The river which, farther on, had done damage to the line, here ran close to it for some distance, consequently Zilda came to the river before she reached the scene of the disaster. The river banks at this season were marshy, green like plush or velvet when it is lifted dripping from green vats of the brightest dye. There were some trees by the river bank, maples and elms, and every twig was tipped with a crimson gem. Zilda did not see the beauty of the river bank either; she regarded nothing until she came to a place where a foot-track was beaten down the side of the embankment, as if apparently to entice walkers to stray across a bit of the meadow and so cut off a large curve of the line. At this point Zilda heard a loud chirpy voice calling,'Hi! hi! who's there? Is any one there?'

Zilda did not know from whence the voice came, but she knew from whom it came. It was Gilby's voice, and she stopped, her soul ravished by the music. All the way along, bobolinks, canaries, and song-sparrows had been singing to her, the swallows and red-throats had been talking; everywhere among the soft spongy mosses, the singing frog of the Canadian spring had been filling the air with its one soft whistling note. Zilda had not heard them, but now she stopped suddenly with head bent, listening eager, enraptured.

'Hi! hi!' called the voice again. 'Is any one there?'

Zilda went down the bank halfway among the bushes and looked over. She saw Gilby sitting at the edge of the meadow almost in the river water. She saw at once that something was wrong. His attitude was as natural as he could make it, such an attitude as a proud man might assume when pain is chaining him in an awkward position, but Zilda saw that he was injured. Her heart gave a great bound of pleasure. Ah! her bird was wounded in the wing; she had him now, for a time at least.

'You! Mam'selle Zilda,' he said in surprise; 'how came you here?'

'I wished to see the broken road, monsieur.' There was nothing in her voice or manner then or at any other time to indicate that she took a special interest in him.

'Do you often take such long walks?' he asked with curiosity.

Zilda shrugged her shoulders. 'Sometimes; why not?'

She could not have told why she dissembled; it was instinct, just as it was the instinct of his proud little spirit to hate to own that he was helpless. 'Look here,' he said, 'I slipped on the bank—and I—I think I have sprained my ankle.'

'Oui, monsieur,' said Zilda.

Her manner evinced no surprise; her stolidity was grateful to him.

Stooping down, she took his foot in her hand, gently, but as firmly as if it had been a horse's hoof. She straightened it, unlaced his muddy boot, and with strong hands tore the slit further open until she could take it off.

'Look here,' he said, with a little nervous shout of laughter, 'do you not know you are hurting me?' It was the only wince he gave, although he was faint with pain.

'Oui, monsieur'—with a smile as firm and gentle as her touch.

She took off her hat, and, heedless of the ribbon upon it, filled it with water again and again and drenched the swollen leg. It was so great a relief to him that he hardly noticed that she stood ankle-deep in the river to do it. She wore a little red tartan shawl upon her shoulders, and she dipped this also in the river, binding it round and round the ankle, and tying it tight with her own boot-lace.

'Thank you,' said he; 'you are really very good, Mam'selle Zilda.'

She stood beside him; she was radiantly happy, but she did not show it much. She had him there very safe; it mattered less to her how to get him away; yet in a minute she said—

'Monsieur had better move a little higher up; he is very uncomfortable.'

He knew that much better than she, but he had borne all the pain he could just then. He nodded as if in dismissal of the idea. 'Presently. But, in the meantime, Zilda, sit down and see what a beautiful place this is; you have not looked at it.'

So she found a stone to sit on, and immediately her eyes were opened and she saw the loveliness around her.

The river was not a very broad one, but ah! how blue it was, with a glint of gold on every wave. The trees that stood upon either bank cast a lacework of shadow upon the carpet of moss and violets beneath them. The buds of the maples were red. On a tree near them a couple of male canaries, bright gold in the spring season, were hopping and piping; then startled, they flew off in a straight line over the river to the other shore.

'See them,' said Gilby; 'they look like streaks of yellow light!'

'I see,' said Zilda, and she did see for the first time.

Now Gilby had a certain capacity for rejoicing in the beauties of nature; it was overlaid with huge conceit in his own taste and discernment and a love of forcing his observations on other people, but the flaws in his character Zilda was not in a position to see. The good in him awakened in her a higher virtue than she would otherwise have known; she was unconscious of the rest, just as eyes which can see form and not colour are unconscious of the bad blending of artificial hues.

Presently Zilda rose up. 'I will make monsieur more comfortable,' she said, and she lifted him to a drier place upon the bank.

This was mortifying to little Gilby; his manner was quite huffy for some minutes after.

Zilda had her own ideas of what she would do. She presently left him alone and walked on swiftly to the place of the breakdown. There she borrowed a hand-car; it was a light one that could be worked easily by two men, and Zilda determined to work it alone. While she was coming back along the iron road on the top of the narrow embankment, Gilby could see her from where he sat—a stalwart young woman in homespun gown, stooping and rising with regular toilsome movement as she worked the rattling machine that came swiftly nearer.

When the carriage thus provided for him was close at hand, the almost breathless Zilda actually proposed to exert her strength to carry Gilby up to it. He insisted upon hopping on one foot supported by her arm; he did not feel the slightest inclination to lean upon her more than was needful, he was too self-conscious and proud. Even after she had placed him on the car, he kept up an air of offence for a long time just because she had proved her strength to be so much greater than his own. His little rudenesses of this sort did not disturb Zilda's tranquillity in the least.

Gilby sat on the low platform of the hand-car. He looked like a bantam cock whose feathers were much ruffled. Zilda worked at the handles of the machine; she was very large and strong, all her attitudes were statuesque. The May day beamed on the flat spring landscape through which they were travelling; the beam found a perfect counterpart in the joy of Zilda's heart.

So she brought Gilby safely to the hotel and installed him in the best room there. The sprain was a very bad one. Gilby was obliged to lie there for a month. Sometimes his friends came out from the town to see him, but not very often, and they did not stay long. Zilda cooked for him, Zilda waited upon him, Zilda conversed with him in the afternoons when he needed amusement. This month was the period of her happiness.

When he was going home, Gilby felt really very grateful to the girl. He had not the slightest thought of making love to her; he felt too strongly on the subject of his dignity and his principles for that; but although he haggled with Chaplot over the bill, he talked in a bombastic manner about making Zilda a present.

It did not distress Zilda that he should quarrel with her father's bill; she had no higher idea in character than that each should seek his own in all things; but when Gilby talked of giving her a present she shrank instinctively with an air of offence. This air of offence was the one betrayal of her affection which he could observe, and he did not gather very much of the truth from it.

'I will give you a watch, Zilda,' he said, 'a gold watch; you will like that.'

'No, monsieur.' Zilda's face was flushed and her head was high in the air.

'I will give you a ring; you would like that—a golden ring.'

'No, monsieur; I would not like it at all.'

Gilby retired from the discussion that day feeling some offence and a good deal of consternation. He thought the best thing would be to have nothing more to do with Zilda; but the next day, in the bustle of his departure, remembering all she had done for him, he relented entirely, and he gave her a kiss.

Afterwards, when the train was at the station, and Chaplot and Zilda had put his bags and his wraps beside him on a cushioned seat, Gilby turned and with great politeness accosted two fine ladies who were travelling in the same carriage and with whom he had a slight acquaintance. His disposition was at once genial and vain; he had been so long absent from the familiar faces of the town that his heart warmed to the first townsfolk he saw; but he was also ambitious: he wished to appear on good terms with these women, who were his superiors in social position.

They would not have anything to do with him, which offended him very much; they received his greeting coldly and turned away; they said within themselves that he was an intolerably vulgar little person.

But all her life Zilda Chaplot lived a better and happier woman because she had known him.



VII

THE SYNDICATE BABY

Some miles above the city of La Motte, the blue Merrian river widens into the Lake of St. Jean. In the Canadian summer the shores of this lake are as pleasant a place for an outing as heart could desire. The inhabitants of the city build wooden villas there, and spend the long warm days in boats upon the water. The families that live in these wooden villas do not take boarders; that was the origin of 'The Syndicate.' It consisted of some two dozen bachelors who were obliged to sit upon office stools all day in the hot city. 'If,' said they, 'we could live upon the lake, we could have our morning swim and our evening sail; and the trains would take us in and out of the city.'

The one or two uncomfortable hotels of this region were already overcrowded, so these bachelors said to each other—'Go to; we will put our pence together, and build us a boat-house with an upper story, and live therein.'

They bought a bit of the beach for a trifle of money. They built a boat-house, of which the upper half was one long dormitory, with a great balcony at the end over the water which served as kitchen and dining-hall. The ground floor was the lake itself, and each man who could buy a boat tethered it there. The property, boats excepted, was in common. By and by they bought a field in which they grew vegetables; later they bought two cows and a pasture. The produce of the herd and the farm helped to furnish forth the table. This accretion of wealth took several years; some of the older men grew richer, and took to themselves wives and villas; the ranks were always filled up by more impecunious bachelors. The bachelors called themselves 'The Syndicate.'

