CHAPTER XXVII.

The Hermit

MORLEY ASHTON.

CHAPTER I.

THE BLIND GODDESS.

It was the evening of one of the last days of spring, when that

delightful season is blending with the approaching summer, and when

the sun was setting on one of those green and fertile landscapes

which we find nowhere but in England, that a young man paused upon

the crest of the eminence which overlooks, from the southward, the

beautiful little vale and sequestered village of Acton-Rennel, and,

with a kindling eye and flushing cheek, surveyed the scene and all

its features, on which he had not gazed for what now seemed a long

and weary lapse of time.

Morley Ashton--for it was he whom we introduce at once to the

reader--was a handsome and active young fellow, with a lithe and

well-knit figure, somewhat above the middle height; but he was thin

and rather sallow in face, as if wasted by recent sickness or

suffering.

His short-shorn hair and well-pointed moustache, together with the

general contour of his head, suggested the idea of a soldier, and yet

no soldier was he.

Forethought and penetration were perceptible in the form and lines of

his brow; his keen, bright, but contemplative eyes, and the shape of

his lower jaw, betokened firmness, decision, and courage; and well

did Morley Ashton require them all, for these pages, and the course

of our story, which opens at no remote date, but only a very short

time ago, will show that he had a very desperate game to play.

Tanned by warmer suns than those which shine in his native England,

his complexion was dark, and, at times, there was a keen, bold

restlessness in his eyes, which seemed to indicate that he had seen

many a far and foreign shore, and many a danger too, since last he

stood by the old Norman cross on Cherrywood Hill, and looked on the

vale and village of Acton-Rennel.

In Morley's dress--a stout grey tweed suit--there was nothing

remarkable; but a large and well-worn courier-bag, slung by a broad

strap across his right shoulder, seemed to indicate that he was

travelling, and dust covered his boots; yet he had only walked some

four miles or so from the nearest station on the London and

North-Western line.

As he looked upon the landscape, where the cowslips were spotting the

meadows; where the wild rose was blooming, and the yellow gorse was

flowering by the hedgerows; where the cherry and apple trees were in

full blossom by the wayside; the landscape, so rich in its foliage

and greenery; so calm in aspect, with the square tower of its Norman

church, stunted in form and massed with ivy, darkly defined against

the flush of the western sky; the little parsonage, secluded among

plum and apple trees, over which its clustered chimneys and quaint

old gables peeped; the thatched village, buried amid coppice, wild

hops, wild flowers, and ivy; the fertile uplands, where the wavy corn

would soon be yellowing under the genial summer sun; and, stretching

in the distance far away, the wooded chase, the remains of a great

Saxon forest, whence comes the name of our village, Æctune, or

Oaktown-Rennel, whose leafy dingles have echoed many a time to the

horn of William Rufus, ere he fell by Tyrrel's arrow; the landscape,

where the voice of the cuckoo rose at times from the woodlands, with

the occasional lowing of the full-fed herd, winding homeward "slowly

o'er the lea." As he gazed on all this, we say, a sigh of pleasure

escaped from Morley Ashton, for it was long since he had beheld such

a scene, or one that had so much of England and of home in all its

placid features.

Save a glimpse of the distant ocean, rippling and shining in the

sunset, through a rocky opening or chasm, known as Acton

Chine--terrible in the annals of wreckers and smugglers--the

landscape might have seemed in the very heart of England; but on the

ocean, "our water-girdle," Morley turned his back, for of late he had

tasted quite enough of spray and spoondrift, having just landed in

the Mersey, after a long and perilous voyage.

He passed the old church with its deep grey buttresses, and older yew

trees; its picturesque Lykegate, footstile, and gravelled path, that

wound between the grassy mounds and lettered stones; he passed the

village, with its alehouse and well-remembered sign-board; and then

he struck into the long green lane that lies beyond--the lane in

which Dick Turpin robbed the rector.

All was very calm and still.

The merry voices of some little roisterers, who swung with frantic

glee upon a paddock gate, soon died away in the distance; the wheel

of the rustic mill had ceased to turn, and the water flowed unchafed

along its narrow race; even the hum of the honey bee had died away,

as it had gone laden to its home, and soft and almost holy thoughts

would have stolen into Morley's heart, at such a time and place and

sober sunset, but for the keen anxiety that made him hasten on--the

anxiety that love and long absence had created, and verses that he

had somewhere read occurred to him with painful truth:--

"Ah! not as once!--my spirit now

Is shadowed by a dull cold fear,

Nor Spring's soft breath that fans my brow

Nor Spring's sweet flowers my breast can cheer.

"Oh, Spring! sweet Spring! if Heaven decree

My term of life to be so brief,

That joy I would afar but see,

But taste the bitter cup of grief."

While proceeding, he looked frequently and eagerly around him; for

now every old gnarled beech that overhung the path, and every meadow

gate brought back some stirring thought or tender memory.

The flush in the western sky was bright, so he shaded his eyes with

his hand (though whilom accustomed to more cloudless skies and

brighter suns than ours), as if looking for some expected person.

At last an irrepressible exclamation of joy escaped him, as a hat and

feather, and a female figure there was no mistaking, met his eye.

He flourished his wide-awake hat, and then quickened his pace, as a

little parasol was waved in reply.

In a minute more his arms were around a young girl, who rushed

forward, panting and breathless, to meet him, and his lips were

pressed to hers in a long and silent kiss.

"Ethel, my own, own Ethel, at last--at _last_!" he exclaimed, in a

voice rendered tremulous by excess of emotion; but the young girl for

some time was unable to reply. She could but sob upon his breast in

the fulness of her joy.

There was a long and tender pause, during which their lips, though

silent, were busy enough, perhaps, for "Love," says some one, "is a

sting of joy, but a heartache for ever!"

"I knew, dear Ethel, that you would come to meet me," said Morley,

"if my letter arrived in time to inform you of the train by which I

would leave Liverpool."

"Where you landed last night--only last night--and this evening you

are here," she exclaimed.

"Yes, Ethel; but poorer than when I left England," said the young man

sadly; "poorer than when I left you," he replied, drawing her arm

through his, but still retaining her hand, with both of his folded

over it;--"and now tell me how are all at Laurel Lodge. Your

papa----"

"Is quite well."

"And your sister Rose--merry little Rose?"

"Well, blooming, and lively as ever."

"Why did she not come to meet me too? My letters have told you,

Ethel, that after enduring the misery of three years' exile on the

Bonny River, wearily waiting and toiling, transacting the sale of

camwood, ivory, and palm oil, for my owners in Liverpool, and often

enduring the frightful fever of that pestilent place----"

"Ah, my poor dear Morley, how it has thinned and wasted you!" said

Ethel, looking at him tenderly through her tears.

"I have been compelled to return, almost broken in health, and what

is worse, perhaps, in a worldly sense, well-nigh penniless, Ethel, to

look for other work at home. But tell me something of yourself,

dearest!"

"What can I say?--what can I tell you, Morley, for here, at Laurel

Lodge, each day that passes is so like its predecessor?"

"How will Mr. Basset--how will your father, welcome me?" asked

Morley, anxiously.

"Most kindly, Morley."

"You think so, still," continued the young man.

"Yes. All the more kindly that you have not been favoured by

fortune; papa is most generous," replied Ethel.

Morley did not feel quite persuaded of this, but replied:

"Bless him and you for this assurance, darling. Oh, Ethel, how

charming your sweet English face seems to me! Do you know, dearest,

that for three whole years I have never seen a white woman or a red

cheek? But you have not told me about Rose--no husband yet?"

"She has lovers in plenty, and Jack Page is her adorer," said Ethel

smiling; "but there is enough time for Rose to think of marrying.

Besides----" but Miss Basset paused and sighed.

"True; she is two years younger than you, Ethel. But our marriage,

my love, seems far, far off indeed. Oh, farther than ever! Your

father----"

"Will welcome you warmly, of that be assured, but----"

"But what, Ethel? Something weighs upon your mind."

"Many misfortunes have come upon him, misfortunes which we could

never have foreseen."

"In your two last letters, you hinted something of losses in London

speculations."

"Yes; and consequently, he has come to the resolution of leaving

Acton-Rennel--leaving dear Laurel Lodge, where since childhood we

have been so happy."

"Leaving Laurel Lodge!" exclaimed Ashton.

"Leaving England itself, Morley," said Ethel, as her fine eyes became

suffused with tears again.

"England!" repeated Morley Ashton, breathlessly, and growing very

pale indeed.

"Yes; did you not get my letter, in which I told you that papa had

been appointed to a vacant judgeship in the Isle of France, and that

in two months or less from this time we shall sail for that distant

colony?"

"No--no! I hear all this now for the first time."

"Papa will tell you all about it," continued Ethel, weeping on her

lover's shoulder. "He has been appointed one of the three judges in

the supreme civil and criminal court of the island."

"Oh, what fatality is this!" exclaimed Morley Ashton, mournfully, as

he struck his hands together; "have I returned to England, but to be

more than ever an exile, and to learn that you are going where you

must school yourself to forget me?"

"Oh, do not say so, Morley!" implored Miss Basset.

"All is ended now," replied her lover; "on earth there is nothing

more for me."

"Or _me_!" said Ethel, upbraidingly.

"True; in the selfishness of my own love and grief, I forget yours."

The girl's tears fell fast, and he held her locked to his breast; for

there was no eye on them in that sequestered lane, where the evening

star, sparkling like a diamond set in amber, alone looked on them.

After a pause:

"See, Morley," said the girl, with a lovely smile, as she drew her

ribbon from her bosom; "our split sixpence!"

"Here is the other half, dear Ethel. I used to carry it at my

watch-guard, but seals and charms are dangerous gear among the black

fellows of the Bonny River, who want every trinket they see, so I

thought it safer where your lock of hair lay--next my heart. It was

a happy hour in which you gave me that dear lock, my sweet Ethel."

"It was on an evening in summer, when we sat yonder by the old stile

at the churchyard. How often have I wished to live that hour over

again!" sighed his companion.

"And, sweet one, so we shall in reality, as I have often done in my

day-dreams, when far, far away from this dear home and you; but this

approaching separation crushes the heart within me, and destroys all

hope for the future."

"Take courage, Morley, though I have none," said the young girl,

while still her tears fell fast.

Ah me! a split sixpence is of small value, yet here it was riches,

for it embodied the hopes, the future, and was all the world to two

young and loving hearts!

"Amid the pestilent swamps and mangrove creeks of West Africa, where,

from September to June, the steamy malaria rises like smoke in the

sunshine, baleful," said Morley, "and laden with disease and death, O

Ethel, my thoughts were with you! There, while engaged in the stupid

and monotonous task of daily bartering old muskets, nails, and

buttons, powder, rum, and tobacco, for palm-oil, camwood, ivory,

lion-skins, and gorgeous feathers, bartering, cajoling, and often

browbeating the hideous and barbarous savages of Eboe and Biafra, for

our house in Liverpool, the hope of being reunited to you alone

sustained and inspired me. In my wretched hut, built of stakes,

roofed with palm-leaves, and plastered with mud, or on board the

river craft, where we always sleep at some seasons, and during the

horrors of the fever which left me the wreck of myself, it was your

memory alone that shed light and hope around me. And there was one

terrible night, when the breathless air was still and heavy, and when

a green slime covered all the ripples of the rotten sea, while my

pulse was as fleet as lightning, and my brain was burning, and when I

thought that certainly I must soon die, my old friend Bartelot--you

have often heard me speak of Tom Bartelot, of Liverpool--conveyed me

to his brig, which rode at her moorings inside Foche Point, and he

actually cured me, merely by talking for hours of you, Ethel, and of

our meeting again--cured me, when, perhaps, the doctor's doses

failed. And now, Ethel, poor though I am, broken in spirit, and

crushed in hope--this hour, this moment, and these kisses, dearest,

reward me for all, all--toil, danger, suffering, and hoping against

hope itself!"

As he spoke he pressed Ethel Basset again to his breast in a long and

passionate embrace, and a bright, happy, and lovely smile spread over

the face of the young girl.

CHAPTER II.

LAUREL LODGE.

To a certain extent the conversation in the preceding chapter must

have served to inform the reader of the relative positions and

prospects of those whom, without much preamble, we have

introduced--to wit, the hero and heroine of our story.

Morley Ashton was the only son of a once wealthy merchant, whose

failure and death had left him well-nigh penniless, to push his

fortune in the world as he best could. Thus, as agent of a Liverpool

house, he had been, as he stated, broiling for the last three years

on the western coast of Africa, with what success the reader has

learned from his conversation with Ethel Basset, to whom he had now

been engaged for four years.

