THE SHIP OF STARS.

by
Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

1899

To THE RIGHT HON. LEONARD HENRY COURTNEY, M.P.

My Dear Mr. Courtney,

It is with a peculiar pleasure and, I dare to hope, with some appropriateness that I dedicate to you this story of the West Country, which claims you with pride. To be sure, the places here written of will be found in no map of your own or any neighbouring constituency. A visitor may discover Nannizabuloe, but only to wonder what has become of the lighthouse, or seek along the sand-hills without hitting on Tredinnis. Yet much of the tale is true in a fashion, even to fact. One or two things which happen to Sir Harry Vyell did actually happen to a better man, who lived and hunted foxes not a hundred miles from the “model borough” of Liskeard, and are told of him in my friend Mr. W. F. Collier’s memoir of Harry Terrell, a bygone Dartmoor hero: and a true account of what followed the wreck of the Samaritan will be found in a chapter of Remembrances by that true poet and large-hearted man, Robert Stephen Hawker.

But a novel ought to be true to more than fact: and if this one come near its aim, no one will need to be told why I dedicate it to you. If it do not (and I wish the chance could be despised!), its author will yet hold that among the names of living Englishmen he could have chosen none fitter to be inscribed above a story which in the telling has insensibly come to rest upon the two texts, “Lord, make men as towers!” and “All towers carry a light.” Although for you Heaven has seen fit to darken the light, believe me it shines outwards over the waters and is a help to men: a guiding light tended by brave hands. We pray, sir—we who sail in little boats—for long life to the tower and the unfaltering lamp.

A. T. Q. C.
St. John’s Eve, 1899.

CONTENTS

THE SHIP OF STARS.

CHAPTER I.
THE BOY IN THE GATE-HOUSE.

Until his ninth year the boy about whom this story is written lived in a house which looked upon the square of a county town. The house had once formed part of a large religious building, and the boy’s bedroom had a high groined roof, and on the capstone an angel carved, with outspread wings. Every night the boy wound up his prayers with this verse which his grandmother had taught him:

“Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
Bless the bed that I lie on.
Four corners to my bed,
Four angels round my head;
One to watch, one to pray,
Two to bear my soul away.”

Then he would look up to the angel and say: “Only Luke is with me.” His head was full of queer texts and beliefs. He supposed the three other angels to be always waiting in the next room, ready to bear away the soul of his grandmother (who was bed-ridden), and that he had Luke for an angel because he was called Theophilus, after the friend for whom St. Luke had written his Gospel and the Acts of the Holy Apostles. His name in full was Theophilus John Raymond, but people called him Taffy.

Of his parents’ circumstances he knew very little, except that they were poor, and that his father was a clergyman attached to the parish church. As a matter of fact, the Reverend Samuel Raymond was senior curate there, with a stipend of ninety-five pounds a year. Born at Tewkesbury, the son of a miller, he had won his way to a servitorship at Christ Church, Oxford; and somehow, in the course of one Long Vacation, had found money for travelling expenses to join a reading party under the Junior Censor. The party spent six summer weeks at a farmhouse near Honiton, in Devon. The farm belonged to an invalid widow named Venning, who let it be managed by her daughter Humility and two paid labourers, while she herself sat by the window in her kitchen parlour, busied incessantly with lace-work of that beautiful kind for which Honiton is famous. He was an unassuming youth; and although in those days servitors were no longer called upon to black the boots of richer undergraduates, the widow and her daughter soon divined that he was lowlier than the others, and his position an awkward one, and were kind to him in small ways, and grew to like him. Next year, at their invitation, he travelled down to Honiton alone, with a box of books; and, at twenty-two, having taken his degree, he paid them a third visit, and asked Humility to be his wife. At twenty-four, soon after his admission to deacon’s orders, they were married. The widow sold the small farm, with its stock, and followed to live with them in the friary gate-house; this having been part of Humility’s bargain with her lover, if the word can be used of a pact between two hearts so fond.

About ten years had gone since these things happened, and their child Taffy was now past his eighth birthday.

It seemed to him that, so far back as he could remember, his mother and grandmother had been making lace continually. At night, when his mother took the candle away with her and left him alone in the dark, he was not afraid; for, by closing his eyes, he could always see the two women quite plainly; and always he saw them at work, each with a pillow on her lap, and the lace upon it growing, growing, until the pins and bobbins wove a pattern that was a dream, and he slept. He could not tell what became of all the lace, though he had a collar of it which he wore to church on Sundays, and his mother had once shown him a parcel of it, wrapped in tissue-paper, and told him it was his christening robe.

His father was always reading, except on Sundays, when he preached sermons. In his thoughts nine times out of ten Taffy associated his father with a great pile of books; but the tenth time with something totally different. One summer—it was in his sixth year—they had all gone on a holiday to Tewkesbury, his father’s old home; and he recalled quite clearly the close of a warm afternoon which he and his mother had spent there in a green meadow beyond the abbey church. She had brought out a basket and cushion, and sat sewing, while Taffy played about and watched the haymakers at their work. Behind them, within the great church, the organ was sounding; but by-and-by it stopped, and a door opened in the abbey wall, and his father came across the meadow toward them with his surplice on his arm. And then Humility unpacked the basket and produced a kettle, a spirit-lamp, and a host of things good to eat. The boy thought the whole adventure splendid. When tea was done, he sprang up with one of those absurd notions which come into children’s heads:

“Now let’s feed the poultry,” he cried, and flung his last scrap of bun three feet in air toward the gilt weather-cock on the abbey tower. While they laughed, “Father, how tall is the tower?” he demanded.

“A hundred and thirty-two feet, my boy, from ground to battlements.”

“What are battlements?”

He was told.

“But people don’t fight here,” he objected.

Then his father told of a battle fought in the very meadow in which they were sitting; of soldiers at bay with their backs to the abbey wall; of crowds that ran screaming into the church; of others chased down Mill Street and drowned; of others killed by the Town Cross; and how—people said in the upper room of a house still standing in the High Street—a boy prince had been stabbed.

Humility laid a hand on his arm.

“He’ll be dreaming of all this. Tell him it was a long time ago, and that these things don’t happen now.”

But her husband was looking up at the tower.

“See it now with the light upon it!” he went on. “And it has seen it all. Eight hundred years of heaven’s storms and man’s madness, and still foursquare and as beautiful now as when the old masons took down their scaffolding. When I was a boy—”

He broke off suddenly. “Lord, make men as towers,” he added quietly after a while, and nobody spoke for many minutes.

To Taffy this had seemed a very queer saying; about as queer as that other one about “men as trees walking.” Somehow—he could not say why—he had never asked any questions about it. But many times he had perched himself on a flat tombstone under the church tower at home, and tilted his head back and stared up at the courses and pinnacles, wondering what his father could have meant, and how a man could possibly be like a tower. It ended in this—that whenever he dreamed about his father, these two towers, or a tower which was more or less a combination of both, would get mixed up with the dream as well.

