CHAPTER I.

E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Graeme Mackreth, and the Project

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A SON OF HAGAR.

A Romance of Our Time

by

HALL CAINE,

Author of "The Bondsman," "The Deemster," etc.

"God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is."

New York

Hurst & Company

Publishers.

TO

R.D. BLACKMORE.

It must be an exceeding great reward, beyond all the rewards of material

success, to know that you have written a book that is deep, tranquil,

strong and pure. Again and again you have nobly earned that knowledge.

Across the more than thirty years that divide us, the elder from the

younger brother, the veteran from the raw comrade, let me offer my hand

to you as to a master of our craft.

To the author, then, of a romance that has no equal save in Scott, I

humbly dedicate this romance of mine.

H.C.

* * * * *

CUMBRIAN WORDS.

barn=child; dusta=dost thou; hasta=hast thou.

laal=little; leet=alight; girt=great.

sista=seëst thou.

varra=very.

wadsta=wouldst thou.

wilta=wilt thou.

Shaf!=_an expression of contempt_.

PREFACE.

In my first novel, "The Shadow of a Crime," I tried to penetrate into

the soul of a brave, unselfish, long-suffering man, and to lay bare the

processes by which he raised himself to a great height of

self-sacrifice. In this novel the aim has been to penetrate into the

soul of a bad man, and to lay bare the processes by which he is tempted

to his fall. To find a character that shall be above all common

tendencies to guilt and yet tainted with the plague-spot of evil hidden

somewhere; then to watch the first sharp struggle of what is good in the

man with what is bad, until he is in the coil of his temptation; and

finally, to show in what tragic ruin a man of strong passions, great

will and power of mind may resist the force that precipitates him and

save his soul alive--this is, I trust, a motive no less worthy, no less

profitable to study, in the utmost result no less heroic and inspiring,

than that of tracing the upward path of noble types of mind. For me

there has been a pathetic, and I think purifying, interest in looking

into the soul of this man and seeing it corrode beneath the touch of a

powerful temptation until at the last, when it seems to lie spent, it

rises again in strength and shows that the human heart has no depths in

which it is lost. If this character had been equal to my intention, it

might have been a real contribution to fiction, and far as I know it to

fall short of the first deep blow of feeling in which it was conceived,

it is, I think, new to the novel, though it holds a notable place in the

drama--it would be presumptuous to say where--unnecessary, also, as I

have made no disguise of my purpose.

One of the usual disadvantages of choosing a leading character that is

off the lines of heroic portraiture is that the author may seem to be in

sympathy with a base part in life and with base opinions. In this novel

I run a different risk. I shall not be surprised if I provoke some

hostility in making the bad man justify his course by the gaunt and grim

morality that masquerades as the morality of our own time, while the

good man is made to justify his one dubious act by the full and sincere

and just morality that too often wears now the garb of vice--the

morality of the books of Moses. This novel relies, I trust, on the sheer

humanities alone, but among its less aggressive purposes is that of a

plea for the natural rights of the bastard. Those rights have been

recognized in every country and by every race, except one, since the day

when the outcast woman in the wilderness hearkened to the cry from

heaven which said, "God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is." In

England alone have the rights of blood been as nothing compared with

the rights of property, and it is part of the business of this novel to

exhibit these interests at a climax of strife. I have no fear that any

true-hearted person will accuse me of a desire to cast reproach upon

marriage as an ordinance. Recognizing the beauty and the sanctity of

marriage, I have tried to show that true marriage is a higher thing than

a ceremony, and that people who use the gibbet and stake for offenders

against its forms are too often those who see no offense in the

violation of its spirit.

My principal scenes are again among the mountains of Cumberland; but in

this second attempt I have tried to realize more completely their

solitude and sweetness, their breezy healthfulness, and their scent as

of new-cut turf, by putting them side by side with scenes full of the

garrulous clangor and the malodor of the dark side of London.

When I began, I thought to enlarge the popular knowledge of our robust

north-country by the addition of some whimsical character and quaint

folk-lore. If much of this quiet local atmosphere has had to make way

before one strong current of tragic feeling, I trust some of it remains

that is fresh and bracing in the incidents of the booth, the smithy, the

dalesman's wedding, the rush-bearing, the cock-fighting, and the

sheep-shearing. Those readers of the earlier book who found human nature

and an element of humor in the patois, will regret with me the necessity

so to modify the dialect in this book as to remove from it nearly all

the race quality that comes of intonation.

I ought to add that one of my characters, Parson Christian, is a

portrait of a dear, simple, honest soul long gone to his account, and

that the words here put into his mouth are oftener his own than mine.

I trust this book may help to correct a prevailing misconception as to

the morals and mind of the typical English peasantry. It is certain that

the conventional peasant of literature, the broad-mouthed rustic in a

smock-frock, dull-eyed, mulish, beetle-headed, doddering, too vacant to

be vicious, too doltish to do amiss, does not exist as a type in

England. What does exist in every corner of the country is a peasantry

speaking a patois that is often of varying inflections, but is always

full of racy poetry, illiterate and yet possessed of a vast oral

literature, sharing brains with other classes more equally than

education, humorous, nimble-witted; clear-sighted, astute, cynical, not

too virtuous, and having a lofty, contempt for the wiseacres of the

town.

The manners and customs, the folk lore and folk-talk of Cumberland are

far from exhausted in my two Cumberland novels; but it is not probable

that I shall work in this vein again. In parting from it, may I venture

to hope that here and there a reader grown tired of the life of the

great cities has sometimes found it a relief to escape with me into

these mountain solitudes and look upon a life as real and more true; a

life that is humble and yet not low; a life in which men may be men, and

the rude people of the soil need study the face of no master save nature

alone?

A SON OF HAGAR.

_BOOK I._

RETRO ME, SATHANA!

PROLOGUE.

IN THE YEAR 1845.

It was a chill December morning. The atmosphere was dense with fog in

the dusky chamber of a London police court; the lights were bleared and

the voices drowsed. A woman carrying a child in her arms had been half

dragged, half pushed into the dock. She was young; beneath her

disheveled hair her face showed almost girlish. Her features were

pinched with pain; her eyes had at one moment a serene look, and at the

next moment a look of defiance. Her dress had been rich; it was now torn

and damp, and clung in dank folds to her limbs. The child she carried

appeared to be four months old. She held it convulsively at her breast,

and when it gave forth a feeble cry she rocked it mechanically.

"Your worship, I picked this person out of the river at ha'past one

o'clock this morning," said a constable. "She had throwed herself off

the steps of Blackfriars Bridge."

"Had she the child with her?" asked the bench.

"Yes, your worship; and when I brought her to land I couldn't get the

little one out of her arms nohow--she clung that tight to it. The

mother, she was insensible; but the child opened its eyes and cried."

"Have you not learned her name?"

"No, sir; she won't give us no answer when we ask her that."

"I am informed," said the clerk, "that against all inquiries touching

her name and circumstances she keeps a rigid silence. The doctor is of

opinion, your worship, that the woman is not entirely responsible."

"Her appearance in court might certainly justify that conclusion," said

the magistrate.

The young woman had gazed vacantly about her with an air of

indifference. She seemed scarcely to realize that through the yellow

vagueness the eyes of a hundred persons were centered on her haggard

face.

"Anybody here who knows her?" asked the bench.

"Yes, your worship; I found out the old woman alonger she lodged."

"Let us hear the old person."

A woman in middle life--a little, confused, aimless, uncomfortable

body--stepped into the box. She answered to the name of Drayton. Her

husband was a hotel porter. She had a house in Pimlico. A month ago one

of her rooms on the first floor back had been to let. She put a card in

her window, and the prisoner applied. Accepted the young lady as tenant,

and had been duly paid her rent. Knew nothing of who she was or where

she came from. Couldn't even get her name. Had heard her call the baby

Paul. That was all she knew.

"Her occupation, my good woman, what was it?

"Nothing; she hadn't no occupation, your worship."

"Never went out? Not at night?"

"No, sir; leastways not at night, sir. I hopes your worship takes me for

an honest woman, sir."

"Did nothing for a living, and yet she paid you. Did you board her?"

"Yes, your worship; she could cook her wittles, but the poor young thing

seemed never to have heart for nothing, sir."

"Never talked to you?"

"No, sir; nothing but cried. She cried, and cried, and cried, 'cept when

she laughed, and then it were awful, your worship. My man always did say

as how there was no knowing what she'd be doing of yet."

"Is she married, do you know?"

"Yes, your worship; she wears her wedding-ring quite regular--only, once

she plucked it off and flung it in the fire--I saw it with my own eyes,

sir, or I mightn't ha' believed it; and I never did see the like--but

the poor creature's not responsible at whiles--that's what my husband

says."

"What was her behavior to the child? Did she seem fond of it?"

"Oh, yes, your worship; she used to hug, and hug, and hug it, and call

it her darling, and Paul, and Paul, and Paul, and all she had left in

the world."

"When did you see her last before to-day?"

"Yesterday, sir; she put on her bonnet and cape and drew a shawl around

the baby, and went out in the afternoon. 'It will do you a mort of

good,' says I to her; 'Yes, Mrs. Drayton,' says she, 'it will do us both

a world of good.' That was on the front doorsteps, your worship and it

was a nice afternoon, but I had never no idea what she meant to be doing

of; but she's not responsible, poor young thing, that's what my--"

"And when night came and she hadn't got home, did you go in search of

her?"

"Yes, your worship; for I says to my husband, says I, 'Poor young thing,

I can't rest in my bed, and knowing nothing of what's come to her.' And

my man, he says to me, 'Maggie,' he says, 'you go to the station and

give the officers her description,' he says--'a tall young woman as

might ha' been a lady, a-carrying a baby--- that'll be good enough,' he

says, and I went. And this morning the officer came, and I knew by his

face as something had happened, and--"

"Let us hear the doctor. Is he in court?"

"Yes, your worship," said the constable.

Mrs. Drayton was being bustled out of the box. She stopped on the first

step down--

"And I do hope as no harm will come to her--she's not

responsible--that's what my hus--"

"All right, we know all that; down with you; this way; don't bother his

worship!"

At the bottom of the steps the woman stopped again with a handkerchief

to her eyes.

"And it do make me cry to see her, poor thing, and the baby, too, and

innocent as a kitten--and I hopes if anything is done to her as--"

Mrs. Drayton's further hopes and fears were lost in the bustle of the

court. The young woman in the dock still gazed about her vacantly. There

was strength in her firmly molded lip, sensibility in her large dark

eyes, power in her broad, smooth brow, and a certain stateliness in the

outlines of her tall, slim figure.

The doctor who had examined her gave his report in a few words; the

woman should be under control, though she was dangerous to no one but

herself. Her attempt at suicide was one of the common results of

disaster in affairs of love. Perhaps she was a married woman, abandoned

by her husband; more likely she was an unfortunate lady in whom the

shame of pregnancy had produced insanity. She was obviously a person of

education and delicacy of feeling.

"She must have connections of some kind," said the magistrate; and,

turning to the dock, he said quietly, "Give us your name, my good lady."

The woman seemed not to hear, but she pressed her child yet closer to

her breast, and it cried feebly.

The magistrate tried again.

"Your baby's name is Paul, isn't it? Paul--what?"

She looked around, glanced at the magistrate and back at the people in

the court, but said nothing.

Just then the door opposite the bench creaked slightly, and a gentleman

entered. The woman's wondering eyes passed over him. In an instant her

torpor was shaken off. She riveted her gaze on the new-comer. Her

features contracted with lines of pain. She drew the child aside, as if

to hide it from sight. Then her face twitched, and she staggered back

into the arms of the constable behind her. She was now insensible.

Through the dense folds of the fog the vague faces of the spectators

showed an intent expression.

It was observed that the gentleman who had entered the court a moment

before immediately left it. The magistrate saw him pass out of the door

merely as a distorted figure in the dusky shadows.

"Let her be removed to the Dartford asylum," said the magistrate; "I

will give an order at once."

A voice came from the body of the court. It was Mrs. Drayton's voice,

thick with sobs.

"And if you please, your worship, may me and my husband take care of the

child until the poor young thing is well enough to come for it? We've no

children of our own, sir, and my husband and me, we'd like to have it,

and no one would do no better by it, your worship."

"I think you are a good woman, Mrs. Drayton," said the magistrate. Then,

turning to the clerk, he added: "Let inquiries be made about her, and,

if all prove satisfactory, let the child be given into her care."

"Oh, thank your worship; it do make me cry--"

"Yes, all right--never mind now--we know all about it--come along."

The prisoner recovered consciousness in being removed from the dock; the

constable was taking the child out of her arms. She clung to it with

feverish hands.

"Take me away," she said in a deep whisper, and her eyes wandered to the

door.

"Stop that man!" said the magistrate, pointing to the vague recesses

into which the spectator had disappeared. An officer of the court went

out hastily. Presently returning: "He is gone," said the officer.

"Take me away, take me away!" cried the prisoner in a tense voice.

"Paul, Paul, my own little Paul!" The woman's breath came and went in

gusts, and her child cried from the convulsive pressure to her breast.

"Remove them," said the bench.

There was a faint commotion. Among the people in the court, huddled like

sheep, there was a harsh scraping of feet, and some suppressed

whispering. The stolid faces on the bench turned and smiled slightly in

the yellow gleam of the gas that burned in front of them. Then the

momentary bustle ended, the woman and child were gone, and the calm

monotony of the court was resumed.

Six months later a handsome woman, still little more than a girl, yet

with eyes of suffering, stepped up to the door of a house in Pimlico and

knocked timidly.

"I wish to see Mrs. Drayton," she said, when the door was opened by an

elderly person.

"Bless you, they're gone, Mrs. Drayton and her Husband."

"Gone!" said the young woman, "gone! What do you mean?"

"Why, gone--removed--shifted."

"Removed--shifted?" The idea seemed to struggle its slow way into her

brain.

"In course--what else, when the big hotel fails and he loses his job?

Rents can't be paid on nothing a week, and something to put in the mouth

besides."

"Gone? Are you mad? Woman, think what you're saying. Gone where?"

"How do I know where? Mad, indeed! I'll not say but other folk look a

mort madder nor ever I looked."

The young woman took her by the shoulder.

"Don't say that--don't say you don't know where they're gone. They've

got my child, I tell you; my poor little Paul.

"Oh, so you're the young party as drowned herself, are you? Well,

they're gone anyways, and the little chit with them, and there's no

saying where. You may believe me. Ask the neighbors else."

The young woman leaned against the door-jamb with a white face and great

eyes.

"Well, well, how hard she takes it. Deary me, deary me, she's not a bad

sort, after all. Well, well, who'd ha' thought it! There, there, come in

and sit awhile. It is cruel to lose one's babby--and me to tell her,

too. Misbegotten or not, it's one's own flesh and blood, and that's what

I always says."

The young woman had been drawn into the house and seated on a chair. She

got up again with the face of an old woman.

"Oh, I'm choking!" she said.

"Rest awhile, do now, my dear--there--there."

"No, no, my good woman, let me go."

"Heaven help you, child; how you look!"

"Heaven has never helped me," said the young woman. "I was a Sister of

Charity only two years ago. A man found me and wooed me; married me and

abandoned me; I tried to die and they rescued me; they separated me from

my child and put me in an asylum; I escaped, and have now come for my

darling, and he is gone."

"Deary me, deary me!" and the old woman stroked her consolingly.

"Let me go," she cried, starting up afresh. "If Heaven has done nothing

for me, perhaps the world itself will have mercy."

The ghastly face answered ill to the grating laugh that followed as she

jerked her head aside and hurried away.

CHAPTER I.

IN THE YEAR 1875.

It was Young Folks' Day in the Vale of Newlands. The summer was at its

height; the sun shone brightly; the lake to the north lay flat as a

floor of glass, and reflected a continent of blue cloud; the fells were

clear to their summits, and purple with waves of heather. It was

noontide, and the shadows were short. In the slumberous atmosphere the

bees droned, and the hot air quivered some feet above the long, lush

grass. The fragrance of new-mown hay floated languidly through a

sub-current of wild rose and honeysuckle. In a meadow at the foot of the

Causey Pike tents were pitched, flags were flying, and crowds of men,

women, and children watched the mountain sports.

In the center of a group of spectators two men, stripped to the waist,

were wrestling. They were huge fellows, with muscles that stood out on

their arms like giant bulbs, and feet that held the ground like the

hoofs of oxen. The wrestlers were calm to all outward appearance, and

embraced each other with the quiet fondling of lambs and the sinuous

power of less affectionate creatures. But the people about them were

wildly excited. They stopped to watch every wary movement of the foot,

and craned their necks to catch the subtlest twist of the wrist.

"Sista, Reuben, sista! He'll have enough to do to tummel John Proudfoot.

John's up to the scat to-day, anyways."

"Look tha! John's on for giving him the cross-buttock."

John was the blacksmith, a big buirdly fellow with a larger blunt head.

"And he has given it too, has John."

"Nay, nay, John's doon--ey, ey, he's doon, is John."

One of the wrestlers had thrown the other, and was standing quietly over

him. He was a stalwart young man of eight-and-twenty, brown-haired,

clear-eyed, of a ruddy complexion, with a short, thick, curly beard, and

the grace and bearing that comes of health and strength and a complete

absence of self-consciousness. He smiled cheerfully, and nodded his head

in response to loud shouts of applause. "Weel done! Verra weel done!

That's the way to ding 'em ower! What sayst tha, Reuben?"

"What a bash it was, to be sure!"

"What dusta think you of yon wrestling, ey, man?"

"Nay, nay, it's verra middling."

"Ever seen owt like it since the good auld days you crack on sa often,

auld man?"

"Nay, he doont him verra neat, did Paul--I will allow it."

"There's never a man in Cumberland need take a hand with young Paul

Ritson after this."

"Ey, ey; he's his father's son."

The wrestler, surrounded by a little multitude of boys, who clung to his

sparse garments on every side, made his way to a tent.

At the same moment a ludicrous figure forced a passage through the

crowd, and came to a stand in the middle of the green. It was a

diminutive creature, mounted on a pony that carried its owner on a

saddle immediately below its neck, and a pair of paniers just above its

tail. The rider was an elderly man with shaggy eyebrows and beard of

mingled black and gray. His swarthy, keen wizened face was twisted into

grotesque lines beneath a pair of little blinking eyes, which seemed to

say that anybody who refused to see that they belonged to a perfectly,

wideawake son of old Adam made a portentous mistake. He was the mountain

peddler, and to-day, at least, his visit was opportune.

"Lasses, here's for you! Look you, here's Gubblum Oglethorpe, pony and

all."

"Why, didsta ever see the like--Gubblum's getten hissel into a saddle!"

Gubblum, from his seat on the pony, twisted one half of his wrinkled

face awry, and said:

"In course I have! But it's a vast easier getting into this saddle nor

getting out of it, I can tell you!"

"Why, how's that, Gubblum?" cried a voice from the crowd.

"What, man, did you never hear of the day I bought it?"

Sundry shakes of many heads were the response.

"No?" said Gubblum, with an accent of sheer incredulity, and added,

"Well, there is no accounting for the ignorance of some folks."

"What happened to you, Gubblum?"

Gubblum's expression of surprise gave place to a look of condescension.

He lifted his bronzed and hairy hand to the rim of his straw hat to

shade his eyes from the sun.

"Well, when I got on to auld Bessy, here, I couldn't get off

again--that's what happened."

"No? Why?"

"You see, I'd got my clogs on when I went to buy the saddle in Kezzick,

and they're middling wide in the soles, my clogs are. So when I put my

feet into the stirrups, there they stuck."

"Stuck!"

"Ey, fast as nails! And when I got home to Branth'et Edge I couldn't get

them out. So our Sally, she said to my auld woman, 'Mother,' she said,

'we'll have to put father into the stable with the pony and fetch him a

cup of tea.' And that's what they did, and when I had summat into me I

had another fratch at getting out of the saddle; but I couldn't manish

it; so I had--what you think I had to do?"

"Nay, man, what?"

"I had to sleep all night in the stable on Bessy's back!"

"Bless thee, Gubblum, and whatever didsta do?"

"I'm coming to that, on'y some folks are so impatient. Next morning that

lass of mine, she said to her mother, 'Mother,' she said, 'wouldn't it

be best to take the saddle off the pony, and then father he'll sure come

off with it?'"

"And they did do it?"

"Ey, they did. They took Bessy and me round to the soft bed as they

keeps maistly at the back of a stable, and they loosened the straps and

gave a push, and cried 'Away.'"

"Weel, man, weel?"

"Weel! nowt of the sort! It wasn't weel at all! When I rolled over I was

off the pony, for sure; but I was stuck fast to the saddle just the

same."

"What ever did they do with thee then?"

"I'm coming to that, too, on'y some folks are so mortal fond of hearing

theirselves talk. They picked me up, saddle and all, and set me on the

edge of the kitchen dresser. And there I sat for the best part of a

week, sleeping and waking, and carding and spinning, and getting fearful

thin. But I got off at last, I did!" There was a look of proud content

in Gubblum's face as he added, "What a thing it is to be eddicated! We

don't vally eddication half enough!"

A young fellow--it was Lang Geordie Moore--pushed a smirking face

between the shoulders of two girls, and said:

"Did you take to reading and writing, then, Gubblum, when you were on

the kitchen dresser?"

There was a gurgling titter, but, disdaining to notice the interruption,

Gubblum lifted his tawny face into the glare of the sun, and said:

"It was my son as did it--him that is learning for a parson. He came

home from St. Bees, and 'Mother,' he said, before he'd been in the house

a minute, 'let's take fathers clogs off, and then his feet will come

out of the stirrups."

A loud laugh bubbled over the company. Gubblum sat erect in the saddle

and added with a grave face:

"That's what comes of eddication and reading the Bible and all o' that!

If I had fifty sons I'd make 'em all parsons."

The people laughed again, and crowed and exchanged nods and knowing

winks. They enjoyed the peddler's talk, and felt an indulgent tenderness

for his slow and feeble intellect. He on his part enjoyed no less to

assume a simple and shallow nature. A twinkle lurked under his bushy

brows while he "smoked the gonies." They laughed and he smiled slyly,

and both were satisfied.

Gubblum Oglethorpe, peddler, of Branth'et Edge, got off his pony and

stroked its tousled mane. He was leading it to a temporary stable, when

he met face to face the young wrestler, Paul Ritson, who was coming from

the tent in his walking costume. Drawing up sharply, he surveyed Paul

rapidly from head to foot, and then asked him with a look of

bewilderment what he could be doing there.

"Why, when did you come back to these parts?"

Paul smiled.

"Come back! I've not been away."

The old man looked slyly up into Paul's face and winked. Perceiving no

response to that insinuating communication, his wrinkled face became

more grave, and he said:

"You were nigh to London three days ago."

"Nigh to London three days ago!" Paul laughed, then nodded across at a

burly dalesman standing near, and said: "Geordie, just pinch the old

man, and see if he's dreaming."

There was a general titter, followed by glances of amused inquiry. The

peddler took off his hat, held his head aside, scratched it leisurely,

glanced up again at the face of young Ritson, as if to satisfy himself

finally as to his identity, and eventually muttered half aloud:

"Well, I'm fair maizelt--that's what I am!"

"Maizelt--why?"

"I could ha' sworn I saw you at a spot near London three days ago."

"Not been there these three years," said Paul.

"Didn't you wave your hand to me as we went by--me and Bessy?"

"Did I? Where?"

"Why, at the Hawk and Heron, in Hendon."

"Never saw the place in my life."

"Sure of that?"

"Sure."

The grave old head dropped once more, and the pony's head was held down

to the withered hand that scratched and caressed it. Then the first idea

of a possible reason on Paul's part for keeping his movements secret

suggested itself afresh to Gubblum. He glanced soberly around, caught

the eye of the young dalesman furtively, and winked again. Paul laughed

outright, nodded his head good-humoredly, and rather ostentatiously

winked in response. The company that had gathered about them caught the

humor of the situation, and tittered audibly enough to provoke the

peddler's wrath.

"But I say you have seen it," shouted Gubblum in emphatic tones.

At that moment a slim young man walked slowly past the group. He was

well dressed, and carried himself with ease and some dignity, albeit

with an air of listlessness--a weary and dragging gait, due in part to a

slight infirmity of one foot. When some of the dalesmen bowed to him his

smile lacked warmth. He was Hugh Ritson, the younger brother of Paul.

Gubblum's manner gathered emphasis. "You were standing on the step of

the Hawk and Heron," said he, "and I waved my hand and shouted 'A canny

morning to you, Master Paul'--ey, that I did!"

"You don't say so!" said Paul, with mock solemnity. His brother had

caught the peddler's words, and stopped.

"But I do say so," said Gubblum, with many shakes of his big head. Let

any facetious young gentleman who supposed that it was possible to make

sport of him, understand once for all that it might be as well to throw

a stone into his own garden.

"Why, Gubblum," said Paul, smothering a laugh, "what was I doing at

Hendon?"

"Doing! Well, a chap 'at was on the road along of me said that Master

Paul had started innkeeper."

"Innkeeper!"

There was a prolonged burst of laughter, amid which one amused patriarch

on a stick shouted: "Feel if tha's abed, Gubblum, ma man!"

"And if I is abed, it's better nor being in bed-lam, isn't it?" shouted

the peddler.

Then Gubblum scratched his head again, and said more quietly: "It caps

all. If it wasn't you, it must ha' been the old gentleman hissel'."

"Are we so much alike? Come, let's see your pack."

"His name was Paul, anyways."

Hugh Ritson had elbowed his way through the group, and was now at

Gubblum's elbow listening intently. When the others had laughed, he

alone preserved an equal countenance.

"Paul--what?" he asked.

"Nay, don't ax me--I know nowt no mair--I must be an auld maizelin, I

must, for sure!"

Hugh Ritson turned on his heel and walked off.

CHAPTER II.

The Vale of Newlands runs north and south. On its east banks rise the

Cat Bell fells and the Eel Crags; on the west rise Hindscarth and

Robinson, backed by Whiteless Pike and Grasmoor. A river flows down the

bed of the valley, springing in the south among the heights of Dale

Head, and emptying into Bassenthwaite on the north. A village known as

Little Town stands about midway in the vale, and a road runs along each

bank. The tents were pitched for the sports near the bed of the valley,

on the east side of the Newlands Beck. On the west side, above the road,

there was a thick copse of hazel, oak, and birch. From a clearing in

this wood a thin column of pale blue smoke was rising through the still

air. A hut in the shape of a cone stood a few yards from the road. It

was thatched from the ground upward with heather and bracken, leaving

only a low aperture as door. Near the hut a small fire of hazel sticks

crackled under the pot that swung from a forked triangle of oak limbs.

Fagots were stacked at one end of the clearing; a pile of loose bark lay

near. It was a charcoal pit, and behind a line of hurdles that were

propped with poles and intertwined with dead grass and gorse, an old man

was building a charcoal fire.

He was tall and slight, and he stooped. His eyes were large and heavy;

his long beard was whitening. He wore a low-crowned hat with broad brim,

and a loose flannel jacket without a waistcoat. Most of us convey the

idea that to our own view we are centers of our circles, and that the

universe revolves about us. This old man suggested a different feeling.

To himself he might have been a thing gone somehow out of its orbit.

There was a listless melancholy, a lonely weariness in his look and

movements. An old misery seemed to sit on him.

His name was Matthew Fisher; but the folk of the country-side called him

Laird Fisher. The dubious dignity came of the circumstance that he was

the holder of an absolute royalty on a few acres of land under

Hindscarth. The royalty had been many generations in his family. His

grandfather had set store by it. When the lord of the manor had worked

the copper pits at the foot of the Eel Crags, he had tried to possess

himself of the royalties of the Fishers. But the peasant family resisted

the aristocrat. Luke Fisher believed there was a fortune under his feet,

and he meant to try his own luck on his holding some day. That day never

came. His son, Mark Fisher, carried on the tradition, but made no effort

to unearth the fortune. They were a cool, silent, slow, and stubborn

race. Matthew Fisher followed his father and his grandfather, and

inherited the family faith. All these years the tenders of the lord of

the manor were ignored, and the Fishers enjoyed their title of courtesy

or badinage. When Matthew was a boy there was a rhyme current in the

vale which ran:

"There's t' auld laird, and t' young laird, and t' laird among t' barns.

If iver there comes another laird, we'll hang-him up by t' arms."

There is a tough bit of Toryism in the grain of these northern

dalesfolk. Their threat was idle; no other laird ever came. Matthew

married, and had one daughter only. He farmed his few acres with poor

results. The ground was good enough, but Matthew was living under the

shadow of the family tradition. One day--it was Sunday morning, and the

sun shone brightly--he was rambling by the Po Beck that rose on

Hindscarth and passed through his land, when his eye glanced over a

glittering stone that lay among the pebbles, at the bottom of the

stream. It was ore, good full ore, and on the very surface. Then the

Laird Fisher sunk a shaft and all his earnings with it in an attempt to

procure iron or copper. The dalespeople derided him, but he held

silently on his way.

"How dusta find the cobbles to-day--any softer?" they would ask.

"As soft as the hearts of most folk," he would answer, and then add in a

murmur, "and maybe a vast harder nor their heads."

The undeceiving came at length, and then the Laird Fisher was old and

poor. His wife died broken-hearted. After that the laird never rallied.

The breezy irony of the dalesfolk did not spare the old man's bent head.

"He's brankan" (holding up his head) "like a steg swan," they would say

as he went past. The shaft was left unworked, and the holding lay

fallow. Laird Fisher took wage from the lord of the manor to burn

charcoal in the copse.

The old man had raised his vertical shaft, and was laying the oak limbs

against it, when a girl of about eighteen came along the road from the

south, and clambered over the stile that led to the charcoal pit. She

was followed by a sheep-dog, small and wiry as a hill-fox.

"Is that thee, Mercy?" said the charcoal-burner from the fire, without

turning.

The girl was a pretty little thing; yet there was something wrong with

her prettiness. One saw at once that her cheeks should have been pink

and white like the daisy, and that her hair, which was yellow as the

primrose, should have tumbled in wavelets about them. There ought to

have been sunshine in the blue eyes, and laughter on the red lips, and

merry lilt in the soft voice. But the pink had faded from the girl's

cheek; the shadow had chased the sunshine from her eyes; her lips had

taken a downward turn, and a note of sadness had stolen the merriment

from her voice.

"It's only your tea, father," she said, setting down a basket. Then

taking up a spoon that lay on the ground, she stirred the mess that was

simmering over the fire. The dog lay and blinked in the sun.

A rabbit rustled through the coppice, and a jay screeched in the distant

glade. But above all came the peals of merry laughter from below. The

girl's eyes wandered yearningly to the tents over which the flags were

flying.

"Do you hear the sports, father?" she said.

"Ey, lass, there's gay carryin's-on. They're chirming and chirping like

as many sparrows." The old man twisted about. "I should have thowt as

thou'd have been in the thick of the thrang thysel', Mercy, carryin' on

the war."

"I didn't care to go," said Mercy in an undertone.

The old man looked at her silently for a moment.

"Ways me, but thoos not the same heartsome lass," he said, and went on

piling the fagots around the shaft. "But I count nowt of sec wark," he

added, after a pause.

Little Mercy's eyes strayed back from the bubbling pot to the tents

below. There was a shout of applause.

"That's Geordie Moore's voice," thought Mercy. She could see a circle

with linked hands. "They're playing the cushion game," she said under

her breath, and then drew a long sigh.

Though she did not care to go to the sports to-day, she felt, oh! so

sick at heart. Like a wounded hare that creeps into quiet ambush, and

lies down on the dry clover to die, she had stolen away from all this

noisy happiness; but her heart's joy was draining away. In her wistful

eyes there was something almost cruel in this bustling merriment, in

this flaunting gayety, in this sweet summer day itself.

The old charcoal-burner had stepped up to where the girl knelt with

far-away eyes.

"Mercy," he said, "I've wanted a word with you this many a day."

"With me, father?"

The girl rose to her feet. There was a look of uneasiness in her face.

"You've lost your spirits--what's come of them?"

"Me, father?"

The assumed surprise was in danger of breaking down.

"Not well, Mercy--is that it?"

He took her head between his hard old hands, and stroked her hair as

tenderly as a mother might have done.

"Oh, yes, father; quite well, quite."

Then there was a little forced laugh. The lucent eyes were full of a

dewy wistfulness.

"Any trouble, Mercy?"

"What trouble, father?"

"Nay, any trouble--trouble's common, isn't it?"

The old man's voice shook slightly, and his hand trembled on the girl's

head.

"What have I to trouble me!" said Mercy, in a low voice nigh to

breaking.

"Well, you know best," said the charcoal-burner. Then he put his hand

under the girl's chin and lifted her face until her unwilling eyes

looked into his. The scrutiny appeared to console him, and a smile

played over his battered features. "Maybe I was wrong," he thought.

"Folk are allus clattering."

Mercy made another forced little laugh, and instantly the Laird Fisher's

face saddened.

"They do say 'at you're not the same heartsome little lass," he said.

"Do they? Oh, but I am quite happy! You always say people are

busybodies, don't you, father?"

The break-down was imminent.

"Why, Mercy, you're crying."

"Me--crying!" The girl tossed her head with, a pathetic gesture of gay

protestation. "Oh, no; I was laughing--that was it."

"There are tears in your eyes, anyways."

"Tears? Nonsense, father! Tears? Didn't I tell you that your sight was

failing you--- ey, didn't I, now?"

It was of no use to struggle longer. The fair head fell on the heaving

breast, and Mercy sobbed.

The old man looked at her through a blinding mist in his hazy eyes.

"Tell me, my little lassie, tell me," he said.

"Oh, it's nothing," said Mercy. She had brushed away the tears and was

smiling.

The Laird Fisher shook his head.

"It's nothing, father--only--"

"Only--what?"

"Only--oh, it's nothing!"

"Mercy, my lass," said the Laird Fisher, and the tears stood now in his

own dim eyes, "Mercy, remember if owt goes wrong with a girl, and her

mother is under the grass, her father is the first she should come to

and tell all."

The old man had seated himself on a stout block cut from a trunk, and

was opening the basket, when there was a light, springy step on the

road.

"So you fire to-night, Matthew?"

An elderly man leaned over the stile and smiled.

"Nay, Mr. Bonnithorne, there's ower much nastment in the weather yet."

The gentleman took off his silk hat and mopped his forehead. His hair

was thin and of a pale yellow, and was smoothed flat on his brow.

"You surprise me! I thought the weather perfect. See how blue the sky

is."

"That doesn't argy. It might be better with never a blenk of blue. It

was rayder airy yesterday, and last night the moon got up as blake and

yellow as May butter."

The smile was perpetual on the gentleman's face. It showed his teeth

constantly.

"You dalesmen are so weather-wise."

The voice was soft and womanish. There was a little laugh at the end of

each remark.

"We go by the moon in firing, sir," the charcoal-burner answered, "Last

night it rose sou'-west, and that doesn't mean betterment, though it's

quiet enough now. There'll be clashy weather before nightfall."

The girl strayed away into the thicket, and startled a woodcock out of a

heap of dead oak leaves. The gentleman followed her with his eyes. They

were very small and piercing eyes, and they blinked frequently.

"Your daughter does not look very well, Matthew."

"She's gayly, sir; she's gayly," said the charcoal-burner shortly, his

mouth in his can of tea.

The gentleman smiled from the teeth out. After a pause, he said: "I

suppose it isn't pleasant when one of your hurdles is blown down, and

the charcoal burning," indicating the wooden hurdles which had been

propped about the half-built charcoal stack.

"Ey, it's gay bad wark, to be sure--being dragged into the fire."

The dog had risen with a startled movement. Following the upward

direction of the animal's nose, the gentleman said, "Whose sheep are

those on the ghyll yonder?"

"Auld Mr. Ritson's, them herdwicks."

The sheep were on a ridge of shelving rock.

"Dangerous spot, eh?"

"Ey, it's a bent place. They're verra clammersome, the black-faced

sorts."

"I'll bid you good-day, Matthew." The yellow-haired elderly gentleman

was moving off. He walked with a jerk and a spring on his toes. "And

mind you take your daughter to the new doctor at Keswick," he said at

parting.

"It's not doctoring that'll mend Mercy," the charcoal-burner muttered,

when the other had gone.

CHAPTER III.