Ethel was now somewhere about her twentieth year, and though her face

was not, perhaps, of that kind which is termed strictly beautiful, it

would be difficult to say wherein a defect could be traced.

Her features were regular, and, though somewhat pensive in

expression, her occasionally sparkling and piquant smile relieved

them from that insipidity which frequently is the characteristic of a

perfectly regular face.

Though, in addition to singing, riding, and waltzing to perfection,

she could play rather a good stroke at billiards, and make a good

shot at the archery butts, her manner was gentle and graceful, her

mind intelligent, and she improved on acquaintance, for few could

converse with Ethel Basset for half-an-hour without being somehow

convinced that she was lovely.

Her taste in dress was excellent, and one felt that from her little

gloved hand, or, rather, from her smoothly-braided hair to the little

heels of her kid boots, Ethel was a study.

Her mother's death had early inducted her into the cares and mystery

of housekeeping, and made her thoughtful, perhaps, beyond her years.

Mr. Scriven Basset, her father, was a kind and warm-hearted, but

somewhat easy-tempered man. In early life he had practised

successfully as a barrister in London, where he had contracted a

wealthy marriage. After this event he had retired to Acton-Rennel,

and there, for the last eighteen years or so, his life had passed

quietly and happily.

His tastes were elegant, but expensive; thus his villa of Laurel

Lodge was fitted up in a style of no ordinary splendour, and to part

with the elegancies by which he was surrounded would cost some pangs

when the time came.

Since a pecuniary change had come upon his affairs, and as he had

procured, by the friendship of the M.P. for Acton-Rennel, a legal

colonial appointment, all his household goods must be scattered. He

knew this, and that there was no help for it: save his dead wife's

portrait, and a few equally dear "lares," all must "come to the

hammer," as he phrased it, when he and his two girls sailed for their

new home in the tropics.

He knew that poor Morley Ashton and his daughter, Ethel, had loved

each other in early youth, when the prospects of the former were

fair, and his "expectations" unexceptionable; and, though reverses

came which blasted these, and rendered a marriage unadvisable,

strange to say he did not separate them.

This was but a part of his easy disposition, and he permitted them to

correspond, in the hope that, by absence, their mutual regard would

gradually die away, as the mere fancy of a boy and girl.

But fortune ordained it otherwise.

Had Morley come home with wealth (three years on the Bonny River will

scarcely serve to acquire that), he could have had no objections to

their marriage; but there would be many now that Morley had come home

poor.

Mr. Basset knew, moreover, that Morley, as his last letter had

informed Ethel, was to visit them at Laurel Lodge immediately on his

return.

"Well, well," thought the easy Mr. Basset, "a few weeks will separate

them hopelessly now, so the poor young folks may as well be left to

bill and coo together in peace until we sail for the Mauritius, which

will be three times as far off as the Bonny River."

This policy was dangerous, and somewhat questionable; but we shall

see how it ended.

Proceeding slowly hand in hand, and while such thoughts as these

passed through the mind of papa, who, reclining in his easy-chair,

was still lingering over his wine and walnuts, watching dreamily the

last flush of the sun, that shone down the dingles of Acton Chase,

Morley and Miss Basset reached the end of the green lane, where a

handsome white gate closed the avenue that led to Laurel Lodge.

It was long and shady; a double row of giant laurels, from which the

villa had its name, bordered the approach, and over these rose some

venerable sycamores, in which the lazy rooks were croaking and cawing.

Laurel Lodge was a house of irregular proportions, the oldest part

having been built in the middle of the seventeenth century, had small

latticed windows, with carved mullions of red sandstone. The modern

additions had been built by Mr. Basset, and were lofty and elegant,

with large windows, some of which opened to the gravelled walks of

the garden.

There was a handsome Elizabethan porch, surmounted, as some thought,

rather ostentatiously by the Basset arms, a shield having three bars

wavy, supported by two unicorns, armed and collared; and the pillars

and arch of this porch, like the roof and clustered chimneys of the

older part of the edifice, were covered with masses of dark ivy,

fragrant honeysuckle, clematis, and brilliant scarlet-runners.

Through the vestibule beyond, with its tesselated floor and walls,

covered with fishing, riding, and shooting appurtenances--rods, nets,

boots, whips, guns, and shot-belts--Ethel led Morley to the door of

the well-remembered dining-room, where, as we have said, Mr. Basset

was still lingering in the twilight, over his full-bodied old port.

Though every feature of this comfortable English villa was known of

old to Morley, after his three years' residence in a wigwam on the

banks of the Bonny River, its aspect impressed him deeply now, and

his eyes wandered rapidly over the furniture of carved walnut and

marqueterie, inlaid with representations of game and fruit, the

crimson velvet chairs, and old Rembrandt tables of quaint and

beautiful designs, the buhl clock on the rich marble mantel-piece,

the gorgeous vases of Sèvres and Dresden china, the ivory puzzles and

Burmese idols, of which he had glimpses between the parted silk and

damask curtains of the drawing-room windows.

Then there were the Brussels carpets, the grates that glittered like

polished silver, the black wolf and dun deer skins, and the

eight-light chandeliers of crystal and Venetian bronze, with armour,

pictures, statuary, and rare books in gorgeous bindings--in short,

the tout-ensemble of Laurel Lodge, wherein taste, wealth, luxury, and

comfort, were all so rarely and singularly combined, formed to the

mind of poor Morley a powerful contrast to the cabin of Tom

Bartelot's 200-ton brig, and to the before-mentioned wigwam, with its

roof of palm-leaves and trellised walls of reeds and bamboo cane,

through which the mosquitoes and the malaria came together by night.

"It is Morley, papa," said Ethel, as they entered; "he has come by

the very train we expected, and has walked all the way from Acton

station."

"The express from Liverpool; but, ah, my dear sir, it was not even

quick enough for me. I would have come by telegraph if I could,"

said the young man, as Mr. Basset shook him warmly by the hand.

"Welcome back to England! welcome home, Morley!" said he. "Sit

beside me, lad, and let me see how you look! Ring for wine and more

glasses, Ethel. And so, after all your toil and danger, worldly

matters have not prospered with you, eh?"

"No, sir," sighed the young man, with his eyes fixed tenderly on

Ethel, who had flung her hat and parasol on the sofa, and seated

herself beside him; "I have come back to England a poorer fellow than

when I left it."

"I am deeply sorry for that, Morley--port or cherry? Under the

sideboard are some Marcobrunner, Johannisberg, and Sauterne, too, I

think--port you prefer?--then the bottle stands with you. Sorry for

your sake, and the sake of others, to hear what you say."

As he spoke he did not glance at Ethel, who was filling Morley's

glass; so she sighed and trembled, for it seemed, by his tone and

manner, as if he still acknowledged the fact of her engagement with

Morley Ashton, but considered it all at an end now.

"Matters have not prospered with me, either," said Mr. Basset, who

was a healthy and florid-looking man, nearer fifty than forty,

however, but with the dark hair already well seamed with grey; "quite

the reverse," he continued, emphatically; "so that I cannot upbraid

you with being on worse terms with fortune than myself. You have, of

course, heard of all that has occurred?"

"Ethel has told me all," said Morley, sadly.

"Aye, fortune is fickle, and was well portrayed as blind, and as

Shakspere has it:--

"'Will fortune never come with both hands full,

But write her fair words still in foulest letters?

She either gives a stomach and no food,--

Such are the poor in health; or else a feast,

And takes away the stomach; such are the rich,

That have abundance and enjoy it not."

"He can console himself with scraps from Shakspere, while my heart is

bursting," thought Morley.

"And so Ethel has told you all?" resumed Mr. Basset, cracking another

walnut of the fruit which had followed a luxurious dinner.

"Yes, sir, and in doing so has wrung the soul within me."

"Oh, Morley," said Ethel, placing her ungloved hand kindly upon his,

"do not talk so mournfully."

"Aye, aye, lad," said Mr. Basset, thinking most of himself, as, with

his head on one side, one eye closed, and the other admiring the ruby

colour of his wine as it shone between him and the flushed sky, "at

my age, though I am not very old, but have many settled habits, it is

hard to leave one's native country, and to set out with these tender

girls on a long, rough voyage; but needs must--you know the rest."

"And so Ethel and I meet again, only to be separated for ever,"

exclaimed Morley, while he pressed her hand within his own, and in a

tone so mournful that Mr. Basset, who, like every matter-of-fact

Englishman, hated scenes, as they worried him, fidgeted in his chair,

and said to Ethel:

"Where is Rose? Has she not seen Mr. Ashton yet?"

"She is with the captain in the conservatory, I think."

Morley, who disliked the formality of being termed "Mr. Ashton,"

glanced at Ethel, and perceived that a blush was burning on her cheek.

"You did not tell me that you had a visitor," said he.

"We had matters of greater moment to think of, Morley, had we not?"

asked Ethel, anxiously.

"Besides, the captain is rather more than a visitor," observed Mr.

Basset, laughing.

"More?" said Ashton, with a sickly smile.

"He has spent some few weeks with us," said Ethel.

"Weeks, Ethel?" exclaimed Mr. Basset. "Why, girl, they have run to

months now. He is the son of one of my oldest and dearest

friends--old Tom Hawkshaw, of Lincoln's Inn--and has seen a great

deal of the world. He is a fine, free, rattling fellow, whom I am

sure you will like; at least, I hope so, as he proposes to follow,

perhaps to go with, us to the Mauritius."

Morley felt his heart sink, he knew not why, at these words--or at

what they imported.

"Has there been a game playing here of which I have been kept in

ignorance?" thought he.

There was an instinctive fear or jealousy in his mind, and he dared

scarcely to look at Ethel. When he did so, there was a painful blush

upon her cheek.

"Do not speak of the Mauritius, my dear sir," said he, in an agitated

tone. "I cannot conceive or realise the idea of your all being

anywhere but here--here at dear old Laurel Lodge."

"Never mind--time soothes all things. Fill your glass, Morley. The

Mauritius possesses a splendid climate, though it is rather hot from

November to April; and there the best of wine can be had almost duty

free. Once we are there, who can say, but I may find you a snug

appointment, my boy, and Ethel shall write to acquaint you of it."

Now Mr. Basset had in reality no more idea at that moment of

procuring any such post for Morley, than of securing one for the

personage who resides in the moon, but it suited him to say so at the

time; and thus Morley, with a heart full of gratitude, exclaimed:

"Ah, how, sir! how shall I thank you?"

"By working hard and industriously at home in the meantime; by never

shrinking from trouble, nor fearing aught that is onerous."

"Such, sir, has ever been my maxim and habit--yet what have they

availed me?"

"With your business habits, your father's well-known name and

connections in Liverpool, your intimate acquaintance with the west

coast trade of Africa, you cannot be at a loss to push your way until

you might join us. My friend the captain, as I have said, perhaps

goes with us. Has Ethel told you that I am pledged to do something

for him? But Heaven alone knows what will suit him; he is such an

unsettled dog, and has been so long accustomed to wandering ways in

California, and among scalp-hunters in Texas, the Rocky Mountains,

and everywhere else."

All this sounded ill and unwelcome to Morley, and served to disturb

him greatly.

His sallow cheek, long blanched by past illness, burned redly; his

eyes were hot and sad in expression. As he drank another glass of

port, he felt the crystal rattling on his teeth, and as Ethel watched

him anxiously, her little hand stole lovingly into his, which closed

tightly upon it.

He perceived that she had still his engagement ring on the proper

finger, but another ring--a huge nugget-like affair, with a green

stone--was there too!

CHAPTER III.

CRAMPLY HAWKSHAW.

Before Morley had time to think or inquire--if, indeed, inquiry was

necessary--concerning this trinket, a lovely, laughing girl of

eighteen burst into the room, and kissed him playfully on each cheek.

"Rose," he exclaimed, "Rose, how you have grown. The little girl I

left behind has become quite a woman!"

"Why have you delayed so long, Rose?" said Ethel, almost with

annoyance. "Did you not know who was here--that Morley had arrived?"

"No. If so, do you think I would have delayed?"

"Yet you have done so."

"Oh, don't be jealous," replied Rose, laughing, though her answer

unwittingly galled Morley, and annoyed Ethel more; "we were not

flirting, for the captain was only telling me about the flowers of

South America; and I merely amuse myself with him and Jack Page, when

I can get no one else."

