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Title:  Wessex Tales

Author:  Thomas Hardy

Release Date:  February, 2002  [Etext #3056]

Edition:  10

Language: English

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WESSEX TALES




Contents:

Preface
An Imaginative Woman
The Three Strangers
The Withered Arm
Fellow-Townsmen
Interlopers at the Knap
The Distracted Preacher



PREFACE



An apology is perhaps needed for the neglect of contrast which is
shown by presenting two consecutive stories of hangmen in such a
small collection as the following.  But in the neighbourhood of
county-towns tales of executions used to form a large proportion of
the local traditions; and though never personally acquainted with
any chief operator at such scenes, the writer of these pages had as
a boy the privilege of being on speaking terms with a man who
applied for the office, and who sank into an incurable melancholy
because he failed to get it, some slight mitigation of his grief
being to dwell upon striking episodes in the lives of those happier
ones who had held it with success and renown.  His tale of
disappointment used to cause some wonder why his ambition should
have taken such an unfortunate form, but its nobleness was never
questioned.  In those days, too, there was still living an old woman
who, for the cure of some eating disease, had been taken in her
youth to have her 'blood turned' by a convict's corpse, in the
manner described in 'The Withered Arm.'

Since writing this story some years ago I have been reminded by an
aged friend who knew 'Rhoda Brook' that, in relating her dream, my
forgetfulness has weakened the facts our of which the tale grew.  In
reality it was while lying down on a hot afternoon that the incubus
oppressed her and she flung it off, with the results upon the body
of the original as described.  To my mind the occurrence of such a
vision in the daytime is more impressive than if it had happened in
a midnight dream.  Readers are therefore asked to correct the
misrelation, which affords an instance of how our imperfect memories
insensibly formalize the fresh originality of living fact--from
whose shape they slowly depart, as machine-made castings depart by
degrees from the sharp hand-work of the mould.

Among the many devices for concealing smuggled goods in caves and
pits of the earth, that of planting an apple-tree in a tray or box
which was placed over the mouth of the pit is, I believe, unique,
and it is detailed in one of the tales precisely as described by an
old carrier of 'tubs'--a man who was afterwards in my father's
employ for over thirty years.  I never gathered from his
reminiscences what means were adopted for lifting the tree, which,
with its roots, earth, and receptacle, must have been of
considerable weight.  There is no doubt, however, that the thing was
done through many years.  My informant often spoke, too, of the
horribly suffocating sensation produced by the pair of spirit-tubs
slung upon the chest and back, after stumbling with the burden of
them for several miles inland over a rough country and in darkness.
He said that though years of his youth and young manhood were spent
in this irregular business, his profits from the same, taken all
together, did not average the wages he might have earned in a steady
employment, whilst the fatigues and risks were excessive.

I may add that the first story in the series turns upon a physical
possibility that may attach to women of imaginative temperament, and
that is well supported by the experiences of medical men and other
observers of such manifestations.

T. H.
April 1896.




AN IMAGINATIVE WOMAN




When William Marchmill had finished his inquiries for lodgings at a
well-known watering-place in Upper Wessex, he returned to the hotel
to find his wife.  She, with the children, had rambled along the
shore, and Marchmill followed in the direction indicated by the
military-looking hall-porter

'By Jove, how far you've gone!  I am quite out of breath,' Marchmill
said, rather impatiently, when he came up with his wife, who was
reading as she walked, the three children being considerably further
ahead with the nurse.

Mrs. Marchmill started out of the reverie into which the book had
thrown her.  'Yes,' she said, 'you've been such a long time.  I was
tired of staying in that dreary hotel.  But I am sorry if you have
wanted me, Will?'

'Well, I have had trouble to suit myself.  When you see the airy and
comfortable rooms heard of, you find they are stuffy and
uncomfortable.  Will you come and see if what I've fixed on will do?
There is not much room, I am afraid; hut I can light on nothing
better.  The town is rather full.'

The pair left the children and nurse to continue their ramble, and
went back together.

In age well-balanced, in personal appearance fairly matched, and in
domestic requirements conformable, in temper this couple differed,
though even here they did not often clash, he being equable, if not
lymphatic, and she decidedly nervous and sanguine.  It was to their
tastes and fancies, those smallest, greatest particulars, that no
common denominator could be applied.  Marchmill considered his
wife's likes and inclinations somewhat silly; she considered his
sordid and material.  The husband's business was that of a gunmaker
in a thriving city northwards, and his soul was in that business
always; the lady was best characterized by that superannuated phrase
of elegance 'a votary of the muse.'  An impressionable, palpitating
creature was Ella, shrinking humanely from detailed knowledge of her
husband's trade whenever she reflected that everything he
manufactured had for its purpose the destruction of life.  She could
only recover her equanimity by assuring herself that some, at least,
of his weapons were sooner or later used for the extermination of
horrid vermin and animals almost as cruel to their inferiors in
species as human beings were to theirs.

She had never antecedently regarded this occupation of his as any
objection to having him for a husband.  Indeed, the necessity of
getting life-leased at all cost, a cardinal virtue which all good
mothers teach, kept her from thinking of it at all till she had
closed with William, had passed the honeymoon, and reached the
reflecting stage.  Then, like a person who has stumbled upon some
object in the dark, she wondered what she had got; mentally walked
round it, estimated it; whether it were rare or common; contained
gold, silver, or lead; were a clog or a pedestal, everything to her
or nothing.

She came to some vague conclusions, and since then had kept her
heart alive by pitying her proprietor's obtuseness and want of
refinement, pitying herself, and letting off her delicate and
ethereal emotions in imaginative occupations, day-dreams, and night-
sighs, which perhaps would not much have disturbed William if he had
known of them.

Her figure was small, elegant, and slight in build, tripping, or
rather bounding, in movement.  She was dark-eyed, and had that
marvellously bright and liquid sparkle in each pupil which
characterizes persons of Ella's cast of soul, and is too often a
cause of heartache to the possessor's male friends, ultimately
sometimes to herself.  Her husband was a tall, long-featured man,
with a brown beard; he had a pondering regard; and was, it must be
added, usually kind and tolerant to her.  He spoke in squarely
shaped sentences, and was supremely satisfied with a condition of
sublunary things which made weapons a necessity.

Husband and wife walked till they had reached the house they were in
search of, which stood in a terrace facing the sea, and was fronted
by a small garden of wind-proof and salt-proof evergreens, stone
steps leading up to the porch.  It had its number in the row, but,
being rather larger than the rest, was in addition sedulously
distinguished as Coburg House by its landlady, though everybody else
called it 'Thirteen, New Parade.'  The spot was bright and lively
now; but in winter it became necessary to place sandbags against the
door, and to stuff up the keyhole against the wind and rain, which
had worn the paint so thin that the priming and knotting showed
through.

The householder, who bad been watching for the gentleman's return,
met them in the passage, and showed the rooms.  She informed them
that she was a professional man's widow, left in needy circumstances
by the rather sudden death of her husband, and she spoke anxiously
of the conveniences of the establishment.

Mrs. Marchmill said that she liked the situation and the house; but,
it being small, there would not be accommodation enough, unless she
could have all the rooms.

The landlady mused with an air of disappointment.  She wanted the
visitors to be her tenants very badly, she said, with obvious
honesty.  But unfortunately two of the rooms were occupied
permanently by a bachelor gentleman.  He did not pay season prices,
it was true; but as he kept on his apartments all the year round,
and was an extremely nice and interesting young man, who gave no
trouble, she did not like to turn him out for a month's 'let,' even
at a high figure.  'Perhaps, however,' she added, 'he might offer to
go for a time.'

They would not hear of this, and went back to the hotel, intending
to proceed to the agent's to inquire further.  Hardly had they sat
down to tea when the landlady called.  Her gentleman, she said, had
been so obliging as to offer to give up his rooms for three or four
weeks rather than drive the new-comers away.

'It is very kind, but we won't inconvenience him in that way,' said
the Marchmills.

'O, it won't inconvenience him, I assure you!' said the landlady
eloquently.  'You see, he's a different sort of young man from most-
-dreamy, solitary, rather melancholy--and he cares more to be here
when the south-westerly gales are beating against the door, and the
sea washes over the Parade, and there's not a soul in the place,
than he does now in the season.  He'd just as soon be where, in
fact, he's going temporarily, to a little cottage on the Island
opposite, for a change.'  She hoped therefore that they would come.

The Marchmill family accordingly took possession of the house next
day, and it seemed to suit them very well.  After luncheon Mr.
Marchmill strolled out towards the pier, and Mrs. Marchmill, having
despatched the children to their outdoor amusements on the sands,
settled herself in more completely, examining this and that article,
and testing the reflecting powers of the mirror in the wardrobe
door.

In the small back sitting-room, which had been the young bachelor's,
she found furniture of a more personal nature than in the rest.
Shabby books, of correct rather than rare editions, were piled up in
a queerly reserved manner in corners, as if the previous occupant
had not conceived the possibility that any incoming person of the
season's bringing could care to look inside them.  The landlady
hovered on the threshold to rectify anything that Mrs. Marchmill
might not find to her satisfaction.

'I'll make this my own little room,' said the latter, 'because the
books are here.  By the way, the person who has left seems to have a
good many.  He won't mind my reading some of them, Mrs. Hooper, I
hope?'

'O dear no, ma'am.  Yes, he has a good many.  You see, he is in the
literary line himself somewhat.  He is a poet--yes, really a poet--
and he has a little income of his own, which is enough to write
verses on, but not enough for cutting a figure, even if he cared
to.'

'A poet!  O, I did not know that.'

Mrs. Marchmill opened one of the books, and saw the owner's name
written on the title-page.  'Dear me!' she continued; 'I know his
name very well--Robert Trewe--of course I do; and his writings!  And
it is HIS rooms we have taken, and HIM we have turned out of his
home?'

Ella Marchmill, sitting down alone a few minutes later, thought with
interested surprise of Robert Trewe.  Her own latter history will
best explain that interest.  Herself the only daughter of a
struggling man of letters, she had during the last year or two taken
to writing poems, in an endeavour to find a congenial channel in
which to let flow her painfully embayed emotions, whose former
limpidity and sparkle seemed departing in the stagnation caused by
the routine of a practical household and the gloom of bearing
children to a commonplace father.  These poems, subscribed with a
masculine pseudonym, had appeared in various obscure magazines, and
in two cases in rather prominent ones.  In the second of the latter
the page which bore her effusion at the bottom, in smallish print,
bore at the top, in large print, a few verses on the same subject by
this very man, Robert Trewe.  Both of them had, in fact, been struck
by a tragic incident reported in the daily papers, and had used it
simultaneously as an inspiration, the editor remarking in a note
upon the coincidence, and that the excellence of both poems prompted
him to give them together.

After that event Ella, otherwise 'John Ivy,' had watched with much
attention the appearance anywhere in print of verse bearing the
signature of Robert Trewe, who, with a man's unsusceptibility on the
question of sex, had never once thought of passing himself off as a
woman.  To be sure, Mrs. Marchmill had satisfied herself with a sort
of reason for doing the contrary in her case; that nobody might
believe in her inspiration if they found that the sentiments came
from a pushing tradesman's wife, from the mother of three children
by a matter-of-fact small-arms manufacturer.

Trewe's verse contrasted with that of the rank and file of recent
minor poets in being impassioned rather than ingenious, luxuriant
rather than finished.  Neither symboliste nor decadent, he was a
pessimist in so far as that character applies to a man who looks at
the worst contingencies as well as the best in the human condition.
Being little attracted by excellences of form and rhythm apart from
content, he sometimes, when feeling outran his artistic speed,
perpetrated sonnets in the loosely rhymed Elizabethan fashion, which
every right-minded reviewer said he ought not to have done.

With sad and hopeless envy, Ella Marchmill had often and often
scanned the rival poet's work, so much stronger as it always was
than her own feeble lines.  She had imitated him, and her inability
to touch his level would send her into fits of despondency.  Months
passed away thus, till she observed from the publishers' list that
Trewe had collected his fugitive pieces into a volume, which was
duly issued, and was much or little praised according to chance, and
had a sale quite sufficient to pay for the printing.

This step onward had suggested to John Ivy the idea of collecting
her pieces also, or at any rate of making up a book of her rhymes by
adding many in manuscript to the few that had seen the light, for
she had been able to get no great number into print.  A ruinous
charge was made for costs of publication; a few reviews noticed her
poor little volume; but nobody talked of it, nobody bought it, and
it fell dead in a fortnight--if it had ever been alive.

The author's thoughts were diverted to another groove just then by
the discovery that she was going to have a third child, and the
collapse of her poetical venture had perhaps less effect upon her
mind than it might have done if she had been domestically
unoccupied.  Her husband had paid the publisher's bill with the
doctor's, and there it all had ended for the time.  But, though less
than a poet of her century, Ella was more than a mere multiplier of
her kind, and latterly she had begun to feel the old afflatus once
more.  And now by an odd conjunction she found herself in the rooms
of Robert Trewe.

She thoughtfully rose from her chair and searched the apartment with
the interest of a fellow-tradesman.  Yes, the volume of his own
verse was among the rest.  Though quite familiar with its contents,
she read it here as if it spoke aloud to her, then called up Mrs.
Hooper, the landlady, for some trivial service, and inquired again
about the young man.

'Well, I'm sure you'd be interested in him, ma'am, if you could see
him, only he's so shy that I don't suppose you will.'  Mrs. Hooper
seemed nothing loth to minister to her tenant's curiosity about her
predecessor.  'Lived here long?  Yes, nearly two years.  He keeps on
his rooms even when he's not here:  the soft air of this place suits
his chest, and he likes to be able to come back at any time.  He is
mostly writing or reading, and doesn't see many people, though, for
the matter of that, he is such a good, kind young fellow that folks
would only be too glad to be friendly with him if they knew him.
You don't meet kind-hearted people every day.'

'Ah, he's kind-hearted . . . and good.'

'Yes; he'll oblige me in anything if I ask him.  "Mr. Trewe," I say
to him sometimes, "you are rather out of spirits."  "Well, I am,
Mrs. Hooper," he'll say, "though I don't know how you should find it
out."  "Why not take a little change?" I ask.  Then in a day or two
he'll say that he will take a trip to Paris, or Norway, or
somewhere; and I assure you he comes back all the better for it.'

'Ah, indeed!  His is a sensitive nature, no doubt.'

'Yes.  Still he's odd in some things.  Once when he had finished a
poem of his composition late at night he walked up and down the room
rehearsing it; and the floors being so thin--jerry-built houses, you
know, though I say it myself--he kept me awake up above him till I
wished him further . . . But we get on very well.'

This was but the beginning of a series of conversations about the
rising poet as the days went on.  On one of these occasions Mrs.
Hooper drew Ella's attention to what she had not noticed before:
minute scribblings in pencil on the wall-paper behind the curtains
at the head of the bed.

'O! let me look,' said Mrs. Marchmill, unable to conceal a rush of
tender curiosity as she bent her pretty face close to the wall.

'These,' said Mrs. Hooper, with the manner of a woman who knew
things, 'are the very beginnings and first thoughts of his verses.
He has tried to rub most of them out, but you can read them still.
My belief is that he wakes up in the night, you know, with some
rhyme in his head, and jots it down there on the wall lest he should
forget it by the morning.  Some of these very lines you see here I
have seen afterwards in print in the magazines.  Some are newer;
indeed, I have not seen that one before.  It must have been done
only a few days ago.'

'O yes! . . . '

Ella Marchmill flushed without knowing why, and suddenly wished her
companion would go away, now that the information was imparted.  An
indescribable consciousness of personal interest rather than
literary made her anxious to read the inscription alone; and she
accordingly waited till she could do so, with a sense that a great
store of emotion would be enjoyed in the act.

Perhaps because the sea was choppy outside the Island, Ella's
husband found it much pleasanter to go sailing and steaming about
without his wife, who was a bad sailor, than with her.  He did not
disdain to go thus alone on board the steamboats of the cheap-
trippers, where there was dancing by moonlight, and where the
couples would come suddenly down with a lurch into each other's
arms; for, as he blandly told her, the company was too mixed for him
to take her amid such scenes.  Thus, while this thriving
manufacturer got a great deal of change and sea-air out of his
sojourn here, the life, external at least, of Ella was monotonous
enough, and mainly consisted in passing a certain number of hours
each day in bathing and walking up and down a stretch of shore.  But
the poetic impulse having again waxed strong, she was possessed by
an inner flame which left her hardly conscious of what was
proceeding around her.

She had read till she knew by heart Trewe's last little volume of
verses, and spent a great deal of time in vainly attempting to rival
some of them, till, in her failure, she burst into tears.  The
personal element in the magnetic attraction exercised by this
circumambient, unapproachable master of hers was so much stronger
than the intellectual and abstract that she could not understand it.
To be sure, she was surrounded noon and night by his customary
environment, which literally whispered of him to her at every
moment; but he was a man she had never seen, and that all that moved
her was the instinct to specialize a waiting emotion on the first
fit thing that came to hand did not, of course, suggest itself to
Ella.

In the natural way of passion under the too practical conditions
which civilization has devised for its fruition, her husband's love
for her had not survived, except in the form of fitful friendship,
any more than, or even so much as, her own for him; and, being a
woman of very living ardours, that required sustenance of some sort,
they were beginning to feed on this chancing material, which was,
indeed, of a quality far better than chance usually offers.

One day the children had been playing hide-and-seek in a closet,
whence, in their excitement, they pulled out some clothing.  Mrs.
Hooper explained that it belonged to Mr. Trewe, and hung it up in
the closet again.  Possessed of her fantasy, Ella went later in the
afternoon, when nobody was in that part of the house, opened the
closet, unhitched one of the articles, a mackintosh, and put it on,
with the waterproof cap belonging to it.

'The mantle of Elijah!' she said.  'Would it might inspire me to
rival him, glorious genius that he is!'

Her eyes always grew wet when she thought like that, and she turned
to look at herself in the glass.  HIS heart had beat inside that
coat, and HIS brain had worked under that hat at levels of thought
she would never reach.  The consciousness of her weakness beside him
made her feel quite sick.  Before she had got the things off her the
door opened, and her husband entered the room.

'What the devil--'

She blushed, and removed them

'I found them in the closet here,' she said, 'and put them on in a
freak.  What have I else to do?  You are always away!'

'Always away?  Well . . . '

That evening she had a further talk with the landlady, who might
herself have nourished a half-tender regard for the poet, so ready
was she to discourse ardently about him.

'You are interested in Mr. Trewe, I know, ma'am,' she said; 'and he
has just sent to say that he is going to call to-morrow afternoon to
look up some books of his that he wants, if I'll be in, and he may
select them from your room?'

'O yes!'

'You could very well meet Mr Trewe then, if you'd like to be in the
way!'

She promised with secret delight, and went to bed musing of him.

Next morning her husband observed:  'I've been thinking of what you
said, Ell:  that I have gone about a good deal and left you without
much to amuse you.  Perhaps it's true.  To-day, as there's not much
sea, I'll take you with me on board the yacht.'

For the first time in her experience of such an offer Ella was not
glad.  But she accepted it for the moment.  The time for setting out
drew near, and she went to get ready.  She stood reflecting.  The
longing to see the poet she was now distinctly in love with
overpowered all other considerations.

'I don't want to go,' she said to herself.  'I can't bear to be
away!  And I won't go.'

She told her husband that she had changed her mind about wishing to
sail.  He was indifferent, and went his way.

For the rest of the day the house was quiet, the children having
gone out upon the sands.  The blinds waved in the sunshine to the
soft, steady stroke of the sea beyond the wall; and the notes of the
Green Silesian band, a troop of foreign gentlemen hired for the
season, had drawn almost all the residents and promenaders away from
the vicinity of Coburg House.  A knock was audible at the door.

Mrs. Marchmill did not hear any servant go to answer it, and she
became impatient.  The books were in the room where she sat; but
nobody came up.  She rang the bell.

'There is some person waiting at the door,' she said.

'O no, ma'am!  He's gone long ago.  I answered it.'

Mrs. Hooper came in herself.

'So disappointing!' she said.  'Mr. Trewe not coming after all!'

'But I heard him knock, I fancy!'

'No; that was somebody inquiring for lodgings who came to the wrong
house.  I forgot to tell you that Mr. Trewe sent a note just before
lunch to say I needn't get any tea for him, as he should not require
the books, and wouldn't come to select them.'

Ella was miserable, and for a long time could not even re-read his
mournful ballad on 'Severed Lives,' so aching was her erratic little
heart, and so tearful her eyes.  When the children came in with wet
stockings, and ran up to her to tell her of their adventures, she
could not feel that she cared about them half as much as usual.

* * *

'Mrs. Hooper, have you a photograph of--the gentleman who lived
here?'  She was getting to be curiously shy in mentioning his name.

'Why, yes.  It's in the ornamental frame on the mantelpiece in your
own bedroom, ma'am.'

'No; the Royal Duke and Duchess are in that.'

'Yes, so they are; but he's behind them.  He belongs rightly to that
frame, which I bought on purpose; but as he went away he said:
"Cover me up from those strangers that are coming, for God's sake.
I don't want them staring at me, and I am sure they won't want me
staring at them."  So I slipped in the Duke and Duchess temporarily
in front of him, as they had no frame, and Royalties are more
suitable for letting furnished than a private young man.  If you
take 'em out you'll see him under.  Lord, ma'am, he wouldn't mind if
he knew it!  He didn't think the next tenant would be such an
attractive lady as you, or he wouldn't have thought of hiding
himself; perhaps.'

'Is he handsome?' she asked timidly.

'_I_ call him so.  Some, perhaps, wouldn't.'

'Should I?' she asked, with eagerness.

'I think you would, though some would say he's more striking than
handsome; a large-eyed thoughtful fellow, you know, with a very
electric flash in his eye when he looks round quickly, such as you'd
expect a poet to be who doesn't get his living by it.'

'How old is he?'

'Several years older than yourself, ma'am; about thirty-one or two,
I think.'

Ella was, as a matter of fact, a few months over thirty herself; but
she did not look nearly so much.  Though so immature in nature, she
was entering on that tract of life in which emotional women begin to
suspect that last love may be stronger than first love; and she
would soon, alas, enter on the still more melancholy tract when at
least the vainer ones of her sex shrink from receiving a male
visitor otherwise than with their backs to the window or the blinds
half down.  She reflected on Mrs. Hooper's remark, and said no more
about age.

Just then a telegram was brought up.  It came from her husband, who
had gone down the Channel as far as Budmouth with his friends in the
yacht, and would not be able to get back till next day.

After her light dinner Ella idled about the shore with the children
till dusk, thinking of the yet uncovered photograph in her room,
with a serene sense of something ecstatic to come.  For, with the
subtle luxuriousness of fancy in which this young woman was an
adept, on learning that her husband was to be absent that night she
had refrained from incontinently rushing upstairs and opening the
picture-frame, preferring to reserve the inspection till she could
be alone, and a more romantic tinge be imparted to the occasion by
silence, candles, solemn sea and stars outside, than was afforded by
the garish afternoon sunlight.

The children had been sent to bed, and Ella soon followed, though it
was not yet ten o'clock.  To gratify her passionate curiosity she
now made her preparations, first getting rid of superfluous garments
and putting on her dressing-gown, then arranging a chair in front of
the table and reading several pages of Trewe's tenderest utterances.
Then she fetched the portrait-frame to the light, opened the back,
took out the likeness, and set it up before her.

It was a striking countenance to look upon.  The poet wore a
luxuriant black moustache and imperial, and a slouched hat which
shaded the forehead.  The large dark eyes, described by the
landlady, showed an unlimited capacity for misery; they looked out
from beneath well-shaped brows as if they were reading the universe
in the microcosm of the confronter's face, and were not altogether
overjoyed at what the spectacle portended.

Ella murmured in her lowest, richest, tenderest tone:  'And it's YOU
who've so cruelly eclipsed me these many times!'

As she gazed long at the portrait she fell into thought, till her
eyes filled with tears, and she touched the cardboard with her lips.
Then she laughed with a nervous lightness, and wiped her eyes.

She thought how wicked she was, a woman having a husband and three
children, to let her mind stray to a stranger in this unconscionable
manner.  No, he was not a stranger!  She knew his thoughts and
feelings as well as she knew her own; they were, in fact, the self-
same thoughts and feelings as hers, which her husband distinctly
lacked; perhaps luckily for himself; considering that he had to
provide for family expenses.

'He's nearer my real self, he's more intimate with the real me than
Will is, after all, even though I've never seen him,' she said.

She laid his book and picture on the table at the bedside, and when
she was reclining on the pillow she re-read those of Robert Trewe's
verses which she had marked from time to time as most touching and
true.  Putting these aside, she set up the photograph on its edge
upon the coverlet, and contemplated it as she lay.  Then she scanned
again by the light of the candle the half-obliterated pencillings on
the wall-paper beside her head.  There they were--phrases, couplets,
bouts-rimes, beginnings and middles of lines, ideas in the rough,
like Shelley's scraps, and the least of them so intense, so sweet,
so palpitating, that it seemed as if his very breath, warm and
loving, fanned her cheeks from those walls, walls that had
surrounded his head times and times as they surrounded her own now.
He must often have put up his hand so--with the pencil in it.  Yes,
the writing was sideways, as it would be if executed by one who
extended his arm thus.

These inscribed shapes of the poet's world,


'Forms more real than living man,
Nurslings of immortality,'


were, no doubt, the thoughts and spirit-strivings which had come to
him in the dead of night, when he could let himself go and have no
fear of the frost of criticism.  No doubt they had often been
written up hastily by the light of the moon, the rays of the lamp,
in the blue-grey dawn, in full daylight perhaps never.  And now her
hair was dragging where his arm had lain when he secured the
fugitive fancies; she was sleeping on a poet's lips, immersed in the
very essence of him, permeated by his spirit as by an ether.

While she was dreaming the minutes away thus, a footstep came upon
the stairs, and in a moment she heard her husband's heavy step on
the landing immediately without.

'Ell, where are you?'

What possessed her she could not have described, but, with an
instinctive objection to let her husband know what she had been
doing, she slipped the photograph under the pillow just as he flung
open the door, with the air of a man who had dined not badly.

'O, I beg pardon,' said William Marchmill.  'Have you a headache?  I
am afraid I have disturbed you.'

'No, I've not got a headache,' said she.  'How is it you've come?'

'Well, we found we could get back in very good time after all, and I
didn't want to make another day of it, because of going somewhere
else to-morrow.'

'Shall I come down again?'

'O no.  I'm as tired as a dog.  I've had a good feed, and I shall
turn in straight off.  I want to get out at six o'clock to-morrow if
I can . . . I shan't disturb you by my getting up; it will be long
before you are awake.'  And he came forward into the room.

While her eyes followed his movements, Ella softly pushed the
photograph further out of sight.

'Sure you're not ill?' he asked, bending over her.

'No, only wicked!'

'Never mind that.'  And he stooped and kissed her.

Next morning Marchmill was called at six o'clock; and in waking and
yawning she heard him muttering to himself:  'What the deuce is this
that's been crackling under me so?'  Imagining her asleep he
searched round him and withdrew something.  Through her half-opened
eyes she perceived it to be Mr. Trewe.

'Well, I'm damned!' her husband exclaimed.

'What, dear?' said she.

'O, you are awake?  Ha! ha!'

'What DO you mean?'

'Some bloke's photograph--a friend of our landlady's, I suppose.  I
wonder how it came here; whisked off the table by accident perhaps
when they were making the bed.'

'I was looking at it yesterday, and it must have dropped in then.'

'O, he's a friend of yours?  Bless his picturesque heart!'

Ella's loyalty to the object of her admiration could not endure to
hear him ridiculed.  'He's a clever man!' she said, with a tremor in
her gentle voice which she herself felt to be absurdly uncalled for.

'He is a rising poet--the gentleman who occupied two of these rooms
before we came, though I've never seen him.'

'How do you know, if you've never seen him?'

'Mrs. Hooper told me when she showed me the photograph.'

'O; well, I must up and be off.  I shall be home rather early.
Sorry I can't take you to-day, dear.  Mind the children don't go
getting drowned.'

That day Mrs. Marchmill inquired if Mr. Trewe were likely to call at
any other time.

'Yes,' said Mrs. Hooper.  'He's coming this day week to stay with a
friend near here till you leave.  He'll be sure to call.'

Marchmill did return quite early in the afternoon; and, opening some
letters which had arrived in his absence, declared suddenly that he
and his family would have to leave a week earlier than they had
expected to do--in short, in three days.

'Surely we can stay a week longer?' she pleaded.  'I like it here.'

'I don't.  It is getting rather slow.'

'Then you might leave me and the children!'

'How perverse you are, Ell!  What's the use?  And have to come to
fetch you!  No:  we'll all return together; and we'll make out our
time in North Wales or Brighton a little later on.  Besides, you've
three days longer yet.'

It seemed to be her doom not to meet the man for whose rival talent
she had a despairing admiration, and to whose person she was now
absolutely attached.  Yet she determined to make a last effort; and
having gathered from her landlady that Trewe was living in a lonely
spot not far from the fashionable town on the Island opposite, she
crossed over in the packet from the neighbouring pier the following
afternoon.

What a useless journey it was!  Ella knew but vaguely where the
house stood, and when she fancied she had found it, and ventured to
inquire of a pedestrian if he lived there, the answer returned by
the man was that he did not know.  And if he did live there, how
could she call upon him?  Some women might have the assurance to do
it, but she had not.  How crazy he would think her.  She might have
asked him to call upon her, perhaps; but she had not the courage for
that, either.  She lingered mournfully about the picturesque seaside
eminence till it was time to return to the town and enter the
steamer for recrossing, reaching home for dinner without having been
greatly missed.

At the last moment, unexpectedly enough, her husband said that he
should have no objection to letting her and the children stay on
till the end of the week, since she wished to do so, if she felt
herself able to get home without him.  She concealed the pleasure
this extension of time gave her; and Marchmill went off the next
morning alone.

But the week passed, and Trewe did not call.

On Saturday morning the remaining members of the Marchmill family
departed from the place which had been productive of so much fervour
in her.  The dreary, dreary train; the sun shining in moted beams
upon the hot cushions; the dusty permanent way; the mean rows of
wire--these things were her accompaniment:  while out of the window
the deep blue sea-levels disappeared from her gaze, and with them
her poet's home.  Heavy-hearted, she tried to read, and wept
instead.

Mr. Marchmill was in a thriving way of business, and he and his
family lived in a large new house, which stood in rather extensive
grounds a few miles outside the city wherein he carried on his
trade.  Ella's life was lonely here, as the suburban life is apt to
be, particularly at certain seasons; and she had ample time to
indulge her taste for lyric and elegiac composition.  She had hardly
got back when she encountered a piece by Robert Trewe in the new
number of her favourite magazine, which must have been written
almost immediately before her visit to Solentsea, for it contained
the very couplet she had seen pencilled on the wallpaper by the bed,
and Mrs. Hooper had declared to be recent.  Ella could resist no
longer, but seizing a pen impulsively, wrote to him as a brother-
poet, using the name of John Ivy, congratulating him in her letter
on his triumphant executions in metre and rhythm of thoughts that
moved his soul, as compared with her own brow-beaten efforts in the
same pathetic trade.

To this address there came a response in a few days, little as she
had dared to hope for it--a civil and brief note, in which the young
poet stated that, though he was not well acquainted with Mr. Ivy's
verse, he recalled the name as being one he had seen attached to
some very promising pieces; that he was glad to gain Mr. Ivy's
acquaintance by letter, and should certainly look with much interest
for his productions in the future.

There must have been something juvenile or timid in her own epistle,
as one ostensibly coming from a man, she declared to herself; for
Trewe quite adopted the tone of an elder and superior in this reply.
But what did it matter? he had replied; he had written to her with
his own hand from that very room she knew so well, for he was now
back again in his quarters.

The correspondence thus begun was continued for two months or more,
Ella Marchmill sending him from time to time some that she
considered to be the best of her pieces, which he very kindly
accepted, though he did not say he sedulously read them, nor did he
send her any of his own in return.  Ella would have been more hurt
at this than she was if she had not known that Trewe laboured under
the impression that she was one of his own sex.

Yet the situation was unsatisfactory.  A flattering little voice
told her that, were he only to see her, matters would be otherwise.
No doubt she would have helped on this by making a frank confession
of womanhood, to begin with, if something had not happened, to her
delight, to render it unnecessary.  A friend of her husband's, the
editor of the most important newspaper in the city and county, who
was dining with them one day, observed during their conversation
about the poet that his (the editor's) brother the landscape-painter
was a friend of Mr. Trewe's, and that the two men were at that very
moment in Wales together.

Ella was slightly acquainted with the editor's brother.  The next
morning down she sat and wrote, inviting him to stay at her house
for a short time on his way back, and requesting him to bring with
him, if practicable, his companion Mr. Trewe, whose acquaintance she
was anxious to make.  The answer arrived after some few days.  Her
correspondent and his friend Trewe would have much satisfaction in
accepting her invitation on their way southward, which would be on
such and such a day in the following week.

Ella was blithe and buoyant.  Her scheme had succeeded; her beloved
though as yet unseen one was coming.  "Behold, he standeth behind
our wall; he looked forth at the windows, showing himself through
the lattice," she thought ecstatically.  "And, lo, the winter is
past, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth,
the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the
turtle is heard in our land."

But it was necessary to consider the details of lodging and feeding
him.  This she did most solicitously, and awaited the pregnant day
and hour.

It was about five in the afternoon when she heard a ring at the door
and the editor's brother's voice in the hall.  Poetess as she was,
or as she thought herself, she had not been too sublime that day to
dress with infinite trouble in a fashionable robe of rich material,
having a faint resemblance to the chiton of the Greeks, a style just
then in vogue among ladies of an artistic and romantic turn, which
had been obtained by Ella of her Bond Street dressmaker when she was
last in London.  Her visitor entered the drawing-room.  She looked
towards his rear; nobody else came through the door.  Where, in the
name of the God of Love, was Robert Trewe?

'O, I'm sorry,' said the painter, after their introductory words had
been spoken.  'Trewe is a curious fellow, you know, Mrs. Marchmill.
He said he'd come; then he said he couldn't.  He's rather dusty.
We've been doing a few miles with knapsacks, you know; and he wanted
to get on home.'

'He--he's not coming?'

'He's not; and he asked me to make his apologies.'

'When did you p-p-part from him?' she asked, her nether lip starting
off quivering so much that it was like a tremolo-stop opened in her
speech.  She longed to run away from this dreadful bore and cry her
eyes out.

'Just now, in the turnpike road yonder there.'

'What! he has actually gone past my gates?'

'Yes.  When we got to them--handsome gates they are, too, the finest
bit of modern wrought-iron work I have seen--when we came to them we
stopped, talking there a little while, and then he wished me good-
bye and went on.  The truth is, he's a little bit depressed just
now, and doesn't want to see anybody.  He's a very good fellow, and
a warm friend, but a little uncertain and gloomy sometimes; he
thinks too much of things.  His poetry is rather too erotic and
passionate, you know, for some tastes; and he has just come in for a
terrible slating from the -- Review that was published yesterday; he
saw a copy of it at the station by accident.  Perhaps you've read
it?'

'No.'

'So much the better.  O, it is not worth thinking of; just one of
those articles written to order, to please the narrow-minded set of
subscribers upon whom the circulation depends.  But he's upset by
it.  He says it is the misrepresentation that hurts him so; that,
though he can stand a fair attack, he can't stand lies that he's
powerless to refute and stop from spreading.  That's just Trewe's
weak point.  He lives so much by himself that these things affect
him much more than they would if he were in the bustle of
fashionable or commercial life.  So he wouldn't come here, making
the excuse that it all looked so new and monied--if you'll pardon--'

'But--he must have known--there was sympathy here!  Has he never
said anything about getting letters from this address?'

'Yes, yes, he has, from John Ivy--perhaps a relative of yours, he
thought, visiting here at the time?'

'Did he--like Ivy, did he say?'

'Well, I don't know that he took any great interest in Ivy.'

'Or in his poems?'

'Or in his poems--so far as I know, that is.'

Robert Trewe took no interest in her house, in her poems, or in
their writer.  As soon as she could get away she went into the
nursery and tried to let off her emotion by unnecessarily kissing
the children, till she had a sudden sense of disgust at being
reminded how plain-looking they were, like their father.

The obtuse and single-minded landscape-painter never once perceived
from her conversation that it was only Trewe she wanted, and not
himself.  He made the best of his visit, seeming to enjoy the
society of Ella's husband, who also took a great fancy to him, and
showed him everywhere about the neighbourhood, neither of them
noticing Ella's mood.

The painter had been gone only a day or two when, while sitting
upstairs alone one morning, she glanced over the London paper just
arrived, and read the following paragraph:-


'SUICIDE OF A POET

'Mr. Robert Trewe, who has been favourably known for some years as
one of our rising lyrists, committed suicide at his lodgings at
Solentsea on Saturday evening last by shooting himself in the right
temple with a revolver.  Readers hardly need to be reminded that Mr.
Trewe has recently attracted the attention of a much wider public
than had hitherto known him, by his new volume of verse, mostly of
an impassioned kind, entitled "Lyrics to a Woman Unknown," which has
been already favourably noticed in these pages for the extraordinary
gamut of feeling it traverses, and which has been made the subject
of a severe, if not ferocious, criticism in the -- Review.  It is
supposed, though not certainly known, that the article may have
partially conduced to the sad act, as a copy of the review in
question was found on his writing-table; and he has been observed to
be in a somewhat depressed state of mind since the critique
appeared.'


Then came the report of the inquest, at which the following letter
was read, it having been addressed to a friend at a distance:-


'DEAR -,--Before these lines reach your hands I shall be delivered
from the inconveniences of seeing, hearing, and knowing more of the
things around me.  I will not trouble you by giving my reasons for
the step I have taken, though I can assure you they were sound and
logical.  Perhaps had I been blessed with a mother, or a sister, or
a female friend of another sort tenderly devoted to me, I might have
thought it worth while to continue my present existence.  I have
long dreamt of such an unattainable creature, as you know, and she,
this undiscoverable, elusive one, inspired my last volume; the
imaginary woman alone, for, in spite of what has been said in some
quarters, there is no real woman behind the title.  She has
continued to the last unrevealed, unmet, unwon.  I think it
desirable to mention this in order that no blame may attach to any
real woman as having been the cause of my decease by cruel or
cavalier treatment of me.  Tell my landlady that I am sorry to have
caused her this unpleasantness; but my occupancy of the rooms will
soon be forgotten.  There are ample funds in my name at the bank to
pay all expenses.  R. TREWE.'


Ella sat for a while as if stunned, then rushed into the adjoining
chamber and flung herself upon her face on the bed.

Her grief and distraction shook her to pieces; and she lay in this
frenzy of sorrow for more than an hour.  Broken words came every now
and then from her quivering lips:  'O, if he had only known of me--
known of me--me! . . . O, if I had only once met him--only once; and
put my hand upon his hot forehead--kissed him--let him know how I
loved him--that I would have suffered shame and scorn, would have
lived and died, for him!  Perhaps it would have saved his dear life!
. . . But no--it was not allowed!  God is a jealous God; and that
happiness was not for him and me!'

All possibilities were over; the meeting was stultified.  Yet it was
almost visible to her in her fantasy even now, though it could never
be substantiated -


'The hour which might have been, yet might not be,
Which man's and woman's heart conceived and bore,
Yet whereof life was barren.'


She wrote to the landlady at Solentsea in the third person, in as
subdued a style as she could command, enclosing a postal order for a
sovereign, and informing Mrs. Hooper that Mrs. Marchmill had seen in
the papers the sad account of the poet's death, and having been, as
Mrs. Hooper was aware, much interested in Mr. Trewe during her stay
at Coburg House, she would be obliged if Mrs. Hooper could obtain a
small portion of his hair before his coffin was closed down, and
send it her as a memorial of him, as also the photograph that was in
the frame.

By the return-post a letter arrived containing what had been
requested.  Ella wept over the portrait and secured it in her
private drawer; the lock of hair she tied with white ribbon and put
in her bosom, whence she drew it and kissed it every now and then in
some unobserved nook.

'What's the matter?' said her husband, looking up from his newspaper
on one of these occasions.  'Crying over something?  A lock of hair?
Whose is it?'

'He's dead!' she murmured.

'Who?'

'I don't want to tell you, Will, just now, unless you insist!' she
said, a sob hanging heavy in her voice.

'O, all right.'

'Do you mind my refusing?  I will tell you some day.'

'It doesn't matter in the least, of course.'

He walked away whistling a few bars of no tune in particular; and
when he had got down to his factory in the city the subject came
into Marchmill's head again.

He, too, was aware that a suicide had taken place recently at the
house they had occupied at Solentsea.  Having seen the volume of
poems in his wife's hand of late, and heard fragments of the
landlady's conversation about Trewe when they were her tenants, he
all at once said to himself; 'Why of course it's he!  How the devil
did she get to know him?  What sly animals women are!'

Then he placidly dismissed the matter, and went on with his daily
affairs.  By this time Ella at home had come to a determination.
Mrs. Hooper, in sending the hair and photograph, had informed her of
the day of the funeral; and as the morning and noon wore on an
overpowering wish to know where they were laying him took possession
of the sympathetic woman.  Caring very little now what her husband
or any one else might think of her eccentricities; she wrote
Marchmill a brief note, stating that she was called away for the
afternoon and evening, but would return on the following morning.
This she left on his desk, and having given the same information to
the servants, went out of the house on foot.

When Mr. Marchmill reached home early in the afternoon the servants
looked anxious.  The nurse took him privately aside, and hinted that
her mistress's sadness during the past few days had been such that
she feared she had gone out to drown herself.  Marchmill reflected.
Upon the whole he thought that she had not done that.  Without
saying whither he was bound he also started off, telling them not to
sit up for him.  He drove to the railway-station, and took a ticket
for Solentsea.

It was dark when he reached the place, though he had come by a fast
train, and he knew that if his wife had preceded him thither it
could only have been by a slower train, arriving not a great while
before his own.  The season at Solentsea was now past:  the parade
was gloomy, and the flys were few and cheap.  He asked the way to
the Cemetery, and soon reached it.  The gate was locked, but the
keeper let him in, declaring, however, that there was nobody within
the precincts.  Although it was not late, the autumnal darkness had
now become intense; and he found some difficulty in keeping to the
serpentine path which led to the quarter where, as the man had told
him, the one or two interments for the day had taken place.  He
stepped upon the grass, and, stumbling over some pegs, stooped now
and then to discern if possible a figure against the sky.

He could see none; but lighting on a spot where the soil was
trodden, beheld a crouching object beside a newly made grave.  She
heard him, and sprang up.

'Ell, how silly this is!' he said indignantly.  'Running away from
home--I never heard such a thing!  Of course I am not jealous of
this unfortunate man; but it is too ridiculous that you, a married
woman with three children and a fourth coming, should go losing your
head like this over a dead lover! . . . Do you know you were locked
in?  You might not have been able to get out all night.'

She did not answer.

'I hope it didn't go far between you and him, for your own sake.'

'Don't insult me, Will.'

'Mind, I won't have any more of this sort of thing; do you hear?'

'Very well,' she said.

He drew her arm within his own, and conducted her out of the
Cemetery.  It was impossible to get back that night; and not wishing
to be recognized in their present sorry condition, he took her to a
miserable little coffee-house close to the station, whence they
departed early in the morning, travelling almost without speaking,
under the sense that it was one of those dreary situations occurring
in married life which words could not mend, and reaching their own
door at noon.

The months passed, and neither of the twain ever ventured to start a
conversation upon this episode.  Ella seemed to be only too
frequently in a sad and listless mood, which might almost have been
called pining.  The time was approaching when she would have to
undergo the stress of childbirth for a fourth time, and that
apparently did not tend to raise her spirits.

'I don't think I shall get over it this time!' she said one day.

'Pooh! what childish foreboding!  Why shouldn't it be as well now as
ever?'

She shook her head.  'I feel almost sure I am going to die; and I
should be glad, if it were not for Nelly, and Frank, and Tiny.'

'And me!'

'You'll soon find somebody to fill my place,' she murmured, with a
sad smile.  'And you'll have a perfect right to; I assure you of
that.'

'Ell, you are not thinking still about that--poetical friend of
yours?'

She neither admitted nor denied the charge.  'I am not going to get
over my illness this time,' she reiterated.  'Something tells me I
shan't.'

This view of things was rather a bad beginning, as it usually is;
and, in fact, six weeks later, in the month of May, she was lying in
her room, pulseless and bloodless, with hardly strength enough left
to follow up one feeble breath with another, the infant for whose
unnecessary life she was slowly parting with her own being fat and
well.  Just before her death she spoke to Marchmill softly:-

'Will, I want to confess to you the entire circumstances of that--
about you know what--that time we visited Solentsea.  I can't tell
what possessed me--how I could forget you so, my husband!  But I had
got into a morbid state:  I thought you had been unkind; that you
had neglected me; that you weren't up to my intellectual level,
while he was, and far above it.  I wanted a fuller appreciator,
perhaps, rather than another lover--'

She could get no further then for very exhaustion; and she went off
in sudden collapse a few hours later, without having said anything
more to her husband on the subject of her love for the poet.
William Marchmill, in truth, like most husbands of several years'
standing, was little disturbed by retrospective jealousies, and had
not shown the least anxiety to press her for confessions concerning
a man dead and gone beyond any power of inconveniencing him more.

But when she had been buried a couple of years it chanced one day
that, in turning over some forgotten papers that he wished to
destroy before his second wife entered the house, he lighted on a
lock of hair in an envelope, with the photograph of the deceased
poet, a date being written on the back in his late wife's hand.  It
was that of the time they spent at Solentsea.

Marchmill looked long and musingly at the hair and portrait, for
something struck him.  Fetching the little boy who had been the
death of his mother, now a noisy toddler, he took him on his knee,
held the lock of hair against the child's head, and set up the
photograph on the table behind, so that he could closely compare the
features each countenance presented.  There were undoubtedly strong
traces of resemblance; the dreamy and peculiar expression of the
poet's face sat, as the transmitted idea, upon the child's, and the
hair was of the same hue.

'I'm damned if I didn't think so!' murmured Marchmill.  'Then she
DID play me false with that fellow at the lodgings!  Let me see:
the dates--the second week in August . . . the third week in May . .
. Yes . . . yes . . . Get away, you poor little brat!  You are
nothing to me!'

1893.




THE THREE STRANGERS




Among the few features of agricultural England which retain an
appearance but little modified by the lapse of centuries, may be
reckoned the high, grassy and furzy downs, coombs, or ewe-leases, as
they are indifferently called, that fill a large area of certain
counties in the south and south-west.  If any mark of human
occupation is met with hereon, it usually takes the form of the
solitary cottage of some shepherd.

Fifty years ago such a lonely cottage stood on such a down, and may
possibly be standing there now.  In spite of its loneliness,
however, the spot, by actual measurement, was not more than five
miles from a county-town.  Yet that affected it little.  Five miles
of irregular upland, during the long inimical seasons, with their
sleets, snows, rains, and mists, afford withdrawing space enough to
isolate a Timon or a Nebuchadnezzar; much less, in fair weather, to
please that less repellent tribe, the poets, philosophers, artists,
and others who 'conceive and meditate of pleasant things.'

