DORSET DEAR

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

IN A NORTH COUNTRY VILLAGE
THE STORY OF DAN
A DAUGHTER OF THE SOIL
MAIME O’ THE CORNER
FRIEZE AND FUSTIAN
AMONG THE UNTRODDEN WAYS
MISS ERIN
THE DUENNA OF A GENIUS
YEOMAN FLEETWOOD
PASTORALS OF DORSET
FIANDER’S WIDOW
NORTH, SOUTH, AND OVER THE SEA
THE MANOR FARM
CHRISTIAN THAL
LYCHGATE HALL

DORSET DEAR

IDYLLS OF COUNTRY LIFE

BY
M. E. FRANCIS
(Mrs. FRANCIS BLUNDELL)

“Vor Do’set dear,

Then gi’e woone cheer,

D’ye hear? woone cheer!”

—William Barnes

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
91 AND 93 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
LONDON AND BOMBAY
1905

These stories originally appeared in Country Life, The Graphic, Longman’s Magazine and The Illustrated London News. The Author’s thanks are due to the Editors of these periodicals for their kind permission to reproduce them.

To the Memory
OF
LADY SMITH-MARRIOTT,
KIND NEIGHBOUR AND TRUE FRIEND.

CONTENTS.

WITCH ANN.

Ann Kerley had lived in great peace and contentment for more than seventy-three years. Her neighbours considered her a good plain ’ooman, who always had a kind word for every one, and was so ready to do a good turn for another body as heart could wish. But, lo and behold! one fine morning old Ann Kerley awoke to find herself a witch.

The previous day had been sultry and wild, with spells of fierce sunshine that smote down upon honest people’s heads as they toiled in cornfield or potato-plot, bringing out great drops of sweat on sunburnt faces, and forcing more than one labourer to supplement the shade and comfort of his broad chip hat by a cool moist cabbage leaf. Withal furious gusts of wind rose every now and then—storm-wind, old Jan Belbin said, and he was considered wonderful weather-wise—wind that set the men’s shirt-sleeves flapping for all the world like the sleeves of a racing jockey, and blew the women’s aprons into the air, and twisted the maids’ hats round upon their heads if they so much as crossed the road to the well. Yet this wind would drop as suddenly as it had sprung up; the land would lie all bathed in fiery heat, and a curious sense of uneasiness and expectancy would seem to pervade the whole of Nature. The very beasts were disquieted in their pasture; the corn stood up straight and stiff, each ear, as it were, on the alert; not a leaf stirred in hedgerow or tree-top; and then “all to once,” as Jan Belbin pointed out, the storm-wind sprang up again, tossing the golden waste of wheat hither and thither like a troubled sea, and making every individual branch and twig creak and groan.

Twilight was at last closing in with brooding stillness, and a group of lads, who had been working for an hour or two in the allotments, gathered idly round the gate, gossiping, and some of them smoking, before proceeding homewards. It was too dark, as Joe Pilcher declared, to see the difference between a ’tater and a turnip, and ’twas about time they were steppin’ anyways. He was in the act of relating some interesting anecdote with regard to last Saturday’s practice in the Cricket field, when he broke off, and pointed up the stony path which led past the allotments.

“Hullo! Whatever’s that?” he cried.

The bent outline of a small figure could be seen creeping along the irregular line of hedge. It was apparently hump-backed, and wore a kind of hood projecting over its face.

“’Tis a wold hag, seemin’ly,” said Jim Ford, craning forward over the top rail.

“There!” cried Joe, “I took it for a sprite, but I don’t know as I shouldn’t be just so much afeared of a witch any day. It be a witch, sure.”

“Don’t be a sammy,” interposed an older man. “’Tis nothin’ but some poor wold body what has been gatherin’ scroff. They’ve felled a tree up-along in wood, an’ she’ve a-been a-pickin’ up all as she can lay hands on for her fire. There, ’tis wold Ann Kerley. I can see her now. She’ve a-got a big nitch o’ sticks upon her back, an’ she do croopy down under the weight on’t, an’ she’ve a-tied her handkercher over her bonnet, poor body, to keep it fro’ blowin’ away. There’s your hag for you, Joe!”

“I be afeared, I say,” insisted Joe, feigning to tremble violently. He considered himself a wag, and had quite a following of the village good-for-noughts. “’Tis a witch, sartin sure ’tis a witch. Don’t ye go for to overlook I, Ann Kerley, for I tell ’ee I won’t a-bear it!”

As the unconscious Ann drew nearer he squatted down behind the gate-post, loudly announcing that he was that frayed he was fair bibbering. Two or three of the others made believe to hide themselves too, pretending to shiver in imitation of their leader; and peering out like him between the bars of the gate.

Such unusual proceedings could not fail to attract the old woman’s attention, and she paused in astonishment when she reached the spot.

“Why, whatever be to do here?” she inquired.

Joe uttered a kind of howl, and burrowed into the hedge.

“She be overlookin’ of we,” he shouted. “The witch be overlookin’ of we.”

“Don’t ye take no notice, my dear woman,” said Abel Bond, the man who had before spoken. “They be but a lot o’ silly bwoys a-talkin’ nonsense.”

“Witch!” cried Joe.

“Witch! witch!” echoed the rest.

Ann looked from one to the other of the grinning faces that kept popping up over the rail, and disappearing again.

“Whatever be they a-talkin’ on?” she gasped.

“You be a witch, Ann,” cried Joe. “If you was served right you’d be ducked in the pond. E-es, that you would.”

A small boy, fired with a desire to distinguish himself, picked up a clod of earth, and flung it at her with so true an aim that it grazed her cheek.

“Take that, witch!” he cried.

Joe, not to be outdone, threw another; pellets of earth and even small pebbles began to assail the old woman from the whole line.

Abel Bond promptly came to the rescue, knocking the ringleaders’ heads together, and impartially distributing kicks and cuffs among the remainder.

“Bad luck to the witch!” cried the irrepressible Joe, wriggling himself free; and the shout was taken up by the rest, even as they dodged the avenger.

“Bad luck, yourself,” retorted poor Ann, trembling with wrath and alarm. “I’m sure nar’n o’ ye do deserve such very good luck arter insultin’ a poor wold ’ooman what never did ye no harm.”

And she went on her way, grumbling and indignant.

But when she had reached her own little house in the “dip,” and had walked up the flagged path between the phlox bushes and the lavender, and pussy had come rubbing against her legs in greeting, her anger cooled; and by the time her kettle had begun to sing over a bright wood fire, and she had laid out her modest repast of bread and watercress, she fairly laughed to herself.

“Lard! they bwoys be simple!” she said. “They did call I a witch, along o’ my havin’ tied my handkercher over my head. Abel did give it to ’em, but I reckon he didn’t hurt ’em much. Bwoys! there, they do seem so hard as stoones very near. ‘Witch!’ says they. Well, that’s a notion.”

She chuckled again, and set down a saucer of milk for the cat to lap.

“They’ll be callin’ you a witch next, puss,” said she laughing.

Ann carried her bucket to the well as usual next morning, feeling rather more cheerful than was her custom. Rain had fallen shortly after daybreak, but the sky was now clear and limpid, and the air cool. On her way to the well her attention was caught by a loud clucking in her neighbour’s garden, and looking across the dividing hedge she descried a hen violently agitating herself inside a coop, while a brood of yellow downy ducklings some few hours old paddled in and out of a pool beside the path.

“Well, of all the beauties!” cried Ann, clapping her hands together until the bucket rattled on her arm; “why, Mrs. Clarke, my dear, you must have hatched out every one—’tis a wonderful bit o’ luck.”

“E-es, indeed,” agreed Mrs. Clarke, “hatchin’ out so late an’ all. I hope I may do well wi’ ’em.”

“I hope so, that do I,” agreed Ann heartily, and hobbled on towards the well.

One or two women were there, who responded to her greeting with a coldness which she did not at once realise.

“Fine rain this marnin’,” she remarked cheerfully, as her bucket went clattering down the well; “we’ve had a good drop to-year, haven’t we? Farmers may grumble, but, as I do say, ’tis good for the well. We’ll be like to draw a bit less chalk nor we do in the dry seasons. There be all sarts in our well, bain’t there? Water an’ chalk, an’ a good few snails. There, when I do hear folks a-talkin’ about the Government doin’ this an doin’ that, I do say to myself, I wish Government ’ud see to our well.”

Usually such a sally would have been applauded, but, to poor old Ann’s astonishment and chagrin, her remark was received on this occasion in solemn silence. To hide her discomfiture she peered into the moss-grown depths of the well.

“Don’t ye go a-lookin’ into it like that, Ann,” cried a vinegary-faced matron in an aggressive tone. “Chalky water, e-es, an’ water wi’ snails in’t is better than no water at all. ’Tis sure—’tis by a long ways.”

“Ah, ’tis!” agreed the others, eyeing Ann suspiciously.

She straightened herself and looked round in surprise.

“I never said it wasn’t,” she faltered. “Why do ye look at me so nasty, Mrs. Biles?”

“Oh, ye don’t know, I s’pose?” retorted Mrs. Biles sourly. “How be your ’taters, Ann Kerley, this marnin’?”

“Doin’ finely, thanks be,” said poor Ann, brightening up, as she considered the conversation was taking a more agreeable turn.

“Not blighted, I s’pose?” put in a little fat woman who had hitherto been silent.

“Not a sign o’ blight about ’em,” said Mrs. Kerley joyfully. “There, I did just chance to look at ’em when I did first get up, an’ they’re beautiful.”

“That’s strange,” remarked Mrs. Biles, with a meaning sniff. “Every single ’tater at the ’lotments be blighted, they do tell I. Mrs. Pilcher did say when her husband went up there this marnin’ he could smell ’em near a quarter of a mile away.”

“Dear, to be sure!” groaned Ann, sympathetically, being quite willing to condone any little asperities of temper on the part of folks suffering from such a calamity. “’Tis a terr’ble pity, Mrs. Biles. There, ’tis along o’ the ’lotments layin’ out so open like, I d’ ’low. Now my bit o’ garden be sheltered.”

The little fat woman, usually a meek sort of body, snorted fiercely.

“’Tisn’t very likely as your garden ’ud suffer, Mrs. Kerley,” she cried, in a voice that trembled with wrath. “Your garden is safe enough—an’ so was the ’lotments till yesterday.”

“Well, I be pure sorry, I’m sure,” said Ann, looking from one to the other in bewilderment. “’Tis just as luck would have it, I s’pose.”

“Luck, indeed!” cried Mrs. Biles meaningly. “There’s them as went by yesterday as wished bad luck, an’ bad luck did come.”

Ann fairly gasped. Mrs. Biles threw out her hand warningly.

“Take your eyes off I, Mrs. Kerley. Take ’em off, I say! I bain’t a-goin’ to have ’ee overlookin’ of I, same as you did do to poor Joe Pilcher—’tis well if the poor bwoy don’t die of it.”

Ann obediently dropped her eyes, a nightmare-like sensation of oppression overwhelming her.

“I d’ ’low ye won’t deny ye did overlook Joe Pilcher,” went on Mrs. Biles; “there, ye did no sooner turn your back yesterday, nor the lad was took wi’ sich a bad pain in his innards that he went all doubly up same as a wold man.”

“Well, that’s none o’ my fault,” expostulated Ann warmly, for even a worm will turn. “He’ve a-been eatin’ summat as disagreed wi’ he.”

“Nothin’ o’ the kind!” cried the women in chorus.

“It comed so sharp as a knife,” added one, “all twisty turny.”

“The poor bwoy did lie upon the floor all night,” put in another, “a-pankin’ and a-groanin’ so pitiful. ‘Ann Kerley has bewitched I,’ says he. E-es, the bwoy come out wi’ the truth. ‘’Tis Mother Kerley what has overlooked I,’ says he.”

“Well,” returned Ann vehemently, “I never did nothin’ at all to the bwoy. ’Tis nonsense what you do talk, all on you. He’ve a-been eatin’ green apples—that’s what the matter wi’ he.”

“Green apples!” exclaimed Mrs. Biles, with shrill sarcasm. “Dear, to be sure, if a bwoy was to be upset every time he ate a green apple, there wouldn’t be a sound child in village. He hadn’t had above five or six, his mother did say herself, an’ he can put away as many as fourteen wi’out feelin’ the worse for it. Ye must agree ’tis very strange, Ann—there, ye did say out plain for all to hear: ‘Bad luck, yourself,’ says you to the innercent bwoy. ‘Ye won’t be like to have such very good luck, nar’n o’ you,’ says you, an’, sure enough, there be the ’taters blighted, an’ there be the poor bwoy upset in’s inside.”

“I didn’t really mean it, neighbours,” faltered Ann, looking piteously round. “I was a bit vexed at the time, an’ when the lads did start a-floutin’ me wi’ stones an’ that, and a-callin’ ill names and a-wishin’ me bad luck, I just says back to ’em, quick like, ‘Bad luck, yourself!’ an’ ’twasn’t very like they’d have good luck; but I didn’t mean it in my heart—not me, indeed. The Lard sees I hadn’t no thought o’ really wishin’ evil to nobody—that I hadn’t, neighbours. You don’t believe I did have, do ’ee now, Mrs. Whittle?”—turning in despair to the little woman on her right—“you, what has knowed I sich a many year—you did ought to know I wouldn’t wish no harm to nobody.”

Mrs. Whittle looked sheepish and uncomfortable. Despite the sinister aspect of things, her heart melted at her old crony’s appeal.

“Why, I scarce can believe it,” she was beginning, when Mrs. Biles struck in:—

“Deny it if you can, Ann Kerley. There’s the ’taters blighted, an’ there’s the bwoy took bad, an’ it’s you what wished ’em ill-luck. What can ye make o’ that, Mrs. Whittle? Ye’ll ’low ’tis strange.”

Mrs. Whittle shook her head dubiously, and Ann, deprived, as she thought, of her only ally, threw her apron over her head, and wept behind it.

“Don’t ’ee take on, Mrs. Kerley, that’s a dear,” said Mrs. Whittle, softening once more. “’Twas maybe a chance thing. You did say them words wi’out thinkin’ an’ they did come true to be a warnin’ to ’ee. We do all do wrong sometimes; this ’ere did ought to be a warnin’ to all on us.”

“I’m sure ’twill be a lesson to I,” sobbed Ann inarticulately. “So long as I do live I’ll never say such things again. ’Twas very ill-done o’ me to ha’ spoke wi’out thought, sich a wold ’ooman as I be, an’ so near my end an’ all, an’ the Lard has chastised I. I can’t do more nor say I’m sorry, an’ I hope the A’mighty ’ull forgive me.”

“There, the ’ooman can’t say no fairer nor that,” said Mrs. Whittle, looking round appealingly; “she can’t do more nor repent.”

“Oh, if she do repent it’ll be well enough,” said Mrs. Biles darkly. “’Tis to be hoped as she do repent. But by all accounts ’tis easier for to begin that kind o’ work nor to leave it off again.”

She turned on her heel with this parting innuendo, and, taking up her full bucket, walked away. The others followed suit, and Ann, left alone, sobbed on for a moment or two with a feeling akin to despair, and then, drawing down her apron, wiped her eyes with it sadly, wound up her pail from the depths where it had lain forgotten, and made her way homewards.

For days afterwards she was ashamed to show her face, and rose at extraordinarily early hours in order to procure her supply of water, and crept out of her own quarters at dusk to make her necessary purchases.

One morning, about a week after the affair at the allotments, when Ann sallied forth as usual for water, she paused incidentally to look over her neighbour’s gate. The hen-coop was still in view, the hen cackling, and the ducklings waddling up and down the path. But how few of them there were! Only three! What could have become of the others? Possibly they were squatting at the back of the coop. She was craning her head round in order to ascertain if this were the case, when a window in Mrs. Clarke’s house was thrown open, and that lady’s voice was heard in angry tones:—

“I’ve catched you at it, have I? I’ve catched you at it! Well, you did ought to be ashamed of yourself, Ann Kerley. To try an’ do me a mischief—me, as has been sich a good neighbour to ’ee.”

“Why, what’s the matter?” returned Ann, backing away from the gate, and raising dim, distracted eyes.

“I’ve catched you in the very act,” continued Mrs. Clarke vehemently. “Says I to myself when the ducklin’s kep’ a-droppin’ off like that, ‘I wonder if it can be Ann?’ says I, an’ then I thinks, ‘No, it never can be Ann; her an’ me was always friends,’ I says. Ah, you ungrateful, spiteful creetur’!”

An arm, clad in checked flannelette, was here thrust forth, and the fist appertaining thereto emphatically shaken.

“I’m sure,” protested the unfortunate Ann, staggering back against her own little gate, “I don’t know whatever you can mean by such talk, Mrs. Clarke; I never touched your ducks. I be a honest ’ooman, an’ I wouldn’t take nothin’ what didn’t belong to I.”

“I don’t say you stole ’em,” retorted Mrs. Clarke, “but I say you overlooked ’em, an’ that’s worse; a body ’ud know what to be at if ’twas only a thief as was makin’ away wi’ ’em, but when ’tis a witch—Lard, whatever is to be done? I couldn’t ha’ thought ye’d ha’ found it in your heart to go striking down they poor little innercent things. What harm did they do ye? Sich beauties as they was. But there, ye must go gettin’ up in the very dummet that ye mid overlook the poor little creetur’s, so that, one after another, they do just croopy down an’ die.”

“Mrs. Clarke,” said Anne, solemnly and desperately, “I can’t tell how sich a thing did come about—I can’t indeed. ’Tis no fault o’ mine, I do assure ye. I wouldn’t ha’ had they poor little duck die for anything. I never wished ’em ill. I was admirin’ of ’em. I never had no other thought.”

“Well, see here,” returned Mrs. Clarke, somewhat mollified. “Don’t ye look at ’em at all, that’s a good ’ooman. Maybe ’tis no fault o’ yourn, but ’tis very strange, Mrs. Kerley, what do seem to have come to you to-year. You do seem to bring bad luck, though you midn’t do it a-purpose.”

“I’m sure I don’t,” protested Ann, “an’ I can’t believe, Mrs. Clarke, as a body can do bad wi’out knowin’ it.”

“Well, ’tis queer, I d’ ’low,” agreed her neighbour, “but when a body sees sich things for theirsel’s as do happen along o’ you, they can’t but believe their own eyes. Ye mind that there bar-hive what Mr. Bridle got last month?”

“E-es,” returned Ann feebly, “I mind it well. I never see sich a handsome contrivance nor so clever. Mr. Bridle showed it to I.”

“E-es, I d’ ’low he did,” agreed the other, with a certain triumph. “I d’ ’low ye was a-lookin’ at it a long time.”

“I was,” confessed Ann, with a sinking heart.

Mrs. Clarke nodded portentously. “That’s it,” she said. “The bees be all dead, Mrs. Kerley. Bridle, he did say to I yesterday, ‘I couldn’t think,’ says he, ‘whatever took the bees. I had but just moved them out of the wold skip and they did seem to take to the bar-hive so nice,’ he says, ‘an’ now they be all a-dyin’ off so quick as they can. I couldn’t think,’ he says, ‘what could be the reason, but I do know now. I do know it was a great mistake to ha’ brought Ann Kerley up to look at ’em.’”

“Oh dear, oh dear,” cried the last-named poor old woman, wringing her hands, “do he really think I did hurt ’em?”

“He do, indeed,” said Mrs. Clarke firmly. “There, my dear, it do seem a terr’ble thing, but you be turned into a witch seemin’ly, whether it be against your will or whether it bain’t.”

Ann stood motionless for a moment, her hands squeezed tightly together, her face haggard and drawn.

“I think I’ll go indoor a bit,” she said, after a pause. “I’ll go indoor an’ set me down. I don’t know what to do. Mrs. Clarke——?”

“E-es, my dear. There, you needn’t look up at I so earnest—I can hear ’ee quite well wi’out that.”

Ann turned away with an impatient groan, and went staggering up her path. The other looked after her remorsefully.

“Bide a bit, Mrs. Kerley, do ’ee now. What was ye goin’ to ax I?”

“I was but goin’ to ax,” faltered Ann, still with her face averted, “if you’d be so kind as to fetch I a drop o’ water this marnin’ when you do go to get some for yoursel’. There, I don’t some way feel as if I could face folks—an’ there mid be some about. ’Tis gettin’ a bit late now.”

“E-es, sure; I could do it easy,” agreed Mrs. Clarke eagerly. “I could do it every marnin’—’tisn’t a bit more trouble to fill two pails nor one. An’ ’t ’ud be better for ee, Ann, my dear, not to go about more nor you can help till this ’ere visitation wears of.”

“’T ’ull never wear off,” said Ann gloomily, as she walked unsteadily away.

Now, as Mrs. Clarke subsequently remarked, those words of Ann’s made her fair bibber, same as if a bucket of cold water were thrown down her back. She was full of compassion for her neighbour, and, though she was willing to believe that the strange, unpleasant power of which she had suddenly become possessed was unwelcome to her and unconsciously used, she was nevertheless forced to agree with Mrs. Biles that that didn’t make the thing no better, and that the more Ann Kerley kept herself to herself the safer it would be for all parties.

Meanwhile, the anguish of mind endured by the unwilling sorceress defies description. Day by day her deplorable plight became more evident to her. Now an indignant farmer’s wife would come to complain that butter had not come, and on poor Ann’s protesting that she had never so much as set foot near the dairy, would retort that she had been seen gathering sticks at nightfall in the pasture, and had doubtless bewitched the cows. Now a village mother would hastily snatch up a child when it toddled towards the witch’s house; even the baker tossed the weekly loaf over the gate in fear, and left his bill at Mrs. Clarke’s, saying he would call for the money there. That lady informed her of the fact through the closed door as she dumped her morning bucket of water on the path without, adding that if she would like to leave the money in the bucket when she put it ready overnight, it would save trouble to every one.

Ann Kerley understood: even her old crony was now afraid to meet her face to face.

As she realised this she fell to crying feebly and hopelessly, as she had done so often of late, and Pussy came and jumped upon her knee, rubbing herself against her, and gazing at her with golden inscrutable eyes. The warm contact of a living creature, even a cat, was comforting, and the old woman hugged her favourite closely; but presently, struck by a sudden thought, she pushed it away, and turned aside her head.

“There! get down, love! do—get away with ’ee, else I’ll maybe be doin’ thee a mischief. Oh dear, Puss, whatever should I do if anything happened to thee?”

The idea positively appalled her, and from that moment she was careful to avert her face when she set the cat’s food before her.

Perhaps the greatest trial of all was the Sunday church-going.

“I d’ ’low the Lard won’t let I do nobody no harm in His House,” she had said to herself at first, almost hopefully; and she had donned her decent Sunday clothes eagerly, not to say joyfully. She was by nature sociable, and had suffered as severely from the inability to indulge in an occasional chat, a little harmless gossip, with this one and that one, as from a sense of being under a ban.

So she had set forth cheerily, volunteering “A fine marnin’, neighbours,” to the first group she had passed upon the road. But dear, to be sure! how the folks had jumped and squeezed themselves against the wall to let her go by! She had not had the heart to greet the next couple, staid elderly folk, who were pacing along in front of her, full of Sabbath righteousness; but presently the man had looked round, and had then nudged his wife, and she had gathered up her skirts and scuttled on without so much as a glance over her shoulder. Poor Ann had fallen back and turned aside into a by-path until all the congregation had streamed in, and then had crept up the steps alone, and made her way to her place blindly, for her eyes were full once more of piteous tears.

But even there humiliation awaited her, for she found herself alone in her pew, none of its accustomed occupants being willing to worship in such dangerous proximity.

“I must be a terr’ble wicked ’ooman, sure,” groaned Ann to herself, and raised her poor smarting eyes to the east window, whence the figure of the Good Shepherd looked back at her, full of compassion and benignity.