Morley thought of the strange ring on Ethel's finger, and as he

caressed Rose's hand, there arose some unpleasant forebodings in his

mind; but at that moment, as lights were brought, and tea announced

in the drawing-room, the gentleman whom they styled "captain" entered

from the conservatory, throwing back therein the fag-end of his cigar.

Ethel hastened to introduce him to Morley as "Captain Cramply

Hawkshaw, the son of papa's old and valued friend."

The captain bowed coldly to Morley, whom he scrutinised from head to

foot in a cool and rather supercilious manner.

Hawkshaw was rather under than over the middle height, and possessed

a tough and well-knit figure. He had rather a good air and bearing;

but at times his manner was absurd and swaggering, and his features,

though good and well cut, were decidedly sinister--so much so, that

his eyes had in them, occasionally, an expression, which, to a keen

observer, was most forbidding.

Under his light grey sack coat, he wore no waistcoat, but had his

trousers girt by a Spanish sash; a tasselled smoking-cap, like an

Egyptian tarboosh, was placed jauntily on his thick mass of curly

dark hair. He rejoiced in a luxuriant beard and pair of long

whiskers, with which his moustaches mingled.

He interlarded his conversation somewhat profusely with digger terms,

Spanish oaths, and Yankee military phrases, American interjections,

and frequent allusions to bowie-knives and six-shooters, and a pair

of these weapons always figured on his dressing-table.

In fact, the captain seemed a character, though scarcely worth

studying; but one that must frequently appear, more for evil than for

good, in these pages.

At a glance, Morley perceived that he was somewhat of a swaggering

fool--perhaps worse. He conceived an instinctive aversion for

him--an aversion, however, that seemed to be quite mutual--and he

marvelled by what idiosyncracy of his nature Mr. Basset could

tolerate, or propose to patronise, a guest whose bearing was so

questionable, and whose presence was rendered so obnoxious to

himself, by his too-evident partiality for Ethel. Nor was this

emotion lessened when our hero perceived, that whenever he spoke, a

covert sneer stole into the cunning eyes of the captain.

He had been an officer, it appeared, among the Texans, in the

Partizan Rangers, or some such distinguished corps; and like Gibbet,

in the "Beau's Stratagem," he considered "captain" a good travelling

name, and one that kept waiters, grooms, and even railway porters in

order; so he still adhered to his regimental rank in the Partizan

Rangers, or true-blooded Six-shooters of Texas.

He talked of scalping Red Indians, and shooting Spanish picaroons, as

if such were his daily amusement; and when smoking out of doors,

would squat on the grass in the mode peculiar to the Texan troopers,

among whom he had undoubtedly become a deadly shot, and a good

horseman--the only qualities he possessed.

"Papa," said Rose, while Ethel was officiating at the tea-urn, "I

wish you to scold Captain Hawkshaw----"

"Why, what has he done now?--been burning your dog's nose with his

cigar--smoking it in the drawing-room, or what?"

"He has been laughing at our loveliest azaleas, and saying they were

only weeds."

"In Tennessee, my dear Miss Rose, in Tennessee," said the captain,

with a deprecating grimace, while caressing his long whiskers; "but

your namesake, the rose itself, is perhaps deemed little better than

a weed in some countries."

"Where you have been?" inquired Morley.

"But," continued Hawkshaw, without deigning to hear his question, "to

me--one who has seen the luscious fruit and gorgeous flower-covered

districts of Xalappa, and of Chilpansingo, in the _tierras

tiempladas_ of Mexico--there is nothing you can show in this tame

England of yours that interests you."

"Ours," retorted Rose; "is it not yours too?"

"Nay, nay," said the captain, shaking his head and the tassel of his

tarboosh together, "I am a cosmopolitan."

"And care nothing for your country?" said Morley.

"_Caramba!_ as we say in Texas, I did so once; but the sun shines

brighter in other lands than it does in England."

"You will never make me think so, captain," said Mr. Basset, pushing

aside his tea-cup; "for even now my heart sinks with deep depression

at the thought of leaving home."

"'Tis nothing when you are used to it, sir--positively nothing.

However, you have comfortable diggings here, and some very pretty

fixings, too," observed the captain, casting his eyes on the mirrors,

the hangings, and vases of Sèvres and Dresden china which decorated

the drawing-room; "and thus, perhaps, don't care much about sailing

in search of 'fresh fields and pastures new,' eh, squire?--or judge,

I suppose we should call you?"

"No, I shall leave my heart behind me in England--in dear old

Acton-Rennel. But the sooner we are gone the better; for every day

now seems to bind me more to the place where my happiest years have

been spent," said Mr. Basset, whose eyes grew moist as his heart

filled with the memory of the wife whom he had lain in the grave but

three years before, and with whom Morley Ashton had been an especial

favourite, for he was gentle and lovable, yet manly withal.

In her resting-place--under the old yew at Acton church--he felt that

she was still near, and still his; but once away from England, the

separation would seem complete indeed.

Half shaded and half lit by the drawing-room lights, Ethel's beauty

seemed very striking. Tall and dark-eyed, there was something of

great delicacy in her cast of features, over which, as we have said,

a pensive shadow often rested; especially when her white eyelids and

long, dark lashes were drooping.

She was a girl whose whole air and manner, expression of eye, and

turn of thought, were the embodiment of refinement; thus the

conversation and brusquerie of the digger captain were by no means

suited to her taste.

On the other hand, Rose was somewhat of a brown-haired hoyden; very

lovely in her bursts of wild joy and laughter; all smiles and rosy

dimples, and full of waggish expressions, in which the quieter Ethel

never indulged; so she rather enjoyed the fanfaronades of Hawkshaw,

and mimicked some of his idioms and Spanish exclamations with great

success.

Tea over, and the piano opened, Morley hung fondly over Ethel, who

ran her white fingers over the notes of an old and favourite air,

which they had often sung together; while the captain, with his feet

planted apart on the rich hearthrug, was romancing, or to use his own

phraseology, "bouncing away" about the Tierra Caliente the mighty

sierras of New Mexico, and so forth, to Mr. Basset, whose eyes were

fixed on the embers that glowed in the bright steel grate, and whose

thoughts were elsewhere.

"Your visitor seems quite at home here--a privileged man, in fact,"

said Morley. "You did not tell me this at first, Ethel," he added,

in a lower tone.

Ethel blushed, and replied:

"We have been so used to him that I quite forgot."

"So used--then he has been long here."

"Nearly three months."

"Three months ago, Ethel, I was lying in Tom Bartelot's cabin, off

the Bonny River, in hourly expectation of death, and with little hope

of being where I am to-night, by your side, dearest, and listening to

that old air again. And he has been here three months?"

"Yes, ever since his return from California."

"Is he rich--this captain--what horse-marine corps is he captain of?"

continued Morley in an angry whisper.

"Oh, Morley, hush! he is not rich, poor fellow!"

"Poor devil!" muttered Morley.

"But he has realised something; I know not what; though he asserts

that he has come back to us poorer than when he went away."

"To us," replied Morley, with growing displeasure, which he strove in

vain to conceal. "Who is he?"

"A second cousin, or something of that kind, to papa, and the son of

his old friend, Mr. Thomas Hawkshaw, of Lincoln's-inn. But why all

these questions?" asked Ethel, looking her lover fully and fondly in

the face.

Morley Ashton did not reply, for he felt an instinctive doubt and

hatred of Hawkshaw: emotions that rose within his breast he scarcely

knew why or wherefore; but, as a Scottish poet has it:

"Men feel by instinct swift as light,

The presence of the foe,

Whom God has marked in after years

To strike the mortal blow!"

Hawkshaw, while talking apparently to Mr. Basset, had his keen and

sinister eyes fixed on the couple at the piano. They seemed plainly

enough to indicate similar emotions in his breast, and to say:

"You are one too many in my diggings, Mr. Ashton. _Poco e poco_, I

must get rid of you, my fine fellow, at whatever risk or cost!"

CHAPTER IV.

RIVALRY.

For a few days after Morley's arrival, he felt almost happy--happy in

the society of Ethel, though the time when she would have to quit

Laurel Lodge and sail from England--a time of painful, and it bade

fair to be most hopeless separation--hung like a black cloud on the

horizon of their future, and, alas! that time was not far distant now.

In three days the air of his native England had begun to redden

Morley's cheek, but his eyes were sad in expression, and his heart

was at times oppressed by thoughts which even Ethel's smile failed to

dispel.

We have said the season was spring, and the last days of April, the

time of which Clare sang so sweetly in his "Shepherd's Calendar."

"With thee the swallow dares to come

And cool his sultry wing;

And urged to seek his yearly home,

Thy suns the martin bring.

"Oh, lovely month, be leisure mine,

Thy yearly mate to be.

Though May-day scenes may lighter shine,

Their birth belongs to thee."

All the old familiar places where Ethel and Morley had wandered hand

in hand before, they revisited now together.

The old green lanes of the picturesque village of Acton-Rennel,

which, with its quaint old tumble-down houses of white-washed brick,

and the black oak beams that run through their walls at every angle,

its ivied porches and latticed windows, half hidden by wild roses and

honeysuckles, is one of the prettiest in England, were wandered in

again and again.

Then there was the ancient church, with its moss-covered Lyke-gate

and sequestered graveyard; the stile near her mother's tomb, where

they had plighted their troth, and split the sixpence which has

already figured in our story; Acton Chine, a dreadful chasm in the

cliffs which overhung the sea, where the brain grew giddy if the eye

attempted to fathom its depth, where the sea-birds wheeled and

screamed in mid-air, and where the boom of the breakers on the rocks

below came faintly to the ear--all were visited again and again, and

never were Morley and Ethel weary of rambling by the margin of

glittering Acton Mere, where the snow-white swans "swim double, swan

and shadow," or in Acton Chase, scheming and dreaming of a future all

their own, when he would strive to rejoin her in the Mauritius, and

fortune yet might smile upon them all. They were too young, too

loving, and too ardent to be without such hopes and day-dreams,

though more than once Morley Ashton said:

"Oh, Ethel, I thought the time had gone for ever when I could lose

myself in a world of my own creating."

They spent hours together by Cherrywood Hill and the Norman cross,

where, according to old tradition, a Crusader, lord of Acton-Rennel,

when returning from Jerusalem, had died of joy at the sight of his

English home; but no place loved they more than stately Acton Chase.

This is the remains of one of those grand old English forests, where

the Norman kings were wont to hunt of old, and where the marks of

King John have been found on more than one of the old trees when

cutting them down lately. The storms of a thousand years have

scattered the heavy foliage of these old English oaks; but every

summer their leaves are thick and heavy again, as in the days when

the wild boars whetted their tusks upon their lower stems.

In long rows, trunk after trunk, gnarled and knotty, solemn, brown,

and distorted, they stand within the chase, in distance stretching

far away, all green with moss or grey with lichens, and with the long

feathery fern, which shelters the timid deer, the fleet hare, and the

brown rabbit; and where the golden pheasant lays her eggs, waving

high around their venerable roots, some of which stretch far into the

brooks and tarns, where the heron wades, and the wild duck swims.

In the centre of this chase stands one vast tree "the monarch of the

wood," sturdy, old, and almost leafless now, for its trunk has been

thunder-riven.

This is called the Shamble-oak, for thereon, when the lover of fair

Rosamond came hither to hunt with the Norman lords of Acton-Rennel,

they were wont to hang the slaughtered deer, ere it was roasted and

washed down with Rhenish wine, in the old oak hall of Acton Manor, a

ruin now, as Cromwell's cannon left it.

Every tree on which, Orlando-like, Morley had carved the name and

initials of his mistress, was sought for again; every familiar spot

was revisited, and Captain Hawkshaw found, to his rage and

mortification, two emotions which he could not at all times skilfully

conceal, that Morley was always with Ethel, while he was left to

amuse Rose, who always teased or quizzed him, or with her companions,

who seemed to dislike him, to play chess with Mr. Basset, to the

enjoyment of a cheroot, or to his own society, which no one envied

less than himself.

Moreover, the farewell visits of friends, and entertainments provided

for them, afforded Morley and Ethel many opportunities of being

undisturbed together; and had it not been that the captain's

self-esteem was wounded, and his inordinate pride hurt, by the

preference which Miss Basset showed for her old and affianced lover,

Morley, he might have found plenty of consolation, for among the

visitors at Laurel Lodge were some very attractive girls; but

Hawkshaw's mode of making himself agreeable, even when most disposed

to do so, seldom pleased.

There was something sinister in his keen eye, and a quaint

_brusquerie_ in his manner, that made ladies instinctively shrink

from him.