Josiah Bonnithorne was quite without kinspeople or connections. His

mother had been one of two sisters who lived by keeping a small

confectioner's shop in Whitehaven, and were devoted Methodists. The

sisters had formed views as to matrimony, and they enjoyed a curious

similarity of choice. They were to be the wives of preachers. But the

opportunity was long in coming, and they grew elderly. At length the

younger sister died, and so solved the problem of her future. The elder

sister was left for two years more alone with her confectionery. Then

she married a stranger who had come to one of the pits as gangsman. It

was a sad falling off. But at all events the gangsman was a local

preacher, and so the poor soul who took him for husband had effected a

compromise with her cherished ideal. It turned put that he was a

scoundrel as well, and had a wife living elsewhere. This disclosure

abridged his usefulness among the brethren, and he fled. Naturally, he

left his second wife behind, having previously secured a bill of sale on

her household effects. A few months elapsed, the woman was turned adrift

by her husband's creditors, and then a child was born. It was a poor

little thing--a boy. The good souls of the "connection" provided for it

until it was two years old, and afterward placed it in a charity school.

While the little fellow was there, his mother was struck down by a

mortal complaint. Then for the first time the poor ruined woman asked to

see her child. They brought the little one to her bedside, and it smiled

down into her dying face. "Oh, that it may please the Lord to make him a

preacher!" she said with a great effort. At a sign from the doctor the

child was taken away. The face pinched by cruel suffering quivered

slightly, the timid eyes worn by wasted hope softened and closed, and

the mother bid farewell to everything.

The boy lived. They christened him Josiah, and he took for surname the

maiden name of his mother, Bonnithorne. He was a weakling, and had no

love of boyish sports; but he excelled in scholarship. In spite of these

tendencies, he was apprenticed to a butcher when the time came to remove

him from school. An accident transferred him to the office of a

solicitor, and he was articled. Ten years later he succeeded to his

master's practice, and then he sailed with all sail set.

He disappointed the "connection" by developing into a Churchman, but

otherwise aroused no hostile feeling. It was obviously his cue to

conciliate everybody. He was liked without being popular, trusted

without being a favorite. Churchwarden, trustee for public funds,

executor for private friends, he had a reputation for disinterested

industry. And people said how well it was that one so unselfish as

Josiah Bonnithorne should nevertheless prosper even as this world goes.

But there was a man in Cumberland who knew Mr. Bonnithorne from the

crown of his head to the sole of his foot. That man was Mr. Hugh Ritson.

Never for an instant did either of these palter with the other.

When Mr. Bonnithorne left the charcoal pit, he followed the road that

crossed the Newlands Beck, and returned on the breast of the Eel Crags.

This led him close to the booth where the sports were proceeding. He

heard, as he passed, the gurgling laugh with which the dalesfolk

received the peddler's story of how he saw Paul Ritson at Hendon. A

minute afterward he encountered Hugh Ritson on the road. There was only

the most meagre pretense at greeting when these men came face to face.

"Your father sent for me," said Mr. Bonnithorne.

"On what business?" Hugh Ritson asked.

"I have yet to learn."

They walked some steps without speaking. Then the lawyer turned with his

constant smile, and said in his soft voice:

"I have just seen your little friend. She looks pale, poor thing!

Something must be done, and shortly."

Hugh Ritson's face flushed perceptibly. His eyes were on the ground.

"Let us go no further in this matter," he said, in a low tone. "I saw

her yesterday. Then there is her father, poor, broken creature! Let it

drop."

"I did not believe it of you!" Mr. Bonnithorne spoke calmly and went on

smiling.

"Besides, I am ashamed. The thing is too mean," said Hugh Ritson. "In

what turgid melodrama does not just such an episode occur?"

"So, so! Or is it the story of the cat in the adage? You would and you

wouldn't?"

"My blood is not thick enough. I can't do it."

"Then why did you propose it? Was it your suggestion or mine? I thought

to spare the girl her shame. Here her trouble must fall on her in

battalions, poor little being. Send her away, and you decimate them."

"It is unnecessary. You know I am superior to prejudice." Hugh Ritson

dropped his voice and said, as if speaking into his breast: "If the

worst comes to the worst, I can marry her."

Mr. Bonnithorne laughed lightly.

"Ho! ho! And in what turgid melodrama does not just such an episode

occur?"

Hugh Ritson drew up sharply.

"Why not? Is she poor? Then what am I? Uneducated? What is education

likely to do for me? A simple creature, all heart and no head? God be

praised for that!"

At this moment a girl's laugh came rippling through the air. It was one

of those joyous peals that make the heart's own music. Hugh Ritson's

pale face flushed a little, and he drew his breath hard.

Mr. Bonnithorne nodded his head in the direction of the voice, and said

softly: "So our friend Greta is here to-day?"

"Yes," said Hugh Ritson very quietly.

Then the friends walked some distance in silence.

"It is scarcely worthy of you to talk in this brain-sick fashion," said

Mr. Bonnithorne. There was a dull irritation in the tone. "You place

yourself in the wrong point of view. You do not love the little being."

Hugh Ritson's forehead contracted, and he said: "If I have wrecked my

life by one folly, one act of astounding unwisdom, what matter? There

was but little to wreck. I am a disappointed man."

"Pardon me, you are a very young one," said Mr. Bonnithorne.

"What am I in my father's house? He gives no hint of helping me to an

independence in life."

"There are the lands. Your father must be a rich man."

"And I am a second son."

"Indeed?"

Hugh Ritson glanced up quickly.

"What do you mean?"

"You say you are a second son."

"And what then?"

"Would it be so fearful a thing if you were not a second son?"

"In the name of truth, be plain. My brother Paul is living."

Mr. Bonnithorne nodded his head twice or thrice, and said calmly: "You

know that your brother hopes to marry Greta?"

"I have heard it."

Again the flush came to Hugh Ritson's cheeks. His low voice had a

tremor.

"Did I ever tell you of her father's strange legacy?"

"Never."

"My poor friend Robert Lowther left a legacy to a son of his own, who

was Greta's half-brother."

"An illegitimate son?"

"Not strictly. Lowther married the son's mother," said Mr. Bonnithorne.

"Married her? Then his son was his heir?"

"No."

Hugh Ritson looked perplexed.

"The girl was a Catholic, Lowther a Protestant. A Catholic priest

married them in Ireland. That was not a valid marriage by English law."

Hugh smiled grimly.

"And Lowther had the marriage annulled?"

"He had fallen in love," began Mr. Bonnithorne.

"This time with an heiress?" There was a caustic laugh.

Mr. Bonnithorne nodded. "Greta's mother. So he--"

"Abandoned the first wife," Hugh Ritson interrupted again.

Mr. Bonnithorne shook his head with an innocent expression.

"Wife? Well, he left her."

"You talk of a son. Had they one?"

"They had," said Mr. Bonnithorne, "and when the woman and child ...

disappeared--"

"Exactly," said Hugh Ritson, and he smiled. "What did Lowther then?"

"Married again, and had a daughter--Greta."

"Then why the legacy?"

"Conscience-money," said Mr. Bonnithorne, pursing up his mouth.

Hugh Ritson laughed slightly.

"The sort of fools' pence the Chancellor of the Exchequer receives

labeled 'Income Tax.'"

"Precisely--only Lowther had no address to send it to."

"He had behaved like a scoundrel," said Hugh Ritson.

"True, and he felt remorse. After the second marriage he set people to

find the poor woman and child. They were never found. His last days were

overshadowed by his early fault. I believe he died broken-hearted. In

his will--I drew it for him--he left, as I say, a sum to be paid to this

son of his first wife--when found."

Hugh Ritson laughed half mockingly.

"I thought he was a fool. A scoundrel is generally a fool as well."

"Generally; I've often observed it," said Mr. Bonnithorne.

"What possible interest of anybody's could it be to go hunting for the

son of the fool's deserted wife?"

"The fool," answered Mr. Bonnithorne, "was shrewd enough to make an

interest by ordering that if the son were not found before Greta came of

age, a legacy of double the sum should be paid to an orphanage for

boys."

Hugh Ritson's respect for the dead man's intelligence experienced a

sensible elevation.

"So it is worth a legacy to the family to discover Greta's

half-brother," he said, summing up the situation in an instant. "If

alive--If not, then proof that he is dead."

The two men had walked some distance, and reached the turning of a lane

which led to a house that could be seen among the trees at the foot of a

ghyll. The younger man drew up on his infirm foot.

"But I fail to catch the relevance of all this. When I mentioned that I

was a second son you--"

"I have had hardly any data to help me in my search," Mr. Bonnithorne

continued. He was walking on. "Only a medallion-portrait of the first

wife." Mr. Bonnithorne dived into a breast-pocket.

"My brother Paul is living. What possible--"

"Here it is," said Mr. Bonnithorne, and he held out a small picture.

Hugh Ritson took it with little interest.

"This is the portrait of the nun," he said, as his eyes first fell on

it, and recognized the coif and cape.

"A novice--that's what she was when Lowther met her," said Mr.

Bonnithorne.

Then Hugh Ritson stopped. He regarded the portrait attentively; looked

up at the lawyer and back at the medallion. For an instant the strong

calm which he had hitherto shown seemed to desert him. The picture

trembled in his hand. Mr. Bonnithorne did not appear to see his

agitation.

"Is it a fancy? Surely it must be fancy!" he muttered.

Then he asked aloud what the nun's name had been.

"Ormerod."

There was a start of recovered consciousness.

"Ormerod--that's strange!"

The exclamation seemed to escape inadvertently.

"Why strange?"

Hugh Ritson did not answer immediately.

"Her Christian name?"

"Grace."

"Grace Ormerod? Why, you must know that Grace Ormerod happened to be my

own mother's maiden name!"

"You seem to recognize the portrait."

Hugh Ritson had regained his self-possession. He assumed an air of

indifference.

"Well, yes--no, of course not--no," he said, emphatically, at last.

In his heart there was another answer. He thought for the moment when he

set eyes on the picture that it looked like--a little like--his own

mother's face.

They walked on. Mr. Bonnithorne's constant smile parted his lips.

Lifting his voice rather unnecessarily, he said:

"By the way, another odd coincidence! Would you like to know the name of

Grace Ormerod's child by Robert Lowther?"

Hugh Ritson's heart leaped within him, but he preserved an outward show

of indifference, and drawled:

"Well, what was it?"

"Paul."

The name went through him like an arrow, then he said, rather languidly:

"So the half-brother of Greta Lowther, wherever he is, is named--"

"Paul Lowther," said Mr. Bonnithorne. "But," he added, with a quick

glance, "he may--I say he may--be passing by another name--Paul

something else, for example."

"Assuredly--certainly--yes--yes," Hugh Ritson mumbled. His all but

impenetrable calm was gone.

They reached the front of the house, and stood in a paved court-yard. It

was the home of the Ritsons, known as the Ghyll, a long Cumbrian

homestead of gray stone and green slate. A lazy curl of smoke was

winding up from one chimney through the clear air. A gossamer net of the

tangled boughs of a slim brier-rose hung over the face of a broad porch,

and at that moment a butterfly flitted through it. The chattering of

geese came from behind.

"Robert Lowther was the father of Grace Ormerod's child?" said Hugh

Ritson, vacantly.

"The father of her son Paul."

"And Greta is his daughter? Is that how it goes?"

"That is so--and half-sister to Paul."

Hugh Ritson raised his eyes to Mr. Bonnithorne's face.

"And of what age would Paul Lowther be now?"

"Well, older than you, certainly. Perhaps as old as--yes, perhaps as

old--fully as old as your brother."

Hugh Ritson's infirm foot trailed heavily on the stones. His lips

quivered. For a moment he seemed to be rapt. Then he swung about and

muttered:

"Tut! it isn't within belief. Thrusted home, it might betray a man,

Heaven only knows how deeply."

Mr. Bonnithorne looked up inquiringly.

"Pardon me; I fail, as you say, to catch the relevance."

"Mr. Bonnithorne," said Hugh Ritson, holding out his hand, "you and I

have been good friends, have we not?"

"Oh, the best of friends."

"At your leisure, when I have had time to think of this, let us discuss

it further."

Mr. Bonnithorne smiled assent.

"And meantime," he said, softly, "let the unhappy little being we spoke

of be sent away."

Hugh Ritson's eyes fell, and his voice deepened.

"Poor little soul--I'm sorry--very."

"As for Greta and her lover--well--"

Mr. Bonnithorne nodded his head significantly, and left his words

unfinished.

"My father is crossing the stack-yard," said Hugh Ritson. "You shall see

him in good time. Come this way."

The shadows were lengthening in the valley. A purple belt was stretching

across the distant hills, and a dark-blue tint was nestling under the

eaves. A solitary crow flew across the sky, and cawed out its guttural

note. Its shadow fell, as it passed, on two elderly people who were

coming into the court-yard.

CHAPTER IV.

"It's time for that laal Mr. Bonnithorne to be here," said Allan Ritson.

"Why did you send for him?" asked Mrs. Ritson, in the low tone that was

natural to her.

"To get that matter about the will off my mind. It'll be one thing less

to think about, and it has boddert me sair and lang."

Allan spoke with the shuffling reserve of a man to whose secret

communings a painful idea had been too long familiar. In the effort to

cast off the unwelcome and secret associate, there was a show of

emancipation which, as an acute observer might see, was more assumed

than real.

Mrs. Ritson made no terms with the affectation of indifference. Her

grave face became yet more grave, and her soft voice grew softer as she

said:

"And if when it is settled and done the cloud would break that has hung

over our lives, then all would be well. But that can never be."

Allan tossed his head aside, and made pretense to smile; but no gleam of

sunshine on his cornfields was ever chased so closely by the line of

dark shadow as his smile by the frown that followed.

"Come, worrit thysel' na' mair about it! When I've made my will, and put

Paul on the same footing with t'other lad, who knows owt mair nor we

choose to tell?"

Mrs. Ritson glanced into his face with a look of sad reproach.

"Heaven knows, Allan," she said; "and the dark cloud still gathers for

us there."

The old man took a step or two on the gravel path, and dropped his gray

head. His voice deepened:

"Tha says reet, mother," he said, "tha says reet. Ey, it saddens my auld

days--and thine forby!" He took a step or two more, and added: "And na

lawyer can shak' it off now. Nay, nay, never now. Weel, mother, our sky

has been lang owerkessen; but, mind ye," lifting his face and voice

together, "we've had gude crops if we tholed some thistles."

"Yes, we've had happy days, too," said Mrs. Ritson.

At that moment there came from across the vale the shouts of the

merrymakers and the music of a fiddle. Allan Ritson lifted his head,

nodded it aside jauntily, and smiled feebly through the mist that was

gathering about his eyes.

"There they are--wrestling and jumping. I mind me when there was scarce

a man in Cummerlan' could give me the cross-buttock. That's many a lang

year agone, though. And now our Paul can manish most on 'em--that he

can."

The fiddle was playing a country dance. The old man listened; his face

broadened, he lifted a leg jauntily, and gave a sweep of one arm.

Just then there came through the air a peal of happy laughter. It was

the same heart's music that Hugh Ritson and Mr. Bonnithorne had heard in

the road. Allan's face brightened, and his voice had only the faintest

crack in it as he said:

"That's Greta's laugh! It is for sure! What a heartsome lass yon is! I

like a heartsome lassie--a merrie touch, and gone!"

"Yes," said Mrs. Ritson, soberly; "Greta is a winsome girl."

It was hardly spoken when a young girl bounded down upon them, almost

breathless, yet laughing in gusts, turning her head over her shoulder

and shouting:

"Hurrah! Beaten, sir! Hurrah!"

It was Greta Lowther; twenty years of age, with fair hair, quick brown

eyes, a sunny face lighted up with youthful animation, a swift smile on

her parted lips--an English wild white rose.

"I've beaten him," she said. "He challenged me to cross Windybrowe while

he ran round the Bowder stone, but I got to the lonnin before he had

crossed the bridge."

Then, running to the corner of the lane, she plucked off her straw hat,

waved it about her head, and shouted again in an accent of triumph:

"Hurrah! hurrah! beaten, sir, beaten!"

Paul Ritson came running down the fell in strides of two yards apiece.

"Oh, you young rogue--you cheated!" he cried, coming to a stand and

catching his breath.

"Cheated?" said Greta, in a tone of dire amazement.

"You bargained to touch the beacon on the top of Windybrowe, and you

didn't go within a hundred yards of it."

"The beacon? On Windybrowe?" said the girl, and wondrous perplexity

shone in her lovely eyes.

Paul wiped his brow, and shook his head and his finger with mock gravity

at the beautiful cheat.

"Now, Greta, now--now--gently--"

Greta looked around with the bewildered gaze of a lost lambkin.

"Mother," said Paul, "she stole a march on me."

"He was the thief, Mrs. Ritson; you believe me, don't you?"

"Me! why I never stole anything in my life--save one thing."

"And what was that, pray?" said Greta, with another mighty innocent

look.

Paul crept up to her side and whispered something over her shoulder,

whereupon she eyed him largely, and said with a quick smile:

"You don't say so! But please don't be too certain of it. I'm sure I

never heard of that theft."

"Then here's a theft you shall hear of," said Paul, throwing one arm

about her neck and tipping up her chin.

There was a sudden gleam of rosy, roguish lips. Old Allan, with mischief

dancing in his eyes, pretended to recover them from a more distant

sight.

"Er--why, what's that?" he said; "the sneck of a gate, eh?"

Greta drew herself up.

"How can you--and all the people looking--they might really think that

we were--we were--"

Paul came behind, put his head over one shoulder, and said:

"And we're not, are we?"

"They're weel matched, mother, eh?" said Allan, turning to his wife.

"They're marra-to-bran, as folks say. Greta, he's a girt booby, isn't

he?"

Greta stepped up to the old man, and with a familiar gesture laid a hand

on his arm. At the same moment Paul came to his side. Allan tapped his

son on the back.

"Thou girt lang booby," he said, and laughed heartily. All the shadows

that had hung over him were gone. "And how's Parson Christian?" he asked

in another tone.

"Well, quite well, and as dear an old soul as ever," said Greta.

"He's father and mother to thee baith, my lass. I never knew thy awn

father. He was dead and gone before we coom't to these parts. And thy

mother, too, God bless her! she's dead and gone now. But if this lad of

mine, this Paul, this girt lang--Ah, and here's Mr. Bonnithorne, and

Hughie, too."

The return of the lawyer and Hugh Ritson abridged the threat of

punishment that seemed to hang on the old man's lips.

Hugh Ritson's lifted eyes had comprehended everything. The girl leaning

over his father's arm; the pure, smooth cheeks close to the swarthy,

weather-beaten, comfortable old face; the soft gaze upward full of

feeling; the half-open lips and the teeth like pearls; then the glance

round, half of mockery, half of protest, altogether of unconquerable

love, to where Paul Ritson stood, his eyes just breaking into a smile;

the head, the neck, the arms, the bosom still heaving gently after the

race; the light loose costume--Hugh Ritson saw it all, and his heart

beat fast. His pale face whitened at that moment, and his infirm foot

trailed heavily on the gravel.

Allan shook hands with Mr. Bonnithorne, and then turned to his sons.

"Come, you two lads have not been gude friends latterly, and that's a

sair grief baith to your mother and me. You're not made in the same mold

seemingly. But you must mak' up your fratch, my lads, for your auld

folks' sake, if nowt else."

At this he stretched out both arms, as if with the intention of joining

their hands. Hugh made a gesture of protestation.

"I have no quarrel to make up," he said, and turned aside.

Paul held out his hand. "Shake hands, Hugh," he said. Hugh took the

proffered hand with unresponsive coldness.

Paul glanced into his brother's face a moment, and said:

"What's the use of breeding malice? It's a sort of live stock that's not

worth its fodder, and it eats up everything."

There was a scarcely perceptible curl on Hugh Ritson's lip, but he

turned silently away. With head on his breast, he walked toward the

porch.

"Stop!"

It was old Allan's voice. The deep tone betrayed the anger that was

choking him. His face was flushed, his eyes were stern, his lips

trembled.

"Come back and shak' hands wi' thy brother reet."

Hugh Ritson faced about, leaning heavily on his infirm foot.

"Why to-day more than yesterday or to-morrow?" he said, calmly.

"Come back, I tell thee!" shouted the old man more hotly.

Hugh maintained his hold of himself, and said in a quiet and even voice,

"I am no longer a child."

"Then bear thysel' like a man--not like a whipped hound."

The young man shuddered secretly from head to foot. His eyes flashed for

an instant. Then, recovering his self-control, he said:

"Even a dog would resent such language, sir."

Greta had dropped aside from the painful scene, and for a moment Hugh

Ritson's eyes followed her.

"I'll have no sec worriment in my house," shouted the old man in a

broken voice. "Those that live here must live at peace. Those that want

war must go."

Hugh Ritson could bear up no longer.

"And what is your house to me, sir? What has it done for me? The world

is wide."

Old Allan was confounded. Silent, dumb, with great staring eyes, he

looked round into the faces of those about him. Then in thick, choking

tones he shouted:

"Shak' thy brother's hand, or thou'rt no brother of his."

"Perhaps not," said Hugh very quietly.

"Shak' hands, I tell thee." The old man's fists were clinched. His body

quivered in every limb.

His son's lips were firmly set; he made no answer.

The old man snatched from Mr. Bonnithorne the stick he carried. At this

Hugh lifted his eyes sharply until they met the eyes of his father.

Allan was transfixed. The stick fell from his hand. Then Hugh Ritson

halted into the house.

"Come back, come back ... my boy ... Hughie ... come back!" the old man

sobbed out. But there was no reply.

"Allan, be patient, forgive him; he will ask your pardon," said Mrs.

Ritson.

Paul and Greta had stolen away. The old man was now speechless, and his

eyes, bent on the ground, swam with tears.

"All will be well, please God," said Mrs. Ritson. "Remember, he is

sorely tried, poor boy. He expected you to do something for him.'"

"And I meant to, I meant to--that I did," the father answered in a

broken cry.

"But you've put it off, and off, Allan--- like everything else."

Allan lifted his hazy eyes from the ground, and looked into his wife's

face. "If it had been t'other lad I could have borne it maybe," he said,

feelingly.

Mr. Bonnithorne, standing aside, had been plowing the gravel with one

foot. He now raised his eyes, and said: "And yet, Mr. Ritson, folk say

that you have always shown most favor to your eldest son."

The old man's gaze rested on the lawyer for a moment, but he did not

speak at once, and there was an awkward silence.

"I've summat to say to Mr. Bonnithorne, mother," said the statesman. He

was quieter now. Mrs. Ritson stepped into the house.

Allan Ritson and the lawyer followed her, going into a little parlor to

the right of the porch. It was a quaint room, full of the odor of a

by-gone time. The floor was of polished black oak covered with skins;

the ceiling was paneled oak and had a paneled beam. Bright oak

cupboards, their fronts carved with rude figures, were set into the

walls, which were whitened, and bore one illuminated text and three

prints in black and white. The furniture was heavy and old. There was a

spinning-wheel under the wide window-board. A bluebottle buzzed about

the ceiling; a slant of sunlight crossed the floor. The men sat down.

"I sent for thee to mak' my will, Mr. Bonnithorne," said the old man.

The lawyer smiled.

"It is an old maxim that delay in affairs of law is a candle that burns

in the daytime; when the night comes it is burned to the socket."

Old Allan took little heed of the sentiment.

"Ey," he said, "but there's mair nor common 'casion for it in my case."

Mr. Bonnithorne was instantly on the alert.

"And what is your especial reason?" he asked.

Allan's mind seemed to wander. He stood silent for a moment, and then

said slowly, as if laboring with thought and phrase:

"Weel, tha must know ... I scarce know how to tell thee ... Weel, my

eldest son, Paul, as they call him--"

The old man stopped, and his manner grew sullen. Mr. Bonnithorne came to

his help.

"Yes, I am all attention--your eldest son--"

"He is--he is--"

The door opened and Mrs. Ritson entered the room, followed close by the

Laird Fisher.

"Mr. Ritson, your sheep, them black-faced herdwicks on Hindscarth, have

broke the fences, and the red drift of 'em is down in the barrowmouth of

the pass," said the charcoal-burner.

The statesman got on his feet.

"I must gang away at once," he said. "Mr. Bonnithorne, I must put thee

off, or maybe I'll lose fifty head of sheep down in the ghyll."

"I made so bold as to tell ye, for I reckon we'll have all maks of

weather yet."

"That's reet, Mattha; and reet neighborly forby. I'll slip away after

thee in a thumb's snitting."

The Laird Fisher went out.

"Can ye bide here for me until eight o'clock to-neet, Mr. Bonnithorne?"

There was some vexation written on the lawyer's face, but he answered

with meekness:

"I am always at your service, Mr. Ritson. I can return at eight."

"Verra good" Then, turning to Mrs. Ritson, "Give friend Bonnithorne a

bite o' summat," said Allan, and he followed the charcoal-burner. Out in

the court-yard he called the dogs. "Hey howe! hey howe! Bright! Laddie!

Come boys; come, boys, te-lick, te-smack!"

He put his head in at the door of an out-house and shouted, "Reuben,

wheriver ista? Come thy ways quick, and bring the lad!"

In another moment a young shepherd and a cowherd, surrounded by three or

four sheep-dogs, joined Allan Ritson in the court-yard.

"Dusta gang back to the fell, Mattha?" said the statesman.

"Nay; I's done for the day. I'm away home."

"Good-neet, and thank."

Then the troop disappeared down the lonnin--the men calling, the dogs

barking.

In walking through the hall Mr. Bonnithorne encountered Hugh Ritson, who

was passing out of the house, his face very hard, his head much bent.

"Would you," said the lawyer, "like to know the business on which I have

been called here?"

Hugh Ritson did not immediately raise his eyes.

"To make his will," added Mr. Bonnithorne, not waiting for an answer.

Then Hugh Ritson's eyes were lifted; there was one flash of

intelligence; after that the young man went out without a word.

CHAPTER V.

Hugh Ritson was seven-and-twenty. His clean-shaven face was long, pale,

and intellectual; his nose was wide at the bridge and full at the

nostrils; he had firm-set lips, large vehement eyes, and a broad

forehead, with hair of dark auburn parted down the middle and falling in

thin waves on the temples. The expression of the physiognomy in repose

was one of pain, and, in action, of power; the effect of the whole was

not unlike that which is produced by the face of a high-bred horse, with

its deep eyes and dilated nostrils. He was barely above medium height,

and his figure was almost delicate. When he spoke his voice startled

you--it was so low and deep to come from that slight frame. His

lameness, which was slight, was due to a long-standing infirmity of the

hip.

As second son of a Cumbrian statesman, whose estate consisted chiefly of

land, he expected but little from his father, and had been trained in

the profession of a mining engineer. After spending a few months at the

iron mines of Cleator, he had removed to London at twenty-two, and

enrolled himself as a student of the Mining College in Jermyn Street.

There he had spent four years, sharing the chambers of a young barrister

in the Temple Gardens. His London career was uneventful. Taciturn in

manner, he made few friends. His mind had a tendency toward

contemplative inactivity. Of physical energy he had very little, and

this may have been partly due to his infirmity. Late at night he would

walk alone in the Strand: the teeming life of the city, and the mystery

of its silence after midnight, had a strong fascination for him. In

these rambles he came to know some of the strangest and oddest of the

rags and rinsings of humanity: among them a Persian nobleman of the late

shah's household, who kept a small tobacco-shop at the corner of a

by-street, and an old French exile, once of the court of Louis

Phillippe, who sold the halfpenny papers. At other times he went out

hardly at all, and was rarely invited.

Only the housemate, who saw him at all times and in many moods, seemed

to suspect that beneath that cold exterior there lay an ardent nature.

But he himself knew how strong was the tide of his passion. He could

never look a beautiful woman in the face but his pulse beat high, and he

felt almost faint. Yet strong as his passion was, his will was no less

strong. He put a check on himself, and during his four years in London

contrived successfully to dam up the flood that was secretly

threatening him.

At six-and-twenty he returned to Cumberland, having some grounds for

believing that his father intended to find him the means of mining for

himself. A year had now passed, and nothing had been done. He was

growing sick with hope deferred. His elder brother, Paul, had spent his

life on the land, and it was always understood that in due course he

would inherit it. That at least was the prospect which Hugh Ritson had

in view, though no prospective arrangement had been made. Week followed

week, and month followed month, and his heart grew bitter. He had almost

decided to end this waiting. The day would come when he could bear it

not longer, and then he would cut adrift.

An accidental circumstance was the cause of his irresolution. He used to

walk frequently on the moss where the Laird Fisher sunk his shaft. In

the beck that ran close to the disused headgear he would wade for an

hour early in the summer morning. One day he saw the old laird's

daughter washing linen at the beck-side. He remembered her as a pretty,

prattling thing of ten or eleven. She was now a girl of eighteen, with a

pure face, a timid manner, and an air that was neither that of a woman

nor of a child. Her mother was lately dead, her father spent most of his

days on the fell (some of his nights also when the charcoal was

burning), and she was much alone. Hugh Ritson liked her gentle replies

and her few simple questions. So it came about that he would look for

her in the mornings, and be disappointed if he did not catch sight of

her good young face. Himself a silent man, he liked to listen to the

girl's modest, unconnected talk. His stern eyes would soften at such

times to a sort of caressing expression. This went on for months, and in

that solitude no idle tongue was set to wag. At length Hugh Ritson

perceived that the girl's heart was touched. If he came late he found

her leaning over the gate, her eyes bent down among the mountain grasses

at her feet, and her cheeks colored by a red glow. It is unnecessary to

go further. The girl gave herself up to him with her whole heart and

soul, and he--well, he found the bulwarks with which he had surrounded

himself were ruined and down.

Then the awakening came, and Hugh learned too late that he had not loved

the simple child, by realizing that with all the ardor of his restrained

but passionate nature he loved another woman.

So much for the first complication in the tragedy of this man's life.

The second complication was new to his consciousness, and it was at this

moment conspiring with the first to lure him to consequences that are

now to be related. The story which Mr. Bonnithorne had told of the

legacy left by Greta's father to a son by one Grace Ormerod had come to

him at a time when, owing to disappointment and chagrin, he was

peculiarly liable to the temptation of any "honest trifle" that pointed

the way he wished to go. If the Grace Ormerod who married Lowther had

indeed been his own mother, then--a thousand to one--Paul was Lowther's

son. If Paul was Lowther's son he was also half brother of Greta. If

Paul was not the son of Allan Ritson, then he himself, Hugh Ritson, was

his father's heir.

In the present whirlwind of feeling he did not inquire too closely into

the pros and cons of probability. Enough that evidence seemed to be with

him, and that it transformed the world in his view.

Perhaps the first result of this transformation was that he

unconsciously assumed a different attitude toward the unhappy passage in

his life wherein Mercy Fisher was chiefly concerned. What his feeling

was before Mr. Bonnithorne's revelation, we have already seen. Now the

sentiment that made much of such an "accident" was fit only for a

"turgid melodrama," and the idea of "atonement" by "marriage" was the

mock heroic of those "great lovers of noble histories," the spectators

who applaud it from the pit.

When he passed Mr. Bonnithorne in the hall at the Ghyll he was on his

way to the cottage of the Laird Fisher. He saw in the road ahead of him

the group which included his father and the charcoal-burner, and to

avoid them he cut across the breast of the Eel Crags. After a sharp

walk of a mile he came to a little white-washed house that stood near

the head of Newlands, almost under the bridge that crosses the fall. It

was a sweet place in a great solitude, where the silence was broken only

by the tumbling waters, the cooing of pigeons on the roof, and the

twittering of ringouzels by the side of the torrent. The air was fresh

with the smell of new peat. There was a wedge-shaped garden in front,

and it was encompassed by chestnut-trees. As Hugh Ritson drew near he

noticed that a squirrel crept from the fork of one of these trees. The

little creature rocked itself on the thin end of a swaying branch,

plucking sometimes at the drooping fan of the chestnut, and sometimes at

the prickly shell of its pendulous nut. When he opened the little gate

Hugh Ritson observed that a cat sat sedately behind the trunk of that

tree, glancing up at intervals at the sporting squirrel in her moving

seat.

As he entered the garden Mercy was crossing it with a pail of water just

raised from the well. She had seen him, and now tried to pass into the

house. He stepped before her and she set down the pail. Her head was

held very low, and her cheeks were deeply flushed.

"Mercy," he said, "it is all arranged. Mr. Bonnithorne will see you into

the train this evening, and when you get to your journey's end the

person I spoke of will meet you."

The girl lifted her eyes beseechingly to his face.

"Not to-day, Hugh," she said in a broken whisper; "let me stay until

to-morrow."

He regarded her for a moment with a steadfast look, and when he spoke

again his voice fell on her ear like the clank of a chain.

"The journey has to be made. Every week's delay increases the danger."

The girl's eyes fell again, and the tears began to drop from them on to

the brown arms that she had clasped in front.

"Come," he said in a softer tone, "the train starts in an hour. Your

father is not yet home from the pit, and most of the dalespeople are at

the sports. So much the better. Put on your cloak and hat and take the

fell path to the Coledaie road-ends. There Mr. Bonnithorne will meet

you."

The girl's tears were flowing fast, though she bit her lip and struggled

to check them.

"Come, now, come; you know this was of your own choice."

There was a pause.

"I never thought it would be so hard to go," she said at length.

He smiled feebly, and tried a more rallying tone.

"You are not going for life. You will come back safe and happy."

The words thrilled her through and through. Her clasped hands trembled

visibly, and her fingers clutched them with a convulsive movement. After

awhile she was calmer, and said quietly:

"No, I'll never come back--I know that quite well." And her head dropped

on her breast and she felt sick at heart. "I'll have to say good-bye to

everything. There were Betsy Jackson's children--I kissed them all this

morning, and never said why--little Willy, he seemed to know, dear

little fellow, and cried so bitterly."

The memories of these incidents touched to overflowing the springs of

love in the girl's simple soul, and the bubbling child-voice was drowned

in sobs.

The man stood with a smile of pain on his face. He came close, and

brushed away her tears, and touched her drooping head with a gesture of

protestation.

Mercy regained her voice.

"And then there's your mother," she said, "and I can't say good-bye to

her, and my poor father, and I daren't tell him--"

Hugh stamped on the path impatiently.

"Come, come, Mercy, don't be foolish."

The girl lifted to his the good young face that had once Been bonny as

the day and was now pale with weeping and drawn down with grief. She

took him by the coat, and then, by an impulse which she seemed unable to

resist, threw one arm about his neck, and raised her face to his until

their lips all but touched, and their eyes met in a steadfast gaze.

"Hugh," she said, passionately, "are you sure that you love me well

enough to think of me when I am gone?--are you quite, quite sure?"

"Yes, yes; be sure of that," he said, gently.

He disengaged her arm.

"And will you come and fetch me after--after--"

She could not say the word. He smiled and answered, "Why, yes, yes."

Her fingers trembled and clung together; her head fell; her cheeks were

aglow.

"Why, of course." He smiled again, as if in deprecation of so much

child-like earnestness; then put his arm about the girl's shoulder,

dropped his voice to a tone of mingled compassion and affection, and

said, as he lifted the brightening face to his, "There, there--now go

off and make ready."

The girl brushed her tears away vigorously, and looked half ashamed and

half enchanted.

"I'm going."

"That's a good little girl."

How the sunshine came back at the sound of his words!

"Good-bye for the present, Mercy--only for the present, you know."

But how the shadow pursued the sunshine after all!

Hugh saw the tears gathering again in the lucent eyes, and came back a

step.

"There--a smile--just one little smile!" She smiled through her tears.

"There--there--that's a dear little Mercy. Good-day; good-bye."

Hugh turned on his heel and walked sharply away. As he passed out

through the gate he could not help observing that the cat from the foot

of the chestnut-tree was walking stealthily off, with something like a

dawning smile on its whiskered face, and the brush of the squirrel

between its teeth.

Hugh Ritson had gained his end, and yet he felt more crushed than at the

darkest moment of defeat. He had conquered his own manhood; and now he

crept away from the scene of his triumph with a sense of utter

abasement. When he had talked with Mr. Bonnithorne it was with a

feeling of the meanness of the folly in which he was involved; and if

any sentiment touching the girl's situation was strong upon him it was

closely bound up with a personal view of the degradation that might come

of a man's humiliating unwisdom. The very conventionality of his folly

had irked him. But its cowardice was now uppermost. That a man should

enter into warfare with a woman on unequal terms, and win by cajolery

and deceit, was more than cruel; it was brutal. He could have borne even

this hard saying so far as it concerned the woman's suffering, but for

the reflection that it made the man something worse than a coxcomb in

his own eyes.