Some old earthen camp or barrow, some clump of trees, at least some
starved fragment of ancient hedge is usually taken advantage of in
the erection of these forlorn dwellings.  But, in the present case,
such a kind of shelter had been disregarded.  Higher Crowstairs, as
the house was called, stood quite detached and undefended.  The only
reason for its precise situation seemed to be the crossing of two
footpaths at right angles hard by, which may have crossed there and
thus for a good five hundred years.  Hence the house was exposed to
the elements on all sides.  But, though the wind up here blew
unmistakably when it did blow, and the rain hit hard whenever it
fell, the various weathers of the winter season were not quite so
formidable on the coomb as they were imagined to be by dwellers on
low ground.  The raw rimes were not so pernicious as in the hollows,
and the frosts were scarcely so severe.  When the shepherd and his
family who tenanted the house were pitied for their sufferings from
the exposure, they said that upon the whole they were less
inconvenienced by 'wuzzes and flames' (hoarses and phlegms) than
when they had lived by the stream of a snug neighbouring valley.

The night of March 28, 182-, was precisely one of the nights that
were wont to call forth these expressions of commiseration.  The
level rainstorm smote walls, slopes, and hedges like the clothyard
shafts of Senlac and Crecy.  Such sheep and outdoor animals as had
no shelter stood with their buttocks to the winds; while the tails
of little birds trying to roost on some scraggy thorn were blown
inside-out like umbrellas.  The gable-end of the cottage was stained
with wet, and the eavesdroppings flapped against the wall.  Yet
never was commiseration for the shepherd more misplaced.  For that
cheerful rustic was entertaining a large party in glorification of
the christening of his second girl.

The guests had arrived before the rain began to fall, and they were
all now assembled in the chief or living room of the dwelling.  A
glance into the apartment at eight o'clock on this eventful evening
would have resulted in the opinion that it was as cosy and
comfortable a nook as could be wished for in boisterous weather.
The calling of its inhabitant was proclaimed by a number of highly-
polished sheep-crooks without stems that were hung ornamentally over
the fireplace, the curl of each shining crook varying from the
antiquated type engraved in the patriarchal pictures of old family
Bibles to the most approved fashion of the last local sheep-fair.
The room was lighted by half-a-dozen candles, having wicks only a
trifle smaller than the grease which enveloped them, in candlesticks
that were never used but at high-days, holy-days, and family feasts.
The lights were scattered about the room, two of them standing on
the chimney-piece.  This position of candles was in itself
significant.  Candles on the chimney-piece always meant a party.

On the hearth, in front of a back-brand to give substance, blazed a
fire of thorns, that crackled 'like the laughter of the fool.'

Nineteen persons were gathered here.  Of these, five women, wearing
gowns of various bright hues, sat in chairs along the wall; girls
shy and not shy filled the window-bench; four men, including Charley
Jake the hedge-carpenter, Elijah New the parish-clerk, and John
Pitcher, a neighbouring dairyman, the shepherd's father-in-law,
lolled in the settle; a young man and maid, who were blushing over
tentative pourparlers on a life-companionship, sat beneath the
corner-cupboard; and an elderly engaged man of fifty or upward moved
restlessly about from spots where his betrothed was not to the spot
where she was.  Enjoyment was pretty general, and so much the more
prevailed in being unhampered by conventional restrictions.
Absolute confidence in each other's good opinion begat perfect ease,
while the finishing stroke of manner, amounting to a truly princely
serenity, was lent to the majority by the absence of any expression
or trait denoting that they wished to get on in the world, enlarge
their minds, or do any eclipsing thing whatever--which nowadays so
generally nips the bloom and bonhomie of all except the two extremes
of the social scale.

Shepherd Fennel had married well, his wife being a dairyman's
daughter from a vale at a distance, who brought fifty guineas in her
pocket--and kept them there, till they should be required for
ministering to the needs of a coming family.  This frugal woman had
been somewhat exercised as to the character that should be given to
the gathering.  A sit-still party had its advantages; but an
undisturbed position of ease in chairs and settles was apt to lead
on the men to such an unconscionable deal of toping that they would
sometimes fairly drink the house dry.  A dancing-party was the
alternative; but this, while avoiding the foregoing objection on the
score of good drink, had a counterbalancing disadvantage in the
matter of good victuals, the ravenous appetites engendered by the
exercise causing immense havoc in the buttery.  Shepherdess Fennel
fell back upon the intermediate plan of mingling short dances with
short periods of talk and singing, so as to hinder any ungovernable
rage in either.  But this scheme was entirely confined to her own
gentle mind:  the shepherd himself was in the mood to exhibit the
most reckless phases of hospitality.

The fiddler was a boy of those parts, about twelve years of age, who
had a wonderful dexterity in jigs and reels, though his fingers were
so small and short as to necessitate a constant shifting for the
high notes, from which he scrambled back to the first position with
sounds not of unmixed purity of tone.  At seven the shrill tweedle-
dee of this youngster had begun, accompanied by a booming ground-
bass from Elijah New, the parish-clerk, who had thoughtfully brought
with him his favourite musical instrument, the serpent.  Dancing was
instantaneous, Mrs. Fennel privately enjoining the players on no
account to let the dance exceed the length of a quarter of an hour.

But Elijah and the boy, in the excitement of their position, quite
forgot the injunction.  Moreover, Oliver Giles, a man of seventeen,
one of the dancers, who was enamoured of his partner, a fair girl of
thirty-three rolling years, had recklessly handed a new crown-piece
to the musicians, as a bribe to keep going as long as they had
muscle and wind.  Mrs. Fennel, seeing the steam begin to generate on
the countenances of her guests, crossed over and touched the
fiddler's elbow and put her hand on the serpent's mouth.  But they
took no notice, and fearing she might lose her character of genial
hostess if she were to interfere too markedly, she retired and sat
down helpless.  And so the dance whizzed on with cumulative fury,
the performers moving in their planet-like courses, direct and
retrograde, from apogee to perigee, till the hand of the well-kicked
clock at the bottom of the room had travelled over the circumference
of an hour.

While these cheerful events were in course of enactment within
Fennel's pastoral dwelling, an incident having considerable bearing
on the party had occurred in the gloomy night without.  Mrs.
Fennel's concern about the growing fierceness of the dance
corresponded in point of time with the ascent of a human figure to
the solitary hill of Higher Crowstairs from the direction of the
distant town.  This personage strode on through the rain without a
pause, following the little-worn path which, further on in its
course, skirted the shepherd's cottage.

It was nearly the time of full moon, and on this account, though the
sky was lined with a uniform sheet of dripping cloud, ordinary
objects out of doors were readily visible.  The sad wan light
revealed the lonely pedestrian to be a man of supple frame; his gait
suggested that he had somewhat passed the period of perfect and
instinctive agility, though not so far as to be otherwise than rapid
of motion when occasion required.  At a rough guess, he might have
been about forty years of age.  He appeared tall, but a recruiting
sergeant, or other person accustomed to the judging of men's heights
by the eye, would have discerned that this was chiefly owing to his
gauntness, and that he was not more than five-feet-eight or nine.

Notwithstanding the regularity of his tread, there was caution in
it, as in that of one who mentally feels his way; and despite the
fact that it was not a black coat nor a dark garment of any sort
that he wore, there was something about him which suggested that he
naturally belonged to the black-coated tribes of men.  His clothes
were of fustian, and his boots hobnailed, yet in his progress he
showed not the mud-accustomed bearing of hobnailed and fustianed
peasantry.

By the time that he had arrived abreast of the shepherd's premises
the rain came down, or rather came along, with yet more determined
violence.  The outskirts of the little settlement partially broke
the force of wind and rain, and this induced him to stand still.
The most salient of the shepherd's domestic erections was an empty
sty at the forward corner of his hedgeless garden, for in these
latitudes the principle of masking the homelier features of your
establishment by a conventional frontage was unknown.  The
traveller's eye was attracted to this small building by the pallid
shine of the wet slates that covered it.  He turned aside, and,
finding it empty, stood under the pent-roof for shelter.

While he stood, the boom of the serpent within the adjacent house,
and the lesser strains of the fiddler, reached the spot as an
accompaniment to the surging hiss of the flying rain on the sod, its
louder beating on the cabbage-leaves of the garden, on the eight or
ten beehives just discernible by the path, and its dripping from the
eaves into a row of buckets and pans that had been placed under the
walls of the cottage.  For at Higher Crowstairs, as at all such
elevated domiciles, the grand difficulty of housekeeping was an
insufficiency of water; and a casual rainfall was utilized by
turning out, as catchers, every utensil that the house contained.
Some queer stories might be told of the contrivances for economy in
suds and dish-waters that are absolutely necessitated in upland
habitations during the droughts of summer.  But at this season there
were no such exigencies; a mere acceptance of what the skies
bestowed was sufficient for an abundant store.

At last the notes of the serpent ceased and the house was silent.
This cessation of activity aroused the solitary pedestrian from the
reverie into which he had lapsed, and, emerging from the shed, with
an apparently new intention, he walked up the path to the house-
door.  Arrived here, his first act was to kneel down on a large
stone beside the row of vessels, and to drink a copious draught from
one of them.  Having quenched his thirst he rose and lifted his hand
to knock, but paused with his eye upon the panel.  Since the dark
surface of the wood revealed absolutely nothing, it was evident that
he must be mentally looking through the door, as if he wished to
measure thereby all the possibilities that a house of this sort
might include, and how they might bear upon the question of his
entry.

In his indecision he turned and surveyed the scene around.  Not a
soul was anywhere visible.  The garden-path stretched downward from
his feet, gleaming like the track of a snail; the roof of the little
well (mostly dry), the well-cover, the top rail of the garden-gate,
were varnished with the same dull liquid glaze; while, far away in
the vale, a faint whiteness of more than usual extent showed that
the rivers were high in the meads.  Beyond all this winked a few
bleared lamplights through the beating drops--lights that denoted
the situation of the county-town from which he had appeared to come.
The absence of all notes of life in that direction seemed to clinch
his intentions, and he knocked at the door.

Within, a desultory chat had taken the place of movement and musical
sound.  The hedge-carpenter was suggesting a song to the company,
which nobody just then was inclined to undertake, so that the knock
afforded a not unwelcome diversion.

'Walk in!' said the shepherd promptly.

The latch clicked upward, and out of the night our pedestrian
appeared upon the door-mat.  The shepherd arose, snuffed two of the
nearest candles, and turned to look at him.

Their light disclosed that the stranger was dark in complexion and
not unprepossessing as to feature.  His hat, which for a moment he
did not remove, hung low over his eyes, without concealing that they
were large, open, and determined, moving with a flash rather than a
glance round the room.  He seemed pleased with his survey, and,
baring his shaggy head, said, in a rich deep voice, 'The rain is so
heavy, friends, that I ask leave to come in and rest awhile.'

'To be sure, stranger,' said the shepherd.  'And faith, you've been
lucky in choosing your time, for we are having a bit of a fling for
a glad cause--though, to be sure, a man could hardly wish that glad
cause to happen more than once a year.'

'Nor less,' spoke up a woman.  'For 'tis best to get your family
over and done with, as soon as you can, so as to be all the earlier
out of the fag o't.'

'And what may be this glad cause?' asked the stranger.

'A birth and christening,' said the shepherd.

The stranger hoped his host might not be made unhappy either by too
many or too few of such episodes, and being invited by a gesture to
a pull at the mug, he readily acquiesced.  His manner, which, before
entering, had been so dubious, was now altogether that of a careless
and candid man.

'Late to be traipsing athwart this coomb--hey?' said the engaged man
of fifty.

'Late it is, master, as you say.--I'll take a seat in the chimney-
corner, if you have nothing to urge against it, ma'am; for I am a
little moist on the side that was next the rain.'

Mrs. Shepherd Fennel assented, and made room for the self-invited
comer, who, having got completely inside the chimney-corner,
stretched out his legs and his arms with the expansiveness of a
person quite at home.

'Yes, I am rather cracked in the vamp,' he said freely, seeing that
the eyes of the shepherd's wife fell upon his boots, 'and I am not
well fitted either.  I have had some rough times lately, and have
been forced to pick up what I can get in the way of wearing, but I
must find a suit better fit for working-days when I reach home.'

'One of hereabouts?' she inquired.

'Not quite that--further up the country.'

'I thought so.  And so be I; and by your tongue you come from my
neighbourhood.'

'But you would hardly have heard of me,' he said quickly.  'My time
would be long before yours, ma'am, you see.'

This testimony to the youthfulness of his hostess had the effect of
stopping her cross-examination.

'There is only one thing more wanted to make me happy,' continued
the new-comer.  'And that is a little baccy, which I am sorry to say
I am out of.'

'I'll fill your pipe,' said the shepherd.

'I must ask you to lend me a pipe likewise.'

'A smoker, and no pipe about 'ee?'

'I have dropped it somewhere on the road.'

The shepherd filled and handed him a new clay pipe, saying, as he
did so, 'Hand me your baccy-box--I'll fill that too, now I am about
it.'

The man went through the movement of searching his pockets.

'Lost that too?' said his entertainer, with some surprise.

'I am afraid so,' said the man with some confusion.  'Give it to me
in a screw of paper.'  Lighting his pipe at the candle with a
suction that drew the whole flame into the bowl, he resettled
himself in the corner and bent his looks upon the faint steam from
his damp legs, as if he wished to say no more.

Meanwhile the general body of guests had been taking little notice
of this visitor by reason of an absorbing discussion in which they
were engaged with the band about a tune for the next dance.  The
matter being settled, they were about to stand up when an
interruption came in the shape of another knock at the door.

At sound of the same the man in the chimney-corner took up the poker
and began stirring the brands as if doing it thoroughly were the one
aim of his existence; and a second time the shepherd said, 'Walk
in!'  In a moment another man stood upon the straw-woven door-mat.
He too was a stranger.

This individual was one of a type radically different from the
first.  There was more of the commonplace in his manner, and a
certain jovial cosmopolitanism sat upon his features.  He was
several years older than the first arrival, his hair being slightly
frosted, his eyebrows bristly, and his whiskers cut back from his
cheeks.  His face was rather full and flabby, and yet it was not
altogether a face without power.  A few grog-blossoms marked the
neighbourhood of his nose.  He flung back his long drab greatcoat,
revealing that beneath it he wore a suit of cinder-gray shade
throughout, large heavy seals, of some metal or other that would
take a polish, dangling from his fob as his only personal ornament.
Shaking the water-drops from his low-crowned glazed hat, he said, 'I
must ask for a few minutes' shelter, comrades, or I shall be wetted
to my skin before I get to Casterbridge.'

'Make yourself at home, master,' said the shepherd, perhaps a trifle
less heartily than on the first occasion.  Not that Fennel had the
least tinge of niggardliness in his composition; but the room was
far from large, spare chairs were not numerous, and damp companions
were not altogether desirable at close quarters for the women and
girls in their bright-coloured gowns.

However, the second comer, after taking off his greatcoat, and
hanging his hat on a nail in one of the ceiling-beams as if he had
been specially invited to put it there, advanced and sat down at the
table.  This had been pushed so closely into the chimney-corner, to
give all available room to the dancers, that its inner edge grazed
the elbow of the man who had ensconced himself by the fire; and thus
the two strangers were brought into close companionship.  They
nodded to each other by way of breaking the ice of unacquaintance,
and the first stranger handed his neighbour the family mug--a huge
vessel of brown ware, having its upper edge worn away like a
threshold by the rub of whole generations of thirsty lips that had
gone the way of all flesh, and bearing the following inscription
burnt upon its rotund side in yellow letters


THERE IS NO FUN
UNTiLL i CUM.


The other man, nothing loth, raised the mug to his lips, and drank
on, and on, and on--till a curious blueness overspread the
countenance of the shepherd's wife, who had regarded with no little
surprise the first stranger's free offer to the second of what did
not belong to him to dispense.

'I knew it!' said the toper to the shepherd with much satisfaction.
'When I walked up your garden before coming in, and saw the hives
all of a row, I said to myself; "Where there's bees there's honey,
and where there's honey there's mead."  But mead of such a truly
comfortable sort as this I really didn't expect to meet in my older
days.'  He took yet another pull at the mug, till it assumed an
ominous elevation.

'Glad you enjoy it!' said the shepherd warmly.

'It is goodish mead,' assented Mrs. Fennel, with an absence of
enthusiasm which seemed to say that it was possible to buy praise
for one's cellar at too heavy a price.  'It is trouble enough to
make--and really I hardly think we shall make any more.  For honey
sells well, and we ourselves can make shift with a drop o' small
mead and metheglin for common use from the comb-washings."

'O, but you'll never have the heart!' reproachfully cried the
stranger in cinder-gray, after taking up the mug a third time and
setting it down empty.  'I love mead, when 'tis old like this, as I
love to go to church o' Sundays, or to relieve the needy any day of
the week.'

'Ha, ha, ha!' said the man in the chimney-corner, who, in spite of
the taciturnity induced by the pipe of tobacco, could not or would
not refrain from this slight testimony to his comrade's humour.

Now the old mead of those days, brewed of the purest first-year or
maiden honey, four pounds to the gallon--with its due complement of
white of eggs, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, mace, rosemary, yeast, and
processes of working, bottling, and cellaring--tasted remarkably
strong; but it did not taste so strong as it actually was.  Hence,
presently, the stranger in cinder-gray at the table, moved by its
creeping influence, unbuttoned his waistcoat, threw himself back in
his chair, spread his legs, and made his presence felt in various
ways.

'Well, well, as I say,' he resumed, 'I am going to Casterbridge, and
to Casterbridge I must go.  I should have been almost there by this
time; but the rain drove me into your dwelling, and I'm not sorry
for it.'

'You don't live in Casterbridge?' said the shepherd.

'Not as yet; though I shortly mean to move there.'

'Going to set up in trade, perhaps?'

'No, no,' said the shepherd's wife.  'It is easy to see that the
gentleman is rich, and don't want to work at anything.'

The cinder-gray stranger paused, as if to consider whether he would
accept that definition of himself.  He presently rejected it by
answering, 'Rich is not quite the word for me, dame.  I do work, and
I must work.  And even if I only get to Casterbridge by midnight I
must begin work there at eight to-morrow morning.  Yes, het or wet,
blow or snow, famine or sword, my day's work to-morrow must be
done.'

'Poor man!  Then, in spite o' seeming, you be worse off than we?'
replied the shepherd's wife.

''Tis the nature of my trade, men and maidens.  'Tis the nature of
my trade more than my poverty . . . But really and truly I must up
and off, or I shan't get a lodging in the town.'  However, the
speaker did not move, and directly added, 'There's time for one more
draught of friendship before I go; and I'd perform it at once if the
mug were not dry.'

'Here's a mug o' small,' said Mrs. Fennel.  'Small, we call it,
though to be sure 'tis only the first wash o' the combs.'

'No,' said the stranger disdainfully.  'I won't spoil your first
kindness by partaking o' your second.'

'Certainly not,' broke in Fennel.  'We don't increase and multiply
every day, and I'll fill the mug again.'  He went away to the dark
place under the stairs where the barrel stood.  The shepherdess
followed him.

'Why should you do this?' she said reproachfully, as soon as they
were alone.  'He's emptied it once, though it held enough for ten
people; and now he's not contented wi' the small, but must needs
call for more o' the strong!  And a stranger unbeknown to any of us.
For my part, I don't like the look o' the man at all.'

'But he's in the house, my honey; and 'tis a wet night, and a
christening.  Daze it, what's a cup of mead more or less?  There'll
be plenty more next bee-burning.'

'Very well--this time, then,' she answered, looking wistfully at the
barrel.  'But what is the man's calling, and where is he one of;
that he should come in and join us like this?'

'I don't know.  I'll ask him again.'

The catastrophe of having the mug drained dry at one pull by the
stranger in cinder-gray was effectually guarded against this time by
Mrs. Fennel.  She poured out his allowance in a small cup, keeping
the large one at a discreet distance from him.  When he had tossed
off his portion the shepherd renewed his inquiry about the
stranger's occupation.

The latter did not immediately reply, and the man in the chimney-
corner, with sudden demonstrativeness, said, 'Anybody may know my
trade--I'm a wheelwright.'

'A very good trade for these parts,' said the shepherd.

'And anybody may know mine--if they've the sense to find it out,'
said the stranger in cinder-gray.

'You may generally tell what a man is by his claws,' observed the
hedge-carpenter, looking at his own hands.  'My fingers be as full
of thorns as an old pin-cushion is of pins.'

The hands of the man in the chimney-corner instinctively sought the
shade, and he gazed into the fire as he resumed his pipe.  The man
at the table took up the hedge-carpenter's remark, and added
smartly, 'True; but the oddity of my trade is that, instead of
setting a mark upon me, it sets a mark upon my customers.'

No observation being offered by anybody in elucidation of this
enigma, the shepherd's wife once more called for a song.  The same
obstacles presented themselves as at the former time--one had no
voice, another had forgotten the first verse.  The stranger at the
table, whose soul had now risen to a good working temperature,
relieved the difficulty by exclaiming that, to start the company, he
would sing himself.  Thrusting one thumb into the arm-hole of his
waistcoat, he waved the other hand in the air, and, with an
extemporizing gaze at the shining sheep-crooks above the
mantelpiece, began:-


'O my trade it is the rarest one,
Simple shepherds all -
My trade is a sight to see;
For my customers I tie, and take them up on high,
And waft 'em to a far countree!'


The room was silent when he had finished the verse--with one
exception, that of the man in the chimney-corner, who, at the
singer's word, 'Chorus! 'joined him in a deep bass voice of musical
relish -


'And waft 'em to a far countree!'


Oliver Giles, John Pitcher the dairyman, the parish-clerk, the
engaged man of fifty, the row of young women against the wall,
seemed lost in thought not of the gayest kind.  The shepherd looked
meditatively on the ground, the shepherdess gazed keenly at the
singer, and with some suspicion; she was doubting whether this
stranger were merely singing an old song from recollection, or was
composing one there and then for the occasion.  All were as
perplexed at the obscure revelation as the guests at Belshazzar's
Feast, except the man in the chimney-corner, who quietly said,
'Second verse, stranger,' and smoked on.

The singer thoroughly moistened himself from his lips inwards, and
went on with the next stanza as requested:-


'My tools are but common ones,
Simple shepherds all -
My tools are no sight to see:
A little hempen string, and a post whereon to swing,
Are implements enough for me!'


Shepherd Fennel glanced round.  There was no longer any doubt that
the stranger was answering his question rhythmically.  The guests
one and all started back with suppressed exclamations.  The young
woman engaged to the man of fifty fainted half-way, and would have
proceeded, but finding him wanting in alacrity for catching her she
sat down trembling.

'O, he's the--!' whispered the people in the background, mentioning
the name of an ominous public officer.  'He's come to do it!  'Tis
to be at Casterbridge jail to-morrow--the man for sheep-stealing--
the poor clock-maker we heard of; who used to live away at
Shottsford and had no work to do--Timothy Summers, whose family were
a-starving, and so he went out of Shottsford by the high-road, and
took a sheep in open daylight, defying the farmer and the farmer's
wife and the farmer's lad, and every man jack among 'em.  He' (and
they nodded towards the stranger of the deadly trade) 'is come from
up the country to do it because there's not enough to do in his own
county-town, and he's got the place here now our own county man's
dead; he's going to live in the same cottage under the prison wall.'

The stranger in cinder-gray took no notice of this whispered string
of observations, but again wetted his lips.  Seeing that his friend
in the chimney-corner was the only one who reciprocated his
joviality in any way, he held out his cup towards that appreciative
comrade, who also held out his own.  They clinked together, the eyes
of the rest of the room hanging upon the singer's actions.  He
parted his lips for the third verse; but at that moment another
knock was audible upon the door.  This time the knock was faint and
hesitating.

The company seemed scared; the shepherd looked with consternation
towards the entrance, and it was with some effort that he resisted
his alarmed wife's deprecatory glance, and uttered for the third
time the welcoming words, 'Walk in!'

The door was gently opened, and another man stood upon the mat.  He,
like those who had preceded him, was a stranger.  This time it was a
short, small personage, of fair complexion, and dressed in a decent
suit of dark clothes.

'Can you tell me the way to--?' he began:  when, gazing round the
room to observe the nature of the company amongst whom he had
fallen, his eyes lighted on the stranger in cinder-gray.  It was
just at the instant when the latter, who had thrown his mind into
his song with such a will that he scarcely heeded the interruption,
silenced all whispers and inquiries by bursting into his third
verse:-


'To-morrow is my working day,
Simple shepherds all -
To-morrow is a working day for me:
For the farmer's sheep is slain, and the lad who did it ta'en,
And on his soul may God ha' merc-y!'


The stranger in the chimney-corner, waving cups with the singer so
heartily that his mead splashed over on the hearth, repeated in his
bass voice as before:-


'And on his soul may God ha' merc-y!'


All this time the third stranger had been standing in the doorway.
Finding now that he did not come forward or go on speaking, the
guests particularly regarded him.  They noticed to their surprise
that he stood before them the picture of abject terror--his knees
trembling, his hand shaking so violently that the door-latch by
which he supported himself rattled audibly:  his white lips were
parted, and his eyes fixed on the merry officer of justice in the
middle of the room.  A moment more and he had turned, closed the
door, and fled.

'What a man can it be?' said the shepherd.

The rest, between the awfulness of their late discovery and the odd
conduct of this third visitor, looked as if they knew not what to
think, and said nothing.  Instinctively they withdrew further and
further from the grim gentleman in their midst, whom some of them
seemed to take for the Prince of Darkness himself; till they formed
a remote circle, an empty space of floor being left between them and
him -


' . . . circulus, cujus centrum diabolus.'


The room was so silent--though there were more than twenty people in
it--that nothing could be heard but the patter of the rain against
the window-shutters, accompanied by the occasional hiss of a stray
drop that fell down the chimney into the fire, and the steady
puffing of the man in the corner, who had now resumed his pipe of
long clay.

The stillness was unexpectedly broken.  The distant sound of a gun
reverberated through the air--apparently from the direction of the
county-town.

'Be jiggered!' cried the stranger who had sung the song, jumping up.

'What does that mean?' asked several.

'A prisoner escaped from the jail--that's what it means.'

All listened.  The sound was repeated, and none of them spoke but
the man in the chimney-corner, who said quietly, 'I've often been
told that in this county they fire a gun at such times; but I never
heard it till now.'

'I wonder if it is MY man?' murmured the personage in cinder-gray.

'Surely it is!' said the shepherd involuntarily.  'And surely we've
zeed him!  That little man who looked in at the door by now, and
quivered like a leaf when he zeed ye and heard your song!'

'His teeth chattered, and the breath went out of his body,' said the
dairyman.

'And his heart seemed to sink within him like a stone,' said Oliver
Giles.

'And he bolted as if he'd been shot at,' said the hedge-carpenter.

'True--his teeth chattered, and his heart seemed to sink; and he
bolted as if he'd been shot at,' slowly summed up the man in the
chimney-corner.

'I didn't notice it,' remarked the hangman.

'We were all a-wondering what made him run off in such a fright,'
faltered one of the women against the wall, 'and now 'tis
explained!'

The firing of the alarm-gun went on at intervals, low and sullenly,
and their suspicions became a certainty.  The sinister gentleman in
cinder-gray roused himself.  'Is there a constable here?' he asked,
in thick tones.  'If so, let him step forward.'

The engaged man of fifty stepped quavering out from the wall, his
betrothed beginning to sob on the back of the chair.

'You are a sworn constable?'

'I be, sir.'

'Then pursue the criminal at once, with assistance, and bring him
back here.  He can't have gone far.'

'I will, sir, I will--when I've got my staff.  I'll go home and get
it, and come sharp here, and start in a body.'

'Staff!--never mind your staff; the man'll be gone!'

'But I can't do nothing without my staff--can I, William, and John,
and Charles Jake?  No; for there's the king's royal crown a painted
on en in yaller and gold, and the lion and the unicorn, so as when I
raise en up and hit my prisoner, 'tis made a lawful blow thereby.  I
wouldn't 'tempt to take up a man without my staff--no, not I.  If I
hadn't the law to gie me courage, why, instead o' my taking up him
he might take up me!'

'Now, I'm a king's man myself; and can give you authority enough for
this,' said the formidable officer in gray.  'Now then, all of ye,
be ready.  Have ye any lanterns?'

'Yes--have ye any lanterns?--I demand it!' said the constable.

'And the rest of you able-bodied--'

'Able-bodied men--yes--the rest of ye!' said the constable.

'Have you some good stout staves and pitch-forks--'

'Staves and pitchforks--in the name o' the law!  And take 'em in yer
hands and go in quest, and do as we in authority tell ye!'

Thus aroused, the men prepared to give chase.  The evidence was,
indeed, though circumstantial, so convincing, that but little
argument was needed to show the shepherd's guests that after what
they had seen it would look very much like connivance if they did
not instantly pursue the unhappy third stranger, who could not as
yet have gone more than a few hundred yards over such uneven
country.

A shepherd is always well provided with lanterns; and, lighting
these hastily, and with hurdle-staves in their hands, they poured
out of the door, taking a direction along the crest of the hill,
away from the town, the rain having fortunately a little abated.

Disturbed by the noise, or possibly by unpleasant dreams of her
baptism, the child who had been christened began to cry heart-
brokenly in the room overhead.  These notes of grief came down
through the chinks of the floor to the ears of the women below, who
jumped up one by one, and seemed glad of the excuse to ascend and
comfort the baby, for the incidents of the last half-hour greatly
oppressed them.  Thus in the space of two or three minutes the room
on the ground-floor was deserted quite.

But it was not for long.  Hardly had the sound of footsteps died
away when a man returned round the corner of the house from the
direction the pursuers had taken.  Peeping in at the door, and
seeing nobody there, he entered leisurely.  It was the stranger of
the chimney-corner, who had gone out with the rest.  The motive of
his return was shown by his helping himself to a cut piece of
skimmer-cake that lay on a ledge beside where he had sat, and which
he had apparently forgotten to take with him.  He also poured out
half a cup more mead from the quantity that remained, ravenously
eating and drinking these as he stood.  He had not finished when
another figure came in just as quietly--his friend in cinder-gray.

'O--you here?' said the latter, smiling.  'I thought you had gone to
help in the capture.'  And this speaker also revealed the object of
his return by looking solicitously round for the fascinating mug of
old mead.

'And I thought you had gone,' said the other, continuing his
skimmer-cake with some effort.

'Well, on second thoughts, I felt there were enough without me,'
said the first confidentially, 'and such a night as it is, too.
Besides, 'tis the business o' the Government to take care of its
criminals--not mine.'

'True; so it is.  And I felt as you did, that there were enough
without me.'

'I don't want to break my limbs running over the humps and hollows
of this wild country.'

'Nor I neither, between you and me.'

'These shepherd-people are used to it--simple-minded souls, you
know, stirred up to anything in a moment.  They'll have him ready
for me before the morning, and no trouble to me at all.'

'They'll have him, and we shall have saved ourselves all labour in
the matter.'

'True, true.  Well, my way is to Casterbridge; and 'tis as much as
my legs will do to take me that far.  Going the same way?'

'No, I am sorry to say!  I have to get home over there' (he nodded
indefinitely to the right), 'and I feel as you do, that it is quite
enough for my legs to do before bedtime.'

The other had by this time finished the mead in the mug, after
which, shaking hands heartily at the door, and wishing each other
well, they went their several ways.

In the meantime the company of pursuers had reached the end of the
hog's-back elevation which dominated this part of the down.  They
had decided on no particular plan of action; and, finding that the
man of the baleful trade was no longer in their company, they seemed
quite unable to form any such plan now.  They descended in all
directions down the hill, and straightway several of the party fell
into the snare set by Nature for all misguided midnight ramblers
over this part of the cretaceous formation.  The 'lanchets,' or
flint slopes, which belted the escarpment at intervals of a dozen
yards, took the less cautious ones unawares, and losing their
footing on the rubbly steep they slid sharply downwards, the
lanterns rolling from their hands to the bottom, and there lying on
their sides till the horn was scorched through.

When they had again gathered themselves together, the shepherd, as
the man who knew the country best, took the lead, and guided them
round these treacherous inclines.  The lanterns, which seemed rather
to dazzle their eyes and warn the fugitive than to assist them in
the exploration, were extinguished, due silence was observed; and in
this more rational order they plunged into the vale.  It was a
grassy, briery, moist defile, affording some shelter to any person
who had sought it; but the party perambulated it in vain, and
ascended on the other side.  Here they wandered apart, and after an
interval closed together again to report progress.

At the second time of closing in they found themselves near a lonely
ash, the single tree on this part of the coomb, probably sown there
by a passing bird some fifty years before.  And here, standing a
little to one side of the trunk, as motionless as the trunk itself;
appeared the man they were in quest of; his outline being well
defined against the sky beyond.  The band noiselessly drew up and
faced him.

'Your money or your life!' said the constable sternly to the still
figure.

'No, no,' whispered John Pitcher.  ''Tisn't our side ought to say
that.  That's the doctrine of vagabonds like him, and we be on the
side of the law.'

'Well, well,' replied the constable impatiently; 'I must say
something, mustn't I? and if you had all the weight o' this
undertaking upon your mind, perhaps you'd say the wrong thing too!--
Prisoner at the bar, surrender, in the name of the Father--the
Crown, I mane!'

The man under the tree seemed now to notice them for the first time,
and, giving them no opportunity whatever for exhibiting their
courage, he strolled slowly towards them.  He was, indeed, the
little man, the third stranger; but his trepidation had in a great
measure gone.

'Well, travellers,' he said, 'did I hear ye speak to me?'

'You did:  you've got to come and be our prisoner at once!' said the
constable.  'We arrest 'ee on the charge of not biding in
Casterbridge jail in a decent proper manner to be hung to-morrow
morning.  Neighbours, do your duty, and seize the culpet!'

On hearing the charge, the man seemed enlightened, and, saying not
another word, resigned himself with preternatural civility to the
search-party, who, with their staves in their hands, surrounded him
on all sides, and marched him back towards the shepherd's cottage.

It was eleven o'clock by the time they arrived.  The light shining
from the open door, a sound of men's voices within, proclaimed to
them as they approached the house that some new events had arisen in
their absence.  On entering they discovered the shepherd's living
room to be invaded by two officers from Casterbridge jail, and a
well-known magistrate who lived at the nearest country-seat,
intelligence of the escape having become generally circulated.

'Gentlemen,' said the constable, 'I have brought back your man--not
without risk and danger; but every one must do his duty!  He is
inside this circle of able-bodied persons, who have lent me useful
aid, considering their ignorance of Crown work.  Men, bring forward
your prisoner!'  And the third stranger was led to the light.

'Who is this?' said one of the officials.

'The man,' said the constable.

'Certainly not,' said the turnkey; and the first corroborated his
statement.

'But how can it be otherwise?' asked the constable.  'Or why was he
so terrified at sight o' the singing instrument of the law who sat
there?'  Here he related the strange behaviour of the third stranger
on entering the house during the hangman's song.

'Can't understand it,' said the officer coolly.  'All I know is that
it is not the condemned man.  He's quite a different character from
this one; a gauntish fellow, with dark hair and eyes, rather good-
looking, and with a musical bass voice that if you heard it once
you'd never mistake as long as you lived.'

'Why, souls--'twas the man in the chimney-corner!'

'Hey--what?' said the magistrate, coming forward after inquiring
particulars from the shepherd in the background.  'Haven't you got
the man after all?'

'Well, sir,' said the constable, 'he's the man we were in search of,
that's true; and yet he's not the man we were in search of.  For the
man we were in search of was not the man we wanted, sir, if you
understand my every-day way; for 'twas the man in the chimney-
corner!'

'A pretty kettle of fish altogether!' said the magistrate.  'You had
better start for the other man at once.'

The prisoner now spoke for the first time.  The mention of the man
in the chimney-corner seemed to have moved him as nothing else could
do.  'Sir,' he said, stepping forward to the magistrate, 'take no
more trouble about me.  The time is come when I may as well speak.
I have done nothing; my crime is that the condemned man is my
brother.  Early this afternoon I left home at Shottsford to tramp it
all the way to Casterbridge jail to bid him farewell.  I was
benighted, and called here to rest and ask the way.  When I opened
the door I saw before me the very man, my brother, that I thought to
see in the condemned cell at Casterbridge.  He was in this chimney-
corner; and jammed close to him, so that he could not have got out
if he had tried, was the executioner who'd come to take his life,
singing a song about it and not knowing that it was his victim who
was close by, joining in to save appearances.  My brother looked a
glance of agony at me, and I knew he meant, "Don't reveal what you
see; my life depends on it."  I was so terror-struck that I could
hardly stand, and, not knowing what I did, I turned and hurried
away.'

The narrator's manner and tone had the stamp of truth, and his story
made a great impression on all around.  'And do you know where your
brother is at the present time?' asked the magistrate.

'I do not.  I have never seen him since I closed this door.'

'I can testify to that, for we've been between ye ever since,' said
the constable.

'Where does he think to fly to?--what is his occupation?'

'He's a watch-and-clock-maker, sir.'

''A said 'a was a wheelwright--a wicked rogue,' said the constable.

'The wheels of clocks and watches he meant, no doubt,' said Shepherd
Fennel.  'I thought his hands were palish for's trade.'

'Well, it appears to me that nothing can be gained by retaining this
poor man in custody,' said the magistrate; 'your business lies with
the other, unquestionably.'

And so the little man was released off-hand; but he looked nothing
the less sad on that account, it being beyond the power of
magistrate or constable to raze out the written troubles in his
brain, for they concerned another whom he regarded with more
solicitude than himself.  When this was done, and the man had gone
his way, the night was found to be so far advanced that it was
deemed useless to renew the search before the next morning.

Next day, accordingly, the quest for the clever sheep-stealer became
general and keen, to all appearance at least.  But the intended
punishment was cruelly disproportioned to the transgression, and the
sympathy of a great many country-folk in that district was strongly
on the side of the fugitive.  Moreover, his marvellous coolness and
daring in hob-and-nobbing with the hangman, under the unprecedented
circumstances of the shepherd's party, won their admiration.  So
that it may be questioned if all those who ostensibly made
themselves so busy in exploring woods and fields and lanes were
quite so thorough when it came to the private examination of their
own lofts and outhouses.  Stories were afloat of a mysterious figure
being occasionally seen in some old overgrown trackway or other,
remote from turnpike roads; but when a search was instituted in any
of these suspected quarters nobody was found.  Thus the days and
weeks passed without tidings.

In brief; the bass-voiced man of the chimney-corner was never
recaptured.  Some said that he went across the sea, others that he
did not, but buried himself in the depths of a populous city.  At
any rate, the gentleman in cinder-gray never did his morning's work
at Casterbridge, nor met anywhere at all, for business purposes, the
genial comrade with whom he had passed an hour of relaxation in the
lonely house on the coomb.

The grass has long been green on the graves of Shepherd Fennel and
his frugal wife; the guests who made up the christening party have
mainly followed their entertainers to the tomb; the baby in whose
honour they all had met is a matron in the sere and yellow leaf.
But the arrival of the three strangers at the shepherd's that night,
and the details connected therewith, is a story as well known as
ever in the country about Higher Crowstairs.

March 1883.




THE WITHERED ARM




CHAPTER I--A LORN MILKMAID



It was an eighty-cow dairy, and the troop of milkers, regular and
supernumerary, were all at work; for, though the time of year was as
yet but early April, the feed lay entirely in water-meadows, and the
cows were 'in full pail.'  The hour was about six in the evening,
and three-fourths of the large, red, rectangular animals having been
finished off, there was opportunity for a little conversation.

'He do bring home his bride to-morrow, I hear.  They've come as far
as Anglebury to-day.'

The voice seemed to proceed from the belly of the cow called Cherry,
but the speaker was a milking-woman, whose face was buried in the
flank of that motionless beast.

'Hav' anybody seen her?' said another.

There was a negative response from the first.  'Though they say
she's a rosy-cheeked, tisty-tosty little body enough,' she added;
and as the milkmaid spoke she turned her face so that she could
glance past her cow's tail to the other side of the barton, where a
thin, fading woman of thirty milked somewhat apart from the rest.

'Years younger than he, they say,' continued the second, with also a
glance of reflectiveness in the same direction.

'How old do you call him, then?'

'Thirty or so.'

'More like forty,' broke in an old milkman near, in a long white
pinafore or 'wropper,' and with the brim of his hat tied down, so
that he looked like a woman.  ''A was born before our Great Weir was
builded, and I hadn't man's wages when I laved water there.'

The discussion waxed so warm that the purr of the milk-streams
became jerky, till a voice from another cow's belly cried with
authority, 'Now then, what the Turk do it matter to us about Farmer
Lodge's age, or Farmer Lodge's new mis'ess?  I shall have to pay him
nine pound a year for the rent of every one of these milchers,
whatever his age or hers.  Get on with your work, or 'twill be dark
afore we have done.  The evening is pinking in a'ready.'  This
speaker was the dairyman himself; by whom the milkmaids and men were
employed.

Nothing more was said publicly about Farmer Lodge's wedding, but the
first woman murmured under her cow to her next neighbour, ''Tis hard
for SHE,' signifying the thin worn milkmaid aforesaid.

'O no,' said the second.  'He ha'n't spoke to Rhoda Brook for
years.'

When the milking was done they washed their pails and hung them on a
many-forked stand made of the peeled limb of an oak-tree, set
upright in the earth, and resembling a colossal antlered horn.  The
majority then dispersed in various directions homeward.  The thin
woman who had not spoken was joined by a boy of twelve or
thereabout, and the twain went away up the field also.

Their course lay apart from that of the others, to a lonely spot
high above the water-meads, and not far from the border of Egdon
Heath, whose dark countenance was visible in the distance as they
drew nigh to their home.

'They've just been saying down in barton that your father brings his
young wife home from Anglebury to-morrow,' the woman observed.  'I
shall want to send you for a few things to market, and you'll be
pretty sure to meet 'em.'

'Yes, mother,' said the boy.  'Is father married then?'

'Yes . . . You can give her a look, and tell me what's she's like,
if you do see her.'

'Yes, mother.'

'If she's dark or fair, and if she's tall--as tall as I.  And if she
seems like a woman who has ever worked for a living, or one that has
been always well off, and has never done anything, and shows marks
of the lady on her, as I expect she do.'

'Yes.'

They crept up the hill in the twilight, and entered the cottage.  It
was built of mud-walls, the surface of which had been washed by many
rains into channels and depressions that left none of the original
flat face visible; while here and there in the thatch above a rafter
showed like a bone protruding through the skin.

She was kneeling down in the chimney-corner, before two pieces of
turf laid together with the heather inwards, blowing at the red-hot
ashes with her breath till the turves flamed.  The radiance lit her
pale cheek, and made her dark eyes, that had once been handsome,
seem handsome anew.  'Yes,' she resumed, 'see if she is dark or
fair, and if you can, notice if her hands be white; if not, see if
they look as though she had ever done housework, or are milker's
hands like mine.'

The boy again promised, inattentively this time, his mother not
observing that he was cutting a notch with his pocket-knife in the
beech-backed chair.



CHAPTER II--THE YOUNG WIFE



The road from Anglebury to Holmstoke is in general level; but there
is one place where a sharp ascent breaks its monotony.  Farmers
homeward-bound from the former market-town, who trot all the rest of
the way, walk their horses up this short incline.

The next evening, while the sun was yet bright, a handsome new gig,
with a lemon-coloured body and red wheels, was spinning westward
along the level highway at the heels of a powerful mare.  The driver
was a yeoman in the prime of life, cleanly shaven like an actor, his
face being toned to that bluish-vermilion hue which so often graces
a thriving farmer's features when returning home after successful
dealings in the town.  Beside him sat a woman, many years his
junior--almost, indeed, a girl.  Her face too was fresh in colour,
but it was of a totally different quality--soft and evanescent, like
the light under a heap of rose-petals.

Few people travelled this way, for it was not a main road; and the
long white riband of gravel that stretched before them was empty,
save of one small scarce-moving speck, which presently resolved
itself into the figure of boy, who was creeping on at a snail's
pace, and continually looking behind him--the heavy bundle he
carried being some excuse for, if not the reason of, his
dilatoriness.  When the bouncing gig-party slowed at the bottom of
the incline above mentioned, the pedestrian was only a few yards in
front.  Supporting the large bundle by putting one hand on his hip,
he turned and looked straight at the farmer's wife as though he
would read her through and through, pacing along abreast of the
horse.

The low sun was full in her face, rendering every feature, shade,
and contour distinct, from the curve of her little nostril to the
colour of her eyes.  The farmer, though he seemed annoyed at the
boy's persistent presence, did not order him to get out of the way;
and thus the lad preceded them, his hard gaze never leaving her,
till they reached the top of the ascent, when the farmer trotted on
with relief in his lineaments--having taken no outward notice of the
boy whatever.

'How that poor lad stared at me!' said the young wife.

'Yes, dear; I saw that he did.'

'He is one of the village, I suppose?'

'One of the neighbourhood.  I think he lives with his mother a mile
or two off.'

'He knows who we are, no doubt?'

'O yes.  You must expect to be stared at just at first, my pretty
Gertrude.'

'I do,--though I think the poor boy may have looked at us in the
hope we might relieve him of his heavy load, rather than from
curiosity.'

'O no,' said her husband off-handedly.  'These country lads will
carry a hundredweight once they get it on their backs; besides his
pack had more size than weight in it.  Now, then, another mile and I
shall be able to show you our house in the distance--if it is not
too dark before we get there.'  The wheels spun round, and particles
flew from their periphery as before, till a white house of ample
dimensions revealed itself, with farm-buildings and ricks at the
back.

Meanwhile the boy had quickened his pace, and turning up a by-lane
some mile and half short of the white farmstead, ascended towards
the leaner pastures, and so on to the cottage of his mother.

She had reached home after her day's milking at the outlying dairy,
and was washing cabbage at the doorway in the declining light.
'Hold up the net a moment,' she said, without preface, as the boy
came up.

He flung down his bundle, held the edge of the cabbage-net, and as
she filled its meshes with the dripping leaves she went on, 'Well,
did you see her?'

'Yes; quite plain.'

'Is she ladylike?'

'Yes; and more.  A lady complete.'

'Is she young?'

'Well, she's growed up, and her ways be quite a woman's.'

'Of course.  What colour is her hair and face?'

'Her hair is lightish, and her face as comely as a live doll's.'

'Her eyes, then, are not dark like mine?'

'No--of a bluish turn, and her mouth is very nice and red; and when
she smiles, her teeth show white.'

'Is she tall?' said the woman sharply.

'I couldn't see.  She was sitting down.'

'Then do you go to Holmstoke church to-morrow morning:  she's sure
to be there.  Go early and notice her walking in, and come home and
tell me if she's taller than I.'

'Very well, mother.  But why don't you go and see for yourself?'

'_I_ go to see her!  I wouldn't look up at her if she were to pass
my window this instant.  She was with Mr. Lodge, of course.  What
did he say or do?'

'Just the same as usual.'

'Took no notice of you?'

'None.'

Next day the mother put a clean shirt on the boy, and started him
off for Holmstoke church.  He reached the ancient little pile when
the door was just being opened, and he was the first to enter.
Taking his seat by the font, he watched all the parishioners file
in.  The well-to-do Farmer Lodge came nearly last; and his young
wife, who accompanied him, walked up the aisle with the shyness
natural to a modest woman who had appeared thus for the first time.
As all other eyes were fixed upon her, the youth's stare was not
noticed now.

When he reached home his mother said, 'Well?' before he had entered
the room.

'She is not tall.  She is rather short,' he replied.

'Ah!' said his mother, with satisfaction.

'But she's very pretty--very.  In fact, she's lovely.'

