"Tchu weet--tchu weet--tchu weet! Come to tea, Jack! Come to tea,
Jack! Come to tea, Jack! Whips Kitty! Whips Kitty! Whips Kitty!
Tcho-tcho-tcho!"
Hilary Leigh lay half awake, listening to the loud song of a thrush,
full-throated and joyous, whistling away to his mate sitting close by in
her clay cup of a nest upon four pale greenish-blue spotted eggs; and as
he heard the notes he seemed to be in the old bedroom at Sir Henry
Norland's, where he used to leave his window open to be called by the
birds.
Yes, he was back in the old place, and here was the rich, ruddy, golden
light of the sun streaming in at his window, and through on to the
opposite wall; and it was such a beautiful morning that he would jump up
and take his rod, and go down to the big hole in the river. The tench
would bite like fun on a morning like this. There were plenty of big
worms, too, in the old watering-pot, tough as worms should be after a
good scouring in a heap of wet moss. Just another five minutes and he'd
get up, and when he met Adela at breakfast he could brag about what a
good one he was at early rising, and show her all the beautiful tench,
and--
"Hallo! Am I awake?"
There was no mistake about it. He was wide awake now, and it was years
ago that he used to listen to the birds in his old bedroom at Sir Henry
Norland's; and though a thrush was whistling away outside, and the
rising sun was streaming in at a window and shining on the opposite
wall, where he was now Hilary Leigh did not know, only that he was
seated on a heap of straw, and that he was in what looked like a part of
an old-fashioned chapel, with a window high up above his reach.
"I feel as if I had been asleep for about a week," muttered Hilary, "and
I'm so hungry that if they, whoever they are, don't soon bring me some
breakfast I shall eat my boots."
"Why, they must have carried me in here while I was asleep," he thought;
and then, "Hallo, old fellow!" he cried, laughing, "there you are, are
you?"
For just then, completely eclipsing the thrush in power, a donkey--
probably, he thought, the one that brought him there--trumpeted forth
his own resonant song, the song that made the savage Irishman exclaim
that it was "a wonderful bird for singing, only it seemed to have a
moighty cowld." And if there had been any doubt before what donkey it
was, Hilary's mind was set at rest, for as the bray ended in a
long-drawn minor howl there came two or three sharp raps, just as if the
jackass has relieved his feelings with these good kicks, as was the
case, up against the boards of the shed in which he was confined.
"Well, this is a rum set-out," said Hilary, getting up, and then bending
down to have a rub at his legs, which still suffered from the
compression of the cord. "Hang it all! what a mess my uniform is in
with this chaffy straw!"
He set to and brushed off as much as he could, and then began to inspect
the place in which he was imprisoned, to find that the ideas he had
formed of it in the dark were not far wrong, inasmuch as there was a
plastered wall, a stone floor, an ancient-looking door with a big
keyhole, through which he could see nothing, and the Gothic window with
iron bars across, and no glass to keep out the air.
"Well, if any fellow had told me about this I should have said he was
inventing. I suppose I'm a prisoner. I wonder what Lipscombe thinks of
my not coming back. Well, I can't help it; and he must come with some
of our men to cut me out."
"Come to tea, Jack! Come to tea, Jack! Whips Kitty! Whips Kitty!
Whips Kitty!"
"Yes, I'll come to tea," said Hilary, as the thrush sang on; "but how am
I to come? Oh! I say, I am so precious hungry. I could eat the
hardest biscuit and the toughest bit of salt beef that ever a fellow put
between his teeth. They might bring me some prog."
Hilary was well rested by his sleep, and felt as active as a young goat
now, so running to the door he tried it again, to find it shut fast, and
no chance of getting it open. So he turned at once to the window, and
looked around for something to enable him to reach it, but looked in
vain, for there was nothing to be seen.
"Never mind; here goes!" he cried; and walking back to the opposite wall
he took a run and a jump, and succeeded in getting his hands upon the
old stone sill, but only to slip back again.
He repeated his efforts several times, but in vain; and at last finding
this was hopeless, unless for the time being he had been furnished with
the hind-legs of a kangaroo, he took out his pocket-knife, opened it,
and began to cut a notch in the wall.
It was the soft sandstone of the district, and he was not long in
carving a good resting-place for one foot; and this he followed up,
cutting another niche about a foot higher.
