Lady Bassett replied. The other answered; and so powerfully that Lady Bassett yielded, and went home sick at heart, but helpless, and in a sea of doubt.

Mr. Angelo did not call. Sir Charles asked Lady Bassett if he had called on her.

She said "No."

"That is odd," said Sir Charles. "Perhaps he thinks we ought to welcome him home. Write and ask him to dinner."

"Yes, dear. Or you can write."

"Very well, I will. No, I will call."

Sir Charles called, and welcomed him home, and asked him to dinner. Angelo received him rather stiffly at first, but accepted his invitation.

He came, looking a good deal older and graver, but almost as handsome as ever; only somewhat changed in mind. He had become a zealous clergyman, and his soul appeared to be in his work. He was distant and very respectful to Lady Bassett; I might say obsequious. Seemed almost afraid of her at first.

That wore off in a few months; but he was never quite so much at his ease with her as he had been before he left some years ago.



And so did time roll on.

Every morning and every night Lady Bassett used to look wistfully at Sir Charles, and say—

"Are you happy, dear? Are you sure you are happy?"

And he used always to say, and with truth, that he was the happiest man in England, thanks to her.

Then she used to relax the wild and wistful look with which she asked the question, and give a sort of sigh, half content, half resignation.

In due course another fine boy came, and filled the royal office of baby in his turn.

But my story does not follow him.



Reginald was over ten years old, and Compton nearly six. They were as different in character as complexion—both remarkable boys.

Reginald, Sir Charles's favorite, was a wonderful boy for riding, running, talking; and had a downright genius for melody; he whistled to the admiration of the village, and latterly he practiced the fiddle in woods and under hedges, being aided and abetted therein by a gypsy boy whom he loved, and who, indeed, provided the instrument.

He rode with Sir Charles, and rather liked him; his brother he never noticed, except to tease him. Lady Bassett he admired, and almost loved her while she was in the act of playing him undeniable melodies. But he liked his nurse Meyrick better, on the whole; she flattered him more, and was more uniformly subservient.

With these two exceptions he despised the whole race of women, and affected male society only, especially of grooms, stable-boys, and gypsies; these last welcomed him to their tents, and almost prostrated themselves before him, so dazzled were they by his beauty and his color. It is believed they suspected him of having gypsy blood in his veins. They let him into their tents, and even into some of their secrets, and he promised them they should have it all their own way as soon as he was Sir Reginald; he had outgrown his original theory that he was to be Sir Charles on his father's death.

He hated in-doors; when fixed by command to a book, would beg hard to be allowed to take it into the sun; and at night would open his window and poke his black head out to wash in the moonshine, as he said.

He despised ladies and gentlemen, said they were all affected fools, and gave imitations of all his father's guests to prove it; and so keen was this child of nature's eye for affectation that very often his disapproving parents were obliged to confess the imp had seen with his fresh eye defects custom had made them overlook, or the solid good qualities that lay beneath had overbalanced.

Now all this may appear amusing and eccentric, and so on, to strangers; but after the first hundred laughs or so with which paternal indulgence dismisses the faults of childhood, Sir Charles became very grave.

The boy was his darling and his pride. He was ambitious for him. He earnestly desired to solve for him a problem which is as impossible as squaring the circle, viz., how to transmit our experience to our children. The years and the health he had wasted before he knew Bella Bruce, these he resolved his successor should not waste. He looked higher for this beautiful boy than for himself. He had fully resolved to be member for the county one day; but he did not care about it for himself; it was only to pave the way for his successor; that Sir Reginald, after a long career in the Commons, might find his way into the House of Peers, and so obtain dignity in exchange for antiquity; for, to tell the truth, the ancestors of four-fifths of the British House of Peers had been hewers of wood and drawers of water at a time when these Bassetts had already been gentlemen of distinction for centuries.

All this love and this vicarious ambition were now mortified daily. Some fathers could do wonders for a brilliant boy, and with him; they expect him, and a dull boy appears; that is a bitter pill; but this was worse. Reginald was a sharp boy; he could do anything; fasten him to a book for twenty minutes, he would learn as much as most boys in an hour; but there was no keeping him to it, unless you strapped him or nailed him, for he had the will of a mule, and the suppleness of an eel to carry out his will. And then his tastes—low as his features were refined; he was a sort of moral dung-fork; picked up all the slang of the stable and scattered it in the dining-room and drawing-room; and once or twice he stole out of his comfortable room at night, and slept in a gypsy's tent with his arm round a gypsy boy, unsullied from his cradle by soap.

At last Sir Charles could no longer reply to his wife at night as he had done for this ten years past. He was obliged to confess that there was one cloud upon his happiness. "Dear Reginald grieves me, and makes me dread the future; for if the child is father to the man, there is a bitter disappointment in store for us. He is like no other boy; he is like no human creature I ever saw. At his age, and long after, I was a fool; I was a fool till I knew you; but surely I was a gentleman. I cannot see myself again—in my first-born."



CHAPTER XXXVII.

LADY BASSETT was paralyzed for a minute or two by this speech. At last she replied by asking a question—rather a curious one. "Who nursed you, Charles?"

"What, when I was a baby? How can I tell? Yes, by-the-by, it was my mother nursed me—so I was told."

"And your mother was a Le Compton. This poor boy was nursed by a servant. Oh, she has some good qualities, and is certainly devoted to us—to this day her face brightens at sight of me—but she is essentially vulgar; and do you remember, Charles, I wished to wean him early; but I was overruled, and the poor child drew his nature from that woman for nearly eighteen months; it is a thing unheard of nowadays."

"Well, but surely it is from our parents we draw our nature."

"No; I think it is from our nurses. If Compton or Alec ever turn out like Reginald, blame nobody but their nurse, and that is Me."

Sir Charles smiled faintly at this piece of feminine logic, and asked her what he should do.

She said she was quite unable to advise. Mr. Rolfe was coming to see them soon; perhaps he might be able to suggest something.

Sir Charles said he would consult him; but he was clear on one thing—the boy must be sent from Huntercombe, and so separated from all his present acquaintances.

Mr. Rolfe came, and the distressed father opened his heart to him in strict confidence respecting Reginald.

Rolfe listened and sympathized, and knit his brow, and asked time to consider what he had heard, and also to study the boy for himself.

He angled for him next day accordingly. A little table was taken out on the lawn, and presently Mr. Rolfe issued forth in a uniform suit of dark blue flannel and a sombrero hat, and set to work writing a novel in the sun.

Reginald in due course descried this figure, and it smacked so of that Bohemia to which his own soul belonged that he was attracted thereby, but made his approaches stealthily, like a little cat.

Presently a fiddle went off behind a tree, so close that the novelist leaped out of his seat with an eldrich screech; for he had long ago forgotten all about Mr. Reginald, and, when he got heated in this kind of composition, any sudden sound seemed to his tense nerves and boiling brain about ten times as loud as it really was.

Having relieved himself with a yell, he sat down with the mien of a martyr expecting tortures; but he was most agreeably disappointed; the little monster played an English melody, and played it in tune. This done, he whistled a quick tune, and played a slow second to it in perfect harmony; this done, he whistled the second part and played the quick treble—a very simple feat, but still ingenious for a boy, and new to his hearer.

"Bravo! bravo!" cried Rolfe, with all his heart,

Mr. Reginald emerged, radiant with vanity. "You are like me, Mr. Writer," said he; "you don't like to be cooped up in-doors."

"I wish I could play the fiddle like you, my fine fellow."

"Ah, you can't do that all in a minute; see the time I have been at it."

