I

My Dear Violet,–So you “gather from the tone of two or three recent
letters that my spirit is creeping back to light and warmth again”?
Well, after a fashion you are right. I shall never laugh again as I
used to laugh before Harry’s death. The taste has gone out of that
carelessness, and I turn even from the remembrance of it. But I can be
cheerful, with a cheerfulness which has found the centre of gravity.
I am myself again, as people say. After months of agitation in what
seemed to be chaos the lost atom has dropped back to its place in the
scheme of things, and even aspires (poor mite!) to do its infinitesimal
business intelligently. So might a mote in a sunbeam feel itself at one
with God!

But when you assume that my recovery has been a gradual process, you are
wrong. You will think me more than ever deranged; but I assure you that
it has been brought about, not by long strivings, but suddenly–without
preparation of mine–and by the immediate hand of our dead brother.

Yes; you shall have the whole tale. The first effect of the news of
Harry’s death in October last was simply to stun me. You may remember
how once, years ago when we were children, we rode home together across
the old Racecourse after a long day’s skating, our skates swinging at
our saddle-bows; how Harry challenged us to a gallop; and how, midway,
the roan mare slipped down neck over crop on the frozen turf and hurled
me clean against the face of a stone dyke. I had been thrown from
horseback more than once before, but somehow had always found the earth
fairly elastic. So I had griefs before Harry died and took some rebound
of hope from each: but that cast repeated in a worse degree the old
shock–the springless brutal jar–of the stone dyke. With him the sun
went out of my sky.

I understand that this torpor is quite common with men and women
suddenly bereaved. I believe that a whole week passed before my brain
recovered any really vital motion; and then such feeble thought as I
could exert was wholly occupied with the desperate stupidity of the
whole affair. If God were indeed shaping the world to any end, if any
design of His underlay the activities of men, what insensate waste to
quench such a heart and brain as Harry’s!–to nip, as it seemed out of
mere blundering wantonness, a bud which had begun to open so generously:
to sacrifice that youth and strength, that comeliness, that enthusiasm,
and all for nothing! Had some campaign claimed him, had he been spent
to gain a citadel or defend a flag, I had understood. But that he
should be killed on a friendly mission; attacked in ignorance by those
East Coast savages while bearing gifts to their king; deserted by the
porters whose comfort (on their own confession) he had studied
throughout the march; left to die, to be tortured, mutilated–and all
for no possible good: these things I could not understand. At the end
he might have escaped; but as he caught hold of his saddle by the band
between the holsters, it parted: it was not leather, but faced paper,
the job of some cheating contractor. I thought of this, too. And Harry
had been through Chitral!

But though a man may hate, he cannot easily despise God for long.
“He is great–but wasteful,” said the American. We are the dust on His
great hands, and fly as He claps them carelessly in the pauses of His
work. Yet this theory would not do at all: for the unlucky particles
are not dust, not refuse, but exquisite and exquisitely fashioned,
designed to live, and to every small function of life adapted with the
minutest care. There were nights indeed when, walking along the shore
where we had walked together on the night before Harry left England and
looking from the dark waters which divided me from his grave up to the
nightly moon and to the stars around her, I could well believe God
wasteful of little things. Sirius flashing low, Orion’s belt with the
great nebula swinging like a pendant of diamonds; the ruby stars,
Betelgueux and Aldebaran–my eyes went up beyond these to Perseus
shepherding the Kids westward along the Milky way. From the right
Andromeda flashed signals to him: and above sat Cassiopeia, her mother,
resting her jewelled wrists on the arms of her throne. Low in the east
Jupiter trailed his satellites in the old moon’s path. As they all
moved, silent, looking down on me out of the hollow spaces of the night,
I could believe no splendid waste too costly for their perfection: and
the Artificer who hung them there after millions of years of patient
effort, if more intelligible than a God who produced them suddenly at
will, certainly not less divine. But walking the same shore by daylight
I recognised that the shells, the mosses, the flowers I trampled on,
were, each in its way, as perfect as those great stars: that on these–
and on Harry–as surely as on the stars–God had spent, if not infinite
pains, then at least so superlative a wisdom that to conceive of them as
wastage was to deny the mind which called them forth.

There they were: and that He who had skill to create them could blunder
in using them was simply incredible.

But this led to worse: for having to admit the infallible design, I now
began to admire it as an exquisite scheme of evil, and to accuse God of
employing supreme knowledge and skill to gratify a royal lust of
cruelty. For a month and more this horrible theory justified itself in
all innocent daily sights. Throughout my country walks I “saw blood.”
I heard the rabbit run squeaking before the weasel; I watched the
butcher crow working steadily down the hedge. If I turned seaward I
looked beneath the blue and saw the dog-fish gnawing on the whiting.
If I walked in the garden I surprised the thrush dragging worms from the
turf, the cat slinking on the nest, the spider squatting in ambush.
Behind the rosy face of every well-nourished child I saw a lamb gazing
up at the butcher’s knife. My dear Violet, that was a hideous time!

And just then by chance a book fell into my hands–Lamartine’s Chute
d’un Ange. Do you know the Seventh and Tenth Visions of that poem,
which describe the favourite amusements of the Men-gods? Before the
Deluge, beyond the rude tents of the nomad shepherds, there rose city
upon city of palaces built of jasper and porphyry, splendid and utterly
corrupt; inhabited by men who called themselves gods and explored the
subtleties of all sciences to minister to their vicious pleasures.
At ease on soft couches, in hanging gardens set with fountains, these
beings feasted with every refinement of cruelty. Kneeling slaves were
their living tables; while for their food–

    Tous les oiseaux de l'air, tous les poissons de l'onde,
    Tout ce qui vole ou nage ou rampe dans le monde,
    Mourant pour leur plaisir des plus cruels trepas
    De sanglantes savours composent leurs repas. . . .

In these lines I believed that I discerned the very God of the universe,
the God whom men worship–

    Dans les infames jeux de leur divin loisir
    Le supplice de l'homme est leur premier plaisir.
    Pour que leur oeil feroce a l'envi s'en repaisse
    Des bourreaux devant eux en immolent sans cesse.
    Tantot ils font lutter, dans des combats affreux,
    L'homme contre la brute et les hommes entre eux,
    Aux longs ruisseaux de sang qui coulent de la veine,
    Aux palpitations des membres sur l'arene,
    Se levant a demi de leurs lits de repos
    Des frissons de plaisir fremissent sur leurs peaux.
    Le cri de la torture est leur douce harmonie,
    Et leur oeil dans son oeil boit sa lente agonie.

I charged the Supreme Power with a cruelty deliberate, ruthless, serene.
Nero the tyrant once commanded a representation in grim earnest of the
Flight of Icarus; and the unhappy boy who took the part, at his first
attempt to fly, fell headlong beside the Emperor’s couch and spattered
him with blood and brains. For the Emperor, says Suetonius, perraro
praesidere, ceterum accubans, parvis primum foraminibus, deinde toto
podio adaperto, spectare consuerat. So I believed that on the stage of
this world men agonised for the delight of one cruel intelligence which
watched from behind the curtain of a private box.

II

In this unhappy condition of mind, then, I was lying in my library chair
here at Sevenhays, at two o’clock on the morning of January 4th. I had
just finished another reading of the Tenth Vision and had tossed my book
into the lap of an armchair opposite. Fire and lamp were burning
brightly. The night outside was still and soundless, with a touch of
frost.

I lay there, retracing in thought the circumstances of Harry’s last
parting from me, and repeating to myself a scrap here and there from the
three letters he wrote on his way–the last of them, full of high
spirits, received a full three weeks after the telegram which announced
his death. There was a passage in this last letter describing a
wonderful ride he had taken alone and by moonlight on the desert; a ride
(he protested) which wanted nothing of perfect happiness but me, his
friend, riding beside him to share his wonder. There was a sentence
which I could not recall precisely, and I left my chair and was crossing
the room towards the drawer in the writing-table where I kept his
letters, when I heard a trampling of hoofs on the gravel outside, and
then my Christian name called–with distinctness, but not at all loudly.

I went to the window, which was unshuttered; drew up the blind and flung
up the sash. The moon, in its third quarter and about an hour short of
its meridian, shone over the deodars upon the white gravel. And there,
before the front door, sat Harry on his sorrel mare Vivandiere, holding
my own Grey Sultan ready bridled and saddled. He was dressed in his old
khaki riding suit, and his face, as he sat askew in his saddle and
looked up towards my window, wore its habitual and happy smile.

Now, call this and what follows a dream, vision, hallucination, what you
will; but understand, please, that from the first moment, so far as I
considered the matter at all, I had never the least illusion that this
was Harry in flesh and blood. I knew quite well all the while that
Harry was dead and his body in his grave. But, soul or phantom–
whatever relation to Harry this might bear–it had come to me, and the
great joy of that was enough for the time. There let us leave the
question. I closed the window, went upstairs to my dressing-room, drew
on my riding-boots and overcoat, found cap, gloves, and riding-crop, and
descended to the porch.

Harry, as I shall call him, was still waiting there on the off side of
Grey Sultan, the farther side from the door. There could be no doubt,
at any rate, that the grey was real horseflesh and blood, though he
seemed unusually quiet after two days in stall. Harry freed him as I
mounted, and we set off together at a walk, which we kept as far as the
gate.

Outside we took the westward road, and our horses broke into a trot.
As yet we had not exchanged a word; but now he asked a question or two
about his people and his friends; kindly, yet most casually, as one
might who returns after a week’s holidaying. I answered as well as I
could, with trivial news of their health. His mother had borne the
winter better than usual–to be sure, there had been as yet no cold
weather to speak of; but she and Ethel intended, I believed, to start
for the south of France early in February. He inquired about you.
His comments were such as a man makes on hearing just what he expects to
hear, or knows beforehand. And for some time it seemed to be tacitly
taken for granted between us that I should ask him no questions.

“As for me–” I began, after a while.

He checked the mare’s pace a little. “I know,” he said, looking
straight ahead between her ears; then, after a pause, “it has been a bad
time for you, You are in a bad way altogether. That is why I came.”

“But it was for you!” I blurted out. “Harry, if only I had known why
you were taken–and what it was to you!“

He turned his face to me with the old confident comforting smile.

“Don’t you trouble about that. That’s nothing to make a fuss about.
Death?” he went on musing–our horses had fallen to a walk again–
“It looks you in the face a moment: you put out your hands: you touch–
and so it is gone. My dear boy, it isn’t for us that you need worry.”

“For whom, then?”

“Come,” said he, and he shook Vivandiere into a canter.

III

I cannot remember precisely at what point in our ride the country had
ceased to be familiar. But by-and-by we were climbing the lower slopes
of a great down which bore no resemblance to the pastoral country around
Sevenhays. We had left the beaten road for short turf–apparently of a
copper-brown hue, but this may have been the effect of the moonlight.
The ground rose steadily, but with an easy inclination, and we climbed
with the wind at our backs; climbed, as it seemed, for an hour, or maybe
two, at a footpace, keeping silence. The happiness of having Harry
beside me took away all desire for speech.

This at least was my state of mind as we mounted the long lower slopes
of the down. But in time the air, hitherto so exhilarating, began to
oppress my lungs, and the tranquil happiness to give way to a vague
discomfort and apprehension.

“What is this noise of water running?”

I reined up Grey Sultan as I put the question. At the same moment it
occurred to me that this sound of water, distant and continuous, had
been running in my ear for a long while.

Harry, too, came to a halt. With a sweep of the arm that embraced the
dim landscape around and ahead, he quoted softly–

    en detithei potamoio mega spenos Okeanoio
    antyga par pymaten sakeos pyka poietoio . . . .

and was silent again.

I recalled at once and distinctly the hot summer morning ten years back,
when we had prepared that passage of the Eighteenth Book together in our
study at Clifton; I at the table, Harry lolling in the cane-seated
armchair with the Liddell and Scott open on his knees; outside, the
sunny close and the fresh green of the lime-trees.

Now that I looked more attentively the bare down, on which we climbed
like flies, did indeed resemble a vast round shield, about the rim of
which this unseen water echoed. And the resemblance grew more startling
when, a mile or so farther on our way, as the grey dawn overtook us,
Harry pointed upwards and ahead to a small boss or excrescence now
lifting itself above the long curve of the horizon.

At first I took it for a hummock or tumulus. Then, as the day whitened
about us, I saw it to be a building–a tall, circular barrack not unlike
the Colosseum. A question shaped itself on my lips, but something in
Harry’s manner forbade it. His gaze was bent steadily forward, and I
kept my wonder to myself, and also the oppression of spirit which had
now grown to something like physical torture.

When first the great barrack broke into sight we must have been at least
two miles distant. I kept my eyes fastened on it as we approached, and
little by little made out the details of its architecture. From base to
summit–which appeared to be roofless–six courses of many hundred
arches ran around the building, one above the other; and between each
pair a course, as it seemed, of plain worked stone, though I afterwards
found it to be sculptured in low relief. The arches were cut in deep
relief and backed with undressed stone. The lowest course of all,
however, was quite plain, having neither arches nor frieze; but at
intervals corresponding to the eight major points of the compass–so far
as I who saw but one side of it could judge–pairs of gigantic stone
figures supported archways pierced in the wall; or sluices, rather,
since from every archway but one a full stream of water issued and
poured down the sides of the hill. The one dry archway was that which
faced us with open gate, and towards which Harry led the way; for
oppression and terror now weighted my hand as with lead upon Grey
Sultan’s rein.

Harry, however, rode forward resolutely, dismounted almost in the very
shadow of the great arch, and waited, smoothing his mare’s neck.
But for the invitation in his eyes, which were solemn, yet without a
trace of fear, I had never dared that last hundred yards. For above the
rush of waters I heard now a confused sound within the building–the
thud and clanking of heavy machinery, and at intervals a human groan;
and looking up I saw that the long friezes in bas-relief represented men
and women tortured and torturing with all conceivable variety of method
and circumstance–flayed, racked, burned, torn asunder, loaded with
weights, pinched with hot irons, and so on without end. And it added to
the horror of these sculptures that while the limbs and even the dress
of each figure were carved with elaborate care and nicety of detail, the
faces of all–of those who applied the torture and of those who looked
on, as well as of the sufferers themselves–were left absolutely blank.
On the same plan the two Titans beside the great archway had no faces.
The sculptor had traced the muscles of each belly in a constriction of
anguish, and had suggested this anguish again in moulding the neck, even
in disposing the hair of the head; but the neck supported, and the locks
fell around, a space of smooth stone without a feature.

Harry allowed me no time to feed on these horrors. Signing to me to
dismount and leave Grey Sultan at the entrance, he led me through the
long archway or tunnel. At the end we paused again, he watching, while
I drew difficult breath. . . .

I saw a vast amphitheatre of granite, curving away on either hand and
reaching up, tier on tier, till the tiers melted in the grey sky
overhead. The lowest tier stood twenty feet above my head; yet curved
with so lordly a perspective that on the far side of the arena, as I
looked across, it seemed almost level with the ground; while the human
figures about the great archway yonder were diminished to the size of
ants about a hole. . . For there were human figures busy in the arena,
though not a soul sat in any of the granite tiers above. A million eyes
had been less awful than those empty benches staring down in the cold
dawn; bench after bench repeating the horror of the featureless carvings
by the entrance-gate–repeating it in series without end, and unbroken,
save at one point midway along the semicircle on my right, where the
imperial seat stood out, crowned like a catafalque with plumes of purple
horse-hair, and screened close with heavy purple hangings. I saw these
curtains shake once or twice in the morning wind.

The floor of this amphitheatre I have spoken of as an arena; but as a
matter of fact it was laid with riveted sheets of copper that recalled
the dead men’s shelves in the Paris morgue. The centre had been
raised some few feet higher than the circumference, or possibly the
whole floor took its shape from the rounded hill of which it was the
apex; and from an open sluice immediately beneath the imperial throne a
flood of water gushed with a force that carried it straight to this
raised centre, over which it ran and rippled, and so drained back into
the scuppers at the circumference. Before reaching the centre it broke
and swirled around a row of what appeared to be tall iron boxes or
cages, set directly in face of the throne. But for these ugly boxes the
whole floor was empty. To and from these the little human figures were
hurrying, and from these too proceeded the thuds and panting and the
frequent groans that I had heard outside.

While I stood and gazed, Harry stepped forward into the arena.
“This also?” I whispered.

He nodded, and led the way over the copper floor, where the water ran
high as our ankles and again was drained off, until little dry spaces
grew like maps upon the surface, and in ten seconds were flooded again.
He led me straight to the cages, and I saw that while the roof and three
sides of these were of sheet iron, the fourth side, which faced the
throne, lay open. And I saw–in the first cage, a man scourged with
rods; in the second, a body twisted on the rack; in the third, a woman
with a starving babe, and a fellow that held food to them and withdrew
it quickly (the torturers wore masks on their faces, and whenever blood
flowed some threw handfuls of sawdust, and blood and sawdust together
were carried off by the running water); in the fourth cage, a man tied,
naked and helpless, whom a masked torturer pelted with discs of gold,
heavy and keen-edged; in the fifth a brasier with irons heating, and a
girl’s body crouched in a corner–

“I will see no more!” I cried, and turned towards the great purple
canopy. High over it the sun broke yellow on the climbing tiers of
seats. “Harry! someone is watching behind those curtains! Is it–HE?”

Harry bent his head.

“But this is all that I believed! This is Nero, and ten times worse
than Nero! Why did you bring me here?” I flung out my hand towards the
purple throne, and finding myself close to a fellow who scattered
sawdust with both hands, made a spring to tear his mask away. But Harry
stretched out an arm.

“That will not help you,” he said. “The man has no face.”

“No face!”

“He once had a face, but it has perished. His was the face of these
sufferers. Look at them.”

I looked from cage to cage, and now saw that indeed all these
sufferers–men and women–had but one face: the same wrung brow, the
same wistful eyes, the same lips bitten in anguish. I knew the face.
We all know it.

“His own Son! O devil rather than God!” I fell on my knees in the
gushing water and covered my eyes.

“Stand up, listen and look!” said Harry’s voice.

“What can I see? He hides behind that curtain.”

“And the curtain?”

“It shakes continually.”

“That is with His sobs. Listen! What of the water?”

“It runs from the throne and about the floor. It washes off the blood.”

“That water is His tears. It flows hence down the hill, and washes all
the shores of earth.”

Then as I stood silent, conning the eddies at my feet, for the first
time Harry took my hand.

“Learn this,” he said. “There is no suffering in the world but
ultimately comes to be endured by God.”

Saying this, he drew me from the spot; gently, very gently led me away;
but spoke again as we were about to pass into the shadow of the arch–

“Look once back: for a moment only.”

I looked. The curtains of the imperial seat were still drawn close, but
in a flash I saw the tiers beside it, and around, and away up to the
sunlit crown of the amphitheatre, thronged with forms in white raiment.
And all these forms leaned forward and bowed their faces on their arms
and wept.

So we passed out beneath the archway. Grey Sultan stood outside, and as
I mounted him the gate clashed behind. . . .

IV

I turned as it clashed. And the gate was just the lodge-gate of
Sevenhays. And Grey Sultan was trampling the gravel of our own drive.
The morning sun slanted over the laurels on my right, and while I
wondered, the stable clock struck eight.

The rest I leave to you; nor shall try to explain. I only know that,
vision or no vision, my soul from that hour has gained a calm it never
knew before. The sufferings of my fellows still afflict me; but always,
if I stand still and listen, in my own room, or in a crowded street, or
in a waste spot among the moors, I can hear those waters moving round
the world–moving on their “priest-like task “–those lustral divine
tears which are Oceanus.

A Jew, unfortunately slain on the sands of Sheba Cove, in the parish of
Ruan Lanihale, August 15, 1810: or so much of it as is hereby related by
the Rev. Endymion Trist, B.D., then vicar of that parish, in a letter to
a friend.

My dear J–,–You are right, to be sure, in supposing that I know more
than my neighbours in Ruan Lanihale concerning the unfortunate young
man, Joseph Laquedem, and more than I care to divulge; in particular
concerning his tragical relations with the girl Julia Constantine, or
July, as she was commonly called. The vulgar knowledge amounts to
little more than this–that Laquedem, a young Hebrew of extraordinary
commercial gifts, first came to our parish in 1807 and settled here as
managing secretary of a privateering company at Porthlooe; that by his
aptitude and daring in this and the illicit trade he amassed a
respectable fortune, and at length opened a private bank at Porthlooe
and issued his own notes; that on August 15, 1810, a forced “run” which,
against his custom, he was personally supervising, miscarried, and he
met his death by a carbine-shot on the sands of Sheba Cove; and, lastly,
that his body was taken up and conveyed away by the girl Julia
Constantine, under the fire of the preventive men.

The story has even in our time received what I may call some fireside
embellishments; but these are the facts, and the parish knows little
beyond them. I (as you conjecture) know a great deal more; and yet
there is a sense in which I know nothing more. You and I, my old
friend, have come to an age when men do not care to juggle with the
mysteries of another world, but knowing that the time is near when all
accounts must be rendered, desire to take stock honestly of what they
believe and what they do not. And here lies my difficulty. On the one
hand I would not make public an experience which, however honestly set
down, might mislead others, and especially the young, into rash and
mischievous speculations. On the other, I doubt if it be right to keep
total silence and withhold from devout and initiated minds any glimpse
of truth, or possible truth, vouchsafed to me. As the Greek said,
“Plenty are the thyrsus-bearers, but few the illuminate”; and among
these few I may surely count my old friend.

It was in January 1807–the year of the abominable business of Tilsit–
that my churchwarden, the late Mr. Ephraim Pollard, and I, in cleaning
the south wall of Lanihale Church for a fresh coat of whitewash,
discovered the frescoes and charcoal drawings, as well as the brass
plaque of which I sent you a tracing; and I think not above a fortnight
later that, on your suggestion, I set to work to decipher and copy out
the old churchwardens’ accounts. On the Monday after Easter, at about
nine o’clock P.M., I was seated in the Vicarage parlour, busily
transcribing, with a couple of candles before me, when my housekeeper
Frances came in with a visiting-card, and the news that a stranger
desired to speak with me. I took the card and read “Mr. Joseph
Laquedem.”

“Show the gentleman in,” said I.

Now the fact is, I had just then a few guineas in my chest, and you know
what a price gold fetched in 1807. I dare say that for twelve months
together the most of my parishioners never set eyes on a piece, and any
that came along quickly found its way to the Jews. People said that
Government was buying up gold, through the Jews, to send to the armies.
I know not the degree of truth in this, but I had some five and twenty
guineas to dispose of, and had been put into correspondence with a Mr.
Isaac Laquedem, a Jew residing by Plymouth Dock, whom I understood to be
offering 25s. 6d. per guinea, or a trifle above the price then current.

I was fingering the card when the door opened again and admitted a
young man in a caped overcoat and tall boots bemired high above the
ankles. He halted on the threshold and bowed.

“Mr.–?”

“Joseph Laquedem,” said he in a pleasant voice.

“I guess your errand,” said I, “though it was a Mr. Isaac Laquedem whom
I expected.–Your father, perhaps?”

He bowed again, and I left the room to fetch my bag of guineas.
“You have had a dirty ride,” I began on my return.

“I have walked,” he answered, lifting a muddy boot. “I beg you to
pardon these.”

“What, from Torpoint Ferry? And in this weather? My faith, sir, you
must be a famous pedestrian!”

He made no reply to this, but bent over the guineas, fingering them,
holding them up to the candlelight, testing their edges with his
thumbnail, and finally poising them one by one on the tip of his
forefinger.

“I have a pair of scales,” suggested I.

“Thank you, I too have a pair in my pocket. But I do not need them.
The guineas are good weight, all but this one, which is possibly a
couple of grains short.”

“Surely you cannot rely on your hand to tell you that?”

His eyebrows went up as he felt in his pocket and produced a small
velvet-lined case containing a pair of scales. He was a decidedly
handsome young man, with dark intelligent eyes and a slightly scornful–
or shall I say ironical?–smile. I took particular note of the
steadiness of his hand as he adjusted the scales and weighed my guinea.

“To be precise,” he announced, “1.898, or practically one and
nine-tenths short.”

“I should have thought,” said I, fairly astounded, “a lifetime too
little for acquiring such delicacy of sense!”

He seemed to ponder. “I dare say you are right, sir,” he answered, and
was silent again until the business of payment was concluded.
While folding the receipt he added, “I am a connoisseur of coins, sir,
and not of their weight alone.”

“Antique, as well as modern?”

“Certainly.”

“In that case,” said I, “you may be able to tell me something about
this”: and going to my bureau I took out the brass plaque which Mr.
Pollard had detached from the planks of the church wall. “To be sure,
it scarcely comes within the province of numismatics.”

He took the plaque. His brows contracted, and presently he laid it on
the table, drew my chair towards him in an absent-minded fashion, and,
sitting down, rested his brow on his open palms. I can recall the
attitude plainly, and his bent head, and the rain still glistening in
the waves of his black hair.

“Where did you find this?” he asked, but without looking up.

I told him. “The engraving upon it is singular. I thought that
possibly–”

“Oh, that,” said he, “is simplicity itself. An eagle displayed, with
two heads, the legs resting on two gates, a crescent between, an
imperial crown surmounting–these are the arms of the Greek Empire, the
two gates are Rome and Constantinople. The question is, how it came
where you found it? It was covered with plaster, you say, and the
plaster whitewashed? Did you discover anything near it?”

Upon this I told him of the frescoes and charcoal drawings, and roughly
described them.

His fingers began to drum upon the table.

“Have you any documents which might tell us when the wall was first
plastered?”

“The parish accounts go back to 1594–here they are: the Registers to
1663 only. I keep them in the vestry. I can find no mention of
plastering, but the entries of expenditure on whitewashing occur
periodically, the first under the year 1633.” I turned the old pages
and pointed to the entry “Ite paide to George mason for a dayes work
about the churche after the Jew had been, and white wassche is vjd.”

“A Jew? But a Jew had no business in England in those days. I wonder
how and why he came.” My visitor took the old volume and ran his finger
down the leaf, then up, then turned back a page. “Perhaps this may
explain it,” said he. “Ite deliued Mr. Beuill to make puision for the
companie of a fforeste barke yt came ashoare iiis ivd.” He broke off,
with a finger on the entry, and rose. “Pray forgive me, sir; I had
taken your chair.”

“Don’t mention it,” said I. “Indeed I was about to suggest that you
draw it to the fire while Frances brings in some supper.”

To be short, although he protested he must push on to the inn at
Porthlooe, I persuaded him to stay the night; not so much, I confess,
from desire of his company, as in the hope that if I took him to see the
frescoes next morning he might help me to elucidate their history.

I remember now that during supper and afterwards my guest allowed me
more than my share of the conversation. He made an admirable listener,
quick, courteous, adaptable, yet with something in reserve (you may call
it a facile tolerance, if you will) which ended by irritating me.
Young men should be eager, fervid, sublimis cupidusque, as I was
before my beard grew stiff. But this young man had the air of a
spectator at a play, composing himself to be amused. There was too much
wisdom in him and too little emotion. We did not, of course, touch upon
any religious question–indeed, of his own opinions on any subject he
disclosed extraordinarily little: and yet as I reached my bedroom that
night I told myself that here, behind a mask of good manners, was one of
those perniciously modern young men who have run through all beliefs by
the age of twenty, and settled down to a polite but weary atheism.

I fancy that under the shadow of this suspicion my own manner may have
been cold to him next morning. Almost immediately after breakfast we
set out for the church. The day was sunny and warm; the atmosphere
brilliant after the night’s rain. The hedges exhaled a scent of spring.
And, as we entered the churchyard, I saw the girl Julia Constantine
seated in her favourite angle between the porch and the south wall,
threading a chain of daisies.

“What an amazingly handsome girl!” my guest exclaimed.

“Why, yes,” said I, “she has her good looks, poor soul!”

“Why ‘poor soul’?”

“She is an imbecile, or nearly so,” said I, fitting the key in the lock.

We entered the church. And here let me say that, although I furnished
you at the time of their discovery with a description of the frescoes
and the ruder drawings which overlay them, you can scarcely imagine the
grotesque and astonishing coup d’oeil presented by the two series.
To begin with the frescoes, or original series. One, as you know,
represented the Crucifixion. The head of the Saviour bore a large crown
of gilded thorns, and from the wound in His left side flowed a
continuous stream of red gouts of blood, extraordinarily intense in
colour (and intensity of colour is no common quality in
fresco-painting). At the foot of the cross stood a Roman soldier, with
two female figures in dark-coloured drapery a little to the right, and
in the background a man clad in a loose dark upper coat, which reached a
little below the knees.

The same man reappeared in the second picture, alone, but carrying a
tall staff or hunting spear, and advancing up a road, at the top of
which stood a circular building with an arched doorway and, within the
doorway, the head of a lion. The jaws of this beast were open and
depicted with the same intense red as the Saviour’s blood.

Close beside this, but further to the east, was a large ship, under
sail, which from her slanting position appeared to be mounting over a
long swell of sea. This vessel had four masts; the two foremost
furnished with yards and square sails, the others with lateen-shaped
sails, after the Greek fashion; her sides were decorated with six gaily
painted bands or streaks, each separately charged with devices–a golden
saltire on a green ground, a white crescent on a blue, and so on; and
each masthead bore a crown with a flag or streamer fluttering beneath.

Of the frescoes these alone were perfect, but fragments of others were
scattered over the wall, and in particular I must mention a group of
detached human limbs lying near the ship–a group rendered conspicuous
by an isolated right hand and arm drawn on a larger scale than the rest.
A gilded circlet adorned the arm, which was flexed at the elbow, the
hand horizontally placed, the forefinger extended towards the west in
the direction of the picture of the Crucifixion, and the thumb shut
within the palm beneath the other three fingers.

So much for the frescoes. A thin coat of plaster had been laid over
them to receive the second series, which consisted of the most
disgusting and fantastic images, traced in black. One of these drawings
represented Satan himself–an erect figure, with hairy paws clasped in a
supplicating posture, thick black horns, and eyes which (for additional
horror) the artist had painted red and edged with a circle of white.
At his feet crawled the hindmost limb of a peculiarly loathsome monster
with claws stuck in the soil. Close by a nun was figured, sitting in a
pensive attitude, her cheek resting on the back of her hand, her elbow
supported by a hideous dwarf, and at some distance a small house, or
prison, with barred windows and a small doorway crossed with heavy
bolts.

As I said, this upper series had been but partially scraped away, and as
my guest and I stood at a little distance, I leave you to imagine, if
you can, the incongruous tableau; the Prince of Darkness almost touching
the mourners beside the cross; the sorrowful nun and grinning dwarf side
by side with a ship in full sail, which again seemed to be forcing her
way into a square and forbidding prison, etc.

Mr. Laquedem conned all this for some while in silence, holding his chin
with finger and thumb.

“And it was here you discovered the plaque?” he asked at length.

I pointed to the exact spot.

“H’m!” he mused, “and that ship must be Greek or Levantine by its rig.
Compare the crowns on her masts, too, with that on the plaque . . .”
He stepped to the wall and peered into the frescoes. “Now this hand and
arm–”

“They belong to me,” said a voice immediately behind me, and turning, I
saw that the poor girl had followed us into the church.

The young Jew had turned also. “What do you mean by that?” he asked
sharply.

“She means nothing,” I began, and made as if to tap my forehead
significantly.

“Yes, I do mean something,” she persisted. “They belong to me.
I remember–”

“What do you remember?”

Her expression, which for a moment had been thoughtful, wavered and
changed into a vague foolish smile. “I can’t tell . . . something . . .
it was sand, I think . . .”

“Who is she?” asked Mr. Laquedem.

“Her name is Julia Constantine. Her parents are dead; an aunt looks
after her–a sister of her mother’s.”

He turned and appeared to be studying the frescoes. “Julia
Constantine–an odd name,” he muttered. “Do you know anything of her
parentage?”

“Nothing except that her father was a labourer at Sheba, the manor-farm.
The family has belonged to this parish for generations. I believe July
is the last of them.”

He faced round upon her again. “Sand, did you say? That’s a strange
thing to remember. How does sand come into your mind? Think, now.”

She cast down her eyes; her fingers plucked at the daisy-chain. After a
while she shook her head. “I can’t think,” she answered, glancing up
timidly and pitifully.

“Surely we are wasting time,” I suggested. To tell the truth I
disapproved of his worrying the poor girl.

He took the daisy-chain from her, looking at me the while with something
between a “by-your-leave” and a challenge. A smile played about the
corners of his mouth.

“Let us waste a little more.” He held up the chain before her and began
to sway it gently to and fro. “Look at it, please, and stretch out your
arm; look steadily. Now your name is Julia Constantine, and you say
that the arm on the wall belongs to you. Why?”

“Because . . . if you please, sir, because of the mark.”

“What mark?”

“The mark on my arm.”

This answer seemed to discompose as well as to surprise him.
He snatched at her wrist and rolled back her sleeve, somewhat roughly,
as I thought. “Look here, sir!” he exclaimed, pointing to a thin red
line encircling the flesh of the girl’s upper arm, and from that to the
arm and armlet in the fresco.

“She has been copying it,” said I, “with a string or ribbon, which no
doubt she tied too tightly.”

“You are mistaken, sir; this is a birthmark. You have had it always?”
he asked the girl.

She nodded. Her eyes were fixed on his face with the gaze of one at the
same time startled and confiding; and for the moment he too seemed to be
startled. But his smile came back as he picked up the daisy-chain and
began once more to sway it to and fro before her.

“And when that arm belonged to you, there was sand around you–eh!
Tell us, how did the sand come there?”

She was silent, staring at the pendulum-swing of the chain. “Tell us,”
he repeated in a low coaxing tone.

And in a tone just as low she began, “There was sand . . . red sand
. . . it was below me . . . and something above . . . something like a
great tent.” She faltered, paused and went on, “There were thousands of
people. . . .” She stopped.

“Yes, yes–there were thousands of people on the sand–”

“No, they were not on the sand. There were only two on the sand . . .
the rest were around . . . under the tent . . . my arm was out . . .
just like this. . . .”

The young man put a hand to his forehead. “Good Lord!” I heard him say,
“the amphitheatre!”

“Come, sir,” I interrupted, “I think we have had enough of this
jugglery.”

But the girl’s voice went on steadily as if repeating a lesson:–

“And then you came–”

“I!“ His voice rang sharply, and I saw a horror dawn in his eyes, and
grow. “I!“

“And then you came,” she repeated, and broke off, her mind suddenly at
fault. Automatically he began to sway the daisy-chain afresh. “We were
on board a ship . . . a funny ship . . . with a great high stern. . . .”

“Is this the same story?” he asked, lowering his voice almost to a
whisper; and I could hear his breath going and coming.

“I don’t know . . . one minute I see clear, and then it all gets mixed
up again . . . we were up there, stretched on deck, near the tiller
. . . another ship was chasing us . . . the men began to row, with long
sweeps. . . .”

“But the sand,” he insisted, “is the sand there?”

“The sand? . . . Yes, I see the sand again . . . we are standing upon it
. . . we and the crew . . . the sea is close behind us . . . some men
have hold of me . . . they are trying to pull me away from you. . . .
Ah!–”

And I declare to you that with a sob the poor girl dropped on her knees,
there in the aisle, and clasped the young man about the ankles, bowing
her forehead upon the insteps of his high boots. As for him, I cannot
hope to describe his face to you. There was something more in it than
wonder–something more than dismay, even–at the success of his
unhallowed experiment. It was as though, having prepared himself
light-heartedly to witness a play, he was seized and terrified to find
himself the principal actor. I never saw ghastlier fear on human
cheeks.

“For God’s sake, sir,” I cried, stamping my foot, “relax your cursed
spells! Relax them and leave us! This is a house of prayer.”

He put a hand under the girl’s chin, and, raising her face, made a pass
or two, still with the daisy-chain in his hand. She looked about her,
shivered and stood erect. “Where am I?” she asked. “Did I fall?
What are you doing with my chain?” She had relapsed into her habitual
childishness of look and speech.

I hurried them from the church, resolutely locked the door, and marched
up the path without deigning a glance at the young man. But I had not
gone fifty yards when he came running after.

“I entreat you, sir, to pardon me. I should have stopped the experiment
before. But I was startled–thrown off my balance. I am telling you
the truth, sir!”

“Very likely,” said I. “The like has happened to other rash meddlers
before you.”

“I declare to you I had no thought–” he began. But I interrupted him:

“‘No thought,’ indeed! I bring you here to resolve me, if you can, a
curious puzzle in archaeology, and you fall to playing devil’s pranks
upon a half-witted child. ‘No thought!’–I believe you, sir.”

“And yet,” he muttered, “it is an amazing business: the sand–the
velarium–the outstretched arm and hand–pollice compresso–the
exact gesture of the gladiatorial shows–”

“Are you telling me, pray, of gladiatorial shows under the Eastern
Empire?” I demanded scornfully.

“Certainly not: and that,” he mused, “only makes it the more amazing.”

“Now, look here,” said I, halting in the middle of the road, “I’ll hear
no more of it. Here is my gate, and there lies the highroad, on to
Porthlooe or back to Plymouth, as you please. I wish you good morning,
sir; and if it be any consolation to you, you have spoiled my digestion
for a week.”

I am bound to say the young man took his dismissal with grace.
He halted then and there and raised his hat; stood for a moment
pondering; and, turning on his heel, walked quickly off towards
Porthlooe.

It must have been a week before I learnt casually that he had obtained
employment there as secretary to a small company owning the Lord
Nelson and the Hand-in-hand privateers. His success, as you know,
was rapid; and naturally in a gossiping parish I heard about it–a
little here, a little there–in all a great deal. He had bought the
Providence schooner; he had acted as freighter for Minards’ men in
their last run with the Morning Star; he had slipped over to Cork and
brought home a Porthlooe prize illegally detained there; he was in
London, fighting a salvage case in the Admiralty Court; . . . Within
twelve months he was accountant of every trading company in Porthlooe,
and agent for receiving the moneys due to the Guernsey merchants.
In 1809, as you know, he opened his bank and issued notes of his own.
And a year later he acquired two of the best farms in the parish,
Tresawl and Killifreeth, and held the fee simple of the harbour and
quays.

During the first two years of his prosperity I saw little of the man.
We passed each other from time to time in the street of Porthlooe, and
he accosted me with a politeness to which, though distrusting him, I
felt bound to respond. But he never offered conversation, and our next
interview was wholly of my seeking.

One evening towards the close of his second year at Porthlooe, and about
the date of his purchase of the Providence schooner, I happened to be
walking homewards from a visit to a sick parishioner, when at Cove
Bottom, by the miller’s footbridge, I passed two figures–a man and a
woman standing there and conversing in the dusk. I could not help
recognising them; and halfway up the hill I came to a sudden resolution
and turned back.

“Mr. Laquedem,” said I, approaching them, “I put it to you, as a man of
education and decent feeling, is this quite honourable?”

“I believe, sir,” he answered courteously enough, “I can convince you
that it is. But clearly this is neither the time nor the place.”