The day was now far spent; the brilliant sun had dipped behind

Grisedale, and left a ridge of dark fells in the west. On the east the

green sides of Cat Bells and the Eel Crags were yellow at the summit,

where the hills held their last commerce with the hidden sun. Not a

breath of wind; not the rustle of a leaf; the valley lay still, save for

the echoing voices of the merrymakers in the booth below. The sky

overhead was blue, but a dark cloud, like the hulk of a ship, had

anchored lately to the north.

Hugh Ritson took the valley road back to Ghyll. He was visibly

perturbed; he walked with head much bent, stopped suddenly at times,

then snatched impetuously at the trailing bushes, and passed on. When he

was under Hindscarth, the sharp yap of dogs, followed by the bleat of

unseen sheep, caused him to look up, and he saw a group of men, like

emmets creeping on a dark bowlder, moving over a ridge of shelving rock.

There was a slight spasm of his features at that moment, and his foot

trailed more heavily as he went on. At a twist of the road he passed the

Laird Fisher. The old man looked less melancholy than usual. It was as

if the familiar sorrow sat a little more lightly to-night on the

half-ruined creature.

"Good-neet to you, sir, and how fend ye?" he said almost cheerily.

Hugh Ritson responded briefly.

"So you're not sleeping on the fell to-night, Matthew?" and as he spoke

his eyes wandered toward the fell road.

"Nay; I's not firing to-neet, for sure; my daughter is expecting me."

Hugh's eyes were now fixed intently on the road that crossed the foot of

the fell to the west. The charcoal-burner was moving off, and, following

at the same moment the upward direction of Hugh Ritson's gaze, he said:

"It's a baddish place yon, where your father is with Reuben and the lad,

and it's baddish weather that is coming, too--look at yon black cloud

over Walna Scar."

Then for an instant there was embarrassment in Hugh Ritson's eyes, and

he answered in a faltering commonplace.

"Ways me; but I must slip away home, sir; my laal lass will be weary

waiting. Good-neet to you, sir; good-neet."

"Good-night, Matthew, and God help you," said Hugh in a tone of

startling earnestness, his eyes turned away.

He had walked half a mile further, and reached the lonnin that led to

the Ghyll, when he was almost overrun by Greta Lowther, who came

tripping out of the gate of a meadow, her bonnet swinging over her arm,

her soft, wavy hair floating over her white forehead, her cheeks colored

with a warm glow, a roguish light in her eyes, and laughter on the point

of bubbling out of her lips.

Greta had just given Paul Ritson the slip. There was a thicket in the

field she had crossed, and it was covered with wild roses, white and

red. Through the heart of it there rippled a tiny streak of water that

was amber-tinted from the round shingle in its bed. The trunk of an old

beech lay across it for ford or bridge. Underfoot were the sedge and

moss; overhead the thick boughs and the roses; in the air, the odor of

hay and the songs of birds. And Paul, the cunning rascal, would have

tempted Greta into this solitude; but she was too shrewd, the wise

little woman, to-be so easily trapped. Pretending to follow him in

ignorance of his manifest design, she tripped back on tiptoe, and fled

away like a lapwing over the noiseless grass.

When Greta met Hugh Ritson she was saying to herself, of Paul in

particular, and of his sex in general: "What dear, simple, unsuspecting,

trustful creatures they are!" Then she drew up sharply, "Ah, Hugh!"

"How happy you look, Greta!" he said, fixing his eyes upon her.

A new light brightened her sunny face. "Not happier than I feel," she

answered. She swung the arm over which the bonnet hung; the heaving of

her breast showed the mold of her early womanhood.

Hugh Ritson's mind had for the last half hour brooded over many a good

purpose, but not one of them was now left.

"You witnessed a painful scene to-day," he said, with some hesitation.

"Be sure it was no less painful to me because you were there to see it."

"Oh, I was so sorry," said Greta, impetuously. "You mean with your

father?"

Hugh bent his head slightly. "It was inevitable--I know that full

well--but for my share in it I ask your pardon."

"That is nothing," she said; "but you took your father too seriously."

"I took him at his word--that was all."

"But the dear old man meant nothing, and you meant very much. He only

wanted to abuse you a little, and perhaps frighten you, and shake his

stick at you, and then love you all the better for it."

"You may be right, Greta. Among the whims of nature there is that of

making such human contradictions; but, as you say, I take things

seriously--everything--life itself."

He paused, and there was a slight trembling of the lip.

"Besides," he went on in another tone, "it has been always so. Since our

childhood--my brother's and mine--there has not been much paternal

tenderness wasted on me. I can hardly expect it now."

"Surely that must be a morbid fancy," Greta said in a distressed tone.

The light was dying out of her eyes. She made one quick glance downward

to where Hugh Ritson's infirm foot trailed on the road, and then, in an

instant of recovered consciousness, she glanced up, now confused and

embarrassed, into his face.

She was too late; he had read her thought. A faint smile parted her

lips; and the light of his own eyes was cold.

"No; not that," he said; "I ask no pity in that regard--and need none.

Nature has given my brother a physique that would shame a Greek statue,

but he and I are quits--perhaps more than quits."

He made a hard smile, and she flushed deep with shame of having her

thought read.

"I am sorry if I conveyed that," she said, slowly. "It must have been

quite unwittingly. I was thinking of your mother. She is so good and

tender to everybody. Why, she is the angel of the country-side. Do you

know what name they've given her?"

Hugh shook his head.

"Saint Grace! Parson Christian told me--it seems it was my own dear

mother who christened her."

"Nevertheless, there has not been much to sweeten my life, Greta," he

said.

His voice arrested her; it was charged with unusual feeling. She made no

answer, and they began to walk toward the house.

After a few steps Greta remembered the trick that she had played on

Paul, and craned her beautiful neck to see over the stone cobble-hedge

into the field where she had left him.

Hugh observed her intently.

"I hear that you have decided. Is it so, Greta?" he said.

"Decided what?" she asked, coloring again.

He also colored slightly, and answered with a strained quietness.

"To marry my brother."

"If he wishes it--I suppose he does--he says so, you know."

Hugh looked earnestly into the girl's glowing face, and said with

deliberation:

"Greta, perhaps there are reasons why you should not marry Paul."

"What reasons?"

He did not reply at once, and she repeated her question. Then he said in

a strange tone:

"Just and lawful impediments, as they say."

Greta's eyes opened wide in undisguised amazement.

"Impossible--you cannot mean it," she said with her customary

impetuosity. She glanced into Hugh's face, and misread what she saw

there. Then she began to laugh; at first lightly, afterward rather

boisterously, and said with head averted, and almost as if talking to

herself, "No, no; he is nothing to me but the man I love."

"Do you then love him?"

Greta started.

"Do you ask?" she said. The amazement in the wide eyes had deepened to a

look of rapture. "Love him?" she said; "better than all the world

beside." The girl was lifted out of herself. "You are to be my brother,

Hugh, and I need not fear to speak so."

She swung her bonnet on her arm, just to preserve composure by some

distracting exercise.

Hugh Ritson stopped, and his face softened. It was a perplexing smile

that sat on his features. While he had talked with Greta there had run

through his mind, as a painful undertone, the thought of Mercy Fisher.

He had now dismissed the last of his qualms respecting her. To be tied

down for life to a mindless piece of physical prettiness--what man of

brains could bear it? He had yielded to a natural impulse--true! That

moment of temptation threatened painful consequences--still true! What

then? Nothing! Was the dead fruit to hang about his neck forever?

Tut!--all natural law was against it. Had he not said that he was above

prejudice? So was he above the maudlin sentiment of the "great lovers of

noble histories." The sophistry grew apace with Greta's beautiful

countenance before him. Catching at her last word, he said:

"Your brother--yes. But did you never guess that I could have wished

another name?"

The look of amazement returned to her eyes; he saw it and went on:

"Is it possible that you have not read my secret?"

"What secret?" she said in a half-smothered voice.

"Greta, if your love had been great love, you must have read my secret

just as I have read yours." In a low tone he continued: "Long ago I knew

that you loved, or thought you loved, my brother. I saw it before he had

seen it--before you had realized it."

The red glow colored her cheeks more deeply than before. She had

stopped, and he was tramping nervously backward and forward.

"Greta," he said again, and he fixed his eyes entreatingly upon her,

"what is the love that scarcely knows itself?--that is the love with

which you love my brother. And what is the tame, timid passion of a man

of no mind?--that is the love which he offers you. What is your love for

him, or his for you?--what is it, can it be? Love is not love unless it

is the love of true minds. That was said long ago, Greta, and how true

it is!" He went on quickly, in a tone of dull irritation: "All other

love is no better than lust. Greta, I understand you. It is not for a

rude man like my brother to do so." Then in an eager voice he said:

"Dearest, I bring you a love undreamed of among these country boors."

"Country boors!" she repeated in a half-stifled whisper.

He did not hear her. His vehement eyes swam, and he was dizzy.

"Greta, dearest, I said there has been little in my life to sweeten it.

Yet I am a man made to love and to be loved. My love for you has been

mute for months; but it can be mute no longer. Perhaps I have had my own

impediment, apart from our love for Paul. But that is all over now."

His cheeks quivered, his lips trembled, his voice swelled, his nervous

fingers were riveted to his palm. He approached her and took her hand.

She seemed to be benumbed by strong feeling. She had stood as one

transfixed, a slow paralysis of surprise laying hold of her faculties.

But at his touch her senses regained their mastery. She flung away his

hand. Her breast heaved. In a voice charged with indignation, she said:

"So this is what you mean! I understand you at last!"

Huge Ritson fell back a pace.

"Greta, hear me--hear me again!"

But she had found her voice indeed.

"Sir, you have outraged your brother's heart as surely as if at this

moment I had been your brother's wife!"

"Greta, think before you speak--think, I implore you!"

"I have thought! I have thought of you as your sister might think, and

spoken to you as my brother. Now I know how mean of soul you are!"

Hugh broke in passionately:

"For God's sake, stop! I am an unforgiving man."

His nostrils quivered, every nerve vibrated.

"Love? You never loved. If you knew what the word means you would die of

shame where you stand this instant."

Hugh lost all control.

"I bid you beware!" he said in wrath and dismay.

"And I bid you be silent!" said Greta, with an eloquent uplifting of the

hand. "You offer your love to a pledged woman. It is only base love that

is basely offered. It is bad coin, sir, and goes back dishonored."

Hugh Ritson regained some self-command. The contractions were deep about

his forehead, but he answered in an imperturbable voice:

"You shall never marry my brother!"

"I will--God willing!"

"Then you shall marry him to your lifelong horror and disgrace."

"That shall be as Heaven may order."

"A boor--a hulking brute--a bas--"

"Enough! I would rather marry a plowboy than such a gentleman as you!"

Face to face, eye to eye, with panting breath and scornful looks, there

they stood for one moment. Then Greta swung about and walked down the

lonnin.

Hugh Ritson's natural manner returned instantly. He looked after her

without the change of a feature, and then turned quietly into the

house.

CHAPTER VI.

There was a drowsy calm in the room where Mr. Bonnithorne sat at lunch.

It was the little oak-bound parlor to the right, in which he had begun

the conversation with old Allan Ritson that had been interrupted by the

announcement of the Laird Fisher. Half of the window was thrown up, and

the landscape framed by the sash lay still as a picture. The sun that

had passed over Grisedale sent a deep glow from behind, and the woods

beneath took a restful tone. Only the mountain-head was white where it

towered into the sky and the silence.

Mrs. Ritson entered and sat down. Her manner was meek almost to

abjectness. She was elderly, but her face bore traces of the beauty she

had enjoyed in youth. The lines had grown deep in it since then, and now

the sadness of its expression was permanent. She wore an old-fashioned

lavender gown, and there was a white silk scarf about her neck. Her

voice was low and tremulous, yet eager, as if it were always

questioning.

With downcast head, and eyes bent on her lap, where her fingers twitched

nervously as she knitted without cessation, she sat silent, or put meek

questions to her guest.

Mr. Bonnithorne answered in smiles and speeches of six words apiece.

Between each sparse reply he addressed himself afresh to his lunch with

an appetite that was the reverse of sparse. All the while a subdued hum

of many voices came up from the booth in the fields below.

At length Mrs. Ritson's anxiety overcame the restraint of her manner.

"Mr. Bonnithorne," she said, "do let the will be made to-night. Urge Mr.

Ritson, when he returns, to admit of no further delay. He has many noble

qualities, but procrastination is his fault. It has been ever so."

Mr. Bonnithorne paused with a glass half raised to his lips, and lifted

his eyes instead.

"Pardon me, madame," he said, with the customary smile which failed to

disarm his words; "this is for certain reasons a subject I can hardly

discuss with--with--- with a woman."

And just then a peacock strutted through the court-yard, startling the

still air with its empty scream.

Mrs. Ritson colored deeply. Even modesty like hers had been put to a

severe strain. But she dropped her eyes again, finished a row of

stitches, rested the steel needle on her lip, and answered quietly:

"Surely a woman may talk of what concerns her husband and her children."

The great man had resumed his knife and fork.

"Not necessarily," he said. "It is a strange and curious fact that there

is one condition in which the law does not recognize the right of a

woman to call her son her own."

During this prolonged speech, Hugh Ritson, fresh from his interview with

Greta Lowther, entered the room, and stretched himself on the couch.

Mrs. Ritson, without shifting the determination of her gaze from the

nervous fingers in her lap, said:

"What condition?"

Mr. Bonnithorne twisted slightly, and glanced significantly at Hugh as

he answered:

"The condition of illegitimacy."

Something supercilious in the tone jarred on Mrs. Ritson's ear. She

looked up from her knitting, and said:

"What do you mean?"

Bonnithorne placed his knife and fork with precision over his empty

plate, used his napkin with deliberation, coughed slightly, and said: "I

mean that the law denies the name of son to offspring that has been

bastardized."

Mrs. Ritson's face grew crimson, and she rose to her feet.

"If so, the law is cruel and wicked," she said in a voice more tremulous

with emotion.

Mr. Bonnithorne leaned languidly back in his chair, ejected a long "hem"

from his overburdened chest, inserted his fingers in the armpits of his

waistcoat, looked up, and said: "Odd, isn't it?"

Unluckily for the full effect of Mr. Bonnithorne's subtle witticism,

Paul Ritson, with Greta at his side, appeared in the door-way at the

moment of its delivery. The manner more than the words had awakened his

anger, and the significance of both he interpreted by his mother's

agitated face. In two strides he stepped up to where the great man sat,

even now all smiles and white teeth, and laid a powerful hand on his

arm.

"My friend," said Paul, lustily, "it might not be safe for you to speak

to my mother again like that!"

Mr. Bonnithorne rose stiffly, and his shifty eyes looked into Paul's

wrathful face.

"Safe?" he echoed with emphasis.

Paul, his lips compressed, bent his head, and at the same instant

brought the other hand down on the table.

Without speaking, Mr. Bonnithorne shuffled back into his seat. Mrs.

Ritson, letting fall her knitting into her lap, sat and dropped her face

into her hands. Paul took her by the arm, raised her up, and led her out

of the room. As he did so, he passed the couch on which Hugh Ritson lay,

and looked down with mingled anger and contempt into his brother's

indifferent eyes.

When the door closed behind them, Hugh Ritson and Mr. Bonnithorne rose

together. There was a momentary gleam of mutual consciousness. Then

instantly, suddenly, by one impulse, the two men joined hands across the

table.

CHAPTER VII.

The cloud that had hung over Walna Scar broke above the valley, and a

heavy rain-storm, with low mutterings of distant thunder, drove the

pleasure-people from the meadow to the booth. It was a long canvas tent

with a drinking-bar at one end, and stalls in the corners for the sale

of gingerbreads and gimcracks. The grass under it was trodden flat, and

in patches the earth was bare and wet beneath the trapesing feet of the

people. They were a mixed and curious company. In a ring that was

cleared by an athletic plowman the fiddler-postman of Newlands, Tom o'

Dint, was seated on a tub turned bottom up. He was a little man with

bowed legs and feet a foot long.

"Now, lasses, step forret! Dunnot be blate. Come along with ye, any as

have springiness in them!"

The rough invitation was accepted without too much timidity by several

damsels dressed in gorgeous gowns and bonnets. Then up and down, one,

two, three, cut and shuffle, cross, under, and up and down again.

"I'll be mounting my best nag and comin' ower to Scara Crag and tappin'

at your window some neet soon," whispered a young fellow to the girl he

had just danced with.

She laughed a little mockingly.

"Your best nag, Willy?"

"Weel--the maister's."

She laughed again, and a sneer curled her lip. "You Colebank chaps are

famous sweethearts, I hear. Fare-te-weel, Willy."

And she twisted on her heel. He followed her up.

"Dunnet gowl, Aggy. Mappen I'll be maister man mysel' soon."

Aggy pushed her way through the crowd and disappeared.

"She's packed him off wi' a flea in his ear," said an elderly man

standing near.

"Just like all the lave of them," said another, "snurling up her neb at

a man for lack of gear. Why didna he brag of some rich uncle in

Austrilly?"

"Ey, and stuff her with all sorts of flaitchment and lies. Then all the

lasses wad be glyming at him."

The dance spun on.

"Why, it's a regular upshot, as good as Carel fair," said one of the

girls.

"Bessie, you're reet clipt and heeled for sure," responded her

companion.

Bessie's eyes sparkled with delight at the lusty compliment paid to her

dancing, and she opened her cloak to cool herself, and also to show the

glittering locket that hung about her neck.

"It's famish, this fashion," muttered the elderly cynic. "It must tak' a

brave canny fortune."

"Shaf, man, the country's puzzen'd round with pride," answered his

gossip. "Lasses worked in the old days. Now they never do a hand's turn

but washin' and bleachin' and starchin' and curlin' their polls."

"Ey, ey, there's been na luck in the country since the women-folk began

to think shame of their wark."

The fiddler made a squeak on two notes that sounded like kiss-her, and

from a corner of the booth there came a clamorous smack of lips.

"I saw you sweetheartin' laal Bessie," said one of the fellows to

another.

"And I saw you last night cutteran sa soft in the meadow. Nay, dunnot

look sa strange. I never say nowt, not I. Only yon mother of Aggy's,

she's a famous fratcher, and dunnot you let her get wind. She brays the

lasses, and mappen she'll bray somebody forby."

While the dancing proceeded there was a noisy clatter of glasses and a

mutter of voices in the neighborhood of the bar.

"The varra crony one's fidgin to see! Gie us a shak' of thy daddle!"

shouted a fellow with a face like a russet apple.

"Come, Dick, let's bottom a quart together. Deil tak' the expense."

"Why, man, and wherever hasta been since Whissen Monday?"

"Weel, you see, I went to the fair and stood with a straw in my mouth,

and the wives all came round, and one of them said, 'What wage do you

ask, canny lad?' 'Five pounds ten,' I says. 'And what can you do?' she

says. 'Do?' I says, 'anything from plowing to threshing and nicking a

nag's tail,' I says. 'Come, be my man,' she says. But she was like to

clem me, so I packed up my bits of duds and got my wage in my reet-hand

breek pocket, and here I am."

The dancing had finished, and a little group was gathered around the

fiddler's tub.

"Come thy ways; here's Tom o' Dint conjuring, and telling folk what they

are thinking."

"That's mair nor he could do for the numskulls as never think."

"He bangs all the player-folk, does Tom."

"Who's yon tatterdemalion flinging by the newspaper and bawling, 'The

country's going to the dogs?'"

"That's Grey Graham, setting folk by the lug with his blusteration."

"Mess, lads, but he'd be a reet good Parli'ment man to threep about the

nation."

"Weel, I's na pollytishun, but if it's tearin' and snappin' same as a

terrier that mak's a reet good Parli'ment man, I reckon not all England

could bang him."

"And that's not saying nowt, Sim. I've heard Grey Graham on the ballot

till it's wet him through to the waistcoat."

"Is that Mister Paul Ritson and Mistress Lowther just run in for

shelter?"

"Surely; and a reet bonny lass she is."

"And he's got larnin' and manners too."

"Ey, he's of the bettermer sort, is Paul."

"Does she live at the parson's--Parson Christian's?"

"Why, yes, man; it's only naturable--he's her guardian."

"And what a man he is, to be sure."

"Ey, we'll never see his like again when he's gone."

"Nay, not till the water runs up bank and trees grow down bank."

"And what a scholar, and no pride neither, and what's mair in a parson,

no greed. Why, the leal fellow values the world and the world's gear not

a flea."

"Contentment's a kingdom, as folk say, and religion is no worse for a

bit o' charity."

There was a momentary pressure of the company toward the mouth of the

booth, where Gubblum Oglethorpe reappeared with his pack swung from his

neck in front of him. The girls gathered eagerly around.

"What have you to-day, Gubblum?"

"Nay, nowt for you, my dear. You're one of them that allus looks best

with nothing on."

"Oh, Gubblum!"

The compliment was certainly a dubious one.

"Only your bits of shabby duds--that's all that pretty faces like yours

wants."

"Oh, Gubblum!"

The peddler was evidently a dear, simple soul.

"Lord bless you, yes; what's in here," slapping his pack contemptuously,

"it's only for them wizzent old creatures up in London--them 'at have

faces like the map of England when it shows all the lines of the

railways--just to make them a bit presentable, you know. And there is no

knowing what some of these things won't do to mak' a body smart--what

with brooches and handkerchers and collars, and I don't know what."

Gubblum's air of indifference had the extraordinary effect of bringing a

dozen pairs of gloating eyes on the strapped pack. The face of the

peddler wore an expression of bland innocence as he continued:

"But bless you, I'm such a straightforward chap, or I'd make my fortune

with the like of what's here."

"Open your pack, Gubblum," said one of the fellows, Geordie Moore,

prompted by sundry prods from the elbow of a little damsel by his side.

The "straightforward chap" made a deprecatory gesture, and then yielded

obligingly. While loosening the straps he resumed his discourse on his

own general ignorance of business tactics, his ruinous honesty, and

demoralizing sense of honor.

"I'm not cute enough, that's my fault. I know the way to my mouth with a

spoonful of poddish, and that's all. If I go further in the dark, I'm

lost."

Gubblum opened his pack and drew forth a red and green shawl of a

hideous pattern.

"Now, just to give you a sample. Here's a nice neat shawl that I never

had no more nor two of. Well, I actually sold the fellow of that shawl

for seven-and-sixpence."

The look of amazement at his own shortcomings which sat on the

child-like face of the peddler was answered by the expression of mock

surprise in the face of Paul Ritson, who came up at the moment, took the

shawl from Gubblum's outstretched arms, and said in a hushed whisper:

"No, did you now?"

Geordie Moore thereupon dived into his pocket, and brought out three

half-crowns.

"Here's for you, Gubblum; let's have it."

"'Od bless me!" cried the elderly cynic, "but that Gubblum will never

mak' his plack a bawbee."

And Grey Graham, having disposed of the affairs of the nation and

witnessed Geordie snap at the peddler's bait, cried out in a bitter

laugh:

"'There's little wit within his powe

That lights a candle at the lowe.'"

Just then a tumult arose in the vicinity of the bar. The two cronies

were at open war.

"Deuce take it! I had fifteen white shillin' in my reet-hand breek

pocket, and where are they now?"

"'Od dang thee! what should I know about your brass? You're kicking up a

stour to waken a corp!"

"I had fifteen white shillin' in my reet-hand breek pocket, I tell

thee!"

"What's that to me, thou poor shaffles? You're as drunk as muck. Do you

think I've taken your brass? You've got a wrong pig by the lug if you

reckon to come ower me!"

"They were in my reet-hand breek pocket, I'll swear on it!"

"What a fratchin'--try your left-hand breek pocket."

The russet-faced plowman thrust his hand where directed and instantly a

comical smile of mingled joy and shame overspread his countenance. There

was a gurgling laugh, through which the voice of the peddler could be

heard saying:

"We'll mak' thee king ower the cockers, my canny lad."

The canny lad was slinking away amid a derisive titter, when a great

silence fell on the booth. Those in front fell back, and those behind

craned their necks to see over the heads of the people before them.

At the mouth of the booth stood the old Laird Fisher, his face ghastly

pale, his eyes big and restless, the rain dripping from his long hair

and beard.

"They've telt me," he began in a strange voice, "they've telt me that my

Mercy has gone off in the London train. I reckon they're mistook as to

the lass, but I've come to see for mysel'. Is she here?"

None answered. Only the heavy rain-drops that pattered on the canvas

overhead broke the silence. Paul Ritson pushed his way through the

crowd.

"Mercy?--London? Wait, Matthew; I'll see if she's here."

The Laird Fisher looked from face to face of the people about him.

"Any on you know owt about her?" he asked in a low voice. "Why don't you

speak, some on you? You shake your heads--what does that mean?"

The old man was struggling to control the emotion that was surging in

his throat.

"No, Matthew, she's not here," said Paul Ritson.

"Then maybe it's true," said Matthew, with a strange quiet.

There was a pause. Paul was the first to shake off his surprise.

"She might be at Little Town--in Keswick--twenty places."

"She might be, Master Paul, but she's nowt o' the sort. She's on her way

to London, Mercy is."

It was Natt, the stableman at the Ghyll, who spoke.

At that the old man's trance seemed to break.

"Gone! Mercy gone! Gone without a word! Why? Where?"

"She'd her little red bundle aside her; and she cried a gay bit to

hersel' in the corner. I saw her mysel'."

Paul's face became rigid with anger.

"There's villainy in this--be sure of that!" he said, hotly.

The laird rocked his head backward and forward, and his eyes swam with

tears; but he stood in the middle as quiet as a child.

"My laal Mercy," he said, faintly, "gone from her old father."

Paul stepped to the old man's side, and put a great hand on his shoulder

as softly as a woman might have soothed her babe. Then turning about,

and glancing wrathfully in the faces around them, he said:

"Some waistrel has been at work here. Who is he? Speak out. Anybody

know?"

No one spoke. Only the laird moaned feebly, and reeled like a drunken

man. Then, with the first shock over, the old man began to laugh. What a

laugh it was!

"No matter," he said; "no matter. Now I've nowt left, I've nowt to lose.

There's comfort in that, anyways. Ha! ha! ha! But my heart is like to

choke for all. You say reet, Mr. Ritson, there's villainy in it."

The old man's eyes wandered vacantly.

"Her own father," he mumbled; "her lone old father--broken-hearted--him

'at loved her--no matter, I've nowt left to--Ha! ha! ha!"

He tried to walk away jauntily, and with a ghastly smile on his battered

face, but he stumbled and fell insensible into Paul's outstretched arms.

They loosened his neckerchief and bathed his forehead.

Just then Hugh Ritson strode into the tent, stepped up to the group, and

looked down over the bent heads at the stricken father lying in his

brother's arms.

Paul's lips trembled and his powerful frame quivered.

"Who knows but the scoundrel is here now?" he said; and his eyes

traversed the men about him. "If he is, let him look at his pitiless

work; and may the sight follow him to his death!"

At that moment Hugh Ritson's face underwent an awful change. Then the

old man opened his eyes in consciousness, and Hugh knelt before him and

put a glass of water to his lips.

CHAPTER VIII.

In the homestead of the Ritsons the wide old ingle was aglow with a

cheerful fire, and Mrs. Ritson stood before it baking oaten cake on a

"griddle." The table was laid for supper with beef and beer and milk and

barley-bread. In the seat of a recessed window, Paul Ritson and Greta

Lowther sat together.

At intervals that grew shorter, and with a grave face that became more

anxious, Mrs. Ritson walked to the door and looked out into the

thickening sky. The young people had been too much absorbed to notice

her increasing perturbation, until she opened a clothes-chest and took

out dry flannels and spread them on the hearth to air.

"Don't worrit yourself, mother," said Paul. "He'll be here soon. He had

to cross the Coledale Pass, and that's a long stroke of the ground, you

know."

"It's an hour past supper-time," said Mrs. Ritson, glancing aside at the

old clock that ticked audibly from behind the great arm-chair. "The rain

is coming again--listen!" There was a light patter of rain-drops against

the window-panes. "If he's on the fells now he'll be wet to the skin."

"I wish I'd gone in place of him," said Paul, turning to Greta. "A bad

wetting troubles him nowadays. Not same as of old, when he'd follow the

fells all day long knee-deep in water and soaked to the skin with rain

or snow."

The thunder-clap shook the house. The windows rattled, and the lamp that

had been newly lighted and put on the table flickered slightly and

burned red.

"Mercy, me, what a night! Was that a flash of lightning?" said Mrs.

Ritson, and she walked to the door once more and opened it.

"Don't worrit, mother," repeated Paul. "Do come in. Father will be here

soon, and if he gets a wetting there's no help for it now."

Paul had turned aside from an animated conversation with Greta to

interpolate this remonstrance against his mother's anxiety. Resuming the

narrative of his wrestling match, he described its incidents as much by

gesture as by words.

"John Proudfoot took me--so--and tried to give me the cross-buttock, but

I caught his eye and twisted him on my hip--so--and down he went in a

bash!"

A hurried knock came to the outer door. In an instant it was opened, and

a white face looked in.

"What's now, Reuben?" said Paul, rising to his feet.

"Come along with me--leave the women-folk behind--master's down--the

lightning has struck him--I'm afeart he's dead!"

"My father!" said Paul, and stood for a moment with a bewildered look.

"Go on, Reuben, I'll follow." Paul picked up his hat and was gone in an

instant.

Mrs. Ritson had been stooping over the griddle when Reuben entered. She

heard what he said, and rose up with a face of death-like pallor. But

she said nothing, and sunk helplessly into a chair. Then Greta stepped

up to her and kissed her.

"Mother--dear mother!" she said, and Mrs. Ritson dropped her head on the

girl's breast.

Hugh had been sitting over some papers in his own room off the first

landing. He overheard the announcement, and came into the hall.

"Your father has been struck by the lightning," said Greta.

"They will fetch him home," said Hugh.

At the next moment there was the sound from without of burdened

footsteps. They were bearing the injured man. Through the back of the

house they carried him to his room.

"That is for my sake," said Mrs. Ritson, raising her tear-stained face

to listen.

Paul entered. His ruddy cheeks had grown ashy white. His eyes, that had

blinked with pleasure a minute ago, now stared wide with fear.

"Is he alive?"

"Yes."

"Thank God! oh, thank God forever and ever! Let me go in to him."

"He is unconscious--he breathes--but no more."

Mrs. Ritson, with Paul and Greta, went into the room in which they had

placed the stricken man. He lay across the bed in his clothes, just as

he had fallen. They bathed his forehead and applied leeches to his

temples. He breathed heavily, but gave no sign of consciousness.

Paul sat at his father's side with his face buried in his hands. He was

recalling his boyish days, when his father would lift him in his arms

and throw him on the bare back of the pony that he gave him on his

thirteenth birthday. Could it be possible that the end was at hand!

He got up and led Greta out of the room.

"This house of mourning is no place for you," he said; "the storm is

over: you must leave us; Natt can put the mare into the trap and drive

you home."

"I will not go," said Greta; "this shall be my home to-night. Don't send

me away from you, Paul. You are in trouble, and my place is here."

"You could do no good, and might take some harm."

Mrs. Ritson came out.

"Where is Mr. Bonnithorne?" she asked. "He was to be here at eight. Your

father might recover consciousness."

"The lawyer could do nothing to help him."

"If he is to leave us, may it please God to give him one little hour of

consciousness."

"Yes, knowing us again--giving us a farewell word."

"There is another reason--a more terrible reason!"

"You are thinking of the will. Let that go by. Come, mother--and Greta,

too--- come, let us go back."

Half an hour later the house was as still as the chamber of death. With

hushed voices and noiseless steps the women-servants moved to and from

the room where lay the dying man. The farming men sat together in an

outer kitchen, and talked in whispers.

The storm had passed away; the stars struggled one by one through a rack

of flying cloud, and a silver fringe of moonlight sometimes fretted the

black patches of the sky.

Hugh Ritson sat alone in the old hall, that was now desolate enough. His

face rested on his hand, and his elbow on his knee. There was a strange

light in his eyes. It was not sorrow, and it was not pain; it was

anxiety, uncertainty, perturbation. Again and again he started up from a

deep reverie, and then a half-smothered cry escaped him. He walked a few

paces to and fro, and sat down once more.

A servant crossed the hall on tiptoe. Hugh raised his head.

"How is your patient now?" he said, quietly.

"Just breathing, sir; still quite unconscious."

Hugh got up uneasily. A mirror hung on the wall in front of him, and he

stood and looked vacantly into it. His thoughts wandered, and when a

gleam of consciousness returned the first object that he saw was the

reflection of his own face. It was full of light and expression. Perhaps

it wore a ghostly smile. He turned away from the sight impatiently.

Sitting down again he tried to compose himself. Point by point he

revolved the situation. He thought of what the lawyer had said of his

deserted wife and lost son of Lowther. Then, taking out of an inner

pocket the medallion that Mr. Bonnithorne had lent him, he looked at it

long and earnestly.

The inspection seemed to afford a grim satisfaction. There could be no

doubt now of the ghostly smile that played upon his face.

There was a tall antique clock in the corner of the hall. It struck

eight. The slow beats of the bell echoed chillily in the hushed

apartment. The hour awakened the consciousness of the brooding man. At

eight o'clock Mr. Bonnithorne was appointed to be there to make the

will.

Hugh Ritson touched gently a hand-bell that stood on the table. A

servant entered.

"Send Natt to me," said Hugh.

A moment later the stableman shambled into the hall. He was a thick-set

young fellow with a short neck and a full face, and eyelids that hung

deep over a pair of cunning eyes. At first sight one would have said

that the rascal was only half awake; at the second glance, that he was

never asleep.

Hugh received him with a show of cordiality.

"Ah, Natt, come here--closer."

The man walked across. Hugh dropped his voice.

"Go down to Little Town and find Mr. Bonnithorne. You may meet him on

the way. If not, he will be at the Flying Horse. Tell him I sent you to

say that Adam Fallow lies dying at Bigrigg, and must see him at once.

You understand?"

The man lifted his slumberous eyelids. A suspicious twinkle lurked

beneath them. He glanced around, then down at his big, grimy boots,

measured with one uplifted hand the altitude of the bump on the top of

his bullet head, and muttered, "I understand."

Hugh's face darkened.

"Silence!" he said, sternly; and then he met Natt's upward glance with a

faint smile. "When you come back, get yourself out of the way--do you

hear?"

The heavy eyelids went up once more. "I hear."

"Then be off!"

The fellow was shuffling away.

"Natt," said Hugh, following him a step, "you fancied that new whip of

mine; take it. You'll find it in the porch."

A smile crossed Natt's face from ear to ear. He stumbled out.

Hugh Ritson returned to the hearth. That haunting mirror caught the

light of his eyes again and showed that he too was smiling. At the same

instant there came from the inner room the dull, dead sound of a deep

sob. It banished the smile and made him pause. He looked at the

reflection of his face--could it be the face of a scoundrel? Was he

playing a base part? No, he was merely asserting his rights; his plain

legal rights--nothing more.

He opened a cupboard in the wall and took down a bunch of keys.

Selecting one key, he stepped up to a cabinet and opened it. In a

compartment were many loose papers. Now to see if by chance there

existed a will already. He glanced at the papers one by one and threw

them aside. When he had finished his inspection he took a hasty turn

about the room. No trace--he had been sure of it!

Again the deep sob came from within. Hugh Ritson walked noiselessly to

the inner door, opened it slightly, bent his head, and listened. He

turned away with an expression of pain, picked up his hat, and went out.

The night was very dark. He strode a few paces down the lonnin and then

back to the porch. Uncovering his head, he let the night wind cool his

hot temples. His breath came audibly and hard. He was turning again

into the house when his eye was arrested by a light near the turning of

the high-road. The light was approaching; he walked toward it, and met

Josiah Bonnithorne. The lawyer was jouncing along toward the house with

a lantern in his hand.

"Didn't you meet the stableman?" said Hugh in an eager whisper.

"No."

"The blockhead must have taken the old pack-horse road on the fell-side.

