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2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].
3. Table of Contents added by Transcriber.
A LITTLE WIZARD
[Illustration: STANLEY J. WEYMAN]
A LITTLE WIZARD
BY
STANLEY J. WEYMAN
AUTHOR OF
"A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE," "FRANCIS CLUDDE,"
"UNDER THE RED ROBE," ETC., ETC.
NEW YORK
R. F. FENNO & COMPANY
9 and 11 EAST 16th STREET
COPYRIGHT, 1895.
R. F. FENNO & COMPANY.
_A Little Wizard_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. Pattenhall.
II. Malham High Moors.
III. Langdale's Horse.
IV. The Meal Chest
V. Treasure Trove.
VI. Dead Sea Apples.
VII. The Wooden Cross.
VIII. A Strange Trial.
IX. His Excellency's Judgment.
A LITTLE WIZARD
CHAPTER I.
PATTENHALL.
When the agent of General Skippon, to whom the estate of Pattenhall by
Ripon fell, as part of his reward after the battle of Naseby, went
down to take possession, he found a little boy sitting on a heap of
stones a few paces from the entrance gate. The old house (which has
since been pulled down) lay a quarter of a mile from the road and
somewhat in a hollow; but its many casements, blushing and sparkling
in the glow of the evening sun, caught the rider's eye, and led him
into the comfortable belief that he had reached his destination. He
had come from Ripon, however, and the village lies on the farther side
of the house from that town; consequently he had seen no one whom he
could question, and he hailed the boy's presence with relief, checking
his horse, and calling to him to know if this was Pattenhall.
The lad crouching on the stones, and nervously plucking the grass
beside him, looked up at the four stern men sitting squarely in their
saddles. But he did not answer. He might have been deaf.
"Come!" Agent Hoby said, repeating his question roughly. "You have got
a tongue, my lad. Is this old squire Patten's?"
The boy shook his head mutely. He looked about twelve years old.
"Is it farther on?"
"Yes, farther on," the lad muttered, scarcely moving his lips.
"Where?"
Still keeping his eyes, which were large and brown, on his questioner,
the boy pointed towards the tower of the church, a quarter of a mile
away.
The agent stifled an exclamation, such as in other times would have
been an oath. "Umph! I thought we were there!" he muttered. "However,
it is but a step. Come up, mare."
The boy watched the four riders plod on along the road until the
trees, which were in the full glory of their summer foliage, and
almost met across the dusty way, hid them from his eyes. Then he rose,
and shaking his fist with passionate vehemence in the direction in
which they had gone, turned towards the gateway as if he would go up
to the house. Before he had taken three steps, however, he changed his
mind, and coming slowly back to the heap of stones, sat down in the
same place and posture as before. The movement to retreat and the
return were alike characteristic. In frame the boy was altogether
childish, being puny and slight, and somewhat stunted; but his small
face, browned by wind and sun, expressed both will and sensibility. As
he sat waiting for the travellers to return, there was a sparkle, and
not of tears only, in his eyes. His mouth took an ugly shape, and his
small hand found and clutched one of the stones on which he sat.
Agent Hoby had never been more astonished in his life than when he
returned hot and angry and found him still there. It was the last
thing he had expected. "You little villain!" he cried, shortening his
whip in his hand, and spurring his horse on to the strip of turf,
which then, as now, bordered the road--"how dare you tell lies to the
Commons' Commissioners?"
[Illustration: He turned and rode in.--Page 9.]
There was a slender gap in the wall behind the heap of stones, and the
lad fell back into this, still clutching his missile in his hand. "I
told no lies!" he said, looking defiantly at the angry man. "You asked
me for Squire Patten, and I sent you to him--to the churchyard!"
One of the men behind Hoby chuckled grimly; and Hoby himself, who had
ridden with Cromwell at Naseby, and looked the Robber Prince in the
eyes, held his hand. "You little whelp!" he said, half in anger and
half in admiration. "It is easy to see what brood you come of! I have
half a mind to lash your back for you! Be off to your mammy, and bid
her whip you! My hand is too heavy."
With that, taking no further notice of the boy, he turned and rode in
through the gate. The aspect of the house, the quality of the herbage,
the size of the timber, the lack of stock, all claimed at once his
agent's eye, and rendered it easy for him to forget the incident. He
grumbled at the sagacity of the Roundhead troopers, who had lain a
night at Pattenhall before Marston Moor, and swept it as bare as a
board. He had a grunt of sympathy to spare for Squire Patten, who,
sore wounded in the same fight, had ridden home to die three days
later. He gave a thought even to young Patten, who had forfeited the
last chance of saving his sequestrated estate by breaking his parole,
and again appearing in arms against the Parliament. But of the lad
crawling slowly along the path behind him he thought nothing. And the
boy, young as he was, felt this and resented it.
