Back o’ the Moon
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
“THE DRAKESTONE.”
Second Edition. Price 6s.
_Selection of Press Opinions._
“It is, both in construction and workmanship, very unlike the usual
flimsy story which does duty as a modern novel. This book is more like
the fiction of some fifty or sixty years ago, when the appearance of a
novel was, to a certain extent, an event in the world of letters.”--_The
Spectator._
“There is much sound work in the novel; quaint local customs are
conscientiously reproduced, and the characters, with the exception of a
rather shadowy heroine, are living beings.”--_The Athenæum._
“The book is thoughtfully as well as cleverly written, and at least
maintains the promise of its forerunners.”--_The Times._
“The character-drawing is strong and clear, the run of the incident
perfectly natural, and the outlook kind and manly in a spirit that puts
to the blush a great deal of meretricious and catchpenny work.”--_Pall
Mall Gazette._
“Mr. Onions’s canvas is crowded with well-drawn characters, and the
whole presents a particularly lively and clever study of Yorkshire life
and manners eighty years ago.”--_The Academy._
“Here he is thoroughly at home, and he writes with rare insight and
uncommon skill of the country folk of our dales.”--_Leeds Mercury._
“The present story derives its main interest from the liveliness of its
presentation of the countryside and rustic character of Yorkshire, as
these appeared to the observant eye in the earlier half of the
nineteenth century.”--_The Scotsman._
“As we have said, the book is devoid of sensationalism of any sort; but,
for all its quiet tone, it is one of the few books of the season worth
careful reading, and worth also a permanent place in any library.”--_The
Westminster Gazette._
“Mr. Onions, who knows his Yorkshire nearly as well as any writer of the
time, has improved amazingly, and ‘The Drakestone’ is of sufficiently
high quality to make one anticipate with interest his next book.”--_The
Yorkshire Post._
“It is a strong book all round, and the culminating catastrophe--the
breaking-in of the marsh upon the moorland--is well rendered and
effective. The work is one which will repay study, and we have few
living writers who could better it.”--_The Sheffield Daily Telegraph._
“It is an _olla podrida_ of vivid sketches of Yorkshire life, more
faithfully conceived and picturesquely rendered than we have ever seen
before.”--_The Daily Mail._
“The humble lives of the peasant folk, their jealousies, bickerings and
junkettings, take their proper place as background to the working out of
the Drake prophecies, while the chief figures are limned with rare skill
and insight. A clever and deeply-interesting book.”--_The Liverpool
Post._
Back o’ the Moon
AND OTHER STORIES
BY
OLIVER ONIONS
AUTHOR OF
“The Drakestone,” “Tales from a Far Riding,” &c.
LONDON
HURST AND BLACKETT, LIMITED
1906
_All rights reserved_
TO
AG AND EM,
MY SISTERS
PREFACE.
_Halifax, Sunday, 26th August, 1778._--“Understanding there was great
need of it, I preached on ‘Render unto Cæsar the things that are
Cæsar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.’ I spoke with all
plainness, and yet did not hear that anyone was offended.”
JOHN WESLEY.
* * * * *
_Halifax, 1836._--“I am very sorry that there was a ‘great need’ for Mr.
Wesley to bring (this) charge ... though unable to unravel the secret.”
URIAH WALKER
(Methodist Historian).
CONTENTS.
BACK O’ THE MOON.
CHAP. PAGE
INTRODUCTION 1
I.--HORWICK THURSDAY 9
II.--THE EXECUTIVE 21
III.--“JOHNNY COPE” 34
IV.--EASTWOOD ELLAH 46
V.--THE WADSWORTH WEDDING 61
VI.--EMMASON 77
VII.--CICELY 89
VIII.--CRUDELITAS 103
IX.--THE SLACK 120
X.--THE HOME-COMING 133
XI.--A HUNDRED POUNDS 147
XII.--THE CLOTH MERCHANT 162
XIII.--THE SCOUT 179
XIV.--ONE WAY IN, NONE OUT 193
XV.--THE CAVE IN SOYLAND 202
XVI.--COVER 217
XVII.--THE MOON TURNED ROUND AGAIN 232
THE PILLERS.
