Chapter I.

E-text prepared by Lionel Sear

LADY GOOD-FOR-NOTHING

A Man's Portrait of a Woman

by

ARTHUR THOMAS QUILLER-COUCH ('Q')

First Published in 1910.

This story originally appeared in the weekly edition of the "Times,"

and is now issued in book form by arrangement with the Proprietors of

that Journal.

TO My Commodore and old Friend Edward Atkinson, Esq.

of Rosebank, Mixtow-by-Fowey.

NOTE

Some years ago an unknown American friend proposed my writing a story on

the loves and adventures of Sir Harry Frankland, Collector of the Port

of Boston in the mid-eighteenth century, and Agnes Surriage, daughter of

a poor Marble-head fisherman. The theme attracted me as it has

attracted other writers--and notably Oliver Wendell Holmes, who built a

poem on it. But while their efforts seemed to leave room for another, I

was no match for them in knowledge of the facts or of local details;

and, moreover, these facts and details cramped my story. I repented,

therefore and, taking the theme, altered the locality and the

characters--who, by the way, in the writing have become real enough to

me, albeit in a different sense. Thus (I hope) no violence has been

offered to historical truth, while I have been able to tell the tale in

my own fashion.

"Q."

CONTENTS.

BOOK I.--PORT NASSAU.

I. THE BEACH.

II. PORT NASSAU.

III. TWO GUINEAS.

IV. FATHER AND SON.

V. RUTH.

VI. PARENTHETICAL--OF THE FAMILY OF VYELL.

VII. A SABBATH-BREAKER.

VIII. ANOTHER SABBATH-BREAKER.

IX. THE SCOURGE.

X. THE BENCH.

XI. THE STOCKS.

XII. THE HUT BY THE BEACH.

XIII. RUTH SETS OUT.

BOOK II.--PROBATION.

I. AFTER TWO YEARS.

II. MR. SILK.

III. MR. HICHENS.

IV. VASHTI.

V. SIR OLIVER'S HEALTH.

VI. CAPTAIN HARRY AND MR. HANMER.

VII. FIRST OFFER.

VIII. CONCERNING MARGARET.

IX. THE PROSPECT.

X. THREE LADIES.

XI. THE ESPIAL.

XII. LADY CAROLINE.

XIII. DIANA VYELL.

XIV. MR. SILK PROPOSES.

XV. THE CHOOSING.

BOOK III.--THE BRIDALS.

I. BETROTHED.

II. THE RETURN.

III. NESTING.

IV. THE BRIDEGROOM.

V. RUTH'S WEDDING DAY.

VI. "YET HE WILL COME--".

VII. HOUSEKEEPING.

VIII. HOME-COMING.

BOOK IV.--LADY GOOD-FOR-NOTHING.

I. BATTY LANGTON, CHRONICLER.

II. SIR OLIVER SAILS.

III. MISCALCULATING WRATH.

IV. THE TERRACE.

V. A PROLOGUE TO NOTHING.

VI. CHILDLESS MOTHER.

BOOK V.--LISBON AND AFTER.

I. ACT OF FAITH.

II. DONNA MARIA.

III. EARTHQUAKE.

IV. THE SEARCH.

V. THE FINDING.

VI. DOCUMENTS.

VII. THE LAST OFFER.

EPILOGUE

"An innocent life, yet far astray." Wordsworth's _Ruth_.

BOOK I.

PORT NASSAU.

Chapter I.

THE BEACH.

A coach-and-six, as a rule, may be called an impressive Object.

But something depends on where you see it.

Viewed from the tall cliffs--along the base of which, on a strip of

beach two hundred feet below, it crawled between the American continent

and the Atlantic Ocean--Captain Oliver Vyell's coach-and-six resembled

nothing so nearly as a black-beetle.

For that matter the cliffs themselves, swept by the spray and humming

with the roar of the beach--even the bald headland towards which they

curved as to the visible bourne of all things terrestrial--shrank in

comparison with the waste void beyond, where sky and ocean weltered

together after the wrestle of a two days' storm; and in comparison with

the thought that this rolling sky and heaving water stretched all the

way to Europe. Not a sail showed, not a wing anywhere under the leaden

clouds that still dropped their rain in patches, smurring out the

horizon. The wind had died down, but the ships kept their harbours and

the sea-birds their inland shelters. Alone of animate things, Captain

Vyell's coach-and-six crept forth and along the beach, as though tempted

by the promise of a wintry gleam to landward.

A god--if we may suppose one of the old careless Olympians seated there

on the cliff-top, nursing his knees--must have enjoyed the comedy of it,

and laughed to think that this pert beetle, edging its way along the

sand amid the eternal forces of nature, was here to take seizin of

them--yes, actually to take seizin and exact tribute. So indomitable a

fellow is Man, _improbus Homo_; and among men in his generation Captain

Oliver Vyell was Collector of Customs for the Port of Boston,

Massachusetts.

In fairness to Captain Vyell be it added that he--a young English blood,

bearing kinship with two or three of the great Whig families at home,

and sceptical as became a person of quality--was capable as any one of

relishing the comedy, had it been pointed out to him. With equal

readiness he would have scoffed at Man's pretensions in this world and

denied him any place at all in the next. Nevertheless on a planet the

folly of which might be taken for granted he claimed at least his share

of the reverence paid by fools to rank and wealth. He was travelling

this lonely coast on a tour of inspection, to visit and report upon a

site where His Majesty's advisers had some design to plant a fort; and a

fine ostentation coloured his progress here as through life. He had

brought his coach because it conveyed his claret and his _batterie de

cuisine_ (the seaside inns were detestable); but being young and

extravagantly healthy and, with all his faults, very much of a man, he

preferred to ride ahead on his saddle-horse and let his pomp follow him.

Six horses drew the coach, and to each pair of leaders rode a

postillion, while a black coachman guided the wheelers from the

box-seat; all three men in the Collector's livery of white and scarlet.

On a perch behind the vehicle--which, despite its weight, left but the

shallowest of wheel-ruts on the hard sand--sat Manasseh, the Collector's

cook and body-servant; a huge negro, in livery of the same white and

scarlet but with heavy adornments of bullion, a cockade in his hat, and

a loaded blunderbuss laid across his thighs. Last and alone within the

coach, with a wine-case for footstool, sat a five-year-old boy.

Master Dicky Vyell--the Collector's only child, and motherless--sat and

gazed out of the windows in a delicious terror. For hours that morning

the travellers had ploughed their way over a plain of blown sand, dotted

with shrub-oaks, bay-berries, and clumps of Indian grass; then, at a

point where the tall cliffs began, had wound down to the sea between

low foothills and a sedge-covered marsh criss-crossed by watercourses

that spread out here and there into lagoons. At the head of this

descent the Atlantic had come into sight, and all the way down its

echoes had grown in the boy's ears, confusing themselves with a

delicious odour which came in fact from the fields of sedge, though he

attributed it to the ocean.

But the sound had amounted to a loud humming at most; and it was with a

leap and a shout, as they rounded the last foothill and saw the vast

empty beach running northward before them, league upon league, that the

thunder of the surf broke on them. For a while the boom and crash of it

fairly stunned the child. He caught at an arm-strap hanging by the

window and held on with all his small might, while the world he knew

with its familiar protective boundaries fell away, melted, left him--a

speck of life ringed about with intolerable roaring emptiness.

To a companion, had there been one in the coach, he must have clung in

sheer terror; yes, even to his father, to whom he had never clung and

could scarcely imagine himself clinging. But his father rode ahead,

carelessly erect on his blood-horse--horse and rider seen in a blur

through the salt-encrusted glass. Therefore Master Dicky held on as

best he might to the arm-strap.

By degrees his terror drained away, though its ebb left him shivering.

Child though he was, he could not remember when he had not been curious

about the sea. In a dazed fashion he stared out upon the breakers.

The wind had died down after the tempest, but the Atlantic kept its

agitation. Meeting the shore (which hereabouts ran shallow for five or

six hundred yards) it reared itself in ten-foot combers, rank stampeding

on rank, until the sixth or seventh hurled itself far up the beach,

spent itself in a long receding curve, and drained back to the foaming

forces behind. Their untiring onset fascinated Dicky; and now and

again he tasted renewal of his terror, as a wave, taller than the rest

or better timed, would come sweeping up to the coach itself, spreading

and rippling about the wheels and the horses' fetlocks. "Surely this

one would engulf them," thought the child, recalling Pharaoh and his

chariots; but always the furious charge spent itself in an edge of white

froth that faded to delicate salt filigree and so vanished. When this

had happened a dozen times or more, and still without disaster, he took

heart and began to turn it all into a game, choosing this or that

breaker and making imaginary wagers upon it; but yet the spectacle

fascinated him, and still at the back of his small brain lay wonder that

all this terrifying fury and uproar should always be coming to nothing.

God must be out yonder (he thought) and engaged in some mysterious form

of play. He had heard a good deal about God from Miss Quiney, his

governess; but this playfulness, as an attribute of the Almighty, was

new to him and hitherto unsuspected.

The beach, with here and there a break, extended for close upon twenty

miles, still curving towards the headland; and the travellers covered

more than two-thirds of the distance without espying a single living

creature. As the afternoon wore on the weather improved. The sun, soon

to drop behind the cliff-summits on the left, asserted itself with a

last effort and shot a red gleam through a chink low in the cloud-wrack.

The shaft widened. The breakers--indigo-backed till now and turbid with

sand in solution--began to arch themselves in glass-green hollows, with

rainbows playing on the spray of their crests. And then--as though the

savage coast had become, at a touch of sunshine, habitable--our

travellers spied a man.

He came forth from a break in the cliffs half a mile ahead and slowly

crossed the sands to the edge of the surf, the line of which he began,

after a pause, to follow as slowly northwards. His back was turned thus

upon the Collector's equipage, to which in crossing the beach he had

given no attention, being old and purblind.

The coach rolled so smoothly, and the jingle of harness was so entirely

swallowed in the roar of the sea, that Captain Vyell, pushing ahead and

overtaking the old fellow, had to ride close up to his shoulder and

shout. It appeared then, for further explanation, that his hearing as

well as his eyesight was none of the best. He faced about in a puzzled

fashion, stared, and touched his hat--or rather lifted his hand a little

way and dropped it again.

"Your Honour will be the Collector," he said, and nodded many times, at

first as if proud of his sagacity, but afterwards dully--as though his

interest had died out and he would have ceased nodding but had forgotten

the way. "Yes; my gran'-darter told me. She's in service at the

Bowling Green, Port Nassau; but walks over on Lord's Days to cheer up

her mother and tell the news. They've been expectin' you at Port Nassau

any time this week."

The Collector asked where he lived, and the old man pointed to a gully

in the cliff and to something which, wedged in the gully, might at a

first glance be taken for a large and loosely-constructed bird's nest.

The Collector's keen eyes made it out to be a shanty of timber roofed

with shingles and barely overtopping a wood pile.

"Wreckwood, eh?"

"A good amount of it ought to be comin' in, after the gale."

"Then where's your hook?"--for the wreckwood gatherers along this part

of the coast carry long gaffs to hook the flotsam and drag it above

reach of the waves.

"Left it up the bank," said the old man shortly. After a moment he

pulled himself together for an explanation, hollowed his palms around

his mouth, and bawled above the boom of the surf. "I'm old. I don't

carry weight more'n I need to. When a log comes in, my darter spies it

an' tells me. She's mons'rous quick-sighted for wood an' such like--

though good for nothin' else." (A pause.) "No, I'm hard on her; she

can cook clams."

"You were looking for clams?" Captain Vyell scrutinised the man's face.

It was a patriarchal face, strikingly handsome and not much wrinkled;

the skin delicately tanned and extraordinarily transparent.

Somehow this transparency puzzled him. "Hungry?" he asked quickly; and

as quickly added, "Starving for food, that's what you are."

"It's the Lord's will," answered the old man.

The coach had come to a halt a dozen paces away. The child within it

could hear nothing of this conversation; but to the end of his life his

memory kept vivid the scene and the two figures in it--his father, in

close-fitting riding-coat of blue, with body braced, leaning sideways a

little against the wind, and a characteristic hint of the cavalryman

about the slope of the thigh; the old wreck-picker standing just forward

of the bay's shoulder and looking up, with blown hair and patient eyes.

Memory recalled even the long slant of the bay's shoulder--a perfectly

true detail, for the horse was of pure English race and bred by the

Collector himself.

After this, as he remembered, some command must have been given, for

Manasseh climbed down, opened the coach door and drew from under the

seat a box, of which he raised the lid, disclosing things good to eat--

among them a pasty with a crisp brown crust.

The wreck-picker broke off a piece of the pasty and wrapped it in a

handkerchief--and memory recalled, as with a small shock of surprise,

that the handkerchief was clean. The old man, though ragged enough to

scare the crows, was clean from his bare head to his bare sea-bleached

feet. He munched the rest of the pasty, talking between mouthfuls. To

his discourse Dicky paid no heed, but slipped away for a scamper on the

sands.

As he came running back he saw the old man, in the act of wiping his

mouth with the back of his hand, suddenly shoot out an arm and point.

Just beyond the breakers a solitary bird--an osprey--rose with a fish

shining in the grip of its claws. It flew northward, away for the

headland, for a hundred yards or so; and then by some mischance let slip

his prey, which fell back into the sea. The boy saw the splash.

To his surprise the bird made no effort to recover the fish--neither

stooped nor paused--but went winging sullenly on its way.

"That's the way o' them," commented the old wreck-picker. "Good food,

an' to let it go. I could teach him better."

But the boy, years after, read it as another and different parable.

Chapter II.

PORT NASSAU.

They left the beach, climbed a road across the neck of the promontory,

and rattled downhill into Port Nassau. Dusk had fallen before they

reached the head of its cobbled street; and here one of the postillions

drew out a horn from his holster and began to blow loud blasts on it.

This at once drew the townsfolk into the road and warned them to get out

of the way.

To the child, drowsed by the strong salt air and the rocking of the

coach, the glimmering whitewashed houses on either hand went by like a

procession in a dream. The figures and groups of men and women on the

side-walks, too, had a ghostly, furtive air. They seemed to the boy to

be whispering together and muttering. Now this was absurd; for what

with the blare of the postillion's horn, the clatter of hoofs, the

jolting and rumbling of wheels, the rattle of glass, our travellers had

all the noise to themselves--or all but the voice of the gale now rising

again for an afterclap and snoring at the street corners. Yet his

instinct was right. Many of the crowd _were_ muttering. These New

Englanders had no love to spare for a Collector of Customs, a fine

gentlemen from Old England and (rumour said) an atheist to boot. They

resented this ostent of entry; the men more sullenly than the women,

some of whom in their hearts could not help admiring its high-and-mighty

insolence.

The Collector, at any rate, had a crowd to receive him, for it was

Saturday evening. On Saturdays by custom the fishing-fleet of Port

Nassau made harbour before nightfall, and the crews kept a sort of

decorous carnival before the Sabbath, of which they were strict

observers. In the lower part of the town, by the quays, much buying and

selling went on, in booths of sail-cloth lit as a rule by oil-flares.

For close upon a week no boat had been able to put to sea; but the

Saturday market and the Saturday gossip and to-and-fro strolling were in

full swing none the less, though the salesmen had to substitute

hurricane-lamps for their ordinary flares, and the boy--now wide awake

again--had a passing glimpse of a couple of booths that had been wrecked

by the rising wind and were being rebuilt. He craned out to stare at

the helpers, while they, pausing in their work and dragged to and fro by

the flapping canvas, stared back as the coach went by.

It came to a halt on a level roadway some few rods beyond this bright

traffic, in an open space which, he knew, must be near the waterside,

for beyond the lights of the booths he had spied a cluster of masts

quite close at hand. Or perhaps he had fallen asleep and in his sleep

had been transported far inland. For the wind had suddenly died down,

the coach appeared to be standing in a forest glade--at any rate, among

trees--and through the trees fell a soft radiance that might well be the

moon's were it only a tinge less yellow. In the shine of it stood

Manasseh, holding open the coach door; and as the child stepped out

these queer impressions were succeeded by one still more curious and

startling. For a hand, as it seemed, reached out of the darkness,

brushed him smartly across the face, and was gone. He gave a little cry

and stood staring aloft at a lantern that hung some feet above him from

an arched bracket. Across its glass face ran the legend BOWLING GREEN

INN, in orange-coloured lettering, and the ray of its oil-lamp wavered

on the boughs of two tall maples set like sentinels by the Inn gateway

and reddening now to the fall of the leaf. Yes, the ground about his

feet was strewn with leaves: it must be one of these that had brushed by

his face.

If the folk in the streets had been sullen, those of the Inn were eager

enough, even obsequious. A trio of grooms fell to unharnessing the

horses; a couple of porters ran to and fro, unloading the baggage and

cooking-pots; while the landlady shouted orders right and left in the

porchway. She deemed, honest soul, that she was mistress of the

establishment, until Manasseh undeceived her.

Manasseh's huge stature and gold-encrusted livery commanded respect in

spite of his colour. He addressed her as "woman." "Woman, if you will

stop yo' cacklin' and yo' crowin'? Go in now and fetch me fish, fetch

me chickens, fetch me plenty eggs. Fetch me a dam scullion. Heh?

Stir yo' legs and fetch me a dam scullion, and the chickens tender.

His Exc'llence mos' partic'ler the chickens tender."

Still adjuring her he shouldered his way through the house to the

kitchen, whence presently his voice sounded loud, authoritative, above

the clatter of cooking-pots. From time to time he broke away from the

business of unpacking to reiterate his demands for fish, eggs,

chicken--the last to be tender at all costs and at pain of his

tremendous displeasure.