When the party presently reached the house, and the few servants who
remained came out obsequiously to receive them, the boy felt his
loneliness and sudden insignificance still more keenly. He saw
stirrups held, and heard terms of honor passing; and he crept away to
the hayloft to give vent to the tears he was too proud to shed in
public. Safe in this refuge, he flung himself down on the hay and
showed himself all child; now sobbing as if his heart was broken, and
now clenching his little fists and beating the air in impotent
passion.
The solitude to which he was left showed that he had good cause for
his grief. No one asked for him, no one sought him, who had lately
been the most important person in the place. The loft grew dark, the
windows changed to mere patches of grey in the midst of blackness. At
any other time, and under any other circumstances, the child would
have been afraid to remain there alone. But grief and indignation
swallow up fear, and in the darkness he called on his dead father and
mother, and felt them nearer than in the day. Young as he was, the
child could remember a time when his absence for half an hour would
have set the house by the ears, and started a dozen pairs of legs in
search of him; when loving voices, silent now forever, would have
cried his name through yard and paddock, and a score of servants, whom
death and dearth had not yet scattered, would have rushed to gratify
his smallest need.
No wonder that at the thought of those days, and of the loving care
and gentle hands which had guarded him from hour to hour, the solitary
child crouching in the hay and darkness cried long and passionately.
He knew little of the quarrel between King and Commons, and nothing of
Laud or Strafford, Pym or Hampden, Ship-money or the New Model. But he
could suffer. He was old enough to remember and feel, and compare past
things with present; and understanding that today his father's house
was passing into the hands of strangers, he experienced all the terror
and anguish which a sense of homelessness combined with helplessness
can inflict. Lonely and neglected he had been for some time now; but
he had felt his loneliness little (comparatively speaking) until
to-day.
Agent Hoby had finished his supper. Stretching his legs before the
empty hearth in the attitude of one who had done a day's work, he was
in the act of admonishing Gridley the butler on his duty to his new
master, when he became aware of a slight movement in the direction of
the door. The panelled walls of the parlor in which he sat swallowed
up the light, and the candles stood in his way. He had to raise one
above his head and peer below it before he could make out anything.
When he did, and the face of the lad he had seen by the gate grew as
it were out of the panel, his first feeling was one of alarm. He
started and muttered an exclamation, thinking that he saw amiss; and
that either the October he had drunk was stronger than ordinary, or
there was something uncanny in the house. When a second look, however,
persuaded him that the boy was there in the flesh, he gave way to
anger.
"Gridley!" he said, knitting his brows, "who is this, and how does he
come to be here? Is he one of your brats, man?"
"One of mine?" the butler answered stupidly.
"Ay, one of yours! Or how comes he to be here?" the agent answered
querulously, sitting forward with a hand on each arm of his chair, and
frowning at the boy, who returned his gaze with interest.
The butler looked at the lad as if he were considering him in some new
light, and hesitated before he answered. "It is the young master," he
said at last.
"The young what?" the agent exclaimed, leaning still farther forward,
and putting into the words as much surprise as possible.
"It is the young master," Gridley repeated sullenly. "And he is here
in season, for I want to know what I am to do with him."
"Do you mean that he is a Patten?" Hoby muttered, staring at the lad
as if he were bewitched.
"To be sure," Gridley answered, looking also at the boy.
"But your master had only one son? Those were my instructions."
"Two," said the butler. "Master Francis--"
"Who is with Duke Hamilton in Scotland, and if caught in arms in
England will hang," rejoined the agent, sternly. "Well?"
"And this one."
Hoby glared at the boy as if he would eat him. To find that the
estate, which he had considered free from embarrassing claims, was
burdened with a child, annoyed him beyond measure. The warrants under
which he acted overrode, of course, all rights and all privileges; in
the eye of the law the boy before him had no more to do with the old
house and the wide acres than the meanest peasant who had a hovel on
the land. But the agent was a humane man, and in his way a just one;
and though he had been well content to ignore the malignant young
reprobate whom he had hitherto considered the only claimant, he was
vexed to find there was another, more innocent and more helpless.
"He must have relations," he said at last, after rubbing his closely
cropped head with an air of much perplexity. "He must go to them."
"He has none alive that I know of," the butler answered stolidly. He
was a high-shouldered, fat-faced man, with sly eyes.
"There are no other Pattens?" quoth Hoby.
"Not so much as an old maid."
"Then he must go to his mother's people."
"She was Cornish," Gridley answered, with a slight grin. "Her family
were out with Sir Ralph Hopton, and are now in Holland, I hear."