The plan worked well, chiefly because of the fine air and the sunshine, the warm starry nights, and, above all, the witchery of the lake, which is to every man who has spent days and nights upon it like a mystical lady-love, ever changeful and ever charming. Then, too, there was the contrast with the hot city; the sense of need fulfilled makes men good-natured. The one servant of the establishment, an old man who made the beds and the dinners, was not a professional cook; the meals were often indifferent; yet the Syndicate did not quarrel among themselves.

Some outlet for temper perhaps was needful. At any rate they had one outside quarrel with an old Welshman named Johns, a farmer of great importance in the place, who had sold them the land and tried, in their opinion, to cheat them afterwards about the boundaries. Their united rage waxed hot against Johns, and he, on his side, did nothing to propitiate. The quarrel came to no end; it was a feud. 'Esprit de corps,' like the fumes of wine, gives men a wholly unreasonable sense of complacence in themselves and their belongings, whatever the belongings may happen to be. The Syndicate learned to cherish this feud as a valuable possession.

The Syndicate, as has been seen, had one house, one servant, and one enemy. It also had one Baby. The Baby was the youngest member of the community, a pretty boy who by some chance favour had obtained a bed in the dormitory at the hoyden age of nineteen. He had a tendency to chubbiness, and his moustache, when it did come, was merely a silken whisp, hardly visible. He did some fagging in return for the extraordinary favour of adoption. The Baby from the first was entirely accustomed to being 'sat upon.' He had no unnecessary independence of mind. At twenty-one he still continued to be 'Baby.'

All the affairs of the Syndicate flourished, including the feud with the neighbouring landowner. All went well with the men and their boats and the Baby, until, at length, upon one fateful day for the latter, there came a young person to the locality who made an addition to the household of Farmer Johns.

'Old Johns has got a niece,' said the bachelors sitting at dinner, as if the niece had come fresh to the world as babies do, and had not held the same relation to old Johns for twenty-five years. Still, it was true she had never been in the old man's possession before, and now she had arrived at his house, a sudden vision of delight as seen from the road or on the verandah.

Now Helen Johns was a beauty; no one unbiassed by the party spirit of a time-honoured feud would have denied that. She was not, it is true, of the ordinary type of beauty, whose chief ornament is an effort at captivation. She did not curl her hair; she did not lift her eyes and smile when she was talking to men; she did not trouble herself to put on her prettiest gown when the evening train came in, bringing the bachelors from the city. She was tall—five foot eight in her stockings; all her muscles were well developed; there was nothing sylph-like about her waist, but all her motions had a strong, gentle grace of their own that bespoke health and dignity. She had a profession, too, which was much beneath most of the be-crimped and smile-wreathed maidens who basked in the favour of the bachelors. She had been to New York and had learned to teach gymnastics, the very newest sort; 'Delsart' or 'Emerson,' or some such name, attached to the rhythmic motions she performed. The Syndicate had no opportunity to criticise the gymnastic performance, for they had not the honour of her acquaintance; they criticised everything else, the smooth hair, the high brow, the well-proportioned waist, the profession; they decided that she was not beautiful.

There were, roughly speaking, two classes of girls in this summer settlement, each held in favour by the Syndicate men according as personal taste might dispose. There were the girls who in a cheerful manner were ever to be found walking or boating in such hours and places as would assuredly bring them into contact with the happy bachelors, and there were those who would not 'for the world' have done such a thing, who sedulously shunned such paths, and had to be much sought after before they were found. Now it chanced that Helen Johns was seen to row alone in her uncle's boat right across the very front of the Syndicate boat-house, at the very hour when the assembled members were eating roast beef upon the verandah above and arriving at their decisions concerning her, and she did not look as if she cared in the least whether twenty-four pair of eyes were bent upon her or not. To be sure, it was her nearest way home from the post-office across the bay, and the post came in at this evening hour. No one could find any fault, not even any of the bachelors, but none the less did the affront sink deep into their hearts. It added a new zest to the old feud. 'We do not see that she is beautiful,' they cried over their dinner. 'We should not care for Helen of Troy if she looked like that.'

The Baby dissented; the Baby actually had the 'cheek' to say, right there aloud at the banquet, that he might not be a man of taste, but, for his part, he thought she looked 'the jolliest girl' he had ever seen. In his heart he meant that he thought she looked like a goddess or an angel (for the Baby was a reverent youth), but he veiled his real feeling under this reticent phrase.

One and all they spoke to him, spoke loudly, spoke severely. 'Baby,' they said, 'if you have any dealings with the niece of Farmer Johns we'll kick you out of this.'

It was a romantic situation; love has proverbially thriven in the atmosphere of a family feud. The Baby felt this, but he felt also that he could not run the risk of being kicked out of the Syndicate. The Baby did sums in a big hot bank all day; he had no dollars to spare, there was no other place upon the lake where he could afford to live, and he had a canoe of his own which his uncle had given him. Hiawatha did not love the darling of his creation more than the Baby loved his cedar-wood canoe. All this made him conceal carefully that mysterious sensation of unrestful delight which he experienced every time he saw Miss Helen Johns. This, at least, in the first stage of his love-sickness.

Fate was hard; she led the Baby, all cheerful and unsuspecting, to spend an evening at a picnic tea in a wood a mile or more from the shore. Mischievous Fate! She led him to flirt frivolously until long after dark with a girl that he cared nothing at all about, and then whispered in his ear that he would get home the quicker if in the obscurity he ran across the Johns' farm. Fate, laughing in her sleeve, led him to pass with noiseless footsteps quite near the house itself; then she was content to leave him to his own devices, for through the open window he caught sight of Helen Johns doing her gymnastics. Her figure was all aglow with the yellow lamplight; she was happy in the poetry of her motions and in the delight that the family circle took in watching them. The Baby was in the dark and the falling dew; he was uncomfortable, for he had to stand on tiptoe, but nothing would have induced him to ease his strained attitude. The pangs of a fierce discontent took possession of his breast.

Art was consulted in the gymnasium in which Miss Johns had studied; the theory was that only that which is beautiful is healthful. Sometimes she poised herself on tiptoe with one arm waved toward heaven, an angel all ready, save the wings, for aerial flight. Sometimes she seemed to hover above the ground like a running Mercury. Sometimes she stood, a hand behind her ear, listening as a maid might who was flying from danger in some enchanted land. Often she waved her hands slowly as if weaving a spell.

A spell was cast over the soul of the Baby; he held himself against the extreme edge of a verandah; his mouth remained open as if he were drinking in the beams from the bright interior and all the beautiful pictures that they brought with them. It was only when the show was over that he noiselessly relaxed his strained muscles, and crept away over the dew-drenched grass, hiding under the shadow of maple boughs, guilty trespasser that he was.

After that, one evening, Farmer Johns and his niece had an errand to run; at a house about two miles away on the other side of the bay there was a parcel which it was their duty to fetch. They had started out in the calm white light of summer twilight; a slight wind blew, just enough to take their sail creeping over the rippled water, no more. The lake within a mile of the shore was thickly strewn with small yachts, boats, and canoes. Upon the green shore the colours of the gaily painted villas could still be seen among the trees, and most conspicuous of all the great barn-like boat-house of the Syndicate, which was painted red. By and by the light grew dimmer and stars came out in the sky; then one could no longer distinguish the outline of the shore, but in every window a light twinkled, like a fallen star.

Helen sat in the side of the tiny ship as near the prow as might be; her uncle sat at the tiller and managed the sails. They were a silent pair, the one in a suit of tweeds with a slouch hat, the other in a muslin gown with a veil of black lace wrapped about her head.

The sailing of the boat was an art which Helen had not exerted herself to understand; she only knew that every now and then there was a minute of bluster and excitement when her uncle shouted to her, and she was obliged to cower while the beam and the sail swung over her head with a sound of fluttering wind. When she was allowed to take her seat after this little hurly-burly the two lighthouses upon the lake and all the lights upon the shore had performed a mysterious dance; they all lay in different places and in different relation to one another. She had not learned to know the different lights. When dusk came she was lost to her own knowledge. She only knew that the sweet air blew upon her face and that she trusted her uncle.

The moonless night closed in. Now and then, as they passed a friendly craft, evening greetings were spoken across the dark space. By the time they got to the place for which they were bound they were floating almost alone upon the black water.

Johns descended into a small boat and secured the sailing-boat to the buoy which belonged to the house whither he was going, or rather, he thought that he secured it.

Helen heard the plash of his oars until he landed. The shore was but twenty yards away, but she could hardly see it. The sail hung limp, wrinkled, and motionless. She began to sing, and there alone in the darkness she fell in love with her own voice, and sang on and on, thinking only of the music.