"Pshaw--_caramba_," said he, on one occasion; "it is very odd that I

am always nervous when among crinolines and crape bonnets."

"Pray," asked Morley, with a disdainful smile, "how comes that to

pass?"

"You forget the many years I have spent among Red Indian squaws and

brown Mexican donzellas."

"Your nervousness should make you more choice in your expressions,"

said Lucy Page, a tall, grave friend of Ethel's, a handsome girl,

with whom Hawkshaw was walking, as they were all promenading one

evening, after tea, among the trees of Acton Chase.

"Though not much in the habit of receiving advice, I shall hope to

profit by yours, Miss Page," said Hawkshaw, bowing with a malevolent

smile.

"Pardon me," continued Miss Page, colouring under the short veil of

her round hat; "I do not presume to offer advice to so travelled a

man; but, for all that, I know a very ugly word may be veiled in your

favourite Spanish."

The captain laughed so loudly, that the young lady bit her lips with

vexation, and Rose saucily inquired if he were vain of his teeth.

"I might be, if I had not seen yours, which the father of dentists

and mother of pearl might envy," said he, with a mock reverential

bow. "But we are sparring, it seems," he said, with a slight flush

on his cheek, as Miss Page turned haughtily away and entered into

conversation with Mr. Basset. But our officer of the Partizan

Rangers was not to be easily put down, and to prove this, he began to

whoop noisily at the cattle, which were browsing under the trees.

"Hah, demonio!" he exclaimed; "if I had a lasso here, ladies, I would

show you how we loop the cattle in Texas. Many a wild bull, I have

overtaken with my horse at full gallop, and fairly tailed him."

"What may that be?" asked Rose Basset, who loved, as she said, "to

draw the Texan warrior out."

"Cutting the poor animal's tail off, I suppose," suggested Miss Page.

"Not at all," said Hawkshaw, curtly.

"Then what is it, pray?" asked Ethel.

"Technically, it is catching him by the tail when at full speed, and

slewing him round like a ship in stays; that is what we call

'tailing' in Texas."

"But to lasso?" began one of the ladies, to whom the captain's

explanation was not very lucid.

"That is to catch Master Bull by casting a looped rope round his

horns."

"Have you ever achieved this?" asked Morley.

"I should think so--rather, and a great deal more," replied the

captain, almost contemptuously. "I once caught one in midstream,

when swimming the Arroya del Colorado, a salt arm of the sea, more

than eighty yards broad, while a wild pampero (that is, a gale of

wind, ladies) was rolling the waves in mountains up the bight; and

with the same lasso, not long after, I caught a rascally picaroon,

just about your size, Mr. Ashton, by the neck, and well-nigh garotted

him, when I was riding past at full gallop."

"And the result?" said Morley, disdaining to notice something

offensive in Hawkshaw's tone, when addressing him.

"Well, the result was mighty unpleasant for the poor devil of a

picaroon," replied Hawkshaw, as the whole party rested themselves on

the soft velvet grass of the lawn, when he began to amuse himself by

tossing a clasp-knife of very ugly aspect among the buttercups, and

skilfully decapitating one at every toss.

"Oh, pray tell us all about it!" exclaimed Rose, smiling brightly

under her parasol, and drawing two very pretty feet, cased in bronze

boots, close under her crinoline.

Hawkshaw seemed here to recall some real memory of his wild and

wandering life, for a dark, savage, and malignant gleam came into his

eyes, while a hectic flush crossed his weather-beaten cheek, and he

began thus:

"I was travelling through the Barranca Secca, which lies between

Xalappa and the Puebla de Perote, on the long, hot, dusty road which

leads from Vera Cruz to Mexico.

"Though I had not a farthing in my pocket, and knew not how I was to

procure a supper for myself or my horse on reaching Orizaba (for I

had spent all my ready money), I was well mounted, and well armed,

with a first-rate six-shooter, a bowie-knife, and carried, moreover,

a lasso, for whatever might come to hand--to catch a stray _cavallo_,

a wild bull, whip nuts from a tree, to loop in a chocolate-coloured

_raterillo_, which means a thief, or, perhaps, a run-away nigger.

"The sun was setting behind the Cordilleras de los Ondes, when I

entered a _quibrada_, as the Spaniards name it, a deep gully--all

great adventures take place in ravines and defiles; but I am more

practical than most men, and so call things by their right names--so

it was a gully in the mountains, worn, bored, and torn by the

waterspouts and thunderstorms of ages; but lofty trees that towered

above the underwood of aloes and azaleas--azaleas to which yours are

weeds, indeed, Rose--overshadowed it, and cast a gloom upon the road,

which seemed to enter a species of sylvan tunnel. I took a hearty

pull of aquadiente from the leathern _bota_ at my saddle-bow, and lit

a Manilla cheroot, to make the most of the 'shining hour.'

"This portion of the Barranca Secca had a particularly bad name as

the haunt of robbers, and there was more than one wooden cross,

covered with green creepers, and many a pile of stones by the wayside

marking the lonely and unconsecrated grave of a bandit, who had been

shot by the National Guard of Orizaba, the soldiers of Santa Anna,

long ago, or where the victim of the bandido's knife or rifle lay.

"Well, anxious to get through the gully, I was going at a fine

rasping pace, when I met a man, armed with a long rifle, and carrying

a knife and brace of pistols in the red and yellow sash which girt up

his blue cotton breeches. His tawny breast, feet, and legs, from the

knees at least, were bare, and a sheepskin jacket, tied by a

cocoa-nut cord, dangled over his right shoulder.

"I recognised him at once, as Zuares Barradas, a young man, whom,

with his brother Pedro, I had met at the gold-diggings on the Feather

River, and with whom I had travelled from the seaport of San Diego,

when they had both deserted their ship to try their fortunes at the

mines.

"'What--capitano, is it you?' he exclaimed, 'welcome to the Barranca

Secca.'

"'_Muchos gratias_, senor,' said I, having some anxiety to be on good

terms with the fellow.

"'How far do you go to-night?'

"'To Orizaba.'

"'A light, if you please, senor--I have lost all my lucifers.'

"He was a sallow, dark-skinned, half-blood; that is, half Mexican,

half Spaniard, and wholly devil--partly seaman, partly landsman, and

wholly pirate in spirit."

"Good heavens!" exclaimed Rose, "were you not terrified to be alone

with such a person in such a place? I am sure I should have screamed

and died of fright."

Hawkshaw smiled and continued:

"His eyes, black and sparkling, told of a cunning equal to that of

the serpent in the scripture, and of a ferocity that death alone

could tame. He had neither beard nor moustache, for he was too

young; but his raven hair hung in masses beside his olive cheeks, and

he had silver rings in his ears.

"Such was Zuares Barradas, who, like his brother, Pedro, feared

nothing on earth, and respected nothing in heaven."

"Was, you say--is he now dead?" asked Ethel.

"You shall hear; but such fellows don't die easily, Miss Basset, be

assured.

"'Are you looking for game?' I asked.

"'_Por vida del demonio_, that I am!' said he, with a savage grin,

'but it is neither the elk, the jaguar, or the vinado I seek.'

"'What then, _amigo mio_?'

"'You must know,' began the young rascal, 'that Pedro and I have

spent all our money--every duro, yes, every quartil--he at the

wineshop, and I on Katarina, the barmaid at the Pasada de Todos

Santos, and that other jade with the wheel--what's her name?--Fortune

has since been as unkind to me as Katarina, with whom I parted on bad

terms.'

"'You quarrelled?' said I.

"Zuares looked keenly into the gully, listened a moment, and then

resumed his bantering style.

"'When last I visited the posada, Katarina had on a very handsome

crucifix and pair of silver bracelets, so I took them off, saying,

"Senora, a beautiful bosom, and such pretty hands as yours, require

no adornment. Permit me to relieve you of these baubles--they are

absurd!" She was about to permit herself the luxury of screaming,

but I touched my knife and quieted her. Since then I have been left

to shift for myself, as my father and mother too have turned their

venerable backs upon me.'

"'I have not a coin, Zuares,' said I, with growing alarm, lest the

underwood of aloes might be full of such evil weeds as the younger

Barradas. 'Surely you mean not to rob me?'

"'Of course not; you are a _bueno camarada_. But as Pedro and I came

through the Barranca Secca we heard that an old woman of the Puebla

de Perote, who sold some cattle at Orizaba, will pass this way about

nightfall. She is veiled, and has the blessed duros concealed among

her hair, for fear of thieves--ha! ha! for fear of thieves," he

continued, pirouetting about, and slapping the butt of his musket.

'Pedro watches one part of the road and I the other, so the money we

shall have--(what use has an old woman for it?)--even should we take

her scalp with it.'

"'Perhaps her hair may be false,' said I.

"'Then I shall be saved some trouble.'

"'She may resist, and make an outcry,' said I.

"'Then so much the worse for her,' said the young fellow, with a

fierce scowl, as he placed his hand under his sheepskin jacket into

the Spanish sash, where his long knife was stuck.

"'In this place none would hear her,' said I.

"'There you mistake,' he replied. 'There are more than forty free

bandidos lurking in the Barranca, and Pedro and I have no wish to

lose the prize we have tracked so far. Maldito, see, 'tis she!' he

exclaimed, as a dark female figure became visible about a hundred

yards off, traversing an eminence, over which the road went, and

thence descended into a hollow. 'Till I return, stay where you are,

and beware how you follow me!'

"With what thoughts, you may imagine, I sat on my horse, afraid to

interfere in the matter. Many a rifle might be covering me from

among the wood of aloes and mangrove trees; so what was the old woman

to me, that I should risk a bullet-hole in my skin to save her duros?

"Zuares Barradas descended into the hollow, which was dark almost as

night, so thick were the trees overhead, though the setting sun

gilded brightly their topmost branches.

"Suddenly I heard a shriek ring through the rocky gully, and Zuares

rushed out, with what appeared to be a bundle in his hand; but it was

a bundle from which the blood was trickling among the summer dust of

the roadway.

"'She resisted, and fought and bit like a tiger-cat, _la muger muy

vieja_ (the old beldame),' he exclaimed, with an oath, 'so I have cut

off her head to save time.'

"Kneeling down, with the bloody knife in his teeth, he proceeded

hastily to unroll the veil, and the long grizzled hair of his victim,

to secure the money, which was concealed among the thick plaitings of

the latter.

"While doing this, I observed that he carefully kept the dead face

_downwards_, as if he lacked the courage to look upon it.

"Thirty silver duros, with the eagle and thunderbolt, soon glittered

in his hands; but he dropped them, as if they had been red-hot, and

threw up his arms in dismay, on finding among the folds of the torn

veil a little piece of cow's horn, tipped with silver--an amulet worn

by women as a protection against the _mal de ojo_, or evil eye.

"On beholding this, a shudder passed over his brown and muscular

frame, and turning up the dead face, now livid, white and horrible,

with fallen jaw, and glazed eyes, he exclaimed, in a piercing and

terrible voice:

"'_Mia madre! mia madre!_'

"He had decapitated his own mother!"

CHAPTER V.

SUSPICION.

While the ladies listened breathlessly, and uttered proper

exclamations of horror, the narrator, with their permission, lighted

a cigar, and, squatting on the ground in the Texan mode, continued

his story.

"Zuares grovelled in the dust, so dismounting, I picked up the

blood-spotted dollars, and was in the act of pocketing them, when a

musket flashed in the dark, leafy hollow, a bullet whizzed past my

left ear, and----"

"What! did you actually take the poor woman's dollars?" exclaimed

Morley.

"Of course," replied Hawkshaw, coolly; "would you have had me leave

them on the mountain road?"

"Yes; perhaps no; but----"

"_Caramba!_" said Hawkshaw, angrily, but using his favourite Spanish

interjection, "in such a country as that, I was not such a thundering

muff."

"Go on, please. What followed, pray?" asked Ethel.

"I took up the money that lay on the road. You, Mr. Ashton, may call

it robbery, perhaps--granted. But what do the best men in England,

yearly, at the Oaks, the Derby, and elsewhere? Oh, there is no such

thing as robbery on the turf, of course. Well, where was I?"

"A musket was fired at you," said Rose.

"Exactly, and then I saw Pedro Barradas, a vast and bulky Spanish

seaman, whom, unfortunately, I knew too well, advancing towards me,

with his Albacete knife tied by a handkerchief bayonet-wise to the

muzzle of his piece. He was a ferocious fellow, and I knew that,

when he and Zuares were so far inland, rapine and robbery were their

sole objects and means of subsistence.

