Produced by Sandra Laythorpe
UNDER THE STORM
or
STEADFAST'S CHARGE
By Charlotte M. Yonge
Author of "The Heir of Redclyffe," &c.
[Illustration: Cover]
CONTENTS.
Chapter I.--The Trust
" II.--The Stragglers
" III.--Kirk Rapine
" IV.--The Good Cause
" V.--Desolation
" VI.--Left to Themselves
" VII.--The Hermit's Gulley
" VIII.--Stead in Possession
" IX.--Wintry Times
" X.--A Terrible Harvest Day
" XI.--The Fortunes of War
" XII.--Farewell to the Cavaliers
" XIII.--Godly Venn's Troop
" XIV.--The Question
" XV.--A Table of Love in the Wilderness
" XVI.--A Fair Offer
" XVII.--The Groom in Grey
" XVIII.--Jeph's Good Fortune
" XIX.--Patience
" XX.--Emlyn's Service
" XXI.--The Assault of the Cavern
" XXII.--Emlyn's Troth
" XXIII.--Fulfilment
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
Farewell to the Cavaliers
The Hiding of the Casket
Stead Stirring the Porridge
Finding of Emlyn
Stead before the Roundheads
Emlyn at Market
UNDER THE STORM:
OR
STEADFAST'S CHARGE.
CHAPTER I. THE TRUST.
"I brought them here as to a sanctuary."
SOUTHEY.
Most of us have heard of the sad times in the middle of the seventeenth
century, when Englishmen were at war with one another and quiet villages
became battlefields.
We hear a great deal about King and Parliament, great lords and able
generals, Cavaliers and Roundheads, but this story is to help us to
think how it must have gone in those times with quiet folk in cottages
and farmhouses.
There had been peace in England for a great many years, ever since the
end of the wars of the Roses. So the towns did not want fortifications
to keep out the enemy, and their houses spread out beyond the old walls;
and the country houses had windows and doors large and wide open, with
no thought of keeping out foes, and farms and cottages were freely
spread about everywhere, with their fields round them.
The farms were very small, mostly held by men who did all the work
themselves with the help of their families.
Such a farm belonged to John Kenton of Elmwood. It lay at the head of a
long green lane, where the bushes overhead almost touched one another
in the summer, and the mud and mire were very deep in winter; but that
mattered the less as nothing on wheels went up or down it but the hay
or harvest carts, creaking under their load, and drawn by the old mare,
with a cow to help her.
Beyond lay a few small fields, and then a bit of open ground scattered
with gorse and thorn bushes, and much broken by ups and downs. There,
one afternoon on a big stone was seated Steadfast Kenton, a boy of
fourteen, sturdy, perhaps loutish, with an honest ruddy face under his
leathern cap, a coarse smock frock and stout gaiters. He was watching
the fifteen sheep and lambs, the old goose and gander and their nine
children, the three cows, eight pigs, and the old donkey which got their
living there.
From the top of the hill, beyond the cleft of the river Avon, he could
see the smoke and the church towers of the town of Bristol, and beyond
it, the slime of the water of the Bristol Channel; and nearer, on one
side, the spire of Elmwood Church looked up, and, on the other, the
woods round Elmwood House, and these ran out as it were, lengthening and
narrowing into a wooded cleft or gulley, Hermit's Gulley, which broke
the side of the hill just below where Steadfast stood, and had a little
clear stream running along the bottom.
Steadfast's little herd knew the time of day as well as if they all had
watches in their pockets, and they never failed to go down and have a
drink at the brook before going back to the farmyard.
They did not need to be driven, but gathered into the rude steep path
that they and their kind had worn in the side of the ravine. Steadfast
followed, looking about him to judge how soon the nuts would be ripe,
while his little rough stiff-haired dog Toby poked about in search of
rabbits or hedgehogs, or the like sport.
Steadfast liked that pathway home beside the stream, as boys do love
running water. Good stones could be got there, water rats might be
chased, there were strawberries on the banks which he gathered and
threaded on stalks of grass for his sisters, Patience and Jerusha. They
used to come with him and have pleasant games, but it was a long time
since Patience had been able to come out, for in the winter, a grievous
trouble had come on the family. The good mother had died, leaving a
little baby of six weeks old, and Patience, who was only thirteen, had
to attend to everything at home, and take care of poor little sickly
Benoni with no one to help her but her little seven years old sister.
The children's lives had been much less bright since that sad day; and
Steadfast seldom had much time for play. He knew he must get home as
fast as he could to help Patience in milking the cows, feeding the pigs
and poultry, and getting the supper, or some of the other things that
his elder brother Jephthah called wench-work and would not do.
He could not, however, help looking up at the hole in the side of the
steep cliff, where one might climb up to such a delightful cave, in
which he and Patience had so often played on hot days. It had been their
secret, and a kind of palace to them. They had sat there as king and
queen, had paved it with stones from the brook, and had had many plans
for the sports they would have there this summer, little thinking that
Patience would have been turned into a grave, busy little housewife,
instead of a merry, playful child.
Toby looked up too, and began to bark. There was a rustling in the
bushes below the cave, and Steadfast, at first in dismay to see his
secret delight invaded, beheld between the mountain ash boughs and ivy,
to his great surprise, a square cap and black cassock tucked up, and
then a bit of brown leathern coat, which he knew full well. It was the
Vicar, Master Holworth, and his father John Kenton was Churchwarden,
so it was no wonder to see him and the Parson together, but what could
bring them here--into Steadfast's cave? and with a dark lantern too!