The youthful freshness of the yeoman's wife had evidently made an
impression even on the somewhat hard nature of the boy.

'That's all I want to hear,' said his mother quickly.  'Now, spread
the table-cloth.  The hare you caught is very tender; but mind that
nobody catches you.--You've never told me what sort of hands she
had.'

'I have never seen 'em.  She never took off her gloves.'

'What did she wear this morning?'

'A white bonnet and a silver-coloured gownd.  It whewed and whistled
so loud when it rubbed against the pews that the lady coloured up
more than ever for very shame at the noise, and pulled it in to keep
it from touching; but when she pushed into her seat, it whewed more
than ever.  Mr. Lodge, he seemed pleased, and his waistcoat stuck
out, and his great golden seals hung like a lord's; but she seemed
to wish her noisy gownd anywhere but on her.'

'Not she!  However, that will do now.'

These descriptions of the newly-married couple were continued from
time to time by the boy at his mother's request, after any chance
encounter he had had with them.  But Rhoda Brook, though she might
easily have seen young Mrs. Lodge for herself by walking a couple of
miles, would never attempt an excursion towards the quarter where
the farmhouse lay.  Neither did she, at the daily milking in the
dairyman's yard on Lodge's outlying second farm, ever speak on the
subject of the recent marriage.  The dairyman, who rented the cows
of Lodge, and knew perfectly the tall milkmaid's history, with manly
kindliness always kept the gossip in the cow-barton from annoying
Rhoda.  But the atmosphere thereabout was full of the subject during
the first days of Mrs. Lodge's arrival; and from her boy's
description and the casual words of the other milkers, Rhoda Brook
could raise a mental image of the unconscious Mrs Lodge that was
realistic as a photograph.



CHAPTER III--A VISION



One night, two or three weeks after the bridal return, when the boy
was gone to bed, Rhoda sat a long time over the turf ashes that she
had raked out in front of her to extinguish them.  She contemplated
so intently the new wife, as presented to her in her mind's eye over
the embers, that she forgot the lapse of time.  At last, wearied
with her day's work, she too retired.

But the figure which had occupied her so much during this and the
previous days was not to be banished at night.  For the first time
Gertrude Lodge visited the supplanted woman in her dreams.  Rhoda
Brook dreamed--since her assertion that she really saw, before
falling asleep, was not to be believed--that the young wife, in the
pale silk dress and white bonnet, but with features shockingly
distorted, and wrinkled as by age, was sitting upon her chest as she
lay.  The pressure of Mrs. Lodge's person grew heavier; the blue
eyes peered cruelly into her face; and then the figure thrust
forward its left hand mockingly, so as to make the wedding-ring it
wore glitter in Rhoda's eyes.  Maddened mentally, and nearly
suffocated by pressure, the sleeper struggled; the incubus, still
regarding her, withdrew to the foot of the bed, only, however, to
come forward by degrees, resume her seat, and flash her left hand as
before.

Gasping for breath, Rhoda, in a last desperate effort, swung out her
right hand, seized the confronting spectre by its obtrusive left
arm, and whirled it backward to the floor, starting up herself as
she did so with a low cry.

'O, merciful heaven!' she cried, sitting on the edge of the bed in a
cold sweat; 'that was not a dream--she was here!'

She could feel her antagonist's arm within her grasp even now--the
very flesh and bone of it, as it seemed.  She looked on the floor
whither she had whirled the spectre, but there was nothing to be
seen.

Rhoda Brook slept no more that night, and when she went milking at
the next dawn they noticed how pale and haggard she looked.  The
milk that she drew quivered into the pail; her hand had not calmed
even yet, and still retained the feel of the arm.  She came home to
breakfast as wearily as if it had been suppertime.

'What was that noise in your chimmer, mother, last night?' said her
son.  'You fell off the bed, surely?'

'Did you hear anything fall?  At what time?'

'Just when the clock struck two.'

She could not explain, and when the meal was done went silently
about her household work, the boy assisting her, for he hated going
afield on the farms, and she indulged his reluctance.  Between
eleven and twelve the garden-gate clicked, and she lifted her eyes
to the window.  At the bottom of the garden, within the gate, stood
the woman of her vision.  Rhoda seemed transfixed.

'Ah, she said she would come!' exclaimed the boy, also observing
her.

'Said so--when?  How does she know us?'

'I have seen and spoken to her.  I talked to her yesterday.'

'I told you,' said the mother, flushing indignantly, 'never to speak
to anybody in that house, or go near the place.'

'I did not speak to her till she spoke to me.  And I did not go near
the place.  I met her in the road.'

'What did you tell her?'

'Nothing.  She said, "Are you the poor boy who had to bring the
heavy load from market?"  And she looked at my boots, and said they
would not keep my feet dry if it came on wet, because they were so
cracked.  I told her I lived with my mother, and we had enough to do
to keep ourselves, and that's how it was; and she said then, "I'll
come and bring you some better boots, and see your mother."  She
gives away things to other folks in the meads besides us.'

Mrs. Lodge was by this time close to the door--not in her silk, as
Rhoda had seen her in the bed-chamber, but in a morning hat, and
gown of common light material, which became her better than silk.
On her arm she carried a basket.

The impression remaining from the night's experience was still
strong.  Brook had almost expected to see the wrinkles, the scorn,
and the cruelty on her visitor's face.

She would have escaped an interview, had escape been possible.
There was, however, no backdoor to the cottage, and in an instant
the boy had lifted the latch to Mrs. Lodge's gentle knock.

'I see I have come to the right house,' said she, glancing at the
lad, and smiling.  'But I was not sure till you opened the door.'

The figure and action were those of the phantom; but her voice was
so indescribably sweet, her glance so winning, her smile so tender,
so unlike that of Rhoda's midnight visitant, that the latter could
hardly believe the evidence of her senses.  She was truly glad that
she had not hidden away in sheer aversion, as she had been inclined
to do.  In her basket Mrs. Lodge brought the pair of boots that she
had promised to the boy, and other useful articles.

At these proofs of a kindly feeling towards her and hers Rhoda's
heart reproached her bitterly.  This innocent young thing should
have her blessing and not her curse.  When she left them a light
seemed gone from the dwelling.  Two days later she came again to
know if the boots fitted; and less than a fortnight after that paid
Rhoda another call.  On this occasion the boy was absent.

'I walk a good deal,' said Mrs. Lodge, 'and your house is the
nearest outside our own parish.  I hope you are well.  You don't
look quite well.'

Rhoda said she was well enough; and, indeed, though the paler of the
two, there was more of the strength that endures in her well-defined
features and large frame, than in the soft-cheeked young woman
before her.  The conversation became quite confidential as regarded
their powers and weaknesses; and when Mrs. Lodge was leaving, Rhoda
said, 'I hope you will find this air agree with you, ma'am, and not
suffer from the damp of the water-meads.'

The younger one replied that there was not much doubt of it, her
general health being usually good.  'Though, now you remind me,' she
added, 'I have one little ailment which puzzles me.  It is nothing
serious, but I cannot make it out.'

She uncovered her left hand and arm; and their outline confronted
Rhoda's gaze as the exact original of the limb she had beheld and
seized in her dream.  Upon the pink round surface of the arm were
faint marks of an unhealthy colour, as if produced by a rough grasp.
Rhoda's eyes became riveted on the discolorations; she fancied that
she discerned in them the shape of her own four fingers.

'How did it happen?' she said mechanically.

'I cannot tell,' replied Mrs. Lodge, shaking her head.  'One night
when I was sound asleep, dreaming I was away in some strange place,
a pain suddenly shot into my arm there, and was so keen as to awaken
me.  I must have struck it in the daytime, I suppose, though I don't
remember doing so.'  She added, laughing, 'I tell my dear husband
that it looks just as if he had flown into a rage and struck me
there.  O, I daresay it will soon disappear.'

'Ha, ha!  Yes . . . On what night did it come?'

Mrs. Lodge considered, and said it would be a fortnight ago on the
morrow.  'When I awoke I could not remember where I was,' she added,
'till the clock striking two reminded me.'

She had named the night and the hour of Rhoda's spectral encounter,
and Brook felt like a guilty thing.  The artless disclosure startled
her; she did not reason on the freaks of coincidence; and all the
scenery of that ghastly night returned with double vividness to her
mind.

'O, can it be,' she said to herself, when her visitor had departed,
'that I exercise a malignant power over people against my own will?'
She knew that she had been slily called a witch since her fall; but
never having understood why that particular stigma had been attached
to her, it had passed disregarded.  Could this be the explanation,
and had such things as this ever happened before?



CHAPTER IV--A SUGGESTION



The summer drew on, and Rhoda Brook almost dreaded to meet Mrs.
Lodge again, notwithstanding that her feeling for the young wife
amounted well-nigh to affection.  Something in her own individuality
seemed to convict Rhoda of crime.  Yet a fatality sometimes would
direct the steps of the latter to the outskirts of Holmstoke
whenever she left her house for any other purpose than her daily
work; and hence it happened that their next encounter was out of
doors.  Rhoda could not avoid the subject which had so mystified
her, and after the first few words she stammered, 'I hope your--arm
is well again, ma'am?'  She had perceived with consternation that
Gertrude Lodge carried her left arm stiffly.

'No; it is not quite well.  Indeed it is no better at all; it is
rather worse.  It pains me dreadfully sometimes.'

'Perhaps you had better go to a doctor, ma'am.'

She replied that she had already seen a doctor.  Her husband had
insisted upon her going to one.  But the surgeon had not seemed to
understand the afflicted limb at all; he had told her to bathe it in
hot water, and she had bathed it, but the treatment had done no
good.

'Will you let me see it?' said the milkwoman.

Mrs. Lodge pushed up her sleeve and disclosed the place, which was a
few inches above the wrist.  As soon as Rhoda Brook saw it, she
could hardly preserve her composure.  There was nothing of the
nature of a wound, but the arm at that point had a shrivelled look,
and the outline of the four fingers appeared more distinct than at
the former time.  Moreover, she fancied that they were imprinted in
precisely the relative position of her clutch upon the arm in the
trance; the first finger towards Gertrude's wrist, and the fourth
towards her elbow.

What the impress resembled seemed to have struck Gertrude herself
since their last meeting.  'It looks almost like finger-marks,' she
said; adding with a faint laugh, 'my husband says it is as if some
witch, or the devil himself, had taken hold of me there, and blasted
the flesh.'

Rhoda shivered.  'That's fancy,' she said hurriedly.  'I wouldn't
mind it, if I were you.'

'I shouldn't so much mind it,' said the younger, with hesitation,
'if--if I hadn't a notion that it makes my husband--dislike me--no,
love me less.  Men think so much of personal appearance.'

'Some do--he for one.'

'Yes; and he was very proud of mine, at first.'

'Keep your arm covered from his sight.'

'Ah--he knows the disfigurement is there!'  She tried to hide the
tears that filled her eyes.

'Well, ma'am, I earnestly hope it will go away soon.'

And so the milkwoman's mind was chained anew to the subject by a
horrid sort of spell as she returned home.  The sense of having been
guilty of an act of malignity increased, affect as she might to
ridicule her superstition.  In her secret heart Rhoda did not
altogether object to a slight diminution of her successor's beauty,
by whatever means it had come about; but she did not wish to inflict
upon her physical pain.  For though this pretty young woman had
rendered impossible any reparation which Lodge might have made Rhoda
for his past conduct, everything like resentment at the unconscious
usurpation had quite passed away from the elder's mind.

If the sweet and kindly Gertrude Lodge only knew of the scene in the
bed-chamber, what would she think?  Not to inform her of it seemed
treachery in the presence of her friendliness; but tell she could
not of her own accord--neither could she devise a remedy.

She mused upon the matter the greater part of the night; and the
next day, after the morning milking, set out to obtain another
glimpse of Gertrude Lodge if she could, being held to her by a
gruesome fascination.  By watching the house from a distance the
milkmaid was presently able to discern the farmer's wife in a ride
she was taking alone--probably to join her husband in some distant
field.  Mrs. Lodge perceived her, and cantered in her direction.

'Good morning, Rhoda!' Gertrude said, when she had come up.  'I was
going to call.'

Rhoda noticed that Mrs. Lodge held the reins with some difficulty.

'I hope--the bad arm,' said Rhoda.

'They tell me there is possibly one way by which I might be able to
find out the cause, and so perhaps the cure, of it,' replied the
other anxiously.  'It is by going to some clever man over in Egdon
Heath.  They did not know if he was still alive--and I cannot
remember his name at this moment; but they said that you knew more
of his movements than anybody else hereabout, and could tell me if
he were still to be consulted.  Dear me--what was his name?  But you
know.'

'Not Conjuror Trendle?' said her thin companion, turning pale.

'Trendle--yes.  Is he alive?'

'I believe so,' said Rhoda, with reluctance.

'Why do you call him conjuror?'

'Well--they say--they used to say he was a--he had powers other
folks have not.'

'O, how could my people be so superstitious as to recommend a man of
that sort!  I thought they meant some medical man.  I shall think no
more of him.'

Rhoda looked relieved, and Mrs. Lodge rode on.  The milkwoman had
inwardly seen, from the moment she heard of her having been
mentioned as a reference for this man, that there must exist a
sarcastic feeling among the work-folk that a sorceress would know
the whereabouts of the exorcist.  They suspected her, then.  A short
time ago this would have given no concern to a woman of her common-
sense.  But she had a haunting reason to be superstitious now; and
she had been seized with sudden dread that this Conjuror Trendle
might name her as the malignant influence which was blasting the
fair person of Gertrude, and so lead her friend to hate her for
ever, and to treat her as some fiend in human shape.

But all was not over.  Two days after, a shadow intruded into the
window-pattern thrown on Rhoda Brook's floor by the afternoon sun.
The woman opened the door at once, almost breathlessly.

'Are you alone?' said Gertrude.  She seemed to be no less harassed
and anxious than Brook herself.

'Yes,' said Rhoda.

'The place on my arm seems worse, and troubles me!' the young
farmer's wife went on.  'It is so mysterious!  I do hope it will not
be an incurable wound.  I have again been thinking of what they said
about Conjuror Trendle.  I don't really believe in such men, but I
should not mind just visiting him, from curiosity--though on no
account must my husband know.  Is it far to where he lives?'

'Yes--five miles,' said Rhoda backwardly.  'In the heart of Egdon.'

'Well, I should have to walk.  Could not you go with me to show me
the way--say to-morrow afternoon?'

'O, not I--that is,' the milkwoman murmured, with a start of dismay.
Again the dread seized her that something to do with her fierce act
in the dream might be revealed, and her character in the eyes of the
most useful friend she had ever had be ruined irretrievably.

Mrs. Lodge urged, and Rhoda finally assented, though with much
misgiving.  Sad as the journey would be to her, she could not
conscientiously stand in the way of a possible remedy for her
patron's strange affliction.  It was agreed that, to escape
suspicion of their mystic intent, they should meet at the edge of
the heath at the corner of a plantation which was visible from the
spot where they now stood.



CHAPTER V--CONJUROR TRENDLE



By the next afternoon Rhoda would have done anything to escape this
inquiry.  But she had promised to go.  Moreover, there was a horrid
fascination at times in becoming instrumental in throwing such
possible light on her own character as would reveal her to be
something greater in the occult world than she had ever herself
suspected.

She started just before the time of day mentioned between them, and
half-an-hour's brisk walking brought her to the south-eastern
extension of the Egdon tract of country, where the fir plantation
was.  A slight figure, cloaked and veiled, was already there.  Rhoda
recognized, almost with a shudder, that Mrs. Lodge bore her left arm
in a sling.

They hardly spoke to each other, and immediately set out on their
climb into the interior of this solemn country, which stood high
above the rich alluvial soil they had left half-an-hour before.  It
was a long walk; thick clouds made the atmosphere dark, though it
was as yet only early afternoon; and the wind howled dismally over
the hills of the heath--not improbably the same heath which had
witnessed the agony of the Wessex King Ina, presented to after-ages
as Lear.  Gertrude Lodge talked most, Rhoda replying with
monosyllabic preoccupation.  She had a strange dislike to walking on
the side of her companion where hung the afflicted arm, moving round
to the other when inadvertently near it.  Much heather had been
brushed by their feet when they descended upon a cart-track, beside
which stood the house of the man they sought.

He did not profess his remedial practices openly, or care anything
about their continuance, his direct interests being those of a
dealer in furze, turf, 'sharp sand,' and other local products.
Indeed, he affected not to believe largely in his own powers, and
when warts that had been shown him for cure miraculously
disappeared--which it must be owned they infallibly did--he would
say lightly, 'O, I only drink a glass of grog upon 'em--perhaps it's
all chance,' and immediately turn the subject.

He was at home when they arrived, having in fact seen them
descending into his valley.  He was a gray-bearded man, with a
reddish face, and he looked singularly at Rhoda the first moment he
beheld her.  Mrs. Lodge told him her errand; and then with words of
self-disparagement he examined her arm.

'Medicine can't cure it,' he said promptly.  ''Tis the work of an
enemy.'

Rhoda shrank into herself, and drew back.

'An enemy?  What enemy?' asked Mrs. Lodge.

He shook his head.  'That's best known to yourself,' he said.  'If
you like, I can show the person to you, though I shall not myself
know who it is.  I can do no more; and don't wish to do that.'

She pressed him; on which he told Rhoda to wait outside where she
stood, and took Mrs. Lodge into the room.  It opened immediately
from the door; and, as the latter remained ajar, Rhoda Brook could
see the proceedings without taking part in them.  He brought a
tumbler from the dresser, nearly filled it with water, and fetching
an egg, prepared it in some private way; after which he broke it on
the edge of the glass, so that the white went in and the yolk
remained.  As it was getting gloomy, he took the glass and its
contents to the window, and told Gertrude to watch them closely.
They leant over the table together, and the milkwoman could see the
opaline hue of the egg-fluid changing form as it sank in the water,
but she was not near enough to define the shape that it assumed.

'Do you catch the likeness of any face or figure as you look?'
demanded the conjuror of the young woman.

She murmured a reply, in tones so low as to be inaudible to Rhoda,
and continued to gaze intently into the glass.  Rhoda turned, and
walked a few steps away.

When Mrs. Lodge came out, and her face was met by the light, it
appeared exceedingly pale--as pale as Rhoda's--against the sad dun
shades of the upland's garniture.  Trendle shut the door behind her,
and they at once started homeward together.  But Rhoda perceived
that her companion had quite changed.

'Did he charge much?' she asked tentatively.

'O no--nothing.  He would not take a farthing,' said Gertrude.

'And what did you see?' inquired Rhoda.

'Nothing I--care to speak of.'  The constraint in her manner was
remarkable; her face was so rigid as to wear an oldened aspect,
faintly suggestive of the face in Rhoda's bed-chamber.

'Was it you who first proposed coming here?' Mrs. Lodge suddenly
inquired, after a long pause.  'How very odd, if you did!'

'No.  But I am not sorry we have come, all things considered,' she
replied.  For the first time a sense of triumph possessed her, and
she did not altogether deplore that the young thing at her side
should learn that their lives had been antagonized by other
influences than their own.

The subject was no more alluded to during the long and dreary walk
home.  But in some way or other a story was whispered about the
many-dairied lowland that winter that Mrs. Lodge's gradual loss of
the use of her left arm was owing to her being 'overlooked' by Rhoda
Brook.  The latter kept her own counsel about the incubus, but her
face grew sadder and thinner; and in the spring she and her boy
disappeared from the neighbourhood of Holmstoke.



CHAPTER VI--A SECOND ATTEMPT



Half-a-dozen years passed away, and Mr. and Mrs. Lodge's married
experience sank into prosiness, and worse.  The farmer was usually
gloomy and silent:  the woman whom he had wooed for her grace and
beauty was contorted and disfigured in the left limb; moreover, she
had brought him no child, which rendered it likely that he would be
the last of a family who had occupied that valley for some two
hundred years.  He thought of Rhoda Brook and her son; and feared
this might be a judgment from heaven upon him.

The once blithe-hearted and enlightened Gertrude was changing into
an irritable, superstitious woman, whose whole time was given to
experimenting upon her ailment with every quack remedy she came
across.  She was honestly attached to her husband, and was ever
secretly hoping against hope to win back his heart again by
regaining some at least of her personal beauty.  Hence it arose that
her closet was lined with bottles, packets, and ointment-pots of
every description--nay, bunches of mystic herbs, charms, and books
of necromancy, which in her schoolgirl time she would have ridiculed
as folly.

'Damned if you won't poison yourself with these apothecary messes
and witch mixtures some time or other,' said her husband, when his
eye chanced to fall upon the multitudinous array.

She did not reply, but turned her sad, soft glance upon him in such
heart-swollen reproach that he looked sorry for his words, and
added, 'I only meant it for your good, you know, Gertrude.'

'I'll clear out the whole lot, and destroy them,' said she huskily,
'and try such remedies no more!'

'You want somebody to cheer you,' he observed.  'I once thought of
adopting a boy; but he is too old now.  And he is gone away I don't
know where.'

She guessed to whom he alluded; for Rhoda Brook's story had in the
course of years become known to her; though not a word had ever
passed between her husband and herself on the subject.  Neither had
she ever spoken to him of her visit to Conjuror Trendle, and of what
was revealed to her, or she thought was revealed to her, by that
solitary heath-man.

She was now five-and-twenty; but she seemed older.

'Six years of marriage, and only a few months of love,' she
sometimes whispered to herself.  And then she thought of the
apparent cause, and said, with a tragic glance at her withering
limb, 'If I could only again be as I was when he first saw me!'

She obediently destroyed her nostrums and charms; but there remained
a hankering wish to try something else--some other sort of cure
altogether.  She had never revisited Trendle since she had been
conducted to the house of the solitary by Rhoda against her will;
but it now suddenly occurred to Gertrude that she would, in a last
desperate effort at deliverance from this seeming curse, again seek
out the man, if he yet lived.  He was entitled to a certain
credence, for the indistinct form he had raised in the glass had
undoubtedly resembled the only woman in the world who--as she now
knew, though not then--could have a reason for bearing her ill-will.
The visit should be paid.

This time she went alone, though she nearly got lost on the heath,
and roamed a considerable distance out of her way.  Trendle's house
was reached at last, however:  he was not indoors, and instead of
waiting at the cottage, she went to where his bent figure was
pointed out to her at work a long way off.  Trendle remembered her,
and laying down the handful of furze-roots which he was gathering
and throwing into a heap, he offered to accompany her in her
homeward direction, as the distance was considerable and the days
were short.  So they walked together, his head bowed nearly to the
earth, and his form of a colour with it.

'You can send away warts and other excrescences I know,' she said;
'why can't you send away this?'  And the arm was uncovered.

'You think too much of my powers!' said Trendle; 'and I am old and
weak now, too.  No, no; it is too much for me to attempt in my own
person.  What have ye tried?'

She named to him some of the hundred medicaments and counterspells
which she had adopted from time to time.  He shook his head.

'Some were good enough,' he said approvingly; 'but not many of them
for such as this.  This is of the nature of a blight, not of the
nature of a wound; and if you ever do throw it off; it will be all
at once.'

'If I only could!'

'There is only one chance of doing it known to me.  It has never
failed in kindred afflictions,--that I can declare.  But it is hard
to carry out, and especially for a woman.'

'Tell me!' said she.

'You must touch with the limb the neck of a man who's been hanged.'

She started a little at the image he had raised.

'Before he's cold--just after he's cut down,' continued the conjuror
impassively.

'How can that do good?'

'It will turn the blood and change the constitution.  But, as I say,
to do it is hard.  You must get into jail, and wait for him when
he's brought off the gallows.  Lots have done it, though perhaps not
such pretty women as you.  I used to send dozens for skin
complaints.  But that was in former times.  The last I sent was in
'13--near twenty years ago.'

He had no more to tell her; and, when he had put her into a straight
track homeward, turned and left her, refusing all money as at first.



CHAPTER VII--A RIDE



The communication sank deep into Gertrude's mind.  Her nature was
rather a timid one; and probably of all remedies that the white
wizard could have suggested there was not one which would have
filled her with so much aversion as this, not to speak of the
immense obstacles in the way of its adoption.

Casterbridge, the county-town, was a dozen or fifteen miles off; and
though in those days, when men were executed for horse-stealing,
arson, and burglary, an assize seldom passed without a hanging, it
was not likely that she could get access to the body of the criminal
unaided.  And the fear of her husband's anger made her reluctant to
breathe a word of Trendle's suggestion to him or to anybody about
him.

She did nothing for months, and patiently bore her disfigurement as
before.  But her woman's nature, craving for renewed love, through
the medium of renewed beauty (she was but twenty-five), was ever
stimulating her to try what, at any rate, could hardly do her any
harm.  'What came by a spell will go by a spell surely,' she would
say.  Whenever her imagination pictured the act she shrank in terror
from the possibility of it:  then the words of the conjuror, 'It
will turn your blood,' were seen to be capable of a scientific no
less than a ghastly interpretation; the mastering desire returned,
and urged her on again.

There was at this time but one county paper, and that her husband
only occasionally borrowed.  But old-fashioned days had old-
fashioned means, and news was extensively conveyed by word of mouth
from market to market, or from fair to fair, so that, whenever such
an event as an execution was about to take place, few within a
radius of twenty miles were ignorant of the coming sight; and, so
far as Holmstoke was concerned, some enthusiasts had been known to
walk all the way to Casterbridge and back in one day, solely to
witness the spectacle.  The next assizes were in March; and when
Gertrude Lodge heard that they had been held, she inquired
stealthily at the inn as to the result, as soon as she could find
opportunity.

She was, however, too late.  The time at which the sentences were to
be carried out had arrived, and to make the journey and obtain
admission at such short notice required at least her husband's
assistance.  She dared not tell him, for she had found by delicate
experiment that these smouldering village beliefs made him furious
if mentioned, partly because he half entertained them himself.  It
was therefore necessary to wait for another opportunity.

Her determination received a fillip from learning that two epileptic
children had attended from this very village of Holmstoke many years
before with beneficial results, though the experiment had been
strongly condemned by the neighbouring clergy.  April, May, June,
passed; and it is no overstatement to say that by the end of the
last-named month Gertrude well-nigh longed for the death of a
fellow-creature.  Instead of her formal prayers each night, her
unconscious prayer was, 'O Lord, hang some guilty or innocent person
soon!'

This time she made earlier inquiries, and was altogether more
systematic in her proceedings.  Moreover, the season was summer,
between the haymaking and the harvest, and in the leisure thus
afforded him her husband had been holiday-taking away from home.

The assizes were in July, and she went to the inn as before.  There
was to be one execution--only one--for arson.

Her greatest problem was not how to get to Casterbridge, but what
means she should adopt for obtaining admission to the jail.  Though
access for such purposes had formerly never been denied, the custom
had fallen into desuetude; and in contemplating her possible
difficulties, she was again almost driven to fall back upon her
husband.  But, on sounding him about the assizes, he was so
uncommunicative, so more than usually cold, that she did not
proceed, and decided that whatever she did she would do alone.

Fortune, obdurate hitherto, showed her unexpected favour.  On the
Thursday before the Saturday fixed for the execution, Lodge remarked
to her that he was going away from home for another day or two on
business at a fair, and that he was sorry he could not take her with
him.

She exhibited on this occasion so much readiness to stay at home
that he looked at her in surprise.  Time had been when she would
have shown deep disappointment at the loss of such a jaunt.
However, he lapsed into his usual taciturnity, and on the day named
left Holmstoke.

It was now her turn.  She at first had thought of driving, but on
reflection held that driving would not do, since it would
necessitate her keeping to the turnpike-road, and so increase by
tenfold the risk of her ghastly errand being found out.  She decided
to ride, and avoid the beaten track, notwithstanding that in her
husband's stables there was no animal just at present which by any
stretch of imagination could be considered a lady's mount, in spite
of his promise before marriage to always keep a mare for her.  He
had, however, many cart-horses, fine ones of their kind; and among
the rest was a serviceable creature, an equine Amazon, with a back
as broad as a sofa, on which Gertrude had occasionally taken an
airing when unwell.  This horse she chose.

On Friday afternoon one of the men brought it round.  She was
dressed, and before going down looked at her shrivelled arm.  'Ah!'
she said to it, 'if it had not been for you this terrible ordeal
would have been saved me!'

When strapping up the bundle in which she carried a few articles of
clothing, she took occasion to say to the servant, 'I take these in
case I should not get back to-night from the person I am going to
visit.  Don't be alarmed if I am not in by ten, and close up the
house as usual.  I shall be at home to-morrow for certain.'  She
meant then to privately tell her husband:  the deed accomplished was
not like the deed projected.  He would almost certainly forgive her.

And then the pretty palpitating Gertrude Lodge went from her
husband's homestead; but though her goal was Casterbridge she did
not take the direct route thither through Stickleford.  Her cunning
course at first was in precisely the opposite direction.  As soon as
she was out of sight, however, she turned to the left, by a road
which led into Egdon, and on entering the heath wheeled round, and
set out in the true course, due westerly.  A more private way down
the county could not be imagined; and as to direction, she had
merely to keep her horse's head to a point a little to the right of
the sun.  She knew that she would light upon a furze-cutter or
cottager of some sort from time to time, from whom she might correct
her bearing.

Though the date was comparatively recent, Egdon was much less
fragmentary in character than now.  The attempts--successful and
otherwise--at cultivation on the lower slopes, which intrude and
break up the original heath into small detached heaths, had not been
carried far; Enclosure Acts had not taken effect, and the banks and
fences which now exclude the cattle of those villagers who formerly
enjoyed rights of commonage thereon, and the carts of those who had
turbary privileges which kept them in firing all the year round,
were not erected.  Gertrude, therefore, rode along with no other
obstacles than the prickly furze bushes, the mats of heather, the
white water-courses, and the natural steeps and declivities of the
ground.

Her horse was sure, if heavy-footed and slow, and though a draught
animal, was easy-paced; had it been otherwise, she was not a woman
who could have ventured to ride over such a bit of country with a
half-dead arm.  It was therefore nearly eight o'clock when she drew
rein to breathe the mare on the last outlying high point of heath-
land towards Casterbridge, previous to leaving Egdon for the
cultivated valleys.

She halted before a pool called Rushy-pond, flanked by the ends of
two hedges; a railing ran through the centre of the pond, dividing
it in half.  Over the railing she saw the low green country; over
the green trees the roofs of the town; over the roofs a white flat
facade, denoting the entrance to the county jail.  On the roof of
this front specks were moving about; they seemed to be workmen
erecting something.  Her flesh crept.  She descended slowly, and was
soon amid corn-fields and pastures.  In another half-hour, when it
was almost dusk, Gertrude reached the White Hart, the first inn of
the town on that side.

Little surprise was excited by her arrival; farmers' wives rode on
horseback then more than they do now; though, for that matter, Mrs.
Lodge was not imagined to be a wife at all; the innkeeper supposed
her some harum-skarum young woman who had come to attend 'hang-fair'
next day.  Neither her husband nor herself ever dealt in
Casterbridge market, so that she was unknown.  While dismounting she
beheld a crowd of boys standing at the door of a harness-maker's
shop just above the inn, looking inside it with deep interest.

'What is going on there?' she asked of the ostler.

'Making the rope for to-morrow.'

She throbbed responsively, and contracted her arm.

''Tis sold by the inch afterwards,' the man continued.  'I could get
you a bit, miss, for nothing, if you'd like?'

She hastily repudiated any such wish, all the more from a curious
creeping feeling that the condemned wretch's destiny was becoming
interwoven with her own; and having engaged a room for the night,
sat down to think.

Up to this time she had formed but the vaguest notions about her
means of obtaining access to the prison.  The words of the cunning-
man returned to her mind.  He had implied that she should use her
beauty, impaired though it was, as a pass-key.  In her inexperience
she knew little about jail functionaries; she had heard of a high-
sheriff and an under-sheriff; but dimly only.  She knew, however,
that there must be a hangman, and to the hangman she determined to
apply.



CHAPTER VIII--A WATER-SIDE HERMIT



At this date, and for several years after, there was a hangman to
almost every jail.  Gertrude found, on inquiry, that the
Casterbridge official dwelt in a lonely cottage by a deep slow river
flowing under the cliff on which the prison buildings were situate--
the stream being the self-same one, though she did not know it,
which watered the Stickleford and Holmstoke meads lower down in its
course.

Having changed her dress, and before she had eaten or drunk--for she
could not take her ease till she had ascertained some particulars--
Gertrude pursued her way by a path along the water-side to the
cottage indicated.  Passing thus the outskirts of the jail, she
discerned on the level roof over the gateway three rectangular lines
against the sky, where the specks had been moving in her distant
view; she recognized what the erection was, and passed quickly on.
Another hundred yards brought her to the executioner's house, which
a boy pointed out It stood close to the same stream, and was hard by
a weir, the waters of which emitted a steady roar.

While she stood hesitating the door opened, and an old man came
forth shading a candle with one hand.  Locking the door on the
outside, he turned to a flight of wooden steps fixed against the end
of the cottage, and began to ascend them, this being evidently the
staircase to his bedroom.  Gertrude hastened forward, but by the
time she reached the foot of the ladder he was at the top.  She
called to him loudly enough to be heard above the roar of the weir;
he looked down and said, 'What d'ye want here?'

'To speak to you a minute.'

The candle-light, such as it was, fell upon her imploring, pale,
upturned face, and Davies (as the hangman was called) backed down
the ladder.  'I was just going to bed,' he said; '"Early to bed and
early to rise," but I don't mind stopping a minute for such a one as
you.  Come into house.'  He reopened the door, and preceded her to
the room within.

The implements of his daily work, which was that of a jobbing
gardener, stood in a corner, and seeing probably that she looked
rural, he said, 'If you want me to undertake country work I can't
come, for I never leave Casterbridge for gentle nor simple--not I.
My real calling is officer of justice,' he added formally.

'Yes, yes!  That's it.  To-morrow!'

'Ah!  I thought so.  Well, what's the matter about that?  'Tis no
use to come here about the knot--folks do come continually, but I
tell 'em one knot is as merciful as another if ye keep it under the
ear.  Is the unfortunate man a relation; or, I should say, perhaps'
(looking at her dress) 'a person who's been in your employ?'

'No.  What time is the execution?'

'The same as usual--twelve o'clock, or as soon after as the London
mail-coach gets in.  We always wait for that, in case of a
reprieve.'

'O--a reprieve--I hope not!' she said involuntarily,

'Well,--hee, hee!--as a matter of business, so do I!  But still, if
ever a young fellow deserved to be let off, this one does; only just
turned eighteen, and only present by chance when the rick was fired.
Howsomever, there's not much risk of it, as they are obliged to make
an example of him, there having been so much destruction of property
that way lately.'

'I mean,' she explained, 'that I want to touch him for a charm, a
cure of an affliction, by the advice of a man who has proved the
virtue of the remedy.'

'O yes, miss!  Now I understand.  I've had such people come in past
years.  But it didn't strike me that you looked of a sort to require
blood-turning.  What's the complaint?  The wrong kind for this, I'll
be bound.'

'My arm.'  She reluctantly showed the withered skin.

'Ah--'tis all a-scram!' said the hangman, examining it.

'Yes,' said she.

'Well,' he continued, with interest, 'that IS the class o' subject,
I'm bound to admit!  I like the look of the place; it is truly as
suitable for the cure as any I ever saw.  'Twas a knowing-man that
sent 'ee, whoever he was.'

'You can contrive for me all that's necessary?' she said
breathlessly.

'You should really have gone to the governor of the jail, and your
doctor with 'ee, and given your name and address--that's how it used
to be done, if I recollect.  Still, perhaps, I can manage it for a
trifling fee.'

'O, thank you!  I would rather do it this way, as I should like it
kept private.'

'Lover not to know, eh?'

'No--husband.'

'Aha!  Very well.  I'll get ee' a touch of the corpse.'

'Where is it now?' she said, shuddering.

'It?--HE, you mean; he's living yet.  Just inside that little small
winder up there in the glum.'  He signified the jail on the cliff
above.

She thought of her husband and her friends.  'Yes, of course,' she
said; 'and how am I to proceed?'

He took her to the door.  'Now, do you be waiting at the little
wicket in the wall, that you'll find up there in the lane, not later
than one o'clock.  I will open it from the inside, as I shan't come
home to dinner till he's cut down.  Good-night.  Be punctual; and if
you don't want anybody to know 'ee, wear a veil.  Ah--once I had
such a daughter as you!'

She went away, and climbed the path above, to assure herself that
she would be able to find the wicket next day.  Its outline was soon
visible to her--a narrow opening in the outer wall of the prison
precincts.  The steep was so great that, having reached the wicket,
she stopped a moment to breathe; and, looking back upon the water-
side cot, saw the hangman again ascending his outdoor staircase.  He
entered the loft or chamber to which it led, and in a few minutes
extinguished his light.

The town clock struck ten, and she returned to the White Hart as she
had come.



CHAPTER IX--A RENCOUNTER



It was one o'clock on Saturday.  Gertrude Lodge, having been
admitted to the jail as above described, was sitting in a waiting-
room within the second gate, which stood under a classic archway of
ashlar, then comparatively modern, and bearing the inscription,
'COVNTY JAIL:  1793.'  This had been the facade she saw from the
heath the day before.  Near at hand was a passage to the roof on
which the gallows stood.

The town was thronged, and the market suspended; but Gertrude had
seen scarcely a soul.  Having kept her room till the hour of the
appointment, she had proceeded to the spot by a way which avoided
the open space below the cliff where the spectators had gathered;
but she could, even now, hear the multitudinous babble of their
voices, out of which rose at intervals the hoarse croak of a single
voice uttering the words, 'Last dying speech and confession!'  There
had been no reprieve, and the execution was over; but the crowd
still waited to see the body taken down.

Soon the persistent girl heard a trampling overhead, then a hand
beckoned to her, and, following directions, she went out and crossed
the inner paved court beyond the gatehouse, her knees trembling so
that she could scarcely walk.  One of her arms was out of its
sleeve, and only covered by her shawl.

On the spot at which she had now arrived were two trestles, and
before she could think of their purpose she heard heavy feet
descending stairs somewhere at her back.  Turn her head she would
not, or could not, and, rigid in this position, she was conscious of
a rough coffin passing her shoulder, borne by four men.  It was
open, and in it lay the body of a young man, wearing the smockfrock
of a rustic, and fustian breeches.  The corpse had been thrown into
the coffin so hastily that the skirt of the smockfrock was hanging
over.  The burden was temporarily deposited on the trestles.

By this time the young woman's state was such that a gray mist
seemed to float before her eyes, on account of which, and the veil
she wore, she could scarcely discern anything:  it was as though she
had nearly died, but was held up by a sort of galvanism.

'Now!' said a voice close at hand, and she was just conscious that
the word had been addressed to her.

By a last strenuous effort she advanced, at the same time hearing
persons approaching behind her.  She bared her poor curst arm; and
Davies, uncovering the face of the corpse, took Gertrude's hand, and
held it so that her arm lay across the dead man's neck, upon a line
the colour of an unripe blackberry, which surrounded it.

Gertrude shrieked:  'the turn o' the blood,' predicted by the
conjuror, had taken place.  But at that moment a second shriek rent
the air of the enclosure:  it was not Gertrude's, and its effect
upon her was to make her start round.

Immediately behind her stood Rhoda Brook, her face drawn, and her
eyes red with weeping.  Behind Rhoda stood Gertrude's own husband;
his countenance lined, his eyes dim, but without a tear.

'D-n you! what are you doing here?' he said hoarsely.

'Hussy--to come between us and our child now!' cried Rhoda.  'This
is the meaning of what Satan showed me in the vision!  You are like
her at last!'  And clutching the bare arm of the younger woman, she
pulled her unresistingly back against the wall.  Immediately Brook
had loosened her hold the fragile young Gertrude slid down against
the feet of her husband.  When he lifted her up she was unconscious.

The mere sight of the twain had been enough to suggest to her that
the dead young man was Rhoda's son.  At that time the relatives of
an executed convict had the privilege of claiming the body for
burial, if they chose to do so; and it was for this purpose that
Lodge was awaiting the inquest with Rhoda.  He had been summoned by
her as soon as the young man was taken in the crime, and at
different times since; and he had attended in court during the
trial.  This was the 'holiday' he had been indulging in of late.
The two wretched parents had wished to avoid exposure; and hence had
come themselves for the body, a waggon and sheet for its conveyance
and covering being in waiting outside.

Gertrude's case was so serious that it was deemed advisable to call
to her the surgeon who was at hand.  She was taken out of the jail
into the town; but she never reached home alive.  Her delicate
vitality, sapped perhaps by the paralyzed arm, collapsed under the
double shock that followed the severe strain, physical and mental,
to which she had subjected herself during the previous twenty-four
hours.  Her blood had been 'turned' indeed--too far.  Her death took
place in the town three days after.

Her husband was never seen in Casterbridge again; once only in the
old market-place at Anglebury, which he had so much frequented, and
very seldom in public anywhere.  Burdened at first with moodiness
and remorse, he eventually changed for the better, and appeared as a
chastened and thoughtful man.  Soon after attending the funeral of
his poor young wife he took steps towards giving up the farms in
Holmstoke and the adjoining parish, and, having sold every head of
his stock, he went away to Port-Bredy, at the other end of the
county, living there in solitary lodgings till his death two years
later of a painless decline.  It was then found that he had
bequeathed the whole of his not inconsiderable property to a
reformatory for boys, subject to the payment of a small annuity to
Rhoda Brook, if she could be found to claim it.

For some time she could not be found; but eventually she reappeared
in her old parish,--absolutely refusing, however, to have anything
to do with the provision made for her.  Her monotonous milking at
the dairy was resumed, and followed for many long years, till her
form became bent, and her once abundant dark hair white and worn
away at the forehead--perhaps by long pressure against the cows.
Here, sometimes, those who knew her experiences would stand and
observe her, and wonder what sombre thoughts were beating inside
that impassive, wrinkled brow, to the rhythm of the alternating
milk-streams.

('Blackwood's Magazine,' January 1888.)




FELLOW-TOWNSMEN




CHAPTER I



The shepherd on the east hill could shout out lambing intelligence
to the shepherd on the west hill, over the intervening town
chimneys, without great inconvenience to his voice, so nearly did
the steep pastures encroach upon the burghers' backyards.  And at
night it was possible to stand in the very midst of the town and
hear from their native paddocks on the lower levels of greensward
the mild lowing of the farmer's heifers, and the profound, warm
blowings of breath in which those creatures indulge.  But the
community which had jammed itself in the valley thus flanked formed
a veritable town, with a real mayor and corporation, and a staple
manufacture.

During a certain damp evening five-and-thirty years ago, before the
twilight was far advanced, a pedestrian of professional appearance,
carrying a small bag in his hand and an elevated umbrella, was
descending one of these hills by the turnpike road when he was
overtaken by a phaeton.

'Hullo, Downe--is that you?' said the driver of the vehicle, a young
man of pale and refined appearance.  'Jump up here with me, and ride
down to your door.'

The other turned a plump, cheery, rather self-indulgent face over
his shoulder towards the hailer.

'O, good evening, Mr. Barnet--thanks,' he said, and mounted beside
his acquaintance.

They were fellow-burgesses of the town which lay beneath them, but
though old and very good friends, they were differently
circumstanced.  Barnet was a richer man than the struggling young
lawyer Downe, a fact which was to some extent perceptible in Downe's
manner towards his companion, though nothing of it ever showed in
Barnet's manner towards the solicitor.  Barnet's position in the
town was none of his own making; his father had been a very
successful flax-merchant in the same place, where the trade was
still carried on as briskly as the small capacities of its quarters
would allow.  Having acquired a fair fortune, old Mr. Barnet had
retired from business, bringing up his son as a gentleman-burgher,
and, it must be added, as a well-educated, liberal-minded young man.

'How is Mrs. Barnet?' asked Downe.

'Mrs. Barnet was very well when I left home,' the other answered
constrainedly, exchanging his meditative regard of the horse for one
of self-consciousness.

Mr. Downe seemed to regret his inquiry, and immediately took up
another thread of conversation.  He congratulated his friend on his
election as a council-man; he thought he had not seen him since that
event took place; Mrs. Downe had meant to call and congratulate Mrs.
Barnet, but he feared that she had failed to do so as yet.

Barnet seemed hampered in his replies.  'WE should have been glad to
see you.  I--my wife would welcome Mrs. Downe at any time, as you
know . . . Yes, I am a member of the corporation--rather an
inexperienced member, some of them say.  It is quite true; and I
should have declined the honour as premature--having other things on
my hands just now, too--if it had not been pressed upon me so very
heartily.'

'There is one thing you have on your hands which I can never quite
see the necessity for,' said Downe, with good-humoured freedom.
'What the deuce do you want to build that new mansion for, when you
have already got such an excellent house as the one you live in?'

Barnet's face acquired a warmer shade of colour; but as the question
had been idly asked by the solicitor while regarding the surrounding
flocks and fields, he answered after a moment with no apparent
embarrassment -

'Well, we wanted to get out of the town, you know:  the house I am
living in is rather old and inconvenient.'  Mr. Downe declared that
he had chosen a pretty site for the new building.  They would be
able to see for miles and miles from the windows.  Was he going to
give it a name?  He supposed so.

Barnet thought not.  There was no other house near that was likely
to be mistaken for it.  And he did not care for a name.

'But I think it has a name!'  Downe observed:  'I went past--when
was it?--this morning; and I saw something,--"Chateau Ringdale," I
think it was, stuck up on a board!'

'It was an idea she--we had for a short time,' said Barnet hastily.
'But we have decided finally to do without a name--at any rate such
a name as that.  It must have been a week ago that you saw it.  It
was taken down last Saturday . . . Upon that matter I am firm!' he
added grimly.

Downe murmured in an unconvinced tone that he thought he had seen it
yesterday.

Talking thus they drove into the town.  The street was unusually
still for the hour of seven in the evening; an increasing drizzle
had prevailed since the afternoon, and now formed a gauze across the
yellow lamps, and trickled with a gentle rattle down the heavy roofs
of stone tile, that bent the house-ridges hollow-backed with its
weight, and in some instances caused the walls to bulge outwards in
the upper story.  Their route took them past the little town-hall,
the Black-Bull Hotel, and onward to the junction of a small street
on the right, consisting of a row of those two-and-two windowed
brick residences of no particular age, which are exactly alike
wherever found, except in the people they contain.

'Wait--I'll drive you up to your door,' said Barnet, when Downe
prepared to alight at the corner.  He thereupon turned into the
narrow street, when the faces of three little girls could be
discerned close to the panes of a lighted window a few yards ahead,
surmounted by that of a young matron, the gaze of all four being
directed eagerly up the empty street.  'You are a fortunate fellow,
Downe,' Barnet continued, as mother and children disappeared from
the window to run to the door.  'You must be happy if any man is.  I
would give a hundred such houses as my new one to have a home like
yours.'

'Well--yes, we get along pretty comfortably,' replied Downe
complacently.

'That house, Downe, is none of my ordering,' Barnet broke out,
revealing a bitterness hitherto suppressed, and checking the horse a
moment to finish his speech before delivering up his passenger.
'The house I have already is good enough for me, as you supposed.
It is my own freehold; it was built by my grandfather, and is stout
enough for a castle.  My father was born there, lived there, and
died there.  I was born there, and have always lived there; yet I
must needs build a new one.'

'Why do you?' said Downe.

