BARBARA LYNN

A TALE OF THE DALES AND FELLS

BY EMILY JENKINSON

AUTHOR OF "SILVERWOOL," "THE SOUL OF UNREST."

"An enduring soul have the Fates given unto men."—Iliad.

LONDON
EDWARD ARNOLD
1914

[All Rights Reserved]

CONTENTS

PART I

PART II

BARBARA LYNN

PART I

CHAPTER I

The Lonely Steading in the Dale

Barbara Lynn looked up the dale.

Thundergay glimmered through the green twilight with his hoary head under the Pole star, and his feet in the wan waters of a tarn. His breath was the North wind.

Barbara put up the shutters and turned to an old woman, who was propped against the pillows of a four-post bed. It stood in the full light of a turf fire, and looked like a ship with its sails furled.

"I'll bid you good-night and good rest, great-granny," said the girl.

The old woman was watching her with keen eyes—eyes so bright that they glittered under her shaggy brows.

"Do you ever waken o' nights?" she asked.

Barbara laughed and shook her head.

"Nay, I sleep from dark to dawn. But I'd hear you, great-granny, if you called. I've ears like a mountain hare."

"Aye, aye, rest's for the young, restlessness for the old. I lie awake thinking o' the days gone by. But you've no memories worth minding yet, my lass. Wait till you're my age—ninety-six come Michaelmas."

Barbara placed a lighted candle on the bridewain close to the bed, and stood for a moment looking down at the eagle-eyed old woman.

The Potter had made the new vessel after the pattern of the old, but the spirit of life which each held was different. The girl and her great-grandmother had the same wide brows, the same well-chiselled nose, and their eyes were blue. Barbara was tall beyond the usual height of her sex, and she carried her body with the grace of one accustomed to stand on giddy heights and climb perilous places. Her head was finely moulded, and in proportion to her form. Peter Fleming, the miller's son, studying classics at Oxford, called her Athene, and said that a glance into her blue eyes, gave strength to his shoulders and courage to his heart. So had the old woman in the four-poster looked eighty years ago.

But though the eyes of both were blue, Barbara's were as mild and meditative, as Mistress Annas Lynn's were hard. They scanned each other narrowly. The marked difference as well as resemblance between them seemed to strike the old woman, for she suddenly said:

"You take after me in looks, lass, though your father and his father were the spitten picture of your great-grandfather, and Lucy favours them. But you are no more like me in temper than the beck in spate is like the same beck on a calm summer's morning. At your age I had kenned the bride-bed, and the birth-bed, and o' but kenned the death-bed. But you're still a bairn, puzzling over your letters."

There was pride and scorn in her voice.

"It's true, great-granny," replied Barbara, who was slow of tongue. "I's mazed-like at the world."

"Hoots-toots," said the old woman testily. "There's nowt to maze thee. Take what's sent and make the best on it. Life was made to be lived, not questioned. And it's worth living. I tell thee so, Barbara, and thee can take my word for it—I's that old. Whiles it turns your mouth awry, but the sweet and the sour are fairly mixed. Lucy's learnt that much—I know by the light in her eye. She'll get more of real life out of one night, larking with the lads in Cringel Forest, than you out of a hundred nights star-gazing on Thundergay."

"M'appen you're right," answered the girl, "but who would see to the farm, the sheep, and the lambs, and the kye, if I spent my time larking with the lads?"

Mistress Lynn's expression changed quickly. A crafty look displaced the open scorn of her eyes.

"Aye, aye, keep to the sheep-paths, Barbara. Keep to the sheep-paths and your star-gazing. See thou keep to the sheep-paths, great-granddaughter. They're safer for a young lass than Cringel Forest. Get thee gone now. It's time you were in bed. The dawn comes earlier every day."

"Earlier still I'll have to be up," replied Barbara, giving the old woman good-night.

"God bless thee, Barbara, thee's a good lass, although I do get my knife into thee whiles. Sleep well."

The girl drew the blue and white homespun curtains round the bed, put out the candle and went away. The wooden soles of her clogs rang with a measured sound upon the stone stairs and then across the rafters overhead. After that there was silence save for the chatter of the beck, running by the door. Its voice had an insistent, familiar tone, as though it were talking to someone within. No movement came from old Mistress Lynn. Either she was asleep, or she busied her mind with thoughts of other days. For a long time the room was in darkness. Then the turf on the fire slipped, the light leaped forth, and the four-poster glided out of shadow like a ship in full sail. The curtains were noiselessly drawn back, and a long, lean hand relit the candle.

Mistress Lynn looked slowly and searchingly about her. She left no dim corner unscanned, and there were many dim corners in the great kitchen, for it ran the length of the front part of the house.

It was a low room with a flagged and sanded floor. The walls were white-washed, making a fine contrast to the beams overhead, and the doors of the carved oak cupboards, all alike, black with age. Along one side ran three windows. The hearth was a slab of blue slate, and, as the chimney flue descended no further into the room than the ceiling, the fire made a great show on occasions, with its flames and smoke; as though one end of the house were burning from floor to rafters. A bar of wood, called the rannel-balk, spanned the fireplace, and from it depended the rattan-crook, a long hook on which the kettle hung. There was a carved oak settle in the ingle, and near it a spinning wheel; and under the windows a narrow but heavy table with all its corners sharp but one, which was rounded off in a curious manner following the shape of the solid tree trunk from which it had been made. Against the opposite wall stood a dresser, holding a varied array of wooden and pewter platters, piggins for drinking out of, and two or three china cups. Next to it came the bridewain, and then the great bed. Between the windows was the door, bound with iron, studded with large nails, and bolted by two massive iron bolts. Another door at the far end led into a little passage, which gave access to the wool-barn, cow-house and dairy, all at the back of the building. In the chimney, curing in the smoke, hung flitches of bacon and a sheep by the heels. Upon the shelves along the walls were hammers and lanterns, pattens for horses to wear in snowy weather, sticks and staves and an old gun. An oak cupboard, with Mistress Lynn's initials carved upon it, held the oat-cake, and a kist, near the fire, held meal.

But the principal feature of the place was the four-post bed, with its curtains of blue and white homespun, so placed that it commanded a full view of the room. Nothing could happen there unseen by the old woman.

Shadows shot up and sank with the flickering light. The clock peered down like a white-faced watcher, the dresser and the high-backed chairs were endowed with movement if not with life. Mistress Lynn laid her fingers upon the bridewain, as though she would reassure herself that it, too, was not a fantastic creation of firelight and shadow, but the solid piece of oak which she had brought with her to this house of Greystones, when she married David Lynn four generations ago.

She listened for any sound in the sleeping house. But all was quiet. No stealthy steps crossed the rafters overhead, where Barbara and Lucy slept. The windows were shuttered and the doors were closed. Jan Straw, the shepherd, grown old and blind and deaf in her service, had a bed along with the hind above the cow-house. There was none to spy upon her, save the shadows and the firelight, and the bob-tailed sheep-dog, lying with his nose between his paws, dreaming of the flocks upon Thundergay.

Mistress Lynn moved the candle nearer to her, and, taking from its hiding-place in the bed a large iron key, she leaned over and unlocked the middle cupboard of the bridewain.

