HAL O' THE DRAFT

Prophets have honour all over the Earth,

Except in the village where they were born,

Where such as knew them boys from birth

Nature-ally hold 'em in scorn.

When Prophets are naughty and young and vain,

They make a won'erful grievance of it;

(You can see by their writings how they complain),

But Oh, 'tis won'erful good for the Prophet!

There's nothing Nineveh Town can give

(Nor being swallowed by whales between),

Makes up for the place where a man's folk live,

That don't care nothing what he has been.

He might ha' been that, or he might ha' been this,

But they love and they hate him for what he is.

A rainy afternoon drove Dan and Una over to play pirates in the Little

Mill. If you don't mind rats on the rafters and oats in your shoes,

the mill-attic, with its trap-doors and inscriptions on beams about

floods and sweethearts, is a splendid place. It is lighted by a

foot-square window, called Duck Window, that looks across to Little

Lindens Farm, and the spot where Jack Cade was killed.

When they had climbed the attic ladder (they called it 'the mainmast

tree', out of the ballad of Sir Andrew Barton, and Dan 'swarved it with

might and main', as the ballad says) they saw a man sitting on Duck

Window-sill. He was dressed in a plum-coloured doublet and tight

plum-coloured hose, and he drew busily in a red-edged book.

'Sit ye! Sit ye!' Puck cried from a rafter overhead. 'See what it is

to be beautiful! Sir Harry Dawe--pardon, Hal--says I am the very image

of a head for a gargoyle.'

The man laughed and raised his dark velvet cap to the children, and his

grizzled hair bristled out in a stormy fringe. He was old--forty at

least--but his eyes were young, with funny little wrinkles all round

them. A satchel of embroidered leather hung from his broad belt, which

looked interesting.

'May we see?' said Una, coming forward.

'Surely--sure-ly!' he said, moving up on the window-seat, and returned

to his work with a silver-pointed pencil. Puck sat as though the grin

were fixed for ever on his broad face, while they watched the quick,

certain fingers that copied it. Presently the man took a reed pen from

his satchel, and trimmed it with a little ivory knife, carved in the

semblance of a fish. 'Oh, what a beauty!' cried Dan.

''Ware fingers! That blade is perilous sharp. I made it myself of the

best Low Country cross-bow steel. And so, too, this fish. When his

back-fin travels to his tail--so--he swallows up the blade, even as the

whale swallowed Gaffer Jonah ... Yes, and that's my inkhorn. I made

the four silver saints round it. Press Barnabas's head. It opens, and

then--'He dipped the trimmed pen, and with careful boldness began to

put in the essential lines of Puck's rugged face, that had been but

faintly revealed by the silver-point.

The children gasped, for it fairly leaped from the page.

As he worked, and the rain fell on the tiles, he talked--now clearly,

now muttering, now breaking off to frown or smile at his work. He told

them he was born at Little Lindens Farm, and his father used to beat

him for drawing things instead of doing things, till an old priest

called Father Roger, who drew illuminated letters in rich people's

books, coaxed the parents to let him take the boy as a sort of

painter's apprentice. Then he went with Father Roger to Oxford, where

he cleaned plates and carried cloaks and shoes for the scholars of a

College called Merton.

'Didn't you hate that?' said Dan after a great many other questions.

'I never thought on't. Half Oxford was building new colleges or

beautifying the old, and she had called to her aid the master-craftsmen

of all Christendie--kings in their trade and honoured of Kings. I knew

them. I worked for them: that was enough. No wonder--' He stopped

and laughed.

'You became a great man, Hal,' said Puck.

'They said so, Robin. Even Bramante said so.'

'Why? What did you do?' Dan asked.

The artist looked at him queerly. 'Things in stone and such, up and

down England. You would not have heard of 'em. To come nearer home, I

rebuilded this little St Barnabas' church of ours. It cost me more

trouble and sorrow than aught I've touched in my life. But 'twas a

sound lesson.'

'Um,' said Dan. 'We've had lessons this morning.'