I.--THE NIGHTINGALE 241
II.--THE LADYSHAWS 248
III.--THE PRESS 256
IV.--AT PORTSANNET 267
SKELF-MARY 279
LAD-LASS 297
THE FAIRWAY 317
BACK O’ THE MOON.
INTRODUCTION.
The first thing that the new parson noticed, as he rode up the narrow,
precipitous street late in the October afternoon, was that the muffled
knock-knocking that proceeded from the houses ceased as he ascended; and
the next was that he had never in his life seen so many mongrel dogs as
prowled and sniffed at his heels. He had left his grey galloway in
Horwick Town, three miles back; he now saw the reason why they had
laughed, and advised him that he might as well sell it there and then.
Wadsworth Shelf had been steep; Wadsworth Street was precipitous; and at
the head of the street rose Wadsworth Scout, dark and mountainous. The
Scout was thinly wooded here and there with birch and mountain-ash. It
overshadowed the village beneath it; and as the parson reached the small
square at its foot he saw, over an irregular row of roofs, the squat
belfry of the little church that was now his charge. A ramshackle inn,
with a long horse-trough in front of it, occupied the lower side of the
square.
As the knock-knocking ceased entirely, the parson became conscious that
men and women had come softly out into the street behind him, and he
knew without looking that behind every blind and shutter there was a
pair of eyes. A raw-boned fellow lounged against the horse-trough of the
inn, and he had taken off one of his wood-soled clogs and was peering
into it as if for a stone. The parson had been warned that few in his
new cure were known by their baptismal names, and had been told the name
by which he must seek his own verger and bellringer. Approaching the
fellow with the clog, he asked where he should find one Pim o’ Cuddy.
The fellow jerked his head in the direction of the church under the dark
Scout, and continued to peer into the clog. The dogs trailed after the
parson as he crossed the square.
An hour later he returned. He had, apparently, learned which of the
houses standing back up a stone-walled lane had been made ready for him,
for he made for it without so much as a glance round him. He passed
beneath the lanternless arch of wrought-iron that spanned his gateway.
Very soon the old body who had made his house ready came out, sought a
lad, and bade him go to Pim o’ Cuddy at the church. The lad and Pim o’
Cuddy (a wizened little man, who walked like a pair of callipers),
returned across the square, carrying between them a small heavy chest.
The chest contained, as the village knew, what remained of the papers
and parchments that for so long had strewn the vestry. Later, the
housekeeper reported that the parson had sat up with these half the
night.
The weavers of Wadsworth and beyond have a sort of thwarted sense of the
droll, and first they smiled sourly, and then guffawed, as the full
humour of the parson’s coming broke on them. They chuckled at the looms
that had been the cause of the knock-knocking, caught their fellows’
eyes in the steep street and roared again. For Pim o’ Cuddy’s pigeons
knew their way home through the broken louver-boards of the squat belfry
by this. If sometimes a ferret refused to come out of the air-hole by
the buttress into which he had been put (and the church “lifted,” as
they said, with rats), well, it was cheaper to take up a floorboard or
two than to pull the church down. As for the unhinged church-door, it
was a wit from Booth, over the moors far beyond the mountainous Scout,
who observed that doorways were made to let folk into church and not to
keep them out; and for the rest--the broken windows, the hen-coops in
the aisle, the parchments taken by the lads to make kites, and the
single elm of the churchyard that had been cut down to furnish
galley-baulks for the looms of they knew whom--the responsibility for
these things rested somewhere between Pim o’ Cuddy and the bishop of the
diocese.