They seemed as surprised, perhaps as vexed as he was, at the sight of
him, but his father said, "'Tis my lad, Steadfast, I'll answer for him."
"And so will I," returned the clergyman. "Is anyone with you, my boy?"
"No, your reverence, no one save the beasts."
"Then come up here," said his father. "Someone has been playing here, I
see."
"Patience and I, father, last summer."
"No one else?"
"No, no one. We put those stones and those sticks when we made a fire
there last year, and no one has meddled with them since."
"Thou and Patience," said Mr. Holworth thoughtfully. "Not Jephthah nor
the little maid?"
"No, sir," replied Steadfast, "we would not let them know, because we
wanted a place to ourselves."
For in truth the quiet ways and little arrangements of these two had
often been much disturbed by the rough elder brother who teased and
laughed at them, and by the troublesome little sister, who put her
fingers into everything.
The Vicar and the Churchwarden looked at one another, and John Kenton
muttered, "True as steel."
"Your father answers for you, my boy," said the Vicar. "So we will e'en
let you know what we are about. I was told this morn by a sure hand that
the Parliament men, who now hold Bristol Castle, are coming to deal with
the village churches even as they have dealt with the minster and with
St. Mary's, Redcliffe."
"A murrain on them!" muttered Kenton.
"I wot that in their ignorance they do it," gently quoted the Vicar.
"But we would fain save from their hands the holy Chalice and paten
which came down to our Church from the ancient times--and which bearing
on them, as they do, the figure of the Crucifixion of our blessed Lord,
would assuredly provoke the zeal of the destroyers. Therefore have we
placed them in this casket, and your father devised hiding them within
this cave, which he thought was unknown to any save himself--"
"Yea," said John, "my poor brother Will and I were wont to play there
when we herded the cattle on the hill. It was climbing yon ash tree that
stands out above that he got the fall that was the death of him at
last. I've never gone nigh the place with mine own good will since that
day--nor knew the children had done so--but methought 'twas a lonesome
place and on mine own land, where we might safest store the holy things
till better times come round."
"And so I hope they will," said Mr. Holworth.
"I hear good news of the King's cause in the north."
Then they began to consult where to place the precious casket. They had
brought tinder and matches, and Steadfast, who knew the secrets of the
cave even better than his father, showed them a little hollow, far back,
which would just hold the chest, and being closed in front with a big
stone, fast wedged in, was never likely to be discovered readily.
[Illustration: The Hiding Of The Casket]
"This has been a hiding place already."
"Methinks this has once been a chapel," said the clergyman presently,
pointing to some rude carvings--one something like a cross, and a large
stone that might have served as an altar.
"Belike," said Kenton, "there's an old stone pile, a mere hovel, down
below, where my grandfather said he remembered an old monk, a hermit, or
some such gear--a Papist--as lived in hiding. He did no hurt, and was
a man from these parts, so none meddled with him, or gave notice to the
Queen's officers, and our folk at the farm sold his baskets at the town,
and brought him a barley loaf twice a week till he died, all alone in
his hut. Very like he said his mass here."
John wondered to find that the minister thought this made the place
more suitable. The whole cavern was so low that the two men could hardly
stand upright in it, though it ran about twelve yards back. There were
white limestone drops like icicles hanging above from the roof; and
bats, disturbed by the light, came flying about the heads of their
visitors, while streamers of ivy and old man's beard hung over the
mouth, and were displaced by the heads of the men.
"None is like to find the spot," said John Kenton, as he tried to
replace the tangled branches that had been pushed aside.
"God grant us happier days for bringing it forth," said the clergyman.
All three bared their heads, and Mr. Holworth uttered a few words of
prayer and blessing; then let John help him down the steep scramble
and descent, and looked up to see whether any sign of the cave could be
detected from the edge of the brook. Kenton shook his head reassuringly.
"Ah!" said Mr. Holworth, "it minds me that none ever found again the
holy Ark of the Covenant that King Josiah and the Prophet Jeremiah hid
in a cavern within Mount Pisgah! and our sins be many that have provoked
this judgment! Mayhap the boy will be the only one of us who will see
these blessed vessels restored to their Altar once more! He may
have been sent hither to that very end. Now, look you, Steadfast
Kenton--Steadfast thou hast ever been, so far as I have known thee, in
nature as well as in name. Give me thy word that thou wilt never give up
the secret of yonder cavern to any save a lawfully ordained minister of
the church."
"No doubt poor old Clerk North will be in distress about the loss," said
Kenton.
"True, but he had best not be told. His mind is fast going, and he
cannot safely be trusted with such a mighty secret."
"Patience knows the cavern," murmured Steadfast to his father.
"Best have no womenfolk, nor young maids in such a matter," said the
Vicar.
"My wench takes after her good mother," said John, "and I ever found my
secrets were safer in her breast than in mine own. Not that I would have
her told without need. But she might take little Rusha there, or make
the place known to others an she be not warned."
"Steadfast must do as he sees occasion, with your counsel, Master
Kenton," said the Vicar. "It is a great trust we place in you, my son,
to be as it were in charge of the vessels of the sanctuary, and I would
have thy hand and word."
"And," said his father, "though he be slower in speech than some, your
reverence may trust him."
Steadfast gave his brown red hand, and with head bare said, "I promise,
after the minister and before God, never to give up that which lies
within the cave to any man, save a lawfully ordained minister of the
Church."