"And I assure you, ma'am," said Captain Vyell, standing in the passage

at the door of his private room, "his standard is a high one. I believe

the blackguard never stole a tough fowl in his life. . . . Show me to my

bedroom, please, if the trunks are unstrapped; and the child, here, to

his. . . . Eh? What's this?--a rush-light? I don't use rush-lights.

Go to Manasseh and ask him to unpack you a pair of candles."

The landlady returned with a silver candlestick in either hand, and

candles of real wax. She had never seen the like, and led the way

upstairs speculating on their cost. The bedrooms proved to be clean,

though bare and more than a little stuffy--their windows having been

kept shut for some days against the gale. The Collector commanded them

to be opened. The landlady faintly protested. "The wind would gutter

the candles--and such wax too!" She was told to obey, and she obeyed.

In the boy's room knelt a girl--a chambermaid--unstrapping his small

valise. She had a rush-light on the floor beside her, and did not look

up as the landlady thrust open the lattice and left the room with the

Collector, the boy remaining behind. His candle stood upon a chest of

drawers by the window; and, as the others went out, a draught of wind

caught the dimity curtain, blew it against the flame, and in an instant

ignited it.

The girl looked up swiftly at the sudden light above her, and as

swiftly--before the child could cry out--was on her feet. She caught

the fire between her two hands and beat it out, making no noise and

scarcely flinching, though her flesh was certainly being scorched.

"That was lucky," she said, looking across at him with a smile.

"Ruth!--Ruth!" called the landlady's voice, up the corridor.

"Here, a moment!"

She dropped the charred curtain and hurried to answer the call.

"Ruth! Where's the bootjack? His Honour will take off his

riding-boots."

"Bootjack, ma'am?" interrupted the Collector, leaning back in a chair

and extending a shapely leg with instep and ankle whereon the

riding-boot fitted like a glove. "I don't maul my leather with

bootjacks. Send Manasseh upstairs to me; ask him with my compliments

what the devil he means by clattering saucepans when he should be

attending to his master. . . . Eh, what's this?"

"She can do it, your Honour," said the landlady, catching Ruth by the

shoulder and motioning her to kneel and draw off the boot.

(It is likely she shirked carrying the message.)

"Oh, very well--if only she won't twist my foot. . . . Take care of the

spur, child."

The girl knelt, and with her blistered hand took hold of the boot-heel

below the spur. It cost her exquisite pain, but she did not wince; and

her head being bent, no one perceived the tears in her eyes.

She had scarcely drawn off the second boot, when Manasseh appeared in

the doorway carrying a silver tray with glasses and biscuits; a glass of

red wine for his master, a more innocent cordial for the young

gentleman, and both glasses filmed over with the chill of crushed ice.

The girl was withdrawing when the Collector, carelessly feeling in his

pocket, drew out a coin and put it into her hand. Her fingers closed on

it sharply, almost with a snatch. In truth, the touch of metal was so

intolerable to the burnt flesh that, but for clutching it so, she must

have dropped the coin. Still with bowed head she passed quietly from

the room.

Master Dicky munched his macaroon and sipped his cordial. He had a

whole guinea in his breeches pocket, and was thinking it would be great

fun to step out and explore the town, if only for a little way.

To-morrow was Sunday, and all the stores would be closed. But Manasseh

was too busy to come with him for bodyguard--and his father's boots were

off; and besides, he stood in great awe and shyness of his admired

parent. Had the boots been on, it would have cost him a bold effort to

make the request. On the whole, the cordial warming him, Master Dicky

had a mind to take French leave.

Chapter III.

TWO GUINEAS.

Though the wind hummed among the chimneys and on the back of the roof,

on either side of the lamp over the gateway the maples stood in the lee

and waved their boughs gently, shedding a leaf now and then in some

deflected gust. Beyond and to the left stretched a dim avenue, also of

maples; and at the end of this, as he reached the gate, the boy could

spy the lights of the fair.

There was no risk at all of losing his way.

He stepped briskly forth and down the avenue. Where the trees ended,

and with them the high wall enclosing the inn's stable-yard, the wind

rushed upon him with a whoop, and swept him off the side-walk almost to

the middle of the road-way. But by this time the lights were close at

hand. He pressed his little hat down on his head and battled his way

towards them.

The first booth displayed sweetmeats; the next hung out lines of

sailors' smocks, petticoats, sea-boots, oilskin coats and caps, that

swayed according to their weight; the third was no booth but a wooden

store, wherein a druggist dispensed his wares; the fourth, also of wood,

belonged to a barber, and was capable of seating one customer at a time

while the others waited their turn on the side-walk. Here--his shanty

having no front--the barber kept them in good humour by chatting to all

and sundry while he shaved; but a part of the crowd had good-naturedly

drifted on to help his neighbour, a tobacco-seller, whose stall had

suffered disaster. A painted wooden statue of a Cherokee Indian lay

face downward across the walk, as the wind had blown it: bellying folds

of canvas and tarpaulin hid the wreck of the poor man's stock-in-trade.

Beyond this wreckage stood, in order, a vegetable stall, another

sweetmeat stall, and a booth in which the boy (who cared little for

sweetmeats, and, moreover, had just eaten his macaroon) took much more

interest. For it was hung about with cages; and in the cages were birds

of all kinds (but the most of them canaries), perched in the dull light

of two horn lanterns, and asleep with open, shining eyes; and in the

midst stood the proprietor, blowing delightful liquid notes upon a

bird-call.

It fascinated Dicky; and he no sooner assured himself that the birds

were really for sale--although no purchaser stepped forward--than there

came upon him an overmastering desire to own a live canary in a cage and

teach it with just such a whistle. (He had often wondered at the things

upon which grown-up folk spent their money to the neglect of this

world's true delights.) Edging his way to the stall, he was summoning up

courage to ask the price of a bird, when the salesman caught sight him

and affably spared him the trouble.

"Eh! here's my young lord wants a bird. . . . You may say what you

like," said he, addressing the bystanders, "but there's none like the

gentry for encouragin' trade. . . . And which shall it be sir? Here's a

green parrot, now, I can recommend; or if your Honour prefers a bird

that'll talk, this grey one. A beauty, see! And not a bad word in his

repertory. Your honoured father shall not blame me for sellin' you a

swearer."

The boy pointed to a cage on the man's right.

"A canary? . . . Well, and you're right. What is talk, after all, to

compare with music? And chosen the best bird of my stock, you have; the

pick of the whole crop. That's Quality, my friends; nothing but the

best'll do for Quality, an' the instinct of it comes out young."

The man, who was evidently an eccentric, ran his eye roguishly over the

faces behind the boy and named his price; a high one--a very high one--

but one nicely calculated to lie on the right side of public

reprobation.

Dicky laid his guinea on the sill. "I want a whistle, too," he said,

"and my change, please."

The bird-fancier slapped his breeches pockets.

"A guinea? Bless me, but I must run around and ask one of my neighbours

to oblige. Any of you got the change for a golden guinea about you?" he

asked of the crowd.

"We ain't so lucky," said a voice somewhere at the back. "We don't

carry guineas about, nor give 'em to our bastards."

A voice or two--a woman's among them--called "Shame!" "Hold your

tongue, there!"

Dicky had his back to the speaker. He heard the word for the first time

in his life, and had no notion of its meaning; but in a dim way he felt

it to be an evil word, and also that the people were protesting out of

pity. A rush of blood came to his face. He gulped, lifted his chin,

and said, with his eyes steady on the face of the blinking fancier,--

"Give it back to me, please, and I will get it changed."

He took the coin, and walked away resolutely with a set white face.

He saw none of the people who made way for him.

The bird-fancier stared after the small figure as it walked away into

darkness. "Bastard?" he said. "There's Blood in that youngster, though

he don't face ye again an' I lose my deal. Blood's blood, however ye

come by it; you may take that on the word of a breeder. An' you ought

to be ashamed, Sam Wilson--slingin' yer mud at a child!"

The word drummed in the boy's ears. What did it mean? What was the

sneer in it? "Brat!" "cry-baby," "tell-tale," "story-teller," these

were opprobrious words, to be resented in their degree; and all but the

first covered accusations which not only must never be deserved, but

obliged a gentleman, however young, to show fight. But "bastard"?

He felt that, whatever it meant, somehow it was worse than any; that

honour called for the annihilation of the man that dared speak it; that

there was weakness, perhaps even poltroonery, in merely walking away.

If only he knew what the word meant!

He came to a halt opposite the drug store. He had once heard Dr.

Lamerton, the apothecary at home, described as a "well-to-do" man.

The phrase stuck in his small brain, and he connected the sale of drugs

with wealth. (How, he reasoned, could any one be tempted to sell wares

so nasty unless by prodigious profit?) He felt sure the drug-seller

would be able to change the guinea for him, and walked in boldly.

His ears were tingling, and he felt a call to assert himself.

There was a single customer in the store--a girl. With some surprise he

recognised her for the girl who had beaten the flame out of the curtain.

She stood with her back to the doorway and a little sidewise by the

counter, from behind which the drug-seller--a burly fellow in a suit of

black--looked down on her doubtfully, rubbing his shaven chin while he

glanced from her to something he held in his open palm.

"I'm askin' you," he said, "how you came by it?"

"It was given to me," the girl answered.

"That's a likely tale! Folks don't give money like this to a girl in

your position; unless--"

Here the man paused.

"Is it a great deal of money?" she asked. There was astonishment in her

voice, and a kind of suppressed eagerness.

"Oh, come now--that's too innocent by half! A guinea-piece is a

guinea-piece, and a guinea is twenty-one shillings; and twenty-one

shillings, likely enough, is more'n you'll earn in a year outside o'

your keep. Who gave it ye?"

"A gentleman--the Collector--at the Inn just now.

"Ho!" said the drug-seller, with a world of meaning.

"But if," she went on, "it is worth so much as you say, there must be

some mistake. Give it back to me, please. I am sorry for troubling

you." She took a small, round parcel from her pocket, laid it on the

counter, and held out her hand for the coin.

The drug-seller eyed her. "There must be some mistake, I guess," said

he, as he gave back the gold piece. "No, and you can take up your

packet too; I don't grudge two-pennyworth of salve. But wait a moment

while I serve this small customer, for I want a word with you

later. . . . Well, and what can I do for you, young gentleman?" he

asked, turning to Dicky.

Dicky advanced to the shop-board, and as he did so the girl turned and

recognised him with a faint, very shy smile.

"If you please," he said politely, "I want change for this--if you can

spare it."

"Bless my soul!" exclaimed the man, staring. "What, _another?_"

"The bird-seller up the road had no change about him. And--and, if you

please," went on Dick hardily, with a glance at the girl, "she hurt her

hands putting out a fire just now. I expect my father gave her the

money for that. But she must have burnt her hands _dreffully!_"--Dicky

had not quite outgrown his infantile lisp--"and if she's come for stuff

to put on them, please I want to pay for it."

"But I don't want you to," put in the girl, still hesitating by the

counter.

"But I'd _rather_ insisted Dicky.

"Tut!" said the drug-seller. "A matter of twopence won't break either

of us. Captain Vyell's boy, are you? Well, then, I'll take your

coppers on principle."

He counted out the change, and Dicky--who was not old enough yet to do

sums--pretended to find it correct. But he was old enough to have

acquired charming manners, and after thanking the drug-seller, gave the

girl quite a grown-up little bow as he passed out.

She would have followed, but the man said, "Stay a moment. What's your

name?"

"Ruth Josselin."

"Age?"

"I was sixteen last month."

"Then listen to a word of advice, Ruth Josselin, and don't you take

money like that from fine gentlemen like the Collector. They don't give

it to the ugly ones. Understand?"

"Thank you," she said. "I am going to give it back;" and slipping the

guinea into her pocket, she said "Good evening," and walked swiftly out

in the wake of the child.

The drug-seller looked after her shrewdly. He was a moral man.

Ruth, hurrying out upon the side-walk, descried the child a few paces up

the road. He had come to a halt; was, in fact, plucking up his courage

to go and demand the bird-cage. She overtook him.

"I was sent out to look for you," she said. "I oughtn't to have wasted

time buying that ointment; but my hands were hurting me. Please, you

are to come home and change your clothes for dinner."

"I'll come in a minute," said Dicky, "if you'll stand here and wait."

He might be called by that word again; and without knowing why, he

dreaded her hearing it. She waited while he trotted forward, nerving

himself to face the crowd again. Lo! when he reached the booth, all the

bystanders had melted away. The bird-seller was covering up his cages

with loose wrappers, making ready to pack up for the night.

"Hello!" he said cheerfully. "Thought I'd lost you for good."

He took the child's money and handed the canary cage across the sill;

also the bird-whistle, wrapped in a scrap of paper. Many times in the

course of a career which brought him much fighting and some little fame,

Dicky Vyell remembered this his first lesson in courage--that if you

walk straight up to an enemy, as likely as not you find him vanished.

But he had not quite reached the end of his alarms. As he took the

cage, a parrot at the back of the booth uplifted his voice and

squawked,--

"No prerogative! No prerogative! No prerogative!"

"You mustn't mind _him_," said the bird-seller genially. "He's like the

crowd--picks up a cry an' harps on it without understandin'."

Master Dicky understood it no better; but thanked the man and ran off,

prize in hand, to rejoin the girl.

They hurried back to the Inn. At the gateway she paused.

"I let you say what was wrong just now," she explained. "Your father

didn't give me that money for putting out the fire."

Here she hesitated. Dicky could not think what it mattered, or why her

voice was so timid.

"Oh," said he carelessly, "I dare say it was just because he liked you.

Father has plenty of money."

Chapter IV.

FATHER AND SON.

The dinner set before Captain Vyell comprised a dish of oysters, a fish

chowder, a curried crab, a fried fowl with white sauce, a saddle of

tenderest mutton, and various sweets over which Manasseh had thrown the

elegant flourishes of his art. The wine came from the Rhone valley--a

Hermitage of the Collector's own shipment. The candles that lit the

repast stood in the Collector's own silver candlesticks. As an old

Roman general carried with him on foreign service, packed in panniers on

mule-back, a tessellated pavement to be laid down for him at each

camping halt and repacked when the troops moved forward, so did Captain

Vyell on his progresses of inspection travel with all the apparatus of a

good table.

Dicky, seated opposite his father in a suit of sapphire blue velvet with

buttons of cut steel, partook only of the fried fowl and of a syllabub.

He had his glass of wine too, and sipped at it, not liking it much, but

encouraged by his father, who held that a fine palate could not be

cultivated too early.

By some process of dishing-up best known to himself (but with the aid,

no doubt, of the "dam scullion") Manasseh, who had cooked the dinner,

also served it; noiselessly, wearing white gloves because his master

abominated the sight of a black hand at meals. These gloves had a

fascination for Dicky. They attracted his eyes as might the

intervolved play of two large white moths in the penumbra beyond the

candle-light, between his father's back and the dark sideboard; but he

fought against the attraction because he knew that to be aware of a

servant was an offence against good manners at table.

His father encouraged him to talk, and he told of his purchase--but not

all the story. Not for worlds--instinct told him--must he mention the

word he had heard spoken. Yet he got so far as to say,--

"The people here don't like us--do they, father?"

Captain Vyell laughed. "No, that's very certain. And, to tell you the

truth, if I had known you were wandering the street by yourself I might

have felt uneasy. Manasseh shall take you for a walk to-morrow.

One can never be sure of the _canaille_."

"What does that mean?"

Captain Vyell explained. The _canaille_, he said, were the common folk,

whose part in this world was to be ruled. He explained further that to

belong to the upper or ruling class it did not suffice to be well-born

(though this was almost essential); one must also cultivate the manners

proper to that station, and appear, as well as be, a superior. Nor was

this all; there were complications, which Dicky would learn in time;

what was called "popular rights," for instance--rights which even a King

must not be allowed to override; and these were so precious that (added

the Collector) the upper classes must sometimes fight and lay down their

lives for them.

Dick perpended. He found this exceedingly interesting--the more so

because it came, though in a curiously different way, to much the same

as Miss Quiney had taught him out of the catechism. Miss Quiney had

used pious words; in Miss Quiney's talk everything--even to sitting

upright at table--was mixed up with God and an all-seeing Eye; and his

father--with a child's deadly penetration Dicky felt sure of it--was

careless about God.

This, by the way, had often puzzled and even frightened him. God, like

a great Sun, loomed so largely through Miss Quiney's scheme of things

(which it were more precise, perhaps, to term a fog) that for certain,

and apart from the sin of it and the assurance of going to hell, every

one removed from God must be sitting in pitch-darkness. But lo! when

his father talked everything became clear and distinct; there was no sun

at all to be seen, but there was also no darkness. On the contrary, a

hundred things grew visible at once, and intelligible and

common-sensible as Miss Quiney never contrived to present them.

This was puzzling; and, moreover, the child could not tolerate the

thought of his father's going to hell--to the flames and unbearable

thirst of it. To be sure Miss Quiney had never hinted this punishment

for her employer, or even a remote chance of it, and Dicky's good

breeding had kept him from confronting her major premise with the

particular instance of his father, although the conclusion of that

syllogism meant everything to him. Or it may be that he was afraid.

. . . Once, indeed, like Sindbad in the cave, he had seen a glimmering

chance of escape. It came when, reading in his Scripture lesson that

Christ consorted by choice with publicans and sinners, he had been

stopped by Miss Quiney with the information that "publican" meant

"a kind of tax-collector." "Like papa?" asked the child, and held his

breath for the answer. "Oh, not in the least like your dear papa,"

Miss Quiney made haste to assure him; "but a quite low class of person,

and, I should say, connected rather with the Excise. You must remember

that all this happened in the East, a long time ago." Poor soul! the

conscientiousness of her conscience (so to speak) had come to rest upon

turning such corners genteelly, and had grown so expert at it that she

scarcely breathed a sigh of relief. The child bent his head over the

book. His eyes were hidden from her, and she never guessed what hope

she had dashed.

