The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Secret in the Hill, by Bernard Capes

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The secret in the hill, by Bernard Edward Joseph Capes

To
MISS PRECISION
AND
“YOUR AFFECNUT LITTLE FRIEND”
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
WITH DEFERENCE
BY
ITS AUTHOR AND THEIRS

CONTENTS.

THE SECRET IN THE HILL.
PART I.

CHAPTER I.
I FIRST SEE JOSHUA PILBROW.

When I was a very little boy my mother died. I was too young to feel her loss long, though I missed her badly at first; but the compensation was that it brought my father nearer to me. He was a barrister, a prodigal love of a man, dear bless him! And he felt his bereavement so cruelly that for a time he seemed incapable of rallying from the blow. But presently he plucked up heart, and went, for my sake, to his business again.

He was more liked than lucky, I believe. I had evidence enough, at least of the former; for after my mother’s death, not bearing that we should be parted, he carried me with him on the last circuit he was ever to go. Those were the days when Bench and Bar dined well, and sat up late telling tales. Sometimes my father would slip me into his pocket, so to speak, and from its shelter—when, to be candid, I had been much better in bed—I heard fine stories related by the gentlemen who put off gravity with the horsehair they wore all day. They were a merry and irresponsible lot, rather like a strolling company of actors; and, indeed, it was no less their business to play many parts. There were types among them which I came to associate with certain qualities: such as the lean vivacious ones, who ate and drank hungrily, and presently grew incoherent and quarrelsome; such as the rosy bald-headed ones, who always seemed to make most laughter; such as the large, heavy-browed ones, who sulked when they were bettered in argument. But my friend amongst them all, next to my father, was Mr. Quayle, Q.C.

I fancied I had discovered, after much consideration, why he was called Q.C. He was a little man, quite bald and round all over his head and face except for a tuft of hair on his chin, and there was the Q; and he wore a pouter-pigeon ruff under his chin like this, Q/C, and there was the Q.C. I may have been wrong; but anyhow I had precedent to justify me, for many of these jolly souls bore such characteristic nicknames. There was Plain John, for instance, who had so christened himself for ever during a dispute about the uses or abuses of multiple titles. “Plain John” had been enough for him, he had said. Again, there was Blind Fogle, so called from his favourite cross-examination phrase. “I don’t quite see.” They were all boys together when off duty, chaffing and horse-playing, and my father was the merriest and most irrepressible of the crew.

There was one treat, however, of which he was persistent in baulking me. Pray him as I might, he would never let me see or hear him in his character of Counsel. The Court where he would be working by day was forbidden ground to me, and for that very reason I longed, like Bluebeard’s wife, to peep into it. This was not right, even in thought, for I knew his wishes. But worse is to be confessed. I once took an opportunity, which ought never to have been given me, to disobey him; and dreadful were the consequences, as you shall hear.

We were travelling on what is called the Home Circuit, and one day we came to Ipswich, a town to mark itself red in the annals of my young life. On the second morning after our arrival I was playing at horses with George, my father’s man, when Mr. Quayle looked in at our hotel, and, dismissing George, took and sat me upon his knee.

He grunted, and rubbed his bald head, with a look half comical, half aggravated. His eyes were rather blinky and red, and he seemed confused in manner and at a loss for words.

“Dicky,” he said, suddenly, “did you live very well, very rich-like, when mamma was alive?”

“Yes,” I answered; “’cept when mamma said we must retrench, and cried; and by’m-by papa laughed, and threw the rice pudding into the fire, and took us to dine at a palace.”

“It was a very little while before mamma went away for good,” I murmured, and hung my head, inclined to whimper.

“O, come!” he said, “we must all bear our losses like men. They teach us the best in the world to stand square on our own toeses. There! Shall I tell you a story—hey?”

“O, lud!” he exclaimed, rubbing his nose with his eye-glasses. “I am committed! Judex damnatur. Dicky, I sat up late last night, devouring briefs, and they’ve given me an indigestion. Never sit up late, Dicky, or you’ll have to pay for it!”

“O, the story!” he said. “H’m! ha! Dear take my fuddled caput! Well, here goes:

“There were once two old twin brothers, booksellers, name of Pilbrow, who kept shop together in a town, as it might be Ipswich. Now books, young gentleman, should engender an atmosphere of reason and sympathy, inasmuch as we talk of the Republic of letters, which signifies a sort of a family tie between A, B, and C. But these fellows, though twins, were so far from being united that they were always quarrelling. If Joshua bought a book of a stranger, Abel would say he had given more than its worth, and sell it at his own valuation; and if Abel attended a sale, there was Joshua to bid against him. Naturally, under these conditions, the business didn’t flourish. The brothers got poorer and poorer, and the more they lost the worse they snapped and snarled, till they took to threatening one another in public with dear knows what reprisals. Well, one day, at an auction, after bidding each against t’other thremenjus for a packet of old manuscripts and book rubbish—which Abel ended by getting, by-the-by—they fastened together like tom-cats, and had to be separated. The people laughed and applauded; but the end was more serious than was expected. Abel disappeared from the business, and a few days later the shop took fire, and was burned to the ground.

“So far, so plain; and now, Mr. Dickycumbob, d’ye know what’s meant by Insurance?”

“Well, look here. If I want to provide against my house, and the goods in it, being lost to me by fire, I go to a gentleman, with a gold watch-chain like a little ship’s cable to recommend him, and says I:—‘If I give you so much pocket-money a year, will you undertake to build up my house again for me in case it happens to be burned down?’ And the gentleman smiles, and says ‘Certainly.’ Then I say, ‘If I double your pocket-money will you undertake to give me a thousand pounds for the value of the goods in that house supposing they are burned too?’ And the gentleman says, ‘Certainly; in case their value really is a thousand pounds at the time.’ So I go away, and presently, strange to say, my house is actually burned to the ground. Then I ask the gentleman to fulfil his promise; but he says, ‘Not at all. The house I will rebuild as before, and for the goods I will pay you; but not a thousand pounds, because I am given to believe that they were worth nothing like that sum at the time of the fire?’ Now, what am I to do? Well, I will tell you what this Joshua did. He insisted upon having the whole thousand pounds, and the gentleman answered by saying that he believed Joshua had purposely set fire to his own house in order to secure a thousand pounds for a lot of old rubbish in it that wasn’t worth twopence ha’penny. D’yunderstand?”

“Very well, then, and listen to this. If the gentleman spoke true, Joshua had fallen in Scyllam cupiens vitare Charybdim, which means that he had jumped out of the frying-pan into the fire, or, in other words had, in trying to catch the Insurance gentleman, been nabbed himself by the law. For arson is arson, and fraud fraud, and the gentleman with the watch-chain isn’t to be caught with a pinch of salt on his tail. But that was not the worst. Human bones had been found among the débris of the building, and ugly rumours got about that these bones were Abel’s bones—the bones of an unhappy victim of Joshua’s murderous hate. The man had disappeared, the brothers’ deadly quarrel was recalled; it was whispered that the fire might owe itself to a double motive—that, in short, Joshua had designed, at one blow, to secure the thousand pounds and destroy the evidences of a great crime. Joshua, sir, was arrested and put upon his trial for murder and arson.”

“Who defended him?” I whispered, gulping; for I knew something of the legal terms.

“O!” I exclaimed, thrilling. And then, after a pause, with a pride of loyalty: “He got him off, didn’t he?”

“What!” he said. “If any man can, papa will. I ask your pardon, Master Dicky, I really do, for palming off fact instead of fiction on you. But my poor brain wasn’t equal. The case is actually sub judice—being tried at this moment. Yesterday began it, and to-day will end. If you whisper to me to-night, I’ll whisper back the result.”

The delay seemed insupportable. He had read and worked me up to the last chapter of the story, and now proposed to leave me agonising for the end. It was the first time I had ever been brought so close to the living romance of the law, and my blood was on fire with the excitement of it.

I felt too guilty to speak. He knew all that was in my mind. Suddenly he took my hand.

“Come along, then,” he said, “and let’s have a peep. Papa needn’t know.”

He shouldn’t have tempted me, nor should I have succumbed. A murder romance was no book for a child, though my father figured in it as a Paladin championing the wronged and oppressed.

I hung back a moment, but the creature cooed and whistled to me. “Come and see Joshua,” he said, “with his back to the wall, and papa in front daring ’em all to come on.”

The picture was irresistible. I let myself be persuaded and run out, tingling all over.

It was a dingy November morning. The old town seemed dull and uneasy, and a tallow-faced clock on a church dawdled behind time, as if it had stopped to let something unpleasant go by. That might have been a posse of melancholy javelin-men, who, with a ludicrous little strutting creature at their head—a sort of pocket drum-major, in sword and cocked hat and with a long staff in his hand—went splashing past at the moment. The court-house, what with the fog and drip, met us like the mouth of a sewer, and I was half-inclined to cry off so disenchanting an adventure, when my companion tossed me up in his arms and carried me within. Through halls and passages, smelling of cold, trodden mud, we were passed with deference, and suddenly were swung and shut into a room where there were lights and a great foggy hush.

I saw before me the scarlet judge. I knew him well enough, but never awful like this—a shrunk ferret with piercing eyes looking out of a gray nest. I saw the wigs of the counsel; but their bobtails seemed cocked with an unfamiliar viciousness. I saw the faces of the Jury, set up in two rows like ghostly ninepins; and then I saw another, a face by itself, a face like a little shrewd wicked gurgoyle, that hung yellow and alone out of the mist of the court. And that face, I knew, was the face of Joshua.

The terrible silence ticked itself away, and there suddenly was my father standing up before them all, and talking in a quick impassioned voice. My skin went cold and hot. If I reaped little of the dear tones, I understood enough to know that he spoke impetuously for the prisoner, heaping scorn upon the prosecution. Never, he said, in all his experience had he known calumny visit a soul so spotless as the one it was now his privilege to defend. The process would be laughably easy, it was true, and he would only dwell upon what must be to the jury a foregone conclusion—the accused’s innocence, that was to say—with the object to crush with its own vicious fallacies a prosecution which, indeed, he could not help remarking bore more the appearance of a persecution.

Mr. Quayle at this point laughed a little under his breath and whispered, “Bravo!” in my ear, as he eased his burden by resting my feet on the back of a bench. As for me, I was burning and shooting all over with pride, as my eyes went from my father to the poor little ugly prisoner in the dock, and back again.

The accused, went on my father (in substance. I can only give the briefest abstract of his speech), would not deny that there had been differences between him and his brother. Indeed, it would be useless to, in the face of some recent notorious evidence to the contrary. But did not all history teach us the folly of jumping, on the strength of an unguarded word, to fatal conclusions? Had not one of our own monarchs (surnamed Fitz-Empress, as he need not remind the jury) suffered a lifelong regret from the false interpretation put upon a rash utterance of his? “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” he had cried, in an unthinking moment. “You shall pay for this!” had been Joshua Pilbrow’s threat to his brother, under a like aggravation, in the sale-room. “Gentlemen,” said my father, “how deadly the seeming import, how laughable the explanation in either case. King Henry cried only distractedly for some one to persuade his importunate Chancellor to leave him alone. Joshua Pilbrow meant no more than to insist that his brother should ‘stand the whole racket’ of a purchase of which he himself had disapproved. Hence, gentlemen, these tears!”

There was a little stir in court, and my companion chuckled delightedly in my ear again.

My father then proceeded triumphantly to give the true facts of the case. The packet of books had, it appeared when opened, revealed one item of unexpected value, in the profits from which Joshua, as partner, insisted upon sharing. To this, however, Abel, quoting his own words against him, demurred. It was his—Abel’s purchase, Abel contended, to do with as he chose. The dispute ran so high as to threaten litigation; when all of a sudden one night Abel was found to have taken himself off with the cherished volume. Joshua, at first unable to credit such perfidy, bided his time, expecting his brother to return. But when, at last, his suspicion of bereavement settled into a conviction, he grew like one demented. He could not believe in the reality of his loss; but, candle in hand, went hunting high and low amongst the litter with which the premises were choked, hoping somewhere to alight, in some forgotten corner where cupidity had concealed it, on the coveted prize. Alas! it never rains but it pours. He not only failed to trace the treasure, but, in his distracted hunt for it, must accidentally have fired the stock, which, smouldering for awhile, burst out presently into flame, and committed all to ruin.

Such was the outline of the story, and, for all that I understood of it, I could have clapped my father to the echo, with the tears gulping in my throat, for his noble vindication of a wronged man. There were other points he made, such as that Joshua had himself escaped with the utmost difficulty from the burning building (and did that look like arson?); such as that he had instructed his lawyers, after committal, to advertise strenuously, though vainly, for his brother’s whereabouts (and did that look like murder?); such as that the bones found amongst the ruins were the bones of anatomical specimens, in which the firm was well known to have dealt. I need not insist on them, because the end was what I knew it must be if men were not base and abominable enough to close their ears wilfully to those ringing accents of truth.

The prosecution, poor thing! answered, and the judge summed up; and still Mr. Quayle, quite absorbed in the case, did not offer to take me away. I had my eyes on my father all the time. He had sunk back, as if exhausted, after his speech, and sat in a corner of the bench, his hand over his face. The jury gave their verdict without leaving their places. I heard the demand and the answer. The cry, “Not Guilty,” rang like a pæan in my ears; and still I kept my eyes on my father.

The prisoner, freed from the dock, had left the court, when suddenly some people stirred, and a whisper went round. A barrister bent over the resting figure, and arose hurriedly. In a moment there was a springing up of heads everywhere, so that the dear form was blotted from my sight. Mr. Quayle, looking over my shoulder, caught a word, and gave a quick little gasp.

“Dicky,” he said, catching at me, “come out at once! We must get away before—before——” and he left the sentence unfinished as he hurried me into the street.

CHAPTER II.
A GREAT LOSS AND A QUEER EQUIVALENT.

I looked in Mr. Quayle’s face; but I asked him no question. The mud we trod seemed colder, the houses we passed more frowning than before; but I asked no question. I could not form one in my mind; only suddenly and somehow I felt frightened, as if in dreams before a great solitude. Then in a moment I was sobbing fast and thickly.

Ah, what is the use to skate round the memory! Let it clutch me for a moment, and be faced and dismissed. My father, my dear, ardent, noble father was dead—struck down in an instant—shaken out of life by the poignant utterances of his own spirit. While the flower of his fervour was blossoming and bearing fruit, the roots thereof were dead already—smitten in their place in his heart. That, its work done, had ceased beating. Sometimes afterwards in my desolation I recalled the church clock, with its poised motionless hands, and thought what a melancholy omen it had been.

Mr. Quayle was kindness itself to me in my utter terror and loneliness. He took upon himself, provisionally, the whole conduct of my affairs. One morning he came in, and drew me to him.

“Dicky—Dicky-bird, me jewl!” he said. “I’ve found the fine cuckoo that’s to come and father the poor little orphaned nestling.”

I must observe that he had his own theories about this same “harbinger of spring,” which, according to him, was the “bird that looked after another bird’s young.” I remembered the occasion on which he had so defined it, and the laughter which had greeted him; and his alternative, “Well, then, ’tis the bird that doesn’t lay its own eggs, and that’s all one!” But the first definition, it appeared, was the one he kept faith in.

“Uncle Jenico Paxton, mamma’s own only brother. Poor papa, my dear—always a wonder and an honour to his profession—has left, it seems, a will, in which he bequeathes everything to Uncle Jenico in trust for his little boy, Master Dicky Bowen. And Uncle Jenico has been found, and is coming to take charge of little Dicky Bowen.”

Was I glad or sorry? I was too stunned, I think, to care one way or the other. Any one would do to stop the empty place which none could ever fill, and neither my sympathies nor my dislikes were active in the case of Uncle Jenico. I had seen him only once or twice, when he had come to spend a night or so with us in town. My memory was of a stout, hoarse old man in spectacles, rather lame, with a little nose and twinkling eyes. He had seemed always busy, always in a hurry. He bore an important, mysterious reputation with us as a great inventive genius, who carried a despatch-box with him choked with invaluable patents, and always left something behind—a toothbrush or an umbrella—when he left. Let it be Uncle Jenico as well as another.

While we were talking there was a flurry at the door of the room, and a man, overcoming some resistance outside, forced his way in. I gave a little cry, and stood staring. It was the acquitted prisoner, Joshua Pilbrow. George appeared just behind him, flushed and truculent.

Mr. Quayle had put me from him and arisen. There was a bad look on his face; but he motioned to George to go, and we were left alone.

The intruder stood shrugging his disordered clothes into place, and looking the while with a sort of black stealth at the barrister. His face held and haunted me. It was bleak and sallow, and grey in the hollows, with fixed dark eyes—the face, I thought, of a malignant, though injured, creature. But it did not so affect Mr. Quayle, it was evident.

“The verdict was ‘Not guilty,’ sir,” said the man, quite suddenly and vehemently.

“I came to thank my benefactor,” said the man. “I had heard nothing till this moment of the tragic sequel.”

“Well,” said the barrister, in the same cynical tone, “you have come too late. The price of your acquittal is this little orphaned life.”

In a moment the man turned upon him in a sort of fierce concentrated bitterness.

“With the inconsistency of your evil profession,” he cried, “you discount your own conclusions. The law guarantees and grudges me my innocence. A curse upon it, I say! Did he there sacrifice his life for me? He sacrificed it for truth, sir, and it’s that which you, as a lawyer, can’t forgive.”

“You will observe,” said Mr. Quayle, icily, “that I have not questioned the truth.”

“Not directly,” answered the visitor. “I know, I know. You damn by innuendo; it’s your trade.”

“You malign our benevolence,” he said. “The law, by its artless verdict, has entitled you to sue on the insurance question. Think, Mr. Pilbrow; it actually offers itself to witness to your right to the thousand pounds.”

“And I shall force it to,” cried the other; “and would to heaven I could make it bleed another thousand for the wrong it has done me. It would, if equity were justice.”

Now, I cannot define what was working in my little soul. The pinched, shorn face was not lovely, the eyes in it were not good; yet there was something there of loss and hopelessness that touched me cruelly. And was not my father lying in the next room in solemn witness to its innocence? Suddenly, before Mr. Quayle could stay me, I had run to the visitor and plucked at his coat.

He gave a little gasp, and fluttered his hand across his eyes, sweeping in a wonderful way the evil out of them.

“Ah!” he said, “if your father, young gentleman, would whisper to you where Abel lies hidden! He knows now.”

He stepped back, with a strange, wintry smile on his lips, stopped, seemed about to speak, waved his hand to me, and was gone.

“Dicky, Dicky,” cried Mr. Quayle, “you’re the son of your father; but, dear me, not so good a lawyer!”

CHAPTER III.
UNCLE JENICO.

That same evening Uncle Jenico arrived. I was just put to bed at the time, but he came and stood by me a little before I went to sleep and dreamt of him. He was not the least grown from his place in my memory—only, to my wonder, a little more shabby-looking than I seemed to recollect. The round gold spectacles were there, and the big beaver hat, and the blue frock coat, and the nankeen trousers, and the limp—all but the first and last a trifle the worse for wear. His smile, however, was as cherubic, his despatch-box as glossy, his walking-stick as stout as ever; and he nodded at me like a benevolent Mandarin.

“Only we two left, my boy,” he said. “Poor papa, dear papa! He’s learnt by now the secret of perpetual motion.”

It was an odd introduction. I cried a little, and, moved by his kindness, clung to him.

“There!” he said, soothing me. “That’s all right. We are going to be famous friends, we are. We’ll invent things; we’ll set the Thames on fire, we will.”

Whether from exhaustion or from the dreamy contemplation of this amazing feat to be performed by us, I fell asleep in his arms, lulled for the first time out of my grief, and did not awake till bright morning. The fog was gone; the birds were singing to us to carry my father to his rest under the blue sky.

By-and-by we set out, Uncle Jenico very grave, in black, with a long weeper round his hat. Mr. Quayle, and one or two more, who had lingered a day behind the Assizes to do honour to the dead, came with us; and others, including the judge, sent flowers. It was a simple, pathetic service, in a green corner of the churchyard. I felt more than understood its beauty, and when once I caught a glimpse of Uncle Jenico busily and stealthily writing something with a pencil on the inside lining of his hat, I accepted the fact naturally as a detail of the ceremony.

But it was on the way home in the carriage that he disillusioned me by removing his hat, and showing me a little drawing of a gravestone he had made therein.

“Just an idea that occurred to me,” he said, “to perpetuate the memory of poor papa. We want to do something better than keep it green, you see. The weather and the lichen pay us all that compliment. So I suggest having the inscription very small, on a stone something the shape of a dining-room clock, and over it a magnifying glass boss, like one of those paperweights, you know, that have a little view at the back. The tooth of Time could never touch that. What do you think now?”

I thought it a very pleasant and kind idea, and told him so, at which he was obviously pleased. But it was never carried out, no more than many another he developed; and in the end—but that was long afterwards—a simple headstone, of my own design, commemorated my beloved father’s virtues.

The few mourners returned with us to the hotel, where, in a private room, we had cake and sherry wine. Afterwards Mr. Quayle, when all but he were gone, asked the favour of a final word with Uncle Jenico.

He appeared to find it a word difficult of utterance, walking up and down, and puffing, and getting a little red in the face, while Uncle Jenico sat beaming in a chair, his legs crossed and finger-tips bridged.

“Mr. Paxton,” said he, “when time’s short formalities are best eschewed, eh?”

“Then,” said Mr. Quayle, stuttering a little, “you are prepared to accept our friend’s trust, for all it’s worth?”

Uncle Jenico nodded again, though I thought his countenance fell a trifle over the emphatic qualification. However, he recovered in an instant, and rubbed his hands together gleefully.

“Capital, sir,” he said; “a little capital. That’s all Richard and I need to make our fortunes.”

“Just the point,” echoed Uncle Jenico, still nodding, but weakly, and with a dew of perspiration on his forehead.

“Just the point,” repeated Mr. Quayle. “I stood close to our friend. I know something of his affairs—and habits. He was—d’ye understand French, Mr. Paxton?”

“Well, listen to this, then: ‘Il a été un joueur invétéré celui là; c’est possible qu’il a mangé son blé en herbe.’”

“My dear sir,” replied Mr. Quayle, “I know how some of us occupy our time on circuit when we’d be better abed. I know a punter when I see one. I may be right; I may be wrong; and for your sake I hope I’m wrong. But the point is this: A good deal of our friend’s paper has come my way; and I want to know if, supposing I take it to market with bad results to the estate, you are going to swear off your trust?”

Then Uncle Jenico did an heroic thing; how heroic I could not realise at the time, though even then I think a shadow of the truth was penetrating my bewilderment. He got to his feet, looking like an angel.

“Mr. Quayle,” he said, “you’ve spoken plainly, and I don’t conceal your words are a disappointment. But if they are also a prophecy, rest assured, sir, that Richard and I stand or fall together. We are the surviving partners of an honourable firm, and there is that in there, sir” (he pointed to his inseparable despatch-box), “to uphold our credit with the world.”

“You’re a good soul,” he said. “Without that assurance I should have felt like robbing the orphan. I hope it may turn out better than we suppose.”

CHAPTER IV.
MY FIRST VIEW OF THE HILL.

It turned out not so badly, yet pretty badly. Uncle Jenico took cheap lodgings for us in the town, and for two or three months was busy flitting between Ipswich and London winding up my father’s estate. At the end, when the value of every lot, stick, and warrant had been realised, and the creditors satisfied, a sum representing perhaps £150 a year was secured to us, and with this, and the despatch-box, we committed ourselves to the future.

It appeared that my Uncle Jenico’s inventions had always been more creditable than profitable to him, and this for the reason that unattainable capital was necessary to their working. Given a few hundreds, he was confident that he could make thousands out of any one of them. It was hard, for the lack of a little fuel, so to speak, to have so much power spoiling on one’s hands. I would have had him, when once I understood, invest our own capital in some of them; but, though I could see he loved me for the suggestion, he had the better strength of affection to keep loyal to his trust, which he administered scrupulously according to the law. Afterwards, when I came to know him better, I could not but be thankful that he had shown this superior genius for honesty; for his faith in his own concerns was so complete, and at the same time so naïve, that he might otherwise have lacked nothing but the guilt to be a defaulter.

As to the patents themselves, they represented a hundred phases of craft, every one of which delighted and convinced me by its originality. There was a design amongst them for an automatic dairy-maid, a machine which, by exhausting the air in a number of flexible tubes, could milk twenty cows at once. There was a design for making little pearls large, by inserting them like setons in the shells of living oysters. There was a plan for a ship to be driven by a portable windmill, which set a turbine spinning under the stern. Uncle Jenico’s contrivances were mostly on an heroic scale, and covered every form of enterprise—from the pill which was to eliminate dyspepsia from the land, to a scheme for liquidating the National Debt by pawning all England for a term of years to an International Trust. At the same time, there was no human need too mean for his consideration. He was for ever striving to economise labour for the betterment of his poorer fellow-creatures. His inventiveness was a great charity, which did not even begin at home. His patents, from being designed to improve any condition but his own, suffered the neglect of a world to which selfishness is the first principle of business competence. His “Napina,” a liquid composition from which old clothes, after having been dipped therein, re-emerged as new, could find no market. His “Labour-of-Love Spit,” which was turned by a rocking-chair moving a treadle, like that on a knife-grinder’s machine, so that the cook could roast her joint in great comfort while dozing over her paper, could make no headway against the more impersonal clock-work affair. And so it was with most of his designs, but a few of which had been actually tested before being condemned on insufficient evidence. What more ridiculous, for instance, than to denounce his “Burglar’s Trap” on the score that one single idiot of a householder had blundered into his own snare and been kept there while the robbers were rifling his premises? What more scandalous than to convict his Fire-Derrick—a noble invention, like a crane dangling a little cabin, for saving life at conflagrations—because the first time it was tested the box would not descend, but kept the insurance gentlemen swinging in the air for an hour or two; or his Infallible Lifebelt, which turned upside-down in the water for the single reason that they tried it on a revenue officer who had lost his legs in an explosion? No practical innovation was surely ever started without a stumble. But Uncle Jenico had no luck. He sunk all his capital in his own patents without convincing a soul, or—and this is the notable thing—losing his temper. That one only of his possessions remained to him, fresh and sound as when, as a little boy, he had invented a flying top, which broke his grandmother’s windows. No neglect had impaired it, nor adversity ruffled for more than a moment. If he had patented it and nothing else, he could have made his fortune, I am certain.

Still, when we came to be comrades—or partners, as he loved to call us—his restless brain was busy as ever with ideas. Nothing was too large or small for him to touch. He showed me, on an early occasion, how his hat—not the black one he had worn at the funeral, but the big beaver article that came over his eyes—explained its own proportions in a number of little cupboards or compartments in the lining, which were designed to carry one’s soap, toothbrush, razor, etc., when on a short visit. He had the most delightful affection for his own ingenuities, and the worldliest axioms for explaining the secret of their success. On the afternoon when Mr. Quayle, after the kindest of partings with me, had left us, and while he was yet on the stairs, Uncle Jenico had bent to me and whispered: “Make it a business principle, my boy, never to confess to insolvency. You heard the way I assured the gentleman? Well, Richard, we may have in our despatch-box there all Ophir lying fallow for the lack of a little cash to work it; but we mustn’t tell our commercial friends so—no, no. We must let them believe it is their privilege to back us. Necessity is a bad recommendation.”

It may be. But I was not a commercial gent; and Uncle Jenico had all my faith, and should have had all my capital if it had rested with me to dispose of it as I liked.

During the time my uncle was engaged in London, George, good man, remained at Ipswich to look after me, though we were forced reluctantly to dismiss him as soon as things were settled. It was impossible, however, on a hundred and fifty pounds a year to keep a man-servant; and so presently he went, and with him my last connection with the old life. Not more of the past than the clothes I stood in now remained to me. It was as if I had been shipwrecked and adopted by a stranger. But the final severance seemed a relief to Uncle Jenico, who, when it was accomplished, drew a long breath, and adjusted his glasses and looked at me rosily.

“Now, Richard,” he said, “with nobody any longer to admonish us, comes the question of our home, and where to make it. Have you any choice?”

Dear me; what did I know of the world’s dwelling-places? I answered that I left it all to him.

“Very well,” he said, with a happy sigh; “then I have an original plan. Suppose we make it nowhere?”

“I mean,” said he, “supposing we have no fixed abode, but go from place to place as it suits us?”

“You see,” said Uncle Jenico, “moving about, I get ideas; and in ideas lies our future prosperity. Let’s look at the map.”

It was a lovely proposal. To enter, in actual being, the mysterious regions of pictures-on-the-wall; to breathe the real atmosphere, so long felt in romance, of tinted lithographs and coloured prints; to find roads and commons and phantom distances, wistful, unattainable dreams hitherto, made suddenly accessible to me—it was thrilling, it was rapturous. My uncle humoured the thought so completely as to leave to me the fanciful choice of our first resting-place.

“Only don’t let it be too far,” he said. “Just at present we must go moderate, and until I can realise on the sale of a little patent, which I am on the point of parting with for an inadequate though considerable sum.”

I spent a delightful hour in poring over the county map. It was patched with verdant places—big farms and gentlemen’s estates—and reminded me somehow of those French green-frilled sugarplums which crunch liqueur and are shaped like little vegetables. One could feel the cosy shelter of the woods, marked in groves of things that looked like tiny cabbages, and gaze down in imagination from the hills meandering like furry caterpillars with a miniature windmill here and there to turn them from their course. The yellow roads were rich in suggestion of tootling coaches, and milestones, and inns revealing themselves round corners, with troughs in front and sign-boards, and perhaps a great elm shadowed with caves of leafiness at unattainable heights. But the red spit of railway which came up from the bottom of the picture as far as Colchester, and was thence extended, in a dotted line only, to Ipswich, gave me a thrill of memory half sad and half beautiful. For it was by that wonderful crimson track that my father and I had travelled our last road together as far as the old Essex town, where, since it ended there for the time being, we had taken coach for Suffolk.

“Can’t we—mayn’t we go to the sea? I’ve never been there yet; and we’re so close; and papa promised.”

“The sea?” he echoed. “Why, to be sure. I’ve long had an idea that seaweed might be used for water-proofing. It’s an inspiration, Richard. We’ll beat Mr. Macintosh on his own ground. But whereabouts to the sea, now?”

I could not suggest a direction, however; so he borrowed for me a local guide-book, which dealt with places of interest round the coast, and left me to study it while he went out for a walk to get ideas.

I had no great education; but I could read glibly enough for my eight years. When Uncle Jenico returned in an hour or two, our choice, so far as I was concerned, was made. I brought the book, and, laying it before him, pointed to a certain description.

“Dunberry,” he read, skipping, so as to take the gist of it—“the Sitomagus of the Roman occupation, and later the Dunmoc of East Anglia. Population, 694. (H’m, h’m!) Disfranchised by the Reform Act of ’32. (H’m!) Formerly a place of importance, owning a seaport, fortifications, seven churches and an abbey. In the twelfth century the sand, silting up, destroyed its harbour and admitted the encroachments of the sea, from which date its prosperity was gradually withdrawn. (H’m, h’m!) Since, century by century, made the devouring sport of the ocean, until, at the present date, but a few crumbling ruins, toppling towards their final extinction in the waves below, remain the sole sad relics of an ancient glory which once proudly dominated the element under which it was doomed later to lie ’whelmed.”

“A hill, called the Abbot’s Mitre, as much from its associations, perhaps, as from its peculiar conformation, overlooks the modern village, and is crowned on its seaward edge by the remains of the ancient foundation from which it takes its name. Some business is done in the catching and curing of sprats and herrings. There is an annual fair. Morant states that after violent storms, when the shingle-drifts are overturned, bushels of coins, Roman and other, and many of considerable value, may be picked up for the seeking.”

Uncle Jenico’s face came slowly round to stare into mine. His hair seemed risen; his jaw was a little dropped.

“Yes,” I thrilled back, delighted. “That’s why I chose it. I thought you’d be pleased.”

He looked out the direction eagerly on the map. It was distant, by road, some twenty-five miles north-east by north from Ipswich; by sea, perhaps ten miles further. But the weather was fine, and water-transport more suited to our finances. So two days later we had started for Dunberry, in one of the little coasting ketches that ply between Harwich and Yarmouth carrying farm produce and such chance passengers as prefer paying cheap for a risk too dear for security.

It was lovely April weather, and a light wind blowing up the shores from the south-east bowled us gaily on our way. I never so much as thought of sickness, and if I had, Uncle Jenico, looking in his large Panama hat like a benevolent planter, would have shamed me, with his rubicund serenity, back to confidence again. Our sole property, for all contingencies, was contained in the despatch-box and a single carpet bag; and with no more sense of responsibility than these engendered, we were committing ourselves to a future of ravishing possibilities.

Throughout the pleasant journey we hugged the coast, never being more than a mile or two distant from it, so that its features, wild or civilized, were always plain to us. It showed ever harsher and more desolate the farther we ran north, and the tearing and hollowing effect of waves upon its sandy cliffs more evident. All the way it was fretted, near and far, with towers—a land of churches. They stood grey in the gaps of hills; brown and gaunt on solitary headlands. Sometimes they were dismantled; and once, on a deserted shore, we saw a belfry and part of a ruined chancel footing the tide itself. It was backed by a great heaped billow of sand, which—so our skipper told us—had stood between it and the sea till storms flung it all over and behind, leaving the walls it had protected exposed to destruction.

As evening came on I must confess my early jubilation waned somewhat. The thin, harsh air, the melancholy cry of the birds, the eternal desolation of the coast, chilled me with a creeping terror of our remoteness from all that friendly warmth and comfort we had rashly deserted. Not a light greeted us from the shore but such as shone ghastly in the lifeless wastes of foam. The last coast town, miles behind, seemed to have passed us beyond the final bounds of civilization. So that it was with something like a whimper of joy that I welcomed the sudden picture of a hill notched oddly far ahead against the darkening sky. I ran hurriedly to Uncle Jenico.

“Aye,” said he, “it’s the Mitre, sure enow,” and spat over the taffrail.

“And like enow, by all they say,” he added, looking at Uncle Jenico, “to figure agen for godliness.”

There was an uneasy atmosphere of enigma here. But we were abroad after adventure, when all was said, and had no cause to complain.

I stood holding my uncle’s hand, while we ran our last knot for home in the twilight. As we neared the hill its peculiar shape was gradually lost, and instead, looking up from below, we saw the cap of a broken tower showing over its swell. Then hill and ruin dropped behind us, a shadowy bulk, and of a sudden we were come opposite a sandy cleft cutting up into the cliff, and below on the shingle a ghostly group of boats and shore-loafers, though still no light or sign of houses.

We brought to, the sails flapping, and the skipper sent a long melancholy boom sounding over the water from a horn. It awoke a stir on the beach, and presently we saw a boat put off, and come curtseying towards us. It was soon alongside, revealing three men, of whom the one who sat steering was a little remarkable. He was immensely tall and slouching, with a lank bristled jaw, a swarthy skin, and, in spectral contrast, eye-places of such an odd sick pallor as to give him the appearance, at least in this gloaming, of wearing huge spectacles. However, he was the authoritative one of the three, and welcomed us civilly enough for early visitors to Dunberry, hoping we should favour the place.

“None so well as thee, Jole, since thy convarsion,” bellowed the skipper, as we pushed off.

There followed a chuckle of laughter from the ketch, and I noticed even that the two men pulling us creased their cheeks. Their companion, unmoving, clipped out something like an oath, which he gruffly and hastily coughed over.

“The Lord in His wrath visit not the scoffer,” he said aloud, “nor waft him blindfold this night upon the Weary Sands!”

In a few minutes we slid up the beach on the comb of a breaker, and half a dozen arms were stretched to help us out. One seized the carpet-bag, another—our tall coxswain’s itself—the despatch-box; and thereby, by that lank arm, hangs this tale. For my uncle, who was jealous of nothing in the world but his box, in scrambling to resecure it from its ravisher, slipped on the wet thwarts, and, falling with his head against a corner of the article itself, rolled out bleeding and half-stunned upon the sand.

I was terribly frightened, and for a moment general consternation reigned. But my uncle was not long in recovering himself, though to such a dazed condition that a strong arm was needed in addition to his stick to help him towards the village. We started, a toilful procession, up the sandy gully (Dunberry Gap its name), I carrying the precious case, and presently, reaching the top, saw the village going in a long gentle sweep below us, the scoop of the land covering it seawards, which was the reason we had seen no lights.

It had been Uncle Jenico’s intention to look for reasonable lodgings; but this being from his injury impracticable, we let ourselves be conducted to the Flask Inn, the most important in the place, where we were no sooner arrived than he consented to be put to bed, with me in a little closet giving off his room. It was near dark by the time we were settled, and feeling forlorn and bewildered I was glad enough, after a hasty supper, to tuck my troubles between the sheets and forget everything in sleep. But how little I guessed, as I did so, that Uncle Jenico had, in falling, taken possession, like William the Conqueror, of this new land of our adoption.

CHAPTER V.
THE STORY OF THE EARTHQUAKE.

Providence, I cannot but believe, had all this time humoured us along a seeming “Road of Casualty,” which was, in truth, the direct path to its own wonderful ends. We talk of luck and accident and coincidence. They are, I am certain, but the veils with which It blinds us to Its inexorable conclusions. My chance selection of our destination, my uncle’s mishap—what were these but second and third acts in the strange drama which had begun in the law courts of Ipswich, where my father had given his life for a truth, which was to be here, thirty miles away, proven and consummated. The dénouement was distant yet, to be sure, for Providence, having all eternity to plot in, works deliberately. Nevertheless, It never loses sight, I think, of what we call the Unities of Art.

I awoke from a dreamless sleep, a restored and avid little giant. It was bright morning. A clock on the stairs cleared its throat and sang out six times. The house was still, save for a shuffling of drowsy maids at their dusting below. I lay quiet, conscious of the most unfamiliar atmosphere all about me—of whitewashed walls; of a smell between wood-smoke and seaweed and the faint sourness of beer; of cold boarded floors gritty with sand; of utter remoteness from the noise of traffic habitual to a young denizen of towns. This little gap of time had lifted me clean out of my accustomed conditions, and dumped me in an outpost of civilization, amongst uncouth allies, friendlies in name, but as foreign as foes to my experience.

I got up soon very softly, and washed and dressed and went out. I had to pass, on my way, through my uncle’s room; and it relieved me to see him slumbering peacefully on his pillow, though the white bandage across his forehead gave me a momentary shock.

I emerged upon a landing, on a wall of which, papered with varnished marble, hung a smoke-stained print of a hunt, with a case of stuffed water-birds on a table beneath. No one accosted me as I descended the little creaking flight of stairs. I passed out by the unlatched private door of the tavern, and found myself at the sea-end of the village street. It was a glowing morning. Not a soul appeared abroad, and I turned to the path by which we had come the night before, thrilling to possess the sea.

The ground went gently up by the way of a track that soon lost itself in the thin grass of the cliffs. Not till I reached the verge did I pause to reconnoitre, and then at once all was displayed about me. I drew one deep delighted breath, and turned as my foremost duty to examine the way I had come. The village, yawning from its chimneys little early draughts of smoke, ran straight from the sea, perhaps for a quarter of a mile, under the shelter of a low, long hill on which a few sheep were folded. Beyond this hill, southwards, and divided from it by a deepish gorge, whose end I could see like a cut trough in the cliff edge, bulged another, the Abbot’s, the contour which gave it its name but roughly distinguishable at these closer quarters. The ruins we had passed overnight crowned this second slope near its marge; and inland both hills dropped into pastures, whence the ground rose again towards a rampart of thick woods which screened all Dunberry from the world beyond.

It looked so endearing, such a happy valley of peace, one would scarcely have credited the picture with a single evil significance; yet—but I am not going to anticipate. Tingling with pleasure, I faced round to the sea.