On the first Sunday morning of his incumbency, save for a preliminary
scrubbing and cleaning and moving out of the hen-coops and so forth, the
parson preached in the church as it was; and then, at his own cost, he
set half a dozen men to work. He paid them at the end of the week in
good coin from a canvas bag. Thereupon a ripple of excitement passed
through the village. The winks and amused stares ceased. The parson was
favoured with nods in the square and street, and awkward greetings were
passed. A man came down from a loom-loft one morning and asked him
whether he had half a guinea in exchange for silver; and the parson, in
his own room, made a little sound of contempt that a few round pieces of
gold should thus buy civility.
Then began the parson’s observations of his new parish.
And first of all, he found that he might regard this hamlet of Wadsworth
either as barbarous or civilised, and be, in a sense, right either way.
It was rougher by several degrees than Horwick Town, where the Thursday
cloth-market was held--the town where he had left the grey galloway;
on the other hand, its manners passed as gentle and gracious by
comparison with certain places away over the well-nigh impassable
Scout--Holdsworth, Booth, Brotherton, Fluett, and other nooks lost in
the wilds that stretched a dozen miles and more to Trawden Forest in
Lancashire. This westerly district went by the name of Back o’ the
Moon, or, as they had it, “Back o’ th’ Mooin” (for they put the “i” into
that and similar words--the “Goose,” the Wadsworth inn, was invariably
the “Gooise,” and there was scarce a long open vowel but they made a
diphthong of it). This mountainous and inaccessible country was cut up
into innumerable short deep valleys and Slacks, thinly-wooded Deans,
stony Shelves, leagues of sweeping heather, and rocks, and Scouts and
Ridges past counting. The best part of a winter might pass and a
Holdsworth man would not be seen in Brotherton nor a Brotherton man in
Booth; while Fluett, save for the Pack Causeway that, creeping by a
roundabout route out of Horwick, gained the high land and crossed the
whole district, would have been utterly isolated. One geographical fact
especially impressed the parson: that was, that the nature of the
country had determined the passing of special Acts of Parliament for the
protection of the weavers of Back o’ th’ Mooin. A man could not, up and
down such a country, carry on his back more than three or four stone of
cloth. He was thus under certain disabilities as compared with those in
the valleys; and it had been necessary to limit by enactment the
buying-powers of the Horwick merchants, in order that the occupation of
the three-and four-stone men should not be entirely gone.
Now the parson was a man of his eyes and ears, and of his tongue withal;
and of one of the earliest of his observations of Back o’ th’ Mooin he
had, by a witty stroke, made a sort of parable. It was a common saying
that in Wadsworth they were “All Raikeses--th’ Eastwoods an’ all,” just
as in Holdsworth they were all Bentleys, including the Murgatroyds, and
in Brotherton Benns, not excepting the Deans. Now it happened that a
Murgatroyd of Holdsworth was famous for a certain run of fighting-dogs
of extraordinary tenacity, and this man (_his_ nickname, by the way, was
“Mish”) hung about Wadsworth a good deal during the summer months--after
a hoyden of a girl, it was said, one of the innumerable Raikeses. He had
turned up one afternoon with one of his dogs in a leash, that it might
not brawl with the tag-rag of Wadsworth, and a little group of men in
the square were now jesting with him about the girl and now discussing
the dog.
The parson chanced to pass as they were badgering this Mish for the
secret of his breeding, and to hear Mish’s reply--something about “in
and in and in.” He stopped abruptly before Murgatroyd.
“Yes,” he interposed; “and in again on top of that, Murgatroyd, till
they’re wrong in their heads and afraid of nothing. Look----”
He pointed to a sackless lad who lolled his tongue over by the
horse-trough. “Yes,” he muttered, half to himself, “there’s little doubt
it’s your Slacks and Scouts and Ridges do it; you’ll not go courting
far from your firesides in the winter ... maybe your metallic water is
the cause of all this goître, too ... in and in and in....”
He shook his head and passed on his way.
And though the winter that was drawing near proved afterwards to be a
green and mild one, the parson seemed able to guess without knowing what
these same Scouts and hills would be like when the snow lay thick on
them, and the packmen went before the horses with spades, seeking for
the black-topped guide-posts, and of each hamlet it became true that
there was “one way in and none out.”