The light was full upon her face, revealing the fine network of lines about mouth and eyes, the parchment-like texture of the skin, and the whiteness of the hair, that escaped from under her frilled nightcap. Hers was a face bearing the imprint of age in every lineament, and of an abiding craftiness, which all the greatness of her nature had not managed to efface.

The bridewain was apparently stocked with carded wool. This she pushed aside, however, and drawing out a bundle of silver spoons and a gold locket, she laid them on the bed. She counted the spoons one by one, and fingered the locket absently, as though the thoughts which it roused carried her mind back to some experience long past. The expression of her face changed from grim satisfaction to great weariness. Her lips moved, but the words were lost in the chatter of the beck.

When Mistress Lynn was a girl, over three-quarters of a century ago, she had loved Joel Hart, a young gentleman of quality, whose home was not far off, and the locket had been a gift from him. But he married Mary Priestly, the heiress of Forest Hall, in Cringel Forest, and she married David Lynn, of Greystones. Neither marriage was very happy. Joel took part in the rebellion of 1745, and was shot, losing all his lands save the old house of Forest Hall, which his descendant owned and lived in at this time. But between the rebel's outlawry and his capture, what memories were crowded for the village girl he had once made love to! She had hidden him from pursuit among the wool-sacks, unknown to her dour, loyal husband. The tale had once been a favourite one for a winter night's telling. But now it had ceased to rouse enthusiasm in the dale. Only to this old woman was it a vital memory.

She turned the locket over, then she dropped it, putting such melancholy thoughts as it drew forth resolutely away. She searched in the back of the bridewain and brought out some bags of blue linen, each one tied with a leather thong. They were full of money.

It was for the winking yellow coins which she poured into her lap, that Annas Lynn, at ninety-five, still found life worth living. She, the relic of a past age, with son and grandsons dead, and only two young girls left of all her kindred, whose heart had shrivelled with the death of Joel Hart long ago, still hoped that many years would pass before she was laid to sleep by the mouldering bones of her husband in the kirk-garth. She was proud of her age, proud of her right to be called great-grandmother, proud of her keen wits. She ruled the steading and the flocks, and the ploughed lands, and the pastures with regal authority from her bed in the kitchen. No one disputed her sway. Lucy, younger than Barbara by a year, had been known to defy her; but she rued her rashness in tears for many days afterwards. Neither her son, nor her grandsons, middle-aged men when they died, had ever opposed her will. She broke if she could not bend.

Mistress Lynn stooped over her money-bags. She counted the coins, letting them fall into her hand with a merry tinkle. She counted them below her breath, as though she were afraid to utter the toll of her wealth openly. She was a rich woman. The toil of years lay in her lap; and Barbara's care of the lambs, Lucy's light hand with the butter, the faithful service of old Jan Straw still added many a sovereign to the pile. Gold! gold! it warmed the life blood that otherwise would have run cold at the fountain. To get richer was the ambition of this old woman. She set about compassing it with all the craft of a daughter of Jacob.

The sheep-dog heard the faint jingle, and, getting up, came sniffing to the bedside. He buried his nose in the quilt, causing a coin to slip unnoticed upon the floor. Like all his kind he owed a willing obedience to a strong hand, and though he slunk in terror from his mistress's anger, he returned trustfully to eat the crumbs which she sometimes gave him.

She patted his head.

"There's no cream-cakes hid among the blankets, Toss, my lad," she said. "Get awa back, and take thy sleep."

The dog returned to his bed by the fire, but the coin lay shining upon the sheepskin beside the four-poster. She did not miss it.

Midnight; and the hour of twelve rang out, overcoming for a brief while the ceaseless chattering of the beck. Mistress Lynn put away her money-bags, and relocked the bridewain. She bent her head, listening intently, but to a clock striking twelve far back in her memory. On such a night as this, at the same hour, she had hidden Joel Hart among the wool-sacks, while David Lynn, goodman, slept peacefully in his bed. That night summed up for Annas all the sweetness and bitterness of life. She had lived then to the utmost fibre of her being.

She drew the curtains and lay down. The four-poster once more took on its likeness to a ship in full sail.

But there was no rest for the old woman. She spent the night-time, as she had foretold to her great-granddaughter, thinking of the days gone by. During those cold, early hours, that drag so wearily for the wakeful, she lived again through many a wild scene. Yet she longed for sleep, and vainly tried to put the memories from her, which she would rather cast into oblivion for ever. Hers had been an eventful life.

She had been born and bred in this land of the dales and fells, under the shadow of Thundergay. Her looks and actions showed the blood from whence she came. She was a true descendant of those wild Northmen, who had once swooped down upon that countryside, and built their homesteads there. Tall, blue-eyed, and yellow-haired in her youth, she might have been Unn, the Deep-minded, come to life again out of her saga. About her breathed an air of mystery, for she was, in truth, no common woman, either in body or in mind.

She had married early, and made this farm of Greystones the very centre of her own personality. Husband and children had feared rather than loved her, and no one knew what depths of affection her nature held, save Joel Hart, dead seventy years ago. There was a Joel Hart now living at Forest Hall, the old house about a mile away down the dale, and upon him had fallen a pale reflection of her love. He and Barbara were the only beings for whom she felt any real regard, and this not for their own sakes, but because the one bore so striking a resemblance to his ill-fated ancestor and the other to herself. They were a reincarnation, in appearance, of the past.

As Mistress Lynn lay awake, she became acutely conscious of those other days. They lived again. At one moment she was helping to bar the doors against the last raid of the moss-troopers, while her husband shot at them with a flint-lock from an upper window. Then, in the twinkling of an eye, she was standing among the wool-sacks, her lantern making a round moon of light upon the wall opposite. Even yet she could not see a lantern's glow without the blood quickening through her veins.

Sleep would not come to her. She tried to draw her mind away from such scenes, and think of the quiet hills. She listened to the beck, singing under the windows. Its voice was so clear that it seemed to be running across the kitchen floor by her bed. But it would only sing of the past, like a bard telling tales of the strenuous days of old. It was a lullaby for heroes, not for a weary old woman who could not sleep. She lay, shut in by her curtains, with her eyes fixed wide, seeing faces and hearing voices long since gone into the spirit-world.

Outside, the moon was shining like a new silver crown. The fells lay white under its rays, for the snow had not yet melted from the uplands, though primroses were beginning to peep along sheltered spots of the beck-side. There was a touch of frost in the air, which gave a shimmer to the sky. The roof of Greystones glistened, and the five great sycamores, standing about the house, flung barred, black shadows across the sheep-pens that lay at the back of the farm, surrounded with one great wall ten feet high, built when robbers were frequent visitors. No other steading stood in the dale. The little village of High Fold lay two miles away, hidden by the trees of Cringel Forest. Behind Greystones the fellside ran up at a steep angle to Mickle Crags. It was not a cheerful place. The fell-folk said that a curse had been laid upon it, but when, and by whom, and for what offence, no one had ever heard. Yet many believed that the house would one day fall, or the beetling black crags come down upon it, and then would end the family of the Lynns, who had lived there for three hundred years. Lucy laid crossed straws on the threshold, as her mother had done, and her mother's mother, and hung horseshoes over the doors, but the house still kept its melancholy air. The lonely situation of the place had much to do with this impression, for Boar Dale was deep and wild and barren, surrounded by a mountain rampart, up which the sun must climb before it could send its kindly beams to dispel the mists that made it their home.

