The loud barking of a dog followed the shot, and directly after Reed
heard a sharp, light tap on a neighbouring door, and the Major's voice--
"Don't be alarmed, my dear. I thought I heard steps in the garden; my
window was open. Some prowling tramp, I expect. Lie down and go to
sleep."
"Rather a military order," thought Reed; "as if the poor girl could go
to sleep under the circumstances, with her lover being shot at--Yes!"
"Don't be startled, Mr Reed," said the Major, who had tapped at his
door. "We don't have policemen here to go their rounds. Some scoundrel
was after my chickens, I expect; and the dog was asleep, so I just fired
a cartridge at random as a warning to my visitor. Good-night."
"Shall I get up and go round with you?" said Reed.
"My dear sir, no. He's over the hills and far away by now.
Good-night."
"Good-night, sir," said Reed, who was half-dressed; and once more
stillness reigned in the mountain solitude.
"No business of mine," he thought, as he quietly returned to bed; "I've
enough to do to-morrow, and want rest. Chickens, eh? Poor old fellow!
for chickens read little ewe lamb. Who'd have thought it of the pretty,
ladylike girl? And I might have married, and eighteen or twenty years
hence have had a daughter like these two in the narrow circle of my
acquaintance--a child whom I had tenderly nursed in infancy, trained as
she grew up, believed in, trusted, and fancied that I shared her inmost
thoughts. Then the revelation would probably have come. No; I don't
think I shall marry now; and--well, how strange! I feel as if I can
sleep--that engine ought to be fixed in a week, and we'll begin at once.
I'll have the smelting-house where I settled, and the furnaces here
shall be utilised for supplying additional steam. I must send a
telegram off to-morrow to hurry on that tubing. Bah! I'll let all that
go to-night, and--"
"Would you like a little hot water, sir?"
Clive Reed started up.
"Eh? No, thanks. I don't shave. Can I have a canful of cold, fresh
from the river?"
"I have brought one up, sir. Breakfast in half an hour."
Clive Reed was dressed and out in half that space of time, to find the
Major busily tying up some beautiful carnations, one of which he cut and
presented, dew wet, to his guest.
"The most aromatic of our plants, Mr Reed," he said. "I'm sorry I
disturbed you in the night, but it was no false alarm. Look! I would
not rake them out till you had seen them."
He pointed to the couple of heavy footprints in the soft soil, and to
one of his carnations crushed by a boot heel.
"Nothing missing," continued the Major. "Our friend was startled; but
don't say anything about the footprints at breakfast."
"Certainly not. But are you much troubled in this way?"
"Well, no," replied the Major, smiling grimly.
"The fact is, never. I'm afraid the news of the reopening of the mine
has brought some roughs down into the neighbourhood. When you get your
men all at work, they'll be too tired of a night to go wandering about."
"I am very sorry," said Reed.
"Oh, don't say a word about it, my dear sir. I am not blaming you. I
cannot expect to have Derbyshire reserved to me. There! those are
smoothed out, and a man who finds that there are firearms upon premises,
with people who mean to use them, will think twice before he comes
again."
"Yes, of course," said Reed, looking thoughtfully at the fine old
soldierly fellow as he ceased raking his bed. "How will Mademoiselle
look this morning? Paler and more startled. A deceitful little minx!"
"We've ten minutes yet," said the Major. "Care to walk up to the top of
the garden? I can show you where my boundary runs, and yours touches
it. Fair play, Mr Engineer. Keep your own side, and don't come
burrowing under me. Hang your rooting and mining! I don't want to have
my garden under-drained and my cottage come toppling about my ears."
"Don't be alarmed, sir. I shall keep rigorously within the limits of
the mapped-out estate."
"Of course you will, my dear sir. I have no fear. It is fascinating
work, that mining, though. If I were a young man I might be tempted to
begin myself. As you saw indoors, I do dabble a bit in mineralogy and
metallurgy. Dinah, too, is quite an expert."