'Why do I?  To preserve peace in the household.  I do anything for
that; but I don't succeed.  I was firm in resisting "Chateau
Ringdale," however; not that I would not have put up with the
absurdity of the name, but it was too much to have your house
christened after Lord Ringdale, because your wife once had a fancy
for him.  If you only knew everything, you would think all attempt
at reconciliation hopeless.  In your happy home you have had no such
experiences; and God forbid that you ever should.  See, here they
are all ready to receive you!'

'Of course!  And so will your wife be waiting to receive you,' said
Downe.  'Take my word for it she will!  And with a dinner prepared
for you far better than mine.'

'I hope so,' Barnet replied dubiously.

He moved on to Downe's door, which the solicitor's family had
already opened.  Downe descended, but being encumbered with his bag
and umbrella, his foot slipped, and he fell upon his knees in the
gutter.

'O, my dear Charles!' said his wife, running down the steps; and,
quite ignoring the presence of Barnet, she seized hold of her
husband, pulled him to his feet, and kissed him, exclaiming, 'I hope
you are not hurt, darling!'  The children crowded round, chiming in
piteously, 'Poor papa!'

'He's all right,' said Barnet, perceiving that Downe was only a
little muddy, and looking more at the wife than at the husband.
Almost at any other time--certainly during his fastidious bachelor
years--he would have thought her a too demonstrative woman; but
those recent circumstances of his own life to which he had just
alluded made Mrs. Downe's solicitude so affecting that his eye grew
damp as he witnessed it.  Bidding the lawyer and his family good-
night he left them, and drove slowly into the main street towards
his own house.

The heart of Barnet was sufficiently impressionable to be influenced
by Downe's parting prophecy that he might not be so unwelcome home
as he imagined:  the dreary night might, at least on this one
occasion, make Downe's forecast true.  Hence it was in a suspense
that he could hardly have believed possible that he halted at his
door.  On entering his wife was nowhere to be seen, and he inquired
for her.  The servant informed him that her mistress had the
dressmaker with her, and would be engaged for some time.

'Dressmaker at this time of day!'

'She dined early, sir, and hopes you will excuse her joining you
this evening.'

'But she knew I was coming to-night?'

'O yes, sir.'

'Go up and tell her I am come.'

The servant did so; but the mistress of the house merely transmitted
her former words.

Barnet said nothing more, and presently sat down to his lonely meal,
which was eaten abstractedly, the domestic scene he had lately
witnessed still impressing him by its contrast with the situation
here.  His mind fell back into past years upon a certain pleasing
and gentle being whose face would loom out of their shades at such
times as these.  Barnet turned in his chair, and looked with
unfocused eyes in a direction southward from where he sat, as if he
saw not the room but a long way beyond.  'I wonder if she lives
there still!' he said.



CHAPTER II



He rose with a sudden rebelliousness, put on his hat and coat, and
went out of the house, pursuing his way along the glistening
pavement while eight o'clock was striking from St. Mary's tower, and
the apprentices and shopmen were slamming up the shutters from end
to end of the town.  In two minutes only those shops which could
boast of no attendant save the master or the mistress remained with
open eyes.  These were ever somewhat less prompt to exclude
customers than the others:  for their owners' ears the closing hour
had scarcely the cheerfulness that it possessed for the hired
servants of the rest.  Yet the night being dreary the delay was not
for long, and their windows, too, blinked together one by one.

During this time Barnet had proceeded with decided step in a
direction at right angles to the broad main thoroughfare of the
town, by a long street leading due southward.  Here, though his
family had no more to do with the flax manufacture, his own name
occasionally greeted him on gates and warehouses, being used
allusively by small rising tradesmen as a recommendation, in such
words as 'Smith, from Barnet & Co.'--'Robinson, late manager at
Barnet's.'  The sight led him to reflect upon his father's busy
life, and he questioned if it had not been far happier than his own.

The houses along the road became fewer, and presently open ground
appeared between them on either side, the track on the right hand
rising to a higher level till it merged in a knoll.  On the summit a
row of builders' scaffold-poles probed the indistinct sky like
spears, and at their bases could be discerned the lower courses of a
building lately begun.  Barnet slackened his pace and stood for a
few moments without leaving the centre of the road, apparently not
much interested in the sight, till suddenly his eye was caught by a
post in the fore part of the ground bearing a white board at the
top.  He went to the rails, vaulted over, and walked in far enough
to discern painted upon the board 'Chateau Ringdale.'

A dismal irony seemed to lie in the words, and its effect was to
irritate him.  Downe, then, had spoken truly.  He stuck his umbrella
into the sod, and seized the post with both hands, as if intending
to loosen and throw it down.  Then, like one bewildered by an
opposition which would exist none the less though its manifestations
were removed, he allowed his arms to sink to his side.

'Let it be,' he said to himself.  'I have declared there shall be
peace--if possible.'

Taking up his umbrella he quietly left the enclosure, and went on
his way, still keeping his back to the town.  He had advanced with
more decision since passing the new building, and soon a hoarse
murmur rose upon the gloom; it was the sound of the sea.  The road
led to the harbour, at a distance of a mile from the town, from
which the trade of the district was fed.  After seeing the obnoxious
name-board Barnet had forgotten to open his umbrella, and the rain
tapped smartly on his hat, and occasionally stroked his face as he
went on.

Though the lamps were still continued at the roadside, they stood at
wider intervals than before, and the pavement had given place to
common road.  Every time he came to a lamp an increasing shine made
itself visible upon his shoulders, till at last they quite glistened
with wet.  The murmur from the shore grew stronger, but it was still
some distance off when he paused before one of the smallest of the
detached houses by the wayside, standing in its own garden, the
latter being divided from the road by a row of wooden palings.
Scrutinizing the spot to ensure that he was not mistaken, he opened
the gate and gently knocked at the cottage door.

When he had patiently waited minutes enough to lead any man in
ordinary cases to knock again, the door was heard to open, though it
was impossible to see by whose hand, there being no light in the
passage.  Barnet said at random, 'Does Miss Savile live here?'

A youthful voice assured him that she did live there, and by a
sudden afterthought asked him to come in.  It would soon get a
light, it said:  but the night being wet, mother had not thought it
worth while to trim the passage lamp.

'Don't trouble yourself to get a light for me,' said Barnet hastily;
'it is not necessary at all.  Which is Miss Savile's sitting-room?'

The young person, whose white pinafore could just be discerned,
signified a door in the side of the passage, and Barnet went forward
at the same moment, so that no light should fall upon his face.  On
entering the room he closed the door behind him, pausing till he
heard the retreating footsteps of the child.

He found himself in an apartment which was simply and neatly, though
not poorly furnished; everything, from the miniature chiffonnier to
the shining little daguerreotype which formed the central ornament
of the mantelpiece, being in scrupulous order.  The picture was
enclosed by a frame of embroidered card-board--evidently the work of
feminine hands--and it was the portrait of a thin faced, elderly
lieutenant in the navy.  From behind the lamp on the table a female
form now rose into view, that of a young girl, and a resemblance
between her and the portrait was early discoverable.  She had been
so absorbed in some occupation on the other side of the lamp as to
have barely found time to realize her visitor's presence.

They both remained standing for a few seconds without speaking.  The
face that confronted Barnet had a beautiful outline; the
Raffaelesque oval of its contour was remarkable for an English
countenance, and that countenance housed in a remote country-road to
an unheard-of harbour.  But her features did not do justice to this
splendid beginning:  Nature had recollected that she was not in
Italy; and the young lady's lineaments, though not so inconsistent
as to make her plain, would have been accepted rather as pleasing
than as correct.  The preoccupied expression which, like images on
the retina, remained with her for a moment after the state that
caused it had ceased, now changed into a reserved, half-proud, and
slightly indignant look, in which the blood diffused itself quickly
across her cheek, and additional brightness broke the shade of her
rather heavy eyes.

'I know I have no business here,' he said, answering the look.  'But
I had a great wish to see you, and inquire how you were.  You can
give your hand to me, seeing how often I have held it in past days?'

'I would rather forget than remember all that, Mr. Barnet,' she
answered, as she coldly complied with the request.  'When I think of
the circumstances of our last meeting, I can hardly consider it kind
of you to allude to such a thing as our past--or, indeed, to come
here at all.'

'There was no harm in it surely?  I don't trouble you often, Lucy.'

'I have not had the honour of a visit from you for a very long time,
certainly, and I did not expect it now,' she said, with the same
stiffness in her air.  'I hope Mrs. Barnet is very well?'

'Yes, yes!' he impatiently returned.  'At least I suppose so--though
I only speak from inference!'

'But she is your wife, sir,' said the young girl tremulously.

The unwonted tones of a man's voice in that feminine chamber had
startled a canary that was roosting in its cage by the window; the
bird awoke hastily, and fluttered against the bars.  She went and
stilled it by laying her face against the cage and murmuring a
coaxing sound.  It might partly have been done to still herself.

'I didn't come to talk of Mrs. Barnet,' he pursued; 'I came to talk
of you, of yourself alone; to inquire how you are getting on since
your great loss.'  And he turned towards the portrait of her father.

'I am getting on fairly well, thank you.'

The force of her utterance was scarcely borne out by her look; but
Barnet courteously reproached himself for not having guessed a thing
so natural; and to dissipate all embarrassment, added, as he bent
over the table, 'What were you doing when I came?--painting flowers,
and by candlelight?'

'O no,' she said, 'not painting them--only sketching the outlines.
I do that at night to save time--I have to get three dozen done by
the end of the month.'

Barnet looked as if he regretted it deeply.  'You will wear your
poor eyes out,' he said, with more sentiment than he had hitherto
shown.  'You ought not to do it.  There was a time when I should
have said you must not.  Well--I almost wish I had never seen light
with my own eyes when I think of that!'

'Is this a time or place for recalling such matters?' she asked,
with dignity.  'You used to have a gentlemanly respect for me, and
for yourself.  Don't speak any more as you have spoken, and don't
come again.  I cannot think that this visit is serious, or was
closely considered by you.'

'Considered:  well, I came to see you as an old and good friend--not
to mince matters, to visit a woman I loved.  Don't be angry!  I
could not help doing it, so many things brought you into my mind . .
. This evening I fell in with an acquaintance, and when I saw how
happy he was with his wife and family welcoming him home, though
with only one-tenth of my income and chances, and thought what might
have been in my case, it fairly broke down my discretion, and off I
came here.  Now I am here I feel that I am wrong to some extent.
But the feeling that I should like to see you, and talk of those we
used to know in common, was very strong.'

'Before that can be the case a little more time must pass,' said
Miss Savile quietly; 'a time long enough for me to regard with some
calmness what at present I remember far too impatiently--though it
may be you almost forget it.  Indeed you must have forgotten it long
before you acted as you did.'  Her voice grew stronger and more
vivacious as she added:  'But I am doing my best to forget it too,
and I know I shall succeed from the progress I have made already!'

She had remained standing till now, when she turned and sat down,
facing half away from him.

Barnet watched her moodily.  'Yes, it is only what I deserve,' he
said.  'Ambition pricked me on--no, it was not ambition, it was
wrongheadedness!  Had I but reflected . . . '  He broke out
vehemently:  'But always remember this, Lucy:  if you had written to
me only one little line after that misunderstanding, I declare I
should have come back to you.  That ruined me!' he slowly walked as
far as the little room would allow him to go, and remained with his
eyes on the skirting.

'But, Mr. Barnet, how could I write to you?  There was no opening
for my doing so.'

'Then there ought to have been,' said Barnet, turning.  'That was my
fault!'

'Well, I don't know anything about that; but as there had been
nothing said by me which required any explanation by letter, I did
not send one.  Everything was so indefinite, and feeling your
position to be so much wealthier than mine, I fancied I might have
mistaken your meaning.  And when I heard of the other lady--a woman
of whose family even you might be proud--I thought how foolish I had
been, and said nothing.'

'Then I suppose it was destiny--accident--I don't know what, that
separated us, dear Lucy.  Anyhow you were the woman I ought to have
made my wife--and I let you slip, like the foolish man that I was!'

'O, Mr. Barnet,' she said, almost in tears, 'don't revive the
subject to me; I am the wrong one to console you--think, sir,--you
should not be here--it would be so bad for me if it were known!'

'It would--it would, indeed,' he said hastily.  'I am not right in
doing this, and I won't do it again.'

'It is a very common folly of human nature, you know, to think the
course you did NOT adopt must have been the best,' she continued,
with gentle solicitude, as she followed him to the door of the room.
'And you don't know that I should have accepted you, even if you had
asked me to be your wife.'  At this his eye met hers, and she
dropped her gaze.  She knew that her voice belied her.  There was a
silence till she looked up to add, in a voice of soothing
playfulness, 'My family was so much poorer than yours, even before I
lost my dear father, that--perhaps your companions would have made
it unpleasant for us on account of my deficiencies.'

'Your disposition would soon have won them round,' said Barnet.

She archly expostulated:  'Now, never mind my disposition; try to
make it up with your wife!  Those are my commands to you.  And now
you are to leave me at once.'

'I will.  I must make the best of it all, I suppose,' he replied,
more cheerfully than he had as yet spoken.  'But I shall never again
meet with such a dear girl as you!'  And he suddenly opened the
door, and left her alone.  When his glance again fell on the lamps
that were sparsely ranged along the dreary level road, his eyes were
in a state which showed straw-like motes of light radiating from
each flame into the surrounding air.

On the other side of the way Barnet observed a man under an
umbrella, walking parallel with himself.  Presently this man left
the footway, and gradually converged on Barnet's course.  The latter
then saw that it was Charlson, a surgeon of the town, who owed him
money.  Charlson was a man not without ability; yet he did not
prosper.  Sundry circumstances stood in his way as a medical
practitioner:  he was needy; he was not a coddle; he gossiped with
men instead of with women; he had married a stranger instead of one
of the town young ladies; and he was given to conversational
buffoonery.  Moreover, his look was quite erroneous.  Those only
proper features in the family doctor, the quiet eye, and the thin
straight passionless lips which never curl in public either for
laughter or for scorn, were not his; he had a full-curved mouth, and
a bold black eye that made timid people nervous.  His companions
were what in old times would have been called boon companions--an
expression which, though of irreproachable root, suggests
fraternization carried to the point of unscrupulousness.  All this
was against him in the little town of his adoption.

Charlson had been in difficulties, and to oblige him Barnet had put
his name to a bill; and, as he had expected, was called upon to meet
it when it fell due.  It had been only a matter of fifty pounds,
which Barnet could well afford to lose, and he bore no ill-will to
the thriftless surgeon on account of it.  But Charlson had a little
too much brazen indifferentism in his composition to be altogether a
desirable acquaintance.

'I hope to be able to make that little bill-business right with you
in the course of three weeks, Mr. Barnet,' said Charlson with hail-
fellow friendliness.

Barnet replied good-naturedly that there was no hurry.

This particular three weeks had moved on in advance of Charlson's
present with the precision of a shadow for some considerable time.

'I've had a dream,' Charlson continued.  Barnet knew from his tone
that the surgeon was going to begin his characteristic nonsense, and
did not encourage him.  'I've had a dream,' repeated Charlson, who
required no encouragement.  'I dreamed that a gentleman, who has
been very kind to me, married a haughty lady in haste, before he had
quite forgotten a nice little girl he knew before, and that one wet
evening, like the present, as I was walking up the harbour-road, I
saw him come out of that dear little girl's present abode.'

Barnet glanced towards the speaker.  The rays from a neighbouring
lamp struck through the drizzle under Charlson's umbrella, so as
just to illumine his face against the shade behind, and show that
his eye was turned up under the outer corner of its lid, whence it
leered with impish jocoseness as he thrust his tongue into his
cheek.

'Come,' said Barnet gravely, 'we'll have no more of that.'

'No, no--of course not,' Charlson hastily answered, seeing that his
humour had carried him too far, as it had done many times before.
He was profuse in his apologies, but Barnet did not reply.  Of one
thing he was certain--that scandal was a plant of quick root, and
that he was bound to obey Lucy's injunction for Lucy's own sake.



CHAPTER III



He did so, to the letter; and though, as the crocus followed the
snowdrop and the daffodil the crocus in Lucy's garden, the harbour-
road was a not unpleasant place to walk in, Barnet's feet never trod
its stones, much less approached her door.  He avoided a saunter
that way as he would have avoided a dangerous dram, and took his
airings a long distance northward, among severely square and brown
ploughed fields, where no other townsman came.  Sometimes he went
round by the lower lanes of the borough, where the rope-walks
stretched in which his family formerly had share, and looked at the
rope-makers walking backwards, overhung by apple-trees and bushes,
and intruded on by cows and calves, as if trade had established
itself there at considerable inconvenience to Nature.

One morning, when the sun was so warm as to raise a steam from the
south-eastern slopes of those flanking hills that looked so lovely
above the old roofs, but made every low-chimneyed house in the town
as smoky as Tophet, Barnet glanced from the windows of the town-
council room for lack of interest in what was proceeding within.
Several members of the corporation were present, but there was not
much business doing, and in a few minutes Downe came leisurely
across to him, saying that he seldom saw Barnet now.

Barnet owned that he was not often present.

Downe looked at the crimson curtain which hung down beside the
panes, reflecting its hot hues into their faces, and then out of the
window.  At that moment there passed along the street a tall
commanding lady, in whom the solicitor recognized Barnet's wife.
Barnet had done the same thing, and turned away.

'It will be all right some day,' said Downe, with cheering sympathy.

'You have heard, then, of her last outbreak?'

Downe depressed his cheerfulness to its very reverse in a moment.
'No, I have not heard of anything serious,' he said, with as long a
face as one naturally round could be turned into at short notice.
'I only hear vague reports of such things.'

'You may think it will be all right,' said Barnet drily.  'But I
have a different opinion . . . No, Downe, we must look the thing in
the face.  Not poppy nor mandragora--however, how are your wife and
children?'

Downe said that they were all well, thanks; they were out that
morning somewhere; he was just looking to see if they were walking
that way.  Ah, there they were, just coming down the street; and
Downe pointed to the figures of two children with a nursemaid, and a
lady walking behind them.

'You will come out and speak to her?' he asked.

'Not this morning.  The fact is I don't care to speak to anybody
just now.'

'You are too sensitive, Mr. Barnet.  At school I remember you used
to get as red as a rose if anybody uttered a word that hurt your
feelings.'

Barnet mused.  'Yes,' he admitted, 'there is a grain of truth in
that.  It is because of that I often try to make peace at home.
Life would be tolerable then at any rate, even if not particularly
bright.'

'I have thought more than once of proposing a little plan to you,'
said Downe with some hesitation.  'I don't know whether it will meet
your views, but take it or leave it, as you choose.  In fact, it was
my wife who suggested it:  that she would be very glad to call on
Mrs. Barnet and get into her confidence.  She seems to think that
Mrs. Barnet is rather alone in the town, and without advisers.  Her
impression is that your wife will listen to reason.  Emily has a
wonderful way of winning the hearts of people of her own sex.'

'And of the other sex too, I think.  She is a charming woman, and
you were a lucky fellow to find her.'

'Well, perhaps I was,' simpered Downe, trying to wear an aspect of
being the last man in the world to feel pride.  'However, she will
be likely to find out what ruffles Mrs. Barnet.  Perhaps it is some
misunderstanding, you know--something that she is too proud to ask
you to explain, or some little thing in your conduct that irritates
her because she does not fully comprehend you.  The truth is, Emily
would have been more ready to make advances if she had been quite
sure of her fitness for Mrs. Barnet's society, who has of course
been accustomed to London people of good position, which made Emily
fearful of intruding.'

Barnet expressed his warmest thanks for the well-intentioned
proposition.  There was reason in Mrs. Downe's fear--that he owned.
'But do let her call,' he said.  'There is no woman in England I
would so soon trust on such an errand.  I am afraid there will not
be any brilliant result; still I shall take it as the kindest and
nicest thing if she will try it, and not be frightened at a
repulse.'

When Barnet and Downe had parted, the former went to the Town
Savings-Bank, of which he was a trustee, and endeavoured to forget
his troubles in the contemplation of low sums of money, and figures
in a network of red and blue lines.  He sat and watched the working-
people making their deposits, to which at intervals he signed his
name.  Before he left in the afternoon Downe put his head inside the
door.

'Emily has seen Mrs. Barnet,' he said, in a low voice.  'She has got
Mrs. Barnet's promise to take her for a drive down to the shore to-
morrow, if it is fine.  Good afternoon!'

Barnet shook Downe by the hand without speaking, and Downe went
away.



CHAPTER IV



The next day was as fine as the arrangement could possibly require.
As the sun passed the meridian and declined westward, the tall
shadows from the scaffold-poles of Barnet's rising residence
streaked the ground as far as to the middle of the highway.  Barnet
himself was there inspecting the progress of the works for the first
time during several weeks.  A building in an old-fashioned town
five-and-thirty years ago did not, as in the modern fashion, rise
from the sod like a booth at a fair.  The foundations and lower
courses were put in and allowed to settle for many weeks before the
superstructure was built up, and a whole summer of drying was hardly
sufficient to do justice to the important issues involved.  Barnet
stood within a window-niche which had as yet received no frame, and
thence looked down a slope into the road.  The wheels of a chaise
were heard, and then his handsome Xantippe, in the company of Mrs.
Downe, drove past on their way to the shore.  They were driving
slowly; there was a pleasing light in Mrs. Downe's face, which
seemed faintly to reflect itself upon the countenance of her
companion--that politesse du coeur which was so natural to her
having possibly begun already to work results.  But whatever the
situation, Barnet resolved not to interfere, or do anything to
hazard the promise of the day.  He might well afford to trust the
issue to another when he could never direct it but to ill himself.
His wife's clenched rein-hand in its lemon-coloured glove, her stiff
erect figure, clad in velvet and lace, and her boldly-outlined face,
passed on, exhibiting their owner as one fixed for ever above the
level of her companion--socially by her early breeding, and
materially by her higher cushion.

Barnet decided to allow them a proper time to themselves, and then
stroll down to the shore and drive them home.  After lingering on at
the house for another hour he started with this intention.  A few
hundred yards below 'Chateau Ringdale' stood the cottage in which
the late lieutenant's daughter had her lodging.  Barnet had not been
so far that way for a long time, and as he approached the forbidden
ground a curious warmth passed into him, which led him to perceive
that, unless he were careful, he might have to fight the battle with
himself about Lucy over again.  A tenth of his present excuse would,
however, have justified him in travelling by that road to-day.

He came opposite the dwelling, and turned his eyes for a momentary
glance into the little garden that stretched from the palings to the
door.  Lucy was in the enclosure; she was walking and stooping to
gather some flowers, possibly for the purpose of painting them, for
she moved about quickly, as if anxious to save time.  She did not
see him; he might have passed unnoticed; but a sensation which was
not in strict unison with his previous sentiments that day led him
to pause in his walk and watch her.  She went nimbly round and round
the beds of anemones, tulips, jonquils, polyanthuses, and other old-
fashioned flowers, looking a very charming figure in her half-
mourning bonnet, and with an incomplete nosegay in her left hand.
Raising herself to pull down a lilac blossom she observed him.

'Mr. Barnet!' she said, innocently smiling.  'Why, I have been
thinking of you many times since Mrs. Barnet went by in the pony-
carriage, and now here you are!'

'Yes, Lucy,' he said.

Then she seemed to recall particulars of their last meeting, and he
believed that she flushed, though it might have been only the fancy
of his own supersensitivenesss.

'I am going to the harbour,' he added.

'Are you?' Lucy remarked simply.  'A great many people begin to go
there now the summer is drawing on.'

Her face had come more into his view as she spoke, and he noticed
how much thinner and paler it was than when he had seen it last.
'Lucy, how weary you look! tell me, can I help you?' he was going to
cry out.--'If I do,' he thought, 'it will be the ruin of us both!'
He merely said that the afternoon was fine, and went on his way.

As he went a sudden blast of air came over the hill as if in
contradiction to his words, and spoilt the previous quiet of the
scene.  The wind had already shifted violently, and now smelt of the
sea.

The harbour-road soon began to justify its name.  A gap appeared in
the rampart of hills which shut out the sea, and on the left of the
opening rose a vertical cliff, coloured a burning orange by the
sunlight, the companion cliff on the right being livid in shade.
Between these cliffs, like the Libyan bay which sheltered the
shipwrecked Trojans, was a little haven, seemingly a beginning made
by Nature herself of a perfect harbour, which appealed to the
passer-by as only requiring a little human industry to finish it and
make it famous, the ground on each side as far back as the daisied
slopes that bounded the interior valley being a mere layer of blown
sand.  But the Port-Bredy burgesses a mile inland had, in the course
of ten centuries, responded many times to that mute appeal, with the
result that the tides had invariably choked up their works with sand
and shingle as soon as completed.  There were but few houses here:
a rough pier, a few boats, some stores, an inn, a residence or two,
a ketch unloading in the harbour, were the chief features of the
settlement.  On the open ground by the shore stood his wife's pony-
carriage, empty, the boy in attendance holding the horse.

When Barnet drew nearer, he saw an indigo-coloured spot moving
swiftly along beneath the radiant base of the eastern cliff, which
proved to be a man in a jersey, running with all his might.  He held
up his hand to Barnet, as it seemed, and they approached each other.
The man was local, but a stranger to him.

'What is it, my man?' said Barnet.

'A terrible calamity!' the boatman hastily explained.  Two ladies
had been capsized in a boat--they were Mrs. Downe and Mrs. Barnet of
the old town; they had driven down there that afternoon--they had
alighted, and it was so fine, that, after walking about a little
while, they had been tempted to go out for a short sail round the
cliff.  Just as they were putting in to the shore, the wind shifted
with a sudden gust, the boat listed over, and it was thought they
were both drowned.  How it could have happened was beyond his mind
to fathom, for John Green knew how to sail a boat as well as any man
there.

'Which is the way to the place?' said Barnet.

It was just round the cliff.

'Run to the carriage and tell the boy to bring it to the place as
soon as you can.  Then go to the Harbour Inn and tell them to ride
to town for a doctor.  Have they been got out of the water?'

'One lady has.'

'Which?'

'Mrs. Barnet.  Mrs. Downe, it is feared, has fleeted out to sea.'

Barnet ran on to that part of the shore which the cliff had hitherto
obscured from his view, and there discerned, a long way ahead, a
group of fishermen standing.  As soon as he came up one or two
recognized him, and, not liking to meet his eye, turned aside with
misgiving.  He went amidst them and saw a small sailing-boat lying
draggled at the water's edge; and, on the sloping shingle beside it,
a soaked and sandy woman's form in the velvet dress and yellow
gloves of his wife.



CHAPTER V



All had been done that could be done.  Mrs. Barnet was in her own
house under medical hands, but the result was still uncertain.
Barnet had acted as if devotion to his wife were the dominant
passion of his existence.  There had been much to decide--whether to
attempt restoration of the apparently lifeless body as it lay on the
shore--whether to carry her to the Harbour Inn--whether to drive
with her at once to his own house.  The first course, with no
skilled help or appliances near at hand, had seemed hopeless.  The
second course would have occupied nearly as much time as a drive to
the town, owing to the intervening ridges of shingle, and the
necessity of crossing the harbour by boat to get to the house, added
to which much time must have elapsed before a doctor could have
arrived down there.  By bringing her home in the carriage some
precious moments had slipped by; but she had been laid in her own
bed in seven minutes, a doctor called to her side, and every
possible restorative brought to bear upon her.

At what a tearing pace he had driven up that road, through the
yellow evening sunlight, the shadows flapping irksomely into his
eyes as each wayside object rushed past between him and the west!
Tired workmen with their baskets at their backs had turned on their
homeward journey to wonder at his speed.  Halfway between the shore
and Port-Bredy town he had met Charlson, who had been the first
surgeon to hear of the accident.  He was accompanied by his
assistant in a gig.  Barnet had sent on the latter to the coast in
case that Downe's poor wife should by that time have been reclaimed
from the waves, and had brought Charlson back with him to the house.

Barnet's presence was not needed here, and he felt it to be his next
duty to set off at once and find Downe, that no other than himself
might break the news to him.

He was quite sure that no chance had been lost for Mrs. Downe by his
leaving the shore.  By the time that Mrs. Barnet had been laid in
the carriage, a much larger group had assembled to lend assistance
in finding her friend, rendering his own help superfluous.  But the
duty of breaking the news was made doubly painful by the
circumstance that the catastrophe which had befallen Mrs. Downe was
solely the result of her own and her husband's loving-kindness
towards himself.

He found Downe in his office.  When the solicitor comprehended the
intelligence he turned pale, stood up, and remained for a moment
perfectly still, as if bereft of his faculties; then his shoulders
heaved, he pulled out his handkerchief and began to cry like a
child.  His sobs might have been heard in the next room.  He seemed
to have no idea of going to the shore, or of doing anything; but
when Barnet took him gently by the hand and proposed to start at
once, he quietly acquiesced, neither uttering any further word nor
making any effort to repress his tears.

Barnet accompanied him to the shore, where, finding that no trace
had as yet been seen of Mrs. Downe, and that his stay would be of no
avail, he left Downe with his friends and the young doctor, and once
more hastened back to his own house.

At the door he met Charlson.  'Well!'  Barnet said.

'I have just come down,' said the doctor; 'we have done everything,
but without result.  I sympathize with you in your bereavement.'

Barnet did not much appreciate Charlson's sympathy, which sounded to
his ears as something of a mockery from the lips of a man who knew
what Charlson knew about their domestic relations.  Indeed there
seemed an odd spark in Charlson's full black eye as he said the
words; but that might have been imaginary.

'And, Mr. Barnet,' Charlson resumed, 'that little matter between us-
-I hope to settle it finally in three weeks at least.'

'Never mind that now,' said Barnet abruptly.  He directed the
surgeon to go to the harbour in case his services might even now be
necessary there:  and himself entered the house.

The servants were coming from his wife's chamber, looking helplessly
at each other and at him.  He passed them by and entered the room,
where he stood mutely regarding the bed for a few minutes, after
which he walked into his own dressing-room adjoining, and there
paced up and down.  In a minute or two he noticed what a strange and
total silence had come over the upper part of the house; his own
movements, muffled as they were by the carpet, seemed noisy, and his
thoughts to disturb the air like articulate utterances.  His eye
glanced through the window.  Far down the road to the harbour a roof
detained his gaze:  out of it rose a red chimney, and out of the red
chimney a curl of smoke, as from a fire newly kindled.  He had often
seen such a sight before.  In that house lived Lucy Savile; and the
smoke was from the fire which was regularly lighted at this time to
make her tea.

After that he went back to the bedroom, and stood there some time
regarding his wife's silent form.  She was a woman some years older
than himself, but had not by any means overpassed the maturity of
good looks and vigour.  Her passionate features, well-defined, firm,
and statuesque in life, were doubly so now:  her mouth and brow,
beneath her purplish black hair, showed only too clearly that the
turbulency of character which had made a bear-garden of his house
had been no temporary phase of her existence.  While he reflected,
he suddenly said to himself, I wonder if all has been done?

The thought was led up to by his having fancied that his wife's
features lacked in its complete form the expression which he had
been accustomed to associate with the faces of those whose spirits
have fled for ever.  The effacement of life was not so marked but
that, entering uninformed, he might have supposed her sleeping.  Her
complexion was that seen in the numerous faded portraits by Sir
Joshua Reynolds; it was pallid in comparison with life, but there
was visible on a close inspection the remnant of what had once been
a flush; the keeping between the cheeks and the hollows of the face
being thus preserved, although positive colour was gone.  Long
orange rays of evening sun stole in through chinks in the blind,
striking on the large mirror, and being thence reflected upon the
crimson hangings and woodwork of the heavy bedstead, so that the
general tone of light was remarkably warm; and it was probable that
something might be due to this circumstance.  Still the fact
impressed him as strange.  Charlson had been gone more than a
quarter of an hour:  could it be possible that he had left too soon,
and that his attempts to restore her had operated so sluggishly as
only now to have made themselves felt?  Barnet laid his hand upon
her chest, and fancied that ever and anon a faint flutter of
palpitation, gentle as that of a butterfly's wing, disturbed the
stillness there--ceasing for a time, then struggling to go on, then
breaking down in weakness and ceasing again.

Barnet's mother had been an active practitioner of the healing art
among her poorer neighbours, and her inspirations had all been
derived from an octavo volume of Domestic Medicine, which at this
moment was lying, as it had lain for many years, on a shelf in
Barnet's dressing-room.  He hastily fetched it, and there read under
the head 'Drowning:'-


'Exertions for the recovery of any person who has not been immersed
for a longer period than half-an-hour should be continued for at
least four hours, as there have been many cases in which returning
life has made itself visible even after a longer interval.

'Should, however, a weak action of any of the organs show itself
when the case seems almost hopeless, our efforts must be redoubled;
the feeble spark in this case requires to be solicited; it will
certainly disappear under a relaxation of labour.'


Barnet looked at his watch; it was now barely two hours and a half
from the time when he had first heard of the accident.  He threw
aside the book and turned quickly to reach a stimulant which had
previously been used.  Pulling up the blind for more light, his eye
glanced out of the window.  There he saw that red chimney still
smoking cheerily, and that roof, and through the roof that somebody.
His mechanical movements stopped, his hand remained on the blind-
cord, and he seemed to become breathless, as if he had suddenly
found himself treading a high rope.

While he stood a sparrow lighted on the windowsill, saw him, and
flew away.  Next a man and a dog walked over one of the green hills
which bulged above the roofs of the town.  But Barnet took no
notice.

We may wonder what were the exact images that passed through his
mind during those minutes of gazing upon Lucy Savile's house, the
sparrow, the man and the dog, and Lucy Savile's house again.  There
are honest men who will not admit to their thoughts, even as idle
hypotheses, views of the future that assume as done a deed which
they would recoil from doing; and there are other honest men for
whom morality ends at the surface of their own heads, who will
deliberate what the first will not so much as suppose.  Barnet had a
wife whose pretence distracted his home; she now lay as in death; by
merely doing nothing--by letting the intelligence which had gone
forth to the world lie undisturbed--he would effect such a
deliverance for himself as he had never hoped for, and open up an
opportunity of which till now he had never dreamed.  Whether the
conjuncture had arisen through any unscrupulous, ill-considered
impulse of Charlson to help out of a strait the friend who was so
kind as never to press him for what was due could not be told; there
was nothing to prove it; and it was a question which could never be
asked.  The triangular situation--himself--his wife--Lucy Savile--
was the one clear thing.

From Barnet's actions we may infer that he SUPPOSED such and such a
result, for a moment, but did not deliberate.  He withdrew his hazel
eyes from the scene without, calmly turned, rang the bell for
assistance, and vigorously exerted himself to learn if life still
lingered in that motionless frame.  In a short time another surgeon
was in attendance; and then Barnet's surmise proved to be true.  The
slow life timidly heaved again; but much care and patience were
needed to catch and retain it, and a considerable period elapsed
before it could be said with certainty that Mrs. Barnet lived.  When
this was the case, and there was no further room for doubt, Barnet
left the chamber.  The blue evening smoke from Lucy's chimney had
died down to an imperceptible stream, and as he walked about
downstairs he murmured to himself, 'My wife was dead, and she is
alive again.'

It was not so with Downe.  After three hours' immersion his wife's
body had been recovered, life, of course, being quite extinct.
Barnet on descending, went straight to his friend's house, and there
learned the result.  Downe was helpless in his wild grief,
occasionally even hysterical.  Barnet said little, but finding that
some guiding hand was necessary in the sorrow-stricken household,
took upon him to supervise and manage till Downe should be in a
state of mind to do so for himself.



CHAPTER VI



One September evening, four months later, when Mrs. Barnet was in
perfect health, and Mrs. Downe but a weakening memory, an errand-boy
paused to rest himself in front of Mr. Barnet's old house,
depositing his basket on one of the window-sills.  The street was
not yet lighted, but there were lights in the house, and at
intervals a flitting shadow fell upon the blind at his elbow.  Words
also were audible from the same apartment, and they seemed to be
those of persons in violent altercation.  But the boy could not
gather their purport, and he went on his way.

Ten minutes afterwards the door of Barnet's house opened, and a tall
closely-veiled lady in a travelling-dress came out and descended the
freestone steps.  The servant stood in the doorway watching her as
she went with a measured tread down the street.  When she had been
out of sight for some minutes Barnet appeared at the door from
within.

'Did your mistress leave word where she was going?' he asked.

'No, sir.'

'Is the carriage ordered to meet her anywhere?'

'No, sir.'

'Did she take a latch-key?'

'No, sir.'

Barnet went in again, sat down in his chair, and leaned back.  Then
in solitude and silence he brooded over the bitter emotions that
filled his heart.  It was for this that he had gratuitously restored
her to life, and made his union with another impossible!  The
evening drew on, and nobody came to disturb him.  At bedtime he told
the servants to retire, that he would sit up for Mrs. Barnet
himself; and when they were gone he leaned his head upon his hand
and mused for hours.

The clock struck one, two; still his wife came not, and, with
impatience added to depression, he went from room to room till
another weary hour had passed.  This was not altogether a new
experience for Barnet; but she had never before so prolonged her
absence.  At last he sat down again and fell asleep.

He awoke at six o'clock to find that she had not returned.  In
searching about the rooms he discovered that she had taken a case of
jewels which had been hers before her marriage.  At eight a note was
brought him; it was from his wife, in which she stated that she had
gone by the coach to the house of a distant relative near London,
and expressed a wish that certain boxes, articles of clothing, and
so on, might be sent to her forthwith.  The note was brought to him
by a waiter at the Black-Bull Hotel, and had been written by Mrs.
Barnet immediately before she took her place in the stage.

By the evening this order was carried out, and Barnet, with a sense
of relief, walked out into the town.  A fair had been held during
the day, and the large clear moon which rose over the most prominent
hill flung its light upon the booths and standings that still
remained in the street, mixing its rays curiously with those from
the flaring naphtha lamps.  The town was full of country-people who
had come in to enjoy themselves, and on this account Barnet strolled
through the streets unobserved.  With a certain recklessness he made
for the harbour-road, and presently found himself by the shore,
where he walked on till he came to the spot near which his friend
the kindly Mrs. Downe had lost her life, and his own wife's life had
been preserved.  A tremulous pathway of bright moonshine now
stretched over the water which had engulfed them, and not a living
soul was near.

Here he ruminated on their characters, and next on the young girl in
whom he now took a more sensitive interest than at the time when he
had been free to marry her.  Nothing, so far as he was aware, had
ever appeared in his own conduct to show that such an interest
existed.  He had made it a point of the utmost strictness to hinder
that feeling from influencing in the faintest degree his attitude
towards his wife; and this was made all the more easy for him by the
small demand Mrs. Barnet made upon his attentions, for which she
ever evinced the greatest contempt; thus unwittingly giving him the
satisfaction of knowing that their severance owed nothing to
jealousy, or, indeed, to any personal behaviour of his at all.  Her
concern was not with him or his feelings, as she frequently told
him; but that she had, in a moment of weakness, thrown herself away
upon a common burgher when she might have aimed at, and possibly
brought down, a peer of the realm.  Her frequent depreciation of
Barnet in these terms had at times been so intense that he was
sorely tempted to retaliate on her egotism by owning that he loved
at the same low level on which he lived; but prudence had prevailed,
for which he was now thankful.

Something seemed to sound upon the shingle behind him over and above
the raking of the wave.  He looked round, and a slight girlish shape
appeared quite close to him, He could not see her face because it
was in the direction of the moon.

'Mr. Barnet?' the rambler said, in timid surprise.  The voice was
the voice of Lucy Savile.

'Yes,' said Barnet.  'How can I repay you for this pleasure?'

'I only came because the night was so clear.  I am now on my way
home.'

'I am glad we have met.  I want to know if you will let me do
something for you, to give me an occupation, as an idle man?  I am
sure I ought to help you, for I know you are almost without
friends.'

She hesitated.  'Why should you tell me that?' she said.

'In the hope that you will be frank with me.'

'I am not altogether without friends here.  But I am going to make a
little change in my life--to go out as a teacher of freehand drawing
and practical perspective, of course I mean on a comparatively
humble scale, because I have not been specially educated for that
profession.  But I am sure I shall like it much.'

'You have an opening?'

'I have not exactly got it, but I have advertised for one.'

'Lucy, you must let me help you!'

'Not at all.'

'You need not think it would compromise you, or that I am
indifferent to delicacy.  I bear in mind how we stand.  It is very
unlikely that you will succeed as teacher of the class you mention,
so let me do something of a different kind for you.  Say what you
would like, and it shall be done.'

'No; if I can't be a drawing-mistress or governess, or something of
that sort, I shall go to India and join my brother.'

'I wish I could go abroad, anywhere, everywhere with you, Lucy, and
leave this place and its associations for ever!'

She played with the end of her bonnet-string, and hastily turned
aside.  'Don't ever touch upon that kind of topic again,' she said,
with a quick severity not free from anger.  'It simply makes it
impossible for me to see you, much less receive any guidance from
you.  No, thank you, Mr. Barnet; you can do nothing for me at
present; and as I suppose my uncertainty will end in my leaving for
India, I fear you never will.  If ever I think you CAN do anything,
I will take the trouble to ask you.  Till then, good-bye.'

The tone of her latter words was equivocal, and while he remained in
doubt whether a gentle irony was or was not inwrought with their
sound, she swept lightly round and left him alone.  He saw her form
get smaller and smaller along the damp belt of sea-sand between ebb
and flood; and when she had vanished round the cliff into the
harbour-road, he himself followed in the same direction.

That her hopes from an advertisement should be the single thread
which held Lucy Savile in England was too much for Barnet.  On
reaching the town he went straight to the residence of Downe, now a
widower with four children.  The young motherless brood had been
sent to bed about a quarter of an hour earlier, and when Barnet
entered he found Downe sitting alone.  It was the same room as that
from which the family had been looking out for Downe at the
beginning of the year, when Downe had slipped into the gutter and
his wife had been so enviably tender towards him.  The old neatness
had gone from the house; articles lay in places which could show no
reason for their presence, as if momentarily deposited there some
months ago, and forgotten ever since; there were no flowers; things
were jumbled together on the furniture which should have been in
cupboards; and the place in general had that stagnant, unrenovated
air which usually pervades the maimed home of the widower.

Downe soon renewed his customary full-worded lament over his wife,
and even when he had worked himself up to tears, went on volubly, as
if a listener were a luxury to be enjoyed whenever he could be
caught.

'She was a treasure beyond compare, Mr. Barnet!  I shall never see
such another.  Nobody now to nurse me--nobody to console me in those
daily troubles, you know, Barnet, which make consolation so
necessary to a nature like mine.  It would be unbecoming to repine,
for her spirit's home was elsewhere--the tender light in her eyes
always showed it; but it is a long dreary time that I have before
me, and nobody else can ever fill the void left in my heart by her
loss--nobody--nobody!'  And Downe wiped his eyes again.

'She was a good woman in the highest sense,' gravely answered
Barnet, who, though Downe's words drew genuine compassion from his
heart, could not help feeling that a tender reticence would have
been a finer tribute to Mrs. Downe's really sterling virtues than
such a second-class lament as this.

'I have something to show you,' Downe resumed, producing from a
drawer a sheet of paper on which was an elaborate design for a
canopied tomb.  'This has been sent me by the architect, but it is
not exactly what I want.'

'You have got Jones to do it, I see, the man who is carrying out my
house,' said Barnet, as he glanced at the signature to the drawing.

'Yes, but it is not quite what I want.  I want something more
striking--more like a tomb I have seen in St. Paul's Cathedral.
Nothing less will do justice to my feelings, and how far short of
them that will fall!'

Barnet privately thought the design a sufficiently imposing one as
it stood, even extravagantly ornate; but, feeling that he had no
right to criticize, he said gently, 'Downe, should you not live more
in your children's lives at the present time, and soften the
sharpness of regret for your own past by thinking of their future?'

'Yes, yes; but what can I do more?' asked Downe, wrinkling his
forehead hopelessly.

It was with anxious slowness that Barnet produced his reply--the
secret object of his visit to-night.  'Did you not say one day that
you ought by rights to get a governess for the children?'

Downe admitted that he had said so, but that he could not see his
way to it.  'The kind of woman I should like to have,' he said,
'would be rather beyond my means.  No; I think I shall send them to
school in the town when they are old enough to go out alone.'

'Now, I know of something better than that.  The late Lieutenant
Savile's daughter, Lucy, wants to do something for herself in the
way of teaching.  She would be inexpensive, and would answer your
purpose as well as anybody for six or twelve months.  She would
probably come daily if you were to ask her, and so your housekeeping
arrangements would not be much affected.'

'I thought she had gone away,' said the solicitor, musing.  'Where
does she live?'

Barnet told him, and added that, if Downe should think of her as
suitable, he would do well to call as soon as possible, or she might
be on the wing.  'If you do see her,' he said, 'it would be
advisable not to mention my name.  She is rather stiff in her ideas
of me, and it might prejudice her against a course if she knew that
I recommended it.'

Downe promised to give the subject his consideration, and nothing
more was said about it just then.  But when Barnet rose to go, which
was not till nearly bedtime, he reminded Downe of the suggestion and
went up the street to his own solitary home with a sense of
satisfaction at his promising diplomacy in a charitable cause.



CHAPTER VII



The walls of his new house were carried up nearly to their full
height.  By a curious though not infrequent reaction, Barnet's
feelings about that unnecessary structure had undergone a change; he
took considerable interest in its progress as a long-neglected
thing, his wife before her departure having grown quite weary of it
as a hobby.  Moreover, it was an excellent distraction for a man in
the unhappy position of having to live in a provincial town with
nothing to do.  He was probably the first of his line who had ever
passed a day without toil, and perhaps something like an inherited
instinct disqualifies such men for a life of pleasant inaction, such
as lies in the power of those whose leisure is not a personal
accident, but a vast historical accretion which has become part of
their natures.

Thus Barnet got into a way of spending many of his leisure hours on
the site of the new building, and he might have been seen on most
days at this time trying the temper of the mortar by punching the
joints with his stick, looking at the grain of a floor-board, and
meditating where it grew, or picturing under what circumstances the
last fire would be kindled in the at present sootless chimneys.  One
day when thus occupied he saw three children pass by in the company
of a fair young woman, whose sudden appearance caused him to flush
perceptibly.

'Ah, she is there,' he thought.  'That's a blessed thing.'

Casting an interested glance over the rising building and the busy
workmen, Lucy Savile and the little Downes passed by; and after that
time it became a regular though almost unconscious custom of Barnet
to stand in the half-completed house and look from the ungarnished
windows at the governess as she tripped towards the sea-shore with
her young charges, which she was in the habit of doing on most fine
afternoons.  It was on one of these occasions, when he had been
loitering on the first-floor landing, near the hole left for the
staircase, not yet erected, that there appeared above the edge of
the floor a little hat, followed by a little head.

Barnet withdrew through a doorway, and the child came to the top of
the ladder, stepping on to the floor and crying to her sisters and
Miss Savile to follow.  Another head rose above the floor, and
another, and then Lucy herself came into view.  The troop ran hither
and thither through the empty, shaving-strewn rooms, and Barnet came
forward.

Lucy uttered a small exclamation:  she was very sorry that she had
intruded; she had not the least idea that Mr. Barnet was there:  the
children had come up, and she had followed.

Barnet replied that he was only too glad to see them there.  'And
now, let me show you the rooms,' he said.

She passively assented, and he took her round.  There was not much
to show in such a bare skeleton of a house, but he made the most of
it, and explained the different ornamental fittings that were soon
to be fixed here and there.  Lucy made but few remarks in reply,
though she seemed pleased with her visit, and stole away down the
ladder, followed by her companions.