Barbara and Lucy, aided by the village folk, had tried to persuade Mistress Lynn to leave the house and have another built in a more cheerful spot, but she would not listen to them. Had she not lived there for more than seventy years? Nothing had ever happened. There had been landslips, to be sure, upon the fells behind, but they had never fallen anywhere near the house. The beck was flooded every winter, but never got higher than the bottom step of the garden. What was there to fear? No; when she left Greystones, abandoned it to the bats and the owls, it would be when she was carried out with her feet up. Then Barbara and Lucy could do as they liked.

Mistress Lynn had been bedridden for several years. She had slipped in the yard one muddy day and injured her ankle. It had recovered sufficiently for her to have hobbled about with the help of a stick, but the proud old woman could not brook such an idea. She would not be seen hirpling like a sheep with the louping-ill, and so she preferred to remain in bed and keep her dignity. She was quite happy and fully occupied in holding her iron sceptre over her little family, and never gave a thought to the curse. But Barbara and Lucy sometimes awoke at night and shuddered, for they knew that the scarred and broken face of Mickle Crags was peering down upon the roof with a malignant grin.

The moon set, and, in the grey dawn the old woman fell asleep. It was then that the birds began to twitter in the copse hard by, through which the beck babbled when it had run by the door. At the first low whistle of a blackbird, Barbara awoke.

CHAPTER II

The Sisters

Lucy was still lying fast asleep in bed. Barbara called softly, "Lucy, Lucy," but there was no reply. Then she laid her hand upon the sleeper's breast. Some hands have a power to thrill the spirit of those they touch. Such power had Barbara Lynn's.

Lucy stirred. She opened her eyes, and saw her sister bending over her, with hair unbound and glistening like a misty golden cloud.

"If I were on my death-bed," she murmured, "I should be fancying thee an angel out of heaven."

Barbara smiled slowly.

"It's time you were waking," she replied, and began to gather up her long locks, pleating them round her head.

Lucy flung back the coverlet, and drew her knees up to her chin.

"You've a black, black heart, Barbara Lynn, though you've the face of a holy saint," she replied. "I believe you get a lot of pleasure out of waking me up in the morning. I was dreaming such heavenly dreams—all about grapes!"

She shook back her hair, which was black and glossy as a raven's wing, but her eyes, like Barbara's, were blue. All her movements were swift and decisive, for her spirit was made of quicksilver.

"You've an earthly mind," she added.

Barbara knotted a kerchief round her head, and glanced at a tiny mirror hanging on the wall. A flickering rushlight vied with the grey dawn to show the face reflected there. She sighed audibly.

"You're about right," she said. "I think it's clod-bound."

Lucy drew a curl between her lips, meditating upon her sister's reply.

"Where are you going?" she asked; "to Ketel's Parlour?"

"Not just now. I promised to help the hind with a rough bit of ploughing—that high field where we are going to plant potatoes. It's too steep for old Jan Straw to lead the horses there. He fell down yesterday! Poor Jan! he'll never work no more."

The sisters were silent as they thought of the old man, hardly so intelligent as the wild creatures of the woods and fells, but faithful to the last drop of his blood.

"I think he'll be glad to die," said Lucy.

A faint flush swept up Barbara's face.

"He's dust," she replied, "and he's going back to the dust he came from, like a little cloud raised by the wind. What has he ever had in life to make him want to live?"

Lucy sank back upon her pillows, and clasped her hands behind her head. It was not often that Barbara spoke bitterly.

"And you!" she said. "You've never a chance, either. You might be a man for the work you do."

"I was meant for a man when I was made so tall and strong," answered the girl, with a note of pride in her voice and a straightening of her figure.

"Nay, nay, there's not a man in the dale, nor in the country round, that can hold a candle to thee."

"Then I's neither fish, flesh nor fowl, for there's not a woman as tall or strong, unless it be yon great creature we saw at the show."

Lucy gazed at her sister with critical eyes.

"You'll look finely, like a queen, when you get the crown Old Camomile promised thee, the day he told your stars," she said.

Barbara moved towards the door, carrying her clogs in her hand.

"Don't forget it's time you were up," she replied. Not even to her sister would she acknowledge that the prophecy gave an interest to her life.

But Lucy would not be repressed.

"Perhaps a lord will ride by some day, and marry you, Barbara. Who knows?"

The girl paused with her fingers on the latch.

"His horse would stick in the mud of the bridle path like a fly in a glue-pot. He'd never get so far as Greystones. You're a silly wench, Lucy. Lords don't come looking for wives among peasant lasses."

Lucy gurgled with laughter, which she stifled under the quilt for fear of waking her great-grandmother.

"What a sober old maid you are, Barbara," she said. "Do you never dream?"

The door shut with a soft snick—her sister had gone.

For a while longer Lucy lay still, gazing at the rushlight as it burnt dimmer and the daylight increased. She wondered what life held in store for Barbara and herself. The present was not without its excitements, but towards the future she turned longing eyes—the Future, hidden by a golden cloud, which some day would fade away, disclosing undreamed-of joys.

Then she got slowly out of bed. Her toilet was not a simple affair like her sister's. Along a shelf stood a row of little green jars and bottles, containing balms and salves and scented waters. The sun might tan Barbara's face and bleach her hair to the colour of ripe corn; rain and wind and frost might redden and cut her hands, but Lucy's cheeks were always satin smooth, and her curls black and glistening. She tempted her sister with ointment made from cowslips, with distilled rose-water, and balm of elder-flowers—all the sweetest odours that ever perfumed woodland air were concentrated into those green phials—but she tempted in vain. Barbara laughed. There were the cows to milk, the sheep to herd, hoeing and weeding and seed-sowing to do; what time had she for such fanglements?

The eastern clouds were rosy with the rays of the rising sun when Lucy stole downstairs and opened the kitchen door. The four-poster stood with its curtains closed like an Arab's tent in lonely gloom. The girl shivered as she looked at it. The thought of the old woman lying within took all the brightness from her eyes and the lightness from her step. She was afraid of her great-grandmother as of something unknown. What right had anyone so old to be still among the living? Her place was with the dead, with the men and women whose names had become a faint memory in the dale, but who were to her personalities, that she had touched and handled. Lucy's mother had died when she was a baby, and the grim old figure, that sometimes rocked her cradle, had filled her infant mind with fear. Now that she had grown to womanhood the fear remained, though she hid it under a gay and careless demeanour. Still, the shadow of her great-grandmother fell like a blight on Lucy's life.

She tiptoed to the fireplace and soon had the smouldering turf in a glow. Then, opening the outer door and stepping out into the sunlight, she filled the kettle at the spring. It was a fair morning. The chorus of birds had ceased and busy feathered things were marketing among the sprouting green of the beck-side. Far away up the dale she saw the red cows move, and knew that Barbara was somewhere near, driving them to new pastures. Thundergay was still swathed with smokelike mists, rolling upwards in the breeze, and gradually disclosing grey precipices, and slatey screes, with here and there patches of emerald, where the young ferns were beginning to spring, and higher up, wide fields of snow. Lucy paused to pluck a cluster of primroses, and place them in her hair. But she was startled by a cough from a stunted tree near. Among its knarled roots crouched a little figure, wrapped in a sack to keep itself warm.