"Ah, to be sure, I forgot your antiquity."

"And it isn't the time only; it's giving your mind to it, old chap."

"What, you don't give your mind to your books, then, as you do to your fiddle, young gentleman?"

"Not such a flat. Why, lookee here, governor, if you go and give your mind to a thing you don't like, it's always time wasted, because some other chap, that does like it, will beat you, and what's the use working for to be beat?"

"'For' is redundant," objected Rolfe.

"But if you stick hard to the things you like, you do 'em downright well. But old people are such fools, they always drive you the wrong way. They make the gals play music six hours a day, and you might as well set the hen bullfinches to pipe. Look at the gals as come here, how they rattle up and down the piano, and can't make it sing a morsel. Why, they couldn't rattle like that, if they'd music in their skins, d—n 'em; and they drive me to those stupid books, because I'm all for music and moonshine. Can you keep a secret?"

"As the tomb."

"Well, then, I can do plenty of things well, besides fiddling; I can set a wire with any poacher in the parish. I have caught plenty of our old man's hares in my time; and it takes a workman to set a wire as it should be. Show me a wire, and I'll tell you whether it was Hudson, or Whitbeck, or Squinting Jack, or who it was that set it. I know all their work that walks by moonlight hereabouts."

"This is criticism; a science; I prefer art; play me another tune, my bold Bohemian."

"Ah, I thought I should catch ye with my fiddle. You're not such a muff as the others, old 'un, not by a long chalk. Hang me if I won't give ye 'Ireland's music,' and I've sworn never to waste that on a fool."

He played the old Irish air so simply and tunably that Rolfe leaned back in his chair, with half closed eyes, in soft voluptuous ecstasy.

The youngster watched him with his coal-black eye.

"I like you," said he, "better than I thought I should, a precious sight."

"Highly flattered."

"Come with me, and hear my nurse sing it."

"What, and leave my novel?"

"Oh, bother your novel."

"And so I will. That will be tit for tat; it has bothered me. Lead on, Bohemian bold."

The boy took him, over hedge and ditch, the short-cut to Meyrick's farm; and caught Mrs. Meyrick, and said she must sing "Ireland's music" to Rolfe the writer.

Mrs. Meyrick apologized for her dress, and affected shyness about singing: Mr. Reginald stared at first, then let her know that, if she was going to be affected like the girls that came to the Hall, he should hate her, as he did them, and this he confirmed with a naughty word.

Thus threatened, she came to book, and sang Ireland's melody in a low, rich, sonorous voice; Reginald played a second; the harmony was so perfect and strong that certain glass candelabra on the mantel-piece rang loudly, and the drops vibrated. Then he made her sing the second, and he took the treble with his violin; and he wound up by throwing in a third part himself, a sort of countertenor, his own voice being much higher than the woman's.

The tears stood in Rolfe's eyes. "Well," said he, "you have got the soul of music, you two. I could listen to you 'From morn till noon, from noon till dewy eve.'"

As they returned to Huntercombe, this mercurial youth went off at a tangent, and Rolfe saw him no more.

He wrote in peace, and walked about between the heats.

Just before dinner-time the screams of women were heard hard by, and the writer hurried to the place in time to see Mr. Basset hanging by the shoulder from the branch of a tree, about twenty feet from the ground.

Rolfe hallooed, as he ran, to the women, to fetch blankets to catch him, and got under the tree, determined to try and catch him in his arms, if necessary; but he encouraged the boy to hold on.

"All right, governor," said the boy, in a quavering voice.

It was very near the kitchen; maids and men poured out with blankets; eight people held one, under Rolfe's direction, and down came Mr. Bassett in a semicircle, and bounded up again off the blanket, like an India-rubber ball.

His quick mind recovered courage the moment he touched wool.

"Crikey! that's jolly," said he; "give me another toss or two."

"Oh no! no!" said a good-natured maid. "Take an' put him to bed right off, poor dear."

"Hold your tongue, ye bitch," said young hopeful; "if ye don't toss me, I'll turn ye all off, as soon as ever the old un kicks the bucket."

Thus menaced, they thought it prudent to toss him; but, at the third toss, he yelled out, "Oh! oh! oh! I'm all wet; it's blood! I'm dead!"

Then they examined, and found his arm was severely lacerated by an old nail that had been driven into the tree, and it had torn the flesh in his fall: he was covered with blood, the sight of which quenched his manly spirit, and he began to howl.

"Old linen rag, warm water, and a bottle of champagne," shouted Rolfe: the servants flew.

Rolfe dressed and bandaged the wound for him, and then he felt faint: the champagne soon set that right; and then he wanted to get drunk, alleging, as a reason, that he had not been drunk for this two months.

Sir Charles was told of the accident, and was distressed by it, and also by the cause.

"Rolfe," said he, sorrowfully, "there is a ring-dove's nest on that tree: she and hers have built there in peace and safety for a hundred years, and cooed about the place. My unhappy boy was climbing the tree to take the young, after solemnly promising me he never would: that is the bitter truth. What shall I do with the young barbarian?"

He sighed, and Lady Bassett echoed the sigh.

Said Rolfe, "The young barbarian, as you call him, has disarmed me: he plays the fiddle like a civilized angel."

"Oh, Mr. Rolfe!"

"What, you his mother, and not found that out yet? Oh yes, he has a heaven-born genius for music."

Rolfe then related the musical feats of the urchin.

Sir Charles begged to observe that this talent would go a very little way toward fitting him to succeed his father and keep up the credit of an ancient family.

"Dear Charles, Mr. Rolfe knows that; but it is like him to make the best of things, to encourage us. But what do you think of him, on the whole, Mr. Rolfe? has Sir Charles more to hope or to fear?"

"Give me another day or two to study him," said Rolfe.

That night there was a loud alarm. Mr. Bassett was running about the veranda in his night-dress.

They caught him and got him to bed, and Rolfe said it was fever; and, with the assistance of Sir Charles and a footman, laid him between two towels steeped in tepid water, then drew blankets tight over him, and, in short, packed him.

"Ah!" said he, complacently; "I say, give me a drink of moonshine, old chap."

"I'll give you a bucketful," said Rolfe; then, with the servant's help, took his little bed and put it close to the window; the moonlight streamed in on the boy's face, his great black eyes glittered in it. He was diabolically beautiful. "Kiss me, moonshine," said he; "I like to wash in you."

Next day he was, apparently, quite well, and certainly ripe for fresh mischief. Rolfe studied him, and, the evening before he went, gave Sir Charles and Lady Bassett his opinion, but not with his usual alacrity; a weight seemed to hang on him, and, more than once, his voice trembled.

"I shall tell you," said he, "what I see—what I foresee—and then, with great diffidence, what I advise.

"I see—what naturalists call a reversion in race, a boy who resembles in color and features neither of his parents, and, indeed, bears little resemblance to any of the races that have inhabited England since history was written. He suggests rather some Oriental type."

Sir Charles turned round in his chair, with a sigh, and said, "We are to have a romance, it seems."

Lady Bassett stared with all her eyes, and began to change color.

The theorist continued, with perfect composure, "I don't undertake to account for it with any precision. How can I? Perhaps there is Moorish blood in your family, and here it has revived; you look incredulous, but there are plenty of examples, ay, and stronger than this: every child that is born resembles some progenitor; how then do you account for Julia Pastrana, a young lady who dined with me last week, and sang me 'Ah perdona,' rather feebly, in the evening? Bust and figure like any other lady, hand exquisite, arms neatly turned, but with long, silky hair from the elbow to the wrist. Face, ugh! forehead made of black leather, eyes all pupil, nose an excrescence, chin pure monkey, face all covered with hair; briefly, a type extinct ten thousand years before Adam, yet it could revive at this time of day. Compared with La Pastrana, and many much weaker examples of antiquity revived, that I have seen, your Mauritanian son is no great marvel, after all."