After this the new residence became yet more of a hobby for Barnet.
Downe's children did not forget their first visit, and when the
windows were glazed, and the handsome staircase spread its broad low
steps into the hall, they came again, prancing in unwearied
succession through every room from ground-floor to attics, while
Lucy stood waiting for them at the door.  Barnet, who rarely missed
a day in coming to inspect progress, stepped out from the drawing-
room.

'I could not keep them out,' she said, with an apologetic blush.  'I
tried to do so very much:  but they are rather wilful, and we are
directed to walk this way for the sea air.'

'Do let them make the house their regular playground, and you
yours,' said Barnet.  'There is no better place for children to romp
and take their exercise in than an empty house, particularly in
muddy or damp weather such as we shall get a good deal of now; and
this place will not be furnished for a long long time--perhaps
never.  I am not at all decided about it.'

'O, but it must!' replied Lucy, looking round at the hall.  'The
rooms are excellent, twice as high as ours; and the views from the
windows are so lovely.'

'I daresay, I daresay,' he said absently.

'Will all the furniture be new?' she asked.

'All the furniture be new--that's a thing I have not thought of.  In
fact I only come here and look on.  My father's house would have
been large enough for me, but another person had a voice in the
matter, and it was settled that we should build.  However, the place
grows upon me; its recent associations are cheerful, and I am
getting to like it fast.'

A certain uneasiness in Lucy's manner showed that the conversation
was taking too personal a turn for her.  'Still, as modern tastes
develop, people require more room to gratify them in,' she said,
withdrawing to call the children; and serenely bidding him good
afternoon she went on her way.

Barnet's life at this period was singularly lonely, and yet he was
happier than he could have expected.  His wife's estrangement and
absence, which promised to be permanent, left him free as a boy in
his movements, and the solitary walks that he took gave him ample
opportunity for chastened reflection on what might have been his lot
if he had only shown wisdom enough to claim Lucy Savile when there
was no bar between their lives, and she was to be had for the
asking.  He would occasionally call at the house of his friend
Downe; but there was scarcely enough in common between their two
natures to make them more than friends of that excellent sort whose
personal knowledge of each other's history and character is always
in excess of intimacy, whereby they are not so likely to be severed
by a clash of sentiment as in cases where intimacy springs up in
excess of knowledge.  Lucy was never visible at these times, being
either engaged in the school-room, or in taking an airing out of
doors; but, knowing that she was now comfortable, and had given up
the, to him, depressing idea of going off to the other side of the
globe, he was quite content.

The new house had so far progressed that the gardeners were
beginning to grass down the front.  During an afternoon which he was
passing in marking the curve for the carriage-drive, he beheld her
coming in boldly towards him from the road.  Hitherto Barnet had
only caught her on the premises by stealth; and this advance seemed
to show that at last her reserve had broken down.

A smile gained strength upon her face as she approached, and it was
quite radiant when she came up, and said, without a trace of
embarrassment, 'I find I owe you a hundred thanks--and it comes to
me quite as a surprise!  It was through your kindness that I was
engaged by Mr. Downe.  Believe me, Mr. Barnet, I did not know it
until yesterday, or I should have thanked you long and long ago!'

'I had offended you--just a trifle--at the time, I think?' said
Barnet, smiling, 'and it was best that you should not know.'

'Yes, yes,' she returned hastily.  'Don't allude to that; it is past
and over, and we will let it be.  The house is finished almost, is
it not?  How beautiful it will look when the evergreens are grown!
Do you call the style Palladian, Mr. Barnet?'

'I--really don't quite know what it is.  Yes, it must be Palladian,
certainly.  But I'll ask Jones, the architect; for, to tell the
truth, I had not thought much about the style:  I had nothing to do
with choosing it, I am sorry to say.'

She would not let him harp on this gloomy refrain, and talked on
bright matters till she said, producing a small roll of paper which
he had noticed in her hand all the while, 'Mr. Downe wished me to
bring you this revised drawing of the late Mrs. Downe's tomb, which
the architect has just sent him.  He would like you to look it
over.'

The children came up with their hoops, and she went off with them
down the harbour-road as usual.  Barnet had been glad to get those
words of thanks; he had been thinking for many months that he would
like her to know of his share in finding her a home such as it was;
and what he could not do for himself, Downe had now kindly done for
him.  He returned to his desolate house with a lighter tread; though
in reason he hardly knew why his tread should be light.

On examining the drawing, Barnet found that, instead of the vast
altar-tomb and canopy Downe had determined on at their last meeting,
it was to be a more modest memorial even than had been suggested by
the architect; a coped tomb of good solid construction, with no
useless elaboration at all.  Barnet was truly glad to see that Downe
had come to reason of his own accord; and he returned the drawing
with a note of approval.

He followed up the house-work as before, and as he walked up and
down the rooms, occasionally gazing from the windows over the
bulging green hills and the quiet harbour that lay between them, he
murmured words and fragments of words, which, if listened to, would
have revealed all the secrets of his existence.  Whatever his reason
in going there, Lucy did not call again:  the walk to the shore
seemed to be abandoned:  he must have thought it as well for both
that it should be so, for he did not go anywhere out of his
accustomed ways to endeavour to discover her.



CHAPTER VIII



The winter and the spring had passed, and the house was complete.
It was a fine morning in the early part of June, and Barnet, though
not in the habit of rising early, had taken a long walk before
breakfast; returning by way of the new building.  A sufficiently
exciting cause of his restlessness to-day might have been the
intelligence which had reached him the night before, that Lucy
Savile was going to India after all, and notwithstanding the
representations of her friends that such a journey was unadvisable
in many ways for an unpractised girl, unless some more definite
advantage lay at the end of it than she could show to be the case.
Barnet's walk up the slope to the building betrayed that he was in a
dissatisfied mood.  He hardly saw that the dewy time of day lent an
unusual freshness to the bushes and trees which had so recently put
on their summer habit of heavy leafage, and made his newly-laid lawn
look as well established as an old manorial meadow.  The house had
been so adroitly placed between six tall elms which were growing on
the site beforehand, that they seemed like real ancestral trees; and
the rooks, young and old, cawed melodiously to their visitor.

The door was not locked, and he entered.  No workmen appeared to be
present, and he walked from sunny window to sunny window of the
empty rooms, with a sense of seclusion which might have been very
pleasant but for the antecedent knowledge that his almost paternal
care of Lucy Savile was to be thrown away by her wilfulness.
Footsteps echoed through an adjoining room; and bending his eyes in
that direction, he perceived Mr. Jones, the architect.  He had come
to look over the building before giving the contractor his final
certificate.  They walked over the house together.  Everything was
finished except the papering:  there were the latest improvements of
the period in bell-hanging, ventilating, smoke-jacks, fire-grates,
and French windows.  The business was soon ended, and Jones, having
directed Barnet's attention to a roll of wall-paper patterns which
lay on a bench for his choice, was leaving to keep another
engagement, when Barnet said, 'Is the tomb finished yet for Mrs.
Downe?'

'Well--yes:  it is at last,' said the architect, coming back and
speaking as if he were in a mood to make a confidence.  'I have had
no end of trouble in the matter, and, to tell the truth, I am
heartily glad it is over.'

Barnet expressed his surprise.  'I thought poor Downe had given up
those extravagant notions of his? then he has gone back to the altar
and canopy after all?  Well, he is to be excused, poor fellow!'

'O no--he has not at all gone back to them--quite the reverse,'
Jones hastened to say.  'He has so reduced design after design, that
the whole thing has been nothing but waste labour for me; till in
the end it has become a common headstone, which a mason put up in
half a day.'

'A common headstone?' said Barnet.

'Yes.  I held out for some time for the addition of a footstone at
least.  But he said, "O no--he couldn't afford it."'

'Ah, well--his family is growing up, poor fellow, and his expenses
are getting serious.'

'Yes, exactly,' said Jones, as if the subject were none of his.  And
again directing Barnet's attention to the wall-papers, the bustling
architect left him to keep some other engagement.

'A common headstone,' murmured Barnet, left again to himself.  He
mused a minute or two, and next began looking over and selecting
from the patterns; but had not long been engaged in the work when he
heard another footstep on the gravel without, and somebody enter the
open porch.

Barnet went to the door--it was his manservant in search of him.

'I have been trying for some time to find you, sir,' he said.  'This
letter has come by the post, and it is marked immediate.  And
there's this one from Mr. Downe, who called just now wanting to see
you.'  He searched his pocket for the second.

Barnet took the first letter--it had a black border, and bore the
London postmark.  It was not in his wife's handwriting, or in that
of any person he knew; but conjecture soon ceased as he read the
page, wherein he was briefly informed that Mrs. Barnet had died
suddenly on the previous day, at the furnished villa she had
occupied near London.

Barnet looked vaguely round the empty hall, at the blank walls, out
of the doorway.  Drawing a long palpitating breath, and with eyes
downcast, he turned and climbed the stairs slowly, like a man who
doubted their stability.  The fact of his wife having, as it were,
died once already, and lived on again, had entirely dislodged the
possibility of her actual death from his conjecture.  He went to the
landing, leant over the balusters, and after a reverie, of whose
duration he had but the faintest notion, turned to the window and
stretched his gaze to the cottage further down the road, which was
visible from his landing, and from which Lucy still walked to the
solicitor's house by a cross path.  The faint words that came from
his moving lips were simply, 'At last!'

Then, almost involuntarily, Barnet fell down on his knees and
murmured some incoherent words of thanksgiving.  Surely his virtue
in restoring his wife to life had been rewarded!  But, as if the
impulse struck uneasily on his conscience, he quickly rose, brushed
the dust from his trousers and set himself to think of his next
movements.  He could not start for London for some hours; and as he
had no preparations to make that could not be made in half-an-hour,
he mechanically descended and resumed his occupation of turning over
the wall-papers.  They had all got brighter for him, those papers.
It was all changed--who would sit in the rooms that they were to
line?  He went on to muse upon Lucy's conduct in so frequently
coming to the house with the children; her occasional blush in
speaking to him; her evident interest in him.  What woman can in the
long run avoid being interested in a man whom she knows to be
devoted to her?  If human solicitation could ever effect anything,
there should be no going to India for Lucy now.  All the papers
previously chosen seemed wrong in their shades, and he began from
the beginning to choose again.

While entering on the task he heard a forced 'Ahem!' from without
the porch, evidently uttered to attract his attention, and footsteps
again advancing to the door.  His man, whom he had quite forgotten
in his mental turmoil, was still waiting there.

'I beg your pardon, sir,' the man said from round the doorway; 'but
here's the note from Mr. Downe that you didn't take.  He called just
after you went out, and as he couldn't wait, he wrote this on your
study-table.'

He handed in the letter--no black-bordered one now, but a practical-
looking note in the well-known writing of the solicitor.


'DEAR BARNET'--it ran--'Perhaps you will be prepared for the
information I am about to give--that Lucy Savile and myself are
going to be married this morning.  I have hitherto said nothing as
to my intention to any of my friends, for reasons which I am sure
you will fully appreciate.  The crisis has been brought about by her
expressing her intention to join her brother in India.  I then
discovered that I could not do without her.

'It is to be quite a private wedding; but it is my particular wish
that you come down here quietly at ten, and go to church with us; it
will add greatly to the pleasure I shall experience in the ceremony,
and, I believe, to Lucy's also.  I have called on you very early to
make the request, in the belief that I should find you at home; but
you are beforehand with me in your early rising.--Yours sincerely,
C. Downe.'


'Need I wait, sir?' said the servant after a dead silence.

'That will do, William.  No answer,' said Barnet calmly.

When the man had gone Barnet re-read the letter.  Turning eventually
to the wall-papers, which he had been at such pains to select, he
deliberately tore them into halves and quarters, and threw them into
the empty fireplace.  Then he went out of the house; locked the
door, and stood in the front awhile.  Instead of returning into the
town, he went down the harbour-road and thoughtfully lingered about
by the sea, near the spot where the body of Downe's late wife had
been found and brought ashore.

Barnet was a man with a rich capacity for misery, and there is no
doubt that he exercised it to its fullest extent now.  The events
that had, as it were, dashed themselves together into one half-hour
of this day showed that curious refinement of cruelty in their
arrangement which often proceeds from the bosom of the whimsical god
at other times known as blind Circumstance.  That his few minutes of
hope, between the reading of the first and second letters, had
carried him to extraordinary heights of rapture was proved by the
immensity of his suffering now.  The sun blazing into his face would
have shown a close watcher that a horizontal line, which he had
never noticed before, but which was never to be gone thereafter, was
somehow gradually forming itself in the smooth of his forehead.  His
eyes, of a light hazel, had a curious look which can only be
described by the word bruised; the sorrow that looked from them
being largely mixed with the surprise of a man taken unawares.

The secondary particulars of his present position, too, were odd
enough, though for some time they appeared to engage little of his
attention.  Not a soul in the town knew, as yet, of his wife's
death; and he almost owed Downe the kindness of not publishing it
till the day was over:  the conjuncture, taken with that which had
accompanied the death of Mrs. Downe, being so singular as to be
quite sufficient to darken the pleasure of the impressionable
solicitor to a cruel extent, if made known to him.  But as Barnet
could not set out on his journey to London, where his wife lay, for
some hours (there being at this date no railway within a distance of
many miles), no great reason existed why he should leave the town.

Impulse in all its forms characterized Barnet, and when he heard the
distant clock strike the hour of ten his feet began to carry him up
the harbour-road with the manner of a man who must do something to
bring himself to life.  He passed Lucy Savile's old house, his own
new one, and came in view of the church.  Now he gave a perceptible
start, and his mechanical condition went away.  Before the church-
gate were a couple of carriages, and Barnet then could perceive that
the marriage between Downe and Lucy was at that moment being
solemnized within.  A feeling of sudden, proud self-confidence, an
indocile wish to walk unmoved in spite of grim environments, plainly
possessed him, and when he reached the wicket-gate he turned in
without apparent effort.  Pacing up the paved footway he entered the
church and stood for a while in the nave passage.  A group of people
was standing round the vestry door; Barnet advanced through these
and stepped into the vestry.

There they were, busily signing their names.  Seeing Downe about to
look round, Barnet averted his somewhat disturbed face for a second
or two; when he turned again front to front he was calm and quite
smiling; it was a creditable triumph over himself, and deserved to
be remembered in his native town.  He greeted Downe heartily,
offering his congratulations.

It seemed as if Barnet expected a half-guilty look upon Lucy's face;
but no, save the natural flush and flurry engendered by the service
just performed, there was nothing whatever in her bearing which
showed a disturbed mind:  her gray-brown eyes carried in them now as
at other times the well-known expression of common-sensed rectitude
which never went so far as to touch on hardness.  She shook hands
with him, and Downe said warmly, 'I wish you could have come sooner:
I called on purpose to ask you.  You'll drive back with us now?'

'No, no,' said Barnet; 'I am not at all prepared; but I thought I
would look in upon you for a moment, even though I had not time to
go home and dress.  I'll stand back and see you pass out, and
observe the effect of the spectacle upon myself as one of the
public.'

Then Lucy and her husband laughed, and Barnet laughed and retired;
and the quiet little party went gliding down the nave and towards
the porch, Lucy's new silk dress sweeping with a smart rustle round
the base-mouldings of the ancient font, and Downe's little daughters
following in a state of round-eyed interest in their position, and
that of Lucy, their teacher and friend.

So Downe was comforted after his Emily's death, which had taken
place twelve months, two weeks, and three days before that time.

When the two flys had driven off and the spectators had vanished,
Barnet followed to the door, and went out into the sun.  He took no
more trouble to preserve a spruce exterior; his step was unequal,
hesitating, almost convulsive; and the slight changes of colour
which went on in his face seemed refracted from some inward flame.
In the churchyard he became pale as a summer cloud, and finding it
not easy to proceed he sat down on one of the tombstones and
supported his head with his hand.

Hard by was a sexton filling up a grave which he had not found time
to finish on the previous evening.  Observing Barnet, he went up to
him, and recognizing him, said, 'Shall I help you home, sir?'

'O no, thank you,' said Barnet, rousing himself and standing up.
The sexton returned to his grave, followed by Barnet, who, after
watching him awhile, stepped into the grave, now nearly filled, and
helped to tread in the earth.

The sexton apparently thought his conduct a little singular, but he
made no observation, and when the grave was full, Barnet suddenly
stopped, looked far away, and with a decided step proceeded to the
gate and vanished.  The sexton rested on his shovel and looked after
him for a few moments, and then began banking up the mound.

In those short minutes of treading in the dead man Barnet had formed
a design, but what it was the inhabitants of that town did not for
some long time imagine.  He went home, wrote several letters of
business, called on his lawyer, an old man of the same place who had
been the legal adviser of Barnet's father before him, and during the
evening overhauled a large quantity of letters and other documents
in his possession.  By eleven o'clock the heap of papers in and
before Barnet's grate had reached formidable dimensions, and he
began to burn them.  This, owing to their quantity, it was not so
easy to do as he had expected, and he sat long into the night to
complete the task.

The next morning Barnet departed for London, leaving a note for
Downe to inform him of Mrs. Barnet's sudden death, and that he was
gone to bury her; but when a thrice-sufficient time for that purpose
had elapsed, he was not seen again in his accustomed walks, or in
his new house, or in his old one.  He was gone for good, nobody knew
whither.  It was soon discovered that he had empowered his lawyer to
dispose of all his property, real and personal, in the borough, and
pay in the proceeds to the account of an unknown person at one of
the large London banks.  The person was by some supposed to be
himself under an assumed name; but few, if any, had certain
knowledge of that fact.

The elegant new residence was sold with the rest of his possessions;
and its purchaser was no other than Downe, now a thriving man in the
borough, and one whose growing family and new wife required more
roomy accommodation than was afforded by the little house up the
narrow side street.  Barnet's old habitation was bought by the
trustees of the Congregational Baptist body in that town, who pulled
down the time-honoured dwelling and built a new chapel on its site.
By the time the last hour of that, to Barnet, eventful year had
chimed, every vestige of him had disappeared from the precincts of
his native place, and the name became extinct in the borough of
Port-Bredy, after having been a living force therein for more than
two hundred years.



CHAPTER IX



Twenty-one years and six months do not pass without setting a mark
even upon durable stone and triple brass; upon humanity such a
period works nothing less than transformation.  In Barnet's old
birthplace vivacious young children with bones like india-rubber had
grown up to be stable men and women, men and women had dried in the
skin, stiffened, withered, and sunk into decrepitude; while
selections from every class had been consigned to the outlying
cemetery.  Of inorganic differences the greatest was that a railway
had invaded the town, tying it on to a main line at a junction a
dozen miles off.  Barnet's house on the harbour-road, once so
insistently new, had acquired a respectable mellowness, with ivy,
Virginia creepers, lichens, damp patches, and even constitutional
infirmities of its own like its elder fellows.  Its architecture,
once so very improved and modern, had already become stale in style,
without having reached the dignity of being old-fashioned.  Trees
about the harbour-road had increased in circumference or disappeared
under the saw; while the church had had such a tremendous practical
joke played upon it by some facetious restorer or other as to be
scarce recognizable by its dearest old friends.

During this long interval George Barnet had never once been seen or
heard of in the town of his fathers.

It was the evening of a market-day, and some half-dozen middle-aged
farmers and dairymen were lounging round the bar of the Black-Bull
Hotel, occasionally dropping a remark to each other, and less
frequently to the two barmaids who stood within the pewter-topped
counter in a perfunctory attitude of attention, these latter sighing
and making a private observation to one another at odd intervals, on
more interesting experiences than the present.

'Days get shorter,' said one of the dairymen, as he looked towards
the street, and noticed that the lamp-lighter was passing by.

The farmers merely acknowledged by their countenances the propriety
of this remark, and finding that nobody else spoke, one of the
barmaids said 'yes,' in a tone of painful duty.

'Come fair-day we shall have to light up before we start for home-
along.'

'That's true,' his neighbour conceded, with a gaze of blankness.

'And after that we shan't see much further difference all's winter.'

The rest were not unwilling to go even so far as this.

The barmaid sighed again, and raised one of her hands from the
counter on which they rested to scratch the smallest surface of her
face with the smallest of her fingers.  She looked towards the door,
and presently remarked, 'I think I hear the 'bus coming in from
station.'

The eyes of the dairymen and farmers turned to the glass door
dividing the hall from the porch, and in a minute or two the omnibus
drew up outside.  Then there was a lumbering down of luggage, and
then a man came into the hall, followed by a porter with a
portmanteau on his poll, which he deposited on a bench.

The stranger was an elderly person, with curly ashen white hair, a
deeply-creviced outer corner to each eyelid, and a countenance baked
by innumerable suns to the colour of terra-cotta, its hue and that
of his hair contrasting like heat and cold respectively.  He walked
meditatively and gently, like one who was fearful of disturbing his
own mental equilibrium.  But whatever lay at the bottom of his
breast had evidently made him so accustomed to its situation there
that it caused him little practical inconvenience.

He paused in silence while, with his dubious eyes fixed on the
barmaids, he seemed to consider himself.  In a moment or two he
addressed them, and asked to be accommodated for the night.  As he
waited he looked curiously round the hall, but said nothing.  As
soon as invited he disappeared up the staircase, preceded by a
chambermaid and candle, and followed by a lad with his trunk.  Not a
soul had recognized him.

A quarter of an hour later, when the farmers and dairymen had driven
off to their homesteads in the country, he came downstairs, took a
biscuit and one glass of wine, and walked out into the town, where
the radiance from the shop-windows had grown so in volume of late
years as to flood with cheerfulness every standing cart, barrow,
stall, and idler that occupied the wayside, whether shabby or
genteel.  His chief interest at present seemed to lie in the names
painted over the shop-fronts and on door-ways, as far as they were
visible; these now differed to an ominous extent from what they had
been one-and-twenty years before.

The traveller passed on till he came to the bookseller's, where he
looked in through the glass door.  A fresh-faced young man was
standing behind the counter, otherwise the shop was empty.  The
gray-haired observer entered, asked for some periodical by way of
paying for admission, and with his elbow on the counter began to
turn over the pages he had bought, though that he read nothing was
obvious.

At length he said, 'Is old Mr. Watkins still alive?' in a voice
which had a curious youthful cadence in it even now.

'My father is dead, sir,' said the young man.

'Ah, I am sorry to hear it,' said the stranger.  'But it is so many
years since I last visited this town that I could hardly expect it
should be otherwise.'  After a short silence he continued--'And is
the firm of Barnet, Browse, and Company still in existence?--they
used to be large flax-merchants and twine-spinners here?'

'The firm is still going on, sir, but they have dropped the name of
Barnet.  I believe that was a sort of fancy name--at least, I never
knew of any living Barnet.  'Tis now Browse and Co.'

'And does Andrew Jones still keep on as architect?'

'He's dead, sir.'

'And the Vicar of St. Mary's--Mr. Melrose?'

'He's been dead a great many years.'

'Dear me!'  He paused yet longer, and cleared his voice.  'Is Mr.
Downe, the solicitor, still in practice?'

'No, sir, he's dead.  He died about seven years ago.'

Here it was a longer silence still; and an attentive observer would
have noticed that the paper in the stranger's hand increased its
imperceptible tremor to a visible shake.  That gray-haired gentleman
noticed it himself, and rested the paper on the counter.  'Is MRS.
Downe still alive?' he asked, closing his lips firmly as soon as the
words were out of his mouth, and dropping his eyes.

'Yes, sir, she's alive and well.  She's living at the old place.'

'In East Street?'

'O no; at Chateau Ringdale.  I believe it has been in the family for
some generations.'

'She lives with her children, perhaps?'

'No; she has no children of her own.  There were some Miss Downes; I
think they were Mr. Downe's daughters by a former wife; but they are
married and living in other parts of the town.  Mrs. Downe lives
alone.'

'Quite alone?'

'Yes, sir; quite alone.'

The newly-arrived gentleman went back to the hotel and dined; after
which he made some change in his dress, shaved back his beard to the
fashion that had prevailed twenty years earlier, when he was young
and interesting, and once more emerging, bent his steps in the
direction of the harbour-road.  Just before getting to the point
where the pavement ceased and the houses isolated themselves, he
overtook a shambling, stooping, unshaven man, who at first sight
appeared like a professional tramp, his shoulders having a
perceptible greasiness as they passed under the gaslight.  Each
pedestrian momentarily turned and regarded the other, and the tramp-
like gentleman started back.

'Good--why--is that Mr. Barnet?  'Tis Mr. Barnet, surely!'

'Yes; and you are Charlson?'

'Yes--ah--you notice my appearance.  The Fates have rather ill-used
me.  By-the-bye, that fifty pounds.  I never paid it, did I? . . .
But I was not ungrateful!'  Here the stooping man laid one hand
emphatically on the palm of the other.  'I gave you a chance, Mr.
George Barnet, which many men would have thought full value
received--the chance to marry your Lucy.  As far as the world was
concerned, your wife was a DROWNED WOMAN, hey?'

'Heaven forbid all that, Charlson!'

'Well, well, 'twas a wrong way of showing gratitude, I suppose.  And
now a drop of something to drink for old acquaintance' sake!  And
Mr. Barnet, she's again free--there's a chance now if you care for
it--ha, ha!'  And the speaker pushed his tongue into his hollow
cheek and slanted his eye in the old fashion.

'I know all,' said Barnet quickly; and slipping a small present into
the hands of the needy, saddening man, he stepped ahead and was soon
in the outskirts of the town.

He reached the harbour-road, and paused before the entrance to a
well-known house.  It was so highly bosomed in trees and shrubs
planted since the erection of the building that one would scarcely
have recognized the spot as that which had been a mere neglected
slope till chosen as a site for a dwelling.  He opened the swing-
gate, closed it noiselessly, and gently moved into the semicircular
drive, which remained exactly as it had been marked out by Barnet on
the morning when Lucy Savile ran in to thank him for procuring her
the post of governess to Downe's children.  But the growth of trees
and bushes which revealed itself at every step was beyond all
expectation; sun-proof and moon-proof bowers vaulted the walks, and
the walls of the house were uniformly bearded with creeping plants
as high as the first-floor windows.

After lingering for a few minutes in the dusk of the bending boughs,
the visitor rang the door-bell, and on the servant appearing, he
announced himself as 'an old friend of Mrs. Downe's.'

The hall was lighted, but not brightly, the gas being turned low, as
if visitors were rare.  There was a stagnation in the dwelling; it
seemed to be waiting.  Could it really be waiting for him?  The
partitions which had been probed by Barnet's walking-stick when the
mortar was green, were now quite brown with the antiquity of their
varnish, and the ornamental woodwork of the staircase, which had
glistened with a pale yellow newness when first erected, was now of
a rich wine-colour.  During the servant's absence the following
colloquy could be dimly heard through the nearly closed door of the
drawing-room.

'He didn't give his name?'

'He only said "an old friend," ma'am.'

'What kind of gentleman is he?'

'A staidish gentleman, with gray hair.'

The voice of the second speaker seemed to affect the listener
greatly.  After a pause, the lady said, 'Very well, I will see him.'

And the stranger was shown in face to face with the Lucy who had
once been Lucy Savile.  The round cheek of that formerly young lady
had, of course, alarmingly flattened its curve in her modern
representative; a pervasive grayness overspread her once dark brown
hair, like morning rime on heather.  The parting down the middle was
wide and jagged; once it had been a thin white line, a narrow
crevice between two high banks of shade.  But there was still enough
left to form a handsome knob behind, and some curls beneath
inwrought with a few hairs like silver wires were very becoming.  In
her eyes the only modification was that their originally mild
rectitude of expression had become a little more stringent than
heretofore.  Yet she was still girlish--a girl who had been
gratuitously weighted by destiny with a burden of five-and-forty
years instead of her proper twenty.

'Lucy, don't you know me?' he said, when the servant had closed the
door.

'I knew you the instant I saw you!' she returned cheerfully.  'I
don't know why, but I always thought you would come back to your old
town again.'

She gave him her hand, and then they sat down.  'They said you were
dead,' continued Lucy, 'but I never thought so.  We should have
heard of it for certain if you had been.'

'It is a very long time since we met.'

'Yes; what you must have seen, Mr. Barnet, in all these roving
years, in comparison with what I have seen in this quiet place!'
Her face grew more serious.  'You know my husband has been dead a
long time?  I am a lonely old woman now, considering what I have
been; though Mr. Downe's daughters--all married--manage to keep me
pretty cheerful.'

'And I am a lonely old man, and have been any time these twenty
years.'

'But where have you kept yourself?  And why did you go off so
mysteriously?'

'Well, Lucy, I have kept myself a little in America, and a little in
Australia, a little in India, a little at the Cape, and so on; I
have not stayed in any place for a long time, as it seems to me, and
yet more than twenty years have flown.  But when people get to my
age two years go like one!--Your second question, why did I go away
so mysteriously, is surely not necessary.  You guessed why, didn't
you?'

'No, I never once guessed,' she said simply; 'nor did Charles, nor
did anybody as far as I know.'

'Well, indeed!  Now think it over again, and then look at me, and
say if you can't guess?'

She looked him in the face with an inquiring smile.  'Surely not
because of me?' she said, pausing at the commencement of surprise.

Barnet nodded, and smiled again; but his smile was sadder than hers.

'Because I married Charles?' she asked.

'Yes; solely because you married him on the day I was free to ask
you to marry me.  My wife died four-and-twenty hours before you went
to church with Downe.  The fixing of my journey at that particular
moment was because of her funeral; but once away I knew I should
have no inducement to come back, and took my steps accordingly.'

Her face assumed an aspect of gentle reflection, and she looked up
and down his form with great interest in her eyes.  'I never thought
of it!' she said.  'I knew, of course, that you had once implied
some warmth of feeling towards me, but I concluded that it passed
off.  And I have always been under the impression that your wife was
alive at the time of my marriage.  Was it not stupid of me!--But you
will have some tea or something?  I have never dined late, you know,
since my husband's death.  I have got into the way of making a
regular meal of tea.  You will have some tea with me, will you not?'

The travelled man assented quite readily, and tea was brought in.
They sat and chatted over the meal, regardless of the flying hour.
'Well, well!' said Barnet presently, as for the first time he
leisurely surveyed the room; 'how like it all is, and yet how
different!  Just where your piano stands was a board on a couple of
trestles, bearing the patterns of wall-papers, when I was last here.
I was choosing them--standing in this way, as it might be.  Then my
servant came in at the door, and handed me a note, so.  It was from
Downe, and announced that you were just going to be married to him.
I chose no more wall-papers--tore up all those I had selected, and
left the house.  I never entered it again till now.'

'Ah, at last I understand it all,' she murmured.

They had both risen and gone to the fireplace.  The mantel came
almost on a level with her shoulder, which gently rested against it,
and Barnet laid his hand upon the shelf close beside her shoulder.
'Lucy,' he said, 'better late than never.  Will you marry me now?'

She started back, and the surprise which was so obvious in her
wrought even greater surprise in him that it should be so.  It was
difficult to believe that she had been quite blind to the situation,
and yet all reason and common sense went to prove that she was not
acting.

'You take me quite unawares by such a question!' she said, with a
forced laugh of uneasiness.  It was the first time she had shown any
embarrassment at all.  'Why,' she added, 'I couldn't marry you for
the world.'

'Not after all this!  Why not?'

'It is--I would--I really think I may say it--I would upon the whole
rather marry you, Mr. Barnet, than any other man I have ever met, if
I ever dreamed of marriage again.  But I don't dream of it--it is
quite out of my thoughts; I have not the least intention of marrying
again.'

'But--on my account--couldn't you alter your plans a little?  Come!'

'Dear Mr. Barnet,' she said with a little flutter, 'I would on your
account if on anybody's in existence.  But you don't know in the
least what it is you are asking--such an impracticable thing--I
won't say ridiculous, of course, because I see that you are really
in earnest, and earnestness is never ridiculous to my mind.'

'Well, yes,' said Barnet more slowly, dropping her hand, which he
had taken at the moment of pleading, 'I am in earnest.  The resolve,
two months ago, at the Cape, to come back once more was, it is true,
rather sudden, and as I see now, not well considered.  But I am in
earnest in asking.'

'And I in declining.  With all good feeling and all kindness, let me
say that I am quite opposed to the idea of marrying a second time.'

'Well, no harm has been done,' he answered, with the same subdued
and tender humorousness that he had shown on such occasions in early
life.  'If you really won't accept me, I must put up with it, I
suppose.'  His eye fell on the clock as he spoke.  'Had you any
notion that it was so late?' he asked.  'How absorbed I have been!'

She accompanied him to the hall, helped him to put on his overcoat,
and let him out of the house herself.

'Good-night,' said Barnet, on the doorstep, as the lamp shone in his
face.  'You are not offended with me?'

'Certainly not.  Nor you with me?'

'I'll consider whether I am or not,' he pleasantly replied.  'Good-
night.'

She watched him safely through the gate; and when his footsteps had
died away upon the road, closed the door softly and returned to the
room.  Here the modest widow long pondered his speeches, with eyes
dropped to an unusually low level.  Barnet's urbanity under the blow
of her refusal greatly impressed her.  After having his long period
of probation rendered useless by her decision, he had shown no
anger, and had philosophically taken her words as if he deserved no
better ones.  It was very gentlemanly of him, certainly; it was more
than gentlemanly; it was heroic and grand.  The more she meditated,
the more she questioned the virtue of her conduct in checking him so
peremptorily; and went to her bedroom in a mood of dissatisfaction.
On looking in the glass she was reminded that there was not so much
remaining of her former beauty as to make his frank declaration an
impulsive natural homage to her cheeks and eyes; it must undoubtedly
have arisen from an old staunch feeling of his, deserving tenderest
consideration.  She recalled to her mind with much pleasure that he
had told her he was staying at the Black-Bull Hotel; so that if,
after waiting a day or two, he should not, in his modesty, call
again, she might then send him a nice little note.  To alter her
views for the present was far from her intention; but she would
allow herself to be induced to reconsider the case, as any generous
woman ought to do.

The morrow came and passed, and Mr. Barnet did not drop in.  At
every knock, light youthful hues flew across her cheek; and she was
abstracted in the presence of her other visitors.  In the evening
she walked about the house, not knowing what to do with herself; the
conditions of existence seemed totally different from those which
ruled only four-and-twenty short hours ago.  What had been at first
a tantalizing elusive sentiment was getting acclimatized within her
as a definite hope, and her person was so informed by that emotion
that she might almost have stood as its emblematical representative
by the time the clock struck ten.  In short, an interest in Barnet
precisely resembling that of her early youth led her present heart
to belie her yesterday's words to him, and she longed to see him
again.

The next day she walked out early, thinking she might meet him in
the street.  The growing beauty of her romance absorbed her, and she
went from the street to the fields, and from the fields to the
shore, without any consciousness of distance, till reminded by her
weariness that she could go no further.  He had nowhere appeared.
In the evening she took a step which under the circumstances seemed
justifiable; she wrote a note to him at the hotel, inviting him to
tea with her at six precisely, and signing her note 'Lucy.'

In a quarter of an hour the messenger came back.  Mr. Barnet had
left the hotel early in the morning of the day before, but he had
stated that he would probably return in the course of the week.

The note was sent back, to be given to him immediately on his
arrival.

There was no sign from the inn that this desired event had occurred,
either on the next day or the day following.  On both nights she had
been restless, and had scarcely slept half-an-hour.

On the Saturday, putting off all diffidence, Lucy went herself to
the Black-Bull, and questioned the staff closely.

Mr. Barnet had cursorily remarked when leaving that he might return
on the Thursday or Friday, but they were directed not to reserve a
room for him unless he should write.

He had left no address.

Lucy sorrowfully took back her note went home, and resolved to wait.

She did wait--years and years--but Barnet never reappeared.

April 1880.




INTERLOPERS AT THE KNAP




CHAPTER I



The north road from Casterbridge is tedious and lonely, especially
in winter-time.  Along a part of its course it connects with Long-
Ash Lane, a monotonous track without a village or hamlet for many
miles, and with very seldom a turning.  Unapprized wayfarers who are
too old, or too young, or in other respects too weak for the
distance to be traversed, but who, nevertheless, have to walk it,
say, as they look wistfully ahead, 'Once at the top of that hill,
and I must surely see the end of Long-Ash Lane!'  But they reach the
hilltop, and Long-Ash Lane stretches in front as mercilessly as
before.

Some few years ago a certain farmer was riding through this lane in
the gloom of a winter evening.  The farmer's friend, a dairyman, was
riding beside him.  A few paces in the rear rode the farmer's man.
All three were well horsed on strong, round-barrelled cobs; and to
be well horsed was to be in better spirits about Long-Ash Lane than
poor pedestrians could attain to during its passage.

But the farmer did not talk much to his friend as he rode along.
The enterprise which had brought him there filled his mind; for in
truth it was important.  Not altogether so important was it,
perhaps, when estimated by its value to society at large; but if the
true measure of a deed be proportionate to the space it occupies in
the heart of him who undertakes it, Farmer Charles Darton's business
to-night could hold its own with the business of kings.

He was a large farmer.  His turnover, as it is called, was probably
thirty thousand pounds a year.  He had a great many draught horses,
a great many milch cows, and of sheep a multitude.  This comfortable
position was, however, none of his own making.  It had been created
by his father, a man of a very different stamp from the present
representative of the line.

Darton, the father, had been a one-idea'd character, with a
buttoned-up pocket and a chink-like eye brimming with commercial
subtlety.  In Darton the son, this trade subtlety had become
transmuted into emotional, and the harshness had disappeared; he
would have been called a sad man but for his constant care not to
divide himself from lively friends by piping notes out of harmony
with theirs.  Contemplative, he allowed his mind to be a quiet
meeting-place for memories and hopes.  So that, naturally enough,
since succeeding to the agricultural calling, and up to his present
age of thirty-two, he had neither advanced nor receded as a
capitalist--a stationary result which did not agitate one of his
unambitious, unstrategic nature, since he had all that he desired.
The motive of his expedition tonight showed the same absence of
anxious regard for Number One.

The party rode on in the slow, safe trot proper to night-time and
bad roads, Farmer Darton's head jigging rather unromantically up and
down against the sky, and his motions being repeated with bolder
emphasis by his friend Japheth Johns; while those of the latter were
travestied in jerks still less softened by art in the person of the
lad who attended them.  A pair of whitish objects hung one on each
side of the latter, bumping against him at each step, and still
further spoiling the grace of his seat.  On close inspection they
might have been perceived to be open rush baskets--one containing a
turkey, and the other some bottles of wine.

'D'ye feel ye can meet your fate like a man, neighbour Darton?'
asked Johns, breaking a silence which had lasted while five-and-
twenty hedgerow trees had glided by.

Mr. Darton with a half-laugh murmured, 'Ay--call it my fate!
Hanging and wiving go by destiny.'  And then they were silent again.

The darkness thickened rapidly, at intervals shutting down on the
land in a perceptible flap, like the wave of a wing.  The customary
close of day was accelerated by a simultaneous blurring of the air.
With the fall of night had come a mist just damp enough to
incommode, but not sufficient to saturate them.  Countrymen as they
were--born, as may be said, with only an open door between them and
the four seasons--they regarded the mist but as an added
obscuration, and ignored its humid quality.

They were travelling in a direction that was enlivened by no modern
current of traffic, the place of Darton's pilgrimage being an old-
fashioned village--one of the Hintocks (several villages of that
name, with a distinctive prefix or affix, lying thereabout)--where
the people make the best cider and cider-wine in all Wessex, and
where the dunghills smell of pomace instead of stable refuse as
elsewhere.  The lane was sometimes so narrow that the brambles of
the hedge, which hung forward like anglers' rods over a stream,
scratched their hats and curry-combed their whiskers as they passed.
Yet this neglected lane had been a highway to Queen Elizabeth's
subjects and the cavalcades of the past.  Its day was over now, and
its history as a national artery done for ever.

'Why I have decided to marry her,' resumed Darton (in a measured
musical voice of confidence which revealed a good deal of his
composition), as he glanced round to see that the lad was not too
near, 'is not only that I like her, but that I can do no better,
even from a fairly practical point of view.  That I might ha' looked
higher is possibly true, though it is really all nonsense.  I have
had experience enough in looking above me.  "No more superior women
for me," said I--you know when.  Sally is a comely, independent,
simple character, with no make-up about her, who'll think me as much
a superior to her as I used to think--you know who I mean--was to
me.'

'Ay,' said Johns.  'However, I shouldn't call Sally Hall simple.
Primary, because no Sally is; secondary, because if some could be,
this one wouldn't.  'Tis a wrong denomination to apply to a woman,
Charles, and affects me, as your best man, like cold water.  'Tis
like recommending a stage play by saying there's neither murder,
villainy, nor harm of any sort in it, when that's what you've paid
your half-crown to see.'

'Well; may your opinion do you good.  Mine's a different one.'  And
turning the conversation from the philosophical to the practical,
Darton expressed a hope that the said Sally had received what he'd
sent on by the carrier that day.

Johns wanted to know what that was.

'It is a dress,' said Darton.  'Not exactly a wedding-dress; though
she may use it as one if she likes.  It is rather serviceable than
showy--suitable for the winter weather.'

'Good,' said Johns.  'Serviceable is a wise word in a bridegroom.  I
commend ye, Charles.'

'For,' said Darton, 'why should a woman dress up like a rope-dancer
because she's going to do the most solemn deed of her life except
dying?'

'Faith, why?  But she will, because she will, I suppose,' said
Dairyman Johns.

'H'm,' said Darton.

The lane they followed had been nearly straight for several miles,
but it now took a turn, and winding uncertainly for some distance
forked into two.  By night country roads are apt to reveal ungainly
qualities which pass without observation during day; and though
Darton had travelled this way before, he had not done so frequently,
Sally having been wooed at the house of a relative near his own.  He
never remembered seeing at this spot a pair of alternative ways
looking so equally probable as these two did now.  Johns rode on a
few steps.

'Don't be out of heart, sonny,' he cried.  'Here's a handpost.
Enoch--come and climm this post, and tell us the way.'

The lad dismounted, and jumped into the hedge where the post stood
under a tree.

'Unstrap the baskets, or you'll smash up that wine!' cried Darton,
as the young man began spasmodically to climb the post, baskets and
all.

'Was there ever less head in a brainless world?' said Johns.  'Here,
simple Nocky, I'll do it.'  He leapt off, and with much puffing
climbed the post, striking a match when he reached the top, and
moving the light along the arm, the lad standing and gazing at the
spectacle.

'I have faced tantalization these twenty years with a temper as mild
as milk!' said Japheth; 'but such things as this don't come short of
devilry!'  And flinging the match away, he slipped down to the
ground.

'What's the matter?' asked Darton.

'Not a letter, sacred or heathen--not so much as would tell us the
way to the great fireplace--ever I should sin to say it!  Either the
moss and mildew have eat away the words, or we have arrived in a
land where the natyves have lost the art o' writing, and should ha'
brought our compass like Christopher Columbus.'

'Let us take the straightest road,' said Darton placidly; 'I shan't
be sorry to get there--'tis a tiresome ride.  I would have driven if
I had known.'

'Nor I neither, sir,' said Enoch.  'These straps plough my shoulder
like a zull.  If 'tis much further to your lady's home, Maister
Darton, I shall ask to be let carry half of these good things in my
innerds--hee, hee!'

'Don't you be such a reforming radical, Enoch,' said Johns sternly.
'Here, I'll take the turkey.'

This being done, they went forward by the right-hand lane, which
ascended a hill, the left winding away under a plantation.  The pit-
a-pat of their horses' hoofs lessened up the slope; and the ironical
directing-post stood in solitude as before, holding out its blank
arms to the raw breeze, which brought a snore from the wood as if
Skrymir the Giant were sleeping there.



CHAPTER II



Three miles to the left of the travellers, along the road they had
not followed, rose an old house with mullioned windows of Ham-hill
stone, and chimneys of lavish solidity.  It stood at the top of a
slope beside King's-Hintock village-street; and immediately in front
of it grew a large sycamore-tree, whose bared roots formed a
convenient staircase from the road below to the front door of the
dwelling.  Its situation gave the house what little distinctive name
it possessed, namely, 'The Knap.'  Some forty yards off a brook
dribbled past, which, for its size, made a great deal of noise.  At
the back was a dairy barton, accessible for vehicles and live-stock
by a side 'drong.'  Thus much only of the character of the homestead
could be divined out of doors at this shady evening-time.

But within there was plenty of light to see by, as plenty was
construed at Hintock.  Beside a Tudor fireplace, whose moulded four-
centred arch was nearly hidden by a figured blue-cloth blower, were
seated two women--mother and daughter--Mrs. Hall, and Sarah, or
Sally; for this was a part of the world where the latter
modification had not as yet been effaced as a vulgarity by the march
of intellect.  The owner of the name was the young woman by whose
means Mr. Darton proposed to put an end to his bachelor condition on
the approaching day.

The mother's bereavement had been so long ago as not to leave much
mark of its occurrence upon her now, either in face or clothes.  She
had resumed the mob-cap of her early married life, enlivening its
whiteness by a few rose-du-Barry ribbons.  Sally required no such
aids to pinkness.  Roseate good-nature lit up her gaze; her features
showed curves of decision and judgment; and she might have been
regarded without much mistake as a warm-hearted, quick-spirited,
handsome girl.

She did most of the talking, her mother listening with a half-absent
air, as she picked up fragments of red-hot wood ember with the
tongs, and piled them upon the brands.  But the number of speeches
that passed was very small in proportion to the meanings exchanged.
Long experience together often enabled them to see the course of
thought in each other's minds without a word being spoken.  Behind
them, in the centre of the room, the table was spread for supper,
certain whiffs of air laden with fat vapours, which ever and anon
entered from the kitchen, denoting its preparation there.

'The new gown he was going to send you stays about on the way like
himself,' Sally's mother was saying.

'Yes, not finished, I daresay,' cried Sally independently.  'Lord, I
shouldn't be amazed if it didn't come at all!  Young men make such
kind promises when they are near you, and forget 'em when they go
away.  But he doesn't intend it as a wedding-gown--he gives it to me
merely as a gown to wear when I like--a travelling-dress is what it
would be called by some.  Come rathe or come late it don't much
matter, as I have a dress of my own to fall back upon.  But what
time is it?'

She went to the family clock and opened the glass, for the hour was
not otherwise discernible by night, and indeed at all times was
rather a thing to be investigated than beheld, so much more wall
than window was there in the apartment.  'It is nearly eight,' said
she.

'Eight o'clock, and neither dress nor man,' said Mrs. Hall.

'Mother, if you think to tantalize me by talking like that, you are
much mistaken!  Let him be as late as he will--or stay away
altogether--I don't care,' said Sally.  But a tender, minute quaver
in the negation showed that there was something forced in that
statement.

Mrs. Hall perceived it, and drily observed that she was not so sure
about Sally not caring.  'But perhaps you don't care so much as I
do, after all,' she said.  'For I see what you don't, that it is a
good and flourishing match for you; a very honourable offer in Mr.
Darton.  And I think I see a kind husband in him.  So pray God
'twill go smooth, and wind up well.'

Sally would not listen to misgivings.  Of course it would go
smoothly, she asserted.  'How you are up and down, mother!' she went
on.  'At this moment, whatever hinders him, we are not so anxious to
see him as he is to be here, and his thought runs on before him, and
settles down upon us like the star in the east.  Hark!' she
exclaimed, with a breath of relief, her eyes sparkling.  'I heard
something.  Yes--here they are!'