Her uncle was long in coming; she became conscious of movement in the water, like the swell of waves outside rolling into the cove. She heard the sound of swaying among all the trees on the shore. She looked up and saw that the stars of one half the sky were obscured, that the darkness was rolling onward toward those that were still shining.

She stopped her own singing, and the song of the waters beneath her prow was curiously like the familiar sound when the boat was in motion. She strained her eyes, but could not see how far she was from the near shore. She looked on the other side and it seemed to her that the lights on the home-ward side of the bay were moving. That meant that she was moving, at what speed and in what direction she had no means of knowing.

She stood up, lifted her arms in the air and shouted for help; again and again her shouts rang out, and she did not wait to hear an answer. She thought that the masters of other boats had seen the storm coming and gone into shore.

She was out now full in the whistling wind and the boat was leaping. Her throat was hoarse with calling, her eyes dazzled by straining.

When she turned in despair from scanning the shore she saw a sight that was very strange. At the tiller where her uncle ought to have been, and just in the attitude in which he always stood, was a slight white figure. A new sort of fear took possession of Helen; at first she could not speak or move, but kept her eyes wide open lest the ghostly thing should come near her unawares.

This illusion might be a forerunner of the death to which she was hastening, the Angel of Death himself steering her to destruction!

Then in a strange voice came the familiar shout, the warning to hold down her head. The sail swung over in the customary way; every movement of the figure at the helm was so familiar and natural that comfort began to steal into her heart. Plainly, whoever had taken command of the drifting craft knew his business; might it not be an angel of life, and not of death?

Now in plain sober reality, as her pulses ceased to dance so wildly, Helen could not believe that her companion was angel or spirit. One does not believe in such companionship readily.

She scrambled to her knees and steadied herself by the seat. 'Who are you?' she asked.

The figure made a gesture that seemed like a signal of peace, but no answer was given.

The lights upon her own part of the shore were now not far distant. She looked above and saw breaks in the darkness that had hidden the stars; the clouds were passing over.

The squall that was taking them upon their journey was still whistling and blowing, but she feared its force less as she realised that she was nearing home.

She desired greatly to work herself along the boat and touch the sailor curiously with her hand, but she was afraid to do it, and that for two reasons: if he was a spirit she had reason for shrinking from such contact, and if he was a man—well, in that case she also saw objections.

The man at the helm dropped the sail; for a minute or two he stood not far from Helen as he busied himself with it.

'Who are you?' she asked again, but she still had not courage to put out her hand and touch him.

There was a little wooden wharf upon the shore, and to this the sailor held the boat while Helen sprung out. Her feet were no sooner safe upon it than the boat was allowed to move away. She saw the black mast and the white figure recede together and disappear in the darkness.

Johns had to walk home by the shore, and in no small anxiety. When he saw that his niece was safe he chuckled over her in burly fashion.

'Then I suppose,' he said, 'that some fellow got aboard her between the puffs of wind. I hope it was none of those Syndicate men; they're a fast lot. What was his name? What had he to say for himself?'

'She was flying far too fast for any one to get aboard,' asserted Helen. 'I don't know what his name was; he didn't say anything; I don't know where he went to.'

Then the uncle suggested toddy in an undertone to his wife. The aunt looked over her spectacles with solicitude, and then arose and put her niece to bed.

When Helen was left alone she lay looking out at the stars that again were shining; she wondered and wondered; perhaps the reason that she came to no definite conclusion was that she liked the state of wonder better. Helen was a modern girl; she had friends who were spiritualists, friends who were theosophists, friends who were 'high church' and believed in visions of angels.

In the morning Johns' boat was found tethered as usual to the buoy in front of his house.

Long before this the Syndicate had suspected the Baby's attachment. The strength of that attachment they did not suspect in the least; never having seen depths in the Baby, they supposed there were none. They had fallen into the habit of taking the Baby by the throat and asking him in trenchant tones, 'Have you spoken to her?' The Baby found it convenient to be able to give a truthful negative, not that he would have minded fibbing in the least, but in this case the fib would certainly have been detected; he could not expect his goddess to enter into any clandestine parley and keep his secret.

Had the Baby taken the matter less to heart he would have been more rash in asserting his independence, but he meditated some great step and 'lay low.' What or when the irrevocable move was to be he had no definite idea, the thought of it was only as yet an exalted swelling of mind and heart.

There was a period, after the affair of the boat, when he spent a good deal of time haunting the sacred precincts of the house where Helen lived. The precincts consisted of a dusty lane, a flat, ugly fenced field where a cow and a horse grazed, and a place immediately about the house covered with thick grass and shaded by maple trees. There were some shrubs too, behind which one could hide if necessary, but they were prickly, uncomfortable to nestle against, and the unmown grass absorbed an immense quantity of dew. In imagination, however, the Baby wandered on pastoral slopes and in classic shades. At first he paid his visits at night when the family were asleep, and he slipped about so quietly that no one but the horse and the cow need know where he went or what he did. At length, however, he grew more bold, and took his way across the maple grove going and coming from other evening errands. Trespassing is not much of a fault at the lake of St. Jean. The Baby became expert in dodging hastily by, with his eyes upon the windows; the dream of his life was to see the gymnastics performed again; at length it was realised.

The thing we desire most is often the thing that brings us woe.

The Baby caught sight of Helen practising her beautiful attitudes. He hung on to a rail of the verandah, and gazed and gazed. Then he took his life in his hand, as it were, and swung himself up on the verandah; he moved like a cat, for he supposed that the stalwart Johns was within. From this better point of view, peeping about, he now surveyed the whole interior of the small drawing-room. What was his joy to find that there was no family circle of spectators; Helen was exercising herself alone! He hugged to himself the idea that the gracious little spectacle was all his own.

Now, as it happened, the Baby in his secret hauntings of this house had not been so entirely unseen as he supposed. Certainly Johns had never caught sight of him or he would have been made aware of it, but Helen, since the night of the boating mystery, had more than once caught sight of a white figure passing among the maple shadows. These glimpses had added point and colour to all the mystical fancies that clustered round the helmsman of the yacht. She hardly believed that some guardian spirit was protecting her in visible semblance, or that some human Prince Charming, more kingly and wise than any man that she had yet seen, had chosen this peculiar mode of courting her; but her wish was the father of thoughts that fluttered between these two explanations, and hope was fed by the conviction that no man who could see her every day if he chose would behave in this romantic manner.

So upon this evening it happened that when Helen, poised upon her toes and beating the time of imaginary music with her waving hand, caught sight of the Baby's white flannels through the dark window pane, she recognised the figure of her dreams and, having long ago made up her mind what to do when she had the chance, she ran to the French window without an instant's delay, and let herself out of it with graceful speed.

The Baby, panic-stricken, felt but one desire, that she might never know who had played the spy. He threw himself over the verandah rail with an acrobat's skill, and with head in front and nimble feet he darted off under the maple trees: but he had to reckon with an agile maiden. Helen had grown tired of a fruitless dream. A crescent moon gave her enough light to pursue; lights of friendly houses on all sides assured her of safety.

Over the log fence into the pasture vaulted the Baby, convinced now that he had escaped. Vain thought! He had not considered the new education. Over the fence vaulted Helen as lightly: in a minute the Baby heard her on his track.

The cow and the horse had never before seen so pretty a chase. There was excitement in the air and they sniffed it; they were both young and they began to run too. The sound of heavy galloping filled the place.

Of the two sides of the field which lay farthest from the house, one looked straight over to the glaring Syndicate windows, and one to the rugged bank that rose from the shore. The Baby's one mad desire was to conceal his identity. He made for the dark shore. Another fence, he thought, or the rocks of the bank, would surely deter her flying feet.

They both vaulted the second fence. The Baby still kept his distance ahead, but when he heard that she too sprang over, a fear for her safety darted across his excited brain. Would those cantering animals jump after and crush her beneath their feet, or would she fall on the rocks of the shore which he was going to leap over? The Baby intended to leap the shore and lose his identity by a swim in the black water.

It was this darting thought of anxiety for Helen that made him hesitate in his leap. Too late to stop, the hesitation was fatal to fair performance. The Baby came down on the shore with a groan, his leg under him and his head on the earth.

He saw Helen pause beside him, deliberately staring through the dim light.

'I'm not hurt,' said the Baby, because he knew that he was.

'You are only the Syndicate Baby!' she exclaimed with interrogatory indignation.

'I'm going to cut the Syndicate; I'll never have anything more to do with them, Miss Johns.'

Helen did not understand the significance of this eager assurance.

The Baby's brain became clear; he tried to rise, but could not.

'Are you not hurt?' she asked.

'Oh! no, not at all, Miss Johns' (he spoke with eager, youthful politeness); 'it's only—it's only that I've doubled my leg and can't quite get up.'

