That meeting practically settled the point towards which these long-

severed persons were converging. But nothing was broached about it for

some time yet. Sally Hall had, in fact, imparted the first decisive

motion to events by refusing to accompany Helena. She soon gave them a

second move by writing the following note

'[Private.]

'DEAR CHARLES,-Living here so long and intimately with Helena, I have

naturally learnt her history, especially that of it which refers to you.

I am sure she would accept you as a husband at the proper time, and I

think you ought to give her the opportunity. You inquire in an old note

if I am sorry that I showed temper (which it wasn't) that night when I

heard you talking to her. No, Charles, I am not sorry at all for what I

said then.-Yours sincerely, SALLY HALL.'

Thus set in train, the transfer of Darton's heart back to its original

quarters proceeded by mere lapse of time. In the following July, Darton

went to his friend Japheth to ask him at last to fulfil the bridal

office which had been in abeyance since the previous January

twelvemonths.

'With all my heart, man o' constancy!' said Dairyman Johns warmly. 'I've

lost most of my genteel fair complexion haymaking this hot weather, 'tis

true, but I'll do your business as well as them that look better. There

be scents and good hair-oil in the world yet, thank God, and they'll

take off the roughest o' my edge. I'll compliment her. "Better late than

never, Sally Hall," I'll say.'

'It is not Sally,' said Darton hurriedly. 'It is young Mrs. Hall.'

Japheth's face, as soon as he really comprehended, became a picture of

reproachful dismay. 'Not Sally?' he said. 'Why not Sally? I can't

believe it! Young Mrs. Hall! Well, well-where's your wisdom?'

Darton shortly explained particulars; but Johns would not be reconciled.

'She was a woman worth having if ever woman was,' he cried. 'And now to

let her go!'

'But I suppose I can marry where I like,' said Darton.

'H'm,' replied the dairyman, lifting his eyebrows expressively. 'This

don't become you, Charles-it really do not. If I had done such a thing

you would have sworn I was a curst no'thern fool to be drawn off the

scent by such a red-herring doll-oll-oll.'

Farmer Darton responded in such sharp terms to this laconic opinion that

the two friends finally parted in a way they had never parted before.

Johns was to be no groomsman to Darton after all. He had flatly

declined. Darton went off sorry, and even unhappy, particularly as

Japheth was about to leave that side of the county, so that the words

which had divided them were not likely to be explained away or softened

down.

A short time after the interview Darton was united to Helena at a simple

matter-of fact wedding; and she and her little girl joined the boy who

had already grown to look on Darton's house as home.

For some months the farmer experienced an unprecedented happiness and

satisfaction. There had been a flaw in his life, and it was as neatly

mended as was humanly possible. But after a season the stream of events

followed less clearly, and there were shades in his reveries. Helena was

a fragile woman, of little staying power, physically or morally, and

since the time that he had originally known her-eight or ten years

before-she had been severely tried. She had loved herself out, in short,

and was now occasionally given to moping. Sometimes she spoke

regretfully of the gentilities of her early life, and instead of

comparing her present state with her condition as the wife of the

unlucky Hall, she mused rather on what it had been before she took the

first fatal step of clandestinely marrying him. She did not care to

please such people as those with whom she was thrown as a thriving

farmer's wife. She allowed the pretty trifles of agricultural

domesticity to glide by her as sorry details, and had it not been for

the children Darton's house would have seemed but little brighter than

it had been before.

This led to occasional unpleasantness, until Darton sometimes declared

to himself that such endeavours as his to rectify early deviations of

the heart by harking back to the old point mostly failed of success.

'Perhaps Johns was right,' he would say. 'I should have gone on with

Sally. Better go with the tide and make the best of its course than stem

it at the risk of a capsize.' But he kept these unmelodious thoughts to

himself, and was outwardly considerate and kind.

This somewhat barren tract of his life had extended to less than a year

and a half when his ponderings were cut short by the loss of the woman

they concerned. When she was in her grave he thought better of her than

when she had been alive; the farm was a worse place without her than

with her, after all. No woman short of divine could have gone through

such an experience as hers with her first husband without becoming a

little soured. Her stagnant sympathies, her sometimes unreasonable

manner, had covered a heart frank and well meaning, and originally

hopeful and warm. She left him a tiny red infant in white wrappings. To

make life as easy as possible to this touching object became at once his

care.

As this child learnt to walk and talk Darton learnt to see feasibility

in a scheme which pleased him. Revolving the experiment which he had

hitherto made upon life, he fancied he had gained wisdom from his

mistakes and caution from his miscarriages.

What the scheme was needs no penetration to discover. Once more he had

opportunity to recast and rectify his ill-wrought situations by

returning to Sally Hall, who still lived quietly on under her mother's

roof at Hintock. Helena had been a woman to lend pathos and refinement

to a home; Sally was the woman to brighten it. She would not, as Helena

did, despise the rural simplicities of a farmer's fireside. Moreover,

she had a pre-eminent qualification for Darton's household; no other

woman could make so desirable a mother to her brother's two children and

Darton's one as Sally-while Darton, now that Helena had gone, was a more

promising husband for Sally than he had ever been when liable to

reminders from an uncured sentimental wound.

Darton was not a man to act rapidly, and the working out of his

reparative designs might have been delayed for some time. But there came

a winter evening precisely like the one which had darkened over that

former ride to Hintock, and he asked himself why he should postpone

longer, when the very landscape called for a repetition of that attempt.

He told his man to saddle the mare, booted and spurred himself with a

younger horseman's nicety, kissed the two youngest children, and rode

off. To make the journey a complete parallel to the first, he would fain

have had his old acquaintance Japheth Johns with him. But Johns, alas!

was missing. His removal to the other side of the county had left

unrepaired the breach which had arisen between him and Darton; and

though Darton had forgiven him a hundred times, as Johns had probably

forgiven Darton, the effort of reunion in present circumstances was one

not likely to be made.

He screwed himself up to as cheerful a pitch as he could without his

former crony, and became content with his own thoughts as he rode,

instead of the words of a companion. The sun went down; the boughs

appeared scratched in like an etching against the sky; old crooked men

with faggots at their backs said 'Good-night, sir,' and Darton replied

'Good-night' right heartily.

By the time he reached the forking roads it was getting as dark as it

had been on the occasion when Johns climbed the directing-post. Darton

made no mistake this time. 'Nor shall I be able to mistake, thank

Heaven, when I arrive,' he murmured. It gave him peculiar satisfaction

to think that the proposed marriage, like his first, was of the nature

of setting in order things long awry, and not a momentary freak of

fancy.

Nothing hindered the smoothness of his journey, which seemed not half

its former length. Though dark, it was only between five and six o'clock

when the bulky chimneys of Mrs. Hall's residence appeared in view behind

the sycamore-tree. On second thoughts he retreated and put up at the

ale-house as in former time; and when he had plumed himself before the

inn mirror, called for something to drink, and smoothed out the

incipient wrinkles of care, he walked on to the Knap with a quick step.

V

That evening Sally was making 'pinners' for the milkers, who were now

increased by two, for her mother and herself no longer joined in milking

the cows themselves. But upon the whole there was little change in the

household economy, and not much in its appearance, beyond such minor

particulars as that the crack over the window, which had been a hundred

years coming, was a trifle wider; that the beams were a shade blacker;

that the influence of modernism had supplanted the open chimney corner

by a grate; that Rebekah, who had worn a cap when she had plenty of

hair, had left it off now she had scarce any, because it was reported

that caps were not fashionable; and that Sally's face had naturally

assumed a more womanly and experienced cast.

Mrs. Hall was actually lifting coals with the tongs, as she had used to

do.

'Five years ago this very night, if I am not mistaken-' she said, laying

on an ember.

'Not this very night-though 'twas one night this week,' said the correct

Sally.

'Well, 'tis near enough. Five years ago Mr. Darton came to marry you,

and my poor boy Phil came home to die.' She sighed. 'Ah, Sally,' she

presently said, 'if you had managed well Mr. Darton would have had you,

Helena or none.'

'Don't be sentimental about that, mother,' begged Sally. 'I didn't care

to manage well in such a case. Though I liked him, I wasn't so anxious.

I would never have married the man in the midst of such a hitch as that

was,' she added with decision; 'and I don't think I would if he were to

ask me now.'

'I am not sure about that, unless you have another in your eye.'

'I wouldn't; and I'll tell you why. I could hardly marry him for love at

this time o' day. And as we've quite enough to live on if we give up the

dairy to-morrow, I should have no need to marry for any meaner reason .

. . I am quite happy enough as I am, and there's an end of it.'

Now it was not long after this dialogue that there came a mild rap at

the door, and in a moment there entered Rebekah, looking as though a

ghost had arrived. The fact was that that accomplished skimmer and

churner (now a resident in the house) had overheard the desultory

observations between mother and daughter, and on opening the door to Mr.

Darton thought the coincidence must have a grisly meaning in it. Mrs.

Hall welcomed the farmer with warm surprise, as did Sally, and for a

moment they rather wanted words.

'Can you push up the chimney-crook for me, Mr Darton? the notches

hitch,' said the matron. He did it, and the homely little act bridged

over the awkward consciousness that he had been a stranger for four

years.

Mrs. Hall soon saw what he had come for, and left the principals

together while she went to prepare him a late tea, smiling at Sally's

recent hasty assertions of indifference, when she saw how civil Sally

was. When tea was ready she joined them. She fancied that Darton did not

look so confident as when he had arrived; but Sally was quite light-

hearted, and the meal passed pleasantly.

About seven he took his leave of them. Mrs. Hall went as far as the door

to light him down the slope. On the doorstep he said frankly-'I came to

ask your daughter to marry me; chose the night and everything, with an

eye to a favourable answer. But she won't.'

'Then she's a very ungrateful girl!' emphatically said Mrs. Hall.

Darton paused to shape his sentence, and asked, 'I-I suppose there's

nobody else more favoured?'

'I can't say that there is, or that there isn't,' answered Mrs. Hall.

'She's private in some things. I'm on your side, however, Mr. Darton,

and I'll talk to her.'

'Thank 'ee, thank 'ee!' said the farmer in a gayer accent; and with this

assurance the not very satisfactory visit came to an end. Darton

descended the roots of the sycamore, the light was withdrawn, and the

door closed. At the bottom of the slope he nearly ran against a man

about to ascend.

'Can a jack-o'-lent believe his few senses on such a dark night, or

can't he?' exclaimed one whose utterance Darton recognized in a moment,

despite its unexpectedness. 'I dare not swear he can, though I fain

would!' The speaker was Johns.

Darton said he was glad of this opportunity, bad as it was, of putting

an end to the silence of years, and asked the dairyman what he was

travelling that way for.

Japheth showed the old jovial confidence in a moment. 'I'm going to see

your-relations-as they always seem to me,' he said-'Mrs. Hall and Sally.

Well, Charles, the fact is I find the natural barbarousness of man is

much increased by a bachelor life, and, as your leavings were always

good enough for me, I'm trying civilization here.' He nodded towards the

house.

'Not with Sally-to marry her?' said Darton, feeling something like a

rill of ice water between his shoulders.

'Yes, by the help of Providence and my personal charms. And I think I

shall get her. I am this road every week-my present dairy is only four

miles off, you know, and I see her through the window. 'Tis rather odd

that I was going to speak practical to-night to her for the first time.

You've just called?'

'Yes, for a short while. But she didn't say a word about you.'

'A good sign, a good sign. Now that decides me. I'll swing the mallet

and get her answer this very night as I planned.'

A few more remarks, and Darton, wishing his friend joy of Sally in a

slightly hollow tone of jocularity, bade him good-bye. Johns promised to

write particulars, and ascended, and was lost in the shade of the house

and tree. A rectangle of light appeared when Johns was admitted, and all

was dark again.

'Happy Japheth!' said Darton. 'This then is the explanation!'

He determined to return home that night. In a quarter of an hour he

passed out of the village, and the next day went about his swede-lifting

and storing as if nothing had occurred.

He waited and waited to hear from Johns whether the wedding-day was

fixed: but no letter came. He learnt not a single particular till,

meeting Johns one day at a horse-auction, Darton exclaimed genially-

rather more genially than he felt-'When is the joyful day to be?'

To his great surprise a reciprocity of gladness was not conspicuous in

Johns. 'Not at all,' he said, in a very subdued tone. ''Tis a bad job;

she won't have me.'

Darton held his breath till he said with treacherous solicitude, 'Try

again-'tis coyness.'

'O no,' said Johns decisively. 'There's been none of that. We talked it

over dozens of times in the most fair and square way. She tells me

plainly, I don't suit her. 'Twould be simply annoying her to ask her

again. Ah, Charles, you threw a prize away when you let her slip five

years ago.'

'I did-I did,' said Darton.

He returned from that auction with a new set of feelings in play. He had

certainly made a surprising mistake in thinking Johns his successful

rival. It really seemed as if he might hope for Sally after all.

This time, being rather pressed by business, Darton had recourse to pen-

and-ink, and wrote her as manly and straightforward a proposal as any

woman could wish to receive. The reply came promptly:-

'DEAR MR. DARTON,-I am as sensible as any woman can be of the goodness

that leads you to make me this offer a second time. Better women than I

would be proud of the honour, for when I read your nice long speeches on

mangold-wurzel, and such like topics, at the Casterbridge Farmers' Club,

I do feel it an honour, I assure you. But my answer is just the same as

before. I will not try to explain what, in truth, I cannot explain-my

reasons; I will simply say that I must decline to be married to you.