"These brothers once carried off a poor boy, the son of a widow, who

resided near the Laguna d'Alvarado, and kept him among their

companions in the mountains, till his mother was well-nigh

distracted. A ransom of fifty duros was required by a padre, whom

they sent as their messenger. She sent twenty--all she could borrow

or scrape together; but, instead of her boy, she received back one of

his ears, with a message that other parts of him, perhaps his

_cabeza_ (head) would follow, if the fifty duros were not forthcoming.

"The money was collected and intrusted to the padre, who, unknown to

himself, was followed by twenty soldiers, sent by the commandant of

Orizaba, with special orders to shoot the Barradas and their

companions.

"Pedro saw these men approaching, and, believing that the padre had

betrayed them, he pocketed the dollars, and with his stiletto stabbed

the bearer and the boy to the heart, and fled to the woods of the Rio

Blanco.

"Such was the character of the fellow who now advanced against me.

"I sprang upon my horse, unwound my lasso, took the slack of it in my

right hand, and, swinging the loop round my head, rode full at him,

as I could not encounter him on foot, or escape his aim on horseback,

if I permitted him again to reload.

"Shrinking back with an oath and a cry, he twice eluded me; but on

the third cast I looped him round the neck, drew the lasso over my

right shoulder, stooped hard over my horse's mane, and spurring

onward, dragged him headlong over the dusty road, for more than two

hundred yards.

"His shrieks were soon stifled, and when I reined up, the blood was

gushing from his mouth; his limbs were quivering, and his face was

blackened by strangulation; but he was not dead, however.

"Dismounting, I released the loop of the lasso from his bare and

muscular throat, and then rode off at full speed, leaving the two

brothers, and the mother, whom, in their cruelty and ignorance, they

had tracked and destroyed, all lying on the mountain path together.

I never looked behind me, nor did I draw bridle till reaching

Orizaba, which lies sixty miles westward of Vera Cruz, where I put up

at the Posada de Todos Santas (or All Saints) about midnight, when

the volcano of Citlaltepetel, which rises from amid forests of vast

extent, and covered with perpetual snows, was flaming in the sky

eighteen thousand feet above me.

"And there, in Orizaba, the duros sent me by fortune in the Barranca

Secco, procured me a good supper, a bottle of vino-bianco, well iced,

from the hands of the fair Katarina--a most enchanting fluid it

proved, after such a devil of a hot ride. Then I went to bed, and

blessed myself that I could sleep with an easier conscience than

either Zuares or Pedro Barradas."

This pleasant little episode in the captain's wandering Mexican life,

made the listeners regard each other, and him especially, with some

surprise.

The girls looked at him blankly under their parasols, and through the

short black veils of their little round hats, for the actual horror

of the story impressed them less than a certain cool gusto in

Hawkshaw's manner, combined with his grim, matter-of-fact mode of

relating it; but this story of the Barradas was only one of many such

as he related incidentally from time to time.

"It is no easy matter," says Goethe, "for one man to understand

another, even if he bring the best disposition with him. What, then,

is to be expected if he bring the smallest _prejudice_?"

Aware that he was a rival--a cunning, a daring, and so far as could

be gleaned from his conversation, an unscrupulous one, Morley, as may

well be supposed, was strongly prejudiced against Hawkshaw, and felt

certain that, under a considerable amount of bombast and external

_bonhomie_, he concealed a character that was alike mean, fierce, and

avaricious; but "every man," says the writer just quoted, "has

something in his nature which, were he to reveal it, would make us

hate him."

"And such creatures as these were your companions in South America?"

exclaimed Ethel Basset, almost with a shudder.

"Do not say so," replied Hawkshaw, who, perhaps, feared that he had

been too communicative "but travelling, in such countries especially,

acquaints one with strange bed-fellows and strange boon companions,

too. But enough of the Barradas, who have likely been shot or

garotted long ago. How delightful is this soft grass under the shady

trees. By Jove, we are better here than in some places where I have

been; the plains of Vera Cruz, for instance, among hot sand, mosquito

flies, that sting like wasps, prickly pears, and herds of wild

bisons; but, with all its charms, this is a cold-blooded country,

this England of yours, Mr. Morley, and ill-suited to such a spirit as

mine."

"Is it not your country as well as ours?" asked Morley, coldly.

"I scolded him for speaking thus the other night, when he laughed at

my azaleas," said Rose, shaking her parasol at the offender.

"Well, I was certainly raised here, which is my misfortune, and not

my fault; but I have been so long where the bowie-knife or revolver,

the hatchet or rifle settle all quarrels, disputes, jealousies, or

impertinent interferences," he continued with an unfathomable smile,

"that I can ill tolerate the system----"

"Of a well-regulated police," interrupted Morley, closing the

captain's sentence with a meaning smile, that was not unlike his own.

"_Caramba!_--yes; and, then, on the wild prairies, while one has a

good musket and ammunition, we are so careless of money."

"The money of others especially," said Ethel.

Hawkshaw bit his nether lip; but observed with a smile:

"Be assured, my dear Miss Basset, that when in South America I did

not squander my cash among tradesmen, or ruin myself by paying

tailors and bootmakers."

What Hawkshaw meant by this was not very apparent; but when the

little party resumed their promenade among the grand old trees of

Acton Chase, Morley gradually drew Ethel somewhat apart from the

rest. After being silent some time:

"I entertain a horror of that fellow!" said he; "and I am astonished

that your father tolerates or patronises him. Excuse me, dear Ethel;

but I cannot help saying so."

"You mean Mr. Hawkshaw?"

"Pray don't omit his rank of captain--yes, Hawkshaw--a most decided

aversion for him."

"Though I don't like him, Morley, I am sorry to hear this," said

Ethel, gently, while colouring a very little.

"Why?"

"He is such a favourite with papa--for his father's sake, I grant

you, rather than his own--for old Mr. Hawkshaw was, indeed, a great

and valued friend to papa, when early in life he much required one."

"Listen, Ethel, and, dearest, do be candid with me--has Hawkshaw ever

spoken of love to you?"

"Frequently, before you came," said Ethel, smiling.

"D---- his impudence!"

"Oh, fie, Morley!" said she, folding her hands upon his arm, and

looking up smilingly in his face.

"And I must quietly endure his presence here, after this most

annoying admission from you!"

"There is something worse still you may have to endure," said Ethel,

sadly; "the voyage on which he may too probably accompany us."

Morley felt a keen pang in his breast at these words; he glanced,

too, at the strange ring on Ethel's finger, which an emotion of pride

or pique had hitherto prevented him from referring to.

"It seems preposterous, Ethel," he exclaimed, "that this man should

propose to accompany you, while I, your affianced lover, am left

behind; and, by Heaven, it shall not be so!"

"Dearest Morley!"

"Poor as I am, Ethel, I am not so poor that I cannot pay my way to

the Mauritius--in the same ship, too, and I shall write this very

night to London about it!"

"Oh, Morley--oh, what happiness!"

"I shall take a berth in the forecastle bunks, rather than be left

behind. You have now at your breast a flower that Hawkshaw gave you."

"A flower!"

"Yes,-a wild rose."

"I had quite forgotten it; but let this show you how it is valued;"

said Ethel, laughing, as she threw it on the ground, and placed

thereon a pretty little foot, cased in a kid boot, with a heel of

very military aspect.

"My own dear Ethel!" exclaimed Morley, pressing to his heart her hand

and arm, which leant so lovingly and confidingly on his, "I have one

thing more to ask you about--this queer-looking ring with the green

stone!"

"Well?"

"Is it a gift of his?"

"Yes; when he first came to Laurel Lodge he begged me to accept of

it, saying that it was found in Mexico, at some battle fought by

Juarez, at a place with an unpronounceable name."

"It was more likely found as he found those dollars about which he

told us some time ago."

"Mercy! do you think so?"

"I am inclined to think the worst of him!" said Morley angrily and

emphatically.

"Oh! Morley, do not let prejudice blind you, and do not condescend

to be jealous of him," said Ethel, imploringly; "I would return the

ring, but that the act might affront him, giving, moreover, to its

first acceptation, a significance, an air of importance, I have no

wish should be attached to it. Do you understand me, Morley, dear?

Then he is papa's friend and guest."

Morley was pale with concealed annoyance.

Ethel perceived this, and that he was distressed by the double

prospect of a rival living in the same house with her, and

embittering the few days that intervened before their long--alas! it

might be final--separation.

With her eyes full of tears, she drew Hawkshaw's gift from her

finger, and gave it to Morley, begging him to return it to the donor

at a fitting time.

This was, to say the least of it, a most unwise request, with which

he readily enough undertook to comply, and secured the ring in his

portemonnaie, as they rejoined their friends, who were now gathered

round the shamble oak in the centre of the chase.

When Morley reflected on the story told by Hawkshaw, it seemed that

there must have existed between him and those lawless brothers, Pedro

and Zaures Barradas, a greater intimacy than he had admitted in the

narrative; and he became convinced that, under a nonchalant and

swaggering air, his rival concealed a real spirit of latent ferocity,

with a dark character that had been inured to cruelty and promptitude

to vengeance, when such could be taken with safety and secrecy; so

Morley Ashton resolved, but somewhat vainly, as we shall show, to be

on his guard against him.

CHAPTER VI.

FOR THE LAST TIME.

Mr. Scriven Basset had made all his arrangements for departing to his

legal charge in the distant Isle of France.

He had secured passages for himself, his two daughters, and an old

and valued servant, Nance, or, as she was more frequently termed,

Nurse Folgate, in the _Hermione_, a fine ship of 500 tons burden,

which was advertised to sail from the London Docks in fourteen days

from the time we now write of.

Meanwhile, poor Morley resolved to make the most of the present, and

endeavoured to shut his eyes to the future; but while striving to be

blindfolded, he knew that this future, with all its separation and

sorrow, its fears, and, alas! its doubts, must ensue.

There were times when Morley thought of asking Ethel to bind herself

to him in writing; but he soon thrust the idea aside as mistrusting

and melodramatic. There were other occasions when he actually

thought of imploring her to contract a stronger tie, by consenting to

a secret marriage; but it seemed an abuse of her kind and easy

father's hospitality, and a violation of the trust reposed in him,

and this, too, he abandoned, resolving to trust to Ethel's faith, to

patience, and to time.

Poor Morley! He knew how dark and lonely seemed the three years of

their past separation, and he felt keenly how much more lonely and

dark would be the vague years of that which was to follow.

Then the pictures he drew of this long severance from Ethel--the

voyage by sea for so many weeks, so many months; a residence in

another land, with strangers, rich and attractive, perhaps, about

her--a severance during which she would be hourly exposed to the

attentions and addresses of a rival so cunning, so artful, so

enterprising, and, in some respects, not so unpleasing, as Cramply

Hawkshaw, filled him with intense apprehension, anxiety, and disgust.

"Why should I not go with her?" thought he, suddenly. "The money

which will enable me to do so I shall only squander here in England,

it may be, without avail, while there, in the Mauritius, a new sphere

will be open to me."

Like all impulsive people, on this new idea he acted at once. He

wrote to the agents for the _Hermione_ to secure a cabin passage for

himself, a measure which Captain Hawkshaw, for some reason as yet

unknown, had omitted to take, though Mr. Basset had always more than

half indicated that he was to accompany him abroad.

Now, when it was announced and definitely settled at Laurel Lodge

that Morley was to go, the spite and disappointment of the ex-digger

and _soi-disant_ captain of Texan Rangers was ill-concealed indeed;

for, doubtless, he considered it no joke to lose all chance of a

lovely bride, with a fair prospect of getting--excuse us for using

his own phraseology--"into comfortable diggings," under the wing of a

colonial official.

After Morley wrote to London, two days elapsed without an answer

coming from the agents, and the anxious dread of Ethel and himself,

lest there was no more accommodation in the _Hermione_, was so great

that he vowed he would go before the mast rather than be left behind.

Already Laurel Lodge had a somewhat dismantled aspect. Bookshelves

were emptied in the library; the walls were denuded of pictures in

dining-room and drawing-rooms; choice plants in the conservatory and

rare flowers in the garden had been given away to the Pages and other

old friends.

Chests, bales, and boxes, corded, labelled, and all very "outward

bound" in aspect, encumbered all the hall and vestibule, indicating

but too surely that the Bassets were on the eve of departure; and now

came their last Sunday in the old village church.

Morley Ashton and Captain Hawkshaw were in the same pew with Mr.

Basset's family.

The curate who officiated was an old friend of theirs, and his voice

faltered as he besought the prayers of the congregation for those who

were about to leave them, and set forth on a long and perilous

journey.

