"O dearest Marjorie, stay at hame,
For dark's the gate ye have to go,
For there's a maike down yonder glen
Hath frightened me and many me."
HOGG.
"Nana," said little Philip in a meditative voice, as he looked into
the glowing embers of the hall fire, "when do fairies leave off
stealing little boys?"
"I do not believe they ever steal them, Phil."
"Oh, yes they do;" and he came and stood by her with his great
limpid blue eyes wide open. "Goody Dearlove says they stole a
little boy, and his name was Penny Grim."
"Goody Dearlove is a silly old body to tell my boy such stories,"
said Anne, disguising how much she was startled.
"Oh, but Ralph Huntsman says 'tis true, and he knew him."
"How could he know him when he was stolen?"
"They put another instead," said the boy, a little puzzled, but too
young to make his story consistent. "And he was an elf--a cross
spiteful elf, that was always vexing folk. And they stole him again
every seven years. Yes--that was it--they stole him every seven
years."
"Whom, Phil; I don't understand--the boy or the elf?" she said,
half-diverted, even while shocked at the old story coming up in such
a form.
"The elf, I think," he said, bending his brows; "he comes back, and
then they steal him again. Yes; and at last they stole him quite--
quite away--but it is seven years, and Goody Dearlove says he is to
be seen again!"
"No!" exclaimed Anne, with an irrepressible start of dismay. "Has
any one seen him, or fancied so?" she added, though feeling that her
chance of maintaining her rational incredulity was gone.
"Goody Dearlove's Jenny did," was the answer. "She saw him stand
out on the beach at night by moonlight, and when she screamed out,
he was gone like the snuff of a candle."
"Saw him? What was he like?" said Anne, struggling for the
dispassionate tone of the governess, and recollecting that Jenny
Dearlove was a maid at Portchester Rectory.
"A little bit of a man, all twisty on one side, and a feather
sticking out. Ralph said they always were like that;" and Phil's
imitation, with his lithe, graceful little figure, of Ralph's clumsy
mimicry was sufficient to show that there was some foundation for
this story, and she did not answer at once, so that he added, "I am
seven, Nana; do you think they will get me?"
"Oh no, no, Phil, there's no fear at all of that. I don't believe
fairies steal anybody, but even old women like Goody Dearlove only
say they steal little tiny babies if they are left alone before they
are christened."
The boy drew a long breath, but still asked, "Was Penny Grim a
little baby?"
"So they said," returned Anne, by no means interfering with the
name, and with a quailing heart as she thought of the child's ever
knowing what concern his father had in that disappearance. She was
by no means sorry to have the conversation broken off by Sir
Philip's appearance, booted and buskined, prepared for an expedition
to visit a flock of sheep and their lambs under the shelter of
Portsdown Hill, and in a moment his little namesake was frisking
round eager to go with grandpapa.
"Well, 'tis a brisk frost. Is it too far for him, think you,
Mistress Anne?"
"Oh no, sir; he is a strong little man and a walk will only be good
for him, if he does not stand still too long and get chilled. Run,
Phil, and ask nurse for your thick coat and stout shoes and
leggings."
"His grandmother only half trusts me with him," said Sir Philip,
laughing. "I tell her she was not nearly so careful of his father.
I remember him coming in crusted all over with ice, so that he could
hardly get his clothes off, but she fancies the boy may have some of
his poor mother's weakliness about him."
"I see no tokens of it, sir."
"Grand-dames will be anxious, specially over one chick. Heigho!
Winter travelling must be hard in Germany, and posts do not come.
How now, my man! Are you rolled up like a very Russian bear? The
poor ewes will think you are come to eat up their lambs."
"I'll growl at them," said Master Philip, uttering a sound
sufficient to disturb the nerves of any sheep if he were permitted
to make it, and off went grandfather and grandson together, Sir
Philip only pausing at the door to say--
"My lady wants you, Anne; she is fretting over the delay. I fear,
though I tell her it bodes well."
Anne watched for a moment the hale old gentleman briskly walking on,
the merry child frolicking hither and thither round him, and the
sturdy body-servant Ralph, without whom he never stirred, plodding
after, while Keeper, the only dog allowed to follow to the
sheepfolds, marched decorously along, proud of the distinction.
Then she went up to Lady Archfield, who could not be perfectly easy
as to the precious grandchild being left to his own devices in the
cold, while Sir Philip was sure to run into a discussion with the
shepherd over the turnips, which were too much of a novelty to be
approved by the Hampshire mind. It was quite true that she could
not watch that little adventurous spirit with the same absence of
anxiety as she had felt for her own son in her younger days, and
Anne had to devote herself to soothing and diverting her mind, till
Dr. Woodford knocked at the door to read and converse with her.