"This is a little too far-fetched," said Sir Charles, satirically; "Bella's father was a very dark man, and it is a tradition in our family that all the Bassetts were as black as ink till they married with you Rolfes, in the year 1684."

"Oho!" said Rolfe, "is it so? See how discussion brings out things."

"And then," said Lady Bassett, "Charles dear, tell Mr. Rolfe what I think."

"Ay, do," said Rolfe; "that will be a new form of circumlocution."

Sir Charles complied, with a smile. "Lady Bassett's theory is, that children derive their nature quite as much from their wet-nurses as from their parents, and she thinks the faults we deplore in Reginald are to be traced to his nurse; by-the-by, she is a dark woman too."

"Well," said Rolfe, "there's a good deal of truth in that, as far as regards the disposition. But I never heard color so accounted for; yet why not? It has been proved that the very bones of young animals can be colored pink, by feeding them on milk so colored."

"There!" said Lady Bassett.

"But no nurse could give your son a color which is not her own. I have seen the woman; she is only a dark Englishwoman. Her arms were embrowned by exposure, but her forehead was not brown. Mr. Reginald is quite another thing. The skin of his body, the white of his eye, the pupil, all look like a reversion to some Oriental type; and, mark the coincidence, he has mental peculiarities that point toward the East."

Sir Charles lost patience. "On the contrary," said he, "he talks and feels just like an English snob, and makes me miserable."

"Oh, as to that, he has picked up vulgar phrases at that farm, and in your stables; but he never picked up his musical genius in stables and farms, far less his poetry."

"What poetry?"

"What poetry? Why, did not you hear him? Was it not poetical of a wounded, fevered boy to beg to be laid by the window, and to say 'Let me drink the moonshine?' Take down your Homer, and read a thousand lines haphazard, and see whether you stumble over a thought more poetical than that. But criticism does not exist: whatever the dead said was good; whatever the living say is little; as if the dead were a race apart, and had never been the living, and the living would never be the dead."

Heaven knows where he was running to now, but Sir Charles stopped him by conceding that point. "Well you are right: poor child, it was poetical," and the father's pride predominated, for a moment, over every other sentiment.

"Yes; but where did it come from? That looks to me a typical idea; I mean an idea derived, not from his luxurious parents, dwellers in curtained mansions, but from some out-door and remote ancestor; perhaps from the Oriental tribe that first colonized Britain; they worshiped the sun and the moon, no doubt; or perhaps, after all, it only came from some wandering tribe that passed their lives between the two lights of heaven, and never set foot in a human dwelling."

"This," said Sir Charles, "is a flattering speculation, but so wild and romantic that I fear it will lead us to no practical result. I thought you undertook to advise me. What advice can you build on these cobwebs of your busy brain?"

"Excuse me, my practical friend," said Rolfe. "I opened my discourse in three heads. What I see—what I foresee—and what, with diffidence, I advise. Pray don't disturb my methods, or I am done for; never disturb an artist's form. I have told you what I see. What I foresee is this: you will have to cut off the entail with Reginald's consent, when he is of age, and make the Saxon boy Compton your successor. Cutting off entails runs in families, like everything else; your grandfather did it, and so will you. You should put by a few thousands every year, that you may be able to do this without injustice either to your Oriental or your Saxon son."

"Never!" shouted Sir Charles: then, in a broken voice, "He is my first-born, and my idol; his coming into the world rescued me out of a morbid condition: he healed my one great grief. Bar the entail, and put his younger brother in his place—never!"

Mr. Rolfe bowed his head politely, and left the subject, which, indeed, could be carried no farther without serious offense.

"And now for my advice. The question is, how to educate this strange boy. One thing is clear; it is no use trying the humdrum plan any longer; it has been tried, and failed. I should adapt his education to his nature. Education is made as stiff and unyielding as a board; but it need not be. I should abolish that spectacled tutor of yours at once, and get a tutor, young, enterprising, manly, and supple, who would obey orders; and the order should be to observe the boy's nature, and teach accordingly. Why need men teach in a chair, and boys learn in a chair? The Athenians studied not in chairs. The Peripatetics, as their name imports, hunted knowledge afoot; those who sought truth in the groves of Academus were not seated at that work. Then let the tutor walk with him, and talk with him by sunlight and moonlight, relating old history, and commenting on each new thing that is done, or word spoken, and improve every occasion. Why, I myself would give a guinea a day to walk with William White about the kindly aspects and wooded slopes of Selborne, or with Karr about his garden. Cut Latin and Greek clean out of the scheme. They are mere cancers to those who can never excel in them. Teach him not dead languages, but living facts. Have him in your justice-room for half an hour a day, and give him your own comments on what he has heard there. Let his tutor take him to all Quarter Sessions and Assizes, and stick to him like diaculum, especially out-of-doors; order him never to be admitted to the stable-yard; dismiss every biped there that lets him come. Don't let him visit his nurse so often, and never without his tutor; it was she who taught him to look forward to your decease; that is just like these common women. Such a tutor as I have described will deserve 500 pounds a year. Give it him; and dismiss him if he plays humdrum and doesn't earn it. Dismiss half a dozen, if necessary, till you get a fellow with a grain or two of genius for tuition. When the boy is seventeen, what with his Oriental precocity, and this system of education, he will know the world as well as a Saxon boy of twenty-one, and that is not saying much. Then, if his nature is still as wild, get him a large tract in Australia; cattle to breed, kangaroos to shoot, swift horses to thread the bush and gallop mighty tracts; he will not shirk business, if it avoids the repulsive form of sitting down in-doors, and offers itself in combination with riding, hunting, galloping, cracking of rifles, and of colonial whips as loud as rifles, and drinking sunshine and moonshine in that mellow clime, beneath the Southern Cross and the spangled firmament of stars unknown to us."

His own eyes sparkled like hot coals at this Bohemian picture.

Then he sighed and returned to civilization. "But," said he, "be ready with eighty thousand pounds for him, that he may enjoy his own way and join you in barring the entail. I forgot, I must say no more on that subject; I see it is as offensive—as it is inevitable. Cassandra has spoken wisely, and, I see, in vain. God bless you both—good-night."

And he rolled out of the room with a certain clumsy importance.

Sir Charles treated all this advice with a polite forbearance while he was in the room, but on his departure delivered a sage reflection.

"Strange," said he, "that a man so valuable in any great emergency should be so extravagant and eccentric in the ordinary affairs of life. I might as well drive to Bellevue House and consult the first gentleman I met there."

Lady Bassett did not reply immediately, and Sir Charles observed that her face was very red and her hands trembled.

"Why, Bella," said he, "has all that rhodomontade upset you?"

Lady Bassett looked frightened at his noticing her agitation, and said that Mr. Rolfe always overpowered her. "He is so large, and so confident, and throws such new light on things."

"New light! Wild eccentricity always does that; but it is the light of Jack-o'-lantern. On a great question, so near my heart as this, give me the steady light of common sense, not the wayward coruscations of a fiery imagination. Bella dear, I shall send the boy to a good school, and so cut off at one blow all the low associations that have caused the mischief."

"You know what is best, dear," said Lady Bassett; "you are wiser than any of us."