It was withdrawn a distance away, creaming at the ebb. All beyond was a sheet of golden lustre fading into the bright mists of dawn. Right under the rising sun, like a bar beneath a crest, stretched the line of the Weary Sands, a perilous bank situate some five miles from shore; and between bank and coast rode a solitary little two-masted lugger, with shrouds of gossamer and hull of purple velvet, it seemed, in the soft glow. Even while I looked, this shook out sails like beetles’ wings, and, drawing away, revealed a tiny boat speeding shorewards. I bent and peered over. Ten fathoms beneath me the gully we had climbed in the dark discharged itself, a river of sand, upon the beach; and tumbled at its mouth, as it might be débris, lay a dozen pot-bellied fishing boats. Right and left the cliffs rose and dropped in fantastic conformations, until they sank either way into the horizon. It was a wonderful scene to the little town-bred boy.

Presently I looked for the rowing-boat again, and saw it close in shore. In a minute it grated on the shingle, and there heaved himself out of it the tall fisherman who had escorted us last night. I was sure of him, and he also, it appeared, of me; for after staring up some time, shading his eyes with his hand, he turned, as if convinced, to haul his craft into safety. I watched him awhile, and was then once more absorbed in the little vessel drawing seawards, when I started to hear his voice suddenly address me close by. He must have come up the gully as soft-footed as a cat.

His eyes were less like a marmoset’s by daylight; but they were still a strange feature in his gaunt forbidding face. I felt friendly towards every one; yet somehow this man’s expression chilled me, as he stood smiling down ingratiatory without another word.

“Lor’ bless ’ee, no, sir,” he answered, heartily, but in a sort of breathless way. “What makes ’ee think so?”

“Me!” He protested, with a panting chuckle. “Jole Rampick own that there little tender beauty! I’d skipped out fur my morning dip, sir—if you must know. A wonderful bracing water this—if folks would only credit it.”

His unshorn dusky face was not, I could not help thinking, the best testimony to its cleansing properties. But I kept my wisdom to myself, and turned to go back to the inn. Mr. Rampick volunteered his company, and on the way some instructive information.

“Aye,” he panted huskily; “man and boy fur nigh on fifty year have I known this here Abbot’s Dunberry, but never—till three months ago—the healing vartues of its brine.”

“The Lord,” he answered, showing the under-whites of his eyes a moment. “The Lord, sir, through his minister the parson—that’s Mr. Sant. Benighted we were—and ignorant—till the light was vouchsafed us; and parson he revealed the Bethesda lying at our very doors.”

“A blessed watering-place,” he said—“I’m humbly surprised, sir; like as parson calc’lates to make of this here, if the Almighty will condescend to convart our former wickedness to our profit.”

“Bad, bad!” He answered, setting his lips, and shaking his head. “A nest of smugglers and forswearers, till He set His hand on us.”

“Yonder, in the Mitre,” he said, waving his hand towards the hidden bluff. “It’ll be fower months ago, won’t it, as they run their last contraband to ground in the belly of that there hill. A cave, it was supposed, sir; but few knew for sarten, and none will ever know now till the day when the Lord ‘shall judge the secrets of men.’ There was a way in, as believed, known only to the few; and one night, as believed, them few entered by it, each man with his brace o’ runlets—and they never come out agen!”

I gasped and knotted my fingers together. It did not occur to my innocence to question the source of his knowledge, or conjecture.

“Why?” he echoed in a sort of asthmatic fury. “Why, sir, because it was a full cargo, and their iniquity according; and so the Lord He spoke, and the hill it closed upon ’em. In the dark, when we was all abed, there come a roaring wind from underground what turned our hearts to water; and in the morning when we gathered to look, there was the hill twisted like a dead face out of knowledge, and the Abbey—two-thirds of what was left—scrattled abroad.”

I could only stare up at him, breathing quick in face of this wonderful romance. It had, I knew, been a year strangely prolific in earth-shocks.

“Yes, sir,” he said soberly; “if all what’s believed is Gospel true, there at this moment lays those poor sinners, bedded like flints in chalk—and the hill fair reeking with Nantes brandy.”

“Hallerloojer! It was a sign and a warning. The shock of it carried off th’ old vicar, and in a week or two arter Mr. Sant he come to take his place. He found us a sober’d people, Hallerloojer! and soil meet fur the Lord’s planting. You be the fust fruits, sir; and we favourably hope as when you go away you’ll recommend us.”

Perhaps I vaguely understood by this something of the nature of our welcome. Given an isolated fishing village skipped by tourists because of its remoteness; given the sudden withdrawal from that village of its natural advantages for an illicit trade; given a clerical enthusiast, introduced at the right moment, to point out to a depressed population it’s locality’s potentialities as a watering-place, and to show the way for them to win an honest prosperity out of the ruins of evil; given, to top all, a dressing of local superstition, and the position was clear. Such deduction, no doubt, was for the adult rather than the child; but though I could not draw it at the time, it was there to be drawn, I am sure.

As we talked we had reached the inn, and my companion, touching his cap, passed on. But he came back before I had time to enter, and addressed me breathlessly, as if on an after-thought.

“Begging your pardon, sir—but you makes me laugh, you reely does—about that there lugger belonging to poor Jole Rampick.” And he went off chuckling, and looking, with his little head and slouching shoulders and stilts of legs, like the hind-quarters of a pantomime elephant.

I found my uncle sitting up in preparation to breakfast in bed. He was very genial and happy; but, so it seemed to me, extraordinarily vague. I told him about my adventure and the story of the earthquake, which he seemed somehow unable to dissociate from his own accident.

“I knew it, Richard,” he said; “but it was taking rather a mean advantage of a lame man, eh? There’s no security against it but balloons—that I’ve often thought. You see, when the ground itself gives underneath you, where are you to go? If one could only pump oxygen into one’s own head, you know. I’ll think about it in the course of the morning. I don’t fancy I shall get up just at present. That despatch-box, now—it was a drastic way of impressing its claims upon me, eh? Well, well!”

“How did I get lame?” he murmured, pressing the bandage on his forehead. “Why, to be sure, it was a parachute, Richard—a really capital thing I invented. But the wires got involved—the merest accident—and I came to the ground.”

He was interrupted by two young ladies, daughters of the inn, who came themselves—out of curiosity, I think—to serve us breakfast. They were over-dressed, all but for their trodden slippers, with large bows of hair on their heads, and they giggled a good deal and answered questions pertly.

“O, there now!” said one; “earthquake yourself, old gentleman! Go along with you!” And they ran out, and we heard them tittering all down the stairs.

Uncle Jenico got clearer after his meal, though he was still disinclined to move. I sat with him all the morning, while he showed and explained to me more of the contents of his box; and about midday a visitor, the Reverend Mr. Sant, was announced. I stood up expectant, and saw a thin, dark young man, in clerical dress, enter the room at a stride. He had the colourless face, large-boned nose, and burning eyes of a zealot, and not an ounce of superfluous flesh anywhere about him. Much athletic temperance had trimmed him down to frame and muscle, but had not parched the sources of a very sweet smile, which was the only emotional weakness he retained. He came up to the bed, took my uncle’s hand, and introduced himself in a word.

“Permit me,” he said; “I heard of your accident. I know a trifle of surgery, and our apothecary visits us but twice in the month. May I look?”

He examined the hurt, and, saying he would send a salve for it, settled down to talk.

Now, I could not follow the persuasive process; but all I know is that within a quarter of an hour he had learned all my uncle’s and my history, and the reason for our coming to Dunberry, and that, having once mastered the details, he very ingeniously set himself to appropriating them to the schemes of Providence.

“It is clear,” he said, “that you, free-lances of Destiny, were inspired to select this, out of all the world, for your operations. We looked for visitors to report for us upon the attractions of the place; you for a quiet and healthful spot in which to develop your schemes.”

“Very true,” said Uncle Jenico. “I’ve long had an idea for extracting gold from sea-water.”

“You see?” cried Mr. Sant, greatly pleased. “It’s a clear interposition of Providence. This coast is, I am sure, peculiarly adapted, from the accessibility of its waters, to gold-seeking.”

“Ah!” he exclaimed, and turned to my uncle. “Old Joel Rampick, was it? One of the most cherished of my converts, sir; a deeply religious man at bottom, though circumstances long obscured the light in him. Old Rampick, now! And talked about smuggling, did he? He’ll have drawn the moral of it from his own experience, I don’t doubt. Dunberry, there’s no use concealing, has been a long thorn in the side of the Revenue, though happily the earthquake has changed all that.”

“Do you think so?” said my uncle, his face falling. “My purpose in coming here was really most harmless, sir.”

“I am afraid that my predecessor lacked a little the apostolic fervour. He was old, and liked his ease, good man. Perhaps long association with the place had blunted his prejudices. I must not play the Pharisee to him, however. No doubt so circumstanced I should have failed no less to sow the seed. Heaven sent me at a fruitful moment: to Heaven be the credit and the glory! This little boy now—nephew Dicky? He knows his catechism?”

“Chit-chit!” protested the clergyman. “I hope not altogether ignorant of it?”

He was decently shocked, and won an easy promise from my uncle that I should come up to him for an hour’s instruction every day. Then he rose to go.

“You’ll excuse me,” he said, bending his brows, “but I trust you are satisfied with your quarters?”

“Well, yes,” answered my uncle, hesitating; “but—an inn, you see. It’s a little more than we can—than we ought to—eh?”

Mr. Sant brightened immediately. We came to know afterwards that he strongly disapproved of these flashy Miss Flemings, and had once expressed in public some surprise that they had not been impounded as skittish animals not under proper control.

“There’s the widow Puddephatt, ripe and ready for visitors,” he said, “and perfectly reasonable, I am sure. May I give you her address? It’s No. 3, the Playstow.”

My uncle thanked him warmly; and, smitten with a sudden idea, caught at his coat as he was leaving.

“O, by the way!” he said, “these coins to be picked up on the beach, now. There are enough left to make it profitable, I suppose?”

“The coins, Roman and other,” persisted Uncle Jenico, anxiously scanning the clergyman’s face; “the antiques, which Morant tells us litter the beach like shells after storms?”

“I have heard nothing of them during my time,” he said; “but I should hardly think smuggling would have got such a hold here if it were the Tom Tiddler’s ground your friend supposes it to be.”

Directly he was gone, Uncle Jenico turned to me, rubbing his hands, with a most roguish smile puckering his mouth.

“Richard,” he said, “we are in plenty of time. The obtuseness of the rustic is a thing astonishing beyond words! Here, with all Pactolus at his feet, he needs a stranger to come and show him his opportunities. But, mum, boy, mum! We’ll keep this little matter to ourselves.”

CHAPTER VI.
MRS. PUDDEPHATT AND FANCY-MARIA.

The following day my uncle was near himself again, and we left the Flask inn and took lodging with the widow Puddephatt. The Playstow was a little green, about half-way down the village, where the villagers reared their may-pole on May-day, and built their fires on Midsummer’s Eve, and caroused in September on the harvest-largesse won from passers-by. Round about, in a little square, were cottages, detached and exclusive, the élite of Dunberry; and to one side was the church—but now in process of completion—in whose porch the daring would seat themselves on St. Mark’s eve to see, at midnight, the wraiths of the year’s pre-doomed come and knock at the door. Mr. Sant had, however, limited that custom, as well as some others less reputable; and the fact that he was able to do so spoke volumes for his persuasiveness. At the present time the villagers, under his stimulus, were transferring, stone by stone, to the long unfinished fabric and its adjoining school-house, the less sacred parts of the ruined foundation on the hill.

Mrs. Puddephatt, though Dunberry-born, was a comparative acquisition to the village, to which she had been summoned, and to her natural succession in No. 3, the Playstow, through the death of an only sister without encumbrances. She had, in fact, gone very young, a great many years ago, into service in London, and had never set foot again in her native place until this inheritance, now two years old, had called her. She brought with her an ironic atmosphere of the great world, and a disdainful tolerance towards the little, in which her lot was now to vegetate. She had, in her high experience, “’tweenied,” “obliged,” scullery-maided, kitchen-maided, house-maided, parlour-maided, and old-maided; and she had somehow emerged from this five-fold chrysalis of virginity the widow Puddephatt—no one knew by what warrant, other than that of a sort of waspish charity-girl cap, with a knuckle-bone frill round her face. But then her knowledge of men was so matrimonial that it was admitted nothing but a husband could have inspired it. Her dictums, in respect to this mystic experience, were merum sal to the wives of Dunberry.

“Look in the pot for your new gownd,” and “The way to a man’s purse is through his mouth,” may be bracketed for utterances cryptic to the “general,” but not to their delighted understandings.

“A man shuts his sweet’art’s mouth with a kiss, but his wife’s heyes.”

“Be careful of a Saturday morning to mend the ’ole in your man’s pocket.”

Such and the like shrewd axioms served the widow Puddephatt at least as well as marriage lines; and, if more were needed, her mastery of the exact science of nagging and of the conquering resource of hysterics supplied it. Sometimes, it was whispered, she was to be seen in her front garden viciously dusting a man’s coat with a stick; and on this moral implication alone, late tavern roysterers, lurching home after closing-time past the little wicket where she was often to be seen watching spectral and ironic, had been known to slink by, meanly conscious of deserting, and surrendering into her gloating hands a purely imaginary Puddephatt, their late boon companion.

This tremendous lady undertook the care of us with infinite condescension, and, hearing that we were Londoners bred, gathered us at once under the protection of her maternal and metropolitan wing.

“Lork, Fancy-Maria!” she would say, with an air of amused tolerance towards the little Suffolk rawbones who “generalled” for her; “we don’t breathe on the knives and polish ’em in our haprons in London!” Or, “That won’t do, Fancy-Maria! We know better in London than to dust the ’ot plates with our helbers.”

With this shibboleth of sarcastic comparison, she had won, not only Fancy-Maria, but all feminine Dunberry to a perspiring emulation of her gentility, so that in the course of her two years the social code had grown quite elevated, and it was no longer fashionable to dine in one’s shirt-sleeves.

Fancy-Maria was her adoring, but unable lieutenant. She tried hard, and breathed very hard; yet her fervour led to frequent disaster. It was the management of trays that tested her most severely. If she rose with one from the depths, she invariably struck it against the lintel of the parlour door, and shot everything from it into the hall. If she descended with one from the heights, she tripped at the corner where the stairs turned, and tobogganed down on it the rest of the way, preceded by an avalanche of cups and dishes. She always did her best to keep the contents steady with her thumbs; but her thumbs, though large, were not universal, and were generally occupied in holding secure the bread and butter, for choice, on one side, and the fried fish on the other. Some people make a point of leaving a little piece on each dish “for manners.” We always cut out and left Fancy-Maria’s thumb-marks for that mysterious retainer of our childhood.

It was not long before Uncle Jenico questioned Mrs. Puddephatt about the earthquake. She turned up her nose at the first mention of it, and tittered the shrillest sarcasm.

“Lork, sir!” she said, “you’ve never abin took hin by that stuff! And you a Londoner!”

She cocked her head and folded her arms across her chest, like a tricksy saint in an old woodcut.

“I wouldn’t a’ believed it of you,” she said; “no, not if you’d gone and took me by the ears and battered my ’ed on the table.”

“Bless ’im for a hinnercent suckling-dove o’cooing among the sarpints!” she interrupted, with a tight little laugh.

We looked at her quite bewildered, and Uncle Jenico was evidently at a loss for an answer.

“What ’e wants, that ’e believes,” said Mrs. Puddephatt, nodding her head many times. “But he ain’t a Londoner, and hi ham!”

“Herthquake, indeed!” exclaimed Mrs. Puddephatt, with withering contempt. “And grace took hout of it? No, sir; not more than what Elijah looked to find in his’n, and was deceived in the Almighty. A fine show convert we’ve got in our Mr. Rampick, haven’t we? Ho, yes! Tee-hee! And I ’opes as he makes it pay, sinst the loss of his liveli’ood by the herthquake.”

“Ah! what would he lose, now?” interrupted the lady, acridly humorous. “That’s just hit, sir. Talked of the wicked smugglers to Master Bowen here, didn’t he? Well, supposin’ he were hisself the most howtdacious of the lot? I don’t say he was, you know. I wouldn’t so commit myself. I merely states as a curious fact that this Rampick, as was formerly as warm and dangerous a man as the best in the place, is, sinst the herthquake, become a loafer, without any visible means of substance. Ho, yes! A pretty convert, I don’t think!”

“You believe him to be at heart a smuggler still?” said my uncle. “Now, now, Mrs. Puddephatt!”

“Sir,” she answered, with dignity, “I thank you for the himplication; but whatever my apperient greenness, I wasn’t born yesterday. We may have our faults in London, but to be Suffolk paunches isn’t among them. Once a smuggler, sir, is halways a smuggler.”

“Yes, sir,” said Mrs. Puddephatt; “just as to be born a gipsy is to laugh at the rates. A ’ottentot, sir, isn’t ashamed of his own nekkedness, nor a smuggler of his smugness. Reform, hindeed!”

“Well, well,” said Uncle Jenico. “But what makes you suppose it wasn’t an earthquake?”

“In London, sir,” she said, “herthquakes—as is p’raps beknownst to you—sends out sulfurious perfumes, and not the heffluvium of brandy.”

“I reveal nothing, Mr. Paxton,” she interrupted him, “but what my nose tells me. You may smell it yet, sir, begging your pardon, about the Mitre.”

“I’ve ’eard tell, sir, of ile wells, but never of brandy. I may be wrong; and halso I may be wrong in doubting that gunpowder forms of itself in the ’oller places of the herth,” and with these enigmatic words she left us.

But it must be said that, for all her withering gentility, she made us an excellent landlady, as we had full opportunity of proving. For—I may as well out with it at once—we had come to Dunberry to stay.

CHAPTER VII.
MR. SANT.

I think, perhaps, Uncle Jenico foresaw it no more than I. Without doubt, at first, he would have laughed to scorn the idea of sinking all his eager interests in this little Suffolk fishing village, whose communications with any town of even fifth-rate importance, such as Yokestone, were by seven miles at least of villainous roads. Our settlement was gradual; our departure postponed, in the beginning, week by week, probably like that of the man who went to Venice for a fortnight and stayed for thirty years. The initiatory step towards our continued residence was certainly my uncle’s acceptance of Mr. Sant’s offer to instruct me. That was, as the French say, le premier pas qui coûte. Afterwards, the offer—being extended, with infinite consideration for our means, to one for my general tuition by the clergyman—grew to confirm our attachment to the place, until it came to be tacitly understood that Dunberry was to see me through my education.

But there was another reason. Uncle Jenico seemed never quite to recover from the stun inflicted upon him at his landing. His affection, his geniality, his inventiveness were no whit impaired; yet somehow the last, one could have thought, had relapsed from the practical upon the theoretic. He was a trifle less restless; a trifle more inert. He appeared to bask in a sort of luminous placidity, and more and more his concern in his patents diminished. I do not mean by this to imply that his schemes for our enrichment were all forgotten. On the contrary, they concentrated to an intensity as pathetic as it was single in its object. I know at this date that Uncle Jenico was a lovable failure. I recognize, moreover, as I hardly recognized then, that a wistful realization of this fact—minus its qualifying adjective—was beginning to dawn upon him, and that he was inclining to consider his “lame and impotent conclusions” a right judgment upon him for his self-seeking. God bless him, I say! He thought to atone for this, his egotism, dear charitable soul, by devoting all his remaining energies to the task of making the fortune of the little trust committed to his care. He wrought, in fact, that he might die content, leaving me rich; and, in the furtherance of this object, his schemes were not, as I say, forgotten, but transferred. They were consolidated, in short, into one, which in the end was to become an obsession. But of that I will treat in its place.

As soon as we were settled, I began at once to go to Mr. Sant’s for my daily lesson, the scope of which imperceptibly enlarged itself from Catechism to the Classics. The rectory stood inland beyond the Playstow, in a rather lonely position under the drop of the hill. It was a dark, mossy old building, shrouded in trees, and a by-road went past its gates up to the woods beyond, in the depths of whose shadows lay the Court Manor-house and its bed-ridden old squire.

Mr. Sant was a bachelor, a tough militant Churchman and Church reformer. He taught me the uses of my fists as well as of the Decalogue. No doubt it was this constitution of his which made such way with the villagers, for Englishmen respect piety the better for its being knocked into them. I took my share of his excellent influence, and I trust it helped to make a man of me. You shall hear by-and-by about the first practical use to which I put it.

He had the motto from Cicero framed and hung over the mantelpiece in his study. I will quote it to you, because it speaks the man more perfectly than I can do. Quidquid agas, agere pro viribus! Whatever you do, to do with your whole strength—that was it. It was a maxim very apt to one whose own strength, both of will and body, was of tempered steel.

One among his many characteristic innovations was “The Feast of Lanterns,” as he called it. A lecture, to combine instruction with amusement, would be called for delivery in the church after dark. Whosoever listed might, on a single condition, attend this. He would find set up, spectrally discernible in the chancel, which, like the rest of the building, would be unlighted, a screen of white linen, on which had been roughly sketched in crayon, by the courageous lecturer himself, a number of objects—to become, in their turn, subjects—which might range, say, from a leg of mutton to the dome of St. Paul’s. The condition of attendance was simply that each comer should bring his or her own lantern, with the natural consequence that the greater the company the brighter the illumination. Now, with the first arrival began hymns, and were so continued until sufficient lights were congregated to reveal the drawings on the screen, a right identification of any one of which, by any member of the audience, at the close of any verse, put a period to the singing and started a disquisition on the object named. It must be said that the identification was not always accurate, in which case the singing was continued. For religious and artistic fervour are not necessarily associated, and the splendid daring which Mr. Sant put into his work sometimes obscured its intentions, as when his bellows, designed to introduce a dissertation on pulmonics, were taken for a ham. But the vigour and resourcefulness of the lecturer neither allowed an impasse, nor, while he was always quite ready to join in the laughter over his own artistic shortcomings, permitted criticism to degenerate into fooling. He did not object to laughter; on the contrary (I am afraid it will scandalize some people), he credited the Almighty with an almighty sense of humour, only he insisted upon its being tempered to the sacredness of the place in which it was evoked. And, for the rest, he had a fund of bright and ready information at his constant disposal.

Such is an example of his methods, and, if any pious reactionaries object, I can only say that in the result it was educational; that it won tavern-loafers to at least one wholesome evening in the week; that, in short, it attained such popularity, that any dissipated seceder attempting to sneak out of the church, and thereby obscure the light by so much as the loss of a taper, would be roughly grabbed back by his fellows, and forced, willy-nilly, to hear the lecture out.

Mr. Sant, to sum him up, was a zealot without being a bigot, and a devoted servant to his Master without prejudice to human nature. He was also a capable boxer. I came to love as much as to respect him.

CHAPTER VIII.
TREASURE-HUNTING.

For a fortnight succeeding our arrival the weather remained calm and bright, so that Uncle Jenico and I were able to explore the locality with great comfort and satisfaction. The coast, which we followed up both north and south for miles, was extremely desolate and unvisited, though bearing at intervals all along it the traces of former settlements. It would seem to have been quite thickly populated once, during a period which dated probably from the incursions, first, of the Roman legions, and, after, of those salt sea-wolves who preferred squatting round the fringes of their conquered island—with the open door of the sea beside them, and its smell in their briny nostrils—to penetrating into the traps of the close-shut valleys. Later, Christianity had come to fret these windy, foam-whipped settlements with pinnacles, and monastic walls, and stone fanes with jewelled windows and airy bell-towers, so that church might peal to church all down this long front line of the position it had won. But corruption creeping in with prosperity, and lawlessness with the tides, God had withdrawn His countenance from the temples that abused His service, and had permitted the ocean to break in their defences and one by one devour them. The priest who had evaded his vows had ages ago tucked up his cassock and fled; the parson who succeeded him, and to the reversion of his benefices, could not so hoodwink Heaven by taking his tithes of smuggled tobacco and brandy, as to stay for one season the hunger of the gluttonous waters. Year by year, century by century, the storms had fed on these devoted sand-built coasts, and were still feeding when we came to know them. Towns and once-flourishing colonies had disappeared as utterly as if they had never existed. Not only they, but the very soil on which they had been planted, paved the floor of the ocean for miles out. There were legends of foundered bells rung by unseen mermen at incredible distances from shore. There were stories of treasure chests and sculptured marbles revealed to storm-belated fishermen in the deep troughs of monstrous, bottom-scouring waves. So far away as the Weary Sands themselves, it was said, traces of the ancient Dunberry could be spelt out, in calm seasons, by those who gazed intently enough and long enough into the green, deep waters. It was a fable, probably, in a land of fables; yet it served to emphasize the wreck of time, and will show upon what a haunted border-land of ghosts we had come to make our home. The modern village itself was old. How ancient, then, those grey ruins on the cliff, which had survived to see the last of the glory, of which they had once been a part, claimed by the deep, and their own hoary traditions engulfed into the pettier traditions of a little clan!

These same ruins consisted of the great tower of the abbey, with a mass of tumbled and complicated masonry at its foot; of the line of the nave, picked out in an avenue of shattered arches which ran seawards until stopped by the upward and outward sweep of the cliff; and, finally, of a maze of huge fragments, mostly on the inland side, which marked the sites of monastic buildings, lazar house, boundary walls, and so forth. Elsewhere were traces of aisles, cloisters and supernumerary offices uncountable, the whole buttressed with ivy. But the most significant ruin of all, to my thinking, was one which stood under the cliff, and for three-fourths of its depth apart from it. This was no other than the abbey well, which generations of storms had gnawed out of its deep bed in the ground without being able to crunch and devour the sturdy relic itself. There it stood, a Titan of the vanished race, sprouting stubborn from the littered sand below, cemented, as it seemed, by the very drift which was yearly flung upon it to destroy. Exposed and isolated, choked with parching rubbish as it was, how thrilling was the thought of the monks who had once drunk from it; of the waters it had drained from the hill; of the hill itself with its one-time springs lying under the salt sea! It was the very gaunt dead monument to the desolation of this land, and as such, it seemed, would endure when all else was vanished. The storms which took the rest stone by stone, could do no more than stone by stone reveal this; the earthquake, which at a blow had rent the massive tower and tumbled half the remaining walls, had left this unshaken. It was a wonderful and impressive relic.

The first time I had entered among the ruins was by myself. I climbed the slope early on the morning before breakfast, and stood in the midst of them, thrilled and awestricken. A little grassy valley divided me from the hill which concealed the village, of which not so much as a roof was visible from where I stood. I seemed entirely cut off and alone, a pigmy in the stupendous shadows of these “ruined choirs.” The ground swept in a steepish curve to the cliff edge, and again, inland, in one slightly shallower. These were the “Old and New Testaments” of the Mitre; and in the “Valley of Knowledge” that lay between, was built the abbey, its monastery, chapter-house, refectory and other buildings taking and topping the western slope, which, on its further side, went shelving down to the Cemeterium Fratrum, and the confines of the old grounds.

I poked about among the shattered stones with a feeling between fear and curiosity. I could tell by the fresh edges of the rents, and the way in which little avalanches of mortar were constantly falling with a whispering sound, that much of the devastation was recent. The tower had been breached by the earthquake all down its seaward front, opening a monstrous gap from which a cataract of stones had thundered, and piled themselves in foam, as it were, at the foot. In one place, near the cliff slope, a mighty plinth had been heaved on to its side, and I saw the mould on the under surface of it yet grooved with the tracks of slugs and beetles. It had sunk, with the mass of masonry cemented to it, two-thirds of its breadth into the earth, and all about the ground was strangely wryed, and distorted, and cracked, and bubbled up into mounds, as if here the underheaval had made itself peculiarly felt. I was gazing on it half-fascinated, when, happening to raise my eyes, I started to see other regarding me fixedly from a face which seemed to have sprouted from the earth.

I gave a little cry and uttered Mr. Rampick’s name. At the word, the man himself rose to his height, from the position in which it appeared he had been crouching, and ascended the last steps of a cliff pathway, of the existence of which I had not known. He came up to me, rubbing the back of his bony hand across his mouth.

“Here, or hereabouts,” he said, “they lays under—as supposed—each with his brace o’ runlets.”

He gazed at me a moment, breathing hard. His eyes seemed blacker, the rims round them more livid than I had yet noticed.

“What!” he cried, so hoarsely that his voice cracked. “Displace these here sacred ruins fur the likes of they! The Lord, sir—begging your pardon—set His own trap for them in His own way; and it been’t fur us to rise His dead. May I make so bold to axe if your uncle knows you’re out?”

“Ah!” he said. “I lay he won’t be best pleased, sir, with humility. This here hill, sir, if all what’s said is Gospel true—is risky ground to walk fur them as knows it not, nor its toppling stones, sir, nor its hidden abscesses. I’d go home, sir, if I was you, with favour, sir.”

I was offended, but a little frightened also. Blushing scarlet, I turned away, without a word, and ran down the slope homewards.

I told Uncle Jenico of my adventure and encounter. To my further surprise he commended Mr. Rampick’s warning.

“What should I do, if anything happened to you, Richard, when I was not by?” he pleaded.

There was a note of emotion in his voice which touched me, and I promised I would never seek the Mitre again out of his company. I meant it when I said it; but, alas! the venturesomeness of youth led me later on, I am ashamed to confess, to disregard my promise.

That was not till long after, however; and in the meanwhile the weather remaining fine, as I have said, we had plenty of opportunity for exploring the district. Not a day was allowed to pass, moreover, without our investigating at least once in the twelve hours, a section of the coast. Uncle Jenico would prod all the way, with his thick stick, into the moraine of shingle which ran along the shore above the high tide mark. At these times he would be very absent-minded, answering my questions at random, and I knew that he had Morant and his golden bushels in his thoughts. He never found anything, however, and each evening would look up at the sky and predict stormy weather with a sham deprecation of the inconvenience it would be to us.

But at last the weather really did break, and dark evening settled in, with a high wind and rising sea. It blew a gale all night and throughout the following day, and Uncle Jenico bemoaned our detention in the house with a gratified face.

It was not until the second morning that it had cleared sufficiently to enable us to go out, which we did immediately after breakfast. The sun was blinking waterily, and the surf pounding yellow as we came down to the beach; but the wind had fallen and the rain ceased, which was enough for us.

Uncle Jenico, with his blue coat fastened tightly across his chest, was looking extraordinarily swollen, I thought, until the reason was explained to me. We had not gone far, when—first glancing all about him with an air of twinkling mystery—he cautiously unbuttoned, and revealed, neatly folded upon his chest, a little bushel sack such as they use for potatoes.

“Hush!” he whispered, though not a soul was in sight; “the difficulty will be to avoid observation when we bring it back full. I dare say they’re honest here, Richard; but it’s a wrong business principle to presume upon a sentiment. We must dine and sup out—I’ve brought some sandwiches with me, and Mr. Sant will excuse you for once—and return with our booty after dark.”

“Well,” he answered, laughing joyously but privately, “I hope not quite, or it would puzzle us to carry it. But, in common wisdom we must make the best we can of this rare opportunity.”

He hung the sack over his arm, and we started off. The storm had certainly overturned the shingle, and scattered much of it abroad in a tangle of seaweed and dead dog-fish. For hours we hunted on, groping sedulously among the litter; and at last, late in the afternoon, we found a penny. At least, I was convinced it was one, being intimately acquainted, like most boys, with the coin. But Uncle Jenico would not hear of it. He was shaking with excitement as he examined it. It was so rubbed by the action of the waves as to exhibit nothing but a near-obliterated bust, which I was sure was that of our late lamented King. My uncle, however, pointed out to me distinct traces, though I could not see them, of a Latin inscription, and was jubilant over the find. It did not make much impression on the sack, it is true; but he was careful to point out to me that the value of a nugget, such as it would take two men to carry, might all be contained in a diamond which one could slip into one’s waistcoat pocket. It was not so much quantity we needed, he said, as quality; and he was quite satisfied, entirely so, with the result of our day’s exploration.

I was glad of this, at least, being dog-tired long before the sun-setting, as it justified us in going home to supper. But my faith in Morant, I am afraid, was already sadly shaken.

CHAPTER IX.
HARRY HARRIER.

It was that obnoxious penny, I believe, which was responsible for my uncle’s continued pursuit of his new Lobby, until the hobby itself became an obsession. If we had come home that first day empty-handed, I have little doubt but that his baulked imagination would have found itself some other and more practical outlet. As it was, the discovery was held by him to justify every proverb which values itself upon small beginnings. He was so little cast down by its meagreness, that there was no limit to the golden dreams of which he made it the basis. Most crazes, I fancy, are so built upon a pennyworth of fact.

He did not take out the sack again, but replaced it by a sponge-bag, and the bag, later, by a stout leathern purse. Finally, he decided that his trouser-pockets would serve all our needs, with the additional advantage that our hands would be freer thereby, and the risk of comment on our proceedings avoided. It may have been, for it had certainly little to feed upon. During those early weeks, beyond some scraps of old iron, we found nothing.

At first, it must be said, Uncle Jenico was not so entirely possessed by his infatuation, but he found time to experiment in other directions. For days he made our lodgings almost uninhabitable by boiling and decomposing seaweed, until Mrs. Puddephatt complained that her reputation was suffering by the incessant “hodour of ’ot putrid fish” which emanated from her premises.

The patent, upon which he had expected to realize, turned out, after all, a disappointment, and had never, it appeared, been regarded as other than a joke by the man who, he had supposed, had been going to buy it. He was a little disconsolate at first, but soon brightened up when he thought of the potential riches lying under the shingle.

“We’ll laugh at ’em all by-and-by, Richard,” he said. “What a joke it’ll be when we’ve got our own capital to work upon, and these ninnies find out the good things they’ve missed. But we won’t be relentless, my boy, and disinherit the honest labourer because of the shortsightedness of his employer. Work for the good of mankind, remember, and you work for your own.”

Fine weather, at this time, made him thoughtful and restless. It was only when the wind blew and the waves rose that he cheered up and became excited like a seagull. Then he would laugh aloud, and button up his coat and, telling me to follow him when my lesson was over, limp off to the beach, and there untiringly weave his ropes of sand, growing more and more absorbed in his task the faster it melted beneath his hands. The coins were there, he was convinced; and it only needed patience and luck (and he plumed himself upon his being rather a spoilt child of the latter) to hit upon the deposits.

In the meanwhile I was going to my daily lesson, and getting absorbed in my own way. Mr. Sant was a delectable tutor, inspiring and invigorating, and by-and-by, unconsciously to me, my hour extended itself to two, and sometimes more. So months passed, and then a year, and I was nine.

One morning I was on my way to the rectory when I made a notable acquaintance. I had to pass, on my setting out, the new school, which was now in full activity, and battling its first successful steps in the moral and intellectual reformation of infant Dunberry. The children were generally trooping to the bell-call as I started, and I have no doubt that the sense of superiority my consciousness of private tuition gave me made itself apparent to some of them in my air and demeanour.

A little beyond the Playstow the road to the rectory, and to the Court on the hill, ran up obliquely through the village side, passing very soon into privacy and loneliness. I had almost reached the rectory palings when I saw a boy start out, at sight of me, from the shadow of them and come swiftly on, as if to accost me while yet short of shelter. He was about my own age or a little older, and had a round, freckled face, with dark red hair curled as tight as astrakhan, and a very fat little pug-nose. He was dressed in a brown velveteen jacket and strong corduroy breeches and leathern gaiters, and he looked what, in fact, he was, a miniature gamekeeper. I knew him well enough by sight, having passed him for the last two or three weeks near the school-house, and always, I verily believe, with an odd little tremor of foreboding in my inside. He had proved, on inquiry, to be the only child of Harrier, the squire’s gamekeeper, from whom, and that only on his master’s initiative, a scowling consent to his son’s attending the new school had been wrung by Mr. Sant. But the boy came, though near as rebellious as his father, and had even, until this morning, arrived punctual.

Now he advanced, swaggering and whistling, with his hands in his breeches’ pockets, and a fine air of abstraction. I tried to dodge him, but for all that, in spite of his pretended preoccupation, he brought his shoulder smack against mine with a force that knocked me sprawling, and, from the mere pain of it, drove the angry tears to my eyes.

He wheeled round at once, as I gathered myself up, with a mock apology so impudent that I longed to hit him, but was deterred by the front he showed me. He stood square, balancing on his heels, as tight-knit a young mischief as health and muscle could produce.

“Mighty!” he said, with a pretence of being scared. “What I done, Lor? Blest if I ain’t knocked into the dirt the young gen’leman what treats we for sich!”

“You did it on purpose,” I said sullenly, trying not to whimper as I dusted myself.

“Me!” he cried, in beautiful astonishment. “Why, howsomever can you charge it to me, master, walking with your nose in the air?”

“Is it!” he gasped, spasmodic. “O yus, o’ course!—I’ll larn you—you dursen’t—foonk!—private poople—yah!—take your lickun, then!”

Something must have stirred in the garden at the moment, for he suddenly flounced round and off, his mouth drawn down contemptuous, and his chin stuck out. But I had not done with him by any means.

Mr. Sant received me that morning, I thought, oddly, and made no allusion to my battered appearance. Neither did I, at which, perhaps, he cleared a little.

The next morning Harry Harrier—for such was the young sportsman’s name—met me as before. I gave him the path, though with anger in my heart; and he openly jeered at me as he went by. The following day it was the same, and for many days after. He would have risked, I believe, ten times the punishment he deserved, and got, for being late, rather than baulk himself of this recurrent treat. Presently he altered his tactics in such a way as to eat his cake and have it, so to speak. He did not pass me one day at the usual hour, and I confess I breathed relief, for all my own inefficiency was gall to me. Mr. Sant’s manner, as was usual now, was chilling almost to repulsion. I was very unhappy. I had grown to brood on my grievance until it almost choked me. Dunberry was becoming to me a miserable Siberia, and I longed to be out of it, and hinted as much to my uncle. But, to my dejection, he would not understand—could not, perhaps, as pride had always prevented me from revealing my difficulty to him or to any of my real friends. Moreover, the picking-up of some trumpery oddments on the beach had by now established him unshakably in his craze, which had been further confirmed by the action of certain unscrupulous Dunberryites in palming off on him some faked-up coins, which I could have sworn had never been minted out of my own generation.

The relief I enjoyed on this particular morning was, however, delusive. The cunning little gamekeeper had got himself credited with punctuality, only that he might descend upon me on his return journey as I left the rectory. Nor was this the worst; for he came reinforced by half a dozen schoolfellows, the dirty little parasites of his corduroy lordship. I found them awaiting me at a quiet turn of the road, and, before I knew it, was being hustled and insulted. I pushed my way through, however, with a lump swelling in my throat, and was trying to stifle the inclination to run, when a cry from Harrier brought me to the roundabout with a scarlet face.

“Cowardy-cowardy-custard! Dursen’t peach to old Crazy, what broke his leg a-kicking of yer!”

“He broke his leg falling from a parryshoot. He isn’t crazy. I’m not such a coward as you!” I blazed out in a breath. I was bristling and tingling all over. The worm had turned at last.

I was down and up again in a moment, and rushing blindly at him with a cut lip and bloody mouth. He kept quite cool, and met me over and over again with stunning blows. I didn’t care. I hardly felt them in my rage; my long pent-up feelings had burst their bonds and I was quite beside myself. In the midst I was caught in the leash of a sinewy hand and torn away. For some moments I fought and screamed in my madness; then suddenly desisted, gasping and trembling all over. Red seemed to clear from my eyes, and I saw. The parasites were fled; Harry Harrier stood opposite me, hanging his head and his twitching hands; and in possession of us both was Mr. Sant.

A little silence followed; then suddenly the clergyman released me and stepped aside.

“You’re a strong boy, Harrier,” he said, quietly. “You’ve had the advantage of some training, too. This was hardly brave.”

“What!” said Mr. Sant. “Do you call it proving it to attack him six to one?”

“I takes no count of that raff, sir,” said the boy. “’Twas him and me fought.”

“But you used them to provoke him—not content with insulting him yourself day by day as he came to his lesson. Yes; I know.”

I looked up amazed, and then down again. Certain tell-tale rustlings that had reached my ears occasionally from the back of the rectory palings occurred to me, so that I hung my head with shame.

“Well, your reverence,” said the boy, rather insolently, “pay me, and get it over. I takes my capers with my mutton.”

“I shall pay you, sir,” said Mr. Sant, with, I could have thought, the ghost of a grin, “as one gentleman pays another. You think, perhaps, that Master Bowen here has told of your bullying him. He has not breathed a word about it to anybody. Now that, I think, shows him to be the better man of the two.”