With good wishes as in former times, I am, your faithful friend, 'SALLY

HALL.'

Darton dropped the letter hopelessly. Beyond the negative, there was

just a possibility of sarcasm in it-'nice long speeches on mangold-

wurzel' had a suspicious sound. However, sarcasm or none, there was the

answer, and he had to be content.

He proceeded to seek relief in a business which at this time engrossed

much of his attention-that of clearing up a curious mistake just current

in the county, that he had been nearly ruined by the recent failure of a

local bank. A farmer named Darton had lost heavily, and the similarity

of name had probably led to the error. Belief in it was so persistent

that it demanded several days of letter-writing to set matters straight,

and persuade the world that he was as solvent as ever he had been in his

life. He had hardly concluded this worrying task when, to his delight,

another letter arrived in the handwriting of Sally.

Darton tore it open; it was very short.

'DEAR MR. DARTON,-We have been so alarmed these last few days by the

report that you were ruined by the stoppage of �'s Bank, that, now it is

contradicted I hasten, by my mother's wish, to say how truly glad we are

to find there is no foundation for the report. After your kindness to my

poor brother's children, I can do no less than write at such a moment.

We had a letter from each of them a few days ago.-Your faithful friend,

'SALLY HALL.'

'Mercenary little woman!' said Darton to himself with a smile. 'Then

that was the secret of her refusal this time-she thought I was ruined.'

Now, such was Darton, that as hours went on he could not help feeling

too generously towards Sally to condemn her in this. What did he want in

a wife? he asked himself. Love and integrity. What next? Worldly wisdom.

And was there really more than worldly wisdom in her refusal to go

aboard a sinking ship? She now knew it was otherwise. 'Begad,' he said,

'I'll try her again.'

The fact was he had so set his heart upon Sally, and Sally alone, that

nothing was to be allowed to baulk him; and his reasoning was purely

formal.

Anniversaries having been unpropitious, he waited on till a bright day

late in May-a day when all animate nature was fancying, in its trusting,

foolish way, that it was going to bask out of doors for evermore. As he

rode through Long-Ash Lane it was scarce recognizable as the track of

his two winter journeys. No mistake could be made now, even with his

eyes shut. The cuckoo's note was at its best, between April

tentativeness and midsummer decrepitude, and the reptiles in the sun

behaved as winningly as kittens on a hearth. Though afternoon, and about

the same time as on the last occasion, it was broad day and sunshine

when he entered Hintock, and the details of the Knap dairy- house were

visible far up the road. He saw Sally in the garden, and was set

vibrating. He had first intended to go on to the inn; but 'No,' he said;

'I'll tie my horse to the garden-gate. If all goes well it can soon be

taken round: if not, I mount and ride away'

The tall shade of the horseman darkened the room in which Mrs. Hall sat,

and made her start, for he had ridden by a side path to the top of the

slope, where riders seldom came. In a few seconds he was in the garden

with Sally.

Five-ay, three minutes-did the business at the back of that row of bees.

Though spring had come, and heavenly blue consecrated the scene, Darton

succeeded not. 'No,' said Sally firmly. 'I will never, never marry you,

Mr. Darton. I would have done it once; but now I never can.'

'But!'-implored Mr. Darton. And with a burst of real eloquence he went

on to declare all sorts of things that he would do for her. He would

drive her to see her mother every week-take her to London-settle so much

money upon her-Heaven knows what he did not promise, suggest, and tempt

her with. But it availed nothing. She interposed with a stout negative,

which closed the course of his argument like an iron gate across a

highway. Darton paused.

'Then,' said he simply, 'you hadn't heard of my supposed failure when

you declined last time?'

'I had not,' she said. 'But if I had 'twould have been all the same.'

'And 'tis not because of any soreness from my slighting you years ago?'

'No. That soreness is long past.'

'Ah-then you despise me, Sally?'

'No,' she slowly answered. 'I don't altogether despise you. I don't

think you quite such a hero as I once did-that's all. The truth is, I am

happy enough as I am; and I don't mean to marry at all. Now, may I ask a

favour, sir?' She spoke with an ineffable charm, which, whenever he

thought of it, made him curse his loss of her as long as he lived.

'To any extent.'

'Please do not put this question to me any more. Friends as long as you

like, but lovers and married never.'

'I never will,' said Darton. 'Not if I live a hundred years.'

And he never did. That he had worn out his welcome in her heart was only

too plain.

When his step-children had grown up, and were placed out in life, all

communication between Darton and the Hall family ceased. It was only by

chance that, years after, he learnt that Sally, notwithstanding the

solicitations her attractions drew down upon her, had refused several

offers of marriage, and steadily adhered to her purpose of leading a

single life

May 1884.

THE DISTRACTED PREACHER

I-HOW HIS COLD WAS CURED

Something delayed the arrival of the Wesleyan minister, and a young man

came temporarily in his stead. It was on the thirteenth of January 183-

that Mr. Stockdale, the young man in question, made his humble entry

into the village, unknown, and almost unseen. But when those of the

inhabitants who styled themselves of his connection became acquainted

with him, they were rather pleased with the substitute than otherwise,

though he had scarcely as yet acquired ballast of character sufficient

to steady the consciences of the hundred-and-forty Methodists of pure

blood who, at this time, lived in Nether-Moynton, and to give in

addition supplementary support to the mixed race which went to church in

the morning and chapel in the evening, or when there was a tea-as many

as a hundred-and-ten people more, all told, and including the parish-

clerk in the winter-time, when it was too dark for the vicar to observe

who passed up the street at seven o'clock-which, to be just to him, he

was never anxious to do.

It was owing to this overlapping of creeds that the celebrated

population-puzzle arose among the denser gentry of the district around

Nether-Moynton: how could it be that a parish containing fifteen score

of strong full-grown Episcopalians, and nearly thirteen score of well-

matured Dissenters, numbered barely two-and-twenty score adults in all?

The young man being personally interesting, those with whom he came in

contact were content to waive for a while the graver question of his

sufficiency. It is said that at this time of his life his eyes were

affectionate, though without a ray of levity; that his hair was curly,

and his figure tall; that he was, in short, a very lovable youth, who

won upon his female hearers as soon as they saw and heard him, and

caused them to say, 'Why didn't we know of this before he came, that we

might have gied him a warmer welcome!'

The fact was that, knowing him to be only provisionally selected, and

expecting nothing remarkable in his person or doctrine, they and the

rest of his flock in Nether-Moynton had felt almost as indifferent about

his advent as if they had been the soundest church-going parishioners in

the country, and he their true and appointed parson. Thus when Stockdale

set foot in the place nobody had secured a lodging for him, and though

his journey had given him a bad cold in the head, he was forced to

attend to that business himself. On inquiry he learnt that the only

possible accommodation in the village would be found at the house of one

Mrs. Lizzy Newberry, at the upper end of the street.

It was a youth who gave this information, and Stockdale asked him who

Mrs. Newberry might be.

The boy said that she was a widow-woman, who had got no husband, because

he was dead. Mr. Newberry, he added, had been a well-to-do man enough,

as the saying was, and a farmer; but he had gone off in a decline. As

regarded Mrs. Newberry's serious side, Stockdale gathered that she was

one of the trimmers who went to church and chapel both.

'I'll go there,' said Stockdale, feeling that, in the absence of purely

sectarian lodgings, he could do no better.

'She's a little particular, and won't hae gover'ment folks, or curates,

or the pa'son's friends, or such like,' said the lad dubiously.

'Ah, that may be a promising sign: I'll call. Or no; just you go up and

ask first if she can find room for me. I have to see one or two persons

on another matter. You will find me down at the carrier's.'

In a quarter of an hour the lad came back, and said that Mrs. Newberry

would have no objection to accommodate him, whereupon Stockdale called

at the house.

It stood within a garden-hedge, and seemed to be roomy and comfortable.

He saw an elderly woman, with whom he made arrangements to come the same

night, since there was no inn in the place, and he wished to house

himself as soon as possible; the village being a local centre from which

he was to radiate at once to the different small chapels in the

neighbourhood. He forthwith sent his luggage to Mrs. Newberry's from the

carrier's, where he had taken shelter, and in the evening walked up to

his temporary home.

As he now lived there, Stockdale felt it unnecessary to knock at the

door; and entering quietly he had the pleasure of hearing footsteps

scudding away like mice into the back quarters. He advanced to the

parlour, as the front room was called, though its stone floor was

scarcely disguised by the carpet, which only over-laid the trodden

areas, leaving sandy deserts under the bulging mouldings of the table-

legs, playing with brass furniture. But the room looked snug and

cheerful. The firelight shone out brightly, trembling on the knobs and

handles, and lurking in great strength on the under surface of the

chimney-piece. A deep arm-chair, covered with horsehair, and studded

with a countless throng of brass nails, was pulled up on one side of the

fireplace. The tea-things were on the table, the teapot cover was open,

and a little hand-bell had been laid at that precise point towards which

a person seated in the great chair might be expected instinctively to

stretch his hand.

Stockdale sat down, not objecting to his experience of the room thus

far, and began his residence by tinkling the bell. A little girl crept

in at the summons, and made tea for him. Her name, she said, was Marther

Sarer, and she lived out there, nodding towards the road and village

generally. Before Stockdale had got far with his meal, a tap sounded on

the door behind him, and on his telling the inquirer to come in, a

rustle of garments caused him to turn his head. He saw before him a fine

and extremely well-made young woman, with dark hair, a wide, sensible,

beautiful forehead, eyes that warmed him before he knew it, and a mouth

that was in itself a picture to all appreciative souls.

'Can I get you anything else for tea?' she said, coming forward a step

or two, an expression of liveliness on her features, and her hand waving

the door by its edge.

'Nothing, thank you,' said Stockdale, thinking less of what he replied

than of what might be her relation to the household.

'You are quite sure?' said the young woman, apparently aware that he had

not considered his answer.

He conscientiously examined the tea-things, and found them all there.

'Quite sure, Miss Newberry,' he said.

'It is Mrs. Newberry,' she said. 'Lizzy Newberry, I used to be Lizzy

Simpkins.'

'O, I beg your pardon, Mrs. Newberry.' And before he had occasion to say

more she left the room.

Stockdale remained in some doubt till Martha Sarah came to clear the

table. 'Whose house is this, my little woman,' said he.

'Mrs. Lizzy Newberry's, sir.'

'Then Mrs. Newberry is not the old lady I saw this afternoon?'

'No. That's Mrs. Newberry's mother. It was Mrs. Newberry who comed in to

you just by now, because she wanted to see if you was good-looking.'

Later in the evening, when Stockdale was about to begin supper, she came

again. 'I have come myself, Mr. Stockdale,' she said. The minister stood

up in acknowledgment of the honour. 'I am afraid little Marther might

not make you understand. What will you have for supper?-there's cold

rabbit, and there's a ham uncut.'

Stockdale said he could get on nicely with those viands, and supper was

laid. He had no more than cut a slice when tap-tap came to the door

again. The minister had already learnt that this particular rhythm in

taps denoted the fingers of his enkindling landlady, and the doomed

young fellow buried his first mouthful under a look of receptive

blandness.

'We have a chicken in the house, Mr. Stockdale-I quite forgot to mention

it just now. Perhaps you would like Marther Sarer to bring it up?'

Stockdale had advanced far enough in the art of being a young man to say

that he did not want the chicken, unless she brought it up herself; but

when it was uttered he blushed at the daring gallantry of the speech,

perhaps a shade too strong for a serious man and a minister. In three

minutes the chicken appeared, but, to his great surprise, only in the

hands of Martha Sarah. Stockdale was disappointed, which perhaps it was

intended that he should be.

He had finished supper, and was not in the least anticipating Mrs.

Newberry again that night, when she tapped and entered as before.

Stockdale's gratified look told that she had lost nothing by not

appearing when expected. It happened that the cold in the head from

which the young man suffered had increased with the approach of night,

and before she had spoken he was seized with a violent fit of sneezing

which he could not anyhow repress.

Mrs. Newberry looked full of pity. 'Your cold is very bad to-night, Mr.

Stockdale.'

Stockdale replied that it was rather troublesome.

'And I've a good mind'-she added archly, looking at the cheerless glass

of water on the table, which the abstemious minister was going to drink.

'Yes, Mrs. Newberry?'

'I've a good mind that you should have something more likely to cure it

than that cold stuff.'

'Well,' said Stockdale, looking down at the glass, 'as there is no inn

here, and nothing better to be got in the village, of course it will

do.'

To this she replied, 'There is something better, not far off, though not

in the house. I really think you must try it, or you may be ill. Yes,

Mr. Stockdale, you shall.' She held up her finger, seeing that he was

about to speak. 'Don't ask what it is; wait, and you shall see.'

Lizzy went away, and Stockdale waited in a pleasant mood. Presently she

returned with her bonnet and cloak on, saying, 'I am so sorry, but you

must help me to get it. Mother has gone to bed. Will you wrap yourself

up, and come this way, and please bring that cup with you?'

Stockdale, a lonely young fellow, who had for weeks felt a great craving

for somebody on whom to throw away superfluous interest, and even

tenderness, was not sorry to join her; and followed his guide through

the back door, across the garden, to the bottom, where the boundary was

a wall. This wall was low, and beyond it Stockdale discerned in the

night shades several grey headstones, and the outlines of the church

roof and tower.

