
+<h5>IN THE ADMIRAL&rsquo;S NAME</h5>
+
+
+<p>There was no return to the subject. Dick and his father
+were henceforth on terms of coldness. The upright old
+gentleman grew more upright when he met his son, buckrammed
+with immortal anger; he asked after Dick&rsquo;s
+health, and discussed the weather and the crops with an
+appalling courtesy; his pronunciation was <i>point-de-vice</i>,
+his voice was distant, distinct, and sometimes almost
+trembling with suppressed indignation.</p>
+
+<p>As for Dick, it seemed to him as if his life had come
+abruptly to an end. He came out of his theories and
+clevernesses; his premature man-of-the-worldness, on
+which he had prided himself on his travels, &ldquo;shrank
+like a thing ashamed&rdquo; before this real sorrow. Pride,
+wounded honour, pity and respect tussled together daily
+in his heart; and now he was within an ace of throwing
+himself upon his father&rsquo;s mercy, and now of slipping forth
+at night and coming back no more to Naseby House. He
+suffered from the sight of his father, nay, even from the
+neighbourhood of this familiar valley, where every corner
+had its legend, and he was besieged with memories of childhood.
+If he fled into a new land, and among none but
+strangers, he might escape his destiny, who knew? and
+begin again light-heartedly. From that chief peak of the
+hills, that now and then, like an uplifted finger, shone in
+an arrow of sunlight through the broken clouds, the shepherd
+in clear weather might perceive the shining of the
+sea. There, he thought, was hope. But his heart failed
+him when he saw the Squire; and he remained. His
+fate was not that of the voyager by sea and land; he
+was to travel in the spirit, and begin his journey sooner
+than he supposed.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page15"></a>15</span></p>
+
+<p>For it chanced one day that his walk led him into a
+portion of the uplands which was almost unknown to him.
+Scrambling through some rough woods, he came out upon
+a moorland reaching towards the hills. A few lofty Scots
+firs grew hard by upon a knoll; a clear fountain near the
+foot of the knoll sent up a miniature streamlet which
+meandered in the heather. A shower had just skimmed
+by, but now the sun shone brightly, and the air smelt of
+the pines and the grass. On a stone under the trees sat
+a young lady sketching. We have learned to think of
+women in a sort of symbolic transfiguration, based on
+clothes; and one of the readiest ways in which we conceive
+our mistress is as a composite thing, principally petticoats.
+But humanity has triumphed over clothes; the
+look, the touch of a dress has become alive; and the woman
+who stitched herself into these material integuments has
+now permeated right through and gone out to the tip of
+her skirt. It was only a black dress that caught Dick
+Naseby&rsquo;s eye; but it took possession of his mind, and
+all other thoughts departed. He drew near, and the girl
+turned round. Her face startled him; it was a face he
+wanted; and he took it in at once like breathing air.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; he said, taking off his hat,
+&ldquo;you are sketching.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she exclaimed, &ldquo;for my own amusement. I
+despise the thing.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ten to one you do yourself injustice,&rdquo; returned Dick.
+&ldquo;Besides, it&rsquo;s a freemasonry. I sketch myself, and you
+know what that implies.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No. What?&rdquo; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Two things,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;First, that I am no
+very difficult critic; and second, that I have a right to
+see your picture.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She covered the block with both her hands. &ldquo;Oh,
+no,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;I am ashamed.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Indeed, I might give you a hint,&rdquo; said Dick.
+&ldquo;Although no artist myself, I have known many; in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page16"></a>16</span>
+Paris I had many for friends, and used to prowl among
+studios.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In Paris?&rdquo; she cried, with a leap of light into her
+eyes. &ldquo;Did you ever meet Mr. Van Tromp?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I? Yes. Why, you&rsquo;re not the Admiral&rsquo;s daughter,
+are you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The Admiral? Do they call him that?&rdquo; she cried.
+&ldquo;Oh, how nice, how nice of them! It is the younger
+men who call him so, is it not?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Dick, somewhat heavily.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You can understand now,&rdquo; she said, with an unspeakable
+accent of contented and noble-minded pride,
+&ldquo;why it is I do not choose to show my sketch. Van
+Tromp&rsquo;s daughter! The Admiral&rsquo;s daughter! I delight
+in that name. The Admiral! And so you know my
+father?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Dick, &ldquo;I met him often; we were even
+intimate. He may have mentioned my name&mdash;Naseby.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He writes so little. He is so busy, so devoted to
+his art! I have had a half wish,&rdquo; she added, laughing,
+&ldquo;that my father was a plainer man whom I could help&mdash;to
+whom I could be a credit; but only sometimes, you
+know, and with only half my heart. For a great painter!
+You have seen his works?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have seen some of them,&rdquo; returned Dick; &ldquo;they&mdash;they
+are very nice.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She laughed aloud. &ldquo;Nice?&rdquo; she repeated. &ldquo;I see
+you don&rsquo;t care much for art.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not much,&rdquo; he admitted; &ldquo;but I know that many
+people are glad to buy Mr. Van Tromp&rsquo;s pictures.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Call him the Admiral!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;It sounds
+kindly and familiar; and I like to think that he is appreciated
+and looked up to by young painters. He has not
+always been appreciated; he had a cruel life for many
+years; and when I think&rdquo;&mdash;there were tears in her eyes&mdash;&ldquo;when
+I think of that, I feel inclined to be a fool,&rdquo; she
+broke off. &ldquo;And now I shall go home. You have filled
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page17"></a>17</span>
+me full of happiness; for think, Mr. Naseby, I have not
+seen my father since I was six years old; and yet he is
+in my thoughts all day! You must come and call on me;
+my aunt will be delighted, I am sure; and then you will
+tell me all&mdash;all about my father, will you not?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Dick helped her to get her sketching traps together;
+and when all was ready, she gave Dick her hand and a
+frank return of pressure.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You are my father&rsquo;s friend,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;we shall be
+great friends too. You must come and see me soon.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Then she was gone down the hillside at a run; and
+Dick stood by himself in a state of some bewilderment and
+even distress. There were elements of laughter in the
+business; but the black dress, and the face that belonged
+to it, and the hand that he had held in his, inclined him
+to a serious view. What was he, under the circumstances,
+called upon to do? Perhaps to avoid the girl? Well,
+he would think about that. Perhaps to break the truth
+to her? Why, ten to one, such was her infatuation, he
+would fail. Perhaps to keep up the illusion, to colour
+the raw facts; to help her to false ideas, while yet not
+plainly stating falsehoods? Well, he would see about that;
+he would also see about avoiding the girl. He saw about
+this last so well, that the next afternoon beheld him on
+his way to visit her.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime the girl had gone straight home, light
+as a bird, tremulous with joy, to the little cottage where
+she lived alone with a maiden aunt; and to that lady, a
+grim, sixty years old Scotswoman, with a nodding head,
+communicated news of her encounter and invitation.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A friend of his?&rdquo; cried the aunt. &ldquo;What like is
+he? What did ye say was his name?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She was dead silent, and stared at the old woman
+darkling. Then very slowly, &ldquo;I said he was my father&rsquo;s
+friend; I have invited him to my house, and come he
+shall,&rdquo; she said; and with that she walked off to her room,
+where she sat staring at the wall all the evening. Miss
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page18"></a>18</span>
+M&rsquo;Glashan, for that was the aunt&rsquo;s name, read a large
+bible in the kitchen with some of the joys of martyrdom.</p>
+
+<p>It was perhaps half-past three when Dick presented
+himself, rather scrupulously dressed, before the cottage
+door; he knocked, and a voice bade him enter. The
+kitchen, which opened directly off the garden, was somewhat
+darkened by foliage; but he could see her as she
+approached from the far end to meet him. This second
+sight of her surprised him. Her strong black brows spoke
+of temper easily aroused and hard to quiet; her mouth
+was small, nervous, and weak; there was something
+dangerous and sulky underlying, in her nature, much that
+was honest, compassionate, and even noble.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My father&rsquo;s name,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;has made you very
+welcome.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And she gave him her hand with a sort of curtsey. It
+was a pretty greeting, although somewhat mannered; and
+Dick felt himself among the gods. She led him through
+the kitchen to a parlour, and presented him to Miss
+M&rsquo;Glashan.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Esther,&rdquo; said the aunt, &ldquo;see and make Mr. Naseby
+his tea.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>As soon as the girl was gone upon this hospitable
+intent, the old woman crossed the room and came quite
+near to Dick as if in menace.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ye know that man?&rdquo; she asked, in an imperious
+whisper.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mr. Van Tromp?&rdquo; said Dick. &ldquo;Yes; I know him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, and what brings ye here?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I
+couldn&rsquo;t save the mother&mdash;her that&rsquo;s dead&mdash;but the
+bairn!&rdquo; She had a note in her voice that filled poor
+Dick with consternation. &ldquo;Man,&rdquo; she went on, &ldquo;what
+is it now? Is it money?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear lady,&rdquo; said Dick, &ldquo;I think you misinterpret
+my position. I am young Mr. Naseby of Naseby House.
+My acquaintance with Mr. Van Tromp is really very slender;
+I am only afraid that Miss Van Tromp has exaggerated
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page19"></a>19</span>
+our intimacy in her own imagination. I know positively
+nothing of his private affairs, and do not care to know.
+I met him casually in Paris&mdash;that is all.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Miss M&rsquo;Glashan drew a long breath. &ldquo;In Paris?&rdquo;
+she said. &ldquo;Well, and what do you think of him?&mdash;what
+do ye think of him?&rdquo; she repeated, with a different
+scansion, as Richard, who had not much taste for such a
+question, kept her waiting for an answer.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I found him a very agreeable companion,&rdquo; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ay,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;did ye! And how does he win his
+bread?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I fancy,&rdquo; he gasped, &ldquo;that Mr. Van Tromp has many
+generous friends.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll warrant!&rdquo; she sneered; and before Dick could
+find more to say, she was gone from the room.</p>
+
+<p>Esther returned with the tea-things, and sat down.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; she said cosily, &ldquo;tell me all about my father.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He&rdquo;&mdash;stammered Dick, &ldquo;he is a very agreeable
+companion.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I shall begin to think it is more than you are, Mr.
+Naseby,&rdquo; she said, with a laugh. &ldquo;I am his daughter, you
+forget. Begin at the beginning, and tell me all you have
+seen of him, all he said and all you answered. You must
+have met somewhere; begin with that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So with that he began: how he had found the Admiral
+painting in a café; how his art so possessed him that he
+could not wait till he got home to&mdash;well, to dash off his
+idea; how (this in reply to a question) his idea consisted
+of a cock crowing and two hens eating corn; how he was
+fond of cocks and hens; how this did not lead him to
+neglect more ambitious forms of art; how he had a picture
+in his studio of a Greek subject which was said to be remarkable
+from several points of view; how no one had
+seen it nor knew the precise site of the studio in which it
+was being vigorously though secretly confected; how (in
+answer to a suggestion) this shyness was common to the
+Admiral, Michelangelo, and others; how they (Dick and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page20"></a>20</span>
+Van Tromp) had struck up an acquaintance at once, and
+dined together that same night; how he (the Admiral)
+had once given money to a beggar; how he spoke with
+effusion of his little daughter; how he had once borrowed
+money to send her a doll&mdash;a trait worthy of Newton, she
+being then in her nineteenth year at least; how, if the
+doll never arrived (which it appeared it never did), the
+trait was only more characteristic of the highest order of
+creative intellect; how he was&mdash;no, not beautiful&mdash;striking,
+yes, Dick would go so far, decidedly striking in appearance;
+how his boots were made to lace and his coat was
+black, not cut-away, a frock; and so on, and so on by the
+yard. It was astonishing how few lies were necessary.
+After all, people exaggerated the difficulty of life. A little
+steering, just a touch of the rudder now and then, and
+with a willing listener there is no limit to the domain of
+equivocal speech. Sometimes Miss M&rsquo;Glashan made a
+freezing sojourn in the parlour; and then the task seemed
+unaccountably more difficult; but to Esther, who was all
+eyes and ears, her face alight with interest, his stream of
+language flowed without break or stumble, and his mind
+was ever fertile in ingenious evasions and&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>What an afternoon it was for Esther!</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; she said at last, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s good to hear all this!
+My aunt, you should know, is narrow and too religious;
+she cannot understand an artist&rsquo;s life. It does not frighten
+me,&rdquo; she added grandly; &ldquo;I am an artist&rsquo;s daughter.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>With that speech, Dick consoled himself for his imposture;
+she was not deceived so grossly after all; and then
+if a fraud, was not the fraud piety itself?&mdash;and what could
+be more obligatory than to keep alive in the heart of a
+daughter that filial trust and honour which, even although
+misplaced, became her like a jewel of the mind? There
+might be another thought, a shade of cowardice, a selfish
+desire to please; poor Dick was merely human; and what
+would you have had him do?</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page21"></a>21</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER IV</h3>
+
+<h5>ESTHER ON THE FILIAL RELATION</h5>
+
+
+<p>A month later Dick and Esther met at the stile beside
+the cross roads; had there been any one to see them but
+the birds and summer insects, it would have been remarked
+that they met after a different fashion from the day before.
+Dick took her in his arms, and their lips were set together
+for a long while. Then he held her at arm&rsquo;s length, and
+they looked straight into each other&rsquo;s eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Esther!&rdquo; he said,&mdash;you should have heard his voice!</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dick!&rdquo; said she.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My darling!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It was some time before they started for their walk;
+he kept an arm about her, and their sides were close
+together as they walked; the sun, the birds, the west
+wind running among the trees, a pressure, a look, the
+grasp tightening round a single finger, these things stood
+them in lieu of thought and filled their hearts with joy.
+The path they were following led them through a wood of
+pine trees carpeted with heather and blueberry, and upon
+this pleasant carpet, Dick, not without some seriousness,
+made her sit down.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Esther!&rdquo; he began, &ldquo;there is something you ought
+to know. You know my father is a rich man, and you
+would think, now that we love each other, we might
+marry when we pleased. But I fear, darling, we may
+have long to wait, and shall want all our courage.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have courage for anything,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I have all
+I want; with you and my father, I am so well off, and
+waiting is made so happy, that I could wait a lifetime
+and not weary.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He had a sharp pang at the mention of the Admiral.
+&ldquo;Hear me out,&rdquo; he continued. &ldquo;I ought to have told
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page22"></a>22</span>
+you this before; but it is a thought I shrink from; if it
+were possible, I should not tell you even now. My poor
+father and I are scarce on speaking terms.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Your father,&rdquo; she repeated, turning pale.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It must sound strange to you; but yet I cannot
+think I am to blame,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I will tell you how it
+happened.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;O Dick!&rdquo; she said, when she had heard him to an
+end, &ldquo;how brave you are, and how proud! Yet I would
+not be proud with a father. I would tell him all.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What!&rdquo; cried Dick, &ldquo;go in months after, and brag
+that I meant to thrash the man, and then didn&rsquo;t? And
+why? Because my father had made a bigger ass of himself
+than I supposed. My dear, that&rsquo;s nonsense.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She winced at his words and drew away. &ldquo;But then
+that is all he asks,&rdquo; she pleaded. &ldquo;If he only knew that
+you had felt that impulse, it would make him so proud
+and happy. He would see you were his own son after
+all, and had the same thoughts and the same chivalry of
+spirit. And then you did yourself injustice when you
+spoke just now. It was because the editor was weak and
+poor and excused himself, that you repented your first
+determination. Had he been a big red man, with whiskers,
+you would have beaten him&mdash;you know you would&mdash;if
+Mr. Naseby had been ten times more committed. Do
+you think, if you can tell it to me, and I understand at
+once, that it would be more difficult to tell it to your
+own father, or that he would not be more ready to sympathise
+with you than I am? And I love you, Dick;
+but then he is your father.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear,&rdquo; said Dick desperately, &ldquo;you do not understand;
+you do not know what it is to be treated with
+daily want of comprehension and daily small injustices,
+through childhood and boyhood and manhood, until you
+despair of a hearing, until the thing rides you like a nightmare,
+until you almost hate the sight of the man you
+love, and who&rsquo;s your father after all. In short, Esther,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page23"></a>23</span>
+you don&rsquo;t know what it is to have a father, and that&rsquo;s
+what blinds you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I see,&rdquo; she said musingly, &ldquo;you mean that I am
+fortunate in my father. But I am not so fortunate, after
+all; you forget, I do not know him; it is you who know
+him; he is already more your father than mine.&rdquo; And
+here she took his hand. Dick&rsquo;s heart had grown as cold
+as ice. &ldquo;But I am sorry for you, too,&rdquo; she continued,
+&ldquo;it must be very sad and lonely.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You misunderstand me,&rdquo; said Dick chokingly. &ldquo;My
+father is the best man I know in all this world; he is
+worth a hundred of me, only he doesn&rsquo;t understand me,
+and he can&rsquo;t be made to.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>There was a silence for a while. &ldquo;Dick,&rdquo; she began
+again, &ldquo;I am going to ask a favour, it&rsquo;s the first since you
+said you loved me. May I see your father&mdash;see him pass,
+I mean, where he will not observe me?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why?&rdquo; asked Dick.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is a fancy; you forget, I am romantic about
+fathers.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The hint was enough for Dick; he consented with
+haste, and full of hang-dog penitence and disgust, took her
+down by a back way and planted her in the shrubbery,
+whence she might see the Squire ride by to dinner. There
+they both sat silent, but holding hands, for nearly half an
+hour. At last the trotting of a horse sounded in the
+distance, the park gates opened with a clang, and then
+Mr. Naseby appeared, with stooping shoulders and a
+heavy, bilious countenance, languidly rising to the trot.
+Esther recognised him at once; she had often seen him
+before, though with her huge indifference for all that lay
+outside the circle of her love, she had never so much as
+wondered who he was; but now she recognised him, and
+found him ten years older, leaden and springless, and
+stamped by an abiding sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;O Dick, Dick!&rdquo; she said, and the tears began to
+shine upon her face as she hid it in his bosom; his own
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page24"></a>24</span>
+fell thickly too. They had a sad walk home, and that
+night, full of love and good counsel, Dick exerted every
+art to please his father, to convince him of his respect
+and affection, to heal up this breach of kindness, and
+reunite two hearts. But alas! the Squire was sick and
+peevish; he had been all day glooming over Dick&rsquo;s
+estrangement&mdash;for so he put it to himself, and now with
+growls, cold words, and the cold shoulder, he beat off all
+advances, and entrenched himself in a just resentment.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER V</h3>
+
+<h5>THE PRODIGAL FATHER MAKES HIS DÉBUT AT HOME</h5>
+
+
+<p>That took place upon a Thursday. On the Thursday
+following, as Dick was walking by appointment, earlier
+than usual, in the direction of the cottage, he was appalled
+to meet in the lane a fly from Thymebury, containing the
+human form of Miss M&rsquo;Glashan. The lady did not deign
+to remark him in her passage; her face was suffused with
+tears, and expressed much concern for the packages by
+which she was surrounded. He stood still, and asked
+himself what this circumstance might portend. It was so
+beautiful a day that he was loth to forecast evil, yet something
+must perforce have happened at the cottage, and
+that of a decisive nature; for here was Miss M&rsquo;Glashan
+on her travels, with a small patrimony in brown paper
+parcels, and the old lady&rsquo;s bearing implied hot battle and
+unqualified defeat. Was the house to be closed against
+him? Was Esther left alone, or had some new protector
+made his appearance from among the millions of Europe?
+It is the character of love to loathe the near relatives of
+the loved one; chapters in the history of the human
+race have justified this feeling, and the conduct of uncles,
+in particular, has frequently met with censure from the
+independent novelist. Miss M&rsquo;Glashan was now seen in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page25"></a>25</span>
+the rosy colours of regret; whoever succeeded her, Dick
+felt the change would be for the worse. He hurried
+forward in this spirit; his anxiety grew upon him with
+every step; as he entered the garden a voice fell upon
+his ear, and he was once more arrested, not this time by
+doubt, but by an indubitable certainty of ill.</p>
+
+<p>The thunderbolt had fallen; the Admiral was here.</p>
+
+<p>Dick would have retreated, in the panic terror of the
+moment; but Esther kept a bright look-out when her
+lover was expected. In a twinkling she was by his side,
+brimful of news and pleasure, too glad to notice his embarrassment,
+and in one of those golden transports of exultation
+which transcend not only words but caresses. She
+took him by the end of the fingers (reaching forward to
+take them, for her great preoccupation was to save time),
+she drew him towards her, pushed him past her in the
+door, and planted him face to face with Mr. Van Tromp,
+in a suit of French country velveteens and with a remarkable
+carbuncle on his nose. Then, as though this was
+the end of what she could endure in the way of joy, Esther
+turned and ran out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>The two men remained looking at each other with
+some confusion on both sides. Van Tromp was naturally
+the first to recover; he put out his hand with a fine
+gesture.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And you know my little lass, my Esther?&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;This is pleasant, this is what I have conceived of home.
+A strange word for the old rover; but we all have a taste
+for home and the homelike, disguise it how we may. It
+has brought me here, Mr. Naseby,&rdquo; he concluded, with an
+intonation that would have made his fortune on the stage,
+so just, so sad, so dignified, so like a man of the world
+and a philosopher, &ldquo;and you see a man who is content.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said Dick.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sit down,&rdquo; continued the parasite, setting the example.
+&ldquo;Fortune has gone against me. (I am just sirrupping a
+little brandy&mdash;after my journey.) I was going down, Mr.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page26"></a>26</span>
+Naseby; between you and me, I was <i>décavé</i>; I borrowed
+fifty francs, smuggled my valise past the concierge&mdash;a
+work of considerable tact&mdash;and here I am!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Dick, &ldquo;and here you are.&rdquo; He was quite
+idiotic.</p>
+
+<p>Esther, at this moment, re-entered the room.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Are you glad to see him?&rdquo; she whispered in his
+ear, the pleasure in her voice almost bursting through
+the whisper into song.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh yes,&rdquo; said Dick; &ldquo;very.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I knew you would be,&rdquo; she replied; &ldquo;I told him
+how you loved him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Help yourself,&rdquo; said the Admiral, &ldquo;help yourself;
+and let us drink to a new existence.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;To a new existence,&rdquo; repeated Dick; and he raised
+the tumbler to his lips, but set it down untasted. He
+had had enough of novelties for one day.</p>
+
+<p>Esther was sitting on a stool beside her father&rsquo;s feet,
+holding her knees in her arms, and looking with pride
+from one to the other of her two visitors. Her eyes were
+so bright that you were never sure if there were tears in
+them or not; little voluptuous shivers ran about her
+body; sometimes she nestled her chin into her throat,
+sometimes threw back her head, with ecstasy; in a word,
+she was in that state when it is said of people that they
+cannot contain themselves for happiness. It would be
+hard to exaggerate the agony of Richard.</p>
+
+<p>And, in the meantime, Van Tromp ran on interminably.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I never forget a friend,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;nor yet an enemy:
+of the latter, I never had but two&mdash;myself and the public;
+and I fancy I have had my vengeance pretty freely out of
+both.&rdquo; He chuckled. &ldquo;But those days are done. Van
+Tromp is no more. He was a man who had successes; I
+believe you knew I had successes&mdash;to which we shall refer
+no further,&rdquo; pulling down his neckcloth with a smile.
+&ldquo;That man exists no more: by an exercise of will I have
+destroyed him. There is something like it in the poets.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page27"></a>27</span>
+First, a brilliant and conspicuous career&mdash;the observed, I
+may say, of all observers including the bum-baily: and
+then, presto! a quiet, sly, old, rustic <i>bonhomme</i>, cultivating
+roses. In Paris, Mr. Naseby&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Call him Richard, father,&rdquo; said Esther.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Richard, if he will allow me. Indeed, we are old
+friends, and now near neighbours; and, <i>ŕ propos</i>, how are
+we off for neighbours, Richard? The cottage stands, I
+think, upon your father&rsquo;s land, a family which I respect&mdash;and
+the wood, I understand, is Lord Trevanion&rsquo;s. Not
+that I care; I am an old Bohemian. I have cut society
+with a cut direct; I cut it when I was prosperous, and now
+I reap my reward, and can cut it with dignity in my declension.
+These are our little <i>amours propres</i>, my daughter:
+your father must respect himself. Thank you, yes; just
+a leetle, leetle tiny&mdash;thanks, thanks; you spoil me. But,
+as I was saying, Richard, or was about to say, my daughter
+has been allowed to rust; her aunt was a mere duenna;
+hence, in parenthesis, Richard, her distrust of me; my
+nature and that of the duenna are poles asunder&mdash;poles!
+But, now that I am here, now that I have given up the
+fight, and live henceforth for one only of my works&mdash;I
+have the modesty to say it is my best&mdash;my daughter&mdash;well,
+we shall put all that to rights. The neighbours,
+Richard?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Dick was understood to say that there were many
+good families in the Vale of Thyme.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You shall introduce us,&rdquo; said the Admiral.</p>
+
+<p>Dick&rsquo;s shirt was wet; he made a lumbering excuse to
+go; which Esther explained to herself by a fear of intrusion,
+and so set down to the merit side of Dick&rsquo;s account,
+while she proceeded to detain him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Before our walk?&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Never! I must
+have my walk.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Let us all go,&rdquo; said the Admiral, rising.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You do not know that you are wanted,&rdquo; she cried,
+leaning on his shoulder with a caress. &ldquo;I might wish to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page28"></a>28</span>
+speak to my old friend about my new father. But you
+shall come to-day, you shall do all you want; I have set
+my heart on spoiling you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I will take just <i>one</i> drop more,&rdquo; said the Admiral,
+stooping to help himself to brandy. &ldquo;It is surprising
+how this journey has fatigued me. But I am growing
+old, I am growing old, I am growing old, and&mdash;I regret
+to add&mdash;bald.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He cocked a white wide-awake coquettishly upon his
+head&mdash;the habit of the lady-killer clung to him; and Esther
+had already thrown on her hat, and was ready, while he
+was still studying the result in a mirror: the carbuncle
+had somewhat painfully arrested his attention.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We are papa now; we must be respectable,&rdquo; he said
+to Dick, in explanation of his dandyism: and then he
+went to a bundle and chose himself a staff. Where were
+the elegant canes of his Parisian epoch? This was a support
+for age, and designed for rustic scenes. Dick began
+to see and appreciate the man&rsquo;s enjoyment in a new part,
+when he saw how carefully he had &ldquo;made it up.&rdquo; He
+had invented a gait for this first country stroll with his
+daughter, which was admirably in key. He walked with
+fatigue; he leaned upon the staff; he looked round him
+with a sad, smiling sympathy on all that he beheld; he
+even asked the name of a plant, and rallied himself gently
+for an old town-bird, ignorant of nature. &ldquo;This country
+life will make me young again,&rdquo; he sighed. They reached
+the top of the hill towards the first hour of evening; the
+sun was descending heaven, the colour had all drawn into
+the west; the hills were modelled in their least contour
+by the soft, slanting shine; and the wide moorlands,
+veined with glens and hazelwoods, ran west and north
+in a hazy glory of light. Then the painter awakened in
+Van Tromp.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Gad, Dick,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;what value!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>An ode in four hundred lines would not have seemed
+so touching to Esther; her eyes filled with happy tears:
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page29"></a>29</span>
+yes, here was the father of whom she had dreamed, whom
+Dick had described; simple, enthusiastic, unworldly, kind,
+a painter at heart, and a fine gentleman in manner.</p>
+
+<p>And just then the Admiral perceived a house by the
+wayside, and something depending over the house door
+which might be construed as a sign by the hopeful and
+thirsty.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is that,&rdquo; he asked, pointing with his stick, &ldquo;an
+inn?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>There was a marked change in his voice, as though he
+attached some importance to the inquiry: Esther listened,
+hoping she should hear wit or wisdom.</p>
+
+<p>Dick said it was.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You know it?&rdquo; inquired the Admiral.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have passed it a hundred times, but that is all,&rdquo;
+replied Dick.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Van Tromp, with a smile, and shaking his
+head; &ldquo;you are not an old campaigner; you have the
+world to learn. Now I, you see, find an inn so very near
+my own home, and my first thought is&mdash;my neighbours.
+I shall go forward and make my neighbours&rsquo; acquaintance;
+no, you needn&rsquo;t come; I shall not be a moment.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And he walked off briskly towards the inn, leaving
+Dick alone with Esther on the road.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dick,&rdquo; she exclaimed, &ldquo;I am so glad to get a word
+with you; I am so happy, I have such a thousand things
+to say; and I want you to do me a favour. Imagine, he
+has come without a paint-box, without an easel; and I
+want him to have all. I want you to get them for me
+in Thymebury. You saw, this moment, how his heart
+turned to painting. They can&rsquo;t live without it,&rdquo; she
+added; meaning perhaps Van Tromp and Michelangelo.</p>
+
+<p>Up to that moment she had observed nothing amiss
+in Dick&rsquo;s behaviour. She was too happy to be curious;
+and his silence, in presence of the great and good being
+whom she called her father, had seemed both natural and
+praiseworthy. But now that they were alone, she became
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page30"></a>30</span>
+conscious of a barrier between her lover and herself, and
+alarm sprang up in her heart.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dick,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;you don&rsquo;t love me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I do that,&rdquo; he said heartily.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But you are unhappy; you are strange; you&mdash;you
+are not glad to see my father,&rdquo; she concluded, with a
+break in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Esther,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I tell you that I love you; if you
+love me, you know what that means, and that all I wish
+is to see you happy. Do you think I cannot enjoy your
+pleasure? Esther, I do. If I am uneasy, if I am alarmed,
+<span class="correction" title="added period">if&mdash;&mdash;.</span> Oh, believe me, try and believe in me,&rdquo; he cried,
+giving up argument with perhaps a happy inspiration.</p>
+
+<p>But the girl&rsquo;s suspicions were aroused; and though she
+pressed the matter no further (indeed, her father was
+already seen returning), it by no means left her thoughts.
+At one moment she simply resented the selfishness of a
+man who had obtruded his dark looks and passionate
+language on her joy; for there is nothing that a woman
+can less easily forgive than the language of a passion
+which, even if only for the moment, she does not share.
+At another, she suspected him of jealousy against her
+father; and for that, although she could see excuses for
+it, she yet despised him. And at least, in one way or the
+other, here was the dangerous beginning of a separation
+between two hearts. Esther found herself at variance with
+her sweetest friend; she could no longer look into his
+heart and find it written in the same language as her
+own; she could no longer think of him as the sun which
+radiated happiness upon her life, for she had turned to
+him once, and he had breathed upon her black and chilly,
+radiated blackness and frost. To put the whole matter
+in a word, she was beginning, although ever so slightly,
+to fall out of love.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page31"></a>31</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER VI</h3>
+
+<h5>THE PRODIGAL FATHER GOES ON FROM STRENGTH
+TO STRENGTH</h5>
+
+
+<p>We will not follow all the steps of the Admiral&rsquo;s return
+and installation, but hurry forward towards the catastrophe,
+merely chronicling by the way a few salient incidents,
+wherein we must rely entirely upon the evidence of
+Richard, for Esther to this day has never opened her
+mouth upon this trying passage of her life, and as for the
+Admiral&mdash;well, that naval officer, although still alive, and
+now more suitably installed in a seaport town where he
+has a telescope and a flag in his front garden, is incapable
+of throwing the slightest gleam of light upon the affair.
+Often and often has he remarked to the present writer:
+&ldquo;If I know what it was all about, sir, I&rsquo;ll be&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; in
+short, be what I hope he will not. And then he will look
+across at his daughter&rsquo;s portrait, a photograph, shake
+his head with an amused appearance, and mix himself
+another grog by way of consolation. Once I have heard
+him go further, and express his feelings with regard to
+Esther in a single but eloquent word. &ldquo;A minx, sir,&rdquo;
+he said, not in anger, rather in amusement: and he cordially
+drank her health upon the back of it. His worst enemy
+must admit him to be a man without malice; he never
+bore a grudge in his life, lacking the necessary taste and
+industry of attention.</p>
+
+<p>Yet it was during this obscure period that the drama
+was really performed; and its scene was in the heart of
+Esther, shut away from all eyes. Had this warm, upright,
+sullen girl been differently used by destiny, had events
+come upon her even in a different succession, for some
+things lead easily to others, the whole course of this tale
+would have been changed, and Esther never would have
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page32"></a>32</span>
+run away. As it was, through a series of acts and words
+of which we know but few, and a series of thoughts which
+any one may imagine for himself, she was awakened in
+four days from the dream of a life.</p>
+
+<p>The first tangible cause of disenchantment was when
+Dick brought home a painter&rsquo;s arsenal on Friday evening.
+The Admiral was in the chimney-corner, once more &ldquo;sirrupping&rdquo;
+some brandy-and-water, and Esther sat at the
+table at work. They both came forward to greet the new
+arrival; and the girl, relieving him of his monstrous
+burthen, proceeded to display her offerings to her father.
+Van Tromp&rsquo;s countenance fell several degrees; he became
+quite querulous.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;God bless me,&rdquo; he said; and then, &ldquo;I must really
+ask you not to interfere, child,&rdquo; in a tone of undisguised
+hostility.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Father,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;forgive me; I knew you had
+given up your art&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh yes!&rdquo; cried the Admiral; &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve done with it to
+the judgment-day!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pardon me again,&rdquo; she said firmly, &ldquo;but I do not, I
+cannot think that you are right in this. Suppose the world
+is unjust, suppose that no one understands you, you have
+still a duty to yourself. And, oh, don&rsquo;t spoil the pleasure
+of your coming home to me; show me that you can be
+my father and yet not neglect your destiny. I am not
+like some daughters; I will not be jealous of your art,
+and I will try to understand it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The situation was odiously farcical. Richard groaned
+under it; he longed to leap forward and denounce the
+humbug. And the humbug himself? Do you fancy he
+was easier in his mind? I am sure, on the other hand,
+that he was actually miserable; and he betrayed his
+sufferings by a perfectly silly and undignified access of
+temper, during which he broke his pipe in several places,
+threw his brandy-and-water into the fire, and employed
+words which were very plain although the drift of them
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page33"></a>33</span>
+was somewhat vague. It was of very brief duration.
+Van Tromp was himself again, and in a most delightful
+humour within three minutes of the first explosion.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am an old fool,&rdquo; he said frankly. &ldquo;I was spoiled
+when a child. As for you, Esther, you take after your
+mother; you have a morbid sense of duty, particularly
+for others; strive against it, my dear&mdash;strive against it.
+And as for the pigments, well, I&rsquo;ll use them some of
+these days; and to show that I&rsquo;m in earnest, I&rsquo;ll get
+Dick here to prepare a canvas.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Dick was put to this menial task forthwith, the Admiral
+not even watching how he did, but quite occupied with
+another grog and a pleasant vein of talk.</p>
+
+<p>A little after Esther arose, and making some pretext,
+good or bad, went off to bed. Dick was left hobbled by
+the canvas, and was subjected to Van Tromp for about
+an hour.</p>
+
+<p>The next day, Saturday, it is believed that little intercourse
+took place between Esther and her father; but
+towards the afternoon Dick met the latter returning from
+the direction of the inn, where he had struck up quite a
+friendship with the landlord. Dick wondered who paid
+for these excursions, and at the thought that the reprobate
+must get his pocket-money where he got his board
+and lodging, from poor Esther&rsquo;s generosity, he had it
+almost in his heart to knock the old gentleman down.
+He, on his part, was full of airs and graces and geniality.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dear Dick,&rdquo; he said, taking his arm, &ldquo;this is neighbourly
+of you; it shows your tact to meet me when I
+had a wish for you. I am in pleasant spirits; and it is
+then that I desire a friend.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am glad to hear you are so happy,&rdquo; retorted Dick
+bitterly. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s certainly not much to trouble <i>you</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; assented the Admiral, &ldquo;not much. I got out
+of it in time; and here&mdash;well, here everything pleases
+me. I am plain in my tastes. <i>A propos</i>, you have never
+asked me how I liked my daughter?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page34"></a>34</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Dick roundly; &ldquo;I certainly have not.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Meaning you will not. And why, Dick? She is my
+daughter, of course; but then I am a man of the world
+and a man of taste, and perfectly qualified to give an
+opinion with impartiality&mdash;yes, Dick, with impartiality.
+Frankly, I am not disappointed in her. She has good
+looks; she has them from her mother. She is devoted,
+quite devoted to me&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She is the best woman in the world!&rdquo; broke out
+Dick.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dick,&rdquo; cried the Admiral, stopping short; &ldquo;I have
+been expecting this. Let us&mdash;let us go back to the
+&lsquo;Trevanion Arms,&rsquo; and talk this matter out over a bottle.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Certainly not,&rdquo; said Dick. &ldquo;You have had far too
+much already.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The parasite was on the point of resenting this; but
+a look at Dick&rsquo;s face, and some recollections of the terms
+on which they had stood in Paris, came to the aid of his
+wisdom and restrained him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;As you please,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;although I don&rsquo;t know
+what you mean&mdash;nor care. But let us walk, if you prefer
+it. You are still a young man; when you are my age&mdash;&mdash; But,
+however, to continue. You please me, Dick; you
+have pleased me from the first; and to say truth, Esther
+is a trifle fantastic, and will be better when she is married.
+She has means of her own, as of course you are aware.
+They come, like the looks, from her poor, dear, good
+creature of a mother. She was blessed in her mother.
+I mean she shall be blessed in her husband, and you are
+the man, Dick, you and not another. This very night I
+will sound her affections.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Dick stood aghast.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mr. Van Tromp, I implore you,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;do what
+you please with yourself, but, for God&rsquo;s sake, let your
+daughter alone.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is my duty,&rdquo; replied the Admiral, &ldquo;and between
+ourselves, you rogue, my inclination too. I am as match-making
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page35"></a>35</span>
+as a dowager. It will be more discreet for you
+to stay away to-night. Farewell. You leave your case
+in good hands; I have the tact of these little matters
+by heart; it is not my first attempt.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>All arguments were in vain; the old rascal stuck to
+his point; nor did Richard conceal from himself how
+seriously this might injure his prospects, and he fought
+hard. Once there came a glimmer of hope. The Admiral
+again proposed an adjournment to the &ldquo;Trevanion Arms,&rdquo;
+and when Dick had once more refused, it hung for a moment
+in the balance whether or not the old toper would return
+there by himself. Had he done so, of course Dick could
+have taken to his heels, and warned Esther of what was
+coming, and of how it had begun. But the Admiral, after
+a pause, decided for the brandy at home, and made off in
+that direction.</p>
+
+<p>We have no details of the sounding.</p>
+
+<p>Next day the Admiral was observed in the parish
+church, very properly dressed. He found the places, and
+joined in response and hymn, as to the manner born;
+and his appearance, as he intended it should, attracted
+some attention among the worshippers. Old Naseby, for
+instance, had observed him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There was a drunken-looking blackguard opposite us
+in church,&rdquo; he said to his son as they drove home; &ldquo;do
+you know who he was?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Some fellow&mdash;Van Tromp, I believe,&rdquo; said Dick.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A foreigner too!&rdquo; observed the Squire.</p>
+
+<p>Dick could not sufficiently congratulate himself on the
+escape he had effected. Had the Admiral met him with
+his father, what would have been the result? And could
+such a catastrophe be long postponed? It seemed to
+him as if the storm were nearly ripe; and it was so more
+nearly than he thought.</p>
+
+<p>He did not go to the cottage in the afternoon, withheld
+by fear and shame; but when dinner was over at
+Naseby House, and the Squire had gone off into a comfortable
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page36"></a>36</span>
+doze, Dick slipped out of the room, and ran
+across country, in part to save time, in part to save his
+own courage from growing cold; for he now hated the
+notion of the cottage or the Admiral, and if he did not
+hate, at least feared to think of Esther. He had no clue
+to her reflections; but he could not conceal from his own
+heart that he must have sunk in her esteem, and the
+spectacle of her infatuation galled him like an insult.</p>
+
+<p>He knocked and was admitted. The room looked very
+much as on his last visit, with Esther at the table and
+Van Tromp beside the fire; but the expression of the
+two faces told a very different story. The girl was paler
+than usual; her eyes were dark, the colour seemed to
+have faded from round about them, and her swiftest
+glance was as intent as a stare. The appearance of the
+Admiral, on the other hand, was rosy, and flabby, and
+moist; his jowl hung over his shirt-collar, his smile was
+loose and wandering, and he had so far relaxed the natural
+control of his eyes, that one of them was aimed inward,
+as if to catch the growth of the carbuncle. We are warned
+against bad judgments; but the Admiral was certainly
+not sober. He made no attempt to rise when Richard
+entered, but waved his pipe flightily in the air, and gave a
+leer of welcome. Esther took as little notice of him as
+might be.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Aha! Dick!&rdquo; cried the painter. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been to
+church; I have, upon my word. And I saw you there,
+though you didn&rsquo;t see me. And I saw a devilish pretty
+woman, by Gad. If it were not for this baldness, and
+a kind of crapulous air I can&rsquo;t disguise from myself&mdash;if
+it weren&rsquo;t for this and that and t&rsquo;other thing&mdash;I&mdash;I&rsquo;ve
+forgot what I was saying. Not that that matters, I&rsquo;ve
+heaps of things to say. I&rsquo;m in a communicative vein to-night.
+I&rsquo;ll let out all my cats, even unto seventy times
+seven. I&rsquo;m in what I call <i>the</i> stage, and all I desire is
+a listener, although he were deaf, to be as happy as
+Nebuchadnezzar.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page37"></a>37</span></p>
+
+<p>Of the two hours which followed upon this it is
+unnecessary to give more than a sketch. The Admiral
+was extremely silly, now and then amusing, and never
+really offensive. It was plain that he kept in view the
+presence of his daughter, and chose subjects and a character
+of language that should not offend a lady. On almost any
+other occasion Dick would have enjoyed the scene. Van
+Tromp&rsquo;s egotism, flown with drink, struck a pitch above
+mere vanity. He became candid and explanatory; sought
+to take his auditors entirely into his confidence, and tell
+them his inmost conviction about himself. Between his
+self-knowledge, which was considerable, and his vanity,
+which was immense, he had created a strange hybrid
+animal, and called it by his own name. How he would
+plume his feathers over virtues which would have gladdened
+the heart of Cćsar or St. Paul; and anon, complete
+his own portrait with one of those touches of pitiless realism
+which the satirist so often seeks in vain.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now, there&rsquo;s Dick,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;he&rsquo;s shrewd; he saw
+through me the first time we met, and told me so&mdash;told
+me so to my face, which I had the virtue to keep. I bear
+you no malice for it, Dick; you were right; I am a
+humbug.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>You may fancy how Esther quailed at this new feature
+of the meeting between her two idols.</p>
+
+<p>And then, again, in a parenthesis:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That,&rdquo; said Van Tromp, &ldquo;was when I had to paint
+those dirty daubs of mine.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And a little further on, laughingly said, perhaps, but
+yet with an air of truth:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I never had the slightest hesitation in sponging upon
+any human creature.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon Dick got up.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think, perhaps,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;we had better all be
+thinking of going to bed.&rdquo; And he smiled with a feeble
+and deprecatory smile.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not at all,&rdquo; cried the Admiral, &ldquo;I know a trick worth
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page38"></a>38</span>
+two of that. Puss here,&rdquo; indicating his daughter, &ldquo;shall
+go to bed; and you and I will keep it up till all&rsquo;s blue.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon Esther arose in sullen glory. She had sat
+and listened for two mortal hours while her idol defiled
+himself and sneered away his godhead. One by one, her
+illusions had departed. And now he wished to order her
+to bed in her own house! now he called her Puss! now,
+even as he uttered the words, toppling on his chair, he
+broke the stem of his tobacco-pipe in three! Never did
+the sheep turn upon her shearer with a more commanding
+front. Her voice was calm, her enunciation a little
+slow, but perfectly distinct, and she stood before him, as
+she spoke, in the simplest and most maidenly attitude.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;Mr. Naseby will have the goodness
+to go home at once, and you will go to bed.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The broken fragments of pipe fell from the Admiral&rsquo;s
+fingers; he seemed by his countenance to have lived too
+long in a world unworthy of him; but it is an odd
+circumstance, he attempted no reply, and sat thunder-struck,
+with open mouth.</p>
+
+<p>Dick she motioned sharply towards the door, and he
+could only obey her. In the porch, finding she was close
+behind him, he ventured to pause and whisper, &rdquo;You
+have done right.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&rdquo;I have done as I pleased,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Can he paint?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Many people like his paintings,&rdquo; returned Dick, in
+stifled tones; &ldquo;I never did; I never said I did,&rdquo; he
+added, fiercely defending himself before he was attacked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I ask you if he can paint. I will not be put off.
+<i>Can</i> he paint?&rdquo; she repeated.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Dick.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Does he even like it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not now, I believe.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And he is drunk?&rdquo;&mdash;she leaned upon the word with
+hatred.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He has been drinking.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Go,&rdquo; she said, and was turning to re-enter the house
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page39"></a>39</span>
+when another thought arrested her. &ldquo;Meet me to-morrow
+morning at the stile,&rdquo; she said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I will,&rdquo; replied Dick.</p>
+
+<p>And then the door closed behind her, and Dick was
+alone in the darkness. There was still a chink of light
+above the sill, a warm, mild glow behind the window;
+the roof of the cottage and some of the banks and hazels
+were defined in denser darkness against the sky; but all
+else was formless, breathless, and noiseless like the pit.
+Dick remained as she had left him, standing squarely on
+one foot and resting only on the toe of the other, and as
+he stood he listened with his soul. The sound of a chair
+pushed sharply over the floor startled his heart into his
+mouth; but the silence which had thus been disturbed
+settled back again at once upon the cottage and its vicinity.
+What took place during this interval is a secret from the
+world of men; but when it was over the voice of Esther
+spoke evenly and without interruption for perhaps half a
+minute, and as soon as that ceased heavy and uncertain
+footfalls crossed the parlour and mounted lurching up the
+stairs. The girl had tamed her father, Van Tromp had
+gone obediently to bed: so much was obvious to the
+watcher in the road. And yet he still waited, straining
+his ears, and with terror and sickness at his heart; for if
+Esther had followed her father, if she had even made one
+movement in this great conspiracy of men and nature to
+be still, Dick must have had instant knowledge of it from
+his station before the door; and if she had not moved,
+must she not have fainted? or might she not be dead?</p>
+
+<p>He could hear the cottage clock deliberately measure
+out the seconds; time stood still with him; an almost
+superstitious terror took command of his faculties; at
+last, he could bear no more, and, springing through the
+little garden in two bounds, he put his face against the
+window. The blind, which had not been drawn fully
+down, left an open chink about an inch in height along
+the bottom of the glass, and the whole parlour was thus
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page40"></a>40</span>
+exposed to Dick&rsquo;s investigation. Esther sat upright at the
+table, her head resting on her hand, her eyes fixed upon
+the candle. Her brows were slightly bent, her mouth
+slightly open; her whole attitude so still and settled that
+Dick could hardly fancy that she breathed. She had
+not stirred at the sound of Dick&rsquo;s arrival. Soon after,
+making a considerable disturbance amid the vast silence
+of the night, the clock lifted up its voice, whined for a
+while like a partridge, and then eleven times hooted like
+a cuckoo. Still Esther continued immovable and gazed
+upon the candle. Midnight followed, and then one of
+the morning; and still she had not stirred, nor had Richard
+Naseby dared to quit the window. And then about half-past
+one, the candle she had been thus intently watching
+flared up into a last blaze of paper, and she leaped to her
+feet with an ejaculation, looked about her once, blew
+out the light, turned round, and was heard rapidly mounting
+the staircase in the dark.</p>
+
+<p>Dick was left once more alone to darkness and to that
+dulled and dogged state of mind when a man thinks that
+Misery must have done her worst, and is almost glad to
+think so. He turned and walked slowly towards the
+stile; she had told him no hour, and he was determined,
+whenever she came, that she should find him waiting.
+As he got there the day began to dawn, and he leaned
+over a hurdle and beheld the shadows flee away. Up
+went the sun at last out of a bank of clouds that were
+already disbanding in the east; a herald wind had already
+sprung up to sweep the leafy earth and scatter the congregated
+dewdrops. &ldquo;Alas!&rdquo; thought Dick Naseby,
+&ldquo;how can any other day come so distastefully to me?&rdquo;
+He still wanted his experience of the morrow.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page41"></a>41</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER VII</h3>
+
+<h5>THE ELOPEMENT</h5>
+
+
+<p>It was probably on the stroke of ten, and Dick had been
+half asleep for some time against the bank, when Esther
+came up the road carrying a bundle. Some kind of
+instinct, or perhaps the distant light footfalls, recalled him,
+while she was still a good way off, to the possession of
+his faculties, and he half raised himself and blinked upon
+the world. It took him some time to recollect his thoughts.
+He had awakened with a certain blank and childish sense
+of pleasure, like a man who had received a legacy overnight
+but this feeling gradually died away, and was
+then suddenly and stunningly succeeded by a conviction
+of the truth. The whole story of the past night sprang
+into his mind with every detail, as by an exercise of the
+direct and speedy sense of sight, and he arose from the
+ditch and, with rueful courage, went to meet his love.</p>
+
+<p>She came up to him walking steady and fast, her face
+still pale, but to all appearance perfectly composed; and
+she showed neither surprise, relief, nor pleasure at finding
+her lover on the spot. Nor did she offer him her hand.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Here I am,&rdquo; said he.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she replied; and then, without a pause or any
+change of voice, &ldquo;I want you to take me away,&rdquo; she added.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Away?&rdquo; he repeated. &ldquo;How? Where?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;To-day,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I do not care where it is, but
+I want you to take me away.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;For how long? I do not understand,&rdquo; gasped Dick.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I shall never come back here any more,&rdquo; was all
+she answered.</p>
+
+<p>Wild words uttered, as these were, with perfect quiet
+of manner, exercise a double influence on the hearer&rsquo;s
+mind. Dick was confounded; he recovered from astonishment
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page42"></a>42</span>
+only to fall into doubt and alarm. He looked upon
+her frozen attitude, so discouraging for a lover to behold,
+and recoiled from the thoughts which it suggested.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;To me?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Are you coming to me,
+Esther?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I want you to take me away,&rdquo; she repeated, with
+weary impatience. &ldquo;Take me away&mdash;take me away from
+here.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The situation was not sufficiently defined. Dick asked
+himself with concern whether she were altogether in her
+right wits. To take her away, to marry her, to work
+off his hands for her support, Dick was content to do all
+this; yet he required some show of love upon her part.
+He was not one of those tough-hided and small-hearted
+males who would marry their love at the point of the
+bayonet rather than not marry her at all. He desired
+that a woman should come to his arms with an attractive
+willingness, if not with ardour. And Esther&rsquo;s bearing was
+more that of despair than that of love. It chilled him
+and taught him wisdom.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dearest,&rdquo; he urged, &ldquo;tell me what you wish, and
+you shall have it; tell me your thoughts, and then I can
+advise you. But to go from here without a plan, without
+forethought, in the heat of a moment, is madder than
+madness, and can help nothing. I am not speaking like
+a man, but I speak the truth; and I tell you again, the
+thing&rsquo;s absurd, and wrong, and hurtful.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him with a lowering, languid look of
+wrath.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So you will not take me?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Well, I will
+go alone.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And she began to step forward on her way. But he
+threw himself before her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Esther, Esther!&rdquo; he cried.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Let me go&mdash;don&rsquo;t touch me&mdash;what right have you
+to interfere? Who are you, to touch me?&rdquo; she flashed
+out, shrill with anger.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page43"></a>43</span></p>
+
+<p>Then, being made bold by her violence, he took her
+firmly, almost roughly, by the arm, and held her while
+he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You know well who I am, and what I am, and that
+I love you. You say I will not help you; but your heart
+knows the contrary. It is you who will not help me;
+for you will not tell me what you want. You see&mdash;or
+you could see, if you took the pains to look&mdash;how I have
+waited here all night to be ready at your service. I only
+asked information; I only urged you to consider; and
+I still urge you to think better of your fancies. But if
+your mind is made up, so be it; I will beg no longer; I
+will give you my orders; and I will not allow&mdash;not allow
+you to go hence alone.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him for a while with cold, unkind scrutiny,
+like one who tries the temper of a tool.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, take me away then,&rdquo; she said, with a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good,&rdquo; said Dick. &ldquo;Come with me to the stables;
+there we shall get the pony-trap and drive to the junction.
+To-night you shall be in London. I am yours so wholly
+that no words can make me more so; and, besides, you
+know it, and the words are needless. May God help me
+to be good to you, Esther&mdash;may God help me! for I see
+that you will not.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So, without more speech, they set out together, and
+were already got some distance from the spot, ere he
+observed that she was still carrying the hand-bag. She
+gave it up to him, passively, but when he offered her his
+arm, merely shook her head and pursed up her lips. The
+sun shone clearly and pleasantly; the wind was fresh
+and brisk upon their faces, and smelt racily of woods
+and meadows. As they went down into the valley of the
+Thyme, the babble of the stream rose into the air like a
+perennial laughter. On the far-away hills, sun-burst and
+shadow raced along the slopes and leaped from peak to
+peak. Earth, air, and water, each seemed in better
+health and had more of the shrewd salt of life in them
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page44"></a>44</span>
+than upon ordinary mornings; and from east to west,
+from the lowest glen to the height of heaven, from every
+look and touch and scent, a human creature could gather
+the most encouraging intelligence as to the durability and
+spirit of the universe.</p>
+
+<p>Through all this walked Esther, picking her small
+steps like a bird, but silent and with a cloud under her
+thick eyebrows. She seemed insensible, not only of
+nature, but of the presence of her companion. She was
+altogether engrossed in herself, and looked neither to
+right nor to left, but straight before her on the road.
+When they came to the bridge, however, she halted,
+leaned on the parapet, and stared for a moment at the
+clear, brown pool, and swift, transient snowdrift of the
+rapids.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am going to drink,&rdquo; she said; and descended the
+winding <span class="correction" title="corrected from 'foothpath'">footpath</span> to the margin.</p>
+
+<p>There she drank greedily in her hands, and washed her
+temples with water. The coolness seemed to break, for
+an instant, the spell that lay upon her; for, instead of
+hastening forward again in her dull, indefatigable tramp,
+she stood still where she was, for near a minute, looking
+straight before her. And Dick, from above on the bridge
+where he stood to watch her, saw a strange, equivocal
+smile dawn slowly on her face and pass away again at
+once and suddenly, leaving her as grave as ever; and
+the sense of distance, which it is so cruel for a lover to
+endure, pressed with every moment more heavily on her
+companion. Her thoughts were all secret; her heart was
+locked and bolted; and he stood without, vainly wooing
+her with his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you feel better?&rdquo; asked Dick, as she at last
+rejoined him; and after the constraint of so long a silence,
+his voice sounded foreign to his own ears.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him for an appreciable fraction of a
+minute ere she answered, and when she did, it was in the
+monosyllable&mdash;&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page45"></a>45</span></p>
+
+<p>Dick&rsquo;s solicitude was nipped and frosted. His words
+died away on his tongue. Even his eyes, despairing of
+encouragement, ceased to attend on hers. And they went
+on in silence through Kirton hamlet, where an old man
+followed them with his eyes, and perhaps envied them
+their youth and love; and across the Ivy beck where the
+mill was splashing and grumbling low thunder to itself in
+the chequered shadow of the dell, and the miller before
+the door was beating flour from his hands as he whistled
+a modulation; and up by the high spinney, whence they
+saw the mountains upon either hand; and down the hill
+again to the back courts and offices of Naseby House.
+Esther had kept ahead all the way, and Dick plodded
+obediently in her wake; but as they neared the stables,
+he pushed on and took the lead. He would have preferred
+her to await him in the road while he went on and brought
+the carriage back, but after so many repulses and rebuffs
+he lacked courage to offer the suggestion. Perhaps, too,
+he felt it wiser to keep his convoy within sight. So they
+entered the yard in Indian file, like a tramp and his wife.</p>
+
+<p>The groom&rsquo;s eyebrows rose as he received the order for
+the pony-phaeton, and kept rising during all his preparations.
+Esther stood bolt upright and looked steadily at
+some chickens in the corner of the yard. Master Richard
+himself, thought the groom, was not in his ordinary; for
+in truth, he carried the hand-bag like a talisman, and
+either stood listless, or set off suddenly walking in one
+direction after another with brisk, decisive footsteps.
+Moreover, he had apparently neglected to wash his hands,
+and bore the air of one returning from a prolonged nutting
+ramble. Upon the groom&rsquo;s countenance there began to
+grow up an expression as of one about to whistle. And
+hardly had the carriage turned the corner and rattled
+into the high road with this inexplicable pair, than the
+whistle broke forth&mdash;prolonged, and low, and tremulous;
+and the groom, already so far relieved, vented the rest of
+his surprise in one simple English word, friendly to the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page46"></a>46</span>
+mouth of Jack-tar and the sooty pitman, and hurried
+to spread the news round the servants&rsquo; hall of Naseby
+House. Luncheon would be on the table in little beyond
+an hour; and the Squire, on sitting down, would hardly
+fail to ask for Master Richard. Hence, as the intelligent
+reader can foresee, this groom has a part to play in the
+imbroglio.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime, Dick had been thinking deeply and bitterly.
+It seemed to him as if his love had gone from him indeed,
+yet gone but a little way; as if he needed but to find the
+right touch or intonation, and her heart would recognise
+him and be melted. Yet he durst not open his mouth,
+and drove in silence till they had passed the main park-gates
+and turned into the cross-cut lane along the wall.
+Then it seemed to him as if it must be now, or never.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you see you are killing me?&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Speak
+to me, look at me, treat me like a human man.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She turned slowly and looked him in the face with eyes
+that seemed kinder. He dropped the reins and caught her
+hand, and she made no resistance, although her touch was
+unresponsive. But when, throwing one arm round her
+waist, he sought to kiss her lips, not like a lover indeed,
+not because he wanted to do so, but as a desperate man
+who puts his fortunes to the touch, she drew away from
+him, with a knot in her forehead, backed and shied about
+fiercely with her head, and pushed him from her with her
+hand. Then there was no room left for doubt, and Dick
+saw, as clear as sunlight, that she had a distaste or nourished
+a grudge against him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then you don&rsquo;t love me?&rdquo; he said, drawing back
+from her, he also, as though her touch had burnt him;
+and then, as she made no answer, he repeated with another
+intonation, imperious and yet still pathetic, &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t
+love me, <i>do</i> you, <i>do</i> you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; she replied. &ldquo;Why do you ask me?
+Oh, how should I know? It has all been lies together&mdash;lies,
+and lies, and lies!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page47"></a>47</span></p>
+
+<p>He cried her name sharply, like a man who has taken
+a physical hurt, and that was the last word that either
+of them spoke until they reached Thymebury Junction.</p>
+
+<p>This was a station isolated in the midst of moorlands,
+yet lying on the great up-line to London. The nearest
+town, Thymebury itself, was seven miles distant along
+the branch they call the Vale of Thyme Railway. It was
+now nearly half an hour past noon, the down train had
+just gone by, and there would be no more traffic at the
+junction until half-past three, when the local train comes
+in to meet the up express at a quarter before four. The
+stationmaster had already gone off to his garden, which
+was half a mile away in a hollow of the moor; a porter,
+who was just leaving, took charge of the phaeton, and
+promised to return it before night to Naseby House; only
+a deaf, snuffy, and stern old man remained to play propriety
+for Dick and Esther.</p>
+
+<p>Before the phaeton had driven off, the girl had entered
+the station and seated herself upon a bench. The endless,
+empty moorlands stretched before her, entirely unenclosed,
+and with no boundary but the horizon. Two lines of
+rails, a waggon shed, and a few telegraph posts, alone
+diversified the outlook. As for sounds, the silence was
+unbroken save by the chant of the telegraph wires and
+the crying of the plovers on the waste. With the
+approach of midday the wind had more and more fallen,
+it was now sweltering hot and the air trembled in the
+sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>Dick paused for an instant on the threshold of the
+platform. Then, in two steps, he was by her side and
+speaking almost with a sob.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Esther,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;have pity on me. What have
+I done? Can you not forgive me? Esther, you loved
+me once&mdash;can you not love me still?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How can I tell you? How am I to know?&rdquo; she
+answered. &ldquo;You are all a lie to me&mdash;all a lie from first
+to last. You were laughing at my folly, playing with me
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page48"></a>48</span>
+like a child, at the very time when you declared you loved
+me. Which was true? was any of it true? or was it
+all, all a mockery? I am weary trying to find out. And
+you say I loved you; I loved my father&rsquo;s friend. I never
+loved, I never heard of, you, until that man came home
+and I began to find myself deceived. Give me back my
+father, be what you were before, and you may talk of
+love indeed!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then you cannot forgive me&mdash;cannot?&rdquo; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have nothing to forgive,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;You do
+not understand.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is that your last word, Esther?&rdquo; said he, very white,
+and biting his lip to keep it still.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes; that is my last word,&rdquo; replied she.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then we are here on false pretences, and we stay here
+no longer,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Had you still loved me, right or
+wrong, I should have taken you away, because then I
+could have made you happy. But as it is&mdash;I must speak
+plainly&mdash;what you propose is degrading to you, and an
+insult to me, and a rank unkindness to your father. Your
+father may be this or that, but you should use him like
+a fellow-creature.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; she flashed. &ldquo;I leave him my
+house and all my money; it is more than he deserves.
+I wonder you dare speak to me about that man. And
+besides, it is all he cares for; let him take it, and let me
+never hear from him again.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I thought you romantic about fathers,&rdquo; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is that a taunt?&rdquo; she demanded.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;it is an argument. No one can
+make you like him, but don&rsquo;t disgrace him in his own
+eyes. He is old, Esther, old and broken down. Even I
+am sorry for him, and he has been the loss of all I cared
+for. Write to your aunt; when I see her answer you can
+leave quietly and naturally, and I will take you to your
+aunt&rsquo;s door. But in the meantime you must go home.
+You have no money, and so you are helpless, and must
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page49"></a>49</span>
+do as I tell you; and believe me, Esther, I do all for your
+good, and your good only, so God help me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She had put her hand into her pocket and withdrawn
+it empty.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I counted upon you,&rdquo; she wailed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You counted rightly, then,&rdquo; he retorted. &ldquo;I will not,
+to please you for a moment, make both of us unhappy
+for our lives; and since I cannot marry you, we have
+only been too long away, and must go home at once.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dick,&rdquo; she cried suddenly, &ldquo;perhaps I might&mdash;perhaps
+in time&mdash;perhaps&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There is no perhaps about the matter,&rdquo; interrupted
+Dick. &ldquo;I must go and bring the phaeton.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And with that he strode from the station, all in a glow
+of passion and virtue. Esther, whose eyes had come
+alive and her cheeks flushed during these last words,
+relapsed in a second into a state of petrifaction. She
+remained without motion during his absence, and when
+he returned suffered herself to be put back into the phaeton,
+and driven off on the return journey like an idiot or a
+tired child. Compared with what she was now, her condition
+of the morning seemed positively natural. She
+sat cold and white and silent, and there was no speculation
+in her eyes. Poor Dick flailed and flailed at the
+pony, and once tried to whistle, but his courage was going
+down; huge clouds of despair gathered together in his
+soul, and from time to time their darkness was divided
+by a piercing flash of longing and regret. He had lost his
+love&mdash;he had lost his love for good.</p>
+
+<p>The pony was tired, and the hills very long and steep,
+and the air sultrier than ever, for now the breeze began to
+fail entirely. It seemed as if this miserable drive would
+never be done, as if poor Dick would never be able to go
+away and be comfortably wretched by himself; for all
+his desire was to escape from her presence and the reproach
+of her averted looks. He had lost his love, he thought&mdash;he
+had lost his love for good.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page50"></a>50</span></p>
+
+<p>They were already not far from the cottage, when his
+heart again faltered and he appealed to her once more,
+speaking low and eagerly in broken phrases.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I cannot live without your love,&rdquo; he concluded.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I do not understand what you mean,&rdquo; she replied,
+and I believe with perfect truth.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said he, wounded to the quick, &ldquo;your aunt
+might come and fetch you herself. Of course you can
+command me as you please. But I think it would be
+better so.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh yes,&rdquo; she said wearily, &ldquo;better so.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This was the only exchange of words between them
+till about four o&rsquo;clock; the phaeton, mounting the lane,
+&ldquo;opened out&rdquo; the cottage between the leafy banks. Thin
+smoke went straight up from the chimney; the flowers in
+the garden, the hawthorn in the lane, hung down their
+heads in the heat; the stillness was broken only by the
+sound of hoofs. For right before the gate a livery servant
+rode slowly up and down, leading a saddle horse. And
+in this last Dick shuddered to identify his father&rsquo;s chestnut.</p>
+
+<p>Alas! poor Richard, what should this portend?</p>
+
+<p>The servant, as in duty bound, dismounted and took
+the phaeton into his keeping; yet Dick thought he touched
+his hat to him with something of a grin. Esther, passive
+as ever, was helped out and crossed the garden with a
+slow and mechanical gait; and Dick, following close
+behind her, heard from within the cottage his father&rsquo;s
+voice upraised in an anathema, and the shriller tones of
+the Admiral responding in the key of war.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER VIII</h3>
+
+<h5>BATTLE ROYAL</h5>
+
+
+<p>Squire Naseby, on sitting down to lunch, had inquired
+for Dick, whom he had not seen since the day before at
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page51"></a>51</span>
+dinner; and the servant answering awkwardly that
+Master Richard had come back, but had gone out again
+with the pony-phaeton, his suspicions became aroused,
+and he cross-questioned the man until the whole was
+out. It appeared from this report that Dick had been
+going about for nearly a month with a girl in the Vale&mdash;a
+Miss Van Tromp; that she lived near Lord Trevanion&rsquo;s
+upper wood; that recently Miss Van Tromp&rsquo;s papa had
+returned home from foreign parts after a prolonged
+absence; that this papa was an old gentleman, very
+chatty and free with his money in the public-house&mdash;whereupon
+Mr. Naseby&rsquo;s face became encrimsoned; that
+the papa, furthermore, was said to be an admiral&mdash;whereupon
+Mr. Naseby spat out a whistle brief and fierce as an
+oath; that Master Dick seemed very friendly with the
+papa&mdash;&ldquo;God help him!&rdquo; said Mr. Naseby; that last
+night Master Dick had not come in, and to-day he had
+driven away in the phaeton with the young lady.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Young woman,&rdquo; corrected Mr. Naseby.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; said the man, who had been unwilling
+enough to gossip from the first, and was now cowed by
+the effect of his communications on the master. &ldquo;Young
+woman, sir!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Had they luggage?&rdquo; demanded the Squire.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Naseby was silent for a moment, struggling to
+keep down his emotion, and he mastered it so far as to
+mount into the sarcastic vein, when he was in the nearest
+danger of melting into the sorrowful.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And was this&mdash;this Van Dunk with them?&rdquo; he
+asked, dwelling scornfully on the name.</p>
+
+<p>The servant believed not, and being eager to shift the
+responsibility to other shoulders, suggested that perhaps
+the master had better inquire further from George the
+stableman in person.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Tell him to saddle the chestnut and come with me.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page52"></a>52</span>
+And then you can take away this trash,&rdquo; added Mr.
+Naseby, pointing to the luncheon; and he arose, lordly
+in his anger, and marched forth upon the terrace to
+await his horse.</p>
+
+<p>There Dick&rsquo;s old nurse shrunk up to him, for the news
+went like wildfire over Naseby House, and timidly expressed
+a hope that there was nothing much amiss with
+the young master.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll pull him through,&rdquo; the Squire said grimly, as
+though he meant to pull him through a threshing-mill;
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll save him from this gang; God help him with the
+next! He has a taste for low company, and no natural
+affections to steady him. His father was no society for
+him; he must go fuddling with a Dutchman, Nance, and
+now he&rsquo;s caught. Let us pray he&rsquo;ll take the lesson,&rdquo; he
+added, more gravely, &ldquo;but youth is here to make troubles,
+and age to pull them out again.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Nance whimpered and recalled several episodes of
+Dick&rsquo;s childhood, which moved Mr. Naseby to blow his
+nose and shake her hard by the hand; and then, the
+horse having arrived opportunely, to get himself without
+delay into the saddle and canter off.</p>
+
+<p>He rode straight, hot spur, to Thymebury, where, as
+was to be expected, he could glean no tidings of the runaways.
+They had not been seen at the George; they
+had not been seen at the station. The shadow darkened
+on Mr. Naseby&rsquo;s face; the junction did not occur to him;
+his last hope was for Van Tromp&rsquo;s cottage; thither he
+bade George guide him, and thither he followed, nursing
+grief, anxiety, and indignation in his heart.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Here it is, sir,&rdquo; said George, stopping.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What! on my own land!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;How&rsquo;s this?
+I let this place to somebody&mdash;M&rsquo;Whirter or M&rsquo;Glashan.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Miss M&rsquo;Glashan was the young lady&rsquo;s aunt, sir, I
+believe,&rdquo; returned George.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ay&mdash;dummies,&rdquo; said the Squire. &ldquo;I shall whistle
+for my rent too. Here, take my horse.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page53"></a>53</span></p>
+
+<p>The Admiral, this hot afternoon, was sitting by the
+window with a long glass. He already knew the Squire
+by sight, and now, seeing him dismount before the cottage
+and come striding through the garden, concluded without
+doubt he was there to ask for Esther&rsquo;s hand.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This is why the girl is not yet home,&rdquo; he thought;
+&ldquo;a very suitable delicacy on young Naseby&rsquo;s part.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And he composed himself with some pomp, answered
+the loud rattle of the riding-whip upon the door with a
+dulcet invitation to enter, and coming forward with a
+bow and a smile, &ldquo;Mr. Naseby, I believe,&rdquo; said he.</p>
+
+<p>The Squire came armed for battle; took in his man
+from top to toe in one rapid and scornful glance, and
+decided on a course at once. He must let the fellow see
+that he understood him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You are Mr. Van Tromp?&rdquo; he returned roughly,
+and without taking any notice of the proffered hand.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The same, sir,&rdquo; replied the Admiral. &ldquo;Pray be
+seated.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, sir,&rdquo; said the Squire, point-blank, &ldquo;I will not
+be seated. I am told that you are an admiral,&rdquo; he added.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, sir, I am not an admiral,&rdquo; returned Van Tromp,
+who now began to grow nettled and enter into the spirit
+of the interview.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then why do you call yourself one, sir?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have to ask your pardon, I do not,&rdquo; says Van
+Tromp, as grand as the Pope.</p>
+
+<p>But nothing was of avail against the Squire.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You sail under false colours from beginning to end,&rdquo;
+he said. &ldquo;Your very house was taken under a sham
+name.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is not my house. I am my daughter&rsquo;s guest,&rdquo;
+replied the Admiral. &ldquo;If it <i>were</i> my house&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well?&rdquo; said the Squire, &ldquo;what then? hey?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The Admiral looked at him nobly, but was silent.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Look here,&rdquo; said Mr. Naseby, &ldquo;this intimidation is
+a waste of time; it is thrown away on me, sir; it will
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page54"></a>54</span>
+not succeed with me. I will not permit you even to gain
+time by your fencing. Now, sir, I presume you understand
+what brings me here.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am entirely at a loss to account for your intrusion,&rdquo;
+bows and waves Van Tromp.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I will try to tell you, then. I come here as a father&rdquo;&mdash;down
+came the riding-whip upon the table&mdash;&ldquo;I have
+right and justice upon my side. I understand your calculations,
+but you calculated without me. I am a man
+of the world, and I see through you and your man&oelig;uvres.
+I am dealing now with a conspiracy&mdash;I stigmatise it as
+such, and I will expose it and crush it. And now I order
+you to tell me how far things have gone, and whither you
+have smuggled my unhappy son.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My God, sir!&rdquo; Van Tromp broke out, &ldquo;I have had
+about enough of this. Your son? God knows where he
+is for me! What the devil have I to do with your son?
+My daughter is out, for the matter of that; I might ask
+you where she is, and what would you say to that? But
+this is all midsummer madness. Name your business
+distinctly, and be off.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How often am I to tell you?&rdquo; cried the Squire.
+&ldquo;Where did your daughter take my son to-day in that
+cursed pony carriage?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In a pony carriage?&rdquo; repeated Van Tromp.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, sir&mdash;with luggage.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Luggage?&rdquo;&mdash;Van Tromp had turned a little pale.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Luggage, I said&mdash;luggage!&rdquo; shouted Naseby. &ldquo;You
+may spare me this dissimulation. Where&rsquo;s my son? You
+are speaking to a father, sir, a father.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But, sir, if this be true,&rdquo; out came Van Tromp in a
+new key, &ldquo;it is I who have an explanation to demand.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Precisely. There is the conspiracy,&rdquo; retorted Naseby.
+&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;I am a man of the world. I can
+see through and through you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Van Tromp began to understand.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You speak a great deal about being a father, Mr.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page55"></a>55</span>
+Naseby,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;I believe you forget that the appellation
+is common to both of us. I am at a loss to figure to
+myself, however dimly, how any man&mdash;I have not said
+any gentleman&mdash;could so brazenly insult another as you
+have been insulting me since you entered this house.
+For the first time I appreciate your base insinuations, and
+I despise them and you. You were, I am told, a manufacturer;
+I am an artist; I have seen better days; I
+have moved in societies where you would not be received,
+and dined where you would be glad to pay a pound to see
+me dining. The so-called aristocracy of wealth, sir, I
+despise. I refuse to help you; I refuse to be helped by
+you. There lies the door.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And the Admiral stood forth in a halo.</p>
+
+<p>It was then that Dick entered. He had been waiting
+in the porch for some time back, and Esther had been
+listlessly standing by his side. He had put out his hand
+to bar her entrance, and she had submitted without surprise;
+and though she seemed to listen, she scarcely
+appeared to comprehend. Dick, on his part, was as white
+as a sheet; his eyes burned and his lips trembled with
+anger as he thrust the door suddenly open, introduced
+Esther with ceremonious gallantry, and stood forward
+and knocked his hat firmer on his head like a man about
+to leap.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What is all this?&rdquo; he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is this your father, Mr. Naseby?&rdquo; inquired the
+Admiral.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is,&rdquo; said the young man.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I make you my compliments,&rdquo; returned Van
+Tromp.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dick!&rdquo; cried his father, suddenly breaking forth,
+&ldquo;It is not too late, is it? I have come here in time to
+save you. Come, come away with me&mdash;come away from
+this place.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And he fawned upon Dick with his hands.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Keep your hands off me,&rdquo; cried Dick, not meaning
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page56"></a>56</span>
+unkindness, but because his nerves were shattered by so
+many successive miseries.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; said the old man. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t repulse your
+father, Dick, when he has come here to save you. Don&rsquo;t
+repulse me, my boy. Perhaps I have not been kind to
+you, not quite considerate, too harsh; my boy, it was not
+for want of love. Think of old times. I was kind to you
+then, was I not? When you were a child, and your
+mother was with us.&rdquo; Mr. Naseby was interrupted by a
+sort of sob. Dick stood looking at him in a maze. &ldquo;Come
+away,&rdquo; pursued the father in a whisper; &ldquo;you need not
+be afraid of any consequences. I am a man of the world,
+Dick; and she can have no claim on you&mdash;no claim, I tell
+you; and we&rsquo;ll be handsome too, Dick&mdash;we&rsquo;ll give them
+a good round figure, father and daughter, and there&rsquo;s an
+end.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He had been trying to get Dick towards the door, but
+the latter stood off.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You had better take care, sir, how you insult that
+lady,&rdquo; said the son, as black as night.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You would not choose between your father and your
+mistress?&rdquo; said the father.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What do you call her, sir?&rdquo; cried Dick, high and
+clear.</p>
+
+<p>Forbearance and patience were not among Mr. Naseby&rsquo;s
+qualities.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I called her your mistress,&rdquo; he shouted, &ldquo;and I
+might have called her a &mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That is an unmanly lie,&rdquo; replied Dick slowly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dick!&rdquo; cried the father, &ldquo;Dick!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I do not care,&rdquo; said the son, strengthening himself
+against his own heart; &ldquo;I&mdash;I have said it, and it&rsquo;s the
+truth.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dick,&rdquo; said the old man at last, in a voice that was
+shaken as by a gale of wind, &ldquo;I am going. I leave you
+with your friends, sir&mdash;with your friends. I came to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page57"></a>57</span>
+serve you, and now I go away a broken man. For years
+I have seen this coming, and now it has come. You
+never loved me. Now you have been the death of me.
+You may boast of that. Now I leave you. God pardon
+you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>With that he was gone; and the three who remained
+together heard his horse&rsquo;s hoofs descend the lane. Esther
+had not made a sign throughout the interview, and still
+kept silence now that it was over; but the Admiral, who
+had once or twice moved forward and drawn back again,
+now advanced for good.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You are a man of spirit, sir,&rdquo; said he to Dick; &ldquo;but
+though I am no friend to parental interference, I will
+say that you were heavy on the governor.&rdquo; Then he
+added with a chuckle: &ldquo;You began, Richard, with a
+silver spoon, and here you are in the water, like the rest.
+Work, work, nothing like work. You have parts, you
+have manners; why, with application, you may die a
+millionaire!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Dick shook himself. He took Esther by the hand, looking
+at her mournfully.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then this is farewell?&rdquo; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she answered. There was no tone in her voice,
+and she did not return his gaze.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;For ever,&rdquo; added Dick.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;For ever,&rdquo; she repeated mechanically.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have had hard measure,&rdquo; he continued. &ldquo;In
+time, I believe I could have shown you I was worthy, and
+there was no time long enough to show how much I loved
+you. But it was not to be. I have lost all.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He relinquished her hand, still looking at her, and she
+turned to leave the room.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, what in fortune&rsquo;s name is the meaning of all
+this?&rdquo; cried Van Tromp. &ldquo;Esther, come back!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Let her go,&rdquo; said Dick, and he watched her disappear
+with strangely mingled feelings. For he had fallen
+into that stage when men have the vertigo of misfortune,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page58"></a>58</span>
+court the strokes of destiny, and rush towards anything
+decisive, that it may free them from suspense though at the
+cost of ruin. It is one of the many minor forms of suicide.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She did not love me,&rdquo; he said, turning to her father.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I feared as much,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;when I sounded her.
+Poor Dick, poor Dick! And yet I believe I am as much
+cut up as you are. I was born to see others happy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You forget,&rdquo; returned Dick, with something like a
+sneer, &ldquo;that I am now a pauper.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Van Tromp snapped his fingers.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Tut!&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;Esther has plenty for us all.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Dick looked at him with some wonder. It had never
+dawned upon him that this shiftless, thriftless, worthless,
+sponging parasite was yet, after all and in spite of
+all, not mercenary in the issue of his thoughts; yet
+so it was.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said Dick, &ldquo;I must go.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Go?&rdquo; cried Van Tromp. &ldquo;Where? Not one foot,
+Mr. Richard Naseby. Here you shall stay in the meantime!
+and&mdash;well, and do something practical&mdash;advertise
+for a situation as private secretary&mdash;and when you have
+it, go and welcome. But in the meantime, sir, no false
+pride; we must stay with our friends; we must sponge a
+while on Papa Van Tromp, who has sponged so often
+upon us.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;By God,&rdquo; cried Dick, &ldquo;I believe you are the best of
+the lot.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dick, my boy,&rdquo; replied the Admiral, winking, &ldquo;you
+mark me, I am not the worst.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then why,&rdquo; began Dick, and then paused. &ldquo;But
+Esther,&rdquo; he began again, once more to interrupt himself.
+&ldquo;The fact is, Admiral,&rdquo; he came out with it roundly
+now, &ldquo;your daughter wished to run away from you to-day,
+and I only brought her back with difficulty.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In the pony carriage?&rdquo; asked the Admiral, with the
+silliness of extreme surprise.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; Dick answered.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page59"></a>59</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, what the devil was she running away from?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Dick found the question unusually hard to answer.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;you know you&rsquo;re a bit of a rip.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I behave to that girl, sir, like an archdeacon,&rdquo; replied
+Van Tromp warmly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well&mdash;excuse me&mdash;but you know you drink,&rdquo; insisted
+Dick.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I know that I was a sheet in the wind&rsquo;s eye, sir,
+once&mdash;once only, since I reached this place,&rdquo; retorted
+the Admiral. &ldquo;And even then I was fit for any drawing-room.
+I should like you to tell me how many fathers,
+lay and clerical, go upstairs every day with a face like a
+lobster and cod&rsquo;s eyes&mdash;and are dull, upon the back of
+it&mdash;not even mirth for the money! No, if that&rsquo;s what
+she runs for, all I say is, let her run.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You see,&rdquo; Dick tried it again, &ldquo;she has fancies&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Confound her fancies!&rdquo; cried Van Tromp. &ldquo;I used
+her kindly; she had her own way; I was her father.
+Besides, I had taken quite a liking to the girl, and meant
+to stay with her for good. But I tell you what it is,
+Dick, since she has trifled with you&mdash;Oh yes, she did
+though!&mdash;and since her old papa&rsquo;s not good enough for
+her&mdash;the devil take her, say I.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You will be kind to her at least?&rdquo; said Dick.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I never was unkind to a living soul,&rdquo; replied the
+Admiral. &ldquo;Firm I can be, but not unkind.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Dick, offering his hand, &ldquo;God bless you,
+and farewell.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The Admiral swore by all his gods he should not go.
+&ldquo;Dick,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you are a selfish dog; you forget
+your old Admiral. You wouldn&rsquo;t leave him alone, would
+you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It was useless to remind him that the house was not
+his to dispose of, that being a class of considerations to
+which his intelligence was closed; so Dick tore himself
+off by force, and shouting a good-bye, made off along the
+lane to Thymebury.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page60"></a>60</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER IX</h3>
+
+<h5>IN WHICH THE LIBERAL EDITOR APPEARS AS
+&ldquo;DEUS EX MACHINÂ&rdquo;</h5>
+
+
+<p>It was perhaps a week later, as old Mr. Naseby sat brooding
+in his study, that there was shown in upon him, on
+urgent business, a little hectic gentleman shabbily
+attired.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have to ask pardon for this intrusion, Mr. Naseby,&rdquo;
+he said; &ldquo;but I come here to perform a duty. My card
+has been sent in, but perhaps you may not know, what it
+does not tell you, that I am the editor of the <i>Thymebury
+Star</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Naseby looked up, indignant.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I cannot fancy,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that we have much in
+common to discuss.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have only a word to say&mdash;one piece of information
+to communicate. Some months ago, we had&mdash;you will
+pardon my referring to it, it is absolutely necessary&mdash;but
+we had an unfortunate difference as to facts.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Have you come to apologise?&rdquo; asked the Squire
+sternly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, sir; to mention a circumstance. On the morning
+in question, your son, Mr. Richard Naseby&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I do not permit his name to be mentioned.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You will, however, permit me,&rdquo; replied the Editor.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You are cruel,&rdquo; said the Squire. He was right, he
+was a broken man.</p>
+
+<p>Then the Editor described Dick&rsquo;s warning visit; and
+how he had seen in the lad&rsquo;s eye that there was a thrashing
+in the wind, and had escaped through pity only&mdash;so
+the Editor put it&mdash;&ldquo;through pity only, sir. And oh, sir,&rdquo;
+he went on, &ldquo;if you had seen him speaking up for you, I
+am sure you would have been proud of your son. I know
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page61"></a>61</span>
+I admired the lad myself, and indeed that&rsquo;s what brings
+me here.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have misjudged him,&rdquo; said the Squire. &ldquo;Do you
+know where he is?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, sir, he lies sick at Thymebury.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You can take me to him?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I can.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I pray God he may forgive me,&rdquo; said the father.</p>
+
+<p>And he and the Editor made post-haste for the country
+town.</p>
+
+<p>Next day the report went abroad that Mr. Richard
+was reconciled to his father and had been taken home
+to Naseby House. He was still ailing, it was said, and
+the Squire nursed him like the proverbial woman. Rumour,
+in this instance, did no more than justice to the truth;
+and over the sick-bed many confidences were exchanged,
+and clouds that had been growing for years passed away
+in a few hours, and, as fond mankind loves to hope, for
+ever. Many long talks had been fruitless in external
+action, though fruitful for the understanding of the pair;
+but at last, one showery Tuesday, the Squire might have
+been observed upon his way to the cottage in the lane.</p>
+
+<p>The old gentleman had arranged his features with a
+view to self-command, rather than external cheerfulness;
+and he entered the cottage on his visit of conciliation
+with the bearing of a clergyman come to announce a
+death.</p>
+
+<p>The Admiral and his daughter were both within, and
+both looked upon their visitor with more surprise than
+favour.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; said he to Van Tromp, &ldquo;I am told I have done
+you much injustice.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>There came a little sound in Esther&rsquo;s throat, and she
+put her hand suddenly to her heart.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You have, sir; and the acknowledgment suffices,&rdquo;
+replied the Admiral. &ldquo;I am prepared, sir, to be easy with
+you, since I hear you have made it up with my friend
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page62"></a>62</span>
+Dick. But let me remind you that you owe some apologies
+to this young lady also.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I shall have the temerity to ask for more than her
+forgiveness,&rdquo; said the Squire. &ldquo;Miss Van Tromp,&rdquo; he
+continued, &ldquo;once I was in great distress, and knew nothing
+of you or your character; but I believe you will pardon
+a few rough words to an old man who asks forgiveness
+from his heart. I have heard much of you since then;
+for you have a fervent advocate in my house. I believe
+you will understand that I speak of my son. He is, I
+regret to say, very far from well; he does not pick up
+as the doctors had expected; he has a great deal upon
+his mind, and, to tell you the truth, my girl, if you won&rsquo;t
+help us, I am afraid I shall lose him. Come now, forgive
+him! I was angry with him once myself, and I found I
+was in the wrong. This is only a misunderstanding, like
+the other, believe me; and, with one kind movement, you
+may give happiness to him, and to me, and to yourself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Esther made a movement towards the door, but long
+before she reached it she had broken forth sobbing.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is all right,&rdquo; said the Admiral; &ldquo;I understand the
+sex. Let me make you my compliments, Mr. Naseby.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The Squire was too much relieved to be angry.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear,&rdquo; said he to Esther, &ldquo;you must not agitate
+yourself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She had better go up and see him right away,&rdquo; suggested
+Van Tromp.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I had not ventured to propose it,&rdquo; replied the Squire.
+&ldquo;<i>Les convenances</i>, I believe&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Je m&rsquo;en fiche</i>,&rdquo; cried the Admiral, snapping his
+fingers. &ldquo;She shall go and see my friend Dick. Run
+and get ready, Esther.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Esther obeyed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She has not&mdash;has not run away again?&rdquo; inquired
+Mr. Naseby, as soon as she was gone.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Van Tromp, &ldquo;not again. She is a devilish
+odd girl, though, mind you that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page63"></a>63</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But I cannot stomach the man with the carbuncles,&rdquo;
+thought the Squire.</p>
+
+<p>And this is why there is a new household and a brand-new
+baby in Naseby Dower House; and why the great
+Van Tromp lives in pleasant style upon the shores of
+England; and why twenty-six individual copies of the
+<i>Thymebury Star</i> are received daily at the door of Naseby
+House.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page64"></a>64</span></p>
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page65"></a>65</span></p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2>THE MERRY MEN</h2>
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page66"></a>66</span></p>
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page67"></a>67</span></p>
+
+<p><i>My dear Lady Taylor</i>,</p>
+
+<p style="text-indent: 3em;"><i>To your name, if I wrote on brass, I could add
+nothing; it has been already written higher than I could
+dream to reach, by a strong and a dear hand; and if I
+now dedicate to you these tales,<a name="FnAnchor_1" href="#Footnote_1"><span class="sp">1</span></a> it is not as the writer who
+brings you his work, but as the friend who would remind
+you of his affection.</i></p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;">ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.</p>
+
+<p><i>Skerryvore, Bournemouth.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page68"></a>68</span></p>
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page69"></a>69</span></p>
+<h2>THE MERRY MEN</h2>
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER I</h3>
+
+<h5>EILEAN AROS</h5>
+
+
+<p>It was a beautiful morning in the late July when I set
+forth on foot for the last time for Aros. A boat had
+put me ashore the night before at Grisapol; I had such
+breakfast as the little inn afforded, and, leaving all my
+baggage till I had an occasion to come round for it by
+sea, struck right across the promontory with a cheerful
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>I was far from being a native of these parts, springing,
+as I did, from an unmixed lowland stock. But an uncle
+of mine, Gordon Darnaway, after a poor, rough youth,
+and some years at sea, had married a young wife in the
+islands; Mary Maclean she was called, the last of her
+family; and when she died in giving birth to a daughter,
+Aros, the sea-girt farm, had remained in his possession.
+It brought him in nothing but the means of life, as I was
+well aware; but he was a man whom ill-fortune had
+pursued; he feared, cumbered as he was with the young
+child, to make a fresh adventure upon life; and remained
+in Aros, biting his nails at destiny. Years passed over
+his head in that isolation, and brought neither help nor
+contentment. Meantime our family was dying out in the
+lowlands; there is little luck for any of that race; and
+perhaps my father was the luckiest of all, for not only
+was he one of the last to die, but he left a son to his name
+and a little money to support it. I was a student of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page70"></a>70</span>
+Edinburgh University, living well enough at my own
+charges, but without kith or kin; when some news of
+me found its way to Uncle Gordon on the Ross of Grisapol;
+and he, as he was a man who held blood thicker than
+water, wrote to me the day he heard of my existence,
+and taught me to count Aros as my home. Thus it was
+that I came to spend my vacations in that part of the
+country, so far from all society and comfort, between
+the codfish and the moorcocks; and thus it was that
+now, when I had done with my classes, I was returning
+thither with so light a heart that July day.</p>
+
+<p>The Ross, as we call it, is a promontory neither wide
+nor high, but as rough as God made it to this day; the
+deep sea on either hand of it, full of rugged isles and
+reefs most perilous to seamen&mdash;all overlooked from the
+eastward by some very high cliffs and the great peak of
+Ben Kyaw. <i>The Mountain of the Mist</i>, they say the
+words signify in the Gaelic tongue; and it is well named.
+For that hill-top, which is more than three thousand feet
+in height, catches all the clouds that come blowing from
+the seaward; and, indeed, I used often to think that it
+must make them for itself; since when all heaven was
+clear to the sea level, there would ever be a streamer on
+Ben Kyaw. It brought water, too, and was mossy<a name="FnAnchor_2" href="#Footnote_2"><span class="sp">2</span></a> to
+the top in consequence. I have seen us sitting in broad
+sunshine on the Ross, and the rain falling black like crape
+upon the mountain. But the wetness of it made it often
+appear more beautiful to my eyes; for when the sun
+struck upon the hillsides there were many wet rocks and
+watercourses that shone like jewels even as far as Aros,
+fifteen miles away.</p>
+
+<p>The road that I followed was a cattle-track. It twisted
+so as nearly to double the length of my journey; it went
+over rough boulders so that a man had to leap from one
+to another, and through soft bottoms where the moss
+came nearly to the knee. There was no cultivation anywhere,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page71"></a>71</span>
+and not one house in the ten miles from Grisapol
+to Aros. Houses of course there were&mdash;three at least;
+but they lay so far on the one side or the other that no
+stranger could have found them from the track. A large
+part of the Ross is covered with big granite rocks, some
+of them larger than a two-roomed house, one beside
+another, with fern and deep heather in between them
+where the vipers breed. Any way the wind was, it was
+always sea air, as salt as on a ship; the gulls were as free
+as moorfowl over all the Ross; and whenever the way
+rose a little, your eye would kindle with the brightness
+of the sea. From the very midst of the land, on a day
+of wind and a high spring, I have heard the Roost roaring
+like a battle where it runs by Aros, and the great and
+fearful voices of the breakers that we call the Merry Men.</p>
+
+<p>Aros itself&mdash;Aros Jay, I have heard the natives call
+it, and they say it means <i>the House of God</i>&mdash;Aros itself
+was not properly a piece of the Ross, nor was it quite an
+islet. It formed the south-west corner of the land, fitted
+close to it, and was in one place only separated from the
+coast by a little gut of the sea, not forty feet across the
+narrowest. When the tide was full, this was clear and
+still, like a pool on a land river; only there was a difference
+in the weeds and fishes, and the water itself was
+green instead of brown; but when the tide went out, in
+the bottom of the ebb, there was a day or two in every
+month when you could pass dryshod from Aros to the
+mainland. There was some good pasture, where my
+uncle fed the sheep he lived on; perhaps the feed was
+better because the ground rose higher on the islet than
+the main level of the Ross, but this I am not skilled enough
+to settle. The house was a good one for that country,
+two stories high. It looked westward over a bay, with
+a pier hard by for a boat, and from the door you could
+watch the vapours blowing on Ben Kyaw.</p>
+
+<p>On all this part of the coast, and especially near Aros,
+these great granite rocks that I have spoken of go down
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page72"></a>72</span>
+together in troops into the sea, like cattle on a summer&rsquo;s
+day. There they stand, for all the world like their neighbours
+ashore; only the salt water sobbing between them
+instead of the quiet earth, and clots of sea-pink blooming
+on their sides instead of heather; and the great sea-conger
+to wreathe about the base of them instead of the
+poisonous viper of the land. On calm days you can go
+wandering between them in a boat for hours, echoes following
+you about the labyrinth; but when the sea is up,
+Heaven help the man that hears that caldron boiling.</p>
+
+<p>Off the south-west end of Aros these blocks are very
+many, and much greater in size. Indeed, they must grow
+monstrously bigger out to sea, for there must be ten sea
+miles of open water sown with them as thick as a country
+place with houses, some standing thirty feet above the
+tides, some covered, but all perilous to ships; so that on
+a clear, westerly blowing day, I have counted, from the
+top of Aros, the great rollers breaking white and heavy
+over as many as six-and-forty buried reefs. But it is
+nearer in shore that the danger is worst; for the tide,
+here running like a mill-race, makes a long belt of broken
+water&mdash;a <i>Roost</i> we call it&mdash;at the tail of the land. I have
+often been out there in a dead calm at the slack of the
+tide; and a strange place it is, with the sea swirling and
+combing up and boiling like the caldrons of a linn, and
+now and again a little dancing mutter of sound as though
+the <i>Roost</i> were talking to itself. But when the tide begins
+to run again, and above all in heavy weather, there is no
+man could take a boat within half a mile of it, nor a ship
+afloat that could either steer or live in such a place. You
+can hear the roaring of it six miles away. At the seaward
+end there comes the strongest of the bubble; and it&rsquo;s
+here that these big breakers dance together&mdash;the dance of
+death, it may be called&mdash;that have got the name, in these
+parts, of the Merry Men. I have heard it said that they
+run fifty feet high; but that must be the green water
+only, for the spray runs twice as high as that. Whether
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page73"></a>73</span>
+they got the name from their movements, which are
+swift and antic, or from the shouting they make about the
+turn of the tide, so that all Aros shakes with it, is more
+than I can tell.</p>
+
+<p>The truth is, that in a south-westerly wind, that part
+of our archipelago is no better than a trap. If a ship got
+through the reefs, and weathered the Merry Men, it would
+be to come ashore on the south coast of Aros, in Sandag
+Bay, where so many dismal things befell our family, as I
+propose to tell. The thought of all these dangers, in the
+place I knew so long, makes me particularly welcome the
+works now going forward to set lights upon the headlands
+and buoys along the channels of our iron-bound, inhospitable
+islands.</p>
+
+<p>The country people had many a story about Aros, as I
+used to hear from my uncle&rsquo;s man, Rorie, an old servant
+of the Macleans, who had transferred his services without
+afterthought on the occasion of the marriage. There was
+some tale of an unlucky creature, a sea-kelpie, that dwelt
+and did business in some fearful manner of his own among
+the boiling breakers of the Roost. A mermaid had once
+met a piper on Sandag beach, and there sang to him a
+long, bright midsummer&rsquo;s night, so that in the morning
+he was found stricken crazy, and from thenceforward, till
+the day he died, said only one form of words; what they
+were in the original Gaelic I cannot tell, but they were
+thus translated: &ldquo;Ah, the sweet singing out of the sea.&rdquo;
+Seals that haunted on that coast have been known to
+speak to man in his own tongue, presaging great disasters.
+It was here that a certain saint first landed on his voyage
+out of Ireland to convert the Hebrideans. And, indeed,
+I think he had some claim to be called saint; for, with the
+boats of that past age, to make so rough a passage, and
+land on such a ticklish coast, was surely not far short of
+the miraculous. It was to him, or to some of his monkish
+underlings who had a cell there, that the islet owes its
+holy and beautiful name, the House of God.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page74"></a>74</span></p>
+
+<p>Among these old wives&rsquo; stories there was one which I
+was inclined to hear with more credulity. As I was told,
+in that tempest which scattered the ships of the Invincible
+Armada over all the north and west of Scotland, one great
+vessel came ashore on Aros, and before the eyes of some
+solitary people on a hill-top, went down in a moment
+with all hands, her colours flying even as she sank. There
+was some likelihood in this tale; for another of that fleet
+lay sunk on the north side, twenty miles from Grisapol.
+It was told, I thought, with more detail and gravity than
+its companion stories, and there was one particularity
+which went far to convince me of its truth: the name,
+that is, of the ship was still remembered, and sounded, in
+my ears, Spanishly. The <i>Espirito Santo</i> they called it, a
+great ship of many decks of guns, laden with treasure and
+grandees of Spain, and fierce soldadoes, that now lay
+fathom deep to all eternity, done with her wars and
+voyages, in Sandag Bay, upon the west of Aros. No more
+salvos of ordnance for that tall ship, the &ldquo;Holy Spirit,&rdquo;
+no more fair winds or happy ventures; only to rot there
+deep in the sea-tangle and hear the shoutings of the Merry
+Men as the tide ran high about the island. It was a
+strange thought to me first and last, and only grew stranger
+as I learned the more of Spain, from which she had set
+sail with so proud a company, and King Philip, the
+wealthy king, that sent her on that voyage.</p>
+
+<p>And now I must tell you, as I walked from Grisapol
+that day, the <i>Espirito Santo</i> was very much in my reflections.
+I had been favourably remarked by our then
+Principal in Edinburgh College, that famous writer, Dr.
+Robertson, and by him had been set to work on some
+papers of an ancient date to rearrange and sift of what
+was worthless; and in one of these, to my great wonder,
+I found a note of this very ship, the <i>Espirito Santo</i>, with
+her captain&rsquo;s name, and how she carried a great part of
+the Spaniards&rsquo; treasure, and had been lost upon the Ross
+of Grisapol; but in what particular spot the wild tribes
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page75"></a>75</span>
+of that place and period would give no information to
+the king&rsquo;s inquiries. Putting one thing with another,
+and taking our island tradition together with this note
+of old King Jamie&rsquo;s perquisitions after wealth, it had
+come strongly on my mind that the spot for which he
+sought in vain could be no other than the small bay of
+Sandag on my uncle&rsquo;s land; and being a fellow of a
+mechanical turn, I had ever since been plotting how to
+weigh that good ship up again with all her ingots, ounces,
+and doubloons, and bring back our house of Darnaway
+to its long-forgotten dignity and wealth.</p>
+
+<p>This was a design of which I soon had reason to repent.
+My mind was sharply turned on different reflections; and
+since I became the witness of a strange judgment of God&rsquo;s,
+the thought of dead men&rsquo;s treasures has been intolerable
+to my conscience. But even at that time I must acquit
+myself of sordid greed; for if I desired riches, it was not
+for their own sake, but for the sake of a person who was
+dear to my heart&mdash;my uncle&rsquo;s daughter, Mary Ellen.
+She had been educated well, and had been a time to school
+upon the mainland; which, poor girl, she would have
+been happier without. For Aros was no place for her,
+with old Rorie the servant, and her father, who was one
+of the unhappiest men in Scotland, plainly bred up in a
+country place among Cameronians, long a skipper sailing
+out of the Clyde about the islands, and now, with infinite
+discontent, managing his sheep and a little &rsquo;long shore
+fishing for the necessary bread. If it was sometimes
+weariful to me, who was there but a month or two, you
+may fancy what it was to her who dwelt in that same
+desert all the year round, with the sheep and flying sea-gulls,
+and the Merry Men singing and dancing in the
+Roost!</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page76"></a>76</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER II</h3>
+
+<h5>WHAT THE WRECK HAD BROUGHT TO AROS</h5>
+
+
+<p>It was half-flood when I got the length of Aros; and
+there was nothing for it but to stand on the far shore
+and whistle for Rorie with the boat. I had no need
+to repeat the signal. At the first sound, Mary was
+at the door flying a handkerchief by way of answer, and
+the old long-legged serving-man was shambling down the
+gravel to the pier. For all his hurry, it took him a long
+while to pull across the bay; and I observed him several
+times to pause, go into the stern, and look over curiously
+into the wake. As he came nearer, he seemed to me
+aged and haggard, and I thought he avoided my eye. The
+coble had been repaired, with two new thwarts and several
+patches of some rare and beautiful foreign wood, the name
+of it unknown to me.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, Rorie,&rdquo; said I, as we began the return voyage,
+&ldquo;this is fine wood. How came you by that?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It will be hard to cheesel,&rdquo; Rorie opined reluctantly;
+and just then, dropping the oars, he made another
+of those dives into the stern which I had remarked as he
+came across to fetch me, and, leaning his hand on my
+shoulder, stared with an awful look into the waters of
+the bay.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What is wrong?&rdquo; I asked, a good deal startled.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It will be a great feesh,&rdquo; said the old man, returning
+to his oars; and nothing more could I get out of him
+but strange glances and an ominous nodding of the head.
+In spite of myself, I was infected with a measure of
+uneasiness; I turned also, and studied the wake. The
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page77"></a>77</span>
+water was still and transparent, but, out here in the
+middle of the bay, exceeding deep. For some time I
+could see naught; but at last it did seem to me as if something
+dark&mdash;a great fish, or perhaps only a shadow&mdash;followed
+studiously in the track of the moving coble. And
+then I remembered one of Rorie&rsquo;s superstitions: how in
+a ferry in Morven, in some great, exterminating feud
+among the clans, a fish, the like of it unknown in all our
+waters, followed for some years the passage of the ferryboat,
+until no man dared to make the crossing.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He will be waiting for the right man,&rdquo; said Rorie.</p>
+
+<p>Mary met me on the beach, and led me up the brae
+and into the house of Aros. Outside and inside there
+were many changes. The garden was fenced with the
+same wood that I had noted in the boat; there were
+chairs in the kitchen covered with strange brocade; curtains
+of brocade hung from the window; a clock stood
+silent on the dresser; a lamp of brass was swinging from
+the roof; the table was set for dinner with the finest of
+linen and silver; and all these new riches were displayed
+in the plain old kitchen that I knew so well, with the high-backed
+settle, and the stools, and the closet bed for Rorie;
+with the wide chimney the sun shone into, and the clear-smouldering
+peats; with the pipes on the mantelshelf
+and the three-cornered spittoons, filled with sea-shells
+instead of sand, on the floor; with the bare stone walls
+and the bare wooden floor, and the three patchwork rugs
+that were of yore its sole adornment&mdash;poor man&rsquo;s patchwork,
+the like of it unknown in cities, woven with homespun,
+and Sunday black, and sea-cloth polished on the
+bench of rowing. The room, like the house, had been a
+sort of wonder in that country-side, it was so neat and
+habitable; and to see it now, shamed by these incongruous
+additions, filled me with indignation and a kind of
+anger. In view of the errand I had come upon to Aros,
+the feeling was baseless and unjust; but it burned high,
+at the first moment, in my heart.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page78"></a>78</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mary, girl,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;this is the place I had learned
+to call my home, and I do not know it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is my home by nature, not by the learning,&rdquo; she
+replied; &ldquo;the place I was born and the place I&rsquo;m like to
+die in; and I neither like these changes, nor the way they
+came, nor that which came with them. I would have
+liked better, under God&rsquo;s pleasure, they had gone down
+into the sea, and the Merry Men were dancing on them
+now.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mary was always serious; it was perhaps the only
+trait that she shared with her father; but the tone with
+which she uttered these words was even graver than of
+custom.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ay,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;I feared it came by wreck, and that&rsquo;s
+by death; yet when my father died I took his goods
+without remorse.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Your father died a clean-strae death, as the folk
+say,&rdquo; said Mary.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;True,&rdquo; I returned; &ldquo;and a wreck is like a judgment.
+What was she called?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They ca&rsquo;d her the <i>Christ-Anna</i>,&rdquo; said a voice behind
+me; and, turning round, I saw my uncle standing in the
+doorway.</p>
+
+<p>He was a sour, small, bilious man, with a long face
+and very dark eyes; fifty-six years old, sound and active
+in body, and with an air somewhat between that of a
+shepherd and that of a man following the sea. He never
+laughed, that I heard; read long at the Bible; prayed
+much, like the Cameronians he had been brought up
+among; and, indeed, in many ways, used to remind me
+of one of the hill-preachers in the killing times before the
+Revolution. But he never got much comfort, nor even,
+as I used to think, much guidance, by his piety. He had
+his black fits when he was afraid of hell; but he had led
+a rough life, to which he would look back with envy, and
+was still a rough, cold, gloomy man.</p>
+
+<p>As he came in at the door out of the sunlight, with
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page79"></a>79</span>
+his bonnet on his head and a pipe hanging in his button-hole,
+he seemed, like Rorie, to have grown older and
+paler, the lines were deeplier ploughed upon his face,
+and the whites of his eyes were yellow, like old stained
+ivory, or the bones of the dead.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ay,&rdquo; he repeated, dwelling upon the first part of
+the word, &ldquo;the <i>Christ-Anna</i>. It&rsquo;s an awfu&rsquo; name.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I made him my salutations, and complimented him
+upon his look of health; for I feared he had perhaps
+been ill.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m in the body,&rdquo; he replied, ungraciously enough;
+&ldquo;aye in the body and the sins of the body, like yoursel&rsquo;.
+Denner,&rdquo; he said abruptly to Mary, and then ran on, to
+me: &ldquo;They&rsquo;re grand braws, thir that we hae gotten, are
+they no&rsquo;? Yon&rsquo;s a bonny knock,<a name="FnAnchor_3" href="#Footnote_3"><span class="sp">3</span></a> but it&rsquo;ll no gang;
+and the napery&rsquo;s by ordnar. Bonny, bairnly braws; it&rsquo;s
+for the like o&rsquo; them folk sells the peace of God that
+passeth understanding; it&rsquo;s for the like o&rsquo; them, an&rsquo;
+maybe no&rsquo; even sae muckle worth, folk daunton God to
+His face and burn in muckle hell; and it&rsquo;s for that
+reason the Scripture ca&rsquo;s them, as I read the passage,
+the accursed thing.&mdash;Mary, ye girzie,&rdquo; he interrupted
+himself to cry with some asperity, &ldquo;what for hae ye no&rsquo;
+put out the twa candlesticks?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why should we need them at high noon?&rdquo; she
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>But my uncle was not to be turned from his idea.
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll bruik<a name="FnAnchor_4" href="#Footnote_4"><span class="sp">4</span></a> them while we may,&rdquo; he said; and so
+two massive candlesticks of wrought silver were added
+to the table equipage, already so unsuited to that rough
+seaside farm.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She cam&rsquo; ashore Februar&rsquo; 10, about ten at nicht,&rdquo;
+he went on to me. &ldquo;There was nae wind, and a sair
+run o&rsquo; sea; and she was in the sook o&rsquo; the Roost, as I
+jaloose. We had seen her a&rsquo; day, Rorie and me, beating
+to the wind. She wasna a handy craft, I&rsquo;m thinking,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page80"></a>80</span>
+that <i>Christ-Anna</i>; for she would neither steer nor stey
+wi&rsquo; them. A sair day they had of it; their hands was
+never aff the sheets, and it perishin&rsquo; cauld&mdash;ower cauld to
+snaw; and aye they would get a bit nip o&rsquo; wind, and
+awa&rsquo; again, to pit the emp&rsquo;y hope into them. Eh, man!
+but they had a sair day for the last o&rsquo;t! He would
+have had a prood, prood heart that won ashore upon
+the back o&rsquo; that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And were all lost?&rdquo; I cried. &ldquo;God help them!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Wheesht!&rdquo; he said sternly. &ldquo;Nane shall pray for
+the deid on my hearth-stane.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I disclaimed a Popish sense for my ejaculation; and
+he seemed to accept my disclaimer with unusual facility,
+and ran on once more upon what had evidently become
+a favourite subject.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We fand her in Sandag Bay, Rorie an&rsquo; me, and a&rsquo;
+thae braws in the inside of her. There&rsquo;s a kittle bit, ye
+see, about Sandag; whiles the sook rins strong for the
+Merry Men; an&rsquo; whiles again, when the tide&rsquo;s makin&rsquo; hard
+an&rsquo; ye can hear the Roost blawin&rsquo; at the far-end of Aros,
+there comes a back-spang of current straucht into Sandag
+Bay. Weel, there&rsquo;s the thing that got the grip on the
+<i>Christ-Anna</i>. She büt to have come in ram-stam an&rsquo;
+stern forrit; for the bows of her are aften under, and
+the back-side of her is clear at hie-water o&rsquo; neaps. But,
+man! the dunt that she cam doon wi&rsquo; when she struck!
+Lord save us a&rsquo;l but it&rsquo;s an unco life to be a sailor&mdash;a
+cauld, wanchancy life. Mony&rsquo;s the gliff I got mysel&rsquo; in
+the great deep; and why the Lord should hae made yon
+unco water is mair than ever I could win to understand.
+He made the vales and the pastures, the bonny green
+yaird, the halesome, canty land&mdash;</p>
+
+<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td>
+<div class="poemr">
+
+<p>And now they shout and sing to Thee,</p>
+  <p class="i1">For Thou hast made them glad,</p>
+
+</div>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="noind">as the Psalms say in the metrical version. No&rsquo; that I
+would preen my faith to that clink neither; but it&rsquo;s bonny,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page81"></a>81</span>
+and easier to mind. &lsquo;Who go to sea in ships,&rsquo; they hae&rsquo;t
+again&mdash;</p>
+
+<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td>
+<div class="poemr">
+
+                     <p class="i8">and in</p>
+  <p class="i1">Great waters trading be,</p>
+<p>Within the deep these men God&rsquo;s works</p>
+  <p class="i1">And His great wonders see.</p>
+
+</div>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="noind">Weel, it&rsquo;s easy sayin&rsquo; sae. Maybe Dauvit wasna very
+weel acquaint wi&rsquo; the sea. But, troth, if it wasna prentit
+in the Bible, I wad whiles be temp&rsquo;it to think it wasna
+the Lord, but the muckle black deil that made the sea.
+There&rsquo;s naething good comes oot o&rsquo;t but the fish; an&rsquo;
+the spentacle o&rsquo; God riding on the tempest, to be shüre,
+whilk would be what Dauvit was likely ettling at. But,
+man, they were sair wonders that God showed to the
+<i>Christ-Anna</i>&mdash;wonders, do I ca&rsquo; them? Judgments,
+rather: judgments in the mirk nicht among the draygons
+o&rsquo; the deep. And their souls&mdash;to think o&rsquo; that&mdash;their
+souls, man, maybe no&rsquo; prepared! The sea&mdash;a muckle
+yett to hell!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I observed, as my uncle spoke, that his voice was unnaturally
+moved and his manner unwontedly demonstrative.
+He leaned forward at these last words, for example,
+and touched me on the knee with his spread fingers,
+looking up into my face with a certain pallor, and
+I could see that his eyes shone with a deep-seated fire,
+and that the lines about his mouth were drawn and
+tremulous.</p>
+
+<p>Even the entrance of Rorie, and the beginning of our
+meal, did not detach him from his train of thought beyond
+a moment. He condescended, indeed, to ask me some
+questions as to my success at college, but I thought it
+was with half his mind; and even in his extempore grace,
+which was, as usual, long and wandering, I could find
+the trace of his preoccupation, praying, as he did, that
+God would &ldquo;remember in mercy fower puir, feckless,
+fiddling, sinful creatures here by their lee-lane beside the
+great and dowie waters.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page82"></a>82</span></p>
+
+<p>Soon there came an interchange of speeches between
+him and Rorie.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Was it there?&rdquo; asked my uncle.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ou, ay!&rdquo; said Rorie.</p>
+
+<p>I observed that they both spoke in a manner of aside,
+and with some show of embarrassment, and that Mary
+herself appeared to colour, and looked down on her plate.
+Partly to show my knowledge, and so relieve the party
+from an awkward strain, partly because I was curious, I
+pursued the subject.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You mean the fish?&rdquo; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Whatten fish?&rdquo; cried my uncle. &ldquo;Fish, quo&rsquo; he!
+Fish! Your een are fu&rsquo; o&rsquo; fatness, man; your heid
+dozened wi&rsquo; carnal leir. Fish! it&rsquo;s a bogle!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He spoke with great vehemence, as though angry; and
+perhaps I was not very willing to be put down so shortly,
+for young men are disputatious. At least I remember I
+retorted hotly, crying out upon childish superstitions.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And ye come frae the College!&rdquo; sneered Uncle
+Gordon. &ldquo;Gude kens what they learn folk there; it&rsquo;s
+no&rsquo; muckle service onyway. Do ye think, man, that
+there&rsquo;s naething in a&rsquo; yon saut wilderness o&rsquo; a world oot
+wast there, wi&rsquo; the sea-grasses growin&rsquo;, an&rsquo; the sea-beasts
+fechtin&rsquo;, an&rsquo; the sun glintin&rsquo; down into it, day by day?
+Na; the sea&rsquo;s like the land, but fearsomer. If there&rsquo;s folk
+ashore, there&rsquo;s folk in the sea&mdash;deid they may be, but they&rsquo;re
+folk whatever; and as for deils, there&rsquo;s nane that&rsquo;s like
+the sea-deils. There&rsquo;s no sae muckle harm in the land-deils,
+when a&rsquo;s said and done. Lang syne, when I was a
+callant in the south country, I mind there was an auld,
+bald bogle in the Peewic Moss. I got a glisk o&rsquo; him mysel&rsquo;,
+sittin&rsquo; on his hunkers in a hag, as grey&rsquo;s a tombstane.
+An&rsquo;, troth, he was a fearsome-like taed. But he steered
+naebody. Nae doobt, if ane that was a reprobate, ane the
+Lord hated, had gane by there wi&rsquo; his sin still upon his
+stamach, nae doobt the creature would hae lowped upo&rsquo;
+the likes o&rsquo; him. But there&rsquo;s deils in the deep sea would
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page83"></a>83</span>
+yoke on a communicant! Eh, sirs, if ye had gane doon
+wi&rsquo; the puir lads in the <i>Christ-Anna</i>, ye would ken by now
+the mercy o&rsquo; the seas. If ye had sailed it for as lang as
+me, ye would hate the thocht of it as I do. If ye had but
+used the een God gave ye, ye would hae learned the wickedness
+o&rsquo; that fause, saut, cauld, bullering creature, and of
+a&rsquo; that&rsquo;s in it by the Lord&rsquo;s permission: labsters an&rsquo;
+partans, an&rsquo; sic-like, howking in the deid; muckle, gutsy,
+blawing whales; an&rsquo; fish&mdash;the hale clan o&rsquo; them&mdash;cauld-wamed,
+blind-ee&rsquo;d uncanny ferlies. Oh, sirs,&rdquo; he cried,
+&ldquo;the horror&mdash;the horror o&rsquo; the sea!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We were all somewhat staggered by this outburst; and
+the speaker himself, after that last hoarse apostrophe,
+appeared to sink gloomily into his own thoughts. But
+Rorie, who was greedy of superstitious lore, recalled him
+to the subject by a question.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You will not ever have seen a teevil of the sea?&rdquo;
+he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No&rsquo; clearly,&rdquo; replied the other. &ldquo;I misdoobt if a
+mere man could see ane clearly and conteenue in the body.
+I hae sailed wi&rsquo; a lad&mdash;they ca&rsquo;d him Sandy Gabart; he
+saw ane, shüre eneuch, an&rsquo; shüre eneuch it was the end
+of him. We were seeven days oot frae the Clyde&mdash;a sair
+wark we had had&mdash;gaun north wi&rsquo; seeds an&rsquo; braws an&rsquo;
+things for the Macleod. We had got in ower near under
+the Cutchull&rsquo;ns, an&rsquo; had just gane about by Soa, an&rsquo; were
+off on a long tack, we thocht would maybe hauld as far&rsquo;s
+Copnahow. I mind the nicht weel; a mune smoored wi&rsquo;
+mist; a fine-gaun breeze upon the water, but no steedy;
+an&rsquo;&mdash;what nane o&rsquo; us likit to hear&mdash;anither wund gurlin&rsquo;
+owerheid, amang thae fearsome, auld stane craigs o&rsquo; the
+Cutchull&rsquo;ns. Weel, Sandy was forrit wi&rsquo; the jib sheet;
+we couldna see him for the mains&rsquo;l, that had just begude
+to draw, when a&rsquo; at ance he gied a skirl. I luffed for my
+life, for I thocht we were over near Soa; but na, it wasna
+that, it was puir Sandy Gabart&rsquo;s deid skreigh, or near-hand,
+for he was deid in half an hour. A&rsquo;t he could tell
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page84"></a>84</span>
+was that a sea-deil, or sea-bogle, or sea-spenster, or sic-like,
+had clum up by the bowsprit, an&rsquo; gi&rsquo;en him ae cauld,
+uncanny look. An&rsquo;, or the life was oot o&rsquo; Sandy&rsquo;s body,
+we kent weel what the thing betokened, and why the wund
+gurled in the taps o&rsquo; the Cutchull&rsquo;ns; for doon it cam&rsquo;&mdash;a
+wund do I ca&rsquo; it! it was the wund o&rsquo; the Lord&rsquo;s anger&mdash;an&rsquo;
+a&rsquo; that nicht we focht like men dementit, and the
+neist that we kenned we were ashore in Loch Uskevagh,
+an&rsquo; the cocks were crawin&rsquo; in Benbecula.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It will have been a merman,&rdquo; Rorie said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A merman!&rdquo; screamed my uncle with immeasurable
+scorn. &ldquo;Auld wives&rsquo; clavers! There&rsquo;s nae sic things as
+mermen.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But what was the creature like?&rdquo; I <span class="correction" title="originally no period">asked.</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What like was it? Gude forbid that we suld ken
+what like it was! It had a kind of a heid upon it&mdash;man
+could say nae mair.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Then Rorie, smarting under the affront, told several
+tales of mermen, mermaids, and sea-horses that had come
+ashore upon the islands and attacked the crews of boats
+upon the sea; and my uncle, in spite of his incredulity,
+listened with uneasy interest.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Aweel, aweel,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;it may be sae; I may be
+wrang; but I find nae word o&rsquo; mermen in the Scriptures.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And you will find nae word of Aros Roost, maybe,&rdquo;
+objected Rorie, and his argument appeared to carry weight.</p>
+
+<p>When dinner was over, my uncle carried me forth with
+him to a bank behind the house. It was a very hot and
+quiet afternoon; scarce a ripple anywhere upon the sea,
+nor any voice but the familiar voice of sheep and gulls;
+and perhaps in consequence of this repose in nature, my
+kinsman showed himself more rational and tranquil than
+before. He spoke evenly and almost cheerfully of my
+career, with every now and then a reference to the lost
+ship or the treasures it had brought to Aros. For my
+part, I listened to him in a sort of trance, gazing with
+all my heart on that remembered scene, and drinking
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page85"></a>85</span>
+gladly the sea-air and the smoke of peats that had been
+lit by Mary.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps an hour had passed when my uncle, who had
+all the while been covertly gazing on the surface of the
+little bay, rose to his feet and bade me follow his example.
+Now I should say that the great run of tide at the south-west
+end of Aros exercises a perturbing influence round
+all the coast. In Sandag Bay, to the south, a strong
+current runs at certain points of the flood and ebb respectively;
+but in this northern bay&mdash;Aros Bay, as it is called&mdash;where
+the house stands and on which my uncle was now
+gazing, the only sign of disturbance is towards the end of
+the ebb, and even then it is too slight to be remarkable.