The surprise, the gratification were so great, I could have cried out to him like a silly girl.

“You think not?” said Mr. Sant. “Well, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do—I’m going to back my man to whop you by-and-by.”

“You’ve all the advantage at present, you know,” went on the clergyman. “You’ve got constitution, muscle, and a little of the science—not so much as you think, but still a little. Now Master Bowen isn’t your equal in any of these, as I suspect you knew, or you wouldn’t have attacked him.”

“Well,” said Mr. Sant, smiling, “I’ll take your word for it, because I believe, after all, it’s an honest word. But the point is this. Muscle and constitution are slow growers, and while my man was training to improve his, you could be improving yours. Science, on the other hand, can be taught, and I mean to teach him science until I consider he’s your equal and better. When that comes about you shall fight again, and I’ll umpire. Do you agree?”

“Very well. Only I must have an understanding. You must leave him unmolested in the mean time.”

“I’ll do it!” cried the lad. “I’ll do more. I’ll fight any one as putts a finger on un.”

“The right spirit, that,” said Mr. Sant, with an approving face. “We’ll agree to decide it, then—in a month’s time, say? I’d keep it to myself if I were you. Good morning!”

The boy pulled his forelock, hesitated, mumbled with a blush and grin, “You’re a gen’leman, sir,” and casting a saucy, triumphant glance at me, retreated. Simultaneously, Mr. Sant took me by the shoulder, and, hurrying me back to the rectory study, procured cold water and a sponge, and shut himself in with me.

I felt half stupefied between the blows I had received and the prospect of others yet to come, in the matter of which, it appeared, I was to be allowed no choice. But there I was wrong. Mr. Sant, as he sponged with great consideration my swollen places, took up the tale at once.

“Now, Richard,” he said, “this is going to be, I think, the first great test of your life. You can refuse it if you like, without any loss of honour. You were bullied by a stronger boy, and you endured your ill-treatment without telling tales. That was to be a gentleman. You suffered insult—a little too long, perhaps—and only resented it when directed against some one whom you very rightly love and respect. Well, that was again to be a gentleman.”

“You heard the engagement I made for you? Well, I tell you, you can decline quite honourably to stand by it. If you do, don’t think I shall blame you. On the contrary, I will see that an effective end is put to this tyranny. You have proved yourself, and that is enough. Now, if you would like me to state the facts to your uncle, I will do so at once.”

“Very well,” he answered, but dryly, I thought. “I could have trained you, perhaps, to stand up to this young bruiser; but without doubt you choose the Christian part. I will speak to Mr. Paxton.”

“Please, sir,” I said, “I don’t think he’d understand why I’ve got to fight, unless you told him.”

“You want it to come off, then, Richard? This is a little shocking, I’m afraid; but perhaps I can’t altogether blame you. He’s a young Samson, mind.”

“You said, sir, that science——” I began, but he plugged my mouth hastily, and gave me no opportunity to speak more till he had cleaned my wounds to his satisfaction. Then he put me up between his knees and, while dabbing my face spasmodically with a towel, recited to me the fable of the brass and the earthenware pots.

“The brass pot, you see, was the gentleman,” he said. “He illustrated the Christian science of self-defence. He didn’t invite an encounter; but, when it was forced upon him, his art got the better of the coarser clay.”

“Well enough,” he said; “but that little Antaeus owes his to his mother earth. He could lick you with one hand, Dicky—easy, he could. Aren’t you afraid?”

“Real courage, Dicky, doesn’t mean not being afraid. We must all be afraid sometimes, when we are called upon to fight men or animals who are much stronger and fiercer than we are. But when we know that wrong or unjust things are being done to us by people who do these things just because they are stronger, then, if we fight them in spite of our being afraid, that is the real courage. On the other hand, it isn’t brave to force people to fight who we know are much weaker than we are. But when God has given us good health and strong arms, it is noble to use them to help people who are weaker than we are, and to punish the bullies who would take advantage of their weakness. That’s what it is makes a true gentleman—not riches, nor titles, nor having a tutor instead of a public teacher. The little boy who is just, and very truthful, and who never does anything that he would be ashamed of good people knowing, is on the way to be a gentleman, whether he lives in a palace or a cottage. But if, added to these, he trains all his faculties to oblige other people to repay him the truth and justice and honour which he gives them, then he is a complete gentleman already.”

“There’s good material here,” he said; “very good. We’ll use it to counterbalance brute strength. That’s the fine moral of boxing, little man—to see that the weak don’t go to the wall. Now, shall I confess a secret? I love Harry Harrier pretty equal with you, sir. He’s got the makings of a gentleman—my sort—in him; only no amount of persuasion from me will educate him like a scientific licking from one less than his own size. You don’t see that, perhaps; but, all the same, I look to you to knock him into my fold for me. You are the Church’s champion, Richard, and you shall gain me a new convert, or I’ll never put faith in the gloves again. Now come along with me home.”

Uncle Jenico received us with surprise, and some consternation over my appearance; nor did the recital of the affray much reassure him. Still more was he confounded by the rector’s frank avowal of his object in approaching him.

“Every true Christian, sir, is a prize-fighter. He champions the right in order to win heaven.”

“I regret to have to confess, sir, in an insulting expression about you, which he very properly resented.”

“Me!” cried my uncle, amazed. Then suddenly he stumped across to where I stood, and patted my shoulder rather tremulously. “Well, well,” he said; “no doubt I’m a funny old fellow. So you stood up for old Uncle Jenico, Dicky?”

“It was a lie!” I cried, choking; “and I’m going to fight him and lick him for it.”

“I mean,” said Mr. Sant, “this little affair shall be conducted strictly according to the regulations of Broughton, the famous boxer.”

“O!” exclaimed Uncle Jenico, palpably misled by the last word, and proportionately relieved. “O, to be sure! ‘Mufflers,’ you call ’em, I think?”

“Yes, yes!” said Mr. Sant, hastily. “A contest of science, sir; no vulgar hammering;” and he repeated, with warm conviction, his little dissertation on the true moral courage.

“If Richard, sir, don’t assert himself at the outset,” he ended with, “I won’t answer for his life here remaining endurable.”

Perhaps this prospect of our moral banishment clinched the matter with Uncle Jenico, whose attachment to the place was becoming quite morbid. He stipulated only that the umpire should stop the fight the moment it might appear I was getting the worst of it. More or less satisfied on this point, he rubbed his hands, and rallied me on being the young gamecock I was.

“I’ve given some thought, myself, to a new boxing-glove,” he confessed; “one with a little gong inside to record the hits, you know.”

Mr. Sant lost no time in taking me in hand. He fashioned me a little pair of gloves out of some old ones of his own, and gave me half an hour’s exercise with them every day after lessons. I am not going to record the process. The result was the important thing.

During all this interval, with the single exception of the morning following that of my encounter with Harry Harrier, I was left in peace by the village boys. On that morning, however, I again found myself in the midst of a little mob of them, who, emboldened by yesterday’s sport, were come to waylay me after school hours. I was not yet so proficient as to regard the situation with equanimity; when, behold! my enemy resolved it for me. He appeared suddenly in the midst, his knees and elbows in a lively state of agitation. One or two fell away, protesting, their hands caressing their injured parts.

“Where be a coomen, ’ar-ree!” expostulated one boy, holding his palm to his ear.

“Mighty!” exclaimed the young ruffler; “bain’t the road free to none but yourself, Jarge? Here be a yoong gen’lman waiting to pass, now.”

They took it as aimed at me, and hedged in again. He clawed two by the napes of their necks, and cracking their heads comfortably together, flung both aside. His intentions were quite unmistakable, and his strength a thing to regard. I was painfully conscious of it as I went through the sullen lane the others, discomfited, made for me; but I plucked up courage, as I passed, to express my gratitude.

“It’s not a’going to make no differ’,” he whispered fiercely. “You onderstand that?”

“It shan’t, anyhow, till after the fight,” I answered back in his ear, and nodded and ran on.

At last the great day came. Mr. Sant, in order that my uncle might be saved anxiety, and me the necessity of deception, had given me no warning until the very moment was on me. He had manœuvred to hold me a little longer than usual over my lessons; and suddenly returned to me after a short absence from the room.

My heart gave a twist, and for a moment pulled the blood out of my cheeks. Then I saw Mr. Sant looking at me, and was suddenly glowing all over, as if after a cold douche.

“For the right, Dicky!” he said. “To win your spurs in Christendom! Remember what I’ve taught you, and keep your head.”

It was all very well to say so, with that part of me like a bladder full of hot air. But I followed him stoutly, trusting to the occasion to inspire me with all the science which, for the moment, had clean deserted me.

There was a little plat of lawn at the back, very snug and private behind some trees; and here we found my adversary waiting, in charge of Jacob, the gardener, a grizzled, comfortable old fellow in complete Christian subjection to his master. Jacob was to second Harry, and Mr. Sant me. The old fellow grinned and ducked as we appeared. There were no other witnesses.

“Now,” said Mr. Sant, “when I say ‘Go!’ go; when I call ‘Time!’ stop.”

He fell back with the words, and we stood facing one another. I was utterly bemused, at that instant, as to the processes by which I had reached this situation. I could only grasp the one fact that I was put up to batter, if I could (which seemed ridiculous), this confident, taut little figure in the shirt and corduroy smalls and gaiters, who held out, as if for my inspection, two bare brown arms, made all of bone and whipcord; and that I must proceed to try to do this, without any present quarrel—but rather the reverse—to stimulate me. It was so different to the circumstances of that other mad contest. I could have laughed; I——

I had got them. The bladder seemed to have burst, and let out all the hot air. I was quite cool, now, and pretty savage over this treatment.

“All right, sir,” I said; and I think he understood. He kept me simmering, however, for the regulation three minutes.

I came up to time now, Broughton’s commendable pupil. The first round had been, what we call in cricket, a trial ball. This that followed was the game—muscle and a little science against science and a little muscle. The brass pot, I am happy to say, prevailed, and sent the earthenware spinning with a crack on its stubborn little nose. Jacob mopped the vanquished, who could hardly be kept still to endure it. As for me, I was cockahoop, crowing inside and out. My second laughed, and let me go on, warning me only that the battle wasn’t won.

It was not, indeed. Our bloods were up, and the next round was a hot test of our qualities. It was give and take, and take and give; until, lunging under a loose defence, Harry hit me in the wind, and, while I was gasping and staggering, levelled me to the ground with a blow on my mouth. He was mad by now, and was rushing to pummel me, prostrate as I was, when Jacob, with a howl, clutched him and bore him struggling away.

“No more of that, Harrier!” said Mr. Sant, from where he was kneeling, nursing and reviving me; “or I take my man away. To hit one that’s down, sir! That’s neither Christian nor professional.”

Then he whispered in my ear, “Three minutes, Dicky! Can you do it? else I’m bound in honour to throw up the sponge.”

There was an agitation in his voice which he tried vainly to control. I made a desperate effort, and rose as he began to count. I felt a little sick and wild; but the lesson of over-confidence had gone home. This time I played warily, tiring out my adversary. At last the moment came. He struck out furiously, missed, and, as he recovered his guard, I hit him with all my strength between the eyes. He staggered, gave a little cry, and, quite blinded for the moment, began to grope aimlessly with his fists.

“Noo, sir!” howled old Jacob, excited (I am afraid he was an unsympathetic second); “noo, sir’s your time. Walk in and finish en!”

Trying to mark me by my voice, the boy let out a furious blow, and, as his fist whizzed near me, I caught and clutched it in my own.

He tore his hand away, stood with his face quivering a moment, then all of a sudden fell upon his knees, and, putting his arm across his eyes, began to sob as if his heart were broken.

A silence and embarrassment fell upon us all. Then Mr. Sant walked over to the boy and addressed some words to him. He turned a deaf ear, repulsing him.

“You have fought like a man,” said the clergyman. “Come, take your beating like one.”

The boy got to his feet, sniffing, and, without uttering a word, began rolling down and buttoning his shirt sleeves.

“There’s a good hot dinner waiting for you inside,” said Mr. Sant. “Come now, and do the man’s part by it and by us!”

Still he would not speak; but shook his head sullenly, and, fetching his coat and cap, walked off.

“No,” said Mr. Sant, rather wistfully. “He’s got the stuff in him. We’ll have him on our side yet, Richard.”

CHAPTER X.
FRIENDS AT LAST.

When I had been washed, and my cuts and bruises salved, Mr. Sant took me in to dinner, having already sent a message to my uncle that I should be late. I was horribly stiff, with blubber lips, and knobs and swellings everywhere; yet I would not for the world have missed one pang which my jaws suffered in eating. For was not each twinge an earnest to me that I was redeemed in my own eyes? The penance was as gratifying as, I think, a Catholic’s must be after confession and absolution given.

Before we were well finished Uncle Jenico came in, a little flurried and apologetic over his intrusion. He had guessed pretty well the reason of my detention, and his anxiety would not let him rest. His hands trembled as he adjusted his spectacles to look at me, and removed and wiped them, and put them on again for a second scrutiny.

“So you have conquered?” he said, “My poor boy; my poor, dear boy! Why I had no idea boxing punished so. You should not have minded what they said about me, Richard—a tough old rascal, and ready to take it all in the day’s luck.”

“I don’t think Richard will agree with you, sir,” said Mr. Sant. “He has won his spurs, and a convert, I hope. He has fought like a gentleman and a Christian—by George, sir, it was poor Broughton and the Norwich butcher over again—and you, I am sure, are as proud of him as I am.”

“Eh?” said my uncle, half laughing and half crying; and then falling suddenly grave. “If it’s to inculcate respect—the stitch in time, you know—certainly. But I can’t help wondering, if this is the victor, what is the state of the vanquished?”

“A state of grace, I hope,” said the clergyman, smiling. “But it’s a very proper reflection, sir, and one which, I am sure, Richard will take to heart.”

The reminder, nevertheless, was not out of place. It is well at the feast of triumph to remember who pays the cost. I had been self-glorifying a little overmuch; and here, of a sudden, was the picture before me of my beaten enemy slinking away to hide his battered face, at the very moment that I was crowing to everybody to come and look at mine. Uncle Jenico was the true gentleman among us all; and it was he who had been insulted.

I soon mended of my knocks, and the very next day was ruffling it to my lessons with a new self-confidence that made nothing of possessing the world. Dunberry was no longer a Siberia to me, but a conquered country full of breezy possibilities. I should have welcomed the prospect of an attack; but no one interfered with me. On the contrary, awed and covert glances greeted me on my way past the school. I dropped a book. An obsequious little courtier scurried to pick it up for me. The news of the fight had got abroad, it was evident, and Harry was no longer the cock of the walk. From this moment, with other than the youth of Dunberry, I am afraid, my position was secured.

I hope I took no base advantage of the knowledge; yet I won’t say but I might have if Mr. Sant had not been at my back to prevent it.

“Don’t forget you fought for a principle,” he would remind me. “It’s no manner of Christian use to turn out a bully that you may usurp his place.”

To prove to me that boxing was not the whole duty of a gentleman, and to school me from presuming on any idea of indulgence because of my victory, he rather put the screw on in my education, and for a time was something of a martinet on questions of study and discipline. I was hurt, and a little bit rebellious at first; but soon, having a fair reason of my own, came to recognize his consistency.

During this time, and for some weeks after the fight, I saw next to nothing of Harry Harrier. He kept out of my way, sulking and grieving, though he attended school—with phenomenal punctuality, too, I believe—regularly. His father, I heard from old Jacob, had been very savage over his beating, and had dressed him well for it. I was furious when I was told, and wanted Mr. Sant to complain to the Squire; but, before he could do so, something happened which made any complaint futile. A new steward, a Draco of a man, was appointed to the Court, and one day, shortly after his arrival, lo and behold! there was the gamekeeper handcuffed, and being carried off to Ipswich gaol in a tax-cart by the officers of the law. It had been discovered that for years he had been in collusion with a gang of poachers, and in the end he had been watched, and caught in flagranti delicto. His wife followed him to the county town, and devoted most of her savings, poor woman, to his defence, but without avail. He was convicted and transported, and I may as well say at once that that was the end of him so far as his family was concerned, for he never turned up again. While the trial was pending, Harry—it is not, under all the circumstances, to be wondered at—gave the schoolhouse a wide berth; but, after his father had been sentenced and their home broken up, to the surprise of every one he put in an appearance there again, coming dogged and punctual to a task which must have grown nothing less than a perpetual ordeal to him. We did not, in truth, know the strength of will of the desperate humbled little spirit—not any of us, that is to say, but Mr. Sant. He had gauged it, I am sure; and, having set his heart on the boy’s reclamation, was watching with an anxious interest the development of the odd little drama which he had helped to engineer. He visited, of course, in virtue of his office, the gamekeeper’s unhappy wife, who had been forced to betake herself to a mean little tenement in the village, where she eked out the small means remaining to her by washing for the rectory; and though, as yet, the son would hardly notice or be civil to him, the mother did not fail to acquaint him, with many fond tears, of her poor, wild little fellow’s real love and resolution, and of the courage which was determining him to train himself to take the place of the breadwinner they had lost. All of which, I knew, made Mr. Sant the more eager to have the lad recognize him for a friend; only pride stood in the way. For, the truth is, poor Harry’s prestige was gone down to zero. Always owing in some part to the local reputation of his father for a bully and rowdy, the removal of that gentleman had finished what my victory had begun. And now it was the case of the sick lion. The cowardly little jackals who had formerly cringed to him, egged on by their more cowardly elders taunted him with his disgrace. If he retaliated, they overwhelmed him with numbers, or ran, squealing injured righteousness, to appeal against him to their parents. His heart, swelling in his plucky little breast, must often have had a business of it not to let loose the tears; but he had an indomitable soul, and only time and tact could find the way into it.

One day Mr. Sant and I, when walking together, came unnoticed upon the rear of such a scene. The victim moved on in front, his head hanging a little, though he would not force his pace an inch to accommodate his tormentors, who followed behind, at a safe distance, hooting and jeering at him.

“OO stole the pawtridges! When did ’ee last ’ear from the ’ulks! Why don’t ’ee git your mawther to wash your dirty linen, ’ar-ree?” and such-like insults they bawled.

I burned with indignation, and was running to retaliate on my enemy by helping him as he had once helped me, when Mr. Sant seized me with a determined hand, and bent to whisper in my ear—

As he spoke the little wretches let fly a shower of small missiles, and a stone struck the boy smartly on the neck. He leapt about at once, and came rushing back with clenched fists and a blazing face. The mob dispersed before his onset; but he cut off one panic-stricken unit of it, and smote the lubberly coward with a thorny crash into the hedge. His eyes looked red, his breast was heaving stormily; he would have done some evil, I think, had not Mr. Sant run and put himself between. Then he backed away, without a word; but his cheeks were quite white now, and the wings of his nostrils going like a little winded horse’s.

Consternation held the scattered enemy. They stood each where he had been halted by the unexpected vision of their rector and me. The assaulted one, sitting on spikes, stuffed his face into his elbow and boo-hoo’d from stentorian lungs. Mr. Sant smiled with rather an ugly look.

“Blubber away, Derrick,” he said. “You’ve been well served for a dirty act.” Then he scowled abroad. “Are you English boys, to kick a downed one! Not one of you, cowards, but if he passed this Harrier alone would hug his fists in his pockets! It is no shame of his, but yours. To bait him ten to one—O! what fine courageous fellows! But I’ll have no more of it; d’ye hear? I’ll have no more of it!”

He stamped, in a little access of passion, and again turned sharply on the fallen.

His tone was so peremptory that the boy rose, snuffling and wiping his eyes with his cuff.

“It was you threw the stone,” said Mr. Sant. “I saw you. Very well, then, it’s got to be one of two things: fight, or put your tail between your legs and run. Quick now! Which is it to be?”

Derrick did not move, but raised his wail to a pitch so artificially dismal that I had to laugh.

“Ah!” exclaimed Mr. Sant, still very grim for his part, and snapped himself round. “He means fight, Harrier.”

If he did, the battle he contemplated was a Battle of the Spurs. Clapping his hand to the thorns in him, and too frightened now to remember to cry, he took to his heels and, turning a corner, was out of sight in a moment. His answer to the resolution claimed for him was so ludicrous that even his little abettors were set off chuckling.

I was looking across at Harry, and saw his face, too, relax and lighten. Drawn by its expression, I walked up to him, with my hand held out.

“We knew you could look after yourself,” I went on, “and—and I wasn’t going to interfere; at least—I mean—why won’t you let us stand up for one another, Harry?” I ended, with a burst and a blush.

His face, too, was very red again, and I could see his lips were trembling. Pride and gratitude were fighting within him for mastery; but the former—still too hot with recent suffering to surrender—remained the more stubborn of the two. While my hand was yet held out, he turned his back on me, on us all, and walked off erect.

I was bitterly hurt and chagrined. I felt that I had done the handsome thing by a boor, and had been meetly rebuffed for my condescension. I came back to Mr. Sant, swelling with indignation. He understood at a glance.

“He shall have all the time he likes, sir,” I said, “before I meddle with him again.”

He did not answer, which was perhaps wise; and we continued our walk. But thenceforth my heart was darkened to my unchivalrous foe, and when we passed in the street I ignored him.

My studied indifference had not, however, the effect of making him avoid me. On the contrary, he seemed rather to resume his earlier practice, going out of his way to get in mine, and strutting by whistling to show his unconsciousness of my neighbourhood. Yet all the time, I knew, he was never more in need of a friend. Mr. Sant’s protest, followed by a public rebuke in the school, had put an end to the active bullying; but, to compensate themselves for this deprivation, his companions had, by tacit agreement, sent poor Harry to perpetual Coventry. He was disclaimed and excluded from all games and conversation; isolated in the midst of the others’ merriment. What this meant to the bright fallen little spirit only Lucifer himself, perhaps, could say; and only Lucifer himself, perhaps, so endure with unlowered crest while the iron ate into his soul. But, in justice to myself, I could make no further overtures where my every advance was wilfully misunderstood.

So the year went its course without any reconciliation between us; and early in November fell a hard frost, with snow that seemed disposed to stop. Awaking one morning, we saw the whole land locked in white under a stiff leaden canopy, as if sea and sky had changed places. The desolation of this remote coast winter-bound it is impossible to describe. We seemed as cut off from the world as Esquimaux; and Uncle Jenico, who had never conceived such a situation, stood aghast before the prospect of a beach ankle-deep in snow. So we found it. The golden sand was all replaced by dazzling silver, into which the surf, so spotless in summer, thrust tongues of a bilious yellow. The sea, from being sportive with weak stomachs, looked sick unto death itself; and the wind in one’s teeth was like a file sharpening a saw. And all this lifelessness cemented itself day by day, until it seemed that we could never emerge again from the depths of winter into which we had fallen.

One afternoon I was loitering very dismal, and quite alone as I thought, near the foot of Dunberry Gap, when a snowball took me full on the back of the head and knocked my cap off. I was stooping to pick it up, when another came splosh in my face, blinding, and half suffocating me. I staggered to my feet, gasping, only to find myself the butt of a couple of snow forts, between whose fires I had unconsciously strayed. A row of little heads was sprung up on either side, and I was being well pounded before I could collect my wits.

I must premise that at this time my empire was much fallen from its former greatness. Never having confirmed it by a second achievement, it had gradually lost the best of its credit, and, though I was still respected by the unit, there was a psychologic point in the association of units beyond which my reputation was coming to be held cheap. I was learning, in fact, the universal truth that to rest on one’s laurels is to resume them, in case of emergency, in a lamentably squashed condition.

Now, with half the breath knocked out of my body and my arm protecting my face, I tried to struggle out of the line of fire, only to find the opposing forces basely combining to pelt me into helplessness. I made some show of retaliating; but what was one against twenty? In the midst, I looked up the Gap, my one way of retreat, and there, standing halfway down, watching the fray, was Harry Harrier. I was smarting all over, with rills of melted snow running down my neck, and still the bombardment took me without mercy.

The appeal did at a stroke what months of propitiation would have missed. It put him right with himself once more. Like a young deer he came leaping down, stooping and gathering ammunition as he approached. The shower ceased on the instant; the craven enemy retreated pell-mell to its double lines of shelter.

“Are you ready, sir?” said Harry, excitedly. “Git your wind and coom on. We’ll drive en out of one o’ them places, and take cover there ourselves.”

He was eagerly gathering and piling the snow as he spoke. In a minute I was myself again, and burning for reprisals. Each of us well armed, we charged upon the left-hand position, which seemed the more accessible of the two, and carried it by storm against a faint show of resistance. The garrison shot out and fled, encountering a volley from the opposing force, while we peppered it in the rear. Our victory was complete. As we sank back, breathed but glowing, I looked Harry silently in the face and held out my hand for the last time. He took it in his own, hanging his silly head; but the nip he gave it felt like a winch’s.

“That’s all right, then,” said I. “It’s pax between us, ain’t it, you old fool?”

He nodded. A long silence fell between us, and I began to whistle. Suddenly he looked up shyly, but his eyes were quick with curiosity.

The problem had evidently haunted him ever since I had told him that my uncle had fallen from one.

“I dunno,” he answered carelessly. “Thought, maybe, ’twas one o’ them things that shoots the malt refuge out of brewhouses.”

I sniggered with laughter. Fancy Uncle Jenico having been shot out of a brewery!

“It’s an umbrella,” I said; “a thing that you jump into the air with off a cliff, and come down without hurting yourself.”

“Mighty!” he cried, all excitement. “Is it reelly? Let’s make one—and try it first on that Derrick,” he added, with commendable foresight.

My heart crowed at the idea. We discussed it for many minutes. In the midst we heard a sound of distant jeering, and cautiously raised our heads above the snow rampart. The whole body of our enemies was in full retreat, and already nearing the top of the Gap. We were left alone, sole inseparable masters of the field. It was the happiest omen of what was to be.

CHAPTER XI.
MISCHIEF OF SORTS.

I came in all glowing to Mr. Sant, who greeted my good news with a sigh of such relief that one could have thought a nightmare had rolled off his chest.

“We have him,” he said gleefully. “You did very well, Dick; better than I could have told you. And now—h’m!”

He fell into a fit of abstraction, the fruits of which did not appear till the following day. Then, as I was leaving him after lessons, he detained me a moment.

“Then,” he said, “tell him that if he likes, and can obtain his mother’s consent, he can come here with you for the future instead of going to school.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Sant, between relish and severity; “I cannot have so promising a spirit warped by a sense of injustice. He has grit—I must put my foot down—he—yes, tell him I will undertake his education, if he is willing.”

I ran off, big with the delight of my mission; and, sure enough, met Harry loitering near the Playstow by the way I should come, though he would not let me suppose it was intentional. His freckled face flushed as he spied me, and he grinned. There was already observable towards him an attitude of increased respect on the part of some of his schoolfellows who played near.

“Mighty!” he exclaimed, as I accosted him, “Who’d ever a-thought o’ meeting you here!”

“Harry!” I whispered, too eager to get him away to feel any embarrassment. “Come with me. I’ve got something to tell you.”

He came, looking both pleased and curious, but still with a certain half-defiant swagger.

“Mr. Sant,” I said, “wants you to chuck up the old school and come and be his pupil with me, if you and your mother’s willing.”

He was fairly hipped. He stopped whistling, and rubbed his round nose till it shone; then suddenly halted, in a quiet place, and stared at me.

He tried to whistle again, and broke down. I didn’t know the depths of the little soul, nor what it had endured.

“I dunno,” he said, hesitating, and with a curious husky sound in his voice, “as—if it had been—I could a-brought myself to it. Now——”

“Ef you’ll let me be your friend, master, I’ll swear to be yours—till death do me part—and so help me God!”

We shook hands firmly on it. “Only,” I said, “I’m Dick to you, you know, just as you are Harry to me.”

“I’ll get used to it in time,” he answered; and so the compact was made, and I am sure we had none of us reason to regret it.

He was a pretty untamed colt at first, with a little of the savage lingering about him. But he was wonderfully sensitive and intelligent, and soon got, under Mr. Sant’s vigorous and manful tuition, not only to cultivate the graces of a scholar and the muscles of an athlete, but to understand those right principles of a gentleman, which are to temper natural combativeness with consideration for others. In this respect, no doubt, his misfortunes had helped to shape him; but I am not going to moralise over the result, which I dare say not one boy in a thousand, coming from such a stock, would have effected. Harry seemed to have inherited all the hardihood, with none of the brutality, of his father; and, for the rest, we became inseparable chums, who, so combined, were a match for any puling forces the village could bring against us.

Mischief? Of course, we were always in it. One of our first escapades was to make a parachute out of Uncle Jenico’s big sun umbrella, and, having beguiled Derrick to the cliff edge by the Gap, tie his wrists to the handle and push him over. We might have killed him; only we didn’t. He fell into a snow-drift, with no more hurt than to rasp his nose on the broken ice. But he smashed the umbrella, for which Mr. Sant made us pay with extra lines.

We scoured the coast together, and were for ever, forgetting my embargo, prowling about the Mitre, dislodging bits of the ruin and imperilling our precious necks. On such occasions Rampick was always our self-elected policeman, watching us and warning us away. Singly, I think, we had an awe of this great sinister hulk of a creature, though, together, we flouted him a good deal, resenting his interference. But he was a pet of Mr. Sant’s, which made any open affront from us difficult.

Harry, by virtue of his training, knew a heap about animals. I am afraid we snared, in our time, more than one of the Squire’s rabbits, fixing loops of copper wire in the runs under the hedgerows. The “kill” went to Mrs. Harrier, whose poverty I used for salve to my conscience, and whose rather weak fondness accepted the tribute with some nervous deprecation. But it was not long before our mighty reverence for Mr. Sant, both as a gentleman and a sportsman, cured us of this temporary obliquity. A poacher gives no “law” to the game he kills; a gentleman does; we gave no “law”; ergo we were poachers, ergo we were not gentlemen. The revelation came upon us one day when our tutor was illustrating some forgotten parable. “The man of honour,” said he, “the God’s gentleman, don’t bet on a certainty, or run his fox with a line tied to his tail, or kill a disarmed enemy, or shoot his pheasant sitting. He sports for the glory of the battle, the test between skill and skill.”

Harry and I looked at one another, and then down. After lessons he addressed me rather resentfully—

“What do you mean?” I answered; “that you ain’t going to take the hint?”

“If ever I snare another,” he said, growling, “may I be shot myself and nailed to a barn door!”

“Well, then,” I said, “for all my being brought up to it, as you call it, you’re the better gentleman, because I was still in two minds about giving it up, it was such fun.”

“You’ll have to,” he said. He was grown more loyal even than I to Mr. Sant.

“Guess you won’t catch a-many without me to help you, anyhow,” he said; which was so disgustingly true that I had to laugh in my turn.

Before this moral reformation occurred, however, we made some thrilling captures. One day it was a hare, which Harry caught in the most wonderful way with his hands alone. We were crossing an open space between two copses, when he suddenly threw down his hat in the snow, bidding me at the same time to take no notice, but walk on with him as if unconcerned. There were tufts of gorse and withered bracken projecting all over the clearing. We advanced briskly a short distance, then quickly wheeled and came back, making a crooked line for the hat. As we neared it, Harry, as swift as thought, swerved aside to a patch of red dead fern and bramble, and, plunging down his hand, brought up what looked like a mat of leaves and snow. But it was a hare, which in that unerring swoop he had clutched behind the poll; and before the startled creature could shriek or struggle, he had seized its hind legs in his other hand, stretched its body, and cracked its neck upon his knee. I could not have imagined such quickness of eye and action. It could only be done, he told me, in cold weather, when the frost gets in the animals’ brains and makes them stupid. They are sort of fascinated by the hat thrown down, watching for it to move; and when the steps return, finding themselves, as it were, between two fires, they can think of nothing but to crouch close. I have seen Harry bring out rats from a rick in the same way. It was just a question of unwincing nerve; but I never had the courage to try it myself. They say that if one has the resolution to hold one’s hand unmoved to a snapping dog, the beast’s teeth will close on it without inflicting an injury. It may be true; only the first time I put it to the test will be in boxing-gloves.

A more legitimate poaching of ours—but that was later, in the spring—was on the preserves of a beautiful unfamiliar sea-bird, which came nesting upon our coasts, driven there by storms probably. We were on the Mitre one day, when we saw it fly out from the top of the Abbot’s well, and swoop down upon the shore, where, no one being by, it gorged itself on a heap of dead dog-fish. We immediately fell flat on the cliff edge to watch for its return. The broken top of the well was perhaps thirty feet below us, but the ground sloping obtusely from where we lay, prevented us from seeing far into it. Presently the bird came back and settled on the rim, so that we could mark it plainly. It was gull-shaped, but unlike any of the species we knew—white-waistcoated, yellow-beaked, and a tender ash colour on the wings—a St. Kilda’s petrel, in fact, we came to learn, which had likely been driven down from the Orkneys. It hopped into the well and disappeared.

By-and-by the mother bird showed herself, and the fact was virtually settled. Then there was nothing for it but to climb the well and see. Harry accomplished it somehow, when the village was at dinner and the beach deserted. He got up, claw and toe (the well inclined a little outwards from the land), and availing himself of every hole and projection reached the top and sprawled over the edge, so that I could see nothing but his legs waving in the air. The birds shot out, and wheeled screaming about him. I heard him utter a cry; and then he emerged and descended with a very blank face, coming down the last yard or two with a run. His hands were barked and bloody, and the right one smeared with an orange slime.

“There was one egg,” he said, “white and a whopper; but it just broke to pieces when I clawed it.”

It was a pity we had not left it alone, for, as it turned out, the bird was a rarity on our coasts, and, laying as it does only a single egg, would not likely outstay so cruel a welcome. Which, indeed, proved to be the case; and the only reward we got for our venture was the knowledge that the well was choked with sand to near its top, a discovery which dissipated for ever some long-cherished dreams of ours as to the ineffable secrets it would reveal if once surmounted and looked down into.

During all this time, I am afraid, I neglected Uncle Jenico a good deal. He was so sweet and kind, he made no complaint, but only rejoiced that I had found a companion more suited than he to my years.

“He’s a fine boy, Richard,” he would say; “a fine promising boy. And if he reconciles you to staying here——”

“I, my dear? No, no; I am content, if you are. We are doing wonderfully well. It’s a place of really extraordinary possibilities. Do you know, Richard, I shouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be our promised land, after all. The extent of coast to be explored makes it a little tiring sometimes, but that’s a trifle. We can’t expect to find all Tom Tiddler’s ground in an acre or so, can we?”

That should have been a jog to my conscience; but youth, I fear, is selfish. A dull day’s hunt with Uncle Jenico through the shingle had come to show very blank by contrast with the exciting adventures contrived by Harry and me. So I kept my deaf side to the calls of duty, and Uncle Jenico pursued his hobby alone.

During the continuance of the frost he had, however, to divert his imagination into other channels, as the beach was impracticable; and really, I think, the distraction did him no harm. Being confined much to the house, he turned his thoughts to an old invention of his for cleaning chimneys, with which he had competed ages ago for a prize offered by a syndicate of anti-climbing-boy philanthropists. I am sure, if simplicity and economy counted for anything, Uncle Jenico ought easily to have come out first; but it was the usual story of showiness being preferred to plain utility. The contrivance was homeliness itself; just a huge compressible ball of wool, attached through its centre to the middle of a cord of indefinite length; and the only objection to it—which was, after all, an extremely idle one—was that it required two operators, one to stand on the roof, and the other on the hearth below. But, once they were in a position, the task was a pastime rather than a labour. The top-sawyer, so to speak, lowered one end of the cord, weighted, down the flue; his companion seized it, and between them they worked the ball up and down till every particle of soot was dislodged. Could anything be more obvious? And yet the committee rejected it! Well, all I can say is that Harry and I proved its efficacy beyond a doubt; though, of course, Mrs. Puddephatt, while she benefited by it, was sarcastic about an invention which had failed to recommend itself to the particularity of London.

“It may be all right,” she would say; “and so may the himage of a piece of fat pork pulled up and down one’s throat with a string, which, I am told, is hemployed at sea to encourage ’eaving. At the same time, sir, I may venture to remark, that there are remedies known to Londoners to be worse than their diseases.”

Uncle Jenico, in the first instance, secretly inveigled Fancy-Maria into helping him in his experiment. The parlour fire was extinguished, and the worthy girl despatched to the roof through a trap-door, where she performed her share of the task with such inflexible tenacity that when my uncle tugged at his end of the cord, which she had dutifully lowered, he pulled her head into the chimney, and would have ended by drawing her bodily down, I believe, if her gasps and chokings reaching him below had not warned him in time. Then he slackened his hold, and commended her excess of loyalty and instructed her further; but in the end she descended from the roof an absolute negress, and for days afterwards shed soot from her boots and sneezed it from her hair in little clouds that flavoured everything.

Subsequently, Harry and I were taken into his confidence and made his operators, much to our gratification. Climbing-boys, indeed! It was become a luxury to be a sweep, thanks to Uncle Jenico; and the world called him a crank! Every one but himself might profit by his inventions. Certainly Harry and I did. We polished every flue in Mrs. Puddephatt’s house as clean as a whistle, and, until we tired of the sport, whatever other chimneys in the village the housewives would lay open to us. And it was only when we took to angling with the great sooty ball over parapets for unsuspecting faces pausing below, that Mr. Sant, giving ear to furious complaints, stepped in with his authority, and put an end to the game.

So, on us, black and joyous and inseparable, I will let down the act-drop of our little stage, to raise it on a later development of the drama I set out to record.

PART II.

CHAPTER I.
THE BADGER.

It is with an odd sense of nervousness, and almost of oppression, that I open upon the second act of my story. In the first, the schoolboy, with his “shining morning face” and serene irresponsibility, had it all his own way. Now—an interval of five years having been supposed, as the play-bills say, to elapse—the “shining morning face” shows a little sobered, a little greyer in the dawn of manhood, like a young moon in the dawn of day. We have not eschewed adventure, Harry and I; only the spirit of it in us is beginning to be tempered with a sense of moral obligations. We are indulgent to the flippancies of youth but in so far as they do not venture to presume upon our patronage. Only when alone together do we relax our vigilance in the matter of what is due to ourselves and our extremely incipient moustaches.

Harry, in short, takes up the tale at sixteen, and I at a few months younger. The interval had served to shape us, I do believe, after a manly enough model. We might have been “oppidans”—to put an extreme case—at Eton, and had our characters stiffened, like cream, by whipping, and have coursed hares, and drunk small-beer at the Christopher, and enjoyed all the other social and educational advantages which, according to the evidence put before the late Commission, [Reported in 1864.] are peculiar to this seminary of the gods, and not found in its Provost such a leader, counsellor and noble confidant as little remote Dunberry was able to furnish us with in the person of Mr. Sant. And this I say in no Pharisaic spirit of self-satisfaction, but simply as a testimony to the qualities of this prince among tutors, whom we loved and respected with the best reason in the world.

Not much had figured to us, perhaps, during these five years except the shapes of romance with which strong young souls can always people a desert. We had put on mind and muscle. We could run, swim, fight, eat anything that was set before us, and want more. Our excursions were further afield; our walks more extended along the road to Parnassus. We were very fine fellows, no doubt, in our own opinions; and our voices were beginning to growl handsomely.

Harry had, for his part, developed into a shapely, fearless young figure, with a good manner of speech and a great attachment to my uncle. He had, moreover, developed a decided bent towards mechanics, and went now on two days in the week to a technical school in Yokestone, making the journey to and from on foot, and sleeping each night with a cousin of his mother’s, who owned a small foundry there, and who, since the boy’s proof of himself, had taken a practical interest in his welfare. The periodic partings were without savour to us, had it not been that to them the periodic reunions supplied the salt. But no doubt they were helpful in giving us opportunity for a more individually independent growth; and certainly during them “Coke upon Littleton” (for Mr. Sant was training me with an eye to the Law) secured my less divided attention.