The first time there came to the parson’s ears, faintly over the hills,
the clanging of hammers by night, he made an inquiry, and was told that
the Forge on the moor, “where they shod the pack-horses,” was at work.
On a later occasion, he put himself to the trouble to climb the
precipitous Scout and to walk a mile or so along the Causeway in the
direction of a low glow that seemed to come from a distant fold of the
moor. Two figures, rising suddenly from the dark heather, stopped him
and demanded his errand; and they conducted him back in silence by the
way he had come. Then, about the middle of November, when the moors grew
heavy with rain, the nightly clanging ceased, and the parson had other
matters to occupy him. The winter set in, cold and raw and gusty; it was
the winter of 1778; and the parson had time enough on his hands to
speculate on breeding-in, physical geography, goître, or whatever else
pleased him. Once only during that dead time, journeying on a December
afternoon to Horwick, and meeting there one of the resident magistrates,
John Emmason by name, did he speak of this noise of hammers; he was
counselled to confine his attention to God’s law and to leave man’s
alone. The Wadsworth looms knock-knocked lazily during the short days;
the Horwick Thursday was thinly attended; now and then, but rarely, a
Back o’ th’ Mooiner from Holdsworth or Brotherton or Booth would appear
in Wadsworth with his dog, his staff, and his budget of cloth; and of
any other staple of the district than that of the weaving of kerseys and
shalloons the parson knew nothing.
In that ignorance he was, however, quite alone.
CHAPTER I.
HORWICK THURSDAY.
The hands of the Piece Hall clock still lacked twenty minutes of eight
of the March morning, but already Horwick market-place was thronged with
the folk who had come in for the first general cloth-market of the
spring. They had come in with their oilskin budgets of grey cloth on
their shoulders, and their mastiffs and terriers and lurchers at their
heels; and such as had risen while it was yet night bore the lanterns
that they had now extinguished. The air was misty and chill, and the
hills grey, and a thin vapour of breathing lay over all the
market-place; but a brightness trembled in the haze, and the hoarse
calling of the Horwick cocks and the fainter crowings that answered them
over the misty heights made a cheerful din. The two long pieceboards,
not yet dried of the night’s damp, were stacked with the bales and
budgets, and the weavers leaned against them and ate their breakfasts as
they talked. On the cobbles of the “Cross Pipes,” opposite the Piece
Hall, packmen were loosing the wame-tows of a string of horses. By the
winding Fullergate the merchants and dyers arrived, and there mingled
with the noises of the market and of the morning the incessant light
pattering of wood-soled clogs on the hard earth.
Under the arches of the raised Piece Hall the fullers and dyers and
merchants moved, and the arcades sounded with the shuffle of their
leather shoes and the hum of their voices as they discussed the arrival
of the new Supervisor of Excise, now breakfasting in the “Cross Pipes”
opposite. The bailiff’s books, wherein he entered his proper market
charges, lay unopened on the small table at the top of the steps, and
his two clerks moved among the Back o’ th’ Mooiners at the pieceboards.
The square stone pillars were placarded with lists, broadsheets,
handbills and public notices, and against the pillar immediately behind
the bailiff’s table Matthew Moon, the merchant, leaned.
His fists were doubled deep in his breeches pockets, and his brow was
closely contracted. He was forty, heavily built, with a square and solid
head. As he moved slightly, there showed over the brown homespun of his
shoulder one corner of a proclamation. The royal arms were visible, and
the letters, plain and heavy and black, “COIN....” He moved again, and
the letters became hidden.
There advanced to the bailiff’s table and flung one leg over it, a huge
red man. He was red-haired, red-faced, red-whiskered, red as a red
setter, and on his head was a cap of red foxskin. The table creaked
beneath his weight, and the spread-out of his buckskin-covered thigh hid
half the width of it. An old coat, of a wide and flaring cut, seemed to
add even more to his bulk, and it was spotted with stains of vivid
orange, apparently the eating of some acid. His accent, as he spoke, was
not the curt and grudging accent of those parts.