“You must excuse me,” I went on, “but I have known Julia since she was a
child.”

To this he made an extraordinary answer. “No longer?” he asked; and
added, with a change of tone, “Had you not forbidden me the vicarage,
sir, I might have something to say to you.”

“If it concern the girl’s spiritual welfare–or yours–I shall be happy
to hear it.”

“In that case,” said he, “I will do myself the pleasure of calling upon
you–shall we say to-morrow evening?”

He was as good as his word. At nine o’clock next evening–about the
hour of his former visit–Frances ushered him into my parlour.
The similarity of circumstance may have suggested to me to draw the
comparison; at any rate I observed then for the first time that rapid
ageing of his features which afterwards became a matter of common
remark. The face was no longer that of the young man who had entered my
parlour two years before; already some streaks of grey showed in his
black locks, and he seemed even to move wearily.

“I fear you are unwell,” said I, offering a chair.

“I have reason to believe,” he answered, “that I am dying.” And then,
as I uttered some expression of dismay and concern, he cut me short.
“Oh, there will be no hurry about it! I mean, perhaps, no more than that
all men carry about with them the seeds of their mortality–so why not
I? But I came to talk of Julia Constantine, not of myself.”

“You may guess, Mr. Laquedem, that as her vicar, and having known her
and her affliction all her life, I take something of a fatherly interest
in the girl.”

“And having known her so long, do you not begin to observe some change
in her, of late?”

“Why, to be sure,” said I, “she seems brighter.”

He nodded. “I have done that; or rather, love has done it.”

“Be careful, sir!” I cried. “Be careful of what you are going to tell
me! If you have intended or wrought any harm to that girl, I tell you
solemnly–”

But he held up a hand. “Ah, sir, be charitable! I tell you solemnly
our love is not of that kind. We who have loved, and lost, and sought
each other, and loved again through centuries, have outlearned that
rougher passion. When she was a princess of Rome and I a Christian Jew
led forth to the lions–”

I stood up, grasping the back of my chair and staring. At last I knew.
This young man was stark mad.

He read my conviction at once. “I think, sir,” he went on, changing
his tone, “the learned antiquary to whom, as you told me, you were
sending your tracing of the plaque, has by this time replied with some
information about it.”

Relieved at this change of subject, I answered quietly (while
considering how best to get him out of the house), “My friend tells me
that a similar design is found in Landulph Church, on the tomb of
Theodore Paleologus, who died in 1636.”

“Precisely; of Theodore Paleologus, descendant of the Constantines.”

I began to grasp his insane meaning. “The race, so far as we know, is
extinct,” said I.

“The race of the Constantines,” said he slowly and composedly, “is never
extinct; and while it lasts, the soul of Julia Constantine will come to
birth again and know the soul of the Jew, until–”

I waited.

“–Until their love lifts the curse, and the Jew can die.”

“This is mere madness,” said I, my tongue blurting it out at length.

“I expected you to say no less. Now look you, sir–in a few minutes I
leave you, I walk home and spend an hour or two before bedtime in adding
figures, balancing accounts; to-morrow I rise and go about my daily
business cheerfully, methodically, always successfully. I am the
long-headed man, making money because I know how to make it, respected
by all, with no trace of madness in me. You, if you meet me to-morrow,
shall recognise none. Just now you are forced to believe me mad.
Believe it then; but listen while I tell you this:–When Rome was, I
was; when Constantinople was, I was. I was that Jew rescued from the
lions. It was I who sailed from the Bosphorus in that ship, with Julia
beside me; I from whom the Moorish pirates tore her, on the beach beside
Tetuan; I who, centuries after, drew those obscene figures on the wall
of your church–the devil, the nun, and the barred convent–when Julia,
another Julia but the same soul, was denied to me and forced into a
nunnery. For the frescoes, too, tell my history. I was that figure
in the dark habit, standing a little back from the cross. Tell me, sir,
did you never hear of Joseph Kartophilus, Pilate’s porter?”

I saw that I must humour him. “I have heard his legend,” said I;[1]
“and have understood that in time he became a Christian.”

He smiled wearily. “He has travelled through many creeds; but he has
never travelled beyond Love. And if that love can be purified of all
passion such as you suspect, he has not travelled beyond forgiveness.
Many times I have known her who shall save me in the end; and now in the
end I have found her and shall be able, at length, to die; have found
her, and with her all my dead loves, in the body of a girl whom you call
half-witted–and shall be able, at length, to die.”

And with this he bent over the table, and, resting his face on his arms,
sobbed aloud. I let him sob there for a while, and then touched his
shoulder gently.

He raised his head. “Ah,” said he, in a voice which answered the
gentleness of my touch, “you remind me!” And with that he deliberately
slipped his coat off his left arm and, rolling up the shirt sleeve,
bared the arm almost to the shoulder. “I want you close,” he added with
half a smile; for I have to confess that during the process I had backed
a couple of paces towards the door. He took up a candle, and held it
while I bent and examined the thin red line which ran like a circlet
around the flesh of the upper arm just below the apex of the deltoid
muscle. When I looked up I met his eyes challenging mine across the
flame.

“Mr. Laquedem,” I said, “my conviction is that you are possessed and are
being misled by a grievous hallucination. At the same time I am not
fool enough to deny that the union of flesh and spirit, so passing
mysterious in everyday life (when we pause to think of it), may easily
hold mysteries deeper yet. The Church Catholic, whose servant I am, has
never to my knowledge denied this; yet has providentially made a rule of
St. Paul’s advice to the Colossians against intruding into those things
which she hath not seen. In the matter of this extraordinary belief of
yours I can give you no such comfort as one honest man should offer to
another: for I do not share it. But in the more practical matter of
your conduct towards July Constantine, it may help you to know that I
have accepted your word and propose henceforward to trust you as a
gentleman.”

“I thank you, sir,” he said, as he slipped on his coat. “May I have
your hand on that?”

“With pleasure,” I answered, and, having shaken hands, conducted him to
the door.

From that day the affection between Joseph Laquedem and July
Constantine, and their frequent companionship, were open and avowed.
Scandal there was, to be sure; but as it blazed up like straw, so it
died down. Even the women feared to sharpen their tongues openly on
Laquedem, who by this time held the purse of the district, and to offend
whom might mean an empty skivet on Saturday night. July, to be sure,
was more tempting game; and one day her lover found her in the centre
of a knot of women fringed by a dozen children with open mouths and
ears. He stepped forward. “Ladies,” said he, “the difficulty which
vexes you cannot, I feel sure, be altogether good for your small sons
and daughters. Let me put an end to it.” He bent forward and
reverently took July’s hand. “My dear, it appears that the depth of my
respect for you will not be credited by these ladies unless I offer you
marriage. And as I am proud of it, so forgive me if I put it beyond
their doubt. Will you marry me?” July, blushing scarlet, covered her
face with her hands, but shook her head. There was no mistaking the
gesture: all the women saw it. “Condole with me, ladies!” said
Laquedem, lifting his hat and including them in an ironical bow; and
placing July’s arm in his, escorted her away.

I need not follow the history of their intimacy, of which I saw, indeed,
no more than my neighbours. On two points all accounts of it agree: the
rapid ageing of the man during this period and the improvement in the
poor girl’s intellect. Some profess to have remarked an equally
vehement heightening of her beauty; but, as my recollection serves me,
she had always been a handsome maid; and I set down the
transfiguration–if such it was–entirely to the dawn and growth of her
reason. To this I can add a curious scrap of evidence. I was walking
along the cliff track, one afternoon, between Porthlooe and Lanihale
church-town, when, a few yards ahead, I heard a man’s voice declaiming
in monotone some sentences which I could not catch; and rounding the
corner, came upon Laquedem and July. She was seated on a rock; and he,
on a patch of turf at her feet, held open a small volume which he laid
face downwards as he rose to greet me. I glanced at the back of the
book and saw it was a volume of Euripides. I made no comment, however,
on this small discovery; and whether he had indeed taught the girl some
Greek, or whether she merely listened for the sake of hearing his voice,
I am unable to say.

Let me come then to the last scene, of which I was one among many
spectators.

On the morning of August 15th, 1810, and just about daybreak, I was
awakened by the sound of horses’ hoofs coming down the road beyond the
vicarage gate. My ear told me at once that they were many riders and
moving at a trot; and a minute later the jingle of metal gave me an
inkling of the truth. I hurried to the window and pulled up the blind.
Day was breaking on a grey drizzle of fog which drove up from seaward,
and through this drizzle I caught sight of the last five or six scarlet
plumes of a troop of dragoons jogging down the hill past my bank of
laurels.

Now our parish had stood for some weeks in apprehension of a visit from
these gentry. The riding-officer, Mr. Luke, had threatened us with them
more than once. I knew, moreover, that a run of goods was contemplated:
and without questions of mine–it did not become a parish priest in
those days to know too much–it had reached my ears that Laquedem was
himself in Roscoff bargaining for the freight. But we had all learnt
confidence in him by this time–his increasing bodily weakness never
seemed to affect his cleverness and resource–and no doubt occurred to
me that he would contrive to checkmate this new move of the
riding-officer’s. Nevertheless, and partly I dare say out of curiosity,
to have a good look at the soldiers, I slipped on my clothes and hurried
downstairs and across the garden.

My hand was on the gate when I heard footsteps, and July Constantine
came running down the hill, her red cloak flapping and her hair powdered
with mist.

“Hullo!” said I, “nothing wrong, I hope?” She turned a white,
distraught face to me in the dawn.

“Yes, yes! All is wrong! I saw the soldiers coming–I heard them a
mile away, and sent up the rocket from the church-tower. But the lugger
stood in–they must have seen!–she stood in, and is right under Sheba
Point now–and he–”

I whistled. “This is serious. Let us run out towards the point; we–
you, I mean–may be in time to warn them yet.”

So we set off running together. The morning breeze had a cold edge on
it, but already the sun had begun to wrestle with the bank of sea-fog.
While we hurried along the cliffs the shoreward fringe of it was ripped
and rolled back like a tent-cloth, and through the rent I saw a broad
patch of the cove below; the sands (for the tide was at low ebb) shining
like silver; the dragoons with their greatcoats thrown back from their
scarlet breasts and their accoutrements flashing against the level rays.
Seaward, the lugger loomed through the weather; but there was a crowd of
men and black boats–half a score of them–by the water’s edge, and it
was clear to me at once that a forced run had been at least attempted.

I had pulled up, panting, on the verge of the cliff, when July caught me
by the arm.

“The sand!“

She pointed; and well I remember the gesture–the very gesture of the
hand in the fresco–the forefinger extended, the thumb shut within the
palm. “The sand . . . he told me . . .”

Her eyes were wide and fixed. She spoke, not excitedly at all, but
rather as one musing, much as she had answered Laquedem on the morning
when he waved the daisy-chain before her.

I heard an order shouted, high up the beach, and the dragoons came
charging down across the sand. There was a scuffle close by the water’s
edge; then, as the soldiers broke through the mob of free-traders and
wheeled their horses round, fetlock deep in the tide, I saw a figure
break from the crowd and run, but presently check himself and walk
composedly towards the cliff up which climbed the footpath leading to
Porthlooe. And above the hubbub of oaths and shouting, I heard a voice
crying distinctly, “Run, man! Tis after thee they are! Man, go
faster!“

Even then, had he gained the cliff-track, he might have escaped; for up
there no horseman could follow. But as a trooper came galloping in
pursuit, he turned deliberately. There was no defiance in his attitude;
of that I am sure. What followed must have been mere blundering
ferocity. I saw a jet of smoke, heard the sharp crack of a firearm, and
Joseph Laquedem flung up his arms and pitched forward at full length on
the sand.

The report woke the girl as with the stab of a knife. Her cry–it
pierces through my dreams at times–rang back with the echoes from the
rocks, and before they ceased she was halfway down the cliffside,
springing as surely as a goat, and, where she found no foothold,
clutching the grass, the rooted samphires and sea pinks, and sliding.
While my head swam with the sight of it, she was running across the
sands, was kneeling beside the body, had risen, and was staggering under
the weight of it down to the water’s edge.

“Stop her!” shouted Luke, the riding-officer. “We must have the man!
Dead or alive, we must have’n!”

She gained the nearest boat, the free-traders forming up around her, and
hustling the dragoons. It was old Solomon Tweedy’s boat, and he,
prudent man, had taken advantage of the skirmish to ease her off, so
that a push would set her afloat. He asserts that as July came up to
him she never uttered a word, but the look on her face said “Push me
off,” and though he was at that moment meditating his own escape, he
obeyed and pushed the boat off “like a mazed man.” I may add that he
spent three months in Bodmin Gaol for it.

She dropped with her burden against the stern sheets, but leapt up
instantly and had the oars between the thole-pins almost as the boat
floated. She pulled a dozen strokes, and hoisted the main-sail, pulled
a hundred or so, sprang forward and ran up the jib. All this while the
preventive men were straining to get off two boats in pursuit; but, as
you may guess, the free-traders did nothing to help and a great deal to
impede. And first the crews tumbled in too hurriedly, and had to climb
out again (looking very foolish) and push afresh, and then one of the
boats had mysteriously lost her plug and sank in half a fathom of water.
July had gained a full hundred yards’ offing before the pursuit began in
earnest, and this meant a good deal. Once clear of the point the small
cutter could defy their rowing and reach away to the eastward with the
wind just behind her beam. The riding-officer saw this, and ordered his
men to fire. They assert, and we must believe, that their object was
merely to disable the boat by cutting up her canvas.

Their first desultory volley did no damage. I stood there, high on the
cliff, and watched the boat, making a spy-glass of my hands. She had
fetched in close under the point, and gone about on the port tack–the
next would clear–when the first shot struck her, cutting a hole through
her jib, and I expected the wind to rip the sail up immediately; yet it
stood. The breeze being dead on-shore, the little boat heeled towards
us, her mainsail hiding the steerswoman.

It was a minute later, perhaps, that I began to suspect that July was
hit, for she allowed the jib to shake and seemed to be running right up
into the wind. The stern swung round and I strained my eyes to catch a
glimpse of her. At that moment a third volley rattled out, a bullet
shore through the peak halliards, and the mainsail came down with a run.
It was all over.

The preventive men cheered and pulled with a will. I saw them run
alongside, clamber into the cutter, and lift the fallen sail.

And that was all. There was no one on board, alive or dead. Whilst the
canvas hid her, in the swift two minutes between the boat’s putting
about and her running up into the wind, July Constantine must have
lifted her lover’s body overboard and followed it to the bottom of the
sea, There is no other explanation; and of the bond that knit these two
together there is, when I ask myself candidly, no explanation at all,
unless I give more credence than I have any wish to give to the wild
tale which Joseph Laquedem told me. I have told you the facts, my
friend, and leave them to your judgment.

[1] The legend is that as Christ left the judgment hall on His way to
Calvary, Kartophilus smote Him, saying, “Man, go quicker!” and was
answered, “I indeed go quickly; but thou shalt tarry till I come again.”

I

In the course of an eventful life John Penaluna did three very rash
things.

To begin with, at seventeen, he ran away to sea.

He had asked his father’s permission. But for fifty years the small
estate had been going from bad to worse. John’s grandfather in the
piping days of agriculture had drunk the profits and mortgaged
everything but the furniture. On his death, John’s father (who had
enlisted in a line regiment) came home with a broken knee-pan and a
motherless boy, and turned market-gardener in a desperate attempt to
rally the family fortunes. With capital he might have succeeded. But
market-gardening required labour; and he could neither afford to hire
it nor to spare the services of a growing lad who cost nothing but his
keep. So John’s request was not granted.

A week later, in the twilight of a May evening, John was digging
potatoes on the slope above the harbour, when he heard–away up the
first bend of the river–the crew of the Hannah Hands brigantine
singing as they weighed anchor. He listened for a minute, stuck his
visgy into the soil slipped on his coat, and trudged down to the
ferry-slip.

Two years passed without word of him. Then on a blue and sunny day
in October he emerged out of Atlantic fogs upon the Market Strand at
Falmouth: a strapping fellow with a brown and somewhat heavy face,
silver rings in his ears, and a suit of good sea-cloth on his back. He
travelled by van to Truro, and thence by coach to St. Austell. It was
Friday–market day; and in the market he found his father standing
sentry, upright as his lame leg allowed, grasping a specimen
apple-tree in either hand. John stepped up to him, took one of the
apple-trees, and stood sentry beside him. Nothing was said–not a
word until John found himself in the ramshackle market-cart, jogging
homewards. His father held the reins.

“How’s things at home?” John asked.

“Much as ever. Hester looks after me.”

Hester was John’s cousin, the only child of old Penaluna’s only
sister, and lately an orphan. John had never seen her.

“If I was you,” said he, “I’d have a try with borrowed capital. You
could raise a few hundreds easy. You’ll never do anything as you’m
going.”

“If I was you,” answered his father, “I’d keep my opinions till they
was asked for.”

And so John did, for three years; in the course of which it is to
be supposed he forgot them. When the old man died he inherited
everything; including the debts, of course. “He knows what I would
have him do by Hester,” said the will. It went on: “Also I will not
be buried in consicrated ground, but at the foot of the dufflin
apple-tree in the waste piece under King’s Walk, and the plainer the
better. In the swet of thy face shalt thou eat bread, amen. P.S.–John
knows the tree.”

But since by an oversight the will was not read until after the
funeral, this wish could not be carried out. John resolved to attend
to the other all the more scrupulously; and went straight from the
lawyer to the kitchen, where Hester stood by the window scouring a
copper pan.

“Look here,” he said, “the old man hasn’ left you nothing.”

“No?” said Hester. “Well, I didn’t expect anything.” And she went on
with her scouring.

“But he’ve a-left a pretty plain hint o’ what he wants me to do.”

He hesitated, searching the calm profile of her face. Hester’s face
was always calm, but her eyes sometimes terrified him. Everyone
allowed she had wonderful eyes, though no two people agreed about
their colour. As a matter of fact their colour was that of the sea,
and varied with the sea. And all her life through they were searching,
unceasingly searching, for she knew not what–something she never had
found, never would find. At times, when talking with you, she would
break off as though words were of no use to her, and her eyes had to
seek your soul on their own account. And in those silences your soul
had to render up the truth to her, though it could never be the truth
she sought. When at length her gaze relaxed and she remembered and
begged pardon (perhaps with a deprecatory laugh), you sighed; but
whether on her account or yours it was impossible to say.

John looked at her awkwardly, and drummed with one foot on the limeash
floor.

“He wanted you to marry me,” he blurted out. “I–I reckon I’ve wanted
that, too … oh, yes, for a long time!”

She put both hands behind her–one of them still grasped the
polishing-cloth–came over, and gazed long into his face.

“You mean it,” she said at length. “You are a good man. I like you. I
suppose I must.”

She turned–still with her hands behind her–walked to the window, and
stood pondering the harbour and the vessels at anchor and the rooks
flying westward. John would have followed and kissed her, but divined
that she wished nothing so little. So he backed towards the door, and
said–

“There’s nothing to wait for. ‘Twouldn’t do to be married from the
same house, I expect. I was thinking–any time that’s agreeable–if
you was to lodge across the harbour for awhile, with the
Mayows–Cherry Mayow’s a friend of yours–we could put up the banns
and all shipshape.”

He found himself outside the door, mopping his forehead.

This was the second rash thing that John Penaluna did.

II

It was Midsummer Eve, and a Saturday, when Hester knocked at the
Mayows’ green door on the Town Quay. The Mayows’ house hung over the
tideway, and the Touch-me-not schooner, home that day from Florida
with a cargo of pines, and warped alongside the quay, had her foreyard
braced aslant to avoid knocking a hole in the Mayows’ roof.

A Cheap Jack’s caravan stood at the edge of the quay. The Cheap Jack
was feasting inside on fried ham rasher among his clocks and mirrors
and pewter ware; and though it wanted an hour of dusk, his assistant
was already lighting the naphtha-lamps when Hester passed.

Steam issued from the Mayows’ doorway, which had a board across it
to keep the younger Mayows from straggling. A voice from the steam
invited her to come in. She climbed over the board, groped along the
dusky passage, pushed open a door and looked in on the kitchen, where,
amid clouds of vapour, Mrs. Mayow and her daughter Cherry were washing
the children. Each had a tub and a child in it; and three children,
already washed, skipped around the floor stark naked, one with a long
churchwarden pipe blowing bubbles which the other two pursued. In the
far corner, behind a deal table, sat Mr. Mayow, and patiently tuned a
fiddle–a quite hopeless task in that atmosphere.

“My gracious!” Mrs. Mayow exclaimed, rising from her knees; “if it
isn’t Hester already! Amelia, get out and dry yourself while I make a
cup of tea.”

Hester took a step forward, but paused at a sound of dismal bumping on
the staircase leading up from the passage.

“That’s Elizabeth Ann,” said Mrs. Mayow composedly, “or Heber, or
both. We shall know when they get to the bottom. My dear, you must be
perishing for a cup of tea. Oh, it’s Elizabeth Ann! Cherry, go and
smack her, and tell her what I’ll do if she falls downstairs again.
It’s all Matthew Henry’s fault.” Here she turned on the naked urchin
with the churchwarden pipe. “If he’d only been home to his time–”

“I was listening to Zeke Penhaligon,” said Matthew Henry (aged eight).
“He’s home to-day in the Touch-me-not.”

“He’s no good to King nor country,” said Mrs. Mayow.

“He was telling me about a man that got swallowed by a whale–”

“Go away with your Jonahses!” sneered one of his sisters.

“It wasn’t Jonah. This man’s name was Jones–Captain Jones, from
Dundee. A whale swallowed him; but, as it happened, the whale had
swallowed a cask just before, and the cask stuck in its stomach. So
whatever the whale swallowed after that went into the cask, and did
the whale no good. But Captain Jones had plenty to eat till he cut his
way out with a clasp-knife–”

“How could he?”

“That’s all you know. Zeke says he did. A whale always turns that way
up when he’s dying. So Captain Jones cut his way into daylight, when,
what does he see but a sail, not a mile away! He fell on his knees–”

“How could he, you silly? He’d have slipped.”

But at this point Cherry swept the family off to bed. Mrs. Mayow,
putting forth unexpected strength, carried the tubs out to the
back-yard, and poured the soapy water into the harbour. Hester, having
borrowed a touzer,[A] tucked up her sleeves and fell to tidying the
kitchen. Mr. Mayow went on tuning his fiddle. It was against his
principles to work on a Saturday night.

[Footnote A: Tout-serve, apron.]

“Your wife seems very strong,” observed Hester, with a shade of
reproach in her voice.

“Strong as a horse,” he assented cheerfully. “I call it wonnerful
after what she’ve a-gone through. ‘Twouldn’ surprise me, one o’ these
days, to hear she’d taken up a tub with the cheeld in it, and heaved
cheeld and all over the quay-door. She’s terrible absent in her mind.”

Mrs. Mayow came panting back with a kettleful of water, which she set
to boil; and, Cherry now reappearing with the report that all the
children were safe abed, the three women sat around the fire awaiting
their supper, and listening to the voice of the Cheap Jack without.

“We’ll step out and have a look at him by-and-by,” said Cherry.

“For my part,” Mrs. Mayow murmured, with her eyes on the fire, “I
never hear one of those fellers without wishing I had a million of
money. There’s so many little shiny pots and pans you could go on
buying for ever and ever, just like Heaven!”

She sighed as she poured the boiling water into the teapot. On
Saturday nights, when the children were packed off, a deep peace
always fell upon Mrs. Mayow, and she sighed until bed-time, building
castles in the air.

Their supper finished, the two girls left her to her musings and
stepped out to see the fun. The naphtha-lamps flared in Hester’s face,
and for a minute red wheels danced before her eyes, the din of a gong
battered on her ears, and vision and hearing were indistinguishably
blurred. A plank, like a diving-board, had been run out on trestles in
front of the caravan, and along this the assistant darted forwards and
backwards on a level with the shoulders of the good-humoured crowd,
his arms full of clocks, saucepans, china ornaments, mirrors, feather
brushes, teapots, sham jewellery. Sometimes he made pretence to slip,
recovered himself with a grin on the very point of scattering his
precious armfuls; and always when he did this the crowd laughed
uproariously. And all the while the Cheap Jack shouted or beat his
gong. Hester thought at first there were half-a-dozen Cheap Jacks at
least–he made such a noise, and the mirrors around his glittering
platform flashed forth so many reflections of him. Trade was always
brisk on Saturday night, and he might have kept the auction going
until eleven had he been minded. But he had come to stay for a
fortnight (much to the disgust of credit-giving tradesmen), and
cultivated eccentricity as a part of his charm. In the thickest of the
bidding he suddenly closed his sale.

“I’ve a weak chest,” he roared. “Even to make your fortunes–which is
my constant joy and endeavour, as you know–I mustn’t expose it too
much to the night air. Now I’ve a pianner here, but it’s not for sale.
And I’ve an assistant here–a bit worn, but he’s not for sale neither.
I got him for nothing, to start with–from the work’us” (comic protest
here from the assistant, and roars of laughter from the crowd)–”and I
taught him a lot o’ things, and among ‘em to play the pianner. So as
’tis Midsummer’s Eve, and I see some very nice-lookin’ young women a
tip-tapping their feet for it, and Mr. Mayow no further away than next
door, and able to play the fiddle to the life–what I say is, ladies
and gentlemen, let’s light up a fire and see if, with all their
reading and writing, the young folks have forgot how to dance!”

In the hubbub that followed, Cherry caught Hester by the arm and
whispered—

“Why I clean forgot ’twas Midsummer Eve! We’ll try our fortun’s
afterwards. Aw, no need to look puzzled–I’ll show ‘ee. Here, feyther,
feyther!…” Cherry ran down the passage and returned, haling forth
Mr. Mayow with his fiddle.

And then–as it seemed to Hester, in less than a minute–empty
packing-cases came flying from half-a-dozen doors–from the cooper’s,
the grocer’s, the ship-chandler’s, the china-shop, the fruit-shop, the
“ready-made outfitter’s,” and the Cheap Jack’s caravan; were seized
upon, broken up, the splinters piled in a heap, anointed with naphtha
and ignited almost before Mr. Mayow had time to mount an empty barrel,
tune his “A” string by the piano, and dash into the opening bars of
the Furry Dance. And almost before she knew it, Hester’s hands were
caught, and she found herself one of the ring swaying and leaping
round the blaze. Cherry held her left hand and an old waterman her
right. The swing of the crowd carried her off her feet, and she had
to leap with the best. By-and-by, as her feet fell into time with the
measure, she really began to enjoy it all–the music, the rush of the
cool night air against her temples, even the smell of naphtha and the
heat of the flames on her face as the dancers paused now and again,
dashed upon the fire as if to tread it out, and backed until
the strain on their arms grew tense again; and, just as it grew
unbearable, the circular leaping was renewed. Always in these pauses
the same face confronted her across the fire: the face of a young man
in a blue jersey and a peaked cap, a young man with crisp dark hair
and dark eyes, gay and challenging. In her daze it seemed to Hester
that, when they came face to face, he was always on the side of the
bonfire nearest the water; and the moon rose above the farther hill as
they danced, and swam over his shoulder, at each meeting higher and
higher.

It was all new to her and strange. The music ceased abruptly, the
dancers unclasped their hands and fell apart, laughing and panting.
And then, while yet she leaned against the Mayows’ door-post, the
fiddle broke out again–broke into a polka tune; and there, in front
of her stood the young man in the blue jersey and peaked cap.

He was speaking. She scarcely knew what she answered; but, even while
she wondered, she had taken his arm submissively. And, next, his arm
was about her and she was dancing. She had never danced before; but,
after one or two broken paces, her will surrendered to his, her body
and its movements answered him docilely. She felt that his eyes were
fixed on her forehead, but dared not look up. She saw nothing of the
crowd. Other dancers passed and re-passed like phantoms, neither
jostling nor even touching–so well her partner steered. She grew
giddy; her breath came short and fast. She would have begged for a
rest, but the sense of his mastery weighed on her–held her dumb.
Suddenly he laughed close to her ear, and his breath ruffled her hair.

“You dance fine,” he said. “Shall us cross the fire?”

She did not understand. In her giddiness they seemed to be moving in a
wide, empty space among many fires, nor had she an idea which was the
real one. His arm tightened about her.

“Now!” he whispered. With a leap they whirled high and across the
bonfire. Her feet had scarcely touched ground before they were off
again to the music–or would have been; but, to her immense surprise,
her partner had dropped on his knees before her and was clasping her
about the ankles. She heard a shout. The fire had caught the edge of
her skirt and her frock was burning.

It was over in a moment. His arms had stifled, extinguished the flame
before she knew of her danger. Still kneeling, holding her fast, he
looked up, and their eyes met. “Take me back,” she murmured, swaying.
He rose, took her arm, and she found herself in the Mayows’ doorway
with Cherry at her side. “Get away with you,” said Cherry, “and leave
her to me!” And the young man went.

Cherry fell to examining the damaged skirt. “It’s clean ruined,” she
reported; “but I reckon that don’t matter to a bride. John Penaluna’ll
not be grudging the outfit. I must say, though–you quiet ones!”

“What have I done?”

“Done? Well, that’s good. Only danced across the bonfire with young
Zeke Penhaligon. Why, mother can mind when that was every bit so good
as a marriage before parson and clerk!–and not so long ago neither.”

III

“You go upstairs backwards,” said Cherry an hour later. “It don’t
matter our going together, only you mustn’t speak a word for ever so.
You undress in the dark, and turn each thing inside out as you take
it off. Prayers? Yes, you can say your prayers if you like; but to
yourself, mind. ‘Twould be best to say ‘em backwards, I reckon; but I
never heard no instructions about prayers.”

“And then?”

“Why, then you go to sleep and dream of your sweetheart.”

“Oh! is that all?”

“Plenty enough, I should think! I dessay it don’t mean much to you;
but it means a lot to me, who han’t got a sweetheart yet an’ don’t
know if ever I shall have one.”

So the two girls solemnly mounted the stairs backwards, undressed in
the dark, and crept into bed. But Hester could not sleep. She lay for
an hour quite silent, motionless lest she should awake Cherry, with
eyes wide open, staring at a ray of moonlight on the ceiling, and from
that to the dimity window-curtains and the blind which waved ever so
gently in the night breeze. All the while she was thinking of the
dance; and by-and-by she sighed.

“Bain’t you asleep?” asked Cherry.

“No.”

“Nor I. Can’t sleep a wink. It’s they children overhead: they ‘m up to
some devilment, I know, because Matthew Henry isn’t snoring. He always
snores when he’s asleep, and it shakes the house. I’ll ha’ gone to
see, only I was afeard to disturb ‘ee. I’ll war’n’ they ‘m up to some
may-games on the roof.”

“Let me come with you,” said Hester.

They rose. Hester slipped on her dressing-gown, and Cherry an old
macintosh, and they stole up the creaking stairs.

“Oh, you anointed limbs!” exclaimed Cherry, coming to a halt on the
top.

The door of the children’s garret stood ajar. On the landing outside a
short ladder led up to a trapdoor in the eaves, and through the open
trapway a broad ray of moonlight streamed upon the staircase.

“That’s mother again! Now I know where Amelia got that cold in her
head. I’ll war’n’ the door hasn’t been locked since Tuesday!”

She climbed the ladder, with Hester at her heels. They emerged through
the trap upon a flat roof, where on Mondays Mrs. Mayow spread her
family “wash” to dry in the harbour breezes. Was that a part of the
“wash” now hanging in a row along the parapet?

No; those dusky white objects were the younger members of the Mayow
family leaning over the tideway, each with a stick and line–fishing
for conger Matthew Henry explained, as Cherry took him by the ear; but
Elizabeth Jane declared that, after four nights of it, she, for her
part, limited her hopes to shannies.

Cherry swept them together, and filed them indoors through the trap
in righteous wrath, taking her opportunity to box the ears of each.
“Come’st along, Hester.”

Hester was preparing to follow, when she heard a subdued laugh. It
seemed to come from the far side of the parapet, and below her. She
drew her dressing-gown close about her and leaned over.

She looked down upon a stout spar overhanging the tide, and thence
along a vessel’s deck, empty, glimmering in the moonlight; upon
mysterious coils of rope; upon the dew-wet roof of a deck-house; upon
a wheel twinkling with brass-work, and behind it a white-painted
taffrail. Her eyes were travelling forward to the bowsprit again,
when, close by the foremast, they were arrested, and she caught her
breath sharply.

There, with his naked feet on the bulwarks and one hand against the
house-wall, in the shadow of which he leaned out-board, stood a man.
His other hand grasped a short stick; and with it he was reaching
up to the window above him–her bedroom window. The window, she
remembered, was open at the bottom–an inch or two, no more. The man
slipped the end of his stick under the sash and prised it up quietly.
Next he raised himself on tiptoe, and thrust the stick a foot or so
through the opening; worked it slowly along the window-ledge, and
hesitated; then pulled with a light jerk, as an angler strikes a fish.
And Hester, holding her breath, saw the stick withdrawn, inch by inch;
and at the end of it a garment–her petticoat!

“How dare you!”

The thief whipped himself about, jumped back upon deck, and stood
smiling up at her, with the petticoat in his hand. It was the young
sailor she had danced with.

“How dare you? Oh, I’d be ashamed!”

“Midsummer Eve!” said he, and laughed.

“Give it up at once!” She dared not speak loudly, but felt herself
trembling with wrath.

“That’s not likely.” He unhitched it from the fish-hook he had spliced
to the end of his stick. “And after the trouble I’ve taken!”

“I’ll call your captain, and he’ll make you give it up.”

“The old man’s sleeping ashore, and won’t be down till nine in the
morning. I’m alone here.” He stepped to the fore-halliards. “Now I’ll
just hoist this up to the topmast head, and you’ll see what a pretty
flag it makes in the morning.”

“Oh, please…!”

He turned his back and began to bend the petticoat on the halliards.

“No, no … please … it’s cruel!”

He could hear that she was crying softly; hesitated, and faced round
again.

“There now … if it teases you so. There wasn’ no harm meant. You
shall have it back–wait a moment!”

He came forward and clambered out on the bowsprit, and from the
bowsprit to the jib-boom beneath her. She was horribly afraid he would
fall, and broke off her thanks to whisper him to be careful, at which
he laughed. Standing there, and holding by the fore-topmast stay, he
could just reach a hand up to the parapet, and was lifting it, but
paused.

“No,” said he, “I must have a kiss in exchange.”

“Please don’t talk like that. I thank you so much. Don’t spoil your
kindness.”

“You’ve spoilt my joke. See, I can hoist myself on the stay here. Bend
over as far as you can, I swear you shall have the petticoat at once,
but I won’t give it up without.”

“I can’t. I shall never think well of you again.”

“Oh, yes, you will. Bend lower.”

“Don’t!” she murmured, but the moonlight, refracted from the water
below, glimmered on her face as she leaned towards him.

“Lower! What queer eyes you’ve got. Do you know what it means to kiss
over running water?” His lips whispered it close to her ear. And with
that, as she bent, some treacherous pin gave way, and her loosely
knotted hair fell in dark masses across his face. She heard him laugh
as he kissed her in the tangled screen of it.

The next moment she had snatched the bundle and sprung to her feet and
away. But as she passed by the trapdoor and hurriedly retwisted her
hair before descending, she heard him there, beyond the parapet,
laughing still.

IV

Three weeks later she married John Penaluna. They spent their
honeymoon at home, as sober folks did in those days. John could spare
no time for holiday-making. He had entered on his duties as master of
Hall, and set with vigour about improving his inheritance. His first
step was to clear the long cliff-garden, which had been allowed to
drop out of cultivation from the day when he had cast down his mattock
there and run away to sea. It was a mere wilderness now. But he fell
to work like a navvy.

He fought it single-handed. He had no money hire extra labour, and
apparently had lost his old belief in borrowed capital, or perhaps had
grown timid with home-keeping. A single labourer–his father’s old
hind–managed the cows and the small farmstead. Hester superintended
the dairy and the housework, with one small servant-maid at her beck
and call. And John tackled the gardens, hiring a boy or two in the
fruit-picking season, or to carry water in times of drought. So they
lived for two years tranquilly. As for happiness–well, happiness
depends on what you expect. It was difficult to know how much John
Penaluna (never a demonstrative man) had expected.

As far as folks could judge, John and Hester were happy enough. Day
after day, from sunrise to sunset, he fought with Nature in his small
wilderness, and slowly won–hewing, digging, terracing, cultivating,
reclaiming plot after plot, and adding it to his conquests. The slope
was sunny but waterless, and within a year Hester could see that his
whole frame stooped with the constant rolling of barrels and carriage
of buckets and waterpots up and down the weary incline. It seemed to
her that the hill thirsted continually; that no sooner was its thirst
slaked than the weeds and brambles took fresh strength and must be
driven back with hook and hoe. A small wooden summer-house stood in
the upper angle of the cliff-garden. John’s father had set it there
twenty years before, and given it glazed windows; for it looked down
towards the harbour’s mouth and the open sea beyond. Before his death
the brambles grew close about it, and level with the roof, choking the
path to it and the view from it. John had spent the best part of a
fortnight in clearing the ground and opening up the view again. And
here, on warm afternoons when her house work was over, Hester usually
sat with her knitting. She could hear her husband at work on the
terraces below; the sound of his pick and mattock mingled with the
clank of windlasses or the tick-tack of shipwrights’ mallets, as she
knitted and watched the smoke of the little town across the water, the
knots of idlers on the quay, the children, like emmets, tumbling
in and out of the Mayows’ doorway, the ships passing out to sea or
entering the harbour and coming to their anchorage.

One afternoon in midsummer week John climbed to his wife’s
summer-house with a big cabbage-leaf in his hand, and within the
cabbage-leaf a dozen strawberries. (John’s strawberries were known by
this time for the finest in the neighbourhood.) He held his offering
in at the open window, and was saying he would step up to the house
for a dish of cream; but stopped short.

“Hullo!” said he; for Hester was staring at him rigidly, as white as a
ghost. “What’s wrong, my dear?” He glanced about him, but saw nothing
to account for her pallor–only the scorched hillside, alive with the
noise of grasshoppers, the hot air quivering above the bramble-bushes,
and beyond, a line of sunlight across the harbour’s mouth, and a
schooner with slack canvas crawling to anchor on the flood-tide.

“You–you came upon me sudden,” she explained.

“Stupid of me!” thought John; and going to the house, fetched not only
a dish of cream but the tea-caddy and a kettle, which they put to
boil outside the summer-house over a fire of dried brambles. The tea
revived Hester and set her tongue going. “‘Tis quite a picnic!” said
John, and told himself privately that it was the happiest hour they
had spent together for many a month.

Two evenings later, on his return from St. Austell market, he happened
to let himself in by the door of the walled garden just beneath the
house, and came on a tall young man talking there in the dusk with his
wife.