In the morning she got hold of Mr. Rolfe, and asked him if he could put her in the way of getting more than three per cent for her money without risk.

"Only one," said.Rolfe. "London freeholds in rising situations let to substantial tenants. I can get you five per cent that way, if you are always ready to buy. The thing does not offer every day."

"I have twenty thousand pounds to dispose of so," said Lady Bassett.

"Very well," said Rolfe. "I'll look out for you, but Oldfield must examine titles and do the actual business. The best of that investment is, it is always improving; no ups and downs. Come," thought he, "Cassandra has not spoken quite in vain."

Sir Charles acted on his judgment, and in due course sent Mr. Bassett to a school at some distance, kept by a clergyman, who had the credit in that county of exercising sharp supervision and strict discipline.

Sir Charles made no secret of the boy's eccentricities. Mr. Beecher said he had one or two steady boys who assisted him in such cases.

Sir Charles thought that a very good idea; it was like putting a wild colt into the break with a steady horse.

He missed the boy sadly at first, but comforted himself with the conviction that he had parted with him for his good: that consoled him somewhat.



The younger children of Sir Charles and Lady Bassett were educated entirely by their mother, and taught as none but a loving lady can teach.

Compton, with whom we have to do, never knew the thorns with which the path of letters is apt to be strewn. A mistress of the great art of pleasing made knowledge from the first a primrose path to him. Sparkling all over with intelligence, she impregnated her boy with it. She made herself his favorite companion; she would not keep her distance. She stole and coaxed knowledge and goodness into his heart and mind with rare and loving cunning.

She taught him English and French and Latin on the Hamiltonian plan, and stored his young mind with history and biography, and read to him, and conversed with him on everything as they read it.

She taught him to speak the truth, and to be honorable and just.

She taught him to be polite, and even formal, rather than free-and-easy and rude. She taught him to be a man. He must not be what brave boys called a molly-coddle: like most womanly women, she had a veneration for man, and she gave him her own high idea of the manly character.

Natural ability, and habitual contact with a mind so attractive and so rich, gave this intelligent boy many good ideas beyond his age.

When he was six years old, Lady Bassett made him pass his word of honor that he would never go into the stable-yard; and even then he was far enough advanced to keep his word religiously.

In return for this she let him taste some sweets of liberty, and was not always after him. She was profound enough to see that without liberty a noble character cannot be formed; and she husbanded the curb.



One day he represented to her that, in the meadow next their lawn, were great stripes of yellow, which were possibly cowslips; of course they might be only buttercups, but he hoped better things of them; he further reported that there was an iron gate between him and this paradise: he could get over it if not objectionable; but he thought it safest to ask her what she thought of the matter; was that iron gate intended to keep little boys from the cowslips, because, if so, it was a misfortune to which he must resign himself. Still, it was a misfortune. All this, of course, in the simple language of boyhood.

Then Lady Bassett smiled, and said, "Suppose I were to lend you a key of that iron gate?"

"Oh, mamma!"

"I have a great mind to."

"Then you will, you will."

"Does that follow?"

"Yes: whenever you say you think you'll do something kind, or you have a great mind to do it, you know you always do it; and that is one thing I do like you for, mamma—you are better than your word."

"Better than my word? Where does the child learn these things?"

"La, mamma, papa says that often."

"Oh, that accounts for it. I like the phrase very much. I wish I could think I deserved it. At any rate, I will be as good as my word for once; you shall have a key of the gate."

The boy clapped his hands with delight. The key was sent for, and, meantime, she told him one reason why she had trusted him with it was because he had been as good as his word about the stable.

The key was brought, and she held it up half playfully, and said, "There, sir, I deliver you this upon conditions: you must only use it when the weather is quite dry, because the grass in the meadow is longer, and will be wet. Do you promise?"

"Yes, mamma."

"And you must always lock the gate when you come back, and bring the key to one place—let me see—the drawer in the hall table, the one with marble on it; for you know a place for every thing is our rule. On these conditions, I hereby deliver you this magic key, with the right of egress and ingress."

"Egress and ingress?"

"Egress and ingress."

"Is that foreign for cowslips, mamma—and oxlips?"

"Ha! ha! the child's head is full of cowslips. There is the dictionary; look out Egress, and afterward look out Ingress."

When he had added these two words to his little vocabulary, his mother asked him if he would be good enough to tell her why he did not care much about all the beautiful flowers in the garden, and was so excited about cowslips, which appeared to her a flower of no great beauty, and the smell rather sickly, begging his pardon.

This question posed him dreadfully: he looked at her in a sort of comic distress, and then sat gravely down all in a heap, about a yard off, to think.

Finally he turned to her with a wry face, and said, "Why do I, mamma?"

She smiled deliciously. "No, no, sir," said she. "How can I get inside your little head and tell what is there? There must be a reason, I suppose; and you know you and I are never satisfied till we get at the reason of a thing. But there is no hurry, dear. I give you a week to find it out. Now, run and open the gate—stay, are there any cows in that field?"

"Sometimes, mamma; but they have no horns, you know."

"Upon your word?"

"Upon my honor. I am not fond of them with horns, myself."

"Then run away, darling. But you must come and hunt me up, and tell me how you enjoyed yourself, because that makes me happy, you know."

This is mawkish; but it will serve to show on what terms the woman and boy were.

On second thoughts, I recall that apology, and defy creation. "THE MAWKISH" is a branch of literature, a great and popular one, and I have neglected it savagely.

Master Compton opened the iron gate, and the world was all before him where to choose.

He chose one of those yellow stripes that had so attracted him. Horror! it was all buttercups and deil a cowslip.

Nevertheless, pursuing his researches, he found plenty of that delightful flower scattered about the meadow in thinner patches; and he gathered a double handful and dirtied his knees.

Returning, thus laden, from his first excursion, he was accosted by a fluty voice.

"Little boy!"

He looked up, and saw a girl standing on the lower bar of a little wooden gate painted white, looking over.

"Please bring me my ball," said she, pathetically.

Compton looked about; and saw a soft ball of many colors lying near.

He put down his cowslips gravely, and, brought her the ball. He gave it her with a blush, because she was a strange girl; and she blushed a little, because he did.

He returned to his cowslips.

"Little boy!" said the voice, "please bring me my ball again."

He brought it her, with undisturbed politeness. She was giggling; he laughed too, at that.

"You did it on purpose that time," said he, solemnly.

"La! you don't think I'd be so wicked," said she.

Compton shook his head doubtfully, and, considering the interview at an end turned to go, when instantly the ball knocked his hat off, and nothing of the malefactress was visible but a black eye sparkling with fun and mischief, and a bit of forehead wedged against the angle of the wall.

This being a challenge, Compton said, "Now you come out after that, and stand a shot, like a man."

The invitation to be masculine did not tempt her a bit; the only thing she put out was her hand, and that she drew in, with a laugh, the moment he threw at it.

At this juncture a voice cried, "Ruperta! what are you doing there?"

Ruperta made a rapid signal with her hand to Compton, implying that he was to run away; and she herself walked demurely toward the person who had called her.

It was three days before Compton saw her again, and then she beckoned him royally to her.

"Little boy," said she, "talk to me."

Compton looked at her a little confounded, and did not reply.

"Stand on this gate, like me, and talk," said she.