"Oh, it's you, Jan!" said Lucy. "I thought you were a sheep coughing. You should have stayed in bed to-day and taken a rest."

The creature raised a pair of watery eyes to her face, then dropped them.

"I's always gotten up at dawn," was the reply.

"But it's so cold!"

Again the pale eyes were raised and dropped.

"Verra cold, lass."

"You must come to the kitchen."

"Nay."

Lucy laid her fingers upon his withered hand.

"Come and get warm," she entreated. "I've got such a grand fire burning."

The old man made no reply, but kept his gaze upon her slender fingers. At last his voice came slowly, as though he were drawing up something from the dark well of his memory.

"Onced I seed a hand like yourn, onced, long ago. I's forgotten when, but I minds the hand."

"Come," said Lucy.

He rose painfully and crawled by her side. But at the kitchen door he held back.

"Nay," he repeated.

"Why?"

"I must work."

"Rubbish," said Lucy scornfully, and again she laid her hand upon his. "You've been working all your life, you can have a rest now. Let the new hind—Tom, do what's to be done."

The old man stared anew at her fingers.

"I minds where I saw that hand," he said, "it was outside a white winding sheet ... long ago."

Lucy tried to draw him into the kitchen, but he was obstinate, and afraid of Mistress Lynn.

"I'll go and feed the chickens," he mumbled, and shuffled away round the end of the house.

Lucy looked after him sadly, then returned to her work. As she was shaking the sheepskin rug a coin fell out of it and lay glittering upon the ground. Picking it up with an exclamation of surprise, she turned it over and over. It was a sovereign. For some minutes she stood with her brows knit and her blue eyes darkening as thought took shape. The coin was her great-grandmother's, there could be no doubt of it. Lucy had always had suspicions about the locked cupboard of the bridewain, which she had never seen opened. Now she knew something was hidden there—money most likely, perhaps many more coins like the one she had found, perhaps bags of them. If one could be lost without a hue and cry being raised for it, they must be as plentiful as blackberries.

What should she do? Should she keep it? Was it not her due, considering the way she worked and yet received no recompense? The temptation to put the coin in her pocket was strong, and she thought longingly of the many pretty things it would buy. Then she spurned the suggestion. She remembered Jan Straw, whose life had been bought for a few pounds and a sup of porridge; she saw Barbara wearing out her strong young life upon the fells; she thought of herself, drudging from daylight to day-darkening. The bitterness of it set her teeth on edge. She looked again at the yellow coin, and it seemed to have taken upon it a tinge of blood.

Then the curtain rings of the bed jingled, and turning round, she saw that her great-grandmother was sitting up, looking at her.

Lucy might fear the old woman, but she was not lacking in courage when the moment called for it. She balanced the coin upon her thumb-nail, spun it into the air, and caught it as it fell.

"See what I've found," she said.

Mistress Lynn stared at the shining thing, lying on the girl's palm.

"Where didst get it?" she asked sharply.

"At the end of the rainbow."

"Rainbow! fiddlesticks! Give it to me."

Lucy dropped the coin into the outstretched hand without a word. But she stood looking down, her eyes fierce and more like the old woman's than Barbara's were, although in face and figure there was no other resemblance.

"Where didst get it?" again asked Mistress Lynn.

"It fell out of the rug."

"Ah! I sold some sheep to a man from the South yesterday. I thought he had paid me short money—they're such cheats in the South! Well, well, it must have dropped out of his hand. Thee shall have a shilling come Good Friday, Lucy."

"A shilling!" Lucy was scornful, "a shilling!"

Mistress Lynn looked narrowly at her great-granddaughter. Between the girl and her little love was lost.

"What ails thee at a shilling? It's over much when I come to think of it. Thee shall have sixpence. That's enough for a young lass to spend on fallals."

"1 wonder at you, I wonder at you, great-grandmother," exclaimed Lucy. "I wonder at you hoarding up the money, and you so old."

"Wouldst like to see me play ducks and drakes with it in the beck?"

Lucy tossed her head impatiently.

"Why do you keep Barbara and me penniless?" she asked.

"I feed you well and clothe you warm—what more dost need?"

"Barbara," began Lucy, but the old woman interrupted her.

"What's Barbara complaining about?"

"Barbara never complains. But I know she's heart-sick for something better than a lone life on the fells."

"If she's sweethearting," said Mistress Lynn, "if she's taken up with a lad, I's nought to say against it," for the old woman thought that the services of a young strong man would be of great value now that Jan Straw was past work.

"Sweethearting!" replied Lucy. "It's learning Barbara's after!"

"Learning! Hasn't she enough learning for any lass, and more than most? Doesn't she ken the lift like the palm of her hand, and the dales and fells better than her ten toes?"

"It's book-learning Barbara wants."

"Book-learning! I don't hold with book-learning. Hark to me, great-granddaughter. You'll be a good lass, and when I's gone there'll be a nice little sum put by for you and your sister. Now, see to your work; the porridge is burning," and the old woman sniffed the air disdainfully.

"Oh," said Lucy, with a shrug of her shoulders, "Mickle Crags will have buried us all by then—you and me and Barbara and the money, all in one grave."

"Hold thy tongue," replied the old woman calmly, but with such an edge to her words that Lucy kept her peace.

Later in the day Lucy went up the dale to find Barbara. She eagerly drank in the sunlight. It comforted her like a cup of sweet wine. From the mosses of the beck-side, where she followed the cattle road, a whispering could be heard as of life—innumerable, and infinitesimal—waking to activity after its long winter sleep. Bees were buzzing; birds were mating; the village geese, in charge of a goose-girl, were being driven to their feeding grounds; Tom, the new hind, with a boy to drive the horses, was ploughing in a steep field; and Jan Straw was gathering rushes. Everything was up and active.

The dale in which Greystones was situated wound into the heart of Thundergay. On the right rose Nab Head—a grey bastion streaked with little streams trickling from the melting snows, and now all aglitter in the sun. On the left, gloomy as its name, hung Darkling Crag. The dale lay between like a green lizard, basking in the warm light. It was green with marsh-mosses, and soon would be yellow with king-cups. Lucy sang to herself as she climbed upward:

"Oh! have you found my golden ball?
And have you come to set me free?
Or have you come to see me hanging
On the gallows tree?"

There was no smile upon her face, but her eyes were wistful. She was hoping that Joel Hart would soon find a golden ball and come to set her free, before Greystones, and the tyrannical old woman there, had robbed her life of its youth and sweetness. She was just twenty, and panting to spread her wings and fly away. She turned round to look at her home.

It was the most solitary of habitations. About it hung an atmosphere of old forgotten things. It had a tragic air as though its past, by some strange process, were still in being. Even on a golden afternoon such as this, it could not exorcise the grey spirit that haunted it—the spirit of the ancient grey stones of which it was built. The slates were green with moss: the drip-stone was feathered with weeds which, before long, would belt it with a flowery garland: soon the great sycamores would burst into leaf; but even then the house would keep its gloom. It was a fitting habitation for Mistress Annas Lynn, who was nearly a hundred years old.

