CHAPTER I.

Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Graeme Mackreth and the

Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

Tales

From Many Sources

Vol. V.

New York

Dodd Mead & Company

1886

CONTENTS.

PAGE.

LOB LIE-BY-THE-FIRE. BY JULIANA H. EWING. 1

WILD JACK. FROM TEMPLE BAR. 87

VIRGINIA. BY MRS. FORRESTER. 145

MR. JOSIAH SMITH'S BALLOON VOYAGE. FROM BELGRAVIA. 172

NUMBER 7639. BY MARY FRANCES PEARD. 137

GONERIL. BY A. MARY F. ROBINSON. 239

OUT OF SEASON. FROM TEMPLE BAR. 266

LOB LIE-BY-THE-FIRE

INTRODUCTORY.

Lob Lie-By-The-Fire--the Lubber-fiend, as Milton calls him--is a rough

kind of Brownie or House Elf, supposed to haunt some north-country

homesteads, where he does the work of the farm labourers, for no grander

wages than

"--to earn his cream bowl duly set."

Not that he is insensible of the pleasures of rest, for

"--When, in one night, ere glimpse of morn,

His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn

That ten day-labourers could not end,

Then lies him down the Lubber-fiend,

And, stretched out all the chimney's length,

Basks at the fire his hairy strength."

It was said that a Lob Lie-by-the-fire once haunted the little old Hall

at Lingborough. It was an old stone house on the Borders, and seemed to

have got its tints from the grey skies that hung above it. It was

cold-looking without, but cosy within, "like a north-country heart,"

said Miss Kitty, who was a woman of sentiment, and kept a commonplace

book.

It was long before Miss Kitty's time that Lob Lie-by-the-fire first came

to Lingborough. Why and whence he came is not recorded, nor when and

wherefore he withdrew his valuable help, which, as wages rose, and

prices rose also, would have been more welcome than ever.

This tale professes not to record more of him than comes within the

memory of man.

Whether (as Fletcher says) he were the son of a witch, if curds and

cream won his heart, and new clothes put an end to his labours, it does

not pretend to tell. His history is less known than that of any other

sprite. It may be embodied in some oral tradition that shall one day be

found; but as yet the mists of forgetfulness hide it from the

storyteller of to-day as deeply as the sea fogs are wont to lie between

Lingborough and the adjacent coast.

THE LITTLE OLD LADIES.--ALMS DONE IN SECRET.

The little old ladies of Lingborough were heiresses.

Not, mind you, in the sense of being the children of some mushroom

millionnaire, with more money than manners, and (as Miss Betty had seen

with her own eyes, on the daughter of a manufacturer who shall be

nameless) dresses so fine in quality and be-furbelowed in construction

as to cost a good quarter's income (of the little old ladies), but

trailed in the dirt from "beggarly extravagance," or kicked out behind

at every step by feet which fortune (and a very large fortune, too) had

never taught to walk properly.

"And how should she know how to walk?" said Miss Betty. "Her mother

can't have taught her, poor body! that ran through the streets of Leith,

with a creel on her back, as a lassie; and got out of her coach (lined

with satin, you mind, sister Kitty?) to her dying day, with a bounce,

all in a heap, her dress caught, and her stockings exposed (among

ourselves, ladies!) like some good wife that's afraid to be late for the

market. Aye, aye! Malcolm Midden--good man!--made a fine pocket of

silver in a dirty trade, but his women'll jerk, and toss, and bounce,

and fuss, and fluster for a generation or two yet, for all the silks and

satins he can buy 'em."

From this it will be seen that the little old ladies inherited some

prejudices of their class, and were also endowed with a shrewdness of

observation common among all classes of north-country women.

But to return to what else they inherited. They were heiresses, as the

last representatives of a family as old in that Border country as the

bold blue hills which broke its horizon. They were heiresses also in

default of heirs male to their father who got the land from his uncle's

dying childless, sons being scarce in the family. They were heiresses,

finally, to the place and the farm, to the furniture that was made when

folk seasoned their wood before they worked it, to a diamond brooch

which they wore by turns, besides two diamond rings, and two black lace

shawls, that had belonged to their mother and their Auntie Jean, long

since departed thither where neither moth nor rust corrupt the true

riches.

As to the incomings of Lingborough, "It was nobody's business but their

own," as Miss Betty said to the lawyer who was their man of business,

and whom they consulted on little matters of rent and repairs at as much

length, and with as much formal solemnity, as would have gone elsewhere

to the changing hands of half a million of money. Without violating

their confidence, however, we may say that the estate paid its way, kept

them in silk stockings, and gave them new tabbinet dresses once in three

years. It supplied their wants the better that they had inherited house

plenishing from their parents, "Which they thanked their stars was not

made of tag-rag, and would last their time," and that they were quite

content with an old home and old neighbours, and never desired to change

the grand air that blew about their native hills for worse, in order to

be poisoned with bad butter, and make the fortunes of extortionate

lodging-house keepers.

The rental of Lingborough did more. How much more the little old ladies

did not know themselves, and no one else shall know, till that which was

done in secret is proclaimed from the housetops.

For they had had a religious scruple, founded upon a literal reading of

the scriptural command that a man's left hand should not know what has

right hand gives in alms, and this scruple had been ingeniously set at

rest by the parson, who, failing in an attempt to explain the force of

Eastern hyperbole to the little ladies' satisfaction, had said that Miss

Betty, being the elder, and the head of the house, might be likened to

the right hand, and Miss Kitty, as the younger, to the left, and that if

they pursued their good works without ostentation, or desiring the

applause even of each other, the spirit of the injunction would be

fulfilled.

The parson was a good man and a clever. He had (as Miss Betty justly

said) a very spiritual piety. But he was also gifted with much

shrewdness in dealing with the various members of his flock. And his

word was law to the sisters.

Thus it came about that the little ladies' charities were not known even

to each other--that Miss Betty turned her morning camlet twice instead

of once, and Miss Kitty denied herself in sugar, to carry out benevolent

little projects which were accomplished in secret, and of which no

record appears in the Lingborough Ledger.

AT TEA WITH MRS. DUNMAW.

The little ladies of Lingborough were very sociable, and there was, as

they said, "as much gaiety as was good for anyone" within their reach.

There were at least six houses at which they drank tea from time to

time, all within a walk. As hosts or guests, you always met the same

people, which was a friendly arrangement, and the programmes of the

entertainments were so uniform, that no one could possibly feel awkward.

The best of manners and home-made wines distinguished these tea parties,

where the company was strictly genteel, if a little faded. Supper was

served at nine, and the parson and the lawyer played whist for love with

different partners on different evenings with strict impartiality.

Small jealousies are apt to be weak points in small societies, but there

was a general acquiescence in the belief that the parson had a friendly

preference for the little ladies of Lingborough.

He lived just beyond them, too, which led to his invariably escorting

them home. Miss Betty and Miss Kitty would not for worlds have been so

indelicate as to take this attention for granted, though it was a custom

of many years' standing. The older sister always went through the form

of asking the younger to "see if the servant had come," and at this

signal the parson always bade the lady of the house good night, and

respectfully proffered his services as an escort to Lingborough.

It was a lovely evening in June, when the little ladies took tea with

the widow of General Dunmaw at her cottage, not quite two miles from

their own home.

It was a memorable evening. The tea party was an agreeable one. The

little ladies had new tabbinets on, and Miss Kitty wore the diamond

brooch. Miss Betty had played whist with the parson, and the younger

sister (perhaps because of the brooch) had been favoured with a good

deal of conversation with the lawyer. It was an honour, because the

lawyer bore the reputation of an _esprit fort_, and was supposed to

have, as a rule, a contempt for feminine intellects, which good manners

led him to veil under an almost officious politeness in society. But

honours are apt to be uneasy blessings, and this one was at least as

harassing as gratifying. For a somewhat monotonous vein of sarcasm, a

painful power of producing puns, and a dexterity in suggesting doubts of

everything, were the main foundation of his intellectual reputation, and

Miss Kitty found them hard to cope with. And it was a warm evening.

But women have much courage, especially to defend a friend or a faith,

and the less Miss Kitty found herself prepared for the conflict the

harder she esteemed it her duty to fight. She fought for Church and

State, for parsons and poor people, for the sincerity of her friends,

the virtues of the Royal Family, the merit of Dr. Drugson's

prescriptions, and for her favourite theory that there is some good in

everyone and some happiness to be found every where.

She rubbed nervously at the diamond brooch with her thin little mittened

hands. She talked very fast; and if the lawyer were guilty of feeling

any ungallant indifference to her observations, she did not so much as

hear his, and her cheeks became so flushed that Mrs. Dunmaw crossed the

room in her China crape shawl and said, "My dear Miss Kitty, I'm sure

you feel the heat very much. Do take my fan, which is larger than

yours."

But Miss Kitty was saved a reply, for at this moment Miss Betty turned

on the sofa, and said, "Dear Kitty, will you kindly see if the

servant--"

And the parson closed the volume of "Friendship's Offering" which lay

before him, and advanced towards Mrs. Dunmaw and took leave in his own

dignified way.

Miss Kitty was so much flustered that she had not even presence of mind

to look for the servant, who had never been ordered to come, but the

parson relieved her by saying in his round, deep voice, "I hope you will

not refuse me the honour of seeing you home, since our roads happen to

lie together," And she was glad to get into the fresh air, and beyond

the doubtful compliments of the lawyer's nasal suavity--"You have been

very severe upon me to-night, Miss Kitty. I'm sure I had no notion I

should find so powerful an antagonist," etc.

MIDSUMMER EVE.--A LOST DIAMOND.

It was Midsummer Eve. The long light of the North was pale and clear,

and the western sky shone luminous through the fir-wood that bordered

the road. Under such dim lights colours deepen, and the great bushes of

broom, that were each one mass of golden blossom, blazed like fairy

watch-fires up the lane.

Miss Kitty leaned on the left arm of the parson and Miss Betty on his

right. She chatted gaily, which left her younger sister at leisure to

think of all the convincing things she had not remembered to say to the

lawyer, as the evening breeze cooled her cheeks.

"A grand prospect for the crops, sir," said Miss petty; "I never saw the

broom so beautiful." But as he leaned forward to look at the yellow

blaze which foretells good luck to farmers, as it shone in the hedge on

the left-hand side of the road, she caught sight of the brooch in Miss

Kitty's lace shawl. Through a gap in the wood the light from the western

sky danced among the diamonds. But where one of the precious stones

should have been there was a little black hole.

"Sister, you've lost a stone out of your brooch!" screamed Miss Betty.

The little ladies were well-trained, and even in that moment of despair

Miss Betty would not hint that her sister's ornaments were not her sole

property.

When Miss Kitty burst into tears the parson was a little astonished as

well as distressed. Men are apt to be so, not perhaps because women cry

on such very small accounts, as because the full reason does not always

transpire. Tears are often the climax of nervous exhaustion and this is

commonly the result of more causes than one. Ostensibly Miss Kitty was

"upset" by the loss of the diamond, but she also wept away a good deal

of the vexation of her unequal conflict with the sarcastic lawyer, and

of all this the parson knew nothing.

Miss Betty knew nothing of that, but she knew enough of things in

general to feel sure that the diamond was not all the matter.

"What is amiss, sister Kitty?" said she. "Have you hurt yourself? Do you

feel ill? Did you know the stone was out?"--"I hope you're not going to

be hysterical, sister Kitty," added Miss Betty anxiously; "there never

was a hysterical woman in our family yet."

"Oh dear no, sister Betty," sobbed Miss Kitty; "but it's all my fault. I

know I was fidgeting with it whilst I was talking; and it's a punishment

on my fidgety ways, and for ever presuming to wear it at all, when

you're the head of the family, and solely entitled to it. And I shall

never forgive myself if it's lost, and if it's found I'll never, never

wear it any more." And as she deluged her best company pocket-handkerchief

(for the useful one was in a big pocket under her dress, and could not be

got at, the parson being present), Church, State, the royal family, the

family Bible, her highest principles, her dearest affections, and the

diamond brooch, all seemed to swim before her disturbed mind in one sea

of desolation.

There was not a kinder heart than the parson's toward women and children

in distress. He tucked the little ladies again under his arms, and

insisted upon going back to Mrs. Dunmaw's searching the lane as they

went. In the pulpit or the drawing room a ready anecdote never failed

him, and on this occasion he had several. Tales of lost rings, and even

single gems, recovered in the most marvellous manner and the most

unexpected places--dug up in gardens, served up to dinner in fishes, and

so forth. "Never," said Miss Kitty, afterward, "never, to her dying day,

could she forget his kindness."

She clung to the parson as a support under both her sources of trouble,

but Miss Betty ran on and back, and hither and thither, looking for the

diamond. Miss Kitty and the parson looked too, and how many aggravating

little bits of glass and silica, and shining nothings and

good-for-nothings there are in the world, no one would believe who has

not looked for a lost diamond on a high road.

But another story of found jewels was to be added to the parson's stock.

He had bent his long back for about the eighteenth time, when such a

shimmer as no glass or silica can give flashed into his eyes, and he

caught up the diamond out of the dust, and it fitted exactly into the

little black hole.

Miss Kitty uttered a cry, and at the same moment Miss Betty, who was

farther down the road, did the same, and these were followed by a third,

which sounded like a mocking echo of both. And then the sisters rushed

together.

"A most miraculous discovery!" gasped Miss Betty.

"You must have passed the very spot before," cried Miss Kitty.

"Though I'm sure, sister, what to do with it now we have found it I

don't know," said Miss Betty, rubbing her nose, as she was wont to do

when puzzled.

"It shall be taken better care of for the future, sister Betty," said

Miss Kitty penitently. "Though how it got out I can't think now."

"Why, bless my soul! you don't suppose it got there of itself, sister?"

snapped Miss Betty. "How it did get there is another matter."

"I felt pretty confident about it, for my own part," smiled the parson

as he joined them.

"Do you mean to say, sir, that you knew it was there?" asked Miss Betty,

solemnly.

"I didn't know the precise spot, my dear madam, but----"

"You didn't see it, sir, I hope?" said Miss Betty.

"Bless me, my dear madam, I found it!" cried the parson.

Miss Betty bridled and bit her lip.