The Baby was pretty tough; a few bumps and breaks were matters of small importance to him; his employers had already bargained with him not to play football as he gained so many holidays in bandages thereby. Just now he was quick enough to take in the situation: Helen despised him, it was neck or nothing, he must do all his pleading once for all, and the compensation for a broken leg was this, that she could not have the inhumanity to leave him till he declared himself fit to be left. He pulled himself round, and straightened the leg before him as he sat.

Helen was not accustomed to falls and injuries; she was shocked and pitiful, but she was stern too; she felt that she had the right.

'I'm very sorry; I will go and get some one to help you, but you know it's entirely your own fault. What have you been behaving in this way for?'

'If you'd only believe me,' pleaded the Baby, 'I—I—you really can have no idea, Miss Johns——'

If she could have seen how white and earnest his young face was she might have listened to him, but the light was too dim.

'I want to know this' (severely), 'Was it you who got on to our sailing boat that other night?'

'I thought you were alarmed, Miss Johns, and in a rather—rather dangerous situation.' The Baby was using his prettiest tones, such as he used when he went out to a dance.

If she could have known how heroic it was to utter these mincing accents over a broken leg she might have been touched; but she did not even know that the leg was broken. She went on rigidly, 'How could you get aboard when she was sailing so fast? Where did you come from?'

'Oh! it wasn't difficult at all, I assure you, Miss Johns; I only got on between the gusts of the wind. I swam from the Syndicate boat. You know, of course, one of us must have gone when we heard you singing out for help, and I was only too happy, frightfully happy, I am sure—and it was nothing at all to do. If you were much here, and saw us swimming and boating, you'd see fellows do that sort of thing every day.'

It was a delicate instinct that made him underrate the feat he had performed, for he would have been so glad to have her feel under the slightest obligation to him; but as far as her perceptions were concerned, the beauty of his sentiment was lost, for when he said that the thing that he had done was easy, she believed him.

She still interrogated. 'Why did you not speak and tell me who you were?'

There had been an ostensible and a real reason for this conduct on the Baby's part. The first was the order which his friends in the Syndicate boat had called after him as he jumped into the water, the second he spoke out now for the first time to Helen.

'I didn't speak, Miss Johns, because I—I couldn't. Oh! you have no idea—really, you know, if you'd only believe me—I love you so much, Miss Johns, I couldn't say anything or I'd have said more than I ought, the sort of thing I'm saying now, you know.'

'Tut!' said Helen sharply, 'what rubbish!'

'Oh! but Miss Johns—yes, I knew you would think it was all rot and that sort of thing; that was the reason I didn't say it in the boat, and that is the reason I've never dared to ask to be introduced to you, Miss Johns. It wasn't that I cared for the Syndicate. You see, the worst of it is, I'm so confoundedly poor; they give me no sort of a screw at all at the bank, I do assure you. But, Miss Johns, my uncle is one of the directors; he's sure to give me a leg up before very long, and if you only knew—oh! really if you only knew——,' words failed him quite when he tried to describe the strength of his devotion. He only sat before her, supporting himself with both hands on the ground and looking up with a face that had no rounded outline now, but was white, passionate and pathetic; he could only murmur, 'really, really—if you only knew——'

The darkness barred her vision and the extravagant words in the boyish voice sounded ridiculous to her.

'I will believe you,' she said, 'if you want me to, but it doesn't make any difference; I am sorry you are hurt, and sorry you have taken this fancy for me. I think you will find some other girl very soon whom you will like better; I hope you will. There isn't' (she was becoming vehement), 'there isn't the slightest atom of use in your caring for me.'

'Isn't there?' asked the Baby despairingly. 'I wish you would say that you will think over it, Miss Johns; I wish you would say that I might know you and come and see you sometimes. I'd cut the Syndicate and make it up with your uncle.'

'It wouldn't be the slightest use,' she repeated excitedly.

'Of course if you go on saying that, I sha'n't bore you any more, but do, Miss Johns, do, do just think a minute before you say it again.'

A note in his voice touched her at last; she paused for the required minute and then answered gently; her gentleness carried conviction. 'I could never care for you. You are not at all the sort of man I could ever care for, and I am going back to New York in a few days, so you won't be troubled by seeing me any more.'

When Helen rushed breathless to the door of the Syndicate boat-house and told of the accident, the bachelors went out in a body and bore the Baby home.

They petted him until he was on his feet again. They gained some vague knowledge of his interview with Helen, and he kept a very distinct remembrance of it. Both he and they believed that his first attempt at love had come to nothing, but that was a mistake.

The Baby had loved with some genuine fervour, and his grief made a man of him.



VIII

WITCHCRAFT

A young minister was walking through the streets of a small town in the island of Cape Breton. The minister was only a theological student who had been sent to preach in this remote place during his summer holiday. The town was at once very primitive and very modern. Many log-houses still remained in it; almost all the other houses were built of wood. The little churches, which represented as many sects, looked like the churches in a child's Dutch village. The town hall had only a brick facing. On the hillsides that surrounded the town far and wide were many fields, in which the first stumps were still standing, charred by the fires that had been kindled to kill them. There were also patches of forest still to be seen among these fields, where the land had not yet been cleared. In spite of all this, the town was very advanced, every improvement being of the newest kind because so recently achieved. Upon huge ungainly tree-trunks roughly erected along the streets, electric lamps hung, and telephone wires crossed and recrossed one another from roof to roof. There was even an electric tram that ran straight through the town and some distance into the country on either side. The general store had a gaily dressed lay figure in its window,—a female figure,—and its gown was labelled 'The Latest Parisian Novelty.'

The theological student was going out to take tea. He was a tall, active fellow, and his long strides soon brought him to a house a little way out of the town, which was evidently the abode of some degree of taste and luxury. The house was of wood, painted in dull colours of red and brown; it had large comfortable verandahs under shingled roofs. Its garden was not old-fashioned in the least; but though it aspired to trimness the grass had not grown there long enough to make a good lawn, so the ribbon flower-beds and plaster vases of flowers lacked the green-velvet setting that would have made them appear better. The student was the less likely to criticise the lawn because a very pretty, fresh-looking girl met him at the gate.

She was really a fine girl. Her dress showed rather more effort at fashion than was quite in keeping with her very rural surroundings, and her speech and accent betrayed a childhood spent among uneducated folk and only overlaid by more recent schooling. Her face had the best parts of beauty: health and good sense were written there, also flashes of humour and an habitual sweet seriousness. She had chanced to be at the gate gathering flowers. Her reception of the student was frank, and yet there was just a touch of blushing dignity about it which suggested that she took a special interest in him. The student also, it would appear, took an interest in her, for, on their way to the house, he made a variety of remarks upon the weather which proved that he was a little excited and unable to observe that he was talking nonsense.

In a little while the family were gathered round the tea-table. The girl, Miss Torrance by name, sat at the head of the table. Her father was a banker and insurance agent. He sat opposite his eldest daughter and did the honours of the meal with the utmost hospitality, yet with reserve of manner caused by his evident consciousness that his grammar and manners were not equal to those of his children and their guest. There were several daughters and two sons younger than Miss Torrance. They talked with vivacity.

The conversation soon turned upon the fact that the abundant supply of cream to which the family were accustomed was not forthcoming. Strawberries were being served with the tea; some sort of cold pudding was also on the table; and all this to be eaten without cream,—these young people might have been asked to go without their supper, so indignant they were.

Now, Mr. Torrance had been decorously trying to talk of the young minister's last sermon and of the affairs of the small Scotch church of which he was an elder, and Miss Torrance was ably seconding his effort by comparing the sentiments of the sermon to a recent magazine article, but against her will she was forced to attend to the young people's clamour about the cream.

It seemed that Trilium, the cow, had recently refused to give her milk. Mary Torrance was about eighteen; she suddenly gave it as her opinion that Trilium was bewitched; there was no other explanation, she said, no other possible explanation of Trilium's extraordinary conduct.

A flush mounted Miss Torrance's face; she frowned at her sister when the student was not looking.

'It's wonderful, the amount of witchcraft we have about here, Mr. Howitt,' said the master of the house tentatively to the minister.

Howitt had taken Mary's words in jest. He gave his smooth-shaven face the twist that with him always expressed ideas wonderful or grotesque. It was a strong, thin face, full of intelligence.

'I never could have conceived anything like it,' said he. 'I come across witch tales here, there, everywhere; and the marvellous thing is, some of the people really seem to believe them.'

The younger members of the Torrance family fixed their eyes upon him with apprehensive stare.

'You can't imagine anything more degrading,' continued the student, who came from afar.

'Degrading, of course.' Mr. Torrance sipped his tea hastily. 'The Cape Breton people are superstitious, I believe.'

An expression that might have betokened a new resolution appeared upon the fine face of the eldest daughter.

'We are Cape Breton people, father,' she said, with dignified reproach. 'I hope'—here a timid glance, as if imploring support—'I hope we know better than to place any real faith in these degrading superstitions.'