But Ann quickly dropped her eyes again. Was He not carrying a lamb upon His shoulder? It seemed to her that even the painted innocent would droop and falter beneath her gaze.

And so thenceforth she started for church long after the other members of the congregation, and instead of seeking her own place, stole humbly to a dark corner, where, hidden away behind a pillar, she worshipped in sorrow of heart.

Such a state of things could not have continued if the old rector had been at home, but he was away holiday-making in Switzerland, and the locum tenens, a young curate from the neighbouring town, could not be expected to notice a matter of the kind.

One Sunday afternoon it chanced that Farmer Joyce, who lived up Riverton way, drove over to Little Branston, and was good enough to give a lift to his neighbour, Martha Hansford, Ann’s married daughter, who was feeling, as she confessed, a bit anxious at not hearing from her mother.

“There, she haven’t a-wrote since I can’t say when,” she explained to the farmer, as the trap went spinning along the road; “she don’t write herself, mother don’t, but she do generally get somebody to drop me a line for her, and I haven’t heard a word to-month; no, nor last month either.”

“Rheumatics perhaps,” suggested the farmer.

“I’m sure I hope not, Mr. Joyce. My mother have never had sich a thing in her life, an’ ’tis to be hoped she bain’t a-goin’ to begin now.”

“The wold lady’s busy, very like,” hazarded Mr. Joyce, after ruminating a while. “The time do slip away so quick, an’ one day do seem so like another, folks can’t always be expected to put their minds to letter-writin’.”

“Lard love ’ee, sir,” returned Martha, startled into familiarity, “farmer folks mid be busy enough, an’ lab’rin’ folks too—I can scarce find the day long enough to put in all as I’ve a-got to do—but mother! what can a poor wold body like mother have to work at, wi’out it’s a bit o’ knittin’, or some such thing. No, it’s summat else, an’ I’m sure I can’t think what it can be.”

Mr. Joyce was not imaginative enough to assist her by any further hypothesis; therefore, he merely touched up the horse and remarked reassuringly that they would soon be there. And for the rest of the drive Martha devoted herself to the somewhat difficult task of keeping her three-year-old boy, Ally, from wriggling out of her arms.

Dropped at the bottom of the “dip” wherein was situated Mrs. Kerley’s cottage, Martha hastened towards it, Ally trotting gleefully beside her. Instead of finding the cottage door open—as might have been expected this sunny October afternoon—and catching a glimpse of her mother’s quiet figure in its elbow-chair, she found the house shut up, and apparently no sign of life about the place. The very garden had a neglected look, or so it seemed to her; and the little window, usually gay with flowers, was blank and desolate, the check curtain within being drawn across it.

“Mother!” cried Martha, in a tone of such anguish that Ally immediately set up a corresponding wail. “Oh mother, whatever is to do? Be you dead? Oh, mother! be you dead?”

To her intense relief she heard the sound of a chair being pushed back over the flagged floor within, and her mother’s well-known step slowly cross the little kitchen.

“Martha! be it you, my dear?” But she did not open the door, and when Martha eagerly tried the latch she found that it did not yield.

“Mother, mother,” she cried in an agony of fear, “oh, mother, what is it? Why don’t ye let I in?”

“I can’t, my dear,” came the tremulous voice from within. “No, don’t ax it of I. I dursen’t, Martha! There, I mid do ’ee a mischief.”

“Mother, what be talkin’ on?” Martha was beginning incredulously, when her small son, impatient of the delay, fairly drowned her voice with shrill clamour for admittance, and vigorous kicking of his little hobnailed boots at the panels of the door. Martha snatched him up and impatiently clapped her hand over the protesting mouth. In the momentary pause that ensued she heard her mother weeping.

“Be that Ally? Oh, my blessed lamb! Oh, dear heart! Oh, oh!” Then in a louder key came the words broken by sobs: “Take en away, Martha, do—take en away, lovey! Somethin’ bad might happen else!”

Here Ally, wrenching himself free, burst into a roar of indignation, and his mother, popping him down on the ground, threw herself upon the door, and, exerting all her strength, succeeded in bursting it open.

With a wail Ann shrank away from her into the farthest corner of the room, hiding her face against the wall.

“Don’t ye come a-nigh me, Martha, don’t ye—don’t ye! And take the blessed child away! Take him away this minute!”

“I’ll do nothin’ o’ the kind,” returned Martha vehemently. “Be you gone crazy, mother? Whatever is the matter?”

“Nay, my dear, I bain’t gone crazy—it be worse, a deal worse. I can’t tell however it did come about, Martha, but, there, I be turned into a witch! I be evil-eyed, they d’ say! There, ye’d never believe the terr’ble things what have a-come about along o’ me jist lookin’.”

Martha dropped down in a chair and burst out laughing. She was a hale, hearty young woman, who had had a bit of schooling, and took a sane and cheerful view of life.

“God bless us, mother!” she cried, wiping her eyes at last and springing up, “what put such a notion as that in your head? You a witch! You hurtin’ things wi’ lookin’ at ’em! I never did hear such nonsense-talk in my life!”

“But it be true, Martha—it be true!” returned Ann, still hiding her face in her trembling hands. “There, I’ve seed it myself. Don’t you come too nigh, my dear, and for mercy’s sake keep the darlin’ child away!”

“Nay, but I won’t,” retorted Martha; and, catching up the child, she advanced with a determined air. “You shall look at us—both of us—that you shall! Kiss grandma, Ally, love—that’s it! Pull away her hands, and give her a big hug. There, the mischief’s done now, if mischief there be. Bain’t he growed, grandma? Bain’t he a fine boy? There, come an’ sit ye down and take en on your knee and feel the weight of en.”

Ann could not withstand the spell of the little clinging arms, the kisses rained upon her withered cheek. She suffered the child to climb from his mother’s arms into hers, and hugged him back passionately.

“Bless you, my lamb! Bless you, my darlin’ little angel! Dear, but he be a fine boy, Martha. Bless you, love! E-es; grandma ’ull find en a lump o’ sugar. Ah, Martha, I be a-feared—it do seem a terr’ble risk; but, there, I can’t think but what the Lard ’ull purtect the innercent child.”

“Now, you come along, mother, and sit ye down, an’ don’t ye go so trembly. You’ll not hurt Ally; he be a deal more like to hurt you, such a mischievous boy as he be. Now, then, whoever has been frightenin’ of ye with such talk?”

“My dear, they do all say it,” murmured Ann, looking fearfully round.

Brokenly, and with many digressions, she told her tale. Long before she had ended Martha was weeping too—weeping with indignation and with a sense of despair; for, argue as she might, she could not divest her mother of her persuasion in her own fell powers. If Ann herself could not be convinced of the folly of the supposition, what hope could Martha have to do away with the unjust suspicions of the neighbours?

Each fresh proof of the ostracism which had become her mother’s portion added to her wrath and woe. She had not had a bit of meat to her dinner, as was invariably the case on Sunday, not having dared to venture forth to buy it. There was not so much as a drop of milk in the house, the child who usually brought it having declined to perform that office. Ann had not liked even to go out and get herself a few “spuds”—there were so many folks about on Saturdays, she explained. There was no fire in the grate, though the autumn day was sharp, for Farmer Cosser had “dared” her to pick up any more sticks in his field.

“I d’ ’low ye’d ha’ been dead afore long, if I hadn’t ha’ come,” cried Martha, and then fell a-sobbing again. What was the use of her having come? What good could she do?

The two women were sitting together in very melancholy mood, when Farmer Joyce called to say that he would hitch the horse at six o’clock, and Martha must meet him at the top of the road.

“Hullo!” he cried, breaking off short at sight of their tearful faces, “be you all a-cryin’ in here?”

And then Martha, eager for sympathy, made bold to clutch at his stout arm and pour forth her tale. The farmer, leaning against the door-post, listened at first in amusement, afterwards with an indignation almost equal to the daughter’s own.

“I never did hear such a thing!” he cried emphatically, as she paused for breath. “They must be a pack o’ sammies in this place—and wicked uns, too. Dear heart alive! they’ve fair gallied the poor wold ’ooman out of her wits. Be there any one about? I’ll soon show ’em what I think of ’em.”

“There’s a good few folks just goin’ their ways to church,” cried Martha, eagerly pointing up the lane.

“Then I’ll step up and give ’em a bit o’ my mind,” returned he. “You come along wi’ I, Mrs. Kerley—don’t ye stop for to put on your bonnet—throw this ’ere ’ankercher over your cap—else we’ll not be in time to catch ’em, maybe.”

“No, I dursen’t do that,” protested Ann, plucking away the handkerchief which he had thrown over her head; “’twas that which did first start the notion. ’Twas a windy day, d’ye see, an’ I was going to pick a bit o’ scroff, an’ I just tied my handkercher round my head—an’ when the bwoys did see I, they did pelt I wi’ stones and call I witch.”

“Young rascals!” ejaculated the farmer, who had by this time hauled her out of the house, and was hurrying with her up the lane. “Come on, Martha! Make haste, ’ooman! There be a lot of ’em yonder.”

In a few moments he and the breathless women found themselves in the midst of quite a little crowd, for Farmer Joyce had waylaid the first group he came across, and the sound of his stentorian tones, raised in wrathful accusation, speedily summoned others.

“You be a wise lot here, you be!” he cried; “you do know summat, you do. Tell ’ee what—you be the biggest lot o’ stunpolls as ever was seed or heerd on. This be your witch, be it?—thikky poor wold ’ooman what have never done anybody a bit o’ harm in her life—poor wold Ann Kerley what was born and bred here, and did get married to a Little Branston man an’ all, and what have lived among ye so quiet an’ peaceful as a body could do. Why, look at her! Look at the poor wold frightened face of her; d’ye mean for to tell I that’s the face of a witch?”

“Well, she did blight our ’taters,” growled somebody.

“An’ she did overlook Mrs. Clarke’s young duck——”

“Did she?” retorted Farmer Joyce, sarcastically. “Well, she didn’t overlook my young duck, and they be dead—the most on ’em—what do ye make o’ that? Did ye never hear, you wise folk, as duckling do mostly die in thunder weather? And I’ll warrant you be too wise hereabouts to have heerd that this be a blight-year. A lot o’ my ’taters be blighted——”

“I’m sure,” put in poor Martha, eagerly, “our ’taters be blighted too. There, my husband do say ’tis scarce worth while to get ’em up.”

“I s’pose,” cried Farmer Joyce, looking round with withering sarcasm, “I s’pose this ’ere witch have a-gone and wished ill-luck to her own darter’s ’taters. ’Tis very likely, I’m sure. And there’s another thing—I did hear some tale o’ bees a-dyin’ arter they’d a-been put in a new hive.”

“That’s true enough.” “’Tis true, sure,” came one or two voices in reply, not with any great enthusiasm, however; then a man’s sullen tones—“’Tis so true as anything. They was my bees, an’ I can answer for ’t bein’ true.”

“How much food did ye put in for ’em when ye did shift ’em?” inquired Joyce, fixing his eyes on the speaker.

“How much food? I d’ ’low bees be like to keep theirselves.”

“Not when you do take their store off ’em so late in the season. You’ve a-killed your own bees, good man; they were too weak, d’ye see, to keep wosses off when they did come a-fightin’ of ’em. I’d ha’ thought you’d ha’ been clever enough to ha’ knowed that, seein’ what knowin’ folks you be in Little Branston. There, you did know poor wold Mrs. Kerley tied her ’andkercher over her head to make herself a witch—’twas that what made her a witch, weren’t it? Now I be a witch, bain’t I?”

He whisked off his hat suddenly, and drawing a cotton handkerchief from his pocket threw it over his head and tied the ends beneath his chin. The sight of his large red face with its fringe of grey whisker looking jubilantly out of the red and yellow folds, was irresistibly comic; the bystanders fairly roared. The farmer was quick to follow up his advantage.

“I must be a witch,” he persisted, “seein’ as I’ve a-got a witch’s head on;” then, seized by a yet more luminous inspiration, he crowned the meek and trembling Ann Kerley with his own broad-brimmed and shaggy beaver.

“Now, Mrs. Kerley be a farmer. She must be a farmer, sure, for she be a-wearin’ a farmer’s hat. There be jist so mich sense in the one notion as t’other. Here we be—Farmer Kerley and Witch Joyce!”

The merriment at this point grew so uproarious that the clergyman in his distant vestry very nearly sallied forth to inquire the cause; but it died away as suddenly as it had begun. The sight of poor old Ann’s lined face looking patiently out from beneath its ridiculous headgear was, on the whole, more pathetic than ludicrous; folks began to look at each other, and to own to themselves that they had been not only foolish, but cruel. Every word that the farmer spoke had carried weight, and he could have employed no more forcible argument than the practical demonstration at the end. He was the very best advocate who could have been chosen to plead for her—a good plain man, like themselves, who thoroughly understood the case. By the time Farmer Joyce had resumed his hat and restored his handkerchief to his pocket, the cause was won. People had gathered round Ann with rough apologies and kindly handshakes, and she was escorted homewards by more than one long-estranged friend.

When little Ally, who had been asleep on the settle, woke at the sound of the approaching voices, and came trotting out of the banned house, rubbing his eyes and calling loudly for “Grandma,” the good women nodded to each other meaningly, and said that he was a fine boy, bless him, and he wouldn’t be likely to look so well if—— And then somebody sniffed the air, and observed that he shouldn’t wonder but what Mrs. Kerley’s ’taters was a bit blighted too, and Mrs. Kerley replied that she was sure they mid be, but she didn’t know, for she hadn’t had the heart to look. And then the expert returned authoritatively that he was quite sure they was done for, which seemed wonderfully satisfactory to all parties.

And then Farmer Joyce bethought him that it was time to hitch the horse, and the rest of Ann’s friends remembered that “last bell” would soon ha’ done ringing; so gradually the little crowd melted away, and Martha embraced her mother with a thankful heart, and went away likewise, leaving Ally behind, according to the farmer’s advice, who had reminded her in a gruff whisper that the little chap would be more like to take off the wold body’s mind from that there queer notion nor anything else.

So the little house, which had been so desolate a few hours before, was now restored to homely joy and peace; and when Martha looked back from the summit of the lane, she saw her mother standing, all smiles, in the open doorway, shading her eyes from the sun, which was making a glory round the curly head of the child in her arms.

A RUNAWAY COUPLE.

Summer dawn; a thousand delicate tints in the sky above and dewy world beneath; birds stretching drowsy little wings and piping to each other; dumb things waking up one by one and sending forth their several calls. But as yet nothing seemed astir in the old house; the windows, open for the most part, were still curtained; no thin spiral of smoke wound its way upwards from the kitchen chimney. Ruddy shafts of light made cheer, indeed, on the mullioned panes and the moss-grown coping, picked out the stone-crops and saxifrages on the roof, ran along the stone gutter, bathed the old chimney stacks with a glow that would seem to mock at the empty hearths within.

Presently a great clucking and crowing was heard from the poultry-yard at the rear of the house, and a moment or two after a little old lady came trotting along the mossy path behind the yew hedge and picked her way daintily between the apple-trees in the orchard. As she proceeded she looked to right and to left as though in fear, yet her face was wreathed in the broadest of smiles, and every now and then she uttered an ecstatic chuckle. Now out at the wicket-gate and down the lane to the right. Lo! standing outlined against the purple expanse of moor a hundred paces or so from the gate an equipage was drawn up; two men were stationed by the horses’ heads, one of whom hurried forward to meet her, while the other stiffly climbed up on the box. The first, a tall burly old man, wearing a white top-hat, an old-fashioned embroidered waistcoat, and a spick-and-span suit of broadcloth, beckoned eagerly as he hastened towards her, while the figure on the box waved his whip, and jerked his elbow with every sign of impatience.

“So there ye be at last, my dear!” cried the old gentleman. “Blest if I didn’t think they’d catched ye. Come along, hurry up! Let’s be off; it’s close upon four o’clock.”

The lady, who was plump and somewhat short of breath, merely chuckled again by way of rejoinder, and suffered herself to be hoisted into the waiting chaise. It was an extremely old-fashioned chaise with a hood and a rumble; the coachman was equally antiquated in appearance, and wore a moth-eaten livery of obsolete cut and a beaver hat.

“Now off with ye, Jem,” cried the old gentleman in a stage whisper. “Let ’em go, my lad. Don’t spare the cattle! We must be miles away from here before the folks yonder have time to miss us. But whatever did keep ye so long, Susan?” he inquired, turning to the lady.

“My dear,” said she, with a delighted giggle, “I’ve been to feed the chickens.”

Thereupon her companion fell into a paroxysm of suppressed merriment, growing purple in the face, and slapping his thigh in ecstacy. The old coachman turned round upon the box and bent down his ear to catch the joke.

“Missus has been to feed chicken, Jem,” laughed his master. “Ho! ho! ho!—she wouldn’t leave out that part, ye may be sure.”

Jem grinned. “No, I d’ ’low she wouldn’t. Missus be a grand hand at feedin’ chicken; she’ve a-had practise, haven’t she, Measter? I’ll go warrant she have.”

“And I’ve been doing something else too, John,” continued she, when the explosion had in some measure subsided. “See here!”

She opened the lid of the little covered basket which she carried, and displayed three nosegays of white flowers.

“I thought we might wear these,” she remarked. “I very nearly brought favours for the horses, too, but I was afraid it would excite remark.”

“And you were right,” said he; “but I think we’ve managed pretty well to put ’em off the scent. Jem did drive a good bit along the Dorchester road, and back very quiet over the heath. ’Twas very artful of ’ee, my dear, to be talkin’ so innercent-like about Weymouth yesterday—they’ll think we’ve a-gone there, for sure.”

The old lady drew herself up with a little conscious air.

“It takes a woman’s wit to think of them things,” she said: “But I do feel sorry for them all, too. I left just a bit of a line for Mary to say she wasn’t to be frightened and we was just gone for the day, and they mustn’t think of looking for us. But I can’t help thinking it does seem a shame. There, all the poor things will be comin’ from this place and that place and bringing the children, and making ready their little speeches, and getting out their little presents——”

The old man began to chuckle again.

She looked at him reproachfully, and he laughed louder and rubbed his hands.

“’Tis very unfeeling of you to laugh like that, John. I’m sure it is. Haven’t you got no feeling for your own flesh and blood?”

“If you come to that,” said John, “whose notion was it? Says I, ‘I do wish,’ I says, ‘we could give ’em all the slip and spend the happy day quiet by our two selves.’ And says you, ‘Why shouldn’t we, then?’ says you. ‘Look here,’ you says, ‘why shouldn’t we do it over again, John?’ ‘What?’ says I. ‘What we done fifty years ago,’ says you. ‘Well,’ I says, and I say now, ‘it takes a woman’s cleverness to think o’ such things.’ So here we be a-runnin’ away again, love; bain’t we?”

She extended her little mittened hand to him with a gracious smile that had in it a droll assumption of coyness.

“There’s the ring, though,” said he; “that there ring ought to come off, Susan, else it ’ull not seem real-like.”

His gnarled old fingers were already fumbling with the ring, but she jerked away her hand quickly.

“No, indeed!” she cried. “Have it off! I wouldn’t have it off for a thousand pounds. It’s never been off my finger all these years, John, and I’m certainly not going to have it off to-day.”

She pinned the nosegay in his coat, assumed a similar decoration herself, and handed one to Jem. Then they drove onwards with renewed speed. Jem, following his master’s advice, was not sparing the cattle; the old chaise rocked from side to side, the horses flew along the road. They had now left the heath behind and found themselves on the highway; the country was looking its best this fine sunny morning; the hedges were still white with bloom; the leafage of the woods through which they passed was yet untarnished by heat or dust; a spicy fragrance was wafted towards them from the fir plantations; in the villages the folks were beginning to stir; chimneys were smoking; women moving to and fro, here and there a man sauntering fieldwards.

They looked after the rattling chaise with astonishment.

“I hope nobody will set up a hue and cry,” ejaculated the old lady nervously. “There’s nobody coming after us, is there, Jem?”

“Don’t ye be afeared, mum,” returned Jem valiantly. “You sit still, Mrs. Bussell; nobody’s thinkin’ o’ sich a thing, an’ if they was, we’d soon leave ’em behind. I brought ye safe to Branston this day fifty year ago, an’ I’ll do the same to-day, dalled if I don’t.”

“So ye did, Jem, so ye did,” exclaimed his master. “Dear heart alive, do ye mind, Sukey, that time we heard such a clatterin’ behind us, and you thought all was lost, and Jem turned right into Yellowham Wood. How he done it I can never think. But we crope out of sight and the folks rattled past. And ’twasn’t nobody thinkin’ of us at all. ’Twas young Squire Frampton drivin’ for a wager.”

“Yes, my father was looking for us along the Dorchester road,” said she, laughing again.

“He! he!” chimed in Jem, “I mind that well. ’Twas my cousin Joe what took yon empty shay. He couldn’t for the life of en make out why he were to ride so fast wi’ nobody inside. ‘Never you mind, Joe,’ says I, ‘ride away for your gold piece,’ I says. I weren’t a-goin’ to tell he what was a-goin’ on. He weren’t to be trusted same as me. He understood about the gold piece right enough, and, dally! he did understand Squire Sherren’s horsewhip, too, when he comed up wi’ en and couldn’t make Joe tell en where he was gone. I d’ ’low ye was half-way to Lunnon by that time.”

“Poor Joe!” said Mrs. Bussell compassionately.

“Pooh!” exclaimed bluff old John, “a gold piece would mend many broken bones. Well, my dear, I’m gettin’ sharp-set, what do ye say to a bit of breakfast? Pull up at the first sheltered place you come to, Jem.”

“But let it be somewhere where you can keep a look-out,” put in the old lady anxiously. “Don’t let’s be caught.”

By-and-by they arrived at a suitable place, and Jem duly pulled up, and John brought out a well-packed hamper from the rumble, and Mrs. Bussell made tea from a spirit-lamp, and dispensed goodly portions of buttered roll, and ham, and hard-boiled eggs, and John and Jem took turns to act sentry, and little Mrs. Bussell raised an alarm about every five minutes and entered more and more into the spirit of the enterprise. Her husband, setting his white hat rakishly on the back of his head, and looking extremely jocose, endeavoured to throw himself into the part which he had played a half-century before, but did not altogether succeed in representing the trembling young lover, even though he called the old lady by her maiden name, and delivered himself of sundry amorous speeches with a fervour that was occasionally mixed with hilarity.

“Faith, my dear,” he cried when she took him to task, “you must let me talk as I please. I was your lover then, and I am your lover now, for all we’ve been man and wife this fifty years. What signifies it whether your hair is gold or silver, or whether you are fat or slim? Handsome is as handsome does, I say, and you’ve a-been the best wife a man could have.”

“La! John,” said she, and winked away a tear. John put out his rugged old hand and gripped hers.

“The best wife a man could have,” he repeated earnestly. “Fifty years!—I wish we mid have fifty years more together.”

“I wish we was back at the beginning,” said she. “I’d like to go through it all over again, John. I’d take it all and be thankful—the rough and the smooth, and the joy and the sorrow. Except maybe—poor little Ben, you know—I don’t think I’d like to live through those years again. How we hoped, didn’t we? And he was took at the last.”

“Well, ye have the other seven, Susan, my dear, alive and well, and their children. Why, you mid say that one loss has been made up to ye by more than a score of other blessings.”

Mrs. Bussell shook her head, but smiled, and presently wondered aloud if John’s Annie would bring the baby.

“I’d like to have seen it, too,” she added. “I hope Mary will have the sense to keep them. I told her a good many of them would stop the night.”

“Somebody’s coming!” announced Jem at this juncture.

And then what a bustle and clatter ensued, what hasty packing of the hamper, what tremulous climbing into the chaise on the part of the “missus”; with what an air of firmness and resolution did the master straighten his hat and square his shoulders as though preparing to defy all pursuers. And after all it was only the mail cart bowling merrily along; and the driver gave the runaway couple a cheery good-day as he passed. Then, though they laughed long and loud over the false alarm, they realised that the time was getting on, and that it behoved them to hasten to their destination.