"Indeed! I was noticing your collection of ores. Some of them very
rich."
"Yes; bits I have chipped here and there during the long years of my
stay. There we are. Your estate runs--"
A shrill whistle arrested him as he stood on the top of a rugged mass of
stone, high above the cottage, where luxuriant ferns clustered in every
niche; and placing a little silver call which hung by his watch-chain to
his lips, he blew an answer.
"One is obliged to have something of this kind," he said smilingly, "to
keep our Martha from going mad. That was the breakfast-bell, or answers
for it. Fine place this for your appetite, Mr Reed."
"Yes, one does get ready for one's meals," replied the guest, as he
walked slowly back down the glen-like garden, toward the open window of
the room in which they had been seated on the previous evening, and from
which Dinah, simply dressed, but looking, with her large eyes and pale
creamy cheeks, ten times as interesting as on the previous night, came
out to meet them.
"A guilty conscience needs no accuser," thought Reed, as they drew near,
but to his intense surprise she held out her hand to him with a sweet,
winning frankness, and bade him good morning. Then turning to the
Major, a sensation as of a sob rising in his throat affected Reed at the
tender affection that seemed to exist between the pair, as Dinah raised
her lips to her father's while he embraced her.
"What a brute I am!" thought Clive; and in spite of the sharp rattle of
the shot seeming to ring in his ears, he told himself that he must have
been wrong.
"A girl like that could not be deceitful," he thought; and when a few
minutes later they were seated at the table, and Martha came in, bearing
a dish of fried ham, he looked hard at the stern robust woman, and
wondered whether she was responsible for the nocturnal visitor.
"Impossible!" he said to himself one moment, and the next he owned that
it might be so. "Fifty if she's a day," he said mentally. "Well,
perhaps so, and the lover has come at last."
Two hours later Clive Reed was back in the great shallow gap, where a
couple of teams of horses had just dragged up heavy loads of machinery
and materials, Sturgess looking morose and speaking in a surly voice,
busy ordering the men about the shaft to look sharp and help to unload.
The click of hammer and pick was making the place echo. Masons were
busy erecting a stone building; and already the place was beginning to
look business-like, and as if waking up from its long, long sleep of
years.
The cottage and its occupants were soon as if they were non-existent to
Clive, who went at once into the temporary office which he had had
erected, wrote and sent off two telegrams to the nearest town for
despatch, several letters, and then, after changing his clothes, went
out to descend the mine.
He had accidentally arranged his time so that he met Sturgess, who had
just ascended.
"Ah! Sturgess," he said, "I wanted to see you. Those rails ought to
have been taken down first thing this morning, so that a line might be
begun for the small trucks."
"Oh, yes, I know," said the man roughly.
The engineer looked at him wonderingly.
"Then see about it at once."
"Plenty of time, sir; plenty of time," said Sturgess insolently.
"There is not plenty of time, sir," said Clive, in a tone of voice which
rather startled the man; "and have the goodness to understand this:--My
late father engaged you on the strength of your recommendations, but I
am in supreme authority here, and I submit to insolence from no person
in my employ."
"I didn't mean to be insolent," grumbled the man.
"Then please understand that you were, and don't venture upon it again,
or we part at once. Now go and see that those rails are taken down
directly, and that a gang of men begin to lay them at once toward the
opening to the great cavern where the water flows."
"No use to lay 'em down there," grumbled Sturgess.
"You heard my orders, sir. I shall be in that direction before long."
Sturgess went out without a word, but with an ugly look upon his
countenance.
"All right!" he muttered. "Make much of it. People who get up very
high have the farther to fall. Curse him! I'll let him see."
"He must have been drinking," thought Clive, as soon as he was alone.
The next minute he was wrapt in the management of the mine, and giving
orders to different men, ending by going to the bucket to be let down,
and noting that Sturgess was looking at him searchingly as he rose from
bending over the labourers who were lifting the rails.