'It is easy to get up this way,' she said, stepping upon a bank which

abutted on the wall; then putting her foot on the top of the stonework,

and descending a spring inside, where the ground was much higher, as is

the manner of graveyards to be. Stockdale did the same, and followed her

in the dusk across the irregular ground till they came to the tower

door, which, when they had entered, she softly closed behind them.

'You can keep a secret?' she said, in a musical voice.

'Like an iron chest!' said he fervently.

Then from under her cloak she produced a small lighted lantern, which

the minister had not noticed that she carried at all. The light showed

them to be close to the singing-gallery stairs, under which lay a heap

of lumber of all sorts, but consisting mostly of decayed framework,

pews, panels, and pieces of flooring, that from time to time had been

removed from their original fixings in the body of the edifice and

replaced by new.

'Perhaps you will drag some of those boards aside?' she said, holding

the lantern over her head to light him better. 'Or will you take the

lantern while I move them?'

'I can manage it,' said the young man, and acting as she ordered, he

uncovered, to his surprise, a row of little barrels bound with wood

hoops, each barrel being about as large as the nave of a heavy waggon-

wheel.

When they were laid open Lizzy fixed her eyes on him, as if she wondered

what he would say.

'You know what they are?' she asked, finding that he did not speak.

'Yes, barrels,' said Stockdale simply. He was an inland man, the son of

highly respectable parents, and brought up with a single eye to the

ministry; and the sight suggested nothing beyond the fact that such

articles were there.

'You are quite right, they are barrels,' she said, in an emphatic tone

of candour that was not without a touch of irony.

Stockdale looked at her with an eye of sudden misgiving. 'Not smugglers'

liquor?' he said.

'Yes,' said she. 'They are tubs of spirit that have accidentally come

over in the dark from France.'

In Nether-Moynton and its vicinity at this date people always smiled at

the sort of sin called in the outside world illicit trading; and these

little kegs of gin and brandy were as well known to the inhabitants as

turnips. So that Stockdale's innocent ignorance, and his look of alarm

when he guessed the sinister mystery, seemed to strike Lizzy first as

ludicrous, and then as very awkward for the good impression that she

wished to produce upon him.

'Smuggling is carried on here by some of the people,' she said in a

gentle, apologetic voice. 'It has been their practice for generations,

and they think it no harm. Now, will you roll out one of the tubs?'

'What to do with it?' said the minister.

'To draw a little from it to cure your cold,' she answered. 'It is so

'nation strong that it drives away that sort of thing in a jiffy. O, it

is all right about our taking it. I may have what I like; the owner of

the tubs says so. I ought to have had some in the house, and then I

shouldn't ha' been put to this trouble; but I drink none myself, and so

I often forget to keep it indoors.'

'You are allowed to help yourself, I suppose, that you may not inform

where their hiding-place is?'

'Well, no; not that particularly; but I may take any if I want it. So

help yourself.'

'I will, to oblige you, since you have a right to it,' murmured the

minister; and though he was not quite satisfied with his part in the

performance, he rolled one of the 'tubs' out from the corner into the

middle of the tower floor. 'How do you wish me to get it out-with a

gimlet, I suppose?'

'No, I'll show you,' said his interesting companion; and she held up

with her other hand a shoemaker's awl and a hammer. 'You must never do

these things with a gimlet, because the wood-dust gets in; and when the

buyers pour out the brandy that would tell them that the tub had been

broached. An awl makes no dust, and the hole nearly closes up again. Now

tap one of the hoops forward.'

Stockdale took the hammer and did so.

'Now make the hole in the part that was covered by the hoop.'

He made the hole as directed. 'It won't run out,' he said.

'O yes it will,' said she. 'Take the tub between your knees, and squeeze

the heads; and I'll hold the cup.'

Stockdale obeyed; and the pressure taking effect upon the tub, which

seemed, to be thin, the spirit spirted out in a stream. When the cup was

full he ceased pressing, and the flow immediately stopped. 'Now we must

fill up the keg with water,' said Lizzy, 'or it will cluck like forty

hens when it is handled, and show that 'tis not full.'

'But they tell you you may take it?'

'Yes, the smugglers: but the buyers must not know that the smugglers

have been kind to me at their expense.'

'I see,' said Stockdale doubtfully. 'I much question the honesty of this

proceeding.'

By her direction he held the tub with the hole upwards, and while he

went through the process of alternately pressing and ceasing to press,

she produced a bottle of water, from which she took mouthfuls, conveying

each to the keg by putting her pretty lips to the hole, where it was

sucked in at each recovery of the cask from pressure. When it was again

full he plugged the hole, knocked the hoop down to its place, and buried

the tub in the lumber as before.

'Aren't the smugglers afraid that you will tell?' he asked, as they

recrossed the churchyard.

'O no; they are not afraid of that. I couldn't do such a thing.'

'They have put you into a very awkward corner,' said Stockdale

emphatically. 'You must, of course, as an honest person, sometimes feel

that it is your duty to inform-really you must.'

'Well, I have never particularly felt it as a duty; and, besides, my

first husband-' She stopped, and there was some confusion in her voice.

Stockdale was so honest and unsophisticated that he did not at once

discern why she paused: but at last he did perceive that the words were

a slip, and that no woman would have uttered 'first husband' by accident

unless she had thought pretty frequently of a second. He felt for her

confusion, and allowed her time to recover and proceed. 'My husband,'

she said, in a self-corrected tone, 'used to know of their doings, and

so did my father, and kept the secret. I cannot inform, in fact, against

anybody.'

'I see the hardness of it,' he continued, like a man who looked far into

the moral of things. 'And it is very cruel that you should be tossed and

tantalized between your memories and your conscience. I do hope, Mrs.

Newberry, that you will soon see your way out of this unpleasant

position.'

'Well, I don't just now,' she murmured.

By this time they had passed over the wall and entered the house, where

she brought him a glass and hot water, and left him to his own

reflections. He looked after her vanishing form, asking himself whether

he, as a respectable man, and a minister, and a shining light, even

though as yet only of the halfpenny-candle sort, were quite justified in

doing this thing. A sneeze settled the question; and he found that when

the fiery liquor was lowered by the addition of twice or thrice the

quantity of water, it was one of the prettiest cures for a cold in the

head that he had ever known, particularly at this chilly time of the

year.

Stockdale sat in the deep chair about twenty minutes sipping and

meditating, till he at length took warmer views of things, and longed

for the morrow, when he would see Mrs. Newberry again. He then felt

that, though chronologically at a short distance, it would in an

emotional sense be very long before to-morrow came, and walked

restlessly round the room. His eye was attracted by a framed and glazed

sampler in which a running ornament of fir-trees and peacocks surrounded

the following pretty bit of sentiment:-

'Rose-leaves smell when roses thrive, Here's my work while I'm alive;

Rose-leaves smell when shrunk and shed, Here's my work when I am dead.

'Lizzy Simpkins. Fear God. Honour the King.

'Aged 11 years.

''Tis hers,' he said to himself. 'Heavens, how I like that name!'

Before he had done thinking that no other name from Abigail to Zenobia

would have suited his young landlady so well, tap-tap came again upon

the door; and the minister started as her face appeared yet another

time, looking so disinterested that the most ingenious would have

refrained from asserting that she had come to affect his feelings by her

seductive eyes.

'Would you like a fire in your room, Mr. Stockdale, on account of your

cold?'

The minister, being still a little pricked in the conscience for

countenancing her in watering the spirits, saw here a way to self-

chastisement. 'No, I thank you,' he said firmly; 'it is not necessary. I

have never been used to one in my life, and it would be giving way to

luxury too far.'

'Then I won't insist,' she said, and disconcerted him by vanishing

instantly.

Wondering if she was vexed by his refusal, he wished that he had chosen

to have a fire, even though it should have scorched him out of bed and

endangered his self-discipline for a dozen days. However, he consoled

himself with what was in truth a rare consolation for a budding lover,

that he was under the same roof with Lizzy; her guest, in fact, to take

a poetical view of the term lodger; and that he would certainly see her

on the morrow.

The morrow came, and Stockdale rose early, his cold quite gone. He had

never in his life so longed for the breakfast hour as he did that day,

and punctually at eight o'clock, after a short walk, to reconnoitre the

premises, he re-entered the door of his dwelling. Breakfast passed, and

Martha Sarah attended, but nobody came voluntarily as on the night

before to inquire if there were other wants which he had not mentioned,

and which she would attempt to gratify. He was disappointed, and went

out, hoping to see her at dinner. Dinner time came; he sat down to the

meal, finished it, lingered on for a whole hour, although two new

teachers were at that moment waiting at the chapel-door to speak to him

by appointment. It was useless to wait longer, and he slowly went his

way down the lane, cheered by the thought that, after all, he would see

her in the evening, and perhaps engage again in the delightful tub-

broaching in the neighbouring church tower, which proceeding he resolved

to render more moral by steadfastly insisting that no water should be

introduced to fill up, though the tub should cluck like all the hens in

Christendom. But nothing could disguise the fact that it was a queer

business; and his countenance fell when he thought how much more his

mind was interested in that matter than in his serious duties.

However, compunction vanished with the decline of day. Night came, and

his tea and supper; but no Lizzy Newberry, and no sweet temptations. At

last the minister could bear it no longer, and said to his quaint little

attendant, 'Where is Mrs. Newberry to-day?' judiciously handing a penny

as he spoke.

'She's busy,' said Martha.

'Anything serious happened?' he asked, handing another penny, and

revealing yet additional pennies in the background.

'O no-nothing at all!' said she, with breathless confidence. 'Nothing

ever happens to her. She's only biding upstairs in bed because 'tis her

way sometimes.'

Being a young man of some honour, he would not question further, and

assuming that Lizzy must have a bad headache, or other slight ailment,

in spite of what the girl had said, he went to bed dissatisfied, not

even setting eyes on old Mrs. Simpkins. 'I said last night that I should

see her to-morrow,' he reflected; 'but that was not to be!'

Next day he had better fortune, or worse, meeting her at the foot of the

stairs in the morning, and being favoured by a visit or two from her

during the day-once for the purpose of making kindly inquiries about his

comfort, as on the first evening, and at another time to place a bunch

of winter-violets on his table, with a promise to renew them when they

drooped. On these occasions there was something in her smile which

showed how conscious she was of the effect she produced, though it must

be said that it was rather a humorous than a designing consciousness,

and savoured more of pride than of vanity.

As for Stockdale, he clearly perceived that he possessed unlimited

capacity for backsliding, and wished that tutelary saints were not

denied to Dissenters. He set a watch upon his tongue and eyes for the

space of one hour and a half, after which he found it was useless to

struggle further, and gave himself up to the situation. 'The other

minister will be here in a month,' he said to himself when sitting over

the fire. 'Then I shall be off, and she will distract my mind no more! .

. . And then, shall I go on living by myself for ever? No; when my two

years of probation are finished, I shall have a furnished house to live

in, with a varnished door and a brass knocker; and I'll march straight

back to her, and ask her flat, as soon as the last plate is on the

dresser!

Thus a titillating fortnight was passed by young Stockdale, during which

time things proceeded much as such matters have done ever since the

beginning of history. He saw the object of attachment several times one

day, did not see her at all the next, met her when he least expected to

do so, missed her when hints and signs as to where she should be at a

given hour almost amounted to an appointment. This mild coquetry was

perhaps fair enough under the circumstances of their being so closely

lodged, and Stockdale put up with it as philosophically as he was able.

Being in her own house, she could, after vexing him or disappointing him

of her presence, easily win him back by suddenly surrounding him with

those little attentions which her position as his landlady put it in her

power to bestow. When he had waited indoors half the day to see her, and

on finding that she would not be seen, had gone off in a huff to the

dreariest and dampest walk he could discover, she would restore

equilibrium in the evening with 'Mr. Stockdale, I have fancied you must

feel draught o' nights from your bedroom window, and so I have been

putting up thicker curtains this afternoon while you were out;' or, 'I

noticed that you sneezed twice again this morning, Mr. Stockdale. Depend

upon it that cold is hanging about you yet; I am sure it is-I have

thought of it continually; and you must let me make a posset for you.'

Sometimes in coming home he found his sitting-room rearranged, chairs

placed where the table had stood, and the table ornamented with the few

fresh flowers and leaves that could be obtained at this season, so as to

add a novelty to the room. At times she would be standing on a chair

outside the house, trying to nail up a branch of the monthly rose which

the winter wind had blown down; and of course he stepped forward to

assist her, when their hands got mixed in passing the shreds and nails.

Thus they became friends again after a disagreement. She would utter on

these occasions some pretty and deprecatory remark on the necessity of

her troubling him anew; and he would straightway say that he would do a

hundred times as much for her if she should so require.

II-HOW HE SAW TWO OTHER MEN

Matters being in this advancing state, Stockdale was rather surprised

one cloudy evening, while sitting in his room, at hearing her speak in

low tones of expostulation to some one at the door. It was nearly dark,

but the shutters were not yet closed, nor the candles lighted; and

Stockdale was tempted to stretch his head towards the window. He saw

outside the door a young man in clothes of a whitish colour, and upon

reflection judged their wearer to be the well-built and rather handsome

miller who lived below. The miller's voice was alternately low and firm,

and sometimes it reached the level of positive entreaty; but what the

words were Stockdale could in no way hear.