The little town of Branston was not yet very wide-awake when they did arrive at the Royal George, and Jem pulled up with a flourish, and threw the reins to a gaping stable-boy with as great an air as would have befitted a coachman in the palmy days when the Flying Stage used to change horses at Branston. The little old lady alighted demurely, her husband supporting her while she planted first one neat little foot, clad in a buckled shoe and clocked white stocking, on the step, and then its fellow, and lifting her off bodily, with much the same tender gallantry as that with which he had doubtless performed a similar office fifty years ago. At his request, Mrs. Bussell was conducted to the best private room; she seemed to have quite identified herself with those bygone days, and clung to his arm fearfully as they mounted the stairs; while in her husband past and present were pleasantly mingled. Thus, when, having deposited his fair charge in the George’s largest sitting-room, he strolled down to the lower premises to give certain orders regarding the horses, he made no ado about taking the landlord into his confidence.

“This ’ere is a runaway trip,” he remarked, with a jocular wink. “’Tis our golden weddin’ day, and the missus and me had a notion o’ spendin’ it quiet, just by our two selves. They’re makin’ a great to-do at our place—children and grandchildren comin’ from all sides, but we just thought we’d give them the slip, and keep the day here same as we done fifty year ago.”

“Ah,” put in the landlord, much interested, “I heard somethin’ about that. You and your lady run off, didn’t ye?”

“We did,” returned John. “Her father, ye see, old Sherren—they did use to call en Squire—she was the only child, and he reckoned on her makin’ a grand match, takin’ up wi’ one o’ the reg’lar gentry, ye know; but he wasn’t a bit better nor the rest of any of us yeoman farmers. Well, I wasn’t much of a match in those days—my father had a long family and not much to divide between us; but I liked the maid, and the maid she did like me, so we took the law into our own hands. My missus, she did use to go a-feedin’ of her chicken very early in the mornin’, so the folks got accustomed to hearin’ her get up and go out before daylight almost—and one mornin’ she did go out and she didn’t never go back.”

“I remember,” cried the other, “you tricked them wi’ an empty post-chaise, didn’t ye?”

“To be sure,” returned the old farmer chuckling. “’Twas Joe Boyt did that. He did ride for all he were worth, the wrong way. And me and the maid ran a couple of mile on our own legs, till we come to the high road where Jem was awaitin’ for us wi’ the very same old shay as we did drive over in to-day. I did swear I’d buy it if ever I had the chance, and I’d take Jem into my service. And I did both.”

“The old Squire came round before long,” remarked the landlord; “yes, I heard the tale often enough. There’s an old chap here as used to be ostler in the old days, and he minds well how you and the lady came here to hide, so to speak, till the coach came up.”

“That’s it!” cried old John delightedly, slapping his thigh to give emphasis to his words. “The coach took us to Bath and we had the job done there—licence, you know. And the missus and I, d’ye see, had the notion o’ stoppin’ here to-day in memory of that time, and makin’ believe we was doin’ it over again. Between you and me,” said John, poking the landlord in the waistcoat and winking knowingly, “I d’ ’low my old woman does truly believe she is back in the old times again. Women do seem to have a wonderful power of imagination. There, she was a-feedin’ her chicken this mornin’, if ye please, just as she done the mornin’ we made off.”

“Well, well,” commented the landlord. “You ought to let old ’Neas Bright have a look at ye both. He’s up in the almhouse now, poor old chap, through not bein’ able to work any more, but he’d hobble down if he was to know ye were here.”

“Send for en, then, send for en,” cried John eagerly; “but look ye, landlord—keep the secret. Don’t ye let the folks know who we are or what we’ve come for, else maybe the children ’ull catch as yet.”

The landlord laughed and promised, and thereupon John went back to his lady, whom he found peeping cautiously out at the Market Place from behind the window curtain.

“Did you think about ordering dinner?” inquired she.

“No, my dear, I left that to you.”

“Oh, John,” she cried bashfully, “I feel nervous-like. I don’t want to ring the bell and have folks starin’ at me. Go down again and order it—at twelve sharp.”

“What shall we have?” he inquired.

“There now—to ask such a thing. Why, the same as we had this day fifty year ago, of course.”

“And what was that?” asked he.

“Why, John, I never thought you would forget anything about that day. We had a beefsteak-pudding and a boiled fowl with parsley-and-butter sauce, and potatoes in their jackets, and greens.”

“So we had,” said John.

“And you had cheese and a crusty loaf, and I had a bit o’ rice puddin’. And you had a tankard o’ best October ale, and I had a glass of sherry wine. Don’t you remember, John, you would make me take the wine though I wasn’t used to it and was afraid it might go to my head?”

“Yes, to be sure,” returned he. “Well, I’ll go and order all that.”

“And then come back to me—come straight back to me, John. Don’t stay gossiping downstairs. I feel quite nervous.”

“Do you think this was the room we had?” inquired John, pausing half-way to the door. “It don’t look the same somehow.”

“They’ve spoilt it with this new-fangled furniture,” returned she; “but it is the same. I remember this little window at the end looking towards the Market Place. Oh, John—see here.”

“What is that, my dear?”

“Why, look here at the corner of the pane. Here are our very name letters, S for Susan, and J for John, and the true-lovers’-knot on the top. I remember your scratching ’em quite well.”

“Why, so I did,” cried he. “I’d a glass-cutter in my big knife. Well, to be sure! There they are—and here we are!”

“Here we are,” echoed she. “Thanks be to God for all His mercies.”

And thereupon she clasped both her little wrinkled hands round his arm and gave it a tender squeeze, and he stooped down and kissed her round, wholesome, pink old cheek.

Well, after John had ordered the dinner, and after old ’Neas Bright had come limping down from the almshouse and had related divers anecdotes, and drunk the couple’s health, and gone away rejoicing with a half-crown piece in his pocket, John and Susan sat down behind the screen which cut off one corner of the room from the rest, and gave themselves up to repose and reminiscence.

Perhaps it was because they were so happy and so much absorbed in each other, and also perhaps because they had both of them grown a trifle hard of hearing of late years, that they did not notice a sudden bustle and excitement in the street below.

Had they looked out they would have seen a string of vehicles of different kinds drawn up just outside—spring-carts, gigs, a waggonette, and last but not least, a waggon drawn by a team of splendid farm-horses and filled to overflowing with country people. All the occupants of these conveyances were dressed in holiday attire, all wore enormous white nosegays, while the horses’ blinkers and the drivers’ whips were alike decorated with snowy streamers. The door opened suddenly, and some one ran round the screen.

“Why, there they are!” cried a child’s jubilant voice. “There’s grandpa and grandma a-sittin’ hand-in-hand.”

And then from the staircase, and from the hall, and from the street arose a sudden deafening cheer.

“I d’ ’low they’ve caught us!” cried John, with a whimsical glance at his spouse; but she was already engaged in fondling the child and scarcely heard him.

A moment afterwards the room was crowded with the descendants of the old folks—three generations of them: middle-aged prosperous-looking sons and daughters; rosy grandchildren and even one great-grandchild, for young John’s Annie had brought her baby, which proved to be the finest child of its age that had ever been seen, and to have “come on wonderful” since Mrs. Bussell last beheld it. And there was such a kissing and hugging and scolding and laughing as had surely never before been heard in that staid, respectable old room, and grandma was very arch and coy on being reproached for her unkind notion, and grandpa chuckled boisterously, and rubbed his hands, and Mary, the only unmarried daughter, related how her suspicions had at first been aroused on discovering that the chickens had been fed so early—all the family knowing the history of that bygone ruse by heart; and how, though she did at first fancy they might have gone to Weymouth, she had made inquiries in the neighbourhood, and had ascertained that a chaise with three people wearing white nosegays had been seen driving Branston-way very soon after daylight. And then John, the eldest son, took up the tale, and related how they had settled to wait till all the family had arrived, and how he had declared that the labourers and their wives should not be baulked of their share of merry-making, and how the whole party was come to keep the golden wedding at Branston.

“The folks are waiting for you outside now,” he concluded; “you’d best show yourselves to them, else they’ll never forgive you.”

So over to the window marched the bridal couple, and there they stood arm-in-arm, the illusion being a little damaged by the presence of the baby which grandma would not relinquish, and by the background of laughing folk, all of whom bore so strong a family likeness to their progenitors that their relationship could not be doubted.

A rousing cheer went up once more, and John waved his hat in reply, and Susan laughed and nodded, and was suddenly taken by surprise by a dimness in the eyes and a choking sensation in the throat.

“I don’t know however I could have had the heart to run away from them,” she murmured.

And then when the speeches had been made, and the presents delivered, and the wedding-feast, supplemented by many substantial additions, set forth upon the table, and when she sat down with John the elder on her right and John the younger on her left, and Annie’s baby sound asleep in her lap, and looked round at the kindly happy faces, she surreptitiously squeezed her husband’s hand:—

“You and me was very happy this time fifty year,” she said, “but after all—I don’t know—I d’ ’low this is best.”

POSTMAN CHRIS.

It was about four o’clock of the afternoon when Postman Chris set forth on his second round. He swung along at a rapid pace, looking about him with the pleased, alert air of one for whom his surroundings had not yet lost the charm of novelty.

He had, indeed, that very morning entered on his duties as postman for the first time, though he had served his country in another way before. For Postman Chris Ryves had been Trooper Chris Ryves in a previous state of existence. He had had his fill of warfare in South Africa, and had indeed been wounded at Graspan; the left breast of his brand-new blue uniform was decorated with a medal and quite a row of clasps. Though Postman Chris walked at ease he held himself with the erectness due to military training, and his straw hat was perched at the rakish angle which in earlier days, when he had paraded at Knightsbridge Barracks, had caused the heart of more than one artless city maiden to flutter in her bosom.

But for all these past glories of his, Postman Chris was an eminently pleasant and affable person; at any chance salutation of a passer-by the white teeth would flash out in that brown, brown face of his with the most good-humoured of smiles; he delivered up his letters with an urbanity of demeanour that was only surpassed by his soldierly promptitude, and he was willing to exchange the news of the day with any pedestrian who cared to march a short distance in his company.

The bag which he carried was not unduly heavy, nor his way fatiguingly long; it was a six-mile round in fact—starting from Chudbury-Marshall, proceeding through Riverton and Little Branston to the market town of Branston and so back again.

It chanced that as Chris approached Little Branston Schoolhouse on this particular day, his attention was attracted by a hubbub of voices and laughter proceeding from the adjoining field. Pausing a moment in his rapid progress he looked through a gap in the hedge. A feast was evidently in progress; some of the children still sat in rows on the grass, armed with great cups of sickly-looking tea and munching vigorously, buns or hunches of bread-and-jam; others, having finished their meal, were already at play.

Here “Blind-man’s-buff” was going on, there “Drop Handkerchief”. In the corner of the field directly under the postman’s observation a game of Forfeits was proceeding. The schoolmistress, who sat facing him, was holding up one object after the other over the blindfolded head of a pupil-teacher, a bright little girl who had left school recently enough to enter still with almost childish zest into such amusements.

“Here’s a Fine Thing and a very Fine Thing; what is the owner of this Fine Thing to do?” cried the schoolmistress. She had a pleasant, clear voice, and though she sat back upon her heels like many of her pupils, there was something particularly graceful about figure and attitude.

“That’s a shapely maid,” remarked Postman Chris to himself; “yes, and a vitty one too.”

It will be seen that Chris Ryves was a Dorset man, as indeed his name betokened; he came in fact from the other side of the county.

The face which he looked on was as pretty as the figure, its fresh bloom enhanced by the darkness of eyes and hair.

“What is the owner of this Fine Thing to do?” she repeated.

“She must bite an inch off a stick,” responded the pupil-teacher, with a delighted giggle.

The owner of the forfeit, a peculiarly stolid-looking child, came slowly up to redeem her pledge, and, after a mystified but determined attempt to obey the mandate literally, was duly initiated into the proper and innocuous manner of accomplishing it. Then the performance was resumed.

“Here’s a Fine Thing and a very Fine Thing; and what must the owner of this very Fine Thing do?” chanted the schoolmistress.

“Is it a boy or a girl?” asked the blindfolded oracle.

“Boy,” responded the schoolmistress.

“Then he must bow to the wittiest, kneel to the prettiest, and kiss the one he loves best.”

A little round-faced urchin came forward to claim his cap, and, after much prompting and not a little pushing, was induced to carry out the prescribed programme.

He duly pulled a forelock to the pupil-teacher, bent his knee to a small person with a necklace and a profusion of corkscrew ringlets, and bestowed a careless salute on the chubby cheek of a smaller and still more round-faced female edition of himself—evidently a sister.

“Well, I’m dalled!” said the postman. “Them children ha’n’t got no eyes in their heads.”

And with that he stepped back from the hedge, hitched up his bag a little higher on his shoulder, and strode off towards Branston.

The next day at the same hour Ruby Damory, the schoolmistress, was standing on the threshold of the schoolhouse with a copybook in her hand. She sometimes lingered after school had broken up and the pupil-teacher had made things tidy and betaken herself homewards, to look over the children’s exercises before returning to her lodgings; and as the interior of the house was close and stuffy she preferred to accomplish this task in the porch. The school-yard was as dusty and bleak as such places usually are; but by some strange chance the rose-tree which was trained over the porch remained uninjured by the constant passing of little feet and contact of little persons. It grew luxuriantly, and its clustering blossoms formed a pretty setting to the slim figure which stood propped against the wall beneath.

All at once Ruby raised her eyes from her book; a rapid step was advancing along the footpath from the direction of Riverton; over the irregular line of hedge she could see a straw hat set at a knowing angle on a head of bright red hair. It was the new postman from Chudbury—she had seen him go past that morning before she had yet left her room.

Now he was opposite the schoolhouse gate, but instead of passing it he stood still, wheeled about with military precision, and took off his hat with a flourish.

“I bow to the wittiest,” said Postman Chris.

Then, before she had time either to respond or to turn away, he was marching on again, and soon disappeared behind the tall hedge on the other side of the school precincts.

“Well, to be sure!” said Ruby, and she laughed to herself; “he must have noticed our game yesterday. He was very complimentary, I must say, though I don’t quite know how he could find out I was witty. I suppose he thinks I must be because I’m the schoolmistress.”

And thereupon she returned to the exercise.

But in spite of herself her thoughts kept wandering to Postman Chris and his odd proceedings, and she said to herself that, though his hair was red it was not at all an ugly colour—in fact when he took off his hat it flashed in the sun like burnished copper. The phrase took her fancy for she liked a fine word or two when opportunity offered; and she was pleased too with the aptness of the simile, for she possessed a little copper tea-kettle which she only used on great occasions, and which was, she fancied, precisely the colour of the new postman’s hair in the sunshine. He had a nice smile, too, and such quick, bright, brown eyes. And then that medal, and those clasps and orders—decidedly Postman Chris appeared to the schoolmistress somewhat in the light of a hero.

All the evening she thought of his brown face and his pleasant voice, and of how his hair had flashed in the sun. On going home she got down the copper tea-kettle and looked at it, turning it about in the lamplight—yes, it really recalled the glow of the new postman’s hair.

When, on the next day, Ruby heard the regular and rapid steps approaching, she stood for a moment in doubt; should she go indoors, or should she give the man a civil good-day as he passed.

She chose the latter alternative, but as she opened her lips to speak the words died on them, for Postman Chris, once more pausing in front of the gate, dropped on his knees and bowed his head. Their eyes met as he raised it again, and he said emphatically: “I kneel to the prettiest.”

Then, springing to his feet, he was gone before Ruby had time to recover from her astonishment. She went inside the larger schoolroom and sat down on the nearest bench, trembling from head to foot.

What did the man mean? Was he laughing at her? No, the brown eyes had looked into hers with as earnest and straightforward a gaze as was to be found in the eyes of man. Was he courting her then? It looked like it, but what a strange way to set about it. No preliminaries—no permission asked—not even a question exchanged between them. Did he intend to carry out the third part of the programme with the same speed and decision with which he had set about fulfilling the first two?

Ruby blushed hotly to herself, and then tossed her head. She was not to be won without due wooing, and after all was she, in any event, to be won by this man? She knew nothing of him except that he was a reservist with a small pension, and that he was a postman—a village postman. Was it likely that a girl of her education and position would throw herself away on a fellow like that—even if he had a kindly face, and a nice way of looking at one, and hair the colour of a copper tea-kettle? Besides, he should know better than to approach her with so light a spirit.

The next day when Postman Chris came swinging along the Branston road the schoolhouse porch was empty, the door bolted and barred. For a full moment he stood gazing towards it, and Ruby, peering cautiously out at him from behind the sheltering blackboard, saw his expression change from the eager tenderness which had for the fraction of a second almost made her wish that she were indeed standing in the porch, to one of hurt and proud surprise.

He wheeled about without delay, and the sound of his steps fell like a knell upon her heart.

Acting upon an unaccountable impulse she flung open the door and darted to the gate, but Postman Chris never turned his head.

On the next day she again watched from behind the blackboard, and saw the postman march past, without so much as a glance either to right or to left. On the day after, strange to relate, Miss Ruby Damory, the schoolmistress, happened to be correcting exercises in the porch when the postman from Chudbury-Marshall walked by; but Postman Chris never caught sight of the schoolmistress. He was whistling as he walked, and held a little cane in his hand with which he switched at the hedge. When he passed the school-gate he tapped it with his cane, and subsequently drew it along the railings which bordered the yard; but he never turned his head.

There was no afternoon post on Sunday, but Postman Chris was at Evening Church, and there Ruby saw him with the light of the stained-glass window falling on his uncovered head and making a very nimbus of his hair.

When Monday afternoon came she was standing, not in the school-porch but at the gate, and when Postman Chris drew near she accosted him in a small voice which did not sound like hers. Indeed, she felt at the time as though it were not she herself who was thus laying aside maidenly dignity, but some wicked little spirit within her, who acted for her against her will.

“Good-day, postman,” said Ruby, or the demon within her.

Postman Chris brought his heels together and saluted—not having yet learnt to lay aside this habit—but his face wore an expression of surprise.

“Have you got a letter for me, to-day?” went on the voice.

“Name?” said Chris succinctly.

“Miss Ruby Damory,” came the hurried answer.

The postman shook his head.

“I’m expecting a letter,” went on Ruby confusedly. “Perhaps you may have left one at my lodgings in Little Branston? I live at Mrs. Maidment’s at the corner of Green Lane.”

The postman looked at her with an expression which would seem to indicate that Ruby’s place of abode was a matter of supreme indifference to him.

“If any letter comes as is directed there, of course it will be left there,” he said, with a coldly business-like air.

“You didn’t leave one for me, to-day, I suppose?” faltered Ruby.

“Not as I know on,” returned Chris stolidly.

Tears rushed to the girl’s eyes; she felt wounded, insulted by this sudden change from warm admiration—admiration which possibly might have ripened to something else—to complete indifference. She hastily turned away her head to conceal them, but not before she had caught sight of a kind of gleam in the postman’s brown eyes.

“Are ye so terrible disappointed?” he inquired roughly, not to say harshly.

“I—oh, yes, of course I am.”

She spoke truly enough, poor girl, though her disappointment arose from another cause than the ostensible one.

Chris eyed her sharply.

“Well, it’ll come in time, I suppose!” he remarked, still in the same surly tone, “and when it do come, you shall have it.”

And thereupon he saluted, hitched up his bag, and walked away.

Ruby went back to the school-porch, with a scarlet face and a mist before her eyes:—

“He’s a rude fellow,” she said; “I’ll think of him no more.”

But she was in a manner forced to think of him.

It was an unkind Fate, indeed, which decreed that Postman Chris Ryves’ beat should bring him under Ruby Damory’s notice twice in the day. Early in the morning, while still in her little lodging at the corner of Green Lane, she heard his brisk step ring out beneath her window, and looking down, as indeed she sometimes did from beneath the corner of her blind, she caught a glimpse of a blue uniform and a red head; but Postman Chris never looked up, and no letter was ever left for Miss Ruby Damory, care of Mrs. Maidment.

Then as the church clock struck half-past four a tall figure was always to be seen swinging along behind the green hedge, which drew near the school-gate, and passed by the school-yard without a single glance at the mistress correcting exercises in the porch.

It was out of pure contradictoriness of course that Ruby Damory learned to listen for that step and to watch for that figure. She grew thin and pale, slept brokenly, and dreamt frequently about Postman Chris; and Mrs. Maidment averred almost with tears that Miss Damory seemed to have no relish for her victuals, and could indeed be scarce persuaded to eat a radish with her tea.

One day the girl took herself seriously to task. “I am a fool and worse,” she said. “I must make an end of it. The man does not care a snap of his fingers for me—I’ll try to forget he’s in the world.”

Therefore she refrained from peeping out from behind her blind on the following morning, and, in the afternoon, she locked up the schoolhouse directly the children had left, and proceeded homewards with the exercise-books under her arm. But whether because Postman Chris was more punctual than usual that day, or because Ruby Damory walked slowly, this manœuvre did not have the desired effect, for, strange to say, the postman overtook her on the road.

Ruby had heard him coming, and had made valiant resolution not to look round, but when he came up with her she could not resist turning towards him, and their eyes met.

“Did you speak?” said Postman Chris.

“No—I—I—” She stopped short; her heart was thumping so violently, indeed, that she could scarcely breathe.

“I thought you might have a letter for me,” she murmured at last, in the frantic endeavour to cover her confusion.

“Not I,” said the postman.

He made as if he would pass on, but wheeled round again. “What have you been doing to yourself?” he asked sharply.

“I? Oh, nothing.”

“Ye bain’t half the maid ye was,” insisted Chris, eyeing her with severe disapproval. “Been frettin’ about summat?”

If Ruby had been pale before, she was rosy enough now.

“What do you mean?” she stammered; “what makes you say that?”

“I thought you mid be disapp’inted-like about that letter,” responded the postman.

“Oh, the letter. Yes—’tis very strange it doesn’t come.”

“Well, it’s none o’ my fault,” retorted Chris roughly. “Ye needn’t look at me like that. I’d bring it to ye fast enough if ’twas there.”

“Well, of course—I never thought you wouldn’t. I’m sure I never said anything——” cried poor Ruby, more and more agitated.

“Ye shouldn’t go frettin’ yourself though,” he remarked. “That won’t make it come any faster. And you shouldn’t blame me.”

“I don’t blame you,” gasped the girl. “I don’t—indeed I don’t”—but here, in spite of herself, her voice was lost in a burst of sobs.

Postman Chris set down his bag and produced a khaki pocket handkerchief—a relic no doubt of South African days. This he tendered very gallantly to Ruby, who, if truth be told, was at that moment at a loss for one, having used her own to wipe out a particularly impracticable sum from a small pupil’s slate.

She accepted the offering in the spirit in which it was meant, dried her eyes, and returned the handkerchief to the postman with a watery smile. At that smile Chris changed colour, but he tucked away the handkerchief in his sleeve without a word, respectfully saluted, and departed. He never looked back at the girl, but as he walked away he said to himself: “That there maid, she be all I thought her. ’Tis a pity I didn’t see her afore she took up wi’ t’other chap. I wouldn’t ha’ left her a-pinin’ so long, and a-waitin’ and a-waitin’ for a letter what never comes. But she’ll stick to him—ah, sure she’ll stick to him.”

And with that he heaved a profound sigh, and turned off in the direction of the post-office.

The former mode of procedure was now changed. Ruby locked up the schoolhouse every day after lesson-time and Postman Chris regularly overtook her on the way home. By mutual consent they avoided the painful subject of the letter and conversed on indifferent topics; and more than once when Chris walked away he muttered to himself: “She be the prettiest, and she be the wittiest, and she be—ah, ’tis a dalled pity I weren’t on the field first.”