It was a relief then--after being forced at one time or another to put

aside or pigeon-hole a hundred questions on which Miss Quiney's

teaching and his father's practice appeared at variance--to find a point

upon which the certainty of both converged. Heaven and hell might be

this or that; but in this world the poor deserved their place, and must

be kept to it.

"That seems fine," said Dicky, after a long pause.

"What seems fine?" His father, tasting the mutton with approval, had

let slip his clue to the child's thought.

"Why, that poor people have rights too, and we ought to stand up for

them--like you said," answered Dicky, not too grammatically.

"They are our rights too, you see," said his father.

Dicky did not see; but his eagerness jumped this gap in the argument.

"Papa," he asked with a sudden flush, "did you ever stand up to a King

on the poor people's side, and fight--and all that?"

"Well, you see"--the Collector smiled--"I was never called upon.

But it's in the blood. Has Miss Quiney ever told you about Oliver

Cromwell?"

"Yes. He cut off King Charles's head. . . . I don't think Miss Quiney

liked him for that, though she didn't say so."

The Collector was still smiling. "He certainly helped to cut off King

Charles's head, and--right or wrong--it's remembered against him.

But he did any amount of great things too. He was a masterful man; and

perhaps the reason why Miss Quiney held her tongue is that he happens to

be an ancestor of ours, and she knew it."

"Oliver Cromwell?" Dicky repeated the name slowly, with awe.

"He was my great-great-grandfather, and you can add on another 'great'

for yourself. I am called Oliver after him. They even say," added

Captain Vyell, sipping his wine, "that I have some of his features; and

so, perhaps, will you when you grow up. But of your chance of that you

shall judge before long. I am having a copy of his portrait sent over

from England."

For a moment or two these last remarks scarcely penetrated to the boy's

hearing. Like all boys, he naturally desired greatness; unlike most,

he was conscious of standing above the crowd, but without a guess that

he derived the advantage from anything better than accident. His

father had the good fortune to be rich. For himself--well, Dicky

was born with one of those simple natures that incline rather to

distrust than to overrate their own merits. None the less he

desired and loved greatness--thus early, and throughout his life--and

it came as a tremendous, a magnificent shock to him that he

enjoyed it as a birthright. The repetition of "great"--"he was my

great-great-grandfather;" "you can add another 'great' for yourself"--

hummed in his ears. A full half a minute ticked by before he grasped at

the remainder of his father's speech, and, like a breaking twig, it

dropped him to bathos.

"But--but--" Dicky passed a hand over his face--"Miss Quiney said that

Oliver Cromwell was covered with warts!"

Captain Vyell laughed outright.

"Women have wonderful ways of conveying a prejudice. Warts? Well,

there, at any rate, we have the advantage of old Noll." The Collector,

whose sense of hearing was acute and fastidious, broke off with a sharp

arching of the eyebrows and a glance up at the ceiling, or rather (since

ceiling there was none) at the oaken beams which supported the floor

overhead. "Manasseh," he said quickly, "be good enough to step upstairs

and inform our landlady that the pitch of her voice annoys me. She

would seem to be rating a servant girl above."

"Yes, sah."

"Pray desire her to take the girl away and scold her elsewhere."

Manasseh disappeared, and returned two minutes later to report that

"the woman would give no furdah trouble." He removed the white cloth,

set out the decanters with an apology for the mahogany's indifferent

polish, and withdrew again to prepare his master's coffee.

At once a silence fell between father and son. Dicky had expected to

hear more of Oliver Cromwell. He stared across the dull shine of the

table at his parent's coat of peach-coloured velvet and shirt front of

frilled linen; at the lace ruffle on the wrist, the signet ring on the

little finger, the hand--firm, but fine--as it reached for a decanter or

fell to playing with a gold toothpick. He loved this father of his with

the helpless, concentred love of a motherless child; admired him, as all

must admire, only more loyally. To feel constraint in so magnificent a

presence was but natural.

It would have astonished him to learn that his father, lolling there so

easily and toying with a toothpick, shared that constraint. Yet it was

so. Captain Vyell did not understand children. Least of all did he

understand this son of his begetting. He could be kind to him, even

extravagantly, by fits and starts; desired to be kind constantly; could

rally and chat with him in hearing of a third person, though that third

person were but a servant waiting at table. But to sit alone facing the

boy and converse with him was a harder business, and gave him an absurd

feeling of _gene_; and this (though possibly he did not know it) was the

real reason why, having brought Dicky in the coach for a treat, he

himself had ridden all day in saddle.

Dicky was the first to resume conversation.

"Papa," he asked, still pondering the problem of rich and poor, "don't

some of the old families die out?"

"They do."

"Then others must come up to take their place, or the people who do the

ruling would come to an end."

"That's the way of it, my boy." The Collector nodded and cracked a

walnut. "New families spring up; and a devilish ugly show they usually

make of it at first. It takes three generations, they say, to breed a

gentleman; and, in my opinion, that's under the mark."

"And a lady?"

"Women are handier at picking up appearances; 'adaptable' 's the word.

But the trouble with them is to find out whether they have the real

thing or not. For my part, if you want the real thing, I believe there

are more gentlemen than gentlewomen in the world; and Batty Langton says

you may breed out the old Adam, but you'll never get rid of Eve. . . .

But, bless my soul, Dicky, it's early days for you to be discussing the

sex!"

Dicky, however, was perfectly serious.

"But I _do_ mean what you call the real thing, papa. Couldn't a poor

girl be born so that she had it from the start? Oh, I can't tell what I

mean exactly--"

"On the contrary, child, you are putting it uncommonly well; at any

rate, you are making me understand what you mean, and that's the A and Z

of it, whether in talk or in writing. 'Is there--can there be--such a

thing as a natural born lady?' that's your question, hey?"

The Collector peeled his walnut and smiled to himself. In other

company--Batty Langton's, for example--he would have answered cynically

that to him the phenomenon of a natural born lady would first of all

suggest a doubt of her mother's virtue. "Well, no," he answered after a

while; "if you met such a person, and could trace back her family

history, ten to one you'd discover good blood somewhere in it.

Old stocks fail, die away underground, and, as time goes on, are

forgotten; then one fine day up springs a shoot nobody can account for.

It's the old sap taking a fresh start. See?"

Dicky nodded. It would take him some time work out the theory, but he

liked the look of it.

His drowsed young brain--for the hour was past bedtime--applied it idly

to a picture that stood out, sharp and vivid, from the endless train of

the day's impressions: the picture of a girl with quiet, troubled eyes,

composed lips, and hands that beat upon a blazing curtain, not flinching

at the pain. . . . And just then, as it were in a dream, he beat of her

hands echoed in a soft tapping, the door behind his father opened

gently, and Dicky sat up with a start, wide awake again and staring, for

the girl herself stood in the doorway.

Chapter V.

RUTH.

"Hey, what is it?" the Collector demanded, slewing himself to the

half-about in his chair.

The girl stepped forward into the candle-light. Over her shoulders she

wore a faded plaid, the ends of which her left hand clutched and held

together at her bosom.

"Your Honour's pardon for troubling," she said, and laying a gold coin

on the table, drew back with a slight curtsy. "But I think you gave

me this by mistake; and now is my only chance to give it back.

I am going home in a few minutes."

The Collector glanced at the coin, and from that to the girl's face, on

which his eyes lingered.

"Gad, I recollect!" he said. "You were the wench that pulled off my

boots?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, upon my honour, I forget at this moment if I gave it by mistake

or because of your face. No, hang me!" he went on, while she flushed,

not angrily, but as though the words hurt her, "it must have been by

mistake. I couldn't have forgot so much better a reason."

To this she answered nothing, but put forward her hand as if to push the

coin nearer.

"Certainly not," said he, still with eyes on her face. "I wish you to

take it. By the way, I heard the landlady's voice just now, letting

loose upon somebody. Was it on you?"

"Yes."

"And you are going home to-night, you say. Has she turned you out?"

"Yes." The girl's hand moved as if gathering the plaid closer over her

bosom. Her voice held no resentment. Her eyes were fixed upon the

coin, which, however, she made no further motion to touch; and this

downward glance showed at its best the lovely droop of her long

eyelashes.

The Collector continued to take stock of her, and with a growing wonder.

The lower half of the face's oval was perhaps Unduly gaunt and a trifle

overweighted by the broad brow. The whole body stood a thought too high

for its breadth, with a hint of coltishness in the thin arms and thick

elbow-joints. So judged the Collector, as he would have appraised a

slave or any young female animal; while as a connoisseur he knew that

these were faults pointing towards ultimate perfection, and at this

stage even necessary to it.

For assurance he asked her, "How old are you?"

"Sixteen."

"That's as I guessed," said he, and added to himself, "My God, this is

going to be one of the loveliest things in creation!" Still, as she

bent her eyes to the coin on the table, he ran his appraising glance

over her neck and shoulders, judging--so far as the ugly shawl

permitted--the head's poise, the set of the coral ear, the delicate wave

of hair on the neck's nape.

"Why is she turning you out?"

"A window curtain took fire. She said it was my fault."

"But it was not your fault at all!" cried Dicky. "Papa, the curtain

took fire in my room, and she beat it out. The whole house might have

been burnt down but for her. She beat it out, and made nothing of it,

though it hurt her horribly. Look at her hands, papa!"

"Hold out your hands," his father commanded.

She stretched them out. The ointment, as she turned them palms upward,

shone under the candle rays.

"Turn them the other way," he commanded, after a long look at them.

The words might mean that the sight afflicted him, but his tone scarcely

suggested this. She turned her hands, and he scrutinised the backs of

them very deliberately. "It's a shame," said he at length.

"Of course it's a shame!" the boy agreed hotly. "Papa, won't you ring

for the landlady and tell her so, and then she won't be sent away."

"My dear Dicky," his father answered, "you mistake. I was thinking that

it was a shame to coarsen such hands with housework." He eyed the girl

again, and she met him with a straight face--flushed a little and

plainly perturbed, but not shrinking, although her bosom heaved--for his

admiration was entirely cool and critical. "What is your name?" he

asked.

"Ruth Josselin."

He appeared to consider this for a moment, and then, reaching out a hand

for the decanter, to dismiss the subject. "Well, pick up your guinea,"

he said. "No doubt the woman outside has treated you badly; but I can't

intercede for you, to keep you a drudge here among the saucepans; no,

upon my conscience, I can't. The fact is, Ruth Josselin, you have the

makings of a beauty, and I'll be no party to spoiling 'em. What is

more, it seems you have spirit, and no woman with beauty and spirit need

fail to win her game in this world. That's my creed." He sipped his

wine.

"If your Honour pleases," said the girl quietly, picking up the coin,

"the woman called me bad names, and I was not wanting you at all to

speak for me."

"Oho!" The Collector set down his glass and laughed. "So that's the

way of it--'_Nobody asked you, sir, she said._' Dicky, we sit rebuked."

"But--" she hesitated, and then went on rapidly in the lowest of low

tones--"if your Honour wouldn't mind giving me silver instead of gold?

They won't change gold for me in the town; they'll think I have stolen

it. Most Sundays I'm allowed to take home broken meats to mother and

grandfather, and to-night I shan't be given any, now that I'm sent away.

They'll be expecting me, and indeed, sir, I can't bear to face them--or

I wouldn't ask you. I beg your Honour's pardon for saying so much."

"Hullo!" exclaimed the Collector. "Why, yes, to be sure, you must be

grandchild to the old man of the sea--him that I met on the beach this

afternoon, t'other side of the headland. Lives in a hovel with a wood

pile beside it, and a daughter that looks out for wreckage?"

"Your Honour spoke with them?" Into Ruth's face there mounted a deeper

tide of colour. But whereas the first flush had been dark with

distress, this second spread with a glow of affection. Her eyes seemed

to take light from it, and shone.

"I spoke with the old man. Since you have said so much, I may say more.

I gave him food; he was starving."

She bent her head. Her hands moved a little, with a gesture most

pitiful to see. "I was afraid," she muttered, "with these gales, and no

getting to the oyster beds."

"He took some food, too, to his daughter, with a bottle of wine, as I

remember."

A bright tear dropped. In the candle-light Dicky saw it splash on the

back of her hand, by the wrist.

"God bless your Honour!" Dicky could just hear the words.

The door opened and Manasseh entered, bearing the coffee on a silver

tray.

"Manasseh," said his master, "take that guinea and bring me change for

it. If you have no silver in the treasury get the landlady to change it

for you."

Manasseh was affronted. His hand came near to shaking as he poured and

handed the coffee.

"Yo' Hon'ah doan off'n use de metal," he answered. "Dat's sho'.

But whiles an' again yo' Hon'ah condescends ter want it. Dat bein' so,

I keep it by me--_an'_ polished. I doan fetch yo' Hon'ah w'at any low

trash has handled."

He withdrew, leaving this fine shaft to rankle, and by-and-by entered

with a small velvet bag, from the neck of which he shook a small cascade

of silver coins, all exquisitely polished.

"Count me out change for a guinea," commanded his master.

Manasseh obeyed.

"Now empty the bag, put into it what you have counted, and sweep up the

rest."

Manasseh dropped in the coins one by one, and tied the neck of the bag

with its silken ribbon. The Collector took it from him and tossed it to

the girl.

"Here--catch!" said he carelessly.

But her burnt hands shrank from closing on if, and it fell to the floor.

She stooped, recovered it, and slipped it within her bodice. As she

rose erect again her eyes rested in wonder on the black servant who with

a crumb-brush was sweeping the rest of the money off the table and

catching it upon the coffee-salver. The rain and clash of the coins

appeared to confuse her for a moment. Then with another curtsy and a

"Thank your Honour," she moved to the door.

"But wait," said the Collector sharply, on a sudden thought. "You are

not meaning to walk all the way home, surely?"

"Yes."

"At this hour?"

"The wind has gone down. I do not mind the dark, and the distance is

nothing. . . . Oh, I forgot: your Honour thinks that, with all this

money, some one will try to rob me?"

The Collector smiled. "You would appear to be a very innocent young

woman," he said. "I was not, as a fact, thinking of the money."

"Nobody will guess that I am carrying so much," she said simply; "so it

will be quite safe."

"Nevertheless this may help to give you confidence," said he.

Feeling in the breast pocket of his laced satin waistcoat, he drew forth

a diminutive pistol--a delicate toy, with a pattern of silver foliated

over the butt. "It is loaded," he explained, "and primed; though it

cannot go off unless you pull back the trigger. At close quarters it

can be pretty deadly. Do you understand firearms?"

"Grandfather has a fowling-piece," she answered; "and, now that his

sight has failed, on Sundays I try to shoot sea-birds for him. He says

that I have a good eye. But last week the birds had all flown inland,

because of the gale."

"Then take this. It is nothing to carry, and you may feel the safer for

it."

She put up a hand to decline. "Why should I need it?"

"We'll hope you will not. But do as I bid you, girl. I shall be

passing back along the beach in two days' time, and will call for it."

She resisted no longer.

"I will take it," she said. "By that time I may have thought of words

to thank your Honour."

She curtsied again.

"Manasseh!" Captain Vyell pointed to the door. The negro opened it and

stood aside majestically as she passed out and was gone.

Let moralists perpend. Ruth Josselin had knocked at that door after a

sharp struggle between conscience and crying want. The poverty known to

Ruth was of the extreme kind that gnaws the entrails with hunger.

It had furthermore starved her childhood of religion, and her sole code

of honour came to her by instinct. Yet she had knocked at the door with

no thought but that the Collector's guinea had come to her hand by

mistake, and no expectancy but that the Collector would thank her and

take it back. She was shy, moreover. It had cost courage.

"Honesty is the best policy." True enough, no doubt. Yet, when all is

said, but for some radical instinct of honesty, untaught, brave to

conquer a more than selfish need, Ruth had never brought back her

guinea. And, yet again, from that action all the rest of this story

flows. When we have told it, let the moralists decide.

Chapter VI.

PARENTHETICAL--OF THE FAMILY OF VYELL.

Captain Oliver Vyell, as we have seen, set store upon pedigree: and

here, as well in compliment to him as to make our story clearer, we will

interrupt it with a brief account of his family and descent.

The tomb of Sir Thomas Vyell, second Baronet, at whose house of

Carwithiel in Cornwall our Collector spent some years of his boyhood,

may yet be seen in the church of that parish, in the family transept.

It bears the coat of the Vyells (gules, a fesse raguly argent) with no

less than twenty-four quarterings: for an Odo of the name had fought on

the winning side at Hastings, and his descendants, settling in the West,

had held estates there and been people of importance ever since.

The Wars of the Roses, to be sure, had left them under a cloud, shorn of

the most of their wealth and a great part of their lands. Yet they kept

themselves afloat (if this riot of metaphor may be pardoned) and their

heads moderately high, until Sir William, the first Baronet, by

developing certain tin mines on his estate and working them by new

processes, set up the family fortunes once more.

His son, Sir Thomas, steadily bettered them. A contemporary narrative

describes him as "chief of a very good Cornish family, with a very good

estate. His marrying a grand-daughter of the Lord Protector (Oliver)

first recommended him to King William, who at the Revolution made him

Commissioner of the Excise and some years after Governor of the Post

Office. . . . The Queen, by reason of his great capacity and honesty,

hath continued him in the office of Postmaster. He is a gentleman of a

sweet, easy, affable disposition--a handsome man, of middle stature,

towards forty years old." This was written in 1713. Sir Thomas died in

1726, of the smallpox, having issue (by his one wife, who survived him

but a few years) seven sons and three daughters.