"I never contradict a clergyman, sir," said she, "but I can only say

that if you did see it, it was not like your usual humanity to leave it

lying there."

I've got it in my hand, ma'am!"

"Why

He's got it in his hand, sister!"

cried the parson and Miss Kitty in one breath. Miss Betty was too much

puzzled to be polite.

"What are you talking about?" she asked.

"The diamond, oh dear, oh dear! _The diamond!_" cried Miss Kitty. "But

what are you talking about, sister?"

"_The baby_" said Miss Betty.

WHAT MISS BETTY FOUND.

It was found under a broom-bush. Miss Betty was poking her nose near the

bank that bordered the wood, in her hunt for the diamond, when she

caught sight of a mass of yellow of a deeper tint than the mass of

broom-blossom above it, and this was the baby.

This vivid color, less opaque than "deep chrome" and a shade more

orange, seems to have a peculiar attraction for wandering tribes.

Gipsies use it, and it is a favorite color with Indian squaws. To the

last dirty rag it is effective, whether it flutters near a tent on

Bagshot Heath, or in some wigwam doorway makes a point of brightness

against the grey shadows of the pine forest.

A large kerchief of this, wound about its body, was the baby's only

robe, but he seemed quite comfortable in it when Miss Betty found him,

sleeping on a pillow of deep hair moss, his little brown fists closed as

fast as his eyes, and a crimson toadstool grasped in one of them.

When Miss Betty screamed the baby awoke, and his long black lashes

tickled his cheeks and made him wink and cry. But by the time she

returned with her sister and the parson, he was quite happy again,

gazing up with dark eyes full of delight into the glowing broom-brush,

and fighting the evening breeze with his feet, which were entangled in

the folds of the yellow cloth, and with the battered toadstool which was

still in his hand.

"And, indeed, sir," said Miss Betty, who had rubbed her nose till it

looked like the twin toadstool to that which the baby was flourishing in

her face, "you won't suppose I would have left the poor little thing

another moment, to catch its death of cold on a warm evening like this;

but having no experience of such cases, and remembering that murder at

the inn in the Black Valley, and that the body was not allowed to be

moved till the constables had seen it, I didn't feel to know how it

might be with foundlings, and--"

But still Miss Betty did not touch the bairn. She was not accustomed to

children. But the parson had christened too many babies to be afraid of

them, and he picked up the little fellow in a moment, and tucked the

yellow rag round him, and then addressing the little ladies precisely as

if they were sponsors, he asked in his deep round voice, "Now where on

the face of the earth are the vagabonds who have deserted this child?"

The little ladies did not know, the broom bushes were silent, and the

question has remained unanswered from that day to this.

There were no railways near Lingborough at this time. The coach ran

three times a week, and a walking postman brought the letters from the

town to the small hamlets. Telegraph wires were unknown, and yet news

travelled quite as fast then as it does now, and in the course of the

following morning all the neighbourhood knew that Miss Betty had found a

baby under a broom bush, and the lawyer called in the afternoon to

inquire how the ladies found themselves after the tea party at Mrs.

General Dunmaw's.

Miss Kitty was glad on the whole. She felt nervous, but ready for a

renewal of hostilities. Several clinching arguments had occurred to her

in bed last night, and after hastily looking up a few lines from her

common-place book, which always made her cry when she read them, but

which she hoped to be able to hurl at the lawyer with a steady voice,

she followed Miss Betty to the drawing-room.

It was half a relief and half a disappointment to find that the lawyer

was quite indifferent to the subject of their late contest. He

overflowed with compliments; was quite sure he must have had the worst

of the argument, and positively dying of curiosity to hear about the

baby.

The little ladies were very full of the subject themselves. An active

search for the baby's relations, conducted by the parson, the clerk,

the farm-bailiff, the constable, the cowherd, and several

supernumeraries, had so far proved quite vain. The country folk were

most anxious to assist, especially by word of mouth. Except a small but

sturdy number who had seen nothing, they had all seen "tramps," but

unluckily no two could be got together whose accounts of the tramps

themselves, of the hour at which they were seen, or of the direction in

which they went, would tally with each other.

The little ladies were quite alive to the possibility that the child's

parents might never be traced, indeed the matter had been constantly

before their minds ever since the parson had carried the baby to

Lingborough, and laid it in the arms of Thomasina, the servant.

Miss Betty had sat long before her toilette-table that evening, gazing

vacantly at the looking-glass. Not that the reflection of the eight

curl-papers she had neatly twisted up was conveyed to her brain. She was

in a brown study, during which the following thoughts passed through her

mind, and they all pointed one way:

That that fine little fellow was not to blame for his people's

misconduct.

That they would never be found.

That it would probably be the means of the poor child's ruin, body and

soul, if they were.

That the master of the neighbouring workhouse bore a bad character.

That a child costs nothing to keep--where cows are kept too--for years.

That just at the age when a boy begins to eat dreadfully and wear out

his clothes, he is very useful on a farm (though not for these reasons).

That Thomasina had taken to him.

That there need be no nonsense about it, as he could be brought up in

his proper station in life in the kitchen and the farm yard.

That tramps have souls.

That he would be taught to say his prayers.

Miss Betty said hers, and went to bed; but all through that midsummer

night the baby kept her awake, or flaunted his yellow robe and crimson

toadstool through her dreams.

The morning brought no change in Miss Betty's views, but she felt

doubtful as to how her sister would receive them. Would she regard them

as foolish and unpractical, and her respect for Miss Betty's opinion be

lessened thenceforward?

The fear was needless. Miss Kitty was romantic and imaginative. She had

carried the baby through his boyhood about the Lingborough fields whilst

she was dressing; and he was attending her own funeral in the capacity

of an attached and faithful servant, in black livery with worsted frogs,

as she sprinkled salt on her buttered toast at breakfast, when she was

startled from this affecting daydream by Miss Betty's voice.

"Dear sister Kitty, I wish to consult you as to our plans in the event

of those wicked people who deserted the baby not being found."

The little ladies resolved that not an inkling of their benevolent

scheme must be betrayed to the lawyer. But they dissembled awkwardly,

and the tone in which they spoke of the tramp-baby roused the lawyer's

quick suspicions. He had a real respect for the little ladies, and was

kindly anxious to save them from their own indiscretion.

"My dear ladies," said he, "I do hope your benevolence--may I say your

romantic benevolence?--of disposition is not tempting you to adopt this

gipsy waif?"

"I hope we know what is due to ourselves, and to the estate--small, as

it is--sir," said Miss Betty, "as well as to Providence, too well to

attempt to raise any child, however handsome, from that station of life

in which he was born."

"Bless me, madam! I never dreamed you would adopt a beggar child as your

heir; but I hope you mean to send it to the workhouse, if the gipsy

tramps it belongs to are not to be found?"

"We have not made up our minds, sir, as to the course we propose to

pursue," said Miss Betty, with outward dignity proportioned to her

inward doubts.

"My dear ladies," said the lawyer anxiously, "let me implore you not to

be rash. To adopt a child in the most favorable circumstances is the

greatest of risks. But if your benevolence _will_ take that line, pray

adopt some little boy out of one of your tenants' families. Even your

teaching will not make him brilliant, as he is likely to inherit the

minimum of intellectual capacity; but he will learn his catechism,

probably grow up respectable, and possibly grateful, since his

forefathers have (so Miss Kitty assures me) had all these virtues for

generations. But this baby is the child of a heathen, barbarous, and

wandering race. The propensities of the vagabonds who have deserted him

are in every drop of his blood. All the parsons in the diocese won't

make a Christian of him, and when (after anxieties I shudder to foresee)

you flatter yourself that he is civilized, he will run away and leave

his shoes and stockings behind him."

"He has a soul to be saved, if he is a gipsy," said Miss Kitty,

hysterically.

"The soul, my dear Miss Kitty "--began the lawyer, facing round upon

her.

"Don't say anything dreadful about the soul, sir, I beg," said Miss

Betty, firmly. And then she added in a conciliatory tone, "Won't you

look at the little fellow, sir? I have no doubt his relations are

shocking people; but when you see his innocent little face and his

beautiful eyes, I think you'll say yourself that if he were a duke's son

he couldn't be a finer child."

"My experience of babies is so limited, Miss Betty," said the lawyer,

"that really--if you'll excuse me--but I can quite imagine him. I have

before now been tempted myself to adopt stray--puppies, when I have seen

them in the round, soft, innocent, bright-eyed stage. And when they have

grown up in the hands of more credulous friends into lanky,

ill-conditioned, misconducted curs, I have congratulated myself that I

was not misled by the graces of an age at which ill-breeding is less

apparent than later in life."

The little ladies both rose. "If you see no difference, sir," said Miss

Betty in her stateliest manner, "between a babe with an immortal soul

and the beasts that perish, it is quite useless to prolong the

conversation."

"Reason is apt to be useless when opposed to the generous impulses of a

sex so full of sentiment as yours, madam," said the lawyer, rising also.

"Permit me to take a long farewell, since it is improbable that our

friendship will resume its old position until your _protegé_ has--run

away."

The words "long farewell" and "old friendship" were quite sufficient to

soften wrath in the tender hearts of the little ladies. But the lawyer

had really lost his temper, and, before Miss Betty had decided how to

offer the olive branch without conceding her principles he was gone.

The weather was warm. The little ladies were heated by discussion and

the parson by vain scouring of the country on foot, when they asked his

advice upon their project, and related their conversation with the

lawyer. The two gentlemen had so little in common that the parson felt

it his duty not to let his advice be prejudiced by this fact. For some

moments he sat silent, then he began to walk about as if he were

composing a sermon; then he stopped before the little ladies (who were

sitting as stiffly on the sofa as if it were a pew) and spoke as if he

were delivering one.

"If you ask me, dear ladies, whether it is your duty to provide for this

child because you found him, I say that there is no such obligation. If

you ask if I think it wise in your own interests, and hopeful as to the

boy's career, I am obliged to agree with your legal adviser. Vagabond

ways are seldom cured in one generation, and I think it is quite

probable that, after much trouble and anxiety spent upon him, he may go

back to a wandering life. But, Miss Betty," continued the parson in

deepening tones, as he pounded his left palm with his right fist for

want of a pulpit, "If you ask me whether I believe any child of any race

is born incapable of improvement, and beyond benefit from the charities

we owe to each other, I should deny my faith if I could say yes. I shall

not, madam, confuse the end of your connection with him with the end of

your training in him, even if he runs away, or fancy that I see the one

because I see the other. I do not pretend to know how much evil he

inherits from his forefathers as accurately as our graphic friend; but I

do know that he has a Father whose image is also to be found in His

children--not quite effaced in any of them--and whose care of this one

will last when yours, madam, may seem to have been in vain."

As the little ladies rushed forward and each shook a hand of the parson,

he felt some compunction for his speech.

"I fear I am encouraging you in grave indiscretion," said he. "But,

indeed, my dear ladies, I am quite against your project, for you do not

realize the anxieties and disappointments that are before you, I am

sure. The child will give you infinite trouble. I think he will run

away. And yet I cannot in good conscience say that I believe love's

labour must be lost. He may return to the woods and wilds; but I hope he

will carry something with him."

"Did the reverend gentleman mean Miss Betty's teaspoons?" asked the

lawyer, stroking his long chin, when he was told what the parson had

said.

BABYHOOD.--PRETTY FLOWERS.--THE ROSE-COLOURED TULIPS.

The matter of the baby's cap disturbed the little ladies. It seemed so

like the beginning of a fulfilment of the lawyer's croakings.

Miss Kitty had made it. She had never seen a baby without a cap before,

and the sight was unusual if not indecent. But Miss Kitty was a quick

needlewoman, and when the new cap was fairly tied over the thick crop of

silky black hair, the baby looked so much less like Puck, and so much

more like the rest of the baby world, that it was quite a relief.

Miss Kitty's feelings may therefore be imagined when, going to the baby

just after the parson's departure, she found him in open rebellion

against his cap. It had been tied on whilst he was asleep, and his eyes

were no sooner open than he commenced the attack. He pulled with one

little brown hand and tugged with the other; he dragged a rosette over

his nose and got the frills into his eyes; he worried it as a puppy

worries your handkerchief if you tie it around its face and tell it to

"look like a grandmother." At last the strings gave way, and he cast it

triumphantly out of the clothes-basket which served him for cradle.

Successive efforts to induce him to wear it proved vain, so Thomasina

said the weather was warm and his hair was very thick, and she parted

this and brushed it, and Miss Kitty gave the cap to the farm-bailiff's

baby, who took to it as kindly as a dumpling to a pudding-cloth.

How the boy was ever kept inside his christening clothes, Thomasina said

she did not know. But when he got into the parson's arms he lay quite

quiet, which was a good omen. That he might lack no advantage, Miss

Betty stood godmother for him, and the parish clerk and the sexton were

his godfathers.

He was named John.

"A plain, sensible name," said Miss Betty. "And while we are about it,"

she added, "we may as well choose his surname. For a surname he must

have, and the sooner it is decided upon the better."

Miss Kitty had made a list of twenty-seven of her favourite Christian

names, which Miss Betty had sternly rejected, that everything might be

plain, practical, and respectable at the outset of the tramp-child's

career. For the same reason she refused to adopt Miss Kitty's

suggestions for a surname.

"It's so seldom there's a chance of _choosing_ a surname for anybody,

sister," said Miss Kitty, "it seems a pity not to choose a pretty one."

"Sister Kitty," said Miss Betty, "don't be romantic. The boy is to be

brought up in that station of life for which one syllable is ample. I

should have called him Smith if that had not been Thomasina's name. As

it is, I propose to call him Broom. He was found under a bush of broom,

and it goes very well with John, and sounds plain and respectable."

So Miss Betty bought a Bible, and on the flyleaf of it she wrote in her

fine, round, gentlewoman's writing--_"John Broom. With good wishes for

his welfare, temporal and eternal. From a sincere friend!"_ And when the

inscription was dry the Bible was wrapped in brown paper, and put by in

Thomasina's trunk till John Broom should come to years of discretion.

He was slow to reach them, though in other respects he grew fast.

When he began to walk he would walk barefoot. To be out of doors was his

delight, but on the threshold of the house he always sat down and

discarded his shoes and stockings. Thomasina bastinadoed the soles of

his feet with the soles of his shoes "to teach him the use of them," so

she said. But Miss Kitty sighed, and thought of the lawyer's prediction.

