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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mary Anerley, by R. D. Blackmore
+
+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: Mary Anerley
+
+Author: R. D. Blackmore
+
+Release Date: June 6, 2006 [EBook #6824]
+Last Updated: March 6, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARY ANERLEY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Don Lainson
+
+
+
+
+
+MARY ANERLEY
+
+
+by R. D. Blackmore
+
+
+
+1880
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+HEADSTRONG AND HEADLONG
+
+
+Far from any house or hut, in the depth of dreary moor-land, a road,
+unfenced and almost unformed, descends to a rapid river. The crossing is
+called the “Seven Corpse Ford,” because a large party of farmers, riding
+homeward from Middleton, banded together and perhaps well primed through
+fear of a famous highwayman, came down to this place on a foggy evening,
+after heavy rain-fall. One of the company set before them what the power
+of the water was, but they laughed at him and spurred into it, and one
+alone spurred out of it. Whether taken with fright, or with too much
+courage, they laid hold of one another, and seven out of eight of them,
+all large farmers, and thoroughly understanding land, came never upon it
+alive again; and their bodies, being found upon the ridge that cast them
+up, gave a dismal name to a place that never was merry in the best of
+weather.
+
+However, worse things than this had happened; and the country is not
+chary of its living, though apt to be scared of its dead; and so the
+ford came into use again, with a little attempt at improvement. For
+those farmers being beyond recall, and their families hard to
+provide for, Richard Yordas, of Scargate Hall, the chief owner of the
+neighborhood, set a long heavy stone up on either brink, and stretched
+a strong chain between them, not only to mark out the course of the
+shallow, whose shelf is askew to the channel, but also that any one
+being washed away might fetch up, and feel how to save himself. For the
+Tees is a violent water sometimes, and the safest way to cross it is to
+go on till you come to a good stone bridge.
+
+Now forty years after that sad destruction of brave but not well-guided
+men, and thirty years after the chain was fixed, that their sons might
+not go after them, another thing happened at “Seven Corpse Ford,” worse
+than the drowning of the farmers. Or, at any rate, it made more stir
+(which is of wider spread than sorrow), because of the eminence of the
+man, and the length and width of his property. Neither could any one at
+first believe in so quiet an end to so turbulent a course. Nevertheless
+it came to pass, as lightly as if he were a reed or a bubble of the
+river that belonged to him.
+
+It was upon a gentle evening, a few days after Michaelmas of 1777. No
+flood was in the river then, and no fog on the moor-land, only the usual
+course of time, keeping the silent company of stars. The young moon was
+down, and the hover of the sky (in doubt of various lights) was gone,
+and the equal spread of obscurity soothed the eyes of any reasonable
+man.
+
+But the man who rode down to the river that night had little love of
+reason. Headstrong chief of a headlong race, no will must depart a
+hair's-breadth from his; and fifty years of arrogant port had stiffened
+a neck too stiff at birth. Even now in the dim light his large square
+form stood out against the sky like a cromlech, and his heavy arms swung
+like gnarled boughs of oak, for a storm of wrath was moving him. In
+his youth he had rebelled against his father; and now his own son was a
+rebel to him.
+
+“Good, my boy, good!” he said, within his grizzled beard, while his eyes
+shone with fire, like the flints beneath his horse; “you have had your
+own way, have you, then? But never shall you step upon an acre of
+your own, and your timber shall be the gallows. Done, my boy, once and
+forever.”
+
+Philip, the squire, the son of Richard, and father of Duncan Yordas,
+with fierce satisfaction struck the bosom of his heavy Bradford
+riding-coat, and the crackle of parchment replied to the blow, while
+with the other hand he drew rein on the brink of the Tees sliding
+rapidly.
+
+The water was dark with the twinkle of the stars, and wide with the
+vapor of the valley, but Philip Yordas in the rage of triumph laughed
+and spurred his reflecting horse.
+
+“Fool!” he cried, without an oath--no Yordas ever used an oath except in
+playful moments--“fool! what fear you? There hangs my respected father's
+chain. Ah, he was something like a man! Had I ever dared to flout him
+so, he would have hanged me with it.”
+
+Wild with his wrong, he struck the rowel deep into the flank of his
+wading horse, and in scorn of the depth drove him up the river. The
+shoulders of the swimming horse broke the swirling water, as he panted
+and snorted against it; and if Philip Yordas had drawn back at once, he
+might even now have crossed safely. But the fury of his blood was up,
+the stronger the torrent the fiercer his will, and the fight between
+passion and power went on. The poor horse was fain to swerve back at
+last; but he struck him on the head with a carbine, and shouted to the
+torrent:
+
+“Drown me, if you can. My father used to say that I was never born
+to drown. My own water drown me! That would be a little too much
+insolence.”
+
+“Too much insolence” were his last words. The strength of the horse was
+exhausted. The beat of his legs grew short and faint, the white of his
+eyes rolled piteously, and the gurgle of his breath subsided. His
+heavy head dropped under water, and his sodden crest rolled over, like
+sea-weed where a wave breaks. The stream had him all at its mercy, and
+showed no more than his savage master had, but swept him a wallowing
+lump away, and over the reef of the crossing. With both feet locked in
+the twisted stirrups, and right arm broken at the elbow, the rider
+was swung (like the mast of a wreck) and flung with his head upon his
+father's chain. There he was held by his great square chin--for the
+jar of his backbone stunned him--and the weight of the swept-away horse
+broke the neck which never had been known to bend. In the morning a
+peasant found him there, not drowned but hanged, with eyes wide open, a
+swaying corpse upon a creaking chain. So his father (though long in the
+grave) was his death, as he often had promised to be to him; while he
+(with the habit of his race) clutched fast with dead hand on dead bosom
+the instrument securing the starvation of his son.
+
+Of the Yordas family truly was it said that the will of God was nothing
+to their will--as long as the latter lasted--and that every man of them
+scorned all Testament, old or new, except his own.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+SCARGATE HALL
+
+
+Nearly twenty-four years had passed since Philip Yordas was carried to
+his last (as well as his first) repose, and Scargate Hall had enjoyed
+some rest from the turbulence of owners. For as soon as Duncan (Philip's
+son, whose marriage had maddened his father) was clearly apprised by the
+late squire's lawyer of his disinheritance, he collected his own little
+money and his wife's, and set sail for India. His mother, a Scotchwoman
+of good birth but evil fortunes, had left him something; and his
+bride (the daughter of his father's greatest foe) was not altogether
+empty-handed. His sisters were forbidden by the will to help him with
+a single penny; and Philippa, the elder, declaring and believing that
+Duncan had killed her father, strictly obeyed the injunction. But Eliza,
+being of a softer kind, and herself then in love with Captain Carnaby,
+would gladly have aided her only brother, but for his stern refusal. In
+such a case, a more gentle nature than ever endowed a Yordas might
+have grown hardened and bitter; and Duncan, being of true Yordas fibre
+(thickened and toughened with slower Scotch sap), was not of the sort to
+be ousted lightly and grow at the feet of his supplanters.
+
+Therefore he cast himself on the winds, in search of fairer soil, and
+was not heard of in his native land; and Scargate Hall and estates were
+held by the sisters in joint tenancy, with remainder to the first son
+born of whichever it might be of them. And this was so worded through
+the hurry of their father to get some one established in the place of
+his own son.
+
+But from paltry passions, turn away a little while to the things which
+excite, but are not excited by them.
+
+Scargate Hall stands, high and old, in the wildest and most rugged part
+of the wild and rough North Riding. Many are the tales about it, in the
+few and humble cots, scattered in the modest distance, mainly to look up
+at it. In spring and summer, of the years that have any, the height and
+the air are not only fine, but even fair and pleasant. So do the shadows
+and the sunshine wander, elbowing into one another on the moor, and
+so does the glance of smiling foliage soothe the austerity of crag and
+scaur. At such time, also, the restless torrent (whose fury has driven
+content away through many a short day and long night) is not in such
+desperate hurry to bury its troubles in the breast of Tees, but spreads
+them in language that sparkles to the sun, or even makes leisure to
+turn into corners of deep brown study about the people on its
+banks--especially, perhaps, the miller.
+
+But never had this impetuous water more reason to stop and reflect upon
+people of greater importance, who called it their own, than now when it
+was at the lowest of itself, in August of the year 1801.
+
+From time beyond date the race of Yordas had owned and inhabited this
+old place. From them the river, and the river's valley, and the mountain
+of its birth, took name, or else, perhaps, gave name to them; for
+the history of the giant Yordas still remains to be written, and the
+materials are scanty. His present descendants did not care an old song
+for his memory, even if he ever had existence to produce it. Piety
+(whether in the Latin sense or English) never had marked them for her
+own; their days were long in the land, through a long inactivity of the
+Decalogue.
+
+And yet in some manner this lawless race had been as a law to itself
+throughout. From age to age came certain gifts and certain ways of
+management, which saved the family life from falling out of rank
+and land and lot. From deadly feuds, exhausting suits, and ruinous
+profusion, when all appeared lost, there had always arisen a man of
+direct lineal stock to retrieve the estates and reprieve the name. And
+what is still more conducive to the longevity of families, no member
+had appeared as yet of a power too large and an aim too lofty, whose
+eminence must be cut short with axe, outlawry, and attainder. Therefore
+there ever had been a Yordas, good or bad (and by his own showing more
+often of the latter kind), to stand before heaven, and hold the land,
+and harass them that dwelt thereon. But now at last the world seemed to
+be threatened with the extinction of a fine old name.
+
+When Squire Philip died in the river, as above recorded, his death, from
+one point of view, was dry, since nobody shed a tear for him, unless it
+was his child Eliza. Still, he was missed and lamented in speech, and
+even in eloquent speeches, having been a very strong Justice of the
+Peace, as well as the foremost of riotous gentlemen keeping the order of
+the county. He stood above them in his firm resolve to have his own way
+always, and his way was so crooked that the difficulty was to get out of
+it and let him have it. And when he was dead, it was either too good
+or too bad to believe in; and even after he was buried it was held that
+this might be only another of his tricks.
+
+But after his ghost had been seen repeatedly, sitting on the chain and
+swearing, it began to be known that he was gone indeed, and the relief
+afforded by his absence endeared him to sad memory. Moreover, his
+good successors enhanced the relish of scandal about him by seeming
+themselves to be always so dry, distant, and unimpeachable. Especially
+so did “My Lady Philippa,” as the elder daughter was called by all the
+tenants and dependents, though the family now held no title of honor.
+
+Mistress Yordas, as she was more correctly styled by usage of the
+period, was a maiden lady of fine presence, uncumbered as yet by
+weight of years, and only dignified thereby. Stately, and straight, and
+substantial of figure, firm but not coarse of feature, she had reached
+her forty-fifth year without an ailment or a wrinkle. Her eyes were
+steadfast, clear, and bright, well able to second her distinct calm
+voice, and handsome still, though their deep blue had waned into a
+quiet, impenetrable gray; while her broad clear forehead, straight nose,
+and red lips might well be considered as comely as ever, at least by
+those who loved her. Of these, however, there were not many; and she was
+content to have it so.
+
+Mrs. Carnaby, the younger sister, would not have been content to have
+it so. Though not of the weak lot which is enfeoffed to popularity, she
+liked to be regarded kindly, and would rather win a smile than exact a
+courtesy. Continually it was said of her that she was no genuine Yordas,
+though really she had all the pride and all the stubbornness of that
+race, enlarged, perhaps, but little weakened, by severe afflictions.
+This lady had lost a beloved husband, Colonel Carnaby, killed in battle;
+and after that four children of the five she had been so proud of. And
+the waters of affliction had not turned to bitterness in her soul.
+
+Concerning the outward part--which matters more than the inward at first
+hand--Mrs. Carnaby had no reason to complain of fortune. She had started
+well as a very fine baby, and grown up well into a lovely maiden,
+passing through wedlock into a sightly matron, gentle, fair, and showing
+reason. For generations it had come to pass that those of the Yordas
+race who deserved to be cut off for their doings out-of-doors were
+followed by ladies of decorum, self-restraint, and regard for their
+neighbor's landmark. And so it was now with these two ladies, the
+handsome Philippa and the fair Eliza leading a peaceful and reputable
+life, and carefully studying their rent-roll.
+
+It was not, however, in the fitness of things that quiet should reign
+at Scargate Hall for a quarter of a century; and one strong element of
+disturbance grew already manifest. Under the will of Squire Philip the
+heir-apparent was the one surviving child of Mrs. Carnaby.
+
+If ever a mortal life was saved by dint of sleepless care, warm
+coddling, and perpetual doctoring, it was the precious life of Master
+Lancelot Yordas Carnaby. In him all the mischief of his race revived,
+without the strong substance to carry it off. Though his parents were
+healthy and vigorous, he was of weakly constitution, which would not
+have been half so dangerous to him if his mind also had been weakly.
+But his mind (or at any rate that rudiment thereof which appears in the
+shape of self-will even before the teeth appear) was a piece of muscular
+contortion, tough as oak and hard as iron. “Pet” was his name with his
+mother and his aunt; and his enemies (being the rest of mankind) said
+that pet was his name and his nature.
+
+For this dear child could brook no denial, no slow submission to his
+wishes; whatever he wanted must come in a moment, punctual as an
+echo. In him re-appeared not the stubbornness only, but also the keen
+ingenuity of Yordas in finding out the very thing that never should be
+done, and then the unerring perception of the way in which it could be
+done most noxiously. Yet any one looking at his eyes would think how
+tender and bright must his nature be! “He favoreth his forebears; how
+can he help it?” kind people exclaimed, when they knew him. And the
+servants of the house excused themselves when condemned for putting up
+with him, “Yo know not what 'a is, yo that talk so. He maun get 's own
+gait, lestwise yo wud chok' un.”
+
+Being too valuable to be choked, he got his own way always.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+A DISAPPOINTING APPOINTMENT
+
+
+For the sake of Pet Carnaby and of themselves, the ladies of the house
+were disquieted now, in the first summer weather of a wet cold year, the
+year of our Lord 1801. And their trouble arose as follows:
+
+There had long been a question between the sisters and Sir Walter
+Carnaby, brother of the late colonel, about an exchange of outlying
+land, which would have to be ratified by “Pet” hereafter. Terms
+being settled and agreement signed, the lawyers fell to at the linked
+sweetness of deducing title. The abstract of the Yordas title was nearly
+as big as the parish Bible, so in and out had their dealings been, and
+so intricate their pugnacity.
+
+Among the many other of the Yordas freaks was a fatuous and generally
+fatal one. For the slightest miscarriage they discharged their lawyer,
+and leaped into the office of a new one. Has any man moved in the
+affairs of men, with a grain of common-sense or half a pennyweight of
+experience, without being taught that an old tenter-hook sits easier to
+him than a new one? And not only that, but in shifting his quarters he
+may leave some truly fundamental thing behind.
+
+Old Mr. Jellicorse, of Middleton in Teesdale, had won golden opinions
+every where. He was an uncommonly honest lawyer, highly incapable of
+almost any trick, and lofty in his view of things, when his side of them
+was the legal one. He had a large collection of those interesting boxes
+which are to a lawyer and his family better than caskets of silver
+and gold; and especially were his shelves furnished with what might be
+called the library of the Scargate title-deeds. He had been proud to
+take charge of these nearly thirty years ago, and had married on the
+strength of them, though warned by the rival from whom they were wrested
+that he must not hope to keep them long. However, through the peaceful
+incumbency of ladies, they remained in his office all those years.
+
+This was the gentleman who had drawn and legally sped to its purport the
+will of the lamented Squire Philip, who refused very clearly to leave
+it, and took horse to flourish it at his rebellious son. Mr. Jellicorse
+had done the utmost, as behooved him, against that rancorous testament;
+but meeting with silence more savage than words, and a bow to depart,
+he had yielded; and the squire stamped about the room until his job was
+finished.
+
+A fact accomplished, whether good or bad, improves in character with
+every revolution of this little world around the sun, that heavenly
+example of subservience. And now Mr. Jellicorse was well convinced, as
+nothing had occurred to disturb that will, and the life of the testator
+had been sacrificed to it, and the devisees under it were his own good
+clients, and some of his finest turns of words were in it, and the
+preparation, execution, and attestation, in an hour and ten minutes
+of the office clock, had never been equalled in Yorkshire before, and
+perhaps never honestly in London--taking all these things into conscious
+or unconscious balance, Mr. Jellicorse grew into the clear conviction
+that “righteous and wise” were the words to be used whenever this will
+was spoken of.
+
+With pleasant remembrance of the starveling fees wherewith he used to
+charge the public, ere ever his golden spurs were won, the prosperous
+lawyer now began to run his eye through a duplicate of an abstract
+furnished upon some little sale about forty years before. This would
+form the basis of the abstract now to be furnished to Sir Walter
+Carnaby, with little to be added but the will of Philip Yordas, and
+statement of facts to be verified. Mr. Jellicorse was fat, but very
+active still; he liked good living, but he liked to earn it, and could
+not sit down to his dinner without feeling that he had helped the Lord
+to provide these mercies. He carried a pencil on his chain, and liked to
+use it ere ever he began with knife and fork. For the young men in the
+office, as he always said, knew nothing.
+
+The day was very bright and clear, and the sun shone through soft
+lilac leaves on more important folios, while Mr. Jellicorse, with happy
+sniffs--for his dinner was roasting in the distance--drew a single line
+here, or a double line there, or a gable on the margin of the paper, to
+show his head clerk what to cite, and in what letters, and what to omit,
+in the abstract to be rendered. For the good solicitor had spent some
+time in the chambers of a famous conveyancer in London, and prided
+himself upon deducing title, directly, exhaustively, and yet tersely, in
+one word, scientifically, and not as the mere quill-driver. The title
+to the hereditaments, now to be given in exchange, went back for many
+generations; but as the deeds were not to pass, Mr. Jellicorse, like an
+honest man, drew a line across, and made a star at one quite old enough
+to begin with, in which the little moorland farm in treaty now was
+specified. With hum and ha of satisfaction he came down the records,
+as far as the settlement made upon the marriage of Richard Yordas, of
+Scargate Hall, Esquire, and Eleanor, the daughter of Sir Fursan de Roos.
+This document created no entail, for strict settlements had never been
+the manner of the race; but the property assured in trust, to satisfy
+the jointure, was then declared subject to joint and surviving powers of
+appointment limited to the issue of the marriage, with remainder to the
+uses of the will of the aforesaid Richard Yordas, or, failing such will,
+to his right heirs forever.
+
+All this was usual enough, and Mr. Jellicorse heeded it little,
+having never heard of any appointment, and knowing that Richard, the
+grandfather of his clients, had died, as became a true Yordas, in a
+fit of fury with a poor tenant, intestate, as well as unrepentant.
+The lawyer, being a slightly pious man, afforded a little sigh to this
+remembrance, and lifted his finger to turn the leaf, but the leaf stuck
+a moment, and the paper being raised at the very best angle to the
+sun, he saw, or seemed to see, a faint red line, just over against that
+appointment clause. And then the yellow margin showed some faint red
+marks.
+
+“Well, I never,” Mr. Jellicorse exclaimed--“certainly never saw these
+marks before. Diana, where are my glasses?”
+
+Mrs. Jellicorse had been to see the potatoes on (for the new cook simply
+made “kettlefuls of fish” of every thing put upon the fire), and now at
+her husband's call she went to her work-box for his spectacles, which
+he was not allowed to wear except on Sundays, for fear of injuring his
+eyesight. Equipped with these, and drawing nearer to the window, the
+lawyer gradually made out this: first a broad faint line of red, as if
+some attorney, now a ghost, had cut his finger, and over against that in
+small round hand the letters “v. b. c.” Mr. Jellicorse could swear that
+they were “v. b. c.”
+
+“Don't ask me to eat any dinner to-day,” he exclaimed, when his wife
+came to fetch him. “Diana, I am occupied; go and eat it up without me.”
+
+“Nonsense, James,” she answered, calmly; “you never get any clever
+thoughts by starving.”
+
+Moved by this reasoning, he submitted, fed his wife and children and
+own good self, and then brought up a bottle of old Spanish wine to
+strengthen the founts of discovery. Whose writing was that upon the
+broad marge of verbosity? Why had it never been observed before? Above
+all, what was meant by “v. b. c.”?
+
+Unaided, he might have gone on forever, to the bottom of a butt of Xeres
+wine; but finding the second glass better than the first, he called to
+Mrs. Jellicorse, who was in the garden gathering striped roses, to come
+and have a sip with him, and taste the yellow cherries. And when she
+came promptly, with the flowers in her hand, and their youngest little
+daughter making sly eyes at the fruit, bothered as he was, he could not
+help smiling and saying, “Oh, Diana, what is 'v. b. c.'?”
+
+“Very black currants, papa!” cried Emily, dancing a long bunch in the
+air.
+
+“Hush, dear child, you are getting too forward,” said her mother, though
+proud of her quickness. “James, how should I know what 'v. b. c.' is?
+But I wish most heartily that you would rid me of my old enemy, box C.
+I want to put a hanging press in that corner, instead of which you turn
+the very passages into office.”
+
+“Box C? I remember no box C.”
+
+“You may not have noticed the letter C upon it, but the box you must
+know as well as I do. It belongs to those proud Yordas people, who hold
+their heads so high, forsooth, as if nobody but themselves belonged to a
+good old county family! That makes me hate the box the more.”
+
+“I will take it out of your way at once. I may want it. It should
+be with the others. I know it as well as I know my snuff-box. It was
+Aberthaw who put it in that corner; but I had forgotten that it was
+lettered. The others are all numbered.”
+
+Of course Mr. Jellicorse was not weak enough to make the partner of his
+bosom the partner of his business; and much as she longed to know why
+he had put an unusual question to her, she trusted to the future for
+discovery of that point. She left him, and he with no undue haste--for
+the business, after all, was not his own--began to follow out his train
+of thought, in manner much as follows:
+
+“This is that old Duncombe's writing--'Dunder-headed Duncombe,' as he
+used to be called in his lifetime, but 'Long-headed Duncombe' afterward.
+None but his wife knew whether he was a wise man, or a wiseacre. Perhaps
+either, according to the treatment he received. Richard Yordas treated
+him badly; that may have made him wiser. V. b. c. means 'vide box C,'
+unless I am greatly mistaken. He wrote those letters as plainly and
+clearly as he could against this power of appointment as recited here.
+But afterward, with knife and pounce, he scraped them out, as now
+becomes plain with this magnifying-glass; probably he did so when all
+these archives, as he used to call them, were rudely ordered over to my
+predecessor. A nice bit of revenge, if my suspicions are correct; and a
+pretty confusion will follow it.”
+
+The lawyer's suspicions proved too correct. He took that box to his
+private room, and with some trouble unlocked it. A damp and musty smell
+came forth, as when a man delves a potato-bury; and then appeared layers
+of parchment yellow and brown, in and out with one another, according to
+the curing of the sheep-skin, perhaps, or the age of the sheep when
+he began to die; skins much older than any man's who handled them, and
+drier than the brains of any lawyer.
+
+“Anno Jacobi tertio, and Quadragesimo Elisabethae! How nice it sounds!”
+ Mr. Jellicorse exclaimed; “they ought all to go in, and be charged for.
+People to be satisfied with sixty years' title! Why, bless the Lord,
+I am sixty-eight myself, and could buy and sell the grammar school at
+eight years old. It is no security, no security at all. What did the
+learned Bacupiston say--'If a rogue only lives to be a hundred and
+eleven, he may have been for ninety years disseized, and nobody alive to
+know it!'”
+
+Older and older grew the documents as the lawyer's hand travelled
+downward; any flaw or failure must have been healed by lapse of time
+long and long ago; dust and grime and mildew thickened, ink became
+paler, and contractions more contorted; it was rather an antiquary's
+business now than a lawyer's to decipher them.
+
+“What a fool I am!” the solicitor thought. “My cuffs will never wash
+white again, and all I have found is a mare's-nest. However, I'll go to
+the bottom now. There may be a gold seal--they used to put them in with
+the deeds three hundred years ago. A charter of Edward the Fourth, I
+declare! Ah, the Yordases were Yorkists--halloa! what is here? By the
+Touchstone of Shepherd, I was right after all! Well done, Long-headed
+Duncombe!”
+
+From the very bottom of the box he took a parchment comparatively fresh
+and new, indorsed “Appointment by Richard Yordas, Esquire, and Eleanor
+his wife, of lands and heredits at Scargate and elsewhere in the county
+of York, dated Nov. 15th, A.D. 1751.” Having glanced at the signatures
+and seals, Mr. Jellicorse spread the document, which was of moderate
+compass, and soon convinced himself that his work of the morning had
+been wholly thrown away. No title could be shown to Whitestone Farm, nor
+even to Scargate Hall itself, on the part of the present owners.
+
+The appointment was by deed-poll, and strictly in accordance with the
+powers of the settlement. Duly executed and attested, clearly though
+clumsily expressed, and beyond all question genuine, it simply nullified
+(as concerned the better half of the property) the will which had cost
+Philip Yordas his life. For under this limitation Philip held a mere
+life-interest, his father and mother giving all men to know by those
+presents that they did thereby from and after the decease of their said
+son Philip grant limit and appoint &c. all and singular the said lands
+&c. to the heirs of his body lawfully begotten &c. &c. in tail general,
+with remainder over, and final remainder to the right heirs of the said
+Richard Yordas forever. From all which it followed that while Duncan
+Yordas, or child, or other descendant of his, remained in the land
+of the living, or even without that if he having learned it had been
+enabled to bar the entail and then sell or devise the lands away, the
+ladies in possession could show no title, except a possessory one, as
+yet unhallowed by the lapse of time.
+
+Mr. Jellicorse was a very pleasant-looking man, also one who took a
+pleasant view of other men and things; but he could not help pulling a
+long and sad face as he thought of the puzzle before him. Duncan Yordas
+had not been heard of among his own hills and valleys since 1778, when
+he embarked for India. None of the family ever had cared to write or
+read long letters, their correspondence (if any) was short, without
+being sweet by any means. It might be a subject for prayer and hope that
+Duncan should be gone to a better world, without leaving hostages to
+fortune here; but sad it is to say that neither prayer nor hope produces
+any faith in the counsel who prepares “requisitions upon title.”
+
+On the other hand, inquiry as to Duncan's history since he left his
+native land would be a delicate and expensive work, and perhaps even
+dangerous, if he should hear of it, and inquire about the inquirers. For
+the last thing to be done from a legal point of view--though the
+first of all from a just one--was to apprise the rightful owner of his
+unexpected position. Now Mr. Jellicorse was a just man; but his justice
+was due to his clients first.
+
+After a long brown study he reaped his crop of meditation thus: “It is a
+ticklish job; and I will sleep three nights upon it.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+DISQUIETUDE
+
+
+The ladies of Scargate Hall were uneasy, although the weather was so
+fine, upon this day of early August, in the year now current. It was a
+remarkable fact, that in spite of the distance they slept asunder, which
+could not be less than five-and-thirty yards, both had been visited by
+a dream, which appeared to be quite the same dream until examined
+narrowly, and being examined, grew more surprising in its points of
+difference. They were much above paying any heed to dreams, though
+instructed by the patriarchs to do so; and they seemed to be quite
+getting over the effects, when the lesson and the punishment astonished
+them.
+
+Lately it had been established (although many leading people went
+against it, and threatened to prosecute the man for trespass) that here
+in these quiet and reputable places, where no spy could be needed, a man
+should come twice every week with letters, and in the name of the
+king be paid for them. Such things were required in towns, perhaps, as
+corporations and gutters were; but to bring them where people could mind
+their own business, and charge them two groats for some fool who knew
+their names, was like putting a tax upon their christening. So it was
+the hope of many, as well as every one's belief, that the postman, being
+of Lancastrian race, would very soon be bogged, or famished, or get lost
+in a fog, or swept off by a flood, or go and break his own neck from a
+precipice.
+
+The postman, however, was a wiry fellow, and as tough as any native, and
+he rode a pony even tougher than himself, whose cradle was a marsh, and
+whose mother a mountain, his first breath a fog, and his weaning meat
+wire-grass, and his form a combination of sole-leather and corundum. He
+wore no shoes for fear of not making sparks at night, to know the road
+by, and although his bit had been a blacksmith's rasp, he would yield
+to it only when it suited him. The postman, whose name was George King
+(which confounded him with King George, in the money to pay), carried a
+sword and blunderbuss, and would use them sooner than argue.
+
+Now this man and horse had come slowly along, without meaning any
+mischief, to deliver a large sealed packet, with sixteen pence to pay
+put upon it, “to Mistress Philippa Yordas, etc., her own hands, and
+speed, speed, speed;” which they carried out duly by stop, stop, stop,
+whensoever they were hungry, or saw any thing to look at. None the less
+for that, though with certainty much later, they arrived in good trim,
+by the middle of the day, and ready for the comfort which they both
+deserved.
+
+As yet it was not considered safe to trust any tidings of importance to
+the post in such a world as this was; and even were it safe, it would be
+bad manners from a man of business. Therefore Mr. Jellicorse had sealed
+up little, except his respectful consideration and request to be allowed
+to wait upon his honored clients, concerning a matter of great moment,
+upon the afternoon of Thursday then next ensuing. And the post had gone
+so far, to give good distance for the money, that the Thursday of the
+future came to be that very day.
+
+The present century opened with a chilly and dark year, following three
+bad seasons of severity and scarcity. And in the northwest of Yorkshire,
+though the summer was now so far advanced, there had been very little
+sunshine. For the last day or two, the sun had labored to sweep up the
+mist and cloud, and was beginning to prevail so far that the mists drew
+their skirts up and retired into haze, while the clouds fell away to the
+ring of the sky, and there lay down to abide their time. Wherefore it
+happened that “Yordas House” (as the ancient building was in old time
+called) had a clearer view than usual of the valley, and the river
+that ran away, and the road that tried to run up to it. Now this
+was considered a wonderful road, and in fair truth it was wonderful,
+withstanding all efforts of even the Royal Mail pony to knock it to
+pieces. In its rapidity down hill it surpassed altogether the river,
+which galloped along by the side of it, and it stood out so boldly with
+stones of no shame that even by moonlight nobody could lose it, until
+it abruptly lost itself. But it never did that, until the house it came
+from was two miles away, and no other to be seen; and so why should it
+go any further?
+
+At the head of this road stood the old gray house, facing toward the
+south of east, to claim whatever might come up the valley, sun, or
+storm, or columned fog. In the days of the past it had claimed much
+more--goods, and cattle, and tribute of the traffic going northward--as
+the loop-holed quadrangle for impounded stock, and the deeply embrasured
+tower, showed. At the back of the house rose a mountain spine, blocking
+out the westering sun, but cut with one deep portal where a pass ran
+into Westmoreland--the scaur-gate whence the house was named; and
+through this gate of mountain often, when the day was waning, a bar of
+slanting sunset entered, like a plume of golden dust, and hovered on a
+broad black patch of weather-beaten fir-trees. The day was waning now,
+and every steep ascent looked steeper, while down the valley light and
+shade made longer cast of shuttle, and the margin of the west began to
+glow with a deep wine-color, as the sun came down--the tinge of many
+mountains and the distant sea--until the sun himself settled quietly
+into it, and there grew richer and more ripe (as old bottled wine is fed
+by the crust), and bowed his rubicund farewell, through the postern of
+the scaur-gate, to the old Hall, and the valley, and the face of Mr.
+Jellicorse.
+
+That gentleman's countenance did not, however, reply with its usual
+brightness to the mellow salute of evening. Wearied and shaken by the
+long, rough ride, and depressed by the heavy solitude, he hated and
+almost feared the task which every step brought nearer. As the house
+rose higher and higher against the red sky, and grew darker, and as the
+sullen roar of blood-hounds (terrors of the neighborhood) roused the
+slow echoes of the crags, the lawyer was almost fain to turn his horse's
+head, and face the risks of wandering over the moor by night. But the
+hoisting of a flag, the well-known token (confirmed by large letters
+on a rock) that strangers might safely approach, inasmuch as the savage
+dogs were kennelled--this, and the thought of such an entry for his
+day-book, kept Mr. Jellicorse from ignominious flight. He was in for it
+now, and must carry it through.
+
+In a deep embayed window of leaded glass Mistress Yordas and her widowed
+sister sat for an hour, without many words, watching the zigzag of shale
+and rock which formed their chief communication with the peopled world.
+They did not care to improve their access, or increase their traffic;
+not through cold morosity, or even proud indifference, but because they
+had been so brought up, and so confirmed by circumstance. For the Yordas
+blood, however hot and wild and savage in the gentlemen, was generally
+calm and good, though steadfast, in the weaker vessels. For the main
+part, however, a family takes it character more from the sword than the
+spindle; and their sword hand had been like Esau's.
+
+Little as they meddled with the doings of the world, of one thing at
+least these stately Madams--as the baffled squires of the Riding called
+them--were by no means heedless. They dressed themselves according to
+their rank, or perhaps above it. Many a nobleman's wife in Yorkshire
+had not such apparel; and even of those so richly gifted, few could have
+come up to the purpose better. Nobody, unless of their own sex, thought
+of their dresses when looking at them.
+
+“He rides very badly,” Philippa said; “the people from the lowlands
+always do. He may not have courage to go home tonight. But he ought to
+have thought of that before.”
+
+“Poor man! We must offer him a bed, of course,” Mrs. Carnaby answered;
+“but he should have come earlier in the day. What shall we do with him,
+when he has done his business?”
+
+“It is not our place to amuse our lawyer. He might go and smoke in the
+Justice-room, and then Welldrum could play bagatelle with him.”
+
+“Philippa, you forget that the Jellicorses are of a good old county
+stock. His wife is a stupid, pretentious thing; but we need not treat
+him as we must treat her. And it may be as well to make much of him,
+perhaps, if there really is any trouble coming.”
+
+“You are thinking of Pet. By-the-bye, are you certain that Pet can not
+get at Saracen? You know how he let him loose last Easter, when the flag
+was flying, and the poor man has been in his bed ever since.”
+
+“Jordas will see to that. He can be trusted to mind the dogs well,
+ever since you fined him in a fortnight's wages. That was an excellent
+thought of yours.”
+
+Jordas might have been called the keeper, or the hind, or the henchman,
+or the ranger, or the porter, or the bailiff, or the reeve, or some
+other of some fifty names of office, in a place of more civilization, so
+many and so various were his tasks. But here his professional name was
+the “dogman;” and he held that office according to an ancient custom of
+the Scargate race, whence also his surname (if such it were) arose. For
+of old time and in outlandish parts a finer humanity prevailed, and a
+richer practical wisdom upon certain questions. Irregular offsets of the
+stock, instead of being cast upon the world as waifs and strays, were
+allowed a place in the kitchen-garden or stable-yard, and flourished
+there without disgrace, while useful and obedient. Thus for generations
+here the legitimate son was Yordas, and took the house and manors; the
+illegitimate became Jordas, and took to the gate, and the minding of the
+dogs, and any other office of fidelity.
+
+The present Jordas was, however, of less immediate kin to the owners,
+being only the son of a former Jordas, and in the enjoyment of a
+Christian name, which never was provided for a first-hand Jordas; and
+now as his mistress looked out on the terrace, his burly figure came
+duly forth, and his keen eyes ranged the walks and courts, in search of
+Master Lancelot, who gave him more trouble in a day, sometimes, than all
+the dogs cost in a twelvemonth. With a fine sense of mischief, this
+boy delighted to watch the road for visitors, and then (if barbarously
+denied his proper enjoyment and that of the dogs) he still had goodly
+devices of his own for producing little tragedies.
+
+Mr. Jellicorse knew Jordas well, and felt some pity for him, because, if
+his grandmother had been wiser, he might have been the master now; and
+the lawyer, having much good feeling, liked not to make a groom of him.
+Jordas, however, knew his place, and touched his hat respectfully, then
+helped the solicitor to dismount, the which was sorely needed.
+
+“You came not by the way of the ford, Sir?” the dogman asked, while
+considering the leathers. “The water is down; you might have saved three
+miles.”
+
+“Better lose thirty than my life. Will any of your men, Master Jordas,
+show me a room, where I may prepare to wait upon your ladies?”
+
+Mr. Jellicorse walked through the old arched gate of the reever's court,
+and was shown to a room, where he unpacked his valise, and changed his
+riding clothes, and refreshed himself. A jug of Scargate ale was brought
+to him, and a bottle of foreign wine, with the cork drawn, lest
+he should hesitate; also a cold pie, bread and butter, and a small
+case-bottle of some liqueur. He was not hungry, for his wife had cared
+to victual him well for the journey; but for fear of offense he ate a
+morsel, found it good, and ate some more. Then after a sip or two of the
+liqueur, and a glance or two at his black silk stockings, buckled shoes,
+and best small-clothes, he felt himself fit to go before a duchess, as
+once upon a time he had actually done, and expressed himself very well
+indeed, according to the dialogue delivered whenever he told the story
+about it every day.
+
+Welldrum, the butler, was waiting for him--a man who had his own ideas,
+and was going to be put upon by nobody. “If my father could only come
+to life for one minute, he would spend it in kicking that man,” Mrs.
+Carnaby had exclaimed, about him, after carefully shutting the door; but
+he never showed airs before Miss Yordas.
+
+“Come along, Sir,” Welldrum said, after one professional glance at the
+tray, to ascertain his residue. “My ladies have been waiting this half
+hour; and for sure, Sir, you looks wonderful! This way, Sir, and have a
+care of them oak fagots. My ladies, Lawyer Jellicorse!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+DECISION
+
+
+The sun was well down and away behind the great fell at the back of the
+house, and the large and heavily furnished room was feebly lit by four
+wax candles, and the glow of the west reflected as a gleam into eastern
+windows. The lawyer was pleased to have it so, and to speak with a
+dimly lighted face. The ladies looked beautiful; that was all that
+Mr. Jellicorse could say, when cross-examined by his wife next day
+concerning their lace and velvet. Whether they wore lace or net was
+almost more than he could say, for he did not heed such trifles; but
+velvet was within his knowledge (though not the color or the shape),
+because he thought it hot for summer, until he remembered what the
+climate was. Really he could say nothing more, except that they looked
+beautiful; and when Mrs. Jellicorse jerked her head, he said that he
+only meant, of course, considering their time of life.
+
+The ladies saw his admiration, and felt that it was but natural. Mrs.
+Carnaby came forward kindly, and offered him a nice warm hand; while the
+elder sister was content to bow, and thank him for coming, and hope that
+he was well. As yet it had not become proper for a gentleman, visiting
+ladies, to yawn, and throw himself into the nearest chair, and cross
+his legs, and dance one foot, and ask how much the toy-terrier cost.
+Mr. Jellicorse made a fine series of bows, not without a scrape or two,
+which showed his goodly calf; and after that he waited for the gracious
+invitation to sit down.
+
+“If I understood your letter clearly,” Mistress Yordas began, when these
+little rites were duly accomplished, “you have something important
+to tell us concerning our poor property here. A small property, Mr.
+Jellicorse, compared with that of the Duke of Lunedale, but perhaps a
+little longer in one family.”
+
+“The duke is a new-fangled interloper,” replied hypocritical Jellicorse,
+though no other duke was the husband of the duchess of whom he indited
+daily; “properties of that sort come and go, and only tradesmen notice
+it. Your estates have been longer in the seisin of one family, madam,
+than any other in the Riding, or perhaps in Yorkshire.”
+
+“We never seized them!” cried Mrs. Carnaby, being sensitive as to
+ancestral thefts, through tales about cattle-lifting. “You must be aware
+that they came to us by grant from the Crown, or even before there was
+any Crown to grant them.”
+
+“I beg your pardon for using a technical word, without explaining it.
+Seisin is a legal word, which simply means possession, or rather
+the bodily holding of a thing, and is used especially of corporeal
+hereditaments. You ladies have seisin of this house and lands, although
+you never seized them.”
+
+“The last thing we would think of doing,” answered Mrs. Carnaby, who was
+more impulsive than her sister, also less straightforward. “How often
+we have wished that our poor lost brother had not been deprived of them!
+But our father's will was sacred, and you told us we were helpless. We
+struggled, as you know; but we could do nothing.”
+
+“That is the question which brought me here,” the lawyer said, very
+quietly, at the same time producing a small roll of parchment sealed in
+cartridge paper. “Last week I discovered a document which I am forced
+to submit to your judgment. Shall I read it to you, or tell its purport
+briefly?”
+
+“Whatever it may be, it can not in any way alter our conclusions. Our
+conclusions have never varied, however deeply they may have grieved us.
+We were bound to do justice to our dear father.”
+
+“Certainly, madam; and you did it. Also, as I know, you did it as kindly
+as possible toward other relatives, and you only met with perversity.
+I had the honor of preparing your respected father's will, a model of
+clearness and precision, considering--considering the time afforded,
+and other disturbing influences. I know for a fact that a copy was laid
+before the finest draftsman in London, by--by those who were displeased
+with it, and his words were: 'Beautiful! beautiful! Every word of it
+holds water.' Now that, madam, can not be said of many; indeed, of not
+one in--”
+
+“Pardon, me for interrupting you, but I have always understood you to
+speak highly of it. And in such a case, what can be the matter?”
+
+“The matter of all matters, madam, is that the testator should have
+disposing power.”
+
+“He could dispose of his own property as he was disposed, you mean.”
+
+“You misapprehend me.” Mr. Jellicorse now was in his element, for he
+loved to lecture--an absurdity just coming into vogue. “Indulge me one
+moment. I take this silver dish, for instance; it is in my hands, I have
+the use of it; but can I give it to either of you ladies?”
+
+“Not very well, because it belongs to us already.”
+
+“You misapprehend me. I can not give it because it is not mine to give.”
+ Mrs. Carnaby looked puzzled.
+
+“Eliza, allow me,” said Mistress Yordas, in her stiffer manner, and
+now for the first time interfering. “Mr. Jellicorse assures us that his
+language is a model of clearness and precision; perhaps he will prove it
+by telling us now, in plain words, what his meaning is.”
+
+“What I mean, madam, is that your respected father could devise you a
+part only of this property, because the rest was not his to devise. He
+only had a life-interest in it.”
+
+“His will, therefore, fails as to some part of the property? How much,
+and what part, if you please?”
+
+“The larger and better part of the estates, including this house and
+grounds, and the home-farm.”
+
+Mrs. Carnaby started and began to speak; but her sister moved only to
+stop her, and showed no signs of dismay or anger.
+
+“For fear of putting too many questions at once,” she said, with a
+slight bow and a smile, “let me beg you to explain, as shortly as
+possible, this very surprising matter.”
+
+Mr. Jellicorse watched her with some suspicion, because she called it
+so surprising, yet showed so little surprise herself. For a moment he
+thought that she must have heard of the document now in his hands; but
+he very soon saw that it could not be so. It was only the ancient
+Yordas pride, perversity, and stiffneckedness. And even Mrs. Carnaby,
+strengthened by the strength of her sister, managed to look as if
+nothing more than a tale of some tenant were pending. But this, or
+ten times this, availed not to deceive Mr. Jellicorse. That gentleman,
+having seen much of the world, whispered to himself that this was all
+“high jinks,” felt himself placed on the stool of authority, and even
+ventured upon a pinch of snuff. This was unwise, and cost him dear,
+for the ladies would not have been true to their birth if they had not
+stored it against him.
+
+He, however, with a friendly mind, and a tap now and then upon his
+document, to give emphasis to his story, recounted the whole of it, and
+set forth how much was come of it already, and how much it might lead
+to. To Scargate Hall, and the better part of the property always enjoyed
+therewith, Philippa Yordas and Eliza Carnaby had no claim whatever,
+except on the score of possession, until it could be shown that their
+brother Duncan was dead, without any heirs or assignment (which might
+have come to pass through a son adult), and even so, his widow might
+come forward and give trouble. Concerning all that, there was time
+enough to think; but something must be done at once to cancel the
+bargain with Sir Walter Carnaby, without letting his man of law get
+scent of the fatal defect in title. And now that the ladies knew all,
+what did they say?
+
+In answer to this, the ladies were inclined to put the whole blame upon
+him, for not having managed matters better; and when he had shown that
+the whole of it was done before he had any thing to do with it, they
+were firmly convinced that he ought to have known it, and found a proper
+remedy. And in the finished manner of well-born ladies they gave him
+to know, without a strong expression, that such an atrocity was a black
+stain on every legal son of Satan, living, dead, or still to issue from
+Gerizim.
+
+“That can not affect the title now--I assure you, madam, that it can
+not,” the unfortunate lawyer exclaimed at last; “and as for damages,
+poor old Duncombe has left no representatives, even if an action would
+lie now, which is simply out of the question. On my part no neglect can
+be shown, and indeed for your knowledge of the present state of things,
+if humbly I may say so, you are wholly indebted to my zeal.”
+
+“Sir, I heartily wish,” Mrs. Carnaby replied, “that your zeal had been
+exhausted on your own affairs.”
+
+“Eliza, Mr. Jellicorse has acted well, and we can not feel too much
+obliged to him.” Miss Yordas, having humor of a sort, smiled faintly at
+the double meaning of her own words, which was not intended. “Whatever
+is right must be done, of course, according to the rule of our family.
+In such a case it appears to me that mere niceties of laws, and quips
+and quirks, are entirely subordinate to high sense of honor. The first
+consideration must be thoroughly unselfish and pure justice.”
+
+The lawyer looked at her with admiration. He was capable of large
+sentiments. And yet a faint shadow of disappointment lingered in the
+folios of his heart--there might have been such a very grand long suit,
+upon which his grandson (to be born next month) might have been enabled
+to settle for life, and bring up a legal family. Justice, however, was
+justice, and more noble than even such prospects. So he bowed his head,
+and took another pinch of snuff.
+
+But Mrs. Carnaby (who had wept a little, in a place beyond the
+candle-light) came back with a passionate flush in her eyes, and a
+resolute bearing of her well-formed neck.
+
+“Philippa, I am amazed at you,” she said, “Mr. Jellicorse, my share
+is equal with my sister's, and more, because my son comes after me.
+Whatever she may do, I will never yield a pin's point of my rights, and
+leave my son a beggar. Philippa, would you make Pet a beggar? And his
+turtle in bed, before the sun is on the window, and his sturgeon jelly
+when he gets out of bed! There never was any one, by a good Providence,
+less sent into the world to be a beggar.”
+
+Mrs. Carnaby, having discharged her meaning, began to be overcome by it.
+She sat down, in fear of hysteria, but with her mind made up to stop it;
+while the gallant Jellicorse was swept away by her eloquence, mixed with
+professional views. But it came home to him, from experience with his
+wife, that the less he said the wiser. But while he moved about, and
+almost danced, in his strong desire to be useful, there was another who
+sat quite still, and meant to have the final say.
+
+“From some confusion of ideas, I suppose, or possibly through my own
+fault,” Philippa Yordas said, with less contempt in her voice than in
+her mind, “it seems that I can not make my meaning clear, even to my
+own sister. I said that we first must do the right, and scorn all legal
+subtleties. That we must maintain unselfish justice, and high sense of
+honor. Can there be any doubt what these dictate? What sort of daughters
+should we be if we basely betrayed our own father's will?”
+
+“Excellent, madam,” the lawyer said; “that view of the case never struck
+me. But there is a great deal in it.”
+
+“Oh, Philippa, how noble you are!” her sister Eliza cried; and cried no
+more, so far as tears go, for a long time afterward.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+ANERLEY FARM
+
+
+On the eastern coast of the same great county, at more than ninety
+miles of distance for a homing pigeon, and some hundred and twenty for
+a carriage from the Hall of Yordas, there was in those days, and there
+still may be found, a property of no vast size--snug, however, and of
+good repute--and called universally “Anerley Farm.” How long it has
+borne that name it knows not, neither cares to moot the question; and
+there lives no antiquary of enough antiquity to decide it. A place of
+smiling hope, and comfort, and content with quietude; no memory of man
+about it runneth to the contrary; while every ox, and horse, and sheep,
+and fowl, and frisky porker, is full of warm domestic feeling and each
+homely virtue.
+
+For this land, like a happy country, has escaped, for years and years,
+the affliction of much history. It has not felt the desolating tramp of
+lawyer or land-agent, nor been bombarded by fine and recovery, lease and
+release, bargain and sale, Doe and Roe and Geoffrey Styles, and the rest
+of the pitiless shower of slugs, ending with a charge of Demons. Blows,
+and blights, and plagues of that sort have not come to Anerley, nor any
+other drain of nurture to exhaust the green of meadow and the gold of
+harvest. Here stands the homestead, and here lies the meadow-land;
+there walk the kine (having no call to run), and yonder the wheat in the
+hollow of the hill, bowing to the silvery stroke of the wind, is touched
+with the promise of increasing gold.
+
+As good as the cattle and the crops themselves are the people that live
+upon them; or at least, in a fair degree, they try to be so; though
+not of course so harmless, or faithful, or peaceful, or charitable.
+But still, in proportion, they may be called as good; and in fact they
+believe themselves much better. And this from no conceit of any sort,
+beyond what is indispensable; for nature not only enables but compels a
+man to look down upon his betters.
+
+From generation to generation, man, and beast, and house, and land, have
+gone on in succession here, replacing, following, renewing, repairing
+and being repaired, demanding and getting more support, with such
+judicious give-and-take, and thoroughly good understanding, that now in
+the August of this year, when Scargate Hall is full of care, and afraid
+to cart a load of dung, Anerley farm is quite at ease, and in the very
+best of heart, man, and horse, and land, and crops, and the cock that
+crows the time of day. Nevertheless, no acre yet in Yorkshire, or in the
+whole wide world, has ever been so farmed or fenced as to exclude the
+step of change.
+
+From father to son the good lands had passed, without even a will to
+disturb them, except at distant intervals; and the present owner was
+Stephen Anerley, a thrifty and well-to-do Yorkshire farmer of the olden
+type. Master Anerley was turned quite lately of his fifty-second year,
+and hopeful (if so pleased the Lord) to turn a good many more years yet,
+as a strong horse works his furrow. For he was strong and of a cheerful
+face, ruddy, square, and steadfast, built up also with firm body to a
+wholesome stature, and able to show the best man on the farm the way to
+swing a pitchfork. Yet might he be seen, upon every Lord's day, as
+clean as a new-shelled chestnut; neither at any time of the week was he
+dirtier than need be. Happy alike in the place of his birth, his lot in
+life, and the wisdom of the powers appointed over him, he looked up with
+a substantial faith, yet a solid reserve of judgment, to the Church, the
+Justices of the Peace, spiritual lords and temporal, and above all His
+Majesty George the Third. Without any reserve of judgmemt which could
+not deal with such low subjects, he looked down upon every Dissenter,
+every pork-dealer, and every Frenchman. What he was brought up to, that
+he would abide by; and the sin beyond repentance, to his mind, was the
+sin of the turncoat.
+
+With all these hard-set lines of thought, or of doctrine (the scabbard
+of thought, which saves its edge, and keeps it out of mischief), Stephen
+Anerley was not hard, or stern, or narrow-hearted. Kind, and gentle, and
+good to every one who knew “how to behave himself,” and dealing to
+every man full justice--meted by his own measure--he was liable even
+to generous acts, after being severe and having his own way. But if any
+body ever got the better of him by lies, and not fair bettering, that
+man had wiser not begin to laugh inside the Riding. Stephen Anerley
+was slow but sure; not so very keen, perhaps, but grained with kerns
+of maxim'd thought, to meet his uses as they came, and to make a rogue
+uneasy. To move him from such thoughts was hard; but to move him from a
+spoken word had never been found possible.
+
+The wife of this solid man was solid and well fitted to him. In early
+days, by her own account, she had possessed considerable elegance, and
+was not devoid of it even now, whenever she received a visitor capable
+of understanding it. But for home use that gift had been cut short,
+almost in the honey-moon, by a total want of appreciation on the part
+of her husband. And now, after five-and-twenty years of studying and
+entering into him, she had fairly earned his firm belief that she was
+the wisest of women. For she always agreed with him, when he wished it;
+and she knew exactly when to contradict him, and that was before he had
+said a thing at all, and while he was rolling it slowly in his mind,
+with a strong tendency against it. In out-door matters she never
+meddled, without being specially consulted by the master; but in-doors
+she governed with watchful eyes, a firm hand, and a quiet tongue.
+
+This good woman now was five-and-forty years of age, vigorous, clean,
+and of a very pleasant look, with that richness of color which settles
+on fair women when the fugitive beauty of blushing is past. When the
+work of the morning was done, and the clock in the kitchen was only
+ten minutes from twelve, and the dinner was fit for the dishing, then
+Mistress Anerley remembered as a rule the necessity of looking to her
+own appearance. She went up stairs, with a quarter of an hour to spare,
+but not to squander, and she came down so neat that the farmer was
+obliged to be careful in helping the gravy. For she always sat next to
+him, as she had done before there came any children, and it seemed ever
+since to be the best place for her to manage their plates and their
+manners as well.
+
+Alas! that the kindest and wisest of women have one (if not twenty)
+blind sides to them; and if any such weakness is pointed out, it is sure
+to have come from their father. Mistress Anerley's weakness was almost
+conspicuous to herself--she worshipped her eldest son, perhaps the least
+worshipful of the family.
+
+Willie Anerley was a fine young fellow, two inches taller than his
+father, with delicate features, and curly black hair, and cheeks as
+bright as a maiden's. He had soft blue eyes, and a rich clear voice,
+with a melancholy way of saying things, as if he were above all this.
+And yet he looked not like a fool; neither was he one altogether, when
+he began to think of things. The worst of him was that he always wanted
+something new to go on with. He never could be idle; and yet he never
+worked to the end which crowns the task. In the early stage he would
+labor hard, be full of the greatness of his aim, and demand every body's
+interest, exciting, also, mighty hopes of what was safe to come of it.
+And even after that he sometimes carried on with patience; but he
+had not perseverance. Once or twice he had been on the very nick of
+accomplishing something, and had driven home his nail; but then he let
+it spring back without clinching. “Oh, any fool can do that!” he cried,
+and never stood to it, to do it again, or to see that it came not
+undone. In a word, he stuck to nothing, but swerved about, here, there,
+and every where.
+
+His father, being of so different a cast, and knowing how often the
+wisest of men must do what any fool can do, was bitterly vexed at the
+flighty ways of Willie, and could do no more than hope, with a general
+contempt, that when the boy grew older he might be a wiser fool. But
+Willie's dear mother maintained, with great consistency, that such a
+perfect wonder could never be expected to do any thing not wonderful.
+To this the farmer used to listen with a grim, decorous smile; then
+grumbled, as soon as he was out of hearing, and fell to and did the
+little jobs himself.
+
+Sore jealousy of Willie, perhaps, and keen sense of injustice, as well
+as high spirit and love of adventure, had driven the younger son, Jack,
+from home, and launched him on a sea-faring life. With a stick and a
+bundle he had departed from the ancestral fields and lanes, one summer
+morning about three years since, when the cows were lowing for the milk
+pail, and a royal cutter was cruising off the Head. For a twelvemonth
+nothing was heard of him, until there came a letter beginning, “Dear
+and respected parents,” and ending, “Your affectionate and dutiful son,
+Jack.” The body of the letter was of three lines only, occupied entirely
+with kind inquiries as to the welfare of every body, especially his pup,
+and his old pony, and dear sister Mary.
+
+Mary Anerley, the only daughter and the youngest child, well deserved
+the best remembrance of the distant sailor, though Jack may have gone
+too far in declaring (as he did till he came to his love-time) that the
+world contained no other girl fit to hold a candle to her. No doubt it
+would have been hard to find a girl more true and loving, more modest
+and industrious; but hundreds and hundreds of better girls might be
+found perhaps even in Yorkshire.
+
+For this maiden had a strong will of her own, which makes against
+absolute perfection; also she was troubled with a strenuous hate
+of injustice--which is sure, in this world, to find cause for an
+outbreak--and too active a desire to rush after what is right, instead
+of being well content to let it come occasionally. And so firm could
+she be, when her mind was set, that she would not take parables, or long
+experience, or even kindly laughter, as a power to move her from the
+thing she meant. Her mother, knowing better how the world goes on,
+promiscuously, and at leisure, and how the right point slides away when
+stronger forces come to bear, was very often vexed by the crotchets
+of the girl, and called her wayward, headstrong, and sometimes nothing
+milder than “a saucy miss.”
+
+This, however, was absurd, and Mary scarcely deigned to cry about it,
+but went to her father, as she always did when any weight lay on her
+mind. Nothing was said about any injustice, because that might lead to
+more of it, as well as be (from a proper point of view) most indecorous.
+Nevertheless, it was felt between them, when her pretty hair was shed
+upon his noble waistcoat, that they two were in the right, and cared
+very little who thought otherwise.
+
+Now it was time to leave off this; for Mary (without heed almost of any
+but her mother) had turned into a full-grown damsel, comely, sweet,
+and graceful. She was tall enough never to look short, and short enough
+never to seem too tall, even when her best feelings were outraged;
+and nobody, looking at her face, could wish to do any thing but please
+her--so kind was the gaze of her deep blue eyes, so pleasant the
+frankness of her gentle forehead, so playful the readiness of rosy lips
+for a pretty answer or a lovely smile. But if any could be found so
+callous and morose as not to be charmed or nicely cheered by this,
+let him only take a longer look, not rudely, but simply in a spirit of
+polite inquiry; and then would he see, on the delicate rounding of each
+soft and dimpled cheek, a carmine hard to match on palette, morning sky,
+or flower bed.
+
+Lovely people ought to be at home in lovely places; and though this can
+not be so always, as a general rule it is. At Anerley Farm the land was
+equal to the stock it had to bear, whether of trees, or corn, or cattle,
+hogs, or mushrooms, or mankind. The farm was not so large or rambling
+as to tire the mind or foot, yet wide enough and full of change--rich
+pasture, hazel copse, green valleys, fallows brown, and golden
+breast-lands pillowing into nooks of fern, clumps of shade for horse
+or heifer, and for rabbits sandy warren, furzy cleve for hare and
+partridge, not without a little mere for willows and for wild-ducks. And
+the whole of the land, with a general slope of liveliness and rejoicing,
+spread itself well to the sun, with a strong inclination toward the
+morning, to catch the cheery import of his voyage across the sea.
+
+The pleasure of this situation was the more desirable because of all
+the parts above it being bleak and dreary. Round the shoulders of the
+upland, like the arch of a great arm-chair, ran a barren scraggy ridge,
+whereupon no tree could stand upright, no cow be certain of her own
+tail, and scarcely a crow breast the violent air by stooping ragged
+pinions, so furious was the rush of wind when any power awoke the
+clouds; or sometimes, when the air was jaded with continual conflict, a
+heavy settlement of brackish cloud lay upon a waste of chalky flint.
+
+By dint of persevering work there are many changes for the better now,
+more shelter and more root-hold; but still it is a battle-ground of
+winds, which rarely change their habits, for this is the chump of the
+spine of the Wolds, which hulks up at last into Flamborough Head.
+
+Flamborough Head, the furthest forefront of a bare and jagged coast,
+stretches boldly off to eastward--a strong and rugged barrier. Away
+to the north the land falls back, with coving bends, and some straight
+lines of precipice and shingle, to which the German Ocean sweeps, seldom
+free from sullen swell in the very best of weather. But to the southward
+of the Head a different spirit seems to move upon the face of every
+thing. For here is spread a peaceful bay, and plains of brighter sea
+more gently furrowed by the wind, and cliffs that have no cause to be so
+steep, and bathing-places, and scarcely freckled sands, where towns
+may lay their drain-pipes undisturbed. In short, to have rounded that
+headland from the north is as good as to turn the corner of a garden
+wall in March, and pass from a buffeted back, and bare shivers, to a
+sunny front of hope all as busy as a bee, with pears spurring forward
+into creamy buds of promise, peach-trees already in a flush of tasselled
+pink, and the green lobe of the apricot shedding the snowy bloom.
+
+Below this point the gallant skipper of the British collier, slouching
+with a heavy load of grime for London, or waddling back in ballast to
+his native North, alike is delighted to discover storms ahead, and to
+cast his tarry anchor into soft gray calm. For here shall he find the
+good shelter of friends like-minded with himself, and of hospitable
+turn, having no cause to hurry any more than he has, all too wise to
+command their own ships; and here will they all jollify together while
+the sky holds a cloud or the locker a drop. Nothing here can shake their
+ships, except a violent east wind, against which they wet the other eye;
+lazy boats visit them with comfort and delight, while white waves are
+leaping, in the offing; they cherish their well-earned rest, and eat the
+lotus--or rather the onion--and drink ambrosial grog; they lean upon the
+bulwarks, and contemplate their shadows--the noblest possible employment
+for mankind--and lo! if they care to lift their eyes, in the south
+shines the quay of Bridlington, inland the long ridge of Priory stands
+high, and westward in a nook, if they level well a clear glass (after
+holding on the slope so many steamy ones), they may espy Anerley Farm,
+and sometimes Mary Anerley herself.
+
+For she, when the ripple of the tide is fresh, and the glance of the
+summer morn glistening on the sands, also if a little rocky basin
+happens to be fit for shrimping, and only some sleepy ships at anchor
+in the distance look at her, fearless she--because all sailors are
+generally down at breakfast--tucks up her skirt and gayly runs upon the
+accustomed play-ground, with her pony left to wait for her. The pony is
+old, while she is young (although she was born before him), and now he
+belies his name, “Lord Keppel,” by starting at every soft glimmer of the
+sea. Therefore now he is left to roam at his leisure above high-water
+mark, poking his nose into black dry weed, probing the winnow casts
+of yellow drift for oats, and snorting disappointment through a gritty
+dance of sand-hoppers.
+
+Mary has brought him down the old “Dane's Dike” for society rather than
+service, and to strengthen his nerves with the dew of the salt, for
+the sake of her Jack who loved him. He may do as he likes, as he always
+does. If his conscience allows him to walk home, no one will think the
+less of him. Having very little conscience at his time of life (after
+so much contact with mankind), he considers convenience only. To go home
+would suit him very well, but his crib would be empty till his young
+mistress came; moreover, there is a little dog that plagues him when his
+door is open; and in spite of old age, it is something to be free, and
+in spite of all experience, to hope for something good. Therefore Lord
+Keppel is as faithful as the rocks; he lifts his long heavy head, and
+gazes wistfully at the anchored ships, and Mary is sure that the darling
+pines for his absent master.
+
+But she, with the multitudinous tingle of youth, runs away rejoicing.
+The buoyant power and brilliance of the morning are upon her, and the
+air of the bright sea lifts and spreads her, like a pillowy skate's egg.
+The polish of the wet sand flickers like veneer of maple-wood at every
+quick touch of her dancing feet. Her dancing feet are as light as nature
+and high spirits made them, not only quit of spindle heels, but even
+free from shoes and socks left high and dry on the shingle. And lighter
+even than the dancing feet the merry heart is dancing, laughing at the
+shadows of its own delight; while the radiance of blue eyes springs like
+a fount of brighter heaven; and the sunny hair falls, flows, or floats,
+to provoke the wind for playmate.
+
+Such a pretty sight was good to see for innocence and largeness. So the
+buoyancy of nature springs anew in those who have been weary, when they
+see her brisk power inspiring the young, who never stand still to think
+of her, but are up and away with her, where she will, at the breath of
+her subtle encouragement.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A DANE IN THE DIKE
+
+
+Now, whether spy-glass had been used by any watchful mariner, or whether
+only blind chance willed it, sure it is that one fine morning Mary met
+with somebody. And this was the more remarkable, when people came to
+think of it, because it was only the night before that her mother had
+almost said as much.
+
+“Ye munna gaw doon to t' sea be yersell,” Mistress Anerley said to her
+daughter; “happen ye mought be one too many.”
+
+Master Anerley's wife had been at “boarding-school,” as far south as
+Suffolk, and could speak the very best of Southern English (like her
+daughter Mary) upon polite occasion. But family cares and farm-house
+life had partly cured her of her education, and from troubles of distant
+speech she had returned to the ease of her native dialect.
+
+“And if I go not to the sea by myself,” asked Mary, with natural logic,
+“why, who is there now to go with me?” She was thinking of her sadly
+missed comrade, Jack.
+
+“Happen some day, perhaps, one too many.”
+
+The maiden was almost too innocent to blush; but her father took her
+part as usual.
+
+“The little lass sall gaw doon,” he said, “wheniver sha likes.” And so
+she went down the next morning.
+
+A thousand years ago the Dane's Dike must have been a very grand
+intrenchment, and a thousand years ere that perhaps it was still
+grander; for learned men say that it is a British work, wrought out
+before the Danes had even learned to build a ship. Whatever, however,
+may be argued about that, the wise and the witless do agree about one
+thing--the stronghold inside it has been held by Danes, while severed by
+the Dike from inland parts; and these Danes made a good colony of their
+own, and left to their descendants distinct speech and manners, some
+traces of which are existing even now. The Dike, extending from the
+rough North Sea to the calmer waters of Bridlington Bay, is nothing more
+than a deep dry trench, skillfully following the hollows of the ground,
+and cutting off Flamborough Head and a solid cantle of high land from
+the rest of Yorkshire. The corner, so intercepted, used to be and is
+still called “Little Denmark;” and the in-dwellers feel a large contempt
+for all their outer neighbors. And this is sad, because Anerley Farm
+lies wholly outside of the Dike, which for a long crooked distance
+serves as its eastern boundary.
+
+Upon the morning of the self-same day that saw Mr. Jellicorse set forth
+upon his return from Scargate Hall, armed with instructions to defy the
+devil, and to keep his discovery quiet--upon a lovely August morning
+of the first year of a new century, Mary Anerley, blithe and gay, came
+riding down the grassy hollow of this ancient Dane's Dike. This was
+her shortest way to the sea, and the tide would suit (if she could only
+catch it) for a take of shrimps, and perhaps even prawns, in time for
+her father's breakfast. And not to lose this, she arose right early,
+and rousing Lord Keppel, set forth for the spot where she kept her net
+covered with sea-weed. The sun, though up and brisk already upon sea
+and foreland, had not found time to rout the shadows skulking in
+the dingles. But even here, where sap of time had breached the turfy
+ramparts, the hover of the dew-mist passed away, and the steady light
+was unfolded.
+
+For the season was early August still, with beautiful weather come
+at last; and the green world seemed to stand on tiptoe to make the
+extraordinary acquaintance of the sun. Humble plants which had long lain
+flat stood up with a sense of casting something off; and the damp heavy
+trunks which had trickled for a twelvemonth, or been only sponged with
+moss, were hailing the fresher light with keener lines and dove-colored
+tints upon their smoother boles. Then, conquering the barrier of the
+eastern land crest, rose the glorious sun himself, strewing before him
+trees and crags in long steep shadows down the hill. Then the sloping
+rays, through furze and brush-land, kindling the sparkles of the dew,
+descended to the brink of the Dike, and scorning to halt at petty
+obstacles, with a hundred golden hurdles bridged it wherever any opening
+was.
+
+Under this luminous span, or through it where the crossing gullies ran,
+Mary Anerley rode at leisure, allowing her pony to choose his pace. That
+privilege he had long secured, in right of age, wisdom, and remarkable
+force of character. Considering his time of life, he looked well and
+sleek, and almost sprightly; and so, without any reservation, did his
+gentle and graceful rider. The maiden looked well in a place like that,
+as indeed in almost any place; but now she especially set off the color
+of things, and was set off by them. For instance, how could the silver
+of the dew-cloud, and golden weft of sunrise, playing through the
+dapples of a partly wooded glen, do better (in the matter of variety)
+than frame a pretty moving figure in a pink checked frock, with a skirt
+of russet murrey, and a bright brown hat? Not that the hat itself was
+bright, even under the kiss of sunshine, simply having seen already too
+much of the sun, but rather that its early lustre seemed to be revived
+by a sense of the happy position it was in; the clustering hair and the
+bright eyes beneath it answering the sunny dance of life and light. Many
+a handsomer face, no doubt, more perfect, grand, and lofty, received--at
+least if it was out of bed--the greeting of that morning sun; but
+scarcely any prettier one, or kinder, or more pleasant, so gentle
+without being weak, so good-tempered without looking void of all temper
+at all.
+
+Suddenly the beauty of the time and place was broken by sharp angry
+sound. Bang! bang! came the roar of muskets fired from the shore at the
+mouth of the Dike, and echoing up the winding glen. At the first report
+the girl, though startled, was not greatly frightened; for the sound was
+common enough in the week when those most gallant volunteers entitled
+the “Yorkshire Invincibles” came down for their annual practice of
+skilled gunnery against the French. Their habit was to bring down a
+red cock, and tether him against a chalky cliff, and then vie with one
+another in shooting at him. The same cock had tested their skill for
+three summers, but failed hitherto to attest it, preferring to return in
+a hamper to his hens, with a story of moving adventures.
+
+Mary had watched those Invincibles sometimes from a respectful distance,
+and therefore felt sure (when she began to think) that she had not them
+to thank for this little scare. For they always slept soundly in the
+first watch of the morning; and even supposing they had jumped up with
+nightmare, where was the jubilant crow of the cock? For the cock, being
+almost as invincible as they were, never could deny himself the glory of
+a crow when the bullet came into his neighborhood. He replied to every
+volley with an elevated comb, and a flapping of his wings, and a clarion
+peal, which rang along the foreshore ere the musket roar died out. But
+before the girl had time to ponder what it was, or wherefore, round the
+corner came somebody, running very swiftly.
+
+In a moment Mary saw that this man had been shot at, and was making for
+his life away; and to give him every chance she jerked her pony aside,
+and called and beckoned; and without a word he flew to her. Words were
+beyond him, till his breath should come back, and he seemed to have no
+time to wait for that. He had outstripped the wind, and his own wind, by
+his speed.
+
+“Poor man!” cried Mary Anerley, “what a hurry you are in! But I suppose
+you can not help it. Are they shooting at you?”
+
+The runaway nodded, for he could not spare a breath, but was deeply
+inhaling for another start, and could not even bow without hinderance.
+But to show that he had manners, he took off his hat. Then he clapped it
+on his head and set off again.
+
+“Come back!” cried the maid; “I can show you a place. I can hide you
+from your enemies forever.”
+
+The young fellow stopped. He was come to that pitch of exhaustion in
+which a man scarcely cares whether he is killed or dies. And his face
+showed not a sign of fear.
+
+“Look! That little hole--up there--by the fern. Up at once, and this
+cloth over you!”
+
+He snatched it, and was gone, like the darting lizard, up a little
+puckering side issue of the Dike, at the very same instant that three
+broad figures and a long one appeared at the lip of the mouth. The
+quick-witted girl rode on to meet them, to give the poor fugitive time
+to get into his hole and draw the brown skirt over him. The dazzle of
+the sun, pouring over the crest, made the hollow a twinkling obscurity;
+and the cloth was just in keeping with the dead stuff around. The three
+broad men, with heavy fusils cocked, came up from the sea mouth of
+the Dike, steadily panting, and running steadily with a long-enduring
+stride. Behind them a tall bony man with a cutlass was swinging it high
+in the air, and limping, and swearing with great velocity.
+
+“Coast-riders,” thought Mary, “and he a free-trader! Four against one is
+cowardice.”
+
+“Halt!” cried the tall man, while the rest were running past her; “halt!
+ground arms; never scare young ladies.” Then he flourished his hat, with
+a grand bow to Mary. “Fair young Mistress Anerley, I fear we spoil your
+ride. But his Majesty's duty must be done. Hats off, fellows, at the
+name of your king! Mary, my dear, the most daring villain, the devil's
+own son, has just run up here--scarcely two minutes--you must have seen
+him. Wait a minute; tell no lies--excuse me, I mean fibs. Your father is
+the right sort. He hates those scoundrels. In the name of his Majesty,
+which way is he gone?”
+
+“Was it--oh, was it a man, if you please? Captain Carroway, don't say
+so.”
+
+“A man? Is it likely that we shot at a woman? You are trifling. It will
+be the worse for you. Forgive me--but we are in such a hurry. Whoa!
+whoa! pony.”
+
+“You always used to be so polite, Sir, that you quite surprise me. And
+those guns look so dreadful! My father would be quite astonished to see
+me not even allowed to go down to the sea, but hurried back here, as if
+the French had landed.”
+
+“How can I help it, if your pony runs away so?” For Mary all this time
+had been cleverly contriving to increase and exaggerate her pony's fear,
+and so brought the gunners for a long way up the Dike, without giving
+them any time to spy at all about. She knew that this was wicked from a
+loyal point of view; not a bit the less she did it. “What a troublesome
+little horse it is!” she cried. “Oh, Captain Carroway, hold him just a
+moment. I will jump down, and then you can jump up, and ride after all
+his Majesty's enemies.”
+
+“The Lord forbid! He slews all out of gear, like a carronade with rotten
+lashings. If I boarded him, how could I get out of his way? No, no, my
+dear, brace him up sharp, and bear clear.”
+
+“But you wanted to know about some enemy, captain. An enemy as bad as my
+poor Lord Keppel?”
+
+“Mary, my dear, the very biggest villain! A hundred golden guineas on
+his head, and half for you. Think of your father, my dear, and Sunday
+gowns. And you must have a young man by-and-by, you know--such a
+beautiful maid as you are. And you might get a leather purse, and give
+it to him. Mary, on your duty, now?”
+
+“Captain, you drive me so, what can I say? I can not bear the thought of
+betraying any body.”
+
+“Of course not, Mary dear; nobody asks you. He must be half a mile off
+by this time. You could never hurt him now; and you can tell your father
+that you have done your duty to the king.”
+
+“Well, Captain Carroway, if you are quite sure that it is too late to
+catch him, I can tell you all about him. But remember your word about
+the fifty guineas.”
+
+“Every farthing, every farthing, Mary, whatever my wife may say to it.
+Quick! quick! Which way did he run, my dear?”
+
+“He really did not seem to me to be running at all; he was too tired.”
+
+“To be sure, to be sure, a worn-out fox! We have been two hours after
+him; he could not run; no more can we. But which way did he go, I mean?”
+
+“I will not say any thing for certain, Sir; even for fifty guineas. But
+he may have come up here--mind, I say not that he did--and if so, he
+might have set off again for Sewerby. Slowly, very slowly, because of
+being tired. But perhaps, after all, he was not the man you mean.”
+
+“Forward, double-quick! We are sure to have him!” shouted the
+lieutenant--for his true rank was that--flourishing his cutlass again,
+and setting off at a wonderful pace, considering his limp. “Five guineas
+every man Jack of you. Thank you, young mistress--most heartily thank
+you. Dead or alive, five guineas!”
+
+With gun and sword in readiness, they all rushed off; but one of the
+party, named John Cadman, shook his head and looked back with great
+mistrust at Mary, having no better judgment of women than this, that he
+never could believe even his own wife. And he knew that it was mainly
+by the grace of womankind that so much contraband work was going on.
+Nevertheless, it was out of his power to act upon his own low opinions
+now.
+
+The maiden, blushing deeply with the sense of her deceit, was informed
+by her guilty conscience of that nasty man's suspicions, and therefore
+gave a smack with her fern whip to Lord Keppel, impelling him to join,
+like a loyal little horse, the pursuit of his Majesty's enemies. But no
+sooner did she see all the men dispersed, and scouring the distance with
+trustful ardor, than she turned her pony's head toward the sea again,
+and rode back round the bend of the hollow. What would her mother say if
+she lost the murrey skirt, which had cost six shillings at Bridlington
+fair? And ten times that money might be lost much better than for her
+father to discover how she lost it. For Master Stephen Anerley was
+a straight-backed man, and took three weeks of training in the Land
+Defense Yeomanry, at periods not more than a year apart, so that many
+people called him “Captain” now; and the loss of his suppleness at knee
+and elbow had turned his mind largely to politics, making him stiffly
+patriotic, and especially hot against all free-traders putting bad
+bargains to his wife, at the cost of the king and his revenue. If the
+bargain were a good one, that was no concern of his.
+
+Not that Mary, however, could believe, or would even have such a bad
+mind as to imagine, that any one, after being helped by her, would be
+mean enough to run off with her property. And now she came to think of
+it, there was something high and noble, she might almost say something
+downright honest, in the face of that poor persecuted man. And in spite
+of all his panting, how brave he must have been, what a runner, and how
+clever, to escape from all those cowardly coast-riders shooting right
+and left at him! Such a man steal that paltry skirt that her mother
+made such a fuss about! She was much more likely to find it in her
+clothes-press filled with golden guineas.
+
+Before she was as certain as she wished to be of this (by reason of
+shrewd nativity), and while she believed that the fugitive must have
+seized such a chance and made good his escape toward North Sea or
+Flamborough, a quick shadow glanced across the long shafts of the sun,
+and a bodily form sped after it. To the middle of the Dike leaped a
+young man, smiling, and forth from the gully which had saved his life.
+To look at him, nobody ever could have guessed how fast he had fled, and
+how close he had lain hid. For he stood there as clean and spruce and
+careless as even a sailor can be wished to be. Limber yet stalwart,
+agile though substantial, and as quick as a dart while as strong as a
+pike, he seemed cut out by nature for a true blue-jacket; but condition
+had made him a smuggler, or, to put it more gently, a free-trader.
+Britannia, being then at war with all the world, and alone in the right
+(as usual), had need of such lads, and produced them accordingly, and
+sometimes one too many. But Mary did not understand these laws.
+
+This made her look at him with great surprise, and almost doubt whether
+he could be the man, until she saw her skirt neatly folded in his hand,
+and then she said, “How do you do, Sir?”
+
+The free-trader looked at her with equal surprise. He had been in such
+a hurry, and his breath so short, and the chance of a fatal bullet after
+him so sharp, that his mind had been astray from any sense of beauty,
+and of every thing else except the safety of the body. But now he looked
+at Mary, and his breath again went from him.
+
+“You can run again now; I am sure of it,” said she; “and if you would
+like to do any thing to please me, run as fast as possible.”
+
+“What have I to run away from now?” he answered, in a deep sweet voice.
+“I run from enemies, but not from friends.”
+
+“That is very wise. But your enemies are still almost within call of
+you. They will come back worse than ever when they find you are not
+there.”
+
+“I am not afraid, fair lady, for I understand their ways. I have led
+them a good many dances before this; though it would have been my
+last, without your help. They will go on, all the morning, in the wrong
+direction, even while they know it. Carroway is the most stubborn of
+men. He never turns back; and the further he goes, the better his bad
+leg is. They will scatter about, among the fields and hedges, and call
+one another like partridges. And when they can not take another step,
+they will come back to Anerley for breakfast.”
+
+“I dare say they will; and we shall be glad to see them. My father is a
+soldier, and his duty is to nourish and comfort the forces of the king.”
+
+“Then you are young Mistress Anerley? I was sure of it before. There are
+no two such. And you have saved my life. It is something to owe it so
+fairly.”
+
+The young sailor wanted to kiss Mary's hand; but not being used to any
+gallantry, she held out her hand in the simplest manner to take back
+her riding skirt; and he, though longing in his heart to keep it, for a
+token or pretext for another meeting, found no excuse for doing so. And
+yet he was not without some resource.
+
+For the maiden was giving him a farewell smile, being quite content with
+the good she had done, and the luck of recovering her property; and that
+sense of right which in those days formed a part of every good young
+woman said to her plainly that she must be off. And she felt how unkind
+it was to keep him any longer in a place where the muzzle of a gun, with
+a man behind it, might appear at any moment. But he, having plentiful
+breath again, was at home with himself to spend it.
+
+“Fair young lady,” he began, for he saw that Mary liked to be called
+a lady, because it was a novelty, “owing more than I ever can pay you
+already, may I ask a little more? Then it is that, on your way down to
+the sea, you would just pick up (if you should chance to see it) the
+fellow ring to this, and perhaps you will look at this to know it by.
+The one that was shot away flew against a stone just on the left of the
+mouth of the Dike, but I durst not stop to look for it, and I must not
+go back that way now. It is more to me than a hatful of gold, though
+nobody else would give a crown for it.”
+
+“And they really shot away one of your ear-rings? Careless, cruel,
+wasteful men! What could they have been thinking of?”
+
+“They were thinking of getting what is called 'blood-money.' One hundred
+pounds for Robin Lyth. Dead or alive--one hundred pounds.”
+
+“It makes me shiver, with the sun upon me. Of course they must offer
+money for--for people. For people who have killed other people, and bad
+things--but to offer a hundred pounds for a free-trader, and fire
+great guns at him to get it--I never should have thought it of Captain
+Carroway.”
+
+“Carroway only does his duty. I like him none the worse for it. Carroway
+is a fool, of course. His life has been in my hands fifty times; but I
+will never take it. He must be killed sooner or later, because he rushes
+into every thing. But never will it be my doing.”
+
+“Then are you the celebrated Robin Lyth--the new Robin Hood, as they
+call him? The man who can do almost any thing?”
+
+“Mistress Anerley, I am Robin Lyth; but, as you have seen, I can not do
+much. I can not even search for my own earring.”
+
+“I will search for it till I find it. They have shot at you too much.
+Cowardly, cowardly people! Captain Lyth, where shall I put it, if I find
+it?”
+
+“If you could hide it for a week, and then--then tell me where to find
+it, in the afternoon, toward four o'clock, in the lane toward Bempton
+Cliffs. We are off tonight upon important business. We have been too
+careless lately, from laughing at poor Carroway.”
+
+“You are very careless now. You quite frighten me almost. The
+coast-riders might come back at any moment. And what could you do then?”
+
+“Run away gallantly, as I did before; with this little difference, that
+I should be fresh, while they are as stiff as nut-cracks. They have
+missed the best chance they ever had at me; it will make their temper
+very bad. If they shot at me again, they could do no good. Crooked mood
+makes crooked mode.”
+
+“You forget that I should not see such things. You may like very much to
+be shot at; but--but you should think of other people.”
+
+“I shall think of you only--I mean of your great kindness, and your
+promise to keep my ring for me. Of course you will tell nobody, Carroway
+will have me like a tiger if you do. Farewell, young lady--for one week
+farewell.”
+
+With a wave of his hat he was gone, before Mary had time to retract her
+promise; and she thought of her mother, as she rode on slowly to look
+for the smuggler's trinket.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+CAPTAIN CARROWAY
+
+
+Fame, that light-of-love trusted by so many, and never a wife till a
+widow--fame, the fair daughter of fuss and caprice, may yet take the
+phantom of bold Robin Lyth by the right hand, and lead it to a pedestal
+almost as lofty as Robin Hood's, or she may let it vanish like a bat
+across Lethe--a thing not bad enough for eminence.
+
+However, at the date and in the part of the world now dealt with, this
+great free-trader enjoyed the warm though possibly brief embrace of
+fame, having no rival, and being highly respected by all who were
+unwarped by a sense of duty. And blessed as he was with a lively nature,
+he proceeded happily upon his path in life, notwithstanding a certain
+ticklish sense of being shot at undesirably. This had befallen him
+now so often, without producing any tangible effect, that a great many
+people, and especially the shooters (convinced of the accuracy of their
+aim), went far to believe that he possessed some charm against wholesome
+bullet and gunpowder. And lately even a crooked sixpence dipped in holy
+water (which was still to be had in Yorkshire) confirmed and doubled
+the faith of all good people, by being declared upon oath to have passed
+clean through him, as was proved by its being picked up quite clean.
+
+This strong belief was of great use to him; for, like many other
+beliefs, it went a very long way to prove itself. Steady left hands now
+grew shaky in the level of the carbine, and firm forefingers trembled
+slightly upon draught of trigger, and the chief result of a large
+discharge was a wale upon the marksman's shoulder. Robin, though so
+clever and well practiced in the world, was scarcely old enough yet to
+have learned the advantage of misapprehension, which, if well handled by
+any man, helps him, in the cunning of paltry things, better than a truer
+estimate. But without going into that, he was pleased with the fancy of
+being invulnerable, which not only doubled his courage, but trebled
+the discipline of his followers, and secured him the respect of all
+tradesmen. However, the worst of all things is that just when they are
+establishing themselves, and earning true faith by continuance, out of
+pure opposition the direct contrary arises, and begins to prove itself.
+And to Captain Lyth this had just happened in the shot which carried off
+his left ear-ring.
+
+Not that his body, or any fleshly member, could be said directly to have
+parted with its charm, but that a warning and a diffidence arose from so
+near a visitation. All genuine sailors are blessed with strong faith, as
+they must be, by nature's compensation. Their bodies continually going
+up and down upon perpetual fluxion, they never could live if their minds
+did the same, like the minds of stationary landsmen. Therefore their
+minds are of stanch immobility, to restore the due share of firm
+element. And not only that, but these men have compressed (through
+generations of circumstance), from small complications, simplicity.
+Being out in all weathers, and rolling about so, how can they stand
+upon trifles? Solid stays, and stanchions, and strong bulwarks are their
+need, and not a dance of gnats in gossamer; hating all fogs, they blow
+not up with their own breath misty mysteries, and gazing mainly at
+the sky and sea, believe purely in God and the devil. In a word, these
+sailors have religion.
+
+Some of their religion is not well pronounced, but declares itself
+in overstrong expressions. However, it is in them, and at any moment
+waiting opportunity of action--a shipwreck or a grape-shot; and the
+chaplain has good hopes of them when the doctor has given them over.
+
+Now one of their principal canons of faith, and the one best observed
+in practice, is (or at any rate used to be) that a man is bound to wear
+ear-rings. For these, as sure tradition shows, and no pious mariner
+would dare to doubt, act as a whetstone in all weathers to the keen
+edge of the eyes. Semble--as the lawyers say--that this idea was born of
+great phonetic facts in the days when a seaman knew his duty better
+than the way to spell it; and when, if his outlook were sharpened by
+a friendly wring from the captain of the watch, he never dreamed of a
+police court.
+
+But Robin Lyth had never cared to ask why he wore ear-rings. His nature
+was not meditative. Enough for him that all the other men of Flamborough
+did so; and enough for them that their fathers had done it. Whether his
+own father had done so, was more than he could say, because he knew of
+no such parent; and of that other necessity, a mother, he was equally
+ignorant. His first appearance at Flamborough, though it made little
+stir at the moment in a place of so many adventures, might still be
+considered unusual, and in some little degree remarkable. So that
+Mistress Anerley was not wrong when she pressed upon Lieutenant Carroway
+how unwise it might be to shoot him, any more than Carroway himself was
+wrong in turning in at Anerley gate for breakfast.
+
+This he had not done without good cause of honest and loyal necessity.
+Free-trading Robin had predicted well the course of his pursuers.
+Rushing eagerly up the Dike, and over its brim, with their muskets, that
+gallant force of revenue men steadily scoured the neighborhood; and the
+further they went, the worse they fared. There was not a horse standing
+down by a pool, with his stiff legs shut up into biped form, nor a cow
+staring blandly across an old rail, nor a sheep with a pectoral cough
+behind a hedge, nor a rabbit making rustle at the eyebrow of his hole,
+nor even a moot, that might either be a man or hold a man inside it,
+whom or which those active fellows did not circumvent and poke into.
+In none of these, however, could they find the smallest breach of the
+strictest laws of the revenue; until at last, having exhausted their
+bodies by great zeal both of themselves and of mind, they braced them
+again to the duty of going, as promptly as possible, to breakfast.
+
+For a purpose of that kind few better places, perhaps, could be found
+than this Anerley Farm, though not at the best of itself just now,
+because of the denials of the season. It is a sad truth about the
+heyday of the year, such as August is in Yorkshire--where they have no
+spring--that just when a man would like his victuals to rise to the mark
+of the period, to be simple yet varied, exhilarating yet substantial,
+the heat of the summer day defrauds its increased length for feeding.
+For instance, to cite a very trifling point--at least in some
+opinions--August has banished that bright content and most devout
+resignation which ensue the removal of a petted pig from this troublous
+world of grunt. The fat pig rolls in wallowing rapture, defying his
+friends to make pork of him yet, and hugs with complacence unpickleable
+hams. The partridge among the pillared wheat, tenderly footing the way
+for his chicks, and teaching little balls of down to hop, knows how
+sacred are their lives to others as well as to himself; and the less
+paternal cock-pheasant scratches the ridge of green-shouldered potatoes,
+without fear of keeping them company at table.
+
+But though the bright glory of the griddle remains in suspense for the
+hoary mornings, and hooks that carried woodcocks once, and hope to do
+so yet again, are primed with dust instead of lard, and the frying-pan
+hangs on the cellar nail with a holiday gloss of raw mutton suet, yet
+is there still some comfort left, yet dappled brawn, and bacon streaked,
+yet golden-hearted eggs, and mushrooms quilted with pink satin, spiced
+beef carded with pellucid fat, buckstone cake, and brown bread scented
+with the ash of gorse bloom--of these, and more that pave the way into
+the good-will of mankind, what lack have fine farm-houses?
+
+And then, again, for the liquid duct, the softer and more sensitive,
+the one that is never out of season, but perennially clear--here we have
+advantage of the gentle time that mellows thirst. The long ride of the
+summer sun makes men who are in feeling with him, and like him go up and
+down, not forego the moral of his labor, which is work and rest. Work
+all day, and light the rounded land with fruit and nurture, and rest at
+evening, looking through bright fluid, as the sun goes down.
+
+But times there are when sun and man, by stress of work, or clouds, or
+light, or it may be some Process of the Equinox, make draughts upon the
+untilted day, and solace themselves in the morning. For lack of dew the
+sun draws lengthy sucks of cloud quite early, and men who have labored
+far and dry, and scattered the rime of the night with dust, find
+themselves ready about 8 A.M. for the golden encouragement of gentle
+ale.
+
+The farm-house had an old porch of stone, with a bench of stone on
+either side, and pointed windows trying to look out under brows of
+ivy; and this porch led into the long low hall, where the breakfast was
+beginning. To say what was on the table would be only waste of time,
+because it has all been eaten so long ago; but the farmer was vexed
+because there were no shrimps. Not that he cared half the clip of a
+whisker for all the shrimps that ever bearded the sea, only that he
+liked to seem to love them, to keep Mary at work for him. The flower
+of his flock, and of all the flocks of the world of the universe to his
+mind, was his darling daughter Mary: the strength of his love was upon
+her, and he liked to eat any thing of her cooking.
+
+His body was too firm to fidget; but his mind was out of its usual
+comfort, because the pride of his heart, his Mary, seemed to be hiding
+something from him. And with the justice to be expected from far clearer
+minds than his, being vexed by one, he was ripe for the relief of
+snapping at fifty others. Mary, who could read him, as a sailor reads
+his compass, by the corner of one eye, awaited with good content the
+usual result--an outbreak of words upon the indolent Willie, whenever
+that young farmer should come down to breakfast, then a comforting
+glance from the mother at her William, followed by a plate kept hot for
+him, and then a fine shake of the master's shoulders, and a stamp of
+departure for business. But instead of that, what came to pass was this.
+
+In the first place, a mighty bark of dogs arose; as needs must be, when
+a man does his duty toward the nobler animals; for sure it is that the
+dogs will not fail of their part. Then an inferior noise of men, crying,
+“Good dog! good dog!” and other fulsome flatteries, in the hope of
+avoiding any tooth-mark on their legs; and after that a shaking down
+and settlement of sounds, as if feet were brought into good order, and
+stopped. Then a tall man, with a body full of corners, and a face of
+grim temper, stood in the doorway.
+
+“Well, well, captain, now!” cried Stephen Anerley, getting up after
+waiting to be spoken to, “the breath of us all is hard to get, with
+doing of our duty, Sir. Come ye in, and sit doon to table, and his
+Majesty's forces along o' ye.”
+
+“Cadman, Ellis, and Dick, be damned!” the lieutenant shouted out to
+them; “you shall have all the victuals you want, by-and-by. Cross legs,
+and get your winds up. Captain of the coast-defense, I am under your
+orders, in your own house.” Carroway was starving, as only a man with
+long and active jaws can starve; and now the appearance of the farmer's
+mouth, half full of a kindly relish, made the emptiness of his own more
+bitter. But happen what might, he resolved, as usual, to enforce strict
+discipline, to feed himself first, and his men in proper order.
+
+“Walk in gentlemen, all walk in,” Master Anerley shouted, as if all men
+were alike, and coming to the door with a hospitable stride; “glad to
+see all of ye, upon my soul I am. Ye've hit upon the right time for
+coming, too; though there might 'a been more upon the table. Mary, run,
+that's a dear, and fetch your grandfather's big Sabbath carver. Them
+peaky little clams a'most puts out all my shoulder-blades, and wunna
+bite through a twine of gristle. Plates for all the gentlemen, Winnie
+lass! Bill, go and drah the black jarge full o' yell.”
+
+The farmer knew well enough that Willie was not down yet; but this was
+his manner of letting people see that he did not approve of such hours.
+
+“My poor lad Willie,” said the mistress of the house, returning with a
+courtesy the brave lieutenant's scrape, “I fear he hath the rheum again,
+overheating of himself after sungate.”
+
+“Ay, ay, I forgot. He hath to heat himself in bed again, with the sun
+upon his coverlid. Mary lof, how many hours was ye up?”
+
+“Your daughter, Sir,” answered the lieutenant, with a glance at the
+maiden over the opal gleam of froth, which she had headed up for
+him--“your daughter has been down the Dike before the sun was, and doing
+of her duty by the king and by his revenue. Mistress Anerley, your good
+health! Master Anerley, the like to you, and your daughter, and all of
+your good household.” Before they had finished their thanks for this
+honor, the quart pot was set down empty. “A very pretty brew, Sir--a
+pretty brew indeed! Fall back, men! Have heed of discipline. A chalked
+line is what they want, Sir. Mistress Anerley, your good health again.
+The air is now thirsty in the mornings. If those fellows could be given
+a bench against the wall--a bench against the wall is what they feel for
+with their legs. It comes so natural to their--yes, yes, their legs, and
+the crook of their heels, ma'am, from what they were brought up to sit
+upon. And if you have any beer brewed for washing days, ma'am, that is
+what they like, and the right thing for their bellies. Cadman, Ellis,
+and Dick Hackerbody, sit down and be thankful.”
+
+“But surely, Captain Carroway, you would never be happy to sit down
+without them. Look at their small-clothes, the dust and the dirt! And
+their mouths show what you might make of them.”
+
+“Yes, madam, yes; the very worst of them is that. They are always
+looking out, here, there, and every where, for victuals everlasting. Let
+them wait their proper time, and then they do it properly.”
+
+“Their proper time is now, Sir. Winnie, fill their horns up. Mary, wait
+you upon the officer. Captain Carroway, I will not have any body starve
+in my house.”
+
+“Madam, you are the lawgiver in your own house. Men of the coast-guard,
+fall to upon your victuals.”
+
+The lieutenant frowned horribly at his men, as much as to say, “Take no
+advantage, but show your best manners;” and they touched their forelocks
+with a pleasant grin, and began to feed rapidly; and verily their wives
+would have said that it was high time for them. Feeding, as a duty,
+was the order of the day, and discipline had no rank left. Good things
+appeared and disappeared, with the speedy doom of all excellence. Mary,
+and Winnie the maid, flitted in and out like carrier-pigeons.
+
+“Now when the situation comes to this,” said the farmer at last, being
+heartily pleased with the style of their feeding and laughing, “his
+Majesty hath made an officer of me, though void of his own writing.
+Mounted Fencibles, Filey Briggers, called in the foreign parts
+'Brigadiers.' Not that I stand upon sermonry about it, except in the
+matter of his Majesty's health, as never is due without ardent spirits.
+But my wife hath a right to her own way, and never yet I knowed her go
+away from it.”
+
+“Not so, by any means,” the mistress said, and said it so quietly that
+some believed her; “I never was so much for that. Captain, you are a
+married man. But reason is reason, in the middle of us all, and what
+else should I say to my husband? Mary lass, Mary lof, wherever is your
+duty? The captain hath the best pot empty!”
+
+With a bright blush Mary sprang up to do her duty. In those days no girl
+was ashamed to blush; and the bloodless cheek savored of small-pox.
+
+“Hold up your head, my lof,” her father said aloud, with a smile of
+tidy pride, and a pat upon her back; “no call to look at all ashamed,
+my dear. To my mind, captain, though I may be wrong, however, but to my
+mind, this little maid may stan' upright in the presence of downright
+any one.”
+
+“There lies the very thing that never should be said. Captain, you have
+seven children, or it may be eight of them justly. And the pride of
+life--Mary, you be off!”
+
+Mary was glad to run away, for she liked not to be among so many men.
+But her father would not have her triumphed over.
+
+“Speak for yourself, good wife,” he said. “I know what you have got
+behind, as well as rooks know plough-tail. Captain, you never heard me
+say that the lass were any booty, but the very same as God hath made
+her, and thankful for straight legs and eyes. Howsoever, there might be
+worse-favored maidens, without running out of the Riding.”
+
+“You may ride all the way to the city of London,” the captain exclaimed,
+with a clinch of his fist, “or even to Portsmouth, where my wife came
+from, and never find a maid fit to hold a candle for Mary to curl her
+hair by.”
+
+The farmer was so pleased that he whispered something; but Carroway put
+his hand before his mouth, and said, “Never, no, never in the morning!”
+ But in spite of that, Master Anerley felt in his pocket for a key, and
+departed.
+
+“Wicked, wicked, is the word I use,” protested Mrs. Anerley, “for all
+this fribble about rooks and looks, and holding of candles, and curling
+of hair. When I was Mary's age--oh dear! It may not be so for your
+daughters, captain; but evil for mine was the day that invented those
+proud swinging-glasses.”
+
+“That you may pronounce, ma'am, and I will say Amen. Why, my eldest
+daughter, in her tenth year now--”
+
+“Come, Captain Carroway,” broke in the farmer, returning softly with a
+square old bottle, “how goes the fighting with the Crappos now? Put your
+legs up, and light your pipe, and tell us all the news.”
+
+“Cadman, and Ellis, and Dick Hackerbody,” the lieutenant of the
+coast-guard shouted, “you have fed well. Be off, men; no more neglect of
+duty! Place an outpost at fork of the Sewerby road, and strictly observe
+the enemy, while I hold a council of war with my brother officer,
+Captain Anerley. Half a crown for you, if you catch the rogue, half
+a crown each, and promotion of twopence. Attention, eyes right, make
+yourselves scarce! Well, now the rogues are gone, let us make ourselves
+at home. Anerley, your question is a dry one. A dry one; but this is
+uncommonly fine stuff! How the devil has it slipped through our fingers?
+Never mind that, inter amicos--Sir, I was at school at Shrewsbury--but
+as to the war, Sir, the service is going to the devil, for the want of
+pure principle.”
+
+The farmer nodded; and his looks declared that to some extent he felt
+it. He had got the worst side of some bargains that week; but his wife
+had another way of thinking.
+
+“Why, Captain Carroway, whatever could be purer? When you were at sea,
+had you ever a man of the downright principles of Nelson?”
+
+“Nelson has done very well in his way; but he is a man who has risen too
+fast, as other men rise too slowly. Nothing in him; no substance,
+madam; I knew him as a youngster, and I could have tossed him on a
+marling-spike. And instead of feeding well, Sir, he quite wore himself
+away. To my firm knowledge, he would scarcely turn the scale upon a good
+Frenchman of half of the peas. Every man should work his own way up,
+unless his father did it for him. In my time we had fifty men as good,
+and made no fuss about them.”
+
+“And you not the last of them, captain, I dare say. Though I do love to
+hear of the Lord's Lord Nelson, as the people call him. If ever a man
+fought his own way up--”
+
+“Madam, I know him, and respect him well. He would walk up to the devil,
+with a sword between his teeth, and a boarder's pistol in each hand.
+Madam, I leaped, in that condition, a depth of six fathoms and a half
+into the starboard mizzen-chains of the French line-of-battle ship Peace
+and Thunder.”
+
+“Oh, Captain Carroway, how dreadful! What had you to lay hold with?”
+
+“At such times a man must not lay hold. My business was to lay about;
+and I did it to some purpose. This little slash, across my eyes struck
+fire, and it does the same now by moonlight.”
+
+One of the last men in the world to brag was Lieutenant Carroway.
+Nothing but the great thirst of this morning, and strong necessity
+of quenching it, could ever have led him to speak about himself, and
+remember his own little exploits. But the farmer was pleased, and said,
+“Tell us some more, Sir.”
+
+“Mistress Anerley,” the captain answered, shutting up the scar, which he
+was able to expand by means of a muscle of excitement, “you know that
+a man should drop these subjects when he has got a large family. I have
+been in the Army and the Navy, madam, and now I am in the Revenue; but
+my duty is first to my own house.”
+
+“Do take care, Sir; I beg you to be careful. Those free-traders now are
+come to such a pitch that any day or night they may shoot you.”
+
+“Not they, madam. No, they are not murderers. In a hand-to-hand conflict
+they might do it, as I might do the same to them. This very morning my
+men shot at the captain of all smugglers, Robin Lyth, of Flamborough,
+with a hundred guineas upon his head. It was no wish of mine; but my
+breath was short to stop them, and a man with a family like mine can
+never despise a hundred guineas.”
+
+“Why, Sophy,” said the farmer, thinking slowly, with a frown, “that
+must have been the noise come in at window, when I were getting up
+this morning. I said, 'Why, there's some poacher fellow popping at the
+conies!' and out I went straight to the warren to see. Three gun-shots,
+or might 'a been four. How many men was you shooting at?”
+
+“The force under my command was in pursuit of one notorious
+criminal--that well-known villain, Robin Lyth.”
+
+“Captain, your duty is to do your duty. But without your own word for
+it, I never would believe that you brought four gun muzzles down upon
+one man.”
+
+“The force under my command carried three guns only. It was not in their
+power to shoot off four.”
+
+“Captain, I never would have done it in your place. I call it no better
+than unmanly. Now go you not for to stir yourself amiss. To look thunder
+at me is what I laugh at. But many things are done in a hurry, Captain
+Carroway, and I take it that this was one of them.”
+
+“As to that, no! I will not have it. All was in thorough good order.
+I was never so much as a cable's length behind, though the devil, some
+years ago, split my heel up, like his own, Sir.”
+
+“Captain, I see it, and I ask your pardon. Your men were out of reach of
+hollering. At our time of life the wind dies quick, from want of blowing
+oftener.”
+
+“Stuff!” cried the captain. “Who was the freshest that came to your
+hospitable door, Sir? I will foot it with any man for six leagues, but
+not for half a mile, ma'am. I depart from nothing. I said, 'Fire!' and
+fire they did, and they shall again. What do Volunteers know of the
+service?”
+
+“Stephen, you shall not say a single other word;” Mistress Anerley
+stopped her husband thus; “these matters are out of your line
+altogether; because you have never taken any body's blood. The captain
+here is used to it, like all the sons of Belial, brought up in the early
+portions of the Holy Writ.”
+
+Lieutenant Carroway's acquaintance with the Bible was not more extensive
+than that of other officers, and comprised little more than the story
+of Joseph, and that of David and Goliath; so he bowed to his hostess for
+her comparison, while his gaunt and bristly countenance gave way to
+a pleasant smile. For this officer of the British Crown had a face of
+strong features, and upon it whatever he thought was told as plainly as
+the time of day is told by the clock in the kitchen. At the same time,
+Master Anerley was thinking that he might have said more than a host
+should say concerning a matter which, after all, was no particular
+concern of his; whereas it was his special place to be kind to any
+visitor. All this he considered with a sound grave mind, and then
+stretched forth his right hand to the officer.
+
+Carroway, being a generous man, would not be outdone in apologies. So
+these two strengthened their mutual esteem, without any fighting--which
+generally is the quickest way of renewing respect--and Mistress Anerley,
+having been a little frightened, took credit to herself for the good
+words she had used. Then the farmer, who never drank cordials, although
+he liked to see other people do it, set forth to see a man who was come
+about a rick, and sundry other business. But Carroway, in spite of all
+his boasts, was stiff, though he bravely denied that he could be; and
+when the good housewife insisted on his stopping to listen to something
+that was much upon her mind, and of great importance to the revenue, he
+could not help owning that duty compelled him to smoke another pipe, and
+hearken.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+ROBIN COCKSCROFT
+
+
+Nothing ever was allowed to stop Mrs. Anerley from seeing to the
+bedrooms. She kept them airing for about three hours at this time of the
+sun-stitch--as she called all the doings of the sun upon the sky--and
+then there was pushing, and probing, and tossing, and pulling, and
+thumping, and kneading of knuckles, till the rib of every feather was
+aching; and then (like dough before the fire) every well-belabored tick
+was left to yeast itself a while. Winnie, the maid, was as strong as a
+post, and wore them all out in bed-making. Carroway heard the beginning
+of this noise, but none of it meddled at all with his comfort; he lay
+back nicely in a happy fit of chair, stretched his legs well upon a
+bench, and nodded, keeping slow time with the breathings of his pipe,
+and drawing a vapory dream of ease. He had fared many stony miles afoot
+that morning; and feet, legs, and body were now less young than they
+used to be once upon a time. Looking up sleepily, the captain had idea
+of a pretty young face hanging over him, and a soft voice saying, “It
+was me who did it all,” which was very good grammar in those days; “will
+you forgive me? But I could not help it, and you must have been sorry to
+shoot him.”
+
+“Shoot every body who attempts to land,” the weary man ordered,
+drowsily. “Mattie, once more, you are not to dust my pistols.”
+
+“I could not be happy without telling you the truth,” the soft voice
+continued, “because I told you such a dreadful story. And now--Oh! here
+comes mother!”
+
+“What has come over you this morning, child? You do the most
+extraordinary things, and now you can not let the captain rest. Go round
+and look for eggs this very moment. You will want to be playing fine
+music next. Now, captain, I am at your service, if you please, unless
+you feel too sleepy.”
+
+“Mistress Anerley, I never felt more wide-awake in all my life. We of
+the service must snatch a wink whenever we can, but with one eye open;
+and it is not often that we see such charming sights.”
+
+The farmer's wife having set the beds to “plump,” had stolen a look at
+the glass, and put on her second-best Sunday cap, in honor of a real
+officer; and she looked very nice indeed, especially when she received a
+compliment. But she had seen too much of life to be disturbed thereby.
+
+“Ah, Captain Carroway, what ways you have of getting on with simple
+people, while you are laughing all the time at them! It comes of the
+foreign war experience, going on so long that in the end we shall all
+be foreigners. But one place there is that you never can conquer, nor
+Boneypart himself, to my belief.”
+
+“Ah, you mean Flamborough--Flamborough, yes! It is a nest of
+cockatrices.”
+
+“Captain, it is nothing of the sort. It is the most honest place in all
+the world. A man may throw a guinea on the crossroads in the night, and
+have it back from Dr. Upandown any time within seven years. You ought to
+know by this time what they are, hard as it is to get among them.”
+
+“I only know that they can shut their mouths; and the devil himself--I
+beg your pardon, madam--Old Nick himself never could unscrew them.”
+
+“You are right, Sir. I know their manner well. They are open as the sky
+with one another, but close as the grave to all the world outside them,
+and most of all to people of authority like you.”
+
+“Mistress Anerley, you have just hit it. Not a word can I get out of
+them. The name of the king--God bless him!--seems to have no weight
+among them.”
+
+“And you can not get at them, Sir, by any dint of money, or even by
+living in the midst of them. The only way to do it is by kin of blood,
+or marriage. And that is how I come to know more about them than almost
+any body else outside. My master can scarcely win a word of them even,
+kind as he is, and well-spoken; and neither might I, though my tongue
+was tenfold, if it were not for Joan Cockscroft. But being Joan's
+cousin, I am like one of themselves.”
+
+“Cockscroft! Cockscroft? I have heard that name. Do they keep the
+public-house there?”
+
+The lieutenant was now on the scent of duty, and assumed his most
+knowing air, the sole effect of which was to put every body upon guard
+against him. For this was a man of no subtlety, but straightforward,
+downright, and ready to believe; and his cleverest device was to seem to
+disbelieve.
+
+“The Cockscrofts keep no public-house,” Mrs. Anerley answered, with a
+little flush of pride. “Why, she was half-niece to my own grandmother,
+and never was beer in the family. Not that it would have been wrong, if
+it was. Captain, you are thinking of Widow Precious, licensed to the Cod
+with the hook in his gills. I should have thought, Sir, that you might
+have known a little more of your neighbors having fallen below the path
+of life by reason of bad bank-tokens. Banking came up in her parts like
+dog-madness, as it might have done here, if our farmers were the fools
+to handle their cash with gloves on. And Joan became robbed by the fault
+of her trustees, the very best bakers in Scarborough, though Robin never
+married her for it, thank God! Still it was very sad, and scarcely bears
+describing of, and pulled them in the crook of this world's swing to
+a lower pitch than if they had robbed the folk that robbed and ruined
+them. And Robin so was driven to the fish again, which he always had
+hankered after. It must have been before you heard of this coast,
+captain, and before the long war was so hard on us, that every body
+about these parts was to double his bags by banking, and no man was
+right to pocket his own guineas, for fear of his own wife feeling them.
+And bitterly such were paid out for their cowardice and swindling of
+their own bosoms.”
+
+“I have heard of it often, and it served them right. Master Anerley knew
+where his money was safe, ma'am!”
+
+“Neither Captain Robin Cockscroft nor his wife was in any way to blame,”
+ answered Mrs. Anerley. “I have framed my mind to tell you about them;
+and I will do it truly, if I am not interrupted. Two hammers never yet
+drove a nail straight, and I make a rule of silence when my betters wish
+to talk.”
+
+“Madam, you remind me of my own wife. She asks me a question, and she
+will not let me answer.”
+
+“That is the only way I know of getting on. Mistress Carroway must
+understand you, captain. I was at the point of telling you how my
+cousin Joan was married, before her money went, and when she was really
+good-looking. I was quite a child, and ran along the shore to see it.
+It must have been in the high summer-time, with the weather fit for
+bathing, and the sea as smooth as a duck-pond. And Captain Robin, being
+well-to-do, and established with every thing except a wife, and pleased
+with the pretty smile and quiet ways of Joan--for he never had heard of
+her money, mind--put his oar into the sea and rowed from Flamborough all
+the way to Filey Brigg, with thirty-five fishermen after him; for the
+Flamborough people make a point of seeing one another through their
+troubles. And Robin was known for the handsomest man and the uttermost
+fisher of the landing, with three boats of his own, and good birth, and
+long sea-lines. And there at once they found my cousin Joan, with her
+trustees, come overland, four wagons and a cart in all of them; and
+after they were married, they burned sea-weed, having no fear in those
+days of invasions. And a merry day they made of it, and rowed back by
+the moonshine. For every one liked and respected Captain Cockscroft on
+account of his skill with the deep-sea lines, and the openness of his
+hands when full--a wonderful quiet and harmless man, as the manner is of
+all great fishermen. They had bacon for breakfast whenever they liked,
+and a guinea to lend to any body in distress.
+
+“Then suddenly one morning, when his hair was growing gray and his eyes
+getting weary of the night work, so that he said his young Robin must
+grow big enough to learn all the secrets of the fishes, while his father
+took a spell in the blankets, suddenly there came to them a shocking
+piece of news. All his wife's bit of money, and his own as well, which
+he had been putting by from year to year, was lost in a new-fangled
+Bank, supposed as faithful as the Bible. Joan was very nearly crazed
+about it; but Captain Cockscroft never heaved a sigh, though they say
+it was nearly seven hundred guineas. 'There are fish enough still in the
+sea,' he said; 'and the Lord has spared our children. I will build a new
+boat, and not think of feather-beds.'
+
+“Captain Carroway, he did so, and every body knows what befell him. The
+new boat, built with his own hands, was called the Mercy Robin, for his
+only son and daughter, little Mercy and poor Robin. The boat is there
+as bright as ever, scarlet within and white outside; but the name is
+painted off, because the little dears are in their graves. Two nicer
+children were never seen, clever, and sprightly, and good to learn; they
+never even took a common bird's nest, I have heard, but loved all the
+little things the Lord has made, as if with a foreknowledge of going
+early home to Him. Their father came back very tired one morning, and
+went up the hill to his breakfast, and the children got into the boat
+and pushed off, in imitation of their daddy. It came on to blow, as it
+does down there, without a single whiff of warning; and when Robin awoke
+for his middle-day meal, the bodies of his little ones were lying on the
+table. And from that very day Captain Cockscroft and his wife began to
+grow old very quickly. The boat was recovered without much damage; and
+in it he sits by the hour on dry land, whenever there is no one on the
+cliffs to see him, with his hands upon his lap, and his eyes upon the
+place where his dear little children used to sit. Because he has always
+taken whatever fell upon him gently; and of course that makes it ever so
+much worse when he dwells upon the things that come inside of him.”
+
+“Madam, you make me feel quite sorry for him,” the lieutenant exclaimed,
+as she began to cry, “If even one of my little ones was drowned, I
+declare to you, I can not tell what I should be like. And to lose them
+all at once, and as his own wife perhaps would say, because he was
+thinking of his breakfast! And when he had been robbed, and the world
+all gone against him! Madam, it is a long time, thank God, since I heard
+so sad a tale.”
+
+“Now you would not, captain, I am sure you would not,” said Mistress
+Anerley, getting up a smile, yet freshening his perception of a tear as
+well--“you would never have the heart to destroy that poor old couple by
+striking the last prop from under them. By the will of the Lord they are
+broken down enough. They are quietly hobbling to their graves, and would
+you be the man to come and knock them on their heads at once?”
+
+“Mistress Anerley, have you ever heard that I am a brute and inhuman?
+Madam, I have no less than seven children, and I hope to have fourteen.”
+
+“I hope with all my heart you may. And you will deserve them all, for
+promising so very kindly not to shoot poor Robin Lyth.”
+
+“Robin Lyth! I never spoke of him, madam. He is outlawed, condemned,
+with a fine reward upon him. We shot at him to-day; we shall shoot at
+him again; and before very long we must hit him. Ma'am, it is my duty
+to the king, the Constitution, the service I belong to, and the babes I
+have begotten.”
+
+“Blood-money poisons all innocent mouths, Sir, and breaks out for
+generations. And for it you will have to take three lives--Robin's, the
+captain's, and my dear old cousin Joan's.”
+
+“Mistress Anerley, you deprive me of all satisfaction. It is just my
+luck, when my duty was so plain, and would pay so well for doing of.”
+
+“Listen now, captain. It is my opinion, and I am generally borne out by
+the end, that instead of a hundred pounds for killing Robin Lyth, you
+may get a thousand for preserving him alive. Do you know how he came
+upon this coast, and how he has won his extraordinary name?”
+
+“I have certainly heard rumors; scarcely any two alike. But I took no
+heed of them. My duty was to catch him; and it mattered not a straw to
+me who or what he was. But now I must really beg to know all about him,
+and what makes you think such things of him. Why should that excellent
+old couple hang upon him? and what can make him worth such a quantity
+of money? Honestly, of course, I mean; honestly worth it, ma'am, without
+any cheating of his Majesty.”
+
+“Captain Carroway,” his hostess said, not without a little blush, as she
+thought of the king and his revenue, “cheating of his Majesty is a thing
+we leave for others. But if you wish to hear the story of that young
+man, so far as known, which is not so even in Flamborough, you must
+please to come on Sunday, Sir; for Sunday is the only day that I can
+spare for clacking, as the common people say. I must be off now; I have
+fifty things to see to. And on Sunday my master has his best things on,
+and loves no better than to sit with his legs up, and a long clay pipe
+lying on him down below his waist (or, to speak more correctly, where
+it used to be, as he might, indeed, almost say the very same to me), and
+then not to speak a word, but hear other folk tell stories, that might
+not have made such a dinner as himself. And as for dinner, Sir, if
+you will do the honor to dine with them that are no more than in the
+Volunteers, a saddle of good mutton fit for the Body-Guards to ride
+upon, the men with the skins around them all turned up, will be ready
+just at one o'clock, if the parson lets us out.”
+
+“My dear madam, I shall scarcely care to look at any slice of victuals
+until one o'clock on Sunday, by reason of looking forward.”
+
+After all, this was not such a gross exaggeration, Anerley Farm being
+famous for its cheer; whereas the poor lieutenant, at the best of times,
+had as much as he could do to make both ends meet; and his wife, though
+a wonderful manager, could give him no better than coarse bread, and
+almost coarser meat.
+
+“And, Sir, if your good lady would oblige us also--”
+
+“No, madam, no!” he cried, with vigorous decision, having found many
+festive occasions spoiled by excess of loving vigilance; “we thank you
+most truly; but I must say 'no.' She would jump at the chance; but a
+husband must consider. You may have heard it mentioned that the Lord is
+now considering about the production of an eighth little Carroway.”
+
+“Captain, I have not, or I should not so have spoken. But with all my
+heart I wish you joy.”
+
+“I have pleasure, I assure you, in the prospect, Mistress Anerley. My
+friends make wry faces, but I blow them away, 'Tush,' I say, 'tush, Sir;
+at the rate we now are fighting, and exhausting all British material,
+there can not be too many, Sir, of mettle such as mine!' What do you say
+to that, madam?”
+
+“Sir, I believe it is the Lord's own truth. And true it is also that our
+country should do more to support the brave hearts that fight for it.”