1. Thomas, the third Baronet: of whom anon.

2. William, who became a Senior Student of Christ Church, Oxford, a

page to Queen Mary, and a Fellow of the Royal Society. A memoir

of the time preserves him for us as "a tall sanguineman, with a

merry eye and talkative in his cups." He married a Walpole, but his

children died young.

3. John, who, going on a diplomatic mission to Hamburg, took a fever

and died there, unmarried.

4. Henry, the father of our Collector. He married Jane, second

daughter of the Marquis of Lomond; increased his wealth in Bengal as

governor of the East India Company's Factory, and while yet

increasing it, died at Calcutta in 1728. His children were two

sons, Oliver and Henry, with both of whom our story deals.

5. Algernon, who went to Jesus College, Cambridge, became a Fellow

there, practised severe parsimony, and dying unmarried in 1742, had

his eyes closed by his college gyp and weighted with two penny

pieces--the only coins found in his breeches pocket. He left his

very considerable savings to young Oliver, whom he had never

seen.

6. Frederick Penwarne, barrister-at-law. We shall have something to do

with him.

7. Roger, who traded at Calcutta and making an expedition to the

Persian Gulf, was killed there in a chance affray with some Arabs.

8. Anne, who married Sackville.

9. Frances Elizabeth, who married Pelham.

10. Arabella, whose affections went astray upon a young Cornish yeoman.

Her family interfering, the match was broken off and she died

unmarried.

Oliver and Henry, born at Calcutta, were for their health's sake sent

home together--he one aged four, the other three--to be nurtured at

Carwithiel. Here under the care of their grandparents, Sir Thomas and

Lady Vyell (the Protector's grand-daughter), they received instruction

at the hands--often very literally at the hands--of the Rev. Isaac

Toplady, Curate in Charge of Carwithiel, a dry scholar, a wet

fly-fisher, and something of a toad-eater. They had for sole playmate

and companion their Cousin Diana, or Di, the seven-year-old daughter of

their eldest uncle, Thomas, heir to the estates and the baronetcy.

This Thomas--a dry, peevish man, averse from country pursuits, penurious

and incurably suspicious of all his fellow-men--now occupied after a

fashion and with fair diligence that place in public affairs from which

his father had, on approach of age, withdrawn. He sat in Parliament for

the family borough of St. Michael, and by family influence had risen to

be a Lord of the Admiralty. He had married Lady Caroline Pett, a

daughter of the first Earl of Portlemouth, and the pair kept house in

Arlington Street, where during the session they entertained with a

frugality against which Lady Caroline fought in vain. They were known

(and she was aware of it) as "Pett and Petty," and her life was

embittered by the discovery, made too late, that her husband was in

every sense a mean man, who would never rise and never understand why

not, while he nursed an irrational grudge against her for having

presented him with a daughter and then ceased from child-bearing.

Unless she repented and procured him a male heir, the baronetcy would

come to him only to pass at his death to young Oliver; and the couple,

who spent all the Parliamentary recesses at Carwithiel because Mr.

Thomas found it cheap, bore no goodwill to that young gentleman.

He _en revanche_ supplied them with abundant food for censure, being

wilful from the first, and given in those early years to consorting with

stable-boys and picking up their manners and modes of speech. The uncle

and aunt alleged--and indeed it was obvious--that the unruly boys passed

on the infection to Miss Diana. Miss Diana never accompanied her

parents to London, but had grown up from the first at Carwithiel--again

because Mr. Thomas found it cheap.

In this atmosphere of stable slang, surrounded by a sort of protective

outer aura in their grandparents' godliness, the three children grew up:

mischievous indeed and without rein, but by no means vicious.

Their first separation came in 1726 when Master Oliver, now rising ten,

left for London, to be entered at Westminster School. Harry was to

follow him; and did, in a twelve-month's time; but just before this

happened, in Oliver's summer holidays. Sir Thomas took the smallpox and

died and went to his tomb in the Carwithiel transept. Harry took it

too; but pulled through, not much disfigured. Oliver and Diana escaped.

The boys, to whom their grandfather--so far as they regarded him at

all--had mainly presented himself as a benevolent old proser, were

surprised to find that they sincerely regretted him; and the events of

the next few weeks threw up his merits (now that the time was past for

rewarding them) into a sharp light which memory overarched with a halo.

Tenderly into that halo dissolved his trivial faults--his trick, for

example, of snoring between the courses at dinner, or of awaking and

pulling his fingers till they cracked with a distressing sound.

These and other small frailties were forgotten as the new Sir Thomas and

his spouse took possession and proceeded in a few weeks to turn the

place inside out, dismissing five of the stable-boys, cutting down the

garden staff by one-third, and carrying havoc into the housekeeper's

apartments, the dairy, the still-room.

In these dismissals I have no doubt that Sir Thomas and Lady Caroline

hit (as justice is done in this world) upon the chief blackguards.

But the two boys, asking one another why So-and-so had been marked down

while This-other had been spared, and observing that the So-and-so's

included an overbalancing number of their own cronies, found malice in

the discrimination, and a malice directed with intent upon themselves.

Young Oliver, as soon as Harry was convalescent, discussed this

vehemently with him. Harry, weak with illness, took it passively.

He was destined for the Navy. To him already the sea meant everything:

as a child of three, on his voyage home in the _Mogul_ East Indiaman, he

had caught the infection of it; on it, as offering the only career fit

for a grown man, his young thoughts brooded, and these annoyances were

to him but as chimney-pots and pantiles falling about the heads of folks

ashore. But he agreed that Di's conduct needed explaining. She had

taken a demure turn, and was not remonstrating with her parents as she

ought--not playing fair, in short. "It must be pretty difficult for

her," said Harry. "I don't see," said Oliver.

The two boys went back to Westminster together. They spent the

Christmas holidays with their Uncle Frederick, the barrister, who

practised very little at the law either in court or in chambers, hut

dwelt somewhat luxuriously in the Inner Temple and lived the life of a

man-about-town. Their summer vacation was to be spent at Carwithiel;

but, as it happened, they were not to see Carwithiel again, for before

summer came news of their father's death at Calcutta. He had amassed a

fortune which, translated out of rupees, amounted to 400,000 pounds.

To his widow, in addition to her jointure, he left a life interest of a

thousand pounds _per annum_; a sum of 20,000 pounds was set aside for

Harry, to accumulate until his twenty-first birthday; while the

magnificent residue in like manner accumulated for young Oliver, the

heir.

Lady Jane returned to England, to live in decent affluence at Bath; and

at Bath, of course, Oliver and Harry spent their subsequent holidays,

while their Uncle Frederick continued by occasional dinners and gifts of

pocket money, by outings down the river to Greenwich, by seats at the

theatre or at state shows and pageants, to mitigate the rigours of

school. Had it occurred to Oliver Vyell in later life to set down his

"Reflections" in the style of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, he might

have begun them in some such words as these: "From my mother, Lady Jane

Vyell, I learned to be proud of good birth, to esteem myself a

gentleman, and to regulate my actions by a code proper to my station in

life. This code she reconciled with the Gospels, and indeed, she rested

it on the rock of Holy Scripture. From my Uncle Frederick I learned

that self-interest was the key of life; that the teachings of the

priest-hood were more or less conscious humbug; that all men could be

bought; that their god was vanity, and the Great Revolution the noblest

event in English history. . . ."

The sane infusion of Father Neptune in Master Harry's blood preserved

him from these doctrines, and before long indeed removed him out of the

way of hearing them. Soon after his fifteenth birthday he sailed to

learn his profession shipping (by a fiction of the service), as

"cabin boy" under his mother's brother. Lord Robert Soules, then

commanding the _Merope_ frigate.

Oliver proceeded to Christ Church, Oxford, and thence (without waiting

for a degree) to make the Grand Tour; in the course of which and in

company with his cousin, Dick Pelham, and a Mr. Batty Langton, a Christ

Church friend, he visited Florence, Rome, Naples, Athens, and

Constantinople, returning through Rome again and by way of Venice,

Switzerland, Paris. He reached home to find that his mother, who

believed in keeping young men employed, had procured him a cornetcy in

Lord Lomond's Troop of Horse. He was now in possession of an ample

fortune. He would certainly succeed to the baronetcy, and to the Vyell

acres, which were mostly entailed.

But the grave itself could not give lessons in greed to a true Whig

family of that period. Lady Jane had it in her blood, every tradition

of it. Her son (though within a few months he rose to command of a

troop) detested all military routine save active service. He despised

the triumphs of the Senate. To keep him out of mischief--or, rather, as

you shall hear, to extricate him from it--the good dame made application

to the Duke of Newcastle; and so in the year 1737, at the age of

twenty-one, Captain Oliver Vyell was appointed to the lucrative post of

Collector to the port of Boston.

He had held it, now, for close upon seven years.

Chapter VII.

A SABBATH-BREAKER.

Now, in his twenty-eighth year, Oliver Vyell, handsome of face, standing

six feet two inches in his stockings, well built and of iron

constitution, might fairly be called a sensual man, but not fairly a

sensualist. The distinction lay in his manliness. He was a man, every

inch of him.

He enjoyed hard riding even more than hard gaming, and far more than

hard drinking; courted fatigue as a form of bodily indulgence; would

tramp from twenty to thirty miles in any weather on a chance of sport;

loved the bite of the wind, the shock of cold water; and was a bold

swimmer in a generation that shunned the exercise.

He awoke next morning to find the sun shining in on his window after a

boisterous night. He looked at his watch and rang a small bell that

stood on the table by his bed. Within ten seconds Manasseh appeared,

and was commanded first to draw up the blind and then, though the hour

was early, to bring shaving-water with all speed.

While the negro went on his errand Captain Vyell arose, slipped on his

dressing-gown, and strolled to the window. It looked upon the ocean,

over a clean stretch of beach that ran north-west, starting from the

pier-head of the harbour and fringing the town's outskirt. Half a dozen

houses formed this outskirt or suburb--decent weather-boarded houses

standing in their own gardens along a curved cliff overlooking the

beach. The beach was of hardest sand, and just beneath the Collector's

window so level that it served for a second bowling-green, or

ten-pin-alley. Thus it ran out for some twenty rods and then shelved

abruptly. Captain Vyell, who had an eye for such phenomena, judged that

this bank had formed itself quite recently, since the building of the

pier.

A heavy sea was running, and evidently with a strong undertow. When

Manasseh returned with the hot water, Captain Vyell announced that he

would bathe before taking his chocolate.

"Yo' Hon'ah will bathe befor' shaving?"

"You d----d fool, did you ever know me do _any_thing before shaving?"

Manasseh chose a razor, stropped it, and worked the shaving soap into a

lather.

"Beggin' yo' Hon'ah's pardon," said he, "it bein' de Lawd's Day, an'

these Port Nassau people dam' ig'orant--"

"Hand me the _peignoir_," commanded his master sharply.

He sat, and was shaved. Then, having sponged his chin, he ordered

Manasseh to lay out his bathing-dress, retire, find a back way to the

beach and, having opened all doors, attend him below. He indued himself

in his bathing-dress very deliberately, standing up for a minute stark

naked in the sunshine flooding through the open window--a splendid

figure, foretasting battle with the surf.

Then, having drawn on his bathing-dress and thrust his feet into

sand-shoes, he cast his dressing-gown again over him and went down the

stairs at a run. The doors stood open, and on the beach the negro

awaited him in the right attitude of "attention." To him he tossed his

wrap and shoes, and ran down to the beach as might swift-footed Achilles

have run to be clasped by the Sea-Goddess his mother.

Through the shallow wavelets he ran, stepping high and delicately

splashing merry drops against the morning sunlight, leaped over one or

two that would have "tilled" him to the knee (to use an old boyish

phrase learnt at Carwithiel where he had learnt to swim), and came to

the shelf beyond which the first tall comber boomed towards him, more

than head high, hissing along its ridge. There, as it overarched him,

he launched his body forward and shot through the transparent green,

emerging beyond the white smother with a thrill and a laugh of sheer

physical delight. Thrice he repeated this,--

"Like a dive-dapper peering through a wave,

Who, being look'd on, ducks as quickly in. . ."

passed the fourth wave, gained deep water, and thrust out to sea with a

steady breast-stroke, his eyes all the while on the great embracing

flood which, stretch as it might from here to Europe, for the moment he

commanded.

Manasseh watched him from the beach. From the cliff above two

scandalised householders calling to one another across their gardens'

boundary pointed seaward and summoned their families to the windows to

note the reprobate swimmer and a Sabbath profaned.

The eyes of a long-shore population are ever on the sea from which comes

their livelihood, and nothing on the sea escapes them long.

The Collector's head by this time was but a speck bobbing on the waves,

but ere he turned back for shore maybe two hundred of Port Nassau's

population were watching, from various points. The Port Nassauers,

whatever their individual frailties, were sternly religious--nine-tenths

of them from conviction or habit, the rest in self-defence--and

Sabbatarians to a man. The sight of that heathen slave, Manasseh,

waiting on the beach with a bath-gown over his arm, incensed them to

fury. Growls were uttered, here and there, that if the authorities knew

their business this law-breaker--for Sabbath-breaking was an indictable

offence--should be seized on landing, haled naked to justice, and

clapped in the town stocks; but fortunately this indignation had no

concert and found, for the moment, no leader.

The Collector, having swum out more than half a mile, turned and sped

back, using a sharp side-stroke now with a curving arm that cleft the

ridges like the fin of a fish. His feet touched earth, and he ran up

through the pursuing breakers--a fleet-footed Achilles again, glittering

from the bath. Manasseh hurried down to throw his mantle over the

godlike man.

"Towel me here," was the panting command. And, lo! slipping off his

bathing-dress and standing naked to the sea. Captain Vyell was towelled

under the eyes of Port Nassau, and flesh-brushed until he glowed (it may

be) as healthily as did the cheeks of those who spied on him. On this

question the Muse declines to take sides. For certain his naked body,

after these ministrations, glowed delicious within the bath-gown as he

mounted again to his Olympian chamber. There he allowed Manasseh to

wash out his locks in fresh water (the Collector had a fine head of

hair, of a waved brown, and detested a wig), to anoint them, and tie

them behind with a fresh black ribbon. This done, he took his clothes

one by one as Manasseh handed them, and arrayed himself, humming the

while an air from Opera, and thus unconsciously committing a second

offence against the Sabbath.

He descended to find Dicky already seated at table, awaiting him.

Dicky had slept like a top in spite of the strange bed; and awaking soon

after daybreak, had lain cosily listening to the boom of the sea.

To him this holiday was a glorious interlude in the regime of Miss

Quiney. His handsome father did not kiss him, but merely patted him on

the shoulder as he passed to his chair; and to Dick (though he would

have liked a kiss) it seemed just the right manly thing to do.

They talked merrily while Manasseh brought in the breakfast dishes--for

Master Dicky bread-and-milk followed by a simple steak of cod; a

bewildering succession of chowder, omelet, devilled kidneys, cold ham,

game pie, and fruit for the Collector, who professed himself keen-set as

a hunter, and washed down the viands with a tankard of cider.

He described his bathe, and promised Dicky that he should have his first

swimming lessons next summer. "I must talk about you to your Uncle

Harry. Craze for the sea? At your age if he saw a puddle of water he

must stick his toes in it. He's cruising just now, off South Carolina,

keeping a look-out for guarda-costas. He'll render an account of them,

you may be sure. He writes that he may be coming up Boston way any time

now. Oh, I can swim, but for diving you should see your Uncle Harry--

off the yard-arm--body taut as a whip--nothing like it in any of the old

Greeks' statues. Plenty of talk about bathing; but diving? No. In the

east, must go south to the Persian Gulf to see diving. The god Hermes

descending on Ogygia--if you could imagine that, you had Uncle Harry--

the shoot outwards, the delicate curve to a straight slant, heels rising

above rigid body while you counted, begad! holding your breath.

Then the plumb drop, like a gannet's--"

Dicky listened, glorious vistas opening before him. With the fruit

Manasseh brought coffee; and still the boy sat entranced while his

father chatted, glowing with exercise and enjoying a breakfast at every

point excellent.

It was in merest thoughtlessness, no doubt, that having arranged for

Dicky's morning walk, and after smoking a tobacco leaf rolled with an

art of which Manasseh possessed the secret, the Collector so timed his

message to the stables that his groom brought the horse Bayard around to

the Inn door just as the Sabbath bells began tolling for divine worship.

For as a sceptic he was careless rather than militant; ridiculing

religion only in his own set, and when occasion arose, and then without

fanaticism. For such piety as his mother's he had even a tolerant

respect; and in any event had too much breeding to affront of set

purpose the godly townsfolk of Port Nassau. At the first note of the

bells he frowned and blamed himself for not having started earlier.

But he had already made appointment by letter to meet the Surveyor and

the Assistant Surveyor at noon on the headland, to measure out and

discuss the site of the proposed fortification; and he was a punctilious

man in observing engagements.

It may be asked how, if civil to other men's scruples, he had come to

make such an appointment for the Sabbath. He had answered this and (as

he hoped) with suitable apologies in his letter to the surveyor,

Mr. Wapshott: explaining that as His Majesty's business was bringing him

to Port Nassau, so it obliged him to be back at Boston by such-and-such

a date. He was personally unacquainted with this Mr. Wapshott, who had

omitted the courtesy of calling upon him at the Bowling Green, and whom

by consequence he was inclined to set down as a person of defective

manners. But Mr. Wapshott was, after all, in the King's service and

would understand its exigencies.