There was no blinking the fact that the child was as troublesome as he

was pretty. The very demon of mischief danced in his black eyes, and

seemed to possess his feet and fingers as if with quicksilver. And if,

as Thomasina said, you "never knew what he would be at next," you might

also be pretty sure that it would be something he ought to have left

undone.

John Broom early developed a taste for glass and crockery, and as the

china cupboard was in that part of the house to which he by social

standing also belonged, he had many chances to seize upon cups, jugs,

and dishes. If detected with any thing that he ought not to have had, it

was his custom to drop the forbidden toy and toddle off as fast as his

unpractised feet would carry him. The havoc which this caused amongst

the glass and china was bewildering in a household where tea-sets and

dinner-sets had passed from generation to generation, where slapdash,

giddy-pated kitchenmaids never came, where Miss Betty washed the best

teacups in the parlor, where Thomasina was more careful than her

mistress, and the breaking of a single plate was a serious matter, and,

if beyond rivetting, a misfortune.

Thomasina soon found that her charge was safest, as he was happiest, out

of doors. A very successful device was to shut him up in the drying

ground, and tell him to "pick the pretty flowers." John Broom preferred

flowers even to china cups with gilding on them. He gathered nosegays of

daisies and buttercups, and the winning way in which he would present

these to the little ladies atoned, in their benevolent eyes, for many a

smashed teacup.

But the tramp-baby's restless spirit was soon weary of the

drying-ground, and he set forth one morning in search of "fresh woods

and pastures new." He had seated himself on the threshold to take off

his shoes, when he heard the sound of Thomasina's footsteps, and,

hastily staggering to his feet, toddled forth without farther delay. The

sky was blue above him, the sun was shining, and the air was very sweet.

He ran for a bit and then tumbled, and picked himself up again, and got

a fresh impetus, and so on till he reached the door of the kitchen

garden, which was open. It was an old-fashioned kitchen garden with

flowers in the borders. There were single rose-colored tulips which had

been in the garden as long as Miss Betty could remember, and they had

been so increased by dividing the clumps that they now stretched in two

rich lines of colour down both sides of the long walk. And John Broom

saw them.

"Pick the pretty flowers, love," said he, in imitation of Thomasina's

patronising tone, and forthwith beginning at the end, he went steadily

to the top of the right-hand border, mowing the rose-coloured tulips as

he went.

Meanwhile, when Thomasina came to look for him he could not be found,

and when all the back premises and the drying-ground had been searched

in vain, she gave the alarm to the little ladies.

Miss Kitty's vivid imagination leaped at once to the conclusion that

the child's vagabond relations had fetched him away, and she became

rigid with alarm. But Miss Betty rushed out into the shrubbery, and Miss

Kitty took a whiff of her vinaigrette and followed her.

When they came at last to the kitchen-garden, Miss Betty's grief for the

loss of John Broom did not prevent her observing that there was

something odd about the borders, and when she got to the top, and found

that all the tulips had been picked from one side, she sank down on the

roller which happened to be lying beside her.

And John Broom staggered up to her, and crying, "For 'oo, Miss Betty,"

fell headlong with a sheaf of rose-coloured tulips into her lap.

As he did not offer any to Miss Kitty, her better judgment was not

warped, and she said, "You must slap him, sister Betty."

"Put out your hand, John Broom," said Miss Betty much agitated.

And John Broom, who was quite composed, put out both his little grubby

paws so trustfully that Miss Betty had not the heart to strike him. But

she scolded him, "Naughty boy!" and she pointed to the tulips and shook

her head. John Broom looked thoughtfully at them, and shook his.

"Naughty boy!" repeated Miss Betty, and she added in very impressive

tones, "John Broom's a very naughty boy!"

After which she took him to Thomasina, and Miss Kitty collected the

rose-colored tulips and put them into water in the best old china

punch-bowl.

In the course of the afternoon she peeped into the kitchen, where John

Broom sat on the floor under the window, gazing thoughtfully up into the

sky.

"As good as gold, bless his little heart!" murmured Miss Kitty. For as

his feet were tucked under him, she did not know that he had just put

his shoes and stockings into the pig-tub, into which he all but fell

himself from the exertion. He did not hear Miss Kitty, and thought on.

He wanted to be out again, and he had a tantalizing remembrance of the

ease with which the tender juicy stalks of the tulips went snap, snap,

in that new place of amusement he had discovered. Thomasina looked into

the kitchen and went away again. When she had gone, John Broom went away

also.

He went both faster and steadier on his bare feet. And when he got into

the kitchen garden, it recalled Miss Betty to his mind. And he shook his

head, and said, "Naughty boy!" And then he went up the left-hand border,

mowing the tulips as he went; after which he trotted home, and met

Thomasina at the back door. And he hugged the sheaf of rose-coloured

tulips in his arms, and said, "John Broom a very naughty boy!"

Thomasina was not sentimental, and she slapped him well--his hands for

picking the tulips, and his feet for going barefoot.

But his feet had to be slapped with Thomasina's slipper, for his own

shoes could not be found.

In spite of all his pranks, John Broom did not lose the favor of his

friends. Thomasina spoiled him, and Miss Betty and Miss Kitty tried not

to do so.

The parson had said, "Treat the child fairly. Bring him up as he will

have to live hereafter. Don't make him half pet and half servant." And

following this advice, and her own resolve that there should be "no

nonsense" in the matter, Miss Betty had made it a rule that he should

not be admitted to the parlor. It bore more heavily on the tender hearts

of the little ladies than on the light heart of John Broom, and led to

their waylaying him in the passages and gardens with little gifts,

unknown to each other. And when Miss Kitty kissed his newly-washed

cheeks, and pronounced them "like ripe russets," Miss Betty murmured,

"Be judicious, sister Kitty;" and Miss Kitty would correct any possible

ill effects by saying, "_Now_ make your betters, John Broom, and say,

'Thank you, ma'am!'" which was accomplished by the child's giving a tug

to the forelock of his thick black hair, with a world of mischief in his

eyes.

When he was old enough, the little ladies sent him to the village

school.

The total failure of their hopes for his education was not the smallest

of the disappointments Miss Betty and Miss Kitty endured on his behalf.

The quarrel with the lawyer had been made up long ago, and though there

was always a touch of raillery in his inquiries after "the young gipsy,"

he had once said, "If he turns out anything of a genius at school, I

might find a place for him in the office, by-and-by." The lawyer was

kind-hearted in his own fashion, and on this hint Miss Kitty built up

hopes, which unhappily were met by no responsive ambition in John Broom.

As to his fitness to be an errand boy, he could not carry a message from

the kitchen to the cowhouse without stopping by the way to play with the

yard-dog, and a hedgehog in the path would probably have led him astray,

if Thomasina had had a fit and he had been despatched for the doctor.

During school hours he spent most of his time under the fool's cap when

he was not playing truant. With his schoolmates he was good friends. If

he was seldom out of mischief, he was seldom out of temper. He could

beat any boy at a foot race (without shoes); he knew the notes and nests

of every bird that sang, and whatever an old pocket-knife is capable of,

that John Broom could and would do with it for his fellows.

Miss Betty had herself tried to teach him to read, and she continued to

be responsible for his religious instruction. She had hoped to stir up

his industry by showing him the Bible, and promising that when he could

read it he should have it for his "very own." But he either could not or

would not apply himself, so the prize lay unearned in Thomasina's trunk.

But he would listen for any length of time to Scripture stories, if

they were read or told him, especially to the history of Elisha, and the

adventures of the judges.

Indeed, since he could no longer be shut up in the drying-ground,

Thomasina had found that he was never so happy and so safe as when he

was listening to tales, and many a long winter evening he lay idle on

the kitchen hearth, with his head on the sheep dog, whilst the more

industrious Thomasina plied her knitting-needles, as she sat in the

inglenook, with the flickering firelight playing among the plaits of her

large cap, and told tales of the country side.

Not that John Broom was her only hearer. Annie "the lass" sat by the

hearth also, and Thomasina took care that she did not "sit with her

hands before her." And a little farther away sat the cowherd.

He had a sleeping-room above the barn, and took his meals in the house.

By Miss Betty's desire he always went in to family prayers after supper,

when he sat as close as possible to the door, under an uncomfortable

consciousness that Thomasina did not think his boots clean enough for

the occasion and would find something to pick off the carpet as she

followed him out, however hardly he might have used the door-scraper

beforehand.

It might be a difficult matter to decide which he liked best, beer or

John Broom. But next to these he liked Thomasina's stories.

Thomasina was kind to him. With all his failings and the dirt on his

boots, she liked him better than the farm-bailiff. The farm-bailiff was

thrifty, and sensible and faithful, and Thomasina was faithful and

sensible and thrifty, and they each had a tendency to claim the monopoly

of those virtues. Notable people complain, very properly, of thriftless

and untidy ones, but they sometimes agree better with them than with

rival notabilities. And so Thomasina's broad face beamed benevolently as

she bid the cowherd "draw up" to the fire, and he who (like Thomasina)

was a native of the country, would confirm the marvels she related, with

a proper pride in the wonderful district to which they both belonged.

He would help her out sometimes with names and dates in a local

biography. By his own account he knew the man who was murdered at the

inn in the Black Valley so intimately that it turned Annie the lass as

white as a dish-cloth to sit beside him. If Thomasina said that folk

were yet alive who had seen the little green men dance in Dawborough

Croft the cowherd would smack his knees and cry, "Scores on 'em!" And

when she whispered of the white figure which stood at the cross roads

after midnight, he testified to having seen it himself--tall beyond

mortal height, and pointing four ways at once. He had a legend of his

own too, which Thomasina sometimes gave him the chance of telling, of

how he was followed home one moonlight night by a black Something as big

as a young calf, which "wimmled and wammled," around him till he fell

senseless into the ditch, and being found there by the farm-bailiff on

his return from market was unjustly accused of the vice of intoxication.

"Fault-finders should be free of flaws," Thomasina would say with a prim

chin. She _had_ seen the farm-bailiff himself "the worse" for more than

his supper beer.

But there was one history which Thomasina was always loth to relate, and

it was that which both John Broom and the cowherd especially

preferred--the history of the Lob Lie-by-the-fire.

Thomasina had a feeling (which was shared by Annie the lass) that it was

better not to talk of "anything" peculiar to the house in which you were

living. One's neighbours' ghosts and bogles are another matter.

But to John Broom and the cowherd no subject was so interesting as that

of the Lubber-fiend. The cowherd sighed to think of the good old times

when a man might sleep on in spite of cocks, and the stables be cleaner,

and the beasts better tended than if he had been up with the lark. And

John Broom's curiosity was never quenched about the rough, hairy

Good-fellow who worked at night that others might be idle by day, and

who was sometimes caught at his hard earned nap, lying "like a great

hurgin bear," where the boy loved to lie himself, before the fire, on

this very hearth.

Why and where he had gone, Thomasina could not tell. She had heard that

he had originally come from some other household, where he had been

offended. But whether he had gone elsewhere when he forsook

Lingborough, or whether "such things had left the country" for good, she

did not pretend to say.

And when she had told, for the third or fourth time, how his porridge

was put into a corner of the cowhouse for him over night, and how he had

been often overheard at his work, but rarely seen, and then only lying

before the fire, Miss Betty would ring for prayers, and Thomasina would

fold up her knitting and lead the way, followed by Annie the lass, whose

nerves John Broom would startle by treading on her heels, the rear being

brought up by the cowherd, looking hopelessly at his boots.

Miss Betty and Miss Kitty did really deny themselves the indulgence of

being indulgent, and treated John Broom on principles, and for his good.

But they did so in their own tremulous and spasmodic way, and got little

credit for it. Thomasina, on the other hand, spoiled him with such a

masterful managing air, and so much sensible talk, that no one would

have thought that the only system she followed was to conceal his

misdemeanours, and to stand between him and the just wrath of the

farm-bailiff.

The farm-bailiff, or grieve, as he liked to call himself, was a

Scotchman, with a hard-featured face (which he washed on the Sabbath), a

harsh voice, a good heart rather deeper down in his body than is usual,

and a shrewd, money-getting head, with a speckled straw hat on the top

of it. No one could venture to imagine when that hat was new, or how

long ago it was that the farm-bailiff went to the expense of purchasing

those work-day clothes. But the dirt on his face and neck was an orderly

accumulation, such as gathers on walls, oil-paintings, and other places

to which soap is not habitually applied; it was not a matter of spills

and splashes, like the dirt John Broom disgraced himself with. And his

clothes, if old, fitted neatly about him; they never suggested

raggedness, which was the normal condition of the tramp-boy's jacket.

They only looked as if he had been born (and occasionally buried) in

them. It is needful to make this distinction, that the good man may not

be accused of inconsistency in the peculiar vexation which John Broom's

disorderly appearance caused him.

In truth, Miss Betty's _protegé_ had reached the age at which he was to

"eat dreadfully, wear out his clothes, and be useful on the farm;" and

the last condition was quite unfulfilled. At eleven years old he could

not be trusted to scare birds, and at half that age the farm-bailiff's

eldest child could drive cattle.

"And no' just ruin the leedies in new coats and compliments, either,

like some ne'er-do-weels," added the farm-bailiff, who had heard with a

jealous ear of sixpences given by Miss Betty and Miss Kitty to their

wasteful favourite.

When the eleventh anniversary of John Broom's discovery was passed, and

his character at school gave no hopes of his ever qualifying himself to

serve the lawyer, it was resolved that--"idleness being the mother of

mischief," he should be put under the care of the farm-bailiff, to do

such odd jobs about the place as might be suited to his capacity and

love of out-door life. And now John Broom's troubles began. By fair

means or foul, with here an hour's weeding and there a day's bird

scaring, and with errands perpetual, the farm-bailiff contrived to "get

some work out of" the idle little urchin. His speckled hat and grim face

seemed to be everywhere, and always to pop up when John Broom began to

play.