As to Dunberry itself and its familiar figures, there was little change to be noted. On the one side there was the ripening of the young fruit towards maturity; on the other, a little whiter growth of lichen on the decaying branches. Uncle Jenico must count among the latter; though surely no tree past fruiting ever retained more unimpaired the sweetness of its sap. He had collected during this period enough antiquities to furnish out an old rag, bone, and iron shop; and, indeed, I am afraid the bulk of his stock was not suited to a much more exclusive repository. There was little which, provided it was gathered from the beach and had once been a part of something living or manufactured, he would not give a place in it. His veneration for rust was the most artless thing. An object had only to be corroded with it, to figure in his eyes for an assured antique. In this way he amassed great quantities of bolts, links, sheet-iron fragments, and other rarities, to most of which he assigned a use and period, which, I am convinced, had never been theirs. There was, for instance, a breastplate of the Renaissance era, which I do believe had never been anything but a dish-cover of our own. There was an iron skull-cap, or morion, of Edward the First’s time, which I will swear was nothing but a saucepan without its handle; the handle itself, indeed, being found near the same spot a few days later, and catalogued for the head of a boar spear. Part of a whale’s under jaw, much decayed, figured for the prow of a Viking ship; and divers teeth, mostly, I think, horses’, for the grinders of prehistoric monsters. There were some bronze coins certainly—none too many—whose value was conjectural, and whose legends were largely undecipherable. Uncle Jenico would never submit these, the cream of his collection, to expert criticism. He hugged them as a miser hugs his gold, but with a diviner intent. I alone was permitted to gloat with him over the hoard.

“There’s your jointure, Dicky,” he would say. “Look at it accumulating for you, without an effort of its own, at compound interest. There’s no trustee like a collector who knows his business. You may turn over current money to increase it; but the more you leave that alone the better you’ll realize on it some day. The antiquity market is always a rising one. Every year adds its interest to it. We won’t touch the principal yet—not till you come of age. Then we’ll put it up, my boy—then we’ll put it up; and you shall eat your dinners, and follow in your dear father’s footsteps, and have chambers in Fountain Court itself.”

Did he have a real faith in this picture? He had a faith in having a faith in it, anyhow. Yet sometimes I could not help thinking he shrunk from that same test of criticism; from the conceivable discovery that he had wasted all these years of his life on a fond chimera. I am glad that in the end the test was never forced; that circumstances came to lay for ever the necessity of it, and in a way than which none other could have delighted him better. For I believe a realization of the truth would have broken his kind, unselfish heart.

He had not during this time altogether eschewed his former habits and enthusiasms. Periodic inventions of purely local inspiration marked it. He designed a respirator to be lined with porous shavings of driftwood, so that the asthmatic merchant might inhale ozone in the thickest fogs of Lombard Street. He planned a boat to be steered from the front by means of a rudder which was merely a jointed elongation of the prow, or false beak hinging to the neck, like a fish’s head and gills: a splendid conception, seeing how the steersman would be also the look-out, and the crew aft suffer no more responsibility than passengers in a train.

Other happy notions of his were “the luminous angler,” a hook rubbed with phosphorus for night fishing; a scheme for pickling sandhoppers; and an uncapsizable boat, the buoyant principle whereof was an armour of light iron pipings, each tube of which was to be divided into a number of little water-tight compartments.

None of these was ever, to my knowledge, put to the actual test, so pledged is our conservatism to run in a circle. The old stern-steerer was good enough for our fathers, and were we to be more exacting than they, who stand to us for all holy prescription? No inspired inventor ever yet profited by his inspiration; nor did his descendants find that inspiration marketable until it was mellowed to a tradition. For which reason Uncle Jenico had to be content, like the magnanimous soul he was, with planting for the generations to come.

He never dreamt now, more than I, of leaving the village in which circumstance had laid us to take root. Aliens at first, we were become of the soil, and bound to it by many ties of interest and affection. As to the place itself, Mr. Sant’s hopes of seasonable visitors, of whom we had been welcomed for the pioneers, were doomed to non-fulfilment. Whether it was its isolation, its shocking primitiveness in those days of antimacassars and the social proprieties, or perhaps its rather forbidding reputation for inhospitality, which kept strangers away, I do not know; but in any case they came rarely, and then only as birds of passage. I think it, at least, quite likely that the third consideration was most operative. Dunberry, before the days of Mr. Sant, had borne, it must be confessed, a sinister notoriety—a name for determined and organized smuggling. Visitors then were neither desired nor welcomed, the whole native population, or at least with few exceptions, forming a lawless confederacy for the disposal of contraband. But after the earthquake (or what was generally cited for such, and by many, I am persuaded, who knew better, though it made no difference in the moral), things should have been otherwise, when the new rector, using its opportunity to reclaim his wayward flock to godliness, sought to compensate by legitimate trade for the lost wages of sin. But it is easier to cure the itch than to convince others of your patient’s recovered cleanness. And so Dunberry reformed had still to suffer the penalty of Dunberry unregenerate. Visitors came not to it, and it was in the position of having dropped the carnal substance for the moral shadow. And what made it worse was that the Excise, unpersuaded of its reclamation, chose this very penitential time to dump down a coastguard station on the cliffs a mile south, and so knocked on the head for ever any possibility of its relapse into the old prosperous condition.

The blow fell in the second year of our stay; and from it dated, I think, the final demoralisation of the ancient order, of which Rampick might be considered the prominent expression. This man deteriorated thenceforth year by year, recognizing, I suppose, the practical uselessness of his hypocrisy. His gradual self-revelation was a real grief to Mr. Sant, whose worldly common sense was not always proof against his missionary zeal. He had the pain to see this cherished convert of his sink into an idle, drunken loafer, with a heart poisoned with a shapeless black resentment against all whom he chose to consider were in any way responsible for his ruin; amongst whom he included, for some unaccountable reason, my uncle and me, and in only less degree, the dear clergyman himself. But bankruptcy knows no reason.

At the date at which I reopen my story, Joel Rampick was a shambling, degraded, evil-looking man, half crazed between drink and his sense of injury; full of suppressed snarlings and mutterings; still, as of old, the watchful spirit of the ruins on the hill; still, as of old, policing Harry and me, though secretly rabid now in his impotency to control or terrify us; still, as of old, nevertheless, a hypocrite in form, while he carried his heart on his tattered sleeve. And so, as a main factor to be in the development of the strange drama, to the dark accomplishment of which in this year of our opening manhood I have been reluctantly leading, I reintroduce, and for the moment leave him.

It was a wild, wet November, a season full of tempest and the promise of it, when guns would boom beyond the fatal sandbanks, and sudden rockets tear the sky; when the wives would gather a rich harvest of driftwood, coming down in the morning to a prospect of frenzied waters, and black spots of wreckage swooping in them like swallows blown about a storm. Near the end of the month the winds quieted, and one afternoon fell dead calm, so that Harry and I were moved to stroll out after dark to stretch our long unexercised limbs. It was so peaceful after the turmoil, that to enlarge our sense of convalescence, we took the way of the lonely valley, and climbed the Abbot’s Mitre. The moon was in its last quarter, and stooping towards its rest in the earth like a bent and wearied old soul; an idle drift or two of cloud pursued it, trying the effect of a star here and there on its gauze, as it loitered; and not a sound broke the stillness but the whispering chuckle of the small surf on the shingle below.

We sat down on a block of stone in the midst of the huge and silent congress of ruin. Here were ghostly corridors, which the sea still mocked with an echo of monkish footsteps; pitch-black corners, where the faint rustle of mortar falling might have been the muttering whisper of the confessional; drifts of broken arches, colossal-shouldered, heaven-supporting in their time, now bowed under the weight of their hanging-gardens of ivy; shattered windows that were without a purpose, like open gates set up in a desert. Dim and tragic in the moonlight, they stood around us, a spectral deputation of giants, making its unearthly appeal for some human redress or sympathy. They seemed to hem us in, to throng closer and closer. An odd nightmare mood possessed me. I shivered, and stamped on the ground.

“Harry,” I said, with a nervous giggle; “supposing these smuggler chaps down here ever walk!”

Out from the blackness of the overturned plinth hard by slipped a grey shadow, a thing that might have been a dog, but was not.

“O!” I shuddered, falling against my friend. “Let’s get away—Harry! at the back here.”

The sound of my voice, little though it was, appeared to startle the creature. It turned, paused as if regarding us, seemed to be coming our way, and vanished again into the glooms from which it had emerged. I had had a dreadful moment; and so it was with a sense of outrage that I heard Harry laugh out as he sprang to his feet.

“O!” he cried, skipping and sniggering before me; “to see it come so pat, and hear his tone change. Wasn’t it beautiful? And him not to know a bogey from a badger! O, Master Dicky, really!”

“A badger!” I echoed awfully. Then recovered myself and added with a rather agitated laugh; “Well, don’t pretend you weren’t startled yourself at first.”

“I?” he exclaimed. “Why, you old donkey, I brought you up here on purpose, on the chance of seeing it.”

“Very well,” he said. “I’ll show you its tracks in the mud to-morrow, if you don’t believe me. I guessed it was somewhere in the hill, and now I know.”

“Did you?” I said resentfully. “Then I’d rather you played the fool with me by day.”

“Played!” said he; “what have I played? ’Twas you began with your ghosts and things. Besides, any fool knows that badgers only walk at night.”

He sniggered again; then, seeing that I was hurt, took my arm in his, and patted me down.

“It’s really rather a start, though,” said he—“I mean the thing being here at all; because they live in woods, you know. But I’ll tell you what I make of it; that it was driven down by those burnings” (it had been a very hot summer, with two fires, destroying some acres, up in the Court woods) “to get near the water. Anyhow, I spotted its tracks in the soft ground here some days ago, and made up my mind to run it to earth. We’ll come up to-morrow and have a look by daylight.”

We did as he proposed, and found, amongst the bramble and other vegetable and miscellaneous litter which choked the neighbourhood of the great tumbled mass of masonry, indubitable signs of a passage leading to the creature’s earth.

“Don’t say anything about it,” said Harry, desisting, excited, from his examination; “and we’ll just have a try to dig it out some day. Wonder if it could tell us anything about the earthquake?”

“Harry,” I whispered, thrilling all through; “supposing there’s a way down after all!”

The man had, after his customary fashion, come softly upon us from some hidden coign of espial. His hands were slouched in his pockets, and he mumbled a little black clay pipe, shaped like a death’s head, between his teeth.

“I wouldn’t think—if I were you,” he went on, “fur to pry into the Lord’s secrets. Let the grave keep its own—pervided I may be so bold.”

“I wish you wouldn’t pry into our secrets, Mr. Rampick,” said Harry, loftily. “It’s got to be rather a nuisance this, you know.”

The ex-smuggler snatched his pipe from his lips, and seemed for an instant as if he were about to dash it to the ground in a fury. But he recovered himself, and pretended only to be shaking out the ashes before he returned the cutty to his mouth.

“Secrets?” said he. “Why, you makes me laugh to talk of having secrets here!”

He broke off, restless in a shaking way to get his pipe to draw; then turned suddenly upon me.

“You’re a gen’leman, sir,” he said, “and should know better—nor to meddle in things what don’t concarn you. The Lord has putt His seal on this here hill: you let it alone—if I may make free to be His mouthpiece, like Ezekiel what was told to warn the evil doers that they come not to grief—and die.”

“O, you flatter yourself, Mr. Rampick!” I said. “You aren’t a bit like Ezekiel.”

He stood regarding me, half perplexed, half malignant, for a minute; then settled himself down on a stone and smoked away, silent, his eyes staring and full of a vicious resolution.

“Come on, Dick,” said Harry, seeing it obvious that the man meant to outstay us, and took my arm and walked me off.

“But we’ll have the badger, nevertheless,” he said, when we were out of hearing, “and in spite of that sot. Can’t make him out, can you? Should have thought he’d have welcomed the chance of recovering some of his old brandy tubs.”

CHAPTER II.
THE GREAT STORM.

“Which it’s well known that ’ope deferred maketh a cat sick,” said Mrs. Puddephatt, with unintentional irreverence, referring to my report to my uncle of our late meeting with Mr. Rampick. She was by this time quite in the family confidence. “Bless you, Master Richard,” said she, “it’s not the Lord’s secret the man’s so keerful of; it’s ’is hown, living all these years on the ’opes of salvidge from the ’ill, and jealous of hothers steppin’ hin and anticepting of ’im.”

“You’re still as sceptical as ever about the earthquake, Mrs. Puddephatt,” said he. “Now, it occurs to me, if the hill was, as you suppose, a rendezvous for smugglers, who by some folly entombed themselves therein, why wasn’t the whole village plunged immediately into mourning for the loss at a blow of so many fathers and brothers?”

Mrs. Puddephatt, standing with folded arms and a bleak, patient smile, awaited his good pleasure to answer.

“Hev you adone, sir?” she now demanded. “Don’t let me hinterrupt you before you’ve got it hall hout.”

“Thank you,” said Uncle Jenico, a little abashed. “I think there’s nothing more.”

“Ho!” said the lady, drawing in a sharp breath. “Then let me hexpress at once, sir, before more’s said, my hobligation for your supposing as I’m supposing.”

“I admit it was unpardonable,” answered my uncle, with a beaming but rather frightened smile. “I should have understood, of course, that you have warrant for your smugglers.”

“Not my smugglers, sir,” she said, “begging your pardon. Faults there may be in my pronounciation; but ’awking and spitting in his langwidge was never yet, so far as I know, laid to the charge of a Londoner.”

“No, sir; nor to hend the names of his towns with a hoath, which it is not permitted to a lady’s lips to pollute themselves with huttering.”

“O, really, Mrs. Puddephatt, I don’t understand!” said my uncle in despair.

“I dare say not, sir,” went on the inexorable female. “But you must excuse me if I draw the line at Hamster and Rotter.”

“O!” said Uncle Jenico, gathering light through the gloom. “You mean to imply that these smugglers were Dutchmen?”

She condescended to smile a little, and, pursing her lips, nodded at him with a very stiff neck.

“Bein’, you see, a Londoner yourself, sir, to which a nod is as good as a wink. It was Dutchmen what landed and stowed the stuff, and Dunberry what distributed of it. They howned to no connection with one another, and worked apart, which was their safety. Dunberry, bless you, would be dreaming in their beds that hinnercent, while ’Olland would be stuffing of the ’ill with contraband. Honly that Rampick was the master sperrit and go-between; and now you knows the truth about ’im.”

“Then,” said my uncle at last, “the unfortunate creatures caught up there, if caught they were——”

“Don’t bait the man, Dick,” he said. “Remember, whoever’s to blame for it, he’s half crazed by his misfortunes; and small wonder, when some of us find it difficult to keep our heads in prosperity. Why, dear, dear! It isn’t the part of luck to throw stones, and certainly not at a dog in a trap. It’s like enough the poor creature’s dangerous. I dare say I should be if things had gone against me. Don’t bait him, Dick. Give him a wide berth.”

He had always been a little nervous about this fellow and our attitude towards him. His appeal was, however, superfluous. The ex-smuggler was not attractive; and Harry and I were certainly never the first to invite collision with him. For, what with blight and rum and sanctimony—which last, from being assumed for a disguise, had become a half-demoniac possession in him—he was little better at this day than a smouldering madman. Nevertheless, I tried loyally henceforth to emulate Uncle Jenico’s better Christianity by making allowances for the man because of his provocation. After all, calumny could visit him with no more formidable charge than that of having been a successful smuggler—a negative indictment even in these days. And perhaps, the main impeachment admitted, Mrs. Puddephatt’s cockney perspicacity was not so deadly a detective as she supposed.

I took Mr. Sant and Harry, of course, into my confidence with regard to our landlady’s story. It was little more than a confirmation to them, if that were needed, that Rampick had been the head and front of the old trade. But the Dutch part was news to us, and nothing less, I do believe, to Mrs. Puddephatt herself, who, however she had become acquainted with it, had acquired her knowledge recently, I am sure, or she would not have omitted hitherto to impress us with it in her many allusions to the “herthquake.” The rector, for his part, had speculated, no doubt, like my uncle, upon the equanimity with which the village had accepted the supposed visitation of God upon a number of its bread-winners; but had never to this day, I think, in spite of the respect in which he was held, succeeded in getting behind the local esprit de corps which hid the real truth from him. Now much was explained—provided Mrs. Puddephatt had actually been permitted to discover what had been kept from us—much, that is to say, except the nature and cause of the catastrophe; and that, I supposed, we should never find out. But there I was mistaken, as events will show. For Destiny, having got her puppets at last into position, was even now gathering the strings into her hands for the final “Dance of Death.”

In the meanwhile, the last month of the year opened upon us with a falling barometer and fresh menace of tempest, which it was not long in justifying. The little calm had been but a breathing time, to enable Winter to brace his muscles and fill out his lungs. It was on the night of the fifteenth, I think, that the great storm which followed, notable even on those coasts, rose to its height. The wind came from the north-east, with a high tide, which, racing obliquely, cut the cliffs like a guillotine. The whole village hummed and shook with the roar of it. Not a chimney but was a screaming gullet into which its breath was sucked like water. There were ricks scattered like chaff on the uplands, and trees uprooted with mandrake groans of agony. God knows, too, what the quicksands knew that night! When the day broke the worst was already over, and the sea, scattered with the bones of its prey, sullenly licking its jaws. Far on the drifts of the Weary Sands gaped the ribs of a mammoth it had torn, the solitary monument to its rage. The rest was matchwood.

That same night Uncle Jenico and Harry and I were supping at the rectory. The occasion is vivid in my memory because of a story which Mr. Sant told us. After the meal we had drawn our chairs to the fire, and moved, perhaps, by the unearthly racket overhead, were fallen upon talk of the supernatural. The house lay so close-shut within trees that the booming of the tempest came to us half muffled. In its pauses, we could even hear the drip from broken gutters treading the drive beneath, upon which the dining-room windows looked, with a sound like stealthy footsteps. It brought to his mind, said Mr. Sant, a legend he had once heard about a werewolf—the German vampire. These creatures, men by day, but condemned, for their unspeakable crimes, to become wolves with the going down of the sun, are like nothing mortal. It is forbidden to notice, to pity, to sympathize with them in any way. Whosoever does, yields himself to their thrall.

One winter evening a peasant-woman, belated in the snow-bound woods, was hurrying home, with her basket of provisions for the morrow over her arm, when she heard a pattering behind her, and looking back, there was a werewolf following. In the hunger of the miserable creature’s face she saw an expression which haunted while it terrified her. It was faintly suggestive of something, or somebody; but of what or whom she could not tell. Yet the lost horror in it moved her in spite of herself. Her pity mastered her fear. She took meat from her basket and threw it back, conscious of her secret sin. “But who will know!” she thought; “and I could not sleep without.” The creature stopped to devour the morsel, which enabled the woman to escape and reach her home in safety. But all the following day her deed dwelt with her, so that towards evening, unable to bear her own sole confidence any longer, she went down to the lonely church to confess her sin and be absolved of it. She rang the little sacristy bell, and summoned the solitary confesser. He came, and behind the bars heard her avowal. Then, as listening to it he turned his face, she saw that snap and change in the gloom. The eyes rounded, the brows puckered and met, the jaw shot down and forth. Before her, glaring through the bars, was the werewolf of the preceding night. It barked and snapped at the grating which divided them, then dropped, and she heard it issue forth and come pattering round to the side where——

We were never to know, for at that instant, weird and unearthly in a pause of the storm, there rose a long melancholy bay outside the window. We all fell like mutes, staring at one another; then, moved by a single impulse, jumped to our feet and made for the front door. The wind battled to crush us with it, driving us back as we raised the latch, and so whipped our eyelashes and flared the lights in the hall that for a minute we could do nothing. But when at last we emerged and stood in the drive, not a living shape of any sort was to be seen—only the tossed bushes and black tree trunks.

“It must have been a wandering dog,” said Mr. Sant; “something attracted by the light. Come in again, all of you.”

But we would only re-enter to get our coats and caps for the homeward march. Some growing sense of unbounded licence in the storm awed us, I think, and drew us like cowed beasts to our lairs.

As we butted through the darkness, a form detached itself from the shadows in a deep part of the lane, and followed staggering and hooting in our wake. It was Rampick, blazing drunk, and his maniac laugh pursued my uncle and me long after we were housed and shuddering between the sheets.

CHAPTER III.
OPEN SESAME.

I had a vision sometimes of our tight little island lying on the sea like a round of bread and butter on a plate, and the Angel of the Storm amusing himself by biting patterns out of its edges. The coast in our part of the world was particularly inviting to him, because, I suppose, it was crumb, and not rocky with crust like other parts. Anyhow he never flew near without setting his teeth in it somewhere, and on this occasion to such gluttonous effect that he must have blown himself out before he had fairly settled down to his meal. His attack was as short as it was violent. For miles north and south the cliffs had been torn and gulped—only the birds, mapping them from above, could have said into what new fantastic outline. Landmarks were gone, and little bays formed where had been promontories. Here and there a fisherman’s boat had been licked out of its winter perch, that that same angel might play bounce-ball with it on the cliffs until it was broken to bits. The wreck and flotsam on the shore were indescribable; and sad and ugly was the sight of more than one drowned mariner entangled in them. I turn my memory gladly from such retrospects, to concentrate it upon those features of the havoc which most concern this history.

Waterside folk are a strangely incurious and fatalistic race. Once having satisfied themselves after a storm that their craft, disposed here and there in winter quarters, are untouched, the changes wrought on their sea-front interest them only in so far and so long as those changes mean profitable wreckage. When that is all gathered, they withdraw again to their winter burrows and winter occupations, and leave the foreshore to its natural desolation.

At least, that is what Dunberry did after the gale and within a couple of days following it, than which no longer was needed, it appeared, to secure any salvage worth the landing. For there is this characteristic of great tempests, that from their destructive rage they yield a poorer harvest of “whole grain,” so to speak, than do moderate ones. The latter, maybe, deposit some literal pickings in the shape of crates, barrels, seamen’s chests, etc., yet compact; the former for the most part mere disjecta membra. It followed, therefore, that when Harry and I next visited the beach—which, as it happened, he having been away, and I confined to the house with a beastly cold, we did not do until the afternoon of the third day succeeding that night of uproar—we found we had the whole place virtually to ourselves.

Uncle Jenico, who, from his anxious concern for me, had also kept at home during the interval, came with us, full of suppressed eagerness to glean the torn fields of shingle for relics. I think I only realized the self-restraint which his affection must have imposed upon him in those two days, when I saw the almost childish joy with which he greeted the sight of the weedy litter strewn, as far as the eye could reach, along the shore.

“Why, Richard!” he exclaimed, rubbing his hands, while his spectacles seemed to twinkle again, “here’s a chance indeed! It’s an ill wind that blows nobody—— Poor souls, poor souls! I feel like robbing the grave to take such advantage of their misery.”

His countenance fell a moment; but his mood was not proof against the stupendous prospect.

“The sea’s a pretty big grave, sir,” said Harry. “You might as well have scruples about digging gold out of the earth, seeing we’re all buried there.”

“That’s true,” said Uncle Jenico, with serious delight. “That’s quite true, my boy. I only hope I’ve not left it to too late.”

“No, Dicky,” he answered; “no, no, no. You and Harry amuse yourselves as you will. I wouldn’t deny myself for anything the gratification of the treat I’m going to bring you by-and-by. It’s selfish, no doubt; but—but I’d rather be alone.”

And he hobbled away, calling out to us not to let our expectations run too high, or he might be defrauded of his opportunity to surprise us.

It was a fine, still afternoon, with the tide at quiet ebb, and a touch of frost in the air. The sun, low down, burned like a winter fire, and gleamed with a light of sadness on the ribs of the gaunt wreck lying far away on the Weary Sands. She was visible only at low water; at high being completely submerged. No one, so far as I knew, had yet had the curiosity or venturesomeness to row out and investigate the poor castaway. It was just plain to see, by the aid of glasses, that she had broken her back on the drift, and that only her stern half remained, wedged into the sand. But what her name or condition Dunberry had not had the energy to inquire.

We were standing at gaze at the foot of the Gap, and when Uncle Jenico went north, we, in obedience to his wish to be left alone, turned our faces down the coast. But we had not taken a score or so of steps when we hooted out simultaneously over the sight that was suddenly revealed to us. The storm had bolted a great hunk, good ten feet through at its thickest, of the Mitre, obliterating the already half-effaced step-way by which Rampick had been wont to ascend, and laying bare, high up in the cliff, a mass of broken masonry. From the character of this last it was evident at a glance what had happened. The seaward limit to the crypts of the old abbey had been shorn through, and the extreme vaulting of that ancient underworld exposed. Nor was this all. The well, now thus further isolated from the hill which had once contained it, was grown, from the washing away of the sand at its base, an apparent five feet or so taller, and was leaning outwards at a distinctly acuter and more ominous angle with the shore.

We stood excited a moment, then, without a word, raced to get a closer view. The wrack and downfall, as we looked up at their traces, must have been stupendous; yet so great had been the pulverising force of the waves, the mighty silt from them, except for a few tumbled blocks of stone, was all dispersed and distributed about the shore below, so that a new cliff face, clear of ruin, went up in a pretty clean sweep from beach to summit sixty feet above. From the lower curve of this, where it ran out and down into the sand, the well projected, not ten feet above us, like a little tower of Pisa; and yet thirty feet higher, at a point in the hill face about on a level with the well top, gaped the jagged ruin of masonry which the storm had laid bare.

“Dick!” whispered Harry—“Dick!” (He was gulping and gripping my arm hard, as he stared up.) “Supposing we could climb to there and look in!”

“Yes!” I choked back. I knew what was in his mind; and the thought fascinated while it frightened me horribly.

“I’ve never seen a Dutchman,” he said. “Mrs. Puddephatt, she—it would be fun to find out the truth. What are they like?”

“I don’t know,” I answered, shivering. “They wear lots of breeches, I believe. But it’s no good. The place is all choked up. You can see for yourself.”

There was no apparent entrance that way, indeed. The contour of the vaulting was roughly discernible, it is true, but so stopped with mud and débris as to offer no visible passage.

“Besides,” I went on, swallowing fast and trying to escape from the fluttering spell the mere suggestion had laid upon me,—“whether it was an earthquake or gunpowder, it’s all the same. It must be just all squash and ruin inside; and—and the things——” I stuck, feeling that I dare not speculate further.

Harry released my arm, and for some time looked down, making thoughtful patterns with his foot in the sand.

“Well, I don’t know,” he said, raising his face suddenly. “But I’d mighty like to see.”

We were both rather silent for the rest of the afternoon; and, though we neither of us alluded to the subject for a day or two afterwards, it was evident it stood between us. We avoided the spot, too; until one evening a long ramble brought us back by the shore past it. Then, by a common impulse, we stopped, and stood gaping silent up once more. The light from the sinking sun smote level upon the face of the cliff, so that it stood out as bright as a grate back. Its surface, quite dried from the tempest, reflected no glaze of water. The rivulets of mud, which had flowed over and sealed the scar of ruin above, were hardened like plaster, though shrinkage had opened black fissures in them here and there.

Harry, softly whistling, left me suddenly, and, with his hands in his pockets, toiled indifferently up the slope to the well foot. Here, still whistling, he began kicking round the base; but in a moment desisted and called to me. I went up, and he fell upon his knees, and set to scraping with his fingers.

“Why, look, you bat!” said he. “Nothing under; nothing deeper. Here’s the last bottom course of the thing; the foundation stones, or I’m a——”

“I was going to say ‘Dutchman,’” said he; “and, for all we know, they may be listening up there.”

“Well, anyhow,” he said, “here’s the old well just standing on its end, like a drain-pipe with a tilt to it. If we brought spades and dug away underneath on the outside, it would fall—and on the top of us, too; but that’s a detail. Wonder the storm didn’t finish it, don’t you? Must have come pretty near to.”

As he spoke, staring up at me, he suddenly uttered a soft exclamation, and scrambling to his feet, pulled at my arm.

I followed the direction of his hand, which was pointing to the scar in the cliff-face above. I could see nothing.

I did not stir; till, at the end of a long interval, something made me start involuntarily. It was a wink—a flutter—a motion of some sort, I knew not what, on the hill front.

He ran down the slope to the sand, and I followed at a leap, thinking he meant that the cliff was falling. But when I saw his face I knew that some excitement other than fear was moving him.

“It was the badger,” he said, turning sharp on me. “Now, do you understand what that means?”

“Why!” he cried reproachfully. “Dicky, you gowk! If he goes to earth at the top and comes and puts his nose out here, what does it mean but that the crypts ain’t as blocked as we supposed!”

An odd little silence fell between us. Then Harry turned away, and began to move off, whistling. At a bound I was after him, with a furious red face, and, seizing his arm, had whipped him round.

“I’m going to try to get into the hill up there,” I cried. “If you’re afraid to come too, stop behind like a coward!”

We were bristling, actually, as on that far-off day when we had first come into collision. Our fists were clenched; the backs of our necks tingled; it was really a pregnant moment.

But the good old fellow resolved it, and in the best way possible. The fire suddenly left his eyes.

“O, Dick,” he said; “what asses we are! Look here, I’ll tell you—I should funk it going up there alone, and you wouldn’t, it seems; that’s the truth. I only wanted to dare you, for my own sake.”

“O, all right!” I said, pocketing my fists, and pretty ashamed of myself. I kicked the sand about, not knowing how to escape the situation gracefully. At last I in my turn blurted out: “What rot this is! Let’s forget it all, and just discuss ways and means.”

“O, well!” he said, heaving a profound sigh. “It’s simple enough. We’ll just climb up there, and say ‘open sesame,’ and walk in.”

This little inspiration to identify our adventure with Ali Baba’s was quite a happy one. Not forty Dutch smugglers, but forty beautiful Persian thieves with scimitars and waxed moustaches! It tinctured with romance at once the thought of the ugly sights it was possible we might encounter. Our half fearful design became, in a flash of coloured light, a tingling conspiracy.

It was too late, of course, to attempt anything that evening. But the following afternoon was a half-holiday with us, and quite apt to our purpose. In the interval we secured some candles and a box of the friction matches then lately come into use, as also, privately, Uncle Jenico’s geological hammer, a sturdy tool with a heavy butt and a long steel pick to balance its head. And with these, and nothing else whatever but our trust in ourselves, we issued forth after a hasty early dinner, and no word said to anybody, to dare and do.

We had resolved, after consultation, to make the attempt from above rather than below; because, in the first place, we should be less likely to attract attention, and, in the second, because a descent of twenty feet appeared easier of accomplishment than a climb of thirty up that slippery glacis. So we started, unregarded of any one, as we supposed, by way of the valley, and were not long in reaching the brow of the Mitre where it overlooked the well and the recent landfall.

It was all strangely altered here, and, near the edge, risky footing at the best. But we stole up cautiously, and, going upon our stomachs the last yard or two, looked down. Below us, at a rather giddy distance, projected some spars and ledges of the fractured masonry. Fortunately, however, the interval between us and them was not balked by any bulge in the cliff, but showed a smooth descent, and not too sheer for the essay. Still, it did not do to dwell upon it.

“Don’t be a fool!” he protested. “We shall break away, and both go faster than we want, if you aren’t careful.”

I made no reply but to resist him doggedly, till at last, with a grunt, he let me go, and I turned, lying flat-faced, and swung my legs over the precipice.

“O, you old brute!” he said. “Well, go easy, then, and dig your toes in.”

And with that I let go and slid away, clawing and scratching like a cat coming down a tree. It was just to fasten on and commit one’s self to luck, which, fortunately for me, directed my feet to a ledge, on which I brought up, gasping and spitting out dirt. But once secure of my hold, and in a state to look about me, I was relieved to find that the position was much more possible than it had seemed either from above or below, the projecting spits of stonework being more and more pronounced than had showed at a distance.

I took a minute to get my wind, and then called up to Harry to follow; but he was already on his way. I saw him coming at a risky pace, and by a slightly divergent course, which he had taken to avoid me. It would have carried him clear of the ruin altogether had I not, at the psychologic moment, clapped my hand to the seat of his small-clothes and checked his descent.

With a desperate effort he managed to wriggle oblique, and in a moment we were standing together on the ledge.

“That was give and take,” he panted. “Like being saved from drowning by a shark. Can’t say your bark’s worse than your bite.”

I chuckled so that I was near falling off our perch, till a sudden thought sobered me.

“Supposing, after all, we can’t get in, or up or down neither?” I said dismayed. “A pretty picture we shall make, stuck up here.”

“Well, it’s too late to think of that now,” answered Harry, coolly. “Lend me a hand while I kick.”

He let out on the wall of mud in front, which we had hoped was just a mask or screen hiding a cavity behind; but his foot only sunk to the ankle in it without effect.

We were standing, so far as we could judge, about midway up the groining of the vault, and right under the apex, a little above and to the right of us, gaped a small round fissure.

“See?” said Harry, excitedly; “that’s the place. It don’t go perpendicular like the others, which means that it’s sunk away from some support above it. Hold me, now.”

I clutched him the best I could, gripping a stone with my other hand, and he brought the big hammer from his jacket pocket, and poised himself, standing high on his toes. “Open sesame!” says he, and struck with all the force he could muster on the soil just under the hole. The result made him stagger, for he had expected some resistance, and there was none. The whole top of a mound of silt, which stopped the neck, it seemed, of the decapitated crypts, and into the thick base of which he had first struck his foot, broke away and fell inwards, revealing an aperture, already, under that one blow, large enough for a man to crawl through.

Harry, recovering himself, quietly repocketed the tool, and turned to me. His face was a little white, but his mouth was set as grim as sin.

It was no use my disputing, as he was on the right side. Working with infinite caution and difficulty on that perilous eyrie, I managed to stoop, and, getting my hands under one of his feet, levered him slowly up, while he drew on every projection he could reach, until he was able to claw his arms into the hole and hang on.

I drove with the word; dig went his feet and knees; he sprawled convulsively a moment; got hold; the mound jerked and sunk a little under him, a clatter of débris went down the cliff face, and he was in.

Almost in the same instant his face, hot and staring, re-emerged, and then his arms.

Fixing my eyes on him, and crouching to the lowest I dared, I sprang, and he snatched and gripped my wrists.

“Now!” he gasped; and instantly the both of us were battling and struggling, he to hold me firm, and I to get way on and leverage.

For a minute the issue was doubtful; the mound sunk and crumbled still lower; I clawed frantically with my toes, my legs going like a frog’s on a slippery basin. But at last I got hold, and a little ease to my lungs; and so, hauling on to the hands held out to me, and wriggling up foot by foot, was drawn into the opening, now much enlarged, and crawling through, rolled, tangled up with Harry, down a slope into darkness.

CHAPTER IV.
THE SECRET IN THE HILL.

My first impression, as I sat up to gather my wits, was of awakening from a falling nightmare to the comfortable security of bed and early morning. The frantic fears engendered of that fathomless descent were all resolved in laughter. I giggled as I recalled them, shaking my dusty noddle to get the brains into place in it. Opposite me I could discern a shadowy figure, squatting in a like process of self-recovery.

“O!” I exclaimed; and the monosyllable rolled away into the darkness like a barrel.

We scrambled up, while it was still echoing, and catching involuntarily at one another, looked fearfully about us. At a height of twelve feet or so behind us shone the opening through which we had entered. It made a great splotch of light, with a dim tail running fanlike from it down the slope by which we had fallen. The effect to us, standing possessed by gloom, was as of our being involved in the tail of a comet. So long as we looked that way, it dazzled and perplexed us. We turned our backs on it.

Then, gradually, the obscure details of the place gathered coherence; and we saw that we were standing in a low vaulted chamber, giving at its further end upon a sewer-like mouth of blackness.

“Dicky,” said Harry, in a rather tremulous whisper, “have you got the candles and lucifers all safe? This is p-p-prime, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I gulped, to either question. But I answered without heart, being sick to postpone the advance, by whatever means, for a little.

“Don’t let me go, you old idiot!” I complained in a panic, as he made as if to step forward. “Supposing we lost one another. Ha-Harry, do you know what I saw under my arm as you p-pulled me up outside there?”

“Rampick—the b-beast—scuttling for the Gap. He must have been watching us again, hidden below somewhere this time; and like enough now he’s making for the cliff overhead.”

Harry began chuckling, but stopped in a fright to hear himself answered, as it were, by a patter of little laughing hiccoughs.

“He won’t find much,” he whispered, “and we needn’t be afraid he’ll follow us down here. Light a candle, Dicky, for goodness’ sake. There seem to be all sorts of things creeping and rustling.”

My hands shook so that I boggled three good matches in coaxing the wick to take; but I would not let Harry hold the candle, for fear that he might run ahead with it, and perhaps in some labyrinth of passages leave me to follow the wrong one.

The flame caught at last, flared with a momentary brilliancy, and shrunk to a mere blink. It is the common way with candles, yet I know nothing more maddening in a nervous emergency. And if philosophy sneers over that statement, let it ponder, and be thankful but take no credit, because it had nothing whatever to do with the making of its own temperament. At length, after a moment of tension indescribable, the wicked little tongue stretched, and glowed steady; and I lifted it high, while we glared right and left.

The cellar in which we found ourselves was, or had been till shorn of its seaward end, a four-square room, with Norman vaulting—crossed flat half-hoops of stone—going down into the corners. It was very small, and very low (the candle flame, as I lifted it, blackened the roof), and very massive; and because of the three, very ancient. Probably it had once been a death-chapel under some older foundation than the abbey, and connected only as a matter of piety with the newer crypts, which, to meet it, had been tunnelled eastwards, in a manner very unusual, from beneath the nave. But, so far as we could see, it was quite empty, and undamaged by the earthquake, or explosion.

The black sewer faced us. There, we knew, was our way. If for a minute or two we hesitated to follow it, by so long was Providence our friend. For, indeed, we had never thought to take account of the stale, confined gases which for years must have been poisoning these glooms, and our delay gave the draught that we had created time to take effect.

For draught there was, though we were unconscious of the significance of it when we saw the flame of our candle draw towards the tunnel. But in truth we had forgotten in our excitement all about the badger.

At last we made a move, holding on to one another’s hands like Hansel and Gretel entering the witch’s forest. We reached the black mouth of the passage, and went in on tiptoe. It was arched, and high enough in its middle to enable one to walk erect; yet not so wide but that Harry must drop behind and follow me. I sniggered a little to feel him treading nervously on my heels, and the sense of laughter was like a tonic. If one touch of nature makes the world kin, it is surely the touch that tickles one under the fifth rib.

The passage seemed to run on endlessly—just a high stone drain with a floor of hammered earth driving straight into the hill. No other diverged from it, nor did any ruin block our path; and we were beginning to move quite merrily, when suddenly the end came in a flight of half a dozen steps going down, and at the bottom a great door torn off its hinges and shivered into splinters.

At the sight we drew back on the very brink, and stood gaping and dumbstruck, afraid for the moment to proceed.

“Dicky,” said Harry, staring over my shoulder, “here comes the tug, don’t it?”

I did not answer. Suddenly he dipped under my arm and ran down, and, terrified at the thought of being left alone, I followed him.

The fragments of the door stood wrenched at any angle; but through the black gaps in the wreck flowed the sense of shattered spaces beyond.

“Now for it!” said Harry. “Hand me the light when I’m in, and follow yourself.”

I would have lingered yet, but he broke from me, and, fearing to precipitate I knew not what nameless ruin, I let him go with only a show of interference.

He was through in a moment, and calling back to me, “Pass the light, and come on. It’s all serene.”

The draught was still strong enough here to flutter the candle flame, so that for a little we could make out nothing of our surroundings. But stepping cautiously to one side, away from the door, we found the light to stand suddenly steady, and immediately before our eyes there grew into grotesque and shadowy being a vision of enormous destruction.

It was again a vaulted chamber we were in, but of apparent proportions infinitely greater than the other. Apparent, I say, for for two-thirds of its extent it was just one unresolvable ruin. A great part of the roof had collapsed, snapping in its downfall, like sticks of celery, the squat massive piers which had supported it. The walls on either side were bowed to an arch above, or swayed drunkenly with colossal knees bent outwards. To the further side, gaping at us across the havoc, a huge blackened rent seemed to invite to nameless horrors beyond; and scattered and spattered and spurted from under the fringe of the stony avalanche were staves of casks, and fragments of burst chests from which fountains of tea had showered all over the floor.

We stood awestruck, scarce daring to breathe. The sense of yet impending disaster, the terror of calling it down upon us by a stumble, a false step, kept us as still as mice. Before us a path went clear round the ruin to another broken archway, and yet remoter vaults. But by this time my curiosity was become something less than a negative quantity.