“So we’ve got William Huggins’s successor, Matthew,” he said cheerfully;
“have you seen him yet?”
As Matthew Moon moved slightly again, the “....ING” of the proclamation
showed.
“No,” he replied.
“Nor I. Well, we must entertain him. King’s Excise or not, William
Huggins was always companionable. A fair show of the lads here. You’ll
be at the meeting to-night?”
The merchant grunted. Presently he said, “What sort o’ man does Sally
say he is?”
“I don’t know. Sally’s out of heart, with Jim and Haigh all these months
in York. Small wonder.”
Matthew Moon frowned again, and was silent for a minute. Then he looked
up and said, “Ye said entertainment, Arthur. Supervisors must take their
chance o’ that. Don’t start taking it heady. Tongues tie knots that
teeth can’t loose, and we don’t want the speech and confession of
Arthur Monjoy yet. Two in York’s enough. Shall I be at the meeting? Yes;
but don’t go and take things too headstrong.”
The big man laughed. “If I remember, they wanted to set the dogs on
Huggins at first; none of that,” he said; and as the merchant moved away
the whole word “COINING” showed on the stone pillar.
Under the bow-windowed shops and houses the vendors of tinware and early
market-stuff and wanded chairs and wooden vessels were knocking up their
light booths; but no wares were yet displayed, for in Horwick the cloth
market takes precedence of all else, and it is a fine of forty
shillings, all but a penny, to as much as ask the price of a piece of
cloth before the first stroke of the bell in the little round-topped
turret of the Piece Hall. Among these minor merchants the women moved
and gossipped. The waspish wife of Pim o’ Cuddy, the Wadsworth verger,
declared that she would not live with her husband another day--but she
had left him at regular intervals any time this twenty years. Fat,
gap-toothed Dooina Benn, who mashed herbs and distilled simples and
rendered services to her sex that Mrs. Pim o’ Cuddy was now little
likely ever to stand in need of, exchanged tidings of the December’s
asthmas and lumbagos, and declared that she had scarce an ounce of
gentian left to her name. They, too, spoke of the new resident excise
officer, but their voices fell as Sally Northrop passed. Sally managed
the “Cross Pipes” during her husband’s absence. Jim Northrop and Will
Haigh should have been back from York months ago; and on a January
afternoon, during Jim’s detention, Dooina had been sent for to Sally in
haste--the innkeeper’s wife had been brought to bed of a son. Not far
from the women, Mish Murgatroyd held in a leash his choicest specimen of
dogflesh, a currant-eyed, brindled brute, heavy as a man, heavily
muzzled and formidable. Curs and terriers and mastiffs, noses to the
ground, threaded in and out across the market-place invisible scents and
tracks of their own, and a group of Back o’ th’ Mooiners looked
admiringly at the animal.
“Hares? Birds? Nay!” Mish said, setting his cap back from his forehead
that had a bull’s-front of rough hair over his brows, but showed two
great calf-licks over his temples. “Keep off him, Charley, for all he’s
muzzled. Sometimes I think I wouldn’t like to slip him at a man; no, not
muzzled. Sitha!” A terrier had approached the brindled dog. The
ferocious creature had not growled, but the terrier crawled away, tail
and belly to earth. “What d’ye think o’ that?” exclaimed Mish,
exultingly.
Suddenly there was a stir under the stable-arch of the “Cross Pipes,”
and the noise about the inn fell. The hush seemed to spread
instantaneously, and out of every upper window heads were thrust. Then,
at the entrance of the stable-arch, a pack was flung down as if by
inadvertence, and somebody stumbled over it. A tall weaver turned with a
heavy budget on his back and jostled somebody. A man laughed. Then the
weavers fell of their own accord back to the pieceboards, and the new
Supervisor of the King’s Excise was seen to be standing on the cobbles.