They lived "at daggers drawn." I am sorry to say that John Broom's

fitful industry was still kept for his own fancies. To climb trees, to

run races with the sheep dog, to cut grotesque sticks, gather hedge

fruits, explore a bog, or make new friends among beasts and birds--at

such matters he would labor with feverish zeal. But so far from trying

to cure himself of his indolence about daily drudgery, he found a new

and pleasant excitement in thwarting the farm-bailiff at every turn.

It would not sound dignified to say that the farm-bailiff took pleasure

in thwarting John Broom. But he certainly did not show his satisfaction

when the boy did do his work properly. Perhaps he thought that praise is

not good for young people; and the child did not often give him the

chance of trying. Of blame he was free enough. Not a good scolding to

clear the air, such as Thomasina would give to Annie the lass, but his

slow, caustic tongue was always growling, like muttered thunder, over

John Broom's incorrigible head.

He had never approved of the tramp-child, who had the overwhelming

drawbacks of having no pedigree and of being a bad bargain as to

expense. This was not altogether John Broom's fault, but with his

personal failings the farm bailiff had even less sympathy. It had been

hinted that he was born in the speckled hat, and whether this were so or

not, he certainly had worn an old head whilst his shoulders were still

young, and could not remember the time when he wished to waste his

energies on any thing that did not earn or at least save something.

Once only did any thing like approval of the lad escape his lips.

Miss Betty's uncle's second cousin had returned from foreign lands with

a good fortune and several white cockatoos. He kept the fortune himself,

but he gave the cockatoos to his friends, and he sent one of them to the

little ladies of Lingborough.

He was a lovely creature (the cockatoo, not the cousin, who was plain),

and John Broom's admiration of him was boundless. He gazed at the

sulphur-colored crest, the pure white wings with their deeper-tinted

lining, and even the beak and the fierce round eyes, as he had gazed at

the broom bush in his babyhood, with insatiable delight.

The cousin did things handsomely. He had had a ring put round one of the

cockatoo's ankles, with a bright steel chain attached and a fastener to

secure it to the perch. The cockatoo was sent in the cage by coach, and

a perch, made of foreign wood, followed by the carrier.

Miss Betty and Miss Kitty were delighted both with the cockatoo and the

perch, but they were a good deal troubled as to how to fasten the two

together. There was a neat little ring on the perch, and the cockatoo's

chain was quite complete, and he evidently wanted to get out, for he

shook the walls of his cage in his gambols. But he put up his crest and

snapped when any one approached, in a manner so alarming that Annie the

lass shut herself up in the dairy, and the farm-bailiff turned his

speckled hat in his hands, and gave cautious counsel from a safe

distance.

"How he flaps!" cried Miss Betty. "I'm afraid he has a very vicious

temper."

"He only wants to get out, Miss Betty," said John Broom. "He'd be all

right with his perch, and I think I can get him on it."

"Now Heaven save us from the sin o' presumption!" cried the

farm-bailiff, and putting on the speckled hat, he added, slowly: "I'm

thinking, John Broom, that if ye're engaged wi' the leddies this morning

it'll be time I turned my hand to singling these few turnips ye've been

thinking about the week past."

On which he departed, and John Broom pressed the little ladies to leave

him alone with the bird.

"We shouldn't like to leave you alone with a wild creature like that,"

said Miss Betty.

"He's just frightened on ye, Miss Betty. He'll be like a lamb when

you're gone," urged John Broom.

"Besides, we should like to see you do it," said Miss Kitty.

"You can look in through the window, miss. I must fasten the door, or

he'll be out."

"I should never forgive myself if he hurt you, John," said Miss Betty,

irresolutely, for she was very anxious to have the cockatoo and perch in

full glory in the parlour.

"He'll none hurt me, miss," said John, with a cheerful smile on his rosy

face. "I likes him, and he'll like me."

This settled the matter. John was left with the cockatoo. He locked the

door, and the little ladies went into the garden and peeped through the

window.

They saw John Broom approach the cage, on which the cockatoo put up his

crest, opened his beak slowly, and snarled, and Miss Betty tapped on the

window and shook her black satin workbag.

"Don't go near him!" she cried. But John Broom paid no attention.

"What are you putting up that top-knot of yours at me for?" said he to

the cockatoo. "Don't ye know your own friends? I'm going to let ye out,

I am. You're going on to your perch, you are."

"Eh, but you're a bonny creature!" he added, as the cockatoo filled the

cage with snow and sulphur flutterings.

"Keep away, keep away!" screamed the little ladies, playing a duet on

the window panes.

"Out with you!" said John Broom, as he unfastened the cage door.

And just when Miss Betty had run round, and as she shouted through the

keyhole, "Open the door, John Broom. We've changed our minds. We've

decided to keep it in its cage," the cockatoo strode solemnly forth on

his eight long toes.

"Pretty Cocky!" said he.

When Miss Betty got back to the window, John Broom had just made an

injudicious grab at the steel chain, on which Pretty Cocky flew fiercely

at him, and John, burying his face in his arms, received the attack on

his thick poll, laughing into his sleeves and holding fast to the chain,

whilst the cockatoo and the little ladies screamed against each other.

"It'll break your leg--you'll tear its eyes out!" cried Miss Kitty.

"Miss Kitty means that you'll break its leg, and it will tear your eyes

out," Miss Betty explained through the glass. "John Broom! Come away!

Lock it in! Let it go!"

But Cocky was now waddling solemnly round the room, and John Broom was

creeping after him, with the end of the chain in one hand, and the perch

in the other, and in a moment more he had joined the chain and the ring,

and just as Miss Betty was about to send for the constable and have the

door broken open, Cocky--driven into a corner--clutched his perch and

was raised triumphantly to his place in the bow-window.

He was now a parlour pet, and John Broom saw little of him. This vexed

him, for he had taken a passionate liking for the bird. The little

ladies rewarded him well for his skill, but this brought him no favour

from the farm-bailiff, and matters went on as ill as before.

One day the cockatoo got his chain entangled, and Miss Kitty promptly

advanced to put it right. She had unfastened that end which secured it

to the perch, when Cocky, who had been watching the proceeding with much

interest, dabbed at her with his beak. Miss Kitty fled, but with great

presence of mind shut the door after her. She forgot, however, that the

window was open, in front of which stood the cockatoo scanning the

summer sky with his fierce eyes, and flapping himself in the breeze.

And just as the little ladies ran into the garden, and Miss Kitty was

saying, "One comfort is, sister Betty, that it's quite safe in the room,

till we can think what to do next," he bowed his yellow crest, spread

his noble wings, and sailed out into the aether.

In ten minutes the whole able-bodied population of the place was in the

grounds of Lingborough, including the farm-bailiff.

The cockatoo was on the top of a fir-tree, and a fragment of the chain

was with him, for he had broken it, and below on the lawn stood the

little ladies, who, with the unfailing courage of women in a hopeless

cause, were trying to dislodge him by waving their pocket-handkerchiefs

and crying "sh!"

He looked composedly down out of one eye for some time, and then he

began to move.

"I think it's coming down now," said Miss Kitty.

But in a quarter of a minute, Cocky had sailed a quarter of a mile, and

was rocking himself on the top of an old willow-tree. And at this moment

John Broom joined the crowd which followed him.

"I'm thinking he's got his chain fast," said the farm-bailiff; "if

onybody that understood the beastie daured to get near him----"

"I'll get him," said John Broom, casting down his hat.

"Ye'll get yer neck thrawed," said the farm-bailiff.

"We won't hear of it," said the little ladies.

But to their horror, John Broom kicked off his shoes, after which he

spat upon his hands (a shock which Miss Kitty thought she never could

have survived), and away he went up the willow.

It was not an easy tree to climb, and he had one or two narrow escapes,

which kept the crowd breathless, but he shook the hair from his eyes,

moistened his hands afresh, and went on. The farm-bailiff's far-away

heart was stirred. No Scotchman is insensible to gallantry. And courage

is the only thing a "canny" Scot can bear to see expended without

return.

"John Broom," screamed Miss Betty, "come down! I order, I command you to

come down."

The farm-bailiff drew his speckled hat forward to shade his upward gaze,

and folded his arms.

"Dinna call on him, leddies," he said, speaking more quickly than usual.

"Dinna mak him turn his head. Steady, lad! Grip wi' your feet. Spit on

your pawms, man."

Once the boy trod on a rotten branch, and as he drew back his foot, and

it came crashing down, the farm-bailiff set his teeth, and Miss Kitty

fainted in Thomasina's arms.

"I'll reward anyone who'll fetch him down," sobbed Miss Betty. But John

Broom seated himself on the same branch as the cockatoo, and undid the

chain and prepared his hands for the downward journey.

"You've got a rare perch, this time," said he. And Pretty Cocky crept

towards him, and rubbed its head against him and chuckled with joy.

What dreams of liberty in the tree tops, with John Broom for a

playfellow, passed through his crested head, who shall say? But when he

found that his friend meant to take him prisoner, he became very angry

and much alarmed. And when John Broom grasped him by both legs and began

to descend, Cocky pecked him vigorously. But the boy held the back of

his head towards him, and went steadily down.

"Weel done!" roared the farm-bailiff. "Gently, lad! Gude save us! ha'e

a care o' yoursen. That's weel. Keep your pow at him. Dinna let the

beast get to your een."

But when John Broom was so near the ground as to be safe, the

farm-bailiff turned wrathfully upon his son, who had been gazing

open-mouthed at the sight which had so interested his father.

"Ye look weel standing gawping here, before the leddies," said he,

"wasting the precious hours, and bringing your father's grey hairs wi'

sorrow to the grave; and John Broom yonder shaming ye, and you not so

much as thinking to fetch the perch for him, ye lazy loon. Away wi' ye

and get it, before I lay a stick about your shoulders."

And when his son had gone for the perch, and John Broom was safely on

the ground, laughing, bleeding, and triumphant, the farm-bailiff said,--

"Ye're a bauld chiel, John Broom, I'll say that for ye."

INTO THE MIST.

Unfortunately the favourable impression produced by "the gipsy lad's"

daring soon passed from the farm-bailiff's mind. It was partly effaced

by the old jealousy of the little ladies favour. Miss Betty gave the boy

no less than four silver shillings, and he ungraciously refused to let

the farm-bailiff place them in a savings bank for him.

Matters got from bad to worse. The farming man was not the only one who

was jealous, and John Broom himself was as idle and restless as ever.

Though, if he had listened respectfully to the Scotchman's counsel, or

shown any disposition to look up to and be guided by him, much might

have been overlooked. But he made fun of him and made a friend of the

cowherd. And this latter most manifest token of low breeding vexed the

respectable taste of the farm-bailiff.

John Broom had his own grievances too, and he brooded over them. He

thought the little ladies had given him over to the farm-bailiff,

because they had ceased to care for him, and that the farm-bailiff was

prejudiced against him beyond any hope of propitiation. The village folk

taunted him, too, with being an outcast, and called him Gipsy John, and

this maddened him. Then he would creep into the cowhouse and lie in the

straw against the white cow's warm back, and for a few of Miss Betty's

coppers, to spend in beer or tobacco, the cowherd would hide him from

the farm-bailiff and tell him countryside tales. To Thomasina's stories

of ghosts and gossip, he would add strange tales of smugglers on the

near-lying coast, and as John Broom listened, his restless blood

rebelled more and more against the sour sneers and dry drudgery that he

got from the farm-bailiff.

Nor were sneers the sharpest punishment his misdemeanours earned. The

farm-bailiff's stick was thick and his arm was strong, and he had a

tendency to believe that if a flogging was good for a boy, the more he

had of it the better it would be for him.

And John Broom, who never let a cry escape him at the time, would steal

away afterwards and sob out his grief into the long soft coat of the

sympathising sheep dog.

Unfortunately he never tried the effect of deserving better treatment as

a remedy for his woes. The parson's good advice and Miss Betty's

entreaties were alike in vain. He was ungrateful even to Thomasina. The

little ladies sighed and thought of the lawyer. And the parson preached

patience.

"Cocky has been tamed," said Miss Kitty thoughtfully, "perhaps John

Broom will get steadier by-and-by."

"It seems a pity we can't chain him to a perch, Miss Kitty," laughed the

parson; "he would be safe then, at any rate."

Miss Betty said afterwards that it did seem so remarkable that the

parson should have made this particular joke on this particular

night--the night when John Broom did not come home.

He had played truant all day. The farm-bailiff had wanted him, and he

had kept out of the way.

The wind was from the east, and a white mist rolled in from the sea,

bringing a strange invigorating smell, and making your lips clammy with

salt. It made John Broom's heart beat faster, and filled his head with

dreams of ships and smugglers, and rocking masts higher than the

willow-tree, and winds wilder than this wind, and dancing waves.

Then something loomed through the fog. It was the farm-bailiff's

speckled hat. John Broom hesitated--the thick stick became visible.

Then a cloud rolled between them, and the child turned, and ran, and

ran, and ran coastwards, into the sea mist.

THE SEA.--THE ONE-EYED SAILOR.--THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD.

John Broom was footsore when he reached the coast, but that keen,

life-giving smell had drawn him on and held him up. The fog had cleared

off, and he strained his black eyes through the darkness to see the sea.

He had never seen it--that other world within this, on which one lived

out of doors, and climbed about all day, and no one blamed him.

When he did see it, he thought he had got to the end of the world. If

the edge of the cliff were not the end, he could not make out where the

sky began; and if that darkness were the sea, the sea was full of stars.

But this was because the sea was quiet and reflected the colour of the

night sky, and the stars were the lights of the herring-boats twinkling

in the bay.

When he got down by the water he saw the vessels lying alongside, and

they were dirtier than he had supposed. But he did not lose heart, and

remembering, from the cowherd's tales, that people who cannot pay for

their passage must either work it out or hide themselves on board ship,

he took the easier alternative, and got on to the first vessel which had

a plank to the quay, and hid himself under some tarpaulin on the deck.

The vessel was a collier bound for London, and she sailed with the

morning tide.

When he was found out he was not ill-treated. Indeed, the rough skipper

offered to take him home again on his return voyage. He would have liked

to go, but pride withheld him, and homesickness had not yet eaten into

his very soul. Then an old sailor with one eye (but that a sly one) met

him, and told him tales more wonderful than the cowherd's. And with him

he shipped as cabin-boy, on a vessel bound for the other side of the

world.