One day when the well-known step came up behind Ruby it was accompanied by a shout:—

“Hi!” cried Postman Chris; “hi! Miss Damory! I’ve a-got summat for ye at last.”

Ruby turned towards him without any very great elation, for, if truth be told, a letter from her only correspondent had never caused her heart to beat one tittle faster than its wont. But as Chris came up with an excited face she felt she could do no less than simulate great delight at his news.

“At last!” cried she, holding out her hand for the letter. But Chris did not deliver it up at once. He looked up the road and down the road—it was indeed little more than a lane, and at that hour solitary enough; there was a strange flash in his eye.

“This’ll be the end of all between you and me, I suppose?” said he. “Ye’ll have got your letter, and ye’ll not care for seein’ me come no more. I’ve a mind to make you pay for it.”

Ruby’s extended hand dropped by her side, and she started back.

“Here’s a Fine Thing,” said Postman Chris, still with that gleam in his eye as he held up the letter. “Here’s a Fine Thing and a very Fine Thing; what’s the owner of Fine Thing to do?”

“What do you mean?” whispered Ruby.

“’Tis your turn to pay the forfeit now!” cried he. “I’ve bowed to the wittiest and knelt to the prettiest; I’d have finished the job if you’d ha’ let me. ’Tis your turn, I say; I’ll let you off all but the last.”

“I don’t know what you take me for, Chris Ryves,” cried Ruby tremulously. “I think you should be ashamed of yourself. You ought to know enough of me by this time to see that I’m not that kind of girl.”

“Well, I be that kind o’ man,” returned Chris obstinately. “This here’s the end—this here’s my last chance. If you want your precious letter, you must pay for it.”

“How dare you?” cried Ruby, turning as white as a sheet. “You are very much mistaken, Mr. Ryves. I’d rather die—than—than——”

“Than have anything to say to me,” he interrupted fiercely. “Oh, I know that very well, Miss Damory; you’re not for the likes o’ me, as you did show me plain enough at the beginning of our acquaintance. But a chap isn’t so very bad if he does ask for a crumb before the whole loaf is handed over to another man. Give me one, Ruby—just one!”

Ruby backed away from him against the hedge.

“This is an insult,” she cried.

“An insult!” he repeated, suddenly sobered. “Oh, if you look on it that way. There’s your letter,” he went on, dropping his voice. “There’s your letter, Miss Damory; I hope it’ll give ye every joy and satisfaction.”

And with that he handed the disputed document to the schoolmistress, took off his hat with a flourish, and marched away quick time. Not so quick, however, but that a little petulant cry fell upon his ears, and, wheeling involuntarily, he saw that the letter had been flung upon the ground, and that Ruby Damory was leaning against the hedge with her face buried in her hands.

Chris came back at the double.

“There!” he cried penitently. “I’m a brute beast. I beg your pardon, my maid. I’m truly sorry—truly, I am.”

“Oh,” sobbed Ruby, “how could you be so unkind?”

“I’m sure I don’t know how I came for to forget myself like that,” he returned ruefully; “but I’ll never offend again, Miss Damory—never.”

“To expect me—to—to do that,” faltered Ruby, “when you’d never said a word of love to me—when you’d never even asked to walk with me.”

The postman’s brown face assumed a puzzled air; he drew a step nearer, and picked up the letter.

“But,” said he; then paused, and once more tendered the document to the schoolmistress.

“Oh, bother!” cried she irritably. “It’ll keep.”

Chris’s countenance lit up suddenly.

“Will it, indeed?” cried he. “That’s a tale—a very different tale. There, when I was comin’ along wi’ that letter, ’twas all I could do not to bury it or to drop it into a ditch. I mastered myself, ye know, but I were terr’ble tempted, and that was why,” he added with a sly glance, “I did look for some reward.”

“But why did you want to destroy my aunt’s letter?” asked Ruby.

“Your aunt!” exclaimed Chris. “Your aunt! Well, that beats all.”

He took off his hat and waved it; he danced a kind of jig upon the footpath; he threw himself sideways against the hedge, laughing all the while, so that Ruby stared in amazement. Suddenly he composed himself.

“That be another tale, indeed, my maid,” said he. “I were a-thinking all the time ’twas your young man you was expectin’ to hear from. But why was you always so eager on the look-out for me?”

“I’m sure I wasn’t,” said Ruby, and she blushed to the roots of her hair. She dared not look at Chris for a full moment, but at last was constrained to raise her eyes to his face, and there, lo, and behold! he was blushing too. And looking at her—yes—with that very self-same expression which she had seen in his eyes on the morning when she had first hidden herself behind the blackboard. He came a step nearer, and his blue-coated arm began to insinuate itself between the hedge and her trim waist.

“Then why, my maid,” he began gently—“that there game, ye know—why didn’t you let me finish?”

“Why,” said Ruby, between laughing and crying, “because you hadn’t begun.”

He whistled softly under his breath.

“Shall us begin now?” said he. “You and me—we’ll do it proper this time.”

“Begin courting?” said she innocently.

“Yes, we’ll play the game right. Here’s a Fine Thing and a very Fine Thing—that’s you, my dear—now what’s the owner of this Fine Thing to do? The owner—that’s me—why—this——”

He accompanied the word with appropriate action.

“For shame!” cried she, in a tone which nevertheless was not displeased, “you’ve begun at the wrong end after all.”

“Not at all,” he retorted, “’tis the proper way to start a courtship. I’ll tell ye summat, Ruby, my maid. We’ll have the banns put up on Sunday.”

KEEPER GUPPY.

“Lard ha’ mercy me! What be doin’, Jan? You that’s only jist out o’ your bed! Whatever ’ud Doctor say? Boots too! Where be goin’?”

Old John Guppy cast a lowering glance at his spouse, and continued to button his gaiters in silence. This task concluded, he stretched out his hand and pointed imperatively to the gun slung over the chimney-piece.

“Reach that down,” he commanded.

“Ye’re never goin’ out! You as has been four month and more on your back! What’s the use on’t? There’s a new keeper yonder—new ways, and strangers pretty nigh everywhere. I’d ha’ had a bit more sperrit nor to go up there where I bain’t wanted.”

“I be goin’, woman. Squire do pay I money, an’ I’ll give en his money’s worth. I must have an eye to things, or they’ll be gettin’ in a reg’lar caddle up yon. New keeper, he’ll not know so very much about the place, and Jim—he were always a terr’ble sammy—he never did seem to see what was under his nose wi’out I were there to rub it into it.”

“Well, but Jan, the bit o’ money what Squire gives ’ee is a pension—same as what soldiers an’ sick-like do get i’ their ancient years. Squire don’t expect ’ee to do no more work for en now, and ye be so fearful punished wi’ the rheumatics, an’ all. No—‘Mrs. Guppy,’ says Squire to I, so considerate as could be, ‘Mrs. Guppy,’ he says, ‘Jan have served I faithful nigh upon two score year—now he can take a bit o’ rest,’ he says; ‘I’ve a-made sure as he’ll be comfortable in’s old age. The pension ’ull be paid reg’lar so long as he do live,’ says he, ‘or so long as I do live,’ he says, laughin’ cheerful-like, ‘for ’pon my word, I do think your Jan ’ll very likely see I down—he be uncommon tough, so old as he mid be,’ says Squire. ‘And if I do go first, my son ’ll see as he wants for nothin’ in his time,’ he says. So let I light your pipe, Jan, my dear, and sit ’ee down sensible like, i’ the chimbley corner—’tis the best place for ’ee, good man.”

“You can light my pipe, if you like,” said John, still gloomily, “but I be goin’ up-along all the same. Things ’ull be goin’ to ruin if I don’t tell ’em how they used to be carried on i’ my time.”

“I d’ ’low ye’ll not get so far,” said Mrs. Guppy; “but of all the obstinate men—well, there, ’tis a good thing as the A’mighty made half the world o’ women-folk, else everythin’ ’ud be fair topsy-turvy.”

John wedged his pipe firmly in the corner of his mouth, put his gun under his arm, and, taking his thick stick from the chimney corner, set forth, without vouchsafing any answer; he limped painfully as he walked, and Mrs. Guppy, looking sorrowfully after him, opined that he’d have had enough of it afore he’d gone half a mile. But though she had been wedded to John for thirty-five years, she had not yet learned the quality of his spirit; he uttered many groans as he shambled along, and lifted the poor limb, which had so long been well-nigh useless, with increasing effort, but he held bravely on his way until he reached his destination, a vast stretch of land, half park, half down, peopled by innumerable rabbits and furnished with copses and plantations, which no doubt afforded cover to game of every kind. Here John paused for the first time, turned his head on one side, clicked his tongue and jerked forward his gun with a knowing air as a rabbit crossed his path.

“If ’t ’ad ha’ been loaded I’d ha’ made short work o’ thee, my bwoy,” he remarked. “There don’t seem to be so many o’ you about as there did used to be i’ my time, though—not by a long ways. That there noo chap ’ull ha’ let ye go down, I reckon. There bain’t many like poor old Jan Guppy—nay, I’ll say that for ye, Jan. You was worth your salt while you were about—’e-es, and so long as ye be above ground I d’ ’low you’ll make it worth Squire’s while to keep ye.”

Having delivered this tribute to himself with a conscientiously impartial air, he proceeded on his way, and presently came in sight of the keeper’s cottage, or rather lodge, set midway in the long avenue which led to the Squire’s mansion, and smiled to himself at the sudden out-cry of canine voices which greeted his approach.

“There they be, the beauties! That’s Jet—I’d know her bark among a thousand. I d’ ’low she knows my foot,” as one voice detached itself from the chorus and exchanged its warning note for a strangled whine of rapture. “She’ll break that chain o’ hers if they don’t let her loose. ’Ullo, Jet, old girl! Hi, Rover! Pull up, Bess!”

All the barks had now ceased, and a pointer came scurrying to the gate, followed by a large retriever.

“There ye be, my lads—too fat, too fat. Ah, they be feedin’ o’ them too well now—not so good for work, I d’ ’low! Poor old Jet! Ye be tied-up, bain’t ye? There, we’ll come to ye.”

Passing through the wicket-gate, he was limping unceremoniously round to the back of the cottage, when the door was thrown open and the astonished figure of the keeper’s wife appeared in the aperture.

“Mornin’, mum,” said John, lifting his hand half-way to his forelock, which was his nearest approach to a polite salutation when in parley with folks of Mrs. Sanders’ degree. “I be Mr. Guppy, what was keeper here afore your master. I be jist come to take a look about.”

“Oh, indeed,” said Mrs. Sanders, who was a very genteel and superior person; “my husband would have had great pleasure in taking you round, Mr. Guppy, but he’s out just at present.”

“No matter for that, mum, I’ll go by myself. What, Jet! There ye be, my beauty; dear, to be sure, a body ’ud never think ’twas the same dog. She do seem to ha’ fell away terr’ble, mum.”

Jet, a curly-coated black spaniel, was at that moment straining wildly at her chain, and wriggling her little black body in such spasms of ecstasy at the sight of her old master that it would have needed a very sharp eye to detect any alteration in her appearance, if, indeed, such existed; but John spoke in a tone of conviction.

“She bain’t half the dog she were. What do you feed her on, mum? Jet, she did used to be dainty—didn’t ye, Jet? Her coat do stare dreadful, mum, now don’t it? A prize dog didn’t ought to have its coat neglected like that. When I had the charge o’ she, dally! if I didn’t comb and brush her morn an’ night, same as if she’d been a young lady. Be dalled if I didn’t! Where be your master, mum?”

Mrs. Sanders’ face, always somewhat frosty in expression, had become more and more pinched and supercilious during the colloquy, and she now replied extremely distantly that she couldn’t say for certain where Mr. Sanders might be, but that very likely he was looking after the young pheasants.

“Ah!” commented John, with interest; “and where mid he ha’ got them this year?”

“On this side of the North Plantation,” returned the lady unwillingly.

“A bad place, mum, a very bad place; no birds ’ull ever do well there. If he’d a-come to I, I could ha’ telled en that. They’ll never thrive up yon in that draughty place—no, that they won’t; and it’ll be too cold for ’em. I’m afeared he’ll have a bad season. The North Plantation—dear, some folks doesn’t know much! Well, I’ll go and have a look at ’em, and if I do see your husband, I mid be able to gie en a word or two o’ advice.”

“Ho! no need for that, I think,” cried Mrs. Sanders wrathfully. “’Tisn’t very likely as my husband, wot ’as lived in the fust o’ families, and been keeper to a markis, ’ud want to take advice from an old gentleman like you, Mr. Guppy, as has never left the one place all your life.”

“I could have advised en agen the North Plantation, anyhow,” said John stolidly. “Well, I’ll wish ’ee good-day, mum. I’ll be goin’ my ways up-along.”

And he hobbled off, muttering to himself as he went: “The North Plantation! The chap must be a fool!... They poor dogs, they was glad to see I!—jist about; but bain’t he a sammy! There he do go and feed up the shooting dogs so as they be for all the world like pigs, and Jet, what we used to keep same as a little queen, he do seem to take no more notice of nor if she was a cat! Poor Jet! How she did cry to get to I! Well, well! I may be able to put things straight a bit.”

Proceeding at his slow pace, the pilgrimage to the North Plantation was a matter of considerable time, and it was noon before he halted at length beside the enclosure where hundreds of tiny pheasant chicks ran in and out of their several coops, with a venturesomeness much deplored by their distracted hen foster-mothers.

A tall, middle-aged man was walking about amid the pens, with a proudly proprietary air which announced him to be the head-keeper.

Guppy wiped the sweat of weakness and fatigue from his brow and uttered a quavering “Hullo!” Mr. Sanders turned and walked majestically towards him.

“What do you want,” he inquired briefly.

“I be jist come up-along to have a look round,” announced John. “I’m Mr. Guppy, what was here afore you. You be in my shoes now, I mid say, but I don’t bear ’ee no grudge for ’t—no, I don’t bear ’ee no grudge,” he repeated handsomely.

“Right,” said Sanders, who was a good-humoured fellow enough, if a little puffed up by the dignity of his position. “Glad to see you, Mr. Guppy. We’ve got a nice lot here, haven’t we?”

“’E-es,” agreed Guppy, with a note of reserve in his voice; “’e-es, a tidyish lot; but you’ll not bring up the half o’ them.”

“Won’t I, indeed?” retorted Sanders, somewhat warmly. “What makes you say that?”

“I could ha’ telled ’ee as this here weren’t a fit place for young pheasants,” returned the ex-keeper, not without a certain triumph. “If you’d ha’ come to I, I could ha’ telled ye. I’ve a-been thirty-nine year and nine month i’ this place, and I’ve never put the young pheasants here once—never once. What do you say to that?”

“Well, I say as every man has his own notions,” returned the other. “You might have a fancy for one place, as very likely I’d take agen, and, on the other hand, you seem to have some notion agen this ’ere place, as I think most suitable.”

“Well, ye’ll find out your mistake, I d’ ’low,” said Guppy unflinchingly. “Done pretty well wi’ eggs this year?”

“Yes, pretty well on the whole. We had to buy a few hundreds, but, as I told Mr.——”

“Buy ’em! Buy eggs! You must ha’ managed wonderful bad. I’ve a-been here nigh upon farty year, and never bought so much as one—not one. Dally! ’Twill come terr’ble expensive for Squire if ye do carry on things that way.”

“Something had to be done, you see,” cried Sanders, who was now beginning to be distinctly nettled. “You seem to have been such a stick-in-the-mud lot—there was hardly any game about the place that I could see when I come.”

“Oh! and weren’t there?” retorted John sarcastically. “Ye must ha’ poor eyes, Maister Sanders. There, ’twas what I did use to say to a cousin o’ Squire’s as used to come shooting here twenty-five years ago, and couldn’t hit a haystack. ‘There don’t seem to be anything to shoot, keeper,’ he’d say; and I’d answer back, ‘Ye must ha’ wonderful poor eyes, sir.’ Ho, ho! he were a stuck-up sort o’ gentleman as were always a-findin’ fault and a-pickin’ holes, but I mind I had a good laugh agen him once. ’Twas a terr’ble hot day, and we’d walked miles and miles, and I were a bit done-up at the end, and thankful for a sup o’ beer. And he comes up to I, and says, laughin’ nasty-like, ‘Well, Guppy, you don’t seem much of a walker. Now, I could go all day.’ ‘’E-es, sir,’ says I, ‘and so can a postman. I d’ ’low your bags ’ad much same weight at the end o’ your rounds.’”

Sanders vouchsafed no comment on this anecdote, and John, propping his stick against the paling, proceeded with much difficulty to climb over it, and to hobble from one pen to the other, stooping stiffly to inspect the young birds and the arrangements made for their comfort.

“They big speckly hens is too heavy for these here delicate little fellows,” he remarked. “Game hens is the best—’twas what I did always have. ’Tis more in nature as the game hens should make the best mothers to young pheasants. They be a poor-looking lot, Maister Sanders. I did use to have ’em a deal more for’ard at this time o’ year. What be feedin’ ’em on?”

“Now look ’ere, I’m not going to stand any more o’ this,” thundered the keeper, fairly losing his temper. “I’m not going to have you poking and prying about this place no longer. You’ve got past your work, and I’m doing it now. If the Squire’s satisfied, that’s all I need think about. If he isn’t, he can tell me so.”

“Ha! no man likes bein’ found fault with,” returned Guppy sententiously; “but sometimes ’tis for their own good. Now you take a word o’ advice from I, what was workin’ here afore you was born or thought of very like.”

“I’ll not, then!” cried the other angrily. “Get out o’ this, you old meddler, or I’ll report you to the Squire!”

“You did ought to thank I for not reportin’ of you,” returned John firmly. “The Squire do think a deal o’ I—a deal; but I’d be sorry to get a man into trouble as do seem to be meanin’ well. You mind my words, keeper, and you’ll find as they’ll come true—ye’ll have a bad season this year, and maybe ye’ll be a bit more ready to take advice from them as knows more nor you do. ’Tis the first year, so I’ll not be hard on ye.”

He had now recrossed the wire, repossessed himself of his stick, and with a nod of farewell at his irate successor, turned his steps homewards.

He spent the rest of that day lamenting the direful changes which had taken place since his own withdrawal from active life, and privately resolved to be astir early on the morrow in order to proceed further with his tour of investigation.

With the first dawn, therefore, of a lovely spring morning he left his bed cautiously, dressed in silence, and made his way out of doors. The cottage which he had occupied since his resignation of the keepership was situated at the very end of the village, and as he glanced up the quiet street he could detect few signs of life. No smoke was yet stealing upwards into the still air, no cows lowing in the bartons; the pigeons, indeed, were astir, preening themselves somewhat sleepily, and cooing in a confidential undertone, and the clucking of hens was audible here and there, while more musical bird-voices resounded from trees and hedgerows. The dew lay heavy on the long grass by the roadside as John set forth. The morning mists had not yet disappeared, and the glamour of dawn still enfolded the world. The dew-washed leaves seemed to be on fire, as they caught the rosy rays of the morning sun; every little wayside pool gleamed and glittered. The air was full of sweet scents, the delicate, distinctive odour of the primrose being predominant, though here and there a gush of almost overpowering perfume greeted the old man’s nostrils, as he passed a wild apple-tree. A kind of aromatic undertone came forth from damp moss, trunks of fir-trees, springing young herbage, yet the exquisite fragrance of the morning itself seemed to belong to none of these things in particular, but rather to emanate from the very freshness of the dawn.

Old John, however, plodded onwards, without appearing to take heed of his surroundings; once, indeed, he paused to sniff with a perturbed expression; a fox had passed that way. His eyes peered warily into the undergrowth, over the banks, beneath the hedgerows; he paused in traversing a copse, stooped, uttering an exclamation of astonished disgust, and some few moments later emerged from the brake with a bulging pocket and an air of increased importance.

Jim Neale, the under-keeper, had not long started on his morning beat when he was hailed by a familiar voice, and turning beheld his former chief.

“Hullo, Maister Guppy, I be pure glad to see you on your legs again. You be afoot early.”

John surveyed him for a moment with an air of solemn indignation.

“’Tis jist so well I were afoot a bit early, Jim. You do want I at your back, I d’ ’low. Which way have you been a-goin’?”

“Why, same as usual—across the big mead, from our place, and up-along by top side o’ the park.”

“Jist what I did fancy. You do seem to use your eyes wonderful well, Jim—jist so well as ever. D’ye mind how I used to tell ’ee ‘some folks has eyes and some has none’?”

“Why, what be amiss?”

John, without speaking, put his hand in his pocket, and drew forth a number of rabbit snares, sticks and all, which he had picked up and secreted in the copse before-mentioned.

“Oh!” said Jim. “Humph! I wonder who could have put them there?”

“Why, Branstone folks what be always a-hangin’ about seekin’ what they can pick up.”

“Well, ’twas a good job ye did chance to come along, Mr. Guppy. I d’ ’low they didn’t have time to catch nothin’. There weren’t no rabbits in ’em, was there?”

“There was a rabbit in one of them though,” retorted John triumphantly; “I’ve a-got en here i’ my pocket.”

“Oh, and have ye?” queried John, eyeing the pocket in question somewhat askance. “Well, it’s lucky I’ve a-met ye—ye can hand en over to me i’stead o’ going all the way up to Sanders.”

“I can hand en over to you, can I? Thank ye kindly, Maister Jim; ‘findins’ is keepins’—or used to be i’ my day. Well, of all the cheek! ‘Hand en over,’ says he to I what has been his maister, I mid say, for fifteen year and more. Hand en over, indeed!”

Jim, temporarily abashed, pushed his hat a little to the back of his head, and stared for a moment or two in silence; then his features relaxed into a slow grin.

“’Pon my word, if it do come to cheek, be dalled if I could say which of us has the most of it! Ye bain’t keeper here no longer, Mr. Guppy, and I don’t know as Squire ’ud be altogether pleased if he was to catch you a-pocketin’ one of his rabbits.”

John laughed derisively.

“Squire ’ud know a bit better nor that,” he remarked, as soon as he had sufficiently composed himself. “Squire ’ud know better than grudge I a rabbit arter all them hundreds as I’ve a-had the years and years as I were here. Be ye a-goin’ on now?”

“’E-es I be,” returned Jim, somewhat sulkily.

“Then look sharp, else you’ll very like miss a good few more things what be under your nose.”

Jim walked away growling to himself that he wasn’t a-goin’ to have two masters if he knew it, and that it was enough to be at one man’s beck and call without being hauled over the coals by folks what had no right to be there at all.

John, leaning on his stick, watched the receding form, still with an air of lofty sovereignty, till it had disappeared, and then took his way homewards, feeling that he had done a good morning’s work.

It was marvellous how one so decrepit as he could manage to be as ubiquitous as he thenceforth became. His bent figure and wrinkled face were perpetually turning up in most unexpected quarters, to the wrath and occasional dismay of Mr. Sanders and his underlings, his small keen eyes frequently detecting some small error or omission which his quavering voice was immediately uplifted to denounce and reprehend. Matters reached a climax when, one sunshiny morning, he discovered the eldest hope of the Sanders family in the act of climbing a tree in search of a bird’s nest, and, not content with boxing the urchin’s ears as soon as he descended to earth again, hauled him off by the collar to the parental abode. The boy’s outcries brought his father to the door, accompanied by Jim, who had chanced to call in for orders.

“See here what I’ve a-caught your bwoy a-doin’ of. His pocket be chock-full o’ eggs—pigeon eggs. He ha’n’t a-got no right to go into the woods arter pigeons’ eggs. I’ve brought en to ’ee, Maister Sanders, so as ye may gie en a dressin’. I be too old to do it myself. Nay, nay, at one time I could ha’ fetched him a crack or two what ’ud ha’ taught en manners. But I bain’t strong enough for that now.”