Lucy turned her eyes away from it, and looked at the mountain at the head of the dale, down whose sides the streams slid in thin white lines to fall with many a rainbow cascade into Swirtle Tarn, lying at its feet, blue as a violet. Thundergay dominated the dale. Its jagged peaks soared high above the fells around. It was the birth-place of eagles, mists and storms; and it was also the nurse of her sister Barbara.

Her mind turned to Barbara.

If Lucy ever visualised such abstract ideas as goodness, integrity, and justice, she saw them under the living form of her sister. Joel Hart she loved; Barbara she worshipped. With Joel she stood on an equality—he was as humanly imperfect as she—but Barbara stood on a mountain height, a great, grand figure, with a great, grand heart, sublime in her magnanimity, immovable as granite among the storms of her world.

She felt, too, that it was among the mountains that Barbara found her secret inspiration and strength. Since childhood she had spent the greater part of her life upon Thundergay, and, though it had been a rough nurse, beating her with winds like scorpions, training her by hunger and cold and weariness, yet she loved it still, but it had made her silent.

Lucy did not put her thought into these words, but she felt them, nevertheless.

She now left the cattle road, and followed a sheep-track round Swirtle Tarn. A shoulder of Thundergay seemed to block her way, but the track wound in and out of knowes and hollows, and led her at last through a gap, where she looked down upon a scene of pastoral beauty. A lawn of velvet grass lay by the margin of the tarn, dotted with sheep and a few lambs—the firstlings of the flock. It sloped gently upwards, and surged like a full green tide against the bases of the cliffs. Here was a cave, called for generations Ketel's Parlour, in memory of some Northern robber who had made it his eyrie. Now Barbara claimed it, and often slept there when her work kept her abroad at night. The flocks were her especial care, and she "shepherded and improved the same according to the due course of good shepherding," as the old title-deeds of Greystones recommended.

Lucy looked in. By the threshold her sister lay fast asleep, her long limbs sunk in repose upon a bed of straw. Her head was near the entrance, and the sun, as it got lower, flowed in golden ripples across the threshold. When it touched her eyes she would awake, for the sun was her clock by day, as the Great Bear was her clock by night.

Lucy did not speak, but took her knitting from her pocket, and sat down on a rock to wait.

The cave had been partly built up long, long ago, and two narrow slits of windows made in the artificial wall. The rusty remains of iron bolts and hinges showed that a door had once closed the entrance. A huge slab of slate lay across the threshold, and underneath it a little spring that babbled out of the floor of the cave disappeared, appearing again some few yards further down the slope.

It was not long before Barbara awoke. The sun was sinking; the tarn lay in shadow, blue as steel and glassy as a mirror; now and then a heron struck an evanescent star from the shallows where it splashed. But the fellside still stood full in the vivid light, and was dyed to a rich green, like the colour seen on old silken needlework. Upon Barbara, standing at the mouth of the cave, the sunshine seemed to concentrate. She looked larger and grander and more remote than a simple human being. She might be an incarnation of some Nature-power, older than the mountains around her, unassailed by time, and partaking of the perpetual youth of immortals.

"One of the ewes has died," she said to Lucy, "and I've spent hours trying to get its lamb fostered. Like enough thee'll have to take it home, and bring it up by hand."

"Botherment!" exclaimed her sister; "haven't I plenty to do already?"

Barbara made no reply. She was wondering what it felt like to be dead, wondering what that strange thing was which came but once, but came to all living, to men and women and sheep, and, in the twinkling of an eye, sent them out of the Known into the Unknown, where all mysteries might abound.

"Hast ever thought, Lucy," she said at last, "how strange it is that we should die like sheep and sheep like us?"

"Not I!" replied the younger girl. "My head's stuffed with lighter rubbish," and she shuddered as her eyes fell upon a huddled white heap under a thorn.

"It mazes me," continued Barbara, "when I think that yon poor creature I've thought so silly mappen knows more than I do now. Death must be a queer waking, Lucy. It's likely we'll find that we're very different to what we fancied we were. It's likely we're not the only things with souls. It's likely that the world wasn't just made for us, and all the creatures for our use. Old Camomile says that every blade of grass has its own little green soul, and loves the wind and the sunshine and the rain, and has its ideas about the sky and the stars. Mappen it puts us down as girt senseless creatures, too coarse-minded to understand its thoughts."

"Old Camomile is getting old," said Lucy. "He havers a lot."

Barbara was silent. She rarely spoke because she rarely found anyone to understand her, save the old man Timothy Hadwin, called by the villagers Old Camomile, because he made potions, and electuaries, and essences, curing their aches and pains as if by magic.

Lucy rolled up her wool, put the ball in her pocket, and looked slowly round.

"It's a lonely-like place to spend the night," she said. "I wonder you're not afraid."

"Sometimes I am," replied Barbara. She recalled nights when she had trembled before the vastness of the hills, when the winds had deafened her with stories of things she could not comprehend, when she had turned from gazing at the cold light of the stars with a fear at her heart, because they would answer nothing to all her questions.

Barbara was not educated as the world counts education. It is true that she knew the fells and dales, the tarns and meres of her native country, as well as the oldest shepherd, who had spent his long life among them. She could tell the names of the constellations, and take her direction upon the darkling moors from them. She knew when to plough and sow and reap. No one was so weather-wise as she in the village. But this is not education in the eyes of the world, and Barbara set little value upon her knowledge. She could not speak the King's English, though she spoke something much more picturesque and vigorous; she only read the simplest books; and wrote an ungainly, but characteristic hand. She knew no history, but her mind was furnished with a collection of tales and legends, which held more of the inner truth of history than the bare facts. Yet she longed with all her ardent nature for the learning contained in books; for the power to grasp the thoughts that flashed across her mind and left upon it an impression as of a great flying light, which, if it had not eluded her, would have illumined her whole being. She pined for the life of the intellect.

"I wish we could get out of our bodies," said she, breaking the long silence. "I wish we could shake them off like an old shift, and leave them here on the grass, while our souls sailed in the air naked-free."

"What a horrid idea!" said Lucy, shrugging her shoulders.

"But our bodies are so earthy—always wanting meat and drink, and crying out for sleep. They throw a shadow on us, like a great rock blocking the light o' the sun."

"I know nought about it," answered Lucy, carelessly.

Barbara laughed at the puzzle of her own thoughts.

"I know nought either," she said; "yet something in me would like to win out if it could."

Lucy went up the sheep-path. On the brow of the knoll she paused, looking back. Barbara was kindling a fire outside the cave, and the smoke, as it coiled upwards, hung between them like a blue veil. Her sister seemed to be moving among mysterious things, and there was symbolical meaning in the blue veil. For two worlds lie side by side, the material and the spiritual, and from either the view into the other seems hazy and unreal. But the greatest intellects try to reconcile them. Towards such a reconciliation Barbara, in her untutored mind, was striving.

The sun had gone down, and, though the sky was still flushed with red and yellow, a subdued light and solemn stillness filled the dale—a stillness made the more impressive by the distant splashing of waterfalls and the calling of birds by the tarn.