He obeyed the first part of this mandate, and stood on the lower bar of the little gate; so their two figures made a V, when they hung back, and a tenpenny nail when they came forward and met, and this motion they continued through the dialogue; and it was a pity the little wretches could not keep still, and send for my friend the English Titian: for, when their heads were in position, it was indeed a pretty picture of childish and flower-like beauty and contrast; the boy fair, blue-eyed, and with exquisite golden hair; the girl black-eyed, black-browed, and with eyelashes of incredible length and beauty, and a cheek brownish, but tinted, and so glowing with health and vigor that, pricked with a needle, it seemed ready to squirt carnation right into your eye.

She dazzled Master Compton so that he could do nothing but look at her.

"Well?" said she, smiling.

"Well," replied he, pretending her "well" was not an interrogatory, but a concise statement, and that he had discharged the whole duty of man by according a prompt and cheerful consent.

"You begin," said the lady.

"No, you."

"What for?"

"Because—I think—you are the cleverest."

"Good little boy! Well, then, I will. Who are you?"

"I am Compton. Who are you, please?"

"I am Ruperta."

"I never heard that name before."

"No more did I. I think they measured me for it: you live in the great house there, don't you?"

"Yes, Ruperta."

"Well, then, I live in the little house. It is not very little either. It's Highmore. I saw you in church one day; is that lady with the hair your mamma?"

"Yes, Ruperta."

"She is beautiful."

"Isn't she?"

"But mine is so good."

"Mine is very good, too, Ruperta. Wonderfully good."

"I like you, Compton—a little."

"I like you a good deal, Ruperta."

"La, do you? I wonder at that: you are like a cherub, and I am such a black thing."

"But that is why I like you. Reginald is darker than you, and oh, so beautiful!"

"Hum!—he is a very bad boy."

"No, he is not."

"Don't tell stories, child; he is. I know all about him. A wicked, vulgar, bad boy."

"He is not," cried Compton, almost sniveling; but he altered his mind, and fired up. "You are a naughty, story-telling girl, to say that."

"Bless me!" said Ruperta, coloring high, and tossing her head haughtily.

"I don't like you now, Ruperta," said Compton, with all the decent calmness of a settled conviction.

"You don't!" screamed Ruperta. "Then go about your business directly, and don't never come here again! Scolding me! How dare you?—oh! oh! oh!" and the little lady went off slowly, with her finger in her eye; and Master Compton looked rather rueful, as we all do when this charming sex has recourse to what may be called "liquid reasoning." I have known the most solid reasons unable to resist it.

However, "mens conscia recti," and, above all, the cowslips, enabled Compton to resist, and he troubled his head no more about her that day.

But he looked out for her the next day, and she did not come; and that rather disappointed him.

The next day was wet, and he did not go into the meadow, being on honor not to do so.

The fourth day was lovely, and he spent a long time in the meadow, in hopes: he saw her for a moment at the gate; but she speedily retired.

He was disappointed.

However, he collected a good store of cowslips, and then came home.

As he passed the door out popped Ruperta from some secret ambush, and said, "Well?"



CHAPTER XXXVIII.

"WELL," replied Compton.

"Are you better, dear?"

"I'm very well, thank you," said the boy.

"In your mind, I mean. You were cross last time, you know."

Compton remembered his mother's lessons about manly behavior, and said, in a jaunty way, "Well, I s'pose I was a little cross."

Now the other cunning little thing had come to apologize, if there was no other way to recover her admirer. But, on this confession, she said, "Oh, if you are sorry for it, I forgive you. You may come and talk."

Then Compton came and stood on the gate, and they held a long conversation; and, having quarreled last time, parted now with rather violent expressions of attachment.

After that they made friends and laid their little hearts bare to each other; and it soon appeared that Compton had learned more, but Ruperta had thought more for herself, and was sorely puzzled about many things, and of a vastly inquisitive mind. "Why," said she, "is good thing's so hard, and had things so nice and easy? It would be much better if good things were nice and bad ones nasty. That is the way I'd have it, if I could make things."

Mr. Compton shook his head and said many things were very hard to understand, and even his mamma sometimes could not make out all the things.

"Nor mine neither; I puzzle her dreadful. I can't help that; things shouldn't come and puzzle me, and then I shouldn't puzzle her. Shall I tell you my puzzles? and perhaps you can answer them because you are a boy. I can't think why it is wicked for me to dig in my little garden on a Sunday, and it isn't wicked for Jessie to cook and Sarah to make the beds. Can't think why mamma told papa not to be cross, and, when I told her not to be cross, she put me in a dark cupboard all among the dreadful mice, till I screamed so she took me out and kissed me and gave me pie. Can't think why papa called Sally 'Something' for spilling the ink over his papers, and when I called the gardener the very same for robbing my flowers, all their hands and eyes went up, and they said I was a shocking girl. Can't think why papa giggled the next moment, if I was a shocking girl: it is all puzzle—puzzle—puzzle."



One day she said, "Can you tell me where all the bad people are buried? for that puzzles me dreadful."

Compton was posed at first, but said at last he thought they were buried in the churchyard, along with the good ones.

"Oh, indeed!" said she, with an air of pity. "Pray, have you ever been in the churchyard, and read the writings on the stones?"

"No."

"Then I have. I have read every single word; and there are none but good people buried there, not one." She added, rather pathetically, "You should not answer me without thinking, as if things were easy, instead of so hard. Well, one comfort, there are not many wicked people hereabouts; they live in towns; so I suppose they are buried in the garden, poor things, or put in the water with a stone."

Compton had no more plausible theory ready, and declined to commit himself to Ruperta's; so that topic fell to the ground.

One day he found her perched as usual, but with her bright little face overclouded.

By this time the intelligent boy was fond enough of her to notice her face. "What's the matter, Perta?"

"Ruperta. The matter? Puzzled again! It is very serious this time."

"Tell me, Ruperta."

"No, dear."

"Please."

The young lady fixed her eyes on him, and said, with a pretty solemnity, "Let us play at catechism."

"I don't know that game."

"The governess asks questions, and the good little boy answers. That's catechism. I'm the governess."

"Then I'm the good little boy."

"Yes, dear; and so now look me full in the face."

"There—you're very pretty, Ruperta."

"Don't be giddy; I'm hideous; so behave, and answer all my questions. Oh, I'm so unhappy. Answer me, is young people, or old people, goodest?"

"You should say best, dear. Good, better, best. Why, old people, to be sure—much."

"So I thought; and that is why I am so puzzled. Then your papa and mine are much betterer—will that do?—than we are?"

"Of course they are."

"There he goes! Such a child for answering slap bang I never."

"I'm not a child. I'm older than you are, Ruperta."

"That's a story."

"Well, then, I'm as old; for Mary says we were born the same day—the same hour—the same minute."

"La! we are twins."

She paused, however, on this discovery, and soon found reason to doubt her hasty conclusion. "No such thing," said she: "they tell me the bells were ringing for you being found, and then I was found—to catechism you."

"There! then you see I am older than you, Ruperta."

"Yes, dear," said Ruperta, very gravely; "I'm younger in my body, but older in my head."

This matter being settled so that neither party could complain, since antiquity was evenly distributed, the catechizing recommenced.

"Do you believe in 'Let dogs delight?'"

"I don't know."

"What!" screamed Ruperta. "Oh, you wicked boy! Why, it comes next after the Bible."

"Then I do believe it," said Compton, who, to tell the truth, had been merely puzzled by the verb, and was not afflicted with any doubt that the composition referred to was a divine oracle.

"Good boy!" said Ruperta, patronizingly. "Well, then, this is what puzzles me; your papa and mine don't believe in 'Dogs delight.' They have been quarreling this twelve years and more, and mean to go on, in spite of mamma. She is good. Didn't you know that your papa and mine are great enemies?"