One would be safe in that fool's stupidity. You have heard what has

happened?"

"I have."

"There is no will already."

"And your father is insensible?"

"Yes."

"Then none shall be made."

There was a pause, in which the darkness itself seemed full of speech.

The lantern cast its light only on an open cart-shed in the lane.

"If your mother is the Grace Ormerod who married Robert Lowther and had

a son by him, then Paul was that son--the heir to Lowther's

conscience-money."

"Bonnithorne," said Hugh Ritson--his voice trembled and broke--"if it is

so, then it is so, and we need do nothing. Remember, he is my father. It

is not within belief that he wants to disinherit his own son for the son

of another man."

Mr. Bonnithorne broke into a half-smothered laugh, and stepped close

into the cobble-hedge, keeping the lantern down.

"Your father--yes. But you have seen to-day what that may come to. He

has always held you under his hand. Paul has been the old man's

favorite."

"No doubt of that." Hugh crept close to the lawyer. He was wrestling in

the coil of a tragic temptation.

"If he recovers consciousness, he may be tempted to recognize as his own

his wife's illegitimate son. That"--the low tone was one of withering

irony--"will keep her from dishonor, and you from the estates."

"At least he is my brother--my mother's son. If my father wishes to

provide for him, God forbid that we should prevent."

Once more the half-smothered laugh came through the darkness.

"You have missed your vocation, Mr. Ritson. Believe me, the Gospel has

lost a fervent advocate. Perhaps you would like to pray for this good

brother; perhaps you would consider it safe to drop on your knee and

say, 'My good brother that should be, who has ever loved me, whom I have

ever loved, take here my fortune, and leave me until death a penniless

dependent on the lands that are mine by right of birth.'"

Hugh Ritson's breath came in gusts through his quivering, unseen lips.

"Bonnithorne, it cannot be--it is mere coincidence, seductive, damning

coincidence. My mother knows all. If it were true that Paul was the son

of Lowther, she would know that Paul and Greta must be half-brother and

half-sister. She would stop their unnatural union."

"And do you think I have waited until now to sound that shoal water with

a cautious plummet? Your mother is as ignorant of the propinquity as

Greta herself. Lowther was dead before your family settled in Newlands.

The families never once came together while the widow lived. And now not

a relative survives who can tell the story."

"Parson Christian?" said Hugh Ritson.

"A great child just out of swaddling-clothes!"

"Then the secret rests with you and me, Bonnithorne?"

"Who else? The marriage must not come off. Greta is Paul's half-sister,

but she is no relative of yours--"

"You are right, Bonnithorne," Hugh Ritson broke in; "the marriage is

against nature."

"And the first step toward stopping it is to stop the will."

"Then why are you here?"

"To make sure that there is no will already. You have satisfied me, and

now I go."

There was a pause.

"Who shall say that I am acting a base part?" said Hugh, in an eager

tone.

"Who indeed?"

"Nature itself is on my side."

The man was conquered. He was in the grip of his temptation.

"I am off, Mr. Ritson. Get back into the house. It is not safe for you

to be out of sight and sound."

Mr. Bonnithorne was moving off in the darkness, the lamp before his

breast; its light fell that instant on Hugh Ritson's haggard face.

"Wait; put out your lamp."

"It's done."

All was now dark.

"Good-night."

"Good-night."

With slow whispers the two men parted.

The springy step of Josiah Bonnithorne was soon lost in the road below.

Hugh Ritson stood for awhile where the lawyer left him, and then turned

back into the house. He found the cabinet open. In the turmoil of

emotion he had forgotten to close it. He returned to it, and shuffled

with the papers to put them back in their place. At that moment the door

opened, and a heavy footstep fell on the floor. Hugh glanced up

startled. It was Paul. His face was plowed deep with lines of pain. But

the cloud of sorrow that it wore was not so black as the cloud of anger

when he saw what his brother was doing and guessed his purpose.

"What are you about?" Paul asked, mastering his wrath.

There was no response.

"Shut up that cabinet!"

Hugh turned about with a flushed face.

"I shall do as I please!"

Paul took two strides toward him.

"Shut it up!"

The cabinet was closed. At the same moment Mrs. Ritson came from the

inner room. Paul turned on his heel.

"He is thinking of the will," said the elder brother. "Perhaps it is

natural that he should distrust me; but when the time comes he is

welcome to the half of everything, and ten thousand wills would hardly

give him more."

Mrs. Ritson was strongly agitated. Her eyes, red with weeping, were

aflame with expression.

"Paul, he is conscious," she cried in a voice that her anxiety could not

subdue. "He is trying to speak. Where is the lawyer?"

Hugh had been moving toward the outer door.

"Conscious!" he repeated, and returned to the hearth.

"Send for Mr. Bonnithorne at once!" said Mrs. Ritson, addressing Hugh.

Her manner was feverish. Hugh touched the bell. When the servant

appeared, he said:

"Tell Natt to run to the village for Mr. Bonnithorne."

Paul had walked to the door of the inner room. His hand was on the

handle, when the door opened and Greta came out. She stepped up to Mrs.

Ritson and tried to quiet her agitation.

The servant returned.

"I can't find Natt," she said. "He is not in the house."

"You'll find him in the stable," said Hugh, composedly.

The servant went out hurriedly.

Paul returned to the middle of the room.

"I'll go myself," he said, and plucked his hat from the settle, but Mrs.

Ritson rose to prevent him.

"No, no, Paul," she said in a tremulous voice, "you must never leave his

side."

Paul glanced at his brother with a perplexed look. The calmness of

Hugh's manner disturbed him.

The servant reappeared.

"Natt is not in the stable, sir."

Paul's face was growing crimson. Mrs. Ritson turned to Hugh.

"Hugh, my dear son, do you go for the lawyer."

A faint smile that lurked at the corners of Hugh's mouth gave way to a

look of injury.

"Mother, my place, also, is here. How can you ask me to leave my

father's side at a moment like this?"

Greta had been looking fixedly at Hugh.

"I'll go," she said, resolutely.

"Impossible," said Paul. "It is now dark--the roads are wet and lonely."

"I'll go, nevertheless," said Greta, firmly.

"God bless you, my darling, and love you and keep you forever!" said

Paul. Wrapping a cloak about her shoulders, he whispered: "My brave

girl--that's the stuff of which an English woman may be made."

He opened the door and walked out with her across the court-yard. The

night was now clear and calm; the stars burned; the trees whispered; the

distant ghylls, swollen by the rain, roared loud through the thin air; a

bird on the bough of a fir-tree whistled and chirped. The storm was

gone; only its wreckage lay in the still room within.

"A safe journey to you, dear girl, and a speedy return," whispered Paul,

and in another moment Greta had vanished in the dark.

When he returned to the hall, his brother was passing into the room

where the sick man lay. Paul was about to follow when his mother, who

was walking aimlessly to and fro in yet more violent agitation than

before, called on him to remain. He turned about and stepped up to her,

observing as he did so that Hugh had paused on the threshold, and was

regarding them with a steadfast look.

Mrs. Ritson took Paul's hand with a nervous grasp. Her eyes, that bore

the marks of recent tears, had the light of wild excitement.

"God be praised that he is conscious at last!" she said.

Paul shook his head as if in censure of his mother's feelings.

"Let him die in peace," he said; "let his soul pass quietly to its rest.

Don't vex it now with thoughts of the cares it leaves behind."

Mrs. Ritson let go his hand, and dropped into a chair. A slight shudder

passed over her. Paul looked down with a puzzled expression. Then there

was a low sobbing. He leaned over his mother and smoothed her hair

tenderly.

"Come, let us go in," he said in a broken voice.

Mrs. Ritson rose from her seat and went down on her knees. Her eyes,

still wet, but no longer weeping, were raised to heaven.

"Almighty Father, give me strength!" she said beneath her breath, and

then more quietly she rose to her feet.

Paul regarded her with increasing perturbation. Something even more

serious than he yet knew of was amiss. Hardly knowing why, his heart

sunk still deeper.

"What are we doing?" he said, scarcely realizing his own words.

Mrs. Ritson threw herself on his neck.

"Did I not say there was a terrible reason why your father should make a

will?"

Paul's voice seemed to die within him.

"What is it, mother?" he asked feebly, not yet gathering the meaning of

his fears.

"God knows, I never dreamed it would be my lips that must tell you,"

said Mrs. Ritson. "Paul, my son, my darling son, you think me a good

mother and a pure woman. I am neither. I must confess all--now--and to

you. Oh, how your love will turn from me!"

Paul's face turned pale. His eyes gazed into his mother's eyes with a

fixed look. The clock ticked audibly. Not another sound broke the

silence. At last Paul spoke.

"Speak, mother," he said; "is it something about my father?"

Mrs. Ritson's face fell on to her son's breast. A strong shudder ran

over her shoulders, and she sobbed aloud.

"You are not your father's heir," she said; "you were born before we

married.... But you will try not to hate me, ... your own mother.... You

will try, will you not?"

Paul's great frame shook visibly. He tried to speak. His tongue cleaved

to his mouth.

"Do you mean that I am--a bastard?" he said in a hoarse whisper.

The word seemed to sting his mother like a poisoned arrow. She clung yet

closer about his neck.

"Pity me and love me still, though I have wronged you before God and

man. I whom the world thought so pure--I am but a whited sepulcher--a

dishonored woman dishonoring her dearest son!"

The door opened gently, and Hugh Ritson stood in the door-way. Neither

his brother nor his mother realized his presence. He remained a moment,

and then withdrew, leaving the door ajar.

Beneath the two whom he left behind, the world at that moment reeled.

Paul stood with great, wide eyes, that had never tear to soften them,

gazing vacantly into the weeping eyes before him. His lips quivered, but

he did not speak.

"Paul, speak to me--speak to me--only speak--only let me hear your

voice! See, I am at your feet--your mother kneels to you--forgive her as

God has forgiven her!"

And loosing her grasp, she flung herself on the ground before him, and

covered her face with her hands.

Paul seemed not at first to know what was happening. Then he stooped and

raised his mother to her feet.

"Mother, rise up," he said in a strange, hollow tone. "Who am I that I

should presume to pardon you? I am your son--you are my mother!"

His vacant eyes gathered a startled expression. He glanced quickly

around the room, and said in a deep whisper:

"How many know of this?"

"None besides ourselves."

The frightened look disappeared. In its place came a look of

overwhelming agony.

"But I know of it; oh, my God!" he cried; and into the chair from which

his mother had risen he fell like a wounded man.

Mrs. Ritson dried her eyes. A strange quiet was coming upon her now. Her

voice gathered strength. She laid a hand on the head of her son, who sat

before her with buried face.

"Paul," she said, "it is not until now that the day of reckoning has

waited for me. When you were a babe, and knew nothing of your mother's

grief, I sorrowed over the shame that might yet be yours; and when you

grew to be a prattling child, I thought if God would look into your

innocent eyes they would purchase grace for both of us."

Paul lifted his head. At that moment of distress God had sent him the

gracious gift of tears. His eyes were wet, and looked tenderly at his

mother.

"Paul," she continued, quite calmly now, "promise me one thing."

"What is it?" he asked, softly.

"That if your father should not live to make the will that must

recognize you as his son, you will never reveal this secret."

Paul rose to his feet. "That is impossible. I cannot promise it," he

said.

"Why?"

"Honor and justice require that my brother Hugh, and not I, should be my

father's heir--he, at least, must know."

"What honor, and what justice?"

"The honor of a true man--the justice of the law of England."

Mrs. Ritson dropped her head. "So much for your honor," she said. "But

what of mine?"

"Mother, what do you mean?"

"That if you allow your younger brother to inherit, the world by that

act will be told all--your father's sin, your mother's shame."

Mrs. Ritson raised her hands to her face, and turned aside. Paul stepped

up to her and kissed her forehead reverently.

"You are right," he said. "Forgive me--I thought only of myself. The

world that loves to tarnish a pure name would like to gloat over your

sorrow. That it shall never! Man's law may have been outraged, but God's

law is still inviolate. Whatever my birth, I am as much your son in the

light of Heaven as Jacob was the son of Isaac, or David of Jesse. Come,

let us go to him--he may yet live to acknowledge me."

It had been a terrible moment, but it was past. To live to manhood in

ignorance of the dishonor of his birth, and then to learn the truth

under the shadow of death--this had been a tragic experience. The love

he had borne his father--the reverence he had learned at his mother's

knee--to what bitter test had they been put! Had all the past been but

as the marble image of a happy life! Was all the future shattered before

him! Pshaw! he was the unconscious slave of a superstition--a phantasm,

a gingerbread superstition!

And a mightier touch awoke his sensibilities--the touch of nature.

Before God at that moment he was his father's son. If the world, or the

world's law, said otherwise, then they were of the devil, and deserving

to be damned. What rite, what jabbering ceremony, what priestly

ordinance, what legal mummery, stood between him and his claim to his

father's name?

Paul took in love the hand of his mother. "Let us go in to him," he

repeated, and together they walked across the room.

The outer door was flung open, and Greta entered, flushed and with

wide-open eyes. At the same instant the inner door swung noiselessly

back, and Hugh Ritson stood on the threshold. Greta was about to speak,

but Hugh motioned her to silence. His face was pale, his hand trembled.

"Too late," he said, huskily; "he is dead!"

Greta sunk on to the settle in the window recess. Hugh walked to the

hearth and paused with rigid features before the haunting mirror.

Paul stood for a moment hand in hand with his mother, motionless,

speechless, cold at his heart. Then he hurried into the inner room. Mrs.

Ritson followed him, closing the door behind him.

The little oak-bound room was dusky; the lamp that burned low was

shaded. Across the bed lay Allan Ritson, in his habit as he lived. But

his lips were white and cold.

Paul stood and looked down. There lay his father--his father still! His

father by right of nature--of love--of honor--let the world say what it

would.

And he knew the truth at last: too late to look into those glassy eyes

and read the secret of their long years of suffering love.

"Father," Paul whispered, and fell to his knees by the deaf ear.

Mrs. Ritson, strangely quiet, strangely calm, stepped to the opposite

side of the bed, and placed one hand on the dead man's breast.

"Paul," she said, "come here."

He rose to his feet and walked to her side.

"Lay your hand with mine, and pledge to me your solemn word never to

speak of what you have heard to-night until that great day when we three

shall stand together before the great white throne."

Paul placed his hand side by side with hers, and lifted his eyes to

heaven.

"On my father's body, by my mother's honor--never to reveal to any human

soul, by word or deed, his act or her shame--always to bear myself as

their lawful son before man, even as I am their rightful son before

God--I swear it! I swear it!"

His voice was cold and clear, but the words were scarcely uttered when

he fell to his knees again, with a subdued cry of overwrought feeling.

Mrs. Ritson staggered back, caught the curtains of the bed, and covered

her face. All was still.

Then a shuffling footfall was heard on the floor. Hugh Ritson was in the

darkened room. He lifted the shaded lamp from the table, approached the

bedside, and held the lamp with one hand above his head. The light fell

on the outstretched body of his father and the bowed head of his

brother.

_BOOK II._

THE COIL OF THE TEMPTATION.

CHAPTER I.

It was late in November, and the day was dark and drear. Hoar-frost lay

on the ground. The atmosphere was pallid with haze and dense with

mystery. Gaunt specters of white mist swept across the valley and

gathered at the sides of every open door. The mountains were gone. Only

a fibrous vagueness was visible.

In an old pasture field by the bridge a man was plowing. He was an

elderly man, sturdy and stolid of figure, and clad in blue homespun.

There was nothing clerical in his garb or manner, yet he was the vicar

and school-master of the parish. His low-crowned hat was drawn deep over

his slumberous gray eyes. The mobile mouth beneath completed the

expression of gentleness and easy good-nature. It was a fine old face,

with the beauty of simplicity and the sweetness of content.

A boy in front led the horses, and whistled. The parson hummed a tune as

he turned his furrows. Sometimes he sung in a drawling tone--

"Bonny lass, canny lass, wilta be mine?

Thou's nowder wesh dishes nor sarra the swine."

At the turn-rows he paused, and rested on his plow handles. He rested

longest at the turn-rows on the roadside of the field. Like the

shivering mists that grouped about the open doors, he was held there by

light and warmth.

The smithy stood at the opposite side of the road, cut into the rock of

the fell on three sides, and having a roof of thatch. The glare of the

fire, now rising, now falling, streamed through the open door. It sent a

long vista of light through the blank and pulsating haze. The vibrations

of the anvil were all but the only sounds on the air; the alternate thin

clink of the smith's hand-hammer and the thick thud of the striker's

sledge echoed in unseen recesses of the hills beyond.

This smithy of Newlands filled the function which under a higher

propitiousness of circumstance is answered by a club. Girded with his

leather apron, his sleeves rolled tightly over his knotty arms, the

smith, John Proudfoot, stood waiting for his heat. His striker, Geordie

Moore, had fallen to at the bellows. On the tool chest sat Gubblum

Oglethorpe, leisurely smoking. His pony was tied to the hasp of the

gate. The miller, Dick of the Syke, sat on a pile of iron rods. Tom o'

Dint, the little bow-legged fiddler and postman, was sharpening at the

grindstone a penknife already worn obliquely to a point by many similar

applications.

"Nay, I can make nowt of him. He's a changed man for sure," said the

blacksmith.

Gubblum removed his pipe and muttered sententiously:

"It's die-spensy, I tell thee."

"Dandering and wandering about at all hours of the day and night,"

continued the blacksmith.

"It's all die-spensy," repeated the peddler.

"And as widderful and wizzent as a polecat nailed up on a barn door,"

said Tom o' Dint, lifting his grating knife from the grindstone and

speaking with a voice as hoarse.

"Eh, and as weak as watter with it," added the blacksmith.

"His as was as strong as rum punch," rejoined the fiddler.

"It's die-spensy, John--nowt else," said Gubblum.

The miller broke in testily.

"What's die-spensy?"

"What ails Paul Ritson?" answered Gubblum.

"Shaf on your balderdash," said Dick of the Syke; "die-spensying and

die-spensying. You've no' but your die-spensy for everything. Tommy's

rusty throat, and John's big toe, and lang Geordie's broken nose, as

Giles Raisley gave him a' Saturday neet at the Pack Horse--it's all

die-spensy."

The miller was a blusterous fellow, who could swear in lusty anger and

laugh in boisterous sport in a single breath.

Gubblum puffed placidly.

"It is die-spensy. I know it by exper'ence," he observed, persistently.

The blacksmith's little eyes twinkled mischievously.

"To be sure you do, Gubblum. You had it bad the day you crossed in the

packet from Whitehebben. That was die-spensy--a cute bout too."

"I've heard as it were amazing rough on the watter that day," said Tom,

in a pause of the wheel, glancing up knowingly at the blacksmith.

"Heard, had you? Must have been tolerable deaf else. Rough? Why, them do

say as the packet were wrecked, and only two planks saved. Gubblum was

washed ashore cross-legged on one of them, and his pack on the other."

The long, labored breathings of the bellows ended, the iron was thrown

white hot out of the glowing coals on to the anvil, and the clank of the

hand-hammer and thud of the sledge were all that could be heard. Then

the iron cooled, and was lifted back into the palpitating blaze. The

blacksmith stepped to the door, wiped his streaming forehead with one

hand and waved the other to the parson plowing in the opposite field.

"A canny morning, Mr. Christian," he shouted. "Bad luck for the parson's

young lady, anyhow--her sweetheart is none to keen for the wedding," he

said, turning again to the fire.

"She's a fine like lass, yon," said Tom o' Dint.

An old man, iron gray, with a pair of mason's mallets swung front and

back across his shoulders, stepped into the smithy.

"How fend ye, John?" he said.

"Middling weel, Job," answered the blacksmith; "and what's your errand

now?"

"A chisel or two for tempering."

"Cutting in the church-yard to-day, Job? Cold wark, eh?"

"Ey, auld Ritson's stone as they've putten over him."

The blacksmith tapped the peddler on the arm.

"Gubblum, shall I tell you what's a-matter with Paul?"

"Never you bother, John, it's die-spensy."

"It's fretting--that's it--fretting for his father."

"Fretting for his fiddlesticks!" shouted Dick, the miller; "Allan's dead

this half a year."

"John's reet," said Job, the stone-cutter; "it is fretting."

Dick of the Syke got up off the iron rods.

"Because a young fellow has given you a job of wark to cut his father's

headstone and tell a lie or two in letters half an inch deep and two

shillings a dozen--does that show 'at he's fretting?"

"He didn't do nowt of the sort," said Job, hotly.

"Dusta mean as it were the other one--Hugh?" inquired the miller.

"Maybe that's reet," said Job.

Dick of the Syke was not to be beaten for lack of the logic of

circumlocution.

"Then what for do you say as Paul is weeping his insides out about his

father, when he leaves it to other folks to put a bit of stone over him

and a few scrats on it?"

"Because I do say so," said Job, conclusively.

"And maybe you've got your reasons, Job," said the blacksmith with

insinuating suavity.

"Maybe I have," said the mason. Then softening, he added, "I don't mind

telling you, neither. Yesterday morning when I went to wark I found Paul

Ritson lying full length across his father's grave. His clothes were

soaking with dew, and his face was as white as a Feb'uary mist, and

stiff and set like, and his hair was frosted over same as a pane in the

church window."

"Never!"

"He was like to take no note of me, but I gave him a shake, and called

out, 'What, Mr. Paul! why, what, man! what's this?'"

"And what ever did he say?"

"Say! Nowt. He get hissel' up--and gay stiff in the limbs he looked, to

be sure--and walked off without a word."

Gubblum on the tool chest had removed his pipe from between his lips

during the mason's narrative, and listened with a face of blank

amazement.

"Weel, that is a stiffener," he said, drawing a long breath.

"What's a stiffener?" said Job, sharply.

"That 'at you're telling for gospel truth." Then, turning to the

blacksmith, the peddler pointed the shank of his pipe at the mason, and

said: "What morning was it as he found Paul Ritson taking a bath to

hissel' in the kirk-yard?"

"Why, yesterday morning," said the smith.

"Well, he bangs them all at lying!" said Gubblum.

"What dusta say?" shouted Job, with sudden fury.

"As you've telt us a lie," answered Gubblum.

"Sista, Gubblum, if you don't take that word back I'll--I'll throw you

into the water-butt!"

"And what would I do while you were thrang at that laal job?" asked the

peddler.

The blacksmith interposed.

"Sec a rumpus!" he said; "you're too sudden in your temper, Job."

"Some folks are ower much like their namesakes in the Bible," said

Gubblum, resuming his pipe.

"Then what for did he say it worn't true as I found young Ritson

yesterday morning wet to the skin in the church-yard?" said Job,

ignoring the peddler.

"Because he warn't there," said Gubblum.

Job lost all patience.

"Look here," he said, "if you're not hankering for a cold bath on a

frosty morning, laal man, I don't know as you've got any call to say

that again!"

"He warn't there," the "laal man" muttered doggedly.

The blacksmith had plunged his last heat into the water trough to cool,

and a cloud of vapor filled the smithy.

"Lord A'mighty!" he said, laughing, "that's the way some folks go

off--all of a hiss and a smoke."

"He warn't there," mumbled the peddler again, impervious to the homely

similitude.

"How are you so certain sure?" said Dick of the Syke. "You warn't there

yourself, I reckon."

"No; but I was somewhere else, and so was Paul Ritson. I slept at the

Pack House in Kezzick night afore last, and he did the same."

"Did you see him there?" said the blacksmith.

"No; but Giles Raisley saw him, and he warn't astir when Giles went on

his morning shift at eight o'clock."

The blacksmith broke into a loud guffaw.

"Tell us how he was at the Hawk and Heron in London at midsummer."

"And so he was," said Gubblum, unabashed.

"Willy-nilly, ey?" said the blacksmith, pausing over the anvil with

uplifted hammer, the lurid reflection of the hot iron on his face.

"Maybe he had his reasons for denying hisself," said Gubblum.

The blacksmith laughed again, tapped the iron with the hand-hammer, down

came the sledge, and the flakes flew.

Two miners entered the smithy.

"Good-morning, John; are ye gayly?" said one of them.

"Gayly, gayly! Why, it's Giles hissel'!"

"Giles," said the peddler, "where was Paul Ritson night afore last?"

"Abed, I reckon," chuckled one of the new-comers.

"Where abed?"

"Nay, don't ax me. Wait--night afore last? That was the night he slept

at Janet's, wasn't it?"

Gubblum's eyes twinkled with triumph.

"What, did I tell you?"

"What call had he to sleep at Keswick?" said the blacksmith; "it's

no'but four miles from his own bed at the Ghyll."

"Nay, now, when ye ax the like o' that--"

Tom, the postman, stopped his grindstone and snuckered huskily:

"Maybe he's had a fratch with yon brother--yon Hugh."

"I'm on the morning shift this week, and Mother Janet she said: 'Giles,'

she said, 'the brother of your young master came late last night for a

bed.'"

"Job, what do you say to that?" shouted the blacksmith above the

pulsating of the bellows, and with the sharp white lights of the leaping

flames on his laughing face.

"Say! That they're a pack of liars!" said the mason, catching up his

untempered chisels and flinging out of the smithy.

When he had gone, Gubblum removed his pipe and said calmly: "He's ower

much like his Bible namesake in temper--that's the on'y fault of Job."

The parson, in the field outside, had stood in the turn-rows, resting on

his plow-handles. He had been drawling "Bonny lass, canny lass;" but,

catching the sound of angry words, he had paused and listened. When Job,

the mason, flung away, he returned to his plowing, and disappeared down

the furrow, the boy whistling at his horse's head.

"Why, Mattha, it is thee?" said the blacksmith, observing for the first

time the second of the new-comers; "and how fend ye?"

"Middling weel, John, middling weel," said Matthew, in a low voice,

resting on the edge of the trough.

It was Laird Fisher, more bent than of old, with deeper lines in his

grave face and with yet more listless eyes. He had brought two picks for

sharpening.

"Got your smelting-house at wark down at the pit, Mattha?" asked the

blacksmith.

"Ey, John, it's at wark--it's at wark."

The miller had turned to go, but he faced about with ready anger.

"Lord, yes, and a pretty pickle you and your gaffer's like to make of

me. Wad ye credit it, John? they've built their smelting-house within

half a rod of my mill. Half a rod; not a yard mair. When your red-hot

rubbish is shot down your bank, where's it going to go, ey? That's what

I want to know--where's it going to go?"

"Why, into your mill, of course," said Gubblum, with a wink, from the

tool-chest. "That'll maybe help you to go by fire when you can't raise

the wind."

"Verra good for thee, Gubblum," laughed the blacksmith.

"I'll have the law on them safe enough," said the miller.

"And where's your damages to come from?"

"From the same spot as all the rest of the brass--that's good enough for

me."

Matthew's voice followed the insinuating guffaw.

"I spoke to Master Hugh yesterday. I telt him all you said about a

wall."

"Well?"

"He won't build it."

"Of course not. Why didsta not speak to Paul?"

"No use in that," said Matthew, faintly.

"Nay, young Hugh is a gaffer," exclaimed the blacksmith.

"And Paul has no say in it except finding the brass, ey?"

"I mak' no doubt as you're reet, Dick," said Matthew, meekly.

"It's been just so since the day auld Allan died," said the blacksmith.

"He hadn't been a week in his grave before Hugh bought up Mattha's

royalty in the Hammer Hole, and began to sink for iron. He's never found

much ore, as I've heard tell on, but he goes ahead laying down his

pumping engines, and putting up his cranes, and boring his mill-races,

just as if he was proper-ietor of a royal mine."

"Hugh is the chain-horse, and Paul's no'but the mare in the shafts,"

said Gubblum.

"And the money comes somehow," said Tom o' Dint, who had finished the

knife and was testing its edge in whittling a stick.

Matthew got up from his seat.

"I'll come again for the picks, John," he said quietly; and the old man

stepped out of the bright glow into the chill haze.

"Mattha has never been the same since laal Mercy left him," said the

blacksmith.

"Any news of her?" asked the peddler.

"Ax Tom o' Dint; he's the postman, and like to know if anybody in

Newlands gets the scribe of a line from the wench," said the miller.

Tom shakes his head. "You could tell summat, an' you would, ey, Tom?"

said the blacksmith, showing his teeth.

"Don't you misliken me," said the rural messenger in his husky tones;

"I'm none of your Peeping Toms." And the postman drew up his head with

as much pride of office as could be assumed by a gentleman of bowed legs

and curtailed stature.

"It baffles me as Mattha hisself could make nowt of his royalty in the

Hammer Hole, if there was owt to make out of it," said the miller from

the gate, buttoning his coat up to his ears.

"I've heard as he had a mind to try his luck again," said Giles Raisley.

"Nay, nay, nowt of the sort," said the blacksmith. "When the laal lass

cut away and left the auld chap he lost heart and couldn't bear the

sight of the spot where she used to bide. So he started back to his bit

place on Coledale Moss. But Hugh Ritson followed him and bought up his

royalty--for nowt, as they say--and set him to wark for wage in his own

sinking--the same that ruined the auld man lang ago."

"And he's like to see a fortun' come out of it yet," said Giles.

"It won't be Mattha's fortun', then."

"Nay, never fear," said the miner.

Gubblum shook the ashes out of his pipe, and said meditatively,

"Mattha's like me and the cuckoo."

"Why, man, how's that?" said the blacksmith, girding his leather apron

in a band about his waist. A fresh heat was in the fire; the bellows

were belching; the palpitating flames were licking the smoky hood. A

twinkle lurked in the blacksmith's eye. "How's that?" he repeated.

"He's allus stopping short too soon," said Gubblum. "My missis, she said

to me last back end, 'Gubblum,' she said, 'dusta mind as it's allus

summer when the cuckoo is in the garden?' 'That's what is is,' I said.

'Well,' she said, 'dusta not think it wad allus be summer if the cuckoo

could allus be kept here?' 'Maybe so,' I says; 'but easier said nor

done.' 'Shaf on you for a clothead!' says she; 'nowt so simple. When you

get the cuckoo into the garden, build a wall round and keep it in.' And

that's what I did; and I built it middling high, too, but it warn't high

enough, for, wad ye think it, one day I saw the cuckoo setting off, and

it just skimmed the top of that wall by a bare inch. Now, if I'd no'but

put another stone--"

A loud peal of laughter was Gubblum's swift abridgment. The peddler

tapped the mouth of his pipe on his thumb-nail, and smiled under his

shaggy brows.

CHAPTER II.

When Parson Christian finished his plowing, the day was far spent. He

gave the boy a shilling as day's wage for leading the horses, drove the

team back to their owner, Robert Atkinson, paid five shillings for the

day's hire of them, and set out for home. On the way thither he called

at Henry Walmsley's, the grocery store in the village, and bought half a

pound of tea, a can of coffee, and a stone of sugar; then at Randal

Alston's, the shoemaker's, and paid for the repairing of a pair of

boots, and put them under his arm; finally, he looked in at the Flying

Horse and called for a pot of ale, and drank it, and smoked a pipe and

had a crack with Tommy Lowthwaite, the publican.

The mist had risen as the day wore on, and now that the twilight was

creeping down the valley, the lane to the vicarage could be plainly seen

in its yellow carpeting of fallen leaves. An outer door of the house

stood open, and a rosy glow streamed from the fire into the porch. Not

less bright was the face within that was waiting to welcome the old

vicar home.

"Back again, Greta, back again!" shouted the parson, rolling into the

cozy room with his ballast under either arm. "There--wait--fair play,

girl--ah, you rogue!--now that's what I call a mean advantage!"

There was a smack of lips, a little laugh in a silvery voice with a

merry lilt in it, and then a deep-toned mutter of affected protestation

breaking down into silence and a broad smile.

At arms-length Greta glanced at the parson's burdens, and summoned an

austere look.

"Now, didn't I tell you never to do it again?" she said, with an

uplifted finger and an air of stern reproof.

"Did you now?" said the parson, with an expression of bland

innocence--adding, in an accent of wonderment: "What a memory I have, to

be sure!"

"Leave such domestic duties to your domestic superiors," said the girl,

keeping a countenance of amazing severity. "Do you hear me, you dear old

darling?"

"I hear, I hear," said the old man, throwing his purchases on the floor

one by one. "Why, bless me, and here's Mr. Bonnithorne," he added,

lifting his eyes to the chimney-corner, where the lawyer sat toasting

his toes. "Welcome, welcome."

"Peter, Peter!" cried Greta, opening an inner door.

A gaunt old fellow, with only one arm, shambled into the room.

"Peter, take away these things to the kitchen," said Greta.

The old man glanced down at the parson's purchases with a look of

undisguised contempt.

"He's been at it again, mistress," he said.

The parson had thrown off his coat, and was pushing away his long boots

with the boot-jack.

"And how's Mr. Bonnithorne this rusty weather? Wait, Peter, give me the

slippers out of the big parcel. I got Randal Alston to cut down my old

boots into clock sides, and make me slippers out of the feet. Only

sixpence, and see what a cozy pair. Thank you, Peter. So you're well,

Mr. Bonnithorne. Odd, you say? Well, it is, considering the world of

folk who are badly these murky days."

Peter lifted the boots and fixed them dexterously under the stump of his

abridged member. The tea and coffee he deposited in his trousers'

pockets, and the sugar he carried in his hand.

"There'll be never no living with him," he muttered in Greta's ear as he

passed out. "Don't know as I mind his going to plow--that's a job for a

man with two hands--but the like o' this isn't no master's wark."

"Dear me!" exclaimed the parson, who was examining his easy-chair

preparatory to sitting in it, "a new cushion--and a bag on the wall for

my specs--and a shelf for my pipes--and a--a--what do you call this?"

"An antimacassar, Mr. Christian," the lawyer said.

"I wondered was he ever going to see any difference," said Greta, with

dancing eyes.

"Dear me, and red curtains on the windows, and a clean print counterpane

on the settle--"

"A chintz--a chintz," interposed Greta, with a mock whimper.

"And the old rosewood clock in the corner as bright as a looking-glass,

and the big oak cabinet all shiny with oil--"

"Varnish, sir, varnish."

"And all the carvings on it as fresh as a new pin--St. Peter with his

great key, and the rich man with his money-bag trying to defy the fiery

furnace."

"Didn't I say you would scarcely know your own house when you came home

again?" said Greta.

She was busying herself at spreading the cloth on the round table and

laying the parson's supper.

Parson Christian was revolving on his slippered toes, his eyes full of

child-like amazement, and a maturer twinkle of knowingness lurking in

that corner of his aged orbs that was not directly under the fire of

the girl's sharp, delighted gaze.

"Deary me, have you a young lady at home, Mr. Bonnithorne?"

"You know I am a bachelor, Mr. Christian," said the lawyer, demurely.

"So am I--so am I. I never knew any better--not until our old friend

Mrs. Lowther died and left me to take charge of her daughter."

"Mother should have asked me to take charge of Mr. Christian, shouldn't

she, Mr. Bonnithorne?" said Greta, with roguish eyes.

"Well, there's something in that," said the parson, with a laugh. "Peter

was getting old and a bit rusty in the hinges, you know, and we were

likely to turn out a pair of old crows fit for nothing but to scare good

Christians from the district. But Greta came to the musty old house,

with its dust and its cobwebs, and its two old human spiders, like a

slant of sunlight on a muggy day. Here's supper--draw up your chair, Mr.

Bonnithorne, and welcome. It's my favorite dish--she knows it--barley

broth and a sheep's head, with boiled potatoes and mashed turnips. Draw

up your chair--but where's the pot of ale, Greta?"

"Peter! Peter!"

The other spider presently appeared, carrying a quart jug with a little

mountain of froth--a crater bubbling over and down the sides.

"Been delving for potatoes to-day, Peter?" said the parson.

Peter answered with a grumpy nod of his big head.

"How many bushels?"

"Maybe a matter of twelve," muttered Peter, shambling out.

Then the parson and his guest fell to.

"You're a happy man, Mr. Christian," said Mr. Bonnithorne, as Greta left

the room on some domestic errand.

Parson Christian shook his head.

"No call for grace," he said, "with all the luxuries of life thrown into

one's lap--that's the worst of living such a happy life. No trials, no

cross--nothing to say but 'Soul, take thine ease'--and that's bad when

you think of it.... Have some sheep's head, Mr. Bonnithorne; you've not

got any tongue--here's a nice sweet bit."