'I'll not afflict ye, lad,' said Hal, while Puck roared. 'Only 'tis

strange to think how that little church was rebuilt, re-roofed, and

made glorious, thanks to some few godly Sussex ironmasters, a Bristow

sailor lad, a proud ass called Hal o' the Draft because, d'you see, he

was always drawing and drafting; and'--he dragged the words

slowly--'and a Scotch pirate.'

'Pirate?' said Dan. He wriggled like a hooked fish.

'Even that Andrew Barton you were singing of on the stair just now.'

He dipped again in the inkwell, and held his breath over a sweeping

line, as though he had forgotten everything else.

'Pirates don't build churches, do they?' said Dan. 'Or do they?'

'They help mightily,' Hal laughed. 'But you were at your lessons this

morn, Jack Scholar.'

'Oh, pirates aren't lessons. It was only Bruce and his silly old

spider,' said Una. 'Why did Sir Andrew Barton help you?' 'I question

if he ever knew it,' said Hal, twinkling. 'Robin, how a' mischief's

name am I to tell these innocents what comes of sinful pride?'

'Oh, we know all about that,' said Una pertly. 'If you get too

beany--that's cheeky--you get sat upon, of course.'

Hal considered a moment, pen in air, and Puck said some long words.

'Aha! that was my case too,' he cried. 'Beany--you say--but certainly

I did not conduct myself well. I was proud of--of such things as

porches--a Galilee porch at Lincoln for choice--proud of one

Torrigiano's arm on my shoulder, proud of my knighthood when I made the

gilt scroll-work for the Sovereign--our King's ship. But Father Roger

sitting in Merton College Library, he did not forget me. At the top of

my pride, when I and no other should have builded the porch at Lincoln,

he laid it on me with a terrible forefinger to go back to my Sussex

clays and rebuild, at my own charges, my own church, where us Dawes

have been buried for six generations. "Out! Son of my Art!" said he.

"Fight the Devil at home ere you call yourself a man and a craftsman."

And I quaked, and I went... How's yon, Robin?' He flourished the

finished sketch before Puck.

'Me! Me past peradventure,' said Puck, smirking like a man at a

mirror. 'Ah, see! The rain has took off! I hate housen in daylight.'

'Whoop! Holiday!' cried Hal, leaping up. 'Who's for my Little

Lindens? We can talk there.'

They tumbled downstairs, and turned past the dripping willows by the

sunny mill-dam.

'Body o' me,' said Hal, staring at the hop-garden, where the hops were

just ready to blossom. 'What are these? Vines? No, not vines, and

they twine the wrong way to beans.' He began to draw in his ready book.

'Hops. New since your day,' said Puck. 'They're an herb of Mars, and

their flowers dried flavour ale. We say--

'Turkeys, Heresy, Hops, and Beer

Came into England all in one year.'

'Heresy I know. I've seen Hops--God be praised for their beauty! What

is your Turkis?'

The children laughed. They knew the Lindens turkeys, and as soon as

they reached Lindens orchard on the hill the full flock charged at them.

Out came Hal's book at once. 'Hoity-toity!' he cried. 'Here's Pride in

purple feathers! Here's wrathy contempt and the Pomps of the Flesh!

How d'you call them?'

'Turkeys! Turkeys!' the children shouted, as the old gobbler raved and

flamed against Hal's plum-coloured hose.

'Save Your Magnificence!' he said. 'I've drafted two good new things

today.' And he doffed his cap to the bubbling bird.

Then they walked through the grass to the knoll where Little Lindens

stands. The old farmhouse, weather-tiled to the ground, took almost

the colour of a blood-ruby in the afternoon light. The pigeons pecked

at the mortar in the chimney-stacks; the bees that had lived under the

tiles since it was built filled the hot August air with their booming;

and the smell of the box-tree by the dairy-window mixed with the smell

of earth after rain, bread after baking, and a tickle of wood-smoke.

The farmer's wife came to the door, baby on arm, shaded her brows

against the sun, stooped to pluck a sprig of rosemary, and turned down

the orchard. The old spaniel in his barrel barked once or twice to

show he was in charge of the empty house. Puck clicked back the

garden-gate.