+When there is any swell, nothing can be seen at all; but
+when it is calm, as it often is, there appear certain strange,
+undecipherable marks&mdash;sea-runes, as we may name them&mdash;on
+the glassy surface of the bay. The like is common
+in a thousand places on the coast; and many a boy must
+have amused himself as I did, seeking to read in them
+some reference to himself or those he loved. It was to
+these marks that my uncle now directed my attention,
+struggling, as he did so, with an evident reluctance.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you see yon scart upo&rsquo; the water?&rdquo; he inquired;
+&ldquo;yon ane wast the grey stane? Ay? Weel, it&rsquo;ll no&rsquo; be
+like a letter, wull it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Certainly it is,&rdquo; I replied. &ldquo;I have often remarked
+it. It is like a C.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He heaved a sigh as if heavily disappointed with my
+answer, and then added below his breath: &ldquo;Ay, for the
+<i>Christ-Anna</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I used to suppose, sir, it was for myself,&rdquo; said I;
+&ldquo;for my name is Charles.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And so ye saw&rsquo;t afore?&rdquo; he ran on, not heeding my
+remark. &ldquo;Weel, weel, but that&rsquo;s unco strange. Maybe,
+it&rsquo;s been there waitin&rsquo;, as a man wad say, through a&rsquo; the
+weary ages. Man, but that&rsquo;s awfu&rsquo;.&rdquo; And then, breaking
+off: &ldquo;Ye&rsquo;ll no&rsquo; see anither, will ye?&rdquo; he asked.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page86"></a>86</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;I see another very plainly, near the
+Ross side, where the road comes down&mdash;an M.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;An M,&rdquo; he repeated very low; and then, again after
+another pause: &ldquo;An&rsquo; what wad ye make o&rsquo; that?&rdquo; he
+inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I had always thought it to mean Mary, sir,&rdquo; I
+answered, growing somewhat red, convinced as I was in
+my own mind that I was on the threshold of a decisive
+explanation.</p>
+
+<p>But we were each following his own train of thought
+to the exclusion of the other&rsquo;s. My uncle once more paid
+no attention to my words; only hung his head and held
+his peace; and I might have been led to fancy that he
+had not heard me, if his next speech had not contained
+a kind of echo from my own.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I would say naething o&rsquo; thae clavers to Mary,&rdquo; he
+observed, and began to walk forward.</p>
+
+<p>There is a belt of turf along the side of Aros Bay where
+walking is easy; and it was along this that I silently
+followed my silent kinsman. I was perhaps a little disappointed
+at having lost so good an opportunity to declare
+my love; but I was at the same time far more deeply
+exercised at the change that had befallen my uncle. He
+was never an ordinary, never, in the strict sense, an
+amiable, man; but there was nothing in even the worst
+that I had known of him before, to prepare me for so
+strange a transformation. It was impossible to close the
+eyes against one fact; that he had, as the saying goes,
+something on his mind; and as I mentally ran over the
+different words which might be represented by the letter
+M&mdash;misery, mercy, marriage, money, and the like&mdash;I was
+arrested with a sort of start by the word murder. I was
+still considering the ugly sound and fatal meaning of the
+word, when the direction of our walk brought us to a point
+from which a view was to be had to either side, back
+towards Aros Bay and homestead, and forward on the
+ocean, dotted to the north with isles, and lying to the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page87"></a>87</span>
+southward blue and open to the sky. There my guide
+came to a halt, and stood staring for awhile on that
+expanse. Then he turned to me and laid a hand on my
+arm.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ye think there&rsquo;s naething there?&rdquo; he said, pointing
+with his pipe; and then cried out aloud, with a kind of
+exultation: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell ye, man! The deid are down there&mdash;thick
+like rattons!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He turned at once, and, without another word, we
+retraced our steps to the house of Aros.</p>
+
+<p>I was eager to be alone with Mary; yet it was not till
+after supper, and then but for a short while, that I could
+have a word with her. I lost no time beating about the
+bush, but spoke out plainly what was on my mind.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mary,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;I have not come to Aros without a
+hope. If that should prove well founded, we may all
+leave and go somewhere else, secure of daily bread and
+comfort; secure, perhaps, of something far beyond that,
+which it would seem extravagant in me to promise. But
+there&rsquo;s a hope that lies nearer to my heart than money.&rdquo;
+And at that I paused. &ldquo;You can guess fine what that
+is, Mary,&rdquo; I said. She looked away from me in silence,
+and that was small encouragement, but I was not to be
+put off. &ldquo;All my days I have thought the world of you,&rdquo;
+I continued; &ldquo;the time goes on and I think always the
+more of you; I could not think to be happy or hearty
+in my life without you: you are the apple of my eye.&rdquo;
+Still she looked away, and said never a word; but I
+thought I saw that her hands shook. &ldquo;Mary,&rdquo; I cried in
+fear, &ldquo;do ye no&rsquo; like me?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Charlie man,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;is this a time to speak
+of it? Let me be a while; let me be the way I am; it&rsquo;ll
+not be you that loses by the waiting!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I made out by her voice that she was nearly weeping,
+and this put me out of any thought but to compose her.
+&ldquo;Mary Ellen,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;say no more; I did not come to
+trouble you: your way shall be mine, and your time too;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page88"></a>88</span>
+and you have told me all I wanted. Only just this one
+thing more: what ails you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She owned it was her father, but would enter into no
+particulars, only shook her head, and said he was not well
+and not like himself, and it was a great pity. She knew
+nothing of the wreck. &ldquo;I havena been near it,&rdquo; said she.
+&ldquo;What for would I go near it, Charlie lad? The poor
+souls are gone to their account long syne; and I would
+just have wished they had ta&rsquo;en their gear with them&mdash;poor
+souls!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This was scarcely any great encouragement for me to
+tell her of the <i>Espirito Santo</i>; yet I did so, and at the
+very first word she cried out in surprise. &ldquo;There was a
+man at Grisapol,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;in the month of May&mdash;a
+little, yellow, black-avised body, they tell me, with gold
+rings upon his fingers, and a beard; and he was speiring
+high and low for that same ship.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It was towards the end of April that I had been given
+these papers to sort out by Dr. Robertson: and it came
+suddenly back upon my mind that they were thus prepared
+for a Spanish historian, or a man calling himself such,
+who had come with high recommendations to the Principal,
+on a mission of inquiry as to the dispersion of the great
+Armada. Putting one thing with another, I fancied that
+the visitor &ldquo;with the gold rings upon his fingers&rdquo; might
+be the same with Dr. Robertson&rsquo;s historian from Madrid.
+If that were so, he would be more likely after treasure
+for himself than information for a learned society. I
+made up my mind, I should lose no time over my undertaking;
+and if the ship lay sunk in Sandag Bay, as perhaps
+both he and I supposed, it should not be for the advantage
+of this ringed adventurer, but for Mary and myself, and
+for the good, old, honest, kindly family of the Darnaways.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page89"></a>89</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER III</h3>
+
+<h5>LAND AND SEA IN SANDAG BAY</h5>
+
+
+<p>I was early afoot next morning; and as soon as I had
+a bite to eat, set forth upon a tour of exploration. Something
+in my heart distinctly told me that I should find
+the ship of the Armada; and although I did not give way
+entirely to such hopeful thoughts, I was still very light
+in spirits and walked upon air. Aros is a very rough islet,
+its surface strewn with great rocks and shaggy with fern
+and heather; and my way lay almost north and south
+across the highest knoll; and though the whole distance
+was inside of two miles, it took more time and exertion
+than four upon a level road. Upon the summit, I paused.
+Although not very high&mdash;not three hundred feet, as I
+think&mdash;it yet outtops all the neighbouring lowlands of the
+Ross, and commands a great view of sea and islands.
+The sun, which had been up some time, was already hot
+upon my neck; the air was listless and thundery, although
+purely clear; away over the north-west, where the isles
+lie thickliest congregated, some half a dozen small and
+ragged clouds hung together in a covey; and the head
+of Ben Kyaw wore, not merely a few streamers, but a
+solid hood of vapour. There was a threat in the weather.
+The sea, it is true, was smooth like glass: even the Roost
+was but a seam on that wide mirror, and the Merry Men
+no more than caps of foam; but to my eye and ear, so
+long familiar with these places, the sea also seemed to lie
+uneasily; a sound of it, like a long sigh, mounted to me
+where I stood; and, quiet as it was, the Roost itself
+appeared to be revolving mischief. For I ought to say
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page90"></a>90</span>
+that all we dwellers in these parts attributed, if not prescience,
+at least a quality of warning, to that strange and
+dangerous creature of the tides.</p>
+
+<p>I hurried on, then, with the greater speed, and had
+soon descended the slope of Aros to the part that we call
+Sandag Bay. It is a pretty large piece of water compared
+with the size of the isle; well sheltered from all but the
+prevailing wind; sandy and shoal and bounded by low
+sand-hills to the west, but to the eastward lying several
+fathoms deep along a ledge of rocks. It is upon that side
+that, at a certain time each flood, the current mentioned
+by my uncle sets so strong into the bay; a little later,
+when the Roost begins to work higher, an undertow runs
+still more strongly in the reverse direction; and it is the
+action of this last, as I suppose, that has scoured that
+part so deep. Nothing is to be seen out of Sandag Bay
+but one small segment of the horizon and, in heavy
+weather, the breakers flying high over a deep-sea reef.</p>
+
+<p>From half-way down the hill I had perceived the
+wreck of February last, a brig of considerable tonnage,
+lying, with her back broken, high and dry on the east
+corner of the sands; and I was making directly towards
+it, and already almost on the margin of the turf, when
+my eyes were suddenly arrested by a spot, cleared of fern
+and heather, and marked by one of those long, low, and
+almost human-looking mounds that we see so commonly
+in graveyards. I stopped like a man shot. Nothing had
+been said to me of any dead man or interment on the
+island; Rorie, Mary, and my uncle had all equally held
+their peace; of her at least, I was certain that she must
+be ignorant; and yet here, before my eyes, was proof
+indubitable of the fact. Here was a grave; and I had to
+ask myself, with a chill, what manner of man lay there in
+his last sleep, awaiting the signal of the Lord in that
+solitary, sea-beat resting-place? My mind supplied no
+answer but what I feared to entertain. Shipwrecked, at
+least, he must have been; perhaps, like the old Armada
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page91"></a>91</span>
+mariners, from some far and rich land over-sea; or perhaps
+one of my own race, perishing within eyesight of the
+smoke of home. I stood awhile uncovered by his side,
+and I could have desired that it had lain in our religion
+to put up some prayer for that unhappy stranger, or, in
+the old classic way, outwardly to honour his misfortune.
+I knew, although his bones lay there, a part of Aros, till
+the trumpet sounded, his imperishable soul was forth
+and far away, among the raptures of the everlasting
+Sabbath or the pangs of hell; and yet my mind misgave
+me even with a fear, that perhaps he was near me where
+I stood, guarding his sepulchre, and lingering on the
+scene of his unhappy fate.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly it was with a spirit somewhat overshadowed
+that I turned away from the grave to the hardly less
+melancholy spectacle of the wreck. Her stem was above
+the first arc of the flood; she was broken in two a little
+abaft the foremast&mdash;though indeed she had none, both
+masts having broken short in her disaster; and as the
+pitch of the beach was very sharp and sudden, and the
+bows lay many feet below the stern, the fracture gaped
+widely open, and you could see right through her poor
+hull upon the farther side. Her name was much defaced,
+and I could not make out clearly whether she was called
+<i>Christiania</i>, after the Norwegian city, or <i>Christiana</i>, after
+the good woman, Christian&rsquo;s wife, in that old book the
+&ldquo;Pilgrim&rsquo;s Progress.&rdquo; By her build she was a foreign
+ship, but I was not certain of her nationality. She had
+been painted green, but the colour was faded and weathered,
+and the paint peeling off in strips. The wreck of the mainmast
+lay alongside, half-buried in sand. She was a forlorn
+sight, indeed, and I could not look without emotion at
+the bits of rope that still hung about her, so often handled
+of yore by shouting seamen; or the little scuttle where
+they had passed up and down to their affairs; or that
+poor noseless angel of a figure-head that had dipped into
+so many running billows.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page92"></a>92</span></p>
+
+<p>I do not know whether it came most from the ship or
+from the grave, but I fell into some melancholy scruples,
+as I stood there, leaning with one hand against the battered
+timbers. The homelessness of men, and even of inanimate
+vessels, cast away upon strange shores, came strongly in
+upon my mind. To make a profit of such pitiful misadventures
+seemed an unmanly and a sordid act; and I
+began to think of my then quest as of something sacrilegious
+in its nature. But when I remembered Mary I
+took heart again. My uncle would never consent to an
+imprudent marriage, nor would she, as I was persuaded,
+wed without his full approval. It behoved me, then, to
+be up and doing for my wife; and I thought with a laugh
+how long it was since that great sea-castle, the <i>Espirito
+Santo</i>, had left her bones in Sandag Bay, and how weak
+it would be to consider rights so long extinguished and
+misfortunes so long forgotten in the process of time.</p>
+
+<p>I had my theory of where to seek for her remains. The
+set of the current and the soundings both pointed to the
+east side of the bay under the ledge of rocks. If she had
+been lost in Sandag Bay, and if, after these centuries,
+any portion of her held together, it was there that I should
+find it. The water deepens, as I have said, with great
+rapidity, and even close alongside the rocks several fathoms
+may be found. As I walked upon the edge I could see far
+and wide over the sandy bottom of the bay; the sun shone
+clear and green and steady in the deeps; the bay seemed
+rather like a great transparent crystal, as one sees them
+in a lapidary&rsquo;s shop; there was naught to show that it
+was water but an internal trembling, a hovering within
+of sun-glints and netted shadows, and now and then a
+faint lap and a dying bubble round the edge. The shadows
+of the rocks lay out for some distance at their feet, so
+that my own shadow, moving, pausing, and stooping on
+the top of that, reached sometimes half across the bay.
+It was above all in this belt of shadows that I hunted for
+the <i>Espirito Santo</i>; since it was there the undertow ran
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page93"></a>93</span>
+strongest, whether in or out. Cool as the whole water
+seemed this broiling day, it looked, in that part, yet cooler,
+and had a mysterious invitation for the eyes. Peer as I
+pleased, however, I could see nothing but a few fishes
+or a bush of sea-tangle, and here and there a lump of
+rock that had fallen from above and now lay separate
+on the sandy floor. Twice did I pass from one end to
+the other of the rocks, and in the whole distance I could
+see nothing of the wreck, nor any place but one where
+it was possible for it to be. This was a large terrace in
+five fathoms of water, raised off the surface of the sand
+to a considerable height, and looking from above like a
+mere outgrowth of the rocks on which I walked. It was
+one mass of great sea-tangles like a grove, which prevented
+me judging of its nature, but in shape and size it bore
+some likeness to a vessel&rsquo;s hull. At least it was my best
+chance. If the <i>Espirito Santo</i> lay not there under the
+tangles, it lay nowhere at all in Sandag Bay; and I prepared
+to put the question to the proof, once and for all,
+and either go back to Aros a rich man or cured for ever
+of my dreams of wealth.</p>
+
+<p>I stripped to the skin, and stood on the extreme margin
+with my hands clasped, irresolute. The bay at that time
+was utterly quiet; there was no sound but from a school
+of porpoises somewhere out of sight behind the point;
+yet a certain fear withheld me on the threshold of my
+venture. Sad sea-feelings, scraps of my uncle&rsquo;s superstitions,
+thoughts of the dead, of the grave, of the old
+broken ships, drifted through my mind. But the strong
+sun upon my shoulders warmed me to the heart, and I
+stooped forward and plunged into the sea.</p>
+
+<p>It was all that I could do to catch a trail of the sea-tangle
+that grew so thickly on the terrace; but once so
+far anchored I secured myself by grasping a whole armful
+of these thick and slimy stalks, and, planting my feet
+against the edge, I looked around me. On all sides the
+clear sand stretched forth unbroken; it came to the foot
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page94"></a>94</span>
+of the rocks, scoured into the likeness of an alley in a
+garden by the action of the tides; and before me, for as
+far as I could see, nothing was visible but the same many-folded
+sand upon the sun-bright bottom of the bay. Yet
+the terrace to which I was then holding was as thick
+with strong sea-growths as a tuft of heather, and the
+cliff from which it bulged hung draped below the water-line
+with brown lianas. In this complexity of forms, all
+swaying together in the current, things were hard to be
+distinguished; and I was still uncertain whether my feet
+were pressed upon the natural rock or upon the timbers
+of the Armada treasure-ship, when the whole tuft of tangle
+came away in my hand, and in an instant I was on the
+surface, and the shores of the bay and the bright water
+swam before my eyes in a glory of crimson.</p>
+
+<p>I clambered back upon the rocks, and threw the plant
+of tangle at my feet. Something at the same moment
+rang sharply, like a falling coin. I stooped, and there,
+sure enough, crusted with the red rust, there lay an iron
+shoe-buckle. The sight of this poor human relic thrilled
+me to the heart, but not with hope nor fear, only with a
+desolate melancholy. I held it in my hand, and the
+thought of its owner appeared before me like the presence
+of an actual man. His weather-beaten face, his sailor&rsquo;s
+hands, his sea-voice hoarse with singing at the capstan,
+the very foot that had once worn that buckle and trod
+so much along the swerving decks&mdash;the whole human fact
+of him, as a creature like myself, with hair and blood
+and seeing eyes, haunted me in that sunny, solitary place,
+not like a spectre, but like some friend whom I had basely
+injured. Was the great treasure-ship indeed below there,
+with her guns and chain and treasure, as she had sailed
+from Spain; her decks a garden for the seaweed, her cabin
+a breeding-place for fish, soundless but for the dredging
+water, motionless but for the waving of the tangle upon
+her battlements&mdash;that old, populous, sea-riding castle,
+now a reef in Sandag Bay? Or, as I thought it likelier,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page95"></a>95</span>
+was this a waif from the disaster of the foreign brig&mdash;was
+this shoe-buckle bought but the other day and worn by
+a man of my own period in the world&rsquo;s history, hearing
+the same news from day to day, thinking the same thoughts,
+praying, perhaps, in the same temple with myself? However
+it was, I was assailed with dreary thoughts; my
+uncle&rsquo;s words, &ldquo;the dead are down there,&rdquo; echoed in
+my ears; and though I determined to dive once more,
+it was with a strong repugnance that I stepped forward
+to the margin of the rocks.</p>
+
+<p>A great change passed at that moment over the appearance
+of the bay. It was no more that clear, visible interior,
+like a house roofed with glass, where the green submarine
+sunshine slept so stilly. A breeze, I suppose, had flawed
+the surface, and a sort of trouble and blackness filled its
+bosom, where flashes of light and clouds of shadow tossed
+confusedly together. Even the terrace below obscurely
+rocked and quivered. It seemed a graver thing to venture
+on this place of ambushes; and when I leaped into the
+sea a second time it was with a quaking in my soul.</p>
+
+<p>I secured myself as at first, and groped among the
+waving tangle. All that met my touch was cold and soft
+and gluey. The thicket was alive with crabs and lobsters,
+trundling to and fro lopsidedly, and I had to harden my
+heart against the horror of their carrion neighbourhood.
+On all sides I could feel the grain and the clefts of hard,
+living stone; no planks, no iron, not a sign of any wreck;
+the <i>Espirito Santo</i> was not there. I remember I had
+almost a sense of relief in my disappointment, and I
+was about ready to leave go, when something happened
+that sent me to the surface with my heart in my mouth.
+I had already stayed somewhat late over my explorations;
+the current was freshening with the change of the tide,
+and Sandag Bay was no longer a safe place for a single
+swimmer. Well, just at the last moment there came a
+sudden flush of current, dredging through the tangles like
+a wave. I lost one hold, was flung sprawling on my side,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page96"></a>96</span>
+and, instinctively grasping for a fresh support, my fingers
+closed on something hard and cold. I think I knew at
+that moment what it was. At least I instantly left hold
+of the tangle, leaped for the surface, and clambered out
+next moment on the friendly rocks with the bone of a
+man&rsquo;s leg in my grasp.</p>
+
+<p>Mankind is a material creature, slow to think and dull
+to perceive connections. The grave, the wreck of the
+brig, and the rusty shoe-buckle were surely plain advertisements.
+A child might have read their dismal story,
+and yet it was not until I touched that actual piece of
+mankind that the full horror of the charnel ocean burst
+upon my spirit. I laid the bone beside the buckle, picked
+up my clothes, and ran as I was along the rocks towards
+the human shore. I could not be far enough from the
+spot; no fortune was vast enough to tempt me back
+again. The bones of the drowned dead should henceforth
+roll undisturbed by me, whether on tangle or minted
+gold. But as soon as I trod the good earth again, and
+had covered my nakedness against the sun, I knelt down
+over against the ruins of the brig, and out of the fulness
+of my heart prayed long and passionately for all poor
+souls upon the sea. A generous prayer is never presented
+in vain; the petition may be refused, but the petitioner
+is always, I believe, rewarded by some gracious visitation.
+The horror, at least, was lifted from my mind; I could
+look with calm of spirit on that great bright creature,
+God&rsquo;s ocean; and as I set off homeward up the rough
+sides of Aros, nothing remained of my concern beyond a
+deep determination to meddle no more with the spoils
+of wrecked vessels or the treasures of the dead.</p>
+
+<p>I was already some way up the hill before I paused to
+breathe and look behind me. The sight that met my
+eyes was doubly strange.</p>
+
+<p>For, first, the storm that I had foreseen was now
+advancing with almost tropical rapidity. The whole
+surface of the sea had been dulled from its conspicuous
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page97"></a>97</span>
+brightness to an ugly hue of corrugated lead; already in
+the distance the white waves, the &ldquo;skipper&rsquo;s daughters,&rdquo;
+had begun to flee before a breeze that was still insensible
+on Aros; and already along the curve of Sandag Bay
+there was a splashing run of sea that I could hear from
+where I stood. The change upon the sky was even more
+remarkable. There had begun to arise out of the south-west
+a huge and solid continent of scowling cloud; here
+and there, through rents in its contexture, the sun still
+poured a sheaf of spreading rays; and here and there,
+from all its edges, vast inky streamers lay forth along the
+yet unclouded sky. The menace was express and imminent.
+Even as I gazed, the sun was blotted out. At any moment
+the tempest might fall upon Aros in its might.</p>
+
+<p>The suddenness of this change of weather so fixed my
+eyes on heaven that it was some seconds before they
+alighted on the bay, mapped out below my feet, and
+robbed a moment later of the sun. The knoll which I
+had just surmounted overflanked a little amphitheatre of
+lower hillocks sloping towards the sea, and beyond that
+the yellow arc of beach and the whole extent of Sandag
+Bay. It was a scene on which I had often looked down,
+but where I had never before beheld a human figure.
+I had but just turned my back upon it and left it empty,
+and my wonder may be fancied when I saw a boat and
+several men in that deserted spot. The boat was lying
+by the rocks. A pair of fellows, bareheaded, with their
+sleeves rolled up, and one with a boat-hook, kept her with
+difficulty to her moorings, for the current was growing
+brisker every moment. A little way off upon the ledge
+two men in black clothes, whom I judged to be superior
+in rank, laid their heads together over some task which
+at first I did not understand, but a second after I had
+made it out&mdash;they were taking bearings with the compass;
+and just then I saw one of them unroll a sheet of paper
+and lay his finger down, as though identifying features
+in a map. Meanwhile a third was walking to and fro,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page98"></a>98</span>
+poking among the rocks and peering over the edge into
+the water. While I was still watching them with the
+stupefaction of surprise, my mind hardly yet able to
+work on what my eyes reported, this third person suddenly
+stooped and summoned his companions with a cry
+so loud that it reached my ears upon the hill. The others
+ran to him, even dropping the compass in their hurry,
+and I could see the bone and the shoe-buckle going from
+hand to hand, causing the most unusual gesticulations of
+surprise and interest. Just then I could hear the seamen
+crying from the boat, and saw them point westward to
+that cloud continent which was ever the more rapidly
+unfurling its blackness over heaven. The others seemed
+to consult; but the danger was too pressing to be braved,
+and they bundled into the boat, carrying my relics with
+them, and set forth out of the bay with all speed of oars.</p>
+
+<p>I made no more ado about the matter, but turned and
+ran for the house. Whoever these men were, it was fit
+my uncle should be instantly informed. It was not then
+altogether too late in the day for a descent of the Jacobites;
+and maybe Prince Charlie, whom I knew my uncle
+to detest, was one of the three superiors whom I had
+seen upon the rock. Yet as I ran, leaping from rock to
+rock, and turned the matter loosely in my mind, this
+theory grew ever the longer the less welcome to my reason.
+The compass, the map, the interest awakened by the
+buckle, and the conduct of that one among the strangers
+who had looked so often below him in the water, all seemed
+to point to a different explanation of their presence on
+that outlying, obscure islet of the western sea. The
+Madrid historian, the search instituted by Dr. Robertson,
+the bearded stranger with the rings, my own fruitless
+search that very morning in the deep water of Sandag
+Bay, ran together, piece by piece, in my memory, and I
+made sure that these strangers must be Spaniards in
+quest of ancient treasure and the lost ship of the Armada.
+But the people living in outlying islands, such as Aros,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page99"></a>99</span>
+are answerable for their own security; there is none near
+by to protect or even to help them; and the presence in
+such a spot of a crew of foreign adventurers&mdash;poor, greedy,
+and most likely lawless&mdash;filled me with apprehensions for
+my uncle&rsquo;s money, and even for the safety of his daughter.
+I was still wondering how we were to get rid of them
+when I came, all breathless, to the top of Aros. The
+whole world was shadowed over; only in the extreme
+east, on a hill of the mainland, one last gleam of sunshine
+lingered like a jewel; rain had begun to fall, not heavily,
+but in great drops; the sea was rising with each moment,
+and already a band of white encircled Aros and the nearer
+coasts of Grisapol. The boat was still pulling seaward,
+but I now became aware of what had been hidden from
+me lower down&mdash;a large, heavily sparred, handsome
+schooner lying-to at the south end of Aros. Since I had
+not seen her in the morning when I had looked around
+so closely at the signs of the weather, and upon these
+lone waters where a sail was rarely visible, it was clear
+she must have lain last night behind the uninhabited
+Eilean Gour, and this proved conclusively that she was
+manned by strangers to our coast, for that anchorage,
+though good enough to look at, is little better than a
+trap for ships. With such ignorant sailors upon so wild
+a coast, the coming gale was not unlikely to bring death
+upon its wings.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page100"></a>100</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER IV</h3>
+
+<h5>THE GALE</h5>
+
+
+<p>I found my uncle at the gable-end, watching the signs
+of the weather, with a pipe in his fingers.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Uncle,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;there were men ashore at Sandag
+Bay&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I had no time to go further; indeed, I not only forgot
+my words, but even my weariness, so strange was the
+effect on Uncle Gordon. He dropped his pipe and fell
+back against the end of the house with his jaw fallen, his
+eyes staring, and his long face as white as paper. We
+must have looked at one another silently for a quarter
+of a minute, before he made answer in this extraordinary
+fashion: &ldquo;Had he a hair kep on?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I knew as well as if I had been there that the man
+who now lay buried at Sandag had worn a hairy cap,
+and that he had come shore alive. For the first and
+only time I lost toleration for the man who was my
+benefactor and the father of the woman I hoped to call
+my wife.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;These were living men,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;perhaps Jacobites,
+perhaps the French, perhaps pirates, perhaps adventurers
+come here to seek the Spanish treasure-ship; but, whatever
+they may be, dangerous at least to your daughter
+and my cousin. As for your own guilty terrors, man, the
+dead sleeps well where you have laid him. I stood this
+morning by his grave; he will not wake before the trump
+of doom.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>My kinsman looked upon me, blinking, while I spoke;
+then he fixed his eyes for a little on the ground, and pulled
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page101"></a>101</span>
+his fingers foolishly; but it was plain that he was past
+the power of speech.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;You must think for others. You
+must come up the hill with me and see this ship.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He obeyed without a word or a look, following slowly
+after my impatient strides. The spring seemed to have
+gone out of his body, and he scrambled heavily up and
+down the rocks, instead of leaping, as he was wont, from
+one to another. Nor could I, for all my cries, induce
+him to make better haste. Only once he replied to me
+complainingly, and like one in bodily pain: &ldquo;Ay, ay,
+man, I&rsquo;m coming.&rdquo; Long before we had reached the top
+I had no other thought for him but pity. If the crime
+had been monstrous, the punishment was in proportion.</p>
+
+<p>At last we emerged above the sky-line of the hill,
+and could see around us. All was black and stormy to
+the eye; the last gleam of sun had vanished; a wind
+had sprung up, not yet high, but gusty and unsteady to
+the point; the rain, on the other hand, had ceased. Short
+as was the interval, the sea already ran vastly higher
+than when I had stood there last; already it had begun
+to break over some of the outward reefs, and already it
+moaned aloud in the sea-caves of Aros. I looked, at
+first, in vain for the schooner.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There she is,&rdquo; I said at last. But her new position,
+and the course she was now lying, puzzled me. &ldquo;They
+cannot mean to beat to sea,&rdquo; I cried.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s what they mean,&rdquo; said my uncle, with something
+like joy; and just then the schooner went about
+and stood upon another tack, which put the question
+beyond the reach of doubt. These strangers, seeing a
+gale on hand, had thought first of sea-room. With the
+wind that threatened, in these reef-sown waters and contending
+against so violent a stream of tide, their course
+was certain death.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good God!&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;they are all lost.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ay,&rdquo; returned my uncle, &ldquo;a&rsquo;&mdash;a&rsquo; lost. They hadna
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page102"></a>102</span>
+a chance but to rin for Kyle Dona. The gate they&rsquo;re
+gaun the noo, they couldna win through an the muckle
+deil were there to pilot them. Eh, man,&rdquo; he continued,
+touching me on the sleeve, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s a braw nicht for a shipwreck!
+Twa in ae twalmonth! Eh, but the Merry
+Men&rsquo;ll dance bonny!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I looked at him, and it was then that I began to fancy
+him no longer in his right mind. He was peering up to
+me, as if for sympathy, a timid joy in his eyes. All
+that had passed between us was already forgotten in the
+prospect of this fresh disaster.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If it were not too late,&rdquo; I cried with indignation,
+&ldquo;I would take the coble and go out to warn them.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Na, na,&rdquo; he protested, &ldquo;ye maunna interfere; ye
+maunna meddle wi&rsquo; the like o&rsquo; that. It&rsquo;s His&rdquo;&mdash;doffing
+his bonnet&mdash;&ldquo;His wull. And, eh, man! but it&rsquo;s a braw
+nicht for&rsquo;t!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Something like fear began to creep into my soul;
+and, reminding him that I had not yet dined, I proposed
+we should return to the house. But no; nothing would
+tear him from his place of outlook.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I maun see the hail thing, man Charlie,&rdquo; he explained;
+and then as the schooner went about a second time, &ldquo;Eh,
+but they han&rsquo;le her bonny!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;The <i>Christ-Anna</i>
+was naething to this.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Already the men on board the schooner must have
+begun to realise some part, but not yet the twentieth, of
+the dangers that environed their doomed ship. At every
+lull of the capricious wind they must have seen how fast
+the current swept them back. Each tack was made
+shorter, as they saw how little it prevailed. Every
+moment the rising swell began to boom and foam upon
+another sunken reef; and ever and again a breaker would
+fall in sounding ruin under the very bows of her, and
+the brown reef and streaming tangle appear in the hollow
+of the wave. I tell you, they had to stand to their tackle:
+there was no idle man aboard that ship, God knows. It
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page103"></a>103</span>
+was upon the progress of a scene so horrible to any human-hearted
+man that my misguided uncle now pored and
+gloated like a connoisseur. As I turned to go down the
+hill, he was lying on his belly on the summit, with his
+hands stretched forth and clutching in the heather. He
+seemed rejuvenated, mind and body.</p>
+
+<p>When I got back to the house already dismally
+affected, I was still more sadly downcast at the sight
+of Mary. She had her sleeves rolled up over her strong
+arms, and was quietly making bread. I got a bannock
+from the dresser and sat down to eat it in silence.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Are ye wearied, lad?&rdquo; she asked after a while.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am not so much wearied, Mary,&rdquo; I replied, getting
+on my feet, &ldquo;as I am weary of delay, and perhaps of
+Aros too. You know me well enough to judge me fairly,
+say what I like. Well, Mary, you may be sure of this:
+you had better be anywhere but here.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll be sure of one thing,&rdquo; she returned: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll be
+where my duty is.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You forget, you have a duty to yourself,&rdquo; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ay, man,&rdquo; she replied, pounding at the dough;
+&ldquo;will you have found that in the Bible, now?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mary,&rdquo; I said solemnly, &ldquo;you must not laugh at
+me just now. God knows I am in no heart for laughing.
+If we could get your father with us, it would be best;
+but with him or without him, I want you far away from
+here, my girl; for your own sake, and for mine, ay, and
+for your father&rsquo;s too, I want you far&mdash;far away from here.
+I came with other thoughts; I came here as a man comes
+home; now it is all changed, and I have no desire nor
+hope but to flee&mdash;for that&rsquo;s the word&mdash;flee, like a bird out
+of the fowler&rsquo;s snare, from this accursed island.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She had stopped her work by this time.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And do you think, now,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;do you think,
+now, I have neither eyes nor ears? Do ye think
+I havena broken my heart to have these braws (as he
+calls them, God forgive him!) thrown into the sea? Do
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page104"></a>104</span>
+ye think I have lived with him, day in, day out, and not
+seen what you saw in an hour or two? No,&rdquo; she said,
+&ldquo;I know there&rsquo;s wrong in it; what wrong, I neither
+know nor want to know. There was never an ill thing
+made better by meddling, that I could hear of. But, my
+lad, you must never ask me to leave my father. While
+the breath is in his body, I&rsquo;ll be with him. And he&rsquo;s not
+long for here, either: that I can tell you, Charlie&mdash;he&rsquo;s
+not long for here. The mark is on his brow; and better
+so&mdash;maybe better so.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I was a while silent, not knowing what to say; and
+when I roused my head at last to speak, she got
+before me.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Charlie,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;what&rsquo;s right for me needna be
+right for you. There&rsquo;s sin upon this house and trouble;
+you are a stranger; take your things upon your back
+and go your ways to better places and to better folk, and
+if you were ever minded to come back, though it were
+twenty years syne, you would find me aye waiting.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mary Ellen,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;I asked you to be my wife,
+and you said as good as yes. That&rsquo;s done for good.
+Wherever you are, I am; as I shall answer to my God.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>As I said the words the wind suddenly burst out
+raving, and then seemed to stand still and shudder round
+the house of Aros. It was the first squall, or prologue,
+of the coming tempest, and as we started and looked about
+us, we found that a gloom, like the approach of evening,
+had settled round the house.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;God pity all poor folks at sea!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll
+see no more of my father till the morrow&rsquo;s morning.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And then she told me, as we sat by the fire and
+hearkened to the rising gusts, of how this change had
+fallen upon my uncle. All last winter he had been dark
+and fitful in his mind. Whenever the Roost ran high,
+or, as Mary said, whenever the Merry Men were dancing,
+he would lie out for hours together on the Head, if it were
+night, or on the top of Aros by day, watching the tumult
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page105"></a>105</span>
+of the sea, and sweeping the horizon for a sail. After
+February the 10th, when the wealth-bringing wreck was
+cast ashore at Sandag, he had been at first unnaturally
+gay, and his excitement had never fallen in degree, but
+only changed in kind from dark to darker. He neglected
+his work, and kept Rorie idle. They two would speak
+together by the hour at the gable-end, in guarded tones
+and with an air of secrecy, and almost of guilt; and if she
+questioned either, as at first she sometimes did, her
+inquiries were put aside with confusion. Since Rorie
+had first remarked the fish that hung about the ferry, his
+master had never set foot but once upon the mainland of
+the Ross. That once&mdash;it was in the height of the springs&mdash;he
+had passed dry-shod while the tide was out; but,
+having lingered overlong on the far side, found himself
+cut off from Aros by the returning waters. It was with
+a shriek of agony that he had leaped across the gut, and
+he had reached home thereafter in a fever-fit of fear. A
+fear of the sea, a constant haunting thought of the sea,
+appeared in his talk and devotions, and even in his
+looks when he was silent.</p>
+
+<p>Rorie alone came in to supper; but a little later my
+uncle appeared, took a bottle under his arm, put some
+bread in his pocket, and set forth again to his outlook,
+followed this time by Rorie. I heard that the schooner
+was losing ground, but the crew was still fighting every
+inch with hopeless ingenuity and courage; and the news
+filled my mind with blackness.</p>
+
+<p>A little after sundown the full fury of the gale broke
+forth, such a gale as I have never seen in summer, nor,
+seeing how swiftly it had come, even in winter. Mary
+and I sat in silence, the house quaking overhead, the
+tempest howling without, the fire between us sputtering
+with raindrops. Our thoughts were far away with the
+poor fellows on the schooner, or my not less unhappy
+uncle, houseless on the promontory; and yet ever and
+again we were startled back to ourselves, when the wind
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page106"></a>106</span>
+would rise and strike the gable like a solid body, or suddenly
+fall and draw away, so that the fire leaped into
+flame and our hearts bounded in our sides. Now the
+storm in its might would seize and shake the four corners
+of the roof, roaring like Leviathan in anger. Anon, in a
+lull, cold eddies of tempest moved shudderingly in the
+room, lifting the hair upon our heads and passing between
+us as we sat. And again the wind would break forth in a
+chorus of melancholy sounds, hooting low in the chimney,
+wailing with flutelike softness round the house.</p>
+
+<p>It was perhaps eight o&rsquo;clock when Rorie came in and
+pulled me mysteriously to the door. My uncle, it appeared,
+had frightened even his constant comrade; and Rorie,
+uneasy at his extravagance, prayed me to come out and
+share the watch. I hastened to do as I was asked; the
+more readily as, what with fear and horror, and the electrical
+tension of the night, I was myself restless and disposed
+for action. I told Mary to be under no alarm, for
+I should be a safeguard on her father; and wrapping
+myself warmly in a plaid, I followed Rorie into the
+open air.</p>
+
+<p>The night, though we were so little past midsummer,
+was as dark as January. Intervals of a groping twilight
+alternated with spells of utter blackness; and it was
+impossible to trace the reason of these changes in the
+flying horror of the sky. The wind blew the breath out
+of a man&rsquo;s nostrils; all heaven seemed to thunder overhead
+like one huge sail; and when there fell a momentary
+lull on Aros, we could hear the gusts dismally sweeping
+in the distance. Over all the lowlands of the Ross
+the wind must have blown as fierce as on the open sea;
+and God only knows the uproar that was raging around
+the head of Ben Kyaw. Sheets of mingled spray and rain
+were driven in our faces. All round the isle of Aros the
+surf, with an incessant, hammering thunder, beat upon
+the reefs and beaches. Now louder in one place, now
+lower in another, like the combinations of orchestral
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page107"></a>107</span>
+music, the constant mass of sound was hardly varied for
+a moment. And loud above all this hurly-burly I could
+hear the changeful voices of the Roost and the intermittent
+roaring of the Merry Men. At that hour, there
+flashed into my mind the reason of the name that they
+were called. For the noise of them seemed almost mirthful,
+as it out-topped the other noises of the night; or if
+not mirthful, yet instinct with a portentous joviality.
+Nay, and it seemed even human. As when savage men
+have drunk away their reason, and, discarding speech,
+bawl together in their madness by the hour; so, to my
+ears, these deadly breakers shouted by Aros in the night.</p>
+
+<p>Arm in arm, and staggering against the wind, Rorie
+and I won every yard of ground with conscious effort.
+We slipped on the wet sod, we fell together sprawling on
+the rocks. Bruised, drenched, beaten, and breathless, it
+must have taken us near half an hour to get from the
+house down to the Head that overlooks the Roost. There,
+it seemed, was my uncle&rsquo;s favourite observatory. Right
+in the face of it, where the cliff is highest and most sheer,
+a hump of earth, like a parapet, makes a place of shelter
+from the common winds, where a man may sit in quiet
+and see the tide and the mad billows contending at his
+feet. As he might look down from the window of a house
+upon some street disturbance, so, from this post, he looks
+down upon the tumbling of the Merry Men. On such a
+night, of course, he peers upon a world of blackness, where
+the waters wheel and boil, where the waves joust together
+with the noise of an explosion, and the foam towers and
+vanishes in the twinkling of an eye. Never before had
+I seen the Merry Men thus violent. The fury, height, and
+transiency of their spoutings was a thing to be seen and
+not recounted. High over our heads on the cliff rose
+their white columns in the darkness; and the same instant,
+like phantoms, they were gone. Sometimes three
+at a time would thus aspire and vanish; sometimes a
+gust took them, and the spray would fall about us, heavy
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page108"></a>108</span>
+as a wave. And yet the spectacle was rather maddening
+in its levity than impressive by its force. Thought was
+beaten down by the confounding uproar; a gleeful vacancy
+possessed the brains of men, a state akin to madness; and
+I found myself at times following the dance of the Merry
+Men as it were a tune upon a jigging instrument.</p>
+
+<p>I first caught sight of my uncle when we were still
+some yards away in one of the flying glimpses of twilight
+that chequered the pitch darkness of the night. He was
+standing up behind the parapet, his head thrown back
+and the bottle to his mouth. As he put it down, he saw
+and recognised us with a toss of one hand fleeringly above
+his head.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Has he been drinking?&rdquo; shouted I to Rorie.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He will aye be drunk when the wind blaws,&rdquo; returned
+Rorie in the same high key, and it was all that I
+could do to hear him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then&mdash;was he so&mdash;in February?&rdquo; I inquired.</p>
+
+<p>Rorie&rsquo;s &ldquo;Ay&rdquo; was a cause of joy to me. The murder,
+then, had not sprung in cold blood from calculation; it
+was an act of madness no more to be condemned than
+to be pardoned. My uncle was a dangerous madman,
+if you will, but he was not cruel and base as I had feared.
+Yet what a scene for a carouse, what an incredible vice,
+was this that the poor man had chosen! I have always
+thought drunkenness a wild and almost fearful pleasure,
+rather demoniacal than human; but drunkenness, out
+here in the roaring blackness, on the edge of a cliff above
+that hell of waters, the man&rsquo;s head spinning like the
+Roost, his foot tottering on the edge of death, his ear
+watching for the signs of shipwreck, surely that, if it were
+credible in any one, was morally impossible in a man
+like my uncle, whose mind was set upon a damnatory
+creed and haunted by the darkest superstitions. Yet so
+it was; and, as we reached the bight of shelter and could
+breathe again, I saw the man&rsquo;s eyes shining in the night
+with an unholy glimmer.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page109"></a>109</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Eh, Charlie man, it&rsquo;s grand!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;See to
+them!&rdquo; he continued, dragging me to the edge of the
+abyss from whence arose that deafening clamour and
+those clouds of spray; &ldquo;see to them dancin&rsquo;, man! Is
+that no wicked?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He pronounced the word with gusto, and I thought it
+suited with the scene.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They&rsquo;re yowlin&rsquo; for thon schooner,&rdquo; he went on,
+his thin, insane voice clearly audible in the shelter of
+the bank, &ldquo;an&rsquo; she&rsquo;s comin&rsquo; aye nearer, aye nearer, aye
+nearer an&rsquo; nearer an&rsquo; nearer; an&rsquo; they ken&rsquo;t, the folk
+kens it, they ken weel it&rsquo;s by wi&rsquo; them. Charlie lad,
+they&rsquo;re a&rsquo; drunk in yon schooner, a&rsquo; dozened wi&rsquo; drink.
+They were a&rsquo; drunk in the <i>Christ-Anna</i>, at the hinder end.
+There&rsquo;s nane could droon at sea wantin&rsquo; the brandy.
+Hoot awa, what do you ken?&rdquo; with a sudden blast of
+anger. &ldquo;I tell ye, it canna be; they daurna droon without
+it. Hae,&rdquo; holding out the bottle, &ldquo;tak&rsquo; a sowp.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I was about to refuse, but Rorie touched me as if in
+warning; and indeed I had already thought better of
+the movement. I took the bottle, therefore, and not
+only drank freely myself, but contrived to spill even
+more as I was doing so. It was pure spirit, and almost
+strangled me to swallow. My kinsman did not observe
+the loss, but, once more throwing back his head, drained
+the remainder to the dregs. Then, with a loud laugh,
+he cast the bottle forth among the Merry Men, who seemed
+to leap up, shouting to receive it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hae, bairns!&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;there&rsquo;s your hansel. Ye&rsquo;ll
+get bonnier nor that or morning.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, out in the black night before us, and not
+two hundred yards away, we heard, at a moment when
+the wind was silent, the clear note of a human voice.
+Instantly the wind swept howling down upon the Head,
+and the Roost bellowed, and churned, and danced with
+a new fury. But we had heard the sound, and we knew,
+with agony, that this was the doomed ship now close on
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page110"></a>110</span>
+ruin, and that what we had heard was the voice of her
+master issuing his last command. Crouching together on
+the edge, we waited, straining every sense, for the inevitable
+end. It was long, however, and to us it seemed like
+ages, ere the schooner suddenly appeared for one brief
+instant, relieved against a tower of glimmering foam. I
+still see her reefed mainsail flapping loose, as the boom
+fell heavily across the deck; I still see the black outline
+of the hull, and still think I can distinguish the figure of
+a man stretched upon the tiller. Yet the whole sight
+we had of her passed swifter than lightning; the very
+wave that disclosed her fell burying her for ever; the
+mingled cry of many voices at the point of death rose
+and was quenched in the roaring of the Merry Men. And
+with that the tragedy was at an end. The strong ship,
+with all her gear, and the lamp perhaps still burning in
+the cabin, the lives of so many men, precious surely to
+others, dear, at least, as heaven to themselves, had all, in
+that one moment, gone down into the surging waters.
+They were gone like a dream. And the wind still ran
+and shouted, and the senseless waters in the Roost still
+leaped and tumbled as before.</p>
+
+<p>How long we lay there together, we three, speechless
+and motionless, is more than I can tell, but it must
+have been for long. At length, one by one, and almost
+mechanically, we crawled back into the shelter of the
+bank. As I lay against the parapet, wholly wretched
+and not entirely master of my mind, I could hear my
+kinsman maundering to himself in an altered and melancholy
+mood. Now he would repeat to himself with
+maudlin iteration, &ldquo;Sic a fecht as they had&mdash;sic a sair
+fecht as they had, puir lads, puir lads!&rdquo; and anon he
+would bewail that &ldquo;a&rsquo; the gear was as gude&rsquo;s tint,&rdquo;
+because the ship had gone down among the Merry Men
+instead of stranding on the shore; and throughout, the
+name&mdash;the <i>Christ-Anna</i>&mdash;would come and go in his divagations,
+pronounced with shuddering awe. The storm
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page111"></a>111</span>
+all this time was rapidly abating. In half an hour the
+wind had fallen to a breeze, and the change was accompanied
+or caused by a heavy, cold, and plumping rain. I
+must then have fallen asleep, and when I came to myself,
+drenched, stiff, and unrefreshed, day had already broken,
+grey, wet, discomfortable day; the wind blew in faint
+and shifting capfuls, the tide was out, the Roost was at
+its lowest, and only the strong beating surf round all the
+coasts of Aros remained to witness of the furies of the
+night.</p>
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page112"></a>112</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER V</h3>
+
+<h5>A MAN OUT OF THE SEA</h5>
+
+
+<p>Rorie set out for the house in search of warmth and
+breakfast; but my uncle was bent upon examining the
+shores of Aros, and I felt it a part of duty to accompany
+him throughout. He was now docile and quiet, but
+tremulous and weak in mind and body; and it was with
+the eagerness of a child that he pursued his exploration.
+He climbed far down upon the rocks; on the beaches
+he pursued the retreating breakers. The merest broken
+plank or rag of cordage was a treasure in his eyes to be
+secured at the peril of his life. To see him, with weak
+and stumbling footsteps, expose himself to the pursuit of
+the surf, or the snares and pitfalls of the weedy rock, kept
+me in a perpetual terror. My arm was ready to support
+him, my hand clutched him by the skirt, I helped him
+to draw his pitiful discoveries beyond the reach of the
+returning wave; a nurse accompanying a child of seven
+would have had no different experience.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, weakened as he was by the reaction from his
+madness of the night before, the passions that smouldered
+in his nature were those of a strong man. His
+terror of the sea, although conquered for the moment, was
+still undiminished; had the sea been a lake of living
+flames, he could not have shrunk more panically from its
+touch; and once, when his foot slipped and he plunged
+to the mid-leg into a pool of water, the shriek that came
+up out of his soul was like the cry of death. He sat still
+for a while, panting like a dog, after that; but his desire
+for the spoils of shipwreck triumphed once more over his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page113"></a>113</span>
+fears; once more he tottered among the curded foam;
+once more he crawled upon the rocks among the bursting
+bubbles; once more his whole heart seemed to be set
+on driftwood, fit, if it was fit for anything, to throw upon
+the fire. Pleased as he was with what he found, he still
+incessantly grumbled at his ill-fortune.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Aros,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;is no&rsquo; a place for wrecks ava&rsquo;&mdash;no&rsquo;
+ava&rsquo;. A&rsquo; the years I&rsquo;ve dwalt here, this ane maks the
+second; and the best o&rsquo; the gear clean tint!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Uncle,&ldquo; said I, for we were now on a stretch of open
+sand, where there was nothing to divert his mind, &ldquo;I
+saw you last night, as I never thought to see you&mdash;you
+were drunk.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Na, na,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;no&rsquo; as bad as that. I had been
+drinking, though. And to tell ye the God&rsquo;s truth, it&rsquo;s a
+thing I canna mend. There&rsquo;s nae soberer man than me
+in my ordnar; but when I hear the wind blaw in my
+lug, it&rsquo;s my belief that I gang gyte.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You are a religious man,&rdquo; I replied, &ldquo;and this is
+sin.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ou,&rdquo; he returned, &ldquo;if it wasna sin, I dinna ken that
+I would care for&rsquo;t. Ye see, man, it&rsquo;s defiance. There&rsquo;s
+a sair spang o&rsquo; the auld sin o&rsquo; the world in yon sea; it&rsquo;s an
+unchristian business at the best o&rsquo;t; an&rsquo; whiles when it
+gets up, an&rsquo; the wind skreighs&mdash;the wind an&rsquo; her are a
+kind of sib, I&rsquo;m thinkin&rsquo;&mdash;an&rsquo; thae Merry Men, the daft
+callants, blawin&rsquo; and lauchin&rsquo;, and puir souls in the deid-thraws
+warstlin&rsquo; the leelang nicht wi&rsquo; their bit ships&mdash;weel,
+it comes ower me like a glamour. I&rsquo;m a deil, I ken&rsquo;t.
+But I think naething o&rsquo; the puir sailor lads; I&rsquo;m wi&rsquo; the
+sea, I&rsquo;m just like ane o&rsquo; her ain Merry Men.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I thought I should touch him in a joint of his harness.
+I turned me towards the sea; the surf was running gaily,
+wave after wave, with their manes blowing behind them,
+riding one after another up the beach, towering, curving,
+falling one upon another on the trampled sand. Without,
+the salt air, the scared gulls, the widespread army of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page114"></a>114</span>
+sea-chargers, neighing to each other, as they gathered
+together to the assault of Aros; and close before us, that
+line on the flat sands, that, with all their number and
+their fury, they might never pass.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thus far shalt thou go,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;and no farther.&rdquo;
+And then I quoted as solemnly as I was able a verse that
+I had often before fitted to the chorus of the breakers:&mdash;</p>
+
+<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td>
+<div class="poemr">
+
+<p>But yet the Lord, that is on high,</p>
+  <p class="i1">Is more of might by far</p>
+<p>Than noise of many waters is,</p>
+  <p class="i1">Or great sea-billows are.</p>
+
+</div>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ay,&rdquo; said my kinsman, &ldquo;at the hinder end, the Lord
+will triumph; I dinna misdoobt that. But here on
+earth, even silly men-folk daur Him to His face. It is
+no&rsquo; wise; I am no sayin&rsquo; that it&rsquo;s wise; but it&rsquo;s the pride
+of the eye, and it&rsquo;s the lust o&rsquo; life, an&rsquo; it&rsquo;s the wale o&rsquo;
+pleesures.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I said no more, for we had now begun to cross a neck
+of land that lay between us and Sandag; and I withheld
+my last appeal to the man&rsquo;s better reason till we should
+stand upon the spot associated with his crime. Nor did
+he pursue the subject; but he walked beside me with a
+firmer step. The call that I had made upon his mind
+acted like a stimulant, and I could see that he had forgotten
+his search for worthless jetsam, in a profound,
+gloomy, and yet stirring train of thought. In three or
+four minutes we had topped the brae and began to go
+down upon Sandag. The wreck had been roughly handled
+by the sea; the stem had been spun round and dragged
+a little lower down; and perhaps the stern had been
+forced a little higher, for the two parts now lay entirely
+separate on the beach. When we came to the grave I
+stopped, uncovered my head in the thick rain, and, looking
+my kinsman in the face, addressed him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A man,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;was in God&rsquo;s providence suffered
+to escape from mortal dangers; he was poor, he was
+naked, he was wet, he was weary, he was a stranger; he
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page115"></a>115</span>
+had every claim upon the bowels of your compassion;
+it may be that he was the salt of the earth, holy, helpful,
+and kind; it may be he was a man laden with iniquities
+to whom death was the beginning of torment. I ask you
+in the sight of Heaven: Gordon Darnaway, where is the
+man for whom Christ died?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He started visibly at the last words; but there came
+no answer, and his face expressed no feeling but a vague
+alarm.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You were my father&rsquo;s brother,&rdquo; I continued; &ldquo;you
+have taught me to count your house as if it were my
+father&rsquo;s house; and we are both sinful men walking before
+the Lord among the sins and dangers of this life. It
+is by our evil that God leads us into good; we sin, I dare
+not say by His temptation, but I must say with His
+consent; and to any but the brutish man his sins are
+the beginning of wisdom. God has warned you by this
+crime; He warns you still by the bloody grave between
+our feet; and if there shall follow no repentance, no
+improvement, no return to Him, what can we look for
+but the following of some memorable judgment?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Even as I spoke the words, the eyes of my uncle wandered
+from my face. A change fell upon his looks that
+cannot be described; his features seemed to dwindle in
+size, the colour faded from his cheeks, one hand rose
+waveringly and pointed over my shoulder into the distance,
+and the oft-repeated name fell once more from
+his lips: &ldquo;The <i>Christ-Anna</i>!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I turned; and if I was not appalled to the same
+degree, as I return thanks to Heaven that I had not the
+cause, I was still startled by the sight that met my eyes.
+The form of a man stood upright on the cabin-hutch of
+the wrecked ship; his back was towards us; he appeared
+to be scanning the offing with shaded eyes, and his figure
+was relieved to its full height, which was plainly very
+great, against the sea and sky. I have said a thousand
+times that I am not superstitious; but at that moment,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page116"></a>116</span>
+with my mind running upon death and sin, the unexplained
+appearance of a stranger on that sea-girt, solitary island
+filled me with a surprise that bordered close on terror. It
+seemed scarce possible that any human soul should have
+come ashore alive in such a sea as had raged last night
+along the coast of Aros; and the only vessel within miles
+had gone down before our eyes among the Merry Men. I
+was assailed with doubts that made suspense unbearable,
+and, to put the matter to the touch at once, stepped forward
+and hailed the figure like a ship.</p>
+
+<p>He turned about, and I thought he started to behold
+us. At this my courage instantly revived, and I called
+and signed to him to draw near, and he, on his part,
+dropped immediately to the sands, and began slowly to
+approach, with many stops and hesitations. At each repeated
+mark of the man&rsquo;s uneasiness I grew the more
+confident myself; and I advanced another step, encouraging
+him as I did so with my head and hand. It was
+plain the castaway had heard indifferent accounts of our
+island hospitality; and indeed, about this time, the
+people farther north had a sorry reputation.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;the man is black!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And just at that moment, in a voice that I could
+scarce have recognised, my kinsman began swearing and
+praying in a mingled stream. I looked at him; he had
+fallen on his knees, his face was agonised; at each step of
+the castaway&rsquo;s the pitch of his voice rose, the volubility
+of his utterance and the fervour of his language redoubled.
+I call it prayer, for it was addressed to God; but surely
+no such ranting incongruities were ever before addressed
+to the Creator by a creature: surely if prayer can be a
+sin, this mad harangue was sinful. I ran to my kinsman,
+I seized him by the shoulders, I dragged him to
+his feet.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Silence, man,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;respect your God in words,
+if not in action. Here, on the very scene of your transgressions,
+He sends you an occasion of atonement. Forward
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page117"></a>117</span>
+and embrace it: welcome like a father yon creature
+who comes trembling to your mercy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>With that, I tried to force him towards the black; but
+he felled me to the ground, burst from my grasp, leaving
+the shoulder of his jacket, and fled up the hillside towards
+the top of Aros like a deer. I staggered to my feet again,
+bruised and somewhat stunned; the negro had paused in
+surprise, perhaps in terror, some half-way between me
+and the wreck; my uncle was already far away, bounding
+from rock to rock; and I thus found myself torn for a
+time between two duties. But I judged, and I pray
+Heaven that I judged rightly, in favour of the poor wretch
+upon the sands; his misfortune was at least not plainly
+of his own creation; it was one, besides, that I could certainly
+relieve; and I had begun by that time to regard
+my uncle as an incurable and dismal lunatic. I advanced
+accordingly towards the black, who now awaited my
+approach with folded arms, like one prepared for either
+destiny. As I came nearer, he reached forth his hand
+with a great gesture, such as I had seen from the pulpit,
+and spoke to me in something of a pulpit voice, but not
+a word was comprehensible. I tried him first in English,
+then in Gaelic, both in vain; so that it was clear we must
+rely upon the tongue of looks and gestures. Thereupon
+I signed to him to follow me, which he did readily and
+with a grave obeisance like a fallen king; all the while
+there had come no shade of alteration in his face, neither
+of anxiety while he was still waiting, nor of relief now that
+he was reassured; if he were a slave, as I supposed, I
+could not but judge he must have fallen from some high
+place in his own country, and, fallen as he was, I could
+not but admire his bearing. As we passed the grave, I
+paused and raised my hands and eyes to heaven in token
+of respect and sorrow for the dead; and he, as if in
+answer, bowed low and spread his hands abroad; it was
+a strange motion, but done like a thing of common custom;
+and I supposed it was ceremonial in the land from
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page118"></a>118</span>
+which he came. At the same time he pointed to my
+uncle, whom we could just see perched upon a knoll, and
+touched his head to indicate that he was mad.</p>
+
+<p>We took the long way round the shore, for I feared
+to excite my uncle if we struck across the island; and
+as we walked, I had time enough to mature the little
+dramatic exhibition by which I hoped to satisfy my doubts.
+Accordingly, pausing on a rock, I proceeded to imitate
+before the negro the action of the man whom I had seen
+the day before taking bearings with the compass at
+Sandag. He understood me at once, and, taking the
+imitation out of my hands, showed me where the boat
+was, pointed out seaward as if to indicate the position of
+the schooner, and then down along the edge of the rock
+with the words &ldquo;Espirito Santo,&rdquo; strangely pronounced,
+but clear enough for recognition. I had thus been right
+in my conjecture; the pretended historical inquiry had
+been but a cloak for treasure-hunting; the man who had
+played on Dr. Robertson was the same as the foreigner
+who visited Grisapol in spring, and now, with many
+others, lay dead under the Roost of Aros: there had
+their greed brought them, there should their bones be
+tossed for evermore. In the meantime the black continued
+his imitation of the scene, now looking up skyward
+as though watching the approach of the storm; now,
+in the character of a seaman, waving the rest to come
+aboard; now as an officer, running along the rock and
+entering the boat; and anon bending over imaginary
+oars with the air of a hurried boatman; but all with the
+same solemnity of manner, so that I was never even
+moved to smile. Lastly, he indicated to me, by a pantomime
+not to be described in words, how he himself
+had gone up to examine the stranded wreck, and, to his
+grief and indignation, had been deserted by his comrades;
+and thereupon folded his arms once more, and stooped
+his head, like one accepting fate.</p>
+
+<p>The mystery of his presence being thus solved for me,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page119"></a>119</span>
+I explained to him by means of a sketch the fate of the
+vessel and of all aboard her. He showed no surprise nor
+sorrow, and, with a sudden lifting of his open hand, seemed
+to dismiss his former friends or masters (whichever they
+had been) into God&rsquo;s pleasure. Respect came upon me
+and grew stronger, the more I observed him; I saw he
+had a powerful mind and a sober and severe character,
+such as I loved to commune with; and before we reached
+the house of Aros I had almost forgotten, and wholly forgiven
+him, his uncanny colour.</p>
+
+<p>To Mary I told all that had passed without suppression,
+though I own my heart failed me; but I did wrong
+to doubt her sense of justice.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You did the right,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;God&rsquo;s will be done.&rdquo;
+And she set out meat for us at once.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as I was satisfied, I bade Rorie keep an eye
+upon the castaway, who was still eating, and set forth
+again myself to find my uncle. I had not gone far before
+I saw him sitting in the same place, upon the very topmost
+knoll, and seemingly in the same attitude as when
+I had last observed him. From that point, as I have
+said, the most of Aros and the neighbouring Ross would
+be spread below him like a map; and it was plain that
+he kept a bright look-out in all directions, for my head
+had scarcely risen above the summit of the first ascent
+before he had leaped to his feet and turned as if to face
+me. I hailed him at once, as well as I was able, in the
+same tones and words as I had often used before, when I
+had come to summon him to dinner. He made not so
+much as a movement in reply. I passed on a little farther,
+and again tried parley, with the same result. But when
+I began a second time to advance, his insane fears blazed
+up again, and still in dead silence, but with incredible
+speed, he began to flee from before me along the rocky
+summit of the hill. An hour before he had been dead
+weary, and I had been comparatively active. But now
+his strength was recruited by the fervour of insanity, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page120"></a>120</span>
+it would have been vain for me to dream of pursuit. Nay,
+the very attempt, I thought, might have inflamed his
+terrors, and thus increased the miseries of our position.
+And I had nothing left but to turn homeward and make
+my sad report to Mary.</p>
+
+<p>She heard it, as she had heard the first, with a concerned
+composure, and, bidding me lie down and take
+that rest of which I stood so much in need, set forth
+herself in quest of her misguided father. At that age it
+would have been a strange thing that put me from either
+meat or sleep; I slept long and deep; and it was already
+long past noon before I awoke and came downstairs into
+the kitchen. Mary, Rorie, and the black castaway were
+seated about the fire in silence; and I could see that
+Mary had been weeping. There was cause enough, as I
+soon learned, for tears. First she, and then Rorie, had
+been forth to seek my uncle; each in turn had found
+him perched upon the hill-top, and from each in turn he
+had silently and swiftly fled. Rorie had tried to chase
+him, but in vain; madness lent a new vigour to his
+bounds; he sprang from rock to rock over the widest
+gullies; he scoured like the wind along the hill-tops; he
+doubled and twisted like a hare before the dogs; and
+Rorie at length gave in; and the last that he saw, my
+uncle was seated as before upon the crest of Aros. Even
+during the hottest excitement of the chase, even when
+the fleet-footed servant had come, for a moment, very
+near to capture him, the poor lunatic had uttered not a
+sound. He fled, and he was silent, like a beast; and
+this silence had terrified his pursuer.</p>
+
+<p>There was something heart-breaking in the situation.
+How to capture the madman, how to feed him in the
+meanwhile, and what to do with him when he was captured,
+were the three difficulties that we had to solve.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The black,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;is the cause of this attack. It
+may even be his presence in the house that keeps my
+uncle on the hill. We have done the fair thing; he has
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page121"></a>121</span>
+been fed and warmed under this roof; now I propose
+that Rorie put him across the bay in the coble, and take
+him through the Ross as far as Grisapol.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In this proposal Mary heartily concurred; and bidding
+the black follow us, we all three descended to the pier.
+Certainly, Heaven&rsquo;s will was declared against Gordon
+Darnaway; a thing had happened, never paralleled
+before in Aros: during the storm, the coble had broken
+loose, and, striking on the rough splinters of the pier,
+now lay in four feet of water with one side stove in. Three
+days of work at least would be required to make her float.
+But I was not to be beaten. I led the whole party round
+to where the gut was narrowest, swam to the other side,
+and called to the black to follow me. He signed, with
+the same clearness and quiet as before, that he knew not
+the art; and there was truth apparent in his signals, it
+would have occurred to none of us to doubt his truth;
+and that hope being over, we must all go back even as we
+came to the house of Aros, the negro walking in our midst
+without embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>All we could do that day was to make one more
+attempt to communicate with the unhappy madman.
+Again he was visible on his perch; again he fled in silence.
+But food and a great cloak were at least left for his comfort;
+the rain, besides, had cleared away, and the night
+promised to be even warm. We might compose ourselves,
+we thought, until the morrow; rest was the chief requisite,
+that we might be strengthened for unusual exertions;
+and as none cared to talk, we separated at an early hour.</p>
+
+<p>I lay long awake, planning a campaign for the morrow.
+I was to place the black on the side of Sandag,
+whence he should head my uncle towards the house;
+Rorie in the west, I on the east, were to complete the
+cordon, as best we might. It seemed to me, the more
+I recalled the configuration of the island, that it should
+be possible, though hard, to force him down upon the
+low ground along Aros Bay; and once there, even with
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page122"></a>122</span>
+the strength of his madness, ultimate escape was hardly
+to be feared. It was on his terror of the black that I
+relied; for I made sure, however he might run, it would
+not be in the direction of the man whom he supposed to
+have returned from the dead, and thus one point of the
+compass at least would be secure.</p>
+
+<p>When at length I fell asleep, it was to be awakened
+shortly after by a dream of wrecks, black men, and submarine
+adventure; and I found myself so shaken and
+fevered that I arose, descended the stair, and stepped out
+before the house. Within, Rorie and the black were
+asleep together in the kitchen; outside was a wonderful
+clear night of stars, with here and there a cloud still
+hanging, last stragglers of the tempest. It was near the
+top of the flood, and the Merry Men were roaring in the
+windless quiet of the night. Never, not even in the height
+of the tempest, had I heard their song with greater awe.
+Now, when the winds were gathered home, when the
+deep was dandling itself back into its summer slumber,
+and when the stars rained their gentle light over land
+and sea, the voice of these tide-breakers was still raised
+for havoc. They seemed, indeed, to be a part of the
+world&rsquo;s evil and the tragic side of life. Nor were their
+meaningless vociferations the only sounds that broke the
+silence of the night. For I could hear, now shrill and
+thrilling and now almost drowned, the note of a human
+voice that accompanied the uproar of the Roost. I knew
+it for my kinsman&rsquo;s; and a great fear fell upon me of
+God&rsquo;s judgments, and the evil in the world. I went back
+again into the darkness of the house as into a place of
+shelter, and lay long upon my bed, pondering these
+mysteries.</p>
+
+<p>It was late when I again woke, and I leaped into
+my clothes and hurried to the kitchen. No one was
+there; Rorie and the black had both stealthily departed
+long before; and my heart stood still at the discovery.
+I could rely on Rorie&rsquo;s heart, but I placed no trust in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page123"></a>123</span>
+his discretion. If he had thus set out without a word, he
+was plainly bent upon some service to my uncle. But
+what service could he hope to render even alone, far less
+in the company of the man in whom my uncle found
+his fears incarnated? Even if I were not already too
+late to prevent some deadly mischief, it was plain I must
+delay no longer. With the thought I was out of the
+house; and often as I have run on the rough sides of
+Aros, I never ran as I did that fatal morning. I do not
+believe I put twelve minutes to the whole ascent.</p>
+
+<p>My uncle was gone from his perch. The basket had
+indeed been torn open and the meat scattered on the
+turf; but, as we found afterwards, no mouthful had
+been tasted; and there was not another trace of human
+existence in that wide field of view. Day had already
+filled the clear heavens; the sun already lighted in a
+rosy bloom upon the crest of Ben Kyaw; but all below
+me the rude knolls of Aros and the shield of sea lay steeped
+in the clear darkling twilight of the dawn.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Rorie!&rdquo; I cried; and again &ldquo;Rorie!&rdquo; My voice
+died in the silence, but there came no answer back. If
+there were indeed an enterprise afoot to catch my uncle,
+it was plainly not in fleetness of foot, but in dexterity
+of stalking, that the hunters placed their trust. I ran
+on farther, keeping the higher spurs, and looking right
+and left, nor did I pause again till I was on the mount
+above Sandag. I could see the wreck, the uncovered
+belt of sand, the waves idly beating, the long ledge of
+rocks, and on either hand the tumbled knolls, boulders,
+and gullies of the island. But still no human thing.</p>
+
+<p>At a stride the sunshine fell on Aros, and the shadows
+and colours leaped into being. Not half a moment later,
+below me to the west, sheep began to scatter as in a
+panic. There came a cry. I saw my uncle running. I
+saw the black jump up in hot pursuit; and before I had
+time to understand, Rorie also had appeared, calling
+directions in Gaelic as to a dog herding sheep.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page124"></a>124</span></p>
+
+<p>I took to my heels to interfere, and perhaps I had
+done better to have waited where I was, for I was the
+means of cutting off the madman&rsquo;s last escape. There
+was nothing before him from that moment but the grave,
+the wreck, and the sea in Sandag Bay. And yet Heaven
+knows that what I did was for the best.</p>
+
+<p>My Uncle Gordon saw in what direction, horrible to
+him, the chase was driving him. He doubled, darting
+to the right and left; but high as the fever ran in his
+veins, the black was still the swifter. Turn where he
+would, he was still forestalled, still driven toward the
+scene of his crime. Suddenly he began to shriek aloud,
+so that the coast re-echoed; and now both I and Rorie
+were calling on the black to stop. But all was vain, for it
+was written otherwise. The pursuer still ran, the chase
+still sped before him screaming; they avoided the grave,
+and skimmed close past the timbers of the wreck; in a
+breath they had cleared the sand; and still my kinsman
+did not pause, but dashed straight into the surf; and the
+black, now almost within reach, still followed swiftly
+behind him. Rorie and I both stopped, for the thing
+was now beyond the hands of men, and these were the
+decrees of God that came to pass before our eyes. There
+was never a sharper ending. On that steep beach they
+were beyond their depth at a bound; neither could swim;
+the black rose once for a moment with a throttling cry;
+but the current had them, racing seaward; and if ever
+they came up again, which God alone can tell, it would
+be ten minutes after, at the far end of Aros Roost, where
+the sea-birds hover fishing.</p>
+
+<hr class="foot" />
+<div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_1" href="#FnAnchor_1"><span class="fn">1</span></a> <i>i.e.</i> the six stories which were in 1887 published in a volume
+entitled <i>The Merry Men, and Other Tales and Fables</i>: of this volume
+&ldquo;The Merry Men&rdquo; and &ldquo;Olalla&rdquo; formed part.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_2" href="#FnAnchor_2"><span class="fn">2</span></a> Boggy.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_3" href="#FnAnchor_3"><span class="fn">3</span></a> Clock.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_4" href="#FnAnchor_4"><span class="fn">4</span></a> Enjoy.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page125"></a>125</span></p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2>OLALLA</h2>
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page126"></a>126</span></p>
+
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page127"></a>127</span></p>
+<h2>OLALLA</h2>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said the doctor, &ldquo;my part is done, and, I may
+say, with some vanity, well done. It remains only to get
+you out of this cold and poisonous city, and to give you
+two months of a pure air and an easy conscience. The
+last is your affair. To the first I think I can help you.
+It falls indeed rather oddly; it was but the other day
+the Padre came in from the country; and as he and I are
+old friends, although of contrary professions, he applied to
+me in a matter of distress among some of his parishioners.
+This was a family&mdash;but you are ignorant of Spain, and
+even the names of our grandees are hardly known to you;
+suffice it, then, that they were once great people, and
+are now fallen to the brink of destitution. Nothing now
+belongs to them but the residencia, and certain leagues
+of desert mountain, in the greater part of which not even
+a goat could support life. But the house is a fine old
+place, and stands at a great height among the hills, and
+most salubriously; and I had no sooner heard my friend&rsquo;s
+tale than I remembered you. I told him I had a wounded
+officer, wounded in the good cause, who was now able to
+make a change; and I proposed that his friends should
+take you for a lodger. Instantly the Padre&rsquo;s face grew
+dark, as I had maliciously foreseen it would. It was
+out of the question, he said. Then let them starve, said I,
+for I have no sympathy with tatterdemalion pride. Thereupon
+we separated, not very content with one another;
+but yesterday, to my wonder, the Padre returned and made
+a submission: the difficulty, he said, he had found upon
+inquiry to be less than he had feared; or, in other words,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page128"></a>128</span>
+these proud people had put their pride in their pocket.
+I closed with the offer; and, subject to your approval,
+I have taken rooms for you in the residencia. The air of
+these mountains will renew your blood; and the quiet
+in which you will there live is worth all the medicines
+in the world.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Doctor,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;you have been throughout my
+good angel, and your advice is a command. But tell me,
+if you please, something of the family with which I am
+to reside.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am coming to that,&rdquo; replied my friend; &ldquo;and,
+indeed, there is a difficulty in the way. These beggars
+are, as I have said, of very high descent, and swollen with
+the most baseless vanity; they have lived for some
+generations in a growing isolation, drawing away, on either
+hand, from the rich who had now become too high for
+them, and from the poor, whom they still regarded as too
+low; and even to-day, when poverty forces them to
+unfasten their door to a guest, they cannot do so without
+a most ungracious stipulation. You are to remain, they
+say, a stranger; they will give you attendance, but they
+refuse from the first the idea of the smallest intimacy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I will not deny that I was piqued, and perhaps the
+feeling strengthened my desire to go, for I was confident
+that I could break down that barrier if I desired. &ldquo;There
+is nothing offensive in such a stipulation,&rdquo; said I; &ldquo;and
+I even sympathise with the feeling that inspired it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is true they have never seen you,&rdquo; returned the
+doctor politely; &ldquo;and if they knew you were the handsomest
+and the most pleasant man that ever came from
+England (where I am told that handsome men are common,
+but pleasant ones not so much so), they would doubtless
+make you welcome with a better grace. But since you
+take the thing so well, it matters not. To me, indeed,
+it seems discourteous. But you will find yourself the
+gainer. The family will not much tempt you. A mother,
+a son, and a daughter; an old woman said to be half-witted,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page129"></a>129</span>
+a country lout, and a country girl, who stands very high
+with her confessor, and is, therefore,&rdquo; chuckled the physician,
+&ldquo;most likely plain; there is not much in that to
+attract the fancy of a dashing officer.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And yet you say they are high-born,&rdquo; I objected.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, as to that, I should distinguish,&rdquo; returned the
+doctor. &ldquo;The mother is; not so the children. The
+mother was the last representative of a princely stock,
+degenerate both in parts and fortune. Her father was
+not only poor, he was mad: and the girl ran wild about
+the residencia till his death. Then, much of the fortune
+having died with him, and the family being quite extinct,
+the girl ran wilder than ever, until at last she married,
+Heaven knows whom, a muleteer some say, others a
+smuggler; while there are some who uphold there was
+no marriage at all, and that Felipe and Olalla are bastards.
+The union, such as it was, was tragically dissolved some
+years ago; but they live in such seclusion, and the country
+at that time was in so much disorder, that the precise
+manner of the man&rsquo;s end is known only to the priest&mdash;if
+even to him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I begin to think I shall have strange experiences,&rdquo;
+said I.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I would not romance, if I were you,&rdquo; replied the
+doctor; &ldquo;you will find, I fear, a very grovelling and
+commonplace reality. Felipe, for instance, I have seen.
+And what am I to say? He is very rustic, very cunning,
+very loutish, and, I should say, an innocent; the others
+are probably to match. No, no, seńor commandante, you
+must seek congenial society among the great sights of our
+mountains; and in these at least, if you are at all a lover of
+the works of nature, I promise you will not be disappointed.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The next day Felipe came for me in a rough country
+cart, drawn by a mule; and a little before the stroke of
+noon, after I had said farewell to the doctor, the innkeeper,
+and different good souls who had befriended me during
+my sickness, we set forth out of the city by the eastern
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page130"></a>130</span>
+gate, and began to ascend into the Sierra. I had been
+so long a prisoner, since I was left behind for dying after
+the loss of the convoy, that the mere smell of the earth
+set me smiling. The country through which we went was
+wild and rocky, partially covered with rough woods, now
+of the cork-tree, and now of the great Spanish chestnut,
+and frequently intersected by the beds of mountain
+torrents. The sun shone, the wind rustled joyously; and
+we had advanced some miles, and the city had already
+shrunk into an inconsiderable knoll upon the plain behind
+us, before my attention began to be diverted to the companion
+of my drive. To the eye, he seemed but a diminutive,
+loutish, well-made country lad, such as the doctor
+had described, mighty quick and active, but devoid of any
+culture; and this first impression was with most observers
+final. What began to strike me was his familiar, chattering
+talk; so strangely inconsistent with the terms on which
+I was to be received; and partly from his imperfect
+enunciation, partly from the sprightly incoherence of the
+matter, so very difficult to follow clearly without an effort
+of the mind. It is true I had before talked with persons
+of a similar mental constitution; persons who seemed to
+live (as he did) by the senses, taken and possessed by the
+visual object of the moment and unable to discharge their
+minds of that impression. His seemed to me (as I sat,
+distantly giving ear) a kind of conversation proper to
+drivers, who pass much of their time in a great vacancy of
+the intellect and threading the sights of a familiar country.
+But this was not the case of Felipe; by his own account,
+he was a home-keeper; &ldquo;I wish I was there now,&rdquo; he
+said; and then, spying a tree by the wayside, he broke
+off to tell me that he had once seen a crow among its
+branches.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A crow?&ldquo; I repeated, struck by the ineptitude of
+the remark, and thinking I had heard imperfectly.</p>
+
+<p>But by this time he was already filled with a new idea;
+hearkening with a rapt intentness, his head on one side,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page131"></a>131</span>
+his face puckered; and he struck me rudely, to make
+me hold my peace. Then he smiled and shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What did you hear?&rdquo; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, it is all right,&rdquo; he said; and began encouraging
+his mule with cries that echoed unhumanly up the mountain
+walls.</p>
+
+<p>I looked at him more closely. He was superlatively
+well-built, light, and lithe and strong; he was well-featured;
+his yellow eyes were very large, though, perhaps,
+not very expressive; take him altogether, he was a
+pleasant-looking lad, and I had no fault to find with him,
+beyond that he was of a dusky hue, and inclined to hairiness;
+two characteristics that I disliked. It was his mind
+that puzzled, and yet attracted me. The doctor&rsquo;s phrase&mdash;an
+innocent&mdash;came back to me; and I was wondering if
+that were, after all, the true description, when the road
+began to go down into the narrow and naked chasm of
+a torrent. The waters thundered tumultuously in the
+bottom; and the ravine was filled full of the sound, the
+thin spray, and the claps of wind, that accompanied their
+descent. The scene was certainly impressive; but the
+road was in that part very securely walled in; the mule
+went steadily forward; and I was astonished to perceive
+the paleness of terror in the face of my companion. The
+voice of that wild river was inconstant, now sinking lower
+as if in weariness, now doubling its hoarse tones; momentary
+freshets seemed to swell its volume, sweeping down the
+gorge, raving and booming against the barrier walls; and
+I observed it was at each of these accessions to the clamour
+that my driver more particularly winced and blanched.
+Some thoughts of Scottish superstition and the river-kelpie
+passed across my mind; I wondered if perchance
+the like were prevalent in that part of Spain; and turning
+to Felipe, sought to draw him out.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What is the matter?&rdquo; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, I am afraid,&rdquo; he replied.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of what are you afraid?&rdquo; I returned. &ldquo;This
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page132"></a>132</span>
+seems one of the safest places on this very dangerous
+road.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It makes a noise,&rdquo; he said, with a simplicity of awe
+that set my doubts at rest.</p>
+
+<p>The lad was but a child in intellect; his mind was
+like his body, active and swift, but stunted in development;
+and I began from that time forth to regard him with a
+measure of pity, and to listen at first with indulgence,
+and at last even with pleasure, to his disjointed
+babble.</p>
+
+<p>By about four in the afternoon we had crossed the
+summit of the mountain line, said farewell to the western
+sunshine, and began to go down upon the other side, skirting
+the edge of many ravines and moving through the
+shadow of dusky woods. There rose upon all sides the voice
+of falling water, not condensed and formidable as in the
+gorge of the river, but scattered and sounding gaily and
+musically from glen to glen. Here, too, the spirits of my
+driver mended, and he began to sing aloud in a falsetto
+voice, and with a singular bluntness of musical perception,
+never true either to melody or key, but wandering at will,
+and yet somehow with an effect that was natural and
+pleasing, like that of the song of birds. As the dusk increased,
+I fell more and more under the spell of this artless
+warbling, listening and waiting for some articulate air,
+and still disappointed; and when at last I asked him
+what it was he sang&mdash;&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; cried he, &ldquo;I am just singing!&rdquo;
+Above all, I was taken with a trick he had of unweariedly
+repeating the same note at little intervals; it was not
+so monotonous as you would think, or, at least, not disagreeable;
+and it seemed to breathe a wonderful contentment
+with what is, such as we love to fancy in the attitude
+of trees, or the quiescence of a pool.</p>
+
+<p>Night had fallen dark before we came out upon a
+plateau, and drew up a little after, before a certain lump
+of superior blackness which I could only conjecture to be
+the residencia. Here my guide, getting down from the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page133"></a>133</span>
+cart, hooted and whistled for a long time in vain; until
+at last an old peasant man came towards us from somewhere
+in the surrounding dark, carrying a candle in his
+hand. By the light of this I was able to perceive a great
+arched doorway of a Moorish character: it was closed by
+iron-studded gates, in one of the leaves of which Felipe
+opened a wicket. The peasant carried off the cart to
+some out-building; but my guide and I passed through
+the wicket, which was closed again behind us; and, by
+the glimmer of the candle, passed through a court, up a
+stone stair, along a section of an open gallery, and up
+more stairs again, until we came at last to the door of a
+great and somewhat bare apartment. This room, which I
+understood was to be mine, was pierced by three windows,
+lined with some lustrous wood disposed in panels, and
+carpeted with the skins of many savage animals. A
+bright fire burned in the chimney, and shed abroad a
+changeful flicker; close up to the blaze there was drawn
+a table, laid for supper; and in the far end a bed stood
+ready. I was pleased by these preparations, and said
+so to Felipe; and he, with the same simplicity of disposition
+that I had already remarked in him, warmly
+re-echoed my praises. &ldquo;A fine room,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;a very
+fine room. And fire, too; fire is good; it melts out the
+pleasure in your bones. And the bed,&rdquo; he continued,
+carrying over the candle in that direction&mdash;&ldquo;see what
+fine sheets&mdash;how soft, how smooth, smooth&rdquo;; and he
+passed his hand again and again over their texture, and
+then laid down his head and rubbed his cheeks among
+them with a grossness of content that somehow offended
+me. I took the candle from his hand (for I feared he
+would set the bed on fire) and walked back to the supper-table,
+where, perceiving a measure of wine, I poured out
+a cup and called to him to come and drink of it. He
+started to his feet at once and ran to me with a strong
+expression of hope; but when he saw the wine he visibly
+shuddered.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page134"></a>134</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, no,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;not that; that is for you. I
+hate it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Very well, Seńor,&rdquo; said I; &ldquo;then I will drink to
+your good health, and to the prosperity of your house and
+family. Speaking of which,&rdquo; I added, after I had drunk,
+&ldquo;shall I not have the pleasure of laying my salutations
+in person at the feet of the Seńora, your mother?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>But at these words all the childishness passed out of
+his face, and was succeeded by a look of indescribable
+cunning and secrecy. He backed away from me at the
+same time, as though I were an animal about to leap or
+some dangerous fellow with a weapon, and when he had
+got near the door, glowered at me sullenly with contracted
+pupils. &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said at last, and the next moment was
+gone noiselessly out of the room; and I heard his footing
+die away downstairs as light as rainfall, and silence closed
+over the house.</p>
+
+<p>After I had supped I drew up the table nearer to the
+bed and began to prepare for rest; but in the new position
+of the light, I was struck by a picture on the wall. It
+represented a woman, still young. To judge by her costume
+and the mellow unity which reigned over the canvas,
+she had long been dead; to judge by the vivacity of the
+attitude, the eyes and the features, I might have been
+beholding in a mirror the image of life. Her figure was
+very slim and strong, and of a just proportion; red tresses
+lay like a crown over her brow; her eyes, of a very golden
+brown, held mine with a look; and her face, which was
+perfectly shaped, was yet marred by a cruel, sullen, and
+sensual expression. Something in both face and figure,
+something exquisitely intangible, like the echo of an
+echo, suggested the features and bearing of my guide; and
+I stood a while unpleasantly attracted and wondering at
+the oddity of the resemblance. The common, carnal stock
+of that race, which had been originally designed for such
+high dames as the one now looking on me from the canvas,
+had fallen to baser uses, wearing country clothes, sitting
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page135"></a>135</span>
+on the shaft and holding the reins of a mule cart, to bring
+home a lodger. Perhaps an actual link subsisted; perhaps
+some scruple of the delicate flesh that was once
+clothed upon with the satin and brocade of the dead
+lady, now winced at the rude contact of Felipe&rsquo;s frieze.</p>
+
+<p>The first light of the morning shone full upon the
+portrait, and, as I lay awake, my eyes continued to dwell
+upon it with growing complacency; its beauty crept
+about my heart insidiously, silencing my scruples one after
+another; and while I knew that to love such a woman
+were to sign and seal one&rsquo;s own sentence of degeneration,
+I still knew that, if she were alive, I should love her. Day
+after day the double knowledge of her wickedness and of
+my weakness grew clearer. She came to be the heroine
+of many day-dreams, in which her eyes led on to, and
+sufficiently rewarded, crimes. She cast a dark shadow on
+my fancy, and when I was out in the free air of heaven,
+taking vigorous exercise and healthily renewing the current
+of my blood, it was often a glad thought to me that my
+enchantress was safe in the grave, her wand of beauty
+broken, her lips closed in silence, her philtre spilt. And
+yet I had a half-lingering terror that she might not be
+dead after all, but re-arisen in the body of some descendant.</p>
+
+<p>Felipe served my meals in my own apartment; and
+his resemblance to the portrait haunted me. At times it
+was not; at times, upon some change of attitude or flash
+of expression, it would leap out upon me like a ghost. It
+was above all in his ill tempers that the likeness triumphed.
+He certainly liked me; he was proud of my notice, which
+he sought to engage by many simple and childlike devices;
+he loved to sit close before my fire, talking his broken talk
+or singing his odd, endless, wordless, songs, and sometimes
+drawing his hand over my clothes with an affectionate
+manner of caressing that never failed to cause in me an
+embarrassment of which I was ashamed. But for all that,
+he was capable of flashes of causeless anger and fits of
+sturdy sullenness. At a word of reproof, I have seen him
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page136"></a>136</span>
+upset the dish of which I was about to eat, and this not
+surreptitiously, but with defiance; and similarly at a
+hint of inquisition. I was not unnaturally curious, being
+in a strange place and surrounded by strange people;
+but at the shadow of a question he shrank back, lowering
+and dangerous. Then it was that, for a fraction of a second,
+this rough lad might have been the brother of the lady
+in the frame. But these humours were swift to pass; and
+the resemblance died along with them.</p>
+
+<p>In these first days I saw nothing of any one but Felipe,
+unless the portrait is to be counted; and since the lad
+was plainly of weak mind, and had moments of passion,
+it may be wondered that I bore his dangerous neighbourhood
+with equanimity. As a matter of fact, it was for
+some time irksome; but it happened before long that I
+obtained over him so complete a mastery as set my disquietude
+at rest.</p>
+
+<p>It fell in this way. He was by nature slothful, and
+much of a vagabond, and yet he kept by the house, and
+not only waited upon my wants, but laboured every day
+in the garden or small farm to the south of the residencia.
+Here he would be joined by the peasant whom I had
+seen on the night of my arrival, and who dwelt at the
+far end of the enclosure, about half a mile away, in a
+rude out-house; but it was plain to me that of these two,
+it was Felipe who did most; and though I would sometimes
+see him throw down his spade and go to sleep among
+the very plants he had been digging, his constancy and
+energy were admirable in themselves, and still more so
+since I was well assured they were foreign to his disposition,
+and the fruit of an ungrateful effort. But while
+I admired, I wondered what had called forth in a lad so
+shuttle-witted this enduring sense of duty. How was
+it sustained? I asked myself, and to what length did it
+prevail over his instincts? The priest was possibly his
+inspirer; but the priest came one day to the residencia.
+I saw him both come and go after an interval of close
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page137"></a>137</span>
+upon an hour, from a knoll where I was sketching, and
+all that time Felipe continued to labour undisturbed in
+the garden.</p>
+
+<p>At last, in a very unworthy spirit, I determined to
+debauch the lad from his good resolutions, and, waylaying
+him at the gate, easily persuaded him to join me in a
+ramble. It was a fine day, and the woods to which I led
+him were green and pleasant and sweet-smelling, and
+alive with the hum of insects. Here he discovered himself
+in a fresh character, mounting up to heights of gaiety
+that abashed me, and displaying an energy and grace of
+movement that delighted the eye. He leaped, he ran
+round me in mere glee; he would stop, and look and
+listen, and seem to drink in the world like a cordial; and
+then he would suddenly spring into a tree with one bound,
+and hang and gambol there like one at home. Little as
+he said to me, and that of not much import, I have rarely
+enjoyed more stirring company; the sight of his delight
+was a continual feast; the speed and accuracy of his
+movements pleased me to the heart; and I might have
+been so thoughtlessly unkind as to make a habit of these
+walks, had not chance prepared a very rude conclusion
+to my pleasure. By some swiftness or dexterity the lad
+captured a squirrel in a tree top. He was then some
+way ahead of me, but I saw him drop to the ground and
+crouch there, crying aloud for pleasure like a child. The
+sound stirred my sympathies, it was so fresh and innocent;
+but as I bettered my pace to draw near, the cry of the
+squirrel knocked upon my heart. I have heard and seen
+much of the cruelty of lads, and above all, of peasants;
+but what I now beheld struck me into a passion of anger.
+I thrust the fellow aside, plucked the poor brute out of
+his hands, and with swift mercy killed it. Then I turned
+upon the torturer, spoke to him long out of the heat of
+my indignation, calling him names at which he seemed to
+wither; and at length, pointing towards the residencia,
+bade him begone and leave me, for I chose to walk with
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page138"></a>138</span>
+men, not with vermin. He fell upon his knees, and, the
+words coming to him with more clearness than usual,
+poured out a stream of the most touching supplications,
+begging me in mercy to forgive him, to forget what he had
+done, to look to the future. &ldquo;Oh, I try so hard,&rdquo; he
+said. &ldquo;Oh, commandante, bear with Felipe this once;
+he will never be a brute again!&rdquo; Thereupon, much more
+affected than I cared to show, I suffered myself to be
+persuaded, and at last shook hands with him and made
+it up. But the squirrel, by way of penance, I made him
+bury; speaking of the poor thing&rsquo;s beauty, telling him
+what pains it had suffered, and how base a thing was the
+abuse of strength. &ldquo;See, Felipe,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;you are strong
+indeed; but in my hands you are as helpless as that poor
+thing of the trees. Give me your hand in mine. You
+cannot remove it. Now suppose that I were cruel like
+you, and took a pleasure in pain. I only tighten my hold,
+and see how you suffer.&rdquo; He screamed aloud, his face
+stricken ashy and dotted with needle-points of sweat; and
+when I set him free, he fell to the earth and nursed his
+hand and moaned over it like a baby. But he took the
+lesson in good part; and whether from that, or from what
+I had said to him, or the higher notion he now had of my
+bodily strength, his original affection was changed into a
+dog-like, adoring fidelity.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile I gained rapidly in health. The residencia
+stood on the crown of a stony plateau; on every side the
+mountains hemmed it about; only from the roof, where
+was a bartizan, there might be seen, between two peaks,
+a small segment of plain, blue with extreme distance. The
+air in these altitudes moved freely and largely; great
+clouds congregated there, and were broken up by the
+wind and left in tatters on the hill-tops; a hoarse and
+yet faint rumbling of torrents rose from all round; and
+one could there study all the ruder and more ancient
+characters of nature in something of their pristine force.
+I delighted from the first in the vigorous scenery and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page139"></a>139</span>
+changeful weather; nor less in the antique and dilapidated
+mansion where I dwelt. This was a large oblong, flanked
+at two opposite corners by bastion-like projections, one
+of which commanded the door, while both were loopholed
+for musketry. The lower story was, besides, naked of
+windows, so that the building, if garrisoned, could not
+be carried without artillery. It enclosed an open court
+planted with pomegranate trees. From this a broad flight
+of marble stairs ascended to an open gallery, running all
+round and resting, towards the court, on slender pillars.
+Thence, again, several enclosed stairs led to the upper
+stories of the house, which were thus broken up into
+distinct divisions. The windows, both within and without,
+were closely shuttered; some of the stonework in the
+upper parts had fallen; the roof, in one place, had been
+wrecked in one of the flurries of wind which were common
+in these mountains; and the whole house, in the strong,
+beating sunlight, and standing out above a grove of stunted
+cork-trees, thickly laden and discoloured with dust, looked
+like the sleeping palace of the legend. The court, in particular,
+seemed the very home of slumber. A hoarse cooing
+of doves haunted about the eaves; the winds were excluded,
+but when they blew outside, the mountain dust fell here
+as thick as rain, and veiled the red bloom of the pomegranates;
+shuttered windows and the closed doors of numerous
+cellars, and the vacant arches of the gallery, enclosed it;
+and all day long the sun made broken profiles on the four
+sides, and paraded the shadow of the pillars on the gallery
+floor. At the ground level there was, however, a certain
+pillared recess, which bore the marks of human habitation.
+Though it was open in front upon the court, it was yet
+provided with a chimney, where a wood fire would be always
+prettily blazing; and the tile floor was littered with the
+skins of animals.</p>
+
+<p>It was in this place that I first saw my hostess. She
+had drawn one of the skins forward and sat in the sun,
+leaning against a pillar. It was her dress that struck me
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page140"></a>140</span>
+first of all, for it was rich and brightly coloured, and shone
+out in that dusty courtyard with something of the same
+relief as the flowers of the pomegranates. At a second
+look it was her beauty of person that took hold of me.
+As she sat back&mdash;watching me, I thought, though with invisible
+eyes&mdash;and wearing at the same time an expression of
+almost imbecile good-humour and contentment, she showed
+a perfectness of feature and a quiet nobility of attitude
+that were beyond a statue&rsquo;s. I took off my hat to her in
+passing, and her face puckered with suspicion as swiftly
+and lightly as a pool ruffles in the breeze; but she paid
+no heed to my courtesy. I went forth on my customary
+walk a trifle daunted, her idol-like impassivity haunting
+me; and when I returned, although she was still in much
+the same posture, I was half surprised to see that she had
+moved as far as the next pillar, following the sunshine.
+This time, however, she addressed me with some trivial
+salutation, civilly enough conceived, and uttered in the
+same deep-chested, and yet indistinct and lisping tones,
+that had already baffled the utmost niceness of my hearing
+from her son. I answered rather at a venture; for not
+only did I fail to take her meaning with precision, but
+the sudden disclosure of her eyes disturbed me. They were
+unusually large, the iris golden like Felipe&rsquo;s, but the pupil
+at that moment so distended that they seemed almost
+black; and what affected me was not so much their size
+as (what was perhaps its consequence) the singular insignificance
+of their regard. A look more blankly stupid I
+have never met. My eyes dropped before it even as I
+spoke, and I went on my way upstairs to my own room,
+at once baffled and embarrassed. Yet when I came there
+and saw the face of the portrait, I was again reminded of
+the miracle of family descent. My hostess was, indeed,
+both older and fuller in person; her eyes were of a different
+colour; her face, besides, was not only free from the ill-significance
+that offended and attracted me in the painting;
+it was devoid of either good or bad&mdash;a moral blank
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page141"></a>141</span>
+expressing literally naught. And yet there was a likeness,
+not so much speaking as immanent, not so much in any
+particular feature as upon the whole. It should seem, I
+thought, as if when the master set his signature to that
+grave canvas, he had not only caught the image of one
+smiling and false-eyed woman, but stamped the essential
+quality of a race.</p>
+
+<p>From that day forth, whether I came or went, I was
+sure to find the Seńora seated in the sun against a pillar,
+or stretched on a rug before the fire; only at times she
+would shift her station to the top round of the stone staircase,
+where she lay with the same nonchalance right
+across my path. In all these days, I never knew her to
+display the least spark of energy beyond what she expended
+in brushing and re-brushing her copious copper-coloured
+hair, or in lisping out, in the rich and broken hoarseness
+of her voice, her customary idle salutations to myself.
+These, I think, were her two chief pleasures, beyond that
+of mere quiescence. She seemed always proud of her
+remarks, as though they had been witticisms: and, indeed,
+though they were empty enough, like the conversation of
+many respectable persons, and turned on a very narrow
+range of subjects, they were never meaningless or incoherent;
+nay, they had a certain beauty of their own,
+breathing, as they did, of her entire contentment. Now
+she would speak of the warmth, in which (like her son)
+she greatly delighted; now of the flowers of the pomegranate
+trees, and now of the white doves and long-winged
+swallows that fanned the air of the court. The birds
+excited her. As they raked the eaves in their swift flight,
+or skimmed sidelong past her with a rush of wind, she
+would sometimes stir, and sit a little up, and seem to
+awaken from her doze of satisfaction. But for the rest
+of her days she lay luxuriously folded on herself and sunk
+in sloth and pleasure. Her invincible content at first
+annoyed me, but I came gradually to find repose in the
+spectacle, until at last it grew to be my habit to sit down
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page142"></a>142</span>
+beside her four times in the day, both coming and going,
+and to talk with her sleepily, I scarce knew of what. I had
+come to like her dull, almost animal neighbourhood; her
+beauty and her stupidity soothed and amused me. I
+began to find a kind of transcendental good sense in her
+remarks, and her unfathomable good-nature moved me to
+admiration and envy. The liking was returned; she enjoyed
+my presence half-unconsciously, as a man in deep
+meditation may enjoy the babbling of a brook. I can
+scarce say she brightened when I came, for satisfaction was
+written on her face eternally, as on some foolish statue&rsquo;s;
+but I was made conscious of her pleasure by some more
+intimate communication than the sight. And one day, as
+I sat within reach of her on the marble step, she suddenly
+shot forth one of her hands and patted mine. The thing
+was done, and she was back in her accustomed attitude,
+before my mind had received intelligence of the caress;
+and when I turned to look her in the face I could perceive
+no answerable sentiment. It was plain she attached no
+moment to the act, and I blamed myself for my own more
+uneasy consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>The sight and (if I may so call it) the acquaintance of
+the mother confirmed the view I had already taken of the
+son. The family blood had been impoverished, perhaps
+by long inbreeding, which I knew to be a common error
+among the proud and the exclusive. No decline, indeed,
+was to be traced in the body, which had been handed down
+unimpaired in shapeliness and strength; and the faces of
+to-day were struck as sharply from the mint as the face
+of two centuries ago that smiled upon me from the portrait.
+But the intelligence (that more precious heirloom)
+was degenerate; the treasure of ancestral memory ran
+low; and it had required the potent, plebeian crossing of
+a muleteer or mountain <i>contrabandista</i> to raise what
+approached hebetude in the mother into the active oddity
+of the son. Yet of the two, it was the mother I preferred.
+Of Felipe, vengeful and placable, full of starts and shyings,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page143"></a>143</span>
+inconstant as a hare, I could even conceive as a creature
+possibly noxious. Of the mother I had no thoughts but
+those of kindness. And indeed, as spectators are apt
+ignorantly to take sides, I grew something of a partisan
+in the enmity which I perceived to smoulder between
+them. True, it seemed mostly on the mother&rsquo;s part. She
+would sometimes draw in her breath as he came near, and
+the pupils of her vacant eyes would contract as if with
+horror or fear. Her emotions, such as they were, were
+much upon the surface and readily shared; and this
+latent repulsion occupied my mind, and kept me wondering
+on what grounds it rested, and whether the son
+was certainly in fault.</p>
+
+<p>I had been about ten days in the residencia, when
+there sprang up a high and harsh wind, carrying clouds of
+dust. It came out of malarious lowlands, and over several
+snowy sierras. The nerves of those on whom it blew
+were strung and jangled; their eyes smarted with the
+dust; their legs ached under the burthen of their body;
+and the touch of one hand upon another grew to be odious.
+The wind, besides, came down the gullies of the hills and
+stormed about the house with a great, hollow buzzing
+and whistling that was wearisome to the ear and dismally
+depressing to the mind. It did not so much blow in gusts
+as with the steady sweep of a waterfall, so that there was
+no remission of discomfort while it blew. But higher up
+on the mountain it was probably of a more variable strength,
+with accesses of fury; for there came down at times a
+far-off wailing, infinitely grievous to hear; and at times,
+on one of the high shelves or terraces, there would start
+up, and then disperse, a tower of dust, like the smoke
+of an explosion.</p>
+
+<p>I no sooner awoke in bed than I was conscious of the
+nervous tension and depression of the weather, and the
+effect grew stronger as the day proceeded. It was in vain
+that I resisted; in vain that I set forth upon my customary
+morning&rsquo;s walk; the irrational, unchanging fury
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page144"></a>144</span>
+of the storm had soon beat down my strength and wrecked
+my temper; and I returned to the residencia, glowing
+with dry heat, and foul and gritty with dust. The court
+had a forlorn appearance; now and then a glimmer of
+sun fled over it; now and then the wind swooped down
+upon the pomegranates, and scattered the blossoms, and
+set the window shutter clapping on the wall. In the recess
+the Seńora was pacing to and fro with a flushed countenance
+and bright eyes; I thought, too, she was speaking
+to herself, like one in anger. But when I addressed her
+with my customary salutation, she only replied by a sharp
+gesture and continued her walk. The weather had distempered
+even this impassive creature; and as I went on
+upstairs I was the less ashamed of my own discomposure.</p>
+
+<p>All day the wind continued; and I sat in my room
+and made a feint of reading, or walked up and down, and
+listened to the riot overhead. Night fell, and I had not
+so much as a candle. I began to long for some society,
+and stole down to the court. It was now plunged in the
+blue of the first darkness; but the recess was redly lighted
+by the fire. The wood had been piled high, and was crowned
+by a shock of flames, which the draught of the chimney
+brandished to and fro. In this strong and shaken brightness
+the Seńora continued pacing from wall to wall with
+disconnected gestures, clasping her hands, stretching forth
+her arms, throwing back her head as in appeal to heaven.
+In these disordered movements the beauty and grace of
+the woman showed more clearly; but there was a light in
+her eye that struck on me unpleasantly; and when I had
+looked on a while in silence, and seemingly unobserved,
+I turned tail as I had come, and groped my way back
+again to my own chamber.</p>
+
+<p>By the time Felipe brought my supper and lights, my
+nerve was utterly gone; and, had the lad been such as
+I was used to seeing him, I should have kept him (even
+by force, had that been necessary) to take off the edge
+from my distasteful solitude. But on Felipe, also, the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page145"></a>145</span>
+wind had exercised its influence. He had been feverish
+all day; now that the night had come he was fallen into
+a low and tremulous humour that reacted on my own.
+The sight of his scared face, his starts and pallors and
+sudden hearkenings, unstrung me; and when he dropped
+and broke a dish, I fairly leaped out of my seat.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think we are all mad to-day,&rdquo; said I, affecting to
+laugh.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is the black wind,&rdquo; he replied dolefully. &ldquo;You
+feel as if you must do something, and you don&rsquo;t know
+what it is.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I noted the aptness of the description; but, indeed,
+Felipe had sometimes a strange felicity in rendering into
+words the sensations of the body. &ldquo;And your mother,
+too,&rdquo; said I; &ldquo;she seems to feel this weather much.
+Do you not fear she may be unwell?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He stared at me a little, and then said, &ldquo;No,&rdquo; almost
+defiantly; and the next moment, carrying his hand to
+his brow, cried out lamentably on the wind and the noise
+that made his head go round like a millwheel. &ldquo;Who
+can be well?&rdquo; he cried; and, indeed, I could only echo
+his question, for I was disturbed enough myself.</p>
+
+<p>I went to bed early, wearied with day-long restlessness;
+but the poisonous nature of the wind, and its ungodly and
+unintermittent uproar, would not suffer me to sleep. I
+lay there and tossed, my nerves and senses on the stretch.
+At times I would doze, dream horribly, and wake again;
+and these snatches of oblivion confused me as to time.
+But it must have been late on in the night, when I was
+suddenly startled by an outbreak of pitiable and hateful
+cries. I leaped from my bed, supposing I had dreamed;
+but the cries still continued to fill the house, cries of pain,
+I thought, but certainly of rage also, and so savage and
+discordant that they shocked the heart. It was no illusion;
+some living thing, some lunatic or some wild animal
+was being foully tortured. The thought of Felipe and
+the squirrel flashed into my mind, and I ran to the door;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page146"></a>146</span>
+but it had been locked from the outside, and I might shake
+it as I pleased, I was a fast prisoner. Still the cries continued.
+Now they would dwindle down into a moaning
+that seemed to be articulate, and at these times I made
+sure they must be human; and again they would break
+forth and fill the house with ravings worthy of hell. I
+stood at the door and gave ear to them, till at last they
+died away. Long after that, I still lingered and still continued
+to hear them mingle in fancy with the storming
+of the wind; and when at last I crept to my bed, it
+was with a deadly sickness and a blackness of horror
+on my heart.</p>
+
+<p>It was little wonder if I slept no more. Why had I
+been locked in? What had passed? Who was the author
+of these indescribable and shocking cries? A human
+being? It was inconceivable. A beast? The cries were
+scarce quite bestial; and what animal, short of a lion or
+a tiger, could thus shake the solid walls of the residencia?
+And while I was thus turning over the elements of the
+mystery, it came into my mind that I had not yet set
+eyes upon the daughter of the house. What was more
+probable than that the daughter of the Seńora, and the
+sister of Felipe, should be herself insane? Or, what more
+likely than that these ignorant and half-witted people
+should seek to manage an afflicted kinswoman by violence?
+Here was a solution; and yet when I called to mind the
+cries (which I never did without a shuddering chill) it
+seemed altogether insufficient: not even cruelty could
+wring such cries from madness. But of one thing I was
+sure: I could not live in a house where such a thing was
+half conceivable, and not probe the matter home and, if
+necessary, interfere.</p>
+
+<p>The next day came, the wind had blown itself out,
+and there was nothing to remind me of the business of
+the night. Felipe came to my bedside with obvious
+cheerfulness; as I passed through the court the Seńora
+was sunning herself with her accustomed immobility;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page147"></a>147</span>
+and when I issued from the gateway I found the whole
+face of nature austerely smiling, the heavens of a cold
+blue, and sown with great cloud islands, and the mountain-sides
+mapped forth into provinces of light and shadow.
+A short walk restored me to myself, and renewed within
+me the resolve to plumb this mystery; and when, from
+the vantage of my knoll, I had seen Felipe pass forth to
+his labours in the garden, I returned at once to the residencia
+to put my design in practice. The Seńora appeared
+plunged in slumber; I stood a while and marked
+her, but she did not stir; even if my design were indiscreet,
+I had little to fear from such a guardian; and
+turning away, I mounted to the gallery and began my
+exploration of the house.</p>
+
+<p>All morning I went from one door to another, and
+entered spacious and faded chambers, some rudely shuttered,
+some receiving their full charge of daylight, all
+empty and unhomely. It was a rich house, on which
+Time had breathed its tarnish and dust had scattered
+disillusion. The spider swung there; the bloated tarantula
+scampered on the cornices; ants had their crowded
+highways on the floor of halls of audience; the big and
+foul fly, that lives on carrion and is often the messenger
+of death, had set up his nest in the rotten woodwork, and
+buzzed heavily about the rooms. Here and there a stool
+or two, a couch, a bed, or a great carved chair remained
+behind, like islets on the bare floors, to testify of man&rsquo;s
+bygone habitation; and everywhere the walls were set
+with the portraits of the dead. I could judge, by these
+decaying effigies, in the house of what a great and what
+a handsome race I was then wandering. Many of the
+men wore orders on their breasts and had the port of
+noble offices; the women were all richly attired; the
+canvases, most of them, by famous hands. But it was
+not so much these evidences of greatness that took hold
+upon my mind, even contrasted, as they were, with the
+present depopulation and decay of that great house. It
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page148"></a>148</span>
+was rather the parable of family life that I read in this
+succession of fair faces and shapely bodies. Never before
+had I so realised the miracle of the continued race, the
+creation and re-creation, the weaving and changing and
+handing down of fleshly elements. That a child should
+be born of its mother, that it should grow and clothe
+itself (we know not how) with humanity, and put on
+inherited looks, and turn its head with the manner of one
+ascendant, and offer its hand with the gesture of another,
+are wonders dulled for us by repetition. But in the
+singular unity of look, in the common features and common
+bearing, of all these painted generations on the walls
+of the residencia, the miracle started out and looked
+me in the face. And an ancient mirror falling opportunely
+in my way, I stood and read my own features a
+long while, tracing out on either hand the filaments of
+descent and the bonds that knit me with my family.</p>
+
+<p>At last, in the course of these investigations, I opened
+the door of a chamber that bore the marks of habitation.
+It was of large proportions and faced to the north, where
+the mountains were most wildly figured. The embers of
+a fire smouldered and smoked upon the hearth, to which
+a chair had been drawn close. And yet the aspect of
+the chamber was ascetic to the degree of sternness; the
+chair was uncushioned; the floor and walls were naked;
+and beyond the books which lay here and there in some
+confusion, there was no instrument of either work or
+pleasure. The sight of books in the house of such a
+family exceedingly amazed me; and I began with a
+great hurry, and in momentary fear of interruption, to
+go from one to another and hastily inspect their character.
+They were of all sorts, devotional, historical, and scientific,
+but mostly of a great age and in the Latin tongue. Some
+I could see to bear the marks of constant study; others
+had been torn across and tossed aside as if in petulance
+or disapproval. Lastly, as I cruised about that empty
+chamber, I espied some papers written upon with pencil
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page149"></a>149</span>
+on a table near the window. An unthinking curiosity
+led me to take one up. It bore a copy of verses, very
+roughly metred in the original Spanish, and which I may
+render somewhat thus&mdash;</p>
+
+<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td>
+<div class="poemr">
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pleasure approached with pain and shame,</p>
+<p class="i05">Grief with a wreath of lilies came.</p>
+<p class="i05">Pleasure showed the lovely sun;</p>
+<p class="i05">Jesu dear, how sweet it shone!</p>
+<p class="i05">Grief with her worn hand pointed on,</p>
+             <p class="i6">Jesu dear, to Thee!&rdquo;</p>
+
+</div>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>Shame and confusion at once fell on me; and, laying
+down the paper, I beat an immediate retreat from
+the apartment. Neither Felipe nor his mother could
+have read the books nor written these rough but feeling
+verses. It was plain I had stumbled with sacrilegious
+feet into the room of the daughter of the house. God
+knows, my own heart most sharply punished me for my
+indiscretion. The thought that I had thus secretly pushed
+my way into the confidence of a girl so strangely situated,
+and the fear that she might somehow come to hear of
+it, oppressed me like guilt. I blamed myself besides for
+my suspicions of the night before; wondered that I
+should ever have attributed those shocking cries to one
+of whom I now conceived as of a saint, spectral of mien,
+wasted with maceration, bound up in the practices of a
+mechanical devotion, and dwelling in a great isolation
+of soul with her incongruous relatives; and as I leaned
+on the balustrade of the gallery and looked down into the
+bright close of pomegranates and at the gaily dressed and
+somnolent woman, who just then stretched herself and
+delicately licked her lips as in the very sensuality of sloth,
+my mind swiftly compared the scene with the cold
+chamber looking northward on the mountains, where
+the daughter dwelt.</p>
+
+<p>That same afternoon, as I sat upon my knoll, I saw
+the Padre enter the gates of the residencia. The revelation
+of the daughter&rsquo;s character had struck home to my
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page150"></a>150</span>
+fancy, and almost blotted out the horrors of the night
+before; but at sight of this worthy man the memory
+revived. I descended, then, from the knoll, and making
+a circuit among the woods, posted myself by the wayside
+to await his passage. As soon as he appeared I stepped
+forth and introduced myself as the lodger of the residencia.
+He had a very strong, honest countenance, on
+which it was easy to read the mingled emotions with
+which he regarded me, as a foreigner, a heretic, and yet
+one who had been wounded for the good cause. Of the
+family at the residencia he spoke with reserve, and yet
+with respect. I mentioned that I had not yet seen the
+daughter, whereupon he remarked that that was as it
+should be, and looked at me a little askance. Lastly, I
+plucked up courage to refer to the cries that had disturbed
+me in the night. He heard me out in silence,
+and then stopped and partly turned about, as though to
+mark beyond doubt that he was dismissing me.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you take tobacco-powder?&rdquo; said he, offering
+his snuff-box; and then, when I had refused, &ldquo;I am an
+old man,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;and I may be allowed to remind
+you that you are a guest.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have, then, your authority,&rdquo; I returned, firmly
+enough, although I flushed at the implied reproof, &ldquo;to
+let things take their course, and not to interfere?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He said &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; and with a somewhat uneasy salute
+turned and left me where I was. But he had done two
+things: he had set my conscience at rest, and he had
+awakened my delicacy. I made a great effort, once more
+dismissed the recollections of the night, and fell once
+more to brooding on my saintly poetess. At the same
+time, I could not quite forget that I had been locked in,
+and that night when Felipe brought me my supper I
+attacked him warily on both points of interest.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I never see your sister,&rdquo; said I casually.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, no,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;she is a good, good girl,&rdquo; and
+his mind instantly veered to something else.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page151"></a>151</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Your sister is pious, I suppose?&rdquo; I asked in the
+next pause.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; he cried, joining his hands with extreme
+fervour, &ldquo;a saint; it is she that keeps me up.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You are very fortunate,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;for the most of us,
+I am afraid, and myself among the number, are better
+at going down.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Seńor,&rdquo; said Felipe earnestly, &ldquo;I would not say
+that. You should not tempt your angel. If one goes
+down, where is he to stop?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, Felipe,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;I had no guess you were a
+preacher, and I may say a good one; but I suppose that
+is your sister&rsquo;s doing?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He nodded at me with round eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, then,&rdquo; I continued, &ldquo;she has doubtless reproved
+you for your sin of cruelty?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Twelve times!&rdquo; he cried; for this was the phrase
+by which the odd creature expressed the sense of frequency.
+&ldquo;And I told her you had done so&mdash;I remembered
+that,&rdquo; he added proudly&mdash;&ldquo;and she was
+pleased.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then, Felipe,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;what were those cries that
+I heard last night? for surely they were cries of some
+creature in suffering.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The wind,&rdquo; returned Felipe, looking in the fire.</p>
+
+<p>I took his hand in mine, at which, thinking it to be
+a caress, he smiled with a brightness of pleasure that
+came near disarming my resolve. But I trod the weakness
+down. &ldquo;The wind,&rdquo; I repeated; &ldquo;and yet I think
+it was this hand,&rdquo; holding it up, &ldquo;that had first locked
+me in.&rdquo; The lad shook visibly, but answered never a
+word. &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;I am a stranger and a guest.
+It is not my part either to meddle or to judge in your
+affairs; in these you shall take your sister&rsquo;s counsel,
+which I cannot doubt to be excellent. But in so far as
+concerns my own I will be no man&rsquo;s prisoner, and I
+demand that key.&rdquo; Half an hour later my door was
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page152"></a>152</span>
+suddenly thrown open, and the key tossed ringing on the
+floor.</p>
+
+<p>A day or two after I came in from a walk a little
+before the point of noon. The Senőra was lying lapped
+in slumber on the threshold of the recess; the pigeons
+dozed below the eaves like snowdrifts; the house was
+under a deep spell of noontide quiet; and only a wandering
+and gentle wind from the mountain stole round
+the galleries, rustled among the pomegranates, and pleasantly
+stirred the shadows. Something in the stillness
+moved me to imitation, and I went very lightly across
+the court and up the marble staircase. My foot was on
+the topmost round, when a door opened, and I found
+myself face to face with Olalla. Surprise transfixed me;
+her loveliness struck to my heart; she glowed in the
+deep shadow of the gallery, a gem of colour; her eyes
+took hold upon mine and clung there, and bound us
+together like the joining of hands; and the moments
+we thus stood face to face, drinking each other in, were
+sacramental and the wedding of souls. I know not how
+long it was before I awoke out of a deep trance, and,
+hastily bowing, passed on into the upper stair. She
+did not move, but followed me with her great, thirsting
+eyes; and as I passed out of sight it seemed to me as
+if she paled and faded.</p>
+
+<p>In my own room, I opened the window and looked
+out, and could not think what change had come upon that
+austere field of mountains that it should thus sing and
+shine under the lofty heaven. I had seen her&mdash;Olalla!
+And the stone crags answered, Olalla! and the dumb,
+unfathomable azure answered, Olalla! The pale saint
+of my dreams had vanished for ever; and in her place I
+beheld this maiden on whom God had lavished the richest
+colours and the most exuberant energies of life, whom He
+had made active as a deer, slender as a reed, and in whose
+great eyes He had lighted the torches of the soul. The
+thrill of her young life, strung like a wild animal&rsquo;s, had
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page153"></a>153</span>
+entered into me; the force of soul that had looked out
+from her eyes and conquered mine, mantled about my
+heart and sprang to my lips in singing. She passed
+through my veins: she was one with me.</p>
+
+<p>I will not say that this enthusiasm declined; rather
+my soul held out in its ecstasy as in a strong castle, and
+was there besieged by cold and sorrowful considerations.
+I could not doubt but that I loved her at first sight, and
+already with a quivering ardour that was strange to my
+experience. What then was to follow? She was the
+child of an afflicted house, the Seńora&rsquo;s daughter, the
+sister of Felipe; she bore it even in her beauty. She
+had the lightness and swiftness of the one, swift as an
+arrow, light as dew; like the other, she shone on the pale
+background of the world with the brilliancy of flowers.
+I could not call by the name of brother that half-witted
+lad, nor by the name of mother that immovable and
+lovely thing of flesh, whose silly eyes and perpetual simper
+now recurred to my mind like something hateful. And
+if I could not marry, what then? She was helplessly unprotected;
+her eyes, in that single and long glance, which
+had been all our intercourse, had confessed a weakness
+equal to my own; but in my heart I knew her for the
+student of the cold northern chamber, and the writer of
+the sorrowful lines; and this was a knowledge to disarm
+a brute. To flee was more than I could find courage for;
+but I registered a vow of unsleeping circumspection.</p>
+
+<p>As I turned from the window, my eyes alighted on
+the portrait. It had fallen dead, like a candle after sunrise;
+it followed me with eyes of paint. I knew it to be
+like, and marvelled at the tenacity of type in that declining
+race; but the likeness was swallowed up in difference.
+I remembered how it had seemed to me a thing
+unapproachable in the life, a creature rather of the
+painter&rsquo;s craft than of the modesty of nature, and I
+marvelled at the thought, and exulted in the image of
+Olalla. Beauty I had seen before, and not been charmed,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page154"></a>154</span>
+and I had been often drawn to women, who were not
+beautiful except to me; but in Olalla all that I desired
+and had not dared to imagine was united.</p>
+
+<p>I did not see her the next day, and my heart ached
+and my eyes longed for her, as men long for morning.
+But the day after, when I returned, about my usual
+hour, she was once more on the gallery, and our looks
+once more met and embraced. I would have spoken,
+I would have drawn near to her; but strongly as she
+plucked at my heart, drawing me like a magnet, something
+yet more imperious withheld me; and I could only
+bow and pass by; and she, leaving my salutation unanswered,
+only followed me with her noble eyes.</p>
+
+<p>I had now her image by rote, and as I conned the
+traits in memory it seemed as if I read her very heart.
+She was dressed with something of her mother&rsquo;s coquetry
+and love of positive colour. Her robe, which I knew she
+must have made with her own hands, clung about her
+with a cunning grace. After the fashion of that country,
+besides, her bodice stood open in the middle, in a long
+slit, and here, in spite of the poverty of the house, a gold
+coin, hanging by a ribbon, lay on her brown bosom.
+These were proofs, had any been needed, of her inborn
+delight in life and her own loveliness. On the other
+hand, in her eyes that hung upon mine, I could read depth
+beyond depth of passion and sadness, lights of poetry
+and hope, blacknesses of despair, and thoughts that were
+above the earth. It was a lovely body, but the inmate,
+the soul, was more than worthy of that lodging. Should
+I leave this incomparable flower to wither unseen on
+these rough mountains? Should I despise the great gift
+offered me in the eloquent silence of her eyes? Here
+was a soul immured; should I not burst its prison? All
+side considerations fell off from me; were she the child
+of Herod I swore I should make her mine; and that very
+evening I set myself, with a mingled sense of treachery
+and disgrace, to captivate the brother. Perhaps I read
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page155"></a>155</span>
+him with more favourable eyes, perhaps the thought of
+his sister always summoned up the better qualities of
+that imperfect soul; but he had never seemed to me so
+amiable, and his very likeness to Olalla, while it annoyed,
+yet softened me.</p>
+
+<p>A third day passed in vain&mdash;an empty desert of hours.