He mounted therefore and rode up the street. The roadway was deserted;

but along the side-walk, sober families, marching by twos and threes,

turned their heads at the sound of Bayard's hoofs on the cobbles.

The Collector set his face and passed them with a grave look, as of one

absorbed in affairs of moment. Nevertheless, coming to the whitewashed

Church where the streams of worshippers converged and choking the

porchway overflowed upon the street, he added the courtesy of doffing

his hat as he rode by. He did this still with a set face, looking

straight between Bayard's ears; but with the tail of his eye caught one

glimpse of a little comedy which puzzled and amused him.

A small rotund, red-gilled man, in bearing and aspect not unlike a

turkey-cock, was mounting the steps of the portico. Behind this

personage sailed an ample lady of middle age, with a bevy of younger

damsels--his spouse and daughters doubtless. Suddenly--and as if, at

sight of the Collector, a whisper passed among them--the middle-aged

lady shot out a hand, arrested her husband by the coat-tail and drew him

down a step, while the daughters ranged themselves in semicircle around

him, spreading their skirts and together effacing him from view, much as

a hen covers her offspring.

The Collector laughed inwardly as he replaced his hat, and rode on

speculating what this bit of by-play might mean. But it had passed out

of his thoughts before he came to the outskirts of the town.

Chapter VIII.

ANOTHER SABBATH-BREAKER.

The road--the same by which he had arrived last night--mounted all the

way and led across the neck of the headland. His business, however, lay

out upon the headland itself and almost at its extremest verge; and a

mile above the town he struck off to the left where a bridle-path

climbed by a long slant to the ridge. Half an hour's easy riding

brought him to the top of the ascent, whence he looked down on the long

beach he had travelled yesterday. The sea lay spread on three sides of

him. Its salt breeze played on his face; and the bay horse, feeling the

tickle of it in his nostrils, threw up his head with a whinny.

"Good, old boy--is it not?" asked the Collector, patting his neck.

"Suppose we try a breather of it?"

The chine of the headland--of turf, short-cropped by the unceasing

wind--stretched smooth as a racecourse for close upon a mile, with a

gentle dip midway much like the hollow of a saddle. The Collector ran

his eye along it in search of the two men he had come to meet, but could

spy neither of them.

"Sheltering somewhere from the breeze, maybe," he decided. "_We_ don't

mind it, hey? Come along, lad--here's wine for heroes!"

He touched Bayard with the spur, and the good horse started at a

gallop--a rollicking gallop and in the very tune of his master's mood;

and if all Port Nassau had not been at its devotions, the chins of its

burghers might have tilted themselves in wonder at the apparition--a

Centaur, enlarged upon the skyline.

Man and horse at full stretch of the gallop were launching down the dip

of the hollow--the wind singing past on the top note of exhilaration--

when the bay, too well trained to shy, faltered a moment and broke his

stride, as a figure started up from the lee-side of the ridge.

The Collector sailing past and throwing a glance over his shoulder, saw

the figure and lifted a hand. In another ten strides he reined up

Bayard, turned, and came back at a walk.

He confronted a lean, narrow-chested young man, black-suited, pale of

face, with watery eyes, straw-coloured eyelashes and an underbred smile

that twitched between timidity and assurance.

"Ah?" queried the Collector, eyeing him and disliking him at sight.

"Are you "--doubtfully--"by any chance Mr. Wapshott, the Surveyor?"

"No such luck," answered the watery-eyed young man with an offhand

attempt at familiarity. "I'm his Assistant--name of Banner--Wapshott's

unwell."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Mr.--Mr. Wapshott--sends word that he's unwell." Under the Collector's

eye the youth suddenly shifted his manner and became respectful.

"I beg your pardon?" the Collector repeated slowly. "He 'sends word,'

do you say? I had not the honour at my Inn--from which I have ridden

straight--to be notified of Mr. Wapshott's indisposition."

Mr. Banner attempted a weak grin and harked back again to familiarity.

"No, I guess not. The fact is--"

"Excuse me; but would you mind taking your hands out of your pockets?"

"Oh, come! Why?" But none the less Mr. Banner removed them.

"Thank you. You were saying?"

"Well, I guess, between you and me"--Mr. Banner's hands were slipping to

his pockets again but he checked the motion and rested a palm

nonchalantly on either hip--"the old man was a bit too God-fearing to

sign to it."

"You mean," the Collector asked slowly, "that he is not, in fact,

unwell, but has asked you to convey an untruth?"

"You've a downright way of putting it--er--sir" Mr. Banner confessed;

"but you get near enough, I shouldn't wonder. You see, the old--the

Surveyor is strict upon Lord's Day Observance."

The Collector bent his brows slightly while he smoothed Bayard's mane.

Of a sudden the small scene by the Church porch recurred to him.

"Stay," he said. "I have not the pleasure of knowing Mr. Wapshott, but

may I attempt to describe him to you? He is, perhaps, a gentleman of

somewhat stunted growth, but of full habit, and somewhat noticeably red

between the ear and the neck-stock?"

"That hits him."

"--with a wife inclining to portliness and six grown daughters, taller

than their parents and not precisely in their first bloom. I speak,"

added the Collector, still eyeing his victim, "as to a man of the

world."

"You've seen him anyhow," Mr. Banner nodded. "That's Wapshott."

"I saw him entering his place of worship; and I note that he thinks what

you call the Lord's Day well worth keeping at the cost of a falsehood.

May I ask, Mr.--" The Collector hesitated.

"Banner."

"Ah, yes--pardon me! May I ask, Mr. Banner, how it comes that you have

a nicer sense than your superior of what is due to His Majesty's

Service?"

Mr. Banner laughed uneasily. "Well, you mightn't guess it from my

looks," he answered with an attempt to ingratiate himself by way of

self-deprecation, "but I am pretty good at working out levels. I really

am."

"That was not my point, though I shall test you on it presently.

You are, it appears, a somewhat less rigid Sabbatarian than Mr.

Wapshott?"

Hereupon Mr. Banner became cryptic. "You needn't fear about that," he

answered. "I have what they call a dispensation; and until you startled

me, I was up here keeping the Lord's Day as well as the best of 'em.

Better, perhaps."

"We will get to business," said the Collector. "Follow me, please."

He wheeled his horse and, with Mr. Banner walking at his stirrup, rode

slowly out to the end of the headland and as slowly back. The Collector

asked a question now and then and to every question the young man

responded pat. He was no fool. It soon appeared that he had studied

the trajectory of guns, that he had views--and sound ones--on coast

defences, and that by some study of the subject he had come, a while

ago, to a conclusion the Collector took but a few minutes to endorse;

that to build a fort on this headland would be waste of public money.

Professionally, Mr. Banner was tolerable. The Collector, consulting

with him, forgot the pertness of his address, the distressing twang of

his accent. He had dismounted, and the pair were busy with a tape,

calling out and checking measurements, when from the southward there was

borne to the Collector's ears the distant crack of a shot-gun.

At the sound of it he glanced up, in time to see Mr. Banner drop the

other end of the tape and run. Almost willy-nilly he followed, vaguely

wondering if there had happened some accident that called for aid.

Mr. Banner, when the Collector overtook him, had come to a halt

overlooking the long beach, and pointed to a figure--a speck almost--for

it was distant more than a mile.

"That Josselin girl!" panted Mr. Banner. "I call you to witness!"

The Collector unstrapped his field-glass, which he carried in a

bandolier, adjusted it, and through it scanned the beach. Yes, in the

distant figure he recognised Ruth Josselin. She carried a gun--or

rather, stood with the gun grounded and her hands folded, resting on its

muzzle--and appeared to be watching the edge of the breakers, perhaps

waiting for them to wash to her feet a dead bird fallen beyond reach.

"See her, do you? I call you to witness!" repeated the voice at his

elbow.

"Why, what is the matter?"

"Sabbath breakin'," answered Mr. Banner with a curious leer.

"Ah!"

"But you yourself don't take much account of the Lord's Day, seemingly.

Bathin', f'r instance."

"Indeed!" The Collector eyed his companion reflectively. "You honoured

me with your observation this morning?"

Mr. Banner grinned. "Better say the whole of Port Nassau was hon'rin'

you. Oh, there'd be no lack of evidence!--but I guess the magistrates

were lookin' the other way. They allowed, no doubt, that even a

Sabbath-breaker might be havin' friends at Court!"

The Collector could not forbear smiling at the youth's impudence.

"May I ask what punishment I have probably escaped by that advantage?"

"Well," said Mr. Banner, "for lighter cases it's usually the stocks."

Still the Collector smiled. "I am trying to picture it," said he, after

a pause. "But you don't tell me they would put a young girl in the

stocks, merely for firing a gun on the Lord's Day, as you call it?"

"Wouldn't they!" Mr. Banner chuckled. "That, or the pillory."

"You are a strange folk in Port Nassau." The Collector frowned, upon a

sudden suspicion, and his eyes darkened in their scrutiny of Mr.

Banner's unpleasant face. "By the way, you told me just now that you

were here upon some sort of a dispensation. Forgive me if I do you

wrong, but was it by any chance that you might play the spy upon this

girl?"

"Shadbolt asked me to keep an eye liftin' for her."

"Who is Shadbolt?"

"The Town Beadle. He's watchin' somewhere along the cliffs."

Mr. Banner waved a hand towards the neck of the headland.

"It's a scandal, and by all accounts has been goin' on for weeks."

"So that is why you called me to witness? Well, Mr. Banner, I have a

horsewhip lying on the turf yonder, and I warn you to forget your

suggestion. . . . Shall we resume our measurements?--and, if you please,

in silence. Your presence is distasteful to me."

They turned from the cliff and went back to their work, in which--for

they both enjoyed it--they were soon immersed. It may have been, too,

that the wind had shifted. At any rate they missed to hear, ten minutes

later, a second shot fired on the beach, not more distant but fainter

than the first.

Chapter IX.

THE SCOURGE.

Next morning, at ten o'clock, the Collector's coach-and-six stood at the

Inn gate, harnessed up and ready for the return journey. In the

road-way beyond one of the grooms waited with a hand on Bayard's bridle.

The Collector, booted and spurred, with riding-whip tucked under his

arm, came up the pebbled pathway, drawing on his gauntleted gloves.

Dicky trotted beside him. Manasseh followed in attendance. Behind them

in the porchway the landlady bobbed unregarded, like a piece of

clockwork gradually running down.

"Hey!" The Collector, as he reached the gate, lifted his chin sharply--

threw up his head as a finely bred animal scents battle or danger.

"What's this? A riot, up the street?"

The grooms could not tell him, for the sound had reached their ears but

a second or two before the question; a dull confused murmur out of

which, as it increased to a clamour and drew nearer, sharper outcries

detached themselves, and the shrill voices of women. A procession had

turned the corner of the head of the avenue--a booing, howling rabble.

The Collector stepped to his horse's rein, flung himself into saddle,

and rode forward at a foot's pace to meet the tumult.

Suddenly his hand tightened on the rein, and Bayard came to a halt; but

his master did not perceive this. The hand's movement had been nervous,

involuntary. He sat erect--stood, rather, from the stirrup--his nostril

dilated, his brain scarcely believing what his eyes saw.

"The swine!" he said slowly, to himself. His teeth were shut and the

words inaudible. "The swine!" he repeated.

Men have done, in the name of religion and not so long ago--indeed are

perhaps doing now and daily--deeds so vile that mere decency cannot face

describing them. It is a question if mere decency (by which I mean the

good instinct of civilised man) will not in the end purge faith clean of

religion; if, while men dispute and hate and inflict cruelty for

religion, they are not all the while outgrowing it. Libraries, for

example, are written to prove that unbaptized infants come out of

darkness to draw a fleeting breath or two and pass to hell-fire; the

dispute occupies men for generations--and lo! one day the world finds it

has no use for any such question. Time--no thanks to the theologians--

has educated it, and this thing at any rate it would no longer believe

if it could, as it certainly cannot. Faith never yet has burnt man or

woman at the stake. Religion has burnt its tens of thousands.

Behind the first two or three ranks of the mob--an exultant mob of grown

men, grown women, and (worst of all) little children--plodded a grey

horse, drawing a cart. Behind the cart, bound to it, with a thong tight

about her fire-scorched wrists--But no; it is not to be written.

They had stripped her to the waist, and then for decency--_their_

decency!--had thrown a jacket of coarse sacking over her, lacing it

loosely in front with pack-thread. But, because their work required it,

this garment had been gathered up into a rope at the neck, whence it

dangled in folds over her young breast.

She walked with wide eyes, uttering no sound. She alone of that crowd

uttered no sound. A brute with a bandaged jaw walked close behind her.

Oliver Vyell saw his forearm swing up--saw the scourge whirl in his

fist--met the girl's eyes. . . . She, meeting his, let escape the

first and last cry she uttered that day. He could have sworn that

her face was scarlet; but no, he was wrong; while he looked he saw

his mistake-she was white as death. Then with that one pitiful cry

she sank among the close-pressing crowd; but her hands, by the cord's

constraint, still lifted themselves as might a drowning swimmer's;

and the grey horse--the one other innocent creature in that

procession--plodded forward, dragging her now senseless body at the

cart's tail.

"You swine!"

It does a man good sometimes to get in his blow. It did Oliver Vyell

good, riding in, to slash twice crosswise on the brute's bandaged face;

to feel the whalebone bite and then, as he swung out of saddle, to ram

fist and whip-butt together on the ugly mouth, driving in its

fore-teeth.

"Stop the horse, some one!" he commanded, as the Beadle reeled back.

"She has fainted." He added, "The first man that interferes, I shoot."

The crowd growled. He turned on the nearest mutterer--"Your knife!"

The fellow handed it; so promptly, he might have been holding it ready

to proffer. The Collector stooped and cut the thongs. This done, he

stood up and saw the Beadle advancing again, snarling through the

bloody gap in his mouth.

"You had best take that man away," said the Collector quietly, pulling

out his small pistol. "If you don't, I am going to kill him."

They heard and saw that he meant it. He added in the same tone,

"I am going to take all responsibility for this. Will you make way,

please?"

His first intention was to lift the body lying unconscious in the

roadway, carry it to the coach and drive out of Port Nassau with it,

defying the law to interfere. For the moment he "saw red," as we say

nowadays, and was quite capable of shooting down, or bidding his

servants shoot down, any man who offered to hinder. It is even possible

that had he acted straightway upon the impulse, he might, with his

momentary mastery of the mob, have won clean away; possible, but by no

means likely, for already a couple of constables were pushing forward to

support the Beadle, and half a dozen broad-shouldered fellows--haters of

"prerogative"--had recovered themselves and were ranging up to support

the law. Had he noted this, it would not have daunted him. What he

noted, and what gave him pause, was the girl's white back at his feet,

upturning its hideous weals. He stooped to lift her, and drew back,

shivering delicately at the thought of hurting the torn flesh in his

arms--a vain scruple, since she had passed for the moment beyond pain.

He picked up the scourge, and stood erect again, crushing it into his

pocket.

"Will you make way, please," he ordered, "while I fetch a cover to hide

your blasted handiwork?"

He strode through them, and they fell back to give him passage.

He walked straight to the coach, pulled the door open, and, in the act

of dragging forth a rug, caught sight of Dicky's small, scared face.

"Oh papa, what has happened?"

"An accident, child. Jump inside; I will explain by-and-by."

"Begging your Honour's pardon"--a heavy-featured fellow, who had

followed the Collector to the coach, put out a hand and touched the

child's shoulder--"I don't hold in whipping maidens, and if it's a fight

I'm with you. But you can't carry her out of it, the way you're

meaning. They've seen blood, same as yourself. This child of yours--he

stands as much chance to be hurt as any, if you push it. Your Honour'll

have to find some other way."

The Collector glanced over his shoulder, and saw that the man spoke

truth.

"Dicky," he said easily, but in a voice the child durst not disobey,

"there has been an accident. Go you down and amuse yourself on the

sands till Manasseh calls you."

He walked back coolly, carrying the rug on his arm.

"Where was she to be taken?" he asked.

"To the stocks!" answered a voice or two. "To the Court-house!" said

others.

"It's the same thing," said the heavy-browed man, at the Collector's

elbow. "The stocks are just across the square from the Court-house.

You'll find the magistrates there; they're the ones to face. They took

her case first this morning, and this is the first part of her

sentence."

Oliver Vyell walked back to the crowd. It was--a glance assured him--

more hostile than before; had recovered from its surprise, and was

menacing. But it gave way again before him.

He called on them to give more room. He stooped and, spreading the rug

over the girl's body, lifted and laid her in the straw of the cart.

A constable would have interfered. The Collector swung round on him.

"You are taking her back to the Court-house? Well, I have business

there too. Where is your Court-house?"

The constable pointed.

"Up the road? I am obliged to you. Drive on, if you please."

Chapter X.

THE BENCH.

The wooden Jail and the wooden Court-house of Port Nassau faced one

another across an unpaved grass-grown square planted with maples.

To-day--for the fall of the leaf was at hand--these maples flamed with

hectic yellows and scarlets; and indeed thousands of leaves, stripped by

the recent gales, already strewed the cross-walks and carpeted the

ground about the benches disposed in the shade--pleasant seats to which,

of an empty afternoon, wives brought their knitting and gossiped while

their small children played within sight; haunts, later in the day, of

youths who whittled sticks or carved out names with jack-knives--ancient

solace of the love-stricken; rarely thronged save when some transgressor

was brought to the stocks or the whipping-post.