Repulsed on all sides, the agent rose from his chair. "Well, bring him
to me in the morning," he said irritably, "and I will see what can be
done. His matter can wait. For yourself, however, make up your mind,
my man; go or stay as you please. But if you stay it can only be upon
my conditions. You understand that?" he added with some asperity.
Gridley assented with a corresponding smack of sullenness in his tone,
and taking the hint, bore off the boy to bed. Soon the few lights,
which still shone in the great house that had so quietly changed
masters, died out one by one; until all lay black and silent, except
one small room, low-ceiled, musty, and dark-panelled, which lay to the
right of the hall, but a step or two below its level. This room was
the butler's pantry and sleeping-chamber. The plate which had once
glittered on its shelves, the silver flagons and Sheffield cups, the
spice bowls and sugar-basins, were gone, devoted these five years past
to the melting-pot and the Royal cause. The club and blunderbuss which
should have guarded them remained, however, in their slings beside the
bed; along with some show of dingy pewter and dingier blackjacks, and
as many empty bottles as served at once to litter the gloomy little
dungeon and prove that the old squire's cellar was not yet empty.
In the midst of this disorder, and in no way incommoded by the close
atmosphere of the room, which reeked of beer and stale liquors, the
butler sat thinking far into the night. On the table beside him, which
had been cleared to make room for it, lay an open Bible; but as he
never consulted its pages or even looked towards it, we may assume
that it lay there rather for show than use, and possibly had been
arranged for the express purpose of catching the eye of Master Hoby
should he push his inquiries as far as this apartment.
Heedless or forgetful of it, Gridley now sat staring into vacancy,
with a dark expression on his face. Now and again he bit his
finger-nails as if some problem of more than ordinary importance
occupied his thoughts. His aspect too was changed in sympathy with the
dark hours of the night. Tear and anticipation, greed and cunning,
peered from behind the mask of sly composure which he had worn in the
parlor. He had now the air of a man who would and dare not, and then
again who would not shrink at risks. At last he rose with his mind
made up, and creeping to the door secured it. With a stealthy glance
round, he next extinguished the light, plunging the room into
darkness. After that he was still to be heard shuffling about for some
time, but of his actions or the business on which he was bent nothing
could be known for certain. Only once a rich ringing sound as of metal
on metal surprised the silence, and hanging on the air--for an
eternity as it seemed to his alarmed ear--died reluctantly in the
hollows of the pewter flagons on the shelf. It was nothing, it was the
merest tinkle, it could scarcely have awakened the suspicions of the
most critical listener. But the man who made the sound and heard the
sound was a coward with an evil conscience; and for a full minute
after the last echo had whispered itself away, he crouched on the
floor, with the cold dew on his brow and his hand shaking. After that,
silence.
Little Jack Patten, awaking suddenly as the first glimmer of dawn
entered his room, found the butler standing by his side. The boy would
have cried out, not knowing him in the half light, but Gridley
muttered his name, and enjoining silence with a finger on his lip, sat
down on the pallet by the lad's side.
"What is it?" Jack said, sitting up. The man's cautious and
apprehensive air, no less than the gloom which still filled the room
and rendered objects indistinct, scared him.
"Hush!" the butler answered in a low voice, "and listen to me, Jack. I
have been thinking about you. You know this house is not yours any
longer. It will be shut up, and there will be none but Roundheaded
soldiers here, and the man below will be master. You don't want to
stay here and eat his bread?"
The boy shook his head. But, even as he shook it, the tears rose to
his eyes. For where was he to go? Yesterday's events, his
friendlessness and helplessness, recurred to his mind in a rush of
bitter memories.
"Would you like to come away with me?" Gridley muttered, keenly
watching the effect of his words.
Jack peered at him doubtfully. The butler had not been so kind to him
of late as to give this proposal an air of complete naturalness. The
manner and the tone of it were strange even in the child's judgment.
"Where are you going?" he asked cautiously.
"To my home," said the butler, licking his lips, as if they were dry.
"It is on the moors, is it not?"
The butler nodded. "Above Pateley?"
"It is many a mile above Pateley--up, up, up; ay, miles above it."
The child's eyes glistened at that. The moors were his fairyland. He
had passed many and many a happy hour in dreaming of the marvellous
things which lay beyond the purple hills to westward; the rugged
broken line behind which the sun went down each day in a glory of
crimson or orange. That line, he knew, was the beginning of the moors.
The blue distance beyond it he had peopled with his own visions of
giants and dwarfs, and witches and warlocks, and added besides all the
tales which passed current in Pattenhall and the low country of doings
_in t' moors_. He knew the moor people kept to themselves and were
wild and savage, inhabiting hills a mile high and valleys miles in
depth; and he longed to visit them and see these things for himself.