“Why, ’tis Zeke Penhaligon! How d’ee do, my lad? Now, ’tis queer, but
only five minutes a-gone I was talkin’ about ‘ee with your skipper,
Nummy Tangye, t’other side o’ the ferry. He says you’m goin’ up for
your mate’s certificate, and ought to get it. Very well he spoke of
‘ee. Why don’t Hester invite you inside? Come’st ‘long in to supper,
my son.”

Zeke followed them in, and this was the first of many visits. John was
one of those naturally friendly souls (there are many in the world)
who never go forth to seek friends, and to whom few friends ever come,
and these by accident. Zeke’s talk set his tongue running on his own
brief Wanderjahre. And Hester would sit and listen to the pair with
heightened colour, which made John wonder why, as a rule, she shunned
company–it did her so much good. So it grew to be a settled thing
that whenever the Touch-me-not entered port a knife and fork awaited
Zeke up at Hall, and the oftener he came the pleasanter was John’s
face.

V

Three years passed, and in the summer of the third year Captain Nummy
Tangye, of the Touch-me-not, relinquished his command. Captain
Tangye’s baptismal name was Matthias, and Bideford, in Devon, his
native town. But the Touch-me-not, which he had commanded for
thirty-five years, happened to carry for figurehead a wooden
Highlander holding a thistle close to his chest, and against his thigh
a scroll with the motto, Noli Me Tangere, and this being, in popular
belief, an effigy of the captain taken in the prime of life, Mr.
Tangye cheerfully accepted the fiction with its implication of
Scottish descent, and was known at home and in various out-of-the-way
parts of the world as Nolim or Nummy. He even carried about a small
volume of Burns in his pocket; not from any love of poetry, but to
demonstrate, when required, that Scotsmen have their own notions of
spelling.

Captain Tangye owned a preponderance of shares in the Touch-me-not,
and had no difficulty in getting Zeke (who now held a master’s
certificate) appointed to succeed him. The old man hauled ashore to a
cottage with a green door and a brass knocker and a garden high
over the water-side. In this he spent the most of his time with a
glittering brass telescope of uncommon length, and in the intervals of
studying the weather and the shipping, watched John Penaluna at work
across the harbour.

The Touch-me-not made two successful voyages under Zeke’s command,
and was home again and discharging beside the Town Quay, when, one
summer’s day, as John Penaluna leaned on his pitchfork beside a heap
of weeds arranged for burning he glanced up and saw Captain Tangye
hobbling painfully towards him across the slope. The old man had on
his best blue cut-away coat, and paused now and then to wipe his brow.

“I take this as very friendly,” said John.

Captain Tangye grunted. “P’rhaps ’tis, p’rhaps ’tisn’. Better wait a
bit afore you say it.”

“Stay and have a bit of dinner with me and the missus.”

“Dashed if I do! ‘Tis about her I came to tell ‘ee.”

“Yes?” John, being puzzled, smiled in a meaningless way.

“Zeke’s home agen.”

“Yes; he was up here two evenin’s ago.”

“He was here yesterday; he’ll be here again to-day. He comes here too
often. I’ve got a telescope, John Penaluna, and I sees what’s goin’
on. What’s more, I guess what’ll come of it. So I warn ‘ee–as a
friend, of course.”

John stared down at the polished steel teeth of his pitchfork,
glinting under the noonday sun.

“As a friend, of course,” he echoed vaguely, still with the
meaningless smile on his face.

“I b’lieve she means to be a good ‘ooman; but she’s listenin’ to
‘en. Now, I’ve got ‘en a ship up to Runcorn. He shan’t sail the
Touch-me-not no more. ‘Tis a catch for ‘en–a nice barquentine, five
hundred tons. If he decides to take the post (and I reckon he will) he
starts to-morrow at latest. Between this an’ then there’s danger, and
’tis for you to settle how to act.”

A long pause followed. The clock across the harbour struck noon, and
this seemed to wake John Penaluna up. “Thank ‘ee,” he said. “I think
I’ll be going in to dinner. I’ll–I’ll consider of it. You’ve took me
rather sudden.”

“Well, so long! I mean it friendly, of course.”

“Of course. Better take the lower path; ’tis shorter, an’ not so many
stones in it.”

John stared after him as he picked his way down the hill; then fell to
rearranging his heaps of dried rubbish in an aimless manner. He had
forgotten the dinner-hour. Something buzzed in his ears. There was no
wind on the slope, no sound in the air. The shipwrights had ceased
their hammering, and the harbour at his feet lay still as a lake. They
were memories, perhaps, that buzzed so swiftly past his ears–trivial
recollections by the hundred, all so little, and yet now immensely
significant.

“John, John!”

It was Hester, standing at the top of the slope and calling him. He
stuck his pitchfork in the ground, picked up his coat, and went slowly
in to dinner.

Next day, by all usage, he should have travelled in to market: but he
announced at breakfast that he was too busy, and would send Robert,
the hind in his stead. He watched his wife’s face as he said it. She
certainly changed colour, and yet she did not seem disappointed. The
look that sprang into those grey eyes of her was more like one of
relief, or, if not of relief, of a sudden hope suddenly snatched at;
but this was absurd, of course. It would not fit in with the situation
at all.

At dinner he said: “You’ll be up in the summer-house this afternoon? I
shouldn’t wonder if Zeke comes to say good-bye. Tangye says he’ve got
the offer of a new berth, up to Runcorn.”

“Yes, I know.”

If she wished, or struggled, to say more he did not seem to observe
it, but rose from his chair, stooped and kissed her on the forehead,
and resolutely marched out to his garden. He worked that afternoon in
a small patch which commanded a view of the ferry and also of the road
leading up to Hall: and at half-past three, or a few minutes later,
dropped his spade and strolled down to the edge of his property, a low
cliff overhanging the ferry-slip.

“Hullo, Zeke!”

Zeke, as he stepped out of the ferry-boat, looked with some confusion
on his face. He wore his best suit, with a bunch of sweet-william in
his button-hole.

“Come to bid us good-bye, I s’pose? We’ve heard of your luck. Here,
scramble up this way if you can manage, and shake hands on your
fortune.”

Zeke obeyed. The climb seemed to fluster him; but the afternoon was a
hot one, in spite of a light westerly breeze. The two men moved side
by side across the garden-slope, and as they did so John caught sight
of a twinkle of sunshine on Captain Tangye’s brass telescope across
the harbour.

They paused beside one of the heaps of rubbish. “This is a fine thing
for you, Zeke.”

“Ay, pretty fair.”

“I s’pose we sha’n't be seein’ much of you now. ‘Tis like an end of
old times. I reckoned we’d have a pipe together afore partin’.” John
pulled out a stumpy clay and filled it. “Got a match about you?”

Zeke passed him one, and he struck it on his boot. “There, now,” he
went on, “I meant to set a light to these here heaps of rubbish this
afternoon, and now I’ve come out without my matches.” He waited for
the sulphur to finish bubbling, and then began to puff.

Zeke handed him half-a-dozen matches.

“I dunno how many ’twill take,” said John. “S’pose we go round together
and light up. ‘Twont’ take us a quarter of an hour, an’ we can talk by
the way.”

Ten minutes later, Captain Tangye, across the harbour, shut his
telescope with an angry snap. The smoke of five-and-twenty bonfires
crawled up the hillside and completely hid John Penaluna’s garden–hid
the two figures standing there, hid the little summer-house at the top
of the slope. It was enough to make a man swear, and Captain Tangye
swore.

John Penaluna drew a long breath.

“Well, good-bye and bless ‘ee, Zeke. Hester’s up in the summer-house.
I won’t go up with ‘ee; my back’s too stiff. Go an’ make your adoos to
her; she’s cleverer than I be, and maybe will tell ‘ee what we’ve both
got in our minds.”

This was the third rash thing that John Penaluna did.

He watched Zeke up the hill, till the smoke hid him. Then he picked up
his spade. “Shall I find her, when I step home this evening? Please
God, yes.”

And he did. She was there by the supper-table? waiting for him. Her
eyes were red. John pretended to have dropped something, and went back
for a moment to look for it. When he returned, neither spoke.

VI

Years passed–many years. Their life ran on in its old groove.

John toiled from early morning to sunset, as before–and yet not quite
as before. There was a difference, and Captain Tangye would, no doubt,
have perceived it long before had not Death one day come on him in an
east wind and closed his activities with a snap, much as he had so
often closed his telescope.

For a year or two after Zeke’s departure, John went on enlarging his
garden-bounds, though more languidly. Then followed four or five years
during which his conquests seemed to stand still. And then little by
little, the brambles and wild growth rallied. Perhaps–who knows?–the
assaulted wilderness had found its Joan of Arc. At any rate, it stood
up to him at length, and pressed in upon him and drove him back. Year
by year, on one excuse or another, an outpost, a foot or two, would
be abandoned and left to be reclaimed by the weeds. They were the
assailants now. And there came a time when they had him at bay, a
beaten man, in a patch of not more than fifty square feet, the centre
of his former domain. “Time, not Corydon,” had conquered him.

He was working here one afternoon when a boy came up the lower path
from the ferry, and put a telegram into his hands. He read it over,
thought for a while, and turned to climb the old track towards the
summer-house, but brambles choked it completely, and he had to fetch a
circuit and strike the grass walk at the head of the slope.

He had not entered the summer-house for years, but he found Hester
knitting there as usual; and put the telegram into her hands.

“Zeke is drowned.” He paused and added–he could not help it–”You’ll
not need to be looking out to sea any more.”

Hester made as if to answer him, but rose instead and laid a hand on
his breast. It was a thin hand, and roughened with housework. With the
other she pointed to where the view had lain seaward. He turned. There
was no longer any view. The brambles hid it, and must have hidden it
for many years.

“Then what have you been thinkin’ of all these days?”

Her eyes filled; but she managed to say, “Of you, John.”

“It’s with you as with me. The weeds have us, every side, each in our
corner.” He looked at his hands, and with sudden resolution turned and
left her.

“Where are you going?”

“To fetch a hook. I’ll have that view open again before nightfall, or
my name’s not John Penaluna.”

A Story of 1644

I pray God to deal gently with my sister Margery Lantine; that the
blood of her twin-brother Mark, though it cry out, may not prevail
against her on the Day of Judgment.

We three were all the children of Ephraim Lantine, a widower, who
owned and farmed (as I do to-day) the little estate of Lawhibbet on
the right shore of the Fowey River, above the ford which crosses to
St. Veep. The whole of our ground slopes towards the river; as also
does the neighbour estate of Lantine, sometime in our family’s
possession, but now and for three generations past yielding us only
its name. Three miles below us the river opens into Fowey Harbour,
with Fowey town beside it and facing across upon the village of
Polruan, and a fort on either shore to guard the entrance. Three miles
above us lies Lostwithiel, a neat borough, by the bridge of which the
tidal water ceases. But the traffic between these two towns passes
behind us and out of sight, by the high-road which after climbing out
of Lostwithiel runs along a narrow neck of land dividing our valley
from Tywardreath Bay. This ridge comes to its highest and narrowest
just over the chimneys of Lawhibbet, and there the old Britons
once planted an earthwork overlooking the bay on one hand and the
river-passage on the other. Castle Dore is its name; a close of short
smooth turf set within two circular ramparts and two fosses choked
with brambles. Thither we children climbed, whether to be alone with
our games–for I do not suppose my father entered the earthwork twice
in a year, and no tillage ever disturbed it, though we possessed
a drawerful of coins ploughed up from time to time in the field
outside–or to watch the sails in the bay and the pack-horses jingling
along the ridge, which contracted until it came abreast of us and
at once began to widen towards Fowey and the coast; so that it came
natural to feign ourselves robbers sitting there in our fastness and
waiting to dash out upon the rich convoys as they passed under our
noses.

I talk as if we three had played this game with one mind. But indeed I
was six years younger than the others, and barely nine years old when
my brother Mark tired of it and left me, who hitherto had been his
obedient scout, to play at the game alone. For Margery turned to
follow Mark in this as in everything, although with her it had been
more earnest play. For him the fun began and ended with the ambush,
the supposed raid and its swashing deeds of valour; for her all these
were but incident to a scheme, long brooded on, by which we were to
amass plunder sufficient to buy back the family estate of Lantine with
all the consequence due to an ancient name in which the rest of us
forgot to feel any pride. But this was my sister Margery’s way; to
whom, as honour was her passion, so the very shadows of old repute,
dead loyalties, perished greatness, were idols to be worshipped. By a
ballad, a story of former daring or devotion, a word even, I have seen
her whole frame shaken and her eyes brimmed with bright tears; nay, I
have seen tears drop on her clasped hands, in our pew in St. Sampson’s
Church, with no more cause than old Parson Kendall’s stuttering
through the prayer for the King’s Majesty–and this long before the
late trouble had come to distract our country. She walked our fields
beside us, but in company with those who walked them no longer; when
she looked towards Lantine ’twas with an angry affection. In the
household she filled her dead mother’s place, and so wisely that we
all relied on her without thinking to wonder or admire; yet had we
stayed to think, we had confessed to ourselves that the love in which
her care for us was comprehended reached above any love we could repay
or even understand–that she walked a path apart from us, obedient to
a call we could not hear.

In her was born the spirit which sends men to die for a cause; but
since God had fashioned her a girl and condemned her to housework, she
took (as it were) her own hope in her hands and laid it all upon her
twin brother. They should have been one, not twain. He had the frame
to do, and for him she nourished the spirit to impel. With her own
high thoughts she clothed him her hero, and made him mine also. And
Mark took our homage enough, without doubting he deserved it. He was
in truth a fine fellow, tall, upright, and handsome, with the delicate
Lantine hands and a face in which you saw his father’s features
refined and freshly coloured to the model of the Lantine portraits
which hung in the best sitting-room to remind us of our lost glories.
For me, I take after my mother, who was a farmer’s daughter of no
lineage.

I remember well the Christmas Eve of 1643, when the call came for
Mark; a night very clear and crisp, with the stars making a brave show
against the broad moon, and a touch of frost against which we wrapped
ourselves warmly before the household sallied down to the great Parc
an Wollas orchard above the ford, to bless the apple-trees. My father
led the way as usual with his fowling-piece under his arm, Mark
following with another; after them staggered Lizzie Pascoe, the
serving maid, with the great bowl of lamb’s wool; Margery followed, I
at her side, and the men after us with their wives, each carrying a
cake or a roasted apple on a string. We halted as usual by the
bent tree in the centre of the orchard, and there, having hung our
offerings on the bough, formed a circle, took hands and chanted, while
Lizzie splashed cider against the trunk–

  "Here's to thee, old apple-tree
  Whence to bud and whence to blow,
  And whence to bear us apples enow--
    Hats full, packs full,
    Great bushel sacks full,
  And every one a pocket full--
  With hurrah! and fire off the gun!"

I remember the moment’s wait on the flint-lock and the flame and roar
of my father’s piece, shattering echoes across the dark water and far
up the creek where the herons roosted. And out of the echoes a voice
answered–a man’s voice hailing across the ford.

Mark took a torch, and, running down to the water’s edge, waved it
to guide the stranger over. By-and-by we caught sight of him, a
tall trooper on horseback with the moonlight and torchlight flaming
together on his steel morion and gorget. He picked his way carefully
to shore and up the bank and reined up his dripping horse in the midst
of us with a laugh.

“Hats full, pockets full, eh? Good-evenin’, naybours, and a merry
Christmas, and I’m sure I wish you may get it. Which of ‘ee may happen
to be Master Ephr’m Lantine?”

My father announced himself, and the trooper drew out a parchment and
handed it.

“‘Tisn’ no proper light here,” said my father, fumbling with the
packet, and not caring to own that he could not read. “Come to the
house, honest man, and we’ll talk it over; for thou’lt sleep with us,
no doubt?”

“Ay, and drink to your apple-trees too,” the trooper answered very
heartily. So my father led the way and we followed, Margery gripping
my hand tight, and the rest talking in loud whispers. They guessed
what the man’s business was.

An hour later, when the ashen faggot had been lit and the
cider-drinking and carolling were fairly started in the kitchen,
Margery packed me off to bed; and afterwards came and sat beside me
for a while, very silent, listening with me to the voices below.

“Where is Mark?” I asked, for I missed his clear tenor.

“In the parlour. He and father and the soldier are talking there.”

“Is Mark going to fight?”

She bent down, slipped an arm round my nee’ and caught me to her in a
sudden breathless hug.

“But he may be killed,” I objected.

“No, no; we must pray against that.” She said it confidently, and I
knew Margery had a firm belief that what was prayed for fitly must
be granted. “I will see to that, morning and evening: we will pray
together. But you must pray sometimes between whiles, when I am not by
to remind you–many times a day–promise me, Jack.”

I promised, and it made me feel better. Margery had a way of managing
things, a way which I had learned to trust. We said no more but
Good-night: in a little while she left me and I jumped out of bed and
punctually started to keep my new promise.

Next morning–Christmas Day–we all attended church together; that is
to say, all we of the family, for our guest chose rather to remain
in the parlour with the cider-mug. Parson Kendall preached to us at
length on Obedience and the authority delegated by God upon kings; and
working back to his text, which was I. Samuel, xvii. 42, wound up with
some particular commendation of “the young man to-day going forth from
amongst us”–which turned all heads towards the Lawhibbet pew and set
Mark blushing and me almost as shamefacedly, but Margery, after the
first flow of colour, turned towards her brother with bright proud
eyes.

That same afternoon between three and four o’clock–so suddenly was
all decided–Mark rode away from us on the young sorrel, and the
trooper beside him, to join the force Sir Bevill Grenvill was
collecting for Sir Ralph Hopton at Liskeard. To his father he said
good-bye at the yard-gate, but Margery and I walked beside the horses
to the ford and afterwards stood and watched their crossing, waving
many times as Mark turned and waved a hand back, and the red sun over
behind us blinked on the trooper’s cap and shoulder-piece. Just before
they disappeared we turned away together–for it is unlucky to watch
anyone out of sight–and I saw that Margery was trembling from head to
foot.

“But he will come back,” said I, to comfort her.

“Yes,” she answered, “he will come back.” With that she paused, and
broke forth, twisting her handkerchief, “Jack, if I were a man–” and
so checked herself.

“Why, you think more of the Cause than Mark does, I believe!” I put
in.

“Not more than Mark–not more than Mark! Jack, you mustn’t say that:
you mustn’t think it!”

“And a great deal more of our name,” I went on sturdily, disregarding
her tone, which I considered vehement beyond reason. “‘Tis a strange
thing to me, Margery, that of us three you should be the one to think
everything of the name of Lantine, who are a girl and must take
another when you marry.”

She halted and turned on me with more anger than I had ever seen on
her face. She even stamped her foot. “Never!” she said, and again
“Never!”

“Oh, well–” I began; but she had started walking rapidly, and
although I caught her up, not another word would she say to me until
we reached home.

For a year we saw no more of our brother, and received of him only two
letters (for he hated penwork), the both very cheerful. Yet within
a month of his going, on a still clear day in January, we listened
together to the noise of a pitched battle in which he was fighting, a
short six miles from us as the crow flies. I have often admired how
men who were happily born too late to witness the troubles of those
times will make their own pictures of warfare, as though it changed at
once the whole face of the country and tenour of folk’s lives; whereas
it would be raging two valleys away and men upon their own farms
ploughing to the tune of it, with nothing seen by them then or
afterwards; or it would leap suddenly across the hills, filling the
roads with cursing weary men, and roll by, leaving a sharp track of
ruin for the eye to follow and remember it by. So on this afternoon,
when Hopton and the Cornish troops were engaging and defeating Ruthen
on Braddock Down, Margery and I counted the rattles of musketry borne
down to us on the still reaches of the river and, climbing to the
earthwork past the field where old Will Retallack stuck to his
ploughing with an army of gulls following and wheeling about him as
usual, spied the smoke rolling over the edge of Boconnoc woodland to
the north-east; but never a soldier we saw that day or for months
after.

A little before the end of the day the rebel army broke and began to
roll back through Liskeard and towards the passes of the Tamar, and
Mark followed with his troops to Saltash, into Devonshire, and as far
as Chagford, where he rode by Mr. Sydney Godolphin in the skirmish
which gave that valiant young gentleman his mortal wound. Soon after
the whole of the King’s forces retired upon Tavistock, where a truce
was patched up between the opposing factions in the West. But this did
not release Mark, who was kept at duty on the border until May–when
the strife burst out again–and joined the pursuit after Stratton
Heath. Thereafter he fought at Lansdowne, and in the operations
against Bristol, and later in the same year, having won a cornetcy in
the King’s Horse, bore his part in the many brisk expeditions led by
Hopton through Dorsetshire and Hampshire into Sussex.

‘Twas from Worthing he came back to us a few days before Christmas,
and his mission was to beat up recruits for his troop in the season of
slackness before the Spring campaign. He had grown almost two inches,
his chest was fuller, his voice manly, and his handsome face not
spoiled (Margery declared it improved) by a scar across the cheek, won
in a raid upon Poole. He had borne himself gallantly, and our prayers
had prevailed with God to save him from serious hurt even in the
furious charge at Lansdowne, when of two thousand horse no more than
six hundred reached the crest of the hill. He greeted us all lovingly
and made no disguise of his joy to be at home again, though but on a
short furlough.

And yet even on the first happy evening, when we walked up through the
dusk together to the old earthwork, and he told us the first chapter
of his adventures, I seemed to see, or rather to feel, that our
brother was not wholly a better man for his campaigning. To be sure,
a soldier must be allowed an oath or two; but Mark slipped out one
before his sister which took me like a slap across the cheek. He bit
his lip the moment it was out, and talked rapidly and at random for a
while, with a dark flush on his face. Margery pretended that she
had not heard, and for the rest he told his story with a manly
carelessness which became him. Once only, when he described the entry
of the troops into Bristol and their behaviour there–while Margery
turned her eyes aside for a moment, that were dim for the death of
Slanning and Trevanion–he came to a pause with a grin that invited me
to be knowing beyond my years. The old Mark would never have looked at
me with that meaning.

On the whole he behaved well, and took Margery’s adoration with great
patience. He had the wit to wish to fall nothing in her eyes. His new
and earthlier view of war, as a game with coarse rewards, he confided
to me; and this not in words but in a smile now and then and a general
air when safe from his sister’s eyes, of being passably amused by her
high-fangled nonsense. His business of beating up recruits took him
away from us for days together; and we missed him on Christmas Eve
when we christened the apple-trees as usual. It was I who discovered
and kept it from Margery–who supposed him as far away as St. Austell,
and tried to find that distance a sufficient excuse–that he had spent
the night a bare mile away, hobnobbing with the owner of Lantine, a
rich man who had used to look down on our family but thought it worth
while to make friends with this promising young soldier.

“And I mean to be equal with him and his likes,” said Mark to me
afterwards by way of excuse. “A man may rise by soldiering as by any
other calling–and quicker too, perhaps, in these days.”

The same thought clearly was running in his head a week later, when he
took leave of us once more by the ford.

“Come back to us, Mark!” Margery wept this time, with her arms about
his neck.

“Ay, sweetheart, and with an estate in my pocket.”

“Ah, forget that old folly! Come back with body safe and honour
bright, and God may take the rest.”

He slapped his pocket with a laugh as he shook up the reins.

Then followed five quiet anxious months. ‘Twas not until early in
June that, by an express from Ashburton in Devon, we heard that our
brother’s fortune was still rising, he having succeeded to the command
of his company made vacant by the wounding of Captain Sir Harry
Welcome. “And this is no mean achievement for a poor yeoman’s son,” he
wrote, “in an army where promotion goes as a rule to them that have
estates to pawn. But I hope in these days some few may serve his
Majesty and yet prosper, and that my dear Margery may yet have her
wish and be mistress in Lantine.” Margery read this letter and knit
her brow thoughtfully. “It was like Mark to think of writing so,” said
she; “but I have not thought of Lantine for this many a day.”

“And he might have left thinking of it,” said I, “until these troubles
are over and the King’s peace established.”

“Tut,” she answered smiling, “he does not think of it but only to
please me. ‘Tis his way to speak what comes to his tongue to give us
pleasure.”

“For all that, he need not have misjudged us,” I grumbled; and then
was sorry for the pain with which she looked at me.

“It is you, Jack, who misjudged!” She spoke it sharply. We still
prayed together for our brother twice a day; but she knew–and either
dared not or cared not to ask why–that since his first home-coming
my love had cooled towards him. Very likely she believed me to be
jealous.

The hay-harvest found and passed us in peace, and the wheat was near
ripe, when, towards the close of July, rumours came to us of an army
marching towards Cornwall under command of the Earl of Essex; by
persuasion (it was said) of the Lord Robarts, whose seat of Lanhydrock
lies on our bank of the river about three miles above Lostwithiel,
facing the Lord Mohun’s house of Boconnoc across the valley. My Lord
Mohun, after some wavering at first, had cast in his fortune with
the King’s party, to which belonged well nigh all the gentry of our
neighbourhood; and had done so in good time for his reputation. But
the Lord Robarts was an obstinate clever man who chose the other side
and stuck to it in despite of first misfortunes. We guessed therefore
that if the Parliamentarians came by his invitation they would not
neglect a district on which he staked so much for mastery; and sure
enough, about July 25th, we heard that Essex had reached Bodmin with
the mass of his forces, Sir Richard Grenvill having retired before him
and moved hastily with the Queen’s troop to Truro. After this, Margery
and I used to climb every morning to the earthwork and spy all the
country round for signs of the hated troopers. Yet day passed after
day with nought to be seen, and little to be heard but further
rumours, of which the most constant said that the King himself was
following Essex with an army, and had already seized and crossed the
passes of the Tamar.

‘Twas on the 2nd of August that the bolt fell; when after mounting
the slope at daybreak with nothing to warn us, we stepped through the
dykes into the old camp. A heavy dew hung in beads on the brambles,
and at the second dyke I had turned and was holding aside a brier to
let Margery pass, when a short cry from her fetched me right-about and
staring into the face of a tall soldier grinning at us over the bank.
In the enclosure behind him (as we saw through a gap) were a number of
men in mud-coloured jerkins, quietly mounting a couple of cannon.

“Good morning!” said the soldier amiably, with an up-country twang in
his voice, “Good-morning, my pretty dears! And if you come from the
farm below, what may be the name of it?”

“Lawhibbet,” I answered, seeing that Margery closed her lips tight.

“Ay, Lawhibbet; that’s the name I was told.” He nodded in the
friendliest manner.

“Are you the rebels?” I blurted out, while Margery gripped my arm; but
this boldness only fetched a laugh from the big man.

“Some of ‘em,” said he; “though you’ll have to unlearn that name, my
young whipstercock, seein’ we’re here to stay for a while. The Earl
marched down into Fowey last night while you were asleep, and is down
there now making it right and tight. Do you ever play at blind-man’s
buff in these parts?”

Three or four soldiers had gathered behind him by this, and were
staring down on us. One of them blew a clumsy kiss to Margery.

“Do you mean the child’s game?” I asked, wondering whatever he could
be driving at.

“I do; but perhaps, sir, you are too old to remember it.” He winked
at the men and they guffawed. “It begins, ‘How many horses has your
father got?’ ‘Six,’ says you; ‘black, red, and grey’–or that’s the
number according to our instructions. ‘Very good then,’ says we; ‘turn
round three times and catch which you may.’ And the moral is, don’t be
surprised if you find the stable empty when you get home. There’s a
detachment gone to attend to it after seizing the ford below; hungry
men, all of them. No doubt they’ll be visiting the bacon-rack after
the stable, and if missy knows where to pick up the new-laid eggs she
might put a score aside for us poor artillerymen.”

We turned from them and hurried down the slope. “Rebels!” said Margery
once, under her breath; but the blow had stunned us and we could not
talk. In the stable yard we found, as the artillerymen had promised,
a company of soldiers leading out the horses, and my father watching
them with that patient look which never deserted him. He turned to
Margery–

“Go into the kitchen, my dear. They will want food next, and we have
to do what we can. They have been civil, and promise to pay for all
they take. I do not think they will show any roughness.”

Margery obeyed with a set face. For the next hour she and Lizzie were
busy in the kitchen, frying ham and eggs, boiling great pans of milk,
cutting up all the bread of the last baking, and heating the oven for
a fresh batch. The men, I am bound to say, took their food civilly,
that morning and afterwards; and for a fortnight at least they paid
reasonably for all they took. For several days I hung closer about
the ingle than ever I had done in my life; not that a boy of fourteen
could be any protection to the women-folk, but to be ready at least to
give an alarm should insult be offered. But we had to do with decent
men, who showed themselves friendly not only in the house but in their
camp down by the ford, whither, after the first morning, Lizzie and
I trudged it twice a day with baskets of provisions. Lizzie indeed
talked freely with them, but I held my tongue and glowered (I dare
say) in my foolish hate. Margery kept to the house.

‘Twas, I think, on August 15th that the first hope of release came to
us, by the King’s troops seizing the ford-head across the river; and
this happened as suddenly as our first surprise. Lizzie and I were
carrying down our baskets at four o’clock that day, when we heard a
sound of musketry on the St. Veep shore and on top of it a bugle twice
blown. Running to the top of a knoll from which the river spread in
view, I saw some rebels of our detachment splashing out from shore in
a hurry. The leaders reached mid-stream or thereabouts, and paused.
Doubtless they could see better than I what was happening; for after
they had stood there a couple of minutes, holding their fire–the
musketry on the St. Veep bank continuing all the while–some twenty
men came running out of the woods there and fled across towards us,
many bullets splashing into the water behind them. They reached their
comrades in the river-bed, and the whole body stood irresolute, facing
the shore where nothing showed but a glint of steel here and there
between the trees. Thus for ten further minutes, perhaps, they
hesitated; then turned and came sullenly back across the rising water.
In this manner the royal troops won the ford-head, and kept it; for
although the two cannon opened fire that evening from the earthwork
above us, and dropped many balls among the trees, they did not
dislodge the regiment (Colonel Lloyd’s) which lay there and held one
of the few passes by which the rebels could break away.

For–albeit I knew nothing of this at the time–by withdrawing his
headquarters to Lostwithiel and holding our narrow ridge with Fowey at
the end of it seaward, the Earl had led his army into a trap, and
one which his Majesty was now fast closing. Already he had drawn his
troops across the river-meadows above Lostwithiel; and, whatever help
the Earl might have hoped to fetch from the sea at his base, he was
there prevented by the quickness of Sir Jacob Astley in seizing a
fort on the other side of the harbour’s mouth as well as a battery
commanding the town from that shore, and in flinging a hundred men
into each, who easily beat off all ships from entering. From this
comfortable sea-entrance then Essex perforce turned for his stores to
Twyardreath Bay on the western side of the ridge, where he landed a
couple of cargoes at the mouth of the little river Par; but on the
25th the Prince Maurice sent down 2,000 horse and 1,000 foot, and
after sharp skirmishing blocked this inlet also. So now we had the
whole rebel army cooped around us and along the two sides of the
ridge, trampling our harvest and eating our larders bare, with no
prospect but a surrender; which yet the Earl refused, although his
Majesty thrice offered to treat with him.

This (I say) was the position, though we at Lawhibbet knew not how
desperate ’twas for the rebels our guests; only that our food was
pinched to short rations of bread and that payment had ceased, though
the sergeants still gave vouchers duly for the little we could supply.
The battery above us kept silence day after day, save twice when the
Royalists made a brief show of forcing the pass; but at intervals each
day we would hear a brisk play of artillery a little higher up the
stream, where they had planted a fort on the high ground by St.
Nectan’s Chapel, to pound at Lostwithiel in the valley. For my part I
could have pitied the rebels, so worn they were with weeks of hunger
and watching, to which the weather added another misery, turning at
the close of the month to steady rain with heavy fogs covering land
and sea, and no wind to disperse them. Margery had no pity; but I
believed would have starved cheerfully–if that could have helped–to
see these poor sodden wretches in worse plight.

I think ’twas on the morning of the 28th that the Royalists across the
ford showed a flag of truce; which having been answered, a small party
of horse came riding over, the leader with a letter for the Earl of
Essex which he was suffered to carry to Fowey, riding thither in the
midst of an escort of six and leaving his own men behind on the near
side of the ford.

While they waited by their horses I drew near to one of them and asked
him if he knew aught of my brother, Captain Mark Lantine. He answered,
after eyeing me sharply, that he knew my brother well–a very gallant
officer, now serving with the Earl of Cleveland’s brigade.

“That will be on the slope beneath Boconnoc,” said I.

“How know you that?” he asked briskly, and I was telling him that the
dispositions of the Royal troops were no secret to the rebels
(warning of all fresh movements being brought daily to the ford from
Lostwithiel), when a sergeant interrupted and, forbidding any further
converse, packed me off homeward, yet not unkindly.

For what came of this talk Margery–to whom I reported it that same
evening–must bear the credit. For two days she brooded over it,
keeping silence even beyond her wont, and then on the night of the
30th, at nine o’clock, when I was scarce abed, she tapped at my door
and bade me arise and dress myself. She had an expedition to propose,
no less than that we should cross the river and pay Mark a visit in
his quarters.

Her boldness took away my breath: yet as she whispered her plan it did
not seem impossible or, bating the chance of being shot by a stray
outpost, so very dangerous. A heavy fog lay over the hills, as it
had lain for nights. The tide was flowing. My father’s boat had been
dragged ashore and lay bottom upwards under a cliff about three
hundred yards above the ford. If we could reach and right it without
being discovered, either one of us was clever enough, with an oar over
the stern, to scull noiselessly across to the entrance of a creek
where the current would take us up towards Boconnoc between banks held
on either side by Royalists; to whom, if they surprised us, we could
tell our business.

The plan (I say) was a promising one. It miscarried only after we had
righted the boat and were dragging it across the strip of shingle
between the meadow bank and the water’s edge. A quick-eared sentry
caught the sound and challenged at two gunshots’ distance. I had the
boat’s nose afloat as I heard his feet stumbling over the uneven
foreshore: but the paddles and even the bottom-boards were lying on
the beach behind us. There was no help for it. Margery stepped on
board swiftly and silently, and I pushed well out into the stream,
following until the water rose to my middle and so standing while
the fellow challenged again. For a minute we kept mute as mice. The
footsteps hesitated and came to a halt by the water’s edge a full
twenty yards below, and I guessed that the fog had blurred for him the
distance as well as the direction of the sound. Very quietly I heaved
myself over the stern and into the boat, which swung broadside to
the current and so was borne up and beyond danger from him. But the
mischief was, we were drifting up the main channel which ended in the
Lostwithiel marshes and must pretty certainly lead us into the enemy’s
hands, unless before striking the moors below the town we could by
some means push across to the farther bank. We leaned over, dipped our
arms in the water, and with the least possible noise began to paddle.
Even in the darkness the tall banks were familiar, and between skill
and good fortune we came to shore on the left bank below a coppice and
just within sight of the town lights. Between us and them lay a broad
marsh-land through which the river wound, and along the edge of which,
under the trees skirting this shore, we started at a timorous run,
pulling up now and again to listen.

So we had come abreast of the town without challenge, when the
sky almost on a sudden grew lighter, and we saw the church spire
glimmering and the weather-cock above it, and knew that the moon had
risen over the woodland in the shadow of which we crouched. And with
that Margery glanced back and plucked at my arm.

The moor we had skirted was full of horsemen, drawn up in rank and
motionless. They loomed through the river fog like giants–rank behind
rank, each man stiff and upright and silent in his saddle–as it were
a vale full of mounted ghosts awaiting the dreadful trumpet, and in my
terror I forgot to tremble at the nearness of our escape (for we had
all but blundered into them). But while I stared, and the wreaths of
fog hid and again disclosed them, I heard Margery’s whisper–

“They are escaping to-night. It can only be by the bridge and across
Boconnoc downs. If we can win to Mark and warn him!”

She drew me off into the wood at a sharp angle, and we began to climb
beneath the branches. They dripped on us, soaking us to the skin; but
this we scarcely felt. We knew that we must be moving along the narrow
interval between the two lines of outposts. Beneath us, in the centre
of a basin of fog, a cluster of lights marked Lostwithiel: above, the
moon and the glow of Royalist camp-fires threw up the outline of the
ridge. Alongside of this we kept, and a little below it, crossing the
high-road which leads east from Lostwithiel bridge, and, beyond that,
advancing more boldly under the lee of a hedge beside a by-road which
curves towards the brow of Boconnoc downs. I began to find it strange
that, for all our secrecy, no one challenged us here. At a bend of the
lane, we came in view of a solitary cottage with one window lit and
blurring its light on the mist. We crept close, still on the far side
of the hedge, and, parting the bushes, peered at it.

It must be here or hereabouts (by all information) that the Earl of
Cleveland kept his quarters. The light shone into our eyes through a
drawn blind which told nothing; and Margery was dragging me forward to
knock at the door when it opened and two men stepped quickly across
the threshold and passed down the lane. They crossed the bar of light
swiftly and were gone into the dark; and they trod softly–so softly
that we listened in vain for their footfalls.

Then, almost before I knew it, Margery had dragged me across a gap in
the hedge and was rapping at the cottage door. No one answered. She
lifted the latch and entered, I at her heels. The kitchen–an ordinary
cottage kitchen–was empty A guttered candle stood on the table to the
right, and beside it lay a feathered cap. Margery stepped toward this
and had scarce time to touch the brim of it before a voice hailed us
in the doorway behind my shoulder.

“Hullo!”

It was our brother Mark.

“Well, of all–” he began, and came to a stop; his face white as a
sheet, as well it might be.

Margery rounded upon him. She must have been surprised, but she began
without explanation running to him and kissing him swiftly–

“Mark–dear Mark, we have news for thee, instant news! Sure, Heaven
directed us to-night that you should be the first to hear it. Mark,
we passed the rebel cavalry in the valley, and for certain they will
attempt to break through to-night.”

“Yes, yes,” said he peevishly, pulling at an end of his long
love-locks, “we have had that scare often enough, these last few
nights.”

“But we passed them close–saw them plainly in rank below Lostwithiel
bridge, and every man in saddle. Even now they will be moving–”

Mark swung about and passed out at the open door. He had not returned
Margery’s kiss. “I must be off, then, to visit my videttes,” said he
quickly, and then paused as if considering. “For you, the cottage here
will not be safe: it stands close beside the line of march and I must
get down a company of musketeers. You had best follow me–” he took a
step and paused again: “No, there will not be time.”

“Tell us in what direction to go and we will fend for ourselves and
leave you free.”

“Through the garden, then, at the back and into the woods–the fence
has a gap and from it a path leads up to a quarry among the trees; you
cannot miss. The quarry is full of brambles–good hiding, in case we
have trouble. No cavalryman will win so far, you may be sure.”

Margery gathered her skirts about her, and we stole out into the
darkness. At the door she turned up her face to Mark. “Kiss me, my
brother.” He kissed her, and breaking away (as I thought) with a low
groan, strode from us up the lane.

“Now why should he go up the lane?” mused Margery: and I too wondered.
For the first alarm must needs come from the lower end towards which
he had been walking with his other visitor, when we first spied on the
cottage through the bushes.