+I would not lose a chance, and loitered all afternoon in
+the court, where (to give myself a countenance) I spoke
+more than usual with the Seńora. God knows it was
+with a most tender and sincere interest that I now studied
+her; and even as for Felipe, so now for the mother, I
+was conscious of a growing warmth of toleration. And
+yet I wondered. Even while I spoke with her, she would
+doze off into a little sleep, and presently awake again
+without embarrassment; and this composure staggered
+me. And again, as I marked her make infinitesimal
+changes in her posture, savouring and lingering on the
+bodily pleasure of the movement, I was driven to wonder
+at this depth of passive sensuality. She lived in her body;
+and her consciousness was all sunk into and disseminated
+through her members, where it luxuriously dwelt. Lastly,
+I could not grow accustomed to her eyes. Each time she
+turned on me those great beautiful and meaningless orbs,
+wide open to the day, but closed against human inquiry&mdash;each
+time I had occasion to observe the lively changes of
+her pupils which expanded and contracted in a breath&mdash;I
+know not what it was came over me, I can find no name
+for the mingled feeling of disappointment, annoyance, and
+distaste that jarred along my nerves. I tried her on a
+variety of subjects, equally in vain; and at last led the
+talk to her daughter. But even there she proved indifferent;
+said she was pretty, which (as with children)
+was her highest word of commendation, but was plainly
+incapable of any higher thought; and when I remarked
+that Olalla seemed silent, merely yawned in my face and
+replied that speech was of no great use when you had
+nothing to say. &ldquo;People speak much, very much,&rdquo; she
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page156"></a>156</span>
+added, looking at me with expanded pupils; and then
+again yawned, and again showed me a mouth that was as
+dainty as a toy. This time I took the hint, and, leaving
+her to her repose, went up into my own chamber to sit
+by the open window, looking on the hills and not beholding
+them, sunk in lustrous and deep dreams, and hearkening
+in fancy to the note of a voice that I had never heard.</p>
+
+<p>I awoke on the fifth morning with a brightness of
+anticipation that seemed to challenge fate. I was sure
+of myself, light of heart and foot, and resolved to put my
+love incontinently to the touch of knowledge. It should
+lie no longer under the bonds of silence, a dumb thing,
+living by the eye only, like the love of beasts; but should
+now put on the spirit, and enter upon the joys of the
+complete human intimacy. I thought of it with wild
+hopes, like a voyager to El Dorado; into that unknown
+and lovely country of her soul, I no longer trembled to
+adventure. Yet when I did indeed encounter her, the
+same force of passion descended on me and at once submerged
+my mind; speech seemed to drop away from me
+like a childish habit; and I but drew near to her as the
+giddy man draws near to the margin of a gulf. She
+drew back from me a little as I came; but her eyes did
+not waver from mine, and these lured me forward. At
+last, when I was already within reach of her, I stopped.
+Words were denied me; if I advanced I could but clasp
+her to my heart in silence; and all that was sane in me,
+all that was still unconquered, revolted against the thought
+of such an accost. So we stood for a second, all our life
+in our eyes, exchanging salvos of attraction and yet each
+resisting; and then, with a great effort of the will, and
+conscious at the same time of a sudden bitterness of disappointment,
+I turned and went away in the same silence.</p>
+
+<p>What power lay upon me that I could not speak?
+And she, why was she also silent? Why did she draw
+away before me dumbly, with fascinated eyes? Was this
+love? or was it a mere brute attraction, mindless and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page157"></a>157</span>
+inevitable, like that of the magnet for the steel? We
+had never spoken, we were wholly strangers; and yet an
+influence, strong as the grasp of a giant, swept us silently
+together. On my side, it filled me with impatience; and
+yet I was sure that she was worthy; I had seen her
+books, read her verses, and thus, in a sense, divined the
+soul of my mistress. But on her side, it struck me almost
+cold. Of me, she knew nothing but my bodily favour;
+she was drawn to me as stones fall to the earth; the laws
+that rule the earth conducted her, unconsenting, to my
+arms; and I drew back at the thought of such a bridal,
+and began to be jealous for myself. It was not thus that
+I desired to be loved. And then I began to fall into
+a great pity for the girl herself. I thought how sharp
+must be her mortification, that she, the student, the
+recluse, Felipe&rsquo;s saintly monitress, should have thus confessed
+an overweening weakness for a man with whom she
+had never exchanged a word. And at the coming of
+pity, all other thoughts were swallowed up; and I longed
+only to find and console and reassure her; to tell her
+how wholly her love was returned on my side, and how
+her choice, even if blindly made, was not unworthy.</p>
+
+<p>The next day it was glorious weather; depth upon
+depth of blue over-canopied the mountains; the sun
+shone wide; and the wind in the trees and the many
+fallen torrents in the mountains filled the air with delicate
+and haunting music. Yet I was prostrated with sadness.
+My heart wept for the sight of Olalla, as a child weeps
+for its mother. I sat down on a boulder on the verge
+of the low cliffs that bound the plateau to the north.
+Thence I looked down into the wooded valley of a stream,
+where no foot came. In the mood I was in, it was even
+touching to behold the place untenanted; it lacked
+Olalla; and I thought of the delight and glory of a life
+passed wholly with her in that strong air, and among
+these rugged and lovely surroundings, at first with a
+whimpering sentiment, and then again with such a fiery
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page158"></a>158</span>
+joy that I seemed to grow in strength and stature, like a
+Samson.</p>
+
+<p>And then suddenly I was aware of Olalla drawing
+near. She appeared out of a grove of cork-trees, and
+came straight towards me; and I stood up and waited.
+She seemed in her walking a creature of such life and fire
+and lightness as amazed me; yet she came quietly and
+slowly. Her energy was in the slowness; but for inimitable
+strength, I felt she would have run, she would have
+flown to me. Still, as she approached, she kept her eyes
+lowered to the ground; and when she had drawn quite
+near, it was without one glance that she addressed me.
+At the first note of her voice I started. It was for this
+I had been waiting; this was the last test of my love.
+And lo, her enunciation was precise and clear, not lisping
+and incomplete like that of her family; and the voice,
+though deeper than usual with women, was still both
+youthful and womanly. She spoke in a rich chord;
+golden contralto strains mingled with hoarseness, as the
+red threads were mingled with the brown among her
+tresses. It was not only a voice that spoke to my heart
+directly; but it spoke to me of her. And yet her words
+immediately plunged me back upon despair.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You will go away,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;to-day.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Her example broke the bonds of my speech; I felt
+as lightened of a weight, or as if a spell had been dissolved.
+I know not in what words I answered; but,
+standing before her on the cliffs, I poured out the whole
+ardour of my love, telling her that I lived upon the thought
+of her, slept only to dream of her loveliness, and would
+gladly forswear my country, my language, and my friends,
+to live for ever by her side. And then, strongly commanding
+myself, I changed the note; I reassured, I comforted
+her; I told her I had divined in her a pious and
+heroic spirit, with which I was worthy to sympathise,
+and which I longed to share and lighten. &ldquo;Nature,&rdquo; I
+told her, &ldquo;was the voice of God, which men disobey at
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page159"></a>159</span>
+peril; and if we were thus dumbly drawn together, ay,
+even as by a miracle of love, it must imply a divine fitness
+in our souls; we must be made,&rdquo; I said&mdash;&ldquo;made
+for one another. We should be mad rebels,&rdquo; I cried out&mdash;&ldquo;mad
+rebels against God, not to obey this instinct.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head. &ldquo;You will go to-day,&rdquo; she repeated,
+and then with a gesture, and in a sudden, sharp
+note&mdash;&ldquo;no, not to-day,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;to-morrow!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>But at this sign of relenting, power came in upon me
+in a tide. I stretched out my arms and called upon her
+name; and she leaped to me and clung to me. The
+hills rocked about us, the earth quailed; a shock as of a
+blow went through me and left me blind and dizzy. And
+the next moment she had thrust me back, broken rudely
+from my arms, and fled with the speed of a deer among
+the cork-trees.</p>
+
+<p>I stood and shouted to the mountains; I turned and
+went back towards the residencia, walking upon air. She
+sent me away, and yet I had but to call upon her name
+and she came to me. These were but the weaknesses of
+girls, from which even she, the strangest of her sex, was
+not exempted. Go? Not I, Olalla&mdash;Oh, not I, Olalla,
+my Olalla! A bird sang near by; and in that season
+birds were rare. It bade me be of good cheer. And once
+more the whole countenance of nature, from the ponderous
+and stable mountains down to the lightest leaf and
+the smallest darting fly in the shadow of the groves,
+began to stir before me and to put on the lineaments of
+life and wear a face of awful joy. The sunshine struck
+upon the hills, strong as a hammer on the anvil, and the
+hills shook; the earth, under that vigorous insolation,
+yielded up heady scents; the woods smouldered in the
+blaze. I felt the thrill of travail and delight run through
+the earth. Something elemental, something rude, violent,
+and savage, in the love that sang in my heart, was
+like a key to nature&rsquo;s secrets; and the very stones that
+rattled under my feet appeared alive and friendly. Olalla!
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page160"></a>160</span>
+Her touch had quickened, and renewed, and strung me
+up to the old pitch of concert with the rugged earth, to a
+swelling of the soul that men learn to forget in their polite
+assemblies. Love burned in me like rage; tenderness
+waxed fierce; I hated, I adored, I pitied, I revered her
+with ecstasy. She seemed the link that bound me in
+with dead things on the one hand, and with our pure
+and pitying God upon the other: a thing brutal and
+divine, and akin at once to the innocence and to the unbridled
+forces of the earth.</p>
+
+<p>My head thus reeling, I came into the courtyard of
+the residencia, and the sight of the mother struck me like
+a revelation. She sat there, all sloth and contentment,
+blinking under the strong sunshine, branded with a passive
+enjoyment, a creature set quite apart, before whom
+my ardour fell away like a thing ashamed. I stopped a
+moment, and, commanding such shaken tones as I was
+able, said a word or two. She looked at me with her
+unfathomable kindness; her voice in reply sounded
+vaguely out of the realm of peace in which she slumbered,
+and there fell on my mind, for the first time, a sense of
+respect for one so uniformly innocent and happy, and I
+passed on in a kind of wonder at myself that I should be
+so much disquieted.</p>
+
+<p>On my table there lay a piece of the same yellow paper
+I had seen in the north room; it was written on with
+pencil in the same hand, Olalla&rsquo;s hand, and I picked it
+up with a sudden sinking of alarm, and read, &ldquo;If you
+have any kindness for Olalla, if you have any chivalry for
+a creature sorely wrought, go from here to-day; in pity,
+in honour, for the sake of Him who died, I supplicate
+that you shall go.&rdquo; I looked at this a while in mere
+stupidity, then I began to awaken to a weariness and
+horror of life; the sunshine darkened outside on the bare
+hills, and I began to shake like a man in terror. The
+vacancy thus suddenly opened in my life unmanned me
+like a physical void. It was not my heart, it was not
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page161"></a>161</span>
+my happiness, it was life itself that was involved. I
+could not lose her. I said so, and stood repeating it.
+And then, like one in a dream, I moved to the window,
+put forth my hand to open the casement, and thrust it
+through the pane. The blood spurted from my wrist;
+and with an instantaneous quietude and command of
+myself, I pressed my thumb on the little leaping fountain,
+and reflected what to do. In that empty room there was
+nothing to my purpose; I felt, besides, that I required
+assistance. There shot into my mind a hope that Olalla
+herself might be my helper, and I turned and went downstairs,
+still keeping my thumb upon the wound.</p>
+
+<p>There was no sign of either Olalla or Felipe, and I
+addressed myself to the recess, whither the Seńora had
+now drawn quite back and sat dozing close before the
+fire, for no degree of heat appeared too much for her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pardon me,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;if I disturb you, but I must
+apply to you for help.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She looked up sleepily and asked me what it was,
+and with the very words I thought she drew in her breath
+with a widening of the nostrils and seemed to come suddenly
+and fully alive.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have cut myself,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;and rather badly.
+See!&rdquo; And I held out my two hands, from which the
+blood was oozing and dripping.</p>
+
+<p>Her great eyes opened wide, the pupils shrank into
+points; a veil seemed to fall from her face, and leave it
+sharply expressive and yet inscrutable. And as I still
+stood, marvelling a little at her disturbance, she came
+swiftly up to me, and stooped and caught me by the hand;
+and the next moment my hand was at her mouth, and
+she had bitten me to the bone. The pang of the bite,
+the sudden spurting of blood, and the monstrous horror
+of the act, flashed through me all in one, and I beat her
+back; and she sprang at me again and again, with
+bestial cries, cries that I recognised, such cries as had
+awakened me on the night of the high wind. Her strength
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page162"></a>162</span>
+was like that of madness; mine was rapidly ebbing with
+the loss of blood; my mind besides was whirling with the
+abhorrent strangeness of the onslaught, and I was already
+forced against the wall, when Olalla ran betwixt us, and
+Felipe, following at a bound, pinned down his mother on
+the floor.</p>
+
+<p>A trance-like weakness fell upon me; I saw, heard,
+and felt, but I was incapable of movement. I heard
+the struggle roll to and fro upon the floor, the yells of the
+catamount ringing up to heaven as she strove to reach
+me. I felt Olalla clasp me in her arms, her hair falling
+on my face, and, with the strength of a man, raise and
+half drag, half carry me upstairs into my own room,
+where she cast me down upon the bed. Then I saw her
+hasten to the door and lock it, and stand an instant
+listening to the savage cries that shook the residencia.
+And then, swift and light as a thought, she was again
+beside me, binding up my hand, laying it in her bosom,
+moaning and mourning over it, with dove-like sounds.
+They were not words that came to her, they were sounds
+more beautiful than speech, infinitely touching, infinitely
+tender; and yet as I lay there, a thought stung to my
+heart, a thought wounded me like a sword, a thought,
+like a worm in a flower, profaned the holiness of my love.
+Yes, they were beautiful sounds, and they were inspired
+by human tenderness; but was their beauty human?</p>
+
+<p>All day I lay there. For a long time the cries of that
+nameless female thing, as she struggled with her half-witted
+whelp, resounded through the house, and pierced
+me with despairing sorrow and disgust. They were the
+death-cry of my love; my love was murdered; it was
+not only dead, but an offence to me; and yet, think as I
+pleased, feel as I must, it still swelled within me like a
+storm of sweetness, and my heart melted at her looks and
+touch. This horror that had sprung out, this doubt upon
+Olalla, this savage and bestial strain that ran not only
+through the whole behaviour of her family, but found a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page163"></a>163</span>
+place in the very foundations and story of our love&mdash;though
+it appalled, though it shocked and sickened
+me, was yet not of power to break the knot of my
+infatuation.</p>
+
+<p>When the cries had ceased, there came a scraping at
+the door, by which I knew Felipe was without; and
+Olalla went and spoke to him&mdash;I know not what. With
+that exception, she stayed close beside me, now kneeling
+by my bed and fervently praying, now sitting with her
+eyes upon mine. So then, for these six hours I drank
+in her beauty, and silently perused the story in her face.
+I saw the golden coin hover on her breaths; I saw her
+eyes darken and brighten, and still speak no language but
+that of an unfathomable kindness; I saw the faultless
+face, and, through the robe, the lines of the faultless body.
+Night came at last, and in the growing darkness of the
+chamber the sight of her slowly melted; but even then
+the touch of her smooth hand lingered in mine and talked
+with me. To lie thus in deadly weakness and drink in
+the traits of the beloved, is to re-awake to love from whatever
+shock of disillusion. I reasoned with myself; and
+I shut my eyes on horrors, and again I was very bold to
+accept the worst. What mattered it, if that imperious
+sentiment survived; if her eyes still beckoned and attached
+me; if now, even as before, every fibre of my dull body
+yearned and turned to her? Late on in the night some
+strength revived in me, and I spoke:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Olalla,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;nothing matters; I ask nothing; I
+am content; I love you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She knelt down a while and prayed, and I devoutly
+respected her devotions. The moon had begun to shine
+in upon one side of each of the three windows, and make
+a misty clearness in the room, by which I saw her indistinctly.
+When she re-arose she made the sign of the cross.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is for me to speak,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;and for you to
+listen. I know; you can but guess. I prayed, how I
+prayed for you to leave this place. I begged it of you,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page164"></a>164</span>
+and I know you would have granted me even this; or if
+not, oh let me think so!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I love you,&rdquo; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And yet you have lived in the world,&rdquo; she said;
+after a pause, &ldquo;you are a man and wise; and I am but a
+child. Forgive me, if I seem to teach, who am as ignorant
+as the trees of the mountain; but those who learn much
+do but skim the face of knowledge; they seize the laws,
+they conceive the dignity of the design&mdash;the horror of the
+living fact fades from their memory. It is we who sit at
+home with evil who remember, I think, and are warned
+and pity. Go, rather, go now, and keep me in mind. So
+I shall have a life in the cherished places of your memory;
+a life as much my own as that which I lead in this body.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I love you,&rdquo; I said once more; and reaching out my
+weak hand, took hers, and carried it to my lips, and kissed
+it. Nor did she resist, but winced a little; and I could
+see her look upon me with a frown that was not unkindly,
+only sad and baffled. And then it seemed she made a
+call upon her resolution; plucked my hand towards her,
+herself at the same time leaning somewhat forward, and
+laid it on the beating of her heart. &ldquo;There,&rdquo; she cried,
+&ldquo;you feel the very footfall of my life. It only moves for
+you; it is yours. But is it even mine? It is mine indeed
+to offer you, as I might take the coin from my neck, as I
+might break a live branch from a tree, and give it you.
+And yet not mine! I dwell, or I think I dwell (if I exist
+at all), somewhere apart, an impotent prisoner, and carried
+about and deafened by a mob that I disown. This capsule,
+such as throbs against the sides of animals, knows
+you at a touch for its master; ay, it loves you! But my
+soul, does my soul? I think not; I know not, fearing
+to ask. Yet when you spoke to me, your words were of
+the soul; it is of the soul that you ask&mdash;it is only from
+the soul that you would take me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Olalla,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;the soul and the body are one, and
+mostly so in love. What the body chooses, the soul loves;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page165"></a>165</span>
+where the body clings, the soul cleaves; body for body,
+soul to soul, they come together at God&rsquo;s signal; and the
+lower part (if we can call aught low) is only the footstool
+and foundation of the highest.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Have you,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;seen the portraits in the house
+of my fathers? Have you looked at my mother or at
+Felipe? Have your eyes never rested on that picture that
+hangs by your bed? She who sat for it died ages ago;
+and she did evil in her life. But, look again: there is
+my hand to the least line, there are my eyes and my hair.
+What is mine, then, and what am I? If not a curve in
+this poor body of mine (which you love, and for the sake
+of which you dotingly dream that you love me), not a
+gesture that I can frame, not a tone of my voice, not any
+look from my eyes, no, not even now when I speak to
+him I love, but has belonged to others? Others, ages
+dead, have wooed other men with my eyes; other men
+have heard the pleading of the same voice that now sounds
+in your ears. The hands of the dead are in my bosom;
+they move me, they pluck me, they guide me; I am a
+puppet at their command; and I but re-inform features
+and attributes that have long been laid aside from evil in
+the quiet of the grave. Is it me you love, friend? or the
+race that made me? The girl who does not know and
+cannot answer for the least portion of herself? or the
+stream of which she is a transitory eddy, the tree of which
+she is the passing fruit? The race exists; it is old, it
+is ever young, it carries its eternal destiny in its bosom;
+upon it, like waves upon the sea, individual succeeds to
+individual, mocked with a semblance of self-control, but
+they are nothing. We speak of the soul, but the soul is
+in the race.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You fret against the common law,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;You
+rebel against the voice of God, which He has made so
+winning to convince, so imperious to command. Hear it,
+and how it speaks between us! Your hand clings to mine,
+your heart leaps at my touch, the unknown elements of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page166"></a>166</span>
+which we are compounded awake and run together at a
+look; the clay of the earth remembers its independent
+life and yearns to join us; we are drawn together as the
+stars are turned about in space, or as the tides ebb and
+flow; by things older and greater than we ourselves.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Alas!&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;what can I say to you? My
+fathers, eight hundred years ago, ruled all this province:
+they were wise, great, cunning, and cruel; they were a
+picked race of the Spanish; their flags led in war; the
+king called them his cousin; the people, when the rope
+was slung for them or when they returned and found their
+hovels smoking, blasphemed their name. Presently a
+change began. Man has risen; if he has sprung from the
+brutes, he can descend again to the same level. The
+breath of weariness blew on their humanity and the cords
+relaxed; they began to go down; their minds fell on
+sleep, their passions awoke in gusts, heady and senseless
+like the wind in the gutters of the mountains; beauty
+was still handed down, but no longer the guiding wit nor
+the human heart; the seed passed on, it was wrapped in
+flesh, the flesh covered the bones, but they were the bones
+and the flesh of brutes, and their mind was as the mind
+of flies. I speak to you as I dare; but you have seen for
+yourself how the wheel has gone backward with my
+doomed race. I stand, as it were, upon a little rising
+ground in this desperate descent, and see both before and
+behind, both what we have lost and to what we are condemned
+to go farther downward. And shall I&mdash;I that
+dwell apart in the house of the dead, my body, loathing
+its ways&mdash;shall I repeat the spell? Shall I bind another
+spirit, reluctant as my own, into this bewitched and
+tempest-broken tenement that I now suffer in? Shall I
+hand down this cursed vessel of humanity, charge it with
+fresh life as with fresh poison, and dash it, like a fire, in
+the faces of posterity? But my vow has been given;
+the race shall cease from off the earth. At this hour my
+brother is making ready; his foot will soon be on the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page167"></a>167</span>
+stair; and you will go with him and pass out of my sight
+for ever. Think of me sometimes as one to whom the
+lesson of life was very harshly told, but who heard it with
+courage; as one who loved you indeed, but who hated
+herself so deeply that her love was hateful to her; as one
+who sent you away and yet would have longed to keep you
+for ever: who had no dearer hope than to forget you, and
+no greater fear than to be forgotten.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She had drawn towards the door as she spoke, her rich
+voice sounding softer and farther away; and with the
+last word she was gone, and I lay alone in the moonlit
+chamber. What I might have done had not I lain bound
+by my extreme weakness, I know not; but as it was, there
+fell upon me a great and blank despair. It was not long
+before there shone in at the door the ruddy glimmer of a
+lantern, and Felipe, coming, charged me without a word
+upon his shoulders, and carried me down to the great
+gate, where the cart was waiting. In the moonlight the
+hills stood out sharply, as if they were of cardboard; on
+the glimmering surface of the plateau, and from among the
+low trees which swung together and sparkled in the wind,
+the great black cube of the residencia stood out bulkily,
+its mass only broken by three dimly lighted windows in
+the northern front above the gate. They were Olalla&rsquo;s
+windows, and as the cart jolted onwards I kept my eyes
+fixed upon them till, where the road dipped into a valley,
+they were lost to my view for ever. Felipe walked in
+silence beside the shafts, but from time to time he would
+check the mule and seem to look back upon me; and at
+length drew quite near and laid his hand upon my head.
+There was such kindness in the touch, and such a simplicity,
+as of the brutes, that tears broke from me like the
+bursting of an artery.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Felipe,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;take me where they will ask no
+questions.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He said never a word, but he turned his mule about,
+end for end, retraced some part of the way we had gone,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page168"></a>168</span>
+and, striking into another path, led me to the mountain
+village, which was, as we say in Scotland, the kirk-town of
+that thinly peopled district. Some broken memories dwell
+in my mind of the day breaking over the plain, of the
+cart stopping, of arms that helped me down, of a bare
+room into which I was carried, and of a swoon that fell
+upon me like sleep.</p>
+
+<p>The next day and the days following, the old priest was
+often at my side with his snuff-box and prayer-book, and
+after a while, when I began to pick up strength, he told
+me that I was now on a fair way to recovery, and must
+as soon as possible hurry my departure; whereupon,
+without naming any reason, he took snuff and looked at
+me sideways. I did not affect ignorance; I knew he must
+have seen Olalla. &ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;you know that I do
+not ask in wantonness. What of that family?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He said they were very unfortunate; that it seemed
+a declining race, and that they were very poor and had
+been much neglected.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But she has not,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Thanks, doubtless, to
+yourself, she is instructed and wise beyond the use of
+women.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;the Seńorita is well-informed. But
+the family has been neglected.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The mother?&rdquo; I queried.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, the mother too,&rdquo; said the Padre, taking snuff.
+&ldquo;But Felipe is a well-intentioned lad.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The mother is odd?&rdquo; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Very odd,&rdquo; replied the priest.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think, sir, we beat about the bush,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;You
+must know more of my affairs than you allow. You must
+know my curiosity to be justified on many grounds. Will
+you not be frank with me?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My son,&rdquo; said the old gentleman, &ldquo;I will be very
+frank with you on matters within my competence; on
+those of which I know nothing it does not require much
+discretion to be silent. I will not fence with you, I take
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page169"></a>169</span>
+your meaning perfectly; and what can I say, but that
+we are all in God&rsquo;s hands, and that His ways are not our
+ways? I have even advised with my superiors in the
+Church, but they, too, were dumb. It is a great mystery.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is she mad?&rdquo; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I will answer you according to my belief. She is
+not,&rdquo; returned the Padre, &ldquo;or she was not. When she was
+young&mdash;God help me, I fear I neglected that wild lamb&mdash;she
+was surely sane; and yet, although it did not run to
+such heights, the same strain was already notable; it had
+been so before her in her father, ay, and before him, and
+this inclined me, perhaps, to think too lightly of it. But
+these things go on growing, not only in the individual but
+in the race.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;When she was young,&rdquo; I began, and my voice failed
+me for a moment, and it was only with a great effort that
+I was able to add, &ldquo;was she like Olalla?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now God forbid!&rdquo; exclaimed the Padre. &ldquo;God
+forbid that any man should think so slightingly of my
+favourite penitent. No, no; the Seńorita (but for her
+beauty, which I wish most honestly she had less of) has
+not a hair&rsquo;s resemblance to what her mother was at the
+same age. I could not bear to have you think so; though,
+heaven knows, it were, perhaps, better that you should.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>At this I raised myself in bed, and opened my heart to
+the old man; telling him of our love and of her decision;
+owning my own horrors, my own passing fancies, but
+telling him that these were at an end; and with something
+more than a purely formal submission, appealing
+to his judgment.</p>
+
+<p>He heard me very patiently and without surprise; and
+when I had done he sat for some time silent. Then he
+began: &ldquo;The Church,&rdquo; and instantly broke off again to
+apologise. &ldquo;I had forgotten, my child, that you were not
+a Christian,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;And indeed, upon a point so
+highly unusual, even the Church can scarce be said to
+have decided. But would you have my opinion? The
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page170"></a>170</span>
+Seńorita is, in a matter of this kind, the best judge; I
+would accept her judgment.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>On the back of that he went away, nor was he thenceforward
+so assiduous in his visits; indeed, even when I
+began to get about again, he plainly feared and deprecated
+my society, not as in distaste, but much as a man
+might be disposed to flee from the riddling sphinx. The
+villagers, too, avoided me; they were unwilling to be my
+guides upon the mountain. I thought they looked at me
+askance, and I made sure that the more superstitious
+crossed themselves on my approach. At first I set this
+down to my heretical opinions; but it began at length
+to dawn upon me that if I was thus redoubted it was
+because I had stayed at the residencia. All men despise
+the savage notions of such peasantry; and yet I was conscious
+of a chill shadow that seemed to fall and dwell
+upon my love. It did not conquer, but I may not deny
+that it restrained, my ardour.</p>
+
+<p>Some miles westward of the village there was a gap in
+the sierra, from which the eye plunged direct upon the
+residencia; and thither it became my daily habit to repair.
+A wood crowned the summit; and just where the pathway
+issued from its fringes, it was overhung by a considerable
+shelf of rock, and that, in its turn, was surmounted
+by a crucifix of the size of life and more than usually
+painful in design. This was my perch; thence, day after
+day, I looked down upon the plateau, and the great old
+house, and could see Felipe, no bigger than a fly, going to
+and fro about the garden. Sometimes mists would draw
+across the view, and be broken up again by mountain
+winds; sometimes the plain slumbered below me in
+unbroken sunshine; it would sometimes be all blotted
+out by rain. This distant post, these interrupted sights
+of the place where my life had been so strangely changed,
+suited the indecision of my humour. I passed whole
+days there, debating with myself the various elements
+of our position, now leaning to the suggestions of love,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page171"></a>171</span>
+now giving an ear to prudence, and in the end halting
+irresolute between the two.</p>
+
+<p>One day, as I was sitting on my rock, there came by
+that way a somewhat gaunt peasant wrapped in a mantle.
+He was a stranger, and plainly did not know me even by
+repute; for, instead of keeping the other side, he drew
+near and sat down beside me, and we had soon fallen in
+talk. Among other things, he told me he had been a
+muleteer, and in former years had much frequented these
+mountains; later on, he had followed the army with his
+mules, had realised a competence, and was now living
+retired with his family.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you know that house?&rdquo; I inquired at last, pointing
+to the residencia, for I readily wearied of any talk
+that kept me from the thought of Olalla.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at me darkly and crossed himself.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Too well,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;it was there that one of my
+comrades sold himself to Satan; the Virgin shield us
+from temptations! He has paid the price; he is now
+burning in the reddest place in hell!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>A fear came upon me; I could answer nothing; and
+presently the man resumed, as if to himself: &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he
+said, &ldquo;O yes, I know it. I have passed its doors. There
+was snow upon the pass, the wind was driving it; sure
+enough there was death that night upon the mountains,
+but there was worse beside the hearth. I took him by the
+arm, Seńor, and dragged him to the gate; I conjured him,
+by all he loved and respected, to go forth with me; I went
+on my knees before him in the snow; and I could see he
+was moved by my entreaty. And just then she came out
+on the gallery, and called him by his name; and he turned,
+and there was she, standing with a lamp in her hand and
+smiling on him to come back. I cried out aloud to God,
+and threw my arms about him, but he put me by, and
+left me alone. He had made his choice; God help us. I
+would pray for him, but to what end? there are sins that
+not even the Pope can loose.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page172"></a>172</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And your friend,&rdquo; I asked, &ldquo;what became of him?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, God knows,&rdquo; said the muleteer. &ldquo;If all be true
+that we hear, his end was like his sin, a thing to raise
+the hair.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you mean that he was killed?&rdquo; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sure enough, he was killed,&rdquo; returned the man. &ldquo;But
+how? Ah, how? But these are things that it is sin to
+speak of.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The people of that house....&rdquo; I began.</p>
+
+<p>But he interrupted me with a savage outburst. &ldquo;The
+people?&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;What people? There are neither
+men nor women in that house of Satan&rsquo;s! What? have
+you lived here so long, and never heard?&rdquo; And here he
+put his mouth to my ear and whispered, as if even the
+fowls of the mountain might have overheard and been
+stricken with horror.</p>
+
+<p>What he told me was not true, nor was it even original;
+being, indeed, but a new edition, vamped up again by
+village ignorance and superstition, of stories nearly as
+ancient as the race of man. It was rather the application
+that appalled me. In the old days, he said, the Church
+would have burned out that nest of basilisks; but the
+arm of the Church was now shortened; his friend Miguel
+had been unpunished by the hands of men, and left to the
+more awful judgment of an offended God. This was
+wrong; but it should be so no more. The Padre was
+sunk in age; he was even bewitched himself; but the
+eyes of his flock were now awake to their own danger;
+and some day&mdash;ay, and before long&mdash;the smoke of that
+house should go up to heaven.</p>
+
+<p>He left me filled with horror and fear. Which way to
+turn I knew not; whether first to warn the Padre, or to
+carry my ill news direct to the threatened inhabitants of
+the residencia. Fate was to decide for me; for, while I
+was still hesitating, I beheld the veiled figure of a woman
+drawing near to me up the pathway. No veil could deceive
+my penetration; by every line and every movement I
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page173"></a>173</span>
+recognised Olalla; and keeping hidden behind a corner
+of the rock, I suffered her to gain the summit. Then I
+came forward. She knew me and paused, but did not
+speak; I, too, remained silent; and we continued for
+some time to gaze upon each other with a passionate
+sadness.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I thought you had gone,&rdquo; she said at length. &ldquo;It
+is all that you can do for me&mdash;to go. It is all I ever asked
+of you. And you still stay. But do you know, that every
+day heaps up the peril of death, not only on your head,
+but on ours? A report has gone about the mountain; it
+is thought you love me, and the people will not suffer it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I saw she was already informed of her danger, and I
+rejoiced at it. &ldquo;Olalla,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;I am ready to go this
+day, this very hour, but not alone.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She stepped aside and knelt down before the crucifix
+to pray, and I stood by and looked now at her and now
+at the object of her adoration, now at the living figure of
+the penitent, and now at the ghastly, daubed countenance,
+the painted wounds, and the projected ribs of the image.
+The silence was only broken by the wailing of some large
+birds that circled sidelong, as if in surprise or alarm, about
+the summit of the hills. Presently Olalla rose again,
+turned towards me, raised her veil, and, still leaning with
+one hand on the shaft of the crucifix, looked upon me with
+a pale and sorrowful countenance.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have laid my hand upon the cross,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;The
+Padre says you are no Christian; but look up for a moment
+with my eyes, and behold the face of the Man of Sorrows.
+We are all such as He was&mdash;the inheritors of sin; we must
+all bear and expiate a past which was not ours; there is
+in all of us&mdash;ay, even in me&mdash;a sparkle of the divine. Like
+Him, we must endure for a little while, until morning
+returns, bringing peace. Suffer me to pass on upon my
+way alone; it is thus that I shall be least lonely, counting
+for my friend Him who is the friend of all the distressed;
+it is thus that I shall be the most happy, having taken my
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page174"></a>174</span>
+farewell of earthly happiness, and willingly accepted sorrow
+for my portion.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I looked at the face of the crucifix, and, though I was
+no friend to images, and despised that imitative and
+grimacing art of which it was a rude example, some sense
+of what the thing implied was carried home to my intelligence.
+The face looked down upon me with a painful
+and deadly contraction; but the rays of a glory encircled
+it, and reminded me that the sacrifice was voluntary. It
+stood there, crowning the rock, as it still stands on so
+many highway sides, vainly preaching to passers-by, an
+emblem of sad and noble truths; that pleasure is not an
+end, but an accident; that pain is the choice of the magnanimous;
+that it is best to suffer all things and do well.
+I turned and went down the mountain in silence; and
+when I looked back for the last time before the wood
+closed about my path, I saw Olalla still leaning on the
+crucifix.</p>
+
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page175"></a>175</span></p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2>HEATHERCAT</h2>
+<h3>A FRAGMENT</h3>
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page176"></a>176</span></p>
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page177"></a>177</span></p>
+<h2>HEATHERCAT</h2>
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER I</h3>
+
+<h5>TRAQUAIRS OF MONTROYMONT</h5>
+
+
+<p>The period of this tale is in the heat of the <i>killing-time</i>;
+the scene laid for the most part in solitary hills and morasses,
+haunted only by the so-called Mountain Wanderers, the
+dragoons that came in chase of them, the women that wept
+on their dead bodies, and the wild birds of the moorland
+that have cried there since the beginning. It is a land
+of many rain-clouds; a land of much mute history, written
+there in pre-historic symbols. Strange green raths are to
+be seen commonly in the country, above all by the kirkyards;
+barrows of the dead, standing stones; beside
+these, the faint, durable footprints and handmarks of the
+Roman; and an antiquity older perhaps than any, and
+still living and active&mdash;a complete Celtic nomenclature and
+a scarce-mingled Celtic population. These rugged and grey
+hills were once included in the boundaries of the Caledonian
+Forest. Merlin sat here below his apple-tree and lamented
+Gwendolen; here spoke with Kentigern; here fell into
+his enchanted trance. And the legend of his slumber
+seems to body forth the story of that Celtic race, deprived
+for so many centuries of their authentic speech, surviving
+with their ancestral inheritance of melancholy perversity
+and patient, unfortunate courage.</p>
+
+<p>The Traquairs of Montroymont (<i>Mons Romanus</i>, as
+the erudite expound it) had long held their seat about
+the head-waters of the Dule and in the back parts of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page178"></a>178</span>
+moorland parish of Balweary. For two hundred years
+they had enjoyed in these upland quarters a certain decency
+(almost to be named distinction) of repute; and the annals
+of their house, or what is remembered of them, were obscure
+and bloody. Ninian Traquair was &ldquo;cruallie slochtered&rdquo;
+by the Crozers at the kirk-door of Balweary, anno 1482.
+Francis killed Simon Ruthven of Drumshoreland, anno
+1540; bought letters of slayers at the widow and heir,
+and, by a barbarous form of compounding, married (without
+tocher) Simon&rsquo;s daughter Grizzel, which is the way
+the Traquairs and Ruthvens came first to an intermarriage.
+About the last Traquair and Ruthven marriage, it is the
+business of this book, among many other things, to tell.</p>
+
+<p>The Traquairs were always strong for the Covenant;
+for the King also, but the Covenant first; and it began to
+be ill days for Montroymont when the Bishops came in
+and the dragoons at the heels of them. Ninian (then laird)
+was an anxious husband of himself and the property, as
+the times required, and it may be said of him, that he
+lost both. He was heavily suspected of the Pentland Hills
+rebellion. When it came the length of Bothwell Brig, he
+stood his trial before the Secret Council, and was convicted
+of talking with some insurgents by the wayside, the subject
+of the conversation not very clearly appearing, and of the
+reset and maintenance of one Gale, a gardener man, who
+seen before Bothwell with a musket, and afterwards, for
+a continuance of months, delved the garden at Montroymont.
+Matters went very ill with Ninian at the Council;
+some of the lords were clear for treason; and even the
+boot was talked of. But he was spared that torture; and
+at last, having pretty good friendship among great men,
+he came off with a fine of seven thousand marks, that
+caused the estate to groan. In this case, as in so many
+others, it was the wife that made the trouble. She was
+a great keeper of conventicles; would ride ten miles to
+one, and when she was fined, rejoiced greatly to suffer for
+the Kirk; but it was rather her husband that suffered.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page179"></a>179</span>
+She had their only son, Francis, baptized privately by the
+hands of Mr. Kidd; there was that much the more to
+pay for! She could neither be driven nor wiled into the
+parish kirk; as for taking the sacrament at the hands of
+any Episcopalian curate, and tenfold more at those of
+Curate Haddo, there was nothing further from her purposes;
+and Montroymont had to put his hand in his pocket
+month by month and year by year. Once, indeed, the little
+lady was cast in prison, and the laird, worthy, heavy,
+uninterested man, had to ride up and take her place; from
+which he was not discharged under nine months and a
+sharp fine. It scarce seemed she had any gratitude to
+him; she came out of gaol herself, and plunged immediately
+deeper in conventicles, resetting recusants, and all
+her old, expensive folly, only with greater vigour and
+openness, because Montroymont was safe in the Tolbooth
+and she had no witness to consider. When he was liberated
+and came back, with his fingers singed, in December
+1680, and late in the black night, my lady was from home.
+He came into the house at his alighting, with a riding-rod
+yet in his hand; and, on the servant-maid telling him,
+caught her by the scruff of the neck, beat her violently,
+flung her down in the passage-way, and went upstairs to
+his bed fasting and without a light. It was three in the
+morning when my lady returned from that conventicle,
+and, hearing of the assault (because the maid had sat up
+for her, weeping), went to their common chamber with a
+lantern in hand and stamping with her shoes so as to wake
+the dead; it was supposed, by those that heard her, from
+a design to have it out with the good man at once. The
+house-servants gathered on the stair, because it was a
+main interest with them to know which of these two was
+the better horse; and for the space of two hours they
+were heard to go at the matter, hammer and tongs. Montroymont
+alleged he was at the end of possibilities; it was
+no longer within his power to pay the annual rents; she
+had served him basely by keeping conventicles while he
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page180"></a>180</span>
+lay in prison for her sake; his friends were weary, and
+there was nothing else before him but the entire loss of
+the family lands, and to begin life again by the wayside
+as a common beggar. She took him up very sharp and
+high: called upon him, if he were a Christian? and which
+he most considered, the loss of a few dirty, miry glebes,
+or of his soul? Presently he was heard to weep, and my
+lady&rsquo;s voice to go on continually like a running burn, only
+the words indistinguishable; whereupon it was supposed
+a victory for her ladyship, and the domestics took themselves
+to bed. The next day Traquair appeared like a
+man who had gone under the harrows; and his lady wife
+thenceforward continued in her old course without the
+least deflection.</p>
+
+<p>Thenceforward Ninian went on his way without complaint,
+and suffered his wife to go on hers without remonstrance.
+He still minded his estate, of which it might be
+said he took daily a fresh farewell, and counted it already
+lost; looking ruefully on the acres and the graves of his
+fathers, on the moorlands where the wildfowl consorted,
+the low, gurgling pool of the trout, and the high, windy
+place of the calling curlews&mdash;things that were yet his for
+the day and would be another&rsquo;s to-morrow; coming back
+again, and sitting ciphering till the dusk at his approaching
+ruin, which no device of arithmetic could postpone
+beyond a year or two. He was essentially the simple
+ancient man, the farmer and landholder; he would have
+been content to watch the seasons come and go, and his
+cattle increase, until the limit of age; he would have been
+content at any time to die, if he could have left the estates
+undiminished to an heir-male of his ancestors, that duty
+standing first in his instinctive calendar. And now he saw
+everywhere the image of the new proprietor come to meet
+him, and go sowing and reaping, or fowling for his pleasure
+on the red moors, or eating the very gooseberries in the
+Place garden; and saw always, on the other hand, the
+figure of Francis go forth, a beggar, into the broad world.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page181"></a>181</span></p>
+
+<p>It was in vain the poor gentleman sought to moderate;
+took every test and took advantage of every indulgence;
+went and drank with the dragoons in Balweary; attended
+the communion and came regularly to the church to
+Curate Haddo, with his son beside him. The mad, raging,
+Presbyterian zealot of a wife at home made all of no avail;
+and indeed the house must have fallen years before if it
+had not been for the secret indulgence of the curate, who
+had a great sympathy with the laird, and winked hard
+at the doings in Montroymont. This curate was a man
+very ill reputed in the countryside, and indeed in all
+Scotland. &ldquo;Infamous Haddo&rdquo; is Shield&rsquo;s expression.
+But Patrick Walker is more copious. &ldquo;Curate Hall Haddo,&rdquo;
+says he, <i>sub voce</i> Peden, &ldquo;or <i>Hell</i> Haddo, as he was more
+justly to be called, a pokeful of old condemned errors and
+the filthy vile lusts of the flesh, a published whoremonger,
+a common gross drunkard, continually and godlessly scraping
+and skirling on a fiddle, continually breathing flames
+against the remnant of Israel. But the Lord put an end
+to his piping, and all these offences were composed into
+one bloody grave.&rdquo; No doubt this was written to excuse
+his slaughter; and I have never heard it claimed for
+Walker that he was either a just witness or an indulgent
+judge. At least, in a merely human character, Haddo
+comes off not wholly amiss in the matter of these Traquairs:
+not that he showed any graces of the Christian, but had
+a sort of Pagan decency, which might almost tempt one
+to be concerned about his sudden, violent, and unprepared
+fate.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page182"></a>182</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER II</h3>
+
+<h5>FRANCIE</h5>
+
+
+<p>Francie was eleven years old, shy, secret, and rather
+childish of his age, though not backward in schooling,
+which had been pushed on far by a private governor, one
+M&rsquo;Brair, a forfeited minister harboured in that capacity
+at Montroymont. The boy, already much employed in
+secret by his mother, was the most apt hand conceivable
+to run upon a message, to carry food to lurking fugitives,
+or to stand sentry on the skyline above a conventicle. It
+seemed no place on the moorlands was so naked but what
+he would find cover there; and as he knew every hag,
+boulder, and heather-bush in a circuit of seven miles about
+Montroymont, there was scarce any spot but what he
+could leave or approach it unseen. This dexterity had
+won him a reputation in that part of the country; and
+among the many children employed in these dangerous
+affairs, he passed under the by-name of Heathercat.</p>
+
+<p>How much his father knew of this employment might
+be doubted. He took much forethought for the boy&rsquo;s
+future, seeing he was like to be left so poorly, and would
+sometimes assist at his lessons, sighing heavily, yawning
+deep, and now and again patting Francie on the shoulder
+if he seemed to be doing ill, by way of a private, kind
+encouragement. But a great part of the day was passed
+in aimless wanderings with his eyes sealed, or in his
+cabinet sitting bemused over the particulars of the coming
+bankruptcy; and the boy would be absent a dozen times
+for once that his father would observe it.</p>
+
+<p>On 2nd of July 1682 the boy had an errand from his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page183"></a>183</span>
+mother, which must be kept private from all, the father
+included in the first of them. Crossing the braes, he
+hears the clatter of a horse&rsquo;s shoes, and claps down incontinent
+in a hag by the wayside. And presently he
+spied his father come riding from one direction, and Curate
+Haddo walking from another; and Montroymont leaning
+down from the saddle, and Haddo getting on his toes
+(for he was a little, ruddy, bald-pated man, more like a
+dwarf), they greeted kindly, and came to a halt within
+two fathoms of the child.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Montroymont,&rdquo; the curate said, &ldquo;the deil&rsquo;s in &rsquo;t
+but I&rsquo;ll have to denunciate your leddy again.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Deil&rsquo;s in &rsquo;t indeed!&rdquo; says the laird.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Man! can ye no induce her to come to the kirk?&rdquo;
+pursues Haddo; &ldquo;or to a communion at the least of
+it? For the conventicles, let be! and the same for yon
+solemn fule, M&rsquo;Brair: I can blink at them. But she&rsquo;s
+got to come to the kirk, Montroymont.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dinna speak of it,&rdquo; says the laird. &ldquo;I can do
+nothing with her.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Couldn&rsquo;t ye try the stick to her? it works wonders
+whiles,&rdquo; suggested Haddo. &ldquo;No? I&rsquo;m wae to hear it.
+And I suppose ye ken where you&rsquo;re going?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Fine!&rdquo; said Montroymont. &ldquo;Fine do I ken where:
+bankrup&rsquo;cy and the Bass Rock!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Praise to my bones that I never married!&rdquo; cried
+the curate. &ldquo;Well, it&rsquo;s a grievous thing to me to see
+an auld house dung down that was here before Flodden
+Field. But naebody can say it was with my wish.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No more they can, Haddo!&rdquo; says the laird. &ldquo;A
+good friend ye&rsquo;ve been to me, first and last. I can give
+you that character with a clear conscience.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon they separated, and Montroymont rode
+briskly down into the Dule Valley. But of the curate
+Francis was not to be quit so easily. He went on with
+his little, brisk steps to the corner of a dyke, and stopped
+and whistled and waved upon a lassie that was herding
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page184"></a>184</span>
+cattle there. This Janet M&rsquo;Clour was a big lass, being
+taller than the curate; and what made her look the more
+so, she was kilted very high. It seemed for a while she
+would not come, and Francie heard her calling Haddo
+a &ldquo;daft auld fule,&rdquo; and saw her running and dodging
+him among the whins and hags till he was fairly blown.
+But at the last he gets a bottle from his plaid-neuk and
+holds it up to her; whereupon she came at once into a
+composition, and the pair sat, drinking of the bottle,
+and daffing and laughing together, on a mound of heather.
+The boy had scarce heard of these vanities, or he might
+have been minded of a nymph and satyr, if anybody
+could have taken long-leggit Janet for a nymph. But
+they seemed to be huge friends, he thought; and was
+the more surprised, when the curate had taken his leave,
+to see the lassie fling stones after him with screeches of
+laughter, and Haddo turn about and caper, and shake
+his staff at her, and laugh louder than herself. A wonderful
+merry pair, they seemed; and when Francie had
+crawled out of the hag, he had a great deal to consider
+in his mind. It was possible they were all fallen in error
+about Mr. Haddo, he reflected,&mdash;having seen him so
+tender with Montroymont, and so kind and playful with
+the lass Janet; and he had a temptation to go out of
+his road and question her herself upon the matter. But
+he had a strong spirit of duty on him; and plodded on
+instead over the braes till he came near the House of
+Cairngorm. There, in a hollow place, by the burnside
+that was shaded by some birks, he was aware of a barefoot
+boy, perhaps a matter of three years older than himself.
+The two approached with the precautions of a pair
+of strange dogs, looking at each other queerly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s ill weather on the hills,&rdquo; said the stranger,
+giving the watchword.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;For a season,&rdquo; said Francie, &ldquo;but the Lord will
+appear.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Richt,&rdquo; said the barefoot boy; &ldquo;wha&rsquo;re ye frae?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page185"></a>185</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The Leddy Montroymont,&rdquo; says Francie.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ha&rsquo;e, then!&rdquo; says the stranger, and handed him a
+folded paper, and they stood and looked at each other
+again. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s unco&rsquo; het,&rdquo; said the boy.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dooms het,&rdquo; says Francie.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What do they ca&rsquo; ye?&rdquo; says the other.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Francie,&rdquo; says he. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m young Montroymont. They
+ca&rsquo; me Heathercat.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m Jock Crozer,&rdquo; said the boy. And there was
+another pause, while each rolled a stone under his
+foot.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Cast your jaiket and I&rsquo;ll fecht ye for a bawbee,&rdquo;
+cried the elder boy with sudden violence, and dramatically
+throwing back his jacket.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Na, I have nae time the now,&rdquo; said Francie, with
+a sharp thrill of alarm, because Crozer was much the
+heavier boy.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ye&rsquo;re feared. Heathercat indeed!&rdquo; said Crozer, for
+among this infantile army of spies and messengers, the
+fame of Crozer had gone forth and was resented by his
+rivals. And with that they separated.</p>
+
+<p>On his way home Francie was a good deal occupied
+with the recollection of this untoward incident. The
+challenge had been fairly offered and basely refused: the
+tale would be carried all over the country, and the lustre
+of the name of Heathercat be dimmed. But the scene
+between Curate Haddo and Janet M&rsquo;Clour had also given
+him much to think of: and he was still puzzling over the
+case of the curate, and why such ill words were said of
+him, and why, if he were so merry-spirited, he should
+yet preach so dry, when coming over a knowe, whom
+should he see but Janet, sitting with her back to him,
+minding her cattle! He was always a great child for
+secret, stealthy ways, having been employed by his mother
+on errands when the same was necessary; and he came
+behind the lass without her hearing.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Jennet,&rdquo; says he.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page186"></a>186</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Keep me,&rdquo; cries Janet, <span class="correction" title="corrected from 'spinging'">springing</span> up. &ldquo;O, it&rsquo;s
+you, Maister Francie! Save us, what a fricht ye gied
+me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ay, it&rsquo;s me,&rdquo; said Francie. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been thinking,
+Jennet; I saw you and the curate a while back&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Brat!&rdquo; cried Janet, and coloured up crimson; and
+the one moment made as if she would have stricken him
+with a ragged stick she had to chase her bestial with,
+and the next was begging and praying that he would
+mention it to none. It was &ldquo;naebody&rsquo;s business, whatever,&rdquo;
+she said; &ldquo;it would just start a clash in the
+country&rdquo;; and there would be nothing left for her
+but to drown herself in Dule Water.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why?&rdquo; says Francie.</p>
+
+<p>The girl looked at him and grew scarlet again.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And it isna that, anyway,&rdquo; continued Francie. &ldquo;It
+was just that he seemed so good to ye&mdash;like our Father in
+heaven, I thought; and I thought that mebbe, perhaps,
+we had all been wrong about him from the first. But I&rsquo;ll
+have to tell Mr. M&rsquo;Brair; I&rsquo;m under a kind of a bargain
+to him to tell him all.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Tell it to the divil if ye like for me!&rdquo; cried the lass.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve naething to be ashamed of. Tell M&rsquo;Brair to mind
+his ain affairs,&rdquo; she cried again: &ldquo;they&rsquo;ll be hot eneugh
+for him, if Haddie likes!&rdquo; And so strode off, shoving
+her beasts before her, and ever and again looking back
+and crying angry words to the boy, where he stood
+mystified.</p>
+
+<p>By the time he had got home his mind was made up
+that he would say nothing to his mother. My Lady
+Montroymont was in the keeping-room, reading a godly
+book; she was a wonderful frail little wife to make so
+much noise in the world and be able to steer about that
+patient sheep her husband; her eyes were like sloes,
+the fingers of her hands were like tobacco-pipe shanks,
+her mouth shut tight like a trap; and even when she
+was the most serious, and still more when she was angry,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page187"></a>187</span>
+there hung about her face the terrifying semblance of a
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Have ye gotten the billet, Francie?&rdquo; said she;
+and when he had handed it over, and she had read and
+burned it, &ldquo;Did you see anybody?&rdquo; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I saw the laird,&rdquo; said Francie.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He didna see you, though?&rdquo; asked his mother.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Deil a fear,&rdquo; from Francie.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Francie!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s that I hear? an
+aith? The Lord forgive me, have I broughten forth a
+brand for the burning, a fagot for hell-fire?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m very sorry, ma&rsquo;am,&rdquo; said Francie. &ldquo;I humbly
+beg the Lord&rsquo;s pardon, and yours, for my wickedness.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;H&rsquo;m,&rdquo; grunted the lady. &ldquo;Did ye see nobody else?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, ma&rsquo;am,&rdquo; said Francie, with the face of an angel,
+&ldquo;except Jock Crozer, that gied me the billet.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Jock Crozer!&rdquo; cried the lady. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll Crozer them!
+Crozers indeed! What next? Are we to repose the
+lives of a suffering remnant in Crozers? The whole clan
+of them wants hanging, and if I had my way of it, they
+wouldna want it long. Are you aware, sir, that these
+Crozers killed your forebear at the kirk-door?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You see, he was bigger &rsquo;n me,&rdquo; said Francie.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Jock Crozer!&rdquo; continued the lady. &ldquo;That&rsquo;ll be
+Clement&rsquo;s son, the biggest thief and reiver in the countryside.
+To trust a note to him! But I&rsquo;ll give the benefit
+of my opinions to Lady Whitecross when we two forgather.
+Let her look to herself! I have no patience
+with half-hearted carlines, that complies on the Lord&rsquo;s
+day morning with the kirk, and comes taigling the same
+night to the conventicle. The one or the other! is what
+I say: hell or heaven&mdash;Haddie&rsquo;s abominations or the
+pure word of God dreeping from the lips of Mr. Arnot,</p>
+
+<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td>
+<div class="poemr">
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Like honey from the honeycomb</p>
+  <p class="i2">That dreepeth, sweeter far.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+</div>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>My lady was now fairly launched, and that upon two
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page188"></a>188</span>
+congenial subjects: the deficiencies of the Lady Whitecross
+and the turpitudes of the whole Crozer race&mdash;which,
+indeed, had never been conspicuous for respectability.
+She pursued the pair of them for twenty minutes on the
+clock with wonderful animation and detail, something of
+the pulpit manner, and the spirit of one possessed. &ldquo;O
+hellish compliance!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;I would not
+suffer a complier to break bread with Christian folk. Of
+all the sins of this day there is not one so God-defying,
+so Christ-humiliating, as damnable compliance&rdquo;: the boy
+standing before her meanwhile, and brokenly pursuing
+other thoughts, mainly of Haddo and Janet, and Jock
+Crozer stripping off his jacket. And yet, with all his distraction,
+it might be argued that he heard too much:
+his father and himself being &ldquo;compliers&rdquo;&mdash;that is
+to say, attending the church of the parish as the law
+required.</p>
+
+<p>Presently, the lady&rsquo;s passion beginning to decline, or
+her flux of ill words to be exhausted, she dismissed her
+audience. Francie bowed low, left the room, closed the
+door behind him: and then turned him about in the
+passage-way, and with a low voice, but a prodigious deal
+of sentiment, repeated the name of the evil one twenty
+times over, to the end of which, for the greater efficacy,
+he tacked on &ldquo;damnable&rdquo; and &ldquo;hellish.&rdquo; <i>Fas est ab
+hoste doceri</i>&mdash;disrespect is made more pungent by quotation;
+and there is no doubt but he felt relieved, and
+went upstairs into his tutor&rsquo;s chamber with a quiet mind.
+M&rsquo;Brair sat by the cheek of the peat-fire and shivered,
+for he had a quartan ague and this was his day. The
+great nightcap and plaid, the dark unshaven cheeks of
+the man, and the white, thin hands that held the plaid
+about his chittering body, made a sorrowful picture.
+But Francie knew and loved him; came straight in,
+nestled close to the refugee, and told his story. M&rsquo;Brair
+had been at the College with Haddo; the Presbytery
+had licensed both on the same day; and at this tale,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page189"></a>189</span>
+told with so much innocency by the boy, the heart of
+the tutor was commoved.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Woe upon him! Woe upon that man!&rdquo; he cried.
+&ldquo;O the unfaithful shepherd! O the hireling and apostate
+minister! Make my matters hot for me? quo&rsquo; she!
+the shameless limmer! And true it is, that he could
+repose me in that nasty, stinking hole, the Canongate
+Tolbooth, from which your mother drew me out&mdash;the
+Lord reward her for it!&mdash;or to that cold, unbieldy, marine
+place of the Bass Rock, which, with my delicate kist,
+would be fair ruin to me. But I will be valiant in my
+Master&rsquo;s service. I have a duty here: a duty to my
+God, to myself, and to Haddo: in His strength, I will
+perform it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Then he straitly discharged Francie to repeat the
+tale, and bade him in the future to avert his very eyes
+from the doings of the curate. &ldquo;You must go to his
+place of idolatry; look upon him there!&rdquo; says he, &ldquo;but
+nowhere else. Avert your eyes, close your ears, pass
+him by like a three days&rsquo; corp. He is like that damnable
+monster Basiliscus, which defiles&mdash;yea, poisons!&mdash;by
+the sight.&rdquo;&mdash;All which was hardly claratory to the
+boy&rsquo;s mind.</p>
+
+<p>Presently Montroymont came home, and called up the
+stairs to Francie. Traquair was a good shot and swordsman:
+and it was his pleasure to walk with his son over
+the braes of the moorfowl, or to teach him arms in the
+back court, when they made a mighty comely pair, the
+child being so lean, and light, and active, and the
+laird himself a man of a manly, pretty stature, his
+hair (the periwig being laid aside) showing already
+white with many anxieties, and his face of an even,
+flaccid red. But this day Francie&rsquo;s heart was not in the
+fencing.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; says he, suddenly lowering his point, &ldquo;will ye
+tell me a thing if I was to ask it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ask away,&rdquo; says the father.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page190"></a>190</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, it&rsquo;s this,&rdquo; said Francie: &ldquo;Why do you and
+me comply if it&rsquo;s so wicked?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ay, ye have the cant of it too!&rdquo; cried Montroymont.
+&ldquo;But I&rsquo;ll tell ye for all that. It&rsquo;s to try and
+see if we can keep the rigging on this house, Francie.
+If she had her way, we would be beggar-folk, and hold
+our hands out by the wayside. When ye hear her&mdash;when
+ye hear folk,&rdquo; he corrected himself briskly, &ldquo;call
+me a coward, and one that betrayed the Lord, and I
+kenna what else, just mind it was to keep a bed to ye
+to sleep in and a bite for ye to eat.&mdash;On guard!&rdquo; he
+cried, and the lesson proceeded again till they were called
+to supper.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s another thing yet,&rdquo; said Francie, stopping
+his father. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s another thing that I am not sure
+that I am very caring for. She&mdash;she sends me errands.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Obey her, then, as is your bounden duty,&rdquo; said
+Traquair.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ay, but wait till I tell ye,&rdquo; says the boy. &ldquo;If I
+was to see you I was to hide.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Montroymont sighed. &ldquo;Well, and that&rsquo;s good of her
+too,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;The less that I ken of thir doings the
+better for me; and the best thing you can do is just to
+obey her, and see and be a good son to her, the same
+as ye are to me, Francie.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>At the tenderness of this expression the heart of
+Francie swelled within his bosom, and his remorse was
+poured out. &ldquo;Faither!&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;I said &lsquo;deil&rsquo; to-day;
+many&rsquo;s the time I said it, and <i>damnable</i> too, and
+<i>hellish</i>. I ken they&rsquo;re all right; they&rsquo;re beeblical. But I
+didna say them beeblically; I said them for sweir words&mdash;that&rsquo;s
+the truth of it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hout, ye silly bairn!&rdquo; said the father, &ldquo;dinna do
+it nae mair, and come in by to your supper.&rdquo; And he
+took the boy, and drew him close to him a moment, as
+they went through the door, with something very fond
+and secret, like a caress between a pair of lovers.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page191"></a>191</span></p>
+
+<p>The next day M&rsquo;Brair was abroad in the afternoon,
+and had a long advising with Janet on the braes where
+she herded cattle. What passed was never wholly known;
+but the lass wept bitterly, and fell on her knees to him
+among the whins. The same night, as soon as it was
+dark, he took the road again for Balweary. In the Kirkton,
+where the dragoons quartered, he saw many lights,
+and heard the noise of a ranting song and people laughing
+grossly, which was highly offensive to his mind. He
+gave it the wider berth, keeping among fields; and came
+down at last by the water-side, where the manse stands
+solitary between the river and the road. He tapped at
+the back door, and the old woman called upon him to
+come in, and guided him through the house to the study,
+as they still called it, though there was little enough
+study there in Haddo&rsquo;s days, and more song-books than
+theology.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Here&rsquo;s yin to speak wi&rsquo; ye, Mr. Haddie!&rdquo; cries
+the old wife.</p>
+
+<p>And M&rsquo;Brair, opening the door and entering, found
+the little, round, red man seated in one chair and his
+feet upon another. A clear fire and a tallow dip lighted
+him barely. He was taking tobacco in a pipe, and
+smiling to himself; and a brandy-bottle and glass, and
+his fiddle and bow, were beside him on the table.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hech, Patey M&rsquo;Brair, is this you?&rdquo; said he, a trifle
+tipsily. &ldquo;Step in by, man, and have a drop brandy: for
+the stomach&rsquo;s sake! Even the deil can quote Scripture&mdash;eh,
+Patey?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I will neither eat nor drink with you,&rdquo; replied
+M&rsquo;Brair. &ldquo;I am come upon my Master&rsquo;s errand! woe
+be upon me if I should anyways mince the same. Hall
+Haddo, I summon you to quit this kirk which you encumber.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Muckle obleeged!&rdquo; says Haddo, winking.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You and me have been to kirk and market together,&rdquo;
+pursued M&rsquo;Brair; &ldquo;we have had blessed seasons in the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page192"></a>192</span>
+kirk, we have sat in the same teaching-rooms and read
+in the same book; and I know you still retain for me
+some carnal kindness. It would be my shame if I denied
+it; I live here at your mercy and by your favour, and
+glory to acknowledge it. You have pity on my wretched
+body, which is but grass, and must soon be trodden under:
+but O, Haddo! how much greater is the yearning with
+which I yearn after and pity your immortal soul! Come
+now, let us reason together! I drop all points of controversy,
+weighty though these be; I take your defaced
+and damnified kirk on your own terms; and I ask you,
+Are you a worthy minister? The communion season
+approaches; how can you pronounce thir solemn words,
+&lsquo;The elders will now bring forrit the elements,&rsquo; and not
+quail? A parishioner may be summoned to-night; you
+may have to rise from your miserable orgies; and I ask
+you, Haddo, what does your conscience tell you? Are
+you fit? Are you fit to smooth the pillow of a parting
+Christian? And if the summons should be for yourself,
+how then?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Haddo was startled out of all composure and the better
+part of his temper. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s this of it?&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+no waur than my neebours. I never set up to be speeritual;
+I never did. I&rsquo;m a plain, canty creature; godliness is
+cheerfulness, says I; give me my fiddle and a dram, and
+I wouldna hairm a flee.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And I repeat my question,&rdquo; said M&rsquo;Brair: &ldquo;Are you
+fit&mdash;fit for this great charge? fit to carry and save souls?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Fit? Blethers! As fit &rsquo;s yoursel&rsquo;,&rdquo; cried Haddo.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Are you so great a self-deceiver?&rdquo; said M&rsquo;Brair.
+&ldquo;Wretched man, trampler upon God&rsquo;s covenants, crucifier
+of your Lord afresh. I will ding you to the earth with one
+word: How about the young woman, Janet M&rsquo;Clour?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Weel, what about her? what do I ken?&rdquo; cries
+Haddo. &ldquo;M&rsquo;Brair, ye daft auld wife, I tell ye as true &rsquo;s
+truth, I never meddled her. It was just daffing, I tell
+ye: daffing, and nae mair: a piece of fun, like! I&rsquo;m no&rsquo;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page193"></a>193</span>
+denying but what I&rsquo;m fond of fun, sma&rsquo; blame to me!
+But for onything sarious&mdash;hout, man, it might come to a
+deposeetion! I&rsquo;ll sweir it to ye. Where&rsquo;s a Bible, till
+you hear me sweir?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There is nae Bible in your study,&rdquo; said M&rsquo;Brair
+severely.</p>
+
+<p>And Haddo, after a few distracted turns, was constrained
+to accept the fact.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Weel, and suppose there isna?&rdquo; he cried, stamping.
+&ldquo;What mair can ye say of us, but just that I&rsquo;m fond of
+my joke, and so &rsquo;s she? I declare to God, by what
+I ken, she might be the Virgin Mary&mdash;if she would
+just keep clear of the dragoons. But me! na, deil haet
+o&rsquo; me!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She is penitent at least,&rdquo; said M&rsquo;Brair.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you mean to actually up and tell me to my face
+that she accused me?&rdquo; cried the curate.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I canna just say that,&rdquo; replied M&rsquo;Brair. &ldquo;But I
+rebuked her in the name of God, and she repented before
+me on her bended knees.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Weel, I daursay she&rsquo;s been ower far wi&rsquo; the dragoons,&rdquo;
+said Haddo. &ldquo;I never denied that. I ken naething by
+it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Man, you but show your nakedness the more plainly,&rdquo;
+said M&rsquo;Brair. &ldquo;Poor, blind, besotted creature&mdash;and I see
+you stoytering on the brink of dissolution: your light out,
+and your hours numbered. Awake, man!&rdquo; he shouted
+with a formidable voice, &ldquo;awake, or it be ower late.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Be damned if I stand this!&rdquo; exclaimed Haddo,
+casting his tobacco-pipe violently on the table, where it
+was smashed in pieces. &ldquo;Out of my house with ye, or
+I&rsquo;ll call for the dragoons.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The speerit of the Lord is upon me,&rdquo; said M&rsquo;Brair
+with solemn ecstasy. &ldquo;I sist you to compear before the
+Great White Throne, and I warn you the summons shall
+be bloody and sudden.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And at this, with more agility than could have been
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page194"></a>194</span>
+expected, he got clear of the room and slammed the door
+behind him in the face of the pursuing curate. The next
+Lord&rsquo;s day the curate was ill, and the kirk closed, but
+for all his ill words, Mr. M&rsquo;Brair abode unmolested in the
+house of Montroymont.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page195"></a>195</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER III</h3>
+
+<h5>THE HILL-END OF DRUMLOWE</h5>
+
+
+<p>This was a bit of a steep broken hill that overlooked upon
+the west a moorish valley, full of ink-black pools. These
+presently drained into a burn that made off, with little
+noise and no celerity of pace, about the corner of the
+hill. On the far side the ground swelled into a bare heath,
+black with junipers, and spotted with the presence of the
+standing stones for which the place was famous. They
+were many in that part, shapeless, white with lichen&mdash;you
+would have said with age: and had made their abode
+there for untold centuries, since first the heathens shouted
+for their installation. The ancients had hallowed them
+to some ill religion, and their neighbourhood had long been
+avoided by the prudent before the fall of day; but of late,
+on the up-springing of new requirements, these lonely
+stones on the moor had again become a place of assembly.
+A watchful picket on the Hill-end commanded all the
+northern and eastern approaches; and such was the disposition
+of the ground, that by certain cunningly posted
+sentries the west also could be made secure against surprise:
+there was no place in the country where a conventicle
+could meet with more quiet of mind or a more
+certain retreat open, in the case of interference from the
+dragoons. The minister spoke from a knowe close to the
+edge of the ring, and poured out the words God gave him
+on the very threshold of the devils of yore. When they
+pitched a tent (which was often in wet weather, upon a
+communion occasion) it was rigged over the huge isolated
+pillar that had the name of Anes-Errand, none knew why.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page196"></a>196</span>
+And the congregation sat partly clustered on the slope
+below, and partly among the idolatrous monoliths and on
+the turfy soil of the Ring itself. In truth the situation was
+well qualified to give a zest to Christian doctrines, had
+there been any wanted. But these congregations assembled
+under conditions at once so formidable and romantic
+as made a zealot of the most cold. They were the last
+of the faithful; God, who had averted His face from all
+other countries of the world, still leaned from heaven to
+observe, with swelling sympathy, the doings of His moorland
+remnant; Christ was by them with His eternal
+wounds, with dropping tears; the Holy Ghost (never perfectly
+realised nor firmly adopted by Protestant imaginations)
+was dimly supposed to be in the heart of each
+and on the lips of the minister. And over against them
+was the army of the hierarchies, from the men Charles
+and James Stuart, on to King Lewie and the Emperor;
+and the scarlet Pope, and the muckle black devil himself,
+peering out the red mouth of hell in an ecstasy of hate
+and hope. &ldquo;One pull more!&rdquo; he seemed to cry; &ldquo;one
+pull more, and it&rsquo;s done. There&rsquo;s only Clydesdale and the
+Stewartry, and the three Bailiaries of Ayr, left for God.&rdquo;
+And with such an august assistance of powers and principalities
+looking on at the last conflict of good and evil, it
+was scarce possible to spare a thought to those old, infirm,
+debile, <i>ab agendo</i> devils whose holy place they were now
+violating.</p>
+
+<p>There might have been three hundred to four hundred
+present. At least there were three hundred horses tethered
+for the most part in the ring; though some of the hearers
+on the outskirts of the crowd stood with their bridles in
+their hand, ready to mount at the first signal. The circle
+of faces was strangely characteristic; long, serious, strongly
+marked, the tackle standing out in the lean brown cheeks,
+the mouth set and the eyes shining with a fierce enthusiasm;
+the shepherd, the labouring man, and the rarer
+laird, stood there in their broad blue bonnets or laced
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page197"></a>197</span>
+hats, and presenting an essential identity of type. From
+time to time a long-drawn groan of adhesion rose in this
+audience, and was propagated like a wave to the outskirts,
+and died away among the keepers of the horses. It had
+a name; it was called &ldquo;a holy groan.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>A squall came up; a great volley of flying mist went
+out before it and whelmed the scene; the wind stormed
+with a sudden fierceness that carried away the minister&rsquo;s
+voice and twitched his tails and made him stagger, and
+turned the congregation for a moment into a mere pother
+of blowing plaid-ends and prancing horses, and the rain
+followed and was dashed straight into their faces. Men
+and women panted aloud in the shock of that violent
+shower-bath; the teeth were bared along all the line in
+an involuntary grimace; plaids, mantles, and riding-coats
+were proved vain, and the worshippers felt the water
+stream on their naked flesh. The minister, reinforcing his
+great and shrill voice, continued to contend against and
+triumph over the rising of the squall and the dashing of
+the rain.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In that day ye may go thirty mile and not hear a
+crawing cock,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;and fifty mile and not get a
+light to your pipe; and an hundred mile and not see a
+smoking house. For there&rsquo;ll be naething in all Scotland
+but deid men&rsquo;s banes and blackness, and the living anger
+of the Lord. O, where to find a bield&mdash;O sirs, where to
+find a bield from the wind of the Lord&rsquo;s anger? Do ye
+call <i>this</i> a wind? Bethankit! Sirs, this is but a temporary
+dispensation; this is but a puff of wind, this is
+but a spit of rain and by with it. Already there&rsquo;s a blue
+bow in the west, and the sun will take the crown of the
+causeway again, and your things&rsquo;ll be dried upon ye, and
+your flesh will be warm upon your bones. But O, sirs,
+sirs! for the day of the Lord&rsquo;s anger!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>His rhetoric was set forth with an ear-piercing elocution,
+and a voice that sometimes crashed like cannon.
+Such as it was, it was the gift of all hill-preachers, to a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page198"></a>198</span>
+singular degree of likeness or identity. Their images
+scarce ranged beyond the red horizon of the moor and
+the rainy hill-top, the shepherd and his sheep, a fowling-piece,
+a spade, a pipe, a dunghill, a crowing cock, the
+shining and the withdrawal of the sun. An occasional
+pathos of simple humanity, and frequent patches of big
+Biblical words, relieved the homely tissue. It was a
+poetry apart; bleak, austere, but genuine, and redolent
+of the soil.</p>
+
+<p>A little before the coming of the squall there was a
+different scene enacting at the outposts. For the most
+part, the sentinels were faithful to their important duty;
+the Hill-end of Drumlowe was known to be a safe meeting-place;
+and the out-pickets on this particular day had
+been somewhat lax from the beginning, and grew laxer
+during the inordinate length of the discourse. Francie lay
+there in his appointed hiding-hole, looking abroad between
+two whin-bushes. His view was across the course of the
+burn, then over a piece of plain moorland, to a gap between
+two hills; nothing moved but grouse, and some cattle
+who slowly traversed his field of view, heading northward:
+he heard the psalms, and sang words of his own
+to the savage and melancholy music; for he had his own
+design in hand, and terror and cowardice prevailed in his
+bosom alternately, like the hot and the cold fit of an ague.
+Courage was uppermost during the singing, which he accompanied
+through all its length with this impromptu strain:</p>
+
+<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td>
+<div class="poemr">
+
+<p>&ldquo;And I will ding Jock Crozer down</p>
+  <p class="i1">No later than the day.&rdquo;</p>
+
+</div>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="noind">Presently the voice of the preacher came to him in wafts,
+at the wind&rsquo;s will, as by the opening and shutting of a
+door; wild spasms of screaming, as of some undiscerned
+gigantic hill-bird stirred with inordinate passion, succeeded
+to intervals of silence; and Francie heard them
+with a critical ear. &ldquo;Ay,&rdquo; he thought at last, &ldquo;he&rsquo;ll do;
+he has the bit in his mou&rsquo; fairly.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page199"></a>199</span></p>
+
+<p>He had observed that his friend, or rather his enemy,
+Jock Crozer, had been established at a very critical part
+of the line of outposts; namely, where the burn issues
+by an abrupt gorge from the semicircle of high moors.
+If anything was calculated to nerve him to battle it was
+this. The post was important; next to the Hill-end
+itself, it might be called the key to the position; and it
+was where the cover was bad, and in which it was most
+natural to place a child. It should have been Heathercat&rsquo;s;
+why had it been given to Crozer? An exquisite
+fear of what should be the answer passed through his
+marrow every time he faced the question. Was it possible
+that Crozer could have boasted? that there were rumours
+abroad to his&mdash;Heathercat&rsquo;s&mdash;discredit? that his honour
+was publicly sullied? All the world went dark about
+him at the thought; he sank without a struggle into the
+midnight pool of despair; and every time he so sank, he
+brought back with him&mdash;not drowned heroism indeed, but
+half-drowned courage by the locks. His heart beat very
+slowly as he deserted his station, and began to crawl
+towards that of Crozer. Something pulled him back, and
+it was not the sense of duty, but a remembrance of Crozer&rsquo;s
+build and hateful readiness of fist. Duty, as he conceived
+it, pointed him forward on the rueful path that he was
+travelling. Duty bade him redeem his name if he were
+able, at the risk of broken bones; and his bones and
+every tooth in his head ached by anticipation. An awful
+subsidiary fear whispered him that if he were hurt, he
+should disgrace himself by weeping. He consoled himself,
+boy-like, with the consideration that he was not yet
+committed; he could easily steal over unseen to Crozer&rsquo;s
+post, and he had a continuous private idea that he would
+very probably steal back again. His course took him so
+near the minister that he could hear some of his words:
+&ldquo;What news, minister, of Claver&rsquo;se? He&rsquo;s going round
+like a roaring rampaging lion....</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page200"></a>200</span></p>
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page201"></a>201</span></p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2>THE GREAT NORTH ROAD</h2>
+<h3>A FRAGMENT</h3>
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page202"></a>202</span></p>
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page203"></a>203</span></p>
+<h2>THE GREAT NORTH ROAD</h2>
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER I</h3>
+
+<h5>NANCE AT THE &ldquo;GREEN DRAGON&rdquo;</h5>
+
+
+<p>Nance Holdaway was on her knees before the fire blowing
+the green wood that voluminously smoked upon the
+dogs, and only now and then shot forth a smothered
+flame; her knees already ached and her eyes smarted, for
+she had been some while at this ungrateful task, but her
+mind was gone far away to meet the coming stranger.
+Now she met him in the wood, now at the castle gate, now
+in the kitchen by candle-light; each fresh presentment
+eclipsed the one before; a form so elegant, manners so
+sedate, a countenance so brave and comely, a voice so
+winning and resolute&mdash;sure such a man was never seen!
+The thick-coming fancies poured and brightened in her
+head like the smoke and flames upon the hearth.</p>
+
+<p>Presently the heavy foot of her uncle Jonathan was
+heard upon the stair, and as he entered the room she bent
+the closer to her work. He glanced at the green fagots
+with a sneer, and looked askance at the bed and the white
+sheets, at the strip of carpet laid, like an island, on the
+great expanse of the stone floor, and at the broken glazing
+of the casement clumsily repaired with paper.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Leave that fire a-be,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;What, have I
+toiled all my life to turn innkeeper at the hind end?
+Leave it a-be, I say.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;La, uncle, it doesn&rsquo;t burn a bit; it only smokes,&rdquo;
+said Nance, looking up from her position.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page204"></a>204</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You are come of decent people of both sides,&rdquo; returned
+the old man. &ldquo;Who are you to blow the coals for
+any Robin-run-agate? Get up, get on your hood, make
+yourself useful, and be off to the &lsquo;Green Dragon.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I thought you was to go yourself,&rdquo; Nance faltered.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So did I,&rdquo; quoth Jonathan; &ldquo;but it appears I was
+mistook.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The very excess of her eagerness alarmed her, and she
+began to hang back. &ldquo;I think I would rather not, dear
+uncle,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Night is at hand, and I think, dear,
+I would rather not.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now you look here,&rdquo; replied Jonathan, &ldquo;I have my
+lord&rsquo;s orders, have I not? Little he gives me, but it&rsquo;s all
+my livelihood. And do you fancy, if I disobey my lord,
+I&rsquo;m likely to turn round for a lass like you? No, I&rsquo;ve
+that hell-fire of pain in my old knee, I wouldn&rsquo;t walk a
+mile, not for King George upon his bended knees.&rdquo; And
+he walked to the window and looked down the steep scarp
+to where the river foamed in the bottom of the dell.</p>
+
+<p>Nance stayed for no more bidding. In her own room,
+by the glimmer of the twilight, she washed her hands and
+pulled on her Sunday mittens; adjusted her black hood,
+and tied a dozen times its cherry ribbons; and in less
+than ten minutes, with a fluttering heart and excellently
+bright eyes, she passed forth under the arch and over the
+bridge, into the thickening shadows of the groves. A
+well-marked wheel-track conducted her. The wood, which
+upon both sides of the river dell was a mere scrambling
+thicket of hazel, hawthorn, and holly, boasted on the level
+of more considerable timber. Beeches came to a good
+growth, with here and there an oak; and the track now
+passed under a high arcade of branches, and now ran
+under the open sky in glades. As the girl proceeded these
+glades became more frequent, the trees began again to
+decline in size, and the wood to degenerate into furzy
+coverts. Last of all there was a fringe of elders; and
+beyond that the track came forth upon an open, rolling
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page205"></a>205</span>
+moorland, dotted with wind-bowed and scanty bushes, and
+all golden brown with the winter, like a grouse. Right
+over against the girl the last red embers of the sunset
+burned under horizontal clouds; the night fell clear and
+still and frosty, and the track in low and marshy passages
+began to crackle under foot with ice.</p>
+
+<p>Some half a mile beyond the borders of the wood the
+lights of the &ldquo;Green Dragon&rdquo; hove in sight, and running
+close beside them, very faint in the dying dusk, the pale
+ribbon of the Great North Road. It was the back of
+the post-house that was presented to Nance Holdaway;
+and as she continued to draw near and the night to fall
+more completely, she became aware of an unusual brightness
+and bustle. A post-chaise stood in the yard, its
+lamps already lighted: light shone hospitably in the
+windows and from the open door; moving lights and
+shadows testified to the activity of servants bearing lanterns.
+The clank of pails, the stamping of hoofs on the
+firm causeway, the jingle of harness, and, last of all, the
+energetic hissing of a groom, began to fall upon her ear.
+By the stir you would have thought the mail was at the
+door, but it was still too early in the night. The down
+mail was not due at the &ldquo;Green Dragon&rdquo; for hard upon
+an hour; the up mail from Scotland not before two in
+the black morning.</p>
+
+<p>Nance entered the yard somewhat dazzled. Sam, the
+tall ostler, was polishing a curb-chain with sand; the
+lantern at his feet letting up spouts of candle-light through
+the holes with which its conical roof was peppered.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hey, miss,&rdquo; said he jocularly, &ldquo;you won&rsquo;t look at
+me any more, now you have gentry at the castle.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Her cheeks burned with anger.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s my lord&rsquo;s chay,&rdquo; the man continued, nodding
+at the chaise, &ldquo;Lord Windermoor&rsquo;s. Came all in a fluster&mdash;dinner,
+bowl of punch, and put the horses to. For all
+the world like a runaway match, my dear&mdash;bar the bride.
+He brought Mr. Archer in the chay with him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page206"></a>206</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is that Holdaway?&rdquo; cried the landlord from the
+lighted entry, where he stood shading his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Only me, sir,&rdquo; answered Nance.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;O, you, Miss Nance,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Well, come in quick,
+my pretty. My lord is waiting for your uncle.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And he ushered Nance into a room cased with yellow
+wainscot and lighted by tall candles, where two gentlemen
+sat at a table finishing a bowl of punch. One of these
+was stout, elderly, and irascible, with a face like a full
+moon, well dyed with liquor, thick tremulous lips, a short,
+purple hand, in which he brandished a long pipe, and
+an abrupt and gobbling utterance. This was my Lord
+Windermoor. In his companion Nance beheld a younger
+man, tall, quiet, grave, demurely dressed, and wearing
+his own hair. Her glance but lighted on him, and she
+flushed, for in that second she made sure that she had
+twice betrayed herself&mdash;betrayed by the involuntary flash
+of her black eyes her secret impatience to behold this new
+companion, and, what was far worse, betrayed her disappointment
+in the realisation of her dreams. He, meanwhile,
+as if unconscious, continued to regard her with
+unmoved decorum.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;O, a man of wood,&rdquo; thought Nance.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What&mdash;what?&rdquo; said his lordship. &ldquo;Who is this?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If you please, my lord, I am Holdaway&rsquo;s niece,&rdquo;
+replied Nance, with a curtsey.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Should have been here himself,&rdquo; observed his lordship.
+&ldquo;Well, you tell Holdaway that I&rsquo;m aground, not
+a stiver&mdash;not a stiver. I&rsquo;m running from the beagles&mdash;going
+abroad, tell Holdaway. And he need look for no
+more wages: glad of &rsquo;em myself, if I could get &rsquo;em. He
+can live in the castle if he likes, or go to the devil. O, and
+here is Mr. Archer; and I recommend him to take him
+in&mdash;a friend of mine&mdash;and Mr. Archer will pay, as I wrote.
+And I regard that in the light of a precious good thing
+for Holdaway, let me tell you, and a set-off against the
+wages.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page207"></a>207</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But O, my lord!&rdquo; cried Nance, &ldquo;we live upon the
+wages, and what are we to do without?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What am I to do?&mdash;what am I to do?&rdquo; replied
+Lord Windermoor with some exasperation. &ldquo;I have no
+wages. And there is Mr. Archer. And if Holdaway
+doesn&rsquo;t like it, he can go to the devil, and you with him!&mdash;and
+you with him!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And yet, my lord,&rdquo; said Mr. Archer, &ldquo;these good
+people will have as keen a sense of loss as you or I; keener,
+perhaps, since they have done nothing to deserve it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Deserve it?&rdquo; cried the peer. &ldquo;What? What? If
+a rascally highwayman comes up to me with a confounded
+pistol, do you say that I&rsquo;ve deserved it? How often
+am I to tell you, sir, that I was cheated&mdash;that I was
+cheated?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You are happy in the belief,&rdquo; returned Mr. Archer
+gravely.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Archer, you would be the death of me!&rdquo; exclaimed
+his lordship. &ldquo;You know you&rsquo;re drunk; you know it,
+sir; and yet you can&rsquo;t get up a spark of animation.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have drunk fair, my lord,&rdquo; replied the younger
+man; &ldquo;but I own I am conscious of no exhilaration.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If you had as black a look-out as me, sir,&rdquo; cried
+the peer, &ldquo;you would be very glad of a little innocent
+exhilaration, let me tell you. I am glad of it&mdash;glad of it,
+and I only wish I was drunker. For let me tell you it&rsquo;s
+a cruel hard thing upon a man of my time of life and my
+position, to be brought down to beggary because the world
+is full of thieves and rascals&mdash;thieves and rascals. What?
+For all I know, you may be a thief and a rascal yourself;
+and I would fight you for a pinch of snuff&mdash;a pinch of
+snuff,&rdquo; exclaimed his lordship.</p>
+
+<p>Here Mr. Archer turned to Nance Holdaway with a
+pleasant smile, so full of sweetness, kindness, and composure
+that, at one bound, her dreams returned to her.
+&ldquo;My good Miss Holdaway,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;if you are willing
+to show me the road, I am even eager to be gone. As
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page208"></a>208</span>
+for his lordship and myself, compose yourself; there is
+no fear; this is his lordship&rsquo;s way.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What? what?&rdquo; cried his lordship. &ldquo;My way? Ish
+no such a thing, my way.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come, my lord,&rdquo; cried Archer; &ldquo;you and I very
+thoroughly understand each other; and let me suggest, it
+is time that both of us were gone. The mail will soon
+be due. Here, then, my lord, I take my leave of you,
+with the most earnest assurance of my gratitude for the
+past, and a sincere offer of any services I may be able
+to render in the future.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Archer,&rdquo; exclaimed Lord Windermoor, &ldquo;I love you
+like a son. Le&rsquo; &rsquo;s have another bowl.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My lord, for both our sakes, you will excuse me,&rdquo;
+replied Mr. Archer. &ldquo;We both require caution; we must
+both, for some while at least, avoid the chance of a
+pursuit.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Archer,&rdquo; quoth his lordship, &ldquo;this is a rank ingratishood.
+What? I&rsquo;m to go firing away in the dark in the
+cold po&rsquo;chaise, and not so much as a game of écarté possible,
+unless I stop and play with the postillion, the postillion;
+and the whole country swarming with thieves and rascals
+and highwaymen.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I beg your lordship&rsquo;s pardon,&rdquo; put in the landlord,
+who now appeared in the doorway to announce the chaise,
+&ldquo;but this part of the North Road is known for safety.
+There has not been a robbery, to call a robbery, this five
+years&rsquo; time. Further south, of course, it&rsquo;s nearer London,
+and another story,&rdquo; he added.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, then, if that&rsquo;s so,&rdquo; concluded my lord, &ldquo;le&rsquo; &rsquo;s
+have t&rsquo; other bowl and a pack of cards.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My lord, you forget,&rdquo; said Archer, &ldquo;I might still
+gain; but it is hardly possible for me to lose.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Think I&rsquo;m a sharper?&rdquo; inquired the peer. &ldquo;Gen&rsquo;leman&rsquo;s
+parole&rsquo;s all I ask.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Archer was proof against these blandishments,
+and said farewell gravely enough to Lord Windermoor,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page209"></a>209</span>
+shaking his hand and at the same time bowing very low.
+&ldquo;You will never know,&rdquo; says he, &ldquo;the service you have
+done me.&rdquo; And with that, and before my lord had finally
+taken up his meaning, he had slipped about the table,
+touched Nance lightly but imperiously on the arm, and
+left the room. In face of the outbreak of his lordship&rsquo;s
+lamentations she made haste to follow the truant.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page210"></a>210</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER II</h3>
+
+<h5>IN WHICH MR. ARCHER IS INSTALLED</h5>
+
+
+<p>The chaise had been driven round to the front door; the
+courtyard lay all deserted, and only lit by a lantern set
+upon a window-sill. Through this Nance rapidly led the
+way, and began to ascend the swellings of the moor with
+a heart that somewhat fluttered in her bosom. She was
+not afraid, but in the course of these last passages with
+Lord Windermoor Mr. Archer had ascended to that pedestal
+on which her fancy waited to instal him. The reality,
+she felt, excelled her dreams, and this cold night walk was
+the first romantic incident in her experience.</p>
+
+<p>It was the rule in these days to see gentlemen unsteady
+after dinner, yet Nance was both surprised and amused
+when her companion, who had spoken so soberly, began
+to stumble and waver by her side with the most airy
+divagations. Sometimes he would get so close to her that
+she must edge away; and at others lurch clear out of the
+track and plough among deep heather. His courtesy and
+gravity meanwhile remained unaltered. He asked her
+how far they had to go; whether the way lay all upon
+the moorland, and when he learned they had to pass a
+wood expressed his pleasure. &ldquo;For,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I am
+passionately fond of trees. Trees and fair lawns, if you
+consider of it rightly, are the ornaments of nature, as
+palaces and fine approaches&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; And here he stumbled
+into a patch of slough and nearly fell. The girl had hard
+work not to laugh, but at heart she was lost in admiration
+for one who talked so elegantly.</p>
+
+<p>They had got to about a quarter of a mile from the</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page211"></a>211</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Green Dragon,&rdquo; and were near the summit of the rise,
+when a sudden rush of wheels arrested them. Turning
+and looking back, they saw the post-house, now much
+declined in brightness; and speeding away northward the
+two tremulous bright dots of my Lord Windermoor&rsquo;s
+chaise-lamps. Mr. Archer followed these yellow and
+unsteady stars until they dwindled into points and disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There goes my only friend,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Death has cut
+off those that loved me, and change of fortune estranged
+my flatterers; and but for you, poor bankrupt, my life
+is as lonely as this moor.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The tone of his voice affected both of them. They
+stood there on the side of the moor, and became thrillingly
+conscious of the void waste of the night, without a feature
+for the eye, and except for the fainting whisper of the
+carriage-wheels without a murmur for the ear. And
+instantly, like a mockery, there broke out, very far away,
+but clear and jolly, the note of the mail-guard&rsquo;s horn.
+&ldquo;Over the hills&rdquo; was his air. It rose to the two watchers
+on the moor with the most cheerful sentiment of human
+company and travel, and at the same time in and around
+the &ldquo;Green Dragon&rdquo; it woke up a great bustle of lights
+running to and fro and clattering hoofs. Presently after,
+out of the darkness to southward, the mail grew near with
+a growing rumble. Its lamps were very large and bright,
+and threw their radiance forward in overlapping cones;
+the four cantering horses swarmed and steamed; the
+body of the coach followed like a great shadow; and this
+lit picture slid with a sort of ineffectual swiftness over
+the black field of night, and was eclipsed by the buildings
+of the &ldquo;Green Dragon.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Archer turned abruptly and resumed his former
+walk; only that he was now more steady, kept better
+alongside his young conductor, and had fallen into a
+silence broken by sighs. Nance waxed very pitiful over
+his fate, contrasting an imaginary past of courts and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page212"></a>212</span>
+great society, and perhaps the King himself, with the
+tumbledown ruin in a wood to which she was now conducting
+him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You must try, sir, to keep your spirits up,&rdquo; said she.
+&ldquo;To be sure this is a great change for one like you; but
+who knows the future?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Archer turned towards her in the darkness, and
+she could clearly perceive that he smiled upon her very
+kindly. &ldquo;There spoke a sweet nature,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;and I
+must thank you for these words. But I would not have
+you fancy that I regret the past for any happiness found
+in it, or that I fear the simplicity and hardship of the
+country. I am a man that has been much tossed about
+in life; now up, now down; and do you think that I shall
+not be able to support what you support&mdash;you who are
+kind, and therefore know how to feel pain; who are
+beautiful, and therefore hope; who are young, and therefore
+(or am I the more mistaken?) discontented?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, sir, not that, at least,&rdquo; said Nance; &ldquo;not
+discontented. If I were to be discontented, how should
+I look those that have real sorrows in the face? I have
+faults enough, but not that fault; and I have my merits
+too, for I have a good opinion of myself. But for beauty,
+I am not so simple but that I can tell a banter from a
+compliment.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, nay,&rdquo; said Mr. Archer, &ldquo;I had half forgotten;
+grief is selfish, and I was thinking of myself and not of
+you, or I had never blurted out so bold a piece of praise.
+&rsquo;Tis the best proof of my sincerity. But come, now, I
+would lay a wager you are no coward?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Indeed, sir, I am not more afraid than another,&rdquo; said
+Nance. &ldquo;None of my blood are given to fear.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And you are honest?&rdquo; he returned.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I will answer for that,&rdquo; said she.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, then, to be brave, to be honest, to be kind,
+and to be contented, since you say you are so&mdash;is not
+that to fill up a great part of virtue?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page213"></a>213</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I fear you are but a flatterer,&rdquo; said Nance, but she
+did not say it clearly, for what with bewilderment and
+satisfaction, her heart was quite oppressed.</p>
+
+<p>There could be no harm, certainly, in these grave
+compliments; but yet they charmed and frightened her,
+and to find favour, for reasons however obscure, in the
+eyes of this elegant, serious, and most unfortunate young
+gentleman, was a giddy elevation, was almost an apotheosis,
+for a country maid.</p>
+
+<p>But she was to be no more exercised; for Mr. Archer,
+disclaiming any thought of flattery, turned off to other
+subjects, and held her all through the wood in conversation,
+addressing her with an air of perfect sincerity, and
+listening to her answers with every mark of interest. Had
+open flattery continued, Nance would have soon found
+refuge in good sense; but the more subtle lure she could
+not suspect, much less avoid. It was the first time she
+had ever taken part in a conversation illuminated by any
+ideas. All was then true that she had heard and dreamed
+of gentlemen; they were a race apart, like deities knowing
+good and evil. And then there burst upon her soul a
+divine thought, hope&rsquo;s glorious sunrise: since she could
+understand, since it seemed that she too, even she, could
+interest this sorrowful Apollo, might she not learn? or
+was she not learning? Would not her soul awake and
+put forth wings? Was she not, in fact, an enchanted
+princess, waiting but a touch to become royal? She saw
+herself transformed, radiantly attired, but in the most
+exquisite taste: her face grown longer and more refined;
+her tint etherealised; and she heard herself with delighted
+wonder talking like a book.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile they had arrived at where the track comes
+out above the river dell, and saw in front of them the
+castle, faintly shadowed on the night, covering with its
+broken battlements a bold projection of the bank, and
+showing at the extreme end, where were the habitable
+tower and wing, some crevices of candle-light. Hence she
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page214"></a>214</span>
+called loudly upon her uncle, and he was seen to issue,
+lantern in hand, from the tower door, and, where the
+ruins did not intervene, to pick his way over the swarded
+courtyard, avoiding treacherous cellars and winding among
+blocks of fallen masonry. The arch of the great gate was
+still entire, flanked by two tottering bastions, and it was
+here that Jonathan met them, standing at the edge of the
+bridge, bent somewhat forward, and blinking at them
+through the glow of his own lantern. Mr. Archer greeted
+him with civility; but the old man was in no humour of
+compliance. He guided the new-comer across the courtyard,
+looking sharply and quickly in his face, and grumbling
+all the time about the cold, and the discomfort and
+dilapidation of the castle. He was sure he hoped that
+Mr. Archer would like it; but in truth he could not think
+what brought him there. Doubtless he had a good reason&mdash;this
+with a look of cunning scrutiny&mdash;but, indeed, the
+place was quite unfit for any person of repute; he himself
+was eaten up with the rheumatics. It was the most
+rheumaticky place in England, and some fine day the
+whole habitable part (to call it habitable) would fetch away
+bodily and go down the slope into the river. He had seen
+the cracks widening; there was a plaguy issue in the
+bank below; he thought a spring was mining it; it might
+be to-morrow, it might be next day; but they were all
+sure of a come-down sooner or later. &ldquo;And that is a
+poor death,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;for any one, let alone a gentleman,
+to have a whole old ruin dumped upon his belly. Have
+a care to your left there; these cellar vaults have all broke
+down, and the grass and hemlock hide &rsquo;em. Well, sir, here
+is welcome to you, such as it is, and wishing you well
+away.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And with that Jonathan ushered his guest through the
+tower door, and down three steps on the left hand into
+the kitchen or common room of the castle. It was a huge,
+low room, as large as a meadow, occupying the whole
+width of the habitable wing, with six barred windows
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page215"></a>215</span>
+looking on the court, and two into the river valley. A
+dresser, a table, and a few chairs stood dotted here and
+there upon the uneven flags. Under the great chimney a
+good fire burned in an iron fire-basket; a high old settee,
+rudely carved with figures and Gothic lettering, flanked
+it on either side; there was a hinge table and a stone
+bench in the chimney corner, and above the arch hung
+guns, axes, lanterns, and great sheaves of rusty keys.</p>
+
+<p>Jonathan looked about him, holding up the lantern,
+and shrugged his shoulders, with a pitying grimace. &ldquo;Here
+it is,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;See the damp on the floor, look at the
+moss; where there&rsquo;s moss you may be sure that it&rsquo;s rheumaticky.
+Try and get near that fire for to warm yourself;
+it&rsquo;ll blow the coat off your back. And with a young
+gentleman with a face like yours, as pale as a tallow-candle,
+I&rsquo;d be afeard of a churchyard cough and a galloping
+decline,&rdquo; says Jonathan, naming the maladies with
+gloomy gusto, &ldquo;or the cold might strike and turn your
+blood,&rdquo; he added.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Archer fairly laughed. &ldquo;My good Mr. Holdaway,&rdquo;
+said he, &ldquo;I was born with that same tallow-candle
+face, and the only fear that you inspire me with is the
+fear that I intrude unwelcomely upon your private hours.
+But I think I can promise you that I am very little troublesome,
+and I am inclined to hope that the terms which I
+can offer may still pay you the derangement.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, the terms,&rdquo; said Jonathan, &ldquo;I was thinking of
+that. As you say, they are very small,&rdquo; and he shook
+his head.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Unhappily, I can afford no more,&rdquo; said Mr. Archer.
+&ldquo;But this we have arranged already,&rdquo; he added with a
+certain stiffness; &ldquo;and as I am aware that Miss Holdaway
+has matter to communicate, I will, if you permit,
+retire at once. To-night I must bivouac; to-morrow my
+trunk is to follow from the <span class="correction" title="changed from double to single quotes">&rsquo;Dragon.&lsquo;</span> So if you will
+show me to my room I shall wish you a good slumber
+and a better awakening.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page216"></a>216</span></p>
+
+<p>Jonathan silently gave the lantern to Nance, and she,
+turning and curtseying in the doorway, proceeded to
+conduct their guest up the broad winding staircase of the
+tower. He followed with a very brooding face.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Alas!&rdquo; cried Nance, as she entered the room, &ldquo;your
+fire black out,&rdquo; and, setting down the lantern, she clapped
+upon her knees before the chimney and began to rearrange
+the charred and still smouldering remains. Mr. Archer
+looked about the gaunt apartment with a sort of shudder.
+The great height, the bare stone, the shattered windows,
+the aspect of the uncurtained bed, with one of its four
+fluted columns broken short, all struck a chill upon his
+fancy. From this dismal survey his eyes returned to
+Nance crouching before the fire, the candle in one hand
+and artfully puffing at the embers; the flames as they
+broke forth played upon the soft outline of her cheek&mdash;she
+was alive and young, coloured with the bright hues
+of life, and a woman. He looked upon her, softening; and
+then sat down and continued to admire the picture.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There, sir,&rdquo; said she, getting upon her feet, &ldquo;your
+fire is doing bravely now. Good-night.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He rose and held out his hand. &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; said he,
+&ldquo;you are my only friend in these parts, and you must
+shake hands.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She brushed her hand upon her skirt and offered it,
+blushing.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;God bless you, my dear,&rdquo; said he.</p>
+
+<p>And then, when he was alone, he opened one of the
+windows, and stared down into the dark valley. A gentle
+wimpling of the river among stones ascended to his ear;
+the trees upon the other bank stood very black against
+the sky; farther away an owl was hooting. It was
+dreary and cold, and as he turned back to the hearth and
+the fine glow of fire, &ldquo;Heavens!&rdquo; said he to himself,
+&ldquo;what an unfortunate destiny is mine!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He went to bed, but sleep only visited his pillow in
+uneasy snatches. Outbreaks of loud speech came up the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page217"></a>217</span>
+staircase; he heard the old stones of the castle crack in
+the frosty night with sharp reverberations, and the bed
+complained under his tossings. Lastly, far on into the
+morning, he awakened from a doze to hear, very far off,
+in the extreme and breathless quiet, a wailing flourish on
+the horn. The down mail was drawing near to the &ldquo;Green
+Dragon.&rdquo; He sat up in bed; the sound was tragical by
+distance, and the modulation appealed to his ear like
+human speech. It seemed to call upon him with a dreary
+insistence&mdash;to call him far away, to address him personally,
+and to have a meaning that he failed to seize. It
+was thus, at least, in this nodding castle, in a cold, miry
+woodland, and so far from men and society, that the
+traffic on the Great North Road spoke to him in the
+intervals of slumber.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page218"></a>218</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER III</h3>
+
+<h5>JONATHAN HOLDAWAY</h5>
+
+
+<p>Nance descended the tower stair, pausing at every step.
+She was in no hurry to confront her uncle with bad news,
+and she must dwell a little longer on the rich note of
+Mr. Archer&rsquo;s voice, the charm of his kind words, and
+the beauty of his manner and person. But, once at the
+stair-foot, she threw aside the spell and recovered her
+sensible and workaday self.</p>
+
+<p>Jonathan was seated in the middle of the settle, a mug
+of ale beside him, in the attitude of one prepared for
+trouble; but he did not speak, and suffered her to fetch
+her supper and eat of it, with a very excellent appetite,
+in silence. When she had done, she, too, drew a tankard
+of home-brewed, and came and planted herself in front of
+him upon the settle.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well?&rdquo; said Jonathan.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My lord has run away,&rdquo; said Nance.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What?&rdquo; cried the old man.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Abroad,&rdquo; she continued; &ldquo;run away from creditors.
+He said he had not a stiver, but he was drunk enough.
+He said you might live on in the castle, and Mr. Archer
+would pay you; but you was to look for no more wages,
+since he would be glad of them himself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Jonathan&rsquo;s face contracted; the flush of a black,
+bilious anger mounted to the roots of his hair; he gave
+an inarticulate cry, leapt upon his feet, and began rapidly
+pacing the stone floor. At first he kept his hands behind
+his back in a tight knot; then he began to gesticulate as
+he turned.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page219"></a>219</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This man&mdash;this lord,&rdquo; he shouted, &ldquo;who is he?
+He was born with a gold spoon in his mouth, and I with
+a dirty straw. He rolled in his coach when he was a
+baby. I have dug and toiled and laboured since I was
+that high&mdash;that high.&rdquo; And he shouted again. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+bent and broke, and full of pains. D&rsquo;ye think I don&rsquo;t
+know the taste of sweat? Many&rsquo;s the gallon I&rsquo;ve drunk
+of it&mdash;ay, in the midwinter, toiling like a slave. All
+through, what has my life been? Bend, bend, bend my
+old creaking back till it would ache like breaking; wade
+about in the foul mire, never a dry stitch; empty belly,
+sore hands, hat off to my Lord Redface; kicks and
+ha&rsquo;pence; and now, here, at the hind end, when I&rsquo;m worn
+to my poor bones, a kick and done with it.&rdquo; He walked
+a little while in silence, and then, extending his hand,
+&ldquo;Now, you Nance Holdaway,&rdquo; says he, &ldquo;you come of
+my blood, and you&rsquo;re a good girl. When that man was
+a boy, I used to carry his gun for him. I carried the gun
+all day on my two feet, and many a stitch I had, and
+chewed a bullet for. He rode upon a horse, with feathers
+in his hat; but it was him that had the shots and took
+the game home. Did I complain? Not I. I knew my
+station. What did I ask, but just the chance to live and
+die honest? Nance Holdaway, don&rsquo;t let them deny it to
+me&mdash;don&rsquo;t let them do it. I&rsquo;ve been as poor as Job, and
+as honest as the day, but now, my girl, you mark these
+words of mine, I&rsquo;m getting tired of it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t say such words, at least,&rdquo; said
+Nance.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You wouldn&rsquo;t?&rdquo; said the old man grimly. &ldquo;Well,
+and did I when I was your age? Wait till your back&rsquo;s
+broke and your hands tremble, and your eyes fail, and
+you&rsquo;re weary of the battle and ask no more but to lie down
+in your bed and give the ghost up like an honest man;
+and then let there up and come some insolent, ungodly
+fellow&mdash;ah! if I had him in these hands! &lsquo;Where&rsquo;s my
+money that you gambled?&rsquo; I should say. &lsquo;Where&rsquo;s my
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page220"></a>220</span>
+money that you drank and diced?&rsquo; &lsquo;Thief!&rsquo; is what I
+would say; &lsquo;Thief!&rsquo;&rdquo; he roared, &ldquo;&lsquo;Thief!&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mr. Archer will hear you if you don&rsquo;t take care,&rdquo;
+said Nance, &ldquo;and I would be ashamed, for one, that he
+should hear a brave, old, honest, hard-working man like
+Jonathan Holdaway talk nonsense like a boy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;D&rsquo;ye think I mind for Mr. Archer?&rdquo; he cried shrilly,
+with a clack of laughter; and then he came close up to
+her, stooped down with his two palms upon his knees,
+and looked her in the eyes, with a strange hard expression,
+something like a smile. &ldquo;Do I mind for God, my girl?&rdquo;
+he said; &ldquo;that&rsquo;s what it&rsquo;s come to be now, do I mind
+for God?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Uncle Jonathan,&rdquo; she said, getting up and taking
+him by the arm; &ldquo;you sit down again, where you were
+sitting. There, sit still; I&rsquo;ll have no more of this; you&rsquo;ll
+do yourself a mischief. Come, take a drink of this good
+ale, and I&rsquo;ll warm a tankard for you. La, we&rsquo;ll pull
+through, you&rsquo;ll see. I&rsquo;m young, as you say, and it&rsquo;s
+my turn to carry the bundle; and don&rsquo;t you worry
+your bile, or we&rsquo;ll have sickness, too, as well as
+sorrow.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;D&rsquo;ye think that I&rsquo;d forgotten you?&rdquo; said Jonathan,
+with something like a groan; and thereupon his teeth
+clicked to, and he sat silent with the tankard in his hand
+and staring straight before him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why,&rdquo; says Nance, setting on the ale to mull, &ldquo;men
+are always children, they say, however old; and if ever
+I heard a thing like this, to set to and make yourself sick,
+just when the money&rsquo;s failing. Keep a good heart up;
+you haven&rsquo;t kept a good heart these seventy years, nigh
+hand, to break down about a pound or two. Here&rsquo;s this
+Mr. Archer come to lodge, that you disliked so much.
+Well, now you see it was a clear Providence. Come, let&rsquo;s
+think upon our mercies. And here is the ale mulling
+lovely; smell of it; I&rsquo;ll take a drop myself, it smells so
+sweet. And, Uncle Jonathan, you let me say one word.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page221"></a>221</span>
+You&rsquo;ve lost more than money before now; you lost my
+aunt, and bore it like a man. Bear this.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>His face once more contracted; his fist doubled, and
+shot forth into the air, and trembled. &ldquo;Let them look
+out!&rdquo; he shouted. &ldquo;Here, I warn all men; I&rsquo;ve done
+with this foul kennel of knaves. Let them look out!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hush, hush! for pity&rsquo;s sake,&rdquo; cried Nance.</p>
+
+<p>And then all of a sudden he dropped his face into his
+hands, and broke out with a great hiccoughing dry sob
+that was horrible to hear. &ldquo;O,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;my God, if
+my son hadn&rsquo;t left me, if my Dick was here!&rdquo; and the
+sobs shook him; Nance sitting still and watching him,
+with distress. &ldquo;O, if he were here to help his father!&rdquo;
+he went on again. &ldquo;If I had a son like other fathers, he
+would save me now, when all is breaking down; O, he
+would save me! Ay, but where is he? Raking taverns,
+a thief perhaps. My curse be on him!&rdquo; he added, rising
+again into wrath.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hush!&rdquo; cried Nance, springing to her feet: &ldquo;your
+boy, your dead wife&rsquo;s boy&mdash;Aunt Susan&rsquo;s baby that she
+loved&mdash;would you curse him? O, God forbid!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The energy of her address surprised him from his
+mood. He looked upon her, tearless and confused. &ldquo;Let
+me go to my bed,&rdquo; he said at last, and he rose, and, shaking
+as with ague, but quite silent, lighted his candle, and left
+the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Nance! the pleasant current of her dreams was
+all diverted. She beheld a golden city, where she aspired
+to dwell; she had spoken with a deity, and had told herself
+that she might rise to be his equal; and now the
+earthly ligaments that bound her down had been tightened.
+She was like a tree looking skyward, her roots were in the
+ground. It seemed to her a thing so coarse, so rustic, to
+be thus concerned about a loss in money; when Mr. Archer,
+fallen from the sky-level of counts and nobles, faced his
+changed destiny with so immovable a courage. To weary
+of honesty; that, at least, no one could do, but even to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page222"></a>222</span>
+name it was already a disgrace; and she beheld in fancy
+her uncle, and the young lad, all laced and feathered,
+hand upon hip, bestriding his small horse. The opposition
+seemed to perpetuate itself from generation to generation;
+one side still doomed to the clumsy and the servile, the
+other born to beauty.</p>
+
+<p>She thought of the golden zones in which gentlemen
+were bred, and figured with so excellent a grace; zones
+in which wisdom and smooth words, white linen and slim
+hands, were the mark of the desired inhabitants; where
+low temptations were unknown, and honesty no virtue,
+but a thing as natural as breathing.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page223"></a>223</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER IV</h3>
+
+<h5>MINGLING THREADS</h5>
+
+
+<p>It was nearly seven before Mr. Archer left his apartment.
+On the landing he found another door beside his own
+opening on a roofless corridor, and presently he was walking
+on the top of the ruins. On one hand he could look
+down a good depth into the green courtyard; on the
+other his eye roved along the downward course of the
+river, the wet woods all smoking, the shadows long and
+blue, the mists golden and rosy in the sun, here and there
+the water flashing across an obstacle. His heart expanded
+and softened to a grateful melancholy, and with his eye
+fixed upon the distance, and no thought of present danger,
+he continued to stroll along the elevated and treacherous
+promenade.</p>
+
+<p>A terror-stricken cry rose to him from the courtyard.
+He looked down, and saw in a glimpse Nance standing
+below with hands clasped in horror and his own foot
+trembling on the margin of a gulf. He recoiled and leant
+against a pillar, quaking from head to foot, and covering
+his face with his hands; and Nance had time to run
+round by the stair and rejoin him where he stood before
+he had changed a line of his position.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; he cried, and clutched her wrist; &ldquo;don&rsquo;t leave
+me. The place rocks; I have no head for altitudes.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sit down against that pillar,&rdquo; said Nance. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t
+you be afraid; I won&rsquo;t leave you, and don&rsquo;t look up or
+down: look straight at me. How white you are!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The gulf,&rdquo; he said, and closed his eyes again and
+shuddered.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page224"></a>224</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why,&rdquo; said Nance, &ldquo;what a poor climber you must
+be! That was where my cousin Dick used to get out of
+the castle after Uncle Jonathan had shut the gate. I&rsquo;ve
+been down there myself with him helping me. I wouldn&rsquo;t
+try with you,&rdquo; she said, and laughed merrily.</p>
+
+<p>The sound of her laughter was sincere and musical, and
+perhaps its beauty barbed the offence to Mr. Archer. The
+blood came into his face with a quick jet, and then left it
+paler than before. &ldquo;It is a physical weakness,&rdquo; he said
+harshly, &ldquo;and very droll, no doubt, but one that I can
+conquer on necessity. See, I am still shaking. Well, I
+advance to the battlements and look down. Show me
+your cousin&rsquo;s path.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He would go sure-foot along that little ledge,&rdquo; said
+Nance, pointing as she spoke; &ldquo;then out through the
+breach and down by yonder buttress. It is easier coming
+back, of course, because you see where you are going.
+From the buttress foot a sheep-walk goes along the scarp&mdash;see,
+you can follow it from here in the dry grass. And
+now, sir,&rdquo; she added, with a touch of womanly pity, &ldquo;I
+would come away from here if I were you, for indeed
+you are not fit.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sure enough Mr. Archer&rsquo;s pallor and agitation had continued
+to increase; his cheeks were deathly, his clenched
+fingers trembled pitifully. &ldquo;The weakness is physical,&rdquo;
+he sighed, and had nearly fallen. Nance led him from the
+spot, and he was no sooner back in the tower-stair, than
+he fell heavily against the wall and put his arm across
+his eyes. A cup of brandy had to be brought him before
+he could descend to breakfast; and the perfection of
+Nance&rsquo;s dream was for the first time troubled.</p>
+
+<p>Jonathan was waiting for them at table, with yellow,
+blood-shot eyes and a peculiar dusky complexion. He
+hardly waited till they found their seats, before, raising one
+hand, and stooping with his mouth above his plate, he put
+up a prayer for a blessing on the food and a spirit of
+gratitude in the eaters, and thereupon, and without more
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page225"></a>225</span>
+civility, fell to. But it was notable that he was no less
+speedily satisfied than he had been greedy to begin. He
+pushed his plate away and drummed upon the table.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;These are silly prayers,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;that they teach
+us. Eat and be thankful, that&rsquo;s no such wonder. Speak
+to me of starving&mdash;there&rsquo;s the touch. You&rsquo;re a man,
+they tell me, Mr. Archer, that has met with some
+reverses?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have met with many,&rdquo; replied Mr. Archer.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ha!&rdquo; said Jonathan. &ldquo;None reckons but the last.
+Now, see; I tried to make this girl here understand me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Uncle,&rdquo; said Nance, &ldquo;what should Mr. Archer care
+for your concerns? He hath troubles of his own, and
+came to be at peace, I think.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I tried to make her understand me,&rdquo; repeated Jonathan
+doggedly; &ldquo;and now I&rsquo;ll try you. Do you think
+this world is fair?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Fair and false!&rdquo; quoth Mr. Archer.</p>
+
+<p>The old man laughed immoderately. &ldquo;Good,&rdquo; said
+he, &ldquo;very good, but what I mean is this: do you know
+what it is to get up early and go to bed late, and never
+take so much as a holiday but four: and one of these
+your own marriage day, and the other three the funerals
+of folk you loved, and all that, to have a quiet old age
+in shelter, and bread for your old belly, and a bed to
+lay your crazy bones upon, with a clear conscience?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; said Mr. Archer with an inclination of his head,
+&ldquo;you portray a very brave existence.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; continued Jonathan, &ldquo;and in the end thieves
+deceive you, thieves rob and rook you, thieves turn you
+out in your old age and send you begging. What have
+you got for all your honesty? A fine return! You that
+might have stole scores of pounds, there you are out in
+the rain with your rheumatics!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Archer had forgotten to eat; with his hand upon
+his chin he was studying the old man&rsquo;s countenance.
+&ldquo;And you conclude?&rdquo; he asked.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page226"></a>226</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Conclude!&rdquo; cried Jonathan. &ldquo;I conclude I&rsquo;ll be
+upsides with them.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ay,&rdquo; said the other, &ldquo;we are all tempted to revenge.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You have lost money?&rdquo; asked Jonathan.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A great estate,&rdquo; said Archer quietly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;See now!&rdquo; says Jonathan, &ldquo;and where is it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, I sometimes think that every one has had his
+share of it but me,&rdquo; was the reply. &ldquo;All England hath
+paid his taxes with my patrimony: I was a sheep that
+left my wool on every briar.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And you sit down under that?&rdquo; cried the old man.
+&ldquo;Come now, Mr. Archer, you and me belong to different
+stations; and I know mine&mdash;no man better,&mdash;but since
+we have both been rooked, and are both sore with it,
+why, here&rsquo;s my hand with a very good heart, and I ask
+for yours, and no offence, I hope.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There is surely no offence, my friend,&rdquo; returned Mr.
+Archer, as they shook hands across the table; &ldquo;for,
+believe me, my sympathies are quite acquired to you.
+This life is an arena where we fight with beasts; and,
+indeed,&rdquo; he added, sighing, &ldquo;I sometimes marvel why
+we go down to it unarmed.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In the meanwhile a creaking of ungreased axles had
+been heard descending through the wood; and presently
+after, the door opened, and the tall ostler entered the
+kitchen carrying one end of Mr. Archer&rsquo;s trunk. The
+other was carried by an aged beggar man of that district,
+known and welcome for some twenty miles about under
+the name of &ldquo;Old Cumberland.&rdquo; Each was soon perched
+upon a settle, with a cup of ale; and the ostler, who
+valued himself upon his affability, began to entertain the
+company, still with half an eye on Nance, to whom in
+gallant terms he expressly dedicated every sip of ale.
+First he told of the trouble they had to get his Lordship
+started in the chaise; and how he had dropped a rouleau
+of gold on the threshold, and the passage and doorstep
+had been strewn with guinea-pieces. At this old Jonathan
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page227"></a>227</span>
+looked at Mr. Archer. Next the visitor turned to news of
+a more thrilling character: how the down mail had been
+stopped again near Grantham by three men on horseback&mdash;a
+white and two bays; how they had handkerchiefs on
+their faces; how Tom the guard&rsquo;s blunderbuss missed fire,
+but he swore he had winged one of them with a
+pistol; and how they had got clean away with seventy
+pounds in money, some valuable papers, and a watch
+or two.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Brave! brave!&rdquo; cried Jonathan in ecstasy. &ldquo;Seventy
+pounds! O, it&rsquo;s brave!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I don&rsquo;t see the great bravery,&rdquo; observed the
+ostler, misapprehending him. &ldquo;Three men, and you may
+call that three to one. I&rsquo;ll call it brave when some one
+stops the mail single-handed; that&rsquo;s a risk.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And why should they hesitate?&rdquo; inquired Mr. Archer.
+&ldquo;The poor souls who are fallen to such a way of life,
+pray what have they to lose? If they get the money,
+well; but if a ball should put them from their troubles,
+why, so better.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, sir,&rdquo; said the ostler, &ldquo;I believe you&rsquo;ll find they
+won&rsquo;t agree with you. They count on a good fling, you
+see; or who would risk it?&mdash;And here&rsquo;s my best respects
+to you, Miss Nance.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And I forgot the part of cowardice,&rdquo; resumed Mr.
+Archer. &ldquo;All men fear.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;O, surely not!&rdquo; cried Nance.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;All men,&rdquo; reiterated Mr. Archer.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ay, that&rsquo;s a true word,&rdquo; observed Old Cumberland,
+&ldquo;and a thief, anyway, for it&rsquo;s a coward&rsquo;s trade.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But these fellows, now,&rdquo; said Jonathan, with a curious,
+appealing manner&mdash;&ldquo;these fellows with their seventy
+pounds! Perhaps, Mr. Archer, they were no true thieves
+after all, but just people who had been robbed and tried
+to get their own again. What was that you said, about
+all England and the taxes? One takes, another gives;
+why, that&rsquo;s almost fair. If I&rsquo;ve been rooked and robbed,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page228"></a>228</span>
+and the coat taken off my back, I call it almost fair to
+take another&rsquo;s.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ask Old Cumberland,&rdquo; observed the ostler; &ldquo;you
+ask Old Cumberland, Miss Nance!&rdquo; and he bestowed a
+wink upon his favoured fair one.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why that?&rdquo; asked Jonathan.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He had his coat taken&mdash;ay, and his shirt too,&rdquo;
+returned the ostler.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is that so?&rdquo; cried Jonathan eagerly. &ldquo;Was you
+robbed too?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That was I,&rdquo; replied Cumberland, &ldquo;with a warrant!
+I was a well-to-do man when I was young.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ay! See that!&rdquo; says Jonathan. &ldquo;And you don&rsquo;t
+long for a revenge?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Eh! Not me!&rdquo; answered the beggar. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s too
+long ago. But if you&rsquo;ll give me another mug of your
+good ale, my pretty lady, I won&rsquo;t say no to that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And shalt have! And shalt have!&rdquo; cried Jonathan.