"I'm making a pretty mess," he muttered as he looked down; "serve 'em
right for shutting me up."
On he went carving away with the big jack-knife, which was an offering
made by Billy Waters, and his perseverance was at last rewarded by his
contriving a series of niches in the stone wall by whose means he
climbed up sufficiently high to enable him to reach the iron bars, when
he easily drew himself up to the broad sill, upon which he could sit,
and with one arm through the bars, make himself pretty comfortable and
enjoy the view.
His first glance, though, was at the iron bars embedded in the stone,
and he came to the conclusion that, given enough time, he could pick
away the cement and make his escape; but as it would be a matter of time
he thought that perhaps it would be better to defer it until he knew
where he was.
"Looking due east," said Hilary, as he began taking observations; "then
the sea must be to the right, over those hills; and out here to the
left--my word, what a pretty place! Why, it is like a park!"
For gazing to the left, or northward, his eye ranged over the lovely
undulating Sussex Weald, with its park-like, well-wooded hills and
valleys, now in the first blush of their summer beauty, the leafage all
tender green, and the soft meadowlike pastures gilded with the dazzling
yellow of the over-abundant crowfoot.
There was a thick dew upon the grass, which sparkled like myriads of
diamonds, emeralds, and sapphires in the morning sun. Here was a patch
of vivid blue where the wild hyacinths were peering out from the edge of
a wood which, farther in, was tinted with the delicate French-white of
the anemones; the cuckoo-flowers rose with their pale lavender turrets
of bloom above the hedgeside herbage, and the rich purple of the spotted
orchis was on every side.
There was a cottage here, a mossy-roofed barn there, all green and
yellow; and a tile roofed and sided farmhouse peered from an apple
orchard all pink blossoms farther on; and dotted about were the patches
like pinky snow lying thick amongst the trees, telling of golden and
ruddy russet apples in the days to come.
Here and there the land dipped down sharply into woody ravines, from out
of whose depths there were reflected back the brilliant flashes of the
sun where the little streamlets trickled down towards one that was
broader, and opened out into quite a little lake, with a hoary-looking
building at one end, where something seemed to be in motion, and, making
a telescope of his hands, he could just discern that it was a great
wheel, from which the water was falling in splashes that glistened and
sparkled in the sun. Far away the hills seemed of a pale misty blue,
near at hand they were of a golden green, and as he drank in with his
eyes the beauty of the scene beneath the brilliant blue sky Hilary Leigh
exclaimed:
"Oh! how I could enjoy all this, if I were not so jolly hungry!"
He forgot his hunger the next moment, for he caught sight of a couple of
tiny white tails seeming to run up a sandy bank, their owners, a pair of
brown rabbits, making for their holes as if ashamed of having been seen
by daylight after eating tender herbage all the night. Far above them
the bird that gave its name to the cutter was hovering in the air,
seemingly motionless at times, as it poised itself over something that
tried to hide itself in the grass.
The proceedings of the kestrel interested Hilary to no small extent as
he saw it stoop, rise, hover again, and end by making a dash down like
an arrow, and then skim along the ground and fly away without its prey.
"Like our dash after the smugglers," he said to himself; and then he
looked closer home, to see that where he was formed part of a very
ancient house, one of whose mossy-roofed, ivy-grown gables he could just
make out by pressing his cheek very hard against the iron bars. Beside
it was an orchard full of very old lichened trees, with patches of green
moss about their boles, and beyond this there seemed to be a garden in a
very neglected state, while surrounding all was a wide black moat.
"I wonder whether there's a bridge," thought Hilary, as he looked at the
smooth dark water, dotted with the broad leaves of the yellow
water-lily, and amidst the herbage of whose banks a sooty-looking
water-hen was walking delicately upon its long thin green toes, darting
its crimson-shielded head forward and flicking its white black-barred
tail at every step.
"It's very nice to be growing a man," mused Hilary; "but how I could
enjoy being a boy again! I'll be bound to say there's heaps of fish in
that great moat, for it looks as deep as deep."
It was not above twenty yards from him at the nearest end, where it
curved round the place that formed his prison, and from his elevated
position he could command a good view.
"There, I said so!" he exclaimed; "I can see the lily leaves moving.