"No, Ruperta. Oh, what a pity!"

"Don't, Compton, don't: there, you have made me cry."

He set himself to console her.

She consented to be consoled.

But she said, with a sigh, "What becomes of old people being better than young ones, now? Are you and I bears and lions? Do we scratch out each other's eyes? It is all puzzle, puzzle, puzzle. I wish I was dead! Nurse says, when I'm dead I shall understand it all. But I don't know; I saw a dead cat once, and she didn't seem to know as much as before; puzzle, puzzle. Compton, do you think they are puzzled in heaven?"

"No."

"Then the sooner we both go there, the better."

"Yes, but not just now."

"Why not?"

"Because of the cowslips."

"Here's a boy! What, would you rather be among the cowslips than the angels? and think of the diamonds and pearls that heaven is paved with."

"But you mightn't be there."

"What! Am I a wicked girl, then—wickeder than you, that is a boy?"

"Oh no, no, no; but see how big it is up there;" they cast their eyes up, and, taking the blue vault for creation, were impressed with its immensity. "I know where to find you here, but up there you might be ever so far off me."

"La! so I might. Well, then, we had better keep quiet. I suppose we shall get wiser as we get older. But Compton, I'm so sorry your papa and mine are bears and lions. Why doesn't the clergyman scold them?"

"Nobody dare scold my papa," said Compton, proudly. Then, after reflection, "Perhaps, when we are older, we may persuade them to make friends. I think it is very stupid to quarrel; don't you?"

"As stupid as an owl."

"You and I had a quarrel once, Ruperta."

"Yes, you misbehaved."

"No, no; you were cross."

"Story! Well, never mind: we did quarrel. And you were miserable directly."

"Not so very," said Compton, tossing his head.

"I was, then," said Ruperta, with unguarded candor.

"So was I."

"Good boy! Kiss me, dear."

"There—and there—and there—and—"

"That will do. I want to talk, Compton."

"Yes, dear."

"I'm not very sure, but I rather think I'm in love with you—a little, little bit, you know."

"And I'm sure I'm in love with you, Ruperta."

"Over head an' ears?"

"Yes."

"Then I love you to distraction. Bother the gate! If it wasn't for that, I could run in the meadow with you; and marry you perhaps, and so gather cowslips together for ever and ever."

"Let us open it."

"You can't."

"Let us try."

"I have. It won't be opened."

"Let me try. Some gates want to be lifted up a little, and then they will open. There, I told you so."

The gate came open.

Ruperta uttered an exclamation of delight, and then drew back.

"I'm afraid, Compton," said she, "papa would be angry."

She wanted Compton to tempt her; but that young gentleman, having a strong sense of filial duty, omitted so to do.

When she saw he would not persuade her, she dispensed. "Come along," said she, "if it is only for five minutes."

She took his hand, and away they scampered. He showed her the cowslips, the violets, and all the treasures of the meadow; but it was all hurry, and skurry, and excitement; no time to look at anything above half a minute, for fear of being found out: and so, at last, back to the gate, beaming with stolen pleasure, glowing and sparkling with heat and excitement.

The cunning thing made him replace the gate, and then, after saying she must go for about an hour, marched demurely back to the house.

After one or two of these hasty trips, impunity gave her a sense of security, and, the weather getting warm, she used to sit in the meadow with her beau and weave wreaths of cowslips, and place them in her black hair, and for Comp-ton she made coronets of bluebells, and adorned his golden head.

And sometimes, for a little while, she would nestle to him, and lean her head, with all the feminine grace of a mature woman, on his shoulder.

Said she, "A boy's shoulder does very nice for a girl to put her nose on."

One day the aspiring girl asked him what was that forest.

"That is Bassett's wood."

"I will go there with you some day, when papa is out."

"I'm afraid that is too far for you," said Compton.

"Nothing is too far for me," replied the ardent girl. "Why, how far is it?"

"More than half a mile."

"Is it very big?"

"Immense."

"Belong to the queen?"

"No, to papa."

"Oh!"

And here my reader may well ask what was Lady Bassett about, or did Compton, with all his excellent teaching, conceal all this from his mother and his friend.

On the contrary, he went open-mouthed to her and told her he had seen such a pretty little girl, and gave her a brief account of their conversation.

Lady Bassett was startled at first, and greatly perplexed. She told him he must on no account go to her; if he spoke to her, it must be on papa's ground. She even made him pledge his honor to that.

More than that she did not like to say. She thought it unnecessary and undesirable to transmit to another generation the unhappy feud by which she had suffered so much, and was even then suffering. Moreover, she was as much afraid of Richard Bassett as ever. If he chose to tell his girl not to speak to Compton, he might. She was resolved not to go out of her way to affront him, through his daughter. Besides, that might wound Mrs. Bassett, if it got round to her ears; and, although she had never spoken to Mrs. Bassett, yet their eyes had met in church, and always with a pacific expression. Indeed, Lady Bassett felt sure she had read in that meek woman's face a regret that they were not friends, and could not be friends, because of their husbands. Lady Bassett, then, for these reasons, would not forbid Compton to be kind to Ruperta in moderation.

Whether she would have remained as neutral had she known how far these young things were going, is quite another matter; but Compton's narratives to her were, naturally enough, very tame compared with the reality, and she never dreamed that two seven-year-olds could form an attachment so warm, as these little plagues were doing.

And, to conclude, about the time when Mr. Compton first opened the gate for his inamorata, Lady Bassett's mind was diverted, in some degree, even from her beloved boy Compton, by a new trouble, and a host of passions it excited in her own heart.

A thunder-clap fell on Sir Charles Bassett, in the form of a letter from Reginald's tutor, informing him that Reginald and another lad had been caught wiring hares in a wood at some distance and were now in custody.

Sir Charles mounted his horse and rode to the place, leaving Lady Bassett a prey to great anxiety and bitter remorse.

Sir Charles came back in two days, with the galling news that his son and heir was in prison for a month, all his exertions having only prevailed to get the case summarily dealt with.

Reginald's companion, a young gypsy, aged seventeen, had got three months, it being assumed that he was the tempter: the reverse was the case, though.

When Sir Charles told Lady Bassett all this, with a face of agony, and a broken voice, her heart almost burst: she threw every other consideration to the winds.

"Charles," she cried, "I can't bear it: I can't see your heart wrung any more, and your affections blighted. Tear that young viper out of your breast: don't go on wasting your heart's blood on a stranger; HE IS NOT YOUR SON."



CHAPTER XXXIX.

AT this monstrous declaration, from the very lips of the man's wife, there was a dead silence, Sir Charles being struck dumb, and Lady Bassett herself terrified at the sound of the words she had uttered.

After a terrible pause, Sir Charles fixed his eyes on her, with an awful look, and said, very slowly, "Will—you—have—the—goodness— to—say that again? but first think what you are saying."

This made Lady Bassett shake in every limb; indeed the very flesh of her body quivered. Yet she persisted, but in a tone that of itself showed how fast her courage was oozing. She faltered out, almost inaudibly, "I say you must waste no more love on him—he is not your son."

Sir Charles looked at her to see if she was in her senses: it was not the first time he had suspected her of being deranged on this one subject. But no: she was pale as death, she was cringing, wincing, quivering, and her eyes roving to and fro; a picture not of frenzy, but of guilt unhardened.

He began to tremble in his turn, and was so horror-stricken and agitated that he could hardly speak. "Am I dreaming?" he gasped.

Lady Bassett saw the storm she had raised, and would have given the world to recall her words.

"Whose is he, then?" asked Sir Charles, in a voice scarcely human.