Howitt observed nothing but the fine face and the words that appeared to him natural.

Torrance looked at them both with the air of an honest man who was still made somewhat cowardly by new-fashioned propriety.

'I never put much o' my faith in these things myself,' he said at last in broad accents, 'still,'—an honest shake of the head—'there's queer things happens.'

'It is like going back to the Middle Ages'—Howitt was still impervious—'to hear some of these poor creatures talk. I never thought it would be my lot to come across anything so delightfully absurd.'

'Perhaps for the sake of the ministry ye'd better be careful how ye say your mind about it,' suggested Mr. Torrance; 'in the hearing of the poor and uneducated, of course, I mean. But if ye like to make a study o' that sort of thing, I'd advise ye to go and have a talk with Mistress Betty M'Leod. She's got a great repertory of tales, has Mistress Betty.'

Mary spoke again. Mary was a young woman who had the courage of her opinions. 'And if you go to Mistress M'Leod, Mr. Howitt, will you just be kind enough to ask her how to cure poor Trilium? and don't forget anything of what she says.'

Miss Torrance gave her sister a word of reproof. There was still upon her face the fine glow born of a new resolution never again to listen to a word of witchcraft.

As for Howitt, there came across his clever face the whimsical look which denoted that he understood Mary's fun perfectly. 'I will go to-morrow,' he cried. 'When the wise woman has told me who has bewitched Trilium, we will make a waxen figure and stick pins in it.'

The next day Howitt walked over the hills in search of Mistress Betty M'Leod. The lake of the Bras d'Or held the sheen of the western sun in its breast. The student walked upon green slopes far above the water, and watched the outline of the hills on the other side of the inlet, and thought upon many things. He thought upon religion and philosophy, for he was religious and studious; he thought upon practical details of his present work, for he was anxious for the welfare of the souls under his charge; but on whatever subject his thoughts dwelt, they came back at easy intervals to the fair, dignified face of his new friend, Miss Torrance.

'There's a fine girl for you,' he said to himself repeatedly, with boyish enthusiasm. He thought, too, how nobly her life would be spent if she chose to be the helpmeet of a Christian minister. He wondered whether Mary could take her sister's place in the home circle. Yet with all this he made no decision as to his own course. He was discreet, and in minds like his decisions upon important matters are fruits of slow growth.

He came at last to a farm, a very goodly farm for so hilly a district. It lay, a fertile flat, in a notch of the green hillside. When he reached the house yard he asked for Mistress Betty M'Leod, and was led to her presence. The old dame sat at her spinning-wheel in a farm kitchen. Her white hair was drawn closely, like a thin veil, down the sides of her head and pinned at the back. Her features were small, her eyes bright; she was not unlike a squirrel in her sharp little movements and quick glances. She wore a small shawl pinned around her spare shoulders. Her skirts fell upon the treadle of the spinning-wheel. The kitchen in which she sat was unused; there was no fire in the stove. The brick floor, the utensils hanging on the walls, had the appearance of undisturbed rest. Doors and windows were open to the view of the green slopes and the golden sea beneath them.

'You come from Canada,' said the old dame. She left her spinning with a certain interested formality of manner.

'From Montreal,' said he.

'That's the same. Canada is a terrible way off.'

'And now,' he said, 'I hear there are witches in this part of the land.' Whereupon he smiled in an incredulous cultured way.

She nodded her head as if she had gauged his thought. 'Ay, there's many a minister believes in them if they don't let on they do. I mind——'

'Yes,' said he.

'I mind how my sister went out early one morning, and saw a witch milking one of our cows.'

'How did you know she was a witch?'

'Och, she was a neighbour we knew to be a witch real well. My sister didn't anger her. It's terrible unlucky to vex them. But would you believe it? as long as we had that cow her cream gave no butter. We had to sell her and get another. And one time—it was years ago, when Donald and me was young—the first sacrament came round——'

'Yes,' said he, looking sober.

'And all the milk of our cows would give hardly any butter for a whole year! And at house-cleaning time, there, above the milk shelves, what did they find but a bit of hair rope! Cows' and horses' hair it was. Oh, it was terrible knotted, and knotted just like anything! So then of course we knew.'

'Knew what?'

'Why, that the milk was bewitched. We took the rope away. Well, that very day more butter came at the churning, and from that time on, more, but still not so much as ought by rights to have come. Then, one day, I thought to unknot the rope, and I undid, and undid, and undid. Well, when I had got it undone, that day the butter came as it should!'

'But what about the sacrament?' asked he.

'That was the time of the year it was. Oh, but I could tell you a sad, sad story of the wickedness of witches. When Donald and me was young, and had a farm up over on the other hill, well, there was a poor widow with seven daughters. It was hard times then for us all, but for her, she only had a bit of flat land with some bushes, and four cows and some sheep, and, you see, she sold butter to put meat in the children's mouths. Butter was all she could sell.

'Well, there came to live near her on the hill an awful wicked old man and woman. I'll tell you who their daughter is: she's married to Mr. M'Curdy, who keeps the store. The old man and his wife were awful wicked to the widow and the fatherless. I'll tell you what they did. Well, the widow's butter failed. Not one bit more could she get. The milk was just the same, but not one bit of butter. "Oh," said she, "it's a hard world, and me a widow!" But she was a brave woman, bound to get along some way. So, now that she had nothing to sell to buy meal, she made curds of the milk, and fed the children on that.

'Well, one day the old man came in to see her in a neighbouring way, and she, being a good woman,—oh, but she was a good woman!—set a dish of curds before him. "Oh," said he, "these are very fine curds!" So he went away, and next day she put the rennet in the milk as usual, but not a bit would the curd come. "Oh," said she, "but I must put something in the children's mouths!" She was a fine woman, she was. So she kept the lambs from the sheep all night, and next morning she milked the sheep. Sheep's milk is rich, and she put rennet in that, and fed the children on the curd.

'So one day the old man came in again. He was a wicked one; he was dreadful selfish; and as he was there, she, being a hospitable woman, gave him some of the curd. "That's good curd," said he. Next day, when she put the rennet in the sheep's milk, not a bit would the curd come. She felt it bitterly, poor woman; but she had a fine spirit, and she fed the children on a few bits of potato she had growing.

'Well, one day, the eldest daughter got up very early to spin—in the twilight of the dawn it was—and she looked out, and there was the old woman coming from her house on the hill, with a shawl over her head and a tub in her arms. Oh, but she was a really wicked one! for I'll tell you what she did. Well, the girl watched and wondered, and in the twilight of the dawn she saw the old woman crouch down by one of the alder bushes, and put her tub under it, and go milking with her hands; and after a bit she lifted her tub, that seemed to have something in it, and set it over against another alder bush, and went milking with her hands again. So the girl said, "Mother, mother, wake up, and see what the neighbour woman is doing!" So the mother looked out, and there, in the twilight of the dawn, she saw her four cows in the bit of land, among the alder bushes, and the old neighbour woman milking away at a bush. And then the old woman moved her tub likewise to another bush, and likewise, and likewise, until she had milked four bushes, and she took up her tub, and it seemed awful heavy, and she had her shawl over it, and was going up the hill.

'So the mother said to the girl, "Run, run, and see what she has got in it." For they weren't up to the ways of witches, and they were astonished like. But the girl, she said, "Oh, mother, I don't like." Well, she was timid, anyway, the eldest girl. But the second girl was a romping thing, not afraid of anything, so they sent her. By this time the wicked old woman was high on the hill; so she ran and ran, but she could not catch her before she was in at her own door; but that second girl, she was not afraid of anything, so she runs in at the door, too. Now, in those days they used to have sailing-chests that lock up; they had iron bars over them, so you could keep anything in that was a secret. They got them from the ships, and this old woman kept her milk in hers. So when the girl bounced in at the door, there she saw that wicked old woman pouring milk out of the tub into her chest, and the chest half full of milk, and the old man looking on! So then, of course they knew where the good of their milk had gone.'

The story was finished. The old dame looked at the student and nodded her head with eyes that awaited some expression of formal disapproval.

'What did they know?' asked he.

'Know! Oh, why, that the old woman was an awful wicked witch, and she'd taken the good of their milk.'

'Oh, indeed!' said the student; and then, 'But what became of the widow and the seven daughters?'

'Well, of course she had to sell her cows and get others, and then it was all right. But that old man and his wife were that selfish they'd not have cared if she'd starved. And I tell you, it's one of the things witches can do, to take the good out of food, if they've an eye to it; they can take every bit of nouriture out of it that's in it. There were two young men that went from here to the States—that's Boston, ye know. Well, pretty soon one, that was named M'Pherson, came back, looking so white-like and ill that nothing would do him any good. He drooped and he died. Well, years after, the other, whose name was McVey, came back. He was of the same wicked stock as the old folks I've been telling ye of. Well, one day, he was in low spirits like, and he chanced to be talking to my father, and says he, "It's one of the sins I'll have to 'count for at the Judgment that I took the good out of M'Pherson's food till he died. I sat opposite to him at the table when we were at Boston together, and I took the good out of his food, and it's the blackest sin I done," said he.