Lucy felt sad. She had dropped over the knoll with a sigh. Barbara had listened to her story of the gold coin, and dismissed it without comment. She had not been impressed by the idea of their great-grandmother's hidden wealth. She had suggested no way of making life easier or pleasanter. Instead, her mind was possessed by vague ideas and strange questionings, which her sister could not understand, and which had no bearing upon their everyday life. Lucy went home in the waning light with reluctant feet.

But she was mistaken about Barbara's interest. For her sister had long known of the secret hoard, and had once remonstrated with the old woman about saving it in this way. But it had been in vain, as everything was in vain which opposed the will of Mistress Annas Lynn. The failure of the attempt had only served to strengthen the patience of her generous nature—the patience which can school itself to wait for the fulfilment of its desires, and, if need be, to receive without a murmur their denial. No shadow of a quarrel ever dimmed Barbara's out-goings or comings in; her intercourse with her ancient kinswoman was serene and reverent, and she would not hazard it in an attempt that could only result in an upheaval of the bitterest passion. Barbara then put the matter from her. In this she was different to Lucy, who could not cease to think and wonder and debate even after she had made up her mind.

CHAPTER III

Peter Fleming

The swift night came down; fells and dales were folded in purple gloom. Stars began to shine, and Barbara, eating her supper of coarse bread, let her eyes wander from group to group with meditative enjoyment. To her the sky was no vast abyss dotted with a formless multitude of shining points, but a field of wonderful fiery things, each following its own appointed course. Yonder glittered Leo, there swung the Great Bear and the Dragon; and, there on a mountain peak, shimmered the Northern Crown. It led her thoughts to Timothy Hadwin's prophecy, when he cast her horoscope; for she should wear a crown, he said, and though Barbara was too wise to put a strict construction upon his words, nevertheless, she found pleasure and inspiration in them, wondering what they might mean.

She flung an extra armful of wood upon the fire, for the night air nipped frostily. Then, taking her lantern, she went among the sheep to see that all was well with them and their lambs. The little orphan had been adopted, and nestled with its foster-brother against a warm woolly side. A sense of placid well-being lay over the fold, so the girl returned to the fire. As she sat in silence, her fingers busy making a withy basket, and her mind active, there came from over the tarn a sudden burst of melody, ethereal as elfin music. It was echoed to and fro from cliff to cliff, now it danced overhead, then it stole like a whisper out of a dale far away. The shores of the tarn were ringed with sounds, so haunting that they seemed to be unearthly. Barbara listened in amazement.

Someone was playing a flute from the Rock of the Seven Echoes.

Again the music came rippling across the water and was tossed about from hillside to hillside in airy phantasy. When at last it died into silence, Barbara became conscious of the other sounds of the night—the tinkling of distant waterfalls, the cropping of a sheep close by. She listened expectantly, but the sounds were not repeated.

"It must be Peter," she thought, "only Peter plays the flute hereaway, except Jake, the ratter, and only Peter would play it at such a place."

Her eyes brightened when she thought that he was back again in the dale. Between him and the sisters lay a good fellowship. Often he spent hours with Barbara among the sheep, reading to her stories of old combats and great doings from the Iliad and Odyssey. But he was equally at ease when he helped Lucy to top and tail gooseberries, or sought among the bracken for the nest of the laying-away hen.

Barbara stirred her fire to a brighter glow. She knew that he would see it on the other side of the tarn, and perhaps he might come round to the cave and greet her after his long absence.

Peter was the only son of John Fleming, the miller—called Dusty John in the village—who was a man of some substance, plain habits and little education. But he gave his son every advantage. The boy was sent to school, and afterwards, proving himself apt beyond expectation, went to St. Bees, from which ancient seat of learning he won a scholarship to Oxford. The miller's ambition was to see his son in the church, where he did not doubt Peter would soon be promoted to the highest office. In dreams he beheld him Archbishop of York or Canterbury. But the lad said neither yea nor nay to his father's wishes. He enjoyed himself to the full, coming home for vacations with a light heart, accepting the truckle bed in the mill-house and the homely fare with as lively a humour as he did the varied life of Oxford.

He reached the cave just as the moon was rising, and leaned his back against the cliffs to watch the light sparkle on the water.

"When did you get home?" asked Barbara, putting her withies aside, and bringing him a cup of milk.

He laughed.

"I've not got home yet," he said, "for I left the coach early in the afternoon to come over the tops. But they were too deep in snow, so I had to take the Girdlestone Pass instead. I stayed at the Shepherd's Rest for an hour. Now here I am, late as usual."

Then he plied her with eager questions about his father and mother, the village folk, and the welfare of all at Greystones.

"How goes the studying, Barbara?" he asked. "Have you read the book I sent you?"

She shook her head.

"Nay; it's not that I haven't the will, but there's no time. Jan Straw is grown so old, and the new hind hasn't got into the way of things yet, so that the heavy end falls on me." Then she added with a smile, "There's such a lot of me to get tired, Peter."

He looked at her. Though he could not see the calm eyes and the corn-coloured hair, the outlines of her form were splendid in the silvery light. He felt dwarfed beside her, not physically, but morally. Hers was the finer spirit. He acknowledged it with a glow of generous feeling, for he was given to hero-worshipping.

"We'll make a pact, Barbara," he said, "while I'm at home I'll shepherd the sheep, and you shall read."

"You are good and kind, Peter," replied she, "but I remember how you helped me once before. If it wasn't a rainbow, it was a flower, and if it wasn't a flower, it was a bird, but never the sheep-salving or the cattle-herding. The kye got into the barley-field—do you mind?"

They both laughed.

"What a careless brute I am to be sure," said he. "But if you won't let me look after the farm, I'll come and read to you, when you have time to listen. I've brought you a new book; you'll like it."

He unstrapped the pack he carried, and took out a stout volume. In the light of the fire he showed it to her. It was Pope's Homer.

"Some warm day," he continued, "we'll sit on the fellside and wake again echoes of great deeds, and old battles. Thundergay shall be Olympus, and you shall be Athene, the azure-eyed maid. Listen to this——"

He bent down by the fire and held the book so that he could read by its light.

"'Now heaven's dread arms her mighty limbs invest,
Jove's cuirass blazes on her ample breast....'

"I can see you in them, Barbara."

'The massy golden helm she next assumes,
That dreadful nods with four o'er shading plumes;
So vast, the broad circumference contains
A hundred battles on a hundred plains.
The goddess thus the imperial car ascends;
Shook by her arm the mighty javelin bends,
Ponderous and huge; that when her fury burns,
Proud tyrants humbles, and whole hosts o'erturns.'"

He closed the book and put it into the girl's hands.

"I've never seen you roused up to do battle," he laughed, "but you'll look like that when the spirit moves you. Good-night, Barbara."

Something stirred her like the call of a trumpet heard by her spiritual ears alone. Was her placid life upon the mountains going to end? Would she have to fight with her desires, because Duty still pointed a stern finger towards the sheep-paths, while another road opened before her—a broad and pleasant road. Peter always roused this restlessness in her heart. She was glad, yet sorry, when he went singing home, leaving her to the night-loneliness with her book of old battles.