But ’twas not for us to guess how the troops were disposed or where
the outposts lay. We made our escape through the little garden, and,
blundering along the woodland path behind it, came at length to a
thicket of brambles over which hung the scarp of the quarry with a
fringe of trees above it pitch-black against the foggy moonlight. Here
on the soaked ground I found a clear space and a tumbled stone or two,
on which we crouched together, sleepless and intently listening.

For an hour we heard no sound. Then the valley towards Lostwithiel
shook with a dull explosion, which puzzled us a great deal. (But the
meaning, I have since learnt was this:–Two prisoners in the church
there had contrived to climb up into the steeple and, pulling the
ladder after them, jeered down upon the rebels’ Provost Marshal, who
was now preparing for a night retreat of the Infantry upon Fowey and
in a hurry to be gone. “I’ll fetch you down,” said he, and with a
barrel of powder blew most of the slates off the roof but without
harming the defiant pair who were found still perched on the steeple
next morning.)

After this the hours passed without sound. It seemed incredible, this
silence in the ring of wakeful outposts. Margery shivered now and
again, and I knew that her eyes were open, though she said nothing.
For me, towards morning, I dropped into a doze, and woke to the
tightening of her hand upon my arm.

“Hist!”

I listened with her. The sky had grown grey about us, and up through
the dripping trees came a soft and regular footfall, as of a body
of horse moving past. “It will be Mark’s troop,” I whispered, and
listened again. It seemed to me that the noise moved away to our right
instead of towards Lostwithiel. A quick suspicion took me then: I
scaled the right-hand side of the quarry at a run, burst through the
fringe of pines, and came out suddenly upon a knoll in full view of
the down. The first gleam of sunshine was breaking over this slope,
and towards it at an easy trot rode the whole body of rebel cavalry,
in number above a thousand.

“Escaped!”

While I stood and stared, Margery caught up with me. We looked into
each other’s face. Then without a word she went from me. I lingered
there for perhaps ten minutes; for now, from behind the trees above, a
squadron of Royalist horse charged across the slope at a gallop. They
were less than four hundred, however, and as the rebel rearguard
turned to face them, drew rein and exchanged but a few harmless shots.
I watched the host as it wound slowly over the crest with its pursuers
hanging sullenly at heel: then I turned and descended in search of
Margery. As I reached the gap in the hedge, Mark entered the garden by
the little gate opposite. He came hastily, but halted as if shot, with
his hand on the gatepost to steady him–yet not at sight of me. I
looked across the gap into the garden between us. Beside a heap
of freshly turned mould, with her back to the currant-bush, stood
Margery, her hands stained with soil; and on the ground before her lay
a small chest with its lid open.

I lifted my eyes from the glinting coins and sought Mark’s gaze: but
it was fastened on Margery, who walked slowly forward and straight up
to him. Though he shrank, he could not retreat. She went to him, I
following a pace behind. She put out a hand and touched the pistol in
his sling.

“Redeem.” The voice was Margery’s and yet not hers. “Redeem,” she
repeated–”not Lantine.”

With a groan he ran round the gable of the cottage. A moment later we
heard the gallop of his horse down the lane.

At seven o’clock that morning the King’s forlorn hope of foot, in
number about 1,000, entered Lostwithiel after a smart skirmish with
the rebel rearguard at the bridge; and not long after, the rebel
reserve of foot, perceiving their comrades giving ground and being
themselves galled by two or three pieces of cannon which began to play
upon them from the captured leaguer, moved away from the hill they had
been holding: so that now we had the whole force falling back towards
Fowey along the ridge, with our forlorn hope following in chase from
field to field.

Before eight the King himself with two troops of horse (one of them my
brother’s) passed over a ford a little to the south of the town, with
intent to catch this movement in flank: and there, by the ford’s edge,
I believe, took a cartload of muskets with five abandoned pieces, two
of them very long guns. The river being too deep, with a rising tide,
for Margery to wade, we made our crossing by the bridge, where the
fighting had been, but where there was now no soldiery, only a many
dead bodies, some huddled into the coigns of the parapet, more laid
out upon a patch of turf at the bridge end, the mud caked on their
faces. It made me shiver to see: but my sister went by with scarce a
glance and, once past the river, caught my hand and set off running
after the troops.

The beginning of the retreat had been brisk enough–so brisk that it
outpaced his Majesty’s movement in flank: who, breasting the hill with
his cavalry (after some minutes lost at the ford in collecting the
cannon and muskets which might well have been gleaned later) found
himself, if anything, in the rear of his victorious footmen. But after
two miles, coming to that part of the ridge where it narrows above
Lawhibbet, and in view of our old earthwork which was yet pretty
strongly held by their artillery, the enemy made a more forcible
resistance, fighting the several hedges and, even when dislodged,
holding them with a hot skirmishing fire while the main body found the
next cover. By these checks we two, who had lost ground at the start,
now regained it fast; and by and by (towards ten o’clock as I guess)
were forced to pick our way under shelter of the hedges, to avoid
the enemy’s bullets and espial by any of the King’s men, who would
doubtless have cursed and driven us back out of the way of danger.

It was Margery who bethought her here of a sunken cart-road descending
along the right of the ridge and crossed on its way by another which
would lead us to the summit again and within two gunshots of the great
earthwork. By following these two roads we might outflank the soldiery
while keeping the crown of the ridge between us; for the fighting
still followed along the left-hand slope, above the river.

This way, to be sure, was reasonably safe for a while; but must lead
us out, if we persisted, into close danger–perhaps into the very
interval between the fighting lines, and if at the rebels’ rear, then
certainly between them and their artillery on the earthwork. As we ran
I tried to prove this to Margery. She would not listen: indeed I
doubt that she heard me. “He must,” “he must,” she kept saying: and I
thought sure she had taken leave of her wits.

It happened as I warned her. The second cart-track, mounting from the
valley bottom, led us up to the high road on the ridge; and there,
peering out cautiously, I spied the backs of a rebel company posted
across it, a bare two hundred yards away towards Lostwithiel. Their
ranks parted and I had time enough, and no more, to push Margery into
the ditch and fling myself beside her among the brambles before a team
of horses swept by at a gallop, with a cannon bumping on its carriage
behind them and dragging a long cloud of dust.

“Quick!” called Margery as it passed: sprang to her feet and across
the road in the noise and smother. Choking with dust and anger I
followed, almost on all-fours.

“But what folly is this?” I demanded, overtaking her by the opposite
hedge.

“I know what I am doing,” she said. “They did not see—the dust hid
us. Now quick again, and help me up to this hazel-bush.”

I swung her up, and myself after her. The bush was one which I myself
had polled two years before; an old stump set thickly about with young
shoots, in the cover of which we huddled, staring down the slope of
our own great grass-field (the largest on Lawhibbet farm) now filled
with rebels withdrawing in good order upon the earthwork on Castle
Dore. This earthwork stood in the very next field on our right, behind
what had used to be a hedge but where was now a gap some twenty yards
wide (levelled a few days before by Essex’s cannoniers), and through
this gap, towards which the regiments were streaming, drifted the
smoke of the guns as they flung their round shot high over our heads,
and over the hedge on our left which hid from us all of the royal
troops save now and then the flash of a steel cap behind the
top-growth of hazel ash and bramble.

The line of this hedge, on the near side to us, was yet held by
musketeers who had spread themselves along it very closely and seemed
to be using every bush. Indeed I wondered how they were to be forced
from such cover, when a party of them by the gate suddenly gave back
and began running, and through the gateway a small troop of horse came
pouring at their heels. And albeit these cavaliers must have suffered
desperately in so charging up to a covered foe (and many riderless
chargers came galloping with them), yet the remnant held such good
order that in pouring through they seemed to divide by agreement, a
part wheeling to right and a part to left to drive the skirmishers,
while the main troop held on across the field nor drew rein until they
had chased the rebel rearguard to the gap. But as the gap cleared
ahead and showed the earthwork and the muzzles of the guns now lowered
right in their path, their leader checked his horse, wheeled about in
as pretty a curve as you would wish to see, and his troop following
cantered back towards the gate.

It was gallantly done and clearly won high approval from a horseman
who at the moment came at a trot through the gate, with a second troop
behind him, and was saluted by the returning squadron with, one flash
of sword-blades, all together, hilt brought to chin and every blade
pointing straight in air–a flourish almost as pretty as the feat it
concluded. He too held his sword before him with point upright, but
awkwardly; and though he sat his saddle well, his bearing had more
of civil authority than of soldierlike precision. I was wondering,
indeed, what his business might be on this field of arms–for his men
hung back somewhat, as escorting rather than charging at his lead,
when Margery plucked at my elbow.

“The King!”

I stared at her stupidly. And reading awe in her wide eyes, I had
almost turned to follow their gaze when my own fell on a rider who had
detached himself from the escort and was coming towards us along the
hedge row, whipping it idly with the flat of his sword, and now
and again thrusting at it with the point, as if beating for hidden
skirmishers. It was our brother Mark, and he frowned as he rode.

I held my breath as he drew near. Margery’s eyes were on the King; but
she must needs recognise her brother when he came abreast of us.

And so it was. She gave him an idle glance, and with that she let out
a short choking cry, and leapt down from the hedge right in his path,
dragging me after her by the sleeve.

“Mark!” she cried.

He swerved his horse round with a curse. But she caught at the bridle
and pointed towards the gap through which, though hidden from us by
the angle, pointed the muzzles of the rebel artillery. “You must! Oh,
if you fear, I will run with you and die with you–I your sister!
There is no other way. You must, Mark!”

He pushed past her sullenly, moving towards the group where the King
stood.

“Mark, if you do not, the King shall know! Redeem, brother; or I
swear–and when did I break word?–here and now the King shall know
who lost him the rebel horse.”

She spoke it fast and low, with a dead-white face. We were close now
to the royal group; close enough to hear the King’s words.

“I must needs,” he was saying, “envy her Majesty, Captain Brett. Under
your leading her troop has done that which my own can only envy.”

He turned at what seemed at first a murmur among his own men, and no
doubt was framing a compliment from them too. But their murmur grew to
a growl of mere astonishment as a thud of hoofs drew all eyes after my
brother riding at full gallop for the gap.

“But what is the madman after?” began the King, and broke off with a
sharp exclamation as his eyes fell on Margery, who had picked up her
skirts and was running after Mark. She was perhaps a hundred yards
behind him when the cannon roared and, almost in the entrance of the
gap, he flung up both arms, and horse and rider rolled over together.
A moment later she too staggered and fell sideways–stunned by the
wind of a round-shot.

The firing ceased as suddenly as it began. I heard a voice saying as
if it continued a discussion–”And Lantine of all men! I’d have picked
him for the levellest-headed man in the troop. By the way, he comes
from these parts, I’ve heard say.”

And with that I ran to my sister’s side.

Two days later by the earthwork where we had played as children his
Majesty received the surrender of the rebel foot; while, on the
slope below, the house which should have been Mark’s heritage blazed
merrily, fired by the last shot of the campaign.

I

I had the honour of commanding my Regiment, the Moray Highlanders,
on the 16th of June, 1815, when the late Ensign David Marie Joseph
Mackenzie met his end in the bloody struggle of Quatre Bras (his first
engagement). He fell beside the colours, and I gladly bear witness
that he had not only borne himself with extreme gallantry, but
maintained, under circumstances of severest trial, a coolness which
might well have rewarded me for my help in procuring the lad’s
commission. And yet at the moment I could scarcely regret his death,
for he went into action under a suspicion so dishonouring that, had
it been proved, no amount of gallantry could have restored him to the
respect of his fellows. So at least I believed, with three of his
brother officers who shared the secret. These were Major William Ross
(my half-brother), Captain Malcolm Murray, and Mr. Ronald Braintree
Urquhart, then our senior ensign. Of these, Mr. Urquhart fell two days
later, at Waterloo, while steadying his men to face that heroic shock
in which Pack’s skeleton regiments were enveloped yet not overwhelmed
by four brigades of the French infantry. From the others I received at
the time a promise that the accusation against young Mackenzie should
be wiped off the slate by his death, and the affair kept secret
between us. Since then, however, there has come to me an explanation
which–though hard indeed to credit–may, if true, exculpate the lad.
I laid it before the others, and they agreed that if, in spite of
precautions, the affair should ever come to light, the explanation
ought also in justice to be forthcoming; and hence I am writing this
memorandum.

It was in the late September of 1814 that I first made acquaintance
with David Mackenzie. A wound received in the battle of Salamanca–a
shattered ankle–had sent me home invalided, and on my partial
recovery I was appointed to command the 2nd Battalion of my Regiment,
then being formed at Inverness. To this duty I was equal; but my ankle
still gave trouble (the splinters from time to time working through
the flesh), and in the late summer of 1814 I obtained leave of absence
with my step-brother, and spent some pleasant weeks in cruising and
fishing about the Moray Firth. Finding that my leg bettered by this
idleness, we hired a smaller boat and embarked on a longer excursion,
which took us almost to the south-west end of Loch Ness.

Here, on September 18th, and pretty late in the afternoon, we were
overtaken by a sudden squall, which carried away our mast (we found
afterwards that it had rotted in the step), and put us for some
minutes in no little danger; for my brother and I, being inexpert
seamen, did not cut the tangle away, as we should have done, but made
a bungling attempt to get the mast on board, with the rigging and
drenched sail; and thereby managed to knock a hole in the side of
the boat, which at once began to take in water. This compelled us to
desist and fall to baling with might and main, leaving the raffle and
jagged end of the mast to bump against us at the will of the waves.
In short, we were in a highly unpleasant predicament, when a coble or
row-boat, carrying one small lug-sail, hove out of the dusk to our
assistance. It was manned by a crew of three, of whom the master
(though we had scarce light enough to distinguish features) hailed us
in a voice which was patently a gentleman’s. He rounded up, lowered
sail, and ran his boat alongside; and while his two hands were cutting
us free of our tangle, inquired very civilly if we were strangers. We
answered that we were, and desired him to tell us of the nearest place
alongshore where we might land and find a lodging for the night, as
well as a carpenter to repair our damage.

“In any ordinary case,” said he, “I should ask you to come aboard and
home with me. But my house lies five miles up the lake; your boat is
sinking, and the first thing is to beach her. It happens that you are
but half a mile from Ardlaugh and a decent carpenter who can answer
all requirements. I think, if I stand by you, the thing can be done;
and afterwards we will talk of supper.”

By diligent baling we were able, under his direction, to bring our
boat to a shingly beach, over which a light shone warm in a cottage
window. Our hail was quickly answered by a second light. A lantern
issued from the building, and we heard the sound of footsteps.

“Is that you, Donald?” cried our rescuer (as I may be permitted to
call him).

Before an answer could be returned, we saw that two men were
approaching; of whom the one bearing the lantern was a grizzled old
carlin with bent knees and a stoop of the shoulders. His companion
carried himself with a lighter step. It was he who advanced to salute
us, the old man holding the light obediently; and the rays revealed to
us a slight, up-standing youth, poorly dressed, but handsome, and with
a touch of pride in his bearing.

“Good evening, gentlemen.” He lifted his bonnet politely, and turned
to our rescuer. “Good evening, Mr. Gillespie,” he said–I thought more
coldly. “Can I be of any service to your friends?”

Mr. Gillespie’s manner had changed suddenly at sight of the young man,
whose salutation he acknowledged more coldly and even more curtly
than it had been given. “I can scarcely claim them as my friends,” he
answered. “They are two gentlemen, strangers in these parts, who have
met with an accident to their boat: one so serious that I brought them
to the nearest landing, which happened to be Donald’s.” He shortly
explained our mishap, while the young man took the lantern in hand and
inspected the damage with Donald.

“There is nothing,” he announced, “which cannot be set right in a
couple of hours; but we must wait till morning. Meanwhile if, as I
gather, you have no claim on these gentlemen, I shall beg them to be
my guests for the night.”

We glanced at Mr. Gillespie, whose manners seemed to have deserted
him. He shrugged his shoulders. “Your house is the nearer,” said he,
“and the sooner they reach a warm fire the better for them after their
drenching.” And with that he lifted his cap to us, turned abruptly,
and pushed off his own boat, scarcely regarding our thanks.

A somewhat awkward pause followed as we stood on the beach, listening
to the creak of the thole-pins in the departing boat. After a minute
our new acquaintance turned to us with a slightly constrained laugh.

“Mr. Gillespie omitted some of the formalities,” said he. “My name is
Mackenzie–David Mackenzie; and I live at Ardlaugh Castle, scarcely
half a mile up the glen behind us. I warn you that its hospitality is
rude, but to what it affords you are heartily welcome.”

He spoke with a high, precise courtliness which contrasted oddly with
his boyish face (I guessed his age at nineteen or twenty), and still
more oddly with his clothes, which were threadbare and patched in
many places, yet with a deftness which told of a woman’s care. We
introduced ourselves by name, and thanked him, with some expressions
of regret at inconveniencing (as I put it, at hazard) the family at
the Castle.

“Oh!” he interrupted, “I am sole master there. I have no parents
living, no family, and,” he added, with a slight sullenness which I
afterwards recognised as habitual, “I may almost say, no friends:
though to be sure, you are lucky enough to have one fellow-guest
to-night–the minister of the parish, a Mr. Saul, and a very worthy
man.”

He broke off to give Donald some instructions about the boat, watched
us while we found our plaids and soaked valises, and then took the
lantern from the old man’s hand. “I ought to have explained,” said
he, “that we have neither cart here nor carriage: indeed, there is no
carriage-road. But Donald has a pony.”

He led the way a few steps up the beach, and then halted, perceiving
my lameness for the first time. “Donald, fetch out the pony. Can you
ride bareback?” he asked: “I fear there’s no saddle but an old piece
of sacking.” In spite of my protestations the pony was led forth; a
starved little beast, on whose over-sharp ridge I must have cut a
sufficiently ludicrous figure when hoisted into place with the valises
slung behind me.

The procession set out, and I soon began to feel thankful for my seat,
though I took no ease in it. For the road climbed steeply from the
cottage, and at once began to twist up the bottom of a ravine so
narrow that we lost all help of the young moon. The path, indeed,
resembled the bed of a torrent, shrunk now to a trickle of water, the
voice of which ran in my ears while our host led the way, springing
from boulder to boulder, avoiding pools, and pausing now and then to
hold his lantern over some slippery place. The pony followed with
admirable caution, and my brother trudged in the rear and took his cue
from us. After five minutes of this the ground grew easier and at the
same time steeper, and I guessed that we were slanting up the hillside
and away from the torrent at an acute angle. The many twists and
angles, and the utter darkness (for we were now moving between trees)
had completely baffled my reckoning when–at the end of twenty
minutes, perhaps–Mr. Mackenzie halted and allowed me to come up with
him.

I was about to ask the reason of this halt when a ray of his lantern
fell on a wall of masonry; and with a start almost laughable I knew
we had arrived. To come to an entirely strange house at night is an
experience which holds some taste of mystery even for the oldest
campaigner; but I have never in my life received such a shock as this
building gave me–naked, unlit, presented to me out of a darkness
in which I had imagined a steep mountain scaur dotted with dwarfed
trees–a sudden abomination of desolation standing, like the
prophet’s, where it ought not. No light showed on the side where we
stood–the side over the ravine; only one pointed turret stood out
against the faint moonlight glow in the upper sky: but feeling our way
around the gaunt side of the building, we came to a back court-yard
and two windows lit. Our host whistled, and helped me to dismount.

In an angle of the court a creaking door opened. A woman’s voice
cried, “That will be be you, Ardlaugh, and none too early! The
minister–”

She broke off, catching sight of us. Our host stepped hastily to the
door and began a whispered conversation. We could hear that she
was protesting, and began to feel awkward enough. But whatever her
objections were, her master cut them short.

“Come in, sirs,” he invited us: “I warned you that the fare would be
hard, but I repeat that you are welcome.”

To our surprise and, I must own, our amusement, the woman caught up
his words with new protestations, uttered this time at the top of her
voice.

“The fare hard? Well, it might not please folks accustomed to city
feasts; but Ardlaugh was not yet without a joint of venison in the
larder and a bottle of wine, maybe two, maybe three, for any guest its
master chose to make welcome. It was ‘an ill bird that ‘filed his own
nest’”–with more to this effect, which our host tried in vain to
interrupt.

“Then I will lead you to your rooms,” he said, turning to us as soon
as she paused to draw breath.

“Indeed, Ardlaugh, you will do nothing of the kind.” She ran into the
kitchen, and returned holding high a lighted torch–a grey-haired
woman with traces of past comeliness, overlaid now by an air of worry,
almost of fear. But her manner showed only a defiant pride as she led
us up the uncarpeted stairs, past old portraits sagging and rotting in
their frames, through bleak corridors, where the windows were patched
and the plastered walls discoloured by fungus. Once only she halted.
“It will be a long way to your appartments. A grand house!” She had
faced round on us, and her eyes seemed to ask a question of ours. “I
have known it filled,” she added–”filled with guests, and the
drink and fiddles never stopping for a week. You will see it better
to-morrow. A grand house!”

I will confess that, as I limped after this barbaric woman and her
torch, I felt some reasonable apprehensions of the bedchamber towards
which they were escorting me. But here came another surprise. The room
was of moderate size, poorly furnished, indeed, but comfortable and
something more. It bore traces of many petty attentions, even–in its
white dimity curtains and valances–of an attempt at daintiness. The
sight of it brought quite a pleasant shock after the dirt and disarray
of the corridor. Nor was the room assigned to my brother one whit less
habitable. But if surprised by all this, I was fairly astounded
to find in each room a pair of candles lit–and quite recently
lit–beside the looking-glass, and an ewer of hot water standing, with
a clean towel upon it, in each wash-hand basin. No sooner had the
woman departed than I visited my brother and begged him (while he
unstrapped his valise) to explain this apparent miracle. He could only
guess with me that the woman had been warned of our arrival by the
noise of footsteps in the court-yard, and had dispatched a servant by
some back stairs to make ready for us.

Our valises were, fortunately, waterproof. We quickly exchanged our
damp clothes for dry ones, and groped our way together along the
corridors, helped by the moon, which shone through their uncurtained
windows, to the main staircase. Here we came on a scent of roasting
meat–appetising to us after our day in the open air–and at the foot
found our host waiting for us. He had donned his Highland dress of
ceremony–velvet jacket, phillabeg and kilt, with the tartan of
his clan–and looked (I must own) extremely well in it, though the
garments had long since lost their original gloss. An apology for our
rough touring suits led to some few questions and replies about the
regimental tartan of the Morays, in the history of which he was
passably well informed.

Thus chatting, we entered the great hall of Ardlaugh Castle–a tall,
but narrow and ill-proportioned apartment, having an open timber roof,
a stone-paved floor, and walls sparsely decorated with antlers and
round targes–where a very small man stood warming his back at
an immense fireplace. This was the Reverend Samuel Saul, whose
acquaintance we had scarce time to make before a cracked gong summoned
us to dinner in the adjoining room.

The young Laird of Ardlaugh took his seat in a roughly carved chair
of state at the head of the table; but before doing so treated me to
another surprise by muttering a Latin grace and crossing himself. Up
to now I had taken it for granted he was a member of the Scottish
Kirk. I glanced at the minister in some mystification; but he, good
man, appeared to have fallen into a brown study, with his eyes
fastened upon a dish of apples which adorned the centre of our
promiscuously furnished board.

Of the furniture of our meal I can only say that poverty and decent
appearance kept up a brave fight throughout. The table-cloth was
ragged, but spotlessly clean; the silver-ware scanty and worn with
high polishing. The plates and glasses displayed a noble range of
patterns, but were for the most part chipped or cracked. Each knife
had been worn to a point, and a few of them joggled in their handles.
In a lull of the talk I caught myself idly counting the darns in my
table-napkin. They were–if I remember–fourteen, and all exquisitely
stitched. The dinner, on the other hand, would have tempted men far
less hungry than we–grilled steaks of salmon, a roast haunch of
venison, grouse, a milk-pudding, and, for dessert, the dish of apples
already mentioned; the meats washed down with one wine only, but that
wine was claret, and beautifully sound. I should mention that we were
served by a grey-haired retainer, almost stone deaf, and as hopelessly
cracked as the gong with which he had beaten us to dinner. In the long
waits between the courses we heard him quarrelling outside with
the woman who had admitted us; and gradually–I know not how–the
conviction grew on me that they were man and wife, and the only
servants of our host’s establishment. To cover the noise of one of
their altercations I began to congratulate the Laird on the quality of
his venison, and put some idle question about his care for his deer.

“I have no deer-forest,” he answered. “Elspeth is my only
housekeeper.”

I had some reply on my lips, when my attention was distracted by a
sudden movement by the Rev. Samuel Saul. This honest man had, as we
shook hands in the great hall, broken into a flood of small talk.
On our way to the dining-room he took me, so to speak, by the
button-hole, and within the minute so drenched me with gossip about
Ardlaugh, its climate, its scenery, its crops, and the dimensions of
the parish, that I feared a whole evening of boredom lay before us.
But from the moment we seated ourselves at table he dropped to an
absolute silence. There are men, living much alone, who by habit
talk little during their meals; and the minister might be reserving
himself. But I had almost forgotten his presence when I heard a sharp
exclamation, and, looking across, saw him take from his lips his
wine-glass of claret and set it down with a shaking hand. The Laird,
too, had heard, and bent a darkly questioning glance on him. At once
the little man–whose face had turned to a sickly white–began to
stammer and excuse himself.

“It was nothing–a spasm. He would be better of it in a moment. No, he
would take no wine: a glass of water would set him right–he was more
used to drinking water,” he explained, with a small, nervous laugh.

Perceiving that our solicitude embarrassed him, we resumed our talk,
which now turned upon the last peninsular campaign and certain
engagements in which the Morays had borne part; upon the stability of
the French Monarchy, and the career (as we believed, at an end) of
Napoleon. On all these topics the Laird showed himself well informed,
and while preferring the part of listener (as became his youth) from
time to time put in a question which convinced me of his intelligence,
especially in military affairs.

The minister, though silent as before, had regained his colour; and we
were somewhat astonished when, the cloth being drawn and the company
left to its wine and one dish of dessert, he rose and announced that
he must be going. He was decidedly better, but (so he excused himself)
would feel easier at home in his own manse; and so, declining our
host’s offer of a bed, he shook hands and bade us good-night. The
Laird accompanied him to the door, and in his absence I fell to
peeling an apple, while my brother drummed with his fingers on the
table and eyed the faded hangings. I suppose that ten minutes elapsed
before we heard the young man’s footsteps returning through the
flagged hall and a woman’s voice uplifted.

“But had the minister any complaint, whatever–to ride off without a
word? She could answer for the collops–”

“Whist, woman! Have done with your clashin’, ye doited old fool!” He
slammed the door upon her, stepped to the table, and with a sullen
frown poured himself a glass of wine. His brow cleared as he drank it.
“I beg your pardon, gentlemen; but this indisposition of Mr. Saul has
annoyed me. He lives at the far end of the parish–a good seven miles
away–and I had invited him expressly to talk of parish affairs.”

“I believe,” said I, “you and he are not of the same religion?”

“Eh?” He seemed to be wondering how I had guessed. “No, I was bred a
Catholic. In our branch we have always held to the Old Religion. But
that doesn’t prevent my wishing to stand well with my neighbours and
do my duty towards them. What disheartens me is, they won’t see it.”
He pushed the wine aside, and for a while, leaning his elbows on the
table and resting his chin on his knuckles, stared gloomily before
him. Then, with sudden boyish indignation, he burst out: “It’s an
infernal shame; that’s it–an infernal shame! I haven’t been home here
a twelvemonth, and the people avoid me like a plague. What have I
done? My father wasn’t popular–in fact, they hated him. But so did I.
And he hated me, God knows: misused my mother, and wouldn’t endure me
in his presence. All my miserable youth I’ve been mewed up in a school
in England–a private seminary. Ugh? what a den it was, too! My mother
died calling for me–I was not allowed to come: I hadn’t seen her for
three years. And now, when the old tyrant is dead, and I come home
meaning–so help me!–to straighten things out and make friends–come
home, to the poverty you pretend not to notice, though it stares you
in the face from every wall–come home, only asking to make the best
of of it, live on good terms with my fellows, and be happy for the
first time in my life–damn them, they won’t fling me a kind look!
What have I done?–that’s what I want to know. The queer thing is,
they behaved more decently at first. There’s that Gillespie, who
brought you ashore: he came over the first week, offered me shooting,
was altogether as pleasant as could be. I quite took to the fellow.
Now, when we meet, he looks the other way! If he has anything against
me, he might at least explain: it’s all I ask. What have I done?”

Throughout this outburst I sat slicing my apple and taking now and
then a glance at the speaker. It was all so hotly and honestly boyish!
He only wanted justice. I know something of youngsters, and recognised
the cry. Justice! It’s the one thing every boy claims confidently as
his right, and probably the last thing on earth he will ever get.
And this boy looked so handsome, too, sitting in his father’s chair,
petulant, restive under a weight too heavy (as anyone could see) for
his age. I couldn’t help liking him.

My brother told me afterwards that I pounced like any
recruiting-sergeant. This I do not believe. But what, after a long
pause, I said was this: “If you are innocent or unconscious of
offending, you can only wait for your neighbours to explain
themselves. Meanwhile, why not leave them? Why not travel, for
instance?”

“Travel!” he echoed, as much as to say, “You ought to know, without my
telling, that I cannot afford it.”

“Travel,” I repeated; “see the world, rub against men of your age. You
might by the way do some fighting.”

He opened his eyes wide. I saw the sudden idea take hold of him, and
again I liked what I saw.

“If I thought–” He broke off. “You don’t mean–” he began, and broke
off again.

“I mean the Morays,” I said. “There may be difficulties; but at this
moment I cannot see any real ones.”

By this time he was gripping the arms of his chair. “If I thought–”
he harked back, and for the third time broke off. “What a fool I am!
It’s the last thing they ever put in a boy’s head at that infernal
school. If you will believe it, they wanted to make a priest of me!”

He sprang up, pushing back his chair. We carried our wine into the
great hall, and sat there talking the question over before the fire.
Before we parted for the night I had engaged to use all my interest to
get him a commission in the Morays; and I left him pacing the hall,
his mind in a whirl, but his heart (as was plain to see) exulting in
his new prospects.

And certainly, when I came to inspect the castle by the next morning’s
light, I could understand his longing to leave it. A gloomier, more
pretentious, or worse-devised structure I never set eyes on. The
Mackenzie who erected it may well have been (as the saying is) his own
architect, and had either come to the end of his purse or left his
heirs to decide against planting gardens, laying out approaches or
even maintaining the pile in decent repair. In place of a drive a
grassy cart-track, scored deep with old ruts, led through a gateless
entrance into a courtyard where the slates had dropped from the roof
and lay strewn like autumn leaves. On this road I encountered the
young Laird returning from an early tramp with his gun; and he stood
still and pointed to the castle with a grimace.

“A white elephant,” said I.

“Call it rather the corpse of one,” he answered. “Cannot you imagine
some genie of the Oriental Tales dragging the beast across Europe
and dumping it down here in a sudden fit of disgust? As a matter of
fact my grandfather built it, and cursed us with poverty thereby. It
soured my father’s life. I believe the only soul honestly proud of it
is Elspeth.”

“And I suppose,” said I, “you will leave her in charge of it when you
join the Morays?”

“Ah!” he broke in, with a voice which betrayed his relief: “you are
in earnest about that? Yes Elspeth will look after the castle, as she
does already. I am just a child in her hand. When a man has one only
servant it’s well to have her devoted.” Seeing my look of surprise, he
added, “I don’t count old Duncan, her husband; for he’s half-witted,
and only serves to break the plates. Does it surprise you to learn
that, barring him, Elspeth is my only retainer?”

“H’m,” said I, considerably puzzled–I must explain why.

       *       *       *       *       *

I am by training an extraordinarily light sleeper; yet nothing had
disturbed me during the night until at dawn my brother knocked at the
door and entered, ready dressed.

“Hullo!” he exclaimed, “are you responsible for this?” and he pointed
to a chair at the foot of the bed where lay, folded in a neat pile,
not only the clothes I had tossed down carelessly overnight, but the
suit in which I had arrived. He picked up this latter, felt it, and
handed it to me. It was dry, and had been carefully brushed.

“Our friend keeps a good valet,” said I; “but the queer thing is that,
in a strange room, I didn’t wake. I see he has brought hot water too.”

“Look here,” my brother asked: “did you lock your door?”

“Why, of course not–the more by token that it hasn’t a key.”

“Well,” said he, “mine has, and I’ll swear I used it; but the same
thing has happened to me!”

This, I tried to persuade him, was impossible; and for the while he
seemed convinced. “It must be,” he owned; “but if I didn’t lock that
door I’ll never swear to a thing again in all my life.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The young Laird’s remark set me thinking of this, and I answered after
a pause, “In one of the pair, then, you possess a remarkably clever
valet.”

It so happened that, while I said it, my eyes rested, without the
least intention, on the sleeve of his shooting-coat; and the words
were scarcely out before he flushed hotly and made a motion as if to
hide a neatly mended rent in its cuff. In another moment he would have
retorted, and was indeed drawing himself up in anger, when I prevented
him by adding–

“I mean that I am indebted to him or to her this morning for a neatly
brushed suit; and I suppose to your freeness in plying me with wine
last night that it arrived in my room without waking me. But for that
I could almost set it down to the supernatural.”

I said this in all simplicity, and was quite unprepared for its effect
upon him, or for his extraordinary reply. He turned as white in
the face as, a moment before, he had been red. “Good God!” he said
eagerly, “you haven’t missed anything, have you?”

“Certainly not,” I assured him. “My dear sir–”

“I know, I know. But you see,” he stammered, “I am new to these
servants. I know them to be faithful, and that’s all. Forgive me; I
feared from your tone one of them–Duncan perhaps …”

He did not finish his sentence, but broke into a hurried walk and led
me towards the house. A minute later, as we approached it, he began
to discourse half-humorously on its more glaring features, and had
apparently forgotten his perturbation.

I too attached small importance to it, and recall it now merely
through unwillingness to omit any circumstance which may throw light
on a story sufficiently dark to me. After breakfast our host walked
down with us to the loch-side, where we found old Donald putting the
last touches on his job. With thanks for our entertainment we shook
hands and pushed off: and my last word at parting was a promise to
remember his ambition and write any news of my success.

II

I anticipated no difficulty, and encountered none. The Gazette of
January, 1815, announced that David Marie Joseph Mackenzie, gentleman,
had been appointed to an ensigncy in the –th Regiment of Infantry
(Moray Highlanders); and I timed my letter of congratulation to reach
him with the news. Within a week he had joined us at Inverness, and
was made welcome.

I may say at once that during his brief period of service I could find
no possible fault with his bearing as a soldier. From the first he
took seriously to the calling of arms, and not only showed himself
punctual on parade and in all the small duties of barracks, but
displayed, in his reserved way, a zealous resolve to master whatever
by book or conversation could be learned of the higher business of
war. My junior officers–though when the test came, as it soon did,
they acquitted themselves most creditably–showed, as a whole, just
then no great promise. For the most part they were young lairds, like
Mr. Mackenzie, or cadets of good Highland families; but, unlike him,
they had been allowed to run wild, and chafed under harness. One or
two of them had the true Highland addiction to card-playing; and
though I set a pretty stern face against this curse–as I dare to call
it–its effects were to be traced in late hours, more than one case of
shirking “rounds,” and a general slovenliness at morning parade.

In such company Mr. Mackenzie showed to advantage, and I soon began to
value him as a likely officer. Nor, in my dissatisfaction with them,
did it give me any uneasiness–as it gave me no surprise–to find
that his brother-officers took less kindly to him. He kept a certain
reticence of manner, which either came of a natural shyness or had
been ingrained in him at the Roman Catholic seminary. He was poor,
too; but poverty did not prevent his joining in all the regimental
amusements, figuring modestly but sufficiently on the subscription
lists, and even taking a hand at cards for moderate stakes. Yet he
made no headway, and his popularity diminished instead of growing.
All this I noted, but without discovering any definite reason. Of his
professional promise, on the other hand, there could be no question;
and the men liked and respected him.

Our senior ensign at this date was a Mr. Urquhart, the eldest son of a
West Highland laird, and heir to a considerable estate. He had been
in barracks when Mr. Mackenzie joined; but a week later his father’s
sudden illness called for his presence at home, and I granted him a
leave of absence, which was afterwards extended. I regretted this, not
only for the sad occasion, but because it deprived the battalion for a
time of one of its steadiest officers, and Mr. Mackenzie in particular
of the chance to form a very useful friendship. For the two young men
had (I thought) several qualities which might well attract them each
to the other, and a common gravity of mind in contrast with their
companions’ prevalent and somewhat tiresome frivolity. Of the two I
Judged Mr. Urquhart (the elder by a year) to have the more stable
character. He was a good-looking, dark-complexioned young Highlander,
with a serious expression which, without being gloomy, did not
escape a touch of melancholy. I should judge this melancholy of Mr.
Urquhart’s constitutional, and the boyish sullenness which lingered on
Mr. Mackenzie’s equally handsome face to have been imposed rather by
circumstances.

Mr. Urquhart rejoined us on the 24th of February. Two days later, as
all the world knows, Napoleon made his escape from Elba; and the next
week or two made it certain not only that the allies must fight, but
that the British contingent must be drawn largely, if not in the main,
from the second battalions then drilling up and down the country. The
29th of March brought us our marching orders; and I will own that,
while feeling no uneasiness about the great issue, I distrusted the
share my raw youngsters were to take in it.

On the 12th of April we were landed at Ostend, and at once marched up
to Brussels, where we remained until the middle of June, having been
assigned to the 5th (Picton’s) Division of the Reserve. For some
reason the Highland regiments had been massed into the Reserve, and
were billeted about the capital, our own quarters lying between the
92nd (Gordons) and General Kruse’s Nassauers, whose lodgings stretched
out along the Louvain road; and although I could have wished some
harder and more responsible service to get the Morays into training, I
felt what advantage they derived from rubbing shoulders with the fine
fellows of the 42nd, 79th, and 92nd, all First Battalions toughened
by Peninsular work. The gaieties of life in Brussels during these two
months have been described often enough; but among the military they
were chiefly confined to those officers whose means allowed them to
keep the pace set by rich civilians, and the Morays played the part of
amused spectators. Yet the work and the few gaieties which fell to our
share, while adding to our experiences, broke up to some degree the
old domestic habits of the battalion. Excepting on duty I saw less of
Mr. Mackenzie and thought less about him; he might be left now to be
shaped by active service. But I was glad to find him often in company
with Mr. Urquhart.