The one o'clock dinner waited for the grandfather and grandson, and
when they came at last, little Philip looked somewhat blue with cold
and more subdued than usual, and his grandfather observed severely
that he had been a naughty boy, running into dangerous places,
sliding where he ought not, and then muttered under his breath that
Sedley ought to have known better than to have let him go there.
Discipline did not permit even a darling like little Phil to speak
at dinner-time; but he fidgeted, and the tears came into his eyes,
and Anne hearing a little grunt behind Sir Philip's chair, looked
up, and was aware that old Ralph was mumbling what to her ears
sounded like: 'Knew too well.' But his master, being slightly
deaf, did not hear, and went on to talk of his lambs and of how
Sedley had joined them on the road, but had not come back to dinner.
Phil was certainly quieter than usual that afternoon, and sat at
Anne's feet by the fire, filling little sacks with bran to be loaded
on his toy cart to go to the mill, but not chattering as usual. She
thought him tired, and hearing a sort of sigh took him on her knee,
when he rested his fair little head on her shoulder, and presently
said in a low voice--
"I've seen him."
"Who? Not your father? Oh, my child!" cried Anne, in a sudden
horror.
"Oh no--the Penny Grim thing."
"What? Tell me, Phil dear, how or where?"
"By the end of the great big pond; and he threw up his arms, and
made a horrid grin." The boy trembled and hid his face against her.
"But go on, Phil. He can't hurt you, you know. Do tell me. Where
were you?"
"I was sliding on the ice. Grandpapa was ever so long talking to
Bill Shepherd, and looking at the men cutting turnips, and I got
cold and tired, and ran about with Cousin Sedley till we got to the
big pond, and we began to slide, and the ice was so nice and hard--
you can't think. He showed me how to take a good long slide, and
said I might go out to the other end of the pond by the copse, by
the great old tree. And I set off, but before I got there, out it
jumped, out of the copse, and waved its arms, and made _that_ face."
He cowered into her bosom again and almost cried. Anne knew the
place, and was ready to start with dismay in her turn. It was such
a pool as is frequent in chalk districts--shallow at one end, but
deep and dangerous with springs at the other.
"But, Phil dear," she said, "it was well you were stopped; the ice
most likely would have broken at that end, and then where would
Nana's little man have been?"
"Cousin Sedley never told me not," said the boy in self-defence; "he
was whistling to me to go on. But when I tumbled down Ralph and
grandpapa and all _did_ scold me so--and Cousin Sedley was gone.
Why did they scold me, Nana? I thought it was brave not to mind
danger--like papa."
"It is brave when one can do any good by it, but not to slide on bad
ice, when one must be drowned," said Anne. "Oh, my dear, dear
little fellow, it was a blessed thing you saw _that_, whatever it
was! But why do you call it Pere--Penny Grim?"
"It was, Nana! It was a little man--rather. And one-sided looking,
with a bit of hair sticking out, just like the picture of Riquet-
with-a-tuft in your French fairy-book."
This last was convincing to Anne that the child must have seen the
phantom of seven years ago, since he was not repeating the popular
description he had given her in the morning, but one quite as
individual. She asked if grandpapa had seen it.
"Oh no; he was in the shed, and only came out when he heard Ralph
scolding me. Was it a wicked urchin come to steal me, Nana?"
"No, I think not," she answered. "Whatever it was, I think it came
because God was taking care of His child, and warning him from
sliding into the deep pool. We will thank him, Phil. 'He shall
give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.'"
And to that verse she soothed the tired child till he fell asleep,
and she could lay him on the settle, and cover him with a cloak,
musing the while on the strange story, until presently she started
up and repaired to the buttery in search of the old servant.
"Ralph, what is this Master Philip tells me?" she asked. "What has
he seen?"
"Well, Mistress Anne, that is what I can't tell--no, not I; but I
knows this, that the child has had a narrow escape of his precious
life, and I'd never trust him again with that there Sedley--no, not
for hundreds of pounds."
"You _really_ think, Ralph--?"
"What can I think, ma'am? When I finds he's been a-setting that
there child to slide up to where he'd be drownded as sure as he's
alive, and you see, if we gets ill news of Master Archfield (which
God forbid), there's naught but the boy atween him and this here
place--and he over head and ears in debt. Be it what it might that
the child saw, it saved the life of him."