Before the colloquy had ended, the minister's attention was attracted by

a second incident. Opposite Lizzy's home grew a clump of laurels,

forming a thick and permanent shade. One of the laurel boughs now

quivered against the light background of sky, and in a moment the head

of a man peered out, and remained still. He seemed to be also much

interested in the conversation at the door, and was plainly lingering

there to watch and listen. Had Stockdale stood in any other relation to

Lizzy than that of a lover, he might have gone out and investigated the

meaning of this: but being as yet but an unprivileged ally, he did

nothing more than stand up and show himself against the firelight,

whereupon the listener disappeared, and Lizzy and the miller spoke in

lower tones.

Stockdale was made so uneasy by the circumstance, that as soon as the

miller was gone, he said, 'Mrs. Newberry, are you aware that you were

watched just now, and your conversation heard?'

'When?' she said.

'When you were talking to that miller. A man was looking from the

laurel-tree as jealously as if he could have eaten you.'

She showed more concern than the trifling event seemed to demand, and he

added, 'Perhaps you were talking of things you did not wish to be

overheard?'

'I was talking only on business,' she said.

'Lizzy, be frank!' said the young man. 'If it was only on business, why

should anybody wish to listen to you?'

She looked curiously at him. 'What else do you think it could be, then?'

'Well-the only talk between a young woman and man that is likely to

amuse an eavesdropper.'

'Ah yes,' she said, smiling in spite of her preoccupation. 'Well, my

cousin Owlett has spoken to me about matrimony, every now and then,

that's true; but he was not speaking of it then. I wish he had been

speaking of it, with all my heart. It would have been much less serious

for me.'

'O Mrs. Newberry!'

'It would. Not that I should ha' chimed in with him, of course. I wish

it for other reasons. I am glad, Mr. Stockdale, that you have told me of

that listener. It is a timely warning, and I must see my cousin again.'

'But don't go away till I have spoken,' said the minister. 'I'll out

with it at once, and make no more ado. Let it be Yes or No between us,

Lizzy; please do!' And he held out his hand, in which she freely allowed

her own to rest, but without speaking.

'You mean Yes by that?' he asked, after waiting a while.

'You may be my sweetheart, if you will.'

'Why not say at once you will wait for me until I have a house and can

come back to marry you.'

'Because I am thinking-thinking of something else,' she said with

embarrassment. 'It all comes upon me at once, and I must settle one

thing at a time.'

'At any rate, dear Lizzy, you can assure me that the miller shall not be

allowed to speak to you except on business? You have never directly

encouraged him?'

She parried the question by saying, 'You see, he and his party have been

in the habit of leaving things on my premises sometimes, and as I have

not denied him, it makes him rather forward.'

'Things-what things?'

'Tubs-they are called Things here.'

'But why don't you deny him, my dear Lizzy?'

'I cannot well.'

'You are too timid. It is unfair of him to impose so upon you, and get

your good name into danger by his smuggling tricks. Promise me that the

next time he wants to leave his tubs here you will let me roll them into

the street?'

She shook her head. 'I would not venture to offend the neighbours so

much as that,' said she, 'or do anything that would be so likely to put

poor Owlett into the hands of the excisemen.'

Stockdale sighed, and said that he thought hers a mistaken generosity

when it extended to assisting those who cheated the king of his dues.

'At any rate, you will let me make him keep his distance as your lover,

and tell him flatly that you are not for him?'

'Please not, at present,' she said. 'I don't wish to offend my old

neighbours. It is not only Owlett who is concerned.'

'This is too bad,' said Stockdale impatiently.

'On my honour, I won't encourage him as my lover,' Lizzy answered

earnestly. 'A reasonable man will be satisfied with that.'

'Well, so I am,' said Stockdale, his countenance clearing.

III-THE MYSTERIOUS GREATCOAT

Stockdale now began to notice more particularly a feature in the life of

his fair landlady, which he had casually observed but scarcely ever

thought of before. It was that she was markedly irregular in her hours

of rising. For a week or two she would be tolerably punctual, reaching

the ground-floor within a few minutes of half-past seven. Then suddenly

she would not be visible till twelve at noon, perhaps for three or four

days in succession; and twice he had certain proof that she did not

leave her room till half-past three in the afternoon. The second time

that this extreme lateness came under his notice was on a day when he

had particularly wished to consult with her about his future movements;

and he concluded, as he always had done, that she had a cold, headache,

or other ailment, unless she had kept herself invisible to avoid meeting

and talking to him, which he could hardly believe. The former

supposition was disproved, however, by her innocently saying, some days

later, when they were speaking on a question of health, that she had

never had a moment's heaviness, headache, or illness of any kind since

the previous January twelvemonth.

'I am glad to hear it,' said he. 'I thought quite otherwise.'

'What, do I look sickly?' she asked, turning up her face to show the

impossibility of his gazing on it and holding such a belief for a

moment.

'Not at all; I merely thought so from your being sometimes obliged to

keep your room through the best part of the day.'

'O, as for that-it means nothing,' she murmured, with a look which some

might have called cold, and which was the worst look that he liked to

see upon her. 'It is pure sleepiness, Mr. Stockdale.'

'Never!'

'It is, I tell you. When I stay in my room till half-past three in the

afternoon, you may always be sure that I slept soundly till three, or I

shouldn't have stayed there.'

'It is dreadful,' said Stockdale, thinking of the disastrous effects of

such indulgence upon the household of a minister, should it become a

habit of everyday occurrence.

'But then,' she said, divining his good and prescient thoughts, 'it only

happens when I stay awake all night. I don't go to sleep till five or

six in the morning sometimes.'

'Ah, that's another matter,' said Stockdale. 'Sleeplessness to such an

alarming extent is real illness. Have you spoken to a doctor?'

'O no-there is no need for doing that-it is all natural to me.' And she

went away without further remark.

Stockdale might have waited a long time to know the real cause of her

sleeplessness, had it not happened that one dark night he was sitting in

his bedroom jotting down notes for a sermon, which occupied him

perfunctorily for a considerable time after the other members of the

household had retired. He did not get to bed till one o'clock. Before he

had fallen asleep he heard a knocking at the front door, first rather

timidly performed, and then louder. Nobody answered it, and the person

knocked again. As the house still remained undisturbed, Stockdale got

out of bed, went to his window, which overlooked the door, and opening

it, asked who was there.

A young woman's voice replied that Susan Wallis was there, and that she

had come to ask if Mrs. Newberry could give her some mustard to make a

plaster with, as her father was taken very ill on the chest.

The minister, having neither bell nor servant, was compelled to act in

person. 'I will call Mrs. Newberry,' he said. Partly dressing himself;

he went along the passage and tapped at Lizzy's door. She did not

answer, and, thinking of her erratic habits in the matter of sleep, he

thumped the door persistently, when he discovered, by its moving ajar

under his knocking, that it had only been gently pushed to. As there was

now a sufficient entry for the voice, he knocked no longer, but said in

firm tones, 'Mrs. Newberry, you are wanted.'

The room was quite silent; not a breathing, not a rustle, came from any

part of it. Stockdale now sent a positive shout through the open space

of the door: 'Mrs. Newberry!'-still no answer, or movement of any kind

within. Then he heard sounds from the opposite room, that of Lizzy's

mother, as if she had been aroused by his uproar though Lizzy had not,

and was dressing herself hastily. Stockdale softly closed the younger

woman's door and went on to the other, which was opened by Mrs. Simpkins

before he could reach it. She was in her ordinary clothes, and had a

light in her hand.

'What's the person calling about?' she said in alarm.

Stockdale told the girl's errand, adding seriously, 'I cannot wake Mrs.

Newberry.'

'It is no matter,' said her mother. 'I can let the girl have what she

wants as well as my daughter.' And she came out of the room and went

downstairs.

Stockdale retired towards his own apartment, saying, however, to Mrs.

Simpkins from the landing, as if on second thoughts, 'I suppose there is

nothing the matter with Mrs. Newberry, that I could not wake her?'

'O no,' said the old lady hastily. 'Nothing at all.'

Still the minister was not satisfied. 'Will you go in and see?' he said.

'I should be much more at ease.'

Mrs. Simpkins returned up the staircase, went to her daughter's room,

and came out again almost instantly. 'There is nothing at all the matter

with Lizzy,' she said; and descended again to attend to the applicant,

who, having seen the light, had remained quiet during this interval.

Stockdale went into his room and lay down as before. He heard Lizzy's

mother open the front door, admit the girl, and then the murmured

discourse of both as they went to the store-cupboard for the medicament

required. The girl departed, the door was fastened, Mrs. Simpkins came

upstairs, and the house was again in silence. Still the minister did not

fall asleep. He could not get rid of a singular suspicion, which was all

the more harassing in being, if true, the most unaccountable thing

within his experience. That Lizzy Newberry was in her bedroom when he

made such a clamour at the door he could not possibly convince himself;

notwithstanding that he had heard her come upstairs at the usual time,

go into her chamber, and shut herself up in the usual way. Yet all

reason was so much against her being elsewhere, that he was constrained

to go back again to the unlikely theory of a heavy sleep, though he had

heard neither breath nor movement during a shouting and knocking loud

enough to rouse the Seven Sleepers.

Before coming to any positive conclusion he fell asleep himself, and did

not awake till day. He saw nothing of Mrs. Newberry in the morning,

before he went out to meet the rising sun, as he liked to do when the

weather was fine; but as this was by no means unusual, he took no notice

of it. At breakfast-time he knew that she was not far off by hearing her

in the kitchen, and though he saw nothing of her person, that back

apartment being rigorously closed against his eyes, she seemed to be

talking, ordering, and bustling about among the pots and skimmers in so

ordinary a manner, that there was no reason for his wasting more time in

fruitless surmise.

The minister suffered from these distractions, and his extemporized

sermons were not improved thereby. Already he often said Romans for

Corinthians in the pulpit, and gave out hymns in strange cramped metres,

that hitherto had always been skipped, because the congregation could

not raise a tune to fit them. He fully resolved that as soon as his few

weeks of stay approached their end he would cut the matter short, and

commit himself by proposing a definite engagement, repenting at leisure

if necessary.

With this end in view, he suggested to her on the evening after her

mysterious sleep that they should take a walk together just before dark,

the latter part of the proposition being introduced that they might

return home unseen. She consented to go; and away they went over a

stile, to a shrouded footpath suited for the occasion. But, in spite of

attempts on both sides, they were unable to infuse much spirit into the

ramble. She looked rather paler than usual, and sometimes turned her

head away.

'Lizzy,' said Stockdale reproachfully, when they had walked in silence a

long distance.

'Yes,' said she.

'You yawned-much my company is to you!' He put it in that way, but he

was really wondering whether her yawn could possibly have more to do

with physical weariness from the night before than mental weariness of

that present moment. Lizzy apologized, and owned that she was rather

tired, which gave him an opening for a direct question on the point; but

his modesty would not allow him to put it to her; and he uncomfortably

resolved to wait.

The month of February passed with alternations of mud and frost, rain

and sleet, east winds and north-westerly gales. The hollow places in the

ploughed fields showed themselves as pools of water, which had settled

there from the higher levels, and had not yet found time to soak away.

The birds began to get lively, and a single thrush came just before

sunset each evening, and sang hopefully on the large elm-tree which

stood nearest to Mrs. Newberry's house. Cold blasts and brittle earth

had given place to an oozing dampness more unpleasant in itself than

frost; but it suggested coming spring, and its unpleasantness was of a

bearable kind.

Stockdale had been going to bring about a practical understanding with

Lizzy at least half-a-dozen times; but, what with the mystery of her

apparent absence on the night of the neighbour's call, and her curious

way of lying in bed at unaccountable times, he felt a check within him

whenever he wanted to speak out. Thus they still lived on as

indefinitely affianced lovers, each of whom hardly acknowledged the

other's claim to the name of chosen one. Stockdale persuaded himself

that his hesitation was owing to the postponement of the ordained

minister's arrival, and the consequent delay in his own departure, which

did away with all necessity for haste in his courtship; but perhaps it

was only that his discretion was reasserting itself, and telling him

that he had better get clearer ideas of Lizzy before arranging for the

grand contract of his life with her. She, on her part, always seemed

ready to be urged further on that question than he had hitherto

attempted to go; but she was none the less independent, and to a degree

which would have kept from flagging the passion of a far more mutable

man.

On the evening of the first of March he went casually into his bedroom

about dusk, and noticed lying on a chair a greatcoat, hat, and breeches.

Having no recollection of leaving any clothes of his own in that spot,

he went and examined them as well as he could in the twilight, and found

that they did not belong to him. He paused for a moment to consider how

they might have got there. He was the only man living in the house; and

yet these were not his garments, unless he had made a mistake. No, they

were not his. He called up Martha Sarah.

'How did these things come in my room?' he said, flinging the

objectionable articles to the floor.

Martha said that Mrs. Newberry had given them to her to brush, and that

she had brought them up there thinking they must be Mr. Stockdale's, as

there was no other gentleman a-lodging there.

'Of course you did,' said Stockdale. 'Now take them down to your

mis'ess, and say they are some clothes I have found here and know

nothing about.'

As the door was left open he heard the conversation downstairs. 'How

stupid!' said Mrs. Newberry, in a tone of confusion. 'Why, Marther

Sarer, I did not tell you to take 'em to Mr. Stockdale's room?'

'I thought they must be his as they was so muddy,' said Martha humbly.

'You should have left 'em on the clothes-horse,' said the young mistress

severely; and she came upstairs with the garments on her arm, quickly

passed Stockdale's room, and threw them forcibly into a closet at the

end of a passage. With this the incident ended, and the house was silent

again.