The gate-house contained a sitting-room and three bedrooms (one hardly bigger than a box-cupboard); but a building adjoined it which had been the old Franciscans’ refectory, though now it was divided by common planking into two floors, the lower serving for a feoffee office, while the upper was supposed to be a muniment-room, in charge of the feoffees’ clerk. The clerk used it for drying his garden-seeds and onions, and spread his hoarding apples to ripen on the floor. So when Taffy grew to need a room of his own, and his father’s books to cumber the very stairs of the gate-house, the money which Humility and her mother made by their lace-work, and which arrived always by post, came very handy for the rent which the clerk asked for his upper chamber.

Carpenters appeared and partitioned it off into two rooms, communicating with the gate-house by a narrow doorway pierced in the wall. All this, whilst it was doing, interested Taffy mightily; and he announced his intention of being a carpenter one of these days.

“I hope,” said Humility, “you will look higher, and be a preacher of God’s Word, like your father.”

His father frowned at this and said: “Jesus Christ was both.”

Taffy compromised: “Perhaps I’ll make pulpits.”

This was how he came to have a bedroom with a vaulted roof and a window that reached down below the floor.

CHAPTER II.
MUSIC IN THE TOWN SQUARE.

This window looked upon the Town Square, and across it to the Mayoralty. The square had once been the Franciscans’ burial-ground, and was really no square at all, but a semicircle. The townspeople called it Mount Folly. The chord of the arc was formed by a large Assize Hall, with a broad flight of granite steps, and a cannon planted on either side of the steps. The children used to climb about these cannons, and Taffy had picked out his first letters from the words Sevastopol and Russian Trophy, painted in white on their lead-coloured carriages.

Below the Assize Hall an open gravelled space sloped gently down to a line of iron railings and another flight of granite steps leading into the main street. The street curved uphill around the base of this open ground, and came level with it just in front of the Mayoralty, a tall stuccoed building where the public balls were given, and the judges had their lodgings in assize time, and the Colonel his quarters during the militia training.

Fine shows passed under Taffy’s window. Twice a year came the judges, with the sheriff in uniform and his chaplain, and his coach, and his coachman and lackeys in powder and plush and silk stockings, white or flesh-coloured; and the barristers with their wigs, and the javelin men and silver trumpets. Every spring, too, the Royal Rangers Militia came up for training. Suddenly one morning, in the height of the bird-nesting season, the street would swarm with countrymen tramping up to the barracks on the hill, and back, with bundles of clothes and unblackened boots dangling. For the next six weeks the town would be full of bugle calls, and brazen music, and companies marching and parading in suits of invisible green, and clanking officers in black, with little round forage caps, and silver badges on their side-belts; and, towards evening, with men lounging and smoking, or washing themselves in public before the doors of their billets.

Usually too, Whitsun Fair fell at the height of the militia training; and then for two days booths and caravans, sweet-standings and shooting-galleries lined the main street, and Taffy went out with a shilling in his pocket to enjoy himself. But the bigger shows—the menagerie, the marionettes, and the travelling Theatre Royal—were pitched on Mount Folly, just under his window. Sometimes the theatre would stay a week or two after the fair was over, until even the boy grew tired of the naphtha-lamps and the voices of the tragedians, and the cornet wheezing under canvas, and began to long for the time when they would leave the square open for the boys to come and play at prisoners’ bars in the dusk.

One evening, a fortnight before Whitsun Fair, he had taken his book to the open window, and sat there with it. Every night he had to learn a text which he repeated next morning to his mother. Already, across the square, the Mayoralty house was brightly lit, and the bandsmen had begun to arrange their stands and music before it; for the Colonel was receiving company. Every now and then a carriage arrived, and set down its guests.

After a while Taffy looked up and saw two persons crossing the square—an old man and a little girl. He recognised them, having seen them together in church the day before, when his father had preached the sermon. The old man wore a rusty silk hat, cocked a little to one side, a high stock collar, black cutaway coat, breeches and gaiters of grey cord. He stooped as he walked, with his hands behind him and his walking-stick dangling like a tail—a very positive old fellow, to look at. The girl’s face Taffy could not see; it was hidden by the brim of her Leghorn hat.

The pair passed close under the window. Taffy heard a knock at the door below, and ran to the head of the stairs. Down in the passage his mother was talking to the old man, who turned to the girl and told her to wait outside.

“But let her come in and sit down,” urged Humility.

“No, ma’am; I know my mind. I want one hour with your husband.”

Taffy heard the door shut, and went back to his window-seat.

The little girl had climbed the cannon opposite, and sat there dangling her feet and eyeing the house.

“Boy,” said she, “what a funny window-seat you’ve got! I can see your legs under it.”

“That’s because the window reaches down to the floor, and the bench is fixed across by the transom here.”

“What’s your name?”

“Theophilus; but they call me Taffy.”

“Why?”

“Father says it’s an imperfect example of Grimm’s Law.”

“Oh! Then, I suppose you’re quite the gentleman? My name’s Honoria.”

“Is that your father downstairs?”

“Bless the boy! What age do you take me for? He’s my grandfather. He’s asking your father about his soul. He wants to be saved, and says if he’s not saved before next Lady-day, he’ll know the reason why. What are you doing up there?”

“Reading.”

“Reading what?”

“The Bible.”

“But, I say, can you really?”

“You listen.” Taffy rested the big Bible on the window-frame; it just had room to lie open between the two mullions—“Now when they had gone throughout Phrygia and Galatia, and were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia, after they were come to Mysia they assayed to go into Bithynia; but the Spirit suffered them not. And they, passing by Mysia, came down to Troas. And a vision appeared to Paul in the night....”

“I don’t wonder at it. Did you ever have the whooping-cough?”

“Not yet.”

“I’ve had it all the winter. That’s why I’m not allowed in to play with you. Listen!”

She coughed twice, and wound up with a terrific whoop.

“Now, if you’d only put on your nightshirt and preach, I’d be the congregation and interrupt you with coughing.”

“Very well,” said Taffy, “let’s do it.”

“No; you didn’t suggest it. I hate boys who have to be told.”

Taffy was huffed, and pretended to return to his book. By-and-by she called up to him:

“Tell me, what’s written on this gun of yours?”

“Sevastopol—that’s a Russian town. The English took it by storm.”

“What! the soldiers over there?”

“No, they’re only bandsmen; and they’re too young. But I expect the Colonel was there. He’s upstairs in the Mayoralty, dining. He’s quite an old man, but I’ve heard father say he was as brave as a lion when the fighting happened.”

The girl climbed off the gun.

“I’m going to have a look at him,” she said; and turning her back on Taffy, she sauntered off across the square, just as the band struck up the first note of the overture from Semiramide. A waltz of Strauss followed, and then came a cornet solo by the bandmaster, and a medley of old English tunes. To all of these Taffy listened. It had fallen too dark to read, and the boy was always sensitive to music. Often when he played alone broken phrases and scraps of remembered tunes came into his head and repeated themselves over and over. Then he would drop his game and wander about restlessly, trying to fix and complete the melody; and somehow in the process the melody always became a story, or so like a story that he never knew the difference. Sometimes his uneasiness lasted for days together. But when the story came complete at last—and this always sprang on him quite suddenly—he wanted to caper and fling his arms about and sing aloud; and did so, if nobody happened to be looking.