“Let go of him—let go at once, I say,” shouted the indignant parent. “Who gave you leave to interfere? The lad’s my lad, and it’s none o’ your business to go meddlin’ with him. Come here, Philip-James; go in to your mother, boy. He’s mauled you fearful.”

“Well, you must be a soft fellow,” ejaculated John in a tone of deep disgust. “I couldn’t ha’ believed it! If I had a-caught a bwoy a-trespassin’ i’ my woods when I was here, I’d ha’ thrashed him well for ’t—let him be my son twenty times over.”

“Trespassin’ indeed! You’re a trespasser yourself,” cried the keeper. “You’ve no business in these woods at all; you’ve no business to come near the place. I’ll summons you, see if I don’t.”

“Well, that is a tale!” exclaimed John, leaning against the gate-post that he might the better indulge in a kind of crow of ironical laughter. “Trespass—me trespass; me what was keeper here for nigh upon farty year. Lard ha’ mercy me! What’ll ye say next?”

“Well, but it be trespassin’, you know, Maister Guppy,” remarked Jim, thrusting his head round the lintel of the door; “it be trespassin’ right enough. If you was head-keeper once, you bain’t head-keeper no more. You ha’n’t got no call to be here at all. It be trespassin’.”

“You hold your tongue, Jim Neale,” retorted John fiercely—“hold your tongue! Who asked you to speak—you as did ought to be ashamed of yourself for neglectin’ the ferrets same as you do. The big dog-ferret have a-got the mange terr’ble bad. You bain’t the man to give a opinion, I d’ ’low.”

Jim, incensed at this sudden home-thrust, uttered a forcible exclamation, and proceeded with much warmth: “You’ve a-got a wrong notion i’ your head altogether, Maister Guppy; you be a-trespassin’ jist the same as you was a-poachin’ t’other marnin’.”

“Poachin’!” cried John, his face purple with wrath and his voice well-nigh strangled—“poachin’! Dall ’ee, Jim, I’ll not stand here to be insulted. There, I’ve a-passed over a deal—a deal I have. I’ve overlooked it on account of the many years as we’ve a-worked here together, but this here be too much. I’ll report ye, Jim Neale, see if I don’t; and I’ll report you too, Maister Sanders, for insultin’ of I same as you’ve a-done. There’s things as a body can’t overlook, let him be so good-natured as he mid be, and there’s times when a man’s dooty do stare en i’ the face. I’ll report ye this very hour.”

“That’s pretty good,” laughed Sanders. “Upon my word, that’s pretty good. Maybe Jim an’ me will have something to report to the Squire too. You’d best come along with me, Jim, and we’ll see who the Squire listens to.”

“Come along then,” cried John valiantly, before Neale had time to answer. “Come along; we’ll see. I bain’t afeard o’ the Squire. The Squire do know I so well as if I was his own brother. Come on, if you be a-comin’.”

The three set out, walkin’ shoulder to shoulder in grim silence, the younger perforce accommodating their pace to the slow gait of the old man, who hobbled along between them, leaning heavily upon his stick, his face set in resolute lines.

They were kept waiting for some little time until the Squire had finished his breakfast, but were presently admitted into the billiard-room where they found him smoking by a blazing wood fire, for he was of a chilly temperament, and though the morning was sunny, the air was still sufficiently sharp.

“Hallo, Guppy!” he cried cheerily, as his eyes fell on the old man. “What! you’re about again, are you? You’re a wonderful old fellow! You’ll see me down, I’m sure, though there are twenty years or so between us.”

John pulled his forelock and then laid his gnarled hand in the Squire’s outstretched palm.

“You’re a splendid old chap,” said his former master, as he shook it warmly. “I must own I never thought to see you on your legs again after that stroke, coming as it did on the top of the rheumatics. How are the rheumatics, John?”

“Very bad, thank ye, sir. There, I can scarce turn i’ my bed, and when I do try for to walk my limbs do seem to go all twisty-like. I be fair scraggled wi’ it, Squire.”

“Well, men, what brought you here?” inquired their master, turning for the first time to the keepers, and addressing them with some surprise.

“Why, a rather unpleasant matter, sir, I am sorry to say,” returned Sanders respectfully, but a trifle tartly. “’Tis a bit difficult to explain, seein’ as you seem so taken up with Mr. Guppy here. I understood, sir, when I accepted your sitooation as I was to have a free hand. I didn’t look for no interference from anybody but you yourself, sir.”

“Well, haven’t you got a free hand? I’m sure I don’t interfere,” replied the Squire, with a shrug of his shoulders.

“’Tis Maister Guppy what be al’ays a-meddlin’, sir!” put in Jim, with a pull at his forelock. “He do come up-along mostly every mornin’, a-horderin’ and a-pickin’ holes here, there, and everywhere. Mr. Sanders and me do find it terr’ble ill-conwenient.”

“I was just going to say, sir,” resumed Sanders, “when Neale interrupted me”—here he paused to glare at his inferior—“as it was what I was never accustomed to—outside people comin’ and pokin’ and pryin’ and fault-findin’ and interferin’——”

“Oh, dear, how much more!” exclaimed the Squire, looking from one to the other in affected dismay, mingled with a little real vexation. “Guppy, what’s all this about?”

“Playse ye, sir, I couldn’t a-bear to see you a-treated same as ye be treated by them as ye puts your trust in. Everythin’ be in a reg’lar caddle all over the place—everythin’ be a-goin’ wrong, sir, and when I sees it, I tells ’em of it. I can’t do no different—’tis my dooty. You do pay I by the week reg’lar, and I bain’t a-goin’ to eat the bread o’ idleness—’t ’ud stick i’ my in’ards—’e-es, that it would. ‘So soon as I do get upon my legs,’ says I, ‘I’ll have a look round;’ and I did have a look round, and what did I find? Every blessed thing a-goin’ wrong—so I sarces ’em for ’t. I wasn’t a-goin’ to hold my tongue, and see you tricked and abused. I was easy wi’ ’em—a dalled sight too easy—I did ought to have reported of ’em before, but to-day I couldn’t stand it no longer; when I did speak to ’em they up and insulted me, both on ’em. ’E-es, they did. They insulted of I shameful.”

“I am sorry to hear that——” the Squire was beginning, when Mr. Sanders, losing patience, interrupted him.

“Begging your pardon, sir, ’tis more than flesh and blood can stand; ’tis got to be him or me—that’s all I can say. Nobody could put up with it. I found things in a very bad state when I came, and I’m getting them better gradual, sir, and doing my dooty in all respects as well as I can; but if Guppy is to be allowed to come pryin’ and spyin’ after me, and findin’ fault with all my arrangements——”

“He did call I a trespasser,” broke out John, who had been ruminating over his private woes, without taking heed of the keeper’s indictment. “He did call I a trespasser; he did say I was trespassin’ when I told en I’d a-been walkin’ through the Long Wood yonder where I did catch his little rascal of a son a-bird’s-nestin’ so bold as you playse. And Jim there, what did ought to know better, up and said I was poachin’ last week. Me poachin’! Me what brought him back that very day a dozen o’ snares what I had picked up i’ the hedge as he went gawkin’ past without taking a bit o’ notice of.”

“’E-es, but you found a rabbit in one and popped it into your pocket!” cried Jim irefully. “Popped it into your pocket and walked off wi’ it, let I say what I would.”

“In course I did,” retorted John, with great dignity, “in course I did. ’Tweren’t very likely as I’d leave it wi’ you. As I telled ’ee at the time—says I: ‘Squire wouldn’t grudge me a rabbit now arter all the hundreds as I’ve a-had while I was keeper up yonder.’”

The Squire covered his mouth with his hand, but tell-tale wrinkles appeared about his eyes, and the points of his moustache curled significantly upwards. After a moment he recovered himself sufficiently to desire the keepers to withdraw, announcing that he would have a quiet talk with John Guppy, and that no doubt the matter could be arranged.

“So you had hundreds of rabbits while you were in my service, John,” he remarked, crossing one leg over the other, and looking at the old man with a smile. “Didn’t you get very tired of them?”

“Well, sir, my old woman be wonderful with the cookin’, and she did do ’em up in a-many different ways. ’E-es, we did use to have a rabbit for dinner four days out of seven.”

“Did you indeed?” returned his former master, much interested in these revelations. “Do you suppose, John, the other men had hundreds of rabbits every year, too?”

“Well, sir, it be a matter o’ taste. Some folks doesn’t fancy rabbit; but, of course, they can take so many as they do want.”

“Of course,” agreed the Squire.

“’E-es; keepers takes rabbits same as gardeners helps theirselves to cabbages. I knowed you’d never begrudge me that there little un.”

“No, to be sure; but we mustn’t be too hard on Jim. Jim was doing what he thought to be his duty. Now, you know, no matter how many rabbits a keeper may take for himself, he is not supposed to allow other people to take any.”

“Nay, sir, nay; I wouldn’t expect it—not other folks. But I d’ ’low it be different wi’ I, what was head over en for so many year. He didn’t ought to ha’ gone and insulted of I.”

“No, no, of course not; but then, you see, you had vexed him. He was too angry to discriminate between poaching and—just helping yourself.”

“And t’other chap, ’ee telled I I was trespassin’!” resumed John wrathfully.

“Well, my dear John, we must consider the point of view. Every man has his own, you know. As a matter of fact, I’m afraid, from Sanders’s point of view, you were trespassing.”

John’s face was a study.

“I never thought to live to hear you say that, Squire.”

“I only said from his point of view,” cried the Squire, hastily. “He’s naturally, perhaps, a little jealous; you were here so many years, you know, and of course, like all young men—young men will have foolish notions, John—he thinks his way is the best way. We old fogies must just give in for the sake of peace and comfort.”

“Noo ways,” agreed the old man, sorrowfully; “noo folks and noo ways.”

“As you heard me say just now,” resumed his master, “I don’t interfere with him, and, upon my life, I think it’s better you shouldn’t interfere, John. I fancy it would be wiser if you could just keep away for a little bit—then no one could say you were trespassing, you know.”

“I’ll keep away, Squire,” said John. “No fear; I’ll keep away. Ye’ll not have to tell I that twice.”

“You and I are free to have our own opinions, of course,” urged the Squire, smiling, “but we’ll keep them to ourselves—these young folks you know——”

But John did not smile in return; his head, always bent, drooped almost to his breast, his lips moved, but uttered no sound. After a moment or two, he pulled his forelock, scraped his leg, and turned to depart.

“You’re not going, John?”

“’E-es, sir, I be goin’, I bain’t wanted here no more. As you do say, noo times——”

“Now, now, I can’t have you going away offended. Don’t you see how it is, John?”

“Nay, sir, I don’t see nothin’ but what you’ve a-gone and thrown over a old servant for a noo un. That be all as I can see. You didn’t check en for insultin’ of I, and you did uphold him and made little of I. I be goin’, and you’ll never be troubled wi’ I again. I’m fit for nothin’. I be a-eatin’ of your bread and a-takin’ of your money and doin’ nothin’ for ’t. Eatin’ the bread o’ idleness! I d’ ’low it ’ull fair choke I.”

The Squire, vexed and perplexed, in vain sought to soothe him, but he waved aside all attempts at consolation, and made his way slowly out of the room and out of the house.

The Squire watched him as he went tottering down the avenue. “What’s to be done?” he said to himself. “The poor old chap is past his work; it would be cruelty to allow him to attempt it. Sanders is an excellent fellow, on the other hand—more go-ahead than dear old John, and, it must be owned, a better keeper. He would certainly have given notice if I had allowed John to continue his visitations here. It is the only thing to be done, but I can’t bear to see the poor old fellow so cut up.”

As Guppy passed the keeper’s lodge the dogs ran forward, leaping upon him and whining. He patted them absently, and then pushed them off. “Down, Rover, down! There, Bessie, off wi’ you; you should learn a lesson fro’ your betters. Stick to the noo folks, and get rid of the wold. Poor beasts! they be fain to see I, I d’ ’low. Dogs bain’t like Christians. They don’t seem to know when a man be down. They be faithful, all the same; they haven’t a-got no sense, poor things.”

He was spent and trembling when he arrived at his own home, and sank down in his chair by the hearth.

“There, missis, put away my gun; I’ll not want it no more; I be done wi’ it—I be done wi’ everythin’. I could wish that there stroke had a-carried I off. I bain’t no use i’ this world as I can see. It do seem a strange thing as the Lard ’ll leave ye to live on and on when folks be tired o’ ye, and be a-wishin’ of ye under the sod. I wish I were i’ my long home—aye, that I do.”

Mrs. Guppy was at first alarmed, then affected, and finally burst into tears.

“I’m sure I never did hear a man go on the same as you do, Jan; there, I be all of a tremble. What’s amiss? What’s come to ye? What’s it all about?”

“Gi’ I my pipe,” said John; “there’s things a woman can’t understand.”

Not another word could she extract from him till dinner-time, when she summoned him to table.

He gazed at the food sourly. “All charity!” he murmured. “Charity, woman. I be eatin’ what I haven’t earned. I may jist so well go to the Union.”

A few days later the Squire’s dogcart drew up at the little gate, and the Squire himself descended therefrom, carrying a couple of rabbits which he extracted from under the seat.

“Good-day, John; good-day, Mrs. Guppy. Well, John, how are you? Cheering up a bit, I hope.”

John shook his head slowly.

“I’ve brought you a couple of rabbits,” continued the Squire. “It never struck me till the other day how you must miss them. I’ll send you some every week. There are enough, Heaven knows.”

“I don’t want no rabbits,” growled Guppy; “I bain’t a-goin’ to eat of ’em.”

“John!” gasped his wife, hardly believing her ears.

“Put ’em back i’ the cart, woman,” he continued; “I bain’t a-goin’ to eat no rabbits what they chaps up yonder have a-ketched.”

“Why, John,” said the Squire, sitting down beside him, “can’t you get over it? I thought you would be all right by this time.”

“I bain’t all right, Squire, and I can’t get over it. Nay, look at it which way I will, I can’t. Here be I, John Guppy, a bit scram and a bit wambly; but so sound i’ the head as ever I was, whatever my legs mid be. Here be I, anxious for to do my dooty, and able for to do my dooty, and you won’t let I do it. You do give me money what I haven’t earned; you do want I to sit here idle when I’m as ready for a day’s work as any o’ they new-fangled chaps what you’ve a-set up yonder i’ my place.”

The Squire sighed and looked hopelessly at Mrs. Guppy, who stood with her hands folded limply at her waist, and a most dolorous expression on her countenance, shaking her head emphatically at every pause in her husband’s speech. After a few further attempts at consolation, the Squire rose and went to the door, followed by his hostess.

“What is to be done, Mrs. Guppy?” he inquired, when they were out of earshot. “I positively can’t have him back up there—he isn’t fit for it; and he has been setting all the other men by the ears.”

“He’s fair breakin’ ’is ’eart,” murmured Mrs. Guppy dolefully. “He thinks he bain’t o’ no use—and he bain’t—and it’s killin’ ’im. If he could even fancy he was doing summat and ockipy hisself in any way he’d be a different man. ’Tis the thought as nobody wants en what do cut en so.”

The Squire cogitated, and then a sudden light broke over his face.

“I have it,” he cried. “I have thought of a job for the old fellow! We’ll put him to rights yet, Mrs. Guppy—see if we don’t!”

He re-entered the cottage, and approached the inglenook where John still sat, leaning forward, and slowly rubbing the knees of his corduroys.

“John,” he said, “I was almost forgetting a most important thing I wanted to say to you. Sanders and Jim have got their hands pretty full up there, as you know.”

“I d’ ’low they have,” agreed Guppy; “they’re like to have ’em too full, seein’ as they don’t know how to set about their work nohow.”

“Yes, yes. Well, Sanders is very busy all day and Jim has a wide beat. Neither of them ever find time to go near the river. It’s my private belief, John, that that river is dreadfully poached. We’ve next to no wild duck, you know.”

“We never did have none, sir,” interrupted Guppy.

“Just what I say,” agreed his master; “we never had the chance. You had your hands pretty full when you were head-keeper, hadn’t you?”

“I weren’t one what ’ud ever ha’ let ’em get empty,” growled Guppy.

“Well, I was thinking, now that you haven’t very much to do, you might undertake the control of those meadows down there by the river, if you feel up to it, and it’s not asking too much of you.”

“Oh! I could do it,” returned John, in a mollified tone; “I could do it right enough if I was let.”

“I should be very much obliged to you,” resumed the Squire, “very much obliged indeed. All that part of the property has got shamefully neglected. I imagine the people think they’ve got a right-of-way.”

“Very like they do,” agreed John, whose countenance was gradually clearing; “but I can soon show ’em whether they have or not.”

“Just so. Well, will you undertake to look after that part of the estate for me? It will be a great relief to my mind. Don’t overtire yourself, you know; but any day that you are feeling pretty fit you might stroll round, and just keep a sharp look-out.”

“’E-es, I could do that,” said John, after considering for a moment; “I could do it all right, Squire. I will look into the matter.”

“That’s right. Thank you very much, John. I shall feel quite satisfied about it now.”

He nodded, and went away, John looking after him with a satisfied expression.

“I never did mind obligin’ the Squire,” he remarked to his wife, “and I’m glad to do en a bit of a good turn i’ my ancient years. ’Tis true what he do say, that there bit down by the river have a-been fearful neglected. I myself could never make time to go down there, and ’t ain’t very likely as these here chaps ’ull go out of their way to look round. I’ll put it to rights, though.”

“I’m sure it’s very good o’ you, John,” said Mrs. Guppy, who had listened to the foregoing colloquy with a somewhat mystified air. “I shouldn’t ha’ thought that there was anything worth lookin’ arter down there. Why, the town boys do bathe there reg’lar i’ the summer.”

“They’ll not bathe there any more,” returned her lord resolutely. “I’ll teach Mr. Sanders a lesson—I’ll larn ’em how to see arter a place as it did ought to be looked arter! Reach me down that gun, woman!”

He sallied forth that very hour, drawing up his little, bent form to as close an approach to straightness as he could manage.

His first care on reaching his destination was to examine the gates that gave access to this stretch of meadow-land. He pursed his nether lip and shook his head disapprovingly at their shaky condition, making a mental resolution to repair them at the earliest opportunity, and moreover to see that they were provided with padlocks. After diligently hunting in the neighbouring wood, he discovered a half-defaced board, which had at one time borne the legend, “Trespassers will be prosecuted,” and, with a sigh of satisfaction, placed it in a more prominent position.

His joy was extreme when, late in the afternoon, he discovered an honest labouring man in the act of climbing a gate, which, owing to the rickety condition of its hinges, could not be opened without risk of falling flat upon the ground.

“Where be goin’ to?” inquired John, sternly.

“Why, jist home-along,” returned the other, with a good-humoured smile; “’tis a bit of a short cut this way.”

“There’s to be no more short cuts here,” cried John, with a certain almost malignant triumph. “These here meadows belongs to Squire. They’m his private property.”

The man’s jaw dropped. “That’ll be summat noo,” he said doubtfully, but still good-humouredly.

“’Tis noo times all round,” replied Guppy, with an odd contraction of the face, “but these ’ere reg’lations ’ull be carried out strict. You jist turn about, my bwoy.”

“I be three parts there now,” protested the other.

“Then you’ll have to step back three parts, that’s all,” responded Guppy unmoved.

The man scratched his head, stared, and finally recrossed the gate, and walked away, grumbling to himself, Guppy looking after him with a sense of well-nigh forgotten dignity. He had vindicated the majesty of the law.

All hitherto unconscious trespassers had thenceforth a bad time of it under the reign of the new river-keeper. Would-be bathers, small boys on bird’s-nesting intent, tired women with market-baskets, labourers on their way to and from their daily work, were ruthlessly turned back by old Guppy, whose magisterial air carried conviction with it. The other keepers, laughing perhaps in their sleeves, let him pursue his tactics unmolested, and the Squire was careful to congratulate him from time to time on the success of his labours. John Guppy’s greatest triumph was, perhaps, when he actually did discover a wild duck’s nest amid the sedges of the now tranquil river. How tenderly he watched over it; how proudly he noted the little brood of downy ducklings when they first paddled from one group of reeds to another in the wake of their mother; with what delight he imparted his discovery to the Squire, and with what supreme joy did he invite him to set about the destruction of these precious charges when they were sufficiently grown! Almost equal rapture was his when, having struggled along the avenue with a brace of ducks dangling from each hand, he encountered the head-keeper in the shrubbery.

“Those are fine ones,” remarked Sanders, good-naturedly; he was a good-hearted fellow in the main, and did not grudge the old man his small successes.

“I should think they was,” returned Guppy, swelling with pride. “They be uncommon fine uns, Maister Sanders; they be the only wild duck what was ever seen on this here property. I be glad to hear,” he added, condescendingly, “as you’ve done pretty well wi’ the pheasants, too. Squire was a-tellin’ me about the good season ye did have.”

“Yes,” rejoined the keeper, with a twinkle in his eye; “they didn’t turn out so bad, you see, Mr. Guppy.”

“I be very glad on’t, I’m sure,” said John, still condescendingly; “of course it be easy to rear a good few pheasants if you do go in for buyin’ eggs; it bain’t so very easy to get wild duck to take to a place where they never did come afore.”

“No, to be sure,” agreed Sanders affably. “It was a wonderful piece of luck, that was.”

“It wasn’t luck, Maister Sanders,” said John impressively, “it was knowledge.”

And he walked on, with conscious pride in every line of face and figure, leaving his successor chuckling.

THE WORM THAT TURNED.

“Where be goin’, William?”

“Oh, I be jest steppin’ up to the Pure Drop.”

And William Faithfull brought back his abstracted gaze from the horizon, where it habitually rested when it was not required for practical purposes in the exercise of his profession, and fixed itself somewhat shamefacedly on his interlocutor.

He was a tall, loose-limbed man, of about forty, with an expression of countenance chronically dismal, except at such times when he was employed in some particularly genial task, such as making a coffin, or repairing the church trestles, when his neighbours averred that he became quite lively, and even whistled as he worked.

His crony now returned his glance with a jocular one, and slapped his thigh ecstatically.

“Well, I never seed such a chap! Faithfull by name and faithful by natur’—ah, sure you are. Why, ’tis nigh upon twelve year, bain’t it, since ye started coortin’ Martha Jesty?”

“Somewhere about that,” replied William; and his countenance, already ruddy in the sunset glow, assumed a still deeper tint.

“Well, I never!” returned the other with a shout of laughter. “She be gettin’ on pretty well, now—I d’ ’low she’ll be a staid woman by the time you wed her.”

William shifted uneasily from one foot to the other.

“Well,” he said, after a pause, “I d’ ’low she be worth waitin’ for. She be wonderful clever, Martha be—an’ that sprack! No, I don’t regret it—not at all I don’t.”

“Bain’t the wold man anyways comin’ round?” inquired his friend with his head on one side.

“No,” returned Faithfull gloomily. “Not at all. But he be so terr’ble punished, poor wold chap, one can’t expect rayson off he.”

“’Tis the rheumatics, bain’t it?” was the next query in a commiserating tone.

“’Tis the sky-attics,” replied the carpenter, not without a certain pride in his pseudo-father-in-law’s distinguished ailment. “There, he be so scraggled as anything—all doubled up by times. Martha do say he goes twisty-like same as a eel, when it do take en real bad.”

“Lard, now!” ejaculated the other.

“’E-es,” said William, shaking his head—“that’s how it do take en. So, as Martha do say, ye can’t expect the onpossible. ‘If my father,’ says she, ‘be so scram-like in his out’ard man, how can ye look for en to act straight-forrard? He’ve a-set his mind again’ the notion of us gettin’ wed, so we must just wait till he be underground. And then,’ says she, ‘I’ll not keep ’ee waitin’ a minute longer.’”