There would have been nothing remarkable in finding such clothes in a

widow's house had they been clean; or moth-eaten, or creased, or mouldy

from long lying by; but that they should be splashed with recent mud

bothered Stockdale a good deal. When a young pastor is in the aspen

stage of attachment, and open to agitation at the merest trifles, a

really substantial incongruity of this complexion is a disturbing thing.

However, nothing further occurred at that time; but he became watchful,

and given to conjecture, and was unable to forget the circumstance.

One morning, on looking from his window, he saw Mrs. Newberry herself

brushing the tails of a long drab greatcoat, which, if he mistook not,

was the very same garment as the one that had adorned the chair of his

room. It was densely splashed up to the hollow of the back with

neighbouring Nether-Moynton mud, to judge by its colour, the spots being

distinctly visible to him in the sunlight. The previous day or two

having been wet, the inference was irresistible that the wearer had

quite recently been walking some considerable distance about the lanes

and fields. Stockdale opened the window and looked out, and Mrs.

Newberry turned her head. Her face became slowly red; she never had

looked prettier, or more incomprehensible, he waved his hand

affectionately, and said good-morning; she answered with embarrassment,

having ceased her occupation on the instant that she saw him, and rolled

up the coat half-cleaned.

Stockdale shut the window. Some simple explanation of her proceeding was

doubtless within the bounds of possibility; but he himself could not

think of one; and he wished that she had placed the matter beyond

conjecture by voluntarily saying something about it there and then.

But, though Lizzy had not offered an explanation at the moment, the

subject was brought forward by her at the next time of their meeting.

She was chatting to him concerning some other event, and remarked that

it happened about the time when she was dusting some old clothes that

had belonged to her poor husband.

'You keep them clean out of respect to his memory?' said Stockdale

tentatively.

'I air and dust them sometimes,' she said, with the most charming

innocence in the world.

'Do dead men come out of their graves and walk in mud?' murmured the

minister, in a cold sweat at the deception that she was practising.

'What did you say?' asked Lizzy.

'Nothing, nothing,' said he mournfully. 'Mere words-a phrase that will

do for my sermon next Sunday.' It was too plain that Lizzy was unaware

that he had seen actual pedestrian splashes upon the skirts of the tell-

tale overcoat, and that she imagined him to believe it had come direct

from some chest or drawer.

The aspect of the case was now considerably darker. Stockdale was so

much depressed by it that he did not challenge her explanation, or

threaten to go off as a missionary to benighted islanders, or reproach

her in any way whatever. He simply parted from her when she had done

talking, and lived on in perplexity, till by degrees his natural manner

became sad and constrained.

IV-AT THE TIME OF THE NEW MOON

The following Thursday was changeable, damp, and gloomy; and the night

threatened to be windy and unpleasant. Stockdale had gone away to

Knollsea in the morning, to be present at some commemoration service

there, and on his return he was met by the attractive Lizzy in the

passage. Whether influenced by the tide of cheerfulness which had

attended him that day, or by the drive through the open air, or whether

from a natural disposition to let bygones alone, he allowed himself to

be fascinated into forgetfulness of the greatcoat incident, and upon the

whole passed a pleasant evening; not so much in her society as within

sound of her voice, as she sat talking in the back parlour to her

mother, till the latter went to bed. Shortly after this Mrs. Newberry

retired, and then Stockdale prepared to go upstairs himself. But before

he left the room he remained standing by the dying embers awhile,

thinking long of one thing and another; and was only aroused by the

flickering of his candle in the socket as it suddenly declined and went

out. Knowing that there were a tinder-box, matches, and another candle

in his bedroom, he felt his way upstairs without a light. On reaching

his chamber he laid his hand on every possible ledge and corner for the

tinderbox, but for a long time in vain. Discovering it at length,

Stockdale produced a spark, and was kindling the brimstone, when he

fancied that he heard a movement in the passage. He blew harder at the

lint, the match flared up, and looking by aid of the blue light through

the door, which had been standing open all this time, he was surprised

to see a male figure vanishing round the top of the staircase with the

evident intention of escaping unobserved. The personage wore the clothes

which Lizzy had been brushing, and something in the outline and gait

suggested to the minister that the wearer was Lizzy herself.

But he was not sure of this; and, greatly excited, Stockdale determined

to investigate the mystery, and to adopt his own way for doing it. He

blew out the match without lighting the candle, went into the passage,

and proceeded on tiptoe towards Lizzy's room. A faint grey square of

light in the direction of the chamber-window as he approached told him

that the door was open, and at once suggested that the occupant was

gone. He turned and brought down his fist upon the handrail of the

staircase: 'It was she; in her late husband's coat and hat!'

Somewhat relieved to find that there was no intruder in the case, yet

none the less surprised, the minister crept down the stairs, softly put

on his boots, overcoat, and hat, and tried the front door. It was

fastened as usual: he went to the back door, found this unlocked, and

emerged into the garden. The night was mild and moonless, and rain had

lately been falling, though for the present it had ceased. There was a

sudden dropping from the trees and bushes every now and then, as each

passing wind shook their boughs. Among these sounds Stockdale heard the

faint fall of feet upon the road outside, and he guessed from the step

that it was Lizzy's. He followed the sound, and, helped by the

circumstance of the wind blowing from the direction in which the

pedestrian moved, he got nearly close to her, and kept there, without

risk of being overheard. While he thus followed her up the street or

lane, as it might indifferently be called, there being more hedge than

houses on either side, a figure came forward to her from one of the

cottage doors. Lizzy stopped; the minister stepped upon the grass and

stopped also.

'Is that Mrs. Newberry?' said the man who had come out, whose voice

Stockdale recognized as that of one of the most devout members of his

congregation.

'It is,' said Lizzy.

'I be quite ready-I've been here this quarter-hour.'

'Ah, John,' said she, 'I have bad news; there is danger to-night for our

venture.'

'And d'ye tell o't! I dreamed there might be.'

'Yes,' she said hurriedly; 'and you must go at once round to where the

chaps are waiting, and tell them they will not be wanted till to-morrow

night at the same time. I go to burn the lugger off.'

'I will,' he said; and instantly went off through a gate, Lizzy

continuing her way.

On she tripped at a quickening pace till the lane turned into the

turnpike-road, which she crossed, and got into the track for Ringsworth.

Here she ascended the hill without the least hesitation, passed the

lonely hamlet of Holworth, and went down the vale on the other side.

Stockdale had never taken any extensive walks in this direction, but he

was aware that if she persisted in her course much longer she would draw

near to the coast, which was here between two and three miles distant

from Nether-Moynton; and as it had been about a quarter-past eleven

o'clock when they set out, her intention seemed to be to reach the shore

about midnight.

Lizzy soon ascended a small mound, which Stockdale at the same time

adroitly skirted on the left; and a dull monotonous roar burst upon his

ear. The hillock was about fifty yards from the top of the cliffs, and

by day it apparently commanded a full view of the bay. There was light

enough in the sky to show her disguised figure against it when she

reached the top, where she paused, and afterwards sat down. Stockdale,

not wishing on any account to alarm her at this moment, yet desirous of

being near her, sank upon his hands and knees, crept a little higher up,

and there stayed still.

The wind was chilly, the ground damp, and his position one in which he

did not care to remain long. However, before he had decided to leave it,

the young man heard voices behind him. What they signified he did not

know; but, fearing that Lizzy was in danger, he was about to run forward

and warn her that she might be seen, when she crept to the shelter of a

little bush which maintained a precarious existence in that exposed

spot; and her form was absorbed in its dark and stunted outline as if

she had become part of it. She had evidently heard the men as well as

he. They passed near him, talking in loud and careless tones, which

could be heard above the uninterrupted washings of the sea, and which

suggested that they were not engaged in any business at their own risk.

This proved to be the fact: some of their words floated across to him,

and caused him to forget at once the coldness of his situation.

'What's the vessel?'

'A lugger, about fifty tons.'

'From Cherbourg, I suppose?'

'Yes, 'a b'lieve.'

'But it don't all belong to Owlett?'

'O no. He's only got a share. There's another or two in it-a farmer and

such like, but the names I don't know.'

The voices died away, and the heads and shoulders of the men diminished

towards the cliff, and dropped out of sight.

'My darling has been tempted to buy a share by that unbeliever Owlett,'

groaned the minister, his honest affection for Lizzy having quickened to

its intensest point during these moments of risk to her person and name.

'That's why she's here,' he said to himself. 'O, it will be the ruin of

her!'

His perturbation was interrupted by the sudden bursting out of a bright

and increasing light from the spot where Lizzy was in hiding. A few

seconds later, and before it had reached the height of a blaze, he heard

her rush past him down the hollow like a stone from a sling, in the

direction of home. The light now flared high and wide, and showed its

position clearly. She had kindled a bough of furze and stuck it into the

bush under which she had been crouching; the wind fanned the flame,

which crackled fiercely, and threatened to consume the bush as well as

the bough. Stockdale paused just long enough to notice thus much, and

then followed rapidly the route taken by the young woman. His intention

was to overtake her, and reveal himself as a friend; but run as he would

he could see nothing of her. Thus he flew across the open country about

Holworth, twisting his legs and ankles in unexpected fissures and

descents, till, on coming to the gate between the downs and the road, he

was forced to pause to get breath. There was no audible movement either

in front or behind him, and he now concluded that she had not outrun

him, but that, hearing him at her heels, and believing him one of the

excise party, she had hidden herself somewhere on the way, and let him

pass by.

He went on at a more leisurely pace towards the village. On reaching the

house he found his surmise to be correct, for the gate was on the latch,

and the door unfastened, just as he had left them. Stockdale closed the

door behind him, and waited silently in the passage. In about ten

minutes he heard the same light footstep that he had heard in going out;

it paused at the gate, which opened and shut softly, and then the door-

latch was lifted, and Lizzy came in.

Stockdale went forward and said at once, 'Lizzy, don't be frightened. I

have been waiting up for you.'

She started, though she had recognized the voice. 'It is Mr. Stockdale,

isn't it?' she said.

'Yes,' he answered, becoming angry now that she was safe indoors, and

not alarmed. 'And a nice game I've found you out in to-night. You are in

man's clothes, and I am ashamed of you!'

Lizzy could hardly find a voice to answer this unexpected reproach.

'I am only partly in man's clothes,' she faltered, shrinking back to the

wall. 'It is only his greatcoat and hat and breeches that I've got on,

which is no harm, as he was my own husband; and I do it only because a

cloak blows about so, and you can't use your arms. I have got my own

dress under just the same-it is only tucked in! Will you go away

upstairs and let me pass? I didn't want you to see me at such a time as

this!'

'But I have a right to see you! How do you think there can be anything

between us now?' Lizzy was silent. 'You are a smuggler,' he continued

sadly.

'I have only a share in the run,' she said.

'That makes no difference. Whatever did you engage in such a trade as

that for, and keep it such a secret from me all this time?'

'I don't do it always. I only do it in winter-time when 'tis new moon.'

'Well, I suppose that's because it can't be done anywhen else . . . You

have regularly upset me, Lizzy.'

'I am sorry for that,' Lizzy meekly replied.

'Well now,' said he more tenderly, 'no harm is done as yet. Won't you

for the sake of me give up this blamable and dangerous practice

altogether?'

'I must do my best to save this run,' said she, getting rather husky in

the throat. 'I don't want to give you up-you know that; but I don't want

to lose my venture. I don't know what to do now! Why I have kept it so

secret from you is that I was afraid you would be angry if you knew.'

'I should think so! I suppose if I had married you without finding this

out you'd have gone on with it just the same?'

'I don't know. I did not think so far ahead. I only went to-night to

burn the folks off, because we found that the excisemen knew where the

tubs were to be landed.'

'It is a pretty mess to be in altogether, is this,' said the distracted

young minister. 'Well, what will you do now?'

Lizzy slowly murmured the particulars of their plan, the chief of which

were that they meant to try their luck at some other point of the shore

the next night; that three landing-places were always agreed upon before

the run was attempted, with the understanding that, if the vessel was

'burnt off' from the first point, which was Ringsworth, as it had been

by her to-night, the crew should attempt to make the second, which was

Lulstead Cove, on the second night; and if there, too, danger

threatened, they should on the third night try the third place, which

was behind a headland further west.

'Suppose the officers hinder them landing there too?' he said, his

attention to this interesting programme displacing for a moment his

concern at her share in it.

'Then we shan't try anywhere else all this dark-that's what we call the

time between moon and moon-and perhaps they'll string the tubs to a

stray-line, and sink 'em a little-ways from shore, and take the

bearings; and then when they have a chance they'll go to creep for 'em.'

'What's that?'

'O, they'll go out in a boat and drag a creeper-that's a grapnel-along

the bottom till it catch hold of the stray-line.'

The minister stood thinking; and there was no sound within doors but the

tick of the clock on the stairs, and the quick breathing of Lizzy,

partly from her walk and partly from agitation, as she stood close to

the wall, not in such complete darkness but that he could discern

against its whitewashed surface the greatcoat and broad hat which

covered her.

'Lizzy, all this is very wrong,' he said. 'Don't you remember the lesson

of the tribute-money? "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's."

Surely you have heard that read times enough in your growing up?'

'He's dead,' she pouted.

'But the spirit of the text is in force just the same.'

'My father did it, and so did my grandfather, and almost everybody in

Nether-Moynton lives by it, and life would be so dull if it wasn't for

that, that I should not care to live at all.'

'I am nothing to live for, of course,' he replied bitterly. 'You would

not think it worth while to give up this wild business and live for me

alone?'

'I have never looked at it like that.'