The bandmaster, too, had music, and a reputation for imparting it. Famous regimental bands contained pupils of his; and his old pupils, when they met, usually told each other stories of his atrocious temper. But he kept his temper to-night, for his youngsters were playing well, and the small crowd standing quiet.

The English melodies had scarcely closed with “Come, lasses and lads,” when across in Mayoralty a blind was drawn, and a window thrown open, and Taffy saw the warm room within, and the officers and ladies standing with glasses in their hands. The Colonel was giving the one toast of the evening:

“Ladies and gentlemen—The Queen!”

The adjutant leaned out and lifted his hand for signal, and the band crashed out with the National Anthem. Then there was silence for a minute. The window remained open. Taffy still caught glimpses of jewels and uniforms, and white necks bending, and men leaning back in their chairs, with their mess-jackets open, and the candle-light flashing on their shirt-fronts. Below, in the dark street, the bandmaster trimmed the lamp by his music-stand. In the rays of it he drew out a handkerchief and polished the keys of his cornet; then passed the cornet over to his left hand, took up his baton, and nodded.

What music was that, stealing, rippling, across the square? The bandmaster knew nothing of the tale of Tannhauser, but was wishing that he had violins at his beck, instead of stupid flutes and reeds. And Taffy had never heard so much as the name of Tannhauser. Of the meaning of the music he knew nothing—nothing beyond its wonder and terror. But afterward he made a tale of it to himself.

In the tale it seemed that a vine shot up and climbed on the shadows of the warm night; and the shadows climbed with it and made a trellis for it right across the sky. The vine thrust through the trellis faster and faster, dividing, throwing out little curls and tendrils; then leaves and millions of leaves, each leaf unfolding about a drop of dew, which trickled and fell and tinkled like a bird’s song.

The beauty and scent of the vine distressed him. He wanted to cry out, for it was hiding the sky. Then he heard the tramp of feet in the distance, and knew that they threatened the vine, and with that he wanted to save it. But the feet came nearer and nearer, tramping terribly.

He could not bear it. He ran to the stairs, stole down them, opened the front door cautiously, and slipped outside. He was half-way across the square before it occurred to him that the band had ceased to play. Then he wondered why he had come, but he did not go back. He found Honoria standing a little apart from the crowd, with her hands clasped behind her, gazing up at the window of the banqueting-room.

She did not see him at once.

“Stand on the steps, here,” he whispered, “then you can see him. That’s the Colonel—the man at the end of the table, with the big, grey moustache.”

He touched her arm. She sprang away and stamped her foot.

“Keep off with you! Who told you?—Oh! you bad boy!”

“Nobody. I thought you hated boys who wait to be told.”

“And now you’ll get the whooping-cough, and goodness knows what will happen to you, and you needn’t think I’ll be sorry!”

“Who wants you to be sorry! As for you,” Taffy went on sturdily, “I think your grandfather might have more sense than to keep you waiting out here in the cold, and giving your cough to the whole town!”

“Ha! you do, do you?”

It was not the girl who said this. Taffy swung round, and saw an old man staring down on him. There was just light enough to reveal that he had very formidable grey eyes. But Taffy’s blood was up.

“Yes, I do,” he said, and wondered at himself.

“Ha! Does your father whip you sometimes?”

“No, sir.”

“I should if you were my boy. I believe in it. Come, Honoria!”

The child threw a glance at Taffy as she was led away. He could not be sure whether she took his side or her grandfather’s.

That night he had a very queer dream.

His grandmother had lost her lace-pillow, and after searching for some time, he found it lying out in the square. But the pins and bobbins were darting to and fro on their own account, at an incredible rate, and the lace as they made it turned into a singing beanstalk, and rose and threw out branches all over the sky. Very soon he found himself climbing among those branches, up and up until he came to a Palace, which was really the Assize Hall, with a flight of steps before it and a cannon on either side of the steps. Within sat a giant, asleep, with his head on the table and his face hidden; but his neck bulged at the back just like the bandmaster’s during a cornet solo. A harp stood on the table. Taffy caught this up, and was stealing downstairs with it, but at the third stair the harp—which had Honoria’s head and face—began to cough, and wound up with a whoop! This woke the giant—he turned out to be Honoria’s grandfather—who came roaring after him. Glancing down below as he ran, Taffy saw his mother and the bandmaster far below with axes, hacking at the foot of the beanstalk. He tried to call out and prevent them, but they kept smiting. And the worst of it was, that down below, too, his father was climbing into a pulpit, quite as if nothing was happening. The pulpit grew and became a tower, and his father kept calling, “Be a tower! Be a tower, like me!”

But Taffy couldn’t for the life of him see how to manage it. The beanstalk began to totter; he felt himself falling, and leapt for the tower.... And awoke in his bed shuddering, and, for the first time in his life, afraid of the dark. He would have called for his mother, but just then down by the turret clock in Fore Street the buglers began to sound the “Last Post,” and he hugged himself and felt that the world he knew was still about him, companionable and kind.

Twice the buglers repeated their call, in more distant streets, each time more faintly; and the last flying notes carried him into sleep again.

CHAPTER III.
PASSENGERS BY JOBY’S VAN.

At breakfast next morning he saw by his parents’ faces that something unusual had happened. Nothing was said to him about it, whatever it might be. But once or twice after this, coming into the parlour suddenly, he found his father and mother talking low and earnestly together; and now and then they would go up to his grandmother’s room and talk.

In some way he divined that there was a question of leaving home. But the summer passed and these private talks became fewer. Toward August, however, they began again; and by-and-by his mother told him. They were going to a parish on the North Coast, right away across the Duchy, where his father had been presented to a living. The place had an odd name—Nannizabuloe.

“And it is lonely,” said Humility, “the most of it sea-sand, so far as I can hear.”

It was by the sea, then. How would they get there?

“Oh, Joby’s van will take us most of the way.”

Of all the vans which came and went in the Fore Street, none could compare for romance with Joby’s. People called it the Wreck Ashore; but its real name, “Vital Spark, J. Job, Proprietor,” was painted on its orange-coloured sides in letters of vivid blue, a blue not often seen except on ship’s boats. It disappeared every Tuesday and Saturday over the hill and into a mysterious country, from which it emerged on Mondays and Fridays with a fine flavour of the sea renewed upon it and upon Joby. No other driver wore a blue guernsey, or rings in his ears, as Joby did. No other van had the same mode of progressing down the street in a series of short tacks, or brought such a crust of brine on its panes, or such a mixture of mud and fine sand on its wheels, or mingled scraps of dry sea-weed with the straw on its floor.

“Will there be ships?” Taffy asked.

“I dare say we shall see a few, out in the distance. It’s a poor, outlandish place. It hasn’t even a proper church.”

“If there’s no church, father can get into a boat and preach; just like the Sea of Galilee, you know.”