+&ldquo;Or brandy even, if you like it better.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And as Cumberland did like it better, and the ostler
+chimed in, the party pledged each other in a dram of
+brandy before separating.</p>
+
+<p>As for Nance, she slipped forth into the ruins, partly
+to avoid the ostler&rsquo;s gallantries, partly to lament over the
+defects of Mr. Archer. Plainly, he was no hero. She
+pitied him; she began to feel a protecting interest mingle
+with and almost supersede her admiration, and was at the
+same time disappointed and yet drawn to him. She was,
+indeed, conscious of such unshaken fortitude in her own
+heart, that she was almost tempted by an occasion to be
+bold for two. She saw herself, in a brave attitude, shielding
+her imperfect hero from the world; and she saw, like
+a piece of heaven, his gratitude for her protection.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page229"></a>229</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER V</h3>
+
+<h5>LIFE IN THE CASTLE</h5>
+
+
+<p>From that day forth the life of these three persons in
+the ruin ran very smoothly. Mr. Archer now sat by the
+fire with a book, and now passed whole days abroad,
+returning late, dead weary. His manner was a mask; but
+it was half transparent; through the even tenor of his
+gravity and courtesy profound revolutions of feeling were
+betrayed, seasons of numb despair, of restlessness, of
+aching temper. For days he would say nothing beyond
+his usual courtesies and solemn compliments; and then,
+all of a sudden, some fine evening beside the kitchen fire,
+he would fall into a vein of elegant gossip, tell of strange
+and interesting events, the secrets of families, brave deeds
+of war, the miraculous discovery of crime, the visitations
+of the dead. Nance and her uncle would sit till the small
+hours with eyes wide open: Jonathan applauding the
+unexpected incidents with many a slap of his big hand;
+Nance, perhaps, more pleased with the narrator&rsquo;s eloquence
+and wise reflections; and then, again, days would follow
+of abstraction, of listless humming, of frequent apologies
+and long hours of silence. Once only, and then after a
+week of unrelieved melancholy, he went over to the &ldquo;Green
+Dragon,&rdquo; spent the afternoon with the landlord and a
+bowl of punch, and returned as on the first night, devious
+in step but courteous and unperturbed of speech.</p>
+
+<p>If he seemed more natural and more at his ease it was
+when he found Nance alone; and, laying by some of his
+reserve, talked before her rather than to her of his destiny,
+character, and hopes. To Nance these interviews were but
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page230"></a>230</span>
+a doubtful privilege. At times he would seem to take a
+pleasure in her presence, to consult her gravely, to hear
+and to discuss her counsels; at times even, but these were
+rare and brief, he would talk of herself, praise the qualities
+that she possessed, touch indulgently on her defects, and
+lend her books to read and even examine her upon her
+reading; but far more often he would fall into a half
+unconsciousness, put her a question and then answer it
+himself, drop into the veiled tone of voice of one soliloquising,
+and leave her at last as though he had forgotten
+her existence. It was odd, too, that in all this random
+converse, not a fact of his past life, and scarce a name,
+should ever cross his lips. A profound reserve kept
+watch upon his most unguarded moments. He spoke
+continually of himself, indeed, but still in enigmas; a
+veiled prophet of egoism.</p>
+
+<p>The base of Nance&rsquo;s feelings for Mr. Archer was admiration
+as for a superior being; and with this, his treatment,
+consciously or not, accorded happily. When he forgot
+her, she took the blame upon herself. His formal politeness
+was so exquisite that this essential brutality stood
+excused. His compliments, besides, were always grave and
+rational; he would offer reason for his praise, convict her
+of merit, and thus disarm suspicion. Nay, and the very
+hours when he forgot and remembered her alternately could
+by the ardent fallacies of youth be read in the light of an
+attention. She might be far from his confidence; but
+still she was nearer it than any one. He might ignore her
+presence, but yet he sought it.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, she, upon her side, was conscious of one
+point of superiority. Beside this rather dismal, rather
+effeminate man, who recoiled from a worm, who grew
+giddy on the castle wall, who bore so helplessly the weight
+of his misfortunes, she felt herself a head and shoulders
+taller in cheerful and sterling courage. She could walk
+head in air along the most precarious rafter; her hand
+feared neither the grossness nor the harshness of life&rsquo;s
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page231"></a>231</span>
+web, but was thrust cheerfully, if need were, into the
+briar bush, and could take hold of any crawling horror.
+Ruin was mining the walls of her cottage, as already it
+had mined and subverted Mr. Archer&rsquo;s palace. Well, she
+faced it with a bright countenance and a busy hand. She
+had got some washing, some rough seamstress work from
+the &ldquo;Green Dragon,&rdquo; and from another neighbour ten
+miles away across the moor. At this she cheerfully
+laboured, and from that height she could afford to pity
+the useless talents and poor attitude of Mr. Archer. It
+did not change her admiration, but it made it bearable.
+He was above her in all ways; but she was above him in
+one. She kept it to herself, and hugged it. When, like
+all young creatures, she made long stories to justify, to
+nourish, and to forecast the course of her affection, it was
+this private superiority that made all rosy, that cut the
+knot, and that, at last, in some great situation, fetched
+to her knees the dazzling but imperfect hero. With this
+pretty exercise she beguiled the hours of labour, and
+consoled herself for Mr. Archer&rsquo;s bearing. Pity was her
+weapon and her weakness. To accept the loved one&rsquo;s
+faults, although it has an air of freedom, is to kiss the chain,
+and this pity it was which, lying nearer to her heart, lent
+the one element of true emotion to a fanciful and merely
+brain-sick love.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it fell out one day that she had gone to the
+&ldquo;Green Dragon&rdquo; and brought back thence a letter to
+Mr. Archer. He, upon seeing it, winced like a man under
+the knife: pain, shame, sorrow, and the most trenchant
+edge of mortification cut into his heart and wrung the
+steady composure of his face.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dear heart! have you bad news?&rdquo; she cried.</p>
+
+<p>But he only replied by a gesture and fled to his room,
+and when, later on, she ventured to refer to it, he stopped
+her on the threshold, as if with words prepared beforehand.
+&ldquo;There are some pains,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;too acute for
+consolation, or I would bring them to my kind consoler.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page232"></a>232</span>
+Let the memory of that letter, if you please, be buried.&rdquo;
+And then as she continued to gaze at him, being, in spite
+of herself, pained by his elaborate phrase, doubtfully sincere
+in word and manner: &ldquo;Let it be enough,&rdquo; he added
+haughtily, &ldquo;that if this matter wring my heart, it doth
+not touch my conscience. I am a man, I would have
+you to know, who suffers undeservedly.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He had never spoken so directly: never with so convincing
+an emotion; and her heart thrilled for him. She
+could have taken his pains and died of them with joy.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile she was left without support. Jonathan
+now swore by his lodger, and lived for him. He was a
+fine talker. He knew the finest sight of stories; he was
+a man and a gentleman, take him for all in all, and a perfect
+credit to Old England. Such were the old man&rsquo;s
+declared sentiments, and sure enough he clung to Mr.
+Archer&rsquo;s side, hung upon his utterance when he spoke,
+and watched him with unwearying interest when he was
+silent. And yet his feeling was not clear; in the partial
+wreck of his mind, which was leaning to decay, some afterthought
+was strongly present. As he gazed in Mr. Archer&rsquo;s
+face a sudden brightness would kindle in his rheumy eyes,
+his eyebrows would lift as with a sudden thought, his
+mouth would open as though to speak, and close again
+on silence. Once or twice he even called Mr. Archer
+mysteriously forth into the dark courtyard, took him by
+the button, and laid a demonstrative finger on his chest;
+but there his ideas or his courage failed him; he would
+shufflingly excuse himself and return to his position by
+the fire without a word of explanation. &ldquo;The good man
+was growing old,&rdquo; said Mr. Archer with a suspicion of a
+shrug. But the good man had his idea, and even when
+he was alone the name of Mr. Archer fell from his lips
+continually in the course of mumbled and gesticulative
+conversation.</p>
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page233"></a>233</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER VI</h3>
+
+<h5>THE BAD HALF-CROWN</h5>
+
+
+<p>However early Nance arose, and she was no sluggard,
+the old man, who had begun to outlive the earthly habit
+of slumber, would usually have been up long before, the
+fire would be burning brightly, and she would see him
+wandering among the ruins, lantern in hand, and talking
+assiduously to himself. One day, however, after he had
+returned late from the market town, she found that she
+had stolen a march upon that indefatigable early riser.
+The kitchen was all blackness. She crossed the castle-yard
+to the wood-cellar, her steps printing the thick hoarfrost.
+A scathing breeze blew out of the north-east and
+slowly carried a regiment of black and tattered clouds
+over the face of heaven, which was already kindled with
+the wild light of morning, but where she walked, in shelter
+of the ruins, the flame of her candle burned steady. The
+extreme cold smote upon her conscience. She could not
+bear to think this bitter business fell usually to the lot
+of one so old as Jonathan, and made desperate resolutions
+to be earlier in the future.</p>
+
+<p>The fire was a good blaze before he entered, limping
+dismally into the kitchen. &ldquo;Nance,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I be all
+knotted up with the rheumatics; will you rub me a bit?&rdquo;
+She came and rubbed him where and how he bade her.
+&ldquo;This is a cruel thing that old age should be rheumaticky,&rdquo;
+said he. &ldquo;When I was young I stood my turn of the
+teethache like a man! for why? because it couldn&rsquo;t last
+for ever; but these rheumatics come to live and die with
+you. Your aunt was took before the time came; never
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page234"></a>234</span>
+had an ache to mention. Now I lie all night in my single
+bed and the blood never warms in me; this knee of mine
+it seems like lighted up with rheumatics; it seems as
+though you could see to sew by it; and all the strings of
+my old body ache, as if devils was pulling &rsquo;em. Thank
+you kindly; that&rsquo;s someways easier now, but an old man,
+my dear, has little to look for; it&rsquo;s pain, pain, pain to the
+end of the business, and I&rsquo;ll never be rightly warm again
+till I get under the sod,&rdquo; he said, and looked down at her
+with a face so aged and weary that she had nearly wept.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I lay awake all night,&rdquo; he continued; &ldquo;I do so
+mostly, and a long walk kills me. Eh, deary me, to think
+that life should run to such a puddle! And I remember
+long syne when I was strong, and the blood all hot and
+good about me, and I loved to run, too&mdash;deary me, to run!
+Well, that&rsquo;s all by. You&rsquo;d better pray to be took early,
+Nance, and not live on till you get to be like me, and are
+robbed in your grey old age, your cold, shivering, dark
+old age, that&rsquo;s like a winter&rsquo;s morning&rdquo;; and he bitterly
+shuddered, spreading his hands before the fire.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come now,&rdquo; said Nance, &ldquo;the more you say the less
+you&rsquo;ll like it, Uncle Jonathan; but if I were you I would
+be proud for to have lived all your days honest and beloved,
+and come near the end with your good name: isn&rsquo;t that
+a fine thing to be proud of? Mr. Archer was telling me
+in some strange land they used to run races each with
+a lighted candle, and the art was to keep the candle burning.
+Well, now, I thought that was like life; a man&rsquo;s
+good conscience is the flame he gets to carry, and if he
+comes to the winning-post with that still burning, why,
+take it how you will, the man&rsquo;s a hero&mdash;even if he was
+low-born like you and me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Did Mr. Archer tell you that?&rdquo; asked Jonathan.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, dear,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;that&rsquo;s my own thought about
+it. He told me of the race. But see, now,&rdquo; she continued,
+putting on the porridge, &ldquo;you say old age is a
+hard season, but so is youth. You&rsquo;re half out of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page235"></a>235</span>
+battle, I would say; you loved my aunt and got her,
+and buried her, and some of these days soon you&rsquo;ll go
+to meet her; and take her my love and tell her I tried
+to take good care of you; for so I do, Uncle Jonathan.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Jonathan struck with his fist upon the settle. &ldquo;D&rsquo;ye
+think I want to die, ye vixen?&rdquo; he shouted. &ldquo;I want
+to live ten hundred years.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This was a mystery beyond Nance&rsquo;s penetration, and
+she stared in wonder as she made the porridge.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I want to live,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;I want to live and
+to grow rich. I want to drive my carriage and to dice
+in hells and see the ring, I do. Is this a life that I lived?
+I want to be a rake, d&rsquo;ye understand? I want to know
+what things are like. I don&rsquo;t want to die like a blind
+kitten, and me seventy-six.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;O fie!&rdquo; said Nance.</p>
+
+<p>The old man thrust out his jaw at her, with the grimace
+of an irreverent schoolboy. Upon that aged face it seemed
+a blasphemy. Then he took out of his bosom a long
+leather purse, and emptying its contents on the settle,
+began to count and recount the pieces, ringing and examining
+each, and suddenly he leapt like a young man.
+&ldquo;What!&rdquo; he screamed. &ldquo;Bad? O Lord! I&rsquo;m robbed
+again!&rdquo; And falling on his knees before the settle he
+began to pour forth the most dreadful curses on the head
+of his deceiver. His eyes were shut, for to him this vile
+solemnity was prayer. He held up the bad half-crown
+in his right hand, as though he were displaying it to
+Heaven, and what increased the horror of the scene, the
+curses he invoked were those whose efficacy he had tasted&mdash;old
+age and poverty, rheumatism and an ungrateful
+son. Nance listened appalled; then she sprang forward
+and dragged down his arm and laid her hand upon his
+mouth.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Whist!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Whist ye, for God&rsquo;s sake! O
+my man, whist ye! If Heaven were to hear; if poor
+Aunt Susan were to hear! Think, she may be listening.&rdquo;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page236"></a>236</span>
+And with the histrionism of strong emotion she pointed
+to a corner of the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>His eyes followed her finger. He looked there for a
+little, thinking, blinking; then he got stiffly to his feet
+and resumed his place upon the settle, the bad piece still
+in his hand. So he sat for some time, looking upon the
+half-crown, and now wondering to himself on the injustice
+and partiality of the law, now computing again and again
+the nature of his loss. So he was still sitting when Mr.
+Archer entered the kitchen. At this a light came into his
+face, and after some seconds of rumination he despatched
+Nance upon an errand.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mr. Archer,&rdquo; said he, as soon as they were alone
+together, &ldquo;would you give me a guinea-piece for silver?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, sir, I believe I can,&rdquo; said Mr. Archer.</p>
+
+<p>And the exchange was just effected when Nance re-entered
+the apartment. The blood shot into her face.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s to do here?&rdquo; she asked rudely.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nothing, my dearie,&rdquo; said old Jonathan, with a touch
+of whine.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s to do?&rdquo; she said again.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Your uncle was but changing me a piece of gold,&ldquo;
+returned Mr. Archer.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Let me see what he hath given you, Mr. Archer,&rdquo;
+replied the girl. &ldquo;I had a bad piece, and I fear it is
+mixed up among the good.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, well,&rdquo; replied Mr. Archer, smiling, &ldquo;I must take
+the merchant&rsquo;s risk of it. The money is now mixed.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I know my piece,&rdquo; quoth Nance. &ldquo;Come, let me
+see your silver, Mr. Archer. If I have to get it by a
+theft I&rsquo;ll see that money,&rdquo; she cried.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, child, if you put as much passion to be honest
+as the world to steal, I must give way, though I betray
+myself,&rdquo; said Mr. Archer. &ldquo;There it is as I received it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Nance quickly found the bad half-crown.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Give him another,&rdquo; she said, looking Jonathan in the
+face; and when that had been done, she walked over to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page237"></a>237</span>
+the chimney and flung the guilty piece into the reddest
+of the fire. Its base constituents began immediately to
+run; even as she watched it the disc crumbled, and the
+lineaments of the King became confused. Jonathan, who
+had followed close behind, beheld these changes from
+over her shoulder, and his face darkened sorely.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;come back to table, and to-day it
+is I that shall say grace, as I used to do in the old times,
+day about with Dick&rdquo;; and covering her eyes with one
+hand, &ldquo;O Lord,&rdquo; said she with deep emotion, &ldquo;make us
+thankful; and, O Lord, deliver us from evil! For the
+love of the poor souls that watch for us in heaven, O
+deliver us from evil.&rdquo;</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page238"></a>238</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER VII</h3>
+
+<h5>THE BLEACHING-GREEN</h5>
+
+
+<p>The year moved on to March; and March, though it
+blew bitter keen from the North Sea, yet blinked kindly
+between whiles on the river dell. The mire dried up in
+the closest covert; life ran in the bare branches, and the
+air of the afternoon would be suddenly sweet with the
+fragrance of new grass.</p>
+
+<p>Above and below the castle the river crooked like the
+letter &ldquo;S.&rdquo; The lower loop was to the left, and embraced
+the high and steep projection which was crowned by the
+ruins; the upper loop enclosed a lawny promontory,
+fringed by thorn and willow. It was easy to reach it from
+the castle side, for the river ran in this part very quietly
+among innumerable boulders and over dam-like walls of
+rock. The place was all enclosed, the wind a stranger,
+the turf smooth and solid; so it was chosen by Nance
+to be her bleaching-green.</p>
+
+<p>One day she brought a bucketful of linen, and had but
+begun to wring and lay them out when Mr. Archer stepped
+from the thicket on the far side, drew very deliberately
+near, and sat down in silence on the grass. Nance looked
+up to greet him with a smile, but finding her smile was
+not returned, she fell into embarrassment and stuck the
+more busily to her employment. Man or woman, the
+whole world looks well at any work to which they are
+accustomed; but the girl was ashamed of what she did.
+She was ashamed, besides, of the sun-bonnet that so
+well became her, and ashamed of her bare arms, which
+were her greatest beauty.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page239"></a>239</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nausicaa,&rdquo; said Mr. Archer at last, &ldquo;I find you like
+Nausicaa.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And who was she?&rdquo; asked Nance, and laughed in
+spite of herself, an empty and embarrassed laugh, that
+sounded in Mr. Archer&rsquo;s ears, indeed, like music, but to
+her own like the last grossness of rusticity.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She was a princess of the Grecian islands,&rdquo; he replied.
+&ldquo;A king, being shipwrecked, found her washing by the
+shore. Certainly I, too, was shipwrecked,&rdquo; he continued,
+plucking at the grass. &ldquo;There was never a more desperate
+castaway&mdash;to fall from polite life, fortune, a shrine of
+honour, a grateful conscience, duties willingly taken up
+and faithfully discharged; and to fall to this&mdash;idleness,
+poverty, inutility, remorse.&rdquo; He seemed to have forgotten
+her presence, but here he remembered her again.
+&ldquo;Nance,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;would you have a man sit down and
+suffer or rise up and strive?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nay,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I would always rather see him
+doing.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ha!&rdquo; said Mr. Archer, &ldquo;but yet you speak from an
+imperfect knowledge. Conceive a man damned to a choice
+of only evil&mdash;misconduct upon either side, not a fault
+behind him, and yet naught before him but this choice
+of sins. How would you say then?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I would say that he was much deceived, Mr. Archer,&rdquo;
+returned Nance. &ldquo;I would say there was a third choice,
+and that the right one.&ldquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I tell you,&rdquo; said Mr. Archer, &ldquo;the man I have in
+view hath two ways open, and no more. One to wait,
+like a poor mewling baby, till Fate save or ruin him; the
+other to take his troubles in his hand, and to perish or
+be saved at once. It is no point of morals; both are
+wrong. Either way this step-child of Providence must
+fall; which shall he choose, by doing or not doing?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Fall, then, is what I would say,&rdquo; replied Nance.
+&ldquo;Fall where you will, but do it! For O, Mr. Archer,&rdquo;
+she continued, stooping to her work, &ldquo;you that are good
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page240"></a>240</span>
+and kind, and so wise, it doth sometimes go against my
+heart to see you live on here like a sheep in a turnip-field!
+If you were braver&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; and here she paused, conscience-smitten.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do I, indeed, lack courage?&rdquo; inquired Mr. Archer
+of himself. &ldquo;Courage, the footstool of the virtues, upon
+which they stand? Courage, that a poor private carrying
+a musket has to spare of; that does not fail a weasel or a
+rat; that is a brutish faculty? I to fail there, I wonder?
+But what is courage, then? The constancy to endure
+oneself or to see others suffer? The itch of ill-advised
+activity: mere shuttle-wittedness, or to be still and
+patient? To inquire of the significance of words is to
+rob ourselves of what we seem to know, and yet, of all
+things, certainly to stand still is the least heroic. Nance,&rdquo;
+he said, &ldquo;did you ever hear of <i>Hamlet</i>?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Never,&rdquo; said Nance.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&rsquo;Tis an old play,&rdquo; returned Mr. Archer, &ldquo;and frequently
+enacted. This while I have been talking Hamlet.
+You must know this Hamlet was a Prince among the
+Danes,&rdquo; and he told her the play in a very good style,
+here and there quoting a verse or two with solemn emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is strange,&rdquo; said Nance; &ldquo;he was then a very
+poor creature?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That was what he could not tell,&rdquo; said Mr. Archer.
+&ldquo;Look at me, am I as poor a creature?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She looked, and what she saw was the familiar thought
+of all her hours; the tall figure very plainly habited in
+black, the spotless ruffles, the slim hands; the long,
+well-shapen, serious, shaven face, the wide and somewhat
+thin-lipped mouth, the dark eyes that were so full of
+depth and change and colour. He was gazing at her
+with his brows a little knit, his chin upon one hand and
+that elbow resting on his knee.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ye look a man!&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;ay, and should be a
+great one! The more shame to you to lie here idle like
+a dog before the fire.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page241"></a>241</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My fair Holdaway,&rdquo; quoth Mr. Archer, &ldquo;you are
+much set on action. I cannot dig, to beg I am ashamed.&rdquo;
+He continued, looking at her with a half-absent fixity,
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Tis a strange thing, certainly, that in my years of
+fortune I should never taste happiness, and now when I
+am broke, enjoy so much of it, for was I ever happier
+than to-day? Was the grass softer, the stream pleasanter
+in sound, the air milder, the heart more at peace? Why
+should I not sink? To dig&mdash;why, after all, it should be
+easy. To take a mate, too? Love is of all grades since
+Jupiter; love fails to none; and children&rdquo;&mdash;but here he
+passed his hand suddenly over his eyes. &ldquo;O fool and
+coward, fool and coward!&rdquo; he said bitterly; &ldquo;can you
+forget your fetters? You did not know that I was
+fettered, Nance?&rdquo; he asked, again addressing her.</p>
+
+<p>But Nance was somewhat sore. &ldquo;I know you keep
+talking,&rdquo; she said, and, turning half away from him,
+began to wring out a sheet across her shoulder. &ldquo;I
+wonder you are not wearied of your voice. When the
+hands lie abed the tongue takes a walk.&ldquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Archer laughed unpleasantly, rose and moved to
+the water&rsquo;s edge. In this part the body of the river
+poured across a little narrow fell, ran some ten feet very
+smoothly over a bed of pebbles, then getting wind, as it
+were, of another shelf of rock which barred the channel,
+began, by imperceptible degrees, to separate towards
+either shore in dancing currents, and to leave the middle
+clear and stagnant. The set towards either side was
+nearly equal; about one half of the whole water plunged
+on the side of the castle, through a narrow gullet; about
+one half ran lipping past the margin of the green and
+slipped across a babbling rapid.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Here,&ldquo; said Mr. Archer, after he had looked for
+some time at the fine and shifting demarcation of these
+currents, &ldquo;come here and see me try my fortune.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am not like a man,&rdquo; said Nance; &ldquo;I have no time
+to waste.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page242"></a>242</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come here,&rdquo; he said again. &ldquo;I ask you seriously,
+Nance. We are not always childish when we seem so.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She drew a little nearer.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;you see these two channels&mdash;choose
+one.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll choose the nearest, to save time,&rdquo; said Nance.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, that shall be for action,&rdquo; returned Mr. Archer.
+&ldquo;And since I wish to have the odds against me, not only
+the other channel but yon stagnant water in the midst
+shall be for lying still. You see this?&rdquo; he continued,
+pulling up a withered rush. &ldquo;I break it in three. I shall
+put each separately at the top of the upper fall, and
+according as they go by your way or by the other I shall
+guide my life.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This is very silly,&rdquo; said Nance, with a movement of
+her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I do not think it so,&rdquo; said Mr. Archer.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And then,&rdquo; she resumed, &ldquo;if you are to try your
+fortune, why not evenly?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nay,&rdquo; returned Mr. Archer with a smile, &ldquo;no man
+can put complete reliance in blind fate; he must still
+cog the dice.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>By this time he had got upon the rock beside the
+upper fall, and, bidding her look out, dropped a piece of
+rush into the middle of the intake. The rusty fragment
+was sucked at once over the fall, came up again far on
+the right hand, leaned ever more and more in the same
+direction, and disappeared under the hanging grasses on
+the castle side.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;One,&rdquo; said Mr. Archer, &ldquo;one for standing still.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>But the next launch had a different fate, and after
+hanging for a while about the edge of the stagnant water,
+steadily approached the bleaching-green and danced down
+the rapid under Nance&rsquo;s eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;One for me,&rdquo; she cried with some exultation; and
+then she observed that Mr. Archer had grown pale, and
+was kneeling on the rock, with his hand raised like a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page243"></a>243</span>
+person petrified. &ldquo;Why,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;you do not mind
+it, do you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Does a man not mind a throw of dice by which a
+fortune hangs?&rdquo; said Mr. Archer, rather hoarsely. &ldquo;And
+this is more than fortune. Nance, if you have any
+kindness for my fate, put up a prayer before I launch
+the next one.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A prayer,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;about a game like this? I
+would not be so heathen.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;then without,&rdquo; and he closed his
+eyes and dropped the piece of rush. This time there was
+no doubt. It went for the rapid as straight as any arrow.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Action then!&rdquo; said Mr. Archer, getting to his feet;
+&ldquo;and then God forgive us,&rdquo; he added, almost to himself.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;God forgive us, indeed,&rdquo; cried Nance, &ldquo;for wasting
+the good daylight! But come, Mr. Archer, if I see you
+look so serious I shall begin to think you was in earnest.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nay,&rdquo; he said, turning upon her suddenly, with a
+full smile; &ldquo;but is not this good advice? I have consulted
+God and demigod; the nymph of the river, and
+what I far more admire and trust, my blue-eyed Minerva.
+Both have said the same. My own heart was telling it
+already. Action, then, be mine; and into the deep sea
+with all this paralysing casuistry. I am happy to-day
+for the first time.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page244"></a>244</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER VIII</h3>
+
+<h5>THE MAIL GUARD</h5>
+
+
+<p>Somewhere about two in the morning a squall had burst
+upon the castle, a clap of screaming wind that made the
+towers rock, and a copious drift of rain that streamed
+from the windows. The wind soon blew itself out, but
+the day broke cloudy and dripping, and when the little
+party assembled at breakfast their humours appeared to
+have changed with the change of weather. Nance had
+been brooding on the scene at the river-side, applying it
+in various ways to her particular aspirations, and the
+result, which was hardly to her mind, had taken the colour
+out of her cheeks. Mr. Archer, too, was somewhat absent,
+his thoughts were of a mingled strain; and even upon his
+usually impassive countenance there were betrayed successive
+depths of depression and starts of exultation,
+which the girl translated in terms of her own hopes and
+fears. But Jonathan was the most altered: he was
+strangely silent, hardly passing a word, and watched Mr.
+Archer with an eager and furtive eye. It seemed as if
+the idea that had so long hovered before him had now
+taken a more solid shape, and, while it still attracted,
+somewhat alarmed his imagination.</p>
+
+<p>At this rate, conversation languished into a silence
+which was only broken by the gentle and ghostly noises
+of the rain on the stone roof and about all that field of
+ruins; and they were all relieved when the note of a
+man whistling and the sound of approaching footsteps in
+the grassy court announced a visitor. It was the ostler
+from the &ldquo;Green Dragon&rdquo; bringing a letter for Mr. Archer.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page245"></a>245</span>
+Nance saw her hero&rsquo;s face contract and then relax again
+at sight of it; and she thought that she knew why, for
+the sprawling, gross black characters of the address were
+easily distinguishable from the fine writing on the former
+letter that had so much disturbed him. He opened it
+and began to read; while the ostler sat down to table
+with a pot of ale, and proceeded to make himself agreeable
+after his fashion.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Fine doings down our way, Miss Nance,&rdquo; said he.
+&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t been abed this blessed night.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Nance expressed a polite interest, but her eye was on
+Mr. Archer, who was reading his letter with a face of
+such extreme indifference that she was tempted to suspect
+him of assumption.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; continued the ostler, &ldquo;not been the like of it
+this fifteen years: the North Mail stopped at the three
+stones.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Jonathan&rsquo;s cup was at his lip, but at this moment
+he choked with a great splutter; and Mr. Archer, as if
+startled by the noise, made so sudden a movement that
+one corner of the sheet tore off and stayed between his
+finger and thumb. It was some little time before the old
+man was sufficiently recovered to beg the ostler to go on,
+and he still kept coughing and crying and rubbing his
+eyes. Mr. Archer, on his side, laid the letter down, and,
+putting his hands in his pocket, listened gravely to the tale.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; resumed Sam, &ldquo;the North Mail was stopped
+by a single horseman; dash my wig, but I admire him!
+There were four insides and two out, and poor Tom Oglethorpe,
+the guard. Tom showed himself a man; let fly
+his blunderbuss at him; had him covered, too, and could
+swear to that; but the Captain never let on, up with a
+pistol and fetched poor Tom a bullet through the body.
+Tom, he squelched upon the seat, all over blood. Up
+comes the Captain to the window. &lsquo;Oblige me,&rsquo; says he,
+&lsquo;with what you have.&rsquo; Would you believe it? Not a
+man says cheep!&mdash;not them. &lsquo;Thy hands over thy
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page246"></a>246</span>
+head.&rsquo; Four watches, rings, snuff-boxes, seven-and-forty
+pounds overhead in gold. One Dicksee, a grazier, tries it
+on: gives him a guinea. &lsquo;Beg your pardon,&rsquo; says the
+Captain, &lsquo;I think too highly of you to take it at your
+hand. I will not take less than ten from such a gentleman.&rsquo;
+This Dicksee had his money in his stocking, but
+there was the pistol at his eye. Down he goes, offs with
+his stocking, and there was thirty golden guineas. &lsquo;Now,&rsquo;
+says the Captain, &lsquo;you&rsquo;ve tried it on with me, but I scorns
+the advantage. Ten I said,&rsquo; he says, &lsquo;and ten I take.&rsquo;
+So, dash my buttons, I call that man a man!&rdquo; cried Sam
+in cordial admiration.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, and then?&rdquo; says Mr. Archer.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then,&rdquo; resumed Sam, &ldquo;that old fat fagot Engleton,
+him as held the ribbons and drew up like a lamb when
+he was told to, picks up his cattle, and drives off again.
+Down they came to the <span class="correction" title="changed from double to single quotes">&rsquo;Dragon,&lsquo;</span> all singing like as if
+they was scalded, and poor Tom saying nothing. You
+would &rsquo;a&rsquo; thought they had all lost the King&rsquo;s crown to
+hear them. Down gets this Dicksee. &lsquo;Postmaster,&rsquo; he
+says, taking him by the arm, &lsquo;this is a most abominable
+thing,&rsquo; he says. Down gets a Major Clayton, and gets the
+old man by the other arm. &lsquo;We&rsquo;ve been robbed,&rsquo; he cries,
+&lsquo;robbed!&rsquo; Down gets the others, and all around the
+old man telling their story, and what they had lost, and
+how they was all as good as ruined; till at last Old Engleton
+says, says he, &lsquo;How about Oglethorpe?&rsquo; says he.
+&lsquo;Ay,&rsquo; says the others, &lsquo;how about the guard?&rsquo; Well,
+with that we bousted him down, as white as a rag and all
+blooded like a sop. I thought he was dead. Well, he
+ain&rsquo;t dead; but he&rsquo;s dying, I fancy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Did you say four watches?&rdquo; said Jonathan.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Four, I think. I wish it had been forty,&rdquo; cried
+Sam. &ldquo;Such a party of soused herrings I never did see&mdash;not
+a man among them bar poor Tom. But us that
+are the servants on the road have all the risk and none
+of the profit.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page247"></a>247</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And this brave fellow,&rdquo; asked Mr. Archer, very
+quietly, &ldquo;this Oglethorpe&mdash;how is he now?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, sir, with my respects, I take it he has a hole
+bang through him,&rdquo; said Sam. &ldquo;The doctor hasn&rsquo;t been
+yet. He&rsquo;d &rsquo;a&rsquo; been bright and early if it had been a
+passenger. But, doctor or no, I&rsquo;ll make a good guess
+that Tom won&rsquo;t see to-morrow. He&rsquo;ll die on a Sunday,
+will poor Tom; and they do say that&rsquo;s fortunate.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Did Tom see him that did it?&rdquo; asked Jonathan.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, he saw him,&rdquo; replied Sam, &ldquo;but not to swear
+by. Said he was a very tall man, and very big, and had
+a &rsquo;ankerchief about his face, and a very quick shot, and
+sat his horse like a thorough gentleman, as he is.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A gentleman!&rdquo; cried Nance. &ldquo;The dirty knave!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I calls a man like that a gentleman,&rdquo; returned
+the ostler; &ldquo;that&rsquo;s what I mean by a gentleman.&ldquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know much of them, then,&rdquo; said Nance.
+&ldquo;A gentleman would scorn to stoop to such a thing. I
+call my uncle a better gentleman than any thief.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And you would be right,&rdquo; said Mr. Archer.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How many snuff-boxes did he get?&rdquo; asked Jonathan.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;O, dang me if I know,&rdquo; said Sam; &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t take
+an inventory.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I will go back with you, if you please,&rdquo; said Mr.
+Archer. &ldquo;I should like to see poor Oglethorpe. He has
+behaved well.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;At your service, sir,&rdquo; said Sam, jumping to his feet.
+&ldquo;I dare to say a gentleman like you would not forget a
+poor fellow like Tom&mdash;no, nor a plain man like me, sir,
+that went without his sleep to nurse him. And excuse
+me, sir,&rdquo; added Sam, &ldquo;you won&rsquo;t forget about the letter
+neither?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Surely not,&rdquo; said Mr. Archer.</p>
+
+<p>Oglethorpe lay in a low bed, one of several in a long
+garret of the inn. The rain soaked in places through the
+roof and fell in minute drops; there was but one small
+window; the beds were occupied by servants, the air of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page248"></a>248</span>
+the garret was both close and chilly. Mr. Archer&rsquo;s heart
+sank at the threshold to see a man lying perhaps mortally
+hurt in so poor a sick-room, and as he drew near the low
+bed he took his hat off. The guard was a big, blowsy,
+innocent-looking soul with a thick lip and a broad nose,
+comically turned up; his cheeks were crimson, and when
+Mr. Archer laid a finger on his brow he found him burning
+with fever.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I fear you suffer much,&rdquo; he said, with a catch in his
+voice, as he sat down on the bedside.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose I do, sir,&rdquo; returned Oglethorpe; &ldquo;it is
+main sore.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am used to wounds and wounded men,&rdquo; returned
+the visitor. &ldquo;I have been in the wars and nursed brave
+fellows before now; and, if you will suffer me, I propose
+to stay beside you till the doctor comes.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is very good of you, sir, I am sure,&rdquo; said Oglethorpe.
+&ldquo;The trouble is they won&rsquo;t none of them let
+me drink.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If you will not tell the doctor,&rdquo; said Mr. Archer, &ldquo;I
+will give you some water. They say it is bad for a green
+wound, but in the Low Countries we all drank water when
+we found the chance, and I could never perceive we were
+the worse for it.&ldquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Been wounded yourself, sir, perhaps?&rdquo; called Oglethorpe.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Twice,&rdquo; said Mr. Archer, &ldquo;and was as proud of these
+hurts as any lady of her bracelets. &rsquo;Tis a fine thing
+to smart for one&rsquo;s duty; even in the pangs of it there
+is contentment.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, well!&rdquo; replied the guard, &ldquo;if you&rsquo;ve been shot
+yourself, that explains. But as for contentment, why, sir,
+you see, it smarts, as you say. And then, I have a good
+wife, you see, and a bit of a brat&mdash;a little thing, so high.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t move,&rdquo; said Mr. Archer.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, sir, I will not, and thank you kindly,&rdquo; said
+Oglethorpe. &ldquo;At York they are. A very good lass is my
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page249"></a>249</span>
+wife&mdash;far too good for me. And the little rascal&mdash;well, I
+don&rsquo;t know how to say it, but he sort of comes round
+you. If I were to go, sir, it would be hard on my poor
+girl&mdash;main hard on her!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ay, you must feel bitter hardly to the rogue that
+laid you here,&rdquo; said Archer.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, no, sir, more against Engleton and the passengers,&rdquo;
+replied the guard. &ldquo;He played his hand, if
+you come to look at it; and I wish he had shot worse,
+or me better. And yet I&rsquo;ll go to my grave but what I
+covered him,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;It looks like witchcraft. I&rsquo;ll
+go to my grave but what he was drove full of slugs like
+a pepper-box.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Quietly,&rdquo; said Mr. Archer, &ldquo;you must not excite
+yourself. These deceptions are very usual in war; the
+eye, in the moment of alert, is hardly to be trusted, and
+when the smoke blows away you see the man you fired
+at, taking aim, it may be, at yourself. You should observe,
+too, that you were in the dark night, and somewhat dazzled
+by the lamps, and that the sudden stopping of the mail
+had jolted you. In such circumstances a man may miss,
+ay, even with a blunderbuss, and no blame attach to
+his marksmanship.&rdquo; ...</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page250"></a>250</span></p>
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page251"></a>251</span></p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2>THE YOUNG CHEVALIER</h2>
+<h3>A FRAGMENT</h3>
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page252"></a>252</span></p>
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page253"></a>253</span></p>
+<h2>THE YOUNG CHEVALIER</h2>
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+<h3>PROLOGUE</h3>
+
+<h5>THE WINE-SELLER&rsquo;S WIFE</h5>
+
+
+<p>There was a wine-seller&rsquo;s shop, as you went down to the
+river in the city of the Anti-popes. There a man was
+served with good wine of the country and plain country
+fare; and the place being clean and quiet, with a prospect
+on the river, certain gentlemen who dwelt in that
+city in attendance on a great personage made it a practice
+(when they had any silver in their purses) to come and
+eat there and be private.</p>
+
+<p>They called the wine-seller Paradou. He was built
+more like a bullock than a man, huge in bone and brawn,
+high in colour, and with a hand like a baby for size. Marie-Madeleine
+was the name of his wife; she was of Marseilles,
+a city of entrancing women, nor was any fairer than herself.
+She was tall, being almost of a height with Paradou;
+full-girdled, point-device in every form, with an exquisite
+delicacy in the face; her nose and nostrils a delight to
+look at from the fineness of the sculpture, her eyes inclined
+a hair&rsquo;s-breadth inward, her colour between dark and fair,
+and laid on even like a flower&rsquo;s. A faint rose dwelt in
+it, as though she had been found unawares bathing, and
+had blushed from head to foot. She was of a grave
+countenance, rarely smiling; yet it seemed to be written
+upon every part of her that she rejoiced in life. Her
+husband loved the heels of her feet and the knuckles of
+her fingers; he loved her like a glutton and a brute; his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page254"></a>254</span>
+love hung about her like an atmosphere; one that came
+by chance into the wine-shop was aware of that passion;
+and it might be said that by the strength of it the woman
+had been drugged or spell-bound. She knew not if she
+loved or loathed him; he was always in her eyes like something
+monstrous,&mdash;monstrous in his love, monstrous in
+his person, horrific but imposing in his violence; and her
+sentiment swung back and forward from desire to sickness.
+But the mean, where it dwelt chiefly, was an
+apathetic fascination, partly of horror; as of Europa in
+mid ocean with her bull.</p>
+
+<p>On the 10th November 1749 there sat two of the foreign
+gentlemen in the wine-seller&rsquo;s shop. They were both
+handsome men of a good presence, richly dressed. The
+first was swarthy and long and lean, with an alert, black
+look, and a mole upon his cheek. The other was more
+fair. He seemed very easy and sedate, and a little melancholy
+for so young a man, but his smile was charming.
+In his grey eyes there was much abstraction, as of one
+recalling fondly that which was past and lost. Yet there
+was strength and swiftness in his limbs; and his mouth
+set straight across his face, the under lip a thought upon
+side, like that of a man accustomed to resolve. These
+two talked together in a rude outlandish speech that no
+frequenter of that wine-shop understood. The swarthy
+man answered to the name of <i>Ballantrae</i>; he of the
+dreamy eyes was sometimes called <i>Balmile</i>, and sometimes
+<i>my Lord</i>, or <i>my Lord Gladsmuir</i>; but when the title was
+given him, he seemed to put it by as if in jesting, not
+without bitterness.</p>
+
+<p>The mistral blew in the city. The first day of that
+wind, they say in the countries where its voice is heard,
+it blows away all the dust, the second all the stones, and
+the third it blows back others from the mountains. It
+was now come to the third day; outside the pebbles flew
+like hail, and the face of the river was puckered, and the
+very building-stones in the walls of houses seemed to be
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page255"></a>255</span>
+curdled, with the savage cold and fury of that continuous
+blast. It could be heard to hoot in all the chimneys of
+the city; it swept about the wine-shop, filling the room
+with eddies; the chill and gritty touch of it passed between
+the nearest clothes and the bare flesh; and the two gentlemen
+at the far table kept their mantles loose about their
+shoulders. The roughness of these outer hulls, for they
+were plain travellers&rsquo; cloaks that had seen service, set
+the greater mark of richness on what showed below of
+their laced clothes; for the one was in scarlet and the
+other in violet and white, like men come from a scene of
+ceremony; as indeed they were.</p>
+
+<p>It chanced that these fine clothes were not without
+their influence on the scene which followed, and which
+makes the prologue of our tale. For a long time Balmile
+was in the habit to come to the wine-shop and eat a meal
+or drink a measure of wine; sometimes with a comrade;
+more often alone, when he would sit and dream and drum
+upon the table, and the thoughts would show in the man&rsquo;s
+face in little glooms and lightenings, like the sun and the
+clouds upon a water. For a long time Marie-Madeleine
+had observed him apart. His sadness, the beauty of his
+smile when by any chance he remembered her existence
+and addressed her, the changes of his mind signalled forth
+by an abstruse play of feature, the mere fact that he
+was foreign and a thing detached from the local and
+the accustomed, insensibly attracted and affected her.
+Kindness was ready in her mind; it but lacked the touch
+of an occasion to effervesce and crystallise. Now Balmile
+had come hitherto in a very poor plain habit; and this
+day of the mistral, when his mantle was just open, and
+she saw beneath it the glancing of the violet and the
+velvet and the silver, and the clustering fineness of the
+lace, it seemed to set the man in a new light, with which
+he shone resplendent to her fancy.</p>
+
+<p>The high inhuman note of the wind, the violence and
+continuity of its outpouring, and the fierce touch of it
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page256"></a>256</span>
+upon man&rsquo;s whole periphery, accelerated the functions of
+the mind. It set thoughts whirling, as it whirled the trees
+of the forest; it stirred them up in flights, as it stirred
+up the dust in chambers. As brief as sparks, the fancies
+glittered and succeeded each other in the mind of Marie-Madeleine;
+and the grave man with the smile, and the
+bright clothes under the plain mantle, haunted her with
+incongruous explanations. She considered him, the unknown,
+the speaker of an unknown tongue, the hero (as
+she placed him) of an unknown romance, the dweller upon
+unknown memories. She recalled him sitting there alone,
+so immersed, so stupefied; yet she was sure he was not
+stupid. She recalled one day when he had remained a
+long time motionless, with parted lips, like one in the
+act of starting up, his eyes fixed on vacancy. Any one
+else must have looked foolish; but not he. She tried to
+conceive what manner of memory had thus entranced him;
+she forged for him a past; she showed him to herself in
+every light of heroism and greatness and misfortune; she
+brooded with petulant intensity on all she knew and
+guessed of him. Yet, though she was already gone so
+deep, she was still unashamed, still unalarmed; her
+thoughts were still disinterested; she had still to reach
+the stage at which&mdash;beside the image of that other whom
+we love to contemplate and to adorn&mdash;we place the image
+of ourself and behold them together with delight.</p>
+
+<p>She stood within the counter, her hands clasped behind
+her back, her shoulders pressed against the wall, her feet
+braced out. Her face was bright with the wind and her
+own thoughts; as a fire in a similar day of tempest glows
+and brightens on a hearth, so she seemed to glow, standing
+there, and to breathe out energy. It was the first time
+Ballantrae had visited that wine-seller&rsquo;s, the first time he
+had seen the wife; and his eyes were true to her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I perceive your reason for carrying me to this very
+draughty tavern,&rdquo; he said at last.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I believe it is propinquity,&rdquo; returned Balmile.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page257"></a>257</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You play dark,&rdquo; said Ballantrae, &ldquo;but have a care!
+Be more frank with me, or I will cut you out. I go
+through no form of qualifying my threat, which would
+be commonplace and not conscientious. There is only
+one point in these campaigns: that is the degree of admiration
+offered by the man; and to our hostess I am
+in a posture to make victorious love.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If you think you have the time, or the game worth
+the candle,&rdquo; replied the other with a shrug.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;One would suppose you were never at the pains to
+observe her,&rdquo; said Ballantrae.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am not very observant,&rdquo; said Balmile. &ldquo;She
+seems comely.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You very dear and dull dog!&rdquo; cried Ballantrae;
+&ldquo;chastity is the most besotting of the virtues. Why, she
+has a look in her face beyond singing! I believe, if you
+was to push me hard, I might trace it home to a trifle
+of a squint. What matters? The height of beauty is in
+the touch that&rsquo;s wrong, that&rsquo;s the modulation in a tune.
+&rsquo;Tis the devil we all love; I owe many a conquest to my
+mole&rdquo;&mdash;he touched it as he spoke with a smile, and his
+eyes glittered;&mdash;&ldquo;we are all hunchbacks, and beauty is
+only that kind of deformity that I happen to admire.
+But come! Because you are chaste, for which I am sure
+I pay you my respects, that is no reason why you should
+be blind. Look at her, look at the delicious nose of her,
+look at her cheek, look at her ear, look at her hand and
+wrist&mdash;look at the whole baggage from heels to crown,
+and tell me if she wouldn&rsquo;t melt on a man&rsquo;s tongue.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>As Ballantrae spoke, half jesting, half enthusiastic,
+Balmile was constrained to do as he was bidden. He
+looked at the woman, admired her excellences, and was
+at the same time ashamed for himself and his companion.
+So it befell that when Marie-Madeleine raised her eyes, she
+met those of the subject of her contemplations fixed
+directly on herself with a look that is unmistakable, the
+look of a person measuring and valuing another,&mdash;and, to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page258"></a>258</span>
+clench the false impression, that his glance was instantly
+and guiltily withdrawn. The blood beat back upon her
+heart and leaped again; her obscure thoughts flashed
+clear before her; she flew in fancy straight to his arms
+like a wanton, and fled again on the instant like a nymph.
+And at that moment there chanced an interruption, which
+not only spared her embarrassment, but set the last consecration
+on her now articulate love.</p>
+
+<p>Into the wine-shop there came a French gentleman,
+arrayed in the last refinement of the fashion, though a
+little tumbled by his passage in the wind. It was to be
+judged he had come from the same formal gathering at
+which the others had preceded him; and perhaps that he
+had gone there in the hope to meet with them, for he came
+up to Ballantrae with unceremonious eagerness.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;At last, here you are!&rdquo; he cried in French. &ldquo;I
+thought I was to miss you altogether.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The Scotsmen rose, and Ballantrae, after the first
+greetings, laid his hand on his companion&rsquo;s shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My lord,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;allow me to present to you one
+of my best friends and one of our best soldiers, the Lord
+Viscount Gladsmuir.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The two bowed with the elaborate elegance of the
+period.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Monseigneur</i>,&rdquo; said Balmile, &ldquo;<i>je n&rsquo;ai pas la prétention
+de m&rsquo;affubler d&rsquo;un titre que la mauvaise fortune de mon roi
+ne me permet pas de porter comme il sied. Je m&rsquo;appelle,
+pour vous servir, Blair de Balmile tout court.</i>&rdquo; [My lord, I
+have not the effrontery to cumber myself with a title
+which the ill fortunes of my king will not suffer me to
+bear the way it should be. I call myself, at your service,
+plain Blair of Balmile.]</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Monsieur le Vicomte ou monsieur Blčr&rsquo; de Balmaďl</i>,&rdquo;
+replied the new-comer, &ldquo;<i>le nom n&rsquo;y fait rien et l&rsquo;on connaît
+vos beaux faits.</i>&rdquo; [The name matters nothing, your
+gallant actions are known.]</p>
+
+<p>A few more ceremonies, and these three, sitting down
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page259"></a>259</span>
+together to the table, called for wine. It was the happiness
+of Marie-Madeleine to wait unobserved upon the
+prince of her desires. She poured the wine, he drank of
+it; and that link between them seemed to her, for the
+moment, close as a caress. Though they lowered their
+tones, she surprised great names passing in their conversation,
+names of kings, the names of de Gesvre and
+Belle-Isle; and the man who dealt in these high matters,
+and she who was now coupled with him in her own thoughts,
+seemed to swim in mid air in a transfiguration. Love is
+a crude core, but it has singular and far-reaching fringes;
+in that passionate attraction for the stranger that now
+swayed and mastered her, his harsh incomprehensible
+language, and these names of grandees in his talk, were
+each an element.</p>
+
+<p>The Frenchman stayed not long, but it was plain he
+left behind him matter of much interest to his companions;
+they spoke together earnestly, their heads
+down, the woman of the wine-shop totally forgotten;
+and they were still so occupied when Paradou returned.</p>
+
+<p>This man&rsquo;s love was unsleeping. The even bluster of
+the mistral, with which he had been combating some
+hours, had not suspended, though it had embittered, that
+predominant passion. His first look was for his wife, a
+look of hope and suspicion, menace and humility and
+love, that made the over-blooming brute appear for the
+moment almost beautiful. She returned his glance, at
+first as though she knew him not, then with a swiftly
+waxing coldness of intent; and at last, without changing
+their direction, she had closed her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>There passed across her mind during that period much
+that Paradou could not have understood had it been told
+to him in words: chiefly the sense of an enlightening
+contrast betwixt the man who talked of kings and the
+man who kept a wine-shop, betwixt the love she yearned
+for and that to which she had been long exposed like a
+victim bound upon the altar. There swelled upon her,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page260"></a>260</span>
+swifter than the Rhone, a tide of abhorrence and disgust.
+She had succumbed to the monster, humbling herself below
+animals; and now she loved a hero, aspiring to the semi-divine.
+It was in the pang of that humiliating thought
+that she had closed her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Paradou&mdash;quick, as beasts are quick, to translate
+silence&mdash;felt the insult through his blood; his inarticulate
+soul bellowed within him for revenge. He glanced about
+the shop. He saw the two indifferent gentlemen deep in
+talk, and passed them over: his fancy flying not so high.
+There was but one other present, a country lout who stood
+swallowing his wine, equally unobserved by all and unobserving;
+to him he dealt a glance of murderous suspicion,
+and turned direct upon his wife. The wine-shop had lain
+hitherto, a space of shelter, the scene of a few ceremonial
+passages and some whispered conversation, in the howling
+river of the wind; the clock had not yet ticked a score
+of times since Paradou&rsquo;s appearance; and now, as he
+suddenly gave tongue, it seemed as though the mistral
+had entered at his heels.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What ails you, woman?&rdquo; he cried, smiting on the
+counter.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nothing ails me,&rdquo; she replied. It was strange; but
+she spoke and stood at that moment like a lady of degree,
+drawn upward by her aspirations.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You speak to me, by God, as though you scorned
+me!&rdquo; cried the husband.</p>
+
+<p>The man&rsquo;s passion was always formidable; she had
+often looked on upon its violence with a thrill, it had
+been one ingredient in her fascination; and she was now
+surprised to behold him, as from afar off, gesticulating but
+impotent. His fury might be dangerous like a torrent or
+a gust of wind, but it was inhuman; it might be feared
+or braved, it should never be respected. And with that
+there came in her a sudden glow of courage and that
+readiness to die which attends so closely upon all strong
+passions.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page261"></a>261</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I do scorn you,&ldquo; she said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What is that?&rdquo; he cried.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I scorn you,&rdquo; she repeated, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You love another man!&rdquo; said he.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;With all my soul,&rdquo; was her reply.</p>
+
+<p>The wine-seller roared aloud so that the house rang
+and shook with it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is this the &mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo; he cried, using a foul word,
+common in the South; and he seized the young countryman
+and dashed him to the ground. There he lay for
+the least interval of time insensible; thence fled from
+the house, the most terrified person in the county. The
+heavy measure had escaped from his hands, splashing
+the wine high upon the wall. Paradou caught it. &ldquo;And
+you?&rdquo; he roared to his wife, giving her the same name
+in the feminine, and he aimed at her the deadly missile.
+She expected it, motionless, with radiant eyes.</p>
+
+<p>But before it sped, Paradou was met by another adversary,
+and the unconscious rivals stood confronted. It
+was hard to say at that moment which appeared the more
+formidable. In Paradou, the whole muddy and truculent
+depths of the half-man were stirred to frenzy; the lust
+of destruction raged in him; there was not a feature in
+his face but it talked murder. Balmile had dropped his
+cloak: he shone out at once in his finery, and stood to his
+full stature; girt in mind and body; all his resources,
+all his temper, perfectly in command; in his face the
+light of battle. Neither spoke; there was no blow nor
+threat of one; it was war reduced to its last element, the
+spiritual; and the huge wine-seller slowly lowered his
+weapon. Balmile was a noble, he a commoner; Balmile
+exulted in an honourable cause. Paradou already perhaps
+began to be ashamed of his violence. Of a sudden, at
+least, the tortured brute turned and fled from the shop in
+the footsteps of his former victim, to whose continued
+flight his reappearance added wings.</p>
+
+<p>So soon as Balmile appeared between her husband and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page262"></a>262</span>
+herself, Marie-Madeleine transferred to him her eyes. It
+might be her last moment, and she fed upon that face;
+reading there inimitable courage and illimitable valour to
+protect. And when the momentary peril was gone by,
+and the champion turned a little awkwardly towards her
+whom he had rescued, it was to meet, and quail before,
+a gaze of admiration more distinct than words. He
+bowed, he stammered, his words failed him; he who had
+crossed the floor a moment ago, like a young god, to smite,
+returned like one discomfited; got somehow to his place
+by the table, muffled himself again in his discarded cloak,
+and for a last touch of the ridiculous, seeking for anything
+to restore his countenance, drank of the wine before him,
+deep as a porter after a heavy lift. It was little wonder
+if Ballantrae, reading the scene with malevolent eyes,
+laughed out loud and brief, and drank with raised glass,
+&ldquo;To the champion of the Fair.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Marie-Madeleine stood in her old place within the
+counter; she disdained the mocking laughter; it fell on
+her ears, but it did not reach her spirit. For her, the
+world of living persons was all resumed again into one
+pair, as in the days of Eden; there was but the one end
+in life, the one hope before her, the one thing needful,
+the one thing possible,&mdash;to be his.</p>
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page263"></a>263</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER I</h3>
+
+<h5>THE PRINCE</h5>
+
+
+<p>That same night there was in the city of Avignon a young
+man in distress of mind. Now he sat, now walked in a
+high apartment, full of draughts and shadows. A single
+candle made the darkness visible; and the light scarce
+sufficed to show upon the wall, where they had been
+recently and rudely nailed, a few miniatures and a copper
+medal of the young man&rsquo;s head. The same was being sold
+that year in London, to admiring thousands. The original
+was fair; he had beautiful brown eyes, a beautiful bright
+open face; a little feminine, a little hard, a little weak;
+still full of the light of youth, but already beginning to be
+vulgarised; a sordid bloom come upon it, the lines coarsened
+with a touch of puffiness. He was dressed, as for a gala,
+in peach-colour and silver; his breast sparkled with stars
+and was bright with ribbons; for he had held a levee in
+the afternoon and received a distinguished personage
+incognito. Now he sat with a bowed head, now walked
+precipitately to and fro, now went and gazed from the
+uncurtained window, where the wind was still blowing,
+and the lights winked in the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>The bells of Avignon rose into song as he was gazing;
+and the high notes and the deep tossed and drowned,
+boomed suddenly near or were suddenly swallowed up,
+in the current of the mistral. Tears sprang in the pale
+blue eyes; the expression of his face was changed to
+that of a more active misery; it seemed as if the voices
+of the bells reached, and touched and pained him, in a
+waste of vacancy where even pain was welcome. Outside
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page264"></a>264</span>
+in the night they continued to sound on, swelling and
+fainting; and the listener heard in his memory, as it
+were their harmonies, joy-bells clashing in a northern city,
+and the acclamations of a multitude, the cries of battle,
+the gross voices of cannon, the stridor of an animated
+life. And then all died away, and he stood face to face
+with himself in the waste of vacancy, and a horror came
+upon his mind, and a faintness on his brain, such as seizes
+men upon the brink of cliffs.</p>
+
+<p>On the table, by the side of the candle, stood a tray
+of glasses, a bottle, and a silver bell. He went thither
+swiftly, then his hand lowered first above the bell, then
+settled on the bottle. Slowly he filled a glass, slowly
+drank it out; and, as a tide of animal warmth recomforted
+the recesses of his nature, stood there smiling at
+himself. He remembered he was young; the funeral curtains
+rose, and he saw his life shine and broaden and flow
+out majestically, like a river sunward. The smile still on
+his lips, he lit a second candle and a third; a fire stood
+ready built in a chimney, he lit that also; and the fir-cones
+and the gnarled olive billets were swift to break in
+flame and to crackle on the hearth, and the room brightened
+and enlarged about him like his hopes. To and fro, to
+and fro, he went, his hands lightly clasped, his breath
+deeply and pleasurably taken. Victory walked with him;
+he marched to crowns and empires among shouting followers;
+glory was his dress. And presently again the
+shadows closed upon the solitary. Under the gilt of flame
+and candle-light, the stone walls of the apartment showed
+down bare and cold; behind the depicted triumph loomed
+up the actual failure: defeat, the long distress of the
+flight, exile, despair, broken followers, mourning faces,
+empty pockets, friends estranged. The memory of his
+father rose in his mind: he, too, estranged and defied;
+despair sharpened into wrath. There was one who had
+led armies in the field, who had staked his life upon the
+family enterprise, a man of action and experience, of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page265"></a>265</span>
+open air, the camp, the court, the council-room; and he
+was to accept direction from an old, pompous gentleman
+in a home in Italy, and buzzed about by priests? A
+pretty king, if he had not a martial son to lean upon!
+A king at all?</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There was a weaver (of all people) joined me at
+St. Ninians; he was more of a man than my papa!&rdquo; he
+thought. &ldquo;I saw him lie doubled in his blood and a
+grenadier below him&mdash;and he died for my papa! All
+died for him, or risked the dying, and I lay for him all
+those months in the rain and skulked in heather like a
+fox; and now he writes me his advice! calls me Carluccio&mdash;me,
+the man of the house, the only king in that king&rsquo;s
+race.&ldquo; He ground his teeth. &ldquo;The only king in Europe!
+Who else? Who has done and suffered except me? who
+has lain and run and hidden with his faithful subjects, like
+a second Bruce? Not my accursed cousin, Louis of France
+at least, the lewd effeminate traitor!&rdquo; And filling the
+glass to the brim, he drank a king&rsquo;s damnation. Ah, if
+he had the power of Louis, what a king were here!</p>
+
+<p>The minutes followed each other into the past, and
+still he persevered in this debilitating cycle of emotions,
+still fed the fire of his excitement with driblets of Rhine
+wine: a boy at odds with life, a boy with a spark of the
+heroic, which he was now burning out and drowning down
+in futile reverie and solitary excess.</p>
+
+<p>From two rooms beyond, the sudden sound of a raised
+voice attracted him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;By....</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page266"></a>266</span></p>
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page267"></a>267</span></p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2>FABLES</h2>
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page268"></a>268</span></p>
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page269"></a>269</span></p>
+<h2>FABLES</h2>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+<h5>I</h5>
+
+<h3>THE PERSONS OF THE TALE</h3>
+
+
+<p>After the 32nd chapter of &ldquo;Treasure Island,&rdquo; two of
+the puppets strolled out to have a pipe before business
+should begin again, and met in an open place not far
+from the story.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good-morning, Cap&rsquo;n,&rdquo; said the first, with a man-o&rsquo;-war
+salute, and a beaming countenance.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, Silver!&rdquo; grunted the other. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re in a bad
+way, Silver.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now, Cap&rsquo;n Smollett,&rdquo; remonstrated Silver, &ldquo;dooty
+is dooty, as I knows, and none better; but we&rsquo;re off
+dooty now; and I can&rsquo;t see no call to keep up the morality
+business.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re a damned rogue, my man,&rdquo; said the Captain.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come, come, Cap&rsquo;n, be just,&rdquo; returned the other.
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no call to be angry with me in earnest. I&rsquo;m
+on&rsquo;y a chara&rsquo;ter in a sea story. I don&rsquo;t really exist.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I don&rsquo;t really exist either,&rdquo; says the Captain,
+&ldquo;which seems to meet that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t set no limits to what a virtuous chara&rsquo;ter
+might consider argument,&rdquo; responded Silver. &ldquo;But I&rsquo;m
+the villain of this tale, I am; and speaking as one sea-faring
+man to another, what I want to know is, what&rsquo;s
+the odds?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Were you never taught your catechism?&rdquo; said the
+Captain. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you know there&rsquo;s such a thing as an
+Author?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page270"></a>270</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Such a thing as a Author?&rdquo; returned John derisively.
+&ldquo;And who better&rsquo;n me? And the p&rsquo;int is, if the Author
+made you, he made Long John, and he made Hands, and
+Pew, and George Merry&mdash;not that George is up to much,
+for he&rsquo;s little more&rsquo;n a name; and he made Flint, what
+there is of him; and he made this here mutiny, you keep
+such a work about; and he had Tom Redruth shot; and&mdash;well,
+if that&rsquo;s a Author, give me Pew!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you believe in a future state?&rdquo; said Smollett.
+&ldquo;Do you think there&rsquo;s nothing but the present story-paper?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t rightly know for that,&rdquo; said Silver; &ldquo;and I
+don&rsquo;t see what it&rsquo;s got to do with it, anyway. What I
+know is this: if there is sich a thing as a Author, I&rsquo;m his
+favourite chara&rsquo;ter. He does me fathoms better&rsquo;n he does
+you&mdash;fathoms, he does. And he likes doing me. He keeps
+me on deck mostly all the time, crutch and all; and he
+leaves you measling in the hold, where nobody can&rsquo;t see
+you, nor wants to, and you may lay to that! If there is
+a Author, by thunder, but he&rsquo;s on my side, and you may
+lay to it!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I see he&rsquo;s giving you a long rope,&rdquo; said the Captain.
+&ldquo;But that can&rsquo;t change a man&rsquo;s convictions. I know the
+Author respects me; I feel it in my bones: when you
+and I had that talk at the blockhouse door, who do you
+think he was for, my man?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And don&rsquo;t he respect me?&rdquo; cried Silver. &ldquo;Ah, you
+should &rsquo;a&rsquo; heard me putting down my mutiny, George
+Merry and Morgan and that lot, no longer ago&rsquo;n last
+chapter; you&rsquo;d &rsquo;a&rsquo; heard something then! You&rsquo;d &rsquo;a&rsquo;
+seen what the Author thinks o&rsquo; me! But come now, do
+you consider yourself a virtuous chara&rsquo;ter clean through?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;God forbid!&rdquo; said Captain Smollett solemnly. &ldquo;I
+am a man that tries to do his duty, and makes a mess
+of it as often as not. I&rsquo;m not a very popular man at
+home, Silver, I&rsquo;m afraid!&rdquo; and the Captain sighed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; says Silver. &ldquo;Then how about this sequel of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page271"></a>271</span>
+yours? Are you to be Cap&rsquo;n Smollett just the same as
+ever and not very popular at home, says you? And if so,
+why, it&rsquo;s &lsquo;Treasure Island&rsquo; over again, by thunder; and
+I&rsquo;ll be Long John and Pew&rsquo;ll be Pew, and we&rsquo;ll have another
+mutiny as like as not. Or are you to be somebody else?
+And if so, why, what the better are you? and what the
+worse am I?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, look here, my man,&rdquo; returned the Captain;
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t understand how this story comes about at all,
+can I? I can&rsquo;t see how you and I who don&rsquo;t exist should
+get to speaking here, and smoke our pipes for all the
+world like reality? Very well, then, who am I to pipe
+up with my opinions? I know the Author&rsquo;s on the side
+of good; he tells me so, it runs out of his pen as he
+writes. Well, that&rsquo;s all I need to know; I&rsquo;ll take my
+chance upon the rest.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a fact he seemed to be against George Merry,&rdquo;
+Silver admitted, musingly. &ldquo;But George is little more&rsquo;n
+a name at the best of it,&rdquo; he added, brightening. &ldquo;And
+to get into soundings for once. What is this good? I
+made a mutiny, and I been a gentleman o&rsquo; fortune; well,
+but by all stories, you ain&rsquo;t no such saint. I&rsquo;m a man
+that keeps company very easy; even by your own account,
+you ain&rsquo;t, and to my certain knowledge you&rsquo;re a devil
+to haze. Which is which? Which is good and which
+bad? Ah, you tell me that! Here we are in stays, and
+you may lay to it!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;re none of us perfect,&rdquo; replied the Captain.
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s a fact of religion, my man. All I can say is, I
+try to do my duty; and if you try to do yours, I can&rsquo;t
+compliment you on your success.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And so you was the judge, was you?&rdquo; said Silver,
+derisively.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I would be both judge and hangman for you, my
+man, and never turn a hair,&rdquo; returned the Captain. &ldquo;But
+I get beyond that: it mayn&rsquo;t be sound theology, but it&rsquo;s
+common sense, that what is good is useful too&mdash;or there
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page272"></a>272</span>
+and thereabout, for I don&rsquo;t set up to be a thinker. Now,
+where would a story go to if there were no virtuous
+characters?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If you go to that,&rdquo; replied Silver, &ldquo;where would a
+story begin, if there wasn&rsquo;t no villains?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, that&rsquo;s pretty much my thought,&rdquo; said Captain
+Smollett. &ldquo;The Author has to get a story; that&rsquo;s what
+he wants; and to get a story, and to have a man like the
+doctor (say) given a proper chance, he has to put in men
+like you and Hands. But he&rsquo;s on the right side; and
+you mind your eye! You&rsquo;re not through this story yet;
+there&rsquo;s trouble coming for you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;ll you bet?&rdquo; asked John.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Much I care if there ain&rsquo;t,&rdquo; returned the Captain.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad enough to be Alexander Smollett, bad as he
+is; and I thank my stars upon my knees that I&rsquo;m not
+Silver. But there&rsquo;s the ink-bottle opening. To quarters!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And indeed the Author was just then beginning to
+write the words:</p>
+
+<h5><span class="sc">Chapter XXXIII</span></h5>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+<h5>II</h5>
+
+<h3>THE SINKING SHIP</h3>
+
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; said the first lieutenant, bursting into the Captain&rsquo;s
+cabin, &ldquo;the ship is going down.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Very well, Mr. Spoker,&rdquo; said the Captain; &ldquo;but that
+is no reason for going about half-shaved. Exercise your
+mind a moment, Mr. Spoker, and you will see that to the
+philosophic eye there is nothing new in our position: the
+ship (if she is to go down at all) may be said to have been
+going down since she was launched.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She is settling fast,&rdquo; said the first lieutenant, as he
+returned from shaving.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page273"></a>273</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Fast, Mr. Spoker?&rdquo; asked the Captain. &ldquo;The
+expression is a strange one, for time (if you will think
+of it) is only relative.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; said the lieutenant, &ldquo;I think it is scarcely
+worth while to embark in such a discussion when we
+shall all be in Davy Jones&rsquo;s Locker in ten minutes.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;By parity of reasoning,&rdquo; returned the Captain gently,
+&ldquo;it would never be worth while to begin any inquiry of
+importance; the odds are always overwhelming that we
+must die before we shall have brought it to an end. You
+have not considered, Mr. Spoker, the situation of man,&rdquo;
+said the Captain, smiling, and shaking his head.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am much more engaged in considering the position
+of the ship,&rdquo; said Mr. Spoker.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Spoken like a good officer,&rdquo; replied the Captain, laying
+his hand on the lieutenant&rsquo;s shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>On deck they found the men had broken into the spirit-room,
+and were fast getting drunk.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My men,&rdquo; said the Captain, &ldquo;there is no sense in
+this. The ship is going down, you will tell me, in ten
+minutes: well, and what then? To the philosophic eye,
+there is nothing new in our position. All our lives long,
+we may have been about to break a blood-vessel or to be
+struck by lightning, not merely in ten minutes, but in
+ten seconds; and that has not prevented us from eating
+dinner, no, nor from putting money in the Savings Bank.
+I assure you, with my hand on my heart, I fail to comprehend
+your attitude.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The men were already too far gone to pay much heed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This is a very painful sight, Mr. Spoker,&rdquo; said the
+Captain.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And yet to the philosophic eye, or whatever it is,&rdquo;
+replied the first lieutenant, &ldquo;they may be said to have
+been getting drunk since they came aboard.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I do not know if you always follow my thought,
+Mr. Spoker,&rdquo; returned the Captain gently. &ldquo;But let us
+proceed.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page274"></a>274</span></p>
+
+<p>In the powder magazine they found an old salt smoking
+his pipe.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good God!&rdquo; cried the Captain, &ldquo;what are you
+about?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, sir,&rdquo; said the old salt apologetically, &ldquo;they
+told me as she were going down.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And suppose she were?&rdquo; said the Captain. &ldquo;To
+the philosophic eye, there would be nothing new in our
+position. Life, my old shipmate, life, at any moment and
+in any view, is as dangerous as a sinking ship; and yet
+it is man&rsquo;s handsome fashion to carry umbrellas, to wear
+indiarubber overshoes, to begin vast works, and to conduct
+himself in every way as if he might hope to be eternal.
+And for my own poor part I should despise the man who,
+even on board a sinking ship, should omit to take a pill
+or to wind up his watch. That, my friend, would not be
+the human attitude.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I beg pardon, sir,&rdquo; said Mr. Spoker. &ldquo;But what is
+precisely the difference between shaving in a sinking ship
+and smoking in a powder magazine?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Or doing anything at all in any conceivable circumstances?&rdquo;
+cried the Captain. &ldquo;Perfectly conclusive; give
+me a cigar!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Two minutes afterwards the ship blew up with a
+glorious detonation.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<h5>III</h5>
+
+<h3>THE TWO MATCHES</h3>
+
+
+<p>One day there was a traveller in the woods in California,
+in the dry season, when the trades were blowing strong.
+He had ridden a long way, and he was tired and hungry,
+and dismounted from his horse to smoke a pipe. But
+when he felt in his pocket he found but two matches.
+He struck the first, and it would not light.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page275"></a>275</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Here is a pretty state of things!&rdquo; said the traveller.
+&ldquo;Dying for a smoke; only one match left; and that
+certain to miss fire! Was there ever a creature so unfortunate?
+And yet,&rdquo; thought the traveller, &ldquo;suppose I
+light this match, and smoke my pipe, and shake out the
+dottle here in the grass&mdash;the grass might catch fire, for
+it is dry like tinder; and while I snatch out the flames
+in front, they might evade and run behind me, and seize
+upon yon bush of poison oak; before I could reach it,
+that would have blazed up; over the bush I see a pine-tree
+hung with moss; that, too, would fly in fire upon
+the instant to its topmost bough; and the flame of that
+long torch&mdash;how would the trade-wind take and brandish
+that through the inflammable forest! I hear this dell
+roar in a moment with the joint voice of wind and fire,
+I see myself gallop for my soul, and the flying conflagration
+chase and outflank me through the hills; I see this
+pleasant forest burn for days, and the cattle roasted, and
+the springs dried up, and the farmer ruined, and his
+children cast upon the world. What a world hangs upon
+this moment!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>With that he struck the match, and it missed fire.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thank God!&rdquo; said the traveller, and put his pipe
+in his pocket.</p>
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+
+<h5>IV</h5>
+
+<h3>THE SICK MAN AND THE FIREMAN</h3>
+
+
+<p>There was once a sick man in a burning house, to whom
+there entered a fireman.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do not save me,&rdquo; said the sick man. &ldquo;Save those
+who are strong.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Will you kindly tell me why?&rdquo; inquired the fireman,
+for he was a civil fellow.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nothing could possibly be fairer,&rdquo; said the sick man.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page276"></a>276</span>
+&ldquo;The strong should be preferred in all cases, because
+they are of more service in the world.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The fireman pondered a while, for he was a man of
+some philosophy. &ldquo;Granted,&rdquo; said he at last, as a part
+of the roof fell in; &ldquo;but for the sake of conversation,
+what would you lay down as the proper service of the
+strong?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nothing can possibly be easier,&rdquo; returned the sick
+man; &ldquo;the proper service of the strong is to help the
+weak.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Again the fireman reflected, for there was nothing
+hasty about this excellent creature. &ldquo;I could forgive you
+being sick,&rdquo; he said at last, as a portion of the wall fell
+out, &ldquo;but I cannot bear your being such a fool.&rdquo; And
+with that he heaved up his fireman&rsquo;s axe, for he was
+eminently just, and clove the sick man to the bed.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<h5>V</h5>
+
+<h3>THE DEVIL AND THE INNKEEPER</h3>
+
+
+<p>Once upon a time the devil stayed at an inn, where no
+one knew him, for they were people whose education had
+been neglected. He was bent on mischief, and for a time
+kept everybody by the ears. But at last the innkeeper
+set a watch upon the devil and took him in the fact.</p>
+
+<p>The innkeeper got a rope&rsquo;s end.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now I&rsquo;m going to thrash you,&rdquo; said the innkeeper.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You have no right to be angry with me,&rdquo; said the
+devil. &ldquo;I am only the devil, and it is my nature to do
+wrong.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is that so?&rdquo; asked the innkeeper.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Fact, I assure you,&rdquo; said the devil.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You really can&rsquo;t help doing ill?&rdquo; asked the innkeeper.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not in the smallest,&rdquo; said the devil; &ldquo;it would be
+useless cruelty to thrash a thing like me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page277"></a>277</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It would indeed,&rdquo; said the innkeeper.</p>
+
+<p>And he made a noose and hanged the devil.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There!&rdquo; said the innkeeper.</p>
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+
+<h5>VI</h5>
+
+<h3>THE PENITENT</h3>
+
+
+<p>A man met a lad weeping. &ldquo;What do you weep for?&rdquo;
+he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am weeping for my sins,&rdquo; said the lad.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You must have little to do,&rdquo; said the man.</p>
+
+<p>The next day they met again. Once more the lad was
+weeping. &ldquo;Why do you weep now?&rdquo; asked the man.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am weeping because I have nothing to eat,&rdquo; said
+the lad.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I thought it would come to that,&rdquo; said the man.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<h5>VII</h5>
+
+<h3>THE YELLOW PAINT</h3>
+
+
+<p>In a certain city there lived a physician who sold yellow
+paint. This was of so singular a virtue that whoso was
+bedaubed with it from head to heel was set free from the
+dangers of life, and the bondage of sin, and the fear of
+death for ever. So the physician said in his prospectus;
+and so said all the citizens in the city; and there was
+nothing more urgent in men&rsquo;s hearts than to be properly
+painted themselves, and nothing they took more delight
+in than to see others painted. There was in the same city
+a young man of a very good family but of a somewhat
+reckless life, who had reached the age of manhood, and
+would have nothing to say to the paint: &ldquo;To-morrow was
+soon enough,&rdquo; said he; and when the morrow came he
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page278"></a>278</span>
+would still put it off. So he might have continued to do
+until his death; only, he had a friend of about his own
+age and much of his own manners; and this youth, taking
+a walk in the public street, with not one fleck of paint
+upon his body, was suddenly run down by a water-cart
+and cut off in the heyday of his nakedness. This shook
+the other to the soul; so that I never beheld a man more
+earnest to be painted; and on the very same evening,
+in the presence of all his family, to appropriate music,
+and himself weeping aloud, he received three complete
+coats and a touch of varnish on the top. The physician
+(who was himself affected even to tears) protested he had
+never done a job so thorough.</p>
+
+<p>Some two months afterwards, the young man was
+carried on a stretcher to the physician&rsquo;s house.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What is the meaning of this?&rdquo; he cried, as soon as
+the door was opened. &ldquo;I was to be set free from all the
+dangers of life; and here have I been run down by that
+self-same water-cart, and my leg is broken.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dear me!&rdquo; said the physician. &ldquo;This is very sad.
+But I perceive I must explain to you the action of my
+paint. A broken bone is a mighty small affair at the
+worst of it; and it belongs to a class of accident to which
+my paint is quite inapplicable. Sin, my dear young
+friend, sin is the sole calamity that a wise man should
+apprehend; it is against sin that I have fitted you out;
+and when you come to be tempted you will give me news
+of my paint.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;O!&rdquo; said the young man, &ldquo;I did not understand
+that, and it seems rather disappointing. But I have no
+doubt all is for the best; and in the meanwhile, I shall
+be obliged to you if you will set my leg.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That is none of my business,&rdquo; said the physician;
+&ldquo;but if your bearers will carry you round the corner to
+the surgeon&rsquo;s, I feel sure he will afford relief.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Some three years later, the young man came running
+to the physician&rsquo;s house in a great perturbation. &ldquo;What
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page279"></a>279</span>
+is the meaning of this?&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Here was I to be
+set free from the bondage of sin; and I have just committed
+forgery, arson, and murder.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dear me!&rdquo; said the physician. &ldquo;This is very
+serious. Off with your clothes at once.&rdquo; And as soon
+as the young man had stripped, he examined him from
+head to foot. &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he cried with great relief, &ldquo;there
+is not a flake broken. Cheer up, my young friend, your
+paint is as good as new.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good God!&rdquo; cried the young man, &ldquo;and what then
+can be the use of it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why,&rdquo; said the physician, &ldquo;I perceive I must explain
+to you the nature of the action of my paint. It does not
+exactly prevent sin; it extenuates instead the painful
+consequences. It is not so much for this world as for the
+next; it is not against life; in short, it is against death
+that I have fitted you out. And when you come to die,
+you will give me news of my paint.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;O!&rdquo; cried the young man, &ldquo;I had not understood
+that, and it seems a little disappointing. But there is no
+doubt all is for the best; and in the meanwhile, I shall
+be obliged if you will help me to undo the evil I have
+brought on innocent persons.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That is none of my business,&rdquo; said the physician;
+&ldquo;but if you will go round the corner to the police office, I
+feel sure it will afford you relief to give yourself up.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Six weeks later the physician was called to the
+town gaol.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What is the meaning of this?&rdquo; cried the young man.
+&ldquo;Here am I literally crusted with your paint; and I
+have broken my leg, and committed all the crimes in the
+calendar, and must be hanged to-morrow; and am in
+the meanwhile in a fear so extreme that I lack words to
+picture it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dear me!&rdquo; said the physician. &ldquo;This is really
+amazing. Well, well; perhaps if you had not been
+painted, you would have been more frightened still.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page280"></a>280</span></p>
+<h5>VIII</h5>
+
+<h3>THE HOUSE OF ELD</h3>
+
+
+<p>So soon as the child began to speak, the gyve was riveted;
+and the boys and girls limped about their play like convicts.
+Doubtless it was more pitiable to see and more
+painful to bear in youth; but even the grown folk, besides
+being very unhandy on their feet, were often sick with
+ulcers.</p>
+
+<p>About the time when Jack was ten years old, many
+strangers began to journey through that country. These
+he beheld going lightly by on the long roads, and the
+thing amazed him. &ldquo;I wonder how it comes,&rdquo; he asked,
+&ldquo;that all these strangers are so quick afoot, and we must
+drag about our fetter?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear boy,&rdquo; said his uncle, the catechist, &ldquo;do not
+complain about your fetter, for it is the only thing that
+makes life worth living. None are happy, none are good,
+none are respectable, that are not gyved like us. And I
+must tell you, besides, it is very dangerous talk. If you
+grumble of your iron, you will have no luck; if you ever
+take it off, you will be instantly smitten by a thunderbolt.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Are there no thunderbolts for these strangers?&rdquo;
+asked Jack.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Jupiter is long-suffering to the benighted,&rdquo; returned
+the catechist.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Upon my word, I could wish I had been less fortunate,&rdquo;
+said Jack. &ldquo;For if I had been born benighted,
+I might now be going free; and it cannot be denied the
+iron is inconvenient, and the ulcer hurts.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; cried his uncle, &ldquo;do not envy the heathen!
+Theirs is a sad lot! Ah, poor souls, if they but knew the
+joys of being fettered! Poor souls, my heart yearns for
+them. But the truth is they are vile, odious, insolent, ill-conditioned,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page281"></a>281</span>
+stinking brutes, not truly human&mdash;for what
+is a man without a fetter?&mdash;and you cannot be too
+particular not to touch or speak with them.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>After this talk, the child would never pass one of the
+unfettered on the road but what he spat at him and called
+him names, which was the practice of the children in
+that part.</p>
+
+<p>It chanced one day, when he was fifteen, he went into
+the woods, and the ulcer pained him. It was a fair day,
+with a blue sky; all the birds were singing; but Jack
+nursed his foot. Presently, another song began; it
+sounded like the singing of a person, only far more gay;
+at the same time there was a beating on the earth. Jack
+put aside the leaves; and there was a lad of his own
+village, leaping, and dancing and singing to himself in
+a green dell; and on the grass beside him lay the
+dancer&rsquo;s iron.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;O!&rdquo; cried Jack, &ldquo;you have your fetter off!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;For God&rsquo;s sake, don&rsquo;t tell your uncle!&rdquo; cried the lad.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If you fear my uncle,&rdquo; returned Jack, &ldquo;why do you
+not fear the thunderbolt?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That is only an old wives&rsquo; tale,&rdquo; said the other. &ldquo;It
+is only told to children. Scores of us come here among
+the woods and dance for nights together, and are none
+the worse.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This put Jack in a thousand new thoughts. He was
+a grave lad; he had no mind to dance himself; he wore
+his fetter manfully, and tended his ulcer without complaint.
+But he loved the less to be deceived or to see others cheated.
+He began to lie in wait for heathen travellers, at covert
+parts of the road, and in the dusk of the day, so that he
+might speak with them unseen; and these were greatly
+taken with their wayside questioner, and told him things
+of weight. The wearing of gyves (they said) was no command
+of Jupiter&rsquo;s. It was the contrivance of a white-faced
+thing, a sorcerer, that dwelt in that country in the
+Wood of Eld. He was one like Glaucus that could change
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page282"></a>282</span>
+his shape, yet he could be always told; for when he was
+crossed, he gobbled like a turkey. He had three lives;
+but the third smiting would make an end of him indeed;
+and with that his house of sorcery would vanish, the gyves
+fall, and the villagers take hands and dance like children.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And in your country?&rdquo; Jack would ask.</p>
+
+<p>But at this, the travellers, with one accord, would put
+him off; until Jack began to suppose there was no land
+entirely happy. Or, if there were, it must be one that
+kept its folk at home; which was natural enough.</p>
+
+<p>But the case of the gyves weighed upon him. The
+sight of the children limping stuck in his eyes; the
+groans of such as dressed their ulcers haunted him.
+And it came at last in his mind that he was born
+to free them.</p>
+
+<p>There was in that village a sword of heavenly forgery,
+beaten upon Vulcan&rsquo;s anvil. It was never used but in
+the temple, and then the flat of it only; and it hung on
+a nail by the catechist&rsquo;s chimney. Early one night Jack
+rose, and took the sword, and was gone out of the house
+and the village in the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>All night he walked at a venture; and when day came,
+he met strangers going to the fields. Then he asked after
+the Wood of Eld and the house of sorcery; and one said
+north, and one south; until Jack saw that they deceived
+him. So then, when he asked his way of any man, he
+showed the bright sword naked; and at that the gyve
+on the man&rsquo;s ankle rang and answered in his stead; and
+the word was still <i>Straight on.</i> But the man, when his
+gyve spoke, spat and struck at Jack, and threw stones at
+him as he went away; so that his head was broken.</p>
+
+<p>So he came to that wood, and entered in, and he was
+aware of a house in a low place, where funguses grew, and
+the trees met, and the steaming of the marsh arose about
+it like a smoke. It was a fine house, and a very rambling;
+some parts of it were ancient like the hills, and some but
+of yesterday, and none finished; and all the ends of it
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page283"></a>283</span>
+were open, so that you could go in from every side. Yet
+it was in good repair, and all the chimneys smoked.</p>
+
+<p>Jack went in through the gable; and there was one
+room after another, all bare, but all furnished in part, so
+that a man could dwell there; and in each there was a
+fire burning, where a man could warm himself, and a
+table spread where he might eat. But Jack saw nowhere
+any living creature; only the bodies of some stuffed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This is a hospitable house,&rdquo; said Jack; &ldquo;but the
+ground must be quaggy underneath, for at every step
+the building quakes.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He had gone some time in the house, when he began
+to be hungry. Then he looked at the food, and at first
+he was afraid; but he bared the sword, and by the shining
+of the sword, it seemed the food was honest. So he took
+the courage to sit down and eat, and he was refreshed in
+mind and body.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This is strange,&rdquo; thought he, &ldquo;that in the house of
+sorcery there should be food so wholesome.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>As he was yet eating, there came into that room the
+appearance of his uncle, and Jack was afraid because he
+had taken the sword. But his uncle was never more kind,
+and sat down to meat with him, and praised him because
+he had taken the sword. Never had these two been more
+pleasantly together, and Jack was full of love to the man.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It was very well done,&rdquo; said his uncle, &ldquo;to take the
+sword and come yourself into the House of Eld; a good
+thought and a brave deed. But now you are satisfied;
+and we may go home to dinner arm in arm.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;O dear no!&rdquo; said Jack. &ldquo;I am not satisfied yet.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How!&rdquo; cried his uncle. &ldquo;Are you not warmed by
+the fire? Does not this food sustain you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I see the food to be wholesome,&rdquo; said Jack; &ldquo;and
+still it is no proof that a man should wear a gyve on
+his right leg.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Now at this the appearance of his uncle gobbled like
+a turkey.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page284"></a>284</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Jupiter!&rdquo; cried Jack, &ldquo;is this the sorcerer?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>His hand held back and his heart failed him for the
+love he bore his uncle; but he heaved up the sword and
+smote the appearance on the head; and it cried out aloud
+with the voice of his uncle; and fell to the ground; and
+a little bloodless white thing fled from the room.</p>
+
+<p>The cry rang in Jack&rsquo;s ears, and his knees smote
+together, and conscience cried upon him; and yet he was
+strengthened, and there woke in his bones the lust of that
+enchanter&rsquo;s blood. &ldquo;If the gyves are to fall,&rdquo; said he,
+&ldquo;I must go through with this, and when I get home I
+shall find my uncle dancing.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So he went on after the bloodless thing. In the way
+he met the appearance of his father; and his father was
+incensed, and railed upon him, and called to him upon
+his duty, and bade him be home, while there was yet
+time. &ldquo;For you can still,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;be home by sunset;
+and then all will be forgiven.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;God knows,&rdquo; said Jack, &ldquo;I fear your anger; but
+yet your anger does not prove that a man should wear
+a gyve on his right leg.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And at that the appearance of his father gobbled like
+a turkey.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, heaven,&rdquo; cried Jack, &ldquo;the sorcerer again!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The blood ran backward in his body, and his joints
+rebelled against him for the love he bore his father; but
+he heaved up the sword, and plunged it in the heart of
+the appearance; and the appearance cried out aloud with
+the voice of his father; and fell to the ground; and a
+little bloodless white thing fled from the room.</p>
+
+<p>The cry rang in Jack&rsquo;s ears, and his soul was darkened;
+but now rage came to him. &ldquo;I have done what I dare
+not think upon,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;I will go to an end with it,
+or perish. And when I get home, I pray God this may
+be a dream, and I may find my father dancing.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So he went on after the bloodless thing that had
+escaped; and in the way he met the appearance of his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page285"></a>285</span>
+mother, and she wept. &ldquo;What have you done?&rdquo; she
+cried. &ldquo;What is this that you have done? O, come
+home (where you may be by bedtime) ere you do more
+ill to me and mine; for it is enough to smite my brother
+and your father.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dear mother, it is not these that I have smitten,&rdquo;
+said Jack; &ldquo;it was but the enchanter in their shape.
+And even if I had, it would not prove that a man should
+wear a gyve on his right leg.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And at this the appearance gobbled like a turkey.</p>
+
+<p>He never knew how he did that; but he swung the
+sword on the one side, and clove the appearance through
+the midst; and it cried out aloud with the voice of his
+mother; and fell to the ground; and with the fall of it,
+the house was gone from over Jack&rsquo;s head, and he stood
+alone in the woods, and the gyve was loosened from
+his leg.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;the enchanter is now dead, and the
+fetter gone.&rdquo; But the cries rang in his soul, and the day
+was like night to him. &ldquo;This has been a sore business,&rdquo;
+said he. &ldquo;Let me get forth out of the wood, and see the
+good that I have done to others.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He thought to leave the fetter where it lay, but when
+he turned to go, his mind was otherwise. So he stooped
+and put the gyve in his bosom; and the rough iron
+galled him as he went, and his bosom bled.</p>
+
+<p>Now when he was forth of the wood upon the highway,
+he met folk returning from the field; and those he
+met had no fetter on the right leg, but, behold! they had
+one upon the left. Jack asked them what it signified; and
+they said, &ldquo;that was the new wear, for the old was found
+to be a superstition.&rdquo; Then he looked at them nearly;
+and there was a new ulcer on the left ankle, and the old
+one on the right was not yet healed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now, may God forgive me!&rdquo; cried Jack. &ldquo;I would
+I were well home.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And when he was home, there lay his uncle smitten
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page286"></a>286</span>
+on the head, and his father pierced through the heart,
+and his mother cloven through the midst. And he sat
+in the lone house and wept beside the bodies.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MORAL</p>
+
+<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td>
+<div class="poemr">
+
+<p>Old is the tree and the fruit good,</p>
+<p>Very old and thick the wood.</p>
+<p>Woodman, is your courage stout?</p>
+<p>Beware! the root is wrapped about</p>
+<p>Your mother&rsquo;s heart, your father&rsquo;s bones;</p>
+<p>And like the mandrake comes with groans.</p>
+
+</div>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<h5>IX</h5>
+
+<h3>THE FOUR REFORMERS</h3>
+
+
+<p>Four reformers met under a bramble-bush. They were all
+agreed the world must be changed. &ldquo;We must abolish
+property,&rdquo; said one.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We must abolish marriage,&rdquo; said the second.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We must abolish God,&rdquo; said the third.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I wish we could abolish work,&rdquo; said the fourth.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do not let us get beyond practical politics,&rdquo; said the
+first. &ldquo;The first thing is to reduce men to a common
+level.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The first thing,&rdquo; said the second, &ldquo;is to give freedom
+to the sexes.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The first thing,&rdquo; said the third, &ldquo;is to find out
+how to do it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The first step,&rdquo; said the first, &ldquo;is to abolish the
+Bible.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The first thing,&rdquo; said the second, &ldquo;is to abolish the
+laws.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The first thing,&rdquo; said the third, &ldquo;is to abolish mankind.&rdquo;</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page287"></a>287</span></p>
+<h5>X</h5>
+
+<h3>THE MAN AND HIS FRIEND</h3>
+
+
+<p>A man quarrelled with his friend.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have been much deceived in you,&rdquo; said the man.</p>
+
+<p>And the friend made a face at him and went away.</p>
+
+<p>A little after, they both died, and came together before
+the great white Justice of the Peace. It began to look
+black for the friend, but the man for a while had a clear
+character and was getting in good spirits.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I find here some record of a quarrel,&rdquo; said the Justice,
+looking in his notes. &ldquo;Which of you was in the wrong?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He was,&rdquo; said the man. &ldquo;He spoke ill of me behind
+my back.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Did he so?&rdquo; said the Justice. &ldquo;And pray how did
+he speak about your neighbours?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;O, he had always a nasty tongue,&rdquo; said the man.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And you chose him for your friend?&rdquo; cried the
+Justice. &ldquo;My good fellow, we have no use here for
+fools.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So the man was cast in the pit, and the friend laughed
+out aloud in the dark and remained to be tried on other
+charges.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<h5>XI</h5>
+
+<h3>THE READER</h3>
+
+
+<p>&ldquo;I never read such an impious book,&rdquo; said the reader,
+throwing it on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You need not hurt me,&rdquo; said the book; &ldquo;you will
+only get less for me second-hand, and I did not write
+myself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page288"></a>288</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That is true,&rdquo; said the reader. &ldquo;My quarrel is with
+your author.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, well,&rdquo; said the book, &ldquo;you need not buy his
+rant.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That is true,&rdquo; said the reader. &ldquo;But I thought
+him such a cheerful writer.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I find him so,&rdquo; said the book.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You must be differently made from me,&rdquo; said the
+reader.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Let me tell you a fable,&rdquo; said the book. &ldquo;There
+were two men wrecked upon a desert island; one of them
+made believe he was at home, the other admitted&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;O, I know your kind of fable,&rdquo; said the reader.
+&ldquo;They both died.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And so they did,&rdquo; said the book. &ldquo;No doubt of that.
+And everybody else.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That is true,&rdquo; said the reader. &ldquo;Push it a little
+further for this once. And when they were all
+dead?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They were in God&rsquo;s hands, the same as before,&rdquo;
+said the book.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not much to boast of, by your account,&rdquo; cried the
+reader.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Who is impious now?&rdquo; said the book.</p>
+
+<p>And the reader put him on the fire.</p>
+
+<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td>
+<div class="poemr">
+
+<p>The coward crouches from the rod,</p>
+<p>And loathes the iron face of God.</p>
+
+</div>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+
+<h5>XII</h5>
+
+<h3>THE CITIZEN AND THE TRAVELLER</h3>
+
+
+<p>&ldquo;Look round you,&rdquo; said the citizen. &ldquo;This is the largest
+market in the world.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;O, surely not,&rdquo; said the traveller.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page289"></a>289</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, perhaps not the largest,&rdquo; said the citizen, &ldquo;but
+much the best.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You are certainly wrong there,&rdquo; said the traveller.
+&ldquo;I can tell you....&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They buried the stranger at the dusk.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<h5>XIII</h5>
+
+<h3>THE DISTINGUISHED STRANGER</h3>
+
+
+<p>Once upon a time there came to this earth a visitor from
+a neighbouring planet. And he was met at the place of
+his descent by a great philosopher, who was to show him
+everything.</p>
+
+<p>First of all they came through a wood, and the stranger
+looked upon the trees. &ldquo;Whom have we here?&rdquo; said he.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;These are only vegetables,&rdquo; said the philosopher.
+&ldquo;They are alive, but not at all interesting.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know about that,&rdquo; said the stranger. &ldquo;They
+seem to have very good manners. Do they never speak?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They lack the gift,&rdquo; said the philosopher.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yet I think I hear them sing,&rdquo; said the other.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That is only the wind among the leaves,&rdquo; said the
+philosopher. &ldquo;I will explain to you the theory of winds:
+it is very interesting.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said the stranger, &ldquo;I wish I knew what they
+are thinking.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They cannot think,&rdquo; said the philosopher.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know, about that,&rdquo; returned the stranger:
+and then, laying his hand upon a trunk: &ldquo;I like these
+people,&rdquo; said he.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They are not people at all,&rdquo; said the philosopher.
+&ldquo;Come along.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Next they came through a meadow where there were
+cows.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page290"></a>290</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;These are very dirty people,&rdquo; said the stranger.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They are not people at all,&rdquo; said the philosopher;
+and he explained what a cow is in scientific words which I
+have forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That is all one to me,&rdquo; said the stranger. &ldquo;But why
+do they never look up?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Because they are graminivorous,&rdquo; said the philosopher;
+&ldquo;and to live upon grass, which is not highly
+nutritious, requires so close an attention to business that
+they have no time to think, or speak, or look at the scenery,
+or keep themselves clean.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said the stranger, &ldquo;that is one way to live, no
+doubt. But I prefer the people with the green heads.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Next they came into a city, and the streets were full
+of men and women.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;These are very odd people,&rdquo; said the stranger.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They are the people of the greatest nation in the
+world,&rdquo; said the philosopher.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Are they indeed?&rdquo; said the stranger. &ldquo;They scarcely
+look so.&rdquo;</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<h5>XIV</h5>
+
+<h3>THE CART-HORSES AND THE SADDLE-HORSE</h3>
+
+
+<p>Two cart-horses, a gelding and a mare, were brought to
+Samoa, and put in the same field with a saddle-horse to
+run free on the island. They were rather afraid to go
+near him, for they saw he was a saddle-horse, and supposed
+he would not speak to them. Now the saddle-horse had
+never seen creatures so big. &ldquo;These must be great chiefs,&rdquo;
+thought he, and he approached them civilly. &ldquo;Lady and
+gentleman,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I understand you are from the
+colonies. I offer you my affectionate compliments, and
+make you heartily welcome to the islands.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page291"></a>291</span></p>
+
+<p>The colonials looked at him askance, and consulted
+with each other.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Who can he be?&rdquo; said the gelding.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He seems suspiciously civil,&rdquo; said the mare.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I do not think he can be much account,&rdquo; said the
+gelding.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Depend upon it he is only a Kanaka,&rdquo; said the mare.</p>
+
+<p>Then they turned to him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Go to the devil!&rdquo; said the gelding.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I wonder at your impudence, speaking to persons of
+our quality!&rdquo; cried the mare.</p>
+
+<p>The saddle-horse went away by himself. &ldquo;I was
+right,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;they are great chiefs.&rdquo;</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<h5>XV</h5>
+
+<h3>THE TADPOLE AND THE FROG</h3>
+
+
+<p>&ldquo;Be ashamed of yourself,&rdquo; said the frog. &ldquo;When I was
+a tadpole, I had no tail.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Just what I thought!&rdquo; said the tadpole. &ldquo;You
+never were a tadpole.&rdquo;</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<h5>XVI</h5>
+
+<h3>SOMETHING IN IT</h3>
+
+
+<p>The natives told him many tales. In particular, they
+warned him of the house of yellow reeds tied with black
+sinnet, how any one who touched it became instantly the
+prey of Akaänga, and was handed on to him by Miru the
+ruddy, and hocussed with the kava of the dead, and baked
+in the ovens and eaten by the eaters of the dead.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There is nothing in it,&rdquo; said the missionary.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page292"></a>292</span></p>
+
+<p>There was a bay upon that island, a very fair bay to
+look upon; but, by the native saying, it was death to
+bathe there. &ldquo;There is nothing in that,&rdquo; said the missionary;
+and he came to the bay, and went swimming.
+Presently an eddy took him and bore him towards the reef.
+&ldquo;Oho!&rdquo; thought the missionary, &ldquo;it seems there is
+something in it after all.&rdquo; And he swam the harder, but
+the eddy carried him away. &ldquo;I do not care about this
+eddy,&rdquo; said the missionary; and even as he said it, he
+was aware of a house raised on piles above the sea; it was
+built of yellow reeds, one reed joined with another, and
+the whole bound with black sinnet; a ladder led to the
+door, and all about the house hung calabashes. He had
+never seen such a house, nor yet such calabashes; and
+the eddy set for the ladder. &ldquo;This is singular,&rdquo; said the
+missionary, &ldquo;but there can be nothing in it.&rdquo; And he
+laid hold of the ladder and went up. It was a fine house;
+but there was no man there; and when the missionary
+looked back he saw no island, only the heaving of the sea.
+&ldquo;It is strange about the island,&rdquo; said the missionary,
+&ldquo;but who&rsquo;s afraid? my stories are the true ones.&rdquo; And
+he laid hold of a calabash, for he was one that loved
+curiosities. Now he had no sooner laid hand upon the
+calabash than that which he handled, and that which he
+saw and stood on, burst like a bubble and was gone; and
+night closed upon him, and the waters, and the meshes of
+the net; and he wallowed there like a fish.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A body would think there was something in this,&rdquo;
+said the missionary. &ldquo;But if these tales are true, I wonder
+what about my tales!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Now the flaming of Akaänga&rsquo;s torch drew near in the
+night; and the misshapen hands groped in the meshes
+of the net; and they took the missionary between the
+finger and the thumb, and bore him dripping in the night
+and silence to the place of the ovens of Miru. And there
+was Miru, ruddy in the glow of the ovens; and there sat
+her four daughters, and made the kava of the dead; and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page293"></a>293</span>
+there sat the comers out of the islands of the living, dripping
+and lamenting.</p>
+
+<p>This was a dread place to reach for any of the sons
+of men. But of all who ever came there, the missionary
+was the most concerned; and, to make things worse, the
+person next him was a convert of his own.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Aha,&rdquo; said the convert, &ldquo;so you are here like your
+neighbours? And how about all your stories?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It seems,&rdquo; said the missionary, with bursting tears,
+&ldquo;that there was nothing in them.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>By this the kava of the dead was ready, and the
+daughters of Miru began to intone in the old manner of
+singing: &ldquo;Gone are the green islands and the bright sea,
+the sun and the moon and the forty million stars, and life
+and love and hope. Henceforth is no more, only to sit
+in the night and silence, and see your friends devoured;
+for life is a deceit, and the bandage is taken from your
+eyes.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Now when the singing was done, one of the daughters
+came with the bowl. Desire of that kava rose in the
+missionary&rsquo;s bosom; he lusted for it like a swimmer for
+the land, or a bridegroom for his bride; and he reached
+out his hand, and took the bowl, and would have drunk.
+And then he remembered, and put it back.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Drink!&rdquo; sang the daughter of Miru. &ldquo;There is no
+kava like the kava of the dead, and to drink of it once
+is the reward of living.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I thank you. It smells excellent,&rdquo; said the missionary.
+&ldquo;But I am a blue-ribbon man myself; and though
+I am aware there is a difference of opinion even in
+our own confession, I have always held kava to be
+excluded.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What!&rdquo; cried the convert. &ldquo;Are you going to
+respect a taboo at a time like this? And you were always
+so opposed to taboos when you were alive!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;To other people&rsquo;s,&rdquo; said the missionary. &ldquo;Never to
+my own.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page294"></a>294</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But yours have all proved wrong,&rdquo; said the
+convert.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It looks like it,&rdquo; said the missionary, &ldquo;and I
+can&rsquo;t help that. No reason why I should break my
+word.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I never heard the like of this!&rdquo; cried the daughter
+of Miru. &ldquo;Pray, what do you expect to gain?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That is not the point,&rdquo; said the missionary. &ldquo;I took
+this pledge for others, I am not going to break it for
+myself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The daughter of Miru was puzzled; she came and
+told her mother, and Miru was vexed; and they went
+and told Akaänga.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what to do about this,&rdquo; said Akaänga;
+and he came and reasoned with the missionary.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But there <i>is</i> such a thing as right and wrong,&rdquo;
+said the missionary; &ldquo;and your ovens cannot alter
+that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Give the kava to the rest,&rdquo; said Akaänga to the
+daughters of Miru. &ldquo;I must get rid of this sea-lawyer
+instantly, or worse will come of it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The next moment the missionary came up in the
+midst of the sea, and there before him were the palm-trees
+of the island. He swam to the shore gladly, and landed.
+Much matter of thought was in that missionary&rsquo;s mind.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I seem to have been misinformed upon some points,&rdquo;
+said he. &ldquo;Perhaps there is not much in it, as I supposed;
+but there is something in it after all. Let me be glad of
+that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And he rang the bell for service.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MORAL</p>
+
+<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td>
+<div class="poemr">
+
+<p>The sticks break, the stones crumble,</p>
+<p>The eternal altars tilt and tumble,</p>
+<p>Sanctions and tales dislimn like mist</p>
+<p>About the amazed evangelist.</p>
+<p>He stands unshook from age to youth</p>
+<p>Upon one pin-point of the truth.</p>
+
+</div>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page295"></a>295</span></p>
+<h5>XVII</h5>
+
+<h3>FAITH, HALF-FAITH, AND NO FAITH AT ALL</h3>
+
+
+<p>In the ancient days there went three men upon pilgrimage;
+one was a priest, and one was a virtuous person,
+and the third was an old rover with his axe.</p>
+
+<p>As they went, the priest spoke about the grounds of
+faith.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We find the proofs of our religion in the works of
+nature,&rdquo; said he, and beat his breast.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That is true,&rdquo; said the virtuous person.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The peacock has a scrannel voice,&rdquo; said the priest,
+&ldquo;as has been laid down always in our books. How cheering!&rdquo;
+he cried, in a voice like one that wept. &ldquo;How
+comforting!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I require no such proofs,&rdquo; said the virtuous
+person.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then you have no reasonable faith,&rdquo; said the
+priest.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Great is the right, and shall prevail!&rdquo; cried the
+virtuous person. &ldquo;There is loyalty in my soul; be sure,
+there is loyalty in the mind of Odin.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;These are but playings upon words,&rdquo; returned the
+priest. &ldquo;A sackful of such trash is nothing to the peacock.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Just then they passed a country farm, where there
+was a peacock seated on a rail; and the bird
+opened its mouth and sang with the voice of a nightingale.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Where are you now?&rdquo; asked the virtuous person.
+&ldquo;And yet this shakes not me! Great is the truth, and
+shall prevail!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The devil fly away with that peacock!&rdquo; said the
+priest; and he was downcast for a mile or two.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page296"></a>296</span></p>
+
+<p>But presently they came to a shrine, where a Fakeer
+performed miracles.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said the priest, &ldquo;here are the true grounds of
+faith. The peacock was but an adminicle. This is the
+base of our religion.&rdquo; And he beat upon his breast, and
+groaned like one with colic.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now to me,&rdquo; said the virtuous person, &ldquo;all this is
+as little to the purpose as the peacock. I believe because
+I see the right is great and must prevail; and this Fakeer
+might carry on with his conjuring tricks till doomsday,
+and it would not play bluff upon a man like me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Now at this the Fakeer was so much incensed that his
+hand trembled; and, lo! in the midst of a miracle the
+cards fell from up his sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Where are you now?&rdquo; asked the virtuous person.
+&ldquo;And yet it shakes not me!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The devil fly away with the Fakeer!&rdquo; cried the
+priest. &ldquo;I really do not see the good of going on with
+this pilgrimage.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Cheer up!&rdquo; cried the virtuous person. &ldquo;Great is
+the right, and shall prevail!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If you are quite sure it will prevail,&rdquo; says the
+priest.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I pledge my word for that,&rdquo; said the virtuous person.</p>
+
+<p>So the other began to go on again with a better heart.</p>
+
+<p>At last one came running, and told them all was lost:
+that the powers of darkness had besieged the Heavenly
+Mansions, that Odin was to die, and evil triumph.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have been grossly deceived,&rdquo; cried the virtuous
+person.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;All is lost now,&rdquo; said the priest.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I wonder if it is too late to make it up with the
+devil?&rdquo; said the virtuous person.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;O, I hope not,&rdquo; said the priest. &ldquo;And at any rate
+we can but try.&mdash;But what are you doing with your
+axe?&rdquo; says he to the rover.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am off to die with Odin,&rdquo; said the rover.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page297"></a>297</span></p>
+<h5>XVIII</h5>
+
+<h3>THE TOUCHSTONE</h3>
+
+
+<p>The King was a man that stood well before the world;
+his smile was sweet as clover, but his soul withinsides was
+as little as a pea. He had two sons; and the younger
+son was a boy after his heart, but the elder was one whom
+he feared. It befell one morning that the drum sounded
+in the dun before it was yet day; and the King rode with
+his two sons, and a brave array behind them. They rode
+two hours, and came to the foot of a brown mountain that
+was very steep.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Where do we ride?&rdquo; said the elder son.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Across this brown mountain,&rdquo; said the King, and
+smiled to himself.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My father knows what he is doing,&rdquo; said the younger
+son.</p>
+
+<p>And they rode two hours more, and came to the sides
+of a black river that was wondrous deep.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And where do we ride?&rdquo; asked the elder son.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Over this black river,&rdquo; said the King, and smiled
+to himself.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My father knows what he is doing,&rdquo; said the younger
+son.</p>
+
+<p>And they rode all that day, and about the time of
+the sunsetting came to the side of a lake, where was a
+great dun.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is here we ride,&rdquo; said the King; &ldquo;to a King&rsquo;s
+house, and a priest&rsquo;s, and a house where you will learn
+much.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>At the gates of the dun, the King who was a priest
+met them; and he was a grave man, and beside him
+stood his daughter, and she was as fair as the morn, and
+one that smiled and looked down.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page298"></a>298</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;These are my two sons,&rdquo; said the first King.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And here is my daughter,&rdquo; said the King who was
+a priest.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She is a wonderful fine maid,&rdquo; said the first King,
+&ldquo;and I like her manner of smiling.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They are wonderful well-grown lads,&rdquo; said the second,
+&ldquo;and I like their gravity.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And then the two Kings looked at each other, and
+said, &ldquo;The thing may come about.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And in the meanwhile the two lads looked upon the
+maid, and the one grew pale and the other red; and the
+maid looked upon the ground smiling.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Here is the maid that I shall marry,&rdquo; said the elder.
+&ldquo;For I think she smiled upon me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>But the younger plucked his father by the sleeve.
+&ldquo;Father,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;a word in your ear. If I find favour
+in your sight, might not I wed this maid, for I think she
+smiles upon me?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A word in yours,&rdquo; said the King his father. &ldquo;Waiting
+is good hunting, and when the teeth are shut the
+tongue is at home.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Now they were come into the dun, and feasted; and
+this was a great house, so that the lads were astonished;
+and the King that was a priest sat at the end of the board
+and was silent, so that the lads were filled with reverence;
+and the maid served them smiling with downcast eyes, so
+that their hearts were enlarged.</p>
+
+<p>Before it was day, the elder son arose, and he found
+the maid at her weaving, for she was a diligent girl.
+&ldquo;Maid,&rdquo; quoth he, &ldquo;I would fain marry you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You must speak with my father,&rdquo; said she, and she
+looked upon the ground smiling, and became like the rose.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Her heart is with me,&rdquo; said the elder son, and he
+went down to the lake and sang.</p>
+
+<p>A little while after came the younger son. &ldquo;Maid,&rdquo;
+quoth he, &ldquo;if our fathers were agreed, I would like well
+to marry you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page299"></a>299</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You can speak to my father,&rdquo; said she; and looked
+upon the ground, and smiled and grew like the rose.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She is a dutiful daughter,&rdquo; said the younger son,
+&ldquo;she will make an obedient wife.&rdquo; And then he thought,
+&ldquo;What shall I do?&rdquo; and he remembered the King her
+father was a priest; so he went into the temple, and
+sacrificed a weasel and a hare.</p>
+
+<p>Presently the news got about; and the two lads and
+the first King were called into the presence of the King
+who was a priest, where he sat upon the high seat.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Little I reck of gear,&rdquo; said the King who was a priest,
+&ldquo;and little of power. For we live here among the shadow
+of things, and the heart is sick of seeing them. And we
+stay here in the wind like raiment drying, and the heart
+is weary of the wind. But one thing I love, and that is
+truth; and for one thing will I give my daughter, and
+that is the trial stone. For in the light of that stone
+the seeming goes, and the being shows, and all things besides
+are worthless. Therefore, lads, if ye would wed my
+daughter, out foot, and bring me the stone of touch, for
+that is the price of her.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A word in your ear,&rdquo; said the younger son to his
+father. &ldquo;I think we do very well without this stone.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A word in yours,&rdquo; said the father. &ldquo;I am of your
+way of thinking; but when the teeth are shut the tongue
+is at home.&rdquo; And he smiled to the King that was a priest.</p>
+
+<p>But the elder son got to his feet, and called the King
+that was a priest by the name of father. &ldquo;For whether
+I marry the maid or no, I will call you by that word for
+the love of your wisdom; and even now I will ride forth
+and search the world for the stone of touch.&rdquo; So he said
+farewell, and rode into the world.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think I will go, too,&rdquo; said the younger son, &ldquo;if I
+can have your leave. For my heart goes out to the maid.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You will ride home with me,&rdquo; said his father.</p>
+
+<p>So they rode home, and when they came to the dun,
+the King had his son into his treasury. &ldquo;Here,&rdquo; said he,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page300"></a>300</span>
+&ldquo;is the touchstone which shows truth; for there is no
+truth but plain truth; and if you will look in this, you
+will see yourself as you are.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And the younger son looked in it, and saw his face as
+it were the face of a beardless youth, and he was well
+enough pleased; for the thing was a piece of a mirror.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Here is no such great thing to make a work about,&rdquo;
+said he; &ldquo;but if it will get me the maid I shall never
+complain. But what a fool is my brother to ride into
+the world, and the thing all the while at home!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So they rode back to the other dun, and showed the
+mirror to the King that was a priest; and when he had
+looked in it, and seen himself like a King, and his house
+like a King&rsquo;s house, and all things like themselves, he
+cried out and blessed God. &ldquo;For now I know,&rdquo; said he,
+&ldquo;there is no truth but the plain truth; and I am a King
+indeed, although my heart misgave me.&rdquo; And he pulled
+down his temple and built a new one; and then the
+younger son was married to the maid.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime the elder son rode into the world to
+find the touchstone of the trial of truth; and whenever
+he came to a place of habitation, he would ask the men
+if they had heard of it. And in every place the men
+answered: &ldquo;Not only have we heard of it, but we alone,
+of all men, possess the thing itself, and it hangs in the
+side of our chimney to this day.&rdquo; Then would the elder
+son be glad, and beg for a sight of it. And sometimes it
+would be a piece of mirror, that showed the seeming of
+things; and then he would say, &ldquo;This can never be, for
+there should be more than seeming.&rdquo; And sometimes it
+would be a lump of coal, which showed nothing; and
+then he would say, &ldquo;This can never be, for at least there
+is the seeming.&rdquo; And sometimes it would be a touchstone
+indeed, beautiful in hue, adorned with polishing, the
+light inhabiting its sides; and when he found this, he
+would beg the thing, and the persons of that place would
+give it him, for all men were very generous of that gift; so
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page301"></a>301</span>
+that at the last he had his wallet full of them, and they
+chinked together when he rode; and when he halted by
+the side of the way he would take them out and try them,
+till his head turned like the sails upon a windmill.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A murrain upon this business!&rdquo; said the elder son,
+&ldquo;for I perceive no end to it. Here I have the red, and
+here the blue and the green; and to me they seem all
+excellent, and yet shame each other. A murrain on the
+trade! If it were not for the King that is a priest and
+whom I have called my father, and if it were not for the
+fair maid of the dun that makes my mouth to sing and
+my heart enlarge, I would even tumble them all into the
+salt sea, and go home and be a King like other folk.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>But he was like the hunter that has seen a stag upon
+a mountain, so that the night may fall, and the fire be
+kindled, and the lights shine in his house; but desire of
+that stag is single in his bosom.</p>
+
+<p>Now after many years the elder son came upon the
+sides of the salt sea; and it was night, and a savage place,
+and the clamour of the sea was loud. There he was aware
+of a house, and a man sat there by the light of a candle,
+for he had no fire. Now the elder son came in to him, and
+the man gave him water to drink, for he had no bread;
+and wagged his head when spoken to, for he had no words.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Have you the touchstone of truth?&rdquo; asked the elder
+son; and when the man had wagged his head, &ldquo;I might
+have known that,&rdquo; cried the elder son. &ldquo;I have here
+a wallet full of them!&rdquo; And with that he laughed,
+although his heart was weary.</p>
+
+<p>And with that the man laughed too, and with the fuff
+of his laughter the candle went out.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sleep,&rdquo; said the man, &ldquo;for now I think you have
+come far enough; and your quest is ended and my candle
+is out.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Now when the morning came, the man gave him a
+clear pebble in his hand, and it had no beauty and no
+colour; and the elder son looked upon it scornfully and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page302"></a>302</span>
+shook his head; and he went away, for it seemed a small
+affair to him.</p>
+
+<p>All that day he rode, and his mind was quiet, and the
+desire of the chase allayed. &ldquo;How if this poor pebble be
+the touchstone, after all?&rdquo; said he: and he got down
+from his horse and emptied forth his wallet by the side
+of the way. Now, in the light of each other, all the touchstones
+lost their hue and fire, and withered like stars at
+morning; but in the light of the pebble, their beauty
+remained, only the pebble was the most bright. And the
+elder son smote upon his brow. &ldquo;How if this be the
+truth?&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;that all are a little true?&rdquo; And he
+took the pebble and turned its light upon the heavens,
+and they deepened about him like the pit; and he turned
+it on the hills, and the hills were cold and rugged, but life
+ran in their sides so that his own life bounded; and he
+turned it on the dust, and he beheld the dust with joy
+and terror; and he turned it on himself, and knelt down
+and prayed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now, thanks be to God,&rdquo; said the elder son, &ldquo;I have
+found the touchstone; and now I may turn my reins,
+and ride home to the King and to the maid of the dun
+that makes my mouth to sing and my heart enlarge.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Now when he came to the dun, he saw children playing
+by the gate where the King had met him in the old
+days; and this stayed his pleasure, for he thought in his
+heart, &ldquo;It is here my children should be playing.&rdquo; And
+when he came into the hall, there was his brother on the
+high seat and the maid beside him; and at that his anger
+rose, for he thought in his heart, &ldquo;It is I that should be
+sitting there, and the maid beside me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Who are you?&rdquo; said his brother. &ldquo;And what make
+you in the dun?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am your elder brother,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;And I am
+come to marry the maid, for I have brought the touchstone
+of truth.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Then the younger brother laughed aloud.  &ldquo;Why,&rdquo;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page303"></a>303</span>
+said he, &ldquo;I found the touchstone years ago, and married
+the maid, and there are our children playing at the
+gate.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Now at this the elder brother grew as grey as the
+dawn. &ldquo;I pray you have dealt justly,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;for I
+perceive my life is lost.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Justly?&rdquo; quoth the younger brother. &ldquo;It becomes
+you ill, that are a restless man and a runagate, to doubt
+my justice, or the King my father&rsquo;s, that are sedentary
+folk and known in the land.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nay,&rdquo; said the elder brother, &ldquo;you have all else, have
+patience also; and suffer me to say the world is full of
+touchstones, and it appears not easily which is true.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have no shame of mine,&rdquo; said the younger brother.
+&ldquo;There it is, and look in it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So the elder brother looked in the mirror, and he was
+sore amazed; for he was an old man, and his hair was
+white upon his head; and he sat down in the hall and
+wept aloud.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said the younger brother, &ldquo;see what a fool&rsquo;s
+part you have played, that ran over all the world to seek
+what was lying in our father&rsquo;s treasury, and came back an
+old carle for the dogs to bark at, and without chick or
+child. And I that was dutiful and wise sit here crowned
+with virtues and pleasures, and happy in the light of my
+hearth.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Methinks you have a cruel tongue,&rdquo; said the elder
+brother; and he pulled out the clear pebble and turned
+its light on his brother; and behold the man was lying,
+his soul was shrunk into the smallness of a pea, and his
+heart was a bag of little fears like scorpions, and love
+was dead in his bosom. And at that the elder brother
+cried out aloud, and turned the light of the pebble on
+the maid, and, lo! she was but a mask of a woman, and
+withinsides she was quite dead, and she smiled as a clock
+ticks, and knew not wherefore.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;O, well,&rdquo; said the elder brother, &ldquo;I perceive there
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page304"></a>304</span>
+is both good and bad. So fare ye all as well as ye may
+in the dun; but I will go forth into the world with my
+pebble in my pocket.&rdquo;</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<h5>XIX</h5>
+
+<h3>THE POOR THING</h3>
+
+
+<p>There was a man in the islands who fished for his bare
+bellyful, and took his life in his hands to go forth upon
+the sea between four planks. But though he had much
+ado, he was merry of heart; and the gulls heard him
+laugh when the spray met him. And though he had little
+lore, he was sound of spirit; and when the fish came to
+his hook in the mid-waters, he blessed God without weighing.
+He was bitter poor in goods and bitter ugly of
+countenance, and he had no wife.</p>
+
+<p>It fell in the time of the fishing that the man awoke
+in his house about the midst of the afternoon. The fire
+burned in the midst, and the smoke went up and the sun
+came down by the chimney. And the man was aware of
+the likeness of one that warmed his hands at the red
+peats.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I greet you,&rdquo; said the man, &ldquo;in the name of God.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I greet you,&rdquo; said he that warmed his hands, &ldquo;but
+not in the name of God, for I am none of His; nor in the
+name of Hell, for I am not of Hell. For I am but a bloodless
+thing, less than wind and lighter than a sound, and
+the wind goes through me like a net, and I am broken by
+a sound and shaken by the cold.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Be plain with me,&rdquo; said the man, &ldquo;and tell me your
+name and of your nature.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My name,&rdquo; quoth the other, &ldquo;is not yet named, and
+my nature not yet sure. For I am part of a man; and I
+was a part of your fathers, and went out to fish and fight
+with them in the ancient days. But now is my turn not
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page305"></a>305</span>
+yet come; and I wait until you have a wife, and then
+shall I be in your son, and a brave part of him, rejoicing
+manfully to launch the boat into the surf, skilful to direct
+the helm, and a man of might where the ring closes and
+the blows are going.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This is a marvellous thing to hear,&rdquo; said the man;
+&ldquo;and if you are indeed to be my son, I fear it will go ill
+with you; for I am bitter poor in goods and bitter ugly
+in face, and I shall never get me a wife if I live to the age
+of eagles.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;All this have I come to remedy, my Father,&rdquo; said
+the Poor Thing; &ldquo;for we must go this night to the little
+isle of sheep, where our fathers lie in the dead-cairn, and
+to-morrow to the Earl&rsquo;s Hall, and there shall you find a
+wife by my providing.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So the man rose and put forth his boat at the time of
+the sunsetting; and the Poor Thing sat in the prow, and
+the spray blew through his bones like snow, and the wind
+whistled in his teeth, and the boat dipped not with the
+weight of him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am fearful to see you, my son,&rdquo; said the man.