'And you won't promise and wait till I am ready?'

'I cannot give you my word to-night.' And, looking thoughtfully down,

she gradually moved and moved away, going into the adjoining room, and

closing the door between them. She remained there in the dark till he

was tired of waiting, and had gone up to his own chamber.

Poor Stockdale was dreadfully depressed all the next day by the

discoveries of the night before. Lizzy was unmistakably a fascinating

young woman, but as a minister's wife she was hardly to be contemplated.

'If I had only stuck to father's little grocery business, instead of

going in for the ministry, she would have suited me beautifully!' he

said sadly, until he remembered that in that case he would never have

come from his distant home to Nether-Moynton, and never have known her.

The estrangement between them was not complete, but it was sufficient to

keep them out of each other's company. Once during the day he met her in

the garden-path, and said, turning a reproachful eye upon her, 'Do you

promise, Lizzy?' But she did not reply. The evening drew on, and he knew

well enough that Lizzy would repeat her excursion at night-her half-

offended manner had shown that she had not the slightest intention of

altering her plans at present. He did not wish to repeat his own share

of the adventure; but, act as he would, his uneasiness on her account

increased with the decline of day. Supposing that an accident should

befall her, he would never forgive himself for not being there to help,

much as he disliked the idea of seeming to countenance such unlawful

escapades.

V-HOW THEY WENT TO LULSTEAD COVE

As he had expected, she left the house at the same hour at night, this

time passing his door without stealth, as if she knew very well that he

would be watching, and were resolved to brave his displeasure. He was

quite ready, opened the door quickly, and reached the back door almost

as soon as she.

'Then you will go, Lizzy?' he said as he stood on the step beside her,

who now again appeared as a little man with a face altogether unsuited

to his clothes.

'I must,' she said, repressed by his stern manner.

'Then I shall go too,' said he.

'And I am sure you will enjoy it!' she exclaimed in more buoyant tones.

'Everybody does who tries it.'

'God forbid that I should!' he said. 'But I must look after you.'

They opened the wicket and went up the road abreast of each other, but

at some distance apart, scarcely a word passing between them. The

evening was rather less favourable to smuggling enterprise than the last

had been, the wind being lower, and the sky somewhat clear towards the

north.

'It is rather lighter,' said Stockdale.

''Tis, unfortunately,' said she. 'But it is only from those few stars

over there. The moon was new to-day at four o'clock, and I expected

clouds. I hope we shall be able to do it this dark, for when we have to

sink 'em for long it makes the stuff taste bleachy, and folks don't like

it so well.'

Her course was different from that of the preceding night, branching off

to the left over Lord's Barrow as soon as they had got out of the lane

and crossed the highway. By the time they reached Chaldon Down,

Stockdale, who had been in perplexed thought as to what he should say to

her, decided that he would not attempt expostulation now, while she was

excited by the adventure, but wait till it was over, and endeavour to

keep her from such practices in future. It occurred to him once or

twice, as they rambled on, that should they be surprised by the

excisemen, his situation would be more awkward than hers, for it would

be difficult to prove his true motive in coming to the spot; but the

risk was a slight consideration beside his wish to be with her.

They now arrived at a ravine which lay on the outskirts of Chaldon, a

village two miles on their way towards the point of the shore they

sought. Lizzy broke the silence this time: 'I have to wait here to meet

the carriers. I don't know if they have come yet. As I told you, we go

to Lulstead Cove to-night, and it is two miles further than Ringsworth.'

It turned out that the men had already come; for while she spoke two or

three dozen heads broke the line of the slope, and a company of them at

once descended from the bushes where they had been lying in wait. These

carriers were men whom Lizzy and other proprietors regularly employed to

bring the tubs from the boat to a hiding-place inland. They were all

young fellows of Nether-Moynton, Chaldon, and the neighbourhood, quiet

and inoffensive persons, who simply engaged to carry the cargo for Lizzy

and her cousin Owlett, as they would have engaged in any other labour

for which they were fairly well paid.

At a word from her they closed in together. 'You had better take it

now,' she said to them; and handed to each a packet. It contained six

shillings, their remuneration for the night's undertaking, which was

paid beforehand without reference to success or failure; but, besides

this, they had the privilege of selling as agents when the run was

successfully made. As soon as it was done, she said to them, 'The place

is the old one near Lulstead Cove;' the men till that moment not having

been told whither they were bound, for obvious reasons. 'Owlett will

meet you there,' added Lizzy. 'I shall follow behind, to see that we are

not watched.'

The carriers went on, and Stockdale and Mrs. Newberry followed at a

distance of a stone's throw. 'What do these men do by day?' he said.

'Twelve or fourteen of them are labouring men. Some are brickmakers,

some carpenters, some shoe-makers, some thatchers. They are all known to

me very well. Nine of 'em are of your own congregation.'

'I can't help that,' said Stockdale.

'O, I know you can't. I only told you. The others are more church-

inclined, because they supply the pa'son with all the spirits he

requires, and they don't wish to show unfriendliness to a customer.'

'How do you choose 'em?' said Stockdale.

'We choose 'em for their closeness, and because they are strong and

surefooted, and able to carry a heavy load a long way without being

tired.'

Stockdale sighed as she enumerated each particular, for it proved how

far involved in the business a woman must be who was so well acquainted

with its conditions and needs. And yet he felt more tenderly towards her

at this moment than he had felt all the foregoing day. Perhaps it was

that her experienced manner and hold indifference stirred his admiration

in spite of himself.

'Take my arm, Lizzy,' he murmured.

'I don't want it,' she said. 'Besides, we may never be to each other

again what we once have been.'

'That depends upon you,' said he, and they went on again as before.

The hired carriers paced along over Chaldon Down with as little

hesitation as if it had been day, avoiding the cart-way, and leaving the

village of East Chaldon on the left, so as to reach the crest of the

hill at a lonely trackless place not far from the ancient earthwork

called Round Pound. An hour's brisk walking brought them within sound of

the sea, not many hundred yards from Lulstead Cove. Here they paused,

and Lizzy and Stockdale came up with them, when they went on together to

the verge of the cliff. One of the men now produced an iron bar, which

he drove firmly into the soil a yard from the edge, and attached to it a

rope that he had uncoiled from his body. They all began to descend,

partly stepping, partly sliding down the incline, as the rope slipped

through their hands.

'You will not go to the bottom, Lizzy?' said Stockdale anxiously.

'No. I stay here to watch,' she said. 'Owlett is down there.'

The men remained quite silent when they reached the shore; and the next

thing audible to the two at the top was the dip of heavy oars, and the

dashing of waves against a boat's bow. In a moment the keel gently

touched the shingle, and Stockdale heard the footsteps of the thirty-six

carriers running forwards over the pebbles towards the point of landing.

There was a sousing in the water as of a brood of ducks plunging in,

showing that the men had not been particular about keeping their legs,

or even their waists, dry from the brine: but it was impossible to see

what they were doing, and in a few minutes the shingle was trampled

again. The iron bar sustaining the rope, on which Stockdale's hand

rested, began to swerve a little, and the carriers one by one appeared

climbing up the sloping cliff; dripping audibly as they came, and

sustaining themselves by the guide-rope. Each man on reaching the top

was seen to be carrying a pair of tubs, one on his back and one on his

chest, the two being slung together by cords passing round the chine

hoops, and resting on the carrier's shoulders. Some of the stronger men

carried three by putting an extra one on the top behind, but the

customary load was a pair, these being quite weighty enough to give

their bearer the sensation of having chest and backbone in contact after

a walk of four or five miles.

'Where is Owlett?' said Lizzy to one of them.

'He will not come up this way,' said the carrier. 'He's to bide on shore

till we be safe off.' Then, without waiting for the rest, the foremost

men plunged across the down; and, when the last had ascended, Lizzy

pulled up the rope, wound it round her arm, wriggled the bar from the

sod, and turned to follow the carriers.

'You are very anxious about Owlett's safety,' said the minister.

'Was there ever such a man!' said Lizzy. 'Why, isn't he my cousin?'

'Yes. Well, it is a bad night's work,' said Stockdale heavily. 'But I'll

carry the bar and rope for you.'

'Thank God, the tubs have got so far all right,' said she.

Stockdale shook his head, and, taking the bar, walked by her side

towards the downs; and the moan of the sea was heard no more.

'Is this what you meant the other day when you spoke of having business

with Owlett?' the young man asked.

'This is it,' she replied. 'I never see him on any other matter.'

'A partnership of that kind with a young man is very odd.'

'It was begun by my father and his, who were brother-laws.'

Her companion could not blind himself to the fact that where tastes and

pursuits were so akin as Lizzy's and Owlett's, and where risks were

shared, as with them, in every undertaking, there would be a peculiar

appropriateness in her answering Owlett's standing question on matrimony

in the affirmative. This did not soothe Stockdale, its tendency being

rather to stimulate in him an effort to make the pair as inappropriate

as possible, and win her away from this nocturnal crew to correctness of

conduct and a minister's parlour in some far-removed inland county.

They had been walking near enough to the file of carriers for Stockdale

to perceive that, when they got into the road to the village, they split

up into two companies of unequal size, each of which made off in a

direction of its own. One company, the smaller of the two, went towards

the church, and by the time that Lizzy and Stockdale reached their own

house these men had scaled the churchyard wall, and were proceeding

noiselessly over the grass within.

'I see that Owlett has arranged for one batch to be put in the church

again,' observed Lizzy. 'Do you remember my taking you there the first

night you came?'

'Yes, of course,' said Stockdale. 'No wonder you had permission to

broach the tubs-they were his, I suppose?'

'No, they were not-they were mine; I had permission from myself. The day

after that they went several miles inland in a waggon-load of manure,

and sold very well.'

At this moment the group of men who had made off to the left some time

before began leaping one by one from the hedge opposite Lizzy's house,

and the first man, who had no tubs upon his shoulders, came forward.

'Mrs. Newberry, isn't it?' he said hastily.

'Yes, Jim,' said she. 'What's the matter?'

'I find that we can't put any in Badger's Clump to-night, Lizzy,' said

Owlett. 'The place is watched. We must sling the apple-tree in the

orchet if there's time. We can't put any more under the church lumber

than I have sent on there, and my mixen hev already more in en than is

safe.'

'Very well,' she said. 'Be quick about it-that's all. What can I do?'

'Nothing at all, please. Ah, it is the minister!-you two that can't do

anything had better get indoors and not be zeed.'

While Owlett thus conversed, in a tone so full of contraband anxiety and

so free from lover's jealousy, the men who followed him had been

descending one by one from the hedge; and it unfortunately happened that

when the hindmost took his leap, the cord slipped which sustained his

tubs: the result was that both the kegs fell into the road, one of them

being stove in by the blow.

''Od drown it all!' said Owlett, rushing back.

'It is worth a good deal, I suppose?' said Stockdale.

'O no-about two guineas and half to us now,' said Lizzy excitedly. 'It

isn't that-it is the smell! It is so blazing strong before it has been

lowered by water, that it smells dreadfully when spilt in the road like

that! I do hope Latimer won't pass by till it is gone off.'

Owlett and one or two others picked up the burst tub and began to scrape

and trample over the spot, to disperse the liquor as much as possible;

and then they all entered the gate of Owlett's orchard, which adjoined

Lizzy's garden on the right. Stockdale did not care to follow them, for

several on recognizing him had looked wonderingly at his presence,

though they said nothing. Lizzy left his side and went to the bottom of

the garden, looking over the hedge into the orchard, where the men could

be dimly seen bustling about, and apparently hiding the tubs. All was

done noiselessly, and without a light; and when it was over they

dispersed in different directions, those who had taken their cargoes to

the church having already gone off to their homes.

Lizzy returned to the garden-gate, over which Stockdale was still

abstractedly leaning. 'It is all finished: I am going indoors now,' she

said gently. 'I will leave the door ajar for you.'

'O no-you needn't,' said Stockdale; 'I am coming too.'

But before either of them had moved, the faint clatter of horses' hoofs

broke upon the ear, and it seemed to come from the point where the track

across the down joined the hard road.

'They are just too late!' cried Lizzy exultingly.

'Who?' said Stockdale.

'Latimer, the riding-officer, and some assistant of his. We had better

go indoors.'

They entered the house, and Lizzy bolted the door. 'Please don't get a

light, Mr. Stockdale,' she said.

'Of course I will not,' said he.

'I thought you might be on the side of the king,' said Lizzy, with

faintest sarcasm.

'I am,' said Stockdale. 'But, Lizzy Newberry, I love you, and you know

it perfectly well; and you ought to know, if you do not, what I have

suffered in my conscience on your account these last few days!'

'I guess very well,' she said hurriedly. 'Yet I don't see why. Ah, you

are better than I!'

The trotting of the horses seemed to have again died away, and the pair

of listeners touched each other's fingers in the cold 'Good-night' of

those whom something seriously divided. They were on the landing, but

before they had taken three steps apart, the tramp of the horsemen

suddenly revived, almost close to the house. Lizzy turned to the

staircase window, opened the casement about an inch, and put her face

close to the aperture. 'Yes, one of 'em is Latimer,' she whispered. 'He

always rides a white horse. One would think it was the last colour for a

man in that line.'

Stockdale looked, and saw the white shape of the animal as it passed by;

but before the riders had gone another ten yards, Latimer reined in his

horse, and said something to his companion which neither Stockdale nor

Lizzy could hear. Its drift was, however, soon made evident, for the

other man stopped also; and sharply turning the horses' heads they

cautiously retraced their steps. When they were again opposite Mrs.