* * * * *

A great many sins bring their own punishment in this life pretty

clearly, and sometimes pretty closely; but few more directly or more

bitterly than rebellion against the duties, and ingratitude for the

blessings, of home.

There was no playing truant on board ship; and as to the master poor

John Broom served now, his cruelty made the memory of the farm-bailiff a

memory of tenderness and gentleness and indulgence. Till he was

half-naked and half-starved, and had only short snatches of sleep in

hard corners, it had never struck him that when one has got good food

and clothes, and sound sleep in a kindly home, he has got more than

many people, and enough to be thankful for.

He did everything he was told now as fast as he could do it, in fear for

his life. The one-eyed sailor had told him that the captain always took

orphans and poor friendless lads to be his cabin-boys, and John Broom

thought what a nice kind man he must be, and how different from the

farm-bailiff, who thought nobody could be trustworthy unless he could

show parents and grand-parents, and cousins to the sixth degree. But

after they had sailed, when John Broom felt very ill, and asked the

one-eyed sailor where he was to sleep, the one-eyed sailor pleasantly

replied that if he hadn't brought a four-post bed in his pocket he must

sleep where he could, for that all the other cabin-boys were sleeping in

Davy's Locker, and couldn't be disturbed. And it was not till John Broom

had learned ship's language that he found out that Davy's Locker meant

the deep, and that the other cabin-boys were dead. "And as they'd nobody

belonging to 'em, no hearts was broke," added the sailor, winking with

his one eye.

John Broom slept standing sometimes for weariness, but he did not sleep

in Davy's Locker. Young as he was he had dauntless courage, a careless

hopeful heart, and a tough little body; and that strong, life-giving sea

smell bore him up instead of food, and he got to the other side of the

world.

Why he did not stay there, why he did not run away into the wilderness

to find at least some easier death than to have his bones broken by the

cruel captain, he often wondered afterwards. He was so much quicker and

braver than the boys they commonly got, that the old sailor kept a sharp

watch over him with his one eye whilst they were ashore; but one day he

was too drunk to see out of it, and John Broom ran away.

It was Christmas Day, and so hot that he could not run far, for he was

at the other side of the world, where things are upside down, and he sat

down by the roadside on the outskirts of the city; and as he sat, with

his thin, brown face resting on his hands, a familiar voice beside him

said, "Pretty Cocky!" and looking up he saw a man with several cages of

birds. The speaker was a cockatoo of the most exquisite shades of cream

colour, salmon and rose, and he had a rose-coloured crest. But lovely as

he was, John Broom's eyes were on another cage, where, silent, solemn,

and sulky, sat a big white one with sulphur-coloured trimmings and

fierce black eyes; and he was so like Miss Betty's pet, that the poor

child's heart bounded as if a hand had been held out to him from home.

"If you let him get at you, you'll not do it a second time, mate," said

the man. "He's the nastiest tempered beast I ever saw. I'd have wrung

his neck long ago if he hadn't such a fine coat."

But John Broom said, as he had said before, "I like him and he'll like

me."

When the cockatoo bit his finger to the bone, the man roared with

laughter, but John Broom did not draw his hand away. He kept it still

at the bird's beak, and with the other he gently scratched him under the

crest and wings. And when the white cockatoo began to stretch out his

eight long toes, as cats clutch with their claws from pleasure, and

chuckled, and sighed, and bit softly without hurting, and laid his head

against the bars till his snow and sulphur feathers touched John Broom's

black locks, the man was amazed.

"Look here, mate," said he, "you've the trick with birds, and no

mistake. I'll sell you this one cheap, and you'll be able to sell him

dear."

"I've not a penny in the world," said John Broom.

"You do look cleaned out too," said the man, scanning him from head to

foot. "I tell you what, you shall come with me a bit and tame the birds,

and I'll find you something to eat."

Ten minutes before, John Broom would have jumped at this offer, but now

he refused it. The sight of the cockatoo had brought back the fever of

home-sickness in all its fierceness. He couldn't stay out here. He would

dare anything, do anything, to see the hills about Lingborough once more

before him died; and even if he did not live to see them, he might live

to sleep in that part of Davy's Locker which should rock him on the

shores of home.

The man gave him a shilling for fastening a ring and chain on to the

Cocky's ankle, and with this he got the best dinner he had eaten since

he lost sight of the farm-bailiff's speckled hat in the mist.

And then he went back to the one-eyed sailor, and shipped as cabin-boy

again for the homeward voyage.

THE HIGHLANDER.--BARRACK LIFE.--THE GREAT CURSE.--JOHN BROOM'S

MONEY-BOX.

When John Broom did get home he did not go to sea again. He lived from

hand to mouth in the seaport town, and slept, as he was well accustomed

to sleep, in holes and corners.

Every day and every night, through the long months of the voyage, he had

dreamed of begging his way barefoot to Miss Betty's door. But now he did

not go. His life was hard, but it was not cruel. He was very idle, and

there was plenty to see. He wandered about the country as of old. The

ships and shipping too had a fascination for him now that the past was

past, and here he could watch them from the shore; and, partly for shame

and partly for pride, he could not face the idea of going back. If he

had been taunted with being a vagrant boy before, what would be said now

if he presented himself, a true tramp, to the farm-bailiff? Besides,

Miss Betty and Miss Kitty could not forgive him. It was impossible!

He was wandering about one day when he came to some fine high walls with

buildings inside. There was an open gateway, at which stood a soldier

with a musket. But a woman and some children went in, and he did not

shoot them; so when his back was turned, and he was walking stiffly to

where he came from, John Broom ran in through the gateway.

The first man he saw was the grandest-looking man he had ever seen.

Indeed, he looked more like a bird than a man--a big bird with a big

black crest. He was very tall. His feet were broad and white, like the

feathered feet of some plumy bird, his legs were bare and brown and

hairy. He was clothed in many colours. He had fur in front, which swung

as he walked, and silver and shining stones about him. He held his head

very high and from it drooped great black plumes. His face looked as if

it had been cut--roughly but artistically--out of a block of old wood,

and his eyes were the colour of a summer sky. And John Broom felt as he

had felt when he first saw Miss Betty's cockatoo.

In repose the Highlander's eye was as clear as a cairngorm and as cold,

but when it fell upon John Broom it took a twinkle not quite unlike the

twinkle in the one eye of the sailor; and then, to his amazement, this

grand creature beckoned to John Broom with a rather dirty hand.

"Yes, sir," said John Broom, staring up at the splendid giant, with eyes

of wonder.

"I'm saying," said the Highlander, confidentially (and it had a pleasant

homely sound to hear him speak like the farm-bailiff)--"I'm saying, I'm

confined to barracks, ye ken; and I'll gi'e ye a hawpenny if ye'll get

the bottle filled wi' whusky. Roun' yon corner ye'll see the 'Britain's

Defenders.'"

But at this moment he erected himself, his turquoise eyes looked

straight before them, and he put his hand to his head and moved it

slowly away again, as a young man with more swinging grandeur of colors

and fur and plumes, and with greater glittering of gems and silver,

passed by, a sword clattering after him.

Meanwhile John Broom had been round the corner and was back again.

"What for are ye stan'in' there, ye fule?" asked his new friend. "What

for didna ye gang for the whusky?"

"It's here, sir."

"My certy, ye dinna let the grass grow under your feet," said the

Highlander; and he added, "If ye want to run errands, laddie, ye can

come back again."

It was the beginning of a fresh life for John Broom. With many other

idle or homeless boys he now haunted the barracks, and ran errands for

the soldiers. His fleetness of foot and ready wit made him the

favourite. Perhaps, too, his youth and his bright face and eyes pleaded

for him, for British soldiers are a tender-hearted race.

He was knocked about, but never cruelly, and he got plenty of coppers

and broken victuals, and now and then an old cap or pair of boots, a

world too large for him. His principal errands were to fetch liquor for

the soldiers. In arms and pockets he would sometimes carry a dozen

bottles at once, and fly back from the canteen or public-house without

breaking one.

Before the summer was over he was familiar with every barrack-room and

guard-room in the place; he had food to eat and coppers to spare, and he

shared his bits with the mongrel dogs who lived, as he did, on the

good-nature of the garrison.

It must be confessed that neatness was not among John Broom's virtues.

He looped his rags together with bits of string, and wasted his pence or

lost them. The soldiers standing at the bar would often give him a drink

out of their pewter-pots. It choked him at first, and then he got used

to it, and liked it. Some relics of Miss Betty's teachings kept him

honest. He would not condescend to sip by the way out of the soldiers'

jugs and bottles, as other errand-boys did, but he came to feel rather

proud of laying his twopence on the counter, and emptying his own pot of

beer with a grimace to the bystanders through the glass at the bottom.

One day he was winking through the froth of a pint of porter at the

canteen sergeant's daughter, who was in fits of laughing, when the

pewter was knocked out of his grasp, and the big Highlander's hand was

laid on his shoulder and bore him twenty or thirty yards from the place

in one swoop.

"I'll trouble ye to give me your attention," said the Highlander, when

they came to a standstill, "and to speak the truth. Did ye ever see me

the worse of liquor?"

John Broom had several remembrances of the clearest kind to that effect,

so he put up his arms to shield his head from the probable blow, and

said, "Yes, M'Alister."

"How often?" asked the Scotchman.

"I never counted," said John Broom; "pretty often."

"How many good-conduct stripes do you ken me to have lost of your ain

knowledge?"

"Three, M'Alister."

"Is there a finer man than me in the regiment?" asked the Highlander,

drawing up his head.

"That there's not," said John Broom, warmly.

"Our sairgent, now," drawled the Scotchman, "wad ye say he was a better

man than me?"

"Nothing like so good," said John Broom, sincerely.

"And what d'ye suppose, man," said the Highlander, firing with sudden

passion, till the light of his clear blue eyes seemed to pierce John

Broom's very soul--"what d'ye suppose has hindered me that I'm not

sairgent, when yon man is? What has keepit me from being an officer,

that had served my country in twa battles when oor quartermaster hadna

enlisted? Wha gets my money? What lost me my stripes? What loses me

decent folks' respect and, waur than that, my ain? What gars a hand that

can grip a broadsword tremble like a woman's? What fills the canteen and

the kirkyard? What robs a man of health and wealth and peace? What

ruins weans and women, and makes mair homes desolate than war? Drink,

man, drink! The deevil of drink!"

It was not till the glare in his eyes had paled that John Broom ventured

to speak. Then he said,--

"Why don't ye give it up, M'Alister?"

The man rose to his full height, and laid his hand heavily on the boy's

shoulder, and his eyes seemed to fade with that pitiful, weary look,

which only such blue eyes show so well, "Because I _canna_" said he;

"because, for as big as I am, I canna. But for as little as you are,

laddie, ye can, and, Heaven help me, ye shall."

That evening he called John Broom into the barrack-room where he slept.

He was sitting on the edge of his bed, and had a little wooden money-box

in his hands.

"What money have ye, laddie?" he asked.

John Broom pulled out three halfpence lately earned, and the Scotchman

dropped them slowly into the box. Then he turned the key, and put it

into his pocket, and gave the box to the boy.

"Ye'll put what ye earn in there," said he, "I'll keep the key, and

ye'll keep the box yoursel; and when it's opened we'll open it together,

and lay out your savings in decent clothes for ye against the winter."

At this moment some men passing to the canteen shouted, "M'Alister?" The

Highlander did not answer, but he started to the door. Then he stood

irresolute, and then turned and reseated himself.

"Gang and bring me a bit o' tobacco," he said, giving John Broom a

penny. And when the boy had gone he emptied his pocket of the few pence

left, and dropped them into the box, muttering, "If he manna, I wunna."

And when the tobacco came, he lit his pipe, and sat on the bench

outside, and snarled at every one who spoke to him.

OUTPOST DUTY.--THE SERGEANT'S STORY.--GRAND ROUNDS.

It was a bitterly cold winter. The soldiers drank a great deal, and John

Broom was constantly trotting up and down, and the box grew very heavy.

Bottles were filled and refilled, in spite of greatly increased

strictness in the discipline of the garrison, for there were rumours of

invasion, and penalties were heavy, and sentry posts were increased, and

the regiments were kept in readiness for action.

The Highlander had not cured himself of drinking, though he had cured

John Broom. But, like others, he was more wary just now, and had

hitherto escaped the heavy punishments inflicted in a time of probable

war; and John Broom watched over him with the fidelity of a sheep dog,

and more than once had roused him with a can of cold water when he was

all but caught by his superiors in a state of stupor, which would not

have been credited to the frost alone.

The talk of invasion had become grave, when one day a body of men were

ordered for outpost duty, and M'Alister was among them. The officer had

got a room for them in a farmhouse, where they sat round the fire, and

went out by turns to act as sentries at various posts for an hour or two

at a time.

The novelty was delightful to John Broom. He hung about the farmhouse,

and warmed himself at the soldiers' fire.

In the course of the day M'Alister got him apart and whispered, "I'm

going on duty the night at ten, laddie. It's fearsome cold, and I hav'na

had a drop to warm me the day. If ye could ha' brought me a wee drappie

to the corner of the three roads--it's twa miles from here I'm

thinking--"

"It's not the miles, M'Alister," said John Broom, "but you're on outpost

duty, and--"

"And you're misdoubting what may be done to ye for bringing liquor to a

sentry on duty? Aye, aye, lad, ye do weel to be cautious," said the

Highlander, and he turned away.

But it was not the fear of consequences to himself which had made John

Broom hesitate, and he was stung by the implication.

The night was dark and very cold, and the Highlander had been pacing up

and down his post for about half-an-hour, when his quick ear caught a

faint sound of footsteps.

"Wha goes there?" said he.

"It's I, M'Alister," whispered John Broom.

"Whisht, laddie," said the sentry; "are ye there after all? Did no one

see ye?"

"Not a soul; I crept by the hedges. Here's your whiskey, M'Alister; but

oh be careful!" said the lad.

The Scotchman's eyes glittered greedily at the bottle.

"Never fear," said he, "I'll just rub a wee drappie on the pawms of my

hands to keep away the frost-bite, for its awsome cold, man. Now away

wi' ye, and take tent, laddie, keep off the other sentries."

John Broom went back as carefully as he had come, and slipped in to warm

himself by the guardroom fire.