“Harry,” I whispered at last, almost querulously, “we’ve seen enough. I’m going back.”

“I’m not,” he said. “But I don’t want you to come. Light me another bit of candle from yours, and stay here while I go and explore. We’ve found out nothing yet, you know.”

I am ashamed to say I let him go, only imploring him to return soon—to be satisfied with a look. He did not answer, but stole off resolutely with his bit of a torch, and it was with a feeling of agony that I saw him disappear through the opening.

It is a question with psychologists how much one can dream in a second. I will answer for the eternity of nightmare I suffered during those few moments of Harry’s absence. He could hardly, in point of fact, have set foot in the further chamber when a strange little cry from him made me start violently. And immediately, as if in response, there sprang into voice near me a step, a rustle, the menace of a coming roar, and I screamed out and fled towards my friend. The crash answered behind me as I ran, and a film of dust followed. Half blinded and deafened, I almost fell at Harry’s feet as he met me. We clutched one another convulsively, and for a minute could not speak.

The concussion was succeeded by an appalling silence. Presently he was staring over my shoulder, swaying his light to and fro.

“Dick!” He went muttering in my ear: “Dick! Dick! Dick! the roof has fallen, down by the door, and blocked our way back!”

Horror took me of a heap. I could only bite into Harry’s arm up and down with my fingers, dumbly entreating him to do something to save us from going crazy.

“O, why did we come?” I moaned at last. “Why didn’t you come when I asked you?”

“What good would that have been,” he said miserably, “if we’d been caught and squashed?”

If he could not see the way to save, he could to make a man of me. He was the first to return to his sturdy self. It struck me like sacrilege to hear him suddenly emit a faint little laugh.

“What is?” he answered. “Look here, Dick, we’re just fools, that’s all, There must be a way out somewhere—we’d forgotten what the badger showed us.”

“O, Harry!” I said, “you good old fellow to think of it! Why, of course there must be; if only we could——”

“Wait a bit!” he interrupted me. “You’ll have to make up your mind to go on.”

“I’ll go anywhere,” I said, “to get safe out of this. O, don’t stop! Any moment may bring down some more of it.”

“Yes, they’re there. If you like to shut your eyes, I’ll lead you past.”

“No,” I said, with a catch in my voice. “If you stood it, so can I. Go on—quick. Are they—are they—very——”

We were in the further vault before I could shape my question; and I took one glance, and shrieked, and shrunk back under the wall. And so, in the very act, at a leap the horror was gone.

Why? I cannot tell. The problem is again for the psychologists. All I know is that, as I cried out, the sickness left me. A spring of some human sympathy gushed up in my heart and expelled it. These pitiful remnants seemed to greet us as with a wistful hail of comradeship. They were ugly, disjointed, ghastly enough in all conscience; but they appealed as from the lost to the lost, and seeing them, their quiet, sad decay, I no longer feared them as I had feared them unseen. Who might swear, indeed, that our own bones would not mingle with these others presently? They were dust of our dust in the great Commonwealth of death. If I had been a desert castaway, lying down to die beside some parched human skeleton, I could not better have testified to my sense of the sorrow that makes us kin than I did now in my changed emotions.

Yet, indeed, the scene was a very awful one. Near the whole of the further side of the crypt had collapsed, making of the place a huge cave-like mouth stuck with blackened splinters of teeth, and gorged to the throttle with a litter of human remains. They lay scattered all over the vast jaw of it—chewed, dismembered, scarce one to be identified in its entirety. Here it might be a red-capped skull, with a naked brown cutlass tilted across its teeth; here a limbless body, horribly suggestive in its crumbling stumps of a mangled doll dribbling sawdust; here something, whole but for its head, crooking its fingers into the dusty scalp of a comrade from whom the legs had been torn. They may have counted to near a dozen in all, if one had had the stomach to tally the flannel caps and brass-buttoned jackets and disjointed slops. But, ten or twenty, the moral was the same. Here at the crook of a finger was the whole life of the hill blown into fragments; and the legend of the earthquake laid.

I understood that plain enough before Harry’s low excited voice sounded over my shoulder.

He drew me back and we stood, figures of tragedy, flashing the light from our candle-ends into dark corners. In all the hideous mélange there were two details unmistakable in their significance. To our right, lying front-downwards with its face smashed into the floor, and its legs caught into the closing throat of the vault, was a little flattened blue-coated figure, its hands flung out, and the left yet closed upon the butt of a pistol. To our left, bolt upright against the wall through which the great rent had been blown into the adjoining crypt, sat a thing grotesque almost beyond naming. It wore, with a little air of sagging weariness, a seaman’s common jersey and good white ducks and shoes with shining buckles, and its right elbow was crooked and the hand beneath rested with a sort of exhausted jauntiness on its bent right knee. In all of which there was wonder, but no indecency, had it not been that, above, the thing had no head, nor any left arm but a stump, which stood oddly upraised from its shoulder.

And somehow one knew that these two were correlative in the tragedy, and somehow responsible for the human scatteration between them—for the bright gleams and splotches of colour which budded from the ancient soot of the holocaust—for these gaudy, half-perished weed-heaps scoring the garden of death.

I sighed and shook my head, not meaning ignorance, but simply overwhelmed under the weight of my own conclusions.

“Why,” he whispered, in an awestruck voice; “that—that there was reaching up for the ammunition, the—the armoury in the wall where they kept their powder and things, and, as he opened the cupboard, the other fired his pistol across. The bullet must have missed who it was meant for and gone into a powder barrel.”

As he spoke, one of the lights sputtered and went dim; and he caught suddenly at me.

“Come away!” he cried. “Why don’t you come? We haven’t candles and to spare.”

“I’m coming,” I answered tremulously. “Which way? Harry, don’t go without me!”

“Look here,” he said; “we must economize these. It won’t do to waste our lights.”

Instantly, in a panic, I blew out my candle, and simultaneously he blew out his. Thus was illustrated the weakness of generalities; and, correspondingly, the value, as you shall see, of accidents. We were plunged, on the breath, into subterranean night; lapped in lead and buried beyond hope of release. At least, so it seemed for the moment; and moments make the sum of time.

We stood rigid, paralysed, too dumb-stricken for speech or movement. And, in that pass, if you will believe me, the most unearthly horror of a voice hard by came to complete our demoralization. It rose between a hiss and bark, a swinish indescribable thing that tailed off into a bubbling snarl; and I thought it was the dead man caught by the legs struggling to rise and get at us.

I could not have survived and kept my reason, I think, had not Harry at this instant scattered all shadows with a jubilant shout—

I shook with the cry, and raised my despairing eyes. Sure enough, at a good height before and above us, a gleam of blessed dawn filtered down through the superincumbent soil. The accident of darkness had revealed it to us so soon as our pupils had forgotten the false glare of the candles.

And he laughed out—“Light up again, you old funk! It was the best friend in the world to us.”

Amazed, without understanding, I tremblingly rekindled the candle; and there, right before us, was a flight of stone steps going up—the ancient entrance to the crypts; and, risen bristling from his bed of straw and sticks at the foot of it, was our ally, our preserver, our most noble and honoured the badger.

He was a surly auxiliary, resentful for his broken slumber. He stood setting at us, and bubbling, and showing his teeth, as cross a little Cerberus as ever divided his duty between guarding the way down and keeping damned souls from escaping. Harry softly pulled the geological hammer from his pocket.

“I’m not going to attack,” said Harry. “But I must defend, if he makes a rush. Try a bite of him first, if you’re doubtful. I tell you, if he once fastens on, you’ll have to take him up with you.”

Keeping close together, and our eyes on the little grey gentleman, we edged gingerly round towards the foot of the flight. Fortunately, as we advanced, he withdrew, coming behind us in a circle.

Holding the candle to light him, I went backwards up the steps, until my head touched the canopy of soil and ruin which blocked their exit; and then, backwards, Harry followed me. The badger snuffed and gurgled, pointing his snout at us, but not offering to follow.

It was a narrow one as it first offered—a mere beast-earth driven down between chance interstices in the ruins above to meet the stair-head. But all the time while we wrought at to enlarge it, the sweet light was stretched to us to comfort and inspire, and the smell of liberty came down more and more in draughts like wine, as if Harry with his strenuous hammer were tapping the very reservoir of day. The only fear was that, striking carelessly, he might loosen some poised mass, and bury us under an avalanche of stone. But luckily, both sunk vault and tumbled ruin had so well adjusted between them the balance of collapse that our puny grubbing was all insufficient to disturb it.

For which, thank God! And tenfold for that glorious moment when, struggling and pushing up by way of the last of the littered steps, we shouldered and tore ourselves through into the mid-thicket of brambles by the fallen plinth, and felt the light of day, broken by the branches, burst over us like a salvo of resplendent rockets!

CHAPTER V.
A REAPPEARANCE.

On the day following that of our adventure Harry was due at Yokestone. I had arranged to walk part of the way with him, for we had much and momentous matter to discuss—our discovery, and the responsibility, moral and legal, which it entailed upon us, to wit. But, to my disturbance, the morning found Uncle Jenico knocked up with a chill; and the dear soul’s hope that I would stay to keep him company was so patent, that I had not the heart to disoblige him. I just took an opportunity to run out and tell Harry I could not come, and to re-decide with him upon postponing all action until we could consider the matter in its every bearing; and then returned, very much depressed, I must own, to my duty.

I don’t know if any suspicion of the past, any premonition as to the future was operating in the old man’s mind. Pure spirits, one must think, must be strangely sensitive to any disturbance in their moral atmosphere. He was certainly oddly solicitous about me, wistfully attentive, loth that I should leave him, and for my sake, not his own. But after dinner, as luck would have it, he fell asleep in his chair, and, restless beyond endurance, I took the chance to go for a stroll.

Once outside the door, I hesitated. I had not yet slept soundly or exhaustively enough to shake off all the horror of our late experience. I dreaded to go by the hill; I dreaded to go by the beach; but at last the prospective quiet of the latter drew me, and I turned my face seawards.

I had expected to find the shore deserted, and so, reaching the cliff edge, was put out a little to see a figure, that of a stranger, already down there before me. It went to and fro, this figure, on the fringe of the surf, thoughtfully, its head bent, its hands clasped behind its back—a lean, small old man, it seemed. But I observed it with unspeculative eyes, because of my pondering all the time, abstractedly and rather dismally, on the events of yesterday.

We had not canvassed our adventure much as yet, Harry and I. The shock and the shame of it, the body and brain-weariness, had disinclined us, during our walk home, to comment on a very frightening experience, out of the reach of whose shadow we could not escape, for all our hurrying. Morning, indeed, found it still with us, like a motionless fog, which, however, we should have endeavoured to dissipate by the breath of frank discussion, had not Uncle Jenico’s illness supervened. In consequence of which I had to face the rather depressing prospect of enduring for a whole day and night the burden of unrelieved silence. Still, about one thing we had been agreed: that we must weigh all the pros and cons before deciding to suppress or confess our discovery. At first, I had been for telling Mr. Sant everything the moment he returned; for he was away in London, as it chanced, on a short visit. But Harry had at once vetoed the idea.

“It wouldn’t be fair to foist all the responsibility on him,” he had said, emphatically. “Being a parson, he’d be bound to call in the law, and if he did that, his influence here would be lost, and you might burst your cheeks trying to whistle it back. Who knows who’d be found to be mixed up in the business, if once we talked? Most of the village, likely. And we’re not going to do anything to force him into becoming unpopular, and losing what he’s been years in getting.”

“But, Mrs. Puddephatt,” I had complained feebly, “said the village had nothing to do with it.”

“Nonsense!” Harry had answered. “She didn’t neither. She said that Dunberry and the Dutchmen worked separate, with Rampick for go-between.”

“Much the same, you gaby!” he had cried. “O yes, of course! Much the same as if two engine wheels connected by a rod turned up their noses about knowing one another.”

The technical inspiration of his simile had thereupon surprised him into a grin, and me, even, into a dismally funny attempt at a retort:—

“Well, they would move in different circles, you know. But we’ll sleep on it—that’s the best; and thrash it out between us to-morrow.”

That, however, as I have explained, we were debarred from doing; and now there was nothing for me but to possess my troubled soul in patience until Harry’s return. In Uncle Jenico, we had neither of us thought for a moment of confiding. Some instinctive sense of his lack of grasp, of his unpractical weakness prevented us. We would not confound or agitate the dear old fellow; and so here, in the result, I was solitarily and tragically cogitating our problem on the cliff edge.

We had, indeed, already come to one conclusion too obvious for dispute. The secret entrance to the smugglers’ lair had been patently near the spot whence we had emerged, and the significance of the now obliterated cliff-path was thus revealed. Those, however, were points which only concerned indirectly the main sources of our confusion, which sources were necessarily the nature of the tragedy and Rampick’s presumptive connection with it. There lay the deep core of the shadow—the stress of the moral obligations our reckless adventure had imposed upon us. We had opened the forbidden chamber, and our fingers were bloody.

Was it murder, in short? And, if so, was Rampick an accessory? And, if so, were we also become accessories?

I started at the thought, and went hurriedly down the Gap impelled by a sudden vision, It took the form of a tax-cart, and a handcuffed man in it being carried off to Ipswich Gaol. I felt the cold grip of the iron on my own wrists, and had to thrust my hands deep into my breeches’ pockets for some familiar reassurance of warmth. The stranger still paced the sands, a mechanic irritating figure. Now noticing my advent, he stopped to regard me, his hands behind his back, the wind gently undulating his coat-tails. Going northwards, I should come under the rake of his eyes. My nerves were on the jump. I flounced peevishly, and went down the coast, till, come opposite the scene of our yesterday’s escapade, I stopped involuntarily and stared up.

I had not intended to. I could master the inclination no more than I could the morbid concentration of my thoughts. They were drawn like smoke into that black gash high up in the cliff.

It was not very noticeable even now. Another storm, any hurricane of rain, might seal it once more, and close the evidence of our passage thereby. Why let any thought of our responsibility to it vex us? Our enterprise had been a purely private one, and——

Like a blow came the memory of Rampick’s cognisance of it, of my vision of him hurrying agitated for the Gap as I was drawn in. He had seen us enter; possibly, emerge. He must at least suspect us of having made some sort of discovery, and his knowledge of our knowledge was the terror.

He might have been, and yet none know the truth of his guilt but himself. Grant it a fact that the local and foreign gangs had worked apart. Had he not been, according to the same authority, their connecting link? What more likely then that he alone of all alive should be informed of the real nature of the act which at a stroke had shattered his connection? It would account for his eternal haunting of the neighbourhood, for his terror lest some one, exploring too far, should unearth his secret—if guilty secret it were. And what proof of that? Why, none that was direct—no proof of anything; not of murder, certainly. And yet I was as sure as if my soul had witnessed it that murder, in deed or intention, had been committed. It was the position, the settlement of the bodies, flung down with all that atmosphere of deadly suggestion. I felt that I could restore the scene, as sculptors restore a statue from a few significant fragments. That the man under the stone had been attacked, and had fired in a desperate self-defence, accidentally sending all to perdition, I had no doubt. He might have been a spy, a deposed chief—his clothing seemed to pronounce him above the order of the rest—he might have been one of, or other than themselves; he had precipitated a greater tragedy in trying to avert a lesser, of that I was sure. And Rampick?

It all resolved upon him, this doubt, this haunting stress of conscience—all concentrated itself upon the wretched, degraded creature in the tissue of whose story our destiny had entangled us. I stirred, and gave a little groan.

With a shock I jerked round; and there was the stranger of the sands come softly up, and intently scrutinising me.

I felt unreasoningly ashamed, as if caught in some self-soliloquy. My face went like fire. “What do you——” I was beginning loud enough; and on the instant bit my teeth on the cry, and stood gaping. I could feel my jaw slackening idiotically. Minute by minute, it seemed to me, we stood silent there, regarding one another.

It all came back to me across that shining gulf of years. I had forded the valley in the mean time, descending into deep glens and unremembering woods, distancing for ever, as I had supposed, the landmarks of childhood. And, lo! climbing the further side, and looking back, here was the past quite close; for the valley had been but a little fairy cleft after all, and all the time the memory of old things had been waiting there for me to resume them. Six years, with their fulness of growth and interest, stood between me and this man; yet I saw and knew him as if the interval were but a span. The story of him, the tragedy of my own connection with it, became in this moment the instant thing with me, bridging the abysmal lapse between.

He was not much changed, it is true. The face was the same haunting unearthly mask which had hung up before me in the court. A gurgoyle, I had called it; and still the stony inhumanity of it was the first thing to impress me. It was older only, and more scarred by wind and weather. The drench of unhealing waters had streaked its forehead and darkened the pits of its eyes; but with no other result than to emphasize the fire in them, and intensify the loneliness of the lost soul they windowed. I gave a little foolish fluttering laugh.

That was the wonder, indeed. Medusa might not change to Perseus as Perseus to Medusa.

It suddenly occurred to me that, after all, he had said nothing to associate me with any memory of his own. I blushed like a fool, and stammered out—

“Your father gave his life for me, sir. Not a shadowed feature, not a transmitted gesture of his, but I should feel myself cursed for failing to identify, if I lived to the age of Methuselah. You are Master Richard Bowen. You will hardly deny it, I think.”

Now, in a wonderful way, my ingenuous question wrought a sudden transformation in the man. As once before, his hand swept the hard evil from his eyes, and when those looked at me again, they were as soft as a weary woman’s. The change was infinitely pathetic, illuminating; and in the light of it, I seemed to see for the first time how worn was this poor creature, how tired and woeful, and how, perhaps, he wore his outlawry for a mask.

“If I doubted before, could I doubt now!” he cried. “Staunch, and unspoiled by the years! And how could it be otherwise with his son!”

He had seized my hands in his; and, embarrassed as I was, his words moved me to a strange understanding.

“Mr. Pilbrow,” I cried, as I had cried those long years before, “he said you did not do it.”

“Come,” he cried. “I must move, or I shall be a woman. Ask me, ask me everything. This accident—this destiny—this heart-filling spring in the desert! No, I have not found Abel, my friend, my dear friend, though I have never ceased to seek him, like the spectral dog I am.”

I thought of the werewolf of Mr. Sant’s story. So damned, so abhorrent, so pitiful appeared this grey shadow moving at my side. He put his arm within mine, and hurried me up and down the desolate beach. The grinding of the sea seemed to hush itself, the drooping pall of sky to rise aloof from us. I was full of excitement and agitation, carried altogether without the oppression of the thoughts which had been vexing me.

“Ask,” he cried, feverishly pressing my arm. “Give me the chance to unburden my heart to my one true friend, I do believe, God help me, in all the world! I have not found Abel, Richard—ah! may I call you Richard?—I have not found Abel, though through these long years I have never ceased to hunt him—his shadow, some sound of his voice, some track of his footsteps.”

“Let it fall from me—the vampire!” he cried, contemptuously. “You are all the world I care, as your father was before you. It is not Abel I want, Richard; it is the secret he carried away with him—the secret, or the clue to it, which I have maddened after, pursuing it, the wicket friar’s-lantern, down the long mire of these coasts.”

He did not resent my youthful irony—met it with a solemn self-deprecation, in fact.

“God knows, dear boy!” he said. “This, and more, I thought once. Now, Richard, forbear to indulge a lust till it masters you. I have damned myself like the wandering Jew. I have no rest in rest. The quest has become an obsession, a craze, which not even the discovery of the treasure itself could, I believe, appease.”

“I don’t wonder. They are choke full of—of things. And have you been tramping them ever since I saw you last?”

“There is a hundred or two left here yet. ‘Equity’—you remember your friend’s words?—‘equity is justice.’”

“Well,” I said, after a pause, “it is very wonderful; and most of all your knowing me again. I—I hope you will be here a day or two. I must be going home.”

“I only arrived last night,” he said. “You live here?—but, of course.”

I laughed. He had no sense of humour. In all my knowledge of him I never knew him even to smile.

“He could not be too different to satisfy me as your guardian,” he responded grimly. Then his face softened, and he took my hands in his. “So long as I stay,” he said sorrowfully, “you will let me see you sometimes?”

Now, at that, my heart melted to him. He was so fierce, so vicious to the rest of the world, it was a certain glory to be his chosen.

“Won’t you come and see my uncle?” I said. “He is at home, not very well. He knows all about that trial, Mr. Pilbrow, and—and he loved my father dearly.”

“Then,” he said, “we shall have that sympathy in common, and I will risk it.”

All the way back I chattered to him of my life since we had last met. He had been so associated with my father’s end, I could not shake off the impression that we were old friends. He listened intently, sharing in all my sympathies, grinding his teeth over my little local misfortunes. And when we reached our door, he took my hand again before entering, and said in a full voice, “Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.”

CHAPTER VI.
AN ODD COMPACT.

Age, that forgets its yesterday’s company, often puts one to shame in the memories of long ago. I had pondered the problem, even while proposing it, of Joshua’s introduction to my uncle; and, behold! the dear soul recognized his guest at the first mention. His name was associated indirectly, it is true, with a momentous decision in his own life; yet, even so—well, one was not wont to look upon Uncle Jenico’s memory as the active partner in his constitution. It saved me some perplexity.

I had left Joshua by his own request in the porch while I went to prepare my relative, who I found much refreshed by his sleep, and to whom I briefly recapitulated the tale of my rally with this old client, as I might call him.

“Bring him in, by all means,” he said, adjusting his spectacles, and then beaming at me through them. “Poor soul, poor fellow, to have suffered all these years under the stigma of an unfounded slander!”

He spoke with a new-awakened loudness; the door was close at hand; the visitor heard. In a moment he came striding in, hat in hand, his eyes glittering.

“Mr. Paxton,” he said; “Mr. Paxton! You are worthy to be this dear lad’s guardian! I can say no more.”

The two men shook hands, with a full understanding, it seemed; and a pregnant minute ticked itself out between them.

“Off a long journey, sir—a journey of six years. I had hardly expected to find this haven by the way. I hardly know now what it means; yet Fate grant it has a meaning!”

“If I have not lost the faculty to rest. I don’t know. I am all confounded at present.”

“He is seeking for a treasure hidden on these coasts,” I put in, and I could have put in nothing apter. My uncle kindled.

“A treasure!” he cried. “Why, so am I, Mr. Pilbrow. Only, I gather, I have the advantage of you in having already collected a part of mine. And did you read of yours, too, in Morant?”

“Morant, sir!” said the bookseller. “No, his name was Victor—Carolus Victor.”

He checked himself instantly—jealously. He had been carried away emotionally, I think, over his reception. But in the same breath his reserve was gone.

“You shall have the whole story from me,” he said; “but not now. Give me time to order my thoughts, to realize what this encounter means to me.”

“Certainly,” said my uncle, kindly. And being all openness and simplicity himself, he proceeded to relate to our visitor the entire history of our sojourn in Dunberry, and of the events and prospects which had brought us there.

“The result has justified my utmost hopes,” he ended with, enthusiastically; and then cast a sudden wistful look at me. “It is something in an otherwise empty life, Mr. Pilbrow, to have this object in accumulating. Heaven has seen fit, sir, to deny me the blessing of a family, lest by my improvidence I turned it into a curse. But it has compensated with the left hand while it withheld the right. What prouder trust to have committed to one than the welfare of the child of him who died to prove the truth!”

“You rebuke me, sir,” he said in a stifled voice; “you teach me. Is this the meaning, the atonement? If I, too, might so earn quittance of this curse of emptiness! The child of him who died to prove the truth! My God, my God! To bequeath to him the fruits of this so wretched quest! To turn the curse into a blessing!”

“Let me be joint trustee with you. By that sacred life laid down for mine, I have a right. If I could so convert this evil—to enrich his son—so perhaps to earn rest.”

My uncle was distinctly snuffling. He took off his spectacles and wiped them, and put them on again tremulously.

“So be it, Mr. Pilbrow,” he said. “We have been two selfish souls, perhaps. We will win our redemption through Richard.”

Thus was I made the inheritor of phantom fortunes. I felt quite inclined to put on airs, as the sole legatee to a vast atmospheric estate. Mr. Pilbrow even came to claim me with some show of kind judicial authority, as if the law had appointed him my part guardian. But that was by-and-by.

Now, he uttered a sound, as if his emotions had been too much for him, and stepped back.

“I must go,” he said. “You will excuse me. This wonder—this kindness—I am unused; it overwhelms me. I must rest the body, even if the brain works. You will let me come and see you again?”

“No, no,” he interrupted him, gasping. “I understand your generosity, sir. I have stood, I can stand the rack. There are limits to my endurance of benignity—such human consideration. I have a good bed at the Flask. I entreat you to let me go—to——”

He left hurriedly. I would have accompanied him; but Uncle Jenico, with a better delicacy, detained me. The moment the door slammed on him he smacked one hand decisively in the palm of the other.

“That man a murderer!” he cried. “Richard, I wish your Mr. Quayle no worser fate than to die in refuting such another calumny!”

CHAPTER VII.
“FACILIS DESCENSUS AVERNI.”

I had forgotten all our late troubles in this wonderful encounter. Aaron’s snake had swallowed the others. This peaked wintry little ghost out of the past, starved and frost-bitten and shabby as it looked, had yet a strange suggestion of vicious force about it which, inasmuch as it seemed sworn for good or evil to my service, comforted me unconsciously in the sense of fear and helplessness which had got me in grip. Somehow Rampick seemed less formidable, my feeling of bondage to an ugly responsibility less acute, in the knowledge of this new acrid ally.

But, beyond this, there was curiosity—still-breathing, wide-eyed curiosity to know what enduring mystery yet held the footsteps of that ancient tale of The King versus Joshua Pilbrow. I had learned something, had had my adventure tooth tickled with a taste of the truth. It had whetted my hunger for more, had tantalized me with that sharpest spur to youthful appetite—the dream of hidden treasure. When would Joshua serve up the whole dish—or would he ever? It seemed incredible that a man who had pursued such a secret, morose and self-contained, for six years, could yield it at last to a sentiment. Yet he had promised, and, though I sickened of the delay, I must not dare to risk making that eternal by over-precipitation.

In the meantime, as there could be no harm in the attentions natural to hospitality, I walked over to the Flask inn, after breakfast the following morning, to see how our visitor had slept.

It was within three or four days of Christmas, and sharp, beautiful weather. I have always since associated the deadliest scheming of Fate with such tranquillity. The robin, like a tiny phœnix, burned, singing on a spray. There was a glaze of rime on the ground, and the sweetest coldness to take into the lungs. The ringers were already practising their carols; the ruddiness of the holly was reflected in the genial cheeks of the wives; the prospect of holiday and fat fare smiled from every door. One had thought that the village, like its geese, had been gutted of the last foulness, and that Nature beamed approval. Alas! it is not the blackest thought that rides the storm. Nature, like the man, may “smile and smile and be a villain.”

The younger Miss Fleming had made herself a sad misalliance, running away with the ostler, and coming to grief and indigence. But her fate had wrought no impression on her sister, who remained as pert and coquettish as ever, and wore the same gaudy finery and shoes down at heel. She always rather courted me because of Harry, of whom she was gigglingly enamoured, and who detested her.

“Lork, Mr. Dicky!” she said, when I came in. “Is the old gentleman a friend of yours? I’m sure I’d have give him every attention if I’d known.”

She was glancing fitfully, all the time she spoke, at a little lozenge of looking-glass which stood on the bar rack.

“Whatever you could have spared from that, Tilly?” I said. “I’m sure I’m much obliged to you.”

“O, get along!” she protested. “You’re always poking your fun at me!” And I made my way upstairs, as directed, to number seven.

I found Joshua not yet out of bed when I entered to his summons. He sat up to greet me, like Lazarus new-risen—a wasted corpse-like little figure, white and grim and unshorn. But his face lighted rapturously at sight of me.

“It was no dream, then!” he said, and lay back again, with a very gentle expression. I came and stood over him, and he nodded to me.

“Richard, I shall lie abed to-day. This passion of luxury after the toil! Most restful, most wonderful! Yet the sickness is not out of my bones.”

“You will do very well,” I said. “When you are rested, we must show you all there is of the place—the local lions, you know. To-night it is a Feast of Lanterns—rather fun. Do you think you could manage it?” And between question and answer he learned all about Mr. Sant, and Harry, and what remained untold of our simple history. It might have been Hume to him, so profound an attention he gave to it.

“I shall like that Harry,” he said at the end; “and the sensible clergyman. Yes, I will come to the Feast, if you can find me a lantern.”

After arranging to fetch him at a given hour, I left him to his trance of rest. He told me no more of his story. I had hardly expected he would; yet I retreated in an itch of half-injured excitement. Ah! if I could have foreseen under what circumstances the revelation was to come to me, I would have sworn a compact of eternal silence with him, and baffled Fate.

That morning Harry returned from Yokestone, and I walked a mile to meet him. He was near as excited as I over Joshua’s coming. He knew all about him, of course. We had no secrets from one another.

“What does he look like?” he said. “I’ve never seen an acquitted murderer.”

“I can’t say he looks like everybody else,” I said, “because he doesn’t. But his nose is in the middle of his face.”

By-and-by we fell to our long-postponed discussion of the great adventure and its moral.

“I’ve been thinking,” said Harry, “that perhaps after all we’ll tell Sant.”

“O, you may snigger!” he said. “But supposing anything were to happen to us.”

“I don’t know. One can never tell.” He spoke quite sombrely. “It wouldn’t be right, would it, to carry that secret to the grave, especially——”

“Why, I was going to say, especially if we thought we were going to be sent there by some one on purpose to keep it.”

“Look here, Harry,” I exploded; “I wish you’d speak plain, and not hint and nudge and set a fellow jumping. Who do you mean? Say out!”

I walked on, staring at the road. He had but given actuality to a rather haunting spectre of my own.

“I think—yes. He saw us go in; and—well, look here, Dick—why’s he been watching there all these years, unless out of fear that some such thing might happen? Ah, you’ve thought the same yourself, I see! It looks black against him, in my opinion, and——”

“Suppose he took us separate? He’s strong as the devil still, I tell you. I’m not afraid; but I don’t want to be tipped over a cliff, or have a stone fall on me, and mother be left to think I didn’t take care of my life for her sake.”

“Very well; we’ll tell Sant, then,” I said, graciously conceding the point—with much private relief.

“Then the sooner the better,” said Harry. “I’ve thought it all out since yesterday, and concluded that not to tell him would be to make him out less of a man than we are. Supposing anything were to happen to us, and some chance brought to his knowing after all what we’d died to keep from him. A pretty opinion he’d think we had of him, and a pretty ghost to haunt his conscience, to know that he might have saved us. The sooner the better, I say.”

“No more he will. Very well; what do you say, then, to filling up the time by going there again?”

“What does it matter if he has? Besides, he’d never get his great carcase through the way we came.”

I clutched my forehead. I knew the dogged side of this friend of mine. Then I fell into a fury, and stamped.

“You’re a beast! If I have a fit, you’ll have to answer for it, that’s all.”

We resumed our way, and I walked by Harry’s side, ruffling. Presently he said—

“I say! Supposing that old Pilbrow’s treasure had anything to do with the secret in the hill! What a lovely complication!”

“I don’t see why it particularly should,” I snapped. “It had to do with a book; not—not with a hash of smugglers.”

I took no longer interest in Joshua for the moment. Harry had put all that story out of my head. He saw I was worked up, and said no more. We parted where our roads branched, on my side in a very depressed condition. My dinner choked me, and my desperate efforts to simulate appetite only brought me observation. Uncle Jenico was quite concerned, and Mrs. Puddephatt disgustingly critical.

“It’s the hair,” she said. “Soon or late it was bound to find ’im hout. I don’t blame you, sir, for noticing at the eleventh hour what’s long been apperient to the casual. The heyes of love is blind, and incapable of seeing into the stomach. The young gentleman, sir, is sickening for London, and no wonder. We know, sir, what Scripture says is the dog’s fancy; and is a human to be judged more himpervious to what he’s give up? Let Master Richard breathe the hair of his native ’eath once more is my advice.”

“Is there any truth in this, Dick?” said Uncle Jenico, when she had gone. “Have you been, perhaps unconsciously, thinking of London lately, because——”

“O, don’t be a dear old idiot!” I interrupted him impatiently. “I was never less in the mood to leave Dunberry. Can’t I keep up my character for health without stuffing myself when I ain’t hungry!”

I laughed vexedly; but still I could see he was anxious about me, and I was working myself up to the last pitch of irritability, when suddenly I was conscious that Harry had gone past the window outside. I waited for his rap at the door. It did not follow. I jumped up, stung to fury, and disregarding my uncle’s cry, ran out of the house and came up with my friend.

“I thought,” he answered, “you’d see me; and then you could come or not as you liked.”

“Now, look here,” I said, “I won’t be treated in this way. I think it’s just beastly. Because I don’t jump at being made sick, every one’s going to pity me or be my superior.”

“Mrs. Puddephatt,” I answered. “I wish she’d leave my inside alone. And here you are going along with your nose in the air.”

“No more do I,” I answered, looking at it, and beginning to come round with a vexed laugh. It is strange what self-respect we can acquire from other people’s weaknesses. Harry’s “pug” was always a rather delicate subject with him.

He flushed truculent a moment, then shrugged his shoulders and gave a good-natured laugh.

“I must take what comfort I can out of its being a cushion,” he said. “It’s very resting to the eyes—better than yours, that they can’t settle on without slipping.”

“Tit for tat,” I said. “You’ve answered me like a witty little gentleman, my darling. And now you can pull my ear, if you like, for having been cross and rude with you.”

He responded, with the addition of an amiable kick, and Richard was himself again.

The air being thus cleared, we went swiftly for the Mitre, chattering spasmodically all the way in a desperate pretence of swagger. I really think the greater credit was due to me, as I was being engaged to this anticlimax, as I considered it, entirely against my judgment. But my heart sank once more, when at last we came up on the hill among the ruins, and I realized at first hand the sinister futility of our design.

The day had fallen wintry close and breathless. The sun was not blotted out, but dulled, as if a ground-glass window had been shut upon it. A light fog was stretching shorewards from the water, chilling and isolating us. It brought the very spirit of ghostly echoes with it, and wickedness and watchfulness; and it seemed to demoralize the pith in one’s bones.

“O, if it’s got to be done, let’s get it over!” I said, with a shiver. “Why—Harry, look there!”

He nipped my arm, and we both stood staring—at the place of our yesterday’s exit.

There was no doubt about it. We had never effected, had never thought to effect, in the litter of dead stuff and bramble, so complete a concealment of our passage therethrough, for our ecstasy had taken no account at the moment of the rending evidences of our adventure which we were leaving behind us. Now, all trace of such was gone, obliterated, had been cunningly effaced and built in with other litter torn from the thicket elsewhere. The deadly spot was returned, to all appearance, to its wonted condition.

“Won’t that do?” I whispered, gulping. “We needn’t look any further.”

“We need,” returned Harry, short and grim. “Who’s to know, if we don’t, that he found his way down?”

“What does it matter if he did or didn’t? This shows plains enough that he saw us come out.”

He was pulling at the dead stuff as I shook out his name. A great pad of it came bodily away in his hands, revealing a savage gap behind—a hole torn and trodden beyond anything that we had made.

“Harry!” I whispered again. “Supposing—supposing he should be down there now!”

Nothing would persuade or deter him. He broke from me, and was in while I spoke; and I had in decency to follow.

Now, if more proof were needed, here it was in the black rent at our feet. It was flagrantly enlarged from our memory of it by the forced passage of a huger body. It offered no difficulty of descent, and Harry let himself down into it cautiously, but without hesitation.

He had brought matches and candles with him; but he paused a moment to listen before he fetched them out.

Not a sound reached us. The hill, inside and out, was wrapped in deadliest silence. The next instant a soft glow spread itself below me, and I went down into it, tingling with the horror of what it should reveal.

Not a sound; not even the snarl of the badger, which I believe I should have welcomed. The brute, scared out of his security, I think, had betaken himself to other quarters. We reached the floor, and crept on.

Again the dead came about us; but now, knowing and holding the road to flight, I could recover nothing of the sad appeal to comradeship with which they had before greeted me. They were terrors apart: ghastly chuckling grotesques without name in the kind world I had left. I hated them as they hated me.

Suddenly Harry uttered a little cry, and, stooping, rose again with some object in his hand.

It was the bowl, broken off short, of a blackened death’s-head pipe, such as was familiar to us in the lips of Joel Rampick.

Do you know what the French call a pièce de conviction? Here it was, and we needed nothing further.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS.

I remember I ate a very large supper that night, to the happy reassurance of Uncle Jenico. That suffocating tightness of the midriff, which anxiety brings, seems to expand, in its reaction, to a quite exaggerated emptiness. Have we not all had that experience? What meals we’ve made after a visit to the dentist’s! Who would have thought that this Berserker, dashing his beard with wine and roaring contempt of wounds and death, was the same individual who in the morning cowered sick-cropped in Mr. Forceps’s waiting-room? The thought of having vindicated, and proved, and so honourably acquitted one’s self of further responsibility to a much-dreaded task, is one of the most appetizing reflections in the world. And besides, I had arrears to make up.

For the moment, I was quite congratulatory to Fate on its having found so strong an instrument as myself to help it with its schemes. I even, I think, took credit for that brilliant conception of shifting the whole burden as soon as possible upon Mr. Sant’s shoulders. Through the glaze of repletion I saw, bedimmed, and even perhaps glorified, the figures of two ghostseers scuttling home that afternoon, with their tails between their legs, before the vision of a vengeance they had evoked. Now I laughed and snapped my fingers at the shadow of that vengeance left standing outside the window.

But it came to be just a leetle a different matter when it fell evening, and when shadow enwrapped the shadow, and I must go out into the first, perhaps after all to find the second also claiming and involving me. We were still, Harry and I, bound unrelieved to our secret, and must be so till late night, at least. For Mr. Sant was to return from London but in time to keep his evening engagement at the church, or, rather, the schoolrooms adjoining—to which, since their completion, the lectures had been relegated—and no opportunity could be ours to speak with him till after the entertainment. In the meanwhile, we had arranged to meet at the Flask, when I went to fetch Joshua, that Harry might be introduced; and about half-past seven I set out.

I confess I looked over my shoulder more than once as I sped for the inn. The night was very black, with a sense of creeping inquisitive mists in it. I had brought a lantern for myself and one for Joshua; but for some reason I did not want to light them as yet. Perhaps it was the thought of my moving a marked object through the gloom which prevented me. However, I reached my destination without mishap, and finding Harry already waiting for me there, took him up at once to our visitor’s bedroom.

We found Mr. Pilbrow dressed, and expecting me with some eagerness. He was quite spruce, so far as the contents of the little hand-bag, his sole baggage, it seemed, could make him. But he had been shaved and brushed, and his boots cleaned; and if his heavy green surtout was worn and smeared with a hundred stains, the character of it was redeemed by that of the little, alert, forcible face, which looked out of the frayed collar.

“So,” he said, pleased, but stiffly, “here’s the lantern, and here’s Harry, I presume?”

“How dee do, sir?” said my friend, grinning rather shy, but in his frank, attractive way. “I hope you’ll like Dunberry. We haven’t much in the way of local sights to recommend us; but what there is we’ll show you, if you’ll let us.”

“I’m obliged to ye,” said Joshua. “My young friend here mentioned some ruins.”

“Yes, there’s the ruins,” said Harry; “and—and—what else is there, Dick?”

I had hoped, under the circumstances, we might have let the ruins alone. I did not care much to think of them, for my part.

“O,” I said, airily, “there’s the wreck on the sands. It’s the only other thing I can call to mind.”

“Mighty!” said Harry. “What a genius you are, Dicky! I’d never thought of that. Would you care to pull out and see a wreck, Mr. Pilbrow?”

“It’d be rather a lark,” said Harry. “Only we must time our visit to the tide. It’ll be low about to-morrow midday, if that’ll suit. If you’ll believe me, sir, we shall be the first to show any curiosity about the thing. There it’s sat for a week, and Dunberry not taken the trouble to pull five miles out to learn its name, even.”