I come now to the memorable night of June 15th, concerning which and
the end it brought upon the festivities of Brussels so much has been
written. All the world has heard of the Duchess of Richmond’s ball,
and seems to conspire in decking it out with pretty romantic fables.
To contradict the most of these were waste of time; but I may point
out (1) that the ball was over and, I believe, all the company
dispersed, before the actual alarm awoke the capital; and (2) that all
responsible officers gathered there shared the knowledge that such
an alarm was impending, might arrive at any moment, and would almost
certainly arrive within a few hours. News of the French advance across
the frontier and attack on General Zieten’s outposts had reached
Wellington at three o’clock that afternoon. It should have been
brought five hours earlier; but he gave his orders at once, and
quietly, and already our troops were massing for defence upon
Nivelles. We of the Reserve had secret orders to hold ourselves
prepared. Obedient to a hint from their Commander-in-chief, the
generals of division and brigade who attended the Duchess’ ball
withdrew themselves early on various pleas. Her Grace had honoured
me with an invitation, probably because I represented a Highland
regiment; and Highlanders (especially the Gordons, her brother’s
regiment) were much to the fore that night with reels, flings, and
strathspeys. The many withdrawals warned me that something was in the
wind, and after remaining just so long as seemed respectful, I took
leave of my hostess and walked homewards across the city as the clocks
were striking eleven.

We of the Morays had our headquarters in a fairly large building–the
Hotel de Liege–in time of peace a resort of commis-voyageurs of
the better class. It boasted a roomy hall, out of which opened two
coffee-rooms, converted by us into guard- and mess-room. A large
drawing-room on the first floor overlooking the street served me for
sleeping as well as working quarters, and to reach it I must pass the
entresol, where a small apartment had been set aside for occasional
uses. We made it, for instance, our ante-room, and assembled there
before mess; a few would retire there for smoking or card-playing;
during the day it served as a waiting-room for messengers or any one
whose business could not be for the moment attended to.

I had paused at the entrance to put some small question to the sentry,
when I heard the crash of a chair in this room, and two voices broke
out in fierce altercation. An instant after, the mess-room door
opened, and Captain Murray, without observing me, ran past me and
up the stairs. As he reached the entresol, a voice–my
brother’s–called down from an upper landing, and demanded, “What’s
wrong there?”

“I don’t know, Major,” Captain Murray answered, and at the same moment
flung the door open. I was quick on his heels, and he wheeled round in
some surprise at my voice, and to see me interposed between him and
my brother, who had come running downstairs, and now stood behind my
shoulder in the entrance.

“Shut the door,” I commanded quickly. “Shut the door, and send away
any one you may hear outside. Now, gentlemen, explain yourselves,
please.”

Mr. Urquhart and Mr. Mackenzie faced each other across a small table,
from which the cloth had been dragged and lay on the floor with a
scattered pack of cards. The elder lad held a couple of cards in his
hand; he was white in the face.

“He cheated!” He swung round upon me in a kind of indignant fury, and
tapped the cards with his forefinger.

I looked from him to the accused. Mackenzie’s face was dark, almost
purple, rather with rage (as it struck me) than with shame.

“It’s a lie.” He let out the words slowly, as if holding rein on his
passion. “Twice he’s said so, and twice I’ve called him a liar.” He
drew back for an instant, and then lost control of himself. “If that’s
not enough–.” He leapt forward, and almost before Captain Murray
could interpose had hurled himself upon Urquhart. The table between
them went down with a crash, and Urquhart went staggering back from a
blow which just missed his face and took him on the collar-bone before
Murray threw both arms around the assailant.

“Mr. Mackenzie,” said I, “you will consider yourself under arrest. Mr.
Urquhart, you will hold yourself ready to give me a full explanation.
Whichever of you may be in the right, this is a disgraceful business,
and dishonouring to your regiment and the cloth you wear: so
disgraceful, that I hesitate to call up the guard and expose it to
more eyes than ours. If Mr. Mackenzie”–I turned to him again–”can
behave himself like a gentleman, and accept the fact of his arrest
without further trouble, the scandal can at least be postponed until
I discover how much it is necessary to face. For the moment, sir, you
are in charge of Captain Murray. Do you understand?”

He bent his head sullenly. “He shall fight me, whatever happens,” he
muttered.

I found it wise to pay no heed to this. “It will be best,” I said to
Murray, “to remain here with Mr. Mackenzie until I am ready for him.
Mr. Urquhart may retire to his quarters, if he will–I advise it,
indeed–but I shall require his attendance in a few minutes. You
understand,” I added significantly, “that for the present this affair
remains strictly between ourselves.” I knew well enough that, for all
the King’s regulations, a meeting would inevitably follow sooner or
later, and will own I looked upon it as the proper outcome, between
gentlemen, of such a quarrel. But it was not for me, their Colonel, to
betray this knowledge or my feelings, and by imposing secrecy I put
off for the time all the business of a formal challenge with seconds.
So I left them, and requesting my brother to follow me, mounted to my
own room. The door was no sooner shut than I turned on him.

“Surely,” I said, “this is a bad mistake of Urquhart’s? It’s an
incredible charge. From all I’ve seen of him, the lad would never be
guilty …” I paused, expecting his assent. To my surprise he did not
give it, but stood fingering his chin and looking serious.

“I don’t know,” he answered unwillingly. “There are stories against
him.”

“What stories?”

“Nothing definite.” My brother hesitated. “It doesn’t seem fair to him
to repeat mere whispers. But the others don’t like him.”

“Hence the whispers, perhaps. They have not reached me.”

“They would not. He is known to be a favourite of yours. But they
don’t care to play with him.” My brother stopped, met my look, and
answered it with a shrug of the shoulders, adding, “He wins pretty
constantly.”

“Any definite charge before to-night’s?”

“No: at least, I think not. But Urquhart may have been put up to
watch.”

“Fetch him up, please,” said I promptly; and seating myself at the
writing-table I lit candles (for the lamp was dim), made ready the
writing materials and prepared to take notes of the evidence.

Mr. Urquhart presently entered, and I wheeled round in my chair to
confront him. He was still exceedingly pale–paler, I thought, than I
had left him. He seemed decidedly ill at ease, though not on his own
account. His answer to my first question made me fairly leap in my
chair.

“I wish,” he said, “to qualify my accusation of Mr. Mackenzie. That he
cheated I have the evidence of my own eyes; but I am not sure how far
he knew he was cheating.”

“Good heavens, sir!” I cried. “Do you know you have accused that young
man of a villainy which must damn him for life? And now you tell me–”
I broke off in sheer indignation.

“I know,” he answered quietly. “The noise fetched you in upon us on
the instant, and the mischief was done.”

“Indeed, sir,” I could not avoid sneering, “to most of us it would
seem that the mischief was done when you accused a brother-officer of
fraud to his face.”

He seemed to reflect. “Yes, sir,” he assented slowly; “it is done. I
saw him cheat: that I must persist in; but I cannot say how far he was
conscious of it. And since I cannot, I must take the consequences.”

“Will you kindly inform us how it is possible for a player to cheat
and not know that he is cheating?”

He bent his eyes on the carpet as if seeking an answer. It was long in
coming. “No,” he said at last, in a slow, dragging tone, “I cannot.”

“Then you will at least tell us exactly what Mr. Mackenzie did.”

Again there was a long pause. He looked at me straight, but with
hopelessness in his eyes. “I fear you would not believe me. It would
not be worth while. If you can grant it, sir, I would ask time to
decide.”

“Mr. Urquhart,” said I sternly, “are you aware you have brought
against Mr. Mackenzie a charge under which no man of honour can
live easily for a moment? You ask me without a word of evidence in
substantiation to keep him in torture while I give you time. It is
monstrous, and I beg to remind you that, unless your charge is proved,
you can–and will–be broken for making it.”

“I know it, sir,” he answered firmly enough; “and because I knew it, I
asked–perhaps selfishly–for time. If you refuse, I will at least ask
permission to see a priest before telling a story which I can scarcely
expect you to believe.” Mr. Urquhart too was a Roman Catholic.

But my temper for the moment was gone. “I see little chance,” said
I, “of keeping this scandal secret, and regret it the less if the
consequences are to fall on a rash accuser. But just now I will have
no meddling priest share the secret. For the present, one word more.
Had you heard before this evening of any hints against Mr. Mackenzie’s
play?”

He answered reluctantly, “Yes.”

“And you set yourself to lay a trap for him?”

“No, sir; I did not. Unconsciously I may have been set on the watch:
no, that is wrong–I did watch. But I swear it was in every hope and
expectation of clearing him. He was my friend. Even when I saw, I had
at first no intention to expose him until–”

“That is enough, sir,” I broke in, and turned to my brother. “I have
no option but to put Mr. Urquhart too under arrest. Kindly convey him
back to his room, and send Captain Murray to me. He may leave Mr.
Mackenzie in the entresol.”

My brother led Urquhart out, and in a minute Captain Murray tapped at
my door. He was an honest Scot, not too sharp-witted, but straight as
a die. I am to show him this description, and he will cheerfully agree
with it.

“This is a hideous business, Murray,” said I as he entered. “There’s
something wrong with Urquhart’s story. Indeed, between ourselves it
has the fatal weakness that he won’t tell it.”

Murray took a minute to digest this, then he answered, “I don’t know
anything about Urquhart’s story, sir. But there’s something wrong
about Urquhart.” Here he hesitated.

“Speak out, man,” said I: “in confidence. That’s understood.”

“Well, sir,” said he, “Urquhart won’t fight.”

“Ah! so that question came up, did it?” I asked, looking at him
sharply.

He was not abashed, but answered, with a twinkle in his eye, “I
believe, sir, you gave me no orders to stop their talking, and in a
case like this–between youngsters–some question of a meeting would
naturally come up. You see, I know both the lads. Urquhart I really
like; but he didn’t show up well, I must own–to be fair to the other,
who is in the worse fix.”

“I am not so sure of that,” I commented; “but go on.”

He seemed surprised. “Indeed, Colonel? Well,” he resumed, “I being the
sort of fellow they could talk before, a meeting was discussed. The
question was how to arrange it without seconds–that is, without
breaking your orders and dragging in outsiders. For Mackenzie wanted
blood at once, and for awhile Urquhart seemed just as eager. All of a
sudden, when….” here he broke off suddenly, not wishing to commit
himself.

“Tell me only what you think necessary,” said I.

He thanked me. “That is what I wanted,” he said. “Well, all of a
sudden, when we had found out a way and Urquhart was discussing it, he
pulled himself up in the middle of a sentence, and with his eyes fixed
on the other–a most curious look it was–he waited while you could
count ten, and, ‘No,’ says he, ‘I’ll not fight you at once’–for we
had been arranging something of the sort–’not to-night, anyway, nor
to-morrow,’ he says. ‘I’ll fight you; but I won’t have your blood on
my head in that way.’ Those were his words. I have no notion what
he meant; but he kept repeating them, and would not explain, though
Mackenzie tried him hard and was for shooting across the table. He was
repeating them when the Major interrupted us and called him up.”

“He has behaved ill from the first,” said I. “To me the whole affair
begins to look like an abominable plot against Mackenzie. Certainly I
cannot entertain a suspicion of his guilt upon a bare assertion which
Urquhart declines to back with a tittle of evidence.”

“The devil he does!” mused Captain Murray. “That looks bad for him.
And yet, sir, I’d sooner trust Urquhart than Mackenzie, and if the
case lies against Urquhart–”

“It will assuredly break him,” I put in, “unless he can prove the
charge, or that he was honestly mistaken.”

“Then, sir,” said the Captain, “I’ll have to show you this. It’s ugly,
but it’s only justice.”

He pulled a sovereign from his pocket and pushed it on the
writing-table under my nose.

“What does this mean?”

“It is a marked one,” said he.

“So I perceive.” I had picked up the coin and was examining it.

“I found it just now,” he continued, “in the room below. The upsetting
of the table had scattered Mackenzie’s stakes about the floor.”

“You seem to have a pretty notion of evidence,” I observed sharply.
“I don’t know what accusation this coin may carry; but why need it be
Mackenzie’s? He might have won it from Urquhart.”

“I thought of that,” was the answer. “But no money had changed hands.
I enquired. The quarrel arose over the second deal, and as a matter of
fact Urquhart had laid no money on the table, but made a pencil-note
of a few shillings he lost by the first hand. You may remember, sir,
how the table stood when you entered.”

I reflected. “Yes, my recollection bears you out. Do I gather that you
have confronted Mackenzie with this?”

“No. I found it and slipped it quietly into my pocket. I thought we
had trouble enough on hand for the moment.”

“Who marked this coin?”

“Young Fraser, sir, in my presence. He has been losing small sums, he
declares, by pilfering. We suspected one of the orderlies.”

“In this connection you had no suspicion of Mr. Mackenzie?”

“None, sr.” He considered for a moment, and added: “There was a
curious thing happened three weeks ago over my watch. It found its
way one night to Mr. Mackenzie’s quarters. He brought it to me in the
morning; said it was lying, when he awoke, on the table beside his
bed. He seemed utterly puzzled. He had been to one or two already to
discover the owner. We joked him about it, the more by token that his
own watch had broken down the day before and was away at the mender’s.
The whole thing was queer, and has not been explained. Of course in
that instance he was innocent: everything proves it. It just occurred
to me as worth mentioning, because in both instances the lad may have
been the victim of a trick.”

“I am glad you did so,” I said; “though just now it does not throw any
light that I can see.” I rose and paced the room. “Mr. Mackenzie had
better be confronted with this, too, and hear your evidence. It’s best
he should know the worst against him; and if he be guilty it may move
him to confession.”

“Certainly, sir,” Captain Murray assented. “Shall I fetch him?”

“No, remain where you are,” I said; “I will go for him myself.”

I understood that Mr. Urquhart had retired to his own quarters or to
my brother’s, and that Mr. Mackenzie had been left in the entresol
alone. But as I descended the stairs quietly I heard within that room
a voice which at first persuaded me he had company, and next that,
left to himself, he had broken down and given way to the most childish
wailing. The voice was so unlike his, or any grown man’s, that it
arrested me on the lowermost stair against my will. It resembled
rather the sobbing of an infant mingled with short strangled cries of
contrition and despair.

“What shall I do? What shall I do? I didn’t mean it–I meant to do
good! What shall I do?”

So much I heard (as I say) against my will, before my astonishment
gave room to a sense of shame at playing, even for a moment, the
eavesdropper upon the lad I was to judge. I stepped quickly to the
door, and with a warning rattle (to give him time to recover himself)
turned the handle and entered.

He was alone, lying back in an easy chair–not writhing there in
anguish of mind, as I had fully expected, but sunk rather in a state
of dull and hopeless apathy. To reconcile his attitude with the sounds
I had just heard was merely impossible; and it bewildered me worse
than any in the long chain of bewildering incidents. For five seconds
or so he appeared not to see me; but when he grew aware his look
changed suddenly to one of utter terror, and his eyes, shifting from
me, shot a glance about the room as if he expected some new accusation
to dart at him from the corners. His indignation and passionate
defiance were gone: his eyes seemed to ask me, “How much do you know?”
before he dropped them and stood before me, sullenly submissive.

“I want you upstairs,” said I: “not to hear your defence on this
charge, for Mr. Urquhart has not yet specified it. But there is
another matter.”

“Another?” he echoed dully, and, I observed, without surprise.

I led the way back to the room where Captain Murray waited. “Can you
tell me anything about this?” I asked, pointing to the sovereign on
the writing-table.

He shook his head, clearly puzzled, but anticipating mischief.

“The coin is marked, you see. I have reason to know that it was marked
by its owner in order to detect a thief. Captain Murray found it just
now among your stakes.”

Somehow–for I liked the lad–I had not the heart to watch his face as
I delivered this. I kept my eyes upon the coin, and waited, expecting
an explosion–a furious denial, or at least a cry that he was the
victim of a conspiracy. None came. I heard him breathing hard. After
a long and very dreadful pause some words broke from him, so lowly
uttered that my ears only just caught them.

“This too? O my God!”

I seated myself, the lad before me, and Captain Murray erect and rigid
at the end of the table. “Listen, my lad,” said I. “This wears an ugly
look, but that a stolen coin has been found in your possession does
not prove that you’ve stolen it.”

“I did not. Sir, I swear to you on my honour, and before Heaven, that
I did not.”

“Very well,” said I: “Captain Murray asserts that he found this
among the moneys you had been staking at cards. Do you question that
assertion?”

He answered almost without pondering. “No, sir. Captain Murray is a
gentleman, and incapable of falsehood. If he says so, it was so.”

“Very well again. Now, can you explain how this coin came into your
possession?”

At this he seemed to hesitate; but answered at length, “No, I cannot
explain.”

“Have you any idea? Or can you form any guess?”

Again there was a long pause before the answer came in low and
strained tones: “I can guess.”

“What is your guess?”

He lifted a hand and dropped it hopelessly. “You would not believe,”
he said.

I will own a suspicion flashed across my mind on hearing these
words–the very excuse given a while ago by Mr. Urquhart–that the
whole affair was a hoax and the two young men were in conspiracy to
fool me. I dismissed it at once: the sight of Mr. Mackenzie’s face,
was convincing. But my temper was gone.

“Believe you?” I exclaimed. “You seem to think the one thing I can
swallow as creditable, even probable, is that an officer in the Morays
has been pilfering and cheating at cards. Oddly enough, it’s the last
thing I’m going to believe without proof, and the last charge I shall
pass without clearing it up to my satisfaction. Captain Murray, will
you go and bring me Mr. Urquhart and the Major?”

As Captain Murray closed the door I rose, and with my hands behind
me took a turn across the room to the fireplace, then back to the
writing-table.

“Mr. Mackenzie,” I said, “before we go any further I wish you to
believe that I am your friend as well as your Colonel. I did something
to start you upon your career, and I take a warm interest in it. To
believe you guilty of these charges will give me the keenest grief.
However unlikely your defence may sound–and you seem to fear it–I
will give it the best consideration I can. If you are innocent, you
shall not find me prejudiced because many are against you and you are
alone. Now, this coin–” I turned to the table.

The coin was gone.

I stared at the place where it had lain; then at the young man. He had
not moved. My back had been turned for less than two seconds, and I
could have sworn he had not budged from the square of carpet on
which he had first taken his stand, and on which his feet were still
planted. On the other hand, I was equally positive the incriminating
coin had lain on the table at the moment I turned my back.

“It is gone!” cried I.

“Gone?” he echoed, staring at the spot to which my finger pointed. In
the silence our glances were still crossing when my brother tapped at
the door and brought in Mr. Urquhart, Captain Murray following.

Dismissing for a moment this latest mystery, I addressed Mr. Urquhart.
“I have sent for you, sir, to request in the first place that here in
Mr. Mackenzie’s presence and in colder blood you will either withdraw
or repeat and at least attempt to substantiate the charge you brought
against him.”

“I adhere to it, sir, that there was cheating. To withdraw would be to
utter a lie. Does he deny it?”

I glanced at Mr. Mackenzie. “I deny that I cheated,” said he sullenly.

“Further,” pursued Mr. Urquhart, “I repeat what I told you, sir. He
may, while profiting by it have been unaware of the cheat. At the
moment I thought it impossible; but I am willing to believe–”

“You are willing!” I broke in. “And pray, sir, what about me, his
Colonel, and the rest of his brother officers? Have you the coolness
to suggest–”

But the full question was never put, and in this world it will never
be answered. A bugle call, distant but clear, cut my sentence in
half. It came from the direction of the Place d’Armes. A second bugle
echoed, it from the height of the Montagne du Parc, and within a
minute its note was taken up and answered across the darkness from
quarter after quarter.

We looked at one another in silence. “Business,” said my

[Or so much as is told of her by Paschal Tonkin, steward and major-domo
to the lamented John Milliton, of Pengersick Castle, in Cornwall: of her
coming in the Portugal Ship, anno 1526; her marriage with the said
Milliton and alleged sorceries; with particulars of the Barbary men
wrecked in Mount's Bay and their entertainment in the town of Market
Jew.]

My purpose is to clear the memory of my late and dear Master; and to
this end I shall tell the truth and the truth only, so far as I know it,
admitting his faults, which, since he has taken them before God, no man
should now aggravate by guess-work. That he had traffic with secret
arts is certain; but I believe with no purpose but to fight the Devil
with his own armoury. He never was a robber as Mr. Thomas St. Aubyn and
Mr. William Godolphin accused him; nor, as the vulgar pretended, a
lustful and bloody man. What he did was done in effort to save a
woman’s soul; as Jude tells us, “Of some have compassion, that are in
doubt; and others save, having mercy with fear, pulling them out of the
fire, hating even the garment spotted by the flesh“–though this, alas!
my dear Master could not. And so with Jude I would end, praying for all
of us and ascribing praise to the only wise God, our Saviour, who is
able to guard us from stumbling and set us faultless before His presence
with exceeding joy.

It was in January, 1526, after a tempest lasting three days, that the
ship called the Saint Andrew, belonging to the King of Portugal, drove
ashore in Gunwallo Cove, a little to the southward of Pengersick.
She was bound from Flanders to Lisbon with a freight extraordinary
rich–as I know after a fashion by my own eyesight, as well as from the
inventory drawn up by Master Francis Porson, an Englishman, travelling
on board of her as the King of Portugal’s factor. I have a copy of it
by me as I write, and here are some of Master Porson’s items:–

   8,000 cakes of copper, valued by him at      3,224 pounds.
   18 blocks of silver,    '    '    '          2,250   '.
   Silver vessels, plate, patens, ewers and
   pots, beside pearls, precious stones,
   and jewels of gold.
   Also a chest of coined money, in amount      6,240   '.

There was also cloth of arras, tapestry, rich hangings, satins, velvets,
silks, camlets, says, satins or Bruges, with great number of bales of
Flemish and English cloth; 2,100 barber’s basins; 3,200 laten
candlesticks; a great chest of shalmers and other instruments of music;
four sets of armour for the King of Portugal, much harness for his
horses, and much beside–the whole amounting at the least computation to
16,000 pounds in value. [1] And this I can believe on confirmation of
what I myself saw upon the beach.

But let me have done with Master Porson and his tale, which runs that
the Saint Andrew, having struck at the mouth of the cove, there
utterly perished; yet, by the grace and mercy of Almighty God, the
greater part of the crew got safely to land, and by help of many poor
folk dwelling in the neighbourhood saved all that was most valuable of
the cargo. But shortly after (says he) there came on the scene three
gentlemen, Thomas Saint Aubyn, William Godolphin, and John Milliton,
with about sixty men armed in manner of war with bows and swords, and
made an assault on the shipwrecked sailors and put them in great fear
and jeopardy; and in the end took from them all they had saved from the
wreck, amounting to 10,000 pounds worth of treasure–”which,” says he,
“they will not yield up, nor make restitution, though they have been
called upon to do so.”

So much then for the factor’s account, which I doubt not he believed to
be true enough; albeit on his own confession he had lain hurt and
unconscious upon the beach at the time, and his tale rested therefore on
what he could learn by hearsay after his recovery; when–the matter
being so important–he was at trouble to journey all the way to London
and lay his complaint before the Portuguese ambassador. Moreover he
made so fair a case of it that the ambassador obtained of the English
Court a Commissioner, Sir Nicholas Fleming, to travel down and push
enquiries on the spot–where Master Porson did not scruple to repeat his
accusation, and to our faces (having indeed followed the Commissioner
down for that purpose). I must say I thought him a very honest man–not
to say a brave one, seeing what words he dared to use to Mr. Saint Aubyn
in his own house at Clowance, calling him a mere robber. I was there
when he said it and made me go hot and cold, knowing (if he did not)
that for two pins Mr. Saint Aubyn might have had him drowned like a
puppy. However, he chose to make nothing of an insult from a factor.
“Mercator tantum,” replied he, snapping his fingers, and to my great
joy; for any violence might have spoiled the story agreed on between
us–that is, between Mr. Saint Aubyn, Mr. Godolphin, and me who acted as
deputy for my Master.

This story of ours, albeit less honest, had more colour of the truth
than Master Porson’s hearsay. It ran that Mr. Saint Aubyn, happening
near Gunwallo, heard of the wreck and rode to it, where presently Mr.
Godolphin and my Master joined him and helped to save the men; that, in
attempting to save the cargo also, a man of Mr. Saint Aubyn’s–one Will
Carnarthur–was drowned; that, in fact, very little was rescued; and,
seeing the men destitute and without money to buy meat and drink, we
bought the goods in lawful bargain with the master. As for the assault,
we denied it, or that we took goods to the value of ten thousand pounds
from the sailors. All that was certainly known to be saved amounted to
about 20 pounds worth; and, in spite of many trials to recover more,
which failed to pay the charges of labour, the bulk of the cargo
remained in the ship and was broken up by the seas.

This was our tale, false in parts, yet a truer one than either of us,
who uttered it, believed. The only person in the plot (so to say) who
knew it to be true in substance was my Master. I, his deputy, took this
version from him to Clowance with a mind glad enough to be relieved by
my duty from having any opinion on the matter. On the one hand, I had
the evidence of my senses that the booty had been saved, and too much
wit to doubt that any other man would conclude it to be in my Master’s
possession. On the other, I had never known him lie or deceive, or
engage me to further any deceit; his word was his bond, and by practice
my word was his bond also. Further, of this affair I had already begun
to wonder if a man’s plain senses could be trusted, as you will hear
reason by-and-by. As for Mr. Saint Aubyn and Mr. Godolphin, they had no
doubt at all that my Master was lying, and that I had come wittingly to
further his lie. They would have drawn on him (I make no doubt) had he
brought the tale in person. From me, his intermediate, they took it as
the best to suit with the known truth and present to the Commissioner.
All Cornishmen are cousins, you may say. It comes to this, rather:
these gentlemen chose to accept my master’s lie, and settle with him
afterwards, rather than make a clean breast and be forced to wring their
small shares out of the Exchequer. A neighbour can be persuaded,
terrified, forced; but London is always a long way off, and London
lawyers are the devil. I say freely that (knowing no more than they
did, or I) these two gentlemen followed a reasonable policy.

But, after we had fitted Sir Nicholas with our common story, and as I
was mounting my horse in Clowance courtyard, Mr. Saint Aubyn came close
to my stirrup and said this by way of parting:

“You will understand, Mr. Tonkin, that to-day’s tale is for to-day.
But by God I will come and take my share–you may tell your master–and
a trifle over! And the next time I overtake you I promise to put a
bullet in the back of your scrag neck.”

For answer to this–seeing that Master Porson stood at an easy distance
with his eye on us–I saluted him gravely and rode out of the courtyard.

Now the manner of the wreck was this, and our concern with it.
So nearly as I can learn, the Saint Andrew came ashore at two hours
after noon: the date, the 20th of January, 1526, and the weather at the
time coarse and foggy with a gale yet blowing from the south-west or a
good west of south, but sensibly abating, and the tide wanting an hour
before low water.

It happened that Mr. Saint Aubyn was riding, with twenty men at his
back, homeward from Gweek, where he had spent three days on some private
business, when he heard news of the wreck at a farmhouse on the road to
Helleston: and so turning aside, he, whose dwelling lay farthest from
it, came first to the cove. The news reached us at Pengersick a little
after three o’clock; as I remember because my Master was just then
settled to dinner. But he rose at once and gave word to saddle in
haste, at the same time bidding me make ready to ride with him, and
fifteen others.

So we set forth and rode–the wind lulling, but the rain coming down
steadily–and reached Gunwallo Cove with a little daylight to spare.
On the beach there we found most of the foreigners landed, but seven of
them laid out starkly, who had been drowned or brought ashore dead
(for the yard had fallen on board, the day before, and no time left in
the ship’s extremity to bury them): and three as good as dead–among
whom was Master Porson, with a great wound of the scalp; also everywhere
great piles of freight, chests, bales, and casks–a few staved and
taking damage from salt water and rain, but the most in apparent good
condition. The crew had worked very busily at the salving, and to the
great credit of men who had come through suffering and peril of death.
Mr. Saint Aubyn’s band, too, had lent help, though by this time the
flowing of the tide forced them to give over. But the master (as one
might say) of their endeavours was neither the Portuguese captain nor
Mr. Saint Aubyn, but a young damsel whom I must describe more
particularly.

She was standing, as we rode down the beach, nigh to the water’s edge;
with a group of men about her, and Mr. Saint Aubyn himself listening to
her orders. I can see her now as she turned at our approaching and she
and my Master looked for the first time into each other’s eyes, which
afterwards were to look so often and fondly. In age she appeared
eighteen or twenty; her shape a mere girl’s, but her face somewhat
older, being pinched and peaked by the cold, yet the loveliest I have
ever seen or shall see. Her hair, which seemed of a copper red,
darkened by rain, was blown about her shoulders, and her drenched blue
gown, hitched at the waist with a snakeskin girdle, flapped about her as
she turned to one or the other, using more play of hands than our
home-bred ladies do. Her feet were bare and rosy; ruddied doubtless, by
the wind and brine, but I think partly also by the angry light of the
sunsetting which broke the weather to seaward and turned the pools and
the wetted sand to the colour of blood. A hound kept beside her,
shivering and now and then lowering his muzzle to sniff the oreweed, as
if the brine of it puzzled him: a beast in shape somewhat like our
grey-hounds, but longer and taller, and coated like a wolf.

As I have tried to describe her she stood amid the men and the tangle of
the beach; a shape majestical and yet (as we drew closer) slight and
forlorn. The present cause of her gestures we made out to be a
dark-skinned fellow whom two of Saint Aubyn’s men held prisoner with his
arms trussed behind him. On her other hand were gathered the rest of
the Portuguese, very sullen and with dark looks whenever she turned from
them to Saint Aubyn and from their language to the English. He, I could
see, was perplexed, and stood fingering his beard: but his face
brightened as he came a step to meet my Master.

“Ha!” said he, “you can help us, Milliton. You speak the Portuguese, I
believe?” (For my master was known to speak most of the languages of
Europe, having caught them up in his youth when his father’s madness
forced him abroad. And I myself, who had accompanied him so far as
Venice, could pick my way in the lingua Franca.) “This fellow”–
pointing at the prisoner–”has just drawn a knife on the lady here; and
indeed would have killed her, but for this hound of hers. My fellows
have him tight and safe, as you see: but I was thinking by your leave to
lodge him with you, yours being the nearest house for the safe keeping
of such. But the plague is,” says he, “there seems to be more in the
business than I can fathom: for one half of these drenched villains take
the man’s part, while scarce one of them seems too well disposed towards
the lady: although to my knowledge she has worked more than any ten of
them in salving the cargo. And heaven help me if I can understand a
word of their chatter!”

My Master lifted his cap to her; and she lifted her eyes to him, but
never a word did she utter, though but a moment since she had been using
excellent English. Only she stood, slight and helpless and (I swear)
most pitiful, as one saying, “Here is my judge. I am content.”

My Master turned to the prisoner and questioned him in the Portuguese.
But the fellow (a man taller than the rest and passably
straight-looking) would confess nothing but that his name was Gil Perez
of Lagos, the boatswain of the wrecked ship. Questioned of the assault,
he shook his head merely and shrugged his shoulders. His face was
white: it seemed to me unaccountably, until glancing down I took note of
a torn wound above his right knee on the inside, where the hound’s teeth
had fastened.

“But who is the captain of the ship?” my Master demanded in Portuguese;
and they thrust forward a small man who seemed not over-willing.
Indeed his face had nothing to commend him, being sharp and yellow, with
small eyes set too near against the nose.

“Your name?” my Master demanded of him too.

“Affonzo Cabral,” he answered, and plunged into a long tale of the loss
of his ship and how it happened. Cut short in this and asked concerning
the lady, he shrugged his shoulders and replied with an oath he knew
nothing about her beyond this, that she had taken passage with him at
Dunquerque for Lisbon, paying him beforehand and bearing him a letter
from the Bishop of Cambrai, which conveyed to him that she was bound on
some secret mission of politics to the Court of Lisbon.

As I thought, two or three of the men would have murmured something
here, but for a look from her, who, turning to my Master, said quietly
in good English:

“That man is a villain. My name is Alicia of Bohemia, and my mission
not to be told here in public. But he best knows why he took me for
passenger, and how he has behaved towards me. Yourselves may see how I
have saved his freight. And for the rest, sir”–here she bent her eyes
on my Master very frankly–”I have proved these men, and claim to be
delivered from them.”

At this my Master knit his brows: and albeit he was a young man (scarce
past thirty) and a handsome, the deep wedge-mark showed between them as
I had often seen it show over the nose of the old man his father.

“I think,” said he to Mr. Saint Aubyn, “this should be inquired into at
greater leisure. With your leave my men shall take the prisoner to
Pengersick and have him there in safe keeping. And if”–with a bow–”
the Lady Alicia will accept my poor shelter it will be the handier for
our examining of him. For the rest, cannot we be of service in rescuing
yet more of the cargo?”

But this for the while was out of question: the Saint Andrew lying
well out upon the strand, with never fewer than four or five ugly
breakers between her and shore; and so balanced that every sea worked
her to and fro. Moreover, her mizzen mast yet stood, as by a miracle,
and the weight of it so strained at her seams that (thought I) there
could be very little left of her by the next ebb.

By now, too, the night was closing down, and we must determine what to
do with the cargo saved. Mr. Godolphin, who had arrived with his men
during my Master’s colloquy, was ready with an offer of wains and
pack-horses to convey the bulk of it to the outhouses at Godolphin.
But this, when I interpreted it, the Portuguese captain would not hear.
Nor was he more tractable to Mr. Saint Aubyn’s offer to set a mixed
guard of our three companies upon the stuff until daybreak. He plainly
had his doubts of such protection: and I could not avoid some respect
for his wisdom while showing it by argument to be mere perversity.
To my Master’s persuasions and mine he shook his head: asking for the
present to be allowed a little fuel and refreshment for his men, who
would camp on the beach among their goods. And to this, in the end, we
had to consent. Several times before agreeing–and perhaps more often
than need was–my Master consulted with the Lady Alicia. But she seemed
indifferent what happened to the ship. Indeed, she might well have been
overwearied.

At length, the Portugals having it their own way, we parted: Mr. Saint
Aubyn riding off to lodge for the night with Mr. Godolphin, who took
charge of the three wounded men; while we carried the Lady Alicia off to
Pengersick (whither the prisoner Gil Perez had been marched on ahead),
she riding pillion behind my Master, and the rest of us at a seemly
distance.

On reaching home I had first to busy myself with orders for the victuals
to be sent down to the foreigners at the Cove, and afterwards in
snatching my supper in the great hall, where already I saw my Master and
the strange lady making good cheer together at the high table. He had
bidden the housekeeper fetch out some robes that had been his mother’s,
and in these antique fittings the lady looked not awkwardly (as you
might suppose), but rather like some player in a masque. I know not how
’twas: but whereas (saving my respect) I had always been to my dear
Master as a brother, close to his heart and thoughts, her coming did at
once remove him to a distance from me, so that I looked on the pair as
if the dais were part of some other world than this, and they, pledging
each other up there and murmuring in foreign tongues and playing with
glances, as two creatures moving through a play or pisky tale without
care or burden of living, and yet in the end to be pitied.

My fast broken, I bethought me of our prisoner; and catching up some
meats and a flask of wine, hurried to the strong room where he lay. But
I found him stretched on his pallet, and turning in a kind of fever: so
returned and fetched a cooling draught in place of the victuals, and
without questioning made him drink it. He thanked me amid some
rambling, light-headed talk–the most of it too quickly poured out for
me to catch; but by-and-by grew easier and drowsy. I left him to sleep,
putting off questions for the morning.

But early on the morrow–between five and six o’clock–came Will Hendra,
a cowkeeper, into our courtyard with a strange tale; one that disquieted
if it did not altogether astonish me. The tale–as told before my
Master, whom I aroused to hear it–ran thus: that between midnight and
one in the morning the Portugals in the Cove had been set upon and
beaten from the spoils by a number of men with pikes (no doubt belonging
to Saint Aubyn or Godolphin, or both), and forced to flee to the cliffs.
But (here came in the wonder) the assailants, having mastered the field,
fell on the casks, chests, and packages, only to find them utterly empty
or filled with weed and gravel! Of freight–so Will Hendra had it from
one of Godolphin’s own men, who were now searching the cliffs and
caverns–not twelve-pennyworth remained on the beach. The Portugals
must have hidden or made away with it all. He added that their captain
had been found at the foot of the cliffs with his head battered in; but
whether by a fall or a blow taken in the affray, there was no telling.

My Master let saddle at once and rode away for the Cove without breaking
his fast. And I went about my customary duties until full daybreak,
when I paid a visit to the strong room, to see how the prisoner had
slept.

I found him sitting up in bed and nursing his leg, the wound of which
appeared red and angry at the edges. I sent, therefore, for a
fomentation, and while applying it thought no harm to tell him the
report from the Cove. To my astonishment it threw him into a transport,
though whether of rage or horror I could not at first tell. But he
jerked his leg from my grasp, and beating the straw with both fists he
cried out–

“I knew it! I knew it would be so! She is a witch–a daughter of
Satan, or his leman! It is her doing, I tell you. It is she who has
killed that fool Affonzo. She is a witch!” He fell back on the straw,
his strength spent, but still beat weakly with his fists, gasping
“Witch–witch!”

“Hush!” said I. “You are light-headed with your hurt. Lie quiet and
let me tend it.”

“As for my hurt,” he answered, “your tending it will do no good.
The poison of that hound of hell is in me, and nothing for me but to say
my prayers. But listen you”–here he sat up again and plucked me by the
shoulder as I bent over his leg. “The freight is not gone, and good
reason for why: it was never landed!”

“Hey?” said I, incredulous.

“It was never landed. The men toiled as she ordered–Lord, how they
toiled! Without witch-craft they had never done the half of it. I tell
you they handled moonshine–wove sand. The riches they brought ashore
were emptiness; vain shows that already have turned to chips and straw
and rubbish. Nay, sir”–for I drew back before these ravings–”listen
for the love of God, before the poison gets hold of me! Soon it will be
too late. . . . The evening before we sailed from Dunquerque, we were
anchored out in the tide. It was my watch. I was leaning on the rail
of the poop when I caught sight of her first. She was running for her
life across the dunes–running for the waterside–she and her hound
beside her. Away behind her, like ants dotted over the rises of the
sand, were little figures running and pursuing. Down by the waterside
one boat was waiting, with a man in it–or the Devil belike–leaning on
his oars. She whistled; he pulled close in shore. She leapt into the
boat with the dog at her heels, and was half-way across towards our ship
before the first of those after her reached the water’s edge. When she
hailed us I ran and fetched Affonzo the master. The rest I charge to
his folly. It was he who handed her up the ship’s side. How the dog
came on board I know not: only that I leaned over the bulwarks to have a
look at him, but heard a pattering noise, and there he was on deck
behind me and close beside his mistress. The boat and rower had
vanished–under the ship’s stern, as I supposed, but now I have my
doubts. I saw no more of them, anyhow.

“By this time Affonzo was reading her letter. The crowd by the water’s
edge had found a boat at length–how, I know not; but it was a very
little one, holding but six men besides the one rower, and then
over-laden. They pulled towards us and hailed just as the lady took the
master’s promise and went down to seek her cabin: and one of the men
stood up, a tall gentleman with a chain about his neck. Affonzo went to
the side to parley with him.