“Well, that’s handsome,” agreed the friend, “but I’m afeard, William, that there complaint bain’t like to carry en off very soon—no, not so very soon. Nay, I’ve a-knowed folks keep on a-livin’ in a way that ’ud surprise ye, as was fair bent in two wi’ pains in all their j’ints. I reckon you’ll very like go first yerself, William.”

After a pause of deep depression the carpenter’s face lighted up.

“The sky-attics, d’ye see, Tom,” he explained condescendingly—“the sky-attics is a new-fayshioned ailment, an’ a deal dangerouser nor the wold rheumatiz an’ newralgy and sich. Why, when I did mention to Parson t’other day about wold Jesty’s sky-attics he did laugh. ‘Sky-attics,’ says he. ‘Then he’ll be like to go up’ards afore very long,’ says he. Well, so long, Tom; I must be steppin’ up-along now.”

“Ye’ll find the wold fellow a bit tilty,” remarked Tom; “whether them there ’attics was troublin’ en or not I can’t say, but he was a-shoutin’ an’ a bally-raggin’ o’ that poor faymale while I was drinkin’ my drap o’ beer jist now, till I wonder she wasn’t dathered.”

William’s recent elation disappeared; he vouchsafed no comment on the unwelcome news, however, but with a sidelong nod at his crony, shambled away, swinging his long limbs as though every joint of them was loose.

The Pure Drop was situated a stone’s throw from the village, and stood at the junction of four cross-roads; a most excellent position, which enabled it to waylay, as it were, not only the inhabitants of the hamlet as they set forth for or returned from their day’s vocations, but to capture most of the travellers who journeyed that way—cyclists galore, wagoners, dusty pedestrians. It must be owned that the aspect of the little place was inviting enough to tempt even a teetotaller; the low red-brick house overgrown with creepers, the mullioned windows winking brightly in the sun in summer, and in winter letting streams of ruddy firelight flow forth. It was so clean and airy, so cosy and trim, that those who went thither for the first time vowed they would return again, and old customers nodded knowingly, and declared that the place had not its like in the country. The liquor was good, while prudent folk who called for tea might have it, and a crusty home-baked loaf into the bargain, and a roll of fresh butter of Martha’s making.

Then Martha herself—though she was no longer in the first bloom of youth, she was a tidy, clean-skinned, pleasant-looking little body; and if her eye was sharp and her tongue ready, she was none the less popular on these accounts; every one got hauled over the coals from time to time, and when it was not your turn it was pleasant enough to see other folks made to look foolish.

Miss Jesty was standing in the open doorway when her lover came up, and immediately made a warning sign to him.

“Ye mustn’t come in to-night, William. Father—there! he’s something awful this evenin’, an’ he’ve a-been on the look-out for ye, so to speak, ever since dinner-time. Whenever the door do go, ‘There,’ he’ll cry, ‘is that that good-for-nothin’ William Faithfull?’ Or if there’s a knock, ‘’Tis that sammy o’ thine, for sure,’ he’ll say.”

“Oh, an’ does he?” returned poor William, with a deeper expression of melancholy.

Martha nodded portentously.

“Ye mustn’t come in to-day,” she said with decision; “no, not even for a minute. Father, he did say to I jist now, as whatever happened he wouldn’t have no cwortin’ here. ‘If ye can have the heart to think about cwortin’ when I’m so bad as I be,’ says he, ‘I’ll take an’ alter my will.’ So there’s nothin’ for it but for you to turn about an’ go home again.”

“I weren’t so much thinkin’ o’ cwortin’ this evenin’, Martha,” said the swain very meekly. “I wer’ lookin’ for a drap o’ beer—I be terr’ble dry.”

Martha hesitated for a moment, and in this interval a kind of bellow sounded from the interior of the house.

“That’s him,” she cried in terror. “No, William, ye can’t have no beer to-night. I dursen’t stay another minute. Go home-along, do, an’ if ye be so thirsty as that comes to, can’t ye get a bottle o’ ‘pop’ off Mrs. Andrews?”

William gazed at her blankly, but before he could protest his charmer had disappeared within the house, and he was forced very dolefully to retrace his steps. He did indeed purchase the bottle of “pop,” but found it by no means exhilarating; in fact, as he laid his head on the pillow that night he was tempted to think he might pay too high a price even for the hope of becoming one day Martha’s husband.

When on the following Sunday evening, however, he walked in the shady lane hand-in-hand with his sweetheart, he forgot how irksome was this time of trial, and listened with the melancholy satisfaction which was his nearest approach to cheerfulness (on ordinary occasions) to the glowing picture with which she depicted the reward earned by his constancy.

“I do r’alely think as poor father be a-breakin’ up,” she remarked consolingly. “When winter comes I reckon he’ll not be able to hold out. Well,” she added piously, “’tis what comes to us all, soon or late, an’ I’m sure he be well prepared, for I don’t think he’ve a-had a day’s health this twenty year. ’Twill be a mercy when he do go, poor wold man. An’ the winter ’ud be a very nice time for us to get married, William; ’twould suit us very well, wouldn’t it?”

“Ah, sure,” said William, with a slow smile.

“We shouldn’t be so busy then, d’ye see,” resumed Martha. “The harvestin’ ’ud be done an’ the potato-gettin’; an’ there wouldn’t be so many by-cyclists—there’s not so much goin’ backwards an’ forrards in winter-time. We shouldn’t be at much loss if we was to take a holiday.”

“Ah,” said William, with mournful rapture, “you was thinkin’ of us takin’ a holiday, was ye, Martha?”

“I thought we mid go to London,” cried Miss Jesty triumphantly. “I have always longed to go to London an’ see the sights there, an’ go to the theayters. There! Susan Inkpen as wed Miller Dewey did go up to London for her honeymoon.”

“For her what?” interrupted Faithfull.

“For her honeymoon—her weddin’ journey—the jaunt what folks do take when they gets wed.”

“Oh, to be sure,” said the carpenter. “An’ you an’ me be to go to London for our honeymoon, be we?”

“’E-es,” cried Martha with a chuckle. “We’ll have a rale week’s pleasurin’, you an’ me. If ’tis winter-time—as most like ’twill be, on account o’ poor father’s sky-attics, you know—the pantomines ’ull be goin’ on. Susan Dewey did go, an’ she said they was the wonderfullest things, wi’ fairies an’ mermaids, an’ sich-like, an’ Clown an’ Pantaloon a-knockin’ of each other about. There, she an’ her husband did fair split their sides wi’ laughin’.”

William appeared to survey this prospect stolidly, and made no comment, and Miss Jesty continued eagerly:—

“Then there’d be the Waxworks, an’ the Zoo, where all the wild beasts is kept; an’ we’d go an’ see the Tower o’ London, where all the king’s jools an’ suits of armour is set out, an’ we’d go to Westminster Abbey——”

“What’s that?” inquired Mr. Faithfull dubiously.

Martha was taken aback for a moment.

“Susan went to see it,” said she hesitatingly, “so I s’pose ’tis worth lookin’ at. ’Tis a wold ancient church.”

“A wold church?” repeated William, shaking his head. “I d’ ’low I shouldn’t care so much to see that. I’d sooner wait till ’twas done-up fresh-like. I never cared at all for goin’ into our church till the Rector had it cleaned and painted-up so good as new. I think ’t ’ud be a foolish kind o’ thing to go trapesin’ off to yon—what-d’-ye-call-it—Abbey till they get it repaired.”

“Maybe not,” agreed Martha cheerfully; “there’s plenty more to be seen wi’out that. Well, I hope the Lord ’ull spare father so long as it be good for en, poor dear man, but if he was to be took, I hope as it may be in the winter, William.”

William, who had been trailing beside her arm-in-crook, suddenly stopped short and faced her with a determined air.

“Whether he do go in winter or whether he do go in summer, Martha,” said he, “you an’ me must be called home so soon as he be laid underground, mind that.”

And having come to the turn in the lane where they usually parted, William went his way, leaving Martha somewhat in doubt whether to be pleased at this proof of ardour or indignant at the sudden display of spirit.

A wilful woman is proverbially supposed to have her way, yet it sometimes happens that, even when she proposes, Heaven disposes events otherwise than she would have had them. Thus, though Martha Jesty had made arrangements for her father to depart this life in the winter—a time when business should be conveniently slack—that worthy old gentleman was removed from this earthly sphere in the very height of summer, when the harvest was in full swing, and more than an ordinary number of tourists halted daily for refreshment at the Pure Drop.

Tidings of this melancholy event were imparted to William by a group who entered his yard on the morning of the occurrence, each eager to be the first to tell the news. That old Mr. Jesty was gone was an incontrovertible fact, but none of the newsmongers could agree as to the precise ailment which had carried him off. He had had a bit of a cold for a day or two, but while some said it had turned to “browntitus,” others were sure it was “poomonia,” and one shrill-voiced old lady delivered it as her opinion that nothing short of an “apple-complex” could have carried him off that sudden.

Beyond sundry “ohs” and “ahs” and grunts indicative of surprise and sympathy, William made no remark, though when one facetious bystander observed that it would be his turn next—a somewhat obscure phrase, which might be interpreted in a variety of ways—he grinned appreciatively.

No sooner had the gossips departed, however, than he went indoors and assumed his coat, and immediately betook himself, not to the Pure Drop, but to the Rectory.

“The Reverend,” as his parishioners frequently called him, was sitting in his study, tranquilly reading his Times, when William Faithfull was ushered in.

“You’ll have heard the noos, sir,” he began abruptly; “old Abel Jesty up to the Pure Drop, he’s gone at last.”

“Oh!” said the Rector, looking rather startled; “that’s sudden, isn’t it?”

“’E-es,” said William, with a wooden face; “sudden but not unpre-pared. Martha has been a-lookin’ for en to go this ten year.”

“Oh!” said the Rector again, this time a little uncertainly.

“’E-es,” resumed William; “I thought I’d call an’ tell ye, so as ye need lose no time in settling things.”

“About the funeral, I suppose you mean?” put in the clergyman as he paused.

“No,” said William, who was gazing not only over the Rector’s head, but apparently through the wall at some distant sky-line; “about the weddin’—mine an’ Martha’s. Ye mid call us over on Sunday.”

“Really, William, I think that is too sudden,” said the Rector; “why, the poor old man won’t have been dead a week!”

“He be so dead as ever he’ll be,” returned William, still gazing impenetrably at that far point in an imaginary horizon. “Martha an’ I have a-made it up years ago, an’ settled as she’d not keep me waitin’ no longer after her father was took. I’ll thank ye to call us home, sir.”

And with that he scraped a leg and pulled his forelock and withdrew, leaving the Rector, half-scandalised, half-amused, murmuring to himself as the door closed something about “funeral baked-meats,” which William set down as a “bit o’ voolishness”.

He found Martha plunged in the most praiseworthy grief, thereby much edifying the neighbours who had gathered together to condole with her; but William, who could only see the other aspect of the affair, immediately beckoned her on one side and informed her of the step he had taken.

“Lard!” cried she, genuinely taken aback, “whatever made ye do that? Why, father ’ull only be buried o’ Thursday. You shouldn’t ha’ done it wi’out axin’ me. ’Tis too sudden. The folks ’ull say we’ve no decency.”

“Let ’em say what they like,” returned William firmly. “I’ll keep to my ’greement, an’ I expect you to do the same. ’Twas drawed out ten year ago an’ more. I’ve stuck to my word, an’ you must stick to your’n.”

“’Twill be a very onconvenient time,” said Martha reflectively. “Three-week come Monday—the middle of August that’ll be, jist when we do take more money nor any other month in the year.”

William cracked his finger joints one after another with great decision, but made no verbal reply.

“There, I’ve a-been lookin’ forward to our honeymoon all these years,” complained Martha, fresh tears rushing to her eyes; “it’ll be a shame, I declare, if we have to give it up! I’ve never took a holiday, no, not since mother died. I don’t see how we can get away then, William.”

“I don’t care so much about gettin’ away,” said Faithfull resolutely. “’Tis the weddin’ I do want. I’ll not have no shilly-shally. I’ve a-told ye hundreds of times as I wouldn’t wait a day longer nor I could help—an’ I won’t wait. You’d best make up your mind to it.”

“Why, whatever’s come to ye?” cried Martha, really angry. “’Tis downright indecent to go upsettin’ me like this in the midst o’ my trouble. ’Tisn’t for you to be namin’ the day either. Jist you keep a civil tongue in your head, William, an’ have a bit o’ patience—maybe about Michaelmas——”

“Michaelmas!” ejaculated the carpenter, catching up his hat and fixing it firmly on his head. “I’ll tell you summat, Martha—I’m goin’ to get married o’ Monday three-week, whatever you mid be. If ye can’t make up your mind to it there’s them as will. I’ll go warrant my cousin Sabina, over to Sturminster, ’ud have me if I was to ax her. Her an’ me was always very thick. Gully, that’s her husband, left her very comfortable, an’ she has but the one little maid.”

Martha thereupon came round in a twinkling, and flinging herself into his arms, promised to agree to everything he wished. A tender scene ensued, at the end of which William suggested that he had better go upstairs to measure the poor old man for his coffin.

When he came down again he found Martha in the midst of her cronies, to whom she had imparted, with a kind of regretful elation, the extreme pressure which William had brought to bear upon her with regard to their approaching nuptials, all her hearers being much impressed and edified by the recital.

She turned to her lover as he was about to leave the house:—

“Ye’ll not be chargin’ me nothin’, I shouldn’t think,” she remarked with mournful archness.

William, who had not hitherto considered the matter, hesitated for a moment, and then observed handsomely:—

“Nothin’ but the price of the wood, my dear. You shall have the labour free.”

“Lard bless the man!” cried she, with some irritation. “I believe he’s goin’ to make out a bill for it. Why, don’t ye see, William, if we’re to be man an’ wife in three-week, ’twill be but takin’ the money out o’ one pocket to put it in the other?”

“And that’s true,” agreed the friends in chorus.

After a pause, during which the carpenter had thoroughly mastered the situation, he turned to his intended, and, with a sudden burst of generosity, informed her that he would make her a present of the whole thing.

“I haven’t gied you so very much afore now,” said he, “but I’ll make you a present of this, my dear, an’ welcome.”

And he walked away, while Martha, looking after him through her tears, observed that there wasn’t a better-natured man in the whole of England.

William, indeed, was in such good humour at the approaching fruition of his hopes that Martha found him more amenable than ever to her views.

Therefore, when, a day or two after the funeral, she encountered him on his way to the tailor’s, where he intended, as he informed her, to order his wedding-suit, she was emboldened to lay her hand on his arm and beseech him tearfully to be married, like her, in “deep”.

“’Twill show proper feelin’,” said she. “All the neighbours ’ull know that you are showin’ respect to poor father; an’ since ye’ll be jist comin’ into the family, ’twill be but decent as you should wear black for him what’s gone.”

William, who had been dreaming of a certain imposing stripe which had dazzled him, days before, in the tailor’s window, among the pile labelled “Elegant Trouserings,” now dismissed with a sigh the alluring vision, and promised to appear in mourning as requested.

But when later on Martha unfolded to him another plan, he gave in his adherence to it with some reluctance. It was no less a proposition than that they should take their honeymoon by turns.

“You see,” she explained, “it just falls out that the weddin’s the very week o’ the Branston show—the house ’ull be full from morn till night for three days or more; an’ we turn over enough that week to pay the year’s rent, very near. ’Twouldn’t do for us both to be away.”

William gazed at her with a more rueful face than she had ever yet beheld in him.

“Dear now! don’t you take on,” urged Martha. “I thought, d’ye see, I’d just pop up to London for a few days by myself, an’ you can stop an’ mind the house, an’ maybe some time in the winter we mid both on us take a few days together somewhere.”

William gazed at her reproachfully.

“Ye didn’t ought to want to go a-pleasurin’ wi’out I,” said he.

“No more I would, my dear,” returned his future better-half, “if it could be helped. But ’twas yourself as named the day, an’ if ye won’t have it put off——”

The carpenter, with a vigorous shake of the head, intimated that he certainly would not have it put off.

“Well, then,” summed up Martha triumphantly, “ye must agree to let me have a bit o’ honeymoon. ’Tis what every bride expects, an’ ’tis the one thought what have kept my heart up all these years. I’ve always promised myself this holiday afore I settled down to wedded life.”

William stared at her gloomily, but made no further opposition; and she informed him in a cheerful tone that he need not fear her staying away too long.

“We’ll have the weddin’ o’ Monday mornin’,” said she, “quite private-like. The neighbours all know we can’t have a great set-out here, on account o’ poor father. An’ you can carry my bag to the station directly we leave church, an’ I’ll be back again Saturday night, so as we can go to church together Sunday mornin’. Will that do ye?”

“’Twill have to do me, I s’pose,” returned William, still with profound melancholy.

“’Tis by your own wish, ye know,” said the bride; “if you hadn’t held out for us to be married all in such a hurry, I’m sure I should have been glad for us to take our honeymoon together, my dear. But ye can’t have everythin’ in this world.”

“No,” agreed Faithfull, with a groan; “no, that ye can’t. ’Twould ha’ been more nat’ral-like to go on our honeymoon together; but what must be, must be.”

On the Monday morning the much-discussed wedding took place; bride and bridegroom were alike clad in new and glossy black, Martha’s blushing countenance being scarcely visible beneath her crape “fall”.

The villagers were all much impressed; there is nothing indeed that the rustic mind so thoroughly appreciates as the panoply of woe, and to find this mourning ceremonial united with marriage pomp was felt to be a rare privilege, and, as such, productive of sincere admiration.

When the wedded pair left church, their friends and neighbours hastened to offer congratulations, attuned to a becoming note of dismalness, which intimated that condolence lay behind; and it was a rude shock for all when William was suddenly hailed in a tone of most discordant cheerfulness. A tall, black-eyed woman had suddenly rushed forward and seized him by the hand.

“There, now! So I wasn’t in time after all! I made sure I’d get here soon enough to see the weddin’. I did always say I’d come to your weddin’, didn’t I, William? I thought it very unkind of ye not to ax me.”

“’Twas very private-like, d’ye see, Sabina,” said William, who had been energetically pumping her hand up and down. “Martha, here—I mean Miss Jesty, no, I mean Mrs. Faithfull—she did want it private, along of her father being dead.”

“Have ye been a-buryin’ of en to-day?” interrupted the newcomer with an awe-struck glance at his sable garb. “No, no—of course not. But why did ye go for to get married in deep?”

“My ’usband,” said Martha repressively, “thought it but right to show respect to them that’s gone, Mrs. Gully—I think ye said your cousin’s name was Gully, William; I s’pose this is your cousin?”

“’E-es, to be sure,” agreed the owner of that name, cheerfully. “Half-cousin, if ye like it better—our mothers was two brothers’ daughters.”

“Indeed,” said Martha stiffly. “I must wish ’ee good-day now, for William an’ me be in a hurry to catch train.”

Mrs. Gully’s jaw dropped, but the carpenter, after hastily explaining that they weren’t having any party along of the mourning, invited her to come home and take a bite o’ summat with him and his wife before they went to the station.

A frown from Martha intimated that she considered this hospitality ill-timed, but William stuck to his point, and they all three turned their steps together towards the Pure Drop.

“I think I’ll hurry on an’ change my dress,” remarked Martha, after stalking on for some moments in silence.

She was not going to travel in her best black and get the crape all messed about with dust.

“Don’t mind me, William, my dear,” said Sabina, when the bride had left them. “If you’re wanting to change your deep, ye’d best hurry on, too, maybe.”

“I’ve no need to change my suit,” returned William sorrowfully. “I bain’t a-goin’ on the honeymoon.”

“What!” cried the widow, in astonishment. “She’s never goin’ to leave ye on your weddin’ day?”

“She be,” said Mr. Faithfull slowly. “It do seem a bit hard, but we couldn’t both on us leave the house, an’ she haven’t a-had a holiday for twenty year. Ye see, it fell out this way—”

And he proceeded to explain the circumstances, already related, on which Mrs. Gully animadverted with much warmth.

They were still discussing the matter when Martha rejoined them in the private room of the Pure Drop, where a slight refection had been set forth.

This was partaken of hastily, and for the most part in silence, and at its conclusion Mrs. Faithfull jumped up and took a ceremonious farewell of her new cousin. William shouldered his wife’s bag and set forth beside her. Martha beguiled the walk to the station by a variety of injunctions, all of which the new landlord of the Pure Drop promised to heed and obey. It was not until she had actually taken her seat in the railway carriage that she found time for sentiment, and then, embracing her husband, she expressed the affectionate hope that he would not be lonely during her absence.

William clambered out of the compartment and carefully closed the door before he answered:—

“Well, I shan’t be altogether that lonely. Sabina—she be a-comin’ to keep I company till ye come back.”

“Never!” cried Mrs. Faithfull, thrusting a scared face out of the window. “You don’t mean to say ye took on yerself to ax her to stop in my house?”

The whistle sounded at this juncture, but William walked beside the train as it slowly moved off.

“I didn’t ax her. ’Twas she herself as did say, when she heerd you were a-goin’ for to leave I all by mysel’, says she, ‘I’ll tell ’ee what, Will’um; I’ll take a holiday, too, an’——’” A loud and prolonged shriek from the engine drowned the remainder of the sentence, and the train steamed away, the last sign of the new-made bride being the agitating waving of a protesting hand from the carriage window.

The carpenter was smoking a ruminative pipe, about four o’clock on that same afternoon, in the doorway of the snug little hostelry of which he now found himself master, when he was suddenly hailed by a distracted voice from the road.

“William! for the Lard’s sake, William, do ’ee come and ketch hold of this here bag!”

William removed his pipe, stared, and then wedging the stem firmly in the corner of his mouth, rushed down the path and up the roadway.

“Bless me, Martha, be ye comed back again? Tired o’ London a’ready?”

“No, my dear, I didn’t ever get so far as London,” cried Martha, thrusting the bag into his hand, and throwing herself in a heated and exhausted condition upon his neck. “I didn’t go no further than Templecombe. There, I’d no sooner started nor I did feel all to once that I couldn’t a-bear to leave ’ee. I fair busted out a-cryin’ in the train.”

“Did ye?” said Faithfull, much gratified.

“I did indeed,” resumed his wife. “‘Oh,’ says I, ‘how could I ever treat en so unfair,’ says I, ‘arter all them years as him an’ me was a-walkin’? Oh,’ says I, ‘when I think of his melancholy face, an’ this his weddin’ day an’ all.’ So I nips out at Templecombe, an’ gets another ticket, an’ pops into the train as were just startin’ Branston-way—an’ here I be.”

“Well, an’ I be pure glad to see ye,” cried William heartily.

They had by this time reached the house, and Mrs. Faithfull, still breathless with fatigue and agitation, stared anxiously about.

“Where is she?” she inquired in a whisper.

“Who?” said William, setting down the bag.

“Why, your Cousin Sabina!”

“Oh, her!” said William, with something like a twinkle in his usually lack-lustre eye; “she be gone home-along to fetch her things an’ lock up her house. She says she’ll come back to-morrow mornin’ first thing.”

“Well, but we don’t want her now, do we?” cried Martha, trembling with eagerness. “I was thinkin’ maybe after all, ye’d fancy a bit of a holiday, William. Ye might drop her a bit of a line an’ say ye was goin’ to take the first honeymoon yerself. I fancy ye’d like London very well, William. You should have the first turn, by right, the man bein’ master; an’ I mid be able to run up for a couple o’ days at the end o’ the week. Here’s my ticket, d’ye see; you could catch the last train, you know, an’ then, as I tell ’ee, I’d come an’ j’ine ye.”

“That won’t do,” said William firmly; “nay, ’twon’t do.”

“Why not?” gasped Martha.

“Ye may pop that ticket in the fire,” said William, speaking slowly, and suffering his countenance to relax gradually. “’Tain’t no manner of use to I. I—be—a-goin’—for to stop—an’ keep—my—honeymoon—here—along of ’ee.”

OLF AND THE LITTLE MAID.