+
+Mrs. Anerley sighed, for she thought of her younger son, by his own
+perversity launched into the thankless peril of fighting England's
+battles. His death at any time might come home, if any kind person
+should take the trouble even to send news of it; or he might lie at the
+bottom of the sea unknown, even while they were talking. But Carroway
+buttoned up his coat and marched, after a pleasant and kind farewell. In
+the course of hard service he had seen much grief, and suffered plenty
+of bitterness, and he knew that it is not the part of a man to multiply
+any of his troubles but children. He went about his work, and he thought
+of all his comforts, which need not have taken very long to count,
+but he added to their score by not counting them, and by the self-same
+process diminished that of troubles. And thus, upon the whole, he
+deserved his Sunday dinner, and the tale of his hostess after it, not
+a word of which Mary was allowed to hear, for some subtle reason of her
+mother's. But the farmer heard it all, and kept interrupting so, when
+his noddings and the joggings of his pipe allowed, or, perhaps one
+should say, compelled him, that merely for the courtesy of saving common
+time it is better now to set it down without them. Moreover, there are
+many things well worthy of production which she did not produce, for
+reasons which are now no hinderance. And the foremost of those reasons
+is that the lady did not know the things; the second that she could not
+tell them clearly as a man might; and the third, and best of all, that
+if she could, she would not do so. In which she certainly was quite
+right; for it would have become her very badly, as the cousin of Joan
+Cockscroft (half removed, and upon the mother's side), and therefore
+kindly received at Flamborough, and admitted into the inner circle, and
+allowed to buy fish at wholesale prices, if she had turned round upon
+all these benefits, and described all the holes to be found in the
+place, for the teaching of a revenue officer.
+
+Still, it must be clearly understood that the nature of the people is
+fishing. They never were known to encourage free-trading, but did their
+very utmost to protect themselves; and if they had produced the very
+noblest free-trader, born before the time of Mr. Cobden, neither the
+credit nor the blame was theirs.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+ROBIN LYTH
+
+
+Half a league to the north of bold Flamborough Head the billows have
+carved for themselves a little cove among cliffs which are rugged, but
+not very high. This opening is something like the grain shoot of a mill,
+or a screen for riddling gravel, so steep is the pitch of the ground,
+and so narrow the shingly ledge at the bottom. And truly in bad weather
+and at high tides there is no shingle ledge at all, but the crest of the
+wave volleys up the incline, and the surf rushes on to the top of it.
+For the cove, though sheltered from other quarters, receives the full
+brunt of northeasterly gales, and offers no safe anchorage. But the
+hardy fishermen make the most of its scant convenience, and gratefully
+call it “North Landing,” albeit both wind and tide must be in good
+humor, or the only thing sure of any landing is the sea. The long
+desolation of the sea rolls in with a sound of melancholy, the gray fog
+droops its fold of drizzle in the leaden-tinted troughs, the pent cliffs
+overhang the flapping of the sail, and a few yards of pebble and of weed
+are all that a boat may come home upon harmlessly. Yet here in the old
+time landed men who carved the shape of England; and here even in these
+lesser days, are landed uncommonly fine cod.
+
+The difficulties of the feat are these: to get ashore soundly, and then
+to make it good; and after that to clinch the exploit by getting on
+land, which is yet a harder step. Because the steep of the ground, like
+a staircase void of stairs, stands facing you, and the cliff upon either
+side juts up close, to forbid any flanking movement, and the scanty
+scarp denies fair start for a rush at the power of the hill front. Yet
+here must the heavy boats beach themselves, and wallow and yaw in the
+shingly roar, while their cargo and crew get out of them, their gunwales
+swinging from side to side, in the manner of a porpoise rolling, and
+their stem and stern going up and down like a pair of lads at seesaw.
+
+But after these heavy boats have endured all that, they have not found
+their rest yet without a crowning effort. Up that gravelly and gliddery
+ascent, which changes every groove and run at every sudden shower, but
+never grows any the softer--up that the heavy boats must make clamber
+somehow, or not a single timber of their precious frames is safe. A big
+rope from the capstan at the summit is made fast as soon as the tails of
+the jackasses (laden with three cwt. of fish apiece) have wagged their
+last flick at the brow of the steep; and then with “yo-heave-ho” above
+and below, through the cliffs echoing over the dull sea, the groaning
+and grinding of the stubborn tug begins. Each boat has her own special
+course to travel up, and her own special berth of safety, and she knows
+every jag that will gore her on the road, and every flint from which she
+will strike fire. By dint of sheer sturdiness of arms, legs, and lungs,
+keeping true time with the pant and the shout, steadily goes it with
+hoist and haul, and cheerily undulates the melody of call that rallies
+them all with a strong will together, until the steep bluff and the
+burden of the bulk by masculine labor are conquered, and a long row of
+powerful pinnaces displayed, as a mounted battery, against the fishful
+sea. With a view to this clambering ruggedness of life, all of these
+boats receive from their cradle a certain limber rake and accommodating
+curve, instead of a straight pertinacity of keel, so that they may ride
+over all the scandals of this arduous world. And happen what may to
+them, when they are at home, and gallantly balanced on the brow line of
+the steep, they make a bright show upon the dreariness of coast-land,
+hanging as they do above the gullet of the deep. Painted outside with
+the brightest of scarlet, and inside with the purest white, at a little
+way off they resemble gay butterflies, preening their wings for a flight
+into the depth.
+
+Here it must have been, and in the middle of all these, that the very
+famous Robin Lyth--prophetically treating him, but free as yet of fame
+or name, and simply unable to tell himself--shone in the doubt of the
+early daylight (as a tidy-sized cod, if forgotten, might have shone)
+upon the morning of St. Swithin, A.D. 1782.
+
+The day and the date were remembered long by all the good people of
+Flamborough, from the coming of the turn of a long bad luck and a bitter
+time of starving. For the weather of the summer had been worse than
+usual--which is no little thing to say--and the fish had expressed their
+opinion of it by the eloquent silence of absence. Therefore, as the
+whole place lives on fish, whether in the fishy or the fiscal form,
+goodly apparel was becoming very rare, even upon high Sundays; and
+stomachs that might have looked well beneath it, sank into unobtrusive
+grief. But it is a long lane that has no turning; and turns are the
+essence of one very vital part.
+
+Suddenly over the village had flown the news of a noble arrival of
+fish. From the cross-roads, and the public-house, and the licensed
+head-quarters of pepper and snuff, and the loop-hole where a sheep had
+been known to hang, in times of better trade, but never could dream of
+hanging now; also from the window of the man who had had a hundred
+heads (superior to his own) shaken at him because he set up for making
+breeches in opposition to the women, and showed a few patterns of what
+he could do if any man of legs would trade with him--from all these
+head-centres of intelligence, and others not so prominent but equally
+potent, into the very smallest hole it went (like the thrill in a
+troublesome tooth) that here was a chance come of feeding, a chance
+at last of feeding. For the man on the cliff, the despairing watchman,
+weary of fastening his eyes upon the sea, through constant fog and
+drizzle, at length had discovered the well-known flicker, the glassy
+flaw, and the hovering of gulls, and had run along Weighing Lane so
+fast, to tell his good news in the village, that down he fell and
+broke his leg, exactly opposite the tailor's shop. And this was on St.
+Swithin's Eve.
+
+There was nothing to be done that night, of course, for mackerel must be
+delicately worked; but long before the sun arose, all Flamborough, able
+to put leg in front of leg, and some who could not yet do that, gathered
+together where the land-hold was, above the incline for the launching
+of the boats. Here was a medley, not of fisher-folk alone, and all their
+bodily belongings, but also of the thousand things that have no soul,
+and get kicked about and sworn at much because they can not answer.
+Rollers, buoys, nets, kegs, swabs, fenders, blocks, buckets, kedges,
+corks, buckie-pots, oars, poppies, tillers, sprits, gaffs, and every
+kind of gear (more than Theocritus himself could tell) lay about,
+and rolled about, and upset their own masters, here and there and
+everywhere, upon this half acre of slip and stumble, at the top of the
+boat channel down to the sea, and in the faint rivalry of three vague
+lights, all making darkness visible.
+
+For very ancient lanterns, with a gentle horny glimmer, and loop-holes
+of large exaggeration at the top, were casting upon anything quite
+within their reach a general idea of the crinkled tin that framed them,
+and a shuffle of inconstant shadows, but refused to shed any light on
+friend or stranger, or clear up suspicions, more than three yards off.
+In rivalry with these appeared the pale disk of the moon, just setting
+over the western highlands, and “drawing straws” through summer haze;
+while away in the northeast over the sea, a slender irregular wisp of
+gray, so weak that it seemed as if it were being blown away, betokened
+the intention of the sun to restore clear ideas of number and of figure
+by-and-by. But little did anybody heed such things; every one ran
+against everybody else, and all was eagerness, haste, and bustle for the
+first great launch of the Flamborough boats, all of which must be taken
+in order.
+
+But when they laid hold of the boat No. 7, which used to be the Mercy
+Robin, and were jerking the timber shores out, one of the men stooping
+under her stern beheld something white and gleaming. He put his hand
+down to it, and, lo! it was a child, in imminent peril of a deadly
+crush, as the boat came heeling over. “Hold hard!” cried the man, not in
+time with his voice, but in time with his sturdy shoulder, to delay the
+descent of the counter. Then he stooped underneath, while they steadied
+the boat, and drew forth a child in a white linen dress, heartily asleep
+and happy.
+
+There was no time to think of any children now, even of a man's own
+fine breed, and the boat was beginning much to chafe upon the rope, and
+thirty or forty fine fellows were all waiting, loath to hurry Captain
+Robin (because of the many things he had dearly lost), yet straining
+upon their own hearts to stand still. And the captain could not find his
+wife, who had slipped aside of the noisy scene, to have her own little
+cry, because of the dance her children would have made if they had lived
+to see it.
+
+There were plenty of other women running all about to help, and to talk,
+and to give the best advice to their husbands and to one another;
+but most of them naturally had their own babies, and if words came to
+action, quite enough to do to nurse them. On this account, Cockscroft
+could do no better, bound as he was to rush forth upon the sea, than lay
+the child gently aside of the stir, and cover him with an old sail, and
+leave word with an ancient woman for his wife when found. The little boy
+slept on calmly still, in spite of all the din and uproar, the song and
+the shout, the tramp of heavy feet, the creaking of capstans, and the
+thump of bulky oars, and the crush of ponderous rollers. Away went these
+upon their errand to the sea, and then came back the grating roar and
+plashy jerks of launching, the plunging, and the gurgling, and the quiet
+murmur of cleft waves.
+
+That child slept on, in the warm good luck of having no boat keel
+launched upon him, nor even a human heel of bulk as likely to prove
+fatal. And the ancient woman fell asleep beside him, because at her time
+of life it was unjust that she should be astir so early. And it happened
+that Mrs. Cockscroft followed her troubled husband down the steep,
+having something in her pocket for him, which she failed to fetch to
+hand. So everybody went about its own business (according to the laws
+of nature), and the old woman slept by the side of the child, without
+giving him a corner of her scarlet shawl.
+
+But when the day was broad and brave, and the spirit of the air was
+vigorous, and every cliff had a color of its own, and a character to
+come out with; and beautiful boats, upon a shining sea, flashed their
+oars, and went up waves which clearly were the stairs of heaven; and
+never a woman, come to watch her husband, could be sure how far he had
+carried his obedience in the matter of keeping his hat and coat on;
+neither could anybody say what next those very clever fishermen might
+be after--nobody having a spy-glass--but only this being understood
+all round, that hunger and salt were the victuals for the day, and
+the children must chew the mouse-trap baits until their dads came home
+again; and yet in spite of all this, with lightsome hearts (so hope
+outstrips the sun, and soars with him behind her) and a strong will,
+up the hill they went, to do without much breakfast, but prepare for a
+glorious supper. For mackerel are good fish that do not strive to live
+forever, but seem glad to support the human race.
+
+Flamburians speak a rich burr of their own, broadly and handsomely
+distinct from that of outer Yorkshire. The same sagacious contempt for
+all hot haste and hurry (which people of impatient fibre are too apt to
+call “a drawl”) may here be found, as in other Yorkshire, guiding and
+retarding well that headlong instrument the tongue. Yet even here there
+is advantage on the side of Flamborough--a longer resonance, a larger
+breadth, a deeper power of melancholy, and a stronger turn up of the
+tail of discourse, by some called the end of a sentence. Over and above
+all these there dwell in “Little Denmark” many words foreign to the
+real Yorkshireman. But, alas! these merits of their speech can not be
+embodied in print without sad trouble, and result (if successful)
+still more saddening. Therefore it is proposed to let them speak in our
+inferior tongue, and to try to make them be not so very long about it.
+For when they are left to themselves entirely, they have so much solid
+matter to express, and they ripen it in their minds and throats with a
+process so deliberate, that strangers might condemn them briefly, and be
+off without hearing half of it. Whenever this happens to a Flamborough
+man, he finishes what he proposed to say, and then says it all over
+again to the wind.
+
+When the “lavings” of the village (as the weaker part, unfit for sea,
+and left behind, were politely called, being very old men, women, and
+small children), full of conversation, came, upon their way back from
+the tide, to the gravel brow now bare of boats, they could not help
+discovering there the poor old woman that fell asleep because she ought
+to have been in bed, and by her side a little boy, who seemed to have
+no bed at all. The child lay above her in a tump of stubbly grass, where
+Robin Cockscroft had laid him; he had tossed the old sail off, perhaps
+in a dream, and he threatened to roll down upon the granny. The contrast
+between his young, beautiful face, white raiment, and readiness to
+roll, and the ancient woman's weary age (which it would be ungracious to
+describe), and scarlet shawl which she could not spare, and satisfaction
+to lie still--as the best thing left her now to do--this difference
+between them was enough to take anybody's notice, facing the
+well-established sun.
+
+“Nanny Pegler, get oop wi' ye!” cried a woman even older, but of tougher
+constitution. “Shame on ye to lig aboot so. Be ye browt to bed this
+toime o' loife?”
+
+“A wonderful foine babby for sich an owd moother,” another proceeded
+with the elegant joke; “and foine swaddles too, wi' solid gowd upon
+'em!”
+
+“Stan' ivery one o' ye oot o' the way,” cried ancient Nanny, now as
+wide-awake as ever; “Master Robin Cockscroft gie ma t' bairn, an'
+nawbody sall hev him but Joan Cockscroft.”
+
+Joan Cockscroft, with a heavy heart, was lingering far behind the rest,
+thinking of the many merry launches, when her smart young Robin would
+have been in the boat with his father, and her pretty little Mercy
+clinging to her hand upon the homeward road, and prattling of the fish
+to be caught that day; and inasmuch as Joan had not been able to get
+face to face with her husband on the beach, she had not yet heard of the
+stranger child. But soon the women sent a little boy to fetch her, and
+she came among them, wondering what it could be. For now a debate of
+some vigor was arising upon a momentous and exciting point, though
+not so keen by a hundredth part as it would have been twenty years
+afterward. For the eldest old woman had pronounced her decision.
+
+“Tell ye wat, ah dean't think bud wat yon bairn mud he a Frogman.”
+
+This caused some panic and a general retreat; for though the immortal
+Napoleon had scarcely finished changing his teeth as yet, a chronic
+uneasiness about Crappos haunted that coast already, and they might
+have sent this little boy to pave the way, being capable of almost
+everything.
+
+“Frogman!” cried the old woman next to her by birth, and believed to
+have higher parts, though not yet ripe. “Na, na; what Frogman here?
+Frogmen ha' skinny shanks, and larks' heels, and holes down their bodies
+like lamperns. No sign of no frog aboot yon bairn. As fair as a wench,
+and as clean as a tyke. A' mought a'most been born to Flaambro'. And
+what gowd ha' Crappos got, poor divils?”
+
+This opened the gate for a clamor of discourse; for there surely could
+be no denial of her words. And yet while her elder was alive and out of
+bed, the habit of the village was to listen to her say, unless any man
+of equal age arose to countervail it. But while they were thus divided,
+Mrs. Cockscroft came, and they stood aside. For she had been kind to
+everybody when her better chances were; and now in her trouble all were
+grieved because she took it so to heart. Joan Cockscroft did not say
+a word, but glanced at the child with some contempt. In spite of white
+linen and yellow gold, what was he to her own dead Robin?
+
+But suddenly this child, whatever he was, and vastly soever inferior,
+opened his eyes and sent home their first glance to the very heart of
+Joan Cockscroft. It was the exact look--or so she always said--of her
+dead angel, when she denied him something, for the sake of his poor dear
+stomach. With an outburst of tears, she flew straight to the little one,
+snatched him in her arms, and tried to cover him with kisses.
+
+The child, however, in a lordly manner, did not seem to like it. He drew
+away his red lips, and gathered up his nose, and passion flew out of his
+beautiful eyes, higher passion than that of any Cockscroft. And he
+tried to say something which no one could make out. And women of high
+consideration, looking on, were wicked enough to be pleased at this, and
+say that he must be a young lord, and they had quite foreseen it. But
+Joan knew what children are, and soothed him down so with delicate
+hands, and a gentle look, and a subtle way of warming his cold places,
+that he very soon began to cuddle into her, and smile. Then she turned
+round to the other people, with both of his arms flung round her neck,
+and his cheek laid on her shoulder, and she only said, “The Lord hath
+sent him.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+DR. UPANDOWN
+
+
+The practice of Flamborough was to listen fairly to anything that might
+be said by any one truly of the native breed, and to receive it well
+into the crust of the mind, and let it sink down slowly. But even after
+that, it might not take root, unless it were fixed in its settlement by
+their two great powers--the law, and the Lord.
+
+They had many visitations from the Lord, as needs must be in such a very
+stormy place; whereas of the law they heard much less; but still they
+were even more afraid of that; for they never knew how much it might
+cost.
+
+Balancing matters (as they did their fish, when the price was worth it,
+in Weigh Lane), they came to the set conclusion that the law and the
+Lord might not agree concerning the child cast among them by the latter.
+A child or two had been thrown ashore before, and trouble once or twice
+had come of it; and this child being cast, no one could say how, to such
+a height above all other children, he was likely enough to bring a spell
+upon their boats, if anything crooked to God's will were done; and even
+to draw them to their last stocking, if anything offended the providence
+of law.
+
+In any other place it would have been a point of combat what to say and
+what to do in such a case as this. But Flamborough was of all the wide
+world happiest in possessing an authority to reconcile all doubts. The
+law and the Lord--two powers supposed to be at variance always, and to
+share the week between them in proportions fixed by lawyers--the
+holy and unholy elements of man's brief existence, were combined in
+Flamborough parish in the person of its magisterial rector. He was also
+believed to excel in the arts of divination and medicine too, for he was
+a full Doctor of Divinity. Before this gentleman must be laid, both for
+purse and conscience' sake, the case of the child just come out of the
+fogs.
+
+And true it was that all these powers were centred in one famous man,
+known among the laity as “Parson Upandown.” For the Reverend Turner
+Upround, to give him his proper name, was a doctor of divinity, a
+justice of the peace, and the present rector of Flamborough. Of all his
+offices and powers, there was not one that he overstrained; and all that
+knew him, unless they were thorough-going rogues and vagabonds, loved
+him. Not that he was such a soft-spoken man as many were, who thought
+more evil; but because of his deeds and nature, which were of the
+kindest. He did his utmost, on demand of duty, to sacrifice this nature
+to his stern position as pastor and master of an up-hill parish, with
+many wrong things to be kept under. But while he succeeded in the form
+now and then, he failed continually in the substance.
+
+This gentleman was not by any means a fool, unless a kind heart proves
+folly. At Cambridge he had done very well, in the early days of the
+tripos, and was chosen fellow and tutor of Gonville and Caius College.
+But tiring of that dull round in his prime, he married, and took to a
+living; and the living was one of the many upon which a perpetual faster
+can barely live, unless he can go naked also, and keep naked children.
+Now the parsons had not yet discovered the glorious merits of hard
+fasting, but freely enjoyed, and with gratitude to God, the powers with
+which He had blessed them. Happily Dr. Upround had a solid income of
+his own, and (like a sound mathematician) he took a wife of terms
+coincident. So, without being wealthy, they lived very well, and helped
+their poorer neighbors.
+
+Such a man generally thrives in the thriving of his flock, and does not
+harry them. He gives them spiritual food enough to support them without
+daintiness, and he keeps the proper distinction between the Sunday and
+the poorer days. He clangs no bell of reproach upon a Monday, when the
+squire is leading the lady in to dinner, and the laborer sniffing at his
+supper pot; and he lets the world play on a Saturday, while he works his
+own head to find good ends for the morrow. Because he is a wise man who
+knows what other men are, and how seldom they desire to be told the
+same thing more than a hundred and four times in a year. Neither did
+his clerical skill stop here; for Parson Upround thought twice about it
+before he said anything to rub sore consciences, even when he had them
+at his mercy, and silent before him, on a Sunday. He behaved like a
+gentleman in this matter, where so much temptation lurks, looking always
+at the man whom he did not mean to hit, so that the guilty one received
+it through him, and felt himself better by comparison. In a word, this
+parson did his duty well, and pleasantly for all his flock; and nothing
+imbittered him, unless a man pretended to doctrine without holy orders.
+
+For the doctor reasoned thus--and sound it sounds--if divinity is a
+matter for Tom, Dick, or Harry, how can there be degrees in it? He held
+a degree in it, and felt what it had cost; and not the parish only, but
+even his own wife, was proud to have a doctor every Sunday. And his wife
+took care that his rich red hood, kerseymere small-clothes, and black
+silk stockings upon calves of dignity, were such that his congregation
+scorned the surgeons all the way to Beverley.
+
+Happy in a pleasant nature, kindly heart, and tranquil home, he was also
+happy in those awards of life in which men are helpless. He was blessed
+with a good wife and three good children, doing well, and vigorous and
+hardy as the air and clime and cliffs. His wife was not quite of his
+own age, but old enough to understand and follow him faithfully down the
+slope of years. A wife with mind enough to know that a husband is not
+faultless, and with heart enough to feel that if he were, she would not
+love him so. And under her were comprised their children--two boys at
+school, and a baby-girl at home.
+
+So far, the rector of this parish was truly blessed and blessing. But
+in every man's lot must be some crook, since this crooked world turned
+round. In Parson Upround's lot the crook might seem a very small one;
+but he found it almost too big for him. His dignity and peace of mind,
+large good-will of ministry and strong Christian sense of magistracy,
+all were sadly pricked and wounded by a very small thorn in the flesh of
+his spirit.
+
+Almost every honest man is the rightful owner of a nickname. When he
+was a boy at school he could not do without one, and if the other boys
+valued him, perhaps he had a dozen. And afterward, when there is less
+perception of right and wrong and character, in the weaker time of
+manhood, he may earn another, if the spirit is within him.
+
+But woe is him if a nasty foe, or somebody trying to be one, annoyed for
+the moment with him, yet meaning no more harm than pepper, smite him to
+the quick, at venture, in his most retired and privy-conscienced hole.
+And when this is done by a Nonconformist to a Doctor of Divinity, and
+the man who does it owes some money to the man he does it to, can the
+latter gentleman take a large and genial view of his critics.
+
+This gross wrong and ungrateful outrage was inflicted thus. A leading
+Methodist from Filey town, who owed the doctor half a guinea, came one
+summer and set up his staff in the hollow of a limekiln, where he lived
+upon fish for change of diet, and because he could get it for nothing.
+This was a man of some eloquence, and his calling in life was cobbling,
+and to encourage him therein, and keep him from theology, the rector
+not only forgot his half guinea, but sent him three or four pairs
+of riding-boots to mend, and let him charge his own price, which was
+strictly heterodox. As a part of the bargain, this fellow came to
+church, and behaved as well as could be hoped of a man who had received
+his money. He sat by a pillar, and no more than crossed his legs at the
+worst thing that disagreed with him. And it might have done him good,
+and made a decent cobbler of him, if the parson had only held him when
+he got him on the hook. But this is the very thing which all great
+preachers are too benevolent to do. Dr. Upround looked at this sinner,
+who was getting into a fright upon his own account, though not a bad
+preacher when he could afford it; and the cobbler could no more look up
+to the doctor than when he charged him a full crown beyond the contract.
+In his kindness for all who seemed convinced of sin, the good preacher
+halted, and looked at Mr. Jobbins with a soft, relaxing gaze. Jobbins
+appeared as if he would come to church forever, and never cheat any
+sound clergyman again; whereupon the generous divine omitted a whole
+page of menaces prepared for him, and passed prematurely to the tender
+strain which always winds up a good sermon.
+
+Now what did Jobbins do in return for all this magnanimous mercy?
+Invited to dine with the senior church-warden upon the strength of
+having been at church, and to encourage him for another visit, and being
+asked, as soon as ever decency permitted, what he thought of Parson
+Upround's doctrine, between two crackles of young griskin (come straight
+from the rectory pig-sty), he was grieved to express a stern opinion
+long remembered at Flamborough:
+
+“Ca' yo yon mon 'Dr. Uproond?' I ca' un 'Dr. Upandoon.'”
+
+From that day forth the rector of the parish was known far and wide as
+“Dr. Upandown,” even among those who loved him best. For the name well
+described his benevolent practice of undoing any harsh thing he might
+have said, sometimes by a smile, and very often with a shilling, or a
+basket of spring cabbages. So that Mrs. Upround, when buttoning up his
+coat--which he always forgot to do for himself--did it with the words,
+“My dear, now scold no one; really it is becoming too expensive.” “Shall
+I abandon duty,” he would answer, with some dignity, “while a shilling
+is sufficient to enforce it?”
+
+Dr. Upround's people had now found out that their minister and
+magistrate discharged his duty toward his pillow, no less than to his
+pulpit. His parish had acquired, through the work of generations, a
+habit of getting up at night, and being all alive at cock-crow; and the
+rector (while very new amongst them) tried to bow--or rather rise--to
+night-watch. But a little of that exercise lasted him for long; and he
+liked to talk of it afterward, but for the present was obliged to drop
+it. For he found himself pale, when his wife made him see himself; and
+his hours of shaving were so dreadful; and scarcely a bit of fair dinner
+could be got, with the whole of the day thrown out so. In short, he
+settled it wisely that the fishers of fish must yield to the habits of
+fish, which can not be corrected; but the fishers of men (who can live
+without catching them) need not be up to all their hours, but may take
+them reasonably.
+
+His parishioners--who could do very well without him, as far as
+that goes, all the week, and by no means wanted him among their
+boats--joyfully left him to his own time of day, and no more worried
+him out of season than he worried them so. It became a matter of right
+feeling with them not to ring a big bell, which the rector had put up to
+challenge everybody's spiritual need, until the stable clock behind the
+bell had struck ten and finished gurgling.
+
+For this reason, on St. Swithin's morn, in the said year 1782, the
+grannies, wives, and babes of Flamborough, who had been to help the
+launch, but could not pull the laboring oar, nor even hold the tiller,
+spent the time till ten o'clock in seeing to their own affairs--the
+most laudable of all pursuits for almost any woman. And then, with some
+little dispute among them (the offspring of the merest accident), they
+arrived in some force at the gate of Dr. Upround, and no woman liked to
+pull the bell, and still less to let another woman do it for her. But an
+old man came up who was quite deaf, and every one asked him to do it.
+
+In spite of the scarcity of all good things, Mrs. Cockscroft had
+thoroughly fed the little stranger, and washed him, and undressed him,
+and set him up in her own bed, and wrapped him in her woollen shawl,
+because he shivered sadly; and there he stared about with wondering
+eyes, and gave great orders--so far as his new nurse could make out--but
+speaking gibberish, as she said, and flying into a rage because it was
+out of Christian knowledge. But he seemed to understand some English,
+although he could only pronounce two words, both short, and in such
+conjunction quite unlawful for any except the highest Spiritual Power.
+Mrs. Cockscroft, being a pious woman, hoped that her ears were wrong,
+or else that the words were foreign and meant no harm, though the
+child seemed to take in much of what was said, and when asked his name,
+answered, wrathfully, and as if everybody was bound to know, “Izunsabe!
+Izunsabe!”
+
+But now, when brought before Dr. Upround, no child of the very best
+English stock could look more calm and peaceful. He could walk well
+enough, but liked better to be carried; and the kind woman who had so
+taken him up was only too proud to carry him. Whatever the rector and
+magistrate might say, her meaning was to keep this little one, with her
+husband's good consent, which she was sure of getting.
+
+“Set him down, ma'am,” the doctor said, when he had heard from half a
+dozen good women all about him; “Mistress Cockscroft, put him on his
+legs, and let me question him.”
+
+But the child resisted this proceeding. With nature's inborn and just
+loathing of examination, he spun upon his little heels, and swore with
+all his might, at the same time throwing up his hands and twirling his
+thumbs in a very odd and foreign way.
+
+“What a shocking child!” cried Mrs. Upround, who was come to know all
+about it. “Jane, run away with Miss Janetta.”
+
+“The child is not to blame,” said the rector, “but only the people who
+have brought him up. A prettier or more clever little head I have never
+seen in all my life; and we studied such things at Cambridge. My fine
+little fellow, shake hands with me.”
+
+The boy broke off his vicious little dance, and looked up at this tall
+gentleman with great surprise. His dark eyes dwelt upon the parson's
+kindly face, with that power of inquiry which the very young possess,
+and then he put both little hands into the gentleman's, and burst into a
+torrent of the most heart-broken tears.
+
+“Poor little man!” said the rector, very gently, taking him up in his
+arms and patting the silky black curls, while great drops fell, and
+a nose was rubbed on his shoulder; “it is early for you to begin bad
+times. Why, how old are you, if you please?”
+
+The little boy sat up on the kind man's arm, and poked a small
+investigating finger into the ear that was next to him, and the locks
+just beginning to be marked with gray; and then he said, “Sore,” and
+tossed his chin up, evidently meaning, “Make your best of that.” And the
+women drew a long breath, and nudged at one another.
+
+“Well done! Four years old, my dear. You see that he understands English
+well enough,” said the parson to his parishioners: “he will tell us all
+about himself by-and-by, if we do not hurry him. You think him a French
+child. I do not, though the name which he gives himself, 'Izunsabe,'
+has a French aspect about it. Let me think. I will try him with a French
+interrogation: 'Parlez-vous Francais, mon enfan?'”
+
+Dr. Upround watched the effect of his words with outward calm, but an
+inward flutter. For if this clever child should reply in French, the
+doctor could never go on with it, but must stand there before his
+congregation in a worse position than when he lost his place, as
+sometimes happened, in a sermon. With wild temerity he had given vent to
+the only French words within his knowledge; and he determined to follow
+them up with Latin if the worst came to the worst.
+
+But luckily no harm came of this, but, contrariwise, a lasting good.
+For the child looked none the wiser, while the doctor's influence was
+increased.
+
+“Aha!” the good parson cried. “I was sure that he was no Frenchman.
+But we must hear something about him very soon, for what you tell me is
+impossible. If he had come from the sea, he must have been wet; it could
+never be otherwise. Whereas, his linen clothes are dry, and even quite
+lately fullered--ironed you might call it.”
+
+“Please your worship,” cried Mrs. Cockscroft, who was growing wild with
+jealousy, “I did up all his little things, hours and hours ere your
+hoose was up.”
+
+“Ah, you had night-work! To be sure! Were his clothes dry or wet when
+you took them off?”
+
+“Not to say dry, your worship; and yet not to say very wet. Betwixt and
+between, like my good master's, when he cometh from a pour of rain, or a
+heavy spray. And the color of the land was upon them here and there.
+And the gold tags were sewn with something wonderful. My best pair of
+scissors would not touch it. I was frightened to put them to the tub,
+your worship; but they up and shone lovely like a tailor's buttons. My
+master hath found him, Sir; and it lies with him to keep him. And the
+Lord hath taken away our Bob.”
+
+“It is true,” said Dr. Upround, gently, and placing the child in her
+arms again, “the Almighty has chastened you very sadly. This child is
+not mine to dispose of, nor yours; but if he will comfort you, keep him
+till we hear of him. I will take down in writing the particulars of the
+case, when Captain Robin has come home and had his rest--say, at this
+time to-morrow, or later; and then you will sign them, and they shall be
+published. For you know, Mrs. Cockscroft, however much you may be taken
+with him, you must not turn kidnapper. Moreover, it is needful, as there
+may have been some wreck (though none of you seem to have heard of any),
+that this strange occurrence should be made known. Then, if nothing is
+heard of it, you can keep him, and may the Lord bless him to you!”
+
+Without any more ado, she kissed the child, and wanted to carry him
+straight away, after courtesying to his worship; but all the other women
+insisted on a smack of him, for pity's sake, and the pleasure of the
+gold, and to confirm the settlement. And a settlement it was, for
+nothing came of any publication of the case, such as in those days could
+be made without great expense and exertion.
+
+So the boy grew up, tall, brave, and comely, and full of the spirit of
+adventure, as behooved a boy cast on the winds. So far as that goes, his
+foster-parents would rather have found him more steady and less comely,
+for if he was to step into their lost son's shoes, he might do it
+without seeming to outshine him. But they got over that little jealousy
+in time, when the boy began to be useful, and, so far as was possible,
+they kept him under by quoting against him the character of Bob,
+bringing it back from heaven of a much higher quality than ever it was
+upon the earth. In vain did this living child aspire to such level; how
+can an earthly boy compare with one who never did a wrong thing, as soon
+as he was dead?
+
+Passing that difficult question, and forbearing to compare a boy with
+angels, be he what he will, his first need (after that of victuals) is a
+name whereby his fellow-boys may know him. Is he to be shouted at with,
+“Come here, what's your name?” or is he to be called (as if in high
+rebuke), “Boy?” And yet there are grown-up folk who do all this without
+hesitation, failing to remember their own predicament at a by-gone
+period. Boys are as useful, in their way, as any other order; and if
+they can be said to do some mischief, they can not be said to do it
+negligently. It is their privilege and duty to be truly active; and
+their Maker, having spread a dull world before them, has provided them
+with gifts of play while their joints are supple.
+
+The present boy, having been born without a father or a mother (so far
+as could yet be discovered), was driven to do what our ancestors must
+have done when it was less needful. That is to say, to work his own name
+out by some distinctive process. When the parson had clearly shown him
+not to be a Frenchman, a large contumely spread itself about, by reason
+of his gold, and eyes, and hair, and name (which might be meant for
+Isaak), that he was sprung from a race more honored now than a hundred
+years ago. But the women declared that it could not be; and the rector
+desiring to christen him, because it might never have been done before,
+refused point-blank to put any “Isaac” in, and was satisfied with
+“Robin” only, the name of the man who had saved him.
+
+The rector showed deep knowledge of his flock, which looked upon Jews
+as the goats of the Kingdom; for any Jew must die for a world of
+generations ere ever a Christian thinks much of him. But finding him not
+to be a Jew, the other boys, instead of being satisfied, condemned him
+for a Dutchman.
+
+Whatever he was, the boy throve well, and being so flouted by his
+playmates, took to thoughts and habits and amusements of his own.
+In-door life never suited him at all, nor too much of hard learning,
+although his capacity was such that he took more advancement in an hour
+than the thick heads of young Flamborough made in a whole leap-year of
+Sundays. For any Flamburian boy was considered a “Brain Scholar,” and a
+“Head-Languager,” when he could write down the parson's text, and chalk
+up a fish on the weigh-board so that his father or mother could tell in
+three guesses what manner of fish it was. And very few indeed had ever
+passed this trial.
+
+For young Robin it was a very hard thing to be treated so by the other
+boys. He could run, or jump, or throw a stone, or climb a rock with the
+best of them; but all these things he must do by himself, simply because
+he had no name. A feeble youth would have moped, but Robin only grew
+more resolute. Alone he did what the other boys would scarcely in
+competition dare. No crag was too steep for him, no cave too dangerous
+and wave-beaten, no race of the tide so strong and swirling as to scare
+him of his wits. He seemed to rejoice in danger, having very little else
+to rejoice in; and he won for himself by nimble ways and rapid turns on
+land and sea, the name of “Lithe,” or “Lyth,” and made it famous even
+far inland.
+
+For it may be supposed that his love of excitement, versatility,
+and daring demanded a livelier outlet than the slow toil of deep-sea
+fishing. To the most patient, persevering, and long-suffering of the
+arts, Robin Lyth did not take kindly, although he was so handy with a
+boat. Old Robin vainly strove to cast his angling mantle over him. The
+gifts of the youth were brighter and higher; he showed an inborn fitness
+for the lofty development of free trade. Eminent powers must force their
+way, as now they were doing with Napoleon; and they did the same with
+Robin Lyth, without exacting tithe in kind of all the foremost human
+race.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+IN A LANE, NOT ALONE
+
+
+Stephen Anerley's daughter was by no means of a crooked mind, but open
+as the day in all things, unless any one mistrusted her, and showed it
+by cross-questioning. When this was done, she resented it quickly by
+concealing the very things which she would have told of her own accord;
+and it so happened that the person to whom of all she should have been
+most open, was the one most apt to check her by suspicious curiosity.
+And now her mother already began to do this, as concerned the smuggler,
+knowing from the revenue officer that Mary must have seen him. Mary,
+being a truthful damsel, told no lies about it; but, on the other hand,
+she did not rush forth with all the history, as she probably would have
+done if left unexamined. And so she said nothing about the ear-ring, or
+the run that was to come off that week, or the riding-skirt, or a host
+of little things, including her promise to visit Bempton Lane.
+
+On the other hand, she had a mind to tell her father, and take his
+opinion about it all. But he was a little cross that evening, not with
+her, but with the world at large; and that discouraged her; and then she
+thought that being an officer of the king--as he liked to call himself
+sometimes--he might feel bound to give information about the impending
+process of free trade; which to her would be a breach of honor,
+considering how she knew of it.
+
+Upon the whole, she heartily wished that she never had seen that Robin
+Lyth; and then she became ashamed of herself for indulging such a
+selfish wish. For he might have been lying dead but for her; and then
+what would become of the many poor people whose greatest comfort he was
+said to be? And what good could arise from his destruction, if cruel
+people compassed it? Free trade must be carried on, for the sake of
+everybody, including Captain Carroway himself; and if an old and ugly
+man succeeded a young and generous one as leader of the free-trade
+movement, all the women in the country would put the blame on her.
+
+Looking at these things loftily, and with a strong determination not
+to think twice of what any one might say who did not understand the
+subject, Mary was forced at last to the stern conclusion that she must
+keep her promise. Not only because it was a promise--although that went
+a very long way with her--but also because there seemed no other chance
+of performing a positive duty. Simple honesty demanded that she should
+restore to the owner a valuable, and beyond all doubt important, piece
+of property. Two hours had she spent in looking for it, and deprived
+her dear father of his breakfast shrimps; and was all this trouble to be
+thrown away, and herself, perhaps, accused of theft, because her mother
+was so short and sharp in wanting to know everything, and to turn it her
+own way?
+
+The trinket, which she had found at last, seemed to be a very uncommon
+and precious piece of jewelry; it was made of pure gold, minutely chased
+and threaded with curious workmanship, in form like a melon, and bearing
+what seemed to be characters of some foreign language: there might be
+a spell, or even witchcraft, in it, and the sooner it was out of her
+keeping the better. Nevertheless she took very good care of it, wrapping
+it in lamb's-wool, and peeping at it many times a day, to be sure that
+it was safe, until it made her think of the owner so much, and the many
+wonders she had heard about him, that she grew quite angry with herself
+and it, and locked it away, and then looked at it again.
+
+As luck would have it, on the very day when Mary was to stroll down
+Bempton Lane (not to meet any one, of course, but simply for the merest
+chance of what might happen), her father had business at Driffield corn
+market, which would keep him from home nearly all the day. When his
+daughter heard of it she was much cast down; for she hoped that he
+might have been looking about on the northern part of the farm, as he
+generally was in the afternoon; and although he could not see Bempton
+Lane at all, perhaps, without some newly acquired power of seeing round
+sharp corners, still it would have been a comfort and a strong resource
+for conscience to have felt that he was not so very far away. And this
+feeling of want made his daughter resolve to have some one at any
+rate near her. If Jack had only been at home, she need have sought no
+further, for he would have entered into all her thoughts about it, and
+obeyed her orders beautifully. But Willie was quite different, and hated
+any trouble, being spoiled so by his mother and the maidens all around
+them.
+
+However, in such a strait, what was there to do but to trust in Willie,
+who was old enough, being five years in front of Mary, and then to try
+to make him sensible? Willie Anerley had no idea that anybody--far less
+his own sister--could take such a view of him. He knew himself to be,
+and all would say the same of him, superior in his original gifts,
+and his manner of making use of them, to the rest of the family put
+together. He had spent a month in Glasgow, when the whole place was
+astir with the ferment of many great inventions, and another month in
+Edinburgh, when that noble city was aglow with the dawn of large ideas;
+also, he had visited London, foremost of his family, and seen enough new
+things there to fill all Yorkshire with surprise; and the result of such
+wide experience was that he did not like hard work at all. Neither could
+he even be content to accept and enjoy, without labor of his own, the
+many good things provided for him. He was always trying to discover
+something which never seemed to answer, and continually flying after
+something new, of which he never got fast hold. In a word, he was
+spoiled, by nature first, and then by circumstances, for the peaceful
+life of his ancestors, and the unacknowledged blessings of a farmer.
+
+“Willie dear, will you come with me?” Mary said to him that day,
+catching him as he ran down stairs to air some inspiration. “Will you
+come with me for just one hour? I wish you would; and I would be so
+thankful.”
+
+“Child, it is quite impossible,” he answered, with a frown which set off
+his delicate eyebrows and high but rather narrow forehead; “you always
+want me at the very moment when I have the most important work in hand.
+Any childish whim of yours matters more than hours and hours of hard
+labor.”
+
+“Oh, Willie, but you know how I try to help you, and all the patterns
+I cut out last week! Do come for once, Willie; if you refuse, you will
+never, never forgive yourself.”
+
+Willie Anerley was as good-natured as any self-indulged youth can be; he
+loved his sister in his way, and was indebted to her for getting out of
+a great many little scrapes. He saw how much she was in earnest now, and
+felt some desire to know what it was about. Moreover--which settled
+the point--he was getting tired of sticking to one thing for a time
+unusually long with him. But he would not throw away the chance of
+scoring a huge debt of gratitude.
+
+“Well, do what you like with me,” he answered, with a smile; “I never
+can have my own way five minutes. It serves me quite right for being so
+good-natured.”
+
+Mary gave him a kiss, which must have been an object of ambition to
+anybody else; but it only made him wipe his mouth; and presently the two
+set forth upon the path toward Bempton.
+
+Robin Lyth had chosen well his place for meeting Mary. The lane (of
+which he knew every yard as well as he knew the rocks themselves)
+was deep and winding, and fringed with bushes, so that an active and
+keen-eyed man might leap into thicket almost before there was a fair
+chance of shooting him. He knew well enough that he might trust Mary;
+but he never could be sure that the bold “coast-riders,” despairing by
+this time of catching him at sea, and longing for the weight of gold
+put upon his head, might not be setting privy snares to catch him in his
+walks abroad. They had done so when they pursued him up the Dike; and
+though he was inclined to doubt the strict legality of that proceeding,
+he could not see his way to a fair discussion of it, in case of their
+putting a bullet through him. And this consideration made him careful.
+
+The brother and sister went on well by the foot-path over the uplands of
+the farm, and crossing the neck of the Flamburn peninsula, tripped away
+merrily northward. The wheat looked healthy, and the barley also, and a
+four-acre patch of potatoes smelled sweetly (for the breeze of them was
+pleasant in their wholesome days), and Willie, having overworked his
+brain, according to his own account of it, strode along loftily before
+his sister, casting over his shoulder an eddy of some large ideas with
+which he had been visited before she interrupted him. But as nothing
+ever came of them, they need not here be stated. From a practical point
+of view, however, as they both had to live upon the profits of the farm,
+it pleased them to observe what a difference there was when they had
+surmounted the chine and began to descend toward the north upon other
+people's land. Here all was damp and cold and slow; and chalk looked
+slimy instead of being clean; and shadowy places had an oozy cast; and
+trees (wherever they could stand) were facing the east with wrinkled
+visage, and the west with wiry beards. Willie (who had, among other
+great inventions, a scheme for improvement of the climate) was reminded
+at once of all the things he meant to do in that way; and making, as he
+always did, a great point of getting observations first--a point whereon
+he stuck fast mainly--without any time for delay he applied himself to a
+rapid study of the subject. He found some things just like other things
+which he had seen in Scotland, yet differing so as to prove, more
+clearly than even their resemblance did, the value of his discovery.
+
+“Look!” he cried; “can anything be clearer? The cause of all these evils
+is not (as an ignorant person might suppose) the want of sunshine, or
+too much wet, but an inadequate movement of the air--”
+
+“Why, I thought it was always blowing up here. The very last time I
+came, my bonnet strings were split.”
+
+“You do not understand me; you never do. When I say inadequate, I mean,
+of course, incorrect, inaccurate, unequable. Now the air is a fluid; you
+may stare as you like, Mary, but the air has been proved to be a
+fluid. Very well; no fluid in large bodies moves with an equal velocity
+throughout. Part of it is rapid and part quite stagnant. The stagnant
+places of the air produce this green scum, this mossy, unwholesome, and
+injurious stuff; while the overrapid motion causes this iron appearance,
+this hard surface, and general sterility. By the simplest of simple
+contrivances, I make this evil its own remedy. An equable impulse given
+to the air produces an adequate uniform flow, preventing stagnation in
+one place, and excessive vehemence in another. And the beauty of it is
+that by my new invention I make the air itself correct and regulate its
+own inequalities.”
+
+“How clever you are, to be sure!” exclaimed Mary, wondering that her
+father could not see it. “Oh, Willie, you will make your fortune by it!
+However do you do it?”
+
+“The simplicity of it is such that even you can understand it. All
+great discoveries are simple. I fix in a prominent situation a large
+and vertically revolving fan, of a light and vibrating substance. The
+movement of the air causes this to rotate by the mere force of the
+impact. The rotation and the vibration of the fan convert an irregular
+impulse into a steady and equable undulation; and such is the elasticity
+of the fluid called, in popular language, 'the air,' that for miles
+around the rotation of this fan regulates the circulation, modifies
+extremes, annihilates sterility, and makes it quite impossible for moss
+and green scum and all this sour growth to live. Even you can see, Mary,
+how beautiful it is.”
+
+“Yes, that I can,” she answered, simply, as they turned the corner upon
+a large windmill, with arms revolving merrily; “but, Willie dear, would
+not Farmer Topping's mill, perpetually going as it is, answer the same
+purpose? And yet the moss seems to be as thick as ever here, and the
+ground as naked.”
+
+“Tush!” cried Willie. “Stuff and nonsense! When will you girls
+understand? Good-by! I will throw away no more time on you.”
+
+Without stopping to finish his sentence he was off and out of sight
+both of the mill and Mary, before the poor girl, who had not the least
+intention of offending him, could even beg his pardon, or say how much
+she wanted him; for she had not dared as yet to tell him what was the
+purpose of her walk, his nature being such that no one, not even his own
+mother, could tell what conclusion he might come to upon any practical
+question. He might rush off at once to put the revenue men on the
+smuggler's track, or he might stop his sister from going, or he might
+(in the absence of his father) order a feast to be prepared, and fetch
+the outlaw to be his guest. So Mary had resolved not to tell him until
+the last moment, when he could do none of these things.
+
+But now she must either go on all alone, or give up her purpose and
+break her promise. After some hesitation she determined to go on, for
+the place would scarcely seem so very lonely now with the windmill
+in view, which would always remind her henceforth of her dear brother
+William. It was perfectly certain that Captain Robert Lyth, whose fame
+for chivalry was everywhere, and whose character was all in all to him
+with the ladies who bought his silks and lace, would see her through all
+danger caused by confidence in him; and really it was too bad of her
+to admit any paltry misgivings. But reason as she might, her young
+conscience told her that this was not the proper thing to do, and she
+made up her mind not to do it again. Then she laughed at the notion of
+being ever even asked, and told herself that she was too conceited; and
+to cut the matter short, went very bravely down the hill.
+
+The lane, which came winding from the beach up to the windmill, was as
+pretty a lane as may anywhere be found in any other county than that of
+Devon. With a Devonshire lane it could not presume to vie, having little
+of the glorious garniture of fern, and nothing of the crystal brook that
+leaps at every corner; no arches of tall ash, keyed with dog-rose, and
+not much of honeysuckle, and a sight of other wants which people feel
+who have lived in the plenitude of everything. But in spite of all that,
+the lane was very fine for Yorkshire.
+
+On the other hand, Mary had prettier ankles, and a more graceful and
+lighter walk, than the Devonshire lanes, which like to echo something,
+for the most part seem accustomed to; and the short dress of the time
+made good such favorable facts when found. Nor was this all that could
+be said, for the maiden (while her mother was so busy pickling cabbage,
+from which she drove all intruders) had managed to forget what the day
+of the week was, and had opened the drawer that should be locked
+up until Sunday. To walk with such a handsome tall fellow as Willie
+compelled her to look like something too, and without any thought of it
+she put her best hat on, and a very pretty thing with some French name,
+and made of a delicate peach-colored silk, which came down over her
+bosom, and tied in the neatest of knots at the small of her back, which
+at that time of life was very small. All these were the gifts of her
+dear uncle Popplewell, upon the other side of Filey, who might have been
+married for forty years, but nobody knew how long it was, because he had
+no children, and so he made Mary his darling. And this ancient gentleman
+had leanings toward free trade.
+
+Whether these goods were French or not--which no decent person could
+think of asking--no French damsel could have put them on better, or
+shown a more pleasing appearance in them; for Mary's desire was to
+please all people who meant no harm to her--as nobody could--and yet
+to let them know that her object was only to do what was right, and to
+never think of asking whether she looked this, that, or the other. Her
+mother, as a matter of duty, told her how plain she was almost every
+day; but the girl was not of that opinion; and when Mrs. Anerley
+finished her lecture (as she did nine times in ten) by turning the glass
+to the wall, and declaring that beauty was a snare skin-deep, with a
+frown of warning instead of a smile of comfort, then Mary believed in
+her looking-glass again, and had the smile of comfort on her own face.
+
+However, she never thought of that just now, but only of how she could
+do her duty, and have no trouble in her own mind with thinking, and
+satisfy her father when she told him all, as she meant to do, when there
+could be no harm done to any one; and this, as she heartily hoped, would
+be to-morrow. And truly, if there did exist any vanity at all, it was
+not confined to the sex in which it is so much more natural and comely.
+
+For when a very active figure came to light suddenly, at a little elbow
+of the lane, and with quick steps advanced toward Mary, she was lost
+in surprise at the gayety, not to say grandeur, of its apparel. A
+broad hat, looped at the side, and having a pointed black crown, with a
+scarlet feather and a dove-colored brim, sat well upon the mass of crisp
+black curls. A short blue jacket of the finest Flemish cloth, and set
+(not too thickly) with embossed silver buttons, left properly open the
+strong brown neck, while a shirt of pale blue silk, with a turned-down
+collar of fine needle-work, fitted, without a wrinkle or a pucker, the
+broad and amply rounded chest. Then a belt of brown leather, with an
+anchor clasp, and empty loops for either fire-arm or steel, supported
+true sailor's trousers of the purest white and the noblest man-of-war
+cut; and where these widened at the instep shone a lovely pair of pumps,
+with buckles radiant of best Bristol diamonds. The wearer of all these
+splendors smiled, and seemed to become them as they became him.
+
+“Well,” thought Mary, “how free trade must pay! What a pity that he is
+not in the Royal Navy!”
+
+With his usual quickness, and the self-esteem which added such lustre to
+his character, the smuggler perceived what was passing in her mind, but
+he was not rude enough to say so.
+
+“Young lady,” he began--and Mary, with all her wisdom, could not help
+being fond of that--“young lady, I was quite sure that you would keep
+your word.”
+
+“I never do anything else,” she answered, showing that she scarcely
+looked at him. “I have found this for you, and then good-by.”
+
+“Surely you will wait to hear my thanks, and to know what made me dare
+to ask you, after all you had done for me already, to begin again for
+me. But I am such an outcast that I never should have done it.”
+
+“I never saw any one look more thoroughly unlike an outcast,” Mary said;
+and then she was angry with herself for speaking, and glancing, and,
+worst of all, for smiling,
+
+“Ladies who live on land can never understand what we go through,” Robin
+replied, in his softest voice, as rich as the murmur of the summer sea.
+“When we expect great honors, we try to look a little tidy, as any one
+but a common boor would do; and we laugh at ourselves for trying to look
+well, after all the knocking about we get. Our time is short--we must
+make the most of it.”
+
+“Oh, please not to talk in such a dreadful way,” said Mary.
+
+“You remind me of my dear friend Dr. Upround--the very best man in the
+whole world, I believe. He always says to me, 'Robin, Robin--'”
+
+“What! is Dr. Upandown a friend of yours?” Mary exclaimed, in amazement,
+and with a stoppage of the foot that was poised for quick departure.
+
+“Dr. Upandown, as many people call him,” said the smuggler, with a tone
+of condemnation, “is the best and dearest friend I have, next to Captain
+and Mistress Cockscroft, who may have been heard of at Anerley Manor.
+Dr. Upround is our magistrate and clergyman, and he lets people say what
+they like against me, while he honors me with his friendship. I must not
+stay long to thank you even, because I am going to the dear old doctor's
+for supper at seven o'clock and a game of chess.”
+
+“Oh dear! oh dear! And he is such a Justice! And yet they shot at you
+last week! It makes me wonder when I hear such things.”
+
+“Young lady, it makes everybody wonder. In my opinion there never could
+be a more shameful murder than to shoot me; and yet but for you it would
+surely have been done.”
+
+“You must not dwell upon such things,” said Mary; “they may have a very
+bad effect upon your mind. But good-by, Captain Lyth; I forgot that I
+was robbing Dr. Upround of your society.”
+
+“Shall I be so ungrateful as not to see you safe upon your own land
+after all your trouble? My road to Flamborough lies that way. Surely you
+will not refuse to hear what made me so anxious about this bauble,
+which now will be worth ten times as much. I never saw it look so bright
+before.”
+
+“It--it must be the sand has made it shine,” the maiden stammered, with
+a fine bright blush; “it does the same to my shrimping net.”
+
+“Ah, shrimping is a very fine pursuit! There is nothing I love better;
+what pools I could show you, if I only might; pools where you may fill
+a sack with large prawns in a single tide--pools known to nobody but
+myself. When do you think of going shrimping next?”
+
+“Perhaps next summer I may try again, if Captain Carroway will come with
+me.”
+
+“That is too unkind of you. How very harsh you are to me! I could hardly
+have believed it after all that you have done. And you really do not
+care to hear the story of this relic?”
+
+“If I could stop, I should like it very much. But my brother, who came
+with me, may perhaps be waiting for me.” Mary knew that this was not
+very likely; still, it was just possible, for Willie's ill tempers
+seldom lasted very long; and she wanted to let the smuggler know that
+she had not come all alone to meet him.
+
+“I shall not be two minutes,” Robin Lyth replied; “I have been forced to
+learn short talking. May I tell you about this trinket?”
+
+“Yes, if you will only begin at once, and finish by the time we get to
+that corner.”
+
+“That is very short measure for a tale,” said Robin, though he liked
+her all the better for such qualities; “however, I will try; only walk
+a little slower. Nobody knows where I was born, any more than they know
+how or why. Only when I came upon this coast as a very little boy, and
+without knowing anything about it, they say that I had very wonderful
+buttons of gold upon a linen dress, adorned with gold-lace, which I used
+to wear on Sundays. Dr. Upround ordered them to keep those buttons, and
+was to have had them in his own care; but before that, all of them were
+lost save two. My parents, as I call them from their wonderful goodness,
+kinder than the ones who have turned me on the world (unless themselves
+went out of it), resolved to have my white coat done up grandly, when
+I grew too big for it, and to lay it by in lavender; and knowing of a
+great man in the gold-lace trade, as far away as Scarborough, they sent
+it by a fishing-smack to him, with people whom they knew thoroughly.
+That was the last of it ever known here. The man swore a manifest that
+he never saw it, and threatened them with libel; and the smack was
+condemned, and all her hands impressed, because of some trifle she
+happened to carry; and nobody knows any more of it. But two of the
+buttons had fallen off, and good mother had put them by, to give a last
+finish to the coat herself; and when I grew up, and had to go to sea
+at night, they were turned into a pair of ear-rings. There, now, Miss
+Anerley, I have not been long, and you know all about it.”
+
+“How very lonesome it must be for you,” said Mary, with a gentle gaze,
+which, coming from such lovely eyes, went straight into his heart, “to
+have no one belonging to you by right, and to seem to belong to nobody!
+I am sure I can not tell whatever I should do without any father, or
+mother, or uncle, or even a cousin to be certain of.”
+
+“All the ladies seem to think that it is rather hard upon me,” Robin
+answered, with an excellent effort at a sigh; “but I do my very best
+to get on without them. And one thing that helps me most of all is when
+kind ladies, who have good hearts, allow me to talk to them as if I had
+a sister. This makes me forget what I am sometimes.”
+
+“You never should try to forget what you are. Everybody in the world
+speaks well of you. Even that cruel Lieutenant Carroway can not help
+admiring you. And if you have taken to free trade, what else could you
+do, when you had no friends, and even your coat was stolen?”
+
+“High-minded people take that view of it, I know. But I do not pretend
+to any such excuse. I took to free trade for the sake of my friends--to
+support the old couple who have been so good to me.”
+
+“That is better still; it shows such good principle. My uncle Popplewell
+has studied the subject of what they call 'political economy,' and he
+says that the country requires free trade, and the only way to get it is
+to go on so that the government must give way at last. However, I need
+not instruct you about that; and you must not stop any longer.”
+
+“Miss Anerley, I will not encroach upon your kindness. You have said
+things that I never shall forget. On the Continent I meet very many
+ladies who tell me good things, and make me better; but not at all as
+you have done. A minute of talk with you is worth an hour with anybody
+else. But I fear that you laugh at me all the while, and are only too
+glad to be rid of me. Good-by. May I kiss your hand? God bless you!”
+
+Mary had no time to say a single word, or even to express her ideas by
+a look, before Robin Lyth, with all his bright apparel, was “conspicuous
+by his absence.” As a diving bird disappears from a gun, or a trout from
+a shadow on his hover, or even a debtor from his creditor, so the great
+free-trader had vanished into lightsome air, and left emptiness behind
+him.
+
+The young maid, having been prepared to yield him a few yards more of
+good advice, if he held out for another corner, now could only say to
+herself that she never had met such a wonderful man. So active, strong,
+and astonishingly brave; so thoroughly acquainted with foreign lands,
+yet superior to their ladies; so able to see all the meaning of good
+words, and to value them when offered quietly; so sweet in his manner,
+and voice, and looks; and with all his fame so unpretending, and--much
+as it frightened her to think it--really seeming to be afraid of her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+GRUMBLING AND GROWLING
+
+
+While these successful runs went on, and great authorities smiled at
+seeing the little authorities set at naught, and men of the revenue
+smote their breasts for not being born good smugglers, and the general
+public was well pleased, and congratulated them cordially upon their
+accomplishment of naught, one man there was whose noble spirit chafed
+and knew no comfort. He strode up and down at Coast-guard Point, and
+communed with himself, while Robin held sweet converse in the lane.
+
+“Why was I born?” the sad Carroway cried; “why was I thoroughly
+educated and trained in both services of the king, expected to rise, and
+beginning to rise, till a vile bit of splinter stopped me, and then sent
+down to this hole of a place to starve, and be laughed at, and baffled
+by a boy? Another lucky run, and the revenue bamboozled, and the whole
+of us sent upon a wild-goose chase! Every gapper-mouth zany grinning
+at me, and scoundrels swearing that I get my share! And the only time I
+have had my dinner with my knees crook'd, for at least a fortnight, was
+at Anerley Farm on Sunday. I am not sure that even they wouldn't turn
+against me; I am certain that pretty girl would. I've a great mind to
+throw it up--a great mind to throw it up. It is hardly the work for
+a gentleman born, and the grandson of a rear-admiral. Tinkers' and
+tailors' sons get the luck now; and a man of good blood is put on the
+back shelf, behind the blacking-bottles. A man who has battled for his
+country--”
+
+“Charles, are you coming to your dinner, once more?”
+
+“No, I am not. There's no dinner worth coming to. You and the children
+may eat the rat pie. A man who has battled for his country, and bled
+till all his veins were empty, and it took two men to hold him up,
+and yet waved his Sword at the head of them--it is the downright
+contradiction of the world in everything for him to poke about with pots
+and tubs, like a pig in a brewery, grain-hunting.”
+
+“Once more, Charles, there is next to nothing left. The children are
+eating for their very lives. If you stay out there another minute, you
+must take the consequence.”
+
+“Alas, that I should have so much stomach, and so little to put into it!
+My dear, put a little bit under a basin, if any of them has no appetite.
+I wanted just to think a little.”
+
+“Charles, they have all got tremendous appetites. It is the way the wind
+is. You may think by-and-by, but if you want to eat, you must do it now,
+or never.”
+
+“'Never' never suits me in that matter,” the brave lieutenant answered.
+“Matilda, put Geraldine to warm the pewter plate for me. Geraldine
+darling, you can do it with your mouth full.”
+
+The commander of the coast-guard turned abruptly from his long indignant
+stride, and entered the cottage provided for him, and which he had
+peopled so speedily.
+
+Small as it was, it looked beautifully clean and neat, and everybody
+used to wonder how Mrs. Carroway kept it so. But in spite of all her
+troubles and many complaints, she was very proud of this little house,
+with its healthful position and beautiful outlook over the bay of
+Bridlington. It stood in a niche of the low soft cliff, where now the
+sea-parade extends from the northern pier of Bridlington Quay; and when
+the roadstead between that and the point was filled with a fleet of
+every kind of craft, or, better still, when they all made sail at
+once--as happened when a trusty breeze arose--the view was lively, and
+very pleasant, and full of moving interest. Often one of his Majesty's
+cutters, Swordfish, Kestrel, or Albatross, would swoop in with all
+sail set, and hover, while the skipper came ashore to see the “Ancient
+Carroway,” as this vigilant officer was called; and sometimes even
+a sloop of war, armed brigantine, or light corvette, prowling for
+recruits, or cruising for their training, would run in under the Head,
+and overhaul every wind-bound ship with a very high hand.
+
+“Ancient Carroway”--as old friends called him, and even young people
+who had never seen him--was famous upon this coast now for nearly
+three degrees of latitude. He had dwelled here long, and in highly
+good content, hospitably treated by his neighbors, and himself more
+hospitable than his wife could wish, until two troubles in his life
+arose, and from year to year grew worse and worse. One of these troubles
+was the growth of mouths in number and size, that required to be filled;
+and the other trouble was the rampant growth of smuggling, and the glory
+of that upstart Robin Lyth. Now let it be lawful to take that subject
+first.
+
+Fair Robin, though not at all anxious for fame, but modestly willing
+to decline it, had not been successful--though he worked so much by
+night--in preserving sweet obscurity. His character was public, and set
+on high by fortune, to be gazed at from wholly different points of view.
+From their narrow and lime-eyed outlook the coast-guard beheld in
+him the latest incarnation of Old Nick; yet they hated him only in an
+abstract manner, and as men feel toward that evil one. Magistrates also,
+and the large protective powers, were arrayed against him, yet happy to
+abstain from laying hands, when their hands were their own, upon him.
+And many of the farmers, who should have been his warmest friends and
+best customers, were now so attached to their king and country, by
+bellicose warmth and army contracts, that instead of a guinea for a
+four-gallon anker, they would offer three crowns, or the exciseman.
+And not only conscience, but short cash, after three bad harvests,
+constrained them.
+
+Yet the staple of public opinion was sound, as it must be where women
+predominate. The best of women could not see why they should not have
+anything they wanted for less than it cost the maker. To gaze at a
+sister woman better dressed at half the money was simply to abjure every
+lofty principle. And to go to church with a counterfeit on, when the
+genuine lace was in the next pew on a body of inferior standing, was a
+downright outrage to the congregation, the rector, and all religion. A
+cold-blooded creature, with no pin-money, might reconcile it with her
+principles, if any she had, to stand up like a dowdy and allow a poor
+man to risk his life by shot and storm and starvation, and then to deny
+him a word or a look, because of his coming with the genuine thing at
+a quarter the price fat tradesmen asked, who never stirred out of their
+shops when it rained, for a thing that was a story and an imposition.
+Charity, duty, and common honesty to their good husbands in these bad
+times compelled them to make the very best of bargains; of which they
+got really more and more, as those brave mariners themselves bore
+witness, because of the depression in the free trade now and the
+glorious victories of England. Were they bound to pay three times the
+genuine value, and then look a figure, and be laughed at?
+
+And as for Captain Carroway, let him scold, and threaten, and stride
+about, and be jealous, because his wife dare not buy true things, poor
+creature--although there were two stories also about that, and the
+quantities of things that he got for nothing, whenever he was clever
+enough to catch them, which scarcely ever happened, thank goodness! Let
+Captain Carroway attend to his own business; unless he was much belied,
+he had a wife who would keep him to it. Who was Captain Carroway to come
+down here, without even being born in Yorkshire, and lay down the law,
+as if he owned the manor?
+
+Lieutenant Carroway had heard such questions, but disdained to answer
+them. He knew who he was, and what his grandfather had been, and he
+never cared a--short word--what sort of stuff long tongues might prate
+of him. Barbarous broad-drawlers, murderers of his Majesty's English,
+could they even pronounce the name of an officer highly distinguished
+for many years in both of the royal services? That was his description,
+and the Yorkshire yokels might go and read it--if read they could--in
+the pages of authority.
+
+Like the celebrated calf that sucked two cows, Carroway had drawn royal
+pay, though in very small drains, upon either element, beginning with a
+skeleton regiment, and then, when he became too hot for it, diving off
+into a frigate as a recommended volunteer. Here he was more at home,
+though he never ceased longing to be a general; and having the credit
+of fighting well ashore, he was looked at with interest when he fought a
+fight at sea. He fought it uncommonly well, and it was good, and so many
+men fell that he picked up his commission, and got into a fifty-two-gun
+ship. After several years of service, without promotion--for his
+grandfather's name was worn out now, and the wars were not properly
+constant--there came a very lively succession of fights, and Carroway
+got into all of them, or at least into all the best of them. And he
+ought to have gone up much faster than he did, and he must have done so
+but for his long lean jaws, the which are the worst things that any man
+can have. Not only because of their own consumption and slow length
+of leverage, but mainly on account of the sadness they impart, and the
+timid recollection of a hungry wolf, to the man who might have lifted up
+a fatter individual.
+
+But in Rodney's great encounter with the Spanish fleet, Carroway
+showed such a dauntless spirit, and received such a wound, that it was
+impossible not to pay him some attention. His name was near the bottom
+of a very long list, but it made a mark on some one's memory, depositing
+a chance of coming up some day, when he should be reported hit again.
+And so good was his luck that he soon was hit again, and a very bad
+hit it was; but still he got over it without promotion, because that
+enterprise was one in which nearly all our men ran away, and therefore
+required to be well pushed up for the sake of the national honor. When
+such things happen, the few who stay behind must be left behind in the
+Gazette as well. That wound, therefore, seemed at first to go against
+him, but he bandaged it, and plastered it, and hoped for better luck.
+And his third wound truly was a blessed one, a slight one, and taken in
+the proper course of things, without a slur upon any of his comrades.
+This set him up again with advancement and appointment, and enabled him
+to marry and have children seven.
+
+The lieutenant was now about fifty years of age, gallant and lively as
+ever, and resolute to attend to his duty and himself as well. His duty
+was now along shore, in command of the Coast-guard of the East District;
+for the loss of a good deal of one heel made it hard for him to step
+about as he should do when afloat. The place suited him, and he was fond
+of it, although he grumbled sometimes about his grandfather, and went
+on as if his office was beneath him. He abused all his men, and all the
+good ones liked him, and respected him for his clear English. And he
+enjoyed this free exercise of language out-of-doors, because inside his
+threshold he was on his P's and Q's. To call him “ugly Carroway,” as
+coarse people did, because of a scar across his long bold nose, was
+petty and unjust, and directly contradicted by his own and his wife's
+opinion. For nobody could have brighter eyes, or a kindlier smile, and
+more open aspect in the forepart of the week, while his Sunday shave
+retained its influence, so far as its limited area went, for he kept a
+long beard always. By Wednesday he certainly began to look grim, and on
+Saturday ferocious, pending the advent of the Bridlington barber, who
+shaved all the Quay every Sunday. But his mind was none the worse, and
+his daughters liked him better when he rasped their young cheeks with
+his beard, and paid a penny. For to his children he was a loving and
+tender-hearted father, puzzled at their number, and sometimes perplexed
+at having to feed and clothe them, yet happy to give them his last and
+go without, and even ready to welcome more, if Heaven should be pleased
+to send them.
+
+But Mrs. Carroway, most fidgety of women, and born of a well-shorn
+family, was unhappy from the middle to the end of the week that she
+could not scrub her husband's beard off. The lady's sense of human
+crime, and of everything hateful in creation, expressed itself mainly in
+the word “dirt.” Her rancor against that nobly tranquil and most natural
+of elements inured itself into a downright passion. From babyhood she
+had been notorious for kicking her little legs out at the least speck
+of dust upon a tiny red shoe. Her father--a clergyman--heard so much of
+this, and had so many children of a different stamp, that when he came
+to christen her, at six months of age (which used to be considered quite
+an early time of life), he put upon her the name of “Lauta,” to which
+she thoroughly acted up; but people having ignorance of foreign tongues
+said that he always meant “Matilda.”
+
+Such was her nature, and it grew upon her; so that when a young and
+gallant officer, tall and fresh, and as clean as a frigate, was captured
+by her neat bright eyes, very clean run, and sharp cut-water, she began
+to like to look at him. Before very long, his spruce trim ducks, careful
+scrape of Brunswick-leather boots, clean pocket-handkerchiefs, and
+fine specklessness, were making and keeping a well-swept path to the
+thoroughly dusted store-room of her heart. How little she dreamed, in
+those virgin days, that the future could ever contain a week when her
+Charles would decline to shave more than once, and then have it done for
+him on a Sunday!
+
+She hesitated, for she had her thoughts--doubts she disdained to call
+them--but still he forgot once to draw his boots sideways, after having
+purged the toe and heel, across the bristle of her father's mat. With
+the quick eye of love he perceived her frown, and the very next day he
+conquered her. His scheme was unworthy, as it substituted corporate for
+personal purity; still it succeeded, as unworthy schemes will do. On the
+birthday of his sacred Majesty, Charles took Matilda to see his ship,
+the 48-gun frigate Immaculate, commanded by a well-known martinet. Her
+spirit fell within her, like the Queen of Sheba's, as she gazed, but
+trembled to set down foot upon the trim order and the dazzling choring.
+She might have survived the strict purity of all things, the deck lines
+whiter than Parian marble, the bulwarks brighter than the cheek-piece of
+a grate, the breeches of the guns like goodly gold, and not a whisker
+of a rope's end curling the wrong way, if only she could have espied a
+swab, or a bucket, or a flake of holy-stone, or any indicament of labor
+done. “Artis est celare artem;” this art was unfathomable.
+
+Matilda was fain to assure herself that the main part of this might be
+superficial, like a dish-cover polished with the spots on, and she lost
+her handkerchief on purpose to come back and try a little test-work
+of her own. This was a piece of unstopped knotting in the panel of a
+hatchway, a resinous hole that must catch and keep any speck of dust
+meandering on the wayward will of wind. Her cambric came out as white as
+it went in!
+
+She surrendered at discretion, and became the prize of Carroway.
+
+Now people at Bridlington Quay declared that the lieutenant, though he
+might have carried off a prize, was certainly not the prize-master; and
+they even went so far as to say that “he could scarcely call his soul
+his own.” The matter was no concern of theirs, neither were their
+conclusions true. In little things the gallant officer, for the sake of
+discipline and peace, submitted to due authority; and being so much from
+home, he left all household matters to a firm control. In return for
+this, he was always thought of first, and the best of everything was
+kept for him, and Mrs. Carroway quoted him to others as a wonder, though
+she may not have done so to himself. And so, upon the whole, they got on
+very well together.
+
+Now on this day, when the lieutenant had exhausted a grumble of unusual
+intensity, and the fair Geraldine (his eldest child) had obeyed him to
+the letter, by keeping her mouth full while she warmed a plate for him,
+it was not long before his usual luck befell the bold Carroway. Rap,
+rap, came a knock at the side door of his cottage--a knock only too
+familiar; and he heard the gruff voice of Cadman--“Can I see his honor
+immediately?”
+
+“No, you can not,” replied Mrs. Carroway. “One would think you were all
+in a league to starve him. No sooner does he get half a mouthful--”
+
+“Geraldine, put it on the hob, my dear, and a basin over it. Matilda, my
+love, you know my maxim--'Duty first, dinner afterward.' Cadman, I will
+come with you.”
+
+The revenue officer took up his hat (which had less time now than his
+dinner to get cold) and followed Cadman to the usual place for holding
+privy councils. This was under the heel of the pier (which was then
+about half as long as now) at a spot where the outer wall combed over,
+to break the crest of the surges in the height of a heavy eastern gale.
+At neap tides, and in moderate weather, this place was dry, with a fine
+salt smell; and with nothing in front of it but the sea, and nothing
+behind it but solid stone wall, any one would think that here must be
+commune sacred, secret, and secluded from eavesdroppers. And yet it was
+not so, by reason of a very simple reason.
+
+Upon the roadway of the pier, and over against a mooring-post, where the
+parapet and the pier itself made a needful turn toward the south, there
+was an equally needful thing, a gully-hole with an iron trap to carry
+off the rain that fell, or the spray that broke upon the fabric; and the
+outlet of this gully was in the face of the masonry outside. Carroway,
+not being gifted with a crooked mind, had never dreamed that this little
+gut might conduct the pulses of the air, like the Tyrant's Ear, and
+that the trap at the end might be a trap for him. Yet so it was; and by
+gently raising the movable iron frame at the top, a well-disposed person
+might hear every word that was spoken in the snug recess below. Cadman
+was well aware of this little fact, but left his commander to find it
+out.
+
+The officer, always thinly clad (both through the state of his wardrobe
+and his dread of effeminate comfort), settled his bony shoulders
+against the rough stonework, and his heels upon a groyne, and gave his
+subordinate a nod, which meant, “Make no fuss, but out with it.” Cadman,
+a short square fellow with crafty eyes, began to do so.
+
+“Captain, I have hit it off at last. Hackerbody put me wrong last time,
+through the wench he hath a hankering after. This time I got it, and no
+mistake, as right as if the villain lay asleep 'twixt you and me, and
+told us all about it with his tongue out; and a good thing for men of
+large families like me.”
+
+“All that I have heard such a number of times,” his commander answered,
+crustily, “that I whistle, as we used to do in a dead calm, Cadman. An
+old salt like you knows how little comes of that.”
+
+“There I don't quite agree with your honor. I have known a hurricane
+come from whistling. But this time there is no woman about it, and the
+penny have come down straightforrard. New moon Tuesday next, and Monday
+we slips first into that snug little cave. He hath a' had his last good
+run.”
+
+“How much is coming this time, Cadman? I am sick and tired of those
+three caves. It is all old woman's talk of caves, while they are running
+south, upon the open beach.”
+
+“Captain, it is a big venture--the biggest of all the summer, I do
+believe. Two thousand pounds, if there is a penny, in it. The schooner,
+and the lugger, and the ketch, all to once, of purpose to send us
+scattering. But your honor knows what we be after most. No woman in it
+this time, Sir. The murder has been of the women, all along. When there
+is no woman, I can see my way. We have got the right pig by the ear this
+time.”
+
+“John Cadman, your manner of speech is rude. You forget that your
+commanding officer has a wife and family, three-quarters of which are
+female. You will give me your information without any rude observations
+as to sex, of which you, as a married man, should be ashamed. A man and
+his wife are one flesh, Cadman, and therefore you are a woman yourself,
+and must labor not to disgrace yourself. Now don't look amazed, but
+consider these things. If you had not been in a flurry, like a woman,
+you would not have spoiled my dinner so. I will meet you at the outlook
+at six o'clock. I have business on hand of importance.”
+
+With these words Carroway hastened home, leaving Cadman to mutter his
+wrath, and then to growl it, when his officer was out of ear-shot.
+
+“Never a day, nor an hour a'most, without he insulteth of me. A woman,
+indeed! Well, his wife may be a man, but what call hath he to speak of
+mine so? John Cadman a woman, and one flesh with his wife! Pretty news
+that would be for my missus!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+SERIOUS CHARGES
+
+
+“Stephen, if it was anybody else, you would listen to me in a moment,”
+ said Mrs. Anerley to her lord, a few days after that little interview in
+the Bempton Lane; “for instance, if it was poor Willie, how long would
+you be in believing it? But because it is Mary, you say 'pooh! pooh!'
+And I may as well talk to the old cracked churn.”
+
+“First time of all my born days,” the farmer answered, with a pleasant
+smile, “that ever I was resembled to a churn. But a man's wife ought to
+know best about un.”
+
+“Stephen, it is not the churn--I mean you; and you never should attempt
+to ride off in that sort of way. I tell you Mary hath a mischief on her
+mind; and you never ought to bring up old churns to me. As long as I
+can carry almost anything in mind, I have been considered to be full of
+common-sense. And what should I use it upon, Captain Anerley, without it
+was my own daughter?”
+
+The farmer was always conquered when she called him “Captain Anerley.”
+ He took it to point at him as a pretender, a coxcomb fond of titles, a
+would-be officer who took good care to hold aloof from fighting. And he
+knew in his heart that he loved to be called “Captain Anerley” by every
+one who meant it.
+
+“My dear,” he said, in a tone of submission, and with a look that
+grieved her, “the knowledge of such things is with you. I can not enter
+into young maids' minds, any more than command a company.”
+
+“Stephen, you could do both, if you chose, better than ten of eleven
+who do it. For, Stephen, you have a very tender mind, and are not at all
+like a churn, my dear. That was my manner of speech, you ought to know,
+because from my youngest days I had a crowd of imagination. You remember
+that, Stephen, don't you?”
+
+“I remember, Sophy, that in the old time you never resembled me to a
+churn, let alone a cracked one. You used to christen me a pillar, and
+a tree, and a rock, and a polished corner; but there, what's the odds,
+when a man has done his duty? The names of him makes no difference.”
+
+“'Twist you and me, my dear,” she said, “nothing can make any
+difference. We know one another too well for that. You are all that I
+ever used to call you, before I knew better about you, and when I used
+to dwell upon your hair and your smile. You know what I used to say of
+them, now, Stephen?”
+
+“Most complimentary--highly complimentary! Another young woman brought
+me word of it, and it made me stick firm when my mind was doubtful.”
+
+“And glad you ought to be that you did stick firm. And you have the Lord
+to thank for it, as well as your own sense. But no time to talk of
+our old times now. They are coming up again, with those younkers, I'm
+afraid. Willie is like a Church; and Jack--no chance of him getting the
+chance of it; but Mary, your darling of the lot, our Mary--her mind is
+unsettled, and a worry coming over her; the same as with me when I saw
+you first.”
+
+“It is the Lord that directs those things,” the farmer answered,
+steadfastly; “and Mary hath the sense of her mother, I believe. That it
+is maketh me so fond on her. If the young maid hath taken a fancy,
+it will pass, without a bit of substance to settle on. Why, how many
+fancies had you, Sophy, before you had the good luck to clap eyes on
+me?”
+
+“That is neither here nor there,” his wife replied, audaciously; “how
+many times have you asked such questions, which are no concern of yours?
+You could not expect me, before ever I saw you, not to have any eyes or
+ears. I had plenty to say for myself; and I was not plain; and I acted
+accordingly.”
+
+Master Anerley thought about this, because he had heard it and thought
+of it many times before. He hated to think about anything new, having
+never known any good come of it; and his thoughts would rather flow than
+fly, even in the fugitive brevity of youth. And now, in his settled way,
+his practice was to tread thought deeper into thought, as a man in
+deep snow keeps the track of his own boots, or as a child writes ink on
+pencil in his earliest copy-books. “You acted according,” he said; “and
+Mary might act according to you, mother.”
+
+“How can you talk so, Stephen? That would be a different thing
+altogether. Young girls are not a bit like what they used to be in my
+time. No steadiness, no diligence, no duty to their parents. Gadding
+about is all they think of, and light-headed chatter, and saucy
+ribbons.”
+
+“May be so with some of them. But I never see none of that in Mary.”
+
+“Mary is a good girl, and well brought up,” her mother could not help
+admitting, “and fond of her home, and industrious. But for all that, she
+must be looked after sharply. And who can look after a child like her
+mother? I can tell you one thing, Master Stephen: your daughter Mary
+has more will of her own than the rest of your family all put together,
+including even your own good wife.”
+
+“Prodigious!” cried the farmer, while he rubbed his hands and
+laughed--“prodigious, and a man might say impossible. A young lass like
+Mary, such a coaxing little poppet, as tender as a lambkin, and as soft
+as wool!”
+
+“Flannel won't only run one way; no more won't Mary,” said her mother.
+“I know her better a long sight than you do; and I say if ever Mary
+sets her heart on any one, have him she will, be he cowboy, thief, or
+chimney-sweep. So now you know what to expect, Master Anerley.”
+
+Stephen Anerley never made light of his wife's opinions in those
+few cases wherein they differed from his own. She agreed with him so
+generally that in common fairness he thought very highly of her wisdom,
+and the present subject was one upon which she had an especial right to
+be heard.
+
+“Sophy,” he said, as he set up his coat to be off to a cutting of clover
+on the hill--for no reaping would begin yet for another month--“the
+things you have said shall abide in my mind. Only you be a-watching of
+the little wench. Harry Tanfield is the man I would choose for her of
+all others. But I never would force any husband on a lass; though stern
+would I be to force a bad one off, or one in an unfit walk of life. No
+inkle in your mind who it is, or wouldst have told me?”
+
+“Well, I may, or I may not. I never like to speak promiscuous. You
+have the first right to know what I think. But I beg you to let me be a
+while. Not even to you, Steve, would I say it, without more to go upon
+than there is yet. I might do the lass a great wrong in my surmising;
+and then you would visit my mistake on me, for she is the apple of your
+eye, no doubt.”
+
+“There is never such another maid in all York County, nor in England, to
+my thinking.”
+
+“She is my daughter as well as yours, and I would be the last to make
+cheap of her. I will not say another word until I know. But if I am
+right--which the Lord forbid--we shall both be ashamed of her, Stephen.”
+
+“The Lord forbid! The Lord forbid! Amen. I will not hear another word.”
+ The farmer snatched up his hat, and made off with a haste unusual for
+him, while his wife sat down, and crossed her arms, and began to think
+rather bitterly. For, without any dream of such a possibility, she was
+jealous sometimes of her own child. Presently the farmer rushed back
+again, triumphant with a new idea. His eyes were sparkling, and his step
+full of spring, and a brisk smile shone upon his strong and ruddy face.
+
+“What a pair of stupes we must be to go on so!” he cried, with a couple
+of bright guineas in his hand. “Mary hath not had a new frock even,
+going on now for a year and a half. Sophy, it is enough to turn a
+maid into thinking of any sort of mischief. Take you these and make
+everything right. I was saving them up for her birthday, but maybe
+another will turn up by that. My dear, you take them, and never be
+afeared.”
+
+“Stephen, you may leave them, if you like. I shall not be in any haste
+to let them go. Either give them to the lass yourself, or leave it to me
+purely. She shall not have a sixpence, unless it is deserved.”
+
+“Of course I leave it in your hands, wife. I never come between you and
+your children. But young folk go piping always after money now; and even
+our Mary might be turning sad without it.”
+
+He hastened off again, without hearing any more; for he knew that some
+hours of strong labor were before him, and to meet them with a heavy
+heart would be almost a new thing for him. Some time ago he had begun
+to hold the plough of heaviness, through the difficult looseness of
+Willie's staple, and the sudden maritime slope of Jack; yet he held on
+steadily through all this, with the strength of homely courage. But if
+in the pride of his heart, his Mary, he should find no better than a
+crooked furrow, then truly the labor of his latter days would be the
+dull round of a mill horse.
+
+Now Mary, in total ignorance of that council held concerning her, and
+even of her mother's bad suspicions, chanced to come in at the front
+porch door soon after her father set off to his meadows by way of the
+back yard. Having been hard at work among her flowers, she was come to
+get a cupful of milk for herself, and the cheery content and general
+goodwill encouraged by the gardener's gentle craft were smiling on her
+rosy lips and sparkling in her eyes. Her dress was as plain as plain
+could be--a lavender twill cut and fitted by herself--and there was not
+an ornament about her that came from any other hand than Nature's. But
+simple grace of movement and light elegance of figure, fair curves of
+gentle face and loving kindness of expression, gladdened with the hope
+of youth--what did these want with smart dresses, golden brooches, and
+two guineas? Her mother almost thought of this when she called Mary into
+the little parlor. And the two guineas lay upon the table.
+
+“Mary, can you spare a little time to talk with me? You seem wonderfully
+busy, as usual.”
+
+“Mother, will you never make allowance for my flowers? They depend upon
+the weather, and they must have things accordingly.”
+
+“Very well; let them think about what they want next, while you sit down
+a while and talk with me.”
+
+The girl was vexed; for to listen to a lecture, already manifest in
+her mother's eyes, was a far less agreeable job than gardening. And the
+lecture would have done as well by candle-light, which seldom can be
+said of any gardening. However, she took off her hat, and sat down,
+without the least sign of impatience, and without any token of guilt, as
+her mother saw, and yet stupidly proceeded just the same.
+
+“Mary,” she began, with a gaze of stern discretion, which the girl met
+steadfastly and pleasantly, “you know that I am your own mother, and
+bound to look after you well, while you are so very young; for though
+you are sensible some ways, Mary, in years and in experience what are
+you but a child? Of the traps of the world and the wickedness of people
+you can have no knowledge. You always think the best of everybody; which
+is a very proper thing to do, and what I have always brought you up to,
+and never would dream of discouraging. And with such examples as your
+father and your mother, you must be perverse to do otherwise. Still,
+it is my duty to warn you, Mary--and you are getting old enough to want
+it--that the world is not made up of fathers and mothers, brothers and
+sisters, and good uncles. There are always bad folk who go prowling
+about like wolves in--wolves in--what is it--”
+
+“Sheep's clothing,” the maiden suggested, with a smile, and then dropped
+her eyes maliciously.
+
+“How dare you be pert, miss, correcting your own mother? Do I ever
+catch you reading of your Bible? But you seem to know so much about it,
+perhaps you have met some of them?”
+
+“How can I tell, mother, when you won't tell me?”
+
+“I tell you, indeed! It is your place to tell me, I think. And what is
+more, I insist at once upon knowing all about it. What makes you go
+on in the way that you are doing? Do you take me for a drumledore,
+you foolish child? On Tuesday afternoon I saw you sewing with a double
+thread. Your father had potato-eyes upon his plate on Sunday; and which
+way did I see you trying to hang up a dish-cover? But that is nothing;
+fifty things you go wandering about in; and always out, on some
+pretense, as if the roof you were born under was not big enough for
+you. And then your eyes--I have seen your eyes flash up, as if you were
+fighting; and the bosom of your Sunday frock was loose in church two
+buttons; it was not hot at all to speak of, and there was a wasp next
+pew. All these things make me unhappy, Mary. My darling, tell me what it
+is.”
+
+Mary listened with great amazement to this catalogue of crimes. At the
+time of their commission she had never even thought of them, although
+she was vexed with herself when she saw one eye--for in verity that was
+all--of a potato upon her father's plate. Now she blushed when she heard
+of the buttons of her frock--which was only done because of tightness,
+and showed how long she must have worn it; but as to the double thread,
+she was sure that nothing of that sort could have happened.
+
+“Why, mother dear,” she said, quite softly, coming up in her coaxing
+way, which nobody could resist, because it was true and gentle
+lovingness, “you know a hundred times more than I do. I have never known
+of any of the sad mistakes you speak of, except about the potato-eye,
+and then I had a round-pointed knife. But I want to make no excuses,
+mother; and there is nothing the matter with me. Tell me what you mean
+about the wolves.”
+
+“My child,” said her mother, whose face she was kissing, while they both
+went on with talking, “it is no good trying to get over me. Either you
+have something on your mind, or you have not--which is it?”
+
+“Mother, what can I have on my mind? I have never hurt any one, and
+never mean to do it. Every one is kind to me, and everybody likes me,
+and of course I like them all again. And I always have plenty to do, in
+and out, as you take very good care, dear mother. My father loves me,
+and so do you, a great deal more than I deserve, perhaps. I am happy
+in a Sunday frock that wants more stuff to button; and I have only one
+trouble in all the world. When I think of the other girls I see--”
+
+“Never mind them, my dear. What is your one trouble?”
+
+“Mother, as if you could help knowing! About my dear brother Jack, of
+course. Jack was so wonderfully good to me! I would walk on my hands and
+knees all the way to York to get a single glimpse of him.”
+
+“You would never get as far as the rick-yard hedge. You children talk
+such nonsense. Jack ran away of his own free-will, and out of downright
+contrariness. He has repented of it only once, I dare say, and that has
+been ever since he did it, and every time he thought of it. I wish
+he was home again, with all my heart, for I can not bear to lose my
+children. And Jack was as good a boy as need be, when he got everything
+his own way. Mary, is that your only trouble? Stand where I can see you
+plainly, and tell me every word the truth. Put your hair back from your
+eyes now, like the catechism.”
+
+“If I were saying fifty catechisms, what more could I do than speak the
+truth?” Mary asked this with some little vexation, while she stood up
+proudly before her mother, and clasped her hands behind her back. “I
+have told you everything I know, except one little thing, which I am not
+sure about.”
+
+“What little thing, if you please? and how can you help being sure about
+it, positive as you are about everything?”
+
+“Mother, I mean that I have not been sure whether I ought to tell you;
+and I meant to tell my father first, when there could be no mischief.”
+
+“Mary, I can scarcely believe my ears. To tell your father before your
+mother, and not even him until nothing could be done to stop it, which
+you call 'mischief!' I insist upon knowing at once what it is. I have
+felt that you were hiding something. How very unlike you, how unlike a
+child of mine!”
+
+“You need not disturb yourself, mother dear. It is nothing of any
+importance to me, though to other people it might be. And that is the
+reason why I kept it to myself.”
+
+“Oh, we shall come to something by-and-by! One would really think you
+were older than your mother. Now, miss, if you please, let us judge of
+your discretion. What is it that you have been hiding so long?”
+
+Mary's face grew crimson now, but with anger rather than with shame; she
+had never thought twice about Robin Lyth with anything warmer than pity,
+but this was the very way to drive her into dwelling in a mischievous
+manner upon him.
+
+“What I have been hiding,” she said, most distinctly, and steadfastly
+looking at her mother, “is only that I have had two talks with the great
+free-trader Robin Lyth.”
+
+“That arrant smuggler! That leader of all outlaws! You have been meeting
+him on the sly!”
+
+“Certainly not. But I met him once by chance; and then, as a matter of
+business, I was forced to meet him again, dear mother.”
+
+“These things are too much for me,” Mrs. Anerley said, decisively. “When
+matters have come to such a pass, I must beg your dear father to see to
+them.”
+
+“Very well, mother; I would rather have it so. May I go now and make an
+end of my gardening?”
+
+“Certainly--as soon as you have made an end of me, as you must quite
+have laid your plans to do. I have seen too much to be astonished any
+more. But to think that a child of mine, my one and only daughter, who
+looks as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, should be hand in glove
+with the wickedest smuggler of the age, the rogue everybody shoots
+at--but can not hit him, because he was born to be hanged---the by-name,
+the by-word, the by-blow, Robin Lyth!” Mrs. Anerley covered her face
+with both hands.
+
+“How would you like your own second cousin,” said Mary, plucking up her
+spirit, “your own second cousin, Mistress Cockscroft, to hear you speak
+so of the man that supports them at the risk of his life, every hour of
+it? He may be doing wrong--it is not for me to say--but he does it very
+well, and he does it nobly. And what did you show me in your drawer,
+dear mother? And what did you wear when that very cruel man, Captain
+Carroway, came here to dine on Sunday?”
+
+“You wicked, undutiful child! Go away! I wish to have nothing more to
+say to you.”
+
+“No, I will not go away,” cried Mary, with her resolute spirit in her
+eyes and brow; “when false and cruel charges are brought against me, I
+have the right to speak, and I will use it. I am not hand in glove with
+Robin Lyth, or any other Robin. I think a little more of myself than
+that. If I have done any wrong, I will meet it, and be sorry, and submit
+to any punishment. I ought to have told you before, perhaps; that is the
+worst you can say of it. But I never attached much importance to it; and
+when a man is hunted so, was I to join his enemies? I have only seen him
+twice: the first time by purest accident, and the second time to give
+him back a piece of his own property. And I took my brother with me; but
+he ran away, as usual.”
+
+“Of course, of course. Every one to blame but you, miss. However, we
+shall see what your father has to say. You have very nearly taken all
+my breath away; but I shall expect the whole sky to tumble in upon us
+if Captain Anerley approves of Robin Lyth as a sweetheart for his
+daughter.”
+
+“I never thought of Captain Lyth; and Captain Lyth never thought of me.
+But I can tell you one thing, mother--if you wanted to make me think of
+him, you could not do it better than by speaking so unjustly.”
+
+“After that perhaps you will go back to your flowers. I have heard that
+they grow very fine ones in Holland. Perhaps you have got some smuggled
+tulips, my dear.”
+
+Mary did not condescend to answer, but said to herself, as she went to
+work again, “Tulips in August! That is like the rest of it. However, I
+am not going to be put out, when I feel that I have not done a single
+bit of harm.” And she tried to be happy with her flowers, but could not
+enter into them as before.
+
+Mistress Anerley was as good as her word, at the very first opportunity.
+Her husband returned from the clover-stack tired and hungry, and angry
+with a man who had taken too much beer, and ran at him with a pitchfork;
+angry also with his own son Willie for not being anywhere in the way to
+help. He did not complain; and his wife knew at once that he ought to
+have done so, to obtain relief. She perceived that her own discourse
+about their daughter was still on his mind, and would require working
+off before any more was said about it. And she felt as sure as if she
+saw it that in his severity against poor Willie--for not doing things
+that were beneath him--her master would take Mary's folly as a joke,
+and fall upon her brother, who was so much older, for not going on to
+protect and guide her. So she kept till after supper-time her mouthful
+of bad tidings.
+
+And when the farmer heard it all, as he did before going to sleep that
+night, he had smoked three pipes of tobacco, and was calm; he had sipped
+(for once in a way) a little Hollands, and was hopeful. And though he
+said nothing about it, he felt that without any order of his, or so much
+as the faintest desire to be told of it, neither of these petty comforts
+would bear to be rudely examined of its duty. He hoped for the best,
+and he believed the best, and if the king was cheated, why, his loyal
+subject was the same, and the women were their masters.
+
+“Have no fear, no fear,” he muttered back through the closing gate of
+sleep; “Mary knows her business--business--” and he buzzed it off into a
+snore.
+
+In the morning, however, he took a stronger and more serious view of the
+case, pronouncing that Mary was only a young lass, and no one could ever
+tell about young lasses. And he quite fell into his wife's suggestion,
+that the maid could be spared till harvest-time, of which (even with the
+best of weather) there was little chance now for another six weeks, the
+season being late and backward. So it was resolved between them both
+that the girl should go on the following day for a visit to her uncle
+Popplewell, some miles the other side of Filey. No invitation was
+required; for Mr. and Mrs. Popplewell, a snug and comfortable pair,
+were only too glad to have their niece, and had often wanted to have her
+altogether; but the farmer would never hear of that.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+CAUGHT AT LAST
+
+
+While these little things were doing thus, the coast from the mouth of
+the Tees to that of Humber, and even the inland parts, were in a great
+stir of talk and work about events impending. It must not be thought
+that Flamborough, although it was Robin's dwelling-place--so far as he
+had any--was the principal scene of his operations, or the stronghold
+of his enterprise. On the contrary, his liking was for quiet coves near
+Scarborough, or even to the north of Whitby, when the wind and tide
+were suitable. And for this there were many reasons which are not of any
+moment now.
+
+One of them showed fine feeling and much delicacy on his part. He knew
+that Flamborough was a place of extraordinary honesty, where every
+one of his buttons had been safe, and would have been so forever; and
+strictly as he believed in the virtue of his own free importation,
+it was impossible for him not to learn that certain people thought
+otherwise, or acted as if they did so. From the troubles which such
+doubts might cause, he strove to keep the natives free.
+
+Flamburians scarcely understood this largeness of good-will to them.
+Their instincts told them that free trade was every Briton's privilege;
+and they had the finest set of donkeys on the coast for landing it. But
+none the more did any of them care to make a movement toward it. They
+were satisfied with their own old way--to cast the net their father
+cast, and bait the hook as it was baited on their good grandfather's
+thumb.
+
+Yet even Flamborough knew that now a mighty enterprise was in hand. It
+was said, without any contradiction, that young Captain Robin had laid
+a wager of one hundred guineas with the worshipful mayor of Scarborough
+and the commandant of the castle, that before the new moon he would land
+on Yorkshire coast, without firing pistol or drawing steel, free goods
+to the value of two thousand pounds, and carry them inland safely. And
+Flamborough believed that he would do it.
+
+Dr. Upround's house stood well, as rectories generally contrive to do.
+No place in Flamborough parish could hope to swindle the wind of its
+vested right, or to embezzle much treasure of the sun, but the parsonage
+made a good effort to do both, and sometimes for three days together got
+the credit of succeeding. And the dwellers therein, who felt the edge
+of the difference outside their own walls, not only said but thoroughly
+believed that they lived in a little Goshen.
+
+For the house was well settled in a wrinkle of the hill expanding
+southward, and encouraging the noon. From the windows a pleasant glimpse
+might be obtained of the broad and tranquil anchorage, peopled with
+white or black, according as the sails went up or down; for the rectory
+stood to the southward of the point, as the rest of Flamborough surely
+must have stood, if built by any other race than armadillos. But to see
+all those vessels, and be sure what they were doing, the proper place
+was a little snug “gazebo,” chosen and made by the doctor himself, near
+the crest of the gully he inhabited.
+
+Here upon a genial summer day--when it came, as it sometimes dared to
+do--was the finest little nook upon the Yorkshire coast for watching
+what Virgil calls “the sail-winged sea.” Not that a man could see round
+the Head, unless his own were gifted with very crooked eyes; but without
+doing that (which would only have disturbed the tranquillity of his
+prospect) there was plenty to engage him in the peaceful spread of
+comparatively waveless waters. Here might he see long vessels rolling,
+not with great misery, but just enough to make him feel happy in the
+firmness of his bench, and little jolly-boats it was more jolly to be
+out of, and faraway heads giving genial bobs, and sea-legs straddled
+in predicaments desirable rather for study than for practice. All was
+highly picturesque and nice, and charming for the critic who had never
+got to do it.
+
+“Now, papa, you must come this very moment,” cried Miss Janetta Upround,
+the daughter of the house, and indeed the only daughter, with a gush of
+excitement, rushing into the study of this deeply read divine; “there
+is something doing that I can not understand. You must bring up the
+spy-glass at once and explain. I am sure that there is something very
+wrong.”
+
+“In the parish, my dear?” the rector asked, with a feeble attempt at
+malice, for he did not want to be disturbed just now, and for weeks he
+had tried (with very poor success) to make Janetta useful; for she had
+no gift in that way.
+
+“No, not in the parish at all, papa, unless it runs out under water,
+as I am certain it ought to do, and make every one of those ships pay
+tithe. If the law was worth anything, they would have to do it. They
+get all the good out of our situation, and they save whole thousands
+of pounds at a time, and they never pay a penny, nor even hoist a flag,
+unless the day is fine, and the flag wants drying. But come along, papa,
+now. I really can not wait; and they will have done it all without us.”
+
+“Janetta, take the glass and get the focus. I will come presently,
+presently. In about two minutes--by the time that you are ready.”
+
+“Very well, papa. It is very good of you. I see quite clearly what
+you want to do; and I hope you will do it. But you promise not to play
+another game now?”
+
+“My dear, I will promise that with pleasure. Only do please be off about
+your business.”
+
+The rector was a most inveterate and insatiable chess-player. In the
+household, rather than by it, he was, as a matter of lofty belief,
+supposed to be deeply engaged with theology, or magisterial questions of
+almost equal depth, or (to put it at the lowest) parochial affairs,
+the while he was solidly and seriously engaged in getting up the sound
+defense to some Continental gambit. And this, not only to satisfy
+himself upon some point of theory, but from a nearer and dearer point of
+view--for he never did like to be beaten.
+
+At present he was laboring to discover the proper defense to a new and
+slashing form of the Algaier gambit, by means of which Robin Lyth had
+won every game in which he had the move, upon their last encounter.
+The great free-trader, while a boy, had shown an especial aptitude for
+chess, and even as a child he had seemed to know the men when first, by
+some accident, he saw them. The rector being struck by this exception
+to the ways of childhood--whose manner it is to take chess-men for
+“dollies,” or roll them about like nine-pins--at once included in
+the education of “Izunsabe,” which he took upon himself, a course of
+elemental doctrine in the one true game. And the boy fought his way up
+at such a pace that he jumped from odds of queen and rook to pawn and
+two moves in less than two years. And now he could almost give odds to
+his tutor, though he never presumed to offer them; and trading as he
+did with enlightened merchants of large Continental sea-ports, who had
+plenty of time on their hands and played well, he imported new openings
+of a dash and freedom which swallowed the ground up under the feet of
+the steady-going players, who had never seen a book upon their favorite
+subject. Of course it was competent to all these to decline such fiery
+onslaught; but chivalry and the true love of analysis (which without may
+none play chess) compelled the acceptance of the challenge, even with a
+trembling forecast of the taste of dust.
+
+“Never mind,” said Dr. Upround, as he rose and stretched himself, a good
+straight man of threescore years, with silver hair that shone like
+silk; “it has not come to me yet; but it must, with a little
+more perseverance. At Cambridge I beat everybody; and who is this
+uncircumcised--at least, I beg his pardon, for I did myself baptize
+him--but who is Robin Lyth, to mate his pastor and his master? All these
+gambits are like a night attack. If once met properly and expelled,
+you are in the very heart of the enemy's camp. He has left his own
+watch-fires to rush at yours. The next game I play, I shall be sure to
+beat him.”
+
+Fully convinced of this great truth, he took a strong oak staff and
+hastened to obey his daughter. Miss Janetta Upround had not only learned
+by nature, but also had been carefully taught by her parents, and by
+every one, how to get her own way always, and to be thanked for taking
+it. But she had such a happy nature, full of kindness and good-will,
+that other people's wishes always seemed to flow into her own, instead
+of being swept aside. Over her father her government was in no sort
+constitutional, nor even a quiet despotism sweetened with liberal
+illusions, but as pure a piece of autocracy as the Continent could
+itself contain, in the time of this first Napoleon.
+
+“Papa, what a time you have been, to be sure!” she exclaimed, as the
+doctor came gradually up, probing his way in perfect leisure, and
+fragrant still of that gambit; “one would think that your parish was
+on dry land altogether, while the better half of it, as they call
+themselves--though the women are in righteousness the better half a
+hundredfold--”
+
+“My dear, do try to talk with some little sense of arithmetic, if no
+other. A hundredfold the half would be the unit multiplied by fifty. Not
+to mention that there can be no better half--”
+
+“Yes, there can, papa, ever so many; and you may see one in mamma every
+day. Now you put one eye to this glass, and the half is better than the
+whole. With both, you see nothing; with one, you see better, fifty times
+better, than with both before. Don't talk of arithmetic after that. It
+is algebra now, and quod demonstrandum.”
+
+“To reason with the less worthy gender is degeneration of reason. What
+would they have said in the Senate-house, Janetta? However, I will obey
+your orders. What am I to look at?”
+
+“A tall and very extraordinary man, striking his arms out, thus and
+thus. I never saw any one looking so excited; and he flourishes a long
+sword now and again, as if he would like to cut everybody's head off.
+There he has been going from ship to ship, for an hour or more, with a
+long white boat, and a lot of men jumping after him. Every one seems
+to be scared of him, and he stumps along the deck just as if he were on
+springs, and one spring longer than the other. You see that heavy brig
+outside the rest, painted with ten port-holes; well, she began to make
+sail and run away, but he fired a gun--quite a real cannon--and she
+had to come back again and drop her colors. Oh, is it some very great
+admiral, papa? Perhaps Lord Nelson himself; I would go and be seasick
+for three days to see Lord Nelson. Papa, it must be Lord Nelson.”
+
+“My dear, Lord Nelson is a little, short man, with a very brisk walk,
+and one arm gone. Now let me see who this can be. Whereabout is he now,
+Janetta?”
+
+“Do you see that clumsy-looking schooner, papa, just behind a
+pilot-boat? He is just in front of her foremast--making such a fuss--”
+
+“What eyes you have got, my child! You see better without the glass than
+I do with it.--Oh, now I have him! Why, I might have guessed. Of course
+it is that very active man and vigilant officer Lieutenant Carroway.”
+
+“Captain Carroway from Bridlington, papa? Why, what can he be doing with
+such authority? I have often heard of him, but I thought he was only a
+coast-guard.”
+
+“He is, as you say, showing great authority, and, I fear, using very
+bad language, for which he is quite celebrated. However, the telescope
+refuses to repeat it, for which it is much to be commended. But
+every allowance must be made for a man who has to deal with a wholly
+uncultivated race, and not of natural piety, like ours.”
+
+“Well, papa, I doubt if ours have too much, though you always make the
+best of them. But let me look again, please; and do tell me what he can
+be doing there.”
+
+“You know that the revenue officers must take the law into their
+own hands sometimes. There have lately been certain rumors of some
+contraband proceedings on the Yorkshire coast. Not in Flamborough
+parish, of course, and perhaps--probably, I may say--a long way off---”
+
+“Papa dear, will you never confess that free trade prevails and
+flourishes greatly even under your own dear nose?”
+
+“Facts do not warrant me in any such assertion. If the fact were so,
+it must have been brought officially before me. I decline to listen to
+uncharitable rumors. But however that matter may be, there are officers
+on the spot to deal with it. My commission as a justice of the peace
+gives me no cognizance of offenses--if such there are--upon the high
+seas. Ah! you see something particular; my dear, what is it?”
+
+“Captain Carroway has found something, or somebody, of great importance.
+He has got a man by the collar, and he is absolutely dancing with
+delight. Ah! there he goes, dragging him along the deck as if he were
+a cod-fish or a conger. And now, I declare, he is lashing his arms
+and legs with a great thick rope. Papa, is that legal, without even a
+warrant?”
+
+“I can hardly say how far his powers may extend, and he is just the man
+to extend them farther. I only hope not to be involved in the matter.
+Maritime law is not my province.”
+
+“But, papa, it is much within three miles of the shore, if that has got
+anything to do with it. My goodness me! They are all coming here; I am
+almost sure that they will apply to you. Yes, two boat-loads of people,
+racing to get their oars out, and to be here first. Where are your
+spectacles, dear papa? You had better go and get up the law before they
+come. You will scarcely have time, they are coming so fast--a white boat
+and a black boat. The prisoner is in the white boat, and the officer
+has got him by the collar still. The men in the white boat will want
+to commit him, and the men in the black boat are his friends, no doubt,
+coming for a habeas corpus--”
+
+“My dear, what nonsense you do talk! What has a simple justice of the
+peace--”
+
+“Never mind that, papa; my facts are sound--sounder than yours about
+smuggling, I fear. But do hurry in, and get up the law. I will go and
+lock both gates, to give you more time.”
+
+“Do nothing of the kind, Janetta. A magistrate should be accessible
+always; and how can I get up the law, without knowing what it is to be
+about--or even a clerk to help me? And perhaps they are not coming here
+at all. They may be only landing their prisoner.”
+
+“If that were it, they would not be coming so, but rowing toward the
+proper place, Bridlington Quay, where their station-house is. Papa, you
+are in for it, and I am getting eager. May I come and hear all about it?
+I should be a great support to you, you know. And they would tell the
+truth so much better!”
+
+“Janetta, what are you dreaming of? It may even be a case of secrecy.”
+
+“Secrecy, papa, with two boat-loads of men and about thirty ships
+involved in it! Oh, do let me hear all about it!”
+
+“Whatever it may be, your presence is not required, and would be
+improper. Unless I should happen to want a book; and in that case I
+might ring for you.”
+
+“Oh, do, papa, do! No one else can ever find them. Promise me now that
+you will want a book. If I am not there, there will be no justice done.
+I wish you severely to reprimand, whatever the facts of the case may be,
+and even to punish, if you can, that tall, lame, violent, ferocious
+man, for dragging the poor fellow about like that, and cutting him with
+ropes, when completely needless, and when he was quite at his mercy.
+It is my opinion that the other man does not deserve one bit of it; and
+whatever the law may be, papa, your duty is to strain it benevolently,
+and question every syllable upon the stronger side.”
+
+“Perhaps I had better resign, my dear, upon condition that you shall be
+appointed in the stead of me. It might be a popular measure, and would
+secure universal justice.”
+
+“Papa, I would do justice to myself--which is a thing you never do. But
+here, they are landing; and they hoist him out as if he were a sack,
+or a thing without a joint. They could scarcely be harder with a man
+compelled to be hanged to-morrow morning.”
+
+“Condemned is what you mean, Janetta. You never will understand the use
+of words. What a nice magistrate you would make!”
+
+“There can be no more correct expression. Would any man be hanged if he
+were not compelled? Papa, you say the most illegal things sometimes. Now
+please to go in and get up your legal points. Let me go and meet those
+people for you. I will keep them waiting till you are quite ready.”
+
+“My dear, you will go to your room, and try to learn a little patience.
+You begin to be too pat with your own opinions, which in a young lady is
+ungraceful. There, you need not cry, my darling, because your opinions
+are always sensible, and I value them very highly; but still you must
+bear in mind that you are but a girl.”
+
+“And behave accordingly, as they say. Nobody can do more so. But though
+I am only a girl, papa, can you put your hand upon a better one?”
+
+“Certainly not, my dear; for going down hill, I can always depend on
+you.”
+
+Suiting the action to the word, Dr. Upround, whose feet were a little
+touched with gout, came down from his outlook to his kitchen-garden, and
+thence through the shrubbery back to his own study, where, with a little
+sigh, he put away his chess-men, and heartily hoped that it might not be
+his favorite adversary who was coming before him to be sent to jail.
+For although the good rector had a warm regard, and even affection, for
+Robin Lyth, as a waif cast into his care, and then a pupil wonderfully
+apt (which breeds love in the teacher), and after that a most gallant
+and highly distinguished young parishioner--with all this it was a
+difficulty for him to be ignorant that the law was adverse. More than
+once he had striven hard to lead the youth into some better path of
+life, and had even induced him to “follow the sea” for a short time in
+the merchant service. But the force of nature and of circumstances had
+very soon prevailed again, and Robin returned to his old pursuits with
+larger experience, and seamanship improved.
+
+A violent ringing at the gate bell, followed by equal urgency upon
+the front door, apprised the kind magistrate of a sharp call on his
+faculties, and perhaps a most unpleasant one. “The poor boy!” he said to
+himself--“poor boy! From Carroway's excitement I greatly fear that it is
+indeed poor Robin. How many a grand game have we had! His new variety of
+that fine gambit scarcely beginning to be analyzed; and if I commit him
+to the meeting next week, when shall we ever meet again? It will seem
+as if I did it because he won three games; and I certainly was a little
+vexed with him. However, I must be stern, stern, stern. Show them in,
+Betsy; I am quite prepared.”
+
+A noise, and a sound of strong language in the hall, and a dragging of
+something on the oil-cloth, led up to the entry of a dozen rough men,
+pushed on by at least another dozen.
+
+“You will have the manners to take off your hats,” said the magistrate,
+with all his dignity; “not from any undue deference to me, but common
+respect to his Majesty.”
+
+“Off with your covers, you sons of”--something, shouted a loud voice;
+and then the lieutenant, with his blade still drawn, stood before them.
+
+“Sheathe your sword, Sir,” said Dr. Upround, in a voice which amazed the
+officer.
+
+“I beg your Worship's pardon,” he began, with his grim face flushing
+purple, but his sword laid where it should have been; “but if you knew
+half of the worry I have had, you would not care to rebuke me. Cadman,
+have you got him by the neck? Keep your knuckles into him, while I make
+my deposition.”
+
+“Cast that man free, I receive no depositions with a man half strangled
+before me.”
+
+The men of the coast-guard glanced at their commander, and receiving a
+surly nod, obeyed. But the prisoner could not stand as yet; he gasped
+for breath, and some one set him on a chair.
+
+“Your Worship, this is a mere matter of form,” said Carroway, still
+keeping eyes on his prey; “if I had my own way, I would not trouble you
+at all, and I believe it to be quite needless. For this man is an outlaw
+felon, and not entitled to any grace of law; but I must obey my orders.”
+
+“Certainly you must, Lieutenant Carroway, even though you are better
+acquainted with the law. You are ready to be sworn? Take this book, and
+follow me.”
+
+This being done, the worthy magistrate prepared to write down what the
+gallant officer might say, which, in brief, came to this, that having
+orders to seize Robin Lyth wherever he might find him, and having sure
+knowledge that said Robin was on board of a certain schooner vessel, the
+Elizabeth, of Goole, the which he had laden with goods liable to duty,
+he, Charles Carroway, had gently laid hands on him, and brought him to
+the nearest justice of the peace, to obtain an order of commitment.
+
+All this, at fifty times the length here given, Lieutenant Carroway
+deposed on oath, while his Worship, for want of a clerk, set it down in
+his own very neat handwriting. But several very coaly-looking men, who
+could scarcely be taught to keep silence, observed that the magistrate
+smiled once or twice; and this made them wait a bit, and wink at one
+another.
+
+“Very clear indeed, Lieutenant Carroway,” said Dr. Upround, with
+spectacles on nose. “Good Sir, have the kindness to sign your
+deposition. It may become my duty to commit the prisoner, upon
+identification. Of that I must have evidence, confirmatory evidence. But
+first we will hear what he has to say. Robin Lyth, stand forward.”
+
+“Me no Robin Lyth, Sar; no Robin man or woman,” cried the captive,
+trying very hard to stand; “me only a poor Francais, make liberty to
+what you call--row, row, sweem, sweem, sail, sail, from la belle France;
+for why, for why, there is no import to nobody.”
+
+“Your Worship, he is always going on about imports,” Cadman said,
+respectfully; “that is enough to show who he is.”
+
+“You may trust me to know him,” cried Lieutenant Carroway. “My
+fine fellow, no more of that stuff! He can pass himself off for any
+countryman whatever. He knows all their jabber, Sir, better than his
+own. Put a cork between his teeth, Hackerbody. I never did see such a
+noisy rogue. He is Robin Lyth all over.”
+
+“I'll be blest if he is, nor under nayther,” cried the biggest of the
+coaly men; “this here froggy come out of a Chaise and Mary as had run up
+from Dunkirk. I know Robin Lyth as well as our own figure-head. But what
+good to try reason with that there revenue hofficer?”
+
+At this, all his friends set a good laugh up, and wanted to give him a
+cheer for such a speech; but that being hushed, they were satisfied with
+condemning his organs of sight and their own quite fairly.
+
+“Lieutenant Carroway,” his Worship said, amidst an impressive silence,
+“I greatly fear that you have allowed zeal, my dear Sir, to outrun
+discretion. Robin Lyth is a young, and in many ways highly respected,
+parishioner of mine. He may have been guilty of casual breaches of the
+laws concerning importation--laws which fluctuate from year to year, and
+require deep knowledge of legislation both to observe and to administer.
+I heartily trust that you may not suffer from having discharged your
+duty in a manner most truly exemplary, if only the example had been the
+right one. This gentleman is no more Robin Lyth than I am.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+DISCIPLINE ASSERTED
+
+
+As soon as his troublesome visitors were gone, the rector sat down in
+his deep arm-chair, laid aside his spectacles, and began to think. His
+face, while he thought, lost more and more of the calm and cheerful
+expression which made it so pleasant a face to gaze upon; and he sighed,
+without knowing it, at some dark ideas, and gave a little shake of his
+grand old head. The revenue officer had called his favorite pupil and
+cleverest parishioner “a felon outlaw;” and if that were so, Robin Lyth
+was no less than a convicted criminal, and must not be admitted within
+his doors. Formerly the regular penalty for illicit importation had been
+the forfeiture of the goods when caught, and the smugglers (unless
+they made resistance or carried fire-arms) were allowed to escape and
+retrieve their bad luck, which they very soon contrived to do. And as
+yet, upon this part of the coast, they had not been guilty of atrocious
+crimes, such as the smugglers of Sussex and Hampshire--who must have
+been utter fiends--committed, thereby raising all the land against
+them. Dr. Upround had heard of no proclamation, exaction, or even capias
+issued against this young free-trader; and he knew well enough that the
+worst offenders were not the bold seamen who contracted for the run, nor
+the people of the coast who were hired for the carriage, but the rich
+indwellers who provided all the money, and received the lion's share
+of all the profits. And with these the law never even tried to deal.