It was a good one, and the soldiers sat close round it. The officer was

writing a letter in another room, and in a low, impressive voice, the

sergeant was telling a story which was listened to with breathless

attention. John Broom was fond of stories, and he listened also.

It was of a friend of the sergeant's, who had been a boy with him in the

same village at home, who had seen active service with him abroad, and

who had slept at his post on such a night as this, from the joint

effects of cold and drink. It was war time, and he had been tried by

court-martial, and shot for the offence. The sergeant had been one of

the firing party to execute his friend, and they had taken leave of each

other as brothers, before the final parting face to face in this last

awful scene.

The man's voice was faltering, when the tale was cut short by the

jingling of the field officer's accoutrements as he rode by to visit the

outposts. In an instant the officer and men turned out to receive him;

and, after the usual formalities, he rode on. The officer went back to

his letter, and the sergeant and his men to their fireside.

The opening of the doors had let in a fresh volume of cold, and one of

the men called to John Broom to mend the fire. But he was gone.

* * * * *

John Broom was fleet of foot, and there are certain moments which lift

men beyond their natural powers, but he had set himself a hard task.

As he listened to the sergeant's tale, an agonising fear smote him for

his friend M'Alister. Was there any hope that the Highlander could keep

himself from the whiskey? Officers were making their rounds at very

short intervals just now, and if drink and cold overcame him at his

post!

Close upon these thoughts came the jingling of the field officer's

sword, and the turn out of the guard. "Who goes there?"--"Rounds."--"What

rounds?"--"Grand rounds."--"Halt, grand rounds, advance one, and give the

counter-sign!" The familiar words struck coldly on John Broom's heart, as

if they had been orders to a firing party, and the bandage was already

across the Highlander's blue eyes. Would the grand rounds be challenged at

the three roads to-night? He darted out into the snow.

He flew, as the crow flies, across the fields, to where M'Alister was

on duty. It was a much shorter distance than by the road, which was

winding; but whether this would balance the difference between a horse's

pace and his own was the question, and there being no time to question,

he ran on.

He kept his black head down, and ran from his shoulders. The clatter,

clatter, jingle, jingle, on the hard road came to him through the still

frost on a level with his left ear. It was terrible, but he held on,

dodging under the hedges to be out of sight, and the sound lessened, and

by-and-by, the road having wound about, he could hear it faintly, _but

behind him_.

And he reached the three roads, and M'Alister was asleep in the ditch.

But when, with jingle and clatter, the field officer of the day reached

the spot, the giant Highlander stood like a watch-tower at his post,

with a little snow on the black plumes that drooped upon his shoulders.

HOSPITAL.--"HAME."

John Broom did not see the Highlander again for two or three days. It

was Christmas week, and, in spite of the war panic, there was festivity

enough in the barracks to keep the errand-boy very busy.

Then came New Year's Eve--"Hogmenay," as the Scotch call it--and it was

the Highland regiment's particular festival. Worn-out with

whiskey-fetching and with helping to deck barrack-rooms and carrying

pots and trestles, John Broom was having a nap in the evening, in

company with a mongrel deer-hound, when a man shook him, and said, "I

heard some one asking for ye an hour or two back; M'Alister wants ye."

"Where is he?" said John Broom, jumping to his feet.

"In hospital; he's been there a day or two. He got cold on outpost duty,

and it's flown to his lungs, they say. Ye see he's been a hard drinker,

has M'Alister, and I expect he's breaking up."

With which very just conclusion the speaker went on into the canteen,

and John Broom ran to the hospital.

Stripped of his picturesque trappings, and with no plumes to shadow the

hollows in his temples, M'Alister looked gaunt and feeble enough, as he

lay in the little hospital bed, which barely held his long limbs. Such a

wreck of giant powers of body, and noble qualities of mind as the

drink-shops are preparing for the hospitals every day!

Since the quickly-reached medical decision that he was in a rapid

decline, and that nothing could be done for him, M'Alister had been left

a good deal alone. His intellect (and it was no fool's intellect,) was

quite clear, and if the long hours by himself, in which he reckoned with

his own soul, had hastened the death-damps on his brow, they had also

written there an expression which was new to John Broom. It was not the

old sour look, it was a kind of noble gravity.

His light-blue eyes brightened as the boy came in, and he held out his

hand, and John Broom took it with both his, saying.

"I never heard till this minute, M'Alister. Eh, I do hope you'll be

better soon."

"The Lord being merciful to me," said the Highlander. "But this warld's

nearly past, laddie, and I was fain to see ye again. Dinna greet, man,

for I've important business wi' ye, and I should wish your attention.

Firstly, I'm aboot to hand ower to ye the key of your box. Tak it, and

put it in a pocket that's no got a hole in it, if you're worth one.

Secondly, there's a bit bag I made mysel', and it's got a trifle o'

money in it that I'm giving and bequeathing to ye, under certain

conditions, namely, that ye shall spend the contents of the box

according to my last wishes and instructions, with the ultimate end of

your ain benefit, ye'll understand."

A fit of coughing here broke M'Alister's discourse; but, after drinking

from a cup beside him, he put aside John Broom's remonstrances with a

dignified movement of his hand, and continued,--

"When a body comes of decent folks, he won't just care, maybe, to have

their names brought up in a barrack-room. Ye never heard me say ought of

my father or my mither?"

"Never, M'Alister."

"I'd a good hame," said the Highlander, with a decent pride in his tone.

"It was a strict hame--I've no cause now, to deceive mysel', and I'm

thinking it was a wee bit ower strict--but it was a good hame. I left

it, man--I ran away."

The glittering blue eyes turned sharply on the lad, and he went on:--

"A body doesna care to turn his byeganes oot for every fool to pick at.

Did I ever speer about your past life, and whar ye came from?"

"Never, M'Alister."

"But that's no to say that, if I knew manners, I didna obsairve. And

there's been things now and again, John Broom, that's gar'd me think

that ye've had what I had, and done as I did. Did ye rin awa', laddie?"

John Broom nodded his black head, but tears choked his voice.

"Man!" said the Highlander, "ane word's as gude's a thousand. Gang back!

Gang hame! There's the bit siller here that's to tak ye, and the love

yonder that's waiting ye. Listen to a dying man, laddie, and gang hame!"

"I doubt if they'd have me," sobbed John Broom, "I gave 'em a deal of

trouble, M'Alister."

"And d'ye think, lad, that that thought has na' cursed _me_, and keepit

me from them that loved me? Aye, lad, and till this week I never

overcame it."

"Weel may I want to save ye, bairn," added the Highlander tenderly, "for

it was the thocht of a' ye riskit for the like of me at the three roads

that made me consider wi' mysel' that I've aiblins been turning my back

a' my wilfu' life on love that's bigger than a man's deservings. It's

near done now, and it'll never lie in my poor power so much as rightly

to thank ye. It's strange that a man should set store by a good name

that he doesna deserve; but if any blessings of mine could bring ye

good, they're yours, that saved an old soldier's honour, and let him die

respectit in his regiment."

"Oh, M'Alister, let me fetch one of the chaplains to write a letter to

fetch your father," cried John Broom.

"The minister's been here this morning," said the Highlander, "and I've

tell't him mair than I've tell't you. And he's jest directed me to put

my sinful trust in the Father of us a'. I've sinned heaviest against

_Him_, laddie, but His love is stronger than the lave."

John Broom remained by his friend, whose painful fits of coughing, and

of gasping for breath, were varied by intervals of seeming stupor. When

a candle had been brought in and placed near the bed, the Highlander

roused himself and asked,--

"Is there a Bible on yon table? Could ye read a bit to me, laddie?"

There is little need to dwell on the bitterness of heart with which John

Broom confessed,--

"I can't read big words, M'Alister."

"Did ye never go to school?" said the Scotchman.

"I didn't learn," said the poor boy; "I played."

"Aye, aye. Weel, ye'll learn, when ye gang hame," said the Highlander,

in gentle tones.

"I'll never get home," said John Broom, passionately. "I'll never

forgive myself. I'll never get over it, that I couldn't read to ye when

ye wanted me, M'Alister."

"Gently, gently," said the Scotchman. "Dinna daunt yoursel' owermuch wi'

the past, laddie. And for me--I'm not that presoomtious to think I can

square up a misspent life as a man might compound wi's creditors. 'Gin

HE forgi'es me, He'll forgi'e; but it's not a prayer up or a chapter

doun that'll stan' between me and the Almighty. So dinna fret yoursel',

but let me think while I may."

And so, far into the night, the Highlander lay silent, and John Broom

watched by him.

It was just midnight when he partly raised himself, and cried,--

"Whisht, laddie! do ye hear the pipes?"

The dying ears must have been quick, for John Broom heard nothing; but

in a few moments he heard the bagpipes from the officers' mess, where

they were keeping Hogmenay. They were playing the old year out with

"Auld lang syne," and the Highlander beat the tune out with his hand,

and his eyes gleamed out of his rugged face in the dim light, as

cairngorms glitter in dark tartan.

There was a pause after the first verse, and he restless, and turning

doubtfully to where John Broom sat, as if his sight were failing, he

said, "Ye'll mind your promise, ye'll gang hame?" And after awhile he

repeated the last word.

_"Hame!"_

But as he spoke there settled over his face a smile so tender and so

full of happiness, that John Broom held his breath as he watched him. As

the light of sunrise creeps over the face of some rugged rock, it crept

from chin to brow, and the pale blue eyes shone tranquil, like water

that reflects heaven.

And when it had passed it left them still open, but gems that had lost

their ray.

LUCK GOES.--AND COMES AGAIN.

The spirit does not always falter in its faith because the flesh is

weary with hope deferred. When week after week, month after month, and

year after year, went by and John Broom was not found, the

disappointment seemed to "age" the little ladies, as Thomasina phrased

it. But yet they said to the parson, "We do not regret it."

"God forbid that you should regret it," said he.

And even the lawyer (whose heart was kinder than his tongue) abstained

from taunting them with his prophecies, and said, "The force of habits

of early education is a power as well as that of inherent tendencies. It

is only for your sake that I regret a too romantic benevolence." And

Miss Betty and Miss Kitty tried to put the matter quite away. But John

Broom was very closely bound up with the life of many years past.

Thomasina mourned him as if he had been her son, and Thomasina being an

old and valuable servant, it is needless to say that when she was

miserable no one in the house was permitted to be quite at ease.

As to Pretty Cocky, he lived, but Miss Kitty fancied that he grew less

pretty and drooped upon his polished perch.

There were times when the parson felt almost conscience-stricken because

he had encouraged the adoption of John Broom. Disappointments fall

heavily upon elderly people. They may submit better than the young, but

they do not so easily revive. The little old ladies looked greyer and

more nervous, and the little old house looked greyer and gloomier than

of old.

Indeed there were other causes of anxiety. Times were changing, prices

were rising, and the farm did not thrive. The lawyer said that the

farm-bailiff neglected his duties, and that the cowherd did nothing but

drink; but Miss Betty trembled, and said they could not part with old

servants.

The farm-bailiff had his own trouble, but he kept it to himself. No one

knew how severely he had beaten John Broom the day before he ran away,

but he remembered it himself with painful clearness. Harsh men are apt

to have consciences, and his was far from easy about the lad who had

been entrusted to his care. He could not help thinking of it when the

day's work was over, and he had to keep filling up his evening

whiskey-glass again and again to drown disagreeable thoughts.

The whiskey answered this purpose, but it made him late in the morning:

it complicated business on market days, not to the benefit of the farm,

and it put him at a disadvantage in dealing with the drunken cowherd.

The cowherd was completely upset by John Broom's mysterious

disappearance, and he comforted himself as the farm-bailiff did, but to

a larger extent. And Thomasina winked at many irregularities in

consideration of the groans of sympathy with which he responded to her

tears as they sat round the hearth where John Broom no longer lay.

At the time that he vanished from Lingborough the gossips of the country

side said, This comes of making pets of tramps' brats, when honest

folk's sons may toil and moil without notice. But when it was proved

that the tramp-boy had stolen nothing, when all search for him was vain,

and when prosperity faded from the place season by season and year by

year, there were old folk who whispered that the gaudily-clothed child

Miss Betty had found under the broom-bush had something more than common

in him, and that whoever and whatever had offended the eerie creature,

he had taken the luck of Lingborough with him when he went away.

It was early summer. The broom was shining in the hedges with uncommon

wealth of golden blossoms. "The lanes looked for all the world as they

did the year that poor child was found," said Thomasina, wiping her

eyes. Annie the lass sobbed hysterically, and the cowherd found himself

so low in spirits that after gazing dismally at the cowstalls, which had

not been cleaned for days past, he betook himself to the ale-house to

refresh his energies for this and other arrears of work.

On returning to the farm, however, he found his hands still feeble, and

he took a drop or two more to steady them, after which it occurred to

him that certain new potatoes which he had had orders to dig were yet in

the ground. The wood was not chopped for the next day's use, and he

wondered what had become of a fork he had had in the morning and had

laid down somewhere.

So he seated himself on some straw in the corner to think about it all,

and whilst he was thinking he fell fast asleep.

By his own account many remarkable things had befallen him in the course

of his life, including that meeting with a Black Something to which

allusion has been made, but nothing so strange as what happened to him

that night.

When he awoke in the morning and sat up on the straw, and looked around

him, the stable was freshly cleaned, the litter in the stalls was shaken

and turned, and near the door was an old barrel of newly dug potatoes,

and the fork stood by it. And when he ran to the wood house there lay

the wood neatly chopped and piled to take away.

He kept his own counsel that day and took credit for the work, but when

on the morrow the farm-bailiff was at a loss to know who had thinned the

turnips that were left to do in the upper field, and Annie the lass

found the kitchen cloths she had left overnight to soak, rubbed through

and rinsed, and laid to dry, the cowherd told his tale to Thomasina, and

begged for a bowl of porridge and cream to set in the barn, as one might

set a mouse-trap baited with cheese.

"For," said he, "the luck of Lingborough's come back, missis. _It's Lob

Lie-by-the-fire_"

LOB LIE-BY-THE-FIRE.

"It's Lob Lie-by-the-fire!"