+&ldquo;For methinks you are no thing of God.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is only the wind that whistles in my teeth,&rdquo; said
+the Poor Thing, &ldquo;and there is no life in me to keep it
+out.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So they came to the little isle of sheep, where the surf
+burst all about it in the midst of the sea, and it was all
+green with bracken, and all wet with dew, and the moon
+enlightened it. They ran the boat into a cove, and set
+foot to land; and the man came heavily behind among
+the rocks in the deepness of the bracken, but the Poor
+Thing went before him like a smoke in the light of the
+moon. So they came to the dead-cairn, and they laid
+their ears to the stones; and the dead complained withinsides
+like a swarm of bees: &ldquo;Time was that marrow was
+in our bones, and strength in our sinews; and the thoughts
+of our head were clothed upon with acts and the words
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page306"></a>306</span>
+of men. But now are we broken in sunder, and the bonds
+of our bones are loosed, and our thoughts lie in the dust.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Then said the Poor Thing: &ldquo;Charge them that they
+give you the virtue they withheld.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And the man said: &ldquo;Bones of my fathers, greeting!
+for I am sprung of your loins. And now, behold, I break
+open the piled stones of your cairn, and I let in the noon
+between your ribs. Count it well done, for it was to be;
+and give me what I come seeking in the name of blood
+and in the name of God.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And the spirits of the dead stirred in the cairn like
+ants; and they spoke: &ldquo;You have broken the roof of
+our cairn and let in the noon between our ribs; and you
+have the strength of the still-living. But what virtue have
+we? what power? or what jewel here in the dust with us,
+that any living man should covet or receive it? for we
+are less than nothing. But we tell you one thing, speaking
+with many voices like bees, that the way is plain before
+all like the grooves of launching: So forth into life and
+fear not, for so did we all in the ancient ages.&rdquo; And
+their voices passed away like an eddy in a river.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said the Poor Thing, &ldquo;they have told you a
+lesson, but make them give you a gift. Stoop your hand
+among the bones without drawback, and you shall find
+their treasure.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So the man stooped his hand, and the dead laid hold
+upon it many and faint like ants; but he shook them
+off, and behold, what he brought up in his hand was the
+shoe of a horse, and it was rusty.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is a thing of no price,&rdquo; quoth the man, &ldquo;for it
+is rusty.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We shall see that,&rdquo; said the Poor Thing; &ldquo;for in
+my thought it is a good thing to do what our fathers did,
+and to keep what they kept without question. And in
+my thought one thing is as good as another in this world;
+and a shoe of a horse will do.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Now they got into their boat with the horse-shoe, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page307"></a>307</span>
+when the dawn was come they were aware of the smoke
+of the Earl&rsquo;s town and the bells of the Kirk that beat.
+So they set foot to shore: and the man went up to the
+market among the fishers over against the palace and
+the Kirk; and he was bitter poor and bitter ugly, and
+he had never a fish to sell, but only a shoe of a horse in
+his creel, and it rusty.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said the Poor Thing, &ldquo;do so and so, and
+you shall find a wife and I a mother.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It befell that the Earl&rsquo;s daughter came forth to go
+into the Kirk upon her prayers; and when she saw the
+poor man stand in the market with only the shoe of a
+horse, and it rusty, it came in her mind it should be a
+thing of price.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What is that?&rdquo; quoth she.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is a shoe of a horse,&rdquo; said the man.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And what is the use of it?&rdquo; quoth the Earl&rsquo;s daughter.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is for no use,&rdquo; said the man.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I may not believe that,&rdquo; said she; &ldquo;else why should
+you carry it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I do so,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;because it was so my fathers did
+in the ancient ages; and I have neither a better reason
+nor a worse.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Now the Earl&rsquo;s daughter could not find it in her mind
+to believe him. &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; quoth she, &ldquo;sell me this, for
+I am sure it is a thing of price.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nay,&rdquo; said the man, &ldquo;the thing is not for sale.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What!&rdquo; cried the Earl&rsquo;s daughter. &ldquo;Then what
+make you here in the town&rsquo;s market, with the thing in
+your creel and nought beside?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I sit here,&rdquo; says the man, &ldquo;to get me a wife.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There is no sense in any of these answers,&rdquo; thought
+the Earl&rsquo;s daughter; &ldquo;and I could find it in my heart
+to weep.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>By came the Earl upon that; and she called him and
+told him all. And when he had heard, he was of his
+daughter&rsquo;s mind that this should be a thing of virtue;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page308"></a>308</span>
+and charged the man to set a price upon the thing, or
+else be hanged upon the gallows; and that was near at
+hand, so that the man could see it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The way of life is straight like the grooves of launching,&rdquo;
+quoth the man. &ldquo;And if I am to be hanged let
+me be hanged.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why!&rdquo; cried the Earl, &ldquo;will you set your neck
+against a shoe of a horse, and it rusty?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In my thought,&rdquo; said the man, &ldquo;one thing is as
+good as another in this world; and the shoe of a horse
+will do.&ldquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This can never be,&rdquo; thought the Earl; and he stood
+and looked upon the man, and bit his beard.</p>
+
+<p>And the man looked up at him and smiled. &ldquo;It was
+so my fathers did in the ancient ages,&rdquo; quoth he to the
+Earl, &ldquo;and I have neither a better reason nor a
+worse.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There is no sense in any of this,&rdquo; thought the Earl,
+&ldquo;and I must be growing old.&rdquo; So he had his daughter on
+one side, and says he: &ldquo;Many suitors have you denied,
+my child. But here is a very strange matter that a man
+should cling so to a shoe of a horse, and it rusty; and
+that he should offer it like a thing on sale, and yet not
+sell it; and that he should sit there seeking a wife. If I
+come not to the bottom of this thing, I shall have no more
+pleasure in bread; and I can see no way, but either I
+should hang or you should marry him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;By my troth, but he is bitter ugly,&rdquo; said the Earl&rsquo;s
+daughter. &ldquo;How if the gallows be so near at hand?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It was not so,&rdquo; said the Earl, &ldquo;that my fathers did
+in the ancient ages. I am like the man, and can give you
+neither a better reason nor a worse. But do you, prithee,
+speak with him again.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So the Earl&rsquo;s daughter spoke to the man. &ldquo;If you
+were not so bitter ugly,&rdquo; quoth she, &ldquo;my father the Earl
+would have us marry.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Bitter ugly am I,&rdquo; said the man, &ldquo;and you as fair
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page309"></a>309</span>
+as May. Bitter ugly I am, and what of that? It was
+so my fathers&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In the name of God,&rdquo; said the Earl&rsquo;s daughter, &ldquo;let
+your fathers be!&ldquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If I had done that,&rdquo; said the man, &ldquo;you had never
+been chaffering with me here in the market, nor your
+father the Earl watching with the end of his eye.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But come,&rdquo; quoth the Earl&rsquo;s daughter, &ldquo;this is a
+very strange thing, that you would have me wed for a
+shoe of a horse, and it rusty.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In my thought,&rdquo; quoth the man, &ldquo;one thing is as
+good&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;O, spare me that,&rdquo; said the Earl&rsquo;s daughter, &ldquo;and
+tell me why I should marry.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Listen and look,&rdquo; said the man.</p>
+
+<p>Now the wind blew through the Poor Thing like an
+infant crying, so that her heart was melted; and her
+eyes were unsealed, and she was aware of the thing as it
+were a babe unmothered, and she took it to her arms and
+it melted in her arms like the air.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come,&rdquo; said the man, &ldquo;behold a vision of our children,
+the busy hearth, and the white heads. And let that
+suffice, for it is all God offers.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have no delight in it,&rdquo; said she; but with that she
+sighed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The ways of life are straight like the grooves of
+launching,&rdquo; said the man; and he took her by the hand.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And what shall we do with the horse-shoe?&rdquo; quoth
+she.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I will give it to your father,&rdquo; said the man; &ldquo;and
+he can make a kirk and a mill of it for me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It came to pass in time that the Poor Thing was born;
+but memory of these matters slept with him, and he
+knew not that which he had done. But he was a part
+of the eldest son; rejoicing manfully to launch the boat
+into the surf, skilful to direct the helm, and a man of
+might where the ring closes and the blows are going.</p>
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page310"></a>310</span></p>
+<h5>XX</h5>
+
+<h3>THE SONG OF THE MORROW</h3>
+
+
+<p>The King of Duntrine had a daughter when he was old,
+and she was the fairest King&rsquo;s daughter between two seas;
+her hair was like spun gold, and her eyes like pools in a
+river; and the King gave her a castle upon the sea beach,
+with a terrace, and a court of the hewn stone, and four
+towers at the four corners. Here she dwelt and grew up,
+and had no care for the morrow, and no power upon the
+hour, after the manner of simple men.</p>
+
+<p>It befell that she walked one day by the beach of the
+sea when it was autumn, and the wind blew from the place
+of rains; and upon the one hand of her the sea beat, and
+upon the other the dead leaves ran. This was the loneliest
+beach between two seas, and strange things had been done
+there in the ancient ages. Now the King&rsquo;s daughter was
+aware of a crone that sat upon the beach. The sea-foam
+ran to her feet, and the dead leaves swarmed about her
+back, and the rags blew about her face in the blowing of
+the wind.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said the King&rsquo;s daughter, and she named a
+holy name, &ldquo;this is the most unhappy old crone between
+two seas.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Daughter of a King,&rdquo; said the crone, &ldquo;you dwell in
+a stone house, and your hair is like the gold: but what
+is your profit? Life is not long, nor lives strong; and
+you live after the way of simple men, and have no thought
+for the morrow and no power upon the hour.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thought for the morrow, that I have,&rdquo; said the
+King&rsquo;s daughter; &ldquo;but power upon the hour, that have
+I not.&rdquo; And she mused with herself.</p>
+
+<p>Then the crone smote her lean hands one within the
+other, and laughed like a sea-gull. &ldquo;Home!&rdquo; cried she.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page311"></a>311</span>
+&ldquo;O daughter of a King, home to your stone house; for
+the longing is come upon you now, nor can you live any
+more after the manner of simple men. Home, and toil
+and suffer, till the gift come that will make you bare, and
+till the man come that will bring you care.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The King&rsquo;s daughter made no more ado, but she turned
+about and went home to her house in silence. And
+when she was come into her chamber she called for her
+nurse.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nurse,&rdquo; said the King&rsquo;s daughter, &ldquo;thought is come
+upon me for the morrow, so that I can live no more after
+the manner of simple men. Tell me what I must do that
+I may have power upon the hour.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Then the nurse moaned like a snow wind. &ldquo;Alas!&rdquo;
+said she, &ldquo;that this thing should be; but the thought is
+gone into your marrow, nor is there any cure against the
+thought. Be it so, then, even as you will; though power
+is less than weakness, power shall you have; and though
+the thought is colder than winter, yet shall you think it
+to an end.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So the King&rsquo;s daughter sat in her vaulted chamber in
+the masoned house, and she thought upon the thought.
+Nine years she sat; and the sea beat upon the terrace,
+and the gulls cried about the turrets, and wind crooned in
+the chimneys of the house. Nine years she came not
+abroad, nor tasted the clean air, neither saw God&rsquo;s sky.
+Nine years she sat and looked neither to the right nor
+to the left, nor heard speech of any one, but thought upon
+the thought of the morrow. And her nurse fed her in
+silence, and she took of the food with her left hand, and
+ate it without grace.</p>
+
+<p>Now when the nine years were out, it fell dusk in the
+autumn, and there came a sound in the wind like a sound
+of piping. At that the nurse lifted up her finger in the
+vaulted house.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I hear a sound in the wind,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;that is like
+the sound of piping.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page312"></a>312</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is but a little sound,&rdquo; said the King&rsquo;s daughter,
+&ldquo;but yet it is sound enough for me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So they went down in the dusk to the doors of the
+house, and along the beach of the sea. And the waves
+beat upon the one hand, and upon the other the dead leaves
+ran; and the clouds raced in the sky, and the gulls flew widdershins.
+And when they came to that part of the beach
+where strange things had been done in the ancient ages,
+lo! there was the crone, and she was dancing widdershins.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What makes you dance widdershins, old crone?&rdquo;
+said the King&rsquo;s daughter; &ldquo;here upon the bleak beach,
+between the waves and the dead leaves?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I hear a sound in the wind that is like a sound of
+piping,&rdquo; quoth she. &ldquo;And it is for that that I dance
+widdershins. For the gift comes that will make you bare,
+and the man comes that must bring you care. But for
+me the morrow is come that I have thought upon, and the
+hour of my power.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How comes it, crone,&rdquo; said the King&rsquo;s daughter,
+&ldquo;that you waver like a rag, and pale like a dead leaf
+before my eyes?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Because the morrow has come that I have thought
+upon, and the hour of my power,&rdquo; said the crone; and
+she fell on the beach, and, lo! she was but stalks of the
+sea tangle, and dust of the sea sand, and the sand-lice
+hopped upon the place of her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This is the strangest thing that befell between two
+seas,&rdquo; said the King&rsquo;s daughter of Duntrine.</p>
+
+<p>But the nurse broke out and moaned like an autumn
+gale. &ldquo;I am weary of the wind,&rdquo; quoth she; and she
+bewailed her day.</p>
+
+<p>The King&rsquo;s daughter was aware of a man upon the
+beach; he went hooded so that none might perceive his
+face, and a pipe was underneath his arm. The sound of
+his pipe was like singing wasps, and like the wind that
+sings in windlestraw; and it took hold upon men&rsquo;s ears
+like the crying of gulls.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page313"></a>313</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Are you the comer?&rdquo; quoth the King&rsquo;s daughter of
+Duntrine.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am the comer,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;and these are the pipes
+that a man may hear, and I have power upon the hour,
+and this is the song of the morrow.&rdquo; And he piped the
+song of the morrow, and it was as long as years; and the
+nurse wept out aloud at the hearing of it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This is true,&rdquo; said the King&rsquo;s daughter, &ldquo;that you
+pipe the song of the morrow; but that ye have power
+upon the hour, how may I know that? Show me a marvel
+here upon the beach, between the waves and the dead
+leaves.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And the man said, &ldquo;Upon whom?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Here is my nurse,&rdquo; quoth the King&rsquo;s daughter. &ldquo;She
+is weary of the wind. Show me a good marvel upon her.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And, lo! the nurse fell upon the beach as it were
+two handfuls of dead leaves, and the wind whirled them
+widdershins, and the sand-lice hopped between.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is true,&ldquo; said the King&rsquo;s daughter of Duntrine;
+&ldquo;you are the comer, and you have power upon the hour.
+Come with me to my stone house.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So they went by the sea margin, and the man piped
+the song of the morrow, and the leaves followed behind
+them as they went. Then they sat down together; and
+the sea beat on the terrace, and the gulls cried about the
+towers, and the wind crooned in the chimneys of the
+house. Nine years they sat, and every year when it fell
+autumn, the man said, &ldquo;This is the hour, and I have
+power in it&rdquo;; and the daughter of the King said, &ldquo;Nay,
+but pipe me the song of the morrow.&rdquo; And he piped it,
+and it was long like years.</p>
+
+<p>Now when the nine years were gone, the King&rsquo;s daughter
+of Duntrine got her to her feet, like one that remembers;
+and she looked about her in the masoned house; and all
+her servants were gone; only the man that piped sat upon
+the terrace with the hood upon his face; and as he piped
+the leaves ran about the terrace and the sea beat along
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page314"></a>314</span>
+the wall. Then she cried to him with a great voice, &ldquo;This
+is the hour, and let me see the power in it.&rdquo; And with
+that the wind blew off the hood from the man&rsquo;s face, and,
+lo! there was no man there, only the clothes and the hood
+and the pipes tumbled one upon another in a corner of
+the terrace, and the dead leaves ran over them.</p>
+
+<p>And the King&rsquo;s daughter of Duntrine got her to that
+part of the beach where strange things had been done in
+the ancient ages; and there she sat her down. The sea-foam
+ran to her feet, and the dead leaves swarmed about
+her back, and the veil blew about her face in the blowing
+of the wind. And when she lifted up her eyes, there was
+the daughter of a King come walking on the beach. Her
+hair was like the spun gold, and her eyes like pools in a
+river, and she had no thought for the morrow and no
+power upon the hour, after the manner of simple men.</p>
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<div class="pd3">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<p class="center f80">END OF VOL. XXI</p>
+<div class="pd3">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<p class="sc center" style="font-size: 70%">Printed by Cassell &amp; Company, Limited, La Belle Sauvage, London, E.C.</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<div class="pd3">&nbsp;</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson,
+Volume XXI, by Robert Louis Stevenson
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORKS OF STEVENSON ***
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+</pre>
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+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume
+XXI, by Robert Louis Stevenson
+
+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 Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI
+
+Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
+
+Release Date: December 11, 2009 [EBook #30650]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORKS OF STEVENSON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Marius Borror and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+      THE WORKS OF
+ ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
+
+    SWANSTON EDITION
+
+       VOLUME XXI
+
+
+
+
+_Of this SWANSTON EDITION in Twenty-five
+Volumes of the Works of ROBERT LOUIS
+STEVENSON Two Thousand and Sixty Copies
+have been printed, of which only Two Thousand
+Copies are for sale._
+
+_This is No._ ...........
+
+[Illustration: R.L.S. ON THE FORWARD DECK OF THE SCHOONER "EQUATOR"]
+
+
+
+
+THE WORKS OF
+
+ROBERT LOUIS
+STEVENSON
+
+VOLUME TWENTY-ONE
+
+LONDON: PUBLISHED BY CHATTO AND
+WINDUS: IN ASSOCIATION WITH CASSELL
+AND COMPANY LIMITED: WILLIAM
+HEINEMANN: AND LONGMANS GREEN
+AND COMPANY       MDCCCCXII
+
+
+ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  THE STORY OF A LIE
+
+  CHAPTER                                            PAGE
+
+      I. INTRODUCES THE ADMIRAL                         3
+
+     II. A LETTER TO THE PAPERS                         8
+
+    III. IN THE ADMIRAL'S NAME                         14
+
+     IV. ESTHER ON THE FILIAL RELATION                 21
+
+      V. THE PRODIGAL FATHER MAKES HIS DEBUT AT HOME   24
+
+     VI. THE PRODIGAL FATHER GOES ON FROM STRENGTH TO
+          STRENGTH                                     31
+
+    VII. THE ELOPEMENT                                 41
+
+   VIII. BATTLE ROYAL                                  50
+
+     IX. IN WHICH THE LIBERAL EDITOR APPEARS AS
+         "DEUS EX MACHINA"                             60
+
+
+  THE MERRY MEN
+
+      I. EILEAN AROS                                   69
+
+     II. WHAT THE WRECK HAD BROUGHT TO AROS            76
+
+    III. LAND AND SEA IN SANDAG BAY                    89
+
+     IV. THE GALE                                     100
+
+      V. A MAN OUT OF THE SEA                         112
+
+
+  OLALLA                                              127
+
+
+  HEATHERCAT
+
+  PART I.--THE KILLING-TIME
+
+      I. TRAQUAIRS OF MONTROYMONT                     177
+
+     II. FRANCIE                                      182
+
+    III. THE HILL-END OF DRUMLOWE                     195
+
+
+  THE GREAT NORTH ROAD
+
+      I. NANCE AT THE "GREEN DRAGON"                  203
+
+     II. IN WHICH MR. ARCHER IS INSTALLED             210
+
+    III. JONATHAN HOLDAWAY                            218
+
+     IV. MINGLING THREADS                             223
+
+      V. LIFE IN THE CASTLE                           229
+
+     VI. THE BAD HALF-CROWN                           233
+
+    VII. THE BLEACHING-GREEN                          238
+
+   VIII. THE MAIL GUARD                               244
+
+
+  THE YOUNG CHEVALIER
+
+
+  PROLOGUE--THE WINE-SELLER'S WIFE                    253
+
+      I. THE PRINCE                                   263
+
+
+  FABLES
+
+      I. THE PERSONS OF THE TALE                      269
+
+     II. THE SINKING SHIP                             272
+
+    III. THE TWO MATCHES                              274
+
+     IV. THE SICK MAN AND THE FIREMAN                 275
+
+      V. THE DEVIL AND THE INNKEEPER                  276
+
+     VI. THE PENITENT                                 277
+
+    VII. THE YELLOW PAINT                             277
+
+   VIII. THE HOUSE OF ELD                             280
+
+     IX. THE FOUR REFORMERS                           286
+
+      X. THE MAN AND HIS FRIEND                       287
+
+     XI. THE READER                                   287
+
+    XII. THE CITIZEN AND THE TRAVELLER                288
+
+   XIII. THE DISTINGUISHED STRANGER                   289
+
+    XIV. THE CART-HORSES AND THE SADDLE-HORSE         290
+
+     XV. THE TADPOLE AND THE FROG                     291
+
+    XVI. SOMETHING IN IT                              291
+
+   XVII. FAITH, HALF-FAITH, AND NO FAITH AT ALL       295
+
+  XVIII. THE TOUCHSTONE                               297
+
+    XIX. THE POOR THING                               304
+
+     XX. THE SONG OF THE MORROW                       310
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF A LIE
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF A LIE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+INTRODUCES THE ADMIRAL
+
+
+When Dick Naseby was in Paris he made some odd acquaintances, for he was
+one of those who have ears to hear, and can use their eyes no less than
+their intelligence. He made as many thoughts as Stuart Mill; but his
+philosophy concerned flesh and blood, and was experimental as to its
+method. He was a type-hunter among mankind. He despised small game and
+insignificant personalities, whether in the shape of dukes or bagmen,
+letting them go by like sea-weed; but show him a refined or powerful
+face, let him hear a plangent or a penetrating voice, fish for him with
+a living look in some one's eye, a passionate gesture, a meaning or
+ambiguous smile, and his mind was instantaneously awakened. "There was a
+man, there was a woman," he seemed to say, and he stood up to the task
+of comprehension with the delight of an artist in his art.
+
+And indeed, rightly considered, this interest of his was an artistic
+interest. There is no science in the personal study of human nature. All
+comprehension is creation; the woman I love is somewhat of my handiwork;
+and the great lover, like the great painter, is he that can so embellish
+his subject as to make her more than human, whilst yet by a cunning art
+he has so based his apotheosis on the nature of the case that the woman
+can go on being a true woman, and give her character free play, and show
+littleness, or cherish spite, or be greedy of common pleasures, and he
+continue to worship without a thought of incongruity. To love a
+character is only the heroic way of understanding it. When we love, by
+some noble method of our own or some nobility of mien or nature in the
+other, we apprehend the loved one by what is noblest in ourselves. When
+we are merely studying an eccentricity, the method of our study is but a
+series of allowances. To begin to understand is to begin to sympathise;
+for comprehension comes only when we have stated another's faults and
+virtues in terms of our own. Hence the proverbial toleration of artists
+for their own evil creations. Hence, too, it came about that Dick
+Naseby, a high-minded creature, and as scrupulous and brave a gentleman
+as you would want to meet, held in a sort of affection the various human
+creeping things whom he had met and studied.
+
+One of these was Mr. Peter Van Tromp, an English-speaking, two-legged
+animal of the international genus, and by profession of general and more
+than equivocal utility. Years before he had been a painter of some
+standing in a colony, and portraits signed "Van Tromp" had celebrated
+the greatness of colonial governors and judges. In those days he had
+been married, and driven his wife and infant daughter in a pony trap.
+What were the steps of his declension? No one exactly knew. Here he was
+at least, and had been, any time these past ten years, a sort of dismal
+parasite upon the foreigner in Paris.
+
+It would be hazardous to specify his exact industry. Coarsely followed,
+it would have merited a name grown somewhat unfamiliar to our ears.
+Followed as he followed it, with a skilful reticence, in a kind of
+social chiaroscuro, it was still possible for the polite to call him a
+professional painter. His lair was in the Grand Hotel and the gaudiest
+cafes. There he might be seen jotting off a sketch with an air of some
+inspiration; and he was always affable, and one of the easiest of men to
+fall in talk withal. A conversation usually ripened into a peculiar sort
+of intimacy, and it was extraordinary how many little services Van Tromp
+contrived to render in the course of six-and-thirty hours. He occupied
+a position between a friend and a courier, which made him worse than
+embarrassing to repay. But those whom he obliged could always buy one of
+his villainous little pictures, or, where the favours had been prolonged
+and more than usually delicate, might order and pay for a large canvas,
+with perfect certainty that they would hear no more of the transaction.
+
+Among resident artists he enjoyed the celebrity of a non-professional
+sort. He had spent more money--no less than three individual fortunes,
+it was whispered--than any of his associates could ever hope to gain.
+Apart from his colonial career, he had been to Greece in a brigantine
+with four brass carronades; he had travelled Europe in a chaise and
+four, drawing bridle at the palace-doors of German princes; queens of
+song and dance had followed him like sheep, and paid his tailor's bills.
+And to behold him now, seeking small loans with plaintive condescension,
+sponging for breakfast on an art-student of nineteen, a fallen Don Juan
+who had neglected to die at the propitious hour, had a colour of romance
+for young imaginations. His name and his bright past, seen through the
+prism of whispered gossip, had gained him the nickname of "The Admiral."
+
+Dick found him one day at the receipt of custom, rapidly painting a pair
+of hens and a cock in a little water-colour sketching-box, and now and
+then glancing at the ceiling like a man who should seek inspiration from
+the muse. Dick thought it remarkable that a painter should choose to
+work over an absinthe in a public cafe, and looked the man over. The
+aged rakishness of his appearance was set off by a youthful costume; he
+had disreputable grey hair and a disreputable sore, red nose; but the
+coat and the gesture, the outworks of the man, were still designed for
+show. Dick came up to his table and inquired if he might look at what
+the gentleman was doing. No one was so delighted as the Admiral.
+
+"A bit of a thing," said he. "I just dash them off like that. I--I dash
+them off," he added, with a gesture.
+
+"Quite so," said Dick, who was appalled by the feebleness of the
+production.
+
+"Understand me," continued Van Tromp; "I am a man of the world. And
+yet--once an artist always an artist. All of a sudden a thought takes me
+in the street; I become its prey; it's like a pretty woman; no use to
+struggle; I must--dash it off."
+
+"I see," said Dick.
+
+"Yes," pursued the painter; "it all comes easily, easily to me; it is
+not my business; it's a pleasure. Life is my business--life--this great
+city, Paris--Paris after dark--its lights, its gardens, its odd corners.
+Aha!" he cried, "to be young again! The heart is young, but the heels
+are leaden. A poor, mean business, to grow old! Nothing remains but the
+_coup d'oeil_, the contemplative man's enjoyment, Mr. ----," and he
+paused for the name.
+
+"Naseby," returned Dick.
+
+The other treated him at once to an exciting beverage, and expatiated on
+the pleasure of meeting a compatriot in a foreign land; to hear him, you
+would have thought they had encountered in Central Africa. Dick had
+never found any one take a fancy to him so readily, nor show it in an
+easier or less offensive manner. He seemed tickled with him as an
+elderly fellow about town might be tickled by a pleasant and witty lad;
+he indicated that he was no precisian, but in his wildest times had
+never been such a blade as he thought Dick. Dick protested, but in vain.
+This manner of carrying an intimacy at the bayonet's point was Van
+Tromp's stock-in-trade. With an older man he insinuated himself; with
+youth he imposed himself, and in the same breath imposed an ideal on his
+victim, who saw that he must work up to it or lose the esteem of this
+old and vicious patron. And what young man can bear to lose a character
+for vice?
+
+As last, as it grew towards dinner-time, "Do you know Paris?" asked Van
+Tromp.
+
+"Not so well as you, I am convinced," said Dick.
+
+"And so am I," returned Van Tromp gaily. "Paris! My young friend--you
+will allow me?--when you know Paris as I do, you will have seen Strange
+Things. I say no more; all I say is, Strange Things. We are men of the
+world, you and I, and in Paris, in the heart of civilised existence.
+This is an opportunity, Mr. Naseby. Let us dine. Let me show you where
+to dine."
+
+Dick consented. On the way to dinner the Admiral showed him where to buy
+gloves, and made him buy them; where to buy cigars, and made him buy a
+vast store, some of which he obligingly accepted. At the restaurant he
+showed him what to order, with surprising consequences in the bill. What
+he made that night by his percentages it would be hard to estimate. And
+all the while Dick smilingly consented, understanding well that he was
+being done, but taking his losses in the pursuit of character as a
+hunter sacrifices his dogs. As for the Strange Things, the reader will
+be relieved to hear that they were no stranger than might have been
+expected, and he may find things quite as strange without the expense of
+a Van Tromp for guide. Yet he was a guide of no mean order, who made up
+for the poverty of what he had to show by a copious, imaginative
+commentary.
+
+"And such," said he, with an hiccup, "such is Paris."
+
+"Pooh!" said Dick, who was tired of the performance.
+
+The Admiral hung an ear, and looked up sidelong with a glimmer of
+suspicion.
+
+"Good-night," said Dick; "I'm tired."
+
+"So English!" cried Van Tromp, clutching him by the hand. "So English!
+So _blase!_ Such a charming companion! Let me see you home."
+
+"Look here," returned Dick, "I have said good-night, and now I'm going.
+You're an amusing old boy; I like you, in a sense; but here's an end of
+it for to-night. Not another cigar, not another grog, not another
+percentage out of me."
+
+"I beg your pardon!" cried the Admiral with dignity.
+
+"Tut, man!" said Dick; "you're not offended; you're a man of the world,
+I thought. I've been studying you, and it's over. Have I not paid for
+the lesson? _Au revoir._"
+
+Van Tromp laughed gaily, shook hands up to the elbows, hoped cordially
+they would meet again and that often, but looked after Dick as he
+departed with a tremor of indignation. After that they two not
+unfrequently fell in each other's way, and Dick would often treat the
+old boy to breakfast on a moderate scale and in a restaurant of his own
+selection. Often, too, he would lend Van Tromp the matter of a pound, in
+view of that gentleman's contemplated departure for Australia; there
+would be a scene of farewell almost touching in character, and a week or
+a month later they would meet on the same boulevard without surprise or
+embarrassment. And in the meantime Dick learned more about his
+acquaintance on all sides: heard of his yacht, his chaise and four, his
+brief season of celebrity amid a more confiding population, his
+daughter, of whom he loved to whimper in his cups, his sponging,
+parasitical, nameless way of life; and with each new detail something
+that was not merely interest nor yet altogether affection grew up in his
+mind towards this disreputable stepson of the arts. Ere he left Paris
+Van Tromp was one of those whom he entertained to a farewell supper; and
+the old gentleman made the speech of the evening, and then fell below
+the table, weeping, smiling, paralysed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+A LETTER TO THE PAPERS
+
+
+Old Mr. Naseby had the sturdy, untutored nature of the upper middle
+class. The universe seemed plain to him. "The thing's right," he would
+say, or "the thing's wrong"; and there was an end of it. There was a
+contained, prophetic energy in his utterances, even on the slightest
+affairs; he _saw_ the damned thing; if you did not, it must be from
+perversity of will, and this sent the blood to his head. Apart from
+this, which made him an exacting companion, he was one of the most
+upright, hot-tempered old gentlemen in England. Florid, with white hair,
+the face of an old Jupiter, and the figure of an old fox-hunter, he
+enlivened the vale of Thyme from end to end on his big, cantering
+chestnut.
+
+He had a hearty respect for Dick as a lad of parts. Dick had a respect
+for his father as the best of men, tempered by the politic revolt of a
+youth who has to see to his own independence. Whenever the pair argued,
+they came to an open rupture; and arguments were frequent, for they were
+both positive, and both loved the work of the intelligence. It was a
+treat to hear Mr. Naseby defending the Church of England in a volley of
+oaths, or supporting ascetic morals with an enthusiasm not entirely
+innocent of port wine. Dick used to wax indignant, and none the less so
+because, as his father was a skilful disputant, he found himself not
+seldom in the wrong. On these occasions, he would redouble in energy,
+and declare that black was white, and blue yellow, with much conviction
+and heat of manner; but in the morning such a licence of debate weighed
+upon him like a crime, and he would seek out his father, where he walked
+before breakfast on a terrace overlooking all the vale of Thyme.
+
+"I have to apologise, sir, for last night----" he would begin.
+
+"Of course you have," the old gentleman would cut in cheerfully. "You
+spoke like a fool. Say no more about it."
+
+"You do not understand me, sir. I refer to a particular point. I confess
+there is much force in your argument from the doctrine of
+possibilities."
+
+"Of course there is," returned his father. "Come down and look at the
+stables. Only," he would add, "bear this in mind, and do remember that a
+man of my age and experience knows more about what he is saying than a
+raw boy."
+
+He would utter the word "boy" even more offensively than the average of
+fathers, and the light way in which he accepted these apologies cut Dick
+to the heart. The latter drew slighting comparisons, and remembered that
+he was the only one who ever apologised. This gave him a high station in
+his own esteem, and thus contributed indirectly to his better behaviour;
+for he was scrupulous as well as high-spirited, and prided himself on
+nothing more than on a just submission.
+
+So things went on until the famous occasion when Mr. Naseby, becoming
+engrossed in securing the election of a sound party candidate to
+Parliament, wrote a flaming letter to the papers. The letter had about
+every demerit of party letters in general: it was expressed with the
+energy of a believer; it was personal; it was a little more than half
+unfair, and about a quarter untrue. The old man did not mean to say what
+was untrue, you may be sure; but he had rashly picked up gossip, as his
+prejudice suggested, and now rashly launched it on the public with the
+sanction of his name.
+
+"The Liberal candidate," he concluded, "is thus a public turncoat. Is
+that the sort of man we want? He has been given the lie, and has
+swallowed the insult. Is that the sort of man we want? I answer, No!
+With all the force of my conviction, I answer, _No_!"
+
+And then he signed and dated the letter with an amateur's pride, and
+looked to be famous by the morrow.
+
+Dick, who had heard nothing of the matter, was up first on that
+inauspicious day, and took the journal to an arbour in the garden. He
+found his father's manifesto in one column; and in another a leading
+article. "No one that we are aware of," ran the article, "had consulted
+Mr. Naseby on the subject, but if he had been appealed to by the whole
+body of electors, his letter would be none the less ungenerous and
+unjust to Mr. Dalton. We do not choose to give the lie to Mr. Naseby,
+for we are too well aware of the consequences; but we shall venture
+instead to print the facts of both cases referred to by this red-hot
+partisan in another portion of our issue. Mr. Naseby is of course a
+large proprietor in our neighbourhood; but fidelity to facts, decent
+feeling, and English grammar, are all of them qualities more important
+than the possession of land. Mr. N---- is doubtless a great man; in his
+large gardens and that half-mile of greenhouses, where he has probably
+ripened his intellect and temper, he may say what he will to his hired
+vassals, but (as the Scots say)--
+
+                    here
+  He maunna think to domineer.
+
+Liberalism," continued the anonymous journalist, "is of too free and
+sound a growth," etc.
+
+Richard Naseby read the whole thing from beginning to end; and a
+crushing shame fell upon his spirit. His father had played the fool; he
+had gone out noisily to war, and come back with confusion. The moment
+that his trumpets sounded, he had been disgracefully unhorsed. There was
+no question as to the facts; they were one and all against the Squire.
+Richard would have given his ears to have suppressed the issue; but as
+that could not be done, he had his horse saddled, and, furnishing
+himself with a convenient staff, rode off at once to Thymebury.
+
+The editor was at breakfast in a large, sad apartment. The absence of
+furniture, the extreme meanness of the meal, and the haggard,
+bright-eyed, consumptive look of the culprit, unmanned our hero; but he
+clung to his stick, and was stout and warlike.
+
+"You wrote the article in this morning's paper?" he demanded.
+
+"You are young Mr. Naseby? I _published_ it," replied the editor,
+rising.
+
+"My father is an old man," said Richard; and then with an outburst, "And
+a damned sight finer fellow than either you or Dalton!" He stopped and
+swallowed; he was determined that all should go with regularity. "I have
+but one question to put to you, sir," he resumed. "Granted that my
+father was misinformed, would it not have been more decent to withhold
+the letter and communicate with him in private?"
+
+"Believe me," returned the editor, "that alternative was not open to me.
+Mr. Naseby told me in a note that he had sent his letter to three other
+journals, and in fact threatened me with what he called exposure if I
+kept it back from mine. I am really concerned at what has happened; I
+sympathise and approve of your emotion, young gentleman; but the attack
+on Mr. Dalton was gross, very gross, and I had no choice but to offer
+him my columns to reply. Party has its duties, sir," added the scribe,
+kindling, as one who should propose a sentiment; "and the attack was
+gross."
+
+Richard stood for half a minute digesting the answer; and then the god
+of fair play came uppermost in his heart, and, murmuring "Good morning,"
+he made his escape into the street.
+
+His horse was not hurried on the way home, and he was late for
+breakfast. The Squire was standing with his back to the fire in a state
+bordering on apoplexy, his fingers violently knitted under his
+coat-tails. As Richard came in, he opened and shut his mouth like a
+cod-fish, and his eyes protruded.
+
+"Have you seen that, sir?" he cried, nodding towards the paper.
+
+"Yes, sir," said Richard.
+
+"Oh, you've read it, have you?"
+
+"Yes; I have read it," replied Richard, looking at his foot.
+
+"Well," demanded the old gentleman, "and what have you to say to it,
+sir?"
+
+"You seem to have been misinformed," said Dick.
+
+"Well? What then? Is your mind so sterile, sir? Have you not a word of
+comment? no proposal?"
+
+"I fear, sir, you must apologise to Mr. Dalton. It would be more
+handsome, indeed it would be only just, and a free acknowledgment would
+go far--" Richard paused, no language appearing delicate enough to suit
+the case.
+
+"That is a suggestion which should have come from me, sir," roared the
+father. "It is out of place upon your lips. It is not the thought of a
+loyal son. Why, sir, if my father had been plunged in such deplorable
+circumstances, I should have thrashed the editor of that vile sheet
+within an inch of his life. I should have thrashed the man, sir. It
+would have been the action of an ass; but it would have shown that I had
+the blood and the natural affections of a man. Son? You are no son, no
+son of mine, sir!"
+
+"Sir!" said Dick.
+
+"I'll tell you what you are, sir," pursued the Squire. "You're a
+Benthamite. I disown you. Your mother would have died for shame;
+there was no modern cant about your mother; she thought--she said to me,
+sir--I'm glad she's in her grave, Dick Naseby. Misinformed! Misinformed,
+sir? Have you no loyalty, no spring, no natural affections? Are you
+clockwork, hey? Away! This is no place for you. Away!" (Waving his hands
+in the air.) "Go away! Leave me!"
+
+At this moment Dick beat a retreat in a disarray of nerves, a whistling
+and clamour of his own arteries, and in short in such a final bodily
+disorder as made him alike incapable of speech or hearing. And in the
+midst of all this turmoil, a sense of unpardonable injustice remained
+graven in his memory.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+IN THE ADMIRAL'S NAME
+
+
+There was no return to the subject. Dick and his father were henceforth
+on terms of coldness. The upright old gentleman grew more upright when
+he met his son, buckrammed with immortal anger; he asked after Dick's
+health, and discussed the weather and the crops with an appalling
+courtesy; his pronunciation was _point-de-vice_, his voice was distant,
+distinct, and sometimes almost trembling with suppressed indignation.
+
+As for Dick, it seemed to him as if his life had come abruptly to an
+end. He came out of his theories and clevernesses; his premature
+man-of-the-worldness, on which he had prided himself on his travels,
+"shrank like a thing ashamed" before this real sorrow. Pride, wounded
+honour, pity and respect tussled together daily in his heart; and now he
+was within an ace of throwing himself upon his father's mercy, and now
+of slipping forth at night and coming back no more to Naseby House. He
+suffered from the sight of his father, nay, even from the neighbourhood
+of this familiar valley, where every corner had its legend, and he was
+besieged with memories of childhood. If he fled into a new land, and
+among none but strangers, he might escape his destiny, who knew? and
+begin again light-heartedly. From that chief peak of the hills, that now
+and then, like an uplifted finger, shone in an arrow of sunlight through
+the broken clouds, the shepherd in clear weather might perceive the
+shining of the sea. There, he thought, was hope. But his heart failed
+him when he saw the Squire; and he remained. His fate was not that of
+the voyager by sea and land; he was to travel in the spirit, and begin
+his journey sooner than he supposed.
+
+For it chanced one day that his walk led him into a portion of the
+uplands which was almost unknown to him. Scrambling through some rough
+woods, he came out upon a moorland reaching towards the hills. A few
+lofty Scots firs grew hard by upon a knoll; a clear fountain near the
+foot of the knoll sent up a miniature streamlet which meandered in the
+heather. A shower had just skimmed by, but now the sun shone brightly,
+and the air smelt of the pines and the grass. On a stone under the trees
+sat a young lady sketching. We have learned to think of women in a sort
+of symbolic transfiguration, based on clothes; and one of the readiest
+ways in which we conceive our mistress is as a composite thing,
+principally petticoats. But humanity has triumphed over clothes; the
+look, the touch of a dress has become alive; and the woman who stitched
+herself into these material integuments has now permeated right through
+and gone out to the tip of her skirt. It was only a black dress that
+caught Dick Naseby's eye; but it took possession of his mind, and all
+other thoughts departed. He drew near, and the girl turned round. Her
+face startled him; it was a face he wanted; and he took it in at once
+like breathing air.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said, taking off his hat, "you are sketching."
+
+"Oh!" she exclaimed, "for my own amusement. I despise the thing."
+
+"Ten to one you do yourself injustice," returned Dick. "Besides, it's a
+freemasonry. I sketch myself, and you know what that implies."
+
+"No. What?" she asked.
+
+"Two things," he answered. "First, that I am no very difficult critic;
+and second, that I have a right to see your picture."
+
+She covered the block with both her hands. "Oh, no," she said; "I am
+ashamed."
+
+"Indeed, I might give you a hint," said Dick. "Although no artist
+myself, I have known many; in Paris I had many for friends, and used to
+prowl among studios."
+
+"In Paris?" she cried, with a leap of light into her eyes. "Did you ever
+meet Mr. Van Tromp?"
+
+"I? Yes. Why, you're not the Admiral's daughter, are you?"
+
+"The Admiral? Do they call him that?" she cried. "Oh, how nice, how nice
+of them! It is the younger men who call him so, is it not?"
+
+"Yes," said Dick, somewhat heavily.
+
+"You can understand now," she said, with an unspeakable accent of
+contented and noble-minded pride, "why it is I do not choose to show my
+sketch. Van Tromp's daughter! The Admiral's daughter! I delight in that
+name. The Admiral! And so you know my father?"
+
+"Well," said Dick, "I met him often; we were even intimate. He may have
+mentioned my name--Naseby."
+
+"He writes so little. He is so busy, so devoted to his art! I have had a
+half wish," she added, laughing, "that my father was a plainer man whom
+I could help--to whom I could be a credit; but only sometimes, you know,
+and with only half my heart. For a great painter! You have seen his
+works?"
+
+"I have seen some of them," returned Dick; "they--they are very nice."
+
+She laughed aloud. "Nice?" she repeated. "I see you don't care much for
+art."
+
+"Not much," he admitted; "but I know that many people are glad to buy
+Mr. Van Tromp's pictures."
+
+"Call him the Admiral!" she cried. "It sounds kindly and familiar; and I
+like to think that he is appreciated and looked up to by young painters.
+He has not always been appreciated; he had a cruel life for many years;
+and when I think"--there were tears in her eyes--"when I think of that,
+I feel inclined to be a fool," she broke off. "And now I shall go home.
+You have filled me full of happiness; for think, Mr. Naseby, I have not
+seen my father since I was six years old; and yet he is in my thoughts
+all day! You must come and call on me; my aunt will be delighted, I am
+sure; and then you will tell me all--all about my father, will you not?"
+
+Dick helped her to get her sketching traps together; and when all was
+ready, she gave Dick her hand and a frank return of pressure.
+
+"You are my father's friend," she said; "we shall be great friends too.
+You must come and see me soon."
+
+Then she was gone down the hillside at a run; and Dick stood by himself
+in a state of some bewilderment and even distress. There were elements
+of laughter in the business; but the black dress, and the face that
+belonged to it, and the hand that he had held in his, inclined him to a
+serious view. What was he, under the circumstances, called upon to do?
+Perhaps to avoid the girl? Well, he would think about that. Perhaps to
+break the truth to her? Why, ten to one, such was her infatuation, he
+would fail. Perhaps to keep up the illusion, to colour the raw facts; to
+help her to false ideas, while yet not plainly stating falsehoods? Well,
+he would see about that; he would also see about avoiding the girl. He
+saw about this last so well, that the next afternoon beheld him on his
+way to visit her.
+
+In the meantime the girl had gone straight home, light as a bird,
+tremulous with joy, to the little cottage where she lived alone with a
+maiden aunt; and to that lady, a grim, sixty years old Scotswoman, with
+a nodding head, communicated news of her encounter and invitation.
+
+"A friend of his?" cried the aunt. "What like is he? What did ye say was
+his name?"
+
+She was dead silent, and stared at the old woman darkling. Then very
+slowly, "I said he was my father's friend; I have invited him to my
+house, and come he shall," she said; and with that she walked off to her
+room, where she sat staring at the wall all the evening. Miss
+M'Glashan, for that was the aunt's name, read a large bible in the
+kitchen with some of the joys of martyrdom.
+
+It was perhaps half-past three when Dick presented himself, rather
+scrupulously dressed, before the cottage door; he knocked, and a voice
+bade him enter. The kitchen, which opened directly off the garden, was
+somewhat darkened by foliage; but he could see her as she approached
+from the far end to meet him. This second sight of her surprised him.
+Her strong black brows spoke of temper easily aroused and hard to quiet;
+her mouth was small, nervous, and weak; there was something dangerous
+and sulky underlying, in her nature, much that was honest,
+compassionate, and even noble.
+
+"My father's name," she said, "has made you very welcome."
+
+And she gave him her hand with a sort of curtsey. It was a pretty
+greeting, although somewhat mannered; and Dick felt himself among the
+gods. She led him through the kitchen to a parlour, and presented him to
+Miss M'Glashan.
+
+"Esther," said the aunt, "see and make Mr. Naseby his tea."
+
+As soon as the girl was gone upon this hospitable intent, the old woman
+crossed the room and came quite near to Dick as if in menace.
+
+"Ye know that man?" she asked, in an imperious whisper.
+
+"Mr. Van Tromp?" said Dick. "Yes; I know him."
+
+"Well, and what brings ye here?" she said. "I couldn't save the
+mother--her that's dead--but the bairn!" She had a note in her voice
+that filled poor Dick with consternation. "Man," she went on, "what is
+it now? Is it money?"
+
+"My dear lady," said Dick, "I think you misinterpret my position. I am
+young Mr. Naseby of Naseby House. My acquaintance with Mr. Van Tromp is
+really very slender; I am only afraid that Miss Van Tromp has
+exaggerated our intimacy in her own imagination. I know positively
+nothing of his private affairs, and do not care to know. I met him
+casually in Paris--that is all."
+
+Miss M'Glashan drew a long breath. "In Paris?" she said. "Well, and what
+do you think of him?--what do ye think of him?" she repeated, with a
+different scansion, as Richard, who had not much taste for such a
+question, kept her waiting for an answer.
+
+"I found him a very agreeable companion," he said.
+
+"Ay," said she, "did ye! And how does he win his bread?"
+
+"I fancy," he gasped, "that Mr. Van Tromp has many generous friends."
+
+"I'll warrant!" she sneered; and before Dick could find more to say, she
+was gone from the room.
+
+Esther returned with the tea-things, and sat down.
+
+"Now," she said cosily, "tell me all about my father."
+
+"He"--stammered Dick, "he is a very agreeable companion."
+
+"I shall begin to think it is more than you are, Mr. Naseby," she said,
+with a laugh. "I am his daughter, you forget. Begin at the beginning,
+and tell me all you have seen of him, all he said and all you answered.
+You must have met somewhere; begin with that."
+
+So with that he began: how he had found the Admiral painting in a cafe;
+how his art so possessed him that he could not wait till he got home
+to--well, to dash off his idea; how (this in reply to a question) his
+idea consisted of a cock crowing and two hens eating corn; how he was
+fond of cocks and hens; how this did not lead him to neglect more
+ambitious forms of art; how he had a picture in his studio of a Greek
+subject which was said to be remarkable from several points of view; how
+no one had seen it nor knew the precise site of the studio in which it
+was being vigorously though secretly confected; how (in answer to a
+suggestion) this shyness was common to the Admiral, Michelangelo, and
+others; how they (Dick and Van Tromp) had struck up an acquaintance at
+once, and dined together that same night; how he (the Admiral) had once
+given money to a beggar; how he spoke with effusion of his little
+daughter; how he had once borrowed money to send her a doll--a trait
+worthy of Newton, she being then in her nineteenth year at least; how,
+if the doll never arrived (which it appeared it never did), the trait
+was only more characteristic of the highest order of creative intellect;
+how he was--no, not beautiful--striking, yes, Dick would go so far,
+decidedly striking in appearance; how his boots were made to lace and
+his coat was black, not cut-away, a frock; and so on, and so on by the
+yard. It was astonishing how few lies were necessary. After all, people
+exaggerated the difficulty of life. A little steering, just a touch of
+the rudder now and then, and with a willing listener there is no limit
+to the domain of equivocal speech. Sometimes Miss M'Glashan made a
+freezing sojourn in the parlour; and then the task seemed unaccountably
+more difficult; but to Esther, who was all eyes and ears, her face
+alight with interest, his stream of language flowed without break or
+stumble, and his mind was ever fertile in ingenious evasions and--
+
+What an afternoon it was for Esther!
+
+"Ah!" she said at last, "it's good to hear all this! My aunt, you should
+know, is narrow and too religious; she cannot understand an artist's
+life. It does not frighten me," she added grandly; "I am an artist's
+daughter."
+
+With that speech, Dick consoled himself for his imposture; she was not
+deceived so grossly after all; and then if a fraud, was not the fraud
+piety itself?--and what could be more obligatory than to keep alive in
+the heart of a daughter that filial trust and honour which, even
+although misplaced, became her like a jewel of the mind? There might be
+another thought, a shade of cowardice, a selfish desire to please; poor
+Dick was merely human; and what would you have had him do?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+ESTHER ON THE FILIAL RELATION
+
+
+A month later Dick and Esther met at the stile beside the cross roads;
+had there been any one to see them but the birds and summer insects, it
+would have been remarked that they met after a different fashion from
+the day before. Dick took her in his arms, and their lips were set
+together for a long while. Then he held her at arm's length, and they
+looked straight into each other's eyes.
+
+"Esther!" he said,--you should have heard his voice!
+
+"Dick!" said she.
+
+"My darling!"
+
+It was some time before they started for their walk; he kept an arm
+about her, and their sides were close together as they walked; the sun,
+the birds, the west wind running among the trees, a pressure, a look,
+the grasp tightening round a single finger, these things stood them in
+lieu of thought and filled their hearts with joy. The path they were
+following led them through a wood of pine trees carpeted with heather
+and blueberry, and upon this pleasant carpet, Dick, not without some
+seriousness, made her sit down.
+
+"Esther!" he began, "there is something you ought to know. You know my
+father is a rich man, and you would think, now that we love each other,
+we might marry when we pleased. But I fear, darling, we may have long to
+wait, and shall want all our courage."
+
+"I have courage for anything," she said, "I have all I want; with you
+and my father, I am so well off, and waiting is made so happy, that I
+could wait a lifetime and not weary."
+
+He had a sharp pang at the mention of the Admiral. "Hear me out," he
+continued. "I ought to have told you this before; but it is a thought I
+shrink from; if it were possible, I should not tell you even now. My
+poor father and I are scarce on speaking terms."
+
+"Your father," she repeated, turning pale.
+
+"It must sound strange to you; but yet I cannot think I am to blame," he
+said. "I will tell you how it happened."
+
+"O Dick!" she said, when she had heard him to an end, "how brave you
+are, and how proud! Yet I would not be proud with a father. I would tell
+him all."
+
+"What!" cried Dick, "go in months after, and brag that I meant to thrash
+the man, and then didn't? And why? Because my father had made a bigger
+ass of himself than I supposed. My dear, that's nonsense."
+
+She winced at his words and drew away. "But then that is all he asks,"
+she pleaded. "If he only knew that you had felt that impulse, it would
+make him so proud and happy. He would see you were his own son after
+all, and had the same thoughts and the same chivalry of spirit. And then
+you did yourself injustice when you spoke just now. It was because the
+editor was weak and poor and excused himself, that you repented your
+first determination. Had he been a big red man, with whiskers, you would
+have beaten him--you know you would--if Mr. Naseby had been ten times
+more committed. Do you think, if you can tell it to me, and I understand
+at once, that it would be more difficult to tell it to your own father,
+or that he would not be more ready to sympathise with you than I am? And
+I love you, Dick; but then he is your father."
+
+"My dear," said Dick desperately, "you do not understand; you do not
+know what it is to be treated with daily want of comprehension and daily
+small injustices, through childhood and boyhood and manhood, until you
+despair of a hearing, until the thing rides you like a nightmare, until
+you almost hate the sight of the man you love, and who's your father
+after all. In short, Esther, you don't know what it is to have a
+father, and that's what blinds you."
+
+"I see," she said musingly, "you mean that I am fortunate in my father.
+But I am not so fortunate, after all; you forget, I do not know him; it
+is you who know him; he is already more your father than mine." And here
+she took his hand. Dick's heart had grown as cold as ice. "But I am
+sorry for you, too," she continued, "it must be very sad and lonely."
+
+"You misunderstand me," said Dick chokingly. "My father is the best man
+I know in all this world; he is worth a hundred of me, only he doesn't
+understand me, and he can't be made to."
+
+There was a silence for a while. "Dick," she began again, "I am going to
+ask a favour, it's the first since you said you loved me. May I see your
+father--see him pass, I mean, where he will not observe me?"
+
+"Why?" asked Dick.
+
+"It is a fancy; you forget, I am romantic about fathers."
+
+The hint was enough for Dick; he consented with haste, and full of
+hang-dog penitence and disgust, took her down by a back way and planted
+her in the shrubbery, whence she might see the Squire ride by to dinner.
+There they both sat silent, but holding hands, for nearly half an hour.
+At last the trotting of a horse sounded in the distance, the park gates
+opened with a clang, and then Mr. Naseby appeared, with stooping
+shoulders and a heavy, bilious countenance, languidly rising to the
+trot. Esther recognised him at once; she had often seen him before,
+though with her huge indifference for all that lay outside the circle of
+her love, she had never so much as wondered who he was; but now she
+recognised him, and found him ten years older, leaden and springless,
+and stamped by an abiding sorrow.
+
+"O Dick, Dick!" she said, and the tears began to shine upon her face as
+she hid it in his bosom; his own fell thickly too. They had a sad walk
+home, and that night, full of love and good counsel, Dick exerted every
+art to please his father, to convince him of his respect and affection,
+to heal up this breach of kindness, and reunite two hearts. But alas!
+the Squire was sick and peevish; he had been all day glooming over
+Dick's estrangement--for so he put it to himself, and now with growls,
+cold words, and the cold shoulder, he beat off all advances, and
+entrenched himself in a just resentment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE PRODIGAL FATHER MAKES HIS DEBUT AT HOME
+
+
+That took place upon a Thursday. On the Thursday following, as Dick was
+walking by appointment, earlier than usual, in the direction of the
+cottage, he was appalled to meet in the lane a fly from Thymebury,
+containing the human form of Miss M'Glashan. The lady did not deign to
+remark him in her passage; her face was suffused with tears, and
+expressed much concern for the packages by which she was surrounded. He
+stood still, and asked himself what this circumstance might portend. It
+was so beautiful a day that he was loth to forecast evil, yet something
+must perforce have happened at the cottage, and that of a decisive
+nature; for here was Miss M'Glashan on her travels, with a small
+patrimony in brown paper parcels, and the old lady's bearing implied hot
+battle and unqualified defeat. Was the house to be closed against him?
+Was Esther left alone, or had some new protector made his appearance
+from among the millions of Europe? It is the character of love to loathe
+the near relatives of the loved one; chapters in the history of the
+human race have justified this feeling, and the conduct of uncles, in
+particular, has frequently met with censure from the independent
+novelist. Miss M'Glashan was now seen in the rosy colours of regret;
+whoever succeeded her, Dick felt the change would be for the worse. He
+hurried forward in this spirit; his anxiety grew upon him with every
+step; as he entered the garden a voice fell upon his ear, and he was
+once more arrested, not this time by doubt, but by an indubitable
+certainty of ill.
+
+The thunderbolt had fallen; the Admiral was here.
+
+Dick would have retreated, in the panic terror of the moment; but Esther
+kept a bright look-out when her lover was expected. In a twinkling she
+was by his side, brimful of news and pleasure, too glad to notice his
+embarrassment, and in one of those golden transports of exultation which
+transcend not only words but caresses. She took him by the end of the
+fingers (reaching forward to take them, for her great preoccupation was
+to save time), she drew him towards her, pushed him past her in the
+door, and planted him face to face with Mr. Van Tromp, in a suit of
+French country velveteens and with a remarkable carbuncle on his nose.
+Then, as though this was the end of what she could endure in the way of
+joy, Esther turned and ran out of the room.
+
+The two men remained looking at each other with some confusion on both
+sides. Van Tromp was naturally the first to recover; he put out his hand
+with a fine gesture.
+
+"And you know my little lass, my Esther?" he said. "This is pleasant,
+this is what I have conceived of home. A strange word for the old rover;
+but we all have a taste for home and the homelike, disguise it how we
+may. It has brought me here, Mr. Naseby," he concluded, with an
+intonation that would have made his fortune on the stage, so just, so
+sad, so dignified, so like a man of the world and a philosopher, "and
+you see a man who is content."
+
+"I see," said Dick.
+
+"Sit down," continued the parasite, setting the example. "Fortune has
+gone against me. (I am just sirrupping a little brandy--after my
+journey.) I was going down, Mr. Naseby; between you and me, I was
+_decave_; I borrowed fifty francs, smuggled my valise past the
+concierge--a work of considerable tact--and here I am!"
+
+"Yes," said Dick, "and here you are." He was quite idiotic.
+
+Esther, at this moment, re-entered the room.
+
+"Are you glad to see him?" she whispered in his ear, the pleasure in her
+voice almost bursting through the whisper into song.
+
+"Oh yes," said Dick; "very."
+
+"I knew you would be," she replied; "I told him how you loved him."
+
+"Help yourself," said the Admiral, "help yourself; and let us drink to a
+new existence."
+
+"To a new existence," repeated Dick; and he raised the tumbler to his
+lips, but set it down untasted. He had had enough of novelties for one
+day.
+
+Esther was sitting on a stool beside her father's feet, holding her
+knees in her arms, and looking with pride from one to the other of her
+two visitors. Her eyes were so bright that you were never sure if there
+were tears in them or not; little voluptuous shivers ran about her body;
+sometimes she nestled her chin into her throat, sometimes threw back her
+head, with ecstasy; in a word, she was in that state when it is said of
+people that they cannot contain themselves for happiness. It would be
+hard to exaggerate the agony of Richard.
+
+And, in the meantime, Van Tromp ran on interminably.
+
+"I never forget a friend," said he, "nor yet an enemy: of the latter, I
+never had but two--myself and the public; and I fancy I have had my
+vengeance pretty freely out of both." He chuckled. "But those days are
+done. Van Tromp is no more. He was a man who had successes; I believe
+you knew I had successes--to which we shall refer no further," pulling
+down his neckcloth with a smile. "That man exists no more: by an
+exercise of will I have destroyed him. There is something like it in the
+poets. First, a brilliant and conspicuous career--the observed, I may
+say, of all observers including the bum-baily: and then, presto! a
+quiet, sly, old, rustic _bonhomme_, cultivating roses. In Paris, Mr.
+Naseby----"
+
+"Call him Richard, father," said Esther.
+
+"Richard, if he will allow me. Indeed, we are old friends, and now near
+neighbours; and, _a propos_, how are we off for neighbours, Richard? The
+cottage stands, I think, upon your father's land, a family which I
+respect--and the wood, I understand, is Lord Trevanion's. Not that I
+care; I am an old Bohemian. I have cut society with a cut direct; I cut
+it when I was prosperous, and now I reap my reward, and can cut it with
+dignity in my declension. These are our little _amours propres_, my
+daughter: your father must respect himself. Thank you, yes; just a
+leetle, leetle tiny--thanks, thanks; you spoil me. But, as I was saying,
+Richard, or was about to say, my daughter has been allowed to rust; her
+aunt was a mere duenna; hence, in parenthesis, Richard, her distrust of
+me; my nature and that of the duenna are poles asunder--poles! But, now
+that I am here, now that I have given up the fight, and live henceforth
+for one only of my works--I have the modesty to say it is my best--my
+daughter--well, we shall put all that to rights. The neighbours,
+Richard?"
+
+Dick was understood to say that there were many good families in the
+Vale of Thyme.
+
+"You shall introduce us," said the Admiral.
+
+Dick's shirt was wet; he made a lumbering excuse to go; which Esther
+explained to herself by a fear of intrusion, and so set down to the
+merit side of Dick's account, while she proceeded to detain him.
+
+"Before our walk?" she cried. "Never! I must have my walk."
+
+"Let us all go," said the Admiral, rising.
+
+"You do not know that you are wanted," she cried, leaning on his
+shoulder with a caress. "I might wish to speak to my old friend about
+my new father. But you shall come to-day, you shall do all you want; I
+have set my heart on spoiling you."
+
+"I will take just _one_ drop more," said the Admiral, stooping to help
+himself to brandy. "It is surprising how this journey has fatigued me.
+But I am growing old, I am growing old, I am growing old, and--I regret
+to add--bald."
+
+He cocked a white wide-awake coquettishly upon his head--the habit of
+the lady-killer clung to him; and Esther had already thrown on her hat,
+and was ready, while he was still studying the result in a mirror: the
+carbuncle had somewhat painfully arrested his attention.
+
+"We are papa now; we must be respectable," he said to Dick, in
+explanation of his dandyism: and then he went to a bundle and chose
+himself a staff. Where were the elegant canes of his Parisian epoch?
+This was a support for age, and designed for rustic scenes. Dick began
+to see and appreciate the man's enjoyment in a new part, when he saw how
+carefully he had "made it up." He had invented a gait for this first
+country stroll with his daughter, which was admirably in key. He walked
+with fatigue; he leaned upon the staff; he looked round him with a sad,
+smiling sympathy on all that he beheld; he even asked the name of a
+plant, and rallied himself gently for an old town-bird, ignorant of
+nature. "This country life will make me young again," he sighed. They
+reached the top of the hill towards the first hour of evening; the sun
+was descending heaven, the colour had all drawn into the west; the hills
+were modelled in their least contour by the soft, slanting shine; and
+the wide moorlands, veined with glens and hazelwoods, ran west and north
+in a hazy glory of light. Then the painter awakened in Van Tromp.
+
+"Gad, Dick," he cried, "what value!"
+
+An ode in four hundred lines would not have seemed so touching to
+Esther; her eyes filled with happy tears: yes, here was the father of
+whom she had dreamed, whom Dick had described; simple, enthusiastic,
+unworldly, kind, a painter at heart, and a fine gentleman in manner.
+
+And just then the Admiral perceived a house by the wayside, and
+something depending over the house door which might be construed as a
+sign by the hopeful and thirsty.
+
+"Is that," he asked, pointing with his stick, "an inn?"
+
+There was a marked change in his voice, as though he attached some
+importance to the inquiry: Esther listened, hoping she should hear wit
+or wisdom.
+
+Dick said it was.
+
+"You know it?" inquired the Admiral.
+
+"I have passed it a hundred times, but that is all," replied Dick.
+
+"Ah," said Van Tromp, with a smile, and shaking his head; "you are not
+an old campaigner; you have the world to learn. Now I, you see, find an
+inn so very near my own home, and my first thought is--my neighbours. I
+shall go forward and make my neighbours' acquaintance; no, you needn't
+come; I shall not be a moment."
+
+And he walked off briskly towards the inn, leaving Dick alone with
+Esther on the road.
+
+"Dick," she exclaimed, "I am so glad to get a word with you; I am so
+happy, I have such a thousand things to say; and I want you to do me a
+favour. Imagine, he has come without a paint-box, without an easel; and
+I want him to have all. I want you to get them for me in Thymebury. You
+saw, this moment, how his heart turned to painting. They can't live
+without it," she added; meaning perhaps Van Tromp and Michelangelo.
+
+Up to that moment she had observed nothing amiss in Dick's behaviour.
+She was too happy to be curious; and his silence, in presence of the
+great and good being whom she called her father, had seemed both natural
+and praiseworthy. But now that they were alone, she became conscious of
+a barrier between her lover and herself, and alarm sprang up in her
+heart.
+
+"Dick," she cried, "you don't love me."
+
+"I do that," he said heartily.
+
+"But you are unhappy; you are strange; you--you are not glad to see my
+father," she concluded, with a break in her voice.
+
+"Esther," he said, "I tell you that I love you; if you love me, you know
+what that means, and that all I wish is to see you happy. Do you think I
+cannot enjoy your pleasure? Esther, I do. If I am uneasy, if I am
+alarmed, if----. Oh, believe me, try and believe in me," he cried, giving
+up argument with perhaps a happy inspiration.
+
+But the girl's suspicions were aroused; and though she pressed the
+matter no further (indeed, her father was already seen returning), it by
+no means left her thoughts. At one moment she simply resented the
+selfishness of a man who had obtruded his dark looks and passionate
+language on her joy; for there is nothing that a woman can less easily
+forgive than the language of a passion which, even if only for the
+moment, she does not share. At another, she suspected him of jealousy
+against her father; and for that, although she could see excuses for it,
+she yet despised him. And at least, in one way or the other, here was
+the dangerous beginning of a separation between two hearts. Esther found
+herself at variance with her sweetest friend; she could no longer look
+into his heart and find it written in the same language as her own; she
+could no longer think of him as the sun which radiated happiness upon
+her life, for she had turned to him once, and he had breathed upon her
+black and chilly, radiated blackness and frost. To put the whole matter
+in a word, she was beginning, although ever so slightly, to fall out of
+love.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE PRODIGAL FATHER GOES ON FROM STRENGTH TO STRENGTH
+
+
+We will not follow all the steps of the Admiral's return and
+installation, but hurry forward towards the catastrophe, merely
+chronicling by the way a few salient incidents, wherein we must rely
+entirely upon the evidence of Richard, for Esther to this day has never
+opened her mouth upon this trying passage of her life, and as for the
+Admiral--well, that naval officer, although still alive, and now more
+suitably installed in a seaport town where he has a telescope and a flag
+in his front garden, is incapable of throwing the slightest gleam of
+light upon the affair. Often and often has he remarked to the present
+writer: "If I know what it was all about, sir, I'll be----" in short, be
+what I hope he will not. And then he will look across at his daughter's
+portrait, a photograph, shake his head with an amused appearance, and
+mix himself another grog by way of consolation. Once I have heard him go
+further, and express his feelings with regard to Esther in a single but
+eloquent word. "A minx, sir," he said, not in anger, rather in
+amusement: and he cordially drank her health upon the back of it. His
+worst enemy must admit him to be a man without malice; he never bore a
+grudge in his life, lacking the necessary taste and industry of
+attention.
+
+Yet it was during this obscure period that the drama was really
+performed; and its scene was in the heart of Esther, shut away from all
+eyes. Had this warm, upright, sullen girl been differently used by
+destiny, had events come upon her even in a different succession, for
+some things lead easily to others, the whole course of this tale would
+have been changed, and Esther never would have run away. As it was,
+through a series of acts and words of which we know but few, and a
+series of thoughts which any one may imagine for himself, she was
+awakened in four days from the dream of a life.
+
+The first tangible cause of disenchantment was when Dick brought home a
+painter's arsenal on Friday evening. The Admiral was in the
+chimney-corner, once more "sirrupping" some brandy-and-water, and Esther
+sat at the table at work. They both came forward to greet the new
+arrival; and the girl, relieving him of his monstrous burthen, proceeded
+to display her offerings to her father. Van Tromp's countenance fell
+several degrees; he became quite querulous.
+
+"God bless me," he said; and then, "I must really ask you not to
+interfere, child," in a tone of undisguised hostility.
+
+"Father," she said, "forgive me; I knew you had given up your art----"
+
+"Oh yes!" cried the Admiral; "I've done with it to the judgment-day!"
+
+"Pardon me again," she said firmly, "but I do not, I cannot think that
+you are right in this. Suppose the world is unjust, suppose that no one
+understands you, you have still a duty to yourself. And, oh, don't spoil
+the pleasure of your coming home to me; show me that you can be my
+father and yet not neglect your destiny. I am not like some daughters; I
+will not be jealous of your art, and I will try to understand it."
+
+The situation was odiously farcical. Richard groaned under it; he longed
+to leap forward and denounce the humbug. And the humbug himself? Do you
+fancy he was easier in his mind? I am sure, on the other hand, that he
+was actually miserable; and he betrayed his sufferings by a perfectly
+silly and undignified access of temper, during which he broke his pipe
+in several places, threw his brandy-and-water into the fire, and
+employed words which were very plain although the drift of them was
+somewhat vague. It was of very brief duration. Van Tromp was himself
+again, and in a most delightful humour within three minutes of the first
+explosion.
+
+"I am an old fool," he said frankly. "I was spoiled when a child. As for
+you, Esther, you take after your mother; you have a morbid sense of
+duty, particularly for others; strive against it, my dear--strive
+against it. And as for the pigments, well, I'll use them some of these
+days; and to show that I'm in earnest, I'll get Dick here to prepare a
+canvas."
+
+Dick was put to this menial task forthwith, the Admiral not even
+watching how he did, but quite occupied with another grog and a pleasant
+vein of talk.
+
+A little after Esther arose, and making some pretext, good or bad, went
+off to bed. Dick was left hobbled by the canvas, and was subjected to
+Van Tromp for about an hour.
+
+The next day, Saturday, it is believed that little intercourse took
+place between Esther and her father; but towards the afternoon Dick met
+the latter returning from the direction of the inn, where he had struck
+up quite a friendship with the landlord. Dick wondered who paid for
+these excursions, and at the thought that the reprobate must get his
+pocket-money where he got his board and lodging, from poor Esther's
+generosity, he had it almost in his heart to knock the old gentleman
+down. He, on his part, was full of airs and graces and geniality.
+
+"Dear Dick," he said, taking his arm, "this is neighbourly of you; it
+shows your tact to meet me when I had a wish for you. I am in pleasant
+spirits; and it is then that I desire a friend."
+
+"I am glad to hear you are so happy," retorted Dick bitterly. "There's
+certainly not much to trouble _you_."
+
+"No," assented the Admiral, "not much. I got out of it in time; and
+here--well, here everything pleases me. I am plain in my tastes. _A
+propos_, you have never asked me how I liked my daughter?"
+
+"No," said Dick roundly; "I certainly have not."
+
+"Meaning you will not. And why, Dick? She is my daughter, of course; but
+then I am a man of the world and a man of taste, and perfectly qualified
+to give an opinion with impartiality--yes, Dick, with impartiality.
+Frankly, I am not disappointed in her. She has good looks; she has them
+from her mother. She is devoted, quite devoted to me----"
+
+"She is the best woman in the world!" broke out Dick.
+
+"Dick," cried the Admiral, stopping short; "I have been expecting this.
+Let us--let us go back to the 'Trevanion Arms,' and talk this matter out
+over a bottle."
+
+"Certainly not," said Dick. "You have had far too much already."
+
+The parasite was on the point of resenting this; but a look at Dick's
+face, and some recollections of the terms on which they had stood in
+Paris, came to the aid of his wisdom and restrained him.
+
+"As you please," he said; "although I don't know what you mean--nor
+care. But let us walk, if you prefer it. You are still a young man; when
+you are my age----. But, however, to continue. You please me, Dick; you
+have pleased me from the first; and to say truth, Esther is a trifle
+fantastic, and will be better when she is married. She has means of her
+own, as of course you are aware. They come, like the looks, from her
+poor, dear, good creature of a mother. She was blessed in her mother. I
+mean she shall be blessed in her husband, and you are the man, Dick, you
+and not another. This very night I will sound her affections."
+
+Dick stood aghast.
+
+"Mr. Van Tromp, I implore you," he said; "do what you please with
+yourself, but, for God's sake, let your daughter alone."
+
+"It is my duty," replied the Admiral, "and between ourselves, you rogue,
+my inclination too. I am as match-making as a dowager. It will be more
+discreet for you to stay away to-night. Farewell. You leave your case in
+good hands; I have the tact of these little matters by heart; it is not
+my first attempt."
+
+All arguments were in vain; the old rascal stuck to his point; nor did
+Richard conceal from himself how seriously this might injure his
+prospects, and he fought hard. Once there came a glimmer of hope. The
+Admiral again proposed an adjournment to the "Trevanion Arms," and when
+Dick had once more refused, it hung for a moment in the balance whether
+or not the old toper would return there by himself. Had he done so, of
+course Dick could have taken to his heels, and warned Esther of what was
+coming, and of how it had begun. But the Admiral, after a pause, decided
+for the brandy at home, and made off in that direction.
+
+We have no details of the sounding.
+
+Next day the Admiral was observed in the parish church, very properly
+dressed. He found the places, and joined in response and hymn, as to the
+manner born; and his appearance, as he intended it should, attracted
+some attention among the worshippers. Old Naseby, for instance, had
+observed him.
+
+"There was a drunken-looking blackguard opposite us in church," he said
+to his son as they drove home; "do you know who he was?"
+
+"Some fellow--Van Tromp, I believe," said Dick.
+
+"A foreigner too!" observed the Squire.
+
+Dick could not sufficiently congratulate himself on the escape he had
+effected. Had the Admiral met him with his father, what would have been
+the result? And could such a catastrophe be long postponed? It seemed to
+him as if the storm were nearly ripe; and it was so more nearly than he
+thought.
+
+He did not go to the cottage in the afternoon, withheld by fear and
+shame; but when dinner was over at Naseby House, and the Squire had gone
+off into a comfortable doze, Dick slipped out of the room, and ran
+across country, in part to save time, in part to save his own courage
+from growing cold; for he now hated the notion of the cottage or the
+Admiral, and if he did not hate, at least feared to think of Esther. He
+had no clue to her reflections; but he could not conceal from his own
+heart that he must have sunk in her esteem, and the spectacle of her
+infatuation galled him like an insult.
+
+He knocked and was admitted. The room looked very much as on his last
+visit, with Esther at the table and Van Tromp beside the fire; but the
+expression of the two faces told a very different story. The girl was
+paler than usual; her eyes were dark, the colour seemed to have faded
+from round about them, and her swiftest glance was as intent as a stare.
+The appearance of the Admiral, on the other hand, was rosy, and flabby,
+and moist; his jowl hung over his shirt-collar, his smile was loose and
+wandering, and he had so far relaxed the natural control of his eyes,
+that one of them was aimed inward, as if to catch the growth of the
+carbuncle. We are warned against bad judgments; but the Admiral was
+certainly not sober. He made no attempt to rise when Richard entered,
+but waved his pipe flightily in the air, and gave a leer of welcome.
+Esther took as little notice of him as might be.
+
+"Aha! Dick!" cried the painter. "I've been to church; I have, upon my
+word. And I saw you there, though you didn't see me. And I saw a
+devilish pretty woman, by Gad. If it were not for this baldness, and a
+kind of crapulous air I can't disguise from myself--if it weren't for
+this and that and t'other thing--I--I've forgot what I was saying. Not
+that that matters, I've heaps of things to say. I'm in a communicative
+vein to-night. I'll let out all my cats, even unto seventy times seven.
+I'm in what I call _the_ stage, and all I desire is a listener, although
+he were deaf, to be as happy as Nebuchadnezzar."
+
+Of the two hours which followed upon this it is unnecessary to give more
+than a sketch. The Admiral was extremely silly, now and then amusing,
+and never really offensive. It was plain that he kept in view the
+presence of his daughter, and chose subjects and a character of language
+that should not offend a lady. On almost any other occasion Dick would
+have enjoyed the scene. Van Tromp's egotism, flown with drink, struck a
+pitch above mere vanity. He became candid and explanatory; sought to
+take his auditors entirely into his confidence, and tell them his inmost
+conviction about himself. Between his self-knowledge, which was
+considerable, and his vanity, which was immense, he had created a
+strange hybrid animal, and called it by his own name. How he would plume
+his feathers over virtues which would have gladdened the heart of Caesar
+or St. Paul; and anon, complete his own portrait with one of those
+touches of pitiless realism which the satirist so often seeks in vain.
+
+"Now, there's Dick," he said, "he's shrewd; he saw through me the first
+time we met, and told me so--told me so to my face, which I had the
+virtue to keep. I bear you no malice for it, Dick; you were right; I am
+a humbug."
+
+You may fancy how Esther quailed at this new feature of the meeting
+between her two idols.
+
+And then, again, in a parenthesis:
+
+"That," said Van Tromp, "was when I had to paint those dirty daubs of
+mine."
+
+And a little further on, laughingly said, perhaps, but yet with an air
+of truth:
+
+"I never had the slightest hesitation in sponging upon any human
+creature."
+
+Thereupon Dick got up.
+
+"I think, perhaps," he said, "we had better all be thinking of going to
+bed." And he smiled with a feeble and deprecatory smile.
+
+"Not at all," cried the Admiral, "I know a trick worth two of that.
+Puss here," indicating his daughter, "shall go to bed; and you and I
+will keep it up till all's blue."
+
+Thereupon Esther arose in sullen glory. She had sat and listened for two
+mortal hours while her idol defiled himself and sneered away his
+godhead. One by one, her illusions had departed. And now he wished to
+order her to bed in her own house! now he called her Puss! now, even as
+he uttered the words, toppling on his chair, he broke the stem of his
+tobacco-pipe in three! Never did the sheep turn upon her shearer with a
+more commanding front. Her voice was calm, her enunciation a little
+slow, but perfectly distinct, and she stood before him, as she spoke, in
+the simplest and most maidenly attitude.
+
+"No," she said, "Mr. Naseby will have the goodness to go home at once,
+and you will go to bed."
+
+The broken fragments of pipe fell from the Admiral's fingers; he seemed
+by his countenance to have lived too long in a world unworthy of him;
+but it is an odd circumstance, he attempted no reply, and sat
+thunder-struck, with open mouth.
+
+Dick she motioned sharply towards the door, and he could only obey her.
+In the porch, finding she was close behind him, he ventured to pause and
+whisper, "You have done right."
+
+"I have done as I pleased," she said. "Can he paint?"
+
+"Many people like his paintings," returned Dick, in stifled tones; "I
+never did; I never said I did," he added, fiercely defending himself
+before he was attacked.
+
+"I ask you if he can paint. I will not be put off. _Can_ he paint?" she
+repeated.
+
+"No," said Dick.
+
+"Does he even like it?"
+
+"Not now, I believe."
+
+"And he is drunk?"--she leaned upon the word with hatred.
+
+"He has been drinking."
+
+"Go," she said, and was turning to re-enter the house when another
+thought arrested her. "Meet me to-morrow morning at the stile," she
+said.
+
+"I will," replied Dick.
+
+And then the door closed behind her, and Dick was alone in the darkness.
+There was still a chink of light above the sill, a warm, mild glow
+behind the window; the roof of the cottage and some of the banks and
+hazels were defined in denser darkness against the sky; but all else was
+formless, breathless, and noiseless like the pit. Dick remained as she
+had left him, standing squarely on one foot and resting only on the toe
+of the other, and as he stood he listened with his soul. The sound of a
+chair pushed sharply over the floor startled his heart into his mouth;
+but the silence which had thus been disturbed settled back again at once
+upon the cottage and its vicinity. What took place during this interval
+is a secret from the world of men; but when it was over the voice of
+Esther spoke evenly and without interruption for perhaps half a minute,
+and as soon as that ceased heavy and uncertain footfalls crossed the
+parlour and mounted lurching up the stairs. The girl had tamed her
+father, Van Tromp had gone obediently to bed: so much was obvious to the
+watcher in the road. And yet he still waited, straining his ears, and
+with terror and sickness at his heart; for if Esther had followed her
+father, if she had even made one movement in this great conspiracy of
+men and nature to be still, Dick must have had instant knowledge of it
+from his station before the door; and if she had not moved, must she not
+have fainted? or might she not be dead?
+
+He could hear the cottage clock deliberately measure out the seconds;
+time stood still with him; an almost superstitious terror took command
+of his faculties; at last, he could bear no more, and, springing through
+the little garden in two bounds, he put his face against the window. The
+blind, which had not been drawn fully down, left an open chink about an
+inch in height along the bottom of the glass, and the whole parlour was
+thus exposed to Dick's investigation. Esther sat upright at the table,
+her head resting on her hand, her eyes fixed upon the candle. Her brows
+were slightly bent, her mouth slightly open; her whole attitude so still
+and settled that Dick could hardly fancy that she breathed. She had not
+stirred at the sound of Dick's arrival. Soon after, making a
+considerable disturbance amid the vast silence of the night, the clock
+lifted up its voice, whined for a while like a partridge, and then
+eleven times hooted like a cuckoo. Still Esther continued immovable and
+gazed upon the candle. Midnight followed, and then one of the morning;
+and still she had not stirred, nor had Richard Naseby dared to quit the
+window. And then about half-past one, the candle she had been thus
+intently watching flared up into a last blaze of paper, and she leaped
+to her feet with an ejaculation, looked about her once, blew out the
+light, turned round, and was heard rapidly mounting the staircase in the
+dark.
+
+Dick was left once more alone to darkness and to that dulled and dogged
+state of mind when a man thinks that Misery must have done her worst,
+and is almost glad to think so. He turned and walked slowly towards the
+stile; she had told him no hour, and he was determined, whenever she
+came, that she should find him waiting. As he got there the day began to
+dawn, and he leaned over a hurdle and beheld the shadows flee away. Up
+went the sun at last out of a bank of clouds that were already
+disbanding in the east; a herald wind had already sprung up to sweep the
+leafy earth and scatter the congregated dewdrops. "Alas!" thought Dick
+Naseby, "how can any other day come so distastefully to me?" He still
+wanted his experience of the morrow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE ELOPEMENT
+
+
+It was probably on the stroke of ten, and Dick had been half asleep for
+some time against the bank, when Esther came up the road carrying a
+bundle. Some kind of instinct, or perhaps the distant light footfalls,
+recalled him, while she was still a good way off, to the possession of
+his faculties, and he half raised himself and blinked upon the world. It
+took him some time to recollect his thoughts. He had awakened with a
+certain blank and childish sense of pleasure, like a man who had
+received a legacy overnight but this feeling gradually died away, and
+was then suddenly and stunningly succeeded by a conviction of the truth.
+The whole story of the past night sprang into his mind with every
+detail, as by an exercise of the direct and speedy sense of sight, and
+he arose from the ditch and, with rueful courage, went to meet his love.
+
+She came up to him walking steady and fast, her face still pale, but to
+all appearance perfectly composed; and she showed neither surprise,
+relief, nor pleasure at finding her lover on the spot. Nor did she offer
+him her hand.
+
+"Here I am," said he.
+
+"Yes," she replied; and then, without a pause or any change of voice, "I
+want you to take me away," she added.
+
+"Away?" he repeated. "How? Where?"
+
+"To-day," she said. "I do not care where it is, but I want you to take
+me away."
+
+"For how long? I do not understand," gasped Dick.
+
+"I shall never come back here any more," was all she answered.
+
+Wild words uttered, as these were, with perfect quiet of manner,
+exercise a double influence on the hearer's mind. Dick was confounded;
+he recovered from astonishment only to fall into doubt and alarm. He
+looked upon her frozen attitude, so discouraging for a lover to behold,
+and recoiled from the thoughts which it suggested.
+
+"To me?" he asked. "Are you coming to me, Esther?"
+
+"I want you to take me away," she repeated, with weary impatience. "Take
+me away--take me away from here."
+
+The situation was not sufficiently defined. Dick asked himself with
+concern whether she were altogether in her right wits. To take her away,
+to marry her, to work off his hands for her support, Dick was content to
+do all this; yet he required some show of love upon her part. He was not
+one of those tough-hided and small-hearted males who would marry their
+love at the point of the bayonet rather than not marry her at all. He
+desired that a woman should come to his arms with an attractive
+willingness, if not with ardour. And Esther's bearing was more that of
+despair than that of love. It chilled him and taught him wisdom.
+
+"Dearest," he urged, "tell me what you wish, and you shall have it; tell
+me your thoughts, and then I can advise you. But to go from here without
+a plan, without forethought, in the heat of a moment, is madder than
+madness, and can help nothing. I am not speaking like a man, but I speak
+the truth; and I tell you again, the thing's absurd, and wrong, and
+hurtful."
+
+She looked at him with a lowering, languid look of wrath.
+
+"So you will not take me?" she said. "Well, I will go alone."
+
+And she began to step forward on her way. But he threw himself before
+her.
+
+"Esther, Esther!" he cried.
+
+"Let me go--don't touch me--what right have you to interfere? Who are
+you, to touch me?" she flashed out, shrill with anger.
+
+Then, being made bold by her violence, he took her firmly, almost
+roughly, by the arm, and held her while he spoke.
+
+"You know well who I am, and what I am, and that I love you. You say I
+will not help you; but your heart knows the contrary. It is you who will
+not help me; for you will not tell me what you want. You see--or you
+could see, if you took the pains to look--how I have waited here all
+night to be ready at your service. I only asked information; I only
+urged you to consider; and I still urge you to think better of your
+fancies. But if your mind is made up, so be it; I will beg no longer; I
+will give you my orders; and I will not allow--not allow you to go hence
+alone."
+
+She looked at him for a while with cold, unkind scrutiny, like one who
+tries the temper of a tool.
+
+"Well, take me away then," she said, with a sigh.
+
+"Good," said Dick. "Come with me to the stables; there we shall get the
+pony-trap and drive to the junction. To-night you shall be in London. I
+am yours so wholly that no words can make me more so; and, besides, you
+know it, and the words are needless. May God help me to be good to you,
+Esther--may God help me! for I see that you will not."
+
+So, without more speech, they set out together, and were already got
+some distance from the spot, ere he observed that she was still carrying
+the hand-bag. She gave it up to him, passively, but when he offered her
+his arm, merely shook her head and pursed up her lips. The sun shone
+clearly and pleasantly; the wind was fresh and brisk upon their faces,
+and smelt racily of woods and meadows. As they went down into the valley
+of the Thyme, the babble of the stream rose into the air like a
+perennial laughter. On the far-away hills, sun-burst and shadow raced
+along the slopes and leaped from peak to peak. Earth, air, and water,
+each seemed in better health and had more of the shrewd salt of life in
+them than upon ordinary mornings; and from east to west, from the
+lowest glen to the height of heaven, from every look and touch and
+scent, a human creature could gather the most encouraging intelligence
+as to the durability and spirit of the universe.
+
+Through all this walked Esther, picking her small steps like a bird, but
+silent and with a cloud under her thick eyebrows. She seemed insensible,
+not only of nature, but of the presence of her companion. She was
+altogether engrossed in herself, and looked neither to right nor to
+left, but straight before her on the road. When they came to the bridge,
+however, she halted, leaned on the parapet, and stared for a moment at
+the clear, brown pool, and swift, transient snowdrift of the rapids.
+
+"I am going to drink," she said; and descended the winding footpath to
+the margin.
+
+There she drank greedily in her hands, and washed her temples with
+water. The coolness seemed to break, for an instant, the spell that lay
+upon her; for, instead of hastening forward again in her dull,
+indefatigable tramp, she stood still where she was, for near a minute,
+looking straight before her. And Dick, from above on the bridge where he
+stood to watch her, saw a strange, equivocal smile dawn slowly on her
+face and pass away again at once and suddenly, leaving her as grave as
+ever; and the sense of distance, which it is so cruel for a lover to
+endure, pressed with every moment more heavily on her companion. Her
+thoughts were all secret; her heart was locked and bolted; and he stood
+without, vainly wooing her with his eyes.
+
+"Do you feel better?" asked Dick, as she at last rejoined him; and after
+the constraint of so long a silence, his voice sounded foreign to his
+own ears.
+
+She looked at him for an appreciable fraction of a minute ere she
+answered, and when she did, it was in the monosyllable--"Yes."
+
+Dick's solicitude was nipped and frosted. His words died away on his
+tongue. Even his eyes, despairing of encouragement, ceased to attend on
+hers. And they went on in silence through Kirton hamlet, where an old
+man followed them with his eyes, and perhaps envied them their youth and
+love; and across the Ivy beck where the mill was splashing and grumbling
+low thunder to itself in the chequered shadow of the dell, and the
+miller before the door was beating flour from his hands as he whistled a
+modulation; and up by the high spinney, whence they saw the mountains
+upon either hand; and down the hill again to the back courts and offices
+of Naseby House. Esther had kept ahead all the way, and Dick plodded
+obediently in her wake; but as they neared the stables, he pushed on and
+took the lead. He would have preferred her to await him in the road
+while he went on and brought the carriage back, but after so many
+repulses and rebuffs he lacked courage to offer the suggestion. Perhaps,
+too, he felt it wiser to keep his convoy within sight. So they entered
+the yard in Indian file, like a tramp and his wife.
+
+The groom's eyebrows rose as he received the order for the pony-phaeton,
+and kept rising during all his preparations. Esther stood bolt upright
+and looked steadily at some chickens in the corner of the yard. Master
+Richard himself, thought the groom, was not in his ordinary; for in
+truth, he carried the hand-bag like a talisman, and either stood
+listless, or set off suddenly walking in one direction after another
+with brisk, decisive footsteps. Moreover, he had apparently neglected to
+wash his hands, and bore the air of one returning from a prolonged
+nutting ramble. Upon the groom's countenance there began to grow up an
+expression as of one about to whistle. And hardly had the carriage
+turned the corner and rattled into the high road with this inexplicable
+pair, than the whistle broke forth--prolonged, and low, and tremulous;
+and the groom, already so far relieved, vented the rest of his surprise
+in one simple English word, friendly to the mouth of Jack-tar and the
+sooty pitman, and hurried to spread the news round the servants' hall of
+Naseby House. Luncheon would be on the table in little beyond an hour;
+and the Squire, on sitting down, would hardly fail to ask for Master
+Richard. Hence, as the intelligent reader can foresee, this groom has a
+part to play in the imbroglio.
+
+Meantime, Dick had been thinking deeply and bitterly. It seemed to him
+as if his love had gone from him indeed, yet gone but a little way; as
+if he needed but to find the right touch or intonation, and her heart
+would recognise him and be melted. Yet he durst not open his mouth, and
+drove in silence till they had passed the main park-gates and turned
+into the cross-cut lane along the wall. Then it seemed to him as if it
+must be now, or never.
+
+"Can't you see you are killing me?" he cried. "Speak to me, look at me,
+treat me like a human man."
+
+She turned slowly and looked him in the face with eyes that seemed
+kinder. He dropped the reins and caught her hand, and she made no
+resistance, although her touch was unresponsive. But when, throwing one
+arm round her waist, he sought to kiss her lips, not like a lover
+indeed, not because he wanted to do so, but as a desperate man who puts
+his fortunes to the touch, she drew away from him, with a knot in her
+forehead, backed and shied about fiercely with her head, and pushed him
+from her with her hand. Then there was no room left for doubt, and Dick
+saw, as clear as sunlight, that she had a distaste or nourished a grudge
+against him.
+
+"Then you don't love me?" he said, drawing back from her, he also, as
+though her touch had burnt him; and then, as she made no answer, he
+repeated with another intonation, imperious and yet still pathetic, "You
+don't love me, _do_ you, _do_ you?"
+
+"I don't know," she replied. "Why do you ask me? Oh, how should I know?
+It has all been lies together--lies, and lies, and lies!"
+
+He cried her name sharply, like a man who has taken a physical hurt, and
+that was the last word that either of them spoke until they reached
+Thymebury Junction.
+
+This was a station isolated in the midst of moorlands, yet lying on the
+great up-line to London. The nearest town, Thymebury itself, was seven
+miles distant along the branch they call the Vale of Thyme Railway. It
+was now nearly half an hour past noon, the down train had just gone by,
+and there would be no more traffic at the junction until half-past
+three, when the local train comes in to meet the up express at a quarter
+before four. The stationmaster had already gone off to his garden, which
+was half a mile away in a hollow of the moor; a porter, who was just
+leaving, took charge of the phaeton, and promised to return it before
+night to Naseby House; only a deaf, snuffy, and stern old man remained
+to play propriety for Dick and Esther.
+
+Before the phaeton had driven off, the girl had entered the station and
+seated herself upon a bench. The endless, empty moorlands stretched
+before her, entirely unenclosed, and with no boundary but the horizon.
+Two lines of rails, a waggon shed, and a few telegraph posts, alone
+diversified the outlook. As for sounds, the silence was unbroken save by
+the chant of the telegraph wires and the crying of the plovers on the
+waste. With the approach of midday the wind had more and more fallen, it
+was now sweltering hot and the air trembled in the sunshine.
+
+Dick paused for an instant on the threshold of the platform. Then, in
+two steps, he was by her side and speaking almost with a sob.
+
+"Esther," he said, "have pity on me. What have I done? Can you not
+forgive me? Esther, you loved me once--can you not love me still?"
+
+"How can I tell you? How am I to know?" she answered. "You are all a lie
+to me--all a lie from first to last. You were laughing at my folly,
+playing with me like a child, at the very time when you declared you
+loved me. Which was true? was any of it true? or was it all, all a
+mockery? I am weary trying to find out. And you say I loved you; I loved
+my father's friend. I never loved, I never heard of, you, until that man
+came home and I began to find myself deceived. Give me back my father,
+be what you were before, and you may talk of love indeed!"
+
+"Then you cannot forgive me--cannot?" he asked.
+
+"I have nothing to forgive," she answered. "You do not understand."
+
+"Is that your last word, Esther?" said he, very white, and biting his
+lip to keep it still.
+
+"Yes; that is my last word," replied she.
+
+"Then we are here on false pretences, and we stay here no longer," he
+said. "Had you still loved me, right or wrong, I should have taken you
+away, because then I could have made you happy. But as it is--I must
+speak plainly--what you propose is degrading to you, and an insult to
+me, and a rank unkindness to your father. Your father may be this or
+that, but you should use him like a fellow-creature."
+
+"What do you mean?" she flashed. "I leave him my house and all my money;
+it is more than he deserves. I wonder you dare speak to me about that
+man. And besides, it is all he cares for; let him take it, and let me
+never hear from him again."
+
+"I thought you romantic about fathers," he said.
+
+"Is that a taunt?" she demanded.
+
+"No," he replied, "it is an argument. No one can make you like him, but
+don't disgrace him in his own eyes. He is old, Esther, old and broken
+down. Even I am sorry for him, and he has been the loss of all I cared
+for. Write to your aunt; when I see her answer you can leave quietly and
+naturally, and I will take you to your aunt's door. But in the meantime
+you must go home. You have no money, and so you are helpless, and must
+do as I tell you; and believe me, Esther, I do all for your good, and
+your good only, so God help me."
+
+She had put her hand into her pocket and withdrawn it empty.
+
+"I counted upon you," she wailed.
+
+"You counted rightly, then," he retorted. "I will not, to please you for
+a moment, make both of us unhappy for our lives; and since I cannot
+marry you, we have only been too long away, and must go home at once."
+
+"Dick," she cried suddenly, "perhaps I might--perhaps in
+time--perhaps--"
+
+"There is no perhaps about the matter," interrupted Dick. "I must go and
+bring the phaeton."
+
+And with that he strode from the station, all in a glow of passion and
+virtue. Esther, whose eyes had come alive and her cheeks flushed during
+these last words, relapsed in a second into a state of petrifaction. She
+remained without motion during his absence, and when he returned
+suffered herself to be put back into the phaeton, and driven off on the
+return journey like an idiot or a tired child. Compared with what she
+was now, her condition of the morning seemed positively natural. She sat
+cold and white and silent, and there was no speculation in her eyes.
+Poor Dick flailed and flailed at the pony, and once tried to whistle,
+but his courage was going down; huge clouds of despair gathered together
+in his soul, and from time to time their darkness was divided by a
+piercing flash of longing and regret. He had lost his love--he had lost
+his love for good.
+
+The pony was tired, and the hills very long and steep, and the air
+sultrier than ever, for now the breeze began to fail entirely. It seemed
+as if this miserable drive would never be done, as if poor Dick would
+never be able to go away and be comfortably wretched by himself; for all
+his desire was to escape from her presence and the reproach of her
+averted looks. He had lost his love, he thought--he had lost his love
+for good.
+
+They were already not far from the cottage, when his heart again
+faltered and he appealed to her once more, speaking low and eagerly in
+broken phrases.
+
+"I cannot live without your love," he concluded.
+
+"I do not understand what you mean," she replied, and I believe with
+perfect truth.
+
+"Then," said he, wounded to the quick, "your aunt might come and fetch
+you herself. Of course you can command me as you please. But I think it
+would be better so."
+
+"Oh yes," she said wearily, "better so."
+
+This was the only exchange of words between them till about four
+o'clock; the phaeton, mounting the lane, "opened out" the cottage
+between the leafy banks. Thin smoke went straight up from the chimney;
+the flowers in the garden, the hawthorn in the lane, hung down their
+heads in the heat; the stillness was broken only by the sound of hoofs.
+For right before the gate a livery servant rode slowly up and down,
+leading a saddle horse. And in this last Dick shuddered to identify his
+father's chestnut.
+
+Alas! poor Richard, what should this portend?
+
+The servant, as in duty bound, dismounted and took the phaeton into his
+keeping; yet Dick thought he touched his hat to him with something of a
+grin. Esther, passive as ever, was helped out and crossed the garden
+with a slow and mechanical gait; and Dick, following close behind her,
+heard from within the cottage his father's voice upraised in an
+anathema, and the shriller tones of the Admiral responding in the key of
+war.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+BATTLE ROYAL
+
+
+Squire Naseby, on sitting down to lunch, had inquired for Dick, whom he
+had not seen since the day before at dinner; and the servant answering
+awkwardly that Master Richard had come back, but had gone out again with
+the pony-phaeton, his suspicions became aroused, and he cross-questioned
+the man until the whole was out. It appeared from this report that Dick
+had been going about for nearly a month with a girl in the Vale--a Miss
+Van Tromp; that she lived near Lord Trevanion's upper wood; that
+recently Miss Van Tromp's papa had returned home from foreign parts
+after a prolonged absence; that this papa was an old gentleman, very
+chatty and free with his money in the public-house--whereupon Mr.
+Naseby's face became encrimsoned; that the papa, furthermore, was said
+to be an admiral--whereupon Mr. Naseby spat out a whistle brief and
+fierce as an oath; that Master Dick seemed very friendly with the
+papa--"God help him!" said Mr. Naseby; that last night Master Dick had
+not come in, and to-day he had driven away in the phaeton with the young
+lady.
+
+"Young woman," corrected Mr. Naseby.
+
+"Yes, sir," said the man, who had been unwilling enough to gossip from
+the first, and was now cowed by the effect of his communications on the
+master. "Young woman, sir!"
+
+"Had they luggage?" demanded the Squire.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+Mr. Naseby was silent for a moment, struggling to keep down his emotion,
+and he mastered it so far as to mount into the sarcastic vein, when he
+was in the nearest danger of melting into the sorrowful.
+
+"And was this--this Van Dunk with them?" he asked, dwelling scornfully
+on the name.
+
+The servant believed not, and being eager to shift the responsibility to
+other shoulders, suggested that perhaps the master had better inquire
+further from George the stableman in person.
+
+"Tell him to saddle the chestnut and come with me. And then you can
+take away this trash," added Mr. Naseby, pointing to the luncheon; and
+he arose, lordly in his anger, and marched forth upon the terrace to
+await his horse.
+
+There Dick's old nurse shrunk up to him, for the news went like wildfire
+over Naseby House, and timidly expressed a hope that there was nothing
+much amiss with the young master.
+
+"I'll pull him through," the Squire said grimly, as though he meant to
+pull him through a threshing-mill; "I'll save him from this gang; God
+help him with the next! He has a taste for low company, and no natural
+affections to steady him. His father was no society for him; he must go
+fuddling with a Dutchman, Nance, and now he's caught. Let us pray he'll
+take the lesson," he added, more gravely, "but youth is here to make
+troubles, and age to pull them out again."
+
+Nance whimpered and recalled several episodes of Dick's childhood, which
+moved Mr. Naseby to blow his nose and shake her hard by the hand; and
+then, the horse having arrived opportunely, to get himself without delay
+into the saddle and canter off.
+
+He rode straight, hot spur, to Thymebury, where, as was to be expected,
+he could glean no tidings of the runaways. They had not been seen at the
+George; they had not been seen at the station. The shadow darkened on
+Mr. Naseby's face; the junction did not occur to him; his last hope was
+for Van Tromp's cottage; thither he bade George guide him, and thither
+he followed, nursing grief, anxiety, and indignation in his heart.
+
+"Here it is, sir," said George, stopping.
+
+"What! on my own land!" he cried. "How's this? I let this place to
+somebody--M'Whirter or M'Glashan."
+
+"Miss M'Glashan was the young lady's aunt, sir, I believe," returned
+George.
+
+"Ay--dummies," said the Squire. "I shall whistle for my rent too. Here,
+take my horse."
+
+The Admiral, this hot afternoon, was sitting by the window with a long
+glass. He already knew the Squire by sight, and now, seeing him dismount
+before the cottage and come striding through the garden, concluded
+without doubt he was there to ask for Esther's hand.
+
+"This is why the girl is not yet home," he thought; "a very suitable
+delicacy on young Naseby's part."
+
+And he composed himself with some pomp, answered the loud rattle of the
+riding-whip upon the door with a dulcet invitation to enter, and coming
+forward with a bow and a smile, "Mr. Naseby, I believe," said he.
+
+The Squire came armed for battle; took in his man from top to toe in one
+rapid and scornful glance, and decided on a course at once. He must let
+the fellow see that he understood him.
+
+"You are Mr. Van Tromp?" he returned roughly, and without taking any
+notice of the proffered hand.
+
+"The same, sir," replied the Admiral. "Pray be seated."
+
+"No, sir," said the Squire, point-blank, "I will not be seated. I am
+told that you are an admiral," he added.
+
+"No, sir, I am not an admiral," returned Van Tromp, who now began to
+grow nettled and enter into the spirit of the interview.
+
+"Then why do you call yourself one, sir?"
+
+"I have to ask your pardon, I do not," says Van Tromp, as grand as the
+Pope.
+
+But nothing was of avail against the Squire.
+
+"You sail under false colours from beginning to end," he said. "Your
+very house was taken under a sham name."
+
+"It is not my house. I am my daughter's guest," replied the Admiral. "If
+it _were_ my house----"
+
+"Well?" said the Squire, "what then? hey?"
+
+The Admiral looked at him nobly, but was silent.
+
+"Look here," said Mr. Naseby, "this intimidation is a waste of time; it
+is thrown away on me, sir; it will not succeed with me. I will not
+permit you even to gain time by your fencing. Now, sir, I presume you
+understand what brings me here."
+
+"I am entirely at a loss to account for your intrusion," bows and waves
+Van Tromp.
+
+"I will try to tell you, then. I come here as a father"--down came the
+riding-whip upon the table--"I have right and justice upon my side. I
+understand your calculations, but you calculated without me. I am a man
+of the world, and I see through you and your manoeuvres. I am dealing
+now with a conspiracy--I stigmatise it as such, and I will expose it and
+crush it. And now I order you to tell me how far things have gone, and
+whither you have smuggled my unhappy son."
+
+"My God, sir!" Van Tromp broke out, "I have had about enough of this.
+Your son? God knows where he is for me! What the devil have I to do with
+your son? My daughter is out, for the matter of that; I might ask you
+where she is, and what would you say to that? But this is all midsummer
+madness. Name your business distinctly, and be off."
+
+"How often am I to tell you?" cried the Squire. "Where did your daughter
+take my son to-day in that cursed pony carriage?"
+
+"In a pony carriage?" repeated Van Tromp.
+
+"Yes, sir--with luggage."
+
+"Luggage?"--Van Tromp had turned a little pale.
+
+"Luggage, I said--luggage!" shouted Naseby. "You may spare me this
+dissimulation. Where's my son? You are speaking to a father, sir, a
+father."
+
+"But, sir, if this be true," out came Van Tromp in a new key, "it is I
+who have an explanation to demand."
+
+"Precisely. There is the conspiracy," retorted Naseby. "Oh!" he added,
+"I am a man of the world. I can see through and through you."
+
+Van Tromp began to understand.
+
+"You speak a great deal about being a father, Mr. Naseby," said he; "I
+believe you forget that the appellation is common to both of us. I am at
+a loss to figure to myself, however dimly, how any man--I have not said
+any gentleman--could so brazenly insult another as you have been
+insulting me since you entered this house. For the first time I
+appreciate your base insinuations, and I despise them and you. You were,
+I am told, a manufacturer; I am an artist; I have seen better days; I
+have moved in societies where you would not be received, and dined where
+you would be glad to pay a pound to see me dining. The so-called
+aristocracy of wealth, sir, I despise. I refuse to help you; I refuse to
+be helped by you. There lies the door."
+
+And the Admiral stood forth in a halo.
+
+It was then that Dick entered. He had been waiting in the porch for some
+time back, and Esther had been listlessly standing by his side. He had
+put out his hand to bar her entrance, and she had submitted without
+surprise; and though she seemed to listen, she scarcely appeared to
+comprehend. Dick, on his part, was as white as a sheet; his eyes burned
+and his lips trembled with anger as he thrust the door suddenly open,
+introduced Esther with ceremonious gallantry, and stood forward and
+knocked his hat firmer on his head like a man about to leap.
+
+"What is all this?" he demanded.
+
+"Is this your father, Mr. Naseby?" inquired the Admiral.
+
+"It is," said the young man.
+
+"I make you my compliments," returned Van Tromp.
+
+"Dick!" cried his father, suddenly breaking forth, "It is not too late,
+is it? I have come here in time to save you. Come, come away with
+me--come away from this place."
+
+And he fawned upon Dick with his hands.
+
+"Keep your hands off me," cried Dick, not meaning unkindness, but
+because his nerves were shattered by so many successive miseries.
+
+"No, no," said the old man. "Don't repulse your father, Dick, when he
+has come here to save you. Don't repulse me, my boy. Perhaps I have not
+been kind to you, not quite considerate, too harsh; my boy, it was not
+for want of love. Think of old times. I was kind to you then, was I not?
+When you were a child, and your mother was with us." Mr. Naseby was
+interrupted by a sort of sob. Dick stood looking at him in a maze. "Come
+away," pursued the father in a whisper; "you need not be afraid of any
+consequences. I am a man of the world, Dick; and she can have no claim
+on you--no claim, I tell you; and we'll be handsome too, Dick--we'll
+give them a good round figure, father and daughter, and there's an end."
+
+He had been trying to get Dick towards the door, but the latter stood
+off.
+
+"You had better take care, sir, how you insult that lady," said the son,
+as black as night.
+
+"You would not choose between your father and your mistress?" said the
+father.
+
+"What do you call her, sir?" cried Dick, high and clear.
+
+Forbearance and patience were not among Mr. Naseby's qualities.
+
+"I called her your mistress," he shouted, "and I might have called her a
+----"
+
+"That is an unmanly lie," replied Dick slowly.
+
+"Dick!" cried the father, "Dick!"
+
+"I do not care," said the son, strengthening himself against his own
+heart; "I--I have said it, and it's the truth."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"Dick," said the old man at last, in a voice that was shaken as by a
+gale of wind, "I am going. I leave you with your friends, sir--with your
+friends. I came to serve you, and now I go away a broken man. For years
+I have seen this coming, and now it has come. You never loved me. Now
+you have been the death of me. You may boast of that. Now I leave you.
+God pardon you."
+
+With that he was gone; and the three who remained together heard his
+horse's hoofs descend the lane. Esther had not made a sign throughout
+the interview, and still kept silence now that it was over; but the
+Admiral, who had once or twice moved forward and drawn back again, now
+advanced for good.
+
+"You are a man of spirit, sir," said he to Dick; "but though I am no
+friend to parental interference, I will say that you were heavy on the
+governor." Then he added with a chuckle: "You began, Richard, with a
+silver spoon, and here you are in the water, like the rest. Work, work,
+nothing like work. You have parts, you have manners; why, with
+application, you may die a millionaire!"
+
+Dick shook himself. He took Esther by the hand, looking at her
+mournfully.
+
+"Then this is farewell?" he said.
+
+"Yes," she answered. There was no tone in her voice, and she did not
+return his gaze.
+
+"For ever," added Dick.
+
+"For ever," she repeated mechanically.
+
+"I have had hard measure," he continued. "In time, I believe I could
+have shown you I was worthy, and there was no time long enough to show
+how much I loved you. But it was not to be. I have lost all."
+
+He relinquished her hand, still looking at her, and she turned to leave
+the room.
+
+"Why, what in fortune's name is the meaning of all this?" cried Van
+Tromp. "Esther, come back!"
+
+"Let her go," said Dick, and he watched her disappear with strangely
+mingled feelings. For he had fallen into that stage when men have the
+vertigo of misfortune, court the strokes of destiny, and rush towards
+anything decisive, that it may free them from suspense though at the
+cost of ruin. It is one of the many minor forms of suicide.
+
+"She did not love me," he said, turning to her father.
+
+"I feared as much," said he, "when I sounded her. Poor Dick, poor Dick!
+And yet I believe I am as much cut up as you are. I was born to see
+others happy."
+
+"You forget," returned Dick, with something like a sneer, "that I am now
+a pauper."
+
+Van Tromp snapped his fingers.
+
+"Tut!" said he; "Esther has plenty for us all."
+
+Dick looked at him with some wonder. It had never dawned upon him that
+this shiftless, thriftless, worthless, sponging parasite was yet, after
+all and in spite of all, not mercenary in the issue of his thoughts; yet
+so it was.
+
+"Now," said Dick, "I must go."
+
+"Go?" cried Van Tromp. "Where? Not one foot, Mr. Richard Naseby. Here
+you shall stay in the meantime! and--well, and do something
+practical--advertise for a situation as private secretary--and when you
+have it, go and welcome. But in the meantime, sir, no false pride; we
+must stay with our friends; we must sponge a while on Papa Van Tromp,
+who has sponged so often upon us."
+
+"By God," cried Dick, "I believe you are the best of the lot."
+
+"Dick, my boy," replied the Admiral, winking, "you mark me, I am not the
+worst."
+
+"Then why," began Dick, and then paused. "But Esther," he began again,
+once more to interrupt himself. "The fact is, Admiral," he came out with
+it roundly now, "your daughter wished to run away from you to-day, and I
+only brought her back with difficulty."
+
+"In the pony carriage?" asked the Admiral, with the silliness of extreme
+surprise.
+
+"Yes," Dick answered.
+
+"Why, what the devil was she running away from?"
+
+Dick found the question unusually hard to answer.
+
+"Why," said he, "you know you're a bit of a rip."
+
+"I behave to that girl, sir, like an archdeacon," replied Van Tromp
+warmly.
+
+"Well--excuse me--but you know you drink," insisted Dick.
+
+"I know that I was a sheet in the wind's eye, sir, once--once only,
+since I reached this place," retorted the Admiral. "And even then I was
+fit for any drawing-room. I should like you to tell me how many fathers,
+lay and clerical, go upstairs every day with a face like a lobster and
+cod's eyes--and are dull, upon the back of it--not even mirth for the
+money! No, if that's what she runs for, all I say is, let her run."
+
+"You see," Dick tried it again, "she has fancies--"
+
+"Confound her fancies!" cried Van Tromp. "I used her kindly; she had her
+own way; I was her father. Besides, I had taken quite a liking to the
+girl, and meant to stay with her for good. But I tell you what it is,
+Dick, since she has trifled with you--Oh yes, she did though!--and since
+her old papa's not good enough for her--the devil take her, say I."
+
+"You will be kind to her at least?" said Dick.
+
+"I never was unkind to a living soul," replied the Admiral. "Firm I can
+be, but not unkind."
+
+"Well," said Dick, offering his hand, "God bless you, and farewell."
+
+The Admiral swore by all his gods he should not go. "Dick," he said,
+"you are a selfish dog; you forget your old Admiral. You wouldn't leave
+him alone, would you?"
+
+It was useless to remind him that the house was not his to dispose of,
+that being a class of considerations to which his intelligence was
+closed; so Dick tore himself off by force, and shouting a good-bye, made
+off along the lane to Thymebury.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+IN WHICH THE LIBERAL EDITOR APPEARS AS "DEUS EX MACHINA"
+
+
+It was perhaps a week later, as old Mr. Naseby sat brooding in his
+study, that there was shown in upon him, on urgent business, a little
+hectic gentleman shabbily attired.
+
+"I have to ask pardon for this intrusion, Mr. Naseby," he said; "but I
+come here to perform a duty. My card has been sent in, but perhaps you
+may not know, what it does not tell you, that I am the editor of the
+_Thymebury Star_."
+
+Mr. Naseby looked up, indignant.
+
+"I cannot fancy," he said, "that we have much in common to discuss."
+
+"I have only a word to say--one piece of information to communicate.
+Some months ago, we had--you will pardon my referring to it, it is
+absolutely necessary--but we had an unfortunate difference as to facts."
+
+"Have you come to apologise?" asked the Squire sternly.
+
+"No, sir; to mention a circumstance. On the morning in question, your
+son, Mr. Richard Naseby----"
+
+"I do not permit his name to be mentioned."
+
+"You will, however, permit me," replied the Editor.
+
+"You are cruel," said the Squire. He was right, he was a broken man.
+
+Then the Editor described Dick's warning visit; and how he had seen in
+the lad's eye that there was a thrashing in the wind, and had escaped
+through pity only--so the Editor put it--"through pity only, sir. And
+oh, sir," he went on, "if you had seen him speaking up for you, I am
+sure you would have been proud of your son. I know I admired the lad
+myself, and indeed that's what brings me here."
+
+"I have misjudged him," said the Squire. "Do you know where he is?"
+
+"Yes, sir, he lies sick at Thymebury."
+
+"You can take me to him?"
+
+"I can."
+
+"I pray God he may forgive me," said the father.
+
+And he and the Editor made post-haste for the country town.
+
+Next day the report went abroad that Mr. Richard was reconciled to his
+father and had been taken home to Naseby House. He was still ailing, it
+was said, and the Squire nursed him like the proverbial woman. Rumour,
+in this instance, did no more than justice to the truth; and over the
+sick-bed many confidences were exchanged, and clouds that had been
+growing for years passed away in a few hours, and, as fond mankind loves
+to hope, for ever. Many long talks had been fruitless in external
+action, though fruitful for the understanding of the pair; but at last,
+one showery Tuesday, the Squire might have been observed upon his way to
+the cottage in the lane.
+
+The old gentleman had arranged his features with a view to self-command,
+rather than external cheerfulness; and he entered the cottage on his
+visit of conciliation with the bearing of a clergyman come to announce a
+death.
+
+The Admiral and his daughter were both within, and both looked upon
+their visitor with more surprise than favour.
+
+"Sir," said he to Van Tromp, "I am told I have done you much injustice."
+
+There came a little sound in Esther's throat, and she put her hand
+suddenly to her heart.
+
+"You have, sir; and the acknowledgment suffices," replied the Admiral.
+"I am prepared, sir, to be easy with you, since I hear you have made it
+up with my friend Dick. But let me remind you that you owe some
+apologies to this young lady also."
+
+"I shall have the temerity to ask for more than her forgiveness," said
+the Squire. "Miss Van Tromp," he continued, "once I was in great
+distress, and knew nothing of you or your character; but I believe you
+will pardon a few rough words to an old man who asks forgiveness from
+his heart. I have heard much of you since then; for you have a fervent
+advocate in my house. I believe you will understand that I speak of my
+son. He is, I regret to say, very far from well; he does not pick up as
+the doctors had expected; he has a great deal upon his mind, and, to
+tell you the truth, my girl, if you won't help us, I am afraid I shall
+lose him. Come now, forgive him! I was angry with him once myself, and I
+found I was in the wrong. This is only a misunderstanding, like the
+other, believe me; and, with one kind movement, you may give happiness
+to him, and to me, and to yourself."
+
+Esther made a movement towards the door, but long before she reached it
+she had broken forth sobbing.
+
+"It is all right," said the Admiral; "I understand the sex. Let me make
+you my compliments, Mr. Naseby."
+
+The Squire was too much relieved to be angry.
+
+"My dear," said he to Esther, "you must not agitate yourself."
+
+"She had better go up and see him right away," suggested Van Tromp.
+
+"I had not ventured to propose it," replied the Squire. "_Les
+convenances_, I believe----"
+
+"_Je m'en fiche_," cried the Admiral, snapping his fingers. "She shall
+go and see my friend Dick. Run and get ready, Esther."
+
+Esther obeyed.
+
+"She has not--has not run away again?" inquired Mr. Naseby, as soon as
+she was gone.
+
+"No," said Van Tromp, "not again. She is a devilish odd girl, though,
+mind you that."
+
+"But I cannot stomach the man with the carbuncles," thought the Squire.
+
+And this is why there is a new household and a brand-new baby in Naseby
+Dower House; and why the great Van Tromp lives in pleasant style upon
+the shores of England; and why twenty-six individual copies of the
+_Thymebury Star_ are received daily at the door of Naseby House.
+
+
+
+
+THE MERRY MEN
+
+
+   _My dear Lady Taylor_,
+
+   _To your name, if I wrote on brass, I could add nothing; it has been
+   already written higher than I could dream to reach, by a strong and a
+   dear hand; and if I now dedicate to you these tales,[1] it is not as
+   the writer who brings you his work, but as the friend who would
+   remind you of his affection._
+
+      ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
+
+  _Skerryvore, Bournemouth._
+
+
+
+
+THE MERRY MEN
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+EILEAN AROS
+
+
+It was a beautiful morning in the late July when I set forth on foot for
+the last time for Aros. A boat had put me ashore the night before at
+Grisapol; I had such breakfast as the little inn afforded, and, leaving
+all my baggage till I had an occasion to come round for it by sea,
+struck right across the promontory with a cheerful heart.
+
+I was far from being a native of these parts, springing, as I did, from
+an unmixed lowland stock. But an uncle of mine, Gordon Darnaway, after a
+poor, rough youth, and some years at sea, had married a young wife in
+the islands; Mary Maclean she was called, the last of her family; and
+when she died in giving birth to a daughter, Aros, the sea-girt farm,
+had remained in his possession. It brought him in nothing but the means
+of life, as I was well aware; but he was a man whom ill-fortune had
+pursued; he feared, cumbered as he was with the young child, to make a
+fresh adventure upon life; and remained in Aros, biting his nails at
+destiny. Years passed over his head in that isolation, and brought
+neither help nor contentment. Meantime our family was dying out in the
+lowlands; there is little luck for any of that race; and perhaps my
+father was the luckiest of all, for not only was he one of the last to
+die, but he left a son to his name and a little money to support it. I
+was a student of Edinburgh University, living well enough at my own
+charges, but without kith or kin; when some news of me found its way to
+Uncle Gordon on the Ross of Grisapol; and he, as he was a man who held
+blood thicker than water, wrote to me the day he heard of my existence,
+and taught me to count Aros as my home. Thus it was that I came to spend
+my vacations in that part of the country, so far from all society and
+comfort, between the codfish and the moorcocks; and thus it was that
+now, when I had done with my classes, I was returning thither with so
+light a heart that July day.
+
+The Ross, as we call it, is a promontory neither wide nor high, but as
+rough as God made it to this day; the deep sea on either hand of it,
+full of rugged isles and reefs most perilous to seamen--all overlooked
+from the eastward by some very high cliffs and the great peak of Ben
+Kyaw. _The Mountain of the Mist_, they say the words signify in the
+Gaelic tongue; and it is well named. For that hill-top, which is more
+than three thousand feet in height, catches all the clouds that come
+blowing from the seaward; and, indeed, I used often to think that it
+must make them for itself; since when all heaven was clear to the sea
+level, there would ever be a streamer on Ben Kyaw. It brought water,
+too, and was mossy[2] to the top in consequence. I have seen us sitting
+in broad sunshine on the Ross, and the rain falling black like crape
+upon the mountain. But the wetness of it made it often appear more
+beautiful to my eyes; for when the sun struck upon the hillsides there
+were many wet rocks and watercourses that shone like jewels even as far
+as Aros, fifteen miles away.
+
+The road that I followed was a cattle-track. It twisted so as nearly to
+double the length of my journey; it went over rough boulders so that a
+man had to leap from one to another, and through soft bottoms where the
+moss came nearly to the knee. There was no cultivation anywhere, and
+not one house in the ten miles from Grisapol to Aros. Houses of course
+there were--three at least; but they lay so far on the one side or the
+other that no stranger could have found them from the track. A large
+part of the Ross is covered with big granite rocks, some of them larger
+than a two-roomed house, one beside another, with fern and deep heather
+in between them where the vipers breed. Any way the wind was, it was
+always sea air, as salt as on a ship; the gulls were as free as moorfowl
+over all the Ross; and whenever the way rose a little, your eye would
+kindle with the brightness of the sea. From the very midst of the land,
+on a day of wind and a high spring, I have heard the Roost roaring like
+a battle where it runs by Aros, and the great and fearful voices of the
+breakers that we call the Merry Men.
+
+Aros itself--Aros Jay, I have heard the natives call it, and they say it
+means _the House of God_--Aros itself was not properly a piece of the
+Ross, nor was it quite an islet. It formed the south-west corner of the
+land, fitted close to it, and was in one place only separated from the
+coast by a little gut of the sea, not forty feet across the narrowest.