We must go now, if we wanted to hear the lecture; and so we lighted our lanterns and descended those private stairs which I had used on the morning first after our coming. I led, and as I issued forth, I lifted my lantern to show Joshua, who followed, the way. The light shone full upon his face, where it hung, like the gurgoyle of my memory, I could have thought, in the dark entry. And on the instant a little strained scream broke at my elbow, and something staggered back against the closed door of the tap which stood hard by.

The latch burst; there was a snap and tinkle of glass, and the door flying open, let down a heavy sprawling body into the lighted bar beyond. A volley of oaths from the landlord sprung out with the glow, and some one was cursed for a crazy, drunken lout. Startled beyond measure, I hurried our guest on.

But by-and-by I took an opportunity to pull Harry back and whisper in his ear—

I was agitated, nevertheless, and more eager than ever to unburden myself to Mr. Sant. This giving of himself away was hardly to be reconciled with the drunkard’s stealthy effacement of his traces up on the hill yonder. I wanted the thing all over and taken out of our hands.

We found the road to the schools, now we came to retrace it, all dotted and lively with wandering sparks of lanterns. There was to be a good attendance, it was evident. The holiday spirit was in the air, and these lectures, after all, were the best of holiday tasks. And, indeed, when we entered the building we perceived it so crowded as, in the brilliancy of its illumination, to preclude any chance of that first fun of obscured revelations; for the drawings on the sheet were plain as truth, or anyhow as plain as good intentions. We were forced to satisfy ourselves with back places near the door. However, the room was not so large but that we could distinguish every one of the freehand objects depicted in charcoal on the screen, which, with a “Seraphine”—a late invented reed instrument blown with the feet, and the joy of Mr. Sant’s heart—was the whole of the lecturer’s paraphernalia.

The lights, and the company, and the prospect of our tutor’s near restoration to us, were beginning to recover me, and already I was tickled with the thought of some fun ahead. And then, in a moment, there he was, the whimsical strong soul; and I breathed a great sigh of relief, and joined tumultuously in the welcome which greeted him.

His discourse this night (and the illustrations to it, presumably) was all of an appropriate observance of the sacred and festive occasion now upon us. He urged his audience to honour it with sobriety. “In the very teeth,” he said, “of that foreign clergyman who exhorted his English congregation to temperance in these words: ‘Myself I do not say no drink. Myself I would drink a pot of porter with you every minute,’ I must assure you that it is not excess which is the friend of festivity, nor is it sport to choose the devil for bottle holder, and let one’s self be knocked out of time at the first round. Take your share and drink fair is our motto; and put it down that you may keep it up, the ‘father of lies.’ A drunken christening is never a pleasant sight; but when Christ Himself is the baby, it is damning as well as shameful. What would you think, as honest men, of repaying the author of a feast by excluding him from a share in it, and not even, like the Model Constituency, in order to point a moral? You have never heard of the Model Constituency?” (“No, your reverence, no!”) “Well, I suppose not. But the one that came nearest to it was the one to the independent and enlightened electors of which a candidate once appealed with a free lunch and drinks on the day of the poll. And very polite and ingratiatory he came to it himself, too, to take a snack and a glass with his good friends and guests. Only his good friends and guests wouldn’t let him in On the contrary, a burly, red-faced elector barred his way as he was entering.

“‘Vait a minute, sir,’ says the elector. ‘Ve likes this idea of yours,’ he says, ‘only there’s vun thing: ve doesn’t want to be disfranchised for corruption,’ says he. ‘The bony fiddles of our borough is wery dear to us,’ he says.

“‘And to me,’ says the candidate. ‘Rather sacrifice twenty seats than imperil that and my good name,’ he says.

“‘So ve thought, sir,’ says the elector. ‘And therefore ve’re going to eat your wittles, and drink your hale, and arterwards go down in a body and plump for the other gentleman, in order to prove,’ says he, ‘that our incorruptibility was what you stood on. And we’ll be wery much obliged,’ he says, ‘if you’ll give us your countenance by clearing out.’”

The illustration went home—we were not so far from the Reform Act of ’32—and was greeted with laughter and cheers.

“Now, you have not that excuse,” said the lecturer. “The author of this feast comes to save, not to corrupt you; and if you would honour Him, consider His sober innocence in your midst, or His Father will withdraw Him. Christmas without Christ! That is to play the devil’s game.”

He sat down, as he spoke, to his “Seraphine,” and broke into a hymn—his own production, and very characteristic—which ran, literally, as follows—

He had set his words to the tune of “Immortal Babe who this dear day,” and you may question, if you are purists, a cockney rhyme or two; and you may question, if you are Pharisees, his methods. Well, all I can tell you is that women wiped their eyes over the homely theme, and that our Christmas was the sweeter for the lesson it taught.

At the end Mr. Sant jumped up, and taking his rod, pointed to the first object on the screen.

There followed a pause and a general stir, rippled through with a little undercurrent of laughter.

“Thank you, Mr. Bowen,” said he. “No, it’s not an oyster!” and he sat down and began trolling out a new carol.

The little ex-bookseller shifted; blushed faintly, I do believe, and turned to me.

“The artist is vindicated,” said he. “The gentleman has the right penetrative vision. A mince-pie it is.” And he made his illustration forthwith the text for a lovely disquisition on plum-porridge and frumenty and goose-pie, “on beef and plum-pudding and turkey and chine,” and, generally, the history and rationale of Christmas fare, till his audience shifted and sighed under the influence of an illusive surfeit.

A thing guessed for “one o’ them tree worms,” and turning out to be a yule log, came next, and provoked an allusion to a Norfolk custom on certain farms of dealing out the strong cider to the household at meals for so long as the block was in consuming; for which reason the servants would select for Yule the biggest and most cross-grained stump of elm they could find—a shrewd providence which tickled the simple fancy of this fishing community, where wood for burning was economized to the last spark it would yield.

A leathern jack coming third, and passing, by way of a wading boot, the ordeal of identification, led to the liveliest little essay on the drinking vessels of our ancestors; the “cocker-nuts” and hornes of beasts; the “goords” and ostrich eggs; the “mazers, broad-mouthed dishes, noggins, whiskins, piggins, crinzes, ale-bowls, wassell-bowls, court-dishes, tankards, Kannes, from a pottle to a pint and a pint to a gill;” and, last of all, the great jacks and bombards, which indeed were not unlike the cavalry boot of William III.’s time.

Then we came to a fowl of some sort, most unnamable and amazing. Every species of partlet known to Dunberry, from a barn-door to a guinea-hen, was named without success, while Mr. Sant at the “Seraphine” laughed so that he could hardly sing, and from the hall a peal of merriment went up with every guess. But at last, a dear fat boy, Hoogan by name, was inspired, and to an explosion of chuckles gave up the secret.

The lecturer brought down his hands to a little scream of laughter, and sprang to his feet.

“Hoogan,” he cried, “you redeem me. Not know him! Look here—his vain, empty, strutting, intolerable self-importance! Isn’t it all there to the life? The very manner of the creature that imposed so abominably upon the Mayor of Bantam.”

“Why, he was the Mayor of Bantam, to be sure, and so puffed up with pride and good living, that when he sat down, I tell you for a fact, he couldn’t see his own lap. He could only see, resting on it, what he loved best in the world; and you may guess what that was. Anyhow, there are two ways of running to waste, and his wasn’t the consumption of the stomach one.

“Well, one Christmas, when he was at the height of his glory and appetite, he conceived the happy idea of making that part of himself a present of the primest and most promising bird which money could procure. ‘It’s no less than a duty,’ thinks he, ‘to so faithful a servant; and I’ll go to Huggins myself this day about it.’

“Now, this Huggins bred turkeys; and what he didn’t know about ’em wasn’t worth knowing. He knew their pride and their self-sufficiency; he knew that of all the fowls that came strutting out of the ark they were the vainest about their election; he knew how a little flattery, properly administered, would serve them for food and drink till they came near bursting; and he had a grudge against this Mayor of Bantam for having once fined him for being incapable when he had never felt so powerful drunk in his life. So, ‘Ho-ho!’ says he to himself, when the mayor comes upon his quest, ‘I’ve a bone to pick with you, my friend; and fine pickings you shall have!’

“‘You want such a turkey as never was, my lord?’ says he. ‘And you want to take and fatten him, and watch him fattening, and enjoy him in anticipation, do you?’ he says. ‘But turkeys is queer beasts,’ says he; ‘and whited sepulchres to them as doesn’t know their tricks.’

“‘Bones, when all’s told,’ says Huggins, shaking his head darkly, ‘if you don’t know the trick of inducing of ’em to swell.’

“‘Do you see him?’ says he. ‘There’s the proudest, healthiest cock in my yard—one as, if humoured, would fill a whole corporation, down to its hungriest kitchen gal on two and six a week and what she could pick up, with the marrer of deliciousness. A dream, he is.’

“‘A nightmare, by the looks of him,’ says the mayor, ‘There’s more of sepulchre than of meat about him,’ he says.

“‘Ah!’ says Huggins; ‘and that shows your ignorance. It’s just slighting that keeps him in his place till he’s wanted. If I was to flatter that bird, sir, he’d puff himself out that amazing with self-importance, he’d burst in a week and anticipate his own market. You take him home, and feed him judicious on admiration and little else, and you’ll have such a feast of him in the end as you never dreamed.’

“‘O, very well!’ says Huggins. ‘I’d as lief you refused. He shall be three to the next customer.’

“Well, the mayor allowed himself to be persuaded; and he had the bird sent home and put in a coop. And every day, and half a dozen times a day, he’d go down and praise the creature to its face till its very wattles turned purple with pleasure. There’s nothing too fulsome for a turkey to swallow. The very ‘gobble-gobble’ of him set the mayor’s jaws going with a foretaste of delight.

“‘Gobble-gobble! I could eat you, my beauty!’ says he, just as a rapturous mother talks to her child.

“‘Put up your tail,’ says the mayor, ‘and the dear little pope’s nose! There’s no Juno’s peacock can spread such a fan!’ says he.

“The cage would hardly contain the bird at that. He expanded at the very sound of the mayor’s footstep afterwards; and he discarded his food almost entirely, as something too gross for the consideration of a better than Juno’s peacock. The mayor wondered; but he couldn’t discount the evidence of his own eyes.

“‘That Huggins is a cunning one,’ he thought. ‘He knows what he’s about’—which was very true.

“Well, at length the festive day arrived, and the mayor went to take a last look at his beauty before consigning him to his cook. He was almost in tears. He’d been starving himself for a week, in anticipation of the feast, and perhaps that was the reason.

“‘Darling!” he said, ‘my whole being craves for you! There never was such a beautiful turkey in the world!’

“Bang! went the bird. It was like a paper bag exploding. And there before the mayor’s eyes was just a little sack of bones and feathers. The creature’s pride had been nothing but wind; and that was a turkey all over.

The lecturer ended amidst shouts of laughter and applause. In the midst, he sat down to the “Seraphine,” and was fingering out the first bars of a new hymn, when some one coming up on to the platform whispered to him. He rose hurriedly, and, listening a moment or two, as hurriedly left the room. The audience, including ourselves, relaxed, at his going, into a babble of talk and merriment.

“Prime, isn’t it, Mr. Pilbrow?” said Harry, grinning and rubbing his hands.

“If you introduce me to nothing worse,” answered the visitor, “I shall love Dunberry for itself.”

“That reminds me,” I said. “I never thought of it before. If we’re going to take him to see the wreck to-morrow, Harry, where shall we get a boat?”

“H’m!” said my friend. “That requires consideration, to be sure. They’re all laid up for the holidays, I suppose.”

Now there was a row of wooden pillars behind us, supporting a gallery, which threw into comparative darkness the space underneath; and projected round that pillar nearest us, and leaned out of the darkness, hung the face of Rampick. It was ghastly pale, the jaw loose, the livid spectacles about the eyes horribly emphasized; and its expression was one of an unnerved and listening sickness that made me shudder. In the very act of my looking, it was snatched back; and I saw the man himself going, lurching heavily, but on tiptoe, into the gloom and away.

To say that I was startled would be but to express ill my feelings. All the doubts and agitations of the earlier evening trooped upon me again, like a cold cloud. Had he followed us for a purpose? and, if so, for what purpose? He had long slunk out of all attendance at these feasts. For some reason, it seemed—we could only assume what—we had become objects of mixed terror and fascination to him. He must have picked himself up from that fall, and stealthily shadowed us hither, where, it was evident, he had taken up a position cautiously to observe and overhear us.

I bent towards Harry to whisper to him; but before I could secure his attention, a stir and silence ran through the room, and there, on the platform, was our parish clerk holding up his hand. He came to say that Mr. Sant had been summoned hastily to the Court, where an old servant of the squire was reported at death’s door, and to request the audience to take his apologies and disperse.

So here were we again baulked for the moment of our confession. It was under the spirit of a fall from gaiety to a very real depression that I said good night to my friends.

CHAPTER IX.
THE WEARY SANDS.

But the morning, rising cold and bright, though still misty, found me on the rebound once more. The day, after all, is what we make it, and I would not think evil of so smiling a one. Mr. Sant was back, even if we could not see him yet, and his mere neighbourhood was a splint to a weak-knee’d conscience.

Uncle Jenico, though still oppressed with some odd premonition, some formless concern about me, permitted himself to be reassured so far by my high spirits as to let me go presently, with nothing more than an earnest entreaty that I would take care of myself. I had told him nothing about our proposed trip to the Weary Sands. It would have served no purpose but to trouble him all day with anxiety as to our return. I was glad to think, later, that I had not done so; that I had sat content with him for an hour or two after breakfast; had kept him chatting genially, and made him laugh; had taken a genuine bright interest in the “Colossal Wrench,” an invention (which he was engaged in perfecting at the time) somewhat on the principle of the Spanish garrotte, for applying tremendous haulage to an object—the most gratifyingly practical of all his inspirations, as you shall see. And I was glad to think that when at last I had left him, well on in the morning, in a sudden access of emotion he had kissed me, and then driven me away with his stick, and a laugh, and the tears in his eyes. I had been half shamefaced, it is true, at the moment; but presently was to sentimentalize more over the memory than he had over the fact.

We were engaged, Harry and I, by arrangement for this day to the convoying of Mr. Pilbrow about the place, in order to his making acquaintance with its objects of interest. It was nothing, in fact, but an excuse for a ramble; only, to give it a holiday complexion, we had arranged to bring our lunch with us, and our visitor back to high tea at the end of the jaunt.

I set forth about eleven o’clock for the Flask, where we were to meet. The shadows of the previous night were dispelled. A still, shining mist half hid and half revealed, like a bridal veil, the pretty face of nature. There was a smile and a sparkle of gems through it all, and I whistled, as happy as a blackbird, as I went. It was within three mornings of Christmas, a time of peace and good-will, and I was determined to let the day be sufficient for itself in evil without troubling to force its hand.

On the wall of the inn I found a wonderful notice posted. It was written crooked, in great black letters and without any stops, and ran as follows:—

Harry joined me while I was spluttering over this, and read the exciting legend across my shoulder.

“I say,” he said, “Mr. Pilbrow’s in luck. He’ll think we’re a game lot. I only hope the reaction won’t be too severe. But what does ‘bumps’ mean? Is Sant getting up a sparring match?”

“By the way,” he said, “Sant hasn’t come home yet, and they don’t expect him at the rectory till this afternoon.”

“O, well!” I said, with a sigh; “we shall be out for the day anyhow; and it don’t make much difference if we can only get hold of him this evening. You saw Rampick last night?”

We ran up in good spirits to Joshua, and in a little while were launched upon our explorations. Our odd dry old companion was quite excited, too, in his way. It was the most novel, most wonderful experience to him, I think, thus to chaperon a couple of lively lads, and be their favoured charge and mentor in one. He kept himself acrid and reserved—it was the habit of his life; but a certain glistening in his pale eyes, a spot of colour that established itself in his lean cheek, spoke of some spark reawakening in those long-chilled ashes of his soul underneath. There was even some glow of self-marvelling enthusiasm in that haunting gaze of his, of which I found myself from time to time the cynosure. It was like the glare of a remorseful ghost coveting recognition in heaven’s nursery by its own child’s happy spirit. “What human sympathy have I foregone and realized too late!” it seemed to express.

We betook ourselves in the first place—by Joshua’s rather insistent wish, but, secretly, against our own—to the ruins, and for an hour poked about among them wearily, loitering after our guest, and supplying, scarcely volunteering, all that of their history with which we were acquainted—impersonally, that is to say. The truth is, the place had become odious to us—as full of sordid significances as is a house in which a murder has been committed, when we know ourselves subpoena’d to give evidence on the crime. But naturally our companion felt none of this, and was only absorbed and interested, so far as appeared, in the archaeological testimony. Once, at the end, he paused, as fatality would have it, close by the plinth and the encumbered thicket. I glanced at Harry. A second time, patiently and scrupulously, had the hole been stopped, and the traces of our visit effaced.

What did the man mean? Did he, in his diseased imagination, think thus to convince us in the face of our actual experience? It was like enough. His unnerving dreams are so real to the drunkard, he cannot but think that others must see what he sees and be blind to what he has successfully hidden from himself. He is like the ostrich in his amazing digestion of both facts and fables, Whether he puts fire in his stomach or his head in the sand, he is equally the confident and incurable dupe of his own imagination.

“Are there any legends of crypts, underground vaults, anything that we have not seen about here?” he demanded.

“O!” I said, recovering myself with a flush, “it was an old tale when we came, Mr. Pilbrow; and, since, the weather and the coastguard have been knocking it to pieces between them.”

I don’t know if he understood my reluctance. He did not persist in his questions, anyhow, but lapsed into a brown study. He seemed to have forgotten our presence.

“So it ever vanishes,” he muttered, with a stark and melancholy frown. “From Dungeness to Spurn Head it is always the same. The past breaks away and falls into the sea as I approach. The ghosts lead, the mirage beckons me; and, behold! the precipice and the boom of waters where I had thought a treasure house!”

He gave a sigh that was nothing less than heart-rending. A certain awe and discomfort kept us mute. Here was some tragedy beyond our guessing, but to which we were guiltily conscious that our secretiveness contributed. Then in a moment he turned upon us with a laugh in which there was not even a tinge of mirth.

“If there is any land too much in the world,” said he, “put me to walk upon its shore, and it will vanish before me yard by yard. My breath is blasting powder; my feet are earthquakes. I must drown if I live long enough.”

He walked off towards the cliff, and paused at its edge, looking down gloomily on the leaning shaft of the well.

Suddenly he turned to me, and put his arm through mine with an air emotional and apologetic.

“Dear lad,” he said, “you mustn’t consider my moods. I talk to myself, Richard—the bad habit of a lonely man. What is that thing, now? I have wondered before this.”

“Ah!” he said, with a bleak jocosity: “let well be. It should have confronted me six years ago; and I see it only now, the moral of all my wanderings. Yet in a good hour is it spoken, Richard, since chance has brought me to your company again. Or is it destiny, which leading me to neglect this scrap of shore hitherto, points its lesson at the end with the broken shaft yonder? Let well be. I am hungry.”

So we sat down then and there and got out our provisions. They put astonishing comfort into us, and we two boys, at least, grew hilarious. Sound-livered and hardened, we took no thought of chill; and indeed the weather for the time of year was balm. A light glistening fog still slept over everything; there was no breath of wind, and the whisper of the surf came up to us drowsily.

“Mighty!” he exclaimed. “We must be thinking of moving if we want to pull out to it. Tide’s at ebb, Dicky, and near the turn. Thereabouts it lies, Mr. Pilbrow, on the Weary Sands; but we can’t just make it out in this haze.”

“Well, for the boat,” I said, scrambling up; and we all made for the Gap together. It was then half an hour past midday.

“A bad time,” said I. “What fools we were not to think of it before! There won’t be a soul about.”

There was one soul, however, it appeared—a gaunt solitary figure, which, as we neared the head of the sandy slope, we could see silhouetted against the sky—a figure, too, which, from its restless craning attitude, one might have thought was expecting us.

Harry edged up to me, and was on the point of whispering, when he caught Joshua’s eyes fixed upon him. He giggled, and looked silly.

“I was thinking, sir,” began he, “that that man there——” and then he stopped.

“Why,” said Harry, so confused as to forget himself—“if—if you want to know about smugglers, he’s the chap to tell you, that’s all.”

“Well,” he muttered peevishly; “I’ve not said anything, have I? Rampick can look after himself.”

Joshua did not answer, and we went on—and in the same moment Rampick was gone.

But we saw him again when we came into view of the beach. He was down by the water, ostentatious with a boat, which lay stern on to the surf—the only man and the only craft handy in all the waste prospect.

How could I answer? That this seeming opportuneness was nothing more, as I was convinced, than a deliberate self-appropriation by this man of a scheme which he had overheard us discussing in the hall last night? And what then, save a confession on his part of a good trading instinct? I must find something better than that.

“He’s a drunkard,” I said, flushing. “He isn’t to be trusted, in my opinion.”

“O yes!” I answered; for it was, indeed—the single sound piece of goods which Rampick had saved and clung to out of the wreck of his past.

“Why,” said Joshua, “a seaman never loses his legs but ashore. And we are three to one, gentlemen. I’m small; but I’ll back myself for a rat to grip. If it’s me you’re thinking of——”

Harry hung his head. I was ashamed to say more. It did seem ridiculous that three vigorous bodies should be timorous of this one crazy oaf. The half-truth made us out cravens, and the whole was impossible. Nevertheless, the prospect of such a boatman for the trip quite took off the edge of its pleasure. We followed Joshua hangdog, as he strode down the Gap and across the beach.

“You’ve whetted my curiosity,” he said over his shoulder. “A drunken smuggler should be good company.”

“Well, why didn’t you take upon yourself to answer him?” he muttered viciously. “We’re in for a nice thing, it seems, knowing what we know. It’ll be pleasant to have to hob-nob with the fellow, and a warrant for his hanging like in our pockets!”

“He’s brought it on himself,” I answered. “He heard us last night; and I’ll swear he’s been ready and waiting for us all the morning.”

“Well, look out for squalls, that’s all I can say,” said my friend; and, as he spoke, we reached the boat.

Rampick, busy over it, never even looked up as we came. But I could see his great hands trembling on the thwarts, as he leaned down.

“We want to pull out to the wreck, Mr. Rampick,” I faltered. “Can you let us have your boat?”

I essayed to exclude him, as a last resource. He did not raise his head, but answered in a heavy shaking voice from where he bent.

“Which it’s well known to you, sir, that my boat and me don’t part company.”

He came up, with a sudden heaving together of all his bulk, and subsiding rigidly backwards against the gunwale, stood breathing softly, and staring with intense unblinking eyes, not at us, but at our companion.

So a cat stares at bay, crouching before a watchful snuffing dog. I don’t think he ever once looked at Harry or me. From that moment he seemed to focus all the panic of his haunted soul on the stranger who had come in our train. It was inexplicable, though in its way a relief to us for the time being—the sort of relief one feels when some deriding gutter urchin attracts from one to himself the unwelcome notice of the town drunkard.

His demented gaze wandered from Joshua’s face to his knees, where it fixed itself.

“‘And He said,’” he muttered, “‘Lazarus, come forth!’ And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre. It’s come to it—a special occasion. One or the other of us. Boat, sir, yes. But I never done it. You ought to know—one, or the other of us.”

“Then the other, by all means,” said Joshua, caustic but interested. “My good man, we don’t want to separate you from your boat. If your presence is indispensable, why, we’ll put up with it.”

Rampick, I could have thought, went a shade more livid. His dry lips seemed to crackle under his hand as he passed the back of it over them. Yet, strangely enough, I did not believe him drunk. He seemed rather in that arid, aghast condition which, with such a man, bespeaks a temporary abstinence.

Suddenly he heaved himself upright, and began heavily to busy himself with preparations for launching his craft. We all lent a hand, and in another minute, with a slide and a jump, were on board and slipping easily over the shoreward swell.

Not then, when he had settled himself to his sculls, we being all seated in the stern, did he for a moment take his eyes off our visitor. Sympathetically, I shrunk under that concentrated stare; but Joshua bore it unruffled. Still, there was something in the atmosphere to freeze our loquacity. For a long time none of us spoke at all. There had not been air enough to fill a sail; and the monotonous bump and creak of the oars in the rowlocks beat a dreary accompaniment to our depression.

“Tide’ll hold for us to land and see the wreck, won’t it, Mr. Rampick?” he said.

His voice broke the spell, and to strange effect. The ex-smuggler did not answer him; but he suddenly ceased rowing, and, resting on his sculls, felt out with his foot, and kicked Joshua softly on the shins.

“What are you doing?” snapped the victim, jerking his insulted limbs under him. “What do you mean, man?”

“I see you walk, sir,” he said hoarsely. “I see you with my own eyes. It’s not in nature, is it? You was kep’ from it, I say—held by the legs from rising. Who let you loose? Who patched you up to follow me? My God, I’ll be even with ’em, I will!”

He was working himself up to a mad pitch of excitement. I half rose in agitation, and looked behind me. We were already so far from the shore that its line of cliffs was a mere blurred bank in the haze. But Joshua, in the same instant, had seized the occasion to justify the character he had given of himself.

“Silence!” he said, not loud, but in a tone like a vice. “Who speaks of being out of nature, you crazy patch! Row on, and mind your business, which is to take us to the wreck!”

The maniac creature shrunk, as quickly as he had flamed up, under the bitter voice. Lowering and trembling he applied himself to his sculls once more, and the boat sped on.

“Yes. Him that lies with the pistol in the hill yonder. He thinks it’s Mr. Pilbrow, and that we’ve set him free!”

He ended with an hysterical giggle. Here, in truth, it appeared, was this bedlamite’s attitude towards our guest explained. The infection of Harry’s laugh over the absurdity seized me. I struggled in vain to control myself. In another moment we were both of us doubling and rolling as if the devil were tickling our ribs.

Joshua expressed no surprise, but nodded intelligently as we gasped ourselves sober again. He attributed our merriment, no doubt, to a general sense of the ludicrous in this wretched creature’s wanderings, of the likelihood of any significance or coherence in which he had, of course, no idea. As for the man himself, he regarded Harry and me no further than if we had been squeaking mice behind a wainscot; but sat with his vision attached once more, and more cringingly than ever, to the little wintry, venomous figure in the stern.

We recovered ourselves, half fearful, from our convulsion, feeling rather, I think, like fugitives who had consciously betrayed their own whereabouts. But the explosion, in fact, had relieved the air; and thenceforth we began to talk together, moved by a common rebellion against the moral tyranny of the depression which had held us hitherto. But, for all that, it startled us near out of our skins, when Joshua of a sudden turned upon Rampick, and asked him roundly if he hadn’t any good smuggling yarns to recount to him.

“Of hidden stores, and black nights,” said he; “and the ground giving up a sudden swarm of mushroom creatures, things squat and stealthy, shouldering kegs?”

Rampick’s chest had seemed to fall in at the first word. It was painful to hear his breathing. But he made no attempt to answer.

“Come!” said Joshua. “It’s fast confidences, man. You know what you know. These young gentlemen have given you away—but no further than to me, mind. Come! What happened underground in those days, before the sea took its toll of the vaults?”

Such a funny little voice, so strained and hoarse, like a cry at a great distance. Joshua himself was startled by it, moved, perhaps, by its distress. He persisted no further, but shrugged his shoulders, and turned to address us again.

In the meanwhile we were approaching the wreck, which for some time now had been visible to us. It hung oddly in the mist—suspended, as it seemed, in the mid-haze of sky and water, like a wreck painted on glass. Still, seen through that illusive medium, it appeared a phantom, far-off thing, when to our surprise, grown absorbed as we were in contemplation of it, our boatman gave a final stroke, and finished on it with his sculls poised.

“No further?” said I, rising all excitement now. “Can’t you take us any further, Mr. Rampick?”

I’ll swear that not once during our approach had he turned his head to canvass our distance or direction. Old crafty smuggler as he was, he had hit his mark blindfold as it were. Even as I spoke, I was aware of something stretching its endless length across our course—a great soft, iridescent fish-shaped bulk, as it might be a vast submarine monster floating dead and motionless on the surface. It shone sleek and fawny, and pitted with little blue scales of water; and in the instant of my recognizing it, our boat had floated on, and, with the way given it, had grated its nose softly in its flank.

“The sands!” whispered Harry, with glistening eyes. “That was clever of you, Mr. Rampick.”

We did not, he or I, demur to our enemy’s silence. It would have made no difference if we had. His regard, his consideration, were still all for our companion.

Across the glimmering lifts of sand, the wreck, now we were brought stationary, seemed to draw nearer and clearer—a phantom still, yet claiming some foothold on this unreal reality of an amphibious little continent. Only a broken poop it was, tilted up and its mighty entrails spilt into the drift. Another storm, any rough weather, would scatter it for ever; yet no plundered town could have stood a symbol of more awful and pathetic desolation. The haze blurred and magnified it to us where we stood; so that, huge relic as it was in reality, it looked nothing less than gigantic. Gazing on it, its ruin and isolation in that mist of waters, I felt as one might feel in alighting on a fallen colossus in a desert.

“Are we to land here?” said Joshua, breaking through the spell which had overtaken me.

“Aye,” answered the smuggler, in that one terse, low monosyllable, and with his eyes never leaving the other’s face.

“Go, you,” said Joshua, turning briskly to us two. “I will wait here, and take my turn when you’ve finished.”

“Why should we any of us go, Mr. Pilbrow?” I spoke up quickly. “We can see all we want to see from here.”

“Nonsense!” he said sharply. “Who’ll credit our adventure if we don’t bring back her name?”

We still hung reluctant; but he drove us good-humouredly forward, and out over the bow. Looking back, after we had leapt to the reeking sand and were hurrying to cross it, I saw him still standing there, taut and resolute, to wave us on.

“I don’t like it, Harry,” I said; “I don’t like it. And no more did he, or he wouldn’t have stayed by Rampick. Let’s hurry all we can.”

“Well, come on!” panted my friend. “The quicker we’re there, the quicker we shall be back.”

Yard by yard, as we traversed the broad spit of sand, the looming ribs of the wreck seemed to shrink, and materialize, and take on outline. And then, in a moment, with an involuntary gasp, we had pulled up, and were standing staring. For between us and our quarry had come suddenly into view an unguessed-at channel of dim water, a hundred feet it might be across.

“He’s done us!” he exclaimed. “He’s meaning some mischief, I’ll swear. Come back, Dick!”

With the word we were running. For a moment the bulge of the drift hid the boat from our view. The next, we had topped it, and breathed with relief to see the figure of Joshua still standing up at the bow as we had left him. For an instant only; and, in that instant, Rampick, catching sight of our returning forms, rose hurriedly and stealthily, with one of his sculls clubbed to strike. We screeched out together. The warning was quick to save Joshua from the worst, but not from secondary consequences. Instinctively he ducked, as the blade flashed over his head; but the act toppled him from his balance, and he fell from the boat prone upon the sand, from which he rolled down, clutching, into the sea. In the same moment, Rampick, using the scull he had swung for lever, pushed off from the bank, hurriedly seated himself, and in a stroke or two was out at safe distance and in deep water, where he held up, breathing stertorously as he regarded us.

By this time we were down at the edge, and, flinging ourselves flat, had caught at Joshua’s hands, where they clawed and slipped in the slobber of wet sand. The drift took the water at a deepish angle, but it was firm above for knee-hold; and in a minute or two we had drawn him up far enough to enable him to get a bite with his own nails, and then the rest was easy. As he sat to recover himself, crowing and spitting but not otherwise greatly discomposed, Harry jumped to his feet, and hailed the madman furiously—

Rampick, resting on his oars, chewed his dry lips for moisture, but answered nothing.

He dropped, and slipped knee-deep into the water as he cried, as if to verify his threat, insane one as he knew it to be. The sea was near quiet as a mill-pond, and Rampick had only to pull a couple of indifferent strokes to increase the distance between us by some fathoms. I thought he was going to abandon us altogether and at once, and in an agony hailed him on my own account—

“Mr. Rampick! why don’t you come back? You aren’t going to leave us to drown here!”

He leaned forward, always watchful of us, and, groping under the thwarts, fetched up a black bottle, which he uncorked and put to his lips—a rejoicing swill. It gave him nerve and voice. He sagged down, between maudlin and triumphant, and answered, with a hoarse defiant laugh—

“Done!” he yelled. “See how you done—fur yourselves, my hearties! You’d let him out, would you! You’d make the dead walk to testify agen me! I know you. You’ve plotted and schemed agen me from the first, you parson’s whelps—and here’s what it come to. I was on the way to salvation—till you crossed me—once too often. The sands ’ll keep my secret and yourn. Let him out to walk, you will; but not to swim—my God, I had you there—old Jole had you there, my bucks!”

“Had you there!” he shrieked. “You may quicken him out of fire—out of rocks and fire; but you furgot as water squenches fire. Thought old Jole crazy, did you—poor old Jole, whose fortunes went out in the spark as him there lighted. And all the time he lay low to get even with you. Has he done it? Did he choose his time crafty? Did any one see us? When your drownded corpses comes in with the tide, who’ll know the truth? Jole—and Jole can keep a secret, once all prying apes is laid from forcing his hand.”

He shook to the roaring of his own voice. The reverberating fire in his brain deafened him to any reason, reassurance, protest. We cried to him in our distraction to listen, only to calm himself and listen. Our appeals could not penetrate the pandemonium in that maniac soul. In the midst Joshua, all amazed and at sea as he was, rose to add his entreaties to ours. The effect was disastrous. At the vision of him, strung as if to fly, his coat-tails spread, the madman gripped his oars convulsively.

“Lie down!” he screamed. “What’s death to you! I ain’t going to stop! I never could abide the sight of it!”

We still shrieked to him vainly. We ran up and down the sand. For the moment I felt quite blind and delirious.

All was of no avail. Yard by yard the boat drew away into the thickening mist; grew dim and dimmer, a phantom of itself; and, while still the thump of its rowlocks drummed thickly into our ears, vanished and was gone.

And then at last we came together, and, halting, looked into one another’s pallid faces like dead souls meeting on the banks of Styx.

CHAPTER X.
THE DARKEST HOUR.

The memory of that awful time is soothed and assuaged to me by virtue of the strong soul who, under Providence, was given to us to command it. If destiny had used him its instrument to precipitate the tragedy, long, I am sure, hanging over our heads, it had done so consciously, by higher command, in order to neutralize the effects of its own inexorable decree. So thought Mr. Sant presently; and gratefully we acquiesced, giving thanks to Providence. Like children, we had played with fire, not realizing, nor, I think, deserving the consequences. All honour, then, after God, to His little self-possessed deputy, who of his confidence and resolution helped us to the nerve to escape them.

For a time Harry and I—I may surely admit it without shame—were beside ourselves. To be thus cast away and abandoned on a sandbank in mid-ocean—for to all appearances, and intents and purposes, our fate seemed nothing less—it was horrible beyond words. An hour—perhaps two hours—and a lingering death must overtake us. Already—we could see by the near lines of foam, could gather from the changed whisper of the tide—the seaward surges were freshening to their return. We hurried to and fro, wringing our hands, crying for impossible help, never once in our distraction holding escape as conceivable save by external agency. The bank on which we stood stretched north and south, a sleek, hateful mockery. It were useless to traverse it up and down; yet we went, as if to hurry this way and that over it were to summon of our agonized need a causeway to the unseen shore five miles distant; we went, until the terror of ranging adrift, beyond recovery, from our one hope of resource, already grown a desolate phantom behind us in the mist, sent us frantically back to the side of the motionless figure, which had not once stirred since we parted from it raving.

“We will—we do,” said Harry, forcing down his terror in one great gulp. “Dick, don’t be a fool!”

Some shame, I think, stiffened me. The debility of despair conceded a hope to the mere prospect of discussion. What a courage was this to succumb without an effort; to have reason, and yield it to the shadow falling before the fact!

“All right,” I muttered. “I’m an ass. Only let him tell us what we’re to do. He brought this on us, you know.”

“Yes,” he said, in a strong quiet voice. “I brought this on you, Richard; for you warned me and I overruled your warning, being sceptical without knowledge, which is the boast of fools. The man was mad, and I thought to control him with reason, having failed in that as in everything else. Now accursed shall I be in the eyes of my co-trustee, your dear uncle.”

“O!” I cried violently, “what do you matter! If you drown, you’ve only yourself to thank. He would have stopped my going, but I wouldn’t tell him anything about it, because I thought it was nonsense to be afraid. And now he’ll wait and wait, and we shall never come, and it will break his heart.”

He stood before me, dripping wet, a most wretched, pathetic expression on his face. It was due less, I knew, to despair than to sorrow over my revolt against him. At the vision of it I was moved even against my will to remorse.

“Well,” I said miserably, “I don’t want to put all the blame on you, though you might have given me credit for a reason. You don’t know what we know about the man, or his interest in shutting our mouths. I ought to have told you, perhaps; but the secret was saving for another who has more right to it. It doesn’t matter now. We only want to get out of this—Mr. Pilbrow, do you hear? O, please think of something! There must be a way! To stand here, and——”

“Richard!” he cried, in great emotion. He half advanced, holding out his hand, then suddenly commanded himself, let it fall, and became in a moment a figure of passionless resolution.

“You are right,” he said, dryly defining and articulating each word. “This is no time for recriminations. We must compose ourselves—must think. The way out of a trap is never the way in. That is where men waste themselves. Now, tell me: nobody knows of our coming here?”

“Nobody,” I said, “nor saw us take the boat. There isn’t a hope of our being rescued from the shore. We can’t see it, even; and if we could be made out here, who’s abroad to mark us? Besides, even if any one did, there’s bare time, even now, to put off and cover the distance before——”

“H’mph!” he pondered, frowning and fondling his gritty chin. Then he turned to my friend.

“Say an hour here—perhaps two, if we climbed the wreck. But there’s deep water between. Ah! you didn’t know that, did you? but there is—and you——”

“No,” he said, “I can’t swim. Leave me out of the question. But you two can, I know. Why shouldn’t you reach the shore?”

“Very well,” said Joshua, so prompt and decided that he made us jump. “Then the wreck’s our one asset; and we’ll just go and see the best use we can make of it.”

With the word, he was striding over the sand, and, sprung to some sudden thrill of hope at his confidence, we followed him, our hearts thumping.

When we came down to the little strait, we found it already and undoubtedly widened. The cream of incoming surf showed more boldly over the lip of the further bank where the wreck lay; and between that and ourselves there was a sense of busier movement, as it might be water yawning and stretching after sleep.

“I’ve told you to leave me out,” he said, dry and composed. “You must swim, as you can’t jump. I’ll wait you here. Maybe you’ll find the means to float back on boards or such.”

Then we saw what was in his mind. It was a chance against all odds, and so poor a one, that we had hardly considered it, I think, in our agitation. The storm, we felt, must have gutted the carcase as clean as a dressed ox’s. Nothing detachable, but must have been wrenched and flung away. From where we stood, indeed, only the framework of the poop, gaunt, and inflexible, and rigid in its suggestion of ribs and spars shattered but unyielding, appeared to have survived its furious sacking by the waves. Moreover, a certain suspicion had come to us that Rampick had not now made his first acquaintance with the wreck; that, even perhaps so early as the serving of the last ebb, when fresh from hearing of our plans, he had rowed over to examine his ground by lantern-light, and to make sure—as so cunning a madman would—that no contingency of crate or cask or loosened plank should be allowed to mar his wicked purpose.

Though we might or might not be right in this (in point of fact, I believe, we were right), our hope, looking upon that lean account of ruin, was a very little hope. Still, for what it was, it lost nothing in inspiration from the self-confidence of our companion. I turned a desperate inquiring glance on Harry.

“Come!” he said, in answer; and, without another word between us, we had slipped down and taken the water.

As for that, it was chill enough, but, to traverse the interval, child’s play for swimmers so young and hardy. In five minutes we had emerged, sleek and dripping, on the further side, and the wreck was close before us.