His eyes dried quickly as he listened to Gridley, and eagerly asked,
"Above Pateley?" which was the boundary of his known world, "miles and
miles above Pateley, Gridley?"
"Ay, up Skipton way."
"Is that in the heart of the moors, Gridley?"
"There is no other heart," the butler answered gruffly, "unless,
maybe, it is Settle. And it is Settle side of Skipton."
"Are you going now?" the lad said impulsively, standing up straight in
his bed, with his brown eyes staring and his fair cheeks glowing with
anticipation and excitement.
"This very minute."
"I'll come with you! You will let me dress, Gridley?"
"Ay, dress quickly. We must be away before any one is awake."
"I'll be quick!" Jack answered.
He was too young to see anything strange in the hurry and secrecy of
such a departure. The troubles of the times had made him familiar with
abrupt comings and goings. He trembled, it is true, as he stole down
the dark staircase on tiptoe and clinging to the butler's hand; but it
was with excitement, not fear. He felt no surprise at finding one of
the great plough-horses standing saddled in its stall; nor did the
size of the wallets which he saw behind the saddle arouse any doubt or
suspicion in his mind. Gridley's haste to be gone, the trembling which
seized the butler as they crossed the farmyard, the frequent glances
he cast behind him until the road was fairly gained, seemed to the boy
natural enough. All Jack knew was that he was leaving his enemies
behind him. They had killed his father and exiled his brother.
Naturally he feared and hated them. He was too young to understand
that he stood in no peril himself, but that on the contrary his proper
disposal had caused Master Hoby the loss of at least an hour's sleep.
Before it was fairly light the fugitives were already a mile away. The
boy rode behind Gridley, clinging to a strap passed round the latter's
waist; and the two jogged along comfortably enough as far as the body
was concerned, though it was evident that Gridley's anxiety was little
if at all allayed. They shunned the highway, and went by hedge paths
and bridle-roads, which avoided houses and villages. When the sun rose
the two were already five or six miles from Pattenhall, in a country
new to the lad, though sufficiently like his own to whet his curiosity
instead of satisfying it.
"How far are we from the moors, Gridley?" he asked as often as he
dared, for the butler's temper seemed uncertain. "Shall we be there to
breakfast?"
"Ay, we'll be there to breakfast," was the usual answer.
And presently, to the boy's delight, the country began to trend
upwards, the path grew steeper. The coppices and hedgerows, the clumps
of elms and oaks and beeches, which had hidden the higher prospects
from his eyes, and almost persuaded him that he was making no
progress, began to grow more sparse; until at last they failed
altogether, and he saw before him a rising slope of marsh and
moorland, swelling here and there into rocky ridges, between which the
sycamores and ashes grew in stunted bunches. Above he raised his eyes
to a heaven wider and more open than that to which he was accustomed;
while lark beyond lark, soaring each higher than the other, seemed
striving which should celebrate most fitly the balmy air and warm
sunshine which flooded all.
"Are these the moors, Gridley?" the boy asked with delight.
"These, the moors?" the man answered, with the first smile he had
allowed himself that morning. "You wait a bit, and you'll see!"
His tone was not encouraging, but as he hastened to give the lad his
breakfast and a drink of beer, Jack passed over the change of manner,
and rocking himself from side to side, as far as the strap would let
him, went merrily upwards, munching as he rode. Over Pateley Bridge
and Pateley moors they went, and upwards still to Bewerley Fell,
whence they saw the Riding stretched like a picture behind them. Jack
fancied, but that was, impossible, that he could see the chimneys and
the great oak at Pattenhall. Leaving Bewerley they skirted Hebdon Moor
on the north side, rising here so high that Jack could see nothing on
either hand but horrid crags, and ridges of grey limestone and vast
slopes of grey rock. Here, too, there was little turf and no heather,
but only stone-crop and saxifrages, with cruel quagmires and bogs in
the hollows. The very sky seemed changed. It grew dark and overcast,
and clouds and mist gathered round the travellers, hiding the path,
yet disclosing from time to time the huge brow of Ingleborough or the
flat head of Penighent. The wind moaned across the grey steeps, and a
small rain began to fall and quickly wet them to the skin.
The boy shuddered. "Are these the moors?" he asked.
"Ay, these are the moors!" his companion answered grimly. "And
moorland weather. Yon's the High Moors and Malham Tarn. Your eyes are
young. Do you see a grey spot in the nook to the right, yonder, two
miles away! That is Little Howe, and we are bound for it."
"Who lives there?" Jack answered, as he looked drearily over the
desolate upland.
"My brother," the butler answered, with a touch of ferocity in his
tone. "Simon Gridley, he is called, and you will know him soon
enough."