"Thank you, Mr. Christian. I came round to pay the ten shillings for

Joseph Parkinson's funeral sermon last Sunday sennight, and the one

pound two half-yearly allowance from the James Bolton charity for poor

clergy-men."

"Well, well! they may well say it never rains but it pours," said the

parson. "I called at Henry Walmsley's and Robert Atkinson's on my way

home from the crossroads, and they both paid me their Martinmas

quarterage--Henry five shillings, and Robert seven shillings--and when I

dropped in on Randal Alston to pay for the welting and soling of my

shoes he said they would come to one and sixpence, but that he owed me

one and seven-pence for veal that Peter sold him, so he paid me a penny,

and we are clear from the beginning of the world to this day."

"I also wanted to speak about our young friend Greta," said Mr.

Bonnithorne, softly. "I suppose you are reconciled to losing her?"

"Losing her?--Greta!" said the parson, laying down his knife. Then

smiling, "Oh, you mean when Paul takes her--of course, of course--only

the marriage will not be yet awhile--he said so himself."

"Marriage with Paul--no," said Mr. Bonnithorne, clearing his throat and

looking grave.

Parson Christian glanced into the lawyer's face uneasily and lapsed into

silence.

"Mr. Christian, you were left guardian of Greta Lowther by our dear

friend, her mother. It becomes your duty to see that she does the best

for her future welfare and happiness."

"Surely, surely!" said the parson.

"You are an old man, Mr. Christian, and she is a young girl. When you

and I are gone, Greta Lowther will still have the battle of life before

her."

"Please God--please God!" said the parson, faintly.

"Isn't it well that you should see that she shall have a husband that

can fight it with her side by side?"

"So she shall, so she shall--Paul is a manly fellow, and as fond of her

as of his own soul--nay, as I tell him, it's idolatry and a sin before

God, his love of the girl."

"You're wrong, Mr. Christian. Paul Ritson is no fit husband for Greta.

He is a ruined man. Since his father's death he has allowed the Ghyll to

go to wreck. It is mortgaged to the last blade of grass. I know it."

Parson Christian shifted his chair from the table and gazed into the

fire with bewildered eyes.

"I knew he was in trouble," he said, "but I didn't guess that things

wore so grave a look."

"Don't you see that he is shattered in mind as well as purse?" said the

lawyer.

"No, no; I can't say that I do see that. He's a little absent sometimes,

but that's all. When I talk of Matthew Henry and discuss his

commentaries, or recite the story of dear Adam Clarke, he is a

little--just a little forgetful--that's all--yes, that is all."

"Compared with his brother--what a difference!" said Mr. Bonnithorne.

"Well, there is a difference," said the parson.

"Such spirit, such intelligence--he'll be the richest man in Cumberland

one of these days. He has bought up a royalty that is sweating ore, and

now he is laying down pumping engines and putting up smelting-houses,

and he is getting standing orders to fix a line of railway for the ore

he is fetching up."

"And where did the money come from?" asked the parson; "the money to

begin?"

Mr. Bonnithorne glanced up sharply.

"It was his share of his father's personalty."

"A big tree from such a little acorn," said the parson, meditatively,

"and quick growth, too."

"There's no saying what intelligence and enterprise will not do in this

world, Mr. Christian," said the lawyer, who seemed less certain of the

next. "Hugh Ritson is a man of spirit and brains. Now, that's the

husband for Greta--that is, if you can get him--and I don't know that

you can--but if it were only possible--"

Parson Christian faced about.

"Mr. Bonnithorne," he said, gravely, "the girl is not up for sale, and

the richest man in Cumberland can't buy her. The thirty pieces of silver

for which Judas sold his master may have been smelted and coined afresh,

but not a piece of that money shall touch fingers of mine!"

"You mistake me, Mr. Christian, believe me, you do," protested the

lawyer, with an aggrieved expression. "I was speaking in our young

friend's interests. Whatever occurs, I beg of you, as a friend and

well-wisher of the daughter of Robert Lowther, now in his grave, never

to allow her to marry Paul Ritson."

"That shall be as God wills it," said the parson quietly.

The lawyer had risen and drawn on his great-coat.

"She can stay here with me," continued the parson.

"No, she should marry now," said Mr. Bonnithorne, stepping to the door.

"She's all but of age. It is hardly fair to keep her."

"Why, what do you mean?" asked the parson, a puzzled look on his face.

"She is rich and she is young. Her wealth can buy comforts, and her

youth win pleasures."

The good old Christian opened wide his great gray eyes with a blank

expression. He glanced vacantly about the simple room, rose to his feet,

and sat down again.

"I never thought of that before," he said, faintly, and staring long

into the fire.

There was a heavy foot on the path outside. The latch was lifted, and

Paul Ritson stepped into the room. At the sound of his step Greta

tripped through the inner door, all joy and eagerness, to welcome him.

The parson got up and held out both hands, the clouds gone from his

beaming face.

"Well, good-night," said the lawyer, opening the door. "I've four long

miles before me. And how dark! how very dark!"

Paul Ritson was in truth a changed man.

His face was pale and haggard, and his eyes were bleared and heavy. He

dropped with a listless weariness into the chair that Greta drew up to

the fire. When he smiled the lips lagged back to a gloomy repose, and

when he laughed the note of merriment rang hollow and fell short.

"Just in time for a game with me, my lad!" said the parson. "Greta,

fetch the chessboard and box."

The board was brought, the pieces fixed; the parson settled himself at

his ease, with slippers on the hearth-rug and a handkerchief across his

knee.

"Do you know, Paul, I heard a great parl about you to-day?"

"About me! Where?" asked Paul, without much curiosity in his tone.

"At Mr. Proudfoot's smithy, while I was turning the fallows in the

meadow down at the crossroads. Little Mr. Oglethorpe was saying that you

slept at the Pack Horse, in Keswick, the night before last; but Mr. Job

Sheepshanks, the letter-cutter, said nay, and they had high words

indeed, wherein Job called Mr. Oglethorpe all but his proper name, and

flung away in high dudgeon."

Paul moved his pawn and said, "I never slept at the Pack Horse in my

life, Mr. Christian."

Greta sat knitting at one side of the ingle. The kitten, with a bell

attached to a ribbon about its neck, sported with the bows of her dainty

slippers. Only the click of the needles, and the tinkle of the bell, and

the hollow tick of the great clock in the corner broke the silence.

At last Parson Christian drew himself up in his chair.

"Well, Paul, man, Paul--deary me, what a sad move! You're going back,

back, back; once you could beat me five games to four. Now I can run

away with you."

The game soon finished, amid a chuckle from the parson, a bantering word

from Greta, and a loud, forced laugh from Paul.

Parson Christian lifted from a shelf a ponderous tome bound in leather

and incased in green cloth.

"I must make my day's entry," he said, "and get off to bed. I was astir

before day-break this morning."

Greta crept up behind the old man, and looked over his shoulder as he

wrote:

"Nov. 21.--Retired to my lodging-room last night, and commended my

all to God, and lay down, and fell asleep; but Peter minded the

heifer that was near to calving; so he came and wakened me, and we

went down and sealed her, and foddered her, and milked her. Spent all

day plowing the low meadow, Peter delving potatoes. Called at the

Flying Horse, and sat while I drank one pot of ale and no more, and

paid for it. Received ten shillings from Lawyer Bonnithorne for

funeral sermon, and one pound two from Bolton charity; also five

shillings quarterage from Henry Walmsley, and seven from Robert

Atkinson, and a penny to square accounts from Randal Alston, and so

retired to my closet at peace with all the world. Blessed be God."

The parson returned to its shelf the ponderous diary "made to view his

life and actions in," and called through the inner door for his bedroom

candle. A morose voice answered "Coming," and presently came.

"Thank you, Peter; and how's the meeting-house, and who preaches there

next Sunday, Peter?"

Peter grumbled out:

"I don't know as it's not yourself. I passed them my word as you'd

exhort 'em a' Sunday afternoon."

"But nobody has ever asked me. You should have mentioned the matter to

me first, Peter, before promising. But never mind, I'm willing, though

it's a poor discourse they can get from me."

Turning to Paul, who sat silent before the fire:

"Peter has left us and turned Methodist," said the parson; "he is now

Brother Peter Ward, and wants me to preach at the meeting-house. Well, I

won't say nay. Many a good ordained clergyman has been dissenting

minister as well. Good-night to you.... Peter, I wish you to get some

whipcord and tie up the reel of my fishing-rod--there it is, on the

rafters of the ceiling; and a bit more cord to go round the handle of my

whip--it leans against the leads of the neuk window; and, Peter, I'm

going to go to the mill with the oats to-morrow, and Robin Atkinson has

loaned me his shandry and mare. Robin always puts a bushel of grain into

the box, but it's light and only small feeding. I wish you to get a

bushel of better to mix with it, and make it more worth the mare's labor

to eat it. Good-night all; good night."

Peter grumbled something beneath his breath and shambled out.

"God bless him!" said Greta presently; and Paul, without lifting his

eyes from the fire, said quietly:

"'Christe's lore, and His apostles twelve

He taught; but first he followed it himselve.'"

Then there was silence in the little vicarage. Paul sat without

animation until Greta set herself to bewitch him out of his moodiness.

Her bright eyes, dancing in the rosy fire-light that flickered in the

room; her high spirits bubbling over with delicious teasing and joyous

sprightliness; her tenderness, her rippling laughter, her wit, her

badinage--all were brought to the defeat and banishment of Paul's

heaviness of soul. It was to no purpose. The gloom of the grave face

would not be conquered. Paul smiled slightly into the gleaming eyes, and

laughed faintly at the pouting lips, and stroked tenderly the soft hair

that was glorified into gold in the glint of the fire-light; but the old

sad look came back once and again.

Greta gave it up at last. She rose from the hassock at his feet.

"Sweetheart," she said, "I will go to bed. You are not well to-night, or

you are angry, or out of humor."

She waited a moment, but he did not speak. Then she made a feeble feint

of leaving the room.

At last Paul said:

"Greta, I have something to say."

She was back at her hassock in an instant. The laughter had gone from

her eyes, and left a dewy wistfulness.

"You are unhappy. You have been unhappy a long, long time, and have

never told me the cause. Tell me now."

The heavy face relaxed.

"What ever put that in your head, little one?" he asked, in a playful

tone, patting the golden hair.

"Tell me now," she said more eagerly. "Think of me as a woman fit to

share your sorrows, not as a child to be pampered and played with, and

never to be burdened with a man's sterner cares. If I am not fit to

know your troubles, I am not fit to be your wife. Tell me, Paul, what it

is that has taken the sunshine out of your life."

"The sunshine has not been taken out of my life yet, little woman--here

it is," said Paul, lightly, and he drew his fingers through the

glistening hair.

The girl's lucent eyes fell.

"You are playing with me," she said gravely; "you are always playing

with me. Am I so much a child? Are you angry with me?"

"Angry with you, little one? Hardly that, I think," said Paul, and his

voice sunk.

"Then tell me, sweetheart. You have something to say--what is it?"

"I have come to ask--"

"Yes?"

He hesitated. His heart was too full to speak. He began again.

"Do you think it would be too great a sacrifice to give up--"

"What?" she gasped.

"Do you remember all you told me about my brother Hugh--that he said he

loved you?"

"Well?" said Greta, with a puzzled glance.

"I think he spoke truly," said Paul, and his voice trembled.

She drew back with agony in every line of her face.

"Would it be ... do you think ... supposing I went away, far away, and

we were not to meet for a time, a long time--never to meet again--could

you bring yourself to love him and marry him?"

Greta rose to her feet in agitation.

"Him--love him!--you ask me that--you!"

The girl's voice broke down into sobs that seemed to shake her to the

heart's core.

"Greta, darling, forgive me; I was blind--I am ashamed."

"Oh, I could cry my eyes out!" she said, wiping away her tears. "Say you

were only playing with me, then; say you were only playing; do say so,

do!"

"I will say anything--anything but the same words again--and they nearly

killed me to say them."

"And was this what you came to say?" Greta inquired.

"No, no," he said, lifted out of his gloom by the excitement; "but

another thing, and it is easier now--ten times easier now--to say it.

Greta, do you think if I were to leave Cumberland and settle in another

country--Australia or Canada, or somewhere far enough away--that you

could give up home, and kindred, and friends, and old associations, and

all the dear past, and face a new life in a new world with me? Could you

do it?"

Her eyes sparkled. He opened his arms, and she flew to his embrace.

"Is this your answer, little one?" he said, with choking delight. And a

pair of streaming eyes looked up for a brief instant into his face.

"Then we'll say no more now. I'm to go to London to-morrow night, and

shall be away four days. When I return we'll talk again, and tell the

good soul who lies in yonder. Peace be with him, and sweet sleep, the

dear old friend!"

Paul lifted up his hat and opened the door. His gloom was gone; his eyes

were alive with animation. The worn cheeks were aflame. He stood erect,

and walked with the step of a strong man.

Greta followed him into the porch. The rosy fire-light followed her. It

flickered over her golden hair, and bathed her beauty in a ruddy glow.

"Oh, how free the air will breathe over there," he said, "when all this

slavery is left behind forever! You don't understand, little woman, but

some day you shall. What matter if it is a land of rain, and snow, and

tempest? It will be a land of freedom--freedom, and life, and love. And

now, Master Hugh, we shall soon be quits--very soon!"

His excitement carried him away, and Greta was too greedy of his joy to

check it with questions.

They stood together at the door. The night was still and dark; the trees

were noiseless, their prattling leaves were gone. Silent and empty as a

vacant street was the unseen road.

Paul held forth his hand to feel if it rained. A withered leaf floated

down from the eaves into his palm.

Then a footstep echoed on the path. It went on toward the village.

Presently the postman came trudging along from the other direction.

"Good-night, Tom o' Dint!" cried Paul, cheerily.

Tom stopped and hesitated.

"Who was it I hailed on the road?" he asked.

"When?"

"Just now."

"Nay, who was it?"

"I thought it was yourself."

The little man trundled on in the dark.

"My brother, no doubt," said Paul, and he pulled the door after him.

CHAPTER III.

The next morning a bright sun shone on the frosty landscape. The sky was

blue and the air was clear.

Hugh Ritson sat in his room at the back of the Ghyll, with its window

looking out on the fell-side and on the river under the leafless trees

beneath. The apartment had hardly the appearance of a room in a Cumbrian

homestead. It was all but luxurious in its appointments. The character

of its contents gave it something of the odor of a by-gone age. Besides

books on many shelves, prints, pictures in water and oil, and mirrors of

various shapes, there was tapestry on the inside of the door, a bust of

Dante above a cabinet of black oak, a piece of bas-relief in soapstone,

a gargoyle in wood, a brass censer, a mediaeval lamp with open mouth,

and a small ivory crucifix nailed to the wall above the fire.

Hugh himself sat at an organ, his fingers wandering aimlessly over the

keys, his eyes gazing vacantly out at the window. There was a knock at

the door.

"Come in," said the player. Mr. Bonnithorne entered and walked to a

table in the middle of the floor. Hugh Ritson finished the movement he

was playing, and then arose from the organ and drew an easy-chair to the

fire.

"Brought the deed?" he asked, quietly, Mr. Bonnithorne still standing.

"I have, my dear friend, and something yet more important."

Hugh glanced up: through his constant smile Mr. Bonnithorne was

obviously agitated. Dropping his voice, the lawyer added, "Copies of the

three certificates."

Hugh smiled faintly. "Good; we will discuss the certificates first," he

said, and drew his dressing-gown leisurely about him.

Mr. Bonnithorne began to unfold some documents. He paused; his eye was

keen and bright; he seemed to survey his dear friend with some

perplexity; his glance was shadowed by a certain look of distrust; but

his words were cordial and submissive, and his voice was, as usual, low

and meek. "What a wonderful man you are. And how changed! It is only a

few months since I had to whip up your lagging spirits at a great

crisis. And now you leave me far behind. Not the least anxious! How

different I am, to be sure. It was this very morning my correspondent

sent me the copies, and yet I am here, five miles from home. And when

the post arrived I declare to you that such was my eagerness to know if

our surmises were right that--"

Hugh interrupted in a quick, cold voice: "That you were too nervous to

open his letter, and fumbled it back and front for an hour--precisely."

Saying this, Hugh lifted his eyes quickly enough to encounter Mr.

Bonnithorne's glance, and when they fell again a curious expression was

playing about his mouth.

"Give me the papers," said Hugh, and he stretched forward his hand

without shifting in his seat.

"Well, really, you are--really--"

Hugh raised his eyes again. Mr. Bonnithorne paused, handed the

documents, and shuffled uneasily into a seat.

One by one Hugh glanced hastily over three slips of paper. "This is

well," he said, quietly.

"Well? I should say so, indeed. What could be better? I confess to you

that until to-day I had some doubts. Now I have none."

"Doubts? So you had doubts?" said Hugh, dryly "They disturbed your

sleep, perhaps?"

The lurking distrust in Mr. Bonnithorne's eyes openly displayed itself,

and he gazed full into the face of Hugh Ritson with a searching look

that made little parley with his smile. "Then one may take a man's

inheritance without qualm or conviction?"

Hugh pretended not to hear, and began to read aloud the certificates in

his hand. "Let me see, this is first--Registration of Birth."

Mr. Bonnithorne interrupted. "Luckily, very luckily, the registration of

birth is first."

Hugh read:

"Name, Paul. Date of birth, August 14, 1845. Place of birth, Russell

Square, London. Father's name, Robert Lowther. Mother's name, Grace

Lowther; maiden name, Ormerod."

"Then this comes second--Registration of Marriage."

Mr. Bonnithorne rose in his eagerness and rubbed his hands together at

the fire. "Yes, second," he said, with evident relish.

Hugh read calmly:

"Allan Ritson--Grace Ormerod--Register's office, Bow Street, Strand,

London--June 12, 1847."

"What do you say to that?" asked Mr. Bonnithorne, in an eager whisper.

Hugh continued without comment. "And this comes last--Registration of

Birth."

"Name, Hugh--March 25, 1848--Holme, Ravenglass, Cumberland--Allan

Ritson--Grace Ritson (Ormerod)."

"There you have the case in a nutshell," said Mr. Bonnithorne, dropping

his voice. "Paul is your half-brother, and the son of Lowther. You are

Allan Ritson's heir, born within a year of your father's marriage. Can

anything be clearer?"

Hugh remained silently intent on the documents. "Were these copies made

at Somerset House?" he asked.

Mr. Bonnithorne nodded.

"And your correspondent can be relied upon?"

"Assuredly. A solicitor in excellent practice."

"Was he told what items he had to find, or did he make a general

search?"

"He was told to find the marriage or marriages of Grace Ormerod and to

trace her offspring."

"And these were the only entries?"

Mr. Bonnithorne nodded again.

Hugh twirled the papers in his fingers, and then placed two of them side

by side. His face wore a look of perplexity. "I am puzzled," he said.

"What puzzles you?" said Mr. Bonnithorne. "Can anything be plainer?"

"Yes. By these certificates I am two and a half years younger than Paul.

I was always taught that there was only a year between us."

Mr. Bonnithorne smiled, and said in a superior tone:

"An obvious ruse."

"You think a child is easily deceived--true!"

Mr. Bonnithorne preserved a smiling face.

"Now, I will proceed to the payment of the legacy, and you, no doubt, to

the institution of your claim."

"No," said Hugh Ritson, with emphasis, rising to his feet.

"You know that if a bastard dies seized of an estate, the law justifies

his title. He is then the bastard eigne. You must eject this man."

"No," said Hugh Ritson again. The lawyer glanced up inquiringly, and

Hugh added: "That shall come later. Meantime the marriage must be

brought about."

"Your own marriage with Greta?"

"Paul's."

"Paul's?" said Mr. Bonnithorne, the very suppression of his tone giving

it additional emphasis.

"Paul's," repeated Hugh with grim composure. "He shall marry her."

The lawyer had risen once more, and was now face to face with Hugh

Ritson, glancing into his eyes with eager scrutiny.

"You cannot mean it?" he said at length.

"And why not?" said Hugh, placidly.

"Because Paul is her brother--at least, her half-brother."

"They don't know that."

Mr. Bonnithorne's breath seemed to be arrested.

"But we know it, and we can't stand by and witness their marriage!" he

said at length.

Hugh Ritson leaned with his back to the fire. "We can, and shall," he

said, and not a muscle of his face moved.

Mr. Bonnithorne surveyed his friend from head to foot, and then his own

countenance relaxed.

"You are trifling; but it will be no trifle to them when they learn that

their billing and cooing must end. And from such a cause, too. It will

be a terrible shock. The only question is, whether it would not be more

humane to say nothing of the impediment until we have brought about

another match. Last night, at Parson Christian's, I did what I could for

you."

Hugh smiled in return; a close observer might have seen that his was a

cold mockery of the lawyer's own smile.

"Yes, you were always humane, Bonnithorne, and now your sensibilities

are shocked. But when I spoke of marriage I meant the ceremony. Nothing

more."

Mr. Bonnithorne's eyes twinkled.

"I think I understand. You intend to separate them at the church

door--perhaps at the altar rail. It is a shocking revenge. My very skin

creeps!"

Hugh laughed lightly, and walked to the window. A slant of sunshine fell

on his upturned face. When he turned his head and broke silence he spoke

in a deep, harsh voice.

"I was humane, too. When she spoke of marriage with Paul, I hinted at an

impediment. She ridiculed the idea; scoffed at it." Another light laugh,

and then a stern solemnity. "She insulted me--palpably, grossly,

brutally. What did she say? Didn't I tell you before? Why, she said--ha!

ha! would you believe it?--she said she'd rather marry a plowboy than

such a gentleman as me. That was her very word."

Hugh Ritson's face was now dark with passion, while laughter was on his

lips.

"She shall marry her plowboy, to her lifelong horror and disgrace. I

promised her as much, and I will keep my word!"

"A terrible revenge!" muttered the lawyer, twitching uneasily at his

finger-nails.

"Tut! You don't know to what lengths love may go. Even the feeble infant

hearts of men whose minds are a blank can carry them any length in the

devotion or the revenge of love!" He paused, and then added in a low

tone, "She has outraged my love!"

"Surely not past forgiveness?" interrupted Mr. Bonnithorne, nervously.

"It would be a lifelong injury. And she is a woman, too."

Hugh faced about.

"But he is a man; and I have my reckoning with him also." Hugh Ritson

strode across the room, and then stopped suddenly. "Look you,

Bonnithorne, you said that with all your confidence on the night of my

father's death, you had your doubts until to-day. But I had never a

moment's doubt. Why? Because I had assurance from my mother's own lips.

To me? No, but worse; to him. He knows well he is not my father's heir.

He has known it since the hour of my father's death. He knows that I

know it. Yet he has kept the lands to this day." Another uneasy

perambulation. "Do you think of that when you talk of revenge?

Manliness? He has none. He is a pitiful, truculent, groveling coward,

ready to buy profit at any price. He has robbed me of my inheritance. He

stands in my place. He is a living lie. Revenge? It will be

retribution!"

Hugh Ritson's composure was gone. Mr. Bonnithorne, not easily cowed,

dropped his eyes before him. "Terrible, terrible!" he muttered again,

and added with more assurance: "But you know I have always urged you to

assert your right to the inheritance."

Hugh was striding about the room, his infirm foot trailing heavily after

him.

"Bonnithorne," he said, pausing, "when a woman has outraged the poor

weak heart of one of the waifs whom fate flings into the gutter, he

sometimes throws a cup of vitriol into her face, saying, 'If she is not

for me, she is not for another;' or 'Where she has sinned, there let her

suffer.' That is revenge; it is the feeble device of a man who thinks in

his simple soul that when beauty is gone loathing is at hand." Another

light trill of laughter.

"But the cup of retribution is not to be measured by the cup of

vitriol."

Mr. Bonnithorne fumbled his papers nervously, and repeated beneath his

breath, "Terrible, terrible!"

"She has wronged me, Bonnithorne, and he has wronged me. They shall

marry and they shall separate; and henceforward they shall walk together

and yet apart, a gulf dividing them from each other, yet a wider gulf

dividing both from the world; and so on until the end, and he and I and

she and I are quits."

"Terrible, terrible!" Mr. Bonnithorne mumbled again. "All nature rises

against it."

"Is it so? Then be it so," said Hugh, the flame subsiding from his

cheek, and a cold smile creeping afresh about his lips. "Your sense of

justice would have been answered, perhaps, if I had turned this bastard

adrift penniless and a beggar, stopped the marriage, and taken by

strategy the woman I could not win by love." The smile faded away. "That

would have been better than the cup of vitriol, but not much better. You

are a man of the world."

"It is a terrible revenge," the lawyer muttered again--this time with a

different intonation.

"I repeat, they shall marry. No more than that," said Hugh. "I would

outrage nature as little as I would shock the world."

The sun had crept round to where the organ stood in one corner of the

room. Hugh's passion had gradually subsided. He sidled on to the stool

and began to play softly. A knock came to the door, and old Laird Fisher

entered.

"The gentleman frae Crewe is down at the pit about t' engine in the

smelting-mill," said the old man.

"Say I shall be with him in half an hour," said Hugh, and Laird Fisher

left the room. Then Hugh put the papers in his pocket.

"We have wasted too much time over the certificates--they can

wait--where's the deed of mortgage?--I must have the money to pay for

the new engine."

"It is here," said the lawyer, and he spread a parchment on the table.

Hugh glanced hastily over it, and touched a hand-bell. When the maid

appeared he told her to go to Mr. Paul, who was thatching in the

stack-yard, and say he wished to see him at once. Then he returned to

the organ and played a tender air. His touch was both light and

strenuous.

"Any news of his daughter?" said Mr. Bonnithorne, sinking his voice to a

whisper.

"Whose daughter?" said Hugh, pausing and looking over his shoulder.

"The old man's--Laird Fisher's."

"Strangely enough--yes. A letter came this morning."

Hugh Ritson stopped playing and thrust his hand into an inner pocket.

But Mr. Bonnithorne hastened to show that he had no desire to pry into

another man's secrets.

"Pray don't trouble. Perhaps you'd rather not--just tell me in a word

how things are shaping."

Hugh laughed a little, unfolded a sheet of scented writing-paper, with

ornamented border, and began to read:

"'I am writing to thank you very much--' Here," tossing the letter to

the lawyer, "read it for yourself." Then he resumed his playing.

Mr. Bonnithorne fixed his nose-glasses, and read:

"I am writing to thank you very much for your kind remembrance of me,

it was almost like having your company, I live in hopes of seeing you

soon, when are you coming to me? Sometimes I think you will never,

never come, and then I can't help crying though I try not to, and I

don't cry much. I don't go out very often London is far away, six

miles, there are nice people here and nice children. Only think when

my trouble is over and you come and take me home. How is poor

father, does he look much older does he fret for me now? I wonder

will he know me. I am quite well, only there is something the matter

in my eyes. Sometimes when I wake up I can't see plain. Don't be long

writing. My eyes are very sore and red to-day, and it is oh so lonely

in this strange place. Mrs. Drayton is kind to me. Good-bye. She has

a son, but he is always at meets, that is races, and I have never

seen him. Write soon to your loving Mercy. The time is near."

Hugh played on while Mr. Bonnithorne read. The lawyer, when he came to

the end, handed the letter back with the simple comment:

"Came this morning, you say? It was written last Tuesday--nearly a week

ago."

Hugh nodded his head over his shoulder, and continued to play. He swayed

to and fro with an easy grace to the long sweeps of the music until the

door opened sharply, and Paul entered with a firm step. Then he rose,

picked a pen from the inkstand, and dipped it in the ink.

Paul wore a suit of rough, light cloth, with leggins, and a fur cap,

which he did not remove. His face was pale; decision sat on every line

of it.

"Excuse me, Mr. Bonnithorne, if I don't shake hands," he said in his

deep voice; "I'm at work, and none too clean."

"This," said Hugh Ritson, twiddling the pen in his fingers, "this is the

deed I spoke of yesterday. You sign there," pointing to a blank space in

front of a little wafer.

Then he placed one hand firmly on the upper part of the parchment, as if

to steady it, and held out the pen.

Paul made no approach to accepting it. He stretched forward, took hold

of the document, and lifted it, casting Hugh's hand aside.

Hugh watched him closely.

"The usual formality," he said, lightly; "nothing more."

Paul passed his eye rapidly over the deed. Then he turned to the lawyer.

"Is this the fourth or fifth mortgage that has been drawn?" he inquired,

still holding the parchment before him.

"Really, I can't say--I presume it is the--really, I hardly remember--"

Mr. Bonnithorne's suavity of tone and customary smile broke down into

silence and a look of lowering anxiety.

Paul glanced steadfastly into his face.

"But I remember," he said, with composure more embarrassing than

violence. "It is the fifth. The Holme farm was first, and then came

Goldscope. Hindscarth was mortgaged to the last ear of corn, and then it

was the turn for Coledale. Now, it's the Ghyll itself, I see, house and

buildings."

Hugh Ritson's face underwent a change, but his tone was unruffled as he

said:

"If you please, we will come to business." Then with a sinister smile,

"You resemble the French counsel--you begin every speech at the

Creation. 'Let us go on to the Deluge,' said the judge."

"To the Deluge!" said Paul; and he turned his head slowly to where Hugh

stood, holding the pen in one hand and rapping the table with the

knuckles of the other. "Rather unnecessary. We're already under water."

The passion in Hugh Ritson's face dropped to a look of sullen anger. But

he mastered his voice, and said quietly:

"The engineer from Crewe is waiting for me at the pit. I have wasted the

whole morning over these formalities. Come, come, let us have done. Mr.

Bonnithorne will witness the signature."

Paul had not shifted his steadfast gaze from his brother's face. Hugh

dodged his glance at first, and then met it with an expression of

audacity.

Still holding the parchment before him, Paul said quietly:

"To-night I leave home for London, and shall be absent four days. Can

this business wait until my return?"

"No, it can't," said Hugh with emphasis.

Paul dropped his voice.

"Don't take that tone with me, I warn you. Can this business wait?"

"I mean what I say--it can not."

"On my return I may have something to tell you that will affect this and

the other deeds. Once more, can it wait?"

"Will you sign--yes or no?" said Hugh.

Paul looked steady and straight into his brother's eyes.

"You are draining away my inheritance--you are--"

At this word Hugh's smoldering temper was afire.

"Your inheritance?" he broke out in his bitterest tones. "It is late in

the day to talk of that. Your inheritance--"

But he stopped. The expression of audacity gave place to a look of blank

bewilderment. Paul had torn the parchment from top to bottom, and flung

it on the table, and in an instant was walking out of the room.

CHAPTER IV.

Paul Ritson returned to the stack-yard, and worked vigorously three

hours longer. A stack had been stripped by a recent storm, and he

thatched it afresh with the help of a laborer and a boy. Then he stepped

indoors, changed his clothes, and filled a traveling-bag. When this was

done he went in search of the stableman. Natt was in his stable,

whistling as he polished his harness.

"Bring the trap round to the front at seven," he said, "and put my bag

in at the back; you'll find it in the hall."

By this time the night had closed in, and the young moon showed faintly

over the head of Hindscarth. The wind was rising.

Paul returned to the house, ate, drank, and smoked. Then he rose and

walked upstairs and knocked at the door of his mother's room.

Mrs. Ritson was alone. A lamp burned on the table and cast a sharp white

light on her face. The face was worn and very pale. Lines were plowed

deep on it. She was kneeling, but she rose as Paul entered. He bent his

head and kissed her forehead. There was a book before her; a rosary was

in her hand. The room was without fire. It was chill and cheerless, and

only sparsely furnished--sheep-skin rugs on the floor, texts on the

walls, a carved oak clothes-chest in one corner, two square high-backed

chairs and a small table, a bed, and no more.

"I'm going off, mother," said Paul; "the train leaves in an hour."

"When do you return?" said Mrs. Ritson.

"Let me see--this is Saturday; I shall be back on Wednesday evening."

"God be with you!" she said in a fervent voice.

"Mother, I spoke to Greta last night, and she promised. We shall soon be

free of this tyranny. Already the first link of the chain is broken. He

called me into his room this morning to sign a mortgage on the Ghyll,

and I refused."

"And yet you are about to go away and leave everything in his hands!"

Mrs. Ritson sat down and Paul put his hand tenderly on her head.

"Better that than to have it wrested from me inch by inch--to hold the

shadow of an inheritance while he grasps the substance. He knows all.

His dark hints are not needed to tell me that."

"Yet he is silent," said Mrs. Ritson, and her eyes fell on to her book.

"And surely it is for my sake that he is so--if in truth he knows all.

Is he not my son? And is not my honor his honor?"

Paul shook his head.

"If the honor of twenty mothers, as true and dear as you, were the

stepping-stones to his interest, over those stones he would go. No, no;

it is not honor, whether yours or his, that keeps him silent."

Mrs. Ritson glanced up.

"Are you not too hard on him? He is guiltless in the eye of the world,

and that at least should plead for him. Forgive him. Do not leave your

brother in anger!"

"I have nothing to forgive," said Paul. "Even if he knew nothing, I

should still go away and leave everything. I could not live any longer

under the shadow of this secret, bound by an oath. I would go, as I go

now, with sealed lips, but a free heart. He should have his own before

man--and I mine, before God."

Mrs. Ritson sat in silence; her lips trembled perceptibly, and her

eyelids quivered.

"I shall soon leave you, my dear son," she said in a tremulous voice.

"Nay, nay, you shall not," he answered in an altered tone, half of

raillery, half of tenderness; "you are coming with us--with Greta and

me--and over there the roses will bloom again in your white cheeks."

Mrs. Ritson shook her head.

"I shall soon leave you, dearest," she repeated, and told her beads.

He tried to dispel her sadness; he laughed, and she smiled feebly; he

patted her head playfully. But she came back to the same words: "I shall

soon leave you."

The moon was shining at the full when he lifted his hat to go. It was

sailing through a sky of fibrous cloud. The wind was high, and rattled

the empty boughs of the tree against the window. Keen frost was in the

air.

"I shall see my father's old friend in London on Monday, and be back on

Wednesday. Good-bye. Keep a good heart. Good-bye."

She wept on his breast and clung to him.

"Good-bye, good-bye!" he repeated, and triad to disengage himself from

her embrace.

But she clung closer. It was as if she was to see him no more.

"Good-bye!" she sobbed, and with the tears in his own eyes he laughed at

her idle fears.

"Ha! ha! ha! one would think I was going for life--ha! ha--"

There was a scream on the frosty air without. His laugh died on his

lips.

"What was that?" he said, and drew a sharp breath.

She lifted her face, whiter now than ever, and with tearless eyes.

"It was the cry of the bird that foretells death," she said in a

whisper.

He laughed a little--boisterously.

"Nay, nay; you will be well and happy yet." Then he broke away.

* * * * *

Natt was sitting in the trap, and it was drawn up in the court-yard to

the door. He was looking through the darkness at some object in the

distance, and when Paul came up he was not at first conscious of his

master's presence.

"What were you looking at, Natt?" said Paul, pulling on his gloves.

"I war wond'rin' whether lang Dick o' the Syke had kindled a fire

to-night, or whether yon lowe on the side of the Causey were frae the

new smelting-house."

Paul glanced over the horse's head. A deep glow stood out against the

fell. All around was darkness.

"The smelting-house, I should say," said Paul, and jumped to his seat

beside Natt.

By one of the lamps that the trap carried, he looked at his watch.

"A quarter past seven. It will be smart driving, but you can give the

mare her own time coming back."

Then he took the reins, and in another moment they were gone.

CHAPTER V.

At eight o'clock that night the sky was brilliantly lighted up, and the

sound of many voices was borne on the night wind. The red flare came

from the Syke; the mill was afire. Showers of sparks and sheets of flame

were leaping and streaming into the sky. Men and women were hurrying to

and fro, and the women's shrill cries mingled with the men's shouts. At

intervals the brightness of the glare faded, and then a column of

choking smoke poured out and was borne away on the wind. Dick, the

miller, was there, with the scorching heat reddening his wrathful face.

John Proudfoot had raised a ladder against the mill, and, hatchet in

hand, was going to cut away the cross-trees; but the heat drove him

back. The sharp snap of the flames told of timbers being ripped away.

"No use--it's gone," said the blacksmith, dragging the ladder behind

him.

"I telt them afore what their damned smelting-house would do for me!"

said the miller, striding about in his impotent rage.