“The tall man with the chain cried out that he was mayor or provost–
I forget which–and the woman must be given up as a proved witch who had
laid the wickedest spells upon many citizens of Dunquerque. All this he
had to shout; for Affonzo, who–either ignorantly or by choice–was
already on Satan’s side, would not suffer him to come aboard or even
nigh the ship’s ladder. Moreover, he drove below so many of our crew as
had gathered to the side to listen, commanding me with curses to see to
this. Yet I heard something of the mayor’s accusation; which was that
the woman had come to Dunquerque, travelling as a great lady with a
retinue of servants and letters of commendation to the religious houses,
on which and on many private persons of note she had bestowed relics of
our Lord and the saints, pretending it was for a penance that she
journeyed and gave the bounties: but that, at a certain hour, these
relics had turned into toads, adders, and all manner of abominable
offal, defiling the holy places and private shrines, in some instances
the very church altars: that upon the outcry her retinue had vanished,
and she herself taken to flight as we saw her running.

“At all this Affonzo scoffed, threatening to sink the boat if further
troubled with their importunities. And, the provost using threats in
return, he gave order to let weigh incontinently and clear with the
tide, which by this was turned to ebb. And so, amid curses which we
answered by display of our guns, we stood out from that port. Of the
master’s purpose I make no guess. Either he was bewitched, or the woman
had taken him with her beauty, and he dreamed of finding favour with
her.

“This only I know, that on the second morning, she standing on deck
beside him, he offered some familiar approach; whereupon the dog flew at
him, and I believe would have killed him, but was in time called off by
her. Within an hour we met with the weather which after three days
drove us ashore. Now whether Affonzo suspected her true nature or not–
as I know he had taken a great fear of her–I never had time to
discover. But I know her for a witch, and for a witch I tried to make
away with her. For the rest, may God pardon me!”

All this the man uttered not as I have written it, but with many gasping
interruptions; and afterwards lay back as one dead. Before I could make
head or tail of my wonder, I heard cries and a clatter from the
courtyard, and ran out to see what was amiss.

In the courtyard I found my Master with a dozen men closing the bolts of
the great gate against a company who rained blows and hammerings on the
outside of it. My Master had dismounted, and while he called his orders
the blood ran down his face from a cut above the forehead. As for the
smoking horses on which they had ridden in, these stood huddling,
rubbing shoulders, and facing all ways like a knot of frightened colts.

All the bolts being shut, my Master steps to the grille and speaking
through it, “Saint Aubyn,” says he, “between gentlemen there are fitter
ways to dispute than brawling with servants. I am no thief or robber;
as you may satisfy yourself by search and question, bringing, if you
will, Mr. Godolphin and three men to help you under protection of my
word. If you will not, then I am ready for you at any time of your
choosing. But I warn you that, if any man offers further violence to my
gate, I send Master Tonkin to melt the lead, of which I have good store.
So make your choice.”

He said it in English, and few of those who heard him could understand.
And after a moment Saint Aubyn, who was a very courteous gentleman for
all his hot temper, made answer in the same tongue.

“If I cannot take your word, Pengersick,” said he, “be sure no searching
will satisfy me. But that some of your men have made off with the
goods, with or without your knowledge, I am convinced.”

“If they have–” my Master was beginning, when Godolphin’s sneering
laugh broke in on his words from the other side of the gate.

“‘If!‘ ‘If!‘ There are too many if’s in this parley for my
stomach. Look ye, Pengersick, will you give up the goods or no?”

Upon this my Master changed his tone. “As for Mr. Godolphin, I have
this only to say: the goods are neither his nor mine; they are not in my
keeping, nor do I believe them stolen by any of my men. For the words
that have passed between us to-day, he knows me well enough to be sure I
shall hold him to account, and that soon: and to that assurance
commending him, I wish you both a very good day.”

So having said, he strolled off towards the stables, leaving me to
listen at the gate, where by-and-by, after some disputing, I had the
pleasure to hear our besiegers draw off and trot away towards Godolphin.
Happening to take a glance upwards at the house-front, I caught sight of
the strange lady at the window of the guest-chamber, which faced towards
the south-east. She was leaning forth and gazing after them: but,
hearing my Master’s footsteps as he came from the stables, she withdrew
her eyes from the road and nodded down at him gaily.

But as he went indoors to join her at breakfast I ran after, and
catching him in the porch, besought him to have his wound seen to.
“And after that,” said I, “there is another wounded man who needs your
attention. Unless you take his deposition quickly, I fear, sir, it may
be too late.”

His eyebrows went up at this, but contracted again upon the twinge of
his wound. “I will attend to him first,” said he shortly, and led the
way to the strong room. “Hullo!” was his next word, as he came to the
door–for in my perturbation and hurry I had forgotten to lock it.

“He is too weak to move,” I stammered, as my poor excuse.

“Nevertheless it was not well done,” he replied, pushing past me.

The prisoner lay on his pallet, gasping, with his eyes wide open in a
rigor. “Take her away!” he panted. “Take her away! She has been
here!”

“Hey?” I cried: but my Master turned on me sharply. To this day I know
not how much of evil he suspected.

“I will summon you if I need you. For the present you will leave us
here alone.”

Nor can I tell what passed between them for the next half-an-hour.
Only that when he came forth my Master’s face was white and set beneath
its dry smear of blood. Passing me, who waited at the end of the
corridor, he said, but without meeting my eyes:

“Go to him. The end is near.”

I went to him. He lay pretty much as I had left him, in a kind of
stupor; out of which, within the hour, he started suddenly and began to
rave. Soon I had to send for a couple of our stablemen; and not too
soon. For by this he was foaming at the mouth and gnashing, the man in
him turned to beast and trying to bite, so that we were forced to strap
him to his bed. I shall say no more of this, the most horrible sight of
my life. The end came quietly, about six in the evening: and we buried
the poor wretch that night in the orchard under the chapel wall.

All that day, as you may guess, I saw nothing of the strange lady.
And on the morrow until dinner-time I had but a glimpse of her.
This was in the forenoon. She stood, with her hound beside her, in an
embrasure of the wall, looking over the sea: to the eye a figure so
maidenly and innocent and (in a sense) forlorn that I recalled Gil
Perez’ tale as the merest frenzy, and wondered how I had come to listen
to it with any belief. Her seaward gaze would be passing over the very
spot where we had laid him: only a low wall hiding the freshly turned
earth. My Master had ridden off early: I could guess upon what errand.

He returned shortly after noon, unhurt and looking like a man satisfied
with his morning’s work. And at dinner, watching his demeanour
narrowly, I was satisfied that either he had not heard the prisoner’s
tale or had rejected it utterly. For he took his seat in the gayest
spirits, and laughed and talked with the stranger throughout the meal.
And afterwards, having fetched an old lute which had been his mother’s,
he sat and watched her fit new strings to it, rallying her over her
tangle. But when she had it tuned and, touching it softly, began the
first of those murmuring heathenish songs to which I have since listened
so often, pausing in my work, but never without a kind of terror at
beauty so far above my comprehending–why, then my Master laughed no
more.

He had met Godolphin that morning and run him through the thigh.
And that bitterest enemy of ours still wore a crutch a month later, when
we faced Master Porson before the Commissioner in Saint Aubyn’s house at
Clowance. At that conference (not to linger over the time between) the
Commissioner showed himself pardonably suspicious of us all. He was a
dry, foxy-faced man, who spoke little and at times seemed scarce to be
listening; but rather turning over some deeper matters in his brain
behind his grey-coloured eyes. But at length, Mr. Saint Aubyn having
twice or thrice made mention of the Lady Alicia and her presence on the
beach, this Sir Nicholas looked up at me sharply, and said he–”By all
accounts this lady was a passenger shipped by the master at Dunquerque.
It seems she was a foreign lady of birth, bearing letters commendatory
to the Court of Lisbon.”

“That was his story of it,” Master Porson assented. “I was below and
busy with the cargo at the time, and knew nothing of her presence on
board until we had cleared the harbour.”

“And at this moment she is a guest of Mr. Milliton’s at Pengersick?”
pursued Sir Nicholas, still with his eyes upon mine. I bowed, feeling
mightily uneasy. “It is most necessary that I should take her
evidence–and Mr. Milliton’s. In all the statements received by me
Mr. Milliton bears no small part: his house lies at no distance from
Gunwallo Cove: and I have heard much of your Cornish courtesy.
It appears to me singular, therefore, that although I have been these
four days in his neighbourhood no invitation has reached me to visit
his house and have audience with him: and it argues small courtesy that
on coming here to-day in full expectation of seeing him, I should be
fobbed off with a deputy.”

“Though but a deputy,” I protested, “I have my Master’s entire
confidence.”

“No doubt,” said he drily. “But it would be more to the point if you
had mine. It is imperative that I see Mr. Milliton of Pengersick and
hear his evidence, as also this Lady Alicia’s: and you may bear him my
respects and say that I intend to call upon him to-morrow.”

I bowed. It was all I could do: since the truth (for different reasons)
could neither be told to him nor to the others. And the truth was that
for two days my Master and the strange lady had not been seen at
Pengersick! They had vanished, and two horses with them: but when and
how I neither knew nor dared push inquiries to discover. Only the
porter could have told me had he chosen; but when I questioned him he
looked cunning, shook his head, and as good as hinted that I would be
wiser to question nobody, but go about my business as if I shared the
secret.

And so I did, imitating the porter’s manner even before Dame Tresize,
the housekeeper. But it rankled that, even while instructing me–as he
did on the eve of his departing–in the part I was to play at Clowance,
my Master had chosen to shut me out of this part of his confidence.
And now on the road home from Clowance I carried an anxious heart as
well as a sore. To tell the truth–that my Master was away–I had not
been able, knowing how prompt Saint Aubyn and Godolphin might be to take
the advantage and pay us an unwelcome visit. “And indeed,” thought I,
“if my Master hides one thing from me, why not another? The stuff may
indeed be stored with us: though I will not believe it without proof.”
The Commissioner would come, beyond a doubt. To discover my Master’s
absence would quicken his suspicions: to deny him admittance would
confirm them.

I reached home, yet could get no sleep for my quandary. But a little
before the dawning, while I did on my clothes, there came a knocking at
the gate followed by a clatter of hoofs in the courtyard; and hurrying
down, with but pause to light my lantern, I found my Master there and
helping the strange lady to dismount, with the porter and two sleepy
grooms standing by and holding torches. Beneath the belly of the lady’s
horse stood her hound, his tongue lolling and his coat a cake of mire.
The night had been chilly and the nostrils of the hard-ridden beasts
made a steam among the lights we held, while above us the upper frontage
of the house stood out clear between the growing daylight and the waning
moon poised above the courtlege-wall in the south-west.

“Hey! Is that Paschal?” My Master turned as one stiff with riding.
His face was ghastly pale, yet full of a sort of happiness: and I saw
that his clothes were disordered and his boots mired to their tops.
“Good luck!” cried he, handing the lady down. “We can have supper at
once.”

“Supper?” I repeated it after him.

“Or breakfast–which you choose. Have the lights lit in the hall, and a
table spread. My lady will eat and drink before going to her room.”

“‘My lady’?” was my echo again.

“Just so–my lady, and my wife, and henceforward your Mistress.
Lead the way, if you please! Afterwards I will talk.”

I did as I was ordered: lit the lights about the dais, spread the cloth
with my own hands, fetched forth the cold meats and–for he would have
no servants aroused–waited upon them in silence and poured the wine,
all in a whirl of mind. My Mistress (as I must now call her) showed no
fatigue, though her skirts were soiled as if they had been dragged
through a sea of mud. Her eyes sparkled and her bosom heaved as she
watched my Master, who ate greedily. But beyond the gallant words with
which he pledged her welcome home to Pengersick nothing was said until,
his hunger put away, he pushed back his chair and commanded me to tell
what had happened at Clowance: which I did, pointing out the ticklish
posture of affairs, and that for a certainty the Commissioner might be
looked for in within a few hours.

“Well,” said my Master, “I see no harm in his coming, nor any profit.
The goods are not with us: never were with us: and there’s the end of
it.”

But I was looking from him to my Mistress, who with bent brows sat
studying the table before her.

“Master Paschal,” said she after a while, as one awaking from thought,
“has done his business zealously and well. I will go to my room now and
rest: but let me be aroused when this visitor comes, for I believe that
I can deal with him.” And she rose and walked away to the stair, with
the hound at her heels.

A little later I saw my Master to his room: and after that had some
hours of leisure in which to fret my mind as well over what had happened
as what was likely to. It was hard on noon when the Commissioner
arrived: and with him Master Porson. I led them at once to the hall
and, setting wine before them, sent to learn when my Master and Mistress
would be pleased to give audience. The lady came down almost at once,
looking very rosy and fresh. She held a packet of papers, and having
saluted the Commissioner graciously, motioned me to seat myself at the
table with paper and pen.

Sir Nicholas began with some question touching her business on board the
Saint Andrew: and in answer she drew a paper from the top of her
packet. It was spotted with sea-water, but (as I could see) yet
legible. The Commissioner studied it, showed it to Master Porson (who
nodded), and handing it back politely, begged her for some particulars
concerning the wreck.

Upon this she told the story clearly and simply. There had been a three
days’ tempest: the ship had gone ashore in such and such a manner: a
great part of the cargo had undoubtedly been landed. It was on the
beach when she had left it under conduct of Mr. Milliton, who had shown
her great kindness. On whomsoever its disappearance might be charged,
of her host’s innocence she could speak.

My Master appearing just now saluted the Commissioner and gave his
version very readily.

“You may search my cellars,” he wound up, “and, if you please,
interrogate my servants. My livery is known by everyone in this
neighbourhood to be purple and tawny. The seamen can tell you if any of
their assailants wore these colours.”

“They assure me,” said Sir Nicholas, “that the night was too dark for
them to observe colours: and for that matter to disguise them would have
been a natural precaution. There was a wounded man brought to your
house–one Gil Perez, the boatswain.”

“He is dead, as you doubtless know, of a bite received from this lady’s
hound as he was attacking her with a knife.”

“But why, madam”–the factor turned to my Mistress–”should this man
have attacked you?”

She appeared to be expecting this question, and drew from her packet a
second paper, which she unfolded quietly and spread on the table, yet
kept her palm over the writing on it while she answered, “Those who
engage upon missions of State must look to meet with attacks, but not to
be asked to explain them. The mob at Dunquerque pursued me upon a
ridiculous charge, yet was wisely incited by men who invented it,
knowing the true purpose of my mission.” She glanced from the
Commissioner to Master Porson. “Sir Nicholas Fleming–surely I have
heard his name spoken, as of a good friend to the Holy Father and not
too anxious for the Emperor’s marriage with Mary Tudor?”
The Commissioner started in his chair, while she turned serenely upon
his companion. “And Master Porson,” she continued, “as a faithful
servant of His Majesty of Portugal will needs be glad to see a princess
of Portugal take Mary Tudor’s place. Eh?”–for they were eyeing each
the other like two detected schoolboys–”It would seem, sirs, that
though you came together, you were better friends than you guessed.
Glance your eye, Master Porson, over this paper which I shall presently
entrust to you for furtherance; and you will agree with Sir Nicholas
that the prudent course for both of you is to forget, on leaving this
house, that any such person as I was on board the Saint Andrew.“

The two peered into the parchment and drew back. “The Emperor–” I
heard the Commissioner mutter with an intake of breath.

“And, as you perceive, in his own handwriting.” She folded up the paper
and, replacing it, addressed my Master. “Your visitors, sir, deserve
some refreshment for their pains and courtesy.”

And that was the end of the conference. What that paper contained I
know as little as I know by what infernal sorcery it was prepared.
Master Porson folded it up tight in his hand, glancing dubiously at Sir
Nicholas. My lady stood smiling upon the both for a moment, then
dismissed me to the kitchens upon a pretended errand. They were gone
when I returned, nor did I again set eyes upon the Commissioner or the
factor. It is true that the Emperor did about this time break his
pledge with our King Henry and marry a princess of Portugal; and some of
high office in England were not sorry therefore. But of this enough.

As the days wore on and we heard no more of the wreck, my Master and
Mistress settled down to that retirement from the world which is by
custom allowed to the newly married, but which with them was to last to
the end. A life of love it was; but–God help us!–no life of
happiness; rather, in process of days, a life of torment. Can I tell
you how it was? At first to see them together was like looking through
a glass upon a picture; a picture gallant and beautiful yet removed
behind a screen and not of this world. Suppose now that by little and
little the glass began to be flawed, or the picture behind it to crumble
(you could not tell which) until when it smiled it smiled wryly, until
rocks toppled and figures fell askew, yet still kept up their pretence
of play against the distorted woodland. Nay, it was worse than this:
fifty times worse. For while the fair show tottered, my Master and
Mistress clung to their love; and yet it was just their love which kept
the foundations rocking.

They lived for each other. They neither visited nor received visits.
Yet they were often, and by degrees oftener, apart; my Master locked up
with his books, my Mistress roaming the walls with her hound or seated
by her lattice high on the seaward side of the castle. Sometimes (but
this was usually on moonlit nights or windless evenings when the sun
sank clear to view over our broad bay) she would take up her lute and
touch it to one of those outlandish love-chants with which she had first
wiled my Master’s heart to her. As time went on, stories came to us
that these chants, which fell so softly on the ears of us as we went
about the rooms and gardens, had been heard by fishermen riding by their
nets far in the offing–so far away (I have heard) as the Scillies; and
there were tales of men who, as they listened, had seen the ghosts of
drowned mariners rising and falling on the moon-rays, or floating with
their white faces thrown back while they drank in the music; yea, even
echoing the words of the song in whispers like the flutter of birds’
wings.

When first the word crept about that she was a witch I cannot certainly
say. But in time it did; and, what is more–though I will swear that no
word of Gil Perez’ confession ever passed my lips–the common folk soon
held it for a certainty that the cargo saved from the Saint Andrew had
been saved by her magic only; that the plate and rich stuffs seen by my
own eyes were but cheating simulacra, and had turned into rubbish at
midnight, scarce an hour before the assault on the Portuguese.

I have wondered since if ’twas this rumour and some belief in it which
held Messrs. Saint Aubyn and Godolphin from offering any further attack
on us. You might say that it was open to them, so believing, to have
denounced her publicly. But in our country Holy Church had little
hold–scarce more than the King’s law itself in such matters; and within
my memory it has always come easier to us to fear witch-craft than to
denounce it. Also (and it concerns my tale) the three years which
followed the stranding of the Saint Andrew were remarkable for a great
number of wrecks upon our coast. In that short time we of our parish
and the men of St. Hilary upon our north were between us favoured with
no fewer than fourteen; the most of them vessels of good burden. Of any
hand in bringing them ashore I know our gentry to have been innocent.
Still, there were pickings; and finding that my Master held aloof from
all share in such and (as far as could be) held his servants aloof, our
neighbours, though not accepting this for quittance, forbore to press
the affair of the Saint Andrew further than by spreading injurious
tales and whispers.

The marvel was that we of Pengersick (who reaped nothing of this
harvest) fell none the less under suspicion of decoying the vessels
ashore. More than once in my dealings with the fishermen and tradesmen
of Market Jew, I happened on hints of this; but nothing which could be
taken hold of until one day a certain Peter Chynoweth of that town,
coming drunk to Pengersick with a basket of fish, blurted out the tale.
Said he, after I had beaten him down to a reasonable price, “Twould be
easy enough, one would think, to spare an honest man a groat of the
fortune Pengersick makes on these dark nights.”

“Thou lying thief!” said I. “What new slander is this?”

“Come, come,” says he, looking roguish; “that won’t do for me that have
seen the false light on Cuddan Point more times than I can count; and so
has every fisherman in the bay.”

Well, I kicked him through the gate for it, and flung his basket after
him; but the tale could not be so dismissed. “It may be,” thought I,
“some one of Pengersick has engaged upon this wickedness on his own
account”; and for my Master’s credit I resolved to keep watch.

I took therefore the porter into my secret, who agreed to let me through
the gate towards midnight without telling a soul. I took a sheepskin
with me and a poignard for protection; and for a week, from midnight to
dawn, I played sentinel on Cuddan Point, walking to and fro, or
stretched under the lee of a rock whence I could not miss any light
shown on the headland, if Peter Chynoweth’s tale held any truth.

By the eighth trial I had pretty well made up my mind (and without
astonishment) that Peter Chynoweth was a liar. But scarcely had I
reached my post that night when, turning, I descried a radiance as of a
lantern, following me at some fifty paces. On the instant I gripped my
poignard and stepped behind a boulder. The light drew nearer, came, and
passed me. To my bewilderment it was no lantern, but an open flame,
running close along the turf and too low for anyone to be carrying it:
nor was the motion that of a light which a man carries.
Moreover, though it passed me within half-a-dozen yards and lit up the
stone I stood behind, I saw nobody and heard no footstep, though the
wind (which was south-westerly) blew from it to me. In this breeze the
flame quivered, though not violently but as it were a ball of fire
rolling with a flickering crest.

It went by, and I followed it at something above walking pace until upon
the very verge of the head-land, where I had no will to risk my neck, it
halted and began to be heaved up and down much like the poop-light of a
vessel at sea. In this play it continued for an hour at least; then it
came steadily back towards me by the way it had gone, and as it came I
ran upon it with my dagger. But it slipped by me, travelling at speed
towards the mainland; whither I pelted after it hot-foot, and so across
the fields towards Pengersick. Strain as I might, I could not overtake
it; yet contrived to keep it within view, and so well that I was bare a
hundred yards behind when it came under the black shadow of the castle
and without pause glided across the dry moat and so up the face of the
wall to my lady’s window, which there overhung. And into this window it
passed before my very eyes and vanished.

I know not what emboldened me, but from the porter’s lodge I went
straight up to my Master’s chamber, where (though the hour must have
been two in the morning or thereabouts) a light was yet burning.
Also–but this had become ordinary–a smell of burning gums and herbs
filled the passage leading to his door. He opened to my knock, and
stood before me in his dressing-gown of sables–a tall figure of a man
and youthful, though already beginning to stoop. Over his shoulder I
perceived the room swimming with coils of smoke which floated in their
wreaths from a brazier hard by the fireplace.

I think his first motion was to thrust me away; but I caught him by the
hand, and with many protestations broke into my tale, giving him no time
to forbid me. And presently he drew me inside, and shutting the door,
stood upright by the table, facing me with his fingers on the rim as if
they rested there for support.

“Paschal,” said he, when at length I drew back, “this must not come to
my lady’s ears. She has been ailing of late.”

“Ay, sir, and long since: of a disease past your curing.”

“God help us! I hope not,” said he; then broke out violently: “She is
innocent, Paschal; innocent as a child!”

“Innocent!” cried I, in a voice which showed how little I believed.

“Paschal,” he went on, “you are my servant, but my friend also, I hope.
Nay, nay, I know. I swear to you, then, these things do but happen in
her sleep. In her waking senses she is mine, as one day she shall be
mine wholly. But at night, when her will is dissolved in sleep, the
evil spirit wakes and goes questing after its master.”

“Mahound?” I stammered, quaking.

“Be it Satan himself,” said he, very low and resolute, “I will win her
from him, though my own soul be the ransom.”

“Dear my Master,” I began, and would have implored him on my knees; but
he pointed to the door. “I will win her,” he repeated. “What you have
seen to-night happens more rarely now. Moreover, the summer is
beginning–”

He paused: yet I had gathered his meaning. “There will be less peril
for the ships for a while,” said I.

Said he: “To them she intends no harm. It is for her master the light
waves. Paschal, I am an unhappy man!” He flung a hand to his forehead,
but recovering himself peered at me under the shadow of it. “If you
could watch–often–as you have done to-night–you might protect others
from seeing–”

The wisdom of this at least I saw, and gave him my promise readily.
Upon this understanding (for no more could be had) I withdrew me.

The next day, therefore, I moved my bed to a turret-chamber on the angle
of the south-eastern wall whence I could keep my lady’s window in view.
I was never a man to need much sleep: but if, through the year which
followed, the apparition escaped once or twice without my cognisance, I
dare take oath this was the extent of it. It appeared more rarely, as
my Master had promised: and in the end (I think) scarce above once a
month. In form it never varied from the cresseted globe of flame I had
first seen, and always it took the path across the fields towards Cuddan
Point. No sound went with it, or announced its going or return: and
while it was absent, my lady’s chamber would be utterly dark and silent.
My custom was not to follow it (which I had proved to be useless), but
to let myself out and patrol the walls, satisfying myself that no
watchers lurked about the castle. I understood now that Pengersick was
reported throughout the neighbourhood to be haunted: and such a report
is not the worst protection. These vague tales kept aloof the country
people who, but for them, had almost certainly happened on the secret.
And night after night while I watched, my Master wrestled with the Evil
One in his room.

The last time I saw the apparition was on the night of May 10th, 1529,
more than three years after my lady’s first coming to Pengersick.
I was prepared for it: for she had been singing at her window a great
part of the afternoon, and I had learnt to be warned by this mood.
The night was a dark one, with flying clouds and a stiff breeze blowing
up from the south-east. The flame left my lady’s window at the usual
hour–a few minutes after midnight–but returned some while before its
due time. In ordinary it would be away for an hour and a half, or from
that to two hours, but this night I had scarcely begun my rounds before
I saw it returning across the fields. Nor was this the only surprise.
For as I watched it up the wall and saw it gain my lady’s window, I
heard the hound within lift up its voice in a long, shuddering howl.

I lost no time, but made my way to my Master’s room. He, too, had heard
the dog’s howl, and was strangely perturbed. “It means something.
It means something,” he kept repeating. He had already run to his
wife’s chamber, but found her in a deep slumber and the hound (which
always slept on the floor at her bed’s foot) composing itself to sleep
again, with jowl dropped on its fore-paws.

The next morning I had fixed to ride into the Market Jew to fetch a
packet of books which was waiting there for my Master. But at the
entrance of the town I found the people in great commotion, the cause of
which turned out to be a group of Turk men gathered at the hither end of
the causeway leading to the Mount. One told me they were Moslems (which
indeed was apparent at first sight) and that their ship had run ashore
that night, under the Mount; but with how much damage was doubtful.
She lay within sight, in a pretty safe position, and not so badly fixed
but I guessed the next tide would float her if her bottom were not
broken. The Moslems (nine in all) had rowed ashore in their boat and
landed on the causeway; but with what purpose they had no chance to
explain: for the inhabitants, catching sight of their knives and
scymeters, could believe in nothing short of an intent to murder and
plunder; and taking courage in numbers, had gathered (men and women) to
the causeway-head to oppose them. To be sure these fears had some
warrant in the foreigners’ appearance: who with their turbans, tunics,
dark faces and black naked legs made up a show which Market Jew had
never known before nor (I dare say) will again.

Nor had the mildness of their address any effect but to raise a fresh
commotion. For, their leader advancing with outstretched hands and
making signals that he intended no mischief but rather sued for
assistance, at once a cry went up, “The Plague!” “The Plague!” at which
I believe the crowd would have scattered like sheep had not a few sturdy
volunteers with pikes and boat-hooks forbidden his nearer approach.

Into this knot the conference had locked itself when I rode up and–the
crowd making way for me–addressed the strangers in the lingua Franca,
explaining that my Master of Pengersick was a magistrate and would be
forward to help them either with hospitality or in lending aid to get
their ship afloat; further that they need have no apprehension of the
crowd, which had opposed them in fear, not in churlishness; yet it might
be wise for the main body to stay and keep guard over the cargo while
their spokesman went with me to Pengersick.

To this their leader at once consented; and we presently set forth
together, he walking by my horse with an agile step and that graceful
bearing which I had not seen since my days of travel: a bearded swarthy
man, extraordinarily handsome in Moorish fashion and distinguished from
his crew not only by authority as patron of the ship, but by a natural
dignity. I judged him about forty. Me he treated with courtesy, yet
with a reticence which seemed to say he reserved his speech for my
Master. Of the wreck he said nothing except that his ship had been by
many degrees out of her bearings: and knowing that the Moorish disasters
in Spain had thrown many of their chiefs into the trade of piracy I was
contented to smoke such an adventurer in this man, and set him down for
one better at fighting than at navigation.

With no more suspicion than this I reached Pengersick and, bestowing the
stranger in the hall, went off to seek my Master. For the change that
came over my dear lord’s face as he heard my errand I was in no way
prepared. It was terrible.

“Paschal,” he cried, sinking into a chair and spreading both hands
helplessly on the table before him, “it is he! Her time is come, and
mine!”

It was in vain that I reasoned, protesting (as I believed) that the
stranger was but a chance pirate cast ashore by misadventure; and as
vain that, his fears infecting me, I promised to go down and get rid of
the fellow on some pretence.

“No,” he insisted, “the hour is come. I must face it: and what is more,
Paschal, I shall win. Another time I shall be no better prepared.
Bring him to my room and then go and tell my lady that I wish to speak
with her.”

Posted under Arthur Quiller-Couch

My eyes had been occupied with the grey chimneys below, among the
Spanish chestnuts, at the very moment when I slipped on the northern
face of Skirrid and twisted my ankle. This indeed explains the
accident; and the accident explains why my interest in the house with
the grey chimneys suddenly became a personal one. Five miles separated
me from my inn in Aber town. But the white smoke of a goods train went
crawling across the green and cultivated plain at my feet; and I knew,
though I carried no map, that somewhere under the slope to my left must
hide the country station of Llanfihangel. To reach it I must pass the
house, and there, no doubt, would happen on someone to set me on the
shortest way.

So I picked up my walking-stick and hobbled down the hillside, albeit
with pain. Where the descent eased a little I found and followed a
foot-track, which in time turned into a sunk road scored deep with old
cart-ruts, and so brought me to a desolate farmstead, slowly dropping to
ruin there in the perpetual shadow of the mountain. The slates that had
fallen from the roof of byre and stable lay buried already under the
growth of nettle and mallow and wild parsnip; and the yard-wall was down
in a dozen places. I shuffled through one of these gaps, and almost at
once found myself face to face with a park-fence of split oak–in yet
worse repair, if that were possible. It stretched away right and left
with promise of a noble circumference; but no hand had repaired it for
at least twenty years. I counted no less than seven breaches through
which a man of common size might step without squeezing; availed myself
of the nearest; and having with difficulty dragged my disabled foot up
the ha-ha slope beyond, took breath at the top and looked about me.

The edge of the ha-ha stood but fifty paces back from an avenue of the
most magnificent Spanish chestnuts I have ever seen in my life. A few
of them were withering from the top; and under these many dead boughs
lay as they had fallen, in grass that obliterated almost all trace of
the broad carriage-road. But nine out of ten stood hale and stout, and
apparently good for centuries to come. Northward, the grey facade of
the house glimmered and closed their green prospective, and towards it I
now made my way.

But, I must own, this avenue daunted me, as a frame altogether too
lordly for a mere limping pedestrian. And therefore I was relieved, as
I drew near, to catch the sound of voices behind the shrubberies on my
right hand. This determined me to take the house in flank, and I
diverged and pushed my way between the laurels in search of the
speakers.

“A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse! Lobelia, how many horses
has your father in stable? Red, white, or grey?”

“One, Miss Wilhelmina; an’ that’s old Sentry-go, and father says he’ll
have to go to the knacker’s before another winter.”

“Then he shall carry me there on his back: with rings on my fingers and
bells on my toes”–

   She rode unto the knacker's yard,
      And tirled at the pin:
   Right glad were then the cat's-meat men
      To let that lady in!

–especially, Lobelia, when she alighted and sat upon the ground and
began to tell them sad stories of the death of kings. But they cut off
Sentry-go’s head and nailed it over the gate. So he died, and she very
imprudently married the master knacker, who had heard she was an heiress
in her own right, and wanted to decorate his coat-of-arms with an
escutcheon of pretence; and besides, his doctor had recommended a
complete change “–

“Law, miss, how you do run on!”

The young lady who had given utterance to this amazing rigmarole stood
at the top of a terrace flight (much cracked and broken) between two
leaden statuettes (headless)–a willowy child in a large-brimmed hat,
with a riding-switch in one hand and the other holding up an old tartan
shawl, which she had pinned about her to imitate a horse-woman’s habit.
As she paced to and fro between the leaden statuettes–

              pedes vestis defluxit ad imos
           Et vera incessu patuit dea,

–and I noted almost at once that two or three butterflies (”red
admirals” they were) floated and circled about her in the sunlight.
A child of commoner make, and perhaps a year older, dressed in a buff
print frock and pink sunbonnet, looked up at her from the foot of the
steps. The faces of both were averted, and I stood there for at least a
minute on the verge of the laurels, unobserved, considering the picture
they made, and the ruinous Jacobean house that formed its background.

Never was house more eloquent of desolation. Unpainted shutters,
cracking in the heat, blocked one half of its windows. Weather-stains
ran down the slates from the lantern on the main roof. The lantern over
the stable had lost its vane, and the stable-clock its minute-hand.
The very nails had dropped out of the gable wall, and the wistaria and
Gloire de Dijons they should have supported trailed down in tangles,
like curtains. Grass choked the rain-pipes, and moss dappled the gravel
walk. In the border at my feet someone had attempted a clearance of the
weeds; and here lay his hoe, matted with bindweed and ring-streaked with
the silvery tracks of snails.

“Very well, Lobelia. We will be sensible house-maid and cook, and talk
of business. We came out, I believe, to cut a cabbage-leaf to make an
apple-pie”–

At this point happening to turn her head she caught sight of me, and
stopped with a slight, embarrassed laugh. I raised my hat.

“I beg your pardon, sir, but no strangers are admitted here.”

“I beg your pardon”–I began; and with that, as I shifted my
walking-stick, my foolish ankle gave way, and plump I sat in the very
middle of the bindweed.

“You are ill?” She came quickly towards me, but halted a pace or two
off. “You look as if you were going to faint.”

“I’ll try not to,” said I. “The fact is, I have just twisted my ankle
on the side of Skirrid, and I wished to be told the shortest way to the
station.”

“I don’t believe you can walk; and”–she hesitated a second, then went
on defiantly–”we have no carriage to take you.”

“I should not think of putting you to any such trouble.”

“Also, if you want to reach Aber, there is no train for the next two
hours. You must come in and rest.”

“But really “–

“I am mistress here. I am Wilhelmina Van der Knoope.”

Being by this time on my feet again, I bowed and introduced myself by
name. She nodded. The child had a thoughtful face–thoughtful beyond
her years–and delicately shaped rather than pretty.

“Lobelia, run in and tell the Admirals that a gentleman has called, with
my permission.”

Having dismissed the handmaiden, she observed me in silence for a few
moments while she unpinned her tartan riding-skirt. Its removal
disclosed, not–as I had expected–a short frock, but one of quite
womanly length; and she carried it with the air of a grown woman.

“You must make allowances, please. I think,” she mused, “yes, I really
think you will be able to help. But you must not be surprised, mind.
Can you walk alone, or will you lean a hand on my shoulder?”

I could walk alone. Of what she meant I had of course no inkling; but I
saw she was as anxious now for me to come indoors as she had been prompt
at first to warn me off the premises. So I hobbled after her towards
the house. At the steps by the side-door she turned and gave me a hand.
We passed across a stone-flagged hall and through a carpetless corridor,
which brought us to the foot of the grand staircase: and a magnificent
staircase it was, ornate with twisted balusters and hung with fine
pictures, mostly by old Dutch masters. But no carpet covered the broad
steps, and the pictures were perishing in their frames for lack of
varnish. I had halted to stare up at a big Hondecoeter that hung in the
sunlight over the first short flight of stairs–an elaborate “Parliament
of Fowls”–when the girl turned the handle of a door to my right and
entered.

“Uncle Peter, here is the gentleman who has called to see you.”

As I crossed the threshold I heard a chair pushed back, and a very old
gentleman rose to welcome me at the far end of the cool and shadowy
room; a tall white-haired figure in a loose suit of holland. He did not
advance, but held out a hand tentatively, as if uncertain from what
direction I was advancing. Almost at once I saw that he was
stone-blind.

“But where is Uncle Melchior?” exclaimed Wilhelmina.

“I believe he is working at accounts,” the old gentleman answered–
addressing himself to vacancy, for she had already run from the room.
He shook hands courteously and motioned me to find a chair, while he
resumed his seat beside a little table heaped with letters, or rather
with bundles of letters neatly tied and docketed. His right hand rested
on these bundles, and his fingers tapped upon them idly for a minute
before he spoke again.

“You are a friend of Fritz’s? of my grandson?”

“I have not the pleasure of knowing him, sir. Your niece’s introduction
leaves me to explain that I am just a wayfarer who had the misfortune to
twist an ankle, an hour ago, on Skirrid, and crawled here to ask his
way.”

His face fell. “I was hoping that you brought news of Fritz. But you
are welcome, sir, to rest your foot here; and I ask your pardon for not
perceiving your misfortune. I am blind. But Wilhelmina–my grandniece
–will attend to your wants.”

“She is a young lady of very large heart,” said I. He appeared to
consider for a while. “She is with me daily, but I have not seen her
since she was a small child, and I always picture her as a child.
To you, no doubt, she is almost a woman grown?”

“In feeling, I should say, decidedly more woman than child; and in
manner.”

“You please me by saying so. She is to marry Fritz, and I wish that to
happen before I die.”

Receiving no answer to this–for, of course, I had nothing to say–he
startled me with a sudden question. “You disapprove of cousins
marrying?”

I could only murmur that a great deal depended on circumstances.

“And there are circumstances in this case. Besides, they are second
cousins only. And they both look forward to it. I am not one to force
their inclinations, you understand–though, of course, they know it to
be my wish–the wish of both of us, I may say; for Melchior is at one
with me in this. Wilhelmina accepts her future–speaks of it, indeed,
with gaiety. And as for Fritz–though they have not seen each other
since he was a mere boy and she an infant–as for Fritz, he writes–but
you shall judge from his last letter.”

He felt among the packets and selected one. “I know one from t’other by
the knots,” he explained. “I am an old seaman! Now here is his last,
written from the South Pacific station. He sends his love to ‘Mina, and
jokes about her being husband-high: ‘but she must grow, if we are to do
credit to the Van der Knoopes at the altar.’ It seems that he is
something below the traditional height of our family; but a thorough
seaman, for all his modesty. There, sir: you will find the passage on
the fourth page, near the top.”

I took the letter; and there, to be sure, read the words the old Admiral
had quoted. But it struck me that Fritz Van der Knoope used a very
ladylike handwriting, and of a sort not usually taught on H.M.S.
Britannia.

“In two years’ time the lad will be home, all being well. And then, of
course, we shall see.”

“Of what rank is he?”

“At present a second lieutenant. His age is but twenty-one. The Van
der Knoopes have all followed the sea, as the portraits in this house
will tell you. Ay, and we have fought against England in our time. As
late as 1672, Adrian Van der Knoope commanded a ship under De Ruyter
when he outgeneralled the English in Southwold Bay. But since 1688 our
swords have been at the service of our adopted country; and she has used
them, sir.”

I am afraid I was not listening. My chair faced the window, and as I
glanced at the letter in my hands enough light filtered through the
transparent “foreign” paper to throw up the watermark, and it bore the
name of an English firm.