+When the tide was full, this was clear and still, like a pool on a land
+river; only there was a difference in the weeds and fishes, and the
+water itself was green instead of brown; but when the tide went out, in
+the bottom of the ebb, there was a day or two in every month when you
+could pass dryshod from Aros to the mainland. There was some good
+pasture, where my uncle fed the sheep he lived on; perhaps the feed was
+better because the ground rose higher on the islet than the main level
+of the Ross, but this I am not skilled enough to settle. The house was a
+good one for that country, two stories high. It looked westward over a
+bay, with a pier hard by for a boat, and from the door you could watch
+the vapours blowing on Ben Kyaw.
+
+On all this part of the coast, and especially near Aros, these great
+granite rocks that I have spoken of go down together in troops into the
+sea, like cattle on a summer's day. There they stand, for all the world
+like their neighbours ashore; only the salt water sobbing between them
+instead of the quiet earth, and clots of sea-pink blooming on their
+sides instead of heather; and the great sea-conger to wreathe about the
+base of them instead of the poisonous viper of the land. On calm days
+you can go wandering between them in a boat for hours, echoes following
+you about the labyrinth; but when the sea is up, Heaven help the man
+that hears that caldron boiling.
+
+Off the south-west end of Aros these blocks are very many, and much
+greater in size. Indeed, they must grow monstrously bigger out to sea,
+for there must be ten sea miles of open water sown with them as thick as
+a country place with houses, some standing thirty feet above the tides,
+some covered, but all perilous to ships; so that on a clear, westerly
+blowing day, I have counted, from the top of Aros, the great rollers
+breaking white and heavy over as many as six-and-forty buried reefs. But
+it is nearer in shore that the danger is worst; for the tide, here
+running like a mill-race, makes a long belt of broken water--a _Roost_
+we call it--at the tail of the land. I have often been out there in a
+dead calm at the slack of the tide; and a strange place it is, with the
+sea swirling and combing up and boiling like the caldrons of a linn, and
+now and again a little dancing mutter of sound as though the _Roost_
+were talking to itself. But when the tide begins to run again, and above
+all in heavy weather, there is no man could take a boat within half a
+mile of it, nor a ship afloat that could either steer or live in such a
+place. You can hear the roaring of it six miles away. At the seaward end
+there comes the strongest of the bubble; and it's here that these big
+breakers dance together--the dance of death, it may be called--that have
+got the name, in these parts, of the Merry Men. I have heard it said
+that they run fifty feet high; but that must be the green water only,
+for the spray runs twice as high as that. Whether they got the name
+from their movements, which are swift and antic, or from the shouting
+they make about the turn of the tide, so that all Aros shakes with it,
+is more than I can tell.
+
+The truth is, that in a south-westerly wind, that part of our
+archipelago is no better than a trap. If a ship got through the reefs,
+and weathered the Merry Men, it would be to come ashore on the south
+coast of Aros, in Sandag Bay, where so many dismal things befell our
+family, as I propose to tell. The thought of all these dangers, in the
+place I knew so long, makes me particularly welcome the works now going
+forward to set lights upon the headlands and buoys along the channels of
+our iron-bound, inhospitable islands.
+
+The country people had many a story about Aros, as I used to hear from
+my uncle's man, Rorie, an old servant of the Macleans, who had
+transferred his services without afterthought on the occasion of the
+marriage. There was some tale of an unlucky creature, a sea-kelpie, that
+dwelt and did business in some fearful manner of his own among the
+boiling breakers of the Roost. A mermaid had once met a piper on Sandag
+beach, and there sang to him a long, bright midsummer's night, so that
+in the morning he was found stricken crazy, and from thenceforward, till
+the day he died, said only one form of words; what they were in the
+original Gaelic I cannot tell, but they were thus translated: "Ah, the
+sweet singing out of the sea." Seals that haunted on that coast have
+been known to speak to man in his own tongue, presaging great disasters.
+It was here that a certain saint first landed on his voyage out of
+Ireland to convert the Hebrideans. And, indeed, I think he had some
+claim to be called saint; for, with the boats of that past age, to make
+so rough a passage, and land on such a ticklish coast, was surely not
+far short of the miraculous. It was to him, or to some of his monkish
+underlings who had a cell there, that the islet owes its holy and
+beautiful name, the House of God.
+
+Among these old wives' stories there was one which I was inclined to
+hear with more credulity. As I was told, in that tempest which scattered
+the ships of the Invincible Armada over all the north and west of
+Scotland, one great vessel came ashore on Aros, and before the eyes of
+some solitary people on a hill-top, went down in a moment with all
+hands, her colours flying even as she sank. There was some likelihood in
+this tale; for another of that fleet lay sunk on the north side, twenty
+miles from Grisapol. It was told, I thought, with more detail and
+gravity than its companion stories, and there was one particularity
+which went far to convince me of its truth: the name, that is, of the
+ship was still remembered, and sounded, in my ears, Spanishly. The
+_Espirito Santo_ they called it, a great ship of many decks of guns,
+laden with treasure and grandees of Spain, and fierce soldadoes, that
+now lay fathom deep to all eternity, done with her wars and voyages, in
+Sandag Bay, upon the west of Aros. No more salvos of ordnance for that
+tall ship, the "Holy Spirit," no more fair winds or happy ventures; only
+to rot there deep in the sea-tangle and hear the shoutings of the Merry
+Men as the tide ran high about the island. It was a strange thought to
+me first and last, and only grew stranger as I learned the more of
+Spain, from which she had set sail with so proud a company, and King
+Philip, the wealthy king, that sent her on that voyage.
+
+And now I must tell you, as I walked from Grisapol that day, the
+_Espirito Santo_ was very much in my reflections. I had been favourably
+remarked by our then Principal in Edinburgh College, that famous writer,
+Dr. Robertson, and by him had been set to work on some papers of an
+ancient date to rearrange and sift of what was worthless; and in one of
+these, to my great wonder, I found a note of this very ship, the
+_Espirito Santo_, with her captain's name, and how she carried a great
+part of the Spaniards' treasure, and had been lost upon the Ross of
+Grisapol; but in what particular spot the wild tribes of that place and
+period would give no information to the king's inquiries. Putting one
+thing with another, and taking our island tradition together with this
+note of old King Jamie's perquisitions after wealth, it had come
+strongly on my mind that the spot for which he sought in vain could be
+no other than the small bay of Sandag on my uncle's land; and being a
+fellow of a mechanical turn, I had ever since been plotting how to weigh
+that good ship up again with all her ingots, ounces, and doubloons, and
+bring back our house of Darnaway to its long-forgotten dignity and
+wealth.
+
+This was a design of which I soon had reason to repent. My mind was
+sharply turned on different reflections; and since I became the witness
+of a strange judgment of God's, the thought of dead men's treasures has
+been intolerable to my conscience. But even at that time I must acquit
+myself of sordid greed; for if I desired riches, it was not for their
+own sake, but for the sake of a person who was dear to my heart--my
+uncle's daughter, Mary Ellen. She had been educated well, and had been a
+time to school upon the mainland; which, poor girl, she would have been
+happier without. For Aros was no place for her, with old Rorie the
+servant, and her father, who was one of the unhappiest men in Scotland,
+plainly bred up in a country place among Cameronians, long a skipper
+sailing out of the Clyde about the islands, and now, with infinite
+discontent, managing his sheep and a little 'long shore fishing for the
+necessary bread. If it was sometimes weariful to me, who was there but a
+month or two, you may fancy what it was to her who dwelt in that same
+desert all the year round, with the sheep and flying sea-gulls, and the
+Merry Men singing and dancing in the Roost!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+WHAT THE WRECK HAD BROUGHT TO AROS
+
+
+It was half-flood when I got the length of Aros; and there was nothing
+for it but to stand on the far shore and whistle for Rorie with the
+boat. I had no need to repeat the signal. At the first sound, Mary was
+at the door flying a handkerchief by way of answer, and the old
+long-legged serving-man was shambling down the gravel to the pier. For
+all his hurry, it took him a long while to pull across the bay; and I
+observed him several times to pause, go into the stern, and look over
+curiously into the wake. As he came nearer, he seemed to me aged and
+haggard, and I thought he avoided my eye. The coble had been repaired,
+with two new thwarts and several patches of some rare and beautiful
+foreign wood, the name of it unknown to me.
+
+"Why, Rorie," said I, as we began the return voyage, "this is fine wood.
+How came you by that?"
+
+"It will be hard to cheesel," Rorie opined reluctantly; and just then,
+dropping the oars, he made another of those dives into the stern which I
+had remarked as he came across to fetch me, and, leaning his hand on my
+shoulder, stared with an awful look into the waters of the bay.
+
+"What is wrong?" I asked, a good deal startled.
+
+"It will be a great feesh," said the old man, returning to his oars; and
+nothing more could I get out of him but strange glances and an ominous
+nodding of the head. In spite of myself, I was infected with a measure
+of uneasiness; I turned also, and studied the wake. The water was still
+and transparent, but, out here in the middle of the bay, exceeding deep.
+For some time I could see naught; but at last it did seem to me as if
+something dark--a great fish, or perhaps only a shadow--followed
+studiously in the track of the moving coble. And then I remembered one
+of Rorie's superstitions: how in a ferry in Morven, in some great,
+exterminating feud among the clans, a fish, the like of it unknown in
+all our waters, followed for some years the passage of the ferryboat,
+until no man dared to make the crossing.
+
+"He will be waiting for the right man," said Rorie.
+
+Mary met me on the beach, and led me up the brae and into the house of
+Aros. Outside and inside there were many changes. The garden was fenced
+with the same wood that I had noted in the boat; there were chairs in
+the kitchen covered with strange brocade; curtains of brocade hung from
+the window; a clock stood silent on the dresser; a lamp of brass was
+swinging from the roof; the table was set for dinner with the finest of
+linen and silver; and all these new riches were displayed in the plain
+old kitchen that I knew so well, with the high-backed settle, and the
+stools, and the closet bed for Rorie; with the wide chimney the sun
+shone into, and the clear-smouldering peats; with the pipes on the
+mantelshelf and the three-cornered spittoons, filled with sea-shells
+instead of sand, on the floor; with the bare stone walls and the bare
+wooden floor, and the three patchwork rugs that were of yore its sole
+adornment--poor man's patchwork, the like of it unknown in cities, woven
+with homespun, and Sunday black, and sea-cloth polished on the bench of
+rowing. The room, like the house, had been a sort of wonder in that
+country-side, it was so neat and habitable; and to see it now, shamed by
+these incongruous additions, filled me with indignation and a kind of
+anger. In view of the errand I had come upon to Aros, the feeling was
+baseless and unjust; but it burned high, at the first moment, in my
+heart.
+
+"Mary, girl," said I, "this is the place I had learned to call my home,
+and I do not know it."
+
+"It is my home by nature, not by the learning," she replied; "the place
+I was born and the place I'm like to die in; and I neither like these
+changes, nor the way they came, nor that which came with them. I would
+have liked better, under God's pleasure, they had gone down into the
+sea, and the Merry Men were dancing on them now."
+
+Mary was always serious; it was perhaps the only trait that she shared
+with her father; but the tone with which she uttered these words was
+even graver than of custom.
+
+"Ay," said I, "I feared it came by wreck, and that's by death; yet when
+my father died I took his goods without remorse."
+
+"Your father died a clean-strae death, as the folk say," said Mary.
+
+"True," I returned; "and a wreck is like a judgment. What was she
+called?"
+
+"They ca'd her the _Christ-Anna_," said a voice behind me; and, turning
+round, I saw my uncle standing in the doorway.
+
+He was a sour, small, bilious man, with a long face and very dark eyes;
+fifty-six years old, sound and active in body, and with an air somewhat
+between that of a shepherd and that of a man following the sea. He never
+laughed, that I heard; read long at the Bible; prayed much, like the
+Cameronians he had been brought up among; and, indeed, in many ways,
+used to remind me of one of the hill-preachers in the killing times
+before the Revolution. But he never got much comfort, nor even, as I
+used to think, much guidance, by his piety. He had his black fits when
+he was afraid of hell; but he had led a rough life, to which he would
+look back with envy, and was still a rough, cold, gloomy man.
+
+As he came in at the door out of the sunlight, with his bonnet on his
+head and a pipe hanging in his button-hole, he seemed, like Rorie, to
+have grown older and paler, the lines were deeplier ploughed upon his
+face, and the whites of his eyes were yellow, like old stained ivory, or
+the bones of the dead.
+
+"Ay," he repeated, dwelling upon the first part of the word, "the
+_Christ-Anna_. It's an awfu' name."
+
+I made him my salutations, and complimented him upon his look of health;
+for I feared he had perhaps been ill.
+
+"I'm in the body," he replied, ungraciously enough; "aye in the body and
+the sins of the body, like yoursel'. Denner," he said abruptly to Mary,
+and then ran on, to me: "They're grand braws, thir that we hae gotten,
+are they no'? Yon's a bonny knock,[3] but it'll no gang; and the
+napery's by ordnar. Bonny, bairnly braws; it's for the like o' them folk
+sells the peace of God that passeth understanding; it's for the like o'
+them, an' maybe no' even sae muckle worth, folk daunton God to His face
+and burn in muckle hell; and it's for that reason the Scripture ca's
+them, as I read the passage, the accursed thing.--Mary, ye girzie," he
+interrupted himself to cry with some asperity, "what for hae ye no' put
+out the twa candlesticks?"
+
+"Why should we need them at high noon?" she asked.
+
+But my uncle was not to be turned from his idea. "We'll bruik[4] them
+while we may," he said; and so two massive candlesticks of wrought
+silver were added to the table equipage, already so unsuited to that
+rough seaside farm.
+
+"She cam' ashore Februar' 10, about ten at nicht," he went on to me.
+"There was nae wind, and a sair run o' sea; and she was in the sook o'
+the Roost, as I jaloose. We had seen her a' day, Rorie and me, beating
+to the wind. She wasna a handy craft, I'm thinking, that _Christ-Anna_;
+for she would neither steer nor stey wi' them. A sair day they had of
+it; their hands was never aff the sheets, and it perishin' cauld--ower
+cauld to snaw; and aye they would get a bit nip o' wind, and awa' again,
+to pit the emp'y hope into them. Eh, man! but they had a sair day for
+the last o't! He would have had a prood, prood heart that won ashore
+upon the back o' that."
+
+"And were all lost?" I cried. "God help them!"
+
+"Wheesht!" he said sternly. "Nane shall pray for the deid on my
+hearth-stane."
+
+I disclaimed a Popish sense for my ejaculation; and he seemed to accept
+my disclaimer with unusual facility, and ran on once more upon what had
+evidently become a favourite subject.
+
+"We fand her in Sandag Bay, Rorie an' me, and a' thae braws in the
+inside of her. There's a kittle bit, ye see, about Sandag; whiles the
+sook rins strong for the Merry Men; an' whiles again, when the tide's
+makin' hard an' ye can hear the Roost blawin' at the far-end of Aros,
+there comes a back-spang of current straucht into Sandag Bay. Weel,
+there's the thing that got the grip on the _Christ-Anna_. She buet to
+have come in ram-stam an' stern forrit; for the bows of her are aften
+under, and the back-side of her is clear at hie-water o' neaps. But,
+man! the dunt that she cam doon wi' when she struck! Lord save us a'l
+but it's an unco life to be a sailor--a cauld, wanchancy life. Mony's
+the gliff I got mysel' in the great deep; and why the Lord should hae
+made yon unco water is mair than ever I could win to understand. He made
+the vales and the pastures, the bonny green yaird, the halesome, canty
+land--
+
+  And now they shout and sing to Thee,
+    For Thou hast made them glad,
+
+as the Psalms say in the metrical version. No' that I would preen my
+faith to that clink neither; but it's bonny, and easier to mind. 'Who
+go to sea in ships,' they hae't again--
+
+                       and in
+    Great waters trading be,
+  Within the deep these men God's works
+    And His great wonders see.
+
+Weel, it's easy sayin' sae. Maybe Dauvit wasna very weel acquaint wi'
+the sea. But, troth, if it wasna prentit in the Bible, I wad whiles be
+temp'it to think it wasna the Lord, but the muckle black deil that made
+the sea. There's naething good comes oot o't but the fish; an' the
+spentacle o' God riding on the tempest, to be shuere, whilk would be what
+Dauvit was likely ettling at. But, man, they were sair wonders that God
+showed to the _Christ-Anna_--wonders, do I ca' them? Judgments, rather:
+judgments in the mirk nicht among the draygons o' the deep. And their
+souls--to think o' that--their souls, man, maybe no' prepared! The
+sea--a muckle yett to hell!"
+
+I observed, as my uncle spoke, that his voice was unnaturally moved and
+his manner unwontedly demonstrative. He leaned forward at these last
+words, for example, and touched me on the knee with his spread fingers,
+looking up into my face with a certain pallor, and I could see that his
+eyes shone with a deep-seated fire, and that the lines about his mouth
+were drawn and tremulous.
+
+Even the entrance of Rorie, and the beginning of our meal, did not
+detach him from his train of thought beyond a moment. He condescended,
+indeed, to ask me some questions as to my success at college, but I
+thought it was with half his mind; and even in his extempore grace,
+which was, as usual, long and wandering, I could find the trace of his
+preoccupation, praying, as he did, that God would "remember in mercy
+fower puir, feckless, fiddling, sinful creatures here by their lee-lane
+beside the great and dowie waters."
+
+Soon there came an interchange of speeches between him and Rorie.
+
+"Was it there?" asked my uncle.
+
+"Ou, ay!" said Rorie.
+
+I observed that they both spoke in a manner of aside, and with some show
+of embarrassment, and that Mary herself appeared to colour, and looked
+down on her plate. Partly to show my knowledge, and so relieve the party
+from an awkward strain, partly because I was curious, I pursued the
+subject.
+
+"You mean the fish?" I asked.
+
+"Whatten fish?" cried my uncle. "Fish, quo' he! Fish! Your een are fu'
+o' fatness, man; your heid dozened wi' carnal leir. Fish! it's a bogle!"
+
+He spoke with great vehemence, as though angry; and perhaps I was not
+very willing to be put down so shortly, for young men are disputatious.
+At least I remember I retorted hotly, crying out upon childish
+superstitions.
+
+"And ye come frae the College!" sneered Uncle Gordon. "Gude kens what
+they learn folk there; it's no' muckle service onyway. Do ye think, man,
+that there's naething in a' yon saut wilderness o' a world oot wast
+there, wi' the sea-grasses growin', an' the sea-beasts fechtin', an' the
+sun glintin' down into it, day by day? Na; the sea's like the land, but
+fearsomer. If there's folk ashore, there's folk in the sea--deid they
+may be, but they're folk whatever; and as for deils, there's nane that's
+like the sea-deils. There's no sae muckle harm in the land-deils, when
+a's said and done. Lang syne, when I was a callant in the south country,
+I mind there was an auld, bald bogle in the Peewic Moss. I got a glisk
+o' him mysel', sittin' on his hunkers in a hag, as grey's a tombstane.
+An', troth, he was a fearsome-like taed. But he steered naebody. Nae
+doobt, if ane that was a reprobate, ane the Lord hated, had gane by
+there wi' his sin still upon his stamach, nae doobt the creature would
+hae lowped upo' the likes o' him. But there's deils in the deep sea
+would yoke on a communicant! Eh, sirs, if ye had gane doon wi' the puir
+lads in the _Christ-Anna_, ye would ken by now the mercy o' the seas. If
+ye had sailed it for as lang as me, ye would hate the thocht of it as I
+do. If ye had but used the een God gave ye, ye would hae learned the
+wickedness o' that fause, saut, cauld, bullering creature, and of a'
+that's in it by the Lord's permission: labsters an' partans, an'
+sic-like, howking in the deid; muckle, gutsy, blawing whales; an'
+fish--the hale clan o' them--cauld-wamed, blind-ee'd uncanny ferlies.
+Oh, sirs," he cried, "the horror--the horror o' the sea!"
+
+We were all somewhat staggered by this outburst; and the speaker
+himself, after that last hoarse apostrophe, appeared to sink gloomily
+into his own thoughts. But Rorie, who was greedy of superstitious lore,
+recalled him to the subject by a question.
+
+"You will not ever have seen a teevil of the sea?" he asked.
+
+"No' clearly," replied the other. "I misdoobt if a mere man could see
+ane clearly and conteenue in the body. I hae sailed wi' a lad--they ca'd
+him Sandy Gabart; he saw ane, shuere eneuch, an' shuere eneuch it was the
+end of him. We were seeven days oot frae the Clyde--a sair wark we had
+had--gaun north wi' seeds an' braws an' things for the Macleod. We had
+got in ower near under the Cutchull'ns, an' had just gane about by Soa,
+an' were off on a long tack, we thocht would maybe hauld as far's
+Copnahow. I mind the nicht weel; a mune smoored wi' mist; a fine-gaun
+breeze upon the water, but no steedy; an'--what nane o' us likit to
+hear--anither wund gurlin' owerheid, amang thae fearsome, auld stane
+craigs o' the Cutchull'ns. Weel, Sandy was forrit wi' the jib sheet; we
+couldna see him for the mains'l, that had just begude to draw, when a'
+at ance he gied a skirl. I luffed for my life, for I thocht we were over
+near Soa; but na, it wasna that, it was puir Sandy Gabart's deid
+skreigh, or near-hand, for he was deid in half an hour. A't he could
+tell was that a sea-deil, or sea-bogle, or sea-spenster, or sic-like,
+had clum up by the bowsprit, an' gi'en him ae cauld, uncanny look. An',
+or the life was oot o' Sandy's body, we kent weel what the thing
+betokened, and why the wund gurled in the taps o' the Cutchull'ns; for
+doon it cam'--a wund do I ca' it! It was the wund o' the Lord's
+anger--an' a' that nicht we focht like men dementit, and the neist that
+we kenned we were ashore in Loch Uskevagh, an' the cocks were crawin' in
+Benbecula."
+
+"It will have been a merman," Rorie said.
+
+"A merman!" screamed my uncle with immeasurable scorn. "Auld wives'
+clavers! There's nae sic things as mermen."
+
+"But what was the creature like?" I asked.
+
+"What like was it? Gude forbid that we suld ken what like it was! It had
+a kind of a heid upon it--man could say nae mair."
+
+Then Rorie, smarting under the affront, told several tales of mermen,
+mermaids, and sea-horses that had come ashore upon the islands and
+attacked the crews of boats upon the sea; and my uncle, in spite of his
+incredulity, listened with uneasy interest.
+
+"Aweel, aweel," he said, "it may be sae; I may be wrang; but I find nae
+word o' mermen in the Scriptures."
+
+"And you will find nae word of Aros Roost, maybe," objected Rorie, and
+his argument appeared to carry weight.
+
+When dinner was over, my uncle carried me forth with him to a bank
+behind the house. It was a very hot and quiet afternoon; scarce a ripple
+anywhere upon the sea, nor any voice but the familiar voice of sheep and
+gulls; and perhaps in consequence of this repose in nature, my kinsman
+showed himself more rational and tranquil than before. He spoke evenly
+and almost cheerfully of my career, with every now and then a reference
+to the lost ship or the treasures it had brought to Aros. For my part, I
+listened to him in a sort of trance, gazing with all my heart on that
+remembered scene, and drinking gladly the sea-air and the smoke of
+peats that had been lit by Mary.
+
+Perhaps an hour had passed when my uncle, who had all the while been
+covertly gazing on the surface of the little bay, rose to his feet and
+bade me follow his example. Now I should say that the great run of tide
+at the south-west end of Aros exercises a perturbing influence round all
+the coast. In Sandag Bay, to the south, a strong current runs at certain
+points of the flood and ebb respectively; but in this northern bay--Aros
+Bay, as it is called--where the house stands and on which my uncle was
+now gazing, the only sign of disturbance is towards the end of the ebb,
+and even then it is too slight to be remarkable. When there is any
+swell, nothing can be seen at all; but when it is calm, as it often is,
+there appear certain strange, undecipherable marks--sea-runes, as we may
+name them--on the glassy surface of the bay. The like is common in a
+thousand places on the coast; and many a boy must have amused himself as
+I did, seeking to read in them some reference to himself or those he
+loved. It was to these marks that my uncle now directed my attention,
+struggling, as he did so, with an evident reluctance.
+
+"Do you see yon scart upo' the water?" he inquired; "yon ane wast the
+grey stane? Ay? Weel, it'll no' be like a letter, wull it?"
+
+"Certainly it is," I replied. "I have often remarked it. It is like a
+C."
+
+He heaved a sigh as if heavily disappointed with my answer, and then
+added below his breath: "Ay, for the _Christ-Anna_."
+
+"I used to suppose, sir, it was for myself," said I; "for my name is
+Charles."
+
+"And so ye saw't afore?" he ran on, not heeding my remark. "Weel, weel,
+but that's unco strange. Maybe, it's been there waitin', as a man wad
+say, through a' the weary ages. Man, but that's awfu'." And then,
+breaking off: "Ye'll no' see anither, will ye?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," said I. "I see another very plainly, near the Ross side, where
+the road comes down--an M."
+
+"An M," he repeated very low; and then, again after another pause: "An'
+what wad ye make o' that?" he inquired.
+
+"I had always thought it to mean Mary, sir," I answered, growing
+somewhat red, convinced as I was in my own mind that I was on the
+threshold of a decisive explanation.
+
+But we were each following his own train of thought to the exclusion of
+the other's. My uncle once more paid no attention to my words; only hung
+his head and held his peace; and I might have been led to fancy that he
+had not heard me, if his next speech had not contained a kind of echo
+from my own.
+
+"I would say naething o' thae clavers to Mary," he observed, and began
+to walk forward.
+
+There is a belt of turf along the side of Aros Bay where walking is
+easy; and it was along this that I silently followed my silent kinsman.
+I was perhaps a little disappointed at having lost so good an
+opportunity to declare my love; but I was at the same time far more
+deeply exercised at the change that had befallen my uncle. He was never
+an ordinary, never, in the strict sense, an amiable, man; but there was
+nothing in even the worst that I had known of him before, to prepare me
+for so strange a transformation. It was impossible to close the eyes
+against one fact; that he had, as the saying goes, something on his
+mind; and as I mentally ran over the different words which might be
+represented by the letter M--misery, mercy, marriage, money, and the
+like--I was arrested with a sort of start by the word murder. I was
+still considering the ugly sound and fatal meaning of the word, when the
+direction of our walk brought us to a point from which a view was to be
+had to either side, back towards Aros Bay and homestead, and forward on
+the ocean, dotted to the north with isles, and lying to the southward
+blue and open to the sky. There my guide came to a halt, and stood
+staring for awhile on that expanse. Then he turned to me and laid a hand
+on my arm.
+
+"Ye think there's naething there?" he said, pointing with his pipe; and
+then cried out aloud, with a kind of exultation: "I'll tell ye, man! The
+deid are down there--thick like rattons!"
+
+He turned at once, and, without another word, we retraced our steps to
+the house of Aros.
+
+I was eager to be alone with Mary; yet it was not till after supper, and
+then but for a short while, that I could have a word with her. I lost no
+time beating about the bush, but spoke out plainly what was on my mind.
+
+"Mary," I said, "I have not come to Aros without a hope. If that should
+prove well founded, we may all leave and go somewhere else, secure of
+daily bread and comfort; secure, perhaps, of something far beyond that,
+which it would seem extravagant in me to promise. But there's a hope
+that lies nearer to my heart than money." And at that I paused. "You can
+guess fine what that is, Mary," I said. She looked away from me in
+silence, and that was small encouragement, but I was not to be put off.
+"All my days I have thought the world of you," I continued; "the time
+goes on and I think always the more of you; I could not think to be
+happy or hearty in my life without you: you are the apple of my eye."
+Still she looked away, and said never a word; but I thought I saw that
+her hands shook. "Mary," I cried in fear, "do ye no' like me?"
+
+"Oh, Charlie man," she said, "is this a time to speak of it? Let me be a
+while; let me be the way I am; it'll not be you that loses by the
+waiting!"
+
+I made out by her voice that she was nearly weeping, and this put me out
+of any thought but to compose her. "Mary Ellen," I said, "say no more; I
+did not come to trouble you: your way shall be mine, and your time too;
+and you have told me all I wanted. Only just this one thing more: what
+ails you?"
+
+She owned it was her father, but would enter into no particulars, only
+shook her head, and said he was not well and not like himself, and it
+was a great pity. She knew nothing of the wreck. "I havena been near
+it," said she. "What for would I go near it, Charlie lad? The poor souls
+are gone to their account long syne; and I would just have wished they
+had ta'en their gear with them--poor souls!"
+
+This was scarcely any great encouragement for me to tell her of the
+_Espirito Santo_; yet I did so, and at the very first word she cried out
+in surprise. "There was a man at Grisapol," she said, "in the month of
+May--a little, yellow, black-avised body, they tell me, with gold rings
+upon his fingers, and a beard; and he was speiring high and low for that
+same ship."
+
+It was towards the end of April that I had been given these papers to
+sort out by Dr. Robertson: and it came suddenly back upon my mind that
+they were thus prepared for a Spanish historian, or a man calling
+himself such, who had come with high recommendations to the Principal,
+on a mission of inquiry as to the dispersion of the great Armada.
+Putting one thing with another, I fancied that the visitor "with the
+gold rings upon his fingers" might be the same with Dr. Robertson's
+historian from Madrid. If that were so, he would be more likely after
+treasure for himself than information for a learned society. I made up
+my mind, I should lose no time over my undertaking; and if the ship lay
+sunk in Sandag Bay, as perhaps both he and I supposed, it should not be
+for the advantage of this ringed adventurer, but for Mary and myself,
+and for the good, old, honest, kindly family of the Darnaways.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+LAND AND SEA IN SANDAG BAY
+
+
+I was early afoot next morning; and as soon as I had a bite to eat, set
+forth upon a tour of exploration. Something in my heart distinctly told
+me that I should find the ship of the Armada; and although I did not
+give way entirely to such hopeful thoughts, I was still very light in
+spirits and walked upon air. Aros is a very rough islet, its surface
+strewn with great rocks and shaggy with fern and heather; and my way lay
+almost north and south across the highest knoll; and though the whole
+distance was inside of two miles, it took more time and exertion than
+four upon a level road. Upon the summit, I paused. Although not very
+high--not three hundred feet, as I think--it yet outtops all the
+neighbouring lowlands of the Ross, and commands a great view of sea and
+islands. The sun, which had been up some time, was already hot upon my
+neck; the air was listless and thundery, although purely clear; away
+over the north-west, where the isles lie thickliest congregated, some
+half a dozen small and ragged clouds hung together in a covey; and the
+head of Ben Kyaw wore, not merely a few streamers, but a solid hood of
+vapour. There was a threat in the weather. The sea, it is true, was
+smooth like glass: even the Roost was but a seam on that wide mirror,
+and the Merry Men no more than caps of foam; but to my eye and ear, so
+long familiar with these places, the sea also seemed to lie uneasily; a
+sound of it, like a long sigh, mounted to me where I stood; and, quiet
+as it was, the Roost itself appeared to be revolving mischief. For I
+ought to say that all we dwellers in these parts attributed, if not
+prescience, at least a quality of warning, to that strange and dangerous
+creature of the tides.
+
+I hurried on, then, with the greater speed, and had soon descended the
+slope of Aros to the part that we call Sandag Bay. It is a pretty large
+piece of water compared with the size of the isle; well sheltered from
+all but the prevailing wind; sandy and shoal and bounded by low
+sand-hills to the west, but to the eastward lying several fathoms deep
+along a ledge of rocks. It is upon that side that, at a certain time
+each flood, the current mentioned by my uncle sets so strong into the
+bay; a little later, when the Roost begins to work higher, an undertow
+runs still more strongly in the reverse direction; and it is the action
+of this last, as I suppose, that has scoured that part so deep. Nothing
+is to be seen out of Sandag Bay but one small segment of the horizon
+and, in heavy weather, the breakers flying high over a deep-sea reef.
+
+From half-way down the hill I had perceived the wreck of February last,
+a brig of considerable tonnage, lying, with her back broken, high and
+dry on the east corner of the sands; and I was making directly towards
+it, and already almost on the margin of the turf, when my eyes were
+suddenly arrested by a spot, cleared of fern and heather, and marked by
+one of those long, low, and almost human-looking mounds that we see so
+commonly in graveyards. I stopped like a man shot. Nothing had been said
+to me of any dead man or interment on the island; Rorie, Mary, and my
+uncle had all equally held their peace; of her at least, I was certain
+that she must be ignorant; and yet here, before my eyes, was proof
+indubitable of the fact. Here was a grave; and I had to ask myself, with
+a chill, what manner of man lay there in his last sleep, awaiting the
+signal of the Lord in that solitary, sea-beat resting-place? My mind
+supplied no answer but what I feared to entertain. Shipwrecked, at
+least, he must have been; perhaps, like the old Armada mariners, from
+some far and rich land over-sea; or perhaps one of my own race,
+perishing within eyesight of the smoke of home. I stood awhile uncovered
+by his side, and I could have desired that it had lain in our religion
+to put up some prayer for that unhappy stranger, or, in the old classic
+way, outwardly to honour his misfortune. I knew, although his bones lay
+there, a part of Aros, till the trumpet sounded, his imperishable soul
+was forth and far away, among the raptures of the everlasting Sabbath or
+the pangs of hell; and yet my mind misgave me even with a fear, that
+perhaps he was near me where I stood, guarding his sepulchre, and
+lingering on the scene of his unhappy fate.
+
+Certainly it was with a spirit somewhat overshadowed that I turned away
+from the grave to the hardly less melancholy spectacle of the wreck. Her
+stem was above the first arc of the flood; she was broken in two a
+little abaft the foremast--though indeed she had none, both masts having
+broken short in her disaster; and as the pitch of the beach was very
+sharp and sudden, and the bows lay many feet below the stern, the
+fracture gaped widely open, and you could see right through her poor
+hull upon the farther side. Her name was much defaced, and I could not
+make out clearly whether she was called _Christiania_, after the
+Norwegian city, or _Christiana_, after the good woman, Christian's wife,
+in that old book the "Pilgrim's Progress." By her build she was a
+foreign ship, but I was not certain of her nationality. She had been
+painted green, but the colour was faded and weathered, and the paint
+peeling off in strips. The wreck of the mainmast lay alongside,
+half-buried in sand. She was a forlorn sight, indeed, and I could not
+look without emotion at the bits of rope that still hung about her, so
+often handled of yore by shouting seamen; or the little scuttle where
+they had passed up and down to their affairs; or that poor noseless
+angel of a figure-head that had dipped into so many running billows.
+
+I do not know whether it came most from the ship or from the grave, but
+I fell into some melancholy scruples, as I stood there, leaning with one
+hand against the battered timbers. The homelessness of men, and even of
+inanimate vessels, cast away upon strange shores, came strongly in upon
+my mind. To make a profit of such pitiful misadventures seemed an
+unmanly and a sordid act; and I began to think of my then quest as of
+something sacrilegious in its nature. But when I remembered Mary I took
+heart again. My uncle would never consent to an imprudent marriage, nor
+would she, as I was persuaded, wed without his full approval. It behoved
+me, then, to be up and doing for my wife; and I thought with a laugh how
+long it was since that great sea-castle, the _Espirito Santo_, had left
+her bones in Sandag Bay, and how weak it would be to consider rights so
+long extinguished and misfortunes so long forgotten in the process of
+time.
+
+I had my theory of where to seek for her remains. The set of the current
+and the soundings both pointed to the east side of the bay under the
+ledge of rocks. If she had been lost in Sandag Bay, and if, after these
+centuries, any portion of her held together, it was there that I should
+find it. The water deepens, as I have said, with great rapidity, and
+even close alongside the rocks several fathoms may be found. As I walked
+upon the edge I could see far and wide over the sandy bottom of the bay;
+the sun shone clear and green and steady in the deeps; the bay seemed
+rather like a great transparent crystal, as one sees them in a
+lapidary's shop; there was naught to show that it was water but an
+internal trembling, a hovering within of sun-glints and netted shadows,
+and now and then a faint lap and a dying bubble round the edge. The
+shadows of the rocks lay out for some distance at their feet, so that my
+own shadow, moving, pausing, and stooping on the top of that, reached
+sometimes half across the bay. It was above all in this belt of shadows
+that I hunted for the _Espirito Santo_; since it was there the undertow
+ran strongest, whether in or out. Cool as the whole water seemed this
+broiling day, it looked, in that part, yet cooler, and had a mysterious
+invitation for the eyes. Peer as I pleased, however, I could see nothing
+but a few fishes or a bush of sea-tangle, and here and there a lump of
+rock that had fallen from above and now lay separate on the sandy floor.
+Twice did I pass from one end to the other of the rocks, and in the
+whole distance I could see nothing of the wreck, nor any place but one
+where it was possible for it to be. This was a large terrace in five
+fathoms of water, raised off the surface of the sand to a considerable
+height, and looking from above like a mere outgrowth of the rocks on
+which I walked. It was one mass of great sea-tangles like a grove, which
+prevented me judging of its nature, but in shape and size it bore some
+likeness to a vessel's hull. At least it was my best chance. If the
+_Espirito Santo_ lay not there under the tangles, it lay nowhere at all
+in Sandag Bay; and I prepared to put the question to the proof, once and
+for all, and either go back to Aros a rich man or cured for ever of my
+dreams of wealth.
+
+I stripped to the skin, and stood on the extreme margin with my hands
+clasped, irresolute. The bay at that time was utterly quiet; there was
+no sound but from a school of porpoises somewhere out of sight behind
+the point; yet a certain fear withheld me on the threshold of my
+venture. Sad sea-feelings, scraps of my uncle's superstitions, thoughts
+of the dead, of the grave, of the old broken ships, drifted through my
+mind. But the strong sun upon my shoulders warmed me to the heart, and I
+stooped forward and plunged into the sea.
+
+It was all that I could do to catch a trail of the sea-tangle that grew
+so thickly on the terrace; but once so far anchored I secured myself by
+grasping a whole armful of these thick and slimy stalks, and, planting
+my feet against the edge, I looked around me. On all sides the clear
+sand stretched forth unbroken; it came to the foot of the rocks,
+scoured into the likeness of an alley in a garden by the action of the
+tides; and before me, for as far as I could see, nothing was visible but
+the same many-folded sand upon the sun-bright bottom of the bay. Yet the
+terrace to which I was then holding was as thick with strong sea-growths
+as a tuft of heather, and the cliff from which it bulged hung draped
+below the water-line with brown lianas. In this complexity of forms, all
+swaying together in the current, things were hard to be distinguished;
+and I was still uncertain whether my feet were pressed upon the natural
+rock or upon the timbers of the Armada treasure-ship, when the whole
+tuft of tangle came away in my hand, and in an instant I was on the
+surface, and the shores of the bay and the bright water swam before my
+eyes in a glory of crimson.
+
+I clambered back upon the rocks, and threw the plant of tangle at my
+feet. Something at the same moment rang sharply, like a falling coin. I
+stooped, and there, sure enough, crusted with the red rust, there lay an
+iron shoe-buckle. The sight of this poor human relic thrilled me to the
+heart, but not with hope nor fear, only with a desolate melancholy. I
+held it in my hand, and the thought of its owner appeared before me like
+the presence of an actual man. His weather-beaten face, his sailor's
+hands, his sea-voice hoarse with singing at the capstan, the very foot
+that had once worn that buckle and trod so much along the swerving
+decks--the whole human fact of him, as a creature like myself, with hair
+and blood and seeing eyes, haunted me in that sunny, solitary place, not
+like a spectre, but like some friend whom I had basely injured. Was the
+great treasure-ship indeed below there, with her guns and chain and
+treasure, as she had sailed from Spain; her decks a garden for the
+seaweed, her cabin a breeding-place for fish, soundless but for the
+dredging water, motionless but for the waving of the tangle upon her
+battlements--that old, populous, sea-riding castle, now a reef in Sandag
+Bay? Or, as I thought it likelier, was this a waif from the disaster of
+the foreign brig--was this shoe-buckle bought but the other day and worn
+by a man of my own period in the world's history, hearing the same news
+from day to day, thinking the same thoughts, praying, perhaps, in the
+same temple with myself? However it was, I was assailed with dreary
+thoughts; my uncle's words, "the dead are down there," echoed in my
+ears; and though I determined to dive once more, it was with a strong
+repugnance that I stepped forward to the margin of the rocks.
+
+A great change passed at that moment over the appearance of the bay. It
+was no more that clear, visible interior, like a house roofed with
+glass, where the green submarine sunshine slept so stilly. A breeze, I
+suppose, had flawed the surface, and a sort of trouble and blackness
+filled its bosom, where flashes of light and clouds of shadow tossed
+confusedly together. Even the terrace below obscurely rocked and
+quivered. It seemed a graver thing to venture on this place of ambushes;
+and when I leaped into the sea a second time it was with a quaking in my
+soul.
+
+I secured myself as at first, and groped among the waving tangle. All
+that met my touch was cold and soft and gluey. The thicket was alive
+with crabs and lobsters, trundling to and fro lopsidedly, and I had to
+harden my heart against the horror of their carrion neighbourhood. On
+all sides I could feel the grain and the clefts of hard, living stone;
+no planks, no iron, not a sign of any wreck; the _Espirito Santo_ was
+not there. I remember I had almost a sense of relief in my
+disappointment, and I was about ready to leave go, when something
+happened that sent me to the surface with my heart in my mouth. I had
+already stayed somewhat late over my explorations; the current was
+freshening with the change of the tide, and Sandag Bay was no longer a
+safe place for a single swimmer. Well, just at the last moment there
+came a sudden flush of current, dredging through the tangles like a
+wave. I lost one hold, was flung sprawling on my side, and,
+instinctively grasping for a fresh support, my fingers closed on
+something hard and cold. I think I knew at that moment what it was. At
+least I instantly left hold of the tangle, leaped for the surface, and
+clambered out next moment on the friendly rocks with the bone of a man's
+leg in my grasp.
+
+Mankind is a material creature, slow to think and dull to perceive
+connections. The grave, the wreck of the brig, and the rusty shoe-buckle
+were surely plain advertisements. A child might have read their dismal
+story, and yet it was not until I touched that actual piece of mankind
+that the full horror of the charnel ocean burst upon my spirit. I laid
+the bone beside the buckle, picked up my clothes, and ran as I was along
+the rocks towards the human shore. I could not be far enough from the
+spot; no fortune was vast enough to tempt me back again. The bones of
+the drowned dead should henceforth roll undisturbed by me, whether on
+tangle or minted gold. But as soon as I trod the good earth again, and
+had covered my nakedness against the sun, I knelt down over against the
+ruins of the brig, and out of the fulness of my heart prayed long and
+passionately for all poor souls upon the sea. A generous prayer is never
+presented in vain; the petition may be refused, but the petitioner is
+always, I believe, rewarded by some gracious visitation. The horror, at
+least, was lifted from my mind; I could look with calm of spirit on that
+great bright creature, God's ocean; and as I set off homeward up the
+rough sides of Aros, nothing remained of my concern beyond a deep
+determination to meddle no more with the spoils of wrecked vessels or
+the treasures of the dead.
+
+I was already some way up the hill before I paused to breathe and look
+behind me. The sight that met my eyes was doubly strange.
+
+For, first, the storm that I had foreseen was now advancing with almost
+tropical rapidity. The whole surface of the sea had been dulled from its
+conspicuous brightness to an ugly hue of corrugated lead; already in
+the distance the white waves, the "skipper's daughters," had begun to
+flee before a breeze that was still insensible on Aros; and already
+along the curve of Sandag Bay there was a splashing run of sea that I
+could hear from where I stood. The change upon the sky was even more
+remarkable. There had begun to arise out of the south-west a huge and
+solid continent of scowling cloud; here and there, through rents in its
+contexture, the sun still poured a sheaf of spreading rays; and here and
+there, from all its edges, vast inky streamers lay forth along the yet
+unclouded sky. The menace was express and imminent. Even as I gazed, the
+sun was blotted out. At any moment the tempest might fall upon Aros in
+its might.
+
+The suddenness of this change of weather so fixed my eyes on heaven that
+it was some seconds before they alighted on the bay, mapped out below my
+feet, and robbed a moment later of the sun. The knoll which I had just
+surmounted overflanked a little amphitheatre of lower hillocks sloping
+towards the sea, and beyond that the yellow arc of beach and the whole
+extent of Sandag Bay. It was a scene on which I had often looked down,
+but where I had never before beheld a human figure. I had but just
+turned my back upon it and left it empty, and my wonder may be fancied
+when I saw a boat and several men in that deserted spot. The boat was
+lying by the rocks. A pair of fellows, bareheaded, with their sleeves
+rolled up, and one with a boat-hook, kept her with difficulty to her
+moorings, for the current was growing brisker every moment. A little way
+off upon the ledge two men in black clothes, whom I judged to be
+superior in rank, laid their heads together over some task which at
+first I did not understand, but a second after I had made it out--they
+were taking bearings with the compass; and just then I saw one of them
+unroll a sheet of paper and lay his finger down, as though identifying
+features in a map. Meanwhile a third was walking to and fro, poking
+among the rocks and peering over the edge into the water. While I was
+still watching them with the stupefaction of surprise, my mind hardly
+yet able to work on what my eyes reported, this third person suddenly
+stooped and summoned his companions with a cry so loud that it reached
+my ears upon the hill. The others ran to him, even dropping the compass
+in their hurry, and I could see the bone and the shoe-buckle going from
+hand to hand, causing the most unusual gesticulations of surprise and
+interest. Just then I could hear the seamen crying from the boat, and
+saw them point westward to that cloud continent which was ever the more
+rapidly unfurling its blackness over heaven. The others seemed to
+consult; but the danger was too pressing to be braved, and they bundled
+into the boat, carrying my relics with them, and set forth out of the
+bay with all speed of oars.
+
+I made no more ado about the matter, but turned and ran for the house.
+Whoever these men were, it was fit my uncle should be instantly
+informed. It was not then altogether too late in the day for a descent
+of the Jacobites; and maybe Prince Charlie, whom I knew my uncle to
+detest, was one of the three superiors whom I had seen upon the rock.
+Yet as I ran, leaping from rock to rock, and turned the matter loosely
+in my mind, this theory grew ever the longer the less welcome to my
+reason. The compass, the map, the interest awakened by the buckle, and
+the conduct of that one among the strangers who had looked so often
+below him in the water, all seemed to point to a different explanation
+of their presence on that outlying, obscure islet of the western sea.
+The Madrid historian, the search instituted by Dr. Robertson, the
+bearded stranger with the rings, my own fruitless search that very
+morning in the deep water of Sandag Bay, ran together, piece by piece,
+in my memory, and I made sure that these strangers must be Spaniards in
+quest of ancient treasure and the lost ship of the Armada. But the
+people living in outlying islands, such as Aros, are answerable for
+their own security; there is none near by to protect or even to help
+them; and the presence in such a spot of a crew of foreign
+adventurers--poor, greedy, and most likely lawless--filled me with
+apprehensions for my uncle's money, and even for the safety of his
+daughter. I was still wondering how we were to get rid of them when I
+came, all breathless, to the top of Aros. The whole world was shadowed
+over; only in the extreme east, on a hill of the mainland, one last
+gleam of sunshine lingered like a jewel; rain had begun to fall, not
+heavily, but in great drops; the sea was rising with each moment, and
+already a band of white encircled Aros and the nearer coasts of
+Grisapol. The boat was still pulling seaward, but I now became aware of
+what had been hidden from me lower down--a large, heavily sparred,
+handsome schooner lying-to at the south end of Aros. Since I had not
+seen her in the morning when I had looked around so closely at the signs
+of the weather, and upon these lone waters where a sail was rarely
+visible, it was clear she must have lain last night behind the
+uninhabited Eilean Gour, and this proved conclusively that she was
+manned by strangers to our coast, for that anchorage, though good enough
+to look at, is little better than a trap for ships. With such ignorant
+sailors upon so wild a coast, the coming gale was not unlikely to bring
+death upon its wings.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE GALE
+
+
+I found my uncle at the gable-end, watching the signs of the weather,
+with a pipe in his fingers.
+
+"Uncle," said I, "there were men ashore at Sandag Bay----"
+
+I had no time to go further; indeed, I not only forgot my words, but
+even my weariness, so strange was the effect on Uncle Gordon. He dropped
+his pipe and fell back against the end of the house with his jaw fallen,
+his eyes staring, and his long face as white as paper. We must have
+looked at one another silently for a quarter of a minute, before he made
+answer in this extraordinary fashion: "Had he a hair kep on?"
+
+I knew as well as if I had been there that the man who now lay buried at
+Sandag had worn a hairy cap, and that he had come shore alive. For the
+first and only time I lost toleration for the man who was my benefactor
+and the father of the woman I hoped to call my wife.
+
+"These were living men," said I, "perhaps Jacobites, perhaps the French,
+perhaps pirates, perhaps adventurers come here to seek the Spanish
+treasure-ship; but, whatever they may be, dangerous at least to your
+daughter and my cousin. As for your own guilty terrors, man, the dead
+sleeps well where you have laid him. I stood this morning by his grave;
+he will not wake before the trump of doom."
+
+My kinsman looked upon me, blinking, while I spoke; then he fixed his
+eyes for a little on the ground, and pulled his fingers foolishly; but
+it was plain that he was past the power of speech.
+
+"Come," said I. "You must think for others. You must come up the hill
+with me and see this ship."
+
+He obeyed without a word or a look, following slowly after my impatient
+strides. The spring seemed to have gone out of his body, and he
+scrambled heavily up and down the rocks, instead of leaping, as he was
+wont, from one to another. Nor could I, for all my cries, induce him to
+make better haste. Only once he replied to me complainingly, and like
+one in bodily pain: "Ay, ay, man, I'm coming." Long before we had
+reached the top I had no other thought for him but pity. If the crime
+had been monstrous, the punishment was in proportion.
+
+At last we emerged above the sky-line of the hill, and could see around
+us. All was black and stormy to the eye; the last gleam of sun had
+vanished; a wind had sprung up, not yet high, but gusty and unsteady to
+the point; the rain, on the other hand, had ceased. Short as was the
+interval, the sea already ran vastly higher than when I had stood there
+last; already it had begun to break over some of the outward reefs, and
+already it moaned aloud in the sea-caves of Aros. I looked, at first, in
+vain for the schooner.
+
+"There she is," I said at last. But her new position, and the course she
+was now lying, puzzled me. "They cannot mean to beat to sea," I cried.
+
+"That's what they mean," said my uncle, with something like joy; and
+just then the schooner went about and stood upon another tack, which put
+the question beyond the reach of doubt. These strangers, seeing a gale
+on hand, had thought first of sea-room. With the wind that threatened,
+in these reef-sown waters and contending against so violent a stream of
+tide, their course was certain death.
+
+"Good God!" said I, "they are all lost."
+
+"Ay," returned my uncle, "a'--a' lost. They hadna a chance but to rin
+for Kyle Dona. The gate they're gaun the noo, they couldna win through
+an the muckle deil were there to pilot them. Eh, man," he continued,
+touching me on the sleeve, "it's a braw nicht for a shipwreck! Twa in ae
+twalmonth! Eh, but the Merry Men'll dance bonny!"
+
+I looked at him, and it was then that I began to fancy him no longer in
+his right mind. He was peering up to me, as if for sympathy, a timid joy
+in his eyes. All that had passed between us was already forgotten in the
+prospect of this fresh disaster.
+
+"If it were not too late," I cried with indignation, "I would take the
+coble and go out to warn them."
+
+"Na, na," he protested, "ye maunna interfere; ye maunna meddle wi' the
+like o' that. It's His"--doffing his bonnet--"His wull. And, eh, man!
+but it's a braw nicht for't!"
+
+Something like fear began to creep into my soul; and, reminding him that
+I had not yet dined, I proposed we should return to the house. But no;
+nothing would tear him from his place of outlook.
+
+"I maun see the hail thing, man Charlie," he explained; and then as the
+schooner went about a second time, "Eh, but they han'le her bonny!" he
+cried. "The _Christ-Anna_ was naething to this."
+
+Already the men on board the schooner must have begun to realise some
+part, but not yet the twentieth, of the dangers that environed their
+doomed ship. At every lull of the capricious wind they must have seen
+how fast the current swept them back. Each tack was made shorter, as
+they saw how little it prevailed. Every moment the rising swell began to
+boom and foam upon another sunken reef; and ever and again a breaker
+would fall in sounding ruin under the very bows of her, and the brown
+reef and streaming tangle appear in the hollow of the wave. I tell you,
+they had to stand to their tackle: there was no idle man aboard that
+ship, God knows. It was upon the progress of a scene so horrible to any
+human-hearted man that my misguided uncle now pored and gloated like a
+connoisseur. As I turned to go down the hill, he was lying on his belly
+on the summit, with his hands stretched forth and clutching in the
+heather. He seemed rejuvenated, mind and body.
+
+When I got back to the house already dismally affected, I was still more
+sadly downcast at the sight of Mary. She had her sleeves rolled up over
+her strong arms, and was quietly making bread. I got a bannock from the
+dresser and sat down to eat it in silence.
+
+"Are ye wearied, lad?" she asked after a while.
+
+"I am not so much wearied, Mary," I replied, getting on my feet, "as I
+am weary of delay, and perhaps of Aros too. You know me well enough to
+judge me fairly, say what I like. Well, Mary, you may be sure of this:
+you had better be anywhere but here."
+
+"I'll be sure of one thing," she returned: "I'll be where my duty is."
+
+"You forget, you have a duty to yourself," I said.
+
+"Ay, man," she replied, pounding at the dough; "will you have found that
+in the Bible, now?"
+
+"Mary," I said solemnly, "you must not laugh at me just now. God knows I
+am in no heart for laughing. If we could get your father with us, it
+would be best; but with him or without him, I want you far away from
+here, my girl; for your own sake, and for mine, ay, and for your
+father's too, I want you far--far away from here. I came with other
+thoughts; I came here as a man comes home; now it is all changed, and I
+have no desire nor hope but to flee--for that's the word--flee, like a
+bird out of the fowler's snare, from this accursed island."
+
+She had stopped her work by this time.
+
+"And do you think, now," said she, "do you think, now, I have neither
+eyes nor ears? Do ye think I havena broken my heart to have these braws
+(as he calls them, God forgive him!) thrown into the sea? Do ye think I
+have lived with him, day in, day out, and not seen what you saw in an
+hour or two? No," she said, "I know there's wrong in it; what wrong, I
+neither know nor want to know. There was never an ill thing made better
+by meddling, that I could hear of. But, my lad, you must never ask me to
+leave my father. While the breath is in his body, I'll be with him. And
+he's not long for here, either: that I can tell you, Charlie--he's not
+long for here. The mark is on his brow; and better so--maybe better so."
+
+I was a while silent, not knowing what to say; and when I roused my head
+at last to speak, she got before me.
+
+"Charlie," she said, "what's right for me needna be right for you.
+There's sin upon this house and trouble; you are a stranger; take your
+things upon your back and go your ways to better places and to better
+folk, and if you were ever minded to come back, though it were twenty
+years syne, you would find me aye waiting."
+
+"Mary Ellen," I said, "I asked you to be my wife, and you said as good
+as yes. That's done for good. Wherever you are, I am; as I shall answer
+to my God."
+
+As I said the words the wind suddenly burst out raving, and then seemed
+to stand still and shudder round the house of Aros. It was the first
+squall, or prologue, of the coming tempest, and as we started and looked
+about us, we found that a gloom, like the approach of evening, had
+settled round the house.
+
+"God pity all poor folks at sea!" she said. "We'll see no more of my
+father till the morrow's morning."
+
+And then she told me, as we sat by the fire and hearkened to the rising
+gusts, of how this change had fallen upon my uncle. All last winter he
+had been dark and fitful in his mind. Whenever the Roost ran high, or,
+as Mary said, whenever the Merry Men were dancing, he would lie out for
+hours together on the Head, if it were night, or on the top of Aros by
+day, watching the tumult of the sea, and sweeping the horizon for a
+sail. After February the 10th, when the wealth-bringing wreck was cast
+ashore at Sandag, he had been at first unnaturally gay, and his
+excitement had never fallen in degree, but only changed in kind from
+dark to darker. He neglected his work, and kept Rorie idle. They two
+would speak together by the hour at the gable-end, in guarded tones and
+with an air of secrecy, and almost of guilt; and if she questioned
+either, as at first she sometimes did, her inquiries were put aside with
+confusion. Since Rorie had first remarked the fish that hung about the
+ferry, his master had never set foot but once upon the mainland of the
+Ross. That once--it was in the height of the springs--he had passed
+dry-shod while the tide was out; but, having lingered overlong on the
+far side, found himself cut off from Aros by the returning waters. It
+was with a shriek of agony that he had leaped across the gut, and he had
+reached home thereafter in a fever-fit of fear. A fear of the sea, a
+constant haunting thought of the sea, appeared in his talk and
+devotions, and even in his looks when he was silent.
+
+Rorie alone came in to supper; but a little later my uncle appeared,
+took a bottle under his arm, put some bread in his pocket, and set forth
+again to his outlook, followed this time by Rorie. I heard that the
+schooner was losing ground, but the crew was still fighting every inch
+with hopeless ingenuity and courage; and the news filled my mind with
+blackness.
+
+A little after sundown the full fury of the gale broke forth, such a
+gale as I have never seen in summer, nor, seeing how swiftly it had
+come, even in winter. Mary and I sat in silence, the house quaking
+overhead, the tempest howling without, the fire between us sputtering
+with raindrops. Our thoughts were far away with the poor fellows on the
+schooner, or my not less unhappy uncle, houseless on the promontory; and
+yet ever and again we were startled back to ourselves, when the wind
+would rise and strike the gable like a solid body, or suddenly fall and
+draw away, so that the fire leaped into flame and our hearts bounded in
+our sides. Now the storm in its might would seize and shake the four
+corners of the roof, roaring like Leviathan in anger. Anon, in a lull,
+cold eddies of tempest moved shudderingly in the room, lifting the hair
+upon our heads and passing between us as we sat. And again the wind
+would break forth in a chorus of melancholy sounds, hooting low in the
+chimney, wailing with flutelike softness round the house.
+
+It was perhaps eight o'clock when Rorie came in and pulled me
+mysteriously to the door. My uncle, it appeared, had frightened even his
+constant comrade; and Rorie, uneasy at his extravagance, prayed me to
+come out and share the watch. I hastened to do as I was asked; the more
+readily as, what with fear and horror, and the electrical tension of the
+night, I was myself restless and disposed for action. I told Mary to be
+under no alarm, for I should be a safeguard on her father; and wrapping
+myself warmly in a plaid, I followed Rorie into the open air.
+
+The night, though we were so little past midsummer, was as dark as
+January. Intervals of a groping twilight alternated with spells of utter
+blackness; and it was impossible to trace the reason of these changes in
+the flying horror of the sky. The wind blew the breath out of a man's
+nostrils; all heaven seemed to thunder overhead like one huge sail; and
+when there fell a momentary lull on Aros, we could hear the gusts
+dismally sweeping in the distance. Over all the lowlands of the Ross the
+wind must have blown as fierce as on the open sea; and God only knows
+the uproar that was raging around the head of Ben Kyaw. Sheets of
+mingled spray and rain were driven in our faces. All round the isle of
+Aros the surf, with an incessant, hammering thunder, beat upon the reefs
+and beaches. Now louder in one place, now lower in another, like the
+combinations of orchestral music, the constant mass of sound was hardly
+varied for a moment. And loud above all this hurly-burly I could hear
+the changeful voices of the Roost and the intermittent roaring of the
+Merry Men. At that hour, there flashed into my mind the reason of the
+name that they were called. For the noise of them seemed almost
+mirthful, as it out-topped the other noises of the night; or if not
+mirthful, yet instinct with a portentous joviality. Nay, and it seemed
+even human. As when savage men have drunk away their reason, and,
+discarding speech, bawl together in their madness by the hour; so, to my
+ears, these deadly breakers shouted by Aros in the night.
+
+Arm in arm, and staggering against the wind, Rorie and I won every yard
+of ground with conscious effort. We slipped on the wet sod, we fell
+together sprawling on the rocks. Bruised, drenched, beaten, and
+breathless, it must have taken us near half an hour to get from the
+house down to the Head that overlooks the Roost. There, it seemed, was
+my uncle's favourite observatory. Right in the face of it, where the
+cliff is highest and most sheer, a hump of earth, like a parapet, makes
+a place of shelter from the common winds, where a man may sit in quiet
+and see the tide and the mad billows contending at his feet. As he might
+look down from the window of a house upon some street disturbance, so,
+from this post, he looks down upon the tumbling of the Merry Men. On
+such a night, of course, he peers upon a world of blackness, where the
+waters wheel and boil, where the waves joust together with the noise of
+an explosion, and the foam towers and vanishes in the twinkling of an
+eye. Never before had I seen the Merry Men thus violent. The fury,
+height, and transiency of their spoutings was a thing to be seen and not
+recounted. High over our heads on the cliff rose their white columns in
+the darkness; and the same instant, like phantoms, they were gone.
+Sometimes three at a time would thus aspire and vanish; sometimes a gust
+took them, and the spray would fall about us, heavy as a wave. And yet
+the spectacle was rather maddening in its levity than impressive by its
+force. Thought was beaten down by the confounding uproar; a gleeful
+vacancy possessed the brains of men, a state akin to madness; and I
+found myself at times following the dance of the Merry Men as it were a
+tune upon a jigging instrument.
+
+I first caught sight of my uncle when we were still some yards away in
+one of the flying glimpses of twilight that chequered the pitch darkness
+of the night. He was standing up behind the parapet, his head thrown
+back and the bottle to his mouth. As he put it down, he saw and
+recognised us with a toss of one hand fleeringly above his head.
+
+"Has he been drinking?" shouted I to Rorie.
+
+"He will aye be drunk when the wind blaws," returned Rorie in the same
+high key, and it was all that I could do to hear him.
+
+"Then--was he so--in February?" I inquired.
+
+Rorie's "Ay" was a cause of joy to me. The murder, then, had not sprung
+in cold blood from calculation; it was an act of madness no more to be
+condemned than to be pardoned. My uncle was a dangerous madman, if you
+will, but he was not cruel and base as I had feared. Yet what a scene
+for a carouse, what an incredible vice, was this that the poor man had
+chosen! I have always thought drunkenness a wild and almost fearful
+pleasure, rather demoniacal than human; but drunkenness, out here in the
+roaring blackness, on the edge of a cliff above that hell of waters, the
+man's head spinning like the Roost, his foot tottering on the edge of
+death, his ear watching for the signs of shipwreck, surely that, if it
+were credible in any one, was morally impossible in a man like my uncle,
+whose mind was set upon a damnatory creed and haunted by the darkest
+superstitions. Yet so it was; and, as we reached the bight of shelter
+and could breathe again, I saw the man's eyes shining in the night with
+an unholy glimmer.
+
+"Eh, Charlie man, it's grand!" he cried. "See to them!" he continued,
+dragging me to the edge of the abyss from whence arose that deafening
+clamour and those clouds of spray; "see to them dancin', man! Is that no
+wicked?"
+
+He pronounced the word with gusto, and I thought it suited with the
+scene.
+
+"They're yowlin' for thon schooner," he went on, his thin, insane voice
+clearly audible in the shelter of the bank, "an' she's comin' aye
+nearer, aye nearer, aye nearer an' nearer an' nearer; an' they ken't,
+the folk kens it, they ken weel it's by wi' them. Charlie lad, they're
+a' drunk in yon schooner, a' dozened wi' drink. They were a' drunk in
+the _Christ-Anna_, at the hinder end. There's nane could droon at sea
+wantin' the brandy. Hoot awa, what do you ken?" with a sudden blast of
+anger. "I tell ye, it canna be; they daurna droon without it. Hae,"
+holding out the bottle, "tak' a sowp."
+
+I was about to refuse, but Rorie touched me as if in warning; and indeed
+I had already thought better of the movement. I took the bottle,
+therefore, and not only drank freely myself, but contrived to spill even
+more as I was doing so. It was pure spirit, and almost strangled me to
+swallow. My kinsman did not observe the loss, but, once more throwing
+back his head, drained the remainder to the dregs. Then, with a loud
+laugh, he cast the bottle forth among the Merry Men, who seemed to leap
+up, shouting to receive it.
+
+"Hae, bairns!" he cried, "there's your hansel. Ye'll get bonnier nor
+that or morning."
+
+Suddenly, out in the black night before us, and not two hundred yards
+away, we heard, at a moment when the wind was silent, the clear note of
+a human voice. Instantly the wind swept howling down upon the Head, and
+the Roost bellowed, and churned, and danced with a new fury. But we had
+heard the sound, and we knew, with agony, that this was the doomed ship
+now close on ruin, and that what we had heard was the voice of her
+master issuing his last command. Crouching together on the edge, we
+waited, straining every sense, for the inevitable end. It was long,
+however, and to us it seemed like ages, ere the schooner suddenly
+appeared for one brief instant, relieved against a tower of glimmering
+foam. I still see her reefed mainsail flapping loose, as the boom fell
+heavily across the deck; I still see the black outline of the hull, and
+still think I can distinguish the figure of a man stretched upon the
+tiller. Yet the whole sight we had of her passed swifter than lightning;
+the very wave that disclosed her fell burying her for ever; the mingled
+cry of many voices at the point of death rose and was quenched in the
+roaring of the Merry Men. And with that the tragedy was at an end. The
+strong ship, with all her gear, and the lamp perhaps still burning in
+the cabin, the lives of so many men, precious surely to others, dear, at
+least, as heaven to themselves, had all, in that one moment, gone down
+into the surging waters. They were gone like a dream. And the wind still
+ran and shouted, and the senseless waters in the Roost still leaped and
+tumbled as before.
+
+How long we lay there together, we three, speechless and motionless, is
+more than I can tell, but it must have been for long. At length, one by
+one, and almost mechanically, we crawled back into the shelter of the
+bank. As I lay against the parapet, wholly wretched and not entirely
+master of my mind, I could hear my kinsman maundering to himself in an
+altered and melancholy mood. Now he would repeat to himself with maudlin
+iteration, "Sic a fecht as they had--sic a sair fecht as they had, puir
+lads, puir lads!" and anon he would bewail that "a' the gear was as
+gude's tint," because the ship had gone down among the Merry Men instead
+of stranding on the shore; and throughout, the name--the
+_Christ-Anna_--would come and go in his divagations, pronounced with
+shuddering awe. The storm all this time was rapidly abating. In half an
+hour the wind had fallen to a breeze, and the change was accompanied or
+caused by a heavy, cold, and plumping rain. I must then have fallen
+asleep, and when I came to myself, drenched, stiff, and unrefreshed, day
+had already broken, grey, wet, discomfortable day; the wind blew in
+faint and shifting capfuls, the tide was out, the Roost was at its
+lowest, and only the strong beating surf round all the coasts of Aros
+remained to witness of the furies of the night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+A MAN OUT OF THE SEA
+
+
+Rorie set out for the house in search of warmth and breakfast; but my
+uncle was bent upon examining the shores of Aros, and I felt it a part
+of duty to accompany him throughout. He was now docile and quiet, but
+tremulous and weak in mind and body; and it was with the eagerness of a
+child that he pursued his exploration. He climbed far down upon the
+rocks; on the beaches he pursued the retreating breakers. The merest
+broken plank or rag of cordage was a treasure in his eyes to be secured
+at the peril of his life. To see him, with weak and stumbling footsteps,
+expose himself to the pursuit of the surf, or the snares and pitfalls of
+the weedy rock, kept me in a perpetual terror. My arm was ready to
+support him, my hand clutched him by the skirt, I helped him to draw his
+pitiful discoveries beyond the reach of the returning wave; a nurse
+accompanying a child of seven would have had no different experience.
+
+Yet, weakened as he was by the reaction from his madness of the night
+before, the passions that smouldered in his nature were those of a
+strong man. His terror of the sea, although conquered for the moment,
+was still undiminished; had the sea been a lake of living flames, he
+could not have shrunk more panically from its touch; and once, when his
+foot slipped and he plunged to the mid-leg into a pool of water, the
+shriek that came up out of his soul was like the cry of death. He sat
+still for a while, panting like a dog, after that; but his desire for
+the spoils of shipwreck triumphed once more over his fears; once more
+he tottered among the curded foam; once more he crawled upon the rocks
+among the bursting bubbles; once more his whole heart seemed to be set
+on driftwood, fit, if it was fit for anything, to throw upon the fire.
+Pleased as he was with what he found, he still incessantly grumbled at
+his ill-fortune.
+
+"Aros," he said, "is no' a place for wrecks ava'--no' ava'. A' the years
+I've dwalt here, this ane maks the second; and the best o' the gear
+clean tint!"
+
+"Uncle," said I, for we were now on a stretch of open sand, where there
+was nothing to divert his mind, "I saw you last night, as I never
+thought to see you--you were drunk."
+
+"Na, na," he said, "no' as bad as that. I had been drinking, though. And
+to tell ye the God's truth, it's a thing I canna mend. There's nae
+soberer man than me in my ordnar; but when I hear the wind blaw in my
+lug, it's my belief that I gang gyte."
+
+"You are a religious man," I replied, "and this is sin."
+
+"Ou," he returned, "if it wasna sin, I dinna ken that I would care
+for't. Ye see, man, it's defiance. There's a sair spang o' the auld sin
+o' the world in yon sea; it's an unchristian business at the best o't;
+an' whiles when it gets up, an' the wind skreighs--the wind an' her are
+a kind of sib, I'm thinkin'--an' thae Merry Men, the daft callants,
+blawin' and lauchin', and puir souls in the deid-thraws warstlin' the
+leelang nicht wi' their bit ships--weel, it comes ower me like a
+glamour. I'm a deil, I ken't. But I think naething o' the puir sailor
+lads; I'm wi' the sea, I'm just like ane o' her ain Merry Men."
+
+I thought I should touch him in a joint of his harness. I turned me
+towards the sea; the surf was running gaily, wave after wave, with their
+manes blowing behind them, riding one after another up the beach,
+towering, curving, falling one upon another on the trampled sand.
+Without, the salt air, the scared gulls, the widespread army of the
+sea-chargers, neighing to each other, as they gathered together to the
+assault of Aros; and close before us, that line on the flat sands, that,
+with all their number and their fury, they might never pass.
+
+"Thus far shalt thou go," said I, "and no farther." And then I quoted as
+solemnly as I was able a verse that I had often before fitted to the
+chorus of the breakers:--
+
+  But yet the Lord, that is on high,
+    Is more of might by far
+  Than noise of many waters is,
+    Or great sea-billows are.
+
+"Ay," said my kinsman, "at the hinder end, the Lord will triumph; I
+dinna misdoobt that. But here on earth, even silly men-folk daur Him to
+His face. It is no' wise; I am no sayin' that it's wise; but it's the
+pride of the eye, and it's the lust o' life, an' it's the wale o'
+pleesures."
+
+I said no more, for we had now begun to cross a neck of land that lay
+between us and Sandag; and I withheld my last appeal to the man's better
+reason till we should stand upon the spot associated with his crime. Nor
+did he pursue the subject; but he walked beside me with a firmer step.
+The call that I had made upon his mind acted like a stimulant, and I
+could see that he had forgotten his search for worthless jetsam, in a
+profound, gloomy, and yet stirring train of thought. In three or four
+minutes we had topped the brae and began to go down upon Sandag. The
+wreck had been roughly handled by the sea; the stem had been spun round
+and dragged a little lower down; and perhaps the stern had been forced a
+little higher, for the two parts now lay entirely separate on the beach.
+When we came to the grave I stopped, uncovered my head in the thick
+rain, and, looking my kinsman in the face, addressed him.
+
+"A man," said I, "was in God's providence suffered to escape from mortal
+dangers; he was poor, he was naked, he was wet, he was weary, he was a
+stranger; he had every claim upon the bowels of your compassion; it may
+be that he was the salt of the earth, holy, helpful, and kind; it may be
+he was a man laden with iniquities to whom death was the beginning of
+torment. I ask you in the sight of Heaven: Gordon Darnaway, where is the
+man for whom Christ died?"
+
+He started visibly at the last words; but there came no answer, and his
+face expressed no feeling but a vague alarm.
+
+"You were my father's brother," I continued; "you have taught me to
+count your house as if it were my father's house; and we are both sinful
+men walking before the Lord among the sins and dangers of this life. It
+is by our evil that God leads us into good; we sin, I dare not say by
+His temptation, but I must say with His consent; and to any but the
+brutish man his sins are the beginning of wisdom. God has warned you by
+this crime; He warns you still by the bloody grave between our feet; and
+if there shall follow no repentance, no improvement, no return to Him,
+what can we look for but the following of some memorable judgment?"
+
+Even as I spoke the words, the eyes of my uncle wandered from my face. A
+change fell upon his looks that cannot be described; his features seemed
+to dwindle in size, the colour faded from his cheeks, one hand rose
+waveringly and pointed over my shoulder into the distance, and the
+oft-repeated name fell once more from his lips: "The _Christ-Anna_!"
+
+I turned; and if I was not appalled to the same degree, as I return
+thanks to Heaven that I had not the cause, I was still startled by the
+sight that met my eyes. The form of a man stood upright on the
+cabin-hutch of the wrecked ship; his back was towards us; he appeared to
+be scanning the offing with shaded eyes, and his figure was relieved to
+its full height, which was plainly very great, against the sea and sky.
+I have said a thousand times that I am not superstitious; but at that
+moment, with my mind running upon death and sin, the unexplained
+appearance of a stranger on that sea-girt, solitary island filled me
+with a surprise that bordered close on terror. It seemed scarce possible
+that any human soul should have come ashore alive in such a sea as had
+raged last night along the coast of Aros; and the only vessel within
+miles had gone down before our eyes among the Merry Men. I was assailed
+with doubts that made suspense unbearable, and, to put the matter to the
+touch at once, stepped forward and hailed the figure like a ship.
+
+He turned about, and I thought he started to behold us. At this my
+courage instantly revived, and I called and signed to him to draw near,
+and he, on his part, dropped immediately to the sands, and began slowly
+to approach, with many stops and hesitations. At each repeated mark of
+the man's uneasiness I grew the more confident myself; and I advanced
+another step, encouraging him as I did so with my head and hand. It was
+plain the castaway had heard indifferent accounts of our island
+hospitality; and indeed, about this time, the people farther north had a
+sorry reputation.
+
+"Why," I said, "the man is black!"
+
+And just at that moment, in a voice that I could scarce have recognised,
+my kinsman began swearing and praying in a mingled stream. I looked at
+him; he had fallen on his knees, his face was agonised; at each step of
+the castaway's the pitch of his voice rose, the volubility of his
+utterance and the fervour of his language redoubled. I call it prayer,
+for it was addressed to God; but surely no such ranting incongruities
+were ever before addressed to the Creator by a creature: surely if
+prayer can be a sin, this mad harangue was sinful. I ran to my kinsman,
+I seized him by the shoulders, I dragged him to his feet.
+
+"Silence, man," said I, "respect your God in words, if not in action.
+Here, on the very scene of your transgressions, He sends you an occasion
+of atonement. Forward and embrace it: welcome like a father yon
+creature who comes trembling to your mercy."
+
+With that, I tried to force him towards the black; but he felled me to
+the ground, burst from my grasp, leaving the shoulder of his jacket, and
+fled up the hillside towards the top of Aros like a deer. I staggered to
+my feet again, bruised and somewhat stunned; the negro had paused in
+surprise, perhaps in terror, some half-way between me and the wreck; my
+uncle was already far away, bounding from rock to rock; and I thus found
+myself torn for a time between two duties. But I judged, and I pray
+Heaven that I judged rightly, in favour of the poor wretch upon the
+sands; his misfortune was at least not plainly of his own creation; it
+was one, besides, that I could certainly relieve; and I had begun by
+that time to regard my uncle as an incurable and dismal lunatic. I
+advanced accordingly towards the black, who now awaited my approach with
+folded arms, like one prepared for either destiny. As I came nearer, he
+reached forth his hand with a great gesture, such as I had seen from the
+pulpit, and spoke to me in something of a pulpit voice, but not a word
+was comprehensible. I tried him first in English, then in Gaelic, both
+in vain; so that it was clear we must rely upon the tongue of looks and
+gestures. Thereupon I signed to him to follow me, which he did readily
+and with a grave obeisance like a fallen king; all the while there had
+come no shade of alteration in his face, neither of anxiety while he was
+still waiting, nor of relief now that he was reassured; if he were a
+slave, as I supposed, I could not but judge he must have fallen from
+some high place in his own country, and, fallen as he was, I could not
+but admire his bearing. As we passed the grave, I paused and raised my
+hands and eyes to heaven in token of respect and sorrow for the dead;
+and he, as if in answer, bowed low and spread his hands abroad; it was a
+strange motion, but done like a thing of common custom; and I supposed
+it was ceremonial in the land from which he came. At the same time he
+pointed to my uncle, whom we could just see perched upon a knoll, and
+touched his head to indicate that he was mad.
+
+We took the long way round the shore, for I feared to excite my uncle if
+we struck across the island; and as we walked, I had time enough to
+mature the little dramatic exhibition by which I hoped to satisfy my
+doubts. Accordingly, pausing on a rock, I proceeded to imitate before
+the negro the action of the man whom I had seen the day before taking
+bearings with the compass at Sandag. He understood me at once, and,
+taking the imitation out of my hands, showed me where the boat was,
+pointed out seaward as if to indicate the position of the schooner, and
+then down along the edge of the rock with the words "Espirito Santo,"
+strangely pronounced, but clear enough for recognition. I had thus been
+right in my conjecture; the pretended historical inquiry had been but a
+cloak for treasure-hunting; the man who had played on Dr. Robertson was
+the same as the foreigner who visited Grisapol in spring, and now, with
+many others, lay dead under the Roost of Aros: there had their greed
+brought them, there should their bones be tossed for evermore. In the
+meantime the black continued his imitation of the scene, now looking up
+skyward as though watching the approach of the storm; now, in the
+character of a seaman, waving the rest to come aboard; now as an
+officer, running along the rock and entering the boat; and anon bending
+over imaginary oars with the air of a hurried boatman; but all with the
+same solemnity of manner, so that I was never even moved to smile.
+Lastly, he indicated to me, by a pantomime not to be described in words,
+how he himself had gone up to examine the stranded wreck, and, to his
+grief and indignation, had been deserted by his comrades; and thereupon
+folded his arms once more, and stooped his head, like one accepting
+fate.
+
+The mystery of his presence being thus solved for me, I explained to
+him by means of a sketch the fate of the vessel and of all aboard her.
+He showed no surprise nor sorrow, and, with a sudden lifting of his open
+hand, seemed to dismiss his former friends or masters (whichever they
+had been) into God's pleasure. Respect came upon me and grew stronger,
+the more I observed him; I saw he had a powerful mind and a sober and
+severe character, such as I loved to commune with; and before we reached
+the house of Aros I had almost forgotten, and wholly forgiven him, his
+uncanny colour.
+
+To Mary I told all that had passed without suppression, though I own my
+heart failed me; but I did wrong to doubt her sense of justice.
+
+"You did the right," she said. "God's will be done." And she set out
+meat for us at once.
+
+As soon as I was satisfied, I bade Rorie keep an eye upon the castaway,
+who was still eating, and set forth again myself to find my uncle. I had
+not gone far before I saw him sitting in the same place, upon the very
+topmost knoll, and seemingly in the same attitude as when I had last
+observed him. From that point, as I have said, the most of Aros and the
+neighbouring Ross would be spread below him like a map; and it was plain
+that he kept a bright look-out in all directions, for my head had
+scarcely risen above the summit of the first ascent before he had leaped
+to his feet and turned as if to face me. I hailed him at once, as well
+as I was able, in the same tones and words as I had often used before,
+when I had come to summon him to dinner. He made not so much as a
+movement in reply. I passed on a little farther, and again tried parley,
+with the same result. But when I began a second time to advance, his
+insane fears blazed up again, and still in dead silence, but with
+incredible speed, he began to flee from before me along the rocky summit
+of the hill. An hour before he had been dead weary, and I had been
+comparatively active. But now his strength was recruited by the fervour
+of insanity, and it would have been vain for me to dream of pursuit.
+Nay, the very attempt, I thought, might have inflamed his terrors, and
+thus increased the miseries of our position. And I had nothing left but
+to turn homeward and make my sad report to Mary.
+
+She heard it, as she had heard the first, with a concerned composure,
+and, bidding me lie down and take that rest of which I stood so much in
+need, set forth herself in quest of her misguided father. At that age it
+would have been a strange thing that put me from either meat or sleep; I
+slept long and deep; and it was already long past noon before I awoke
+and came downstairs into the kitchen. Mary, Rorie, and the black
+castaway were seated about the fire in silence; and I could see that
+Mary had been weeping. There was cause enough, as I soon learned, for
+tears. First she, and then Rorie, had been forth to seek my uncle; each
+in turn had found him perched upon the hill-top, and from each in turn
+he had silently and swiftly fled. Rorie had tried to chase him, but in
+vain; madness lent a new vigour to his bounds; he sprang from rock to
+rock over the widest gullies; he scoured like the wind along the
+hill-tops; he doubled and twisted like a hare before the dogs; and Rorie
+at length gave in; and the last that he saw, my uncle was seated as
+before upon the crest of Aros. Even during the hottest excitement of the
+chase, even when the fleet-footed servant had come, for a moment, very
+near to capture him, the poor lunatic had uttered not a sound. He fled,
+and he was silent, like a beast; and this silence had terrified his
+pursuer.
+
+There was something heart-breaking in the situation. How to capture the
+madman, how to feed him in the meanwhile, and what to do with him when
+he was captured, were the three difficulties that we had to solve.
+
+"The black," said I, "is the cause of this attack. It may even be his
+presence in the house that keeps my uncle on the hill. We have done the
+fair thing; he has been fed and warmed under this roof; now I propose
+that Rorie put him across the bay in the coble, and take him through the
+Ross as far as Grisapol."
+
+In this proposal Mary heartily concurred; and bidding the black follow
+us, we all three descended to the pier. Certainly, Heaven's will was
+declared against Gordon Darnaway; a thing had happened, never paralleled
+before in Aros: during the storm, the coble had broken loose, and,
+striking on the rough splinters of the pier, now lay in four feet of
+water with one side stove in. Three days of work at least would be
+required to make her float. But I was not to be beaten. I led the whole
+party round to where the gut was narrowest, swam to the other side, and
+called to the black to follow me. He signed, with the same clearness and
+quiet as before, that he knew not the art; and there was truth apparent
+in his signals, it would have occurred to none of us to doubt his truth;
+and that hope being over, we must all go back even as we came to the
+house of Aros, the negro walking in our midst without embarrassment.
+
+All we could do that day was to make one more attempt to communicate
+with the unhappy madman. Again he was visible on his perch; again he
+fled in silence. But food and a great cloak were at least left for his
+comfort; the rain, besides, had cleared away, and the night promised to
+be even warm. We might compose ourselves, we thought, until the morrow;
+rest was the chief requisite, that we might be strengthened for unusual
+exertions; and as none cared to talk, we separated at an early hour.
+
+I lay long awake, planning a campaign for the morrow. I was to place the
+black on the side of Sandag, whence he should head my uncle towards the
+house; Rorie in the west, I on the east, were to complete the cordon, as
+best we might. It seemed to me, the more I recalled the configuration of
+the island, that it should be possible, though hard, to force him down
+upon the low ground along Aros Bay; and once there, even with the
+strength of his madness, ultimate escape was hardly to be feared. It was
+on his terror of the black that I relied; for I made sure, however he
+might run, it would not be in the direction of the man whom he supposed
+to have returned from the dead, and thus one point of the compass at
+least would be secure.
+
+When at length I fell asleep, it was to be awakened shortly after by a
+dream of wrecks, black men, and submarine adventure; and I found myself
+so shaken and fevered that I arose, descended the stair, and stepped out
+before the house. Within, Rorie and the black were asleep together in
+the kitchen; outside was a wonderful clear night of stars, with here and
+there a cloud still hanging, last stragglers of the tempest. It was near
+the top of the flood, and the Merry Men were roaring in the windless
+quiet of the night. Never, not even in the height of the tempest, had I
+heard their song with greater awe. Now, when the winds were gathered
+home, when the deep was dandling itself back into its summer slumber,
+and when the stars rained their gentle light over land and sea, the
+voice of these tide-breakers was still raised for havoc. They seemed,
+indeed, to be a part of the world's evil and the tragic side of life.
+Nor were their meaningless vociferations the only sounds that broke the
+silence of the night. For I could hear, now shrill and thrilling and now
+almost drowned, the note of a human voice that accompanied the uproar of
+the Roost. I knew it for my kinsman's; and a great fear fell upon me of
+God's judgments, and the evil in the world. I went back again into the
+darkness of the house as into a place of shelter, and lay long upon my
+bed, pondering these mysteries.
+
+It was late when I again woke, and I leaped into my clothes and hurried
+to the kitchen. No one was there; Rorie and the black had both
+stealthily departed long before; and my heart stood still at the
+discovery. I could rely on Rorie's heart, but I placed no trust in his
+discretion. If he had thus set out without a word, he was plainly bent
+upon some service to my uncle. But what service could he hope to render
+even alone, far less in the company of the man in whom my uncle found
+his fears incarnated? Even if I were not already too late to prevent
+some deadly mischief, it was plain I must delay no longer. With the
+thought I was out of the house; and often as I have run on the rough
+sides of Aros, I never ran as I did that fatal morning. I do not believe
+I put twelve minutes to the whole ascent.
+
+My uncle was gone from his perch. The basket had indeed been torn open
+and the meat scattered on the turf; but, as we found afterwards, no
+mouthful had been tasted; and there was not another trace of human
+existence in that wide field of view. Day had already filled the clear
+heavens; the sun already lighted in a rosy bloom upon the crest of Ben
+Kyaw; but all below me the rude knolls of Aros and the shield of sea lay
+steeped in the clear darkling twilight of the dawn.
+
+"Rorie!" I cried; and again "Rorie!" My voice died in the silence, but
+there came no answer back. If there were indeed an enterprise afoot to
+catch my uncle, it was plainly not in fleetness of foot, but in
+dexterity of stalking, that the hunters placed their trust. I ran on
+farther, keeping the higher spurs, and looking right and left, nor did I
+pause again till I was on the mount above Sandag. I could see the wreck,
+the uncovered belt of sand, the waves idly beating, the long ledge of
+rocks, and on either hand the tumbled knolls, boulders, and gullies of
+the island. But still no human thing.
+
+At a stride the sunshine fell on Aros, and the shadows and colours
+leaped into being. Not half a moment later, below me to the west, sheep
+began to scatter as in a panic. There came a cry. I saw my uncle
+running. I saw the black jump up in hot pursuit; and before I had time
+to understand, Rorie also had appeared, calling directions in Gaelic as
+to a dog herding sheep.
+
+I took to my heels to interfere, and perhaps I had done better to have
+waited where I was, for I was the means of cutting off the madman's last
+escape. There was nothing before him from that moment but the grave, the
+wreck, and the sea in Sandag Bay. And yet Heaven knows that what I did
+was for the best.
+
+My Uncle Gordon saw in what direction, horrible to him, the chase was
+driving him. He doubled, darting to the right and left; but high as the
+fever ran in his veins, the black was still the swifter. Turn where he
+would, he was still forestalled, still driven toward the scene of his
+crime. Suddenly he began to shriek aloud, so that the coast re-echoed;
+and now both I and Rorie were calling on the black to stop. But all was
+vain, for it was written otherwise. The pursuer still ran, the chase
+still sped before him screaming; they avoided the grave, and skimmed
+close past the timbers of the wreck; in a breath they had cleared the
+sand; and still my kinsman did not pause, but dashed straight into the
+surf; and the black, now almost within reach, still followed swiftly
+behind him. Rorie and I both stopped, for the thing was now beyond the
+hands of men, and these were the decrees of God that came to pass before
+our eyes. There was never a sharper ending. On that steep beach they
+were beyond their depth at a bound; neither could swim; the black rose
+once for a moment with a throttling cry; but the current had them,
+racing seaward; and if ever they came up again, which God alone can
+tell, it would be ten minutes after, at the far end of Aros Roost, where
+the sea-birds hover fishing.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [1] _i.e._ the six stories which were in 1887 published in a volume
+    entitled _The Merry Men, and Other Tales and Fables_: of this volume
+    "The Merry Men" and "Olalla" formed part.
+
+  [2] Boggy.
+
+  [3] Clock.
+
+  [4] Enjoy.
+
+
+
+
+OLALLA
+
+
+
+
+OLALLA
+
+
+"Now," said the doctor, "my part is done, and, I may say, with some
+vanity, well done. It remains only to get you out of this cold and
+poisonous city, and to give you two months of a pure air and an easy
+conscience. The last is your affair. To the first I think I can help
+you. It falls indeed rather oddly; it was but the other day the Padre
+came in from the country; and as he and I are old friends, although of
+contrary professions, he applied to me in a matter of distress among
+some of his parishioners. This was a family--but you are ignorant of
+Spain, and even the names of our grandees are hardly known to you;
+suffice it, then, that they were once great people, and are now fallen
+to the brink of destitution. Nothing now belongs to them but the
+residencia, and certain leagues of desert mountain, in the greater part
+of which not even a goat could support life. But the house is a fine old
+place, and stands at a great height among the hills, and most
+salubriously; and I had no sooner heard my friend's tale than I
+remembered you. I told him I had a wounded officer, wounded in the good
+cause, who was now able to make a change; and I proposed that his
+friends should take you for a lodger. Instantly the Padre's face grew
+dark, as I had maliciously foreseen it would. It was out of the
+question, he said. Then let them starve, said I, for I have no sympathy
+with tatterdemalion pride. Thereupon we separated, not very content with
+one another; but yesterday, to my wonder, the Padre returned and made a
+submission: the difficulty, he said, he had found upon inquiry to be
+less than he had feared; or, in other words, these proud people had put
+their pride in their pocket. I closed with the offer; and, subject to
+your approval, I have taken rooms for you in the residencia. The air of
+these mountains will renew your blood; and the quiet in which you will
+there live is worth all the medicines in the world."
+
+"Doctor," said I, "you have been throughout my good angel, and your
+advice is a command. But tell me, if you please, something of the family
+with which I am to reside."
+
+"I am coming to that," replied my friend; "and, indeed, there is a
+difficulty in the way. These beggars are, as I have said, of very high
+descent, and swollen with the most baseless vanity; they have lived for
+some generations in a growing isolation, drawing away, on either hand,
+from the rich who had now become too high for them, and from the poor,
+whom they still regarded as too low; and even to-day, when poverty
+forces them to unfasten their door to a guest, they cannot do so without
+a most ungracious stipulation. You are to remain, they say, a stranger;
+they will give you attendance, but they refuse from the first the idea
+of the smallest intimacy."
+
+I will not deny that I was piqued, and perhaps the feeling strengthened
+my desire to go, for I was confident that I could break down that
+barrier if I desired. "There is nothing offensive in such a
+stipulation," said I; "and I even sympathise with the feeling that
+inspired it."
+
+"It is true they have never seen you," returned the doctor politely;
+"and if they knew you were the handsomest and the most pleasant man that
+ever came from England (where I am told that handsome men are common,
+but pleasant ones not so much so), they would doubtless make you welcome
+with a better grace. But since you take the thing so well, it matters
+not. To me, indeed, it seems discourteous. But you will find yourself
+the gainer. The family will not much tempt you. A mother, a son, and a
+daughter; an old woman said to be half-witted, a country lout, and a
+country girl, who stands very high with her confessor, and is,
+therefore," chuckled the physician, "most likely plain; there is not much
+in that to attract the fancy of a dashing officer."
+
+"And yet you say they are high-born," I objected.
+
+"Well, as to that, I should distinguish," returned the doctor. "The
+mother is; not so the children. The mother was the last representative
+of a princely stock, degenerate both in parts and fortune. Her father
+was not only poor, he was mad: and the girl ran wild about the
+residencia till his death. Then, much of the fortune having died with
+him, and the family being quite extinct, the girl ran wilder than ever,
+until at last she married, Heaven knows whom, a muleteer some say,
+others a smuggler; while there are some who uphold there was no marriage
+at all, and that Felipe and Olalla are bastards. The union, such as it
+was, was tragically dissolved some years ago; but they live in such
+seclusion, and the country at that time was in so much disorder, that
+the precise manner of the man's end is known only to the priest--if even
+to him."
+
+"I begin to think I shall have strange experiences," said I.
+
+"I would not romance, if I were you," replied the doctor; "you will
+find, I fear, a very grovelling and commonplace reality. Felipe, for
+instance, I have seen. And what am I to say? He is very rustic, very
+cunning, very loutish, and, I should say, an innocent; the others are
+probably to match. No, no, senor commandante, you must seek congenial
+society among the great sights of our mountains; and in these at least,
+if you are at all a lover of the works of nature, I promise you will not
+be disappointed."
+
+The next day Felipe came for me in a rough country cart, drawn by a
+mule; and a little before the stroke of noon, after I had said farewell
+to the doctor, the innkeeper, and different good souls who had
+befriended me during my sickness, we set forth out of the city by the
+eastern gate, and began to ascend into the Sierra. I had been so long a
+prisoner, since I was left behind for dying after the loss of the
+convoy, that the mere smell of the earth set me smiling. The country
+through which we went was wild and rocky, partially covered with rough
+woods, now of the cork-tree, and now of the great Spanish chestnut, and
+frequently intersected by the beds of mountain torrents. The sun shone,
+the wind rustled joyously; and we had advanced some miles, and the city
+had already shrunk into an inconsiderable knoll upon the plain behind
+us, before my attention began to be diverted to the companion of my
+drive. To the eye, he seemed but a diminutive, loutish, well-made
+country lad, such as the doctor had described, mighty quick and active,
+but devoid of any culture; and this first impression was with most
+observers final. What began to strike me was his familiar, chattering
+talk; so strangely inconsistent with the terms on which I was to be
+received; and partly from his imperfect enunciation, partly from the
+sprightly incoherence of the matter, so very difficult to follow clearly
+without an effort of the mind. It is true I had before talked with
+persons of a similar mental constitution; persons who seemed to live (as
+he did) by the senses, taken and possessed by the visual object of the
+moment and unable to discharge their minds of that impression. His
+seemed to me (as I sat, distantly giving ear) a kind of conversation
+proper to drivers, who pass much of their time in a great vacancy of the
+intellect and threading the sights of a familiar country. But this was
+not the case of Felipe; by his own account, he was a home-keeper; "I
+wish I was there now," he said; and then, spying a tree by the wayside,
+he broke off to tell me that he had once seen a crow among its branches.
+
+"A crow?" I repeated, struck by the ineptitude of the remark, and
+thinking I had heard imperfectly.
+
+But by this time he was already filled with a new idea; hearkening with
+a rapt intentness, his head on one side, his face puckered; and he
+struck me rudely, to make me hold my peace. Then he smiled and shook his
+head.
+
+"What did you hear?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, it is all right," he said; and began encouraging his mule with
+cries that echoed unhumanly up the mountain walls.
+
+I looked at him more closely. He was superlatively well-built, light,
+and lithe and strong; he was well-featured; his yellow eyes were very
+large, though, perhaps, not very expressive; take him altogether, he was
+a pleasant-looking lad, and I had no fault to find with him, beyond that
+he was of a dusky hue, and inclined to hairiness; two characteristics
+that I disliked. It was his mind that puzzled, and yet attracted me. The
+doctor's phrase--an innocent--came back to me; and I was wondering if
+that were, after all, the true description, when the road began to go
+down into the narrow and naked chasm of a torrent. The waters thundered
+tumultuously in the bottom; and the ravine was filled full of the sound,
+the thin spray, and the claps of wind, that accompanied their descent.
+The scene was certainly impressive; but the road was in that part very
+securely walled in; the mule went steadily forward; and I was astonished
+to perceive the paleness of terror in the face of my companion. The
+voice of that wild river was inconstant, now sinking lower as if in
+weariness, now doubling its hoarse tones; momentary freshets seemed to
+swell its volume, sweeping down the gorge, raving and booming against
+the barrier walls; and I observed it was at each of these accessions to
+the clamour that my driver more particularly winced and blanched. Some
+thoughts of Scottish superstition and the river-kelpie passed across my
+mind; I wondered if perchance the like were prevalent in that part of
+Spain; and turning to Felipe, sought to draw him out.
+
+"What is the matter?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, I am afraid," he replied.
+
+"Of what are you afraid?" I returned. "This seems one of the safest
+places on this very dangerous road."
+
+"It makes a noise," he said, with a simplicity of awe that set my doubts
+at rest.
+
+The lad was but a child in intellect; his mind was like his body, active
+and swift, but stunted in development; and I began from that time forth
+to regard him with a measure of pity, and to listen at first with
+indulgence, and at last even with pleasure, to his disjointed babble.
+
+By about four in the afternoon we had crossed the summit of the mountain
+line, said farewell to the western sunshine, and began to go down upon
+the other side, skirting the edge of many ravines and moving through the
+shadow of dusky woods. There rose upon all sides the voice of falling
+water, not condensed and formidable as in the gorge of the river, but
+scattered and sounding gaily and musically from glen to glen. Here, too,
+the spirits of my driver mended, and he began to sing aloud in a
+falsetto voice, and with a singular bluntness of musical perception,
+never true either to melody or key, but wandering at will, and yet
+somehow with an effect that was natural and pleasing, like that of the
+song of birds. As the dusk increased, I fell more and more under the
+spell of this artless warbling, listening and waiting for some
+articulate air, and still disappointed; and when at last I asked him
+what it was he sang--"Oh," cried he, "I am just singing!" Above all, I
+was taken with a trick he had of unweariedly repeating the same note at
+little intervals; it was not so monotonous as you would think, or, at
+least, not disagreeable; and it seemed to breathe a wonderful
+contentment with what is, such as we love to fancy in the attitude of
+trees, or the quiescence of a pool.
+
+Night had fallen dark before we came out upon a plateau, and drew up a
+little after, before a certain lump of superior blackness which I could
+only conjecture to be the residencia. Here my guide, getting down from
+the cart, hooted and whistled for a long time in vain; until at last an
+old peasant man came towards us from somewhere in the surrounding dark,
+carrying a candle in his hand. By the light of this I was able to
+perceive a great arched doorway of a Moorish character: it was closed by
+iron-studded gates, in one of the leaves of which Felipe opened a
+wicket. The peasant carried off the cart to some out-building; but my
+guide and I passed through the wicket, which was closed again behind us;
+and, by the glimmer of the candle, passed through a court, up a stone
+stair, along a section of an open gallery, and up more stairs again,
+until we came at last to the door of a great and somewhat bare
+apartment. This room, which I understood was to be mine, was pierced by
+three windows, lined with some lustrous wood disposed in panels, and
+carpeted with the skins of many savage animals. A bright fire burned in
+the chimney, and shed abroad a changeful flicker; close up to the blaze
+there was drawn a table, laid for supper; and in the far end a bed stood
+ready. I was pleased by these preparations, and said so to Felipe; and
+he, with the same simplicity of disposition that I had already remarked
+in him, warmly re-echoed my praises. "A fine room," he said; "a very
+fine room. And fire, too; fire is good; it melts out the pleasure in
+your bones. And the bed," he continued, carrying over the candle in that
+direction--"see what fine sheets--how soft, how smooth, smooth"; and he
+passed his hand again and again over their texture, and then laid down
+his head and rubbed his cheeks among them with a grossness of content
+that somehow offended me. I took the candle from his hand (for I feared
+he would set the bed on fire) and walked back to the supper-table,
+where, perceiving a measure of wine, I poured out a cup and called to
+him to come and drink of it. He started to his feet at once and ran to
+me with a strong expression of hope; but when he saw the wine he visibly
+shuddered.
+
+"Oh, no," he said, "not that; that is for you. I hate it."
+
+"Very well, Senor," said I; "then I will drink to your good health, and
+to the prosperity of your house and family. Speaking of which," I added,
+after I had drunk, "shall I not have the pleasure of laying my
+salutations in person at the feet of the Senora, your mother?"
+
+But at these words all the childishness passed out of his face, and was
+succeeded by a look of indescribable cunning and secrecy. He backed away
+from me at the same time, as though I were an animal about to leap or
+some dangerous fellow with a weapon, and when he had got near the door,
+glowered at me sullenly with contracted pupils. "No," he said at last,
+and the next moment was gone noiselessly out of the room; and I heard
+his footing die away downstairs as light as rainfall, and silence closed
+over the house.
+
+After I had supped I drew up the table nearer to the bed and began to
+prepare for rest; but in the new position of the light, I was struck by
+a picture on the wall. It represented a woman, still young. To judge by
+her costume and the mellow unity which reigned over the canvas, she had
+long been dead; to judge by the vivacity of the attitude, the eyes and
+the features, I might have been beholding in a mirror the image of life.
+Her figure was very slim and strong, and of a just proportion; red
+tresses lay like a crown over her brow; her eyes, of a very golden
+brown, held mine with a look; and her face, which was perfectly shaped,
+was yet marred by a cruel, sullen, and sensual expression. Something in
+both face and figure, something exquisitely intangible, like the echo of
+an echo, suggested the features and bearing of my guide; and I stood a
+while unpleasantly attracted and wondering at the oddity of the
+resemblance. The common, carnal stock of that race, which had been
+originally designed for such high dames as the one now looking on me
+from the canvas, had fallen to baser uses, wearing country clothes,
+sitting on the shaft and holding the reins of a mule cart, to bring
+home a lodger. Perhaps an actual link subsisted; perhaps some scruple of
+the delicate flesh that was once clothed upon with the satin and brocade
+of the dead lady, now winced at the rude contact of Felipe's frieze.
+
+The first light of the morning shone full upon the portrait, and, as I
+lay awake, my eyes continued to dwell upon it with growing complacency;
+its beauty crept about my heart insidiously, silencing my scruples one
+after another; and while I knew that to love such a woman were to sign
+and seal one's own sentence of degeneration, I still knew that, if she
+were alive, I should love her. Day after day the double knowledge of her
+wickedness and of my weakness grew clearer. She came to be the heroine
+of many day-dreams, in which her eyes led on to, and sufficiently
+rewarded, crimes. She cast a dark shadow on my fancy, and when I was out
+in the free air of heaven, taking vigorous exercise and healthily
+renewing the current of my blood, it was often a glad thought to me that
+my enchantress was safe in the grave, her wand of beauty broken, her
+lips closed in silence, her philtre spilt. And yet I had a
+half-lingering terror that she might not be dead after all, but
+re-arisen in the body of some descendant.
+
+Felipe served my meals in my own apartment; and his resemblance to the
+portrait haunted me. At times it was not; at times, upon some change of
+attitude or flash of expression, it would leap out upon me like a ghost.
+It was above all in his ill tempers that the likeness triumphed. He
+certainly liked me; he was proud of my notice, which he sought to engage
+by many simple and childlike devices; he loved to sit close before my
+fire, talking his broken talk or singing his odd, endless, wordless,
+songs, and sometimes drawing his hand over my clothes with an
+affectionate manner of caressing that never failed to cause in me an
+embarrassment of which I was ashamed. But for all that, he was capable
+of flashes of causeless anger and fits of sturdy sullenness. At a word
+of reproof, I have seen him upset the dish of which I was about to eat,
+and this not surreptitiously, but with defiance; and similarly at a hint
+of inquisition. I was not unnaturally curious, being in a strange place
+and surrounded by strange people; but at the shadow of a question he
+shrank back, lowering and dangerous. Then it was that, for a fraction of
+a second, this rough lad might have been the brother of the lady in the
+frame. But these humours were swift to pass; and the resemblance died
+along with them.
+
+In these first days I saw nothing of any one but Felipe, unless the
+portrait is to be counted; and since the lad was plainly of weak mind,
+and had moments of passion, it may be wondered that I bore his dangerous
+neighbourhood with equanimity. As a matter of fact, it was for some time
+irksome; but it happened before long that I obtained over him so
+complete a mastery as set my disquietude at rest.
+
+It fell in this way. He was by nature slothful, and much of a vagabond,
+and yet he kept by the house, and not only waited upon my wants, but
+laboured every day in the garden or small farm to the south of the
+residencia. Here he would be joined by the peasant whom I had seen on
+the night of my arrival, and who dwelt at the far end of the enclosure,
+about half a mile away, in a rude out-house; but it was plain to me that
+of these two, it was Felipe who did most; and though I would sometimes
+see him throw down his spade and go to sleep among the very plants he
+had been digging, his constancy and energy were admirable in themselves,
+and still more so since I was well assured they were foreign to his
+disposition, and the fruit of an ungrateful effort. But while I admired,
+I wondered what had called forth in a lad so shuttle-witted this
+enduring sense of duty. How was it sustained? I asked myself, and to
+what length did it prevail over his instincts? The priest was possibly
+his inspirer; but the priest came one day to the residencia. I saw him
+both come and go after an interval of close upon an hour, from a knoll
+where I was sketching, and all that time Felipe continued to labour
+undisturbed in the garden.
+
+At last, in a very unworthy spirit, I determined to debauch the lad from
+his good resolutions, and, waylaying him at the gate, easily persuaded
+him to join me in a ramble. It was a fine day, and the woods to which I
+led him were green and pleasant and sweet-smelling, and alive with the
+hum of insects. Here he discovered himself in a fresh character,
+mounting up to heights of gaiety that abashed me, and displaying an
+energy and grace of movement that delighted the eye. He leaped, he ran
+round me in mere glee; he would stop, and look and listen, and seem to
+drink in the world like a cordial; and then he would suddenly spring
+into a tree with one bound, and hang and gambol there like one at home.
+Little as he said to me, and that of not much import, I have rarely
+enjoyed more stirring company; the sight of his delight was a continual
+feast; the speed and accuracy of his movements pleased me to the heart;
+and I might have been so thoughtlessly unkind as to make a habit of
+these walks, had not chance prepared a very rude conclusion to my
+pleasure. By some swiftness or dexterity the lad captured a squirrel in
+a tree top. He was then some way ahead of me, but I saw him drop to the
+ground and crouch there, crying aloud for pleasure like a child. The
+sound stirred my sympathies, it was so fresh and innocent; but as I
+bettered my pace to draw near, the cry of the squirrel knocked upon my
+heart. I have heard and seen much of the cruelty of lads, and above all,
+of peasants; but what I now beheld struck me into a passion of anger. I
+thrust the fellow aside, plucked the poor brute out of his hands, and
+with swift mercy killed it. Then I turned upon the torturer, spoke to
+him long out of the heat of my indignation, calling him names at which
+he seemed to wither; and at length, pointing towards the residencia,
+bade him begone and leave me, for I chose to walk with men, not with
+vermin. He fell upon his knees, and, the words coming to him with more
+clearness than usual, poured out a stream of the most touching
+supplications, begging me in mercy to forgive him, to forget what he had
+done, to look to the future. "Oh, I try so hard," he said. "Oh,
+commandante, bear with Felipe this once; he will never be a brute
+again!" Thereupon, much more affected than I cared to show, I suffered
+myself to be persuaded, and at last shook hands with him and made it up.
+But the squirrel, by way of penance, I made him bury; speaking of the
+poor thing's beauty, telling him what pains it had suffered, and how
+base a thing was the abuse of strength. "See, Felipe," said I, "you are
+strong indeed; but in my hands you are as helpless as that poor thing of
+the trees. Give me your hand in mine. You cannot remove it. Now suppose
+that I were cruel like you, and took a pleasure in pain. I only tighten
+my hold, and see how you suffer." He screamed aloud, his face stricken
+ashy and dotted with needle-points of sweat; and when I set him free, he
+fell to the earth and nursed his hand and moaned over it like a baby.
+But he took the lesson in good part; and whether from that, or from what
+I had said to him, or the higher notion he now had of my bodily
+strength, his original affection was changed into a dog-like, adoring
+fidelity.
+
+Meanwhile I gained rapidly in health. The residencia stood on the crown
+of a stony plateau; on every side the mountains hemmed it about; only
+from the roof, where was a bartizan, there might be seen, between two
+peaks, a small segment of plain, blue with extreme distance. The air in
+these altitudes moved freely and largely; great clouds congregated
+there, and were broken up by the wind and left in tatters on the
+hill-tops; a hoarse and yet faint rumbling of torrents rose from all
+round; and one could there study all the ruder and more ancient
+characters of nature in something of their pristine force. I delighted
+from the first in the vigorous scenery and changeful weather; nor less
+in the antique and dilapidated mansion where I dwelt. This was a large
+oblong, flanked at two opposite corners by bastion-like projections, one
+of which commanded the door, while both were loopholed for musketry. The
+lower story was, besides, naked of windows, so that the building, if
+garrisoned, could not be carried without artillery. It enclosed an open
+court planted with pomegranate trees. From this a broad flight of marble
+stairs ascended to an open gallery, running all round and resting,
+towards the court, on slender pillars. Thence, again, several enclosed
+stairs led to the upper stories of the house, which were thus broken up
+into distinct divisions. The windows, both within and without, were
+closely shuttered; some of the stonework in the upper parts had fallen;
+the roof, in one place, had been wrecked in one of the flurries of wind
+which were common in these mountains; and the whole house, in the
+strong, beating sunlight, and standing out above a grove of stunted
+cork-trees, thickly laden and discoloured with dust, looked like the
+sleeping palace of the legend. The court, in particular, seemed the very
+home of slumber. A hoarse cooing of doves haunted about the eaves; the
+winds were excluded, but when they blew outside, the mountain dust fell
+here as thick as rain, and veiled the red bloom of the pomegranates;
+shuttered windows and the closed doors of numerous cellars, and the
+vacant arches of the gallery, enclosed it; and all day long the sun made
+broken profiles on the four sides, and paraded the shadow of the pillars
+on the gallery floor. At the ground level there was, however, a certain
+pillared recess, which bore the marks of human habitation. Though it was
+open in front upon the court, it was yet provided with a chimney, where
+a wood fire would be always prettily blazing; and the tile floor was
+littered with the skins of animals.
+
+It was in this place that I first saw my hostess. She had drawn one of
+the skins forward and sat in the sun, leaning against a pillar. It was
+her dress that struck me first of all, for it was rich and brightly
+coloured, and shone out in that dusty courtyard with something of the
+same relief as the flowers of the pomegranates. At a second look it was
+her beauty of person that took hold of me. As she sat back--watching me,
+I thought, though with invisible eyes--and wearing at the same time an
+expression of almost imbecile good-humour and contentment, she showed a
+perfectness of feature and a quiet nobility of attitude that were beyond
+a statue's. I took off my hat to her in passing, and her face puckered
+with suspicion as swiftly and lightly as a pool ruffles in the breeze;
+but she paid no heed to my courtesy. I went forth on my customary walk a
+trifle daunted, her idol-like impassivity haunting me; and when I
+returned, although she was still in much the same posture, I was half
+surprised to see that she had moved as far as the next pillar, following
+the sunshine. This time, however, she addressed me with some trivial
+salutation, civilly enough conceived, and uttered in the same
+deep-chested, and yet indistinct and lisping tones, that had already
+baffled the utmost niceness of my hearing from her son. I answered
+rather at a venture; for not only did I fail to take her meaning with
+precision, but the sudden disclosure of her eyes disturbed me. They were
+unusually large, the iris golden like Felipe's, but the pupil at that
+moment so distended that they seemed almost black; and what affected me
+was not so much their size as (what was perhaps its consequence) the
+singular insignificance of their regard. A look more blankly stupid I
+have never met. My eyes dropped before it even as I spoke, and I went on
+my way upstairs to my own room, at once baffled and embarrassed. Yet
+when I came there and saw the face of the portrait, I was again reminded
+of the miracle of family descent. My hostess was, indeed, both older and
+fuller in person; her eyes were of a different colour; her face,
+besides, was not only free from the ill-significance that offended and
+attracted me in the painting; it was devoid of either good or bad--a
+moral blank expressing literally naught. And yet there was a likeness,
+not so much speaking as immanent, not so much in any particular feature
+as upon the whole. It should seem, I thought, as if when the master set
+his signature to that grave canvas, he had not only caught the image of
+one smiling and false-eyed woman, but stamped the essential quality of a
+race.
+
+From that day forth, whether I came or went, I was sure to find the
+Senora seated in the sun against a pillar, or stretched on a rug before
+the fire; only at times she would shift her station to the top round of
+the stone staircase, where she lay with the same nonchalance right
+across my path. In all these days, I never knew her to display the least
+spark of energy beyond what she expended in brushing and re-brushing her
+copious copper-coloured hair, or in lisping out, in the rich and broken
+hoarseness of her voice, her customary idle salutations to myself.
+These, I think, were her two chief pleasures, beyond that of mere
+quiescence. She seemed always proud of her remarks, as though they had
+been witticisms: and, indeed, though they were empty enough, like the
+conversation of many respectable persons, and turned on a very narrow
+range of subjects, they were never meaningless or incoherent; nay, they
+had a certain beauty of their own, breathing, as they did, of her entire
+contentment. Now she would speak of the warmth, in which (like her son)
+she greatly delighted; now of the flowers of the pomegranate trees, and
+now of the white doves and long-winged swallows that fanned the air of
+the court. The birds excited her. As they raked the eaves in their swift
+flight, or skimmed sidelong past her with a rush of wind, she would
+sometimes stir, and sit a little up, and seem to awaken from her doze of
+satisfaction. But for the rest of her days she lay luxuriously folded on
+herself and sunk in sloth and pleasure. Her invincible content at first
+annoyed me, but I came gradually to find repose in the spectacle, until
+at last it grew to be my habit to sit down beside her four times in the
+day, both coming and going, and to talk with her sleepily, I scarce knew
+of what. I had come to like her dull, almost animal neighbourhood; her
+beauty and her stupidity soothed and amused me. I began to find a kind
+of transcendental good sense in her remarks, and her unfathomable
+good-nature moved me to admiration and envy. The liking was returned;
+she enjoyed my presence half-unconsciously, as a man in deep meditation
+may enjoy the babbling of a brook. I can scarce say she brightened when
+I came, for satisfaction was written on her face eternally, as on some
+foolish statue's; but I was made conscious of her pleasure by some more
+intimate communication than the sight. And one day, as I sat within
+reach of her on the marble step, she suddenly shot forth one of her
+hands and patted mine. The thing was done, and she was back in her
+accustomed attitude, before my mind had received intelligence of the
+caress; and when I turned to look her in the face I could perceive no
+answerable sentiment. It was plain she attached no moment to the act,
+and I blamed myself for my own more uneasy consciousness.
+
+The sight and (if I may so call it) the acquaintance of the mother
+confirmed the view I had already taken of the son. The family blood had
+been impoverished, perhaps by long inbreeding, which I knew to be a
+common error among the proud and the exclusive. No decline, indeed, was
+to be traced in the body, which had been handed down unimpaired in
+shapeliness and strength; and the faces of to-day were struck as sharply
+from the mint as the face of two centuries ago that smiled upon me from
+the portrait. But the intelligence (that more precious heirloom) was
+degenerate; the treasure of ancestral memory ran low; and it had
+required the potent, plebeian crossing of a muleteer or mountain
+_contrabandista_ to raise what approached hebetude in the mother into
+the active oddity of the son. Yet of the two, it was the mother I
+preferred. Of Felipe, vengeful and placable, full of starts and shyings,
+inconstant as a hare, I could even conceive as a creature possibly
+noxious. Of the mother I had no thoughts but those of kindness. And
+indeed, as spectators are apt ignorantly to take sides, I grew something
+of a partisan in the enmity which I perceived to smoulder between them.
+True, it seemed mostly on the mother's part. She would sometimes draw in
+her breath as he came near, and the pupils of her vacant eyes would
+contract as if with horror or fear. Her emotions, such as they were,
+were much upon the surface and readily shared; and this latent repulsion
+occupied my mind, and kept me wondering on what grounds it rested, and
+whether the son was certainly in fault.
+
+I had been about ten days in the residencia, when there sprang up a high
+and harsh wind, carrying clouds of dust. It came out of malarious
+lowlands, and over several snowy sierras. The nerves of those on whom it
+blew were strung and jangled; their eyes smarted with the dust; their
+legs ached under the burthen of their body; and the touch of one hand
+upon another grew to be odious. The wind, besides, came down the gullies
+of the hills and stormed about the house with a great, hollow buzzing
+and whistling that was wearisome to the ear and dismally depressing to
+the mind. It did not so much blow in gusts as with the steady sweep of a
+waterfall, so that there was no remission of discomfort while it blew.
+But higher up on the mountain it was probably of a more variable
+strength, with accesses of fury; for there came down at times a far-off
+wailing, infinitely grievous to hear; and at times, on one of the high
+shelves or terraces, there would start up, and then disperse, a tower of
+dust, like the smoke of an explosion.
+
+I no sooner awoke in bed than I was conscious of the nervous tension and
+depression of the weather, and the effect grew stronger as the day
+proceeded. It was in vain that I resisted; in vain that I set forth upon
+my customary morning's walk; the irrational, unchanging fury of the
+storm had soon beat down my strength and wrecked my temper; and I
+returned to the residencia, glowing with dry heat, and foul and gritty
+with dust. The court had a forlorn appearance; now and then a glimmer of
+sun fled over it; now and then the wind swooped down upon the
+pomegranates, and scattered the blossoms, and set the window shutter
+clapping on the wall. In the recess the Senora was pacing to and fro
+with a flushed countenance and bright eyes; I thought, too, she was
+speaking to herself, like one in anger. But when I addressed her with my
+customary salutation, she only replied by a sharp gesture and continued
+her walk. The weather had distempered even this impassive creature; and
+as I went on upstairs I was the less ashamed of my own discomposure.
+
+All day the wind continued; and I sat in my room and made a feint of
+reading, or walked up and down, and listened to the riot overhead. Night
+fell, and I had not so much as a candle. I began to long for some
+society, and stole down to the court. It was now plunged in the blue of
+the first darkness; but the recess was redly lighted by the fire. The
+wood had been piled high, and was crowned by a shock of flames, which
+the draught of the chimney brandished to and fro. In this strong and
+shaken brightness the Senora continued pacing from wall to wall with
+disconnected gestures, clasping her hands, stretching forth her arms,
+throwing back her head as in appeal to heaven. In these disordered
+movements the beauty and grace of the woman showed more clearly; but
+there was a light in her eye that struck on me unpleasantly; and when I
+had looked on a while in silence, and seemingly unobserved, I turned
+tail as I had come, and groped my way back again to my own chamber.
+
+By the time Felipe brought my supper and lights, my nerve was utterly
+gone; and, had the lad been such as I was used to seeing him, I should
+have kept him (even by force, had that been necessary) to take off the
+edge from my distasteful solitude. But on Felipe, also, the wind had
+exercised its influence. He had been feverish all day; now that the
+night had come he was fallen into a low and tremulous humour that
+reacted on my own. The sight of his scared face, his starts and pallors
+and sudden hearkenings, unstrung me; and when he dropped and broke a
+dish, I fairly leaped out of my seat.
+
+"I think we are all mad to-day," said I, affecting to laugh.
+
+"It is the black wind," he replied dolefully. "You feel as if you must
+do something, and you don't know what it is."
+
+I noted the aptness of the description; but, indeed, Felipe had
+sometimes a strange felicity in rendering into words the sensations of
+the body. "And your mother, too," said I; "she seems to feel this
+weather much. Do you not fear she may be unwell?"
+
+He stared at me a little, and then said, "No," almost defiantly; and the
+next moment, carrying his hand to his brow, cried out lamentably on the
+wind and the noise that made his head go round like a millwheel. "Who
+can be well?" he cried; and, indeed, I could only echo his question, for
+I was disturbed enough myself.
+
+I went to bed early, wearied with day-long restlessness; but the
+poisonous nature of the wind, and its ungodly and unintermittent uproar,
+would not suffer me to sleep. I lay there and tossed, my nerves and
+senses on the stretch. At times I would doze, dream horribly, and wake
+again; and these snatches of oblivion confused me as to time. But it
+must have been late on in the night, when I was suddenly startled by an
+outbreak of pitiable and hateful cries. I leaped from my bed, supposing
+I had dreamed; but the cries still continued to fill the house, cries of
+pain, I thought, but certainly of rage also, and so savage and
+discordant that they shocked the heart. It was no illusion; some living
+thing, some lunatic or some wild animal was being foully tortured. The
+thought of Felipe and the squirrel flashed into my mind, and I ran to
+the door; but it had been locked from the outside, and I might shake it
+as I pleased, I was a fast prisoner. Still the cries continued. Now they
+would dwindle down into a moaning that seemed to be articulate, and at
+these times I made sure they must be human; and again they would break
+forth and fill the house with ravings worthy of hell. I stood at the
+door and gave ear to them, till at last they died away. Long after that,
+I still lingered and still continued to hear them mingle in fancy with
+the storming of the wind; and when at last I crept to my bed, it was
+with a deadly sickness and a blackness of horror on my heart.
+
+It was little wonder if I slept no more. Why had I been locked in? What
+had passed? Who was the author of these indescribable and shocking
+cries? A human being? It was inconceivable. A beast? The cries were
+scarce quite bestial; and what animal, short of a lion or a tiger, could
+thus shake the solid walls of the residencia? And while I was thus
+turning over the elements of the mystery, it came into my mind that I
+had not yet set eyes upon the daughter of the house. What was more
+probable than that the daughter of the Senora, and the sister of Felipe,
+should be herself insane? Or, what more likely than that these ignorant
+and half-witted people should seek to manage an afflicted kinswoman by
+violence? Here was a solution; and yet when I called to mind the cries
+(which I never did without a shuddering chill) it seemed altogether
+insufficient: not even cruelty could wring such cries from madness. But
+of one thing I was sure: I could not live in a house where such a thing
+was half conceivable, and not probe the matter home and, if necessary,
+interfere.