Newberry's garden, Latimer dismounted, and the man on the dark horse did

the same.

Lizzy and Stockdale, intently listening and observing the proceedings,

naturally put their heads as close as possible to the slit formed by the

slightly opened casement; and thus it occurred that at last their cheeks

came positively into contact. They went on listening, as if they did not

know of the singular incident which had happened to their faces, and the

pressure of each to each rather increased than lessened with the lapse

of time.

They could hear the excisemen sniffing the air like hounds as they paced

slowly along. When they reached the spot where the tub had burst, both

stopped on the instant.

'Ay, ay, 'tis quite strong here,' said the second officer. 'Shall we

knock at the door?'

'Well, no,' said Latimer. 'Maybe this is only a trick to put us off the

scent. They wouldn't kick up this stink anywhere near their hiding-

place. I have known such things before.'

'Anyhow, the things, or some of 'em, must have been brought this way,'

said the other.

'Yes,' said Latimer musingly. 'Unless 'tis all done to tole us the wrong

way. I have a mind that we go home for to-night without saying a word,

and come the first thing in the morning with more hands. I know they

have storages about here, but we can do nothing by this owl's light. We

will look round the parish and see if everybody is in bed, John; and if

all is quiet, we will do as I say.'

They went on, and the two inside the window could hear them passing

leisurely through the whole village, the street of which curved round at

the bottom and entered the turnpike road at another junction. This way

the excisemen followed, and the amble of their horses died quite away.

'What will you do?' said Stockdale, withdrawing from his position.

She knew that he alluded to the coming search by the officers, to divert

her attention from their own tender incident by the casement, which he

wished to be passed over as a thing rather dreamt of than done. 'O,

nothing,' she replied, with as much coolness as she could command under

her disappointment at his manner. 'We often have such storms as this.

You would not be frightened if you knew what fools they are. Fancy

riding o' horseback through the place: of course they will hear and see

nobody while they make that noise; but they are always afraid to get

off, in case some of our fellows should burst out upon 'em, and tie them

up to the gate-post, as they have done before now. Good-night, Mr.

Stockdale.'

She closed the window and went to her room, where a tear fell from her

eyes; and that not because of the alertness of the riding-officers.

VI-THE GREAT SEARCH AT NETHER-MOYNTON

Stockdale was so excited by the events of the evening, and the dilemma

that he was placed in between conscience and love, that he did not

sleep, or even doze, but remained as broadly awake as at noonday. As

soon as the grey light began to touch ever so faintly the whiter objects

in his bedroom he arose, dressed himself, and went downstairs into the

road.

The village was already astir. Several of the carriers had heard the

well-known tramp of Latimer's horse while they were undressing in the

dark that night, and had already communicated with each other and Owlett

on the subject. The only doubt seemed to be about the safety of those

tubs which had been left under the church gallery-stairs, and after a

short discussion at the corner of the mill, it was agreed that these

should be removed before it got lighter, and hidden in the middle of a

double hedge bordering the adjoining field. However, before anything

could be carried into effect, the footsteps of many men were heard

coming down the lane from the highway.

'Damn it, here they be,' said Owlett, who, having already drawn the

hatch and started his mill for the day, stood stolidly at the mill-door

covered with flour, as if the interest of his whole soul was bound up in

the shaking walls around him.

The two or three with whom he had been talking dispersed to their usual

work, and when the excise officers, and the formidable body of men they

had hired, reached the village cross, between the mill and Mrs.

Newberry's house, the village wore the natural aspect of a place

beginning its morning labours.

'Now,' said Latimer to his associates, who numbered thirteen men in all,

'what I know is that the things are somewhere in this here place. We

have got the day before us, and 'tis hard if we can't light upon 'em and

get 'em to Budmouth Custom-house before night. First we will try the

fuel-houses, and then we'll work our way into the chimmers, and then to

the ricks and stables, and so creep round. You have nothing but your

noses to guide ye, mind, so use 'em to-day if you never did in your

lives before.'

Then the search began. Owlett, during the early part, watched from his

mill-window, Lizzy from the door of her house, with the greatest self-

possession. A farmer down below, who also had a share in the run, rode

about with one eye on his fields and the other on Latimer and his

myrmidons, prepared to put them off the scent if he should be asked a

question. Stockdale, who was no smuggler at all, felt more anxiety than

the worst of them, and went about his studies with a heavy heart, coming

frequently to the door to ask Lizzy some question or other on the

consequences to her of the tubs being found.

'The consequences,' she said quietly, 'are simply that I shall lose 'em.

As I have none in the house or garden, they can't touch me personally.'

'But you have some in the orchard?'

'Owlett rents that of me, and he lends it to others. So it will be hard

to say who put any tubs there if they should be found.'

There was never such a tremendous sniffing known as that which took

place in Nether-Moynton parish and its vicinity this day. All was done

methodically, and mostly on hands and knees. At different hours of the

day they had different plans. From daybreak to breakfast-time the

officers used their sense of smell in a direct and straightforward

manner only, pausing nowhere but at such places as the tubs might be

supposed to be secreted in at that very moment, pending their removal on

the following night. Among the places tested and examined were

Hollow trees Cupboards Culverts Potato-graves Clock-cases Hedgerows

Fuel-houses Chimney-flues Faggot-ricks Bedrooms Rainwater-butts

Haystacks Apple-lofts Pigsties Coppers and ovens.

After breakfast they recommenced with renewed vigour, taking a new line;

that is to say, directing their attention to clothes that might be

supposed to have come in contact with the tubs in their removal from the

shore, such garments being usually tainted with the spirit, owing to its

oozing between the staves. They now sniffed at -

Smock-frocks Smiths' and shoemakers' aprons Old shirts and waistcoats

Knee-naps and hedging-gloves Coats and hats Tarpaulins Breeches and

leggings Market-cloaks Women's shawls and gowns Scarecrows

And as soon as the mid-day meal was over, they pushed their search into

places where the spirits might have been thrown away in alarm:-

Horse-ponds Mixens Sinks in yards Stable-drains Wet ditches Road-

scrapings, and Cinder-heaps Cesspools Back- door gutters.

But still these indefatigable excisemen discovered nothing more than the

original tell-tale smell in the road opposite Lizzy's house, which even

yet had not passed off.

'I'll tell ye what it is, men,' said Latimer, about three o'clock in the

afternoon, 'we must begin over again. Find them tubs I will.'

The men, who had been hired for the day, looked at their hands and

knees, muddy with creeping on all fours so frequently, and rubbed their

noses, as if they had almost had enough of it; for the quantity of bad

air which had passed into each one's nostril had rendered it nearly as

insensible as a flue. However, after a moment's hesitation, they

prepared to start anew, except three, whose power of smell had quite

succumbed under the excessive wear and tear of the day.

By this time not a male villager was to be seen in the parish. Owlett

was not at his mill, the farmers were not in their fields, the parson

was not in his garden, the smith had left his forge, and the

wheelwright's shop was silent.

'Where the divil are the folk gone?' said Latimer, waking up to the fact

of their absence, and looking round. 'I'll have 'em up for this! Why

don't they come and help us? There's not a man about the place but the

Methodist parson, and he's an old woman. I demand assistance in the

king's name!'

'We must find the jineral public afore we can demand that,' said his

lieutenant.

'Well, well, we shall do better without 'em,' said Latimer, who changed

his moods at a moment's notice. 'But there's great cause of suspicion in

this silence and this keeping out of sight, and I'll bear it in mind.

Now we will go across to Owlett's orchard, and see what we can find

there.'

Stockdale, who heard this discussion from the garden-gate, over which he

had been leaning, was rather alarmed, and thought it a mistake of the

villagers to keep so completely out of the way. He himself, like the

excisemen, had been wondering for the last half-hour what could have

become of them. Some labourers were of necessity engaged in distant

fields, but the master-workmen should have been at home; though one and

all, after just showing themselves at their shops, had apparently gone

off for the day. He went in to Lizzy, who sat at a back window sewing,

and said, 'Lizzy, where are the men?'

Lizzy laughed. 'Where they mostly are when they're run so hard as this.'

She cast her eyes to heaven. 'Up there,' she said.

Stockdale looked up. 'What-on the top of the church tower?' he asked,

seeing the direction of her glance.

'Yes.'

'Well, I expect they will soon have to come down,' said he gravely. 'I

have been listening to the officers, and they are going to search the

orchard over again, and then every nook in the church.'

Lizzy looked alarmed for the first time. 'Will you go and tell our

folk?' she said. 'They ought to be let know.' Seeing his conscience

struggling within him like a boiling pot, she added, 'No, never mind,

I'll go myself.'

She went out, descended the garden, and climbed over the churchyard wall

at the same time that the preventive-men were ascending the road to the

orchard. Stockdale could do no less than follow her. By the time that

she reached the tower entrance he was at her side, and they entered

together.

Nether-Moynton church-tower was, as in many villages, without a turret,

and the only way to the top was by going up to the singers' gallery, and

thence ascending by a ladder to a square trap-door in the floor of the

bell-loft, above which a permanent ladder was fixed, passing through the

bells to a hole in the roof. When Lizzy and Stockdale reached the

gallery and looked up, nothing but the trap-door and the five holes for

the bell-ropes appeared. The ladder was gone.

'There's no getting up,' said Stockdale.

'O yes, there is,' said she. 'There's an eye looking at us at this

moment through a knot-hole in that trap-door.'

And as she spoke the trap opened, and the dark line of the ladder was

seen descending against the white-washed wall. When it touched the

bottom Lizzy dragged it to its place, and said, 'If you'll go up, I'll

follow.'

The young man ascended, and presently found himself among consecrated

bells for the first time in his life, nonconformity having been in the

Stockdale blood for some generations. He eyed them uneasily, and looked

round for Lizzy. Owlett stood here, holding the top of the ladder.

'What, be you really one of us?' said the miller.

'It seems so,' said Stockdale sadly.

'He's not,' said Lizzy, who overheard. 'He's neither for nor against us.

He'll do us no harm.'

She stepped up beside them, and then they went on to the next stage,

which, when they had clambered over the dusty bell-carriages, was of

easy ascent, leading towards the hole through which the pale sky

appeared, and into the open air. Owlett remained behind for a moment, to

pull up the lower ladder.

'Keep down your heads,' said a voice, as soon as they set foot on the

flat.

Stockdale here beheld all the missing parishioners, lying on their

stomachs on the tower roof, except a few who, elevated on their hands

and knees, were peeping through the embrasures of the parapet. Stockdale

did the same, and saw the village lying like a map below him, over which

moved the figures of the excisemen, each foreshortened to a crablike

object, the crown of his hat forming a circular disc in the centre of

him. Some of the men had turned their heads when the young preacher's

figure arose among them.

'What, Mr. Stockdale?' said Matt Grey, in a tone of surprise.

'I'd as lief that it hadn't been,' said Jim Clarke. 'If the pa'son

should see him a trespassing here in his tower, 'twould be none the

better for we, seeing how 'a do hate chapel-members. He'd never buy a

tub of us again, and he's as good a customer as we have got this side o'

Warm'll.'

'Where is the pa'son?' said Lizzy.

'In his house, to be sure, that he mid see nothing of what's going on-

where all good folks ought to be, and this young man likewise.'

'Well, he has brought some news,' said Lizzy. 'They are going to search

the orchet and church; can we do anything if they should find?'

'Yes,' said her cousin Owlett. 'That's what we've been talking o', and

we have settled our line. Well, be dazed!'

The exclamation was caused by his perceiving that some of the searchers,

having got into the orchard, and begun stooping and creeping hither and

thither, were pausing in the middle, where a tree smaller than the rest

was growing. They drew closer, and bent lower than ever upon the ground.

'O, my tubs!' said Lizzy faintly, as she peered through the parapet at

them.

'They have got 'em, 'a b'lieve,' said Owlett.

The interest in the movements of the officers was so keen that not a

single eye was looking in any other direction; but at that moment a

shout from the church beneath them attracted the attention of the

smugglers, as it did also of the party in the orchard, who sprang to

their feet and went towards the churchyard wall. At the same time those

of the Government men who had entered the church unperceived by the

smugglers cried aloud, 'Here be some of 'em at last.'

The smugglers remained in a blank silence, uncertain whether 'some of

'em' meant tubs or men; but again peeping cautiously over the edge of

the tower they learnt that tubs were the things descried; and soon these

fated articles were brought one by one into the middle of the churchyard

from their hiding-place under the gallery-stairs.

'They are going to put 'em on Hinton's vault till they find the rest!'

said Lizzy hopelessly. The excisemen had, in fact, begun to pile up the

tubs on a large stone slab which was fixed there; and when all were

brought out from the tower, two or three of the men were left standing

by them, the rest of the party again proceeding to the orchard.

The interest of the smugglers in the next manoeuvres of their enemies

became painfully intense. Only about thirty tubs had been secreted in

the lumber of the tower, but seventy were hidden in the orchard, making

up all that they had brought ashore as yet, the remainder of the cargo

having been tied to a sinker and dropped overboard for another night's

operations. The excisemen, having re-entered the orchard, acted as if

they were positive that here lay hidden the rest of the tubs, which they

were determined to find before nightfall. They spread themselves out

round the field, and advancing on all fours as before, went anew round

every apple-tree in the enclosure. The young tree in the middle again

led them to pause, and at length the whole company gathered there in a

way which signified that a second chain of reasoning had led to the same

results as the first.