'D'you marvel that I love it?' said Hal, in a whisper. 'What can town

folk know of the nature of housen--or land?' They perched themselves

arow on the old hacked oak bench in Lindens garden, looking across the

valley of the brook at the fern-covered dimples and hollows of the

Forge behind Hobden's cottage. The old man was cutting a faggot in his

garden by the hives. It was quite a second after his chopper fell that

the chump of the blow reached their lazy ears.

'Eh--yeh!' said Hal. 'I mind when where that old gaffer stands was

Nether Forge--Master John Collins's foundry. Many a night has his big

trip-hammer shook me in my bed here. Boom-bitty! Boom-bitty! If the

wind was east, I could hear Master Tom Collins's forge at Stockens

answering his brother, Boom-oop! Boom-oop! and midway between, Sir

John Pelham's sledgehammers at Brightling would strike in like a pack

o' scholars, and "Hic-haec-hoc" they'd say, "Hic-haec-hoc," till I fell

asleep. Yes. The valley was as full o' forges and fineries as a May

shaw o' cuckoos. All gone to grass now!'

'What did they make?' said Dan. 'Guns for the King's ships--and for

others. Serpentines and cannon mostly. When the guns were cast, down

would come the King's Officers, and take our plough-oxen to haul them

to the coast. Look! Here's one of the first and finest craftsmen of

the Sea!'

He fluttered back a page of his book, and showed them a young man's

head. Underneath was written: 'Sebastianus.'

'He came down with a King's Order on Master John Collins for twenty

serpentines (wicked little cannon they be!) to furnish a venture of

ships. I drafted him thus sitting by our fire telling Mother of the

new lands he'd find the far side the world. And he found them, too!

There's a nose to cleave through unknown seas! Cabot was his name--a

Bristol lad--half a foreigner. I set a heap by him. He helped me to

my church-building.'

'I thought that was Sir Andrew Barton,' said Dan.

'Ay, but foundations before roofs,' Hal answered. 'Sebastian first put

me in the way of it. I had come down here, not to serve God as a

craftsman should, but to show my people how great a craftsman I was.

They cared not, and it served me right, one split straw for my craft or

my greatness. What a murrain call had I, they said, to mell with old

St Barnabas'? Ruinous the church had been since the Black Death, and

ruinous she would remain; and I could hang myself in my new

scaffold-ropes! Gentle and simple, high and low--the Hayes, the

Fowles, the Fenners, the Collinses--they were all in a tale against me.

Only Sir John Pelham up yonder at Brightling bade me heart-up and go

on. Yet how could I? Did I ask Master Collins for his timber-tug to

haul beams? The oxen had gone to Lewes after lime. Did he promise me

a set of iron cramps or ties for the roof? They never came to hand, or

else they were spaulty or cracked. So with everything. Nothing said,

but naught done except I stood by them, and then done amiss. I thought

the countryside was fair bewitched.'

'It was, sure-ly,' said Puck, knees under chin. 'Did you never suspect

ary one?'

'Not till Sebastian came for his guns, and John Collins played him the

same dog's tricks as he'd played me with my ironwork. Week in, week

out, two of three serpentines would be flawed in the casting, and only

fit, they said, to be re-melted. Then John Collins would shake his

head, and vow he could pass no cannon for the King's service that were

not perfect. Saints! How Sebastian stormed! I know, for we sat on

this bench sharing our sorrows inter-common.

'When Sebastian had fumed away six weeks at Lindens and gotten just six

serpentines, Dirk Brenzett, Master of the Cygnet hoy, sends me word

that the block of stone he was fetching me from France for our new font

he'd hove overboard to lighten his ship, chased by Andrew Barton up to

Rye Port.'

'Ah! The pirate!' said Dan.

'Yes. And while I am tearing my hair over this, Ticehurst Will, my

best mason, comes to me shaking, and vowing that the Devil, horned,

tailed, and chained, has run out on him from the church-tower, and the

men would work there no more. So I took 'em off the foundations, which

we were strengthening, and went into the Bell Tavern for a cup of ale.