+However, the magistrate-parson resolved that, in spite of all the
+interest of tutorship and chess-play, and even all the influence of his
+wife and daughter (who were hearty admirers of brave smuggling), he must
+either reform this young man, or compel him to keep at a distance, which
+would be very sad.
+
+Meanwhile the lieutenant had departed in a fury, which seemed to be
+incapable of growing any worse. Never an oath did he utter all the way
+to the landing where his boat was left; and his men, who knew how much
+that meant, were afraid to do more than just wink at one another. Even
+the sailors of the collier schooner forbore to jeer him, until he was
+afloat, when they gave him three fine rounds of mock cheers, to which
+the poor Frenchman contributed a shriek. For this man had been most
+inhospitably treated, through his strange but undeniable likeness to a
+perfidious Briton.
+
+“Home!” cried the officer, glowering at those fellows, while his men
+held their oars, and were ready to rush at them. “Home, with a will!
+Give way, men!” And not another word he spoke, till they touched the
+steps at Bridlington. Then he fixed stern eyes upon Cadman, who vainly
+strove to meet them, and he said, “Come to me in one hour and a half.”
+ Cadman touched his hat without an answer, saw to the boat, and then went
+home along the quay.
+
+Carroway, though of a violent temper, especially when laughed at,
+was not of that steadfast and sedentary wrath which chews the cud
+of grievances, and feeds upon it in a shady place. He had a good
+wife--though a little overclean--and seven fine-appetited children, who
+gave him the greatest pleasure in providing victuals. Also, he had his
+pipe, and his quiet corners, sacred to the atmosphere and the private
+thoughts of Carroway. And here he would often be ambitious even now,
+perceiving no good reason why he might not yet command a line-of-battle
+ship, and run up his own flag, and nobly tread his own lofty
+quarter-deck. If so, he would have Mrs. Carroway on board, and not only
+on the boards, but at them; so that a challenge should be issued every
+day for any other ship in all the service to display white so wholly
+spotless, and black so void of streakiness. And while he was dwelling
+upon personal matters--which, after all, concerned the nation most--he
+had tried very hard to discover any reason (putting paltry luck aside)
+why Horatio Nelson should be a Lord, and what was more to the purpose,
+an admiral, while Charles Carroway (his old shipmate, and in every way
+superior, who could eat him at a mouthful, if only he were good enough)
+should now be no more than a 'long-shore lieutenant, and a Jonathan Wild
+of the revenue. However, as for envying Nelson, the Lord knew that he
+would not give his little Geraldine's worst frock for all the fellow's
+grand coat of arms, and freedom in a snuff-box, and golden shields, and
+devices, this, that, and the other, with Bona Robas to support them.
+
+To this conclusion he was fairly come, after a good meal, and with the
+second glass of the finest Jamaica pine-apple rum--which he drank from
+pure principle, because it was not smuggled--steaming and scenting the
+blue curls of his pipe, when his admirable wife came in to say that on
+no account would she interrupt him.
+
+“My dear, I am busy, and am very glad to hear it. Pish! where have I put
+all those accounts?”
+
+“Charles, you are not doing any accounts. When you have done your pipe
+and glass, I wish to say a quiet word or two. I am sure that there is
+not a woman in a thousand--”
+
+“Matilda, I know it. Nor one in fifty thousand. You are very good at
+figures: will you take this sheet away with you? Eight o'clock will be
+quite time enough for it.”
+
+“My dear, I am always too pleased to do whatever I can to help you. But
+I must talk to you now; really I must say a few words about something,
+tired as you may be, Charles, and well deserving of a little good sleep,
+which you never seem able to manage in bed. You told me, you know, that
+you expected Cadman, that surly, dirty fellow, who delights to spoil my
+stones, and would like nothing better than to take the pattern out
+of our drawing-room Kidderminster. Now I have a reason for saying
+something. Charles, will you listen to me once, just once?”
+
+“I never do anything else,” said the husband, with justice, and meaning
+no mischief.
+
+“Ah! how very seldom you hear me talk; and when I do, I might just as
+well address the winds! But for once, my dear, attend, I do implore you.
+That surly, burly Cadman will be here directly, and I know that you
+are much put out with him. Now I tell you he is dangerous, savagely
+dangerous; I can see it in his unhealthy skin. Oh, Charles, where have
+you put down your pipe? I cleaned that shelf this very morning! How
+little I thought when I promised to be yours that you ever would knock
+out your ashes like that! But do bear in mind, dear, whatever you do, if
+anything happened to you, what ever would become of all of us? All your
+sweet children and your faithful wife--I declare you have made two great
+rings with your tumbler upon the new cover of the table.”
+
+“Matilda, that has been done ever so long. But I am almost certain this
+tumbler leaks.”
+
+“So you always say; just as if I would allow it. You never will think of
+simply wiping the rim every time you use it; when I put you a saucer for
+your glass, you forget it; there never was such a man, I do believe. I
+shall have to stop the rum and water altogether.”
+
+“No, no, no. I'll do anything you like. I'll have a tumbler made with
+a saucer to it--I'll buy a piece of oil-cloth the size of a
+foretop-sail--I'll--”
+
+“Charles, no nonsense, if you please: as if I were ever unreasonable!
+But your quickness of temper is such that I dread what you may say to
+that Cadman. Remember what opportunities he has, dear. He might shoot
+you in the dark any night, my darling, and put it upon the smugglers. I
+entreat you not to irritate the man, and make him your enemy. He is so
+spiteful; and I should be in terror the whole night long.”
+
+“Matilda, in the house you may command me as you please--even in my
+own cuddy here. But as regards my duty, you know well that I permit
+no interference. And I should have expected you to have more sense. A
+pretty officer I should be if I were afraid of my own men! When a man
+is to blame, I tell him so, in good round language, and shall do so now.
+This man is greatly to blame, and I doubt whether to consider him a fool
+or a rogue. If it were not that he has seven children, as we have, I
+would discharge him this very night.”
+
+“Charles, I am very sorry for his seven children, but our place is to
+think of our own seven first. I beg you, I implore you, to discharge the
+man; for he has not the courage to harm you, I believe, except with the
+cowardly advantage he has got. Now promise me either to say nothing to
+him, or to discharge him, and be done with him.”
+
+“Matilda, of such things you know nothing; and I can not allow you to
+say any more.”
+
+“Very well, very well. I know my duty. I shall sit up and pray every
+dark night you are out, and the whole place will go to the dogs, of
+course. Of the smugglers I am not afraid one bit, nor of any honest
+fighting, such as you are used to. But oh, my dear Charles, the very
+bravest man can do nothing against base treachery.”
+
+“To dream of such things shows a bad imagination,” Carroway answered,
+sternly; but seeing his wife's eyes fill with tears, he took her hand
+gently, and begged her pardon, and promised to be very careful, “I am
+the last man to be rash,” he said, “after getting so many more kicks
+than coppers. I never had a fellow under my command who would lift
+a finger to harm me. And you must remember, my darling Tilly, that I
+command Englishmen, not Lascars.”
+
+With this she was forced to be content, to the best of her ability; and
+Geraldine ran bouncing in from school to fill her father's pipe for him;
+so that by the time John Cadman came, his commander had almost forgotten
+the wrath created by the failure of the morning. But unluckily Cadman
+had not forgotten the words and the look he received before his
+comrades.
+
+“Here I am, Sir, to give an account of myself,” he said, in an insolent
+tone, having taken much liquor to brace him for the meeting. “Is it your
+pleasure to say out what you mean?”
+
+“Yes, but not here. You will follow me to the station.” The lieutenant
+took his favorite staff, and set forth, while his wife, from the little
+window, watched him with a very anxious gaze. She saw her husband stride
+in front with the long rough gait she knew so well, and the swing of his
+arms which always showed that his temper was not in its best condition;
+and behind him Cadman slouched along, with his shoulders up and his red
+hands clinched. And the poor wife sadly went back to work, for her life
+was a truly anxious one.
+
+The station, as it was rather grandly called, was a hut, about the size
+of a four-post bed, upon the low cliff, undermined by the sea, and
+even then threatened to be swept away. Here was a tall flag-staff for
+signals, and a place for a beacon-light when needed, and a bench with
+a rest for a spy-glass. In the hut itself were signal flags, and a few
+spare muskets, and a keg of bullets, with maps and codes hung round the
+wall, and flint and tinder, and a good many pipes, and odds and ends on
+ledges. Carroway was very proud of this place, and kept the key strictly
+in his own pocket, and very seldom allowed a man to pass through
+the narrow doorway. But he liked to sit inside, and see them looking
+desirous to come in.
+
+“Stand there, Cadman,” he said, as soon as he had settled himself in the
+one hard chair; and the man, though thoroughly primed for revolt, obeyed
+the old habit, and stood outside.
+
+“Once more you have misled me, Cadman, and abused my confidence. More
+than that, you have made me a common laughing-stock for scores of fools,
+and even for a learned gentleman, magistrate of divinity. I was not
+content with your information until you confirmed it by letters you
+produced from men well known to you, as you said, and even from
+the inland trader who had contracted for the venture. The schooner
+Elizabeth, of Goole, disguised as a collier, was to bring to, with Robin
+Lyth on board of her, and the goods in her hold under covering of coal,
+and to run the goods at the South Flamborough landing this very night. I
+have searched the Elizabeth from stem to stern, and the craft brought
+up alongside of her; and all I have found is a wretched Frenchman, who
+skulked so that I made sure of him, and not a blessed anker of foreign
+brandy, nor even a forty-pound bag of tea. You had that packet of
+letters in your neck-tie. Hand them to me this moment--”
+
+“If your Honor has made up your mind to think that a sailor of the Royal
+Navy--”
+
+“Cadman, none of that! No lick-spittle lies to me; those letters, that
+I may establish them! You shall have them back, if they are right. And I
+will pay you a half crown for the loan.”
+
+“If I was to leave they letters in your hand, I could never hold head up
+in Burlington no more.”
+
+“That is no concern of mine. Your duty is to hold up your head with me,
+and those who find you in bread and butter.”
+
+“Precious little butter I ever gets, and very little bread to speak of.
+The folk that does the work gets nothing. Them that does nothing gets
+the name and game.”
+
+“Fellow, no reasoning, but obey me!” Carroway shouted, with his temper
+rising. “Hand over those letters, or you leave the service.”
+
+“How can I give away another man's property?” As he said these words,
+the man folded his arms, as who should say, “That is all you get out of
+me.”
+
+“Is that the way you speak to your commanding officer? Who owns those
+letters, then, according to your ideas?”
+
+“Butcher Hewson; and he says that you shall have them as soon as he sees
+the money for his little bill.”
+
+This was a trifle too much for Carroway. Up he jumped with surprising
+speed, took one stride through the station door, and seizing Cadman by
+the collar, shook him, wrung his ear with the left hand, which was like
+a pair of pincers, and then with the other flung him backward as if he
+were an empty bag. The fellow was too much amazed to strike, or close
+with him, or even swear, but received the vehement impact without any
+stay behind him. So that he staggered back, hat downward, and striking
+one heel on a stone, fell over the brink of the shallow cliff to the
+sand below.
+
+The lieutenant, who never had thought of this, was terribly scared, and
+his wrath turned cold. For although the fall was of no great depth, and
+the ground at the bottom so soft, if the poor man had struck it poll
+foremost, as he fell, it was likely that his neck was broken. Without
+any thought of his crippled heel, Carroway took the jump himself.
+
+As soon as he recovered from the jar, which shook his stiff joints and
+stiffer back, he ran to the coast-guardsman and raised him, and found
+him very much inclined to swear. This was a good sign, and the officer
+was thankful, and raised him in the gravelly sand, and kindly requested
+him to have it out, and to thank the Lord as soon as he felt better. But
+Cadman, although he very soon came round, abstained from every token of
+gratitude. Falling with his mouth wide open in surprise, he had filled
+it with gravel of inferior taste, as a tidy sewer pipe ran out just
+there, and at every execration he discharged a little.
+
+“What can be done with a fellow so ungrateful?” cried the lieutenant,
+standing stiffly up again; “nothing but to let him come back to his
+manners. Hark you, John Cadman, between your bad words, if a glass of
+hot grog will restore your right wits, you can come up and have it, when
+your clothes are brushed.”
+
+With these words Carroway strode off to his cottage, without even
+deigning to look back, for a minute had been enough to show him that no
+very serious harm was done.
+
+The other man did not stir until his officer was out of sight; and then
+he arose and rubbed himself, but did not care to go for his rummer of
+hot grog.
+
+“I must work this off,” the lieutenant said, as soon as he had told
+his wife, and received his scolding; “I can not sit down; I must do
+something. My mind is becoming too much for me, I fear. Can you expect
+me to be laughed at? I shall take a little sail in the boat; the wind
+suits, and I have a particular reason. Expect me, my dear, when you see
+me.”
+
+In half an hour the largest boat, which carried a brass swivel-gun in
+her bows, was stretching gracefully across the bay, with her three white
+sails flashing back the sunset. The lieutenant steered, and he had four
+men with him, of whom Cadman was not one, that worthy being left at
+home to nurse his bruises and his dudgeon. These four men now were quite
+marvellously civil, having heard of their comrade's plight, and being
+pleased alike with that and with their commander's prowess. For Cadman
+was by no means popular among them, because, though his pay was the same
+as theirs, he always tried to be looked up to; the while his manners
+were not distinguished, and scarcely could be called polite, when a
+supper required to be paid for. In derision of this, and of his desire
+for mastery, they had taken to call him “Boatswain Jack,” or “John
+Boatswain,” and provoked him by a subscription to present him with a
+pig-whistle. For these were men who liked well enough to receive hard
+words from their betters who were masters of their business, but saw
+neither virtue nor value in submitting to superior airs from their
+equals.
+
+The Royal George, as this boat was called, passed through the fleet of
+quiet vessels, some of which trembled for a second visitation; but not
+deigning to molest them, she stood on, and rounding Flamborough Head,
+passed by the pillar rocks called King and Queen, and bore up for the
+North Landing cove. Here sail was taken in, and oars were manned; and
+Carroway ordered his men to pull in to the entrance of each of the
+well-known caves.
+
+To enter these, when any swell is running, requires great care and
+experience; and the Royal George had too much beam to do it comfortably,
+even in the best of weather. And now what the sailors call a “chopping
+sea” had set in with the turn of the tide, although the wind was still
+off-shore; so that even to lie to at the mouth made rather a ticklish
+job of it. The men looked at one another, and did not like it, for
+a badly handled oar would have cast them on the rocks, which are
+villainously hard and jagged, and would stave in the toughest boat, like
+biscuit china. However, they durst not say that they feared it; and by
+skill and steadiness they examined all three caves quite enough to be
+certain that no boat was in them.
+
+The largest of the three, and perhaps the finest, was the one they first
+came to, which already was beginning to be called the cave of Robin
+Lyth. The dome is very high, and sheds down light when the gleam of the
+sea strikes inward. From the gloomy mouth of it, as far as they could
+venture, the lapping of the wavelets could be heard all round it,
+without a boat, or even a balk of wood to break it. Then they tried
+echo, whose clear answer hesitates where any soft material is; but the
+shout rang only of hard rock and glassy water. To make assurance doubly
+sure, they lit a blue-light, and sent it floating through the depths,
+while they held their position with two boat-hooks and a fender. The
+cavern was lit up with a very fine effect, but not a soul inside of it
+to animate the scene. And to tell the truth, the bold invaders were
+by no means grieved at this; for if there had been smugglers there, it
+would have been hard to tackle them.
+
+Hauling off safely, which was worse than running in, they pulled across
+the narrow cove, and rounding the little headland, examined the Church
+Cave and the Dovecote likewise, and with a like result. Then heartily
+tired, and well content with having done all that man could do, they
+set sail again in the dusk of the night, and forged their way against a
+strong ebb-tide toward the softer waters of Bridlington, and the warmer
+comfort of their humble homes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+DELICATE INQUIRIES
+
+
+A genuine summer day pays a visit nearly once in the season to
+Flamborough; and when it does come, it has a wonderful effect. Often the
+sun shines brightly there, and often the air broods hot with thunder;
+but the sun owes his brightness to sweep of the wind, which sweeps away
+his warmth as well; while, on the other hand, the thunder-clouds, like
+heavy smoke capping the headland, may oppress the air with heat, but are
+not of sweet summer's beauty.
+
+For once, however, the fine day came, and the natives made haste to
+revile it. Before it was three hours old they had found a hundred and
+fifty faults with it. Most of the men truly wanted a good sleep, after
+being lively all the night upon the waves, and the heat and the yellow
+light came in upon their eyes, and set the flies buzzing all about them.
+And even the women, who had slept out their time, and talked quietly,
+like the clock ticking, were vexed with the sun, which kept their
+kettles from good boiling, and wrote upon their faces the years of their
+life. But each made allowance for her neighbor's appearance, on the
+strength of the troubles she had been through. For the matter of that,
+the sun cared not the selvage of a shadow what was thought of him, but
+went his bright way with a scattering of clouds and a tossing of vapors
+anywhere. Upon the few fishermen who gave up hope of sleep, and came
+to stand dazed in their doorways, the glare of white walls and chalky
+stones, and dusty roads, produced the same effect as if they had put on
+their fathers' goggles. Therefore they yawned their way back to their
+room, and poked up the fire, without which, at Flamborough, no hot
+weather would be half hot enough.
+
+The children, however, were wide-awake, and so were the washer-women,
+whose turn it had been to sleep last night for the labors of the
+morning. These were plying hand and tongue in a little field by the
+three cross-roads, where gaffers and gammers of by-gone time had set up
+troughs of proven wood, and the bilge of a long storm-beaten boat, near
+a pool of softish water. Stout brown arms were roped with curd, and
+wedding rings looked slippery things, and thumb-nails bordered with
+inveterate black, like broad beans ripe for planting, shone through a
+hubbub of snowy froth; while sluicing and wringing and rinsing went on
+over the bubbled and lathery turf; and every handy bush or stub, and
+every tump of wiry grass, was sheeted with white, like a ship in full
+sail, and shining in the sun-glare.
+
+From time to time these active women glanced back at their cottages,
+to see that the hearth was still alive, or at their little daughters
+squatting under the low wall which kept them from the road, where they
+had got all the babies to nurse, and their toes and other members to
+compare, and dandelion chains to make. But from their washing ground the
+women could not see the hill that brings to the bottom of the village
+the crooked road from Sewerby. Down that hill came a horseman slowly,
+with nobody to notice him, though himself on the watch for everybody;
+and there in the bottom below the first cottage he allowed his horse to
+turn aside and cool hot feet and leathery lips, in a brown pool spread
+by Providence for the comfort of wayworn roadsters.
+
+The horse looked as if he had labored far, while his rider was calmly
+resting; for the cross-felled sutures of his flank were crusted with
+gray perspiration, and the runnels of his shoulders were dabbled; and
+now it behooved him to be careful how he sucked the earthy-flavored
+water, so as to keep time with the heaving of his barrel. In a word,
+he was drinking as if he would burst--as his hostler at home often told
+him--but the clever old roadster knew better than that, and timing it
+well between snorts and coughs, was tightening his girths with deep
+pleasure.
+
+“Enough, my friend, is as good as a feast,” said his rider to him,
+gently, yet strongly pulling up the far-stretched head, “and too much is
+worse than a famine.”
+
+The horse, though he did not belong to this gentleman, but was hired by
+him only yesterday, had already discovered that, with him on his back,
+his own judgment must lie dormant, so that he quietly whisked his tail
+and glanced with regret at the waste of his drip, and then, with a
+roundabout step, to prolong the pleasure of this little wade, sadly but
+steadily out he walked, and, after the necessary shake, began his
+first invasion of the village. His rider said nothing, but kept a sharp
+look-out.
+
+Now this was Master Geoffrey Mordacks, of the ancient city of York, a
+general factor and land agent. What a “general factor” is, or is not,
+none but himself can pretend to say, even in these days of definition,
+and far less in times when thought was loose; and perhaps Mr. Mordacks
+would rather have it so. But any one who paid him well could trust him,
+according to the ancient state of things. To look at him, nobody would
+even dare to think that money could be a consideration to him, or
+the name of it other than an insult. So lofty and steadfast his whole
+appearance was, and he put back his shoulders so manfully. Upright,
+stiff, and well appointed with a Roman nose, he rode with the seat of a
+soldier and the decision of a tax-collector. From his long steel spurs
+to his hard coned hat not a soft line was there, nor a feeble curve.
+Stern honesty and strict purpose stamped every open piece of him so
+strictly that a man in a hedge-row fostering devious principles, and
+resolved to try them, could do no more than run away, and be thankful
+for the chance of it.
+
+But in those rough and dangerous times, when thousands of people were
+starving, the view of a pistol-butt went further than sternest aspect of
+strong eyes. Geoffrey Mordacks well knew this, and did not neglect his
+knowledge. The brown walnut stock of a heavy pistol shone above either
+holster, and a cavalry sword in a leathern scabbard hung within easy
+reach of hand. Altogether this gentleman seemed not one to be rashly
+attacked by daylight.
+
+No man had ever dreamed as yet of coming to this outlandish place for
+pleasure of the prospect. So that when this lonely rider was descried
+from the washing field over the low wall of the lane, the women made
+up their minds at once that it must be a justice of the peace, or some
+great rider of the Revenue, on his way to see Dr. Upandown, or at the
+least a high constable concerned with some great sheep-stealing. Not
+that any such crime was known in the village itself of Flamborough,
+which confined its operations to the sea; but in the outer world of
+land that malady was rife just now, and a Flamborough man, too fond of
+mutton, had farmed some sheep on the downs, and lost them, which was
+considered a judgment on him for willfully quitting ancestral ways.
+
+But instead of turning at the corner where the rector was trying to grow
+some trees, the stranger kept on along the rugged highway, and between
+the straggling cottages, so that the women rinsed their arms, and turned
+round to take a good look at him, over the brambles and furze, and the
+wall of chalky flint and rubble.
+
+“This is just what I wanted,” thought Geoffrey Mordacks: “skill makes
+luck, and I am always lucky. Now, first of all, to recruit the inner
+man.”
+
+At this time Mrs. Theophila Precious, generally called “Tapsy,” the
+widow of a man who had been lost at sea, kept the “Cod with a Hook in
+his Gills,” the only hostelry in Flamborough village, although there
+was another toward the Landing. The cod had been painted from life--or
+death--by a clever old fisherman who understood him, and he looked so
+firm, and stiff, and hard, that a healthy man, with purse enough to tire
+of butcher's-meat, might grow in appetite by gazing. Mr. Mordacks pulled
+up, and fixed steadfast eyes upon this noble fish, the while a score
+of sharp eyes from the green and white meadow were fixed steadfastly on
+him.
+
+“How he shines with salt-water! How firm he looks, and his gills as
+bright as a rose in June! I have never yet tasted a cod at first hand.
+It is early in the day, but the air is hungry. My expenses are paid, and
+I mean to live well, for a strong mind will be required. I will have a
+cut out of that fish, to begin with.”
+
+Inditing of this, and of matters even better, the rider turned into the
+yard of the inn, where an old boat (as usual) stood for a horse-trough,
+and sea-tubs served as buckets. Strong sunshine glared upon the
+oversaling tiles, and white buckled walls, and cracky lintels;
+but nothing showed life, except an old yellow cat, and a pair of
+house-martins, who had scarcely time to breathe, such a number of little
+heads flipped out with a white flap under the beak of each, demanding
+momentous victualling. At these the yellow cat winked with dreamy
+joyfulness, well aware how fat they would be when they came to tumble
+out.
+
+“What a place of vile laziness!” grumbled Mr. Mordacks, as he got off
+his horse, after vainly shouting “Hostler!” and led him to the byre,
+which did duty for a stable. “York is a lazy hole enough, but the
+further you go from it, the lazier they get. No energy, no movement, no
+ambition, anywhere. What a country! what a people! I shall have to go
+back and enlist the washer-women.”
+
+A Yorkshireman might have answered this complaint, if he thought it
+deserving of an answer, by requesting Master Mordacks not to be so
+overquick, but to bide a wee bit longer before he made so sure of the
+vast superiority of his own wit, for the long heads might prove better
+than the sharp ones in the end of it. However, the general factor
+thought that he could not have come to a better place to get all that he
+wanted out of everybody. He put away his saddle, and the saddlebags
+and sword, in a rough old sea-chest with a padlock to it, and having a
+sprinkle of chaff at the bottom. Then he calmly took the key, as if
+the place were his, gave his horse a rackful of long-cut grass, and
+presented himself, with a lordly aspect, at the front door of the silent
+inn. Here he made noise enough to stir the dead; and at the conclusion
+of a reasonable time, during which she had finished a pleasant dream
+to the simmering of the kitchen pot, the landlady showed herself in the
+distance, feeling for her keys with one hand, and rubbing her eyes
+with the other. This was the head-woman of the village, but seldom
+tyrannical, unless ill-treated, Widow Precious, tall and square, and of
+no mean capacity.
+
+“Young mon,” with a deep voice she said, “what is tha' deein' wi' aw
+that clatter?”
+
+“Alas, my dear madam, I am not a young man; and therefore time is more
+precious to me. I have lived out half my allotted span, and shall never
+complete it unless I get food.”
+
+“T' life o' mon is aw a hoory,” replied Widow Precious, with slow truth.
+“Young mon, what 'll ye hev?”
+
+“Dinner, madam; dinner at the earliest moment. I have ridden far, and my
+back is sore, and my substance is calling for renewal.”
+
+“Ate, ate, ate, that's t' waa of aw menkins. Bud ye maa coom in, and
+crack o' it.”
+
+“Madam, you are most hospitable; and the place altogether seems to be
+of that description. What a beautiful room! May I sit down? I perceive
+a fine smell of most delicate soup. Ah, you know how to do things at
+Flamborough.”
+
+“Young mon, ye can ha' nune of yon potty. Yon's for mesell and t'
+childer.”
+
+“My excellent hostess, mistake me not. I do not aspire to such lofty
+pot-luck. I simply referred to it as a proof of your admirable culinary
+powers.”
+
+“Yon's beeg words. What 'll ye hev te ate?”
+
+“A fish like that upon your sign-post, madam, or at least the upper half
+of him; and three dozen oysters just out of the sea, swimming in their
+own juice, with lovely melted butter.”
+
+“Young mon, hast tha gotten t' brass? Them 'at ates offens forgets t'
+reck'nin'.”
+
+“Yes, madam, I have the needful in abundance. Ecce signum! Which is
+Latin, madam, for the stamps of the king upon twenty guineas. One to be
+deposited in your fair hand for a taste, for a sniff, madam, such as I
+had of your pot.”
+
+“Na, na. No tokkins till a' airned them. What ood your Warship be for
+ating when a' boileth?”
+
+The general factor, perceiving his way, was steadfast to the shoulder
+cut of a decent cod; and though the full season was scarcely yet come,
+Mrs. Precious knew where to find one. Oysters there were none, but she
+gave him boiled limpets, and he thought it the manner of the place that
+made them tough. After these things he had a duck of the noblest and
+best that live anywhere in England. Such ducks were then, and perhaps
+are still, the most remarkable residents of Flamborough. Not only
+because the air is fine, and the puddles and the dabblings of
+extraordinary merit, and the wind fluffs up their pretty feathers while
+alive, as the eloquent poulterer by-and-by will do; but because they
+have really distinguished birth, and adventurous, chivalrous, and bright
+blue Norman blood. To such purpose do the gay young Vikings of the
+world of quack pour in (when the weather and the time of year invite),
+equipped with red boots and plumes of purple velvet, to enchant the coy
+lady ducks in soft water, and eclipse the familiar and too legal drake.
+For a while they revel in the change of scene, the luxury of unsalted
+mud and scarcely rippled water, and the sweetness and culture of tame
+dilly-ducks, to whom their brilliant bravery, as well as an air
+of romance and billowy peril, commends them too seductively. The
+responsible sire of the pond is grieved, sinks his unappreciated bill
+into his back, and vainly reflects upon the vanity of love.
+
+From a loftier point of view, however, this is a fine provision; and Mr.
+Mordacks always took a lofty view of everything.
+
+“A beautiful duck, ma'am; a very grand duck!” in his usual loud and
+masterful tone, he exclaimed to Widow Precious. “I understand your
+question now as to my ability to pay for him. Madam, he is worth a man's
+last shilling. A goose is a smaller and a coarser bird. In what manner
+do you get them?”
+
+“They gets their own sells, wi' the will of the Lord. What will your
+Warship be for ating, come after?”
+
+“None of your puddings and pies, if you please, nor your excellent
+jellies and custards. A red Dutch cheese, with a pat of fresh butter,
+and another imperial pint of ale.”
+
+“Now yon is what I call a man,” thought Mrs. Precious, having neither
+pie nor pudding, as Master Mordacks was well aware; “aisy to please,
+and a' knoweth what a' wants. A' mought 'a been born i' Flaambro. A' maa
+baide for a week, if a' hath the tokkins.”
+
+Mr. Mordacks felt that he had made his footing; but he was not the man
+to abide for a week where a day would suit his purpose. His rule was
+never to beat about the bush when he could break through it, and he
+thought that he saw his way to do so now. Having finished his meal,
+he set down his knife with a bang, sat upright in the oaken chair, and
+gazed in a bold yet pleasant manner at the sturdy hostess.
+
+“You are wondering what has brought me here. That I will tell you in
+a very few words. Whatever I do is straightforward, madam; and all the
+world may know it. That has been my character throughout life; and in
+that respect I differ from the great bulk of mankind. You Flamborough
+folk, however, are much of the very same nature as I am. We ought to
+get on well together. Times are very bad--very bad indeed. I could put
+a good trifle of money in your way; but you tell the truth without
+it, which is very, very noble. Yet people with a family have duties to
+discharge to them, and must sacrifice their feelings to affection. Fifty
+guineas is a tidy little figure, ma'am. With the famine growing in the
+land, no parent should turn his honest back upon fifty guineas. And
+to get the gold, and do good at the same time, is a very rare chance
+indeed.”
+
+This speech was too much for Widow Precious to carry to her settled
+judgment, and get verdict in a breath. She liked it, on the whole, but
+yet there might be many things upon the other side; so she did what
+Flamborough generally does, when desirous to consider things, as it
+generally is. That is to say, she stood with her feet well apart, and
+her arms akimbo, and her head thrown back to give the hinder part a
+rest, and no sign of speculation in her eyes, although they certainly
+were not dull. When these good people are in this frame of mind and
+body, it is hard to say whether they look more wise or foolish. Mr.
+Mordacks, impatient as he was, even after so fine a dinner, was not far
+from catching the infection of slow thought, which spreads itself as
+pleasantly as that of slow discourse.
+
+“You are heeding me, madam; you have quick wits,” he said, without any
+sarcasm, for she rescued the time from waste by affording a study of the
+deepest wisdom; “you are wondering how the money is to come, and whether
+it brings any risk with it. No, Mistress Precious, not a particle of
+risk. A little honest speaking is the one thing needed.”
+
+“The money cometh scores of times more freely fra wrong-doing.”
+
+“Your observation, madam, shows a deep acquaintance with the human race.
+Too often the money does come so; and thus it becomes mere mammon. On
+such occasions we should wash our hands, and not forget the charities.
+But the beauty of money, fairly come by, is that we can keep it all. To
+do good in getting it, and do good with it, and to feel ourselves better
+in every way, and our dear children happier--this is the true way of
+considering the question. I saw some pretty little dears peeping in, and
+wanted to give them a token or two, for I do love superior children. But
+you called them away, madam. You are too stern.”
+
+Widow Precious had plenty of sharp sense to tell her that her children
+were by no means “pretty dears” to anybody but herself, and to herself
+only when in a very soft state of mind; at other times they were but
+three gew-mouthed lasses, and two looby loons with teeth enough for
+crunching up the dripping-pan.
+
+“Your Warship spaketh fair,” she said; “a'most too fair, I'm doubting.
+Wad ye say what the maning is, and what name goeth pledge for the fafty
+poon, Sir?”
+
+“Mistress Precious, my meaning always is plainer than a pikestaff; and
+as to pledges, the pledge is the hard cash down upon the nail, ma'am.”
+
+“Bank-tokkins, mayhap, and I prummeese to paa, with the sign of the
+Dragon, and a woman among sheeps.”
+
+“Madam, a bag of solid gold that can be weighed and counted. Fifty new
+guineas from the mint of King George, in a water-proof bag just fit to
+be buried at the foot of a tree, or well under the thatch, or sewn up
+in the sacking of your bedstead, ma'am. Ah, pretty dreams, what pretty
+dreams, with a virtuous knowledge of having done the right! Shall we say
+it is a bargain, ma'am, and wet it with a glass, at my expense, of the
+crystal spring that comes under the sea?”
+
+“Naw, Sir, naw!--not till I knaw what. I niver trafficks with the divil,
+Sir. There wur a chap of Flaambro deed--”
+
+“My good madam, I can not stop all day. I have far to ride before
+night-fall. All that I want is simply this, and having gone so far, I
+must tell you all, or make an enemy of you. I want to match this; and I
+have reason to believe that it can be matched in Flamborough. Produce me
+the fellow, and I pay you fifty guineas.”
+
+With these words Mr. Mordacks took from an inner pocket a little
+pill-box, and thence produced a globe, or rather an oblate spheroid, of
+bright gold, rather larger than a musket-ball, but fluted or crenelled
+like a poppy-head, and stamped or embossed with marks like letters.
+Widow Precious looked down at it, as if to think what an extraordinary
+thing it was, but truly to hide from the stranger her surprise at the
+sudden recognition. For Robin Lyth was a foremost favorite of hers, and
+most useful to her vocation; and neither fifty guineas nor five hundred
+should lead her to do him an injury. At a glance she had known that
+this bead must belong to the set from which Robin's ear-rings came; and
+perhaps it was her conscience which helped her to suspect that a trap
+was being laid for the free-trade hero. To recover herself, and have
+time to think, as well as for closer discretion, she invited Master
+Mordacks to the choice guest-chamber.
+
+“Set ye doon, Sir, hereaboot,” she said, opening a solid door into
+the inner room; “neaver gain no fear at aw o' crackin' o' the setties;
+fairm, fairm anoo' they be, thoo sketterish o' their lukes, Sir. Set ye
+doon, your Warship; fafty poons desarveth a good room, wi'oot ony lugs
+o' anemees.”
+
+“What a beautiful room!” exclaimed Mr. Mordacks; “and how it savors of
+the place! I never should have thought of finding art and taste of such
+degree in a little place like Flamborough. Why, madam, you must have
+inherited it direct from the Danes themselves.”
+
+“Naw, Sir, naw. I fetched it aw oop fra the breck of the say and the
+cobbles. Book-folk tooneth naw heed o' what we do.”
+
+“Well, it is worth a great deal of heed. Lovely patterns of sea-weed
+on the floor--no carpet can compare with them; shelves of--I am sure
+I don't know what--fished up from the deep, no doubt; and shells
+innumerable, and stones that glitter, and fish like glass, and tufts
+like lace, and birds with most wonderful things in their mouths:
+Mistress Precious, you are too bad. The whole of it ought to go to
+London, where they make collections!”
+
+“Lor, Sir, how ye da be laffin' at me. But purty maa be said of 'em
+wi'out ony lees.”
+
+The landlady smiled as she set for him a chair, toward which he trod
+gingerly, and picking every step, for his own sake as well as of the
+garniture. For the black oak floor was so oiled and polished, to set
+off the pattern of the sea-flowers on it (which really were laid with no
+mean taste and no small sense of color), that for slippery boots there
+was some peril.
+
+“This is a sacred as well as beautiful place,” said Mr. Mordacks. “I may
+finish my words with safety here. Madam, I commend your prudence as well
+as your excellent skill and industry. I should like to bring my daughter
+Arabella here: what a lesson she would gain for tapestry! But now,
+again, for business. What do you say? Unless I am mistaken, you have
+some knowledge of the matter depending on this bauble. You must not
+suppose that I came to you at random. No, madam, no; I have heard far
+away of your great intelligence, caution, and skill, and influence in
+this important town. 'Mistress Precious is the Mayor of Flamborough,'
+was said to me only last Saturday; 'if you would study the wise people
+there, hang up your hat in her noble hostelry.' Madam, I have taken that
+advice, and heartily rejoice at doing so. I am a man of few words,
+very few words--as you must have seen already--but of the strictest
+straightforwardness in deeds. And now again, what do you say, ma'am?”
+
+“Your Warship hath left ma nowt to saa. Your Warship hath had the mooth
+aw to yosell.”
+
+“Now Mistress, Mistress Precious, truly that is a little too bad of you.
+It is out of my power to help admiring things which are utterly beyond
+me to describe, and a dinner of such cooking may enlarge the tongue,
+after all the fine things it has been rolling in. But business is my
+motto, in the fewest words that may be. You know what I want; you will
+keep it to yourself, otherwise other people might demand the money.
+Through very simple channels you will find out whether the fellow thing
+to this can be found here or elsewhere; and if so, who has got it, and
+how it was come by, and everything else that can be learned about it;
+and when you know all, you just make a mark on this piece of paper,
+ready folded and addressed; and then you will seal it, and give it to
+the man who calls for the letters nearly twice a week. And when I get
+that, I come and eat another duck, and have oysters with my cod-fish,
+which to-day we could not have, except in the form of mussels, ma'am.”
+
+“Naw, not a moosel--they was aw gude flithers.”
+
+“Well, ma'am, they may have been unknown animals; but good they were,
+and as fresh as the day. Now, you will remember that my desire is to do
+good. I have nothing to do with the revenue, nor the magistrates,
+nor his Majesty. I shall not even go to your parson, who is the chief
+authority, I am told; for I wish this matter to be kept quiet, and
+beside the law altogether. The whole credit of it shall belong to you,
+and a truly good action you will have performed, and done a little good
+for your own good self. As for this trinket, I do not leave it with you,
+but I leave you this model in wax, ma'am, made by my daughter, who is
+very clever. From this you can judge quite as well as from the other.
+If there are any more of these things in Flamborough, as I have strong
+reason to believe, you will know best where to find them, and I need
+not tell you that they are almost certain to be in the possession of a
+woman. You know all the women, and you skillfully inquire, without even
+letting them suspect it. Now I shall just stretch my legs a little,
+and look at your noble prospect, and in three hours' time a little
+more refreshment, and then, Mistress Precious, you see the last of your
+obedient servant, until you demand from him fifty gold guineas.”
+
+After seeing to his horse again, he set forth for a stroll, in the
+course of which he met with Dr. Upround and his daughter. The rector
+looked hard at this distinguished stranger, as if he desired to know
+his name, and expected to be accosted by him, while quick Miss Janetta
+glanced with undisguised suspicion, and asked her father, so that Mr.
+Mordacks overheard it, what business such a man could have, and what
+could he come spying after, in their quiet parish? The general factor
+raised his hat, and passed on with a tranquil smile, taking the crooked
+path which leads along and around the cliffs, by way of the light-house,
+from the north to the southern landing. The present light-house was not
+yet built, but an old round tower, which still exists, had long been
+used as a signal station, for semaphore by day, and at night for
+beacon, in the times of war and tumult; and most people called it the
+“Monument.” This station was now of very small importance, and sometimes
+did nothing for a year together; but still it was very good and useful,
+because it enabled an ancient tar, whose feet had been carried away by
+a cannon-ball, to draw a little money once a month, and to think himself
+still a fine British bulwark.
+
+In the summer-time this hero always slung his hammock here, with plenty
+of wind to rock him off to sleep, but in winter King Æolus himself
+could not have borne it. “Monument Joe,” as almost everybody called him,
+was a queer old character of days gone by. Sturdy and silent, but as
+honest as the sun, he made his rounds as regularly as that great orb,
+and with equally beneficent object. For twice a day he stumped to fetch
+his beer from Widow Precious, and the third time to get his little
+pannikin of grog. And now the time was growing for that last important
+duty, when a stranger stood before him with a crown piece in his hand.
+
+“Now don't get up, captain, don't disturb yourself,” said Mr. Mordacks,
+graciously; “your country has claimed your activity, I see, and I hope
+it makes amends to you. At the same time I know that it very seldom
+does. Accept this little tribute from the admiration of a friend.”
+
+Old Joe took the silver piece and rung it on his tin tobacco-box, then
+stowed it inside, and said, “Gammon! What d'ye want of me?”
+
+“Your manners, my good Sir, are scarcely on a par with your merits.
+I bribe no man; it is the last thing I would ever dream of doing. But
+whenever a question of memory arises, I have often observed a great
+failure of that power without--without, if you will excuse the
+expression, the administration of a little grease.”
+
+“Smooggling? Aught about smooggling?” Old Joe shut his mouth sternly;
+for he hated and scorned the coast-guards, whose wages were shamefully
+above his own, and who had the impudence to order him for signals;
+while, on the other hand, he found free trade a policy liberal,
+enlightening, and inspiriting.
+
+“No, captain, no; not a syllable of that. You have been in this place
+about sixteen years. If you had only been here four years more, your
+evidence would have settled all I want to know. No wreck can take place
+here, of course, without your knowledge?”
+
+“Dunno that. B'lieve one have. There's a twist of the tide here--but
+what good to tell landlubbers?”
+
+“You are right. I should never understand such things. But I find them
+wonderfully interesting. You are not a native of this place, and knew
+nothing of Flamborough before you came here?”
+
+Monument Joe gave a grunt at this, and a long squirt of tobacco juice.
+“And don't want,” he said.
+
+“Of course, you are superior, in every way superior. You find these
+people rough, and far inferior in manners. But either, my good friend,
+you will re-open your tobacco-box, or else you will answer me a few
+short questions, which trespass in no way upon your duty to the king, or
+to his loyal smugglers.”
+
+Old Joe looked up, with weather-beaten eyes, and saw that he had no
+fool to deal with, in spite of all soft palaver. The intensity of Mr.
+Mordacks's eyes made him blink, and mutter a bad word or two, but remain
+pretty much at his service. And the last intention he could entertain
+was that of restoring this fine crown piece. “Spake on, Sir,” he said;
+“and I will spake accordin'.”
+
+“Very good. I shall give you very little trouble. I wish to know whether
+there was any wreck here, kept quiet perhaps, but still some ship lost,
+about three or four years before you came to this station. It does not
+matter what ship, any ship at all, which may have gone down without any
+fuss at all. You know of none such? Very well. You were not here; and
+the people of this place are wonderfully close. But a veteran of the
+Royal Navy should know how to deal with them. Make your inquiries
+without seeming to inquire. The question is altogether private, and
+can not in any way bring you into trouble. Whereas, if you find out
+anything, you will be a made man, and live like a gentleman. You hate
+the lawyers? All the honest seamen do. I am not a lawyer, and my object
+is to fire a broadside into them. Accept this guinea; and if it would
+suit you to have one every week for the rest of your life, I will pledge
+you my word for it, paid in advance, if you only find out for me one
+little fact, of which I have no doubt whatever, that a merchant ship was
+cast away near this Head just about nineteen years agone.”
+
+That ancient sailor was accustomed to surprises; but this, as he said,
+when he came to think of it, made a clean sweep of him, fore and aft.
+Nevertheless, he had the presence of mind required for pocketing the
+guinea, which was too good for his tobacco-box; and as one thing at a
+time was quite enough upon his mind, he probed away slowly, to be sure
+there was no hole. Then he got up from his squatting form, with the
+usual activity of those who are supposed to have none left, and touched
+his brown hat, standing cleverly. “What be I to do for all this?” he
+asked.
+
+“Nothing more than what I have told you. To find out slowly, and without
+saying why, in the way you sailors know how to do, whether such a thing
+came to pass, as I suppose. You must not be stopped by the lies of
+anybody. Of course they will deny it, if they got some of the wrecking;
+or it is just possible that no one even heard of it; and yet there may
+be some traces. Put two and two together, my good friend, as you have
+the very best chance of doing; and soon you may put two to that in your
+pocket, and twenty, and a hundred, and as much as you can hold.”
+
+“When shall I see your good honor again, to score log-run, and come to a
+reckoning?”
+
+“Master Joseph, work a wary course. Your rating for life will depend
+upon that. You may come to this address, if you have anything important.
+Otherwise you shall soon hear of me again. Good-by.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+GOYLE BAY
+
+
+While all the world was at cross-purposes thus--Mr. Jellicorse uneasy at
+some rumors he had heard; Captain Carroway splitting his poor heel with
+indignation at the craftiness of free-traders; Farmer Anerley vexed at
+being put upon by people, without any daughter to console him, or catch
+shrimps; Master Mordacks pursuing a noble game, strictly above-board, as
+usual; Robin Lyth troubled in his largest principles of revolt against
+revenue by a nasty little pain that kept going to his heart, with an
+emptiness there, as for another heart; and last, and perhaps of all
+most important, the rector perpetually pining for his game of chess, and
+utterly discontented with the frigid embraces of analysis--where was the
+best, and most simple, and least selfish of the whole lot, Mary Anerley?
+
+Mary was in as good a place as even she was worthy of. A place not by
+any means so snug and favored by nature as Anerley Farm, but pretty
+well sheltered by large trees of a strong and hardy order. And the
+comfortable ways of good old folk, who needed no labor to live by spread
+a happy leisure and a gentle ease upon everything under their roof-tree.
+Here was no necessity for getting up until the sun encouraged it; and
+the time for going to bed depended upon the time of sleepiness. Old
+Johnny Popplewell, as everybody called him, without any protest on his
+part, had made a good pocket by the tanning business, and having no
+children to bring up to it, and only his wife to depend upon him, had
+sold the good-will, the yard, and the stock as soon as he had turned his
+sixtieth year. “I have worked hard all my life,” he said, “and I mean to
+rest for the rest of it.”
+
+At first he was heartily miserable, and wandered about with a vacant
+look, having only himself to look after. And he tried to find a hole in
+his bargain with the man who enjoyed all the smells he was accustomed
+to, and might even be heard through a gap in the fence rating the men
+as old Johnny used to do, at the same time of day, and for the same
+neglect, and almost in the self-same words which the old owner used, but
+stronger. Instead of being happy, Master Popplewell lost more flesh in a
+month than he used to lay on in the most prosperous year; and he owed
+it to his wife, no doubt, as generally happens, that he was not speedily
+gathered to the bosom of the hospitable Simon of Joppa. For Mrs.
+Popplewell said, “Go away; Johnny, go away from this village; smell
+new smells, and never see a hide without a walking thing inside of it.
+Sea-weed smells almost as nice as tan; though of course it is not so
+wholesome.” The tanner obeyed, and bought a snug little place about ten
+miles from the old premises, which he called, at the suggestion of the
+parson, “Byrsa Cottage.”
+
+Here was Mary, as blithe as a lark, and as petted as a robin-redbreast,
+by no means pining, or even hankering, for any other robin. She was not
+the girl to give her heart before it was even asked for; and hitherto
+she had regarded the smuggler with pity more than admiration. For in
+many points she was like her father, whom she loved foremost of the
+world; and Master Anerley was a law-abiding man, like every other
+true Englishman. Her uncle Popplewell was also such, but exerted his
+principles less strictly. Moreover, he was greatly under influence of
+wife, which happens more freely to a man without children, the which are
+a source of contradiction. And Mistress Popplewell was a most thorough
+and conscientious free-trader.
+
+Now Mary was from childhood so accustomed to the sea, and the relish
+of salt breezes, and the racy dance of little waves that crowd on one
+another, and the tidal delivery of delightful rubbish, that to fail
+of seeing the many works and plays and constant variance of her never
+wearying or weary friend was more than she could long put up with. She
+called upon Lord Keppel almost every day, having brought him from home
+for the good of his health, to gird up his loins, or rather get his
+belly girths on, and come along the sands with her, and dig into new
+places. But he, though delighted for a while with Byrsa stable, and
+the social charms of Master Popplewell's old cob, and a rick of fine
+tan-colored clover hay and bean haulm, when the novelty of these
+delights was passed, he pined for his home, and the split in his crib,
+and the knot of hard wood he had polished with his neck, and even the
+little dog that snapped at him. He did not care for retired people--as
+he said to the cob every evening--he liked to see farm-work going on, or
+at any rate to hear all about it, and to listen to horses who had worked
+hard, and could scarcely speak, for chewing, about the great quantity
+they had turned of earth, and how they had answered very bad words with
+a bow. In short, to put it in the mildest terms, Lord Keppel was giving
+himself great airs, unworthy of his age, ungrateful to a degree, and
+ungraceful, as the cob said repeatedly; considering how he was fed, and
+bedded, and not a thing left undone for him. But his arrogance soon had
+to pay its own costs.
+
+For, away to the right of Byrsa Cottage, as you look down the hollow
+of the ground toward the sea, a ridge of high scrubby land runs up to
+a forefront of bold cliff, indented with a dark and narrow bay. “Goyle
+Bay,” as it is called, or sometimes “Basin Bay,” is a lonely and rugged
+place, and even dangerous for unwary visitors. For at low spring tides
+a deep hollow is left dry, rather more than a quarter of a mile across,
+strewn with kelp and oozy stones, among which may often be found pretty
+shells, weeds richly tinted and of subtle workmanship, stars, and
+flowers, and love-knots of the sea, and sometimes carnelians and
+crystals. But anybody making a collection here should be able to keep
+one eye upward and one down, or else in his pocket to have two things--a
+good watch and a trusty tide-table.
+
+John and Deborah Popplewell were accustomed to water in small supplies,
+such as that of a well, or a road-side pond, or their own old noble
+tan-pits; but to understand the sea it was too late in life, though it
+pleased them, and gave them fine appetites now to go down when it was
+perfectly calm, and a sailor assured them that the tide was mild. But
+even at such seasons they preferred to keep their distance, and called
+out frequently to one another. They looked upon their niece, from all
+she told them, as a creature almost amphibious; but still they were
+often uneasy about her, and would gladly have kept her well inland. She,
+however, laughed at any such idea; and their discipline was to let her
+have her own way. But now a thing happened which proved forever how much
+better old heads are than young ones.
+
+For Mary, being tired of the quiet places, and the strands where she
+knew every pebble, resolved to explore Goyle Bay at last, and she chose
+the worst possible time for it. The weather had been very fine and
+gentle, and the sea delightfully plausible, without a wave--tide after
+tide--bigger than the furrow of a two-horse plough; and the maid began
+to believe at last that there never were any storms just here. She had
+heard of the pretty things in Goyle Bay, which was difficult of access
+from the land, but she resolved to take opportunity of tide, and thus
+circumvent the position; she would rather have done it afoot, but her
+uncle and aunt made a point of her riding to the shore, regarding the
+pony as a safe companion, and sure refuge from the waves. And so, upon
+the morning of St. Michael, she compelled Lord Keppel, with an adverse
+mind, to turn a headland they had never turned before.
+
+The tide was far out and ebbing still, but the wind had shifted, and was
+blowing from the east rather stiffly, and with increasing force. Mary
+knew that the strong equinoctial tides were running at their height; but
+she had timed her visit carefully, as she thought, with no less than an
+hour and a half to spare. And even without any thought of tide, she was
+bound to be back in less time than that, for her uncle had been most
+particular to warn her to be home without fail at one o'clock, when the
+sacred goose, to which he always paid his duties, would be on the table.
+And if anything marred his serenity of mind, it was to have dinner kept
+waiting.
+
+Without any misgivings, she rode into Basin Bay, keeping within the
+black barrier of rocks, outside of which wet sands were shining. She
+saw that these rocks, like the bar of a river, crossed the inlet of
+the cove; but she had not been told of their peculiar frame and upshot,
+which made them so treacherous a rampart. At the mouth of the bay they
+formed a level crescent, as even as a set of good teeth, against the
+sea, with a slope of sand running up to their outer front, but a deep
+and long pit inside of them. This pit drained itself very nearly dry
+when the sea went away from it, through some stony tubes which only
+worked one way, by the closure of their mouths when the tide returned;
+so that the volume of the deep sometimes, with tide and wind behind it,
+leaped over the brim into the pit, with tenfold the roar, a thousandfold
+the power, and scarcely less than the speed, of a lion.
+
+Mary Anerley thought what a lovely place it was, so deep and secluded
+from anybody's sight, and full of bright wet colors. Her pony refused,
+with his usual wisdom, to be dragged to the bottom of the hole, but she
+made him come further down than he thought just, and pegged him by
+the bridle there. He looked at her sadly, and with half a mind to
+expostulate more forcibly, but getting no glimpse of the sea where he
+stood, he thought it as well to put up with it; and presently he snorted
+out a tribe of little creatures, which puzzled him and took up his
+attention.
+
+Meanwhile Mary was not only puzzled, but delighted beyond description.
+She never yet had come upon such treasures of the sea, and she scarcely
+knew what to lay hands upon first. She wanted the weeds of such
+wonderful forms, and colors yet more exquisite, and she wanted the
+shells of such delicate fabric that fairies must have made them, and a
+thousand other little things that had no names; and then she seemed most
+of all to want the pebbles. For the light came through them in stripes
+and patterns, and many of them looked like downright jewels. She had
+brought a great bag of strong canvas, luckily, and with both hands she
+set to to fill it.
+
+So busy was the girl with the vast delight of sanguine acquisition--this
+for her father, and that for her mother, and so much for everybody she
+could think of--that time had no time to be counted at all, but flew
+by with feathers unheeded. The mutter of the sea became a roar, and the
+breeze waxed into a heavy gale, and spray began to sputter through the
+air like suds; but Mary saw the rampart of the rocks before her, and
+thought that she could easily get back around the point. And her taste
+began continually to grow more choice, so that she spent as much time
+in discarding the rubbish which at first she had prized so highly as
+she did in collecting the real rarities, which she was learning to
+distinguish. But unluckily the sea made no allowance for all this.
+
+For just as Mary, with her bag quite full, was stooping with a long
+stretch to get something more--a thing that perhaps was the very best of
+all, and therefore had got into a corner--there fell upon her back quite
+a solid lump of wave, as a horse gets the bottom of the bucket cast at
+him. This made her look up, not a minute too soon; and even then she was
+not at all aware of danger, but took it for a notice to be moving.
+And she thought more of shaking that saltwater from her dress than of
+running away from the rest of it.
+
+But as soon as she began to look about in earnest, sweeping back her
+salted hair, she saw enough of peril to turn pale the roses and strike
+away the smile upon her very busy face. She was standing several yards
+below the level of the sea, and great surges were hurrying to swallow
+her. The hollow of the rocks received the first billow with a thump and
+a slush, and a rush of pointed hillocks in a fury to find their way back
+again, which failing, they spread into a long white pool, taking Mary
+above her pretty ankles. “Don't you think to frighten me,” said Mary; “I
+know all your ways, and I mean to take my time.”
+
+But even before she had finished her words, a great black wall (doubled
+over at the top with whiteness, that seemed to race along it like a
+fringe) hung above the rampart, and leaped over, casting at Mary such a
+volley that she fell. This quenched her last audacity, although she was
+not hurt; and jumping up nimbly, she made all haste through the rising
+water toward her pony. But as she would not forsake her bag, and the
+rocks became more and more slippery, towering higher and higher surges
+crashed in over the barrier, and swelled the yeasty turmoil which began
+to fill the basin; while a scurry of foam flew like pellets from the
+rampart, blinding even the very best young eyes.
+
+Mary began to lose some of her presence of mind and familiar approval
+of the sea. She could swim pretty well, from her frequent bathing; but
+swimming would be of little service here, if once the great rollers
+came over the bar, which they threatened to do every moment. And when at
+length she fought her way to the poor old pony, her danger and distress
+were multiplied. Lord Keppel was in a state of abject fear; despair was
+knocking at his fine old heart; he was up to his knees in the loathsome
+brine already, and being so twisted up by his own exertions that to
+budge another inch was beyond him, he did what a horse is apt to do in
+such condition--he consoled himself with fatalism. He meant to expire;
+but before he did so he determined to make his mistress feel what she
+had done. Therefore, with a sad nudge of white old nose, he drew her
+attention to his last expression, sighed as plainly as a man could sigh,
+and fixed upon her meek eyes, telling volumes.
+
+“I know, I know that it is all my fault,” cried Mary, with the brine
+almost smothering her tears, as she flung her arms around his neck; “but
+I never will do it again, my darling. And I never will run away and let
+you drown. Oh, if I only had a knife! I can not even cast your bridle
+off; the tongue has stuck fast, and my hands are cramped. But, Keppel, I
+will stay, and be drowned with you.”
+
+This resolve was quite unworthy of Mary's common-sense; for how could
+her being drowned with Keppel help him? However, the mere conception
+showed a spirit of lofty order; though the body might object to be
+ordered under. Without any thought of all that, she stood, resolute,
+tearful, and thoroughly wet through, while she hunted in her pocket for
+a penknife.
+
+The nature of all knives is, not to be found; and Mary's knife was loyal
+to its kind. Then she tugged at her pony, and pulled out his bit, and
+labored again at the obstinate strap; but nothing could be done with it.
+Keppel must be drowned, and he did not seem to care, but to think that
+the object of his birth was that. If the stupid little fellow would
+have only stepped forward, the hands of his mistress, though cramped and
+benumbed, might perhaps have unbuckled his stiff and sodden reins, or
+even undone their tangle; on the other hand, if he would have jerked
+with all his might, something or other must have given way; but stir he
+would not from one fatuous position, which kept all his head-gear on the
+strain, but could not snap it. Mary even struck him with her heavy bag
+of stones, to make him do something; but he only looked reproachful.
+
+“Was there ever such a stupid?” the poor girl cried, with the water
+rising almost to her waist, and the inner waves beginning to dash over
+her, while the outer billows threatened to rush in and crush them both.
+“But I will not abuse you any more, poor Keppel. What will dear father
+say? Oh, what will he think of it?”
+
+Then she burst into a fit of sobs, and leaned against the pony, to
+support her from a rushing wave which took her breath away, and she
+thought that she would never try to look up any more, but shut her eyes
+to all the rest of it. But suddenly she heard a loud shout and a splash,
+and found herself caught up and carried like an infant.
+
+“Lie still. Never mind the pony: what is he? I will go for him
+afterward. You first, you first of all the world, my Mary.”
+
+She tried to speak, but not a word would come; and that was all the
+better. She was carried quick as might be through a whirl of tossing
+waters, and gently laid upon a pile of kelp; and then Robin Lyth said,
+“You are quite safe here, for at least another hour. I will go and get
+your pony.”
+
+“No, no; you will be knocked to pieces,” she cried; for the pony, in the
+drift and scud, could scarcely be seen but for his helpless struggles.
+But the young man was half way toward him while she spoke, and she knelt
+upon the kelp, and clasped her hands.
+
+Now Robin was at home in a matter such as this. He had landed many kegs
+in a sea as strong or stronger, and he knew how to deal with the horses
+in a surf. There still was a break of almost a fathom in the level of
+the inner and the outer waves, for the basin was so large that it could
+not fill at once; and so long as this lasted, every roller must comb
+over at the entrance, and mainly spend itself. “At least five minutes to
+spare,” he shouted back, “and there is no such thing as any danger.” But
+the girl did not believe him.
+
+Rapidly and skillfully he made his way, meeting the larger waves
+sideways, and rising at their onset; until he was obliged to swim at
+last where the little horse was swimming desperately. The leather,
+still jammed in some crevice at the bottom, was jerking his poor chin
+downward; his eyes were screwed up like a new-born kitten's, and his
+dainty nose looked like a jelly-fish. He thought how sad it was that
+he should ever die like this, after all the good works of his life--the
+people he had carried, and the chaise that he had drawn, and all his
+kindness to mankind. Then he turned his head away to receive the stroke
+of grace, which the next wave would administer.
+
+No! He was free. He could turn his honest tail on the sea, which he
+always had detested so; he could toss up his nose and blow the filthy
+salt out, and sputter back his scorn, while he made off for his life.
+So intent was he on this that he never looked twice to make out who his
+benefactor was, but gave him just a taste of his hind-foot on the
+elbow, in the scuffle of his hurry to be round about and off. “Such is
+gratitude!” the smuggler cried; but a clot of salt-water flipped into
+his mouth, and closed all cynical outlet. Bearing up against the waves,
+he stowed his long knife away, and then struck off for the shore with
+might and main.
+
+Here Mary ran into the water to meet him, shivering as she was with
+fright and cold, and stretched out both hands to him as he waded forth;
+and he took them and clasped them, quite as if he needed help. Lord
+Keppel stood afar off, recovering his breath, and scarcely dared to look
+askance at the execrable sea.
+
+“How cold you are!” Robin Lyth exclaimed. “You must not stay a moment.
+No talking, if you please--though I love your voice so. You are not
+safe yet. You can not get back round the point. See the waves dashing
+up against it! You must climb the cliff, and that is no easy job for a
+lady, in the best of weather. In a couple of hours the tide will be
+over the whole of this beach a fathom deep. There is no boat nearer than
+Filey; and a boat could scarcely live over that bar. You must climb the
+cliff, and begin at once, before you get any colder.”
+
+“Then is my poor pony to be drowned, after all? If he is, he had better
+have been drowned at once.”
+
+The smuggler looked at her with a smile, which meant, “Your gratitude
+is about the same as his;” but he answered, to assure her, though by no
+means sure himself:
+
+“There is time enough for him; he shall not be drowned. But you must be
+got out of danger first. When you are off my mind, I will fetch up pony.
+Now you must follow me step by step, carefully and steadily. I would
+carry you up if I could; but even a giant could scarcely do that, in a
+stiff gale of wind, and with the crag so wet.”
+
+Mary looked up with a shiver of dismay. She was brave and nimble
+generally, but now so wet and cold, and the steep cliff looked so
+slippery, that she said: “It is useless; I can never get up there.
+Captain Lyth, save yourself, and leave me.”
+
+“That would be a pretty thing to do!” he replied; “and where should I be
+afterward? I am not at the end of my devices yet. I have got a very snug
+little crane up there. It was here we ran our last lot, and beat the
+brave lieutenant so. But unluckily I have no cave just here. None of my
+lads are about here now, or we would make short work of it. But I could
+hoist you very well, if you would let me.”
+
+“I would never think of such a thing. To come up like a keg! Captain
+Lyth, you must know that I never would be so disgraced.”
+
+“Well, I was afraid that you might take it so, though I can not see why
+it should be any harm. We often hoist the last man so.”
+
+“It is different with me,” said Mary. “It may be no harm; but I could
+not have it.”
+
+The free-trader looked at her bright eyes and color, and admired her
+spirit, which his words had roused.
+
+“I pray your forgiveness, Miss Anerley,” he said; “I meant no harm. I
+was thinking of your life. But you look now as if you could do anything
+almost.”
+
+“Yes, I am warm again. I have no fear. I will not go up like a keg, but
+like myself. I can do it without help from anybody.”
+
+“Only please to take care not to cut your little hands,” said Robin, as
+he began the climb; for he saw that her spirit was up to do it.
+
+“My hands are not little; and I will cut them if I choose. Please not
+even to look back at me. I am not in the least afraid of anything.”
+
+The cliff was not of the soft and friable stuff to be found at
+Bridlington, but of hard and slippery sandstone, with bulky ribs
+oversaling here and there, and threatening to cast the climber back. At
+such spots nicks for the feet had been cut, or broken with a hammer, but
+scarcely wider than a stirrup-iron, and far less inviting. To surmount
+these was quite impossible except by a process of crawling; and Mary,
+with her heart in her mouth, repented of her rash contempt for the crane
+sling. Luckily the height was not very great, or, tired as she was, she
+must have given way; for her bodily warmth had waned again in the strong
+wind buffeting the cliff. Otherwise the wind had helped her greatly by
+keeping her from swaying outward; but her courage began to fail at last,
+and very near the top she called for help. A short piece of lanyard was
+thrown to her at once, and Robin Lyth landed her on the bluff, panting,
+breathless, and blushing again.
+
+“Well done!” he cried, gazing as she turned her face away. “Young ladies
+may teach even sailors to climb. Not every sailor could get up this
+cliff. Now back to Master Popplewell's as fast as you can run, and your
+aunt will know what to do with you.”
+
+“You seem well acquainted with my family affairs,” said Mary, who could
+not help smiling. “Pray how did you even know where I am staying?”
+
+“Little birds tell me everything, especially about the best, and most
+gentle, and beautiful of all birds.”
+
+The maiden was inclined to be vexed; but remembering how much he had
+done, and how little gratitude she had shown, she forgave him, and asked
+him to come to the cottage.
+
+“I will bring up the little horse. Have no fear,” he replied. “I will
+not come up at all unless I bring him. But it may take two or three
+hours.”
+
+With no more than a wave of his hat, he set off, as if the coast-riders
+were after him, by the path along the cliffs toward Filey, for he knew
+that Lord Keppel must be hoisted by the crane, and he could not manage
+it without another man, and the tide would wait for none of them. Upon
+the next headland he found one of his men, for the smugglers maintained
+a much sharper look-out than did the forces of his Majesty, because they
+were paid much better; and returning, they managed to strap Lord Keppel,
+and hoist him like a big bale of contraband goods. For their crane had
+been left in a brambled hole, and they very soon rigged it out again.
+The little horse kicked pretty freely in the air, not perceiving his own
+welfare; but a cross-beam and pulley kept him well out from the cliff,
+and they swung him in over handsomely, and landed him well up on the
+sward within the brink. Then they gave him three cheers for his great
+adventure, which he scarcely seemed to appreciate.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+A FARM TO LET
+
+
+That storm on the festival of St. Michael broke up the short summer
+weather of the north. A wet and tempestuous month set in, and the
+harvest, in all but the very best places, lay flat on the ground,
+without scythe or sickle. The men of the Riding were not disturbed by
+this, as farmers would have been in Suffolk; for these were quite used
+to walk over their crops, without much occasion to lift their feet. They
+always expected their corn to be laid, and would have been afraid of it
+if it stood upright. Even at Anerley Farm this salam of the wheat was
+expected in bad seasons; and it suited the reapers of the neighborhood,
+who scarcely knew what to make of knees unbent, and upright discipline
+of stiff-cravated ranks.
+
+In the northwest corner of the county, where the rocky land was mantled
+so frequently with cloud, and the prevalence of western winds bore sway,
+an upright harvest was a thing to talk of, as the legend of a century,
+credible because it scarcely could have been imagined. And this year it
+would have been hard to imagine any more prostrate and lowly position
+than that of every kind of crop. The bright weather of August and
+attentions of the sun, and gentle surprise of rich dews in the morning,
+together with abundance of moisture underneath, had made things look as
+they scarcely ever looked--clean, and straight, and elegant. But none of
+them had found time to form the dry and solid substance, without which
+neither man nor his staff of life can stand against adversity.
+
+“My Lady Philippa,” as the tenants called her, came out one day to see
+how things looked, and whether the tenants were likely to pay their
+Michaelmas rents at Christmas. Her sister, Mrs. Carnaby, felt like
+interest in the question, but hated long walks, being weaker and less
+active, and therefore rode a quiet pony. Very little wheat was grown on
+their estates, both soil and climate declining it; but the barley crop
+was of more importance, and flourished pretty well upon the southern
+slopes. The land, as a rule, was poor and shallow, and nourished more
+grouse than partridges; but here and there valleys of soft shelter and
+fair soil relieved the eye and comforted the pocket of the owner. These
+little bits of Goshen formed the heart of every farm; though oftentimes
+the homestead was, as if by some perversity, set up in bleak and barren
+spots, outside of comfort's elbow.
+
+The ladies marched on, without much heed of any other point than
+one--would the barley crop do well? They had many tenants who trusted
+chiefly to that, and to the rough hill oats, and wool, to make up in
+coin what part of their rent they were not allowed to pay in kind.
+For as yet machinery and reeking factories had not besmirched the
+country-side.
+
+“How much further do you mean to go, Philippa?” asked Mrs. Carnaby,
+although she was not travelling by virtue of her own legs. “For my part,
+I think we have gone too far already.”
+
+“Your ambition is always to turn back. You may turn back now if you
+like. I shall go on.” Miss Yordas knew that her sister would fail of the
+courage to ride home all alone.
+
+Mrs. Carnaby never would ride without Jordas or some other serving-man
+behind her, as was right and usual for a lady of her position; but “Lady
+Philippa” was of bolder strain, and cared for nobody's thoughts, words,
+or deeds. And she had ordered her sister's servant back for certain
+reasons of her own.
+
+“Very well, very well. You always will go on, and always on the road you
+choose yourself. Although it requires a vast deal of knowledge to know
+that there is any road here at all.”
+
+The widow, who looked very comely for her age, and sat her pony
+prettily, gave way (as usual) to the stronger will; though she always
+liked to enter protest, which the elder scarcely ever deigned to notice.
+But hearing that Eliza had a little cough at night, and knowing that
+her appetite had not been as it ought to be, Philippa (who really was
+wrapped up in her sister, but never or seldom let her dream of such a
+fact) turned round graciously and said:
+
+“I have ordered the carriage here for half past three o'clock. We will
+go back by the Scarbend road, and Heartsease can trot behind us.”
+
+“Heartsease, uneasy you have kept my heart by your shufflings and
+trippings perpetual. Philippa, I want a better-stepping pony. Pet has
+ruined Heartsease.”
+
+“Pet ruins everything and everybody; and you are ruining him, Eliza. I
+am the only one who has the smallest power over him. And he is beginning
+to cast off that. If it comes to open war between us, I shall be sorry
+for Lancelot.”
+
+“And I shall be sorry for you, Philippa. In a few years Pet will be
+a man. And a man is always stronger than a woman; at any rate in our
+family.”
+
+“Stronger than such as you, Eliza. But let him only rebel against me,
+and he will find himself an outcast. And to prove that, I have brought
+you here.”
+
+Mistress Yordas turned round, and looked in a well-known manner at her
+sister, whose beautiful eyes filled with tears, and fell.
+
+“Philippa,” she said, with a breath like a sob, “sometimes you look
+harder than poor dear papa, in his very worst moments, used to look. I
+am sure that I do not at all deserve it. All that I pray for is peace
+and comfort; and little do I get of either.”
+
+“And you will get less, as long as you pray for them, instead of doing
+something better. The only way to get such things is to make them.”
+
+“Then I think that you might make enough for us both, if you had any
+regard for them, or for me, Philippa.”
+
+Mistress Yordas smiled, as she often did, at her sister's style of
+reasoning. And she cared not a jot for the last word, so long as the
+will and the way were left to her. And in this frame of mind she turned
+a corner from the open moor track into a little lane, or rather the
+expiring delivery of a lane, which was leading a better existence
+further on.
+
+Mrs. Carnaby followed dutifully, and Heartsease began to pick up his
+feet, which he scorned to do upon the negligence of sward. And following
+this good lane, they came to a gate, corded to an ancient tree, and
+showing up its foot, as a dog does when he has a thorn in it. This gate
+seemed to stand for an ornament, or perhaps a landmark; for the lane,
+instead of submitting to it, passed by upon either side, and plunged
+into a dingle, where a gray old house was sheltering. The lonely
+moorside farm--if such a wild and desolate spot could be a farm--was
+known as “Wallhead,” from the relics of some ancient wall; and the
+folk who lived there, or tried to live, although they possessed a
+surname--which is not a necessary consequence of life--very seldom used
+it, and more rarely still had it used for them. For the ancient fashion
+still held ground of attaching the idea of a man to that of things more
+extensive and substantial. So the head of the house was “Will o'
+the Wallhead;” his son was “Tommy o' Will o' the Wallhead;” and his
+grandson, “Willy o' Tommy o' Will o' the Wallhead.” But the one their
+great lady desired to see was the unmarried daughter of the house,
+“Sally o' Will o' the Wallhead.”
+
+Mistress Yordas knew that the men of the house would be out upon the
+land at this time of day, while Sally would be full of household work,
+and preparing their homely supper. So she walked in bravely at the
+open door, while her sister waited with the pony in the yard. Sally was
+clumping about in clog-shoes, with a child or two sprawling after her
+(for Tommy's wife was away with him at work), and if the place was not
+as clean as could be, it seemed as clean as need be.
+
+The natives of this part are rough in manner, and apt to regard civility
+as the same thing with servility. Their bluntness does not proceed from
+thickness, as in the south of England, but from a surety of their own
+worth, and inferiority to no one. And to deal with them rightly, this
+must be entered into.
+
+Sally o' Will o' the Wallhead bobbed her solid and black curly head,
+with a clout like a jelly on the poll of it, to the owner of their land,
+and a lady of high birth; but she vouchsafed no courtesy, neither did
+Mistress Yordas expect one. But the active and self-contained woman set
+a chair in the low dark room, which was their best, and stood waiting to
+be spoken to.
+
+“Sally,” said the lady, who also possessed the Yorkshire gift of going
+to the point, “you had a man ten years ago; you behaved badly to him,
+and he went into the Indian Company.”
+
+“A' deed,” replied the maiden, without any blush, because she had been
+in the right throughout; “and noo a' hath coom in a better moind.”
+
+“And you have come to know your own mind about him. You have been
+steadfast to him for ten years. He has saved up some money, and is come
+back to marry you.”
+
+“I heed nane o' the brass. But my Jack is back again.”
+
+“His father held under us for many years. He was a thoroughly honest
+man, and paid his rent as often as he could. Would Jack like to have his
+father's farm? It has been let to his cousin, as you know; but they have
+been going from bad to worse; and everything must be sold off, unless I
+stop it.”
+
+Sally was of dark Lancastrian race, with handsome features and fine
+brown eyes. She had been a beauty ten years ago, and could still look
+comely, when her heart was up.
+
+“My lady,” she said, with her heart up now, at the hope of soon having
+a home of her own, and something to work for that she might keep, “such
+words should not pass the mouth wi'out bin meant.”
+
+What she said was very different in sound, and not to be rendered in
+echo by any one born far away from that country, where three dialects
+meet and find it hard to guess what each of the others is up to.
+Enough that this is what Sally meant to say, and that Mistress Yordas
+understood it.
+
+“It is not my custom to say a thing without meaning it,” she answered;
+“but unless it is taken up at once, it is likely to come to nothing.
+Where is your man Jack?”
+
+“Jack is awaa to the minister to tell of us cooming tegither.” Sally
+made no blush over this, as she might have done ten years ago.
+
+“He must be an excellent and faithful man. He shall have the farm if he
+wishes it, and can give some security at going in. Let him come and see
+Jordas tomorrow.”
+
+After a few more words, the lady left Sally full of gratitude, very
+little of which was expressed aloud, and therefore the whole was more
+likely to work, as Mistress Yordas knew right well.
+
+The farm was a better one than Wallhead, having some good barley land
+upon it; and Jack did not fail to present himself at Scargate upon the
+following morning. But the lady of the house did not think fit herself
+to hold discourse with him. Jordas was bidden to entertain him, and find
+out how he stood in cash, and whether his character was solid; and then
+to leave him with a jug of ale, and come and report proceedings. The
+dogman discharged this duty well, being as faithful as the dogs he kept,
+and as keen a judge of human nature.
+
+“The man hath no harm in him,” he said, touching his hair to the ladies,
+as he entered the audit-room. “A' hath been knocked aboot a bit in them
+wars i' Injury, and hath only one hand left; but a' can lay it upon
+fifty poon, and get surety for anither fifty.”
+
+“Then tell him, Jordas, that he may go to Mr. Jellicorse to-morrow,
+to see about the writings, which he must pay for. I will write full
+instructions for Mr. Jellicorse, and you go and get your dinner; and
+then take my letter, that he may have time to consider it. Wait a
+moment. There are other things to be done in Middleton, and it would be
+late for you to come back to-night, the days are drawing in so. Sleep at
+our tea-grocer's; he will put you up. Give your letter at once into the
+hands of Mr. Jellicorse, and he will get forward with the writings. Tell
+this man Jack that he must be there before twelve o'clock to-morrow, and
+then you can call about two o'clock, and bring back what there may be
+for signature; and be careful of it. Eliza, I think I have set forth
+your wishes.”
+
+“But, my lady, lawyers do take such a time; and who will look after
+Master Lancelot? I fear to have my feet two moiles off here--”
+
+“Obey your orders, without reasoning; that is for those who give them.
+Eliza, I am sure that you agree with me. Jordas, make this man clearly
+understand, as you can do when you take the trouble. But you first must
+clearly understand the whole yourself. I will repeat it for you.”
+
+Philippa Yordas went through the whole of her orders again most clearly,
+and at every one of them the dogman nodded his large head distinctly,
+and counted the nods on his fingers to make sure; for this part is
+gifted with high mathematics. And the numbers stick fast like pegs
+driven into clay.
+
+“Poor Jordas! Philippa, you are working him too hard. You have made
+great wrinkles in his forehead. Jordas, you must have no wrinkles until
+you are married.”
+
+While Mrs. Carnaby spoke so kindly, the dogman took his fingers off
+their numeral scale, and looked at her. By nature the two were first
+cousins, of half blood; by law and custom, and education, and vital
+institution, they were sundered more widely than black and white. But,
+for all that, the dogman loved the lady, at a faithful distance.
+
+“You seem to me now to have it clearly, Jordas,” said the elder sister,
+looking at him sternly, because Eliza was so soft; “you will see that no
+mischief can be done with the dogs or horses while you are away; and
+Mr. Jellicorse will give you a letter for me, to say that everything is
+right. My desire is to have things settled promptly, because your friend
+Jack has been to set the banns up; and the Church is more speedy in such
+matters than the law. Now the sooner you are off, the better.”
+
+Jordas, in his steady but by no means stupid way, considered at his
+leisure what such things could mean. He knew all the property, and the
+many little holdings, as well as, and perhaps a great deal better than,
+if they had happened to be his own. But he never had known such a hurry
+made before, or such a special interest shown about the letting of
+any tenement, of perhaps tenfold the value. However, he said, like a
+sensible man (and therefore to himself only), that the ways of women
+are beyond compute, and must be suitably carried out, without any
+contradiction.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+AN OLD SOLDIER
+
+
+Now Mr. Jellicorse had been taking a careful view of everything. He
+wished to be certain of placing himself both on the righteous side and
+the right one; and in such a case this was not to be done without much
+circumspection. He felt himself bound to his present clients, and could
+not even dream of deserting them; but still there are many things that
+may be done to conciliate the adversary of one's friend, without being
+false to the friend himself. And some of these already were occurring to
+the lawyer.
+
+It was true that no adversary had as yet appeared, nor even shown token
+of existence; but some little sign of complication had arisen, and one
+serious fact was come to light. The solicitors of Sir Ulphus de Roos
+(the grandson of Sir Fursan, whose daughter had married Richard
+Yordas) had pretty strong evidence, in some old letters, that a deed
+of appointment had been made by the said Richard, and Eleanor his wife,
+under the powers of their settlement. Luckily they had not been employed
+in the matter, and possessed not so much as a draft or a letter of
+instructions; and now it was no concern of theirs to make, or meddle, or
+even move. Neither did they know that any question could arise about it;
+for they were a highly antiquated firm, of most rigid respectability,
+being legal advisers to the Chapter of York, and clerks of the
+Prerogative Court, and able to charge twice as much as almost any other
+firm, and nearly three times as much as poor Jellicorse.
+
+Mr. Jellicorse had been most skillful and wary in sounding these deep
+and silent people; for he wanted to find out how much they knew, without
+letting them suspect that there was anything to know. And he proved
+an old woman's will gratis, or at least put it down to those who could
+afford it--because nobody meant to have it proved--simply for the
+sake of getting golden contact with Messrs. Akeborum, Micklegate, and
+Brigant. Right craftily then did he fetch a young member of the firm,
+who delighted in angling, to take his holiday at Middleton, and fish the
+goodly Tees; and by gentle and casual discourse of gossip, in hours of
+hospitality, out of him he hooked and landed all that his firm knew of
+the Yordas race. Young Brigant thought it natural enough that his
+host, as the lawyer of that family, and their trusted adviser for
+five-and-twenty years, should like to talk over things of an elder date,
+which now could be little more than trifles of genealogical history. He
+got some fine fishing and good dinners, and found himself pleased with
+the river and the town, and his very kind host and hostess; and it came
+into his head that if Miss Emily grew up as pretty and lively as she
+promised to be, he might do worse than marry her, and open a connection
+with such a fishing station. At any rate he left her as a “chose in
+action,” which might be reduced into possession some fine day.
+
+Such was the state of affairs when Jordas, after a long and muddy ride,
+sent word that he would like to see the master, for a minute or two,
+if convenient. The days were grown short, and the candles lit, and Mr.
+Jellicorse was fast asleep, having had a good deal to get through that
+day, including an excellent supper. The lawyer's wife said: “Let
+him call in the morning. Business is over, and the office is closed.
+Susanna, your master must not be disturbed.” But the master awoke, and
+declared that he would see him.
+
+Candles were set in the study, while Jordas was having a trifle of
+refreshment; and when he came in, Mr. Jellicorse was there, with his
+spectacles on, and full of business.
+
+“Asking of your pardon. Sir, for disturbing of you now,” said the
+dogman, with the rain upon his tarred coat shining, in a little course
+of drainage from his great brown beard, “my orders wur to lay this in
+your own hand, and seek answer to-morrow by dinner-time, if may be.”
+
+“Master Jordas, you shall have it, if it can be. Do you know anybody who
+can promise more than that?”
+
+“Plenty, Sir, to promise it, as you must know by this time; but never a
+body to perform so much as half. But craving of your pardon again, and
+separate, I wud foin spake a word or two of myself.”
+
+“Certainly, Jordas, I shall listen with great pleasure. A fine-looking
+fellow like you must have affairs. And the lady ought to make some
+settlement. It shall all be done for you at half price.”
+
+“No, Sir, it is none o' that kind of thing,” the dogman answered, with a
+smile, as if he might have had such opportunities, but would trouble
+no lawyer about them; “and I get too much of half price at home. It is
+about my ladies I desire to make speech. They keep their business too
+tight, master.”
+
+“Jordas, you have been well taught and trained; and you are a man of
+sagacity. Tell me faithfully what you mean. It shall go no further. And
+it may be of great service to your ladies.”
+
+“It is not much, Master Jellicoose; and you may make less than that
+of it. But a lie shud be met and knocked doon, Sir, according to my
+opinion.”
+
+“Certainly, Jordas, when an action will not lie; and sometimes even
+where it does, it is wise to commit a defensible assault, and so to
+become the defendant. Jordas, you are big enough to do that.”
+
+“Master Jellicoose, you are a pleasant man; but you twist my maning, as
+a lawyer must. They all does it, to keep their hand in. I am speaking
+of the stories, Sir, that is so much about. And I think that my ladies
+should be told of them right out, and come forward, and lay their hands
+on them. The Yordases always did wrong, of old time; but they never was
+afraid to jump on it.”
+
+“My friend, you speak in parables. What stories have arisen to be jumped
+upon?”
+
+“Well, Sir, for one thing, they do tell that the proper owner of the
+property is Sir Duncan, now away in India. A man hath come home who
+knows him well, and sayeth that he is like a prince out there, with
+command of a country twice as big as Great Britain, and they up and made
+'Sir Duncan' of him, by his duty to the king. And if he cometh home, all
+must fall before him.”
+
+“Even the law of the land, I suppose, and the will of his own father.
+Pretty well, so far, Jordas. And what next?”
+
+“Nought, Sir, nought. But I thought I wur duty-bound to tell you that.
+What is women before a man Yordas?”
+
+“My good friend, we will not despair. But you are keeping back
+something; I know it by your feet. You are duty-bound to tell me every
+word now, Jordas.”
+
+“The lawyers is the devil,” said the dogman to himself; and being quite
+used to this reflection, Mr. Jellicorse smiled and nodded; “but if you
+must have it all, Sir, it is no more than this. Jack o' the Smithies,
+as is to marry Sally o' Will o' the Wallhead, is to have the lease of
+Shipboro' farm, and he is the man as hath told it all.”
+
+“Very well. We will wish him good luck with his farm,” Mr. Jellicorse
+answered, cheerfully; “and what is even rarer nowadays, I fear, good
+luck of his wife, Master Jordas.”
+
+But as soon as the sturdy retainer was gone, and the sound of his heavy
+boots had died away, Mr. Jellicorse shook his head very gravely, and
+said, as he opened and looked through his packet, which confirmed the
+words of Jordas, “Sad indiscretion--want of legal knowledge--headstrong
+women--the very way to spoil it all! My troubles are beginning, and I
+had better go to bed.”
+
+His good wife seconded this wise resolve; and without further parley it
+was put into effect, and proclaimed to be successful by a symphony of
+snores. For this is the excellence of having other people's cares to
+carry (with the carriage well paid), that they sit very lightly on the
+springs of sleep. That well-balanced vehicle rolls on smoothly, without
+jerk, or jar, or kick, so long as it travels over alien land.
+
+In the morning Mr. Jellicorse was up to anything, legitimate, legal, and
+likely to be paid for. Not that he would stir half the breadth of one
+wheat corn, even for the sake of his daily bread, from the straight and
+strict line of integrity. He had made up his mind about that long ago,
+not only from natural virtue, strong and dominant as that was, but also
+by dwelling on his high repute, and the solid foundations of character.
+He scarcely knew anybody, when he came to think of it, capable of taking
+such a lofty course; but that simply confirmed him in his stern resolve
+to do what was right and expedient.
+
+It was quite one o'clock before Jack o' the Smithies rang the bell to
+see about his lease. He ought to have done it two hours sooner, if he
+meant to become a humble tenant; and the lawyer, although he had plenty
+to do of other people's business, looked upon this as a very bad sign.
+Then he read his letter of instructions once more, and could not but
+admire the nice brevity of these, and the skillful style of hinting much
+and declaring very little.
+
+For after giving full particulars about the farm, and the rent, and the
+covenants required, Mistress Yordas proceeded thus:
+
+“The new tenant is the son of a former occupant, who proved to be a
+remarkably honest man, in a case of strong temptation. As happens too
+often with men of probity, he was misled and made bankrupt, and died
+about twelve years ago, I think. Please to verify this by reference.
+The late tenant was his nephew, and has never perceived the necessity of
+paying rent. We have been obliged to distrain, as you know; and I wish
+John Smithies to buy in what he pleases. He has saved some capital in
+India, where I am told that he fought most gallantly. Singular to say,
+he has met with, and perhaps served under, our lamented and lost brother
+Duncan, of whom and his family he may give us interesting particulars.
+You know how this neighborhood excels in idle talk, and if John Smithies
+becomes our tenant, his discourse must be confined to his own business.
+But he must not hesitate to impart to you any facts you may think it
+right to ask about. Jordas will bring us your answer, under seal.”
+
+“Skillfully put, up to that last word, which savors too much of teaching
+me my own business. Aberthaw, are you quite ready with that lease? It is
+wanted rather in a hurry.”
+
+As Mr. Jellicorse thought the former, and uttered the latter part of
+these words, it was plain to see that he was fidgety. He had put on
+superior clothes to get up with; and the clerks had whispered to
+one another that it must be his wedding day, and ought to end in a
+half-holiday all round, and be chalked thenceforth on the calendar;
+but instead of being joyful and jocular, like a man who feels a saving
+Providence over him, the lawyer was as dismal, and unsettled and
+splenetic, as a prophet on the brink of wedlock. But the very last thing
+that he ever dreamed of doubting was his power to turn this old soldier
+inside out.
+
+Jack o' the Smithies was announced at last; and the lawyer, being vexed
+with him for taking such a time, resolved to let him take a little
+longer, and kept him waiting, without any bread and cheese, for nearly
+half an hour. The wisdom of doing this depended on the character of
+the man, and the state of his finances. And both of these being strong
+enough to stand, to keep him so long on his legs was unwise. At last
+he came in, a very sturdy sort of fellow, thinking no atom the less of
+himself because some of his anatomy was honorably gone.
+
+“Servant, Sir,” he said, making a salute; “I had orders to come to you
+about a little lease.”
+
+“Right, my man, I remember now. You are thinking of taking to your
+father's farm, after knocking about for some years in foreign parts. Ah,
+nothing like old England after all. And to tread the ancestral soil, and
+cherish the old associations, and to nurture a virtuous family in the
+fear of the Lord, and to be ready with the rent--”
+
+“Rent is too high, Sir; I must have five pounds off. It ought to be ten,
+by right. Cousin Joe has taken all out, and put nought in.”
+
+“John o' the Smithies, you astonish me. I have strong reason for
+believing that the rent is far too low. I have no instructions to reduce
+it.”
+
+“Then I must try for another farm, Sir. I can have one of better land,
+under Sir Walter; only I seemed to hold on to the old place; and my
+Sally likes to be under the old ladies.”
+
+“Old ladies! Jack, what are you come to? Beautiful ladies in the prime
+of life--but perhaps they would be old in India. I fear that you have
+not learned much behavior. But at any rate you ought to know your own
+mind. Is it your intention to refuse so kind an offer (which was only
+made for your father's sake, and to please your faithful Sally) simply
+because another of your family has not been honest in his farming?”
+
+“I never have took it in that way before,” the steady old soldier
+answered, showing that rare phenomenon, the dawn of a new opinion upon
+a stubborn face. “Give me a bit to turn it over in my mind, Sir. Lawyers
+be so quick, and so nimble, and all-cornered.”
+
+“Turn it over fifty times, Master Smithies. We have no wish to force the
+farm upon you. Take a pinch of snuff, to help your sense of justice. Or
+if you would like a pipe, go and have it in my kitchen. And if you are
+hungry, cook will give you eggs and bacon.”
+
+“No, Sir; I am very much obliged to you. I never make much o' my
+thinking. I go by what the Lord sends right inside o' me, whenever I
+have decent folk to deal with. And spite of your cloth, Sir, you have a
+honest look.”
+
+“You deserve another pinch of snuff for that. Master Smithies, you have
+a gift of putting hard things softly. But this is not business. Is your
+mind made up?”
+
+“Yes, Sir. I will take the farm, at full rent, if the covenants are to
+my liking. They must be on both sides--both sides, mind you.”
+
+Mr. Jellicorse smiled as he began to read the draft prepared from a very
+ancient form which was firmly established on the Scargate Hall estates.
+The covenants, as usual, were all upon one side, the lessee being bound
+to a multitude of things, and the lessor to little more than acceptance
+of the rent. But such a result is in the nature of the case. Yet Jack
+o' the Smithies was not well content. In him true Yorkshire stubbornness
+was multiplied by the dogged tenacity of a British soldier, and the
+aggregate raised to an unknown power by the efforts of shrewd ignorance;
+and at last the lawyer took occasion to say,
+
+“Master John Smithies, you are worthy to serve under the colors of a
+Yordas.”
+
+“That I have, Sir, that I have,” cried the veteran, taken unawares, and
+shaking the stump of his arm in proof; “I have served under Sir Duncan
+Yordas, who will come home some day and claim his own; and he won't want
+no covenants of me.”
+
+“You can not have served under Duncan Yordas,” Mr. Jellicorse answered,
+with a smile of disbelief, craftily rousing the pugnacity of the man;
+“because he was not even in the army of the Company, or any other army.
+I mean, of course, unless there was some other Duncan Yordas.”
+
+“Tell me!” Jack o' Smithies almost shouted--“tell me about Duncan
+Yordas, indeed! Who he was, and what he wasn't! And what do lawyers
+know of such things? Why, you might have to command a regiment, and read
+covenants to them out there! Sir Duncan was not our colonel, nor our
+captain; but we was under his orders all the more; and well he knew how
+to give them. Not one in fifty of us was white; but he made us all as
+good as white men; and the enemy never saw the color of our backs. I
+wish I was out there again, I do, and would have staid, but for being
+hoarse of combat; though the fault was never in my throat, but in my
+arm.”
+
+“There is no fault in your throat, John Smithies, except that it is a
+great deal too loud. I am sorry for Sally, with a temper such as yours.”
+
+“That shows how much you know about it. I never lose my temper, without
+I hearken lies. And for you to go and say that I never saw Sir Duncan--”
+
+“I said nothing of the kind, my friend. But you did not come here
+to talk about Duncan, or Captain, or Colonel, or Nabob, or Rajah, or
+whatever potentate he may be--of him we desire to know nothing more--a
+man who ran away, and disgraced his family, and killed his poor father,
+knows better than ever to set his foot on Scargate land again. You talk
+about having a lease from him, a man with fifty wives, I dare say, and a
+hundred children! We all know what they are out there.”
+
+There are very few tricks of the human face divine more forcibly
+expressive of contempt than the lowering of the eyelids so that only a
+narrow streak of eye is exposed to the fellow-mortal, and that streak
+fixed upon him steadfastly; and the contumely is intensified when (as in
+the present instance) the man who does it is gifted with yellow lashes
+on the under lid. Jack o' the Smithies treated Mr. Jellicorse to a gaze
+of this sort; and the lawyer, whose wrath had been feigned, to rouse the
+other's, and so extract full information, began to feel his own temper
+rise. And if Jack had known when to hold his tongue, he must have had
+the best of it. But the lawyer knew this, and the soldier did not.
+
+“Master Jellicorse,” said the latter, with his forehead deeply wrinkled,
+and his eyes now opened to their widest, “in saying of that you make
+a liar of yourself. Lease or no lease--that you do. Leasing stands for
+lying in the Bible, and a' seemeth to do the same thing in Yorkshire.
+Fifty wives, and a hundred children! Sir Duncan hath had one wife, and
+lost her, through the Neljan fever and her worry; and a Yorkshire lady,
+as you might know--and never hath he cared to look at any woman since.
+There now, what you make of that--you lawyers that make out every man
+a rake, and every woman a light o' love? Get along! I hate the lot o'
+you.”
+
+“What a strange character you are! You must have had jungle fever, I
+should think. No, Diana, there is no danger”--for Jack o' the Smithies
+had made such a noise that Mrs. Jellicorse got frightened and ran in:
+“this poor man has only one arm; and if he had two, he could not hurt
+me, even if he wished it. Be pleased to withdraw, Diana. John Smithies,
+you have simply made a fool of yourself. I have not said a word against
+Sir Duncan Yordas, or his wife, or his son--”
+
+“He hath no son, I tell you; and that was partly how he lost his wife.”
+
+“Well, then, his daughters, I have said no harm of them.”
+
+“And very good reason--because he hath none. You lawyers think you are
+so clever; and you never know anything rightly. Sir Duncan hath himself
+alone to see to, and hundreds of thousands of darkies to manage, with
+a score of British bayonets. But he never heedeth of the bayonets, not
+he.”
+
+“I have read of such men, but I never saw them,” Mr. Jellicorse said,
+as if thinking to himself; “I always feel doubt about the possibility of
+them.”
+
+“He hath ten elephants,” continued Soldier Smithies, resolved to crown
+the pillar of his wonders while about it--“ten great elephants that come
+and kneel before him, and a thousand men ready to run to his thumb; and
+his word is law--better law than is in England--for scores and scores of
+miles on the top of hundreds.”
+
+“Why did you come away, John Smithies? Why did you leave such a great
+prince, and come home?”
+
+“Because it was home, Sir. And for sake of Sally.”
+
+“There is some sense in that, my friend. And now if you wish to make
+a happy life for Sally, you will do as I advise you. Will you take my
+advice? My time is of value; and I am not accustomed to waste my words.”
+
+“Well, Sir, I will hearken to you. No man that meaneth it can say more
+than that.”
+
+“Jack o' the Smithies, you are acute. You have not been all over the
+world for nothing. But if you have made up your mind to settle, and be
+happy in your native parts, one thing must be attended to. It is a maxim
+of law, time-honored and of the highest authority, that the tenant must
+never call in question the title of his landlord. Before attorning, you
+may do so; after that you are estopped. Now is it or is it not your wish
+to become the tenant of the Smithies farm, which your father held so
+honorably? Farm produce is fetching great prices now; and if you refuse
+this offer, we can have a man, the day after to-morrow, who will give my
+ladies 10 pounds more, and who has not been a soldier, but a farmer all
+his life.”
+
+“Lawyer Jellicorse, I will take it; for Sally hath set her heart on it;
+and I know every crumple of the ground better than the wisest farmer
+doth. Sir, I will sign the articles.”
+
+“The lease will be engrossed by next market day; and the sale will
+be stopped until you have taken whatever you wish at a valuation. But
+remember what I said--you are not to go prating about this wonderful
+Sir Duncan, who is never likely to come home, if he lives in such grand
+state out there, and who is forbidden by his father's will from taking
+an acre of the property. And as he has no heirs, and is so wealthy, it
+can not matter much to him.”
+
+“That is true,” said the soldier; “but he might love to come home, as
+all our folk in India do; and if he doth, I will not deny him. I tell
+you fairly, Master Jellicorse.”
+
+“I like you for being an outspoken man, and true to those who have used
+you well. You could do him no good, and you might do harm to others, and
+unsettle simple minds, by going on about him among the tenants.”
+
+“His name hath never crossed my lips till now, and shall not again
+without good cause. Here is my hand upon it, Master Lawyer.”
+
+The lawyer shook hands with him heartily, for he could not but respect
+the man for his sturdiness and sincerity. And when Jack was gone, Mr.
+Jellicorse played with his spectacles and his snuff-box for several
+minutes before he could make up his mind how to deal with the matter.
+Then hearing the solid knock of Jordas, who was bound to take horse for
+Scargate House pretty early at this time of year (with the weakening of
+the day among the mountains), he lost a few moments in confusion. The
+dogman could not go without any answer; and how was any good answer to
+be given in half an hour, at the utmost? A time had been when the lawyer
+studied curtness and precision under minds of abridgment in London. But
+the more he had labored to introduce rash brevity into Yorkshire, and to
+cut away nine words out of ten, when all the ten meant one thing only,
+the more of contempt for his ignorance he won, and the less money he
+made out of it. And no sooner did he marry than he was forced to give up
+that, and, like a respectable butcher, put in every pennyweight of fat
+that could be charged for. Thus had he thriven and grown like a goodly
+deed of fine amplification; and if he had made Squire Philip's will now,
+it would scarcely have gone into any breast pocket. Unluckily it is
+an easier thing to make a man's will than to carry it out, even though
+fortune be favorable.
+
+In the present case obstacles seemed to be arising which might at any
+moment require great skill and tact to surmount them; and the lawyer,
+hearing Jordas striding to and fro impatiently in the waiting-room, was
+fain to win time for consideration by writing a short note to say
+that he proposed to wait upon the ladies the very next day. For he had
+important news which seemed expedient to discuss with them. In the mean
+time he begged them not to be at all uneasy, for his news upon the whole
+was propitious.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+JACK AND JILL GO DOWN THE GILL
+
+
+Upon a little beck that runs away into the Lune, which is a tributary of
+the Tees, there stood at this time a small square house of gray stone,
+partly greened with moss, or patched with drip, and opening to the sun
+with small dark windows. It looked as if it never could be warm inside,
+by sunshine or by fire-glow, and cared not, although it was the only
+house for miles, whether it were peopled or stood empty. But this cold,
+hard-looking place just now was the home of some hot and passionate
+hearts.
+
+The people were poor; and how they made their living would have been a
+mystery to their neighbors, if there had been any. They rented no land,
+and they followed no trade, and they took no alms by land or post; for
+the begging-letter system was not yet invented. For the house itself
+they paid a small rent, which Jordas received on behalf of his ladies,
+and always found it ready; and that being so, he had nothing more to
+ask, and never meddled with them. They had been there before he came
+into office, and it was not his place to seek into their history; and if
+it had been, he would not have done it. For his sympathies were (as
+was natural and native to a man so placed) with all outsiders, and
+the people who compress into one or two generations that ignorance of
+lineage which some few families strive to defer for centuries, showing
+thereby unwise insistence, if latter-day theories are correct.
+
+But if Master Jordas knew little of these people, somebody else knew
+more about them, and perhaps too much about one of them. Lancelot
+Carnaby, still called “Pet,” in one of those rushes after random change
+which the wildness of his nature drove upon him, had ridden his pony to
+a stand-still on the moor one sultry day of that August. No pity or care
+for the pony had he, but plenty of both for his own dear self. The pony
+might be left for the crows to pick his bones, so far as mattered to Pet
+Carnaby; but it mattered very greatly to a boy like him to have to go
+home upon his own legs. Long exertion was hateful to him, though he
+loved quick difficulty; for he was one of the many who combine activity
+with laziness. And while he was wondering what he should do, and
+worrying the fine little animal, a wave of the wind carried into his
+ear the brawling of a beck, like the humming of a hive. The boy had
+forgotten that the moor just here was broken by a narrow glen, engrooved
+with sliding water.
+
+Now with all his strength, which was not much, he tugged the panting and
+limping little horse to the flat breach, and then down the steep of the
+gill, and let him walk into the water and begin to slake off a little of
+the crust of thirst. But no sooner did he see him preparing to rejoice
+in large crystal draughts (which his sobs had first forbidden) than he
+jerked him with the bit, and made a bad kick at him, because he could
+bear to see nothing happy. The pony had sense enough to reply, weary as
+he was, with a stronger kick, which took Master Lancelot in the knee,
+and discouraged him for any further contest. Bully as he was, the boy
+had too much of ancient Yordas pith in him to howl, or cry, or even
+whimper, but sat down on a little ridge to nurse his poor knee, and
+meditate revenge against the animal with hoofs. Presently pain and wrath
+combined became too much for the weakness of his frame, and he fell back
+and lay upon the hard ground in a fainting fit.
+
+At such times, as everybody said (especially those whom he knocked about
+in his lively moments), this boy looked wonderfully lovely. His features
+were almost perfect; and he had long eyelashes like an Andalusian girl,
+and cheeks more exquisite than almost any doll's, a mouth of fine curve,
+and a chin of pert roundness, a neck of the mould that once was called
+“Byronic,” and curly dark hair flying all around, as fine as the very
+best peruke. In a word, he was just what a boy ought not to be, who
+means to become an Englishman.
+
+Such, however, was not the opinion of a creature even more beautiful
+than he, in the truer points of beauty. Coming with a pitcher for some
+water from the beck, Insie of the Gill (the daughter of Bat and Zilpie
+of the Gill) was quite amazed as she chanced round a niche of the bank
+upon this image. An image fallen from the sun, she thought it, or at any
+rate from some part of heaven, until she saw the pony, who was testing
+the geology of the district by the flavor of its herbage. Then Insie
+knew that here was a mortal boy, not dead, but sadly wounded; and she
+drew her short striped kirtle down, because her shapely legs were bare.
+
+Lancelot Carnaby, coming to himself (which was a poor return for him),
+opened his large brown eyes, and saw a beautiful girl looking at him. As
+their eyes met, his insolent languor fell--for he generally awoke from
+these weak lapses into a slow persistent rage--and wonder and unknown
+admiration moved something in his nature that had never moved before.
+His words, however, were scarcely up to the high mark of the moment.
+“Who are you?” was all he said.
+
+“I am called 'Insie of the Gill.' My father is Bat of the Gill, and my
+mother Zilpie of the Gill. You must be a stranger, not to know us.”
+
+“I never heard of you in all my life; although you seem to be living on
+my land. All the land about here belongs to me; though my mother has it
+for a little time.”
+
+“I did not know,” she answered, softly, and scarcely thinking what she
+said, “that the land belonged to anybody, besides the birds and animals.
+And is the water yours as well?”
+
+“Yes; every drop of it, of course. But you are quite welcome to a
+pitcherful.” This was the rarest affability of Pet; and he expected
+extraordinary thanks.
+
+But Insie looked at him with surprise. “I am very much obliged to you,”
+ she said; “but I never asked any one to give it me, unless it is the
+beck itself; and the beck never seems to grudge it.”
+
+“You are not like anybody I ever saw. You speak very different from the
+people about here; and you look very different ten times over.”
+
+Insie reddened at his steadfast gaze, and turned her sweet soft face
+away. And yet she wanted to know more. “Different means a great many
+things. Do you mean that I look better, or worse?”
+
+“Better, of course; fifty thousand times better! Why, you look like a
+beautiful lady. I tell you, I have seen hundreds of ladies; perhaps you
+haven't, but I have. And you look better than all of them.”
+
+“You say a great deal that you do not think,” Insie answered, quietly,
+yet turning round to show her face again. “I have heard that gentlemen
+always do; and I suppose that you are a young gentleman.”
+
+“I should hope so indeed. Don't you know who I am? I am Lancelot Yordas
+Carnaby.”
+
+“Why, you look quite as if you could stop the river,” she answered, with
+a laugh, though she felt his grandeur. “I suppose you consider me nobody
+at all. But I must get my water.”
+
+“You shall not carry water. You are much too pretty. I will carry it for
+you.”
+
+Pet was not “introspective;” otherwise he must have been astonished at
+himself. His mother and aunt would have doubted their own eyes if
+they had beheld this most dainty of the dainty, and mischievous of the
+mischievous (with pain and passion for the moment vanquished), carefully
+carrying an old brown pitcher. Yet this he did, and wonderfully well,
+as he believed; though Insie only laughed to see him. For he had on
+the loveliest gaiters in the world, of thin white buckskin with agate
+buttons, and breeches of silk, and a long brocaded waistcoat, and a
+short coat of rich purple velvet, also a riding hat with a gray ostrich
+plume. And though he had very little calf inside his gaiters, and not
+much chest to fill out his waistcoat, and narrower shoulders than a
+velvet coat deserved, it would have been manifest, even to a tailor,
+that the boy had lineal, if not lateral, right to his rich habiliments.
+
+Insie of the Gill (who seemed not to be of peasant birth, though so
+plainly dressed), came gently down the steep brook-side to see what was
+going to be done for her.
+
+She admired Lancelot, both for bravery of apparel and of action; and
+she longed to know how he would get a good pitcher of water without any
+splash upon his clothes. So she stood behind a little bush, pretending
+not to be at all concerned, but amused at having her work done for her.
+But Pet was too sharp to play cat's-paw for nothing.
+
+“Smile, and say 'thank you,'” he cried, “or I won't do it. I am not
+going up to my middle for nothing; I know that you want to laugh at me.”
+
+“You must have a very low middle,” said Insie; “why, it never comes half
+way to my knees.”
+
+“You have got no stockings, and no new gaiters,” Lancelot answered,
+reasonably; and then, like two children, they set to and laughed, till
+the gill almost echoed with them.
+
+“Why, you're holding the mouth of the pitcher down stream!” Insie could
+hardly speak for laughing. “Is that how you go to fill a pitcher?”
+
+“Yes, and the right way too,” he answered; “the best water always comes
+up the eddies. You ought to be old enough to know that.”
+
+“I don't know anything at all--except that you are ruining your best
+clothes.”
+
+“I don't care twopence for such rubbish. You ought to see me on a
+Sunday, Insie, if you want to know what is good. There, you never drew
+such a pitcher as that. And I believe there is a fish in the bottom of
+it.”
+
+“Oh, if there is a fish, let me have him in my hands. I can nurse a fish
+on dry land, until he gets quite used to it. Are you sure that there is
+a little fish?”
+
+“No, there is no fish; and I am soaking wet. But I never care what
+anybody thinks of me. If they say what I don't like, I kick them.”
+
+“Ah, you are accustomed to have your own way. That any one might know
+by looking at you. But I have got a quantity of work to do. You can see
+that by my fingers.”
+
+The girl made a courtesy, and took the pitcher from him, because he was
+knocking it against his legs; but he could not be angry when he looked
+into her eyes, though the habit of his temper made him try to fume.
+
+“Do you know what I think?” she said, fixing bright hazel eyes upon him;
+“I think that you are very passionate sometimes.”
+
+“Well, if I am, it is my own business. Who told you anything about it?
+Whoever it was shall pay out for it.”
+
+“Nobody told me, Sir. You must remember that I never even heard of your
+name before.”
+
+“Oh, come, I can't quite take down that. Everybody knows me for fifty
+miles or more; and I don't care what they think of me.”
+
+“You may please yourself about believing me,” she answered, without
+concern about it. “No one who knows me doubts my word, though I am not
+known for even five miles away.”
+
+“What an extraordinary girl you are! You say things on purpose to
+provoke me. Nobody ever does that; they are only too glad to keep me in
+a good temper.”
+
+“If you are like that, Sir, I had better run away. My father will be
+home in about an hour, and he might think that you had no business
+here.”
+
+“I! No business upon my own land! This place must be bewitched, I think.
+There is a witch upon the moors, I know, who can take almost any shape;
+but--but they say she is three hundred years of age, or more.”
+
+“Perhaps, then, I am bewitched,” said Insie; “or why should I stop to
+talk with you, who are only a rude boy, after all, even according to
+your own account?”
+
+“Well, you can go if you like. I suppose you live in that queer little
+place down there?”
+
+“The house is quite good enough for me and my father and mother and
+brother Maunder. Good-by; and please never to come here again.”
+
+“You don't understand me. I have made you cry. Oh, Insie, let me have
+hold of your hand. I would rather make anybody cry than you. I never
+liked anybody so before.”
+
+“Cry, indeed! Who ever heard me cry? It is the way you splashed the
+water up. I am not in the habit of crying for a stranger. Good-by, now;
+and go to your great people. You say that you are bad; and I fear it is
+too true.”
+
+“I am not bad at all. It is only what everybody says, because I never
+want to please them. But I want to please you. I would give anything to
+do it; if you would only tell me how.”
+
+The girl having cleverly dried her eyes, poured all their bright beauty
+upon him, and the heart of the youth was enlarged with a new, very
+sweet, and most timorous feeling. Then his dark eyes dropped, and he
+touched her gently, and only said, “Don't go away.”
+
+“But I must go away,” Insie answered, with a blush, and a look as of
+more tears lurking in her eyes. “I have stopped too long; I must go away
+at once.”
+
+“But when may I come again? I will hold you, and fight for you with
+everybody in the world, unless you tell me when to come again.”
+
+“Hush! I am quite ashamed to hear you talk so. I am a poor girl, and you
+a great young gentleman.”
+
+“Never mind that. That has nothing to do with it. Would you like to make
+me miserable, and a great deal more wicked than I ever was before? Do
+you hate me so much as all that, Insie?”
+
+“No. You have been very kind to me. Only my father would be angry, I am
+sure; and my brother Maunder is dreadful. They all go away every other
+Friday, and that is the only free time I have.”
+
+“Every other Friday! What a long time, to be sure! Won't you come again
+for water this day fortnight?”
+
+“Yes; I come for water three or four times every day. But if they were
+to see you, they would kill you first, and then lock me up forever. The
+only wise plan is for you to come no more.”
+
+“You can not be thinking for a moment what you say. I will tell you
+what; if you don't come, I will march up to the house, and beat the door
+in. The landlord can do that, according to law.”
+
+“If you care at all for me,” said Insie, looking as if she had known him
+for ten years, “you will do exactly what I tell you. You will think no
+more about me for a fortnight; and then if you fancy that I can do you
+good by advice about your bad temper, or by teaching you how to plait
+reeds for a bat, and how to fill a pitcher--perhaps I might be able to
+come down the gill again.”
+
+“I wish it was to-morrow. I shall count the days. But be sure to come
+early, if they go away all day. I shall bring my dinner with me; and you
+shall have the first help, and I will carve. But I should like one thing
+before I go; and it is the first time I ever asked anybody, though they
+ask me often enough, I can tell you.”
+
+“What would you like? You seem to me to be always wanting something.”
+
+“I should like very much--very much indeed--just to give you one kiss,
+Insie.”
+
+“It can not be thought of for a moment,” she replied; “and the first
+time of my ever seeing you, Sir!”
+
+Before he could reason in favor of a privilege which goes proverbially
+by favor, the young maid was gone upon the winding path, with the
+pitcher truly balanced on her well-tressed head. Then Pet sat down and
+watched her; and she turned round in the distance, and waved him a kiss
+at decorous interval.
+
+Not more than three days after this, Mrs. Carnaby came into the
+drawing-room with a hasty step, and a web of wrinkles upon her generally
+smooth, white forehead.
+
+“Eliza,” asked her sister, “what has put you out so? That chair is
+not very strong, and you are rather heavy. Do you call that gracefully
+sinking on a seat, as we used to learn the way to do at school?”
+
+“No, I do not call it anything of the kind. And if I am heavy, I only
+keep my heart in countenance, Philippa. You know not the anxieties of a
+mother.”
+
+“I am thankful to say that I do not. I have plenty of larger cares to
+attend to, as well as the anxieties of an aunt and sister. But what is
+this new maternal care?”
+
+“Poor Pet's illness--his serious illness. I am surprised that you have
+not noticed it, Philippa; it seems so unkind of you.”
+
+“There can not be anything much amiss with him. I never saw any one eat
+a better breakfast. What makes you fancy that the boy must be unwell?”
+
+“It is no fancy. He must be very ill. Poor dear! I can not bear to think
+of it. He has done no mischief for quite three days.”
+
+“Then he must indeed be at the point of death. Oh, if we could only keep
+him always so, Eliza!”
+
+“My dear sister, you will never understand him. He must have his little
+playful ways. Would you like him to be a milksop?”
+
+“Certainly not. But I should like him first to be a manly boy, and
+then a boyish man. The Yordases always have been manly boys; instead of
+puling, and puking, and picking this, that, and the other.”
+
+“The poor child can not help his health, Philippa. He never had the
+Yordas constitution. He inherits his delicate system from his poor dear
+gallant father.”
+
+Mrs. Carnaby wiped away a tear; and her sister (who never was hard to
+her) spoke gently, and said there were many worse boys than he, and she
+liked him for many good and brave points of character, and especially
+for hating medicine.
+
+“Philippa, you are right; he does hate medicine,” the good mother
+answered, with a soft, sad sigh; “and he kicked the last apothecary in
+the stomach, when he made certain of its going down. But such things are
+trifles, dear, in comparison with now. If he would only kick Jordas, or
+Welldrum, or almost any one who would take it nicely, I should have some
+hope that he was coming to himself. But to see him sit quiet is so truly
+sad. He gets up a tree with his vast activity, and there he sits moping
+by the hour, and gazing in one fixed direction. I am almost sure that
+he has knocked his leg; but he flew into a fury when I wanted to examine
+it; and when I made a poultice, there was Saracen devouring it; and the
+nasty dog swallowed one of my lace handkerchiefs.”
+
+“Then surely you are unjust, Eliza, in lamenting all lack of mischief.
+But I have noticed things as well as you. And yesterday I saw something
+more portentous than anything you have told me. I came upon Lancelot
+suddenly, in the last place where I should have looked for him. He was
+positively in the library, and reading--reading a real book.”
+
+“A book, Phillppa! Oh, that settles everything. He must have gone
+altogether out of his sane mind.”
+
+“Not only was it a book, but even a book of what people call poetry. You
+have heard of that bold young man over the mountains, who is trying to
+turn poetry upside down, by making it out of every single thing he sees;
+and who despises all the pieces that we used to learn at school. I
+can not remember his name; but never mind. I thought that we ought to
+encourage him, because he might know some people in this neighborhood;
+and so I ordered a book of his. Perhaps I told you; and that is the very
+book your learned boy was reading.”
+
+“Philippa, it seems to me impossible almost. He must have been looking
+at the pictures. I do hope he was only looking at the pictures.”
+
+“There is not a picture in the book of any sort. He was reading it, and
+saying it quite softly to himself; and I felt that if you saw him, you
+would send for Dr. Spraggs.”
+
+“Ring the bell at once, dear, if you will be kind enough. I hope there
+is a fresh horse in the stable. Or the best way would be to send the
+jumping-car; then he would be certain to come back at once.”
+
+“Do as you like. I begin to think that we ought to take proper
+precautions. But when that is done, I will tell you what I think he may
+be up the tree for.”
+
+A man with the jumping-car was soon dispatched, by urgency of Jordas,
+for Dr. Spraggs, who lived several miles away, in a hamlet to the
+westward, inaccessible to anything that could not jump right nimbly.
+But the ladies made a slight mistake: they caught the doctor, but no
+patient.
+
+For Pet being well up in his favorite tree--poring with great wonder
+over Lyrical Ballads, which took his fancy somehow--thence descried the
+hateful form of Dr. Spraggs, too surely approaching in the seat of honor
+of the jumping-car. Was ever any poesy of such power as to elevate the
+soul above the smell of physic? The lofty poet of the lakes and fells
+fell into Pet's pocket anyhow, and down the off side of the tree came
+he, with even his bad leg ready to be foremost in giving leg-bail to
+the medical man. The driver of the jumping-car espied this action;
+but knowing that he would have done the like, grinned softly, and said
+nothing. And long after Dr. Spraggs was gone, leaving behind him sage
+advice, and a vast benevolence of bottles, Pet returned, very dirty and
+hungry, and cross, and most unpoetical.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+YOUNG GILLY FLOWERS
+
+
+“Drum,” said Pet, in his free and easy style, about ten days after
+that escape, to a highly respected individual, Mr. Welldrum, the
+butler--“Drum, you have heard perhaps about my being poorly.”
+
+“Ay, that I have, and too much of it,” replied the portly butler, busy
+in his office with inferior work, which he never should have had to do,
+if rightly estimated. “What you wants, Master Lancelot, is a little more
+of this here sort of thing--sleeves up--elbow grease--scrub away at hold
+ancient plate, and be blowed up if you puts a scratch on it; and the
+more you sweats, the less thanks you gets.”