"I don't know," said Lady Bassett doggedly.

"Then how dare you say that he isn't mine?"

"Kill me, Charles," cried she, passionately; "but don't look at me so and speak to me so. Why I say he is not yours, is he like you either in face or mind?"

"And he is like—whom?"

Lady Bassett had lost all her courage by this time: she whimpered out, "Like nobody except the gypsies."

"Bella, this is a subject which will part you and me for life unless we can agree upon it—"

No reply, in words, from Lady Bassett.

"So please let us understand each other. Your son is not my son. Is that what you look me in the face and tell me?"

"Charles, I never said that. How could he be my son, and not be yours?"

And she raised her eyes, and looked him full in the face: nor fear nor cringing now: the woman was majestic.

Sir Charles was a little alarmed in his turn; for his wife's soft eyes flamed battle for the first time in her life.

"Now you talk sense," said he; "if he is yours, he is mine; and, as he is certainly yours, this is a very foolish conversation, which must not be renewed, otherwise—"

"I shall be insulted by my own husband?"

"I think it very probable. And, as I do not choose you to be insulted, nor to think yourself insulted, I forbid you ever to recur to this subject."

"I will obey, Charles; but let me say one word first. When I was alone in London, and hardly sensible, might not this child have been imposed upon me and you? I'm sure he was."

"By whom?"

"How can I tell? I was alone—that woman in the house had a bad face—the gypsies do these things, I've heard."

"The gypsies! And why not the fairies?" said Sir Charles, contemptuously. "Is that all you have to suggest—before we close the subject forever?"

"Yes," said Lady Bassett sorrowfully. "I see you take me for a mad-woman; but time will show. Oh that I could persuade you to detach your affections from that boy—he will break your heart else—and rest them on the children that resemble us in mind and features."

"These partialities are allowed to mothers; but a father must be just. Reginald is my first-born; he came to me from Heaven at a time when I was under a bitter trial, and from the day he was born till this day I have been a happy man. It is not often a father owes so much to a son as I do to my darling boy. He is dear to my heart in spite of his faults; and now I pity him, as well as love him, since it seems he has only one parent, poor little fellow!"

Lady Bassett opened her mouth to reply, but could not. She raised her hands in mute despair, then quietly covered her face with them, and soon the tears trickled through her white fingers.

Sir Charles looked at her, and was touched at her silent grief.

"My darling wife," said he, "I think this is the only thing you and I cannot agree upon. Why not be wise as well as loving, and avoid it."

"I will never seek it again," sobbed Lady Bassett. "But oh," she cried, with sudden wildness, "something tells me it will meet me, and follow me, and rob me of my husband. Well, when that day comes, I shall know how to die."

And with this she burst away from him, like some creature who has been stung past endurance.

Sir Charles often meditated on this strange scene: turn it how he could he came back to the same conclusion, that she must have an hallucination on this subject. He said to himself, "If Bella really believed the boy was a changeling, she would act upon her conviction, she would urge me to take some steps to recover our true child, whom the gypsies or the fairies have taken, and given us poor dear Reginald instead."

But still the conversation, and her strange looks of terror, lay dormant in his mind: both were too remarkable to be ever forgotten. Such things lie like certain seeds, awaiting only fresh accidents to spring into life.

The month rolled away, and the day came for Reginald's liberation. A dogcart was sent for him, and the heir of the Bassetts emerged from a county jail, and uttered a whoop of delight; he insisted on driving, and went home at a rattling pace.

He was in high spirits till he got in sight of Huntercombe Hall; and then it suddenly occurred to his mercurial mind that he should probably not be received with an ovation, petty larceny being a novelty in that ancient house whose representative he was.

When he did get there he found the whole family in such a state of commotion that his return was hardly noticed at all.



Master Compton's dinner hour was two P.M., and yet, at three o'clock of this day, he did not come in.

This was reported to Lady Bassett, and it gave her some little anxiety; for she suspected he might possibly be in the company of Ruperta Bassett; and, although she did not herself much object to that, she objected very much to have it talked about and made a fuss. So she went herself to the end of the lawn, and out into the meadow, that a servant might not find the young people together, if her suspicion was correct.

She went into the meadow and called "Compton! Compton!" as loud as she could, but there was no reply.

Then she came in, and began to be alarmed, and sent servants about in all directions.

But two hours elapsed, and there were no tidings. The thing looked serious.

She sent out grooms well mounted to scour the country. One of these fell in with Sir Charles, who thereupon came home and found his wife in a pitiable state. She was sitting in an armchair, trembling and crying hysterically.

She caught his hand directly, and grasped it like a vise.

"It is Richard Bassett!" she cried. "He knows how to wound and kill me. He has stolen our child."

Sir Charles hurried out, and, soon after that, Reginald arrived, and stood awe-struck at her deplorable condition.

Sir Charles came back heated and anxious, kissed Reginald, told him in three words his brother was missing, and then informed Lady Bassett that he had learned something very extraordinary; Richard Bassett's little girl had also disappeared, and his people were out looking after her.

"Ah, they are together," cried Lady Bassett.

"Together? a son of mine consorting with that viper's brood!"

"What does that poor child know? Oh, find him for me, if you love that dear child's mother!'"

Sir Charles hurried out directly, but was met at the door by a servant, who blurted out, "The men have dragged the fish-ponds, Sir Charles, and they want to know if they shall drag the brook."

"Hold your tongue, idiot!" cried Sir Charles, and thrust him out; but the wiseacre had not spoken in vain. Lady Bassett moaned, and went into worse hysterics, with nobody near her but Reginald.

That worthy, never having seen a lady in hysterics, and not being hardened at all points, uttered a sympathetic howl, and flung his arms round her neck. "Oh! oh! oh! Don't cry, mamma."

Lady Bassett shuddered at his touch, but did not repel him.

"I'll find him for you," said the boy, "if you will leave off crying."

She stared in his face a moment, and then went on as before.

"Mamma," said he, getting impatient, "do listen to me. I'll find him easy enough, if you will only listen."

"You! you!" and she stared wildly at him.

"Ay, I know a sight more than the fools about here. I'm a poacher. Just you put me on to his track. I'll soon run into him, if he is above ground."

"A child like you!" cried Lady Bassett; "how can you do that?" and she began to wring her hands again.

"I'll show you," said the boy, getting very impatient, "if you will just leave off crying like a great baby, and come to any place you like where he has been to-day and left a mark—"

"Ah!" cried Lady Bassett.

"I'm a poacher," repeated Reginald, quite proudly; "you forget that."

"Come with me," cried Lady Bassett, starting up. She whipped on her bonnet, and ran with him down the lawn.

"There, Reginald," said she, panting, "I think my darling was here this afternoon; yes, yes, he must; for he had a key of the door, and it is open."

"All right," said Reginald; "come into the field."

He ran about like a dog hunting, and soon found marks among the cowslips.

"Somebody has been gathering a nosegay here to-day," said he; "now, mamma, there's only two ways put of this field—let us go straight to that gate; that is the likeliest."

Near the gate was some clay, and Reginald showed her several prints of small feet.

"Look," said he, "here's the track of two—one's a gal; how I know, here's a sole to this shoe no wider nor a knife. Come on."

In the next field he was baffled for a long time; but at last he found a place in a dead hedge where they had gone through.

"See," said he, "these twigs are fresh broken, and here's a bit of the gal's frock. Oh! won't she catch it?":

"Oh, you brave, clever boy!" cried Lady Bassett.

"Come on!" shouted the urchin.