These instruments of public discipline stood on the northern side of the

square, before the iron-studded door of the Jail. The same hand, may

be, that had blackened over the Jail's weather-boarded front with a coat

of tar, had with equal propriety whitewashed the facade of the

Court-house; an immaculate building, set in the cool shade, its

straight-lined front broken only by a recessed balcony, whence, as

occasion arose, Mr. George Bellingham, Chief Magistrate, delivered the

text of a proclamation, royal or provincial, or declared the poll when

the people of Port Nassau chose their Selectmen.

This morning Mr. Bellingham held session within, in the long, airy

Court-room, and dispensed justice with the help of three

fellow-magistrates--Mr. Trask, Mr. Somershall, and our friend

Mr. Wapshott. They sat at a long baize-covered table, with the

Justices' Clerk to advise them. On the wall behind and above their

heads hung a framed panel emblazoned with the royal escutcheon, the lion

and unicorn for supporters, an inscription in old French to the effect

that there is shame in evil-thinking, and another:--

CAR II.

FID DEF.

distributed among the four corners of the panel, with the date 1660

below. This had been erected (actually in 1664, but the artist had

received instructions to antedate it) when the good people of

Massachusetts after some demur rejoiced in the Restoration and accepted

King Charles II. as defender of their Faith.

The four magistrates had dealt (as we know) with a case of

Sabbath-breaking; had inflicted various terms of imprisonment on two

drunkards and a beggar-woman; had discharged for lack of evidence (but

with admonition) a youth accused of profane swearing; and were now

working through a list of commoner and more venial offences, such as

cheating by the use of false weights.

These four grave gentlemen looked up in slightly shocked deprecation;

for the Collector entered without taking account of the constable at the

door, save to thrust him aside. The Clerk called "Silence in the

Court!" mechanically, and a deputy-beadle at his elbow as mechanically

repeated it.

"Your Worships"--the Collector, hat in hand advanced to the table and

bowed--"will forgive an interruption which only its urgency can excuse."

"Ah! Captain Vyell, I believe?" Mr. Bellingham arose from his

high-backed throne of carved oak, bowed, and extended a hand across the

table. "I had heard that you were honouring Port Nassau with a visit;

but understanding from our friend Mr. Wapshott that the visit was--er--

not official--that, in fact, it was connected with government business

not--er--to be divulged, I forbore to do myself the pleasure--"

Mr. Bellingham had a courtly manner and a courtly presence. He was a

tallish man, somewhat thin in the face and forehead, of classical

features, and a sanguine complexion. He came of a family highly

distinguished in the history of Massachusetts; but he was in fact a weak

man, though he concealed this by some inherited aptitude for public

business and a well-trained committee manner.

"I thank you." The Collector shook the preferred hand and bowed again.

"You will pardon my abruptness? A girl has fainted outside here, in the

street--"

Mr. Bellingham's well-shaped brows arched themselves a trifle higher.

"Indeed?" he murmured, at a loss.

"A young girl who--as I understand--was suffering public punishment

under sentence of yours."

"Yes?" Mr. Bellingham's smile grew vaguer, and his two hands touched

finger-tips in front of his magisterial stomach--an adequate stomach but

well on the right side of grossness. He glanced at his

fellow-magistrates right and left. "It--er---sometimes happens," he

suggested.

"I dare say." Captain Vyell took him up. "But she has fainted under the

punishment. She has passed the limit of her powers, poor child; and

they tell me that what she has endured is to be followed, and at once,

by five hours in the stocks. Gentlemen, I repeat I am quite well aware

that this is most irregular--you may call it indecent; but I saw the

poor creature fall, and, as it happens, I know something that might have

softened you before you passed sentence."

Here the Clerk interposed, stiffening the Chief Magistrate, who wore a

smile of embarrassed politeness.

"As His Honour--as Captain Vyell--suggests, your Worships, this is quite

irregular."

"To be sure--to be sure--of course," hemm'd Mr. Bellingham. "We can

only overlook that, when appealed to by a person of your distinction;"

here he inclined himself gently. "Still, you will understand, a

sentence is a sentence. As for a temporary faintness, that is by no

means outside our experience. Our Beadle--Shadbolt--invariably manages

to revive them sufficiently to endure--er--the rest."

I'll be shot if he will this time, thought the Collector grimly, with a

glance down at a smear across the knuckle of his right-hand glove.

The sight of it cheered him and steadied his temper. "Possibly," said

he aloud. "But your worships may not be aware--and as merciful men may

be glad to hear--that this poor creature's offence against the Sabbath

was committed under stress. Her mother and grandfather have starved

this week through, as I happen to know."

"That may or may not be," put in Mr. Trask--a dry-complexioned,

stubborn, malignant-looking man, seated next on the Chairman's right.

"But the girl--if you mean Ruth Josselin--has not been scourged for

Sabbath-breaking. For that she will sit in the stocks--our invariable

sentence for first offenders in this respect." From under his

down-drawn brows Mr. Trask eyed the Collector malevolently.

"Ruth Josselin," he continued, "has suffered the scourge for having

resisted Beadle Shadbolt in the discharge of his duty, and for unlawful

wounding."

"Excuse me," put in Mr. Somershall, speaking across from the Chairman's

left. Mr. Somershall was afflicted with deafness, but liked to assert

himself whenever a word by chance reached him and gave him a cue.

He leaned sideways, arching a palm around his one useful ear.

"Excuse me; we brought it in 'attempted wounding,' I believe? I have it

noted so, here on the margin of my charge-sheet." He glanced at the

Clerk, who nodded for confirmation.

"It didn't matter," Mr. Trask snapped brutally. "She got it, just the

same."

"Oh, quite so!" Mr. Somershall took his hand from his ear and nodded,

satisfied with having made his point.

"Wounding?" echoed the Collector, addressing the Chairman. "To be frank

with you, sir, I had not heard of this--though it scarcely affects my

plea."

Mr. Bellingham smiled indulgently. "Say no more, Captain Vyell--pray

say no more! This is not the first time an inclination to deem us

severe has been corrected by a fuller acquaintance with the facts. . . .

Yes, yes--chivalrous feeling--I quite understand; but you see--"

He concluded his sentence with a gentle wave of the hand. "You will be

glad to hear, since you take an interest in the girl, that Providence

overruled her aim and Shadbolt escaped with a mere graze of the jaw--so

slight, indeed, that, taking a merciful view, we decided not to consider

it an actual wound, and convicted her only of the attempt. By the way,

Mr. Leemy, where is the weapon?"

The Clerk produced it from his bag and laid it on the table.

Captain Vyell drew a sharp breath.

"It is my pistol."

"Eh?"

"I have the fellow to it here." He pulled out the other and handed it

by the muzzle.

"To be sure--to be sure; the pattern is identical," murmured Mr.

Bellingham, examining it and for the moment completely puzzled.

"You--er--suggest that she stole it?"

"Certainly not. I lent it to her."

There followed a slow pause. It was broken by the grating voice of Mr.

Trask--

"You remember, Mr. Chairman, that the prisoner stubbornly refused to

tell how the pistol came in her possession? Does Captain Vyell give us

to understand that his interest in this young woman is of older date

than this morning's encounter?"

"My interest in her--such as it is--dates, sir, from the evening before

last, when she was dismissed from the Bowling Green Inn. The hour was

late; her home, as you know, lies at some distance--though doubtless

within the ambit of your authority. I lent her this small weapon to

protect herself should she be molested."

"And she used it next day upon the Beadle! Dismissed, you say? Why was

she dismissed?"

"I regret that I was not more curious at the time," answered the

Collector with the politest touch of weariness. "I believe it was for

saving the house from fire--something of that sort. As told to me, it

sounded rather heroical. But, sir--" he turned again to the Chairman--"

I suggest that all this does not affect my plea. Whatever her offence,

she has suffered cruelly. She is physically unfit to bear this second

punishment; and when I tell you on my word as a gentleman--or on oath,

if you will--that on Saturday I found her grandparent starving and that

her second offence was committed presumably to supply the household

wants, surely I shall not entreat your mercy in vain?"

The Chief Magistrate hesitated, and a frown showed his annoyance.

"To tell you the truth, Captain Vyell, you put me in a quandary.

I do not like to refuse you--" Here he glanced right and left.

"But it can't be done," snapped Mr. Trask. Mr. Wapshott, sitting just

beyond, shook his head gently and--as he hoped--unperceived by the

Collector.

"You see, sir," explained Mr. Bellingham with a sigh, "we sit here to

administer justice without fear or favour. You see also to what scandal

it might give rise if a culprit--merely on the intercession of a

gentleman like yourself--influential--er--and, in short--"

"--In short, sir," the Collector broke in, "you have in the name of

justice committed one damnable atrocity upon this child, and plead your

cowardice as an excuse for committing another. Influential, am I?

And you prate to me of not being affected by that? Very well; I'll take

you at your word. This girl resisted your ruffian in the discharge of

his duty? So did I just now, and with such effect that he will resume

it neither to-day nor to-morrow. She inflicted, it appears, a slight

graze on his chin. I inflicted two cuts on his face and knocked in

three of his teeth. You can take cognisance of _my_ wounding, I promise

you. Now, sir, will you whip _me_ through your town?"

"This is mere violence, sir." Mr. Bellingham's face was flushed, but he

answered with dignity. "The law is as little to be exasperated as

defied."

"I will try you in another way, then," said the Collector, recovering

grip of his temper and dropping his voice to a tone of politest

insolence. "It is understood that you have not the courage to do this

because, seated here and administering what you call justice, you have,

each one of you, an eye upon England and preferment, and you know well

enough that to touch me would play the devil among the tailors with your

little ambitions. I except"--with a bow towards Mr. Trask--"this

gentleman, who seems to have earned his influence on your counsels by

rugged force of character, And--" for here Mr. Trask, who enjoyed a dig

at his colleagues, cast his eyes down and compressed a grin--"is, I

should judge, capable of striking a woman for the mere fun of it."

Here Mr. Bellingham and Mr. Wapshott looked demure in turn; for that

Mr. Trask led his wife a dog's life was notorious.

"--In truth, gentlemen," the Collector continued easily, "I am at some

loss in addressing you, seeing that through some defect of courtesy you

have omitted to wait on me, albeit informed (I believe) that I came as

His Majesty's Commissioner, and that therefore I have not even the

pleasure of knowing your names. I may except that of Mr. Wapshott, whom

I am glad to see convalescent this morning." Here he inclined to Mr.

Wapshott, whose gills under the surprised gaze of his colleagues took a

perceptibly redder tinge. "Mr. Wapshott, gentlemen," explained the

Collector, smiling, "had a slight attack of vertigo yesterday, on the

steps of his Place of Worship. Well, sirs, as I was saying, I will try

you in another way. You have not the courage to bring me to trial for

assaulting your beadle. You have not even the courage, here and now, to

throw me out. I believe, however, that upon a confessed breach of the

law--supported by evidence, if necessary--I can force you to try me.

The Clerk will correct me if I am wrong. . . . Apparently he assents.

Then I desire to confess to you that yesterday, at such-and-such an

hour, I broke your laws or bye-laws of Lord's Day Observance; by bathing

in the sea for my pleasure. I demand trial on this charge, and, if you

convict me--here you can hardly help yourselves, since to my knowledge

some of you witnessed the offence--I demand my due punishment of the

stocks."

"Really--really, Captain Vyell!" hemm'd the Chief Magistrate.

"Passing over your derogatory language, I am at a loss to understand--"

"Are you? Yet it is very simple. Since you reject my plea for this

poor creature, I desire to share her punishment."

"Let him," snapped the mouth of Mr. Trask again, opening and shutting

like a trap.

"_You_ at any rate, sir, have sense," the Collector felicitated him and

turned to the Chief Magistrate. "And you, sir, if you will oblige me,

may rest assured that I shall bear the magistracy of Port Nassau no

grudge whatever."

Chapter XI.

THE STOCKS.

In the end they came to a compromise. That Dame Justice should be

hustled in this fashion--taken by the shoulders, so to speak, forced to

catch up her robe and skip--offended the Chief Magistrate's sense of

propriety. It was unseemly in the last degree, he protested.

Nevertheless it appeared certain that Captain Vyell had a right to be

tried and punished; and the Clerk's threat to set down the hearing for

an adjourned sessions was promptly countered by the culprit's producing

His Majesty's Commission, which enjoined upon all and sundry "_to

observe the welfare of my faithful subject, Oliver John Dinham de Courcy

Vyell, now travelling on the business of this my Realm, and to further

that business with all zeal and expedition as required by him_"--a

command which might be all the more strictly construed for being loosely

worded. To be sure the Court might by dilatory process linger out the

hearing of the Weights and Measures cases--one of which was being

scandalously interrupted at this moment--or it might adjourn for dinner

and reassemble in the afternoon, by which time the sands of Ruth

Josselin's five hours' ignominy would be running out. But here Mr.

Somershall had to be reckoned with. Mr. Somershall not only made it a

practice to sit long at dinner and sleep after it; he invariably lost

his temper if the dinner-hour were delayed; and, being deaf as well as

honest, he was capable of blurting out his mind in a fashion to confound

either of these disingenuous courses. As for Mr. Wapshott, the wording

of the Commission had frightened him, and he wished himself at home.

It was Mr. Trask who found the way out. Mr. Trask, his malevolent eye

fixed on the Collector, opined that after all an hour or two in the

stocks would be a salutary lesson for hot blood and pampered flesh.

He suggested that, without insisting on a trial, the Captain might be

obliged, and his legs given that lesson. He cited precedents.

More than once a friend or relative had, by mercy of the Court, been

allowed to sit beside a culprit under punishment. If, a like leave

being granted him, Captain Vyell preferred to have his ankles

confined--why, truly, Mr. Trask saw no reason for denying him the

experience. But the Captain, it was understood, must give his word of

honour, first, to accept this as a free concession from the Bench, and,

secondly, not to repent or demand release before the expiry of the five

hours.

"With all my heart," promised Captain Vyell; and the Chief Magistrate

reluctantly gave way.

Ruth Josselin sat in the stocks. She had come so far out of her swoon

that her pulse beat, her breath came and went, she felt the sun warm on

her face, and was aware of some pain where the edge of the wood pressed

into her flesh, a little above the ankle-bones--of discomfort, rather,

in comparison with the anguish throbbing and biting across her

shoulder-blades. Some one--it may have been in unthinking mercy--had

drawn down the sackcloth over her stripes, and the coarse stuff,

irritating the raw, was as a shirt of fire.

She had come back to a sense of this torture, but not yet to complete

consciousness. She sat with eyes half closed, filmed with suffering.

As they had closed in the moment of swooning, so and with the same look

of horror they awoke as the lids parted. But they saw nothing; neither

the sunlight dappling the maple shadows nor the curious faces of the

crowd. She felt the sunlight; the crowd's presence she felt not at all.

But misery she felt; a blank of misery through which her reviving soul--

like the shoot of a plant trodden into mire--pushed feebly towards the

sunlight that coaxed her eyes to open. Something it sought there . . .

a face . . . yes, a face. . . .

--Yes, of course, a face; lifted high above other faces that were

hateful, hostile, mocking her misery--God knew why; a strong face, not

very pitiful--but so strong!--and yet it must be pitiful too, for it

condescended to help. It was moving down, bending, to help. . . .

--What had become of it? . . . Ah, now (shame at length reawakening) she

remembered! She was hiding from him. He was strong, he was kind, but

above all he must not see her shame. Let the earth cover her and hide

it! . . . and either the merciful earth had opened or a merciful

darkness had descended. She remembered sinking into it--sinking--her

hands held aloft, as by ropes. Then the ropes had parted. . . .

She had fallen, plumb. . . .

She was re-emerging now; and either shame lay far below, a cast-off weed

in the depths, or shame had driven out shame as fire drives out fire.

Her back was burning; her tongue was parched; her eyes were seared as

they half opened upon the crowd. The grinning faces--the mouths pulled

awry, mocking a sorrow they did not understand--these were meaningless

to her. She did not, in any real sense, behold them. Her misery was a

sea about her, and in the trough of it she looked up, seeking one face.

--And why not? It had shone far above her as a god's; but she had been

sucked down as deep again, and there is an extreme of degradation may

meet even a god's altitude on equal terms. Stark mortal, stark god--its

limit of suffering past, humanity joins the celestial, clasping its

knees.

Of a sudden, turning her eyes a little to the left, she saw him.

He had come at a strolling pace across the square, with Manasseh and the

deputy-beadle walking wide beside him, and the Court-house rabble at his

heels, but keeping, in spite of themselves, a respectful distance.

At the stocks he faced about, and they halted on the instant, as though

he had spoken a word of command. He smiled, seated himself leisurably

at the end of the bench on Ruth Josselin's left, and extended a leg for

Manasseh to draw off its riding-boot. At the back of the crowd a few

voices chattered, but within the semicircle a hush had fallen.

It was then that she turned her eyes and saw him.

How came he here? What was he doing? . . . She could not comprehend at

all. Only she felt her heart leap within her and stand still, as like a

warm flood the consciousness of his presence stole through her, poured

over her, soothing away for the moment all physical anguish. She sat

very still, her hands in her lap; afraid to move, afraid even to look

again. This consciousness--it should have been shame, but it held no

shame at all. It was hope. It came near, very near, to bliss.

She was aware in a dull way of some one unlocking and lifting the upper

beam of the stocks. Were they releasing her? Surely her sentence had

been for five hours?--surely her faintness could not have lasted so

long! This could not be the end? She did not wish to be released.

She would not know what to do, where to go, when they set her free.

She must walk home through the town, and that would be worst of all.