The next moment her mother's slower ear also distinguished the
familiar reverberation occasioned by footsteps clambering up the
roots of the sycamore.

'Yes it sounds like them at last,' she said.  'Well, it is not so
very late after all, considering the distance.'

The footfall ceased, and they arose, expecting a knock.  They began
to think it might have been, after all, some neighbouring villager
under Bacchic influence, giving the centre of the road a wide berth,
when their doubts were dispelled by the new-comer's entry into the
passage.  The door of the room was gently opened, and there
appeared, not the pair of travellers with whom we have already made
acquaintance, but a pale-faced man in the garb of extreme poverty--
almost in rags.

'O, it's a tramp--gracious me!' said Sally, starting back.

His cheeks and eye-orbits were deep concaves--rather, it might be,
from natural weakness of constitution than irregular living, though
there were indications that he had led no careful life.  He gazed at
the two women fixedly for a moment:  then with an abashed,
humiliated demeanour, dropped his glance to the floor, and sank into
a chair without uttering a word.

Sally was in advance of her mother, who had remained standing by the
fire.  She now tried to discern the visitor across the candles.

'Why--mother,' said Sally faintly, turning back to Mrs. Hall.  'It
is Phil, from Australia!'

Mrs. Hall started, and grew pale, and a fit of coughing seized the
man with the ragged clothes.  'To come home like this!' she said.
'O, Philip--are you ill?'

'No, no, mother,' replied he impatiently, as soon as he could speak.

'But for God's sake how do you come here--and just now too?'

'Well, I am here,' said the man.  'How it is I hardly know.  I've
come home, mother, because I was driven to it.  Things were against
me out there, and went from bad to worse.'

'Then why didn't you let us know?--you've not writ a line for the
last two or three years.'

The son admitted sadly that he had not.  He said that he had hoped
and thought he might fetch up again, and be able to send good news.
Then he had been obliged to abandon that hope, and had finally come
home from sheer necessity--previously to making a new start.  'Yes,
things are very bad with me,' he repeated, perceiving their
commiserating glances at his clothes.

They brought him nearer the fire, took his hat from his thin hand,
which was so small and smooth as to show that his attempts to fetch
up again had not been in a manual direction.  His mother resumed her
inquiries, and dubiously asked if he had chosen to come that
particular night for any special reason.

For no reason, he told her.  His arrival had been quite at random.
Then Philip Hall looked round the room, and saw for the first time
that the table was laid somewhat luxuriously, and for a larger
number than themselves; and that an air of festivity pervaded their
dress.  He asked quickly what was going on.

'Sally is going to be married in a day or two,' replied the mother;
and she explained how Mr. Darton, Sally's intended husband, was
coming there that night with the groomsman, Mr. Johns, and other
details.  'We thought it must be their step when we heard you,' said
Mrs. Hall.

The needy wanderer looked again on the floor.  'I see--I see,' he
murmured.  'Why, indeed, should I have come to-night?  Such folk as
I are not wanted here at these times, naturally.  And I have no
business here--spoiling other people's happiness.'

'Phil,' said his mother, with a tear in her eye, but with a thinness
of lip and severity of manner which were presumably not more than
past events justified; 'since you speak like that to me, I'll speak
honestly to you.  For these three years you have taken no thought
for us.  You left home with a good supply of money, and strength and
education, and you ought to have made good use of it all.  But you
come back like a beggar; and that you come in a very awkward time
for us cannot be denied.  Your return to-night may do us much harm.
But mind--you are welcome to this home as long as it is mine.  I
don't wish to turn you adrift.  We will make the best of a bad job;
and I hope you are not seriously ill?'

'O no.  I have only this infernal cough.'

She looked at him anxiously.  'I think you had better go to bed at
once,' she said.

'Well--I shall be out of the way there,' said the son wearily.
'Having ruined myself, don't let me ruin you by being seen in these
togs, for Heaven's sake.  Who do you say Sally is going to be
married to--a Farmer Darton?'

'Yes--a gentleman-farmer--quite a wealthy man.  Far better in
station than she could have expected.  It is a good thing,
altogether.'

'Well done, little Sal!' said her brother, brightening and looking
up at her with a smile.  'I ought to have written; but perhaps I
have thought of you all the more.  But let me get out of sight.  I
would rather go and jump into the river than be seen here.  But have
you anything I can drink?  I am confoundedly thirsty with my long
tramp.'

'Yes, yes, we will bring something upstairs to you,' said Sally,
with grief in her face.

'Ay, that will do nicely.  But, Sally and mother--'  He stopped, and
they waited.  'Mother, I have not told you all,' he resumed slowly,
still looking on the floor between his knees.  'Sad as what you see
of me is, there's worse behind.'

His mother gazed upon him in grieved suspense, and Sally went and
leant upon the bureau, listening for every sound, and sighing.
Suddenly she turned round, saying, 'Let them come, I don't care!
Philip, tell the worst, and take your time.'

'Well, then,' said the unhappy Phil, 'I am not the only one in this
mess.  Would to Heaven I were!  But--'

'O, Phil!'

'I have a wife as destitute as I.'

'A wife?' said his mother.

'Unhappily!'

'A wife!  Yes, that is the way with sons!'

'And besides--' said he.

'Besides!  O, Philip, surely--'

'I have two little children.'

'Wife and children!' whispered Mrs. Hall, sinking down confounded.

'Poor little things!' said Sally involuntarily.

His mother turned again to him.  'I suppose these helpless beings
are left in Australia?'

'No.  They are in England.'

'Well, I can only hope you've left them in a respectable place.'

'I have not left them at all.  They are here--within a few yards of
us.  In short, they are in the stable.'

'Where?'

'In the stable.  I did not like to bring them indoors till I had
seen you, mother, and broken the bad news a bit to you.  They were
very tired, and are resting out there on some straw.'

Mrs. Hall's fortitude visibly broke down.  She had been brought up
not without refinement, and was even more moved by such a collapse
of genteel aims as this than a substantial dairyman's widow would in
ordinary have been moved.  'Well, it must be borne,' she said, in a
low voice, with her hands tightly joined.  'A starving son, a
starving wife, starving children!  Let it be.  But why is this come
to us now, to-day, to-night?  Could no other misfortune happen to
helpless women than this, which will quite upset my poor girl's
chance of a happy life?  Why have you done us this wrong, Philip?
What respectable man will come here, and marry open-eyed into a
family of vagabonds?'

'Nonsense, mother!' said Sally vehemently, while her face flushed.
'Charley isn't the man to desert me.  But if he should be, and won't
marry me because Phil's come, let him go and marry elsewhere.  I
won't be ashamed of my own flesh and blood for any man in England--
not I!'  And then Sally turned away and burst into tears.

'Wait till you are twenty years older and you will tell a different
tale,' replied her mother.

The son stood up.  'Mother,' he said bitterly, 'as I have come, so I
will go.  All I ask of you is that you will allow me and mine to lie
in your stable to-night.  I give you my word that we'll be gone by
break of day, and trouble you no further!'

Mrs. Hall, the mother, changed at that.  'O no,' she answered
hastily; 'never shall it be said that I sent any of my own family
from my door.  Bring 'em in, Philip, or take me out to them.'

'We will put 'em all into the large bedroom,' said Sally,
brightening, 'and make up a large fire.  Let's go and help them in,
and call Rebekah.'  (Rebekah was the woman who assisted at the dairy
and housework; she lived in a cottage hard by with her husband, who
attended to the cows.)

Sally went to fetch a lantern from the back-kitchen, but her brother
said, 'You won't want a light.  I lit the lantern that was hanging
there.'

'What must we call your wife?' asked Mrs. Hall.

'Helena,' said Philip.

With shawls over their heads they proceeded towards the back door.

'One minute before you go,' interrupted Philip.  'I--I haven't
confessed all.'

'Then Heaven help us!' said Mrs. Hall, pushing to the door and
clasping her hands in calm despair.

'We passed through Evershead as we came,' he continued, 'and I just
looked in at the "Sow-and-Acorn" to see if old Mike still kept on
there as usual.  The carrier had come in from Sherton Abbas at that
moment, and guessing that I was bound for this place--for I think he
knew me--he asked me to bring on a dressmaker's parcel for Sally
that was marked "immediate."  My wife had walked on with the
children.  'Twas a flimsy parcel, and the paper was torn, and I
found on looking at it that it was a thick warm gown.  I didn't wish
you to see poor Helena in a shabby state.  I was ashamed that you
should--'twas not what she was born to.  I untied the parcel in the
road, took it on to her where she was waiting in the Lower Barn, and
told her I had managed to get it for her, and that she was to ask no
question.  She, poor thing, must have supposed I obtained it on
trust, through having reached a place where I was known, for she put
it on gladly enough.  She has it on now.  Sally has other gowns, I
daresay.'

Sally looked at her mother, speechless.

'You have others, I daresay!' repeated Phil, with a sick man's
impatience.  'I thought to myself, "Better Sally cry than Helena
freeze."  Well, is the dress of great consequence?  'Twas nothing
very ornamental, as far as I could see.'

'No--no; not of consequence,' returned Sally sadly, adding in a
gentle voice, 'You will not mind if I lend her another instead of
that one, will you?'

Philip's agitation at the confession had brought on another attack
of the cough, which seemed to shake him to pieces.  He was so
obviously unfit to sit in a chair that they helped him upstairs at
once; and having hastily given him a cordial and kindled the bedroom
fire, they descended to fetch their unhappy new relations.



CHAPTER III



It was with strange feelings that the girl and her mother, lately so
cheerful, passed out of the back door into the open air of the
barton, laden with hay scents and the herby breath of cows.  A fine
sleet had begun to fall, and they trotted across the yard quickly.
The stable-door was open; a light shone from it--from the lantern
which always hung there, and which Philip had lighted, as he said.
Softly nearing the door, Mrs. Hall pronounced the name 'Helena!'

There was no answer for the moment.  Looking in she was taken by
surprise.  Two people appeared before her.  For one, instead of the
drabbish woman she had expected, Mrs. Hall saw a pale, dark-eyed,
ladylike creature, whose personality ruled her attire rather than
was ruled by it.  She was in a new and handsome gown, of course, and
an old bonnet.  She was standing up, agitated; her hand was held by
her companion--none else than Sally's affianced, Farmer Charles
Darton, upon whose fine figure the pale stranger's eyes were fixed,
as his were fixed upon her.  His other hand held the rein of his
horse, which was standing saddled as if just led in.

At sight of Mrs. Hall they both turned, looking at her in a way
neither quite conscious nor unconscious, and without seeming to
recollect that words were necessary as a solution to the scene.  In
another moment Sally entered also, when Mr. Darton dropped his
companion's hand, led the horse aside, and came to greet his
betrothed and Mrs. Hall.

'Ah!' he said, smiling--with something like forced composure--'this
is a roundabout way of arriving, you will say, my dear Mrs. Hall.
But we lost our way, which made us late.  I saw a light here, and
led in my horse at once--my friend Johns and my man have gone back
to the little inn with theirs, not to crowd you too much.  No sooner
had I entered than I saw that this lady had taken temporary shelter
here--and found I was intruding.'

'She is my daughter-in-law,' said Mrs. Hall calmly.  'My son, too,
is in the house, but he has gone to bed unwell.'

Sally had stood staring wonderingly at the scene until this moment,
hardly recognizing Darton's shake of the hand.  The spell that bound
her was broken by her perceiving the two little children seated on a
heap of hay.  She suddenly went forward, spoke to them, and took one
on her arm and the other in her hand.

'And two children?' said Mr. Darton, showing thus that he had not
been there long enough as yet to understand the situation.

'My grandchildren,' said Mrs. Hall, with as much affected ease as
before.

Philip Hall's wife, in spite of this interruption to her first
rencounter, seemed scarcely so much affected by it as to feel any
one's presence in addition to Mr. Darton's.  However, arousing
herself by a quick reflection, she threw a sudden critical glance of
her sad eyes upon Mrs. Hall; and, apparently finding her
satisfactory, advanced to her in a meek initiative.  Then Sally and
the stranger spoke some friendly words to each other, and Sally went
on with the children into the house.  Mrs. Hall and Helena followed,
and Mr. Darton followed these, looking at Helena's dress and
outline, and listening to her voice like a man in a dream.

By the time the others reached the house Sally had already gone
upstairs with the tired children.  She rapped against the wall for
Rebekah to come in and help to attend to them, Rebekah's house being
a little 'spit-and-dab' cabin leaning against the substantial stone-
work of Mrs. Hall's taller erection.  When she came a bed was made
up for the little ones, and some supper given to them.  On
descending the stairs after seeing this done Sally went to the
sitting-room.  Young Mrs. Hall entered it just in advance of her,
having in the interim retired with her mother-in-law to take off her
bonnet, and otherwise make herself presentable.  Hence it was
evident that no further communication could have passed between her
and Mr. Darton since their brief interview in the stable.

Mr. Japheth Johns now opportunely arrived, and broke up the
restraint of the company, after a few orthodox meteorological
commentaries had passed between him and Mrs. Hall by way of
introduction.  They at once sat down to supper, the present of wine
and turkey not being produced for consumption to-night, lest the
premature display of those gifts should seem to throw doubt on Mrs.
Hall's capacities as a provider.

'Drink hearty, Mr. Johns--drink hearty,' said that matron
magnanimously.  'Such as it is there's plenty of.  But perhaps
cider-wine is not to your taste?--though there's body in it.'

'Quite the contrairy, ma'am--quite the contrairy,' said the
dairyman.  'For though I inherit the malt-liquor principle from my
father, I am a cider-drinker on my mother's side.  She came from
these parts, you know.  And there's this to be said for't--'tis a
more peaceful liquor, and don't lie about a man like your hotter
drinks.  With care, one may live on it a twelvemonth without
knocking down a neighbour, or getting a black eye from an old
acquaintance.'

The general conversation thus begun was continued briskly, though it
was in the main restricted to Mrs. Hall and Japheth, who in truth
required but little help from anybody.  There being slight call upon
Sally's tongue, she had ample leisure to do what her heart most
desired, namely, watch her intended husband and her sister-in-law
with a view of elucidating the strange momentary scene in which her
mother and herself had surprised them in the stable.  If that scene
meant anything, it meant, at least, that they had met before.  That
there had been no time for explanations Sally could see, for their
manner was still one of suppressed amazement at each other's
presence there.  Darton's eyes, too, fell continually on the gown
worn by Helena as if this were an added riddle to his perplexity;
though to Sally it was the one feature in the case which was no
mystery.  He seemed to feel that fate had impishly changed his vis-
a-vis in the lover's jig he was about to foot; that while the gown
had been expected to enclose a Sally, a Helena's face looked out
from the bodice; that some long-lost hand met his own from the
sleeves.

Sally could see that whatever Helena might know of Darton, she knew
nothing of how the dress entered into his embarrassment.  And at
moments the young girl would have persuaded herself that Darton's
looks at her sister-in-law were entirely the fruit of the clothes
query.  But surely at other times a more extensive range of
speculation and sentiment was expressed by her lover's eye than that
which the changed dress would account for.

Sally's independence made her one of the least jealous of women.
But there was something in the relations of these two visitors which
ought to be explained.

Japheth Johns continued to converse in his well-known style,
interspersing his talk with some private reflections on the position
of Darton and Sally, which, though the sparkle in his eye showed
them to be highly entertaining to himself, were apparently not quite
communicable to the company.  At last he withdrew for the night,
going off to the roadside inn half-a-mile back, whither Darton
promised to follow him in a few minutes.

Half-an-hour passed, and then Mr. Darton also rose to leave, Sally
and her sister-in-law simultaneously wishing him good-night as they
retired upstairs to their rooms.  But on his arriving at the front
door with Mrs. Hall a sharp shower of rain began to come down, when
the widow suggested that he should return to the fire-side till the
storm ceased.

Darton accepted her proposal, but insisted that, as it was getting
late, and she was obviously tired, she should not sit up on his
account, since he could let himself out of the house, and would
quite enjoy smoking a pipe by the hearth alone.  Mrs. Hall assented;
and Darton was left by himself.  He spread his knees to the brands,
lit up his tobacco as he had said, and sat gazing into the fire, and
at the notches of the chimney-crook which hung above.

An occasional drop of rain rolled down the chimney with a hiss, and
still he smoked on; but not like a man whose mind was at rest.  In
the long run, however, despite his meditations, early hours afield
and a long ride in the open air produced their natural result.  He
began to doze.

How long he remained in this half-unconscious state he did not know.
He suddenly opened his eyes.  The back-brand had burnt itself in
two, and ceased to flame; the light which he had placed on the
mantelpiece had nearly gone out.  But in spite of these deficiencies
there was a light in the apartment, and it came from elsewhere.
Turning his head he saw Philip Hall's wife standing at the entrance
of the room with a bed-candle in one hand, a small brass tea-kettle
in the other, and HIS gown, as it certainly seemed, still upon her.

'Helena!' said Darton, starting up.

Her countenance expressed dismay, and her first words were an
apology.  'I--did not know you were here, Mr. Darton,' she said,
while a blush flashed to her cheek.  'I thought every one had
retired--I was coming to make a little water boil; my husband seems
to be worse.  But perhaps the kitchen fire can be lighted up again.'

'Don't go on my account.  By all means put it on here as you
intended,' said Darton.  'Allow me to help you.'  He went forward to
take the kettle from her hand, but she did not allow him, and placed
it on the fire herself.

They stood some way apart, one on each side of the fireplace,
waiting till the water should boil, the candle on the mantel between
them, and Helena with her eyes on the kettle.  Darton was the first
to break the silence.  'Shall I call Sally?' he said.

'O no,' she quickly returned.  'We have given trouble enough
already.  We have no right here.  But we are the sport of fate, and
were obliged to come.'

'No right here!' said he in surprise.

'None.  I can't explain it now,' answered Helena.  'This kettle is
very slow.'

There was another pause; the proverbial dilatoriness of watched pots
was never more clearly exemplified.

Helena's face was of that sort which seems to ask for assistance
without the owner's knowledge--the very antipodes of Sally's, which
was self-reliance expressed.  Darton's eyes travelled from the
kettle to Helena's face, then back to the kettle, then to the face
for rather a longer time.  'So I am not to know anything of the
mystery that has distracted me all the evening?' he said.  'How is
it that a woman, who refused me because (as I supposed) my position
was not good enough for her taste, is found to be the wife of a man
who certainly seems to be worse off than I?'

'He had the prior claim,' said she.

'What! you knew him at that time?'

'Yes, yes!  Please say no more,' she implored.

'Whatever my errors, I have paid for them during the last five
years!'

The heart of Darton was subject to sudden overflowings.  He was kind
to a fault.  'I am sorry from my soul,' he said, involuntarily
approaching her.  Helena withdrew a step or two, at which he became
conscious of his movement, and quickly took his former place.  Here
he stood without speaking, and the little kettle began to sing.

'Well, you might have been my wife if you had chosen,' he said at
last.  'But that's all past and gone.  However, if you are in any
trouble or poverty I shall be glad to be of service, and as your
relation by marriage I shall have a right to be.  Does your uncle
know of your distress?'

'My uncle is dead.  He left me without a farthing.  And now we have
two children to maintain.'

'What, left you nothing?  How could he be so cruel as that?'

'I disgraced myself in his eyes.'

'Now,' said Darton earnestly, 'let me take care of the children, at
least while you are so unsettled.  YOU belong to another, so I
cannot take care of you.'

'Yes you can,' said a voice; and suddenly a third figure stood
beside them.  It was Sally.  'You can, since you seem to wish to?'
she repeated.  'She no longer belongs to another . . . My poor
brother is dead!'

Her face was red, her eyes sparkled, and all the woman came to the
front.  'I have heard it!' she went on to him passionately.  'You
can protect her now as well as the children!'  She turned then to
her agitated sister-in-law.  'I heard something,' said Sally (in a
gentle murmur, differing much from her previous passionate words),
'and I went into his room.  It must have been the moment you left.
He went off so quickly, and weakly, and it was so unexpected, that I
couldn't leave even to call you.'

Darton was just able to gather from the confused discourse which
followed that, during his sleep by the fire, this brother whom he
had never seen had become worse; and that during Helena's absence
for water the end had unexpectedly come.  The two young women
hastened upstairs, and he was again left alone.


After standing there a short time he went to the front door and
looked out; till, softly closing it behind him, he advanced and
stood under the large sycamore-tree.  The stars were flickering
coldly, and the dampness which had just descended upon the earth in
rain now sent up a chill from it.  Darton was in a strange position,
and he felt it.  The unexpected appearance, in deep poverty, of
Helena--a young lady, daughter of a deceased naval officer, who had
been brought up by her uncle, a solicitor, and had refused Darton in
marriage years ago--the passionate, almost angry demeanour of Sally
at discovering them, the abrupt announcement that Helena was a
widow; all this coming together was a conjuncture difficult to cope
with in a moment, and made him question whether he ought to leave
the house or offer assistance.  But for Sally's manner he would
unhesitatingly have done the latter.

He was still standing under the tree when the door in front of him
opened, and Mrs. Hall came out.  She went round to the garden-gate
at the side without seeing him.  Darton followed her, intending to
speak.

Pausing outside, as if in thought, she proceeded to a spot where the
sun came earliest in spring-time, and where the north wind never
blew; it was where the row of beehives stood under the wall.
Discerning her object, he waited till she had accomplished it.

It was the universal custom thereabout to wake the bees by tapping
at their hives whenever a death occurred in the household, under the
belief that if this were not done the bees themselves would pine
away and perish during the ensuing year.  As soon as an interior
buzzing responded to her tap at the first hive Mrs. Hall went on to
the second, and thus passed down the row.  As soon as she came back
he met her.

'What can I do in this trouble, Mrs. Hall?' he said.

'O--nothing, thank you, nothing,' she said in a tearful voice, now
just perceiving him.  'We have called Rebekah and her husband, and
they will do everything necessary.'  She told him in a few words the
particulars of her son's arrival, broken in health--indeed, at
death's very door, though they did not suspect it--and suggested, as
the result of a conversation between her and her daughter, that the
wedding should be postponed.

'Yes, of course,' said Darton.  'I think now to go straight to the
inn and tell Johns what has happened.'  It was not till after he had
shaken hands with her that he turned hesitatingly and added, 'Will
you tell the mother of his children that, as they are now left
fatherless, I shall be glad to take the eldest of them, if it would
be any convenience to her and to you?'

Mrs. Hall promised that her son's widow should he told of the offer,
and they parted.  He retired down the rooty slope and disappeared in
the direction of the inn, where he informed Johns of the
circumstances.  Meanwhile Mrs. Hall had entered the house, Sally was
downstairs in the sitting-room alone, and her mother explained to
her that Darton had readily assented to the postponement.

'No doubt he has,' said Sally, with sad emphasis.  'It is not put
off for a week, or a month, or a year.  I shall never marry him, and
she will!'



CHAPTER IV



Time passed, and the household on the Knap became again serene under
the composing influences of daily routine.  A desultory, very
desultory correspondence, dragged on between Sally Hall and Darton,
who, not quite knowing how to take her petulant words on the night
of her brother's death, had continued passive thus long.  Helena and
her children remained at the dairy-house, almost of necessity, and
Darton therefore deemed it advisable to stay away.

One day, seven months later on, when Mr. Darton was as usual at his
farm, twenty miles from Hintock, a note reached him from Helena.
She thanked him for his kind offer about her children, which her
mother-in-law had duly communicated, and stated that she would be
glad to accept it as regarded the eldest, the boy.  Helena had, in
truth, good need to do so, for her uncle had left her penniless, and
all application to some relatives in the north had failed.  There
was, besides, as she said, no good school near Hintock to which she
could send the child.

On a fine summer day the boy came.  He was accompanied half-way by
Sally and his mother--to the 'White Horse,' at Chalk Newton--where
he was handed over to Darton's bailiff in a shining spring-cart, who
met them there.

He was entered as a day-scholar at a popular school at Casterbridge,
three or four miles from Darton's, having first been taught by
Darton to ride a forest-pony, on which he cantered to and from the
aforesaid fount of knowledge, and (as Darton hoped) brought away a
promising headful of the same at each diurnal expedition.  The
thoughtful taciturnity into which Darton had latterly fallen was
quite dissipated by the presence of this boy.

When the Christmas holidays came it was arranged that he should
spend them with his mother.  The journey was, for some reason or
other, performed in two stages, as at his coming, except that Darton
in person took the place of the bailiff, and that the boy and
himself rode on horseback.

Reaching the renowned 'White Horse,' Darton inquired if Miss and
young Mrs. Hall were there to meet little Philip (as they had agreed
to be).  He was answered by the appearance of Helena alone at the
door.

'At the last moment Sally would not come,' she faltered.

That meeting practically settled the point towards which these long-
severed persons were converging.  But nothing was broached about it
for some time yet.  Sally Hall had, in fact, imparted the first
decisive motion to events by refusing to accompany Helena.  She soon
gave them a second move by writing the following note


'[Private.]

'DEAR CHARLES,--Living here so long and intimately with Helena, I
have naturally learnt her history, especially that of it which
refers to you.  I am sure she would accept you as a husband at the
proper time, and I think you ought to give her the opportunity.  You
inquire in an old note if I am sorry that I showed temper (which it
WASN'T) that night when I heard you talking to her.  No, Charles, I
am not sorry at all for what I said then.--Yours sincerely, SALLY
HALL.'


Thus set in train, the transfer of Darton's heart back to its
original quarters proceeded by mere lapse of time.  In the following
July, Darton went to his friend Japheth to ask him at last to fulfil
the bridal office which had been in abeyance since the previous
January twelvemonths.

'With all my heart, man o' constancy!' said Dairyman Johns warmly.
'I've lost most of my genteel fair complexion haymaking this hot
weather, 'tis true, but I'll do your business as well as them that
look better.  There be scents and good hair-oil in the world yet,
thank God, and they'll take off the roughest o' my edge.  I'll
compliment her.  "Better late than never, Sally Hall," I'll say.'

'It is not Sally,' said Darton hurriedly.  'It is young Mrs. Hall.'

Japheth's face, as soon as he really comprehended, became a picture
of reproachful dismay.  'Not Sally?' he said.  'Why not Sally?  I
can't believe it!  Young Mrs. Hall!  Well, well--where's your
wisdom?'

Darton shortly explained particulars; but Johns would not be
reconciled.  'She was a woman worth having if ever woman was,' he
cried.  'And now to let her go!'

'But I suppose I can marry where I like,' said Darton.

'H'm,' replied the dairyman, lifting his eyebrows expressively.
'This don't become you, Charles--it really do not.  If I had done
such a thing you would have sworn I was a curst no'thern fool to be
drawn off the scent by such a red-herring doll-oll-oll.'

Farmer Darton responded in such sharp terms to this laconic opinion
that the two friends finally parted in a way they had never parted
before.  Johns was to be no groomsman to Darton after all.  He had
flatly declined.  Darton went off sorry, and even unhappy,
particularly as Japheth was about to leave that side of the county,
so that the words which had divided them were not likely to be
explained away or softened down.

A short time after the interview Darton was united to Helena at a
simple matter-of fact wedding; and she and her little girl joined
the boy who had already grown to look on Darton's house as home.

For some months the farmer experienced an unprecedented happiness
and satisfaction.  There had been a flaw in his life, and it was as
neatly mended as was humanly possible.  But after a season the
stream of events followed less clearly, and there were shades in his
reveries.  Helena was a fragile woman, of little staying power,
physically or morally, and since the time that he had originally
known her--eight or ten years before--she had been severely tried.
She had loved herself out, in short, and was now occasionally given
to moping.  Sometimes she spoke regretfully of the gentilities of
her early life, and instead of comparing her present state with her
condition as the wife of the unlucky Hall, she mused rather on what
it had been before she took the first fatal step of clandestinely
marrying him.  She did not care to please such people as those with
whom she was thrown as a thriving farmer's wife.  She allowed the
pretty trifles of agricultural domesticity to glide by her as sorry
details, and had it not been for the children Darton's house would
have seemed but little brighter than it had been before.

This led to occasional unpleasantness, until Darton sometimes
declared to himself that such endeavours as his to rectify early
deviations of the heart by harking back to the old point mostly
failed of success.  'Perhaps Johns was right,' he would say.  'I
should have gone on with Sally.  Better go with the tide and make
the best of its course than stem it at the risk of a capsize.'  But
he kept these unmelodious thoughts to himself, and was outwardly
considerate and kind.

This somewhat barren tract of his life had extended to less than a
year and a half when his ponderings were cut short by the loss of
the woman they concerned.  When she was in her grave he thought
better of her than when she had been alive; the farm was a worse
place without her than with her, after all.  No woman short of
divine could have gone through such an experience as hers with her
first husband without becoming a little soured.  Her stagnant
sympathies, her sometimes unreasonable manner, had covered a heart
frank and well meaning, and originally hopeful and warm.  She left
him a tiny red infant in white wrappings.  To make life as easy as
possible to this touching object became at once his care.

As this child learnt to walk and talk Darton learnt to see
feasibility in a scheme which pleased him.  Revolving the experiment
which he had hitherto made upon life, he fancied he had gained
wisdom from his mistakes and caution from his miscarriages.

What the scheme was needs no penetration to discover.  Once more he
had opportunity to recast and rectify his ill-wrought situations by
returning to Sally Hall, who still lived quietly on under her
mother's roof at Hintock.  Helena had been a woman to lend pathos
and refinement to a home; Sally was the woman to brighten it.  She
would not, as Helena did, despise the rural simplicities of a
farmer's fireside.  Moreover, she had a pre-eminent qualification
for Darton's household; no other woman could make so desirable a
mother to her brother's two children and Darton's one as Sally--
while Darton, now that Helena had gone, was a more promising husband
for Sally than he had ever been when liable to reminders from an
uncured sentimental wound.

Darton was not a man to act rapidly, and the working out of his
reparative designs might have been delayed for some time.  But there
came a winter evening precisely like the one which had darkened over
that former ride to Hintock, and he asked himself why he should
postpone longer, when the very landscape called for a repetition of
that attempt.

He told his man to saddle the mare, booted and spurred himself with
a younger horseman's nicety, kissed the two youngest children, and
rode off.  To make the journey a complete parallel to the first, he
would fain have had his old acquaintance Japheth Johns with him.
But Johns, alas! was missing.  His removal to the other side of the
county had left unrepaired the breach which had arisen between him
and Darton; and though Darton had forgiven him a hundred times, as
Johns had probably forgiven Darton, the effort of reunion in present
circumstances was one not likely to be made.

He screwed himself up to as cheerful a pitch as he could without his
former crony, and became content with his own thoughts as he rode,
instead of the words of a companion.  The sun went down; the boughs
appeared scratched in like an etching against the sky; old crooked
men with faggots at their backs said 'Good-night, sir,' and Darton
replied 'Good-night' right heartily.

By the time he reached the forking roads it was getting as dark as
it had been on the occasion when Johns climbed the directing-post.
Darton made no mistake this time.  'Nor shall I be able to mistake,
thank Heaven, when I arrive,' he murmured.  It gave him peculiar
satisfaction to think that the proposed marriage, like his first,
was of the nature of setting in order things long awry, and not a
momentary freak of fancy.

Nothing hindered the smoothness of his journey, which seemed not
half its former length.  Though dark, it was only between five and
six o'clock when the bulky chimneys of Mrs. Hall's residence
appeared in view behind the sycamore-tree.  On second thoughts he
retreated and put up at the ale-house as in former time; and when he
had plumed himself before the inn mirror, called for something to
drink, and smoothed out the incipient wrinkles of care, he walked on
to the Knap with a quick step.



CHAPTER V



That evening Sally was making 'pinners' for the milkers, who were
now increased by two, for her mother and herself no longer joined in
milking the cows themselves.  But upon the whole there was little
change in the household economy, and not much in its appearance,
beyond such minor particulars as that the crack over the window,
which had been a hundred years coming, was a trifle wider; that the
beams were a shade blacker; that the influence of modernism had
supplanted the open chimney corner by a grate; that Rebekah, who had
worn a cap when she had plenty of hair, had left it off now she had
scarce any, because it was reported that caps were not fashionable;
and that Sally's face had naturally assumed a more womanly and
experienced cast.

Mrs. Hall was actually lifting coals with the tongs, as she had used
to do.

'Five years ago this very night, if I am not mistaken--' she said,
laying on an ember.

'Not this very night--though 'twas one night this week,' said the
correct Sally.

'Well, 'tis near enough.  Five years ago Mr. Darton came to marry
you, and my poor boy Phil came home to die.'  She sighed.  'Ah,
Sally,' she presently said, 'if you had managed well Mr. Darton
would have had you, Helena or none.'

'Don't be sentimental about that, mother,' begged Sally.  'I didn't
care to manage well in such a case.  Though I liked him, I wasn't so
anxious.  I would never have married the man in the midst of such a
hitch as that was,' she added with decision; 'and I don't think I
would if he were to ask me now.'

'I am not sure about that, unless you have another in your eye.'

'I wouldn't; and I'll tell you why.  I could hardly marry him for
love at this time o' day.  And as we've quite enough to live on if
we give up the dairy to-morrow, I should have no need to marry for
any meaner reason . . . I am quite happy enough as I am, and there's
an end of it.'

Now it was not long after this dialogue that there came a mild rap
at the door, and in a moment there entered Rebekah, looking as
though a ghost had arrived.  The fact was that that accomplished
skimmer and churner (now a resident in the house) had overheard the
desultory observations between mother and daughter, and on opening
the door to Mr. Darton thought the coincidence must have a grisly
meaning in it.  Mrs. Hall welcomed the farmer with warm surprise, as
did Sally, and for a moment they rather wanted words.

'Can you push up the chimney-crook for me, Mr Darton? the notches
hitch,' said the matron.  He did it, and the homely little act
bridged over the awkward consciousness that he had been a stranger
for four years.

Mrs. Hall soon saw what he had come for, and left the principals
together while she went to prepare him a late tea, smiling at
Sally's recent hasty assertions of indifference, when she saw how
civil Sally was.  When tea was ready she joined them.  She fancied
that Darton did not look so confident as when he had arrived; but
Sally was quite light-hearted, and the meal passed pleasantly.

About seven he took his leave of them.  Mrs. Hall went as far as the
door to light him down the slope.  On the doorstep he said frankly--
'I came to ask your daughter to marry me; chose the night and
everything, with an eye to a favourable answer.  But she won't.'

'Then she's a very ungrateful girl!' emphatically said Mrs. Hall.

Darton paused to shape his sentence, and asked, 'I--I suppose
there's nobody else more favoured?'

'I can't say that there is, or that there isn't,' answered Mrs.
Hall.  'She's private in some things.  I'm on your side, however,
Mr. Darton, and I'll talk to her.'

'Thank 'ee, thank 'ee!' said the farmer in a gayer accent; and with
this assurance the not very satisfactory visit came to an end.
Darton descended the roots of the sycamore, the light was withdrawn,
and the door closed.  At the bottom of the slope he nearly ran
against a man about to ascend.

'Can a jack-o'-lent believe his few senses on such a dark night, or
can't he?' exclaimed one whose utterance Darton recognized in a
moment, despite its unexpectedness.  'I dare not swear he can,
though I fain would!'  The speaker was Johns.

Darton said he was glad of this opportunity, bad as it was, of
putting an end to the silence of years, and asked the dairyman what
he was travelling that way for.

Japheth showed the old jovial confidence in a moment.  'I'm going to
see your--relations--as they always seem to me,' he said--'Mrs. Hall
and Sally.  Well, Charles, the fact is I find the natural
barbarousness of man is much increased by a bachelor life, and, as
your leavings were always good enough for me, I'm trying
civilization here.'  He nodded towards the house.

'Not with Sally--to marry her?' said Darton, feeling something like
a rill of ice water between his shoulders.

'Yes, by the help of Providence and my personal charms.  And I think
I shall get her.  I am this road every week--my present dairy is
only four miles off, you know, and I see her through the window.
'Tis rather odd that I was going to speak practical to-night to her
for the first time.  You've just called?'

'Yes, for a short while.  But she didn't say a word about you.'

'A good sign, a good sign.  Now that decides me.  I'll swing the
mallet and get her answer this very night as I planned.'

A few more remarks, and Darton, wishing his friend joy of Sally in a
slightly hollow tone of jocularity, bade him good-bye.  Johns
promised to write particulars, and ascended, and was lost in the
shade of the house and tree.  A rectangle of light appeared when
Johns was admitted, and all was dark again.

'Happy Japheth!' said Darton.  'This then is the explanation!'

He determined to return home that night.  In a quarter of an hour he
passed out of the village, and the next day went about his swede-
lifting and storing as if nothing had occurred.

He waited and waited to hear from Johns whether the wedding-day was
fixed:  but no letter came.  He learnt not a single particular till,
meeting Johns one day at a horse-auction, Darton exclaimed genially-
-rather more genially than he felt--'When is the joyful day to be?'

To his great surprise a reciprocity of gladness was not conspicuous
in Johns.  'Not at all,' he said, in a very subdued tone.  ''Tis a
bad job; she won't have me.'

Darton held his breath till he said with treacherous solicitude,
'Try again--'tis coyness.'

'O no,' said Johns decisively.  'There's been none of that.  We
talked it over dozens of times in the most fair and square way.  She
tells me plainly, I don't suit her.  'Twould be simply annoying her
to ask her again.  Ah, Charles, you threw a prize away when you let
her slip five years ago.'

'I did--I did,' said Darton.

He returned from that auction with a new set of feelings in play.
He had certainly made a surprising mistake in thinking Johns his
successful rival.  It really seemed as if he might hope for Sally
after all.

This time, being rather pressed by business, Darton had recourse to
pen-and-ink, and wrote her as manly and straightforward a proposal
as any woman could wish to receive.  The reply came promptly:-


'DEAR MR. DARTON,--I am as sensible as any woman can be of the
goodness that leads you to make me this offer a second time.  Better
women than I would be proud of the honour, for when I read your nice
long speeches on mangold-wurzel, and such like topics, at the
Casterbridge Farmers' Club, I do feel it an honour, I assure you.
But my answer is just the same as before.  I will not try to explain
what, in truth, I cannot explain--my reasons; I will simply say that
I must decline to be married to you.  With good wishes as in former
times, I am, your faithful friend,

'SALLY HALL.'


Darton dropped the letter hopelessly.  Beyond the negative, there
was just a possibility of sarcasm in it--'nice long speeches on
mangold-wurzel' had a suspicious sound.  However, sarcasm or none,
there was the answer, and he had to be content.

He proceeded to seek relief in a business which at this time
engrossed much of his attention--that of clearing up a curious
mistake just current in the county, that he had been nearly ruined
by the recent failure of a local bank.  A farmer named Darton had
lost heavily, and the similarity of name had probably led to the
error.  Belief in it was so persistent that it demanded several days
of letter-writing to set matters straight, and persuade the world
that he was as solvent as ever he had been in his life.  He had
hardly concluded this worrying task when, to his delight, another
letter arrived in the handwriting of Sally.

Darton tore it open; it was very short.


'DEAR MR. DARTON,--We have been so alarmed these last few days by
the report that you were ruined by the stoppage of --'s Bank, that,
now it is contradicted I hasten, by my mother's wish, to say how
truly glad we are to find there is no foundation for the report.
After your kindness to my poor brother's children, I can do no less
than write at such a moment.  We had a letter from each of them a
few days ago.--Your faithful friend,

'SALLY HALL.'


'Mercenary little woman!' said Darton to himself with a smile.
'Then that was the secret of her refusal this time--she thought I
was ruined.'

Now, such was Darton, that as hours went on he could not help
feeling too generously towards Sally to condemn her in this.  What
did he want in a wife? he asked himself.  Love and integrity.  What
next?  Worldly wisdom.  And was there really more than worldly
wisdom in her refusal to go aboard a sinking ship?  She now knew it
was otherwise.  'Begad,' he said, 'I'll try her again.'

The fact was he had so set his heart upon Sally, and Sally alone,
that nothing was to be allowed to baulk him; and his reasoning was
purely formal.

Anniversaries having been unpropitious, he waited on till a bright
day late in May--a day when all animate nature was fancying, in its
trusting, foolish way, that it was going to bask out of doors for
evermore.  As he rode through Long-Ash Lane it was scarce
recognizable as the track of his two winter journeys.  No mistake
could be made now, even with his eyes shut.  The cuckoo's note was
at its best, between April tentativeness and midsummer decrepitude,
and the reptiles in the sun behaved as winningly as kittens on a
hearth.  Though afternoon, and about the same time as on the last
occasion, it was broad day and sunshine when he entered Hintock, and
the details of the Knap dairy-house were visible far up the road.
He saw Sally in the garden, and was set vibrating.  He had first
intended to go on to the inn; but 'No,' he said; 'I'll tie my horse
to the garden-gate.  If all goes well it can soon be taken round:
if not, I mount and ride away'

The tall shade of the horseman darkened the room in which Mrs. Hall
sat, and made her start, for he had ridden by a side path to the top
of the slope, where riders seldom came.  In a few seconds he was in
the garden with Sally.

Five--ay, three minutes--did the business at the back of that row of
bees.  Though spring had come, and heavenly blue consecrated the
scene, Darton succeeded not.  'NO,' said Sally firmly.  'I will
never, never marry you, Mr. Darton.  I would have done it once; but
now I never can.'

'But!'--implored Mr. Darton.  And with a burst of real eloquence he
went on to declare all sorts of things that he would do for her.  He
would drive her to see her mother every week--take her to London--
settle so much money upon her--Heaven knows what he did not promise,
suggest, and tempt her with.  But it availed nothing.  She
interposed with a stout negative, which closed the course of his
argument like an iron gate across a highway.  Darton paused.

'Then,' said he simply, 'you hadn't heard of my supposed failure
when you declined last time?'

'I had not,' she said.  'But if I had 'twould have been all the
same.'

'And 'tis not because of any soreness from my slighting you years
ago?'

'No.  That soreness is long past.'

'Ah--then you despise me, Sally?'

'No,' she slowly answered.  'I don't altogether despise you.  I
don't think you quite such a hero as I once did--that's all.  The
truth is, I am happy enough as I am; and I don't mean to marry at
all.  Now, may _I_ ask a favour, sir?'  She spoke with an ineffable
charm, which, whenever he thought of it, made him curse his loss of
her as long as he lived.

'To any extent.'

'Please do not put this question to me any more.  Friends as long as
you like, but lovers and married never.'

'I never will,' said Darton.  'Not if I live a hundred years.'

And he never did.  That he had worn out his welcome in her heart was
only too plain.

When his step-children had grown up, and were placed out in life,
all communication between Darton and the Hall family ceased.  It was
only by chance that, years after, he learnt that Sally,
notwithstanding the solicitations her attractions drew down upon
her, had refused several offers of marriage, and steadily adhered to
her purpose of leading a single life

May 1884.




THE DISTRACTED PREACHER




CHAPTER I--HOW HIS COLD WAS CURED



Something delayed the arrival of the Wesleyan minister, and a young
man came temporarily in his stead.  It was on the thirteenth of
January 183- that Mr. Stockdale, the young man in question, made his
humble entry into the village, unknown, and almost unseen.  But when
those of the inhabitants who styled themselves of his connection
became acquainted with him, they were rather pleased with the
substitute than otherwise, though he had scarcely as yet acquired
ballast of character sufficient to steady the consciences of the
hundred-and-forty Methodists of pure blood who, at this time, lived
in Nether-Moynton, and to give in addition supplementary support to
the mixed race which went to church in the morning and chapel in the
evening, or when there was a tea--as many as a hundred-and-ten
people more, all told, and including the parish-clerk in the winter-
time, when it was too dark for the vicar to observe who passed up
the street at seven o'clock--which, to be just to him, he was never
anxious to do.

It was owing to this overlapping of creeds that the celebrated
population-puzzle arose among the denser gentry of the district
around Nether-Moynton:  how could it be that a parish containing
fifteen score of strong full-grown Episcopalians, and nearly
thirteen score of well-matured Dissenters, numbered barely two-and-
twenty score adults in all?

The young man being personally interesting, those with whom he came
in contact were content to waive for a while the graver question of
his sufficiency.  It is said that at this time of his life his eyes
were affectionate, though without a ray of levity; that his hair was
curly, and his figure tall; that he was, in short, a very lovable
youth, who won upon his female hearers as soon as they saw and heard
him, and caused them to say, 'Why didn't we know of this before he
came, that we might have gied him a warmer welcome!'

The fact was that, knowing him to be only provisionally selected,
and expecting nothing remarkable in his person or doctrine, they and
the rest of his flock in Nether-Moynton had felt almost as
indifferent about his advent as if they had been the soundest
church-going parishioners in the country, and he their true and
appointed parson.  Thus when Stockdale set foot in the place nobody
had secured a lodging for him, and though his journey had given him
a bad cold in the head, he was forced to attend to that business
himself.  On inquiry he learnt that the only possible accommodation
in the village would be found at the house of one Mrs. Lizzy
Newberry, at the upper end of the street.

It was a youth who gave this information, and Stockdale asked him
who Mrs. Newberry might be.

The boy said that she was a widow-woman, who had got no husband,
because he was dead.  Mr. Newberry, he added, had been a well-to-do
man enough, as the saying was, and a farmer; but he had gone off in
a decline.  As regarded Mrs. Newberry's serious side, Stockdale
gathered that she was one of the trimmers who went to church and
chapel both.

'I'll go there,' said Stockdale, feeling that, in the absence of
purely sectarian lodgings, he could do no better.

'She's a little particular, and won't hae gover'ment folks, or
curates, or the pa'son's friends, or such like,' said the lad
dubiously.

'Ah, that may be a promising sign:  I'll call.  Or no; just you go
up and ask first if she can find room for me.  I have to see one or
two persons on another matter.  You will find me down at the
carrier's.'

In a quarter of an hour the lad came back, and said that Mrs.
Newberry would have no objection to accommodate him, whereupon
Stockdale called at the house.

It stood within a garden-hedge, and seemed to be roomy and
comfortable.  He saw an elderly woman, with whom he made
arrangements to come the same night, since there was no inn in the
place, and he wished to house himself as soon as possible; the
village being a local centre from which he was to radiate at once to
the different small chapels in the neighbourhood.  He forthwith sent
his luggage to Mrs. Newberry's from the carrier's, where he had
taken shelter, and in the evening walked up to his temporary home.

As he now lived there, Stockdale felt it unnecessary to knock at the
door; and entering quietly he had the pleasure of hearing footsteps
scudding away like mice into the back quarters.  He advanced to the
parlour, as the front room was called, though its stone floor was
scarcely disguised by the carpet, which only over-laid the trodden
areas, leaving sandy deserts under the bulging mouldings of the
table-legs, playing with brass furniture.  But the room looked snug
and cheerful.  The firelight shone out brightly, trembling on the
knobs and handles, and lurking in great strength on the under
surface of the chimney-piece.  A deep arm-chair, covered with
horsehair, and studded with a countless throng of brass nails, was
pulled up on one side of the fireplace.  The tea-things were on the
table, the teapot cover was open, and a little hand-bell had been
laid at that precise point towards which a person seated in the
great chair might be expected instinctively to stretch his hand.

Stockdale sat down, not objecting to his experience of the room thus
far, and began his residence by tinkling the bell.  A little girl
crept in at the summons, and made tea for him.  Her name, she said,
was Marther Sarer, and she lived out there, nodding towards the road
and village generally.  Before Stockdale had got far with his meal,
a tap sounded on the door behind him, and on his telling the
inquirer to come in, a rustle of garments caused him to turn his
head.  He saw before him a fine and extremely well-made young woman,
with dark hair, a wide, sensible, beautiful forehead, eyes that
warmed him before he knew it, and a mouth that was in itself a
picture to all appreciative souls.