+
+The next day came, the wind had blown itself out, and there was nothing
+to remind me of the business of the night. Felipe came to my bedside
+with obvious cheerfulness; as I passed through the court the Senora was
+sunning herself with her accustomed immobility; and when I issued from
+the gateway I found the whole face of nature austerely smiling, the
+heavens of a cold blue, and sown with great cloud islands, and the
+mountain-sides mapped forth into provinces of light and shadow. A short
+walk restored me to myself, and renewed within me the resolve to plumb
+this mystery; and when, from the vantage of my knoll, I had seen Felipe
+pass forth to his labours in the garden, I returned at once to the
+residencia to put my design in practice. The Senora appeared plunged in
+slumber; I stood a while and marked her, but she did not stir; even if
+my design were indiscreet, I had little to fear from such a guardian;
+and turning away, I mounted to the gallery and began my exploration of
+the house.
+
+All morning I went from one door to another, and entered spacious and
+faded chambers, some rudely shuttered, some receiving their full charge
+of daylight, all empty and unhomely. It was a rich house, on which Time
+had breathed its tarnish and dust had scattered disillusion. The spider
+swung there; the bloated tarantula scampered on the cornices; ants had
+their crowded highways on the floor of halls of audience; the big and
+foul fly, that lives on carrion and is often the messenger of death, had
+set up his nest in the rotten woodwork, and buzzed heavily about the
+rooms. Here and there a stool or two, a couch, a bed, or a great carved
+chair remained behind, like islets on the bare floors, to testify of
+man's bygone habitation; and everywhere the walls were set with the
+portraits of the dead. I could judge, by these decaying effigies, in the
+house of what a great and what a handsome race I was then wandering.
+Many of the men wore orders on their breasts and had the port of noble
+offices; the women were all richly attired; the canvases, most of them,
+by famous hands. But it was not so much these evidences of greatness
+that took hold upon my mind, even contrasted, as they were, with the
+present depopulation and decay of that great house. It was rather the
+parable of family life that I read in this succession of fair faces and
+shapely bodies. Never before had I so realised the miracle of the
+continued race, the creation and re-creation, the weaving and changing
+and handing down of fleshly elements. That a child should be born of its
+mother, that it should grow and clothe itself (we know not how) with
+humanity, and put on inherited looks, and turn its head with the manner
+of one ascendant, and offer its hand with the gesture of another, are
+wonders dulled for us by repetition. But in the singular unity of look,
+in the common features and common bearing, of all these painted
+generations on the walls of the residencia, the miracle started out and
+looked me in the face. And an ancient mirror falling opportunely in my
+way, I stood and read my own features a long while, tracing out on
+either hand the filaments of descent and the bonds that knit me with my
+family.
+
+At last, in the course of these investigations, I opened the door of a
+chamber that bore the marks of habitation. It was of large proportions
+and faced to the north, where the mountains were most wildly figured.
+The embers of a fire smouldered and smoked upon the hearth, to which a
+chair had been drawn close. And yet the aspect of the chamber was
+ascetic to the degree of sternness; the chair was uncushioned; the floor
+and walls were naked; and beyond the books which lay here and there in
+some confusion, there was no instrument of either work or pleasure. The
+sight of books in the house of such a family exceedingly amazed me; and
+I began with a great hurry, and in momentary fear of interruption, to go
+from one to another and hastily inspect their character. They were of
+all sorts, devotional, historical, and scientific, but mostly of a great
+age and in the Latin tongue. Some I could see to bear the marks of
+constant study; others had been torn across and tossed aside as if in
+petulance or disapproval. Lastly, as I cruised about that empty chamber,
+I espied some papers written upon with pencil on a table near the
+window. An unthinking curiosity led me to take one up. It bore a copy of
+verses, very roughly metred in the original Spanish, and which I may
+render somewhat thus--
+
+  "Pleasure approached with pain and shame,
+  Grief with a wreath of lilies came.
+  Pleasure showed the lovely sun;
+  Jesu dear, how sweet it shone!
+  Grief with her worn hand pointed on,
+               Jesu dear, to Thee!"
+
+Shame and confusion at once fell on me; and, laying down the paper, I
+beat an immediate retreat from the apartment. Neither Felipe nor his
+mother could have read the books nor written these rough but feeling
+verses. It was plain I had stumbled with sacrilegious feet into the room
+of the daughter of the house. God knows, my own heart most sharply
+punished me for my indiscretion. The thought that I had thus secretly
+pushed my way into the confidence of a girl so strangely situated, and
+the fear that she might somehow come to hear of it, oppressed me like
+guilt. I blamed myself besides for my suspicions of the night before;
+wondered that I should ever have attributed those shocking cries to one
+of whom I now conceived as of a saint, spectral of mien, wasted with
+maceration, bound up in the practices of a mechanical devotion, and
+dwelling in a great isolation of soul with her incongruous relatives;
+and as I leaned on the balustrade of the gallery and looked down into
+the bright close of pomegranates and at the gaily dressed and somnolent
+woman, who just then stretched herself and delicately licked her lips as
+in the very sensuality of sloth, my mind swiftly compared the scene with
+the cold chamber looking northward on the mountains, where the daughter
+dwelt.
+
+That same afternoon, as I sat upon my knoll, I saw the Padre enter the
+gates of the residencia. The revelation of the daughter's character had
+struck home to my fancy, and almost blotted out the horrors of the
+night before; but at sight of this worthy man the memory revived. I
+descended, then, from the knoll, and making a circuit among the woods,
+posted myself by the wayside to await his passage. As soon as he
+appeared I stepped forth and introduced myself as the lodger of the
+residencia. He had a very strong, honest countenance, on which it was
+easy to read the mingled emotions with which he regarded me, as a
+foreigner, a heretic, and yet one who had been wounded for the good
+cause. Of the family at the residencia he spoke with reserve, and yet
+with respect. I mentioned that I had not yet seen the daughter,
+whereupon he remarked that that was as it should be, and looked at me a
+little askance. Lastly, I plucked up courage to refer to the cries that
+had disturbed me in the night. He heard me out in silence, and then
+stopped and partly turned about, as though to mark beyond doubt that he
+was dismissing me.
+
+"Do you take tobacco-powder?" said he, offering his snuff-box; and then,
+when I had refused, "I am an old man," he added, "and I may be allowed
+to remind you that you are a guest."
+
+"I have, then, your authority," I returned, firmly enough, although I
+flushed at the implied reproof, "to let things take their course, and
+not to interfere?"
+
+He said "Yes," and with a somewhat uneasy salute turned and left me
+where I was. But he had done two things: he had set my conscience at
+rest, and he had awakened my delicacy. I made a great effort, once more
+dismissed the recollections of the night, and fell once more to brooding
+on my saintly poetess. At the same time, I could not quite forget that I
+had been locked in, and that night when Felipe brought me my supper I
+attacked him warily on both points of interest.
+
+"I never see your sister," said I casually.
+
+"Oh, no," said he; "she is a good, good girl," and his mind instantly
+veered to something else.
+
+"Your sister is pious, I suppose?" I asked in the next pause.
+
+"Oh!" he cried, joining his hands with extreme fervour, "a saint; it is
+she that keeps me up."
+
+"You are very fortunate," said I, "for the most of us, I am afraid, and
+myself among the number, are better at going down."
+
+"Senor," said Felipe earnestly, "I would not say that. You should not
+tempt your angel. If one goes down, where is he to stop?"
+
+"Why, Felipe," said I, "I had no guess you were a preacher, and I may
+say a good one; but I suppose that is your sister's doing?"
+
+He nodded at me with round eyes.
+
+"Well, then," I continued, "she has doubtless reproved you for your sin
+of cruelty?"
+
+"Twelve times!" he cried; for this was the phrase by which the odd
+creature expressed the sense of frequency. "And I told her you had done
+so--I remembered that," he added proudly--"and she was pleased."
+
+"Then, Felipe," said I, "what were those cries that I heard last night?
+for surely they were cries of some creature in suffering."
+
+"The wind," returned Felipe, looking in the fire.
+
+I took his hand in mine, at which, thinking it to be a caress, he smiled
+with a brightness of pleasure that came near disarming my resolve. But I
+trod the weakness down. "The wind," I repeated; "and yet I think it was
+this hand," holding it up, "that had first locked me in." The lad shook
+visibly, but answered never a word. "Well," said I, "I am a stranger and
+a guest. It is not my part either to meddle or to judge in your affairs;
+in these you shall take your sister's counsel, which I cannot doubt to
+be excellent. But in so far as concerns my own I will be no man's
+prisoner, and I demand that key." Half an hour later my door was
+suddenly thrown open, and the key tossed ringing on the floor.
+
+A day or two after I came in from a walk a little before the point of
+noon. The Senora was lying lapped in slumber on the threshold of the
+recess; the pigeons dozed below the eaves like snowdrifts; the house was
+under a deep spell of noontide quiet; and only a wandering and gentle
+wind from the mountain stole round the galleries, rustled among the
+pomegranates, and pleasantly stirred the shadows. Something in the
+stillness moved me to imitation, and I went very lightly across the
+court and up the marble staircase. My foot was on the topmost round,
+when a door opened, and I found myself face to face with Olalla.
+Surprise transfixed me; her loveliness struck to my heart; she glowed in
+the deep shadow of the gallery, a gem of colour; her eyes took hold upon
+mine and clung there, and bound us together like the joining of hands;
+and the moments we thus stood face to face, drinking each other in, were
+sacramental and the wedding of souls. I know not how long it was before
+I awoke out of a deep trance, and, hastily bowing, passed on into the
+upper stair. She did not move, but followed me with her great, thirsting
+eyes; and as I passed out of sight it seemed to me as if she paled and
+faded.
+
+In my own room, I opened the window and looked out, and could not think
+what change had come upon that austere field of mountains that it should
+thus sing and shine under the lofty heaven. I had seen her--Olalla! And
+the stone crags answered, Olalla! and the dumb, unfathomable azure
+answered, Olalla! The pale saint of my dreams had vanished for ever; and
+in her place I beheld this maiden on whom God had lavished the richest
+colours and the most exuberant energies of life, whom He had made active
+as a deer, slender as a reed, and in whose great eyes He had lighted the
+torches of the soul. The thrill of her young life, strung like a wild
+animal's, had entered into me; the force of soul that had looked out
+from her eyes and conquered mine, mantled about my heart and sprang to
+my lips in singing. She passed through my veins: she was one with me.
+
+I will not say that this enthusiasm declined; rather my soul held out in
+its ecstasy as in a strong castle, and was there besieged by cold and
+sorrowful considerations. I could not doubt but that I loved her at
+first sight, and already with a quivering ardour that was strange to my
+experience. What then was to follow? She was the child of an afflicted
+house, the Senora's daughter, the sister of Felipe; she bore it even in
+her beauty. She had the lightness and swiftness of the one, swift as an
+arrow, light as dew; like the other, she shone on the pale background of
+the world with the brilliancy of flowers. I could not call by the name
+of brother that half-witted lad, nor by the name of mother that
+immovable and lovely thing of flesh, whose silly eyes and perpetual
+simper now recurred to my mind like something hateful. And if I could
+not marry, what then? She was helplessly unprotected; her eyes, in that
+single and long glance, which had been all our intercourse, had
+confessed a weakness equal to my own; but in my heart I knew her for the
+student of the cold northern chamber, and the writer of the sorrowful
+lines; and this was a knowledge to disarm a brute. To flee was more than
+I could find courage for; but I registered a vow of unsleeping
+circumspection.
+
+As I turned from the window, my eyes alighted on the portrait. It had
+fallen dead, like a candle after sunrise; it followed me with eyes of
+paint. I knew it to be like, and marvelled at the tenacity of type in
+that declining race; but the likeness was swallowed up in difference. I
+remembered how it had seemed to me a thing unapproachable in the life, a
+creature rather of the painter's craft than of the modesty of nature,
+and I marvelled at the thought, and exulted in the image of Olalla.
+Beauty I had seen before, and not been charmed, and I had been often
+drawn to women, who were not beautiful except to me; but in Olalla all
+that I desired and had not dared to imagine was united.
+
+I did not see her the next day, and my heart ached and my eyes longed
+for her, as men long for morning. But the day after, when I returned,
+about my usual hour, she was once more on the gallery, and our looks
+once more met and embraced. I would have spoken, I would have drawn near
+to her; but strongly as she plucked at my heart, drawing me like a
+magnet, something yet more imperious withheld me; and I could only bow
+and pass by; and she, leaving my salutation unanswered, only followed me
+with her noble eyes.
+
+I had now her image by rote, and as I conned the traits in memory it
+seemed as if I read her very heart. She was dressed with something of
+her mother's coquetry and love of positive colour. Her robe, which I
+knew she must have made with her own hands, clung about her with a
+cunning grace. After the fashion of that country, besides, her bodice
+stood open in the middle, in a long slit, and here, in spite of the
+poverty of the house, a gold coin, hanging by a ribbon, lay on her brown
+bosom. These were proofs, had any been needed, of her inborn delight in
+life and her own loveliness. On the other hand, in her eyes that hung
+upon mine, I could read depth beyond depth of passion and sadness,
+lights of poetry and hope, blacknesses of despair, and thoughts that
+were above the earth. It was a lovely body, but the inmate, the soul,
+was more than worthy of that lodging. Should I leave this incomparable
+flower to wither unseen on these rough mountains? Should I despise the
+great gift offered me in the eloquent silence of her eyes? Here was a
+soul immured; should I not burst its prison? All side considerations
+fell off from me; were she the child of Herod I swore I should make her
+mine; and that very evening I set myself, with a mingled sense of
+treachery and disgrace, to captivate the brother. Perhaps I read him
+with more favourable eyes, perhaps the thought of his sister always
+summoned up the better qualities of that imperfect soul; but he had
+never seemed to me so amiable, and his very likeness to Olalla, while it
+annoyed, yet softened me.
+
+A third day passed in vain--an empty desert of hours. I would not lose a
+chance, and loitered all afternoon in the court, where (to give myself a
+countenance) I spoke more than usual with the Senora. God knows it was
+with a most tender and sincere interest that I now studied her; and even
+as for Felipe, so now for the mother, I was conscious of a growing
+warmth of toleration. And yet I wondered. Even while I spoke with her,
+she would doze off into a little sleep, and presently awake again
+without embarrassment; and this composure staggered me. And again, as I
+marked her make infinitesimal changes in her posture, savouring and
+lingering on the bodily pleasure of the movement, I was driven to wonder
+at this depth of passive sensuality. She lived in her body; and her
+consciousness was all sunk into and disseminated through her members,
+where it luxuriously dwelt. Lastly, I could not grow accustomed to her
+eyes. Each time she turned on me those great beautiful and meaningless
+orbs, wide open to the day, but closed against human inquiry--each time
+I had occasion to observe the lively changes of her pupils which
+expanded and contracted in a breath--I know not what it was came over
+me, I can find no name for the mingled feeling of disappointment,
+annoyance, and distaste that jarred along my nerves. I tried her on a
+variety of subjects, equally in vain; and at last led the talk to her
+daughter. But even there she proved indifferent; said she was pretty,
+which (as with children) was her highest word of commendation, but was
+plainly incapable of any higher thought; and when I remarked that Olalla
+seemed silent, merely yawned in my face and replied that speech was of
+no great use when you had nothing to say. "People speak much, very
+much," she added, looking at me with expanded pupils; and then again
+yawned, and again showed me a mouth that was as dainty as a toy. This
+time I took the hint, and, leaving her to her repose, went up into my
+own chamber to sit by the open window, looking on the hills and not
+beholding them, sunk in lustrous and deep dreams, and hearkening in
+fancy to the note of a voice that I had never heard.
+
+I awoke on the fifth morning with a brightness of anticipation that
+seemed to challenge fate. I was sure of myself, light of heart and foot,
+and resolved to put my love incontinently to the touch of knowledge. It
+should lie no longer under the bonds of silence, a dumb thing, living by
+the eye only, like the love of beasts; but should now put on the spirit,
+and enter upon the joys of the complete human intimacy. I thought of it
+with wild hopes, like a voyager to El Dorado; into that unknown and
+lovely country of her soul, I no longer trembled to adventure. Yet when
+I did indeed encounter her, the same force of passion descended on me
+and at once submerged my mind; speech seemed to drop away from me like a
+childish habit; and I but drew near to her as the giddy man draws near
+to the margin of a gulf. She drew back from me a little as I came; but
+her eyes did not waver from mine, and these lured me forward. At last,
+when I was already within reach of her, I stopped. Words were denied me;
+if I advanced I could but clasp her to my heart in silence; and all that
+was sane in me, all that was still unconquered, revolted against the
+thought of such an accost. So we stood for a second, all our life in our
+eyes, exchanging salvos of attraction and yet each resisting; and then,
+with a great effort of the will, and conscious at the same time of a
+sudden bitterness of disappointment, I turned and went away in the same
+silence.
+
+What power lay upon me that I could not speak? And she, why was she also
+silent? Why did she draw away before me dumbly, with fascinated eyes?
+Was this love? or was it a mere brute attraction, mindless and
+inevitable, like that of the magnet for the steel? We had never spoken,
+we were wholly strangers; and yet an influence, strong as the grasp of a
+giant, swept us silently together. On my side, it filled me with
+impatience; and yet I was sure that she was worthy; I had seen her
+books, read her verses, and thus, in a sense, divined the soul of my
+mistress. But on her side, it struck me almost cold. Of me, she knew
+nothing but my bodily favour; she was drawn to me as stones fall to the
+earth; the laws that rule the earth conducted her, unconsenting, to my
+arms; and I drew back at the thought of such a bridal, and began to be
+jealous for myself. It was not thus that I desired to be loved. And then
+I began to fall into a great pity for the girl herself. I thought how
+sharp must be her mortification, that she, the student, the recluse,
+Felipe's saintly monitress, should have thus confessed an overweening
+weakness for a man with whom she had never exchanged a word. And at the
+coming of pity, all other thoughts were swallowed up; and I longed only
+to find and console and reassure her; to tell her how wholly her love
+was returned on my side, and how her choice, even if blindly made, was
+not unworthy.
+
+The next day it was glorious weather; depth upon depth of blue
+over-canopied the mountains; the sun shone wide; and the wind in the
+trees and the many fallen torrents in the mountains filled the air with
+delicate and haunting music. Yet I was prostrated with sadness. My heart
+wept for the sight of Olalla, as a child weeps for its mother. I sat
+down on a boulder on the verge of the low cliffs that bound the plateau
+to the north. Thence I looked down into the wooded valley of a stream,
+where no foot came. In the mood I was in, it was even touching to behold
+the place untenanted; it lacked Olalla; and I thought of the delight and
+glory of a life passed wholly with her in that strong air, and among
+these rugged and lovely surroundings, at first with a whimpering
+sentiment, and then again with such a fiery joy that I seemed to grow
+in strength and stature, like a Samson.
+
+And then suddenly I was aware of Olalla drawing near. She appeared out
+of a grove of cork-trees, and came straight towards me; and I stood up
+and waited. She seemed in her walking a creature of such life and fire
+and lightness as amazed me; yet she came quietly and slowly. Her energy
+was in the slowness; but for inimitable strength, I felt she would have
+run, she would have flown to me. Still, as she approached, she kept her
+eyes lowered to the ground; and when she had drawn quite near, it was
+without one glance that she addressed me. At the first note of her voice
+I started. It was for this I had been waiting; this was the last test of
+my love. And lo, her enunciation was precise and clear, not lisping and
+incomplete like that of her family; and the voice, though deeper than
+usual with women, was still both youthful and womanly. She spoke in a
+rich chord; golden contralto strains mingled with hoarseness, as the red
+threads were mingled with the brown among her tresses. It was not only a
+voice that spoke to my heart directly; but it spoke to me of her. And
+yet her words immediately plunged me back upon despair.
+
+"You will go away," she said, "to-day."
+
+Her example broke the bonds of my speech; I felt as lightened of a
+weight, or as if a spell had been dissolved. I know not in what words I
+answered; but, standing before her on the cliffs, I poured out the whole
+ardour of my love, telling her that I lived upon the thought of her,
+slept only to dream of her loveliness, and would gladly forswear my
+country, my language, and my friends, to live for ever by her side. And
+then, strongly commanding myself, I changed the note; I reassured, I
+comforted her; I told her I had divined in her a pious and heroic
+spirit, with which I was worthy to sympathise, and which I longed to
+share and lighten. "Nature," I told her, "was the voice of God, which
+men disobey at peril; and if we were thus dumbly drawn together, ay,
+even as by a miracle of love, it must imply a divine fitness in our
+souls; we must be made," I said--"made for one another. We should be mad
+rebels," I cried out--"mad rebels against God, not to obey this
+instinct."
+
+She shook her head. "You will go to-day," she repeated, and then with a
+gesture, and in a sudden, sharp note--"no, not to-day," she cried,
+"to-morrow!"
+
+But at this sign of relenting, power came in upon me in a tide. I
+stretched out my arms and called upon her name; and she leaped to me and
+clung to me. The hills rocked about us, the earth quailed; a shock as of
+a blow went through me and left me blind and dizzy. And the next moment
+she had thrust me back, broken rudely from my arms, and fled with the
+speed of a deer among the cork-trees.
+
+I stood and shouted to the mountains; I turned and went back towards the
+residencia, walking upon air. She sent me away, and yet I had but to
+call upon her name and she came to me. These were but the weaknesses of
+girls, from which even she, the strangest of her sex, was not exempted.
+Go? Not I, Olalla--Oh, not I, Olalla, my Olalla! A bird sang near by;
+and in that season birds were rare. It bade me be of good cheer. And
+once more the whole countenance of nature, from the ponderous and stable
+mountains down to the lightest leaf and the smallest darting fly in the
+shadow of the groves, began to stir before me and to put on the
+lineaments of life and wear a face of awful joy. The sunshine struck
+upon the hills, strong as a hammer on the anvil, and the hills shook;
+the earth, under that vigorous insolation, yielded up heady scents; the
+woods smouldered in the blaze. I felt the thrill of travail and delight
+run through the earth. Something elemental, something rude, violent, and
+savage, in the love that sang in my heart, was like a key to nature's
+secrets; and the very stones that rattled under my feet appeared alive
+and friendly. Olalla! Her touch had quickened, and renewed, and strung
+me up to the old pitch of concert with the rugged earth, to a swelling
+of the soul that men learn to forget in their polite assemblies. Love
+burned in me like rage; tenderness waxed fierce; I hated, I adored, I
+pitied, I revered her with ecstasy. She seemed the link that bound me in
+with dead things on the one hand, and with our pure and pitying God upon
+the other: a thing brutal and divine, and akin at once to the innocence
+and to the unbridled forces of the earth.
+
+My head thus reeling, I came into the courtyard of the residencia, and
+the sight of the mother struck me like a revelation. She sat there, all
+sloth and contentment, blinking under the strong sunshine, branded with
+a passive enjoyment, a creature set quite apart, before whom my ardour
+fell away like a thing ashamed. I stopped a moment, and, commanding such
+shaken tones as I was able, said a word or two. She looked at me with
+her unfathomable kindness; her voice in reply sounded vaguely out of the
+realm of peace in which she slumbered, and there fell on my mind, for
+the first time, a sense of respect for one so uniformly innocent and
+happy, and I passed on in a kind of wonder at myself that I should be so
+much disquieted.
+
+On my table there lay a piece of the same yellow paper I had seen in the
+north room; it was written on with pencil in the same hand, Olalla's
+hand, and I picked it up with a sudden sinking of alarm, and read, "If
+you have any kindness for Olalla, if you have any chivalry for a
+creature sorely wrought, go from here to-day; in pity, in honour, for
+the sake of Him who died, I supplicate that you shall go." I looked at
+this a while in mere stupidity, then I began to awaken to a weariness
+and horror of life; the sunshine darkened outside on the bare hills, and
+I began to shake like a man in terror. The vacancy thus suddenly opened
+in my life unmanned me like a physical void. It was not my heart, it was
+not my happiness, it was life itself that was involved. I could not
+lose her. I said so, and stood repeating it. And then, like one in a
+dream, I moved to the window, put forth my hand to open the casement,
+and thrust it through the pane. The blood spurted from my wrist; and
+with an instantaneous quietude and command of myself, I pressed my thumb
+on the little leaping fountain, and reflected what to do. In that empty
+room there was nothing to my purpose; I felt, besides, that I required
+assistance. There shot into my mind a hope that Olalla herself might be
+my helper, and I turned and went downstairs, still keeping my thumb
+upon the wound.
+
+There was no sign of either Olalla or Felipe, and I addressed myself to
+the recess, whither the Senora had now drawn quite back and sat dozing
+close before the fire, for no degree of heat appeared too much for her.
+
+"Pardon me," said I, "if I disturb you, but I must apply to you for
+help."
+
+She looked up sleepily and asked me what it was, and with the very words
+I thought she drew in her breath with a widening of the nostrils and
+seemed to come suddenly and fully alive.
+
+"I have cut myself," I said, "and rather badly. See!" And I held out my
+two hands, from which the blood was oozing and dripping.
+
+Her great eyes opened wide, the pupils shrank into points; a veil seemed
+to fall from her face, and leave it sharply expressive and yet
+inscrutable. And as I still stood, marvelling a little at her
+disturbance, she came swiftly up to me, and stooped and caught me by the
+hand; and the next moment my hand was at her mouth, and she had bitten
+me to the bone. The pang of the bite, the sudden spurting of blood, and
+the monstrous horror of the act, flashed through me all in one, and I
+beat her back; and she sprang at me again and again, with bestial cries,
+cries that I recognised, such cries as had awakened me on the night of
+the high wind. Her strength was like that of madness; mine was rapidly
+ebbing with the loss of blood; my mind besides was whirling with the
+abhorrent strangeness of the onslaught, and I was already forced against
+the wall, when Olalla ran betwixt us, and Felipe, following at a bound,
+pinned down his mother on the floor.
+
+A trance-like weakness fell upon me; I saw, heard, and felt, but I was
+incapable of movement. I heard the struggle roll to and fro upon the
+floor, the yells of the catamount ringing up to heaven as she strove to
+reach me. I felt Olalla clasp me in her arms, her hair falling on my
+face, and, with the strength of a man, raise and half drag, half carry
+me upstairs into my own room, where she cast me down upon the bed. Then
+I saw her hasten to the door and lock it, and stand an instant listening
+to the savage cries that shook the residencia. And then, swift and light
+as a thought, she was again beside me, binding up my hand, laying it in
+her bosom, moaning and mourning over it, with dove-like sounds. They
+were not words that came to her, they were sounds more beautiful than
+speech, infinitely touching, infinitely tender; and yet as I lay there,
+a thought stung to my heart, a thought wounded me like a sword, a
+thought, like a worm in a flower, profaned the holiness of my love. Yes,
+they were beautiful sounds, and they were inspired by human tenderness;
+but was their beauty human?
+
+All day I lay there. For a long time the cries of that nameless female
+thing, as she struggled with her half-witted whelp, resounded through
+the house, and pierced me with despairing sorrow and disgust. They were
+the death-cry of my love; my love was murdered; it was not only dead,
+but an offence to me; and yet, think as I pleased, feel as I must, it
+still swelled within me like a storm of sweetness, and my heart melted
+at her looks and touch. This horror that had sprung out, this doubt upon
+Olalla, this savage and bestial strain that ran not only through the
+whole behaviour of her family, but found a place in the very
+foundations and story of our love--though it appalled, though it shocked
+and sickened me, was yet not of power to break the knot of my
+infatuation.
+
+When the cries had ceased, there came a scraping at the door, by which I
+knew Felipe was without; and Olalla went and spoke to him--I know not
+what. With that exception, she stayed close beside me, now kneeling by
+my bed and fervently praying, now sitting with her eyes upon mine. So
+then, for these six hours I drank in her beauty, and silently perused
+the story in her face. I saw the golden coin hover on her breaths; I saw
+her eyes darken and brighten, and still speak no language but that of an
+unfathomable kindness; I saw the faultless face, and, through the robe,
+the lines of the faultless body. Night came at last, and in the growing
+darkness of the chamber the sight of her slowly melted; but even then
+the touch of her smooth hand lingered in mine and talked with me. To lie
+thus in deadly weakness and drink in the traits of the beloved, is to
+re-awake to love from whatever shock of disillusion. I reasoned with
+myself; and I shut my eyes on horrors, and again I was very bold to
+accept the worst. What mattered it, if that imperious sentiment
+survived; if her eyes still beckoned and attached me; if now, even as
+before, every fibre of my dull body yearned and turned to her? Late on
+in the night some strength revived in me, and I spoke:--
+
+"Olalla," I said, "nothing matters; I ask nothing; I am content; I love
+you."
+
+She knelt down a while and prayed, and I devoutly respected her
+devotions. The moon had begun to shine in upon one side of each of the
+three windows, and make a misty clearness in the room, by which I saw
+her indistinctly. When she re-arose she made the sign of the cross.
+
+"It is for me to speak," she said, "and for you to listen. I know; you
+can but guess. I prayed, how I prayed for you to leave this place. I
+begged it of you, and I know you would have granted me even this; or if
+not, oh let me think so!"
+
+"I love you," I said.
+
+"And yet you have lived in the world," she said; after a pause, "you are
+a man and wise; and I am but a child. Forgive me, if I seem to teach,
+who am as ignorant as the trees of the mountain; but those who learn
+much do but skim the face of knowledge; they seize the laws, they
+conceive the dignity of the design--the horror of the living fact fades
+from their memory. It is we who sit at home with evil who remember, I
+think, and are warned and pity. Go, rather, go now, and keep me in mind.
+So I shall have a life in the cherished places of your memory; a life as
+much my own as that which I lead in this body."
+
+"I love you," I said once more; and reaching out my weak hand, took
+hers, and carried it to my lips, and kissed it. Nor did she resist, but
+winced a little; and I could see her look upon me with a frown that was
+not unkindly, only sad and baffled. And then it seemed she made a call
+upon her resolution; plucked my hand towards her, herself at the same
+time leaning somewhat forward, and laid it on the beating of her heart.
+"There," she cried, "you feel the very footfall of my life. It only
+moves for you; it is yours. But is it even mine? It is mine indeed to
+offer you, as I might take the coin from my neck, as I might break a
+live branch from a tree, and give it you. And yet not mine! I dwell, or
+I think I dwell (if I exist at all), somewhere apart, an impotent
+prisoner, and carried about and deafened by a mob that I disown. This
+capsule, such as throbs against the sides of animals, knows you at a
+touch for its master; ay, it loves you! But my soul, does my soul? I
+think not; I know not, fearing to ask. Yet when you spoke to me, your
+words were of the soul; it is of the soul that you ask--it is only from
+the soul that you would take me."
+
+"Olalla," I said, "the soul and the body are one, and mostly so in love.
+What the body chooses, the soul loves; where the body clings, the soul
+cleaves; body for body, soul to soul, they come together at God's
+signal; and the lower part (if we can call aught low) is only the
+footstool and foundation of the highest."
+
+"Have you," she said, "seen the portraits in the house of my fathers?
+Have you looked at my mother or at Felipe? Have your eyes never rested
+on that picture that hangs by your bed? She who sat for it died ages
+ago; and she did evil in her life. But, look again: there is my hand to
+the least line, there are my eyes and my hair. What is mine, then, and
+what am I? If not a curve in this poor body of mine (which you love, and
+for the sake of which you dotingly dream that you love me), not a
+gesture that I can frame, not a tone of my voice, not any look from my
+eyes, no, not even now when I speak to him I love, but has belonged to
+others? Others, ages dead, have wooed other men with my eyes; other men
+have heard the pleading of the same voice that now sounds in your ears.
+The hands of the dead are in my bosom; they move me, they pluck me, they
+guide me; I am a puppet at their command; and I but re-inform features
+and attributes that have long been laid aside from evil in the quiet of
+the grave. Is it me you love, friend? or the race that made me? The girl
+who does not know and cannot answer for the least portion of herself? or
+the stream of which she is a transitory eddy, the tree of which she is
+the passing fruit? The race exists; it is old, it is ever young, it
+carries its eternal destiny in its bosom; upon it, like waves upon the
+sea, individual succeeds to individual, mocked with a semblance of
+self-control, but they are nothing. We speak of the soul, but the soul
+is in the race."
+
+"You fret against the common law," I said. "You rebel against the voice
+of God, which He has made so winning to convince, so imperious to
+command. Hear it, and how it speaks between us! Your hand clings to
+mine, your heart leaps at my touch, the unknown elements of which we
+are compounded awake and run together at a look; the clay of the earth
+remembers its independent life and yearns to join us; we are drawn
+together as the stars are turned about in space, or as the tides ebb and
+flow; by things older and greater than we ourselves."
+
+"Alas!" she said, "what can I say to you? My fathers, eight hundred
+years ago, ruled all this province: they were wise, great, cunning, and
+cruel; they were a picked race of the Spanish; their flags led in war;
+the king called them his cousin; the people, when the rope was slung for
+them or when they returned and found their hovels smoking, blasphemed
+their name. Presently a change began. Man has risen; if he has sprung
+from the brutes, he can descend again to the same level. The breath of
+weariness blew on their humanity and the cords relaxed; they began to go
+down; their minds fell on sleep, their passions awoke in gusts, heady
+and senseless like the wind in the gutters of the mountains; beauty was
+still handed down, but no longer the guiding wit nor the human heart;
+the seed passed on, it was wrapped in flesh, the flesh covered the
+bones, but they were the bones and the flesh of brutes, and their mind
+was as the mind of flies. I speak to you as I dare; but you have seen
+for yourself how the wheel has gone backward with my doomed race. I
+stand, as it were, upon a little rising ground in this desperate
+descent, and see both before and behind, both what we have lost and to
+what we are condemned to go farther downward. And shall I--I that dwell
+apart in the house of the dead, my body, loathing its ways--shall I
+repeat the spell? Shall I bind another spirit, reluctant as my own, into
+this bewitched and tempest-broken tenement that I now suffer in? Shall I
+hand down this cursed vessel of humanity, charge it with fresh life as
+with fresh poison, and dash it, like a fire, in the faces of posterity?
+But my vow has been given; the race shall cease from off the earth. At
+this hour my brother is making ready; his foot will soon be on the
+stair; and you will go with him and pass out of my sight for ever.
+Think of me sometimes as one to whom the lesson of life was very harshly
+told, but who heard it with courage; as one who loved you indeed, but
+who hated herself so deeply that her love was hateful to her; as one who
+sent you away and yet would have longed to keep you for ever: who had no
+dearer hope than to forget you, and no greater fear than to be
+forgotten."
+
+She had drawn towards the door as she spoke, her rich voice sounding
+softer and farther away; and with the last word she was gone, and I lay
+alone in the moonlit chamber. What I might have done had not I lain
+bound by my extreme weakness, I know not; but as it was, there fell upon
+me a great and blank despair. It was not long before there shone in at
+the door the ruddy glimmer of a lantern, and Felipe, coming, charged me
+without a word upon his shoulders, and carried me down to the great
+gate, where the cart was waiting. In the moonlight the hills stood out
+sharply, as if they were of cardboard; on the glimmering surface of the
+plateau, and from among the low trees which swung together and sparkled
+in the wind, the great black cube of the residencia stood out bulkily,
+its mass only broken by three dimly lighted windows in the northern
+front above the gate. They were Olalla's windows, and as the cart jolted
+onwards I kept my eyes fixed upon them till, where the road dipped into
+a valley, they were lost to my view for ever. Felipe walked in silence
+beside the shafts, but from time to time he would check the mule and
+seem to look back upon me; and at length drew quite near and laid his
+hand upon my head. There was such kindness in the touch, and such a
+simplicity, as of the brutes, that tears broke from me like the bursting
+of an artery.
+
+"Felipe," I said, "take me where they will ask no questions."
+
+He said never a word, but he turned his mule about, end for end,
+retraced some part of the way we had gone, and, striking into another
+path, led me to the mountain village, which was, as we say in Scotland,
+the kirk-town of that thinly peopled district. Some broken memories
+dwell in my mind of the day breaking over the plain, of the cart
+stopping, of arms that helped me down, of a bare room into which I was
+carried, and of a swoon that fell upon me like sleep.
+
+The next day and the days following, the old priest was often at my side
+with his snuff-box and prayer-book, and after a while, when I began to
+pick up strength, he told me that I was now on a fair way to recovery,
+and must as soon as possible hurry my departure; whereupon, without
+naming any reason, he took snuff and looked at me sideways. I did not
+affect ignorance; I knew he must have seen Olalla. "Sir," said I, "you
+know that I do not ask in wantonness. What of that family?"
+
+He said they were very unfortunate; that it seemed a declining race, and
+that they were very poor and had been much neglected.
+
+"But she has not," I said. "Thanks, doubtless, to yourself, she is
+instructed and wise beyond the use of women."
+
+"Yes," he said, "the Senorita is well-informed. But the family has been
+neglected."
+
+"The mother?" I queried.
+
+"Yes, the mother too," said the Padre, taking snuff. "But Felipe is a
+well-intentioned lad."
+
+"The mother is odd?" I asked.
+
+"Very odd," replied the priest.
+
+"I think, sir, we beat about the bush," said I. "You must know more of
+my affairs than you allow. You must know my curiosity to be justified on
+many grounds. Will you not be frank with me?"
+
+"My son," said the old gentleman, "I will be very frank with you on
+matters within my competence; on those of which I know nothing it does
+not require much discretion to be silent. I will not fence with you, I
+take your meaning perfectly; and what can I say, but that we are all in
+God's hands, and that His ways are not our ways? I have even advised
+with my superiors in the Church, but they, too, were dumb. It is a great
+mystery."
+
+"Is she mad?" I asked.
+
+"I will answer you according to my belief. She is not," returned the
+Padre, "or she was not. When she was young--God help me, I fear I
+neglected that wild lamb--she was surely sane; and yet, although it did
+not run to such heights, the same strain was already notable; it had
+been so before her in her father, ay, and before him, and this inclined
+me, perhaps, to think too lightly of it. But these things go on growing,
+not only in the individual but in the race."
+
+"When she was young," I began, and my voice failed me for a moment, and
+it was only with a great effort that I was able to add, "was she like
+Olalla?"
+
+"Now God forbid!" exclaimed the Padre. "God forbid that any man should
+think so slightingly of my favourite penitent. No, no; the Senorita (but
+for her beauty, which I wish most honestly she had less of) has not a
+hair's resemblance to what her mother was at the same age. I could not
+bear to have you think so; though, heaven knows, it were, perhaps,
+better that you should."
+
+At this I raised myself in bed, and opened my heart to the old man;
+telling him of our love and of her decision; owning my own horrors, my
+own passing fancies, but telling him that these were at an end; and with
+something more than a purely formal submission, appealing to his
+judgment.
+
+He heard me very patiently and without surprise; and when I had done he
+sat for some time silent. Then he began: "The Church," and instantly
+broke off again to apologise. "I had forgotten, my child, that you were
+not a Christian," said he. "And indeed, upon a point so highly unusual,
+even the Church can scarce be said to have decided. But would you have
+my opinion? The Senorita is, in a matter of this kind, the best judge;
+I would accept her judgment."
+
+On the back of that he went away, nor was he thenceforward so assiduous
+in his visits; indeed, even when I began to get about again, he plainly
+feared and deprecated my society, not as in distaste, but much as a man
+might be disposed to flee from the riddling sphinx. The villagers, too,
+avoided me; they were unwilling to be my guides upon the mountain. I
+thought they looked at me askance, and I made sure that the more
+superstitious crossed themselves on my approach. At first I set this
+down to my heretical opinions; but it began at length to dawn upon me
+that if I was thus redoubted it was because I had stayed at the
+residencia. All men despise the savage notions of such peasantry; and
+yet I was conscious of a chill shadow that seemed to fall and dwell upon
+my love. It did not conquer, but I may not deny that it restrained, my
+ardour.
+
+Some miles westward of the village there was a gap in the sierra, from
+which the eye plunged direct upon the residencia; and thither it became
+my daily habit to repair. A wood crowned the summit; and just where the
+pathway issued from its fringes, it was overhung by a considerable shelf
+of rock, and that, in its turn, was surmounted by a crucifix of the size
+of life and more than usually painful in design. This was my perch;
+thence, day after day, I looked down upon the plateau, and the great old
+house, and could see Felipe, no bigger than a fly, going to and fro
+about the garden. Sometimes mists would draw across the view, and be
+broken up again by mountain winds; sometimes the plain slumbered below
+me in unbroken sunshine; it would sometimes be all blotted out by rain.
+This distant post, these interrupted sights of the place where my life
+had been so strangely changed, suited the indecision of my humour. I
+passed whole days there, debating with myself the various elements of
+our position, now leaning to the suggestions of love, now giving an ear
+to prudence, and in the end halting irresolute between the two.
+
+One day, as I was sitting on my rock, there came by that way a somewhat
+gaunt peasant wrapped in a mantle. He was a stranger, and plainly did
+not know me even by repute; for, instead of keeping the other side, he
+drew near and sat down beside me, and we had soon fallen in talk. Among
+other things, he told me he had been a muleteer, and in former years had
+much frequented these mountains; later on, he had followed the army with
+his mules, had realised a competence, and was now living retired with
+his family.
+
+"Do you know that house?" I inquired at last, pointing to the
+residencia, for I readily wearied of any talk that kept me from the
+thought of Olalla.
+
+He looked at me darkly and crossed himself.
+
+"Too well," he said, "it was there that one of my comrades sold himself
+to Satan; the Virgin shield us from temptations! He has paid the price;
+he is now burning in the reddest place in hell!"
+
+A fear came upon me; I could answer nothing; and presently the man
+resumed, as if to himself: "Yes," he said, "O yes, I know it. I have
+passed its doors. There was snow upon the pass, the wind was driving it;
+sure enough there was death that night upon the mountains, but there was
+worse beside the hearth. I took him by the arm, Senor, and dragged him
+to the gate; I conjured him, by all he loved and respected, to go forth
+with me; I went on my knees before him in the snow; and I could see he
+was moved by my entreaty. And just then she came out on the gallery, and
+called him by his name; and he turned, and there was she, standing with
+a lamp in her hand and smiling on him to come back. I cried out aloud to
+God, and threw my arms about him, but he put me by, and left me alone.
+He had made his choice; God help us. I would pray for him, but to what
+end? there are sins that not even the Pope can loose."
+
+"And your friend," I asked, "what became of him?"
+
+"Nay, God knows," said the muleteer. "If all be true that we hear, his
+end was like his sin, a thing to raise the hair."
+
+"Do you mean that he was killed?" I asked.
+
+"Sure enough, he was killed," returned the man. "But how? Ah, how? But
+these are things that it is sin to speak of."
+
+"The people of that house ..." I began.
+
+But he interrupted me with a savage outburst. "The people?" he cried.
+"What people? There are neither men nor women in that house of Satan's!
+What? have you lived here so long, and never heard?" And here he put his
+mouth to my ear and whispered, as if even the fowls of the mountain
+might have overheard and been stricken with horror.
+
+What he told me was not true, nor was it even original; being, indeed,
+but a new edition, vamped up again by village ignorance and
+superstition, of stories nearly as ancient as the race of man. It was
+rather the application that appalled me. In the old days, he said, the
+Church would have burned out that nest of basilisks; but the arm of the
+Church was now shortened; his friend Miguel had been unpunished by the
+hands of men, and left to the more awful judgment of an offended God.
+This was wrong; but it should be so no more. The Padre was sunk in age;
+he was even bewitched himself; but the eyes of his flock were now awake
+to their own danger; and some day--ay, and before long--the smoke of
+that house should go up to heaven.
+
+He left me filled with horror and fear. Which way to turn I knew not;
+whether first to warn the Padre, or to carry my ill news direct to the
+threatened inhabitants of the residencia. Fate was to decide for me;
+for, while I was still hesitating, I beheld the veiled figure of a woman
+drawing near to me up the pathway. No veil could deceive my penetration;
+by every line and every movement I recognised Olalla; and keeping
+hidden behind a corner of the rock, I suffered her to gain the summit.
+Then I came forward. She knew me and paused, but did not speak; I, too,
+remained silent; and we continued for some time to gaze upon each other
+with a passionate sadness.
+
+"I thought you had gone," she said at length. "It is all that you can do
+for me--to go. It is all I ever asked of you. And you still stay. But do
+you know, that every day heaps up the peril of death, not only on your
+head, but on ours? A report has gone about the mountain; it is thought
+you love me, and the people will not suffer it."
+
+I saw she was already informed of her danger, and I rejoiced at it.
+"Olalla," I said, "I am ready to go this day, this very hour, but not
+alone."
+
+She stepped aside and knelt down before the crucifix to pray, and I
+stood by and looked now at her and now at the object of her adoration,
+now at the living figure of the penitent, and now at the ghastly, daubed
+countenance, the painted wounds, and the projected ribs of the image.
+The silence was only broken by the wailing of some large birds that
+circled sidelong, as if in surprise or alarm, about the summit of the
+hills. Presently Olalla rose again, turned towards me, raised her veil,
+and, still leaning with one hand on the shaft of the crucifix, looked
+upon me with a pale and sorrowful countenance.
+
+"I have laid my hand upon the cross," she said. "The Padre says you are
+no Christian; but look up for a moment with my eyes, and behold the face
+of the Man of Sorrows. We are all such as He was--the inheritors of sin;
+we must all bear and expiate a past which was not ours; there is in all
+of us--ay, even in me--a sparkle of the divine. Like Him, we must endure
+for a little while, until morning returns, bringing peace. Suffer me to
+pass on upon my way alone; it is thus that I shall be least lonely,
+counting for my friend Him who is the friend of all the distressed; it
+is thus that I shall be the most happy, having taken my farewell of
+earthly happiness, and willingly accepted sorrow for my portion."
+
+I looked at the face of the crucifix, and, though I was no friend to
+images, and despised that imitative and grimacing art of which it was a
+rude example, some sense of what the thing implied was carried home to
+my intelligence. The face looked down upon me with a painful and deadly
+contraction; but the rays of a glory encircled it, and reminded me that
+the sacrifice was voluntary. It stood there, crowning the rock, as it
+still stands on so many highway sides, vainly preaching to passers-by,
+an emblem of sad and noble truths; that pleasure is not an end, but an
+accident; that pain is the choice of the magnanimous; that it is best to
+suffer all things and do well. I turned and went down the mountain in
+silence; and when I looked back for the last time before the wood closed
+about my path, I saw Olalla still leaning on the crucifix.
+
+
+
+
+HEATHERCAT
+
+A FRAGMENT
+
+
+
+
+HEATHERCAT
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+TRAQUAIRS OF MONTROYMONT
+
+
+The period of this tale is in the heat of the _killing-time_; the scene
+laid for the most part in solitary hills and morasses, haunted only by
+the so-called Mountain Wanderers, the dragoons that came in chase of
+them, the women that wept on their dead bodies, and the wild birds of
+the moorland that have cried there since the beginning. It is a land of
+many rain-clouds; a land of much mute history, written there in
+pre-historic symbols. Strange green raths are to be seen commonly in the
+country, above all by the kirkyards; barrows of the dead, standing
+stones; beside these, the faint, durable footprints and handmarks of the
+Roman; and an antiquity older perhaps than any, and still living and
+active--a complete Celtic nomenclature and a scarce-mingled Celtic
+population. These rugged and grey hills were once included in the
+boundaries of the Caledonian Forest. Merlin sat here below his
+apple-tree and lamented Gwendolen; here spoke with Kentigern; here fell
+into his enchanted trance. And the legend of his slumber seems to body
+forth the story of that Celtic race, deprived for so many centuries of
+their authentic speech, surviving with their ancestral inheritance of
+melancholy perversity and patient, unfortunate courage.
+
+The Traquairs of Montroymont (_Mons Romanus_, as the erudite expound it)
+had long held their seat about the head-waters of the Dule and in the
+back parts of the moorland parish of Balweary. For two hundred years
+they had enjoyed in these upland quarters a certain decency (almost to
+be named distinction) of repute; and the annals of their house, or what
+is remembered of them, were obscure and bloody. Ninian Traquair was
+"cruallie slochtered" by the Crozers at the kirk-door of Balweary, anno
+1482. Francis killed Simon Ruthven of Drumshoreland, anno 1540; bought
+letters of slayers at the widow and heir, and, by a barbarous form of
+compounding, married (without tocher) Simon's daughter Grizzel, which is
+the way the Traquairs and Ruthvens came first to an intermarriage. About
+the last Traquair and Ruthven marriage, it is the business of this book,
+among many other things, to tell.
+
+The Traquairs were always strong for the Covenant; for the King also,
+but the Covenant first; and it began to be ill days for Montroymont when
+the Bishops came in and the dragoons at the heels of them. Ninian (then
+laird) was an anxious husband of himself and the property, as the times
+required, and it may be said of him, that he lost both. He was heavily
+suspected of the Pentland Hills rebellion. When it came the length of
+Bothwell Brig, he stood his trial before the Secret Council, and was
+convicted of talking with some insurgents by the wayside, the subject of
+the conversation not very clearly appearing, and of the reset and
+maintenance of one Gale, a gardener man, who seen before Bothwell with a
+musket, and afterwards, for a continuance of months, delved the garden
+at Montroymont. Matters went very ill with Ninian at the Council; some
+of the lords were clear for treason; and even the boot was talked of.
+But he was spared that torture; and at last, having pretty good
+friendship among great men, he came off with a fine of seven thousand
+marks, that caused the estate to groan. In this case, as in so many
+others, it was the wife that made the trouble. She was a great keeper of
+conventicles; would ride ten miles to one, and when she was fined,
+rejoiced greatly to suffer for the Kirk; but it was rather her husband
+that suffered. She had their only son, Francis, baptized privately by
+the hands of Mr. Kidd; there was that much the more to pay for! She
+could neither be driven nor wiled into the parish kirk; as for taking
+the sacrament at the hands of any Episcopalian curate, and tenfold more
+at those of Curate Haddo, there was nothing further from her purposes;
+and Montroymont had to put his hand in his pocket month by month and
+year by year. Once, indeed, the little lady was cast in prison, and the
+laird, worthy, heavy, uninterested man, had to ride up and take her
+place; from which he was not discharged under nine months and a sharp
+fine. It scarce seemed she had any gratitude to him; she came out of
+gaol herself, and plunged immediately deeper in conventicles, resetting
+recusants, and all her old, expensive folly, only with greater vigour
+and openness, because Montroymont was safe in the Tolbooth and she had
+no witness to consider. When he was liberated and came back, with his
+fingers singed, in December 1680, and late in the black night, my lady
+was from home. He came into the house at his alighting, with a
+riding-rod yet in his hand; and, on the servant-maid telling him, caught
+her by the scruff of the neck, beat her violently, flung her down in the
+passage-way, and went upstairs to his bed fasting and without a light.
+It was three in the morning when my lady returned from that conventicle,
+and, hearing of the assault (because the maid had sat up for her,
+weeping), went to their common chamber with a lantern in hand and
+stamping with her shoes so as to wake the dead; it was supposed, by
+those that heard her, from a design to have it out with the good man at
+once. The house-servants gathered on the stair, because it was a main
+interest with them to know which of these two was the better horse; and
+for the space of two hours they were heard to go at the matter, hammer
+and tongs. Montroymont alleged he was at the end of possibilities; it
+was no longer within his power to pay the annual rents; she had served
+him basely by keeping conventicles while he lay in prison for her sake;
+his friends were weary, and there was nothing else before him but the
+entire loss of the family lands, and to begin life again by the wayside
+as a common beggar. She took him up very sharp and high: called upon
+him, if he were a Christian? and which he most considered, the loss of a
+few dirty, miry glebes, or of his soul? Presently he was heard to weep,
+and my lady's voice to go on continually like a running burn, only the
+words indistinguishable; whereupon it was supposed a victory for her
+ladyship, and the domestics took themselves to bed. The next day
+Traquair appeared like a man who had gone under the harrows; and his
+lady wife thenceforward continued in her old course without the least
+deflection.
+
+Thenceforward Ninian went on his way without complaint, and suffered his
+wife to go on hers without remonstrance. He still minded his estate, of
+which it might be said he took daily a fresh farewell, and counted it
+already lost; looking ruefully on the acres and the graves of his
+fathers, on the moorlands where the wildfowl consorted, the low,
+gurgling pool of the trout, and the high, windy place of the calling
+curlews--things that were yet his for the day and would be another's
+to-morrow; coming back again, and sitting ciphering till the dusk at his
+approaching ruin, which no device of arithmetic could postpone beyond a
+year or two. He was essentially the simple ancient man, the farmer and
+landholder; he would have been content to watch the seasons come and go,
+and his cattle increase, until the limit of age; he would have been
+content at any time to die, if he could have left the estates
+undiminished to an heir-male of his ancestors, that duty standing first
+in his instinctive calendar. And now he saw everywhere the image of the
+new proprietor come to meet him, and go sowing and reaping, or fowling
+for his pleasure on the red moors, or eating the very gooseberries in
+the Place garden; and saw always, on the other hand, the figure of
+Francis go forth, a beggar, into the broad world.
+
+It was in vain the poor gentleman sought to moderate; took every test
+and took advantage of every indulgence; went and drank with the dragoons
+in Balweary; attended the communion and came regularly to the church to
+Curate Haddo, with his son beside him. The mad, raging, Presbyterian
+zealot of a wife at home made all of no avail; and indeed the house must
+have fallen years before if it had not been for the secret indulgence of
+the curate, who had a great sympathy with the laird, and winked hard at
+the doings in Montroymont. This curate was a man very ill reputed in the
+countryside, and indeed in all Scotland. "Infamous Haddo" is Shield's
+expression. But Patrick Walker is more copious. "Curate Hall Haddo,"
+says he, _sub voce_ Peden, "or _Hell_ Haddo, as he was more justly to be
+called, a pokeful of old condemned errors and the filthy vile lusts of
+the flesh, a published whoremonger, a common gross drunkard, continually
+and godlessly scraping and skirling on a fiddle, continually breathing
+flames against the remnant of Israel. But the Lord put an end to his
+piping, and all these offences were composed into one bloody grave." No
+doubt this was written to excuse his slaughter; and I have never heard
+it claimed for Walker that he was either a just witness or an indulgent
+judge. At least, in a merely human character, Haddo comes off not wholly
+amiss in the matter of these Traquairs: not that he showed any graces of
+the Christian, but had a sort of Pagan decency, which might almost tempt
+one to be concerned about his sudden, violent, and unprepared fate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+FRANCIE
+
+
+Francie was eleven years old, shy, secret, and rather childish of his
+age, though not backward in schooling, which had been pushed on far by a
+private governor, one M'Brair, a forfeited minister harboured in that
+capacity at Montroymont. The boy, already much employed in secret by his
+mother, was the most apt hand conceivable to run upon a message, to
+carry food to lurking fugitives, or to stand sentry on the skyline above
+a conventicle. It seemed no place on the moorlands was so naked but what
+he would find cover there; and as he knew every hag, boulder, and
+heather-bush in a circuit of seven miles about Montroymont, there was
+scarce any spot but what he could leave or approach it unseen. This
+dexterity had won him a reputation in that part of the country; and
+among the many children employed in these dangerous affairs, he passed
+under the by-name of Heathercat.
+
+How much his father knew of this employment might be doubted. He took
+much forethought for the boy's future, seeing he was like to be left so
+poorly, and would sometimes assist at his lessons, sighing heavily,
+yawning deep, and now and again patting Francie on the shoulder if he
+seemed to be doing ill, by way of a private, kind encouragement. But a
+great part of the day was passed in aimless wanderings with his eyes
+sealed, or in his cabinet sitting bemused over the particulars of the
+coming bankruptcy; and the boy would be absent a dozen times for once
+that his father would observe it.
+
+On 2nd of July 1682 the boy had an errand from his mother, which must
+be kept private from all, the father included in the first of them.
+Crossing the braes, he hears the clatter of a horse's shoes, and claps
+down incontinent in a hag by the wayside. And presently he spied his
+father come riding from one direction, and Curate Haddo walking from
+another; and Montroymont leaning down from the saddle, and Haddo getting
+on his toes (for he was a little, ruddy, bald-pated man, more like a
+dwarf), they greeted kindly, and came to a halt within two fathoms of
+the child.
+
+"Montroymont," the curate said, "the deil's in 't but I'll have to
+denunciate your leddy again."
+
+"Deil's in 't indeed!" says the laird.
+
+"Man! can ye no induce her to come to the kirk?" pursues Haddo; "or to a
+communion at the least of it? For the conventicles, let be! and the same
+for yon solemn fule, M'Brair: I can blink at them. But she's got to come
+to the kirk, Montroymont."
+
+"Dinna speak of it," says the laird. "I can do nothing with her."
+
+"Couldn't ye try the stick to her? it works wonders whiles," suggested
+Haddo. "No? I'm wae to hear it. And I suppose ye ken where you're
+going?"
+
+"Fine!" said Montroymont. "Fine do I ken where: bankrup'cy and the Bass
+Rock!"
+
+"Praise to my bones that I never married!" cried the curate. "Well, it's
+a grievous thing to me to see an auld house dung down that was here
+before Flodden Field. But naebody can say it was with my wish."
+
+"No more they can, Haddo!" says the laird. "A good friend ye've been to
+me, first and last. I can give you that character with a clear
+conscience."
+
+Whereupon they separated, and Montroymont rode briskly down into the
+Dule Valley. But of the curate Francis was not to be quit so easily. He
+went on with his little, brisk steps to the corner of a dyke, and
+stopped and whistled and waved upon a lassie that was herding cattle
+there. This Janet M'Clour was a big lass, being taller than the curate;
+and what made her look the more so, she was kilted very high. It seemed
+for a while she would not come, and Francie heard her calling Haddo a
+"daft auld fule," and saw her running and dodging him among the whins
+and hags till he was fairly blown. But at the last he gets a bottle from
+his plaid-neuk and holds it up to her; whereupon she came at once into a
+composition, and the pair sat, drinking of the bottle, and daffing and
+laughing together, on a mound of heather. The boy had scarce heard of
+these vanities, or he might have been minded of a nymph and satyr, if
+anybody could have taken long-leggit Janet for a nymph. But they seemed
+to be huge friends, he thought; and was the more surprised, when the
+curate had taken his leave, to see the lassie fling stones after him
+with screeches of laughter, and Haddo turn about and caper, and shake
+his staff at her, and laugh louder than herself. A wonderful merry pair,
+they seemed; and when Francie had crawled out of the hag, he had a great
+deal to consider in his mind. It was possible they were all fallen in
+error about Mr. Haddo, he reflected,--having seen him so tender with
+Montroymont, and so kind and playful with the lass Janet; and he had a
+temptation to go out of his road and question her herself upon the
+matter. But he had a strong spirit of duty on him; and plodded on
+instead over the braes till he came near the House of Cairngorm. There,
+in a hollow place, by the burnside that was shaded by some birks, he was
+aware of a barefoot boy, perhaps a matter of three years older than
+himself. The two approached with the precautions of a pair of strange
+dogs, looking at each other queerly.
+
+"It's ill weather on the hills," said the stranger, giving the
+watchword.
+
+"For a season," said Francie, "but the Lord will appear."
+
+"Richt," said the barefoot boy; "wha're ye frae?"
+
+"The Leddy Montroymont," says Francie.
+
+"Ha'e, then!" says the stranger, and handed him a folded paper, and they
+stood and looked at each other again. "It's unco' het," said the boy.
+
+"Dooms het," says Francie.
+
+"What do they ca' ye?" says the other.
+
+"Francie," says he. "I'm young Montroymont. They ca' me Heathercat."
+
+"I'm Jock Crozer," said the boy. And there was another pause, while each
+rolled a stone under his foot.
+
+"Cast your jaiket and I'll fecht ye for a bawbee," cried the elder boy
+with sudden violence, and dramatically throwing back his jacket.
+
+"Na, I have nae time the now," said Francie, with a sharp thrill of
+alarm, because Crozer was much the heavier boy.
+
+"Ye're feared. Heathercat indeed!" said Crozer, for among this infantile
+army of spies and messengers, the fame of Crozer had gone forth and was
+resented by his rivals. And with that they separated.
+
+On his way home Francie was a good deal occupied with the recollection
+of this untoward incident. The challenge had been fairly offered and
+basely refused: the tale would be carried all over the country, and the
+lustre of the name of Heathercat be dimmed. But the scene between Curate
+Haddo and Janet M'Clour had also given him much to think of: and he was
+still puzzling over the case of the curate, and why such ill words were
+said of him, and why, if he were so merry-spirited, he should yet preach
+so dry, when coming over a knowe, whom should he see but Janet, sitting
+with her back to him, minding her cattle! He was always a great child
+for secret, stealthy ways, having been employed by his mother on errands
+when the same was necessary; and he came behind the lass without her
+hearing.
+
+"Jennet," says he.
+
+"Keep me," cries Janet, springing up. "O, it's you, Maister Francie!
+Save us, what a fricht ye gied me."
+
+"Ay, it's me," said Francie. "I've been thinking, Jennet; I saw you and
+the curate a while back----"
+
+"Brat!" cried Janet, and coloured up crimson; and the one moment made as
+if she would have stricken him with a ragged stick she had to chase her
+bestial with, and the next was begging and praying that he would mention
+it to none. It was "naebody's business, whatever," she said; "it would
+just start a clash in the country"; and there would be nothing left for
+her but to drown herself in Dule Water.
+
+"Why?" says Francie.
+
+The girl looked at him and grew scarlet again.
+
+"And it isna that, anyway," continued Francie. "It was just that he
+seemed so good to ye--like our Father in heaven, I thought; and I
+thought that mebbe, perhaps, we had all been wrong about him from the
+first. But I'll have to tell Mr. M'Brair; I'm under a kind of a bargain
+to him to tell him all."
+
+"Tell it to the divil if ye like for me!" cried the lass. "I've naething
+to be ashamed of. Tell M'Brair to mind his ain affairs," she cried
+again: "they'll be hot eneugh for him, if Haddie likes!" And so strode
+off, shoving her beasts before her, and ever and again looking back and
+crying angry words to the boy, where he stood mystified.
+
+By the time he had got home his mind was made up that he would say
+nothing to his mother. My Lady Montroymont was in the keeping-room,
+reading a godly book; she was a wonderful frail little wife to make so
+much noise in the world and be able to steer about that patient sheep
+her husband; her eyes were like sloes, the fingers of her hands were
+like tobacco-pipe shanks, her mouth shut tight like a trap; and even
+when she was the most serious, and still more when she was angry, there
+hung about her face the terrifying semblance of a smile.
+
+"Have ye gotten the billet, Francie?" said she; and when he had handed
+it over, and she had read and burned it, "Did you see anybody?" she
+asked.
+
+"I saw the laird," said Francie.
+
+"He didna see you, though?" asked his mother.
+
+"Deil a fear," from Francie.
+
+"Francie!" she cried. "What's that I hear? an aith? The Lord forgive me,
+have I broughten forth a brand for the burning, a fagot for hell-fire?"
+
+"I'm very sorry, ma'am," said Francie. "I humbly beg the Lord's pardon,
+and yours, for my wickedness."
+
+"H'm," grunted the lady. "Did ye see nobody else?"
+
+"No, ma'am," said Francie, with the face of an angel, "except Jock
+Crozer, that gied me the billet."
+
+"Jock Crozer!" cried the lady. "I'll Crozer them! Crozers indeed! What
+next? Are we to repose the lives of a suffering remnant in Crozers? The
+whole clan of them wants hanging, and if I had my way of it, they
+wouldna want it long. Are you aware, sir, that these Crozers killed your
+forebear at the kirk-door?"
+
+"You see, he was bigger 'n me," said Francie.
+
+"Jock Crozer!" continued the lady. "That'll be Clement's son, the
+biggest thief and reiver in the countryside. To trust a note to him! But
+I'll give the benefit of my opinions to Lady Whitecross when we two
+forgather. Let her look to herself! I have no patience with half-hearted
+carlines, that complies on the Lord's day morning with the kirk, and
+comes taigling the same night to the conventicle. The one or the other!
+is what I say: hell or heaven--Haddie's abominations or the pure word of
+God dreeping from the lips of Mr. Arnot,
+
+  "'Like honey from the honeycomb
+      That dreepeth, sweeter far.'"
+
+My lady was now fairly launched, and that upon two congenial subjects:
+the deficiencies of the Lady Whitecross and the turpitudes of the whole
+Crozer race--which, indeed, had never been conspicuous for
+respectability. She pursued the pair of them for twenty minutes on the
+clock with wonderful animation and detail, something of the pulpit
+manner, and the spirit of one possessed. "O hellish compliance!" she
+exclaimed. "I would not suffer a complier to break bread with Christian
+folk. Of all the sins of this day there is not one so God-defying, so
+Christ-humiliating, as damnable compliance": the boy standing before her
+meanwhile, and brokenly pursuing other thoughts, mainly of Haddo and
+Janet, and Jock Crozer stripping off his jacket. And yet, with all his
+distraction, it might be argued that he heard too much: his father and
+himself being "compliers"--that is to say, attending the church of the
+parish as the law required.
+
+Presently, the lady's passion beginning to decline, or her flux of ill
+words to be exhausted, she dismissed her audience. Francie bowed low,
+left the room, closed the door behind him: and then turned him about in
+the passage-way, and with a low voice, but a prodigious deal of
+sentiment, repeated the name of the evil one twenty times over, to the
+end of which, for the greater efficacy, he tacked on "damnable" and
+"hellish." _Fas est ab hoste doceri_--disrespect is made more pungent by
+quotation; and there is no doubt but he felt relieved, and went upstairs
+into his tutor's chamber with a quiet mind. M'Brair sat by the cheek of
+the peat-fire and shivered, for he had a quartan ague and this was his
+day. The great nightcap and plaid, the dark unshaven cheeks of the man,
+and the white, thin hands that held the plaid about his chittering body,
+made a sorrowful picture. But Francie knew and loved him; came straight
+in, nestled close to the refugee, and told his story. M'Brair had been
+at the College with Haddo; the Presbytery had licensed both on the same
+day; and at this tale, told with so much innocency by the boy, the
+heart of the tutor was commoved.
+
+"Woe upon him! Woe upon that man!" he cried. "O the unfaithful shepherd!
+O the hireling and apostate minister! Make my matters hot for me? quo'
+she! the shameless limmer! And true it is, that he could repose me in
+that nasty, stinking hole, the Canongate Tolbooth, from which your
+mother drew me out--the Lord reward her for it!--or to that cold,
+unbieldy, marine place of the Bass Rock, which, with my delicate kist,
+would be fair ruin to me. But I will be valiant in my Master's service.
+I have a duty here: a duty to my God, to myself, and to Haddo: in His
+strength, I will perform it."
+
+Then he straitly discharged Francie to repeat the tale, and bade him in
+the future to avert his very eyes from the doings of the curate. "You
+must go to his place of idolatry; look upon him there!" says he, "but
+nowhere else. Avert your eyes, close your ears, pass him by like a three
+days' corp. He is like that damnable monster Basiliscus, which
+defiles--yea, poisons!--by the sight."--All which was hardly claratory
+to the boy's mind.
+
+Presently Montroymont came home, and called up the stairs to Francie.
+Traquair was a good shot and swordsman: and it was his pleasure to walk
+with his son over the braes of the moorfowl, or to teach him arms in the
+back court, when they made a mighty comely pair, the child being so
+lean, and light, and active, and the laird himself a man of a manly,
+pretty stature, his hair (the periwig being laid aside) showing already
+white with many anxieties, and his face of an even, flaccid red. But
+this day Francie's heart was not in the fencing.
+
+"Sir," says he, suddenly lowering his point, "will ye tell me a thing if
+I was to ask it?"
+
+"Ask away," says the father.
+
+"Well, it's this," said Francie: "Why do you and me comply if it's so
+wicked?"
+
+"Ay, ye have the cant of it too!" cried Montroymont. "But I'll tell ye
+for all that. It's to try and see if we can keep the rigging on this
+house, Francie. If she had her way, we would be beggar-folk, and hold
+our hands out by the wayside. When ye hear her--when ye hear folk," he
+corrected himself briskly, "call me a coward, and one that betrayed the
+Lord, and I kenna what else, just mind it was to keep a bed to ye to
+sleep in and a bite for ye to eat.--On guard!" he cried, and the lesson
+proceeded again till they were called to supper.
+
+"There's another thing yet," said Francie, stopping his father. "There's
+another thing that I am not sure that I am very caring for. She--she
+sends me errands."
+
+"Obey her, then, as is your bounden duty," said Traquair.
+
+"Ay, but wait till I tell ye," says the boy. "If I was to see you I was
+to hide."
+
+Montroymont sighed. "Well, and that's good of her too," said he. "The
+less that I ken of thir doings the better for me; and the best thing you
+can do is just to obey her, and see and be a good son to her, the same
+as ye are to me, Francie."
+
+At the tenderness of this expression the heart of Francie swelled within
+his bosom, and his remorse was poured out. "Faither!" he cried, "I said
+'deil' to-day; many's the time I said it, and _damnable_ too, and
+_hellish_. I ken they're all right; they're beeblical. But I didna say
+them beeblically; I said them for sweir words--that's the truth of it."
+
+"Hout, ye silly bairn!" said the father, "dinna do it nae mair, and come
+in by to your supper." And he took the boy, and drew him close to him a
+moment, as they went through the door, with something very fond and
+secret, like a caress between a pair of lovers.
+
+The next day M'Brair was abroad in the afternoon, and had a long
+advising with Janet on the braes where she herded cattle. What passed
+was never wholly known; but the lass wept bitterly, and fell on her
+knees to him among the whins. The same night, as soon as it was dark, he
+took the road again for Balweary. In the Kirkton, where the dragoons
+quartered, he saw many lights, and heard the noise of a ranting song and
+people laughing grossly, which was highly offensive to his mind. He gave
+it the wider berth, keeping among fields; and came down at last by the
+water-side, where the manse stands solitary between the river and the
+road. He tapped at the back door, and the old woman called upon him to
+come in, and guided him through the house to the study, as they still
+called it, though there was little enough study there in Haddo's days,
+and more song-books than theology.
+
+"Here's yin to speak wi' ye, Mr. Haddie!" cries the old wife.
+
+And M'Brair, opening the door and entering, found the little, round, red
+man seated in one chair and his feet upon another. A clear fire and a
+tallow dip lighted him barely. He was taking tobacco in a pipe, and
+smiling to himself; and a brandy-bottle and glass, and his fiddle and
+bow, were beside him on the table.
+
+"Hech, Patey M'Brair, is this you?" said he, a trifle tipsily. "Step in
+by, man, and have a drop brandy: for the stomach's sake! Even the deil
+can quote Scripture--eh, Patey?"
+
+"I will neither eat nor drink with you," replied M'Brair. "I am come
+upon my Master's errand! woe be upon me if I should anyways mince the
+same. Hall Haddo, I summon you to quit this kirk which you encumber."
+
+"Muckle obleeged!" says Haddo, winking.
+
+"You and me have been to kirk and market together," pursued M'Brair; "we
+have had blessed seasons in the kirk, we have sat in the same
+teaching-rooms and read in the same book; and I know you still retain
+for me some carnal kindness. It would be my shame if I denied it; I live
+here at your mercy and by your favour, and glory to acknowledge it. You
+have pity on my wretched body, which is but grass, and must soon be
+trodden under: but O, Haddo! how much greater is the yearning with which
+I yearn after and pity your immortal soul! Come now, let us reason
+together! I drop all points of controversy, weighty though these be; I
+take your defaced and damnified kirk on your own terms; and I ask you,
+Are you a worthy minister? The communion season approaches; how can you
+pronounce thir solemn words, 'The elders will now bring forrit the
+elements,' and not quail? A parishioner may be summoned to-night; you
+may have to rise from your miserable orgies; and I ask you, Haddo, what
+does your conscience tell you? Are you fit? Are you fit to smooth the
+pillow of a parting Christian? And if the summons should be for
+yourself, how then?"
+
+Haddo was startled out of all composure and the better part of his
+temper. "What's this of it?" he cried. "I'm no waur than my neebours. I
+never set up to be speeritual; I never did. I'm a plain, canty creature;
+godliness is cheerfulness, says I; give me my fiddle and a dram, and I
+wouldna hairm a flee."
+
+"And I repeat my question," said M'Brair: "Are you fit--fit for this
+great charge? fit to carry and save souls?"
+
+"Fit? Blethers! As fit 's yoursel'," cried Haddo.
+
+"Are you so great a self-deceiver?" said M'Brair. "Wretched man,
+trampler upon God's covenants, crucifier of your Lord afresh. I will
+ding you to the earth with one word: How about the young woman, Janet
+M'Clour?"
+
+"Weel, what about her? what do I ken?" cries Haddo. "M'Brair, ye daft
+auld wife, I tell ye as true 's truth, I never meddled her. It was just
+daffing, I tell ye: daffing, and nae mair: a piece of fun, like! I'm no'
+denying but what I'm fond of fun, sma' blame to me! But for onything
+sarious--hout, man, it might come to a deposeetion! I'll sweir it to ye.
+Where's a Bible, till you hear me sweir?"
+
+"There is nae Bible in your study," said M'Brair severely.
+
+And Haddo, after a few distracted turns, was constrained to accept the
+fact.
+
+"Weel, and suppose there isna?" he cried, stamping. "What mair can ye
+say of us, but just that I'm fond of my joke, and so 's she? I declare
+to God, by what I ken, she might be the Virgin Mary--if she would just
+keep clear of the dragoons. But me! na, deil haet o' me!"
+
+"She is penitent at least," said M'Brair.
+
+"Do you mean to actually up and tell me to my face that she accused me?"
+cried the curate.
+
+"I canna just say that," replied M'Brair. "But I rebuked her in the name
+of God, and she repented before me on her bended knees."
+
+"Weel, I daursay she's been ower far wi' the dragoons," said Haddo. "I
+never denied that. I ken naething by it."
+
+"Man, you but show your nakedness the more plainly," said M'Brair.
+"Poor, blind, besotted creature--and I see you stoytering on the brink
+of dissolution: your light out, and your hours numbered. Awake, man!" he
+shouted with a formidable voice, "awake, or it be ower late."
+
+"Be damned if I stand this!" exclaimed Haddo, casting his tobacco-pipe
+violently on the table, where it was smashed in pieces. "Out of my house
+with ye, or I'll call for the dragoons."
+
+"The speerit of the Lord is upon me," said M'Brair with solemn ecstasy.
+"I sist you to compear before the Great White Throne, and I warn you the
+summons shall be bloody and sudden."
+
+And at this, with more agility than could have been expected, he got
+clear of the room and slammed the door behind him in the face of the
+pursuing curate. The next Lord's day the curate was ill, and the kirk
+closed, but for all his ill words, Mr. M'Brair abode unmolested in the
+house of Montroymont.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE HILL-END OF DRUMLOWE
+
+
+This was a bit of a steep broken hill that overlooked upon the west a
+moorish valley, full of ink-black pools. These presently drained into a
+burn that made off, with little noise and no celerity of pace, about the
+corner of the hill. On the far side the ground swelled into a bare
+heath, black with junipers, and spotted with the presence of the
+standing stones for which the place was famous. They were many in that
+part, shapeless, white with lichen--you would have said with age: and
+had made their abode there for untold centuries, since first the
+heathens shouted for their installation. The ancients had hallowed them
+to some ill religion, and their neighbourhood had long been avoided by
+the prudent before the fall of day; but of late, on the up-springing of
+new requirements, these lonely stones on the moor had again become a
+place of assembly. A watchful picket on the Hill-end commanded all the
+northern and eastern approaches; and such was the disposition of the
+ground, that by certain cunningly posted sentries the west also could be
+made secure against surprise: there was no place in the country where a
+conventicle could meet with more quiet of mind or a more certain retreat
+open, in the case of interference from the dragoons. The minister spoke
+from a knowe close to the edge of the ring, and poured out the words God
+gave him on the very threshold of the devils of yore. When they pitched
+a tent (which was often in wet weather, upon a communion occasion) it
+was rigged over the huge isolated pillar that had the name of
+Anes-Errand, none knew why. And the congregation sat partly clustered
+on the slope below, and partly among the idolatrous monoliths and on the
+turfy soil of the Ring itself. In truth the situation was well qualified
+to give a zest to Christian doctrines, had there been any wanted. But
+these congregations assembled under conditions at once so formidable and
+romantic as made a zealot of the most cold. They were the last of the
+faithful; God, who had averted His face from all other countries of the
+world, still leaned from heaven to observe, with swelling sympathy, the
+doings of His moorland remnant; Christ was by them with His eternal
+wounds, with dropping tears; the Holy Ghost (never perfectly realised
+nor firmly adopted by Protestant imaginations) was dimly supposed to be
+in the heart of each and on the lips of the minister. And over against
+them was the army of the hierarchies, from the men Charles and James
+Stuart, on to King Lewie and the Emperor; and the scarlet Pope, and the
+muckle black devil himself, peering out the red mouth of hell in an
+ecstasy of hate and hope. "One pull more!" he seemed to cry; "one pull
+more, and it's done. There's only Clydesdale and the Stewartry, and the
+three Bailiaries of Ayr, left for God." And with such an august
+assistance of powers and principalities looking on at the last conflict
+of good and evil, it was scarce possible to spare a thought to those
+old, infirm, debile, _ab agendo_ devils whose holy place they were now
+violating.
+
+There might have been three hundred to four hundred present. At least
+there were three hundred horses tethered for the most part in the ring;
+though some of the hearers on the outskirts of the crowd stood with
+their bridles in their hand, ready to mount at the first signal. The
+circle of faces was strangely characteristic; long, serious, strongly
+marked, the tackle standing out in the lean brown cheeks, the mouth set
+and the eyes shining with a fierce enthusiasm; the shepherd, the
+labouring man, and the rarer laird, stood there in their broad blue
+bonnets or laced hats, and presenting an essential identity of type.
+From time to time a long-drawn groan of adhesion rose in this audience,
+and was propagated like a wave to the outskirts, and died away among the
+keepers of the horses. It had a name; it was called "a holy groan."
+
+A squall came up; a great volley of flying mist went out before it and
+whelmed the scene; the wind stormed with a sudden fierceness that
+carried away the minister's voice and twitched his tails and made him
+stagger, and turned the congregation for a moment into a mere pother of
+blowing plaid-ends and prancing horses, and the rain followed and was
+dashed straight into their faces. Men and women panted aloud in the
+shock of that violent shower-bath; the teeth were bared along all the
+line in an involuntary grimace; plaids, mantles, and riding-coats were
+proved vain, and the worshippers felt the water stream on their naked
+flesh. The minister, reinforcing his great and shrill voice, continued
+to contend against and triumph over the rising of the squall and the
+dashing of the rain.
+
+"In that day ye may go thirty mile and not hear a crawing cock," he
+said; "and fifty mile and not get a light to your pipe; and an hundred
+mile and not see a smoking house. For there'll be naething in all
+Scotland but deid men's banes and blackness, and the living anger of the
+Lord. O, where to find a bield--O sirs, where to find a bield from the
+wind of the Lord's anger? Do ye call _this_ a wind? Bethankit! Sirs,
+this is but a temporary dispensation; this is but a puff of wind, this
+is but a spit of rain and by with it. Already there's a blue bow in the
+west, and the sun will take the crown of the causeway again, and your
+things'll be dried upon ye, and your flesh will be warm upon your bones.
+But O, sirs, sirs! for the day of the Lord's anger!"
+
+His rhetoric was set forth with an ear-piercing elocution, and a voice
+that sometimes crashed like cannon. Such as it was, it was the gift of
+all hill-preachers, to a singular degree of likeness or identity. Their
+images scarce ranged beyond the red horizon of the moor and the rainy
+hill-top, the shepherd and his sheep, a fowling-piece, a spade, a pipe,
+a dunghill, a crowing cock, the shining and the withdrawal of the sun.
+An occasional pathos of simple humanity, and frequent patches of big
+Biblical words, relieved the homely tissue. It was a poetry apart;
+bleak, austere, but genuine, and redolent of the soil.
+
+A little before the coming of the squall there was a different scene
+enacting at the outposts. For the most part, the sentinels were faithful
+to their important duty; the Hill-end of Drumlowe was known to be a safe
+meeting-place; and the out-pickets on this particular day had been
+somewhat lax from the beginning, and grew laxer during the inordinate
+length of the discourse. Francie lay there in his appointed hiding-hole,
+looking abroad between two whin-bushes. His view was across the course
+of the burn, then over a piece of plain moorland, to a gap between two
+hills; nothing moved but grouse, and some cattle who slowly traversed
+his field of view, heading northward: he heard the psalms, and sang
+words of his own to the savage and melancholy music; for he had his own
+design in hand, and terror and cowardice prevailed in his bosom
+alternately, like the hot and the cold fit of an ague. Courage was
+uppermost during the singing, which he accompanied through all its
+length with this impromptu strain:
+
+  "And I will ding Jock Crozer down
+    No later than the day."
+
+Presently the voice of the preacher came to him in wafts, at the wind's
+will, as by the opening and shutting of a door; wild spasms of
+screaming, as of some undiscerned gigantic hill-bird stirred with
+inordinate passion, succeeded to intervals of silence; and Francie heard
+them with a critical ear. "Ay," he thought at last, "he'll do; he has
+the bit in his mou' fairly."
+
+He had observed that his friend, or rather his enemy, Jock Crozer, had
+been established at a very critical part of the line of outposts;
+namely, where the burn issues by an abrupt gorge from the semicircle of
+high moors. If anything was calculated to nerve him to battle it was
+this. The post was important; next to the Hill-end itself, it might be
+called the key to the position; and it was where the cover was bad, and
+in which it was most natural to place a child. It should have been
+Heathercat's; why had it been given to Crozer? An exquisite fear of what
+should be the answer passed through his marrow every time he faced the
+question. Was it possible that Crozer could have boasted? that there
+were rumours abroad to his--Heathercat's--discredit? that his honour was
+publicly sullied? All the world went dark about him at the thought; he
+sank without a struggle into the midnight pool of despair; and every
+time he so sank, he brought back with him--not drowned heroism indeed,
+but half-drowned courage by the locks. His heart beat very slowly as he
+deserted his station, and began to crawl towards that of Crozer.
+Something pulled him back, and it was not the sense of duty, but a
+remembrance of Crozer's build and hateful readiness of fist. Duty, as he
+conceived it, pointed him forward on the rueful path that he was
+travelling. Duty bade him redeem his name if he were able, at the risk
+of broken bones; and his bones and every tooth in his head ached by
+anticipation. An awful subsidiary fear whispered him that if he were
+hurt, he should disgrace himself by weeping. He consoled himself,
+boy-like, with the consideration that he was not yet committed; he could
+easily steal over unseen to Crozer's post, and he had a continuous
+private idea that he would very probably steal back again. His course
+took him so near the minister that he could hear some of his words:
+"What news, minister, of Claver'se? He's going round like a roaring
+rampaging lion....
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT NORTH ROAD
+
+A FRAGMENT
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT NORTH ROAD
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+NANCE AT THE "GREEN DRAGON"
+
+
+Nance Holdaway was on her knees before the fire blowing the green wood
+that voluminously smoked upon the dogs, and only now and then shot forth
+a smothered flame; her knees already ached and her eyes smarted, for she
+had been some while at this ungrateful task, but her mind was gone far
+away to meet the coming stranger. Now she met him in the wood, now at
+the castle gate, now in the kitchen by candle-light; each fresh
+presentment eclipsed the one before; a form so elegant, manners so
+sedate, a countenance so brave and comely, a voice so winning and
+resolute--sure such a man was never seen! The thick-coming fancies
+poured and brightened in her head like the smoke and flames upon the
+hearth.
+
+Presently the heavy foot of her uncle Jonathan was heard upon the stair,
+and as he entered the room she bent the closer to her work. He glanced
+at the green fagots with a sneer, and looked askance at the bed and the
+white sheets, at the strip of carpet laid, like an island, on the great
+expanse of the stone floor, and at the broken glazing of the casement
+clumsily repaired with paper.
+
+"Leave that fire a-be," he cried. "What, have I toiled all my life to
+turn innkeeper at the hind end? Leave it a-be, I say."
+
+"La, uncle, it doesn't burn a bit; it only smokes," said Nance, looking
+up from her position.
+
+"You are come of decent people of both sides," returned the old man.
+"Who are you to blow the coals for any Robin-run-agate? Get up, get on
+your hood, make yourself useful, and be off to the 'Green Dragon.'"
+
+"I thought you was to go yourself," Nance faltered.
+
+"So did I," quoth Jonathan; "but it appears I was mistook."
+
+The very excess of her eagerness alarmed her, and she began to hang
+back. "I think I would rather not, dear uncle," she said. "Night is at
+hand, and I think, dear, I would rather not."
+
+"Now you look here," replied Jonathan, "I have my lord's orders, have I
+not? Little he gives me, but it's all my livelihood. And do you fancy,
+if I disobey my lord, I'm likely to turn round for a lass like you? No,
+I've that hell-fire of pain in my old knee, I wouldn't walk a mile, not
+for King George upon his bended knees." And he walked to the window and
+looked down the steep scarp to where the river foamed in the bottom of
+the dell.
+
+Nance stayed for no more bidding. In her own room, by the glimmer of the
+twilight, she washed her hands and pulled on her Sunday mittens;
+adjusted her black hood, and tied a dozen times its cherry ribbons; and
+in less than ten minutes, with a fluttering heart and excellently bright
+eyes, she passed forth under the arch and over the bridge, into the
+thickening shadows of the groves. A well-marked wheel-track conducted
+her. The wood, which upon both sides of the river dell was a mere
+scrambling thicket of hazel, hawthorn, and holly, boasted on the level
+of more considerable timber. Beeches came to a good growth, with here
+and there an oak; and the track now passed under a high arcade of
+branches, and now ran under the open sky in glades. As the girl
+proceeded these glades became more frequent, the trees began again to
+decline in size, and the wood to degenerate into furzy coverts. Last of
+all there was a fringe of elders; and beyond that the track came forth
+upon an open, rolling moorland, dotted with wind-bowed and scanty
+bushes, and all golden brown with the winter, like a grouse. Right over
+against the girl the last red embers of the sunset burned under
+horizontal clouds; the night fell clear and still and frosty, and the
+track in low and marshy passages began to crackle under foot with ice.
+
+Some half a mile beyond the borders of the wood the lights of the "Green
+Dragon" hove in sight, and running close beside them, very faint in the
+dying dusk, the pale ribbon of the Great North Road. It was the back of
+the post-house that was presented to Nance Holdaway; and as she
+continued to draw near and the night to fall more completely, she became
+aware of an unusual brightness and bustle. A post-chaise stood in the
+yard, its lamps already lighted: light shone hospitably in the windows
+and from the open door; moving lights and shadows testified to the
+activity of servants bearing lanterns. The clank of pails, the stamping
+of hoofs on the firm causeway, the jingle of harness, and, last of all,
+the energetic hissing of a groom, began to fall upon her ear. By the
+stir you would have thought the mail was at the door, but it was still
+too early in the night. The down mail was not due at the "Green Dragon"
+for hard upon an hour; the up mail from Scotland not before two in the
+black morning.
+
+Nance entered the yard somewhat dazzled. Sam, the tall ostler, was
+polishing a curb-chain with sand; the lantern at his feet letting up
+spouts of candle-light through the holes with which its conical roof was
+peppered.
+
+"Hey, miss," said he jocularly, "you won't look at me any more, now you
+have gentry at the castle."
+
+Her cheeks burned with anger.
+
+"That's my lord's chay," the man continued, nodding at the chaise, "Lord
+Windermoor's. Came all in a fluster--dinner, bowl of punch, and put the
+horses to. For all the world like a runaway match, my dear--bar the
+bride. He brought Mr. Archer in the chay with him."
+
+"Is that Holdaway?" cried the landlord from the lighted entry, where he
+stood shading his eyes.
+
+"Only me, sir," answered Nance.
+
+"O, you, Miss Nance," he said. "Well, come in quick, my pretty. My lord
+is waiting for your uncle."
+
+And he ushered Nance into a room cased with yellow wainscot and lighted
+by tall candles, where two gentlemen sat at a table finishing a bowl of
+punch. One of these was stout, elderly, and irascible, with a face like
+a full moon, well dyed with liquor, thick tremulous lips, a short,
+purple hand, in which he brandished a long pipe, and an abrupt and
+gobbling utterance. This was my Lord Windermoor. In his companion Nance
+beheld a younger man, tall, quiet, grave, demurely dressed, and wearing
+his own hair. Her glance but lighted on him, and she flushed, for in
+that second she made sure that she had twice betrayed herself--betrayed
+by the involuntary flash of her black eyes her secret impatience to
+behold this new companion, and, what was far worse, betrayed her
+disappointment in the realisation of her dreams. He, meanwhile, as if
+unconscious, continued to regard her with unmoved decorum.
+
+"O, a man of wood," thought Nance.
+
+"What--what?" said his lordship. "Who is this?"
+
+"If you please, my lord, I am Holdaway's niece," replied Nance, with a
+curtsey.
+
+"Should have been here himself," observed his lordship. "Well, you tell
+Holdaway that I'm aground, not a stiver--not a stiver. I'm running from
+the beagles--going abroad, tell Holdaway. And he need look for no more
+wages: glad of 'em myself, if I could get 'em. He can live in the castle
+if he likes, or go to the devil. O, and here is Mr. Archer; and I
+recommend him to take him in--a friend of mine--and Mr. Archer will pay,
+as I wrote. And I regard that in the light of a precious good thing for
+Holdaway, let me tell you, and a set-off against the wages."
+
+"But O, my lord!" cried Nance, "we live upon the wages, and what are we
+to do without?"
+
+"What am I to do?--what am I to do?" replied Lord Windermoor with some
+exasperation. "I have no wages. And there is Mr. Archer. And if Holdaway
+doesn't like it, he can go to the devil, and you with him!--and you with
+him!"
+
+"And yet, my lord," said Mr. Archer, "these good people will have as
+keen a sense of loss as you or I; keener, perhaps, since they have done
+nothing to deserve it."
+
+"Deserve it?" cried the peer. "What? What? If a rascally highwayman
+comes up to me with a confounded pistol, do you say that I've deserved
+it? How often am I to tell you, sir, that I was cheated--that I was
+cheated?"
+
+"You are happy in the belief," returned Mr. Archer gravely.
+
+"Archer, you would be the death of me!" exclaimed his lordship. "You
+know you're drunk; you know it, sir; and yet you can't get up a spark of
+animation."
+
+"I have drunk fair, my lord," replied the younger man; "but I own I am
+conscious of no exhilaration."
+
+"If you had as black a look-out as me, sir," cried the peer, "you would
+be very glad of a little innocent exhilaration, let me tell you. I am
+glad of it--glad of it, and I only wish I was drunker. For let me tell
+you it's a cruel hard thing upon a man of my time of life and my
+position, to be brought down to beggary because the world is full of
+thieves and rascals--thieves and rascals. What? For all I know, you may
+be a thief and a rascal yourself; and I would fight you for a pinch of
+snuff--a pinch of snuff," exclaimed his lordship.
+
+Here Mr. Archer turned to Nance Holdaway with a pleasant smile, so full
+of sweetness, kindness, and composure that, at one bound, her dreams
+returned to her. "My good Miss Holdaway," said he, "if you are willing
+to show me the road, I am even eager to be gone. As for his lordship
+and myself, compose yourself; there is no fear; this is his lordship's
+way."
+
+"What? what?" cried his lordship. "My way? Ish no such a thing, my way."
+
+"Come, my lord," cried Archer; "you and I very thoroughly understand
+each other; and let me suggest, it is time that both of us were gone.
+The mail will soon be due. Here, then, my lord, I take my leave of you,
+with the most earnest assurance of my gratitude for the past, and a
+sincere offer of any services I may be able to render in the future."
+
+"Archer," exclaimed Lord Windermoor, "I love you like a son. Le' 's have
+another bowl."
+
+"My lord, for both our sakes, you will excuse me," replied Mr. Archer.
+"We both require caution; we must both, for some while at least, avoid
+the chance of a pursuit."
+
+"Archer," quoth his lordship, "this is a rank ingratishood. What? I'm to
+go firing away in the dark in the cold po'chaise, and not so much as a
+game of ecarte possible, unless I stop and play with the postillion, the
+postillion; and the whole country swarming with thieves and rascals and
+highwaymen."
+
+"I beg your lordship's pardon," put in the landlord, who now appeared in
+the doorway to announce the chaise, "but this part of the North Road is
+known for safety. There has not been a robbery, to call a robbery, this
+five years' time. Further south, of course, it's nearer London, and
+another story," he added.
+
+"Well, then, if that's so," concluded my lord, "le' 's have t' other
+bowl and a pack of cards."
+
+"My lord, you forget," said Archer, "I might still gain; but it is
+hardly possible for me to lose."
+
+"Think I'm a sharper?" inquired the peer. "Gen'leman's parole's all I
+ask."
+
+But Mr. Archer was proof against these blandishments, and said farewell
+gravely enough to Lord Windermoor, shaking his hand and at the same
+time bowing very low. "You will never know," says he, "the service you
+have done me." And with that, and before my lord had finally taken up
+his meaning, he had slipped about the table, touched Nance lightly but
+imperiously on the arm, and left the room. In face of the outbreak of
+his lordship's lamentations she made haste to follow the truant.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+IN WHICH MR. ARCHER IS INSTALLED
+
+
+The chaise had been driven round to the front door; the courtyard lay
+all deserted, and only lit by a lantern set upon a window-sill. Through
+this Nance rapidly led the way, and began to ascend the swellings of the
+moor with a heart that somewhat fluttered in her bosom. She was not
+afraid, but in the course of these last passages with Lord Windermoor
+Mr. Archer had ascended to that pedestal on which her fancy waited to
+instal him. The reality, she felt, excelled her dreams, and this cold
+night walk was the first romantic incident in her experience.
+
+It was the rule in these days to see gentlemen unsteady after dinner,
+yet Nance was both surprised and amused when her companion, who had
+spoken so soberly, began to stumble and waver by her side with the most
+airy divagations. Sometimes he would get so close to her that she must
+edge away; and at others lurch clear out of the track and plough among
+deep heather. His courtesy and gravity meanwhile remained unaltered. He
+asked her how far they had to go; whether the way lay all upon the
+moorland, and when he learned they had to pass a wood expressed his
+pleasure. "For," said he, "I am passionately fond of trees. Trees and
+fair lawns, if you consider of it rightly, are the ornaments of nature,
+as palaces and fine approaches----" And here he stumbled into a patch of
+slough and nearly fell. The girl had hard work not to laugh, but at
+heart she was lost in admiration for one who talked so elegantly.
+
+They had got to about a quarter of a mile from the
+
+"Green Dragon," and were near the summit of the rise, when a sudden rush
+of wheels arrested them. Turning and looking back, they saw the
+post-house, now much declined in brightness; and speeding away northward
+the two tremulous bright dots of my Lord Windermoor's chaise-lamps. Mr.
+Archer followed these yellow and unsteady stars until they dwindled into
+points and disappeared.
+
+"There goes my only friend," he said. "Death has cut off those that
+loved me, and change of fortune estranged my flatterers; and but for
+you, poor bankrupt, my life is as lonely as this moor."
+
+The tone of his voice affected both of them. They stood there on the
+side of the moor, and became thrillingly conscious of the void waste of
+the night, without a feature for the eye, and except for the fainting
+whisper of the carriage-wheels without a murmur for the ear. And
+instantly, like a mockery, there broke out, very far away, but clear and
+jolly, the note of the mail-guard's horn. "Over the hills" was his air.
+It rose to the two watchers on the moor with the most cheerful sentiment
+of human company and travel, and at the same time in and around the
+"Green Dragon" it woke up a great bustle of lights running to and fro
+and clattering hoofs. Presently after, out of the darkness to southward,
+the mail grew near with a growing rumble. Its lamps were very large and
+bright, and threw their radiance forward in overlapping cones; the four
+cantering horses swarmed and steamed; the body of the coach followed
+like a great shadow; and this lit picture slid with a sort of
+ineffectual swiftness over the black field of night, and was eclipsed by
+the buildings of the "Green Dragon."
+
+Mr. Archer turned abruptly and resumed his former walk; only that he was
+now more steady, kept better alongside his young conductor, and had
+fallen into a silence broken by sighs. Nance waxed very pitiful over his
+fate, contrasting an imaginary past of courts and great society, and
+perhaps the King himself, with the tumbledown ruin in a wood to which
+she was now conducting him.
+
+"You must try, sir, to keep your spirits up," said she. "To be sure this
+is a great change for one like you; but who knows the future?"
+
+Mr. Archer turned towards her in the darkness, and she could clearly
+perceive that he smiled upon her very kindly. "There spoke a sweet
+nature," said he, "and I must thank you for these words. But I would not
+have you fancy that I regret the past for any happiness found in it, or
+that I fear the simplicity and hardship of the country. I am a man that
+has been much tossed about in life; now up, now down; and do you think
+that I shall not be able to support what you support--you who are kind,
+and therefore know how to feel pain; who are beautiful, and therefore
+hope; who are young, and therefore (or am I the more mistaken?)
+discontented?"
+
+"Nay, sir, not that, at least," said Nance; "not discontented. If I were
+to be discontented, how should I look those that have real sorrows in
+the face? I have faults enough, but not that fault; and I have my merits
+too, for I have a good opinion of myself. But for beauty, I am not so
+simple but that I can tell a banter from a compliment."
+
+"Nay, nay," said Mr. Archer, "I had half forgotten; grief is selfish,
+and I was thinking of myself and not of you, or I had never blurted out
+so bold a piece of praise. 'Tis the best proof of my sincerity. But
+come, now, I would lay a wager you are no coward?"
+
+"Indeed, sir, I am not more afraid than another," said Nance. "None of
+my blood are given to fear."
+
+"And you are honest?" he returned.
+
+"I will answer for that," said she.
+
+"Well, then, to be brave, to be honest, to be kind, and to be contented,
+since you say you are so--is not that to fill up a great part of
+virtue?"
+
+"I fear you are but a flatterer," said Nance, but she did not say it
+clearly, for what with bewilderment and satisfaction, her heart was
+quite oppressed.
+
+There could be no harm, certainly, in these grave compliments; but yet
+they charmed and frightened her, and to find favour, for reasons however
+obscure, in the eyes of this elegant, serious, and most unfortunate
+young gentleman, was a giddy elevation, was almost an apotheosis, for a
+country maid.
+
+But she was to be no more exercised; for Mr. Archer, disclaiming any
+thought of flattery, turned off to other subjects, and held her all
+through the wood in conversation, addressing her with an air of perfect
+sincerity, and listening to her answers with every mark of interest. Had
+open flattery continued, Nance would have soon found refuge in good
+sense; but the more subtle lure she could not suspect, much less avoid.
+It was the first time she had ever taken part in a conversation
+illuminated by any ideas. All was then true that she had heard and
+dreamed of gentlemen; they were a race apart, like deities knowing good
+and evil. And then there burst upon her soul a divine thought, hope's
+glorious sunrise: since she could understand, since it seemed that she
+too, even she, could interest this sorrowful Apollo, might she not
+learn? or was she not learning? Would not her soul awake and put forth
+wings? Was she not, in fact, an enchanted princess, waiting but a touch
+to become royal? She saw herself transformed, radiantly attired, but in
+the most exquisite taste: her face grown longer and more refined; her
+tint etherealised; and she heard herself with delighted wonder talking
+like a book.
+
+Meanwhile they had arrived at where the track comes out above the river
+dell, and saw in front of them the castle, faintly shadowed on the
+night, covering with its broken battlements a bold projection of the
+bank, and showing at the extreme end, where were the habitable tower and
+wing, some crevices of candle-light. Hence she called loudly upon her
+uncle, and he was seen to issue, lantern in hand, from the tower door,
+and, where the ruins did not intervene, to pick his way over the swarded
+courtyard, avoiding treacherous cellars and winding among blocks of
+fallen masonry. The arch of the great gate was still entire, flanked by
+two tottering bastions, and it was here that Jonathan met them, standing
+at the edge of the bridge, bent somewhat forward, and blinking at them
+through the glow of his own lantern. Mr. Archer greeted him with
+civility; but the old man was in no humour of compliance. He guided the
+new-comer across the courtyard, looking sharply and quickly in his face,
+and grumbling all the time about the cold, and the discomfort and
+dilapidation of the castle. He was sure he hoped that Mr. Archer would
+like it; but in truth he could not think what brought him there.
+Doubtless he had a good reason--this with a look of cunning
+scrutiny--but, indeed, the place was quite unfit for any person of
+repute; he himself was eaten up with the rheumatics. It was the most
+rheumaticky place in England, and some fine day the whole habitable part
+(to call it habitable) would fetch away bodily and go down the slope
+into the river. He had seen the cracks widening; there was a plaguy
+issue in the bank below; he thought a spring was mining it; it might be
+to-morrow, it might be next day; but they were all sure of a come-down
+sooner or later. "And that is a poor death," said he, "for any one, let
+alone a gentleman, to have a whole old ruin dumped upon his belly. Have
+a care to your left there; these cellar vaults have all broke down, and
+the grass and hemlock hide 'em. Well, sir, here is welcome to you, such
+as it is, and wishing you well away."
+
+And with that Jonathan ushered his guest through the tower door, and
+down three steps on the left hand into the kitchen or common room of the
+castle. It was a huge, low room, as large as a meadow, occupying the
+whole width of the habitable wing, with six barred windows looking on
+the court, and two into the river valley. A dresser, a table, and a few
+chairs stood dotted here and there upon the uneven flags. Under the
+great chimney a good fire burned in an iron fire-basket; a high old
+settee, rudely carved with figures and Gothic lettering, flanked it on
+either side; there was a hinge table and a stone bench in the chimney
+corner, and above the arch hung guns, axes, lanterns, and great sheaves
+of rusty keys.
+
+Jonathan looked about him, holding up the lantern, and shrugged his
+shoulders, with a pitying grimace. "Here it is," he said. "See the damp
+on the floor, look at the moss; where there's moss you may be sure that
+it's rheumaticky. Try and get near that fire for to warm yourself; it'll
+blow the coat off your back. And with a young gentleman with a face like
+yours, as pale as a tallow-candle, I'd be afeard of a churchyard cough
+and a galloping decline," says Jonathan, naming the maladies with gloomy
+gusto, "or the cold might strike and turn your blood," he added.
+
+Mr. Archer fairly laughed. "My good Mr. Holdaway," said he, "I was born
+with that same tallow-candle face, and the only fear that you inspire me
+with is the fear that I intrude unwelcomely upon your private hours. But
+I think I can promise you that I am very little troublesome, and I am
+inclined to hope that the terms which I can offer may still pay you the
+derangement."
+
+"Yes, the terms," said Jonathan, "I was thinking of that. As you say,
+they are very small," and he shook his head.
+
+"Unhappily, I can afford no more," said Mr. Archer. "But this we have
+arranged already," he added with a certain stiffness; "and as I am aware
+that Miss Holdaway has matter to communicate, I will, if you permit,
+retire at once. To-night I must bivouac; to-morrow my trunk is to follow
+from the 'Dragon.' So if you will show me to my room I shall wish you a
+good slumber and a better awakening."
+
+Jonathan silently gave the lantern to Nance, and she, turning and
+curtseying in the doorway, proceeded to conduct their guest up the broad
+winding staircase of the tower. He followed with a very brooding face.
+
+"Alas!" cried Nance, as she entered the room, "your fire black out,"
+and, setting down the lantern, she clapped upon her knees before the
+chimney and began to rearrange the charred and still smouldering
+remains. Mr. Archer looked about the gaunt apartment with a sort of
+shudder. The great height, the bare stone, the shattered windows, the
+aspect of the uncurtained bed, with one of its four fluted columns
+broken short, all struck a chill upon his fancy. From this dismal survey
+his eyes returned to Nance crouching before the fire, the candle in one
+hand and artfully puffing at the embers; the flames as they broke forth
+played upon the soft outline of her cheek--she was alive and young,
+coloured with the bright hues of life, and a woman. He looked upon her,
+softening; and then sat down and continued to admire the picture.
+
+"There, sir," said she, getting upon her feet, "your fire is doing
+bravely now. Good-night."
+
+He rose and held out his hand. "Come," said he, "you are my only friend
+in these parts, and you must shake hands."
+
+She brushed her hand upon her skirt and offered it, blushing.
+
+"God bless you, my dear," said he.
+
+And then, when he was alone, he opened one of the windows, and stared
+down into the dark valley. A gentle wimpling of the river among stones
+ascended to his ear; the trees upon the other bank stood very black
+against the sky; farther away an owl was hooting. It was dreary and
+cold, and as he turned back to the hearth and the fine glow of fire,
+"Heavens!" said he to himself, "what an unfortunate destiny is mine!"
+
+He went to bed, but sleep only visited his pillow in uneasy snatches.
+Outbreaks of loud speech came up the staircase; he heard the old stones
+of the castle crack in the frosty night with sharp reverberations, and
+the bed complained under his tossings. Lastly, far on into the morning,
+he awakened from a doze to hear, very far off, in the extreme and
+breathless quiet, a wailing flourish on the horn. The down mail was
+drawing near to the "Green Dragon." He sat up in bed; the sound was
+tragical by distance, and the modulation appealed to his ear like human
+speech. It seemed to call upon him with a dreary insistence--to call him
+far away, to address him personally, and to have a meaning that he
+failed to seize. It was thus, at least, in this nodding castle, in a
+cold, miry woodland, and so far from men and society, that the traffic
+on the Great North Road spoke to him in the intervals of slumber.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+JONATHAN HOLDAWAY
+
+
+Nance descended the tower stair, pausing at every step. She was in no
+hurry to confront her uncle with bad news, and she must dwell a little
+longer on the rich note of Mr. Archer's voice, the charm of his kind
+words, and the beauty of his manner and person. But, once at the
+stair-foot, she threw aside the spell and recovered her sensible and
+workaday self.
+
+Jonathan was seated in the middle of the settle, a mug of ale beside
+him, in the attitude of one prepared for trouble; but he did not speak,
+and suffered her to fetch her supper and eat of it, with a very
+excellent appetite, in silence. When she had done, she, too, drew a
+tankard of home-brewed, and came and planted herself in front of him
+upon the settle.
+
+"Well?" said Jonathan.
+
+"My lord has run away," said Nance.
+
+"What?" cried the old man.
+
+"Abroad," she continued; "run away from creditors. He said he had not a
+stiver, but he was drunk enough. He said you might live on in the
+castle, and Mr. Archer would pay you; but you was to look for no more
+wages, since he would be glad of them himself."
+
+Jonathan's face contracted; the flush of a black, bilious anger mounted
+to the roots of his hair; he gave an inarticulate cry, leapt upon his
+feet, and began rapidly pacing the stone floor. At first he kept his
+hands behind his back in a tight knot; then he began to gesticulate as
+he turned.
+
+"This man--this lord," he shouted, "who is he? He was born with a gold
+spoon in his mouth, and I with a dirty straw. He rolled in his coach
+when he was a baby. I have dug and toiled and laboured since I was that
+high--that high." And he shouted again. "I'm bent and broke, and full of
+pains. D'ye think I don't know the taste of sweat? Many's the gallon
+I've drunk of it--ay, in the midwinter, toiling like a slave. All
+through, what has my life been? Bend, bend, bend my old creaking back
+till it would ache like breaking; wade about in the foul mire, never a
+dry stitch; empty belly, sore hands, hat off to my Lord Redface; kicks
+and ha'pence; and now, here, at the hind end, when I'm worn to my poor
+bones, a kick and done with it." He walked a little while in silence,
+and then, extending his hand, "Now, you Nance Holdaway," says he, "you
+come of my blood, and you're a good girl. When that man was a boy, I
+used to carry his gun for him. I carried the gun all day on my two feet,
+and many a stitch I had, and chewed a bullet for. He rode upon a horse,
+with feathers in his hat; but it was him that had the shots and took the
+game home. Did I complain? Not I. I knew my station. What did I ask, but
+just the chance to live and die honest? Nance Holdaway, don't let them
+deny it to me--don't let them do it. I've been as poor as Job, and as
+honest as the day, but now, my girl, you mark these words of mine, I'm
+getting tired of it."
+
+"I wouldn't say such words, at least," said Nance.
+
+"You wouldn't?" said the old man grimly. "Well, and did I when I was
+your age? Wait till your back's broke and your hands tremble, and your
+eyes fail, and you're weary of the battle and ask no more but to lie
+down in your bed and give the ghost up like an honest man; and then let
+there up and come some insolent, ungodly fellow--ah! if I had him in
+these hands! 'Where's my money that you gambled?' I should say. 'Where's
+my money that you drank and diced?' 'Thief!' is what I would say;
+'Thief!'" he roared, "'Thief!'"
+
+"Mr. Archer will hear you if you don't take care," said Nance, "and I
+would be ashamed, for one, that he should hear a brave, old, honest,
+hard-working man like Jonathan Holdaway talk nonsense like a boy."
+
+"D'ye think I mind for Mr. Archer?" he cried shrilly, with a clack of
+laughter; and then he came close up to her, stooped down with his two
+palms upon his knees, and looked her in the eyes, with a strange hard
+expression, something like a smile. "Do I mind for God, my girl?" he
+said; "that's what it's come to be now, do I mind for God?"
+
+"Uncle Jonathan," she said, getting up and taking him by the arm; "you
+sit down again, where you were sitting. There, sit still; I'll have no
+more of this; you'll do yourself a mischief. Come, take a drink of this
+good ale, and I'll warm a tankard for you. La, we'll pull through,
+you'll see. I'm young, as you say, and it's my turn to carry the bundle;
+and don't you worry your bile, or we'll have sickness, too, as well as
+sorrow."
+
+"D'ye think that I'd forgotten you?" said Jonathan, with something like
+a groan; and thereupon his teeth clicked to, and he sat silent with the
+tankard in his hand and staring straight before him.
+
+"Why," says Nance, setting on the ale to mull, "men are always children,
+they say, however old; and if ever I heard a thing like this, to set to
+and make yourself sick, just when the money's failing. Keep a good heart
+up; you haven't kept a good heart these seventy years, nigh hand, to
+break down about a pound or two. Here's this Mr. Archer come to lodge,
+that you disliked so much. Well, now you see it was a clear Providence.
+Come, let's think upon our mercies. And here is the ale mulling lovely;
+smell of it; I'll take a drop myself, it smells so sweet. And, Uncle
+Jonathan, you let me say one word. You've lost more than money before
+now; you lost my aunt, and bore it like a man. Bear this."
+
+His face once more contracted; his fist doubled, and shot forth into the
+air, and trembled. "Let them look out!" he shouted. "Here, I warn all
+men; I've done with this foul kennel of knaves. Let them look out!"
+
+"Hush, hush! for pity's sake," cried Nance.
+
+And then all of a sudden he dropped his face into his hands, and broke
+out with a great hiccoughing dry sob that was horrible to hear. "O," he
+cried, "my God, if my son hadn't left me, if my Dick was here!" and the
+sobs shook him; Nance sitting still and watching him, with distress. "O,
+if he were here to help his father!" he went on again. "If I had a son
+like other fathers, he would save me now, when all is breaking down; O,
+he would save me! Ay, but where is he? Raking taverns, a thief perhaps.
+My curse be on him!" he added, rising again into wrath.
+
+"Hush!" cried Nance, springing to her feet: "your boy, your dead wife's
+boy--Aunt Susan's baby that she loved--would you curse him? O, God
+forbid!"
+
+The energy of her address surprised him from his mood. He looked upon
+her, tearless and confused. "Let me go to my bed," he said at last, and
+he rose, and, shaking as with ague, but quite silent, lighted his
+candle, and left the kitchen.
+
+Poor Nance! the pleasant current of her dreams was all diverted. She
+beheld a golden city, where she aspired to dwell; she had spoken with a
+deity, and had told herself that she might rise to be his equal; and now
+the earthly ligaments that bound her down had been tightened. She was
+like a tree looking skyward, her roots were in the ground. It seemed to
+her a thing so coarse, so rustic, to be thus concerned about a loss in
+money; when Mr. Archer, fallen from the sky-level of counts and nobles,
+faced his changed destiny with so immovable a courage. To weary of
+honesty; that, at least, no one could do, but even to name it was
+already a disgrace; and she beheld in fancy her uncle, and the young
+lad, all laced and feathered, hand upon hip, bestriding his small horse.
+The opposition seemed to perpetuate itself from generation to
+generation; one side still doomed to the clumsy and the servile, the
+other born to beauty.
+
+She thought of the golden zones in which gentlemen were bred, and
+figured with so excellent a grace; zones in which wisdom and smooth
+words, white linen and slim hands, were the mark of the desired
+inhabitants; where low temptations were unknown, and honesty no virtue,
+but a thing as natural as breathing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+MINGLING THREADS
+
+
+It was nearly seven before Mr. Archer left his apartment. On the landing
+he found another door beside his own opening on a roofless corridor, and
+presently he was walking on the top of the ruins. On one hand he could
+look down a good depth into the green courtyard; on the other his eye
+roved along the downward course of the river, the wet woods all smoking,
+the shadows long and blue, the mists golden and rosy in the sun, here
+and there the water flashing across an obstacle. His heart expanded and
+softened to a grateful melancholy, and with his eye fixed upon the
+distance, and no thought of present danger, he continued to stroll along
+the elevated and treacherous promenade.
+
+A terror-stricken cry rose to him from the courtyard. He looked down,
+and saw in a glimpse Nance standing below with hands clasped in horror
+and his own foot trembling on the margin of a gulf. He recoiled and
+leant against a pillar, quaking from head to foot, and covering his face
+with his hands; and Nance had time to run round by the stair and rejoin
+him where he stood before he had changed a line of his position.
+
+"Ah!" he cried, and clutched her wrist; "don't leave me. The place
+rocks; I have no head for altitudes."
+
+"Sit down against that pillar," said Nance. "Don't you be afraid; I
+won't leave you, and don't look up or down: look straight at me. How
+white you are!"
+
+"The gulf," he said, and closed his eyes again and shuddered.
+
+"Why," said Nance, "what a poor climber you must be! That was where my
+cousin Dick used to get out of the castle after Uncle Jonathan had shut
+the gate. I've been down there myself with him helping me. I wouldn't
+try with you," she said, and laughed merrily.
+
+The sound of her laughter was sincere and musical, and perhaps its
+beauty barbed the offence to Mr. Archer. The blood came into his face
+with a quick jet, and then left it paler than before. "It is a physical
+weakness," he said harshly, "and very droll, no doubt, but one that I
+can conquer on necessity. See, I am still shaking. Well, I advance to
+the battlements and look down. Show me your cousin's path."
+
+"He would go sure-foot along that little ledge," said Nance, pointing as
+she spoke; "then out through the breach and down by yonder buttress. It
+is easier coming back, of course, because you see where you are going.
+From the buttress foot a sheep-walk goes along the scarp--see, you can
+follow it from here in the dry grass. And now, sir," she added, with a
+touch of womanly pity, "I would come away from here if I were you, for
+indeed you are not fit."
+
+Sure enough Mr. Archer's pallor and agitation had continued to increase;
+his cheeks were deathly, his clenched fingers trembled pitifully. "The
+weakness is physical," he sighed, and had nearly fallen. Nance led him
+from the spot, and he was no sooner back in the tower-stair, than he
+fell heavily against the wall and put his arm across his eyes. A cup of
+brandy had to be brought him before he could descend to breakfast; and
+the perfection of Nance's dream was for the first time troubled.
+
+Jonathan was waiting for them at table, with yellow, blood-shot eyes and
+a peculiar dusky complexion. He hardly waited till they found their
+seats, before, raising one hand, and stooping with his mouth above his
+plate, he put up a prayer for a blessing on the food and a spirit of
+gratitude in the eaters, and thereupon, and without more civility, fell
+to. But it was notable that he was no less speedily satisfied than he
+had been greedy to begin. He pushed his plate away and drummed upon the
+table.
+
+"These are silly prayers," said he, "that they teach us. Eat and be
+thankful, that's no such wonder. Speak to me of starving--there's the
+touch. You're a man, they tell me, Mr. Archer, that has met with some
+reverses?"
+
+"I have met with many," replied Mr. Archer.
+
+"Ha!" said Jonathan. "None reckons but the last. Now, see; I tried to
+make this girl here understand me."
+
+"Uncle," said Nance, "what should Mr. Archer care for your concerns? He
+hath troubles of his own, and came to be at peace, I think."
+
+"I tried to make her understand me," repeated Jonathan doggedly; "and
+now I'll try you. Do you think this world is fair?"
+
+"Fair and false!" quoth Mr. Archer.
+
+The old man laughed immoderately. "Good," said he, "very good, but what
+I mean is this: do you know what it is to get up early and go to bed
+late, and never take so much as a holiday but four: and one of these
+your own marriage day, and the other three the funerals of folk you
+loved, and all that, to have a quiet old age in shelter, and bread for
+your old belly, and a bed to lay your crazy bones upon, with a clear
+conscience?"
+
+"Sir," said Mr. Archer with an inclination of his head, "you portray a
+very brave existence."
+
+"Well," continued Jonathan, "and in the end thieves deceive you, thieves
+rob and rook you, thieves turn you out in your old age and send you
+begging. What have you got for all your honesty? A fine return! You that
+might have stole scores of pounds, there you are out in the rain with
+your rheumatics!"
+
+Mr. Archer had forgotten to eat; with his hand upon his chin he was
+studying the old man's countenance. "And you conclude?" he asked.
+
+"Conclude!" cried Jonathan. "I conclude I'll be upsides with them."
+
+"Ay," said the other, "we are all tempted to revenge."
+
+"You have lost money?" asked Jonathan.
+
+"A great estate," said Archer quietly.
+
+"See now!" says Jonathan, "and where is it?"
+
+"Nay, I sometimes think that every one has had his share of it but me,"
+was the reply. "All England hath paid his taxes with my patrimony: I was
+a sheep that left my wool on every briar."
+
+"And you sit down under that?" cried the old man. "Come now, Mr. Archer,
+you and me belong to different stations; and I know mine--no man
+better,--but since we have both been rooked, and are both sore with it,
+why, here's my hand with a very good heart, and I ask for yours, and no
+offence, I hope."
+
+"There is surely no offence, my friend," returned Mr. Archer, as they
+shook hands across the table; "for, believe me, my sympathies are quite
+acquired to you. This life is an arena where we fight with beasts; and,
+indeed," he added, sighing, "I sometimes marvel why we go down to it
+unarmed."
+
+In the meanwhile a creaking of ungreased axles had been heard descending
+through the wood; and presently after, the door opened, and the tall
+ostler entered the kitchen carrying one end of Mr. Archer's trunk. The
+other was carried by an aged beggar man of that district, known and
+welcome for some twenty miles about under the name of "Old Cumberland."
+Each was soon perched upon a settle, with a cup of ale; and the ostler,
+who valued himself upon his affability, began to entertain the company,
+still with half an eye on Nance, to whom in gallant terms he expressly
+dedicated every sip of ale. First he told of the trouble they had to get
+his Lordship started in the chaise; and how he had dropped a rouleau of
+gold on the threshold, and the passage and doorstep had been strewn with
+guinea-pieces. At this old Jonathan looked at Mr. Archer. Next the
+visitor turned to news of a more thrilling character: how the down mail
+had been stopped again near Grantham by three men on horseback--a white
+and two bays; how they had handkerchiefs on their faces; how Tom the
+guard's blunderbuss missed fire, but he swore he had winged one of them
+with a pistol; and how they had got clean away with seventy pounds in
+money, some valuable papers, and a watch or two.
+
+"Brave! brave!" cried Jonathan in ecstasy. "Seventy pounds! O, it's
+brave!"
+
+"Well, I don't see the great bravery," observed the ostler,
+misapprehending him. "Three men, and you may call that three to one.
+I'll call it brave when some one stops the mail single-handed; that's a
+risk."
+
+"And why should they hesitate?" inquired Mr. Archer. "The poor souls who
+are fallen to such a way of life, pray what have they to lose? If they
+get the money, well; but if a ball should put them from their troubles,
+why, so better."
+
+"Well, sir," said the ostler, "I believe you'll find they won't agree
+with you. They count on a good fling, you see; or who would risk
+it?--And here's my best respects to you, Miss Nance."
+
+"And I forgot the part of cowardice," resumed Mr. Archer. "All men
+fear."
+
+"O, surely not!" cried Nance.
+
+"All men," reiterated Mr. Archer.
+
+"Ay, that's a true word," observed Old Cumberland, "and a thief, anyway,
+for it's a coward's trade."
+
+"But these fellows, now," said Jonathan, with a curious, appealing
+manner--"these fellows with their seventy pounds! Perhaps, Mr. Archer,
+they were no true thieves after all, but just people who had been robbed
+and tried to get their own again. What was that you said, about all
+England and the taxes? One takes, another gives; why, that's almost
+fair. If I've been rooked and robbed, and the coat taken off my back, I
+call it almost fair to take another's."
+
+"Ask Old Cumberland," observed the ostler; "you ask Old Cumberland, Miss
+Nance!" and he bestowed a wink upon his favoured fair one.
+
+"Why that?" asked Jonathan.