When they had examined the sod hereabouts for some minutes, one of the

men rose, ran to a disused porch of the church where tools were kept,

and returned with the sexton's pickaxe and shovel, with which they set

to work.

'Are they really buried there?' said the minister, for the grass was so

green and uninjured that it was difficult to believe it had been

disturbed. The smugglers were too interested to reply, and presently

they saw, to their chagrin, the officers stand several on each side of

the tree; and, stooping and applying their hands to the soil, they

bodily lifted the tree and the turf around it. The apple-tree now showed

itself to be growing in a shallow box, with handles for lifting at each

of the four sides. Under the site of the tree a square hole was

revealed, and an exciseman went and looked down.

'It is all up now,' said Owlett quietly. 'And now all of ye get down

before they notice we are here; and be ready for our next move. I had

better bide here till dark, or they may take me on suspicion, as 'tis on

my ground. I'll be with ye as soon as daylight begins to pink in.'

'And I?' said Lizzy.

'You please look to the linch-pins and screws; then go indoors and know

nothing at all. The chaps will do the rest.'

The ladder was replaced, and all but Owlett descended, the men passing

off one by one at the back of the church, and vanishing on their

respective errands.

Lizzy walked boldly along the street, followed closely by the minister.

'You are going indoors, Mrs. Newberry?' he said.

She knew from the words 'Mrs. Newberry' that the division between them

had widened yet another degree.

'I am not going home,' she said. 'I have a little thing to do before I

go in. Martha Sarah will get your tea.'

'O, I don't mean on that account,' said Stockdale. 'What can you have to

do further in this unhallowed affair?'

'Only a little,' she said.

'What is that? I'll go with you.'

'No, I shall go by myself. Will you please go indoors? I shall be there

in less than an hour.'

'You are not going to run any danger, Lizzy?' said the young man, his

tenderness reasserting itself.

'None whatever-worth mentioning,' answered she, and went down towards

the Cross.

Stockdale entered the garden gate, and stood behind it looking on. The

excisemen were still busy in the orchard, and at last he was tempted to

enter, and watch their proceedings. When he came closer he found that

the secret cellar, of whose existence he had been totally unaware, was

formed by timbers placed across from side to side about a foot under the

ground, and grassed over.

The excisemen looked up at Stockdale's fair and downy countenance, and

evidently thinking him above suspicion, went on with their work again.

As soon as all the tubs were taken out, they began tearing up the turf;

pulling out the timbers, and breaking in the sides, till the cellar was

wholly dismantled and shapeless, the apple-tree lying with its roots

high to the air. But the hole which had in its time held so much

contraband merchandize was never completely filled up, either then or

afterwards, a depression in the greensward marking the spot to this day.

VII-THE WALK TO WARM'ELL CROSS AND AFTERWARDS

As the goods had all to be carried to Budmouth that night, the

excisemen's next object was to find horses and carts for the journey,

and they went about the village for that purpose. Latimer strode hither

and thither with a lump of chalk in his hand, marking broad-arrows so

vigorously on every vehicle and set of harness that he came across, that

it seemed as if he would chalk broad-arrows on the very hedges and

roads. The owner of every conveyance so marked was bound to give it up

for Government purposes. Stockdale, who had had enough of the scene,

turned indoors thoughtful and depressed. Lizzy was already there, having

come in at the back, though she had not yet taken off her bonnet. She

looked tired, and her mood was not much brighter than his own. They had

but little to say to each other; and the minister went away and

attempted to read; but at this he could not succeed, and he shook the

little bell for tea.

Lizzy herself brought in the tray, the girl having run off into the

village during the afternoon, too full of excitement at the proceedings

to remember her state of life. However, almost before the sad lovers had

said anything to each other, Martha came in in a steaming state.

'O, there's such a stoor, Mrs. Newberry and Mr. Stockdale! The king's

excisemen can't get the carts ready nohow at all! They pulled Thomas

Ballam's, and William Rogers's, and Stephen Sprake's carts into the

road, and off came the wheels, and down fell the carts; and they found

there was no linch-pins in the arms; and then they tried Samuel Shane's

waggon, and found that the screws were gone from he, and at last they

looked at the dairyman's cart, and he's got none neither! They have gone

now to the blacksmith's to get some made, but he's nowhere to be found!'

Stockdale looked at Lizzy, who blushed very slightly, and went out of

the room, followed by Martha Sarah. But before they had got through the

passage there was a rap at the front door, and Stockdale recognized

Latimer's voice addressing Mrs. Newberry, who had turned back.

'For God's sake, Mrs. Newberry, have you seen Hardman the blacksmith up

this way? If we could get hold of him, we'd e'en a'most drag him by the

hair of his head to his anvil, where he ought to be.'

'He's an idle man, Mr. Latimer,' said Lizzy archly. 'What do you want

him for?'

'Why, there isn't a horse in the place that has got more than three

shoes on, and some have only two. The waggon-wheels be without strakes,

and there's no linch-pins to the carts. What with that, and the bother

about every set of harness being out of order, we shan't be off before

nightfall-upon my soul we shan't. 'Tis a rough lot, Mrs. Newberry, that

you've got about you here; but they'll play at this game once too often,

mark my words they will! There's not a man in the parish that don't

deserve to be whipped.'

It happened that Hardman was at that moment a little further up the

lane, smoking his pipe behind a holly-bush. When Latimer had done

speaking he went on in this direction, and Hardman, hearing the

exciseman's steps, found curiosity too strong for prudence. He peeped

out from the bush at the very moment that Latimer's glance was on it.

There was nothing left for him to do but to come forward with unconcern.

'I've been looking for you for the last hour!' said Latimer with a glare

in his eye.

'Sorry to hear that,' said Hardman. 'I've been out for a stroll, to look

for more hid tubs, to deliver 'em up to Gover'ment.'

'O yes, Hardman, we know it,' said Latimer, with withering sarcasm. 'We

know that you'll deliver 'em up to Gover'ment. We know that all the

parish is helping us, and have been all day! Now you please walk along

with me down to your shop, and kindly let me hire ye in the king's

name.'

They went down the lane together; and presently there resounded from the

smithy the ring of a hammer not very briskly swung. However, the carts

and horses were got into some sort of travelling condition, but it was

not until after the clock had struck six, when the muddy roads were

glistening under the horizontal light of the fading day. The smuggled

tubs were soon packed into the vehicles, and Latimer, with three of his

assistants, drove slowly out of the village in the direction of the port

of Budmouth, some considerable number of miles distant, the other

excisemen being left to watch for the remainder of the cargo, which they

knew to have been sunk somewhere between Ringsworth and Lulstead Cove,

and to unearth Owlett, the only person clearly implicated by the

discovery of the cave.

Women and children stood at the doors as the carts, each chalked with

the Government pitchfork, passed in the increasing twilight; and as they

stood they looked at the confiscated property with a melancholy

expression that told only too plainly the relation which they bore to

the trade.

'Well, Lizzy,' said Stockdale, when the crackle of the wheels had nearly

died away. 'This is a fit finish to your adventure. I am truly thankful

that you have got off without suspicion, and the loss only of the

liquor. Will you sit down and let me talk to you?'

'By and by,' she said. 'But I must go out now.'

'Not to that horrid shore again?' he said blankly.

'No, not there. I am only going to see the end of this day's business.'

He did not answer to this, and she moved towards the door slowly, as if

waiting for him to say something more.

'You don't offer to come with me,' she added at last. 'I suppose that's

because you hate me after all this?'

'Can you say it, Lizzy, when you know I only want to save you from such

practices? Come with you of course I will, if it is only to take care of

you. But why will you go out again?'

'Because I cannot rest indoors. Something is happening, and I must know

what. Now, come!' And they went into the dusk together.

When they reached the turnpike-road she turned to the right, and he soon

perceived that they were following the direction of the excisemen and

their load. He had given her his arm, and every now and then she

suddenly pulled it back, to signify that he was to halt a moment and

listen. They had walked rather quickly along the first quarter of a

mile, and on the second or third time of standing still she said, 'I

hear them ahead-don't you?'

'Yes,' he said; 'I hear the wheels. But what of that?'

'I only want to know if they get clear away from the neighbourhood.'

'Ah,' said he, a light breaking upon him. 'Something desperate is to be

attempted!-and now I remember there was not a man about the village when

we left.'

'Hark!' she murmured. The noise of the cartwheels had stopped, and given

place to another sort of sound.

''Tis a scuffle!' said Stockdale. 'There'll be murder! Lizzy, let go my

arm; I am going on. On my conscience, I must not stay here and do

nothing!'

'There'll be no murder, and not even a broken head,' she said. 'Our men

are thirty to four of them: no harm will be done at all.'

'Then there is an attack!' exclaimed Stockdale; 'and you knew it was to

be. Why should you side with men who break the laws like this?'

'Why should you side with men who take from country traders what they

have honestly bought wi' their own money in France?' said she firmly.

'They are not honestly bought,' said he.

'They are,' she contradicted. 'I and Owlett and the others paid thirty

shillings for every one of the tubs before they were put on board at

Cherbourg, and if a king who is nothing to us sends his people to steal

our property, we have a right to steal it back again.'

Stockdale did not stop to argue the matter, but went quickly in the

direction of the noise, Lizzy keeping at his side. 'Don't you interfere,

will you, dear Richard?' she said anxiously, as they drew near. 'Don't

let us go any closer: 'tis at Warm'ell Cross where they are seizing 'em.

You can do no good, and you may meet with a hard blow!'

'Let us see first what is going on,' he said. But before they had got

much further the noise of the cartwheels began again; and Stockdale soon

found that they were coming towards him. In another minute the three

carts came up, and Stockdale and Lizzy stood in the ditch to let them

pass.

Instead of being conducted by four men, as had happened when they went

out of the village, the horses and carts were now accompanied by a body

of from twenty to thirty, all of whom, as Stockdale perceived to his

astonishment, had blackened faces. Among them walked six or eight huge

female figures, whom, from their wide strides, Stockdale guessed to be

men in disguise. As soon as the party discerned Lizzy and her companion

four or five fell back, and when the carts had passed, came close to the

pair.

'There is no walking up this way for the present,' said one of the gaunt

women, who wore curls a foot long, dangling down the sides of her face,

in the fashion of the time. Stockdale recognized this lady's voice as

Owlett's.

'Why not?' said Stockdale. 'This is the public highway.'

'Now look here, youngster,' said Owlett. 'O, 'tis the Methodist parson!-

what, and Mrs. Newberry! Well, you'd better not go up that way, Lizzy.

They've all run off, and folks have got their own again.'

The miller then hastened on and joined his comrades. Stockdale and Lizzy

also turned back. 'I wish all this hadn't been forced upon us,' she said

regretfully. 'But if those excisemen had got off with the tubs, half the

people in the parish would have been in want for the next month or two.'

Stockdale was not paying much attention to her words, and he said, 'I

don't think I can go back like this. Those four poor excisemen may be

murdered for all I know.'

'Murdered!' said Lizzy impatiently. 'We don't do murder here.'

'Well, I shall go as far as Warm'ell Cross to see,' said Stockdale

decisively; and, without wishing her safe home or anything else, the

minister turned back. Lizzy stood looking at him till his form was

absorbed in the shades; and then, with sadness, she went in the

direction of Nether-Moynton.

The road was lonely, and after nightfall at this time of the year there

was often not a passer for hours. Stockdale pursued his way without

hearing a sound beyond that of his own footsteps; and in due time he

passed beneath the trees of the plantation which surrounded the Warm'ell

Cross-road. Before he had reached the point of intersection he heard

voices from the thicket.

'Hoi-hoi-hoi! Help, help!'

The voices were not at all feeble or despairing, but they were

unmistakably anxious. Stockdale had no weapon, and before plunging into

the pitchy darkness of the plantation he pulled a stake from the hedge,

to use in case of need. When he got among the trees he shouted-'What's

the matter-where are you?'

'Here,' answered the voices; and, pushing through the brambles in that

direction, he came near the objects of his search.

'Why don't you come forward?' said Stockdale.

'We be tied to the trees!'

'Who are you?'

'Poor Will Latimer the exciseman!' said one plaintively. 'Just come and

cut these cords, there's a good man. We were afraid nobody would pass by

to-night.'

Stockdale soon loosened them, upon which they stretched their limbs and

stood at their ease.

'The rascals!' said Latimer, getting now into a rage, though he had

seemed quite meek when Stockdale first came up. ''Tis the same set of

fellows. I know they were Moynton chaps to a man.'

'But we can't swear to 'em,' said another. 'Not one of 'em spoke.'

'What are you going to do?' said Stockdale.

'I'd fain go back to Moynton, and have at 'em again!' said Latimer.

'So would we!' said his comrades.

'Fight till we die!' said Latimer.

'We will, we will!' said his men.

'But,' said Latimer, more frigidly, as they came out of the plantation,

'we don't know that these chaps with black faces were Moynton men? And

proof is a hard thing.'

'So it is,' said the rest.

'And therefore we won't do nothing at all,' said Latimer, with complete

dispassionateness. 'For my part, I'd sooner be them than we. The

clitches of my arms are burning like fire from the cords those two

strapping women tied round 'em. My opinion is, now I have had time to

think o't, that you may serve your Gover'ment at too high a price. For

these two nights and days I have not had an hour's rest; and, please

God, here's for home-along.'

The other officers agreed heartily to this course; and, thanking

Stockdale for his timely assistance, they parted from him at the Cross,

taking themselves the western road, and Stockdale going back to Nether-

Moynton.