+
+“Drum, when you come to be my butler, you shall have all the keys
+allowed you, and walk about with them on a great gold ring, with a gold
+chain down to your breeches pocket. You shall dine when you like, and
+have it cooked on purpose, and order it directly after breakfast; and
+you shall have the very best hot-water plates; because you hate grease,
+don't you, Drum?”
+
+“That I do; especial from young chaps as wants to get something out of
+me.”
+
+“I am always as good as my word; come, now.”
+
+“That you are, Sir; and nothing very grand to say, considering the
+hepithets you applies to me sometimes. But you han't insulted me for
+three days now; and that proves to my mind that you can't be quite
+right.”
+
+“But you would like to see me better. I am sure you would. There is
+nobody so good to you as I am, Drum; and you are very crusty at times,
+you know. Your daughter shall be the head cook; and then everything must
+be to your liking.”
+
+“Master Lancelot, you speaks fair. What can I have the honor of doing
+for you, Sir, to set you up again in your poor dear 'ealth?”
+
+“Well, you hate physic, don't you, Drum? And you make a strict point of
+never taking it.”
+
+“I never knew no good to come out of no bottle, without it were a bottle
+of old crusted port-wine. Ah! you likes that, Master Lancelot.”
+
+“I'll tell you what it is, Drum; I am obliged to be very careful. The
+reason why I don't get on is from taking my meals too much in-doors.
+There is no fresh air in these old rooms. I have got a man who says--I
+could read it to you; but perhaps you don't care to hear poetry, Drum?”
+ The butler made a face, and put the leather to his ears. “Very well,
+then; I am only just beginning; and it's like claret, you must learn to
+come to it. But from what he says, and from my own stomach, I intend to
+go and dine out-of-doors to-day.”
+
+“Lord! Master Lancelot, you must be gone clean daft. How ever could you
+have hot gravy, Sir? And all the Yordases hates cold meat. Your poor
+dear grandfather--ah! he was a man.”
+
+“So am I. And I have got half a guinea. Now, Drum, you do just what I
+tell you; and mind, not a word to any one. It will be the last coin you
+ever see of mine, either now or in all my life, remember, if you let
+my mamma ever hear of it. You slip down to the larder and get me a cold
+grouse, and a cold partridge, and two of the hearth-stone cakes, and
+a pat of butter, and a pinch of salt, and put them in my army knapsack
+Aunt Philippa gave me; also a knife and fork and plate; and--let me
+see--what had I better have to drink?”
+
+“Well, Sir, if I might offer an opinion, a pint bottle of dry port, or
+your grandfather's Madeira.”
+
+“Young ladies--young gentlemen I mean, of course--never take strong
+wines in the middle of the day. Bucellas, Drum--Bucellas is the proper
+thing. And when you have got it all together, turn the old cat into the
+larder, and get away cleverly by your little door, and put my knapsack
+in the old oak-tree, the one that was struck by lightning. Now do you
+understand all about it? It must all be ready in half an hour. And if
+I make a good dinner out on the moor, why, you might get another half
+guinea before long.” And with these words away strode Pet.
+
+“Well, well,” the butler began muttering to himself; “what wickedness
+are you up to next? A lassie in his head, and his dear mammy thought
+he was sickening over his wisdom-teeth! He is beginning airly, and no
+mistake. But the gals are a coarse ugly lot about here”--Master Welldrum
+was not a Yorkshireman--“and the lad hath good taste in the matter of
+wine; although he is that contrairy, Solomon's self could not be upsides
+with him. Fall fair, fall foul, I must humor the boy, or out of this
+place I go, neck and crop.”
+
+Accordingly, Pet found all that he had ordered, and several little
+things which he had not thought of, especially a corkscrew and a glass;
+and forgetting half his laziness, he set off briskly, keeping through
+the trees where no window could espy him, and down a little side glen,
+all afoot; for it seemed to him safer to forego his pony.
+
+The gill (or “ghyll,” as the poet writes it), from which the lonely
+family that dwelt there took their name, was not upon the bridle-road
+from Scargate Hall toward Middleton, nor even within eye or reach of
+any road at all; but overlooked by kites alone, and tracked with
+thoroughfare of nothing but the mountain streamlet. The four who lived
+there--“Bat and Zilpic, Maunder and Insie, of the Gill”--had nothing to
+do with, and little to say to, any of the scatterling folk about them,
+across the blue distance of the moor. They ploughed no land, they kept
+no cattle, they scarcely put spade in the ground, except for about a
+fortnight in April, when they broke up a strip of alluvial soil new
+every season, and abutting on the brook; and there sowed or planted
+their vegetable crop, and left it to the clemency of heaven. Yet twice
+every year they were ready with their rent when it suited Master Jordas
+to come for it, since audits at the hall, and tenants' dinners, were not
+to their liking. The rent was a trifle; but Jordas respected them highly
+for handing it done up in white paper, without even making him leave
+the saddle. How many paid less, or paid nothing at all, yet came to
+the dinners under rent reservation of perhaps one mark, then strictly
+reserved their rent, but failed not to make the most punctual and
+liberal marks upon roast beef and plum-pudding!
+
+But while the worthy dogman got his little bit of money, sealed up and
+so correct that (careful as he was) he never stopped now to count it,
+even his keen eyes could make nothing of these people, except that they
+stood upon their dignity. To him they appeared to be of gypsy race; or
+partly of wild and partly perhaps of Lancastrian origin; for they rather
+“featured” the Lancashire than the Yorkshire type of countenance, yet
+without any rustic coarseness, whether of aspect, voice, or manners.
+The story of their settlement in this glen had flagged out of memory of
+gossip by reason of their calm obscurity, and all that survived was the
+belief that they were queer, and the certainty that they would not be
+meddled with.
+
+Lancelot Yordas Carnaby was brave, both in the outward and the inward
+boy, when he struck into the gill from a trackless spread of moor, not
+far from the source of the beck that had shaped or been shaped by this
+fissure. He had made up his mind to learn all about the water that
+filled sweet Insie's pitcher; and although the great poet of nature as
+yet was only in early utterance, some of his words had already touched
+Pet as he had never been touched before; but perhaps that fine effect
+was due to the sapping power of first love.
+
+Yet first love, however it may soften and enlarge a petulant and wayward
+nature, instead of increasing, cuts short and crisp the patience of the
+patient. When Lancelot was as near as manners and prudence allowed to
+that lonesome house, he sat down quietly for a little while in a little
+niche of scrubby bush whence he could spy the door. For a short time
+this was very well; also it was well to be furnishing his mind with a
+form for the beautiful expressions in it, and prepare it for the order
+of their coming out. And when he was sure that these were well arranged,
+and could not fail at any crisis, he found a further pastime in
+considering his boots, then his gaiters and small-clothes (which were of
+lofty type), and his waistcoat, elegant for anybody's bosom. But after a
+bit even this began to pall; and when one of his feet went fast asleep,
+in spite of its beautiful surroundings, he jumped up and stamped, and
+was not so very far from hot words as he should have been. For his habit
+was not so much to want a thing as to get it before he wanted it, which
+is very poor training for the trials of the love-time.
+
+But just as he was beginning to resolve to be wise, and eat his
+victuals, now or never, and be sorry for any one who came too
+late--there came somebody by another track, whose step made the heart
+rise, and the stomach fall. Lancelot's mind began to fail him all at
+once; and the spirit that was ready with a host of words fluttered away
+into a quaking depth of silence. Yet Insie tripped along as if the world
+held no one to cast a pretty shadow from the sun beside her own.
+
+Even the youngest girls are full of little tricks far beyond the oldest
+boy's comprehension. But the wonder of all wonders is, they have so pure
+a conscience as never to be thinking of themselves at all, far less of
+any one who thinks too much of them. “I declare, she has forgotten that
+she ever saw me!” Lancelot muttered to the bush in which he trembled.
+“It would serve her right, if I walked straight away.” But he looked
+again, and could not help looking more than many times again, so
+piercing (as an ancient poet puts it) is the shaft from the eyes of
+the female women. And Insie was especially a female girl--which has now
+ceased to be tautology--so feminine were her walk, and way, and sudden
+variety of unreasonable charm.
+
+“Dear me! I never thought to see you any more, Sir;” said she, with a
+bright blush, perhaps at such a story, as Pet jumped out eagerly, with
+hands stretched forth. “It is the most surprising thing. And we might
+have done very well with rain-water.”
+
+“Oh, Insie! don't be so cold-hearted. Who can drink rain-water? I have
+got something very good for you indeed. I have carried it all the way
+myself; and only a strong man could have done it. Why, you have got
+stockings on, I declare; but I like you much better without them.”
+
+“Then, Master Lancelot Yordas Carnaby, you had better go home with all
+your good things.”
+
+“You are totally mistaken about that. I could never get these things
+into the house again, without being caught out to a certainty. It shows
+how little girls know of anything.”
+
+“A girl can not be expected,” she answered, looking most innocently at
+him, “to understand anything sly or cunning. Why should anything of that
+sort be?”
+
+“Well, if it comes to that,” cried Pet, who (like all unreasonable
+people) had large rudiments of reasoning, “why should not I come up to
+your door, and knock, and say, 'I want to see Miss Insie; I am fond of
+Miss Insie, and have got something good for her'? That is what I shall
+do next time.”
+
+“If you do, my brother Maunder will beat you dreadfully--so dreadfully
+that you will never walk home. But don't let us talk of such terrible
+things. You must never come here, if you think of such things. I would
+not have you hurt for all the world; for sometimes I think that I like
+you very much.”
+
+The lovely girl looked at the handsome boy, as if they were at school
+together, learning something difficult, which must be repeated to the
+other's eyes, with a nod, or a shake of the head, as may be. A kind, and
+pure, and soft gaze she gave him, as if she would love his thoughts, if
+he could explain them. And Pet turned away, because he could not do so.
+
+“I'll tell you what it is,” he said, bravely, while his heart was
+thrilling with desire to speak well; “we will set to at once, and have a
+jolly good spread. I told my man to put up something very good, because
+I was certain that you would be very hungry.”
+
+“Surely you were not so foolish as to speak of me?”
+
+“No, no, no; I know a trick worth two of that. I was not such a fool as
+to speak of you, of course. But--”
+
+“But I would never condescend to touch one bit. You were ashamed to say
+a word about me, then, were you?”
+
+“Insie, now, Insie, too bad of you it is. You can have no idea what
+those butlers and footmen are, if ever you tell them anything. They are
+worse than the maids; they go down stairs, and they get all the tidbits
+out of the cook, and sit by the girl they like best, on the strength of
+having a secret about their master.”
+
+“Well, you are cunning!” cried the maiden, with a sigh. “I thought that
+your nature was loftier than that. No, I do not know anything of butlers
+and footmen; and I think that the less I know of you the better.”
+
+“Oh, Insie, darling Insie, if you run away like that--I have got both
+your hands, and you shall not run away. Do you want to kill me, Insie?
+They have had the doctor for me.”
+
+“Oh, how very dreadful! that does sound dreadful. I am not at all
+crying, and you need not look. But what did he say? Please to tell me
+what he said.”
+
+“He said, 'Salts and senna.' But I got up a high tree. Let us think of
+nicer things. It is enough to spoil one's dinner. Oh, Insie, what is
+anything to eat or drink, compared with looking at you, when you are
+good? If I could only tell you the things that I have felt, all day and
+all night, since this day fortnight, how sorry you would be for having
+evil thoughts of me!”
+
+“I have no evil thoughts; I have no thoughts at all. But it puzzles me
+to think what on earth you have been thinking. There, I will sit down,
+and listen for a moment.”
+
+“And I may hold one of your hands? I must, or you would never understand
+me. Why, your hands are much smaller than mine, I declare! And mine are
+very small; because of thinking about you. Now you need not laugh--it
+does spoil everything to laugh so. It is more than a fortnight since
+I laughed at all. You make me feel so miserable. But would you like to
+know how I felt? Mind, I would rather cut my head off than tell it to
+any one in the world but you.”
+
+“Now I call that very kind of you. If you please, I should like to know
+how you have been feeling.” With these words Insie came quite close up
+to his side, and looked at him so that he could hardly speak. “You may
+say it in a whisper, if you like,” she said; “there is nobody coming for
+at least three hours, and so you may say it in a whisper.”
+
+“Then I will tell you; it was just like this. You know that I began to
+think how beautiful you were at the very first time I looked at you. But
+you could not expect me so to love you all at once as I love you now,
+dear Insie.”
+
+“I can not understand any meaning in such things.” But she took a little
+distance, quite as if she did.
+
+“Well, I went away without thinking very much, because I had a bad place
+in my knee--a blue place bigger than the new half crown, where you saw
+that the pony kicked me. I had him up, and thrashed him, when I got
+home; but that has got nothing to do with it--only that I made him know
+who was his master. And then I tried to go on with a lot of things as
+usual; but somehow I did not care at all. There was a great rat hunt
+that I had been thinking of more than three weeks, when they got the
+straddles down, to be ready for the new ricks to come instead. But I
+could not go near it; and it made them think that the whole of my inside
+was out of order. And it must have been. I can see by looking back; it
+must have been so, without my knowing it. I hit several people with my
+holly on their shins, because they knew more than I did. But that was no
+good; nor was anything else. I only got more and more out of sorts, and
+could not stay quiet anywhere; and yet it was no good to me to try to
+make a noise. All day I went about as if I did not care whether people
+contradicted me or not, or where I was, or what time I should get back,
+or whether there would be any dinner. And I tucked up my feet in my
+nightgown every night; but instead of stopping there, as they always
+used to do, they were down in cold places immediately; and instead of
+any sleep, I bit holes by the hundred in the sheets, with thinking. I
+hated to be spoken to, and I hated everybody; and so I do now, whenever
+I come to think about them!”
+
+“Including even poor me, I suppose?” Insie had wonderfully pretty
+eyebrows, and a pretty way of raising them, and letting more light into
+her bright hazel eyes.
+
+“No, I never seemed to hate you; though I often was put out, because I
+could never make your face come well. I was thinking of you always, but
+I could not see you. Now tell me whether you have been like that.”
+
+“Not at all; but I have thought of you once or twice, and wondered what
+could make you want to come and see me. If I were a boy, perhaps I could
+understand it.”
+
+“I hate boys; I am a man all over now. I am old enough to have a wife;
+and I mean to have you. How much do you suppose my waistcoat cost? Well,
+never mind, because you are not rich. But I have got money enough for
+both of us to live well, and nobody can keep me out of it. You know what
+a road is, I suppose--a good road leading to a town? Have you ever seen
+one? A brown place, with hedges on each side, made hard and smooth for
+horses to go upon, and wheels that make a rumble. Well, if you will
+have me, and behave well to me, you shall sit up by yourself in a velvet
+dress, with a man before you and a man behind, and believe that you are
+flying.”
+
+“But what would become of my father, and my mother, and my brother
+Maunder?”
+
+“Oh, they must stop here, of course. We shouldn't want them. But I would
+give them all their house rent-free, and a fat pig every Christmas. Now
+you sit there and spread your lap, that I may help you properly. I
+want to see you eat; you must learn to eat like a lady of the highest
+quality; for that you are going to be, I can tell you.”
+
+The beautiful maid of the gill smiled sweetly, sitting on the low bank
+with the grace of simple nature and the playfulness of girlhood. She
+looked up at Lancelot, the self-appointed man, with a bright glance
+of curious contemplation; and contemplation (of any other subject than
+self) is dangerously near contempt. She thought very little of his
+large, free brag, of his patronizing manner, and fine self-content,
+reference of everything to his own standard, beauty too feminine, and
+instead of female gentleness, highly cultivated waywardness. But in
+spite of all that, she could not help liking, and sometimes admiring
+him, when he looked away. And now he was very busy with the high feast
+he had brought.
+
+“To begin with,” he said, when his good things were displayed, “you must
+remember that nothing is more vulgar than to be hungry. A gentleman may
+have a tremendous appetite, but a lady never.”
+
+“But why? but why? That does seem foolish. I have read that the ladies
+are always helped first. That must be because of their appetites.”
+
+“Insie, I tell you things, not the reasons of them. Things are learned
+by seeing other people, and not by arguing about them.”
+
+“Then you had better eat your dinner first, and let me sit and watch
+you. And then I can eat mine by imitation; that is to say, if there is
+any left.”
+
+“You are one of the oddest people I have ever seen. You go round the
+corner of all that I say, instead of following properly. When we are
+married, you will always make me laugh. At one time they kept a boy to
+make me laugh; but I got tired of him. Now I help you first, although
+I am myself so hungry. I do it from a lofty feeling, which my aunt
+Philippa calls 'chivalry.' Ladies talk about it when they want to get
+the best of us. I have given you all the best part, you see; and I only
+keep the worst of it for myself.”
+
+If Pet had any hope that his self-denial would promptly be denied to
+him, he made a great mistake; for the damsel of the gill had a healthy
+moorland appetite, and did justice to all that was put before her; and
+presently he began, for the first time in his life, to find pleasure in
+seeing another person pleased. But the wine she would not even taste,
+in spite of persuasion and example; the water from the brook was all she
+drank, and she drank as prettily as a pigeon. Whatever she did was done
+gracefully and well.
+
+“I am very particular,” he said at last; “but you are fit to dine with
+anybody. How have you managed to learn it all? You take the best of
+everything, without a word about it, as gently as great ladies do. I
+thought that you would want me to eat the nicest pieces; but instead of
+that, you have left me bones and drumsticks.”
+
+He gave such a melancholy look at these that Insie laughed quite
+merrily. “I wanted to see you practice chivalry,” she said.
+
+“Well, never mind; I shall know another time. Instead of two birds, I
+shall order four, and other things in proportion. But now I want to know
+about your father and your mother. They must be respectable people, to
+judge by you. What is their proper name, and how much have they got to
+live upon?”
+
+“More than you--a great deal more than you,” she answered, with such a
+roguish smile that he forgot his grievances, or began to lose them in
+the mist of beauty.
+
+“More than me! And they live in such a hole, where only the crows come
+near them?”
+
+“Yes, more than you, Sir. They have their wits to live upon, and
+industry, and honesty.”
+
+Pet was not old enough yet in the world to say, “What is the use of all
+those? All their income is starvation.” He was young enough to think
+that those who owned them had advantage of him, for he knew that he was
+very lazy. Moreover, he had heard of such people getting on--through the
+striking power of exception, so much more brilliant than the rule--when
+all the blind virtues found luck to lead them. Industry, honesty, and
+ability always get on in story-books, and nothing is nicer than to hear
+a pretty story. But in some ways Pet was sharp enough.
+
+“Then they never will want that house rent-free, nor the fat pig, nor
+any other presents. Oh, Insie, how very much better that will be! I find
+it so much nicer always to get things than to give them. And people are
+so good-natured, when they have done it, and can talk of it. Insie,
+they shall give me something when I marry you, and as often as they like
+afterward.”
+
+“They will give you something you will not like,” she answered, with a
+laugh, and a look along the moor, “if you stay here too long chattering
+with me. Do you know what o'clock it is? I know always, whether the sun
+is out or in. You need show no gold watch to me.”
+
+“Oh, that comes of living in a draught all day. The out-door people grow
+too wise. What do you see about ten miles off? It must be ten miles to
+that hill.”
+
+“That hill is scarcely five miles off, and what I see is not half of
+that. I brought you up here to be quite safe. Maunder's eyes are better
+than mine. But he will not see us, for another mile, if you cover your
+grand waistcoat, because we are in the shadows. Slip down into the gill
+again, and keep below the edge of it, and go home as fast as possible.”
+
+Lancelot felt inclined to do as he was told, and keep to safe obscurity.
+The long uncomfortable loneliness of prospect, and dim airy distance
+of the sinking sun, and deeply silent emptiness of hollows, where great
+shadows began to crawl--in the waning of the day, and so far away from
+home--all these united to impress upon the boy a spiritual influence,
+whose bodily expression would be the appearance of a clean pair of
+heels. But, to meet this sensible impulse, there arose the stubborn
+nature of his race, which hated to be told to do anything, and the
+dignity of his new-born love--such as it was--and the thought of looking
+small.
+
+“Why should I go?” he said. “I will meet them, and tell them that I am
+their landlord, and have a right to know all about them. My grandfather
+never ran away from anybody. And they have got a donkey with them.”
+
+“They will have two, if you stop,” cried Insie, although she admired his
+spirit. “My father is a very quiet man. But Maunder would take you by
+the throat and cast you down into the beck.”
+
+“I should like to see him try to do it. I am not so very strong, but I
+am active as a cat. I have no idea of being threatened.”
+
+“Then will you be coaxed? I do implore you, for my sake, to go, or it
+will be too late. Never, never, will you see me again, unless you do
+what I beseech of you.”
+
+“I will not stir one peg, unless you put your arms round my neck and
+kiss me, and say that you will never have anybody else.”
+
+Insie blushed deeply, and her bright eyes flashed with passion not of
+loving kind. But it went to her heart that he was brave, and that he
+loved her truly. She flung her comely arms round his neck, and touched
+her rosy lips with his; and before he could clasp her she was gone, with
+no more comfort than these words:
+
+“Now if you are a gentleman, you must go, and never come near this place
+again.”
+
+Not a moment too soon he plunged into the gill, and hurried up its
+winding course; but turning back at the corner, saw a sweet smile in the
+distance, and a wave of the hand, that warmed his heart.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+LOVE MILITANT
+
+
+So far so good. But that noble and exalted condition of the youthful
+mind which is to itself pure wisdom's zenith, but to folk of coarse
+maturity and tough experience “calf-love,” superior as it is to words
+and reason, must be left to its own course. The settled resolve of a
+middle-aged man, with seven large-appetited children, and an eighth
+approaching the shores of light, while baby-linen too often transmitted
+betrays a transient texture, and hose has ripened into holes, and
+breeches verify their name, and a knock at the door knocks at the
+heart--the fixed resolution of such a man to strike a bold stroke, for
+the sake of his home, is worthier of attention than the flitting fancy
+of boy and girl, who pop upon one another, and skip through zigzag
+vernal ecstasy, like the weathery dalliance of gnats.
+
+Lieutenant Carroway had dealt and done with amorous grace and attitude,
+soaring rapture, and profundity of sigh, suspense (more agonizing than
+suspension), despair, prostration, grinding of the teeth, the hollow and
+spectral laugh of a heart forever broken, and all the other symptoms of
+an annual bill of vitality; and every new pledge of his affections
+sped him toward the pledge-shop. But never had he crossed that fatal
+threshold; the thought of his uniform and dignity prevailed; and he was
+not so mean as to send a child to do what the father was ashamed of.
+
+So it was scarcely to be expected that even as a man he should
+sympathize deeply with the tender passion, and far less, as a
+coast-guardsman, with the wooing of a smuggler. Master Robin Lyth, by
+this time, was in the contraband condition known to the authorities
+as love; Carroway had found out this fact; but instead of indulging
+in generous emotion, he made up his mind to nab him through it. For he
+reasoned as follows; and granting that reason has any business on such
+premises, the process does not seem amiss.
+
+A man in love has only got one-eighth part of his wits at home to govern
+the doings of his arms, legs, and tongue. A large half is occupied
+with his fancy, in all the wanderings of that creature, dreamy, flimsy,
+anchoring with gossamer, climbing the sky with steps of fog, cast into
+abysms (as great writers call it) by imaginary demons, and even at its
+best in a queer condition, pitiful, yet exceeding proud. A quarter of
+the mental power is employed in wanting to know what the other people
+think; an eighth part ought to be dwelling upon the fair distracting
+object; and only a small eighth can remain to attend to the business of
+the solid day. But in spite of all this, such lads get on about as well
+as usual. If Bacchus has a protective power, Venus has no less of it,
+and possibly is more active, as behooves a female.
+
+And surely it was a cold-blooded scheme, which even the Revenue should
+have excised from an honest scale of duties, to catch a poor fellow in
+the meshes of love, because he was too sharp otherwise. This, however,
+was the large idea ripening in the breast of Carroway.
+
+“To-night I shall have him,” he said to his wife, who was inditing of
+softer things, her eighth confinement, and the shilling she had laid
+that it would be a boy this time. “The weather is stormy, yet the fellow
+makes love between the showers in a barefaced way. That old fool of a
+tanner knows it, and has no more right feeling than if he were a boy.
+Aha, my Robin, fine robin as you are, I shall catch you piping with
+your Jenny Wren tonight!” The lieutenant shared the popular ignorance of
+simplest natural history.
+
+“Charles, you never should have told me of it. Where is your feeling for
+the days gone by? And as for his coming between the showers, what should
+I have thought of you if you had made a point of bringing your umbrella?
+My dear, it is wrong. And I beg you, for my sake, not to catch him with
+his true love, but only with his tubs.”
+
+“Matilda, your mind is weakened by the coming trial of your nerves. I
+would rather have him with his tubs, of course; they would set us up
+for several years, and his silks would come in for your churching. But
+everything can not be as we desire. And he carries large pistols when he
+is not courting. Do you wish me to be shot, Matilda?”
+
+“Captain Carroway, how little thought you have, to speak to me in that
+way! And I felt before dinner that I never should get over it. Oh, who
+would have the smugglers on her mind, at such a time?”
+
+“My dear, I beg your pardon. Pray exert your strength of mind, and cast
+such thoughts away from you--or perhaps it will be a smuggler. And yet
+if it were, how much better it would pay!”
+
+“Then I hope it will, Charles; I heartily hope it will be. It would
+serve you quite right to be snaring your own son, after snaring a poor
+youth through his sweetheart.”
+
+“Well, well, time will show. Put me up the flat bottle, Tilly, and the
+knuckle of pork that was left last night. Goodness knows when I shall be
+back; and I never like to rack my mind upon an empty stomach.”
+
+The revenue officer had far to go, and was wise in providing provender.
+And the weather being on the fall toward the equinox, and the tides
+running strong and uncertain, he had made up his mind to fare inland,
+instead of attempting the watery ways. He felt that he could ride, as
+every sailor always feels; and he had a fine horse upon hire from his
+butcher, which the king himself would pay for. The inferior men had been
+sent ahead on foot, with orders to march along and hold their tongues.
+And one of these men was John Cadman, the self-same man who had
+descended the cliff without any footpath. They were all to be ready,
+with hanger and pistol, in a hole toward Byrsa Cottage.
+
+Lieutenant Carroway enjoyed his ride. There are men to whom excitement
+is an elevation of the sad and slow mind, which otherwise seems to have
+nothing to do. And what finer excitement can a good mind have than
+in balancing the chances of its body tumbling out of the saddle, and
+evicting its poor self?
+
+The mind of Charles Carroway was wide awake to this, and tenderly
+anxious about the bad foot in which its owner ended--because of the
+importance of the stirrups--and all the sanguine vigor of the heart
+(which seemed to like some thumping) conveyed to the seat of reason
+little more than a wish to be well out of it. The brave lieutenant
+holding place, and sticking to it through a sense of duty, and of the
+difficulty of getting off, remembered to have heard, when quite a little
+boy, that a man who gazes steadily between his horse's ears can not
+possibly tumble off the back. The saying in its wisdom is akin to that
+which describes the potency of salt upon a sparrow's tail.
+
+While Carroway gloomily pounded the road, with reflection a dangerous
+luxury, things of even deeper interest took their course at the goal of
+his endeavors. Mary Anerley, still an exile in the house of the tanner,
+by reason of her mother's strict coast-guard, had long been thinking
+that more injustice is done in the world than ought to be; and
+especially in the matter of free trade she had imbibed lax opinions,
+which may not be abhorrent to a tanner's nature, but were most
+unbecoming to the daughter of a farmer orthodox upon his own land, and
+an officer of King's Fencibles. But how did Mary make this change,
+and upon questions of public policy chop sides, as quickly as a clever
+journal does? She did it in the way in which all women think, whose
+thoughts are of any value, by allowing the heart to go to work, being
+the more active organ, and create large scenery, into which the tempted
+mind must follow. To anybody whose life has been saved by anybody else,
+there should arise not only a fine image of the preserver, but a high
+sense of the service done to the universe, which must have gone into
+deepest mourning if deprived of No. One. And then, almost of necessity,
+succeeds the investment of this benefactor to the world at large with
+all the great qualities needed for an exploit so stupendous. He has
+done a great deed, he has proved himself to be gallant, generous,
+magnanimous; shall I, who exist through his grand nobility, listen
+to his very low enemies? Therefore Robin was an angel now, and his
+persecutors must be demons.
+
+Captain Lyth had not been slow to enter into his good luck. He knew that
+Master Popplewell had a cultivated taste for rare old schnapps, while
+the partner of his life, and labor, and repose, possessed a desire
+for the finer kinds of lace. Attending to these points, he was always
+welcome; and the excellent couple encouraged his affection and liberal
+goodwill toward them. But Mary would accept no presents from him, and
+behaved for a long time very strangely, and as if she would rather keep
+out of his way. Yet he managed to keep on running after her, as much as
+she managed to run away; for he had been down now into the hold of his
+heart, searching it with a dark lantern, and there he had discovered
+“Mary,” “Mary,” not only branded on the hullage of all things, but the
+pith and pack of everything; and without any fraud upon charter-party,
+the cargo entire was “Mary.”
+
+Who can tell what a young maid feels, when she herself is doubtful?
+Somehow she has very large ideas, which only come up when she begins to
+think; and too often, after some very little thing, she exclaims that
+all is rubbish. The key-note of her heart is high, and a lot of things
+fall below harmony, and notably (if she is not a stupe), some of her
+own dear love's expressions before she has made up her soul to love him.
+This is a hard time for almost any man, who feels his random mind dipped
+into with a spirit-gauge and a saccharometer. But in spite of all these
+indications, Robin Lyth stuck to himself, which is the right way to get
+credit for sticking.
+
+“Johnny, my dear,” said Deborah Popplewell to her valued husband, just
+about the time when bold Carroway was getting hot and sore upon the
+Filey Road, yet steadily enlarging all the penance of return, “things
+ought to be coming to a point, I think. We ought not to let them so be
+going on forever. Young people like to be married in the spring; the
+birds are singing, and the price of coal goes down. And they ought to be
+engaged six months at least. We were married in the spring, my dear, the
+Tuesday but one that comes next from Easter-day. There was no lilac
+out, but there ought to have been, because it was not sunny. And we have
+never repented it, you know.”
+
+“Never as long as I live shall I forget that day,” said Popplewell;
+“they sent me home a suit of clothes as were made for kidney-bean
+sticks. I did want to look nice at church, and crack, crack, crack they
+went, and out came all the lining. Debby, I had good legs in those days,
+and could crunch down bark like brewers' grains.”
+
+“And so you could now, my dear, every bit as well. Scarcely any of the
+young men have your legs. How thankful we ought to be for them--and
+teeth! But everything seems to be different now, and nobody has any
+dignity of mind. We sowed broad beans, like a pigeon's foot-tread, out
+and in, all the way to church.”
+
+“The folk can never do such things now; we must not expect it of such
+times, my dear. Five-and-forty years ago was ninety times better than
+these days, Debby, except that you and I was steadfast, and mean to
+be so to the end, God willing. Lord! what are the lasses that He makes
+now?”
+
+“Johnny, they try to look their best; and we must not be hard upon them.
+Our Mary looks well enow, when she hath a color, though my eyes might 'a
+been a brighter blue if I never hadn't took to spectacles. Johnny, I am
+sure a'most that she is in her love-time. She crieth at night, which is
+nobody's business; the strings of her night-cap run out of their starch;
+and there looks like a channel on the pillow, though the sharp young
+hussy turns it upside down. I shall be upsides with her, if you won't.”
+
+“Certainly it shall be left to you; you are the one to do it best. You
+push her on, and I will stir him up. I will smuggle some schnapps into
+his tea to-night, to make him look up bolder; as mild as any milk it is.
+When I was taken with your cheeks, Debby, and your bit of money, I was
+never that long in telling you.”
+
+“That's true enow, Johnny; you was sarcy. But I'm thinking of the
+trouble we may get into over at Anerley about it.”
+
+“I'll carry that, lass. My back's as broad as Stephen's. What more can
+they want for her than a fine young fellow, a credit to his business and
+the country? Lord! how I hate them rough coast-riders! it wouldn't be
+good for them to come here.”
+
+“Then they are here, I tell you, and much they care. You seem to me to
+have shut your eyes since ever you left off tanning. How many times have
+I told you, John, that a sneaking fellow hath got in with Sue? I saw
+him with my own eyes last night skulking past the wicket-gate; and the
+girl's addle-pate is completely turned. You think her such a wonder,
+that you won't hearken. But I know the women best, I do.”
+
+“Out of this house she goes, neck and crop, if what you say is true,
+Deb. Don't say it again, that's a kind, good soul; it spoils my pipe to
+think of it.”
+
+Toward sundown Robin Lyth appeared, according to invitation. Dandy as
+he generally was, he looked unusually smart this time, with snow-white
+ducks and a velvet waistcoat, pumps like a dressing-glass, lace to his
+shirt, and a blue coat with gold buttons. His keen eyes glanced about
+for Mary, and sparkled as soon as she came down; and when he took her
+hand she blushed, and was half afraid to look at him; for she felt in
+her heart that he meant to say something, if he could find occasion; but
+her heart did not tell her what answer she would make, because of her
+father's grief and wrath; so she tried to hope that nothing would be
+said, and she kept very near her good aunt's apron-string. Such tactics,
+however, were doomed to defeat. The host and hostess of Byrsa Cottage
+were very proud of the tea they gave to any distinguished visitor.
+Tea was a luxury, being very dear, and although large quantities were
+smuggled, the quality was not, like that of other goods so imported,
+equal or superior to the fair legitimate staple. And Robin, who never
+was shy of his profession, confessed that he could not supply a cup so
+good.
+
+“You shall come and have another out-of-doors, my friend,” said his
+entertainer, graciously. “Mary, take the captain's cup to the bower;
+the rain has cleared off, and the evening will be fine. I will smoke my
+pipe, and we will talk adventures. Things have happened to me that would
+make you stare, if I could bring myself to tell them. Ah yes, I have
+lived in stirring times. Fifty years ago men and women knew their minds;
+and a dog could eat his dinner without a damask napkin.”
+
+Master Popplewell, who was of a good round form, and tucked his heels
+over one another as he walked (which indicates a pleasant self-esteem),
+now lit his long pipe and marched ahead, carefully gazing to the front
+and far away; so that the young folk might have free boot and free
+hand behind him. That they should have flutters of loving-kindness, and
+crafty little breaths of whispering, and extraordinary gifts of just
+looking at each other in time not to be looked at again, as well as a
+strange sort of in and out of feeling, as if they were patterned with
+the same zigzag--as the famous Herefordshire graft is made--and above
+all the rest, that they should desire to have no one in the world to
+look at them, was to be expected by a clever old codger, a tanner who
+had realized a competence, and eaten many “tanner's pies.” The which is
+a good thing; and so much the better because it costs nothing save the
+crust and the coal. But instead of any pretty little goings on such as
+this worthy man made room for, to tell the stupid truth, this lad and
+lass came down the long walk as far apart and as independent of one
+another as two stakes of an espalier. There had not been a word gone
+amiss between them, nor even a thought the wrong way of the grain; but
+the pressure of fear and of prickly expectation was upon them both, and
+kept them mute. The lad was afraid that he would get “nay,” and the lass
+was afraid that she could not give it.
+
+The bower was quite at the end of the garden, through and beyond the
+pot-herb part, and upon a little bank which overhung a little lane.
+Here in this corner a good woman had contrived what women nearly always
+understand the best, a little nook of pleasure and of perfume, after the
+rank ranks of the kitchen-stuff. Not that these are to be disdained; far
+otherwise; they indeed are the real business; and herein lies true test
+of skill. But still the flowers may declare that they do smell better.
+And not only were there flowers here, and little shrubs planted
+sprucely, but also good grass, which is always softness, and soothes
+the impatient eyes of men. And on this grass there stood, or hung, or
+flowered, or did whatever it was meant to do, a beautiful weeping-ash,
+the only one anywhere in that neighborhood.
+
+“I can't look at skies, and that--have seen too many of them. You young
+folk, go and chirp under the tree. What I want is a little rum and
+water.”
+
+With these words the tanner went into his bower, where he kept a good
+store of materials in moss; and the plaited ivy of the narrow entrance
+shook with his voice, and steps, and the decision of his thoughts. For
+he wanted to see things come to a point, and his only way to do it was
+to get quite out of sight. Such fools the young people of the age were
+now!
+
+While his thoughts were such, or scarcely any better, his partner in
+life came down the walk, with a heap of little things which she thought
+needful for the preservation of the tanner, and she waddled a little and
+turned her toes out, for she as well was roundish.
+
+“Ah, you ought to have Sue. Where is Sue?” said Master Popplewell.
+“Now come you in out of the way of the wind, Debby; you know how your
+back-sinew ached with the darning before last wash.”
+
+Mrs. Popplewell grumbled, but obeyed; for she saw that her lord had
+his reasons. So Mary and Robin were left outside, quite as if they were
+nothing to any but themselves. Mary was aware of all this manoeuvring,
+and it brought a little frown upon her pretty forehead, as if she
+were cast before the feet of Robin Lyth; but her gentleness prevailed,
+because they meant her well. Under the weeping-ash there was a little
+seat, and the beauty of it was that it would not hold two people. She
+sat down upon it, and became absorbed in the clouds that were busy with
+the sunset.
+
+These were very beautiful, as they so often are in the broken weather
+of the autumn; but sailors would rather see fair sky, and Robin's fair
+heaven was in Mary's eyes. At these he gazed with a natural desire to
+learn what the symptoms of the weather were; but it seemed as if little
+could be made out there, because everything seemed so lofty: perhaps
+Mary had forgotten his existence.
+
+Could any lad of wax put up with this, least of all a daring mariner?
+He resolved to run the cargo of his heart right in, at the risk of all
+breakers and drawn cutlasses; and to make a good beginning he came up
+and took her hand. The tanner in the bower gave approval with a cough,
+like Cupid with a sneeze; then he turned it to a snore.
+
+“Mary, why do you carry on like this?” the smuggler inquired, in a very
+gentle voice. “I have done nothing to offend you, have I? That would be
+the last thing I would ever do.”
+
+“Captain Lyth, you are always very good; you never should think such
+things of me. I am just looking at a particular cloud. And who ever said
+that you might call me 'Mary'?”
+
+“Perhaps the particular cloud said so; but you must have been the cloud
+yourself, for you told me only yesterday.”
+
+“Then I will never say another word about it; but people should not take
+advantage.”
+
+“Who are people? How you talk! quite as if I were somebody you never saw
+before. I should like you just to look round now, and let me see why you
+are so different from yourself.”
+
+Mary Anerley looked round; for she always did what people liked, without
+good reason otherwise; and if her mind was full of clouds, her eyes had
+little sign of them.
+
+“You look as lovely as you always do,” said the smuggler, growing bolder
+as she looked at something else. “You know long ago what my opinion of
+you is, and yet you seem to take no notice. Now I must be off, as you
+know, to-night; not for any reason of my own, as I told you yesterday,
+but to carry out a contract. I may not see you for many months again;
+and you may fall in love with a Preventive man.”
+
+“I never fall in love with anybody. Why should I go from one extreme to
+the other? Captain Carroway has seven children, as well as a very active
+wife.”
+
+“I am not afraid of Carroway, in love or in war. He is an honest fellow,
+with no more brains than this ash-tree over us. I mean the dashing
+captains who come in with their cutters, and would carry you off as soon
+as look.”
+
+“Captain Lyth, you are not at all considering what you say: those
+officers do not want me--they want you.”
+
+“Then they shall get neither; they may trust me for that. But, Mary, do
+tell me how your heart is; you know well how mine has been for ever such
+a time. I tell you downright that I have thought of girls before--”
+
+“Oh, I was not at all aware of that; surely you had better go on with
+thinking of them.”
+
+“You have not heard me out. I have only thought of them; nothing more
+than thinking, in a foolish sort of way. But of you I do not think; I
+seem to feel you all through me.”
+
+“What sort of a sensation do I seem to be? A foolish one, I suppose,
+like all those many others.”
+
+“No, not at all. A very wise one; a regular knowledge that I can not
+live without you; a certainty that I could only mope about a little--”
+
+“And not run any more cargoes on the coast?”
+
+“Not a single tub, nor a quarter bale of silk; except, of course, what
+is under contract now; and, if you should tell me that you can not care
+about me--”
+
+“Hush! I am almost sure that I hear footsteps. Listen, just a moment.”
+
+“No, I will not listen to any one in the world but you. I beg you not to
+try to put me off. Think of the winter, and the long time coming; say
+if you will think of me. I must allow that I am not, like you, of a
+respectable old family. The Lord alone knows where I came from, or where
+I may go to. My business is a random and up-and-down one, but no one can
+call it disreputable; and if you went against it, I would throw it up.
+There are plenty of trades that I can turn my hand to; and I will turn
+it to anything you please, if you will only put yours inside it. Mary,
+only let me have your hand; and you need not say anything unless you
+like.”
+
+“But I always do like to say something, when things are brought before
+me so. I have to consider my father, and my mother, and others belonging
+to me. It is not as if I were all alone, and could do exactly as I
+pleased. My father bears an ill-will toward free trade; and my mother
+has made bad bargains, when she felt sure of very good ones.”
+
+“I know that there are rogues about,” Robin answered, with a judicial
+frown; “but foul play never should hurt fair play; and we haul
+them through the water when we catch them. Your father is terribly
+particular, I know, and that is the worst thing there can be; but I do
+not care a groat for all objections, Mary, unless the objection begins
+with you. I am sure by your eyes, and your pretty lips and forehead,
+that you are not the one to change. If once any lucky fellow wins your
+heart, he will have it--unless he is a fool--forever. I can do most
+things, but not that, or you never would be thinking about the other
+people. What would anybody be to me in comparison with you, if I only
+had the chance? I would kick them all to Jericho. Can you see it in that
+way? can you get hot every time you think of me?”
+
+“Really,” said Mary, looking very gently at him, because of his serious
+excitement, “you are very good, and very brave, and have done wonders
+for me; but why should I get hot?”
+
+“No, I suppose it is not to be expected. When I am in great peril I grow
+hot, and tingle, and am alive all over. Men of a loftier courage grow
+cold; it depends upon the constitution; but I enjoy it more than they
+do, and I can see things ten times quicker. Oh, how I wish I was Nelson!
+how he must enjoy himself!”
+
+“But if you have love of continual danger, and eagerness to be always
+at it,” said Mary, with wide Yorkshire sense, much as she admired this
+heroic type, “the proper thing for you to do is to lead a single life.
+You might be enjoying all the danger very much; but what would your wife
+at home be doing? Only to knit, and sigh, and lie awake.”
+
+Mary made a bad hit here. This picture was not at all deterrent; so
+daring are young men, and so selfish.
+
+“Nothing of that sort should ever come to pass,” cried Robin, with the
+gaze of the head of a household, “supposing only that my wife was you.
+I would be home regularly every night before the kitchen clock struck
+eight. I would always come home with an appetite, and kiss you, and do
+both my feet upon the scraper. I would ask how the baby was, and carry
+him about, and go 'one, two, three,' as the nurses do, I would quite
+leave the government to put on taxes, and pay them--if I could--without
+a word of grumble. I would keep every rope about the house in order, as
+only a sailor knows how to do, and fettle my own mending, and carry out
+my orders, and never meddle with the kitchen, at least unless my opinion
+was sought for concerning any little thing that might happen to be meant
+for me.”
+
+“Well,” exclaimed Mary, “you quite take my breath away. I had no idea
+that you were so clever. In return for all these wonders, what should
+poor I have to do?”
+
+“Poor I would only have to say just once, 'Robin, I will have you, and
+begin to try to love you.'”
+
+“I am afraid that it has been done long ago; and the thing that I ought
+to do is to try and help it.”
+
+What happened upon this it would be needless to report, and not only
+needless, but a vast deal worse--shabby, interloping, meddlesome and
+mean, undignified, unmanly, and disreputably low; for even the tanner
+and his wife (who must have had right to come forward, if anybody had)
+felt that their right was a shadow, and kept back as if they were a
+hundred miles away, and took one another by the hand and nodded, as much
+as to say: “You remember how we did it; better than that, my dear. Here
+is your good health.”
+
+This being so, and the time so sacred to the higher emotions, even
+the boldest intruder should endeavor to check his ardor for intrusion.
+Without any inkling of Preventive Force, Robin and Mary, having once
+done away with all that stood between them, found it very difficult to
+be too near together; because of all the many things that each had for
+to say. They seemed to get into an unwise condition of longing to know
+matters that surely could not matter. When did each of them first feel
+sure of being meant only for the other nobler one? At first sight, of
+course, and with a perfect gift of seeing how much loftier each was
+than the other; and what an extraordinary fact it was that in everything
+imaginable they were quite alike, except in the palpable certainty
+possessed by each of the betterness of the other. What an age it seemed
+since first they met, positively without thinking, and in the very
+middle of a skirmish, yet with a remarkable drawing out of perceptions
+one anotherward! Did Mary feel this, when she acted so cleverly, and
+led away those vile pursuers? and did Robin, when his breath came back,
+discover why his heart was glowing in the rabbit-hole? Questions of such
+depth can not be fathomed in a moment; and even to attempt to do any
+justice to them, heads must be very long laid together. Not only so, but
+also it is of prime necessity to make sure that every whisper goes into
+the proper ear, and abides there only, and every subtlety of glance, and
+every nicety of touch, gets warm with exclusive reciprocity. It is
+not too much to say that in so sad a gladness the faculties of
+self-preservation are weak, when they ought to be most active; therefore
+it should surprise nobody (except those who are so far above all
+surprise) to become aware that every word they said, and everything
+(even doubly sacred) that they did, was well entered into, and
+thoroughly enjoyed, by a liberal audience of family-minded men, who had
+been through pretty scenes like this, and quietly enjoyed dry memory.
+
+Cadman, Ellis, and Dick Hackerbody were in comfortable places of
+retirement, just under the combing of the hedge; all waiting for a
+whistle, yet at leisure to enjoy the whisper, the murmur, or even the
+sigh, of a genuine piece of “sweet-hearting.” Unjust as it may be, and
+hard, and truly narrow, there does exist in the human mind, or at least
+in the masculine half of it, a strong conviction that a man in love is a
+man in a scrape, in a hole, in a pitfall, in a pitiful condition,
+untrue for the moment to the brotherhood of man, and cast down among the
+inferior vessels. And instead of being sorry for him, those who are all
+right look down, and glory over him, with very ancient gibes. So these
+three men, instead of being touched at heart by soft confessions, laid
+hard hands to wrinkled noses.
+
+“Mary, I vow to you, as I stand here,” said Robin, for the fiftieth
+time, leading her nearer to the treacherous hedge, as he pressed her
+trembling hand, and gazed with deep ecstasy into her truthful eyes, “I
+will live only to deserve you, darling. I will give up everything and
+everybody in the world, and start afresh. I will pay king's duty upon
+every single tub; and set up in the tea and spirit line, with his
+Majesty's arms upon the lintel. I will take a large contract for the
+royal navy, who never get anything genuine, and not one of them ever
+knows good from bad--”
+
+“That's a dirty lie, Sir. In the king's name I arrest you.”
+
+Lieutenant Carroway leaped before them, flourishing a long sword, and
+dancing with excitement, in this the supreme moment of his life. At the
+same instant three men came bursting through the hedge, drew hangers,
+and waited for orders. Robin Lyth, in the midst of his love, was so
+amazed, that he stood like a boy under orders to be caned.
+
+“Surrender, Sir! Down with your arms; you are my prisoner. Strike to his
+Majesty. Hands to your side! or I run you through like Jack Robinson!
+Keep back, men. He belongs to me.”
+
+But Carroway counted his chicks too soon; or at any rate he overlooked
+a little chick. For while he was making fine passes (having learned the
+rudiments of swordsmanship beyond other British officers), and just as
+he was executing a splendid flourish, upon his bony breast lay Mary. She
+flung her arms round him, so that move he could not without grievously
+tearing her; and she managed, in a very wicked way, to throw the whole
+weight of two bodies on his wounded heel. A flash of pain shot up to his
+very sword; and down he went, with Mary to protect him, or at any rate
+to cover him. His three men, like true Britons, stood in position, and
+waited for their officer to get up and give orders.
+
+These three men showed such perfect discipline that Robin was invited to
+knock them down, as if they had simply been three skittles in a row;
+he recovered his presence of mind and did it; and looking back at Mary,
+received signal to be off. Perceiving that his brave love would take
+no harm--for the tanner was come forth blustering loudly, and Mrs.
+Popplewell with shrieks and screams enough to prevent the whole
+Preventive Service--the free-trader kissed his hand to Mary, and was
+lost through the bushes, and away into the dark.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+LOVE PENITENT
+
+
+“I tell you, Captain Anerley, that she knocked me down. Your daughter
+there, who looks as if butter would not melt in her mouth, knocked down
+Commander Carroway of his Majesty's coastguard, like a royal Bengal
+tiger, Sir. I am not come to complain; such an action I would scorn; and
+I admire the young lady for her spirit, Sir. My sword was drawn; no man
+could have come near me; but before I could think, Sir, I was lying on
+my back. Do you call that constitutional?”
+
+“Mary, lof, however could you think it--to knock down Captain Carroway?”
+
+“Father, I never did. He went down of himself, because he was
+flourishing about so. I never thought what I was doing of at all. And
+with all my heart I beg his pardon. What right had you, Sir, to come
+spying after me?”
+
+This interview was not of the common sort. Lieutenant Carroway, in full
+uniform, was come to Anerley Farm that afternoon; not for a moment to
+complain of Mary, but to do his duty, and to put things straight; while
+Mary had insisted upon going home at once from the hospitable house of
+Uncle Popplewell, who had also insisted upon going with her, and taking
+his wife to help the situation.
+
+A council had been called immediately, with Mistress Anerley presiding;
+and before it had got beyond the crying stage, in marched the brave
+lieutenant.
+
+Stephen Anerley was reserving his opinion--which generally means that
+there is none yet to reserve--but in his case there would be a great
+deal by-and-by. Master Popplewell had made up his mind and his wife's,
+long ago, and confirmed it in the one-horse shay, while Mary was riding
+Lord Keppel in the rear; and the mind of the tanner was as tough as good
+oak bark. His premises had been intruded upon--the property which he had
+bought with his own money saved by years of honest trade, his private
+garden, his ornamental bower, his wife's own pleasure-plot, at a sacred
+moment invaded, trampled, and outraged by a scurvy preventive-man and
+his low crew. The first thing he had done to the prostrate Carroway was
+to lay hold of him by the collar, and shake his fist at him and demand
+his warrant--a magistrate's warrant, or from the crown itself. The poor
+lieutenant having none to show, “Then I will have the law of you, Sir,”
+ the tanner shouted; “if it costs me two hundred and fifty pounds. I
+am known for a man, Sir, who sticks to his word; and my attorney is a
+genuine bulldog.”
+
+This had frightened Carroway more than fifty broadsides. Truly he loved
+fighting; but the boldest sailor bears away at prospect of an action at
+law. Popplewell saw this, and stuck to his advantage, and vowed, until
+bed-time, satisfaction he would have; and never lost the sight of it
+until he fell asleep.
+
+Even now it was in his mind, as Carroway could see; his eyebrows meant
+it, and his very surly nod, and the way in which he put his hands far
+down into his pockets. The poor lieutenant, being well aware that zeal
+had exceeded duty (without the golden amnesty of success), and finding
+out that Popplewell was rich and had no children, did his very best to
+look with real pleasure at him, and try to raise a loftier feeling in
+his breast than damages. But the tanner only frowned, and squared his
+elbows, and stuck his knuckles sharply out of both his breeches pockets.
+And Mrs. Popplewell, like a fat and most kind-hearted lady, stared at
+the officer as if she longed to choke him.
+
+“I tell you again, Captain Anerley,” cried the lieutenant, with his
+temper kindling, “that no consideration moved me, Sir, except that of
+duty. As for my spying after any pretty girls, my wife, who is now down
+with her eighth baby, would get up sooner than hear of it. If I intruded
+upon your daughter, so as to justify her in knocking me down, Captain
+Anerley, it was because--well I won't say, Mary, I won't say; we have
+all been young; and our place is to know better.”
+
+“Sir, you are a gentleman,” cried Popplewell with heat; “here is
+my hand, and you may trespass on my premises, without bringing any
+attorney.”
+
+“Did you say her eighth baby? Oh, Commander Carroway,” Mrs. Popplewell
+began to whisper; “what a most interesting situation! Oh, I see why you
+have such high color, Sir.”
+
+“Madam, it is enough to make me pale. At the same time I do like
+sympathy; and my dear wife loves the smell of tan.”
+
+“We have retired, Sir, many years ago, and purchased a property near the
+seaside; and from the front gate you must have seen--But oh, I forgot,
+captain, you came through the hedge, or at any rate down the row of
+kidney-beans.”
+
+“I want to know the truth,” shouted Stephen Anerley, who had been
+ploughing through his brow into his brain, while he kept his eyes
+fixed upon his daughter's, and there found abashment, but no abasement;
+“naught have I to do with any little goings on, or whether an action was
+a gentleman's or not. That question belongs to the regulars, I wand, or
+to the folk who have retired. Nobbut a farmer am I, in little business;
+but concerning of my children I will have my say. All of you tell me
+what is this about my Mary.”
+
+As if he would drag their thoughts out of them, he went from one to
+another with a hard quick glance, which they all tried to shun; for they
+did not want to tell until he should get into a better frame of mind.
+And they looked at Mistress Anerley, to come forth and take his edge
+off; but she knew that when his eyes were so, to interfere was mischief.
+But Carroway did not understand the man.
+
+“Come, now, Anerley,” the bold lieutenant said; “what are you getting
+into such a way about? I would sooner have lost the hundred pounds twice
+over, and a hundred of my own--if so be I ever had it--than get little
+Mary into such a row as this. Why, Lord bless my heart, one would think
+that there was murder in a little bit of sweethearting. All pretty girls
+do it; and the plain ones too. Come and smoke a pipe, my good fellow,
+and don't terrify her.”
+
+For Mary was sobbing in a corner by herself, without even her mother to
+come up and say a word.
+
+“My daughter never does it,” answered Stephen Anerley; “my daughter is
+not like the foolish girls and women. My daughter knows her mind; and
+what she does she means to do. Mary, lof, come to your father, and tell
+him that every one is lying of you. Sooner would I trust a single quiet
+word of yours, than a pile, as big as Flambro Head, sworn by all the
+world together against my little Mary.”
+
+The rest of them, though much aggrieved by such a bitter calumny, held
+their peace, and let him go with open arms toward his Mary. The farmer
+smiled, that his daughter might not have any terror of his public talk;
+and because he was heartily expecting her to come and tell him some
+trifle, and be comforted, and then go for a good happy cry, while he
+shut off all her enemies.
+
+But instead of any nice work of that nature, Mary Anerley arose and
+looked at the people in the room--which was their very best, and by no
+means badly furnished--and after trying to make out, as a very trifling
+matter, what their unsettled minds might be, her eyes came home to her
+father's, and did not flinch, although they were so wet.
+
+Master Anerley, once and forever, knew that his daughter was gone from
+him. That a stronger love than one generation can have for the one
+before it--pure and devoted and ennobling as that love is--now had
+arisen, and would force its way. He did not think it out like that,
+for his mind was not strictly analytic--however his ideas were to that
+effect, which is all that need be said about them.
+
+“Every word of it is true,” the girl said, gently; “father, I have
+done every word of what they say, except about knocking down Captain
+Carroway. I have promised to marry Robin Lyth, by-and-by, when you agree
+to it.”
+
+Stephen Anerley's ruddy cheeks grew pale, and his blue eyes glittered
+with amazement. He stared at his daughter till her gaze gave way; and
+then he turned to his wife, to see whether she had heard of it. “I told
+you so,” was all she said; and that tended little to comfort him. But he
+broke forth into no passion, as he might have done with justice and some
+benefit, but turned back quietly and looked at his Mary, as if he were
+saying, once for all, “good-by.”
+
+“Oh, don't, father, don't,” the girl answered with a sob; “revile me, or
+beat me, or do anything but that. That is more than I can bear.”
+
+“Have I ever reviled you? Have I ever beaten you?”
+
+“Never--never once in all my life. But I beg you--I implore of you to do
+it now. Oh, father, perhaps I have deserved it.”
+
+“You know best what you deserve. But no bad word shall you have of me.
+Only you must be careful for the future never to call me 'father.'”
+
+The farmer forgot all his visitors, and walked, without looking at
+anybody, toward the porch. Then that hospitable spot re-awakened his
+good manners, and he turned and smiled as if he saw them all sitting
+down to something juicy.
+
+“My good friends, make yourselves at home,” he said; “the mistress will
+see to you while I look round. I shall be back directly, and we will
+have an early supper.”
+
+But when he got outside, and was alone with earth and sky, big tears
+arose into his brave blue eyes, and he looked at his ricks, and his
+workmen in the distance, and even at the favorite old horse that
+whinnied and came to have his white nose rubbed, as if none of them
+belonged to him ever any more. “A' would sooner have heard of broken
+bank,” he muttered to himself and to the ancient horse, “fifty times
+sooner, and begin the world anew, only to have Mary for a little child
+again.”
+
+As the sound of his footsteps died away, the girl hurried out of the
+room, as if she were going to run after him; but suddenly stopped in
+the porch, as she saw that he scarcely even cared to feel the cheek of
+Lightfoot, who made a point of rubbing up his master's whiskers with it,
+“Better wait, and let him come round,” thought Mary; “I never did
+see him so put out.” Then she ran up the stairs to the window on the
+landing, and watched her dear father grow dimmer and dimmer up the
+distance of the hill, with a bright young tear for every sad old step.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+DOWN AMONG THE DEAD WEEDS
+
+
+Can it be supposed that all this time Master Geoffrey Mordacks, of the
+city of York, land agent, surveyor, and general factor, and maker and
+doer of everything whether general or particular, was spending his days
+in doing nothing, and his nights in dreaming? If so, he must have had
+a sunstroke on that very bright day of the year when he stirred up
+the minds of the washer-women, and the tongue of Widow Precious. But
+Flamborough is not at all the place for sunstroke, although it reflects
+so much in whitewash; neither had Mordacks the head to be sunstruck, but
+a hard, impenetrable, wiry poll, as weather-proof as felt asphalted. At
+first sight almost everybody said that he must have been a soldier, at a
+time when soldiers were made of iron, whalebone, whip-cord, and ramrods.
+Such opinions he rewarded with a grin, and shook his straight shoulders
+straighter. If pride of any sort was not beneath him, as a matter of
+strict business, it was the pride which he allowed his friends to take
+in his military figure and aspect.
+
+This gentleman's place of business was scarcely equal to the
+expectations which might have been formed from a view of the owner. The
+old King's Staith, on the right hand after crossing Ouse Bridge from
+the Micklegate, is a passageway scarcely to be called a street, but
+combining the features of an alley, a lane, a jetty, a quay, and a
+barge-walk, and ending ignominiously. Nevertheless, it is a lively place
+sometimes, and in moments of excitement. Also it is a good place for
+business, and for brogue of the broadest; and a man who is unable to be
+happy there, must have something on his mind unusual. Geoffrey Mordacks
+had nothing on his mind except other people's business; which (as in
+the case of Lawyer Jellicorse) is a very favorable state of the human
+constitution for happiness.
+
+But though Mr. Mordacks attended so to other people's business, he would
+not have anybody to attend to his. No partner, no clerk, no pupil, had
+a hand in the inner breast pockets of his business; there was nothing
+mysterious about his work, but he liked to follow it out alone. Things
+that were honest and wise came to him to be carried out with judgment;
+and he knew that the best way to carry them out is to act with discreet
+candor. For the slug shall be known by his slime; and the spider who
+shams death shall receive it.
+
+Now here, upon a very sad November afternoon, when the Northern day
+was narrowing in; and the Ouse, which is usually of a ginger-color,
+was nearly as dark as a nutmeg; and the bridge, and the staith, and the
+houses, and the people, resembled one another in tint and tone; while
+between the Minster and the Clifford Tower there was not much difference
+of outline--here and now Master Geoffrey Mordacks was sitting in
+the little room where strangers were received. The live part of his
+household consisted of his daughter, and a very young Geoffrey, who did
+more harm than good, and a thoroughly hard-working country maid, whose
+slowness was gradually giving way to pressure.
+
+The weather was enough to make anybody dull, and the sap of every human
+thing insipid; and the time of day suggested tea, hot cakes, and the
+crossing of comfortable legs. Mordacks could well afford all these good
+things, and he never was hard upon his family; but every day he liked
+to feel that he had earned the bread of it, and this day he had labored
+without seeming to earn anything. For after all the ordinary business of
+the morning, he had been devoting several hours to the diligent revisal
+of his premises and data, in a matter which he was resolved to carry
+through, both for his credit and his interest. And this was the matter
+which had cost him two days' ride, from York to Flamborough, and three
+days on the road home, as was natural after such a dinner as he made
+in little Denmark. But all that trouble he would not have minded,
+especially after his enjoyment of the place, if it had only borne good
+fruit. He had felt quite certain that it must do this, and that he would
+have to pay another visit to the Head, and eat another duck, and have a
+flirt with Widow Precious.
+
+But up to the present time nothing had come of it, and so far as he
+could see he might just as well have spared himself that long rough
+ride. Three months had passed, and that surely was enough for even
+Flamborough folk to do something, if they ever meant to do it. It was
+plain that he had been misled for once, that what he suspected had
+not come to pass, and that he must seek elsewhere the light which
+had gleamed upon him vainly from the Danish town. To this end he went
+through all his case again, while hope (being very hard to beat, as
+usual) kept on rambling over everything unsettled, with a very sage
+conviction that there must be something there, and doubly sure, because
+there was no sign of it.
+
+Men at the time of life which he had reached, conducting their bodies
+with less suppleness of joint, and administering food to them with
+greater care, begin to have doubts about their intellect as well,
+whether it can work as briskly as it used to do. And the mind, falling
+under this discouragement of doubt, asserts itself amiss, in making
+futile strokes, even as a gardener can never work his best while
+conscious of suspicious glances through the window-blinds. Geoffrey
+Mordacks told himself that it could not be the self it used to be, in
+the days when no mistakes were made, but everything was evident at half
+a glance, and carried out successfully with only half a hand. In this
+Flamborough matter he had felt no doubt of running triumphantly through,
+and being crowned with five hundred pounds in one issue of the case, and
+five thousand in the other. But lo! here was nothing. And he must reply,
+by the next mail, that he had made a sad mistake.
+
+Suddenly, while he was rubbing his wiry head with irritation, and poring
+over his letters for some clew, like a dunce going back through his
+pot-hooks, suddenly a great knock sounded through the house--one, two,
+three--like the thumping of a mallet on a cask, to learn whether any
+beer may still be hoped for.
+
+“This must be a Flamborough man,” cried Master Mordacks, jumping up;
+“that is how I heard them do it; they knock the doors, instead of
+knocking at them. It would be a very strange thing just now if news were
+to come from Flamborough; but the stranger a thing is, the more it can
+be trusted, as often is the case with human beings. Whoever it is, show
+them up at once,” he shouted down the narrow stairs; for no small noise
+was arising in the passage.
+
+“A' canna coom oop. I wand a' canna,” was the answer in Kitty's
+well-known brogue; “how can a', when a' hanna got naa legs?”
+
+“Oh ho! I see,” said Mr. Mordacks to himself; “my veteran friend from
+the watch-tower, doubtless. A man with no legs would not have come so
+far for nothing. Show the gentleman into the parlor, Kitty; and Miss
+Arabella may bring her work up here.”
+
+The general factor, though eager for the news, knew better than to
+show any haste about it; so he kept the old mariner just long enough in
+waiting to damp a too covetous ardor, and then he complacently locked
+Arabella in her bedroom, and bolted off Kitty in the basement; because
+they both were sadly inquisitive, and this strange arrival had excited
+them.
+
+“Ah, mine ancient friend of the tower! Veteran Joseph, if my memory is
+right,” Mr. Mordacks exclaimed, in his lively way, as he went up and
+offered the old tar both hands, to seat him in state upon the sofa; but
+the legless sailor condemned “them swabs,” and crutched himself into
+a hard-bottomed chair. Then he pulled off his hat, and wiped his white
+head with a shred of old flag, and began hunting for his pipe.
+
+“First time I ever was in York city; and don't think much of it, if this
+here is a sample.”
+
+“Joseph, you must not be supercilious,” his host replied, with an
+amiable smile; “you will see things better through a glass of grog; and
+the state of the weather points to something dark. You have had a
+long journey, and the scenery is new. Rum shall it be, my friend? Your
+countenance says 'yes.' Rum, like a ruby of the finest water, have I;
+and no water shall you have with it. Said I well? A man without legs
+must keep himself well above water.”
+
+“First time I ever was in York city,” the ancient watchman answered,
+“and grog must be done as they does it here. A berth on them old walls
+would suit me well; and no need to travel such a distance for my beer.”
+
+“And you would be the man of all the world for such a berth,” said
+Master Mordacks, gravely, as he poured the sparkling liquor into a glass
+that was really a tumbler; “for such a post we want a man who is himself
+a post; a man who will not quit his duty, just because he can not, which
+is the only way of making sure. Joseph, your idea is a very good one,
+and your beer could be brought to you at the middle of each watch. I
+have interest; you shall be appointed.”
+
+“Sir, I am obligated to you,” said the watchman; “but never could I live
+a month without a wink of sea-stuff. The coming of the clouds, and the
+dipping of the land, and the waiting of the distance for what may come
+to be in it; let alone how they goes changing of their color, and making
+of a noise that is always out of sight: it is the very same as my beer
+is to me. Master, I never could get on without it.”
+
+“Well, I can understand a thing like that,” Mordacks answered,
+graciously; “my water-butt leaked for three weeks, pat, pat, all night
+long upon a piece of slate, and when a man came and caulked it up, I put
+all the blame upon the pillow; but the pillow was as good as ever. Not a
+wink could I sleep till it began to leak again; and you may trust a
+York workman that it wasn't very long. But, Joseph, I have interest at
+Scarborough also. The castle needs a watchman for fear of tumbling down;
+and that is not the soldiers' business, because they are inside. There
+you could have quantities of sea-stuff, my good friend; and the tap at
+the Hooked Cod is nothing to it there. Cheer up, Joseph, we will land
+you yet. How the devil did you manage, now, to come so far?”
+
+“Well, now, your honor, I had rare luck for it, as I must say, ever
+since I set eyes on you. There comes a son of mine as I thought were
+lost at sea; but not he, blow me! nearly all of him come back, with a
+handful of guineas, and the memory of his father. Lord! I could have
+cried; and he up and blubbered fairly, a trick as he learned from ten
+Frenchmen he had killed. Ah! he have done his work well, and aimed a
+good conduck--fourpence-halfpenny a day, so long as ever he shall live
+hereafter.”
+
+“In this world you mean, I suppose, my friend; but be not overcome; such
+things will happen. But what did you do with all that money, Joseph?”
+
+“We never wasted none of it, not half a groat, Sir. We finished out the
+cellar at the Hooked Cod first; and when Mother Precious made a
+grumble of it, we gave her the money for to fill it up again, upon
+the understanding to come back when it was ready; and then we went to
+Burlington, and spent the rest in poshays like two gentlemen; and when
+we was down upon our stumps at last, for only one leg there is between
+us both, your honor, my boy he ups and makes a rummage in his traps;
+which the Lord he put it into his mind to do so, when he were gone a
+few good sheets in the wind; and there sure enough he finds five good
+guineas in the tail of an old hankercher he had clean forgotten; and
+he says, 'Now, father, you take care of them. Let us go and see the
+capital, and that good gentleman, as you have picked up a bit of news
+for.' So we shaped a course for York, on board the schooner Mary Anne,
+and from Goole in a barge as far as this here bridge; and here we are,
+high and dry, your honor. I was half a mind to bring in my boy Bob; but
+he saith, 'Not without the old chap axes;' and being such a noisy one,
+I took him at his word; though he hath found out what there was to
+find--not me.”
+
+“How noble a thing is parental love!” cried the general factor, in
+his hard, short way, which made many people trust him, because it was
+unpleasant; “and filial duty of unfathomable grog! Worthy Joseph, let
+your narrative proceed.”
+
+“They big words is beyond me, Sir. What use is any man to talk over a
+chap's head?”
+
+“Then, dash your eyes, go on, Joe. Can you understand that, now?”
+
+“Yes, Sir, I can, and I likes a thing put sensible. If the gentlemen
+would always speak like that, there need be no difference atween us.
+Well, it was all along of all that money-bag of Bob's that he and I
+found out anything. What good were your guinea? Who could stand treat
+on that more than a night or two, and the right man never near you? But
+when you keep a good shop open for a month, as Bob and me did with Widow
+Tapsy, it standeth to reason that you must have everybody, to be called
+at all respectable, for miles and miles around. For the first few nights
+or so some on 'em holds off--for an old chalk against them, or for doubt
+of what is forrard, or for cowardliness of their wives, or things they
+may have sworn to stop, or other bad manners. But only go on a little
+longer, and let them see that you don't care, and send everybody home
+a-singing through the lanes as merry as a voting-time for Parliament,
+and the outer ones begins to shake their heads, and to say that they are
+bound to go, and stop the racket of it. And so you get them all, your
+honor, saints as well as sinners, if you only keeps the tap turned long
+enough.”
+
+“Your reasoning is ingenious, Joseph, and shows a deep knowledge of
+human nature. But who was this tardy saint that came at last for grog?”
+
+“Your honor, he were as big a sinner as ever you clap eyes on. Me and my
+son was among the sawdust, spite of our three crutches, and he spreading
+hands at us, sober as a judge, for lumps of ungenerous iniquity. Mother
+Tapsy told us of it, the very next day, for it was not in our power to
+be ackirate when he done it, and we see everybody laffing at us round
+the corner. But we took the wind out of his sails the next night,
+captain, you may warrant us. Here's to your good health, Sir, afore I
+beats to win'ard.”
+
+“Why, Joseph, you seem to be making up lost way for years of taciturnity
+in the tower. They say there is a balance in all things.”
+
+“We had the balance of him next night, and no mistake, your honor.
+He was one of them 'longshore beggars as turns up here, there, and
+everywhere, galley-raking, like a stinking ray-fish when the tide goes
+out; thundering scoundrels that make a living of it, pushing out for
+roguery with their legs tucked up; no courage for smuggling, nor honest
+enough, they goes on anyhow with their children paid for. We found
+out what he were, and made us more ashamed, for such a sneaking rat to
+preach upon us, like a regular hordinated chaplain, as might say a word
+or two and mean no harm, with the license of the Lord to do it. So my
+son Bob and me called a court-martial in the old tower, so soon as we
+come round; and we had a red herring, because we was thirsty, and we
+chawed a bit of pigtail to keep it down. At first we was glum; but we
+got our peckers up, as a family is bound to do when they comes together.
+My son Bob was a sharp lad in his time, and could read in Holy Scripter
+afore he chewed a quid; and I see'd a good deal of it in his mind now,
+remembering of King Solomon. 'Dad,' he says, 'fetch out that bottle as
+was left of French white brandy, and rouse up a bit of fire in the old
+port-hole. We ain't got many toes to warm between us'--only five, you
+see, your worship--'but,' says he, 'we'll warm up the currents where
+they used to be.'
+
+“According to what my son said, I done; for he leadeth me now, being
+younger of the two, and still using half of a shoemaker. However, I says
+to him, 'Warm yourself; it don't lay in my power to do that for you.' He
+never said nothing; for he taketh after me, in tongue and other likings;
+but he up with the kettle on the fire, and put in about a fathom and
+a half of pigtail. 'So?' says I; and he says, 'So!' and we both of us
+began to laugh, as long and as gentle as a pair of cockles, with their
+tongues inside their shells.
+
+“Well, your honor understands; I never spake so much before since ever
+I pass my coorting-time. We boiled down the pigtail to a pint of tidy
+soup, and strained it as bright as sturgeon juice; then we got a bottle
+with 'Navy Supply' on a bull's-eye in the belly of it; and we filled
+it with the French white brandy, and the pigtail soup, and a noggin of
+molasses, and shook it all up well together; and a better contract-rum,
+your honor, never come into high admiral's stores.”
+
+“But, Joseph, good Joseph,” cried Mr. Mordacks, “do forge ahead a little
+faster. Your private feelings, and the manufacture of them, are highly
+interesting to you; but I only want to know what came of it.”
+
+“Your honor is like a child hearing of a story; you wants the end first,
+and the middle of it after; but I bowls along with a hitch and a squirt,
+from habit of fo'castle: and the more you crosses hawse, the wider I
+shall head about, or down helm and bear off, mayhap. I can hear my Bob
+a-singing: what a voice he hath! They tell me it cometh from the timber
+of his leg; the same as a old Cremony. He tuned up a many times in
+yonder old barge, and shook the brown water, like a frigate's wake. He
+would just make our fortin in the Minister, they said, with Black-eyed
+Susan and Tom Bowline.”
+
+“Truly, he has a magnificent voice: what power, what compass, what a
+rich clear tone! In spite of the fog I will have the window up.”
+
+Geoffrey Mordacks loved good singing, the grandest of all melody, and,
+impatient as he was, he forgot all hurry; while the river, and the
+buildings, and the arches of the bridge, were ringing, and echoing, and
+sweetly embosoming the mellow delivery of the one-legged tar. And old
+Joe was highly pleased, although he would not show it, at such an effect
+upon a man so hard and dry.
+
+“Now, your honor, it is overbad of you,” he continued, with a softening
+grin, “to hasten me so, and then to hear me out o' window, because Bob
+hath a sweeter pipe. Ah, he can whistle like a blackbird, too, and gain
+a lot of money; but there, what good? He sacrifices it all to the honor
+of his heart, first maggot that cometh into it; and he done the very
+same with Rickon Goold, the Methody galley-raker. We never was so softy
+when I were afloat. But your honor shall hear, and give judgment for
+yourself.
+
+“Mother Precious was ready in her mind to run out a double-shotted gun
+at Rickon, who liveth down upon the rabbit-warren, to the other side
+of Bempton, because he scarcely ever doth come nigh her; and when he
+do come, he putteth up both bands, to bless her for hospitality, but
+neither of them into his breeches pocket. And being a lone woman, she
+doth feel it. Bob and me gave her sailing orders--'twould amaze you,
+captain; all was carried out as ship-shape as the battle of the Nile.
+There was Rickon Goold at anchor, with a spring upon his cable, having
+been converted; and he up and hailed that he would slip, at the very
+first bad word we used. My son hath such knowledge of good words that
+he, answered, 'Amen, so be it.'
+
+“Well, your honor, we goes on decorous, as our old quartermaster used to
+give the word; and we tried him first with the usual tipple, and several
+other hands dropped in. But my son and me never took a blessed drop,
+except from a gin-bottle full of cold water, till we see all the others
+with their scuppers well awash. Then Bob he findeth fault--Lor' how
+beautiful he done it!--with the scantling of the stuff; and he shouteth
+out, 'Mother, I'm blest if I won't stand that old guinea bottle of
+best Jamaica, the one as you put by, with the cobwebs on it, for Lord
+Admiral. No Lord Admiral won't come now. Just you send away, and hoist
+it up.'
+
+“Rickon Goold pricked up his ugly ears at this; and Mother Tapsy did it
+bootiful. And to cut a long yarn short, we spliced him, captain, with
+never a thought of what would come of it; only to have our revenge, your
+honor. He showed himself that greedy of our patent rum, that he never
+let the bottle out of his own elbow, and the more he stowed away, the
+more his derrick chains was creaking; but if anybody reasoned, there he
+stood upon his rights, and defied every way of seeing different, until
+we was compelled to take and spread him down, in the little room with
+sea-weeds over it.
+
+“With all this, Bob and me was as sober as two judges, though your honor
+would hardly believe it, perhaps; but we left him in the dark, to come
+round upon the weeds, as a galley-raker ought to do. And now we began
+to have a little drop ourselves, after towing the prize into port, and
+recovering the honor of the British navy; and we stood all round to
+every quarter of the compass, with the bottom of the locker still not
+come to shallow soundings. But sudden our harmony was spoiled by a
+scream, like a whistle from the very bottom of the sea.
+
+“We all of us jumped up, as if a gun had broke its lashings; and the
+last day of judgment was the thoughts of many bodies; but Bob he down at
+once with his button-stump gun-metal, and takes the command of the whole
+of us. 'Bear a hand, all on you,' he saith, quite steadfast; 'Rickon
+Goold is preaching to his own text to-night.' And so a' was, sure
+enough; so a' was, your honor.
+
+“We thought he must have died, although he managed to claw off of it,
+with confessing of his wickedness, and striking to his Maker. All of
+us was frightened so, there was no laugh among us, till we come to talk
+over it afterward. There the thundering rascal lay in the middle of that
+there mangerie of sea-stuff, as Mother Precious is so proud of, that the
+village calleth it the 'Widow's Weeds.' Blest if he didn't think that
+he were a-lying at the bottom of the sea, among the stars and cuttles,
+waiting for the day of judgment!
+
+“'Oh, Captain McNabbins, and Mate Govery,' he cries, 'the hand of the
+Lord hath sent me down to keep you company down here. I never would 'a
+done it, captain, hard as you was on me, if only I had knowed how dark
+and cold and shivery it would be down here. I cut the plank out; I'll
+not lie; no lies is any good down here, with the fingers of the deep
+things pointing to me, and the black devil's wings coming over me--but
+a score of years agone it were, and never no one dreamed of it--oh, pull
+away, pull! for God's sake, pull!--the wet woman and the three innocent
+babbies crawling over me like congers!'
+
+“This was the shadows of our legs, your honor, from good Mother Tapsy's
+candle; for she was in a dreadful way by this time about her reputation
+and her weeds, and come down with her tongue upon the lot of us. 'Enter
+all them names upon the log,' says I to Bob, for he writeth like a
+scholar. But Bob says, 'Hold hard, dad; now or never.' And with that,
+down he goeth on the deck himself, and wriggleth up to Rickon through
+the weeds, with a hiss like a great sea-snake, and grippeth him. 'Name
+of ship, you sinner!' cried Bob, in his deep voice, like Old Nick
+a-hailing from a sepulchre. 'Golconda, of Calcutta,' says the fellow,
+with a groan as seemed to come out of the whites of his eyes; and down
+goes his head again, enough to split a cat-head. And that was the last
+of him we heard that night.
+
+“Well, now, captain, you scarcely would believe, but although my nob is
+so much older of the pair, and white where his is as black as any coal,
+Bob's it was as first throwed the painter up, for a-hitching of this
+drifty to the starn of your consarns. And it never come across him till
+the locker was run out, and the two of us pulling longer faces than
+our legs is. Then Bob, by the mercy of the Lord, like Peter, found them
+guineas in the corner of his swab--some puts it round their necks, and
+some into their pockets; I never heard of such a thing till chaps run
+soft and watery--and so we come to this here place to change the air
+and the breeding, and spin this yarn to your honor's honor, as hath a
+liberal twist in it; and then to take orders, and draw rations, and any
+'rears of pay fallen due, after all dibs gone in your service; and for
+Bob to tip a stave in the Minister.”
+
+“You have done wisely and well in coming here,” said Mr, Mordacks,
+cheerfully; “but we must have further particulars, my friend. You seem
+to have hit upon the clew I wanted, but it must be followed very
+cautiously. You know where to lay your hand upon this villain? You have
+had the sense not to scare him off?”
+
+“Sarten, your honor. I could clap the irons on him any hour you gives
+that signal.”
+
+“Capital! Take your son to see the sights, and both of you come to me at
+ten to-morrow morning. Stop: you may as well take this half guinea. But
+when you get drunk, drink inwards.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+MEN OF SOLID TIMBER
+
+
+Mr. Mordacks was one of those vivacious men who have strong faith in
+their good luck, and yet attribute to their merits whatever turns out
+well. In the present matter he had done as yet nothing at all ingenious,
+or even to be called sagacious. The discovery of “Monument Joe,” or
+“Peg-leg Joe,” as he was called at Flamborough, was not the result of
+any skill whatever, either his own or the factor's, but a piece of as
+pure luck as could be. For all that, however, Mr. Mordacks intended to
+have the whole credit as his sole and righteous due.
+
+“Whenever I am at all down-hearted, samples of my skill turn up,” he
+said to himself as soon as Joe was gone; “and happy results come home,
+on purpose to rebuke my diffidence. Would any other man have got so far
+as I have got by simple, straightforward, yet truly skillful action,
+without a suspicion being started? Old Jellicorse lies on his bed of
+roses, snoring folios of long words, without a dream of the gathering
+cloud. Those insolent ladies are revelling in the land from which they
+have ousted their only brother; they are granting leases not worth a
+straw; they are riding the high horse; they are bringing up that cub
+(who set the big dog at me) in every wanton luxury. But wait a bit--wait
+a bit, my ladies; as sure as I live I shall have you.
+
+“In the first place, it is clear that my conclusion was correct
+concerning that poor Golconda; and why not also in the other issue? The
+Indiaman was scuttled--I had never thought of that, but only of a wreck.
+It comes to the same thing, only she went down more quietly; and that
+explains a lot of things. She was bound for Leith, with the boy to be
+delivered into the hands of his Scotch relatives. She was spoken last
+off Yarmouth Roads, all well, and under easy sail. Very good so far.
+I have solved her fate, which for twenty years has been a mystery. We
+shall have all particulars in proper time, by steering on one side of
+the law, which always huddles up everything. A keen eye must be kept
+upon that scoundrel, but he must never dream that he is watched at all;
+he has committed a capital offense. But as yet there is nothing but
+his own raving to convict him of barratry. The truth must be got at by
+gentle means. I must not claim the 500 pounds as yet, but I am sure of
+getting it. And I have excellent hopes of the 5000 pounds.”
+
+Geoffrey Mordacks never took three nights to sleep upon his thoughts (as
+the lawyer of Middleton loved to do), but rather was apt to overdrive
+his purport, with the goad of hasty action. But now he was quite
+resolved to be most careful; for the high hand would never do in such a
+ticklish matter, and the fewer the hands introduced at all into it, the
+better the chance of coming out clear and clean. The general factor had
+never done anything which, in his opinion, was not thoroughly upright;
+and now, with his reputation made, and his conscience stiffened to the
+shape of it, even a large sum of money must be clean, and cleanly got
+at, to make it pay for handling.
+
+This made him counsel with himself just now. For he was a superior man
+upon the whole, and particular always in feeling sure that the right
+word in anything would be upon his side. Not that he cared a groat for
+anybody's gossip; only that he kept a lofty tenor of good opinion. And
+sailors who made other sailors tipsy, and went rolling about on the
+floor all together, whether with natural legs or artificial, would do no
+credit to his stairs of office on a fine market-day in the morning. On
+the other hand, while memory held sway, no instance could be cited of
+two jolly sailors coming to see the wonders of this venerable town,
+and failing to be wholly intoxicated with them, before the Minster bell
+struck one.
+
+This was to be avoided, or rather forestalled, as a thing inevitable
+should be. Even in York city, teeming as it is with most delightful
+queerities, the approach of two sailors with three wooden legs might
+be anticipated at a distant offing, so abundant are boys there, and
+everywhere. Therefore it was well provided, on the part of Master
+Mordacks, that Kitty, or Koity, the maid-of-all-work, a damsel of
+muscular power and hard wit, should hold tryst with these mariners in
+the time of early bucket, and appoint a little meeting with her master
+by-and-by. This she did cleverly, and they were not put out; because
+they were to dine at his expense at a snug little chop-house in
+Parliament Street, and there to remain until he came to pay the score.
+
+All this happened to the utmost of desires; and before they had time
+to get thick-witted, Mordacks stood before them. His sharp eyes took in
+Sailor Bob before the poor fellow looked twice at him, and the general
+factor saw that he might be trusted not to think much for himself. This
+was quite as Mr. Mordacks hoped; he wanted a man who could hold his
+tongue, and do what he was told to do.
+
+After a few words about their dinner, and how they got on, and so forth,
+the principal came to the point by saying: “Now both of you must start
+to-morrow morning; such clever fellows can not be spared to go to sleep.
+You shall come and see York again, with free billet, and lashings of
+money in your pockets, as soon as you have carried out your sailing
+orders. To-night you may jollify; but after that you are under strict
+discipline, for a month at least. What do you say to that, my men?”
+
+Watchman Joe looked rather glum; he had hoped for a fortnight of
+stumping about, with a tail of admiring boys after him, and of hailing
+every public-house the cut of whose jib was inviting; however, he put
+his knife into his mouth, with a bit of fat, saved for a soft adieu to
+dinner, and nodded for his son to launch true wisdom into the vasty deep
+of words.
+
+Now Bob, the son of Joe, had striven to keep himself up to the paternal
+mark. He cited his father as the miracle of the age, when he was a long
+way off; and when he was nigh at hand, he showed his sense of duty,
+nearly always, by letting him get tipsy first. Still, they were very
+sober fellows in the main, and most respectable, when they had no money.
+
+“Sir,” began Bob, after jerking up his chin, as a sailor always does
+when he begins to think (perhaps for hereditary counsel with the sky),
+“my father and I have been hauling of it over, to do whatever is laid
+down by duty, without going any way again' ourselves. And this is the
+sense we be come to, that we should like to have something handsome
+down, to lay by again' chances; also a dokkyment in black and white, to
+bear us harmless of the law, and enter the prize-money.”
+
+“What a fine councillor a' would have made!” old Joe exclaimed, with
+ecstasy. “He hath been round the world three times--excuseth of him for
+only one leg left.”
+
+“My friend, how you condemn yourself! You have not been round the world
+at all, and yet you have no leg at all.” So spake Mr. Mordacks, wishing
+to confuse ideas; for the speech of Bob misliked him.
+
+“The corners of the body is the Lord's good-will,” old Joe answered,
+with his feelings hurt; “He calleth home a piece to let the rest bide
+on, and giveth longer time to it--so saith King David.”
+
+“It may be so; but I forget the passage. Now what has your son Bob to
+say?”
+
+Bob was a sailor of the fine old British type, still to be found even
+nowadays, and fit to survive forever. Broad and resolute of aspect, set
+with prejudice as stiff as his own pigtail, truthful when let alone,
+yet joyful in a lie, if anybody doubted him, peaceable in little things
+through plenty of fight in great ones, gentle with women and children,
+and generous with mankind in general, expecting to be cheated, yet not
+duly resigned at being so, and subject to unaccountable extremes of
+laziness and diligence. His simple mind was now confused by the general
+factor's appeal to him to pronounce his opinion, when he had just now
+pronounced it, after great exertion.
+
+“Sir,” he said, “I leave such things to father's opinion; he hath been
+ashore some years; and I almost forget how the land lays.”
+
+“Sea-faring Robert, you are well advised. A man may go round the world
+till he has no limbs left, yet never overtake his father. So the matter
+is left to my decision. Very good; you shall have no reason to repent
+it. To-night you have liberty to splice the main-brace, or whatever
+your expression is for getting jolly drunk; in the morning you will be
+sobriety itself, sad, and wise, and aching. But hear my proposal, before
+you take a gloomy view of things, such as to-morrow's shades may
+bring. You have been of service to me, and I have paid you with great
+generosity; but what I have done, including dinner, is dust in the
+balance to what I shall do, provided only that you act with judgment,
+discipline, and self-denial, never being tipsy more than once a week,
+which is fair naval average, and doing it then with only one another.
+Hard it may be; but it must be so. Now before I go any further, let me
+ask whether you, Joseph, as a watchman under government, have lost your
+position by having left it for two months upon a private spree?”
+
+“Lor', no, your honor! Sure you must know more than that. I gived a old
+'ooman elevenpence a week, and a pot of beer a Sunday, to carry out the
+dooties of the government.”
+
+“You farmed out your appointment at a low figure. My opinion of your
+powers and discretion is enhanced; you will return to your post with
+redoubled ardor, and vigor renewed by recreation; you will be twice the
+man you were, and certainly ought to get double pay. I have interest; I
+may be enabled to double your salary--if you go on well.”
+
+This made both of them look exceeding downcast, and chew the bitter quid
+of disappointment. They had laid their heads together over glass number
+one, and resolved upon asking for a guinea a week; over glass number
+two, they had made up their minds upon getting two guineas weekly; and
+glass number three had convinced them that they must be poor fools to
+accept less than three. Also they felt that the guineas they had spent,
+in drinking their way up to a great discovery, should without hesitation
+be made good ere ever they had another pint of health. In this
+catastrophe of large ideas, the father gazed sadly at the son, and the
+son reproachfully reflected the paternal gaze. How little availed it to
+have come up here, wearily going on upon yellow waters, in a barge where
+the fleas could man the helm, without aid of the stouter insect, and
+where a fresh run sailor was in more demand than salmon; and even
+without that (which had largely enhanced the inestimable benefit of
+having wooden legs), this pair of tars had got into a state of mind to
+return the whole way upon horseback. No spurs could they wear, and no
+stirrups could they want, and to get up would be difficult; but what is
+the use of living, except to conquer difficulties? They rejoiced all the
+more in the four legs of a horse, by reason of the paucity of their
+own; which approves a liberal mind. But now, where was the horse to come
+from, or the money to make him go?
+
+“You look sad,” proceeded Mr. Mordacks. “It grieves me when any good
+man looks sad; and doubly so when a brace of them do it. Explain your
+feelings, Joe and Bob; if it lies in a human being to relieve them, I
+will do it.”
+
+“Captain, we only wants what is our due,” said Bob, with his chin up,
+and his strong eyes stern. “We have been on the loose; and it is the
+manner of us, and encouraged by the high authorities. We have come
+across, by luck of drink, a thing as seems to suit you; and we have told
+you all our knowledge without no conditions. If you takes us for a pair
+of fools, and want no more of us, you are welcome, and it will be what
+we are used to; but if your meaning is to use us, we must have fair
+wages; and even so, we would have naught to do with it if it was against
+an honest man; but a rogue who has scuttled a ship--Lor', there!”
+
+Bob cast out the juice of his chew into the fire, as if it were the
+life-blood of such a villain, and looked at his father, who expressed
+approval by the like proceeding. And Geoffrey Mordacks was well content
+at finding them made of decent stuff. It was not his manner to do things
+meanly; and he had only spoken so to moderate their minds and keep them
+steady.
+
+“Mariner Bob, you speak well and wisely,” he answered, with a superior
+smile. “Your anxiety as to ways and means does credit to your intellect.
+That subject has received my consideration. I have studied the style of
+life at Flamborough, and the prices of provisions--would that such they
+were in York!--and to keep you in temperate and healthy comfort, without
+temptation, and with minds alert, I am determined to allow for the two
+of you, over and above all your present income from a grateful country
+(which pays a man less when amputation has left less of him), the sum of
+one guinea and a half per week. But remember that, to draw this stipend,
+both of you must be in condition to walk one mile and a half on a
+Saturday night, which is a test of character. You will both be fitted
+up with solid steel ends, by the cutler at the end of Ouse Bridge,
+to-morrow morning, so that the state of the roads will not affect you,
+and take note of one thing, mutual support (graceful though it always
+is in paternal and filial communion) will not be allowed on a Saturday
+night. Each man must stand on his own stumps.”
+
+“Sir,” replied Bob, who had much education, which led him to a knowledge
+of his failings, “never you fear but what we shall do it. Sunday will
+be the day of standing with a shake to it; for such, is the habit of the
+navy. Father, return thanks; make a leg--no man can do it better. Master
+Mordacks, you shall have our utmost duty; but a little brass in hand
+would be convenient.”
+
+“You shall have a fortnight in advance; after that you must go every
+Saturday night to a place I will appoint for you. Now keep your own
+counsel; watch that fellow; by no means scare him at first, unless you
+see signs of his making off; but rather let him think that you know
+nothing of his crime. Labor hard to make him drink again; then terrify
+him like Davy Jones himself; and get every particular out of him,
+especially how he himself escaped, where he landed, and who was with
+him. I want to learn all about a little boy (at least, he may be a
+big man now), who was on board the ship Golconda, under the captain's
+special charge. I can not help thinking that the child escaped; and I
+got a little trace of something connected with him at Flamborough. I
+durst not make much inquiry there, because I am ordered to keep things
+quiet. Still, I did enough to convince me almost that my suspicion was
+an error; for Widow Precious--”
+
+“Pay you no heed, Sir, to any manoeuvring of Widow Precious. We find her
+no worse than the other women; but not a blamed bit better.”
+
+“I think highly of the female race; at least, in comparison with the
+male one. I have always found reason to believe that a woman, put upon
+her mettle by a secret, will find it out, or perish.”
+
+“Your honor, everybody knows as much as that; but it doth not follow
+that she tells it on again, without she was ordered not to do so.”
+
+“Bob, you have not been round the world for nothing. I see my blot, and
+you have hit it; you deserve to know all about the matter now. Match me
+that button, and you shall have ten guineas.”
+
+The two sailors stared at the bead of Indian gold which Mordacks pulled
+out of his pocket. Buttons are a subject for nautical contempt and
+condemnation; perhaps because there is nobody to sew them on at sea;
+while ear-rings, being altogether useless, are held in good esteem and
+honor.
+
+“I have seen a brace of ear-rings like it,” said old Joe, wading through
+deep thought. “Bob, you knows who was a-wearing of 'em.”
+
+“A score of them fishermen, like enough,” cautious Bob answered; for
+he knew what his father meant, but would not speak of the great
+free-trader; for Master Mordacks might even be connected with the
+revenue. “What use to go on about such gear? His honor wanteth to hear
+of buttons, regulation buttons by the look of it, and good enough for
+Lord Nelson. Will you let us take the scantle, and the rig of it, your
+honor?”
+
+“By all means, if you can do so, my friend; but what have you to do it
+with?”
+
+“Hold on a bit, Sir, and you shall see.” With these words Bob clapped
+a piece of soft York bread into the hollow of his broad brown palm,
+moistened it with sugary dregs of ale, such as that good city loves, and
+kneading it firmly with some rapid flits of thumb, tempered and
+enriched it nobly with the mellow juice of quid. Treated thus, it took
+consistence, plastic, docile, and retentive pulp; and the color was
+something like that of gold which had passed, according to its fate,
+through a large number of unclean hands.
+
+“Now the pattern, your honor,” said Bob, with a grin; “I could do it
+from memory, but better from the thing.” He took the bauble, and set it
+on the foot of a rummer which stood on the table; and in half a minute
+he had the counterpart in size, shape, and line; but without the
+inscription. “A sample of them in the hollow will do, and good enough
+for the nigger-body words--heathen writing, to my mind.” With lofty
+British intolerance, he felt that it might be a sinful thing to make
+such marks; nevertheless he impressed one side, whereon the characters
+were boldest, into the corresponding groove of his paste model; then he
+scooped up the model on the broad blade of his knife, and set it in the
+oven of the little fire-place, in a part where the heat was moderate.
+
+“Well done, indeed!” cried Mr. Mordacks; “you will have a better
+likeness of it than good Mother Precious. Robert, I admire your
+ingenuity. But all sailors are ingenious.”
+
+“At sea, in the trades, or in a calm, Sir, what have we to do but to
+twiddle our thumbs, and practice fiddling with them? A lively tune is
+what I like, and a-serving of the guns red-hot; a man must act according
+to what nature puts upon him. And nature hath taken one of my legs from
+me with a cannon-shot from the French line-of-battle ship--Rights of
+Mankind the name of her.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE PROPER WAY TO ARGUE
+
+
+Alas, how seldom is anything done in proper time and season! Either too
+fast, or too slow, is the clock of all human dealings; and what is the
+law of them, when the sun (the regulator of works and ways) has to be
+allowed for very often on his own meridian? With the best intention
+every man sets forth to do his duty, and to talk of it; and he makes
+quite sure that he has done it, and to his privy circle boasts, or lets
+them do it better for him; but before his lips are dry, his ears apprise
+him that he was a stroke too late.
+
+So happened it with Master Mordacks, who of all born men was foremost,
+with his wiry fingers spread, to pass them through the scattery forelock
+of that mettlesome horse, old Time. The old horse galloped by him
+unawares, and left him standing still, to hearken the swish of the tail,
+and the clatter of the hoofs, and the spirited nostrils neighing for
+a race, on the wide breezy down at the end of the lane. But Geoffrey
+Mordacks was not to blame. His instructions were to move slowly, until
+he was sure of something worth moving for. And of this he had no surety
+yet, and was only too likely to lose it altogether by any headlong
+action. Therefore, instead of making any instant rush, or belting on
+his pistols, and hiring the sagacious quadruped that understood his
+character, content he was to advance deliberately upon one foot and
+three artificial legs.
+
+Meanwhile, at Anerley Farm, the usual fatness of full garners, and
+bright comfort of the evening hearth, the glow of peace, which labor
+kindles in the mind that has earned its rest, and the pleasant laziness
+of heart which comes where family love lies careless, confident, and
+unassailed--the pleasure also of pitying the people who never can get in
+their wheat, and the hot benevolence of boiling down the bones for the
+man who has tumbled off one's own rick--all these blisses, large and
+little, were not in their usual prime.
+
+The master of the house was stern and silent, heavy and careless of his
+customary victuals, neglectful also of his customary jokes. He disliked
+the worse side of a bargain as much as in his most happy moments; and
+the meditation (which is generally supposed to be going on where speech
+is scarce) was not of such loftiness as to overlook the time a man
+stopped round the corner. As a horse settles down to strong collar-work
+better when the gloss of the stable takes the ruffle of the air, so this
+man worked at his business all the harder, with the brightness of the
+home joys fading. But it went very hard with him more than once, when
+he made a good stroke of salesmanship, to have to put the money in the
+bottom of his pocket, without even rubbing a bright half crown, and
+saying to himself, “I have a'most a mind to give this to Mary.”
+
+Now if this settled and steadfast man (with three-quarters of his life
+gone over him, and less and less time every year for considering soft
+subjects), in spite of all that, was put out of his way by not being
+looked at as usual--though for that matter, perhaps, himself failed to
+look in search of those looks as usual--what, on the other hand, was
+likely to remain of mirth and light-heartedness in a weaker quarter?
+Mary, who used to be as happy as a bird where worms abound and cats are
+scarce, was now in a grievous plight of mind, restless, lonely, troubled
+in her heart, and doubtful of her conscience. Her mother had certainly
+shown kind feeling, and even a readiness to take her part, which
+surprised the maiden, after all her words; and once or twice they
+had had a cry together, clearing and strengthening their intellects
+desirably. For the more Mistress Anerley began to think about it, the
+more she was almost sure that something could be said on both sides. She
+never had altogether approved of the farmer's volunteering, which took
+him away to drill at places where ladies came to look at him; and where
+he slept out of his own bed, and got things to eat that she had never
+heard of; and he never was the better afterward. If that was the thing
+which set his mind against free trade so bitterly, it went far to show
+that free trade was good, and it made all the difference of a blanket.
+And more than that, she had always said from the very first, and had
+even told the same thing to Captain Carroway, in spite of his position,
+that nobody knew what Robin Lyth might not turn out in the end to be.
+He had spoken most highly of her, as Mary had not feared to mention; and
+she felt obliged to him for doing so, though of course he could not do
+otherwise. Still, there were people who would not have done that, and it
+proved that he was a very promising young man.
+
+Mary was pleased with this conclusion, and glad to have some one who did
+not condemn her; hopeful, moreover, that her mother's influence might
+have some effect by-and-by. But for the present it seemed to do more
+harm than good; because the farmer, having quite as much jealousy as
+justice, took it into silent dudgeon that the mother of his daughter,
+who regularly used to be hard upon her for next to nothing, should now
+turn round and take her part, from downright womanism, in the teeth of
+all reason, and of her own husband! Brave as he was, he did not put it
+to his wife in so strong a way as that; but he argued it so to himself,
+and would let it fly forth, without thinking twice about it, if they
+went on in that style much longer, quite as if he were nobody, and
+they could do better without him. Little he knew, in this hurt state of
+mind--for which he should really have been too old--how the heart of
+his child was slow and chill, stupid with the strangeness he had made,
+waiting for him to take the lead, or open some door for entrance,
+and watching for the humors of the elder body, as the young of past
+generations did. And sometimes, faithful as she was to plighted truth
+and tenderness, one coaxing word would have brought her home to the arms
+that used to carry her.
+
+But while such things were waiting to be done till they were thought of,
+the time for doing them went by; and to think of them was memory. Master
+Popplewell had told Captain Anerley continually what his opinions were,
+fairly giving him to know on each occasion that they were to be taken
+for what they were worth; that it did not follow, from his own success
+in life, that he might not be mistaken now; and that he did not care a
+d--n, except for Christian feeling, whether any fool hearkened to him
+twice or not. He said that he never had been far out in any opinion he
+had formed in all his life; but none the more for that would he venture
+to foretell a thing with cross-purposes about it. A man of sagacity and
+dealings with the world might happen to be right ninety-nine times in
+a hundred, and yet he might be wrong the other time. Therefore he would
+not give any opinion, except that everybody would be sorry by-and-by,
+when things were too late for mending.
+
+To this the farmer listened with an air of wisdom, not put forward too
+severely; because Brother Popplewell had got a lot of money, and must
+behave handsomely when in a better world. The simplest way of treating
+him was just to let him talk--for it pleased him, and could do no
+harm--and then to recover self-content by saying what a fool he was when
+out of hearing. The tanner partly suspected this; and it put his nature
+upon edge; for he always drove his opinions in as if they were so many
+tenpenny nails, which the other man must either clinch or strike back
+into his teeth outright. He would rather have that than flabby silence,
+as if he were nailing into dry-rot.
+
+“I tell you what it is,” he said, the third time he came over, which was
+well within a week--for nothing breeds impatience faster than retirement
+from work--“you are so thick-headed in your farmhouse ways, sometimes
+I am worn out with you. I do not expect to be thought of any higher
+because I have left off working for myself; and Deborah is satisfied to
+be called 'Debby,' and walks no prouder than if she had got to clean
+her own steps daily. You can not enter into what people think of me,
+counting Parson Beloe; and therefore it is no good saying anything about
+it. But, Stephen, you may rely upon it that you will be sorry afterward.
+That poor girl, the prettiest girl in Yorkshire, and the kindest, and
+the best, is going off her victuals, and consuming of her substance,
+because you will not even look at her. If you don't want the child, let
+me have her. To us she is welcome as the flowers in May.”
+
+“If Mary wishes it, she can go with you,” the farmer answered, sternly;
+and hating many words, he betook himself to work, resolving to keep at
+it until the tanner should be gone. But when he came home after dusk,
+his steadfast heart was beating faster than his stubborn mind approved.
+Mary might have taken him at his word, and flown for refuge from
+displeasure, cold voice, and dull comfort, to the warmth, and hearty
+cheer, and love of the folk who only cared to please her, spoil her,
+and utterly ruin her. Folk who had no sense of fatherly duty, or right
+conscience; but, having piled up dirty money, thought that it covered
+everything: such people might think it fair to come between a father
+and his child, and truckle to her, by backing her up in whims that were
+against her good, and making light of right and wrong, as if they turned
+on money; but Mary (such a prudent lass, although she was a fool just
+now) must see through all such shallow tricks, such rigmarole about
+Parson Beloe, who must be an idiot himself to think so much of Simon
+Popplewell--for Easter offerings, no doubt--but there, if Mary had the
+heart to go away, what use to stand maundering about it? Stephen Anerley
+would be dashed if he cared which way it was.
+
+Meaning all this, Stephen Anerley, however, carried it out in a style at
+variance with such reckless vigor. Instead of marching boldly in at his
+own door, and throwing himself upon a bench, and waiting to be waited
+upon, he left the narrow gravel-walk (which led from the horse gate to
+the front door) and craftily fetched a compass through the pleasure beds
+and little shrubs, upon the sward, and in the dusk, so that none might
+see or hear him. Then, priding himself upon his stealth, as a man with
+whom it is rare may do, yet knowing all the time that he was more than
+half ashamed of it, he began to peep in at his own windows, as if he
+were planning how to rob his own house. This thought struck him, but
+instead of smiling, he sighed very sadly; for his object was to learn
+whether house and home had been robbed of that which he loved so fondly.
+There was no Mary in the kitchen, seeing to his supper; the fire was
+bright, and the pot was there, but only shadows round it. No Mary in the
+little parlor; only Willie half asleep, with a stupid book upon his lap,
+and a wretched candle guttering. Then, as a last hope, he peered into
+the dairy, where she often went at fall of night, to see things safe,
+and sang to keep the ghosts away. She would not be singing now of
+course, because he was so cross with her; but if she were there, it
+would be better than the merriest song for him. But no, the place was
+dark and cold; tub and pan, and wooden skimmer, and the pails hung up
+to drain, all were left to themselves, and the depth of want of life was
+over them. “She hathn't been there for an hour,” thought he; “a reek o'
+milk, and not my lassie.”
+
+Very few human beings have such fragrance of good-will as milk. The
+farmer knew that he had gone too far in speaking coarsely of the cow,
+whose children first forego their food for the benefit of ours, and then
+become veal to please us. “My little maid is gone,” said the lord of
+many cows, and who had robbed some thousand of their dear calves. “I
+trow I must make up my mind to see my little maid no more.”
+
+Without compunction for any mortal cow (though one was bellowing sadly
+in the distance, that had lost her calf that day), and without even
+dreaming of a grievance there, Master Anerley sat down to think upon a
+little bench hard by. His thoughts were not very deep or subtle; yet to
+him they were difficult, because they were so new and sad. He had always
+hoped to go through life in the happiest way there is of it, with simply
+doing common work, and heeding daily business, and letting other people
+think the higher class of thought for him. To live as Nature, cultivated
+quite enough for her own content, enjoys the round of months and years,
+the changes of the earth and sky, and gentle slope of time subsiding to
+softer shadows and milder tones. And, most of all, to see his children,
+dutiful, good, and loving, able and ready to take his place--when he
+should be carried from farm to church--to work the land he loved so
+well, and to walk in his ways, and praise him.
+
+But now he thought, like Job in his sorrow, “All these things are
+against me.” The air was laden with the scents of autumn, rich and ripe
+and soothing--the sweet fulfillment of the year. The mellow odor of
+stacked wheat, the stronger perfume of clover, the brisk smell of apples
+newly gathered, the distant hint of onions roped, and the luscious waft
+of honey, spread and hung upon the evening breeze. “What is the good of
+all this,” he muttered, “when my little lassie is gone away, as if she
+had no father?”
+
+“Father, I am not gone away. Oh, father, I never will go away, if you
+will love me as you did.”
+
+Here Mary stopped; for the short breath of a sob was threatening to
+catch her words; and her nature was too like her father's to let him
+triumph over her. The sense of wrong was in her heart, as firm and
+deep as in his own, and her love of justice quite as strong; only they
+differed as to what it was. Therefore Mary would not sob until she was
+invited. She stood in the arch of trimmed yew-tree, almost within reach
+of his arms; and though it was dark, he knew her face as if the sun was
+on it.
+
+“Dearie, sit down here,” he said; “there used to be room for you and me,
+without two chairs, when you was my child.”
+
+“Father, I am still your child,” she answered, softly, sitting by him.
+“Were you looking for me just now? Say it was me you were looking for.”
+
+“There is such a lot of rogues to look for; they skulk about so, and
+they fire the stacks--”
+
+“Now, father, you never could tell a fib,” she answered, sidling closer
+up, and preparing for his repentance.
+
+“I say that I was looking for a rogue. If the cap fits--” here he
+smiled a little, as much as to say, “I had you there;” and then, without
+meaning it, from simple force of habit, he did a thing equal to utter
+surrender. He stroked his chin, as he always used to do when going to
+kiss Mary, that the bristles might lie down for her.
+
+“The cap doesn't fit; nothing fits but you; you--you--you, my own dear
+father,” she cried, as she kissed him again and again, and put her arms
+round to protect him. “And nobody fits you, but your own Mary. I knew
+you were sorry. You needn't say it. You are too stubborn, and I will let
+you off. Now don't say a word, father, I can do without it. I don't want
+to humble you, but only to make you good; and you are the very best of
+all people, when you please. And you never must be cross again with your
+darling Mary. Promise me immediately; or you shall have no supper.”
+
+“Well,” said the farmer, “I used to think that I was gifted with the
+gift of argument. Not like a woman, perhaps; but still pretty well for
+a man, as can't spare time for speechifying, and hath to earn bread for
+self and young 'uns.”
+
+“Father, it is that arguing spirit that has done you so much harm. You
+must take things as Heaven sends them; and not go arguing about them.
+For instance, Heaven has sent you me.”
+
+“So a' might,” Master Anerley replied; “but without a voice from the
+belly of a fish, I wunna' believe that He sent Bob Lyth.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+FAREWELL, WIFE AND CHILDREN DEAR
+
+
+Now Robin Lyth held himself in good esteem; as every honest man is bound
+to do, or surely the rogues will devour him. Modesty kept him silent as
+to his merits very often; but the exercise of self-examination made
+them manifest to himself. As the Yorkshireman said to his minister, when
+pressed to make daily introspection, “I dare na do it, sir; it sets
+me up so, and leaveth no chance for my neighbors;” so the great
+free-trader, in charity for others, forbore to examine himself too much.
+But without doing that, he was conscious of being as good as Master
+Anerley; and intended, with equal mind and manner, to state his claim to
+the daughter's hand.
+
+It was not, therefore, as the farmer thought, any deep sense of
+illegality which kept him from coming forward now, as a gallant sailor
+always does; but rather the pressure of sterner business, and the hard
+necessity of running goods, according to honorable contract. After
+his narrow escape from outrage upon personal privilege--for the habeas
+corpus of the Constitution should at least protect a man while making
+love--it was clear that the field of his duties as a citizen was
+padlocked against him, until next time. Accordingly he sought the
+wider bosom of the ever-liberal sea; and leaving the noble Carroway
+to mourn--or in stricter truth, alas! to swear--away he sailed, at the
+quartering of the moon, for the land of the genial Dutchman.
+
+Now this was the time when the forces of the realm were mightily
+gathered together against him. Hitherto there had been much fine feeling
+on the part of his Majesty's revenue, and a delicate sense of etiquette.
+All the commanders of the cutters on the coast, of whom and of which
+there now were three, had met at Carroway's festive board; and, looking
+at his family, had one and all agreed to let him have the first chance
+of the good prize-money. It was All-saints' Day of the year gone by when
+they met and thus enjoyed themselves; and they bade their host appoint
+his time; and he said he should not want three months. At this they
+laughed, and gave him twelve; and now the twelve had slipped away.
+
+“I would much rather never have him caught at all,” said Carroway, to
+his wife, when his year of precaption had expired, “than for any of
+those fellows to nab him; especially that prig last sent down.”
+
+“So would I, dear; so would I, of course,” replied Mrs. Carroway, who
+had been all gratitude for their noble self-denial when they made the
+promise; “what airs they would give themselves! And what could they do
+with the money? Drink it out! I am sure that the condition of our best
+tumblers, after they come, is something. People who don't know anything
+about it always fancy that glass will clean. Glass won't clean, after
+such men as those; and as for the table--don't talk of it.”
+
+“Two out of the three are gone”--the lieutenant's conscience was not
+void of offense concerning tables--“gone upon promotion. Everybody gets
+promotion, if he only does his very best never to deserve it. They ought
+to have caught Lyth long and long ago. What are such dummies fit for?”
+
+“But, Charles, you know that they would have acted meanly and
+dishonestly if they had done so. They promised not to catch him; and
+they carried out their promise.”
+
+“Matilda, such questions are beyond you altogether. You can not be
+expected to understand the service. One of those trumpery, half-decked
+craft--or they used to be half-deckers in my time--has had three of
+those fresh-meat Jemmies over her in a single twelvemonth. But of course
+they were all bound by the bargain they had made. As for that, small
+thanks to them. How could they catch him, when I couldn't? They chop and
+they change so, I forget their names; my head is not so good as it was,
+with getting so much moonlight.”
+
+“Nonsense, Charles; you know them like your fingers. But I know what you
+want; you want Geraldine, you are so proud to hear her tell it.”
+
+“Tilly, you are worse. You love to hear her say it. Well, call her in,
+and let her do it. She is making an oyster-shell cradle over there, with
+two of the blessed babies.”
+
+“Charles, how very profane you are! All babes are blest by the Lord, in
+an independent parable, whether they can walk, or crawl, or put up their
+feet and take nourishment. Jerry, you come in this very moment. What
+are you doing with your two brothers there, and a dead skate--bless the
+children! Now say the cutters and their captains.”
+
+Geraldine, who was a pretty little girl, as well as a good and clever
+one, swept her wind-tossed hair aside, and began to repeat her lesson;
+for which she sometimes got a penny when her father had made a good
+dinner.
+
+“His Majesty's cutter Swordfish, Commander Nettlebones, senior officer
+of the eastern division after my papa, although a very young man still,
+carries a swivel-gun and two bow-chasers. His Majesty's cutter Kestrel,
+commanded by Lieutenant Bowler, is armed with three long-John's, or
+strap-guns, capable of carrying a pound of shrapnel. His Majesty's
+cutter Albatross, Lieutenant Corkoran Donovan, carries no artillery
+yet--”
+
+“Not artillery--guns, child; your mother calls them 'artillery.'”
+
+“Carries no guns yet, because she was captured from the foreign enemy;
+and as yet she has not been reported stanch, since the British fire
+made a hole in her. It is, however, expected that those asses at the
+dock-yard---”
+
+“Geraldine, how often must I tell you that you are not to use that word?
+It is your father's expression.”
+
+“It is, however, expected that those donkeys at the dock-yard will
+recommend her to be fitted with two brass howisyers.”
+
+“Howitzers, my darling. Spell that word, and you shall have your penny.
+Now you may run out and play again. Give your old father a pretty kiss
+for it. I often wish,” continued the lieutenant, as his daughter flew
+back to the dead skate and the babies, “that I had only got that
+child's clear head. Sometimes the worry is too much for me. And now if
+Nettlebones catches Robin Lyth, to a certainty I shall be superseded,
+and all of us go to the workhouse. Oh, Tilly, why won't your old aunt
+die? We might be so happy afterward.”
+
+“Charles, it is not only sinful, but wicked, to show any wish to hurry
+her. The Lord knows best what is good for us; and our prayers upon such
+matters should be silent.”
+
+“Well, mine would be silent and loud too, according to the best chance
+of being heard. Not that I would harm the poor old soul; I wish her
+every heavenly blessing; and her time is come for all of them. But I
+never like to think of that, because one's own time might come first. I
+have felt very much out of spirits to-day, as my poor father did the day
+before he got his billet. You know, Matilda, he was under old Boscawen,
+and was killed by the very first shot fired; it must be five-and-forty
+years ago. How my mother did cry, to be sure! But I was too young to
+understand it. Ah, she had a bad time with us all! Matilda, what would
+you do without me?”
+
+“Why, Charles, you are not a bit like yourself. Don't go to-night; stay
+at home for once. And the weather is very uncertain, too. They never
+will attempt their job to-night. Countermand the boats, dear; I
+will send word to stop them. You shall not even go out of the house
+yourself.”
+
+“As if it were possible! I am not an old woman, nor even an old man yet,
+I hope. In half an hour I must be off. There will be good time for
+a pipe. One more pipe in the old home, Tilly. After all I am well
+contented with it, although now and then I grumble; and I don't like so
+much cleaning.”
+
+“The cleaning must be done; I could never leave off that. Your room is
+going to be turned out to-morrow, and before you go you must put away
+your papers, unless you wish me to do it. You really never seem to
+understand when things are really important. Do you wish me to have
+a great fever in the house? It is a fortnight since your boards were
+scrubbed; and how can you think of smoking?”
+
+“Very well, Tilly, I can have it by-and-by, 'upon the dancing waves,' as
+little Tommy has picked up the song. Only I can not let the men on duty;
+and to see them longing destroys my pleasure. Lord, how many times I
+should like to pass my pipe to Dick, or Ellis, if discipline allowed of
+it! A thing of that sort is not like feeding, which must be kept apart
+by nature; but this by custom only.”
+
+“And a very good custom, and most needful,” answered Mrs. Carroway. “I
+never can see why men should want to do all sorts of foolish things with
+tobacco--dirty stuff, and full of dust. No sooner do they begin, like a
+tinder-box, than one would think that it made them all alike. They want
+to see another body puffing two great streams of reeking smoke from
+pipe and from mouth, as if their own was not enough; and their good
+resolutions to speak truth of one another float away like so much smoke;
+and they fill themselves with bad charity. Sir Walter Raleigh deserved
+his head off, and Henry the Eighth knew what was right.”
+
+“My dear, I fancy that your history is wrong. The king only chopped off
+his own wives' heads. But the moral of the lesson is the same. I will
+go and put away my papers. It will very soon be dark enough for us to
+start.”
+
+“Charles, I can not bear your going. The weather is so dark, and the sea
+so lonely, and the waves are making such a melancholy sound. It is not
+like the summer nights, when I can see you six miles off, with the moon
+upon the sails, and the land out of the way. Let anybody catch him that
+has the luck. Don't go this time, Charley.”