Says Master John Collins: "Have it your own way, lad; but if I was you,

I'd take the sinnification o' the sign, and leave old Barnabas' Church

alone!" And they all wagged their sinful heads, and agreed. Less

afraid of the Devil than of me--as I saw later.

'When I brought my sweet news to Lindens, Sebastian was limewashing the

kitchen-beams for Mother. He loved her like a son.

"'Cheer up, lad," he says. "God's where He was. Only you and I chance

to be pure pute asses. We've been tricked, Hal, and more shame to me,

a sailor, that I did not guess it before! You must leave your belfry

alone, forsooth, because the Devil is adrift there; and I cannot get my

serpentines because John Collins cannot cast them aright. Meantime

Andrew Barton hawks off the Port of Rye. And why? To take those very

serpentines which poor Cabot must whistle for; the said serpentines,

I'll wager my share of new continents, being now hid away in St

Barnabas' church-tower. Clear as the Irish coast at noonday!"

"They'd sure never dare to do it," I said; "and, for another thing,

selling cannon to the King's enemies is black treason--hanging and

fine."

"'It is sure, large profit. Men'll dare any gallows for that. I have

been a trader myself," says he. "We must be upsides with 'em for the

honour of Bristol."

'Then he hatched a plot, sitting on the limewash bucket. We gave out

to ride o' Tuesday to London and made a show of taking farewells of our

friends--especially of Master John Collins. But at Wadhurst Woods we

turned; rode home to the water-meadows; hid our horses in a willow-tot

at the foot of the glebe, and, come night, stole a-tiptoe uphill to

Barnabas' church again. A thick mist, and a moon striking through. 'I

had no sooner locked the tower-door behind us than over goes Sebastian

full length in the dark.

"'Pest!" he says. "Step high and feel low, Hal. I've stumbled over

guns before."

'I groped, and one by one--the tower was pitchy dark--I counted the

lither barrels of twenty serpentines laid out on pease straw. No

conceal at all!

"'There's two demi-cannon my end," says Sebastian, slapping metal.

"They'll be for Andrew Barton's lower deck. Honest--honest John

Collins! So this is his ware-house, his arsenal, his armoury! Now see

you why your pokings and pryings have raised the Devil in Sussex?

You've hindered John's lawful trade for months," and he laughed where

he lay.

'A clay-cold tower is no fireside at midnight, so we climbed the belfry

stairs, and there Sebastian trips over a cow-hide with its horns and

tail.

"'Aha! Your Devil has left his doublet! Does it become me, Hal?" He

draws it on and capers in the shafts of window-moonlight--won'erful

devilish-like. Then he sits on the stairs, rapping with his tail on a

board, and his back-aspect was dreader than his front, and a howlet lit

in, and screeched at the horns of him.

"'If you'd keep out the Devil, shut the door," he whispered. "And

that's another false proverb, Hal, for I can hear your tower-door

opening."

"'I locked it. Who a-plague has another key, then?" I said.

"'All the congregation, to judge by their feet," he says, and peers

into the blackness. "Still! Still, Hal! Hear 'em grunt! That's more

o' my serpentines, I'll be bound. One--two--three--four they bear in!

Faith, Andrew equips himself like an Admiral! Twenty-four serpentines

in all!"

'As if it had been an echo, we heard John Collins's voice come up all

hollow: "Twenty-four serpentines and two demi-cannon. That's the full

tally for Sir Andrew Barton."

"'Courtesy costs naught," whispers Sebastian. "Shall I drop my dagger

on his head?"

"'They go over to Rye o' Thursday in the wool-wains, hid under the

wool-packs. Dirk Brenzett meets them at Udimore, as before," says John.

"'Lord! What a worn, handsmooth trade it is!" says Sebastian. "I lay

we are the sole two babes in the village that have not our lawful share

in the venture."

'There was a full score folk below, talking like all Robertsbridge

Market. We counted them by voice.

'Master John Collins pipes: "The guns for the French carrack must lie

here next month. Will, when does your young fool" (me, so please you!)

"come back from Lunnon?"