Olf drove the cows up from their pasture by the river, whistling all the way as was his wont. It was not a particularly tuneful whistle, for he had no ear for music; nevertheless, blending as it did with the morning ecstasies of a particularly early lark, with the chirp of the newly awakened nestlings in the rambling hedges, with the drone of the first bee, with the thousand and one other sounds of the summer dawn, these vacillating notes added something to the general harmony. As his troop of cows plodded tranquilly in front of him, they made green tracks in the dewy sheen of the fields, the silvery uniformity of which had hitherto been unbroken save for the print of Olf’s own footsteps, large and far apart, where he had stridden forth half an hour before to gather together his charges.

Arrived at the open gate, the cows passed solemnly through, crossed the road and turned up the narrow lane which led to Farmer Inkpen’s premises, made their way to the shed at the farther end and took possession each of her own stall.

The farmer had just emerged from the house, and was in the act of tying the strings of his white “pinner”; his wife and daughter, each carrying the necessary three-legged stool, were walking slowly towards the scene of their morning labours. Another female form was already ensconced on a similar stool at the very farthest end of the shed, and edged itself a little sideways as the leading cow stepped past it to her accustomed place. In a few minutes the whole herd had ranged itself, and the rhythmical splash of milk falling into the pails was soon heard.

According to custom, Olf’s next proceeding should have been to “sarve” the pigs, but instead of directing his steps towards the adjacent styes, he stood embracing one of the posts which supported the shed, and gazing at his master with a vague smile on his habitually foolish face.

“Well, Olf?” inquired the farmer, dropping his horny fingers from the bow which he had just succeeded in tying in the middle of his portly waist.

“Well, maister!”

The farmer glanced at him in amazement.

“Anything wrong?”

The smile on Olf’s face expanded into a grin. Clasping the post still more firmly with one hand, he swung himself round it to the full length of his arm, then swung himself back again and became suddenly serious.

“Nay, sir, nay, there’s nothin’ wrong. I thought I mid just so well show you this ’ere.”

Down went his hand into the depths of his pocket, from which, after producing sundry articles of no particular interest to any one but their owner, he drew forth a piece of paper, folded small, and soiled with much fingering. This he handed to his master, his face now preternaturally solemn, his eyes round with an expression which might almost be taken for one of awe.

Farmer Inkpen smoothed out this document and read it, his jaw dropping with amazement when he had mastered its contents. He stared at Olf, who stared back at him with palpably increasing nervousness.

“Whatever is it?” cried Mrs. Inkpen, thrusting her head round from behind the dappled flank of her particular cow. “No bad noos, I hope.”

“Bad noos!” ejaculated her husband, recovering his wits and his voice together, “what d’ye think? Olf there has come into a fortun’!”

“Never!” exclaimed Mrs. Inkpen, craning her neck as far as she could round her charge, but not ceasing for a moment in her occupation. “You don’t say so!”

“However did ye manage that, Olf?” cried Annie Inkpen. And the “spurt spurt” of the milk into her pail ceased for a moment.

“’Tis a prize drawin’,” explained her father, speaking for Olf, who was notoriously slow with his tongue. “He’ve a-been an’ took a ticket in one o’ them Dutch lotteries.”

“Four on ’em,” interrupted Olf, with unexpected promptitude.

“Eh?” inquired his master, turning round to look at him.

“I say I did take four on ’em!” repeated Olf. “They was a-talkin’ about it in the town, an’ they said two tickets gave ye a better chance nor one, an’ four was the best of all. So I did settle to take four.”

“Well, what have ye got? How much is the prize?” cried the “missus,” now mightily excited, and feeling more at leisure to gratify her curiosity, as the time had come for “stripping” her cow.

“A thousand pound, no less,” shouted her lord before Olf could open his mouth. “Why, Olf’s as good as a gentleman now. Lard, I never had the layin’ out of a thousand pound in my life. Why, ye can take a bigger farm nor this if ye do like, an’ ye can stock it straight off wi’out being beholden to anybody.”

Olf, who had again been swinging himself round the post, now paused to digest this astonishing piece of information.

Mrs. Inkpen cackled as she picked up her stool and proceeded to operate on the next of the long row.

“Why, he’ll be settin’ up so grand as you please,” she cried. “He’ll be gettin’ married first off, I should think. Tain’t no use tryin’ to work a farm wi’out a missus.”

At this juncture light steps were heard pattering over the cobble-stones, and Maggie Fry, from the village in the “dip,” came up, jug in hand, to fetch the milk for her father’s breakfast.

“What do you think?” shouted Annie, raising herself a little from her seat in order to judge of the effect which her announcement would produce upon Maggie, who was a crony of hers. “What do you think, Maggie? Here’s Olfred Boyt come into a fortun’. He’ve a-been an’ won the thousand pound prize in one of them Dutch bank drawin’s—he is a rich man this mornin’!”

“He is,” chimed in her mother, with a crow of laughter. “I am just tellin’ him he’ll have to look out for a wife first thing. Mr. Farmer Boyt must have a missus to look after the grand noo property he be a-goin’ to buy.”

“Ah, sure he will,” cried the farmer.

Olf swung himself round the post once more, and then slowly regaining his former place, gazed thoughtfully at Annie, whose fair, curly head was delicately outlined against the golden-red flank of her cow.

“I’d as soon have you as any one, Annie,” he remarked hesitatingly.

“Me!” cried Annie, jumping up and knocking over her stool. “Of all the impudence! Me, Olf? Your master’s daughter?”

Her pretty face was flushed to the temples, her eyes were flashing fire. Her mother and father burst into loud laughter, in which Maggie joined.

“I d’ ’low he isn’t very slack once he do make up his mind,” cried the farmer, wiping his eyes. “’Tis a bit strong, I will say, ’tis a bit strong, Olf.”

“I’ll be a master myself now,” explained Olf, looking from one to the other, “an’ I’d as soon have Annie as any one,” he added with conviction.

“Well, I’d a deal sooner not have you,” ejaculated Annie, picking up her stool, and sitting down again with a suddenness that betokened great perturbation of mind. “I think ’tis most awful cheeky of you, Olf, to ask me, an’ I don’t see as it is any laughing matter.”

Thereupon she fell to work again, the milk falling into her pail in a jerky manner, which, while relieving her own feeling, was not altogether satisfactory to her meek charge, whose horned head came peering round as though to ascertain the cause of this unusual disturbance.

Olf, after contemplating for a moment the resolute outline of the back presented to him so decidedly, slowly turned his gaze upon Maggie, who still stood by, laughing and dangling her jug.

“Will you have me, Maggie?” he inquired pleasantly.

“Dear heart alive!” ejaculated the farmer, while his wife once more gave utterance to a shout of laughter.

It was now Maggie’s turn to flush and look disconcerted. “I’m not goin’ to put up wi’ Annie’s leavings,” she cried indignantly. “The idea! I s’pose you reckon any maid is to be picked up for the axin’, Olfred Boyt. You think you have nothin’ more to do nor just p’int your finger at the first one you fancy an’ she’ll have you straight off. A pretty notion!”

“A pretty notion indeed,” cried Annie, “and a pretty figure he’d be to go out a-coortin’!”

“’E-es,” resumed Maggie, with ever-increasing indignation, “a pretty figure, I d’ ’low. Tell ye what, Olf, next time you go a-coortin’ ye’d best wash your face first.”

“Ah! ’tis true. ’Twould be a good notion,” laughed the farmer. “Ye bain’t exactly the kind o’ figure a maid ’ud jump at.”

Olf raised a grimy hand to his sunburnt face as though to ascertain what manner of appearance it presented. It was true he had not washed it that morning, but there was nothing surprising in that. It would indeed have been a manifestly sinful waste of soap and water to perform one’s ablutions before “sarving” the pigs. In fact, according to established custom, Olf’s toilet was accomplished at a late hour in the afternoon when his labours were concluded. The condition of his chin would have at once announced to any experienced observer that it was then the middle of the week; from the appearance of his garments he might have recently effected a change with a tolerably respectable scarecrow. Altogether, after a moment’s reflection, Olf felt that Maggie’s point of view was justified, and that he was not precisely the kind of figure to go courting at such short notice. Presently he remarked reflectively, “Ah! ’tis true, I mid ’ave washed myself a bit afore axin’ the question. I will next time.”

Then he held out his hand to the farmer for the paper, pocketed it, and went shambling across the yard towards the corner where the pig-bucket stood.

Except for the clatter of the cans, and the sound of the spurting milk, silence reigned in the shed for a moment after his departure. The farmer stood scratching his chin meditatively, while the women-folk appeared also lost in thought.

By-and-by Mrs. Inkpen’s voice sounded muffled from behind her cow. “A thousand pound, mind ye, isn’t to be picked up every day.”

“It bain’t,” cried her husband.

Annie tossed her head. “He be a regular sammy,” she remarked.

“And ’tisn’t as if a maid hadn’t plenty of other chaps to walk with,” chimed in Maggie.

From the farthest corner a little voice suddenly sounded, “He be a very kind man, Olf be. He be a very kind man.”

“Do you think so, Kitty?” called out the farmer good-naturedly. “Hark to the little maid! You think Olf be a kind man, do ye, Kitty?”

“Don’t talk so much and mind your work, Kitty,” said Mrs. Inkpen severely. “Nobody axed your opinion. The idea,” she continued, in an angry undertone to her husband, “of a little chit, the same as that, puttin’ in her word. What does she know about Olf, or what kind of a man he is? You will have to be lookin’ out for somebody else to take Olf’s place, that’s what I’m thinkin’,” she remarked presently to her husband. “’Tis a pity. Olf be a bit of a sammy, as Annie do say, but he is a good worker and never gives no trouble. I could wish somebody else had won the fortun’.”

The two girls were now gossiping together and interchanging various opinions derogatory to Olf, and eulogistic of sundry other youths with whom it would appear they “walked” by preference. By-and-by the milking was concluded, and the farmer and his women-folk went in to breakfast, Maggie having taken her departure some minutes before.

As the cows began to troop pasturewards again, Olf, standing by the yard-gate, noticed a girl’s figure come darting forth from the obscurity of the shed. It was Kitty, a workhouse-bred orphan, whom Mrs. Inkpen had engaged as general help in house and dairy. She was a little creature, small and slight, with a round freckled face and flaming red hair. I say “flaming” advisedly, for it seemed to give forth as well as to receive light. Her face, habitually pink and white, was now extremely pink all over as she paused opposite Olf; a dimple peeped in and out near the corner of her mouth, and her teeth flashed in a smile that was half-shy and half-mischievous.

“Please, Olf,” said she, “if you are lookin’ for a wife, I’m willin’ to have ye.”

Olf, who had been about to pass through the gate in the rear of his charges, wheeled about and faced her, scratching his jaw meditatively.

“Oh, an’ are you, Kitty?” said he.

“E-es,” said Kitty, nodding emphatically.

Olf eyed her thoughtfully, and then his eyes reverted to the cows, which, after the perverse manner of their kind, were nibbling at the quickset hedge over the way.

“Who-ope, who-ope,” he called warningly, and then once more glanced at Kitty. “We’ll talk about that ’ere when I come back,” he remarked, and sauntered forth pulling the rickety gate to after him.

Kitty paused a moment with a puzzled look, and then, being a philosophical young person, picked up her pail and betook herself indoors.

She had finished a somewhat perfunctory breakfast, and was on her knees scrubbing the doorstep when Olf returned. She heard his footfall crossing the yard, but did not look round, neither did she glance up when his shadow fell upon the sunlit flags. After the necessary pause for adjustment of his ideas, Olf broke the silence.

“You’d be willin’ to take me?” said he.

“E-es,” returned Kitty, without raising her head.

Olf paused a moment, then—“You’d like to marry me, would ye, Kitty?”

“E-es,” said Kitty again.

“They two other maids wouldn’t so much as look at me,” pursued Olf, in a ruminative tone. “I wonder what makes ye think you’d like to marry me, maidie?”

Kitty sat back upon her heels and contemplated him gravely, mechanically soaping her scrubbing-brush the while.

“You did carry my pail for I t’other day when ’twas too heavy,” she replied presently, “and you did black my shoes on Sunday when I was afraid I would be late for church. And besides,” she added, “I think ’twould be nice to get married, and there—I be so sick of scrubbin’ doorsteps and cleanin’ pots and pans!”

“That’s it, be it?” said Olf. “But you mid still have to clean pots and pans after we was married, Kitty,” he added with a provident eye to the future. “The missus, she do often do a bit of cleanin’ up, if she be the missus.”

“That would be different,” returned Kitty. “I shouldn’t have no objections to scourin’ my own pots and pans.”

“True, true,” agreed Olf.

Kitty dropped on all-fours again. “Well, I have told ye I’d be willin’,” she observed in somewhat ruffled tones, “but of course ye needn’t if ye don’t like.”

“Who says I don’t like?” returned Olf, with unexpected warmth. “I d’ ’low I do like. I do think it a very good notion, my maid.”

Kitty gave a little unexpected giggle, and continued to polish her doorstep with an immense deal of energy. Olf stood by for a moment in silence. Then to her surprise, and it must be owned, dismay, he turned about and walked slowly away.

If Kitty had been unwilling to turn her head a few moments before, no earthly power would have induced her to glance round at him now; she began to sing blithely and carelessly to herself, and made a great clatter with her pail and scrubbing-brush. Not such a clatter, however, but that after a moment or two she detected the sound of vigorous pumping on the opposite side of the yard, and guessed, from certain subsequent sounds, that Olf was washing his face.

Louder than ever sang Kitty when he presently crossed the yard again and bent over her. But a wave of colour rushed over her downcast face, and even dyed her little white neck. She could hear Olf chuckling, and presently a large finger, moist from recent ablutions, touched her chin.

“Look up a minute, my maid,” said Olf.

Kitty looked up. Olf’s sunburnt face was scarlet from the result of his late exertions, and was imperfectly dried, but it wore so frank and kindly a smile that the little maid smiled back with absolute confidence.

“So we be to start a-coortin’, be we?” inquired Olf pleasantly.

“I d’ ’low we be,” responded Kitty.

“How’s that for a beginnin’, then?” inquired Olf. And thereupon he kissed her.

At this moment Mrs. Inkpen appeared on the threshold, and soon her penetrating tones announced to the household that Olf was at last suited with a bride. A good deal of jesting and laughing ensued—not perhaps altogether good-natured, for in some unaccountable way both Mrs. Inkpen and Annie felt themselves slighted by this sudden transfer of Olf’s affection—but the newly-engaged couple submitted to their raillery with entire good humour, and presently resumed their interrupted vocations as though nothing particular had taken place.

Towards evening, however, Olf found a moment for a word with his little sweetheart.

“I be a-goin’ over to take this ’ere bit of writin’ to the bank to-morrow,” said he. “Maister says ’tis the best thing to do. He says they’ll keep it and give I money when I do want it. I were a-thinkin’, Kitty, I mid make ye a bit of a present—’tis all in the way o’ coortin’, bain’t it? I wonder now what you’d like?”

“Oh!” cried Kitty, her eyes dancing with excitement, “that’s real good o’ ye, Olf. I can’t call to mind as anybody ever gave me a present. I do want a new hat terrible bad.”

“A new hat,” repeated Olf, “that’s easy got. Wouldn’t ye like summat a bit grander—a real handsome present? What would you like best in the world, Kitty?”

“O-o-o-h!” cried Kitty again, and this time her eyes became round with something that was almost awe. “What I’d like best in the whole world, Olf, would be to have a gold watch. I did dream once that I did have a real gold watch o’ my own, and I never, never, never thought that it mid come true. O-o-o-h! if I was to have a gold watch!”

“Say no more, maidie,” exclaimed Olf, with doughty resolution, “you shall have that there gold watch so sure as my name be Olfred Boyt. There now! And you can show it to Annie and Maggie Fry, and they can see for theirselves what they mid ha’ had if they had been willin’ to take me.”

Kitty pouted. “You don’t want to marry them now you be a-goin’ to marry I, do ye?” she inquired pettishly.

“No more I do,” cried Olf, “but they mid ha’ been a bit more civil.”

Kitty agreeing to this statement, harmony was at once restored, and the pair parted with complete satisfaction.

Next day Olf duly conferred with his banker, and in an extremely bad hand, and with difficulty, accomplished the writing of his first cheque. It was for £5—a sum of money which he had never in all his life hoped to possess at one time. In fact, he was more elated at the sight of the five golden sovereigns than he had been in contemplating his thousand pound bond. He expended a certain portion of this new wealth on his own personal adornment—having his hair cut at a barber’s for the first time in his existence, and investing in a new suit of clothes, the pattern being a check of a somewhat startling description. He also purchased a hat for Kitty with a wreath of blue flowers, supplemented, at his particular request, by a white feather.

“We do not generally use feathers with flowers,” expostulated the shopwoman.

Olf considered. “I think I will have the feather all the same,” said he; “feathers is more richer-like.”

“I did not want for to grudge ye nothin’, ye see,” he subsequently explained to Kitty, “and this ’ere is the gold watch.”

Kitty positively gasped with rapture. It was a very fine watch certainly, extremely yellow, and with a little diapered pattern on the case.

“It cost thirty-five shillin’,” explained Olf, with modest triumph. “’Tis rolled gold, so you may think how good that must be.”

Kitty gasped again. Farmer Inkpen possessed a gold watch of turnip shape and immense weight, but she felt quite sure it was not rolled gold, and in consequence a highly inferior article. She turned towards Olf with a sudden movement and clasped both her little hands about his arm—“I do like ye, Olf,” she said, “I do. I do think ye be the kindest man that ever was made. I’ll work for ye so hard as I can when I be your missus.”

There being no reason to delay the wedding, preparations were made at once for that auspicious event. On the following Sunday the banns were put up; Kitty and Olf paid several visits to the upholsterer’s in the neighbouring town and selected sundry articles of furniture, Olf giving orders right and left in a lordly fashion which quite dazzled his future bride. Farmer Inkpen made inquiries with regard to a certain farm which he thought might possibly suit his former assistant, and was moreover good enough to promise help and advice in the selection of stock. All, in fact, was proceeding merrily as that marriage bell which they both so soon expected to hear, when there came of a sudden a bolt from the blue. The manager of the local bank sent a peremptory message one evening to Olf requesting, or rather ordering, him to call without delay.

The poor fellow obeyed the summons without alarm, without even the faintest suspicion that anything was wrong, and it was indeed with great difficulty that the manager conveyed to him the astounding fact that the precious bond, which was to have been the foundation of his fortune, was so much waste paper; the prize-drawing had been a swindling concern, and the thousand pound prize did not exist.

“But I thought you told I that ’ere bit o’ paper was a thousand pound,” expostulated Olf, when for the fortieth time the manager had explained the state of the case.

“That bit of paper represented a thousand pounds,” returned that gentleman, with diminishing patience, “but when we came to collect it, the money wasn’t there.”

Olf scratched his head and looked at him. “And what be I to do now?” he inquired.

“Why, nothing, I am afraid. I don’t suppose you would be able to prosecute, and even if you had the money to carry on your case, it would not do you much good to get those swindlers punished. You will just have to grin and bear it, my poor fellow. We will give you time you know—we won’t be hard with you.”

“Time?” ejaculated Olf, staring at him blankly.

“Yes. We have let you have £5 on account you know. That will have to be paid back, of course, but we won’t press you. You can let us have it little by little.”

“Oh!” said Olf, “thank ye,” and he went out, absently stroking the check sleeve of the beautiful new suit which had cost him so dear.

He shambled back to the farm and paused by the gate, across which Mr. Inkpen was leaning.

“Hullo, Olf, back again?”

“’E-es,” said Olf, “I be back again, maister. Ye bain’t suited yet, be ye?”

“Not yet,” said the farmer, “but ye can’t be married afore another fortnight, can ye? I s’pose you’ll lend me a hand until you shift?”

“I bain’t a-goin’ to shift. I bain’t a-goin’ to get wed, I bain’t—” He paused, his lip trembling for a moment piteously like a child’s. “It is all a mistake, maister—there bain’t no money there.”

“Dear to be sure,” cried Farmer Inkpen.

Olf stood gazing at him. There was a dimness about his eyes, and he bit his lips to stop their quivering.

Mr. Inkpen’s loud exclamation caused the women-folk to appear on the scene, and in a moment the entire household was assembled and plying Olf with questions.

“There is nothin’ more to tell ye,” he said at last. “’Tis a mistake. There bain’t no money there—I can’t take no farm. I must ax the folk o’ the shop to keep that ’ere furniture and things—I haven’t made no fortun’, I be just the same as I was ’afore, ’cept as I have a-got to pay back a matter of £5 to the bank.”

Little Kitty stood by, growing red and pale in turn, and fingering the watch in her waistband. All at once she gave a loud sob and rushed away.

“Ah! she be like to feel it,” said the farmer, whose heart was perhaps more tender than that of his wife or daughter. “She’ll feel it, poor little maid. Sich a chance for her—and now to go back to her scrubbin’ and cleanin’ just the same as ’afore.”

Olf heaved a deep sigh. “Well,” he said, “I’ll go home and take off these ’ere clothes, and I’ll come back and finish my work, maister.”

He then turned away, a very low-spirited and drooping figure, his shoulders round under that astonishing plaid, his head sunk almost on to his chest. After a little more talk the family separated, Mrs. Inkpen feeling some irritation on discovering that Kitty was nowhere to be found.

“She’s run off to cry,” said Annie. “However, don’t ye take no notice of her for this once, mother; ’tis but natural she should be a bit down, poor little maid.”

Olf had finished his work and was going dejectedly homewards that night when, in the narrow lane which led from the farm towards the village, he was waylaid by a well-known figure. It was Kitty. Her eyes were filled with tears, her face very pale, yet nevertheless there was a note of triumph in her voice.

“I’ve been to the town, Olf,” she cried. “I didn’t want ye to be at a loss through me, and the folks was kind. They took back the watch all right and gave me the thirty-five shillin’ for it. They wouldn’t take back the hat at the shop where you got it, along ’o my wearin’ it you know. They did tell me of a place where they buy second-hand things, and they gave me seven shillin’ for it there. So that won’t be so bad will it? You can pay that much to the bank straight off.”

Olf looked at her dejectedly. “There, my maid,” cried he. “I wish ye hadn’t done that. I could wish ye had kept them two things what I did give ye—’twas all I could do for ye. We can never do all we’d like to do now.”

Kitty sobbed.

“I take it very kind o’ ye to be so feelin’,” said Olf. “I could wish we could have got wed, my maid. I’d ha’ been a lovin’ husband, and I d’ ’low you’d ha’ been a lovin’ wife.”

“I would,” sobbed Kitty.

“But there, ’tis all over, bain’t it? I be nothin’ but a poor chap earnin’ of a poor wage. You be a vitty maid too good for the likes o’ me. I’ll never have a wife now.”

“I don’t see that,” said Kitty, in a low voice. She was hanging her head and drawing patterns with the point of her shoe in the sandy soil.

Olf stared at her, and then repeated his statement. “A poor man earnin’ of a poor wage, Kitty. I’ll never have a wife.”

“Why not?” said Kitty, almost inarticulately. “Many poor men get wed, Olf.”

Olf caught his breath with a gasp. “Kitty,” he cried, “Kitty, do ye mean you’d take me now wi’out no fortun’, and just as I be? You’d never take me now, Kitty?”

“I would,” said Kitty, and she hid her face on his patched shoulder and burst into tears.

“Then I don’t care about nothin’,” cried Olf valiantly. “If you would really like it, Kitty, say no more.”

“I would,” said Kitty again. And then raising her head, she smiled at him through her tears. “But don’t tell nobody I axed ye,” said she.

IN THE HEART OF THE GREEN.

When the new keeper and his wife took possession of their cottage, deep in the heart of Westbury Chase, summer was still at its height. Jim Whittle’s real responsibilities had not yet begun—a little breathing space was, as it were, allotted to the young couple before settling thoroughly into harness. So Betty thought at least, though Jim frequently reminded her that summer was as anxious a time as any other for a man in his position.