This small discovery, quite unwillingly made, gave me a sudden sense of
shame, as though I had been playing some dishonourable trick. I was
hastily folding up the paper, to return it, when the door opened and
Wilhelmina came in, with her uncle Melchior.

She seemed to divine in an instant what had happened; threw a swift
glance at the blind Admiral, and almost as swiftly took the letter from
my hand and restored it to the packet. The next moment, with perfect
coolness she was introducing me to her uncle Melchior.

Melchior Van der Knoope was perhaps ten years younger than his brother,
and carried his tall figure buttoned up tightly in an old-fashioned
frockcoat: a mummy of a man, with a fixed air of mild bewilderment and a
trick of running his left hand through his white hair–due, no doubt, to
everlasting difficulty with the family accounts. He shook hands as
ceremoniously as his brother.

“We have been talking of Fritz,” said old Peter.

“Oh yes–of Fritz. To be sure.” Melchior answered him vaguely, and
looked at me with a puzzled smile. There was silence in the room till
his brother spoke again. “I have been showing Mr.–Fritz’s last
letter.”

“Fritz writes entertainingly,” murmured Melchior, and seemed to cast
about for another word, but repeated, “–entertainingly. If the state
of your ankle permits, sir, you will perhaps take an interest in our
pictures. I shall be happy to show them to you.”

And so, with the occasional support of Melchior’s arm, I began a tour of
the house. The pictures indeed were a sufficient reward–seascapes by
Willem Van der Velde, flower-portraits by Willem Van Aslet,
tavern-scenes by Adrian Van Ostade; a notable Cuyp; a small Gerard Dow
of peculiar richness; portraits–the Burgomaster Albert Van der Knoope,
by Thomas de Keyser–the Admiral Nicholas, by Kneller–the Admiral Peter
(grand-uncle of the blind Admiral), by Romney. . . . My guide seemed as
honestly proud of them as insensible of their condition, which was in
almost every case deplorable. By-and-by, in the library we came upon a
modern portrait of a rosy-faced boy in a blue suit, who held (strange
combination!) a large ribstone pippin in one hand and a cricket bat in
the other–a picture altogether of such glaring demerit that I wondered
for a moment why it hung so conspicuously over the fireplace, while
worthier paintings were elbowed into obscure corners. Then with a
sudden inkling I glanced at Uncle Melchior. He nodded gravely.

“That is Fritz.”

I pulled out my watch. “I believe,” I said, “it must be time for me to
bid your brother good-bye.”

“You need be in no hurry,” said Miss Wilhelmina’s voice behind me.
“The last train to Aber has gone at least ten minutes since.
You must dine and sleep with us to-night.”

I awoke next morning between sheets of sweet-smelling linen in a carved
four-post bed, across the head-board of which ran the motto “STEMMATA
QVID FACIVNT” in faded letters of gilt. If the appearance of the room,
with its tattered hangings and rickety furniture, had counted for
anything, my dreams should certainly have been haunted. But, as a
matter of fact, I never slept better. Possibly the lightness of the
dinner (cooked by the small handmaid Lobelia) had something to do with
it; possibly, too, the infectious somnolence of the two Admirals, who
spoke but little during the meal, and nodded, without attempt at
dissimulation, over the dessert. At any rate, shortly after nine
o’clock–when Miss Wilhelmina brought out a heavy Church Service, and
Uncle Melchior read the lesson and collect for the day and a few
prayers, including the one “For those at Sea”–I had felt quite ready
for bed. And now, thanks to a cold compress, my ankle had mended
considerably. I descended to breakfast in very cheerful mind, and found
Miss Wilhelmina alone at the table.

“Uncle Peter,” she explained, “rarely comes down before mid-day; and
Uncle Melchior breakfasts in his room. He is busy with the accounts.”

“So early?”

She smiled rather sadly. “They take a deal of disentangling.”

She asked how my ankle did. When I told her, and added that I must
catch an early train back to Aber, she merely said, “I will walk to the
station with you, if I may.”

And so at ten o’clock–after I had bidden farewell to Uncle Melchior,
who wore the air of one interrupted in a long sum of compound addition–
we set forth. I knew the child had something on her mind, and waited.
Once, by a ruinous fountain where a stone Triton blew patiently at a
conch-shell plugged with turf, she paused and dug at the mortared joints
of the basin with the point of her sunshade; and I thought the
confidence was coming. But it was by the tumble-down gate at the end of
the chestnut avenue that she turned and faced me.

“I knew you yesterday at once,” she said. “You write novels.”

“I wish,” said I feebly, “the public were as quick at discovering me.”

“Somebody printed an ‘interview’ with you in ‘–’s Magazine a month or
two ago.”

“There was not the slightest resemblance.”

“Please don’t be silly. There was a photograph.”

“Ah, to be sure.”

“You can help me–help us all–if you will.”

“Is it about Fritz?”

She bent her head and signed to me to open the gate. Across the
high-road a stile faced us, and a little church, with an acre framed in
elms and set about with trimmed yews. She led the way to the low and
whitewashed porch, and pushed open the iron-studded door. As I
followed, the name of Van der Knoope repeated itself on many mural
tablets. Almost at the end of the south aisle she paused and lifted a
finger and pointed.

I read–

                            SACRED
                       To the Memory of
                FRITZ OPDAM DE KEYSER VAN DER KNOOPE
                  A Midshipman of the Royal Navy
                Who was born Oct. 21st MDCCCLXVII.
                       And Drowned
                 By the Capsizing of H.M.S. Viper
                  off the North Coast of Ireland
                 On the 17th of January MDCCCLXXXV.
              A youth of peculiar promise who lacked
                  but the greater indulgence of
                     an all-wise Providence
             to earn the distinction of his forefathers
            (of whom he was the last male representative)
                   in his Country's service
                          in which
                    he laid down his young life

                         ----------
             Heu miserande puer! Si qua fata aspera rumpas
                    Tu Marcellus eris.

“Uncle Melchior had it set up. I wonder what Fritz was really like.”

“And your Uncle Peter still believes–?”

“Oh yes. I am to marry Fritz in time. That is where you must help us.
It would kill Uncle Peter if he knew. But Uncle Melchior gets puzzled
whenever it comes to writing; and I am afraid of making mistakes.
We’ve put him down in the South Pacific station at present–that will
last for two years more. But we have to invent the gossip, you know.
And I thought that you–who wrote stories–”

“My dear young lady,” I said, “let me be Fritz, and you shall have a
letter duly once a month.”

And my promise was kept–until, two years ago, she wrote that there was
no further need for letters, for Uncle Peter was dead. For aught I
know, by this time Uncle Melchior may be dead also. But regularly, as
the monthly date comes round, I am Fritz Opdam de Keyser van der Knoope,
a young midshipman of Her Majesty’s Navy; and wonder what my affianced
bride is doing; and see her on the terrace steps with those butterflies
floating about her. In my part of the world it is believed that the
souls of the departed pass into these winged creatures. So might the
souls of those many pictured Admirals: but some day, before long, I hope
to cross Skirrid again and see.

Beside the Plymouth road, as it plunges down-hill past Ruan Lanihale
church towards Ruan Cove, and ten paces beyond the lych-gate–where the
graves lie level with the coping, and the horseman can decipher their
inscriptions in passing, at the risk of a twisted neck–the base of the
churchyard wall is pierced with a low archway, festooned with toad-flax
and fringed with the hart’s-tongue fern. Within the archway bubbles a
well, the water of which was once used for all baptisms in the parish,
for no child sprinkled with it could ever be hanged with hemp. But this
belief is discredited now, and the well neglected: and the events which
led to this are still a winter’s tale in the neighbourhood. I set them
down as they were told me, across the blue glow of a wreck-wood fire, by
Sam Tregear, the parish bedman. Sam himself had borne an inconspicuous
share in them; and because of them Sam’s father had carried a white face
to his grave.

My father and mother (said Sam) married late in life, for his trade was
what mine is, and ’twasn’t till her fortieth year that my mother could
bring herself to kiss a gravedigger. That accounts, maybe, for my being
born rickety and with other drawbacks that only made father the fonder.
Weather permitting, he’d carry me off to churchyard, set me upon a flat
stone, with his coat folded under, and talk to me while he delved.
I can mind, now, the way he’d settle lower and lower, till his head
played hidey-peep with me over the grave’s edge, and at last he’d be
clean swallowed up, but still discoursing or calling up how he’d come
upon wonderful towns and kingdoms down underground, and how all the
kings and queens there, in dyed garments, was offering him meat for his
dinner every day of the week if he’d only stop and hobbynob with them–
and all such gammut. He prettily doted on me–the poor old ancient!

But there came a day–a dry afternoon in the late wheat harvest–when we
were up in the churchyard together, and though father had his tools
beside him, not a tint did he work, but kept travishing back and forth,
one time shading his eyes and gazing out to sea, and then looking far
along the Plymouth road for minutes at a time. Out by Bradden Point
there stood a little dandy-rigged craft, tacking lazily to and fro, with
her mains’le all shiny-yellow in the sunset. Though I didn’t know it
then, she was the Preventive boat, and her business was to watch the
Hauen: for there had been a brush between her and the Unity lugger, a
fortnight back, and a Preventive man shot through the breast-bone, and
my mother’s brother Philip was hiding down in the town. I minded,
later, how that the men across the vale, in Farmer Tresidder’s
wheat-field, paused every now and then, as they pitched the sheaves, to
give a look up towards the churchyard, and the gleaners moved about in
small knots, causeying and glancing over their shoulders at the cutter
out in the bay; and how, when all the field was carried, they waited
round the last load, no man offering to cry the Neck, as the fashion
was, but lingering till sun was near down behind the slope and the long
shadows stretching across the stubble.

“Sha’n't thee go underground to-day, father?” says I, at last.

He turned slowly round, and says he, “No, sonny. ‘Reckon us’ll climb
skywards for a change.”

And with that, he took my hand, and pushing abroad the belfry door began
to climb the stairway. Up and up, round and round we went, in a sort of
blind-man’s-holiday full of little glints of light and whiff’s of wind
where the open windows came; and at last stepped out upon the leads of
the tower and drew breath.

“There’s two-an’-twenty parishes to be witnessed from where we’re
standin’, sonny–if ye’ve got eyes,” says my father.

Well, first I looked down towards the harvesters and laughed to see them
so small: and then I fell to counting the church-towers dotted across
the high-lands, and seeing if I could make out two-and-twenty.
‘Twas the prettiest sight–all the country round looking as if ’twas
dusted with gold, and the Plymouth road winding away over the hills like
a long white tape. I had counted thirteen churches, when my father
pointed his hand out along this road and called to me–

“Look’ee out yonder, honey, an’ say what ye see!”

“I see dust,” says I.

“Nothin’ else? Sonny boy, use your eyes, for mine be dim.”

“I see dust,” says I again, “an’ suthin’ twinklin’ in it, like a tin
can–”

“Dragooners!” shouts my father; and then, running to the side of the
tower facing the harvest-field, he put both hands to his mouth and
called:

“What have ‘ee? What have ‘ee?“–very loud and long.

“A neck–a neck!” came back from the field, like as if all shouted at
once–dear, the sweet sound! And then a gun was fired, and craning
forward over the coping I saw a dozen men running across the stubble and
out into the road towards the Hauen; and they called as they ran, “A
neck–a neck!“

“Iss,” says my father, “’tis a neck, sure ’nuff. Pray God they save en!
Come, sonny–”

But we dallied up there till the horsemen were plain to see, and their
scarlet coats and armour blazing in the dust as they came. And when
they drew near within a mile, and our limbs ached with crouching–for
fear they should spy us against the sky–father took me by the hand and
pulled hot foot down the stairs. Before they rode by he had picked up
his shovel and was shovelling out a grave for his life.

Forty valiant horsemen they were, riding two-and-two (by reason of the
narrowness of the road) and a captain beside them–men broad and long,
with hairy top-lips, and all clad in scarlet jackets and white breeches
that showed bravely against their black war-horses and jet-black
holsters, thick as they were wi’ dust. Each man had a golden helmet,
and a scabbard flapping by his side, and a piece of metal like a
half-moon jingling from his horse’s cheek-strap. 12 D was the numbering
on every saddle, meaning the Twelfth Dragoons.

Tramp, tramp! they rode by, talking and joking, and taking no more heed
of me–that sat upon the wall with my heels dangling above them–than if
I’d been a sprig of stonecrop. But the captain, who carried a drawn
sword and mopped his face with a handkerchief so that the dust ran
across it in streaks, drew rein, and looked over my shoulder to where
father was digging.

“Sergeant!” he calls back, turning with a hand upon his crupper;
“didn’t we see a figger like this a-top o’ the tower, some way back?”

The sergeant pricked his horse forward and saluted. He was the tallest,
straightest man in the troop, and the muscles on his arm filled out his
sleeve with the three stripes upon it–a handsome red-faced fellow, with
curly black hair.

Says he, “That we did, sir–a man with sloping shoulders and a boy with
a goose neck.” Saying this, he looked up at me with a grin.

“I’ll bear it in mind,” answered the officer, and the troop rode on in a
cloud of dust, the sergeant looking back and smiling, as if ’twas a joke
that he shared with us. Well, to be short, they rode down into the town
as night fell. But ’twas too late, Uncle Philip having had fair warning
and plenty of time to flee up towards the little secret hold under Mabel
Down, where none but two families knew how to find him. All the town,
though, knew he was safe, and lashins of women and children turned out
to see the comely soldiers hunt in vain till ten o’clock at night.

The next thing was to billet the warriors. The captain of the troop, by
this, was pesky cross-tempered, and flounced off to the “Jolly
Pilchards” in a huff. “Sergeant,” says he, “here’s an inn, though a
damned bad ‘un, an’ here I means to stop. Somewheres about there’s a
farm called Constantine, where I’m told the men can be accommodated.
Find out the place, if you can, an’ do your best: an’ don’t let me see
yer face till to-morra,” says he.

So Sergeant Basket–that was his name–gave the salute, and rode his
troop up the street, where–for his manners were mighty winning,
notwithstanding the dirty nature of his errand–he soon found plenty to
direct him to Farmer Noy’s, of Constantine; and up the coombe they rode
into the darkness, a dozen or more going along with them to show the
way, being won by their martial bearing as well as the sergeant’s very
friendly way of speech.

Farmer Noy was in bed–a pock-marked, lantern-jawed old gaffer of
sixty-five; and the most remarkable point about him was the wife he had
married two years before–a young slip of a girl but just husband-high.
Money did it, I reckon; but if so, ’twas a bad bargain for her.
He was noted for stinginess to such a degree that they said his wife
wore a brass wedding-ring, weekdays, to save the genuine article from
wearing out. She was a Ruan woman, too, and therefore ought to have
known all about him. But woman’s ways be past finding out.

Hearing the hoofs in his yard and the sergeant’s stram-a-ram upon the
door, down comes the old curmudgeon with a candle held high above his
head.

“What the devil’s here?” he calls out. Sergeant Basket looks over the
old man’s shoulder; and there, halfway up the stairs, stood Madam Noy in
her night rail–a high-coloured ripe girl, languishing for love, her red
lips parted and neck all lily-white against a loosened pile of
dark-brown hair.

“Be cussed if I turn back!” said the sergeant to himself; and added out
loud–

“Forty souldjers, in the King’s name!”

“Forty devils!” says old Noy.

“They’re devils to eat,” answered the sergeant, in the most friendly
manner; “an’, begad, ye must feed an’ bed ‘em this night–or else I’ll
search your cellars. Ye are a loyal man–eh, farmer? An’ your cellars
are big, I’m told.”

“Sarah,” calls out the old man, following the sergeant’s bold glance,
“go back an’ dress yersel’ dacently this instant! These here honest
souldjers–forty damned honest gormandisin’ souldjers–be come in his
Majesty’s name, forty strong, to protect honest folks’ rights in the
intervals of eatin’ ‘em out o’ house an’ home. Sergeant, ye be very
welcome i’ the King’s name. Cheese an’ cider ye shall have, an’ I pray
the mixture may turn your forty stomachs.”

In a dozen minutes he had fetched out his stable-boys and farm-hands,
and, lantern in hand, was helping the sergeant to picket the horses and
stow the men about on clean straw in the outhouses. They were turning
back to the house, and the old man was turning over in his mind that the
sergeant hadn’t yet said a word about where he was to sleep, when by the
door they found Madam Noy waiting, in her wedding gown, and with her
hair freshly braided.

Now, the farmer was mortally afraid of the sergeant, knowing he had
thirty ankers and more of contraband liquor in his cellars, and minding
the sergeant’s threat. None the less his jealousy got the upper hand.

“Woman,” he cries out, “to thy bed!”

“I was waiting,” said she, “to say the Cap’n’s bed–”

“Sergeant’s,” says the dragoon, correcting her.

“–Was laid i’ the spare room.”

“Madam,” replies Sergeant Basket, looking into her eyes and bowing,
“a soldier with my responsibility sleeps but little. In the first
place, I must see that my men sup.”

“The maids be now cuttin’ the bread an’ cheese and drawin’ the cider.”

“Then, Madam, leave me but possession of the parlour, and let me have a
chair to sleep in.”

By this they were in the passage together, and her gaze devouring his
regimentals. The old man stood a pace off, looking sourly.
The sergeant fed his eyes upon her, and Satan got hold of him.

“Now if only,” said he, “one of you could play cards!”

“But I must go to bed,” she answered; “though I can play cribbage, if
only you stay another night.”

For she saw the glint in the farmer’s eye; and so Sergeant Basket slept
bolt upright that night in an arm-chair by the parlour fender. Next day
the dragooners searched the town again, and were billeted all about
among the cottages. But the sergeant returned to Constantine, and
before going to bed–this time in the spare room–played a game of
cribbage with Madam Noy, the farmer smoking sulkily in his arm-chair.

“Two for his heels!” said the rosy woman suddenly, halfway through the
game. “Sergeant, you’re cheatin’ yoursel’ an’ forgettin’ to mark.
Gi’e me the board; I’ll mark for both.”

She put out her hand upon the board, and Sergeant Basket’s closed upon
it. ‘Tis true he had forgot to mark; and feeling the hot pulse in her
wrist, and beholding the hunger in her eyes, ’tis to be supposed he’d
have forgot his own soul.

He rode away next day with his troop: but my uncle Philip not being
caught yet, and the Government set on making an example of him, we
hadn’t seen the last of these dragoons. ‘Twas a time of fear down in
the town. At dead of night or at noonday they came on us–six times in
all: and for two months the crew of the Unity couldn’t call their
souls their own, but lived from day to day in secret closets and
wandered the country by night, hiding in hedges and straw-houses.
All that time the revenue men watched the Hauen, night and day, like
dogs before a rat-hole.

But one November morning ’twas whispered abroad that Uncle Philip had
made his way to Falmouth, and slipped across to Guernsey. Time passed
on, and the dragooners were seen no more, nor the handsome
devil-may-care face of Sergeant Basket. Up at Constantine, where he had
always contrived to billet himself, ’tis to be thought pretty Madam Noy
pined to see him again, kicking his spurs in the porch and smiling out
of his gay brown eyes; for her face fell away from its plump condition,
and the hunger in her eyes grew and grew. But a more remarkable fact
was that her old husband–who wouldn’t have yearned after the dragoon,
ye’d have thought–began to dwindle and fall away too. By the New Year
he was a dying man, and carried his doom on his face. And on New Year’s
Day he straddled his mare for the last time, and rode over to Looe, to
Doctor Gale’s.

“Goody-losh!” cried the doctor, taken aback by his appearance–
“What’s come to ye, Noy?”

“Death!” says Noy. “Doctor, I hain’t come for advice, for before this
day week I’ll be a clay-cold corpse. I come to ax a favour. When they
summon ye, before lookin’ at my body–that’ll be past help–go you to
the little left-top corner drawer o’ my wife’s bureau, an’ there ye’ll
find a packet. You’re my executor,” says he, “and I leaves ye to deal
wi’ that packet as ye thinks fit.”

With that, the farmer rode away home-along, and the very day week he
went dead.

The doctor, when called over, minded what the old chap had said, and
sending Madam Noy on some pretence to the kitchen, went over and
unlocked the little drawer with a duplicate key, that the farmer had
unhitched from his watch-chain and given him. There was no parcel of
letters, as he looked to find, but only a small packet crumpled away in
the corner. He pulled it out and gave a look, and a sniff, and another
look: then shut the drawer, locked it, strode straight down-stairs to
his horse and galloped away.

In three hours’ time, pretty Madam Noy was in the constables’ hands upon
the charge of murdering her husband by poison.

They tried her, next Spring Assize, at Bodmin, before the Lord Chief
Justice. There wasn’t evidence enough to put Sergeant Basket in the
dock alongside of her–though ’twas freely guessed he knew more than
anyone (saving the prisoner herself) about the arsenic that was found in
the little drawer and inside the old man’s body. He was subpoena’d from
Plymouth, and cross-examined by a great hulking King’s Counsel for
three-quarters of an hour. But they got nothing out of him.
All through the examination the prisoner looked at him and nodded her
white face, every now and then, at his answers, as much as to say,
“That’s right–that’s right: they shan’t harm thee, my dear.” And the
love-light shone in her eyes for all the court to see. But the sergeant
never let his look meet it. When he stepped down at last she gave a sob
of joy, and fainted bang-off.

They roused her up, after this, to hear the verdict of Guilty and her
doom spoken by the judge. “Pris’ner at the bar,” said the Clerk of
Arraigns, “have ye anything to say why this court should not pass
sentence o’ death?”

She held tight of the rail before her, and spoke out loud and clear–

“My Lord and gentlemen all, I be a guilty woman; an’ I be ready to die
at once for my sin. But if ye kill me now, ye kill the child in my
body–an’ he is innocent.”

Well, ’twas found she spoke truth; and the hanging was put off till
after the time of her delivery. She was led back to prison, and there,
about the end of June, her child was born, and died before he was six
hours old. But the mother recovered, and quietly abode the time of her
hanging.

I can mind her execution very well; for father and mother had determined
it would be an excellent thing for my rickets to take me into Bodmin
that day, and get a touch of the dead woman’s hand, which in those times
was considered an unfailing remedy. So we borrowed the parson’s
manure-cart, and cleaned it thoroughly, and drove in together.

The place of the hangings, then, was a little door in the prison-wall,
looking over the bank where the railway now goes, and a dismal piece of
water called Jail-pool, where the townsfolk drowned most of the dogs and
cats they’d no further use for. All the bank under the gallows was that
thick with people you could almost walk upon their heads; and my ribs
were squeezed by the crowd so that I couldn’t breathe freely for a month
after. Back across the pool, the fields along the side of the valley
were lined with booths and sweet-stalls and standings–a perfect
Whitsun-fair; and a din going up that cracked your ears.

But there was the stillness of death when the woman came forth, with the
sheriff and the chaplain reading in his book, and the unnamed man
behind–all from the little door. She wore a strait black gown, and a
white kerchief about her neck–a lovely woman, young and white and
tearless.

She ran her eye over the crowd and stepped forward a pace, as if to
speak; but lifted a finger and beckoned instead: and out of the people a
man fought his way to the foot of the scaffold. ‘Twas the dashing
sergeant, that was here upon sick-leave. Sick he was, I believe.
His face above his shining regimentals was grey as a slate; for he had
committed perjury to save his skin, and on the face of the perjured no
sun will ever shine.

“Have you got it?” the doomed woman said, many hearing the words.

He tried to reach, but the scaffold was too high, so he tossed up what
was in his hand, and the woman caught it–a little screw of
tissue-paper.

“I must see that, please!” said the sheriff, laying a hand upon her arm.

“‘Tis but a weddin’-ring, sir”–and she slipped it over her finger.
Then she kissed it once, under the beam, and, lookin’ into the dragoon’s
eyes, spoke very slow–

“Husband, our child shall go wi’ you; an’ when I want you he shall
fetch you.“

–and with that turned to the sheriff, saying:

“I be ready, sir.”

The sheriff wouldn’t give father and mother leave for me to touch the
dead woman’s hand; so they drove back that evening grumbling a good bit.
‘Tis a sixteen-mile drive, and the ostler in at Bodmin had swindled the
poor old horse out of his feed, I believe; for he crawled like a slug.
But they were so taken up with discussing the day’s doings, and what a
mort of people had been present, and how the sheriff might have used
milder language in refusing my father, that they forgot to use the whip.
The moon was up before we got halfway home, and a star to be seen here
and there; and still we never mended our pace.

‘Twas in the middle of the lane leading down to Hendra Bottom, where for
more than a mile two carts can’t pass each other, that my father pricks
up his ears and looks back.

“Hullo!” says he; “there’s somebody gallopin’ behind us.”

Far back in the night we heard the noise of a horse’s hoofs, pounding
furiously on the road and drawing nearer and nearer.

“Save us!” cries father; “whoever ’tis, he’s comin’ down th’ lane!”
And in a minute’s time the clatter was close on us and someone shouting
behind.

“Hurry that crawlin’ worm o’ yourn–or draw aside in God’s name, an’ let
me by!” the rider yelled.

“What’s up?” asked my father, quartering as well as he could.
“Why! Hullo! Farmer Hugo, be that you?”

“There’s a mad devil o’ a man behind, ridin’ down all he comes across.
A’s blazin’ drunk, I reckon–but ’tisn’ that–’tis the horrible voice
that goes wi’ en–Hark! Lord protect us, he’s turn’d into the lane!”

Sure enough, the clatter of a second horse was coming down upon us, out
of the night–and with it the most ghastly sounds that ever creamed a
man’s flesh. Farmer Hugo pushed past us and sent a shower of mud in our
faces as his horse leapt off again, and ‘way-to-go down the hill. My
father stood up and lashed our old grey with the reins, and down we went
too, bumpity-bump for our lives, the poor beast being taken suddenly
like one possessed. For the screaming behind was like nothing on earth
but the wailing and sobbing of a little child–only tenfold louder.
‘Twas just as you’d fancy a baby might wail if his little limbs was
being twisted to death.

At the hill’s foot, as you know, a stream crosses the lane–that widens
out there a bit, and narrows again as it goes up t’other side of the
valley. Knowing we must be overtaken further on–for the screams and
clatter seemed at our very backs by this–father jumped out here into
the stream and backed the cart well to one side; and not a second too
soon.

The next moment, like a wind, this thing went by us in the moonlight–
a man upon a black horse that splashed the stream all over us as he
dashed through it and up the hill. ‘Twas the scarlet dragoon with his
ashen face; and behind him, holding to his cross-belt, rode a little
shape that tugged and wailed and raved. As I stand here, sir, ’twas the
shape of a naked babe!

Well, I won’t go on to tell how my father dropped upon his knees in the
water, or how my mother fainted off. The thing was gone, and from that
moment for eight years nothing was seen or heard of Sergeant Basket.
The fright killed my mother. Before next spring she fell into a
decline, and early next fall the old man–for he was an old man now–had
to delve her grave. After this he went feebly about his work, but held
on, being wishful for me to step into his shoon, which I began to do as
soon as I was fourteen, having outgrown the rickets by that time.

But one cool evening in September month, father was up digging in the
yard alone: for ’twas a small child’s grave, and in the loosest soil,
and I was off on a day’s work, thatching Farmer Tresidder’s stacks.
He was digging away slowly when he heard a rattle at the lych-gate, and
looking over the edge of the grave, saw in the dusk a man hitching his
horse there by the bridle.

‘Twas a coal-black horse, and the man wore a scarlet coat all powdered
with pilm; and as he opened the gate and came over the graves, father
saw that ’twas the dashing dragoon. His face was still a slaty-grey,
and clammy with sweat; and when he spoke, his voice was all of a
whisper, with a shiver therein.

“Bedman,” says he, “go to the hedge and look down the road, and tell me
what you see.”

My father went, with his knees shaking, and came back again.

“I see a woman,” says he, “not fifty yards down the road. She is
dressed in black, an’ has a veil over her face; an’ she’s comin’ this
way.”

“Bedman,” answers the dragoon, “go to the gate an’ look back along the
Plymouth road, an’ tell me what you see.”

“I see,” says my father, coming back with his teeth chattering, “I see,
twenty yards back, a naked child comin’. He looks to be callin’, but he
makes no sound.”

“Because his voice is wearied out,” says the dragoon. And with that he
faced about, and walked to the gate slowly.

“Bedman, come wi’ me an’ see the rest,” he says, over his shoulder.

He opened the gate, unhitched the bridle and swung himself heavily up in
the saddle.

Now from the gate the bank goes down pretty steep into the road, and at
the foot of the bank my father saw two figures waiting. ‘Twas the woman
and the child, hand in hand; and their eyes burned up like coals: and
the woman’s veil was lifted, and her throat bare.

As the horse went down the bank towards these two, they reached out and
took each a stirrup and climbed upon his back, the child before the
dragoon and the woman behind. The man’s face was set like a stone.
Not a word did either speak, and in this fashion they rode down the hill
towards Ruan sands. All that my father could mind, beyond, was that the
woman’s hands were passed round the man’s neck, where the rope had
passed round her own.

No more could he tell, being a stricken man from that hour. But Aunt
Polgrain, the house-keeper up to Constantine, saw them, an hour later,
go along the road below the town-place; and Jacobs, the smith, saw them
pass his forge towards Bodmin about midnight. So the tale’s true
enough. But since that night no man has set eyes on horse or riders.

A Narrative of the sufferings of Mr. Obed Lanyon, of Vellingey-Saint
Agnes, Cornwall; Margit Lanyon, his wife; and seventeen persons (mostly
Americans) shipwrecked among the Quinaiult Tribes of the N.W. Coast of
America, in the winter of 1807-8. With some remarkable Experiences of
the said Margit Lanyon, formerly Pedersen. Written by the Survivor,
Edom Lanyon, sometime a Commander in the service of the Honourable East
India Company.

My twin brother Obed and I were born on the 21st of March, 1759
(he being the elder by a few minutes), at Vellingey-St. Agnes, or
St. Ann’s, a farm on the north coast of Cornwall, owned and cultivated
by our father Renatus Lanyon. Our mother was a Falmouth woman,
daughter of a ship’s captain of that port: and I suppose it was this
inclined us to a sea-faring life. At any rate, soon after our fifteenth
birthday we sailed (rather against our father’s wish) on a short
coasting voyage with our grandfather–whose name was William Dustow.

A second voyage in the early summer of 1776 took us as far as the
Thames. It happened that the famous Captain Cook was just then
recruiting for his third and (as it proved) his last voyage of
discovery. This set us talking and planning, and the end was that we
stole ashore and offered ourselves. Obed had the luck to be picked.
Though very like in face, I was already the taller by two inches; and no
doubt the Captain judged I had outgrown my strength. But it surprised
me to be rejected when Obed was taken; and disappointed me more: for,
letting alone the prospect of the voyage, we two (as twins, and our
parents’ only children) were fond of each other out of the common
degree, and had never thought to be separated.

To speak first of Obed:–Captain Cook put some questions, and finding
that we were under our grandfather’s care, would do nothing without his
consent. We returned to the ship and confessed to the old man, who
pretended to be much annoyed. But next day he put on his best clothes
and went in search of the great seaman, to Whitehall; and so the matter
was arranged. Obed sailed in July on board the Discovery; shared the
dangers of that voyage, in which the ships followed up the N.W. Coast of
America and pushed into Behring’s Strait beyond the 70th parallel; was a
witness, on February 4th, 1779, of his commander’s tragical end; and
returned to England in October, 1780. Eleven years later he made
another voyage to the same N.W. American Coast; this time as master’s
mate under Vancouver, who had kept an interest in him since they sailed
together under Cook, and thought highly of him as a practical navigator
and draughtsman. It was my brother who, under Vancouver, drew up the
first chart of the Straits of Fuca, which Cook had missed: and I have
been told (by a Mr. G–, a clerk to the Admiralty) that on his return he
stood well for a lieutenant’s commission–the rule of the Service being
stretched now and then to favour these circumnavigating seamen, many of
whom worked their way aft from the hawse-hole to the quarter deck.
But my father and mother dying just then, and the former having slipped
a particular request into his will, Obed threw up the sea and settled
down in Vellingey as a quiet yeoman farmer.

Meanwhile, in 1779, I had entered the sea service of the Honourable East
India Company; and with passable good fortune had risen in it pretty
fast. Enough to say, that by the spring of 1796 I was looking forward
to the command of a ship. Just then my fortune deserted me. In a
sudden fear of French invasion, our Government bought the four new ships
which the Company had building (and a bad bargain they proved).
This put a stop for the time to all chance of promotion; and a sharp
attack of jaundice falling on top of my disappointments, I took the
usual decrease of pay and the Board’s promise to remember my services on
a proper occasion, and hauled ashore to Vellingey for a holiday and a
thorough refit of health.

I believe that the eight or nine following months which Obed and I spent
together were the happiest in our two lives. He was glad enough to
shoulder off the small business of the farm and turn–as I have seen so
many men play, in a manner, at the professions they have given over–to
his favourite amusement of sounding the coast of Vellingey and
correcting the printed charts. He kept a small lugger mainly for this
purpose, and plied her so briskly that he promised to know the
sea-bottom between Kelsey Head and Godrevy Rock better than his own
fields. As for me, after years of salt water and stumping decks, I
asked nothing better than to steer a plough and smell broken soil, and
drowse after supper in an armchair, with good tobacco and Obed for
company.

In this way we passed the winter of 1796-7; until the lambing season,
which fell midway in February. The year opened wet, with fresh south
westerly winds, which in the second week chopped suddenly; and for four
days a continuous freezing gale blew on us from the N.W. It was then
that the lambs began to drop; and for three nights I exchanged pipe and
fireside for a lantern and the lower corner of Friar’s Parc at the back
of the towans, where the ewes were gathered in the lew.[1] They kept us
so busy that for forty-eight hours we neither changed our clothes (at
least, I did not) nor sat down to a meal. The sand about Vellingey is
always driving, more or less; and the gale so mixed it up with fine snow
that we made our journeys to and from the house, so to speak, blindfold,
and took our chance of the drifts. But the evening of the 11th promised
better. The wind dropped, and in an hour fell to a flat calm: then,
after another hour, began to draw easily off shore–the draught itself
being less noticeable than the way in which it smoothed down the heavy
sea running. Though the cold did not lift, the weather grew tolerable
once more: and each time I crossed the townplace[2] with a lamb in my
arms, I heard the surf running lower and lower in the porth below
Vellingey.

By day-break (the 12th) it was fallen to nothing: the sky still holding
snow, but sky and sea the same colour; a heavy blueish grey, like steel.
I was coming over the towans, just then, with a lamb under either arm
(making twelve, that night) when I happened to look seaward, and there
saw a boat tossing, about a gunshot from the shore.

She was a long boat, painted white; very low in the sheer, and curved at
stem and stern like a Norwegian; her stem rounded off without a transom,
and scarcely bluffer than her bows. She carried a mast, stepped right
forward; but no sail. She was full of people. I counted five sitting,
all white with snow–one by the mast, three amidships, and one in the
stern sheets, steering. At least, he had a hand on the tiller: but the
people had given over pulling, and the boat without steerage-way was
drifting broadside-on towards the shore with the set of the tide.

While I stood conning her, up at the house the back-door opened, and my
brother stepped out and across the yard to milk the cows. His
milk-pails struck against the door-post, and sounded as clear as bells.
I shouted to him and pointed towards the boat: and after looking a
moment, he set down his pails and started off at a run, down towards the
porth. I then hurried towards the house, where I found Selina, our old
housekeeper, in the kitchen, tending the lambs with warm milk.
Handing the new-comers over to her, I caught up a line and made off
hot-foot after Obed.

At low-water (and the tide had now scarcely an hour to ebb) the sands in
Vellingey Porth measure a good half-mile from the footbridge at its head
to the sea at its base. My legs were longer than Obed’s; but I dare say
he had arrived five minutes ahead of me. He was standing and calling to
the boat’s crew to get out an oar and pull her head-to-sea: for although
the smoothing wind had taken most of the danger out of the breakers,
they were quite able to capsize and roll over any boat that beached
herself in that lubberly fashion.

I ran up panting, and shouted with him–”Pull her round head-to-sea, and
back her in!”

Not a man moved or lifted a hand. The next moment, a wave tilted and
ran a dozen yards with her, but mercifully passed before it broke.
A smaller one curved on the back-draught and splashed in over her
gunwale as she took ground. But what knocked the wind out of our sails
was this–As the first wave canted her up, two men had rolled out of her
like logs; and the others, sitting like logs, had never so much as
stirred to help!

“Good Lord!” I called out, and fumbled with my line. “What’s the
meaning of it?”

“The meaning is,” said Obed, “they’re dead men, every mother’s son.
They’re frozen,” said he: “I’ve seen frozen seamen before now.”

“I’ll have in the boat, anyway,” I said. “Here, catch hold and pay
out!” Running in, I reached her just as she lifted again; and managed
to slew her nose in-shore, but not in time to prevent half-a-hogshead
pouring over her quarter. This wave knocked her broadside-on again, and
the water shipped made her heavier to handle. But by whipping my end of
the line round the thwart in which her mast was stepped, for Obed to
haul upon, and myself heaving at her bows, we fetched her partly round
as she lifted again, and ran her into the second line of breakers, which
were pretty well harmless.

“How many on board?” Obed sang out.

“Five!” called I, having counted them. Up to this I had had enough to
do with the boat; besides looking after myself. For twice the heave had
tilled me up to the armpits, and once lifted me clean off my feet; and I
had no wish to try swimming in my sea-boots. “Five,” said I; “and two
overboard–that makes seven. Come and look here!”

“Tend to the boat first,” he said. “I’ve seen frozen seamen.”

“You never saw the likes of this,” I answered. So he ran in beside me.

The boat had her name (or that of the ship she belonged to) painted in
yellow and black on the gunwale strake by her port quarter–
“MARGIT PEDERSEN, BERGEN”: but by their faces we could not miss knowing
to what country the poor creatures belonged. They were–

1. A tall man, under middle age; seated by the mast and leaning
against it (his right arm frozen to it, in fact, from the elbow up)
with his back towards the bows. The snow was heaped on his head and
shoulders like a double cape. This one had no hair on his face; and
his complexion being very fresh and pink, and his eyes wide open, it
was hard to believe him dead. Indeed, while getting in the boat,
I had to speak to him twice, to make sure.

2. A much older man, and shorter, with a rough grey beard. He sat
in the stern sheets, with his right hand frozen on the tiller.
Our folk had afterwards to unship the tiller when they came to lift
him out: and carried him up to the house still holding it. Later on
we buried it beside him. This man wore a good blue coat and black
breeches; and at first we took him to be the captain. He turned out
to be the mate, Knud Lote, who had put on his best clothes when it
came to leaving the ship. His eyes were screwed up, and the brine
had frozen over them, like a glaze, or a big pair of spectacles.

3. Against his knee rested the head of a third man–one of the
three I had first seen sitting amidships. When the other two
toppled overboard this one had slid off the thwart and fallen
against the steersman. He was an oldish man, yellow and thin and
marked with the small-pox; the only one in the boat who might have
come from some other country than Norway. His eyes were cast down
in a quiet way, and he seemed to be smiling. He wore a seaman’s
loose frock, ragged breeches, and sea-boots.