"'No odds," I heard Ticehurst Will answer. "Lay 'em just where you've

a mind, Mus' Collins. We're all too afraid o' the Devil to mell with

the tower now." And the long knave laughed.

"'Ah! 'tis easy enow for you to raise the Devil, Will," says

another--Ralph Hobden of the Forge.

"'Aaa-men!" roars Sebastian, and ere I could hold him, he leaps down

the stairs--won'erful devilish-like howling no bounds. He had scarce

time to lay out for the nearest than they ran. Saints, how they ran!

We heard them pound on the door of the Bell Tavern, and then we ran too.

"'What's next?" says Sebastian, looping up his cow-tail as he leaped

the briars. "I've broke honest John's face."

"'Ride to Sir John Pelham's," I said. "He is the only one that ever

stood by me."

'We rode to Brightling, and past Sir John's lodges, where the keepers

would have shot at us for deer-stealers, and we had Sir John down into

his Justice's chair, and when we had told him our tale and showed him

the cow-hide which Sebastian wore still girt about him, he laughed till

the tears ran.

"'Wel-a-well!" he says. "I'll see justice done before daylight.

What's your complaint? Master Collins is my old friend."

"'He's none of mine," I cried. "When I think how he and his likes have

baulked and dozened and cozened me at every turn over the church"--and

I choked at the thought.

"'Ah, but ye see now they needed it for another use," says he smoothly.

"Also they did my serpentines," Sebastian cries. "I should be half

across the Western Ocean by now if my guns had been ready. But they're

sold to a Scotch pirate by your old friend--"

"'Where's your proof?" says Sir John, stroking his beard.

"'I broke my shins over them not an hour since, and I heard John give

order where they were to be taken," says Sebastian.

"'Words! Words only," says Sir John. "Master Collins is somewhat of a

liar at best."

'He carried it so gravely that, for the moment, I thought he was dipped

in this secret traffick too, and that there was not an honest

ironmaster in Sussex.

"'Name o' Reason!" says Sebastian, and raps with his cow-tail on the

table, "whose guns are they, then?"

"'Yours, manifestly," says Sir John. "You come with the King's Order

for 'em, and Master Collins casts them in his foundry. If he chooses

to bring them up from Nether Forge and lay 'em out in the church-tower,

why, they are e'en so much the nearer to the main road and you are

saved a day's hauling. What a coil to make of a mere act of

neighbourly kindness, lad!"

"'I fear I have requited him very scurvily," says Sebastian, looking at

his knuckles. "But what of the demi-cannon? I could do with 'em well,

but they are not in the King's Order."

"'Kindness--loving-kindness," says Sir John. "Questionless, in his

zeal for the King and his love for you, John adds those two cannon as a

gift. 'Tis plain as this coming daylight, ye stockfish!"

"'So it is," says Sebastian. "Oh, Sir John, Sir John, why did you

never use the sea? You are lost ashore." And he looked on him with

great love.

"'I do my best in my station." Sir John strokes his beard again and

rolls forth his deep drumming Justice's voice thus: "But--suffer

me!---you two lads, on some midnight frolic into which I probe not,

roystering around the taverns, surprise Master Collins at his"--he

thinks a moment--"at his good deeds done by stealth. Ye surprise him,

I say, cruelly."

"'Truth, Sir John. If you had seen him run!" says Sebastian.

"'On this you ride breakneck to me with a tale of pirates, and

wool-wains, and cow-hides, which, though it hath moved my mirth as a

man, offendeth my reason as a magistrate. So I will e'en accompany you

back to the tower with, perhaps, some few of my own people, and

three-four wagons, and I'll be your warrant that Master John Collins

will freely give you your guns and your demi-cannon, Master Sebastian."

He breaks into his proper voice--"I warned the old tod and his

neighbours long ago that they'd come to trouble with their

side-sellings and bye-dealings; but we cannot have half Sussex hanged

for a little gun-running. Are ye content, lads?"

"'I'd commit any treason for two demi-cannon,' said Sebastian, and rubs

his hands.

"Ye have just compounded with rank treason-felony for the same bribe,"

says Sir John. "Wherefore to horse, and get the guns."'