They have, as the Wadsworth parson had discovered, a humour of their own
Horwick way. As if at a signal, there was a general catching of breath,
and then a shout of laughter went up. Men clambered to the pieceboards
to look over their neighbours’ shoulders at the oddity that had been
sent to them for an exciseman.
He was ludicrous, half a man only, a dwarf. An ordinary flight of steps
would have taxed his diminutive legs; his body and shoulders were those
of an undersized lad; and, awkwardly set on them, an enormous head
wagged. His complexion was floury, and looked as if, had you touched it,
a mothy dust would have adhered to your finger. A pair of round,
black-rimmed spectacles made a double-O under his forehead, and behind
them a pair of drowsy, blinking eyelids, purple with veining, showed
scarce half of the greenish irises beneath them. He made alarmed and
nervous movements with his hands as a hundred dogs pressed about him.
The peal of laughter had scarce died away when a couple of weavers had
an exquisite idea. They hoisted themselves on one of the pieceboards and
began to clack together the wooden heels of their brass-bound clogs.
Across the market-place two more men began to clack. There was a general
scramble for the pieceboards.
The infection caught and spread instantaneously. The tall pieceboards
became an avenue of legs regularly moving--legs in casings of hide, in
wrappings of straw-band, calves and tibias in stockings of grey and
white and blue and brown--and an appalling racket of sound arose. In a
second they had taken their time from the original clackers; the
rhythmic high noise filled the market-place, rang under the Piece Hall
arches, spread in a harsh, splitting cascade to the hills, affronted the
sense of hearing. A man from Booth tossed up a pigeon. The derisive,
puerile noise fell to a soft beat; it rose again as if a regiment of
paviors had been at work; and the villainous dogs that pressed round the
preposterous exciseman seemed but to await a signal from their masters.
The bell in the turret of the Piece Hall struck eight; the wooden heels
accompanied it; and then, as if by magic, there came a silence. Eyes
still streaming with tears of enjoyment turned towards the Piece Hall
steps. The big red man was descending them.
Monjoy extended his hand and snapped his fingers.
“Call those dogs off!” he ordered; and from the indescribable short
mingling of noises that followed each dog seemed to sort out his own
cluck or call or whistle, just as they had threaded the invisible tracks
across the market-place. The great fellow stood opposite the exciseman.
“Our new Resident Supervisor?” he said courteously, his lips twitching
as if he himself had to strive not to make drollery of it.
The heavy, livid lids behind the round black spectacles lifted a little,
and the dwarf gave a short nasal “Hn, hn!”
“Yes, yes; I am he; hn, hn! My name is Cope--Jeremy Cope.”
This time Big Monjoy could not resist the smile. “It is a historic name
in these parts,” he said.
“Yes, yes, yes.... I should say, rather, How so, Mr. ----?”
“How so? Well, if the fellows you see about you are anything at all in
politics (which I doubt), they are for--you know whom: not the Elector.
A gentleman of your name made himself famous some thirty years ago, and
things move slowly hereabouts. But perhaps you have heard my own name
from William Huggins--Arthur Monjoy.”
“From William--from whom?” queried the little man; and to those on the
pieceboards he seemed pleased that any should take the trouble to talk
to one so insignificant as he.
“Your predecessor; you did not know him? Our very good friend, Huggins
was; always, in some respects, a ‘Pot o’ One’ (as they say here of a
man who combs his wool alone)--that was the disability of his office.
Unofficially, we counted him one of ourselves.”
“The poor fellow is--hn, hn!--dead, then?”
“One foggy evening last November, with a pot in his hand and a pipe in
his mouth, like the gentleman in the ballad. Died of a Halo Punch.--But
you must let me show you our market.”