We shook ourselves like dogs, and ran up the sand. The shivered frame of the thing lay pitched on the sharp back of the drift, where the poor ship must have dumped herself to be broken like a stick across a housemaid’s knee. What remained was a melancholy witness to the impotence of man’s bravest efforts to command Nature in her passions. She must have been a fine craft, of many thousand tons burden, by evidence of this fragment. Ex pede Herculem. Now, the forlorn remnant of her was so shattered as to look, at these close quarters, more like the wreck of a blown-down hoarding than of a gallant vessel. Wryed, and gaping, and burst apart, her ribs had been stripped, inside and out, of everything that could be torn away and swallowed; so that what survived, survived by virtue of a tenacity, which, inasmuch as it had defied the wrench of the storm, was little likely to yield us salvage.

And, indeed, we reached her only to find our apprehensions confirmed. Shorn through her waist, it appeared, close off by the poop, and her fore-part lifted, and rolled, and ravished God knew whither, she had disgorged her vitals into the gulf to the last bolt, so that not one loose board of her remained to reward us, unless buried beyond our recovery in the sand, into which the jagged wound of her emptied trunk was plugged.

We climbed, and pulled, and tested, running hither and thither. We fell upon our knees, and with our hands dug frantically, until they bled, into the wedged drift. It yielded nothing. From time to time we desisted, and gazed, in a panic of fear, at the water, where, but a few yards beyond and below her stern, it rustled and curvetted, advancing and retreating, and advancing yet another step to play cat-like with our anguish.

At last, and for the last time of many, we mounted the slope of stubborn planks, to struggle with some fractured balk of timber, some broken rib end, which might seem to promise yielding to our frenzied blows and kicks. It was all of no avail. Like lost souls we paused, looking down on a litter of splinters, our great need’s only recompense; and, “O, my God!” whispered Harry, and staggered back where he stood, and flung himself, quite ill and overcome, upon the bulwarks.

He was up by the broken stern-post, and, sick to note the rising of the tide, he looked down. On the instant he uttered a wild exclamation, jumped to his feet, went over the side, and vanished.

I was poising myself a little below on the slope of the deck. At his cry I dropped and slipped, landed at the bottom, recovered my feet, and raced round to meet him. Then I, too, uttered a yell; for here, unnoticed by us before, was at least a straw of hope to catch at.

It was a great spar, which lay down the slope of the sand, with some wreck of tackle yet tangled about it, and its butt wedged under the stern of the ship.

“Lord!” shrieked my friend. “Come and pull, Dicky! O, Lord! Come and pull!”

He was skipping and sobbing as if he were cracked. “Get a purchase!” he screeched. “We must have it out if we bust ourselves!”

I had sprung and seized on it even as he spoke. To lift it was far beyond our strength; but straining and hauling our mightiest, we found we could shift it a little, right and left, like a colossal dead tooth in its socket.

“O, if we only had Uncle Jenico’s wrench!” I panted, as we paused a moment in exhaustion. We were quite breathless and white. The sweat, for all the weather, was running down our faces.

“Harry!” I groaned piteously, “if we can’t get it out now, after all this—this——”

The look in his eyes stopped me. The despair was quite gone from them, and the old breezy fearlessness returned.

“But we’re going to get it out,” he cried, “and without Uncle Jenico’s wrench, too.”

His gay new confidence was revivifying, amazing. My heart, for all its terror, was beginning to expand in the radiance of it.

“I’ll show you,” he said; and with the word was down among the tackle, unknotting and pulling.

I watched him breathless—helped him where I could. Between us, in a few minutes, we had disentangled many fathoms of unbroken rope, and still there was more to come. We wrought hurriedly, feverishly, with one eye always on the rising water.

“Let it only wait,” said Harry through his teeth, “till we’ve got this clear, and then it may come as fast as it likes.”

I worked on hard, not asking him why. Perhaps I had a lingering horror that his answer would disillusion me, show this shadow of hope a heart-breaking chimera. And still stealthily the tide crept up, and still we had not done.

But at length the last kink was unravelled, and we rose with a shout. One end of the rope was still fastened tight to a ring-bolt in the spar at its seaward end. The other Harry shouldered, and with it turned to run up the bank.

“We shan’t be able to move it that way any more than we did before—anyhow, not to pull it out of its hold.”

“Why, Dicky, you stoopid, look here. I examined the thing, which you didn’t, no more than Rampick himself, if it’s true he’s been here already. He thought it wedged tight, maybe, and safe from us. Well, I tell you it’s only caught by the tip of its nose—far enough in to baffle us lying as it does, but easy enough to pull out floating.”

I stared at him a moment; then gave a wild hoot, and began to dance about as he had done before, and threw up my cap, and ended by hugging him.

“You beauty, you beauty! You dear old positive genius and darling! We shall get away, after all, with nothing but a ducking. And Uncle Jenico——”

A sudden choke stopped me. I turned away so that my friend shouldn’t see my shame.

“Dick, old man,” he said, soberly. “You mustn’t be too wild even now. It’s all right, I hope; only—well, it’s cold, and three of us to drift five miles on a spar——”

But I wouldn’t heed a word of his admonition. The recoil from despair had sent my wits toppling clean head over heels. If nothing but a bowl had offered, I should have been as joyous as a wise man of Gotham to commit our destinies to it. To have some means, any, to escape this hideous nightmare of enchainment to a living death!

“Hi! Gee-whoa! Get on!” I cried, chuckling hysteric, and drove Harry, holding the rope-end, up the sand before me. It paid out behind, and did not pull taut till we were well on the slope. Then, for the first time, we thought of Joshua, and turned to look for him.

He was standing, with some suggestion of agitation, on the edge of the further drift. The water had crept up since we left him, widening ominously the channel between. We waved our hands to him, and he responded.

“Look here,” said Harry. “He mustn’t be left in his ignorance; it’s torture. Besides—— Hold on, Dicky, while I go to him.”

“He’d never gather. We must have him ready, and I can’t explain here. Don’t drop the rope for a moment while I’m gone.”

“All right. But why not have a pull first, to see if it’ll come free without?”

“Mighty! Not for the world! It’s been rotting in the water: supposing it snapped? There’ll hardly be a strain when the tide lifts the thing, and gets under the seat of the old girl—you believe me. Did you see her name?”

“Well, it’s The Good Hope. Hurrah!”—and he scuttled from me, and the next moment was squattering through the water of the little strait. I watched his chestnut ball of a head lovingly as it drew a line across the channel; and I danced with excitement again to see his streaming shoulders emerge presently, and Joshua, as near wrought-up as I, run out knee-deep to help him ashore, and support him—as if he needed support—and kneel to wring out his clothes, while the faint gabble of their voices came to me. And then I turned to look seawards once more, and, behold! the comb of a little wave struck the spar-end, and seethed up and over it, and the sight made my heart flutter.

“Harry!” I screeched; and gripped the rope as if I feared some unnamable wickedness were seeking to snatch it out of my hands. I did not dare to turn again; but watched the hurrying tide fascinated; and, almost before I knew it, Harry was at my side.

“Lord, Dicky!” he whispered, his eyes glistening; “it comes, don’t it! Don’t let go! We mustn’t give it a chance.”

If it had only answered to our thoughts! How slow it crawled, without haste or flurry, sometimes seeming to drop dormant as if to take us off our guard. Presently, what with the strain and our shivering, we were fain to squat gingerly upon the sand, and grip, and watch, setting our chattering teeth. What if our expectations were to be cruelly baffled after all! What if the spar were anchored by some unexpected unseen grapnel to the bank! I turned sick at the thought. The water by now lipped along it, covering some three feet of its end. And still, to any gentle test of pulling it responded nothing.

Suddenly, eccentric as always in its motions, the tide bowled a succession of heavier wavelets shorewards. The first found us sitting, the rope taut between us and the spar, and left us sprawling backwards in a puddle of water. I thought the mere wash of it had upset us, till, in the midst of my spluttering and clutching to recover purchase, I heard my friend sing out—

Then, scrambling, gasping, to my feet, I saw what had happened. The spar, answering to our strain in the bobble of water, had swung towards us, the rope had slackened, and over we had tumbled. Chattering with excitement, we got hold once more, and pulled.

Still it did not come free, nor for long minutes yet. We tugged and hauled what we dared, and ceased, and tugged again. Not—to cut short that tale of agony and suspense—until we were ankle deep in water; not until the rush of little incoming waves foamed high on the stern of The Good Hope, kicking her up, and loosening her nip on that grim-held relic of her own; not until the sands were whelmed near and far, so that we seemed to sprout, three fantastic trunks of humanity, from the surface of the ocean itself, did a great surge and vortex, answering to our last despairing wrench, show us that we had been successful.

And even then some dreadful moments passed—moments of terror lest the rope had given—before the mass, rolling sluggishly to the surface, revealed itself.

We were panting and sobbing as we hauled it in. But Harry kept his wits through all.

“This” was the running gear, which he wanted to dispose about the spar in such way as to give us all some hold to cling by. We wrought quick and hard, and in a little had it looped to our satisfaction. The wreckage consisted of a huge segment of a main lower and top-mast, with the step, pretty complete, and the whole of the over-lapping part bolted snug, on either side of which the great sticks had snapped. It was in all some twenty feet long, perhaps, with rings and shroud fastenings and cut ends of rigging yet attached; and it floated massive, on an even keel, so to speak, so that in places we could even walk on it without fear of upsetting in that tranquil sea.

I swear till that moment we had realized no difficulty; and then, with the word, we were staring aghast at one another. The spar sat too deep to move; not till the tide had risen another two feet at least would she ride over the bank; we knew no way round. Could he plant himself firm in that hurrying sway of water until we reached him?

We stood up and waved and shouted: “We’re coming in a little! Hold on till we come!” I don’t know if he heard us. He stood there plunged to the knees—the oddest, most tragic sight. He waved back and screeched something—what, we could not understand. Every few minutes we dropped overboard, and heaved our utmost at the great hulk, only to have her ride a few feet and ground again. But at last, when the water was up to his shoulders, she gave a little dip and curtsey, and the following wave washed her on. We yelled, then, and slipped into the water for the last time, and, finding no bottom, kicked out frantic, holding each to a loop of the rope, and propelled her slowly before us, The tide took her now, and do what we would, we could not coax her in a direct course for our friend. We saw we should miss him by a full fathom; he was staggering, desperate to keep his foothold; we drove near.

“Fling yourself forward!” shrieked Harry. “It’s your only chance!” And with the word scrambled on to the spar again. I was on Joshua’s side; and I dwelt in an agony, holding on to the rope with one hand, while I strained to draw her closer.

It was no use, and seeing we must float past, I echoed Harry’s scream. Joshua sprang out and forward on the instant, and, with a mighty flounder of water, disappeared. But the impetus of his leap carried him towards me, and suddenly, like a crooked bough borne on a flood, an arm of him was stuck out within a yard of my reach. I let go my hold to dash and clutch it, and as I swerved, Harry, snapping down, caught at one of my kicking ankles and held on. My head went under; but I had the wrist like a vice; and in another minute I and my quarry were drawn to the spar side, and our noddles, gobbling and clucking and purple with suffocation, helped right way up.

CHAPTER XI.
JOSHUA SPEAKS.

What a fantastic nightmare in my memory is that amazing voyage! Were souls as oddly consorted ever launched on an odder? Looking back at this date on all the circumstances, our isolation, our helplessness, our exhaustion of mind and body following on the strain—and that, by long hours yet, not to be withdrawn—it appears to me little less than miraculous that we ever won to harbour. Had it not been for the strange distraction of a certain recital which the occasion called forth, and which, occupying our thoughts both during and after its telling, rendered us partly oblivious to our condition, a very creeping paralysis of terror would, I believe, have ended by destroying us. To swing there unrelated to any visible hold on life but the sodden, weltering stick beneath us: lost atoms in a vast immensity of mist and water! My mind, save I gripped it frenziedly to its own consciousness, would have reeled and forsaken me, I think. Sometimes for a moment, indeed, it would be almost gone, dropping through the seeming clouds on which we swam into immeasurable abysses of space; and it was only on these occasions by grappling aghast with the figures of reality before it, that it could recover and control itself. If only we could have seen the shore—could have steadied nothing more than our vision on that ghost of moral support, it would have been something. But by now the haze had shut down, and we were derelicts utterly committed to the waste. It was a bad time—a bad, forsaken time, and I do not much like to recall it, that is the truth.

We had perched Joshua, having with some distress got him on board, between us on the twin spar, where he could set his back against the broken top and hold on mechanically till he was in the way to convalescence. Fore and aft of him, squatting or straddling on our slippery bed, we made at first fitful attempts to dig a little way on our craft with our feet; but the load was too heavy thus lightly to be influenced, and we soon gave up the effort. We might, perhaps, have affected our course a trifle by swimming and pushing; we did not dare. It had been a different matter in the first excitement of escape, with the sand under our feet. Now, in the reaction to a consciousness of our drenched, and overwrought, and half benumbed condition, the water had become a fathomless horror, lapping after us with hiss and hurry to devour what it had seduced from its shallows. There was a heaviness, a deadliness in it, level and undisturbed as it seemed, which it was sickening to contemplate. And so we sat close and drifted, and essayed—did Harry and I, while Joshua was recovering—to reassure ourselves and one another with fitful banter—the most cheerless, hollow stuff, God knew, and soon to expire of its own pretence.

For a time, undoubtedly, the tide carried us shorewards, leisurely and with no affectation of charity. The wreck sunk and disappeared behind us: was a wreck—a bulwark—a stile in mid-desert—a post—a stump—was gone. We distanced it so slowly that scarce a quarter of a mile could have separated us from it when its last token was submerged—and our hearts seemed to founder with it.

“Harry!” I cried, in a sudden shock of terror: “what if, at this rate, we never reach the shore at all, and are carried out again by the ebb!”

“What’s the use of meeting trouble half-way? We’ve four or five hours before us, and if we can’t drift close enough by then to finish swimming, the deuce is in it. Hold tight, Dicky—that’s all you’ve got to do; and I’ll answer for the rest.”

His self-confidence soothed me supremely. And I was the more comforted to see Joshua stir himself at that moment and sit upright.

“What’s that?” he said. “Leave me out of the question if you want to swim.”

“We don’t want to swim, Mr. Pilbrow—not unless the tide won’t serve us to the end; and then I hope it’ll be only a little way.”

“Well,” he answered, “go when you will; only I want to have a word with you first, Richard.”

“Right?” he muttered. “I don’t know. The land drops and flees before me. The cold is in my heart. I must ease it, Richard—I must ease it of its secret load before that winter gets home.”

“O, don’t talk like that!” I complained. “It’s to flout Providence in the face after this mercy.”

“Well,” he said, with a melancholy smile, “I shall be lighter anyhow for the easing. With this weight continuing in me, I should sink like a plumb.”

“There’s to be no thought of sinking, Mr. Pilbrow,” I said. “But if there’s something you’ll feel the better for ridding yourself of, why say it and have done.”

He turned stiffly in his place so that the spar rocked, and looked at me, where I sat behind him, with a most yearning affection.

“If you were entitled to the truth before,” he said, “how much more now, when you have saved my life.”

“Didn’t you!” he answered. “Didn’t you risk your own by letting go to reach me, when I might have pulled you down?”

“O, nonsense!” I cried, with a real laugh. “We should have both been in a bad way, I dare say, if Harry hadn’t had the sense to catch my foot. He towed us in. If there’s any credit it’s to him.”

“He did the resourceful thing, and you the brave,” persisted Joshua. “I owe to him through you; but to you first. If I live, I will honour that debt. If I am to die——”

“In good time, Mr. Pilbrow!” I cried reassuringly. “This little contest had flushed and rallied us all. “In good time! We aren’t going to give up, I can assure you, having come so far as this.”

“By God’s providence!” answered the ex-bookseller, with unwonted devoutness. “Only I feel that while I delay to tell you, the devil struggles to hale me into the deeps.”

“Out with it, then!” I said lightly, “and let’s crow to see him gnash his ugly teeth at being anticipated.”

I realized that he was about to give us the long-expected story, with a shadowy abstract of which he had only as yet tantalized me, and, through me, of course, Harry. Could we have had our curiosity satisfied under circumstances more tragically wet-blanketing? Yet there was a providence in that no less. The little sparks of inquisitiveness which survived in us, expanded in the revelation to flames of heat, which, in warming us, distracted our thoughts from our miseries. I will not believe this opportuneness was accidental. Mercy, in all the Committee of Destiny, is jealous to keep to herself the casting vote, I think.

His face fell; the evil shadow I knew darkened on it a moment; but almost in the same thought was gone. He wrung his lips with his hand, and heaved a profound sigh.

“Succeed, then,” he said, in a sad inspired voice, “succeed to the truth for which your father died; and God spare you to find your inheritance a rich one! If He will; if for your most loyal faith in me, dear child, I could so requite you, I could pass contented under the waters to the rest the land has denied me. I am weary, Richard; I am wearied to death; and to lie floating off my legs appears beatitude.”

He sighed again, and setting his teeth in the very act, forced himself frowningly and inexorably to his task.

“I have hinted to you already,” he said, “that this long fever of my quest dates from Abel’s disappearance with a certain book which contained the clue to an important secret. Hear, then, at last, what that secret was, and how it came into our hands.

“My brother Abel and I were twins and enemies, partners and apart. Why? I cannot tell. Look at two dogs of a litter quarrelling over a bone, and seek for the reason there. We thwarted one another—at every turn we did, and ruined our common business in a mutual spite. You know as much; yet in fairness I must urge that his was the more rancorous and vindictive spirit. I would have cried halt sometimes; but Abel, never. He had the fiercer resolution; he went armed; I feared while I hated him. ... The book in question was one of a packet over which we had perversely disputed in the sale-room; an old scorched and dog’s-eared commonplace book of the seventeenth century, in contemporary crimson calf, and bearing inside its cover the name of ‘Carolus Victor, Chaplain in ordinary to his Majesty’s Prison of Newgate.’ Yes, you remember the name. I once let it out unguarded. Well, he was our inspirer, as some Morell or Morant was your uncle’s. ... There was nothing of note about this book. It contained just the jottings and excerpta of a decent unremarkable man; ‘tips’ for homilies; memoranda of ‘last testaments;’ mere personal data of a conscientious and commonplace clergyman, whose lines had fallen in incongruous places. With all that we have nothing to do. Our business is with a folded letter, in the handwriting of this same Carolus Victor, which ages ago had been slipped between the leaves, and had there adhered through the melting of the wax with which it was sealed.”

“How had it got there?” I asked, because he here came to a dramatic pause, which seemed to challenge questioning.

“Ah!” he answered. “How? And why it had remained undelivered? I can submit only a plausible theory. A second-hand book-shop, gentlemen, is a mine of reference. Research presently revealed to me that this Carolus Victor, Chaplain of Newgate, had died—suddenly, by presumption—in that very year, 1679, which dates not only his letter, but the last entries in his diary where it was found. Suppose, then, the letter written by this Victor, and never delivered to him to whom it was addressed; suppose the book containing it tied up unexamined with the deceased’s other manuscript effects, and put away on some remote shelf and forgotten; suppose some jealous no-Popery bookdealer snatching it years later from the flames of Newgate, and consigning it to his own store, where, in the excitement, it was again forgotten till finally brought to light in the sale-room, a scorched and smoke-stained packet to excite the ridicule of the dealers. Suppose anything or nothing; conjecture and account as you will. The fact remains that Carolus Victor’s commonplace book came intact, and holding fast to its enclosure, into our hands. ... Into our hands—into our hands, I say. Were we not brothers, twins, partners? Abel, before bidding for it, had known or guessed nothing of what the packet contained. He had bought the lot, a business transaction, merely to spite me. And yet now he would claim the whole fruits for himself!”

A fury and excitement took the narrator’s voice at this point. The heat he exhaled was communicated to us in part.

“Go on!” I said, giving a vigorous kick into the water. “There was a letter in the book, you say. What was it about?”

He struggled with himself a moment, dropped his face into his hands with a groan, looked up, and resumed in a more ordered voice—

“I am coming to it. It is stereotyped on my brain—all of its accursed riddle, that is to say, but the key. It was dated Newgate, 1679, and was superscribed to one Peachumn, a doctor of divinity, (to whom, you will always bear in mind, it never was delivered), from which honoured friend and counsellor the writer craved certain instruction and advice in a very private and particular matter. He had had confessed to him that night, he said, a passing strange story by one Vining, a prisoner, and grey in iniquity, who was condemned to suffer on the morrow for piracy on the high seas. This Vining, according to his own statement, had been, about the second decade of the century, a student in the great English College of Douai, in France, whence one winter he had been sent, in company with an ordained brother collegiate, on an extraordinary secret mission across the water to a little town on our east coast. This mission, said Vining, was nothing less than to recover, if possible, from its secret hiding-place in the crypts of a certain long abandoned church, a great treasure of gold pieces, which had lain there ever since the suppression of the religious houses—a suppression which, in this case, had but hardly anticipated a natural dissolution more complete. For the church in question was, it appeared, already doomed when the king’s edict fell. Lingering, a relic of the greater past, amidst the ruin of those eastern shores, the sea had since taken its outworks; and now the treasure (the existence and depository of which had been made known through the death-bed confidence of a former sacristan) must be secured without delay, if recovered it were to be at all ... Richard! it was secured by those two—a loaded box of iron. And then the madness of possession smote the wretched clerk. In the darkness of the crypts he murdered his companion, and in the darkness the curse of God fell upon him. His hands were scarlet with consecrated blood. He loathed to handle the price of his iniquity; but, like Judas, he cast it from him, and with it hid the body of his victim in a place whence he hoped neither could again be brought to light to testify against him.”

He paused. And “Where was that?” I asked faintly. An extraordinary fancy had taken possession of me—a thought so stunning, so bewildering in its first weak conception, yet so explanatory, if admitted, of Rampick’s incomprehensible behaviour, that I fairly shivered under it. I looked dumfounded at Harry. He also, if I was not mistaken, had been smitten with a like shock of expectancy.

“Where was that?” I repeated; and so, innocently, applied the match to this tow. Joshua did not answer, to my surprise, for a moment; and then suddenly I was conscious of the flame rising and blazing in him.

“Where!” he shrieked. “Give me the key if you pity me! It is that has kept me hunting these long years, ravenous like the dogs that devoured Sin, their mother, and yet were unappeased. Give me the key; give me rest, or here and now the waters of oblivion!”

For an instant I really believed he was going to rise and plunge. Had he done so, I doubt if, in our weakened condition, we could have saved him a second time. But in the thought, he had clutched at himself once more; and his passion grew inarticulate, and ceased.

“Richard,” he said, “touch me there and I am mad. Rebuke me with thine eyes, sweet boy, and I am sane and sorry. I will not offend again. Listen, the story breaks off with the night of our quarrel—Abel’s and mine. He had discovered and was reading this letter spread out before him on the table, when I came up unnoticed behind him and read over his shoulder. The confession was all there, to the flight of the murderer and his subsequent life of crime; to the agony of his haunted soul and his desire, in the shadow of death, to make restitution. Some words by the chaplain followed; some prayer of the weak soul to his stronger confidant to guide him in this pass, whether for action or unconcern. And at the foot of the sheet he ended with the words. ‘And the confessed Place and deposit of this treasure are——’ and there passed over the page, and I never learned them, was never to learn them, Richard. ... Some sound I made roused Abel from his absorption. He leapt to his feet, cramming the paper into his pocket, and faced me.

“‘Well, where are they?’ I asked, smiling. Yet in that moment I knew he would never tell me.

“‘Miles under the sea, probably, by this time,’ he answered. ‘You will understand that, if you have pryed to any purpose.’

“‘Abel,’ I said quietly, ‘you are lying. The place still exists, or you would not wish to conceal its name from me.’

“‘Well,’ he said, with an evil grin, ‘the book is mine, and the secret with it. You disputed its purchase, remember.’

“‘I may have,’ I replied. ‘But bought it is, and with our money—our money, Abel. I will not yield my right to a share in it.’

“I advanced upon him. I was hell inside, though calm outwardly. And as I came, he pulled a pistol from his breast—he was left-handed, like the crooked beast he was—and held it at me. I told you he always went armed. ... Richard, I confess the creature appalled me. He would have made nothing of shooting me like a dog. I hesitated; and then fell to entreaty, expostulation, threats. He was grey and hard as steel. In the end I must desist, though still resolved to get at the paper by fair means or foul. When he was gone, in a hunger of agitation I threw myself upon the book. It told me nothing, of course. I flung it down again, and went to bed, poisoned with black thoughts. In the morning when I rose, late and racked with fever, I found him gone, him and the book and the paper—gone, without leaving anywhere a trace of his direction. I could not believe it for a time; then madness took me. I went up and down, mouthing like a beast—by day and night, Richard—by day and night. It was then I must inadvertently have fired the stock. You know the rest.”

He ended in a deep depression, and burying his face in his hands, set to rocking to and fro.

“Rest!” he suddenly cried. “No rest for me! All these years I have pursued him, a wicked, laughing shadow, in the likely places of the land—always on these eastern coasts or near them, exploring ruins or the histories of them—recognizing at last my own madness, yet unable to lay it. And still the shadow flies before; and still I follow, myself a shadow!”

“Yes, tell him,” he said. “Tell him, if he’ll believe, how he’s been mistaken by a madman for the risen ghost of his brother yonder.”

It was the conviction in both our minds. It grew inevitably out of the tale just told us. Time, place, circumstance; the combative brother who went armed; the pistol clutched in the dead left hand—these, taken together with Rampick’s discovery of our discovery, and his imagined identification of the dead, invoked by us, as he thought, to rise and denounce him, left us in no moral doubt whatever. Yet still, the coincidence was so amazing, I hesitated to commit myself. I must take breath, fencing a little longer with the truth.

“We were twins,” he said quietly, “scarce separable, perhaps, in feature, unless by the lines which hate had chiselled to distinguish us. His were deeper scored than mine.”

“Wait a moment!” I fluttered. “Why, who could say, Mr. Pilbrow, that thieves or the sea hadn’t taken this treasure long ago?”

“Abel,” he answered, in the same voice. “Abel, the direct consignee of the secret, which was sealed by Carolus Victor, and never opened or delivered till it came to light in our parlour. Abel, who knew this coast, had written guide-books, about it—misleading guide-books, indeed, to me in my killing search—and who was aware that the place, the actual caché of the treasure, still survived—or why should he have sought to hide the truth from me, and have fled in the night, himself like a thief? Abel, the cursed shadow that I follow, and cannot run to earth!”

“Mr. Pilbrow!” I broke out, trembling with excitement. “I believe you have hunted counter; I believe we can show you where your shadow lies. It is in the hill under the abbey ruins, and you must take off your curse from it.”

CHAPTER XII.
RESCUE.

Confession, discussion, incredulity, conviction, with all their concomitants of amazement, awe, emotion, were long over; long put aside in reservation was the unsolvable problem of Rampick’s part in the dark mystery of the hill; long had our last exhausted consideration of these questions lapsed into something like a silence of despair, as we drifted, with gentle lap and wallow, over those immeasurable heart-breaking wastes.

At least with Harry and me, I think, hope had attenuated almost to the vanishing point. Brain-sodden, benumbed, half lifeless, grown near unconscious of time or place, the instinct to hold on, the power to keep at bay the last fatal drowsiness alone remained to us in ever-diminishing degree. We did not know, in the confusion of our senses, whether we were drawing inshore or to sea; we did not know whether we were rocking, an idle log, virtually unprogressive, or slipped into one of the coast currents, and speeding silent on an interminable journey. We could not tell the sick drawl of the hours, for our watches had, of course, stopped. But we dreaded horribly the time when dusk should fall, if it should find us derelicts still. And so it found us, drooping down and closing in; and then Providence seemed hidden, and we despaired.

I cannot picture, indeed, the terror of that darkening desolation; the running fields of water, spectral with foam, fenced within an ever-contracting cyclone of dusk, devouring their own boundaries, and committing us slowly to entombment in one final sepulchre of night. It is all an impossible dream, in my mind—a sort of horrible pantomime, in which a sense of induration, of fixity, while I watched grotesque figures, born of my imagination, come and go in my brain, was ineffably dissolved by the spirit of the moon, and changed into consciousness of heaven.

Joshua, I knew, felt nothing of what we did, except, in a measure, physically; and, even there, the exultation in his soul was tonic to his body. Since our capping of his secret with our own, he had been a changed creature—a bent bow released and snapped upright. It is difficult to describe his transformation—his translation, rather, inspired as Bottom’s. Where had been sombreness, depression, some self-deprecation, was self-assurance, some rallying blitheness, boisterousness almost. He had been crushed, and was expanded; beaten, and was triumphant. That he should have run, when near broke with the chase, his shadow to earth, and through me, the son of the man whose memory he worshipped! It was stupendous. He could not contain his glee, or discipline his expectancy, now it had once burst those year-long bonds. He was convinced with, more utterly convinced than, us, that the body was Abel’s. He would tolerate no suggestion of error. And where the body was, would be the book, the clue—finally the treasure. I doubted if, in all these generations, it could still lie hidden there undiscovered and unravished. He laughed my scepticism to scorn. That Vining would never have concealed the evidences of his crime in a place easy or inviting to be come at, he declared. Probably, indeed, he had restored them to the original oubliette, which, I might make sure, would have been chosen by the monks with a cunning genius for its inaccessibility, either by smugglers or other casual squatters in their abandoned vaults. Moreover history, or at least gossip, might be trusted to have left us record of such costly treasure-trove thus unearthed, if unearthed it had been. Nevertheless, he questioned us closely as to our underground observations, which, indeed, had not been exhaustive. But they were enough, it appeared, to confirm his assurance. Desire is the most credulous of all enthusiasts.

All this was before the last abandonment to despair had overwhelmed us, Harry and me; and it was useful in helping us to a sort of fictitious endurance. We might have succumbed sooner, otherwise, and actually foregone our living rescue. He was so strong and hopeful; so certain that Destiny would not have led him thus far, by such tortured ways, only to see him founder when within sight of his goal, that some part of his faith could not fail to communicate itself to us with vital results. At the same time, I think, we shrunk from the merciless expression of his triumph. Our concern, in revealing the truth as we supposed it, had been with the tragic end of his brother. Not so his. He had no sentiment for Abel even now; no pity for the fate which had overtaken him. The best he could find to say about him was that he had paid the penalty and called quits, and left the better man to come into his own. Not for himself—that was the moral reservation, after all, which silenced and confounded us. He longed for the treasure; he gloated in the thought of its resurrection; but now for my sake, not his own. With the prospect of its recovery instant in his mind, he never wavered in his intention to bestow it all on the son of the man who had died to vindicate his honesty. I could have laughed again over this tragic, comical, chimerical bequest to me; only tears were too near the source of humour. It was terrible, and indecent, and pathetic in one. We sought life for no end but sweet life’s own. The rest was a mockery.

Well, he kept us alive with it, that I believe. Even after he himself was numbed and silenced from stimulating us, from encouraging us by sympathy and example to prevail through hope, he would keep nodding brightly to us to rally our spirits, until his neck got too stiff to nod at all.

It must have been half-past six and near the time of ebb, when the spectral dark which engulphed us knew a change. The fog, lying low on the water, grew slowly diaphanous, waxing from a weak dawn, like heaven seen through dying lids, to a sweet and solemn lightness. For long we were too exhausted, body and mind, to consider what this portended. The lightness increased; and suddenly high over the bank shone a little red spark like a lantern. We lifted our dazed heads; we stirred stiffly where we sat. O God! O God! what did it mean?

Swiftly it broadened, glowing like a rising fire. It mounted, or the haze shrunk beneath it—who could tell? In a moment it was free, and we knew it, in wonder and thankfulness, for the moon.

She was in her first quarter—a child moon, swelling into maidenhood. Slowly, slowly she rose, while we watched her, gloating, absorbed. Gradually the blush with which she had first observed us, sole spectators of her girlish disrobing, faded into a white glow of pity. Her tresses fell from her neck upon the sea, the mist parting to let them by, and were extended to us, “Climb to me by them,” she seemed to whisper; “here is the way to hope.” And lo! full in the midst of that shining path rode a little boat.

There was a man in it, a solitary fisherman trawling for soles. The agony of the moment gave us life and voice. We screamed to him; we waved; we made every frantic demonstration that was possible to us in our condition. He heard and saw us—and he sat as if stricken. Ghostly, leisurely, we drifted past, and the boat faded and became a phantom behind us.

We could not believe it. We never ceased to cry out. It was too hideous, too cruel for truth. Harry, with a dying effort, half rose. I don’t know what desperate thought was in his mind.

There was a little knock and paddle coming to us out of the mist. In a moment the boat forged into sight, approached us, and hung off.

“We went to visit the wreck on the sands; we were abandoned there by a scoundrel, and we have been floating on this spar ever since.”

Still the man was not convinced. We could hear him distinctly spit into the water. It is so his class exorcises all demons.

“Hey!” interrupted the boatman, with all his voice of wonder; and he sculled rapidly up, and alongside. “Master!” He peered through the mist. “Lord have mercy on ’s, ’tis himself trewthfully!”

“Old Jacob!” I cried, in a faint voice between laughing and sobbing. “Old Jacob, help us off this before we die!”

CHAPTER XIII.
RAMPICK SPEAKS.

You remember old Jacob? ’Twas he seconded Harry so unhandsomely in the great fight. He had retired upon his savings now, and did no work, save when a still night persuaded him forth with line and trawling-net, and the loan of a friend’s boat could be procured. Such had been the case when we ran across him. He had taken advantage of the holiday spirit, which kept all “afternoon farmers” of the sea scrupulously away from it, to pull a few miles out in a borrowed craft, and try for a basket of fish to make a welcome garnish to his Christmas pot.

He was lying, when he picked us up, off the banks some four miles from land in a southerly direction, and in a few minutes was to have hauled in and returned home. By so narrow a margin of Providence were we acquitted. In all these hours, it appeared, we had made no nearer the coast than this; had just swung hither and thither gently, drifting south, on the whole, and making two feet shoreward, perhaps, for every one we retired. Probably, in the end, we should have dropped sluggishly on the banks again, unless the outward race of the tide, more vicious than the inward, had swept us over them. In either case, however, the result would have been the same, I believe. Another hour or two must have seen the finish of our endurance.

As it was, I don’t know how they got me on board. Harry, with his stronger fibre, rallied immediately under the excitement: the strain off, I collapsed—that was the difference between us. I was physically and mentally frozen; I could not make an effort on my own account; but lay on the planks, my head on my friend’s knees, listening, in a sort of staring dream, to the murmur of voices above me punctuated by old Jacob’s exclamations. They were telling him, I knew, enough of the facts to explain our situation; and I heard Harry impress upon him the necessity of keeping all to himself, until we had seen Mr. Sant, and learned what course he proposed to take. Old Jacob made no demur. He was honoured in their confidence for one thing, and, for another, his admiration for his former master was still so unspeakable, that he chuckled at the mere idea of temporarily sharing a secret with that great man.

Harry questioned him about Rampick’s doings since our abandonment on the sands. He knew nothing of the fellow; had neither seen nor heard of him. Probably, he thought, if he were convinced no one had witnessed our departure, he would, after deserting us, have pulled oblique up or down the coast, to some outlying station on it, in order to establish an alibi in case of inquiry.

“He were free to go his gait, without risk o’ being observed in these merry times,” said he. “Reckon he’s turned up late, with his story of Jack or Jim visited, and the wur-rds spoke, and mayhap some proof of what Jack give him or Jim lent, to the very tune of innercence.”

I heard them all. Their speech drummed on my brain, as if it were parchment, which was just what it felt like. I lay staring at the light of the moon, for my back was turned to the beautiful thing herself; and I was not unhappy, only utterly cold-blooded. I thought, perhaps, from my long semi-immersion I had become a fish. What a fate, to go gasping through the world, with round lidless eyes and ears palpitating like gills, and never to feel warm again!

Presently we came to shore; and they tilted me up, as if I were a board, and stood me on end, so that I could not help laughing. But even then, in the most extraordinary way, cold air seemed to come from my lungs. Some one, with a whisper and nudge, as if to fire my interest, pointed out to me a boat, Rampick’s, pulled up on the beach, its sides gleaming wet in the moonshine. I crowed and acquiesced, very knowing about nothing, as they seemed to wish me to be; and then, having my legs pointed out to me, tried seriously to remonstrate with and command them, for they were in the most drunken condition. I supposed, indeed, that they were quite detached from me, until, between Harry’s and Jacob’s support, I set them moving; and then I understood that they still acknowledged my control, and I was gigglingly interested in them, looking down on them idiotically as they went splayed, and giving, and pulling themselves respectable over the hard. They found the Gap a tough business; but once up and over it, the descent beyond appeared a matter of moments. While I was still chuckling to Harry, and failing in words to express to him what the joke was, there close before our faces was the door of number three, the Playstow; and I gaped and grinned and delightedly pointed out my discovery to my friends. While I was yet in the act, it opened hurriedly to a great surge of light; and I saw the figures of Uncle Jenico and Mr. Sant, standing blowzed and flurried, in the midst of the furnace. Suddenly they moved and came towards us; and at that I tried to hail them with a shout of laughter; but, instead, staggered and slipped down into their midst. It was very restful, after all; and I thought I would stop where I was. But the jangle of many voices worried me, and I closed my eyes. Then, instantly, as it seemed to me, I was lifted up, and borne aloft, and smothered in down, or snow, which embraced me very cold and peaceful. The light sunk low, and the voices to a whisper. I was quite content, so long as they would leave me packed there frozen. But presently I was conscious that this was not to be. Something, by creeping degrees, tickled, and bit, and stung at my feet. The poison rose, giving me intolerable pain. I moaned and cried; and, at the sound of my voice, they lifted me up and poured fire down my throat. The rising and the falling heat met, it seemed, at my heart, and I believed it was consuming. I struggled to beat out the flames, to reproach these demons with their cruelty—and then in a moment, in a blazing swerve to consciousness, I saw them. They, or their shadows, leapt gigantic on the ceiling; furious, gnashing caricatures of my uncle, Mrs. Puddephatt, Mr. Sant, Fancy-Maria. A furnace glared and reverberated behind them. They sprang and held me down, and rasped my limbs till they crackled and smoked. From prayers and anguish I passed to frenzied defiance. If they would torture me so pitilessly, I would of myself stultify their efforts. I felt the waters of revolt rising within me. An instant, and they gushed to the surface of my body, putting out the fires all over. Surcease from pain, a delicious oblivion overwhelmed me, and I sank back and forgot everything.

Once out of dreams of dewy meadows I awoke, and found my hand in the hand of my uncle, who sat beside the bed. He was himself once more, the real loving normal Uncle Jenico, and I smiled drowzily on him, and dropped away again. A second time I awoke; and there was Fancy-Maria beside my pillow, softly rubbing a smut into her nose with her thumb, and repeating to herself the multiplication table to keep from nodding.

“Three sevens ain’t twenty-four, Fancy-Maria,” I said, and off I went again.

At last, and finally, after unravelling a great endless jest of a rope, I stuck at a prodigious knot, and gasped, and opened my eyes.

I sat up. I was in bed in my own room; the noonday sun glowed on the blind, and squatted down before the dead embers of the fire, sniggering like a Bonanza, was Harry. He rose, yawning, and came across to me.

Sweet is the constitution of youth. It all came back to me now, and without distress.

“Not much. Not in that way. It was good enough for me to be safe. I say, you gave us a precious fright.”

“I’m very sorry. I couldn’t help it. What happened? Was Uncle Jenico very put out about our not coming home?”

“Near off his head, I should think. He’d sent for Sant. Nobody had heard or knew anything about us. But, of course, they never supposed it was quite so bad as it was.”

“Very well. Then, when we’d got rid of you at last, and had something to eat and drink, we held a council of war. Mr. Paxton was in a rare state. I think he’d have liked to shoot that beast at sight. I’d never thought he could be like that, and I tell you it made me crow to see him. But your friend Joshua was for a postponement, until he could visit the crypts. He went through his whole story again, just as he’d said it to us. We told your uncle everything, of course, from first to last; and Sant, naturally. And then he came down. He would hear of no course but the direct one. He’d go straight up to the Court for a warrant against Rampick for attempted murder; and, after that, to wring out and air the whole dirty business. He didn’t mind about risking his own popularity; he didn’t value at a brass piece the insane flummery of the treasure, as he called it. He and Mr. Pilbrow near came to words about it; and then——”

“Well, we’d all gone out on the step, to see Mr. Pilbrow off, and he and Sant were standing wrangling there, when who should come slouching past but Rampick himself.