Parson Christian was standing by the gate on the windward side of the

mill-yard, with Laird Fisher beside him, looking on in silence at the

leaping flames.

"The wind is from the south," he said, "and a spark of the hot refuse

shot down the bank has been blown into the mill."

The mill was a wooden structure, and the fire held it like a serpent in

its grip. People were coming and going from the darkness into the red

glare, and out of the glare into the darkness. Among them was one

stalwart figure that none noticed in the general confusion.

"Have you a tarpaulin?" said this man, addressing those about him.

"There's a big one on the stack at Coledale," answered another.

"Run for it!"

"It's of no use."

"Damme, run for it!"

The tone of authority was not to be ignored. In three minutes a huge

tarpaulin was being dragged behind a dozen men.

"Lay hold of the ropes and let us dip it into the river," shouted the

same voice above the prevailing clangor. It was done. Dripping wet, the

tarpaulin was pulled into the mill-yard.

"Where's your ladder? Quick!"

The ladder was raised against the scorching wooden walls.

"Be ready to throw me the ropes," shouted the deep voice.

A firm step was set on the lowest rung. There was a crackle of glass,

and then a cloud of smoke streamed out of a broken window. For an

instant the bright glare was obscured. But it burst forth afresh, and

leaped with great white tongues into the sky.

"The sheets are caught!" shouted the miller.

They were flying around with the wind. A line of flame seemed to be

pursuing them.

"Who's the man on the ladder--dusta know?" cried John Proudfoot.

"I dunnot," answered the miller.

At that instant Hugh Ritson came up. The smoke was gone, and now a dark

figure could be dimly seen high up on the mill-side. He seized the

cross-trees with both hands and swung himself on to the raking roof.

"Now for the ropes!" he shouted.

The flames burst out again and illumined the whole sky; the dark mass of

the fells could be seen far overhead, and the waters of the river in the

bed of the valley glowed like amber. The stalwart figure stood out in

the white light against the red glare, holding on to the cross-trees on

the top of the mill, and with a wheel of crackling fire careering beside

him.

There could be no doubt of his identity, with the light on his strong

face and tawny hair.

"It's Paul Ritson!" shouted many a voice.

"Damme, the ropes--quick!"

The ropes were thrown and caught, and thrown again to the other side.

Then the dripping tarpaulin was drawn over the mill until it covered the

top and half the sides. The wheel burned out, and the iron axle came to

the ground with a plunge.

The fire was conquered; the night sky grew black; the night wind became

voiceless. Then the busy throng had time for talk.

"Where's Paul?" asked Parson Christian.

"Ay, where is he?" said the miller.

"He's a stunner, for sure--where is he?" said the blacksmith.

None knew. When the flames began to fade he was missed. He had

gone--none knew where.

"Nine o'clock," said Parson Christian, turning his face toward home.

"Sharp work, while it lasted, my lads!"

Then there was the sound of wheels, and Natt drove his trap to the gate

of the mill-yard.

"You've just missed it, Natt," said John Proudfoot; "where have you

been?"

"Driving the master to the train."

Hugh Ritson was standing by. Every one glanced from him to Natt.

"The train?--master? What do you mean? Who?"

"Who? Why, Master Paul," said Natt, with a curl of the lip. "I reckon it

could scarce be Master Hugh."

"When? What train?" said Parson Christian.

"The eight o'clock to London."

"Eight o'clock? London?"

"Don't I speak plain?"

"And has he gone?"

"I's warrant he's gone."

Consternation sat on every face but Natt's.

CHAPTER VI.

Next day was Sunday, and after morning service a group of men gathered

about the church porch to discuss the events of the night before. In the

evening the parlor of the Flying Horse was full of dalespeople, and many

a sapient theory was then and there put forth to account for the

extraordinary coincidence of the presence of Paul Ritson at the fire and

his alleged departure by the London train.

Hugh Ritson was not seen abroad that day. But early on Monday morning he

hastened to the stable, called on Natt to saddle a horse, sprung on its

back and galloped away toward the town.

The morning was bitterly cold, and the rider was buttoned up to the

throat. The air was damp; a dense veil of vapor lay on the valley and

hid half the fells; the wintery dawn, with its sunless sky, had not the

strength to rend it asunder; the wind had veered to the north, and was

now dank and icy. A snow-storm was coming.

The face of Hugh Ritson was wan and jaded. He leaned heavily forward in

the saddle; the biting wind was in his eyes; he had a fixed look, and

seemed not to see the people whom he passed on the road.

Dick o' the Syke was grubbing among the fallen wreck of the charred and

dismantled mill. When Hugh rode past him he lifted his eyes and muttered

an oath beneath his breath. Old Laird Fisher was trundling a wheelbarrow

on the bank of the smelting-house. The headgear of the pit-shaft was

working. As Hugh passed the smithy, John Proudfoot was standing, hammer

in hand, by the side of a wheelless wagon upheld by poles. John was

saying, "Wonder what sec a place Mister Paul slept a' Saturday neet--I

reckon that wad settle all;" and a voice from inside the smithy

answered: "Nowt of the sort, John; it's a fate, I tell, tha." The

peddler's pony was standing by the hasp of the gate.

Never once lifting his eyes, with head bent and compressed lips, Hugh

Ritson rode on in the teeth of the coming storm. There was another storm

within that was uprooting every emotion of his soul. When he came to the

vicarage he drew up sharply and rapped heavily on the gate. Brother

Peter came shambling out at the speed of six steps a minute.

"Mr. Christian at home?" asked Hugh.

"Don't know as he is," said Peter.

"Where is he?"

"Don't know as I've heard."

"Tell him I'll call as I come back, in two hours."

"Don't know as I'll see him."

"Then go and look for him!" shouted Hugh, impatiently bringing down the

whip on the flank of the horse.

Brother Peter Ward turned about sulkily.

"Don't know as I will," he grumbled, and trudged back into the house.

Then Hugh Ritson rode on. A thin sleet began to fall, and it drove hard

into his face. The roads were crisp, and the horse sometimes stumbled;

but the rider pressed on.

In less than half an hour he was riding into the town. The people who

were standing in groups in the market-place parted and made space for

him. They hailed him with respectful salutations. He responded curtly or

not at all. Notwithstanding his long ride, his face was still pale, and

his lips were bloodless. He stopped at the court-yard leading to the

front of the Pack Horse. Old Willie Calvert, the innkeeper, stood there,

and touched his cap when Hugh approached him.

"My brother Paul slept here a few nights ago, I hear?" said Hugh.

"So he did," said the innkeeper.

"What night was it?"

"What night? Let me see--it were a week come Wednesday."

"Did you see him yourself?"

"Nay; I were lang abed."

"Who did--Mistress Calvert?"

"Ey--she did for sure--Janet" (calling up the court). "She'll tell ye

all the ins and oots."

A comfortable-looking elderly body in a white cap and print apron came

to the door.

"You saw my brother--Paul, you know--when he slept at your house last

Wednesday night?"

"Yes, surely," said Janet.

"What did he say?"

"Nay, nowt. It was verra late--maybe twelve o'clock--and I was bolting

up and had the cannel in my hand to get me to bed, and a rap came, and

when I opened the door who should it be but Mister Paul. He said he

wanted a bed, but he seem't to be in the doldrums and noways keen for a

crack, so I ax't na questions, but just took him to the little green

room over the snug and bid him good-night."

"And next morning--did you see him then?" said Hugh.

"No, but a morning when he paid for his bed for he had nowther bite nor

sup in the house."

"Did he look changed?--anything different about him?"

"Nay, nowt but in low feckle someways, and maybe summat different

dressed."

"How different? What did he wear that night?"

Pale as Hugh Ritson's face had been before, it was now white as a face

in moonlight.

"Maybe a pepper and salt tweed coat, but I can't rightly call to mind at

the minute."

Hugh's great eyes stared out of his head. His tongue cleaved to his

mouth, and for the moment denied him speech.

"Thank you, Mistress Calvert. Here, Willie, my man, drink my health with

the missis."

So saying, he tossed a silver coin to the innkeeper, wheeled about, and

rode off.

"I can not mak' nowther head nor tail o' this," said the old man.

"Of what--the brass?" said Janet.

"Nay, but that's soond enough, for sure, auld lass."

"Then just thoo leave other folks's business to theirselves, and come

thy ways in with thee. Thoo wert allus thrang a-meddlin'."

The innkeeper had gone indoors and drawn himself a draught of ale.

"I allus like to see the ins and oots o' things," he observed, with a

twinkle in his eye, and the pot to his mouth.

"Mind as you're not ower keen at seein' the ins and oots o' that

pewter."

"I'll be keerful, auld lass."

Hugh Ritson's horse went clattering over the stones of the streets until

it came to the house of Mr. Bonnithorne. Then Hugh drew up sharply,

jumped from the saddle, tied the reins to the loop in the gate-pier, and

rang the bell. In another minute he was standing in the breakfast-room,

which was made comfortable by a glowing fire. Mr. Bonnithorne, in

dressing-gown and slippers, rose from his easy-chair with a look of

surprise.

"Did you hear of the fire at the mill on Saturday night?" asked Hugh in

a faltering voice.

Mr. Bonnithorne nodded his head.

"Very unlucky, very," said the lawyer. "The man will want recompense,

and the law will support him."

"Tut!--a bagatelle!" said Hugh, with a gesture of impatience.

"Of course, if you say so--"

"You've heard nothing about Paul?"

Mr. Bonnithorne answered with a shake of his yellow head, and a look of

inquiry.

Then Hugh told him of the man at the fire, and of Natt's story when he

drove up in the trap. He spoke with visible embarrassment, and in a

voice that could scarcely support itself. But the deep fear that had

come over him had not yet taken hold of the lawyer. Mr. Bonnithorne

listened with a bland smile of amused incredulity. Hugh stopped with a

shudder.

"What are you thinking?" he asked, nervously.

"That Natt lied."

"As well say that the people at the fire lied."

"No; you yourself saw Paul there."

"Bonnithorne, like all keen-eyed men, you are short-sighted. I have

something more to tell you. The people at the Pack Horse say that Paul

slept at their house last Wednesday night. Now I know that he slept at

home."

Mr. Bonnithorne smiled again.

"A mistake as to the night," he said; "what can be plainer?"

"Don't wriggle; look the facts in the face."

"Facts?--a coincidence in evidence--a common error."

"Would to God it were!" Hugh strode about the room in obvious

perturbation, his eyes bent on the ground. "Bonnithorne, what is the

place where the girl Mercy lives?"

"An inn at Hendon."

"Do they call it the Hawk and Heron?"

"They do. The old woman Drayton keeps it."

Hugh Ritson's step faltered. He listened with a look of stupid

consternation.

"Did I never tell you that the peddler, Oglethorpe, said he saw Paul at

the Hawk and Heron in Hendon?"

Mr. Bonnithorne dropped back into his seat without a word. Conviction

was taking hold of him.

"What do the folks say?" he asked at length.

"Say? That it was a ghost, a wraith, twenty things--the idiots!"

"What do you say, Mr. Ritson?"

"That it was another man."

The lawyer remained sitting, his eyes fixed and vacant.

"What then? What if it is another man? Resemblances are common. We are

all brothers. For example, there are numbers of persons like myself in

the world. Odd, isn't it?"

"Very," said Hugh, with a hard laugh.

"And what if there exists a man resembling your half-brother, Paul, so

closely that on three several occasions he has been mistaken for him by

competent witnesses--what does it come to?"

Hugh paused.

"Come to. God knows! I want to find out. Who is this man? What is he?

Where does he come from? What is his business here? Why, of all places

on this wide earth, does he, of all men alive, haunt my house like a

shadow?"

Hugh Ritson was still visibly perturbed.

"There's more in this matter than either of us knows," he said.

Mr. Bonnithorne watched him for a moment in silence.

"I think you draw a painful inference--what is it?" he asked.

"What?" repeated Hugh, and added, absently, "who can tell?"

Up and down the room he walked restlessly, his eyes bent on the floor,

his face drawn down into lines. At length he stood and picked up the hat

he had thrown on the couch.

"Bonnithorne," he said, "you and I thought we saw into the heart of a

mystery. Heaven pity us for blind moles! I fear we saw nothing."

"Why--what--how so--when--" Mr. Bonnithorne stammered, and then stopped

short.

Hugh had walked out of the room and out of the house. He leaped into the

saddle and rode away.

The wind had risen yet higher; it blew an icy blast from behind him as

he cantered home. Through the hazy atmosphere a cloud of dun, vaporish

red could be seen trailing over the dim fells. It poised above the ball

crown of the Eel Crags like a huge supernatural bird with outstretched

wings.

Hugh held the reins with half-frozen hands. He barely felt the biting

cold. His soul was in a tumult, and he was driven on by fears that were

all but insupportable. For months a thick veil had overspread his

conscience, and now, in an instant, and by an accident, it was being

rent asunder. He had lulled his soul to sleep. But no opiate of

sophistry could keep the soul from waking. His soul was waking now. He

began to suspect that he had been acting like a scoundrel.

At the vicarage he stopped, dismounted, and entered. Standing in the

hall, he overheard voices in the kitchen. They were those of Brother

Peter and little Jacob Berry, the tailor, who had been hired to sew by

the day, and was seated on the dresser.

"I've heard of such sights afore," the little tailor was saying. "When

auld Mother Langdale's son was killed at wrustlin' down Borrowdale way,

and Mother Langdale was abed with rheumatis, she saw him come to the

bed-head a-dripping wet with blood, as plain as plain could be, and in

less nor an hour after they brought him home to the auld body on a

shutter--they did, for sure."

"Shaf on sec stories! I don't know as some folks aren't as daft as

Mother Langdale herself!" Peter muttered in reply.

Hugh Ritson beat the door heavily with his riding-whip.

"Parson Christian at home now?" he asked, when Peter opened it.

"Been and gone," said Peter.

"Did you tell him I meant to come back?"

"Don't know as I did."

Hugh's whip came down impatiently on his leggins.

"Do you know anything?" he asked. "Do you know that you are now talking

to a gentleman?"

"Don't know as I do," mumbled Peter, backing in again.

"If Miss Greta is at home tell her I should be glad to speak with

her--do you hear?" Peter disappeared.

Hugh was left alone in the hall. He waited some minutes, thinking that

Peter was carrying his message. Presently he overheard that worthy

reopening the discussion on Mother Langdale's sanity with little Jacob

in the kitchen. The deep damnation he desired just then for Brother

Peter was about to be indicated by another lusty rap on the kitchen

door, when the door of the parlor opened, and Greta herself stood on

the threshold with a smile and an outstretched hand.

"I thought it was your voice," she said, and led the way in.

"Your cordial welcome heaps coals of fire on my head, Greta. I cannot

forget in what spirit we last talked and parted."

"Let us think no more about it," said Greta, and she drew a chair for

him to the fire.

He remained standing, and as if benumbed by strong feeling.

"I have come to speak of it--to ask pardon for it--I was in the wrong,"

he said, falteringly.

She did not respond, but sat down with drooping eyes. He paused, and

there was an ominous silence.

"You don't know what I suffered, or what I suffer still. You are very

happy. I am a miserable man. Greta, do you know what it is to love

without being loved? How can you know? It is torture beyond the gift of

words--misery beyond the relief of tears. It is not jealousy; that is no

more than a vulgar kind of envy. It is a nameless, measureless torment."

He paused again. She did not speak. His voice grew tremulous.

"I'm not one of the fools who think that the souls that are created for

each other must needs come together--that destiny draws them from the

uttermost parts of the earth--that, trifle as they will with their best

hopes, fate is stronger than they are, and true to the pole-star of

ultimate happiness. I know the world too well to believe nonsense like

that. I know that every day, every hour, men and women are casting

themselves away--men on the wrong women, women on the wrong men--and

that all this is a tangle that will never, never be undone."

He stepped up to where she sat and dropped his voice to a whisper.

"Greta--permit me to say it--I loved you dearly. Would to Heaven I had

not! My love was not of yesterday. It was you and I, I and you. That was

the only true marriage possible to either of us from world's end to

world's end. But Paul came between us; and when I saw you give yourself

to the wrong man--"

Greta had risen to her feet.

"You say you come to ask pardon for what you said, but you really come

to repeat it." So saying, she made a show of leaving the room.

Hugh stood awhile in silence. Then he threw off his faltering tone and

drew himself up.

"I have come," he said, "to warn you before it is too late. I have come

to say, while it is yet time, never marry my brother, for as sure as God

is above us, you will repent it with unquenchable tears if you do."

Greta's eyes flashed with an expression of disdain.

"No," she said; "you have come to threaten me--a sure sign that you

yourself have some secret cause for fear."

It was a home-thrust, and Hugh was hit.

"Greta, I repeat it, you are marrying the wrong man."

"What right have you to say so?"

"The right of one who could part you forever with a word."

Greta was sore perplexed. Like a true woman, she would have given half

her fortune at that moment to probe this mystery. But her indignation

got the better of her curiosity.

"It is false!" she said.

"It is true!" he answered. "I could speak the word that would part you

wider than the poles asunder."

"Then I challenge you to speak it," she exclaimed.

They faced each other, pale, and with quivering lips.

"It is not my purpose. I have warned you," he said.

"You do not believe your own warning," she answered.

He winced, but said not a word.

"You have come to me with an idle threat, and fear is written on your

own face."

He drew his breath sharply, and did not reply.

"Whatever it is, you do not believe it."

He was making for the door. He came back a step.

"Shall I speak the word?" he said. "Can you bear it?"

"Leave me," she said, "and carry your falsehood with you!"

He was gone in an instant. Then her anger cooled directly, and her

woman's curiosity came back with a hundred-fold rebound.

"Gracious Heaven! what did he mean?" she thought, and the hot flush

mounted to her eyes. She had half a mind to call him back. "Could it be

true?" The tears were now rolling down her cheeks. "He has a secret

power over Paul--what is it?" She ran to the door. "Hugh! Hugh!" He was

gone. The galloping feet of his horse were heard faint in the distance.

She went back into the house and sat down, and wept galling tears of

pride and vexation.

CHAPTER VII.

At midday Parson Christian came home from the fields to dinner.

"I've been away leading turf," he said, "from Cole Moss, for Robin

Atkinson, to pay him for loaning me his gray mare on Saturday when I

fetched my grain to the mill. Happen most of it is burned up,

though--but that's no fault of Robin's. So now we neither owe t'other

anything, and we're straight from the beginning of the world."

Greta was bustling about with the very efficient hindrance of Brother

Peter's assistance, to get the dinner on the table. She smiled, and

sometimes tossed her fair head mighty jauntily, and laughed out loud

with a touch of rattling gayety. But there were rims of red around her

bleared eyes, and her voice, beneath all its noisy merriment, had a

tearful lilt.

The parson observed this, but said nothing about it.

"Coming round by Harras End I met John Lowthwaite," he said, "and John

would have me go into his house and return thanks for his wife's

recovery from childbed. So I went in, and warmed me, and drank a pot of

ale with them, and assisted the wife and family to return praise to

God."

Dinner was laid, little Jacob Berry came in from the kitchen, and all

sat down together--Parson Christian and Greta, Brother Peter, and the

tailor hired to sew.

"Dear me! I'm Jack-of-all-trades, Greta, my lass," said the parson,

after grace. "Old Jonathan Truesdale came running after me at the

bridge, to say that Mistress Truesdale wanted me to go and taste the

medicine that the doctor sent her from Keswick, and see if it hadn't

opium in it, because it made her sleep. I sent word that I had business

to take me the other way, but would send Miss Greta if she would go.

Jonathan said his missus would be very thankful, for she was lonesome at

whiles."

"I'll go, and welcome," said Greta. The rims about her eyes were growing

deeper; the parson chattered on, to banish the tempest of tears that he

saw was coming.

"Well, Peter, and how did the brethren at the meeting house like the

discourse yesterday afternoon?"

"Don't know as they thought you were varra soond on the point of

'lection," muttered Peter from the inside of his bowl of soup.

"Well, you're right homely folk down there, and I'd have no fault to

find if you were not a little too disputatious. What's the use of

wrangling over doctrine? Right or wrong, it will matter very little to

any of us in a hundred years. We're on our way to heaven, and, please

God, there'll be no doctrine there."

Greta could not eat. She had no appetite for food. Another appetite--the

appetite of curiosity--was eating at her heart. She laid down her knife.

The parson could hide his concern no longer.

"Dear me, my lass, you and that braw lad of yours are like David and

Jonathan, and" (with a stern wag of his white head) "I'm not so sure

that I won't turn myself into Saul and fling my javelin at him for

envy."

The parson certainly did not look too revengeful at that moment, with

the mist gathering in his eyes.

"Talking of Saul," said little Jacob, "there's that story of the witch

of Endor, and Saul seein' Sam'el when he was dead. I reckon as that's

no'but another version of what happened at the fire a' Saturday neet."

Parson Christian glanced furtively at Greta's drooping head, and then

meeting the tailor's eye, he put his finger to his lips.

When dinner was over the parson lifted from the shelf the huge tome,

"made to view his life and actions in." He drew his chair to the fire

and began to turn over the earliest leaves. Greta had thrown on her

cloak and was fixing her hat.

"I'm going to see poor Mrs. Truesdale," she said. Then, coming behind

the old man, and glancing over his shoulder at the book on his knees,

"What are you looking for?" she asked, and smiled; "a prescription for

envy?"

The parson shook his old head gravely. "You must know I met young Mr.

Ritson this morning?"

"Hugh?"

"Yes; he was riding home from his iron pits, but stopped and asked me if

I could tell him when his father, who is dead and gone, poor fellow,

came first to these parts, and how old his brother Paul might be at that

time."

"Why did he ask?" said Greta, eagerly.

"Nay, I scarce can say. I told him I could not tell without looking at

my book. Let me see; it must be a matter of seven-and-twenty years ago.

How old is your sweetheart, Greta?"

"Paul is twenty-eight."

"And this is the year seventy-five. Twenty-eight from

seventy-five--that's forty-seven. Paul was a wee toddle, I remember.

I'll look for forty-seven. Eighteen forty-four, forty-five,

forty-six--here it is--forty-seven. And, bless me, the very page! Look,

here we have it."

Then the parson read this entry in his diary:

"'Nov. 18th.--Being promised to preach at John Skerton's church, at

Ravenglass, I got ready to go thither. I took my mare and set forward

and went direct to Thomas Storsacre's, where I was to lodge. It rained

sore all the day, and I was wet, and took off my coat and let it run an

hour. Then we supped and sat discoursing by the fire till near ten

o'clock of one thing and another, and, among the rest, of one Allan

Ritson, who had newly settled at Ravenglass. Thomas said Allan was fresh

from Scotland, being Scottish born, and that his wife was Irish, and

that they had a child, called Paul, only a few months old, and not yet

walking.'

"The very thing! Wait, here's something more:

"'Nov. 19th (Lord's day).--Went to church, and many people came to

worship. Parson Skerton read the prayers and Thomas Storsacre the

lessons. I prayed, and preached from Matt. vii. 23, 24; then ceased, and

dismissed the people. After service, Thomas brought his new neighbor,

Allan Ritson, who asked me to visit him that day and dine. So I went

with him, and saw his wife and child--an infant in arms. Mrs. Ritson is

a woman of some education and much piety. Her husband is a rough, blunt

dalesman, of the good old type.'

"The very thing," the parson repeated, and he put a pipe spill in the

page.

"I wonder why he wants it?" said Greta.

She left Parson Christian still looking at his book, and went out on her

errand.

She was more than an hour gone, and when she returned, the winter's day

had all but closed in. Only a little yellow light still lingered in the

sky.

"Greta, they have sent for you from the Ghyll," said the parson, as she

entered. "Mrs. Ritson wants to see you to-night. Natt, the stableman,

came with the trap. But he has gone again."

"I will follow him at once," said Greta.

"Nay, my lass; the day is not young enough," said the parson.

"I was never afraid of the dark," said Greta.

She took down a lantern and lighted it, drew her cloak more closely

about her, and prepared to go.

"Then take this paper to young Mr. Hugh. It's a copy of what is written

in my book."

Greta hesitated. But she could not tell Parson Christian what had passed

between Hugh and herself. She took the paper and hastened away.

The parson sat for a while before the fire. Then he rose, walked to the

door and opened it. "Heaven bless the girl, it's snowing! What a night

for the child to be abroad!" He returned in disturbed humor to the

fireside.

CHAPTER VIII.

When Greta set out, the atmosphere was yellow and vaporish. The sky grew

rapidly darker. As she reached the village, thin flakes of snow began to

fall. She could feel them driven by the wind against her face, and when

she came by the inn she could see them in the dull, yellow light.

The laborers were leaving the fields, and, with their breakfast cans

swung on their fork handles, they were drifting in twos and threes into

the Flying Horse. It looked warm and snug within.

She passed the little cluster of old houses, and scarcely saw them in

the deepening night. As she went by the mill she could just descry its

ruined roof standing out like a dark pyramid against the dun sky. The

snow fell faster. It was now lying thick on her cloak in front, and on

the windward face of the lantern in her hand.

The road was heavier than before, and she had still fully a quarter of a

mile to go. She hastened on. Passing the little church--Parson

Christian's church--she met Job Sheepshanks, the letter-cutter, coming

out of the shed in the church-yard. "Bad night for a young lady to be

from home, begging your pardon, miss," said Job, and went on toward the

village, his bunch of chisels clanking over his shoulder.

The wind soughed in the leafless trees that grew around the old roofless

barn at the corner of the road that led to the fells. The gurgle of a

half-frozen waterfall came from the distant Ghyll. Save for these sounds

and the dull thud of Greta's step on the snow-covered road, all around

was still.

How fast the snow fell now. Yet Greta heeded it not at all. Her mind was

busy with many thoughts. She was thinking of Paul as Parson Christian's

great book had pictured him--Paul as a child, a little, darling babe,

not yet able to walk. Could it be possible that Paul, her Paul, had once

been that? Of course, to think like this was foolishness. Every one must

have been young at some time. Only it seemed so strange. It was a sort

of mystery.

Then she thought of Paul the man--Paul as he had been, gay and

heartsome; Paul as he was, harassed by many cares. She thought of her

love for him--of his love for her--of how they were soon, very soon, to

join hands and face the unknown future in an unknown land. She had

promised. Yes, and she would go.

She thought of Paul in London, and how soon he would be back in

Newlands. This was Monday, and Paul had promised to come home on

Wednesday. Only two days more! Yet how long it would be, after all!

Greta had reached the lonnin that went up to the Ghyll. She would soon

be there. How thick the trees were in the lane! They shut out the last

glimmer of light from the sky. The lantern burned yellow amidst the snow

that lay on it like a crust.

Then Greta thought of Mrs. Ritson. It was strange that Paul's mother had

sent for her. They were friends, but there had never been much intimacy

between them. Mrs. Ritson was a grave and earnest woman, a saintly soul,

and Greta's lightsome spirit had always felt rebuked in her presence.

Paul loved his mother, and she herself must needs love as well as

reverence the mother of Paul. It was Paul first and Paul last. Paul was

the center of her world. She was a woman, and love was her whole

existence.

Here in the lonnin she was in pitch darkness. She stumbled once into the

dike; then laughed and went on again. At one moment she thought she

heard a noise not far away. She stood and listened. No, it was nothing.

Only a hundred yards more! Bravely!

Then, by a swift rebound--she knew not why--her mind went back to the

events of the morning. She thought of Hugh Ritson and his mysterious

threat. What did he mean? What harm could he do them? Oh! that she had

been calmer, and asked. Her heart fluttered. It flashed upon her that

perhaps it was he and not his mother who had sent for her to-night. Her

pulse quickened.

At that instant the curlew shot over her head with its deep, mournful

cry. At the same moment she heard a step approaching her. It came on

quickly. She stopped. "Who is it?" she asked.

There was no answer. The sound of the footstep ceased.

"Who are you?" she called again.

Then with heavy thuds in the darkness and on the snow, some one

approached. She trembled from head to foot, but advanced a step and

stopped again. The footstep was passing her. She brought the light of

the lantern full on the retreating figure.

It was the figure of a man. Going by hastily, he turned his head over

his shoulder and she saw his face. It was the face of Paul, colorless,

agitated, with flashing eyes.

Every drop of Greta's blood stood still.

"Paul!" she cried, thrilled and immovable.

There was an instant of unconsciousness. The earth reeled beneath her.

When she came to herself she was standing alone in the lane, the lantern

half buried in the snow at her feet.

Had it been all a dream?

She was but twenty yards from the house. The door of the porch stood

open. Chilled with fear to the heart's core, she rushed in. No one was

in the hall. Not a sound, but the faint mutter of voices in the kitchen.

She ran through the passage and threw open the kitchen door. The farm

laborers were at supper, chatting, laughing, eating, smoking.

"Didn't you hear somebody in the house?" she cried.

The men got up and turned about. There was dead silence in a moment.

"When?"

"Now."

"No. What body?"

She flew off without waiting to explain. The kitchen was too far away.

Hugh Ritson's room opened from the first landing of the stairs. The

stairs went up almost from the porch. Darting up, she threw open the

door of Hugh's room. Hugh was sitting at the table, examining papers by

a lamp.

"Have you seen Paul?" she cried, in an agonized whisper, and with a

panic-stricken look.

Hugh dropped the papers and rose stiffly to his feet.

"Great God! Where?"

"Here--this moment!"

Their eyes met. He did not answer. He was very pale. Had she dreamed?

She looked down at the snow-crusted lantern in her hand. It must have

been all a dream.

She stepped back on to the landing, and stood in silence. The serving

people had come out of the kitchen, and, huddled together, they looked

at her in amazement. Then a low moan reached her ear. She ran to Mrs.

Ritson's room. The door to it stood wide open; a fire burned in the

grate, a candle on the table.

Outstretched on the floor lay the mother of Paul, cold, still, and

insensible.

When Mrs. Ritson regained consciousness she looked about with the empty

gaze of one who is bending bewildered eyes on vacancy. Greta was

kneeling beside her, and she helped to lift her into the bed. Mrs.

Ritson did not speak, but she grasped Greta's hand with a nervous

twitch, when the girl whispered something in her ear. From time to time

she trembled visibly, and glanced with a startled look toward the door.

But not a word did she utter.

Thus hour after hour wore on, and the night was growing apace. A painful

silence brooded over the house. Only in the kitchen was any voice raised

above a whisper. There the servants quaked and clucked--every tongue

among them let loose in conjecture and the accents of surprise.

Hugh Ritson passed again and again from his own room to his mother's. He

looked down from time to time at the weary, pale, and quiet face. But he

said little. He put no questions.

Greta sat beside the bed, only less weary, only less pale and quiet,

only less disturbed by horrible imaginings than the sufferer who lay

upon it. Toward midnight Hugh came to say that Peter had been sent for

her from the vicarage. Greta rose, put on her cloak and hat, kissed the

silent lips, and followed Hugh out of the room.

As they passed down the stairs Greta stopped at the door of Hugh

Ritson's room, and beckoned him to enter it with her. They went in

together, and she closed the door.

"Now tell me," she said, "what this means."

Hugh's face was very pale. His eyes had a wandering look, and when he

spoke his voice was muffled. But by an effort of his unquenchable energy

he shook off this show of concern.

"It means," he said, "that you have been the victim of a delusion."

Greta's pale face flushed. "And your mother--has she also been the

victim of a delusion?"

Hugh shrugged his shoulders, showed his teeth slightly, but made no

reply.

"Answer me--tell me the truth--be frank for once--tell me, can you

explain this mystery?"

"If I could explain it, how would it be a mystery?"

Greta felt the blood tingle to her finger-tips.

"Do you believe I have told you the truth?" she asked.

"I am sure you have."

"Do you believe I saw Paul in the lane?"

"I am sure you think you saw him."

"Do you know for certain that he went away?"

Hugh nodded his head.

"Are you sure he has not got back?"

"Quite sure."

"In short, you think what I saw was merely the result of woman's

hysteria?"

Hugh smiled through his white lips, and his staring eyes assumed a

momentary look of amused composure. He stepped to the table and fumbled

some papers.

This reminded Greta of the paper the parson had asked her to deliver. "I

ought to have given you this before," she said. "Mr. Christian sent it."

He took it without much apparent interest, put it on the table unread,

and went to the door with Greta.

The trap was standing in the court-yard, with Natt in the driver's seat,

and Brother Peter in the seat behind. The snow had ceased to fall, but

it lay several inches deep on the ground. There was the snow's dumb

silence on the earth and in the air.

Hugh helped Greta to her place, and then lifted the lamp from the trap,

and looked on the ground a few yards ahead of the horse. "There are no

footprints in the snow," he said, with a poor pretence at a

smile--"none, at least, that go from the house."

Greta herself had begun to doubt. She lacked presence of mind to ask if

there were any footprints at all except Peter's. The thing was done and

gone. It all happened three hours ago, and it was easy to suspect the

evidence of the senses.

Hugh returned the lamp to its loop. "Did you scream," he asked, "when

you saw--when you saw--it?"

Greta was beginning to feel ashamed. "I might have done. I can not

positively say--"

"Ah, that explains everything. No doubt mother heard you and was

frightened. I see it all now. Natt, drive on--cold journey--good-night."

Greta felt her face burn in the darkness. Before she had time or

impulse to reply, they were rolling away toward home.

At intervals her ear caught the sound of suppressed titters from the

driver's seat. Natt was chuckling to himself with great apparent

satisfaction. Since the fire at the mill he had been putting two and two

together, and he was now perfectly confident as to the accuracy of his

computation. When folks said that Paul had been at the fire he laughed

derisively, because he knew that an hour before he had left him at the

station. But an idea works in a brain like Natt's pretty much as the hop

ferments. When it goes to the bottom it leaves froth and bubbles at the

top. Natt knew that there was some grave quarrel between the brothers.

He also knew that there were two ways to the station and two ways back

to Newlands--one through the town, the other under Latrigg. Mr. Paul

might have his own reasons for pretending to go to London, and also his

own reasons for not going. Natt had left him stepping into the station

at the town entrance. But what was to prevent him from going out again

at the entrance from Latrigg? Of course that was what he had done. And

he had never been out of the county. Deary me, how blind folks were, to

be sure! Thus Natt's wise head chuckled and clucked.

At one moment Natt twisted his sapient and facetious noddle over his

shoulder to where Brother Peter sat huddled into a hump and in gloomy

silence. "Mercy me, Peter!" he cried, in an affrighted whisper, and with

a mighty tragical start, "and is that thee? Dusta know I thowt it were

thy ghost?"

"Don't know as it's not--dragging a body frae bed a cold neet like

this," mumbled Peter, numbed up to his tongue, but still warm enough

there.

CHAPTER IX.

Hugh Ritson was content that Greta should think she had been the victim

of a delusion. He was not unwilling that she should be tortured by

suggestions of the supernatural. If she concluded that Paul had deceived

her as to his departure from Newlands, he would not be unlikely to

foster the delusion. The one thing of all others which Hugh Ritson was

anxious to prevent was that Greta should be led to draw the purely

matter-of-fact inference that when she thought she saw Paul she had

really seen another man.

But that was his own conviction. He was now sure beyond the hope of

doubt that there was a man alive who resembled Paul Ritson so closely

that he had thrice before, and now once again, been mistaken for him by

unsuspecting persons. That other man was to be the living power in his

own life, in his brother's life, in his mother's life, in Greta's life.

Who was he?

Left alone in the court-yard when the trap drove away, Hugh Ritson

shuddered and looked round. He had laughed with the easy grace of a man

no longer puzzled as he bid Greta good-night, but suspense was gnawing

at his heart. He returned hastily to his room, sat down at the table,

picked up the paper which Parson Christian had sent him, and read it

with eager eyes.

He read it and reread it; he seemed to devour it line by line, word by

word. When he would have set it down his fingers so trembled that he let

it fall, and he rose from his chair with rigid limbs.

What he had dreaded he now knew for certainty. He had stumbled into an

empty grave. He opened a drawer and took out three copies of

certificates that Mr. Bonnithorne had brought him. Selecting the

earliest of these in order of date, he set it side by side with the copy

of the extract from Parson Christian's diary.

By the one--Paul, the son of Grace Ormerod, by her husband Robert

Lowther, was born August 14, 1845.

By the other--Paul, the reputed son of Grace Ormerod by her husband,

Allan Ritson, was an infant still in arms on November 19, 1847.