“Your father is too good a man to mimic the Scriptures in any such way. There is a church, I believe, though it’s a tumble-down one. Nobody has preached in it for years. But Squire Moyle may do something now. He’s a rich man.”

“Is that the old gentleman who came to ask father about his soul?”

“Yes; he says no preaching ever did him so much good as your father’s. That’s why he came and offered the living.”

“But he can’t go to heaven if he’s rich.”

“I don’t know, Taffy, wherever you pick up such wicked thoughts.”

“Why, it’s in the Bible!”

Humility would not argue about it; but she told her husband that night what the child had said. “My dear,” he answered, “the boy must think of these things.”

“But he ought not to be talking disrespectfully,” contended she.

One Tuesday, towards the end of September, Taffy saw his father off by Joby’s van; and the Friday after, walked down with his mother to meet him on his return. Almost at once the household began to pack. The packing went on for a week, in the midst of which his father departed again, a waggon-load of books and furniture having been sent forward on the road that same morning. Then followed a day or two during which Taffy and his mother took their meals at the window-seat, sitting on corded boxes; and an evening when he went out to the cannon in the square, and around the little back garden, saying good-bye to the fixtures and the few odds and ends which were to be left behind—the tool-shed (Crusoe’s hut, Cave of Adullam, and Treasury of the Forty Thieves), the stunted sycamore-tree which he had climbed at different times as Zacchaeus, Ali Baba, and Man Friday with the bear behind him; the clothes’ prop, which, on the strength of its forked tail, had so often played Dragon to his St. George. When he returned to the empty house, he found his mother in the passage. She had been for a walk alone. The candle was lit, and he saw she had been crying. This told him where she had been; for, although he remembered nothing about it, he knew he had once possessed a small sister, who lived with him less than two months. He had, as a rule, very definite notions of death and the grave; but he never thought of her as dead and buried, partly because his mother would never allow him to go with her to the cemetery, and partly because of a picture in a certain book of his, called Child’s Play. It represented a little girl wading across a pool among water-lilies. She wore a white nightdress, kilted above her knees, and a dark cloak, which dragged behind in the water. She let it trail, while she held up a hand to cover one of her eyes. Above her were trees and an owl, and a star shining under the topmost branch; and on the opposite page this verse:

“I have a little sister,
They call her Peep-peep,
She wades through the waters,
Deep, deep, deep;
She climbs up the mountains,
High, high, high;
This poor little creature
She has but one eye.”

For years Taffy believed that this was his little sister, one-eyed, and always wandering; and that his mother went out in the dusk to persuade her to return; but she never would.

When he woke next morning his mother was in the room; and while he washed and dressed she folded his bed-clothes and carried them down to a waggon which stood by the door, with horses already harnessed. It drove away soon after. He found breakfast laid on the window-seat. A neighbour had lent the crockery, and Taffy was greatly taken with the pattern on the cups and saucers. He wanted to run round again and repeat his good-byes to the house, but there was no time. By-and-by the door opened, and two men, neighbours of theirs, entered with an invalid’s litter; and, Humility directing, brought down old Mrs. Venning. She wore the corner of a Paisley shawl over her white cap, and carried a nosegay of flowers in place of her lace-pillow; but otherwise looked much as usual.

“Quite the traveller, you see!” she cried gaily to Taffy.

Then the woman who had lent the breakfast-ware came running to say that Joby was getting impatient. Humility handed the door-key to her, and so the little procession passed out and down across Mount Folly.

Joby had drawn his van up close to the granite steps. They were the only passengers, it seemed. The invalid was hoisted in and laid with her couch across the seats, so that her shoulders rested against one side of the van and her feet against the other. Humility climbed in after her; but Taffy, to his joy, was given a seat outside the box.

“C’k!”—they were off.

As they crawled up the street a few townspeople paused on the pavement and waved farewells. At the top of the town they overtook three sailor-boys, with bundles, who climbed up and perched themselves a-top of the van, on the luggage.

On they went again. There were two horses—a roan and a grey. Taffy had never before looked down on the back of a horse, and Joby’s horses astonished him; they were so broad behind, and so narrow at the shoulders. He wanted to ask if the shape were at all common, but felt shy. He stole a glance at the silver ring in Joby’s left ear, and blushed when Joby turned and caught him.

“Here, catch hold!” said Joby handing him the whip. “Only you mustn’t use it too fierce.”

“Thank you.”

“I suppose you’ll be a scholar, like your father? Can ee spell?”

“Yes.”

“Cipher?”

“Yes.”

“That’s more than I can. I counts upon my fingers. When they be used up, I begins upon my buttons. I ha’n’t got no buttons—visible that is—’pon my week-a-day clothes; so I keeps the long sums for Sundays, and adds ’em up and down my weskit during sermon. Don’t tell any person.”

“I won’t.”

“That’s right. I don’t want it known. Ever see a gipsy?”

“Oh, yes—often.”

“Next time you see one you’ll know why he wears so many buttons. You’ve a lot to learn.”

The van zigzagged down one hill and up another, and halted at a turnpike. An old woman in a pink sun-bonnet bustled out and handed Joby a pink ticket. A little way beyond they passed the angle of a mining district, with four or five engine-houses high up like castles on the hillside, and rows of stamps clattering and working up and down like ogres’ teeth. Next they came to a church town, with a green and a heap of linen spread to dry (for it was Tuesday), and a flock of geese that ran and hissed after the van, until Joby took the whip and, leaning out, looped the gander by the neck and pulled him along in the dust. The sailor-boys shouted with laughter and struck up a song about a fox and a goose, which lasted all the way up a long hill and brought them to a second turnpike, on the edge of the moors. Here lived an old woman in a blue sun-bonnet; and she handed Joby a yellow-ticket.

“But why does she wear a blue bonnet and give yellow tickets?” Taffy asked, as they drove on.

Joby considered for a minute. “Ah, you’re one to take notice, I see. That’s right, keep your eyes skinned when you travel.”

Taffy had to think this out. The country was changing now. They had left stubble fields and hedges behind, and before them the granite road stretched like a white ribbon, with moors on either hand, dotted with peat-ricks and reedy pools and cropping ponies, and rimmed in the distance with clay-works glistening in the sunny weather.

“What sort of place is Nannizabuloe?”

“I don’t go on there. I drop you at Indian Queens.”

“But what sort of place is it?”

“Well, I’ll tell you what folks say of it:”

‘All sea and san’s,
Out of the world and into St. Ann’s.’

“That’s what they say, and if I’m wrong you may call me a liar.”

“And Squire Moyle?” Taffy persevered. “What kind of man is he?”

Joby turned and eyed him severely. “Look here, sonny. I got my living to get.”

This silenced Taffy for a long while, but he picked up his courage again by degrees. There was a small window at his back, and he twisted himself round, and nodded to his mother and grandmother inside the van. He could not hear what they answered, for the sailor-boys were singing at the top of their voices:

“I will sing you One, O!
What is your One, O?
Number One sits all alone, and ever more shall be-e so.”