“What with folks expectin’ the young birds to be nigh full-growed afore they was much more than hatched out; and what wi’ the fear of there being too much wet, or too much sun, and varmint an’ sich-like, I can tell ye, Betty,” said he, “I’m as anxious in summer as in winter, very near.”

Nevertheless, he found time to do many little odd jobs for her which he could not have accomplished in the shooting season: knocking together shelves, digging in the garden, chopping up the store of wood which she herself collected as she strolled out in her spare hours. Betty was as happy as a bird in those days. Their new home had been put in order before their advent, and was spick and span from roof to threshold; the fresh thatch glinted bravely through the heavy summer foliage; the flowers in the little garden made patches of bright colour amid the surrounding green. Betty herself in her print dress and with her hair shining like polished gold, Betty carrying her six-months-old child poised on her round arm, was an almost startling figure to those who came upon her suddenly in the leafy aisles about her home. Brown and grey and fawn and russet are the tones chiefly affected by forest people; yet here were the mother and child, wood creatures both of them, flaunting it in their pinks and yellows before autumn had so much as crimsoned a leaf.

What wonder that the shy folk in fur or feather peered at them with round astonished eyes, ere scuttling to cover or taking to flight.

Dick Tuffin, the woodman, looked up in surprise from the faggot he had just bound together, when Betty and her baby-boy came towards him one sunny morning from one of the many shadowy avenues which abutted on a glade cleared by his own hands. As she advanced, he sat back upon his heels amid the slender sappy victims of his axe, and frankly stared at her.

He was a young man, dark as a gipsy, muscular and lithe, with quick-glancing eyes and a flashing smile.

“Good-day,” said Betty, pausing civilly.

“Good-day to you, Mum. I d’ ’low you be new keeper’s wife?”

“Yes, I am Mrs. Whittle,” said Betty. “Are you cutting down my husband’s woods?” she added, smiling.

“Ah! your husband’s woods ’ud not be in sich good order as they do be if it wasn’t for I an’ sich as I,” returned the man. “I do cut down a piece reg’lar every year, an’ then the young growth comes, d’ye see, twice so thick as before, so that the game can find so much shelter as they do like.”

“And what are you going to do with all these poor little trees?” inquired Betty. “They are too green for firewood, aren’t they?”

“Well,” said Dick, with his infectious smile, “I make hurdles wi’ ’em for one thing, an’ some of ’em goes for pea-sticks, an’ others is made into besoms. They mid be green,” he added reflectively, “but folks do come here often enough a-pickin’ up scroff for burnin’.”

Here the child on Betty’s arm began to whimper, and she nodded to it and dandled it, her own person keeping up a swaying, dancing movement the while.

Dick Tuffin watched her, at first with a smile; but presently his face clouded.

“You have a better time of it, Mrs. Whittle,” said he, “nor my poor little ’ooman at home. You do see your husband so often as you like; but there, I must bide away from home for weeks and months at a time. I mid almost say I haven’t got a home; and Mary, she mid say she haven’t got a husband.”

“How’s that?” inquired Betty, pausing, with the now laughing child suspended in mid-air, to turn her astonished face upon him.

“My place is nigh upon fifteen mile away from here. I go travellin’ the country round, cuttin’ the woods and makin’ hurdles; an’ ’tis too far to get back except for a little spell now and then. I didn’t think o’ wedlock when I took up the work, an’ now I d’ ’low I wouldn’t care to turn to any other. But ’tis hard on the ’ooman.”

“She oughtn’t to let you do it!” cried the keeper’s wife firmly. “Ha’ done, Jim; ha’ done, thou naughty boy! I’ll throw thee over the trees in a minute!”

The child had clutched at her golden locks, pulling one strand loose; she caught at the chubby hand, made believe to slap it, and then kissed the little pink palm half a dozen times.

“Your wife ought to make you get your livin’ some other way,” she added seriously.

“It couldn’t be done now,” said the woodman. “I have done nothin’ but fell trees an’ plesh hurdles since I was quite a little ’un. I couldn’t do naught else,” he added somewhat dreamily; “I fancy I couldn’t bide anywhere except in a wood.”

“Well, ’tis a fine life,” said she, willing to say something civil.

“Yes, pleasant enough,” he agreed. “If I could tole my missus about I’d never complain; but, there! it can’t be done.”

He tossed the faggot on one side, and began to collect materials for another. Betty noticed a great rent in his fustian waistcoat, and, commenting upon the fact, volunteered to mend it.

“’Tis awkward for ye having no one to sew for ye,” she added, as Dick gratefully divested himself of the garment in question.

“’Tis that,” agreed Tuffin. “I do move about so often the folks where I lodge do never seem to take a bit of interest in I. My wife, she do fair cry at times when she do see the state my things be in. Come, I’ll hold the youngster for ye, Mum.”

“Oh, he’ll be all right on the soft grass here!”

“Nay, I’d like to hold ’en if ye’ll let me. I want to get my hand in, d’ye see. There’ll be a little un at our place very soon.”

“I do call it unfeelin’ of ye to leave your wife alone at such a time,” remarked Betty reprovingly.

“Her mother’s wi’ her,” returned Dick. “I’ll go home for a bit in a fortnight or so, but I must be back in October.”

He chirruped to the child, swinging him high in the air, till Baby Jim crowed and laughed again. Soon Mrs. Whittle’s task was accomplished, and she handed back the waistcoat to its owner, receiving his profuse thanks in return. As she walked away through the chequered light and shade Dick looked after her.

“Some folks is luckier nor others,” he said. “Keeper can live in the woods and have wife and child anigh him, too; but I, if I be to live at all, must live alone.”

Then he thought of the little brown wife in that far-away village, and wondered with a sudden tightening of the heart-strings how she was getting on; but presently he whistled again, in time to the rhythmic strokes of his axe, as he pointed the sowels for his next lot of hurdles.

On the following morning when Betty was sweeping out her house a shadow fell across the threshold, and, looking up, she descried the woodman.

“I’ve brought ye a new besom,” said he, with a somewhat shamefaced smile. “One good turn do deserve another, Mrs. Whittle.”

“Thank ye kindly, I’m sure,” returned Betty, with a bright smile. “I never thought of your making any return for the few stitches I set for ye. The besom is a beauty, Mr. Tuffin.”

“Glad ye like it,” said Dick, turning to take his leave.

“If ye’ve any other bits o’ mending, Mr. Tuffin,” Betty called after him, “I’d be pleased to do ’em for ye.”

“Nay, now, I don’t like puttin’ too much on your good nature, Mrs. Whittle,” said Dick, glancing over his shoulder with a sheepish smile.

But the keeper’s wife insisted; and presently Dick confessed that there were a good few socks lying by at his lodgings in sore need of repair.

On the morrow he brought them, with the addition of a large basket of “scroff,” or chips, for firing.

Keeper Jim was much amused at this exchange of civilities; but was so far moved with compassion for Tuffin’s lonely wife that he contributed a couple of nice young rabbits to the little packet of comforts which Betty sent her when Dick went home for his brief holiday; and he was both touched and gratified when little Mrs. Tuffin sent a return tribute of new-laid eggs and fresh vegetables to the woman who had befriended her Dick.

Autumn came, scarcely perceptible at first in this sheltered spot; little drifts of yellow leaves strewed Betty’s threshold of a morning; there was a brave show of berries amid the undergrowth; maple bushes lit cool fires here and there; and travellers’ joy and bryony flung silver-spangled tendrils or jewelled chains across a tangle of orange and crimson and brown. The delicate tracery of twigs, the gnarled strength of boughs, became ever more perceptible as the leafage thinned; Jim could see more of the thatch of his house as he tramped homewards, and could mark through the jagged outline of the naked boughs how the blue smoke-wreaths blew hither and thither as they issued from his chimney.

There was a growing sense of excitement in the woods; their silence was often broken by startled cries and the whirring of great wings. Soon the glades would echo to the sound of the beaters’ sticks; dry twigs would crack beneath the sportsmen’s feet; shots would wake the slumbering echoes; and then a cart would come and bear away the rigid bodies erstwhile so blithe. Betty almost cried as she thought of the fate that awaited the pretty birds which she had so often fed with her own hand and which the baby had loved to watch; but Jim chid her when she said she hoped many of them would escape.

“Tell ’ee what,” he remarked sternly, “if the gentry don’t find more pheasants nor in the wold chap’s time they’ll say I bain’t worth my salt. There, what be making such a fuss about? ’Tis what they be brought up for. D’ye think folks ’ud want to be watchin’ ’em an’ feedin’ ’em an’ lookin’ arter ’em always if ’twasn’t that they mid get shot in the end? They must die some way, d’ye see; and I d’ ’low if ye was to ax ’em, they pheasants ’ud liefer come rocketin’ down wi’ a dose o’ lead in their innards nor die natural-like by freezin’ or starvin’ or weasels or sich.”

Jim grew more and more enthusiastic as the time drew nearer for the big shoot, which was, as he expected, to establish his reputation. This was not to take place till late in November, so as to allow time for the trees to be fully denuded of their leaves. The keeper often talked darkly of the iniquities of certain village ne’er-do-weels, who, according to him, thought no more of snaring a rabbit than of lying down in their beds.

“If they only kept to rabbits,” he added once, “it wouldn’t be so bad; but when those chaps gets a footin’ in these woods there’s no knowin’ where they’ll stop. But they’ll find I ready for them. They’ll find I bain’t so easy to deal wi’ as wold Jenkins.”

“Dear, to be sure, Jim, I wish you wouldn’t talk so!” said Betty. “You make me go all of a tremble! I shall be afeard to stop here by myself when you’re away on your beat if you ’fray me wi’ such tales. I don’t like to think there’s poachin’ folk about.”

“There, they’d never want to do nothin’ to a woman,” said Jim consolingly; “’tis the game they’re arter. They’ll not come anigh the house, bless ye!”

“Well, but I don’t like to think they mid go fightin’ you,” she whimpered.

Jim bestowed a sounding kiss on her smooth cheek.

“Don’t ye fret yoursel’,” he cried; “they’ll run away fast enough when they do see I comin’. Why, what a little foolish ’ooman thou be’est! There, give over cryin’. I didn’t ought to ha’ talked about such things.”

Betty’s pretty eyes were still somewhat pink, however, as she came strolling into Dick’s quarters that afternoon; and her lip drooped when in answer to his questions she divulged the cause.

“Afeard o’ poachers!” exclaimed the woodman, with a laugh. “Bless ye, Mrs. Whittle, poachers bain’t no worse nor other folks! Dalled if I can see much harm in a man catchin’ a rabbit or two when there’s such a-many of ’em about! The place be fair swarmin’ wi’ ’em o’ nights.”

Betty was much shocked; and returned reprovingly that it couldn’t ever be right to steal. “And poachin’ is but stealin’,” she summed up severely.

“Stealin’!” echoed Dick; “nay, ye’ll never make me believe that. I d’ ’low the Lard did make they little wild things for the poor so well as for the rich. Pheasants, now,” he continued, ruminating, “I won’t say as any one has a right to take pheasants except the man what owns the woods. I’d as soon rob a hen-roost, for my part, as go arter one o’ they fat tame things as mid be chicken for all the spirit what’s in ’em. I’d never ax to interfere wi’ a pheasant,” he continued reflectively, “wi’out it was jist for the fun o’ the thing. But settin’ a gin or two—wi’ all these hundreds and thousands o’ rabbits runnin’ under a body’s feet—ye’ll never make me think there’s a bit o’ harm in it.”

“Don’t let my husband hear such talk!” said Betty loftily.

The woodman laughed again. “I wouldn’t mind speakin’ out plain to his face,” said he. “Him and me is the best o’ friends—I do like en very well,” continued Dick handsomely; “better nor I ever thought to like a gamekeeper. As a rule, I don’t hold with folks what goes spyin’ about, a-tryin’ to catch other folks in the wrong. I never could a-bear a policeman, now—’tis my belief they do more harm than good.”

“Gracious!” ejaculated the scandalised Betty. “I don’t know how you can go for to say such things.”

“Well, d’ye see, ’tis this way,” explained Dick. “If a man do want for to get drunk, drunk he’ll get if there be farty policemen arter him. If he’s willin’ to make a beast of hisself, and to ruin his wife and family, and to get out o’ work an’ everything, for the sake of a drap o’ drink, ’tisn’t a policeman that ’ull stop him. And if a chap do want to fight another chap—his blood being up, d’ye see—he’ll fight en—ah, that he will! and give no thought at all to the chance o’ bein’ run in for it. And jist same way—if a body has a notion to trap a rabbit, trap it he will, keeper or no keeper.”

Here Dick selected a sapling and began to trim it leisurely, pursing up his lips the while in a silent whistle.

“I’ll not tell Whittle all you’ve said,” remarked Betty with dignity, as she shifted her baby from one arm to the other, and prepared to walk on. “He mid think you was a poacher yourself.”

“You may tell him if you like,” retorted Dick, and then he whistled out loud and clapped his hands at the baby, which thereupon laughed ecstatically, and almost sprang from its mother’s arms. The keeper’s wife relaxed, and mentally resolved to make no allusion to Dick’s unorthodox sentiments in conversing with her husband. Jim himself had said that it wouldn’t be so bad if folks only kept to rabbits, and Dick had intimated that he would never care to touch anything else. A body should not be too hard, she reflected, on a poor fellow who had no home, so to speak; why, he was almost like a wild creature of the woods himself, living out in all weathers, sleeping often under the stars, picking up a chance meal as he best could—there was no great wonder if he had become as lawless as the four-footed “varmint” against whom the keepers waged such fierce war.

One evening, shortly before the great shoot was to take place, Jim came home to tea in a state of contained excitement. When the meal was over he went to the door, and began, to his wife’s surprise, to examine the fastenings carefully.

“’Tis a good stout bolt,” he remarked, “and the lock be a new ’un. I d’ ’low if house was shut up you wouldn’t be afeard to bide alone in it?”

Betty immediately demonstrated the presence of mind which she would be likely to display under such circumstances by uttering a loud scream.

“Oh, Jim, Jim!” she cried, “why be goin’ to stop out all night? I do know so well as if you did tell me that you be goin’ into danger.”

“Danger!” cried the keeper, thumping his great chest, “not much fear o’ that! There, don’t ye be so foolish. Me and Stubbs be a-goin’ over t’other side o’ the park down to the river to see to that ’ere decoy for duck, as squire be so set on puttin’ to rights. ’Tis five mile away; we be like to be kep’ late, very late—till daybreak, most like; but do you make the house fast, old ’ooman, and no harm ’ull come to either of us.”

Had Betty not been so much absorbed in the main issue, she might have detected something improbable about the keeper’s story; but, as it was, her fears for him were almost lost in the horror of being left all night alone in that desolate spot.

Jim, however, jested at her terrors, and himself made the round of the cottage, fastening the casements and securing the seldom-used front door. He stood outside the threshold while she drew the bolts and locked the back one.

“Get to thy bed early,” he called to her. “Go to sleep so fast as thou can; and first thing thou knows thou’lt hear me knockin’ to be let in.”

But somebody else knocked before Betty had any thought of going to bed; before, indeed, she had finished washing up the tea-things.

“Who’s that?” cried she, thrusting a scared face out of the window.

“It’s me, Mrs. Whittle—Dick Tuffin. I’ve a-brought ye back your hamper what I promised to mend for ye. Why, ye be shut up very early, bain’t ye?”

“Whittle’s gone travellin’ off a long way,” she answered with a scarcely perceptible sob. “There, he be gone to the river—’tis a good five mile off, he do say. I’m frightened to death here by myself.”

She heard him laugh in the darkness.

“How ’ud ye like to be my little wife,” he asked, “as bides alone night after night, wi’ nobody but the little ’un, now her mother have a-left her? I wouldn’t be afeard, Mrs. Whittle. Your house be so safe as a church; and there’s Duke—he’s big enough and strong enough to guard ye. Hark to en barkin’ now, the minute he do hear my voice!”

“Well, and that’s true,” agreed Betty in a more cheerful tone. “Thank ye for mendin’ the hamper, Mr. Tuffin. I’ll open the door in a minute.”

“No, don’t ye bother to do that,” said Dick. “The hamper’ll take no harm out here till morning. Good-night to ye.”

“Good-night,” said Betty, closing the window.

She heard the sound of his footsteps die away, and then the loneliness of the forest night seemed to close in upon her. Jim had often been out as late as this, and later, but the mere knowledge that he did not intend to return till daybreak made her more nervous than she had ever been. When the logs crackled or fell together she started violently; the moaning of the wind in the branches without filled her with dread, though often, when she and her husband sat by the hearth, they had declared the sound made them feel more snug. More than once she opened the window and listened; a fine, close rain was falling, making a dull patter upon the thatched roof, dripping from the eves; but besides these sounds there were many others, strange, unaccountable, terrifying—creakings and crackings of boughs; now what seemed to be a stealthy tread, now whispering voices. She chid herself for these fancies, knowing well that they must be without foundation, since Duke remained silent; nevertheless her flesh crept and the dew of terror started to her brow.

At length, making a strong resolution, she went up to her attic bedchamber, undressed, and, taking the child into her arms, crept into bed. But she lay there for a long time, quaking, and staring with wide-open eyes into the darkness; until, overcome by sheer fatigue after a long and busy day, she fell asleep.

She woke up suddenly, and sat for a moment vainly endeavouring to disentangle the confusion of sound which filled her ears. Her heart was beating like a drum, the blood surged in her brain—a dream-panic was still upon her, and yet there were certain other unmistakable noises to be heard without. Duke was barking in frenzied fashion and straining at his chain; men were shouting at no very great distance, and now—what was that? A single shot!

“It’s the poachers!” exclaimed Betty, with chattering teeth. “Pray God they don’t come here!”

In the midst of her anguish of fear she felt a sudden rush of gratitude. Jim was safe out of the way, thanks be! Jim would not be back till the folks had got off with their spoil. But now Duke was whimpering and crying in a most eerie and heartrending manner, and presently uplifted his voice in long-drawn howls which jarred upon Betty’s overwrought nerves beyond endurance. She jumped out of bed and ran to the casement. It had ceased raining, and though the moon rode between piles of angry clouds, she sent forth at that moment an extraordinarily clear light. Betty could see the skeleton branches of the trees all wet and shining as they tossed against the sky; the little paved path glimmered white; yonder stood a dark patch—Dick’s hamper. She could see Duke pacing round and round his kennel, at the utmost length of his chain; now sniffing the ground, now lifting up his head for another howl.

She rapped at the pane and called to him sharply; and the dog looked up at her window, and suddenly wheeled in the opposite direction, pricking his ears.

Steps were heard approaching—slow, lagging steps—and presently two figures came staggering together out of the wood. Betty screamed as they emerged from the shadow, and then leaned forth, paralysed with dread; for as the two slowly advanced into the moonlit path she recognised Stubbs, the under-keeper, and saw that he was supporting, almost carrying, his companion.

“Be that you, Mrs. Whittle?” cried Stubbs. “Come down, Mum, come down this minute! This be a bad night’s work!”

The man leaning upon him raised his head with an inarticulate attempt to speak, and Betty saw that it was Jim—her own Jim—her husband! But, oh! what tale was that told by the drawn features and glassy eyes?

She had screamed at the unknown terror, but she uttered no sound now. Before they reached the door she had mechanically thrown on her dress over her nightgown, and had come downstairs, pattering with her bare feet. She flung open the door, and put her arms round her husband, almost as if she grudged him any support but hers.

“My poor little ’ooman!” said Jim brokenly; “I d’ ’low I’m done for.”

With Stubbs’ aid she stretched him on the sofa, and unfastened coat and waistcoat. She drew out her hand from his bosom suddenly, and looked at it with a shudder: it was red!

“Ah, he’s got the whole charge in en somewhere,” groaned Stubbs. “There was a lot of ’em out to-night, and we catched one of ’em; he fought like a devil, he did—’twas in wrestling wi’ him poor Whittle’s gun went off. Dear to be sure, ’tis awful to think on. His own gun!”

“Where’s the man?” asked Betty sharply; her face was as white as a sheet—her lips drawn back from her gleaming teeth.

“Oh, he made off, ye mid be sure,” returned the other. “I don’t know who he was. ’Twas in the thick o’ the trees yonder we come on ’em. Moon had gone in and ’twas as dark as pitch.”

“Do you think my husband will die!” gasped Betty.

“Ah! ’tis a bad job—’tis surely,” responded the other, almost whimpering; “and the worst on’t is we be nigh six mile from a doctor.”

“Oh, Mr. Stubbs,” cried the keeper’s wife earnestly, “let’s do everything we can, any way! Will ye go for the doctor for me? Do! I’ll—I’ll give ye every penny in the house if ye will!”

“Lard! my dear ’ooman, I don’t want no pay for doin’ what I can at sich a time. I’ll go, to be sure, an’ make so much haste as I can; but—won’t ye be afeard to bide here all alone—and him so bad?”

Betty saw that he expected her husband would die before his return, but she did not flinch.

“I will do anything in the world so long as there’s a chance of saving him!” she cried. “Run, Mr. Stubbs, run! Make haste—oh, do make haste!”

Stubbs drew his arm from beneath the wounded man’s shoulder, and hastened away without another word. Betty went to her linen-drawer, and found an old sheet, which she tied round Jim’s body to staunch the bleeding; he seemed to have received the charge chiefly in his right side. He opened his eyes and smiled at her faintly, and then she dropped on her knees beside him.

“Jim,” she whispered, “you never went away arter all?”

He shook his head feebly. “I meant it for the best,” he said; “I heard these chaps would be up to their tricks to-night, and I thought me and Stubbs ’ud catch them.”

“Oh, Jim,” said Betty, “ye told me a lie!”

“I meant it for the best, my dear,” he returned faintly. “I didn’t want ye to be frayed—poor little ’ooman! Ye mustn’t be vexed.”

Betty stooped and kissed him, and he closed his eyes.

“I reckon I’m goin’,” he said. “Well, I done my dooty. But what ’ull ye do, my dear?”

“I’ll manage,” said Betty.

Her voice had a harsh note quite unlike its own; she sank down in a heap on the floor, staring before her. She knew what she would do if Jim died. She would first of all find the man who had killed him, and then—oh, he should pay for it!

Jim had fallen into a kind of drowsy state, and presently his hand slipped down and unconsciously touched hers: it was very cold. Betty, rousing herself, went towards the hearth, drawing the embers together. There was not enough fuel, however, to make much of a fire; and, softly opening the door, she went out to the woodshed, her bare feet making no sound on the damp stones. As she was returning with her burden the wicket-gate swung open, and Dick Tuffin come up the path.

“Mrs. Whittle! Mrs. Whittle!” he called pantingly.

She turned and confronted him. The moon had dipped behind the trees and she could not distinguish his face, but something in the aspect of the man struck her with a lightning-like intuition.

“Come in,” she said hoarsely.

Dick followed her into the house, starting back at sight of the prostrate figure on the couch. Betty dropped her wood on the hearth and came swiftly across to him with her panther-like tread. There was an expression on her face which might have recalled the beast in question. She placed both her hands upon his breast, and he, giving way before them, stepped backwards a few paces.

“Look at him,” said Betty; “he is dying! Dick Tuffin, it is you who have killed my husband!”

“I swear I didn’t know it was him,” faltered Dick. “I’d no thought of harm. I went out with the others for a frolic. You yourself did tell I your husband was miles away.”

She had told him! He would make out that she had delivered him into their hands! A red mist came before her eyes.

“Even when he did catch I,” went on Dick, “I didn’t know who ’twas. But somebody told me jist now that Stubbs was runnin’ for the doctor for en, so I come—I couldn’t rest, ye see. I had to come. Mrs. Whittle, I don’t know what you’ll say to me.”