'But Master Collins meant the guns for Sir Andrew Barton all along,

didn't he?' said Dan.

'Questionless, that he did,' said Hal. 'But he lost them. We poured

into the village on the red edge of dawn, Sir John horsed, in

half-armour, his pennon flying; behind him thirty stout Brightling

knaves, five abreast; behind them four wool-wains, and behind them four

trumpets to triumph over the jest, blowing: Our King went forth to

Normandie. When we halted and rolled the ringing guns out of the

tower, 'twas for all the world like Friar Roger's picture of the French

siege in the Queen's Missal-book.'

'And what did we--I mean, what did our village do?' said Dan.

'Oh! Bore it nobly--nobly,' cried Hal. 'Though they had tricked me, I

was proud of them. They came out of their housen, looked at that

little army as though it had been a post, and went their shut-mouthed

way. Never a sign! Never a word! They'd ha' perished sooner than let

Brightling overcrow us. Even that villain, Ticehurst Will, coming out

of the Bell for his morning ale, he all but runs under Sir John's horse.

"''Ware, Sirrah Devil!" cries Sir John, reining back.

"'Oh!" says Will. "Market-day, is it? And all the bullocks from

Brightling here?"

'I spared him his belting for that--the brazen knave!

'But John Collins was our masterpiece! He happened along-street (his

jaw tied up where Sebastian had clouted him) when we were trundling the

first demi-cannon through the lych-gate.

"'I reckon you'll find her middlin' heavy," he says. "If you've a mind

to pay, I'll loan ye my timber-tug. She won't lie easy on ary

wool-wain."

'That was the one time I ever saw Sebastian taken flat aback. He

opened and shut his mouth, fishy-like.

"'No offence," says Master John. "You've got her reasonable good

cheap. I thought ye might not grudge me a groat if I helped move her."

Ah, he was a masterpiece! They say that morning's work cost our John

two hundred pounds, and he never winked an eyelid, not even when he saw

the guns all carted off to Lewes.'

'Neither then nor later?' said Puck.

'Once. 'Twas after he gave St Barnabas' the new chime of bells. (Oh,

there was nothing the Collinses, or the Hayes, or the Fowles, or the

Fenners would not do for the church then! "Ask and have" was their

song.) We had rung 'em in, and he was in the tower with Black Nick

Fowle, that gave us our rood-screen. The old man pinches the bell-rope

one hand and scratches his neck with t'other. "Sooner she was pulling

yon clapper than my neck, he says. That was all! That was Sussex

seely Sussex for everlasting.'

'And what happened after?' said Una.

'I went back into England,' said Hal, slowly. 'I'd had my lesson

against pride. But they tell me I left St Barnabas' a jewel--just

about a jewel! Wel-a-well! 'Twas done for and among my own people,

and--Father Roger was right--I never knew such trouble or such triumph

since. That's the nature o' things. A dear--dear land.' He dropped

his chin on his chest.

'There's your Father at the Forge. What's he talking to old Hobden

about?' said Puck, opening his hand with three leaves in it.

Dan looked towards the cottage.

'Oh, I know. It's that old oak lying across the brook. Pater always

wants it grubbed.'

In the still valley they could hear old Hobden's deep tones.

'Have it as you've a mind to,' he was saying. 'But the vivers of her

roots they hold the bank together. If you grub her out, the bank

she'll all come tearin' down, an' next floods the brook'll swarve up.

But have it as you've a mind. The Mistuss she sets a heap by the ferns

on her trunk.

'Oh! I'll think it over,' said the Pater.

Una laughed a little bubbling chuckle.

'What Devil's in that belfry?' said Hal, with a lazy laugh. 'That

should be a Hobden by his voice.'

'Why, the oak is the regular bridge for all the rabbits between the

Three Acre and our meadow. The best place for wires on the farm,

Hobden says. He's got two there now,' Una answered. 'He won't ever

let it be grubbed!'

'Ah, Sussex! Seely Sussex for everlastin',' murmured Hal; and the next

moment their Father's voice calling across to Little Lindens broke the

spell as little St Barnabas' clock struck five.