Or perhaps _he_ was commanding them to release her? . . . No; the beam

creaked and dropped into place again. A moment ago his voice had been

speaking; speaking very cheerfully, not to her. Now it was silent.

After some minutes she gathered courage to turn her eyes again.

Captain Vyell sat with his legs in durance. They were very shapely

legs, cased in stockings of flesh-coloured silk with crimson knee-ties.

He sat in perfect patience, and rolled a tobacco-leaf between his

fingers. At his shoulder stood Manasseh like a statue, with face

immobile as Marble--black marble--and a tinder-box ready in his hand.

"Why? . . ."

He could not be sure if it were a word, or merely a sigh, deep in her

breast, so faintly it reached him. She had murmured it as if to

herself, yet it seemed to hang on a question. His ear was alert.

"Hush!" he said, speaking low and without glancing towards her, for the

eyes of the crowd were on them. "The faintness is over?"

"Yes."

"Do not talk at all. By-and-by we will talk. Now I am going to ask you

a selfish question, and you are just to bend your head for 'yes' or

'no.' Will the smell of tobacco distress you, or bring the faintness

back? These autumn flies sting abominably here, under the trees."

She moved her head slowly. "I do not feel them," she said after a

while.

He glanced at her compassionately before nodding to Manasseh for a

light. "No, poor wretch, I'll be sworn you do not," he muttered between

the puffs. "Thank you, Manasseh; and now will you step down to the Inn,

order the horses back to stable, and bring George and Harry back with

you? I may require them to break a head or two here, if there should be

trouble. Tell Alexander"--this was the coachman--"to have an eye on

Master Dicky, and see that he gets his dinner. The child is on no

account to come here, or be told about this. His papa is detained on

business--you understand? Yes, and by the way, you may extract a book

from the valise--the Calderon, for choice, or if it come handier, that

second volume of Corneille. Don't waste time, though, in searching for

this or that. In the stocks I've no doubt a book is a book: the

instrument has a reputation for levelling."

Manasseh departed on his errand, and for a while the Collector paid no

heed to his companion. He and she were now unprotected, at the mercy of

the mob if it intended mischief; and the next few minutes would be

critical.

He sat immersed apparently in his own thoughts, and by the look on his

face these were serious thoughts. He seemed to see and yet not to see

the ring of faces; to be aware of them, yet not concerned with them, no

whit afraid and quite as little defiant. True, he was smoking, but

without a trace of affected insouciance or bravado; gravely rather,

resting an elbow on his groin and leaning forward with a preoccupied

frown. Two minutes passed in this silence, and he felt the danger

ebbing. Mob insolence ever wants a lead, and--perhaps because with the

return of fine weather the fishing-crews had put to sea early--this Port

Nassau crowd lacked a fugleman.

"Are you here--because--of me?"

"Hush, again," he answered quietly, not turning his head. "I like you

to talk if you feel strong enough; but for the moment it will be better

if they do not perceive. . . . Yes, and no," he answered her question

after a pause. "I am here to see that you get through this. You are in

pain?"

"Yes; but it is easier."

"You are afraid of these people?"

"Afraid?" She took some time considering this. "No," she said at

length. "I am not afraid of them. I do not see them. You are here."

He took the tobacco-leaf from his lips, blew a thin cloud of smoke with

grave deliberateness, and in doing so contrived to glance at her face.

"You have blood in you. That face, too, my beauty," he muttered,

"never came to you but by gift of blood." Aloud he said, "That's brave.

But take care when your senses clear and the strain comes back on you.

Speak to me when you feel it coming; I don't want it to tauten you up

with a jerk. You understand?"

"Yes. . . ."

"I wonder now--" he began musingly, and broke off. The danger he had

been keeping account with was over; Manasseh had returned with the two

grooms, and they--perfectly trained servants on the English model--took

their posts without exhibiting surprise by so much as a twitch of the

face. George in particular was a tight fellow with his fists, as the

crowd, should it offer annoyance, would assuredly learn. The Collector

took the volume which Manasseh brought him, and opened it, but did not

begin to read. "You despise these people?" he asked.

He was puzzled with himself. He was here to protect her; and this, from

him to her, implied a noble condescension. His fine manners, to be

sure, forbade his showing it; on no account would he have shown it.

But the puzzle was, he could not feel it.

She met his eyes. "No . . . why should I despise them?"

"They are _canaille_."

"What does that mean? . . . They have been cruel to me. Afterwards, I

expect, they will be crueller still. But just now it does not matter,

because you are here."

"Does that make so much difference?" he asked thoughtlessly.

She caught her breath upon a sob. "Ah, do not--" The voice died,

strangled, in her throat. "Do not--" Again she could get no further,

but sat shivering, her fingers interlocked and writhing.

"Brute!" muttered the Collector to himself. He did not ask her pardon,

but opened his Calderon, signed to Manasseh to roll a fresh

tobacco-leaf, and fell to reading his favourite _Alcalde de Zalamea_.

The sun crept slowly to the right over the tops of the maples. It no

longer scorched their faces, but slanted in rays through the upper

boughs, dappling the open walks with splashes of light which, as they

receded in distance, took by a trick of the eyesight a pattern regular

as diaper. By this time the Collector, when he glanced up from his

book, had an ample view of the square, for the crowd had thinned.

The punishment of the stocks was no such rare spectacle in Port Nassau;

and five hours is a tedious while even for the onlooker--a very long

while indeed to stand weighing the fun of throwing a handful of filth

against the cost of a thrashing. The men-folk, reasoning thus, had

melted away to their longshore avocations. The women, always more

patient--as to their nature the show was more piquant than to the

men's--had withdrawn with their knitting to benches well within

eyeshot. The children, playing around, grew more and more immersed in

their games; which, nevertheless, one or another would interrupt from

time to time to point and ask a question. Above the Court-house the

town clock chimed its quarters across the afternoon heat.

The Collector, glancing up in the act of turning a page, spied Mr. Trask

hobbling down an alley towards the Jail. Mr. Trask, a martyr to gout,

helped his progress with an oaken staff. He leaned on this as he halted

before the stocks.

"Tired?" he asked.

"Damnably!" answered the Collector with great cheerfulness. "It takes

one in the back, you see. If ever the Town Fathers think of moving this

machine, you might put in a word for shifting it a foot or two back,

against the prison wall."

Mr. Trask grinned.

"I suppose now," he said after a pause, "you think you are doing a fine

thing, and doing it handsomely?"

"I had some notion of the sort, but this confinement of the feet is

wonderfully cooling to the brain. No--if you dispute it. Most human

actions are mixed."

Mr. Trask eyed him, chin between two fingers and thumb. When he spoke

again it was with lowered voice. "Is it altogether kind to the girl?"

he asked.

"Eh?" The Collector in turn eyed Mr. Trask.

"Or even quite fair to her?"

"Oh, come!" said the Collector. "Tongues? I hadn't thought of that."

"I dare say not." Mr. Trask glanced up at the windows of a two-storeyed

house on the left, scarcely a stone's throw away, a respectable mansion

with a verandah and neat gateway of wrought iron. "But at the end of

this what becomes of her?"

The Collector shrugged his shoulders. "I have thought of _that_, at all

events. My coach will be here to take her home. It lies on my road.

As for me, I shall have to mount at once and ride through the night--a

second test for the back-bone."

"Ride and be hanged to you!" broke out Mr. Trask with a snarl of scorn.

"But for the rest, if your foppery leave you any room to consider the

girl, you couldn't put a worse finish on your injury. Drive her off in

your coach indeed!--and what then becomes of her reputation?"

"--Of what you have left to her, you mean? Damn it--_you_ to talk like

this!"

"Do not be profane, Captain Vyell. . . . We see things differently, and

this punishment was meted to her--if cruelly, as you would say--still in

honest concern for her soul's good. But if you, a loose-living man--"

Mr. Trask paused.

"Go on."

"I thank you. For the moment I forgot that you are not at liberty.

But I used not that plainness of speech to insult you; rather because it

is part of the argument. If you, then, drive away with this child in

public, through this town, you do her an injury for which mere

carelessness is your best excuse; and the world will assign it a worse."

"The world!"

"I mean the world this young woman will have to live in. But we talk at

cross-purposes. When I asked, 'What becomes of her at the end of this?'

I was thinking of the harm you have already done. As a fact, I have

ordered my cart to be ready to take her home."

Captain Vyell considered for a few seconds. "Sir," he said, "since

plain speech is allowed between us, I consider you a narrow bigot; but,

I hasten to add, you are the best man I have met in Port Nassau. By the

way--that house on our left--does it by chance belong to Mr. Wapshott?"

"It does."

"I thought so. For a couple of hours past, in the intervals of my

reading, I have discovered a family of tall young women peeking at us

from behind the windows and a barrier of furniture; and once, it seemed

to me, I detected the wattles of your worthy fellow-magistrate.

He ought not to strain that neck; you should warn him of the danger."

"It should have warned you, sir, of what mischief you are doing."

"I seem to remember," the Collector mused, "reading the words '_Honi

soit qui mal y pense_' to-day written on the wall behind you. . . .

Why, damn me, sir, for aught you or any of them can tell, I intend to

marry this girl! Why not? Go and tell them. Could there (you'll say)

be a fairer betrothal? The reputable plight their troth with a single

ring around the woman's finger; but here are four rings around the four

ankles, and the bar locked. With your leave, which is the more

symbolical?"

"You are a reprobate man, Captain Vyell," was the answer, "and I have no

relish for your talk. I will only say this, When her punishment is

done, my cart shall be ready for her; and you, if you would vindicate an

action which--for I'll give you that credit--sprang from a generous

impulse, will go your ways and let this child live down her

humiliation."

Mr. Trask turned and went his way up the alley, across which the sun

made level rays of flame. The Collector sat in thought.

He turned his head, surprised by the sound of a sob. A small child had

drawn near--a toddle of four, trailing her wooden doll with its head in

the dust--and stood a few paces in front of Ruth Josselin, round-eyed,

finger at mouth.

"Steady, my girl. . . . Steady!"

At the murmured warning she braced her body stiffly, and no second sob

came. But the tears ran--the first in all her long agony--and small

shivers, as light winds play on aspen, chased one another down her

throat. Almost you could guess them passing down her flesh beneath the

sackcloth, rippling over its torn and purple ridges.

He did not check her weeping. The child--small, innocent cause of it--

stood round-eyed, wondering. "She has been naughty. What has she done,

to be so naughty?"

Over the maples the town clock slowly told the hour.

They were free. The Collector tossed away the half-smoked

tobacco-leaf--his twelfth--drew a long breath, and emitted it with a gay

laugh of relief. At the same moment he saw Mr. Trask's bullock-cart

approaching down the dappled avenue.

Chapter XII.

THE HUT BY THE BEACH.

"And you'll never hold up your head again! No more will any of us.

The disgrace of it! the disgrace of it!"

Ruth stood in the middle of the wretched room, with her hands hanging

slack and her eyes bent wearily upon her mother, who had collapsed upon

a block of sawn timber, and sat there, with sack apron cast over her

head, rocking her body.

"Hush, ye fool!" said old Josselin, and spat out of window.

Mechanically, by habit, his dim eyes swept along the beach by the

breakers' edge. "What's the use, any way?" he added.

"We, that always carried ourselves so high, for all our being poor!

It's God's mercy that took your father before he could see this day.

'Twould have broken his sperrit. Your father a Josselin, and me a

Pocock, with lands of my own--if right was law in this world; and now to

be stripped naked and marched through the streets!"

Ruth's eyes met the Collector's. He stood within the doorway, and was

regarding her curiously. She did not plead or protest; only, as their

eyes met, a flush rose to her cheek, and he guessed rightly that the

touch of shame was for her mother, not for herself. The flush deepened

as old Josselin turned and said apologetically,--

"You mustn't mind M'ria. She's weak-minded. Always was; but sence her

husband was drowned--he was my second son--she've lost whatever wits she

had. The gal here was born about that time." Here the old man launched

into some obstetrical guesswork, using the plainest words.

It embarrassed the Collector; the girl did not so much as wince.

"Poor might be stood," moaned the woman; "but poor and shamed!"

Then of a sudden, as though recollecting herself, she arose with an air

of mincing gentility. "Ruth," she said, "it's little we can offer the

gentleman, but you _might_ get out the bread and cheese, after his being

so kind to you."

"Sit down, you dormed fool," commanded her father-in-law. "Here, fetch

your seat over to the look-out, an' tell me if that's a log I see

floatin'. She's wonderful good at that," he explained, without lowering

his voice, "and it'll keep her quiet. It's true, though, what she said

about the property. Thousands of acres, if she had her rights--up this

side of the Kennebee." He jerked a thumb northwards. "The Pococks

bought it off one of the Gorges, gettin' on for a hundred years sence;

and by rights, as I say, a seventh share oughter be hers. But lawyers!

The law's like a ship's pump: pour enough in for a start, and it'll

reward ye with floods. But where's the money to start it?"

The Collector scarcely heard him. His eyes were on Ruth's face.

He had walked briskly down from the Town Square to the Bowling Green

Inn, refreshed himself, let saddle his horse, and set forth, leaving

orders for his coach to follow. At the summit of the hill above Port

Nassau he had overtaken the cart with the poor girl lying in it, had

checked his pace to ride alongside, and so, disregarding Mr. Trask's

counsel, had brought her home. Nay, dismissing the men with a guinea

apiece, he had desired them to return to Mr. Trask and report his

conduct.

"Listen to me," he said suddenly, checking Old Josselin in full flow.

"You say, both of you, that Ruth here will live under disgrace; and I

dare say you are right. Why not send her away? Get her out of this."

The woman by the window turned her head with a vague simper. The old

man, building a small heap of chips on the hearthstone, distended his

cheeks and let out his breath slowly, as though coaxing a fire already

kindled.

"All very well--but where? And where's the money to come from?

Besides, we can't spare the child; she vittles us. Dorm it, Ruth," he

exclaimed, on a sudden recollection, "you don't say you ha'n't brought

back the gun!"

"No, grandfather."

"Why? The magistrates would have given it back. It's ruination for us

without the gun, and that you might have remembered. Better step over

and ask 'em for it to-morrow."

"Must I?" asked the girl slowly.

"'Course you'll have to," said her grandparent. "_I_ can't walk the

distance, and that you know.--My eyesight's poor," he explained to the

Collector, "and I can't walk, because--" here he stated an organic

complaint very frankly. "As for M'ria, she's an eye like a fish-hawk;

but you never saw such a born fool with firearms. Well, must heat some

water, I reckon, to bathe the poor maid's back."

"First give her food," said the Collector. He stepped forward and

himself cut her a large manchet from the loaf the old man produced.

She took it from him and ate ravenously, like a young wild animal,

tearing at the crust with her white teeth. "They haven't broken your

body's health, then," he thought to himself. Aloud he said, "You don't

quite take my meaning, Mr. Josselin, and I'll put it to you in a

straight offer. Let her come with me to Boston. She shall be put to

school there, say for three years; she shall live among folk who will

treat her kindly, and teach her at any rate to build up her spirit again

and be happy, as she will never be within these miles of Port Nassau;

and in return--"

"Ah!" said the old man significantly.

"In return you shall accept from me a decent pension--enough, at any

rate, to fend off want. We will not quarrel over the amount, up or

down. Or, if you prefer, I will get the lawyers to look into this claim

of your daughter-in-law's, and maybe make you an offer for it."

"Ah!" repeated Old Josselin, and nodded. "Taken your eye, has she?

Oh, I'm not blamin' your lordship! Flesh will after flesh, and--you can

believe it or not--I was all for the women in my time." He chuckled,

and had added some gross particulars before the younger man could check

him. Yet the old fellow was so naif and direct that his speech left no

evil taste. He talked as one might of farm stock. "But we're decent

folk, we Josselins. It's hard to starve and be decent too, and times

enough I've been sorry for it; but decent we are."

The Collector frowned. "Mr. Josselin," he answered, "I am offering you

to take your granddaughter away and have her educated. What that will

make of her I neither can tell you nor have I means of guessing; but

this I will undertake, and give you my word of honour for it: in three

years' time she shall come back to you in all honesty, unharmed by me or

by any one. By that time she will be a woman grown, able to decide as a

woman; but she shall come to you, nevertheless."

The old man fumbled with a finger, scraping together the flakes of

touchwood in a tinder-box.

"D'ye hear, M'ria? His Honour wants our Ruth to go along with him."

The Collector glanced at the girl's face. Years after, and a hundred

times, he recalled the look with which she turned towards her mother.

At the same instant her mother faced about with a vacuous silly smile.

"Eh?"

"To larn to be a lady," Old Josselin explained, raising his voice as

though she were deaf.

"That would be a fine thing," she answered mincingly, and returned her

gaze to the window and the line of shore.

Chapter XIII.

RUTH SETS OUT.

Manasseh had wrapped Master Dicky up warm in a couple of rugs, and

spread a third about his feet. In the ample state seat of the coach the

child reclined as easily as in a bed. He began to doze while the

vehicle yet jolted over the road crossing the headland; and when it

gained the track, and the wheels rolled smoothly on the hard sand, the

motion slid him deep into slumber.

He came out of it with a start and a catch of the breath, and for a full

half-minute lay with all his senses numbed, not so much scared as

bewildered. In his dreams he had been at home in Boston, and he

searched his little brain, wondering why he was awake, and if he should

call for Miss Quiney (who slept always within hail, in a small bedroom);

and why, when the night-nursery window lay to the left of his bed,

strange lights should be flashing on his right, where the picture of

King William landing at Torbay hung over his washstand.