The next morning Peter Fleming was walking up and down the cobbled path of the mill-garden between flowering currant bushes, and sheaves of lent-lilies, whose buds were still encased in their pale-green sheaths. Everything sparkled in a sudden burst of sunshine. From the mill-wheel the water fell like a glittering fringe, and the beck raced merrily by, clutching at the weeds and grasses on its rim, and drawing them down to make them gorgeously green under its clear surface. On the other side of the stream stood Cringel Forest.

The mill-house was a tall building with the date, 1600, carved over the door under a coat of arms of a wheat-sheaf and a sickle. The Flemings, or De Flemings, as they were then called—had been millers in the dale since the reign of Elizabeth, a fact which Dusty John prided himself upon, although he was as simple an old man as ever spoke the vernacular.

The kitchen door was open at the end of the cobbled path, and in its hot and sunny atmosphere, Peter's mother stood ironing. Her muslin kerchief—as fine as ever came from the looms of the East India Company—her gown of russet, and white apron were the essence of cleanliness and order.

"Get away with thy blandishments," she said, for Peter had paused on the threshold to tell her that she looked like a ripe hazel-nut, her face was so brown and rosy and round. "Thee'd witch the wisdom out of my old head with thy flattery. And as for thy dadda—he cannot walk for swaggering, thee's lillied him up so handsome!"

She smiled proudly into the clear-eyed face looking so affectionately into her own. Peter made her feel that she was still young and worthy of admiration. When he came home she always wore white stockings—though she thought them an extravagance at other times—and placed a flower or a bow of ribbon under her chin.

She held up a kerchief that she was ironing, and said tenderly:

"It will be a great day for thy father and me when we see thee consecrated, Peter."

He stepped across the floor where the sunshine lay in a broad band, and kissed her.

"And a blessed day when I does up thy lawn sleeves, my son. Thee must never let anyone do up thy sleeves but me, lad, not even thy wife when thee gets one. There's nobody kens the art of clear starching and ironing better than thy old mother."

The young man sat on the edge of the table and swung his legs.

"You'll be disappointed, mother," he said, "but I never can see myself—in spite of your dear visions—in bishop's sleeves. I'm a lazy beggar, and more likely to be lying under a tree, finding sermons in stones and books in the running brooks than beating the pulpit cushions of Durham or Carlisle."

She shook her head indulgently.

"Time enough, time enough," she said. "Thee's too young yet to know thy own mind."

Peter looked round the kitchen and laughed.

"Would you like to live in a palace, mother?" he asked.

"A palace! And what would I do there?" she replied, seeing no further than the lawn sleeves which she would wash and iron.

The kitchen of the mill-house was small, clean and simple. Brass fire-irons, two or three candlesticks, a burnished copper warming-pan reflected the strong sunshine, but otherwise the puritanical severity of the white-washed walls was unrelieved. The floor was strewn with river sand, and the chairs and dresser glistened with constant oiling and rubbing. On the dresser was a pile of newly-made clap-cakes, and round the fire stood an oak maiden hung with clean linen. The place had a kindly, homely smell, and Peter sniffed it with enjoyment. He loved the towers of Oxford, and the shadow of his college cloisters, but this small and sunlit kitchen, where his mother baked and ironed, and his father smoked his evening pipe, brought him back to those primitive passions of man out of which the strength of his life springs.

Peter returned to the garden and continued his walk up and down the cobbled path.

He was thinking of his future, and wondering what he would be able to make of it. He had almost decided that he would not take orders when his college days were done, which would be at the summer vacation. The prospect of becoming a curate, or even a North Country vicar did not attract him; on the other hand, he had no particular leanings in any other direction. That which would have suited him down to the ground, he sometimes told himself whimsically, was the position of a country gentleman, with a good library, a well-stocked stable, plenty of dogs and troops of friends. His was a genial, breezy nature; he had a firm hand, a just mind, and a clear brain, added to a boyish love of the unusual and adventurous. Peter was a favourite in the village. He liked pretty faces, and flirted openly, but he left the lasses' hearts none the worse. He fished and hunted with the lads; he talked politics with the tailor, religion with the cobbler, and with Jake, the rat-catcher, spent many a long afternoon. It was Jake who taught him to play upon the flute, and though he never managed to charm the rats with his music—as the strange little man did—he had the young men and maids capering on the bit of green before the inn door on summer evenings, long after they ought to have been abed.

His meditation was interrupted by a horseman calling from over the wall:

"Halloa! Peter, back again?"

It was Joel Hart.

"I'm glad to see you," said he.

"I thought you'd made up your mind to go abroad and seek your fortune," replied Peter, shaking hands heartily.

"So I had, but I broke it again. I couldn't be quite sure where to find the fortune."

They both laughed, but Joel had a note of envy in his mirth.

"You're a lucky dog, Peter," he exclaimed, "to have money in your pockets and a fond father ready to supply more. How long are you home for?"

"Six weeks. It's the Easter vacation."

"Good! we'll have some fishing and wrestling—eh? We'll make a damned fine holiday of it. I want something to take my mind off the worry of wondering where my bread and butter is to come from. You don't want to work, I bet; had enough of that sort of thing down yonder—eh? Come and have a glass at the Wild Boar."

He alighted and leading his horse by the bridle walked down the village street with Peter.

When they were boys they had gone nutting and fishing together, and the memory of many a hairbreadth escape still bound them with the links of affection, though in mind and character they had long since drifted apart.

Joel Hart was a handsome man. Beside him, Peter with his homely face, honest grey eyes, and loosely built figure looked rough-hewn—looked, indeed, that which he was, the off-spring of clean-living, hard-working peasant forefathers. The two men were of a height, but the one carried himself proudly, looking neither to right nor left; the other with an easy swing, that could stoop to give pennies to a crying child, or lift a bundle for an old woman. There was an expression of arrogance and dissatisfaction on Joel's features that marred their beauty. He had dark curling hair, which he wore rather long, his eyes were large, well-shaped, full of a smouldering fire or melting sadness as his mood chanced to be.

The world had dealt hardly with him, and he could not forgive it. His father, the son of that ill-fated Joel Hart whom Annas Lynn had hidden in the wool-barn, had married late in life, and died shortly after, leaving his infant to be brought up by the widow—a vain and foolish woman. She had been indifferent to his discipline and education, and when she died, left the estate—it was a very small one—burdened with debts, a burden that increased rapidly, owing to extravagance and bad management. Joel was not competent to deal with it. A habit of indolence, fostered by his up-bringing, had become second nature to him; his temper was uncertain; yet he cared deeply for two things—Forest Hall and Lucy Lynn. To preserve the one, and gain the other was a wild dream that he dreamed, but made only fitful attempts to realise. He felt that he was bound by invisible bonds which he could not break.

"I'm getting to the end of my resources, Peter," he said as they stood in the inn parlour, drinking. He often make a joke of his poverty; it was too well-known to be hidden; and he did not care that folk should see how much he felt it. "I've only one hope left."

"I trust it's a substantial one," remarked Peter.

Joel flung back his head and laughed.

"Ha, ha," he cried, "ha, ha. It's the old great-grandmother up at Greystones."

"You're not thinking of marrying her—are you?" said Peter, his eyes twinkling.

"'Pon my soul I never thought of it! What a pity. She'd have had me, Peter, for the love she bore my grand-dad. I needn't have waited till she was dead, then, to have got her money."