"Did you see it?"
"No, Mistress Anne; I can't say as I did. I only heard the little
master cry out as he fell. I was in the shed, you see, taking a
pipe to keep me warm. And when I took him up, he cried out like one
dazed. 'Twas Penny Grim, Ralph! Keep me. He is come to steal me."
But Sir Philip wouldn't hear nothing of it, only blamed Master Phil
for being foolhardy, and for crying for the fall, and me for letting
him out of sight."
"And Mr. Sedley--did he see it?"
"Well, mayhap he did, for I saw him as white as a sheet and his eyes
staring out of his head; but that might have been his evil
conscience."
"What became of him?"
"To say the truth, ma'am, I believe he be at the Brocas Arms, a-
drowning of his fright--if fright it were, with Master Harling's
strong waters."
"But this apparition, this shape--or whatever it is? What put it
into Master Philip's head? What has been heard of it?"
Ralph looked unwilling. "Bless you, Mistress Anne, there's been
some idle talk among the women folk, as how that there crooked slip
of Major Oakshott's, as they called Master Perry or Penny, and said
was a changeling, has been seen once and again. Some says as the
fairies have got him, and 'tis the seven year for him to come back
again. And some says that he met with foul play, and 'tis the ghost
of him, but I holds it all mere tales, and I be sure 'twere nothing
bad as stopped little master on that there pond. So I be."
Anne could not but be of the same mind, but her confusion, alarm,
and perplexity were great. It seemed strange, granting that this
were either spirit or elf connected with Peregrine Oakshott, that it
should interfere on behalf of Charles Archfield's child, and on the
sweet hypothesis that a guardian angel had come to save the child,
it was in a most unaccountable form.
And more pressing than any such mysterious idea was the tangible
horror of Ralph's suggestion, too well borne out by the boy's own
unconscious account of the adventure. It was too dreadful, too real
a peril to be kept to herself, and she carried the story to her
uncle on his return, but without speaking of the spectral warning.
Not only did she know that he would not attend to it, but the hint,
heard for the first time, that Peregrine was supposed to have met
with foul play, sealed her lips, just when she still was hoping
against hope that Charles might be on the way home. But that Ralph
believed, and little Philip's own account confirmed, that his cousin
had incited the little heir to the slide that would have been fatal
save for his fall, she told with detail, and entreated that the
grandfather might be warned, and some means be found of ensuring the
safety of her darling, the motherless child!
To her disappointment Dr. Woodford was not willing to take alarm.
He did not think so ill of Sedley as to believe him capable of such
a secret act of murder, and he had no great faith in Ralph's
sagacity, besides that he thought his niece's nerves too much
strained by the long suspense to be able to judge fairly. He
thought it would be cruel to the grandparents, and unjust to Sedley,
to make such a frightful suggestion without further grounds during
their present state of anxiety, and as to the boy's safety, which
Anne pleaded with an uncontrollable passion of tears, he believed
that it was provided for by watchfulness on the part of his two
constant guardians, as well as himself, since, even supposing the
shocking accusation to be true, Sedley would not involve himself in
danger of suspicion, and it was already understood that he was not a
fit companion for his little cousin to be trusted with. Philip had
already brought home words and asked questions that distressed his
grandmother, and nobody was willing to leave him alone with the ex-
lieutenant. So again the poor maiden had to hold her peace under an
added burthen of anxiety and many a prayer.
When the country was ringing with the tidings of Sir George
Barclay's conspiracy for the assassination of William III, it was
impossible not to hope that Sedley's boastful tongue might have
brought him sufficiently under suspicion to be kept for a while
under lock and key; but though he did not appear at Fareham, there
was reason to suppose that he was as usual haunting the taverns and
cockpits of Portsmouth.
No one went much abroad that winter. Sir Philip, perhaps from
anxiety and fretting, had a fit of the gout, and Anne kept herself
and her charge within the garden or the street of the town. In fact
there was a good deal of danger on the roads. The neighbourhood of
the seaport was always lawless, and had become more so since Sir
Philip had ceased to act as Justice of the Peace, and there were
reports of highway robberies of an audacious kind, said to be
perpetrated by a band calling themselves the Black Gang, under a
leader known as Piers Pigwiggin, who were alleged to be half
smuggler, half Jacobite, and to have their headquarters somewhere in
the back of the Isle of Wight, in spite of the Governor, the
terrible Salamander, Lord Cutts, who was, indeed, generally absent
with the army.