+
+Carroway kissed his wife, and sent her to the baby, who was squalling
+well up stairs. And when she came down he was ready to start, and she
+brought the baby for him to kiss.
+
+“Good-by, little chap--good-by, dear wife.” With his usual vigor and
+flourish, he said, “I never knew how to kiss a baby, though I have had
+such a lot of them.”
+
+“Good-by, Charley dear. All your things are right; and here is the key
+of the locker. You are fitted out for three days; but you must on no
+account make that time of it. To-morrow I shall be very busy, but you
+must be home by the evening. Perhaps there will be a favorite thing of
+yours for supper. You are going a long way; but don't be long.”
+
+“Good-by, Tilly darling--good-by, Jerry dear--good-by, Tommy boy, and
+all my countless family. I am coming home to-morrow with a mint of
+money.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+TACTICS OF DEFENSE
+
+
+The sea at this time was not pleasant, and nobody looking at it longed
+to employ upon it any members of a shorter reach than eyes.
+
+It was not rushing upon the land, nor running largely in the offing, nor
+making white streaks on the shoals; neither in any other places doing
+things remarkable. No sign whatever of coming storm or gathering fury
+moved it; only it was sullen, heavy, petulant, and out of sorts. It went
+about its business in a state of lumps irregular, without long billows
+or big furrows, as if it took the impulse more of distant waters than of
+wind; and its color was a dirty green. Ancient fishermen hate this, and
+ancient mariners do the same; for then the fish lie sulking on their
+bellies, and then the ship wallows without gift of sail.
+
+“Bear off, Tomkins, and lay by till the ebb. I can only say, dash the
+whole of it!”
+
+Commander Nettlebones, of the Swordfish, gave this order in disgust at
+last; for the tide was against her, with a heavy pitch of sea, and the
+mainsail scarcely drew the sheet. What little wind there was came off
+the land, and would have been fair if it had been firm; but often it
+dropped altogether where the cliffs, or the clouds that lay upon them,
+held it. The cutter had slipped away from Scarborough, as soon as it was
+dark last night, under orders for Robin Hood's Bay, where the Albatross
+and Kestrel were to meet her, bring tidings, and take orders. Partly
+by coast-riding, and partly by coast signals, it had been arranged that
+these three revenue cruisers should come together in a lonely place
+during the haze of November morning, and hold privy council of
+importance. From Scarborough, with any wind at all, or even with
+ordinary tide-run, a coal barge might almost make sure of getting to
+Robin Hood's Bay in six hours, if the sea was fit to swim in. Yet
+here was a cutter that valued herself upon her sailing powers already
+eighteen hours out, and headed back perpetually, like a donkey-plough.
+Commander Nettlebones could not understand it, and the more impatient he
+became, the less could he enter into it. The sea was nasty, and the
+wind uncertain, also the tide against him; but how often had such things
+combined to hinder, and yet he had made much fairer way! Fore and aft he
+bestrode the planks, and cast keen eyes at everything, above, around,
+or underneath, but nothing showed him anything. Nettlebones was
+a Cornishman, and Cornishmen at that time had a reverent faith in
+witchcraft. “Robin Lyth has bought the powers, or ancient Carroway
+has done it,” he said to himself, in stronger language than is now
+reportable. “Old Carroway is against us, I know, from his confounded
+jealousy; and this cursed delay will floor all my plans.”
+
+He deserved to have his best plans floored for such vile suspicion of
+Carroway. Whatever the brave lieutenant did was loyal, faithful, and
+well above-board. Against the enemy he had his plans, as every great
+commander must, and he certainly did not desire to have his glory stolen
+by Nettlebones. But that he would have suffered, with only a grin at the
+bad luck so habitual; to do any crooked thing against it was not in his
+nature. The cause of the grief of Commander Nettlebones lay far away
+from Carroway; and free trade was at the bottom of it.
+
+For now this trim and lively craft was doing herself but scanty credit,
+either on or off a wind. She was like a poor cat with her tail in a gin,
+which sadly obstructs her progress; even more was she like to the little
+horse of wood, which sits on the edge of a table and gallops, with a
+balance weight limiting his energies. None of the crew could understand
+it, if they were to be believed; and the more sagacious talked of
+currents and mysterious “under-tow.” And sure enough it was under-tow,
+the mystery of which was simple. One of the very best hands on board was
+a hardy seaman from Flamborough, akin to old Robin Cockscroft, and no
+stranger to his adopted son. This gallant seaman fully entered into the
+value of long leverage, and he made fine use of a plug-hole which
+had come to his knowledge behind his berth. It was just above the
+water-line, and out of sight from deck, because the hollow of the run
+was there. And long ere the lights of Scarborough died into the haze
+of night, as the cutter began to cleave watery way, the sailor passed
+a stout new rope from a belaying-pin through this hole, and then he
+betrayed his watch on deck by hauling the end up with a clew, and gently
+returning it to the deep with a long grappling-iron made fast to it.
+This had not fluke enough to lay fast hold and bring the vessel up; for
+in that case it would have been immediately discovered; but it dragged
+along the bottom like a trawl, and by its weight, and a hitch every now
+and then in some hole, it hampered quite sufficiently the objectionable
+voyage. Instead of meeting her consorts in the cloud of early morning,
+the Swordfish was scarcely abreast of the Southern Cheek by the middle
+of the afternoon. No wonder if Commander Nettlebones was in a fury
+long ere that, and fitted neither to give nor take the counsel of calm
+wisdom; and this condition of his mind, as well as the loss of precious
+time, should have been taken into more consideration by those who
+condemned him for the things that followed.
+
+“Better late than never, as they say,” he cried, when the Kestrel and
+the Albatross hove in sight. “Tomkins, signal to make sail and close.
+We seem to be moving more lively at last. I suppose we are out of that
+infernal under-tow.”
+
+“Well, sir, she seems like herself a little more. She've had a witch on
+board of her, that's where it is. When I were a younker, just joined his
+Majesty's forty-two-gun frigate--”
+
+“Stow that, Tomkins. No time now. I remember all about it, and very good
+it is. Let us have it all again when this job is done with. Bowler and
+Donovan will pick holes if they can, after waiting for us half a day.
+Not a word about our slow sailing, mind; leave that to me. They are
+framptious enough. Have everything trim, and all hands ready. When they
+range within hail, sing out for both to come to me.”
+
+It was pretty to see the three cutters meet, all handled as smartly
+as possible; for the Flamborough man had cast off his clog, and the
+Swordfish again was as nimble as need be. Lieutenants Bowler and Donovan
+were soon in the cabin of their senior officer, and durst not question
+him very strictly as to his breach of rendezvous, for his manner was
+short and sharp with them.
+
+“There is plenty of time, if we waste it not in talking,” he said, when
+they had finished comparing notes. “All these reports we are bound to
+receive and consider; but I believe none of them. The reason why poor
+Carroway has made nothing but a mess of it is that he will listen to the
+country people's tales. They are all bound together, all tarred with one
+brush--all stuffed with a heap of lies, to send us wrong; and as for the
+fishing-boats, and what they see, I have been here long enough already
+to be sure that their fishing is a sham nine times in ten, and their
+real business is to help those rogues. Our plan is to listen, and
+pretend to be misled.”
+
+“True for you, captain,” cried the ardent Donovan. “You 'bout ship as
+soon as you can see them out of sight.”
+
+“My own opinion is this,” said Bowler, “that we never shall catch any
+fellow until we have a large sum of money placed at our disposal. The
+general feeling is in their favor, and against us entirely. Why is it in
+their favor? Because they are generally supposed to run great risks, and
+suffer great hardships. And so they do; but not half so much as we do,
+who keep the sea in all sorts of weather, while they can choose their
+own. Also because they outrun the law, which nature makes everybody long
+to do, and admire the lucky ones who can. But most of all because they
+are free-handed, and we can be only niggards. They rob the king with
+impunity, because they pay well for doing it; and he pays badly, or
+not at all, to defend himself from robbery. If we had a thousand pounds
+apiece, with orders to spend it on public service, take no receipt,
+and give no account, I am sure that in three months we could stop all
+contraband work upon this coast.”
+
+“Upon me sowl and so we could; and it's meself that would go into the
+trade, so soon as it was stopped with the thousand pounds.”
+
+“We have no time for talking nonsense;” answered Nettlebones, severely,
+according to the universal law that the man who has wasted the time of
+others gets into a flurry about his own. “Your suggestion, Bowler, is
+a very wise one, and as full as possible of common-sense. You
+also, Donovan, have shown with great sagacity what might come of it
+thereafter. But unluckily we have to get on as we can, without sixpence
+to spare for anybody. We know that the fishermen and people on the
+coast, and especially the womankind, are all to a man--as our good
+friend here would say--banded in league against us. Nevertheless, this
+landing shall not be, at least upon our district. What happens north of
+Teesmouth is none of our business; and we should have the laugh of the
+old Scotchman there, if they pay him a visit, as I hope they may; for he
+cuts many jokes at our expense. But, by the Lord Harry, there shall be
+no run between the Tees and Yare, this side of Christmas. If there is,
+we may call ourselves three old women. Shake hands, gentlemen, upon that
+point; and we will have a glass of grog to it.”
+
+This was friendly, and rejoiced them all; for Nettlebones had been stiff
+at first. Readily enough they took his orders, which seemed to make it
+impossible almost for anything large to slip between them, except in
+case of a heavy fog; and in that case they were to land, and post their
+outlooks near the likely places.
+
+“We have shed no blood yet, and I hope we never shall,” said the senior
+officer, pleasantly. “The smugglers of this coast are too wise, and I
+hope too kind-hearted, for that sort of work. They are not like those
+desperate scoundrels of Sussex. When these men are nabbed, they give up
+their venture as soon as it goes beyond cudgel-play, and they never
+lie in wait for a murderous revenge. In the south I have known a very
+different race, who would jump on an officer till he died, or lash him
+to death with their long cart-whips; such fellows as broke open Poole
+Custom-house, and murdered poor Galley and Cator, and the rest, in a
+manner that makes human blood run cold. It was some time back; but their
+sons are just as bad. Smuggling turns them all to devils.”
+
+“My belief is,” said Bowler, who had a gift of looking at things from an
+outer point of view, “that these fellows never propose to themselves
+to transgress the law, but to carry it out according to their own
+interpretation. One of them reasoned with me some time ago, and he
+talked so well about the Constitution that I was at a loss to answer
+him.”
+
+“Me jewel, forbear,” shouted Donovan; “a clout on the head is the only
+answer for them Constitutionals. Niver will it go out of my mind about
+the time I was last in Cark; shure, thin, and it was holiday-time; and
+me sister's wife's cousin, young Tim O'Brady--Tim says to me, 'Now,
+Corkoran, me lad--'”
+
+“Donovan,” Nettlebones suddenly broke in, “we will have that story,
+which I can see by the cut of your jib is too good to be hurried, when
+first we come together after business done. The sun will be down in less
+than half an hour, and by that time we all must be well under way. We
+are watched from the land, as I need not tell you, and we must not let
+them spy for nothing. They shall see us all stand out to sea to catch
+them in the open, as I said in the town-hall of Scarborough yesterday,
+on purpose. Everybody laughed; but I stuck to it, knowing how far the
+tale would go. They take it for a crotchet of mine, and will expect it,
+especially after they have seen us standing out; and their plans will be
+laid accordingly.”
+
+“The head-piece ye have is beyont me inthirely. And if ye stand out, how
+will ye lay close inshore?”
+
+“By returning, my good friend, before the morning breaks; each man
+to his station, lying as close as can be by day, with proper outlooks
+hidden at the points, but standing along the coast every night,
+and communicating with sentries. Have nothing to say to any
+fishing-boats--they are nearly all spies--and that puzzles them. This
+Robin Hood's Bay is our centre for the present, unless there comes
+change of weather. Donovan's beat is from Whitby to Teesmouth, mine from
+Whitby to Scarborough, and Bowler's thence to Flamborough. Carroway goes
+where he likes, of course, as the manner of the man is. He is a
+little in the doldrums now, and likely enough to come meddling. From
+Flamborough to Hornsea is left to him, and quite as much as he can
+manage. Further south there is no fear; our Yarmouth men will see to
+that. Now I think that you quite understand. Good-by; we shall nab some
+of them to a certainty this time; they are trying it on too large a
+scale.”
+
+“If they runs any goods through me, then just ye may reckon the legs of
+me four times over.”
+
+“And if they slip in past me,” said Bowler, “without a thick fog, or a
+storm that drives me off, I will believe more than all the wonders told
+of Robin Lyth.”
+
+“Oh! concerning that fellow, by-the-bye,” Commander Nettlebones stopped
+his brother officers as they were making off; “you know what a point
+poor Carroway has made, even before I was sent down here, of catching
+the celebrated Robin for himself. He has even let his fellows fire at
+him once or twice when he was quietly departing, although we are not
+allowed to shoot except upon strenuous resistance. Cannon we may fire,
+but no muskets, according to wise ordinance. Luckily, he has not hit him
+yet; and, upon the whole, we should be glad of it, for the young fellow
+is a prime sailor, as you know, and would make fine stuff for Nelson.
+Therefore we must do one thing of two--let Carroway catch him, and get
+the money to pay for all the breeches and the petticoats we saw; or
+if we catch him ourselves, say nothing, but draft him right off to the
+Harpy. You understand me. It is below us to get blood-money upon the
+man. We are gentlemen, not thief-catchers.”
+
+The Irishman agreed to this at once, but Bowler was not well pleased
+with it. “Our duty is to give him up,” he said.
+
+“Your duty is to take my orders,” answered Nettlebones, severely. “If
+there is a fuss about it, lay the blame on me. I know what I am about in
+what I say. Gentlemen, good-by, and good luck to you.”
+
+After long shivers in teeth of the wind and pendulous labor of rolling,
+the three cutters joyfully took the word to go. With a creak, and a
+cant, and a swish of canvas, upon their light heels they flew round,
+and trembled with the eagerness of leaping on their way. The taper boom
+dipped toward the running hills of sea, and the jib-foreleech drew a
+white arc against the darkness of the sky to the bowsprit's plunge.
+Then, as each keen cut-water clove with the pressure of the wind upon
+the beam, and the glistening bends lay over, green hurry of surges
+streaked with gray began the quick dance along them. Away they went
+merrily, scattering the brine, and leaving broad tracks upon the closing
+sea.
+
+Away also went, at a rapid scamper, three men who had watched them from
+the breast-work of the cliffs--one went northward, another to the south,
+and the third rode a pony up an inland lane. Swiftly as the cutters flew
+over the sea, the tidings of their flight took wing ashore, and before
+the night swallowed up their distant sails, everybody on the land whom
+it concerned to know, knew as well as their steersmen what course they
+had laid.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+INLAND OPINION
+
+
+Whatever may be said, it does seem hard, from a wholly disinterested
+point of view, that so many mighty men, with swift ships, armed with
+villainous saltpetre and sharp steel, should have set their keen faces
+all together and at once to nip, defeat, and destroy as with a blow,
+liberal and well-conceived proceedings, which they had long regarded
+with a larger mind. Every one who had been led to embark soundly and
+kindly in this branch of trade felt it as an outrage and a special
+instance of his own peculiar bad luck that suddenly the officers should
+become so active. For long success had encouraged enterprise; men who
+had made a noble profit nobly yearned to treble it; and commerce, having
+shaken off her shackles, flapped her wings and began to crow; so at
+least she had been declared to do at a public banquet given by the Mayor
+of Malton, and attended by a large grain factor, who was known as a
+wholesale purveyor of illicit goods.
+
+This man, Thomas Rideout, long had been the head-master of the smuggling
+school. The poor sea-faring men could not find money to buy, or even
+hire, the craft (with heavy deposit against forfeiture) which the
+breadth and turbulence of the North Sea made needful for such ventures.
+Across the narrow English Channel an open lobster boat might run, in
+common summer weather, without much risk of life or goods. Smooth water,
+sandy coves, and shelfy landings tempted comfortable jobs; and any man
+owning a boat that would carry a sail as big as a shawl might smuggle,
+with heed of the weather, and audacity. It is said that once upon the
+Sussex coast a band of haymakers, when the rick was done, and their
+wages in hand on a Saturday night, laid hold of a stout boat on the
+beach, pushed off to sea in tipsy faith of luck, and hit upon Dieppe
+with a set-fair breeze, having only a fisherman's boy for guide. There
+on the Sunday they heartily enjoyed the hospitality of the natives; and
+the dawn of Tuesday beheld them rapt in domestic bliss and breakfast,
+with their money invested in old Cognac; and glad would they have been
+to make such hay every season. But in Yorkshire a good solid capital
+was needed to carry on free importation. Without broad bottoms and deep
+sides, the long and turbulent and often foggy voyage, and the rocky
+landing, could scarcely be attempted by sane folk; well-to-do people
+found the money, and jeopardized neither their own bodies, consciences,
+nor good repute. And perhaps this fact had more to do with the
+comparative mildness of the men than difference of race, superior
+culture, or a loftier mould of mind; for what man will fight for his
+employer's goods with the ferocity inspired by his own? A thorough
+good ducking, or a tow behind a boat, was the utmost penalty generally
+exacted by the victors from the vanquished.
+
+Now, however, it seemed too likely that harder measures must be meted.
+The long success of that daring Lyth, and the large scale of his
+operations, had compelled the authorities to stir at last. They began by
+setting a high price upon him, and severely reprimanding Carroway, who
+had long been doing his best in vain, and becoming flurried, did it
+more vainly still; and now they had sent the sharp Nettlebones down, who
+boasted largely, but as yet without result. The smugglers, however, were
+aware of added peril, and raised their wages accordingly.
+
+When the pending great venture was resolved upon, as a noble finish to
+the season, Thomas Rideout would intrust it to no one but Robin Lyth
+himself; and the bold young mariner stipulated that after succeeding
+he should be free, and started in some more lawful business. For Dr.
+Upround, possessing as he did great influence with Robin, and shocked
+as he was by what Carroway had said, refused to have anything more to
+do with his most distinguished parishioner until he should forsake his
+ways. And for this he must not be thought narrow-minded, strait-laced,
+or unduly dignified. His wife quite agreed with him, and indeed had
+urged it as the only proper course; for her motherly mind was uneasy
+about the impulsive nature of Janetta; and chess-men to her were dolls,
+without even the merit of encouraging the needle. Therefore, with a deep
+sigh, the worthy magistrate put away his board--which came out again
+next day--and did his best to endure for a night the arithmetical
+torture of cribbage; while he found himself supported by a sense of
+duty, and capable of preaching hard at Carroway if he would only come
+for it on Sunday.
+
+From that perhaps an officer of revenue may abstain, through the
+pressure of his duty and his purity of conscience; but a man of less
+correctness must behave more strictly. Therefore, when a gentleman of
+vigorous aspect, resolute step, and successful-looking forehead marched
+into church the next Sunday morning, showed himself into a prominent
+position, and hung his hat against a leading pillar, after putting his
+mouth into it, as if for prayer, but scarcely long enough to say “Amen,”
+ behind other hats low whispers passed that here was the great financier
+of free trade, the Chancellor of the Exchequer of smuggling, the
+celebrated Master Rideout.
+
+That conclusion was shared by the rector, whose heart immediately burned
+within him to have at this man, whom he had met before and suspiciously
+glanced at in Weighing Lane, as an interloper in his parish. Probably
+this was the very man whom Robin Lyth served too faithfully; and the
+chances were that the great operations now known to be pending had
+brought him hither, spying out all Flamborough. The corruption of
+fish-folk, the beguiling of women with foreign silks and laces, and of
+men with brandy, the seduction of Robin from lawful commerce, and even
+the loss of his own pet pastime, were to be laid at this man's door.
+While donning his surplice, Dr. Upround revolved these things with
+gentle indignation, quickened, as soon as he found himself in white, by
+clerical and theological zeal. These feelings impelled him to produce a
+creaking of the heavy vestry door, a well-known signal for his daughter
+to slip out of the chancel pew and come to him.
+
+“Now, papa, what is it?” cried that quick young lady; “that miserable
+Methodist that ruined your boots, has he got the impudence to come
+again? Oh, please do say so, and show me where he is; after church
+nobody shall stop me--”
+
+“Janetta, you quite forget where you are, as well as my present
+condition. Be off like a good girl, as quick as you can, and bring No.
+27 of my own handwriting--'Render unto Caesar'--and put my hat upon it.
+My desire is that Billyjack should not know that a change has been made
+in my subject of discourse.”
+
+“Papa, I see; it shall be done to perfection, while Billyjack is at his
+very loudest roar in the chorus of the anthem. But do tell me who it is;
+or how can I enjoy it? And lemon drops--lemon drops--”
+
+“Janetta, I must have some very serious talk with you. Now don't be
+vexed, darling; you are a thoroughly good girl, only thoughtless and
+careless; and remember, dear, church is not a place for high spirits.”
+
+The rector, as behooved him, kissed his child behind the vestry door, to
+soothe all sting, and then he strode forth toward the reading-desk; and
+the tuning of fiddles sank to deferential scrape.
+
+It was not at all a common thing, as one might know, for Widow Precious
+to be able to escape from casks and taps, and the frying pan of eggs
+demanded by some half-drowned fisherman, also the reckoning of notches
+on the bench for the pints of the week unpaid for, and then to put
+herself into her two best gowns (which she wore in the winter, one over
+the other--a plan to be highly commended to ladies who never can have
+dress enough), and so to enjoy, without losing a penny, the warmth of
+the neighborhood of a congregation. In the afternoon she could hardly
+ever do it, even if she had so wished, with knowledge that this was
+common people's time; so if she went at all, it must--in spite of the
+difference of length--be managed in the morning. And this very morning
+here she was, earnest, humble, and devout, with both the tap keys in her
+pocket, and turning the leaves with a smack of her thumb, not only to
+show her learning, but to get the sweet approval of the rector's pew.
+
+Now if the good rector had sent for this lady, instead of his daughter
+Janetta, the sermon which he brought would have been the one to preach,
+and that about Caesar might have stopped at home; for no sooner did the
+widow begin to look about, taking in the congregation with a dignified
+eye, and nodding to her solvent customers, than the wrath of perplexity
+began to gather on her goodly countenance. To see that distinguished
+stranger was to know him ever afterward; his power of eating, and of
+paying, had endeared his memory; and for him to put up at any other
+house were foul shame to the “Cod Fish.”
+
+“Hath a' put up his beastie?” she whispered to her eldest daughter, who
+came in late.
+
+“Naa, naa, no beastie,” the child replied, and the widow's relish of
+her thumb was gone; for, sooth to say, no Master Rideout, nor any other
+patron of free trade was here, but Geoffrey Mordacks, of York city,
+general factor, and universal agent.
+
+It was beautiful to see how Dr. Upround, firmly delivering his text, and
+stoutly determined to spare nobody, even insisted in the present
+case upon looking at the man he meant to hit, because he was not his
+parishioner. The sermon was eloquent, and even trenchant. The necessity
+of duties was urged most sternly; if not of directly Divine institution
+(though learned parallels were adduced which almost proved them to be
+so), yet to every decent Christian citizen they were synonymous with
+duty. To defy or elude them, for the sake of paltry gain, was a dark
+crime recoiling on the criminal; and the preacher drew a contrast
+between such guilty ways and the innocent path of the fisherman. Neither
+did he even relent and comfort, according to his custom, toward the end;
+that part was there, but he left it out; and the only consolation for
+any poor smuggler in all the discourse was the final Amen.
+
+But to the rector's great amazement, and inward indignation, the object
+of his sermon seemed to take it as a personal compliment. Mr. Mordacks
+not only failed to wince, but finding himself particularly fixed by the
+gaze of the eloquent divine, concluded that it was from his superior
+intelligence, and visible gifts of appreciation. Delighted with
+this--for he was not free from vanity--what did he do but return the
+compliment, not indecorously, but nodding very gently, as much as
+to say, “That was very good indeed, you were quite right, sir, in
+addressing that to me; you perceive that it is far above these common
+people. I never heard a better sermon.”
+
+“What a hardened rogue you are!” thought Dr. Upround; “how feebly and
+incapably I must have put it! If you ever come again, you shall have my
+Ahab sermon.”
+
+But the clergyman was still more astonished a very few minutes
+afterward. For, as he passed out of the church-yard gate, receiving,
+with his wife and daughter, the kindly salute of the parish, the same
+tall stranger stood before him, with a face as hard as a statue's, and,
+making a short, quick flourish with his hat, begged for the honor of
+shaking his hand.
+
+“Sir, it is to thank you for the very finest sermon I ever had the
+privilege of hearing. My name is Mordacks, and I flatter nobody--except
+myself--that I know a good thing when I get it.”
+
+“Sir, I am obliged to you,” said Dr. Upround, stiffly, and not without
+suspicion of being bantered, so dry was the stranger's countenance, and
+his manner so peculiar; “and if I have been enabled to say a good word
+in season, and its season lasts, it will be a source of satisfaction to
+me.”
+
+“Yes, I fear there are many smugglers here. But I am no revenue
+officer, as your congregation seemed to think. May I call upon business
+to-morrow, sir? Thank you; then may I say ten o'clock--your time of
+beginning, as I hear? Mordacks is my name, sir, of York city, not
+unfavorably known there. Ladies, my duty to you!”
+
+“What an extraordinary man, my dear!” Mrs. Upround exclaimed, with some
+ingratitude, after the beautiful bow she had received. “He may talk as
+he likes, but he must be a smuggler. He said that he was not an officer;
+that shows it, for they always run into the opposite extreme. You
+have converted him, my dear; and I am sure that we ought to be so much
+obliged to him. If he comes to-morrow morning to give up all his lace,
+do try to remember how my little all has been ruined in the wash, and I
+am sick of working at it.”
+
+“My dear, he is no smuggler. I begin to recollect. He was down here in
+the summer, and I made a great mistake. I took him for Rideout; and I
+did the same to-day. When I see him to-morrow, I shall beg his pardon.
+One gets so hurried in the vestry always; they are so impatient with
+their fiddles! A great deal of it was Janetta's fault.”
+
+“It always is my fault, papa, somehow or other,” the young lady
+answered, with a faultless smile: and so they went home to the early
+Sunday dinner.
+
+“Papa, I am in such a state of excitement; I am quite unfit to go to
+church this afternoon,” Miss Upround exclaimed, as they set forth again.
+“You may put me in stocks made out of hassocks--you may rope me to the
+Flodden Field man's monument, of the ominous name of 'Constable;' but
+whatever you do, I shall never attend; and I feel that it is so sinful.”
+
+“Janetta, your mamma has that feeling sometimes; for instance, she has
+it this afternoon; and there is a good deal to be said for it. But I
+fear that it would grow with indulgence.”
+
+“I can firmly fancy that it never would; though one can not be sure
+without trying. Suppose that I were to try it just once, and let you
+know how it feels at tea-time?”
+
+“My dear, we are quite round the corner of the lane. The example would
+be too shocking.”
+
+“Now don't you make any excuses, papa. Only one woman can have seen
+us yet; and she is so blind she will think it was her fault. May I go?
+Quick, before any one else comes.”
+
+“If you are quite sure, Janetta, of being in a frame of mind which
+unfits you for the worship of your Maker--”
+
+“As sure as a pike-staff, dear papa.”
+
+“Then, by all means, go before anybody sees you, for whom it might
+be undesirable; and correct your thoughts, and endeavor to get into a
+befitting state of mind by tea-time.”
+
+“Certainly, papa. I will go down on the stones, and look at the
+sea. That always makes me better; because it is so large and so
+uncomfortable.”
+
+The rector went on to do his duty, by himself. A narrow-minded man might
+have shaken solemn head, even if he had allowed such dereliction. But
+Dr. Upround knew that the girl was good, and he never put strain upon
+her honesty. So away she sped by a lonely little foot-path, where nobody
+could take from her contagion of bad morals; and avoiding the incline
+of boats, she made off nicely for the quiet outer bay, and there, upon a
+shelfy rock, she sat and breathed the sea.
+
+Flamborough, excellent place as it is, and delightful, and full of
+interest for people who do not live there, is apt to grow dull perhaps
+for spirited youth, in the scanty and foggy winter light. There is not
+so very much of that choice product generally called “society” by a man
+who has a house to let in an eligible neighborhood, and by ladies who do
+not heed their own. Moreover, it is vexatious not to have more rogues to
+talk about.
+
+That scarcity may be less lamentable now, being one that takes care
+to redress itself, and perhaps any amateur purchaser of fish may find
+rogues enough now for his interest. But the rector's daughter pined for
+neither society nor scandal: she had plenty of interest in her life,
+and in pleasing other people, whenever she could do it with pleasure
+to herself, and that was nearly always. Her present ailment was not
+languor, weariness, or dullness, but rather the want of such things;
+which we long for when they happen to be scarce, and declare them to be
+our first need, under the sweet name of repose.
+
+Her mind was a little disturbed by rumors, wonders, and uncertainty. She
+was not at all in love with Robin Lyth, and laughed at his vanity quite
+as much as she admired his gallantry. She looked upon him also as of
+lower rank, kindly patronized by her father, but not to be treated as
+upon an equal footing. He might be of any rank, for all that was known;
+but he must be taken to belong to those who had brought him up and fed
+him. Janetta was a lively girl, of quick perception and some discretion,
+though she often talked much nonsense. She was rather proud of her
+position, and somewhat disdainful of uneducated folk; though (thanks to
+her father) Lyth was not one of these. Possibly love (if she had felt
+it) would have swept away such barriers; but Robin was grateful to his
+patron, and, knowing his own place in life, would rightly have thought
+it a mean return to attempt to inveigle the daughter. So they liked one
+another--but nothing more. It was not, therefore, for his sake only,
+but for her father's, and that of the place, that Miss Upround now
+was anxious. For days and days she had watched the sea with unusual
+forebodings, knowing that a great importation was toward, and pretty
+sure to lead to blows, after so much preparation. With feminine zeal,
+she detested poor Carroway, whom she regarded as a tyrant and a spy;
+and she would have clapped her hands at beholding the three cruisers
+run upon a shoal, and there stick fast. And as for King George, she had
+never believed that he was the proper King of England. There were many
+stanch Jacobites still in Yorkshire, and especially the bright young
+ladies.
+
+To-night, at least, the coast was likely to be uninvaded. Smugglers,
+even if their own forces would make breach upon the day of rest, durst
+not outrage the piety of the land, which would only deal with kegs
+in-doors. The coast-guard, being for the most part southerns, splashed
+about as usual--a far more heinous sin against the Word of God than
+smuggling. It is the manner of Yorkshiremen to think for themselves,
+with boldness, in the way they are brought up to: and they made it a
+point of serious doubt whether the orders of the king himself could set
+aside the Fourth Commandment, though his arms were over it.
+
+Dr. Upround's daughter, as she watched the sea, felt sure that, even if
+the goods were ready, no attempt at landing would be made that night,
+though something might be done in the morning. But even that was not
+very likely, because (as seemed to be widely known) the venture was a
+very large one, and the landers would require a whole night's work to
+get entirely through with it.
+
+“I wish it was over, one way or the other,” she kept on saying to
+herself, as she gazed at the dark, weary lifting of the sea; “it keeps
+one unsettled as the waves themselves. Sunday always makes me feel
+restless, because there is so little to do. It is wicked, I suppose; but
+how can I help it? Why, there is a boat, I do declare! Well, even a boat
+is welcome, just to break this gray monotony. What boat can it be? None
+of ours, of course. And what can they want with our Church Cave? I hope
+they understand its dangers.”
+
+Although the wind was not upon the shore, and no long rollers were
+setting in, short, uncomfortable, clumsy waves were lolloping under the
+steep gray cliffs, and casting up splashes of white here and there. To
+enter that cave is a risky thing, except at very favorable times, and
+even then some experience is needed, for the rocks around it are like
+knives, and the boat must generally be backed in, with more use of
+fender and hook than of oars. But the people in the boat seemed to
+understand all that. There were two men rowing, and one steering with an
+oar, and a fourth standing up, as if to give directions; though in truth
+he knew nothing about it, but hated even to seem to play second fiddle.
+
+“What a strange thing!” Janetta thought, as she drew behind a rock, that
+they might not see her, “I could almost declare that the man standing
+up is that most extraordinary gentleman papa preached quite the wrong
+sermon at. Truly he deserves the Ahab one, for spying our caves out on a
+Sunday. He must be a smuggler, after all, or a very crafty agent of the
+Revenue. Well, I never! That old man steering, as sure as I live, is
+Robin Cockscroft, by the scarlet handkerchief round his head. Oh, Robin!
+Robin! could I ever have believed that you would break the Sabbath so?
+But the boat is not Robin's. What boat can it be? I have not staid away
+from church for nothing. One of the men rowing has got no legs, when the
+boat goes up and down. It must be that villain of a tipsy Joe, who used
+to keep the 'Monument.' I heard that he was come back again, to stump
+for his beer as usual: and his son, that sings like the big church bell,
+and has such a very fine face and one leg--why, he is the man that pulls
+the other oar. Was there ever such a boat-load? But they know what they
+are doing.”
+
+Truly it was, as the young lady said, an extraordinary boat's crew. Old
+Robin Cockscroft, with a fringe of silver hair escaping from the crimson
+silk, which he valued so much more than it, and his face still grand (in
+spite of wrinkles and some weakness of the eyes), keenly understanding
+every wave, its character, temper, and complexity of influence, as only
+a man can understand who has for his life stood over them. Then tugging
+at the oars, or rather dipping them with a short well-practiced plunge,
+and very little toil of body, two ancient sailors, one considerably
+older than the other, inasmuch as he was his father, yet chips alike
+from a sturdy block, and fitted up with jury-stumps. Old Joe pulled
+rather the better oar, and called his son “a one-legged fiddler” when he
+missed the dip of wave; while Mordacks stood with his legs apart, and
+playing the easy part of critic, had his sneers at both of them. But
+they let him gibe to his liking; because they knew their work, and he
+did not. And, upon the whole, they went merrily.
+
+The only one with any doubt concerning the issue of the job was the one
+who knew most about it, and that was Robin Cockscroft. He doubted not
+about want of strength, or skill, or discipline of his oars, but because
+the boat was not Flamburian, but borrowed from a collier round the Head.
+No Flamborough boat would ever think of putting to sea on a Sunday,
+unless it were to save human life; and it seemed to him that no strange
+boat could find her way into the native caves. He doubted also whether,
+even with the pressure of strong motive put upon him, which was not of
+money, it was a godly thing on his part to be steering in his Sunday
+clothes; and he feared to hear of it thereafter. But being in for it, he
+must do his utmost.
+
+With genuine skill and solid patience, the entrance of the cave was
+made, and the boat was lost to Janetta's view. She as well was lost in
+the deeper cavern of great wonder, and waited long, and much desired
+to wait even longer, to see them issue forth again, and learn what they
+could have been after. But the mist out of which they had come, and
+inside of which they would rather have remained perhaps, now thickened
+over land and sea, and groping dreamily for something to lay hold of,
+found a solid stay and rest-hold in the jagged headlands here. Here,
+accordingly, the coilings of the wandering forms began to slide into
+strait layers, and soft settlement of vapor. Loops of hanging moisture
+marked the hollows of the land-front, or the alleys of the waning light;
+and then the mass abandoned outline, fused its shades to pulp, and
+melted into one great blur of rain. Janetta thought of her Sunday frock,
+forgot the boat, and sped away for home.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+TACTICS OF ATTACK
+
+
+“I am sorry to be troublesome, Mynheer Van Dunck, but I can not say
+good-by without having your receipt in full for the old bilander.”
+
+“Goot, it is vere good, Meester Lyth; you are te goot man for te
+pisness.”
+
+With these words the wealthy merchant of the Zuyder-Zee drew forth
+his ancient inkhorn, smeared with the dirt of countless contracts, and
+signed an acquittance which the smuggler had prepared. But he signed it
+with a sigh, as a man declares that a favorite horse must go at last;
+sighing, not for the money, but the memories that go with it. Then, as
+the wind began to pipe, and the roll of the sea grew heavier, the solid
+Dutchman was lowered carefully into his shore boat, and drew the apron
+over his great and gouty legs.
+
+“I vos married in dat zhips,” he shouted back, with his ponderous fist
+wagging up at Robin Lyth, “Dis taime you will have de bad luck, sir.”
+
+“Well, mynheer, you have only to pay the difference, and the ketch will
+do; the bilander sails almost as fast.”
+
+But Master Van Dunck only heaved another sigh, and felt that his leather
+bag was safe and full in his breeches pocket. Then he turned his eyes
+away, and relieved his mind by swearing at his men.
+
+Now this was off the Isle of Texel, and the time was Sunday morning, the
+very same morning which saw the general factor sitting to be preached
+at. The flotilla of free trade was putting forth upon its great emprise,
+and Van Dunck (who had been ship's husband) came to speed them from
+their moorings.
+
+He took no risk, and to him it mattered little, except as a question of
+commission; but still he enjoyed the relish of breaking English law most
+heartily. He hated England, as a loyal Dutchman, for generations, was
+compelled to do; and he held that a Dutchman was a better sailor, a
+better ship-builder, and a better fighter than the very best Englishman
+ever born. However, his opinions mattered little, being (as we must
+feel) absurd. Therefore let him go his way, and grumble, and reckon his
+guilders. It was generally known that he could sink a ship with money;
+and when such a man is insolent, who dares to contradict him?
+
+The flotilla in the offing soon ploughed hissing furrows through the
+misty waves. There were three craft, all of different rig--a schooner,
+a ketch, and the said bilander. All were laden as heavily as speed and
+safety would allow, and all were thoroughly well manned. They laid their
+course for the Dogger Bank, where they would receive the latest news
+of the disposition of the enemy. Robin Lyth, high admiral of smugglers,
+kept to his favorite schooner, the Glimpse, which had often shown a
+fading wake to fastest cutters. His squadron was made up by the ketch,
+Good Hope, and the old Dutch coaster, Crown of Gold. This vessel, though
+built for peaceful navigation and inland waters, had proved herself so
+thoroughly at home in the roughest situations, and so swift of foot,
+though round of cheek, that the smugglers gloried in her and the good
+luck which sat upon her prow. They called her “the lugger,” though her
+rig was widely different from that, and her due title was “bilander.”
+ She was very deeply laden now, and, having great capacity, appeared an
+unusually tempting prize.
+
+This grand armada of invasion made its way quite leisurely. Off the
+Dogger Bank they waited for the last news, and received it, and the
+whole of it was to their liking, though the fisherman who brought it
+strongly advised them to put back again. But Captain Lyth had no such
+thought, for the weather was most suitable for the bold scheme he had
+hit upon. “This is my last run,” he said, “and I mean to make it a good
+one.” Then he dressed himself as smartly as if he were going to meet
+Mary Anerley, and sent a boat for the skippers of the Good Hope, and the
+Crown of Gold, who came very promptly and held counsel in his cabin.
+
+“I'm thinking that your notion is a very good one, captain,” said the
+master of the bilander, Brown, a dry old hand from Grimsby.
+
+“Capital, capital; there never was a better,” the master of the ketch
+chimed in, “Nettlebones and Carroway--they will knock their heads
+together!”
+
+“The plan is clever enough,” replied Robin, who was free from all
+mock-modesty, “But you heard what that old Van Dunck said. I wish he had
+not said it.”
+
+“Ten tousan' tuyfels--as the stingy old thief himself says--he might
+have held his infernal croak. I hate to make sail with a croak astern;
+'tis as bad as a crow on forestay-sail.”
+
+“All very fine for you to talk,” grumbled the man of the bilander to the
+master of the ketch; “but the bad luck is saddled upon me this voyage.
+You two get the gilgoes, and I the bilboes!”
+
+“Brown, none of that!” Captain Lyth said, quietly, but with a look which
+the other understood; “you are not such a fool as you pretend to be. You
+may get a shot or two fired at you; but what is that to a Grimsby man?
+And who will look at you when your hold is broached? Your game is the
+easiest that any man can play--to hold your tongue and run away.”
+
+“Brown, you share the profits, don't you see?” the ketch man went on,
+while the other looked glum; “and what risk do you take for it? Even if
+they collar you, through your own clumsiness, what is there for them to
+do? A Grimsby man is a grumbling man, I have heard ever since I was that
+high. I'll change berths with you, if you choose, this minute.”
+
+“You could never do it,” said the Grimsby man, with that high contempt
+which abounds where he was born--“a boy like you! I should like to see
+you try it.”
+
+“Remember, both of you,” said Robin Lyth, “that you are not here to do
+as you please, but to obey my orders. If the coast-guard quarrel, we do
+not; and that is why we beat them. You will both do exactly as I have
+laid it down; and the risk of failure falls on me. The plan is very
+simple, and can not fail, if you will just try not to think for
+yourselves, which always makes everything go wrong. The only thing you
+have to think about at all is any sudden change of weather. If a gale
+from the east sets in, you both run north, and I come after you. But
+there will not be any easterly gale for the present week, to my belief;
+although I am not quite sure of it.”
+
+“Not a sign of it. Wind will hold with sunset, up to next quarter of the
+moon.”
+
+“The time I ha' been on the coast,” said Brown, “and to hear the young
+chaps talking over my head! Never you mind how I know, but I'll lay a
+guinea with both of you--easterly gale afore Friday.”
+
+“Brown, you may be right,” said Robin; “I have had some fear of it, and
+I know that you carry a weather eye. No man under forty can pretend to
+that. But if it will only hold off till Friday, we shall have the laugh
+of it. And even if it come on, Tom and I shall manage. But you will be
+badly off in that case, Brown. After all, you are right; the main danger
+is for you.”
+
+Lyth, knowing well how important it was that each man should play his
+part with true good-will, shifted his ground thus to satisfy the other,
+who was not the man to shrink from peril, but liked to have his share
+acknowledged.
+
+“Ay, ay, captain, you see clear enough, though Tom here has not got the
+gumption,” the man of Grimsby answered, with a lofty smile. “Everybody
+knows pretty well what William Brown is. When there is anything that
+needs a bit of pluck, it is sure to be put upon old Bill Brown. And
+never you come across the man, Captain Lyth, as could say that Bill
+Brown was not all there. Now orders is orders, lad. Tip us your latest.”
+
+“Then latest orders are to this effect. Toward dusk of night you stand
+in first, a league or more ahead of us, according to the daylight,
+Tom to the north of you, and me to the south, just within signaling
+distance. The Kestrel and Albatross will come to speak the Swordfish off
+Robin Hood's Bay, at that very hour, as we happen to be aware. You sight
+them, even before they sight you, because you know where to look for
+them, and you keep a sharper look-out, of course. Not one of them will
+sight us, so far off in the offing. Signal immediately, one, two, or
+three; and I heartily hope it will be all three. Then you still stand
+in, as if you could not see them; and they begin to laugh, and draw
+inshore; knowing the Inlander as they do, they will hug the cliffs for
+you to run into their jaws. Tom and I bear off, all sail, never allowing
+them to sight us. We crack on to the north and south, and by that time
+it will be nearly dark. You still carry on, till they know that you must
+see them; then 'bout ship, and crowd sail to escape. They give chase,
+and you lead them out to sea, and the longer you carry on, the better.
+Then, as they begin to fore-reach, and threaten to close, you 'bout ship
+again, as in despair, run under their counters, and stand in for the
+bay. They may fire at you; but it is not very likely, for they would not
+like to sink such a valuable prize; though nobody else would have much
+fear of that.”
+
+“Captain, I laugh at their brass kettle-pots. They may blaze away as
+blue as verdigris. Though an Englishman haven't no right to be shot at,
+only by a Frenchman.”
+
+“Very well, then, you hold on, like a Norfolk man, through the thickest
+of the enemy. Nelson is a Norfolk man; and you charge through as he
+does. You bear right on, and rig a gangway for the landing, which
+puts them all quite upon the scream. All three cutters race after you
+pell-mell, and it is much if they do not run into one another. You take
+the beach, stem on, with the tide upon the ebb, and by that time it
+ought to be getting on for midnight. What to do then, I need not tell
+you; but make all the stand you can to spare us any hurry. But don't
+give the knock-down blow if you can help it; the lawyers make such a
+point of that, from their intimacy with the prize-fighters.”
+
+Clearly perceiving their duty now, these three men braced up loin, and
+sailed to execute the same accordingly. For invaders and defenders were
+by this time in real earnest with their work, and sure alike of having
+done the very best that could be done. With equal confidence on either
+side, a noble triumph was expected, while the people on the dry land
+shook their heads and were thankful to be out of it. Carroway, in a
+perpetual ferment, gave no peace to any of his men, and never entered
+his own door; but riding, rowing, or sailing up and down, here and there
+and everywhere, set an example of unflagging zeal, which was largely
+admired and avoided. And yet he was not the only remarkably active man
+in the neighborhood; for that great fact, and universal factor, Geoffrey
+Mordacks, was entirely here. He had not broken the heart of Widow
+Precious by taking up his quarters at the Thornwick Inn, as she at first
+imagined, but loyally brought himself and his horse to her sign-post
+for their Sunday dinner. Nor was this all, but he ordered the very best
+bedroom, and the “coral parlor”--as he elegantly called the sea-weedy
+room--gave every child, whether male or female, sixpence of new mintage,
+and created such impression on her widowed heart that he even won the
+privilege of basting his own duck. Whatever this gentleman did never
+failed to reflect equal credit on him and itself. But thoroughly well
+as he basted his duck, and efficiently as he consumed it, deeper things
+were in his mind, and moving with every mouthful. If Captain Carroway
+labored hard on public and royal service, no less severely did Mordacks
+work, though his stronger sense of self-duty led him to feed the labor
+better. On the Monday morning he had a long and highly interesting talk
+with the magisterial rector, to whom he set forth certain portions of
+his purpose, loftily spurning entire concealment, according to the motto
+of his life. “You see, sir,” he said, as he rose to depart, “what I have
+told you is very important, and in the strictest confidence, of course,
+because I never do anything on the sly.”
+
+“Mr. Mordacks, you have surprised me,” answered Dr. Upround; “though
+I am not so very much wiser at present. I really must congratulate you
+upon your activity, and the impression you create.”
+
+“Not at all, sir, not at all. It is my manner of doing business, now for
+thirty years or more. Moles and fools, sir, work under-ground, and only
+get traps set for them; I travel entirely above-ground, and go ten miles
+for their ten inches. My strategy, sir, is simplicity. Nothing puzzles
+rogues so much, because they can not believe it.”
+
+“The theory is good; may the practice prove the same! I should be sorry
+to be against you in any case you undertake. In the present matter I am
+wholly with you, so far as I understand what it is. Still, Flamborough
+is a place of great difficulties--”
+
+“The greatest difficulty of all would be to fail, as I look at it.
+Especially with your most valuable aid.”
+
+“What little I can do shall be most readily forth-coming. But remember
+there is many a slip--If you had interfered but one month ago, how much
+easier it might have been!”
+
+“Truly. But I have to grope my way; and it is a hard people, as you say,
+to deal with. But I have no fear, sir; I shall overcome all Flamborough,
+unless--unless, what I fear to think of, there should happen to be
+bloodshed.”
+
+“There will be none of that, Mr. Mordacks; we are too skillful, and too
+gentle, for anything more than a few cracked crowns.”
+
+“Then everything is as it ought to be. But I must be off; I have many
+points to see to. How I find time for this affair is the wonder.”
+
+“But you will not leave us, I suppose, until--until what appears to be
+expected has happened!”
+
+“When I undertake a thing, Dr. Upround, my rule is to go through with
+it. You have promised me the honor of an interview at any time. Good-by,
+sir; and pray give the compliments of Mr. Mordacks to the ladies.”
+
+With even more than his usual confidence and high spirits the general
+factor mounted horse and rode at once to Bridlington, or rather to the
+quay thereof, in search of Lieutenant Carroway. But Carroway was not
+at home, and his poor wife said, with a sigh, that now she had given up
+expecting him. “Have no fear, madam; I will bring him back,” Mordacks
+answered, as if he already held him by the collar. “I have very good
+news, madam, very grand news for him, and you, and all those lovely and
+highly intelligent children. Place me, madam, under the very deepest
+obligation by allowing these two little dears to take the basket I see
+yonder, and accompany me to that apple stand. I saw there some fruit of
+a sort which used to fit my teeth most wonderfully when they were
+just the size of theirs. And here is another little darling, with a
+pin-before infinitely too spotless. If you will spare her also, we will
+do our best to take away that reproach, ma'am.”
+
+“Oh, sir, you are much too kind. But to speak of good news does one
+good. It is so long since there has been any, that I scarcely know how
+to pronounce the words.”
+
+“Mistress Carroway, take my word for it, that such a state of things
+shall be shortly of the past. I will bring back Captain Carroway, madam,
+to his sweet and most beautifully situated home, and with tidings which
+shall please you.”
+
+“It is kind of you not to tell me the good news now, sir. I shall enjoy
+it so much more, to see my husband hear it. Good-by, and I hope that you
+will soon be back again.”
+
+While Mr. Mordacks was loading the children with all that they made soft
+mouths at, he observed for the second time three men who appeared to be
+taking much interest in his doings. They had sauntered aloof while he
+called at the cottage, as if they had something to say to him, but would
+keep it until he had finished there. But they did not come up to him as
+he expected; and when he had seen the small Carroways home, he rode
+up to ask what they wanted with him. “Nothing, only this, sir,” the
+shortest of them answered, while the others pretended not to hear; “we
+was told that yon was Smuggler's house, and we thought that your Honor
+was the famous Captain Lyth.”
+
+“If I ever want a man,” said the general factor, “to tell a lie with a
+perfect face, I shall come here and look for you, my friend.” The man
+looked at him, and smiled, and nodded, as much as to say, “You might
+get it done worse,” and then carelessly followed his comrades toward the
+sea. And Mr. Mordacks, riding off with equal jauntiness, cocked his
+hat, and stared at the Priory Church as if he had never seen any such
+building before.
+
+“I begin to have a very strong suspicion,” he said to himself as he put
+his horse along, “that this is the place where the main attack will be.
+Signs of a well-suppressed activity are manifest to an experienced eye
+like mine. All the grocers, the bakers, the candlestick-makers, and the
+women, who always precede the men, are mightily gathered together. And
+the men are holding counsel in a milder way. They have got three jugs
+at the old boat-house for the benefit of holloaing in the open air.
+Moreover, the lane inland is scored with a regular market-day of wheels,
+and there is no market this side of the old town. Carroway, vigilant
+captain of men, why have you forsaken your domestic hearth? Is it
+through jealousy of Nettlebones, and a stern resolve to be ahead of him?
+Robin, my Robin, is a genius in tactics, a very bright Napoleon of free
+trade. He penetrates the counsels, or, what is more, the feelings,
+of those who camp against him. He means to land this great emprise at
+Captain Carroway's threshold. True justice on the man for sleeping out
+of his own bed so long! But instead of bowing to the blow, he would
+turn a downright maniac, according to all I hear of him. Well, it is no
+concern of mine, so long as nobody is killed, which everybody makes such
+a fuss about.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+CORDIAL ENJOYMENT
+
+
+The poise of this great enterprise was hanging largely in the sky, from
+which come all things, and to which resolved they are referred again.
+The sky, to hold an equal balance, or to decline all troublesome
+responsibility about it, went away, or (to put it more politely) retired
+from the scene. Even as nine men out of ten, when a handsome fight is
+toward, would rather have no opinion on the merits, but abide in their
+breeches, and there keep their hands till the fist of the victor
+is opened, so at this period the upper firmament nodded a strict
+neutrality. And yet, on the whole, it must have indulged a sneaking
+proclivity toward free trade; otherwise, why should it have been as
+follows?
+
+November now was far advanced; and none but sanguine Britons hoped,
+at least in this part of the world, to know (except from memory and
+predictions of the almanac) whether the sun were round or square, until
+next Easter-day should come. It was not quite impossible that he
+might appear at Candlemas, when he is supposed to give a dance, though
+hitherto a strictly private one; but even so, this premature frisk of
+his were undesirable, if faith in ancient rhyme be any. But putting him
+out of the question, as he had already put himself, the things that
+were below him, and, from length of practice, manage well to shape
+their course without him, were moving now and managing themselves with
+moderation.
+
+The tone of the clouds was very mild, and so was the color of the sea. A
+comely fog involved the day, and a decent mist restrained the night from
+ostentatious waste of stars. It was not such very bad weather; but a
+captious man might find fault with it, and only a thoroughly cheerful
+one could enlarge upon its merits. Plainly enough these might be found
+by anybody having any core of rest inside him, or any gift of turning
+over upon a rigidly neutral side, and considerably outgazing the color
+of his eyes.
+
+Commander Nettlebones was not of poetic, philosophic, or vague mind.
+“What a d----d fog!” he exclaimed in the morning; and he used the same
+words in the afternoon, through a speaking-trumpet, as the two other
+cutters ranged up within hail. This they did very carefully, at the
+appointed rendezvous, toward the fall of the afternoon, and hauled their
+wind under easy sail, shivering in the southwestern breeze.
+
+“Not half so bad as it was,” returned Bowler, being of a cheerful mind.
+“It is lifting every minute, sir. Have you had sight of anything?”
+
+“Not a blessed stick, except a fishing-boat. What makes you ask,
+lieutenant?”
+
+“Why, sir, as we rounded in, it lifted for a moment, and I saw a craft
+some two leagues out, standing straight in for us.”
+
+“The devil you did! What was she like? and where away, lieutenant?”
+
+“A heavy lugger, under all sail, about E.N.E, as near as may be. She is
+standing for Robin Hood's Bay, I believe. In an hour's time she will be
+upon us, if the weather keeps so thick.”
+
+“She may have seen you, and sheered off. Stand straight for her, as
+nigh as you can guess. The fog is lifting, as you say. If you sight her,
+signal instantly. Lieutenant Donovan, have you heard Bowler's news?”
+
+“Sure an' if it wasn't for the fog, I would. Every word of it come to
+me, as clear as seeing.”
+
+“Very well. Carry on a little to the south, half a league or so,
+and then stand out, but keep within sound of signal. I shall bear up
+presently. It is clearing every minute, and we must nab them.”
+
+The fog began to rise in loops and alleys, with the upward pressure of
+the evening breeze, which freshened from the land in lines and patches,
+according to the run of cliff. Here the water darkened with the ruffle
+of the wind, and there it lay quiet, with a glassy shine, or gentle
+shadows of variety. Soon the three cruisers saw one another clearly; and
+then they all sighted an approaching sail.
+
+This was a full-bowed vessel, of quaint rig, heavy sheer, and
+extraordinary build--a foreigner clearly, and an ancient one. She
+differed from a lugger as widely as a lugger differs from a schooner,
+and her broad spread of canvas combined the features of square and of
+fore-and-aft tackle. But whatever her build or rig might be, she was
+going through the water at a strapping pace, heavily laden as she was,
+with her long yards creaking, and her broad frame croaking, and her deep
+bows driving up the fountains of the sea. Her enormous mainsail upon the
+mizzenmast--or mainmast, for she only carried two--was hung obliquely,
+yet not as a lugger's, slung at one-third of its length, but bent to
+a long yard hanging fore and aft, with a long fore-end sloping down to
+midship. This great sail gave her vast power, when close hauled; and
+she carried a square sail on the foremast, and a square sail on either
+topmast.
+
+“Lord, have mercy! She could run us all down if she tried!” exclaimed
+Commander Nettlebones; “and what are my pop-guns against such beam?”
+
+For a while the bilander seemed to mean to try it, for she carried on
+toward the central cruiser as if she had not seen one of them. Then,
+beautifully handled, she brought to, and was scudding before the wind in
+another minute, leading them all a brave stern-chase out to sea.
+
+“It must be that dare-devil Lyth himself,” Nettlebones said, as the
+Swordfish strained, with all canvas set, but no gain made; “no other
+fellow in all the world would dare to beard us in this style. I'd lay
+ten guineas that Donovan's guns won't go off, if he tries them. Ah, I
+thought so--a fizz, and a stink--trust an Irishman.”
+
+For this gallant lieutenant, slanting toward the bows of the flying
+bilander, which he had no hope of fore-reaching, trained his long
+swivel-gun upon her, and let go--or rather tried to let go--at her. But
+his powder was wet, or else there was some stoppage; for the only result
+was a spurt of smoke inward, and a powdery eruption on his own red
+cheeks.
+
+“I wish I could have heard him swear,” grumbled Nettlebones; “that would
+have been worth something. But Bowler is further out. Bowler will cross
+her bows, and he is not a fool. Don't be in a hurry, my fine Bob Lyth.
+You are not clear yet, though you crack on like a trooper. Well done,
+Bowler, you have headed him! By Jove, I don't understand these tactics.
+Stand by there! She is running back again.”
+
+To the great amazement of all on board the cruisers, except perhaps
+one or two, the great Dutch vessel, which might haply have escaped by
+standing on her present course, spun round like a top, and bore in again
+among her three pursuers. She had the heels of all of them before the
+wind, and might have run down any intercepter, but seemed not to know
+it, or to lose all nerve. “Thank the Lord in heaven, all rogues are
+fools! She may double as she will, but she is ours now. Signal Albatross
+and Kestrel to stand in.”
+
+In a few minutes all four were standing for the bay; the Dutch vessel
+leading with all sail set, the cruisers following warily, and spreading,
+to head her from the north or south. It was plain that they had her well
+in the toils; she must either surrender or run ashore; close hauled as
+she was, she could not run them down, even if she would dream of such an
+outrage.
+
+So far from showing any sign of rudeness was the smuggling vessel, that
+she would not even plead want of light as excuse for want of courtesy.
+For running past the royal cutters, who took much longer to come about,
+she saluted each of them with deep respect for the swallowtail of his
+Majesty. And then she bore on, like the admiral's ship, with signal for
+all to follow her.
+
+“Such cursed impudence never did I see,” cried every one of the revenue
+skippers, as they all were compelled to obey her. “Surrender she must,
+or else run upon the rocks. Does the fool know what he is driving at?”
+
+The fool, who was Master James Brown of Grimsby, knew very well what
+he was about. Every shoal, and sounding, and rocky gut, was thoroughly
+familiar to him, and the spread of faint light on the waves and
+alongshore told him all his bearings. The loud cackle of laughter, which
+Grimsby men (at the cost of the rest of the world) enjoy, was carried by
+the wind to the ears of Nettlebones.
+
+The latter set fast his teeth, and ground them; for now in the rising
+of the large full moon he perceived that the beach of the cove was black
+with figures gathering rapidly. “I see the villain's game; it is all
+clear now,” he shouted, as he slammed his spy-glass. “He means to run in
+where we dare not follow: and he knows that Carroway is out of hail. The
+hull may go smash for the sake of the cargo; and his flat-bottomed tub
+can run where we can not. I dare not carry after him--court-martial if I
+do: that is where those fellows beat us always. But, by the Lord Harry,
+he shall not prevail! Guns are no good--the rogue knows that. We will
+land round the point, and nab him.”
+
+By this time the moon was beginning to open the clouds, and strew the
+waves with light; and the vapors, which had lain across the day, defying
+all power of sun ray, were gracefully yielding, and departing softly, at
+the insinuating whisper of the gliding night. Between the busy rolling
+of the distant waves, and the shining prominence of forward cliffs, a
+quiet space was left for ships to sail in, and for men to show activity
+in shooting one another. And some of these were hurrying to do so, if
+they could.
+
+“There is little chance of hitting them in this bad light; but let them
+have it, Jakins; and a guinea for you, if you can only bring that big
+mainsail down.”
+
+The gunner was yearning for this, and the bellow of his piece responded
+to the captain's words. But the shot only threw up a long path of
+fountains, and the bilander ploughed on as merrily as before.
+
+“Hard aport! By the Lord, I felt her touch! Go about! So, so--easy!
+Now lie to, for Kestrel and Albatross to join. My certy! but that was a
+narrow shave. How the beggar would have laughed if we had grounded!
+Give them another shot. It will do the gun good; she wants a little
+exercise.”
+
+Nothing loath was master gunner, as the other bow-gun came into bearing,
+to make a little more noise in the world, and possibly produce a greater
+effect. And therein he must have had a grand success, and established a
+noble reputation, by carrying off a great Grimsby head, if he only had
+attended to a little matter. Gunner Jakins was a celebrated shot, and
+the miss he had made stirred him up to shoot again. If the other gun was
+crooked, this one should be straight; and dark as it was inshore, he
+got a patch of white ground to sight by. The bilander was a good sizable
+object, and not to hit her anywhere would be too bad. He considered
+these things carefully, and cocked both eyes, with a twinkling ambiguity
+between them; then trusting mainly to the left one, as an ancient gunner
+for the most part does, he watched the due moment, and fired. The smoke
+curled over the sea, and so did the Dutchman's maintop-sail, for the
+mast beneath it was cut clean through. Some of the crew were frightened,
+as may be the bravest man when for the first time shot at; but James
+Brown rubbed his horny hands.
+
+“Now this is a good judgment for that younker Robin Lyth,” he shouted
+aloud, with the glory of a man who has verified his own opinions. “He
+puts all the danger upon his elders, and tells them there is none of
+it. A' might just as well have been my head, if a wave hadn't lifted the
+muzzle when that straight-eyed chap let fire. Bear a hand, boys, and cut
+away the wreck. He hathn't got never another shot to send. He hath saved
+us trouble o' shortening that there canvas. We don't need too much way
+on her.”
+
+This was true enough, as all hands knew; for the craft was bound to take
+the beach, without going to pieces yet awhile. Jem Brown stood at the
+wheel himself, and carried her in with consummate skill.
+
+“It goeth to my heart to throw away good stuff,” he grumbled at almost
+every creak. “Two hunder pound I would 'a paid myself for this here
+piece of timber. Steady as a light-house, and as handy as a mop; but
+what do they young fellows care? There, now, my lads, hold your legs a
+moment; and now make your best of that.”
+
+With a crash, and a grating, and a long sad grind, the nuptial ark of
+the wealthy Dutchman cast herself into her last bed and berth.
+
+“I done it right well,” said the Grimsby man.
+
+The poor old bilander had made herself such a hole in the shingle that
+she rolled no more, but only lifted at the stern and groaned, as the
+quiet waves swept under her. The beach was swarming with men, who gave
+her a cheer, and flung their hats up; and in two or three minutes as
+many gangways of timber and rope were rigged to her hawse-holes, or
+fore-chains, or almost anywhere. And then the rolling of puncheons
+began, and the hoisting of bales, and the thump and the creak, and the
+laughter, and the swearing.
+
+“Now be you partiklar, uncommon partiklar; never start a stave nor fray
+a bale. Powerful precious stuff this time. Gold every bit of it, if it
+are a penny. They blessed coast-riders will be on us round the point.
+But never you hurry, lads, the more for that. Better a'most to let 'em
+have it, than damage a drop or a thread of such goods.”
+
+“All right, Cappen Brown. Don't you be so wonnerful unaisy. Not the
+first time we have handled such stuff.”
+
+“I'm not so sure of that,” replied Brown, as he lit a short pipe and
+began to puff. “I've a-run some afore, but never none so precious.”
+
+Then the men of the coast and the sailors worked with a will, by the
+broad light of the moon, which showed their brawny arms and panting
+chests, with the hoisting, and the heaving, and the rolling. In less
+than an hour three-fourths of the cargo was landed, and some already
+stowed inland, where no Preventive eye could penetrate. Then Captain
+Brown put away his pipe, and was busy, in a dark empty part of the hold,
+with some barrels of his own, which he covered with a sailcloth.
+
+Presently the tramp of marching men was heard in a lane on the north
+side of the cove, and then the like sound echoed from the south. “Now
+never you hurry,” said the Grimsby man. The others, however, could not
+attain such standard of equanimity. They fell into sudden confusion,
+and babble of tongues, and hesitation--everybody longing to be off,
+but nobody liking to run without something good. And to get away with
+anything at all substantial, even in the dark, was difficult, because
+there were cliffs in front, and the flanks would be stopped by men with
+cutlasses.
+
+“Ston' you still,” cried Captain Brown; “never you budge, ne'er a one
+of ye. I stands upon my legitimacy; and I answer for the consekence. I
+takes all responsibility.”
+
+Like all honest Britons, they loved long words, and they knew that if
+the worst came to the worst, a mere broken head or two would make all
+straight; so they huddled together in the moonlight waiting, and no
+one desired to be the outside man. And while they were striving for
+precedence toward the middle, the coast-guards from either side marched
+upon them, according to their very best drill and in high discipline, to
+knock down almost any man with the pommel of the sword.
+
+But the smugglers also showed high discipline under the commanding voice
+of Captain Brown.
+
+“Every man ston' with his hands to his sides, and ask of they sojjers
+for a pinch of bacca.”
+
+This made them laugh, till Captain Nettlebones strode up.
+
+“In the name of his Majesty, surrender, all you fellows. You are fairly
+caught in the very act of landing a large run of goods contraband. It is
+high time to make an example of you. Where is your skipper, lads? Robin
+Lyth, come forth.”
+
+“May it please your good honor and his Majesty's commission,” said
+Brown, in his full, round voice, as he walked down the broadest of
+the gangways leisurely, “my name is not Robin Lyth, but James Brown, a
+family man of Grimsby, and an honest trader upon the high seas. My cargo
+is medical water and rags, mainly for the use of the revenue men, by
+reason they han't had their new uniforms this twelve months.”
+
+Several of the enemy began to giggle, for their winter supply of clothes
+had failed, through some lapse of the department. But Nettlebones
+marched up, and collared Captain Brown, and said, “You are my prisoner,
+sir. Surrender, Robin Lyth, this moment.” Brown made no resistance, but
+respectfully touched his hat, and thought.
+
+“I were trying to call upon my memory,” he said, as the revenue officer
+led him aside, and promised him that he should get off easily if he
+would only give up his chief. “I am not going to deny, your honor, that
+I have heard tell of that name 'Robin Lyth.' But my memory never do come
+in a moment. Now were he a man in the contraband line?”
+
+“Brown, you want to provoke me. It will only be ten times worse for you.
+Now give him up like an honest fellow, and I will do my best for you. I
+might even let a few tubs slip by.”
+
+“Sir, I am a stranger round these parts; and the lingo is beyond me.
+Tubs is a bucket as the women use for washing. Never I heared of any
+other sort of tubs. But my mate he knoweth more of Yorkshire talk. Jack,
+here his honor is a-speaking about tubs; ever you hear of tubs, Jack?”
+
+“Make the villain fast to yonder mooring-post,” shouted Nettlebones,
+losing his temper; “and one of you stand by him, with a hanger ready.
+Now, Master Brown, we'll see what tubs are, if you please; and what sort
+of rags you land at night. One chance more for you--will you give up
+Robin Lyth?”
+
+“Yes, sir, that I will, without two thoughts about 'un. Only too happy,
+as the young women say, to give 'un up, quick stick--so soon as ever I
+ha' got 'un.”
+
+“If ever there was a contumacious rogue! Roll up a couple of those
+puncheons, Mr. Avery; and now light half a dozen links. Have you got
+your spigot-heels--and rummers? Very good; Lieutenant Donovan, Mr.
+Avery, and Senior Volunteer Brett, oblige me by standing by to verify.
+Gentlemen, we will endeavor to hold what is judicially called an
+assay--a proof of the purity of substances. The brand on these casks
+is of the very highest order--the renowned Mynheer Van Dunck himself.
+Donovan, you shall be our foreman; I have heard you say that you
+understood ardent spirits from your birth.”
+
+“Faix, and I quite forget, commander, whether I was weaned on or off of
+them. But the foine judge me father was come down till me--honey, don't
+be narvous; slope it well, then--a little thick, is it? All the
+richer for that same, me boy. Commander, here's the good health of his
+Majesty--Oh Lord!”
+
+Mr. Corkoran Donovan fell down upon the shingle, and rolled and
+bellowed: “Sure me inside's out! 'Tis poisoned I am, every mortial
+bit o' me. A docthor, a docthor, and a praste, to kill me! That ever
+I should live to die like this! Ochone, ochone, every bit of me; to be
+brought forth upon good whiskey, and go out of the world upon docthor's
+stuff!”
+
+“Most folk does that, when they ought to turn ends t'otherwise.” James
+Brown of Grimsby could see how things were going, though his power to
+aid was restricted by a double turn of rope around him; but a kind
+hand had given him a pipe, and his manner was to take things easily.
+“Commander, or captain, or whatever you be, with your king's clothes,
+constructing a hole in they flints, never you fear, sir. 'Tis medical
+water, and your own wife wouldn't know you to-morrow. Your complexion
+will be like a hangel's.”
+
+“You d----d rogue,” cried Nettlebones, striding up, with his sword
+flashing in the link-lights, “if ever I had a mind to cut any man
+down--”
+
+“Well, sir, do it, then, upon a roped man, if the honor of the British
+navy calleth for it. My will is made, and my widow will have action; and
+the executioner of my will is a Grimsby man, with a pile of money made
+in the line of salt fish, and such like.”
+
+“Brown, you are a brave man. I would scorn to harm you. Now, upon your
+honor, are all your puncheons filled with that stuff, and nothing else?”
+
+“Upon my word of honor, sir, they are. Some a little weaker, some with
+more bilge-water in it, or a trifle of a dash from the midden. The main
+of it, however, in the very same condition as a' bubbleth out of what
+they call the spawses. Why, captain, you must 'a lived long enough to
+know, partiklar if gifted with a family, that no sort of spirit as were
+ever stilled will fetch so much money by the gallon, duty paid, as the
+doctor's stuff doth by the phial-bottle.”
+
+“That is true enough; but no lies, Brown, particularly when upon your
+honor! If you were importing doctor's stuff, why did you lead us such a
+dance, and stand fire?”
+
+“Well, your honor, you must promise not to be offended, if I tell you
+of a little mistake we made. We heared a sight of talk about some pirate
+craft as hoisteth his Majesty's flag upon their villainy. And when first
+you come up, in the dusk of the night--”
+
+“You are the most impudent rogue I ever saw. Show your bills of lading,
+sir. You know his Majesty's revenue cruisers as well as I know your
+smuggling tub.”
+
+“Ship's papers are aboard of her, all correct, sir. Keys at your
+service, if you please to feel my pocket, objecting to let my hands
+loose.”
+
+“Very well, I must go on board of her, and test a few of your puncheons
+and bales, Master Brown. Locker in the master's own cabin, I suppose?”
+
+“Yes, sir, plain as can be, on the starboard side, just behind the cabin
+door. Only your honor must be smart about it; the time-fuse can't 'a got
+three inches left.”
+
+“Time-fuse? What do you mean, you Grimsby villain?”
+
+“Nothing, commander, but to keep you out of mischief. When we were
+compelled to beach the old craft, for fear of them scoundrelly pirates,
+it came into my head what a pity it would be to have her used illegal;
+for she do outsail a'most everything, as your honor can bear witness.
+So I just laid a half-hour fuse to three big-powder barrels as is down
+there in the hold; and I expect to see a blow-up almost every moment.
+But your honor might be in time yet, with a run, and good luck to your
+foot, you might--”
+
+“Back, lads! back every one of you this moment!” The first concern of
+Nettlebones was rightly for his men. “Under the cliff here. Keep well
+back. Push out those smuggler fellows into the middle. Let them have the
+benefit of their own inventions, and this impudent Brown the foremost.
+They have laid a train to their powder barrels, and the lugger will blow
+up any moment.”
+
+“No fear for me, commander,” James Brown shouted through the hurry and
+jostle of a hundred runaways. “More fear for that poor man as lieth
+there a-lurching. She won't hit me when she bloweth up, no more than
+your honor could. But surely your duty demandeth of you to board the old
+bilander, and take samples.”
+
+“Sample enough of you, my friend. But I haven't quite done with you yet.
+Simpson, here, bear a hand with poor Lieutenant Donovan.”
+
+Nettlebones set a good example by lifting the prostrate Irishman;
+and they bore him into safety, and drew up there; while the beachmen,
+forbidden the shelter at point of cutlass, made off right and left; and
+then, with a crash that shook the strand and drove back the water in
+a white turmoil, the Crown of Gold flew into a fount of timbers,
+splinters, shreds, smoke, fire, and dust.
+
+“Gentlemen, you may come out of your holes,” the Grimsby man shouted
+from his mooring-post, as the echoes ran along the cliffs, and rolled to
+and fro in the distance. “My old woman will miss a piece of my pigtail,
+but she hathn't hurt her old skipper else. She blowed up handsome, and
+no mistake! No more danger, gentlemen, and plenty of stuff to pick up
+afore next pay-day.”
+
+“What shall we do with that insolent hound?” Nettlebones asked poor
+Donovan, who was groaning in slow convalescence. “We have caught him in
+nothing. We can not commit him; we can not even duck him legally.”
+
+“Be jabers, let him drink his health in his own potheen.”
+
+“Capital! Bravo for old Ireland, my friend! You shall see it done, and
+handsomely. Brown, you recommend these waters, so you shall have a dose
+of them.”
+
+A piece of old truncate kelp was found, as good a drinking horn as need
+be; and with this Captain Brown was forced to swallow half a bucketful
+of his own “medical water”; and they left him fast at his moorings, to
+reflect upon this form of importation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+BEARDED IN HIS DEN
+
+
+“What do you think of it by this time, Bowler?” Commander Nettlebones
+asked his second, who had been left in command afloat, and to whom they
+rowed back in a wrathful mood, with a good deal of impression that the
+fault was his, “You have been taking it easily out here. What do you
+think of the whole of it?”
+
+“I have simply obeyed your orders, sir; and if I am to be blamed for
+that, I had better offer no opinion.”
+
+“No, no, I am finding no fault with you. Don't be so tetchy, Bowler. I
+seek your opinion, and you are bound to give it.”
+
+“Well, then, sir, my opinion is that they have made fools of the lot of
+us, excepting, of course, my superior officer.”
+
+“You think so, Bowler? Well, and so do I--and myself the biggest fool of
+any. They have charged our centre with a dummy cargo, while they run the
+real stuff far on either flank. Is that your opinion?”
+
+“To a nicety, that is my opinion, now that you put it so clearly, sir.”
+
+“The trick is a clumsy one, and never should succeed. Carroway ought
+to catch one lot, if he has a haporth of sense in him. What is the time
+now; and how is the wind?”
+
+“I hear a church clock striking twelve; and by the moon it must be that.
+The wind is still from the shore, but veering, and I felt a flaw from
+the east just now.”
+
+“If the wind works round, our turn will come. Is Donovan fit for duty
+yet?”
+
+“Ten times fit, sir--to use his own expression. He is burning to have at
+somebody. His eyes work about like the binnacle's card.”
+
+“Then board him, and order him to make all sail for Burlington, and
+see what old Carroway is up to. You be off for Whitby, and as far as
+Teesmouth, looking into every cove you pass. I shall stand off and on
+from this to Scarborough, and as far as Filey. Short measures, mind,
+if you come across them. If I nab that fellow Lyth, I shall go near to
+hanging him as a felon outlaw. His trick is a little too outrageous.”
+
+“No fear, commander. If it is as we suppose, it is high time to make a
+strong example.”
+
+Hours had been lost, as the captains of the cruisers knew too well
+by this time. Robin Lyth's stratagem had duped them all, while the
+contraband cargoes might be landed safely, at either extremity of their
+heat. By the aid of the fishing-boats, he had learned their manoeuvres
+clearly, and outmanoeuvred them.
+
+Now it would have been better for him, perhaps, to have been content
+with a lesser triumph, and to run his own schooner, the Glimpse, further
+south, toward Hornsea, or even Aldbrough. Nothing, however, would
+satisfy him but to land his fine cargo at Carroway's own door--a piece
+of downright insolence, for which he paid out most bitterly. A man
+of his courage and lofty fame should have been above such vindictive
+feelings. But, as it was, he cherished and, alas! indulged a certain
+small grudge against the bold lieutenant, scarcely so much for
+endeavoring to shoot him, as for entrapping him at Byrsa Cottage, during
+the very sweetest moment of his life. “You broke in disgracefully,” said
+the smuggler to himself, “upon my privacy when it should have been most
+sacred. The least thing I can do is to return your visit, and pay my
+respects to Mrs. Carroway and your interesting family.”
+
+Little expecting such a courtesy as this, the vigilant officer was
+hurrying about, here, there, and almost everywhere (except in the right
+direction), at one time by pinnace, at another upon horseback, or on his
+unwearied though unequal feet. He carried his sword in one hand, and his
+spy-glass in the other, and at every fog he swore so hard that he
+seemed to turn it yellow. With his heart worn almost into holes, as
+an overmangled quilt is, by burdensome roll of perpetual lies, he
+condemned, with a round mouth, smugglers, cutters, the coast-guard and
+the coast itself, the weather, and, with a deeper depth of condemnation,
+the farmers, landladies, and fishermen. For all of these verily seemed
+to be in league to play him the game which school-boys play with a
+gentle-faced new-comer--the game of “send the fool further.”
+
+John Gristhorp, of the “Ship Inn,” at Filey, had turned out his
+visitors, barred his door, and was counting his money by the fireside,
+with his wife grumbling at him for such late hours as half past ten of
+the clock in the bar, that night when the poor bilander ended her long
+career as aforesaid. Then a thundering knock at the door just fastened
+made him upset a little pyramid of pence, and catch up the iron
+candlestick.
+
+“None of your roistering here!” cried the lady. “John, you know better
+than to let them in, I hope.”
+
+“Copper coomth by daa, goold coomth t'naight-time,” the sturdy publican
+answered, though resolved to learn who it was before unbarring.
+
+“In the name of the King, undo this door,” a deep stern voice resounded,
+“or by royal command we make splinters of it.”
+
+“It is that horrible Carroway again,” whispered Mrs. Gristhorp. “Much
+gold comes of him, I doubt. Let him in if you dare, John.”
+
+“'Keep ma oot, if ye de-arr,' saith he. Ah'll awand here's the tail o'
+it.”
+
+While Gristhorp, in wholesome fealty to his wife, was doubting, the door
+flew open, and in marched Carroway and all his men, or at least all save
+one of his present following. He had ordered his pinnace to meet him
+here, himself having ridden from Scarborough, and the pinnace had
+brought the jolly-boat in tow, according to his directions. The men had
+landed with the jolly-boat, which was handier for beach work, leaving
+one of their number to mind the larger craft while they should refresh
+themselves. They were nine in all, and Carroway himself the tenth, all
+sturdy fellows, and for the main of it tolerably honest; Cadman, Ellis,
+and Dick Hackerbody, and one more man from Bridlington, the rest a
+re-enforcement from Spurn Head, called up for occasion.
+
+“Landlord, produce your best, and quickly,” the officer said, as he
+threw himself into the arm-chair of state, being thoroughly tired. “In
+one hour's time we must be off. Therefore, John, bring nothing tough,
+for our stomachs are better than our teeth. A shilling per head is his
+Majesty's price, and half a crown for officers. Now a gallon of ale, to
+begin with.”
+
+Gristhorp, being a prudent man, brought the very toughest parts of
+his larder forth, with his wife giving nudge to his elbow. All, and
+especially Carroway, too hungry for nice criticism, fell to, by the
+light of three tallow candles, and were just getting into the heart of
+it, when the rattle of horseshoes on the pitch-stones shook the long
+low window, and a little boy came staggering in, with scanty breath, and
+dazzled eyes, and a long face pale with hurrying so.
+
+“Why, Tom, my boy!” the lieutenant cried, jumping up so suddenly that
+he overturned the little table at which he was feeding by himself, to
+preserve the proper discipline. “Tom, my darling, what has brought you
+here? Anything wrong with your mother?”
+
+“Nobody wouldn't come, but me,” Carroway's eldest son began to gasp,
+with his mouth full of crying; “and I borrowed Butcher Hewson's pony,
+and he's going to charge five shillings for it.”
+
+“Never mind that. We shall not have to pay it. But what is it all about,
+my son?”
+
+“About the men that are landing the things, just opposite our front
+door, father. They have got seven carts, and a wagon with three horses,
+and one of the horses is three colors; and ever so many ponies, more
+than you could count.”
+
+“Well, then, may I be forever”--here the lieutenant used an expression
+which not only was in breach of the third commandment, but might lead
+his son to think less of the fifth--“if it isn't more than I can bear!
+To be running a cargo at my own hall door!” He had a passage large
+enough to hang three hats in, which the lady of the house always called
+“the hall.” “Very well, very good, very fine indeed! You sons of”--an
+animal that is not yet accounted the mother of the human race--“have you
+done guzzling and swizzling?”
+
+The men who were new to his orders jumped up, for they liked his
+expressions, by way of a change; but the Bridlington squad stuck to
+their trenchers. “Ready in five minutes, sir,” said Cadman, with a
+glance neither loving nor respectful.
+
+“If ever there was an old hog for the trough, the name of him is John
+Cadman. In ten minutes, lads, we must all be afloat.”
+
+“One more against you,” muttered Cadman; and a shrewd quiet man from
+Spurn Head, Adam Andrews, heard him, and took heed of him.
+
+While the men of the coast-guard were hurrying down to make ready the
+jolly-boat and hail the pinnace, Carroway stopped to pay the score, and
+to give his son some beer and meat. The thirsty little fellow drained
+his cup, and filled his mouth and both hands with food, while the
+landlady picked out the best bits for him.
+
+“Don't talk, my son--don't try to talk,” said Carroway, looking proudly
+at him, while the boy was struggling to tell his adventures, without
+loss of feeding-time; “you are a chip of the old block, Tom, for
+victualling, and for riding too. Kind madam, you never saw such a boy
+before. Mark my words, he will do more in the world than ever his father
+did, and his father was pretty well known in his time, in the Royal
+Navy, ma'am. To have stuck to his horse all that way in the dark was
+wonderful, perfectly wonderful. And the horse blows more than the rider,
+ma'am, which is quite beyond my experience. Now, Tom, ride home very
+carefully and slowly, if you feel quite equal to it. The Lord has
+watched over you, and He will continue, as He does with brave folk that
+do their duty. Half a crown you shall have, all for yourself, and the
+sixpenny boat that you longed for in the shops. Keep out of the way of
+the smugglers, Tom; don't let them even clap eyes on you. Kiss me, my
+son; I am proud of you.”
+
+Little Tom long remembered this; and his mother cried over it hundreds
+of times.
+
+Although it was getting on for midnight now, Master Gristhorp and his
+wife came out into the road before their house, to see the departure of
+their guests. And this they could do well, because the moon had cleared
+all the fog away, and was standing in a good part of the sky for
+throwing clear light upon Filey. Along the uncovered ridge of shore,
+which served for a road, and was better than a road, the boy and the
+pony grew smaller; while upon the silvery sea the same thing happened to
+the pinnace, with her white sails bending, and her six oars glistening.
+
+“The world goeth up, and the world goeth down,” said the lady, with her
+arms akimbo; “and the moon goeth over the whole of us, John; but to my
+heart I do pity poor folk as canna count the time to have the sniff of
+their own blankets.”
+
+“Margery, I loikes the moon, as young as ever ye da. But I sooner see
+the snuff of our own taller, a-going out, fra the bed-curtings.”
+
+Shaking their heads with concrete wisdom, they managed to bar the door
+again, and blessing their stars that they did not often want them, took
+shelter beneath the quiet canopy of bed. And when they heard by-and-by
+what had happened, it cost them a week apiece to believe it; because
+with their own eyes they had seen everything so peaceable, and had such
+a good night afterward.
+
+When a thing is least expected, then it loves to come to pass, and then
+it is enjoyed the most, whatever good there is of it. After the fog and
+the slur of the day, to see the sky at all was joyful, although there
+was but a white moon upon it, and faint stars gliding hazily. And it was
+a great point for every man to be satisfied as to where he was; because
+that helps him vastly toward being satisfied to be there. The men in the
+pinnace could see exactly where they were in this world; and as to the
+other world, their place was fixed--if discipline be an abiding gift--by
+the stern precision of their commander in ordering the lot of them to
+the devil. They carried all sail, and they pulled six oars, and the wind
+and sea ran after them.
+
+“Ha! I see something!” Carroway cried, after a league or more of
+swearing. “Dick, the night glass; my eyes are sore. What do you make her
+out for?”
+
+“Sir, she is the Spurn Head yawl,” answered Dick Hackerbody, who was
+famed for long sight, but could see nothing with a telescope. “I can see
+the patch of her foresail.”
+
+“She is looking for us. We are the wrong way of the moon. Ship oars,
+lads; bear up for her.”
+
+In ten minutes' time the two boats came to speaking distance off Bempton
+Cliffs, and the windmill, that vexed Willie Anerley so, looked bare
+and black on the highland. There were only two men in the Spurn Head
+boat--not half enough to manage her. “Well, what is it?” shouted
+Carroway.
+
+“Robin Lyth has made his land-fall on Burlington Sands, opposite your
+honor's door, sir. There was only two of us to stop him, and the man as
+is deaf and dumb.”
+
+“I know it,” said Carroway, too wroth to swear. “My boy of eight years
+old is worth the entire boiling of you. You got into a rabbit-hole, and
+ran to tell your mammy.”
+
+“Captain, I never had no mammy,” the other man answered, with his
+feelings hurt. “I come to tell you, sir; and something, if you please,
+for your own ear, if agreeable.”
+
+“Nothing is agreeable. But let me have it. Hold on; I will come aboard
+of you.”
+
+The lieutenant stepped into the Spurn Head boat with confident activity,
+and ordered his own to haul off a little, while the stranger bent down
+to him in the stern, and whispered.
+
+“Now are you quite certain of this?” asked Carroway, with his grim face
+glowing in the moonlight, “I have had such a heap of cock and bulls
+about it. Morcom, are you certain?”
+
+“As certain, sir, as that I stand here, and you sit there, commander.
+Put me under guard, with a pistol to my ear, and shoot me if it turns
+out to be a lie.”
+
+“The Dovecote, you say? You are quite sure of that, and not the Kirk
+Cave, or Lyth's Hole?”
+
+“Sir, the Dovecote, and no other. I had it from my own young brother,
+who has been cheated of his share. And I know it from my own eyes too.”
+
+“Then, by the Lord in heaven, Morcom, I shall have my revenge at last;
+and I shall not stand upon niceties. If I call for the jolly-boat, you
+step in. I doubt if either of these will enter.”
+
+It was more than a fortnight since the lieutenant had received the
+attentions of a barber, and when he returned to his own boat, and
+changed her course inshore, he looked most bristly even in the
+moonlight. The sea and the moon between them gave quite light enough to
+show how gaunt he was--the aspect of a man who can not thrive without
+his children to make play, and his wife to do cookery for him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+THE DOVECOTE
+
+
+With the tiller in his hand, the brave lieutenant meditated sadly. There
+was plenty of time for thought before quick action would be needed,
+although the Dovecote was so near that no boat could come out of it
+unseen. For the pinnace was fetching a circuit, so as to escape the eyes
+of any sentinel, if such there should be at the mouth of the cavern, and
+to come upon the inlet suddenly. And the two other revenue boats were in
+her wake.
+
+The wind was slowly veering toward the east, as the Grimsby man had
+predicted, with no sign of any storm as yet, but rather a prospect of
+winterly weather, and a breeze to bring the woodcocks in. The gentle
+rise and fall of waves, or rather, perhaps, of the tidal flow, was
+checkered and veined with a ripple of the slanting breeze, and twinkled
+in the moonbeams. For the moon was brightly mounting toward her zenith,
+and casting bastions of rugged cliff in gloomy largeness on the mirror
+of the sea. Hugging these as closely as their peril would allow,
+Carroway ordered silence, and with the sense of coming danger thought:
+
+“Probably I shall kill this man. He will scarcely be taken alive, I
+fear. He is as brave as myself, or braver; and in his place I would
+never yield. If he were a Frenchman, it would be all right. But I hate
+to kill a gallant Englishman. And such a pretty girl, and a good girl
+too, loves him with all her heart, I know. And that good old couple who
+depend upon him, and who have had such shocking luck themselves! He has
+been a bitter plague to me, and often I have longed to strike him down.
+But to-night--I can not tell why it is--I wish there were some way
+out of it. God knows that I would give up the money, and give up my
+thief-catching business too, if the honor of the service let me. But
+duty drives me; do it I must. And after all, what is life to a man who
+is young, and has no children? Better over, better done with, before
+the troubles and the disappointment come, the weariness, and the loss of
+power, and the sense of growing old, and seeing the little ones hungry.
+Life is such a fleeting vapor--I smell some man sucking peppermint! The
+smell of it goes on the wind for a mile. Oh! Cadman again, as usual.
+Peppermint in the Royal Coast-Guard! Away with it, you ancient beldame!”
+
+Muttering something about his bad tooth, the man flung his lozenge away;
+and his eyes flashed fire in the moonlight, while the rest grinned a low
+grin at him. And Adam Andrews, sitting next him, saw him lay hands upon
+his musketoon.
+
+“Are your firelocks all primed, my lads?” the commander asked, quite as
+if he had seen him, although he had not been noticing; and the foremost
+to answer “Ay, ay, sir,” was Cadman.
+
+“Then be sure that you fire not, except at my command. We will take them
+without shedding blood, if it may be. But happen what will, we must have
+Lyth.”
+
+With these words, Carroway drew his sword, and laid it on the bench
+beside him; and the rest (who would rather use steel than powder) felt
+that their hangers were ready. Few of them wished to strike at all;
+for vexed as they were with the smugglers for having outwitted them
+so often, as yet there was no bad blood between them, such as must be
+quenched with death. And some of them had friends, and even relatives,
+among the large body of free-traders, and counted it too likely that
+they might be here.
+
+Meanwhile in the cave there was rare work going on, speedily, cleverly,
+and with a merry noise. There was only one boat, with a crew of six men,
+besides Robin Lyth the captain; but the six men made noise enough for
+twelve, and the echoes made it into twice enough for any twenty-four.
+The crew were trusty, hardy fellows, who liked their joke, and could
+work with it; and Robin Lyth knew them too well to attempt any high
+authority of gagging. The main of their cargo was landed and gone
+inland, as snugly as need be; and having kept beautifully sober over
+that, they were taking the liberty of beginning to say, or rather sip,
+the grace of the fine indulgence due to them.
+
+Pleasant times make pleasant scenes, and everything now was fair
+and large in this happy cave of freedom. Lights of bright resin were
+burning, with strong flare and fume, upon shelves of rock; dark water
+softly went lapping round the sides, having dropped all rude habits at
+the entrance; and a pulse of quiet rise and fall opened, and spread to
+the discovery of light, tremulous fronds and fans of kelp. The cavern,
+expanding and mounting from the long narrow gut of its inlet, shone with
+staves of snowy crag wherever the scour of the tide ran round;
+bulged and scooped, or peaked and fissured, and sometimes beautifully
+sculptured by the pliant tools of water. Above the tide-reach darker
+hues prevailed, and more jagged outline, tufted here and there with
+yellow, where the lichen freckles spread. And the vault was framed of
+mountain fabric, massed with ponderous gray slabs.
+
+All below was limpid water, or at any rate not very muddy, but as bright
+as need be for the time of year, and a sea which is not tropical. No one
+may hope to see the bottom through ten feet of water on the Yorkshire
+coast, toward the end of the month of November; but still it tries to
+look clear upon occasion; and here in the caves it settles down, after
+even a week free from churning. And perhaps the fog outside had helped
+it to look clearer inside; for the larger world has a share of the
+spirit of contrariety intensified in man.
+
+Be that as it may, the water was too clear for any hope of sinking tubs
+deeper than Preventive eyes could go; and the very honest fellows who
+were laboring here had not brought any tubs to sink. All such coarse
+gear was shipped off inland, as they vigorously expressed it; and
+what they were concerned with now was the cream and the jewel of their
+enterprise.
+
+The sea reserved exclusive right of way around the rocky sides, without
+even a niche for human foot, so far as a stranger could perceive. At
+the furthermost end of the cave, however, the craggy basin had a lip
+of flinty pebbles and shelly sand. This was no more than a very narrow
+shelf, just enough for a bather to plunge from; but it ran across the
+broad end of the cavern, and from its southern corner went a deep dry
+fissure mounting out of sight into the body of the cliff. And here the
+smugglers were merrily at work.
+
+The nose of their boat was run high upon the shingle; two men on board
+of her were passing out the bales, while the other four received them,
+and staggered with them up the cranny. Captain Lyth himself was in the
+stern-sheets, sitting calmly, but ordering everything, and jotting down
+the numbers. Now and then the gentle wash was lifting the brown timbers,
+and swelling with a sleepy gush of hushing murmurs out of sight. And now
+and then the heavy vault was echoing with some sailor's song.
+
+There was only one more bale to land, and that the most precious of
+the whole, being all pure lace most closely packed in a water-proof
+inclosure. Robin Lyth himself was ready to indulge in a careless song.
+For this, as he had promised Mary, was to be his last illegal act.
+Henceforth, instead of defrauding the revenue, he would most loyally
+cheat the public, as every reputable tradesman must. How could any man
+serve his time more notably, toward shop-keeping, and pave fairer way
+into the corporation of a grandly corrupt old English town, than by long
+graduation of free trade? And Robin was yet too young and careless to
+know that he could not endure dull work. “How pleasant, how comfortable,
+how secure,” he was saying to himself, “it will be! I shall hardly be
+able to believe that I ever lived in hardship.”
+
+But the great laws of human nature were not to be balked so. Robin Lyth,
+the prince of smugglers, and the type of hardihood, was never to wear a
+grocer's apron, was never to be “licensed to sell tea, coffee, tobacco,
+pepper, and snuff.” For while he indulged in this vain dream, and was
+lifting his last most precious bale, a surge of neither wind nor tide,
+but of hostile invasion, washed the rocks, and broke beneath his feet.
+
+In a moment all his wits returned, all his plenitude of resource,
+and unequalled vigor and coolness. With his left hand--for he was
+as ambidexter as a brave writer of this age requires--he caught up a
+handspike, and hurled it so truly along the line of torches that only
+two were left to blink; with his right he flung the last bale upon the
+shelf; then leaped out after it, and hurried it away. Then he sprang
+into the boat again, and held an oar in either hand.
+
+“In the name of the king, surrender,” shouted Carroway, standing, tall
+and grim, in the bow of the pinnace, which he had skillfully driven
+through the entrance, leaving the other boats outside. “We are three to
+one, we have muskets, and a cannon. In the name of the king, surrender.”
+
+“In the name of the devil, splash!” cried Robin, suiting the action
+to the word, striking the water with both broad blades, while his men
+snatched oars and did the same. A whirl of flashing water filled the
+cave, as if with a tempest, soaked poor Carroway, and drenched his
+sword, and deluged the priming of the hostile guns. All was uproar,
+turmoil, and confusion thrice confounded; no man could tell where he
+was, and the grappling boats reeled to and fro.
+
+“Club your muskets, and at 'em!” cried the lieutenant, mad with rage,
+as the gunwale of his boat swung over. “Their blood be upon their own
+heads; draw your hangers, and at 'em!”
+
+He never spoke another word, but furiously leaping at the smuggler
+chief, fell back into his own boat, and died, without a syllable,
+without a groan. The roar of a gun and the smoke of powder mingled with
+the watery hubbub, and hushed in a moment all the oaths of conflict.
+
+The revenue men drew back and sheathed their cutlasses, and laid down
+their guns; some looked with terror at one another, and some at their
+dead commander. His body lay across the heel of the mast, which had been
+unstepped at his order; and a heavy drip of blood was weltering into a
+ring upon the floor.
+
+For several moments no one spoke, nor moved, nor listened carefully;
+but the fall of the poor lieutenant's death-drops, like the ticking of
+a clock, went on. Until an old tar, who had seen a sight of battles,
+crooked his legs across a thwart, and propped up the limp head upon his
+doubled knee.
+
+“Dead as a door-nail,” he muttered, after laying his ear to the lips,
+and one hand on the too impetuous heart, “Who takes command? This is a
+hanging job, I'm thinking.”
+
+There was nobody to take command, not even a petty officer. The command
+fell to the readiest mind, as it must in such catastrophes. “Jem, you do
+it,” whispered two or three; and being so elected, he was clear.
+
+“Lay her broadside on to the mouth of the cave. Not a man stirs out
+without killing me,” old Jem shouted; and to hear a plain voice was
+sudden relief to most of them. In the wavering dimness they laid the
+pinnace across the narrow entrance, while the smugglers huddled all
+together in their boat. “Burn two blue-lights,” cried old Jem; and it
+was done.
+
+“I'm not going to speechify to any cursed murderers,” the old sailor
+said, with a sense of authority which made him use mild language; “but
+take heed of one thing, I'll blow you all to pieces with this here
+four-pounder, without you strikes peremptory.”
+
+The brilliance of the blue-lights filled the cavern, throwing out
+everybody's attitude and features, especially those of the dead
+lieutenant. “A fine job you have made of it this time!” said Jem.
+
+They were beaten, they surrendered, they could scarcely even speak to
+assert their own innocence of such a wicked job. They submitted to be
+bound, and cast down into their boat, imploring only that it might be
+there--that they might not be taken to the other boat and laid near the
+corpse of Carroway.
+
+“Let the white-livered cowards have their way,” the old sailor said,
+contemptuously. “Put their captain on the top of them. Now which is
+Robin Lyth?”
+
+The lights were burned out, and the cave was dark again, except when a
+slant of moonlight came through a fissure upon the southern side. The
+smugglers muttered something, but they were not heeded.
+
+“Never mind, make her fast, fetch her out, you lubbers. We shall see him
+well enough when we get outside.”
+
+But in spite of all their certainty, they failed of this. They had only
+six prisoners, and not one of them was Lyth.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+LITTLE CARROWAYS
+
+
+Mrs. Carroway was always glad to be up quite early in the morning. But
+some few mornings seemed to slip in between whiles when, in accordance
+with human nature, and its operations in the baby stage, even Lauta
+Carroway failed to be about the world before the sun himself. Whenever
+this happened she was slightly cross, from the combat of conscience and
+self-assertion, which fly at one another worse than any dog and cat.
+Geraldine knew that her mother was put out if any one of the household
+durst go down the stairs before her. And yet if Geraldine herself held
+back, and followed the example of late minutes, she was sure “to catch
+it worse,” as the poor child expressed it.
+
+If any active youth with a very small income (such as an active youth is
+pretty sure to have) wants a good wife, and has the courage to set
+out with one, his proper course is to choose the eldest daughter of
+a numerous family. When the others come thickly, this daughter of the
+house gets worked down into a wonderful perfection of looking after
+others, while she overlooks herself. Such a course is even better
+for her than to have a step-mother--which also is a goodly thing, but
+sometimes leads to sourness. Whereas no girl of any decent staple can
+revolt against her duty to her own good mother, and the proud sense of
+fostering and working for the little ones. Now Geraldine was wise in all
+these ways, and pleased to be called the little woman of the house.
+
+The baby had been troublous in the night, and scant of reason, as the
+rising race can be, even while so immature; and after being up with
+it, and herself producing a long series of noises--which lead to peace
+through the born desire of contradiction--the mother fell asleep at
+last, perhaps from simple sympathy, and slept beyond her usual hour. But
+instead of being grateful for this, she was angry and bitter to any one
+awake before her.
+
+“I can not tell why it is,” she said to Geraldine, who was toasting a
+herring for her brothers and sisters, and enjoying the smell (which was
+all that she would get), “but perpetually now you stand exactly like
+your father. There is every excuse for your father, because he is an
+officer, and has been knocked about, as he always is; but there is no
+excuse for you, miss. Put your heel decently under your dress. If we can
+afford nothing else, we can surely afford to behave well.”
+
+The child made no answer, but tucked her heel in, and went on toasting
+nobly, while she counted the waves on the side of the herring, where his
+ribs should have been if he were not too fat; and she mentally divided
+him into seven pieces, not one of which, alas! would be for hungry
+Geraldine. “Tom must have two, after being out all night,” she was
+saying to herself; “and to grudge him would be greedy. But the bit of
+skin upon the toasting-fork will be for me, I am almost sure.”
+
+“Geraldine, the least thing you can do, when I speak to you, is to
+answer. This morning you are in a most provoking temper, and giving
+yourself the most intolerable airs. And who gave you leave to do your
+hair like that? One would fancy that you were some rising court beauty,
+or a child of the nobility at the very least, instead of a plain little
+thing that has to work--or at any rate that ought to work--to help its
+poor mother! Oh, now you are going to cry, I suppose. Let me see a tear,
+and you shall go to bed again.”
+
+“Oh, mother, mother, now what do you think has happened?” little Tom
+shouted, as he rushed in from the beach. “Father has caught all the
+smugglers, every one, and the Royal George is coming home before a
+spanking breeze, with three boats behind her, and they can't be all
+ours; and one of them must belong to Robin Lyth himself; and I would
+almost bet a penny they have been and shot him; though everybody said
+that he never could be shot. Jerry, come and look--never mind the old
+fish. I never did see such a sight in all my life. They have got the
+jib-sail on him, so he must be dead at last; and instead of half a
+crown, I am sure to get a guinea. Come along, Jerry, and perhaps I'll
+give you some of it!”
+
+“Tommy,” said his mother, “you are always so impetuous! I never
+will believe in such good luck until I see it. But you have been a
+wonderfully good brave boy, and your father may thank you for whatever
+he has done. I shall not allow Geraldine to go; for she is not a good
+child this morning. And of course I can not go myself, for your father
+will come home absolutely starving. And it would not be right for the
+little ones to go, if things are at all as you suppose. Now, if I let
+you go yourself, you are not to go beyond the flag-staff. Keep far away
+from the boats, remember; unless your father calls for you to run on any
+errand. All the rest of you go in here, with your bread and milk, and
+wait until I call you.”
+
+Mrs. Carroway locked all the little ones in a room from which they could
+see nothing of the beach, with orders to Cissy, the next girl, to feed
+them, and keep them all quiet till she came again. But while she was
+busy, with a very lively stir, to fetch out whatever could be found of
+fatness or grease that could be hoped to turn to gravy in the pan--for
+Carroway, being so lean, loved fat, and to put a fish before him was an
+insult to his bones--just at the moment when she had struck oil, in the
+shape of a very fat chop, from forth a stew, which had beaten all
+the children by stearine inertia--then at this moment, when she was
+rejoicing, the latch of the door clicked, and a man came in.
+
+“Whoever you are, you seem to me to make yourself very much at home,”
+ the lady said, sharply, without turning round, because she supposed it
+to be a well-accustomed enemy, armed with that odious “little bill.” The
+intruder made no answer, and she turned to rate him thoroughly; but the
+petulance of her eyes drew back before the sad stern gaze of his. “Who
+are you, and what do you want?” she asked, with a yellow dish in one
+hand, and a frying-pan in the other. “Geraldine, come here: that man
+looks wild.”
+
+Her visitor did look wild enough, but without any menace in his
+sorrowful dark eyes. “Can't the man speak?” she cried. “Are you mad, or
+starving? We are not very rich; but we can give you bread, poor fellow.
+Captain Carroway will be at home directly, and he will see what can be
+done for you.”
+
+“Have you not heard of the thing that has been done?” the young man
+asked her, word by word, and staying himself with one hand upon the
+dresser, because he was trembling dreadfully.
+
+“Yes, I have heard of it all. They have shot the smuggler Robin Lyth
+at last. I am very sorry for him. But it was needful; and he had no
+family.”
+
+“Lady, I am Robin Lyth. I have not been shot; nor even shot at. The man
+that has been shot, I know not how, instead of me, was--was somebody
+quite different. With all my heart I wish it had been me; and no more
+trouble.”
+
+He looked at the mother and the little girl, and sobbed, and fell upon
+a salting stool, which was to have been used that morning. Then, while
+Mrs. Carroway stood bewildered, Geraldine ran up to him, and took his
+hand, and said: “Don't cry. My papa says that men never cry. And I am so
+glad that you were not shot.”
+
+“See me kiss her,” said Robin Lyth, as he laid his lips upon the child's
+fair forehead. “If I had done it, could I do that? Darling, you will
+remember this. Madam, I am hunted like a mad dog, and shall be hanged to
+your flag-staff if I am caught. I am here to tell you that, as God looks
+down from heaven upon you and me, I did not do it--I did not even know
+it.”
+
+The smuggler stood up, with his right hand on his heart, and tears
+rolling manifestly down his cheeks, but his eyes like crystal, clear
+with truth; and the woman, who knew not that she was a widow, but felt
+it already with a helpless wonder, answered, quietly: “You speak the
+truth, sir. But what difference can it make to me?” Lyth tried to answer
+with the same true look; but neither his eyes nor his tongue would
+serve.
+
+“I shall just go and judge for myself,” she said, as if it were a
+question of marketing (such bitter defiance came over her), and she took
+no more heed of him than if he were a chair; nor even half so much, for
+she was a great judge of a chair. “Geraldine, go and put your bonnet on.
+We are going to meet your father. Tell Cissy and all the rest to come
+but the baby. The baby can not do it, I suppose. In a minute and a half
+I shall expect you all--how many? Seven?--yes, seven of you.”
+
+“Seven, mother, yes. And the baby makes it eight; and yesterday you said
+that he was worth all us together.”
+
+Robin Lyth saw that he was no more wanted, or even heeded; and without
+delay he quitted such premises of danger. Why should he linger in a
+spot where he might have violent hands laid on him, and be sped to a
+premature end, without benefit even of trial by jury? Upon this train of
+reasoning he made off.
+
+Without any manner of reasoning at all, but with fierceness of dread and
+stupidity of grief, the mother collected her children in silence, from
+the damsel of ten to the toddler of two. Then, leaving the baby tied
+down in the cradle, she pulled at the rest of them, on this side and on
+that, to get them into proper trim of dresses and of hats, as if they
+were going to be marched off to church. For that all the younger ones
+made up their minds, and put up their ears for the tinkle of the bell;
+but the elder children knew that it was worse than that, because their
+mother never looked at them.
+
+“You will go by the way of the station,” she said, for the boats were
+still out at sea, and no certainty could be made of them: “whatever it
+is, we may thank the station for it.”
+
+The poor little things looked up at her in wonder; and then, acting up
+to their discipline, set off, in lopsided pairs of a small and a big
+one, to save any tumbling and cutting of knees. The elder ones walked
+with discretion, and a strong sense of responsibility, hushed, moreover,
+by some inkling of a great black thing to meet. But the baby ones
+prattled, and skipped with their feet, and straggled away toward the
+flowers by the path. The mother of them all followed slowly and heavily,
+holding the youngest by the hand, because of its trouble in getting
+through the stones. Her heart was nearly choking, but her eyes free and
+reckless, wandering wildly over earth, and sea, and sky, in vain search
+of guidance from any or from all of them.
+
+The pinnace came nearer, with its sad, cold freight. The men took off
+their hats, and rubbed their eyes, and some of them wanted to back
+off again; but Mrs. Carroway calmly said, “Please to let me have my
+husband.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+MAIDS AND MERMAIDS
+
+
+Day comes with climbing, night by falling; hence the night is so much
+swifter. Happiness takes years to build; but misery swoops like an
+avalanche. Such, and even more depressing, are the thoughts young folk
+give way to when their first great trouble rushes and sweeps them into a
+desert, trackless to the inexperienced hope.
+
+When Mary Anerley heard, by the zealous offices of watchful friends,
+that Robin Lyth had murdered Captain Carroway ferociously, and had fled
+for his life across the seas, first wrath at such a lie was followed by
+persistent misery. She had too much faith in his manly valor and tender
+heart to accept the tale exactly as it was told to her; but still she
+could not resist the fear that in the whirl of conflict, with life
+against life, he had dealt the death. And she knew that even such a deed
+would brand him as a murderer, stamp out all love, and shatter every
+hope of quiet happiness. The blow to her pride was grievous also; for
+many a time had she told herself that a noble task lay before her--to
+rescue from unlawful ways and redeem to reputable life the man whose
+bravery and other gallant gifts had endeared him to the public and to
+her. But now, through force of wretched facts, he must be worse than
+ever.
+
+Her father and mother said never a word upon the subject to her. Mrs.
+Anerley at first longed to open out, and shed upon the child a mother's
+sympathy, as well as a mother's scolding; but firmly believing, as
+she did, the darkest version of the late event, it was better that she
+should hold her peace, according to her husband's orders.
+
+“Let the lass alone,” he said; “a word against that fellow now would
+make a sight of mischief. Suppose I had shot George Tanfield, instead
+of hiding him soundly, when he stuck up to you, why you must have been
+sorry for me, Sophy. And Mary is sorry for that rogue, no doubt, and
+believes that he did it for her sake, I dare say. The womenkind always
+do think that. If a big thief gets swung for breaking open a cash-box,
+his lassie will swear he was looking for her thimble. If you was to go
+now for discoursing of this matter, you would never put up with poor
+Poppet's account of him, and she would run him higher up, every time you
+ran him down; ay, and believe it too: such is the ways of women.”
+
+“Why, Stephen, you make me open up my eyes. I never dreamed you were
+half so cunning, and of such low opinions.”
+
+“Well, I don't know, only from my own observance. I would scarcely trust
+myself not to abuse that fellow. And, Sophy, you know you can not stop
+your tongue, like me.”
+
+“Thank God for that same! He never meant us so to do. But, Stephen, I
+will follow your advice; because it is my own opinion.”
+
+Mary was puzzled by this behavior; for everything used to be so plain
+among them. She would even have tried for some comfort from Willie,
+whose mind was very large upon all social questions. But Willie had
+solved at last the problem of perpetual motion, according to his own
+conviction, and locked himself up with his model all day; and the world
+might stand still, so long as that went on. “Oh, what would I give for
+dear Jack!” cried Mary.
+
+Worn out at length with lonely grief, she asked if she might go to Byrsa
+Cottage, for a change. Even that was refused, though her father's
+kind heart ached at the necessary denial. Sharp words again had passed
+between the farmer and the tanner concerning her, and the former
+believed that his brother-in-law would even encourage the outlaw still.
+And for Mary herself now the worst of it was that she had nothing to lay
+hold of in the way of complaint or grievance. It was not like that first
+estrangement, when her father showed how much he felt it in a hundred
+ways, and went about everything upside down, and comforted her by his
+want of comfort. Now it was ten times worse than that, for her father
+took everything quite easily!
+
+Shocking as it may be, this was true. Stephen Anerley had been through
+a great many things since the violence of his love-time, and his views
+upon such tender subjects were not so tender as they used to be. With
+the eyes of wisdom he looked back, having had his own way in the matter,
+upon such young sensations as very laudable, but curable. In his own
+case he had cured them well, and, upon the whole, very happily, by a
+good long course of married life; but having tried that remedy alone,
+how could he say that there was no better? He remembered how his own
+miseries had soon subsided, or gone into other grooves, after matrimony.
+This showed that they were transient, but did not prove such a course
+to be the only cure for them. Recovering from illness, has any man been
+known to say that the doctor recovered him?
+
+Mrs. Anerley's views upon the subject were much the same, though
+modified, of course, by the force of her own experience. She might have
+had a much richer man than Stephen; and when he was stingy, she reminded
+him of that, which, after a little disturbance, generally terminated
+in five guineas. And now she was clear that if Mary were not worried,
+condoled with, or cried over, she would take her own time, and come
+gradually round, and be satisfied with Harry Tanfield. Harry was a fine
+young fellow, and worshipped the ground that Mary walked upon; and it
+seemed a sort of equity that he should have her, as his father had
+been disappointed of her mother. Every Sunday morning he trimmed his
+whiskers, and put on a wonderful waistcoat; and now he did more, for he
+bought a new hat, and came to church to look at her.
+
+Oftentimes now, by all these doings, the spirit of the girl was roused,
+and her courage made ready to fly out in words; but the calm look of the
+elders stopped her, and then true pride came to her aid. If they chose
+to say nothing of the matter which was in her heart continually, would
+she go whining to them about it, and scrape a grain of pity from
+a cartload of contempt? One day, as she stood before the swinging
+glass--that present from Aunt Popplewell which had moved her mother's
+wrath so--she threw back her shoulders, and smoothed the plaits of her
+nice little waist, and considered herself. The humor of the moment grew
+upon her, and crept into indulgence, as she saw what a very fair lass
+she was, and could not help being proud of it. She saw how the soft rich
+damask of her cheeks returned at being thought of, and the sparkle
+of her sweet blue eyes, and the merry delight of her lips, that made
+respectable people want to steal a kiss, from the pure enticement of
+good-will.
+
+“I will cry no more in the nights,” she said. “Why should I make such a
+figure of myself, with nobody to care for it? And here is my hair full
+of kinkles and neglect! I declare, if he ever came back, he would say,
+'What a fright you are become, my Mary!' Where is that stuff of Aunt
+Deborah's, I wonder, that makes her hair like satin? It is high time to
+leave off being such a dreadful dowdy. I will look as nice as ever, just
+to let them know that their cruelty has not killed me.”
+
+Virtuous resolves commend themselves, and improve with being carried
+out. She put herself into her very best trim, as simple as a lily, and
+as perfect as a rose, though the flutter of a sigh or two enlarged her
+gentle breast. She donned a very graceful hat, adorned with sweet ribbon
+right skillfully smuggled; and she made up her mind to have the benefit
+of the air.
+
+The prettiest part of all Anerley Farm, for those who are not farmers,
+is a soft little valley, where a brook comes down, and passes from
+voluntary ruffles into the quiet resignation of a sheltered lake. A
+pleasant and a friendly little water-spread is here, cheerful to the
+sunshine, and inviting to the moon, with a variety of gleamy streaks,
+according to the sky and breeze. Pasture-land and arable come sloping to
+the margin, which, instead of being rough and rocky, lips the pool with
+gentleness. Ins and outs of little bays afford a nice variety, while
+round the brink are certain trees of a modest and unpretentious bent.
+These having risen to a very fair distance toward the sky, come down
+again, scarcely so much from a doubt of their merits, as through
+affection to their native land. In summer they hang like a permanent
+shower of green to refresh the bright water; and in winter, like loose
+osier-work, or wattles curved for binding.
+
+Under one of the largest of these willows the runaway Jack had made a
+seat, whereon to sit and watch his toy boat cruising on the inland wave.
+Often when Mary was tired of hoping for the return of her playmate, she
+came to this place to think about him, and wonder whether he thought of
+her. And now in the soft December evening (lonely and sad, but fair to
+look at, like herself) she was sitting here.
+
+The keen east wind, which had set in as Captain Brown predicted, was
+over now, and succeeded by the gentler influence of the west. Nothing
+could be heard in this calm nook but the lingering touch of the dying
+breeze, and the long soft murmur of the distant sea, and the silvery
+plash of a pair of coots at play. Neither was much to be seen, except
+the wavering glisten and long shadows of the mere, the tracery of trees
+against the fading light, and the outline of the maiden as she leaned
+against the trunk. Generations of goat-moths in their early days of
+voracity had made a nice hollow for her hat to rest in, and some of the
+powdering willow dusted her bright luxuriant locks with gold. Her face
+was by no means wan or gloomy, and she added to the breezes not a single
+sigh. This happened without any hardness of heart, or shallow contempt
+of the nobler affections; simply from the hopefulness of healthful
+youth, and the trust a good will has in powers of good.
+
+She was looking at those coots, who were full of an idea that the winter
+had spent itself in that east wind, that the gloss of spring plumage
+must be now upon their necks, and that they felt their toes growing
+warmer toward the downy tepefaction of a perfect nest. Improving a long
+and kind acquaintance with these birds, some of whom have confidence in
+human nature, Mary was beginning to be absent from her woes, and joyful
+in the pleasure of a thoughtless pair, when suddenly, with one accord,
+they dived, and left a bright splash and a wrinkle. “Somebody is coming;
+they must have seen an enemy,” said the damsel to herself. “I am sure
+I never moved. I will never have them shot by any wicked poacher.” To
+watch the bank nicely, without being seen, she drew in her skirt and
+shrank behind the tree, not from any fear, but just to catch the fellow;
+for one of the laborers on the farm, who had run at his master with
+a pitchfork once, was shrewdly suspected of poaching with a gun. But
+keener eyes than those of any poacher were upon her, and the lightest of
+light steps approached.
+
+“Oh, Robin, are you come, then, at last?” cried Mary.
+
+“Three days I have been lurking, in the hope of this. Heart of my heart,
+are you glad to see me?”
+
+“I should think that I was. It is worth a world of crying. Oh, where
+have you been this long, long time?”
+
+“Let me have you in my arms, if it is but for a moment. You are not
+afraid of me?--you are not ashamed to love me?”
+
+“I love you all the better for your many dreadful troubles. Not a word
+do I believe of all the wicked people say of you. Don't be afraid of me.
+You may kiss me, Robin.”
+
+“You are such a beautiful spick and span! And I am only fit to go into
+the pond. Oh, Mary, what a shame of me to take advantage of you!”
+
+“Well, I think that it is time for you to leave off now. Though you must
+not suppose that I think twice about my things. When I look at you, it
+makes me long to give you my best cloak and a tidy hat. Oh, where is all
+your finery gone, poor Robin?”
+
+“Endeavor not to be insolent, on the strength of your fine clothes.
+Remember that I have abandoned free trade; and the price of every
+article will rise at once.”