So Thomasina whispered exultingly, and Annie the lass timidly. Thomasina

cautioned the cowherd to hold his tongue, and she said nothing to the

little ladies on the subject. She felt certain that they would tell the

parson, and he might not approve. The farm-bailiff knew of a farm on the

Scotch side of the Border where a brownie had been driven away by the

minister preaching his last Sunday's sermon over again at him, and as

Thomasina said, "There'd been little enough luck at Lingborough lately,

that they should wish to scare it away when it came."

And yet the news leaked out gently, and was soon known all through the

neighborhood--as a secret.

"The luck of Lingborough's come back. Lob's lying by the fire!"

He could be heard at his work any night, and several people had seen

him, though this vexed Thomasina, who knew well that the good people do

not like to be watched at their labours.

The cowherd had not been able to resist peeping down through chinks in

the floor of the loft above the barn, where he slept, and one night he

had seen Lob fetching straw for the cowhouse. "A great rough, black

fellow," said he, and he certainly grew bigger and rougher and blacker

every time the cowherd told the tale.

The Lubber-fiend appeared next to a boy who was loitering at a late hour

somewhere near the little ladies' kitchen-garden, and whom he pursued

and pelted with mud till the lad nearly lost his wits with terror. (It

was the same boy who was put in the lock-up in the autumn for stealing

Farmer Mangel's Siberian crabs.)

For this trick, however, the rough elf atoned by leaving three pecks of

newly-gathered fruit in the kitchen the following morning. Never had

there been such a preserving season at Lingborough within the memory of

Thomasina.

The truth is, hobgoblins, from Puck to Will-o'-the-wisp, are apt to play

practical jokes and knock people about whom they meet after sunset. A

dozen tales of such were rife, and folks were more amused than amazed by

Lob Lie-by-the-fire's next prank.

There was an aged pauper who lived on the charity of the little ladies,

and whom it was Miss Betty's practice to employ to do light weeding in

the fields for heavy wages. This venerable person was toddling to his

home in the gloaming with a barrow load of Miss Betty's new potatoes,

dexterously hidden by an upper sprinkling of groundsel and hemlock, when

the Lubber-fiend sprang out from behind an elder-bush, ran at the old

man with his black head, and knocked him, heels uppermost, into the

ditch. The wheelbarrow was afterwards found in Miss Betty's farmyard,

quite empty.

And when the cowherd (who had his own opinion of the aged pauper, and it

was a very poor one) went that evening to drink Lob Lie-by-the-fire's

health from a bottle he kept in the harness room window, he was nearly

choked with the contents, which had turned into salt and water, as fairy

jewels turn to withered leaves.

But luck had come to Lingborough. There had not been such crops for

twice seven years past.

The lay-away hens' eggs were brought regularly to the kitchen.

The ducklings were not eaten by rats.

No fowls were stolen.

The tub of pig-meal lasted three times as long as usual.

The cart-wheels and gate-hinges were oiled by unseen fingers.

The mushrooms in the croft gathered themselves and down on a dish in the

larder.

It is by small savings that a farm thrives, and Miss Betty's farm

throve.

Everybody worked with more alacrity. Annie the lass said the butter came

in a way that made it a pleasure to churn.

The neighbours knew even more than those on the spot. They said--That

since Lob came back to Lingborough the hens laid eggs as large as

turkeys' eggs, and the turkeys' eggs were--oh, you wouldn't believe the

size!

That the cows gave nothing but cream, and that Thomasina skimmed butter

off it as less lucky folk skim cream from milk.

That her cheeses were as rich as butter.

That she sold all she made, for Lob took the fairy butter from the old

trees in the avenue, and made it up into pats for Miss Betty's table.

That if you bought Lingborough turnips, you might feed your cows on them

all the winter and the milk would be as sweet as new-mown hay.

That horses foddered on Lingborough hay would have thrice the strength

of others, and that sheep who cropped Lingborough pastures would grow

three times as fat.

That for as good a watchdog as it was, the sheep dog never barked at

Lob, a plain proof that he was more than human.

That for all its good luck it was not safe to loiter near the place

after dark, if you wished to keep your senses. And if you took so much

as a fallen apple belonging to Miss Betty, you might look out for palsy

or St. Vitus' dance, or be carried off bodily to the underground folk.

Finally, that it was well all the cows gave double, for that Lob

Lie-by-the-fire drank two gallons of the best cream every day, with

curds, porridge, and other dainties to match. But what did that matter,

when he had been overheard to swear that luck should not leave

Lingborough till Miss Betty owned half the country side?

MISS BETTY IS SURPRISED.

Miss Betty and Miss Kitty having accepted a polite invitation from Mrs.

General Dunmaw, went down to tea with that lady one fine evening in this

eventful summer.

Death had made a gap or two in the familiar circle during the last

fourteen years, but otherwise it was quite the same, except that the

lawyer was married and not quite so sarcastic, and that Mrs. Brown Jasey

had brought a young niece with her dressed in the latest fashion, which

looked quite as odd as new fashions are wont to do, and with a

_coiffure_ "enough to frighten the French away," as her aunt told her.

It was while this young lady was getting more noise out of Mrs. Dunmaw's

red silk and rosewood piano than had been shaken out of it during the

last thirty years, that the lawyer brought his cup of coffee to Miss

Betty's side, and said, suavely, "I here wonderful accounts of

Lingborough, dear Miss Betty."

"I am thankful to say, sir, that the farm is doing well this year. I am

very thankful, for the past few years have been unfavourable, and we had

begun to face the fact that it might be necessary to sell the old place.

And I will not deny, sir, that it would have gone far to break my heart,

to say nothing of my sister Kitty's."

"Oh, we shouldn't have let it come to that," said the lawyer, "I could

have raised a loan--"

"Sir," said Miss Betty with dignity, "if we have our own pride, I hope

it's an honest one. Lingborough will have passed out of our family when

it's kept up on borrowed money."

"I _could_ live in lodgings," added Miss Betty, firmly, "little as I've

been accustomed to it, but _not in debt_."

"Well, well, my dear madam, we needn't talk about it now. But I'm dying

of curiosity as to the mainstay of all this good luck."

"The turnips--" began Miss Betty.

"Bless my soul, Miss Betty!" cried the lawyer, "I'm not talking of

turnips. I'm talking of Lob Lie-by-the-fire, as all the country side is

for that matter."

"The country people have plenty of tales of him," said Miss Betty, with

some pride in the family goblin. "He used to haunt the old barns, they

say, in my great-grandfather's time."

"And now you've got him back again," said the lawyer.

"Not that I know of," said Miss Betty.

On which the lawyer poured into her astonished ear all the latest news

on the subject, and if it had lost nothing before reaching his house in

the town, it rather gained in marvels as he repeated it to Miss Betty.

No wonder that the little lady was anxious to get home to question

Thomasina, and that somewhat before the usual hour she said,--

"Sister Kitty, if it's not too soon for the servant--"

And the parson, threading his way to where Mrs. Dunmaw's china crape

shawl (dyed crimson) shone in the bow window, said, "The clergy should

keep respectable hours, madam; especially when they are as old as I am.

Will you allow me to thank you for a very pleasant evening, and to say

good night?"

THE PARSON AND THE LUBBER-FIEND.

"Do you think there'd be any harm in leaving it alone, sister Betty?"

said Miss Kitty, tremulously.

They had reached Lingborough, and the parson had come in with them, by

Miss Betty's request, and Thomasina had been duly examined.

"Eh, Miss Betty, why should ye chase away good luck with the minister?"

cried she.

"Sister Kitty! Thomasina!" said Miss Betty. "I would not accept good

luck from a doubtful quarter to save Lingborough. But if It can face

this excellent clergyman, the Being who haunted my great-grandfather's

farm is still welcome to the old barns, and you, Thomasina, need not

grudge It cream or curds."

"You're quite right, sister Betty," said Miss Kitty. "You always are;

but oh dear, oh dear!"--

"Thomasina tells me," said Miss Betty, turning to the parson, "that on

chilly evenings It sometimes comes and lies by the kitchen fire after

they have gone to bed, and I can distinctly remember my grandmother

mentioning the same thing. Thomasina has of late left the kitchen door

on the latch for Its convenience, and as they had to sit up late for us,

she and Annie have taken their work into the still-room to leave the

kitchen free for Lob Lie-by-the-fire. They have not looked into the

kitchen this evening, as such beings do not like to be watched. But they

fancy that they heard It come in. I trust, sir, that neither in myself

nor my sister Kitty does timidity exceed a proper feminine sensibility,

where duty is concerned. If you will be good enough to precede us, we

will go to meet the old friend of my great-grandfather's fortunes, and

we leave it entirely to your valuable discretion to pursue what course

you think proper on the occasion."

"Is this the door?" said the parson, cheerfully, after knocking his head

against black beams and just saving his legs down shallow and unexpected

steps on his way to the kitchen--beams so unfelt and steps so familiar

to the women that it had never struck them that the long passage was not

the most straightforward walk a man could take--"I think you said It

generally lies on the hearth?"

The happy thought struck Thomasina that the parson might be frightened

out of his unlucky interference.

"Aye, aye, sir," said she from behind. "We've heard him rolling by the

fire, and growling like thunder to himself. They say he's an awful size,

too, with the strength of four men, and a long tail, and eyes like coals

of fire."

But Thomasina spoke in vain, for the parson opened the door, and as they

pressed in, the moonlight streaming through the latticed window showed

Lob lying by the fire.

"There's his tail! Ay--k!" screeched Annie the lass, and away she went,

without drawing breath to the top garret, where she locked and bolted

herself in, and sat her bandbox flat, and screamed for help.

But it was the plumy tail of the sheep dog, who was lying there with the

Lubber-fiend. And Lob was asleep, with his arms around the sheep dog's

neck, and the sheep dog's head lay on his breast, and his own head

touched the dog's.

And it was a smaller head than the parson had been led to expect, and it

had thick black hair.

As the parson bent over the hearth, Thomasina took Miss Kitty round the

waist, and Miss Betty clutched her black velvet bag till the steel beads

ran into her hands, and they were quite prepared for an explosion, and

sulphur, and blue lights, and thunder.

And then the parson's deep round voice broke the silence, saying,--

"Is that you, lad? GOD bless you, John Broom. You're welcome home!"

THE END

Some things--such as gossip--gain in the telling, but there are others

before which words fail, though each heart knows its own power of

sympathy. And such was the joy of the little ladies and of Thomasina at

John Broom's return.

The sheep dog had had his satisfaction out long ago, and had kept it to

himself, but how Pretty Cocky crowed, and chuckled, and danced, and

bowed his crest, and covered his face with his amber wings, and kicked

his seed-pot over, and spilled his water-pot on to the Derbyshire marble

chess-table, and screamed till the room rang again, and went on

screaming, with Miss Kitty's pocket-handkerchief over his head to keep

him quiet, my poor pen can but imperfectly describe.

The desire to atone for the past which had led John Broom to act the

part of one of those Good-Fellows who have, we must fear, finally

deserted us, will be easily understood. And to a nature of his type, the

earning of some self-respect, and of a character before others, was

perhaps a necessary prelude to future well-doing.

He did do well. He became a good scholar, as farmers were then. He

spent as much of his passionate energies on the farm as the farm would

absorb, and he restrained the rest. It is not cockatoos only who have

sometimes to live and be happy in this unfinished life with one wing

clipped.

In fine weather, when the perch was put into the garden, Miss Betty was

sometimes startled by stumbling on John Broom in the dusk, sitting on

his heels, the unfastened chain in his hand, with his black head

lovingly laid against Cock's white and yellow poll, talking in a low

voice, and apparently with the sympathy of his companion; and as Miss

Betty justly feared, of that "other side of the world," which they both

knew, and which both at times had cravings to revisit.

Even after the sobering influences of middle age had touched him, and a

wife and children bound him with the quiet ties of home, he had (at long

intervals) his "restless times," when his good "misses" would bring out

a little store laid by in one of the children's socks, and would bid

him. "Be off, and get a breath of the sea-air," but on condition that

the sock went with him as his purse. John Broom always looked ashamed to

go, but he came back the better, and his wife was quite easy in his

absence with that confidence in her knowledge of the "master," which is

so mysterious to the unmarried, and which Miss Betty looked upon as

"want of feeling" to the end. She always dreaded that he would not

return, and a little ruse which she adopted of giving him money to make

bargains for foreign articles of _vertu_ with sailors, is responsible

for many of the choicest ornaments in the Lingborough parlour.

"The sock'll bring him home," said Mrs. Broom, and home he came, and

never could say what he had been doing. Nor was the account given by

Thomasina's cousin, who was a tide-waiter down yonder, particularly

satisfying to the women's curiosity. He said that John Broom was always

about; that he went aboard of all the craft in the bay, and asked whence

they came and whither they were bound. That being once taunted to do it,

he went up the rigging of a big vessel like a cat, and came down it

looking like a fool. That as a rule, he gossipped and shared his tobacco

with sailors and fishermen, and brought out the sock much oftener than

was prudent for the benefit of the ragged boys who haunt the quay.

He had two other weaknesses, which a faithful biographer must chronicle.

A regiment on the march would draw him from the plough-tail itself, and

"With daddy to see the pretty soldiers" was held to excuse any of Mrs.

Broom's children from household duties.

The other shall be described in the graphic language of that acute

observer the farm-bailiff.

"If there cam' an Irish beggar, wi' a stripy cloot him and a bellows

under 's arm, and ca'd himsel' a Hielander, the lad wad gi'e him his

silly head off his shoulders."

As to the farm-bailiff, perhaps no one felt more or said less than he

did on John Broom's return. But the tones of his voice had tender

associations for the boy's ears as he took off his speckled hat, and

after contemplating the inside for some moments, put it on again, and

said,--

"Aweel, lad, sae ye've cam' hame?"

But he listened with quivering face when John Broom told the story of

M'Alister, and when it was ended he rose and went out, and "took the

pledge" against drink, and--kept it.

Moved by similar enthusiasm, the cowherd took the pledge also, and if he

didn't keep it, he certainly drank less, chiefly owing to the vigilant

oversight of the farm-bailiff, who now exercised his natural severity

almost exclusively in the denunciation of all liquors whatsoever, from

the cowherd's whiskey to Thomasina's elder-flower wine.

The plain cousin left his money to the little old ladies, and

Lingborough continued to flourish.