+
+"He had his coat taken--ay, and his shirt too," returned the ostler.
+
+"Is that so?" cried Jonathan eagerly. "Was you robbed too?"
+
+"That was I," replied Cumberland, "with a warrant! I was a well-to-do
+man when I was young."
+
+"Ay! See that!" says Jonathan. "And you don't long for a revenge?"
+
+"Eh! Not me!" answered the beggar. "It's too long ago. But if you'll
+give me another mug of your good ale, my pretty lady, I won't say no to
+that."
+
+"And shalt have! And shalt have!" cried Jonathan. "Or brandy even, if
+you like it better."
+
+And as Cumberland did like it better, and the ostler chimed in, the
+party pledged each other in a dram of brandy before separating.
+
+As for Nance, she slipped forth into the ruins, partly to avoid the
+ostler's gallantries, partly to lament over the defects of Mr. Archer.
+Plainly, he was no hero. She pitied him; she began to feel a protecting
+interest mingle with and almost supersede her admiration, and was at the
+same time disappointed and yet drawn to him. She was, indeed, conscious
+of such unshaken fortitude in her own heart, that she was almost tempted
+by an occasion to be bold for two. She saw herself, in a brave attitude,
+shielding her imperfect hero from the world; and she saw, like a piece
+of heaven, his gratitude for her protection.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+LIFE IN THE CASTLE
+
+
+From that day forth the life of these three persons in the ruin ran very
+smoothly. Mr. Archer now sat by the fire with a book, and now passed
+whole days abroad, returning late, dead weary. His manner was a mask;
+but it was half transparent; through the even tenor of his gravity and
+courtesy profound revolutions of feeling were betrayed, seasons of numb
+despair, of restlessness, of aching temper. For days he would say
+nothing beyond his usual courtesies and solemn compliments; and then,
+all of a sudden, some fine evening beside the kitchen fire, he would
+fall into a vein of elegant gossip, tell of strange and interesting
+events, the secrets of families, brave deeds of war, the miraculous
+discovery of crime, the visitations of the dead. Nance and her uncle
+would sit till the small hours with eyes wide open: Jonathan applauding
+the unexpected incidents with many a slap of his big hand; Nance,
+perhaps, more pleased with the narrator's eloquence and wise
+reflections; and then, again, days would follow of abstraction, of
+listless humming, of frequent apologies and long hours of silence. Once
+only, and then after a week of unrelieved melancholy, he went over to
+the "Green Dragon," spent the afternoon with the landlord and a bowl of
+punch, and returned as on the first night, devious in step but courteous
+and unperturbed of speech.
+
+If he seemed more natural and more at his ease it was when he found
+Nance alone; and, laying by some of his reserve, talked before her
+rather than to her of his destiny, character, and hopes. To Nance these
+interviews were but a doubtful privilege. At times he would seem to
+take a pleasure in her presence, to consult her gravely, to hear and to
+discuss her counsels; at times even, but these were rare and brief, he
+would talk of herself, praise the qualities that she possessed, touch
+indulgently on her defects, and lend her books to read and even examine
+her upon her reading; but far more often he would fall into a half
+unconsciousness, put her a question and then answer it himself, drop
+into the veiled tone of voice of one soliloquising, and leave her at
+last as though he had forgotten her existence. It was odd, too, that in
+all this random converse, not a fact of his past life, and scarce a
+name, should ever cross his lips. A profound reserve kept watch upon his
+most unguarded moments. He spoke continually of himself, indeed, but
+still in enigmas; a veiled prophet of egoism.
+
+The base of Nance's feelings for Mr. Archer was admiration as for a
+superior being; and with this, his treatment, consciously or not,
+accorded happily. When he forgot her, she took the blame upon herself.
+His formal politeness was so exquisite that this essential brutality
+stood excused. His compliments, besides, were always grave and rational;
+he would offer reason for his praise, convict her of merit, and thus
+disarm suspicion. Nay, and the very hours when he forgot and remembered
+her alternately could by the ardent fallacies of youth be read in the
+light of an attention. She might be far from his confidence; but still
+she was nearer it than any one. He might ignore her presence, but yet he
+sought it.
+
+Moreover, she, upon her side, was conscious of one point of superiority.
+Beside this rather dismal, rather effeminate man, who recoiled from a
+worm, who grew giddy on the castle wall, who bore so helplessly the
+weight of his misfortunes, she felt herself a head and shoulders taller
+in cheerful and sterling courage. She could walk head in air along the
+most precarious rafter; her hand feared neither the grossness nor the
+harshness of life's web, but was thrust cheerfully, if need were, into
+the briar bush, and could take hold of any crawling horror. Ruin was
+mining the walls of her cottage, as already it had mined and subverted
+Mr. Archer's palace. Well, she faced it with a bright countenance and a
+busy hand. She had got some washing, some rough seamstress work from the
+"Green Dragon," and from another neighbour ten miles away across the
+moor. At this she cheerfully laboured, and from that height she could
+afford to pity the useless talents and poor attitude of Mr. Archer. It
+did not change her admiration, but it made it bearable. He was above her
+in all ways; but she was above him in one. She kept it to herself, and
+hugged it. When, like all young creatures, she made long stories to
+justify, to nourish, and to forecast the course of her affection, it was
+this private superiority that made all rosy, that cut the knot, and
+that, at last, in some great situation, fetched to her knees the
+dazzling but imperfect hero. With this pretty exercise she beguiled the
+hours of labour, and consoled herself for Mr. Archer's bearing. Pity was
+her weapon and her weakness. To accept the loved one's faults, although
+it has an air of freedom, is to kiss the chain, and this pity it was
+which, lying nearer to her heart, lent the one element of true emotion
+to a fanciful and merely brain-sick love.
+
+Thus it fell out one day that she had gone to the "Green Dragon" and
+brought back thence a letter to Mr. Archer. He, upon seeing it, winced
+like a man under the knife: pain, shame, sorrow, and the most trenchant
+edge of mortification cut into his heart and wrung the steady composure
+of his face.
+
+"Dear heart! have you bad news?" she cried.
+
+But he only replied by a gesture and fled to his room, and when, later
+on, she ventured to refer to it, he stopped her on the threshold, as if
+with words prepared beforehand. "There are some pains," said he, "too
+acute for consolation, or I would bring them to my kind consoler. Let
+the memory of that letter, if you please, be buried." And then as she
+continued to gaze at him, being, in spite of herself, pained by his
+elaborate phrase, doubtfully sincere in word and manner: "Let it be
+enough," he added haughtily, "that if this matter wring my heart, it
+doth not touch my conscience. I am a man, I would have you to know, who
+suffers undeservedly."
+
+He had never spoken so directly: never with so convincing an emotion;
+and her heart thrilled for him. She could have taken his pains and died
+of them with joy.
+
+Meanwhile she was left without support. Jonathan now swore by his
+lodger, and lived for him. He was a fine talker. He knew the finest
+sight of stories; he was a man and a gentleman, take him for all in all,
+and a perfect credit to Old England. Such were the old man's declared
+sentiments, and sure enough he clung to Mr. Archer's side, hung upon his
+utterance when he spoke, and watched him with unwearying interest when
+he was silent. And yet his feeling was not clear; in the partial wreck
+of his mind, which was leaning to decay, some afterthought was strongly
+present. As he gazed in Mr. Archer's face a sudden brightness would
+kindle in his rheumy eyes, his eyebrows would lift as with a sudden
+thought, his mouth would open as though to speak, and close again on
+silence. Once or twice he even called Mr. Archer mysteriously forth into
+the dark courtyard, took him by the button, and laid a demonstrative
+finger on his chest; but there his ideas or his courage failed him; he
+would shufflingly excuse himself and return to his position by the fire
+without a word of explanation. "The good man was growing old," said Mr.
+Archer with a suspicion of a shrug. But the good man had his idea, and
+even when he was alone the name of Mr. Archer fell from his lips
+continually in the course of mumbled and gesticulative conversation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE BAD HALF-CROWN
+
+
+However early Nance arose, and she was no sluggard, the old man, who had
+begun to outlive the earthly habit of slumber, would usually have been
+up long before, the fire would be burning brightly, and she would see
+him wandering among the ruins, lantern in hand, and talking assiduously
+to himself. One day, however, after he had returned late from the market
+town, she found that she had stolen a march upon that indefatigable
+early riser. The kitchen was all blackness. She crossed the castle-yard
+to the wood-cellar, her steps printing the thick hoarfrost. A scathing
+breeze blew out of the north-east and slowly carried a regiment of black
+and tattered clouds over the face of heaven, which was already kindled
+with the wild light of morning, but where she walked, in shelter of the
+ruins, the flame of her candle burned steady. The extreme cold smote
+upon her conscience. She could not bear to think this bitter business
+fell usually to the lot of one so old as Jonathan, and made desperate
+resolutions to be earlier in the future.
+
+The fire was a good blaze before he entered, limping dismally into the
+kitchen. "Nance," said he, "I be all knotted up with the rheumatics;
+will you rub me a bit?" She came and rubbed him where and how he bade
+her. "This is a cruel thing that old age should be rheumaticky," said
+he. "When I was young I stood my turn of the teethache like a man! for
+why? because it couldn't last for ever; but these rheumatics come to
+live and die with you. Your aunt was took before the time came; never
+had an ache to mention. Now I lie all night in my single bed and the
+blood never warms in me; this knee of mine it seems like lighted up with
+rheumatics; it seems as though you could see to sew by it; and all the
+strings of my old body ache, as if devils was pulling 'em. Thank you
+kindly; that's someways easier now, but an old man, my dear, has little
+to look for; it's pain, pain, pain to the end of the business, and I'll
+never be rightly warm again till I get under the sod," he said, and
+looked down at her with a face so aged and weary that she had nearly
+wept.
+
+"I lay awake all night," he continued; "I do so mostly, and a long walk
+kills me. Eh, deary me, to think that life should run to such a puddle!
+And I remember long syne when I was strong, and the blood all hot and
+good about me, and I loved to run, too--deary me, to run! Well, that's
+all by. You'd better pray to be took early, Nance, and not live on till
+you get to be like me, and are robbed in your grey old age, your cold,
+shivering, dark old age, that's like a winter's morning"; and he
+bitterly shuddered, spreading his hands before the fire.
+
+"Come now," said Nance, "the more you say the less you'll like it, Uncle
+Jonathan; but if I were you I would be proud for to have lived all your
+days honest and beloved, and come near the end with your good name:
+isn't that a fine thing to be proud of? Mr. Archer was telling me in
+some strange land they used to run races each with a lighted candle, and
+the art was to keep the candle burning. Well, now, I thought that was
+like life; a man's good conscience is the flame he gets to carry, and if
+he comes to the winning-post with that still burning, why, take it how
+you will, the man's a hero--even if he was low-born like you and me."
+
+"Did Mr. Archer tell you that?" asked Jonathan.
+
+"No, dear," said she, "that's my own thought about it. He told me of the
+race. But see, now," she continued, putting on the porridge, "you say
+old age is a hard season, but so is youth. You're half out of the
+battle, I would say; you loved my aunt and got her, and buried her, and
+some of these days soon you'll go to meet her; and take her my love and
+tell her I tried to take good care of you; for so I do, Uncle Jonathan."
+
+Jonathan struck with his fist upon the settle. "D'ye think I want to
+die, ye vixen?" he shouted. "I want to live ten hundred years."
+
+This was a mystery beyond Nance's penetration, and she stared in wonder
+as she made the porridge.
+
+"I want to live," he continued, "I want to live and to grow rich. I want
+to drive my carriage and to dice in hells and see the ring, I do. Is
+this a life that I lived? I want to be a rake, d'ye understand? I want
+to know what things are like. I don't want to die like a blind kitten,
+and me seventy-six."
+
+"O fie!" said Nance.
+
+The old man thrust out his jaw at her, with the grimace of an irreverent
+schoolboy. Upon that aged face it seemed a blasphemy. Then he took out
+of his bosom a long leather purse, and emptying its contents on the
+settle, began to count and recount the pieces, ringing and examining
+each, and suddenly he leapt like a young man. "What!" he screamed. "Bad?
+O Lord! I'm robbed again!" And falling on his knees before the settle he
+began to pour forth the most dreadful curses on the head of his
+deceiver. His eyes were shut, for to him this vile solemnity was prayer.
+He held up the bad half-crown in his right hand, as though he were
+displaying it to Heaven, and what increased the horror of the scene, the
+curses he invoked were those whose efficacy he had tasted--old age and
+poverty, rheumatism and an ungrateful son. Nance listened appalled; then
+she sprang forward and dragged down his arm and laid her hand upon his
+mouth.
+
+"Whist!" she cried. "Whist ye, for God's sake! O my man, whist ye! If
+Heaven were to hear; if poor Aunt Susan were to hear! Think, she may be
+listening." And with the histrionism of strong emotion she pointed to a
+corner of the kitchen.
+
+His eyes followed her finger. He looked there for a little, thinking,
+blinking; then he got stiffly to his feet and resumed his place upon the
+settle, the bad piece still in his hand. So he sat for some time,
+looking upon the half-crown, and now wondering to himself on the
+injustice and partiality of the law, now computing again and again the
+nature of his loss. So he was still sitting when Mr. Archer entered the
+kitchen. At this a light came into his face, and after some seconds of
+rumination he despatched Nance upon an errand.
+
+"Mr. Archer," said he, as soon as they were alone together, "would you
+give me a guinea-piece for silver?"
+
+"Why, sir, I believe I can," said Mr. Archer.
+
+And the exchange was just effected when Nance re-entered the apartment.
+The blood shot into her face.
+
+"What's to do here?" she asked rudely.
+
+"Nothing, my dearie," said old Jonathan, with a touch of whine.
+
+"What's to do?" she said again.
+
+"Your uncle was but changing me a piece of gold," returned Mr. Archer.
+
+"Let me see what he hath given you, Mr. Archer," replied the girl. "I
+had a bad piece, and I fear it is mixed up among the good."
+
+"Well, well," replied Mr. Archer, smiling, "I must take the merchant's
+risk of it. The money is now mixed."
+
+"I know my piece," quoth Nance. "Come, let me see your silver, Mr.
+Archer. If I have to get it by a theft I'll see that money," she cried.
+
+"Nay, child, if you put as much passion to be honest as the world to
+steal, I must give way, though I betray myself," said Mr. Archer. "There
+it is as I received it."
+
+Nance quickly found the bad half-crown.
+
+"Give him another," she said, looking Jonathan in the face; and when
+that had been done, she walked over to the chimney and flung the guilty
+piece into the reddest of the fire. Its base constituents began
+immediately to run; even as she watched it the disc crumbled, and the
+lineaments of the King became confused. Jonathan, who had followed close
+behind, beheld these changes from over her shoulder, and his face
+darkened sorely.
+
+"Now," said she, "come back to table, and to-day it is I that shall say
+grace, as I used to do in the old times, day about with Dick"; and
+covering her eyes with one hand, "O Lord," said she with deep emotion,
+"make us thankful; and, O Lord, deliver us from evil! For the love of
+the poor souls that watch for us in heaven, O deliver us from evil."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE BLEACHING-GREEN
+
+
+The year moved on to March; and March, though it blew bitter keen from
+the North Sea, yet blinked kindly between whiles on the river dell. The
+mire dried up in the closest covert; life ran in the bare branches, and
+the air of the afternoon would be suddenly sweet with the fragrance of
+new grass.
+
+Above and below the castle the river crooked like the letter "S." The
+lower loop was to the left, and embraced the high and steep projection
+which was crowned by the ruins; the upper loop enclosed a lawny
+promontory, fringed by thorn and willow. It was easy to reach it from
+the castle side, for the river ran in this part very quietly among
+innumerable boulders and over dam-like walls of rock. The place was all
+enclosed, the wind a stranger, the turf smooth and solid; so it was
+chosen by Nance to be her bleaching-green.
+
+One day she brought a bucketful of linen, and had but begun to wring and
+lay them out when Mr. Archer stepped from the thicket on the far side,
+drew very deliberately near, and sat down in silence on the grass. Nance
+looked up to greet him with a smile, but finding her smile was not
+returned, she fell into embarrassment and stuck the more busily to her
+employment. Man or woman, the whole world looks well at any work to
+which they are accustomed; but the girl was ashamed of what she did. She
+was ashamed, besides, of the sun-bonnet that so well became her, and
+ashamed of her bare arms, which were her greatest beauty.
+
+"Nausicaa," said Mr. Archer at last, "I find you like Nausicaa."
+
+"And who was she?" asked Nance, and laughed in spite of herself, an
+empty and embarrassed laugh, that sounded in Mr. Archer's ears, indeed,
+like music, but to her own like the last grossness of rusticity.
+
+"She was a princess of the Grecian islands," he replied. "A king, being
+shipwrecked, found her washing by the shore. Certainly I, too, was
+shipwrecked," he continued, plucking at the grass. "There was never a
+more desperate castaway--to fall from polite life, fortune, a shrine of
+honour, a grateful conscience, duties willingly taken up and faithfully
+discharged; and to fall to this--idleness, poverty, inutility, remorse."
+He seemed to have forgotten her presence, but here he remembered her
+again. "Nance," said he, "would you have a man sit down and suffer or
+rise up and strive?"
+
+"Nay," she said. "I would always rather see him doing."
+
+"Ha!" said Mr. Archer, "but yet you speak from an imperfect knowledge.
+Conceive a man damned to a choice of only evil--misconduct upon either
+side, not a fault behind him, and yet naught before him but this choice
+of sins. How would you say then?"
+
+"I would say that he was much deceived, Mr. Archer," returned Nance. "I
+would say there was a third choice, and that the right one."
+
+"I tell you," said Mr. Archer, "the man I have in view hath two ways
+open, and no more. One to wait, like a poor mewling baby, till Fate save
+or ruin him; the other to take his troubles in his hand, and to perish
+or be saved at once. It is no point of morals; both are wrong. Either
+way this step-child of Providence must fall; which shall he choose, by
+doing or not doing?"
+
+"Fall, then, is what I would say," replied Nance. "Fall where you will,
+but do it! For O, Mr. Archer," she continued, stooping to her work, "you
+that are good and kind, and so wise, it doth sometimes go against my
+heart to see you live on here like a sheep in a turnip-field! If you
+were braver----" and here she paused, conscience-smitten.
+
+"Do I, indeed, lack courage?" inquired Mr. Archer of himself. "Courage,
+the footstool of the virtues, upon which they stand? Courage, that a poor
+private carrying a musket has to spare of; that does not fail a weasel or
+a rat; that is a brutish faculty? I to fail there, I wonder? But what is
+courage, then? The constancy to endure oneself or to see others suffer?
+The itch of ill-advised activity: mere shuttle-wittedness, or to be still
+and patient? To inquire of the significance of words is to rob ourselves
+of what we seem to know, and yet, of all things, certainly to stand still
+is the least heroic. Nance," he said, "did you ever hear of _Hamlet_?"
+
+"Never," said Nance.
+
+"'Tis an old play," returned Mr. Archer, "and frequently enacted. This
+while I have been talking Hamlet. You must know this Hamlet was a Prince
+among the Danes," and he told her the play in a very good style, here
+and there quoting a verse or two with solemn emphasis.
+
+"It is strange," said Nance; "he was then a very poor creature?"
+
+"That was what he could not tell," said Mr. Archer. "Look at me, am I as
+poor a creature?"
+
+She looked, and what she saw was the familiar thought of all her hours;
+the tall figure very plainly habited in black, the spotless ruffles, the
+slim hands; the long, well-shapen, serious, shaven face, the wide and
+somewhat thin-lipped mouth, the dark eyes that were so full of depth and
+change and colour. He was gazing at her with his brows a little knit,
+his chin upon one hand and that elbow resting on his knee.
+
+"Ye look a man!" she cried, "ay, and should be a great one! The more
+shame to you to lie here idle like a dog before the fire."
+
+"My fair Holdaway," quoth Mr. Archer, "you are much set on action. I
+cannot dig, to beg I am ashamed." He continued, looking at her with a
+half-absent fixity, "'Tis a strange thing, certainly, that in my years
+of fortune I should never taste happiness, and now when I am broke,
+enjoy so much of it, for was I ever happier than to-day? Was the grass
+softer, the stream pleasanter in sound, the air milder, the heart more
+at peace? Why should I not sink? To dig--why, after all, it should be
+easy. To take a mate, too? Love is of all grades since Jupiter; love
+fails to none; and children"--but here he passed his hand suddenly over
+his eyes. "O fool and coward, fool and coward!" he said bitterly; "can
+you forget your fetters? You did not know that I was fettered, Nance?"
+he asked, again addressing her.
+
+But Nance was somewhat sore. "I know you keep talking," she said, and,
+turning half away from him, began to wring out a sheet across her
+shoulder. "I wonder you are not wearied of your voice. When the hands
+lie abed the tongue takes a walk."
+
+Mr. Archer laughed unpleasantly, rose and moved to the water's edge. In
+this part the body of the river poured across a little narrow fell, ran
+some ten feet very smoothly over a bed of pebbles, then getting wind, as
+it were, of another shelf of rock which barred the channel, began, by
+imperceptible degrees, to separate towards either shore in dancing
+currents, and to leave the middle clear and stagnant. The set towards
+either side was nearly equal; about one half of the whole water plunged
+on the side of the castle, through a narrow gullet; about one half ran
+lipping past the margin of the green and slipped across a babbling
+rapid.
+
+"Here," said Mr. Archer, after he had looked for some time at the fine
+and shifting demarcation of these currents, "come here and see me try my
+fortune."
+
+"I am not like a man," said Nance; "I have no time to waste."
+
+"Come here," he said again. "I ask you seriously, Nance. We are not
+always childish when we seem so."
+
+She drew a little nearer.
+
+"Now," said he, "you see these two channels--choose one."
+
+"I'll choose the nearest, to save time," said Nance.
+
+"Well, that shall be for action," returned Mr. Archer. "And since I wish
+to have the odds against me, not only the other channel but yon stagnant
+water in the midst shall be for lying still. You see this?" he
+continued, pulling up a withered rush. "I break it in three. I shall put
+each separately at the top of the upper fall, and according as they go
+by your way or by the other I shall guide my life."
+
+"This is very silly," said Nance, with a movement of her shoulders.
+
+"I do not think it so," said Mr. Archer.
+
+"And then," she resumed, "if you are to try your fortune, why not
+evenly?"
+
+"Nay," returned Mr. Archer with a smile, "no man can put complete
+reliance in blind fate; he must still cog the dice."
+
+By this time he had got upon the rock beside the upper fall, and,
+bidding her look out, dropped a piece of rush into the middle of the
+intake. The rusty fragment was sucked at once over the fall, came up
+again far on the right hand, leaned ever more and more in the same
+direction, and disappeared under the hanging grasses on the castle side.
+
+"One," said Mr. Archer, "one for standing still."
+
+But the next launch had a different fate, and after hanging for a while
+about the edge of the stagnant water, steadily approached the
+bleaching-green and danced down the rapid under Nance's eyes.
+
+"One for me," she cried with some exultation; and then she observed that
+Mr. Archer had grown pale, and was kneeling on the rock, with his hand
+raised like a person petrified. "Why," said she, "you do not mind it,
+do you?"
+
+"Does a man not mind a throw of dice by which a fortune hangs?" said Mr.
+Archer, rather hoarsely. "And this is more than fortune. Nance, if you
+have any kindness for my fate, put up a prayer before I launch the next
+one."
+
+"A prayer," she cried, "about a game like this? I would not be so
+heathen."
+
+"Well," said he, "then without," and he closed his eyes and dropped the
+piece of rush. This time there was no doubt. It went for the rapid as
+straight as any arrow.
+
+"Action then!" said Mr. Archer, getting to his feet; "and then God
+forgive us," he added, almost to himself.
+
+"God forgive us, indeed," cried Nance, "for wasting the good daylight!
+But come, Mr. Archer, if I see you look so serious I shall begin to
+think you was in earnest."
+
+"Nay," he said, turning upon her suddenly, with a full smile; "but is
+not this good advice? I have consulted God and demigod; the nymph of the
+river, and what I far more admire and trust, my blue-eyed Minerva. Both
+have said the same. My own heart was telling it already. Action, then,
+be mine; and into the deep sea with all this paralysing casuistry. I am
+happy to-day for the first time."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE MAIL GUARD
+
+
+Somewhere about two in the morning a squall had burst upon the castle, a
+clap of screaming wind that made the towers rock, and a copious drift of
+rain that streamed from the windows. The wind soon blew itself out, but
+the day broke cloudy and dripping, and when the little party assembled
+at breakfast their humours appeared to have changed with the change of
+weather. Nance had been brooding on the scene at the river-side,
+applying it in various ways to her particular aspirations, and the
+result, which was hardly to her mind, had taken the colour out of her
+cheeks. Mr. Archer, too, was somewhat absent, his thoughts were of a
+mingled strain; and even upon his usually impassive countenance there
+were betrayed successive depths of depression and starts of exultation,
+which the girl translated in terms of her own hopes and fears. But
+Jonathan was the most altered: he was strangely silent, hardly passing a
+word, and watched Mr. Archer with an eager and furtive eye. It seemed as
+if the idea that had so long hovered before him had now taken a more
+solid shape, and, while it still attracted, somewhat alarmed his
+imagination.
+
+At this rate, conversation languished into a silence which was only
+broken by the gentle and ghostly noises of the rain on the stone roof
+and about all that field of ruins; and they were all relieved when the
+note of a man whistling and the sound of approaching footsteps in the
+grassy court announced a visitor. It was the ostler from the "Green
+Dragon" bringing a letter for Mr. Archer. Nance saw her hero's face
+contract and then relax again at sight of it; and she thought that she
+knew why, for the sprawling, gross black characters of the address were
+easily distinguishable from the fine writing on the former letter that
+had so much disturbed him. He opened it and began to read; while the
+ostler sat down to table with a pot of ale, and proceeded to make
+himself agreeable after his fashion.
+
+"Fine doings down our way, Miss Nance," said he. "I haven't been abed
+this blessed night."
+
+Nance expressed a polite interest, but her eye was on Mr. Archer, who
+was reading his letter with a face of such extreme indifference that she
+was tempted to suspect him of assumption.
+
+"Yes," continued the ostler, "not been the like of it this fifteen
+years: the North Mail stopped at the three stones."
+
+Jonathan's cup was at his lip, but at this moment he choked with a great
+splutter; and Mr. Archer, as if startled by the noise, made so sudden a
+movement that one corner of the sheet tore off and stayed between his
+finger and thumb. It was some little time before the old man was
+sufficiently recovered to beg the ostler to go on, and he still kept
+coughing and crying and rubbing his eyes. Mr. Archer, on his side, laid
+the letter down, and, putting his hands in his pocket, listened gravely
+to the tale.
+
+"Yes," resumed Sam, "the North Mail was stopped by a single horseman;
+dash my wig, but I admire him! There were four insides and two out, and
+poor Tom Oglethorpe, the guard. Tom showed himself a man; let fly his
+blunderbuss at him; had him covered, too, and could swear to that; but
+the Captain never let on, up with a pistol and fetched poor Tom a bullet
+through the body. Tom, he squelched upon the seat, all over blood. Up
+comes the Captain to the window. 'Oblige me,' says he, 'with what you
+have.' Would you believe it? Not a man says cheep!--not them. 'Thy hands
+over thy head.' Four watches, rings, snuff-boxes, seven-and-forty
+pounds overhead in gold. One Dicksee, a grazier, tries it on: gives him
+a guinea. 'Beg your pardon,' says the Captain, 'I think too highly of
+you to take it at your hand. I will not take less than ten from such a
+gentleman.' This Dicksee had his money in his stocking, but there was
+the pistol at his eye. Down he goes, offs with his stocking, and there
+was thirty golden guineas. 'Now,' says the Captain, 'you've tried it on
+with me, but I scorns the advantage. Ten I said,' he says, 'and ten I
+take.' So, dash my buttons, I call that man a man!" cried Sam in cordial
+admiration.
+
+"Well, and then?" says Mr. Archer.
+
+"Then," resumed Sam, "that old fat fagot Engleton, him as held the
+ribbons and drew up like a lamb when he was told to, picks up his
+cattle, and drives off again. Down they came to the 'Dragon,' all
+singing like as if they was scalded, and poor Tom saying nothing. You
+would 'a' thought they had all lost the King's crown to hear them. Down
+gets this Dicksee. 'Postmaster,' he says, taking him by the arm, 'this
+is a most abominable thing,' he says. Down gets a Major Clayton, and
+gets the old man by the other arm. 'We've been robbed,' he cries,
+'robbed!' Down gets the others, and all around the old man telling their
+story, and what they had lost, and how they was all as good as ruined;
+till at last Old Engleton says, says he, 'How about Oglethorpe?' says
+he. 'Ay,' says the others, 'how about the guard?' Well, with that we
+bousted him down, as white as a rag and all blooded like a sop. I
+thought he was dead. Well, he ain't dead; but he's dying, I fancy."
+
+"Did you say four watches?" said Jonathan.
+
+"Four, I think. I wish it had been forty," cried Sam. "Such a party of
+soused herrings I never did see--not a man among them bar poor Tom. But
+us that are the servants on the road have all the risk and none of the
+profit."
+
+"And this brave fellow," asked Mr. Archer, very quietly, "this
+Oglethorpe--how is he now?"
+
+"Well, sir, with my respects, I take it he has a hole bang through him,"
+said Sam. "The doctor hasn't been yet. He'd 'a' been bright and early if
+it had been a passenger. But, doctor or no, I'll make a good guess that
+Tom won't see to-morrow. He'll die on a Sunday, will poor Tom; and they
+do say that's fortunate."
+
+"Did Tom see him that did it?" asked Jonathan.
+
+"Well, he saw him," replied Sam, "but not to swear by. Said he was a
+very tall man, and very big, and had a 'ankerchief about his face, and a
+very quick shot, and sat his horse like a thorough gentleman, as he is."
+
+"A gentleman!" cried Nance. "The dirty knave!"
+
+"Well, I calls a man like that a gentleman," returned the ostler;
+"that's what I mean by a gentleman."
+
+"You don't know much of them, then," said Nance. "A gentleman would
+scorn to stoop to such a thing. I call my uncle a better gentleman than
+any thief."
+
+"And you would be right," said Mr. Archer.
+
+"How many snuff-boxes did he get?" asked Jonathan.
+
+"O, dang me if I know," said Sam; "I didn't take an inventory."
+
+"I will go back with you, if you please," said Mr. Archer. "I should
+like to see poor Oglethorpe. He has behaved well."
+
+"At your service, sir," said Sam, jumping to his feet. "I dare to say a
+gentleman like you would not forget a poor fellow like Tom--no, nor a
+plain man like me, sir, that went without his sleep to nurse him. And
+excuse me, sir," added Sam, "you won't forget about the letter neither?"
+
+"Surely not," said Mr. Archer.
+
+Oglethorpe lay in a low bed, one of several in a long garret of the inn.
+The rain soaked in places through the roof and fell in minute drops;
+there was but one small window; the beds were occupied by servants, the
+air of the garret was both close and chilly. Mr. Archer's heart sank at
+the threshold to see a man lying perhaps mortally hurt in so poor a
+sick-room, and as he drew near the low bed he took his hat off. The
+guard was a big, blowsy, innocent-looking soul with a thick lip and a
+broad nose, comically turned up; his cheeks were crimson, and when Mr.
+Archer laid a finger on his brow he found him burning with fever.
+
+"I fear you suffer much," he said, with a catch in his voice, as he sat
+down on the bedside.
+
+"I suppose I do, sir," returned Oglethorpe; "it is main sore."
+
+"I am used to wounds and wounded men," returned the visitor. "I have
+been in the wars and nursed brave fellows before now; and, if you will
+suffer me, I propose to stay beside you till the doctor comes."
+
+"It is very good of you, sir, I am sure," said Oglethorpe. "The trouble
+is they won't none of them let me drink."
+
+"If you will not tell the doctor," said Mr. Archer, "I will give you
+some water. They say it is bad for a green wound, but in the Low
+Countries we all drank water when we found the chance, and I could never
+perceive we were the worse for it."
+
+"Been wounded yourself, sir, perhaps?" called Oglethorpe.
+
+"Twice," said Mr. Archer, "and was as proud of these hurts as any lady
+of her bracelets. 'Tis a fine thing to smart for one's duty; even in the
+pangs of it there is contentment."
+
+"Ah, well!" replied the guard, "if you've been shot yourself, that
+explains. But as for contentment, why, sir, you see, it smarts, as you
+say. And then, I have a good wife, you see, and a bit of a brat--a
+little thing, so high."
+
+"Don't move," said Mr. Archer.
+
+"No, sir, I will not, and thank you kindly," said Oglethorpe. "At York
+they are. A very good lass is my wife--far too good for me. And the
+little rascal--well, I don't know how to say it, but he sort of comes
+round you. If I were to go, sir, it would be hard on my poor girl--main
+hard on her!"
+
+"Ay, you must feel bitter hardly to the rogue that laid you here," said
+Archer.
+
+"Why, no, sir, more against Engleton and the passengers," replied the
+guard. "He played his hand, if you come to look at it; and I wish he had
+shot worse, or me better. And yet I'll go to my grave but what I covered
+him," he cried. "It looks like witchcraft. I'll go to my grave but what
+he was drove full of slugs like a pepper-box."
+
+"Quietly," said Mr. Archer, "you must not excite yourself. These
+deceptions are very usual in war; the eye, in the moment of alert, is
+hardly to be trusted, and when the smoke blows away you see the man you
+fired at, taking aim, it may be, at yourself. You should observe, too,
+that you were in the dark night, and somewhat dazzled by the lamps, and
+that the sudden stopping of the mail had jolted you. In such
+circumstances a man may miss, ay, even with a blunderbuss, and no blame
+attach to his marksmanship." ...
+
+
+
+
+THE YOUNG CHEVALIER
+
+A FRAGMENT
+
+
+
+
+THE YOUNG CHEVALIER
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE
+
+THE WINE-SELLER'S WIFE
+
+
+There was a wine-seller's shop, as you went down to the river in the
+city of the Anti-popes. There a man was served with good wine of the
+country and plain country fare; and the place being clean and quiet,
+with a prospect on the river, certain gentlemen who dwelt in that city
+in attendance on a great personage made it a practice (when they had any
+silver in their purses) to come and eat there and be private.
+
+They called the wine-seller Paradou. He was built more like a bullock
+than a man, huge in bone and brawn, high in colour, and with a hand like
+a baby for size. Marie-Madeleine was the name of his wife; she was of
+Marseilles, a city of entrancing women, nor was any fairer than herself.
+She was tall, being almost of a height with Paradou; full-girdled,
+point-device in every form, with an exquisite delicacy in the face; her
+nose and nostrils a delight to look at from the fineness of the
+sculpture, her eyes inclined a hair's-breadth inward, her colour between
+dark and fair, and laid on even like a flower's. A faint rose dwelt in
+it, as though she had been found unawares bathing, and had blushed from
+head to foot. She was of a grave countenance, rarely smiling; yet it
+seemed to be written upon every part of her that she rejoiced in life.
+Her husband loved the heels of her feet and the knuckles of her fingers;
+he loved her like a glutton and a brute; his love hung about her like
+an atmosphere; one that came by chance into the wine-shop was aware of
+that passion; and it might be said that by the strength of it the woman
+had been drugged or spell-bound. She knew not if she loved or loathed
+him; he was always in her eyes like something monstrous,--monstrous in
+his love, monstrous in his person, horrific but imposing in his
+violence; and her sentiment swung back and forward from desire to
+sickness. But the mean, where it dwelt chiefly, was an apathetic
+fascination, partly of horror; as of Europa in mid ocean with her bull.
+
+On the 10th November 1749 there sat two of the foreign gentlemen in the
+wine-seller's shop. They were both handsome men of a good presence,
+richly dressed. The first was swarthy and long and lean, with an alert,
+black look, and a mole upon his cheek. The other was more fair. He
+seemed very easy and sedate, and a little melancholy for so young a man,
+but his smile was charming. In his grey eyes there was much abstraction,
+as of one recalling fondly that which was past and lost. Yet there was
+strength and swiftness in his limbs; and his mouth set straight across
+his face, the under lip a thought upon side, like that of a man
+accustomed to resolve. These two talked together in a rude outlandish
+speech that no frequenter of that wine-shop understood. The swarthy man
+answered to the name of _Ballantrae_; he of the dreamy eyes was
+sometimes called _Balmile_, and sometimes _my Lord_, or _my Lord
+Gladsmuir_; but when the title was given him, he seemed to put it by as
+if in jesting, not without bitterness.
+
+The mistral blew in the city. The first day of that wind, they say in
+the countries where its voice is heard, it blows away all the dust, the
+second all the stones, and the third it blows back others from the
+mountains. It was now come to the third day; outside the pebbles flew
+like hail, and the face of the river was puckered, and the very
+building-stones in the walls of houses seemed to be curdled, with the
+savage cold and fury of that continuous blast. It could be heard to hoot
+in all the chimneys of the city; it swept about the wine-shop, filling
+the room with eddies; the chill and gritty touch of it passed between
+the nearest clothes and the bare flesh; and the two gentlemen at the far
+table kept their mantles loose about their shoulders. The roughness of
+these outer hulls, for they were plain travellers' cloaks that had seen
+service, set the greater mark of richness on what showed below of their
+laced clothes; for the one was in scarlet and the other in violet and
+white, like men come from a scene of ceremony; as indeed they were.
+
+It chanced that these fine clothes were not without their influence on
+the scene which followed, and which makes the prologue of our tale. For
+a long time Balmile was in the habit to come to the wine-shop and eat a
+meal or drink a measure of wine; sometimes with a comrade; more often
+alone, when he would sit and dream and drum upon the table, and the
+thoughts would show in the man's face in little glooms and lightenings,
+like the sun and the clouds upon a water. For a long time
+Marie-Madeleine had observed him apart. His sadness, the beauty of his
+smile when by any chance he remembered her existence and addressed her,
+the changes of his mind signalled forth by an abstruse play of feature,
+the mere fact that he was foreign and a thing detached from the local
+and the accustomed, insensibly attracted and affected her. Kindness was
+ready in her mind; it but lacked the touch of an occasion to effervesce
+and crystallise. Now Balmile had come hitherto in a very poor plain
+habit; and this day of the mistral, when his mantle was just open, and
+she saw beneath it the glancing of the violet and the velvet and the
+silver, and the clustering fineness of the lace, it seemed to set the
+man in a new light, with which he shone resplendent to her fancy.
+
+The high inhuman note of the wind, the violence and continuity of its
+outpouring, and the fierce touch of it upon man's whole periphery,
+accelerated the functions of the mind. It set thoughts whirling, as it
+whirled the trees of the forest; it stirred them up in flights, as it
+stirred up the dust in chambers. As brief as sparks, the fancies
+glittered and succeeded each other in the mind of Marie-Madeleine; and
+the grave man with the smile, and the bright clothes under the plain
+mantle, haunted her with incongruous explanations. She considered him,
+the unknown, the speaker of an unknown tongue, the hero (as she placed
+him) of an unknown romance, the dweller upon unknown memories. She
+recalled him sitting there alone, so immersed, so stupefied; yet she was
+sure he was not stupid. She recalled one day when he had remained a long
+time motionless, with parted lips, like one in the act of starting up,
+his eyes fixed on vacancy. Any one else must have looked foolish; but
+not he. She tried to conceive what manner of memory had thus entranced
+him; she forged for him a past; she showed him to herself in every light
+of heroism and greatness and misfortune; she brooded with petulant
+intensity on all she knew and guessed of him. Yet, though she was
+already gone so deep, she was still unashamed, still unalarmed; her
+thoughts were still disinterested; she had still to reach the stage at
+which--beside the image of that other whom we love to contemplate and to
+adorn--we place the image of ourself and behold them together with
+delight.
+
+She stood within the counter, her hands clasped behind her back, her
+shoulders pressed against the wall, her feet braced out. Her face was
+bright with the wind and her own thoughts; as a fire in a similar day of
+tempest glows and brightens on a hearth, so she seemed to glow, standing
+there, and to breathe out energy. It was the first time Ballantrae had
+visited that wine-seller's, the first time he had seen the wife; and his
+eyes were true to her.
+
+"I perceive your reason for carrying me to this very draughty tavern,"
+he said at last.
+
+"I believe it is propinquity," returned Balmile.
+
+"You play dark," said Ballantrae, "but have a care! Be more frank with
+me, or I will cut you out. I go through no form of qualifying my threat,
+which would be commonplace and not conscientious. There is only one
+point in these campaigns: that is the degree of admiration offered by
+the man; and to our hostess I am in a posture to make victorious love."
+
+"If you think you have the time, or the game worth the candle," replied
+the other with a shrug.
+
+"One would suppose you were never at the pains to observe her," said
+Ballantrae.
+
+"I am not very observant," said Balmile. "She seems comely."
+
+"You very dear and dull dog!" cried Ballantrae; "chastity is the most
+besotting of the virtues. Why, she has a look in her face beyond
+singing! I believe, if you was to push me hard, I might trace it home to
+a trifle of a squint. What matters? The height of beauty is in the touch
+that's wrong, that's the modulation in a tune. 'Tis the devil we all
+love; I owe many a conquest to my mole"--he touched it as he spoke with
+a smile, and his eyes glittered;--"we are all hunchbacks, and beauty is
+only that kind of deformity that I happen to admire. But come! Because
+you are chaste, for which I am sure I pay you my respects, that is no
+reason why you should be blind. Look at her, look at the delicious nose
+of her, look at her cheek, look at her ear, look at her hand and
+wrist--look at the whole baggage from heels to crown, and tell me if she
+wouldn't melt on a man's tongue."
+
+As Ballantrae spoke, half jesting, half enthusiastic, Balmile was
+constrained to do as he was bidden. He looked at the woman, admired her
+excellences, and was at the same time ashamed for himself and his
+companion. So it befell that when Marie-Madeleine raised her eyes, she
+met those of the subject of her contemplations fixed directly on herself
+with a look that is unmistakable, the look of a person measuring and
+valuing another,--and, to clench the false impression, that his glance
+was instantly and guiltily withdrawn. The blood beat back upon her heart
+and leaped again; her obscure thoughts flashed clear before her; she
+flew in fancy straight to his arms like a wanton, and fled again on the
+instant like a nymph. And at that moment there chanced an interruption,
+which not only spared her embarrassment, but set the last consecration
+on her now articulate love.
+
+Into the wine-shop there came a French gentleman, arrayed in the last
+refinement of the fashion, though a little tumbled by his passage in the
+wind. It was to be judged he had come from the same formal gathering at
+which the others had preceded him; and perhaps that he had gone there in
+the hope to meet with them, for he came up to Ballantrae with
+unceremonious eagerness.
+
+"At last, here you are!" he cried in French. "I thought I was to miss
+you altogether."
+
+The Scotsmen rose, and Ballantrae, after the first greetings, laid his
+hand on his companion's shoulder.
+
+"My lord," said he, "allow me to present to you one of my best friends
+and one of our best soldiers, the Lord Viscount Gladsmuir."
+
+The two bowed with the elaborate elegance of the period.
+
+"_Monseigneur_," said Balmile, "_je n'ai pas la pretention de m'affubler
+d'un titre que la mauvaise fortune de mon roi ne me permet pas de porter
+comme il sied. Je m'appelle, pour vous servir, Blair de Balmile tout
+court._" [My lord, I have not the effrontery to cumber myself with a
+title which the ill fortunes of my king will not suffer me to bear the
+way it should be. I call myself, at your service, plain Blair of
+Balmile.]
+
+"_Monsieur le Vicomte ou monsieur Bler' de Balmail_," replied the
+new-comer, "_le nom n'y fait rien et l'on connait vos beaux faits._"
+[The name matters nothing, your gallant actions are known.]
+
+A few more ceremonies, and these three, sitting down together to the
+table, called for wine. It was the happiness of Marie-Madeleine to wait
+unobserved upon the prince of her desires. She poured the wine, he drank
+of it; and that link between them seemed to her, for the moment, close
+as a caress. Though they lowered their tones, she surprised great names
+passing in their conversation, names of kings, the names of de Gesvre
+and Belle-Isle; and the man who dealt in these high matters, and she who
+was now coupled with him in her own thoughts, seemed to swim in mid air
+in a transfiguration. Love is a crude core, but it has singular and
+far-reaching fringes; in that passionate attraction for the stranger
+that now swayed and mastered her, his harsh incomprehensible language,
+and these names of grandees in his talk, were each an element.
+
+The Frenchman stayed not long, but it was plain he left behind him
+matter of much interest to his companions; they spoke together
+earnestly, their heads down, the woman of the wine-shop totally
+forgotten; and they were still so occupied when Paradou returned.
+
+This man's love was unsleeping. The even bluster of the mistral, with
+which he had been combating some hours, had not suspended, though it had
+embittered, that predominant passion. His first look was for his wife, a
+look of hope and suspicion, menace and humility and love, that made the
+over-blooming brute appear for the moment almost beautiful. She returned
+his glance, at first as though she knew him not, then with a swiftly
+waxing coldness of intent; and at last, without changing their
+direction, she had closed her eyes.
+
+There passed across her mind during that period much that Paradou could
+not have understood had it been told to him in words: chiefly the sense
+of an enlightening contrast betwixt the man who talked of kings and the
+man who kept a wine-shop, betwixt the love she yearned for and that to
+which she had been long exposed like a victim bound upon the altar.
+There swelled upon her, swifter than the Rhone, a tide of abhorrence
+and disgust. She had succumbed to the monster, humbling herself below
+animals; and now she loved a hero, aspiring to the semi-divine. It was
+in the pang of that humiliating thought that she had closed her eyes.
+
+Paradou--quick, as beasts are quick, to translate silence--felt the
+insult through his blood; his inarticulate soul bellowed within him for
+revenge. He glanced about the shop. He saw the two indifferent gentlemen
+deep in talk, and passed them over: his fancy flying not so high. There
+was but one other present, a country lout who stood swallowing his wine,
+equally unobserved by all and unobserving; to him he dealt a glance of
+murderous suspicion, and turned direct upon his wife. The wine-shop had
+lain hitherto, a space of shelter, the scene of a few ceremonial
+passages and some whispered conversation, in the howling river of the
+wind; the clock had not yet ticked a score of times since Paradou's
+appearance; and now, as he suddenly gave tongue, it seemed as though the
+mistral had entered at his heels.
+
+"What ails you, woman?" he cried, smiting on the counter.
+
+"Nothing ails me," she replied. It was strange; but she spoke and stood
+at that moment like a lady of degree, drawn upward by her aspirations.
+
+"You speak to me, by God, as though you scorned me!" cried the husband.
+
+The man's passion was always formidable; she had often looked on upon
+its violence with a thrill, it had been one ingredient in her
+fascination; and she was now surprised to behold him, as from afar off,
+gesticulating but impotent. His fury might be dangerous like a torrent
+or a gust of wind, but it was inhuman; it might be feared or braved, it
+should never be respected. And with that there came in her a sudden glow
+of courage and that readiness to die which attends so closely upon all
+strong passions.
+
+"I do scorn you," she said.
+
+"What is that?" he cried.
+
+"I scorn you," she repeated, smiling.
+
+"You love another man!" said he.
+
+"With all my soul," was her reply.
+
+The wine-seller roared aloud so that the house rang and shook with it.
+
+"Is this the ----?" he cried, using a foul word, common in the South;
+and he seized the young countryman and dashed him to the ground. There
+he lay for the least interval of time insensible; thence fled from the
+house, the most terrified person in the county. The heavy measure had
+escaped from his hands, splashing the wine high upon the wall. Paradou
+caught it. "And you?" he roared to his wife, giving her the same name in
+the feminine, and he aimed at her the deadly missile. She expected it,
+motionless, with radiant eyes.
+
+But before it sped, Paradou was met by another adversary, and the
+unconscious rivals stood confronted. It was hard to say at that moment
+which appeared the more formidable. In Paradou, the whole muddy and
+truculent depths of the half-man were stirred to frenzy; the lust of
+destruction raged in him; there was not a feature in his face but it
+talked murder. Balmile had dropped his cloak: he shone out at once in
+his finery, and stood to his full stature; girt in mind and body; all
+his resources, all his temper, perfectly in command; in his face the
+light of battle. Neither spoke; there was no blow nor threat of one; it
+was war reduced to its last element, the spiritual; and the huge
+wine-seller slowly lowered his weapon. Balmile was a noble, he a
+commoner; Balmile exulted in an honourable cause. Paradou already
+perhaps began to be ashamed of his violence. Of a sudden, at least, the
+tortured brute turned and fled from the shop in the footsteps of his
+former victim, to whose continued flight his reappearance added wings.
+
+So soon as Balmile appeared between her husband and herself,
+Marie-Madeleine transferred to him her eyes. It might be her last
+moment, and she fed upon that face; reading there inimitable courage and
+illimitable valour to protect. And when the momentary peril was gone by,
+and the champion turned a little awkwardly towards her whom he had
+rescued, it was to meet, and quail before, a gaze of admiration more
+distinct than words. He bowed, he stammered, his words failed him; he
+who had crossed the floor a moment ago, like a young god, to smite,
+returned like one discomfited; got somehow to his place by the table,
+muffled himself again in his discarded cloak, and for a last touch of
+the ridiculous, seeking for anything to restore his countenance, drank
+of the wine before him, deep as a porter after a heavy lift. It was
+little wonder if Ballantrae, reading the scene with malevolent eyes,
+laughed out loud and brief, and drank with raised glass, "To the
+champion of the Fair."
+
+Marie-Madeleine stood in her old place within the counter; she disdained
+the mocking laughter; it fell on her ears, but it did not reach her
+spirit. For her, the world of living persons was all resumed again into
+one pair, as in the days of Eden; there was but the one end in life, the
+one hope before her, the one thing needful, the one thing possible,--to
+be his.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE PRINCE
+
+
+That same night there was in the city of Avignon a young man in distress
+of mind. Now he sat, now walked in a high apartment, full of draughts
+and shadows. A single candle made the darkness visible; and the light
+scarce sufficed to show upon the wall, where they had been recently and
+rudely nailed, a few miniatures and a copper medal of the young man's
+head. The same was being sold that year in London, to admiring
+thousands. The original was fair; he had beautiful brown eyes, a
+beautiful bright open face; a little feminine, a little hard, a little
+weak; still full of the light of youth, but already beginning to be
+vulgarised; a sordid bloom come upon it, the lines coarsened with a
+touch of puffiness. He was dressed, as for a gala, in peach-colour and
+silver; his breast sparkled with stars and was bright with ribbons; for
+he had held a levee in the afternoon and received a distinguished
+personage incognito. Now he sat with a bowed head, now walked
+precipitately to and fro, now went and gazed from the uncurtained
+window, where the wind was still blowing, and the lights winked in the
+darkness.
+
+The bells of Avignon rose into song as he was gazing; and the high notes
+and the deep tossed and drowned, boomed suddenly near or were suddenly
+swallowed up, in the current of the mistral. Tears sprang in the pale
+blue eyes; the expression of his face was changed to that of a more
+active misery; it seemed as if the voices of the bells reached, and
+touched and pained him, in a waste of vacancy where even pain was
+welcome. Outside in the night they continued to sound on, swelling and
+fainting; and the listener heard in his memory, as it were their
+harmonies, joy-bells clashing in a northern city, and the acclamations
+of a multitude, the cries of battle, the gross voices of cannon, the
+stridor of an animated life. And then all died away, and he stood face
+to face with himself in the waste of vacancy, and a horror came upon his
+mind, and a faintness on his brain, such as seizes men upon the brink of
+cliffs.
+
+On the table, by the side of the candle, stood a tray of glasses, a
+bottle, and a silver bell. He went thither swiftly, then his hand
+lowered first above the bell, then settled on the bottle. Slowly he
+filled a glass, slowly drank it out; and, as a tide of animal warmth
+recomforted the recesses of his nature, stood there smiling at himself.
+He remembered he was young; the funeral curtains rose, and he saw his
+life shine and broaden and flow out majestically, like a river sunward.
+The smile still on his lips, he lit a second candle and a third; a fire
+stood ready built in a chimney, he lit that also; and the fir-cones and
+the gnarled olive billets were swift to break in flame and to crackle on
+the hearth, and the room brightened and enlarged about him like his
+hopes. To and fro, to and fro, he went, his hands lightly clasped, his
+breath deeply and pleasurably taken. Victory walked with him; he marched
+to crowns and empires among shouting followers; glory was his dress. And
+presently again the shadows closed upon the solitary. Under the gilt of
+flame and candle-light, the stone walls of the apartment showed down
+bare and cold; behind the depicted triumph loomed up the actual failure:
+defeat, the long distress of the flight, exile, despair, broken
+followers, mourning faces, empty pockets, friends estranged. The memory
+of his father rose in his mind: he, too, estranged and defied; despair
+sharpened into wrath. There was one who had led armies in the field, who
+had staked his life upon the family enterprise, a man of action and
+experience, of the open air, the camp, the court, the council-room; and
+he was to accept direction from an old, pompous gentleman in a home in
+Italy, and buzzed about by priests? A pretty king, if he had not a
+martial son to lean upon! A king at all?
+
+"There was a weaver (of all people) joined me at St. Ninians; he was
+more of a man than my papa!" he thought. "I saw him lie doubled in his
+blood and a grenadier below him--and he died for my papa! All died for
+him, or risked the dying, and I lay for him all those months in the rain
+and skulked in heather like a fox; and now he writes me his advice!
+calls me Carluccio--me, the man of the house, the only king in that
+king's race." He ground his teeth. "The only king in Europe! Who else?
+Who has done and suffered except me? who has lain and run and hidden
+with his faithful subjects, like a second Bruce? Not my accursed cousin,
+Louis of France at least, the lewd effeminate traitor!" And filling the
+glass to the brim, he drank a king's damnation. Ah, if he had the power
+of Louis, what a king were here!
+
+The minutes followed each other into the past, and still he persevered
+in this debilitating cycle of emotions, still fed the fire of his
+excitement with driblets of Rhine wine: a boy at odds with life, a boy
+with a spark of the heroic, which he was now burning out and drowning
+down in futile reverie and solitary excess.
+
+From two rooms beyond, the sudden sound of a raised voice attracted him.
+
+"By....
+
+
+
+
+FABLES
+
+
+
+
+FABLES
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE PERSONS OF THE TALE
+
+
+After the 32nd chapter of "Treasure Island," two of the puppets strolled
+out to have a pipe before business should begin again, and met in an
+open place not far from the story.
+
+"Good-morning, Cap'n," said the first, with a man-o'-war salute, and a
+beaming countenance.
+
+"Ah, Silver!" grunted the other. "You're in a bad way, Silver."
+
+"Now, Cap'n Smollett," remonstrated Silver, "dooty is dooty, as I knows,
+and none better; but we're off dooty now; and I can't see no call to
+keep up the morality business."
+
+"You're a damned rogue, my man," said the Captain.
+
+"Come, come, Cap'n, be just," returned the other. "There's no call to be
+angry with me in earnest. I'm on'y a chara'ter in a sea story. I don't
+really exist."
+
+"Well, I don't really exist either," says the Captain, "which seems to
+meet that."
+
+"I wouldn't set no limits to what a virtuous chara'ter might consider
+argument," responded Silver. "But I'm the villain of this tale, I am;
+and speaking as one sea-faring man to another, what I want to know is,
+what's the odds?"
+
+"Were you never taught your catechism?" said the Captain. "Don't you
+know there's such a thing as an Author?"
+
+"Such a thing as a Author?" returned John derisively. "And who better'n
+me? And the p'int is, if the Author made you, he made Long John, and he
+made Hands, and Pew, and George Merry--not that George is up to much,
+for he's little more'n a name; and he made Flint, what there is of him;
+and he made this here mutiny, you keep such a work about; and he had Tom
+Redruth shot; and--well, if that's a Author, give me Pew!"
+
+"Don't you believe in a future state?" said Smollett. "Do you think
+there's nothing but the present story-paper?"
+
+"I don't rightly know for that," said Silver; "and I don't see what it's
+got to do with it, anyway. What I know is this: if there is sich a thing
+as a Author, I'm his favourite chara'ter. He does me fathoms better'n he
+does you--fathoms, he does. And he likes doing me. He keeps me on deck
+mostly all the time, crutch and all; and he leaves you measling in the
+hold, where nobody can't see you, nor wants to, and you may lay to that!
+If there is a Author, by thunder, but he's on my side, and you may lay
+to it!"
+
+"I see he's giving you a long rope," said the Captain. "But that can't
+change a man's convictions. I know the Author respects me; I feel it in
+my bones: when you and I had that talk at the blockhouse door, who do
+you think he was for, my man?"
+
+"And don't he respect me?" cried Silver. "Ah, you should 'a' heard me
+putting down my mutiny, George Merry and Morgan and that lot, no longer
+ago'n last chapter; you'd 'a' heard something then! You'd 'a' seen what
+the Author thinks o' me! But come now, do you consider yourself a
+virtuous chara'ter clean through?"
+
+"God forbid!" said Captain Smollett solemnly. "I am a man that tries to
+do his duty, and makes a mess of it as often as not. I'm not a very
+popular man at home, Silver, I'm afraid!" and the Captain sighed.
+
+"Ah," says Silver. "Then how about this sequel of yours? Are you to be
+Cap'n Smollett just the same as ever and not very popular at home, says
+you? And if so, why, it's 'Treasure Island' over again, by thunder; and
+I'll be Long John and Pew'll be Pew, and we'll have another mutiny as
+like as not. Or are you to be somebody else? And if so, why, what the
+better are you? and what the worse am I?"
+
+"Why, look here, my man," returned the Captain; "I can't understand how
+this story comes about at all, can I? I can't see how you and I who
+don't exist should get to speaking here, and smoke our pipes for all the
+world like reality? Very well, then, who am I to pipe up with my
+opinions? I know the Author's on the side of good; he tells me so, it
+runs out of his pen as he writes. Well, that's all I need to know; I'll
+take my chance upon the rest."
+
+"It's a fact he seemed to be against George Merry," Silver admitted,
+musingly. "But George is little more'n a name at the best of it," he
+added, brightening. "And to get into soundings for once. What is this
+good? I made a mutiny, and I been a gentleman o' fortune; well, but by
+all stories, you ain't no such saint. I'm a man that keeps company very
+easy; even by your own account, you ain't, and to my certain knowledge
+you're a devil to haze. Which is which? Which is good and which bad? Ah,
+you tell me that! Here we are in stays, and you may lay to it!"
+
+"We're none of us perfect," replied the Captain. "That's a fact of
+religion, my man. All I can say is, I try to do my duty; and if you try
+to do yours, I can't compliment you on your success."
+
+"And so you was the judge, was you?" said Silver, derisively.
+
+"I would be both judge and hangman for you, my man, and never turn a
+hair," returned the Captain. "But I get beyond that: it mayn't be sound
+theology, but it's common sense, that what is good is useful too--or
+there and thereabout, for I don't set up to be a thinker. Now, where
+would a story go to if there were no virtuous characters?"
+
+"If you go to that," replied Silver, "where would a story begin, if
+there wasn't no villains?"
+
+"Well, that's pretty much my thought," said Captain Smollett. "The
+Author has to get a story; that's what he wants; and to get a story, and
+to have a man like the doctor (say) given a proper chance, he has to put
+in men like you and Hands. But he's on the right side; and you mind your
+eye! You're not through this story yet; there's trouble coming for you."
+
+"What'll you bet?" asked John.
+
+"Much I care if there ain't," returned the Captain. "I'm glad enough to
+be Alexander Smollett, bad as he is; and I thank my stars upon my knees
+that I'm not Silver. But there's the ink-bottle opening. To quarters!"
+
+And indeed the Author was just then beginning to write the words:
+
+    CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE SINKING SHIP
+
+
+"Sir," said the first lieutenant, bursting into the Captain's cabin,
+"the ship is going down."
+
+"Very well, Mr. Spoker," said the Captain; "but that is no reason for
+going about half-shaved. Exercise your mind a moment, Mr. Spoker, and
+you will see that to the philosophic eye there is nothing new in our
+position: the ship (if she is to go down at all) may be said to have
+been going down since she was launched."
+
+"She is settling fast," said the first lieutenant, as he returned from
+shaving.
+
+"Fast, Mr. Spoker?" asked the Captain. "The expression is a strange one,
+for time (if you will think of it) is only relative."
+
+"Sir," said the lieutenant, "I think it is scarcely worth while to
+embark in such a discussion when we shall all be in Davy Jones's Locker
+in ten minutes."
+
+"By parity of reasoning," returned the Captain gently, "it would never
+be worth while to begin any inquiry of importance; the odds are always
+overwhelming that we must die before we shall have brought it to an end.
+You have not considered, Mr. Spoker, the situation of man," said the
+Captain, smiling, and shaking his head.
+
+"I am much more engaged in considering the position of the ship," said
+Mr. Spoker.
+
+"Spoken like a good officer," replied the Captain, laying his hand on
+the lieutenant's shoulder.
+
+On deck they found the men had broken into the spirit-room, and were
+fast getting drunk.
+
+"My men," said the Captain, "there is no sense in this. The ship is
+going down, you will tell me, in ten minutes: well, and what then? To
+the philosophic eye, there is nothing new in our position. All our lives
+long, we may have been about to break a blood-vessel or to be struck by
+lightning, not merely in ten minutes, but in ten seconds; and that has
+not prevented us from eating dinner, no, nor from putting money in the
+Savings Bank. I assure you, with my hand on my heart, I fail to
+comprehend your attitude."
+
+The men were already too far gone to pay much heed.
+
+"This is a very painful sight, Mr. Spoker," said the Captain.
+
+"And yet to the philosophic eye, or whatever it is," replied the first
+lieutenant, "they may be said to have been getting drunk since they came
+aboard."
+
+"I do not know if you always follow my thought, Mr. Spoker," returned
+the Captain gently. "But let us proceed."
+
+In the powder magazine they found an old salt smoking his pipe.
+
+"Good God!" cried the Captain, "what are you about?"
+
+"Well, sir," said the old salt apologetically, "they told me as she were
+going down."
+
+"And suppose she were?" said the Captain. "To the philosophic eye, there
+would be nothing new in our position. Life, my old shipmate, life, at
+any moment and in any view, is as dangerous as a sinking ship; and yet
+it is man's handsome fashion to carry umbrellas, to wear indiarubber
+overshoes, to begin vast works, and to conduct himself in every way as
+if he might hope to be eternal. And for my own poor part I should
+despise the man who, even on board a sinking ship, should omit to take a
+pill or to wind up his watch. That, my friend, would not be the human
+attitude."
+
+"I beg pardon, sir," said Mr. Spoker. "But what is precisely the
+difference between shaving in a sinking ship and smoking in a powder
+magazine?"
+
+"Or doing anything at all in any conceivable circumstances?" cried the
+Captain. "Perfectly conclusive; give me a cigar!"
+
+Two minutes afterwards the ship blew up with a glorious detonation.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE TWO MATCHES
+
+
+One day there was a traveller in the woods in California, in the dry
+season, when the trades were blowing strong. He had ridden a long way,
+and he was tired and hungry, and dismounted from his horse to smoke a
+pipe. But when he felt in his pocket he found but two matches. He struck
+the first, and it would not light.
+
+"Here is a pretty state of things!" said the traveller. "Dying for a
+smoke; only one match left; and that certain to miss fire! Was there
+ever a creature so unfortunate? And yet," thought the traveller,
+"suppose I light this match, and smoke my pipe, and shake out the dottle
+here in the grass--the grass might catch fire, for it is dry like
+tinder; and while I snatch out the flames in front, they might evade and
+run behind me, and seize upon yon bush of poison oak; before I could
+reach it, that would have blazed up; over the bush I see a pine-tree
+hung with moss; that, too, would fly in fire upon the instant to its
+topmost bough; and the flame of that long torch--how would the
+trade-wind take and brandish that through the inflammable forest! I hear
+this dell roar in a moment with the joint voice of wind and fire, I see
+myself gallop for my soul, and the flying conflagration chase and
+outflank me through the hills; I see this pleasant forest burn for days,
+and the cattle roasted, and the springs dried up, and the farmer ruined,
+and his children cast upon the world. What a world hangs upon this
+moment!"
+
+With that he struck the match, and it missed fire.
+
+"Thank God!" said the traveller, and put his pipe in his pocket.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE SICK MAN AND THE FIREMAN
+
+
+There was once a sick man in a burning house, to whom there entered a
+fireman.
+
+"Do not save me," said the sick man. "Save those who are strong."
+
+"Will you kindly tell me why?" inquired the fireman, for he was a civil
+fellow.
+
+"Nothing could possibly be fairer," said the sick man. "The strong
+should be preferred in all cases, because they are of more service in
+the world."
+
+The fireman pondered a while, for he was a man of some philosophy.
+"Granted," said he at last, as a part of the roof fell in; "but for the
+sake of conversation, what would you lay down as the proper service of
+the strong?"
+
+"Nothing can possibly be easier," returned the sick man; "the proper
+service of the strong is to help the weak."
+
+Again the fireman reflected, for there was nothing hasty about this
+excellent creature. "I could forgive you being sick," he said at last,
+as a portion of the wall fell out, "but I cannot bear your being such a
+fool." And with that he heaved up his fireman's axe, for he was
+eminently just, and clove the sick man to the bed.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE DEVIL AND THE INNKEEPER
+
+
+Once upon a time the devil stayed at an inn, where no one knew him, for
+they were people whose education had been neglected. He was bent on
+mischief, and for a time kept everybody by the ears. But at last the
+innkeeper set a watch upon the devil and took him in the fact.
+
+The innkeeper got a rope's end.
+
+"Now I'm going to thrash you," said the innkeeper.
+
+"You have no right to be angry with me," said the devil. "I am only the
+devil, and it is my nature to do wrong."
+
+"Is that so?" asked the innkeeper.
+
+"Fact, I assure you," said the devil.
+
+"You really can't help doing ill?" asked the innkeeper.
+
+"Not in the smallest," said the devil; "it would be useless cruelty to
+thrash a thing like me."
+
+"It would indeed," said the innkeeper.
+
+And he made a noose and hanged the devil.
+
+"There!" said the innkeeper.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE PENITENT
+
+
+A man met a lad weeping. "What do you weep for?" he asked.
+
+"I am weeping for my sins," said the lad.
+
+"You must have little to do," said the man.
+
+The next day they met again. Once more the lad was weeping. "Why do you
+weep now?" asked the man.
+
+"I am weeping because I have nothing to eat," said the lad.
+
+"I thought it would come to that," said the man.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+THE YELLOW PAINT
+
+
+In a certain city there lived a physician who sold yellow paint. This
+was of so singular a virtue that whoso was bedaubed with it from head to
+heel was set free from the dangers of life, and the bondage of sin, and
+the fear of death for ever. So the physician said in his prospectus; and
+so said all the citizens in the city; and there was nothing more urgent
+in men's hearts than to be properly painted themselves, and nothing they
+took more delight in than to see others painted. There was in the same
+city a young man of a very good family but of a somewhat reckless life,
+who had reached the age of manhood, and would have nothing to say to the
+paint: "To-morrow was soon enough," said he; and when the morrow came he
+would still put it off. So he might have continued to do until his
+death; only, he had a friend of about his own age and much of his own
+manners; and this youth, taking a walk in the public street, with not
+one fleck of paint upon his body, was suddenly run down by a water-cart
+and cut off in the heyday of his nakedness. This shook the other to the
+soul; so that I never beheld a man more earnest to be painted; and on
+the very same evening, in the presence of all his family, to appropriate
+music, and himself weeping aloud, he received three complete coats and a
+touch of varnish on the top. The physician (who was himself affected
+even to tears) protested he had never done a job so thorough.
+
+Some two months afterwards, the young man was carried on a stretcher to
+the physician's house.
+
+"What is the meaning of this?" he cried, as soon as the door was opened.
+"I was to be set free from all the dangers of life; and here have I been
+run down by that self-same water-cart, and my leg is broken."
+
+"Dear me!" said the physician. "This is very sad. But I perceive I must
+explain to you the action of my paint. A broken bone is a mighty small
+affair at the worst of it; and it belongs to a class of accident to
+which my paint is quite inapplicable. Sin, my dear young friend, sin is
+the sole calamity that a wise man should apprehend; it is against sin
+that I have fitted you out; and when you come to be tempted you will
+give me news of my paint."
+
+"O!" said the young man, "I did not understand that, and it seems rather
+disappointing. But I have no doubt all is for the best; and in the
+meanwhile, I shall be obliged to you if you will set my leg."
+
+"That is none of my business," said the physician; "but if your bearers
+will carry you round the corner to the surgeon's, I feel sure he will
+afford relief."
+
+Some three years later, the young man came running to the physician's
+house in a great perturbation. "What is the meaning of this?" he cried.
+"Here was I to be set free from the bondage of sin; and I have just
+committed forgery, arson, and murder."
+
+"Dear me!" said the physician. "This is very serious. Off with your
+clothes at once." And as soon as the young man had stripped, he examined
+him from head to foot. "No," he cried with great relief, "there is not a
+flake broken. Cheer up, my young friend, your paint is as good as new."
+
+"Good God!" cried the young man, "and what then can be the use of it?"
+
+"Why," said the physician, "I perceive I must explain to you the nature
+of the action of my paint. It does not exactly prevent sin; it
+extenuates instead the painful consequences. It is not so much for this
+world as for the next; it is not against life; in short, it is against
+death that I have fitted you out. And when you come to die, you will
+give me news of my paint."
+
+"O!" cried the young man, "I had not understood that, and it seems a
+little disappointing. But there is no doubt all is for the best; and in
+the meanwhile, I shall be obliged if you will help me to undo the evil I
+have brought on innocent persons."
+
+"That is none of my business," said the physician; "but if you will go
+round the corner to the police office, I feel sure it will afford you
+relief to give yourself up."
+
+Six weeks later the physician was called to the town gaol.
+
+"What is the meaning of this?" cried the young man. "Here am I literally
+crusted with your paint; and I have broken my leg, and committed all the
+crimes in the calendar, and must be hanged to-morrow; and am in the
+meanwhile in a fear so extreme that I lack words to picture it."
+
+"Dear me!" said the physician. "This is really amazing. Well, well;
+perhaps if you had not been painted, you would have been more frightened
+still."
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE HOUSE OF ELD
+
+
+So soon as the child began to speak, the gyve was riveted; and the boys
+and girls limped about their play like convicts. Doubtless it was more
+pitiable to see and more painful to bear in youth; but even the grown
+folk, besides being very unhandy on their feet, were often sick with
+ulcers.
+
+About the time when Jack was ten years old, many strangers began to
+journey through that country. These he beheld going lightly by on the
+long roads, and the thing amazed him. "I wonder how it comes," he asked,
+"that all these strangers are so quick afoot, and we must drag about our
+fetter?"
+
+"My dear boy," said his uncle, the catechist, "do not complain about
+your fetter, for it is the only thing that makes life worth living. None
+are happy, none are good, none are respectable, that are not gyved like
+us. And I must tell you, besides, it is very dangerous talk. If you
+grumble of your iron, you will have no luck; if you ever take it off,
+you will be instantly smitten by a thunderbolt."
+
+"Are there no thunderbolts for these strangers?" asked Jack.
+
+"Jupiter is long-suffering to the benighted," returned the catechist.
+
+"Upon my word, I could wish I had been less fortunate," said Jack. "For
+if I had been born benighted, I might now be going free; and it cannot
+be denied the iron is inconvenient, and the ulcer hurts."
+
+"Ah!" cried his uncle, "do not envy the heathen! Theirs is a sad lot!
+Ah, poor souls, if they but knew the joys of being fettered! Poor souls,
+my heart yearns for them. But the truth is they are vile, odious,
+insolent, ill-conditioned, stinking brutes, not truly human--for what
+is a man without a fetter?--and you cannot be too particular not to
+touch or speak with them."
+
+After this talk, the child would never pass one of the unfettered on the
+road but what he spat at him and called him names, which was the
+practice of the children in that part.
+
+It chanced one day, when he was fifteen, he went into the woods, and the
+ulcer pained him. It was a fair day, with a blue sky; all the birds were
+singing; but Jack nursed his foot. Presently, another song began; it
+sounded like the singing of a person, only far more gay; at the same
+time there was a beating on the earth. Jack put aside the leaves; and
+there was a lad of his own village, leaping, and dancing and singing to
+himself in a green dell; and on the grass beside him lay the dancer's
+iron.
+
+"O!" cried Jack, "you have your fetter off!"
+
+"For God's sake, don't tell your uncle!" cried the lad.
+
+"If you fear my uncle," returned Jack, "why do you not fear the
+thunderbolt?"
+
+"That is only an old wives' tale," said the other. "It is only told to
+children. Scores of us come here among the woods and dance for nights
+together, and are none the worse."
+
+This put Jack in a thousand new thoughts. He was a grave lad; he had no
+mind to dance himself; he wore his fetter manfully, and tended his ulcer
+without complaint. But he loved the less to be deceived or to see others
+cheated. He began to lie in wait for heathen travellers, at covert parts
+of the road, and in the dusk of the day, so that he might speak with
+them unseen; and these were greatly taken with their wayside questioner,
+and told him things of weight. The wearing of gyves (they said) was no
+command of Jupiter's. It was the contrivance of a white-faced thing, a
+sorcerer, that dwelt in that country in the Wood of Eld. He was one like
+Glaucus that could change his shape, yet he could be always told; for
+when he was crossed, he gobbled like a turkey. He had three lives; but
+the third smiting would make an end of him indeed; and with that his
+house of sorcery would vanish, the gyves fall, and the villagers take
+hands and dance like children.
+
+"And in your country?" Jack would ask.
+
+But at this, the travellers, with one accord, would put him off; until
+Jack began to suppose there was no land entirely happy. Or, if there
+were, it must be one that kept its folk at home; which was natural
+enough.
+
+But the case of the gyves weighed upon him. The sight of the children
+limping stuck in his eyes; the groans of such as dressed their ulcers
+haunted him. And it came at last in his mind that he was born to free
+them.
+
+There was in that village a sword of heavenly forgery, beaten upon
+Vulcan's anvil. It was never used but in the temple, and then the flat
+of it only; and it hung on a nail by the catechist's chimney. Early one
+night Jack rose, and took the sword, and was gone out of the house and
+the village in the darkness.
+
+All night he walked at a venture; and when day came, he met strangers
+going to the fields. Then he asked after the Wood of Eld and the house
+of sorcery; and one said north, and one south; until Jack saw that they
+deceived him. So then, when he asked his way of any man, he showed the
+bright sword naked; and at that the gyve on the man's ankle rang and
+answered in his stead; and the word was still _Straight on._ But the
+man, when his gyve spoke, spat and struck at Jack, and threw stones at
+him as he went away; so that his head was broken.
+
+So he came to that wood, and entered in, and he was aware of a house in
+a low place, where funguses grew, and the trees met, and the steaming of
+the marsh arose about it like a smoke. It was a fine house, and a very
+rambling; some parts of it were ancient like the hills, and some but of
+yesterday, and none finished; and all the ends of it were open, so that
+you could go in from every side. Yet it was in good repair, and all the
+chimneys smoked.
+
+Jack went in through the gable; and there was one room after another,
+all bare, but all furnished in part, so that a man could dwell there;
+and in each there was a fire burning, where a man could warm himself,
+and a table spread where he might eat. But Jack saw nowhere any living
+creature; only the bodies of some stuffed.
+
+"This is a hospitable house," said Jack; "but the ground must be quaggy
+underneath, for at every step the building quakes."
+
+He had gone some time in the house, when he began to be hungry. Then he
+looked at the food, and at first he was afraid; but he bared the sword,
+and by the shining of the sword, it seemed the food was honest. So he
+took the courage to sit down and eat, and he was refreshed in mind and
+body.
+
+"This is strange," thought he, "that in the house of sorcery there
+should be food so wholesome."
+
+As he was yet eating, there came into that room the appearance of his
+uncle, and Jack was afraid because he had taken the sword. But his uncle
+was never more kind, and sat down to meat with him, and praised him
+because he had taken the sword. Never had these two been more pleasantly
+together, and Jack was full of love to the man.
+
+"It was very well done," said his uncle, "to take the sword and come
+yourself into the House of Eld; a good thought and a brave deed. But now
+you are satisfied; and we may go home to dinner arm in arm."
+
+"O dear no!" said Jack. "I am not satisfied yet."
+
+"How!" cried his uncle. "Are you not warmed by the fire? Does not this
+food sustain you?"
+
+"I see the food to be wholesome," said Jack; "and still it is no proof
+that a man should wear a gyve on his right leg."
+
+Now at this the appearance of his uncle gobbled like a turkey.
+
+"Jupiter!" cried Jack, "is this the sorcerer?"
+
+His hand held back and his heart failed him for the love he bore his
+uncle; but he heaved up the sword and smote the appearance on the head;
+and it cried out aloud with the voice of his uncle; and fell to the
+ground; and a little bloodless white thing fled from the room.
+
+The cry rang in Jack's ears, and his knees smote together, and
+conscience cried upon him; and yet he was strengthened, and there woke
+in his bones the lust of that enchanter's blood. "If the gyves are to
+fall," said he, "I must go through with this, and when I get home I
+shall find my uncle dancing."
+
+So he went on after the bloodless thing. In the way he met the
+appearance of his father; and his father was incensed, and railed upon
+him, and called to him upon his duty, and bade him be home, while there
+was yet time. "For you can still," said he, "be home by sunset; and then
+all will be forgiven."
+
+"God knows," said Jack, "I fear your anger; but yet your anger does not
+prove that a man should wear a gyve on his right leg."
+
+And at that the appearance of his father gobbled like a turkey.
+
+"Ah, heaven," cried Jack, "the sorcerer again!"
+
+The blood ran backward in his body, and his joints rebelled against him
+for the love he bore his father; but he heaved up the sword, and plunged
+it in the heart of the appearance; and the appearance cried out aloud
+with the voice of his father; and fell to the ground; and a little
+bloodless white thing fled from the room.
+
+The cry rang in Jack's ears, and his soul was darkened; but now rage
+came to him. "I have done what I dare not think upon," said he. "I will
+go to an end with it, or perish. And when I get home, I pray God this
+may be a dream, and I may find my father dancing."
+
+So he went on after the bloodless thing that had escaped; and in the way
+he met the appearance of his mother, and she wept. "What have you
+done?" she cried. "What is this that you have done? O, come home (where
+you may be by bedtime) ere you do more ill to me and mine; for it is
+enough to smite my brother and your father."
+
+"Dear mother, it is not these that I have smitten," said Jack; "it was
+but the enchanter in their shape. And even if I had, it would not prove
+that a man should wear a gyve on his right leg."
+
+And at this the appearance gobbled like a turkey.
+
+He never knew how he did that; but he swung the sword on the one side,
+and clove the appearance through the midst; and it cried out aloud with
+the voice of his mother; and fell to the ground; and with the fall of
+it, the house was gone from over Jack's head, and he stood alone in the
+woods, and the gyve was loosened from his leg.
+
+"Well," said he, "the enchanter is now dead, and the fetter gone." But
+the cries rang in his soul, and the day was like night to him. "This has
+been a sore business," said he. "Let me get forth out of the wood, and
+see the good that I have done to others."
+
+He thought to leave the fetter where it lay, but when he turned to go,
+his mind was otherwise. So he stooped and put the gyve in his bosom; and
+the rough iron galled him as he went, and his bosom bled.
+
+Now when he was forth of the wood upon the highway, he met folk
+returning from the field; and those he met had no fetter on the right
+leg, but, behold! they had one upon the left. Jack asked them what it
+signified; and they said, "that was the new wear, for the old was found
+to be a superstition." Then he looked at them nearly; and there was a
+new ulcer on the left ankle, and the old one on the right was not yet
+healed.
+
+"Now, may God forgive me!" cried Jack. "I would I were well home."
+
+And when he was home, there lay his uncle smitten on the head, and his
+father pierced through the heart, and his mother cloven through the
+midst. And he sat in the lone house and wept beside the bodies.
+
+MORAL
+
+  Old is the tree and the fruit good,
+  Very old and thick the wood.
+  Woodman, is your courage stout?
+  Beware! the root is wrapped about
+  Your mother's heart, your father's bones;
+  And like the mandrake comes with groans.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE FOUR REFORMERS
+
+
+Four reformers met under a bramble-bush. They were all agreed the world
+must be changed. "We must abolish property," said one.
+
+"We must abolish marriage," said the second.
+
+"We must abolish God," said the third.
+
+"I wish we could abolish work," said the fourth.
+
+"Do not let us get beyond practical politics," said the first. "The
+first thing is to reduce men to a common level."
+
+"The first thing," said the second, "is to give freedom to the sexes."
+
+"The first thing," said the third, "is to find out how to do it."
+
+"The first step," said the first, "is to abolish the Bible."
+
+"The first thing," said the second, "is to abolish the laws."
+
+"The first thing," said the third, "is to abolish mankind."
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+THE MAN AND HIS FRIEND
+
+
+A man quarrelled with his friend.
+
+"I have been much deceived in you," said the man.
+
+And the friend made a face at him and went away.
+
+A little after, they both died, and came together before the great white
+Justice of the Peace. It began to look black for the friend, but the man
+for a while had a clear character and was getting in good spirits.
+
+"I find here some record of a quarrel," said the Justice, looking in his
+notes. "Which of you was in the wrong?"
+
+"He was," said the man. "He spoke ill of me behind my back."
+
+"Did he so?" said the Justice. "And pray how did he speak about your
+neighbours?"
+
+"O, he had always a nasty tongue," said the man.
+
+"And you chose him for your friend?" cried the Justice. "My good fellow,
+we have no use here for fools."
+
+So the man was cast in the pit, and the friend laughed out aloud in the
+dark and remained to be tried on other charges.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+THE READER
+
+
+"I never read such an impious book," said the reader, throwing it on the
+floor.
+
+"You need not hurt me," said the book; "you will only get less for me
+second-hand, and I did not write myself."
+
+"That is true," said the reader. "My quarrel is with your author."
+
+"Ah, well," said the book, "you need not buy his rant."
+
+"That is true," said the reader. "But I thought him such a cheerful
+writer."
+
+"I find him so," said the book.
+
+"You must be differently made from me," said the reader.
+
+"Let me tell you a fable," said the book. "There were two men wrecked
+upon a desert island; one of them made believe he was at home, the other
+admitted----"
+
+"O, I know your kind of fable," said the reader. "They both died."
+
+"And so they did," said the book. "No doubt of that. And everybody
+else."
+
+"That is true," said the reader. "Push it a little further for this
+once. And when they were all dead?"
+
+"They were in God's hands, the same as before," said the book.
+
+"Not much to boast of, by your account," cried the reader.
+
+"Who is impious now?" said the book.
+
+And the reader put him on the fire.
+
+  The coward crouches from the rod,
+  And loathes the iron face of God.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+THE CITIZEN AND THE TRAVELLER
+
+
+"Look round you," said the citizen. "This is the largest market in the
+world."
+
+"O, surely not," said the traveller.
+
+"Well, perhaps not the largest," said the citizen, "but much the best."
+
+"You are certainly wrong there," said the traveller. "I can tell you...."
+
+They buried the stranger at the dusk.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+THE DISTINGUISHED STRANGER
+
+
+Once upon a time there came to this earth a visitor from a neighbouring
+planet. And he was met at the place of his descent by a great
+philosopher, who was to show him everything.
+
+First of all they came through a wood, and the stranger looked upon the
+trees. "Whom have we here?" said he.
+
+"These are only vegetables," said the philosopher. "They are alive, but
+not at all interesting."
+
+"I don't know about that," said the stranger. "They seem to have very
+good manners. Do they never speak?"
+
+"They lack the gift," said the philosopher.
+
+"Yet I think I hear them sing," said the other.
+
+"That is only the wind among the leaves," said the philosopher. "I will
+explain to you the theory of winds: it is very interesting."
+
+"Well," said the stranger, "I wish I knew what they are thinking."
+
+"They cannot think," said the philosopher.
+
+"I don't know, about that," returned the stranger: and then, laying his
+hand upon a trunk: "I like these people," said he.
+
+"They are not people at all," said the philosopher. "Come along."
+
+Next they came through a meadow where there were cows.
+
+"These are very dirty people," said the stranger.
+
+"They are not people at all," said the philosopher; and he explained
+what a cow is in scientific words which I have forgotten.
+
+"That is all one to me," said the stranger. "But why do they never look
+up?"
+
+"Because they are graminivorous," said the philosopher; "and to live
+upon grass, which is not highly nutritious, requires so close an
+attention to business that they have no time to think, or speak, or look
+at the scenery, or keep themselves clean."
+
+"Well," said the stranger, "that is one way to live, no doubt. But I
+prefer the people with the green heads."
+
+Next they came into a city, and the streets were full of men and women.
+
+"These are very odd people," said the stranger.
+
+"They are the people of the greatest nation in the world," said the
+philosopher.
+
+"Are they indeed?" said the stranger. "They scarcely look so."
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+THE CART-HORSES AND THE SADDLE-HORSE
+
+
+Two cart-horses, a gelding and a mare, were brought to Samoa, and put in
+the same field with a saddle-horse to run free on the island. They were
+rather afraid to go near him, for they saw he was a saddle-horse, and
+supposed he would not speak to them. Now the saddle-horse had never seen
+creatures so big. "These must be great chiefs," thought he, and he
+approached them civilly. "Lady and gentleman," said he, "I understand
+you are from the colonies. I offer you my affectionate compliments, and
+make you heartily welcome to the islands."
+
+The colonials looked at him askance, and consulted with each other.
+
+"Who can he be?" said the gelding.
+
+"He seems suspiciously civil," said the mare.
+
+"I do not think he can be much account," said the gelding.
+
+"Depend upon it he is only a Kanaka," said the mare.
+
+Then they turned to him.
+
+"Go to the devil!" said the gelding.
+
+"I wonder at your impudence, speaking to persons of our quality!" cried
+the mare.
+
+The saddle-horse went away by himself. "I was right," said he, "they are
+great chiefs."
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+THE TADPOLE AND THE FROG
+
+
+"Be ashamed of yourself," said the frog. "When I was a tadpole, I had no
+tail."
+
+"Just what I thought!" said the tadpole. "You never were a tadpole."
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+SOMETHING IN IT
+
+
+The natives told him many tales. In particular, they warned him of the
+house of yellow reeds tied with black sinnet, how any one who touched it
+became instantly the prey of Akaaenga, and was handed on to him by Miru
+the ruddy, and hocussed with the kava of the dead, and baked in the
+ovens and eaten by the eaters of the dead.
+
+"There is nothing in it," said the missionary.
+
+There was a bay upon that island, a very fair bay to look upon; but, by
+the native saying, it was death to bathe there. "There is nothing in
+that," said the missionary; and he came to the bay, and went swimming.
+Presently an eddy took him and bore him towards the reef. "Oho!" thought
+the missionary, "it seems there is something in it after all." And he
+swam the harder, but the eddy carried him away. "I do not care about
+this eddy," said the missionary; and even as he said it, he was aware of
+a house raised on piles above the sea; it was built of yellow reeds, one
+reed joined with another, and the whole bound with black sinnet; a
+ladder led to the door, and all about the house hung calabashes. He had
+never seen such a house, nor yet such calabashes; and the eddy set for
+the ladder. "This is singular," said the missionary, "but there can be
+nothing in it." And he laid hold of the ladder and went up. It was a
+fine house; but there was no man there; and when the missionary looked
+back he saw no island, only the heaving of the sea. "It is strange about
+the island," said the missionary, "but who's afraid? my stories are the
+true ones." And he laid hold of a calabash, for he was one that loved
+curiosities. Now he had no sooner laid hand upon the calabash than that
+which he handled, and that which he saw and stood on, burst like a
+bubble and was gone; and night closed upon him, and the waters, and the
+meshes of the net; and he wallowed there like a fish.
+
+"A body would think there was something in this," said the missionary.
+"But if these tales are true, I wonder what about my tales!"
+
+Now the flaming of Akaaenga's torch drew near in the night; and the
+misshapen hands groped in the meshes of the net; and they took the
+missionary between the finger and the thumb, and bore him dripping in
+the night and silence to the place of the ovens of Miru. And there was
+Miru, ruddy in the glow of the ovens; and there sat her four daughters,
+and made the kava of the dead; and there sat the comers out of the
+islands of the living, dripping and lamenting.
+
+This was a dread place to reach for any of the sons of men. But of all
+who ever came there, the missionary was the most concerned; and, to make
+things worse, the person next him was a convert of his own.
+
+"Aha," said the convert, "so you are here like your neighbours? And how
+about all your stories?"
+
+"It seems," said the missionary, with bursting tears, "that there was
+nothing in them."
+
+By this the kava of the dead was ready, and the daughters of Miru began
+to intone in the old manner of singing: "Gone are the green islands and
+the bright sea, the sun and the moon and the forty million stars, and
+life and love and hope. Henceforth is no more, only to sit in the night
+and silence, and see your friends devoured; for life is a deceit, and
+the bandage is taken from your eyes."
+
+Now when the singing was done, one of the daughters came with the bowl.
+Desire of that kava rose in the missionary's bosom; he lusted for it
+like a swimmer for the land, or a bridegroom for his bride; and he
+reached out his hand, and took the bowl, and would have drunk. And then
+he remembered, and put it back.
+
+"Drink!" sang the daughter of Miru. "There is no kava like the kava of
+the dead, and to drink of it once is the reward of living."
+
+"I thank you. It smells excellent," said the missionary. "But I am a
+blue-ribbon man myself; and though I am aware there is a difference of
+opinion even in our own confession, I have always held kava to be
+excluded."
+
+"What!" cried the convert. "Are you going to respect a taboo at a time
+like this? And you were always so opposed to taboos when you were
+alive!"
+
+"To other people's," said the missionary. "Never to my own."
+
+"But yours have all proved wrong," said the convert.
+
+"It looks like it," said the missionary, "and I can't help that. No
+reason why I should break my word."
+
+"I never heard the like of this!" cried the daughter of Miru. "Pray,
+what do you expect to gain?"
+
+"That is not the point," said the missionary. "I took this pledge for
+others, I am not going to break it for myself."
+
+The daughter of Miru was puzzled; she came and told her mother, and Miru
+was vexed; and they went and told Akaaenga.
+
+"I don't know what to do about this," said Akaaenga; and he came and
+reasoned with the missionary.
+
+"But there _is_ such a thing as right and wrong," said the missionary;
+"and your ovens cannot alter that."
+
+"Give the kava to the rest," said Akaaenga to the daughters of Miru. "I
+must get rid of this sea-lawyer instantly, or worse will come of it."
+
+The next moment the missionary came up in the midst of the sea, and
+there before him were the palm-trees of the island. He swam to the shore
+gladly, and landed. Much matter of thought was in that missionary's
+mind.
+
+"I seem to have been misinformed upon some points," said he. "Perhaps
+there is not much in it, as I supposed; but there is something in it
+after all. Let me be glad of that."
+
+And he rang the bell for service.
+
+  MORAL
+
+  The sticks break, the stones crumble,
+  The eternal altars tilt and tumble,
+  Sanctions and tales dislimn like mist
+  About the amazed evangelist.
+  He stands unshook from age to youth
+  Upon one pin-point of the truth.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+FAITH, HALF-FAITH, AND NO FAITH AT ALL
+
+
+In the ancient days there went three men upon pilgrimage; one was a
+priest, and one was a virtuous person, and the third was an old rover
+with his axe.
+
+As they went, the priest spoke about the grounds of faith.
+
+"We find the proofs of our religion in the works of nature," said he,
+and beat his breast.
+
+"That is true," said the virtuous person.
+
+"The peacock has a scrannel voice," said the priest, "as has been laid
+down always in our books. How cheering!" he cried, in a voice like one
+that wept. "How comforting!"
+
+"I require no such proofs," said the virtuous person.
+
+"Then you have no reasonable faith," said the priest.
+
+"Great is the right, and shall prevail!" cried the virtuous person.
+"There is loyalty in my soul; be sure, there is loyalty in the mind of
+Odin."
+
+"These are but playings upon words," returned the priest. "A sackful of
+such trash is nothing to the peacock."
+
+Just then they passed a country farm, where there was a peacock seated
+on a rail; and the bird opened its mouth and sang with the voice of a
+nightingale.
+
+"Where are you now?" asked the virtuous person. "And yet this shakes not
+me! Great is the truth, and shall prevail!"
+
+"The devil fly away with that peacock!" said the priest; and he was
+downcast for a mile or two.
+
+But presently they came to a shrine, where a Fakeer performed miracles.
+
+"Ah!" said the priest, "here are the true grounds of faith. The peacock
+was but an adminicle. This is the base of our religion." And he beat
+upon his breast, and groaned like one with colic.
+
+"Now to me," said the virtuous person, "all this is as little to the
+purpose as the peacock. I believe because I see the right is great and
+must prevail; and this Fakeer might carry on with his conjuring tricks
+till doomsday, and it would not play bluff upon a man like me."
+
+Now at this the Fakeer was so much incensed that his hand trembled; and,
+lo! in the midst of a miracle the cards fell from up his sleeve.
+
+"Where are you now?" asked the virtuous person. "And yet it shakes not
+me!"
+
+"The devil fly away with the Fakeer!" cried the priest. "I really do not
+see the good of going on with this pilgrimage."
+
+"Cheer up!" cried the virtuous person. "Great is the right, and shall
+prevail!"
+
+"If you are quite sure it will prevail," says the priest.
+
+"I pledge my word for that," said the virtuous person.
+
+So the other began to go on again with a better heart.
+
+At last one came running, and told them all was lost: that the powers of
+darkness had besieged the Heavenly Mansions, that Odin was to die, and
+evil triumph.
+
+"I have been grossly deceived," cried the virtuous person.
+
+"All is lost now," said the priest.
+
+"I wonder if it is too late to make it up with the devil?" said the
+virtuous person.
+
+"O, I hope not," said the priest. "And at any rate we can but try.--But
+what are you doing with your axe?" says he to the rover.
+
+"I am off to die with Odin," said the rover.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+THE TOUCHSTONE
+
+
+The King was a man that stood well before the world; his smile was sweet
+as clover, but his soul withinsides was as little as a pea. He had two
+sons; and the younger son was a boy after his heart, but the elder was
+one whom he feared. It befell one morning that the drum sounded in the
+dun before it was yet day; and the King rode with his two sons, and a
+brave array behind them. They rode two hours, and came to the foot of a
+brown mountain that was very steep.
+
+"Where do we ride?" said the elder son.
+
+"Across this brown mountain," said the King, and smiled to himself.
+
+"My father knows what he is doing," said the younger son.
+
+And they rode two hours more, and came to the sides of a black river
+that was wondrous deep.
+
+"And where do we ride?" asked the elder son.
+
+"Over this black river," said the King, and smiled to himself.
+
+"My father knows what he is doing," said the younger son.
+
+And they rode all that day, and about the time of the sunsetting came to
+the side of a lake, where was a great dun.
+
+"It is here we ride," said the King; "to a King's house, and a priest's,
+and a house where you will learn much."
+
+At the gates of the dun, the King who was a priest met them; and he was
+a grave man, and beside him stood his daughter, and she was as fair as
+the morn, and one that smiled and looked down.
+
+"These are my two sons," said the first King.
+
+"And here is my daughter," said the King who was a priest.
+
+"She is a wonderful fine maid," said the first King, "and I like her
+manner of smiling."
+
+"They are wonderful well-grown lads," said the second, "and I like their
+gravity."
+
+And then the two Kings looked at each other, and said, "The thing may
+come about."
+
+And in the meanwhile the two lads looked upon the maid, and the one grew
+pale and the other red; and the maid looked upon the ground smiling.
+
+"Here is the maid that I shall marry," said the elder. "For I think she
+smiled upon me."
+
+But the younger plucked his father by the sleeve. "Father," said he, "a
+word in your ear. If I find favour in your sight, might not I wed this
+maid, for I think she smiles upon me?"
+
+"A word in yours," said the King his father. "Waiting is good hunting,
+and when the teeth are shut the tongue is at home."
+
+Now they were come into the dun, and feasted; and this was a great
+house, so that the lads were astonished; and the King that was a priest
+sat at the end of the board and was silent, so that the lads were filled
+with reverence; and the maid served them smiling with downcast eyes, so
+that their hearts were enlarged.
+
+Before it was day, the elder son arose, and he found the maid at her
+weaving, for she was a diligent girl. "Maid," quoth he, "I would fain
+marry you."
+
+"You must speak with my father," said she, and she looked upon the
+ground smiling, and became like the rose.
+
+"Her heart is with me," said the elder son, and he went down to the lake
+and sang.
+
+A little while after came the younger son. "Maid," quoth he, "if our
+fathers were agreed, I would like well to marry you."
+
+"You can speak to my father," said she; and looked upon the ground, and
+smiled and grew like the rose.
+
+"She is a dutiful daughter," said the younger son, "she will make an
+obedient wife." And then he thought, "What shall I do?" and he
+remembered the King her father was a priest; so he went into the temple,
+and sacrificed a weasel and a hare.
+
+Presently the news got about; and the two lads and the first King were
+called into the presence of the King who was a priest, where he sat upon
+the high seat.
+
+"Little I reck of gear," said the King who was a priest, "and little of
+power. For we live here among the shadow of things, and the heart is
+sick of seeing them. And we stay here in the wind like raiment drying,
+and the heart is weary of the wind. But one thing I love, and that is
+truth; and for one thing will I give my daughter, and that is the trial
+stone. For in the light of that stone the seeming goes, and the being
+shows, and all things besides are worthless. Therefore, lads, if ye
+would wed my daughter, out foot, and bring me the stone of touch, for
+that is the price of her."
+
+"A word in your ear," said the younger son to his father. "I think we do
+very well without this stone."
+
+"A word in yours," said the father. "I am of your way of thinking; but
+when the teeth are shut the tongue is at home." And he smiled to the
+King that was a priest.
+
+But the elder son got to his feet, and called the King that was a priest
+by the name of father. "For whether I marry the maid or no, I will call
+you by that word for the love of your wisdom; and even now I will ride
+forth and search the world for the stone of touch." So he said farewell,
+and rode into the world.
+
+"I think I will go, too," said the younger son, "if I can have your
+leave. For my heart goes out to the maid."
+
+"You will ride home with me," said his father.
+
+So they rode home, and when they came to the dun, the King had his son
+into his treasury. "Here," said he, "is the touchstone which shows
+truth; for there is no truth but plain truth; and if you will look in
+this, you will see yourself as you are."
+
+And the younger son looked in it, and saw his face as it were the face
+of a beardless youth, and he was well enough pleased; for the thing was
+a piece of a mirror.
+
+"Here is no such great thing to make a work about," said he; "but if it
+will get me the maid I shall never complain. But what a fool is my
+brother to ride into the world, and the thing all the while at home!"
+
+So they rode back to the other dun, and showed the mirror to the King
+that was a priest; and when he had looked in it, and seen himself like a
+King, and his house like a King's house, and all things like themselves,
+he cried out and blessed God. "For now I know," said he, "there is no
+truth but the plain truth; and I am a King indeed, although my heart
+misgave me." And he pulled down his temple and built a new one; and then
+the younger son was married to the maid.
+
+In the meantime the elder son rode into the world to find the touchstone
+of the trial of truth; and whenever he came to a place of habitation, he
+would ask the men if they had heard of it. And in every place the men
+answered: "Not only have we heard of it, but we alone, of all men,
+possess the thing itself, and it hangs in the side of our chimney to
+this day." Then would the elder son be glad, and beg for a sight of it.
+And sometimes it would be a piece of mirror, that showed the seeming of
+things; and then he would say, "This can never be, for there should be
+more than seeming." And sometimes it would be a lump of coal, which
+showed nothing; and then he would say, "This can never be, for at least
+there is the seeming." And sometimes it would be a touchstone indeed,
+beautiful in hue, adorned with polishing, the light inhabiting its
+sides; and when he found this, he would beg the thing, and the persons
+of that place would give it him, for all men were very generous of that
+gift; so that at the last he had his wallet full of them, and they
+chinked together when he rode; and when he halted by the side of the way
+he would take them out and try them, till his head turned like the sails
+upon a windmill.
+
+"A murrain upon this business!" said the elder son, "for I perceive no
+end to it. Here I have the red, and here the blue and the green; and to
+me they seem all excellent, and yet shame each other. A murrain on the
+trade! If it were not for the King that is a priest and whom I have
+called my father, and if it were not for the fair maid of the dun that
+makes my mouth to sing and my heart enlarge, I would even tumble them
+all into the salt sea, and go home and be a King like other folk."
+
+But he was like the hunter that has seen a stag upon a mountain, so that
+the night may fall, and the fire be kindled, and the lights shine in his
+house; but desire of that stag is single in his bosom.
+
+Now after many years the elder son came upon the sides of the salt sea;
+and it was night, and a savage place, and the clamour of the sea was
+loud. There he was aware of a house, and a man sat there by the light of
+a candle, for he had no fire. Now the elder son came in to him, and the
+man gave him water to drink, for he had no bread; and wagged his head
+when spoken to, for he had no words.
+
+"Have you the touchstone of truth?" asked the elder son; and when the
+man had wagged his head, "I might have known that," cried the elder son.
+"I have here a wallet full of them!" And with that he laughed, although
+his heart was weary.
+
+And with that the man laughed too, and with the fuff of his laughter the
+candle went out.
+
+"Sleep," said the man, "for now I think you have come far enough; and
+your quest is ended and my candle is out."
+
+Now when the morning came, the man gave him a clear pebble in his hand,
+and it had no beauty and no colour; and the elder son looked upon it
+scornfully and shook his head; and he went away, for it seemed a small
+affair to him.
+
+All that day he rode, and his mind was quiet, and the desire of the
+chase allayed. "How if this poor pebble be the touchstone, after all?"
+said he: and he got down from his horse and emptied forth his wallet by
+the side of the way. Now, in the light of each other, all the
+touchstones lost their hue and fire, and withered like stars at morning;
+but in the light of the pebble, their beauty remained, only the pebble
+was the most bright. And the elder son smote upon his brow. "How if this
+be the truth?" he cried, "that all are a little true?" And he took the
+pebble and turned its light upon the heavens, and they deepened about
+him like the pit; and he turned it on the hills, and the hills were cold
+and rugged, but life ran in their sides so that his own life bounded;
+and he turned it on the dust, and he beheld the dust with joy and
+terror; and he turned it on himself, and knelt down and prayed.
+
+"Now, thanks be to God," said the elder son, "I have found the
+touchstone; and now I may turn my reins, and ride home to the King and
+to the maid of the dun that makes my mouth to sing and my heart
+enlarge."
+
+Now when he came to the dun, he saw children playing by the gate where
+the King had met him in the old days; and this stayed his pleasure, for
+he thought in his heart, "It is here my children should be playing." And
+when he came into the hall, there was his brother on the high seat and
+the maid beside him; and at that his anger rose, for he thought in his
+heart, "It is I that should be sitting there, and the maid beside me."
+
+"Who are you?" said his brother. "And what make you in the dun?"
+
+"I am your elder brother," he replied. "And I am come to marry the maid,
+for I have brought the touchstone of truth."
+
+Then the younger brother laughed aloud. "Why," said he, "I found the
+touchstone years ago, and married the maid, and there are our children
+playing at the gate."
+
+Now at this the elder brother grew as grey as the dawn. "I pray you have
+dealt justly," said he, "for I perceive my life is lost."
+
+"Justly?" quoth the younger brother. "It becomes you ill, that are a
+restless man and a runagate, to doubt my justice, or the King my
+father's, that are sedentary folk and known in the land."
+
+"Nay," said the elder brother, "you have all else, have patience also;
+and suffer me to say the world is full of touchstones, and it appears
+not easily which is true."
+
+"I have no shame of mine," said the younger brother. "There it is, and
+look in it."
+
+So the elder brother looked in the mirror, and he was sore amazed; for
+he was an old man, and his hair was white upon his head; and he sat down
+in the hall and wept aloud.
+
+"Now," said the younger brother, "see what a fool's part you have
+played, that ran over all the world to seek what was lying in our
+father's treasury, and came back an old carle for the dogs to bark at,
+and without chick or child. And I that was dutiful and wise sit here
+crowned with virtues and pleasures, and happy in the light of my
+hearth."
+
+"Methinks you have a cruel tongue," said the elder brother; and he
+pulled out the clear pebble and turned its light on his brother; and
+behold the man was lying, his soul was shrunk into the smallness of a
+pea, and his heart was a bag of little fears like scorpions, and love
+was dead in his bosom. And at that the elder brother cried out aloud,
+and turned the light of the pebble on the maid, and, lo! she was but a
+mask of a woman, and withinsides she was quite dead, and she smiled as a
+clock ticks, and knew not wherefore.
+
+"O, well," said the elder brother, "I perceive there is both good and
+bad. So fare ye all as well as ye may in the dun; but I will go forth
+into the world with my pebble in my pocket."
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+THE POOR THING
+
+
+There was a man in the islands who fished for his bare bellyful, and
+took his life in his hands to go forth upon the sea between four planks.
+But though he had much ado, he was merry of heart; and the gulls heard
+him laugh when the spray met him. And though he had little lore, he was
+sound of spirit; and when the fish came to his hook in the mid-waters,
+he blessed God without weighing. He was bitter poor in goods and bitter
+ugly of countenance, and he had no wife.
+
+It fell in the time of the fishing that the man awoke in his house about
+the midst of the afternoon. The fire burned in the midst, and the smoke
+went up and the sun came down by the chimney. And the man was aware of
+the likeness of one that warmed his hands at the red peats.
+
+"I greet you," said the man, "in the name of God."
+
+"I greet you," said he that warmed his hands, "but not in the name of
+God, for I am none of His; nor in the name of Hell, for I am not of
+Hell. For I am but a bloodless thing, less than wind and lighter than a
+sound, and the wind goes through me like a net, and I am broken by a
+sound and shaken by the cold."
+
+"Be plain with me," said the man, "and tell me your name and of your
+nature."
+
+"My name," quoth the other, "is not yet named, and my nature not yet
+sure. For I am part of a man; and I was a part of your fathers, and went
+out to fish and fight with them in the ancient days. But now is my turn
+not yet come; and I wait until you have a wife, and then shall I be in
+your son, and a brave part of him, rejoicing manfully to launch the boat
+into the surf, skilful to direct the helm, and a man of might where the
+ring closes and the blows are going."
+
+"This is a marvellous thing to hear," said the man; "and if you are
+indeed to be my son, I fear it will go ill with you; for I am bitter
+poor in goods and bitter ugly in face, and I shall never get me a wife
+if I live to the age of eagles."
+
+"All this have I come to remedy, my Father," said the Poor Thing; "for
+we must go this night to the little isle of sheep, where our fathers lie
+in the dead-cairn, and to-morrow to the Earl's Hall, and there shall you
+find a wife by my providing."
+
+So the man rose and put forth his boat at the time of the sunsetting;
+and the Poor Thing sat in the prow, and the spray blew through his bones
+like snow, and the wind whistled in his teeth, and the boat dipped not
+with the weight of him.
+
+"I am fearful to see you, my son," said the man. "For methinks you are
+no thing of God."
+
+"It is only the wind that whistles in my teeth," said the Poor Thing,
+"and there is no life in me to keep it out."
+
+So they came to the little isle of sheep, where the surf burst all about
+it in the midst of the sea, and it was all green with bracken, and all
+wet with dew, and the moon enlightened it. They ran the boat into a
+cove, and set foot to land; and the man came heavily behind among the
+rocks in the deepness of the bracken, but the Poor Thing went before him
+like a smoke in the light of the moon. So they came to the dead-cairn,
+and they laid their ears to the stones; and the dead complained
+withinsides like a swarm of bees: "Time was that marrow was in our
+bones, and strength in our sinews; and the thoughts of our head were
+clothed upon with acts and the words of men. But now are we broken in
+sunder, and the bonds of our bones are loosed, and our thoughts lie in
+the dust."
+
+Then said the Poor Thing: "Charge them that they give you the virtue
+they withheld."
+
+And the man said: "Bones of my fathers, greeting! for I am sprung of
+your loins. And now, behold, I break open the piled stones of your
+cairn, and I let in the noon between your ribs. Count it well done, for
+it was to be; and give me what I come seeking in the name of blood and
+in the name of God."
+
+And the spirits of the dead stirred in the cairn like ants; and they
+spoke: "You have broken the roof of our cairn and let in the noon
+between our ribs; and you have the strength of the still-living. But
+what virtue have we? what power? or what jewel here in the dust with us,
+that any living man should covet or receive it? for we are less than
+nothing. But we tell you one thing, speaking with many voices like bees,
+that the way is plain before all like the grooves of launching: So forth
+into life and fear not, for so did we all in the ancient ages." And
+their voices passed away like an eddy in a river.
+
+"Now," said the Poor Thing, "they have told you a lesson, but make them
+give you a gift. Stoop your hand among the bones without drawback, and
+you shall find their treasure."
+
+So the man stooped his hand, and the dead laid hold upon it many and
+faint like ants; but he shook them off, and behold, what he brought up
+in his hand was the shoe of a horse, and it was rusty.
+
+"It is a thing of no price," quoth the man, "for it is rusty."
+
+"We shall see that," said the Poor Thing; "for in my thought it is a
+good thing to do what our fathers did, and to keep what they kept
+without question. And in my thought one thing is as good as another in
+this world; and a shoe of a horse will do."
+
+Now they got into their boat with the horse-shoe, and when the dawn was
+come they were aware of the smoke of the Earl's town and the bells of
+the Kirk that beat. So they set foot to shore: and the man went up to
+the market among the fishers over against the palace and the Kirk; and
+he was bitter poor and bitter ugly, and he had never a fish to sell, but
+only a shoe of a horse in his creel, and it rusty.
+
+"Now," said the Poor Thing, "do so and so, and you shall find a wife and
+I a mother."
+
+It befell that the Earl's daughter came forth to go into the Kirk upon
+her prayers; and when she saw the poor man stand in the market with only
+the shoe of a horse, and it rusty, it came in her mind it should be a
+thing of price.
+
+"What is that?" quoth she.
+
+"It is a shoe of a horse," said the man.
+
+"And what is the use of it?" quoth the Earl's daughter.
+
+"It is for no use," said the man.
+
+"I may not believe that," said she; "else why should you carry it?"
+
+"I do so," said he, "because it was so my fathers did in the ancient
+ages; and I have neither a better reason nor a worse."
+
+Now the Earl's daughter could not find it in her mind to believe him.
+"Come," quoth she, "sell me this, for I am sure it is a thing of price."
+
+"Nay," said the man, "the thing is not for sale."
+
+"What!" cried the Earl's daughter. "Then what make you here in the
+town's market, with the thing in your creel and nought beside?"
+
+"I sit here," says the man, "to get me a wife."
+
+"There is no sense in any of these answers," thought the Earl's
+daughter; "and I could find it in my heart to weep."
+
+By came the Earl upon that; and she called him and told him all. And
+when he had heard, he was of his daughter's mind that this should be a
+thing of virtue; and charged the man to set a price upon the thing, or
+else be hanged upon the gallows; and that was near at hand, so that the
+man could see it.
+
+"The way of life is straight like the grooves of launching," quoth the
+man. "And if I am to be hanged let me be hanged."
+
+"Why!" cried the Earl, "will you set your neck against a shoe of a
+horse, and it rusty?"
+
+"In my thought," said the man, "one thing is as good as another in this
+world; and the shoe of a horse will do."
+
+"This can never be," thought the Earl; and he stood and looked upon the
+man, and bit his beard.
+
+And the man looked up at him and smiled. "It was so my fathers did in
+the ancient ages," quoth he to the Earl, "and I have neither a better
+reason nor a worse."
+
+"There is no sense in any of this," thought the Earl, "and I must be
+growing old." So he had his daughter on one side, and says he: "Many
+suitors have you denied, my child. But here is a very strange matter
+that a man should cling so to a shoe of a horse, and it rusty; and that
+he should offer it like a thing on sale, and yet not sell it; and that
+he should sit there seeking a wife. If I come not to the bottom of this
+thing, I shall have no more pleasure in bread; and I can see no way, but
+either I should hang or you should marry him."
+
+"By my troth, but he is bitter ugly," said the Earl's daughter. "How if
+the gallows be so near at hand?"
+
+"It was not so," said the Earl, "that my fathers did in the ancient
+ages. I am like the man, and can give you neither a better reason nor a
+worse. But do you, prithee, speak with him again."
+
+So the Earl's daughter spoke to the man. "If you were not so bitter
+ugly," quoth she, "my father the Earl would have us marry."
+
+"Bitter ugly am I," said the man, "and you as fair as May. Bitter ugly
+I am, and what of that? It was so my fathers----"
+
+"In the name of God," said the Earl's daughter, "let your fathers be!"
+
+"If I had done that," said the man, "you had never been chaffering with
+me here in the market, nor your father the Earl watching with the end of
+his eye."
+
+"But come," quoth the Earl's daughter, "this is a very strange thing,
+that you would have me wed for a shoe of a horse, and it rusty."
+
+"In my thought," quoth the man, "one thing is as good----"
+
+"O, spare me that," said the Earl's daughter, "and tell me why I should
+marry."
+
+"Listen and look," said the man.
+
+Now the wind blew through the Poor Thing like an infant crying, so that
+her heart was melted; and her eyes were unsealed, and she was aware of
+the thing as it were a babe unmothered, and she took it to her arms and
+it melted in her arms like the air.
+
+"Come," said the man, "behold a vision of our children, the busy hearth,
+and the white heads. And let that suffice, for it is all God offers."
+
+"I have no delight in it," said she; but with that she sighed.
+
+"The ways of life are straight like the grooves of launching," said the
+man; and he took her by the hand.
+
+"And what shall we do with the horse-shoe?" quoth she.
+
+"I will give it to your father," said the man; "and he can make a kirk
+and a mill of it for me."
+
+It came to pass in time that the Poor Thing was born; but memory of
+these matters slept with him, and he knew not that which he had done.
+But he was a part of the eldest son; rejoicing manfully to launch the
+boat into the surf, skilful to direct the helm, and a man of might where
+the ring closes and the blows are going.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+THE SONG OF THE MORROW
+
+
+The King of Duntrine had a daughter when he was old, and she was the
+fairest King's daughter between two seas; her hair was like spun gold,
+and her eyes like pools in a river; and the King gave her a castle upon
+the sea beach, with a terrace, and a court of the hewn stone, and four
+towers at the four corners. Here she dwelt and grew up, and had no care
+for the morrow, and no power upon the hour, after the manner of simple
+men.
+
+It befell that she walked one day by the beach of the sea when it was
+autumn, and the wind blew from the place of rains; and upon the one hand
+of her the sea beat, and upon the other the dead leaves ran. This was
+the loneliest beach between two seas, and strange things had been done
+there in the ancient ages. Now the King's daughter was aware of a crone
+that sat upon the beach. The sea-foam ran to her feet, and the dead
+leaves swarmed about her back, and the rags blew about her face in the
+blowing of the wind.
+
+"Now," said the King's daughter, and she named a holy name, "this is the
+most unhappy old crone between two seas."
+
+"Daughter of a King," said the crone, "you dwell in a stone house, and
+your hair is like the gold: but what is your profit? Life is not long,
+nor lives strong; and you live after the way of simple men, and have no
+thought for the morrow and no power upon the hour."
+
+"Thought for the morrow, that I have," said the King's daughter; "but
+power upon the hour, that have I not." And she mused with herself.
+
+Then the crone smote her lean hands one within the other, and laughed
+like a sea-gull. "Home!" cried she. "O daughter of a King, home to your
+stone house; for the longing is come upon you now, nor can you live any
+more after the manner of simple men. Home, and toil and suffer, till the
+gift come that will make you bare, and till the man come that will bring
+you care."
+
+The King's daughter made no more ado, but she turned about and went home
+to her house in silence. And when she was come into her chamber she
+called for her nurse.
+
+"Nurse," said the King's daughter, "thought is come upon me for the
+morrow, so that I can live no more after the manner of simple men. Tell
+me what I must do that I may have power upon the hour."
+
+Then the nurse moaned like a snow wind. "Alas!" said she, "that this
+thing should be; but the thought is gone into your marrow, nor is there
+any cure against the thought. Be it so, then, even as you will; though
+power is less than weakness, power shall you have; and though the
+thought is colder than winter, yet shall you think it to an end."
+
+So the King's daughter sat in her vaulted chamber in the masoned house,
+and she thought upon the thought. Nine years she sat; and the sea beat
+upon the terrace, and the gulls cried about the turrets, and wind
+crooned in the chimneys of the house. Nine years she came not abroad,
+nor tasted the clean air, neither saw God's sky. Nine years she sat and
+looked neither to the right nor to the left, nor heard speech of any
+one, but thought upon the thought of the morrow. And her nurse fed her
+in silence, and she took of the food with her left hand, and ate it
+without grace.
+
+Now when the nine years were out, it fell dusk in the autumn, and there
+came a sound in the wind like a sound of piping. At that the nurse
+lifted up her finger in the vaulted house.
+
+"I hear a sound in the wind," said she, "that is like the sound of
+piping."
+
+"It is but a little sound," said the King's daughter, "but yet it is
+sound enough for me."
+
+So they went down in the dusk to the doors of the house, and along the
+beach of the sea. And the waves beat upon the one hand, and upon the
+other the dead leaves ran; and the clouds raced in the sky, and the
+gulls flew widdershins. And when they came to that part of the beach
+where strange things had been done in the ancient ages, lo! there was
+the crone, and she was dancing widdershins.
+
+"What makes you dance widdershins, old crone?" said the King's daughter;
+"here upon the bleak beach, between the waves and the dead leaves?"
+
+"I hear a sound in the wind that is like a sound of piping," quoth she.
+"And it is for that that I dance widdershins. For the gift comes that
+will make you bare, and the man comes that must bring you care. But for
+me the morrow is come that I have thought upon, and the hour of my
+power."
+
+"How comes it, crone," said the King's daughter, "that you waver like a
+rag, and pale like a dead leaf before my eyes?"
+
+"Because the morrow has come that I have thought upon, and the hour of
+my power," said the crone; and she fell on the beach, and, lo! she was
+but stalks of the sea tangle, and dust of the sea sand, and the
+sand-lice hopped upon the place of her.
+
+"This is the strangest thing that befell between two seas," said the
+King's daughter of Duntrine.
+
+But the nurse broke out and moaned like an autumn gale. "I am weary of
+the wind," quoth she; and she bewailed her day.
+
+The King's daughter was aware of a man upon the beach; he went hooded so
+that none might perceive his face, and a pipe was underneath his arm.
+The sound of his pipe was like singing wasps, and like the wind that
+sings in windlestraw; and it took hold upon men's ears like the crying
+of gulls.
+
+"Are you the comer?" quoth the King's daughter of Duntrine.
+
+"I am the comer," said he, "and these are the pipes that a man may hear,
+and I have power upon the hour, and this is the song of the morrow." And
+he piped the song of the morrow, and it was as long as years; and the
+nurse wept out aloud at the hearing of it.
+
+"This is true," said the King's daughter, "that you pipe the song of the
+morrow; but that ye have power upon the hour, how may I know that? Show
+me a marvel here upon the beach, between the waves and the dead leaves."
+
+And the man said, "Upon whom?"
+
+"Here is my nurse," quoth the King's daughter. "She is weary of the
+wind. Show me a good marvel upon her."
+
+And, lo! the nurse fell upon the beach as it were two handfuls of dead
+leaves, and the wind whirled them widdershins, and the sand-lice hopped
+between.
+
+"It is true," said the King's daughter of Duntrine; "you are the comer,
+and you have power upon the hour. Come with me to my stone house."
+
+So they went by the sea margin, and the man piped the song of the
+morrow, and the leaves followed behind them as they went. Then they sat
+down together; and the sea beat on the terrace, and the gulls cried
+about the towers, and the wind crooned in the chimneys of the house.
+Nine years they sat, and every year when it fell autumn, the man said,
+"This is the hour, and I have power in it"; and the daughter of the King
+said, "Nay, but pipe me the song of the morrow." And he piped it, and it
+was long like years.
+
+Now when the nine years were gone, the King's daughter of Duntrine got
+her to her feet, like one that remembers; and she looked about her in
+the masoned house; and all her servants were gone; only the man that
+piped sat upon the terrace with the hood upon his face; and as he piped
+the leaves ran about the terrace and the sea beat along the wall. Then
+she cried to him with a great voice, "This is the hour, and let me see
+the power in it." And with that the wind blew off the hood from the
+man's face, and, lo! there was no man there, only the clothes and the
+hood and the pipes tumbled one upon another in a corner of the terrace,
+and the dead leaves ran over them.
+
+And the King's daughter of Duntrine got her to that part of the beach
+where strange things had been done in the ancient ages; and there she
+sat her down. The sea-foam ran to her feet, and the dead leaves swarmed
+about her back, and the veil blew about her face in the blowing of the
+wind. And when she lifted up her eyes, there was the daughter of a King
+come walking on the beach. Her hair was like the spun gold, and her eyes
+like pools in a river, and she had no thought for the morrow and no
+power upon the hour, after the manner of simple men.
+
+
+
+
+END OF VOL. XXI
+
+
+PRINTED BY CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, LA BELLE SAUVAGE, LONDON, E.C.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson,
+Volume XXI, by Robert Louis Stevenson
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