'Can I get you anything else for tea?' she said, coming forward a
step or two, an expression of liveliness on her features, and her
hand waving the door by its edge.

'Nothing, thank you,' said Stockdale, thinking less of what he
replied than of what might be her relation to the household.

'You are quite sure?' said the young woman, apparently aware that he
had not considered his answer.

He conscientiously examined the tea-things, and found them all
there.  'Quite sure, Miss Newberry,' he said.

'It is Mrs. Newberry,' she said.  'Lizzy Newberry, I used to be
Lizzy Simpkins.'

'O, I beg your pardon, Mrs. Newberry.'  And before he had occasion
to say more she left the room.

Stockdale remained in some doubt till Martha Sarah came to clear the
table.  'Whose house is this, my little woman,' said he.

'Mrs. Lizzy Newberry's, sir.'

'Then Mrs. Newberry is not the old lady I saw this afternoon?'

'No.  That's Mrs. Newberry's mother.  It was Mrs. Newberry who comed
in to you just by now, because she wanted to see if you was good-
looking.'

Later in the evening, when Stockdale was about to begin supper, she
came again.  'I have come myself, Mr. Stockdale,' she said.  The
minister stood up in acknowledgment of the honour.  'I am afraid
little Marther might not make you understand.  What will you have
for supper?--there's cold rabbit, and there's a ham uncut.'

Stockdale said he could get on nicely with those viands, and supper
was laid.  He had no more than cut a slice when tap-tap came to the
door again.  The minister had already learnt that this particular
rhythm in taps denoted the fingers of his enkindling landlady, and
the doomed young fellow buried his first mouthful under a look of
receptive blandness.

'We have a chicken in the house, Mr. Stockdale--I quite forgot to
mention it just now.  Perhaps you would like Marther Sarer to bring
it up?'

Stockdale had advanced far enough in the art of being a young man to
say that he did not want the chicken, unless she brought it up
herself; but when it was uttered he blushed at the daring gallantry
of the speech, perhaps a shade too strong for a serious man and a
minister.  In three minutes the chicken appeared, but, to his great
surprise, only in the hands of Martha Sarah.  Stockdale was
disappointed, which perhaps it was intended that he should be.

He had finished supper, and was not in the least anticipating Mrs.
Newberry again that night, when she tapped and entered as before.
Stockdale's gratified look told that she had lost nothing by not
appearing when expected.  It happened that the cold in the head from
which the young man suffered had increased with the approach of
night, and before she had spoken he was seized with a violent fit of
sneezing which he could not anyhow repress.

Mrs. Newberry looked full of pity.  'Your cold is very bad to-night,
Mr. Stockdale.'

Stockdale replied that it was rather troublesome.

'And I've a good mind'--she added archly, looking at the cheerless
glass of water on the table, which the abstemious minister was going
to drink.

'Yes, Mrs. Newberry?'

'I've a good mind that you should have something more likely to cure
it than that cold stuff.'

'Well,' said Stockdale, looking down at the glass, 'as there is no
inn here, and nothing better to be got in the village, of course it
will do.'

To this she replied, 'There is something better, not far off, though
not in the house.  I really think you must try it, or you may be
ill.  Yes, Mr. Stockdale, you shall.'  She held up her finger,
seeing that he was about to speak.  'Don't ask what it is; wait, and
you shall see.'

Lizzy went away, and Stockdale waited in a pleasant mood.  Presently
she returned with her bonnet and cloak on, saying, 'I am so sorry,
but you must help me to get it.  Mother has gone to bed.  Will you
wrap yourself up, and come this way, and please bring that cup with
you?'

Stockdale, a lonely young fellow, who had for weeks felt a great
craving for somebody on whom to throw away superfluous interest, and
even tenderness, was not sorry to join her; and followed his guide
through the back door, across the garden, to the bottom, where the
boundary was a wall.  This wall was low, and beyond it Stockdale
discerned in the night shades several grey headstones, and the
outlines of the church roof and tower.

'It is easy to get up this way,' she said, stepping upon a bank
which abutted on the wall; then putting her foot on the top of the
stonework, and descending a spring inside, where the ground was much
higher, as is the manner of graveyards to be.  Stockdale did the
same, and followed her in the dusk across the irregular ground till
they came to the tower door, which, when they had entered, she
softly closed behind them.

'You can keep a secret?' she said, in a musical voice.

'Like an iron chest!' said he fervently.

Then from under her cloak she produced a small lighted lantern,
which the minister had not noticed that she carried at all.  The
light showed them to be close to the singing-gallery stairs, under
which lay a heap of lumber of all sorts, but consisting mostly of
decayed framework, pews, panels, and pieces of flooring, that from
time to time had been removed from their original fixings in the
body of the edifice and replaced by new.

'Perhaps you will drag some of those boards aside?' she said,
holding the lantern over her head to light him better.  'Or will you
take the lantern while I move them?'

'I can manage it,' said the young man, and acting as she ordered, he
uncovered, to his surprise, a row of little barrels bound with wood
hoops, each barrel being about as large as the nave of a heavy
waggon-wheel.

When they were laid open Lizzy fixed her eyes on him, as if she
wondered what he would say.

'You know what they are?' she asked, finding that he did not speak.

'Yes, barrels,' said Stockdale simply.  He was an inland man, the
son of highly respectable parents, and brought up with a single eye
to the ministry; and the sight suggested nothing beyond the fact
that such articles were there.

'You are quite right, they are barrels,' she said, in an emphatic
tone of candour that was not without a touch of irony.

Stockdale looked at her with an eye of sudden misgiving.  'Not
smugglers' liquor?' he said.

'Yes,' said she.  'They are tubs of spirit that have accidentally
come over in the dark from France.'

In Nether-Moynton and its vicinity at this date people always smiled
at the sort of sin called in the outside world illicit trading; and
these little kegs of gin and brandy were as well known to the
inhabitants as turnips.  So that Stockdale's innocent ignorance, and
his look of alarm when he guessed the sinister mystery, seemed to
strike Lizzy first as ludicrous, and then as very awkward for the
good impression that she wished to produce upon him.

'Smuggling is carried on here by some of the people,' she said in a
gentle, apologetic voice.  'It has been their practice for
generations, and they think it no harm.  Now, will you roll out one
of the tubs?'

'What to do with it?' said the minister.

'To draw a little from it to cure your cold,' she answered.  'It is
so 'nation strong that it drives away that sort of thing in a jiffy.
O, it is all right about our taking it.  I may have what I like; the
owner of the tubs says so.  I ought to have had some in the house,
and then I shouldn't ha' been put to this trouble; but I drink none
myself, and so I often forget to keep it indoors.'

'You are allowed to help yourself, I suppose, that you may not
inform where their hiding-place is?'

'Well, no; not that particularly; but I may take any if I want it.
So help yourself.'

'I will, to oblige you, since you have a right to it,' murmured the
minister; and though he was not quite satisfied with his part in the
performance, he rolled one of the 'tubs' out from the corner into
the middle of the tower floor.  'How do you wish me to get it out--
with a gimlet, I suppose?'

'No, I'll show you,' said his interesting companion; and she held up
with her other hand a shoemaker's awl and a hammer.  'You must never
do these things with a gimlet, because the wood-dust gets in; and
when the buyers pour out the brandy that would tell them that the
tub had been broached.  An awl makes no dust, and the hole nearly
closes up again.  Now tap one of the hoops forward.'

Stockdale took the hammer and did so.

'Now make the hole in the part that was covered by the hoop.'

He made the hole as directed.  'It won't run out,' he said.

'O yes it will,' said she.  'Take the tub between your knees, and
squeeze the heads; and I'll hold the cup.'

Stockdale obeyed; and the pressure taking effect upon the tub, which
seemed, to be thin, the spirit spirted out in a stream.  When the
cup was full he ceased pressing, and the flow immediately stopped.
'Now we must fill up the keg with water,' said Lizzy, 'or it will
cluck like forty hens when it is handled, and show that 'tis not
full.'

'But they tell you you may take it?'

'Yes, the SMUGGLERS:  but the BUYERS must not know that the
smugglers have been kind to me at their expense.'

'I see,' said Stockdale doubtfully.  'I much question the honesty of
this proceeding.'

By her direction he held the tub with the hole upwards, and while he
went through the process of alternately pressing and ceasing to
press, she produced a bottle of water, from which she took
mouthfuls, conveying each to the keg by putting her pretty lips to
the hole, where it was sucked in at each recovery of the cask from
pressure.  When it was again full he plugged the hole, knocked the
hoop down to its place, and buried the tub in the lumber as before.

'Aren't the smugglers afraid that you will tell?' he asked, as they
recrossed the churchyard.

'O no; they are not afraid of that.  I couldn't do such a thing.'

'They have put you into a very awkward corner,' said Stockdale
emphatically.  'You must, of course, as an honest person, sometimes
feel that it is your duty to inform--really you must.'

'Well, I have never particularly felt it as a duty; and, besides, my
first husband--'  She stopped, and there was some confusion in her
voice.  Stockdale was so honest and unsophisticated that he did not
at once discern why she paused:  but at last he did perceive that
the words were a slip, and that no woman would have uttered 'first
husband' by accident unless she had thought pretty frequently of a
second.  He felt for her confusion, and allowed her time to recover
and proceed.  'My husband,' she said, in a self-corrected tone,
'used to know of their doings, and so did my father, and kept the
secret.  I cannot inform, in fact, against anybody.'

'I see the hardness of it,' he continued, like a man who looked far
into the moral of things.  'And it is very cruel that you should be
tossed and tantalized between your memories and your conscience.  I
do hope, Mrs. Newberry, that you will soon see your way out of this
unpleasant position.'

'Well, I don't just now,' she murmured.

By this time they had passed over the wall and entered the house,
where she brought him a glass and hot water, and left him to his own
reflections.  He looked after her vanishing form, asking himself
whether he, as a respectable man, and a minister, and a shining
light, even though as yet only of the halfpenny-candle sort, were
quite justified in doing this thing.  A sneeze settled the question;
and he found that when the fiery liquor was lowered by the addition
of twice or thrice the quantity of water, it was one of the
prettiest cures for a cold in the head that he had ever known,
particularly at this chilly time of the year.

Stockdale sat in the deep chair about twenty minutes sipping and
meditating, till he at length took warmer views of things, and
longed for the morrow, when he would see Mrs. Newberry again.  He
then felt that, though chronologically at a short distance, it would
in an emotional sense be very long before to-morrow came, and walked
restlessly round the room.  His eye was attracted by a framed and
glazed sampler in which a running ornament of fir-trees and peacocks
surrounded the following pretty bit of sentiment:-


'Rose-leaves smell when roses thrive,
Here's my work while I'm alive;
Rose-leaves smell when shrunk and shed,
Here's my work when I am dead.

'Lizzy Simpkins.  Fear God.  Honour the King.
'Aged 11 years.


''Tis hers,' he said to himself.  'Heavens, how I like that name!'

Before he had done thinking that no other name from Abigail to
Zenobia would have suited his young landlady so well, tap-tap came
again upon the door; and the minister started as her face appeared
yet another time, looking so disinterested that the most ingenious
would have refrained from asserting that she had come to affect his
feelings by her seductive eyes.

'Would you like a fire in your room, Mr. Stockdale, on account of
your cold?'

The minister, being still a little pricked in the conscience for
countenancing her in watering the spirits, saw here a way to self-
chastisement.  'No, I thank you,' he said firmly; 'it is not
necessary.  I have never been used to one in my life, and it would
be giving way to luxury too far.'

'Then I won't insist,' she said, and disconcerted him by vanishing
instantly.

Wondering if she was vexed by his refusal, he wished that he had
chosen to have a fire, even though it should have scorched him out
of bed and endangered his self-discipline for a dozen days.
However, he consoled himself with what was in truth a rare
consolation for a budding lover, that he was under the same roof
with Lizzy; her guest, in fact, to take a poetical view of the term
lodger; and that he would certainly see her on the morrow.

The morrow came, and Stockdale rose early, his cold quite gone.  He
had never in his life so longed for the breakfast hour as he did
that day, and punctually at eight o'clock, after a short walk, to
reconnoitre the premises, he re-entered the door of his dwelling.
Breakfast passed, and Martha Sarah attended, but nobody came
voluntarily as on the night before to inquire if there were other
wants which he had not mentioned, and which she would attempt to
gratify.  He was disappointed, and went out, hoping to see her at
dinner.  Dinner time came; he sat down to the meal, finished it,
lingered on for a whole hour, although two new teachers were at that
moment waiting at the chapel-door to speak to him by appointment.
It was useless to wait longer, and he slowly went his way down the
lane, cheered by the thought that, after all, he would see her in
the evening, and perhaps engage again in the delightful tub-
broaching in the neighbouring church tower, which proceeding he
resolved to render more moral by steadfastly insisting that no water
should be introduced to fill up, though the tub should cluck like
all the hens in Christendom.  But nothing could disguise the fact
that it was a queer business; and his countenance fell when he
thought how much more his mind was interested in that matter than in
his serious duties.

However, compunction vanished with the decline of day.  Night came,
and his tea and supper; but no Lizzy Newberry, and no sweet
temptations.  At last the minister could bear it no longer, and said
to his quaint little attendant, 'Where is Mrs. Newberry to-day?'
judiciously handing a penny as he spoke.

'She's busy,' said Martha.

'Anything serious happened?' he asked, handing another penny, and
revealing yet additional pennies in the background.

'O no--nothing at all!' said she, with breathless confidence.
'Nothing ever happens to her.  She's only biding upstairs in bed
because 'tis her way sometimes.'

Being a young man of some honour, he would not question further, and
assuming that Lizzy must have a bad headache, or other slight
ailment, in spite of what the girl had said, he went to bed
dissatisfied, not even setting eyes on old Mrs. Simpkins.  'I said
last night that I should see her to-morrow,' he reflected; 'but that
was not to be!'

Next day he had better fortune, or worse, meeting her at the foot of
the stairs in the morning, and being favoured by a visit or two from
her during the day--once for the purpose of making kindly inquiries
about his comfort, as on the first evening, and at another time to
place a bunch of winter-violets on his table, with a promise to
renew them when they drooped.  On these occasions there was
something in her smile which showed how conscious she was of the
effect she produced, though it must be said that it was rather a
humorous than a designing consciousness, and savoured more of pride
than of vanity.

As for Stockdale, he clearly perceived that he possessed unlimited
capacity for backsliding, and wished that tutelary saints were not
denied to Dissenters.  He set a watch upon his tongue and eyes for
the space of one hour and a half, after which he found it was
useless to struggle further, and gave himself up to the situation.
'The other minister will be here in a month,' he said to himself
when sitting over the fire.  'Then I shall be off, and she will
distract my mind no more! . . . And then, shall I go on living by
myself for ever?  No; when my two years of probation are finished, I
shall have a furnished house to live in, with a varnished door and a
brass knocker; and I'll march straight back to her, and ask her
flat, as soon as the last plate is on the dresser!

Thus a titillating fortnight was passed by young Stockdale, during
which time things proceeded much as such matters have done ever
since the beginning of history.  He saw the object of attachment
several times one day, did not see her at all the next, met her when
he least expected to do so, missed her when hints and signs as to
where she should be at a given hour almost amounted to an
appointment.  This mild coquetry was perhaps fair enough under the
circumstances of their being so closely lodged, and Stockdale put up
with it as philosophically as he was able.  Being in her own house,
she could, after vexing him or disappointing him of her presence,
easily win him back by suddenly surrounding him with those little
attentions which her position as his landlady put it in her power to
bestow.  When he had waited indoors half the day to see her, and on
finding that she would not be seen, had gone off in a huff to the
dreariest and dampest walk he could discover, she would restore
equilibrium in the evening with 'Mr. Stockdale, I have fancied you
must feel draught o' nights from your bedroom window, and so I have
been putting up thicker curtains this afternoon while you were out;'
or, 'I noticed that you sneezed twice again this morning, Mr.
Stockdale.  Depend upon it that cold is hanging about you yet; I am
sure it is--I have thought of it continually; and you must let me
make a posset for you.'

Sometimes in coming home he found his sitting-room rearranged,
chairs placed where the table had stood, and the table ornamented
with the few fresh flowers and leaves that could be obtained at this
season, so as to add a novelty to the room.  At times she would be
standing on a chair outside the house, trying to nail up a branch of
the monthly rose which the winter wind had blown down; and of course
he stepped forward to assist her, when their hands got mixed in
passing the shreds and nails.  Thus they became friends again after
a disagreement.  She would utter on these occasions some pretty and
deprecatory remark on the necessity of her troubling him anew; and
he would straightway say that he would do a hundred times as much
for her if she should so require.



CHAPTER II--HOW HE SAW TWO OTHER MEN



Matters being in this advancing state, Stockdale was rather
surprised one cloudy evening, while sitting in his room, at hearing
her speak in low tones of expostulation to some one at the door.  It
was nearly dark, but the shutters were not yet closed, nor the
candles lighted; and Stockdale was tempted to stretch his head
towards the window.  He saw outside the door a young man in clothes
of a whitish colour, and upon reflection judged their wearer to be
the well-built and rather handsome miller who lived below.  The
miller's voice was alternately low and firm, and sometimes it
reached the level of positive entreaty; but what the words were
Stockdale could in no way hear.

Before the colloquy had ended, the minister's attention was
attracted by a second incident.  Opposite Lizzy's home grew a clump
of laurels, forming a thick and permanent shade.  One of the laurel
boughs now quivered against the light background of sky, and in a
moment the head of a man peered out, and remained still.  He seemed
to be also much interested in the conversation at the door, and was
plainly lingering there to watch and listen.  Had Stockdale stood in
any other relation to Lizzy than that of a lover, he might have gone
out and investigated the meaning of this:  but being as yet but an
unprivileged ally, he did nothing more than stand up and show
himself against the firelight, whereupon the listener disappeared,
and Lizzy and the miller spoke in lower tones.

Stockdale was made so uneasy by the circumstance, that as soon as
the miller was gone, he said, 'Mrs. Newberry, are you aware that you
were watched just now, and your conversation heard?'

'When?' she said.

'When you were talking to that miller.  A man was looking from the
laurel-tree as jealously as if he could have eaten you.'

She showed more concern than the trifling event seemed to demand,
and he added, 'Perhaps you were talking of things you did not wish
to be overheard?'

'I was talking only on business,' she said.

'Lizzy, be frank!' said the young man.  'If it was only on business,
why should anybody wish to listen to you?'

She looked curiously at him.  'What else do you think it could be,
then?'

'Well--the only talk between a young woman and man that is likely to
amuse an eavesdropper.'

'Ah yes,' she said, smiling in spite of her preoccupation.  'Well,
my cousin Owlett has spoken to me about matrimony, every now and
then, that's true; but he was not speaking of it then.  I wish he
had been speaking of it, with all my heart.  It would have been much
less serious for me.'

'O Mrs. Newberry!'

'It would.  Not that I should ha' chimed in with him, of course.  I
wish it for other reasons.  I am glad, Mr. Stockdale, that you have
told me of that listener.  It is a timely warning, and I must see my
cousin again.'

'But don't go away till I have spoken,' said the minister.  'I'll
out with it at once, and make no more ado.  Let it be Yes or No
between us, Lizzy; please do!'  And he held out his hand, in which
she freely allowed her own to rest, but without speaking.

'You mean Yes by that?' he asked, after waiting a while.

'You may be my sweetheart, if you will.'

'Why not say at once you will wait for me until I have a house and
can come back to marry you.'

'Because I am thinking--thinking of something else,' she said with
embarrassment.  'It all comes upon me at once, and I must settle one
thing at a time.'

'At any rate, dear Lizzy, you can assure me that the miller shall
not be allowed to speak to you except on business? You have never
directly encouraged him?'

She parried the question by saying, 'You see, he and his party have
been in the habit of leaving things on my premises sometimes, and as
I have not denied him, it makes him rather forward.'

'Things--what things?'

'Tubs--they are called Things here.'

'But why don't you deny him, my dear Lizzy?'

'I cannot well.'

'You are too timid.  It is unfair of him to impose so upon you, and
get your good name into danger by his smuggling tricks.  Promise me
that the next time he wants to leave his tubs here you will let me
roll them into the street?'

She shook her head.  'I would not venture to offend the neighbours
so much as that,' said she, 'or do anything that would be so likely
to put poor Owlett into the hands of the excisemen.'

Stockdale sighed, and said that he thought hers a mistaken
generosity when it extended to assisting those who cheated the king
of his dues.  'At any rate, you will let me make him keep his
distance as your lover, and tell him flatly that you are not for
him?'

'Please not, at present,' she said.  'I don't wish to offend my old
neighbours.  It is not only Owlett who is concerned.'

'This is too bad,' said Stockdale impatiently.

'On my honour, I won't encourage him as my lover,' Lizzy answered
earnestly.  'A reasonable man will be satisfied with that.'

'Well, so I am,' said Stockdale, his countenance clearing.



CHAPTER III--THE MYSTERIOUS GREATCOAT



Stockdale now began to notice more particularly a feature in the
life of his fair landlady, which he had casually observed but
scarcely ever thought of before.  It was that she was markedly
irregular in her hours of rising.  For a week or two she would be
tolerably punctual, reaching the ground-floor within a few minutes
of half-past seven.  Then suddenly she would not be visible till
twelve at noon, perhaps for three or four days in succession; and
twice he had certain proof that she did not leave her room till
half-past three in the afternoon.  The second time that this extreme
lateness came under his notice was on a day when he had particularly
wished to consult with her about his future movements; and he
concluded, as he always had done, that she had a cold, headache, or
other ailment, unless she had kept herself invisible to avoid
meeting and talking to him, which he could hardly believe.  The
former supposition was disproved, however, by her innocently saying,
some days later, when they were speaking on a question of health,
that she had never had a moment's heaviness, headache, or illness of
any kind since the previous January twelvemonth.

'I am glad to hear it,' said he.  'I thought quite otherwise.'

'What, do I look sickly?' she asked, turning up her face to show the
impossibility of his gazing on it and holding such a belief for a
moment.

'Not at all; I merely thought so from your being sometimes obliged
to keep your room through the best part of the day.'

'O, as for that--it means nothing,' she murmured, with a look which
some might have called cold, and which was the worst look that he
liked to see upon her.  'It is pure sleepiness, Mr. Stockdale.'

'Never!'

'It is, I tell you.  When I stay in my room till half-past three in
the afternoon, you may always be sure that I slept soundly till
three, or I shouldn't have stayed there.'

'It is dreadful,' said Stockdale, thinking of the disastrous effects
of such indulgence upon the household of a minister, should it
become a habit of everyday occurrence.

'But then,' she said, divining his good and prescient thoughts, 'it
only happens when I stay awake all night.  I don't go to sleep till
five or six in the morning sometimes.'

'Ah, that's another matter,' said Stockdale.  'Sleeplessness to such
an alarming extent is real illness.  Have you spoken to a doctor?'

'O no--there is no need for doing that--it is all natural to me.'
And she went away without further remark.

Stockdale might have waited a long time to know the real cause of
her sleeplessness, had it not happened that one dark night he was
sitting in his bedroom jotting down notes for a sermon, which
occupied him perfunctorily for a considerable time after the other
members of the household had retired.  He did not get to bed till
one o'clock.  Before he had fallen asleep he heard a knocking at the
front door, first rather timidly performed, and then louder.  Nobody
answered it, and the person knocked again.  As the house still
remained undisturbed, Stockdale got out of bed, went to his window,
which overlooked the door, and opening it, asked who was there.

A young woman's voice replied that Susan Wallis was there, and that
she had come to ask if Mrs. Newberry could give her some mustard to
make a plaster with, as her father was taken very ill on the chest.

The minister, having neither bell nor servant, was compelled to act
in person.  'I will call Mrs. Newberry,' he said.  Partly dressing
himself; he went along the passage and tapped at Lizzy's door.  She
did not answer, and, thinking of her erratic habits in the matter of
sleep, he thumped the door persistently, when he discovered, by its
moving ajar under his knocking, that it had only been gently pushed
to.  As there was now a sufficient entry for the voice, he knocked
no longer, but said in firm tones, 'Mrs. Newberry, you are wanted.'

The room was quite silent; not a breathing, not a rustle, came from
any part of it.  Stockdale now sent a positive shout through the
open space of the door:  'Mrs. Newberry!'--still no answer, or
movement of any kind within.  Then he heard sounds from the opposite
room, that of Lizzy's mother, as if she had been aroused by his
uproar though Lizzy had not, and was dressing herself hastily.
Stockdale softly closed the younger woman's door and went on to the
other, which was opened by Mrs. Simpkins before he could reach it.
She was in her ordinary clothes, and had a light in her hand.

'What's the person calling about?' she said in alarm.

Stockdale told the girl's errand, adding seriously, 'I cannot wake
Mrs. Newberry.'

'It is no matter,' said her mother.  'I can let the girl have what
she wants as well as my daughter.'  And she came out of the room and
went downstairs.

Stockdale retired towards his own apartment, saying, however, to
Mrs. Simpkins from the landing, as if on second thoughts, 'I suppose
there is nothing the matter with Mrs. Newberry, that I could not
wake her?'

'O no,' said the old lady hastily.  'Nothing at all.'

Still the minister was not satisfied.  'Will you go in and see?' he
said.  'I should be much more at ease.'

Mrs. Simpkins returned up the staircase, went to her daughter's
room, and came out again almost instantly.  'There is nothing at all
the matter with Lizzy,' she said; and descended again to attend to
the applicant, who, having seen the light, had remained quiet during
this interval.

Stockdale went into his room and lay down as before.  He heard
Lizzy's mother open the front door, admit the girl, and then the
murmured discourse of both as they went to the store-cupboard for
the medicament required.  The girl departed, the door was fastened,
Mrs. Simpkins came upstairs, and the house was again in silence.
Still the minister did not fall asleep.  He could not get rid of a
singular suspicion, which was all the more harassing in being, if
true, the most unaccountable thing within his experience.  That
Lizzy Newberry was in her bedroom when he made such a clamour at the
door he could not possibly convince himself; notwithstanding that he
had heard her come upstairs at the usual time, go into her chamber,
and shut herself up in the usual way.  Yet all reason was so much
against her being elsewhere, that he was constrained to go back
again to the unlikely theory of a heavy sleep, though he had heard
neither breath nor movement during a shouting and knocking loud
enough to rouse the Seven Sleepers.

Before coming to any positive conclusion he fell asleep himself, and
did not awake till day.  He saw nothing of Mrs. Newberry in the
morning, before he went out to meet the rising sun, as he liked to
do when the weather was fine; but as this was by no means unusual,
he took no notice of it.  At breakfast-time he knew that she was not
far off by hearing her in the kitchen, and though he saw nothing of
her person, that back apartment being rigorously closed against his
eyes, she seemed to be talking, ordering, and bustling about among
the pots and skimmers in so ordinary a manner, that there was no
reason for his wasting more time in fruitless surmise.

The minister suffered from these distractions, and his extemporized
sermons were not improved thereby.  Already he often said Romans for
Corinthians in the pulpit, and gave out hymns in strange cramped
metres, that hitherto had always been skipped, because the
congregation could not raise a tune to fit them.  He fully resolved
that as soon as his few weeks of stay approached their end he would
cut the matter short, and commit himself by proposing a definite
engagement, repenting at leisure if necessary.

With this end in view, he suggested to her on the evening after her
mysterious sleep that they should take a walk together just before
dark, the latter part of the proposition being introduced that they
might return home unseen.  She consented to go; and away they went
over a stile, to a shrouded footpath suited for the occasion.  But,
in spite of attempts on both sides, they were unable to infuse much
spirit into the ramble.  She looked rather paler than usual, and
sometimes turned her head away.

'Lizzy,' said Stockdale reproachfully, when they had walked in
silence a long distance.

'Yes,' said she.

'You yawned--much my company is to you!'  He put it in that way, but
he was really wondering whether her yawn could possibly have more to
do with physical weariness from the night before than mental
weariness of that present moment.  Lizzy apologized, and owned that
she was rather tired, which gave him an opening for a direct
question on the point; but his modesty would not allow him to put it
to her; and he uncomfortably resolved to wait.

The month of February passed with alternations of mud and frost,
rain and sleet, east winds and north-westerly gales.  The hollow
places in the ploughed fields showed themselves as pools of water,
which had settled there from the higher levels, and had not yet
found time to soak away.  The birds began to get lively, and a
single thrush came just before sunset each evening, and sang
hopefully on the large elm-tree which stood nearest to Mrs.
Newberry's house.  Cold blasts and brittle earth had given place to
an oozing dampness more unpleasant in itself than frost; but it
suggested coming spring, and its unpleasantness was of a bearable
kind.

Stockdale had been going to bring about a practical understanding
with Lizzy at least half-a-dozen times; but, what with the mystery
of her apparent absence on the night of the neighbour's call, and
her curious way of lying in bed at unaccountable times, he felt a
check within him whenever he wanted to speak out.  Thus they still
lived on as indefinitely affianced lovers, each of whom hardly
acknowledged the other's claim to the name of chosen one.  Stockdale
persuaded himself that his hesitation was owing to the postponement
of the ordained minister's arrival, and the consequent delay in his
own departure, which did away with all necessity for haste in his
courtship; but perhaps it was only that his discretion was
reasserting itself, and telling him that he had better get clearer
ideas of Lizzy before arranging for the grand contract of his life
with her.  She, on her part, always seemed ready to be urged further
on that question than he had hitherto attempted to go; but she was
none the less independent, and to a degree which would have kept
from flagging the passion of a far more mutable man.

On the evening of the first of March he went casually into his
bedroom about dusk, and noticed lying on a chair a greatcoat, hat,
and breeches.  Having no recollection of leaving any clothes of his
own in that spot, he went and examined them as well as he could in
the twilight, and found that they did not belong to him.  He paused
for a moment to consider how they might have got there.  He was the
only man living in the house; and yet these were not his garments,
unless he had made a mistake.  No, they were not his.  He called up
Martha Sarah.

'How did these things come in my room?' he said, flinging the
objectionable articles to the floor.

Martha said that Mrs. Newberry had given them to her to brush, and
that she had brought them up there thinking they must be Mr.
Stockdale's, as there was no other gentleman a-lodging there.

'Of course you did,' said Stockdale.  'Now take them down to your
mis'ess, and say they are some clothes I have found here and know
nothing about.'

As the door was left open he heard the conversation downstairs.
'How stupid!' said Mrs. Newberry, in a tone of confusion.  'Why,
Marther Sarer, I did not tell you to take 'em to Mr. Stockdale's
room?'

'I thought they must be his as they was so muddy,' said Martha
humbly.

'You should have left 'em on the clothes-horse,' said the young
mistress severely; and she came upstairs with the garments on her
arm, quickly passed Stockdale's room, and threw them forcibly into a
closet at the end of a passage.  With this the incident ended, and
the house was silent again.

There would have been nothing remarkable in finding such clothes in
a widow's house had they been clean; or moth-eaten, or creased, or
mouldy from long lying by; but that they should be splashed with
recent mud bothered Stockdale a good deal.  When a young pastor is
in the aspen stage of attachment, and open to agitation at the
merest trifles, a really substantial incongruity of this complexion
is a disturbing thing.  However, nothing further occurred at that
time; but he became watchful, and given to conjecture, and was
unable to forget the circumstance.

One morning, on looking from his window, he saw Mrs. Newberry
herself brushing the tails of a long drab greatcoat, which, if he
mistook not, was the very same garment as the one that had adorned
the chair of his room.  It was densely splashed up to the hollow of
the back with neighbouring Nether-Moynton mud, to judge by its
colour, the spots being distinctly visible to him in the sunlight.
The previous day or two having been wet, the inference was
irresistible that the wearer had quite recently been walking some
considerable distance about the lanes and fields.  Stockdale opened
the window and looked out, and Mrs. Newberry turned her head.  Her
face became slowly red; she never had looked prettier, or more
incomprehensible, he waved his hand affectionately, and said good-
morning; she answered with embarrassment, having ceased her
occupation on the instant that she saw him, and rolled up the coat
half-cleaned.

Stockdale shut the window.  Some simple explanation of her
proceeding was doubtless within the bounds of possibility; but he
himself could not think of one; and he wished that she had placed
the matter beyond conjecture by voluntarily saying something about
it there and then.

But, though Lizzy had not offered an explanation at the moment, the
subject was brought forward by her at the next time of their
meeting.  She was chatting to him concerning some other event, and
remarked that it happened about the time when she was dusting some
old clothes that had belonged to her poor husband.

'You keep them clean out of respect to his memory?' said Stockdale
tentatively.

'I air and dust them sometimes,' she said, with the most charming
innocence in the world.

'Do dead men come out of their graves and walk in mud?' murmured the
minister, in a cold sweat at the deception that she was practising.

'What did you say?' asked Lizzy.

'Nothing, nothing,' said he mournfully.  'Mere words--a phrase that
will do for my sermon next Sunday.'  It was too plain that Lizzy was
unaware that he had seen actual pedestrian splashes upon the skirts
of the tell-tale overcoat, and that she imagined him to believe it
had come direct from some chest or drawer.

The aspect of the case was now considerably darker.  Stockdale was
so much depressed by it that he did not challenge her explanation,
or threaten to go off as a missionary to benighted islanders, or
reproach her in any way whatever.  He simply parted from her when
she had done talking, and lived on in perplexity, till by degrees
his natural manner became sad and constrained.



CHAPTER IV--AT THE TIME OF THE NEW MOON



The following Thursday was changeable, damp, and gloomy; and the
night threatened to be windy and unpleasant.  Stockdale had gone
away to Knollsea in the morning, to be present at some commemoration
service there, and on his return he was met by the attractive Lizzy
in the passage.  Whether influenced by the tide of cheerfulness
which had attended him that day, or by the drive through the open
air, or whether from a natural disposition to let bygones alone, he
allowed himself to be fascinated into forgetfulness of the greatcoat
incident, and upon the whole passed a pleasant evening; not so much
in her society as within sound of her voice, as she sat talking in
the back parlour to her mother, till the latter went to bed.
Shortly after this Mrs. Newberry retired, and then Stockdale
prepared to go upstairs himself.  But before he left the room he
remained standing by the dying embers awhile, thinking long of one
thing and another; and was only aroused by the flickering of his
candle in the socket as it suddenly declined and went out.  Knowing
that there were a tinder-box, matches, and another candle in his
bedroom, he felt his way upstairs without a light.  On reaching his
chamber he laid his hand on every possible ledge and corner for the
tinderbox, but for a long time in vain.  Discovering it at length,
Stockdale produced a spark, and was kindling the brimstone, when he
fancied that he heard a movement in the passage.  He blew harder at
the lint, the match flared up, and looking by aid of the blue light
through the door, which had been standing open all this time, he was
surprised to see a male figure vanishing round the top of the
staircase with the evident intention of escaping unobserved.  The
personage wore the clothes which Lizzy had been brushing, and
something in the outline and gait suggested to the minister that the
wearer was Lizzy herself.

But he was not sure of this; and, greatly excited, Stockdale
determined to investigate the mystery, and to adopt his own way for
doing it.  He blew out the match without lighting the candle, went
into the passage, and proceeded on tiptoe towards Lizzy's room.  A
faint grey square of light in the direction of the chamber-window as
he approached told him that the door was open, and at once suggested
that the occupant was gone.  He turned and brought down his fist
upon the handrail of the staircase:  'It was she; in her late
husband's coat and hat!'

Somewhat relieved to find that there was no intruder in the case,
yet none the less surprised, the minister crept down the stairs,
softly put on his boots, overcoat, and hat, and tried the front
door.  It was fastened as usual:  he went to the back door, found
this unlocked, and emerged into the garden.  The night was mild and
moonless, and rain had lately been falling, though for the present
it had ceased.  There was a sudden dropping from the trees and
bushes every now and then, as each passing wind shook their boughs.
Among these sounds Stockdale heard the faint fall of feet upon the
road outside, and he guessed from the step that it was Lizzy's.  He
followed the sound, and, helped by the circumstance of the wind
blowing from the direction in which the pedestrian moved, he got
nearly close to her, and kept there, without risk of being
overheard.  While he thus followed her up the street or lane, as it
might indifferently be called, there being more hedge than houses on
either side, a figure came forward to her from one of the cottage
doors.  Lizzy stopped; the minister stepped upon the grass and
stopped also.

'Is that Mrs. Newberry?' said the man who had come out, whose voice
Stockdale recognized as that of one of the most devout members of
his congregation.

'It is,' said Lizzy.

'I be quite ready--I've been here this quarter-hour.'

'Ah, John,' said she, 'I have bad news; there is danger to-night for
our venture.'

'And d'ye tell o't!  I dreamed there might be.'

'Yes,' she said hurriedly; 'and you must go at once round to where
the chaps are waiting, and tell them they will not be wanted till
to-morrow night at the same time.  I go to burn the lugger off.'

'I will,' he said; and instantly went off through a gate, Lizzy
continuing her way.

On she tripped at a quickening pace till the lane turned into the
turnpike-road, which she crossed, and got into the track for
Ringsworth.  Here she ascended the hill without the least
hesitation, passed the lonely hamlet of Holworth, and went down the
vale on the other side.  Stockdale had never taken any extensive
walks in this direction, but he was aware that if she persisted in
her course much longer she would draw near to the coast, which was
here between two and three miles distant from Nether-Moynton; and as
it had been about a quarter-past eleven o'clock when they set out,
her intention seemed to be to reach the shore about midnight.

Lizzy soon ascended a small mound, which Stockdale at the same time
adroitly skirted on the left; and a dull monotonous roar burst upon
his ear.  The hillock was about fifty yards from the top of the
cliffs, and by day it apparently commanded a full view of the bay.
There was light enough in the sky to show her disguised figure
against it when she reached the top, where she paused, and
afterwards sat down.  Stockdale, not wishing on any account to alarm
her at this moment, yet desirous of being near her, sank upon his
hands and knees, crept a little higher up, and there stayed still.

The wind was chilly, the ground damp, and his position one in which
he did not care to remain long.  However, before he had decided to
leave it, the young man heard voices behind him.  What they
signified he did not know; but, fearing that Lizzy was in danger, he
was about to run forward and warn her that she might be seen, when
she crept to the shelter of a little bush which maintained a
precarious existence in that exposed spot; and her form was absorbed
in its dark and stunted outline as if she had become part of it.
She had evidently heard the men as well as he.  They passed near
him, talking in loud and careless tones, which could be heard above
the uninterrupted washings of the sea, and which suggested that they
were not engaged in any business at their own risk.  This proved to
be the fact:  some of their words floated across to him, and caused
him to forget at once the coldness of his situation.

'What's the vessel?'

'A lugger, about fifty tons.'

'From Cherbourg, I suppose?'

'Yes, 'a b'lieve.'

'But it don't all belong to Owlett?'

'O no.  He's only got a share.  There's another or two in it--a
farmer and such like, but the names I don't know.'

The voices died away, and the heads and shoulders of the men
diminished towards the cliff, and dropped out of sight.

'My darling has been tempted to buy a share by that unbeliever
Owlett,' groaned the minister, his honest affection for Lizzy having
quickened to its intensest point during these moments of risk to her
person and name.  'That's why she's here,' he said to himself.  'O,
it will be the ruin of her!'

His perturbation was interrupted by the sudden bursting out of a
bright and increasing light from the spot where Lizzy was in hiding.
A few seconds later, and before it had reached the height of a
blaze, he heard her rush past him down the hollow like a stone from
a sling, in the direction of home.  The light now flared high and
wide, and showed its position clearly.  She had kindled a bough of
furze and stuck it into the bush under which she had been crouching;
the wind fanned the flame, which crackled fiercely, and threatened
to consume the bush as well as the bough.  Stockdale paused just
long enough to notice thus much, and then followed rapidly the route
taken by the young woman.  His intention was to overtake her, and
reveal himself as a friend; but run as he would he could see nothing
of her.  Thus he flew across the open country about Holworth,
twisting his legs and ankles in unexpected fissures and descents,
till, on coming to the gate between the downs and the road, he was
forced to pause to get breath.  There was no audible movement either
in front or behind him, and he now concluded that she had not outrun
him, but that, hearing him at her heels, and believing him one of
the excise party, she had hidden herself somewhere on the way, and
let him pass by.

He went on at a more leisurely pace towards the village.  On
reaching the house he found his surmise to be correct, for the gate
was on the latch, and the door unfastened, just as he had left them.
Stockdale closed the door behind him, and waited silently in the
passage.  In about ten minutes he heard the same light footstep that
he had heard in going out; it paused at the gate, which opened and
shut softly, and then the door-latch was lifted, and Lizzy came in.

Stockdale went forward and said at once, 'Lizzy, don't be
frightened.  I have been waiting up for you.'

She started, though she had recognized the voice.  'It is Mr.
Stockdale, isn't it?' she said.

'Yes,' he answered, becoming angry now that she was safe indoors,
and not alarmed.  'And a nice game I've found you out in to-night.
You are in man's clothes, and I am ashamed of you!'

Lizzy could hardly find a voice to answer this unexpected reproach.

'I am only partly in man's clothes,' she faltered, shrinking back to
the wall.  'It is only his greatcoat and hat and breeches that I've
got on, which is no harm, as he was my own husband; and I do it only
because a cloak blows about so, and you can't use your arms.  I have
got my own dress under just the same--it is only tucked in!  Will
you go away upstairs and let me pass?  I didn't want you to see me
at such a time as this!'

'But I have a right to see you!  How do you think there can be
anything between us now?'  Lizzy was silent.  'You are a smuggler,'
he continued sadly.

'I have only a share in the run,' she said.

'That makes no difference.  Whatever did you engage in such a trade
as that for, and keep it such a secret from me all this time?'

'I don't do it always.  I only do it in winter-time when 'tis new
moon.'

'Well, I suppose that's because it can't be done anywhen else . . .
You have regularly upset me, Lizzy.'

'I am sorry for that,' Lizzy meekly replied.

'Well now,' said he more tenderly, 'no harm is done as yet.  Won't
you for the sake of me give up this blamable and dangerous practice
altogether?'

'I must do my best to save this run,' said she, getting rather husky
in the throat.  'I don't want to give you up--you know that; but I
don't want to lose my venture.  I don't know what to do now!  Why I
have kept it so secret from you is that I was afraid you would be
angry if you knew.'

'I should think so!  I suppose if I had married you without finding
this out you'd have gone on with it just the same?'

'I don't know.  I did not think so far ahead.  I only went to-night
to burn the folks off, because we found that the excisemen knew
where the tubs were to be landed.'

'It is a pretty mess to be in altogether, is this,' said the
distracted young minister.  'Well, what will you do now?'

Lizzy slowly murmured the particulars of their plan, the chief of
which were that they meant to try their luck at some other point of
the shore the next night; that three landing-places were always
agreed upon before the run was attempted, with the understanding
that, if the vessel was 'burnt off' from the first point, which was
Ringsworth, as it had been by her to-night, the crew should attempt
to make the second, which was Lulstead Cove, on the second night;
and if there, too, danger threatened, they should on the third night
try the third place, which was behind a headland further west.

'Suppose the officers hinder them landing there too?' he said, his
attention to this interesting programme displacing for a moment his
concern at her share in it.

'Then we shan't try anywhere else all this dark--that's what we call
the time between moon and moon--and perhaps they'll string the tubs
to a stray-line, and sink 'em a little-ways from shore, and take the
bearings; and then when they have a chance they'll go to creep for
'em.'

'What's that?'

'O, they'll go out in a boat and drag a creeper--that's a grapnel--
along the bottom till it catch hold of the stray-line.'

The minister stood thinking; and there was no sound within doors but
the tick of the clock on the stairs, and the quick breathing of
Lizzy, partly from her walk and partly from agitation, as she stood
close to the wall, not in such complete darkness but that he could
discern against its whitewashed surface the greatcoat and broad hat
which covered her.

'Lizzy, all this is very wrong,' he said.  'Don't you remember the
lesson of the tribute-money?  "Render unto Caesar the things that
are Caesar's."  Surely you have heard that read times enough in your
growing up?'

'He's dead,' she pouted.

'But the spirit of the text is in force just the same.'

'My father did it, and so did my grandfather, and almost everybody
in Nether-Moynton lives by it, and life would be so dull if it
wasn't for that, that I should not care to live at all.'

'I am nothing to live for, of course,' he replied bitterly.  'You
would not think it worth while to give up this wild business and
live for me alone?'

'I have never looked at it like that.'

'And you won't promise and wait till I am ready?'

'I cannot give you my word to-night.'  And, looking thoughtfully
down, she gradually moved and moved away, going into the adjoining
room, and closing the door between them.  She remained there in the
dark till he was tired of waiting, and had gone up to his own
chamber.

Poor Stockdale was dreadfully depressed all the next day by the
discoveries of the night before.  Lizzy was unmistakably a
fascinating young woman, but as a minister's wife she was hardly to
be contemplated.  'If I had only stuck to father's little grocery
business, instead of going in for the ministry, she would have
suited me beautifully!' he said sadly, until he remembered that in
that case he would never have come from his distant home to Nether-
Moynton, and never have known her.

The estrangement between them was not complete, but it was
sufficient to keep them out of each other's company.  Once during
the day he met her in the garden-path, and said, turning a
reproachful eye upon her, 'Do you promise, Lizzy?'  But she did not
reply.  The evening drew on, and he knew well enough that Lizzy
would repeat her excursion at night--her half-offended manner had
shown that she had not the slightest intention of altering her plans
at present.  He did not wish to repeat his own share of the
adventure; but, act as he would, his uneasiness on her account
increased with the decline of day.  Supposing that an accident
should befall her, he would never forgive himself for not being
there to help, much as he disliked the idea of seeming to
countenance such unlawful escapades.



CHAPTER V--HOW THEY WENT TO LULSTEAD COVE



As he had expected, she left the house at the same hour at night,
this time passing his door without stealth, as if she knew very well
that he would be watching, and were resolved to brave his
displeasure.  He was quite ready, opened the door quickly, and
reached the back door almost as soon as she.

'Then you will go, Lizzy?' he said as he stood on the step beside
her, who now again appeared as a little man with a face altogether
unsuited to his clothes.

'I must,' she said, repressed by his stern manner.

'Then I shall go too,' said he.

'And I am sure you will enjoy it!' she exclaimed in more buoyant
tones.  'Everybody does who tries it.'

'God forbid that I should!' he said.  'But I must look after you.'

They opened the wicket and went up the road abreast of each other,
but at some distance apart, scarcely a word passing between them.
The evening was rather less favourable to smuggling enterprise than
the last had been, the wind being lower, and the sky somewhat clear
towards the north.

'It is rather lighter,' said Stockdale.

''Tis, unfortunately,' said she.  'But it is only from those few
stars over there.  The moon was new to-day at four o'clock, and I
expected clouds.  I hope we shall be able to do it this dark, for
when we have to sink 'em for long it makes the stuff taste bleachy,
and folks don't like it so well.'

Her course was different from that of the preceding night, branching
off to the left over Lord's Barrow as soon as they had got out of
the lane and crossed the highway.  By the time they reached Chaldon
Down, Stockdale, who had been in perplexed thought as to what he
should say to her, decided that he would not attempt expostulation
now, while she was excited by the adventure, but wait till it was
over, and endeavour to keep her from such practices in future.  It
occurred to him once or twice, as they rambled on, that should they
be surprised by the excisemen, his situation would be more awkward
than hers, for it would be difficult to prove his true motive in
coming to the spot; but the risk was a slight consideration beside
his wish to be with her.