Paul Ritson could not be Paul Lowther.

Paul Ritson could not be the half-brother of Greta Lowther.

Hugh Ritson fell back as one who had been dealt a blow. For months he

had been idly hatching an addled villainy. The revenge that he had

promised himself for spurned and outraged love--the revenge that he had

named retribution--was but an impotent mockery.

For an hour he strode up and down the room with flushed face and limbs

that shook beneath him. Natt came home from the vicarage, put in his

horse, and turned into the kitchen--now long deserted for the night. He

heard the restless footstep backward and forward, and began to wonder if

anything further had gone wrong. At last he ventured upstairs, opened

noiselessly the door, and found his master with a face aflame and a look

of frenzy. But the curious young rascal with the sleepy eyes had not

time to proffer his disinterested services before he was hunted out with

an oath. He returned to the kitchen with a settled conviction that

somewhere in that mysterious chamber his master kept a capacious

cupboard for strong drink.

Like master, like man: Natt brewed himself an ample pint of hot ale,

pulled off his great boots, and drew up to warm himself before the

remains of a huge fire.

Hugh Ritson's bedroom opened off his sitting-room. He went to bed; he

tried to sleep, but no sleep came near him; he tossed about for an hour,

rose, walked the room again, then went to bed once more.

He was feeling the first pangs of honest remorse. A worse man would have

accommodated himself more speedily to the altered conditions when he

found that he had pursued a phantasm. To do this erring man justice, he

writhed under it. A better man would have fled from it. If, at the

outset, if when the first step in the descent had been taken, he had

seen clearly that villainy lay that way, he would not have gone

further. But now he had gone too far. To go on were as easy as to go

back; and go on he must.

While he honestly believed that Greta was half-sister to the man known

to the world as Paul Ritson and his brother, he could have stood aside

and witnessed without flinching the ceremony that was to hold them

forever together and apart. Then without remorse he could have come down

and separated them, and seen that woman die of heart's hunger who had

starved to death the great love he bore her. There would have been a

stern retribution in that, and the voice of nature would have whispered

him that he did well.

But when it was no longer possible to believe that Greta and Paul were

anything to each other, the power of sophistry collapsed, and

retribution sunk to revenge.

He might go on, but there could be no self-deception. The blind

earthworms of malice might delude themselves if they liked, but he could

see, and he must face the truth. If ever he did what he had proposed to

do, then he was a scoundrel, and a conscious scoundrel!

Hugh Ritson leaped out of his bed. The perspiration rolled in big beads

from his forehead. His tongue grew thick and stiff in his mouth. The

great veins in his neck swelled.

Without knowing whither he went, he walked out of his own into his

mother's room. A candle still burned on the table. The fire had

smoldered out. A servant-maid sat by the bedside with head aslant,

sleeping the innocent sleep. He approached the bed. His mother was

breathing softly. She had fallen into a doze; the pale face was very

quiet; the weary look of the worn cheeks was smoothed out; the absent

eyes were lightly closed. Closed, too, on the rough world was the poor

soul that was vexed by it.

Hugh Ritson was touched. Somewhere deep down in that frozen nature the

angel of love troubled the still waters.

Bending his head, he would have touched the cold forehead with his

feverish lips. But he drew back. No, no, no! Tenderness was not for

him. The good God gave it to some as manna from heaven. But here and

there a man, stretched on the rack of life, had not the drop of water

that would cool his tongue.

With stealthy steps, as of one who had violated the chamber of chastity,

Hugh Ritson crept back to his own room. He took brandy from a cupboard

and drank a glass of it. Then he lay down and composed himself afresh to

sleep. Thoughts of Greta came back to him. Even his love for her was

without tenderness. It was a fiery passion. It made him weep,

nevertheless. Galling tears, hot, bitter, smarting tears, rolled from

his eyes. And down in that deep and hidden well of feeling, where he,

too, was a man like other men, Hugh Ritson's strong heart bled. He would

have thought that love like his must have subdued the whole world to its

will; that when a woman could reject it the very stones must cry out.

Pshaw!

Would sleep never come? He leaped up, and laughed mockingly, drank

another glass of brandy, and laughed again. His door was open, and the

hollow voice echoed through the house.

He put on a dressing-gown, took his lamp in his hand, and walked

down-stairs and into the hall. The wind had risen. It moaned around the

house, then licked it with hissing tongues. Hugh Ritson walked to the

ingle, where no fire burned. There he stood, scarcely knowing why. The

lamp in his hand cast its reflection into the mirror on the wall. Behind

it was a flushed face, haggard, with hollow eyes and parted lips.

The sight recalled another scene. He stepped into the little room at the

back. It was in that room his father died. Now it was empty; a bare

mattress, a chair, a table--no more.

Hugh Ritson lifted the lamp above his head and looked down. He was

enacting the whole terrible tragedy afresh. He crept noiselessly to the

door, opened it slightly, and looked cautiously out. Then, leaving it

ajar, he stood behind it with bent head and inclining ear. His face wore

a ghastly smile.

The wind soughed and wept without.

Hugh Ritson threw the door open and stepped back into the hall. There he

stood some minutes with eyes riveted on one spot. Then he hurried away

to his room. As he went up the stairs he laughed again.

Back at his bedside he poured himself another glass of brandy, and once

more lay down to sleep. He certainly slept this time, and his sleep was

deep.

Natt's dreamy ear heard a voice in the hall. He had drunk his hot ale,

and from the same potent cause as his master, he also had slept, but

with somewhat less struggle. Awakened in his chair by the unaccustomed

sound, he stole on tiptoe to the kitchen door. He was in time to see

from behind the figure of a man ascending the stairs carrying a lamp

before him. Natt's eyes were a shade hazy at the moment, but he was

cock-sure of what he saw. Of course it was Mister Paul, sneaking off to

bed after more "straitforrad" folk had got into their nightcaps and

their second sleep. That was where Natt soon put himself.

When all was still in that troubled house, the moon's white face peered

through a rack of flying cloud and looked in at the dark windows.

CHAPTER X.

Next morning, Tuesday morning, Hugh Ritson found this letter on his

table:

"Dearest,--I do not know what is happening to me, but my eyes get

worse and worse. To-day and yesterday I have not opened them. Oh,

dear, I think I am losing my sight; and I have had such a fearful

fright. The day after I wrote to you, Mrs. Drayton's son came home,

and I saw him. Oh, I thought it was your brother Paul, and his name

is Paul, too, but I think now it must be my eyes--they were very bad,

and perhaps I did not see plain. He asked me questions, and went away

next morning. Do not be long writing, I am, oh, so very lonely. When

are you coming to me? Write soon.

Your loving,

Mercy."

Hugh Ritson had risen in a calmer mood. He was prepared for a disclosure

like this. Last night he had been overwhelmed by the discovery that Paul

Ritson was not the son of Robert Lowther. With the coming of daylight a

sterner spirit of inquiry came upon him. The question that now agitated

him was the identity of the man who had been mistaken for Paul.

After Mercy's letter the mystery was in a measure dispelled. There could

hardly be the shadow of a doubt that the man who had slept at the Pack

Horse--the man who had been seen by many persons at the fire--the man

who Greta had encountered in the lane--was one and the same with the man

whom Mercy knew for Paul Drayton, the innkeeper at Hendon.

But so much light on one small spot only made the surrounding gloom more

dark. Far more important than any question of who this man was by repute

was the other question of why he was there. Wherefore had he come? Why

did he not come openly? What hidden reason had he for moving like a

shadow where he knew no one and was known of none?

Hugh thought again of the circumstance of his mother's strange seizure.

Last night he had formulated his theory respecting it. And it was simple

enough. The second man, whoever he was, had, for whatever reason, come

to the house, and, failing to attract attention in the hall, had

wandered aimlessly upstairs to the first room in which he heard a noise.

That room happened to be his mother's, and when the stranger, with the

fatal resemblance to her absent son, presented himself before her in

that strange way, at that strange hour, in that strange place, the fear

had leaped to her heart that it was his wraith warning her of his death,

and she had fainted and fallen.

The theory had its serious loop-holes for incredulity, but Hugh Ritson

minded them not at all. Another and a graver issue tortured him.

But this morning, by the light of Mercy's letter, his view was clearer.

If the man who resembled Paul had come secretly to Newlands, he must

have had his reasons for not declaring himself. If he had wandered when

none was near into Mrs. Ritson's room, it must have been because he had

a purpose there. And his mother's seizure might not have been due to

purely superstitious fears, or her silence to shattered nerves.

There was one thing to do, and that was to get at the heart of this

mystery. Whoever he was, this second man was to be the living influence

in all their lives.

Thus far, one thing only was plain--that Paul Ritson was not the

half-brother of Greta.

Hugh determined to travel south forthwith. If the other man was still

beating about Newlands, so much the better. Hugh would be able to see

the old woman, his mother, and talk with her undisturbed by the

suspicions of a cunning man.

Hugh spent most of that day in his office at the pit-head, settling up

such business as could not await his return. On Wednesday morning early

he dispatched Natt on foot with a letter to Mr. Bonnithorne, explaining

succinctly, but with shrewd reservations, the recent turn of events.

Then he stepped for a moment into his mother's room.

Mrs. Ritson had risen, and was sitting by the fire writing. Hugh

observed, as she rose, that there were tears in her eyes, and that the

paper beneath her pen was stained with great drops that had fallen as

she wrote. A woman was busy on her knees on the floor sorting linen into

a trunk. This garrulous body, old Dinah Wilson, was talking as Hugh

entered.

"It caps all--you niver heard sec feckless wark," she was saying. "And

Reuben threept me down, too. There he was in the peat loft when I went

for the peats, and he had it all as fine as clerk after passon. 'It was

Master Paul at the fire, certain sure,' he says, ower and ower again.

'What, man, get away wi' thy botheration--Mister Paul was off to

London!' I says. 'Go and see if tha can leet on a straight waistcoat any

spot,' I says. But he threept and he threept. 'It was Master Paul or his

own birth brother,' he says."

"Hush, Dinah!" said Mrs. Ritson.

Hugh told his mother, in a quiet voice, that business was taking him

away. Then he turned about and said "Good-day" without emotion.

She held out her hand to him and looked him tenderly in the eyes.

"Is this our parting?" she said, and then leaned forward and touched his

cheek with her lips.

He seemed surprised, and turned pale; but he went out calmly and without

speaking. In half an hour he was walking rapidly over the snow-crusted

road to the station.

CHAPTER XI.

When Paul parted from Natt at the station on Saturday night, he had told

the stableman to meet him with the trap at the same spot and at the same

hour on Wednesday. Since receiving these instructions, however, Natt

had, as we have seen, arrived at conclusions of his own respecting

certain events. The futility of doing as he had been bidden began to

present itself to his mind with peculiar force. What was the good of

going to the station for a man who was not coming by the train? What was

the use of pretending to bring home a person who had never been away?

These and other equivocal problems defied solution when Natt essayed

them.

He revolved the situation fully on his way home from Mr. Bonnithorne's,

and decided that to go to the station that night at eight o'clock would

be only a fine way of making a fool of a body. But when he reached the

stable, and sat down to smoke, and saw the hour approaching, his

instinct began to act automatically, and in sheer defiance of the thing

he called his reason. In short, Natt pulled off his coat and proceeded

to harness the mare.

Then it was that, relieved of the weight of abstract questions, he made

two grave discoveries. The first was that the horse bore marks of having

been driven in his absence; the next, that the harness was not hanging

precisely on those hooks where he had last placed it. And when he drew

out the trap he saw that the tires of the wheels were still crusted with

unmelted snow.

These concrete issues finally banished the discussion of general

principles. Natt had not entirely accounted for the strange

circumstances when he jumped into his seat and drove away. But the old

idea of Paul's dubious conduct was still fermenting; the froth and

bubbles were still rising.

Natt had not gone half-way to the station when he almost leaped out of

the trap at the sudden advent of an original thought: The trap had been

driven out before! He had not covered a mile more before that thought

had annexed another: And along this road, too! After this the sequence

of ideas was swift. In less than half a league, Natt had realized that

Paul Ritson himself had driven the mare to the station in order that he

might be there to come home at eight o'clock, and thus complete the

deception which he had practiced on gullible and slow-witted persons.

But in his satisfaction at this explanation Natt overlooked the trifling

difficulty of how the trap had been got home again.

Driving up into the station, he was greeted by a flyman waiting for

hire.

"Bad on the laal mare, ma man--two sec journeys in ya half day. I reckon

tha knows it's been here afore?"

Natt's face broadened into a superior smile, which seemed to desire his

gratuitous informant to tell him something he didn't know. This unspoken

request was about to be gratified.

"Dusta ken who came down last?"

Natt waved his hand in silent censure of so much unnecessary zeal, and

passed on.

Promptly as the clock struck eight, the London train drew up at the

station, and a minute afterward Paul Ritson came out. "Here he be, of

course," thought Natt.

Paul was in great spirits. His face wore the brightest smile, and his

voice had the cheeriest ring. His clothes, seen by the lamp, looked a

little draggled and dirty.

He swung himself into the trap, took the driver's seat and the reins and

rattled along with cheerful talk.

It was months since Natt had witnessed such an access of geniality on

Paul's part.

"Too good to be true," thought Natt, who, in his own wise way, was

silently making a study in histrionics.

"Anything fresh while I've been away?" asked Paul.

"Humph!" said Natt.

"Nothing new? Nobody's cow calved? The mare not lost her hindmost

shoe--nothing?" asked Paul, and laughed.

"I know no more nor you," said Natt, in a grumpy tone.

Paul looked at him and laughed again. Not to-night were good spirits

like his to be quenched by a servant's ill humor.

They drove some distance without speaking, the silence being broken only

by Paul's coaxing appeals to the old mare to quicken the pace that was

carrying him to somebody who was waiting at the vicarage.

Natt recovered from his natural dudgeon at an attempt to play upon him,

and began to feel the humor of the situation. It was good sport, after

all--this little trick of Master Paul. And the best of it was that

nobody saw through it but Natt himself. Natt began to titter and look up

significantly out of his sleepy eyes into Paul's face. Paul glanced back

with a look of bewilderment; but of course that was only a part of the

game.

"Keep it up," thought Natt; "how we are doing 'em!"

The landscape lying south was a valley, with a double gable of mountains

at the top; the mill stood on a knoll two miles further up, and on any

night but the darkest its black outlines could be dimly seen against the

sky that crept down between these fells. There was no moon visible, but

the moon's light was behind the clouds.

"What has happened to the mill?" said Paul, catching sight of the

dismantled mass in the distance.

"Nowt since Saturday neet, as I've heard on," said Natt.

"And what happened then?"

"Oh, nowt, nowt--I's warrant not," said Natt, with a gurgling titter.

Paul looked perplexed. Natt had been drinking, nothing surer.

"Why, lad, the wheel is gone--look!"

"I'll not say but it is. We know all about that, we do!"

Paul glanced down again. Liquor got into the brains of some folk, but it

had gone into Natt's face. With what an idiotic grin he was looking into

one's eyes!

But Paul's heart was full of happiness. His bosom's lord sat lightly on

its throne. Natt's face was excruciatingly ridiculous, and Paul laughed

at the sight of it. Then Natt laughed, and they both laughed together,

each at, neither with, the other. "I don't know nothing, I don't. Oh,

no!" chuckled Natt, inwardly. Once he made the remark aloud.

When they came to the vicarage Paul drew up, threw the reins to Natt,

and got down.

"Don't wait for me," he said; "drive home."

Natt drove as far homeward as the Flying Horse, and then turned in there

for a crack, leaving the trap in the road. Before he left the inn, a

discovery yet more astounding, if somewhat less amusing, was made by his

swift and subtle intellect.

CHAPTER XII.

An itinerant mendicant preacher had walked through the valley that day,

and when night fell in he had gravitated to the parson's door.

"Seeing the sun low," he said, "and knowing it a long way to Keswick,

and I not being able to abide the night air, but sure to catch a cold, I

came straight to your house."

Like other guests of high degree, the shoeless being made a virtue of

accepting hospitality.

"Come in, brother, and welcome," said Parson Christian; and that night

the wayfarer lodged at the vicarage. He was a poor, straggle-headed

creature, with a broken brain as well as a broken purse, but he had the

warm seat at the ingle.

Greta heard Paul's step on the path and ran to meet him.

"Paul, Paul! thank God you are here at last!"

Her manner was warm and impulsive to seriousness, but Paul was in no

humor to make nice distinctions.

Parson Christian rose from his seat before the fire and shook hands with

feeling and gravity.

"Right glad to see you, good lad," he said. "This is Brother Jolly," he

added, "a fellow-soldier of the cross, who has suffered sore for

neglecting Solomon's injunction against suretyship."

Paul took the flaccid hand of the fellow-soldier, and then drew Greta

aside into the recess of the square window.

"It's all settled," he said, eagerly; "I saw my father's old friend, and

agreed to go out to his sheep runs as steward, with the prospect of

farming for myself in two years' time. I have been busy, I can tell you.

Only listen. On Monday I saw the good old gentleman--he's living in

London now, and he won't go back to Victoria, he tells me--wants to lay

his bones where they were got, he says--funny old dog, rather--says he

remembers my father when he wasn't as solemn as a parish clerk on Ash

Wednesday. Well, on Monday I saw the old fellow, and settled terms and

things--liberal old chap, too, if he has got a hawk beak--regular

Shylock, you know. Well--where was I? Oh, of course--then on Tuesday I

took out our berths--yours, mother's, and mine--the ship is called the

'Ballarat'--queer name--a fine sea-boat, though--she leaves the London

docks next Wednesday--"

"Next Wednesday?" said Greta, absently, and with little interest in her

tone.

"Yes, a week to-day--sails at three prompt--pilot comes on at a quarter

to--everybody aboard at twelve. But it didn't take quite four-and-twenty

hours to book the berths, and the rest of the day I spent at a lawyer's

office. Can't stomach that breed, somehow; they seem to get all the

clover--maybe it's because they're a drift of sheep with tin cans about

their necks, and can never take a nibble without all the world knowing.

Ha! ha! I wish I'd thought of that when I saw old Shylock."

Paul was rattling on with a glib tongue, and eyes that danced to the

blithe step of an emancipated heart.

In the slumberous fire-light the parson and the itinerant preacher

talked together of the dust and noise in the great world outside these

sleepy mountains.

Greta drew back into the half-light of the window recess, too greedy of

Paul's good spirits to check them.

"Yes, I went to the lawyer's office," he continued, "and drew out a

power of attorney in Hugh's name, and now he can do what he likes with

the Ghyll, just as if it were his own. Much luck to him, say I, and some

bowels, too, please God! But that's not all--not half. This morning--ah,

now, you wise little woman, who always pretend to know so much more than

other folks, tell me what I did in London before leaving it this

morning?"

Greta had hardly listened. Her eyes had dropped to his breast, her arms

had crept about his neck, and her tears were falling fast. But he was

not yet conscious of the deluge.

"What do you think? Why, I went to Doctors' Commons and bought the

license--dirt cheap, too, at the price--and now it can be done any

day--any day--- think of that! So ho! so ho! covering your face,

eh?--up, now, up with it--gently. Do you know, they asked me your

complexion, the color of your eyes, or something--that old Shylock or

somebody--and I couldn't tell for the life of me--there, a peep, just

one wee peep! Why, what's this--what the d---- What villain--what in the

name of mischief is the ma--Why, Greta, you're cry--yes, you are--you

are crying!"

Paul had forced up Greta's face with gentle violence, and now he held

her at arm's length, surveying her with bewildered looks.

Parson Christian twisted about in his chair. He had not been so much

immersed in wars and rumors of wars as to be quite ignorant of what was

going on around him. "Greta is but in badly case," he said, pretending

to laugh. "She has fettled things in the house over and over again, and

she has if't and haffled over everything. She's been longing, surely."

The deep voice had a touch of tremor in it this time, and the twinkling

old eyes looked hazy.

"Ah, of course!" shouted Paul, in stentorian tones, and he laughed about

as heartily as the parson.

Greta's tears were gone in an instant.

"You must go home at once, Paul," she said; "your mother must not wait a

moment longer."

He laughed and bantered and talked of his dismissal. She stopped him

with a grave face and a solemn word. At last his jubilant spirit was

conquered; he realized that something was amiss. Then she told him what

happened at the Ghyll on Monday night. He turned white, and at first

stood tongue-tied. Next he tried to laugh it off, but the laughter fell

short.

"Must have been my brother," he said; "it's true, we're not much alike,

but then it was night, dark night, and you had no light but the dim

lamp--and at least there's a family resemblance."

"Your brother Hugh was sitting in his room."

Paul's heart sickened with an indescribable sensation.

"You found the door of my mother's room standing open?"

"Wide open."

"And Hugh was in his own room?" said Paul, his eyes flashing and his

teeth set.

"I saw him there a moment later."

"My features, my complexion, my height, and my build, you say?"

"The same in everything."

Paul lifted his face, and in that luminous twilight it were an

expression of peculiar horror: "In fact, myself--in a glass?"

Greta shuddered and answered, "Just that, Paul; neither more nor less."

"Very strange," he muttered. He was shaken to the depths. Greta crept

closer to his breast.

"And when my mother recovered she said nothing?"

"Nothing."

"You did not question her?"

"How could I? But I was hungering for a word."

Paul patted her head with his tenderest touch.

"Have you seen her since?"

"Not since. I have been ill--I mean, rather unwell."

Parson Christian twisted again in his chair. "What do you think, my lad?

Greta in a dream last night rose out of bed, went to the stair-head, and

there fell to the ground."

"My poor darling," said Paul, the absent look flying from his eyes.

"But, blessed be God, she has no harm," said the parson, and turned once

more to his guest.

"Paul, you must hurry away now. Good-bye for the present, dearest. Kiss

me good-bye."

But Paul stood there still.

"Greta, do you ever feel that what is happening now has happened

before--somehow--somewhere--and where?--when?--the questions keep

ringing in your brain and racking your heart--but there is no

answer--you are shouting into a voiceless cavern."

His face was as pale as ashes, his eyes were fixed, and his gaze was far

away. Greta grew afraid of the horror she had awakened.

"Don't think too seriously about it," she said. "Besides, I may have

been mistaken. In fact, Hugh said--"

"Well, what did he say?"

"He made me ashamed. He said I had imagined I saw you and screamed, and

so frightened your mother."

"There are men in the world who would see the Lord of Hosts come from

the heavens in glory and say it was only a water-spout."

"But, as you said yourself, it was in the night, and very dark. I had

nothing but the feeble oil-lamp to see by. Don't look like that, Paul."

The girl lifted a nervous hand and covered his eyes, and laughed a

little, hollow laugh.

Paul shook himself free of his stupor.

"Good-night, Greta," he said, tenderly, and walked to the door. Then the

vacant look returned.

"The answer is somewhere--somewhere," he said, faintly. He shook himself

again, and shouted, in his lusty tones:

"Good-night, all--good-night, good-night!"

The next instant he was gone.

Out in the road, he began to run; but it was not from exertion alone

that his breath came and went in gusts. Before he reached the village

his nameless sentiment of dread of the unknown had given way to anxiety

for his mother. What was this strange illness that had come upon her in

his absence? Her angel-face had been his beacon in darkness. She had

lifted his soul from the dust. Tortured by the world and the world's

law, yet Heaven's peace had settled on her. Let the world say what it

would, into her heart the world had not entered.

He hurried on. What a crazy fool he had been to let Natt go off with the

trap! Why had not that coxcomb told him what had occurred? He would

break every bone in the blockhead's skin.

How long the road was, to be sure! A hundred fears suggested themselves

on the way. Would his mother be worse? Would she be still conscious?

Why, in God's name, had he ever gone away?

He came by the Flying Horse, and there, tied to the blue post, stood the

horse and trap. Natt was inside. There he was, the villain, in front of

the fire, laughing boisterously, a glass of hot liquor in his hand.

Paul jumped into the trap and drove away.

It was hardly in human nature that Natt should resist the temptation to

show his cronies by ocular demonstration what a knowing young dog he

could be if he liked. Natt never tried to resist it.

"Is it all die-spensy?" he asked, with a wink, when, with masterly

circumlocution, he had broached his topic.

"It's a fate, I tell tha'," said Tom o' Dint, taking a churchwarden from

between his lips; and another thin voice, from a back bench--it was

little Jacob Berry's--corroborated that view of the mystery.

A fine scorn sat on the features of Natt as he exploded beneath their

feet this mine of supernaturalism.

"Shaf on your bogies and bodderment, say I," he cried; "there are folks

as won't believe their own senses. If you'll no' but show me how yon

horse of mine can be in two places at once, I'll maybe believe as Master

Paul Ritson can be here and in London at the same time. Nowt short o'

that'll do for me, I can tell you."

And at this conclusive reasoning Natt laughed, and crowed, and stirred

his steaming liquor. It was at that moment that Paul whipped up into the

trap and drove away.

"Show me as my horse as I've tied to the post out there is in his stable

all the time, and I's not be for saying as maybe I won't give in."

Gubblum Oglethorpe came straggling into the room at that instant, and

caught the words of Natt's clinching argument.

"What see a post?" he asked.

"Why, the post afore the house, for sure!"

"Well, I wudna be for saying but I's getten a bit short-sighted, but if

theer's a horse tied to a post afore this house, I's not be for saying

as I won't be domd!"

Natt ran to the door, followed by a dozen pairs of quizzing eyes. The

horse was gone. Natt sat down on the post and looked around in blank

astonishment.

"Well, I will be domd!" he said.

At last the bogies had him in their grip.

CHAPTER XIII.

By the time that Paul had got to the Ghyll his anxiety had reached the

point of anguish. Perhaps it had been no more than a fancy, but he

thought as he approached the house that a mist hung about it. When he

walked into the hall his footsteps sounded hollow to his ear, and the

whole place seemed empty as a vault. The spirit-deadening influence of

the surroundings was upon him, when old Dinah Wilson came from the

kitchen and looked at him with surprise. Clearly he had not been

expected. He wanted to ask twenty questions, but his tongue cleaved to

his mouth. The strong man trembled and his courage oozed away.

Why did not the woman speak? How scared she looked, too! He was brushing

past her, and up the stairs, when she told him, in faltering tones, that

her mistress was gone.

The word coursed through his veins like poison. "Gone! how gone?" he

said. Could it be possible that his mother was dead?

"Gone away," said Dinah.

"Away! Where?"

"Gone by train, sir, this afternoon."

"Gone by train," Paul repeated, mechanically, with absent manner.

"There's a letter left, sir; it's on the table in her room."

Recovering his self-possession, Paul darted upstairs at three steps a

stride. His mother's room was empty; no fire in the grate; the pictures

down from the walls; the table coverless; the few books gone from the

shelf; all chill, voiceless, and blind.

What did it mean? Paul stood an instant on the threshold, seeing all in

one swift glance, yet seeing nothing. Then, with the first return of

present consciousness, his eye fell on the letter that lay on the table.

He took it up with trembling fingers. It was addressed in his mother's

hand to him. He broke the seal. This is what he read:

"I go to-day to the shelter of the Catholic Church. I had long

thought to return to this refuge, though I had hoped to wait until

the day your happiness with Greta was complete. That, in Heaven's

purposes, was not to be, and I must leave you without a last

farewell. Good-bye, dear son, and God bless and guide you. If you

love me, do not grieve for me. It is from love of you I leave you.

Think of me as one who is at peace, and I will bless you even in

heaven. If ever the world should mock you with your mother's name,

remember that she is your mother still, and that she loved you to

the last. Good-bye, dear Paul; you may never know the day when this

erring and sorrowing heart will be allowed, in His infinite pity, to

join the choirs above. Then, dearest, from the hour when you read

this letter, think of me as dead, for I shall be dead to the world."

Paul held the letter before him, and looked at it long with vacant eyes.

Feeling itself seemed gone. Not a tear came from him, not a sigh, not

one moan of an overwrought heart escaped him. All was blind, pulseless

torpor. He stood there crushed and overwhelmed, a shaken, shattered man.

A thousand horrors congealed within him to one deep, dead stupor.

He turned away in silence, and walked out of the house. The empty

chambers seemed, as he went, to echo his heavy footsteps. He took the

road back toward the vicarage, turning neither to the right nor the

left, looking straight before him, and never once shifting his gaze. The

road might be long, but now it fretted him no more. The night might be

cold, but colder far was the heart within him. The moon might fly behind

the cloud floes, and her light burst forth afresh; but for him all was

blank night.

In the vicarage the slumberous fire was smoldering down. The

straggle-brained guest had been lighted to his bed, and the good parson

himself was carrying to his own tranquil closet a head full of the great

world's dust and noise. Greta was still sitting before the dying fire,

her heart heavy with an indefinable sensation of dread.

When Paul opened the door his face was very pale and his eyes had a

strange look; but he was calm, and spoke quietly. He told what had

occurred, and read aloud his mother's letter. The voice was strong in

which he read it, and never a tremor told of the agony his soul was

suffering. Then he sat some time without speaking, and time itself had

no reckoning.

Greta scarcely spoke, and the old parson said little. What power had

words to express a sorrow like this? Death had its solace; but there

was no comfort for death in life.

At last Paul told Parson Christian that he wished the marriage to take

place at once--- to-morrow, or, at latest, the day after that. He told

of their intention to leave England, of his father's friend, and, in

answer to questions, of the power of attorney drawn up in the name of

his brother.

The old man was deeply moved, but his was the most unselfish of souls.

He understood very little of all that was meant by what had been done,

and was still to do. But he said, "God bless you and go with you!"

though his own wounded heart was bleeding. Greta knelt at his chair, and

kissed the tawny old face lined and wrinkled and damp now with a furtive

tear. It was agreed that the marriage should take place on Friday. This

was Wednesday night.

Paul rose and stepped to the door, and Greta followed him to the porch.

"It is good of you to leave all to your brother," she said.

"We'll not speak of it," he answered.

"Is there not something between you?" she asked.

"Another time, darling."

Greta recalled Hugh Ritson's strange threat. Should she mention it to

Paul? She had almost done so, when she lifted her eyes to his face. The

weary, worn expression checked her. Not now; it would be a cruelty.

"I knew the answer to that omen was somewhere," he said, "and it has

come."

He stepped over the threshold and stood one pace outside. The snow still

lay under foot, crusted with frost. The wind blew strongly, and soughed

in the stiff and leafless boughs. Overhead the flying moon at that

moment broke through a rack of cloud. At the same instant the red glow

of the fire-light found its way through the open door, and was reflected

on Paul's pallid face.

Greta gasped; a thrill passed through her. There, before her, eye to eye

with her once again, was the face she saw at the Ghyll!

CHAPTER XIV.

Paul went back home, carrying with him a crushed and broken spirit He

threw himself into a chair in a torpor of dejection. When the servants

spoke to him, he lifted to their faces two clouded eyes, heavy with

suffering, and answered their questions in few words. The maid laid the

supper, and told him it was ready. When she returned to clear the cloth,

the supper was untouched. Paul stepped up to his mother's room, and sat

down before the cold grate. The candle he carried with him burned out.

In the kitchen the servants of the farm and house gossipped long and

bickered vigorously. "Whatever ails Master Paul?" "Crossed in love,

maybe." "Shaf on sec woman's wit!" "Wherever has mistress gone?" "To buy

a new gown, mayhap." "Sista now how a lass's first thowt runs on

finery!" "Didsta hear nowt when you drove mistress to the rail, Reuben?"

"Nay, nowt." "Dusta say it war thee as drove to the station this

afternoon." "I wouldn't be for saying as it warn't." "Wilta be meeting

Master Hugh in the forenoon, Natt?" "Nay, ax Natt na questions. He's

fair tongue-tied to-neet, Natt is. He's clattering all of it to

hisself--swearing a bit, and sec as that."

When the servants had gone to bed, and the house was quiet, Paul still

sat in his mother's abandoned room. No one but he knew what he suffered

that night. He tried to comprehend the disaster that had befallen him.

Why had his mother shut herself in a convent? How should her love for

him require that she should leave him? To demand answers to these

questions was like knocking at the door of a tomb; the voice was silent

that could reply; there came no answer save the dull, heavy, hollow echo

of his own uncertain knock. All was blind, dumb, insensate torpor. No

outlook; no word; no stimulating pang.

His stupor was broken by a vision that for long hours of that dead

night burned in his brain like molten lead. The face which Greta had

seen, and which his mother must also have seen, seemed to rise up before

him as he sat in that deserted chamber. He saw his own face as he might

have seen it in a glass. Not even the blackness of night could conceal

it. Clear as a face seen in the day it shone and burned in that dark

room. He closed his eyes to shut it out, but it was still before him. It

was within him. It was imprinted in features of fire on his brain. He

trembled with fear, never until that hour knowing what fear was. It

acted upon him like his own ghost.

He knew it was but a phantasy, but no phantasy was ever more horrible.

He got up to banish it, and it stood before him face to face. He sunk

down again, and it sat beside him eye to eye.

Then it changed. For a moment it faded away into a palpitating mist, and

the tension of his gaze relaxed. How blessed was that moment's respite!

His thought returned to his mother. "If ever the world should mock you

with your mother's name, remember that she is your mother still, and

that she loved you to the last." Dear, sacred soul. Little fear that he

should forget it! Little fear that the wise world should tarnish the

fair shrine of that holy love! Tears of tenderness rose to his eyes, and

in the midst of them he thought his mother sat before him. Her head was

bent; an all-eating shame was crimsoning her pale cheek. Then he knew

that other eyes were upon her, looking into her heart, prying deep down

into her dead past, keeping open the heavy eyelids that could never

sleep. He looked up; his own shadow was silently gazing down upon both

of them.

Paul leaped to his feet and ran out of the room. Surely the spirit of

his mother still inhabited the deserted chamber. Surely this was the

shadow that had driven her away. Big drops of sweat rolled in beads from

his forehead. He went out of the house. Heavy black clouds were adrift

in a stormy sky; behind them, the bright moon was scudding.

He walked among the naked trees of the gaunt wood at the foot of

Coledale, and listened to the short breathings of the wind among the

frost-covered boughs. At every second step he gave a quick glance

backward. But at last he saw the thing he looked for--it was walking

with him side by side, pace for pace.

He passed slowly out of the wood, not daring now to run. The white fell

rose sheer up to the grim, gray crags that hung in shaggy, snowy masses

over the black seams of the ravines; and the moon's light rested on them

for an instant. Without thought or aim he began to climb. The ascent was

perilous at any hour to any foot save that of a mountaineer. The

exertion and the watchfulness banished the vision, and his liberated

mind turned to Greta. What was life itself now without Greta's love?

Nothing but a succession of days. She was the savior of his outcast

state; she was his life's spring, whence the waters of content might

flow. And a flood of emotion came over him, and in his heart he blessed

her. It was then that on that gaunt headland he seemed to see her at his

side. But between them, and dividing them, stalked the spectre of

himself.

All to the east was dense gloom, save where the pulsating red of the

smelting house burned in the distance. With no rest for his foot, Paul

walked in the direction of the light, and the shadow of his face walked

with him. As the wind went by him it whistled in his ear, and it sounded

in that solitude like the low cry of the thing at his side.

Old Laird Fisher was at his work of wheeling the refuse of the ore from

the mouth of the furnace, and shooting it down the bank. The glow of the

hot stone in the iron barrow that he trundled was reflected in sharp

white lights on his wrinkled face.

"Ista theer, Mister Paul?" he said, catching his breath and coughing

amid the smoke, and shouting between the gusts of wind.

The slow beat of the engine and the clank of the chain of the cage in

the shaft deadened the wind's shrill whistle. The smoke from the bank

shot up and swirled away like a long flight of swallows.

Standing there, the vision troubled him no longer. It had been merely a

waking phantasy, bred of what Greta said she saw in the snow, and

heightened by the shock to his nerves caused by his mother's departure.

The sight of Matthew helped to beat it off. His submissive face was the

sign of his broken spirit. A tempest had torn up his only hold on the

earth. He was but a poor naked trunk flung on the ground, without power

of growth or grip of the soil. He was old and he had no hope. Yet he

lived on and worked submissively. Paul's own case was different. Destiny

had dashed him in unknown seas against unseen rocks. But he was young,

he had the power of life, and the stimulus of love. Yet here he was, the

prey to an idle fancy, tortured by an agony of fear.

"Good-night to you, Matthew!" he shouted cheerily above the wind, and

went away into the night.