“They’re home ’pon leave,” said Joby. The song went on and reached Number Seven:

“I will sing you Seven, O!
What is your Seven, O?
Seven be seven stars in the ship a-sailing round in Heaven, O!”

One of the boys leaned from the roof and twitched Taffy by the hair. “Hullo, nipper! Did you ever see a ship of stars?” He grinned and pulled open his sailor’s jumper and singlet; and there, on his naked breast, Taffy saw a ship tattooed, with three masts, and a half-circle of stars above it, and below it the initials W. P.

“D’ee think my mother’ll know me again?” asked the boy, and the other two began to laugh.

“Yes, I think so,” said Taffy gravely; which made them laugh more than ever.

“But why is he painted like that?” he asked Joby, as they took up their song again.

“Ah, you’ll larn over to St. Ann’s, being one to notice things.” The nearer he came to it, the more mysterious this new home of Taffy’s seemed to grow. By-and-by Humility let down the window and handed out a pasty. Joby searched under his seat and found a pasty, twice the size of Taffy’s, in a nose-bag. They ate as they went, holding up their pasties from time to time and comparing progress. Late in the afternoon they came to hedges again, and at length to an inn; and in front of it Taffy spied his father waiting with a farm-cart. While Joby baited his horses, the sailor-boys helped to lift out the invalid and trans-ship the luggage; after which they climbed on the roof again, and were jogged away northward in the dusk, waving their caps and singing.

The most remarkable thing about the inn was its signboard. This bore on either side the picture of an Indian queen and two blackamoor children, all with striped parasols, walking together across a desert. The queen on one side wore a scarlet turban and a blue robe; but the queen on the other side wore a blue turban and a scarlet robe. Taffy dodged from side to side, comparing them, and had not made up his mind which he liked best when Humility called him indoors to tea.

They had ham and eggs with their tea, which they took in a great hurry; and then his grandmother was lifted into the cart and laid on a bed of clean straw beside the boxes, and he and his mother clambered up in front. So they started again, his father walking at the horse’s head. They took the road toward the sunset. As the dusk fell closer around, Mr. Raymond lit a horn lantern and carried it before them. The rays of it danced and wheeled upon the hedges and gorse bushes. Taffy began to feel sleepy, though it was long before his usual bedtime. The air seemed to weigh his eyelids down. Or was it a sound lulling him? He looked up suddenly. His mother’s arm was about him. Stars flashed above, and a glimmer fell on her gentle face—a dew of light, as it were. Her dark eyes appeared darker than usual as she leaned and drew her shawl over his shoulder.

Ahead, the rays of the lantern kept up their dance, but they flared now and again upon stone hedges built in zigzag layers, and upon unknown feathery bushes, intensely green and glistening like metal.

The cart jolted and the lantern swung to a soundless tune that filled the night. When Taffy listened it ceased; when he ceased listening, it began again.

The lantern stopped its dance and stood still over a ford of black water. The cart splashed into it and became a ship, heaving and lurching over a soft, irregular floor that returned no sound. But suddenly the ship became a cart again, and stood still before a house with a narrow garden-path and a light streaming along it from an open door.

His father lifted him down; his mother took his hand. They seemed to wade together up that stream of light. Then came a staircase and room with a bed in it, which, oddly enough, turned out to be his own. He stared at the pink roses on the curtains. Yes; certainly it was his own bed. And satisfied of this, he nestled down in the pillows and slept, to the long cadence of the sea.

CHAPTER IV.
THE RUNNING SANDS.

He awoke to find the sun shining in at his window. At first he wondered what had happened. The window seemed to be in the ceiling, and the ceiling sloped down to the walls, and all the furniture had gone astray into wrong positions. Then he remembered, jumped out of bed, and drew the blind.

He saw a blue line of sea, so clearly drawn that the horizon might have been a string stretched from the corner eaves to the snow-white light-house standing on the farthest spit of land; blue sea and yellow sand curving round it, with a white edge of breakers; inshore, the sand rising to a cliff ridged with grassy hummocks; farther inshore, the hummocks united and rolling away up to inland downs, but broken here and there on their way with scars of sand; over all, white gulls wheeling. He could hear the nearest ones mewing as they sailed over the house.

Taffy had seen the sea once before, at Dawlish, on the journey to Tewkesbury; and again on the way home. But here it was bluer altogether, and the sands were yellower. Only he felt disappointed that no ship was in sight, nor any dwelling nearer than the light-house and the two or three white cottages behind it. He dressed in a hurry and said his prayers, repeating at the close, as he had been taught to do, the first and last verses of the Morning Hymn:

“Awake, my soul, and with the sun
Thy daily stage of duty run;
Shake off dull sloth, and joyful rise
To pay thy morning sacrifice.

“Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host,
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”

He ran downstairs. In this queer house the stairs led right down into the kitchen. The front door, too, opened into the kitchen, which was really a slate-paved hall, with a long table set between the doorway and the big open hearth. The floor was always strewn with sand; there was no trouble about this, for the wind blew plenty under the door.

Taffy found the table laid, and his mother busily slicing bread for his bread and milk. He begged for a hot cake from the hearth, and ran out of doors to eat it. Humility lifted the latch for him, for the cake was so hot that he had to pass it from hand to hand.

Outside, the wind came upon him with a clap on the shoulder, quite as if it had been a comrade waiting.

Taffy ran down the path and out upon the sandy hummocks, setting his face to the wind and the roar of the sea, keeping his head low, and still shifting the cake from hand to hand. By-and-by he fumbled and dropped it; stooped to pick it up, but saw something which made him kneel and peer into the ground.

The whole of the sand was moving; not by fits and starts, but constantly; the tiny particles running over each other and drifting in and out of the rushes, like little creatures in a dream. While he looked, they piled an embankment against the edge of his cake. He picked it up, ran forward a few yards, and peered again. Yes, here too; here and yonder, and over every inch of that long shore.

He ate his cake and climbed to the beach, and ran along it, watching the sandhoppers that skipped from under his boots at every step, and were lost on the instant. The beach here was moist and firm. He pulled off his boots and stockings, and ran on, conning his footprints and the driblets of sand split ahead from his bare toes. By-and-by he came to the edge of the surf. The strand here was glassy wet, and each curving wave sent a shadow flying over it, and came after the shadow, thundering and hissing, and chased it up the shore, and fell back, leaving for a second or two an edge of delicate froth which reminded the boy of his mother’s lace-work.

He began a sort of game with the waves, choosing one station after another, and challenging them to catch him there. If the edge of froth failed to reach his toes, he won. But once or twice the water caught him fairly, and ran rippling over his instep and about his ankles.

He was deep in this game when he heard a horn blown somewhere high on the towans behind him.

He turned. No one was in sight. The house lay behind the sand-banks, the first ridge hiding even its chimney-smoke. He gazed along the beach, where the perpetual haze of spray seemed to have removed the light-house to a vast distance. A sense of desolation came over him with a rush, and with something between a gasp and a sob he turned his back to the sea and ran, his boots dangling from his shoulders by their knotted laces.