Then Ethel felt her timid heart tremble, and Rose sobbed under her

veil, while many a moistened eye turned kindly to the Bassets' pew;

but a smile curled the moustached lip of the Texan Ranger, as much as

to say:

"Speak to me of danger--pah!"

The solemnity of the place, and the soft familiar music of the choir,

and the old organ pealing from its shadowy loft, soothed the grief

and agitation of Ethel's heart, though a keen pang shot through it,

when she reflected, that when again the sacred melody rang through

that ancient church, only seven days' hence, she might perhaps be

separated from Morley, and most assuredly would be ploughing the sea,

while he--ah! he might come here, where they had last sat side by

side, and feel himself alone--so terribly alone!

Some such thoughts were swelling in the breast of Morley Ashton, for

his eyes were turned on her with a deep and unfathomable expression

of tenderness, while hers was bent upon her prayer-book--it might be

on vacancy.

There was a wonderful charm in those snowy lids and downcast lashes,

so dark, so silky, and in the pure, pale loveliness of the whole face

of Ethel, especially when contrasted with the rounder and rosier

beauty of her younger sister.

Over the high oak pews, quaint with old carvings, dates, and

monograms; the marble tablets, where lay the men of yesterday; the

time-worn tombs of those whose rusted helmets, spurs, and gloves of

mail, erst worn in many a field against the Scot and Gaul, now hung

over them amidst dust and cobwebs; over the painted windows, through

which the sunshine poured its rays of many colours; over the bowed

heads of the hushed congregation; over the altar, before the rail of

which, during many a day-dream in Africa, he had knelt in fancy, the

bride-groom of Ethel Basset;--over all these the eye of Morley

wandered, but to fall, again and again, on her soft and downcast

face, her sweet mouth and long lashes, and on her little tremulous

hand, cased in its pale kid glove, that touched his from, time to

time, as they read from the same prayer-book.

"No answer yet from London!" was ever in his mind, and keenly in

anticipation he felt the nervous dread of being severed from her

after all.

But now the morning service was ended; the organ was pealing its

farewell notes from the dark recesses of the vaulted loft, and the

Bassets rose up to depart.

In that old pew the people of the parish had seen their heads bowed

in prayer when Ethel and Rose had nestled beside their mother, now at

rest in the adjacent graveyard--nestled with their shining heads bent

over the same volume, and now they were on the verge of womanhood.

Ere evil fortune came upon them, so good had those girls been to the

sick, the poor and ailing, that a crowd of village matrons, the

mothers of the blooming Dollys and hobnailed Chawbacons, blessed them

with hands outstretched; and so deeply moved were all present, that

when they passed down the aisle and issued--from amid those flakes of

many-coloured light that fell on oaken pew and carved pillar--through

the deep old gothic porch, into the grassy churchyard, where the

tombstones that stand so thickly were shining in the sun that

streamed in his glory down the far extent of Acton Chase, poor Ethel

burst into a passion of tears, and sobbed aloud.

"Oh, Morley!--oh, papa!" she exclaimed; "how sad it is to do

anything, and know that we are doing it for the last time!"

Morley pressed the hand that laid upon his arm.

"I have had the same emotion in my heart all day, Ethel, dear," said

he, "with a sadness for which I cannot account. I have no one now to

cling to but you. I never had a brother or sister. My father died,

as you know, before I went far away to Africa, and now he sleeps by

my mother's side, in yonder old churchyard, among the Denbigh hills;

and their graves, of all our English ground the dearest spot to me, I

shall never look on more."

"My poor Morley!" said Ethel, her eyes sparkling through tears of

affection.

"Oh, how plainly still I can draw their faces and forms, as my mind

goes back quickly and feverishly at times over the past days of

infancy, when their kind eyes smiled on me under our old roof. How

different seems that early home and parental care, which to a child

are as a fortress and tower of strength, when compared to----"

"Our diggings in manhood, eh?" interrupted Hawkshaw, who had joined

them unperceived, and thus cut short Morley's intended peroration.

The latter repressed his rising wrath with difficulty. Jealousy of

Hawkshaw, perhaps, he had not; but that Ethel should be annoyed by

the society of such a man was repugnant to him. But how was he to

act?

He could not quarrel with Hawkshaw while they both shared, for a

brief period now, the hospitality of Mr. Basset; and to retire from

Laurel Lodge would but serve to leave him in full possession of the

field, and to embitter the last few days they would all spend

together in good old England, and in the home of their early loves

and best associations.

With Morley, Ethel and Rose had paid a visit for the last time to all

their old haunts and rambles. At Acton Chase, now almost in the full

foliage of an early summer; at Acton Chine, that frightful cliff

which overhangs the sea; at the moss-grown Norman cross; on

Cherrywood Hill, where in childhood they had often sought in vain,

among the long grass and the pink bells of the foxglove, for the

elves and fairies of whom they had read so much in nursery lore.

They paid a last visit to the ivy-clad cottages of all their old

pensioners and favourites in the village, to each and all of whom

they gave some little memento; to the churchyard stile; to every

place connected with the memory of their past happiness; and, lastly,

to their mother's grave the sisters paid a visit that was sad and

solemn.

Some daisies which grew there Ethel gathered and placed in her

breast, and with something of the same spirit which often inspires

the poor expatriated Highland emigrant, she made up a little packet

of English earth to take with her to her new home beyond the sea.

She sadly viewed their garden, where a blush of summer roses, of

crimson daisies, gorgeous lilacs, and sweetbriar had now replaced the

earlier flowers of spring, the yellow pansies, the purple auriculas,

the golden crocuses, the pale white snowdrop, and she wondered if

such things grew in the distant Isle of France.

It was on her return alone from a farewell visit in the village, that

she was overtaken by Hawkshaw, when something like an unpleasant

crisis took place in the relations which had subsequently existed

between them. At that time Morley was absent, having walked to the

Acton railway station, for the purpose of telegraphing along the

London and North-Western line, to the agents of the _Hermione_, for

intelligence regarding his berth and passage.

CHAPTER VII.

THE REJECTION.

Hawkshaw had been rambling in Acton Chase alone, when he met Ethel,

or overtook her, near the great old shamble oak, which we have before

mentioned.

He had been pondering on the state of his affairs and finances, which

were far from flourishing. His pocket-money was almost gone, and for

a time he had been reduced to clay pipes and cheap cubas. He was

without the means, in fact, of travelling so far as the Mauritius;

and as Mr. Basset--good-natured, easy-tempered Mr. Basset--whose

character had no particular point save perfect amiability, though

half intending or adopting the idea that Cramply, the son of his "old

friend Tom Hawkshaw, of Lincoln's Inn," should accompany him abroad,

had never made an offer of means to enable him to do so; thus our

Texan Ranger was somewhat at his wit's end on the evening in

question--an evening of which, at that moment, he little foresaw the

end; and he rambled under the stately oaks of the ancient chase with

a cloudy expression of eye, though still wearing the melodramatic

scarlet cap and Spanish sash, which had excited considerable

speculation among the rustic hobnails of Acton-Rennel.

Hawkshaw had imbibed rather too much of Mr. Basset's Amontillado

after dinner; this, with some champagne, of which he had partaken

freely during that meal, and a glass of brandy, imbibed as a

corrective after it, rendered him somewhat blind alike to

consequences, and to foregone conclusions. Thus, on suddenly meeting

Ethel in such a secluded place, he resolved on speaking more openly

of his love to her.

Had Mrs. Basset survived at this period of our story, there can be

little doubt that she would speedily have relieved Ethel from the

presence and advances of such a lover, despite her husband's

reverence for the memory of "old Tom Hawkshaw, of Lincoln's Inn." As

the matter stood now, the village gossips, at the tap of the "Royal

Oak," the blacksmith's forge, and other rustic resorts, had long

since settled the whole affair. Ethel was the affianced of Morley

Ashton, and poor little Rose was assigned to "the captain with the

red thingumbob cap."

"'Fortune favours the brave;' 'nothing venture, nothing have.' They

are two old saws; but I must keep them in view, nevertheless,"

thought Hawkshaw, as he threw away his cigar and joined Ethel Basset,

on whose cheek there was a charming flush, for the May evening was

warm. She had been walking fast, to learn what tidings the electric

wire had for her and Morley; and the last farewell of an old

cottager, who dwelt by the skirts of the chase, had agitated her.

The captain opened the trenches by some of the remarks usually made

about the weather, and the beauty of the evening; then he adverted to

his good fortune in meeting her, especially in such a place; how much

he had longed for an opportunity of speaking with her alone, as his

future happiness or misery would be the result--an opportunity that

had not occurred for some time (since Morley Ashton's arrival he

might have said), and so, after sundry awkward pauses, he proceeded

to declare his regard, his esteem, his passion for Ethel.

She listened to him with considerable annoyance and concern, but

barely slackened her pace as he spoke.

The extreme self-possession, the quiet manner, the cool and gentle

aspect of Ethel, baffled Hawkshaw, and irritated him so much, that

there were times, when in his self-communings he actually felt a

doubt whether he loved or--hated her!

And now, while he spoke of love, volubly, but yet with agitation, she

continued to fit on a lemon-coloured kid glove, with provoking care

and accuracy, on her small, pretty hand, and seemed to be fully more

occupied with it than with him.

The very movements of her hands, the white parting of her smooth,

dark hair--all betokened a placidity which, as he said, mentally,

"served to worry him." Yet Ethel was greatly agitated, though

Hawkshaw's eye had not the acuteness, nor had he the refinement, to

be aware of it.

"I am deeply grieved to hear all this, Captain Hawkshaw," said she;

"for already you must be assured," she added, in a tremulous

voice--"assured that I cannot love you in return."

"Now, Ethel, call me Hawkshaw, Cramply, which you will, or anything

you please that is not formal, but do not, for Heaven's sake, speak

so coldly. And so--and so it is quite impossible?"

"Quite," she said in a low voice.

"Wherefore? Am I so hideous?"

"Far from it."

Hawkshaw was aware of her undisguised preference for Morley Ashton;

and though he knew, or feared what her reply would be, the wine he

had imbibed, or some strange emotion that stirred within his breast,

made him urge the hopeless matter still.

"Ethel," said he, softly, but through his clenched teeth, and while

his cheek grew pale with suppressed passion; "you will, perhaps, have

the kindness to explain?"

Trembling with excitement and annoyance, and while tears started to

her eyes, she replied:

"Explain, sir! Why should I be called upon to explain? You know

well that since I was seventeen I have been engaged--have loved

another."

"At seventeen, interesting age, a girl is in the first flush of

womanhood," began Hawkshaw, in his sneering tone; "fresh in feeling

and tender in sensibility; the consequence is that, of a necessity,

she falls in love with the first fellow, be he good, bad, or

indifferent, who presents himself."

"But I did not fall in love, as you phrase it, with the first who

presented himself, any more than I am likely to do with the _last_,"

replied Ethel, with an air that now was one of unconcealed annoyance.

"My sister Rose is a girl whom all allow to be charming, and is as

much admired as any in the county, and she has passed seventeen, your

rubicon, your girlish equator, your ideal line, without 'falling in

love' with anyone----"

"That you know of, Miss Basset," said Hawkshaw, sharply.

"Rose has no secrets from me, sir!"

"Do not let us quarrel, for Heaven's sake. I apologise."

"How tiresome--how impertinent! and yet I dare not tell Morley,"

sighed Ethel, in her heart, as she continued to walk very fast; but

Laurel Lodge was a long way off, and the sunlit waste of the chase

stretched for, at least, a mile before them yet.

Bitterly did she now repent having entrusted Morley with the ring, as

it might lead to some unseemly quarrel between him and Hawkshaw; on

this occasion she had an admirable opportunity for returning it

personally. After a pause:

"With all this fancied attachment to your first love, I do not think

you very romantic, Ethel," said Hawkshaw.

"You are right, sir; indeed, I am quite matter-of-fact."

"_Caramba!_ it is too bad for a charming girl of two-and-twenty to be

so."

"What right have you to deem me charming, or to assume my age?" asked

Ethel, angrily, and with her eyes now full of tears, which the short

veil of her little hat concealed.

"I can no more help deeming you so than help admiring the sunshine.

But, ah, Ethel, if I had you where I have been--where the volcanic

mountains of the Sierra Nevada look down on the valley of the

Colorado, I could teach you, or perhaps infuse into your impulsive

nature something of the fire, the romance--the glorious romance--of

Spanish South America."