They now arrived at a ravine which lay on the outskirts of Chaldon,
a village two miles on their way towards the point of the shore they
sought.  Lizzy broke the silence this time:  'I have to wait here to
meet the carriers.  I don't know if they have come yet.  As I told
you, we go to Lulstead Cove to-night, and it is two miles further
than Ringsworth.'

It turned out that the men had already come; for while she spoke two
or three dozen heads broke the line of the slope, and a company of
them at once descended from the bushes where they had been lying in
wait.  These carriers were men whom Lizzy and other proprietors
regularly employed to bring the tubs from the boat to a hiding-place
inland.  They were all young fellows of Nether-Moynton, Chaldon, and
the neighbourhood, quiet and inoffensive persons, who simply engaged
to carry the cargo for Lizzy and her cousin Owlett, as they would
have engaged in any other labour for which they were fairly well
paid.

At a word from her they closed in together.  'You had better take it
now,' she said to them; and handed to each a packet.  It contained
six shillings, their remuneration for the night's undertaking, which
was paid beforehand without reference to success or failure; but,
besides this, they had the privilege of selling as agents when the
run was successfully made.  As soon as it was done, she said to
them, 'The place is the old one near Lulstead Cove;' the men till
that moment not having been told whither they were bound, for
obvious reasons.  'Owlett will meet you there,' added Lizzy.  'I
shall follow behind, to see that we are not watched.'

The carriers went on, and Stockdale and Mrs. Newberry followed at a
distance of a stone's throw.  'What do these men do by day?' he
said.

'Twelve or fourteen of them are labouring men.  Some are
brickmakers, some carpenters, some shoe-makers, some thatchers.
They are all known to me very well.  Nine of 'em are of your own
congregation.'

'I can't help that,' said Stockdale.

'O, I know you can't.  I only told you.  The others are more church-
inclined, because they supply the pa'son with all the spirits he
requires, and they don't wish to show unfriendliness to a customer.'

'How do you choose 'em?' said Stockdale.

'We choose 'em for their closeness, and because they are strong and
surefooted, and able to carry a heavy load a long way without being
tired.'

Stockdale sighed as she enumerated each particular, for it proved
how far involved in the business a woman must be who was so well
acquainted with its conditions and needs.  And yet he felt more
tenderly towards her at this moment than he had felt all the
foregoing day.  Perhaps it was that her experienced manner and hold
indifference stirred his admiration in spite of himself.

'Take my arm, Lizzy,' he murmured.

'I don't want it,' she said.  'Besides, we may never be to each
other again what we once have been.'

'That depends upon you,' said he, and they went on again as before.

The hired carriers paced along over Chaldon Down with as little
hesitation as if it had been day, avoiding the cart-way, and leaving
the village of East Chaldon on the left, so as to reach the crest of
the hill at a lonely trackless place not far from the ancient
earthwork called Round Pound.  An hour's brisk walking brought them
within sound of the sea, not many hundred yards from Lulstead Cove.
Here they paused, and Lizzy and Stockdale came up with them, when
they went on together to the verge of the cliff.  One of the men now
produced an iron bar, which he drove firmly into the soil a yard
from the edge, and attached to it a rope that he had uncoiled from
his body.  They all began to descend, partly stepping, partly
sliding down the incline, as the rope slipped through their hands.

'You will not go to the bottom, Lizzy?' said Stockdale anxiously.

'No.  I stay here to watch,' she said.  'Owlett is down there.'

The men remained quite silent when they reached the shore; and the
next thing audible to the two at the top was the dip of heavy oars,
and the dashing of waves against a boat's bow.  In a moment the keel
gently touched the shingle, and Stockdale heard the footsteps of the
thirty-six carriers running forwards over the pebbles towards the
point of landing.

There was a sousing in the water as of a brood of ducks plunging in,
showing that the men had not been particular about keeping their
legs, or even their waists, dry from the brine:  but it was
impossible to see what they were doing, and in a few minutes the
shingle was trampled again.  The iron bar sustaining the rope, on
which Stockdale's hand rested, began to swerve a little, and the
carriers one by one appeared climbing up the sloping cliff; dripping
audibly as they came, and sustaining themselves by the guide-rope.
Each man on reaching the top was seen to be carrying a pair of tubs,
one on his back and one on his chest, the two being slung together
by cords passing round the chine hoops, and resting on the carrier's
shoulders.  Some of the stronger men carried three by putting an
extra one on the top behind, but the customary load was a pair,
these being quite weighty enough to give their bearer the sensation
of having chest and backbone in contact after a walk of four or five
miles.

'Where is Owlett?' said Lizzy to one of them.

'He will not come up this way,' said the carrier.  'He's to bide on
shore till we be safe off.'  Then, without waiting for the rest, the
foremost men plunged across the down; and, when the last had
ascended, Lizzy pulled up the rope, wound it round her arm, wriggled
the bar from the sod, and turned to follow the carriers.

'You are very anxious about Owlett's safety,' said the minister.

'Was there ever such a man!' said Lizzy.  'Why, isn't he my cousin?'

'Yes.  Well, it is a bad night's work,' said Stockdale heavily.
'But I'll carry the bar and rope for you.'

'Thank God, the tubs have got so far all right,' said she.

Stockdale shook his head, and, taking the bar, walked by her side
towards the downs; and the moan of the sea was heard no more.

'Is this what you meant the other day when you spoke of having
business with Owlett?' the young man asked.

'This is it,' she replied.  'I never see him on any other matter.'

'A partnership of that kind with a young man is very odd.'

'It was begun by my father and his, who were brother-laws.'

Her companion could not blind himself to the fact that where tastes
and pursuits were so akin as Lizzy's and Owlett's, and where risks
were shared, as with them, in every undertaking, there would be a
peculiar appropriateness in her answering Owlett's standing question
on matrimony in the affirmative.  This did not soothe Stockdale, its
tendency being rather to stimulate in him an effort to make the pair
as inappropriate as possible, and win her away from this nocturnal
crew to correctness of conduct and a minister's parlour in some far-
removed inland county.

They had been walking near enough to the file of carriers for
Stockdale to perceive that, when they got into the road to the
village, they split up into two companies of unequal size, each of
which made off in a direction of its own.  One company, the smaller
of the two, went towards the church, and by the time that Lizzy and
Stockdale reached their own house these men had scaled the
churchyard wall, and were proceeding noiselessly over the grass
within.

'I see that Owlett has arranged for one batch to be put in the
church again,' observed Lizzy.  'Do you remember my taking you there
the first night you came?'

'Yes, of course,' said Stockdale.  'No wonder you had permission to
broach the tubs--they were his, I suppose?'

'No, they were not--they were mine; I had permission from myself.
The day after that they went several miles inland in a waggon-load
of manure, and sold very well.'

At this moment the group of men who had made off to the left some
time before began leaping one by one from the hedge opposite Lizzy's
house, and the first man, who had no tubs upon his shoulders, came
forward.

'Mrs. Newberry, isn't it?' he said hastily.

'Yes, Jim,' said she.  'What's the matter?'

'I find that we can't put any in Badger's Clump to-night, Lizzy,'
said Owlett.  'The place is watched.  We must sling the apple-tree
in the orchet if there's time.  We can't put any more under the
church lumber than I have sent on there, and my mixen hev already
more in en than is safe.'

'Very well,' she said.  'Be quick about it--that's all.  What can I
do?'

'Nothing at all, please.  Ah, it is the minister!--you two that
can't do anything had better get indoors and not be zeed.'

While Owlett thus conversed, in a tone so full of contraband anxiety
and so free from lover's jealousy, the men who followed him had been
descending one by one from the hedge; and it unfortunately happened
that when the hindmost took his leap, the cord slipped which
sustained his tubs:  the result was that both the kegs fell into the
road, one of them being stove in by the blow.

''Od drown it all!' said Owlett, rushing back.

'It is worth a good deal, I suppose?' said Stockdale.

'O no--about two guineas and half to us now,' said Lizzy excitedly.
'It isn't that--it is the smell!  It is so blazing strong before it
has been lowered by water, that it smells dreadfully when spilt in
the road like that!  I do hope Latimer won't pass by till it is gone
off.'

Owlett and one or two others picked up the burst tub and began to
scrape and trample over the spot, to disperse the liquor as much as
possible; and then they all entered the gate of Owlett's orchard,
which adjoined Lizzy's garden on the right.  Stockdale did not care
to follow them, for several on recognizing him had looked
wonderingly at his presence, though they said nothing.  Lizzy left
his side and went to the bottom of the garden, looking over the
hedge into the orchard, where the men could be dimly seen bustling
about, and apparently hiding the tubs.  All was done noiselessly,
and without a light; and when it was over they dispersed in
different directions, those who had taken their cargoes to the
church having already gone off to their homes.

Lizzy returned to the garden-gate, over which Stockdale was still
abstractedly leaning.  'It is all finished:  I am going indoors
now,' she said gently.  'I will leave the door ajar for you.'

'O no--you needn't,' said Stockdale; 'I am coming too.'

But before either of them had moved, the faint clatter of horses'
hoofs broke upon the ear, and it seemed to come from the point where
the track across the down joined the hard road.

'They are just too late!' cried Lizzy exultingly.

'Who?' said Stockdale.

'Latimer, the riding-officer, and some assistant of his.  We had
better go indoors.'

They entered the house, and Lizzy bolted the door.  'Please don't
get a light, Mr. Stockdale,' she said.

'Of course I will not,' said he.

'I thought you might be on the side of the king,' said Lizzy, with
faintest sarcasm.

'I am,' said Stockdale.  'But, Lizzy Newberry, I love you, and you
know it perfectly well; and you ought to know, if you do not, what I
have suffered in my conscience on your account these last few days!'

'I guess very well,' she said hurriedly.  'Yet I don't see why.  Ah,
you are better than I!'

The trotting of the horses seemed to have again died away, and the
pair of listeners touched each other's fingers in the cold 'Good-
night' of those whom something seriously divided.  They were on the
landing, but before they had taken three steps apart, the tramp of
the horsemen suddenly revived, almost close to the house.  Lizzy
turned to the staircase window, opened the casement about an inch,
and put her face close to the aperture.  'Yes, one of 'em is
Latimer,' she whispered.  'He always rides a white horse.  One would
think it was the last colour for a man in that line.'

Stockdale looked, and saw the white shape of the animal as it passed
by; but before the riders had gone another ten yards, Latimer reined
in his horse, and said something to his companion which neither
Stockdale nor Lizzy could hear.  Its drift was, however, soon made
evident, for the other man stopped also; and sharply turning the
horses' heads they cautiously retraced their steps.  When they were
again opposite Mrs. Newberry's garden, Latimer dismounted, and the
man on the dark horse did the same.

Lizzy and Stockdale, intently listening and observing the
proceedings, naturally put their heads as close as possible to the
slit formed by the slightly opened casement; and thus it occurred
that at last their cheeks came positively into contact.  They went
on listening, as if they did not know of the singular incident which
had happened to their faces, and the pressure of each to each rather
increased than lessened with the lapse of time.

They could hear the excisemen sniffing the air like hounds as they
paced slowly along.  When they reached the spot where the tub had
burst, both stopped on the instant.

'Ay, ay, 'tis quite strong here,' said the second officer.  'Shall
we knock at the door?'

'Well, no,' said Latimer.  'Maybe this is only a trick to put us off
the scent.  They wouldn't kick up this stink anywhere near their
hiding-place.  I have known such things before.'

'Anyhow, the things, or some of 'em, must have been brought this
way,' said the other.

'Yes,' said Latimer musingly.  'Unless 'tis all done to tole us the
wrong way.  I have a mind that we go home for to-night without
saying a word, and come the first thing in the morning with more
hands.  I know they have storages about here, but we can do nothing
by this owl's light.  We will look round the parish and see if
everybody is in bed, John; and if all is quiet, we will do as I
say.'

They went on, and the two inside the window could hear them passing
leisurely through the whole village, the street of which curved
round at the bottom and entered the turnpike road at another
junction.  This way the excisemen followed, and the amble of their
horses died quite away.

'What will you do?' said Stockdale, withdrawing from his position.

She knew that he alluded to the coming search by the officers, to
divert her attention from their own tender incident by the casement,
which he wished to be passed over as a thing rather dreamt of than
done.  'O, nothing,' she replied, with as much coolness as she could
command under her disappointment at his manner.  'We often have such
storms as this.  You would not be frightened if you knew what fools
they are.  Fancy riding o' horseback through the place:  of course
they will hear and see nobody while they make that noise; but they
are always afraid to get off, in case some of our fellows should
burst out upon 'em, and tie them up to the gate-post, as they have
done before now.  Good-night, Mr. Stockdale.'

She closed the window and went to her room, where a tear fell from
her eyes; and that not because of the alertness of the riding-
officers.



CHAPTER VI--THE GREAT SEARCH AT NETHER-MOYNTON



Stockdale was so excited by the events of the evening, and the
dilemma that he was placed in between conscience and love, that he
did not sleep, or even doze, but remained as broadly awake as at
noonday.  As soon as the grey light began to touch ever so faintly
the whiter objects in his bedroom he arose, dressed himself, and
went downstairs into the road.

The village was already astir.  Several of the carriers had heard
the well-known tramp of Latimer's horse while they were undressing
in the dark that night, and had already communicated with each other
and Owlett on the subject.  The only doubt seemed to be about the
safety of those tubs which had been left under the church gallery-
stairs, and after a short discussion at the corner of the mill, it
was agreed that these should be removed before it got lighter, and
hidden in the middle of a double hedge bordering the adjoining
field.  However, before anything could be carried into effect, the
footsteps of many men were heard coming down the lane from the
highway.

'Damn it, here they be,' said Owlett, who, having already drawn the
hatch and started his mill for the day, stood stolidly at the mill-
door covered with flour, as if the interest of his whole soul was
bound up in the shaking walls around him.

The two or three with whom he had been talking dispersed to their
usual work, and when the excise officers, and the formidable body of
men they had hired, reached the village cross, between the mill and
Mrs. Newberry's house, the village wore the natural aspect of a
place beginning its morning labours.

'Now,' said Latimer to his associates, who numbered thirteen men in
all, 'what I know is that the things are somewhere in this here
place.  We have got the day before us, and 'tis hard if we can't
light upon 'em and get 'em to Budmouth Custom-house before night.
First we will try the fuel-houses, and then we'll work our way into
the chimmers, and then to the ricks and stables, and so creep round.
You have nothing but your noses to guide ye, mind, so use 'em to-day
if you never did in your lives before.'

Then the search began.  Owlett, during the early part, watched from
his mill-window, Lizzy from the door of her house, with the greatest
self-possession.  A farmer down below, who also had a share in the
run, rode about with one eye on his fields and the other on Latimer
and his myrmidons, prepared to put them off the scent if he should
be asked a question.  Stockdale, who was no smuggler at all, felt
more anxiety than the worst of them, and went about his studies with
a heavy heart, coming frequently to the door to ask Lizzy some
question or other on the consequences to her of the tubs being
found.

'The consequences,' she said quietly, 'are simply that I shall lose
'em.  As I have none in the house or garden, they can't touch me
personally.'

'But you have some in the orchard?'

'Owlett rents that of me, and he lends it to others.  So it will be
hard to say who put any tubs there if they should be found.'

There was never such a tremendous sniffing known as that which took
place in Nether-Moynton parish and its vicinity this day.  All was
done methodically, and mostly on hands and knees.  At different
hours of the day they had different plans.  From daybreak to
breakfast-time the officers used their sense of smell in a direct
and straightforward manner only, pausing nowhere but at such places
as the tubs might be supposed to be secreted in at that very moment,
pending their removal on the following night.  Among the places
tested and examined were

Hollow trees        Cupboards         Culverts
Potato-graves       Clock-cases       Hedgerows
Fuel-houses         Chimney-flues     Faggot-ricks
Bedrooms            Rainwater-butts   Haystacks
Apple-lofts         Pigsties          Coppers and ovens.

After breakfast they recommenced with renewed vigour, taking a new
line; that is to say, directing their attention to clothes that
might be supposed to have come in contact with the tubs in their
removal from the shore, such garments being usually tainted with the
spirit, owing to its oozing between the staves.  They now sniffed at
-

Smock-frocks                 Smiths' and shoemakers' aprons
Old shirts and waistcoats    Knee-naps and hedging-gloves
Coats and hats               Tarpaulins
Breeches and leggings        Market-cloaks
Women's shawls and gowns     Scarecrows

And as soon as the mid-day meal was over, they pushed their search
into places where the spirits might have been thrown away in alarm:-

Horse-ponds       Mixens         Sinks in yards
Stable-drains     Wet ditches    Road-scrapings, and
Cinder-heaps      Cesspools      Back-door gutters.

But still these indefatigable excisemen discovered nothing more than
the original tell-tale smell in the road opposite Lizzy's house,
which even yet had not passed off.

'I'll tell ye what it is, men,' said Latimer, about three o'clock in
the afternoon, 'we must begin over again.  Find them tubs I will.'

The men, who had been hired for the day, looked at their hands and
knees, muddy with creeping on all fours so frequently, and rubbed
their noses, as if they had almost had enough of it; for the
quantity of bad air which had passed into each one's nostril had
rendered it nearly as insensible as a flue.  However, after a
moment's hesitation, they prepared to start anew, except three,
whose power of smell had quite succumbed under the excessive wear
and tear of the day.

By this time not a male villager was to be seen in the parish.
Owlett was not at his mill, the farmers were not in their fields,
the parson was not in his garden, the smith had left his forge, and
the wheelwright's shop was silent.

'Where the divil are the folk gone?' said Latimer, waking up to the
fact of their absence, and looking round.  'I'll have 'em up for
this!  Why don't they come and help us?  There's not a man about the
place but the Methodist parson, and he's an old woman.  I demand
assistance in the king's name!'

'We must find the jineral public afore we can demand that,' said his
lieutenant.

'Well, well, we shall do better without 'em,' said Latimer, who
changed his moods at a moment's notice.  'But there's great cause of
suspicion in this silence and this keeping out of sight, and I'll
bear it in mind.  Now we will go across to Owlett's orchard, and see
what we can find there.'

Stockdale, who heard this discussion from the garden-gate, over
which he had been leaning, was rather alarmed, and thought it a
mistake of the villagers to keep so completely out of the way.  He
himself, like the excisemen, had been wondering for the last half-
hour what could have become of them.  Some labourers were of
necessity engaged in distant fields, but the master-workmen should
have been at home; though one and all, after just showing themselves
at their shops, had apparently gone off for the day.  He went in to
Lizzy, who sat at a back window sewing, and said, 'Lizzy, where are
the men?'

Lizzy laughed.  'Where they mostly are when they're run so hard as
this.'  She cast her eyes to heaven.  'Up there,' she said.

Stockdale looked up.  'What--on the top of the church tower?' he
asked, seeing the direction of her glance.

'Yes.'

'Well, I expect they will soon have to come down,' said he gravely.
'I have been listening to the officers, and they are going to search
the orchard over again, and then every nook in the church.'

Lizzy looked alarmed for the first time.  'Will you go and tell our
folk?' she said.  'They ought to be let know.'  Seeing his
conscience struggling within him like a boiling pot, she added, 'No,
never mind, I'll go myself.'

She went out, descended the garden, and climbed over the churchyard
wall at the same time that the preventive-men were ascending the
road to the orchard.  Stockdale could do no less than follow her.
By the time that she reached the tower entrance he was at her side,
and they entered together.

Nether-Moynton church-tower was, as in many villages, without a
turret, and the only way to the top was by going up to the singers'
gallery, and thence ascending by a ladder to a square trap-door in
the floor of the bell-loft, above which a permanent ladder was
fixed, passing through the bells to a hole in the roof.  When Lizzy
and Stockdale reached the gallery and looked up, nothing but the
trap-door and the five holes for the bell-ropes appeared.  The
ladder was gone.

'There's no getting up,' said Stockdale.

'O yes, there is,' said she.  'There's an eye looking at us at this
moment through a knot-hole in that trap-door.'

And as she spoke the trap opened, and the dark line of the ladder
was seen descending against the white-washed wall.  When it touched
the bottom Lizzy dragged it to its place, and said, 'If you'll go
up, I'll follow.'

The young man ascended, and presently found himself among
consecrated bells for the first time in his life, nonconformity
having been in the Stockdale blood for some generations.  He eyed
them uneasily, and looked round for Lizzy.  Owlett stood here,
holding the top of the ladder.

'What, be you really one of us?' said the miller.

'It seems so,' said Stockdale sadly.

'He's not,' said Lizzy, who overheard.  'He's neither for nor
against us.  He'll do us no harm.'

She stepped up beside them, and then they went on to the next stage,
which, when they had clambered over the dusty bell-carriages, was of
easy ascent, leading towards the hole through which the pale sky
appeared, and into the open air.  Owlett remained behind for a
moment, to pull up the lower ladder.

'Keep down your heads,' said a voice, as soon as they set foot on
the flat.

Stockdale here beheld all the missing parishioners, lying on their
stomachs on the tower roof, except a few who, elevated on their
hands and knees, were peeping through the embrasures of the parapet.
Stockdale did the same, and saw the village lying like a map below
him, over which moved the figures of the excisemen, each
foreshortened to a crablike object, the crown of his hat forming a
circular disc in the centre of him.  Some of the men had turned
their heads when the young preacher's figure arose among them.

'What, Mr. Stockdale?' said Matt Grey, in a tone of surprise.

'I'd as lief that it hadn't been,' said Jim Clarke.  'If the pa'son
should see him a trespassing here in his tower, 'twould be none the
better for we, seeing how 'a do hate chapel-members.  He'd never buy
a tub of us again, and he's as good a customer as we have got this
side o' Warm'll.'

'Where is the pa'son?' said Lizzy.

'In his house, to be sure, that he mid see nothing of what's going
on--where all good folks ought to be, and this young man likewise.'

'Well, he has brought some news,' said Lizzy.  'They are going to
search the orchet and church; can we do anything if they should
find?'

'Yes,' said her cousin Owlett.  'That's what we've been talking o',
and we have settled our line.  Well, be dazed!'

The exclamation was caused by his perceiving that some of the
searchers, having got into the orchard, and begun stooping and
creeping hither and thither, were pausing in the middle, where a
tree smaller than the rest was growing.  They drew closer, and bent
lower than ever upon the ground.

'O, my tubs!' said Lizzy faintly, as she peered through the parapet
at them.

'They have got 'em, 'a b'lieve,' said Owlett.

The interest in the movements of the officers was so keen that not a
single eye was looking in any other direction; but at that moment a
shout from the church beneath them attracted the attention of the
smugglers, as it did also of the party in the orchard, who sprang to
their feet and went towards the churchyard wall.  At the same time
those of the Government men who had entered the church unperceived
by the smugglers cried aloud, 'Here be some of 'em at last.'

The smugglers remained in a blank silence, uncertain whether 'some
of 'em' meant tubs or men; but again peeping cautiously over the
edge of the tower they learnt that tubs were the things descried;
and soon these fated articles were brought one by one into the
middle of the churchyard from their hiding-place under the gallery-
stairs.

'They are going to put 'em on Hinton's vault till they find the
rest!' said Lizzy hopelessly.  The excisemen had, in fact, begun to
pile up the tubs on a large stone slab which was fixed there; and
when all were brought out from the tower, two or three of the men
were left standing by them, the rest of the party again proceeding
to the orchard.

The interest of the smugglers in the next manoeuvres of their
enemies became painfully intense.  Only about thirty tubs had been
secreted in the lumber of the tower, but seventy were hidden in the
orchard, making up all that they had brought ashore as yet, the
remainder of the cargo having been tied to a sinker and dropped
overboard for another night's operations.  The excisemen, having re-
entered the orchard, acted as if they were positive that here lay
hidden the rest of the tubs, which they were determined to find
before nightfall.  They spread themselves out round the field, and
advancing on all fours as before, went anew round every apple-tree
in the enclosure.  The young tree in the middle again led them to
pause, and at length the whole company gathered there in a way which
signified that a second chain of reasoning had led to the same
results as the first.

When they had examined the sod hereabouts for some minutes, one of
the men rose, ran to a disused porch of the church where tools were
kept, and returned with the sexton's pickaxe and shovel, with which
they set to work.

'Are they really buried there?' said the minister, for the grass was
so green and uninjured that it was difficult to believe it had been
disturbed.  The smugglers were too interested to reply, and
presently they saw, to their chagrin, the officers stand several on
each side of the tree; and, stooping and applying their hands to the
soil, they bodily lifted the tree and the turf around it.  The
apple-tree now showed itself to be growing in a shallow box, with
handles for lifting at each of the four sides.  Under the site of
the tree a square hole was revealed, and an exciseman went and
looked down.

'It is all up now,' said Owlett quietly.  'And now all of ye get
down before they notice we are here; and be ready for our next move.
I had better bide here till dark, or they may take me on suspicion,
as 'tis on my ground.  I'll be with ye as soon as daylight begins to
pink in.'

'And I?' said Lizzy.

'You please look to the linch-pins and screws; then go indoors and
know nothing at all.  The chaps will do the rest.'

The ladder was replaced, and all but Owlett descended, the men
passing off one by one at the back of the church, and vanishing on
their respective errands.

Lizzy walked boldly along the street, followed closely by the
minister.

'You are going indoors, Mrs. Newberry?' he said.

She knew from the words 'Mrs. Newberry' that the division between
them had widened yet another degree.

'I am not going home,' she said.  'I have a little thing to do
before I go in.  Martha Sarah will get your tea.'

'O, I don't mean on that account,' said Stockdale.  'What CAN you
have to do further in this unhallowed affair?'

'Only a little,' she said.

'What is that?  I'll go with you.'

'No, I shall go by myself.  Will you please go indoors?  I shall be
there in less than an hour.'

'You are not going to run any danger, Lizzy?' said the young man,
his tenderness reasserting itself.

'None whatever--worth mentioning,' answered she, and went down
towards the Cross.

Stockdale entered the garden gate, and stood behind it looking on.
The excisemen were still busy in the orchard, and at last he was
tempted to enter, and watch their proceedings.  When he came closer
he found that the secret cellar, of whose existence he had been
totally unaware, was formed by timbers placed across from side to
side about a foot under the ground, and grassed over.

The excisemen looked up at Stockdale's fair and downy countenance,
and evidently thinking him above suspicion, went on with their work
again.  As soon as all the tubs were taken out, they began tearing
up the turf; pulling out the timbers, and breaking in the sides,
till the cellar was wholly dismantled and shapeless, the apple-tree
lying with its roots high to the air.  But the hole which had in its
time held so much contraband merchandize was never completely filled
up, either then or afterwards, a depression in the greensward
marking the spot to this day.



CHAPTER VII--THE WALK TO WARM'ELL CROSS AND AFTERWARDS



As the goods had all to be carried to Budmouth that night, the
excisemen's next object was to find horses and carts for the
journey, and they went about the village for that purpose.  Latimer
strode hither and thither with a lump of chalk in his hand, marking
broad-arrows so vigorously on every vehicle and set of harness that
he came across, that it seemed as if he would chalk broad-arrows on
the very hedges and roads.  The owner of every conveyance so marked
was bound to give it up for Government purposes.  Stockdale, who had
had enough of the scene, turned indoors thoughtful and depressed.
Lizzy was already there, having come in at the back, though she had
not yet taken off her bonnet.  She looked tired, and her mood was
not much brighter than his own.  They had but little to say to each
other; and the minister went away and attempted to read; but at this
he could not succeed, and he shook the little bell for tea.

Lizzy herself brought in the tray, the girl having run off into the
village during the afternoon, too full of excitement at the
proceedings to remember her state of life.  However, almost before
the sad lovers had said anything to each other, Martha came in in a
steaming state.

'O, there's such a stoor, Mrs. Newberry and Mr. Stockdale!  The
king's excisemen can't get the carts ready nohow at all!  They
pulled Thomas Ballam's, and William Rogers's, and Stephen Sprake's
carts into the road, and off came the wheels, and down fell the
carts; and they found there was no linch-pins in the arms; and then
they tried Samuel Shane's waggon, and found that the screws were
gone from he, and at last they looked at the dairyman's cart, and
he's got none neither!  They have gone now to the blacksmith's to
get some made, but he's nowhere to be found!'

Stockdale looked at Lizzy, who blushed very slightly, and went out
of the room, followed by Martha Sarah.  But before they had got
through the passage there was a rap at the front door, and Stockdale
recognized Latimer's voice addressing Mrs. Newberry, who had turned
back.

'For God's sake, Mrs. Newberry, have you seen Hardman the blacksmith
up this way?  If we could get hold of him, we'd e'en a'most drag him
by the hair of his head to his anvil, where he ought to be.'

'He's an idle man, Mr. Latimer,' said Lizzy archly.  'What do you
want him for?'

'Why, there isn't a horse in the place that has got more than three
shoes on, and some have only two.  The waggon-wheels be without
strakes, and there's no linch-pins to the carts.  What with that,
and the bother about every set of harness being out of order, we
shan't be off before nightfall--upon my soul we shan't.  'Tis a
rough lot, Mrs. Newberry, that you've got about you here; but
they'll play at this game once too often, mark my words they will!
There's not a man in the parish that don't deserve to be whipped.'

It happened that Hardman was at that moment a little further up the
lane, smoking his pipe behind a holly-bush.  When Latimer had done
speaking he went on in this direction, and Hardman, hearing the
exciseman's steps, found curiosity too strong for prudence.  He
peeped out from the bush at the very moment that Latimer's glance
was on it.  There was nothing left for him to do but to come forward
with unconcern.

'I've been looking for you for the last hour!' said Latimer with a
glare in his eye.

'Sorry to hear that,' said Hardman.  'I've been out for a stroll, to
look for more hid tubs, to deliver 'em up to Gover'ment.'

'O yes, Hardman, we know it,' said Latimer, with withering sarcasm.
'We know that you'll deliver 'em up to Gover'ment.  We know that all
the parish is helping us, and have been all day!  Now you please
walk along with me down to your shop, and kindly let me hire ye in
the king's name.'

They went down the lane together; and presently there resounded from
the smithy the ring of a hammer not very briskly swung.  However,
the carts and horses were got into some sort of travelling
condition, but it was not until after the clock had struck six, when
the muddy roads were glistening under the horizontal light of the
fading day.  The smuggled tubs were soon packed into the vehicles,
and Latimer, with three of his assistants, drove slowly out of the
village in the direction of the port of Budmouth, some considerable
number of miles distant, the other excisemen being left to watch for
the remainder of the cargo, which they knew to have been sunk
somewhere between Ringsworth and Lulstead Cove, and to unearth
Owlett, the only person clearly implicated by the discovery of the
cave.

Women and children stood at the doors as the carts, each chalked
with the Government pitchfork, passed in the increasing twilight;
and as they stood they looked at the confiscated property with a
melancholy expression that told only too plainly the relation which
they bore to the trade.

'Well, Lizzy,' said Stockdale, when the crackle of the wheels had
nearly died away.  'This is a fit finish to your adventure.  I am
truly thankful that you have got off without suspicion, and the loss
only of the liquor.  Will you sit down and let me talk to you?'

'By and by,' she said.  'But I must go out now.'

'Not to that horrid shore again?' he said blankly.

'No, not there.  I am only going to see the end of this day's
business.'

He did not answer to this, and she moved towards the door slowly, as
if waiting for him to say something more.

'You don't offer to come with me,' she added at last.  'I suppose
that's because you hate me after all this?'

'Can you say it, Lizzy, when you know I only want to save you from
such practices?  Come with you of course I will, if it is only to
take care of you.  But why will you go out again?'

'Because I cannot rest indoors.  Something is happening, and I must
know what.  Now, come!'  And they went into the dusk together.

When they reached the turnpike-road she turned to the right, and he
soon perceived that they were following the direction of the
excisemen and their load.  He had given her his arm, and every now
and then she suddenly pulled it back, to signify that he was to halt
a moment and listen.  They had walked rather quickly along the first
quarter of a mile, and on the second or third time of standing still
she said, 'I hear them ahead--don't you?'

'Yes,' he said; 'I hear the wheels.  But what of that?'

'I only want to know if they get clear away from the neighbourhood.'

'Ah,' said he, a light breaking upon him.  'Something desperate is
to be attempted!--and now I remember there was not a man about the
village when we left.'

'Hark!' she murmured.  The noise of the cartwheels had stopped, and
given place to another sort of sound.

''Tis a scuffle!' said Stockdale.  'There'll be murder!  Lizzy, let
go my arm; I am going on.  On my conscience, I must not stay here
and do nothing!'

'There'll be no murder, and not even a broken head,' she said.  'Our
men are thirty to four of them:  no harm will be done at all.'

'Then there IS an attack!' exclaimed Stockdale; 'and you knew it was
to be.  Why should you side with men who break the laws like this?'

'Why should you side with men who take from country traders what
they have honestly bought wi' their own money in France?' said she
firmly.

'They are not honestly bought,' said he.

'They are,' she contradicted.  'I and Owlett and the others paid
thirty shillings for every one of the tubs before they were put on
board at Cherbourg, and if a king who is nothing to us sends his
people to steal our property, we have a right to steal it back
again.'

Stockdale did not stop to argue the matter, but went quickly in the
direction of the noise, Lizzy keeping at his side.  'Don't you
interfere, will you, dear Richard?' she said anxiously, as they drew
near.  'Don't let us go any closer:  'tis at Warm'ell Cross where
they are seizing 'em.  You can do no good, and you may meet with a
hard blow!'

'Let us see first what is going on,' he said.  But before they had
got much further the noise of the cartwheels began again; and
Stockdale soon found that they were coming towards him.  In another
minute the three carts came up, and Stockdale and Lizzy stood in the
ditch to let them pass.

Instead of being conducted by four men, as had happened when they
went out of the village, the horses and carts were now accompanied
by a body of from twenty to thirty, all of whom, as Stockdale
perceived to his astonishment, had blackened faces.  Among them
walked six or eight huge female figures, whom, from their wide
strides, Stockdale guessed to be men in disguise.  As soon as the
party discerned Lizzy and her companion four or five fell back, and
when the carts had passed, came close to the pair.

'There is no walking up this way for the present,' said one of the
gaunt women, who wore curls a foot long, dangling down the sides of
her face, in the fashion of the time.  Stockdale recognized this
lady's voice as Owlett's.

'Why not?' said Stockdale.  'This is the public highway.'

'Now look here, youngster,' said Owlett.  'O, 'tis the Methodist
parson!--what, and Mrs. Newberry!  Well, you'd better not go up that
way, Lizzy.  They've all run off, and folks have got their own
again.'

The miller then hastened on and joined his comrades.  Stockdale and
Lizzy also turned back.  'I wish all this hadn't been forced upon
us,' she said regretfully.  'But if those excisemen had got off with
the tubs, half the people in the parish would have been in want for
the next month or two.'

Stockdale was not paying much attention to her words, and he said,
'I don't think I can go back like this.  Those four poor excisemen
may be murdered for all I know.'

'Murdered!' said Lizzy impatiently.  'We don't do murder here.'

'Well, I shall go as far as Warm'ell Cross to see,' said Stockdale
decisively; and, without wishing her safe home or anything else, the
minister turned back.  Lizzy stood looking at him till his form was
absorbed in the shades; and then, with sadness, she went in the
direction of Nether-Moynton.

The road was lonely, and after nightfall at this time of the year
there was often not a passer for hours.  Stockdale pursued his way
without hearing a sound beyond that of his own footsteps; and in due
time he passed beneath the trees of the plantation which surrounded
the Warm'ell Cross-road.  Before he had reached the point of
intersection he heard voices from the thicket.

'Hoi-hoi-hoi!  Help, help!'

The voices were not at all feeble or despairing, but they were
unmistakably anxious.  Stockdale had no weapon, and before plunging
into the pitchy darkness of the plantation he pulled a stake from
the hedge, to use in case of need.  When he got among the trees he
shouted--'What's the matter--where are you?'

'Here,' answered the voices; and, pushing through the brambles in
that direction, he came near the objects of his search.

'Why don't you come forward?' said Stockdale.

'We be tied to the trees!'

'Who are you?'

'Poor Will Latimer the exciseman!' said one plaintively.  'Just come
and cut these cords, there's a good man.  We were afraid nobody
would pass by to-night.'

Stockdale soon loosened them, upon which they stretched their limbs
and stood at their ease.

'The rascals!' said Latimer, getting now into a rage, though he had
seemed quite meek when Stockdale first came up.  ''Tis the same set
of fellows.  I know they were Moynton chaps to a man.'

'But we can't swear to 'em,' said another.  'Not one of 'em spoke.'

'What are you going to do?' said Stockdale.

'I'd fain go back to Moynton, and have at 'em again!' said Latimer.

'So would we!' said his comrades.

'Fight till we die!' said Latimer.

'We will, we will!' said his men.

'But,' said Latimer, more frigidly, as they came out of the
plantation, 'we don't KNOW that these chaps with black faces were
Moynton men?  And proof is a hard thing.'

'So it is,' said the rest.

'And therefore we won't do nothing at all,' said Latimer, with
complete dispassionateness.  'For my part, I'd sooner be them than
we.  The clitches of my arms are burning like fire from the cords
those two strapping women tied round 'em.  My opinion is, now I have
had time to think o't, that you may serve your Gover'ment at too
high a price.  For these two nights and days I have not had an
hour's rest; and, please God, here's for home-along.'

The other officers agreed heartily to this course; and, thanking
Stockdale for his timely assistance, they parted from him at the
Cross, taking themselves the western road, and Stockdale going back
to Nether-Moynton.

During that walk the minister was lost in reverie of the most
painful kind.  As soon as he got into the house, and before entering
his own rooms, he advanced to the door of the little back parlour in
which Lizzy usually sat with her mother.  He found her there alone.
Stockdale went forward, and, like a man in a dream, looked down upon
the table that stood between him and the young woman, who had her
bonnet and cloak still on.  As he did not speak, she looked up from
her chair at him, with misgiving in her eye.

'Where are they gone?' he then said listlessly.

'Who?--I don't know.  I have seen nothing of them since.  I came
straight in here.'

'If your men can manage to get off with those tubs, it will be a
great profit to you, I suppose?'

'A share will be mine, a share my cousin Owlett's, a share to each
of the two farmers, and a share divided amongst the men who helped
us.'

'And you still think,' he went on slowly, 'that you will not give
this business up?'

Lizzy rose, and put her hand upon his shoulder.  'Don't ask that,'
she whispered.  'You don't know what you are asking.  I must tell
you, though I meant not to do it.  What I make by that trade is all
I have to keep my mother and myself with.'

He was astonished.  'I did not dream of such a thing,' he said.  'I
would rather have swept the streets, had I been you.  What is money
compared with a clear conscience?'

'My conscience is clear.  I know my mother, but the king I have
never seen.  His dues are nothing to me.  But it is a great deal to
me that my mother and I should live.'

'Marry me, and promise to give it up.  I will keep your mother.'

'It is good of you,' she said, trembling a little.  'Let me think of
it by myself.  I would rather not answer now.'

She reserved her answer till the next day, and came into his room
with a solemn face.  'I cannot do what you wished!' she said
passionately.  'It is too much to ask.  My whole life ha' been
passed in this way.'  Her words and manner showed that before
entering she had been struggling with herself in private, and that
the contention had been strong.

Stockdale turned pale, but he spoke quietly.  'Then, Lizzy, we must
part.  I cannot go against my principles in this matter, and I
cannot make my profession a mockery.  You know how I love you, and
what I would do for you; but this one thing I cannot do.'

'But why should you belong to that profession?' she burst out.  'I
have got this large house; why can't you marry me, and live here
with us, and not be a Methodist preacher any more?  I assure you,
Richard, it is no harm, and I wish you could only see it as I do!
We only carry it on in winter:  in summer it is never done at all.
It stirs up one's dull life at this time o' the year, and gives
excitement, which I have got so used to now that I should hardly
know how to do 'ithout it.  At nights, when the wind blows, instead
of being dull and stupid, and not noticing whether it do blow or
not, your mind is afield, even if you are not afield yourself; and
you are wondering how the chaps are getting on; and you walk up and
down the room, and look out o' window, and then you go out yourself,
and know your way about as well by night as by day, and have
hairbreadth escapes from old Latimer and his fellows, who are too
stupid ever to really frighten us, and only make us a bit nimble.'

'He frightened you a little last night, anyhow:  and I would advise
you to drop it before it is worse.'

She shook her head.  'No, I must go on as I have begun.  I was born
to it.  It is in my blood, and I can't be cured.  O, Richard, you
cannot think what a hard thing you have asked, and how sharp you try
me when you put me between this and my love for 'ee!'

Stockdale was leaning with his elbow on the mantelpiece, his hands
over his eyes.  'We ought never to have met, Lizzy,' he said.  'It
was an ill day for us!  I little thought there was anything so
hopeless and impossible in our engagement as this.  Well, it is too
late now to regret consequences in this way.  I have had the
happiness of seeing you and knowing you at least.'

'You dissent from Church, and I dissent from State,' she said.  'And
I don't see why we are not well matched.'

He smiled sadly, while Lizzy remained looking down, her eyes
beginning to overflow.

That was an unhappy evening for both of them, and the days that
followed were unhappy days.  Both she and he went mechanically about
their employments, and his depression was marked in the village by
more than one of his denomination with whom he came in contact.  But
Lizzy, who passed her days indoors, was unsuspected of being the
cause:  for it was generally understood that a quiet engagement to
marry existed between her and her cousin Owlett, and had existed for
some time.

Thus uncertainly the week passed on; till one morning Stockdale said
to her:  'I have had a letter, Lizzy.  I must call you that till I
am gone.'

'Gone?' said she blankly.

'Yes,' he said.  'I am going from this place.  I felt it would be
better for us both that I should not stay after what has happened.
In fact, I couldn't stay here, and look on you from day to day,
without becoming weak and faltering in my course.  I have just heard
of an arrangement by which the other minister can arrive here in
about a week; and let me go elsewhere.'

That he had all this time continued so firmly fixed in his
resolution came upon her as a grievous surprise.  'You never loved
me!' she said bitterly.

'I might say the same,' he returned; 'but I will not.  Grant me one
favour.  Come and hear my last sermon on the day before I go.'

Lizzy, who was a church-goer on Sunday mornings, frequently attended
Stockdale's chapel in the evening with the rest of the double-
minded; and she promised.

It became known that Stockdale was going to leave, and a good many
people outside his own sect were sorry to hear it.  The intervening
days flew rapidly away, and on the evening of the Sunday which
preceded the morning of his departure Lizzy sat in the chapel to
hear him for the last time.  The little building was full to
overflowing, and he took up the subject which all had expected, that
of the contraband trade so extensively practised among them.  His
hearers, in laying his words to their own hearts, did not perceive
that they were most particularly directed against Lizzy, till the
sermon waxed warm, and Stockdale nearly broke down with emotion.  In
truth his own earnestness, and her sad eyes looking up at him, were
too much for the young man's equanimity.  He hardly knew how he
ended.  He saw Lizzy, as through a mist, turn and go away with the
rest of the congregation; and shortly afterwards followed her home.

She invited him to supper, and they sat down alone, her mother
having, as was usual with her on Sunday nights, gone to bed early.

'We will part friends, won't we?' said Lizzy, with forced gaiety,
and never alluding to the sermon:  a reticence which rather
disappointed him.

'We will,' he said, with a forced smile on his part; and they sat
down.

It was the first meal that they had ever shared together in their
lives, and probably the last that they would so share.  When it was
over, and the indifferent conversation could no longer be continued,
he arose and took her hand.  'Lizzy,' he said, 'do you say we must
part--do you?'

'You do,' she said solemnly.  'I can say no more.'

'Nor I,' said he.  'If that is your answer, good-bye!'

Stockdale bent over her and kissed her, and she involuntarily
returned his kiss.  'I shall go early,' he said hurriedly.  'I shall
not see you again.'

And he did leave early.  He fancied, when stepping forth into the
grey morning light, to mount the van which was to carry him away,
that he saw a face between the parted curtains of Lizzy's window,
but the light was faint, and the panes glistened with wet; so he
could not be sure.  Stockdale mounted the vehicle, and was gone; and
on the following Sunday the new minister preached in the chapel of
the Moynton Wesleyans.


One day, two years after the parting, Stockdale, now settled in a
midland town, came into Nether-Moynton by carrier in the original
way.  Jogging along in the van that afternoon he had put questions
to the driver, and the answers that he received interested the
minister deeply.  The result of them was that he went without the
least hesitation to the door of his former lodging.  It was about
six o'clock in the evening, and the same time of year as when he had
left; now, too, the ground was damp and glistening, the west was
bright, and Lizzy's snowdrops were raising their heads in the border
under the wall.

Lizzy must have caught sight of him from the window, for by the time
that he reached the door she was there holding it open:  and then,
as if she had not sufficiently considered her act of coming out, she
drew herself back, saying with some constraint, 'Mr. Stockdale!'

'You knew it was,' said Stockdale, taking her hand.  'I wrote to say
I should call.'

'Yes, but you did not say when,' she answered.

'I did not.  I was not quite sure when my business would lead me to
these parts.'

'You only came because business brought you near?'

'Well, that is the fact; but I have often thought I should like to
come on purpose to see you . . . But what's all this that has
happened?  I told you how it would be, Lizzy, and you would not
listen to me.'

'I would not,' she said sadly.  'But I had been brought up to that
life; and it was second nature to me.  However, it is all over now.
The officers have blood-money for taking a man dead or alive, and
the trade is going to nothing.  We were hunted down like rats.'

'Owlett is quite gone, I hear.'

'Yes.  He is in America.  We had a dreadful struggle that last time,
when they tried to take him.  It is a perfect miracle that he lived
through it; and it is a wonder that I was not killed.  I was shot in
the hand.  It was not by aim; the shot was really meant for my
cousin; but I was behind, looking on as usual, and the bullet came
to me.  It bled terribly, but I got home without fainting; and it
healed after a time.  You know how he suffered?'

'No,' said Stockdale.  'I only heard that he just escaped with his
life.'

'He was shot in the back; but a rib turned the ball.  He was badly
hurt.  We would not let him be took.  The men carried him all night
across the meads to Kingsbere, and hid him in a barn, dressing his
wound as well as they could, till he was so far recovered as to be
able to get about.  He had gied up his mill for some time; and at
last he got to Bristol, and took a passage to America, and he's
settled in Wisconsin.'

'What do you think of smuggling now?' said the minister gravely.

'I own that we were wrong,' said she.  'But I have suffered for it.
I am very poor now, and my mother has been dead these twelve months
. . . But won't you come in, Mr. Stockdale?'

Stockdale went in; and it is to be supposed that they came to an
understanding; for a fortnight later there was a sale of Lizzy's
furniture, and after that a wedding at a chapel in a neighbouring
town.

He took her away from her old haunts to the home that he had made
for himself in his native county, where she studied her duties as a
minister's wife with praiseworthy assiduity.  It is said that in
after years she wrote an excellent tract called Render unto Caesar;
or, The Repentant Villagers, in which her own experience was
anonymously used as the introductory story.  Stockdale got it
printed, after making some corrections, and putting in a few
powerful sentences of his own; and many hundreds of copies were
distributed by the couple in the course of their married life.

April 1879.




End of the Project Gutenberg eText Wessex Tales