'Oh, they're awful wicked people, these witches! One of them offered to teach my sister how to take the good out of food, but my sister was too honest; she said, "I'll learn to keep the good of my own, if ye like." However, the witch wouldn't teach her that because she wouldn't learn the other. Oh, but I cheated a witch once. Donald, he brought me a pound of tea. 'Twasn't always we got tea in those days, so I put it in the tin box; and there was just a little over, so I was forced to leave that in the paper bag. Well, that day a neighbour came in from over the hill. I knew fine she was a witch; so we sat and gossiped a bit; she was a real pleasant woman, and she sat and sat, and the time of day went by. So I made her a cup of tea, her and me; but I used the drawing that was in the paper bag. Said she, "I just dropped in to borrow a bit of tea going home, but if that's all ye have"—Oh, but I could see her eyeing round; so I was too sharp for her, and I says, "Well, I've no more in the paper just now, but if ye'll wait till Donald comes, maybe he'll bring some." So she saw I was too sharp for her, and away she went. If I'd as much as opened the tin, she'd have had every grain of good out of it with her eyes.'

At first the student had had the grave and righteous intention of denouncing the superstition, but gradually he had perceived that to do so would be futile. The artistic soul of him was caught by the curious recital. He remembered now the bidding of Mary Torrance, and thought with pleasure that he would go back and repeat these strange stories to Miss Torrance, and smile at them in her company.

'Now, for instance,' he said aloud, 'if a good cow, that is a great pet in the family, should suddenly cease to give her milk, how would you set about curing her?'

The dame's small bright eyes grew keener. She moved to her spinning-wheel and gave it a turn. 'Ay,' she said, 'and whose is the cow?'

He was not without a genuine curiosity. 'What would you do for any cow in that case?'

'And is it Torrance's cow?' asked Mistress Betty. 'Och, but I know it's Torrance's cow that ye're speiring for.'

The young minister was recalled to a sense of his duty. He rose up with brisk dignity. 'I only asked you to see what you would say. I do not believe the stories you have been telling me.'

She nodded her head, taking his assertion as a matter of course. 'But I'll tell you exactly what they must do,' she said. 'Ye can tell Miss Torrance she must get a pound of pins.'

'A pound of pins!' said he.

'Ay, it's a large quantity, but they'll have them at the store, for it's more than sometimes they're wanted—a time here, a time there—against the witches. And she's to boil them in whatever milk the cow gives, and she's to pour them boiling hot into a hole in the ground; and when she's put the earth over them, and the sod over that, she's to tether the animal there, and milk it there, and the milk will come right enough.'

While the student was making his way home along the hillside, through field and forest, the long arm of the sea turned to red and gold in the light of the clouds which the sun had left behind when it sank down over the distant region that the Cape Breton folk call Canada.

The minister meditated upon what he had heard, but not for long. He could not bring his mind into such attitude towards the witch-tales as to conceive of belief in them as an actual part of normal human experience. Insanity, or the love of making a good story out of notions which have never been seriously entertained, must compose the warp and woof of the fabric of such strange imaginings. It is thus we account for most experiences we do not understand.

The next evening the Torrance family were walking to meeting. The student joined himself to Miss Torrance. He greeted her with the whimsical look of grave humour. 'You are to take a pound of pins,' he said.

'I do not believe it would do any good,' she interrupted eagerly.

It struck him as very curious that she should assert her unbelief. He was too nonplussed to go on immediately. Then he supposed it was part of the joke, and proceeded to give the other details.

'Mr. Howitt,'—a tremulous pause,—'it is very strange about poor Trilium, she has always been such a good, dear cow; the children are very fond of her, and my mother was very fond of her when she was a heifer. The last summer before she died, Trilium fed out of mother's hand, and now—she's in perfect health as far as we can see, but father says that if she keeps on refusing to give her milk he will be obliged to sell her.'

Miss Torrance, who was usually strong and dignified, spoke now in a very appealing voice.

'Couldn't you get an old farmer to look at her, or a vet?'

'But why do you think she has suddenly stopped giving milk?' persisted the girl.

'I am very sorry, but I really don't know anything about animals,' said he.

'Oh, then if you don't know anything about them——' She paused. There had been such an evident tone of relief in her voice that he wondered much what would be coming next. In a moment she said, 'I quite agreed with you the other night when you said the superstition about witchcraft was degrading.'

'No one could think otherwise.' He was much puzzled at the turn of her thought.

'Still, of course, about animals, old people like Mistress Betty M'Leod may know something.'

As they talked they were walking down the street in the calm of the summer evening to the prayer meeting. The student's mind was intent upon his duties, for, as they neared the little white-washed church, many groups were seen coming from all sides across the grassy space in which it stood. He was an earnest man, and his mind became occupied with the thought of the spiritual needs of these others who were flocking to hear him preach and pray.

Inside the meeting-room, unshaded oil lamps flared upon a congregation most serious and devout. The student felt that their earnestness and devotion laid upon him the greater responsibility; he also felt much hindered in his speech because of their ignorance and remote ways of thought. It was a comfort to him to feel that there was at least one family among his hearers whose education would enable them to understand him clearly. He looked with satisfaction at the bench where Mr. Torrance sat with his children. He looked with more satisfaction to where Miss Torrance sat at the little organ. She presided over it with dignity and sweet seriousness. She drew music even out of its squeaking keys.

A few days after that prayer meeting the student happened to be in the post-office. It was a small, rough place; a wooden partition shut off the public from the postmistress and her helpers. He was waiting for some information for which he had asked; he was forced to stand outside the little window in this partition. He listened to women's voices speaking on the other side, as one listens to that which in no way concerns oneself.

'It's just like her, stuck up as she is since she came from school, setting herself and her family up to be better than other folks.'

'Perhaps they were out of them at the store,' said a gentler voice.

'Oh, don't tell me. It's on the sly she's doing it, and then pretending to be grander than other folks.'

Then the postmistress came to the window with the required information. When she saw who was there, she said something else also.

'There's a parcel come for Miss Torrance,—if you happen to be going up that way,' the postmistress simpered.

The student became aware for the first time that his friendship with Miss Torrance was a matter of public interest. He was not entirely displeased. 'I will take the parcel,' he said.

As he went along the sunny road, he felt so light-hearted that, hardly thinking what he did, he began throwing up the parcel and catching it again in his hands. It was not large; it was very tightly done up in thick paper, and had an ironmonger's label attached; so that, though he paid small attention, it did not impress him as a thing that could be easily injured. Something, however, did soon make a sharp impression upon him; once as he caught the parcel he felt his hand deeply pricked. Looking closely, he saw that a pin was working its way through the thick paper. After that he walked more soberly, and did not play ball. He remembered what he had heard at the post-office. The parcel was certainly addressed to Miss Torrance. It was very strange. He remembered with displeasure now the assumption of the postmistress that he would be glad to carry this parcel.

He delivered the pound of pins at the door without making a call. His mind had never come to any decision with regard to his feeling for Miss Torrance, and now he was more undecided than ever. He was full of curiosity about the pins. He found it hard to believe that they were to be used for a base purpose, but suspicion had entered his mind. The knowledge that the eyes of the little public were upon him made him realise that he could not continue to frequent the house merely to satisfy his curiosity.

He was destined to know more.

That night, long after dark, he was called to visit a dying man, and the messenger led him somewhat out of the town.

He performed his duty to the dying with wistful eagerness. The spirit passed from earth while he yet knelt beside the bed. When he was returning home alone in the darkness, he felt his soul open to the power of unseen spirit, and to him the power of the spiritual unseen was the power of God.

Walking on the soft, quiet road, he came near the house where he had lately loved to visit, and his eye was arrested by seeing a lantern twinkling in the paddock where Trilium grazed. He saw the forms of two women moving in its little circle of light; they were digging in the ground.

He felt that he had a right to make sure of the thing he suspected. The women were not far from a fence by which he could pass, and he did pass that way, looking and looking till a beam of the lantern fell full on the bending faces. When he saw that Miss Torrance was actually there, he went on without speaking.

After that two facts became known in the village, each much discussed in its own way; yet they were not connected with each other in the common mind. One was that the young minister had ceased to call frequently upon Miss Torrance; the other, that Trilium, the cow, was giving her milk.



IX

THE GIRL WHO BELIEVED IN THE SAINTS

Marie Verine was a good girl, but she was not beautiful or clever. She lived with her mother in one flat of an ordinary-looking house in a small Swiss town. Had they been poorer or richer there might have been something picturesque about their way of life, but, as it was, there was nothing. Their pleasures were few and simple; yet they were happier than most people are—but this they did not know.