4 and 5. Stretched along the bottom-boards lay a tall young man
with straw-coloured hair and beard: and in his arms, tightly
clasped, and wrapped in a shawl and seaman’s jacket, a young woman.
Her arms were about the young man and her face pressed close and
hidden against his side. He must have taken off his jacket to warm
her; for the upper part of his body had no covering but a flannel
shirt and cinglet.

While we stood there the tide drained back, leaving the bows of the boat
high and dry. As I remember, Obed was the first to speak; and he said
“She has beautiful hair.” This was the bare truth: a great lock of it
lay along the bottom-board like a stream of guineas poured out of a
sack. He climbed into the boat and lifted the shawl from her face.

Those neighbours of ours, friends and acquaintances, who afterwards saw
Margit Pedersen at Vellingey, and for whom this account is mainly
written, will not need a description of her. Many disliked her: but
nobody denied that she was a lovely woman; and I am certain that nobody
could see her face and afterwards forget it. It was, then and always,
very pale: but this had nothing to do with ill health. In fact I am not
sure it would have been noticeable but for the warm colour of her hair
and her red lips and (especially) her eyebrows and lashes, of a deep
brown that seemed almost black. Her lips were blue with the cold, just
now: but the contrast between her eyebrows and her pale face and yellow
hair struck me at once and kept me wondering: until Obed startled me by
dropping the shawl and falling on his knees beside her. “Good God,
Dom!” he sang out: “the girl’s alive!”

The next moment, of course, I was as wild as he. “Get her out, then,” I
cried, “and up to the house at once!”

“I can’t loosen the man’s arms!” Though less than a yard apart, we both
shouted at the top of our voices.

“Nonsense!” I answered: but it was true all the same–as I found out
when I stepped in to Obed’s help. “We must carry up the pair as they
are,” I said. “There’s no time to lose.”

We lifted them out, and making a chair of our hands and wrists, carried
them up to Vellingey; leaving the others in the boat, now for an hour
well above reach of the tide. And here I must tell of something that
happened on the way: the first sign of Obed’s madness, as I may call it.
All of a sudden he stopped and panted, from the weight of our load, I
supposed. “Dom,” he said, “I believe that nine men out of ten would
kiss her!”

I told him not to be a fool, and we walked on. In the town-place we
happened on the shepherd, Reuben Santo, and sent him off for help, and
to look after the frozen people in the boat. The sight of us at the
door nearly scared Selina into her grave: but we allowed her no time for
hysterics. We laid the pair on a blanket before the open fire, and very
soon Obed was trying to force some warm milk and brandy between the
girl’s lips. I think she swallowed a little: but the first time she
opened her eyes was when one of the lambs (which everyone had neglected
for twenty minutes or so) tottered across the kitchen on his foolish
legs and began to nuzzle at her face. Obed at the moment was trying to
disengage the dead man’s arms. A thought struck Selina at once.
“Put the lamb close against her heart,” she said. “That’ll warm her
more than any fire.”

So we did, making the lamb lie down close beside her; and it had a
wonderful effect. In less than half-an-hour her pulse grew moderately
firm and she had even contrived to speak a word or two, but in
Norwegian, which none of us understood. Obed by this time had loosened
the dead man’s arms; and we thought it best to get her upstairs to bed
before the full sense of her misfortune should afflict her.
Obed carried her up to the spare-room and there left her to Selina;
while I saddled horse and rode in to Truro, for Doctor Mitchell.

Much of what followed is matter of public knowledge. Our folks carried
the dead Norwegians up to Church-town, including one of the two that had
fallen overboard (the next tide washed him in; the other never came to
land); and there buried them, two days later, in separate graves, but
all close together. The boat being worthless, we sawed it in two just
abaft the mast and set the fore-part over the centre grave, which was
that of Captain Pedersen, the young man we had carried up with Margit.
The mast rotted and fell, some years ago, although carefully stayed: but
the boat, with the names painted on it, remains to this day. Also we
set up a small wooden cross by each man’s grave, with his name upon it.
Margit was able, from our description, to plan out the right name for
each.

On the third day an interpreter came over from Penzance. Margit could
not yet leave her bed: and before he stepped up to question her, I took
him aside and showed a small Norwegian Bible we had found in the pocket
of the seaman’s jacket to which she owed her life. On the first page
was some foreign writing which I could not make out. The interpreter
translated it: first the names “Margit Hansen to Nils Pedersen”: and
after them, this strange verse from the Song of Solomon–strange, I
mean, to find written in such a place–”Let him kiss me with the kisses
of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.”

The interpreter, Mr. Scammel, went upstairs, and she told him her story.
“Our vessel,” she said (I give it in brief) “was the Margit Pedersen,
brig. She belonged to me and was called after me. We were bound for
the Tagus with a cargo of salted fish which I had bought at Bergen from
the Lofoden smacks–fish for the Roman Catholics to eat in Lent.
Nils Pedersen, the captain, was my husband: Knud Lote was mate.”
Mr. Scammell having expressed some surprise that so young a man should
have been captain, she explained, “He was twenty-two. I made him
captain. My father and mother died: they had not wished me to marry
him. They were proud. But they left very little money, considering;
and with it I bought the brig and cargo. She was an old craft, half
rotten. We had fair weather, mostly, down the English Channel and
almost to Ushant. There we met a strong southerly gale, and in the
middle of it a pintle of our rudder gave way and the loose rudder
damaged our stern-post. We tried to bear up for Falmouth, but she would
not steer; and we drove up towards the Irish Coast, just missing Scilly.
On the 8th the wind changed to N.W. and increased. That night, as Nils
tried to lay to, she carried away her fore-mast, which had been shaky
for days. She was now leaking fast. At noon on the 9th we managed to
launch a boat, and abandoned her. She sank at four o’clock: we saw her
go down. The weather grew colder, that night. I think it snowed all
the time: and the seas were too heavy to let the boat run. The men
pulled to keep her nose to them and the wind, and so she drifted.
I forget when they gave over pulling. For a night and a day I baled
steadily. After that I lay most of the time in the bottom of the boat.
Our food was almost done. It was very cold. That is all I can
remember.”

And this, I think, was all we ever heard from her. On his return to
Penzance, Mr. Scammell sent me a Norwegian dictionary; and with the help
of it Obed and I soon managed to talk a little with her, in a mixture of
Norwegian and English. But she never wanted to speak of the past, and
fell silent whenever we spoke of it. What astonished me more was that,
though she told us the names of the dead men, she showed no further
interest in them. At first, knowing how weak she was, and fearing to
distress her, I fought shy of the subject; but one day, towards the end
of the third week–she being strong enough to walk a moderate distance–
I plucked up courage and asked if she cared to come with me to the
churchyard. She agreed, and that afternoon, after a heavy shower, we
walked thither together. I feared what effect the first sight of her
husband’s grave might work on her feelings; and all the way kept wishing
that we had omitted to set up the boat and mast. But she looked at them
calmly, and at the graves. “That is good,” she said: “you have done
great kindness to them. I will not come any more.” And so she prepared
to walk away.

I own that this seemed to me unfeeling. Outside the churchyard I pulled
from my pocket the small Bible. “This belongs to you,” I said: “I have
kept it to help me with your language”–but I held it open at the
fly-leaf. She glanced at it, “Oh yes, I gave it to Nils, my husband.
You wish to keep it?”

“You were very fond of him, to judge from this,” I said; and halted,
expecting her to be angry. But she halted too, and said quite coolly–
looking at me straight–”Yes? Oh yes; very much.”

That same evening I spoke to Obed as we sat alone with our pipes.
“I suppose,” said I as carelessly as I could, “Margit Pedersen will be
leaving us before long.” He looked up sharply, and began to shift the
logs on the hearth. “What makes you say so?” he asked. “Well, she will
have friends in Bergen, and business–” “Has she written to her
friends?” he interrupted. “Not to my knowledge: but she won’t be
staying here for ever, I suppose.” “When she chooses to go, she can.
Are you proposing to turn her out? If so, I’d have you to mind that
Vellingey is my house, and I am master here.”

This was an unworthy thing to say, and he said it with a fury that
surprised me. Obed and I had not quarrelled since we were boys. I put
a stopper on my tongue, and went on smoking: and after a while he began
to talk again in his natural way on ordinary matters.

Margit stayed on; and to all appearance our life at Vellingey fell back
into its old groove. As a matter of fact there was all the difference
in the world–a difference felt before it was seen, and not to be summed
up by saying that a woman sat at our table. I believe I may quite
fairly lay the blame on Obed. For the first time in our lives he kept a
part of his mind hidden from me; he made show enough of frankness in his
talk, but I knew him far too well to miss the suspicion behind it. And
his suspicion bred suspicion in me. Yet though I searched, I could find
nothing amiss in his outward bearing. If he were indeed in love with
the girl–her age, she told us, was twenty-one–he gave no sign upon
which one could lay hold. And certainly Margit’s bearing towards us was
cool and friendly and impartial as the strictest could desire. Of the
two, I had, perhaps, more of her company, simply because Obed spent most
of his time in the lugger, while I worked in the fields and within easy
reach of an afternoon’s stroll. Margit would be busy with housework
most of the morning, or in the kitchen, helping Selina–”domineering,”
Selina preferred to call it.

For, whatever our feelings, Selina had set her face against the
new-comer from the first. She started, no doubt, with the old woman’s
whiddle that no good ever comes of a person saved from the sea. But as
time went on she picked up plenty of other reasons for dislike.
Margit took charge from the day she came downstairs, and had a cold way
of seeing that her orders were attended to. With about twenty words of
English she at once gave battle to Selina, who had bullied us two men
from childhood; and routed her. The old woman kept up a running fight
for a week before appealing to Obed, and this delay cost her everything.
Obed flew in a rage that more than equalled her own, and had the
advantage to be unusual and quite unexpected by her. She ran from him
to the kitchen, in tears; and thenceforth was a beaten woman, however
much she might grumble at the “foreigner” and “interloper.”

For me, I will confess, and have done with it, that before a month was
out my interest in this pale foreign woman, who moved about the house so
quietly and surely, had grown to a degree that troubled me. That Obed
had suspected me before he had any cause made it no easier now to play a
concealed game at cross-purposes; and no pleasanter. In the two months
that followed I hated myself pretty often, and at times came near to
despise myself for the thought that before long I might be hating Obed.
This would never have done: and luckily I saw it in time. Towards the
end of June I made application to the Board: and left Vellingey in July,
to sail for Bombay on board the Warren Hastings, in my old capacity of
first mate. My abandoning the field to Obed would deserve some credit,
had Margit ever by word or look given me the slightest reason to hope.
But she had not; indeed I hoped that she had never guessed the state of
my feelings.

Eighteen months passed before I returned to Vellingey–this time on a
short leave. Obed had written constantly and with all the old
familiarity; a good deal concerning Margit–her health, her walks, her
household business–everything, in short, but what I expected and
dreaded to hear. “Come,” I said to myself, “five minutes’ start in life
and eighteen months in courtship is no such bad allowance for Obed.
Perhaps he will allow me now to have my turn.”

I had this thought in my head as I drew near Vellingey in a light gig
hired from the Truro post-master. It was a rainy afternoon in January,
and a boisterous north-wester blew the Atlantic weather in our teeth as
we mounted the rise over Vellingey churchtown. My head being bent down,
I did not observe the figure of a woman coming up the village street,
but looked up on hearing the sound of her clogs close beside the gig.
It was Selina, tearful, carrying a bundle.

“Whatever is the matter?” I asked, on pulling up.

“They’ve turned me to door!” she moaned. “My dear, they’ve turned me to
door!”

She was tramping home to her cousins in St. Day parish. Not another
night would she sleep at Vellingey–to be trampled on. Of course she
accused the “foreign woman “: but I, it seemed, had started the quarrel
this time; or, rather, it started over the preparations for my
home-coming–some trifling matter of cookery. Selina knew my tastes.
Margit professed to know them better. Such are women.

I own that as I sent the poor soul on her way, with a promise that the
gig should carry back her boxes from Vellingey and a secret resolve that
she should return to us within a week, I could not avoid a foolish
pleasure in the thought that Margit deemed my coming of such importance.
Then it occurred to me that her position now as a single woman alone at
Vellingey lay open to scandal. The sooner I tested my growing hopes,
the better.

I did so, the second evening, after supper. Obed had stepped out to
make the round of the farm buildings and lock up. Margit had removed
the white cloth, and was setting the brass candlesticks and tobacco jar
on the uncovered table.

“What is going to happen about Selina?” I asked, from my chair.

Margit set down a candlestick. “Selina has gone,” she said quietly.

“But people will talk, if you stay here alone with us, or with Obed.
You mustn’t mind my saying this.”

“Oh, no. I suppose they will talk.”

I stood up. “I take it,” said I, “you cannot be quite blind to my
feelings, Margit. I came home on purpose to speak to you: but perhaps,
if it had not been for this, I might have put off speaking for some
days. If you care for me at all, though, I think you can answer.
My dear, if you will marry me it will make me a happy man.”

She was fingering the candle-base, just touching the brass with her
finger-tips and withdrawing them gently. She looked up. “I rather
thought,” she said, “you would have spoken last night. Obed asked me
this morning–he gave you that chance: and I have promised to marry
him.”

“Good Lord! but this is a question of loving a man!”

“I have never said that I like you better. I shall make Obed a very
good wife.”

Less than a minute later, Obed came into the room, after slamming the
back-door loudly. He did not look at our faces: but I am sure that he
knew exactly what had happened.

They were married in April, a fortnight after my leaving England on
another voyage. We parted the best of friends; and in the course of the
next seven years I spent most of my holidays with them. No married life
could well be smoother than was Obed’s and Margit’s in all this time.
He worshipped her to fondness; and she, without the least parade of
affection, seemed to make his comfort and well-being the business of her
life. It hardly needs to be said that my unfortunate proposal was
ignored by all of us as a thing that had never happened.

In October, 1802, I reached the height of my ambition, being appointed
to the command of the Company’s ship Macartney, engaged in the China
traffic. I call her the Macartney: but the reader will presently see
that I have reasons for not wishing to make public the actual name of
this vessel, which, however, will be sufficiently familiar to all who
knew me at that time and who have therefore what I may call a private
interest in this narrative. For the same reason I shall say no more of
her than that she was a new ship, Thames-built, and more than commonly
fast; and that I commanded her from October 1802 to June 1806.

She carried passengers, of course: and in the autumn of 1805 it
surprised and delighted me to hear from Obed that he and Margit had
determined on a sea voyage, and wished to book their passages to the
Canton River and back in the Macartney. I had often given this
invitation in jest: but such voyages merely for health and pleasure were
then far from common. Yet there was no single impediment to their
going. They had no children: they were well-to-do: they had now a hind,
or steward (one Stephens), to whose care they might comfortably leave
the farm. To be short, they sailed with me.

On the 2nd of May 1806, the Macartney dropped anchor in the Canton
River after a fast and prosperous voyage. The events I have now to
relate will appear least extraordinary to the reader who best
understands under what conditions the English carry on their trade with
China. Let me say, then, that in its jealousy of us foreign barbarians
the Chinese government confines our ships to the one port of Canton and
reserves the right of nominating such persons as shall be permitted to
trade with us. These Hong merchants (in number less than a dozen) are
each and all responsible to the Emperor for any disturbance that may be
committed by a person belonging to a foreign ship: and they in turn look
for compensation to the European factors. So that, a Chinese mob being
the most insolent in the world, and the spirit of British seamen
proverbial, these factors often find themselves in situations of great
delicacy, and sometimes of more than a little danger.

It happened that on the next day after our arrival a small party of us–
Margit and Obed, the second officer, Mr. Tomlinson, and I–had taken a
short stroll ashore and were returning to the boat, which lay ready by
the landing, manned by six seamen. The coxswain brought the boat
alongside: and I, on the lowest step of the landing-stage, stooped to
hold her steady while Margit embarked. She and Obed waited on the step
next above, with Mr. Tomlinson close behind. A small crowd had followed
us: and just then one dirty Chinaman reached forward and with a word or
two (no doubt indecent) laid his open palm on the back of Margit’s neck.
Quick as thought, she lifted a hand and dealt him a rousing box in the
ear. I sprang up and pushed him back as he recovered. He slipped on
the green ooze of the steps and fell: this was all I saw, for the crowd
made a rush and closed. Obed and Mr. Tomlinson had hurried Margit into
the boat: I leapt after them: and we pushed off under a brisk shower of
dirt and stones. We were soon out of range, and reached the ship
without mishap.

Knowing the nature of a Chinese rabble, I felt glad enough that the
affair had proved no worse; and thought little more of it until early
next morning, when Mr. Findlater, the first officer, came with a puzzled
face and reported that during the night someone had attached a boat,
with a dead Chinaman in it, to the chain of our small bower anchor.

I went on deck at once. A good look at the corpse relieved me: for as
far as my recollection served, it bore no resemblance to the man I had
pushed on the landing. I told off two of the rowers of the previous
day–the two whose position in the bows had given them the best view of
the scuffle–to cut the thing adrift. They did so and came back with
the report that they had never seen the dead man before in their lives.
So I tried to feel easy.

But soon after breakfast, and almost in the full heat of the day, there
came off a galley with two of the Hong merchants and no less a person
than Mr. ‘–’, the Chief of the H.E.I.C.’s factory. He brought serious
news. The boat had drifted up the river and had been recovered by a
crowd of Chinese, who took out the dead man and laid him on the doorstep
of the factory, clamouring that he had been killed, the day before, by
an Englishwoman; and threatening, unless she were given up, to seize the
first supercargo that came out and carry him off to be strangled.

I answered, describing the scuffle and declaring my readiness to swear
that the body bore no resemblance to the fellow whose ear Margit had
boxed. But I knew how little this testimony would avail in a Chinese
court. The two Hong merchants assured me that their brother, the
Macartney’s guarantor, was already in the hands of the magistrates,
who had handcuffed him and were threatening him with the bamboo: that an
interdiction lay on the Macartney’s cargo, and Mr. ‘–’ himself ran no
small risk of imprisonment.

Our position was at once absurd and extremely serious. To do him
justice, Mr. ‘–’ at once agreed that there could be no question of
delivering up Margit: the penalty of her offence, if proved to the
satisfaction of the Chinese magistrates, being–I can hardly bring
myself to write it–nothing short of strangulation. He could only
promise to accept for the while the risks of delay and do his utmost to
bribe the magistrates into compromising the matter for a small fine.

He proved as good as his word. For five weeks the Macartney lay at
anchor without discharging a pennyweight of her cargo; and every day
brought a new threat, edict, or proclamation. At the end of the first
week the security merchant was allowed to send his agents to offer a
reward of 10,000 dollars to any man of our crew who would swear to
having seen the Englishwoman strike the deceased. The agents conducted
their parley from a boat, and only made off on being threatened with a
bucket of slops. I kept the ship’s guns loaded, and set on a double
watch, night and day. His wife’s peril threw Obed into a state of
apprehension so pitiable that I began to fear for his mind. Margit, on
the other hand, behaved with the coolest composure: and I had some
trouble in persuading her to remain below decks and out of sight.
She relied cheerfully on us and on the crew, every man of whom she had
bound to her (I suppose by her remarkable beauty) in the completest
loyalty.

In five weeks Mr. ‘–’ had spent at least as many thousands of pounds; and
still matters were at a stand when, one day, Mr. Tomlinson reported a
boat under our quarter demanding speech with us. I went to the side and
saw a tall lank-haired man, in a suit of white duck, standing in the
stern-sheets with the tiller-lines in his hands.

“No pigtail on me, Cap!” he bawled. “I’m Oliphant Q. Wills, of the
American barque Independence: and I want to come aboard.” He pointed
to his vessel, which had entered the river soon after us, and now lay,
ready for sea, two cables distant from us.

I saw no reason for refusing; and in less than a minute he came running
up the ladder, and introduced himself again. “Business,” said he; so I
led him to my cabin.

“Hullo!” said he, looking over the floor. “I observe you don’t chew.”
He glanced at the stern-window. I opened it. Our talk then ran as
follows:

Capt. W. “I’ve come to trade.”

Self. “Then you have come, sir, to a very bad ship.”

Capt. W. “I allowed you would say that. I know all about it, and came
in consequence. I never miss a chance.”

Self. “You wish to buy, of course.”

Capt. W. “Not at all. I’m here to sell.”

Self. “What, pray?”

Capt. W. “A half-hogshead cask of pretty ordinary Geneva: with a
Dutchwoman inside.”

Self. “Now, where on earth could you have picked that up?”

Capt. W. (spitting out of window). “In latitude 28 degrees; in a flat
calm; off a Dutch East Indiaman. The name I have at home on a
bit of paper: you shall have it as warranty with the cask.
The captain was drunk, and I traded with the mate. I never
miss a chance. The mate said nothing of the woman inside.
I believe her to be his captain’s wife, preserved for burial
ashore. This is painful for me to speak about; for I had the
worst of the deal, and such is not my reputation. But I
allowed I would sell that cask at a profit if I carried it
around for a hundred years.”

Self. “What do you ask?”

Capt. W. “Well, I have been enquiring of Mr. ‘–’, your Chief Factor
here; and he tells me that your brother, Mr. Obed Lanyon, was
with Cook and Vancouver, and knows the coast from Cape
Flattery northwards and round by the Aleutians like the palm
of his hand. Now it happens I have business up there among
the Russian settlements–part trade, part exploring–
I needn’t say more, for the United States’ Government didn’t
send me to tell secrets. A man like your brother would be
money in my pocket all the way: and at the end of the job I
would undertake to deliver him and his wife safely at any
American port within reason, with money to take them home
like princes, and a trifle over. I’m a square man: and if I
weren’t, you couldn’t be in a worse fix than you are.”

“I think,” said I, “if you do not mind waiting a few minutes, we will
trade, Mr. Wills.” With this I went on deck and hoisted my private
signal for Mr. ‘–’, who came alongside in less than half-an-hour.
He was a practical man, and at once saw the prospect of escape held out
by the American’s offer, ridiculous as it may seem to those who know
little of Chinese law and custom. Indeed one of the magistrates had
frankly appealed to Mr. ‘–’ to hire a substitute for Margit among the
negro women at Macao: and our friend engaged that by spending a few
hundred additional dollars he would get the Dutchwoman’s corpse accepted
as full discharge for the offence, provided that Mrs. Lanyon could be
smuggled out of the Canton River. This Captain Wills readily undertook
to do. Mr. ‘–’ then suggested that his negotiations would be made
easier by the disappearance of all implicated in the scuffle–i.e.
Mr. Tomlinson and myself, as well as Obed and Mrs. Lanyon.
Mr. Findlater, my first officer, could take command and work the
Macartney home; and Mr. ‘–’ engaged to make our case right with the
Company, though at the cost to me of the indirect profits which a
commander looks to make from a homeward voyage. We discussed this for
some while, and in the end agreed to it. Captain Wills, being
short-handed, was even generous enough to offer me a small sum for my
services in assisting him with the navigation.

To be short, all was arranged. That same night a boat from the
Independence brought the famous cask of Geneva alongside, and took us
four English people in exchange, and by 4 a.m. we were under weigh and
heading for the open sea.

The Independence steered through the Formosa Strait, across the
Eastern Sea, and on the 25th of July entered the bay of Nangasaki under
Russian colours, which she thenceforth continued to fly. Like most
European captains, our American kept his straightforward dealing for
certain races only. He produced his trading articles: but the Japanese
wanted nothing, and demanded to know what brought him there?
He answered that he wanted water and fresh provisions (we had a plenty
of both), and to prove it, ordered several butts to be started, and
brought empty on deck. This was enough for the hospitable Japanese; who
next day brought supplies of hogs, fish, and vegetables, for which they
asked no payment; besides four dozen large tubs of water, which Captain
Wills emptied on deck, stopping the scuppers, and removing the plugs at
night so that the water might not be perceived. On the fourth day we
got under weigh again; our deluded friends even going so far in kindness
as to tow us out of the bay, and parting from us with cheers and much
waving of hats and hands.

From Nangasaki we made for Kamschatka and thence for the Aleutian
Islands and the American coast. On his way Captain Wills sedulously
prosecuted the business for which his vessel had been chartered by the
Russian American Company, and distributed his cargo of nankeens, silks,
tea, sugar, etc., among the Russian settlements dotted among the
islands. So far, Obed’s services had been in little request: and I,
too, had leisure to observe and wonder at a certain remarkable change
that had come over Margit–as it seemed to me, from the time of our
entering the parallels above 50 degrees. Her usual calm bearing had
given way to succeeding fits of restlessness and apathy. At times she
would sit dejected for hours together; at others, she would walk the
deck without pause, her cloak thrown open to the cold wind, which she
seemed to drink like a thirsty creature. One day, the vessel being
awkwardly becalmed within a mile of an ugly-looking iceberg, her
excitement rose to something like a frenzy. The weather being hazy,
Obed–who was busy with the captain taking soundings–asked me to run
below for his glass; and there I almost fell Over Margit, who lay on the
cabin floor, her whole body writhing, her hands tightly clenched upon a
handkerchief which she had torn to rags. Of course I asked what ailed
her, and offered to bring help, medicines, anything. She rose in
confusion. ‘It was a pain at the heart,’ she said; ‘nothing more: it
would quickly pass: the cold brought it on, she thought. I would oblige
her by going away; and, above all, by saying nothing to Obed.’

To what extent Obed remarked the change, I cannot tell. He now began to
be pretty busy with his soundings and sketches of the coast. We had
left Kadjak on the 9th of October, and on the last day of the month were
cruising off Queen Charlotte’s Island. So far, considering the lateness
of the season, we had enjoyed remarkable weather. The natives, too,
were friendly beyond expectation. The sight of our vessel brought them
off in great numbers and at times we had as many as a hundred canoes
about us, the largest holding perhaps a dozen, some armed with muskets,
but the most with lances and forks pointed with stags’ antlers and a
kind of scimetar made of whale-rib. We suffered but two or three
persons to board us at a time, and traded with them for dried fish,
sea-otters, beaver and reindeer skins. A string of glass beads (blue
was the favourite colour) would buy a salmon of 20 pounds weight: but
for beaver they would take nothing less valuable than China stuffs.

Obed had warned us against the natives of Queen Charlotte’s Island, as
likely to prove stronger and less friendly than any we had encountered.
We felt a reasonable anxiety, therefore, when, almost as soon as we
sighted the island, a thick fog came up with some wind and a heavy swell
from the south and hid the coast completely. This lasted until November
2nd at daybreak, when the weather lifted and we saw land at about eight
miles’ distance. Unhappily the wind dropped at once, while the motion
of the waves continued, and our sails being useless, we found ourselves
drifting rapidly shoreward with the set of the current. In the height
of our dismay, however, a breeze sprang up from the north-west, and we
worked off.

But we were over-hasty in blessing this breeze, which before midnight
grew to a violent gale: and for two days we drove before it in much
distress–Obed and I taking turns at conning the ship, since Captain
Wills had received an awkward blow between the shoulders from the
swinging of a loose block, and lay below in considerable pain and
occasionally spitting blood, which made us fear some inward hurt.
During the night of the 4th, the wind moderated; but the weather turning
thick again, we were hardly reassured.

Early on the 6th Captain Wills appeared once more on deck and sent me
below to get some sleep. I believe indeed that, had fate allowed, I
could have slept round the clock. But at ten that morning a violent
shock pitched me clean out of my berth. The Independence was aground.

The place of our shipwreck you will find in 47 degrees 66 minutes N.
lat., between Vancouver’s Cape Flattery and the mouth of the Columbia
River, but nearer to the former. Luckily the Independence had run in
upon soft ground and at high water: so that when the tide dropped she
still held together, though badly shaken and gaping in all her lower
seams. To save her was out of the question. We therefore made the best
of our way ashore in the dense fog, taking with us all our guns and the
best part of our ammunition, as well as provisions and a quantity of
sails and spars for rigging up tents. On no side of us could we see
further than twenty paces. Of the inhabitants of this dreary spot–if
indeed it had inhabitants–we knew nothing. So we first of all cleaned
and loaded our firearms, and then set to work to light a fire and erect
a shelter. We had done better, as it turned out, to have divided our
company, and told off a fairly strong party to protect the ship. As it
was, Captain Wills remained on board with three men to cut away and take
down some of the heavier tackling.

We had set up one tent and were at work on the second, when I heard an
exclamation from Margit, who stood by the big cauldron, a few paces off,
cooking our dinner of salt pork. Looking up I saw a ring of savages all
about us on the edge of the fog.

They were brown undersized men, clothed for the most part in dirty
blankets and armed with short lances shod with iron, though one or two
carried muskets. These last I soon discovered to be toens, or elders,
of the tribe. They stood and observed us with great gravity (indeed in
all my acquaintance with them I never knew one to smile) and in
absolute silence. I could not tell how many the fog concealed.
They made no aggressive movement.

I called to Margit, bidding her leave the cauldron and walk quietly
towards us; and she did so. Almost at once a savage thrust his lance
into the pot, drew out our dinner on the end of it, and laid it on the
sand. One of the toens then cut up the pork with his knife and handed
the portions round, retaining a large lump for himself.

Seeing this, some of our men were for hostilities: but I restrained
them and we made our meal from a barrel of biscuit, eating in silence
while the natives chewed away at the pork. The meal over, we fell to
work and finished the second tent without opposition, though curiosity
drew some of our visitors so near as to hamper the workmen. When thrust
aside they showed no resentment, but after a minute drew near again and
impeded us as badly as ever.

Towards nightfall the main body drew off–whither, the fog did not
reveal: but one or two entered the tents with us, hung around while we
supped, and without the least invitation stretched themselves down to
sleep. I own that this impudence tried my temper sorely, and Obed–the
only one of us who knew some scraps of the language of these Indians–
went so far as to remonstrate with them. But if they understood, they
gave no sign of understanding: and we resolved to forbear from violence,
at least so long as Captain Wills and his three comrades remained away
from our main body and exposed to any vengeance these savages might
wreak.

And our fears for the Captain were justified about 4 a.m. by a report of
firearms in the direction of the ship. I sprang to the door and waved a
torch, and in a minute or so our comrades came running in through a
shower of stones and lances, several of which struck the tents.
The natives, it appeared, had attempted to plunder the ship. At great
risk Obed ran out to seek one of the toens and reason with him: but the
mischief happened too quickly. Some of our men caught up their muskets
and fired. Our assailants at once broke up and fled; and half-a-dozen
of us charged down to the water’s edge, where we saw a score and more
with torches, busily setting fire to the ship. They too dispersed
before us, leaving two of their number dead on the field and carrying
off several wounded. But we came too late to save the Independence,
which was already ablaze in a dozen different places; nor could we make
any effort against the flames, for we knew not how sorely we might be
wanted at the tents.

So we returned and spent the rest of the night in great discomfort, the
blaze of the ship colouring the fog all around, but showing us nothing.
Soon after daybreak the weather lifted a little, and what we saw
discouraged us yet further. For, except the beach on which we were
encamped, we found the whole coast covered with thick forest to the
water’s edge; while our boats, in which we might have made shift to
escape, had been either fired or taken off by the savages. At 10 a.m.,
therefore, Captain Wills called a council of war, and informed us that
he could think of no better plan than to push on for a harbour
(its name, if I mistake not, was Gray’s Harbour) lying about seventy
miles to the southward, where a ship of the Company was due to call
early in the spring. Obed remembered it, and added that the journey
might be quickly made, since his map showed no creek or river that
promised to impede us, and the Indians were not likely to annoy us while
the camp and the remains of the barque afforded any plunder.
Accordingly we packed up, and having destroyed what muskets and weapons
we did not want and thrown our spare gunpowder into the sea, shortly
after noon began our march through the forest.

We were nineteen persons in all: and each of us carried two muskets, a
pistol and some pounds of ammunition, besides his share of the
provisions. The only ones more lightly laden were Margit and Captain
Wills. The latter, indeed, could with pain manage to walk at all, and
so clogged the pace of the party that we made but eight miles before
night-fall, when we halted in an open space, set watches, and passed the
night with no more discomfort than came from the severe cold.

In the morning we started early and made a good ten miles before noon.
The Captain now seemed at the end of his powers and we allowed him an
hour’s rest while we cleaned our firearms. Margit gave no sign of
fatigue: but I observed that she walked alone and in silence. Indeed
she had scarcely spoken since our shipwreck.

The ground chosen for our halt lay about mid-way down a stiff slope by
which the forest descended to the sea, visible here and there between
the stems of the trees below us. Shortly before two o’clock, when we
were preparing to start again, a big stone came crashing down among our
stores; and, as we scattered in alarm, two or three others followed.
Looking up, I caught sight of a couple of Indians on the crest of the
slope, and fired off my rifle to frighten them. They desisted at once:
but to prevent further annoyance we made for the crest, where the rocky
ground made walking difficult, so that we added but another five miles
or so before nightfall.

During this night the wind rose, and at length it blew and snowed so
hard as to drive us off the ridge. Luckily, however, one of the men
discovered a shallow cave in the hillside, and here we huddled and
continued all the next day and night, waiting for the storm to abate;
which no sooner happened than we were assailed again by a perfect
bombardment of big stones. These, however, flew harmlessly over our
shelter.

I was dozing at daybreak on the 10th when a seaman named Hogue woke me
and called my attention to the Captain. He was stiff and cold, and had
died in the night without complaint and, as far as could be learnt,
without sound. The rain of stones not being resumed with daylight, we
left his body in the cave, and pushed on over the snow in sad and sorry
condition: for our provisions now began to run short.

Obed assumed the lead, with the consent of all. Once or twice in the
course of the morning I observed him to pause, as if listening.
The cause of this became apparent at about one in the afternoon, when I,
too, heard the sound of running water: and an hour later we halted on
the edge of a broad valley, with a swift stream running through it,
black between banks of snow, and on the near bank a few huts and a crowd
of three hundred Indians at least.

They had already caught sight of us: so we judged it better to advance,
after looking to our arms. We were met by a toen (the same that had cut
up the pork) and a chief of taller stature and pleasanter features than
we had hitherto happened on in the country. It now appeared that the
previous silence of these people had been deliberate: for the toen at
once began to talk in a language fairly intelligible to Obed.
He proposed to supply us with boats to cross the river, if we would give
up our muskets in payment. This, of course, we refused: but offered
him the whole collection of beads and trinkets that we had brought with
us in the hope of trafficking for food. After some haggling–to which
the handsome chief, Yootramaki, listened with seeming disdain–the toen
undertook to let us have the boats; and presently one appeared, paddled
by three naked savages. As this would barely hold a dozen passengers,
we begged for another, that we might all cross together. The toen
complied, and sent a second, but much smaller boat. In these we allowed
ourselves to be distributed–Obed and I with ten others in the larger,
and Margit with five seamen in the smaller.

The boats pushed out into the stream, the larger leading. The current
ran deep and swift: and when, about half-way across, the nearest savage
ceased paddling, I supposed he did so that the others on the starboard
side might more easily bring the bows round to it. Before one could
guess his true intention he had stooped and whipped out a plug from the
boat’s bottom, at the same time calling to his comrades, who leapt up
and flung themselves overboard. The next moment he was after them, and
the whole party swimming to shore. The current swept us down and
carried us so near to a spit of the shore we had left, that the savages,
who now pelted us with arrows, succeeded in killing one seaman, and
wounding four others: but here most fortunately it set right across for
the opposite bank, where we contrived to land just as our boat sank
beneath us. Those in the smaller boat, however, fell into our enemy’s
hands, who clubbed the five seamen on the head, sparing only Margit; and
then, supposing our muskets to be wet and useless, crossed over in a
canoe to attack us.

But as Providence would have it, we had four muskets left dry–they
being slung round us in bandoliers–and the greater part of our powder
unspoiled. We met the foe with a volley which disposed of three and
sank the canoe. The survivors swam for it, and I dare say reached
shore. A second canoe put off, and from the bows of it the rascally
toen (cause of all this misfortune, as we deemed) hailed Obed and
offered to let us go in peace and even restore Margit if we would
surrender our firearms.

I think the coldest heart must have pitied my poor brother then.
He paced the bank like a mad creature, silent, directing the most
agonised looks at his comrades and at me in particular. We turned our
faces aside; for his wishes were madness, yet we were asking him to
sacrifice what was dearest to him in the world. In his distraction then
he tore off most of his clothes, and piling them in a heap besought the
toen to take them for the ransom; and we too stripped and stood all but
naked, adding our prayers to his. But the scoundrel, without regard of
our offering, spoke to his men, and was paddled away.

I will pass over the hour that followed. We quieted Obed’s ravings at
length; or rather, they ceased out of pure exhaustion. We were all
starving in fact, and the food left in our wallets would not keep a cat
alive for another forty-eight hours. Retiring to a clump of firs about
100 yards back from the river’s bank, we scooped a hole in the snow and
entrenched ourselves as well as we could for the night. Some of us
managed to sleep a little; the others tried to allay the pangs of hunger
by chewing their musket-covers, the sponges on their ramrods, even their
boot-soles.

At midnight came my turn for watching. In my weakness I may have dozed,
or perhaps was light-headed. At any rate, turning after some time to
glance at the sleepers, I missed Obed. An ugly suspicion seized me; I
counted the muskets. Two of these were missing. After shaking one of the
sleepers by the elbow and bidding him watch, I leaped over our low
breastwork and ran towards the river in the track of my brother’s
footsteps. Almost as I started, a flash and a report of a musket right
ahead changed the current of my fears. By the light of the young moon I
saw two figures struggling and rolling together on the river’s brink.
They were Obed and our peculiar enemy, the toen. The body of a dead
Indian lad was stretched some ten paces off beside a small canoe which
lay moored by the bank.

Our comrades came running up as I flung myself into the struggle, and we
quickly secured the toen. I believe Obed would have killed him.
“Don’t be a fool!” said I; “cannot you see that we now have a hostage
for Margit?” I ought at the same time to have begged his pardon for my
suspicions. As the reader already knows, Obed had a far keener ear than
I, and it had warned him of the canoe’s approach. It turned out
afterwards that the toen had planned this little reconnoitring
expedition on his own account, and on the chance perhaps of filching a
musket or two.

We quickly laid our plans; and at daybreak flung my gentleman, bound
hand and foot, into his own canoe, which Obed and I paddled into
mid-stream, while our party stood on the bank and watched. The village
opposite seemed deserted: but at Obed’s hail an Indian woman ran out of
the largest hut, and returning, must have summoned the good-looking
chief Yootramaki; who emerged in a minute or so, and came slowly down
the bank. By this time several groups of Indians had gathered and stood
looking on, in all perhaps eighty or a hundred people.

Obed pointed to our prisoner and made his demand. I understood him to
ask for the immediate ransom of Margit, and a supply of salmon and other
provisions to take us on our journey. The chief stood considering for a
while; then spoke to a native boy, who ran to the house; and in a minute
or so Margit herself appeared, wi