The lights moved to and fro, then they were quenched, and all was dark

about him. But he heard Manasseh's voice, some way off, in the

darkness, and the sound of it brought him to his bearings. He was in

the coach, he remembered; and realising this, he was instantly glad--for

he was a plucky child--that he had not called out to summon Miss Quiney.

Had there been an accident? At any rate he was not hurt. His father

had ridden on ahead, and would reach home many hours in advance.

The boy had learnt this from Manasseh. He reasoned that, if an accident

had happened, his father would not hear of it--would be riding

forward, further and further into the night. He wondered how Manasseh

and the grooms would manage without his father, who always gave the

orders and was never at a loss.

He sat up, peering out into the night. He was still peering thus,

building hasty wild guesses, when again a light showed, waving as it

drew nearer. It came close; it was one of the coach-lamps, and blazed

full into his eyes through the window. The door opened, letting in the

roar of the beach and smiting his small nostrils with sea-brine, that

with one breath purged away the stuffy scent of leather.

Manasseh was handing some one into the coach.

"De child--Mas' Richard--if you'll tak' care, miss. He's fas' asleep,

prob'ly."

"But I'm _not_," said Dicky, sitting bolt upright and gathering his rugs

about him. "Who is it?"

Manasseh perhaps did not hear. He made no reply, at any rate, but

turned the lamp full on Ruth Josselin as she sank back against the

cushions on Dicky's right.

"You will find plenty rugs, miss."

He shut the door. Dicky, holding his breath, heard him replace the lamp

in its socket, and felt the soft tilt of his great weight as he climbed

to the perch behind.

"R--right away!"

There was a tug, and the great coach rolled forward. In the darkness

Dicky caught the sound of a smothered sob.

"Who are you?" he asked. There was no response, and after a moment he

added, "I know. You are the girl who put out the fire. I like you."

He was very sleepy. He wondered why she did not answer; but, his

childish instinct assuring him that she was a friend, in his somnolence

he felt nothing other than trust in her. He nestled close in his rugs

and reached out an arm.

It rubbed across the weals on Ruth's back, and was torture.

She clenched her teeth, while tears--tears of physical anguish,

irrepressible--over-brimmed her lashes and fell uncounted in the

darkness.

"You are crying. Why? I like you." The child's voice trailed off into

dream.

"Closer!" whispered Ruth, and would have forced the embrace upon her

pain; but it relaxed. Dicky's head fell sideways, and rested, angled

between the cushions and her shoulder.

She sat wide-eyed, staring into folds of darkness, while the coach

rolled forward smoothly towards the dawn.

BOOK II.

PROBATION.

Chapter I.

AFTER TWO YEARS.

"Come down and play!"

Ruth, looking down from the open lattice, smiled and shook her head.

"I must not; I'm doing my lessons."

"Must not!" mimicked Master Dick. "You're getting stupider and

stupider, living up here. If you don't look out, one of these days

you'll turn into an old maid--just like Miss Quiney."

"Hs-s-sh! She's downstairs somewhere."

"I don't care if she hears." Dicky ran his eyes defiantly along the line

of ground-floor windows under the verandah, then upturned his face

again. "After coming all this way on purpose to play with you," he

protested.

"You have made yourself dreadfully hot."

"I _am_ hot," the boy confessed. "I gave Piggy the slip at the foot of

the hill, and I've run every step of the way."

"Is _he_ here?" Ruth glanced nervously toward a clump of elms around

which the path from the entrance-gate curved into view. "But you

oughtn't to call Mr. Silk 'Piggy,' you know. It--it's ungentlemanly."

"Why, I took the name from you! You said yourself, one day, that he was

a pig; and so he is. He has piggy eyes, and he eats too much, and

there's something about the back of his neck you must have noticed."

"It's cruel of you, Dicky, to remember and cast up what I said when I

knew no better. You know how hard I am learning: in the beginning you

helped me to learn."

"Did I?" mused Dicky. "Then I wish I hadn't, if you're going to grow up

and treat me like this. Oh, very well," he added stoutly after a pause,

"then I'm learning too, learning to be a sailor; and it'll be first-rate

practice to climb aloft to you, over the verandah. You don't mind my

spitting on my hands? It's a way they have in the Navy."

"Dicky, don't be foolish! Think of Miss Quiney's roses." Finding him

inexorable, Ruth began to parley. "I don't want to see Mr. Silk.

But if I come down to you, it will not be to play. We'll creep off to

the Well, or somewhere out of hail, and there you must let me read--or

perhaps I'll read aloud to you. Promise?"

"What're you reading?"

"The Bible."

Dicky pulled a face. "Well, the Bible's English, anyway," he said

resignedly. The sound of a foreign tongue always made him feel

pugnacious, and it was ever a question with him how, as a gentleman, to

treat a dead language. Death was respectable, but had its own

obligations; obligations which Greek and Latin somehow ignored.

The house, known as Sabines, stood high on the slope of the midmost of

Boston's three hills, in five acres of ground well set with elms.

Captain Vyell had purchased the site some five years before, and had

built himself a retreat away from the traffic that surged about his

official residence by the waterside. Of its raucous noises very few--

the rattle of a hawser maybe, or a boatswain's whistle, or the yells of

some stentorian pilot--reached to penetrate the belt of elms surrounding

the house and its green garth; but the Collector had pierced this

woodland with bold vistas through which the eye overlooked Boston

harbour with its moving panorama of vessels, the old fort then standing

where now stands the Navy Yard, and the broad waters of the Charles

sweeping out to the Bay.

For eighteen months he, the master of this demesne, had not set foot

within its front gate; not once since the day when on a sudden

resolution he had installed Ruth Josselin here, under ward of Miss

Quiney, to be visited and instructed in theology, the arts, and the

sciences, by such teachers as that unparagoned spinster might, with his

approval, select. In practice he left it entirely to her, and Miss

Quiney's taste in teachers was of the austerest. What nutriment

(one might well have asked) could a young mind extract from the husks of

doctrine and of grammar purveyed to Ruth by the Reverend Malachi

Hichens, her tutor in the Holy Scriptures and in the languages of Greece

and Rome?

The answer is that youth, when youth craves for it, will draw knowledge

even from the empty air and drink it through the very pores of the skin.

Mr. Hichens might be dry--inhumanly dry--and his methods repellent; but

there were the books, after all, and the books held food for her hunger,

wine for her thirst. So too the harpsichord held music, though Miss

Quiney's touch upon it was formal and lifeless. . . . In these eighteen

months Ruth Josselin had been learning eagerly, teaching herself in a

hundred ways and by devices of which she wist not. Yet always she was

conscious of the final purpose of this preparation; nay, it possessed

her, mastered her. For whatever fate her lord designed her, she would

be worthy of it.

He never came. For eighteen months she had not seen him. Was it

carelessly or in delicacy that he withheld his face? Or peradventure in

displeasure? Her heart would stand still at times, and her face pale

with the fear of it. She could not bethink her of having displeased

him; but it might well be that he repented of his vast condescension.

Almost without notice, and without any reason given, he had deported her

to this house on the hill. . . . Yet, if he repented, why did he

continue to wrap her around with kindness? Why had she these good

clothes, and food and drink, servants to wait on her, tutors to teach

her--everything, in short, but liberty and young companions and his

presence that most of all she desired and dreaded?

On the slope to the south-west of the house, in a dingle well screened

with willow and hickory, a stream of water gushed from the living rock

and had been channelled downhill over a stairway of flat boulders, so

that it dropped in a series of miniature cascades before shooting out of

sight over the top of a ferny hollow. The spot was a favourite one with

Dicky, for between the pendent willow boughs, as through a frame, it

overlooked the shipping and the broad bosom of the Charles. Ruth and he

stole away to it, unperceived of Miss Quiney; to a nook close beside the

spray of the fall, where on a boulder the girl could sit and read while

Dick wedged his back into a cushion of moss, somewhat higher up the

slope, and recumbent settled himself so as to bring (luxurious young

dog!) her face in profile between him and the shining distance.

She had stipulated for silence while she read her lesson over; but he at

once began to beg off.

"If you won't let me talk," he grumbled, "the least you can do is to

read aloud."

"But it's the Bible," she objected.

"Oh, well, I don't mind. Only choose something interesting. David and

Goliath, or that shipwreck in the Acts."

"You don't seem to understand that this is a lesson, and I must read

what Mr. Hichens sets. To-day it's about Hagar and Ishmael."

"I seem to forget about them; but fire away, and we'll hope there's a

story in it."

Ruth began to read: "_And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, which

she had born unto Abraham, mocking her. Wherefore she said unto

Abraham, Cast out this bondwoman_. . ."

She read on. Before she ended Dicky had raised himself to a sitting

posture. "The whole business was a dirty shame," he declared.

"This Ishmael was his own son, eh? Then why should he cast out one son

more than another?"

"There's a long explanation in the New Testament," said Ruth. "It's by

St. Paul; and I dare say that Mr. Hichens too, if he sees anything

difficult in it, will say that Ishmael stands for the bond and Isaac for

the free, and Abraham had to do it, or the teaching wouldn't come

right."

"He can't make out it was fair; nor St. Paul can't neither, not if you

read it to him like you did to me," asserted Dicky.

"But I shall not," answered Ruth after a pause, "and it was rather

clever of you to guess."

"Why not?"

"Because it would shock him. I used to find the Bible just as dull as

he makes it out: but one day I heard Mr. Langton standing up for it.

Mr. Langton said it was the finest book in the world and the most

fascinating, if only you read it in the proper way; and the proper way,

he said, is to forget all about its being divided into verses and just

take it like any other book. I tried that, and it makes all the

difference."

"You mean to say you like it?" asked Dicky, incredulous.

"I love it. I can't get away from the people in it. They are so

splendid, one moment; and, the next, they are just too mean and petty

for words; and the queer part of it is, they never see. They tell

falsehoods, and they cheat, and the things they do to get into Palestine

are simply disgusting--even if they had the shadow of a right there,

which they haven't."

"But the land was promised to them."

She had a mind to criticise that promise, but checked her lips.

He was a child, and she would do no violence to the child's mind.

Getting no answer, he considered for a while, and harked back.

"But I don't see," he began, and halted, casting about to express

himself. "I don't see why, if you read it like that to yourself, you

should read it differently to old Hichens. That's a sort of pretending,

you know."

She turned her eyes on him, and they were straight and honest, as

always. "Oh," said she, "you are a man, of course!"

Master Dicky blushed with pleasure.

"Men," she went on, "can go the straight way to get what they wish.

The way is usually hard--it ought to be hard if the man is worth

anything--but it is always quite straight and simple, else it is wrong.

Now women have to win through men; which means that they must go round

about."

"But old Hichens?"

To herself she might have answered, "He only is allowed to me here.

On whom else can I practise to please? But, alas! I practise for a

master who never comes!" Aloud she said, "You are excited to-day,

Dicky. You have something to tell me."

"I should think I had!"

"What is it?"

"It's about Uncle Harry. Dad showed me a letter from him to-day, and

he's fought a splendid action down off Grand Bahama. Oh, you must hear!

It seems he'd been beating about in his frigate for close on three

months--on and off the islands on the look-out for those Spanish fellows

that snap up our fruit-ships. Well, the water on board was beginning to

smell; so he ran in through the nor'-west entrance of Providence

Channel, anchored just inside, and sent his casks ashore to be refilled.

They'd taken in the fresh stock, and the _Venus_ was weighing for sea

again almost before the last boatload came alongside.--Can't you see

her, the beauty! One anchor lifted, t'other chain shortened in, tops'ls

and t'gallants'ls cast off, ready to cant her at the right moment--"

"Is that how they do it?"

"Of course it is. Well just then Uncle Harry spied a boat beating in

through the entrance. He had passed her outside two days before--one of

those small open craft that dodge about groping for sponges--splendid

naked fellows, the crews are. She had put about and run back in search

of him, and her news was of a Spanish guarda-costa making down towards

Havana with three prizes. Think of it! Uncle Harry was off and after

them like a greyhound, and at sunrise next morning he sighted them in a

bunch. He had the wind of them and the legs of them; there isn't a

speedier frigate afloat than the _Venus_--although, he says, she was

getting foul with weed: and after being chased for a couple of hours the

Spaniard and two of the prizes hauled up and showed fight. Now for it!

. . . He ran past the guarda-costa, drawing her fire, but no great harm

done; shot up under the sterns of the two prizes, that were lying not

two hundred yards apart; and raked 'em with half-a-broadside apiece--no

time, you see, to reload between. It pretty well cleaned every Spaniard

off their decks--Why are you putting your hands to your ears!"

"Go on," said Ruth withdrawing them.

"By this, of course, he had lost way and given the guarda-costa the wind

of him. But she couldn't reach the _Venus_ for twenty minutes and more,

because of the prizes lying helpless right in her way, and in half that

time Uncle Harry had filled sail again and was manoeuvring out of

danger. Bit by bit he worked around her for the wind'ard berth, got it,

bore down again and hammered her for close upon three hours. She

fought, he says, like a rat in a sink, and when at last she pulled down

her colours the two prizes had patched up somehow and were well off for

Havana after the third, that had showed no fight from the beginning.

Quick as lightning he gets his prisoners on board, heads off on the new

chase, and by sundown has taken the prizes all three--the third one a

timber-ship, full of mahogany . . . That wasn't the end of his luck,

either; for the captain of the guarda-costa turned out to be a

blackguard that two years ago took a British captain prisoner and cut

off his ears, which accounts for his fighting so hard. 'Didn't want to

meet me if he could help it,' writes Uncle Harry, and says the man

wouldn't haul down the flag till his crew had tied him up with ropes."

"What happened to him?"

"Uncle Harry shipped him off to England. This was from Carolina, where

he sailed in with all the four vessels in convoy. And now, guess!

He has refitted there, and is sailing around for Boston, and papa has

promised to ask him to take me for a cruise, to see if he can make a

sailor of me!"

"But that won't be for years."

"Oh yes, it will. You can join the Navy at any age. They ship you on

as a cabin-boy, or sometimes as the Captain's servant; and papa says

that for the first cruise Uncle Harry's wife will look after me."

"But"--Ruth opened beautiful eyes of astonishment. "Your Uncle Harry is

not married? Why, more than once you have told me that you would never

take a wife when you grew up, but be like your uncle and live only for

sailing a ship and fighting."

"He is, though. It happened at Carolina, whilst the _Venus_ was

refitting; and I believe her father is Governor there, or something of

the sort, but I didn't read that part of the letter very carefully.

There was a lot of silly talk in it, quite different from the fighting.

I remember, though, he said he was coming around here for his honeymoon;

and I'm glad, on the whole."

"On the whole? When you've dreamed, all this while, of seeing your

uncle and growing up to be like him!"

"I mean that on the whole I'm glad he is married. It--it shows the two

things can go together after all; and, Ruth--"

She turned in some wonderment as his voice faltered, and wondered more

at sight of his young face. It was crimson.

"No, please! I want you not to look," he entreated. "I want you to turn

your face away and listen . . . Ruth," he blurted, "I love you better

than anybody in the whole world!"

"Dear Dicky!"

"--and I think you're the loveliest person that ever was--besides being

the best."

"It's lovely of you, at any rate, to think so." Ruth, forgetting his

command, turned her eyes again on Dicky, and they were dewy. For indeed

she loved him and his boyish chivalrous ways. Had he not been her

friend from the first, taking her in perfect trust, and in the hour that

had branded her and in her dreams seared her yet? Often, yet, in the

mid-watches of the night she started out of sleep and lay quivering

along her exquisite body from head to heel, while the awful writing

awoke and crawled and ate again, etching itself upon her flesh.

"But--but it made me miserable!" choked Dicky.

"Miserable! Why?"

"Because I wanted to grow up and marry you," he managed to say

defiantly. "And the two things didn't seem to fit at all. I couldn't

make them fit. But of course," he went on in a cheerfuller voice, the

worst of his confession over, "if Uncle Harry can be married, why

shouldn't we?"

She bent her head low over the book. Calf-love is absurd, but so

honest, so serious; and like all other sweet natural foolishness should

be sacred to the pure of heart.

"I ought to tell you something though," he went on gravely and

hesitated.

"Yes, Dicky! What is it?"

"Well, I don't quite know what it means, and I don't like to ask any one

else. Perhaps you can tell me. . . . I wouldn't ask it if it weren't

that I'd hate to take you in; or if I could find out any other way."

"But what is it, dear?"

"Something against me. I can't tell what, though I've looked at myself

again and again in the glass, trying." He met her eyes bravely, with an

effort. "Ruth, dear--what is a bastard?"

Ruth sat still. Her palms were folded, one upon another, over the book

on her knees.

"But what is it?" he pleaded.

"It means," she said quietly, "a child whose father and mother are not

married--not properly married."

A pause followed--a long pause--and the tumbling cascade sounded louder

and louder in Ruth's ears, while Dicky considered.

"Do you think," he asked at length "that papa was not properly married

to my mother?"

"No, dear--no. And even if that were so, what difference could it make

to my loving you?"

"It wouldn't make any! Sure?"

"Sure."

"But it might make a difference to papa," he persisted, "if ever papa

had another child--like Abraham, you know--" Here he jumped to his

feet, for she had risen of a sudden. "Why, what is the matter?"

She held out a hand. There were many dragon-flies by the fall, and for

the moment he guessed that one of them had stung her.

"Dicky," she said. "Whatever happens, you and I will be friends

always."

"Always," he echoed, taking her hand and ready to search for the mark of

the sting. But her eyes were fastened on the water bubbling from the

well head.

A branch creaked aloft, and to the right of the well head the hickory

bushes rustled and parted.

"So here are the truants!" exclaimed a voice. "Good-morning, Miss

Josselin!"