+
+Mary Anerley not only smiled, but laughed, with the pleasure of a great
+relief. She had always scorned the idea that her lover had even made a
+shot at Carroway, often though the brave lieutenant had done the like to
+him; and now she felt sure that he could clear himself; or how could
+he be so light-hearted? “You see that I am scarcely fit to lead off a
+country-dance with you,” said Robin, still holding both her hands, and
+watching the beauty of her clear bright eyes, which might gather big
+tears at any moment, as the deep blue sky is a sign of sudden rain; “and
+it will be a very long time, my darling, before you see me in gay togs
+again.”
+
+“I like you a great deal better so. You always look brave--but you look
+so honest now!”
+
+“That is a most substantial saying, and worthy of the race of Anerley.
+How I wish that your father would like me, Mary! I suppose it is
+hopeless to wish for that?”
+
+“No, not at all--if you could keep on looking shabby. My dear father
+has a most generous mind. If he only could be brought to see how you are
+ill-treated--”
+
+“Alas! I shall have no chance of letting him see that. Before to-morrow
+morning I must say good-by to England. My last chance of seeing you
+was now this evening. I bless every star that is in the heaven now. I
+trusted to my luck, and it has not deceived me.”
+
+“Robin dear, I never wish to try to be too pious. But I think that you
+should rather trust in Providence than starlight.”
+
+“So I do. And it is Providence that has kept me out of sight--out of
+sight of enemies, and in sight of you, my Mary. The Lord looks down on
+every place where His lovely angels wander. You are one of His angels,
+Mary; and you have made a man of me. For years I shall not see you,
+darling; never more again, perhaps. But as long as I live you will be
+here; and the place shall be kept pure for you. If we only could have
+a shop together--oh, how honest I would be! I would give full weight,
+besides the paper; I would never sell an egg more than three weeks old;
+and I would not even adulterate! But that is a dream of the past, I
+fear. Oh, I never shall hoist the Royal Arms. But I mean to serve under
+them, and fight my way. My captain shall be Lord Nelson.”
+
+“That is the very thing that you were meant for. I will never forgive
+Dr. Upandown for not putting you into the navy. You could have done no
+smuggling then.”
+
+“I am not altogether sure of that. However, I will shun scandal, as
+behooves a man who gets so much. You have not asked me to clear myself
+of that horrible thing about poor Carroway. I love you the more for not
+asking me; it shows your faith so purely. But you have the right to know
+all I know. There is no fear of any interruption here; so, Mary, I will
+tell you, if you are sure that you can bear it.”
+
+“Yes, oh yes! Do tell me all you know. It is so frightful that I must
+hear it.”
+
+“What I have to say will not frighten you, darling, because I did
+not even see the deed. But my escape was rather strange, and deserves
+telling better than I can tell it, even with you to encourage me
+by listening. When we were so suddenly caught in the cave, through
+treachery of some of our people, I saw in a moment that we must be
+taken, but resolved to have some fun for it, with a kind of whim which
+comes over me sometimes. So I knocked away the lights, and began myself
+to splash with might and main, and ordered the rest to do likewise. We
+did it so well that the place was like a fountain or a geyser; and I
+sent a great dollop of water into the face of the poor lieutenant--the
+only assault I have ever made upon him. There was just light enough for
+me to know him, because he was so tall and strange; but I doubt whether
+he knew me at all. He became excited, as he well might be; he dashed
+away the water from his eyes with one hand, and with the other made
+a wild sword-cut, rushing forward as if to have at me. Like a bird, I
+dived into the water from our gunwale, and under the keel of the other
+boat, and rose to the surface at the far side of the cave. In the very
+act of plunging, a quick flash came before me--or at least I believed
+so afterward--and a loud roar, as I struck the wave. It might have been
+only from my own eyes and ears receiving so suddenly the cleavage of the
+water. If I thought anything at all about it, it was that somebody had
+shot at me; but expecting to be followed, I swam rapidly away. I did not
+even look back, as I kept in the dark of the rocks, for it would have
+lost a stroke, and a stroke was more than I could spare. To my great
+surprise, I heard no sound of any boat coming after me, nor any shouts
+of Carroway, such as I am accustomed to. But swimming as I was, for my
+own poor life, like an otter with a pack of hounds after him, I
+assure you I did not look much after anything except my own run of the
+gauntlet.”
+
+“Of course not. How could you? It makes me draw my breath to think of
+you swimming in the dark like that, with deep water, and caverns, and
+guns, and all!”
+
+“Mary, I thought that my time was come; and only one beautiful image
+sustained me, when I came to think of it afterward. I swam with my
+hands well under water, and not a breath that could be heard, and my cap
+tucked into my belt, and my sea-going pumps slipped away into a pocket.
+The water was cold, but it only seemed to freshen me, and I found myself
+able to breathe very pleasantly in the gentle rise and fall of waves.
+Yet I never expected to escape, with so many boats to come after me. For
+now I could see two boats outside, as well as old Carroway's pinnace in
+the cave; and if once they caught sight of me, I could never get away.
+
+“When I saw those two boats upon the watch outside, I scarcely knew what
+to do for the best, whether to put my breast to it and swim out, or
+to hide in some niche with my body under water, and cover my face with
+oar-weed. Luckily I took the bolder course, remembering their portfires,
+which would make the cave like day. Not everybody could have swum out
+through that entrance, against a spring-tide and the lollop of the sea;
+and one dash against the rocks would have settled me. But I trusted in
+the Lord, and tried a long, slow stroke.
+
+“My enemies must have been lost in dismay, and panic, and utter
+confusion, or else they must have espied me, for twice or thrice, as I
+met the waves, my head and shoulders were thrown above the surface, do
+what I would; and I durst not dive, for I wanted my eyes every moment.
+I kept on the darkest side, of course, but the shadows were not half
+so deep as I could wish; and worst of all, outside there was a piece of
+moonlight, which I must cross within fifty yards of the bigger of the
+sentry boats.
+
+“The mouth of that cave is two fathoms wide for a longish bit of
+channel; and, Mary dear, if I had not been supported by continual
+thoughts of you, I must have gone against the sides, or downright to the
+bottom, from the waves keeping knocking me about so. I may tell you that
+I felt that I should never care again, as my clothes began to bag about
+me, except to go down to the bottom and be quiet, but for the blessed
+thought of standing up some day, at the 'hymeneal altar,' as great
+people call it, with a certain lovely Mary.”
+
+“Oh, Robin, now you make me laugh, when I ought to be quite crying. If
+such a thing should ever be, I shall expect to see you swimming.”
+
+“Such a thing will be, as sure as I stand here--though not at all in
+hymeneal garb just now. Whatever my whole heart is set upon, I do, and
+overcome all obstacles. Remember that, and hold fast, darling. However,
+I had now to overcome the sea, which is worse than any tide in the
+affairs of men. A long and hard tussle it was, I assure you, to fight
+against the indraught, and to drag my frame through the long hillocky
+gorge. At last, however, I managed it; and to see the open waves again
+put strength into my limbs, and vigor into my knocked-about brain. I
+suppose that you can not understand it, Mary, but I never enjoyed a
+thing more than the danger of crossing that strip of moonlight. I could
+see the very eyes and front teeth of the men who were sitting there to
+look out for me if I should slip their mates inside; and knowing the
+twist of every wave, and the vein of every tide-run, I rested in a
+smooth dark spot, and considered their manners quietly. They had not yet
+heard a word of any doings in the cavern, but their natures were up for
+some business to do, as generally happens with beholders. Having nothing
+to do, they were swearing at the rest.
+
+“In the place where I was halting now the line of a jagged cliff seemed
+to cut the air, and fend off the light from its edges. You can only see
+such a thing from the level of the sea, and it looks very odd when you
+see it, as if the moon and you were a pair of playing children, feeling
+round a corner for a glimpse of one another. But plain enough it was,
+and far too plain, that the doubling of that little cape would treble my
+danger, by reason of the bold moonlight, I knew that my only refuge was
+another great hollow in the crags between the cave I had escaped from
+and the point--a place which is called the 'Church Cave,' from an
+old legend that it leads up to Flamborough church. To the best of my
+knowledge, it does nothing of the kind, at any rate now; but it has a
+narrow fissure, known to few except myself, up which a nimble man
+may climb; and this was what I hoped to do. Also it has a very narrow
+entrance, through which the sea flows into it, so that a large boat can
+not enter, and a small one would scarcely attempt it in the dark, unless
+it were one of my own, hard pressed. Now it seemed almost impossible for
+me to cross that moonlight without being seen by those fellows in the
+boat, who could pull, of course, four times as fast as I could swim, not
+to mention the chances of a musket-ball. However, I was just about to
+risk it, for my limbs were growing very cold, when I heard a loud
+shout from the cave which I had left, and knew that the men there were
+summoning their comrades. These at once lay out upon their oars, and
+turned their backs to me, and now was my good time. The boat came
+hissing through the water toward the Dovecote, while I stretched away
+for the other snug cave. Being all in a flurry, they kept no look-out;
+if the moon was against me, my good stars were in my favor. Nobody
+saw me, and I laughed in my wet sleeves as I thought of the rage of
+Carroway, little knowing that the fine old fellow was beyond all rage or
+pain.”
+
+“How wonderful your luck was, and your courage too!” cried Mary, who had
+listened with bright tears upon her cheeks. “Not one man in a thousand
+could have done so bold a thing. And how did you get away at last, poor
+Robin?”
+
+“Exactly as I meant to do, from the time I formed my plan. The Church
+has ever been a real friend in need to me; I took the name for a lucky
+omen, and swam in with a brisker stroke. It is the prettiest of all the
+caves, to my mind, though the smallest, with a sweet round basin, and a
+playful little beach, and nothing very terrible about it. I landed, and
+rested with a thankful heart upon the shelly couch of the mermaids.”
+
+“Oh, Robin, I hope none of them came to you. They are so wonderfully
+beautiful. And no one that ever has seen them cares any more for--for
+dry people that wear dresses.”
+
+“Mary, you delight me much, by showing signs of jealousy. Fifty may have
+come, but I saw not one, for I fell into a deep calm sleep. If they had
+come, I would have spurned them all, not only from my constancy to you,
+my dear, but from having had too much drip already. Mary, I see a man on
+the other side of the mere, not opposite to us, but a good bit further
+down. You see those two swimming birds: look far away between them, you
+will see something moving.”
+
+“I see nothing, either standing still or moving. It is growing too dark
+for any eyes not thoroughly trained in smuggling. But that reminds me to
+tell you, Robin, that a strange man--a gentleman they seemed to say--has
+been seen upon our land, and he wanted to see me, without my father
+knowing it. But only think! I have never even asked you whether you are
+hungry--perhaps even starving! How stupid, how selfish, how churlish of
+me! But the fault is yours, because I had so much to hear of.”
+
+“Darling, you may trust me not to starve, I can feed by-and-by. For the
+present I must talk, that you may know all about everything, and bear me
+harmless in your mind, when evil things are said of me. Have you heard
+that I went to see Widow Carroway, even before she had heard of her
+loss, but not before I was hunted? I knew that I must do so, now or
+never, before the whole world was up in arms against me; and I thank God
+that I saw her. A man might think nothing of such an act, or even might
+take it for hypocrisy; but a woman's heart is not so black. Though she
+did not even know what I meant, for she had not felt her awful blow, and
+I could not tell her of it, she did me justice afterward. In the thick
+of her terrible desolation, she stood beside her husband's grave, in
+Bridlington Priory Church yard, and she said to a hundred people there:
+'Here lies my husband, foully murdered. The coroner's jury have brought
+their verdict against Robin Lyth the smuggler. Robin Lyth is as innocent
+as I am. I know who did it, and time will show. My curse is upon him;
+and my eyes are on him now.' Then she fell down in a fit, and the
+Preventive men, who were drawn up in a row, came and carried her away.
+Did anybody tell you, darling? Perhaps they keep such things from you.”
+
+“Part of it I heard; but not so clearly. I was told that she acquitted
+you and I blessed her in my heart for it.”
+
+“Even more than that she did. As soon as she got home again, she wrote
+to Robin Cockscroft--a very few words, but as strong as could be,
+telling him that I should have no chance of justice if I were caught
+just now; that she must have time to carry out her plans; that the Lord
+would soon raise up good friends to help her; and as sure as there was
+a God in heaven, she would bring the man who did it to the gallows. Only
+that I must leave the land at once. And that is what I shall do
+this very night. Now I have told you almost all. Mary, we must say
+'good-by.'”
+
+“But surely I shall hear from you sometimes?” said Mary, striving to be
+brave, and to keep her voice from trembling. “Years and years, without a
+word--and the whole world bitter against you and me! Oh, Robin, I think
+that it will break my heart. And I must not even talk of you.”
+
+“Think of me, darling, while I think of you. Thinking is better than
+talking, I shall never talk of you, but be thinking all the more.
+Talking ruins thinking. Take this token of the time you saved me, and
+give me that bit of blue ribbon, my Mary; I shall think of your eyes
+every time I kiss it. Kiss it yourself before you give it to me.”
+
+Like a good girl, she did what she was told to do. She gave him the
+love-knot from her breast, and stored his little trinket in that pure
+shrine.
+
+“But sometimes--sometimes, I shall hear of you?” she whispered,
+lingering, and trembling in the last embrace.
+
+“To be sure, you shall hear of me from time to time, through Robin and
+Joan Cockscroft. I will not grieve you by saying, 'Be true to me,' my
+noble one, and my everlasting love.”
+
+Mary was comforted, and ceased to cry. She was proud of him thus in the
+depth of his trouble; and she prayed to God to bless him through the
+long sad time.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+FACT, OR FACTOR
+
+
+“Papa, I have brought you a wonderful letter,” cried Miss Janetta
+Upround, toward supper-time of that same night; “and the most miraculous
+thing about it is that there is no post to pay. Oh, how stupid I am! I
+ought to have got at least a shilling out of you for postage.”
+
+“My dear, be sorry for your sins, and not for having failed to add to
+them. Our little world is brimful of news just now, but nearly all of
+it bad news. Why, bless me, this is in regular print, and it never has
+passed through the post at all, which explains the most astounding fact
+of positively naught to pay. Janetta, every day I congratulate myself
+upon such a wondrous daughter. But I never could have hoped that even
+you would bring me a letter gratis.”
+
+“But the worst of it is that I deserve no credit. If I had cheated the
+postman, there would have been something to be proud of. But this letter
+came in the most ignominious way--poked under the gate, papa! It is
+sealed with a foreign coin! Oh, dear, dear, I am all in a tingle to know
+all about it. I saw it by the moonlight, and it must belong to me.”
+
+“My dear, it says, 'Private, and to his own hands.' Therefore you had
+better go, and think no more about it. I confide to you many of my
+business matters: or at any rate you get them out of me: but this being
+private, you must think no more about it.”
+
+“Darling papa, what a flagrant shame! The man must have done it with
+no other object than to rob me of every wink of sleep. If I swallow the
+outrage and retire, will you promise to tell me every word to-morrow?
+You preached a most exquisite sermon last Sunday about the meanness and
+futility of small concealments.”
+
+“Be off!” cried the rector; “you are worse than Mr. Mordacks, who lays
+down the law about frankness perpetually, but never lets me guess what
+his own purpose is.”
+
+“Oh, now I see where the infection comes from! Papa, I am off, for fear
+of catching it myself. Don't tell me, whatever you do. I never can sleep
+upon dark mysteries.”
+
+“Poor dear, you shall not have your rest disturbed,” Dr. Upround said,
+sweetly, as he closed the door behind her; “you are much too good a
+girl for other people's plagues to visit you.” Then, as he saddled his
+pleasant old nose with the tranquil span of spectacles, the smile on his
+lips and the sigh of his breast arrived at a quiet little compromise. He
+was proud of his daughter, her quickness and power to get the upper
+turn of words with him; but he grieved at her not having any deep
+impressions, even after his very best sermons. But her mother always
+told him not to be in any hurry, for even she herself had felt no very
+profound impressions until she married a clergyman; and that argument
+always made him smile (as invisibly as possible), because he had not
+detected yet their existence in his better half. Such questions are
+most delicate, and a husband can only set mute example. A father, on
+the other hand, is bound to use his pastoral crook upon his children
+foremost.
+
+“Now for this letter,” said Dr. Upround, holding council with himself;
+“evidently a good clerk, and perhaps a first-rate scholar. One of the
+very best Greek scholars of the age does all his manuscript in printing
+hand, when he wishes it to be legible. And a capital plan it is--without
+meaning any pun. I can read this like a gazette itself.”
+
+
+“REVEREND AND WORSHIPFUL SIR,--Your long and highly valued kindness
+requires at least a word from me, before I leave this country. I have
+not ventured into your presence, because it might place you in a very
+grave predicament. Your duty to King and State might compel you with
+your own hand to arrest me; and against your hand I could not strive.
+The evidence brought before you left no choice but to issue a warrant
+against me, though it grieved your kind heart to do that same. Sir, I
+am purely innocent of the vile crime laid against me. I used no fire-arm
+that night, neither did any of my men. And it is for their sake, as well
+as my own, that I now take the liberty of writing this. Failing of me,
+the authorities may bring my comrades to trial, and convict them. If
+that were so, it would become my duty as a man to surrender myself,
+and meet my death in the hope of saving them. But if the case is sifted
+properly, they must be acquitted; for no fire-arm of any kind was in my
+boat, except one pair of pistols, in a locker under the after thwart,
+and they happened to be unloaded. I pray you to verify this, kind sir.
+My firm belief is that the revenue officer was shot by one of his own
+men; and his widow has the same opinion. I hear that the wound was in
+the back of the head. If we had carried fire-arms, not one of us could
+have shot him so.
+
+“It may have been an accident; I can not say. Even so, the man whose
+mishap it was is not likely to acknowledge it. And I know that in a
+court of law truth must be paid for dearly. I venture to commit to your
+good hands a draft upon a well-known Holland firm, which amounts to 78
+pounds British, for the defense of the men who are in custody. I know
+that you as a magistrate can not come forward as their defender; but
+I beg you as a friend of justice to place the money for their benefit.
+Also especially to direct attention to the crew of the revenue boat and
+their guns.
+
+“And now I fear greatly to encroach upon your kindness, and very
+long-suffering good-will toward me. But I have brought into sad trouble
+and distress with her family--who are most obstinate people--and with
+the opinion of the public, I suppose, a young lady worth more than all
+the goods I ever ran, or ever could run, if I went on for fifty years.
+By name she is Mistress Mary Anerley, and by birth the daughter of
+Captain Anerley, of Anerley Farm, outside our parish. If your reverence
+could only manage to ride round that way upon coming home from Sessions,
+once or twice in the fine weather, and to say a kind word or two to my
+Mary, and a good word, if any can be said of me, to her parents, who are
+stiff but worthy people, it would be a truly Christian act, and such as
+you delight in, on this side of the Dane-dike.
+
+“Reverend sir, I must now say farewell. From you I have learned almost
+everything I know, within the pale of statutes, which repeal one another
+continually. I have wandered sadly outside that pale, and now I pay the
+penalty. If I had only paid heed to your advice, and started in business
+with the capital acquired by free trade, and got it properly protected,
+I might have been able to support my parents, and even be churchwarden
+of Flamborough. You always told me that my unlawful enterprise must
+close in sadness; and your words have proved too true. But I never
+expected anything like this; and I do not understand it yet. A
+penetrating mind like yours, with all the advantages of authority, even
+that is likely to be baffled in such a difficult case as this.
+
+“Reverend sir, my case is hard; for I always have labored to establish
+peaceful trade; and I must have succeeded again, if honor had guided all
+my followers. We always relied upon the coast-guard to be too late for
+any mischief; and so they would have been this time, if their acts had
+been straightforward. In sorrow and lowness of fortune, I remain, with
+humble respect and gratitude, your Worship's poor pupil and banished
+parishioner,
+
+“ROBIN LYTH, of Flamborough.”
+
+
+“Come, now, Robin,” Dr. Upround said, as soon as he had well considered
+this epistle, “I have put up with many a checkmate at your hands, but
+not without the fair delight of a counter-stroke at the enemy. Here you
+afford me none of that. You are my master in every way; and quietly you
+make me make your moves, quite as if I were the black in a problem.
+You leave me to conduct your fellow-smugglers' case, to look after your
+sweetheart, and to make myself generally useful. By-the-way, that touch
+about my pleading his cause in my riding-boots, and with a sessional
+air about me, is worthy of the great Verdoni. Neither is that a bad hit
+about my Christianity stopping at the Dane-dike. Certes, I shall have
+to call on that young lady, though from what I have heard of the sturdy
+farmer, I may both ride and reason long, even after my greatest exploits
+at the Sessions, without converting him to free trade; and trebly so
+after that deplorable affair. I wonder whether we shall ever get to the
+bottom of that mystery. How often have I warned the boy that mischief
+was quite sure to come! though I never even dreamed that it would be so
+bad as this.”
+
+Since Dr. Upround first came to Flamborough, nothing (not even the
+infliction of his nickname) had grieved him so deeply as the sad death
+of Carroway. From the first he felt certain that his own people were
+guiltless of any share in it. But his heart misgave him as to distant
+smugglers, men who came from afar freebooting, bringing over ocean
+woes to men of settlement, good tithe-payers. For such men (plainly of
+foreign breed, and very plain specimens of it) had not at all succeeded
+in eluding observation, in a neighborhood where they could have no
+honest calling. Flamborough had called to witness Filey, and Filey had
+attested Bridlington, that a stranger on horseback had appeared among
+them with a purpose obscurely evil. They were right enough as to the
+fact, although the purpose was not evil, as little Denmark even now
+began to own.
+
+“Here I am again!” cried Mr. Mordacks, laying vehement hold of the
+rector's hand, upon the following morning; “just arrived from York, dear
+sir, after riding half the night, and going anywhere you please; except
+perhaps where you would like to send me, if charity and Christian
+courtesy allowed. My dear sir, have you heard the news? I perceive by
+your countenance that you have not. Ah, you are generally benighted in
+these parts. Your caves have got something to do with it. The mind gets
+accustomed to them.”
+
+“I venture to think, Mr. Mordacks, on the whole,” said the rector,
+who studied this man gently, “that sometimes you are rapid in your
+conclusions. Possibly of the two extremes it is the more desirable;
+especially in these parts, because of its great rarity. Still the mere
+fact of some caves existing, in or out of my parish, whichever it may
+be, scarcely seems to prove that all the people of Flamborough live in
+them. And even if we did, it was the manner of the ancient seers, both
+in the Classics, and in Holy Writ--”
+
+“Sir, I know all about Elijah and Obadiah, and the rest of them. Profane
+literature we leave now for clerks in holy orders--we positively have no
+time for it. Everything begins to move with accelerated pace. This is a
+new century, and it means to make its mark. It begins very badly; but
+it will go on all the better. And I hope to have the pleasure, at a
+very early day, of showing you one of its leading men, a man of large
+intellect, commanding character, the most magnificent principles--and,
+in short, lots of money. You must be quite familiar with the name of Sir
+Duncan Yordas.”
+
+“I fancy that I have heard or seen it somewhere. Oh, something to do
+with the Hindoos, or the Africans. I never pay much attention to such
+things.”
+
+“Neither do I, Dr. Upround. Still somebody must, and a lot of money
+comes of it. Their idols have diamond eyes, which purity of worship
+compels us to confiscate. And there are many other ways of getting on
+among them, while wafting and expanding them into a higher sphere of
+thought. The mere fact of Sir Duncan having feathered his nest--pardon
+so vulgar an expression, doctor--proves that while giving, we may also
+receive: for which we have the highest warranty.”
+
+“The laborer is worthy of his hire, Mr. Mordacks. At the same time we
+should remember also--”
+
+“What St. Paul says per contra. Quite so. That is always my first
+consideration, when I work for my employers. Ah, Dr. Upround, few men
+give such pure service as your humble servant. I have twice had the
+honor of handing you my card. If ever you fall into any difficulty,
+where zeal, fidelity, and high principle, combined with very low
+charges--”
+
+“Mr. Mordacks, my opinion of you is too high for even yourself to add to
+it. But what has this Sir Duncan Yorick--”
+
+“Yordas, my dear sir--Sir Duncan Yordas--the oldest family in Yorkshire.
+Men of great power, both for good and evil, mainly, perhaps, the latter.
+It has struck me sometimes that the county takes its name--But etymology
+is not my forte. What has he to do with us, you ask? Sir, I will answer
+you most frankly. 'Coram populo' is my business motto. Excuse me,
+I think I hear that door creak. No, a mere fancy--we are quite 'in
+camera.' Very well; reverend sir, prepare your mind for a highly
+astounding disclosure.”
+
+“I have lived too long to be astounded, my good sir. But allow me to put
+on my spectacles. Now I am prepared for almost anything.”
+
+“Dr. Upround, my duty compels me to enter largely into minds. Your mind
+is of a lofty order--calm, philosophic, benevolent. You have proved this
+by your kind reception of me, a stranger, almost an intruder. You have
+judged from my manners and appearance, which are shaped considerably by
+the inner man, that my object was good, large, noble. And yet you have
+not been quite able to refrain, at weak moments perhaps, but still a
+dozen times a day, from exclaiming in the commune of your heart, 'What
+the devil does this man want in my parish?'”
+
+“My good sir, I never use bad language; and if I did my duty, I should
+now inflict--”
+
+“Five shillings for your poor-box. There it is. And it serves me quite
+right for being too explicit, and forgetting my reverence to the
+cloth. However, I have coarsely expressed your thoughts. Also you have
+frequently said to yourself, 'This man prates of openness, but I find
+him closer than any oyster.' Am I right? Yes, I see that I am, by
+your bow. Very well, you may suppose what pain it gave me to have
+the privilege of intercourse with a perfect gentleman and an eloquent
+divine, and yet feel myself in an ambiguous position. In a few words I
+will clear myself, being now at liberty to indulge that pleasure. I have
+been here, as agent for Sir Duncan Yordas, to follow up the long-lost
+clew to his son, and only child, who for very many years was believed
+to be out of all human pursuit. My sanguine and penetrating mind scorned
+rumors, and went in for certainty. I have found Sir Duncan's son, and
+am able to identify him, beyond all doubt, as a certain young man well
+known to you, and perhaps too widely known, by the name of Robin Lyth.”
+
+In spite of the length of his experience of the world, in a place of so
+many adventures, the rector of Flamborough was astonished, and perhaps
+a little vexed as well. If anything was to be found out, in such a
+headlong way, about one of his parishioners, and notably such a pet
+pupil and favorite, the proper thing would have been that he himself
+should do it. Failing that, he should at least have been consulted,
+enlisted, or at any rate apprised of what was toward. But instead of
+that, here he had been hoodwinked (by this marvel of incarnate candor
+employed in the dark about several little things), and then suddenly
+enlightened, when the job was done. Gentle and void of self-importance
+as he was, it misliked him to be treated so.
+
+“This is a wonderful piece of news,” he said, as he fixed a calm gaze
+upon the keen, hard eyes of Mordacks. “You understand your business,
+sir, and would not make such a statement unless you could verify it. But
+I hope that you may not find cause to regret that you have treated me
+with so little confidence.”
+
+“I am not open to that reproach. Dr. Upround, consider my instructions.
+I was strictly forbidden to disclose my object until certainty should
+be obtained. That being done, I have hastened to apprise you first of
+a result which is partly due to your own good offices. Shake hands,
+my dear sir, and acquit me of rudeness--the last thing of which I am
+capable.”
+
+The rector was mollified, and gave his hand to the gallant general
+factor. “Allow me to add my congratulations upon your wonderful
+success,” he said; “but would that I had known it some few hours sooner!
+It might have saved you a vast amount of trouble. I might have kept
+Robin well within your reach. I fear that he is now beyond it.”
+
+“I am grieved to hear you say so. But according to my last instructions,
+although he is in strict concealment, I can lay hands upon him when the
+time is ripe.”
+
+“I fear not. He sailed last night for the Continent, which is a vague
+destination, especially in such times as these. But perhaps that was
+part of your skillful contrivance?”
+
+“Not so. And for the time it throws me out. I have kept most careful
+watch on him. But the difficulty was that he might confound my vigilance
+with that of his enemies; take me for a constable, I mean. And perhaps
+he has done so, after all. Things have gone luckily for me in the main;
+but that murder came in most unseasonably. It was the very thing that
+should have been avoided. Sir Duncan will need all his influence there.
+Suppose for a moment that young Robin did not do it--”
+
+“Mr. Mordacks, you frighten me. What else could you suppose?”
+
+“Certainly--yes. A parishioner of yours, when not engaged unlawfully
+upon the high seas. We heartily hope that he did not do it, and we give
+him the benefit of the doubt; in which I shared largely, until it became
+so manifest that he was a Yordas. A Yordas has made a point of slaying
+his man--and sometimes from three to a dozen men--until within the last
+two generations. In the third generation the law revives, as is hinted,
+I think, in the Decalogue. In my professional course a large stock of
+hereditary trail--so to speak--comes before me. Some families always
+drink, some always steal, some never tell lies because they never know a
+falsehood, some would sell their souls for a sixpence, and these are the
+most respectable of any--”
+
+“My dear sir, my dear sir, I beg your pardon for interrupting you; but
+in my house the rule is to speak well of people, or else to say nothing
+about them.”
+
+“Then you must resign your commission, doctor; for how can you take
+depositions? But, as I was saying, I should have some hope of the
+innocence of young Robin if it should turn out that his father, Sir
+Duncan, has destroyed a good many of the native race in India. It may
+reasonably be hoped that he has done so, which would tend very strongly
+to exonerate his son. But the evidence laid before your Worship and
+before the coroner was black--black--black.”
+
+“My position forbids me to express opinions. The evidence compelled me
+to issue the warrant. But knowing your position, I may show you this, in
+every word of which I have perfect faith.”
+
+With these words Dr. Upround produced the letter which he had received
+last night, and the general factor took in all the gist of it in less
+than half a minute.
+
+“Very good! very good!” he said, with a smile of experienced
+benevolence. “We believe some of it. Our duty is to do so. There are two
+points of importance in it. One as to the girl he is in love with, and
+the other his kind liberality to the fellows who will have to bear the
+brunt of it.”
+
+“You speak sarcastically, and I hope unfairly. To my mind, the most
+important facts are these--that poor Carroway was shot from behind, and
+that the smugglers had no fire-arms, except two pistols, both unloaded.”
+
+“Who is to prove that, Dr. Upround? Their mouths are closed; and if
+they were open, would anybody believe them? We knew long ago that the
+vigilant and deservedly lamented officer took the deathblow from behind;
+but of that how simple is the explanation! The most intelligent of his
+crew, and apparently his best subordinate, whose name is John Cadman,
+deposes that his lamented chief turned round for one moment to give an
+order, and during that moment received the shot. His evidence is the
+more weighty because he does not go too far with it. He does not pretend
+to say who fired. He knows only that one of the smugglers did. His
+evidence will hang those six poor fellows, from the laudable desire of
+the law to include the right one. But I trust that the right one will be
+far away.”
+
+“I trust not. If even one of them is condemned, even to transportation,
+Robin Lyth will surrender immediately. You doubt it. You smile at the
+idea. Your opinion of human nature is low. Mine is not enthusiastic. But
+I judge others by myself.”
+
+“So do I,” Mr. Mordacks answered, with a smile of curious humor. And the
+rector could not help smiling too, at this instance of genuine candor.
+“However, not to go too deeply into that,” his visitor continued, “there
+really is one point in Robin's letter which demands inquiry. I mean
+about the guns of the Preventive men. Cadman may be a rogue. Most
+probably he is. None of the others confirm, although they do not
+contradict him. Do you know anything about him?”
+
+“Only villainy--in another way. He led away a nice girl of this parish,
+an industrious mussel-gatherer. And he then had a wife and large family
+of his own, of which the poor thing knew nothing. Her father nearly
+killed him; and I was compelled (very much against my will) to inflict
+a penalty. Cadman is very shy of Flamborough now. By-the-way, have you
+called upon poor Widow Carroway?”
+
+“I thank you for the hint. She is the very person. It will be a sad
+intrusion; and I have put it off as long as possible. After what Robin
+says, it is most important. I hope that Sir Duncan will be here very
+shortly. He is coming from Yarmouth in his own yacht. Matters are
+crowding upon me very fast. I will see Mrs. Carroway as soon as it is
+decent. Good-morning, and best thanks to your Worship.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+THE DEMON OF THE AXE
+
+
+The air was sad and heavy thus, with discord, doubt, and death
+itself gathering and descending, like the clouds of long night, upon
+Flamborough. But far away, among the mountains and the dreary moorland,
+the “intake” of the coming winter was a great deal worse to see. For
+here no blink of the sea came up, no sunlight under the sill of clouds
+(as happens where wide waters are), but rather a dark rim of brooding on
+the rough horizon seemed to thicken itself against the light under the
+sullen march of vapors--the muffled funeral of the year. Dry trees and
+naked crags stood forth, and the dirge of the wind went to and fro, and
+there was no comfort out-of-doors.
+
+Soon the first snow of the winter came, the first abiding earnest snow,
+for several skits had come before, and ribbed with white the mountain
+breasts. But nobody took much heed of that, except to lean over the
+plough, while it might be sped, or to want more breakfast. Well resigned
+was everybody to the stoppage of work by winter. It was only what must
+be every year, and a gracious provision of Providence. If a man earned
+very little money, that was against him in one way, but encouraged him
+in another. It brought home to his mind the surety that others would
+be kind to him; not with any sense of gift, but a large good-will of
+sharing.
+
+But the first snow that visits the day, and does not melt in its own
+cold tears, is a sterner sign for every one. The hardened wrinkle, and
+the herring-bone of white that runs among the brown fern fronds, the
+crisp defiant dazzle on the walks, and the crust that glitters on the
+patient branch, and the crest curling under the heel of a gate, and the
+ridge piled up against the tool-house door--these, and the shivering
+wind that spreads them, tell of a bitter time in store.
+
+The ladies of Scargate Hall looked out upon such a December afternoon.
+The massive walls of their house defied all sudden change of
+temperature, and nothing less than a week of rigor pierced the comfort
+of their rooms. The polished oak beams overhead glanced back the merry
+fire-glow, the painted walls shone with rosy tints, and warm lights
+flitting along them, and the thick-piled carpet yielded back a velvety
+sense of luxury. It was nice to see how bleak the crags were, and the
+sad trees laboring beneath the wind and snow.
+
+“If it were not for thinking of the poor cold people, for whom one feels
+so deeply,” said the gentle Mrs. Carnaby, with a sweet soft sigh, “one
+would rather enjoy this dreary prospect. I hope there will be a deep
+snow to-night. There is every sign of it upon the scaurs. And then,
+Philippa, only think--no post, no plague of news, no prospect of even
+that odious Jellicorse! Once more we shall have our meals in quiet.”
+
+Mrs. Carnaby loved a good dinner right well, a dinner unplagued by
+hospitable cares; when a woodcock was her own to dwell on, and pretty
+little teeth might pick a pretty little bone at ease.
+
+“Eliza, you are always such a creature of the moment,” Mistress Yordas
+answered, indulgently; “you do love the good things of the world too
+much. How would you like to be out there, in a naked little cottage
+where the wind howls through, and the ewer is frozen every morning? And
+where, if you ever get anything to eat--”
+
+“Philippa, I implore you not to be so dreadful. One never can utter the
+most commonplace reflection--and you know that I said I was sorry for
+the people.”
+
+“My object is good, as you ought to know. My object is to habituate your
+mind--”
+
+“Philippa, I beg you once more to confine your exertions, in that way,
+to your own more lofty mind. Again I refuse to have my mind, or
+whatever it is that does duty for it, habituated to anything. A gracious
+Providence knows that I should die outright, after all my blameless
+life, if reduced to those horrible straits you always picture. And I
+have too much faith in a gracious Providence to conceive for one moment
+that it would treat me so. I decline the subject. Why should we
+make such troubles? There is clear soup for dinner, and some lovely
+sweet-breads. Cook has got a new receipt for bread sauce, and Jordas
+says that he never did shoot such a woodcock.”
+
+“Eliza, I trust that you may enjoy them all; your appetite is delicate,
+and you require nourishment. Why, what do I see over yonder in the snow?
+A slim figure moving at a very great pace, and avoiding the open places!
+Are my eyes growing old, or is it Lancelot?”
+
+“Pet out in such weather, Philippa! Such a thing is simply impossible.
+Or at any rate I should hope so. You know that Jordas was obliged to put
+a set of curtains from end to end even of the bowling-alley, which is
+so beautifully sheltered; and even then poor Pet was sneezing. And you
+should have heard what he said to me, when I was afraid of the sheets
+taking fire from his warming-pan one night. Pet is unaccountable
+sometimes, I know. But the very last thing imaginable of him is that he
+should put his pretty feet into the snow.”
+
+“You know him best, Eliza; and it is very puzzling to distinguish things
+in snow. But if it was not Pet, why, it must have been a squirrel.”
+
+“The squirrels are gone to sleep for the winter, Philippa. I dare say it
+was only Jordas. Don't you think that it must have been Jordas?”
+
+“I am quite certain that it was not Jordas. But I will not pretend to
+say that it was not a squirrel. He may forego his habitudes more easily
+than Lancelot.”
+
+“How horribly dry you are sometimes, Philippa. There seems to be no
+softness in your nature. You are fit to do battle with fifty lawyers;
+and I pity Mr. Jellicorse, with his best clothes on.”
+
+“You could commit no greater error. We pay the price of his black silk
+stockings three times over, every time we see him. The true objects of
+pity are--you, I, and the estates.”
+
+“Well, let us drop it for a while. If you begin upon that nauseous
+subject, not a particle of food will pass my lips; and I did look
+forward to a little nourishment.”
+
+“Dinner, my ladies!” cried the well-appointed Welldrum, throwing open
+the door as only such a man can do, while cleverly accomplishing the
+necessary bow, which he clinched on such occasions with a fine smack of
+his lips.
+
+“Go and tell Mr. Lancelot, if you please, that we are waiting for him.”
+ A great point was made, but not always effected, of having Master Pet,
+in very gorgeous attire, to lead his aunt into the dining-room. It
+was fondly believed that this impressed him with the elegance and nice
+humanities required by his lofty position and high walk in life. Pet
+hated this performance, and generally spoiled it by making a face over
+his shoulder at old Welldrum, while he strode along in real or mock awe
+of Aunt Philippa.
+
+“If you please, my ladies,” said the butler now, choosing Mrs. Carnaby
+for his eyes to rest on, “Mr. Lancelot beg to be excoosed of dinner. His
+head is that bad that he have gone for open air.”
+
+“Snow-headache is much in our family; Eliza, you remember how our dear
+father used to feel it.” With these words Mistress Yordas led her sister
+to the dining-room; and they took good care to say nothing more about it
+before the officious Welldrum.
+
+Pet meanwhile was beginning to repent of his cold and lonely venture.
+For a mile or two the warmth of his mind and the glow of exercise
+sustained him; and he kept on admiring his own courage till his feet
+began to tingle. “Insie will be bound to kiss me now; and she never will
+be able to laugh at me again,” he said to himself some fifty times.
+“I am like the great poet who describes the snow; and I have got some
+cherry-brandy.” He trudged on very bravely; but his poor dear toes at
+every step grew colder. Out upon the moor, where he was now, no shelter
+of any kind encouraged him; no mantlet of bank, or ridge, or brush-wood,
+set up a furry shiver betwixt him and the tatterdemalion wind. Not even
+a naked rock stood up to comfort a man by looking colder than himself.
+
+But in truth there was no severe cold yet; no depth of snow, no
+intensity of frost, no splintery needles of sparkling drift; but only
+the beginning of the wintry time, such as makes a strong man pick his
+feet up, and a healthy boy start an imaginary slide. The wind, however,
+was shrewd and searching, and Lancelot was accustomed to a warming-pan.
+Inside his waistcoat he wore a hare-skin, and his heart began to give
+rapid thumps against it. He knew that he was going into bodily peril
+worse than any frost or snow.
+
+For a long month he had not even seen his Insie, and his hot young heart
+had never before been treated so contemptuously. He had been allowed to
+show himself in the gill at his regular interval, a fortnight ago. But
+no one had ventured forth to meet him, or even wave signal of welcome
+or farewell. But that he could endure, because he had been warned not to
+hope for much that Friday; now, however, it was not his meaning to
+put up with any more such nonsense. That he, who had been told by the
+servants continually that all the land for miles and miles around was
+his, should be shut out like a beggar, and compelled to play bo-peep, by
+people who lived in a hole in the ground, was a little more than in the
+whole entire course of his life he could ever have imagined. His mind
+was now made up to let them know who he was and what he was; and unless
+they were very quick in coming to their senses, Jordas should have
+orders to turn them out, and take Insie altogether away from them.
+
+But in spite of all brave thoughts and words, Master Pet began to spy
+about very warily, ere ever he descended from the moor into the gill.
+He seemed to have it borne in upon his mind that territorial
+rights--however large and goodly--may lead only to a taste of earth,
+when earth alone is witness to the treatment of her claimant. Therefore
+it behooved him to look sharp; and possessing the family gift of keen
+sight, he began to spy about, almost as shrewdly as if he had been
+educated in free trade. But first he had wit enough to step below the
+break, and get behind a gorse bush, lest haply he should illustrate only
+the passive voice of seeing.
+
+In the deep cut of the glen there was very little snow, only a few veins
+and patches here and there, threading and seaming the steep, as if a
+white-footed hare had been coursing about. Little stubby brier shoots,
+and clumps of russet bracken, and dead heather, ruffling like a brown
+dog's back, broke the dull surface of withered herbage, thistle stumps,
+teasels, rugged banks, and naked brush. Down in the bottom the noisy
+brook was scurrying over its pebbles brightly, or plunging into gloom of
+its own production; and away at the bend of the valley was seen the cot
+of poor Lancelot's longing.
+
+The situation was worth a sigh, and came half way to share one; Pet
+sighed heavily, and deeply felt how wrong it was of any one to treat him
+so. What could be easier for him than to go, as Insie had said to him
+at least a score of times, and mind his own business, and shake off the
+dust--or the mud--of his feet at such strangers? But, alas! he had
+tried it, and could shake nothing, except his sad and sapient head. How
+deplorably was he altered from the Pet that used to be! Where were
+now his lofty joys, the pleasure he found in wholesome mischief and
+wholesale destruction, the high delight of frightening all the world
+about his safety?
+
+“There are people here, I do believe,” he said to himself, most
+touchingly, “who would be quite happy to chop off my head!”
+
+As if to give edge to so murderous a thought, and wings to the feet of
+the thinker, a man both tall and broad came striding down the cottage
+garden. He was swinging a heavy axe as if it were a mere dress cane, and
+now and then dealing clean slash of a branch, with an air which made Pet
+shiver worse than any wind. The poor lad saw that in the grasp of such
+a man he could offer less resistance than a nut within the crackers, and
+even his champion, the sturdy Jordas, might struggle without much avail.
+He gathered in his legs, and tucked his head well under the gorse to
+watch him.
+
+“Surely he is too big to run very fast,” thought the boy, with his valor
+evaporated; “it must be that horrible Maunder. What a blessing that I
+stopped up here just in time! He is going up the gill to cleave some
+wood. Shall I cut away at once, or lie flat upon my stomach? He would
+be sure to see me if I tried to run away; and much he would care for his
+landlord!”
+
+In such a choice of evils, poor Lancelot resolved to lie still, unless
+the monster should turn his steps that way. And presently he had the
+heart-felt pleasure of seeing the formidable stranger take the track
+that followed the windings of the brook. But instead of going well away,
+and rounding the next corner, the big man stopped at the very spot where
+Insie used to fill her pitcher, pulled off his coat and hung it on a
+bush, and began with mighty strokes to fell a dead alder-tree that stood
+there. As his great arms swung, and his back rose and fell, and the sway
+of his legs seemed to shake the bank, and the ring of his axe filled
+the glen with echoes, wrath and terror were fighting a hot battle in the
+heart of Lancelot.
+
+His sense of a land-owner's rights and titles had always been most
+imperious, and though the Scargate estates were his as yet only in
+remainder, he was even more jealous about them than if he held them
+already in possession. What right had this man to cut down trees, to
+fell and appropriate timber? Even in the garden which he rented he could
+not rightfully touch a stick or stock. But to come out here, a good
+furlong from his renting, and begin hacking and hewing, quite as if the
+land were his--it seemed almost too brazen-faced for belief! It must be
+stopped at once--such outrageous trespass stopped, and punished sternly.
+He would stride down the hill with a summary veto--but, alas, if he did,
+he might get cut down too!
+
+Not only this disagreeable reflection, but also his tender regard for
+Insie, prevented him from challenging this process of the axe; but his
+feelings began to goad him toward something worthy of a Yordas--for a
+Yordas he always accounted himself, and not by any means a Carnaby. And
+to this end all the powers of his home conspired.
+
+“That fellow is terribly big and strong,” he said to himself, with much
+warmth of spirit; “but his axe is getting dull; and to chop down that
+tree of mine will take him at least half an hour. Dead wood is harder to
+cut than live. And when he has done that, he must work till dark to
+lop the branches, and so on. I need not be afraid of anybody but this
+fellow. Now is my time, then, while he is away. Even if the old folk are
+at home, they will listen to my reasons. The next time he comes to hack
+my tree on this side, I shall slip out, and go down to the cottage. I
+have no fear of any one that pays any heed to reason.”
+
+This sudden admirer and lover of reason cleverly carried out his bold
+discretion. For now the savage woodman, intent upon that levelling which
+is the highest glory of pugnacious minds, came round the tree, glaring
+at it (as if it were the murderer, and he the victim), redoubling his
+tremendous thwacks at every sign of tremor, flinging his head back with
+a spiteful joy, poising his shoulders on the swing, and then with all
+his weight descending into the trenchant blow. When his back was fairly
+turned on Lancelot, and his whole mind and body thus absorbed upon his
+prey, the lad rose quickly from his lair, and slipped over the crest of
+the gill to the moorland. In a moment he was out of sight to that demon
+of the axe, and gliding, with his head bent low, along a little hollow
+of the heathery ground, which cut off a bend of the ravine, and again
+struck its brink a good furlong down the gill. Here Pet stopped running,
+and lay down, and peered over the brink, for this part was quite new to
+him, and resolved as he was to make a bold stroke of it, he naturally
+wished to see how the land lay, and what the fortress of the enemy was
+like, ere ever he ventured into it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+BATTERY AND ASSUMPSIT
+
+
+That little moorland glen, whose only murmur was of wavelets, and
+principal traffic of birds and rabbits, even at this time of year
+looked pretty, with the winter light winding down its shelter and soft
+quietude. Ferny pitches and grassy bends set off the harsh outline of
+rock and shale, while a white mist (quivering like a clew above the
+rivulet) was melting into the faint blue haze diffused among the
+foldings and recesses of the land. On the hither side, nearly at the
+bottom of the slope, a bright green spot among the brown and yellow
+roughness, looking by comparison most smooth and rich, showed where the
+little cottage grew its vegetables, and even indulged in a small attempt
+at fruit. Behind this, the humble retirement of the cot was shielded
+from the wind by a breastwork of bold rock, fringed with ground-ivy,
+hanging broom, and silver stars of the carline. So simple and low was
+the building, and so matched with the colors around it, that but for
+the smoke curling up from a pipe of red pottery-ware, a stranger might
+almost have overlooked it. The walls were made from the rocks close by,
+the roof of fir slabs thatched with ling; there was no upper story, and
+(except the door and windows) all the materials seemed native and at
+home. Lancelot had heard, by putting a crafty question in safe places,
+that the people of the gill here had built their own dwelling, a good
+many years ago; and it looked as if they could have done it easily.
+
+Now, if he intended to spy out the land, and the house as well, before
+the giant of the axe returned, there was no time to lose in beginning.
+He had a good deal of sagacity in tricks, and some practice in little
+arts of robbery. For before he attained to this exalted state of mind
+one of his favorite pastimes had been a course of stealthy raids upon
+the pears in Scargate garden. He might have had as many as he liked for
+asking; but what flavor would they have thus possessed? Moreover, he
+bore a noble spite against the gardener, whose special pride was in that
+pear wall; and Pet more than once had the joy of beholding him thrash
+his own innocent son for the dark disappearance of Beurre and Bergamot.
+Making good use of this experience, he stole his way down the steep
+glen-side, behind the low fence of the garden, until he reached the
+bottom, and the brush-wood by the stream. Here he stopped to observe
+again, and breathe, and get his spirit up. The glassy water looked as
+cold as death; and if he got cramp in his feet, how could he run? And
+yet he could see no other way but wading, of approaching the cottage
+unperceived.
+
+Now fortune (whose privilege it is to cast mortals into the holes that
+most misfit them) sometimes, when she has got them there, takes pity,
+and contemptuously lifts them. Pet was in a hole of hardship, such as
+his dear mamma never could have dreamed of, and such as his nurture and
+constitution made trebly disastrous for him. He had taken a chill from
+his ambush, and fright, and the cold wind over the snow of the moor; and
+now the long wading of that icy water might have ended upon the shores
+of Acheron. However, he was just about to start upon that passage--for
+the spirit of his race was up--when a dull grating sound, as of
+footsteps crunching grit, came to his prettily concave ears.
+
+At this sound Lancelot Carnaby stopped from his rash venture into the
+water, and drew himself back into an ivied bush, which served as the
+finial of the little garden hedge. Peeping through this, he could see
+that the walk from the cottage to the hedge was newly sprinkled with
+gray wood ash, perhaps to prevent the rain from lodging and the snow
+from lying there. Heavy steps of two old men (as Pet in the insolence
+of young days called them) fell upon the dull soft crust, and ground
+it, heel and toe--heel first, as stiff joints have it--with the bruising
+snip a hungry cow makes, grazing wiry grasses. “One of them must be
+Insie's dad,” said Pet to himself, as he crouched more closely behind
+the hedge; “which of them, I wonder? Well, the tall one, I suppose, to
+go by the height of that Maunder. And the other has only one arm; and a
+man with one arm could never have built their house. They are coming to
+sit on that bench; I shall hear every word they say, and learn some
+of their secrets that I never could get out of Insie one bit of. But I
+wonder who that other fellow is?”
+
+That other fellow, in spite of his lease, would promptly have laid his
+surviving hand to the ear of Master Lancelot, or any other eavesdropper;
+for a sturdy and resolute man was he, being no less than our ancient
+friend and old soldier, Jack of the Smithies. And now was verified that
+homely proverb that listeners never hear good of themselves.
+
+“Sit down, my friend,” said the elder of the twain, a man of rough dress
+and hard hands, but good, straightforward aspect, and that careless
+humor which generally comes from a life of adventures, and a long
+acquaintance with the world's caprice. “I have brought you here that we
+may be undisturbed. Little pitchers have long ears. My daughter is as
+true as steel; but this matter is not for her at present. You are sure,
+then, that Sir Duncan is come home at last? And he wished that I should
+know it?”
+
+“Yes, sir, he wished that you should know it. So soon as I told him that
+you was here, and leading what one may call this queer life, he slapped
+his thigh like this here--for he hath a downright way of everything--and
+he said, 'Now, Smithies, so soon as you get home, go and tell him that I
+am coming. I can trust him as I trust myself; and glad I am for one
+old friend in the parts I am such a stranger to. Years and years I have
+longed to know what was become of my old friend Bert.' Tears was in his
+eyes, your honor: Sir Duncan hath seen such a mighty lot of men, that
+his heart cometh up to the few he hath found deserving of the name,
+sir.”
+
+“You said that you saw him at York, I think?”
+
+“Yes, sir, at the business house of his agent, one Master Geoffrey
+Mordacks. He come there quite unexpected, I believe, to see about
+something else he hath in hand, and I got a message to go there at once.
+I save his life once in India, sir, from one of they cursed Sours, which
+made him take heed of me, and me of him. And then it come out where
+I come from, and why; and the both of us spoke the broad Yorkshire
+together, like as I dea naa care to do to home. After that he got on
+wonderful, as you know; and I stuck to him through the whole of it, from
+luck as well as liking, till, if I had gone out to see to his breeches,
+I could not very well have knowed more of him. And I tell you, sir, not
+to regard him for a Yordas. He hath a mind far above them lot; though I
+was born under them, to say so!”
+
+“And you think that he will come and recover his rights, in spite of his
+father's will against him. I know nothing of the ladies of the Hall; but
+it seems a hard thing to turn them out, after being there so long.”
+
+“Who was turned out first, they or him? Five-and-twenty years of tent,
+open sky, jungle, and who knows what, for him--but eider-down, and
+fireside, and fat of land for them! No, no, sir; whatever shall happen
+there, will be God's own justice.”
+
+“Of His justice who shall judge?” said Insie's father, quietly. “But is
+there not a young man grown, who passes for the heir with every one?”
+
+“Ay, that there is; and the best game of all will be neck and crop
+for that young scamp. A bully, a coward, a puling milksop, is all the
+character he beareth. He giveth himself born airs, as if every inch
+of the Riding belonged to him. He hath all the viciousness of Yordas,
+without the pluck to face it out. A little beast that hath the venom,
+without the courage, of a toad. Ah, how I should like to see--”
+
+Jack of the Smithies not only saw, but felt. The Yordas blood was up in
+Pet. He leaped through the hedge and struck this man with a sharp quick
+fist in either eye. Smithies fell backward behind the bench, his heels
+danced in the air, and the stump of his arm got wedged in the stubs of a
+bush, while Lancelot glared at him with mad eyes.
+
+“What next?” said his companion, rising calmly, and steadfastly gazing
+at Lancelot.
+
+“The next thing is to kill him; and it shall be done,” the furious youth
+replied, while he swung the gentleman's big stick, which he had seized,
+and danced round his foe with the speed of a wild-cat. “Don't meddle, or
+it will be worse for you. You heard what he said of me. Get out of the
+way.”
+
+“Indeed, my young friend, I shall do nothing of the sort.” But the old
+man was not at all sure that he could do much; such was the fury and
+agility of the youth, who jumped three yards for every step of his,
+while the poor old soldier could not move. The boy skipped round the
+protecting figure, whose grasp he eluded easily, and swinging the staff
+with both arms, aimed a great blow at the head of his enemy. Suddenly
+the other interposed the bench, upon which the stick fell, and broke
+short; and before the assailant could recover from the jerk, he was a
+prisoner in two powerful old arms.
+
+“You are so wild that we must make you fast,” his captor said, with
+a benignant smile; and struggle as he might, the boy was very soon
+secured. His antagonist drew forth a red bandana handkerchief, and
+fastened his bleeding hands behind his back. “There, now, lad,” he said,
+“you can do no mischief. Recover your temper, sir, and tell us who you
+are, as soon as you are sane enough to know.”
+
+Pet, having spent his just indignation, began to perceive that he
+had made a bad investment. His desire had been to maintain in this
+particular spot strict privacy from all except Insie, to whom in the
+largeness of love he had declared himself. Yet here he stood, promulged
+and published, strikingly and flagrantly pronounced! At first he was
+like to sulk in the style of a hawk who has failed of his swoop; but
+seeing his enemy arising slowly with grunts, and action nodose and
+angular--rather than flexibly graceful--contempt became the uppermost
+feature of his mind.
+
+“My name,” he said, “if you are not afraid of it, that you tie me in
+this cowardly low manner, is--Lancelot Yordas Carnaby.”
+
+“My boy, it is a long name for any one to carry. No wonder that you look
+weak beneath it. And where do you live, young gentleman?”
+
+Amazement sat upon the face of Pet--a genuine astonishment, entirely
+pure from wrath. It was wholly beyond his imagination that any one,
+after hearing his name, should have to ask him where he lived. He
+thought that the question must be put in low mockery, and to answer was
+far beneath his dignity.
+
+By this time the veteran Jack of the Smithies had got out of his trap,
+and was standing stiffly, passing his hand across his sadly smitten
+eyes, and talking to himself about them.
+
+“Two black eyes, at my time of life, as sure as I'm a Christian!
+Howsomever, young chap, I likes you better. Never dreamed there was such
+good stuff in you. Master Bert, cast him loose, if so please you. Let me
+shake hands with 'un, and bear no malice. Bad words deserve hard blows,
+and I ask his pardon for driving him into it. I called 'un a milksop,
+and he hath proved me a liar. He may be a bad 'un, but with good stuff
+in 'un. Lord bless me, I never would have believed the lad could hit so
+smartly!”
+
+Pet was well pleased with this tribute to his prowess; but as for
+shaking hands with a tenant, and a “common man”--as every one not of
+gentle birth was then called--such an act was quite below him, or above
+him, according as we take his own opinion, or the truth. And possibly he
+rose in Smithies' mind by drawing back from bodily overture.
+
+Mr. Bert looked on with all the bliss of an ancient interpreter. He
+could follow out the level of the vein of each, as no one may do except
+a gentleman, perhaps, who has turned himself deliberately into a “common
+man.” Bert had done his utmost toward this end; but the process is
+difficult when voluntary.
+
+“I think it is time,” he now said, firmly, to the unshackled and
+triumphant Pet, “for Lancelot Yordas Carnaby to explain what has brought
+him into such humble quarters, and induced him to turn eavesdropper;
+which was not considered (at least in my young days) altogether the part
+of a gentleman.”
+
+The youth had not seen quite enough of the world to be pat with a
+fertile lie as yet; especially under such searching eyes. However, he
+did as much as could be well expected.
+
+“I was just looking over my property,” he said, “and I thought I heard
+somebody cutting down my timber. I came to see who it was, and I heard
+people talking, and before I could ask them about it, I heard myself
+abused disgracefully; and that was more than I could stand.”
+
+“We must take it for granted that a brave young gentleman of your
+position would tell no falsehood. You assure us, on your honor, that you
+heard no more?”
+
+“Well, I heard voices, sir. But nothing to understand, or make head or
+tail of.” There was some truth in this; for young Lancelot had not the
+least idea who “Sir Duncan” was. His mother and aunt had kept him wholly
+in the dark as to any lost uncle in India. “I should like to know what
+it was,” he added, “if it has anything to do with me.”
+
+This was a very clever hit of his; and it made the old gentleman believe
+him altogether.
+
+“All in good time, my young friend,” he answered, even with a smile of
+some pity for the youth. “But you are scarcely old enough for business
+questions, although so keen about your timber. Now after abusing you so
+disgracefully, as I admit that my friend here has done, and after roping
+your pugnacious hands, as I myself was obliged to do, we never can
+launch you upon the moor, in such weather as this, without some food.
+You are not very strong, and you have overdone yourself. Let us go to
+the house, and have something.”
+
+Jack of the Smithies showed alacrity at this, as nearly all old soldiers
+must; but Pet was much oppressed with care, and the intellect in his
+breast diverged into sore distraction of anxious thought. Whether should
+he draw the keen sword of assurance, put aside the others, and see
+Insie, or whether should he start with best foot foremost, scurry up the
+hill, and avoid the axe of Maunder? Pallas counselled this course, and
+Aphrodite that; and the latter prevailed, as she always used to do,
+until she produced the present dry-cut generation.
+
+Lancelot bowed to the gentleman of the gill, and followed him along the
+track of grit, which set his little pearly teeth on edge; while Jack
+of the Smithies led, and formed, the rear-guard. “This is coming now
+to something very queer,” thought Pet; “after all, it might have been
+better for me to take my chance with the hatchet man.”
+
+Brown dusk was ripely settling down among the mossy apple-trees, and the
+leafless alders of the brook, and the russet and yellow memories of late
+autumn lingering in the glen, while the peaky little freaks of snow,
+and the cold sighs of the wind, suggested fireside and comfort. Mr. Bert
+threw open his cottage door, and bowing as to a welcome guest, invited
+Pet to enter. No passage, no cold entrance hall, demanded scrapes of
+ceremony; but here was the parlor, and the feeding-place, and the warm
+dance of the fire-glow. Logs that meant to have a merry time, and spread
+a cheerful noise abroad, ere ever they turned to embers, were snorting
+forth the pointed flames, and spitting soft protests of sap. And before
+them stood, with eyes more bright than any flash of fire-light, intent
+upon rich simmering scents, a lovely form, a grace of dainties--oh, a
+goddess certainly!
+
+“Master Carnaby,” said the host, “allow me, sir, the honor to present
+my daughter to you, Insie darling, this is Mr. Lancelot Yordas Carnaby.
+Make him a pretty courtesy.”
+
+Insie turned round with a rosy blush, brighter than the brightest
+fire-wood, and tried to look at Pet as if she had never even dreamed
+of such a being. Pet drew hard upon his heart, and stood bewildered,
+tranced, and dazzled. He had never seen Insie in-doors before, which
+makes a great difference in a girl; and the vision was too bright for
+him.
+
+For here, at her own hearth, she looked so gentle, sweet, and lovely. No
+longer wild and shy, or gayly mischievous and watchful, but calm-eyed,
+firm-lipped, gravely courteous; intent upon her father's face, and
+banishing not into shadow so much as absolute nullity any one who
+dreamed that he ever filled a pitcher for her, or fed her with grouse
+and partridge, and committed the incredible atrocity of kissing her.
+
+Lancelot ceased to believe it possible that he ever could have done such
+a thing as that, while he saw how she never would see him at all, or
+talk in the voice that he had been accustomed to, or even toss her head
+in the style he had admired, when she tried to pretend to make light
+of him. If she would only make light of him now, he would be well
+contented, and say to himself that she did it on purpose, for fear
+of the opposite extreme. But the worst of it was that she had quite
+forgotten, beyond blink of inquiry or gleam of hope, that ever in her
+life she had set eyes on a youth of such perfect insignificance before.
+
+“My friend, you ought to be hungry,” said Bert of the Gill, as he was
+proud to call himself; “after your exploit you should be fed. Your
+vanquished foe will sit next to you. Insie, you are harassed in mind by
+the countenance of our old friend Master John Smithies. He has met with
+a little mishap--never mind--the rising generation is quick of temper.
+A soldier respects his victor; it is a beautiful arrangement of
+Providence; otherwise wars would never cease. Now give our two guests a
+good dish of the best, piping hot, and of good meaty fibre. We will have
+our own supper by-and-by, when Maunder comes home, and your mother is
+ready. Gentlemen, fall to; you have far to go, and the moors are bad
+after night-fall.”
+
+Lancelot, proudly as he stood upon his rank, saw fit to make no
+objection. Not only did his inner man cry, “Feed, even though a common
+man feed with thee,” but his mind was under the influence of a stronger
+one, which scorned such stuff. Moreover, Insie, for the first time, gave
+him a glance, demure but imperative, which meant, “Obey my father, sir.”
+
+He obeyed, and was rewarded; for the beautiful girl came round him so,
+to hand whatever he wanted, and seemed to feel so sweetly for him in his
+strange position, that he scarcely knew what he was eating, only that it
+savored of rich rare love, and came from the loveliest creature in the
+world. In stern fact, it came from the head of a sheep; but neither jaws
+nor teeth were seen. Upon one occasion he was almost sure that a curl
+of Insie's lovely hair fell upon the back of his stooping neck; he could
+scarcely keep himself from jumping up; and he whispered, very softly,
+when the old man was away, “Oh, if you would only do that again!” But
+his darling made manifest that this was a mistake, and applied herself
+sedulously to the one-armed Jack.
+
+Jack of the Smithies was a trencherman of the very first order, and
+being well wedded (with a promise already of young soldiers to come),
+it behooved him to fill all his holes away from home, and spare his own
+cupboard for the sake of Mistress Smithies. He perceived the duty, and
+performed it, according to the discipline of the British army.
+
+But Insie was fretting in the conscience of her heart to get the young
+Lancelot fed and dismissed before the return of her great wild brother.
+Not that he would hurt their guest, though unwelcome; or even show any
+sort of rudeness to him; but more than ever now, since she heard of
+Pet's furious onslaught upon the old soldier--which made her begin to
+respect him a little--she longed to prevent any meeting between this
+gallant and the rough Maunder. And that anxiety led her to look at Pet
+with a melancholy kindness. Then Jack of the Smithies cut things short.
+
+“Off's the word,” he said, “if ever I expects to see home afore
+daylight. All of these moors is known to me, and many's the time I have
+tracked them all in sleep, when the round world was betwixt us. But
+without any moon it is hard to do 'em waking; and the loss of my arm
+sends me crooked in the dark. And as for young folk, they be all abroad
+to once. With your leave, Master Bert, I'll be off immediate, after
+getting all I wants, as the manner of the world is. My good missus will
+be wondering what is come of me.”
+
+“You have spoken well,” his host replied; “and I think we shall have a
+heavy fall to-night. But this young gentleman must not go home alone. He
+is not robust, and the way is long and rough. I have seen him shivering
+several times. I will fetch my staff, and march with him.”
+
+“No, sir, I will not have such a thing done,” the veteran answered,
+sturdily. “If the young gentleman is a gentleman, he will not be afraid
+for me to take him home, in spite of what he hath done to me. Speak up,
+young man, are you frightened of me?”
+
+“Not if you are not afraid of me,” said Pet, who had now forgotten all
+about that Maunder, and only longed to stay where he was, and set up a
+delicious little series of glances. For the room, and the light, and the
+tenor of the place, began more and more to suit such uses. And most and
+best of all, his Insie was very thankful to him for his good behavior;
+and he scarcely could believe that she wanted him to go. To go, however,
+was his destiny; and when he had made a highly laudable and far-away
+salute, it happened--in the shift of people, and of light, and clothing,
+which goes on so much in the winter-time--that a little hand came into
+his, and rose to his lips, with ground of action, not for assault and
+battery, but simply for assumpsit.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+STORMY GAP
+
+
+Snowy weather now set in, and people were content to stay at home. Among
+the scaurs and fells and moors the most perturbed spirit was compelled
+to rest, or try to do so, or at any rate not agitate its body
+out-of-doors. Lazy folk were suited well with reason good for laziness;
+and gentle minds, that dreaded evil, gladly found its communication
+stopped.
+
+Combined excitement and exertion, strong amazement, ardent love, and a
+cold of equal severity, laid poor Pet Carnaby by the heels, and reduced
+him to perpetual gruel. He was shut off from external commune, and
+strictly blockaded in his bedroom, where his only attendants were his
+sweet mother, and an excellent nurse who stroked his forehead, and
+called him “dear pet,” till he hated her, and, worst of all, that Dr.
+Spraggs, who lived in the house, because the weather was so bad.
+
+“We have taken a chill, and our mind is a little unhinged,” said
+the skillful practitioner: “careful diet, complete repose, a warm
+surrounding atmosphere, absence of undue excitement, and, above all, a
+course of my gentle alteratives regularly administered--these are the
+very simple means to restore our beloved patient. He is certainly making
+progress; but I assure you, my dear madam, or rather I need not tell a
+lady of such wonderfully clear perception, that remedial measures must
+be slow to be truly efficacious. With lower organizations we may deal in
+a more empiric style; but no experiments must be tried here--”
+
+“Dr. Spraggs, I should hope not, indeed. You alarm me by the mere
+suggestion.”
+
+“Gradation, delicately pursued, adapted subtly, discriminated nicely by
+the unerring diagnosis of extensive medical experience, combined with
+deep study of the human system, and a highly distinguished university
+career--such, madam, are, in my humble opinion, the true elements
+of permanent amelioration. At the same time we must not conceal
+from ourselves that our constitution is by no means one of ordinary
+organization. None of your hedger and ditcher class, but delicate,
+fragile, impulsive, sensitive, liable to inopine derangements from
+excessive activity of mind--”
+
+“Oh, Dr. Spraggs, he has been reading poetry, which none of our family
+ever even dreamed of doing--it is a young man, over your way somewhere.
+Possibly you may have heard of him.”
+
+“That young man has a great deal to answer for. I have traced a very bad
+case of whooping-cough to him. That explains many symptoms which I could
+not quite make out. We will take away this book, madam, and give him
+Dr. Watts--the only wholesome poet that our country has produced; though
+even his opinions would be better expressed in prose.”
+
+But the lad, in spite of all this treatment, slowly did recover, and
+then obtained relief, which set him on his nimble legs again. For
+his aunt Philippa, one snowy morning, went into the room beneath that
+desperately sick chamber, to see whether wreaths of snow had entered,
+as they often did, between the loose joints of the casement. She walked
+very carefully, for fear of making a noise that might be heard above,
+and disturb the repose of the poor invalid. But, to her surprise, there
+came loud thumps from above, and a quivering of the ceiling, and a sound
+as of rushing steps, and laughter, and uproarious jollity.
+
+“What can it be? I am perfectly amazed,” said Mistress Yordas to
+herself. “I must inquire into this.”
+
+She knew that her sister was out of the way, and the nurse in the
+kitchen, having one of her frequent feeds and agreeable discourses.
+So she went to a mighty ring in her own room, as large as an untaxed
+carriage wheel, and from it (after due difficulty) took the spare key of
+the passage door that led the way to Lancelot.
+
+No sooner had she passed this door than she heard a noise a great deal
+worse than the worst imagination--whiz, and hiss, and crack, and smash,
+and rolling of hollow things over hollow places, varied with shouts, and
+the flapping of skirts, and jingling of money upon heart of oak; these
+and many other travails of the air (including strong language) amazed
+the lady. Hastening into the sick-room, she found the window wide open,
+with the snow pouring in, a dozen of phial bottles ranged like skittles,
+some full and some empty, and Lancelot dancing about in his night-gown,
+with Divine Songs poised for another hurl.
+
+“Two for a full, and one for an empty. Seven to me, and four to you. No
+cheating, now, or I'll knock you over,” he was shouting to Welldrum's
+boy, who had clearly been smuggled in at the window for this game.
+“There's plenty more in old Spraggs's chest. Holloa, here's Aunt
+Philippa!”
+
+Mistress Yordas was not displeased with this spirited application of
+pharmacy; she at once flung wide the passage door, and Pet was free of
+the house again, but upon parole not to venture out of doors. The
+first use he made of his liberty was to seek the faithful Jordas, who
+possessed a little private sitting-room, and there hold secret council
+with him.
+
+The dogman threw his curly head back, when he had listened to his young
+lord's tale (which contained the truth, and nothing but the truth, yet
+not by any means the whole truth, for the leading figure was left out),
+and a snort from his broad nostrils showed contempt and strong vexation.
+
+“Just what I said would come o' such a job,” he muttered, without
+thought of Lancelot; “to let in a traitor, and spake him fair, and make
+much of him. I wish you had knocked his two eyes out, Master Lance,
+instead of only blacking of 'un. And a fortnight lost through that
+pisonin' Spraggs! And the weather going on, snow and thaw, snow and
+thaw. There's scarcely a dog can stand, let alone a horse, and the
+wreaths getting deeper. Most onlucky! It hath come to pass most
+ontoimely.”
+
+“But who is Sir Duncan? And who is Mr. Bert? I have told you everything,
+Jordas; and all you do is to tell me nothing.”
+
+“What more can I tell you, sir? You seem to know most about 'em. And
+what was it as took you down that way, sir, if I may make so bold to
+ask?”
+
+“Jordas, that is no concern of yours; every gentleman has his own
+private affairs, which can not in any way concern a common man. But
+I wish you particularly to find out all that can be known about Mr.
+Bert--what made him come here, and why does he live so, and how much has
+he got a year? He seems to be quite a gentleman--”
+
+“Then his private affairs, sir, can not concern a common man. You had
+better ways go yourself and ask him; or ask his friend with the two
+black eyes. Now just you do as I bid you, Master Lance. Not a word of
+all this here to my ladies; but think of something as you must have
+immediate from Middleton. Something as your health requires”--here
+Jordas indulged in a sarcastic grin--“something as must come, if the sky
+come down, or the day of Judgment was to-morrow.”
+
+“I know, yes, I am quite up to you, Jordas. Let me see: last time it was
+a sweet-bread. That would never do again. It shall be a hundred oysters;
+and Spraggs shall command it, or be turned out.”
+
+“Jordas, I really can not bear,” said the kind Mrs. Carnaby, an hour
+afterward, “that you should seem almost to risk your life by riding to
+Middleton in such dreadful weather. Are you sure that it will not snow
+again, and quite sure that you can get through all the wreaths? If not,
+I would on no account have you go. Perhaps, after all, it is but the
+fancy of a poor fantastic invalid, though Dr. Spraggs feels that it is
+so important, and may be the turning-point in his sad illness. It seems
+such a long way in such weather; and selfish people, who can never
+understand, might say that it was quite unkind of us. But if you have
+made up your mind to go, in spite of all remonstrance, you must be sure
+to come back to-night; and do please to see that the oysters are round,
+and have not got any of their lids up.”
+
+The dogman knew well that he jeopardized his life in either half of the
+journey; no little in going, and tenfold as much in returning through
+the snows of night. Though the journey in the first place had been of
+his own seeking, and his faithful mind was set upon it, some little
+sense of bitterness was in his heart, that his life was not thought more
+of. He made a low bow, and turned away, that he might not meet those
+eyes so full of anxiety for another, and of none for him. And when he
+came to think of it, he was sorry afterward for indulging in a little
+bit of two-edged satire.
+
+“Will you please to ask my lady if I may take Marmaduke? Or whether she
+would be afeared to risk him in such weather?”
+
+“I think it is unkind of you to speak like that. I need not ask my
+sister, as you ought to know. Of course you may take Marmaduke. I need
+not tell you to be careful of him.”
+
+After that, if he had chosen for himself, he would not have taken
+Marmaduke. But he thought of the importance of his real purpose, and
+could trust no other horse to get him through it.
+
+In fine summer weather, when the sloughs were in, and the water-courses
+low or dry, and the roads firm, wherever there were any, a good horse
+and rider, well acquainted with the track, might go from Scargate Hall
+to Middleton in about three hours, nearly all of the journey being well
+down hill. But the travel to come back was a very different thing; four
+hours and a half was quick time for it, even in the best state of earth
+and sky, and the Royal Mail pony was allowed a good seven, because his
+speed (when first established) had now impaired his breathing. And ever
+since the snow set in, he had received his money for the journey,
+but preferred to stay in stable; for which everybody had praised him,
+finding letters give them indigestion.
+
+Now Jordas roughed Marmaduke's shoes himself; for the snow would be
+frozen in the colder places, and ball wherever any softness was--two
+things which demand very different measures. Also he fed him well, and
+nourished himself, and took nurture for the road; so that with all haste
+he could not manage to start before twelve of the day. Travelling was
+worse than he expected, and the snow very deep in places, especially
+at Stormy Gap, about a league from Scargate. Moreover, he knew that the
+strength of his horse must be carefully husbanded for the return; and so
+it was dusk of the winter evening, and the shops of the little town were
+being lit with hoops of candles, when Jordas, followed by Saracen, came
+trotting through the unpretending street.
+
+That ancient dog Saracen, the largest of the blood-hounds, had joined
+the expedition as a volunteer, craftily following and crouching out of
+sight, until he was certain of being too far from home to be sent
+back again. Then he boldly appeared, and cantered gayly on in front of
+Marmaduke, with his heavy dewlaps laced with snow.
+
+Jordas put up at a quiet old inn, and had Saracen chained strongly to a
+ringbolt in the stable; then he set off afoot to see Mr. Jellicorse, and
+just as he rang the office bell a little fleecy twinkle fell upon one
+of his eyelashes, and looking sharply up, he saw that a snowy night was
+coming.
+
+The worthy lawyer received him kindly, but not at all as if he wished to
+see him; for Christmas-tide was very nigh at hand, and the weather made
+the ink go thick, and only a clerk who was working for promotion would
+let his hat stay on its peg after the drum and fife went by, as they
+always did at dusk of night, to frighten Bonyparty.
+
+“There are only two important facts in all you have told me, Jordas,”
+ Mr. Jellicorse said, when he had heard him out: “one that Sir Duncan is
+come home, of which I was aware some time ago; and the other that he has
+been consulting an agent of the name of Mordacks, living in this county.
+That certainly looks as if he meant to take some steps against us. But
+what can he do more than might have been done five-and-twenty years
+ago?” The lawyer took good care to speak to none but his principals
+concerning that plaguesome deed of appointment.
+
+“Well, sir, you know best, no doubt. Only that he hath the money now, by
+all accounts; and like enough he hath labored for it a' purpose to
+fight my ladies. If your honor knew as well as I do what a Yordas is for
+fighting, and for downright stubbornness--”
+
+“Perhaps I do,” replied the lawyer, with a smile; “but if he has
+no children of his own, as I believe is the case with him, it seems
+unlikely that he would risk his substance in a rash attempt to turn out
+those who are his heirs.”
+
+“He is not so old but what he might have children yet, if he hath none
+now to hand. Anyways it was my duty to tell you my news immediate.”
+
+“Jordas, I always say that you are a model of a true retainer--a
+character becoming almost extinct in this faithless and revolutionary
+age. Very few men would have ridden into town through all those
+dangerous unmade roads, in weather when even the Royal Mail is kept, by
+the will of the Lord, in stable.”
+
+“Well, sir,” said Jordas, with his brave soft smile, “the smooth and
+the rough of it comes in and out, accordin'. Some days I does next to
+nought; and some days I earns my keepin'. Any more commands for me,
+Lawyer Jellicoose? Time cometh on rather late for starting.”
+
+“Jordas, you amaze me! You never mean to say that you dream of setting
+forth again on such a night as this is? I will find you a bed; you shall
+have a hot supper. What would your ladies think of me, if I let you go
+forth among the snow again? Just look at the window-panes, while you and
+I were talking! And the feathers of the ice shooting up inside, as long
+as the last sheaf of quills I opened for them. Quills, quills, quills,
+all day! And when I buy a goose unplucked, if his quills are any good,
+his legs won't carve, and his gizzard is full of gravel-stones! Ah, the
+world grows every day in roguery.”
+
+“All the world agrees to that, sir; ever since I were as high as your
+table, never I hear two opinions about it; and it maketh a man seem to
+condemn himself. Good-night, sir, and I hope we shall have good news
+so soon as his Royal Majesty the king affordeth a pony as can lift his
+legs.”
+
+Mr. Jellicorse vainly strove to keep the man in town that night. He even
+called for his sensible wife and his excellent cook to argue, having no
+clerk left to make scandal of the scene. The cook had a turn of mind for
+Jordas, and did think that he would stop for her sake; and she took a
+broom to show him what the depth of snow was upon the red tiles between
+the brew-house and the kitchen. An icicle hung from the lip of the pump,
+and new snow sparkled on the cook's white cap, and the dark curly hair
+which she managed to let fall; the brew-house smelled nice, and the
+kitchen still nicer; but it made no difference to Jordas. If he had told
+them the reason of this hurry, they would have said hard things
+about it, perhaps; Mrs. Jellicorse especially (being well read in the
+Scriptures, and fond of quoting them against all people who had grouse
+and sent her none) would have called to mind what David said, when the
+three mighty men broke through the host, and brought water from the well
+of Bethlehem. So Jordas only answered that he had promised to return,
+and a trifle of snow improved the travelling.
+
+“A willful man must have his way,” said Mr. Jellicorse at last. “We can
+not put him in the pound, Diana; but the least we can do is to provide
+him for a coarse, cold journey. If I know anything of our country,
+he will never see Scargate Hall to-night, but his blanket will be a
+snowdrift. Give him one of our new whitneys to go behind his saddle, and
+I will make him take two things. I am your legal adviser, Jordas, and
+you are like all other clients. Upon the main issue, you cast me off;
+but in small matters you must obey me.”
+
+The hardy dogman was touched with this unusual care for his welfare. At
+home his services were accepted as a due, requiring little praise and
+less of gratitude. It was his place to do this and that, and be thankful
+for the privilege. But his comfort was left for himself to study; and if
+he had studied it much, reproach would soon have been the chief reward.
+It never would do, as his ladies said, to make too much of Jordas. He
+would give himself airs, and think that people could not get on without
+him.
+
+Marmaduke looked fresh and bold when he came out of stable; he had eaten
+with pleasure a good hot dinner, or supper perhaps he considered it,
+liking to have his meals early, as horses generally do. And he neighed
+and capered for the homeward road, though he knew how full it was of
+hardships; for never yet looked horse through bridle, without at least
+one eye resilient toward the charm of headstall. And now he had both
+eyes fixed with legitimate aim in that direction; and what were a few
+tiny atoms of snow to keep a big horse from his household?
+
+Merrily, therefore, he set forth, with a sturdy rider on his back; his
+clear neigh rang through the thick dull streets, and kind people came
+to their white blurred windows, and exclaimed, as they glanced at the
+party-colored horseman rushing away into the dreary depths, “Well,
+rather him than me, thank God!”
+
+“You keep the dog,” Master Jordas had said to the hostler, before he
+left the yard; “he is like a lamb, when you come to know him. I can't be
+plagued with him to-night. Here's a half crown for his victuals; he eats
+precious little for the size of him. A bullock's liver every other day,
+and a pound and a half the between times. Don't be afeared of him. He
+looks like that, to love you, man.”
+
+Instead of keeping on the Durham side of Tees, as he would have done in
+fair weather for the first six miles or so, Jordas crossed by the old
+town bridge into his native county. The journey would be longer thus,
+but easier in some places, and the track more plain to follow, which
+on a snowy night was everything. For all things now were in one
+indiscriminate pelt and whirl of white; the Tees was striped with
+rustling floes among the black moor-water; and the trees, as long as
+there were any, bent their shrouded forms and moaned.
+
+But with laborious plunges, and broad scatterings of obstruction, the
+willing horse ploughed out his way, himself the while wrapped up in
+white, and caked in all his tufty places with a crust that flopped up
+and down. The rider, himself piled up with snow, and bearded with a
+berg of it, from time to time, with his numb right hand, fumbled at the
+frozen clouts that clogged the poor horse's mane and crest.
+
+“How much longer will a' go, I wonder?” said Jordas to himself for the
+twentieth time. “The Lord in heaven knows where we be; but horse knows
+better than the Lord a'most. Two hour it must be since ever I 'tempted
+to make head or tail of it. But Marmaduke knoweth when a' hath his head;
+these creatures is wiser than Christians. Save me from the witches, if
+I ever see such weather! And I wish that Master Lance's oysters wasn't
+quite so much like him.”
+
+For, broad as his back was, perpetual thump of rugged and flintified
+knobs and edges, through the flag basket strapped over his neck, was
+beginning to tell upon his stanch but jolted spine; while his foot in
+the northern stirrup was numbed, and threatening to get frost-bitten.
+
+“The Lord knoweth where we be,” he said once more, growing in piety as
+the peril grew. “What can old horse know, without the Lord hath told
+'un? And likely he hath never asked, no more than I did. We mought 'a
+come twelve moiles, or we mought 'a come no more than six. What ever is
+there left in the world to judge by? The hills, or the hollows, or
+the boskies, all is one, so far as the power of a man's eyes goes.
+Howsomever, drive on, old Dukie.”
+
+Old Dukie drove on with all his might and main, and the stout spirit
+which engenders strength, till he came to a white wall reared before
+him, twice as high as his snow-capped head, and swirling like a billow
+of the sea with drift. Here he stopped short, for he had his own rein,
+and turned his clouted neck, and asked his master what to make of it.
+
+“We must 'a come at last to Stormy Gap: it might be worse, and it might
+be better. Rocks o' both sides, and no way round. No choice but to get
+through it, or to spend the night inside of it. You and I are a pretty
+good weight, old Dukie. We'll even try a charge for it, afore we knock
+under. We can't have much more smother than we've gotten already. My
+father was taken like this, I've heard tell, in the service of old
+Squire Philip; and he put his nag at it, and scumbled through. But first
+you get up your wind, old chap.”
+
+Marmaduke seemed to know what was expected of him; for he turned round,
+retreated a few steps, and then stood panting. Then Jordas dismounted,
+as well as he could with his windward leg nearly frozen. He smote
+himself lustily, with both arms swinging, upon his broad breast, and he
+stamped in the snow till he felt his tingling feet again. Then he took
+up the skirt of his thick heavy coat, and wiped down the head, mane,
+and shoulders of the horse, and the great pile of snow upon the crupper.
+“Start clear is a good word,” he said.
+
+For a moment he stopped to consider the forlorn hope of his last
+resolution. “About me, there is no such great matter,” he thought; “but
+if I was to kill Dukie, who would ever hear the last of it? And what a
+good horse he have been, to be sure! But if I was to leave him so, the
+crows would only have him. We be both in one boat; we must try of it.”
+ He said a little prayer, which was all he knew, for himself and a lass
+he had a liking to, who lived in a mill upon the river Lune; and then
+he got into the saddle again, and set his teeth hard, and spoke to
+Marmaduke, a horse who would never be touched with a spur. “Come on, old
+chap,” was all he said.
+
+The horse looked about in the thick of the night, as the head of the
+horse peers out of the cloak, in Welsh mummery, at Christmas-tide.
+The thick of the night was light and dark, with the dense intensity
+of down-pour; light in itself, and dark with shutting out all sight of
+everything--a close-at-hand confusion, and a distance out of measure.
+The horse, with his wise snow-crusted eyes, took in all the winnowing of
+light among the draff, and saw no possibility of breaking through, but
+resolved to spend his life as he was ordered. No power of rush or of
+dash could he gather, because of the sinking of his feet; the main
+chance was of bulk and weight; and his rider left him free to choose.
+For a few steps he walked, nimbly picking up his feet, and then, with
+a canter of the best spring he could compass, hurled himself into the
+depth of the drift, while Jordas lay flat along his neck, and let him
+plunge. For a few yards the light snow flew before him, like froth of
+the sea before a broad-bowed ship, and smothered as he was, he fought
+onward for his life. But very soon the power of his charge was gone, his
+limbs could not rise, and his breath was taken from him; the hole that
+he had made was filled up behind him; fresh volumes from the shaken
+height came pouring down upon him; his flanks and his back were wedged
+fast in the cumber, and he stood still and trembled, being buried alive.
+
+Jordas, with a great effort, threw himself off, and put his hat before
+his mouth, to make himself a breathing space. He scarcely knew whether
+he stood or lay; but he kicked about for want of air, and the more
+he kicked the worse it was, as in the depth of nightmare. Blindness,
+choking, smothering, and freezing fell in a lump upon his poor body now,
+and the shrieking of the horse and the panting of his struggles came, by
+some vibration, to him.
+
+But just as he began to lose his wits, sink away backward, and gasp for
+breath, a gleam of light broke upon his closing eyes; he gathered the
+remnant of his strength, struck for it, and was in a space of free air.
+After several long pants he looked around, and found that a thicket of
+stub oak jutting from the crag of the gap had made a small alcove with
+billows of snow piled over it. Then the brave spirit of the man came
+forth. “There is room for Dukie as well as me,” he gasped; “with God's
+help, I will fetch him in.”
+
+Weary as he was, he cast himself back into the wall of snow, and
+listened. At first he heard nothing, and made sure that all was over;
+but presently a faint soft gurgle, like a dying sob, came through the
+murk. With all his might he dashed toward the sound, and laid hold of a
+hairy chin just foundering. “Rise up, old chap,” he tried to shout, and
+he gave the horse a breath or two with the broad-brimmed hat above his
+nose. Then Marmaduke rallied for one last fight, with the surety of a
+man to help him. He staggered forward to the leading of the hand he knew
+so well, and fell down upon his knees; but his head was clear, and he
+drew long breaths, and his heart was glad, and his eyes looked up, and
+he gave a feeble whinny.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+BAT OF THE GILL
+
+
+Upon that same evening the cottage in the gill was well snowed up, as
+befell it every winter, more or less handsomely, according to the wind.
+The wind was in the right way to do it truly now, with just enough
+draught to pile bountiful wreaths, and not enough of wild blast to
+scatter them again. “Bat of the Gill,” as Mr. Bert was called, sat by
+the fire, with his wife and daughter, and listened very calmly to the
+whistle of the wind, and the sliding of the soft fall that blocked his
+window-panes.
+
+Insie was reading, Mrs. Bert was knitting stockings, and Mr. Bert was
+thinking of his own strange life. It never once occurred to him that
+great part of its strangeness sprang from the oddities of his own
+nature, any more than a man who has been in a quarrel believes that he
+could have kept out of it. “Matters beyond my own control have forced me
+to do this and that,” is the sure belief of every man whose life has run
+counter to his fellows, through his own inborn diversity. In this man's
+nature were two strange points, sure (if they are strong enough to
+survive experience) to drive anybody into strange ways: he did not care
+for money, and he contemned rank.
+
+How these two horrible twists got into his early composition is more
+than can be told, and in truth it does not matter. But being quite
+incurable, and meeting with no sympathy, except among people who aspired
+to them only, and failed--if they ever got the chance of failing--these
+depravations from the standard of mankind drove Christopher Bert from
+the beaten tracks of life. Providence offered him several occasions of
+return into the ordinary course; for after he had cast abroad a very
+nice inheritance, other two fortunes fell to him, but found him as
+difficult as ever to stay with. Not that he was lavish upon luxury
+of his own, for no man could have simpler tastes, but that he weakly
+believed in the duty of benevolence, and the charms of gratitude. Of the
+latter it is needless to say that he got none, while with the former he
+produced some harm. When all his bread was cast upon the waters, he set
+out to earn his own crust as best he might.
+
+Hence came a chapter of accidents, and a volume of motley incidents in
+various climes, and upon far seas. Being a very strong, active man,
+with gift of versatile hand and brain, and early acquaintance with
+handicrafts, Christopher Bert could earn his keep, and make in a year
+almost as much as he used to give away, or lend without redemption, in a
+general day of his wealthy time. Hard labor tried to make him sour, but
+did not succeed therein.
+
+Yet one thing in all this experience vexed him more than any hardship,
+to wit, that he never could win true fellowship among his new fellows in
+the guild of labor. Some were rather surly, others very pleasant (from
+a warm belief that he must yet come into money); but whatsomever
+or whosoever they were, or of whatever land, they all agreed that
+Christopher Bert was not of their communion. Manners, appearance,
+education, freedom from prejudice, and other wide diversities marked him
+as an interloper, and perhaps a spy, among the enlightened working-men
+of the period. Over and over again he strove to break down this barrier;
+but thrice as hard he might have striven, and found it still too strong
+for him. This and another circumstance at last impressed him with the
+superior value of his own society. Much as he loved the working-man--in
+spite of all experience of him--that worthy fellow would not have it,
+but felt a truly and piously hereditary scorn for “a gentleman as took
+a order, when, but for being a blessed fool, he might have stood there
+giving it.”
+
+The other thing that helped to drive him from this very dense array was
+his own romantic marriage, and the copious birth of children. After the
+sensitive age was past, and when the sensibles ought to reign--for then
+he was past five-and-thirty--he fell (for the first time of his life)
+into a violent passion of love for a beautiful Jewish maid barely turned
+seventeen; Zilpah admired him, for he was of noble aspect, rich with
+variety of thoughts and deeds. With women he had that peculiar power
+which men of strong character possess; his voice was like music, and
+his words as good as poetry, and he scarcely ever seemed to contradict
+himself. Very soon Zilpah adored him; and then he gave notice to her
+parents that she was to be his wife. These stared considerably, being
+very wealthy people, of high Jewish blood (and thus the oldest of the
+old), and steadfast most--where all are steadfast--to their own race of
+religion. Finding their astonishment received serenely, they locked up
+their daughter, with some strong expressions; which they redoubled when
+they found the door wide open in the morning. Zilpah was gone, and they
+scratched out her name from the surface of their memories.
+
+Christopher Bert, being lawfully married--for the local restrictions
+scorned the case of a foreigner and a Jewess--crossed the Polish
+frontier with his mules and tools, and drove his little covered cart
+through Austria. And here he lit upon, and helped in some predicament
+of the road, a spirited young Englishman undergoing the miseries of
+the grand tour, the son and heir of Philip Yordas. Duncan was large and
+crooked of thought--as every true Yordas must be--and finding a mind in
+advance of his own by several years of such sallyings, and not yet even
+swerving toward the turning goal of corpulence, the young man perceived
+that he had hit upon a prophet.
+
+For Bert scarcely ever talked at all of his generous ideas. A
+prophet's proper mantle is the long cloak of Harpocrates, and his best
+vaticinations are inspired more than uttered. So it came about that
+Duncan Yordas, difficult as he was to lead, largely shared the devious
+courses of Christopher Bert the workman, and these few months of
+friendship made a lasting mark upon the younger man.
+
+Soon after this a heavy blow befell the ingenious wanderer. Among his
+many arts and trades, he had some knowledge of engineering, or at
+any rate much boldness of it; which led him to conceive a brave idea
+concerning some tributary of the Po. The idea was sound and fine, and
+might have led to many blessings; but Nature, enjoying her bad work
+best, recoiled upon her improver. He left an oozy channel drying (like a
+glanderous sponge) in August; and virulent fever came into his tent.
+All of his eight children died except his youngest son Maunder; his own
+strong frame was shaken sadly; and his loving wife lost all her strength
+and buxom beauty. He gathered the remnants of his race, and stricken but
+still unconquered, took his way to a long-forgotten land. “The residue
+of us must go home,” he said, after all his wanderings.
+
+In London, of course, he was utterly forgotten, although he had spent
+much substance there, in the days of sanguine charity. Durham was his
+native county, where he might have been a leading man, if more like
+other men. “Cosmopolitan” as he was, and strong in his own opinions
+still, the force of years, and sorrow, and long striving, told upon him.
+He had felt a longing to mend the kettles of the house that once was
+his; but when he came to the brink of Tees his stout heart failed, and
+he could not cross.
+
+Instead of that he turned away, to look for his old friend Yordas; not
+to be patronized by him--for patronage he would have none--but from
+hankering after a congenial mind, and to touch upon kind memories.
+Yordas was gone, as pure an outcast as himself, and his name almost
+forbidden there. He thought it a part of the general wrong, and wandered
+about to see the land, with his eyes wide open as usual.
+
+There was nothing very beautiful in the land, and nothing at all
+attractive, except that it commanded length of view, and was noble
+in its rugged strength. This, however, pleased him well, and here he
+resolved to set up his staff, if means could be found to make it grow.
+From the higher fells he could behold (whenever the weather encouraged
+him) the dromedary humps of certain hills, at the tail whereof he had
+been at school--a charming mist of retrospect. And he felt, though it
+might have been hard to make him own it, a deeply seated joy that here
+he should be long lengths out of reach of the most highly illuminated
+working-man. This was an inconsistent thing, but consistent forever in
+coming to pass.
+
+Where the will is, there the way is, if the will be only wise. Bert
+found out a way of living in this howling wilderness, as his poor wife
+would have called it, if she had been a bad wife. Unskillful as he had
+shown himself in the matter of silver and gold, he had won great skill
+in the useful metals, especially in steel--the type of truth. And here
+in a break of rock he discovered a slender vein of a slate-gray mineral,
+distinct from cobalt, but not unlike it, such as he had found in the
+Carpathian Mountains, and which in metallurgy had no name yet, for its
+value was known to very few. But a legend of the spot declared that the
+ancient cutlers of Bilbao owed much of their fame to the use of this
+mineral in the careful process of conversion.
+
+“I can make a living out of it, and that is all I want,” said Bert, who
+was moderately sanguine still. “I know a manufacturer who has faith in
+me, and is doing all he can against the supremacy of Sheffield. If I
+can make arrangements with him, we will settle here, and keep to our own
+affairs for the future.”
+
+He built him a cottage in lonely snugness, far in the waste, and outside
+even of the range of title-deeds, though he paid a small rent to the
+manor, to save trouble, and to satisfy his conscience of the mineral
+deposit. By right of discovery, lease, and user, this became entirely
+his, as nobody else had ever heard of it. So by the fine irony of facts
+it came to pass, first, that the squanderer of three fortunes united
+his lot with a Jewess; next, that a great “cosmopolitan” hugged a strict
+corner of jealous monopoly; and again, that a champion of communism
+insisted upon his exclusive right to other people's property. However,
+for all that, it might not be easy to find a more consistent man.
+
+Here Maunder, the surviving son, grew up, and Insie, their last child,
+was born; and the land enjoyed peace for twenty years, because it was
+of little value. A man who had been about the world so loosely must have
+found it hard to be boxed up here, except for the lowering of strength
+and pride by sorrow of affection, and sore bodily affliction. But the
+air of the moorland is good for such troubles. Bert possessed a happy
+nature; and perhaps it was well that his children could say, “We are
+nine; but only two to feed.”
+
+It must have been the whistling wind, a long memorial sound, which sent
+him, upon this snowy December night, back among the echoes of the past;
+for he always had plenty of work to do, even in the winter evenings,
+and was not at all given to folded arms. And before he was tired of his
+short warm rest, his wife asked, “Where is Maunder?”
+
+“I left him doing his work,” he replied; “he had a great heap still to
+clear. He understands his work right well. He will not go to bed till he
+has done it. We must not be quite snowed up, my dear.”
+
+Mrs. Bert shook her head: having lost so many children, she was anxious
+about the rest of them. But before she could speak again, a heavy leap
+against the door was heard; the strong latch rattled, and the timbers
+creaked. Insie jumped up to see what it meant, but her father stopped
+her, and went himself. When he opened the door, a whirl of snow flew in,
+and through the glitter and the flutter a great dog came reeling, and
+rolled upon the floor, a mighty lump of bristled whiteness. Mrs. Bert
+was terrified, for she thought it was a wolf, not having found it in her
+power to believe that there could be such a desert place without wolves
+in the winter-time.
+
+“Why, Saracen!” said Insie; “I declare it is! You poor old dog, what can
+have brought you out this weather?”
+
+Both her parents were surprised to see her sit down on the floor and
+throw her arms around the neck of this self-invited and very uncouth
+visitor. For the girl forgot all of her trumpery concealments in the
+warmth of her feeling for a poor lost dog.
+
+Saracen looked at her, with a view to dignity. He had only seen her once
+before, when Pet brought him down (both for company and safeguard), and
+he was not a dog who would dream of recognizing a person to whom he had
+been rashly introduced. And he knew that he was in a mighty difficulty
+now, which made self-respect all the more imperative. However, on the
+whole, he had been pleased with Insie at their first interview, and had
+patronized her--for she had an honest fragrance, and a little taste of
+salt--and now with a side look he let her know that he did not wish to
+hurt her feelings, although his business was not with her. But if she
+wanted to give him some refreshment, she might do so, while he was
+considering.
+
+The fact was, though he could not tell it, and would scorn to do so
+if he could, that he had not had one bit to eat for more hours than he
+could reckon. That wicked hostler at Middleton had taken his money and
+disbursed it upon beer, adding insult to injury by remarking, in the
+hearing of Saracen (while strictly chained), that he was a deal too fat
+already. So vile a sentiment had deepened into passion the dog's ever
+dominant love of home; and when the darkness closed upon him in an
+unknown hungry hole, without even a horse for company, any other dog
+would have howled; but this dog stiffened his tail with self-respect. He
+scraped away all the straw to make a clear area for his experiment, and
+then he stood up like a pillar, or a fine kangaroo, and made trial of
+his weight against the chain. Feeling something give, or show propensity
+toward giving, he said to himself that here was one more triumph for him
+over the presumptuous intellect of man. The chain might be strong enough
+to hold a ship, and the great leathern collar to secure a bull; but the
+fastening of chain to collar was unsound, by reason of the rusting of a
+rivet.
+
+Retiring to the manger for a better length of rush, he backed against
+the wall for a fulcrum to his spring, while the roll of his chest and
+the breadth of his loins quivered with tight muscle. Then off like the
+charge of a cannon he dashed, the loop of the collar flew out of the
+rivet, and the chain fell clanking on the paving-bricks. With grim
+satisfaction the dog set off in the track of the horse for Scargate
+Hall. And now he sat panting in the cottage of the gill, to tell his
+discovery and to crave for help.
+
+“Where do you come from, and what do you want?” asked Bert, as the dog,
+soon beginning to recover, looked round at the door, and then back again
+at him, and jerked up his chin impatiently, “Insie, you seem to know
+this fine fellow. Where have you met him? And whose dog is he? Saracen!
+Why, that is the name of the dog who is everybody's terror at Scargate.”
+
+“I gave him some water one day,” said Insie, “when he was terribly
+thirsty. But he seems to know you, father, better than me. He wants you
+to do something, and he scorns me.”
+
+For Saracen, failing of articulate speech, was uttering volumes of
+entreaty with his eyes, which were large, and brown, and full of clear
+expression under eyebrows of rich tan; and then he ran to the door, put
+up one heavy paw and shook it, and ran back, and pushed the master with
+his nozzle, and then threw back his great head and long velvet ears, and
+opening his enormous jaws, gave vent to a mighty howl which shook the
+roof.
+
+“Oh, put him out, put him out! open the door!” exclaimed Mrs. Bert, in
+fresh terror. “If he is not a wolf, he is a great deal worse.”
+
+“His master is out in the snow,” cried Bert; “perhaps buried in the
+snow, and he is come to tell us. Give me my hat, child, and my thick
+coat. See how delighted he is, poor fellow! Oh, here comes Maunder! Now
+lead the way, my friend. Maunder, go and fetch the other shovel.
+There is somebody lost in the snow, I believe. We must follow this dog
+immediately.”
+
+“Not till you both have had much plenty food,” the mother said: “out
+upon the moors, this bad, bad night, and for leagues possibly to travel.
+My son and my husband are much too good. You bad dog, why did you come,
+pestilent? But you shall have food also. Insie, provide him. While I
+make to eat your father and your brother.”
+
+Saracen would hardly wait, starving as he was; but seeing the men
+prepare to start, he made the best of it, and cleared out a colander of
+victuals in a minute.
+
+“Put up what is needful for a starving traveller,” Mr. Bert said to the
+ladies. “We shall want no lantern; the snow gives light enough, and
+the moon will soon be up. Keep a kettle boiling, and some warm clothes
+ready. Perhaps we shall be hours away; but have no fear. Maunder is the
+boy for snow-drifts.”
+
+The young man being of a dark and silent nature, quite unlike his
+father's, made no reply, nor even deigned to give a smile, but seemed to
+be wonderfully taken with the dog, who in many ways resembled him. Then
+he cast both shovels on his shoulder at the door, and strode forth,
+and stamped upon the path that he had cleared. His father took a stout
+stick, the dog leaped past them, and led them out at once upon the open
+moor.
+
+“We are in for a night of it,” said Mr. Bert, and his son did not
+contradict him.
+
+“The dog goes first, then I, then you,” he said to his father, with his
+deep slow tone. And the elderly man, whose chief puzzle in life--since
+he had given up the problem of the world--was the nature of his only
+son, now wondered again, as he seldom ceased from wondering, whether
+this boy despised or loved him. The young fellow always took the very
+greatest care of his father, as if he were a child to be protected, and
+he never showed the smallest sign of disrespect. Yet Maunder was not the
+true son of his father, but of some ancestor, whose pride sprang out
+of dust at the outrageous idea of a kettle-mending Bert, and embodied
+itself in this Maunder.
+
+The large-minded father never dreamed of such a trifle, but felt in such
+weather, with the snow above his leggings, that sometimes it is good to
+have a large-bodied son.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+A CLEW OF BUTTONS
+
+
+When Jack o' the Smithies met his old commander, as related by himself,
+at the house of Mr. Mordacks, everything seemed to be going on well for
+Sir Duncan, and badly for his sisters. The general factor, as he hinted
+long ago, possessed certain knowledge which the Middleton lawyer fondly
+supposed to be confined to himself and his fair clients. Sir Duncan
+refused to believe that the ladies could ever have heard of such a
+document as that which, if valid, would simply expel them; for, said he,
+“If they know of it, they are nothing less than thieves to conceal it
+and continue in possession. Of a lawyer I could fancy it, but never of a
+lady.”
+
+“My good sir,” answered the sarcastic Mordacks, “a lady's conscience is
+not the same as a gentleman's, but bears more resemblance to a lawyer's.
+A lady's honor is of the very highest standard; but the standard depends
+upon her state of mind; and that, again, depends upon the condition of
+her feelings. You must not suppose me to admit the faintest shadow of
+disrespect toward your good sisters; but ladies are ladies, and facts
+are facts; and the former can always surmount the latter; while a man is
+comparatively helpless. I know that Mr. Jellicorse, their man of law, is
+thoroughly acquainted with this interesting deed; his first duty was to
+apprise them of it; and that, you may be quite sure, he has done.”
+
+“I hope not. I am sure not. A lawyer does not always employ hot haste in
+an unwelcome duty.”
+
+“True enough, Sir Duncan. But the duty here was welcome. Their knowledge
+of that deed, and of his possession of it, would make him their master,
+if he chose to be so. Not that old Jellicorse would think of such a
+thing. He is a man of high principle like myself, of a lofty conscience,
+and even sentimental. But lawyers are just like the rest of mankind.
+Their first consideration is their bread and cheese; though some of them
+certainly seem ready to accept it even in the toasted form.”
+
+“You may say what you like, Mordacks, my sister Philippa is far too
+upright, and Eliza too good, for any such thing to be possible. However,
+that question may abide. I shall not move until I have some one to do it
+for. I have no great affection for a home which cast me forth, whether
+it had a right to do so or not. But if we succeed in the more important
+matter, it will be my duty to recover the estates, for the benefit of
+another. You are sure of your proofs that it is the boy?”
+
+“As certain as need be. And we will make it surer when you meet me there
+the week after next. For the reasons I have mentioned, we must wait
+till then. Your yacht is at Yarmouth. You have followed my advice in
+approaching by sea, and not by land, and in hiring at Yarmouth for the
+purpose. But you never should have come to York, Sir Duncan; this is
+a very great mistake of yours. They are almost sure to hear of it.
+And even your name given in our best inn! But luckily they never see a
+newspaper at Scargate.”
+
+“I follow the tactics with which you succeed--all above-board, and no
+stratagems. Your own letter brought me; but perhaps I am too old to be
+so impatient. Where shall I meet you, and on what day?”
+
+“This day fortnight, at the Thornwick Inn, I shall hope to be with you
+at three o'clock, and perhaps bring somebody with me. If I fixed an
+earlier day, I should only disappoint you. For many things have to be
+delicately managed; and among them, the running of a certain cargo,
+without serious consequence. For that we may trust a certain very
+skillful youth. For the rest you must trust to a clumsier person, your
+humble land-agent and surveyor--titles inquired into and verified, at a
+tenth of solicitors' charges.”
+
+“Well,” said Sir Duncan, “you shall verify mine, as soon as you have
+verified my son, and my title to him. Good-by, Mordacks. I am sure you
+mean me well, but you seem to be very long about it.”
+
+“Hot climates breed impatience, sir. A true son of Yorkshire is never in
+a hurry. The general complaint of me is concerning my wild rapidity.”
+
+“You are like the grocer, whose goods, if they have any fault at all,
+have the opposite one to what the customer finds in them. Well, good-by,
+Mordacks. You are a trusty friend, and I thank you.”
+
+These words from Sir Duncan Yordas were not merely of commonplace.
+For he was a man of great self-reliance, quick conclusion, and strong
+resolve. These had served him well in India, and insured his fortune;
+while early adversity and bitter losses had tempered the arrogance of
+his race. After the loss of his wife and child, and the breach with all
+his relatives, he had led a life of peril and hard labor, varied with
+few pleasures. When first he learned from Edinburgh that the ship
+conveying his only child to the care of the mother's relatives was lost,
+with all on board, he did all in his power to make inquiries. But
+the illness and death of his wife, to whom he was deeply attached,
+overwhelmed him. For while with some people “one blow drives out
+another,” with some the second serves only to drive home, deepen, and
+aggravate the first. For years he was satisfied to believe both losses
+irretrievable. And so he might still have gone on believing, except for
+a queer little accident.
+
+Being called to Calcutta upon government business, he happened to see a
+pair of English sailors, lazily playing, in a shady place by the side of
+the road, at hole-penny. One of them seemed to have his pocket cleared
+out, for just as Sir Duncan was passing, he cried, “Here, Jack, you give
+me change of one of them, and I'll have at you again, my boy. As good as
+a guinea with these blessed niggers. Come back to their home, I b'lieve
+they are, same as I wish I was; rale gold--ask this gen'leman.”
+
+The other swore that they were “naught but brass, and not worth a copper
+farden”; until the tars, being too tipsy for much fighting, referred the
+question to Sir Duncan.
+
+Three hollow beads of gold were what they showed him, and he knew them
+at once for his little boy's buttons, the workmanship being peculiar to
+one village of his district, and one family thereof. The sailor would
+thankfully have taken one rupee apiece for them; but Sir Duncan gave him
+thirty for the three--their full metallic value--upon his pledging honor
+to tell all he knew about them, and make affidavit, if required. Then
+he told all he knew, to the best of his knowledge, and swore to it when
+sober, accepted a refresher, and made oath to it again, with some lively
+particulars added. And the facts that he deposed to, and deposited, were
+these:
+
+Being down upon his luck, about a twelvemonth back, he thought of
+keeping company with a nice young woman, and settling down until a
+better time turned up; and happening to get a month's wages from a
+schooner of ninety-five tons at Scarborough, he strolled about the
+street a bit, and kept looking down the railings for a servant-girl who
+might have got her wages in her work-box. Clean he was, and taut, and
+clever, beating up street in Sunday rig, keeping sharp look-out for
+a consort, and in three or four tacks he hailed one. As nice a young
+partner as a lad could want, and his meaning was to buckle to for the
+winter. But the night before the splicing-day, what happened to him he
+never could tell after. He was bousing up his jib, as a lad is bound
+to do, before he takes the breakers. And when he came to, he was twenty
+leagues from Scarborough, on board of his Majesty's recruiting brig the
+Harpy. He felt in his pocket for the wedding-ring, and instead of that,
+there were these three beads.
+
+Sir Duncan was sorry for his sad disaster, and gave him ten more rupees
+to get over it. And then he discovered that the poor forsaken maiden's
+name was Sally Watkins. Sally was the daughter of a rich pawnbroker,
+whose frame of mind was sometimes out of keeping with its true
+contents. He had very fine feelings, and real warmth of sympathy; but
+circumstances seemed sometimes to lead them into the wrong channel,
+and induced him to kick his children out of doors. In the middle of the
+family he kicked out Sally, almost before her turn was come; and
+she took a place at 4 pounds a year, to disgrace his memory--as she
+said--carrying off these buttons, and the jacket, which he had bestowed
+upon her, in a larger interval.
+
+There was no more to be learned than this from the intercepted
+bridegroom. He said that he might have no objection to go on with his
+love again, as soon as the war was over, leastways, if it was made worth
+his while; but he had come across another girl, at the Cape of Good
+Hope, and he believed that this time the Lord was in it, for she had
+been born in a caul, and he had got it. With such a dispensation Sir
+Duncan Yordas saw no right to interfere, but left the course of true
+love to itself, after taking down the sailor's name--“Ned Faithful.”
+
+However, he resolved to follow out the clew of beads, though without
+much hope of any good result. Of the three in his possession he kept
+one, and one he sent to Edinburgh, and the third to York, having heard
+of the great sagacity, vigor, and strict integrity of Mr. Mordacks, all
+of which he sharpened by the promise of a large reward upon discovery.
+Then he went back to his work, until his time of leave was due, after
+twenty years of arduous and distinguished service. In troublous times,
+no private affairs, however urgent, should drive him from his post.
+
+Now, eager as he was when in England once again, he was true to his
+character and the discipline of life. He had proof that the matter was
+in very good hands, and long command had taught him the necessity of
+obedience. Any previous Yordas would have kicked against the pricks,
+rushed forward, and scattered everything. But Sir Duncan was now of a
+different fibre. He left York at once, as Mordacks advised, and posted
+to Yarmouth, before the roads were blocked with snow, and while Jack o'
+the Smithies was returning to his farm. And from Yarmouth he set sail
+for Scarborough, in a sturdy little coaster, which he hired by the week.
+From Scarborough he would run down to Bridlington--not too soon,
+for fear of setting gossip going, but in time to meet Mordacks at
+Flamborough, as agreed upon.
+
+That gentleman had other business in hand, which must not be neglected;
+but he gave to this matter a very large share of his time, and paid
+five-and-twenty pounds for the trusty roadster, who liked the taste of
+Flamborough pond, and the salt air on the oats of Widow Tapsy's stable,
+and now regularly neighed and whisked his tail as soon as he found
+himself outside Monk Bar. By favor of this horse and of his own sword
+and pistols, Mordacks spent nearly as much time now at Flamborough as
+he did in York; but unluckily he had been obliged to leave on the
+very afternoon before the run was accomplished, and Carroway slain so
+wickedly; for he hurried home to meet Sir Duncan, and had not heard the
+bad news when he met him.
+
+That horrible murder was a sad blow to him, not only as a man of
+considerable kindness and desire to think well of every one--so far as
+experience allows it--but also because of the sudden apparition of the
+law rising sternly in front of him. Justice in those days was not as
+now: her truer name was Nemesis. After such an outrage to the dignity of
+the realm, an example must be made, without much consideration whether
+it were the right one. If Robin Lyth were caught, there would be the
+form of trial, but the principal point would be to hang him. Like the
+rest of the world, Mr. Mordacks at first believed entirely in his guilt;
+but unlike the world, he did not desire to have him caught, and brought
+straightway to the gallows. Instead of seeking him, therefore, he was
+now compelled to avoid him, when he wanted him most; for it never must
+be said that a citizen of note had discoursed with such a criminal,
+and allowed him to escape. On the other hand, here he had to meet Sir
+Duncan, and tell him that all those grand promises were shattered, that
+in finding his only son all he had found was a cowardly murderer flying
+for his life, and far better left at the bottom of the sea. For once
+in a way, as he dwelt upon all this, the general factor became
+down-hearted, his vigorous face lost the strong lines of decision, and
+he even allowed his mouth to open without anything to put into it.
+
+But it was impossible for this to last. Nature had provided Mordacks
+with an admirably high opinion of himself, enlivened by a sprightly
+good-will toward the world, whenever it wagged well with him. He had
+plenty of business of his own, and yet could take an amateur delight in
+the concerns of everybody; he was always at liberty to give good advice,
+and never under duty to take it; he had vigor of mind, of memory,
+of character, and of digestion; and whenever he stole a holiday from
+self-denial, and launched out after some favorite thing, there was the
+cash to do it with, and the health to do it pleasantly.
+
+Such a man is not long depressed by a sudden misadventure. Dr. Upround's
+opinion in favor of Robin did not go very far with him; for he looked
+upon the rector as a man who knew more of divine than of human nature.
+But that fault could scarcely be found with a woman; or at any rate with
+a widow encumbered with a large family hanging upon the dry breast of
+the government. And though Mr. Mordacks did not invade the cottage quite
+so soon as he should have done, if guided by strict business, he thought
+himself bound to get over that reluctance, and press her upon a most
+distressing subject, before he kept appointment with his principal.
+
+The snow, which by this time had blockaded Scargate, impounded
+Jordas, and compelled Mr. Jellicorse to rest and be thankful for a hot
+mince-pie, although it had visited this eastern coast as well, was
+not deep enough there to stop the roads. Keeping head-quarters at the
+“Hooked Cod” now, and encouraging a butcher to set up again (who had
+dropped all his money, in his hurry to get on), Geoffrey Mordacks began
+to make way into the outer crust of Flamborough society. In a council of
+the boats, upon a Sunday afternoon, every boat being garnished for
+its rest upon the flat, and every master fisherman buttoned with a
+flower--the last flowers of the year, and bearing ice-marks in their
+eyes--a resolution had been passed that the inland man meant well, had
+naught to do with Revenue, or Frenchmen either, or what was even worse,
+any outside fishers, such as often-time came sneaking after fishing
+grounds of Flamborough. Mother Tapsy stood credit for this strange man,
+and he might be allowed to go where he was minded, and to take all the
+help he liked to pay for.
+
+Few men could have achieved such a triumph, without having married a
+Flamborough lass, which must have been the crown of all human ambition,
+if difficulty crowns it. Even to so great a man it was an added laurel,
+and strengthened him much in his opinion of himself. In spite of all
+disasters, he recovered faith in fortune, so many leading Flamborough
+men began to touch their hats to him! And thus he set forth before a
+bitter eastern gale, with the head of his seasoned charger bent toward
+the melancholy cot at Bridlington.
+
+Having granted a new life of slaughter to that continually insolvent
+butcher, who exhibited the body of a sheep once more, with an eye to the
+approach of Christmas, this universal factor made it a point of duty
+to encourage him. In either saddle-bag he bore a seven-pound leg of
+mutton--a credit to a sheep of that district then--and to show himself
+no traitor to the staple of the place, he strapped upon his crupper, in
+some oar-weed and old netting, a twenty-pound cod, who found it hard to
+breathe his last when beginning to enjoy horse-exercise.
+
+“There is a lot of mouths to fill,” said Mr. Mordacks, with a sigh,
+while his landlady squeezed a brown loaf of her baking into the nick
+of his big sword-strap; “and you and I are capable of entering into the
+condition of the widow and the fatherless.”
+
+“Hoonger is the waa of them, and victuals is the cure for it. Now mind
+you coom home afore dark,” cried the widow, to whom he had happened to
+say, very sadly, that he was now a widower. “To my moind, a sight o'
+more snaw is a-coomin'; and what mah sard or goon foight again it?
+Captain Moordocks, coom ye home arly. T' hare sha' be doon to a toorn be
+fi' o'clock. Coom ye home be that o'clock, if ye care for deener.”