There's a big tench pushing about amongst the stems. Smack! That was a
great carp."
The water moved in a series of rings in the spot whence the loud
smacking noise had come, and as Hilary excitedly watched the place a
faint nibbling noise reached his ear. After looking about he saw what
produced the sound, in the shape of a pretty little animal, that seemed
to be made of the softest and finest of black velvet. It had crawled a
little way up a strand of reed, and was nibbling its way through so
rapidly that the reed fell over with a light splash in the water, when
the little animal followed, took the cut end in its teeth, and swam
across the moat, trailing the reed, and disappearing with it under some
overhanging bushes, where it probably had its hole.
"I could be as happy as a king here," thought Hilary, "if I could go
about as I liked. Why, there's a snake crawling out in the sun on that
patch of sand, and--phew! what a whopper! a ten-pounder, if he's an
ounce!" he cried, as, simultaneously with the flashing out of a shoal of
little silvery fish from the black surface of the moat there was a rush,
a swirl, a tremendous splash, and the green and gold of a large pike was
seen as it threw itself out of the water in pursuit of its prey.
"I wonder whether they've got any fishing-tackle here," he cried
excitedly. "How I could enjoy a week or two at this place! Why,
there'd be no end of fun, only one would want a companion. Birds' nests
must swarm, and one might get rabbits and hares, and fish of an
evening."
He stopped short, for an acute pang drew his attention to an extremely
vulgar want.
"Oh, I say, what a boy I am still!" he said, half aloud. "Here I am,
half starved for want of food. I'm a king's officer taken prisoner by a
pack of dirty smugglers, and I'm keeping up my dignity as a gentleman in
the king's service by thinking about chasing water-rats and fishing for
carp and pike. 'Pon my word I'm about ashamed of myself. What a
beautiful magpie, though!" he continued, staring out of the window; "I
never saw one with so large a tail. Why, there are jays, too calling in
the wood. Yes, there they go--char, char, char! One might keep 'em
aboard ship to make fog-signals in thick weather. My word, how this
does bring back all the old times! I feel as boyish and as bright and--
Oh! I say, are you going to starve a fellow to death? I can't stand
this. Ahoy! Is there any one here? Ahoy! Pipe all hands to
breakfast, will you? Ahoy!"
He placed one hand to the side of his face and shouted with all his
might, and as he ceased--
"Haw-w! hee-haw! hee-haw! hee-haw! hee-haw! haw-haw! haw-haw-wk!" came
from a short distance, as if in answer to his hail, followed directly by
half a dozen lively kicks.
"Sweet, intelligent beast!" cried Hilary. "What, are you hungry too?
Surely they have not left us to starve, my gentle friend in misfortune."
Growing too hungry and impatient to be interested any longer by the
beauty of the scene, Hilary shouted again several times, but without
obtaining an answer. He startled some pigeons, though, from somewhere
upon the roof, and they circled round a few times before settling down
again, and beginning to sing, "Koo-coo-coo-cooo! koo-coo-coo-cooo!" over
and over again.
He leaped down, went to the door, and hammered and kicked and shouted
till his toes were tender and his throat hoarse; but in answer to his
kicks came hollow echoes, and to his shouts the donkey's brays, and at
last he threw himself sulkily down upon the straw.
"I'm not going to stop here and be starved to death," he exclaimed
angrily; "there's no one in the place, that's my opinion, and they've
stuffed me in here while they get out of the country."
He jumped up in a fury and went and kicked at the door again, but the
mocking echoes were the only response, and, tired of that, he shouted
through the keyhole, ran, jumped, and clambered to the window, as he
took out his knife, opened it, and began to dig at the stonework to
loosen the bars, when the donkey brayed once more.
"Be quiet, will you," roared Hilary, "or I'll kill you, and eat you
afterwards."
As he said this he burst out laughing at the ludicrous situation, and
this did him good, for he felt that it would be best to be patient.
So there he sat, listening for some sound to indicate the presence of a
human being, but hearing nothing, longing intensely the while for some
breakfast; and just as he was conjuring up visions of a country-house
meal, with hot bread, delicious butter, and yellow cream, he detected in
the distance the cooking of home-made bacon, and as if to add poignancy
to the keen edge of his hunger, a hen began loudly to announce that
somewhere or other there was a new-laid egg.