He pounded up the first slope and looked for the cottage. No sign of it! An insane fancy seized him. These silent moving sands were after him.

He was panting along in real distress when he heard the baying of dogs, and at the same instant from the top of a hummock caught sight of a figure outlined against the sky, and barely a quarter of a mile away; the figure of a girl on horseback—a small girl on a very tall horse.

Just as Taffy recognised her, she turned her horse, walked him down into the hollow beyond, and disappeared. Taffy ran towards the spot, gained the ridge where she had been standing, and looked down.

In a hollow about twenty feet deep and perhaps a hundred wide were gathered a dozen riders, with five or six couples of hounds and two or three dirty terriers. Two of the men had dismounted. One of these, stripped to his shirt and breeches, was leaning on a long-handled spade and laughing. The other—a fellow in a shabby scarlet coat—held up what Taffy guessed to be a fox, though it seemed a very small one. It was bleeding. The hounds yapped and leapt at it, and fell back a-top of each other snarling, while the Whip grinned and kept them at bay. A knife lay between his wide-planted feet, and a visgy[1] close behind him on a heap of disturbed sand.

The boy came on them from the eastward, and his shadow fell across the hollow.

“Hullo!” said one of the riders, looking up. It was Squire Moyle himself. “Here’s the new Passon’s boy!”

All the riders looked up. The Whip looked up too, and turned to the old Squire with a wider grin than before.

“Shall I christen en, maister?”

The Squire nodded. Before Taffy knew what it meant, the man was climbing toward him with a grin, clutching the rush bents with one hand, and holding out the blood-dabbled mask with the other. The child turned to run, but a hand clutched his ankle. He saw the man’s open mouth and yellow teeth; and, choking with disgust and terror, slung his boots at them with all his small force. At the same instant he was jerked off his feet, the edge of the bank crumbled and broke, and the two went rolling down the sandy slope in a heap. He heard shouts of laughter, caught a glimpse of blue sky, felt a grip of fingers on his throat, and smelt the verminous odour of the dead cub, as the Whip thrust the bloody mess against his face and neck. Then the grip relaxed, and—it seemed to him, amid dead silence—Taffy sprang to his feet, spitting sand and fury.

“You—you devils!” He caught up the visgy and stood, daring all to come on. “You devils!” He tottered forward with the visgy lifted—it was all he could manage—at Squire Moyle. The old man let out an oath, and the curve of his whip-thong took the boy across the eyes and blinded him for a moment, but did not stop him. The grey horse swerved, and half-wheeled, exposing his flank. In another moment there would have been mischief; but the Whip, as he stood wiping his mouth, saw the danger and ran in. He struck the visgy out of the child’s grasp, set his foot on it, and with an open-handed cuff sent him floundering into a sand-heap.

“Nice boy, that!” said somebody, and the whole company laughed as they walked their horses slowly out of the hollow.

They passed before Taffy in a blur of tears; and the last rider to go was the small girl Honoria on her tall sorrel. She moved up the broad shelving path, but reined up just within sight, turned her horse, and came slowly back to him.

“If I were you, I’d go home.” She pointed in its direction.

Taffy brushed the back of his hand across his eyes. “Go away. I hate you—I hate you all!”

She eyed him while she smoothed the sorrel’s mane with her riding-switch.

“They did it to me three years ago, when I was six. Grandfather called it ‘entering’ me.”

Taffy kept his eyes sullenly on the ground. Finding that he would not answer, she turned her horse again and rode slowly after the others. Taffy heard the soft footfalls die away, and when he looked up she had vanished.

He picked up his boots and started in the direction to which she had pointed. Every now and then a sob shook him. By-and-by the chimneys of the house hove in sight among the ridges, and he ran toward it. But within a gunshot of the white garden-wall his breast swelled suddenly and he flung himself on the ground and let the big tears run. They made little pits in the moving sand; and more sand drifted up and covered them.

“Taffy! Taffy! Whatever has become of the child?”

His mother was standing by the gate in her print frock. He scrambled up and ran toward her. She cried out at the sight of him, but he hid his blood-smeared face against her skirts.

[1] Mattock.

CHAPTER V.
TAFFY RINGS THE CHURCH BELL.

They were in the church—Squire Moyle, Mr. Raymond, and Taffy close behind. The two men were discussing the holes in the roof and other dilapidations.

“One, two, three,” the Squire counted. “I’ll send a couple of men with tarpaulin and rick-ropes. That’ll tide us over next Sunday, unless it blows hard.”

They passed up three steps under the belfry arch. Here a big bell rested on the flooring. Its rim was cracked, but not badly. A long ladder reached up into the gloom.

“What’s the beam like?” the Squire called up to someone aloft.

“Sound as a bell,” answered a voice.

“I said so. We’ll have en hoisted by Sunday, I’ll send a waggon over to Wheel Gooniver for a tackle and winch. Damme, up there! Don’t keep sheddin’ such a muck o’ dust on your betters!”

“I can’t help no other, Squire!” said the voice overhead; “such a cauch o’ pilm an’ twigs, an’ birds’ droppins’! If I sneeze I’m a lost man.”

Taffy, staring up as well as he could for the falling rubbish, could just spy a white smock above the beam, and a glint of daylight on the toe-scutes of two dangling boots.

“I’ll dam soon make you help it. Is the beam sound?”

“Ha’n’t I told ’ee so?” said the voice querulously.

“Then come down off the ladder, you son of a—”

“Gently, Squire!” put in Mr. Raymond.

The Squire groaned. “There I go again—an’ in the House of God itself! Oh! ’tis a case with me! I’ve a heart o’ stone—a heart o’ stone.” He turned and brushed his rusty hat with his coat-cuff. Suddenly he faced round again. “Here, Bill Udy,” he said to the old labourer who had just come down the ladder, “catch hold of my hat an’ carry en fore to porch. I keep forgettin’ I’m in church, an’ then on he goes.”

The building stood half a mile from the sea, surrounded by the rolling towans and rabbit burrows, and a few lichen-spotted tombstones slanting inland. Early in the seventeenth century a London merchant had been shipwrecked on the coast below Nannizabuloe and cast ashore, the one saved out of thirty. He asked to be shown a church in which to give thanks for his preservation, and the people led him to a ruin bedded in the sands. It had lain since the days of Arundel’s Rebellion. The Londoner vowed to build a new church there on the towans, where the songs of prayer and praise should mingle with the voice of the waves which God had baffled for him. The people warned him of the sand; but he would not listen to reason. He built his church—a squat Perpendicular building of two aisles, the wider divided into nave and chancel merely by a granite step in the flooring; he saw it consecrated, and returned to his home and died. And the church steadily decayed. He had mixed his mortar with sea-sand. The stonework oozed brine, the plaster fell piece-meal; the blown sand penetrated like water; the foundations sank a foot on the south side, and the whole structure took a list to leeward. The living passed into the hands of the Dean and Chapter of Exeter, and from them, in 1730, to the Moyles. Mr. Raymond’s predecessor was a kinsman of theirs by marriage, a pluralist, who lived and died at the other end of the Duchy. He had sent curates from time to time; the last of whom was dead, three years since, of solitude and drink. But he never came himself, Squire Moyle having threatened to set the dogs on him if ever he set foot in Nannizabuloe; for there had been some dispute over a dowry. The result was that nobody went to church, though a parson from the next parish held an occasional service. The people were Wesleyan Methodists or Bryanites. Each sect had its own chapel in the fishing village of Innis, on the western side of the parish; and the Bryanites a second one, at the cross-roads behind the downs, for the miners and warreners and scattered farmfolk.