+
+“I must have made a tender impression on her heart,” Mr. Mordacks said
+to himself, as he kissed his hand to the capacious hostess. “Such is
+my fortune, to be loved by everybody, while aiming at the sternest
+rectitude. It is sweet, it is dangerously sweet; but what a comfort! How
+that large-hearted female will baste my hare!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+A PLEASANT INTERVIEW
+
+
+Cumbered as he was of body, and burdened with some cares of mind, the
+general factor ploughed his way with his usual resolution. A scowl of
+dark vapor came over the headlands, and under-ran the solid snow-clouds
+with a scud, like bonfire smoke. The keen wind following the curves of
+land, and shaking the fringe of every white-clad bush, piped (like a
+boy through a comb) wherever stock or stub divided it. It turned all
+the coat of the horse the wrong way, and frizzed up the hair of Mr.
+Mordacks, which was as short as a soldier's, and tossed up his heavy
+riding cape, and got into him all up the small of his back. Being fond
+of strong language, he indulged in much; but none of it warmed him, and
+the wind whistled over his shoulders, and whirled the words out of his
+mouth.
+
+When he came to the dip of the road, where it crosses the Dane's
+Dike, he pulled up his horse for a minute, in the shelter of shivering
+fir-trees. “What a cursed bleak country! My fish is frozen stiff, and my
+legs are as dead as the mutton in the saddle-bags. Geoffrey, you are a
+fool,” he said. “Charity is very fine, and business even better; but a
+good coal fire is the best of all. But in for a penny of it, in for a
+pound. Hark! I hear some fellow-fool equally determined to be frozen.
+I'll go at once and hail him; perhaps the sight of him will warm me.”
+
+He turned his horse down a little lane upon the left, where snow lay
+deep, with laden bushes overhanging it, and a rill of water bridged
+with bearded ice ran dark in the hedge-trough. And here he found a
+stout lusty man, with shining red cheeks and keen blue eyes, hacking and
+hewing in a mighty maze of brambles.
+
+“My friend, you seem busy. I admire your vast industry,” Mr. Mordacks
+exclaimed, as the man looked at him, but ceased not from swinging his
+long hedge-hook. “Happy is the land that owns such men.”
+
+“The land dothn't own me; I own the land. I shall be pleased to learn
+what your business is upon it.”
+
+Farmer Anerley hated chaff, as a good agriculturist should do. Moreover,
+he was vexed by many little griefs to-day, and had not been out long
+enough to work them off. He guessed pretty shrewdly that this sworded
+man was “Moreducks”--as the leading wags of Flamborough were gradually
+calling him--and the sight of a sword upon his farm (unless of an
+officer bound to it) was already some disquietude to an English farmer's
+heart. That was a trifle; for fools would be fools, and might think it a
+grand thing to go about with tools they were never born to the handling
+of; but a fellow who was come to take up Robin Lyth's case, and strive
+to get him out of his abominable crime, had better go back to the
+rogue's highway, instead of coming down the private road to Anerley.
+
+“Upon my word I do believe,” cried Mordacks, with a sprightly joy, “that
+I have the pleasure of meeting at last the well-known Captain Anerley!
+My dear sir, I can not help commending your prudence in guarding the
+entrance to your manor; but not in this employment of a bill-hook. From
+all that I hear, it is a Paradise indeed. What a haven in such weather
+as the present! Now, Captain Anerley, I entreat you to consider whether
+it is wise to take the thorn so from the rose. If I had so sweet a
+place, I would plant brambles, briers, blackthorn, furze, crataegus,
+every kind of spinous growth, inside my gates, and never let anybody lop
+them. Captain, you are too hospitable.”
+
+Farmer Anerley gazed with wonder at this man, who could talk so fast for
+the first time of seeing a body. Then feeling as if his hospitality were
+challenged, and desiring more leisure for reflection, “You better come
+down the lane, sir,” he said.
+
+“Am I to understand that you invite me to your house, or only to the
+gate where the dogs come out? Excuse me: I always am a most plain-spoken
+man.”
+
+“Our dogs never bite nobody but rogues.”
+
+“In that case, Captain Anerley, I may trust their moral estimate. I knew
+a farmer once who was a thorough thief in hay; a man who farmed his own
+land, and trimmed his own hedges; a thoroughly respectable and solid
+agriculturist. But his trusses of hay were always six pounds short, and
+if ever anybody brought a sample truss to steelyard, he had got a little
+dog, just seven pounds weight, who slipped into the core of it, being
+just a good hay-color. He always delivered his hay in the twilight, and
+when it swung the beam, he used to say, 'Come, now, I must charge you
+for overweight.' Now, captain, have you got such an honest dog as that?”
+
+“I would have claimed him, that I would, if such a clever dog were
+weighed to me. But, sir, you have got the better of me. What a man for
+stories you be, for sure! Come in to our fire-place.” Farmer Anerley was
+conquered by this tale, which he told fifty times every year he lived
+thereafter, never failing to finish with, “What rogues they be, up York
+way!”
+
+Master Mordacks was delighted with this piece of luck on his side.
+Many times he had been longing to get in at Anerley, not only from the
+reputation of good cheer there, but also from kind curiosity to see the
+charming Mary, who was now becoming an important element of business.
+Since Robin had given him the slip so sadly--a thing it was impossible
+to guard against--the best chance of hearing what became of him would be
+to get into the good graces of his sweetheart.
+
+“We have been very sadly for a long time now,” said the farmer, as he
+knocked at his own porch door with the handle of his bill-hook. “There
+used to be one as was always welcome here; and a pleasure it was to see
+him make himself so pleasant, sir. But ever since the Lord took him home
+from his family, without a good-by, as a man might say, my wife hath
+taken to bar the doors whiles I am away and out of sight.” Stephen
+Anerley knocked harder, as he thus explained the need of it; for it
+grieved him to have his house shut up.
+
+“Very wise of them all to bar out such weather,” said Mordacks, who read
+the farmer's thoughts like print, “Don't relax your rules, sir, until
+the weather changes. Ah, that was a very sad thing about the captain. As
+gallant an officer, and as single-minded, as ever killed a Frenchman in
+the best days of our navy.”
+
+“Single-minded is the very word to give him, sir. I sought about for it
+ever since I heard of him coming to an end like that, and doing of his
+duty in the thick of it. If I could only get a gentleman to tell me, or
+an officer's wife would be better still, what the manners is when a poor
+lady gets her husband shot, I'll be blest if I wouldn't go straight
+and see her, though they make such a distance betwixt us and the
+regulars.--Oh, then, ye've come at last! No thief, no thief.”
+
+“Father,” cried Mary, bravely opening all the door, of which the
+ruffian wind made wrong by casting her figure in high relief--and yet a
+pardonable wrong--“father, you are quite wise to come home, before your
+dear nose is quite cut off.--Oh, I beg your pardon, sir; I never saw
+you.”
+
+“My fate in life is to be overlooked,” Mr. Mordacks answered, with
+a martial stride; “but not always, young lady, with such exquisite
+revenge. What I look at pays fiftyfold for being overlooked.”
+
+“You are an impudent, conceited man,” thought Mary to herself, with
+gross injustice; but she only blushed and said, “I beg your pardon,
+sir.”
+
+“You see, sir,” quoth the farmer, with some severity, tempered, however,
+with a smile of pride, “my daughter, Mary Anerley.”
+
+“And I take off my hat,” replied audacious Mordacks, among whose faults
+was no false shame, “not only to salute a lady, sir, but also to have a
+better look.”
+
+“Well, well,” said the farmer, as Mary ran away; “your city ways are
+high polite, no doubt, but my little lass is strange to them. And I like
+her better so, than to answer pert with pertness. Now come you in, and
+warm your feet a bit. None of us are younger than we used to be.”
+
+This was not Master Anerley's general style of welcoming a guest, but he
+hated new-fangled Frenchified manners, as he told his good wife, when
+he boasted by-and-by how finely he had put that old coxcomb down. “You
+never should have done it,” was all the praise he got. “Mr. Mordacks is
+a business man, and business men always must relieve their minds.” For
+no sooner now was the general factor introduced to Mistress Anerley
+than she perceived clearly that the object of his visit was not to make
+speeches to young chits of girls, but to seek the advice of a sensible
+person, who ought to have been consulted a hundred times for once that
+she even had been allowed to open her mouth fairly. Sitting by the fire,
+he convinced her that the whole of the mischief had been caused by sheer
+neglect of her opinion. Everything she said was so exactly to the point
+that he could not conceive how it should have been so slighted, and she
+for her part begged him to stay and partake of their simple dinner.
+
+“Dear madam, it can not be,” he replied; “alas! I must not think of it.
+My conscience reproaches me for indulging, as I have done, in what
+is far sweeter than even one of your dinners--a most sensible lady's
+society. I have a long bitter ride before me, to comfort the fatherless
+and the widow. My two legs of mutton will be thawed by this time in the
+genial warmth of your stable. I also am thawed, warmed, feasted I may
+say, by happy approximation to a mind so bright and congenial. Captain
+Anerley, madam, has shown true kindness in allowing me the privilege of
+exclusive speech with you. Little did I hope for such a piece of luck
+this morning. You have put so many things in a new and brilliant light,
+that my road becomes clear before me. Justice must be done; and you feel
+quite sure that Robin Lyth committed this atrocious murder because poor
+Carroway surprised him so when making clandestine love, at your brother
+Squire Popplewell's, to a beautiful young lady who shall be nameless.
+And deeply as you grieve for the loss of such a neighbor, the bravest
+officer of the British navy, who leaped from a strictly immeasurable
+height into a French ship, and scattered all her crew, and has since had
+a baby about three months old, as well as innumerable children, you
+feel that you have reason to be thankful sometimes that the young man's
+character has been so clearly shown, before he contrived to make his way
+into the bosom of respectable families in the neighborhood.”
+
+“I never thought it out quite so clear as that, sir; for I feel so sorry
+for everybody, and especially those who have brought him up, and those
+he has made away with.”
+
+“Quite so, my dear madam; such are your fine feelings, springing from
+the goodness of your nature. Pardon my saying that you could have no
+other, according to my experience of a most benevolent countenance. Part
+of my duty, and in such a case as yours, one of the pleasantest parts of
+it, is to study the expression of a truly benevolent--”
+
+“I am not that old, sir, asking of your pardon, to pretend to be
+benevolent. All that I lay claim to is to look at things sensible.”
+
+“Certainly, yet with a tincture of high feeling. Now if it should happen
+that this poor young man were of very high birth, perhaps the highest in
+the county, and the heir to very large landed property, and a title,
+and all that sort of nonsense, you would look at him from the very same
+point of view?”
+
+“That I would, sir, that I would. So long as he was proclaimed for
+hanging. But naturally bound, of course, to be more sorry for him.”
+
+“Yes, from sense of all the good things he must lose. There seems,
+however, to be strong ground for believing--as I may tell you, in
+confidence, Dr. Upround does--that he had no more to do with it than you
+or I, ma'am. At first I concluded as you have done. I am going to see
+Mrs. Carroway now. Till then I suspend my judgment.”
+
+“Now that is what nobody should do, Mr. Mordacks. I have tried, but
+never found good come of it. To change your mind is two words against
+yourself; and you go wrong both ways, before and after.”
+
+“Undoubtedly you do, ma'am. I never thought of that before. But you
+must remember that we have not the gift of hitting--I might say of
+making--the truth with a flash or a dash, as you ladies have. May I be
+allowed to come again?”
+
+“To tell you the truth, sir, I am heartily sorry that you are going away
+at all. I could have talked to you all the afternoon; and how seldom I
+get the chance now, Lord knows. There is that in your conversation which
+makes one feel quite sure of being understood; not so much in what you
+say, sir--if you understand my meaning--as in the way you look, quite as
+if my meaning was not at all too quick for you. My good husband is of a
+greater mind than I am, being nine-and-forty inches round the chest;
+but his mind seems somehow to come after mine, the same as the ducks do,
+going down to our pond.”
+
+“Mistress Anerley, how thankful you should be! What a picture of
+conjugal felicity! But I thought that the drake always led the way?”
+
+“Never upon our farm, sir. When he doth, it is a proof of his being
+crossed with wild-ducks. The same as they be round Flamborough.”
+
+“Oh, now I see the truth. How slow I am! It improves their flavor, at
+the expense of their behavior. But seriously, madam, you are fit to take
+the lead. What a pleasant visit I have had! I must brace myself up for a
+very sad one now--a poor lady, with none to walk behind her.”
+
+“Yes, to be sure! It is very fine of me to talk. But if I was left
+without my husband, I should only care to walk after him. Please to give
+her my kind love, sir; though I have only seen her once. And if there is
+anything that we can do--”
+
+“If there is anything that we can do,” said the farmer, coming out
+of his corn-chamber, “we won't talk about it, but we'll do it, Mr.
+Moreducks.”
+
+The factor quietly dispersed this rebuke, by waving his hand at his two
+legs of mutton and the cod, which had thawed in the stable. “I knew that
+I should be too late,” he said; “her house will be full of such little
+things as these, so warm is the feeling of the neighborhood. I guessed
+as much, and arranged with my butcher to take them back in that case;
+and he said they would eat all the better for the ride. But as for
+the cod, perhaps you will accept him. I could never take him back to
+Flamborough.”
+
+“Ride away, sir, ride away,” said the farmer, who had better not have
+measured swords with Mordacks. “I were thinking of sending a cart over
+there, so soon as the weather should be opening of the roads up. But
+the children might be hankerin' after meat, the worse for all the
+snow-time.”
+
+“It is almost impossible to imagine such a thing. Universally respected,
+suddenly cut off, enormous family with hereditary hunger, all the
+neighbors well aware of straitened circumstances, the kindest-hearted
+county in Great Britain--sorrow and abundance must have cloyed their
+appetites, as at a wealthy man's funeral. What a fool I must have been
+not to foresee all that!”
+
+“Better see than foresee,” replied the farmer, who was crusty from
+remembering that he had done nothing. “Neighbors likes to wait for
+neighbors to go in; same as two cows staring at a new-mown meadow.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+THE WAY OF THE WORLD
+
+
+Cliffs snow-mantled, and storm-ploughed sands, and dark gray billows
+frilled with white, rolling and roaring to the shrill east wind, made
+the bay of Bridlington a very different sight from the smooth fair
+scene of August. Scarcely could the staggering colliers, anchored under
+Flamborough Head (which they gladly would have rounded if they could),
+hold their own against wind and sea, although the outer spit of sand
+tempered as yet the full violence of waves.
+
+But if everything looked cold and dreary, rough, and hard, and bare
+of beauty, the cottage of the late lieutenant, standing on the shallow
+bluff, beaten by the wind, and blinded of its windows from within, of
+all things looked the most forlorn, most desolate, and freezing. The
+windward side was piled with snow, on the crest of which foam pellets
+lay, looking yellow by comparison, and melting small holes with their
+brine. At the door no foot-mark broke the drift; and against the
+vaporous sky no warmer vapor tufted the chimney-pots.
+
+“I am pretty nearly frozen again,” said Mordacks; “but that place sends
+another shiver down my back. All the poor little devils must be icicles
+at least.”
+
+After peeping through a blind, he turned pale betwixt his blueness, and
+galloped to the public-house abutting on the quay. Here he marched into
+the parlor, and stamped about, till a merry-looking landlord came to
+him. “Have a glass of hot, sir; how blue your nose is!” the genial
+master said to him. The reply of the factor can not be written down in
+these days of noble language. Enough that it was a terse malediction of
+the landlord, the glass of hot, and even his own nose. Boniface was no
+Yorkshireman, else would he have given as much as he got, at least in
+lingual currency. As it was, he considered it no affair of his if a
+guest expressed his nationality. “You must have better orders than that
+to give, I hope, sir.”
+
+“Yes, sir, I have. And you have got the better of me; which has happened
+to me three times this day already, because of the freezing of my wits,
+young man. Now you go in to your best locker, and bring me your very
+best bottle of Cognac--none of your government stuff, you know, but a
+sample of your finest bit of smuggling. Why did I swear at a glass of
+hot? Why, because you are all such a set of scoundrels. I want a glass
+of hot as much as man ever did. But how can I drink it, when women and
+children are dying--perhaps dead, for all I know--for want of warmth and
+victuals? Your next-door neighbors almost, and a woman, whose husband
+has just been murdered! And here you are swizzling, and rattling your
+coppers. Good God, sir! The Almighty from heaven would send orders to
+have His own commandment broken.”
+
+Mr. Mordacks was excited, and the landlord saw no cause for it. “What
+makes you carry on like this?” he said; “it was only last night we was
+talking in the tap-room of getting a subscription up, downright liberal.
+I said I was good for a crown, and take it out of the tick they owes me.
+And when you come to think of these hard times--”
+
+“Take that, and then tell me if you find them softer.” Suiting the
+action to the word, the universal factor did something omitted on his
+card in the list of his comprehensive functions. As the fat host
+turned away, to rub his hands, with a phosphoric feeling of his future
+generosity, a set of highly energetic toes, prefixed with the toughest
+York leather, and tingling for exercise, made him their example. The
+landlord flew up among his own pots and glasses, his head struck the
+ceiling, which declined too long a taste of him, and anon a silvery ring
+announced his return to his own timbers.
+
+“Accept that neighborly subscription, my dear friend, and acknowledge
+its promptitude,” said Mr. Mordacks; “and now be quick about your
+orders, peradventure a second flight might be less agreeable. Now don't
+show any airs; you have been well treated, and should be thankful for
+the facilities you have to offer. I know a poor man without any legs at
+all, who would be only too glad if he could do what you have done.”
+
+“Then his taste must be a queer one,” the landlord replied, as he
+illustrated sadly the discovery reserved for a riper age--that human
+fingers have attained their present flexibility, form, and skill by
+habit of assuaging, for some millions of ages, the woes of the human
+body.
+
+“Now don't waste my time like that,” cried Mordacks; and seeing him
+draw near again, his host became right active. “Benevolence must be
+inculcated,” continued the factor, following strictly in pursuit. “I
+have done you a world of good, my dear friend; and reflection will
+compel you to heap every blessing on me.”
+
+“I don't know about that,” replied the landlord. It is certain, however,
+that this exhibition of philanthropic vigor had a fine effect. In five
+minutes all the resources of the house were at the disposal of this
+rapid agent, who gave his orders right and left, clapped down a bag of
+cash, and took it up again, and said, “Now just you mind my horse, twice
+as well as you mind your fellow-creatures. Take a leg of mutton out, and
+set it roasting. Have your biggest bed hot for a lot of frozen children.
+By the Lord, if you don't look alive, I'll have you up for murder.” As
+he spoke, a stout fish-woman came in from the quay; and he beckoned to
+her, and took her with him.
+
+“You can't come in,” said a little weak voice, when Mr. Mordacks, having
+knocked in vain, began to prise open the cottage door. “Mother is so
+poorly; and you mustn't think of coming in. Oh, whatever shall I do, if
+you won't stop when I tell you?”
+
+“Where are all the rest of you? Oh, in the kitchen, are they? You poor
+little atomy, how many of you are dead?”
+
+“None of us dead, sir; without it is the baby;” here Geraldine
+burst into a wailing storm of tears. “I gave them every bit,” she
+sobbed--“every bit, sir, but the rush-lights; and them they wouldn't
+eat, sir, or I never would have touched them. But mother is gone off her
+head, and baby wouldn't eat it.”
+
+“You are a little heroine,” said Mordacks, looking at her--the pinched
+face, and the hollow eyes, and the tottering blue legs of her. “You are
+greater than a queen. No queen forgets herself in that way.”
+
+“Please, sir, no; I ate almost a box of rush-lights, and they were only
+done last night. Oh, if baby would have took to them!”
+
+“Hot bread and milk in this bottle; pour it out; feed her first, Molly,”
+ Mr. Mordacks ordered. “The world can't spare such girls as this. Oh, you
+won't eat first! Very well; then the others shall not have a morsel till
+your mouth is full. And they seem to want it bad enough. Where is the
+dead baby?”
+
+In the kitchen, where now they stood, not a spark of fire was lingering,
+but some wood-ash still retained a feeble memory of warmth; and three
+little children (blest with small advance from babyhood) were huddling
+around, with hands, and faces, and sharp grimy knees poking in for
+lukewarm corners; while two rather senior young Carroways were lying
+fast asleep, with a jack-towel over them. But Tommy was not there;
+that gallant Tommy, who had ridden all the way to Filey after dark, and
+brought his poor father to the fatal place.
+
+Mordacks, with his short, bitter-sweet smile, considered all these
+little ones. They were not beautiful, nor even pretty; one of them was
+too literally a chip of the old block, for he had reproduced his dear
+father's scar; and every one of them wanted a “wash and brush up,” as
+well as a warming and sound victualling. Corruptio optimi pessima. These
+children had always been so highly scrubbed, that the great molecular
+author of existence, dirt, resumed parental sway, with tenfold power
+of attachment and protection, the moment soap and flannel ceased their
+wicked usurpation.
+
+“Please, sir, I couldn't keep them clean, I couldn't,” cried Geraldine,
+choking, both with bread and milk, and tears. “I had Tommy to feed
+through the coal-cellar door; and all the bits of victuals in the house
+to hunt up; and it did get so dark, and it was so cold. I am frightened
+to think of what mother will say for my burning up all of her brushes,
+and the baskets. But please, sir, little Cissy was a-freezing at the
+nose.”
+
+The three little children at the grate were peeping back over the pits
+in their shoulders, half frightened at the tall, strange man, and half
+ready to toddle to him for protection; while the two on the floor sat up
+and stared, and opened their mouths for their sister's bread and milk.
+Then Jerry flew to them, and squatted on the stones, and very nearly
+choked them with her spoon and basin.
+
+“Molly, take two in your apron, and be off,” said the factor to the
+stout fish-woman--who was simply full of staring, and of crying out “Oh
+lor!”--“pop them into the hot bed at once; they want warmth first, and
+victuals by-and-by. Our wonderful little maid wants food most. I will
+come after you with the other three. But I must see my little queen fill
+her own stomach first.”
+
+“But, please, sir, won't you let our Tommy out first?” cried Jerry, as
+the strong woman lapped up the two youngest in her woolsey apron and ran
+off with them. “He has been so good, and he was too proud to cry so soon
+as ever he found out that mother couldn't hear him. And I gave him the
+most to eat of anybody else, because of him being the biggest, sir. It
+was all as black as ink, going under the door; but Tommy never minded.”
+
+“Wonderful merit! While you were eating tallow! Show me the coal-cellar,
+and out he comes. But why don't you speak of your poor mother, child?”
+
+The child, who had been so brave, and clever, self-denying, laborious,
+and noble, avoided his eyes, and began to lick her spoon, as if she had
+had enough, starving though she was. She glanced up at the ceiling, and
+then suddenly withdrew her eyes, and the blue lids trembled over them.
+Mordacks saw that it was childhood's dread of death. “Show me where
+little Tommy is,” he said; “we must not be too hard upon you, my dear.
+But what made your mother lock you up, and carry on so?”
+
+“I don't know at all, sir,” said Geraldine.
+
+“Now don't tell a story,” answered Mr. Mordacks. “You were not meant
+for lies; and you know all about it. I shall just go away if you tell
+stories.”
+
+“Then all I know is this,” cried Jerry, running up to him, and
+desperately clutching at his riding coat; “the very night dear father
+was put into the pit-hole--oh, hoo, oh, hoo, oh, hoo!”
+
+“Now we can't stop for that,” said the general factor, as he took her up
+and kissed her, and the tears, which had vainly tried to stop, ran out
+of young eyes upon well-seasoned cheeks; “you have been a wonder; I am
+like a father to you. You must tell me quickly, or else how can I cure
+it? We will let Tommy out then, and try to save your mother.”
+
+“Mother was sitting in the window, sir,” said the child, trying strongly
+to command herself, “and I was to one side of her, and Tommy to the
+other, and none of us was saying anything. And then there came a bad,
+wicked face against the window, and the man said, 'What was it you said
+to-day, ma'am?' And mother stood up--she was quite right then--and she
+opened the window, and she looked right at him, and she said, 'I spoke
+the truth, John Cadman. Between you and your God it rests.' And the man
+said, 'You shut your black mouth up, or you and your brats shall all go
+the same way. Mind one thing--you've had your warning.' Then mother fell
+away, for she was just worn out; and she lay upon the floor, and she
+kept on moaning, 'There is no God! there is no God!' after all she have
+taught us to say our prayers to. And there was nothing for baby to draw
+ever since.”
+
+For once in his life Mr. Mordacks held his tongue; and his face, which
+was generally fiercer than his mind, was now far behind it in ferocity.
+He thought within himself, “Well, I am come to something, to have
+let such things be going on in a matter which pertains to
+my office--pigeon-hole 100! This comes of false delicacy, my
+stumbling-block perpetually! No more of that. Now for action.”
+
+Geraldine looked up at him, and said, “Oh, please, sir.” And then she
+ran off, to show the way toward little Tommy.
+
+The coal-cellar flew open before the foot of Mordacks; but no Tommy
+appeared, till his sister ran in. The poor little fellow was quite
+dazzled with the light; and the grime on his cheeks made the inrush
+of fresh air come like wasps to him. “Now, Tommy, you be good,” said
+Geraldine; “trouble enough has been made about you.”
+
+The boy put out his under lip, and blinked with great amazement. After
+such a quantity of darkness and starvation, to be told to be good was
+a little too bad. His sense of right and wrong became fluid with
+confusion; he saw no sign of anything to eat; and the loud howl of an
+injured heart began to issue from the coaly rampart of neglected teeth.
+
+“Quite right, my boy,” Mr. Mordacks said. “You have had a bad time, and
+are entitled to lament. Wipe your nose on your sleeve, and have at it
+again.”
+
+“Dirty, dirty things I hear. Who is come into my house like this? My
+house and my baby belong to me. Go away all of you. How can I bear this
+noise?”
+
+Mrs. Carroway stood in the passage behind them, looking only fit to die.
+One of her husband's watch-coats hung around her, falling nearly to her
+feet; and the long clothes of her dead baby, which she carried, hung
+over it, shaking like a white dog's tail. She was standing with her bare
+feet well apart, and that swing of hip and heel alternate which mothers
+for a thousand generations have supposed to lull their babies into sweet
+sleep.
+
+For once in his life the general factor had not the least idea of the
+proper thing to do. Not only did he not find it, but he did not even
+seek for it, standing aside rather out of the way, and trying to look
+like a calm spectator. But this availed him to no account whatever. He
+was the only man there, and the woman naturally fixed upon him.
+
+“You are the man,” she said, in a quiet and reasonable voice, and coming
+up to Mordacks with the manner of a lady; “you are the gentleman, I
+mean, who promised to bring back my husband. Where is he? Have you
+fulfilled your promise?”
+
+“My dear madam, my dear madam, consider your children, and how cold you
+are. Allow me to conduct you to a warmer place. You scarcely seem to
+enter into the situation.”
+
+“Oh yes, I do, sir; thoroughly, thoroughly. My husband is in his grave;
+my children are going after him; and the best place for them. But they
+shall not be murdered. I will lock them up, so that they never shall be
+murdered.”
+
+“My dear lady, I agree with you entirely. You do the very wisest thing
+in these bad times. But you know me well. I have had the honor of making
+your acquaintance in a pleasant manner. I feel for your children, quite
+as if I was--I mean, ma'am, a very fine old gentleman's affection.
+Geraldine, come and kiss me, my darling. Tommy, you may have the other
+side; never mind the coal, my boy; there is a coal-wharf quite close to
+my windows at home.”
+
+These children, who had been hiding behind Mr. Mordacks and Molly (who
+was now come back), immediately did as he ordered them; or rather Jerry
+led the way, and made Tommy come as well, by a signal which he never
+durst gainsay. But while they saluted the general factor (who sat down
+upon a box to accommodate them), from the corners of their eyes they
+kept a timid, trembling, melancholy watch upon their own mother.
+
+Poor Mrs. Carroway was capable of wondering. Her power of judgment was
+not so far lost as it is in a dream--where we wonder at nothing, but
+cast off skeptic misery--and for the moment she seemed to be brought
+home from the distance of roving delusion, by looking at two of her
+children kissing a man who was hunting in his pocket for his card.
+
+“Circumstances, madam,” said Mr. Mordacks, “have deprived me of the
+pleasure of producing my address. It should be in two of my pockets; but
+it seems to have strangely escaped from both of them. However, I will
+write it down, if required. Geraldine dear, where is your school slate?
+Go and look for it, and take Tommy with you.”
+
+This surprised Mrs. Carroway, and began to make her think. These were
+her children--she was nearly sure of that--her own poor children, who
+were threatened from all sides with the likelihood of being done away
+with. Yet here was a man who made much of them, and kissed them; and
+they kissed him without asking her permission!
+
+“I scarcely know what it is about,” she said; “and my husband is not
+here to help me.”
+
+“You have hit the very point, ma'am. You must take it on yourself. How
+wonderfully clever the ladies always are! Your family is waiting for
+a government supply; everybody knows that everybody in the world may
+starve before government thinks of supplying supply. I do not belong to
+the government--although if I had my deserts I should have done so--but
+fully understanding them, I step in to anticipate their action. I see
+that the children of a very noble officer, and his admirable wife, have
+been neglected, through the rigor of the weather and condition of the
+roads. I am a very large factor in the neighborhood, who make a good
+thing out of all such cases. I step in; circumstances favor me; I
+discover a good stroke of business; my very high character, though much
+obscured by diffidence, secures me universal confidence. The little
+dears take to me, and I to them. They feel themselves safe under my
+protection from their most villainous enemies. They are pleased to kiss
+a man of strength and spirit, who represents the government.”
+
+Mrs. Carroway scarcely understood a jot of this. Such a rush of words
+made her weak brain go round, and she looked about vainly for her
+children, who had gladly escaped upon the chance afforded. But she came
+to the conclusion she was meant to come to--that this gentleman before
+her was the government.
+
+“I will do whatever I am told,” she said, looking miserably round, as if
+for anything to care about; “only I must count my children first, or the
+government might say there was not the proper number.”
+
+“Of all points that is the very one that I would urge,” Mordacks
+answered, without dismay. “Molly, conduct this good lady to her room.
+Light a good fire, as the Commissioners have ordered; warm the soup sent
+from the arsenal last night, but be sure that you put no pepper in
+it. The lady will go with you, and follow our directions. She sees the
+importance of having all her faculties perfectly clear when we make
+our schedule, as we shall do in a few hours' time, of all the children;
+every one, with the date of their birth, and their Christian names,
+which nobody knows so well as their own dear mother. Ah, how very sweet
+it is to have so many of them; and to know the pride, the pleasure, the
+delight, which the nation feels in providing for the welfare of every
+little darling!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV
+
+THE THING IS JUST
+
+
+“Was there ever such a man?” said Mr. Mordacks to himself, as he rode
+back to Flamborough against the bitter wind, after “fettling” the
+affairs of the poor Carroways, as well as might be for the present.
+“As if I had not got my hands too full already, now I am in for another
+plaguesome business, which will cost a lot of money, instead of bringing
+money in. How many people have I now to look after? In the first place,
+two vile wretches--Rickon Goold, the ship-scuttler, and John Cadman, the
+murderer--supposing that Dr. Upandown and Mrs. Carroway are right. Then
+two drunken tars, with one leg between them, who may get scared of the
+law, and cut and run. Then an outlawed smuggler, who has cut and
+run already; and a gentleman from India, who will be wild with
+disappointment through the things that have happened since I saw him
+last. After that a lawyer, who will fight tooth and nail of course,
+because it brings grist to his mill. That makes seven; and now to all
+these I have added number eight, and that the worst of all--not only
+a woman, but a downright mad one, as well as seven starving children.
+Charity is a thing that pays so slowly! That this poor creature should
+lose her head just now is most unfortunate. I have nothing whatever to
+lay before Sir Duncan, when I tell him of this vile catastrophe, except
+the boy's own assertion, and the opinion of Dr. Upandown. Well, well,
+'faint heart,' etc. I must nurse the people round; without me they would
+all have been dead. Virtue is its own reward. I hope the old lady has
+not burned my hare to death.”
+
+The factor might well say that without his aid that large family must
+have perished. Their neighbors were not to be blamed for this, being
+locked out of the house, and having no knowledge of the frost and famine
+that prevailed within. Perhaps, when the little ones began to die,
+Geraldine might heave escaped from a window, and got help in time to
+save some of them, if she herself had any strength remaining; but as it
+was, she preferred to sacrifice herself, and obey her mother. “Father
+always told me,” she had said to Mr. Mordacks, when he asked her how so
+sharp a child could let things come to such a pitch, “that when he was
+out of the way, the first thing I was to mind always was to do what
+mother told me; and now he can't come back no more, to let me off from
+doing it.”
+
+By this time the “Cod with the Hook in his Gills” was as much at the
+mercy of Mr. Mordacks as if he had landed and were crimping him. Widow
+Precious was a very tough lady to get over, and she liked to think
+the worst she could of everybody--which proves in the end the most
+charitable course, because of the good-will produced by explanation--and
+for some time she had stood in the Flamburian attitude of doubt toward
+the factor. But even a Flamburian may at last be pierced; and then
+(as with other pachydermatous animals) the hole, once made, is almost
+certain to grow larger. So by dint of good offices here and there, kind
+interest, and great industry among a very simple and grateful race,
+he became the St. Oswald of that ancient shrine (as already has been
+hinted), and might do as he liked, even on the Sabbath-day. And as one
+of the first things he always liked to do was to enter into everybody's
+business, he got into an intricacy of little knowledge too manifold even
+for his many-fibred brain. But some of this ran into and strengthened
+his main clew, leading into the story he was laboring to explore,
+and laying before him, as bright as a diamond, even the mystery of
+ear-rings.
+
+“My highly valued hostess and admirable cook,” he said to Widow
+Precious, after making noble dinner, which his long snowy ride and work
+at Bridlington had earned, “in your knowledge of the annals of this
+interesting town, happen you to be able to recall the name of a certain
+man, John Cadman?”
+
+“Ah, that ah deah,” Widow Tapsy answered, with a heavy sigh, which
+rattled all the dishes on the waiter; “and sma' gude o' un, sma' gude,
+whativer. Geroot wi' un!”
+
+The landlady shut her firm lips with a smack, which Mordacks well knew
+by this time though seldom foreclosed by it now, as he had been before
+he became a Danish citizen. He was sure that she had some good reason
+for her silence; and the next day he found that the girl who had left
+her home, through Cadman's villainy, was akin by her mother's side to
+Mistress Precious. But he had another matter to discuss with her now,
+which caused him some misgivings, yet had better be faced manfully. In
+the safe philosophical distance of York from this strong landlady he had
+(for good reasons of his own) appointed the place of meeting with
+Sir Duncan Yordas at the rival hostelry, the inn of Thornwick. Widow
+Precious had a mind of uncommonly large type, so lofty and pure of all
+petty emotions, that if any one spoke of the Thornwick Inn, even upon
+her back premises, her dignity stepped in and said, “I can't abide the
+stinkin' naam o' un.”
+
+Of this persistently noble regard of a lower institution Mr. Mordacks
+was well aware; and it gave him pause, in his deep anxiety to spare a
+tender heart, and maintain the high standard of his breakfast kidneys.
+“Madam,” he began, and then he rubbed his mouth with the cross-cut out
+of the jack-towel by the sink, newly set on table, to satisfy him for a
+dinner napkin--“madam, will you listen, while I make an explanation?”
+
+The landlady looked at him with dark suspicions gathering.
+
+“Joost spak' oot,” she said, “whativer's woorkin' i' thah mahnd.”
+
+“I am bound to meet a gentleman near Flamborough to-morrow,” Mr.
+Mordacks continued, with the effrontery of guilt, “who will come
+from the sea. And as it would not suit him to walk far inland, he has
+arranged for the interview at a poor little place called the Thorny
+Wick, or the Stubby Wick, or something of that sort. I thought it was
+due to you, madam, to explain the reason of my entering, even for a
+moment--”
+
+“Ah dawn't care. Sitha--they mah fettle thee there, if thow's fondhead
+enew.”
+
+Without another word she left the room, clattering her heavy shoes at
+the door; and Mordacks foresaw a sad encounter on the morrow, without a
+good breakfast to “fettle” him for it. It was not in his nature to dread
+anything much, and he could not see where he had been at all to blame;
+but gladly would he have taken ten per cent off his old contract, than
+meet Sir Duncan Yordas with the news he had to tell him.
+
+One cause of the righteous indignation felt by the good mother Tapsy,
+was her knowledge that nobody could land just now in any cove under the
+Thornwick Hotel. With the turbulent snow-wind bringing in the sea, as
+now it had been doing for several days, even the fishermen's cobles
+could not take the beach, much less any stranger craft. Mr. Mordacks was
+sharp; but an inland factor is apt to overlook such little facts marine.
+
+Upon the following day he stood in the best room of the Thornwick
+Inn--which even then was a very decent place to any eyes uncast with
+envy--and he saw the long billows of the ocean rolling before the steady
+blowing of the salt-tongued wind, and the broad white valleys that
+between them lay, and the vaporous generation of great waves. They
+seemed to have little gift of power for themselves, and no sign of any
+heed of purport; only to keep at proper distance from each other, and
+threaten to break over long before they meant to do it. But to see what
+they did at the first opposition of reef, or crag, or headland bluff,
+was a cure for any delusion about them, or faith in their liquid
+benevolence. For spouts of wild fury dashed up into the clouds; and the
+shore, wherever any sight of it was left, weltered in a sadly frothsome
+state, like the chin of a Titan with a lather-brush at work.
+
+“Why, bless my heart!” cried the keen-eyed Mordacks; “this is a check I
+never thought of. Nobody could land in such a surf as that, even if he
+had conquered all India. Landlord, do you mean to tell me any one could
+land? And if not, what's the use of your inn standing here?”
+
+“Naw, sir, nawbody cud laun' joost neaw. Lee-ast waas, nut to ca' fur
+naw yell to dry hissen.”
+
+The landlord was pleased with his own wit--perhaps by reason of its
+scarcity--and went out to tell it in the tap-room while fresh; and
+Mordacks had made up his mind to call for something--for the good of
+the house and himself--and return with a sense of escape to his own
+inn, when the rough frozen road rang with vehement iron, and a horse was
+pulled up, and a man strode in. The landlord having told his own joke
+three times, came out with the taste of it upon his lips; but the stern
+dark eyes looking down into his turned his smile into a frightened
+stare. He had so much to think of that he could not speak--which happens
+not only at Flamborough--but his visitor did not wait for the solution
+of his mental stutter. Without any rudeness he passed the mooning host,
+and walked into the parlor, where he hoped to find two persons.
+
+Instead of two, he found one only, and that one standing with his back
+to the door, and by the snow-flecked window, intent upon the drizzly
+distance of the wind-struck sea. The attitude and fixed regard were so
+unlike the usual vivacity of Mordacks, that the visitor thought there
+must be some mistake, till the other turned round and looked at him.
+
+“You see a defeated but not a beaten man,” said the factor, to get
+through the worst of it. “Thank you, Sir Duncan, I will not shake hands.
+My ambition was to do so, and to put into yours another hand, more near
+and dear to it. Sir, I have failed. It is open to you to call me by
+any hard name that may occur to you. That will do you good, be a hearty
+relief, and restore me rapidly to self-respect, by arousing my anxiety
+to vindicate myself.”
+
+“It is no time for joking; I came here to meet my son. Have you found
+him, or have you not?”
+
+Sir Duncan sat down and gazed steadfastly at Mordacks. His self-command
+had borne many hard trials; but the prime of his life was over now; and
+strong as he looked, and thought himself, the searching wind had sought
+and found weak places in a sun-beaten frame. But no man would be of
+noble aspect by dwelling at all upon himself.
+
+The quick intelligence of Mordacks--who was of smaller though admirable
+type--entered into these things at a flash. And throughout their
+interview he thought less of himself and more of another than was at all
+habitual with him, or conducive to good work.
+
+“You must bear with a very heavy blow,” he said; “and it goes to my
+heart to have to deal it.”
+
+Sir Duncan Yordas bowed, and said, “The sooner the better, my good
+friend.”
+
+“I have found your son, as I promised you I would,” replied Mordacks,
+speaking rapidly; “healthy, active, uncommonly clever; a very fine
+sailor, and as brave as Nelson; of gallant appearance--as might be
+expected; enterprising, steadfast, respected, and admired; benevolent
+in private life, and a public benefactor. A youth of whom the most
+distinguished father might be proud. But--but--”
+
+“Will you never finish?”
+
+“But by the force of circumstances, over which he had no control, he
+became in early days a smuggler, and rose to an eminent rank in that
+profession.”
+
+“I do not care two pice for that; though I should have been sorry if he
+had not risen.”
+
+“He rose to such eminence as to become the High Admiral of smugglers on
+this coast, and attain the honors of outlawry.”
+
+“I look upon that as a pity. But still we may be able to rescind it. Is
+there anything more against my son?”
+
+“Unluckily there is. A commander of the Coastguard has been killed in
+discharge of his duty; and Robin Lyth has left the country to escape a
+warrant.”
+
+“What have we to do with Robin Lyth? I have heard of him everywhere--a
+villain and a murderer.”
+
+“God forbid that you should say so! Robin Lyth is your only son.”
+
+The man whose word was law to myriads rose without a word for his own
+case; he looked at his agent with a stern, calm gaze, and not a sign of
+trembling in his lull broad frame, unless, perhaps, his under lip gave a
+little soft vibration to the grizzled beard grown to meet the change of
+climate.
+
+“Unhappily so it is,” said Mordacks, firmly meeting Sir Duncan's eyes.
+“I have proved the matter beyond dispute; and I wish I had better news
+for you.”
+
+“I thank you, sir. You could not well have worse. I believe it upon your
+word alone. No Yordas ever yet had pleasure of a son. The thing is quite
+just. I will order my horse.”
+
+“Sir Duncan, allow me a few minutes first. You are a man of large
+judicial mind. Do you ever condemn any stranger upon rumor? And will
+you, upon that, condemn your son?”
+
+“Certainly not. I proceed upon my knowledge of the fate between father
+and son in our race.”
+
+“That generally has been the father's fault. In this case, you are the
+father.”
+
+Sir Duncan turned back, being struck with this remark. Then he sat down
+again; which his ancestors had always refused to do, and had rued it. He
+spoke very gently, with a sad faint smile.
+
+“I scarcely see how, in the present case, the fault can be upon the
+father's side.”
+
+“Not as yet, I grant you. But it would be so if the father refused to
+hear out the matter, and joined in the general outcry against his son,
+without even having seen him, or afforded him a chance of self-defense.”
+
+“I am not so unjust or unnatural as that, sir. I have heard much about
+this--sad occurrence in the cave. There can be no question that the
+smugglers slew the officer. That--that very unfortunate young man may
+not have done it himself--I trust in God that he did not even mean it.
+Nevertheless, in the eye of the law, if he were present, he is as guilty
+as if his own hand did it. Can you contend that he was not present?”
+
+“Unhappily I can not. He himself admits it; and if he did not, it could
+be proved most clearly.”
+
+“Then all that I can do,” said Sir Duncan, rising with a heavy sigh, and
+a violent shiver caused by the chill of his long bleak ride, “is first
+to require your proofs, Mr. Mordacks, as to the identity of my child who
+sailed from India with this--this unfortunate youth; then to give you
+a check for 5000 pounds, and thank you for skillful offices, and great
+confidence in my honor. Then I shall leave with you what sum you may
+think needful for the defense, if he is ever brought to trial. And
+probably after that--well, I shall even go back to end my life in
+India.”
+
+“My proofs are not arranged yet, but they will satisfy you. I shall take
+no 5000 pounds from you, Sir Duncan, though strictly speaking I have
+earned it. But I will take one thousand to cover past and future outlay,
+including the possibility of a trial. The balance I shall live to claim
+yet, I do believe, and you to discharge it with great pleasure. For
+that will not be until I bring you a son, not only acquitted, but also
+guiltless; as I have good reason for believing him to be. But you do not
+look well; let me call for something.”
+
+“No, thank you. It is nothing. I am quite well, but not quite seasoned
+to my native climate yet. Tell me your reasons for believing that.”
+
+“I can not do that in a moment. You know what evidence is a hundred
+times as well as I do. And in this cold room you must not stop. Sir
+Duncan, I am not a coddler any more than you are. And I do not presume
+to dictate to you. But I am as resolute a man as yourself. And I refuse
+to go further with this subject, until you are thoroughly warmed and
+refreshed.”
+
+“Mordacks, you shall have your way,” said his visitor, after a
+heavy frown, which produced no effect upon the factor. “You are as
+kind-hearted as you are shrewd. Tell me once more what your conviction
+is; and I will wait for your reasons, till--till you are ready.”
+
+“Then, sir, my settled conviction is that your son is purely innocent of
+this crime, and that we shall be able to establish that.”
+
+“God bless you for thinking so, my dear friend. I can bear a great deal;
+and I would do my duty. But I did love that boy's mother so.”
+
+The general factor always understood his business; and he knew that no
+part of it compelled him now to keep watch upon the eyes of a stern,
+proud man.
+
+“Sir, I am your agent, and I magnify mine office,” he said, as he took
+up his hat to go forth. “One branch of my duty is to fettle your horse;
+and in Flamborough they fettle them on stale fish.” Mr. Mordacks strode
+with a military tramp, and a loud shout for the landlord, who had
+finished his joke by this time, and was paying the penalties of
+reaction. “Gil Beilby, thoo'st nobbut a fondhead,” he was saying to
+himself. “Thoo mun hev thy lahtel jawk, thof it crack'th thy own pure
+back.” For he thought that he was driving two great customers away,
+by the flashing independence of too brilliant a mind; and many clever
+people of his native place had told him so. “Make a roaring fire in that
+room,” said Mordacks.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI
+
+STUMPED OUT
+
+
+“I think, my dear, that you never should allow mysterious things to be
+doing in your parish, and everybody full of curiosity about them, while
+the only proper person to explain their meaning is allowed to remain
+without any more knowledge than a man locked up in York Castle might
+have. In spite of all the weather, and the noise the sea makes, I feel
+quite certain that important things, which never have any right to
+happen in our parish, are going on here, and you never interfere; which
+on the part of the rector, and the magistrate of the neighborhood, to
+my mind is not a proper course of action. I am sure that I have not
+the very smallest curiosity; I feel very often that I should have asked
+questions, when it has become too late to do so, and when anybody else
+would have put them at the moment, and not had to be sorry afterward.”
+
+“I understand that feeling,” Dr. Upround answered, looking at his wife
+for the third cup of coffee to wind up his breakfast as usual, “and
+without hesitation I reply that it naturally arises in superior natures.
+Janetta, you have eaten up that bit of broiled hake that I was keeping
+for your dear mother!”
+
+“Now really, papa, you are too crafty. You put my mother off with a
+wretched generality, because you don't choose to tell her anything; and
+to stop me from coming to the rescue, you attack me with a miserable
+little personality. I perceive by your face, papa, every trick that
+rises; and without hesitation I reply that they naturally arise in
+inferior natures.”
+
+“Janetta, you never express yourself well.” Mrs. Upround insisted upon
+filial respect. “When I say 'well,' I mean--Well, well, well, you know
+quite well what I mean, Janetta.”
+
+“To be sure, mamma, I always do. You always mean the very best meaning
+in the world; but you are not up to half of papa's tricks yet.”
+
+“This is too bad!” cried the father, with a smile.
+
+“A great deal too bad!” said the mother, with a frown. “I am sure I
+would never have asked a word of anything, if I could ever have imagined
+such behavior. Go away, Janetta, this very moment; your dear father
+evidently wants to tell me something. Now, my dear, you were too sleepy
+last night; but your peace of mind requires you to unburden itself at
+once of all these very mysterious goings on.”
+
+“Well, perhaps I shall have no peace of mind unless I do,” said the
+rector, with a slight sarcasm, which missed her altogether; “only it
+might save trouble, my dear, if you would first specify the points which
+oppress your--or rather I should say, perhaps, my mind so much.”
+
+“In the first place, then,” began Mrs. Upround, drawing nearer to the
+doctor, “who is that highly distinguished stranger who can not get away
+from the Thornwick Inn? What made him come to such a place in dreadful
+weather; and if he is ill, why not send for Dr. Stirbacks? Dr. Stirbacks
+will think it most unkind of you; and after all he did for dear Janetta.
+And then, again, what did the milkman from Sewerby mean by the way he
+shook his head this morning, about something in the family at Anerley
+Farm? And what did that most unaccountable man, who calls himself Mr.
+Mordacks--though I don't believe that is his name at all--”
+
+“Yes, it is, my dear; you never should say such things. He is well known
+at York, and for miles around; and I entertain very high respect for
+him.”
+
+“So you may, Dr. Upround. You do that too freely; but Janetta quite
+agrees with me about him. A man with a sword, that goes slashing about,
+and kills a rat, that was none of his business! A more straightforward
+creature than himself, I do believe, though he struts like a soldier
+with a ramrod. And what did he mean, in such horrible weather, by
+dragging you out to take a deposition in a place even colder than
+Flamborough itself--that vile rabbit-warren on the other side of
+Bempton? Deposition of a man who had drunk himself to death--and a
+Methodist too, as you could not help saying.”
+
+“I said it, I know; and I am ashamed of saying it. I was miserably cold,
+and much annoyed about my coat.”
+
+“You never say anything to be ashamed of. It is when you do not say
+things that you should rather blame yourself. For instance, I feel no
+curiosity whatever, but a kind-hearted interest, in the doings of my
+neighbors. We very seldom get any sort of excitement; and when exciting
+things come all together, quite within the hearing of our stable bell,
+to be left to guess them out, and perhaps be contradicted, destroys
+one's finest feelings, and produces downright fidgets.”
+
+“My dear, my dear, you really should endeavor to emancipate yourself
+from such small ideas.”
+
+“Large words shall never divert me from my duty. My path of duty is
+distinctly traced; and if a thwarting hand withdraws me from it, it must
+end in a bilious headache.”
+
+This was a terrible menace to the household, which was always thrown out
+of its course for three days when the lady became thus afflicted.
+
+“My first duty is to my wife,” said the rector. “If people come into my
+parish with secrets, which come to my knowledge without my desire, and
+without official obligation, and the faithful and admirable partner of
+my life threatens to be quite unwell--”
+
+“Ill, dear, very ill--is what would happen to me.”
+
+“--then I consider that my duty is to impart to her everything that can
+not lead to mischief.”
+
+“How could you have any doubt of it, my dear? And as to the mischief, I
+am the proper judge of that.”
+
+Dr. Upround laughed in his quiet inner way; and then, as a matter
+of form, he said, “My dear, you must promise most faithfully to keep
+whatever I tell you as the very strictest secret.”
+
+Mrs. Upround looked shocked at the mere idea of her ever doing
+otherwise; which indeed, as she said, was impossible. Her husband very
+nearly looked as if he quite believed her; and then they went into his
+snug sitting-room, while the maid took away the breakfast things.
+
+“Now don't keep me waiting,” said the lady.
+
+“Well, then, my dear,” the rector began, after crossing stout legs
+stoutly, “you must do your utmost not to interrupt me, and, in short--to
+put it courteously--you must try to hold your tongue, and suffer
+much astonishment in silence. We have a most distinguished visitor in
+Flamborough setting up his staff at the Thornwick Hotel.”
+
+“Lord Nelson! I knew it must be. Janetta is so quick at things.”
+
+“Janetta is too quick at things; and she is utterly crazy about Nelson.
+No; it is the famous Sir Duncan Yordas.”
+
+“Sir Duncan Yordas! Why, I never heard of him.”
+
+“You will find that you have heard of him when you come to think,
+my dear. Our Harry is full of his wonderful doings. He is one of the
+foremost men in India, though perhaps little heard of in this country
+yet. He belongs to an ancient Yorkshire family, and is, I believe, the
+head of it. He came here looking for his son, but has caught a most
+terrible chill, instead of him; and I think we ought to send him some of
+your rare soup.”
+
+“How sensible you are! It will be the very thing. But first of all, what
+character does he bear? They do such things in India.”
+
+“His character is spotless; I might say too romantic. He is a man of
+magnificent appearance, large mind, and lots of money.”
+
+“My dear, my dear, he must never stay there. I shudder to think of it,
+this weather. A chill is a thing upon the kidneys always. You know my
+electuary; and if we bring him round, it is high time for Janetta to
+begin to think of settling.”
+
+“My dear!” said Dr. Upround; “well, how suddenly you jump! I must put
+on my spectacles to look at you. This gentleman must be getting on for
+fifty!”
+
+“Janetta should have a man of some discretion, somebody she would not
+dare to snap at. Her expressions are so reckless, that a young man would
+not suit her. She ought to have some one to look up to; and you know how
+she raves about fame, and celebrity, and that. She really seems to care
+for very little else.”
+
+“Then she ought to have fallen in love with Robin Lyth, the most famous
+man in all this neighborhood.”
+
+“Dr. Upround, you say things on purpose to provoke me when my remarks
+are unanswerable. Robin Lyth indeed! A sailor, a smuggler, a common
+working-man! And under that terrible accusation!”
+
+“An objectionable party altogether; not even desirable as a grandson.
+Therefore say nothing more of Janetta and Sir Duncan.”
+
+“Sometimes, my dear, the chief object of your existence seems to be to
+irritate me. What can poor Robin have to do with Sir Duncan Yordas?”
+
+“Simply this. He is his only son. The proofs were completed, and
+deposited with me for safe custody, last night, by that very active man
+of business, Geoffrey Mordacks, of York city.”
+
+“Well!” cried Mrs. Upround, with both hands lifted, and a high color
+flowing into her unwrinkled cheeks; “from this day forth I shall never
+have any confidence in you again. How long--if I may dare to put any
+sort of question--have you been getting into all this very secret
+knowledge? And why have I never heard a word of it till now? And not
+even now, I do believe, through any proper urgency of conscience on your
+part, but only because I insisted upon knowing. Oh, Dr. Upround, for
+shame! for shame!”
+
+“My dear, you have no one but yourself to blame,” her husband replied,
+with a sweet and placid smile. “Three times I have told you things that
+were to go no further, and all three of them went twenty miles within
+three days. I do not complain of it; far less of you. You may have felt
+it quite as much your duty to spread knowledge as I felt it mine to
+restrict it. And I never should have let you get all this out of me now,
+if it had been at all incumbent upon me to keep it quiet.”
+
+“That means that I have never got it out of you at all. I have taken all
+this trouble for nothing.”
+
+“No, my dear, not at all. You have worked well, and have promised not
+to say a word about it. You might not have known it for a week at least,
+except for my confidence in you.”
+
+“Much of it I thank you for. But don't be cross, my dear, because you
+have behaved so atrociously. You have not answered half of my questions
+yet.”
+
+“Well, there were so many, that I scarcely can remember them. Let me
+see: I have told you who the great man is, and the reason that brought
+him to Flamborough. Then about the dangerous chill he has taken; it came
+through a bitter ride from Scarborough; and if Dr. Stirbacks came, he
+would probably make it still more dangerous. At least so Mordacks says;
+and the patient is in his hands, and out of mine; so that Stirbacks
+can not be aggrieved with us. On the other hand, as to the milkman from
+Sewerby. I really do not know why he shook his head. Perhaps he found
+the big pump frozen. He is not of my parish, and may shake his head
+without asking my permission. Now I think that I have answered nearly
+all your questions.”
+
+“Not at all; I have not had time to ask them yet, because I feel so
+much above them. But if the milkman meant nothing, because of his not
+belonging to our parish, the butcher does, and he can have no excuse.
+He says that Mr. Mordacks takes all the best meanings of a mutton-sheep
+every other day to Burlington.”
+
+“I know he does. And it ought to put us to the blush that a stranger
+should have to do so. Mordacks is finding clothes, food, and firing for
+all the little creatures poor Carroway left, and even for his widow,
+who has got a wandering mind. Without him there would not have been one
+left. The poor mother locked in all her little ones, and starved them,
+to save them from some quite imaginary foe. The neighbors began to think
+of interfering, and might have begun to do it when it was all over.
+Happily, Mordacks arrived just in time. His promptitude, skill, and
+generosity saved them. Never say a word against that man again.”
+
+“My dear, I will not,” Mrs. Upround answered, with tears coming into her
+kindly eyes. “I never heard of anything more pitiful. I had no idea
+Mr. Mordacks was so good. He looks more like an evil spirit. I always
+regarded him as an evil spirit; and his name sounds like it, and he
+jumps about so. But he ought to have gone to the rector of the parish.”
+
+“It is a happy thing that he can jump about. The rector of the parish
+can not do so, as you know; and he lives two miles away from them, and
+had never even heard of it. People always talk about the rector of a
+parish as if he could be everywhere and see to everything. And few
+of them come near him in their prosperous times. Have you any other
+questions to put to me, my dear?”
+
+“Yes, a quantity of things which I can not think of now. How it was that
+little boy--I remember it like yesterday--came ashore here, and turned
+out to be Robin Lyth; or at least to be no Robin Lyth at all, but the
+son of Sir Duncan Yordas. And what happened to the poor man in Bempton
+Warren.”
+
+“The poor man died a most miserable death, but I trust sincerely
+penitent. He had led a sad, ungodly life, and he died at last of wooden
+legs. He was hunted to his grave, he told us, by these wooden legs; and
+he recognized in them Divine retribution, for the sin of his life was
+committed in timber. No sooner did any of those legs appear--and the
+poor fellow said they were always coming--than his heart began to
+patter, and his own legs failed him, and he tried to stop his ears, but
+his conscience would not let him.”
+
+“Now there!” cried Mrs. Upround; “what the power of conscience is! He
+had stolen choice timber, perhaps ready-made legs.”
+
+“A great deal worse than that, my dear; he had knocked out a knot as
+large as my shovel-hat from the side of a ship home bound from India,
+because he was going to be tried for mutiny upon their arrival at Leith,
+it was, I think. He and his partners had been in irons, but unluckily
+they were just released. The weather was magnificent, a lovely summer's
+night, soft fair breeze, and every one rejoicing in the certainty of
+home within a few short hours. And they found home that night, but it
+was in a better world.”
+
+“You have made me creep all over. And you mean to say that a wretch like
+that has any hope of heaven! How did he get away himself?”
+
+“Very easily. A little boat was towing at the side. There were only
+three men upon deck, through the beauty of the weather, and two of those
+were asleep. They bound and gagged the waking one, lashed the wheel,
+and made off in the boat wholly unperceived. There was Rickon Goold, the
+ringleader, and four others, and they brought away a little boy who was
+lying fast asleep, because one of them had been in the service of his
+father, and because of the value of his Indian clothes, which his ayah
+made him wear now in his little cot for warmth. The scoundrels took
+good care that none should get away to tell the tale. They saw the poor
+Golconda sink with every soul on board, including the captain's wife and
+babies; then they made for land, and in the morning fog were carried by
+the tide toward our North Landing. One of them knew the coast as well
+as need be; but they durst not land until their story was concocted, and
+everything fitted in to suit it. The sight of the rising sun, scattering
+the fog, frightened them, as it well might do; and they pulled into the
+cave, from which I always said, as you may now remember, Robin must have
+come--the cave which already bears his name.
+
+“Here they remained all day, considering a plausible tale to account
+for themselves, without making mention of any lost ship, and trying to
+remove every trace of identity from the boat they had stolen. They had
+brought with them food enough to last three days, and an anker of
+rum from the steward's stores; and as they grew weary of their long
+confinement, they indulged more freely than wisely in the consumption of
+that cordial. In a word, they became so tipsy that they frightened
+the little helpless boy; and when they began to fight about his gold
+buttons, which were claimed by the fellow who had saved his life, he
+scrambled from the side of the boat upon the rock, and got along a
+narrow ledge, where none of them could follow him. They tried to coax
+him back; but he stamped his feet, and swore at them, being sadly taught
+bad language by the native servants, I dare say. Rickon Goold wanted to
+shoot him, for they had got a gun with them, and he feared to leave him
+there. But Sir Duncan's former boatman would not allow it; and at dark
+they went away and left him there. And the poor little fellow, in
+his dark despair, must have been led by the hand of the Lord through
+crannies too narrow for a man to pass. There is a well-known land
+passage out of that cave; but he must have crawled out by a smaller one,
+unknown even to our fishermen, slanting up the hill, and having outlet
+in the thicket near the place where the boats draw up. And so he was
+found by Robin Cockscroft in the morning. They had fed the child with
+biscuit soaked in rum, which accounts for his heavy sleep and wonderful
+exertions, and may have predisposed him for a contraband career.”
+
+“And perhaps for the very bad language which he used,” said Mrs.
+Upround, thoughtfully. “It is an extraordinary tale, my dear. But I
+suppose there can be no doubt of it. But such a clever child should have
+known his own name. Why did he call himself 'Izunsabe'?”
+
+“That is another link in the certainty of proof. On board that
+unfortunate ship, and perhaps even before he left India, he was always
+called the 'Young Sahib,' and he used, having proud little ways of his
+own, to shout, if anybody durst provoke him, 'I'se young Sahib, I'se
+young Sahib;' which we rendered into 'Izunsabe.' But his true name is
+Wilton Bart Yordas, I believe, and the initials can be made out upon his
+gold beads, Mr. Mordacks tells me, among heathen texts.”
+
+“That seems rather shocking to good principles, my dear. I trust that
+Sir Duncan is a Christian at least; or he shall never set foot in this
+house.”
+
+“My dear, I can not tell. How should I know? He may have lapsed, of
+course, as a good many of them do, from the heat of the climate, and bad
+surroundings. But that happens mostly from their marrying native women.
+And this gentleman never has done that, I do believe.”
+
+“They tell me that he is a very handsome man, and of most commanding
+aspect--the very thing Janetta likes so much. But what became of those
+unhappy sadly tipsy sailors?”
+
+“Well, they managed very cleverly, and made success of tipsiness. As
+soon as it was dark that night, and before the child had crawled away,
+they pushed out of the cave, and let the flood-tide take them round
+the Head. They meant to have landed at Bridlington Quay, with a tale of
+escape from a Frenchman; but they found no necessity for going so far. A
+short-handed collier was lying in the roads; and the skipper, perceiving
+that they were in liquor, thought it a fine chance, and took some
+trouble to secure them. They told him that they had been trying to run
+goods, and were chased by a revenue boat, and so on. He was only too
+glad to be enabled to make sail, and by dawn they were under way for the
+Thames; and that was the end of the Golconda.”
+
+“What an awful crime! But you never mean to tell me that the Lord let
+those men live and prosper?”
+
+“That subject is beyond our view, my dear. There were five of them, and
+Rickon Goold believed himself the last of them. But being very penitent,
+he might have exaggerated. He said that one was swallowed by a shark, at
+least his head was, and one was hanged for stealing sheep, and one for
+a bad sixpence; but the fate of the other (too terrible to tell you)
+brought this man down here, to be looking at the place, and to divide
+his time between fasting, and drinking, and poaching, and discoursing to
+the thoughtless. The women flocked to hear him preach, when the passion
+was upon him; and he used to hint at awful sins of his own, which
+made him earnest. I hope that he was so, and I do believe it. But
+the wooden-legged sailors, old Joe and his son, who seem to have
+been employed by Mordacks, took him at his own word for a 'miserable
+sinner'--which, as they told their master, no respectable man would call
+himself--and in the most business-like manner they set to to remove him
+to a better world; and now they have succeeded.”
+
+“Poor man! After all, one must be rather sorry for him. If old Joe came
+stumping after me for half an hour, I should have no interest in this
+life left.”
+
+“My dear, they stumped after him the whole day long, and at night they
+danced a hornpipe outside his hut. He became convinced that the Prince
+of Evil was come, in that naval style, to fetch him; and he drank
+everything he could lay hands on, to fortify him for the contest. The
+end, as you know, was extremely sad for him, but highly satisfactory
+to them, I fear. They have signified their resolution to attend his
+funeral; and Mordacks has said, with unbecoming levity, that if
+they never were drunk before--which seems to me an almost romantic
+supposition--that night they shall be drunk, and no mistake.”
+
+“All these things, my dear,” replied Mrs. Upround, who was gifted with
+a fine vein of moral reflection, “are not as we might wish if we ordered
+them ourselves. But still there is this to be said in their favor, that
+they have a large tendency toward righteousness.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII
+
+A TANGLE OF VEINS
+
+
+Human resolution, energy, experience, and reason in its loftiest form
+may fight against the doctor; but he beats them all, maintains at least
+his own vitality, and asserts his guineas. Two more resolute men than
+Mr. Mordacks and Sir Duncan Yordas could scarcely be found in those
+resolute times. They sternly resolved to have no sort of doctor; and yet
+within three days they did have one; and, more than that, the very one
+they had positively vowed to abstain from.
+
+Dr. Stirbacks let everybody know that he never cared two flips of his
+thumb for anybody. If anybody wanted him, they must come and seek him,
+and be thankful if he could find time to hear their nonsense. For he
+understood not the system only, but also the nature of mankind. The
+people at the Thornwick did not want him. Very good, so much the better
+for him and for them; because the more they wanted him, the less
+would he go near them. Tut! tut! tut! he said; what did he want with
+crack-brained patients?
+
+All this compelled him, with a very strong reluctance, to be dragged
+into that very place the very same day; and he saw that he was not come
+an hour too soon. Sir Duncan was lying in a bitterly cold room, with the
+fire gone out, and the spark of his life not very far from following it.
+Mr. Mordacks was gone for the day upon business, after leaving strict
+orders that a good fire must be kept, and many other things attended to.
+But the chimney took to smoking, and the patient to coughing, and the
+landlady opened the window wide, and the fire took flight into the upper
+air. Sir Duncan hated nothing more than any fuss about himself. He
+had sent a man to Scarborough for a little chest of clothes, for his
+saddle-kit was exhausted; and having promised Mordacks that he would not
+quit the house, he had nothing to do except to meditate and shiver.
+
+Gil Beilby's wife Nell, coming up to take orders for dinner, “got a
+dreadful turn” from what she saw, and ran down exclaiming that the very
+best customer that ever drew their latch was dead. Without waiting to
+think, the landlord sent a most urgent message for Dr. Stirbacks.
+That learned man happened to be round the corner, although he lived at
+Bempton; he met the messenger, cast to the winds all sense of wrong, and
+rushed to the succor of humanity.
+
+That night, when the general factor returned, with the hunger excited
+by feeding the hungry, he was met at the door by Dr. Stirbacks, saying,
+“Hush, my good sir,” before he had time to think of speaking. “You!”
+ cried Mr. Mordacks, having met this gentleman when Rickon Goold was near
+his last. “You! Then it must be bad indeed!”
+
+“It is bad, and it must have been all over, sir, but for my being
+providentially at the cheese shop. I say nothing to wound any
+gentleman's feelings who thinks that he understands everything; but our
+poor patient, with the very best meaning, no doubt, has been all but
+murdered.”
+
+“Dr. Stirbacks, you have got him now, and of course you will make the
+best of him. Don't let him slip through your fingers, doctor; he is much
+too good for that.”
+
+“He shall not slip through my fingers,” said the little doctor, with
+a twinkle of self-preservation. “I have got him, sir, and I shall keep
+him, sir; and you ought to have put him in my hands long ago.”
+
+The sequel of this needs no detail. Dr. Stirbacks came three times a
+day; and without any disrespect to the profession, it must be admitted
+that he earned his fees. For Sir Duncan's case was a very strange one,
+and beyond the best wisdom of the laity. If that chill had struck upon
+him when his spirit was as usual, he might have cast it off, and gone
+on upon his business. But coming as it did, when the temperature of his
+heart was lowered by nip of disappointment, it went into him, as water
+on a duck's back is not cast away when his rump gland is out of order.
+
+“A warm room, good victuals, and cheerful society--these three are
+indispensable,” said Dr. Stirbacks to Mr. Mordacks, over whom he began
+to try to tyrannize; “and admirable as you are, my good sir, I fear
+that your society is depressing. You are always in a fume to be doing
+something--a stew, I might say, without exaggeration--a wonderful
+pattern of an active mind. But in a case of illness we require the
+passive voice. Everything suggestive of rapid motion must be removed,
+and never spoken of. You are rapid motion itself, my dear sir. We get a
+relapse every time you come in.”
+
+“You want me out of the way. Very well. Let me know when you have killed
+my friend. I suppose your office ends with that. I will come down and
+see to his funeral.”
+
+“Mr. Mordacks, you may be premature in such prevision. Your own may come
+first, sir. Look well at your eyes the next time you shave, and I fear
+you will descry those radiant fibres in the iris which always co-exist
+with heart-disease. I can tell you fifty cases, if you have time to
+listen.”
+
+“D--n your prognostics, sir!” exclaimed the factor, rudely; but
+he seldom lathered himself thenceforth without a little sigh of
+self-regard. “Now, Dr. Stirbacks,” he continued, with a rally, “you
+may find my society depressing, but it is generally considered to be
+elevating; and that, sir, by judges of the highest order, and men of
+independent income. The head of your profession in the northern half of
+England, who takes a hundred guineas for every one you take, rejoices,
+sir--rejoices is not too strong a word to use--in my very humble
+society. Of course he may be wrong; but when he hears that Mr.
+Stirbacks, of Little Under-Bempton--is that the right address,
+sir?--speaks of my society as depressing--”
+
+“Mr. Mordacks, you misunderstood my meaning. I spoke with no reference
+to you whatever, but of all male society as enervating--if you dislike
+the word 'depressing'--relaxing, emollient, emasculating, from want of
+contradictory element; while I was proceeding to describe the need of
+strictly female society. The rector offers this; he was here just
+now. His admiration for you is unbounded. He desires to receive our
+distinguished patient, with the vast advantage of ladies' society,
+double-thick walls, and a southern aspect, if you should consider it
+advisable.”
+
+“Undoubtedly I do. If the moving can be done without danger; and of that
+you are the proper judge, of course.”
+
+Thus they composed their little disagreement, with mutual respect, and
+some approaches to good-will; and Sir Duncan Yordas, being skillfully
+removed, spent his Christmas (without knowing much about it) in the best
+and warmest bedroom in the rectory. But Mordacks returned, as an
+honest man should do, to put the laurel and the mistletoe on his proper
+household gods. And where can this be better done than in that grand
+old city, York? But before leaving Flamborough, he settled the claims
+of business and charity, so far as he could see them, and so far as the
+state of things permitted.
+
+Foiled as he was in his main object by the murder of the revenue
+officer, and the consequent flight of Robin Lyth, he had thoroughly
+accomplished one part of his task, the discovery of the Golconda's fate,
+and the history of Sir Duncan's child. Moreover, his trusty agents, Joe
+of the Monument, and Bob his son, had relieved him of one thorny care,
+by the zeal and skill with which they worked. It was to them a sweet
+instruction to watch, encounter, and drink down a rogue who had scuttled
+a ship, and even defeated them at their own weapons, and made a text of
+them to teach mankind. Dr. Upround had not exaggerated the ardor with
+which they discharged their duty.
+
+But Mordacks still had one rogue on hand, and a deeper one than Rickon
+Goold. In the course of his visits to Bridlington Quay, he had managed
+to meet John Cadman, preferring, as he always did, his own impressions
+to almost any other evidence. And his own impressions had entirely borne
+out the conviction of Widow Carroway. But he saw at once that this man
+could not be plied with coarse weapons, like the other worn-out villain.
+He reserved him as a choice bit for his own skill, and was careful not
+to alarm him yet. Only two things concerned him, as immediate in the
+matter--to provide against Cadman's departure from the scene, and to
+learn all the widow had to tell about him.
+
+The widow had a great deal to say about that man; but had not said it
+yet, from want of power so to do. Mordacks himself had often stopped
+her, when she could scarcely stop herself; for until her health should
+be set up again, any stir of the mind would be dangerous. But now, with
+the many things provided for her, good nursing, and company, and the
+kindness of the neighbors (who jealously rushed in as soon as a stranger
+led the way), and the sickening of Tommy with the measles--which he had
+caught in the coal-cellar--she began to be started in a different plane
+of life; to contemplate the past as a golden age (enshrining a diamond
+statue of a revenue officer in full uniform), and to look upon the
+present as a period of steel, when a keen edge must be kept against the
+world, for a defense of all the little seed of diamonds.
+
+Now the weather was milder, as it generally is at Christmas time, and
+the snow all gone, and the wind blowing off the land again, to the great
+satisfaction of both cod and conger. The cottage, which had looked such
+a den of cold and famine, with the blinds drawn down, and the snow piled
+up against the door, and not a single child-nose against the glass, was
+now quite warm again, and almost as lively as if Lieutenant Carroway
+were coming home to dinner. The heart of Mr. Mordacks glowed with
+pride as he said to himself that he had done all this; and the glow was
+reflected on the cheeks of Geraldine, as she ran out to kiss him, and
+then jumped upon his shoulder. For, in spite of his rigid aspect and
+stern nose, the little lass had taken kindly to him; while he admired
+her for eating candles.
+
+“If you please, you can come in here,” said Jerry. “Oh, don't knock my
+head against the door.”
+
+Mrs. Carroway knew what he was come for; and although she had tried
+to prepare herself for it, she could not help trembling a little. The
+factor had begged her to have some friend present, to encourage and help
+her in so grievous an affair; but she would not hear of it, and said she
+had no friend.
+
+Mr. Mordacks sat down, as he was told to do, in the little room sacred
+to the poor lieutenant, and faithful even yet to the pious memory of his
+pipe. When the children were shut out, he began to look around, that the
+lady might have time to cry. But she only found occasion for a little
+dry sob.
+
+“It is horrible, very, very horrible,” she murmured, with a shudder, as
+her eyes were following his; “but for his sake I endure it.”
+
+“A most sad and bitter trial, ma'am, as ever I have heard of. But you
+are bound to bear in mind that he is looking down on you.”
+
+“I could not put up with it, without the sense of that, sir. But I say
+to myself how much he loved it; and that makes me put up with it.”
+
+“I am quite at a loss to understand you, madam. We seem to be at
+cross-purposes. I was speaking of--of a thing it pains me to mention;
+and you say how much he loved--”
+
+“Dirt, sir, dirt. It was his only weakness. Oh, my darling Charles, my
+blessed, blessed Charley! Sometimes I used to drive him almost to his
+end about it; but I never thought his end would come; I assure you I
+never did, sir. But now I shall leave everything as he would like to see
+it--every table and every chair, that he could write his name on it. And
+his favorite pipe with the bottom in it. That is what he must love to
+see, if the Lord allows him to look down. Only the children mustn't see
+it, for the sake of bad example.”
+
+“Mrs. Carroway, I agree with you most strictly. Children must be taught
+clean ways, even while they revere their father. You should see my
+daughter Arabella, ma'am. She regards me with perfect devotion. Why?
+Because I never let her do the things that I myself do. It is the only
+true principle of government for a nation, a parish, a household. How
+beautifully you have trained pretty Geraldine! I fear that you scarcely
+could spare her for a month, in the spring, and perhaps Tommy after his
+measles; but a visit to York would do them good, and establish their
+expanding minds, ma'am.”
+
+“Mr. Mordacks, I know not where we may be then. But anything that you
+desire is a law to us.”
+
+“Well said! Beautifully said! But I trust, my dear madam, that you will
+be here. Indeed, it would never do for you to go away. Or rather, I
+should put it thus--for the purposes of justice, and for other reasons
+also, it is most important that you should not leave this place. At
+least you will promise me that, I hope? Unless, of course, unless you
+find the memories too painful. And even so, you might find comfort in
+some inland house, not far.”
+
+“Many people might not like to stop,” the widow answered, simply; “but
+to me it would be a worse pain to go away. I sit, in the evening, by
+the window here. Whenever there is light enough to show the sea, and
+the beach is fit for landing on, it seems to my eyes that I can see
+the boat, with my husband standing up in it. He had a majestic way of
+standing, with one leg more up than the other, sir, through one of his
+daring exploits; and whenever I see him, he is just like that; and the
+little children in the kitchen peep and say, 'Here's daddy coming at
+last; we can tell by mammy's eyes;' and the bigger ones say, 'Hush! You
+might know better.' And I look again, wondering which of them is right;
+and then there is nothing but the clouds and sea. Still, when it is
+over, and I have cried about it, it does me a little good every time. I
+seem to be nearer to Charley, as my heart falls quietly into the will of
+the Lord.”
+
+“No doubt of it whatever. I can thoroughly understand it, although there
+is not a bit of resignation in me. I felt that sort of thing, to some
+extent, when I lost my angelic wife, ma'am, though naturally departed
+to a sphere more suited for her. And I often seem to think that still
+I hear her voice when a coal comes to table in a well-dish. Life, Mrs.
+Carroway, is no joke to bandy back, but trouble to be shared. And none
+share it fairly but the husband and the wife, ma'am.”
+
+“You make it very hard for me to get my words,” she said, without
+minding that her tears ran down, so long as she spoke clearly. “I am not
+of the lofty sort, and understand no laws of things; though my husband
+was remarkable for doing so. He took all the trouble of the taxes off,
+though my part was to pay for them. And in every other way he was a
+wonder, sir; not at all because now he is gone above. That would be my
+last motive.”
+
+“He was a wonder, a genuine wonder,” Mordacks replied, without irony.
+“He did his duty, ma'am, with zeal and ardor; a shining example upon
+very little pay. I fear that it was his integrity and zeal, truly
+British character and striking sense of discipline, that have so sadly
+brought him to--to the condition of an example.”
+
+“Yes, Mr. Mordacks, it was all that. He never could put up with a lazy
+man, as anybody, to live, must have to do. He kept all his men, as I
+used to do our children, to word of command, and no answer. Honest men
+like it; but wicked men fly out. And all along we had a very wicked man
+here.”
+
+“So I have heard from other good authority--a deceiver of women, a
+skulk, a dog. I have met with many villains; and I am not hot. But
+my tendency is to take that fellow by the throat with both hands, and
+throttle him. Having thoroughly accomplished that, I should prepare to
+sift the evidence. Unscientific, illogical, brutal, are such desires,
+as you need not tell me. And yet, madam, they are manly. I hate slow
+justice; I like it quick--quick, or none at all, I say, so long as it
+is justice. Creeping justice is, to my mind, little better than slow
+revenge. My opinions are not orthodox, but I hope they do not frighten
+you.”
+
+“They do indeed, sir; or at least your face does; though I know how
+quick and just you are. He is a bad man--too well I know it--but, as my
+dear husband used to say, he has a large lot of children.”
+
+“Well, Mrs. Carroway, I admire you the more, for considering what he has
+not considered. Let us put aside that. The question is--guilty or not
+guilty? If he is guilty, shall he get off, and innocent men be hanged
+for him? Six men are in jail at this present moment for the deed which
+we believe he did. Have they no wives, no fathers and mothers, no
+children--not to speak of their own lives? The case is one in which the
+Constitution of the realm must be asserted. Six innocent men must die
+unless the crime is brought home to the guilty one. Even that is not
+all as regards yourself. You may not care for your own life, but you
+are bound to treasure it seven times over for the sake of your seven
+children. While John Cadman is at large, and nobody hanged instead of
+him, your life is in peril, ma'am. He knows that you know him, and have
+denounced him. He has tried to scare you into silence; and the fright
+caused your sad illness. I have reason to believe that he, by scattering
+crafty rumors, concealed from the neighbors your sad plight, and that
+of your dear children. If so, he is worse than the devil himself. Do you
+see your duty now, and your interest also?”
+
+Mrs. Carroway nodded gently. Her strength of mind was not come back yet,
+after so much illness. The baby lay now on its father's breast, and the
+mother's had been wild for it.
+
+“I am sorry to have used harsh words,” resumed Mordacks; “but I always
+have to do so. They seem to put things clearer; and without that, where
+would business be? Now I will not tire you if I can help it, nor ask a
+needless question. What provocation had this man? What fanciful cause
+for spite, I mean?”
+
+“Oh, none, Mr. Mordacks, none whatever. My husband rebuked him for
+being worthless, and a liar, and a traitor; and he threatened to get
+him removed from the force; and he gave him a little throw down from the
+cliff--but what little was done was done entirely for his good.”
+
+“Yes, I see. And, after that, was Cadman ever heard to threaten him?”
+
+“Many times, in a most malicious way, when he thought that he was not
+heeded. The other men may fear to bear witness. But my Geraldine has
+heard him.”
+
+“There could be no better witness. A child, especially a pretty little
+girl, tells wonderfully with a jury. But we must have a great deal more
+than that. Thousands of men threaten, and do nothing, according to the
+proverb. A still more important point is--how did the muskets in the
+boat come home? They were all returned to the station, I presume. Were
+they all returned with their charges in them?”
+
+“I am sure I can not say how that was. There was nobody to attend to
+that. But one of them had been lost altogether.”
+
+“One of the guns never came back at all!” Mordacks almost shouted.
+“Whose gun was it that did not come back?”
+
+“How can we say? There was such confusion. My husband would never let
+them nick the guns, as they do at some of the stations, for every man
+to know his own. But in spite of that, each man had his own, I believe.
+Cadman declares that he brought home his; and nobody contradicted him.
+But if I saw the guns, I should know whether Cadman's is among them.”
+
+“How can you possibly pretend to know that, ma'am? English ladies can do
+almost anything. But surely you never served out the guns?”
+
+“No, Mr. Mordacks. But I have cleaned them. Not the inside, of course;
+that I know nothing of; and nobody sees that, to be offended. But
+several times I have observed, at the station, a disgraceful quantity
+of dust upon the guns--dust and rust and miserable blotches, such as bad
+girls leave in the top of a fish-kettle; and I made Charley bring them
+down, and be sure to have them empty; because they were so unlike what
+I have seen on board of the ship where he won his glory, and took the
+bullet in his nineteenth rib.”
+
+“My dear madam, what a frame he must have had! But this is most
+instructive. No wonder Geraldine is brave. What a worthy wife for a
+naval hero! A lady who could handle guns!”
+
+“I knew, sir, quite from early years, having lived near a very large
+arsenal, that nothing can make a gun go off unless there is something
+in it. And I could trust my husband to see to that; and before I touched
+one of them I made him put a brimstone match to the touch-hole. And
+I found it so pleasant to polish them, from having such wicked things
+quite at my mercy. The wood was what I noticed most, because of
+understanding chairs. One of them had a very curious tangle of veins
+on the left cheek behind the trigger; and I just had been doing for the
+children's tea what they call 'crinkly-crankly'--treacle trickled (like
+a maze) upon the bread; and Tommy said, 'Look here! it is the very same
+upon this gun.' And so it was; just the same pattern on the wood! And
+while I was doing it Cadman came up, in his low surly way, and said, 'I
+want my gun, missus; I never shoot with no other gun than that. Captain
+says I may shoot a sea-pye, for the little ones.' And so I always called
+it 'Cadman's gun.' I have not been able to think much yet. But if that
+gun is lost, I shall know who it was that lost a gun that dreadful
+night.”
+
+“All this is most strictly to the purpose,” answered Mordacks, “and
+may prove most important. We could never hope to get those six men off,
+without throwing most grave suspicion elsewhere; and unless we can get
+those six men off, their captain will come and surrender himself, and be
+hanged, to a dead certainty. I doubted his carrying the sense of right
+so far, until I reflected upon his birth, dear madam. He belongs, as I
+may tell you now, to a very ancient family, a race that would run their
+heads into a noose out of pure obstinacy, rather than skulk off. I am
+of very ancient race myself, though I never take pride in the matter,
+because I have seen more harm than good of it. I always learned Latin
+at school so quickly through being a grammatical example of descent.
+According to our pedigree, Caius Calpurnius Mordax Naso was the Governor
+of Britain under Pertinax. My name means 'biting'; and bite I can,
+whether my dinner is before me, or my enemy. In the present case I shall
+not bite yet, but prepare myself for doing so. I watch the proceedings
+of the government, who are sure to be slow, as well as blundering.
+There has been no appointment to this command as yet, because of so
+many people wanting it. This patched-up peace, which may last about six
+months (even if it is ever signed), is producing confusion everywhere.
+You have an old fool put in charge of this station till a proper
+successor is appointed.”
+
+“He is not like Captain Carroway, sir. But that concerns me little now.
+But I do wish, for my children's sake, that they would send a little
+money.”
+
+“On no account think twice of that. That question is in my hands, and
+affords me one of the few pleasures I derive from business. You are
+under no sort of obligation about it. I am acting under authority. A man
+of exalted position and high office--but never mind that till the proper
+time comes; only keep your mind in perfect rest, and attend to your
+children and yourself. I am obliged to proceed very warily, but you
+shall not be annoyed by that scoundrel. I will provide for that before I
+leave; also I will see the guns still in store, without letting anybody
+guess my motive. I have picked up a very sharp fellow here, whose heart
+is in the business thoroughly; for one of the prisoners is his twin
+brother, and he lost his poor sweetheart through Cadman's villainy--a
+young lass who used to pick mussels, or something. He will see that the
+rogue does not give us the slip, and I have looked out for that in other
+ways as well. I am greatly afraid of tiring you, my dear madam; but have
+you any other thing to tell me of this Cadman?”
+
+“No, Mr. Mordacks, except a whole quantity of little things that tell a
+great deal to me, but to anybody else would have no sense. For instance,
+of his looks, and turns, and habits, and tricks of seeming neither the
+one thing nor the other, and jumping all the morning, when the last man
+was hanged--”
+
+“Did he do that, madam? Are you quite sure?”
+
+“I had it on the authority of his own wife. He beats her, but still she
+can not understand him. You may remember that the man to be suspended
+was brought to the place where--where--”
+
+“Where he earned his doom. It is quite right. Things of that sort should
+be done upon a far more liberal scale. Example is better than a thousand
+precepts. Let us be thankful that we live in such a country. I have
+brought some medicine for brave Tommy from our Dr. Stirbacks. Be sure
+that you stroke his throat when he takes it. Boys are such rogues--”
+
+“Well, Mr. Mordacks, I really hope that I know how to make my little boy
+take medicine!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII
+
+SHORT SIGHS, AND LONG ONES
+
+
+Now it came to pass that for several months this neighborhood, which
+had begun to regard Mr. Mordacks as its tutelary genius--so great is the
+power of bold energy--lost him altogether; and with brief lamentation
+began to do very well without him. So fugitive is vivacious stir, and
+so well content is the general world to jog along in its old ruts. The
+Flamborough butcher once more subsided into a piscitarian; the postman,
+who had been driven off his legs, had time to nurse his grain again;
+Widow Tapsy relapsed into the very worst of taps, having none to
+demand good beverage; and a new rat, sevenfold worse than the mighty
+net-devourer (whom Mordacks slew; but the chronicle has been cut out,
+for the sake of brevity), took possession of his galleries, and made
+them pay. All Flamborough yearned for the “gentleman as did things,”
+ itself being rather of the contemplative vein, which flows from
+immemorial converse with the sea. But the man of dry hand-and-heel
+activity came not, and the lanes forgot the echo of his Roman march.
+
+The postman (with a wicked endeavor of hope to beget faith from sweet
+laziness) propagated a loose report that Death had claimed the general
+factor, through fear of any rival in activity. The postman did not put
+it so, because his education was too good for long words to enter
+into it; but he put his meaning in a shorter form than a smattering of
+distant tongues leaves to us. The butcher (having doubt of death, unless
+by man administered) kicked the postman out of his expiring shop, where
+large hooks now had no sheep for bait; and Widow Tapsy, filled with
+softer liquid form of memory, was so upset by the letter-man's tale that
+she let off a man who owed four gallons, for beating him as flat as his
+own bag. To tell of these things may take time, but time is thoroughly
+well spent if it contributes a trifle toward some tendency, on anybody's
+part, to hope that there used to be, even in this century, such a thing
+as gratitude.
+
+But why did Mr. Mordacks thus desert his favorite quest and quarters,
+and the folk in whom he took most delight--because so long inaccessible?
+The reason was as sound as need be: important business of his own had
+called him away into Derbyshire. Like every true son of stone and crag,
+he required an annual scratch against them, and hoped to rest among them
+when the itch of life was over. But now he had hopes of even more than
+that--of owning a good house and fair estate, and henceforth exerting
+his remarkable powers of agency on his own behalf. For his cousin,
+Calpurnius Mordacks, the head of the family, was badly ailing, and
+having lost his only son in the West Indies, had sent for this kinsman
+to settle matters with him. His offer was generous and noble; to wit,
+that Geoffrey should take, not the property alone, but also his second
+cousin, fair Calpurnia, though not without her full consent. Without
+the lady, he was not to have the land, and the lady's consent must be
+secured before her father ceased to be a sound testator.
+
+Now if Calpurnia had been kept in ignorance of this arrangement, a man
+possessing the figure, decision, stature, self-confidence, and other
+high attributes of our Mordacks, must have triumphed in a week at
+latest. But with that candor which appears to have been so strictly
+entailed in the family, Colonel Calpurnius called them in; and there (in
+the presence of the testator and of each other) they were fully apprised
+of this rather urgent call upon their best and most delicate emotions.
+And the worst of it was (from the gentleman's point of view), that
+the contest was unequal. The golden apples were not his to cast, but
+Atalanta's. The lady was to have the land, even without accepting love.
+Moreover, he was fifty per cent beyond her in age, and Hymen would make
+her a mamma without invocation of Lucina. But highest and deepest woe of
+all, most mountainous of obstacles, was the lofty skyline of his nose,
+inherited from the Roman. If the lady's corresponding feature had not
+corresponded--in other words, if her nose had been chubby, snub, or even
+Greek--his bold bridge must have served him well, and even shortened
+access to rosy lips and tender heart. But, alas! the fair one's nose was
+also of the fine imperial type, truly admirable in itself, but (under
+one of nature's strictest laws) coy of contact with its own male
+expression. Love, whose joy and fierce prank is to buckle to the plated
+pole ill-matched forms and incongruous spirits, did not fail of her
+impartial freaks. Mr. Mordacks had to cope with his own kin, and found
+the conflict so severe that not a breath of time was left him for
+anybody's business but his own.
+
+If luck was against him in that quarter (although he would not own it
+yet), at York and Flamborough it was not so. No crisis arose to demand
+his presence; no business went amiss because of his having to work so
+hard at love. There came, as there sometimes does in matters pressing,
+tangled, and exasperating, a quiet period, a gentle lull, a halcyon
+time when the jaded brain reposes, and the heart may hatch her own
+mares'-nests. Underneath that tranquil spell lay fond Joe and Bob (with
+their cash to spend), Widow Precious (with her beer laid in), and
+Widow Carroway, with a dole at last extorted from the government; while
+Anerley Farm was content to hearken the creak of wagon and the ring of
+flail, and the rector of Flamborough once more rejoiced in the bloodless
+war that breeds good-will.
+
+For Sir Duncan Yordas was a fine chess-player, as many Indian officers
+of that time were; and now that he was coming to his proper temperature
+(after three months of barbed stab of cold, and the breach of the seal
+of the seventy-seventh phial of Dr. Stirbacks), in gratitude for that
+miraculous escape, he did his very best to please everybody. To Dr.
+Upround he was an agreeable and penetrative companion; to Mrs. Upround,
+a gallant guest, with a story for every slice of bread and butter; to
+Janetta, a deity combining the perfections of Jupiter, Phoebus, Mars,
+and Neptune (because of his yacht), without any of their drawbacks;
+and to Flamborough, more largely speaking, a downright good sort of
+gentleman, combining a smoke with a chaw--so they understood cigars--and
+not above standing still sometimes for a man to say some sense to him.
+
+But before Mr. Mordacks left his client under Dr. Upround's care, he had
+done his best to provide that mischief should not come of gossip; and
+the only way to prevent that issue is to preclude the gossip. Sir Duncan
+Yordas, having lived so long in a large commanding way, among people
+who might say what they pleased of him, desired no concealment here,
+and accepted it unwillingly. But his agent was better skilled in English
+life, and rightly foresaw a mighty buzz of nuisance--without any honey
+to be brought home--from the knowledge of the public that the Indian
+hero had begotten the better-known apostle of free trade. Yet it
+might have been hard to persuade Sir Duncan to keep that great fact to
+himself, if his son had been only a smuggler, or only a fugitive from a
+false charge of murder. But that which struck him in the face, as soon
+as he was able to consider things, was the fact that his son had fled
+and vanished, leaving his underlings to meet their fate. “The smuggling
+is a trifle,” exclaimed the sick man; “our family never was law-abiding,
+and used to be large cattle-lifters; even the slaying of a man in hot
+combat is no more than I myself have done, and never felt the worse for
+it. But to run away, and leave men to be hanged, after bringing them
+into the scrape himself, is not the right sort of dishonor for a Yordas.
+If the boy surrenders, I shall be proud to own him. But until he does
+that, I agree with you, Mordacks, that he does not deserve to know who
+he is.”
+
+This view of the case was harsh, perhaps, and showed some ignorance of
+free-trade questions, and of English justice. If Robin Lyth had been
+driven, by the heroic view of circumstances, to rush into embrace
+constabular, would that have restored the other six men to family
+sinuosities? Not a chance of it. Rather would it treble the pangs of
+jail--where they enjoyed themselves--to feel that anxiety about their
+pledges to fortune from which the free Robin relieved them. Money was
+lodged and paid as punctual as the bank for the benefit of all their
+belongings. There were times when the sailors grumbled a little because
+they had no ropes to climb; but of any unfriendly rope impending they
+were too wise to have much fear. They knew that they had not done the
+deed, and they felt assured that twelve good men would never turn round
+in their box to believe it.
+
+Their captain took the same view of the case. He had very little doubt
+of their acquittal if they were defended properly; and of that a far
+wealthier man than himself, the Chancellor of the Exchequer of free
+trade, Master Rideout of Malton, would take good care, if the money left
+with Dr. Upround failed. The surrender of Robin would simply hurt them,
+unless they were convicted, and in that case he would yield himself. Sir
+Duncan did not understand these points, and condemned his son unjustly.
+And Mordacks was no longer there to explain such questions in his sharp
+clear way.
+
+Being in this sadly disappointed state, and not thoroughly delivered
+from that renal chill (which the northeast wind, coming over the leather
+of his valise, had inflicted), this gentleman, like a long-pendulous
+grape with the ventilators open, was exposed to the delicate insidious
+billing of little birds that love something good. It might be
+wrong--indeed, it must be wrong, and a foul slur upon fair sweet
+love--to insinuate that Indian gold, or rank, or renown, or vague
+romance, contributed toward what came to pass. Miss Janetta Upround, up
+to this time of her life, had laughed at all the wanton tricks of Cupid;
+and whenever the married women told her that her time would be safe to
+come, and then she might understand their behavior, they had always been
+ordered to go home and do their washing. And this made it harder for her
+to be mangled by the very tribulation she had laughed at.
+
+Short little sighs were her first symptom, and a quiet way of going up
+the stairs--which used to be a noisy process with her--and then a desire
+to know something of history, and a sudden turn of mind toward soup. Sir
+Duncan had a basin every day at twelve o'clock, and Janetta had orders
+to see him do it, by strict institution of Stirbacks. Those orders she
+carried out with such zeal that she even went so far as to blow upon the
+spoon; and she did look nice while doing it. In a word--as there is no
+time for many--being stricken, she did her best to strike, as the manner
+of sweet women is.
+
+Sir Duncan Yordas received it well. Being far on toward her futurity in
+years, and beyond her whole existence in experience and size, he smiled
+at her ardor and short vehemence to please him, and liked to see her
+go about, because she turned so lightly. Then the pleasant agility of
+thought began to make him turn to answer it; and whenever she had the
+best of him in words, her bright eyes fell, as if she had the worst.
+“She doesn't even know that she is clever,” said the patient to himself,
+“and she is the first person I have met with yet who knows which side of
+the line Calcutta is.”
+
+The manner of those benighted times was to keep from young ladies
+important secrets which seemed to be no concern of theirs. Miss Upround
+had never been told what brought this visitor to Flamborough, and
+although she had plenty of proper curiosity, she never got any reward
+for it. Only four Flamburians knew that Sir Duncan was Robin Lyth's
+papa--or, as they would put it (having faster hold of the end of the
+stick next to them), that Robin Lyth was the son of Sir Duncan. And
+those four were, by force of circumstance, Robin Cockscroft and Joan
+his wife, the rector and the rectoress. Even Dr. Stirbacks (organically
+inquisitive as he was, and ill content to sniff at any bottle with the
+cork tied down), by mastery of Mordacks and calm dignity of rector, was
+able to suspect a lot of things, but to be sure of none of them; and
+suspicion, according to its usual manner, never came near the truth
+at all. Miss Upround, therefore, had no idea that if she became Lady
+Yordas, which she very sincerely longed to be, she would, by that event,
+be made the step-mother of a widely celebrated smuggler; while her
+Indian hero, having no idea of her flattering regard as yet, was not
+bound to enlighten her upon that point.
+
+At Anerley Farm the like ignorance prevailed; except that Mistress
+Anerley, having a quick turn for romance, and liking to get her
+predictions confirmed, recalled to her mind (and recited to her husband
+in far stronger language) what she had said, in the clover-blossom
+time, to the bravest man that ever lived, the lamented Captain
+Carroway. Captain Carroway's dauntless end, so thoroughly befitting his
+extraordinary exploits, for which she even had his own authority, made
+it the clearest thing in all the world that every word she said to
+him must turn out Bible-true. And she had begged him--and one might
+be certain that he had told it, as a good man must, to his poor dear
+widow--not to shoot at Robin Lyth; because he would get a thousand
+pounds, instead of a hundred for doing it. She never could have dreamed
+to find her words come true so suddenly; but here was an Indian Prince
+come home, who employed the most pleasant-spoken gentleman; and he might
+know who it was he had to thank that even in the cave the captain did
+not like to shoot that long-lost heir; and from this time out there was
+no excuse for Stephen if he ever laughed at anything that his wife said.
+Only on no account must Mary ever hear of it; for a bird in the hand
+was worth fifty in the bush; and the other gone abroad, and under
+accusation, and very likely born of a red Indian mother. Whereas Harry
+Tanfield's father, George, had been as fair as a foal, poor fellow; and
+perhaps if the church books had been as he desired, he might have kept
+out of the church-yard to this day.
+
+“And me in it,” the farmer answered, with a laugh--“dead for love of my
+wife, Sophy; as wouldn't 'a been my wife, nor drawn nigh upon fi' pounds
+this very week for feathers, fur, and ribbon stuff. Well, well, George
+would 'a come again, to think of it. How many times have I seen him go
+with a sixpence in the palm of 's hand, and think better of the king
+upon it, and worser of the poor chap as were worn out, like the tail of
+it! Then back go the sixpence into George's breeches; and out comes my
+shilling to the starving chap, on the sly, and never mentioned. But for
+all that, I think, like enow, old George mought 'a managed to get up to
+heaven.”
+
+“Stephen, I wish to hear nothing of that. The question concerns his
+family, not ours, as Providence has seen fit to arrange. Now what is
+your desire to have done with Mary? William has made his great discovery
+at last; and if we should get the 10,000 pounds, nobody need look down
+on us.”
+
+“I should like to see any one look down on me,” Master Anerley said,
+with his back set straight; “a' mought do so once, but a' would be
+sorry afterward. Not that I would hinder him of 's own way; only that
+he better keep out of mine. Sometimes, when you go thinking of your own
+ideas, you never seem to bear in mind what my considerations be.”
+
+“Because you can not follow out the quickness of the way I think. You
+always acknowledge that, my dear.”
+
+“Well, well. Quick churn spoileth butter. Like Willie with his perpetual
+motion. What good to come of it, if he hath found out? And a' might, if
+ever a body did, from the way he goeth jumping about forever, and never
+hold fast to anything. A nice thing 'twould be for the fools to say,
+perpetual motion come from Anerley Farm!”
+
+“You never will think any good of him, Stephen, because his mind comes
+from my side. But wait till you see the 10,000 pounds.”
+
+“That I will; and thank the Lord to live so long. But, to come to
+common-sense--how was Mary and Harry a-carrying on this afternoon?”
+
+“Not so very bad, father; and nothing good to speak of. He kept on very
+well from the corners of his eyes; but she never corresponded, so to
+speak--same as--you know.”
+
+“The same as you used to do when you was young. Well, manners may be
+higher stylish now. Did he ask her about the hay-rick?”
+
+“That he did. Three or four times over; exactly as you said it to him.
+He knew that was how you got the upper hand of me, according to your
+memory, but not mine; and he tried to do it the very same way; but the
+Lord makes a lot of change in thirty years of time. Mary quite turned
+her nose up at any such riddle, and he pulled his spotted handkerchief
+out of that new hat of his, and the fagot never saw fit to heed even the
+color of his poor red cheeks. Stephen, you would have marched off for a
+week if I had behaved to you so.”
+
+“And the right way too; I shall put him up to that. Long sighs only
+leads to turn-up noses. He plays too knuckle-down at it. You should
+go on with your sweetheart very mild at first; just a-feeling for her
+finger-tips; and emboldening of her to believe that you are frightened,
+and bringing her to peep at you as if you was a blackbird, ready to pop
+out of sight. That makes 'em wonderful curious and eager, and sticks you
+into 'em, like prickly spinach. But you mustn't stop too long like that.
+You must come out large, as a bull runs up to gate; and let them see
+that you could smash it if you liked, but feel a goodness in your heart
+that keeps you out of mischief. And then they comes up, and they says,
+'poor fellow!'”
+
+“Stephen, I do not approve of such expressions, or any such low
+opinions. You may know how you went on. Such things may have answered
+once; because of your being--yourself, you know. But Mary, although she
+may not have my sense, must have her own opinions. And the more you talk
+of what we used to do--though I never remember your trotting up, like
+a great bull roaring, to any kind of gate--the less I feel inclined to
+force her. And who is Harry Tanfield, after all?”
+
+“We know all about him,” the farmer answered; “and that is something to
+begin with. His land is worth fifteen shillings an acre less than ours,
+and full of kid-bine. But, for all that, he can keep a family, and is a
+good home-dweller. However, like the rest of us, in the way of women, he
+must bide his bolt, and bode it.”
+
+“Father,” the mistress of the house replied, “I shall never go one step
+out of my way to encourage a young man who makes you speak so lightly of
+those you owe so much to. Harry Tanfield may take his chance for me.”
+
+“So a' may for me, mother--so a' may for me. If a' was to have our Mary,
+his father George would be coming up between us, out of his peace
+in churchyard, more than he doth a'ready; and a' comes too much
+a'ready.--Why, poppet, we were talking of you--fie, fie, listening!”
+
+“No, now, father,” Mary Anerley answered, with a smile at such a low
+idea; “you never had that to find fault with me, I think. And if you are
+plotting against me for my good--as mother loves to put it--it would be
+the best way to shut me out before you begin to do it.”
+
+“Why, bless my heart and soul,” exclaimed the farmer, with a most crafty
+laugh--for he meant to kill two birds with one stone--“if the lass
+hathn't got her own dear mother's tongue, and the very same way of
+turning things! There never hath been such a time as this here. The
+childer tell us what to do, and their mothers tell us what not to do.
+Better take the business off my hands, and sell all they turnips as is
+rotting. Women is cheats, and would warrant 'em sound, with the best to
+the top of the bury. But mind you one thing--if I retires from business,
+like Brother Popplewell, I shall expect to be supported; cheap, but very
+substantial.”
+
+“Mary, you are wicked to say such things,” Mistress Anerley began, as
+he went out, “when you know that your dear father is such a substantial
+silent man.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX
+
+A BOLD ANGLER
+
+
+As if in vexation at being thwarted by one branch of the family, Cupid
+began to work harder at the other, among the moors and mountains. Not
+that either my lady Philippa or gentle Mistress Carnaby fell back into
+the snares of youth, but rather that youth, contemptuous of age, leaped
+up, and defied everybody but itself, and cried tush to its own welfare.
+
+For as soon as the trance of snow was gone, and the world, emboldened to
+behold itself again, smiled up from genial places; and the timid step of
+peeping spring awoke a sudden flutter in the breast of buds; and streams
+(having sent their broken anger to the sea) were pleased to be murmuring
+clearly again, and enjoyed their own flexibility; and even stern
+mountains and menacing crags allowed soft light to play with them--at
+such a time prudence found very narrow house-room in the breast of young
+Lancelot, otherwise “Pet.”
+
+“If Prudence be present, no Divinity is absent,” according to high
+authority; but the author of the proverb must have first excluded Love
+from the list of Divinities. Pet's breast, or at any rate his chest, had
+grown under the expansive enormity of love; his liver, moreover (which,
+according to poets, both Latin and Greek, is the especial throne of
+love), had quickened its proceedings, from the exercise he took; from
+the same cause, his calves increased so largely that even Jordas could
+not pull the agate buttons of his gaiters through their holes. In a
+word, he gained flesh, muscle, bone, and digestion, and other great
+bodily blessings, from the power believed by the poets to upset
+and annihilate every one of them. However, this proves nothing
+anti-poetical, for the essence of that youth was to contradict
+experience.
+
+Jordas had never, in all his born days, not even in the thick of the
+snow-drift, found himself more in a puzzle than now; and he could not
+even fly for advice in this matter to Lawyer Jellicorse. The first great
+gift of nature, expelled by education, is gratitude. A child is full
+of gratitude, or at least has got the room for it; but no full-grown
+mortal, after good education, has been known to keep the rudiments of
+thankfulness. But Jordas had a stock of it--as much as can remain to any
+one superior to the making of a cross.
+
+Now the difficulty of it was that Jordas called to mind, every morning
+when he saw snow, and afterward when he saw anything white, that he must
+have required a grave, and not got it (in time to be any good to him),
+without the hard labor, strong endurance, and brotherly tendance of
+the people of the gill. Even the three grand fairy gifts of Lawyer
+Jellicorse himself might scarcely have saved him, although they were no
+less than as follows, in virtue: the tip of a tongue that had never told
+a lie (because it belonged to a bullock slain young), a flask of old
+Scotch whiskey, and a horn comfit-box of Irish snuff. All these three
+had stood him in good stead, especially the last, which kept him
+wide-awake, and enabled him to sneeze a yellow hole in the drift,
+whenever it threatened to ingulf his beard. Without those three he could
+never have got on; but, with all the three, he could never have got out,
+if Bat and Maunder of the gill had not come to his succor in the very
+nick of time. Not only did they work hard for hours under the guidance
+of Saracen (who was ready to fly at them if they left off), but when at
+length they came on Jordas, in his last exhaustion, with the good horse
+rubbing up his chin to make him warmer, they did a sight of things,
+which the good Samaritan, having finer climate, was enabled to dispense
+with. And when they had set him on his legs again, finding that he
+could not use them yet, they hoisted him on the back of Maunder, who was
+strong; and the whole of that expedition ended at the little cottage in
+the gill. But the kindness of the inhabitants was only just beginning;
+for when Jordas came to himself he found that his off-foot--as Marmaduke
+would have called it--the one which had ridden with a northeast aspect,
+was frozen as hard as a hammer, and as blue as a pistol barrel. Mrs.
+Bart happened to have seen such cases in her native country, and by her
+skillful treatment and never-wearying care, the poor fellow's foot was
+saved and cured, though at one time he despaired of it. Marmaduke also
+was restored, and sent home to his stable some days before his rider was
+in a condition to mount him.
+
+In return for all these benefits, how could the dogman, without being
+worse than a dog, go and say to his ladies that mischief was breeding
+between their heir and a poor girl who lived in a corner of their land?
+If he had been ungrateful, or in any way a sneak, he might have found
+no trouble in this thing; but being, as he was, an honest, noble-hearted
+fellow, he battled severely in his mind to set up the standard of the
+proper side to take. For such matters Pet cared not one jot. Crafty as
+he was, he could never understand that Jordas and Welldrum were not the
+same man, one half working out-of-doors, and the other in. For him it
+was enough that Jordas would not tell, probably because he was afraid
+to do so, and Pet resolved to make him useful. For Lancelot Carnaby was
+very sharp indeed in espying what suited his purpose. His set purpose
+was to marry Insie Bart, in whom he had sense enough to perceive his
+better, in every respect but money and birth, in which two he was
+before her, or at any rate supposed so. He was proud, as need be, of
+his station in life; but he reasoned--if the process of his mind was
+reason--that being so exalted, he might please himself; that his wife
+would rise to his rank, instead of lowering him; that her father was a
+man of education and a gentleman, although he worked with his own hands;
+and that Insie was a lady, though she went to fill a pitcher.
+
+For one happy fact the youth deserved some credit, or rather, perhaps,
+his youth deserved it for him. He was madly in love with Insie, and
+his passion could not be of very high spiritual order; but the idea of
+obtaining her dishonorably never occurred to his mind for one moment. He
+knew her to be better, purer, and nobler than himself in every way; and
+he felt, though he did not want to feel it, that her nature gave a
+lift to his. Insie, on the other hand, began to like him better, and to
+despise him less and less; his reckless devotion to her made its way;
+and in spite of all her common-sense, his beauty and his lordly style
+had attractions for her young romance. And at last her heart began to
+bound, like his, when they were together. “With all thy faults, I love
+thee still,” was the loose condition of her youthful mind.
+
+Into every combination, however steep and deep be the gill of its quiet
+incubation, a number of people and of things peep in, and will enter,
+like the cuckoo, at the glimpse of a white feather, or even without it,
+unless beak and claw are shown. And now the intruder into Pet's love
+nest had the right to look in, and to pull him out, neck and crop,
+unless he sat there legally. Whether birds discharge fraternal duty is
+a question for Notes and Queries even in the present most positive
+age. Sophocles says that the clever birds feed their parents and their
+benefactors, and men ascribe piety to them in fables, as a needful
+ensample to one another.
+
+Be that as it may, this Maunder Bart, when his rather slow attention was
+once aroused, kept a sharp watch upon his young landlord's works. It was
+lucky for Pet that he meant no harm, and that Maunder had contemptuous
+faith in him; otherwise Insie's brother would have shortly taken him up
+by his gaiters, and softly beaten his head in against a rock. For Mr.
+Bart's son was of bitter, morose, and almost savage nature, silent,
+moody, and as resolute as death. He resented and darkly repined at the
+loss of position and property of which he had heard, and he scorned the
+fine sentiments which had led to nothing at all substantial. It was not
+in his power to despise his father, for his mind felt the presence of
+the larger one; but he did not love him as a son should do; neither did
+he speak out his thoughts to anybody beyond a few mutters to his mother.
+But he loved his gentle sister, and found in her a goodness which warmed
+him up to think about getting some upon his own account.
+
+Such thoughts, however, were fugitive, and Maunder's more general
+subject of brooding was the wrong he had suffered through his father.
+He was living and working like a peasant or a miner, instead of having
+horses, and dogs, and men, and the right to kick out inferior people--as
+that baby Lancelot Carnaby had--for no other reason, that he could find,
+than the magnitude of his father's mind. He had gone into the subject
+with his father long ago--for Mr. Bart felt a noble pride in his
+convictions--and the son lamented with all his heart the extent of
+his own father's mind. In his lonely walks, heavy hours, and hard
+work--which last he never grudged, for his strength required outlet--he
+pondered continually upon one thing, and now he seemed to see a chance
+of doing it. The first step in his upward course would be Insie's
+marriage with Lancelot.
+
+Pet, who had no fear of any one but Maunder, tried crafty little tricks
+to please him; but instead of earning many thanks, got none at all,
+which made him endeavor to improve himself. Mr. Bart's opinion of him
+now began to follow the course of John Smithies's, and Smithies looked
+at it in one light only (ever since Pet so assaulted him, and then
+trusted his good-will across the dark moors), and that light was that
+“when you come to think of him, you mustn't be too hard upon him, after
+all.” And one great excellence of this youth was that he cared not a
+doit for general opinion, so long as he got his own special desire.
+
+His desire was, not to let a day go by without sight and touch of Insie.
+These were not to be had at a moment's notice, nor even by much care;
+and five times out of six he failed of so much as a glimpse or a word
+of her. For the weather and the time of year have much to say concerning
+the course of the very truest love, and worse than the weather itself
+too often is the cloudy caprice of maiden mind.
+
+Insie's father must have known what attraction drew this youth to such
+a cold unfurnished spot, and if he had been like other men, he would
+either have nipped in the bud this passion, or, for selfish reasons,
+fostered it. But being of large theoretical mind, he found his due
+outlet in giving advice.
+
+It is plain at a glance that in such a case the mother is the proper one
+to give advice, and the father the one to act strenuously. But now Mrs.
+Bart, who was a very good lady, and had gone through a world of
+trouble from the want of money--the which she had cast away for sake of
+something better--came to the forefront of this pretty little business,
+as Insie's mother, vigorously.
+
+“Christophare,” she said to her husband, “not often do I speak, between
+us, of the affairs it is wise to let alone. But now of our dear child
+Inesa it is just that I should insist something. Mandaro, which you call
+English Maunder, already is destroyed for life by the magnitude of
+your good mind. It is just that his sister should find the occasion of
+reversion to her proper grade of life. For you, Christophare, I have
+abandoned all, and have the good right to claim something from you. And
+the only thing that I demand is one--let Inesa return to the lady.”
+
+“Well,” said Mr. Bart, who had that sense of humor without which no man
+can give his property away, “I hope that she never has departed from
+it. But, my dear, as you make such a point of it, I will promise not to
+interfere, unless there is any attempt to do wrong, and intrap a poor
+boy who does not know his own mind. Insie is his equal by birth and
+education, and perhaps his superior in that which comes foremost
+nowadays--the money. Dream not that he is a great catch, my dear; I know
+more of that matter than you do. It is possible that he may stand at the
+altar with little to settle upon his bride except his bright waistcoat
+and gaiters.”
+
+“Tush, Christophare! You are, to my mind, always an enigma.”
+
+“That is as it should be, and keeps me interesting still. But this is a
+mere boy and girl romance. If it meant anything, my only concern would
+be to know whether the boy was good. If not, I should promptly kick him
+back to his own door.”
+
+“From my observation, he is very good--to attend to his rights, and make
+the utmost of them.”
+
+Mr. Bart laughed, for he knew that a little hit at himself was intended;
+and very often now, as his joints began to stiffen, he wished that his
+youth had been wiser. He stuck to his theories still; but his practice
+would have been more of the practical kind, if it had come back to
+be done again. But his children and his wife had no claim to bring
+up anything, because everything was gone before he undertook their
+business. However, he obtained reproach--as always seems to happen--for
+those doings of his early days which led to their existence. Still, he
+liked to make the best of things, and laughed, instead of arguing.
+
+For a short time, therefore, Lancelot Carnaby seemed to have his own way
+in this matter, as well as in so many others. As soon as spring weather
+unbound the streams, and enlarged both the spots and the appetite of
+trout (which mainly thrive together), Pet became seized, by his own
+account, with insatiable love of angling. The beck of the gill, running
+into the Lune, was alive, in those unpoaching days, with sweet little
+trout of a very high breed, playful, mischievous, and indulging (while
+they provoked) good hunger. These were trout who disdained to feed
+basely on the ground when they could feed upward, ennobling almost every
+gulp with a glimpse of the upper creation. Mrs. Carnaby loved these
+“graceful creatures,” as she always called them, when fried well;
+and she thought it so good and so clever of her son to tempt her poor
+appetite with them.
+
+“Philippa, he knows--perhaps your mind is absent,” she said, as she put
+the fifth trout on her plate at breakfast one fine morning--“he feels
+that these little creatures do me good, and to me it becomes a sacred
+duty to endeavor to eat them.”
+
+“You seem to succeed very well, Eliza.”
+
+“Yes, dear, I manage to get on a little, from a sort of sporting feeling
+that appeals to me. Before I begin to lift the skins of any of these
+little darlings, I can see my dear boy standing over the torrent, with
+his wonderful boldness, and bright eagle eyes--”
+
+“To pull out a fish of an ounce and a half. Without any disrespect to
+Pet, whose fishing apparel has cost 20 pounds, I believe that Jordas
+catches every one of them.”
+
+Sad to say, this was even so; Lancelot tried once or twice, for some
+five minutes at a time, throwing the fly as he threw a skittle-ball; but
+finding no fish at once respond to his precipitance, down he cast the
+rod, and left the rest of it to Jordas. But inasmuch as he brought
+back fish whenever he went out fishing, and looked as brilliant
+and picturesque as a salmon-fly, in his new costume, his mother was
+delighted, and his aunt, being full of fresh troubles, paid small heed
+to him.
+
+For as soon as the roads became safe again, and an honest attorney could
+enter “horse hire” in his bill without being too chivalrous, and the ink
+that had clotted in the good-will time began to form black blood again,
+Mr. Jellicorse himself resolved legitimately to set forth upon a legal
+enterprise. The winter had shaken him slightly--for even a solicitor's
+body is vulnerable; and well for the clerk of the weather it is that no
+action lies against him--and his good wife told him to be very careful,
+although he looked as young as ever. She had no great opinion of the
+people he was going to, and was sure that they would be too high and
+mighty even to see that his bed was aired. For her part, she hoped that
+the reports were true which were now getting into every honest person's
+mouth; and if he would listen to a woman's common-sense, and at once
+go over to the other side, it would serve them quite right, and be the
+better for his family, and give a good lift to his profession. But his
+honesty was stout, and vanquished even his pride in his profession.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L
+
+PRINCELY TREATMENT
+
+
+“This, then, is what you have to say,” cried my lady Philippa, in a tone
+of little gratitude, and perhaps not purely free from wrath; “this is
+what has happened, while you did nothing?”