"Thank you," replied Ethel, relieved and laughing, when she found

Hawkshaw was indulging in one of his platitudes; "but I would rather

learn it here, amid a sweet English landscape, like this old wooded

chase, than among flaming volcanoes, tawny savages, stinging

mosquitoes, and your old friends, the Barradas."

"The Barradas!" repeated Hawkshaw, starting, as his eyes flashed with

a gleam of malevolence and alarm; his brows knit, his hands twitched

spasmodically, and he gave Ethel a keen glance of inquiry; for she

had unwittingly touched some hidden spring, some secret sore--or it

might be sorrow. For a moment he looked as if he could have sprang

upon her; but he laughed, and said, with an evident effort at being

jocular: "To return to the subject--to this love of thrilling,

blushing, and susceptible seventeen, which deprives me of you,

occurred five years ago?"

"And since then I have found no reason to change my mind. Here is

the gate of Miss Page's house, where I wish to call. Good evening,

captain. Her brother Jack will see me home."

Ethel bowed, left him, and closed the iron gate.

She was, in reality, full of intense anxiety to learn what tidings

Morley had received by the telegraph from London; but being bored and

worried by Hawkshaw's cool and impudent love-making, she took this

opportunity of quitting him, which, in her nervous haste, she did,

perhaps, rather too abruptly.

A shower of tears relieved her; but Hawkshaw, as he watched her

figure flitting up the Pages' avenue of lilacs, balsam, poplars, and

giant hollyhocks, bit his nether lip till the blood nearly came, and

his sinister eyes emitted one of their most malevolent gleams.

"Curse her!" he muttered, hoarsely and deeply, "curse her! She spoke

of the Barradas, too! But I shall crush her proud heart yet--crush

it like a rotten _castano_!"

Then he turned away towards the seashore, with vengeance burning in

his heart, and had not proceeded a quarter of a mile before he

encountered Morley Ashton, perhaps the last person in the world he

could have wished to meet at such a time, and when in such a bitter

mood.

CHAPTER VIII.

MORLEY AND HAWKSHAW.

A fierce and panther-like spirit swelled up in the breast of Hawkshaw

on seeing his fortunate rival approach. He felt a strong desire to

strangle him, and thus, by one determined stroke, remove him from his

path, and gain revenge on Ethel too!

He had more than once conceived the idea, in his wilder and more

bitter moods, of giving Morley a _quietus_ of strychnine, or putting

a loaded revolver in his hand, so that it might go off conveniently,

and, to all appearance, unawares; but coroners' inquests often

brought unpleasant things to light, and Morley was completely master

of that ticklish fire-arm, the "six-shooter," as well as himself, and

our Texan captain was far too politic to risk his valuable neck, in

committing an open outrage on the queen's highway in England,

whatever he may have done in his well-beloved Mexico, among the wild

inhabitants of which he had learned the art--no small one

certainly--of veiling alike every purpose, love, hate, or fear, under

a bland and smiling exterior, when it suited his purpose to do so.

The man he hated most on earth was Morley Ashton, yet he walked up to

him frankly, with a smile in his deep eyes, and on his cruel lip

(though his moustache concealed that), his right hand extended, and a

cigar-case in his left----

"A lovely evening, Ashton," said he. "Had a pleasant walk? Have a

weed--eh? Try a cigar?"

"Thank you--I don't smoke cubas."

"Do you prefer a regalia?"

"Thank you, I have some here."

"_Caramba_! I have smoked them two feet long ere this."

"In Texas?"

"Yes."

"I thought so," replied Morley, laughing. He was in excellent

spirits. A telegram to Acton-Rennel had announced that his cabin

passage to the Isle of France had been secured on board the

_Hermione_, immediately on receipt of his mandate, and added, that a

letter, duly announcing the circumstance, had been posted for Laurel

Lodge.

"I never received it, Hawkshaw--odd, isn't it?" said Morley; "but it

matters nothing now."

Hawkshaw gave a bitter smile unnoticed. No wonder that Morley had

never received it, as his quondam friend had found the letter

referred to, in Mr. Basset's post-bag, which hung in the hall, and,

after making himself master of the contents, had quietly put it in

the fire, thinking by delay to create confusion, and, perhaps,

stultify Morley's intentions altogether.

In his joy, honest, good-hearted Morley felt blandly disposed even to

Hawkshaw, of whom he had such a constitutional mistrust. He had now

an excellent opportunity for returning the ring, with which Ethel

(whom Hawkshaw, incidentally, assured him was from home) had so

unwisely entrusted to him; but in the height of his own satisfaction,

he felt loth to mortify his luckless rival, and so delayed the matter

for a time, while, smoking their cigars, they walked together slowly,

side by side, up the hill, towards the rocks that overhung the sea,

and border on the Yale of Acton.

"And so, old boy," said Morley to the silent and brooding Hawkshaw,

"I am to go with our dear friends, the Bassets, after all."

"And what follows?"

"Of course, I shall have to look about me for some employment the

moment we land, because I would rather die than be dependent on any

man; but when I have the new judge's influence to second my

exertions, something suitable and jolly will be sure to turn up."

"Ah--yes," accorded the other, smoking vigorously.

"Then, I shall have all the joy of the voyage with--(Ethel, he had

almost said)--with my old friends the voyage through those very

waters I so recently traversed on my half-hopeless homeward

journey--a most miserable dog in my own estimation.

Morley, who, in the exuberance of his joy, began to whistle "A Life

on the Ocean Wave," seemed to commune with himself rather than

Hawkshaw, whose sinister visage at this moment presented somewhat of

a picture as he listened.

"Like you, friend Ashton," said he, "I have failed to climb

"'The steep ascent where Fortune frowns afar.'

But I have learnt to fling a bowie-knife, point foremost, with deadly

effect, and to handle a six-shooter ditto, damme--yes, and that is

something."

Had Morley looked at Hawkshaw as he spoke, he would have seen a

fierce glitter in his usually cunning eyes, betokening mischief.

"Well," he resumed, "any place is better than this conventional

England. One of the greatest annoyances to me is the state of

society in it; so you are wise to squat elsewhere."

"Indeed! How?" asked Morley, watching his cigar smoke as it curled

away in the breeze that came from the sea, whose breakers they could

now hear bursting on the rocks.

"Because that state compels us, as if we wore a vizard--a mask--to

conceal our suspicions, our loves, and our hatreds--yes, Mr. Ashton,

still more especially our hatreds--under a suave and cold-blooded

exterior."

"The result of good breeding, I presume?"

"The result of cursed conventionality, I call it. The stronger the

hate, too often, the brighter and softer is the smile that conceals

it. _Maladette_! 'Tis not so in some of the sunny lands where I

have been, and where a little homicide, now and then, is considered

but a casual occurrence."

The captain was in what Morley and Mr. Basset were wont to term one

of his "bitter and bouncing moods"--moods which rather amused them;

so as this was scarcely a moment in which to proffer the ring, Morley

lit another cigar, and to put off the time until he could meet Ethel,

strolled on till they reached the summit of the cliffs, from whence

could be seen the far extent of the dark blue sea, that stretched

away to the south-west, with the sails that dotted it, shining red,

rather than white, in the ruddy light of the setting sun. There,

too, was visible the smoke of more than one steamer, rolling far

astern, like a long and fading pennant on the sky.

So the rivals continued to ramble on in no very companionable mood,

for Morley was happy and abstracted, while Hawkshaw was bitter and

quarrelsome, till the deep hoarse booming of the breakers announced

that they were close to Acton Chine, towards which, as if by silent

and tacit consent, they proceeded.

The evening was lovely, and its calm beauty increased as the sun set

and twilight stole on.

With the shrill practical whistle of an occasional locomotive on the

London and North-Western line, there came on the breath of the soft

west wind the more poetical tinkling of the waggon-bells from the

dusty highway, in the green vale far down below; and now, though the

placid air rang joyously, the evening chime from the broad, low

Norman spire of Acton church, the solid outline of which stood

defined and dark against the flush of the saffron sky beyond.

And with the breeze that wafted the sound came the fragrant perfume

of the ripening fields, their warmth and fertility, as if it had

stolen "o'er a bed of violets." Sunk in deepening shadow now, green

Acton Chase, with all its great oaks blending in a mass, stretched

far away in the distance to the foot of the uplands.

Acton Chine--the reader may perhaps have seen it--is a seam or chasm

in the rocks, rising to the height of four hundred feet or more,

sheer from the sea, whose waves for ever roar, toil, and boil in

snow-white foam against its base.

Standing where Morley and Hawkshaw did, on the evening in question,

one might say with Edgar, but perhaps more truly than he did of Dover:

"How fearful

And dizzy 'tis, to cast one's eyes so low!

The crows and choughs, that wing the midway air,

Show scarce so large as beetles * * *

The murmuring surge,

That on the unnumbered idle pebbles chafes,

Cannot be heard so high. I'll look no more,

Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight

Topple down headlong."

There, too, as at Dover, on the dark face of those rocks, the fine

green tufts of the samphire grow. The waves outside the chine are

white as snow with foam and fury, while within the water is calm,

deep, and dark as those of a far-sunk well.

Above, around, and below, the sea-birds wheel and scream, for the

clefts and crannies of the rocks are full of their nests. And here,

in explanation, we may add that chine is an old Anglo-Norman word,

derived from echine--a gash or rent; and these chasms are so named in

some parts of England, particularly about the Isle of Wight, where we

find Compton Chine, Brook Chine, and the Black Gang Chine.

Morley peeped over into the awful profundity below, and then shrank

back instinctively, with an emotion of inexpressible alarm and

awe--it seemed so vast, so terrible!

Retiring, he seated himself on the verge of the giddy cliff and

removed his hat, that the sea-breeze might play on his hot and

flushed forehead. Cool and grateful, it refreshed, soothed, and

calmed him.

Impressed by the beauty of the scene and of the evening, a calm joy

pervaded Morley's heart, and he prayed a voiceless prayer to God to

strengthen him for his destiny.

What put prayer into his head at such a time?

The scene was grandly terrible on one side, and softly serene on the

other; but Morley was familiar with both.

Was it present happiness, or a solemn foreboding of future woe, that

filled his soul with pious thoughts?

Morley himself could not tell. He thought of the future; and none

can foresee what is in the womb of Time.

To be separated from Ethel--ah! there was no chance of that now; but

Hawkshaw--the cunning and hateful Cramply Hawkshaw--for some brief

space would hover about her still!

What of that? The broad waters of the mighty sea on which he looked,

and whose breakers boiled against the rocks four hundred feet below

him--the sea from which a red moon, round and vast as a

chariot-wheel, was rising--would be around him and Ethel, and this

man Hawkshaw would be left behind.

While these thoughts occurred to Morley, he opened his portemonnaie,

and drew forth the ring he had promised to return.

At that moment Hawkshaw, who was seated behind him, crept near, with

a visage pale, damp, and distorted by malevolence, and with a

fiendish glare in his eye.

* * * * *

About an hour after this, the captain was seen leisurely proceeding

along the road to Laurel Lodge.

_He was alone!_

CHAPTER IX.

ALARM.

Darkness had set in, and candles had been lighted for an hour nearly,

when Hawkshaw entered the now half dismantled drawing-room of Laurel

Lodge.

Rose was idling over the piano; Ethel was seated near the unremoved

tea equipage, and Mr. Basset was busy among some papers in his

escritoire. Hawkshaw, for reasons of his own, dared not encounter

the pale, inquiring face of Ethel.

"Have you seen anything of Mr. Ashton?" asked her father, looking up,

with one glance at Hawkshaw, and another at the clock on the

mantel-piece. "It is past nine. He was only going to the railway

station, and has not yet returned. His absence is most singular."

Hawkshaw hesitated, and looked at his watch with a confused air, as

he muttered:

"Past nine--yes, ten minutes."

"He was seen to pass the gate with you," said Ethel.

"With me?" said Hawkshaw, starting.

"Yes."

"By whom?" he asked, with some asperity.

"Nance Folgate," said Rose.

"Ah--true, yes--we took a turn together; and when I saw him last he

was going towards the chine."

"The chine!" exclaimed the girls together, in a tone of surprise that

was not unmingled with alarm.

"The chine, at this hour!" repeated Mr. Basset.

"It was eight then; and he said he intended to enjoy a quiet weed

along the cliffs."

"Most strange!" said Ethel, "when he had news of importance to

communicate to me."

"He cannot be long now. I returned without him, as I felt

odd--giddy; the regalias I sometimes smoke here don't agree with me.

I used to get such prime ones in Mexico."