Ding—ding—ding—ding—ding.

It was Sunday morning, and Taffy was sounding the bell, by a thin rope tied to its clapper. The heavy bell-rope would be ready next week; but Humility must first contrive a woollen binding for it, to prevent its chafing the ringer’s hands.

Out on the towans the rabbits heard the sound, and ran scampering. Others, farther away, paused in their feeding, and listened with cocked ears.

Ding—ding—ding.

Mr. Raymond stood in the belfry at the boy’s elbow. He wore his surplice, and held his prayer-book, with a finger between the pages. Glancing down toward the nave, he saw Humility sitting in the big vicarage pew—no other soul in church.

He took the cord from Taffy, “Run to the door, and see if anyone is coming.”

Taffy ran, and after a minute came back.

“There’s Squire Moyle coming along the path, and the little girl with him, and some servants behind—five or six of them. Bill Udy’s one.”

“Nobody else?”

“I expect the people don’t hear the bell,” said Taffy. “They live too far away.”

“God hears. Yes, and God sees the lamp is lit.”

“What lamp?” Taffy looked up at his father’s face, wondering.

“All towers carry a lamp of some kind. For what else are they built?”

It was exactly the tone in which he had spoken that afternoon at Tewkesbury about men being like towers. Both these sentences puzzled the boy; and yet Taffy never felt so near to understanding him as he had then, and did again now. He was shy of his father. He did not know that his father was just as shy of him. He began to ring with all his soul—ding—ding-ding, ding-ding.

The old Squire entered the church, paused, and blew his nose violently, and taking Honoria by the hand, marched her up to the end of the south aisle. The door of the great pew was shut upon them, and they disappeared. Before Honoria vanished Taffy caught a glimpse of a grey felt hat with pink ribbons.

The servants scattered and found seats in the body of the church. He went on ringing, but no one else came. After a minute or two Mr. Raymond signed to him to stop and go to his mother, which he did, blushing at the noise of his shoes on the slate pavement. Mr. Raymond followed, walked slowly past, and entered the reading-desk.

“When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive....”

Taffy looked towards the Squire’s pew. The bald top of the Squire’s head was just visible above the ledge. He looked up at his mother, but her eyes were fastened on her prayer-book. He felt—he could not help it—that they were all gathered to save this old man’s soul, and that everybody knew it and secretly thought it a hopeless case. The notion dogged him all through the service, and for many Sundays after. Always that bald head above the ledge, and his father and the congregation trying to call down salvation on it. He wondered what Honoria thought, boxed up with it and able to see its face.

Mr. Raymond mounted an upper pulpit to preach his sermon. He chose his text from Saint Matthew, Chapter vii., verses 26 and 27:

“And every one that heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man which built his house upon the sand;

“And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell; and great was the fall of it.”

Taffy never followed his father’s sermons closely. He would listen to a sentence or two, now and again, and then let his wits wander.

“You think this church is built upon the sands. The rain has come, the winds have blown and beaten on it; the foundations have sunk and it leans to leeward.... By the blessing of God we will shore it up, and upon a foundation of rock. Upon what rock, you ask?... Upon that rock which is the everlasting foundation of the Church spiritual.... Hear what comfortable words our Lord spake to Peter. ... Our foundation must be faith, which is God’s continuing Presence on earth, and which we shall recognise hereafter as God Himself.... Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.... In other words, it is the rock we search for.... Draw near it, and you will know yourself in God’s very shadow—the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.... As with this building, so with you, O man, cowering from wrath, as these walls are cowering....”

The benediction was pronounced, the pew-door opened, and the old man marched down the aisle, looking neither to right nor to left, with his jaw set like a closed gin. Honoria followed. She had not so much as a glance for Taffy; but in passing she gazed frankly at Humility, whom she had not seen before.

Humility was rather ostentatiously cheerful at dinner that day; a sure sign that at heart she was disappointed. She had looked for a bigger congregation. Mrs. Venning, who had been carried downstairs for the meal, saw this and asked few questions. Both the women stole glances at Mr. Raymond when they thought he was not observing them. He at least pretended to observe nothing, but chatted away cheerfully.

“Taffy,” he said, after dinner, “I want you to run up to Tredinnis with a note from me. Maybe I will follow later, but I must go to the village first.”

CHAPTER VI.
A COCK-FIGHT.

A footpath led Taffy past the church, and out at length upon a high road, in face of two tall granite pillars with an iron gate between. The gate was surmounted with a big iron lantern, and the lantern with a crest—two snakes’ heads intertwined. The gate was shut, but the fence had been broken down on either side, and the gap, through which Taffy passed, was scored with wheel-ruts. He followed these down an ill-kept road bordered with furze-whins, tamarisks, and clumps of bannel broom. By-and-by he came to a ragged plantation of stone pines, backed by a hedge of rhododendrons, behind which the hounds were baying in their kennels. It put him in mind of the “Pilgrim’s Progress.” He heard the stable clock strike three, and caught a glimpse, over the shrubberies, of its cupola and gilt weather-cock. And then a turn of the road brought him under the gloomy northern face of the house, with its broad carriage sweep and sunless portico. Half the windows on this side had been blocked up and painted black, with white streaks down and across to represent framework.

He pulled at an iron bell-chain which dangled by the great door. The bell clanged far within and a dozen dogs took up the note, yelping in full peal. He heard footsteps coming; the door was opened, and the dogs poured out upon him—spaniels, terriers, lurchers, greyhounds, and a big Gordon setter—barking at him, leaping against him, sniffing his calves. Taffy kept them at bay as best he could and waved his letter at a wall-eyed man in a dirty yellow waistcoat, who looked down from the doorstep but did not offer to call them off.

“Any answer?” asked the wall-eyed man.

Taffy could not say. The man took the letter and went to inquire, leaving him alone with the dogs.

It seemed an age before he reappeared, having in the interval slipped a dirty livery coat over his yellow waistcoat. “The Squire says you’re to come in.” Taffy and the dogs poured together into a high, stone-flagged hall; then through a larger hall and a long dark corridor. The footman’s coat, for want of a loop, had been hitched on a peg by its collar, and stuck out behind his neck in the most ludicrous manner; but he shuffled ahead so fast that Taffy, tripping and stumbling among the dogs, had barely time to observe this before a door was flung open and he stood blinking in a large room full of sunlight.

“Hallo! Here’s the parson’s bantam!”