“I tell you he gave a screech, and dropped in a heap where he stood. We all ran out, thinking him dead. I don’t know now whether he is or not.”

“Maybe it would,” said Harry. “They got help and carried him home, and Sant went with him. He’s been there ever since, I think. At least he’s not come back here. Anyhow it stops the warrant business for the time. And there we are. Nobody knows the real truth but old Jacob; and Sant bound him to silence for the present. We’ve been looking after you ever since, young gentleman; and here I am, having taken my turn by the fire.”

“It’s very good of you, you old idiot,” I said rather tremulously. “Harry, if—if he’s rested, do you think you could send Uncle Jenico to me now?”

He nodded, comprehending perfectly, and went out. I don’t intend to recount the meeting that followed. If I had loved the old man before, you may understand what penitence now made of my feelings. I was painfully suspicious that that secrecy as to my own movements had been dictated rather by private selfishness than consideration for my relative. Certainly I had feared that, had he been told of our purposed trip to the sands, he would, in his uneasiness of mind, have put forward all sorts of objections, even, perhaps, had I proved obstinate, to a personal appeal to me not to desert him in his depressed condition. And now, supposing that eternal seal had been put on our actions, what a heritage of mental torture, of unfounded self-accusations to impose on that blameless soul! I ended by swearing that for the future no simplest scheme of mine should take shape without his sanction. And then he was pacified, though still, while Rampick’s fate was undecided, in a fever of nervousness to keep me within sight and touch.

I came down to dinner, at which Harry was an invited guest, and made up handsomely for my late abstinence. We had a merry meal, though still in some perturbation as to Mr. Sant’s prolonged absence. During the course of it, I suddenly found a huge 21, scrawled on a scrap of paper, lying on the table beside me. A smutty thumb print in one corner informed me at once of the authorship.

“Three times seven, Fancy-Maria?” I said. “That’s a good girl! I knew you’d come round to my point of view in the end.”

She backed, giggling, out of the room; and a heavy sound in the hall which followed, endorsed, so to speak, by a pasty disc on her bustle when she reappeared, showed us that she had sat down in the pudding. But that, fortunately, was when we were at the cheese.

Mrs. Puddephatt was genteel and a little distant in her visitations during the meal; and, finally, with such spectral significance, that Uncle Jenico, though she had not spoken, felt constrained to offer her a sort of apology.

“There’s something behind, you think,” said he. “Well, candidly, there is, but it’s not exactly our secret as yet, my dear woman. When it is, you shall have all the facts.”

She gave a sharp wince, as if suddenly recalled to herself with a pin; and, drawing herself up with her arms folded, gazed at him with stony abstraction.

“Which you was addressing me, Mr. Paxton?” she said. “Would you take the liberty now to repeat yourself?”

“Ho!” she exclaimed, with decision. “Well, I must believe my ears for the future, I suppose, when they accuses me of curihosity, and pryingness into things which people no doubt has their very good reasons for keeping dark, and not becoming to a decent woman to pollute herself with hearing. I thank you for your consideration, Mr. Paxton, venturing to remark honly as it were uncalled for; me being the last person to worrit herself about her neighbour’s concerns, nor accustomed in London to know so much as the name of the next door, which is a feature of the metropulis neither hunderstood nor hemulated by provincial rustication.”

“Permit me to say, sir,” she broke in rather shrilly, “that you should not think about a woman at all, save in the way of kindness; and leastways, not to adopt her to your fancies. Suspicion begets the shadows of its own rising, Mr. Paxton.”

We had hardly recovered, indeed, when steps outside woke us alert, and the next instant Mr. Sant entered.

He looked pale, and worn, and unshaved; but his eyes lightened at sight of me sitting there rested and confident.

“Ha, Dick!” he said. “What a brave constitution, you little dog! Is it fit for another strain yet, do you think?”

“You’ve nothing else for him at present?” said my uncle suddenly, and almost fiercely. “I’m not going to have him overtired, Sant.”

The rector said “Hush!” and crossing over to see that the door was tight shut, turned to us with his back against it.

“He’s dying,” he said. “It was a stroke, or fit, and the heart is just doing time for a little. The hope of your forgiveness is all, I do believe, that keeps it going.”

“He knows the truth now, and in his turn confesses everything,” said the clergyman, clearly. “He understands the terrible mistake he made. His brain clears of its delusions in the searching atmosphere of death. If you can forgive him, forgive the great wrong he designed you, he may be saved for God yet. But there is no time to lose.”

I felt that the blood had left my face, making my head swim and my heart beat suffocatingly. This was a hard relapse upon horror. But had we not learned to hit and be hit and nurse no resentment? I pulled myself together.

“Broughton regulations, sir,” I said, with a rather shaky smile. “Come on, Harry. Let’s go and find Mr. Pilbrow, and bring him, too.”

“Stay,” said our tutor, in a very sweet voice. “I’ve fetched him already. He’s waiting outside now. He will abide by your decision, Richard.”

“Then, let him be my dear boy’s deputy to forgive,” spoke up Uncle Jenico, sharply. “There’s no occasion to submit Richard to this fresh ordeal.”

“He’s got a bad enough road to go, uncle,” I said. “I don’t want to lay up more remorse for myself. We’ll cheer him on his way. Come, Mr. Sant!”

“In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum suum!” I heard him mutter viciously; and I ran up, and shook his hand hard, and hurried out.

In the little garden we found Joshua. He understood without a word. He was very sombre; but quiet, and glad, by his glistening eyes, to see me well.

We hastened up the village street. News of our mission had got abroad; vague and speculative as yet, for Jacob had been loyal. But the people we passed looked at us covertly and curiously, scenting strange revelations in the air.

The ex-smuggler lived, was dying, in a little cottage up a squalid alley near the head of the village. It was a poor, dreary hovel, the mere lair of a beast, self-degraded, God-forsaken. His wretched wife, the real scapegoat of his sins, took us in to him.

“He’s dyin’ hard,” she said, in a thin fretful voice; “hard as a lord, wi’ the whole world to lose. He allers was above his station, was Jole. Lived on dreams, he did. I mind the time he promised me a kerridge; and now we’ll be bad set to find a hearse.”

He sat propped up under a frowzy patchwork quilt. A silhouette under broken glass was clutched in one of his hands. The whole man was sunk in upon his frame; his breath, always difficult to him to draw, laboured heavily; his eyes, in their livid halos, were quite unearthly. The woman went to him, and made some show of easing the coverlet on his chest.

“I was telling the gentlemen,” she said, shrilly, “that time was we was to have our kerridge, and now summut less than a hearse must serve.”

“He’s daft on it,” she said, turning to address us. “’Tis our little Martha, gentlemen, took at the fair before her going. I tell him he needn’t look to join her where she sings among the angels. He should have thought about it earlier, if he wanted to curry favour. Better to pass on what he can get from you, if so be as you’re agreeable.”

“We forgive you, Mr. Rampick!” I cried out, and hung my head, and turned in dumb entreaty to Mr. Sant. He hurried to the bed-head, and put a gentle manly arm about the dying sinner.

The smuggler moved his exhausted hands. Mr. Sant, understanding, lifted them both for him in an attitude of prayer.

“Mr. Pilbrow,” he said softly, “he wants you to hear the truth, if possible, from his own lips. Will you come?”

Joshua moved up, and knelt by the bed. We all heard the broken, gasping confession—

“Tuk you—fur him, I did. ’Twas in the days—afore the—’arthquake. We had our store—where you know, in the underground vaults of th’ old abbey. Over above, in the hopen, was a knot of arches—running together, like the bow ribs of a ship; and—set in the pavement under—in a dark corner behind ruins, were a stone moving on a pivot—what let down him—as knew the trick—by a flight of steps, to the crypts. The powder—was kep’ handy—just below; and beyond—in th’ old cellars running seaward—till they bruk off—in a choke of ruin, behind the cliff face—lay the tea and brandy.

“At that time we was a good deal chafed—as one might call it. What with a revenue cutter—and a sloop of war to back it—our last run had been a run fur life—and—at the end it were touch and go to get—the stuff housed. And in the thick, of the excitement, who should be sprung—upon us—as we thought, but a spy. He come from nowhere—it seemed. He was just up there one day poking—and prying—among the ruins—and I see him. For hours he went—sniffing round—while I watched secret. He squinted, and he tapped, and he went—in and out—cautious; and sometimes, he’d stamp on the ground, and listen—fur the holler echer—with his ear down like a dog. Then—by-and-by—off he went, on tiptoe, and I follered, tracken en—to the Flask. They could tell me nothing—about en there; save as he’d walked over—by his own statement—from Yokestone. The thing looked as black as hell; and what we done—we done—in justice to ourselves as we thought—because we was druv, to it. I had no hand in what follered. I wouldn’t have: I never—could abide—the sight of death.

“We was stowing—the last of the cargo—by starlight, when I see—the man agen. He was setting, behind a stone, his eyes shining—like a cat’s—upon each of us—tradesmen—as we disappeared, down the hole. We was druv to it—as we thought—and tuk our plans—cautious and seized en. He was a cat—he was. We bled, a few on us. But we got en down, he screeching—all the time—about some treasure, he was come arter,—and then I left en, and went up—to keep watch. I couldn’t stand—what I knew was to foller. I’m a peaceable man—by disposition, I am. It was a providence—arter all. Fur I hadn’t abin—there not a minute—when all hell bruk—underneath me, and went out with a roar. The blessed ground—heaved itself—like so much bed-clothes; the arches—come thumping down, and all—in a noise—as if, the Almighty was a tearing—of His world—to tatters. I were spilt on my face—lucky, fur me, I’d moved away to git—out o’ earshot—of the thing, under—and when I come—to my senses, I didn’t know myself—or the place. I crep’ home—dazed-like—to bed; and kep’ it—fur a week—hearing of the ’arthquake. But I knew, in my heart, what had happened. Some fool had fired—the powder—and closed up, the hill. It were so—I was sure—when I come at last—to look. It seemed all fallen, in upon itself. Where the passage—had been—were just, a shipload, of ruin, the half of it turned over—and sunk, into the herth. I never believed—from that moment—till the day I seen it, proved otherwise—that so much—as a babby—could find its way agen—into them shattered vaults. But the Lord—has His way.”

He ended, amidst a deep silence, and sank back exhausted. Joshua got quietly to his feet.

“You are forgiven, Rampick,” he said, “by me and by us all. Make your peace with God.”

CHAPTER XIV.
WHAT THE LETTER SAID.

We were all sitting very sombrely in the gloaming, when Mr. Sant came in to us. There was no need to question anything but his face.

By common consent we would speak no more on the subject until nature had been restored. There was a scent of battle, not to speak of eggs and bacon, in the air, which inspired us somehow to brace up our loins before the ordeal. Tea was on the table, and we sat down to it, and presently were doing justice to Uncle Jenico’s plentiful fare. Then, refreshed and reinvigorated, we pulled our chairs to the fire, and the ball began.

“Now, Mr. Pilbrow,” opened the rector, cautiously, “what is your next move?”

“To find and search my brother Abel’s body,” answered Joshua, prompt and perfectly cool. “What is yours?”

“To go straight to the squire, and put the whole matter into the hands of the law,” said Mr. Sant.

“This is intolerable, sir. It is my brother who was done to death, and the cause is mine.”

“Your parish,” said Joshua, viciously, “has postponed its cleansing six years. A couple of days longer won’t spoil it.”

“It would spoil my conscience in my own eyes, Mr. Pilbrow. I do not compound a felony, now I know of it, for an hour.”

“Then go at once, sir, to be consistent, and, to satisfy your conscience, defraud this orphan, your pupil, of his just indemnification.”

“For the loss of his fortune, of his father, sir,” said Joshua, as resolutely; “who, to vindicate the truth, died and left him bankrupt of his legitimate expectations.”

Uncle Jenico, shifting nervously in his seat, put in a pacifying word. The truth is, the dear old fellow had been in a suppressed state of excitement ever since our visitor’s first dark allusion to his mission on these coasts had begun to shadow itself out into some form and substance.

“Sant,” he said, “I think you must be reasonable. We don’t stand first in this matter. The treasure——”

“Nonsense!” interrupted the clergyman loudly. “Do you credit a word of the stuff!”

“To be sceptical without knowledge—the boast of fools!” cried Joshua, repeating himself.

“Hush!” said Uncle Jenico. “Sant, hadn’t we better first learn from Mr. Pilbrow how he proposes to act in event of the—the clew really coming to light?”

“You are an adept in matters of conscience, sir,” said the bookseller, bitterly and rather violently. “There was no question of hurry when you wanted to use us to help you smuggle a soul into salvation. I won’t say that, if I’d foreseen your intention, I should have postponed my forgiveness till I’d gone to the hill and verified the man’s words; but I do say that in acting on a generous impulse, without a thought of possible consequences to myself, I was playing a better Christian part than you, who had this damning sequel in your mind all the time.”

“Aren’t we rather fighting in the dark? It mayn’t be Mr. Pilbrow’s brother that was the supposed spy, after all, in which case there’s no question of treasure. I think he’s the right to go and see first, before any steps are taken. I beg your pardon, sir.”

Mr. Sant sighed, his brow lightened, and he patted the boy’s shoulder approvingly.

“Good fellow!” he said. “No doubt it would be best to clear the air of this fantastic stuff, before we begin to set our house in order.”

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Pilbrow. I was betrayed into some unwarrantable heat. I confess we look at this matter from different points of view; but that is not to say that mine is necessarily the right one. Indeed, you have given me a lesson in Christianity, to which I seem to make, I admit, a scurvy return.”

“If then,” said the clergyman, biting under the irony that would make itself felt in his words, “you find this clew—find this marvellous deposit of wealth—there are laws of treasure-trove: you cannot think for a moment that I will, that I can, counsel secrecy—allow Richard to share in the profits of a felony——”

“Is not that what a hoodwinking of the law would amount too? You agree with me, Mr. Paxton?”

“Harkee, Mr. Parson!” cried Joshua, in a heat. “I throw the word in your teeth. I am no suborner, sir, no, nor glorifier of my own ignorance neither. Be sure I don’t know the law better than you, before you tax me in advance with cheating it.”

“Well, well,” said Mr. Sant, smiling. “I don’t know the law on the subject, I confess.”

“Then take this, sir, for your rebuke,” said the other, sourly; “and be less apt—for a clergyman—to damn without book. The law of England—I do know it, and have reason to—takes its definition of treasure-trove from the jurist Paulus, who lays down that ‘vetus depositio pecuniae cujus dominus ignoratur,’ that is to say, ancient concealed treasure of which the lord of the soil is ignorant, becomes, being discovered, the property of the Crown, if presumptively deposited by some one who at the time intended to reclaim it.”

“Will you permit me?” interrupted the bookseller, with a manner of most frosty sarcasm. “For all your cloth, sir, I would not have you on a jury, lest you stopped the case before hearing the other side.”

“I say,” repeated Joshua, “that the Crown, to prove its title to treasure-trove, must prove the depositor’s intention to reclaim first. Where that is wanting, or where an intention to abandon can be shown—as when the goods were thrown away in a panic, or for other reason, to be rid of them—the treasure remains wholly and solely in the possession of the finder.”

“Very well,” said Mr. Sant, plucking up heart. “And what benefit is that alternative to you?”

“What benefit! To me!” cried Joshua. “Have you heard my story, sir? Did you listen to it? Did you hear me quote the man Vining’s confession that he had abandoned the price of his iniquity, and cast it from him?”

“’Tis a subtle legal point, I think,” said he. “I foresee, anyhow, fine complications; even if you had evidence—which you have not—of this intention to abandon.”

“Which I have not,” repeated Joshua, “at present. And which I shall never have, to the right effect, if your delicate conscience can forestall me.”

“You are unnecessarily sarcastic, sir,” said the clergyman, gravely. “You must give me the credit of my intentions. This Augean stable in our midst—it must be cleaned out as soon as recognized, or I become an accomplice in its condition. Why should any prompt summoning of the sweeper—of our legal Hercules—affect your position?”

“Because, sir,” said Joshua, vigorously, “he would, a thousand to one, lay bare, in so drastic a process, the golden deposit underneath, and so rob me of any title to its discovery.”

I believe there was enough of the imaginative boy yet left in him to thrill and respond to this exciting legend of gold. Uncle Jenico felt the change, and fell back, glistening, and softly rubbing his hands together.

“Mr. Pilbrow,” said the clergyman, suddenly and decisively, “will you tell me plainly what you propose?”

“I propose,” said Joshua, as instantly, “to visit, and identify, and search the remains of my unhappy brother to-morrow; I propose to take advantage of the letter which, I am convinced, will be found on them, and which, by every right, is legally mine, to secure the treasure. After that, sir, let in your Hercules with a fire-hose, if you will. I shall be content for my part. Possession is eleven points in the law, and for the twelfth I will go to pitch-and-toss with it.”

“Sant, that is certainly fair!” cried out Uncle Jenico, impulsively, and immediately fell abashed.

“Very well,” said our dear rector at last. “I will agree to defer my action till after to-morrow; but on condition that, once having secured his wonderful haul, Mr. Pilbrow openly challenges the law to deprive him of it. It is buying a pig in a poke, I believe; but I must guard myself by insisting.”

“That’s capital,” said Uncle Jenico. “You don’t object to the condition, Mr. Pilbrow?”

“No,” said Joshua, shortly. “I ask for complete secrecy in the mean time—that is all. That man’s wife——”

“She will say nothing,” said Mr. Sant. “The honour of her poor rogue is safe with her.”

Then we fell excitedly to discussing ways and means. The embargo once off my conscience, I was eager to join in the search. But here Uncle Jenico was quite absolute and imperative in vetoing my taking any part in it. He would not, on any condition whatever, have me descend into the hill again. I was disappointed; but he was unshakable, and in the end I had to submit.

It was finally arranged that Mr. Sant, Joshua, and Harry should meet early on the following morning, and complete their expedition, if possible, before the village was awake. And, on this understanding, at a latish hour we parted.

The next day was Christmas eve. I had never known one to drag so wearily. Uncle Jenico and I were up betimes, and making a show of following with serenity our customary occupations. But it was all a transparent pretence. I took no more interest in my books, nor he in his new invention, than if they had been prison tasks. We just perspired for the return of one or other of the party to put an end to our intolerable suspense; and that was the beginning and end of it.

At last a shadow danced on the window, and the door opened, and Harry hurried in. In the first sight of his face we read momentous news. I could hardly control myself as I said—

He had shut the door behind him, and stood there, breathing quickly, his eyes like white pebbles.

“Yes—in his pocket. He—I could hardly look—he seemed to fall to pieces.”

“In the well. What fools we were never to think of that before! Of course it stood at the end of the crypts once—the most natural place for him to throw them into.”

His “them” seemed to hit me in the throat. I had forgotten about the murdered priest. I stood gaping like an idiot, lost in the plain marvel of the thing. I had forgotten Uncle Jenico, till his voice, speaking in a queer, shaky way, recalled me to the thought of him.

“My wrench!” he said. “They will have sunk to the bottom. We shall have to pull it down!”

“That’s just what we’re going to do,” said Harry “to-night, after every one’s asleep.”

CHAPTER XV.
OUT OF THE DEPTHS.

The village was long asleep when at last we issued forth, as blamelessly agitated a body of brigands as ever trod the corridors of night. We had taken our measures with infinite precaution, so that not a hint of our designs should leak out; yet still we had delayed, sitting, like the party in the parlour, “all silent and all damned,” while Dunberry sunk into deep and deeper unconsciousness of our conspiracy in its midst. We were assembled, in fact, in the rector’s study, Joshua, Mr. Sant himself, my uncle, and we two; and there we stuck, spelling out the blessed quarters, until the chimes of the school clock, coming in a flurry out of silence, called up a single rebukeful stroke from Time, and subsided upon it. So late as this, an hour after midnight, had we resolved to linger, to make assurance double sure; and at the sound, with a great pouf! of relief, we were on our feet and tingling to depart.

There had been no longer any question, of course, since our learning where the treasure was, or should be, concealed, of my foregoing my share in the attempt to recover it. No possible peril, within reason, could attach to this purely open-air sport; though, indeed, Uncle Jenico had made, even now, some presumptive risk to me the excuse for his joining us in the expedition.

It was a question, at this last, if he or Mr. Sant were the more excited. Our dear comical tutor and sceptic still made a show, it is true, of subscribing to a madness in order to humour a party of lunatics under his charge; but this affectation, I do believe, took in none of us. Was it not he, in solemn fact, who had insisted upon the necessity of this postponement of the foray until the small hours? Was it not he who had manœuvred to enwrap our plans in a profound mist of secrecy? Was it not he who had appointed the present rendezvous with a masterly eye to contingencies? As to wit: (1) His house stood remote, and we could reach the sea-front from the back of it, without ever touching the village; (2) A French window gave from his study upon the garden to the rear; (3) There was a little hand-cart for luggage in a shed in this garden, which cart offered itself apt to a dual purpose—(A) to convey down to the shore a pick and a shovel, together with Uncle Jenico’s colossal wrench, which, under pretence of its being submitted to some test, had already been brought to the rectory; (B) to serve as vehicle for the carrying back of the treasure.

On the top of all which, I ask you, was Mr. Sant the incredulous humourist he professed to be?

Whatever he thought, however, Uncle Jenico was patently and irresistibly the enthusiast of the undertaking. He stumped along, dear soul, his face one moon of hilarity. The adventure was to his very heart. To be called upon, in such an enterprise, to advertise the merits of such an invention, his own! It was unspeakable—beyond expectation! He laughed constantly, holding my arm, and rebuking me for being a sluggard when I tried to regulate his pace lest he upset himself.

Harry trundled the cart, making the softest track he could manage, under the hill towards the Gap. It was a brilliant moonlit night, with a singing wind. We had brought lanterns; but had no need of them. It was near as bright as day, indeed, and we sped rapidly on our course, never having need to pause or pick our way till we reached the sands. The great shaft of the well, when we stood over against it, seemed to topple towards us, tragically anticipating its doom. The sight of it, so lonely and so ancient in this moon-drowned solitude, thrilled me with a sort of pity. It had stood so long, baffling the winds and tides, foregathering with such generations of dead and departed ghosts! And now at last man’s cupidity was scheming to compass the final ruin of what Nature had been impotent to wreck. Ah! a more fatal force than any storm! the one against which no monument, however venerable, is proof.

If the others were touched by this spirit of regret, they were sensible enough to subordinate it to the inevitably practical. While I was, literally, mooning, they had already lifted the wrench from the barrow, and were busy, under Uncle Jenico’s directions, getting it into position on the sand.

I can only hastily elucidate the idea of this machine. Pinned to a sort of frame, or trestle, which was anchored all round with stout grapnels, and shored up in front against a bracket, was a ship’s steering-wheel, which the inventor had picked up cheap at a marine auction. A good rope (length indefinite), to be passed round the subject of the proposed haulage, and its two ends then carried to the wheel and clamped, one on each side, to its rim, completed the design. So disposed, nothing remained but to turn the wheel by its spokes, when the rope would garrotte the object, and, mechanically contracting of itself, induce a forward strain.

Now, I know little about scientific values; but certainly in this case the result justified the means, as you shall hear.

We had got all in place but the rope; and then suddenly Mr. Sant drew himself up, scratching his head in an unclerical manner.

“My good man,” cried the rector sarcastically, “do you really imagine we are going to haul that thing over by tugging at its base, or near it?”

“It is tottering already. It is laid bare to its lowest course. These boys examined and proved it!” answered Uncle Jenico.

“O, it will never do!” he said. “We must give this insanity a better chance. By hook or by crook, we must get the thing fixed up near the top.”

“I’ll carry the rope up, sir. I know the way. Harry and I climbed it once before.”

“No,” cried Uncle Jenico, sharply and decisively. “I won’t have you go on any account, Richard!”

“Then it’s to be me!” cried Harry; and, as I muttered discontentedly, trying to block his way, he evaded me and ran for the shaft. Mr. Sant, trailing the rope, followed him, and in a moment they were under its shadow.

I chafed, watching them: but my relative was inexorable. And, indeed, to speak truth, there was considerably more risk in the venture than formerly before the storm. Harry, however, accomplished his part in safety; and, while he still dwelt aloft, holding the loop in place, Mr. Sant captured the two ends of the rope, and came running towards us with them. In a moment we had pulled them taut and clamped them in place to the wheel. And then we hailed Harry to come down, which he did, rather with a run, so afraid was he of missing any detail of the sport.

Uncle Jenico had already given a half-turn to the wheel, in order to clinch the hold of the rope; and now he stood in a tense eagerness, dwelling on the psychologic moment. He held, by right of patent, the larboard spokes; Mr. Sant, the port. The dear old man was so wrought up out of feebleness, that I was apprehensive of the part he insisted upon taking in the manipulation of his own design. He would not be denied, however; and who could have had the heart to disappoint him? Was not this the very first time that his genius for invention promised him a harvest of gold? He took a long breath, and tightened his hold on the spokes.

Joshua stood rigid, awaiting the result. Harry and I shook on wires, staring from the wrench to the shaft, and hardly stifling the exclamations that rose to our lips. It was a solemn moment.

“Go!” cried Uncle Jenico; and the wheel spun a little, stiffened, and began to cry ominously.

Something cracked; thank Heaven it was only Uncle Jenico’s braces! The old man tugged and puffed, wrestling with his task. Suddenly he staggered—the wheel seemed to give and spin away from him—and he was almost on his face. In the same moment I fancied the shadow of a night-bird had crossed my vision—and I looked; and where had been the well was nothing. It was fallen prone upon the sand, so wearily, so softly, that in that humming wind no sound of the concussion had reached us.

Hardly suppressing a cry of triumph, we dropped everything, and raced for the place. The shaft in falling had broken into three pieces, of which the middle one was in a proportion of two-fourths. The fracture nearest the base was only three or so inches in width; but the top fragment was quite detached, and tilted over a little away from the neck.

Where the shaft had stood was surprisingly little scar in the ground—nothing to see, in fact, but a pyramid of sand, which had run from the stuffed base of the well in its parting. Upon this we flung ourselves, scrambling and scraping like children about a burst sugar cask. We clawed, as badgers claw, throwing the draff behind us. A hole opened under our furious assault, and sunk, and deepened—and revealed nothing. We ran for the tools, and picked and dug like madmen. Presently Mr. Sant threw down his shovel.

“We are feet below the well bottom. Are you satisfied at last, Mr. Pilbrow?” he said, really in a quite quarrelsome way. He had been cheated, he felt, of the fruits of his own condescension.

“No,” snarled Joshua, “I’m not. Here was mud, perhaps, once. It was a loaded box of iron—we know that. It may have sunk far.”

Mr. Sant laughed offensively. The best of us bear awakening from engaging dreams badly. As for me, I had desisted from working when he did, and was sitting disconsolately on the lower part of the shaft, fumbling with my fingers in the fracture.

All in a moment the blood seemed to rush to my heart, making me gasp. I jumped to my feet.

My fingers, burrowing through the crack into a choke of sand, had touched upon the iron-bound corner of a box.

They were all up and swarming about me directly. One by one, quite cavalier to each other in their eagerness to dive and feel, they exclaimed and fell back, Some people say that colours are indiscernible by moonlight. I can answer for the flush which suffused our rector’s cheek as he looked at Joshua.

“We must rope this lowest piece, and pull it away from the other,” he cried, full of bustle and excitement. “What a providential thought was this wrench of mine! Hey, my boys? Ha-ha!”

It was brilliantly the obvious course, and at the word we were all scurrying to put it into execution, Uncle Jenico directing us in a perfect and quite lovable rapture of self-importance. He and I, when the rope had been readjusted to its new position, hurried to manipulate the machine, while the others remained to watch the result of our efforts on the huge pipe of masonry. We seized the spokes.

Now, I don’t know if the first test had amounted to no more than a little soft extra persuasion applied to an already tottering article. I know only that that success was not to be repeated.

“Right!” said Uncle Jenico; and the wheel turned under our hands, tightened, and began to scream as before, only infinitely more distressfully. We strained our mightiest, putting our backs into it.

And with the word, an explosive lash whistled by my ear, the machine bounded and pitched, and there were we rolling on the sand amidst a mad wreck of everything.

We were neither of us hurt. Uncle Jenico sat up ruefully. Mr. Sant came running to us across the sand.

Nobody, by God’s mercy! It was the nearest shave. If I had had a whisker, it would have been shorn off, I think. The rope had snapped like a piece of string, and we were right in the path of its recoil.

“Eh!” cried my uncle. “I can’t understand. It must have severed itself on a sharp stone, I suppose.”

“That was the case, without doubt,” said the clergyman, kindly. “Well, there’s nothing for us now but to take pick and shovel, and dig out the pith of the thing. It will take a little longer, that’s all.”

Indeed, we found the other two, once assured of our safety, already hard at the job. It proved a tough one, for the silt inside from long pressure was grown as compact as mortar, and every fragment of it had to be chipped off and pulled away—a difficult matter, when from the depth of our boring it was no longer possible to wield the pick. However, we got through it, taking turns at the tools, and working now by lantern light, for the end of the great trunk was turned from the face of the moon.

Suddenly Harry, when he and I were once more hammering and shovelling together, uttered a stifled sound, and scrambled up, so quickly as half to fracture his skull against the roof of the tube. Then, holding his head, and squatting out backwards, he gingerly raked after him a little white thing—a human bone.

“We’re coming to it,” muttered Mr. Sant; and almost on the instant, as we plunged in again to resume our burrowing, the end was wrought. A slab of concreted stuff, falling detached to our renewed blows and tilting outwards, let down an avalanche of loosened sand, and, slipping on its torrent—what?

We did not wait to discriminate. The dead, it seemed to us only, had come sliding and chuckling to meet us half way, with his, “Here we are again!” like a clown.

“It’s there!” gasped Harry, as we stood up outside. “Some one else must fetch it—not me: I won’t.”

Joshua dived on the instant: we heard him scuffling and chattering inside. And then he emerged.

“The rope!” he cried like a madman. “Fetch it—a bit of it—anything!”

I ran off, unknotted the shorter length from the wreck of the machine, and returned with it to him. He disappeared again into the tunnel, drawing the slack after him, and in a minute reissued, unkempt and agitated beyond measure, and disposed us all to haul. Without a question we obeyed, and, at his word, set our shoulders to a simultaneous tug. Slowly the capture responded to our efforts, and drew out heavily into the open—a great iron-ribbed box, with the upper half of a human skeleton chained to it by the neck.

Joshua seized the pick, and, before Mr. Sant could stop him, had parted at a blow the skull from its vertebræ. It leapt and settled, grinning up at us from the sand.

“That was basely done,” said our rector. “Take your spoil, sir. These poor remains are my concern.”

Joshua had thrown away the tool, and was standing, as if petrified, looking down on the chest. It might have measured a yard by two feet, and some two feet and a half in depth. The wood, under the corroded clamps of iron, was spongey, half-eaten by water, and, half-eaten, preserved in sand. But of the immense antiquity of the whole there was no question.

“We must secure what of these bones we can,” said Mr. Sant. “Well, Dick? Well, Harry?”

His quiet appeal overcame our repugnance. Once more we grovelled and groped in the bowels of the well. It was a gruesome task; but we fulfilled it. Excitement, no doubt—an eagerness to be done with it, and so earn the sweeter reward of adventure, stimulated us. At the end we had found, and gathered into a heap outside, all evidence that remained to mortality of that ancient deed of murder. It made one’s brain swim to look down on this wonderful tragic salvage of the centuries. It was all true, then—all true! And Destiny had made us her instruments in this unspeakable resurrection!

All this time Joshua, and even my uncle, had remained as if tranced. Now, suddenly, the former raised his voice in a shrill ecstatic cry.

It was evident he was wrought far beyond any susceptibility to moral warning or rebuke. The rector perceived this, I think, and submitted himself to circumstance.

The truck was hurried up, and the chest placed upon it. It needed our united efforts to raise the thing; and at our every stagger Joshua sawed out a little jubilant laugh. We gathered the tools and the ropes and the ruin of the wrench, and piled all on top. Then we disposed the broken skeleton amidst, and started on our way home.

It was a hard pull now, though we all gave a hand to it. Three o’clock had struck, when at last, exhausted and agitated, we drew the little cart cautiously up to the study window, and unloaded it of its weightest burden, leaving the rest temporarily outside while we examined our haul.

The box had been stoutly fastened and secured; but the wood being shrunk away from its clamps rendered our task an easy one. A little wrenching with forceps, and the whole lid came apart, sinking upon the floor with a dusty clang. And then——

Sleeking and glinting through a dust of perished rags—piled to the throat, and kept burnished by the sand that had filtered in—a glut of gold!

Gold in rouleaux and ingots; gold in sovereigns and ryals; gold in angels and rose-nobles—near all of Henry the Seventh’s and Henry the Eighth’s reigns, and of incalculable antiquarian, apart from their intrinsic, value; gold in patens; gold and more in a jewelled ciborium; chased gold and ivory in an exquisite chalice with handles, and little queer figures of saints in rich enamel; gold in such wealth as we had never dreamt.

The vessels had been wrapped, it appeared, in soft skins of suckling-calf vellum, which had long crumpled into a floury meal, keeping all bright as blossoms preserved in sand, and easy to dust and blow away, We felt fairly drunk with the sight, as we gazed down spell-bound into that brimming reservoir of all wealth.

“O Lord!” he prayed, in a low half-agonized tone; “teach thy servant to deal rightly with this, converting it to fair uses, and justifying himself of Thy generosity.”

A little dead silence followed; and at the end Joshua bowed his head, and raising his hands clasped together, cried twice, in a firm voice—

And so at last was consummated that wonderful and tragic tale of mystery and fatality, which had begun for me in the old court house of Ipswich. Truly, other things than hanging and wiving go by destiny.

CONCLUSION.

There was a sequel, which I must relate. Stories of recovered treasure, if true like this, do not always end with the emotional unities and the final chapter. Morning does not always bring a confirmation of pious resolves. A little sourness of digestion sometimes impairs the glamour of last night’s feast of righteousness. That is the deuce of it.

Now, I will not say that Joshua repudiated in the slightest reality the sense of that “Amen” of his; but, once awake and restored to the full realization of his possession, he certainly did try to back out of his undertaking to challenge the law to deprive him of it. Not unscrupulously—not in the least. He merely strove to convince Mr. Sant as to the actual letter of that law, and, consequently, of the Quixotry of calling upon it to establish his claim—probably at considerable expense to both sides—to do what was already, by its own decreeing, indubitably his.

But he was entirely unsuccessful. The rector, seeing in this only a personal obstructive policy, designed to shackle that main moral question of the cleansing of his Augean stable, utterly declined to forego his bond, and wrung a promise out of my reluctant relative himself that I should not be allowed to touch a penny of this treasure until it could be proved well-gotten.

So Joshua, forced at last to give way, though with a very ill grace, sent in his notice to the Ipswich coroner.

In the mean time the process of cleansing was carried through with all despatch. The hill was cleared, at some risk, of its tragic impedimenta, which—after a jury had sat on them, and brought in a verdict of accidental death—were consigned to rest in the churchyard—Abel’s, with some distinction, in a separate grave. The whole story was wrung out at the inquest, and aired, and hung up on the lines for gossips to find holes in; and gradually the village—with the entire country-side, to boot—subsided from its fever heat of excitement, which was only to suffer a temporary recrudescence in the cause célebre which came presently to provide the epilogue.

One day, a tax-cart, a coroner’s clerk, a posse of insurance-office firemen, and a couple of cavalrymen from the barracks to escort the whole, appeared before the rectory, and, removing the treasure-box, well encased and sealed, from the clerical strong-room—where it had lain perdu since its discovery—mounted that and Joshua in the vehicle, and incontinently drove away with both.

We saw him go, sitting darkly on the top of his coffin, like a dyspeptic Jack Sheppard being jogged off to Tyburn; and thereafter for a desperate week or more heard or saw nothing of him. Then one day, a great trumpeting and cheering in the street brought us all out pell-mell; and there he was, worshipful in the repute of fabulous riches, being carried shoulder high.

He had won his cause; and through whom do you think? Why, Mr. Quayle. The little Q.C. accompanied the procession, and shared in its triumph. Joshua had alighted on him, quite accidentally, in Ipswich, and revealing to him everything—not without an ironic satisfaction, one may be sure, in returning at this eleventh hour a Rowland for his Oliver—had engaged him to conduct his case. And he had done it, and won it; and the treasure was ours.

“Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings,” said the little man, meeting me again with delight. “Richard, I am rebuked. I once said you were the son of your father, but not so good a lawyer. I withdraw the riservation, entirely. You could see further than some of us into a stone wall. To think now that your friend spoke the truth through ut all! I’ll never trust the evidence of me nine senses again. Five, is ut? Well, I was thinking of the Muses, I suppose. ’Tis a weakness I have, and will prove my undoing in the end. Never you bother about the girls, Richard. They spoil your law.”

I have only a word or two to add. I am afraid to declare what that box of gold realized. The sum, anyhow, was so large as to enrich us all. A great part of its treasures was distributed into the cabinets of collectors, the beautiful chalice finding its way, I believe, at an immense figure, into the museum of a famous cardinal and virtuoso in Rome. From the total proceeds Joshua handsomely presented to Harry the equivalent of a comfortable income, which was the means of helping my dear friend to the very satisfactory position to which he attained a few years later in London. For me he held the residue nominally in trust till I was come of age, when he proposed to establish himself and Uncle Jenico as pensioners on my bounty. The question was one merely of terms. We made, in fact, our common home together until the end, even after I had so far neglected Mr. Quayle’s advice as to bother my head very much indeed about one girl, and to wive her into the bargain.

We had left Dunberry soon after the events narrated above, taking Mrs. Puddephatt with us for housekeeper, and not forgetting Fancy-Maria. For some time, I understand, after our departure, the famous crypts were a gazing-stock, attracting so many visitors that in the end Mr. Sant’s dearest wish was realized, and a popular watering-place established on the foundations of the old smugglers’ haunt. But long before that the vaults had been closed, as unsafe, by councillors’ authority; and at this day only a deep depression in the soil above denotes the spot under which the tragedy of Abel Pilbrow was enacted.

So the old order changes—all, that is to say, but Uncle Jenico, who is engaged at this moment, very bent and white, in demonstrating to my little boy the method of his latest machine for solving the riddle of perpetual motion.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES.

Minor spelling inconsistencies (e.g. drowzily/drowsily, schoolhouse/school-house, barn-door/barn door, etc.) have been preserved.

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THE SECRET IN THE HILL

CONTENTS.

THE SECRET IN THE HILL. PART I.

CHAPTER I. I FIRST SEE JOSHUA PILBROW.

CHAPTER II. A GREAT LOSS AND A QUEER EQUIVALENT.

CHAPTER III. UNCLE JENICO.

CHAPTER IV. MY FIRST VIEW OF THE HILL.

CHAPTER V. THE STORY OF THE EARTHQUAKE.

CHAPTER VI. MRS. PUDDEPHATT AND FANCY-MARIA.

CHAPTER VII. MR. SANT.

CHAPTER VIII. TREASURE-HUNTING.

CHAPTER IX. HARRY HARRIER.

CHAPTER X. FRIENDS AT LAST.

CHAPTER XI. MISCHIEF OF SORTS.

PART II.

CHAPTER I. THE BADGER.

CHAPTER II. THE GREAT STORM.

CHAPTER III. OPEN SESAME.

CHAPTER IV. THE SECRET IN THE HILL.

CHAPTER V. A REAPPEARANCE.

CHAPTER VI. AN ODD COMPACT.

CHAPTER VII. “FACILIS DESCENSUS AVERNI.”

CHAPTER VIII. THE FEAST OF LANTERNS.

CHAPTER IX. THE WEARY SANDS.

CHAPTER X. THE DARKEST HOUR.

CHAPTER XI. JOSHUA SPEAKS.

CHAPTER XII. RESCUE.

CHAPTER XIII. RAMPICK SPEAKS.

CHAPTER XIV. WHAT THE LETTER SAID.

CHAPTER XV. OUT OF THE DEPTHS.