'It is a pity we are not richer and have not more friends,' Madame Verine would remark, 'for then we could perhaps get Marie a husband; as it is, there is no chance.'

Madame Verine usually made this remark to the Russian lady who lived upstairs. The Russian lady had a name that could not be pronounced; she spoke many languages, and took an interest in everything. She would reply—

'No husband! It is small loss. I have seen much of the world.'

Marie had seen little of the world, and she did not believe the Russian lady. She never said anything about it, except at her prayers, and then she used to ask the saints to pray for her that she might have a husband.

Now, in a village about half a day's journey from the town where Marie dwelt, there lived a young girl whose name was Celeste. Her mother had named her thus because her eyes were blue as the sky above, and her face was round as the round moon, and her hair and eyelashes were like sunbeams, or like moonlight when it shines in yellow halo through the curly edges of summer clouds. The good people of this village were a hard-working, hard-headed set of men and women. While Celeste's father lived they had waxed proud about her beauty, for undoubtedly she was a credit to the place; but when her parents died, and left her needy, they said she must go to the town and earn her living.

Celeste laughed in her sleeve when they told her this, because young Fernand, the son of the inn-keeper, had been wooing and winning her heart, in a quiet way, for many a day; and now she believed in him, and felt sure that he would speak his love aloud and take her home to his parents. To be sure, it was unknown in that country for a man who had money to marry a girl who had none; but Fernand was strong to work and to plan; Celeste knew that he could do what he liked.

It was the time when the April sun smiles upon the meadow grass till it is very green and long enough to wave in the wind, and all amongst it the blue scilla flowers are like dewdrops reflecting the blue that hangs above the gnarled arms of the still leafless walnut trees. The cottage where Celeste lived was out from the village, among the meadows, and to the most hidden side of it young Fernand came on the eve of the day on which she must leave it for ever. Very far off the snow mountains had taken on their second flush of evening red before he came, and Celeste had grown weary waiting.

'Good-bye,' said Fernand. He was always a somewhat stiff and formal young man, and to-night he was ill at ease.

'But,' cried Celeste—and here she wept—'you have made me love you. I love no one in the world but you.'

'You are foolish,' said he. 'It is, of course, a pity that we must part, but it cannot be helped. You have no dowry, not even a small one. It would be unthrifty for the son of an innkeeper to marry a girl without a sou. My parents would not allow me to act so madly!' and his manner added—'nor would I be so foolish myself.'

Next day Celeste went up to the town, and went into the market-place to be hired as a servant.

This was the day of the spring hiring. Many servants were wanting work, and they stood in the market-place. All around were the old houses of the square; there was the church and the pastor's house, and the house and office of the notary, and many other houses standing very close together, with high-peaked roofs and gable windows. The sun shone down, lighting the roofs, throwing eaves and niches into strong shadow, gleaming upon yellow bowls and dishes, upon gay calicoes, upon cheese and sausages, on all bright things displayed on the open market-stalls, and upon the faces of the maid-servants who stood to be hired. Many ladies of the town went about seeking servants: among them was Madame Verine, and the Russian lady and Marie were with her. When they came in front of Celeste they all stopped.

'Ah, what eyes!' said the Russian lady—'what simple, innocent, trustful eyes! In these days how rare!'

'She is like a flower,' said Marie.

Now, they quickly found out that Celeste knew very little about the work she would have to do; it was because of this she had not yet found a mistress.

'I myself would delight to teach her,' cried the Russian lady.

'And I,' cried Marie. So Madame Verine took her home.

They taught Celeste many things. Marie taught her to cook and to sew; the Russian lady taught her to write and to cipher, and was surprised at the progress she made, especially in writing. Celeste was the more interesting to them because there was just a shade of sadness in her eye. One day she told Marie why she was sad; it was the story of Fernand, how he had used her ill.

'What a shame!' cried Marie, when the brief facts were repeated.

'It is the way of the country,' said the Russian lady. 'These Swiss peasants, who have so fair a reputation for sobriety, are mercenary above all: they have no heart.'

Celeste lived with Madame Verine for one year. At the end of that time Madame Verine arose one morning to find the breakfast was not cooked, nor the fire lit. In the midst of disorder stood Celeste, with flushed cheeks and startled eyes, and a letter in her hand.

'Ah, madam,' she faltered, 'what a surprise! The letter, it is from monsieur the notary, who lives in the market-place, and to me, madam—to me!'

When Madame Verine took the letter she found told therein that an aunt of Celeste, who had lived far off in the Jura, was dead, and had left to Celeste a little fortune of five thousand francs, which was to be paid to her when she was twenty-one, or on her marriage day.

'Ah,' cried Celeste, weeping, 'can it be true? Can it be true?'

'Of course, since monsieur the notary says so.'

'Ah, madam; let me run and see monsieur the notary. Let me just ask him, and hear from his lips that it is true!'

So she ran out into the town, with her apron over her head, and Marie made the breakfast.

The Russian lady came down to talk it over. 'The pretty child is distraught, and at so small a piece of good fortune!' said she.

But when Celeste came in she was more composed. 'It is true,' she said, with gentle joy, and she stood before them breathless and blushing.

'It will be three years before you are twenty-one,' said Madame Verine; 'you will remain with me.'

'If you please, madam, no,' said Celeste, modestly casting down her eyes; 'I must go to my native village.'

'How!' they cried. 'To whom will you go?'

Celeste blushed the more deeply, and twisted her apron. 'I have good clothes; I have saved my year's wages. I will put up at the inn. The wife of the innkeeper will be a mother to me now I can pay for my lodging.'

At which Madame Verine looked at the Russian lady, and that lady looked at her, and said behind her hand, 'Such a baby, and so clever! It is the mere instinct of wisdom; it cannot be called forethought.'

It is to be observed that, all the world over, however carefully a mistress may guard her maid-servant, no great responsibility is felt when the engagement is broken. Madame Verine shrugged her shoulders and got another servant. Celeste went down to her village.

After that, when Marie walked in the market-place, she used to like to look at the notary's house, and at him, if she could espy him in the street. The house was a fine one, and the notary, in spite of iron-grey hair and a keen eye, good-looking; but that was not why Marie was interested; it was because he and his office seemed connected with the romance of life—with Celeste's good fortune.

When summer days grew long, Madame Verine, her friend and daughter, took a day's holiday, and out of good nature they went to see Celeste.

'Celeste lives like a grand lady now,' cried the innkeeper's wife, on being questioned. 'She will have me take her coffee to her in bed each morning.'

'The wages she has saved will not hold out long,' said the visitors.

'When that is finished she gives us her note of hand for the money she will get when she is married. She has shown us the notary's letter. It is certainly a tidy sum she will have, and our son has some thoughts of marrying.'

They saw Celeste, who was radiant; they saw young Fernand, who was paying his court to her. They returned home satisfied.

It was not long after that when one morning Celeste came into Madame Verine's house; she was weeping on account of the loss of some of her money. She had come up to town, she said, to buy her wedding clothes, for which the notary had been so good as to advance her a hundred francs, but her pocket had been picked in the train. The money was gone—quite gone—alas!

So tearful was she that they lent her some money—not much, but a little. Then she dried her eyes, and said she would also get some things on credit, promising to pay in a month, for it was then she was to be married. At the end of the day she came back gaily to show her treasures.

'When the rejoicings of your wedding are over,' said Madame Verine, 'and your husband brings you to town to claim the money, you may stay here in the upper room of this house—it is an invitation.'

In a month came the wedding pair, joyful and blooming. The Russian lady made them a supper. They lodged in an attic room that Madame Verine rented. In the morning they went out, dressed in their best, to see the notary.

An hour later Madame Verine sat in her little salon. The floor was of polished wood; it shone in the morning light; so did all the polished curves of the chairs and cabinets. Marie was practising exercises on the piano.

They heard a heavy step on the stair. The bridegroom came into the room, agitated, unable to ask permission to enter. He strode across the floor and sat down weakly before the ladies.

They thought he had been drinking wine, but this was not so, although his eye was bloodshot and his voice unsteady.

'Can you believe it!' he cried, 'the notary never wrote letters to her; there was no aunt; there is no money!'

'It is incredible,' said Madame Verine, and then there was a pause of great astonishment.

'It is impossible!' cried the Russian lady, who had come in.

'It is true,' said the bridegroom hoarsely; and he wept.

And now Celeste herself came into the house. She came within the room, and looked at the ladies, who stood with hands upraised, and at her weeping husband. If you have ever enticed a rosy-faced child to bathe in the sea, and seen it stand half breathless, half terrified, yet trying hard to be brave, you know just the expression that was on the face of the child-like deceiver. With baby-like courage she smiled upon them all.