"She's rich—is she?"

"Must be! an old miser! She told me she was going to leave the little she had—little, mind you, and Greystones is the most prosperous farm for miles round—she said she was going to leave it to be divided between Barbara, Lucy, and me. She's ninety-five now, and can't live much longer, though she looks as hale and hearty an old sinner as ever laid up treasure in this world. I hope she'll not forget her promise."

"Court her," replied Peter, briefly.

"Her or her great-granddaughters?" Joel shot a sharp glance at his companion. He sometimes thought that Peter had a warm side for Lucy as well as himself. "All the same," he continued, tossing off another glass, "I'm breeding dogs, as a stand-by, in case she dies without leaving me a shilling. You must come and see them. I've got a litter of the prettiest pups you ever saw. I keep 'em in the parlour because the kennels are all out of repair. It's a comedown, eh, for the master to sup his porridge in the kitchen, but feed his dogs under the very noses of his forefathers in their gilt frames?"

They talked a little longer, made plans to join the fox-hunt next morning, then Joel mounted his horse and rode away, while Peter retraced his steps up the village street.

He thought that Joel was changing. The man looked unhappy and restless in spite of his gay demeanour. He talked too much, and he drank too much. He might be as poor as he asserted, but he rode a fine horse—Peter was a judge of horse-flesh—and his clothes were dandified beyond the fashion of the times. Yet there was something in him that appealed to Peter, who thought he looked like a gay bird in a trap. And what trap could be worse than one made out of family pride, poverty, and lack of education?

Pondering upon his friend's character and circumstances, he passed through the village.

High Fold, in the midst of which the mill stood, was a cluster of houses on the fringe of Cringel Forest. They were built of grey stone, roofed with rough-hewn slates, where the yellow stonecrop ran riot, hung with queer little balconies, giving them a foreign air. They stood at all angles on either side of a steep road, at the foot of which was the inn, at the top the church. Except for the house known as Forest Hall, the farm of Greystones and a few solitary cots, High Fold marked the limit of human habitation in that direction. Beyond it were many miles of heathy moorland, a wild expanse of mountain, barren ravines, each with its own gushing beck, and wild marshes. The people were a healthy, thrifty race, lacking little—and those things not necessities—working hard and simply, and living to a good old age. Many of them herded sheep on the common lands; a few wrought in a silver mine some distance off; others spun and carded wool; a tailor, a weaver, a rat-catcher and a blacksmith were respected members of the community. They owned a large flock of geese, each bird was smit with its owner's private mark, and a goose-girl, in the common employ, led them daily to their feeding-grounds. There were few idle hands in the village, even the old men knitted stockings, sitting on the inn bench of a spring or summer evening.

Peter followed the road beyond the village, where it turned into a cart-track, and wound through Cringel Forest, leading to Forest Hall, and then on up the dale to Greystones.

As he lay under a beech-tree, watching the birds fluttering among the smooth branches, a little old man came wandering through and sat beside him.

The hair of the little old man curled on his shoulders, like a child's—though it was grey instead of golden—and his eyes were also like a child's, bright and questioning. He was primly dressed in a flowered waistcoat buff breeches and blue stockings, but the garments were faded and threadbare. On his knee he held a basket of roots and leaves.

"Meditation," he said, "is the mother of great thoughts, and repose fosters them till they be well-grown."

"That's comforting to my lazy soul," drawled Peter.

The thin old voice continued, carefully choosing the words as though, even in meditation, nothing slipshod or ill-fitting was allowed to pass.

"We should find time to be idle," he said. "When the soul is possessed by tranquillity, there enters in an angel called thought—a mysterious being, whose birth and origin is far beyond our knowledge or understanding. But we can give her housing, care for her like kind folk, and she will reward us abundantly. Her presence with us is her reward."

Peter chewed a blade of grass, basking in the warm light. For a little while neither spoke. The last week had shaken off all the appearance of winter from the forest. The trees were budding, a tall poplar rose purple as a plum, yonder a group of larches were turning green, and a sycamore had all its tips dipped in crimson. The blackthorn thicket was white, and the lesser celandines were golden on the banks. In the forest lay a deep blue silence—the silence of old wise trees, but on the topmost branches, gay and giddy birds were pouring out their hearts to the spring sunshine in a wild burst of melody.

"It's all very beautiful," said Peter; "that light on the beech-stems—it might be a splash of pure gold. The trees seem to be aware of it too—if only their leaves were out they would be clapping their hands for joy." Then he turned to Timothy Hadwin. "I'm becoming a convert to your Faith," he said. "I believe the earth has a soul and every living thing."

"You feel it, then?" replied the old man, eagerly. "You feel a magic in the woods which only comes from the communion of souls? You and I and the trees are not alone here. You feel that other minds are reaching out to touch you, as you are reaching out to touch them? You have in your own mind this vision of the truth—the kinship of the living world?"

"Perhaps it's imagination after all," said Peter.

"Imagination does not lie."

"It may deceive."

"No, no. What we imagine is true for ourselves, though no one else may see it to be so. We each of us have senses, feelings, thoughts of our own. Were you to tell me that you saw a hamadryad coming out of yon beech-tree, I should not contradict you because I could not see it. But if you plucked a buttercup, and said it was only coloured matter, I should say you were wrong, for I know it to be something more. The greatest blessing of life is sight, and the commonest ill is blindness." He laid his hand upon the ground and continued. "We are all akin, because we are all the children of the Earth. Her great mind is made up of our little minds. She knows us better than we know ourselves—do we know ourselves at all? I love to think of the Earth, a personality, a great angel rejoicing as a strong man to run a race, rushing along through the dark night or the bright day, through clouds and through sunshine, never halting or stumbling or going astray, carrying upon her bosom a multitudinous life, caring for it, as a thoughtful mother."

After this conversation the two men were silent for a while, each following the trend of his own thoughts. Then Timothy got up and went away. But Peter remained under the beech-tree.

Peter had capacity for the full enjoyment of life, and a boundless curiosity concerning it. As he lay on the ground he seemed to feel the heart of the Earth-mother beating under his own, and he was filled with a sense of her teeming vitality and his individual share of it. He opened his mind to the sounds and sights around. It delighted him to follow with his eyes the stems of the trees as they sprang straight from the bosom of their universal mother into the blue air. He listened to the whistling of the birds, the hum of the bees, and watched a rabbit leap among the ferns—pleased with such simple demonstrations of life. Perhaps a change was working in his own nature, for never had the common things about him seemed to be so full of absorbing interest as now; never had he been so conscious of the sap running up the branches of the trees, and of his own vitality. At present he did but enjoy the sense of power, which he could use if he desired. But soon, he told himself, he would labour, singing in the light of the sun.

Then through the forest came Barbara Lynn, driving her primitive cart home from market. She did not see the figure under the beech-tree, for her eyes were dreaming, neither did Peter try to draw her attention. She sat with her hands lying loosely on her lap, the reins hanging slack as the old pony took its own pace home. Her fine, large features were composed, and she kept her jolting seat with unconcern. There was something patriarchal in the cart, and its rough-cut wooden wheels, and the regal form of Barbara, deep-bosomed, yellow-haired and clear-eyed as the off-spring of shepherd kings should be.