Partly perhaps because of this, it is doubtful if John Broom was ever

looked upon by the rustics as quite "like other folk."

The favourite version of his history is that he was Lob under the guise

of a child; that he was driven away by new clothes; that he returned

from unwillingness to see an old family go to ruin "which he had served

for hundreds of years;" that the parson preached his last Sunday's

sermon at him; and that, having stood that test, he took his place among

Christian people.

Whether a name invented off-hand, however plain and sensible, does not

stick to a man as his father's does, is a question. But John Broom was

not often called by his.

With Scotch caution, the farm-bailiff seldom exceeded the safe title of

"Man!" and the parson was apt to address him as "My dear boy" when he

had certainly outgrown the designation.

Miss Betty called him John Broom, but the people called him by the name

he had earned.

And long after his black hair lay white and thick on his head, like snow

on the old barn roof, and when his dark eyes were dim in an honoured old

age, the village children would point him out to each other, crying,

"There goes Lob Lie-by-the-fire, the Luck of Lingborough!"

[Illustration]

WILD JACK.

CHAPTER I.

A series of accidents had overtaken the Newbury mail from the hour that

it started in the fine dewy morning, till the sun went down; and as the

twilight deepened over the landscape it was still many miles from its

destination.

The troubles began early in the day. One of the leaders cast a shoe, and

had to be shod at the first village through which they passed. Farther

on something went wrong with the harness, and later still a much more

serious impediment to their progress arose--some accident happened to a

wheel, so that the coach must needs go half-pace, in spite of the oaths

of old Joe, the driver, whose boast it was that he had never reached

Wancote later than midnight.

But this evening old Joe's boasts were doomed to fall to the ground, for

the coach could only crawl along, and the night was closing in fast.

The guard was engaged in a somewhat mysterious occupation, an occupation

which, though only partially visible from the interior of the coach,

caused a faint shriek to issue therefrom.

"What is he doing? What is it?" cried a woman's voice.

"Nothing, madam; be easy, I entreat," was the answer from within. "There

is nothing to alarm, but rather to reassure, in his actions--he prepares

his pistols and looks to their priming. Zounds! one must be ready for

all contingencies with ten miles of unfrequented road ahead of us."

The mail continued on its way, becoming slower and slower, as an ominous

creaking of the injured wheel gave token that the pace must be reduced

to a walk.

The curtain before the window was held back, and a gentleman from within

addressed the guard.

"Will the wheel hold out, think you?" he said.

"It is impossible to assure your reverence that it will, and the night

will be dark."

The gentleman drew in his head with a little "Tut-tut" of consternation.

There were four occupants of the coach--two ladies and two gentlemen. Of

the ladies one was young, perhaps nineteen, and one close upon forty.

The younger was the parson's daughter Elizabeth, otherwise Betty Ives.

Her father, Mr. Ives, was bringing her home from Newbury, where she had

spent the last six months with her aunt, Mrs. Primrose, seeing something

of the gay world in the county town.

The father and daughter, who sat opposite to each other, bore a strong

resemblance to each other. In the girl's face the dark brows were more

arched, the large blue eyes more tender, the firm mouth more sweet, and

all tinted with the lilies and roses of a fresh country life, so

beautifully blended on the peach-like cheeks that, even without her rare

perfection of feature, the colouring alone would have made Betty

beautiful.

Parson Ives had been very handsome in his youth, and though worn by

years (he was forty years older than his child), and by the grief of

bereavement, he was yet famous for his good looks.

Betty wore a short dark green riding-habit and a broad felt hat. She was

as much at home on horseback as on foot, and seldom in the mornings wore

a less business-like costume.

The other two occupants of the coach were to ordinary eyes less

interesting. Mistress Mary Jones was a faded woman, who had once been

pretty, a spinster, a great friend of Betty's, and one of her father's

parishioners. She was an excellent woman in her way, albeit somewhat

given to terrors both real and fanciful.

Her opposite neighbor was a man past the prime of life, owner and

breeder of large herds of cattle near Wancote, a man who, after

attending the Newbury markets, often returned home by this very coach,

and was believed to carry large sums of money in the flap-pockets of his

many-caped riding-coat.

Mr. Barnes had a fixed mask-like countenance, his bushy eyebrows almost

met in a wrinkle that told of thought and deep calculation. He was

clean-shaven, and his chin was swathed in a huge neckcloth of white

muslin; he wore his hat low on his brow.

"I like not to be out so late on the high road," said he very suddenly,

so that both Mr. Ives and Mistress Mary Jones started, and Betty, whom

nothing ever startled, turned her great blue eyes inquiringly on him.

"Why, sir?" she asked.

"Why, my good young lady, because the Newbury sales are just over, and

it is well known that the stock reared on Belford home farm has sold

well"

"Are the roads not safe then, sir?" asked Mr. Ives rather anxiously.

"I do not quite say that, for it is many a long day since the coach was

attacked between Newbury and Wancote; but rumour has been busy."

"Ha!" cried Betty, sitting upright eagerly.

"It is said that Wild Jack Barnstaple has been heard of in the

neighbourhood."

"Heaven help us!" shrieked Mary Jones.

"Be calm, I entreat you, my dear madam, and have pity on my unfortunate

toes! Zounds! it is torture enough to be subject to periodical gout,

without such an infliction as the stamp of a lady's fashionable heel on

the tender place."

"But you say Wild Jack is in the neighbourhood! Oh Heaven! what will

become of us!"

Betty's blooming cheek had turned just a faint shade paler, but the

rosy colour came rushing back, her eyes flashed.

Suddenly stooping forward she said in a low voice:

"Mr. Barnes, you may confide in me. Do you carry much money?"

He answered in a tone of assumed ease, "Paper to the value of nearly a

thousand pounds."

"Then look you, Mr. Barnes," said Betty in her natural voice, "I have a

proposal to make to you. Give the valuables you have to us--to Miss Mary

Jones and to myself. Wild Jack, all say, is a gentleman--should he, by

any unfortunate chance, be on the road to-night, he will not rob women.

Your money will be safe."

"No, no, no, no!" cried Mary. "Betty, how can you propose anything so

impossible, so unfeminine! Are not men our natural protectors?" and she

threw a languishing glance at the cattle-breeder. "Shall we usurp their

rights?"

"It is quite true; it is impossible," said Barnes.

"You are foolish to throw away the chance," said Betty calmly.

"I cannot see why you should not accept her offer," said the parson

restlessly; he was accustomed to yield to his daughter's judgment in

everything. "Betty is a bold girl, and she is generally in the right."

"Come, yield the point, Mr. Barnes," said Betty, with a light laugh,

holding out her hand for the pocket-book.

"Remember I have no part or parcel in it," cried Mary, shrinking farther

and farther away. "I would not for the whole world! Why, Betty," she

whimpered, "they might even search you."

"Wild Jack is a gentleman," answered the girl; then with a sudden flash

of scorn, "but even had I not such faith in his honourable dealing, I

should know how to take care of myself. Give me the papers, Mr. Barnes."

Very unwillingly, as if he despised himself for so doing, Barnes gave

them into her hands. The notes were smoothed and laid flat, they

occupied the smallest space possible.

Betty Ives placed the papers within the bosom of her tight-fitting

riding-habit, and leant back as if she had done with the subject.

Mr. Ives looked with anxious eyes through the window.

The mail was passing along a wide fair unsheltered road, on each side

spread away treeless tracts of country, flat and wide, over which the

fresh cold wind blew listlessly. To the left the horizon was bounded by

the wide expanse of the grassy Berkshire downs. They rose and fell, a

vast undulating plain, covered with short fine herbage.

It was growing very dark; the parson drew in his head, and thanked

Heaven that the country was so fine and open, that he could even in the

gathering gloom see far behind and before, and could perceive no

suspicious object.

"We are all right here," said Mr. Barnes, his voice becoming more and

more dismal. "But a mile farther on, and we come to a small wood--the

road dips down there suddenly, it is a first-rate place for an ambush."

"Mercy! mercy!" cried Mary Jones in a voice half-strangled by the

anguish of her terror.

"We have yet a mile of safety," said Betty kindly "--a whole mile, Mary;

and going at this pace, we need not prepare our terrors for another

hour."

"Heaven grant that the moon may be up," cried Barnes.

"Sir," said Betty slowly, "I imagine that you carry arms?"

"I am not unarmed," he answered hastily, "I have pistols and a sword."

"I should have them in readiness, as I myself intend to do," said Betty,

and she drew out a tiny silver-mounted pistol. "See, it is prepared for

use. My father is a clergyman and must eschew firearms; Mary Jones is a

woman--"

"Aye, a true woman, a frail woman," whined the poor lady.

"But," continued Betty, "the guard is armed, so are we; we have still a

mile to go. Ha!" her voice ended abruptly. There was a crashing sound, a

shot, a shout, a confused sense as if the whole coach were falling to

the ground. The door was torn open. Before Betty could even raise the

deadly little weapon she carried, it was seized from her hand--the whole

party were dragged out of the carriage--they found themselves surrounded

by armed men. There was a violent struggle, fighting and disorder, loud

oaths from the coachman, appalling shrieks from Mary Jones. Some one

opened a lantern and allowed its red glare to fall on the scared

prisoners and on the black masks of their captors.

The man who was evidently the leader of the party was holding Betty's

two hands in one of his in a grasp which she imagined to be gentle until

she attempted to release them, when she discovered that she might as

easily have broken bands of steel.

"Here, give me a rope, we must bind our prisoners," said this man

suddenly. "This fair lady had all but fired one shot too many for Wild

Jack to-night!"

There was a laugh, and with dexterity, evidently gained from experience,

the prisoners were rapidly bound.

"I am grieved to incommode you thus, madam," said the leader, bowing low

to Betty. "Our business is with that gentleman," with a slight motion of

his hand towards the hapless Mr. Barnes. Betty bowed slightly. The light

fell full on her tall figure, on her noble head slightly raised and

thrown back, the nostrils dilated, the colour glowing richly in the soft

cheek. Wild Jack, looking at her, felt a glow of enthusiasm which

betrayed itself in his voice.

"You have nothing to fear, madam," he said.

"I? I fear nothing," said the girl calmly--"Wild Jack is a gentleman."

The highwayman made a rapid sign to his comrades, who proceeded to throw

themselves on to Samuel Barnes, and begin to search him from head to

foot.

A sudden fear flashed into Betty's mind. How if Wild Jack were unable to

restrain his companions, infuriated as they would be by their failure in

discovering the expected treasure on the person of their victim?

Her cheeks paled, for one moment she turned her eyes full on the masked

face of her captor. Masked as he was, her look thrilled him through and

through.

"You are safe," he repeated hurriedly.

Something in his voice seemed to give her confidence, for she stooped

forward and said in a low voice, "Mr. Barnstaple, I trust to your

honour,--the money is here."

And with a grand movement she laid her bound hands on her breast.

Wild Jack bowed low, but he said nothing, and in spite of the bold front

she bore, Betty's heart beat fast.

The noise increased. Samuel Barnes, maddened with fright, struggled

against his assailants furiously, but he was overmatched, a violent blow

with the butt end of a pistol stunned him completely, and all

resistance was over. Undaunted by their want of success the coach was

then rifled, the mails ruthlessly thrown out into the road.

One or two of the men, of whom there appeared to be five at least, now

proposed to search the women.

There was a moment's pause, during which Wild Jack tightened his grasp

on Betty's arm. Had she shown one symptom of fear, it is possible that

his fierce profession would have triumphed over the infatuation of her

beauty, but the look she turned upon him was so full of confidence, such

absolute trust in his honour, that it prevailed.

He swore that he made no war upon women, and ordered back his

disappointed followers, allowing them to divide the trumpery booty they

had secured, of watches, trinkets, and the parson's purse, which was not

empty.

They stood back. Wild Jack spoke to them in a low tone, looking, as he

did so, several times up at the sky as if to see how the time went; then

advancing he opened the door of the coach, and unbinding the hands of

the two ladies, offered to hand them in.

Betty demurred. "We have duties here first," she said, pointing to the

inanimate form of poor Samuel Barnes.

"It is well then," said Wild Jack, just touching the prostrate man with

the toe of his boot. "We will leave you now, with many apologies, madam,

for our intrusion."

The others were already in the saddle and almost out of sight.

Wild Jack, who was about to mount, withdrew his foot from the stirrup

and approached Betty once more.

"Go, go!" she said. "This poor man bleeds; ah, why do you not go?"

"I am gone," he answered. "But first, fair lady, in consideration of the

booty I have resigned I demand a reward."

"What can I give you?"

He pointed to her hand, on one finger of which was a small gold ring in

the form of a serpent with tiny ruby eyes.

"Give me that," he said somewhat imperiously.

"You are welcome," she said haughtily, and she drew the ring from her

finger. "I would give a trinket of more value," she cried, stamping her

little foot, "to be freed from your company now!"

The words stung him.

"You will remember those words, madam," he said, "some day--when this

ring returns to your keeping."

He shut the lantern, which during all this time had thrown its yellow

light on the strange scene, mounted his horse and disappeared. The horse

was snow white, and it passed by like a white gleam in the darkness.

It was pitch dark now, and the horror of their situation was increased

by the moans which Mr. Barnes began to utter as consciousness slowly

returned.

It was a relief to all when the familiar sound of flint and steel smote

the ear, and the coachman awkwardly, with his bound hands, attempted to

light the lamps of the coach. Betty's first business was to unfasten the

ropes which bound the men hand and foot, and by degrees they were able

to take in their exact position.

One of the leaders had been shot dead, the traces had been cut, but the

frightened horses had not strayed out of reach.

Mary Jones was in a dead faint, and, in the absence of all restoratives,

seemed likely to remain so.

Mr. Barnes, his head carefully bound up by Betty and her father, was at

last able to rise to his feet and take his place in the carriage.

The dawn was already breaking, and a white light stealing over the murky

sky, before the mail could once more get under weigh and move heavily

forwards.

Far and wide the downs stretched, silent and deserted; a bitter wind

swept over them and stirred the mane of the dead horse, who lay a

ghastly spectacle, his head thrown back, in a pool of his own blood.

From afar, from whence nor eye nor tongue could tell, came a foul raven

croaking.