He would go home and sleep the fever out of his blood; he took the road;

and as he went, the monotonous engine-throb died off behind him. He

passed through the village; the street was empty, and it echoed loud to

the sound of his footfall. Large shadows fell about him when for an

instant the moon shot clear of a cloud. A light burned in a cottage

window. Poor Mrs. Truesdale's sick life was within that sleepless

chamber lingering out its last days. The wind fell to silence at one

moment, and then a child's little cry came out to him in the night.

He walked on, and plunged again into the darkness of the road beyond.

The dogs were howling at the distant Ghyll. A sable cloud floated in the

sky, and at its back the moon sailed. It was like black hair silvered

with gray. But on one spot on the road before him the moon shone clear

and white. The place fascinated him like a star. He quickened his pace

until he came into the moon's open light. Then it turned to an ashy

tint; it lay over the church-yard. His father's grave was only a few

paces from the road.

What unseen power had drawn him there? Was it meant that he should

understand that all the stings that fate had in store for him were to be

in some unsearchable way the refuse of his father's deed? His mind went

back to the night of his father's death. He thought of his mother's

confession--a confession more terrible to make more fearful to listen

to, than a mother ever made before or a son ever heard. And now again,

was the disaster of this very night a link in the chain of destiny?

Let no man compare the withering effects of a father's curse with the

blasting influence of a father's sin. If the wrath of Providence should

fail in its stern and awful retribution, the world in its mercy would

not forget that the sins of the fathers must be visited upon the

children.

Paul entered the lych-gate and entered the church-yard. The night dew on

his cheeks was not colder than his tears as he knelt by his father's

grave. At one instant he cursed the world and the world's cruel law.

Then there stole into his heart a poison that corroded its dearest

memory: he thought of his father with bitterness.

At that moment a strange awe crept over him. He knew, though still only

by the eyes of his mind, that the vision had returned. He knew it was

standing against the night-sky as a ghastly headstone to the grave. But

when he raised his eyes what he saw was more terrible. The face was

before him, but it was a dead face now. He saw his own corpse stretched

out on his father's grave.

His head fell on the cold sod. He lay like the dead on the grave of the

dead. Then he knew that it was ordered above that the cloud of his

father's sin should darken his days; that through all the range and

change of life he was to be the lonely slave of a sin not his own. His

fate was sin-inherited, and the wages of sin is death.

Was it strange that at that moment, when all the earth seemed gloomed by

the shadow of a curse that lay blackest over him--when reverence for a

father's memory and love learned at a mother's knee were deadened by a

sense of irremediable wrong--was it strange that there and then peace

fell on him like a dove from heaven?

Orphaned in one hour--now, and not till now--foredoomed to writhe like a

worm amid the dust of the world--the man in him arose and shook off its

fear.

It was because he came to know--rude man as he was, unlettered, but

strong of soul--that there is a Power superior to fate, that the

stormiest sea has its Master, that the waif that is cast by the roughest

wave on the loneliest shore is yet seen and known.

And the voice of an angel seemed to whisper in his heart the story of

Hagar and her son; how the boy was the first-born of his father; how the

second-born became the heir; how the woman and son were turned away; how

they were nigh to death in the desert; and how, at last, the cry came

from heaven, "God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is."

The horror of the vision had gone. It would come back no more. Paul

walked home, went up to his own room, and slept peacefully.

When he awoke the pink and yellow rose of a wintery sunrise bloomed over

the head of the Eel Crags. The tinkle of the anvil came from across the

vale. Sheep were bleating high up on the frost-nipped side of the fell.

The echo of the ax could be heard from the wood, and the muffled lowing

of the kine from the shippon in the yard behind. The harsh scrape of

Natt's clogs was on the gravel. A robin with full throat perched on the

window-ledge and warbled cheerily.

Last night was gone from him for all eternity. Before him was the day,

the world, and life.

CHAPTER XV.

That day--the day before the wedding--all the gossiping tongues in

Newlands were cackling from morning till night. Natt had been sent round

the dale with invitations addressed to statesmen, their wives, sons and

daughters. Parson Christian himself made the round of the homes of the

poor.

"'The poor ye have always with you,' but not everywhere, and not often

in Cana of Galilee," he said to Greta on setting out.

And the people of the highways and hedges were nothing loath to come in

to the feast. "God luck to the weddiners!" they said, "and may they

never lick a lean poddish-stick."

There was not much work done in the valley that day. The richest heiress

on the country-side was about to be married to the richest statesman in

the dale. On the eve of such an event it was labor enough to drop in at

the Flying Horse and discuss mathematics. The general problem was one in

simple addition, namely, how much Paul Ritson would be worth when he

married Greta Lowther. And more than once that day twice two made a

prodigious five.

The frost continued and the roads were crisp. Heavy rains had preceded

the frost, and the river that ran down the middle of the valley had

overflowed the meadows to the width of a wide carriage-way. This was now

a road of ice five miles long, smooth as glass, and all but as straight

as an arrow.

Abraham Strong, the carpenter, had been ordered to take the wheels off a

disused landau and fix instead two keels of wood beneath the axles. This

improvised sledge, after it had been shod in steel by the blacksmith,

was to play a part in to-morrow's ceremony.

Early in the day Brother Peter was dispatched to the town to fetch Mr.

Bonnithorne. The four miles' journey afoot seemed to him a bigger candle

than the entire game was worth.

"Don't know as I see what the lass wants mair nor she's got," he told

himself, grumpily, as he plodded along the road. "What call has she for

a man? Hasn't she two of 'em as she is? I made her comfortable enough

myself. But lasses are varra ficklesome."

Mr. Bonnithorne gathered enough from Brother Peter's "Don't know as

there's not a wedding in t' wind," to infer what was afoot. Hugh Ritson

was away from home, and his brother Paul was availing himself of his

absence to have the marriage ceremony performed.

This was the inference with which Mr. Bonnithorne had walked from the

town; but before reaching the vicarage he encountered Paul himself, who

was even then on the way to his office. Few words passed between them.

Indeed, the young dalesman was civil, and no more. He gave scant

courtesy, but then he also gave something that was more substantial, and

the severity of the lawyer's cynicism relaxed. Paul handed Mr.

Bonnithorne, without comment, the deed drawn up in London. Mr.

Bonnithorne glanced at it, pocketed it, and smiled. His sense of Paul's

importance as a dangerous man sunk to nothing at that moment. They

parted without more words.

Parson Christian got home toward evening, dead beaten with fatigue. He

found the lawyer waiting for him. The marriage had been big in his eyes

all day, and other affairs very little.

"So you shall give her away, Mr. Bonnithorne," he said, without

superfluous preface of any kind.

"I--I?" said Mr. Bonnithorne, with elevated brows.

"Who has more right?" said the parson.

"Well, you know, you--you--"

"Me! Nay, I must marry them. It is you for the other duty."

"You see, Mr. Christian, if you think of it, I am--I am--"

"You are her father's old friend. There, let us look on it as settled."

Mr. Bonnithorne looked on it as awkward. "Well, to say the truth, Mr.

Christian, I'd--I'd rather not."

The old parson lifted two astonished eyes, and gazed at Mr. Bonnithorne

over the rims of his spectacles. The lawyer's uneasiness increased. Then

Parson Christian remembered that only a little while ago Mr. Bonnithorne

had offered reasons why Paul should not marry Greta. They were rather

too secular, those same reasons, but no doubt they had appealed honestly

to his mind as a friend of Greta's family.

"Paul and Greta are going away," said the parson.

"So I judged."

"They go to Victoria to farm there," continued the parson.

"On Greta's money," added the lawyer.

Parson Christian looked again over the rims of his spectacles. Then for

once his frank and mellow face annexed a reflection of the curl on the

lawyer's lip. "Do you know," he said, "it never once came into my

simple old pate to ask which would find the dross and which the honest

labor?"

Mr. Bonnithorne winced. The simple old pate could, on occasion, be more

than a match for his own wise head.

"Seeing that I shall marry her, I think it will be expected that you

should give her to her husband; but if you have an objection--"

"An objection?" Mr. Bonnithorne interrupted. "I don't know that my

feeling is so serious as that."

"Then let us leave it there, and you'll decide in the morning," said

Parson Christian.

So they left it there, and Mr. Bonnithorne, the dear friend of the

family, made haste to the telegraph office and sent this telegram to

Hugh Ritson in London: "They are to be married to-morrow. If you have

anything imperative to say, write to-night, or come."

Paul and Greta saw each other only for five minutes that day amid the

general hubbub; but their few words were pregnant with serious issues.

Beneath the chorus of their hearts' joy there was an undersong of

discord; and neither knew of the other's perplexity.

Greta was thinking of Hugh Ritson's mysterious threat. Whether or not

Hugh had the power of preventing their marriage was a question of less

consequence to Greta at this moment than the other question of whether

or not she could tell Paul what Hugh had said. As the day wore on, her

uncertainty became feverish. If she spoke, she must reveal--what

hitherto she had partly hidden--the importunity and unbrotherly

disloyalty of Hugh's love. She must also awaken fresh distress in Paul's

mind, already overburdened with grief for the loss of his mother.

Probably Paul would be powerless to interpret his brother's strange

language. And if he should be puzzled, the more he must be pained.

Perhaps Hugh Ritson's threat was nothing but the outburst of a

distempered spirit--the noise of a bladder that is emptying itself.

Still, Greta's nervousness increased; no reason, no sophistry could

allay it. She felt like a blind man who knows by the current of air on

his face that he has reached two street crossings, and can not decide

which turn to take.

Paul, on his part, had a grave question to revolve. He was thinking

whether it was the act of an honorable man to let Greta marry him in

ignorance of the fact that he was not his father's legitimate son. Yet

he could never tell her. The oath he had taken over his father's body

must seal his lips forever. His mother's honor was wrapped up in that

oath. Break the one, and the other was no longer inviolate. True, it

would be to Greta, and Greta alone, and she and he were one. True, too,

his mother was now dead to the world. But the oath was rigid:

"Never to reveal to any human soul, by word or deed, his act, or her

shame." He had sworn it, and he must keep it. The conflict of emotion

was terrible. Love was dragging him one way, and love the other. Honor

said yes, and honor said no. His heart's first thought was to tell Greta

everything, to keep nothing back from her whose heart's last thought was

his. But the secret of his birth must lie as a dead and speechless thing

within him.

If it was not the act of an honorable man to let Greta marry him in

ignorance of his birth, there was only one escape from the dishonor--not

to let her marry him at all. If they married, the oath must be kept. If

the oath were kept, the marriage might be dishonored--it could not be

the unreserved and complete union of soul with soul, heart with heart,

mind with mind, which true marriage meant. It would be laying the

treasure at the altar and keeping back part of the price.

Paul was not a man of subtle intellect, or perhaps such reflections

would have troubled him too deeply. Love was above everything, and to

give up Greta was impossible. If Circumstance was the evil genius of a

man's life, should it be made the god of it also?

At all hazards Paul meant to marry Greta. And after all, what did this

question of honor amount to? It was a mere phantasm. What did it matter

to Greta whether he were high or basely born? Should he love her less or

more? Would he be less or more worthy of her love? And how was his

birth base? Not in God's eyes, for God had heard the voice of Hagar's

son. Only in the eyes of the world. And what did that mean? It meant

that whether birth was high or base depended one part on virtue and nine

hundred and ninety-nine parts on money. Where had half the world's

titled great ones sprung from? Not--like him--from their father and

their father's fathers, but from a monarch's favorite.

Thus Paul reasoned with himself at this juncture. Whether he was wholly

right or wholly wrong, or partly right and partly wrong, concerns us not

at all. It was natural that such a man, in such a place, at such an

hour, should decide once for all to say not a word to Greta. It was just

as natural that his reticence should produce the long series of

incidents still to be recorded.

Thus it was not a word was said between them of what lay nearest to the

hearts of both.

CHAPTER XVI.

The morning was brilliant--a vigorous, lusty young day, such as can

awake from the sleep of the night only in winter and in the north. The

sun shone on the white frost; the air was hazy enough to make the

perspective of the fells more sharp, and leave a halo of mystery to hang

over every distant peak and play about every tree.

The Ghyll was early astir, and in every nook and corner full of the buzz

of gossip.

"Well, things is at a pass, for sure!" "And never no axings nowther."

"And all cock-a-hoop, and no waiting for the mistress to come back."

"Shaf, what matter about the mistress--she's no' but a kill-joy. There'd

be no merry neet an' she were at home." "Well, I is fair maizelt 'at he

won't wait for Master Hugh--his awn brother, thoo knows." "What, lass,

dusta think as he wad do owt at the durdum to-neet? Maybe tha's

reckoning on takin' a step wi' him, eh?" "And if I is, it's nowt sa

strange." "Weel, I wadna be for saying tha's aiming too high, for I mind

me of a laal lass once as they called Mercy Fisher, and folks did say

as somebody were partial to her." "Hod thy tongue about the bit thing;

don't thoo misliken me to sec a stromp!"

Resplendent in a blue cloth coat, light check trousers, a flowered

yellow silk waistcoat, and a white felt hat, Natt was flying up and down

the stairs to and from Paul's room. Paul himself had not yet been seen.

Rumor in the kitchen whispered that he had hardly taken the trouble to

dress, and had not even been at the pains to wash. Natt had more than

once protested his belief that his master meant to be married in his

shirt-sleeves. Nothing but "papers and pens and sealing-wax and things"

had he asked for.

Outside the vicarage a motley group had gathered. There was John

Proudfoot, the blacksmith, uncommonly awkward in a frock coat and a pair

of kid gloves that sat on his great hands like a clout on a pitchfork.

Dick, the miller, was there, too, with Giles Raisley, the miner; and Job

Sheepshanks (by the way of treaty of peace) stood stroking the tangled

mane of Gubblum Oglethorpe's pony. Children hung on the fence, women

gathered about the gate, dogs capered on the path. Gubblum himself had

been in the house, and now came out accompanied by Brother Peter Ward

and a huge black jug. The jug was passed round with distinct

satisfaction.

"Is the laal man ever coming?" said Gubblum, smacking his lips and

taking a swift survey of the road.

"Why, here he is at sec a skufter as'll brak' his shins!"

At the top of his speed, and breathless, clad in a long coat whose tails

almost swept the ground, grasping a fiddle in one hand and a paper in

the other, Tom o' Dint came hurrying up.

"Tha's here at last, Tom, ma man. Teem a glass into him, Peter, and

let's mak' a start."

"Ye see, I's two men, I is," said the small man, apologetically. "I had

my rounds with my letters to do first, and business afore pleasure, you

knows."

"Pleasure afore business, say I," cried Gubblum. "Never let yer wark get

the upper hand o' yer wages--them's my maxims."

Two coaches came up at the moment, having driven four miles for the

purpose of driving four furlongs.

John Proudfoot, without needless courtesy, took the fiddler-postman by

the neck of his coat and the garment beneath its tails, and slung him,

fiddle and all, on to the saddle of the pony, and held him there a

moment, steadying him like a sack with an open mouth.

"Sit thee there as steady as a broody hen; and now let's mak' shift,"

said the blacksmith.

"But I must go inside first," said the fiddler; "I've a letter for

Lawyer Bonnithorne."

"Shaf on thee and thy letter! Away with thee! Deliver it at the church

door."

The men dropped into a single file, with Tom o' Dint riding at their

head, and Gubblum walking by the pony's side and holding the reins.

"Strike up!" shouted Job Sheepshanks. "Ista ever gaen to begin?"

Then the fiddler shouldered his fiddle, and fell to, and the first long

sweeps of his wedding-march awoke the echoes of the vale.

The women and children followed the procession a few hundred yards, and

then returned to see the wedding-party enter the coaches.

Inside the vicarage all was noise and bustle. Greta was quiet enough,

and ready to set out at any time, but a bevy of gay young daleswomen

were grouped about her, trying to persuade her to change her brown

broche dress for a pale-blue silk, to have some hothouse plants in her

hair, and at least to wear a veil.

"And mind you keep up heart, darling, and speak out your responses; and,

dearest, don't cry until the parson gets to 'God bless you!'"

Greta received all this counsel with equal thanks. She listened to it,

affected to approve of it, and ignored it. Her face betrayed anxiety.

She hardly understood her own fears, but whenever the door opened, and a

fresh guest entered, she knew that her heart leaped to her mouth.

Parson Christian stood near her in silk gaiters and a coat that had been

old-fashioned even in his youth. But his Jovian gray head and fine old

face, beautiful in its mellowness and child-like simplicity, made small

demand of dress. He patted Greta's hair sometimes with the affectionate

gesture that might be grateful to a fondled child.

Mr. Bonnithorne arrived early, in a white waistcoat and coat adorned by

a flower. His brave apparel was scarcely in keeping with the anxiety

written on his face. He could not sit down for more than a moment in the

same seat. He was up and down, walking to and fro, looking out of the

window, and diving for papers into his pocket.

The procession, headed by Tom o' Dint, had not long been gone, when word

was given, and the party took to the coaches and set off at a trot. Then

the group of women at the gate separated with many a sapient comment.

"Weel, he's getten a bonny lass, for sure."

"And many a sadder thing med happen to her, too."

The village lay midway between the vicarage and the church, and the

fiddler and his company marched through it to a brisk tune, bringing

fifty pairs of curious eyes to the windows and the doors. Tom o' Dint

sat erect in the saddle, playing vigorously, and when a burst of

cheering hailed the procession as it passed a group of topers gathered

outside the Flying Horse, Tom accepted it as a tribute to his playing,

and bowed his head with becoming dignity, and without undue familiarity,

always remembering that courtesy comes after art, as a true artist is in

loyalty bound to do.

Once or twice the pony slipped its foot on the frosty road, and then Tom

was fain to abridge a movement in music and make a movement in

gymnastics toward grasping the front of the saddle.

But all went well until the company came within fifty paces of the

church door, and there a river crossed the road. Being shallow and very

swift, the river head escaped the grip of the frost, and slipped through

its fingers. There was a foot-bridge on one side, and the men behind the

fiddler fell out of line to cross by it.

Gubblum dropped the reins and followed them; but, as bridges are not

made for the traffic of ponies, Tom o' Dint was bound to go through the

water. Never interrupting the sweep and swirl of the march he was

playing, he gave the pony a prod with his foot, and it plunged in. But

scarcely had it taken two steps and reached the depth of its knees,

when, from the intenser cold, or from coming sharply against a submerged

stone, or from indignation at the fiddler's prod, or from the occult

cause known as pure devilment, it shied up its back legs, and tossed

down its tousled head, and pitched the musician head-foremost into the

stream.

Amid a burst of derisive cheers, Tom o' Dint was drawn, wet as a sack,

to the opposite bank, and his fiddle was rescued from a rapid voyage

down the river.

Now, the untoward adventure had the good effect of reducing the

fiddler's sense of the importance of his artistic function, and bringing

him back to consciousness of his prosaic duties as postman. He put his

hand into his pocket, feeling as if he had dipped it into a bag of eels,

and drew out the lawyer's letter. It was wet, and the ink of the

superscription was beginning to run.

Tom o' Dint also began to run. Fearing trouble, he left his

unsympathetic cronies, hurried on to the church, went into the vestry,

where he knew there would be a fire, and proceeded to dry the letter.

The water had softened the gum, and the envelope had opened.

"So much the mair easier dried," thought Tom, and, nothing loath, he

drew out the letter, unfolded it, and held it to the fire.

The paper was smoking with the heat, and so was Tom, when he heard

carriage-wheels without, and then a mighty hubbub, and loud voices

mentioning his own name without reverence: "Where's that clothead of a

fiddler?" and sundry other dubious allusions.

Tom knew that he ought to be at the gate striking up a merry tune to

welcome the bride. But then the letter was not dry. There was not a

moment to lose. Tom spread the paper and envelope on the fender,

intending to return for them, and dashed off with his fiddle to the

discharge of his artistic duty.

As Tom o' Dint left the vestry, Parson Christian entered it. The parson

saw the papers on his fender, picked them up, and in all innocence read

them. The letter ran as follows:

"Morley's Hotel, Trafalgar Square, Nov. 28.

"Dear Bonnithorne,--The man who was in Newlands is Paul Lowther,

Greta's half-brother. Paul Ritson is my own brother, my father's son.

Keep this to yourself as you value your salvation, your pride, or

your purse, or whatever else you hold most dear. Send me by wire

to-day the name of their hotel in London, the time of their train

south, and who, if any, are with them.

Yours,

"HUGH RITSON."

"P.S.--The girl Mercy will be troublesome."

The parson had scarcely time to understand the words he read, when he,

too, was compelled to leave the vestry. The bride and bridegroom had met

at the church door. It was usual to receive them at the altar with

music. The fiddler's function was at an end for the present. Parson

Christian could not allow the fiddle to be heard in church. There a less

secular instrument was required. The church was too poor for an organ;

it had not yet reached the dignity of a harmonium; but it had an

accordion, and among the parson's offices was the office of

accordionist. So, throwing his gown over his head, he walked into the

church, stepped into the pulpit, whipped up his instrument from the

shelf where he kept it, and began to play.

Now it chanced that Mr. Bonnithorne in his legal capacity held certain

documents for signature, and having accompanied the bride to the altar

rail, he hurried to deposit them in the vestry. The gloom had still hung

heavy on his brow as he entered the church. He was brooding over a

letter that he had expected and had not received. Perhaps it was his

present hunger for a letter that made his eye light first on the one

which the fiddler-postman had left to dry. The parson had dropped it on

the mantel-shelf. At a glance Mr. Bonnithorne saw it was his own.

Tom o' Dint had been compelled to come up the aisle at the tail of the

wedding-party. He saw Mr. Bonnithorne, who was at the head of it, go

into the vestry. Dripping wet as he was, and with chattering teeth, the

sweat stood on his forehead. "Deary me, what sec a character will I

have!" he muttered. He elbowed and edged his way through the crowd, and

got into the vestry at last. But he was too late. With an eye that

struck lightning into the meek face of the fiddler, Mr. Bonnithorne

demanded an explanation.

The request was complied with.

"And who has been in the room since you left it?"

"Nay, nobody, sir."

"Sure of that?"

"For sure," said Tom.

Mr. Bonnithorne's countenance brightened. He had read the letter, and,

believing that no one else had read it, he was satisfied. He put it in

his pocket.

"Maybe I may finish drying it, sir?" said Tom o' Dint.

The lawyer gave a contemptuous snort, and turned on his heel.

When Paul walked with a firm step up the aisle, he looked fresh and

composed. His dress was simple; his eyes were clear and bright, and his

wavy brown hair fell back from a smooth and peaceful brow.

Greta, at Paul's side, looked less at ease. The clouds still hung over

her face. Her eyes turned at intervals to the door, as if expecting some

new arrival.

The service was soon done, and then the parson delivered a homily. It

was short and simple, telling how the good bishop had said marriage was

the mother of the world, filling cities and churches, and heaven itself,

whose nursery it was. Then it touched on the marriage rite.

"I do not love ceremonies," said the parson, "for they are too often

'devised to set a gloss on faint deeds,' and there are such of them as

throw the thing they celebrate further away than the wrong end of a

telescope."

Then he explained that though the marriage ceremony was unknown to the

early Christians, and never referred to in the old Bible, where Abraham

"took" Sarah to wife, and Jacob "took" Rachel, yet that the marriage of

the Church was a most holy and beautiful thing, symbolizing the union of

Christ with His people. Last of all, he spoke of the stainless and pious

parentage of both bride and bridegroom, and warned them to keep their

name and fame unsullied, for "What is birth to man or woman," said the

teacher, "if it shall be a stain to his dead ancestors to have left such

offspring?"

Greta bowed her head meekly, and Paul stood, while the parson spoke,

with absent eyes fixed on the tablets on the wall before him, spelling

out mechanically the words of the commandments.

In a few moments the signatures were taken, the bell in the little

turret was ringing, and the company were trooping out of the church. It

was a rude old structure, with great bulges in the walls, little square

lead lights, and open timbers untrimmed and straight from the tree.

The crowd outside had gathered about the wheelless landau which the

carpenter and blacksmith had converted into a sledge. On the box seat

sat Tom o' Dint, his fiddle in his hand, and icicles hanging in the

folds of his capacious coat. The bride and bridegroom were to return in

this conveyance, which was to be drawn down the frozen river by a score

of young dalesmen shod in steel. They took their seats, and had almost

set off, when Greta called for the parson.

"Parson Christian, Parson Christian!" echoed twenty voices. The good

parson was ringing the bell, being bell-ringer also. Presently the

brazen tongue ceased wagging, and Parson Christian reappeared.

"Here's your seat, parson," said Paul, making space.

"In half a crack," replied Parson Christian, pulling a great key out of

his pocket and locking the church door. He was sexton as well.

Then he got up into the sledge, word was called, the fiddle broke out,

and away they went for the river-bank. A minute more and they were

flying over the smooth ice with the morning sunlight chasing them, and

the music of fifty lusty voices in their ears.

They had the longer journey, but they reached the vicarage as early as

the coaches that had returned by the road. Then came the breakfast--a

solid repast, fit for appetites sharpened by the mountain air. Parson

Christian presided in the parlor, and Brother Peter in the kitchen, the

door between being thrown open. The former radiated smiles like April

sunshine; the latter looked as sour as a plum beslimed by the

earthworms, and "didn't know as he'd ever seen sec a pack of hungry

hounds."

After the breakfast the toasts, and up leaped Mr. Bonnithorne. That

gentleman had quite cast off the weight of his anxiety. He laughed and

chaffed, made quips and cranks.

"Our lawyer is foreclosing," whispered a pert young damsel in Greta's

ear. "He's getting drunk."

Mr. Bonnithorne would propose "Mr. and Mrs. Ritson." He began with a few

hoary and reverend quotations--"Men are April when they woo, December

when they wed." This was capped by "Maids are May when they are maids,

but the sky changes when they are wives." Mr. Bonnithorne protested that

both had been true, only with exceptions.

Paul thanked the company in a dozen manly and well-chosen phrases, and

then stepped to the kitchen door and invited the guests over whom

Brother Peter presided to spend the evening at the Ghyll.

The ladies had risen and carried off Greta to prepare for her journey,

when Gubblum Oglethorpe got on his feet and insisted on proposing "the

lasses." What Gubblum had to say on the subject it is not given to us to

record. By some strange twist of logic, he launched out on a very

different topic. Perhaps he sat in the vicinity of Nancy Tantarum, for

he began with the story of a funeral.

"It minds me," he said, "of the carriers at Adam Strang's funeral, at

Gosforth, last back-end gone twelvemonth. There were two sets on 'em,

and they'd a big bottle atween 'em--same as that one as auld Peter, the

honey, keeps to hissel at yon end of the table. Well, they carried Adam

shoulder high from the house to the grave-yard, first one set and then

t'other, mile on mile apiece, and when one set got to the end of their

mile they set down the coffin and went on for t'other set to pick it

up. It were nine mile from Branthet Edge to Gosforth, so they had nine

shifts atween 'em, and at every shift they swigged away at the big

bottle--this way with it, Peter. Well, the mourners they crossed the

fields for shortness, but the bearers, they had to keep the corpse road.

All went reet for eight mile, and then one set with Adam were far ahead

of the other with the bottle. They set the coffin on a wall at the

roadside and went on. Well, when the second set came up they didn't see

it--they couldn't see owt, that's the fact--same as I expect I'll be

afore the day's gone, but not with Peter's good-will, seemingly. Well,

they went on, too. And when all of 'em coom't up to the church togither,

there was the parson in his white smock and his bare poll and big book

open to start. But, you see, there warn't no corpse. Where was it? Why,

it was no' but resting quiet all by itsel' on the wall a mile away."

Gubblum was proceeding to associate the grewsome story with the

incidents of Paul's appearance at the fire while he was supposed to be

in London; but Greta had returned to the parlor, muffled in furs, Paul

had thrown on a long frieze ulster, and every one had risen for the last

leave-taking. In the midst of the company stood the good old Christian,

his wrinkled face wet with silent tears. Greta threw herself into his

arms and wept aloud. Then the parson began to cast seeming merry glances

around him, and to be mighty jubilant all at once.

The improvised sledge was at the door, laden with many boxes.

"Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye!"

A little cheer, a little attempt at laughter, a suppressed sigh, then a

downright honest cry, and away they were gone. The last thing seen by

Greta's hazy eyes was a drooping white head amid many bright girl faces.

How they flew along. The glow of sunset was now in their faces. It

crimsoned the west, and sparkled like gold on the eastern crags. Between

them and the light were the skaters drawing the sledge, sailing along

like a flight of great rooks, their voices echoing in unseen caverns of

the fells.

Mr. Bonnithorne sat with Paul and Greta.

"Where did you say you would stay in London?" he asked.

"At Morley's Hotel," said Paul.

With this answer the lawyer looked unreasonably happy.

The station was reached in twenty minutes. The train steamed in. Paul

and Greta got into the last carriage, all before it being full. A moment

more, and they were gone.

Then Mr. Bonnithorne walked direct to the telegraph office. But the

liquor he had taken played him false. He had got it into his stupefied

head that he must have blundered about Morley's Hotel. That was not

Paul's, but Hugh's address. So he sent this telegram:

"Left by train at one. Address, Hawk and Heron."

Then he went home happy.

That night there was high revel at the Ghyll. First, a feast in the

hall: beef, veal, mutton, ham, haggis, and hot bacon pie. Then an

adjournment to a barn, where tallow candles were stuck into cloven

sticks, and hollowed potatoes served for lamps. Strong ale and trays of

tobacco went round, and while the glasses jingled and the smoke wreathed

upward, a song was sung:

"A man may spend

And God will send,

If his wife be good to owt;

But a man may spare

And still be bare,

If his wife be good to nowt."

Then blindman's buff. "Antony Blindman kens ta me, sen I bought butter

and cheese o' thee? I ga' tha my pot, I ga' tha my pan, I ga' all I had

but a rap ho' penny I gave a poor auld man."

Last of all, the creels were ranged round the hay-mows, and the floor

was cleared of everything except a beer-barrel. This was run into the

corner, and Tom o' Dint and fiddle were seated on top of it. Dancing was

interrupted only by drinking, until Tom's music began to be irregular,

whereupon Gubblum remonstrated; and then Tom, with the indignation of an

artist, broke the bridge of his fiddle on Gubblum's head, and Gubblum

broke the bridge of Tom's nose with his fist, and both rolled on to the

floor and lay there, until Gubblum extricated himself with difficulty,

shook his lachrymose noddle, and said:

"The laal man is as drunk as a fiddler."

The vicarage was quiet that night. All the guests save one were gone.

Parson Christian sat before the smoldering fire. Old Laird Fisher sat

with him. Neither spoke. They passed a long hour in silence.

_BOOK III._

THE DECLIVITY OF CRIME.

CHAPTER I.

A way-side hostelry, six miles from London, bearing its swinging sign of

the silver hawk and golden heron. It was a little, low-roofed place,

with a drinking-bar in front as you entered, and rooms opening from it

on either hand.

The door of the room to the left was shut. One could hear the voices of

children within, and sometimes a peal of their merry laughter. The room

to the right stood open to the bar. It was a smoky place, with a few

chairs, a long deal table, a bench with a back, a form against the wall,

pipes that hung on nails, and a rough beam across the low ceiling.

A big fire burned in an open grate on a hearth without a fender. In

front of it, coiled up in a huge chair like a canoe, that had a look of

having been hewn straight from the tree, sat the only occupant of the

room. The man wore a tweed suit of the indefinite pattern known as

pepper and salt. His hat was drawn heavily over his face to protect his

eyes from the glare of the fire-light. He gave satisfactory evidence

that he slept.

Under any light but that of the fire, the place must have looked

cheerless to desolation, but the comfortless room was alive with the

fire's palpitating heart. The rosy flames danced over the sleeper's

tawny hair, over the sanded floor, over the walls adorned with gaudy

prints. They threw shadows and then caught them back again; flashed a

ruddy face out of the little cracked window, and then lay still while

the blue night looked in.

An old woman, with a yellow face deeply wrinkled, served behind the bar.

Two or three carriers and hawkers sat on a bench before it. One of these

worthies screwed up the right side of his face with an expression of

cutting irony.

"Burn my body, though, but what an inwalable thing to have a son wot

never need do no work!"

The old woman lifted her eyes.

"There, enough of that," she said, and then jerked her head toward the

room from whence came measured snores. "He'll be working at throwing you

out, some of you, same as he did young Bobby on Sunday sennight."

"Like enough. He don't know which side his bread is buttered, he don't."

"His bread?" said another, an old road-mender, with a scornful dig of

emphasis. "His old mother's, you mean. Don't you notice as folks as eat

other folks' bread, and earn none for theirselves, never knows no more

nor babbies which side the butter is on?"

"Hold your tongue, Luke Sturgis!" said the old woman. "Mayhap you think

it's you're pint of half-and-half as keeps us all out of the union."

"Now you're a-goin' to get wexed, Mrs. Drayton. So wot's to prevent me

having another pint, just to get that fine son of yourn an extra cigar

or so. Hold hard with the pewter, though. I'll drain off what's left, if

convenient."

A drowsy-eyed countryman, with a dog snoring at his feet, said:

"Been to Lunnon again," and pointed the shank of his pipe in the

direction of the sleeping man. "Got the Lunnon smell on his clothes. I

allus knows it forty perches off."

"You're wrong, then, Mr. Wiseman," said the old woman, "and he ain't got

no smell of no Lunnon on his clothes this day, anyways. For he's been

where there ain't no smell no more nor in Hendon, leastways unless the

mount'ins smells and the cataracks and the sheeps."

"The mount'ins? And has Master Paul been along of the mount'ins?"

"Yes; Cummerland, that's the mountains, and fur off, too, I've heerd."

"Cummerland? Ain't that the part as the young missy comes from?"

"Mayhap it is; I wouldn't be for saying no to that."

"So that's the time o' day, is it?" The speaker gave a prolonged whistle

and turned a suggestive glance into the faces of his companions. "Well,

I allus says to my old woman, 'Bide quiet,' I says, 'and it'll leak

out,' and sure enough, so it has."

The landlady fired up.

"And I allus says to your missus, 'Mistress Sturgis,' I says, 'it do

make me that wexed to see a man a-prying into other people's business

and a-talking and a-scandalizing, which it is bad in a woman, where you

expects no better, as the saying is, but it ain't no ways bearsome in a

man--and I wish you'd keep him,' I says, 'from poking his nose, as you

might say, into other people's pewters.' There--that's what I allus says

to your missis."

"And very perwerse of you, too," said the worthy addressed, speaking

with the easy good-nature of one who could afford to be rated. "And

wot's to prevent me having a screw of twist on the strength of it,"

putting a penny on the counter.

The landlady threw down the paper of tobacco, picked up the penny, and

cast it into the till.

"On'y, as I say, there's no use denying now as Mister Paul Drayton has a

finger in the young missy's pie."

"There, that's enough o' that. I told you afore she never set eyes on

him till a fortnight come Sunday."

Two women came into the bar with jugs.

"And how is the young missy?" asked the elder of the two, catching up

the conversation as the landlady served her.

"She's there," said the landlady, rather indefinitely, indicating with a

sidelong nod the room to the left with the closed door.

At that moment the laughter of the children could be heard from within.

"She's merry over it, at any rate, though I did hear a whisper," said

the woman, "as she feeds two when she eats her wittals, as the saying

is."

The men laughed.

"That's being overcur'ous, mistress," said one, as the woman passed out

sniggering.

"Such baggage oughtn't to be taken in to live with respectable people,"

said the other woman, the younger one, who wore a showy bonnet and a

little gay ribbon at her neck.

"And that's being overcharitable," said another voice. "It's the women

for charity, especially to one of themselves."

"It's cur'osity as is the mischief i' this world," said the drowsy-eyed

countryman. "People talk o' the root o' all evil, and some says drink,

and some says money, and some says rheumatis, but I says cur'osity. Show

me the man as ain't cur'ous, and he don't go a-poking his nose into

every stink-pot, as you might say."

"Of course not," said the gentleman addressed as Luke Sturgis. "And show

me the man as ain't cur'ous" he said, with a wink, "and I'll show you

the man as is good at a plough and inwalable at a ditch, and wery near

worth his weight in gold at gapping a hedge, and mucking up a

horse-midden, and catching them nasty moles wot ruin the county worse

nor wars and publicans and parsons."