“Thank you, thank you, thank you. A barren country hereabouts, Mr. ----”
“(Monjoy).... Barren? So-so. Yes, the hills are barren, and breed a
rough homely folk. Our staple is cloth, as you see. I see you are
looking at the stains on my old coat. You are right; they are of acid. I
am no clothier myself; I am a seal-engraver.--What was I saying? Ah, our
cloth! Our cloth goes far afield, much to Liverpool; and in return the
good folk of Liverpool press on us a certain number of these metal
pieces, the possession of which is vulgarly supposed to constitute
wealth. But we know better than that, you and I--eh, Cope? ‘Fill me with
your corn and I’ll cover you with my cloth; a third shall build us roof
and hearth’--that’s the true wealth, the commonwealth, eh?--But your
pardon. I carry my coals to Newcastle--that is to say, my cloth to
Horwick.”
“Hn! hn! hn! You are a very pleasant gentleman, Mr. Monjoy.... I should
say, now, that a great variety of saxifrages is to be found on your
hills?”
“Best let the hills alone; these gentlemen at the pieceboards are not
always in a merry humour. Come and see the market.”
As Monjoy passed up the square with the supervisor, talking pleasantly,
and explaining that save for the cloth-staple the district would be a
wilderness, cachinnations, as if at some hidden jest, passed along the
pieceboards. For all the bell had rung, not a man had unstrapped his
budget. Big Monjoy pointed out this feature, or that man--goîtred John
Raikes, dusty with the earth of the fulling-mill; Mish, with the
brindled dog squatting under the pieceboard beneath him; the pack-road
winding up the Shelf to the Causeway, and so forth. And every now and
then the weavers seemed to see the ludicrous figure afresh and to break
into fresh chuckles.
Matthew Moon drew James Eastwood, the Wadsworth flockmaster, aside under
the pillars of the Piece Hall, and took him by the sleeve.
“There’s times, James, when Arthur wants libbing of his tongue,” he
growled. “Two at Ouse Bridge now ... he’s daft. He cuts our dies well
enough; but look here--right in our midst!” He rapped with the back of
his hand on the proclamation.
James Eastwood, a lean man, with a cracked and wrinkled and sly face,
laughed softly.
“Leave the bills to John Emmason,” he said; “John knows what he’s about
when he sticks bills up. The more bills the more safety.--Did ye ever
see aught more like a frog nor yon?”
“That daft talk o’ Arthur’s! There’s more fox in Arthur’s cap than in
all the rest of him put together. Listen to him now!” And again the
voice of the big red man was heard.
“...That may be; but many of them saw Charles Edward in the ’45, in
Manchester. For that matter, his drummer was a Horwick lad; there’s a
tale about that I’ll tell you some time. But King or Elector, it’s small
odds now, and I shouldn’t wonder (this, of course, is _un_official) but
my own word carried as much weight in Back o’ th’ Mooin as another
man’s.--Our Piece Hall is considered a fine building. The statue in the
niche is of Queen Anne; a good piece of work, take an engraver’s word
for it.--The market is very late.--Ah, let me make you known to John
Emmason, one of our magistrates. You and he will doubtless work in some
measure together....”
The bailiff had now opened his books, and the Back o’ th’ Mooiners were
unpacking their budgets on the pieceboards. The market was opening
tardily. The huge red-whiskered man in the foxskin cap continued to
present the new exciseman here and there, and then the bailiff’s clerks
began to pass more busily between the pieceboards. Quickly the talk and
laughter fell to a low murmur of exchange; and presently Monjoy said,
“Come, a morning draught at the ‘Cross Pipes.’ What say you?”
The eyes beneath the bruised-looking lids blinked up at Monjoy.
“Certainly, certainly, certainly; but I fear I must confess--hn!
hn!--that I have a weakly stomach. The weakest glass of brandy and
water--a very little excess--ah!” His narrow chest rose in a quick
little sigh.
“Ay? Well, Huggins was the other way. ‘Four-in-Hand Huggins,’ we called
him; but it beat him at the finish. Come.”
Half-way down the market-place Monjoy stopped to exchange a word with
Matthew Moon. “Ay, eight o’clock, in the kitchen,” Moon grunted, and
Monjoy nodded and returned to Jeremy Cope. They passed almost unnoticed
into the “Cross Pipes.”