"You look pale--absolutely ill," said Mr. Basset; "have some wine.

What is the matter?"

"Thanks," replied Hawkshaw, almost tottering into a chair, and

tossing his red cap aside.

"The last bottle of our Cliquot is on the sideboard."

The cork was soon cut, and Hawkshaw nearly filled a crystal rummer

with the foaming champagne, of which he drank thirstily. As he did

so, his hand trembled, and the vessel was heard to rattle against his

teeth.

Whence this unusual emotion, which did not escape the anxious eyes of

Ethel.

"Oh, Heaven!" thought she in her heart, "if he should have quarrelled

with Morley! His manner is so excited, so strange, something

unpleasant--terrible--must have happened."

Time passed slowly.

Half-past nine struck, then ten, but there was no appearance of

Morley. Ethel watched at the windows which opened to the lawn; she

listened and lingered at the front door. Then Rose and she ventured

to the foot of the avenue, now lighted by a clear, cold moon, and

gazed down the long green lane, in which she had first met him on his

return; but all was still, not a footfall was heard, nor aught but

the dew dropping from the leaves.

Far into the darkness and silence stretched the vista of that long

and shady lane, so famed for its wild roses in summer, its filberts

and black brambleberries in autumn, its scarlet hips and haws in

frosty winter--a real old English lane.

A sound breaks the impressive silence--it is the distant clock of the

village church striking the hour of eleven.

Anon twelve struck, and no Morley came.

Ethel wept aloud. Mr. Basset now became seriously alarmed, and

knowing how dangerous was the chine, and indeed, how much so were all

the cliffs along the adjacent coast, he closely questioned Hawkshaw

(who had now become more composed) as to when, where, and how he had

last seen Morley, and his story never varied--that they had separated

at the pathway which ascended upwards from the old London road to

Acton Chine; that Ashton was in high spirits, having had a most

satisfactory telegram from town, and that the speaker, when looking

back, had last seen the outline of his figure between the earth and

the sky on the summit of the rocks above the chine.

"He must have fallen and hurt himself--broken a bone, perhaps,"

suggested Mr. Basset, rising, and proposing to start.

"Oh, for mercy's sake--papa! papa!" began Ethel.

"Let us go forth to search--I am at your service!" said Hawkshaw.

"Nance Folgate, summon the gardener; let us get lanterns--a rope, a

pole or two, so as to be ready for any emergency."

Pale, trembling, faint, and in tears with apprehension and vague

fears of some impending disaster, Ethel would have accompanied them,

but for the opposition made by her father and Hawkshaw; and with

sickening anxiety, she saw them depart, knowing that some hours must

necessarily elapse before they could bring intelligence that might

relieve her agony or crush her heart for ever.

Muffled in cloaks and shawls, she and Rose, with old Nance Folgate,

lingered at the end of the avenue, so long as the lantern lights were

visible; and hour after hour, till dawn was drawing near, did they

wait, trembling with every respiration, and listening in an agony of

expectation to every sound, till the shades of night began to pass

away.

When Mr. Basset, Hawkshaw, and the gardener set out, a little after

twelve, the night had become dark--unusually so for the

season--cloudy and windy.

They traversed the road leading to that portion of the cliffs on

which Hawkshaw averred he had last seen Morley Ashton lingering in

the twilight.

Hallooing from time to time, as they continued to ascend the pathway

to the shore, they pushed on rapidly, yet pausing ever and anon to

listen; but there came no response on the gusts of wind that

occasionally swept past them.

The clock of Acton church in the valley below struck the hour of two,

when they reached the summit of the cliffs, when weird and wild was

the scene around them. Masses of cloud, like dark floating palls,

were hurrying across the heavens; the stars between them shone out

clear and brightly; the ocean, that stretched in distance far away,

and blended with the sky, was flecked with foam, for there was a gale

coming on from the seaward, and the boom of the hurrying waves as

they rolled in white surf against the rock-bound coast, and mingled

their roar with the bellowing wind in that deep and awful chasm, _the

chine_, was terrifically grand and impressive, especially at such an

hour.

Disturbed by the lantern-lights, and the voices of the three

searchers, the wild sea-birds screamed and wheeled about in flocks.

The soft close turf grew to the very verge of the shore and wall-like

cliff, and as the searchers proceeded along the giddy summit, seeking

for traces of feet and hallooing from time to time, the utmost

caution was necessary for their own safety.

Gradually they drew near the chine.

"Hallo--what is this?" exclaimed Mr. Basset, as he trod on something;

"a hat--and near it, a kid glove."

They picked them up, and recognised Morley's light grey "wide-awake,"

and a glove supposed to be his, all uncertainty about the

first-mentioned article being ended, by their perceiving his name

written on the lining thereof.

Proceeding with greater care, a little farther on they found his

cigar-case, and a few feet below, near the edge of the cliff, the

ends of two half-used cigars.

"I told you he was enjoying a quiet weed," said Hawkshaw.

Mr. Basset and the gardener made no reply; but with eyes and lanterns

close to the ground, were breathlessly examining several footmarks

impressed in the soft gravelly soil and sea grass about the mouth of

the chine.

"For Heaven's sake, take care, sir," exclaimed the gardener, whom the

scene, the place, the hour, and the awful booming of the black sea in

the profundity four hundred feet below, appalled. "But look here,

sir," he added almost immediately; "oh, sir, look here!"

Two deep ruts in the gravel, as if formed by a man's foot slipping

downwards, and two places from which the grass had been recently torn

away by hands that had clutched them evidently in despair, showed but

too plainly and too terribly that some one had fallen over there.

"Look here, captain--look here!" continued the excited gardener.

Hawkshaw was pale as death, and he drew back with an irrepressible

shudder.

"Oh, heavens!" exclaimed Mr. Basset, "poor Ethel!--he has fallen over

here, and must have perished--most miserably perished!"

"Nothing could save him, sir," said the gardener, in a low voice, "he

would be drowned, if he was not dead before he reached the water."

After lingering hopelessly for a time, as if loth to accept the fact

of such a sudden calamity, they began to descend from the chine, and

slowly and sorrowfully retraced their steps to Laurel Lodge, to

increase by their story the alarm, dismay, and grief, which already

reigned there.

* * * * *

In vain were descriptions of Morley Ashton's person and dress

circulated in the local papers, in vain were they distributed among

the rural police, fishermen, and coastguard, by Mr. Basset, during

the few days that remained before he left England.

In vain were telegrams dispatched along the coast, north and south

(at Mr. Basset's expense), by Hawkshaw, who made himself most

singularly and kindly active; no trace could be found of the missing

one; and after three days had elapsed, there remained not a shadow of

a doubt that he had been drowned by falling or being thrown over the

cliff of the chine. The London detectives who examined the spot were

suspicious enough to aver the latter, from the traces they found,

and, in their opinion, Mr. Basset and Hawkshaw, the latter most

unwillingly, ultimately found themselves compelled to concur.

CHAPTER X.

POOR ETHEL.

The day that followed the return of Mr. Basset and Hawkshaw from the

perilous exploration of Acton Chine was one of dreadful suffering for

poor Ethel.

Kind old Nance Folgate had forced the girls to retire to bed as dawn

was breaking; but no sleep closed the eyes of Ethel Basset.

Morning came--a bright May morning--and still no word of Morley; for

she could not realise as yet the idea, the dread conviction, of his

death--that he had indeed perished so miserably.

Oh! was this the world of yesterday?

Her sister, Rose, weary with watching overnight, was now asleep.

Happy Rose, who could gain oblivion in slumber. Ethel quitted her

restless bed, opened the window, and looked forth into the sunny

morning.

There was still the garden, with its trees and flowers, the first

rays of the sun shining through the conservatory, a distant glimpse

of the village church through a long vista of oaks, and the blue sea

beyond. There, in the distance, she could trace the road that wound

over the uplands towards that fatal Chine--the road he must have

pursued but yesterday. There also--but tears, hot and blinding,

welled up in her eyes, and she nestled again beside her sleeping and

unconscious sister.

"Gone! Morley gone--Morley dead--Morley drowned!"

These words seemed ever on her lips, written in the air before her,

to be whispered in her ears and in her heart, while fancy drew an

agonising picture of his fall from that dreadful cliff into the

yawning profundity below, where he would be tossed and dashed upon

the rocks, till his poor, uncoffined remains were chafed to pieces by

the waves.

As the lagging day drew on, she did not quit her bed; but, after a

time, total prostration of mind and body enabled her to sleep soundly

and deeply, with her aching head pillowed on the bosom of Rose; while

her father, with Hawkshaw and others, pursued a hopeless and

fruitless search for the missing man.

This slumber lasted little more than an hour, and waking brought her

back to misery--a misery that flashed upon her vividly, keenly, and

suddenly, calling all her half dormant faculties into instant life

and action.

It was indeed coming back to agony.

Vainly did Rose speak to her of hope, that it might not have been he

whom Hawkshaw had watched proceeding towards the Chine, and that the

half-smoked cigars might not have been his.

"But the hat, with his name written in it, and the glove--his glove,

Rose; see where I sewed it for him yesterday--only yesterday!" she

would exclaim, while pressing it to her lips as she sat up in bed,

with her dark hair all dishevelled about her white and polished

shoulders, pale, worn, and crushed by an anguish there was no

alleviating--for the loss of the poor dear heart, who had loved her

so truly and so tenderly.

When re-examined by day, the verge of the Chine, by the abrasion of

the soil, bore conclusive evidence that a short struggle had taken

place, and that some one had fallen or been pushed over there. A few

drops of blood were detected on the stones; but of this circumstance

Ethel was not informed.

"Eat something, Miss Ethel--a bit of cake; take a little tea, a glass

of wine, or anything; you must, darling, you must!" said old Nance

Folgate, pillowing her favourite's head on her breast, towards the

close of this most dreadful day.

Ethel silently declined, for the smallest crumb would have choked

her; but grief is thirsty, so she drank the wine and water with

gratitude, or rather permitted Rose to pour it between her pale and

passive lips.

Then a shower of tears followed, and she moaned and sobbed aloud, and

heavily. Another night followed, another day dawned; but no hope

dawned with it, and no tidings came.

The first shock over, there settled on the mind and soul of Ethel a

deep and settled grief. She ceased to weep, save when alone. For a

time she was reckless of the future, or viewed it with sullen

indifference or composure, none knew which. She cared not how soon

they quitted Laurel Lodge now, nor how soon she saw the shores of

England fade from view, though she thought, with a shudder, of the

ocean which she knew must have entombed the corpse of him she loved

so long and well.

And Cramply Hawkshaw--how did he comport himself during this painful

crisis? Quietly, earnestly, full of apparent solicitude, ready in

suggestion and active in inquiry. He remained mostly with Rose; but

when Ethel appeared on the evening of the second day in the

dining-room, he was ready, with hand and arm, to attend her politely,

and silently.

She entered Morley's bed-room, now empty of its tenant. She flung

herself upon the couch in an agony of grief, for the place seemed

full of his presence, and his beloved form appeared to rise up

embodied before her.

There were his travelling bag; his telescope and flask, his

hair-brushes, a stray glove or so, and a miniature of herself, which

had been the poor fellow's only solace when far away from her in

Africa. There were other mementoes of the beloved one she would

never see more; he whose poor remains, if they were not lying at the

foot of that dreadful Chine, were being, perhaps, swept away to

sea--that sea which, at times, she hoped she might not live to

traverse.

Here prostrate on the couch she was found by Rose and Nance Folgate,

who conveyed her out, and locked the door.

This event, by the confusion and anxiety it created, delayed the

departure of the Bassets from Laurel Lodge for a week longer.

There were times when Ethel wished that she might die, though she

shrank from the idea of being separated from her father and sister,

and from not sharing their perilous journey; but her mother's grave

under the close-clipped grass looked so calm and peaceful in the

sunshine of the old English churchyard, that she almost longed to be

laid by her side. However, as some one says, "Grief rivets the chain

of our life instead of breaking it." So Ethel did not die; but she

fell into a state of languid apathy, which caused her father and

sister the most serious apprehension.

There were other times, when dreadful thoughts occurred to

Ethel--thoughts that came to her mind unbidden, and that she dared

express to none; but she could not help associating the mysterious

and terrible calamity which had befallen Morley with the idea of

Hawkshaw, his rival.

She remembered the unusual and unnatural pallor of his cheek, and his

strange excitement on the eventful night; how he complained of

illness; how thirstily he drank of the champagne; and how his hand

shook so that the crystal which contained the wine rattled nervously

against his teeth.