Now the next person who entered the room was the notary himself. He was a gentleman of manners; he bowed with great gallantry to the ladies, not excepting Celeste.

'She is a child, and has had no chance to learn the arts of cunning,' cried the Russian lady, who had thought that she knew the world.

The notary bowed to her in particular. 'Madam, the true artist is born, not made.'

Then he looked at Celeste again. There were two kinds of admiration in his glance—one for her face, the other for her cleverness. He looked at the weeping husband with no admiration at all, but the purpose in his mind was steady as his clear grey eye, unmoved by emotion.

'I have taken the trouble to walk so far,' said he, 'to tell this young man what, perhaps, I ought to have mentioned when he was at my office. Happily, the evil can be remedied. It is the law of our land that if the fortune has been misrepresented, a divorce can be obtained.'

Celeste's courage vanished with her triumph. She covered her face. The husband had turned round; he was looking eagerly at the notary and at his cowering bride.

'Ah, Heaven!' cried the two matrons, 'must it be?'

'I have walked so far to advise,' said the notary.

All this time Marie was sitting upon the piano-stool; she had turned it half-way round so that she could look at the people. She was not pretty, but, as the morning light struck full upon her face, she had the comeliness that youth and health always must have; and more than that, there was the light of a beautiful soul shining through her eyes, for Marie was gentle and submissive, but her mind and spirit were also strong; the individual character that had grown in silence now began to assert itself with all the beauty of a new thing in the world. Marie had never acted for herself before.

She began to speak to the notary simply, eagerly, as one who could no longer keep silence.

'It would be wrong to separate them, monsieur.'

Madame Verine chid Marie; the notary, no doubt just because he was a man and polite, answered her.

'This brave young fellow does not deserve to be thus fooled. I shall be glad to lend him my aid to extricate himself.'

'He does deserve it,' cried Marie. 'Long ago he pretended to have love for her, just for the pleasure of it, when he had not—that is worse than pretending to have money! And in any case, it is a wicked law, monsieur, that would grant a divorce when they are married, and—look now—left to himself he will forgive her, but he is catching at what you say. You have come here to tempt him! You dare not go on, monsieur!'

'Dare not, mademoiselle?' said the notary, with a superior air.

'No, monsieur. Think of what the good God and the holy saints would say! This poor girl has brought much punishment on herself, but—ah, monsieur, think of the verdict of Heaven!'

'Mademoiselle,' said the notary haughtily, 'I was proposing nothing but justice; but it is no affair of mine.' And with that he went out brusquely—very brusquely for a gentleman of such polite manners.

'I am astonished at you, Marie,' said Madame Verine. This was true, but it was meant as a reproach.

'She is beside herself with compassion,' said the Russian lady; 'but that is just what men of the world despise most.'

Then Marie went to her room weeping, and the two ladies talked to Celeste till her soft face had hard lines about the mouth and her eyes were defiant. Young Fernand slipped out and went again to the market-place.

'I come to ask your aid, monsieur the notary.'

'I do not advise you.'

'But, monsieur, to whom else can I apply?'

'I am too busy,' said the notary.

Fernand and Celeste walked back to their village, hand in hand, both downcast, both peevish, but still together.

Now the notary was not what might be called a bad man himself, but he believed that the world was very bad. He had seen much to confirm this belief, and had not looked in the right place to find any facts that would contradict it. This belief had made him hard and sometimes even dishonest in his dealings with men; for what is the use of being good in a world that can neither comprehend goodness nor admire it? On the whole, the notary was much better satisfied with himself than with human nature around him, although, if he had only known it, he himself had grown to be the reflex—the image as in a mirror—of what he thought other men were; it is always so. There was just this much truth in him at the bottom of his scorn and grumbling—he flattered himself that if he could see undoubted virtue he could admire it; and there was in him that possibility of grace.

After he left Madame Verine's door he thought with irritation of the girl who had rebuked him. Then he began to remember that she was only a woman and very young, and she had appealed to his heart—ah, yes, he had a heart. After all, he was not sure but that her appeal was charming. Then he thought of her with admiration. This was not the result of Marie's words—words in themselves are nothing; it is the personality of the speaker that makes them live or die, and personality is strongest when nourished long in virtue and silence and prayer. When it came to pass that the notary actually did the thing Marie told him to do, he began to think of her even with tenderness in his heart.

Now a very strange thing happened. In about a week the notary called on Madame Verine a second time; he greeted her with all ceremony, and then he sat down on a little stiff chair and explained his business in his own brief, dry way.

Marie was not there. The little salon, all polished and shining, gave faint lights and shadows in answer to every movement of its inmates. Madame Verine, in a voluminous silk gown, sat all attention, looking at the notary; she thought he was a very fine man, quite a great personage, and undoubtedly handsome.

'Madam,' began he, 'I am, as you know, at middle age, yet a bachelor, and the reason, to be plain with you, is that I have not believed in women. Pardon me, I would not be rude, but I am a business man. I have no delusions left, yet it has occurred to me that a young woman who would make the lives of the saints her rule of life—I do not believe in such things myself, but—in short, madam, I ask for your daughter in marriage.'

He said it as if he was doing quite a kind thing, as, indeed, he thought he was. Madame Verine thought so too, and with great astonishment, and even some apologies, gave away her daughter with grateful smiles.

Marie was married to the notary, and he made her very happy. At first she was happy because he had good manners and she had such a loving heart that she loved him. After a few years he found out that she was too good for him, and then he became a better man.



X

THE PAUPERS' GOLDEN DAY

Betty Lamb was a comely girl; she was big to look at, being tall and strong. She was never plump; she was never well clothed, not even in the best days of her youth. She had been brought up in the work-house; after that she belonged to no one. Her mind was a little astray: she had strong, rude, strange ideas of her own; she would not be humble and work day in, day out, like other folk, and for that reason she never throve in the world. She lived here and there, and did this and that. All the town knew her; she was just 'Betty Lamb'; no one expected aught of her.

It was a small town in the west of Scotland. On different sides of it long lanes of humble cottages straggled out into the fields; the cottages had grey stone walls and red tiled roofs. There were new grey churches in the town, and big buildings, and streets of shops. The people in those days thought these very fine; they thought less about the real glory of the town—a ruined abbey which stood upon an open heath just beyond the houses.

Three walls, two high gothic windows with the slender mullions unbroken, a few stately columns broken off at different heights from the ground, and one fragment of the high arch of the nave standing up against the sky in exquisite outline—these formed the ruin. It was built of the red sandstone that in its age takes upon it a delicate bloom of pink and white; it looked like a jewel in the breast of the grey hill country. Furze grew within the ruin and for acres on all sides. Sheep and goats came nibbling against the old altar steps. A fringe of wallflower and grass grew upon the top of the highest arch and down the broken fragments of the wall.

All around the stately hills looked down upon the town and the ruin, and the sky that bent over was more often than not full of cloud, soft and grey.

Betty Lamb was getting on to middle age, about thirty, when she had a baby. They had put her again in the poorshouse, but she rose when her baby was but a day old and went away from the place.

It was summer time then; the sky relented somewhat; there was sunshine between the showers, and sometimes a long fair week of silvery weather, when a white haze of lifting moisture rose ever, like incense, from the hills, and the light shone white upon the yellow bloom of the furze.

Betty Lamb found the ambry niche in the wall of the ruin at the side of the place where the altar had been. She laid her baby there. That was his cradle, and by sunlight and moonlight she was heard singing loud songs to him. The people were afraid of going too near her at that time. 'It is dangerous,' said they, 'to touch an animal when she has her young with her.'

As years went on Betty Lamb and her little boy spent summer after summer upon the moor. The child was not christened, unless, indeed, the dew falling from the sacred stones and the pity of God for fatherless innocents had christened him. In this world, at least, his name was written in no book of life, for he had no name.

He grew to be a little lithe lad. Then it was that in every pickle of mischief where a little lad could be this elf-child, with his black eyes and curly auburn hair, was to be found. So maddening indeed were his naughty tricks that the townspeople spoke not so often of beating him, as they would have beaten a human child, but of wringing his neck like a young thing that had no right to live. Yet it was more often in word than in deed that punishment of any sort was inflicted, for the preliminary stage was perforce, 'first catch your boy,' and that was far from easy.

Even when the catching was accomplished the beating did not always come. One day the minister of the Kirk looked out upon his glebe. His favourite cow, with a bridle in her mouth, was being galloped at greatest speed around the field, Betty's lad standing tip-toe upon her back. The minister, with the agility which unbounded wrath gave him, caught the boy' and swung his cane.

'I am going to thrash you,' said he.

'Ay, ye maun do that.' The small face was drawn to the aspect of a grave judge—'ye maun do that; it's yer juty.'

The minister, who had looked upon his intention rather in the light of natural impulse, felt the less inclination for the task. 'Are you not afraid of being beaten?' he asked.