+
+“Madam, I assure you,” Mr. Jellicorse replied, “that no one point has
+been neglected. And truly I am bold enough--though you may not perceive
+it--to take a little credit to myself for the skill and activity of my
+proceedings. I have a most conceited man against me; no member at all
+of our honored profession; but rather inclined to make light of us.
+A gentleman--if one may so describe him--of the name of Mordacks, who
+lives in a den below a bridge in York, and has very long harassed
+the law by a sort of cheap-jack, slap-dash, low-minded style of doing
+things. 'Jobbing,' I may call it--cheap and nasty jobbing--not at all
+the proper thing, from a correct point of view. 'A catch-penny fellow,'
+that's the proper name for him--I was trying to think of it half the way
+from Middleton.”
+
+“And now, in your eloquence, you have hit upon it. I can easily
+understand that such a style of business would not meet with your
+approbation. But, Mr. Jellicorse, he seems to me to have proved himself
+considerably more active in his way--however objectionable that may
+be--than you, as our agent, have shown yourself.”
+
+The cheerful, expressive, and innocent face of Mr. Jellicorse protested
+now. By nature he was almost as honest as Geoffrey Mordacks himself
+could be; and in spite of a very long professional career, the original
+element was there, and must be charged for.
+
+“I can not recall to my memory,” he said, “any instance of neglect on my
+part. But if that impression is upon your mind, it would be better for
+you to change your legal advisers at an early opportunity. Such has been
+the frequent practice, madam, of your family. And but for that, none of
+this trouble could exist. I must beg you either to withdraw the charge
+of negligence, which I understand you to have brought, or else to
+appoint some gentleman of greater activity to conduct your business.”
+
+With the haughtiness of her headstrong race, Miss Yordas had failed as
+yet to comprehend that a lawyer could be a gentleman. And even now that
+idea scarcely broke upon her, until she looked hard at Mr. Jellicorse.
+But he, having cast aside all deference for the moment, met her stern
+gaze with such courteous indifference and poise of self-composure that
+she suddenly remembered that his grandfather had been the master of a
+pack of fox-hounds.
+
+“I have made no charge of negligence; you are hasty, and misunderstand
+me,” she answered, after waiting for him to begin again, as if he were a
+rash aggressor. “It is possible that you desire to abandon our case, and
+conceive affront where none is meant whatever.”
+
+“God forbid!” Mr. Jellicorse exclaimed, with his legal state of mind
+returning. “A finer case never came into any court of law. There is a
+coarse axiom, not without some truth, that possession is nine points of
+the law. We have possession. What is even more important, we have the
+hostile instrument in our possession.”
+
+“You mean that unfortunate and unjust deed, of a by-gone time, that was
+so wickedly concealed? Dishonest transaction from first to last!”
+
+“Madam, the law is not to blame for that, nor even the lawyers; but the
+clients, who kept changing them. But for that, your admirable father
+must have known that the will he dictated to me was waste paper. At
+least as regards the main part of these demesnes.”
+
+“What monstrous injustice! A positive premium upon filial depravity. You
+regard things professionally, I suppose. But surely it must have struck
+you as a flagrant dishonesty, a base and wicked crime, that a document
+so vile should be allowed even to exist.”
+
+Miss Yordas had spoken with unusual heat; and the lawyer looked at her
+with an air of mild inquiry. Was it possible that she suggested to him
+the destruction of the wicked instrument? Ladies had done queer things,
+within his knowledge; but this lady showed herself too cautious for
+that.
+
+“I know what my father would have done in such a case,” she continued,
+with her tranquil smile recovered: “he would just have ridden up to his
+solicitor's office, demanded the implement of robbery, brought it home,
+and set it upon the hall fire, in the presence of the whole of his
+family and household. But now we live in such a strictly lawful age that
+no crime can be stopped, if only perpetrated legally. And you say
+that Mr. More--something, 'Moresharp,' I think it was, knows of that
+iniquitous production?”
+
+“Madam, we can not be certain; but I have reason to suspect that Mr.
+Mordacks has got wind of that unfortunate deed of appointment.”
+
+“Supposing that he has, and that he means to use his knowledge, he can
+not force the document from your possession, can he?”
+
+“Not without an order. But by filing affidavit, after issue of writ in
+ejectment, they may compel us to produce, and allow attested copy to be
+taken.”
+
+“Then the law is disgraceful to the last degree, and it is useless to
+own anything. That deed is in your charge, as our attorney, I suppose,
+sir?”
+
+“By no other right, madam: we have twelve chestfuls, any one or all of
+which I am bound to render up to your order.”
+
+“Our confidence in you is unshaken. But without shaking it we might
+order home any particular chest for inspection?”
+
+“Most certainly, madam, by giving us receipt for it. For antiquarian
+uses, and others, such a thing is by no means irregular. And the oldest
+of all the deeds are in that box--charters from the crown, grants from
+corporations, records of assay by arms--warrants that even I can not
+decipher.”
+
+“A very learned gentleman is likely soon to visit us--a man of modern
+family, who spends his whole time in seeking out the stories of the
+older ones. No family in Yorkshire is comparable to ours in the interest
+of its annals.”
+
+“That is a truth beyond all denial, madam. The character of your ancient
+race has always been a marked one.”
+
+“And always honorable, Mr. Jellicorse. Undeviating principle has
+distinguished all my ancestors. Nothing has ever been allowed to stand
+between them and their view of right.”
+
+“You could not have put it more clearly, Mistress Yordas. Their own view
+of right has been their guiding star throughout. And they never have
+failed to act accordingly.”
+
+“Alas! of how very few others can we say it! But being of a very good
+old family yourself, you are able to appreciate such conduct. You
+would like me, perhaps, to sign the order for that box of
+ancient--cartularies--is not that the proper word for them? And it might
+be as well to state why they happen to be wanted--for purposes of family
+history.”
+
+“Madam, I will at once prepare a memorandum for your signature and your
+sister's.”
+
+The mind of Mr. Jellicorse was much relieved, although the relief was
+not untempered with misgivings. He sat down immediately at an ancient
+writing-table, and prepared a short order for delivery, to their
+trusty servant Jordas, of a certain box, with the letter C upon it, and
+containing title-deeds of Scargate Hall estate.
+
+“I think it might be simpler not to put it so precisely,” my lady
+Philippa suggested, “but merely to say a box containing the oldest of
+the title-deeds, as required for an impending antiquarian research.”
+
+Mr. Jellicorse made the amendment; and then, with the prudence of long
+practice, added, “The order should be in your handwriting, madam; will
+it give you too much trouble just to copy it?” “How can it signify,
+if it bears our signatures?” his client asked, with a smile at such
+a trifle; however, she sat down, and copied it upon another sheet
+of paper. Then Mr. Jellicorse, beautifully bowing, drew near to take
+possession of his own handwriting; but the lady, with a bow of even
+greater elegance, lifted the cover of the standing desk, and therein
+placed both manuscripts; and the lawyer perceived that he could say
+nothing.
+
+“How delightful it is to be quit of business!” The hostess now looked
+hospitable. “We need not recur to this matter, I do hope. That paper,
+whatever it is, will be signed by both of us, and handed over to you,
+in your legal head-quarters, to-morrow. We must have the pleasure of
+sending you home in the morning, Mr. Jellicorse. We have bought a very
+wonderful vehicle, invented for such roads as ours, and to supersede the
+jumping-car. It is warranted to traverse any place a horse can
+travel, with luxurious ease to the passengers, and safety of no common
+description. Jordas will drive you; your horse can trot behind; and you
+can send back by it whatever there may be.”
+
+Mr. Jellicorse detested new inventions, and objected most strongly to
+any experiment made in his own body. However, he would rather die
+than plead his time of life in bar, and his faith in the dogman was
+unlimited. And now the gentle Mrs. Carnaby, who had gracefully taken
+flight from “horrid business,” returned in an evening dress and with
+a sweetly smiling countenance, and very nearly turned the Jellicorsian
+head, snowy as it was, with soft attentions and delicious deference.
+
+“I was treated like a prince,” he said next day, when delivered safe at
+home, and resting among his rather dingy household gods. “There never
+could have been a more absurd idea than that notion of yours about my
+being put into wet sheets, Diana. Why, I even had my night-cap warmed;
+and a young woman came, with a blush upon her face, and a question
+whether I would be pleased to sleep in a gross of Naples stockings! Ah,
+to my mind, after all, it proves what I have always said--that there is
+nothing like old blood.”
+
+“Nothing like old blood for being made a fool of,” his wife replied,
+with a coarseness which made him shiver, after Mrs. Carnaby. “They know
+what they are about, I'll lay a penny. Some roguery, no doubt, that they
+seek to lead you into. That is what their night-caps and stockings mean.
+How low it is to make a foreground of them!”
+
+“Hush, my dear! I can not bear such want of charity. And what is even
+worse, you expose me to an action at law, with heavy damages.”
+
+The lawyer had sundry little qualms of conscience, which were deepened
+by his wife's sagacious words; and suddenly it struck him that the
+new-fangled vehicle which had brought him home so quietly from Scargate
+had shown a strange inability to stand still for more than two minutes
+at his side door. So much had he been hurried by the apparent straits of
+his charioteer that he ran out with box C without ever stopping to make
+an inventory of its contents--as he intended to do--or even looking
+whether the all-important deed was there. In fact, he had scarcely time
+to seal up the key in a separate package, hand it to Jordas, and take
+the order (now become a receipt) from the horny fist of the dogman,
+before Marmaduke, rendered more dashing by snow-drift, was away like a
+thunder-bolt--if such a thing there be, and if it has four legs.
+
+“How could I have helped doing as I have done?” he whispered to himself,
+uncomfortably. “Here are two ladies of high position, and they send a
+joint order for their property. By-the-bye, I will just have a look at
+that order, now that there is no horse to jump over me.” Upon going to
+the day file, he found the order right, transcribed from his own amended
+copy, and bearing two signatures, as it should do. But it struck him
+that the words “Eliza Carnaby” were written too boldly for that lady's
+hand; and the more he looked at them, the more he was convinced of
+it. That was no concern of his, for it was not his duty, under the
+circumstances of the case, to verify her signature. But this conviction
+drove him to an uncomfortable conclusion--“Miss Yordas intends to
+destroy that deed without her sister's knowledge. She knows that her
+sister's nerve is weaker, and she does not like to involve her in
+the job. A very brave, sisterly feeling, no doubt, and much the wiser
+course, if she means to do it. It is a bold stroke, and well worthy of
+a Yordas. But I hope, with all my heart, that she never can have thought
+of it. And she kept that order in my handwriting to make it look as if
+the suggestion came from me! And I am as innocent as any lamb is of the
+frauds that shall come to be written on his skin. The duty of attorney
+toward client prevents me from opening my lips upon the matter. But she
+is a deep woman, and a bold one too. May the Lord direct things aright!
+I shall retire, and let Robert have the practice, as soon as Brown's
+bankruptcy has worn out captious creditors. It is the Lord alone that
+doeth all things well.”
+
+Mr. Jellicorse knew that he had done his best; and though doubtful of
+the turn which things had taken, with some exclusion of his agency, he
+felt (though his conscience told him not to feel it) that here was one
+true source of joy. That impudent, dashing, unprofessional man, who was
+always poking his vile unarticled nose into legal business, that fellow
+of the name of Mordacks, now would have no locus standi left. At least
+a hundred and fifty firms, of good standing in the county, detested that
+man, and even a judge would import a scintillula juris into any measure
+which relieved the country of him. Meditating thus, he heard a knock.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI
+
+STAND AND DELIVER
+
+
+The day was not far worn as yet; and May month having come at last, the
+day could stand a good deal of wear. With Jordas burning to exhibit the
+wonders of the new machine (which had been bought upon his advice),
+and with Marmaduke conscious of the new gloss on his coat, all previous
+times had been beaten--as the sporting writers put it; that is to say,
+all previous times of the journey from Scargate to Middleton, for any
+man who sat on wheels. A rider would take a shorter cut, and have many
+other advantages; but for a driver the time had been the quickest upon
+record.
+
+Mr. Jellicorse, exulting in his safety, had imprinted the chaste salute
+upon his good wife's cheek at ten minutes after one o'clock; when the
+clerks in the office with laudable promptitude (not expecting him as
+yet) had unanimously cast down pen, and betaken hand and foot toward
+knife and fork. Instead of blaming them, this good lawyer went upon that
+same road himself, with the great advantage that the road to his dinner
+lay through his own kitchen. At dinner-time he had much to tell, and
+many large helps to receive, of interest and of admiration, especially
+from his pet child Emily (who forgot herself so largely as to lick her
+spoon while gazing), and after dinner he was not without reasons for
+letting perhaps a little of the time slip by. Therefore, by the time he
+had described all dangers, discharged his duty to all comforts, and held
+the little confidential talk with his wife and himself above recorded,
+the clock had made its way to half past three.
+
+Mrs. Jellicorse and Emily were gone forth to pay visits; the clerks,
+shut away in their own room, were busy, scratching up a lovely case for
+nisi prius; the cook had thrown the sifted cinders on the kitchen fire,
+and was gone with the maids to exchange just a few constitutional words
+with the gardener; and the whole house was drowsy with that by-time when
+light and shadow seem to mix together, and far-away sounds take a faint
+to and fro, as if they were the pendulum of silence.
+
+“That is Emily's knock. Impatient child! Come back for her mother's
+gloves, or something. All the people are out; I must go and let her in.”
+
+With these words, and a little placid frown--because a soft nap was
+impending on his eyelids, and yet they were always glad to open on his
+favorite--the worthy lawyer rose, and took a pinch of snuff to rouse
+himself; but before he could get to the door, a louder and more
+impatient rap almost made him jump.
+
+“What a hurry you are in, my dear! You really should try to learn some
+little patience.”
+
+While he was speaking, he opened the door; and behold, there was no
+little girl, but a tall and stately gentleman in horseman's dress, and
+of strong commanding aspect.
+
+“What is your pleasure, sir?” the lawyer asked, while his heart began
+to flutter; for exactly such a visitor had caused him scare of his life,
+when stronger by a quarter of a century than now.
+
+“My pleasure, or rather my business, is with Mr. Jellicorse, the
+lawyer.”
+
+“Then, sir, you have come to the right man for it. My name is
+Jellicorse, and greatly at your service. Allow me the honor of inviting
+you within.”
+
+“My name is Yordas--Sir Duncan Yordas,” said the stranger, when seated
+in the lawyer's private room. “My father, Philip Yordas, was a client of
+yours, and of other legal gentlemen before he came to you. Upon the day
+of his death, in the year 1777, you prepared his will, which you have
+since found to be of no effect, except as regards his personal estate,
+and about one-eighth part of the realty. Of the bulk of the land,
+including Scargate Hall, he could not dispose, for the simple reason
+that it had been strictly entailed by a deed executed by my grandfather
+and his wife in 1751. Under that entail I take in fee, for it could not
+have been barred without me; and I never concurred in any disentailing
+deed, and my father never knew that such was needful.”
+
+“Excuse me, Sir Duncan, but you seem to be wonderfully apt with the
+terms of our profession.”
+
+“I could scarcely be otherwise, after all that I have had to do with
+law, in India. Our first object is to apply our own laws, and our second
+to spread our religion. But no more of that. Do you admit the truth of a
+matter so stated that you can not fail to grasp it?”
+
+Sir Duncan Yordas, as he put this question, fixed large, unwavering, and
+piercing eyes (against which no spectacles were any shelter) upon the
+mild, amiable, and, generally speaking, very honest orbs of sight
+which had lighted the path of the elder gentleman to good repute and
+competence. But who may turn a lawyer's hand from the Heaven-sped legal
+plough?
+
+“Am I to understand, Sir Duncan Yordas, that your visit to me is of an
+amicable nature, and intended (without prejudice to other interests) to
+ascertain, so far as may be compatible with professional rules, how far
+my clients are acquainted with documents alleged or imagined to be in
+existence, and how far their conduct might be guided by desire to afford
+every reasonable facility?”
+
+“You are to understand simply this, that as the proper owner of Scargate
+Hall, and the main part of the estates held with it, I require you to
+sign a memorandum that you hold all the title-deeds on my behalf, and to
+deliver at once to me that entailing instrument of 1751, under which I
+make my claim.”
+
+“You speak, sir, as if you had already brought your action, and entered
+verdict. Legal process may be dispensed with in barbarous countries, but
+not here. The title-deeds and other papers of Scargate Hall were placed
+in my custody neither by you nor on your behalf, sir. I hold them
+on behalf of those at present in possession; and until I receive due
+instructions from them, or a final order from a court of law, I should
+be guilty of a breach of trust if I parted with a dog's-ear of them.”
+
+“You distinctly refuse my requirements, and defy me to enforce them?”
+
+“Not so, Sir Duncan. I do nothing more than declare what my view of my
+duty is, and decline in any way to depart from it.”
+
+“Upon that score I have nothing more to say. I did not expect you to
+give up the deeds, though in 'barbarous countries,' as you call them, we
+have peremptory ways. I will say more than that, Mr. Jellicorse--I will
+say that I respect you for clinging to what you must know better than
+anybody else to be the weaker side.”
+
+The lawyer bowed his very best bow, but was bound to enter protest
+against the calm assumption of the claimant.
+
+“Let us leave that question,” Sir Duncan said; “the time would fail
+us to discuss that now. But one thing I surely may insist upon as
+the proper heir of my grandfather. I may desire you to produce for my
+inspection that deed in pursuance of his marriage settlement, which has
+for so many years lain concealed.”
+
+“With pleasure I will do so, Sir Duncan Yordas (presuming that any such
+deed exists), upon the production of an order from the Court either of
+King's Bench or of Common Pleas.”
+
+“In that case you would be obliged to produce it, and would earn no
+thanks of mine. But I ask you to lay aside the legal aspect; for no
+action is pending, and perhaps never will be. I ask you, as a valued
+adviser of the family, and a trustworthy friend to its interests--as a
+gentleman, in fact, rather than a mere lawyer--to do a wise and amicable
+thing. You can not in any way injure your case, if a law case is to
+come of it, because we know all about the deed already. We even have
+an abstract of it as clear as you yourself could make, and we have
+discovered that one of the witnesses is still alive. I have come to you
+myself in preference to employing a lawyer, because I hope, if you meet
+me frankly, to put things in train for a friendly and fair settlement.
+I am not a young man; I have been disappointed of any one to succeed me,
+and I wish to settle my affairs in this country, and return to India,
+which suits me better, and where I am more useful. My sisters have not
+behaved kindly to me; but that I must try to forgive and forget. I
+have thought matters over, and am quite prepared to offer very liberal
+terms--in short, to leave them in possession of Scargate, upon certain
+conditions and in a certain manner.”
+
+“Really, Sir Duncan,” Mr. Jellicorse exclaimed, “allow me to offer you
+a pinch of snuff. You are pleased with it? Yes, it is of quite superior
+quality. It saved the life of a most admirable fellow, a henchman
+of your family--in fact, poor Jordas. The power of this snuff alone
+supported him from freezing--”
+
+“At another time I may be highly interested in that matter,” the visitor
+replied, without meaning to be rude, but knowing that the man of law was
+making passes to gain time; “just at present I must ask you to say yes
+or no. If you wish me to set my offer plainly before you, and so relieve
+the property of the cost of a hopeless struggle--for I have taken the
+opinion of the first real property counsel of the age--you will, as a
+token of good faith and of common-sense, produce for my inspection that
+deed-poll of November 15, 1751.”
+
+Poor Mr. Jellicorse was desperately driven. He looked round the room, to
+seek for any interruption. He went to the window, and pretended to see
+another visitor knocking at the door. But no help came; he must face
+it out himself; and Sir Duncan, with his quiet resolution, looked more
+stern than his violent father.
+
+“I think that before we proceed any further,” said the lawyer, at last
+sitting down, and taking up a pen and trying what the nib was like, “we
+really should understand a little where we are already. My own desire to
+avoid litigation is very strong--almost unprofessionally so--though
+the first thing consulted by all of us naturally is the pocket of our
+client--”
+
+“Whether it will hold out, I suppose.” Sir Duncan Yordas departed from
+his dignity in saying this, and was sorry as soon as he had said it.
+
+“That is the vulgar impression about us, which it is our duty to
+disdain. But without losing time upon that question, let me ask, what
+shall I put down as your proposition, sir?”
+
+“There is nothing to put down. That is just the point. I do not come
+here with any formal proposition. If that had been my object, I would
+have brought a lawyer. What I say is that I have the right to see that
+deed. It forms no part of my sisters' title-deeds, but even destroys
+their title. It belongs to me, it is my property, and only through fraud
+is it now in your hands. Of course we can easily wrest it from you, and
+must do so if you defy me. It rests with you to take that risk. But I
+prefer to cut things short. I pledge myself to two things--first, to
+leave the document in your possession; and next, to offer fair and even
+handsome terms when you have met me thus fairly. Why should you object?
+For we know all about it. Never mind how.”
+
+Those last three words decided the issue. Even worse than the fear of
+breach of trust was the fear of treason in the office, and the lawyer's
+only chance of getting clew to that was to keep on terms with this Sir
+Duncan Yordas. There had been no treason whatever in the office; neither
+had anything come out through the proctorial firm in York, or Sir Walter
+Carnaby's solicitors; but a note among longheaded Duncombe's papers had
+got into the hands of Mordacks. Of that, however, Mr. Jellicorse had no
+idea.
+
+“Sir Duncan Yordas, I will meet you as you come,” he said, with his
+good, fresh-colored face, as honest as the sun when the clouds roll off.
+“It is an unusual step on my part, and perhaps irregular. But rather
+than destroy the prospect of a friendly compromise, I will strain
+a point, and candidly admit that there is an instrument open to an
+interpretation which might, or might not, be in your favor.”
+
+“That I knew long ago, and more than that. My demand is--to see it, and
+to satisfy myself.”
+
+“Under the circumstances, I am half inclined to think that I should
+be disposed to allow you that privilege if the document were in my
+possession.”
+
+“Now, Mr. Jellicorse,” Sir Duncan answered, showing his temper in his
+eyes alone, “how much longer will you trifle with me? Where is that
+deed?”
+
+Mr. Jellicorse drew forth his watch, took off his spectacles, and dusted
+them carefully with a soft yellow handkerchief; then restored them to
+their double sphere of usefulness, and perused, with some diligence, the
+time of day. By the law which compels a man to sneeze when another man
+sets the example, Sir Duncan also drew forth his watch.
+
+“I am trying to make my reply as accurate,” said the lawyer, beginning
+to enjoy the position as a man, though not quite as a lawyer--“as
+accurate as your candor and confidence really deserve, Sir Duncan. The
+box containing that document, to which you attach so much importance
+(whether duly or otherwise is not for me to say until counsel's opinion
+has been taken on our side), considering the powers of the horse, that
+box should be about Stormy Gap by this time. A quarter to four by me.
+What does your watch say, sir?”
+
+“The deed has been sent for, post-haste, has it? And you know for what
+purpose?”
+
+“You must draw a distinction between the deed and the box containing
+it, Sir Duncan. Or, to put it more accurately, betwixt that deed and its
+casual accompaniments. It happens to be among very old charters, which
+happen to be wanted for certain excellent antiquarian purposes.
+Such things are not in my line, I must confess, although so deeply
+interesting. But a very learned man seems to have expressed--”
+
+“Rubbish. Excuse me, but you are most provoking. You know, as well as I
+do, that robbery is intended, and you allow yourself to be made a party
+to it.”
+
+This was the simple truth; and the lawyer, being (by some strange
+inversion of professional excellence) honest at the bottom, was deeply
+pained at having such words used, as to, for, about, or in anywise
+concerning him.
+
+“I think, Sir Duncan, that you will be sorry,” he answered, with much
+dignity, “for employing such language where it can not be resented. Your
+father was a violent man, and we all expect violence of your family.”
+
+“There is no time to go into that question now. If I have wronged you,
+I will beg your pardon. A very few hours will prove how that is. How and
+by whom have you sent the box?”
+
+Mr. Jellicorse answered, rather stiffly, that his clients had sent a
+trusty servant with a light vehicle to fetch the box, and that now he
+must be half way toward home.
+
+“I shall overtake him,” said Sir Duncan, with a smile; “I have a good
+horse, and I know the shortcuts. Hoofs without wheels go a yard to a
+foot upon such rocky collar-work.”
+
+Without another word, except “Good-by,” Sir Duncan Yordas left the
+house, walked rapidly to the inn, and cut short the dinner his good
+horse was standing up to. In a very few minutes he was on Tees bridge,
+with his face toward the home of his ancestors.
+
+It may be supposed that neither his thoughts nor those of the lawyer
+were very cheerful. Mr. Jellicorse was deeply anxious as to the conflict
+which must ensue, and as to the figure his fair fame might cut, if this
+strange transaction should be exposed and calumniated by evil tongues.
+In these elderly days, and with all experience, he had laid himself
+open, not legally perhaps, but morally, to the heavy charge of
+connivance at a felonious act, and even some contribution toward it. He
+told himself vainly that he could not help it, that the documents were
+in his charge only until he was ordered to give them up, and that it was
+no concern of his to anticipate what might become of them. His position
+had truly been difficult, but still he might have escaped from it with
+clearer conscience. His duty was to cast away drawing-room manners, and
+warn Miss Yordas that the document she hated so was not her own to deal
+with, but belonged (in equity at least) to those who were entitled under
+it, and that to take advantage of her wrongful possession, and destroy
+the foe, was a crime, and, more than that, a shabby one. The former
+point might not have stopped her; but the latter would have done so
+without fail, for her pride was equal to her daring. But poor Mr.
+Jellicorse had felt the power of a will more resolute than his own, and
+of grand surroundings and exalted style; and his desire to please had
+confused, and thereby overcome, his perception of the right. But now
+these reflections were all too late, and the weary brain found comfort
+only in the shelter of its night-cap.
+
+If a little slip had brought a very good man to unhappiness, how much
+harder was it for Sir Duncan Yordas, who had committed no offense at
+all! No Yordas had ever cared a tittle for tattle--to use their own
+expression--but deeper mischief than tattle must ensue, unless great
+luck prevented it. The brother knew well that his sister inherited much
+of the reckless self-will which had made the name almost a by-word,
+and which had been master of his own life until large experience of
+the world, and the sense of responsible power, curbed it. He had little
+affection for that sister left--for she had used him cruelly, and even
+now was imbittering the injury--but he still had some tender feeling for
+the other, who had always been his favorite. And though cut off, by his
+father's act, from due headship of the family, he was deeply grieved, in
+this more enlightened age, to expose their uncivilized turbulence.
+
+Therefore he spurred his willing horse against the hill, and up the
+many-winding ruggedness of road, hoping, at every turn, to descry in the
+distance the vehicle carrying that very plaguesome box. If his son had
+been there, he might have told him, on the ridge of Stormy Gap (which
+commanded high and low, rough and smooth, dark and light, for miles
+ahead), that Jordas was taking the final turn, by the furthest gleam of
+the water-mist, whence the stone road labored up to Scargate. But Sir
+Duncan's eyes--though as keen as an eagle's while young--had now seen
+too much of the sun to make out that gray atom gliding in the sunset
+haze.
+
+Upon the whole, it was a lucky thing that he could not overtake the car;
+for Jordas would never have yielded his trust while any life was in him;
+and Sir Duncan having no knowledge of him, except as a boy-of-all-work
+about the place, might have been tempted to use the sword, without which
+no horseman then rode there. Or failing that, a struggle between two
+equally resolute men must have followed, with none at hand to part them.
+
+When the horseman came to the foot of the long steep pull leading up to
+the stronghold of his race, he just caught a glimpse of the car turning
+in at the entrance of the court-yard. “They have half an hour's start of
+me,” he thought, as he drew up behind a rock, that the house might not
+descry him; “if I ride up in full view, I hurry the mischief. Philippa
+will welcome me with the embers of my title. She must not suspect that
+the matter is so urgent. Nobody shall know that I am coming. For many
+reasons I had better try the private road below the Scarfe.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII
+
+THE SCARFE
+
+
+Jordas, without suspicion of pursuit, had allowed no grass to grow under
+the feet of Marmaduke on the homeward way. His orders were to use all
+speed, to do as he had done at the lawyer's private door, and then,
+without baiting his horse, to drive back, reserving the nose-bag for
+some very humpy halting-place. There is no such man, at the present time
+of day, to carry out strict orders, as the dogman was, and the chance
+of there being such a one again diminishes by very rapid process.
+Marmaduke, as a horse, was of equal quality, reasoning not about his
+orders, but about the way to do them.
+
+There was no special emergency now, so far as my lady Philippa knew; but
+the manner of her mind was to leave no space between a resolution and
+its execution. This is the way to go up in the world, or else to go down
+abruptly; and to her the latter would have been far better than to halt
+between two opinions. Her plan had been shaped and set last night, and,
+like all great ideas, was the simplest of the simple. And Jordas, who
+had inklings of his own, though never admitted to confidence, knew how
+to carry out the outer part.
+
+“When the turbot comes,” she said to Welldrum, as soon as her long sight
+showed her the trusty Jordas beginning the home ascent, “it is to be
+taken first out of the car, and to my sister's sitting-room; the other
+things Jordas will see to. I may be going for a little walk. But you
+will at once carry up the turbot. Mrs. Carnaby's appetite is delicate.”
+
+The butler had his own opinion upon that interesting subject. But in her
+presence it must be his own. Any attempt at enlargement of her mind by
+exchange of sentiment--such as Mrs. Carnaby permitted and enjoyed--would
+have sent him flying down the hill, pursued by square-toed men prepared
+to add elasticity to velocity. Therefore Welldrum made a leg in silence,
+and retreated, while his mistress prepared for her intended exploit. She
+had her beaver hat and mantle ready by the shrubbery door--as a little
+quiet postern of her own was called--and in the heavy standing desk, or
+“secretary,” of her private room she had stored a flat basket, or frail,
+of stout flags, with a heavy clock weight inside it.
+
+“Much better to drown the wretched thing than burn it,” she had been
+saying to herself, “especially at this time of year, when fires are weak
+and telltale. And parchment makes such a nasty smell; Eliza might come
+in and suspect it. But the Scarfe is a trusty confidant.”
+
+Mistress Yordas, while sure that her sister (having even more than
+herself at stake) would approve and even applaud her scheme, was equally
+sure that it must be kept from her, both for its own sake and for hers.
+And the sooner it was done, the less the chance of disturbing poor
+Eliza's mind.
+
+The Scarfe is a deep pool, supposed to have no bottom (except, perhaps,
+in the very bowels of the earth), upon one of the wildest head-waters of
+the Tees. A strong mountain torrent from a desolate ravine springs forth
+with great ferocity, and sooner than put up with any more stabs from
+the rugged earth, casts itself on air. For a hundred and twenty feet the
+water is bright, in the novelty and the power of itself, striking out
+freaks of eccentric flashes, and even little sun-bows, in fine weather.
+But the triumph is brief; and a heavy retribution, created by its
+violence, awaits below. From the tossing turmoil of the fall two white
+volumes roll away, with a clash of waves between them, and sweeping
+round the craggy basin, meet (like a snowy wreath) below, and rush back
+in coiling eddies flaked with foam. All the middle is dark deep water,
+looking on the watch for something to suck down.
+
+What better duty, or more pious, could a hole like this perform, than
+that of swallowing up a lawyer; or, if no such morsel offered, then at
+least a lawyer's deeds? Many a sheep had been there ingulfed, and never
+saluted by her lambs again; and although a lawyer by no means is a sheep
+(except in his clothing, and his eyes perhaps), yet his doings appear
+upon the skin thereof, and enhance its value more than drugs of Tyre.
+And it is to be feared that some fleeced clients will not feel the
+horror which they ought to feel at the mode pursued by Mistress Yordas
+in the delivery of her act and deed.
+
+She came down the dell, from the private grounds of Scargate, with a
+resolute face, and a step of strength. The clock weight, that should
+know time no more, was well imbosomed in the old deed-poll, and all
+stitched firmly in the tough brown frail, whose handles would help for a
+long strong cast. Towering crags, and a ridge of jagged scaurs, shut out
+the sunset, while a thicket of dwarf oak, and the never-absent bramble,
+aproned the yellow dugs of shale with brown. In the middle was the
+caldron of the torrent, called the “Scarfe,” with the sheer trap-rock,
+which is green in the sunlight, like black night flung around it, while
+a snowy wreath of mist (like foam exhaling) circled round the basined
+steep, or hovered over the chasm.
+
+Miss Yordas had very stanch nerves, but still, for reasons of her own,
+she disliked this place, and never came near it for pleasure's sake,
+although in dry summers, when the springs were low, the fury of the
+scene passed into grandeur, and even beauty. But a Yordas (long ago gone
+to answer for it) had flung a man, who plagued him with the law, into
+this hole. And what was more disheartening, although of less importance,
+a favorite maid of this lady, upon the exile of her sweetheart, hearing
+that his feet were upside down to hers, and that this hole went right
+through the earth, had jumped into it, in a lonely moment, instead of
+taking lessons in geography. Philippa Yordas was as brave as need be;
+but now her heart began to creep as coldly as the shadows crept.
+
+For now she was out of sight of home, and out of hearing of any sound,
+except the roaring of the force. The Hall was half a mile away, behind
+a shoulder of thick-ribbed hill; and it took no sight of this torrent,
+until it became a quiet river by the downward road. “I must be getting
+old,” Miss Yordas thought, “or else this path is much rougher than it
+used to be. Why, it seems to be getting quite dangerous! It is too bad
+of Jordas not to see to things better. My father used to ride this way
+sometimes. But how could a horse get along here now?”
+
+There used to be a bridle-road from the grounds of Scargate to a ford
+below the force, and northward thence toward the Tees; or by keeping
+down stream, and then fording it again, a rider might hit upon
+the Middleton road, near the rock that warned the public of the
+blood-hounds. This bridle-road kept a great distance from the cliffs
+overhanging the perilous Scarfe; and the only way down to a view of
+the fall was a scrambling track, over rocks and trunks, unworthy to
+be called a foot-path. The lady with the bag had no choice left but to
+follow this track, or else abandon her intention. For a moment she
+was sorry that she had not been satisfied with some less troublesome
+destruction of her foe, even at the risk of chance suspicions. But
+having thus begun it, she would not turn back, and be angry with her
+idle fears when she came to think of them.
+
+With hereditary scorn of second thoughts she cast away doubt, and went
+down the steep, and stood on the brow of sheer rock, to recover her
+breath and strength for a long bold cast. The crag beneath her feet was
+trembling with the power of the flood below, and the white mist from the
+deep moved slowly, shrouding now, and now revealing, the black gulf and
+its slippery walls. For the last few months Miss Yordas had taken very
+little exercise, and seldom tasted the open air; therefore the tumult
+and terror of the place, in the fading of the sky and darkening of the
+earth, got hold of her more than they should have done.
+
+With the frail in her right hand, poised upon three fingers (for the
+fourth had been broken in her childhood), she planted the sole of her
+left foot on the brink, and swung herself for the needful cast.
+
+A strong throw was needful to reach the black water that never gave
+up anything: if the bag were dropped in the foaming race, it might
+be carried back to the heel of the fall. She was proud of her bodily
+strength, which was almost equal to that of a muscular man, and her long
+arm swelled with the vigor of the throw. But just when the weight should
+have been delivered, and flown with a hiss into the bottomless abyss, a
+loose flag of the handle twisted on her broken finger. Instead of being
+freed, the bag fell back, struck her in the chest, and threw her back,
+for the clock weight was a heavy one. Her balance was lost, her feet
+flew up, she fell upon her back, and the smooth beaver cloak began
+sliding upon the slippery rock. Horrible death was pulling at her; not
+a stick nor a stone was in reach of her hands, and the pitiless crags
+echoed one long shriek above all the roar of the water-fall. She strove
+to turn over and grasp the ground, but only felt herself going faster.
+Her bright boots were flashing against the white mist--a picture in
+her mind forever--her body was following, inch by inch. With elbow and
+shoulder, and even hair coils, she strove to prolong the descent into
+death; but the descent increased its speed, and the sky itself was
+sliding.
+
+Just when the balance was inclining downward, and the plunge hanging on
+a hair's-breadth, powerful hands fell upon her shoulders; a grating of a
+drag against the grain was the last thing she was conscious of; and Sir
+Duncan Yordas, having made a strong pull, at the imminent risk of his
+life, threw back his weight on the heels of his boots, and they helped
+him. His long Indian spurs, which had no rowel, held their hold like a
+falcon's hind talon; and he drew back the lady without knowing who she
+was, having leaped from his horse at her despairing scream. From his
+knowledge of the place he concluded that it was some person seeking
+suicide, but recoiling from the sight of death; and without another
+thought he risked his life to save.
+
+Breathless himself--for the transit of years and of curry-powder had not
+improved his lungs--he labored at the helpless form, and laid it at last
+in a place of safety.
+
+“What a weight the lady is!” was his first idea; “it can not be want of
+food that has driven her, nor of money either; her cloak would fetch a
+thousand rupees in Calcutta. And a bag full of something--precious also,
+to judge by the way she clings to it. Poor thing! Can I get any water
+for her? There used to be a spring here, where the woodcocks came. Is
+it safe to leave her? Certainly not, with her head like that; she might
+even have apoplexy. Allow me, madam. I will not steal it. It is only for
+a cushion.”
+
+The lady, however, though still in a stupor, kept her fingers clinched
+upon the handle of the bag; and without using violence he could not move
+them. Then the stitching of the frail gave way, and Sir Duncan espied
+a roll of parchment. Suddenly the lady opened large dark eyes, which
+wandered a little, and then (as he raised her head) met his, and turned
+away.
+
+“Philippa!” he said, and she faintly answered “Yes,” being humbled and
+shaken by her deadly terror, and scarcely sure of safety yet, for the
+roar and the chasm were in sight and hearing still.
+
+“Philippa, are you better? Never mind what you were thinking of. All
+shall be right about that, Philippa. What is land in comparison with
+life? Look up at me. Don't be afraid to look. Surely you know your only
+brother! I am Duncan, who ran away, and has lived for years in India.
+I used to be very kind to you when we were children, and why should I
+alter from it now? I remember when you tumbled in the path down there,
+and your knee was bleeding, and I tied it up with a dock leaf and my
+handkerchief. Can you remember? It was primrose time.”
+
+“To be sure I do,” she said, looking up with cheerfulness; “and you
+carried me all the way home almost, and Eliza was dreadfully jealous.”
+
+“That she always was, and you not much better. But now we are getting on
+in life, and we need not have much to do with one another. Still, we may
+try not to kill one another by trumpery squabbles about property. Stay
+where you are for a moment, sister, and you shall see the end of that.”
+
+Sir Duncan took the bag, with the deed inside it, returned in three
+steps to the perilous shelf, and with one strong hurl sent forth the
+load, which cleft the white mist, and sank forever in the waves of the
+whirlpool.
+
+“No one can prosecute me for that,” he said, returning with a smile,
+“though Mordacks may be much aggrieved. Now, Philippa, although I can
+not carry you well, from the additions time has made to you, I can help
+you home, my dear; and then on upon my business.”
+
+The pride and self-esteem of Miss Yordas had never been so crushed
+before. She put both hands upon her brother's shoulders, and burst into
+a flood of tears.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII
+
+BUTS REBUTTED
+
+
+Sir Duncan Yordas was a man of impulse, as almost every man must be who
+sways the wills of other men. But he had not acted upon mere impulse in
+casting away his claim to Scargate. He knew that he could never live in
+that bleak spot, after all his years in India; he disliked the place,
+through his father's harshness; he did not care that any son of his, who
+had lain under charge of a foul crime, and fled instead of meeting it,
+should become a “Yordas of Scargate Hall,” although that description by
+no means involved any very strict equity of conduct. And besides these
+reasons, he had another, which will appear very shortly. But whatever
+the secondary motives were, it was a large and generous act.
+
+When Mrs. Carnaby saw her brother, she was sure that he was come to
+turn her out, and went through a series of states of mind natural to
+an adoring mother with a frail imagination of an appetite--as she
+poetically described it. She was not very swift of apprehension,
+although so promptly alive to anything tender, refined, and succulent.
+Having too strong a sense of duty to be guilty of any generosity, she
+could not believe, either then or thereafter, that her brother had cast
+away anything at all, except a mere shred of a lawsuit. And without any
+heed of chronology--because (as she justly inquired), what two clocks
+are alike?--she was certain that if he did anything at all to drive off
+those horrible lawyers from the house, there was no credit due to any
+one but Pet. It was the noble way Pet looked at him!
+
+Pet, being introduced to his uncle, after dinner, when he came home from
+fishing, certainly did look nobly at him, if a long stare is noble.
+Then he went up to him, with a large and liberal sniff, and an affable
+inquiry, as a little dog goes up to a big one. Sir Duncan was amused,
+having heard already some little particulars about this youth, whose
+nature he was able to enter into as none but a Yordas could rightly do.
+However, he was bound to make the best of him, and did so; discovering
+not only room for improvement, but some hope of that room being
+occupied.
+
+“The boy has been shockingly spoiled,” he said to his sister Philippa
+that evening; “also he is dreadfully ignorant. None of us are very great
+at scholarship, and never have much occasion for it. But things are
+becoming very different now. Everybody is beginning to be expected to
+know everything. Very likely, as soon as I am no more wanted, I shall be
+voted a blockhead. Luckily the wars keep people from being too choice,
+when their pick goes every minute. And this may stop the fuss, that
+comes from Scotland mainly, about universal distribution--or some big
+words--of education. 'Pet,' as you call him, is a very clever fellow,
+with much more shape of words about him than ever I was blessed with. In
+spelling I saw that he was my master; and so I tried him with geography,
+and all he knew of India was that it takes its name from India rubber!”
+
+“Now I call that clever of him,” said Miss Yordas; “for I really might
+have forgotten even that. But the fatal defect in his education has
+been the want of what you grow, chiefly in West India perhaps--the
+cane, Duncan, the sugar-cane. I have read all about it; you can tell me
+nothing. You suck it, you smoke it, and you beat your children with it.”
+
+“Well,” said Sir Duncan, who was not quite sure, in the face of such
+authority, “I disremember; but perhaps they do in some parts, because
+the country is so large. But it is not the ignorance of Pet I care
+for--such a fault is natural and unavoidable; and who is there to pick
+holes in it? The boy knows a great deal more than I did at his age,
+because he is so much younger. But, Philippa, unless you do something
+with him, he will never be a gentleman.”
+
+“Duncan, you are hard. You have seen so much.”
+
+“The more we see, the softer we become. The one thing we harden against
+is lying--the seed, the root, and the substance of all vileness. I am
+sorry to say your Pet is a liar.”
+
+“He does not always tell the truth, I know. But bear in mind, Duncan,
+that his mother did not insist--and, in fact, she does not herself
+always--”
+
+“I know it; I am grieved that it should come from our side. I never
+cared for his father much, because he went against me; but this I will
+say for him, Lance Carnaby would sooner cut his tongue out that put it
+to a lie. When I am at home, my dealings are with fellows who could
+not speak the truth if they tried for dear life, simply through want
+of practice. They are like your lower class of horse-dealers, but with
+infinitely more intelligence. It is late to teach poor Pet the first of
+all lessons; and for me to stop to do it is impossible. But will you try
+to save further disgrace to a scapegrace family, but not a mean one?”
+
+“I feel it as much as you do--perhaps more,” Miss Yordas answered,
+forgetting altogether about the deed-box and her antiquary. “You need
+not tell me how very sad it is. But how can it be cured? His mother is
+his mother. She never would part with him; and her health is delicate.”
+
+“Stronger than either yours or mine, unless she takes too much
+nourishment. Philippa, her will is mere petulance. For her own good, we
+must set it aside. And if you agree with me, it can be done. He must go
+into a marching regiment at once, ordered abroad, with five shillings in
+his pocket, earn his pay, and live upon it. This patched-up peace will
+never last six months. The war must be fought out till France goes down,
+or England. I can get him a commission; and I know the colonel, a man of
+my own sort, who sees things done, instead of talking. It would be the
+making of Lancelot. He has plenty of courage, but it has been milched.
+At Oxford or Cambridge he would do no good, but simply be ruined by
+having his own way. Under my friend Colonel Thacker, he will have a hard
+time of it, and tell no lies.”
+
+Thus it was settled. There was a fearful outcry, hysterics of an elegant
+order, and weepings enough to produce summer spate in the Tees. But the
+only result was the ordering of the tailor, the hosier, the boot-maker,
+and the scissors-grinder to put a new edge upon Squire Philip's razors,
+that Pet might practice shaving. “Cold-blooded cruelty, savage homicide;
+cannibalism itself is kinder,” said poor Mrs. Carnaby, when she saw the
+razors; but Pet insisted upon having them, made lather, and practiced
+with the backs, till he began to understand them.
+
+“He promises well; I have great hopes of him,” Sir Duncan said to
+himself. “He has pride; and no proud boy can be long a liar. I will go
+and consult my dear old friend Bart.”
+
+Mr. Bart, who was still of good bodily strength, but becoming less
+resolute in mind than of yore, was delighted to see his old friend
+again; and these two men, having warm, proud hearts, preserved each
+other from self-contempt by looking away through the long hand-clasp.
+For each of them was to the other almost the only man really respected
+in the world.
+
+Betwixt them such a thing as concealment could not be. The difference in
+their present position was a thing to laugh at. Sir Duncan looked up to
+Bart as being the maker of his character, and Bart admired Sir Duncan
+as a newer and wiser edition of himself. They dispatched the past in a
+cheery talk; for the face of each was enough to show that it might have
+been troublous--as all past is--but had slidden into quiet satisfaction
+now, and a gentle flow of experience. Then they began to speak of
+present matters, and the residue of time before them; and among other
+things, Sir Duncan Yordas spoke of his nephew Lancelot.
+
+“Lancelot Yordas Carnaby,” said Bart, with the smile of a gray-beard at
+young love's dream, “has done us the honor to fall in love, for ever and
+ever, with our little Insie. And the worst of it is that she likes him.”
+
+“What an excellent idea!” his old friend answered; “I was sure there was
+something of that sort going on. Now betwixt love and war we shall make
+a man of Pet.”
+
+As shortly as possible he told Mr. Bart what his plan about his nephew
+was, and how he had carried it against maternal, and now must carry
+it against maiden, love. If Lancelot had any good stuff in him, any
+vertebrate embryo of honesty, to be put among men, and upon his mettle
+(with a guardian angel in the distance of sweet home), would stablish
+all the man in him, and stint the beast. Mr. Bart, though he hated hard
+fighting, admitted that for weak people it was needful; and was only too
+happy so to cut the knot of his own home entanglements with the ruthless
+sword. For a man of liberal education, and much experience in spending
+money, who can put a new bottom to his own saucepan, is not the one to
+feel any despair of his fellow-creatures mending.
+
+Then arose the question, who should bell the cat, or rather, who should
+lead the cat to the belling. Pet must be taken, under strong duress, to
+the altar--as his poor mother said, and shrieked--whereat he was to shed
+his darling blood. His heart was in his mouth when his uniform came; and
+he gave his sacred honor to fly, straight as an arrow, to the port where
+his regiment was getting into boats; but Sir Duncan shook his grizzled
+head. “Somebody must see him into it,” he said. “Not a lady; no, no,
+my dear Eliza. I can not go myself; but it must be a man of rigidity, a
+stern agent. Oh, I know! how stupid of me!”
+
+“You mean poor dear Mr. Jellicorse,” suggested Mrs. Carnaby, with a
+short hot sob. “But, Duncan, he has not the heart for it. For anything
+honest and loyal and good, kind people may trust him with their lives.
+But to tyranny, rapine, and manslaughter, he never could lend his fine
+honorable face.”
+
+“I mean a man of a very different cast--a man who knows what time is
+worth; a man who is going to be married on a Sunday, that he may not
+lose the day. He has to take three days' holiday, because the lady is an
+heiress; otherwise he might get off with one. But he hopes to be at work
+again on Wednesday, and we will have him here post-haste from York on
+Thursday. It will be the very job to suit him--a gentleman of Roman
+ancestry, and of the name of Mordacks.”
+
+“My heart was broken already; and now I can feel the poor pieces flying
+into my brain. Oh, why did I ever have a babe for monsters of the name
+of Mordacks to devour?”
+
+Mordacks was only too glad to come. On the very day after their union,
+Calpurnia (likewise of Roman descent) had exhibited symptoms of a strong
+will of her own.
+
+Mordacks had temporized during their courtship; but now she was his, and
+must learn the great fact. He behaved very well, and made no attempt at
+reasoning (which would have been a fatal course), but promptly donned
+cloak, boots, and spurs while his horse was being saddled, and then set
+off, with his eyes fixed firmly upon business. A crow could scarcely
+make less than fifty miles from York to Scargate, and the factor's
+trusty roadster had to make up his mind to seventy. So great, however,
+is sometimes the centrifugal force of Hymen, that upon the third day Mr.
+Mordacks was there, vigorous, vehement, and fit for any business.
+
+When he heard what it was, it liked him well; for he bore a fine grudge
+against Lancelot for setting the dogs at him three years ago, when he
+came (as an agent for adjoining property) to the house of Yordas,
+and when Mr. Jellicorse scorned to meet an illegal meddler with legal
+matters. If Mordacks had any fault--and he must have had some, in spite
+of his resolute conviction to the contrary--it was that he did not
+altogether scorn revenge.
+
+Lives there man, or even woman, capable of describing now the miseries,
+the hardships, the afflictions beyond groaning, which, like electric
+hail, came down upon the sacred head of Pet? He was in the grasp
+of three strong men--his uncle, Mr. Bart, worst of all, that
+Mordacks--escape was impossible, lamentation met with laughter, and
+passion led to punishment. Even stern Maunder was sorry for him,
+although he despised him for feeling it. The only beam of light, the
+only spark of pleasure, was his royal uniform; and to know that Insie's
+laugh thereat was hollow, and would melt away to weeping when he was out
+of sight, together with the sulky curiosity of Maunder, kept him up a
+little, in this time of bitter sacrifice.
+
+Enough that he went off, at last, in the claws of that Roman
+hippogriff--as Mrs. Carnaby savagely called poor Mordacks--and the
+visitor's flag hung half-mast high, and Saracen and the other dogs made
+a howling dirge, with such fine hearts (as the poor mother said, between
+her sobs) that they got their dinners upon china plates.
+
+Sir Duncan had left before this, and was back under Dr. Upround's
+hospitable roof. He had made up his mind to put his fortune, or rather
+his own value, to the test, in a place of deep interest to him now, the
+heart of the fair Janetta. He knew that, according to popular view, he
+was much too old for this young lady; but for popular view he cared not
+one doit, if her own had the courage and the will to go against it. For
+years he had sternly resisted all temptation of second marriage, toward
+which shrewd mothers and nice maidens had labored in vain to lead him.
+But the bitter disappointment about his son, and that long illness, and
+the tender nursing (added to the tenderness of his own sides, from
+lying upon them, with a hard dry cough), had opened some parts of his
+constitution to matrimonial propensities. Miss Upround was of a playful
+nature, and teased everybody she cared about; and although Sir Duncan
+was a great hero to her, she treated him sometimes as if he were her
+doll. Being a grave man, he liked this, within the bounds of good taste
+and manners; and the young lady always knew where to stop. From being
+amused with her, he began to like her; and from liking her, he went on
+to miss her; and from missing her to wanting her was no long step.
+
+However, Sir Duncan was not at all inclined to make a fool of himself
+herein. He liked the lady very much, and saw that she would suit him,
+and help him well in the life to which he was thinking of returning. For
+within the last fortnight a very high post at Calcutta had been offered
+to him by the powers in Leadenhall Street, upon condition of sailing at
+once, and foregoing the residue of his leave. If matters had been to his
+liking in England, he certainly would have declined it; but after his
+sad disappointment, and the serious blow to his health, he resolved to
+accept it, and set forth speedily. The time was an interlude of the war,
+and ships need not wait for convoy.
+
+This had induced him to take his Yorkshire affairs (which Mordacks had
+been forced to intermit during his Derbyshire campaign) into his own
+hands, and speed the issue, as above related. And part of his plan was
+to quit all claim to present possession of Scargate; that if the young
+lady should accept his suit, it might not in any way be for the sake of
+the landed interest. As it happened, he had gone much further than this,
+and cast away his claim entirely, to save his sister from disgrace and
+the family property from lawyers. And now having sought Dr. Upround's
+leave (which used to be thought the proper thing to do), he asked
+Janetta whether she would have him, and she said, “No, but he might have
+her.” Upon this he begged permission to set the many drawbacks before
+her, and she nodded her head, and told him to begin.
+
+“I am of a Yorkshire family. But, I am sorry to say that their temper is
+bad, and they must have their own way too much.”
+
+“But, that suits me; and I understand it. Because I must have my own way
+too.”
+
+“But, I have parted with my inheritance, and have no place in this
+country now.”
+
+“But, I am very glad of that. Because I shall be able to go about.”
+
+“But, India is a dreadfully hot country; many creatures tease you, and
+you get tired of almost everything.”
+
+“But, that will make it all the more refreshing not to be tired of you,
+perhaps.”
+
+“But, I have a son as old as you, or older.”
+
+“But, you scarcely suppose that I can help that!”
+
+“But, my hair is growing gray, and I have great crow's-feet, and
+everybody will begin to say--”
+
+“But, I don't believe a word of it, and I won't have it; and I don't
+care a pin's head what all the world says put together, so long as you
+don't belong to it.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIV
+
+TRUE LOVE
+
+
+About a month after Sir Duncan's marriage, when he and his bride were in
+London, with the lady's parents come to help, in the misery of outfit, a
+little boy ran through a field of wheat, early in the afternoon, and
+hid himself in a blackthorn hedge to see what was going on at Anerley.
+Nothing escaped him, for his eyes were sharp, being of true Danish
+breed. He saw Captain Anerley trudging up the hill, with a pipe in his
+mouth, to the bean field, where three or four men were enjoying the air,
+without any of the greedy gulps produced by too great exertion of the
+muscles; then he saw the mistress of the house throw wide a lattice, and
+shake out a cloth for the birds, who skipped down from the thatch by
+the dozen instantly; and then he saw Mary, with a basket and a wooden
+measure, going round the corner of the house, and clucking for the fowls
+to rally from their scratching-places. These came zealously, with speed
+of leg and wing, from straw-rick, threshing-floor, double hedge, or
+mixen; and following their tails, the boy slipped through the rick-yard,
+and tossed a note to Mary with a truly Flamburian delivery.
+
+Although it was only a small-sized boy, no other than the heir of the
+“Cod-fish,” a brighter rose flew into Mary's cheeks than the master-cock
+of all the yard could show upon comb or wattle. Contemptuous of
+twopence, which Mary felt for, the boy disappeared like a rabbit; and
+the fowls came and helped themselves to the tail-wheat, while their
+mistress was thinking of her letter. It was short and sweet--at least
+in promise--being no more than these few words: “Darling, the dike where
+first we met, an hour after sunset.”
+
+Mary never doubted that her duty was to go; and at the time appointed
+she was there, with firm knowledge of her own mind, being now a loving
+and reasonable woman. It was just a year since she had saved the life
+of Robin; and patience, and loneliness, and opposition, had enlarged and
+ennobled her true and simple heart. No lord in the land need have looked
+for a purer or sweeter example of maidenhood than this daughter of a
+Yorkshire farmer was, in her simple dress, and with the dignity of love.
+The glen was beginning to bestrew itself with want of light, instead
+of shadows; and bushy places thickened with the imperceptible growth of
+night. Mary went on, with excitement deepening, while sunset deepened
+into dusk; and the color of her clear face flushed and fleeted under the
+anxious touch of love, as the tint of a delicate finger-nail, with any
+pressure, varies. But not very long was she left in doubt.
+
+“How long you have been! And oh, where have you been? And how much
+longer will you be?” Among many other words and doings she insisted
+chiefly on these points.
+
+“I am a true-blue, as you may see, and a warrant-officer already,” he
+said, with his old way of smiling at himself. “When the war begins again
+(as it must--please God!--before many weeks are over), I shall very
+soon get my commission, and go up. I am quite fit already to command a
+frigate.”
+
+Mary was astonished at his modesty; she thought that he ought to be an
+admiral at least, and so she told him; however, he knew better.
+
+“You must bear in mind,” he replied, with a kindly desire to spare
+her feelings, “that until a change for the better comes, I am under
+disadvantages. Not only as an outlaw--which has been upon the whole
+a comfort--but as a suspected criminal, with warrant against him, and
+reward upon him. Of course I am innocent; and everybody knows it, or at
+least I hope so, except the one who should have known it best.”
+
+“I am the person who should know it best of all,” his true love
+answered, with some jealousy. “Explain yourself, Robin, if you please.”
+
+“No Robin, so please you, but Mr. James Blyth, captain of the foretop,
+then cockswain of the barge, and now master's mate of H. M. ship of the
+line Belleisle. But the one who should have trusted me, next to my own
+love, is my father, Sir Duncan Yordas.”
+
+“How you are talking! You have such a reckless way. A warrant-officer,
+an arrant criminal! And your father, Sir Duncan Yordas, that very
+strange gentleman, who could never get warm! Oh, Robin, you always did
+talk nonsense, when--whenever I would let you. But you should not try to
+make my head go round.”
+
+“Every word of it is true,” the young sailor answered, applying a prompt
+remedy for vertigo. “It had been clearly proved to his knowledge, long
+before the great fact was vouchsafed to me, that I am the only son of
+Sir Duncan Yordas, or, at any rate, his only son for the present. The
+discovery gratified him so little, that he took speedy measures to
+supplant me.”
+
+“The very rich gentleman from India,” said Mary, “that married Miss
+Upround lately; and her dress was all made of spun diamonds, they say,
+as bright as the dew in the morning. Oh, then you will have to give me
+up; Robin, you must give up me!”
+
+Clasping her hands, she looked up at him with courage, keeping down all
+sign of tears. She felt that her heart would not hold out long, and yet
+she was prouder than to turn away. “Speak,” she said; “it is better to
+speak plainly; you know that it must be so.”
+
+“Do I? why?” Robin Lyth asked, calmly, being well contented to prolong
+her doubts, that he might get the benefit thereafter.
+
+“Because you belong to great people, and I am just a farmer's daughter,
+and no more, and quite satisfied to remain so. Such things never
+answer.”
+
+“A little while ago you were above me, weren't you? When I was nobody's
+son, and only a castaway, with a nickname.”
+
+“That has nothing to do with it. We must take things exactly as we find
+them at the time.”
+
+“And you took me as you found me at the time; only that you made me out
+so much better. Mary, I am not worthy of you. What has birth to do with
+it? And so far as that goes, yours is better, though mine may seem the
+brighter. In every other way you are above me. You are good, and I
+am wicked. You are pure, and I am careless. You are sweet, and I am
+violent. In truth alone can I ever vie with you; and I must be a pitiful
+scoundrel, Mary, if I did not even try to do that, after all that you
+have done for me.”
+
+“But,” said Mary, with her lovely eyes gleaming with the glittering
+shade of tears, “I like you very much to do it--but not exactly as a
+duty, Robin.”
+
+“You look at me like that, and you talk of duty! Duty, duty; this is my
+duty. I should like to be discharging it forever and a day.”
+
+“I did not come here for ideas of this kind,” said Mary, with her lips
+as red as pyracanthine berries; “free trade was bad enough, but the
+Royal Navy worse, it seems. Now, Robin dear, be sensible, and tell me
+what I am to do.”
+
+“To listen to me, and then say whether I deserve what my father has done
+to me. He came back from India--as you must understand--with no other
+object in life, that I can hear of (for he had any quantity of money),
+than to find out me, his only child, and the child of the only wife
+he ever could put up with. For twenty years he had believed me to be
+drowned, when the ship he sent me home in to be educated was supposed
+to have foundered, with all hands. But something made him fancy that I
+might have escaped; and as he could not leave India then, he employed a
+gentleman of York, named Mordacks, to hunt out all about it. Mordacks,
+who seems to be a wonderful man, and most kind-hearted to everybody,
+as poor Widow Carroway says of him with tears, and as he testifies of
+himself--he set to work, and found out in no time all about me and my
+ear-rings, and my crawling from the cave that will bear my name, they
+say, and more things than I have time to tell. He appointed a meeting
+with Sir Duncan Yordas here at Flamborough, and would have brought me to
+him, and everything might have been quite happy. But in the mean while
+that horrible murder of poor Carroway came to pass, and I was obliged to
+go into hiding, as no one knows better than you, my dear. My father (as
+I suppose I must call him) being bound, as it seems that they all are,
+to fall out with their children, took a hasty turn against me at once.
+Mordacks, whom I saw last week, trusting myself to his honor, tells me
+that Sir Duncan would not have cared twopence about my free-trade work,
+and so on, or even about my having killed the officer in fair conflict,
+for he is used to that. But he never will forgive me for absconding, and
+leaving my fellows, as he puts it, to bear the brunt. He says that I am
+a dastard and a skulk, and unworthy to bear the name of Yordas.”
+
+“What a wicked, unnatural man he must be!” cried Mary. “He deserves to
+have no children.”
+
+“No; I am told that he is a very good man, but stiff-necked and
+disdainful. He regards me with scorn, because he knows no better. He may
+know our laws, but he knows nothing of our ways, to suppose that my men
+were in any danger. If I had been caught while the stir was on, a gibbet
+on the cliff would have been set up, even before my trial--such is the
+reward of eminence--but no Yorkshire jury would turn round in the box,
+with those poor fellows before them. 'Not guilty, my lord,' was on their
+tongues, before he had finished charging them.”
+
+“Oh, I am so glad! They have been acquitted, and you were there to see
+it!”
+
+“To be sure. I was in the court, as Harry Ombler's father. Mr. Mordacks
+got it up; and it told on the jury even more than could have been
+expected. Even the judge wiped his eyes as he looked at me, for they say
+he has a scapegrace son; and Harry was the only one of all the six
+in danger, according to the turn of the evidence. My poor eyes have
+scarcely come round yet from the quantity of sobbing that I had to do,
+and the horrible glare of my goggles. And then I had a crutch that
+I stumped with as I sighed, so that all the court could hear me; and
+whenever I did it, all the women sighed too, and even the hardest hearts
+were moved. Mr. Mordacks says that it was capital.”
+
+“Oh, but, Robin, how shocking, though you make me laugh! If the verdict
+had been otherwise--oh, what then?”
+
+“Well, then, Harry Ombler had a paper in his hand, done in printing
+letters by myself, because he is a very tidy scholar, and signed by me;
+the which he was to read before receiving sentence, saying that Robin
+Lyth himself was in York town, and would surrender to that court upon
+condition that mercy should be warranted to the prisoners.”
+
+“And you would have given yourself up? And without consulting me about
+it!”
+
+“Bad, I admit,” Robin answered, with a smile; “but not half so bad as
+to give up you--which you calmly proposed just now, dear heart. However,
+there is no need for any trouble now, except that I am forced to keep
+out of sight until other evidence is procured. Mordacks has taken to me,
+like a better father, mainly from his paramount love of justice, and of
+daring gallantry, as he calls it.”
+
+“So it was, and ten times more; heroic self-devotion is a much more
+proper term.”
+
+“Now don't,” said Robin. “If you make me blush, you may guess what I
+shall do to hide it--carry the war into the sweet land of the enemy. But
+truly, my darling, there was very little danger. And I am up for a much
+better joke this time. My august Roman father, who has cast me off,
+sails as a very great Indian gun, in a ship of the line, from Spithead,
+early in September. The Belleisle is being paid off now, and I have my
+certificate, as well as lots of money. Next to his lass, every sailor
+loves a spree; and mine, instead of emptying, shall fill the locker.
+With this disgusting peace on, and no chance of prize-money, and plenty
+in their pockets for a good spell ashore, blue-jackets will be scarce
+when Sir Duncan Yordas sails. If I can get a decent berth as a petty
+officer, off I go for Calcutta, and watch (like the sweet little cherub
+that sits up aloft) for the safety of my dear papa and mamma, as the
+Frenchmen are teaching us to call them. What do you think of such filial
+devotion?”
+
+“It would be a great deal more than he deserves,” Mary answered, with
+sweet simplicity. “But what could you do, if he found out who you are?”
+
+“Not the smallest fear of that, my dear. I have never had the honor of
+an introduction. My new step-mother, who might have been my sweetheart
+if I had not seen somebody a hundred times as good, a thousand times as
+gentle, and a million times as lovely--”
+
+“Oh, Robin, do leave off such very dreadful stories! I saw her in the
+church, and she looked beautiful.”
+
+“Fine feathers make fine birds. However, she is well enough in her way;
+and I love her father. But, for all that, she has no business to be my
+step-mother; and of course it was only the money that did it. She has a
+little temper of her own, I can assure you; and I wish Sir Duncan joy of
+her when they get among mosquitoes. But, as I was going to say, the only
+risk of my being caught is from her sharp eyes. Even of that there is
+not much danger, for we common sailors need not go within hail of those
+grandees, unless it comes to boat-work. And even if Miss Janetta--I beg
+her pardon, Lady Yordas--should chance to recognize me, I am sure she
+would never tell her husband. No, no; she would be too jealous; and for
+fifty other reasons. She is very cunning, let me tell you.”
+
+“Well,” cried Mary, with a smile of wisdom, “I hope that I may never
+live to be a step-mother. The way those poor things get abused--”
+
+“You would have more principle, I should hope, than to marry anybody
+after me. However, I have told you nearly all my news, and in a few
+minutes I must be off. Only two things more. In the first place,
+Mordacks has taken a very great fancy to me, and has turned against my
+father. He and Widow Carroway and I had a long talk after the trial, and
+we all agreed that the murder was committed by a villain called 'John
+Cadman,' a sneak and a skulk, whom I knew well, as one of Carroway's
+own men. Among other things, they chanced to say that Cadman's gun was
+missing, and that the poor widow can swear to it. I asked if any one had
+searched for it; and Mordacks said no, it would be hopeless. I told them
+that if I were only free to show myself and choose my time, I would lay
+my life upon finding it, if thrown away (as it most likely was) in some
+part of that unlucky cave. Mordacks caught at this idea, and asked me a
+number of questions, and took down my answers; for no one else knows the
+cave as I do. I would run all risks myself, and be there to do it, if
+time suited. But only certain tides will serve, even with the best of
+weather; and there may be no such tide for months--I mean tide, weather,
+and clear water combined, as they must be for the job. Therefore I am
+not to wait, but go about my other business, and leave this to Mordacks,
+who loves to be captain of everything. Mr. Mordacks talked of a
+diving-bell, and some great American inventions; but nothing of the kind
+can be used there, nor even grappling-irons. The thing must not be heard
+of even, until it has been accomplished. Whatever is done, must be done
+by a man who can swim and dive as I can, and who knows the place almost
+as well. I have told him where to find the man, when the opportunity
+comes for it; and I have shown my better father, Robin Cockscroft, the
+likely spot. So now I have nothing more to do with that.”
+
+“How wonderfully you can throw off cares!” his sweetheart answered,
+softly. “But I shall be miserable till I know what happens. Will they
+let me be there? Because I understand so much about tides, and I can
+hold my tongue.”
+
+“That you have shown right well, my Mary; but your own sense will tell
+you that you could not be there. Now one thing more: here is a ring, not
+worthy--although it is the real stuff--to go upon your precious hand,
+yet allow me to put it on; no, not there; upon your wedding finger. Now
+do you know what that is for?”
+
+“For me, I suppose,” she answered, blushing with pleasure and
+admiration; “but it is too good, too beautiful, too costly.”
+
+“Not half good enough. Though, to tell you the truth, it can not be
+matched easily; any more than you can. But I know where to get those
+things. Now promise me to wear it, when you think of me; and the one
+habit will confirm the other. But the more important part is this, and
+the last thing for me to say to you. Your father still hates my name, I
+fear. Tell him every word I have told you, and perhaps it will bring him
+half way round. Sooner or later he must come round; and the only way to
+do it is to work him slowly. When he sees in how many ways I have been
+wronged, and how beautifully I have borne it all, he will begin to say
+to himself, 'Now this young man may be improving.' But he never will
+say, 'He hath no need of it.'”
+
+“I should rather think not, you conceited Robin, or whatever else I am
+to call you now. But I bargain for one thing--whatever may happen, I
+shall never call you anything else but Robin. It suits you, and you look
+well with it. Yordas, indeed, or whatever it may be--”
+
+“No bargain is valid without a seal,” etc., etc. In the old but
+ever-vivid way they went on, until they were forced to part, at the
+very lips of the house itself, after longing lingerings. The air of
+the fields was sweet with summer fragrance and the breath of night; the
+world was ripe with soft repose, whose dreams were hope and happiness;
+and the heaven spread some gentle stars, to show mankind the way to it.
+Then a noble perfume strewed the ambient air with stronger presence, as
+the farmer, in his shirt sleeves, came, with a clay pipe, and grumbled,
+“Wherever is our Mary all this time?”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LV
+
+NICHOLAS THE FISH
+
+
+
+Five hundred years ago there was a great Italian swimmer, even greater
+than our Captain Webb; inasmuch as he had what the wags of the age
+unjustly ascribe to our hero, that is to say, web toes and fingers. This
+capable man could, if history be true, not only swim for a week without
+ceasing (reassuring solid nature now and then by a gulp of live fish),
+but also could expand his chest so considerably that it held enough air
+for a day's consumption. Fortified thus, he explored Charybdis and all
+the Liparic whirlpools, and could have found Cadman's gun anywhere, if
+it had only been there. But at last the sea had its revenge upon him,
+through the cruel insistence of his king.
+
+No man so amphibious has since arisen through the unfathomed tide of
+time. But a swimmer and diver of great repute was now living not far
+from Teesmouth. That is to say, he lived there whenever the state of the
+weather or the time of year stranded him in dry misery. Those who have
+never come across a man of this description might suppose that he was
+happy and content at home with his wife and growing family, assuaging
+the brine in the delightful manner commended by Hero to Leander. But,
+alas! it was not so at all. The temper of the man was very slow to move,
+as generally happens with deep-chested men, and a little girl might
+lead him with her finger on the shore; and he liked to try to smell
+land flowers, which in his opinion were but weeds. But if a man can not
+control his heart, in the very middle of his system, how can he hope to
+command his skin, that unscientific frontier of his frame?
+
+“Nicholas the fish,” as his neighbors (whenever, by coming ashore, he
+had such treasures) contemptuously called him, was endowed from his
+birth with a peculiar skin, and by exercise had improved it. Its virtue
+was excessive thickness--such as a writer should pray for--protected
+also by powerful hairiness--largely admired by those with whom it is
+restricted to the head.
+
+Unhappily for Nicholas, the peremptory poises of nature struck a line
+with him, and this was his line of flotation. From perpetual usage this
+was drawn, obliquely indeed, but as definitely as it is upon a ship of
+uniform displacement--a yacht, for instance, or a man-of-war. Below
+that line scarcely anything could hurt him; but above it he was most
+sensitive, unless he were continually wetted; and the flies, and the
+gnats, and many other plagues of England, with one accord pitched
+upon him, and pitched into him, during his short dry intervals, with a
+bracing sense of saline draught. Also the sun, and the wind, and even
+the moon, took advantage of him when unwetted.
+
+This made his dry periods a purgatory to him; and no sooner did he hear
+from Mr. Mordacks of a promising job under water than he drew breath
+enough for a ten-fathom dive, and bursting from long despair, made a
+great slap at the flies beneath his collar-bone. The sound was like
+a drum which two men strike; and his wife, who was devoted to him,
+hastened home from the adjoining parish with a sad presentiment of
+parting. And this was speedily verified; for the champion swimmer and
+diver set forth that very day for Bempton Warren, where he was to have a
+private meeting with the general factor.
+
+Now it was a great mistake to think--as many people at this time did,
+both in Yorkshire and Derbyshire--that the gulf of connubial cares had
+swallowed the great Roman hero Mordacks. Unarmed, and even without his
+gallant roadster to support him, he had leaped into that Curtian lake,
+and had fought a good fight at the bottom of it. The details are highly
+interesting, and the chronicle might be useful; but, alas! there is no
+space left for it. It is enough, and a great thing too, to say that
+he emerged triumphant, reduced his wife into very good condition, and
+obtained the due mastery of her estates, and lordship of the household.
+
+Refreshed and recruited by the home campaign, and having now a double
+base for future operations--York city with the fosse of Ouse in the
+east, and Pretorian Hill, Derbyshire, westward--Mordacks returned, with
+a smack of lip more dry than amontilladissimo, to the strict embrace of
+business. So far as the needs of the body were concerned, he might have
+done handsomely without any business; but having no flesh fit to weigh
+against his mind, he gave preference to the latter. Now the essence
+of his nature was to take strong views; not hastily--if he could help
+it--nor through narrow aspect of prejudice, but with power of insight
+(right or wrong), and stern fixity thereafter. He had kept his opinion
+about Sir Duncan Yordas much longer than usual pending, being struck
+with the fame of the man, and his manner, and generous impulsive nature.
+All these he still admired, but felt that the mind was far too hasty,
+and, to put it in his own strong way, Sir Duncan (whatever he might be
+in India) had been but a fool in England. Why had he cast away his claim
+on Scargate, and foiled the factor's own pet scheme for a great triumph
+over the lawyers? And why condemn his only son, when found with such
+skill and at heavy expense, without even hearing both sides of the tale?
+Last, but not least, what induced him to marry, when amply old enough
+to know better, a girl who might be well enough in her way, but had no
+family estate to bring, was shrewdly suspected of a cutting tongue, and
+had more than once been anything but polite to Geoffrey Mordacks?
+
+Although this gentleman was not a lawyer, and indeed bore a tyrannous
+hate against that gentle and most precious class, he shared the
+solicitor's just abhorrence of the word “farewell,” when addressed to
+him by any one of good substance. He resolved that his attentions should
+not cease, though undervalued for the moment, but should be continued
+to the son and heir--whose remainder in tail subsisted still, though it
+might be hard to substantiate--and when his cousin Lancelot should come
+into possession, he might find a certain factor to grapple him. Mr.
+Mordacks hated Lancelot, and had carried out his banishment with intense
+enjoyment, holding him as in a wrench-hammer all the way, silencing his
+squeaks with another turn of the screw, and as eager to crack him as if
+he were a nut, the first that turns auburn in September.
+
+This being the condition of so powerful a mind, facts very speedily
+shaped themselves thereto, as they do when the power of an eminent
+orator lays hold of them and crushes them, and they can not even squeak.
+Or even as a still more eminent 'bus driver, when the street is blocked,
+and there seems to be no room for his own thumb, yet (with a gentle
+whistle and a wink) solves the jostling stir and balk, makes obstructive
+traffic slide, like an eddy obsequious, beside him and behind, and comes
+forth as the first of an orderly procession toward the public-house of
+his true love.
+
+Now if anything beyond his own conviction were wanted to set this great
+agent upon action, soon it was found in York Summer Assizes, and
+the sudden inrush of evidence, which--no matter how a case has been
+prepared--gets pent up always for the Bar and Bench. Then Robin Lyth
+came, with a gallant dash, and offered himself as a sacrifice, if
+needful, which proved both his courage and his common-sense in waiting
+till due occasion demanded him. Mordacks was charmed with this
+young man, not only for proving his own judgment right, but also for
+possessing a quickness of decision akin to his own, and backing up his
+own ideas.
+
+With vigor thus renewed by many interests and motives, the general
+and generous factor kept his appointment in Bempton Warren. Since the
+distressing, but upon the whole desirable, decease of that poor Rickon
+Goold, the lonely hut in which he breathed his last had not been by any
+means a popular resort. There were said to be things heard, seen, and
+felt, even in the brightest summer day, which commended the spot to the
+creatures that fear mankind, but not their spectres. The very last of
+all to approach it now would have been the two rollicking tars who
+had trodden their wooden-legged watch around it. Nicholas the fish was
+superstitious also, as it behooved him well to be; but having heard
+nothing of the story of the place, and perceiving no gnats in the
+neighborhood, he thankfully took it for his short dry spells.
+
+Mr. Mordacks met him, and the two men were deeply impressed with
+one another. The diver admired the sharp, terse style and definite
+expression of the factor, while the factor enjoyed the large ponderous
+roll and suggestive reservations of the diver. For this was a man who
+had met great beings, and faced mighty wonders in deep places; and he
+thought of them more than he liked to say, because he had to get his
+living.
+
+Nothing could be settled to a nicety between them, not even as to
+pounds, shillings, and pence. For the nature of the job depended wholly
+upon the behavior of the weather; and the weather must be not only at
+its best, but also setting meekly in the right direction at the right
+moment of big springtide. The diver was afraid that he might ask too
+little, and the factor disliked the risk of offering too much, and
+possibly spoiling thereby a noble nature. But each of them realized (to
+some extent) the honesty of the other, and neither of them meant to be
+unreasonable.
+
+“Give and take, is what I say,” said the short man with the monstrous
+chest, looking up at the tall man with the Roman nose; “live and let
+live. Ah! that's it.”
+
+Mr. Mordacks would have said, “Right you are,” if that elegant
+expression had been in vogue; but as that brilliance had not yet
+risen, he was content to say, “Just so.” Then he added, “Here you have
+everything you want. Madam Precious will send you twice a day, to the
+stone at the bottom of the lane, a gallon of beer, and victuals in
+proportion. Your duty is to watch the tides and weather, keep your boat
+going, and let me know; and here I am in half an hour.”
+
+Calpurnia Mordacks was in her duty now, and took her autumn holiday
+at Flamborough. And though Widow Precious felt her heart go pitapat at
+first sight of another Mrs. Mordacks, she made up her mind, with a gulp,
+not to let this cash go to the Thornwick. As a woman she sighed; but as
+a landlady she smiled, and had visions of hoisting a flag on her roof.
+
+When Mordacks, like a victorious general, conqueror of this Danish town,
+went forth for his evening stroll to see his subjects and be saluted, a
+handsome young sailor came up from the cliffs, and begged to have a few
+quiet words with him. “Say on, my lad; all my words are quiet,” replied
+the general factor. Then this young man up and told his tale, which was
+all in the well-trodden track of mankind. He had run away to sea, full
+of glorious dreams--valor, adventure, heroism, rivers of paradise, and
+lands of heaven. Instead of that, he had been hit upon the head, and
+in places of deeper tenderness, frequently roasted, and frozen yet more
+often, basted with brine when he had no skin left, scorched with thirst,
+and devoured by creatures whose appetites grew dainty when his own was
+ravening.
+
+“Excellent youth,” Mr. Mordacks said, “your tale might move a heart of
+flint. All who know me have but one opinion. I am benevolence itself.
+But my balance is low at my banker's.”
+
+“I want no money, sir,” the sailor answered, simply offering benevolence
+itself a pipeful of tobacco from an ancient bit of bladder; “I have not
+got a farthing, but I am with good people who never would take it if
+I had it, and that makes everything square between us. I might have a
+hatful of money if I chose, but I find myself better without it, and my
+constitution braces up. If I only chose to walk a league sou'west, there
+would be bonfires burning. But I vowed I would go home a captain, and I
+will.”
+
+“Ha!” cried Mr. Mordacks, with his usual quickness, and now knowing
+all about everybody; “you are Mr. John Anerley, the son of the famous
+Captain Anerley.”
+
+“Jack Anerley, sir, till better times; and better they never will be,
+till I make them. But not a word to any one about me, if you please.
+It would break my mother's heart (for she doth look down upon people,
+without asking) to hear that Robin Cockscroft was supporting of me. But,
+bless you, I shall pay him soon, a penny for a guinea.”
+
+Truth, which struggles through the throng of men to get out and have
+a little breath sometimes, now and then succeeds, by accident, or the
+stupid misplacement of a word. A penny for a guinea was as much as Robin
+Cockscroft was likely ever to see for his outlay upon this very fine
+young fellow. Jack Anerley accepted the situation with the large
+philosophy of a sailor; and all he wanted from Mr. Mordacks was leave
+to be present at the diving job. This he obtained, as he promised to be
+useful, and a fourth oar was likely to be needed.
+
+It was about an hour before noon of a beautifully soft September day,
+when little Sam Precious, the same boy that carried Robin Lyth's note to
+Mary, came up to Mr. Mordacks with a bit of plaited rushes, the scytale
+of Nicholas the fish, who was happy enough not to know his alphabet. The
+factor immediately put on his hat, girded himself with his riding sword
+and pistol belt, and told his good wife that business might take him
+away for some hours. Then he hastened to Robin Cockscroft's house, after
+sending the hostler, on his own horse, with a letter to Bridlington
+coast-guard station, as he had arranged with poor Carroway's successor.
+
+The Flamborough fishermen were out at sea; and without any fuss, Robin's
+boat was launched, and manned by that veteran himself, together with old
+Joe and Bob, who had long been chewing the quid of expectation, and at
+the bow oar Jack Anerley. Their orders were to slip quietly round, and
+wait in the Dovecote till the diver came. Mordacks saw them on their
+way; and then he strode up the deserted path, and struck away toward a
+northern cove, where the diver's little boat was housed. There he found
+Nicholas the fish, spread out in all his glory, like a polypod awash, or
+a basking turtle, or a well-fed calf of Proteus. Laid on his back, where
+the wavelets broke, and beaded a silver fringe upon the golden ruff of
+sand, he gave his body to soft lullaby, and his mind to perfect holiday.
+His breadth, and the spring of fresh air inside it, kept him gently up
+and down; and his calm enjoyment was enriched by the baffled wrath of
+his enemies. For flies, of innumerable sorts and sizes, held a hopeless
+buzz above him, being put upon their mettle to get at him, and perishing
+sweetly in the vain attempt.
+
+With a grunt of reluctance he awoke to business, swam for his boat, and
+embarking Mr. Mordacks, pulled him across the placid bay to the cave
+where his forces were assembled.
+
+“Let there be no mistake about it,” the factor shouted from the
+mermaids' shelf, having promised his Calpurnia to keep upon dry land
+whenever the water permitted him; “our friend the great diver will first
+ascertain whether the thing which we seek is here. If so, he will
+leave it where it is until the arrival of the Preventive boat. You all
+understand that we wish to put the matter so that even a lawyer can not
+pick any hole in the evidence. Light no links until I tell you. Now,
+Nicholas the fish, go down at once.”
+
+Without a word the diver plunged, having taken something between his
+teeth which he would not let the others see. The watery floor of the
+cavern was as smooth as a mill-pond in July, and he plunged so neatly
+that he made no splash; nothing but a flicker of reflection on the roof,
+and a lapping murmur round the sides, gave token that a big man was
+gone into the deep. For several minutes no one spoke, but every eye was
+strained upon the glassy dimness, and every ear intent for the first
+break of sound.
+
+“T' goop ha' got un,” cried old Robin, indignant at this outrage by a
+stranger to his caves, “God niver mahd mon to pree intil 's ain warks.”
+
+Old Joe and Bob grunted approbation, and Mordacks himself was beginning
+to believe that some dark whirlpool or coil of tangles had drowned the
+poor diver, when a very gentle noise, like a dabchick playing beneath a
+bridge, came from the darkest corner. Nicholas was there, inhaling air,
+not in greedy gulps and gasps, like a man who has had no practice, but
+leisurely encouraging his lungs with little doses, as a doctor gives
+soup to a starved boat crew. Being hailed by loud voices, he answered
+not, for his nature was by no means talkative; but presently, with very
+little breach of water, he swam to the middle, and asked for his pipe.
+
+“Have you found the gun?” cried Mordacks, whose loftiest feelings had
+subsided in a quarter of a minute to the business level. Nicholas made
+no reply until the fire of his pipe was established, while he stood in
+the water quite as if he were on land, supporting himself by nothing
+more than a gentle movement of his feet, while the glow of the
+touch-paper lit his round face and yellow leather skull-cap. “In coorse
+I has,” he said at last, blowing a roll of smoke along the gleaming
+surface; “over to yon little cornder.”
+
+“And you can put your hand upon it in a moment?” The reply was a nod and
+another roll of smoke. “Admirable! Now, then, Joe, and Bob the son of
+Joe, do what I told you, while Master Cockscroft and our nimble young
+friend get the links all ready.”
+
+The torches were fixed on the rocky shelf, as they had been upon the
+fatal night; but they were not lit until Joe and his son, sent forth in
+the smaller boat to watch, came back with news that the Preventive gig
+was round the point, and approaching swiftly, with a lady in the stern,
+whose dress was black.
+
+“Right!” cried Mr. Mordacks, with a brisk voice ringing under the
+ponderous brows of rock. “Men, I have brought you to receive a lesson.
+You shall see what comes of murder. Light the torches. Nicholas, go
+under, with the exception of your nose, or whatever it is you breathe
+with. When I lift my hand, go down; and do as I have ordered you.”
+
+The cavern was lit with the flare of fire, and the dark still water
+heaved with it, when the coast-guard boat came gliding in. The crew, in
+white jerseys, looked like ghosts flitting into some magic scene. Only
+the officer, darkly clad, and standing up with the tiller-lines in hand,
+and the figure of a woman sitting in the stern, relieved their spectral
+whiteness.
+
+“Commander Hardlock, and men of the coastguard,” shouted Mr. Mordacks,
+when the wash of ripples and the drip of oars and the creak of wood gave
+silence, “the black crime committed upon this spot shall no longer
+go unpunished. The ocean itself has yielded its dark secret to the
+perseverance of mankind, and the humble but not unskillful efforts which
+it has been my privilege to conduct. A good man was slain here, in
+cold blood slain--a man of remarkable capacity and zeal, gallantry,
+discipline, and every noble quality, and the father of a very large
+family. The villain who slew him would have slain six other harmless
+men by perjury if an enlightened English jury had been fools enough to
+believe him. Now I will show you what to believe. I am not eloquent, I
+am not a man of words; my motto is strict business. And business with me
+is a power, not a name. I lift my hand; you wait for half a minute; and
+then, from the depths of this abyss, arises the gun used in the murder.”
+
+The men understood about half of this, being honest fellows in the main,
+and desiring time to put heads together about the meaning; but one there
+was who knew too well that his treacherous sin had found him out. He
+strove to look like the rest, but felt that his eyes obeyed heart more
+than brain; and then the widow, who had watched him closely through her
+black veil, lifted it, and fixed her eyes on his. Deadly terror seized
+him, and he wished that he had shot himself.
+
+“Stand up, men,” the commander shouted, “until we see the end of this.
+The crime has been laid upon our force. We scorn the charge of such
+treachery. Stand up, men, and face, like innocent men, whatever can be
+shown against you.”
+
+The men stood up, and the light of the torches fell upon their faces.
+All were pale with fear and wonder, but one was white as death itself.
+Calling up his dogged courage, and that bitterness of malice which had
+made him do the deed, and never yet repent of it, he stood as firmly as
+the rest, but differed from them in three things. His face wore a smile;
+he watched one place only; and his breath made a noise, while theirs was
+held.
+
+Then, from the water, without a word, or sign of any hand that moved
+it, a long gun rose before John Cadman, and the butt was offered to his
+hand. He stood with his arms at his sides, and could not lift them to
+do anything. Neither could he speak, nor make defense, but stood like an
+image that is fastened by the feet.
+
+“Hand me that,” cried the officer, sharply; but instead of obeying, the
+man stared malignantly, and then plunged over the gun into the depth.
+
+Not so, however, did he cheat the hangman; Nicholas caught him (as a
+water-dog catches a worn-out glove), and gave him to any one that would
+have him. “Strap him tight,” the captain cried; and the men found relief
+in doing it. At the next jail-delivery he was tried, and the jury did
+their duty. His execution restored good-will, and revived that faith in
+justice which subsists upon so little food.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVI
+
+IN THE THICK OF IT
+
+
+One of the greatest days in all the history of England, having no sense
+of its future fame, and being upon a hostile coast, was shining rather
+dismally. And one of England's greatest men, the greatest of all her
+sons in battle--though few of them have been small at that--was out of
+his usual mood, and full of calm presentiment and gloomy joy. He knew
+that he would see the sun no more; yet his fear was not of that, but
+only of losing the light of duty. As long as the sun endures, he shall
+never see duty done more brilliantly.
+
+The wind was dropping, to give the storm of human fury leisure; and
+while a sullen swell was rolling, canvas flapped and timbers creaked.
+Like a team of mallards in double column, plunging and lifting buoyant
+breasts to right and left alternately, the British fleet bore down upon
+the swan-like crescent of the foe. These were doing their best to fly,
+but failing of that luck, put helm alee, and shivered in the wind, and
+made fine speeches, proving that they must win the day.
+
+“For this I have lived, and for this it would be worth my while to die,
+having no one left, I dare say now, in all the world to care for me.”
+
+Thus spake the junior lieutenant of that British ship, the Victory--a
+young man after the heart of Nelson, and gazing now on Nelson's face.
+No smarter sailor could be found in all that noble fleet than this
+Lieutenant Blyth, who once had been the captain of all smugglers. He had
+fought his way up by skill, and spirit, and patience, and good temper,
+and the precious gift of self-reliance, failing of which all merit
+fails. He had always thought well of himself, but never destroyed the
+good of it by saying so; and whoever praised him had to do it again, to
+outspeak his modesty. But without good fortune all these merits would
+never have been successes. One of Robin's truest merits was that he
+generally earned good luck.
+
+However, his spirits were not in their usual flow of jocundity just now,
+and his lively face was dashed with care. Not through fear of lead, or
+steel, or wooden splinter, or a knock upon the head, or any other human
+mode of encouraging humanity. He hoped to keep out of the way of these,
+as even the greatest heroes do; for how could the world get on if all
+its bravest men went foremost? His mind meant clearly, and with trust
+in proper Providence, to remain in its present bodily surroundings, with
+which it had no fault to find. Grief, however--so far as a man having
+faith in his luck admits that point--certainly was making some little
+hole into a heart of corky fibre. For Robin Lyth had heard last night,
+when a schooner joined the fleet with letters, that Mary Anerley at last
+was going to marry Harry Tanfield. He told himself over and over again
+that if it were so, the fault was his own, because he had not taken
+proper care about the safe dispatch of letters. Changing from ship to
+ship and from sea to sea for the last two years or more, he had found
+but few opportunities of writing, and even of those he had not made the
+utmost. To Mary herself he had never once written, knowing well that her
+father forbade it, while his letters to Flamborough had been few, and
+some of those few had miscarried. For the French had a very clever knack
+just now of catching the English dispatch-boats, in most of which they
+found accounts of their own thrashings, as a listener catches bad news
+of himself. But none of these led them to improve their conduct.
+
+Flamborough (having felt certain that Robin could never exist without
+free trade, and missing many little courtesies that flowed from his
+liberal administration), was only too ready to lament his death,
+without insisting on particulars. Even as a man who has foretold a very
+destructive gale of wind tempers with the pride of truth the sorrow
+which he ought to feel for his domestic chimney-pots (as soon as he
+finds them upon his lawn), so Little Denmark, while bewailing, accepted
+the loss as a compliment to its own renowned sagacity.
+
+But Robin knew not until last night that he was made dead at
+Flamborough, through the wreck of a ship which he had quitted a month
+before she was cast away. And now at last he only heard that news by
+means of his shipmate, Jack Anerley. Jack was a thorough-going sailor
+now, easy, and childish, and full of the present, leaving the past to
+cure and the future to care for itself as might be. He had promised Mr.
+Mordacks and Robin Cockscroft to find out Robin Lyth, and tell him all
+about the conviction of John Cadman; and knowing his name in the navy
+and that of his ship, he had done so after in-and-out chase. But there
+for the time he had rested from his labors, and left “Davy Jones” to
+send back word about it; which that Pelagian Davy fails to do, unless
+the message is enshrined in a bottle, for which he seems to cherish true
+naval regard.
+
+In this state of things the two brothers-in-law--as they fully intended
+to be by-and-by--were going into this tremendous battle: Jack as a petty
+officer, and Robin as a junior lieutenant of Lord Nelson's ship. Already
+had Jack Anerley begun to feel for Robin--or Lieutenant Blyth, as he now
+was called--that liking of admiration which his clear free manner, and
+quickness of resource, and agreeable smile in the teeth of peril, had
+won for him before he had the legal right to fight much. And
+Robin--as he shall still be called while the memory of Flamborough
+endures--regarded Jack Anerley with fatherly affection, and hoped to put
+strength into his character.
+
+However, one necessary step toward that is to keep the character
+surviving; and in the world's pell-mell now beginning, the uproar alone
+was enough to kill some, and the smoke sufficient to choke the rest.
+Many a British sailor who, by the mercy of Providence, survived that
+day, never could hear a word concerning any other battle (even though
+a son of his own delivered it down a trumpet), so furious was the
+concussion of the air, the din of roaring metal, and the clash of
+cannon-balls which met in the air, and split up into founts of iron.
+
+No less than seven French and Spanish ships agreed with one accord to
+fall upon and destroy Lord Nelson's ship. And if they had only adopted
+a rational mode of doing it, and shot straight, they could hardly have
+helped succeeding. Even as it was, they succeeded far too well; for they
+managed to make England rue the tidings of her greatest victory.
+
+In the storm and whirl and flame of battle, when shot flew as close as
+the teeth of a hay-rake, and fire blazed into furious eyes, and then
+with a blow was quenched forever, and raging men flew into pieces--some
+of which killed their dearest friends--who was he that could do more
+than attend to his own business? Nelson had known that it would be so,
+and had twice enjoined it in his orders; and when he was carried down to
+die, his dying mind was still on this. Robin Lyth was close to him when
+he fell, and helped to bear him to his plank of death, and came back
+with orders not to speak, but work.
+
+Then ensued that crowning effort of misplaced audacity--the attempt to
+board and carry by storm the ship that still was Nelson's. The captain
+of the Redoubtable saw through an alley of light, between walls of
+smoke, that the quarter-deck of the Victory had plenty of corpses, but
+scarcely a life upon it. Also he felt (from the comfort to his feet,
+and the increasing firmness of his spinal column) that the heavy British
+guns upon the lower decks had ceased to throb and thunder into his
+own poor ship. With a bound of high spirits he leaped to a pleasing
+conclusion, and shouted, “Forward, my brave sons; we will take the
+vessel of war of that Nielson!”
+
+This, however, proved to be beyond his power, partly through the
+inborn absurdity of the thing, and partly, no doubt, through the quick
+perception and former vocation of Robin Lyth. What would England have
+said if her greatest hero had breathed his last in French arms, and a
+captive to the Frenchman? Could Nelson himself have departed thus to a
+world in which he never could have put the matter straight? The wrong
+would have been redressed very smartly here, but perhaps outside his
+knowledge. Even to dream of it awakes a shudder; yet outrages almost as
+great have triumphed, and nothing is quite beyond the irony of fate.
+
+But if free trade can not be shown as yet to have won for our country
+any other blessing, it has earned the last atom of our patience and
+fortitude by its indirect benevolence at this great time. Without free
+trade--in its sweeter and more innocent maidenhood of smuggling--there
+never could have been on board that English ship the Victory, a man,
+unless he were a runagate, with a mind of such laxity as to understand
+French. But Robin Lyth caught the French captain's words, and with two
+bounds, and a holloa, called up Britons from below. By this time a swarm
+of brave Frenchmen was gathered in the mizzen-chains and gangways
+of their ship, waiting for a lift of the sea to launch them into the
+English outworks. And scarcely a dozen Englishmen were alive within hail
+to encounter them. Not even an officer, till Robin Lyth returned, was
+there to take command of them. The foremost and readiest there was Jack
+Anerley, with a boarder's pike, and a brace of ship pistols, and his
+fine ruddy face screwed up as firm as his father's, before a big sale of
+wheat. “Come on, you froggies; we are ready for you,” he shouted, as if
+he had a hundred men in ambush.
+
+They, for their part, failed to enter into the niceties of his
+language--which difficulty somehow used never to be felt among classic
+warriors--yet from his manner and position they made out that he offered
+let and hinderance. To remove him from their course, they began to load
+guns, or to look about for loaded ones, postponing their advance until
+he should cease to interfere, so clear at that time was the Gallic
+perception of an English sailor's fortitude. Seeing this to be so, Jack
+(whose mind was not well balanced) threw a powder-case amongst them, and
+exhibited a dance. But this was cut short by a hand-grenade, and, before
+he had time to recover from that, the deck within a yard of his head
+flew open, and a stunning crash went by.
+
+Poor Jack Anerley lay quite senseless, while ten or twelve men (who
+were rushing up, to repel the enemy) fell and died in a hurricane of
+splinters. A heavy round shot, fired up from the enemy's main-deck, had
+shattered all before it; and Jack might thank the grenade that he lay
+on his back while the havoc swept over. Still, his peril was hot, for a
+volley of musketry whistled and rang around him; and at least a hundred
+and fifty men were watching their time to leap down on him.
+
+Everything now looked as bad as could be, with the drifting of the
+smoke, and the flare of fire, and the pelting of bullets, and of grapnel
+from coehorns, and the screams of Frenchmen exulting vastly, with
+scarcely any Englishmen to stop them. It seemed as if they were to do as
+they pleased, level the bulwarks of English rights, and cover themselves
+with more glory than ever. But while they yet waited to give one more
+scream, a very different sound arose. Powder, and metal, and crash
+of timber, and even French and Spanish throats at their very highest
+pressure, were of no avail against the onward vigor and power of an
+English cheer. This cheer had a very fine effect. Out of their own
+mouths the foreigners at once were convicted of inferior stuff, and
+their two twelve-pounders crammed with grapnel, which ought to have
+scattered mortality, banged upward, as harmless as a pod discharging
+seed.
+
+In no account of this great conflict is any precision observed
+concerning the pell-mell and fisticuff parts of it. The worst of it is
+that on such occasions almost everybody who was there enlarges his own
+share of it; and although reflection ought to curb this inclination, it
+seems to do quite the contrary. This may be the reason why nobody as yet
+(except Mary Anerley and Flamborough folk) seems even to have tried to
+assign fair importance to Robin Lyth's share in this glorious encounter.
+It is now too late to strive against the tide of fortuitous clamor,
+whose deposit is called history. Enough that this Englishman came up,
+with fifty more behind him, and carried all before him, as he was bound
+to do.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVII
+
+MARY LYTH
+
+
+Conquests, triumphs, and slaughterous glory are not very nice till they
+have ceased to drip. After that extinction of the war upon the waves,
+the nation which had won the fight went into general mourning. Sorrow,
+as deep as a maiden's is at the death of her lover, spread over the
+land; and people who had married their romance away, and fathered off
+their enthusiasm, abandoned themselves to even deeper anguish at the
+insecurity of property. So deeply had England's faith been anchored
+into the tenacity of Nelson. The fall of the funds when the victory was
+announced outspoke a thousand monuments.
+
+From sires and grandsires Englishmen have learned the mood into which
+their country fell. To have fought under Nelson in his last fight was a
+password to the right hands of men, and into the hearts of women. Even
+a man who had never been known to change his mind began to condemn
+other people for being obstinate. Farmer Anerley went to church in his
+Fencible accoutrements, with a sash of heavy crape, upon the first day
+of the Christian year. To prove the largeness of his mind, he harnessed
+the white-nosed horse, and drove his family away from his own parish, to
+St. Oswald's Church at Flamborough, where Dr. Upround was to preach upon
+the death of Nelson. This sermon was of the noblest order, eloquent,
+spirited, theological, and yet so thoroughly practical, that seven
+Flamborough boys set off on Monday to destroy French ships of war. Mary
+did her very utmost not to cry--for she wanted so particularly to watch
+her father--but nature and the doctor were too many for her. And when he
+came to speak of the distinguished part played (under Providence) by a
+gallant son of Flamborough, who, after enduring with manly silence evil
+report and unprecious balms, stood forward in the breach, like Phineas,
+and, with the sword of Gideon, defied Philistia to enter the British
+ark; and when he went on to say that but for Flamborough's prowess on
+that day, and the valor of the adjoining parish (which had also supplied
+a hero), England might be mourning her foremost _promachos_, her very
+greatest fighter in the van, without the consolation of burying him, and
+embalming him in a nation's tears--for the French might have fired
+the magazine--and when he proceeded to ask who it was that (under the
+guiding of a gracious hand) had shattered the devices of the enemy, up
+stood Robin Cockscroft, with a score of equally ancient captains,
+and remembering where they were, touched their forelocks, and
+answered--“Robin Lyth, sir!”
+
+Then Mary permitted the pride of her heart, which had long been painful
+with the tight control, to escape in a sob, which her mother had
+foreseen; and pulling out the stopper from her smelling-bottle, Mistress
+Anerley looked at her husband as if he were Bonaparte himself.
+He, though aware that it was inconsistent of her, felt (as he said
+afterward) as if he had been a Frenchman; and looked for his hat, and
+fumbled about for the button of the pew, to get out of it. But luckily
+the clerk, with great presence of mind, awoke, and believing the sermon
+to be over, from the number of men who were standing up, pronounced
+“Amen” decisively.
+
+During the whole of the homeward drive Farmer Anerley's countenance was
+full of thought; but he knew that it was watched, and he did not choose
+to let people get in front of him with his own brains. Therefore he let
+his wife and daughter look at him, to their hearts' content, while he
+looked at the ledges, and the mud, and the ears of his horse, and the
+weather; and he only made two observations of moment, one of which was
+“gee!” and the other was “whoa!”
+
+With females jolting up and down, upon no springs--except those of
+jerksome curiosity--conduct of this character was rude in the extreme.
+But knowing what he was, they glanced at one another, not meaning in any
+sort of way to blame him, but only that he would be better by-and-by,
+and perhaps try to make amends handsomely. And this, beyond any denial,
+he did as soon as he had dined, and smoked his pipe on the butt of the
+tree by the rick-yard. Nobody knew where he kept his money, or at least
+his good wife always said so, when any one made bold to ask her. And
+even now he was right down careful to go to his pot without anybody
+watching; so that when he came into the Sunday parlor there was not one
+of them who could say, even at a guess, where he last had been.
+
+Master Simon Popplewell, gentleman-tanner (called out of his name, and
+into the name of “Johnny,” even by his own wife, because there was no
+sign of any Simon in him), he was there, and his good wife Debby, and
+Mistress Anerley in her best cap, and Mary, dressed in royal navy blue,
+with bars of black (for Lord Nelson's sake), according to the kind gift
+of aunt and uncle; also Willie, looking wonderfully handsome, though
+pale with the failure of “perpetual motion,” and inclined to be languid,
+as great genius should be in its intervals of activity. Among them a
+lively talk was stirring; and the farmer said, “Ah! You was talking
+about me.”
+
+“We mought be; and yet again we mought not,” Master Popplewell returned,
+with a glance at Mrs. Deborah, who had just been describing to the
+company how much her husband excelled in jokesomeness. “Brother Stephen,
+a good man seeks to be spoken of, and a bad one objects to it, in vain.”
+
+“Very well. You shall have something for your money. Mary, you know
+where the old Mydeary wine is that come from your godfathers and
+godmothers when you was called in baptism. Take you the key from your
+mother, child, and bring you up a bottle, and brother Popplewell will
+open it, for such things is beyond me.”
+
+“Well done, our side!” exclaimed the tanner; for if he had a weakness it
+was for Madeira, which he always declared to have a musky smack of tan;
+and a waggish customer had told him once that the grapes it was made
+of were always tanned first. The others kept silence, foreseeing great
+events.
+
+Then Mr. Popplewell, poised with calm discretion, and moving with the
+nice precision of a fine watchmaker, shed into the best decanter (softly
+as an angel's tears) liquid beauty, not too gaudy, not too sparkling
+with shallow light, not too ruddy with sullen glow, but vivid--like a
+noble gem, a brown cairngorm--with mellow depth of lustre. “That's your
+sort!” the tanner cried, after putting his tongue, while his wife looked
+shocked, to the lip of the empty bottle.
+
+“Such things is beyond my knowledge,” answered Farmer Anerley, as soon
+as he saw the best glasses filled; “but nothing in nature is too good to
+speak a good man's health in. Now fill you up a little glass for Mary;
+and, Perpetual Motion, you stand up, which is more than your machines
+can do. Now here I stand, and I drink good health to a man as I never
+clapped eyes on yet, and would have preferred to keep the door between
+us; but the Lord hath ordered otherwise. He hath wiped out all his
+faults against the law; he hath fought for the honor of old England
+well; and he hath saved the life of my son Jack. Spite of all that, I
+might refuse to unspeak my words, which I never did afore, if it had not
+been that I wronged the man. I have wronged the young fellow, and I am
+man enough to say so. I called him a murderer and a sneak, and time hath
+proved me to have been a liar. Therefore I ask his pardon humbly; and,
+what will be more to his liking, perhaps, I say that he shall have my
+daughter Mary, if she abides agreeable. And I put down these here twenty
+guineas, for Mary to look as she ought to look. She hath been a good
+lass, and hath borne with me better than one in a thousand would have
+done. Mary, my love to you; and with leave all round, here's the very
+good health of Robin Lyth!”
+
+“Here's the health of Robin Lyth!” shouted Mr. Popplewell, with his fat
+cheeks shining merrily. “Hurrah for the lad who saved Nelson's death
+from a Frenchman's grins, and saved our Jack boy! Stephen Anerley, I
+forgive you. This is the right stuff, and no mistake. Deborah, come and
+kiss the farmer.”
+
+Mrs. Popplewell obeyed her husband, as the manner of good wives is. And
+over and above this fleeting joy, solid satisfaction entered into noble
+hearts, which felt that now the fruit of laborious years, and the cash
+of many a tanning season, should never depart from the family. And to
+make an end of any weak misgivings, even before the ladies went--to fill
+the pipes for the gentlemen--the tanner drew with equal care, and
+even better nerve, the second bottle's cork, and expressed himself as
+follows:
+
+“Brother Steve hath done the right thing. We hardly expected it of
+him, by rights of his confounded stubbornness. But when a shut-up man
+repenteth, he is equal to a hoyster, or this here bottle. What good
+would this 'a been without it was sealed over? Now mark my words. I'll
+not be behind no man when it comes to the right side up. I may be a
+poor man, a very poor man; and people counting otherwise might find
+themselves mistaken. I likes to be liked for myself only. But the day
+our Mary goes to church with Robin Lyth she shall have 500 pounds tied
+upon her back, or else my name's not Popplewell.”
+
+Mary had left the room long ago, after giving her father a gentle kiss,
+and whispering to Willie that he should have half of her twenty guineas
+for inventing things; which is a most expensive process, and should be
+more highly encouraged. Therefore she could not express at the moment
+her gratitude to Squire Popplewell; but as soon as she heard of his
+generosity, it lifted a great weight off her mind, and enabled her to
+think about furnishing a cottage. But she never told even her mother of
+that. Perhaps Robin might have seen some one he liked better. Perhaps he
+might have heard that stupid story about her having taken up with poor
+Harry Tanfield; and that might have driven him to wed a foreign lady,
+and therefore to fight so desperately. None, however, of these perhapses
+went very deeply into her heart, which was equally trusting and trusty.
+
+Now some of her confidence in the future was justified that very moment
+almost, by a sudden and great arrival, not of Jack Anerley and Robin
+Lyth (who were known to be coming home together), but of a gentleman
+whose skill and activity deserved all thanks for every good thing that
+had happened.
+
+“Well! I am in the very nick of time. It is my nature,” cried Mr.
+Mordacks, seated in the best chair by the fire. “Why? you inquire, with
+your native penetration. Simply because in very early days I acquired
+the habit of punctuality. This holding good where an appointment is,
+holds good afterward, from the force of habit, in matters that are of
+luck alone. The needle-eye of time gets accustomed to be hit, and
+turns itself up, without waiting for the clew. Wonderful Madeira! Well,
+Captain Anerley, no wonder that you have discouraged free trade with
+your cellars full of this! It is twenty years since I have tasted such
+wine. Mistress Anerley, I have the honor of quaffing this glass to
+your very best health, and that of a very charming young lady, who has
+hitherto failed to appreciate me.”
+
+“Then, sir, I am here to beg your pardon,” said Mary, coming up, with
+a beautiful blush. “When I saw you first I did not enter into
+your--your--”
+
+“My outspoken manner and short business style. But I hope that you have
+come to like me better. All good persons do, when they come to know me.”
+
+“Yes, sir; I was quite ashamed of myself, when I came to learn all that
+you have done for somebody, and your wonderful kindness at Bridlington.”
+
+“Famously said! You inherit from your mother the power and the charm of
+expression. And now, my dear lady, good Mistress Anerley, I shall undo
+all my great merits by showing that I am like the letter-writers, who
+never write until they have need of something. Captain Anerley, it
+concerns you also, as a military man, and loyal soldier of King George.
+A gallant young officer (highly distinguished in his own way, and very
+likely to get on, in virtue of high connection) became of age some few
+weeks back; and being the heir to large estates, determined to entail
+them. I speak as in a parable. My meaning is one which the ladies will
+gracefully enter into. Being a large heir, he is not selfish, but would
+fain share his blessings with a little one. In a word, he is to marry a
+very beautiful young lady to-morrow, and under my agency. But he has
+a very delightful mother, and an aunt of a lofty and commanding mind,
+whose views, however, are comparatively narrow. For a hasty, brief
+season, they will be wroth; and it would be unjust to be angry with
+them. But love's indignation is soon cured by absence, and tones down
+rapidly into desire to know how the sinner is getting on. In the present
+case, a fortnight will do the business; or if for a month, so much the
+better. Heroes are in demand just now; and this young gentleman took
+such a scare in his very first fight that he became a hero, and so has
+behaved himself ever since. Ladies, I am astonished at your goodness in
+not interrupting me. Your minds must be as practical as my own. Now this
+lovely young pair, being married to-morrow, will have to go hunting for
+the honey in the moon, to which such enterprises lead.”
+
+“Sir, you are very right,” Squire Popplewell replied; and, “That is
+Bible truth,” said the farmer.
+
+“Our minds are enlarged by experience,” resumed the genial factor,
+pleasantly, and bowing to the ladies, who declined to say a word until
+a better opportunity, “and we like to see the process going on with
+others. But a nest must be found for these young doves--a quiet one, a
+simple one, a place where they may learn to put up with one another's
+cookery. The secret of happiness in this world is not to be too
+particular. I have hit upon the very place to make them thankful
+by-and-by, when they come to look back upon it--a sweet little hole,
+half a league away from anybody. All is arranged--a frying-pan, a
+brown-ware tea-pot, a skin of lard, a cock and a hen, to lay some eggs;
+a hundredweight of ship biscuits, warranted free from weevil, and a
+knife and fork. Also a way to the sea, and a net, for them to
+fish together. Nothing more delightful can be imagined. Under such
+circumstances, they will settle, in three days, which is to be
+the master--which I take to be the most important of all marriage
+settlements. And, unless I am very much mistaken, it will be the right
+one--the lady. My little heroine, Jerry Carroway, is engaged as their
+factotum, and every auspice is favorable. But without your consent, all
+is knocked on the head; for the cottage is yours, and the tenant won't
+go out, even under temptation of five guineas, without your written
+order. Mistress Anerley, I appeal to you. Captain, say nothing. This is
+a lady's question.”
+
+“Then I like to have a little voice sometimes, though it is not often
+that I get it. And, Mr. Mordacks, I say 'Yes.' And out of the five
+guineas we shall get our rent, or some of it, perhaps, from Poacher Tim,
+who owes us nigh upon two years now.”
+
+The farmer smiled at his wife's good thrift, and, being in a pleasant
+mood, consented, if so be the law could not be brought against him, and
+if the young couple would not stop too long, or have any family to
+fall upon the rates. The factor assured him against all evils; and then
+created quite a brisk sensation by telling them, in strict confidence,
+that the young officer was one Lancelot Yordas, own first cousin to the
+famous Robin Lyth, and nephew to Sir Duncan Yordas. And the lady was the
+daughter of Sir Duncan's oldest friend, the very one whose name he had
+given to his son. Wonder never ceased among them, when they thought how
+things came round.
+
+Things came round not only thus, but also even better afterward.
+Mordacks had a very beautiful revenge of laughter at old Jellicorse, by
+outstripping him vastly in the family affairs. But Mr. Jellicorse did
+not care, so long as he still had eleven boxes left of title-deeds to
+Scargate Hall, no liability about the twelfth, and a very fair prospect
+of a lawsuit yet for the multiplication of the legal race. And meeting
+Mr. Mordacks in the highest legal circles, at Proctor Brigant's, in
+Crypt Court, York, he acknowledged that he never met a more delightful
+gentleman, until he found out what his name was. And even then he
+offered him a pinch of snuff, and they shook hands very warmly without
+anything to pay.
+
+When Robin Lyth came home he was dissatisfied at first--so difficult is
+mankind to please--because his good luck had been too good. No scratch
+of steel, no permanent scorch of powder, was upon him, and England was
+not in the mood to value any unwounded valor. But even here his good
+luck stood him in strong stead, and cured his wrong. For when the body
+of the lamented hero arrived at Spithead, in spirits of wine, early in
+December, it was found that the Admiralty had failed to send down any
+orders about it. Reports, however, were current of some intention that
+the hero should lie in state, and the battered ship went on with him.
+And when at last proper care was shown, and the relics of one of the
+noblest men that ever lived upon the tide of time were being transferred
+to a yacht at the Nore, Robin Lyth, in a sad and angry mood, neglected
+to give a wide berth to a gun that was helping to keep up the mourning
+salute, and a piece of wad carried off his starboard whisker.
+
+This at once replaced him in the popular esteem, and enabled him to
+land upon the Yorkshire coast with a certainty of glorious welcome. Mr.
+Mordacks himself came down to meet him at the Northern Landing, with Dr.
+Upround and Robin Cockscroft, and nearly all the men, and entirely
+all the women and children, of Little Denmark. Strangers also from
+outlandish parts, Squire Popplewell and his wife Deborah, Mrs. Carroway
+(with her Tom, and Jerry, and Cissy, and lesser Carroways, for her old
+aunt Jane was gone to Paradise at last, and had left her enough to keep
+a pony-carriage), and a great many others, and especially a group of
+four distinguished persons, who stood at the top of the slide, because
+of the trouble of getting back if they went down.
+
+These had a fair and double-horsed carriage in the lane, at the spot
+where fish face their last tribunal; and scarcely any brains but those
+of Flamborough could have absorbed such a spectacle as this, together
+with the deeper expectations from the sea. Of these four persons, two
+were young enough, and two not so young as they had been, but still very
+lively, and well pleased with one another. These were Mrs. Carnaby and
+Mr. Bart; the pet of the one had united his lot with the darling of the
+other; for good or for bad, there was no getting out of it, and the only
+thing was to make the best of it. And being good people, they were doing
+this successfully. Poor Mrs. Carnaby had said to Mr. Bart, as soon as
+Mr. Mordacks let her know about the wedding, “Oh, but, Mr. Bart, you
+are a gentleman; now, are you not? I am sure you are, though you do such
+things! I am sure of it by your countenance.”
+
+“Madam,” Mr. Bart replied, with a bow that was decisive, “if I am not,
+it is my own fault, as it is the fault of every man.”
+
+At this present moment they were standing with their children, Lancelot
+and Insie, who had nicely recovered from matrimony, and began to be too
+high-spirited. They all knew, by virtue of Mr. Mordacks, who Robin Lyth
+was; and they wanted to see him, and be kind to him, if he made no claim
+upon them. And Mr. Bart desired, as his father's friend, to shake hands
+with him, and help him, if help were needed.
+
+But Robin, with a grace and elegance which he must have imported from
+foreign parts, declined all connection and acquaintance with them,
+and declared his set resolve to have nothing to do with the name of
+“Yordas.” They were grieved, as they honestly declared, to hear it, but
+could not help owning that his pride was just; and they felt that their
+name was the richer for not having any poor people to share it.
+
+Yet Captain Lyth--as he now was called, even by revenue officers--in no
+way impoverished his name by taking another to share it with him. The
+farmer declared that there should be no wedding until he had sold
+seven stacks of wheat, for his meaning was to do things well. But this
+obstacle did not last long, for those were times when corn was golden,
+not in landscape only.
+
+So when the spring was fair with promise of green for the earth, and
+of blue for heaven, and of silver-gray upon the sea, the little church
+close to Anerley Farm filled up all the complement of colors. There
+was scarlet, of Dr. Upround's hood (brought by the Precious boy from
+Flamborough); a rich plum-color in the coat of Mordacks; delicate rose
+and virgin white in the blush and the brow of Mary; every tint of the
+rainbow on her mother's part; and gold, rich gold, in a great tanned
+bag, on behalf of Squire Popplewell. His idea of a “settlement” was cash
+down, and he put it on the parish register.
+
+Mary found no cause to repent of the long endurance of her truth, and
+the steadfast power of quiet love. Robin was often in the distance
+still, far beyond the silvery streak of England's new salvation. But
+Mary prayed for his safe return; and safe he was, by the will of the
+Lord, which helps the man who helps himself, and has made his hand
+bigger than his tongue. When the war was over, Captain Lyth came home,
+and trained his children in the ways in which he should have walked, and
+the duties they should do and pay.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mary Anerley, by R. D. Blackmore
+
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