The room had four high, bare windows through which the afternoon sunshine streamed on the carpet. The carpet had a pattern of pink peonies on a delicate buff ground, and was shamefully dirty. And the vast apartment, with its white paint and gilding and Italian sketches in water-colour and statuettes under glass, might have been a lady’s drawing-room. But paint and gilding were tarnished; the chintz chair-covers soiled and torn; the pictures hung askew; and a smell of dog filled the air.

Squire Moyle sat huddled in a deep chair beside the fire-place, facing the middle of the room, where a handsome, high-complexioned gentleman, somewhat past middle age, lounged on a settee and dangled a gold-mounted riding crop. A handsome boy knelt at the back of the settee and leaned over the handsome gentleman’s shoulder. On the floor, between the two men, lay a canvas bag; and something moved inside it. At the end of the room, by the farthest window, Honoria knelt over a big portfolio. She wore the grey frock and pink sash which Taffy had seen in church that morning, and she tossed her dark hair back from her eyes as she looked up.

The Squire crumpled up the letter in his hand.

“Put the bag away,” he said to the handsome gentleman. “’Tis Sunday, I tell ’ee, and Parson will be here in an hour. This is young six-foot I was telling about.” He turned to Taffy—

“Boy, go and shake hands with Sir Harry Vyell.”

Taffy did as he was bidden. “This is my son George,” said Sir Harry; and Taffy shook hands with him, too, and liked his face.

“Put the bag away, Harry,” said the Squire.

“Just to comfort ’ee, now!”

“I tell ’ee I won’t look at en.”

Sir Harry untied the neck of the bag, and drew out a smaller one; untied this, and out strutted a game-cock.

The old Squire eyed it. “H’m, he don’t seem flourishing.”

“Don’t abuse a bird that’s come twelve miles in a bag on purpose to cheer you up. He’s a match for anything you can bring.”

“Tuts, man, he’s dull—no colour nor condition. Get along with ’ee; I wouldn’ ask a bird of mine to break the Sabbath for a wastrel like that.”

Sir Harry drew out a shagreen-covered case and opened it. Within, on a lining of pale blue velvet, lay two small sharp instruments of steel, very highly polished. He lifted one, felt its point, replaced it, set down the case on the carpet, and fell to toying with the ears of the Gordon setter, which had come sniffing out of curiosity.

“You’re a very obstinate man,” said Squire Moyle. After a long pause he added, “I suppose you’re wanting odds?”

“Evens will do,” said Sir Harry.

The old man turned and rang the bell.

“Tell Jim to fetch in the red cock,” he shouted to the wall-eyed footman—who must have been waiting in the corridor, so promptly he appeared.

“And Jim won’t be long about it either,” whispered Honoria. She had come forward quietly, and stood at Taffy’s elbow.

Sir Harry shook a finger at her and laid it on his lips. But the old Squire did not hear. He sat glum, pulling a whisker and keeping a sour eye on the bird, which was strutting about in rather foolish bewilderment at the pink peonies on the carpet.

“I’m giving you every chance,” he grumbled at length.

“Oh, as for that,” Sir Harry replied, equably, “have it out in the yard, if you please, on your own dunghill.”

“No. Indoors is bad enough.”

Jim appeared just then, and turned out to be Taffy’s old enemy, the Whip, bearing the Squire’s game-cock in a basket. He took it out; a very handsome bird, with a hackle in which gold, purple and the richest browns shone and were blended.

Sir Harry had picked up his bird and was heeling it with the long steel spurs; a very delicate process, to judge by the time occupied and the pucker on his good-tempered brow.

“Ready?” he asked at length.

Jim, who had been heeling the Squire’s bird, nodded and the pair were set down. They ruffled and flew at each other without an instant’s hesitation. The visitor, which five minutes before had been staring at the carpet so foolishly, was prompt enough now. For a moment they paused, beak to beak, eye to eye, furious, with necks outstretched and hackles stiff with the rage of battle. They began to rise and fall like two feathers tossing in the air, very quietly. But for the soft whir of wings there was no sound in the room. Taffy could scarcely believe they were fighting in earnest. For a moment they seemed to touch—to touch and no more, and for a moment only—but in that moment the stroke was given. The home champion fluttered down, stood on his legs for a moment, as if nothing had happened, then toppled over and lay twitching, as his conqueror strutted over him and lifted his throat to crow.

Squire Moyle rose, clutching the corner of his chair. His mouth opened and shut, but no words came. Sir Harry caught up his bird, whipped off his spurs, and thrust him back into the bag. The old man dropped back, letting his chin sink on his high stock-collar.

“It serves me right. Who shall deliver me from the wrath to come?”

“Oh! as for that—” Sir Harry finished tying the neck of the bag, and lazily fell to fingering the setter’s ear.

The old man was muttering to himself. Taffy looked at the dead bird, then at Honoria. She was gazing at it too, with untroubled eyes.

“But I will be saved! I tell you, Harry, I will! Take those birds away. Honoria, hand me my Bible. It’s all here”—he tapped the heavy book—“miracles, redemption, justification by faith—I will have faith. I will believe, every damned word of it!”

Sir Harry broke in with a peal of laughter. Taffy had never heard a laugh so musical.

The old man was adjusting his spectacles; but he took them off and laid them down, his hands shaking with rage.

“You came here to taunt me”—his voice shook as his hand—“me, an old man, with no son to my house. You think, because I’m seeking higher things, there’s no fight left in us or in the parish. I tell you what; make that boy of yours strip and stand up, and I’ll back the Parson’s youngster for doubles or quits. Off with your coat, my son, and stand up to him!”

Taffy turned round in a daze. He did not understand. His eyes met Honoria’s, and they were fastened on him curiously. He was white in the face; the sight of the murdered game-cock had sickened him.

“He doesn’t look flourishing.” Sir Harry mimicked the Squire’s recent manner.

Taffy turned with the look of a hunted animal. He did not want to fight. He hated this house and its inhabitants. The other boy was stripping off his jacket with a good-humoured smile.

“I—I don’t want—” Taffy began fumbling with a button. “Please—”

“Off with your coat, boy! You were game enough t’other day. If you lick en, I’ll put a new roof on your father’s church.”

Taffy was still fumbling with his jacket-button when a bell sounded, clanging through the house.

“The parson!”

Squire Moyle clutched at his Bible like a child who has been caught playing in school. Sir Harry stepped to the window and flung up the sash. “Out you tumble, youngsters—you too, Miss, if you like. Pick up your coat, George—cut and run to the stables; I’ll be round in a minute—quick, out you go!”

The children scrambled over the sill and dropped on to the stone terrace. As his father closed the sash behind him, George Vyell laughed out. Then Taffy began to laugh; he laughed all the way as they ran. When they reached the stables he was swaying with laughter. There was a hepping-stock by the stable-wall, and he flung himself on to the slate steps. He could not stop laughing. The two others stared at him. They thought he had gone mad.

“Here comes Dad!” cried George Vyell.

This sobered Taffy. He sat up and brushed his eyes. Sir Harry whistled for Jim, and told him to saddle the horses.