He hunted like a beagle, and saw like a bird, with his savage, glittering eye. He was on fire with the ardor of the chase; and, not to dwell too long on what has been so often and so well written by others, in about an hour and a half he brought the anxious, palpitating, but now hopeful mother, to the neighborhood of Bassett's wood. Here he trusted to his own instinct. "They have gone into the wood," said he, "and I don't blame 'em. I found my way here long before his age. I say, don't you tell; I've snared plenty of the governor's hares in that wood."

He got to the edge of the wood and ran down the side. At last he found the marks of small feet on a low bank, and, darting over it, discovered the fainter traces on some decaying leaves inside the wood.

"There," said he; "now it is just as if you had got them in your pocket, for they'll never find their way out of this wood. Bless your heart, why I used to get lost in it at first."

"Lost in the wood!" cried Lady Bassett; "but he will die of fear, or be eaten by wild beasts; and it is getting so dark."

"What about that? Night or day is all one to me. What will you give me if I find him before midnight?"

"Anything I've got in the world."

"Give me a sovereign?"

"A thousand!"

"Give me a kiss?"

"A hundred!"

"Then I'll tell you what I'll do—I don't mind a little trouble, to stop your crying, mamma, because you are the right sort. I'll get the village out, and we will tread the wood with torches, an' all for them as can't see by night; I can see all one; and you shall have your kid home to supper. You see, there's a heavy dew, and he is not like me, that would rather sleep in this wood than the best bed in London city; a night in a wood would about settle his hash. So here goes. I can run a mile in six minutes and a half."

With these words, the strange boy was off like an arrow from a bow.

Lady Bassett, exhausted by anxiety and excitement, was glad to sit down; her trembling heart would not let her leave the place that she now began to hope contained her child. She sat down and waited patiently.

The sun set, the moon rose, the stars glittered; the infinite leaves stood out dark and solid, as if cut out of black marble; all was dismal silence and dread suspense to the solitary watcher.

Yet the lady of Huntercombe Hall sat on, sick at heart, but patient, beneath that solemn sky.

She shuddered a little as the cold dews gathered on her, for she was a woman nursed in luxury's lap; but she never moved.

The silence was dismal. Had that wild boy forgotten his promise, or were there no parents in the village, that their feet lagged so?

It was nearly ten o'clock, when her keen ears, strained to the utmost, discovered a faint buzzing of voices; but where she could not tell.

The sounds increased and increased, and then there was a temporary silence; and after that a faint hallooing in the wood to her right. The wood was five hundred acres, and the bulk of it lay in front and to her left.

The hallooing got louder and louder; the whole wood seemed to echo; her heart beat high; lights glimmered nearer and nearer, hares and rabbits pattered by and startled her, and pheasants thundered off their roosts with an incredible noise, owls flitted, and bats innumerable, disturbed and terrified by the glaring lights and loud resounding halloos.

Nearer, nearer came the sounds, till at last a line of men and boys, full fifty carrying torches and lanterns, came up, and lighted up the dew-spangled leaves, and made the mother's heart leap with joyful hope at succor so powerful.

Oh, she could have kissed the stout village blacksmith, whose deep sonorous lungs rang close to her. Never had any man's voice sounded to her so like a god's as this stout blacksmith's "hilloop! hilloop!" close and loud in her ear, and those at the end of the line hallooed "hillo-op; hillo-op!" like an echo; and so they passed on, through bush and brier, till their voices died away in the distance.

A boy detached himself from the line, and ran to Lady Bassett with a traveling rug. It was Reginald.

"You put on this," said he. He shook it, and, standing on tiptoe, put it over her shoulders.

"Thank you, dear," said she. "Where is papa?"

"Oh, he is in the line, and the Highmore swell and all."

"Mr. Richard Bassett?"

"Air, his kid is out on the loose, as well as ours."

"Oh, Reginald, if they should quarrel!"

"Why, our governor can lick him, can't he?"



CHAPTER XL.

"OH, don't talk so. I wouldn't for all the world they should quarrel."

"Well, we have got enough fellows to part them if they do."

"Dear Reginald, you have been so good to me, and you are so clever; speak to some of the men, and let there be no more quarreling between papa and that man."

"All right," said the boy.

"On second thoughts take me to papa; I'll be by his side, and then they cannot."

"You want to walk through the wood? that is a good joke. Why, it is like walking through a river, and the young wood slapping your eyes, for you can't see every twig by this light, and the leaves sponging your face and shoulders: and the briers would soon strip your gown into ribbons, and make your little ankles bleed. No, you are a lady; you stay where you are, and let us men work it. We shan't find him yet awhile. I must get near the governor. When we find my lord, I'll give a whistle you could hear a mile off."

"Oh, Reginald, are you sure he is in the wood?"

"I'd bet my head to a chany orange. You might as well ask me, when I track a badger to his hole, and no signs of his going out again, whether old long-claws is there. I wish I was as sure of never going back to school as I am of finding that little lot. The only thing I don't like is, the young muff's not giving us a halloo back. But, any way, I'll find 'em, alive or dead."

And, with this pleasing assurance, the little imp scudded off, leaving the mother glued to the spot with terror.

For full an hour more the torches gleamed, though fainter and fainter; and so full was the wood of echoes, that the voices, though distant, seemed to halloo all round the agonized mother.

But presently there was a continuous yell, quite different from the isolated shouts, a distant but unmistakable howl of victory that made a bolt of ice shoot down her back, and then her heart to glow like fire.

It was followed by a keen whistle.

She fell on her knees and thanked God for her boy.



In the middle of this wood was a shallow excavation, an old chalk-pit, unused for many years. It was never deep, and had been half filled up with dead leaves; these, once blown into the hollow, or dropped from the trees, had accumulated.

The very middle of the line struck on this place, and Moss, the old keeper, who was near the center, had no sooner cast his eyes into it than he halted, and uttered a stentorian halloo well known to sportsmen—"SEE HO!"



A dead halt, a low murmur, and in a very few seconds the line was a circle, and all the torches that had not expired held high in a flaming ring over the prettiest little sight that wood had ever presented.

The old keeper had not given tongue on conjecture, like some youthful hound. In a little hollow of leaves, which the boy had scraped out, lay Master Compton and Miss Ruperta, on their little backs, each with an arm round the other's neck, enjoying the sweet sound sleep of infancy, which neither the horror of their situation—babes in the wood—nor the shouts of fifty people had in the smallest degree disturbed; to be sure, they had undergone great fatigue.

Young master wore a coronet of bluebells on his golden bead, young miss a wreath of cowslips on her ebon locks. The pair were flowers, cherubs, children—everything that stands for young, tender, and lovely.

The honest villagers gaped, and roared in chorus, and held high their torches, and gazed with reverential delight. Not for them was it to finger the little gentlefolks, but only to devour them with admiring eyes.

Indeed, the picture was carried home to many a humble hearth, and is spoken of to this day in Huntercombe village.

But the pale and anxious fathers were in no state to see pictures—they only saw their children Sir Charles and Richard Bassett came round with the general rush, saw, and dashed into the pit.

Strange to say, neither knew the other was there. Each seized his child, and tore it away from the contact of the other child, as if from a viper; in which natural but harsh act they saw each other for the first time, and their eyes gleamed in a moment with hate and defiance over their loving children.

Here was a picture of a different kind, and if the melancholy Jaques, or any other gentleman with a foible for thinking in a wood; had been there, methinks he had moralized very prettily on the hideousness of hate and the beauty of the sentiment it had interrupted so fiercely. But it escaped this sort of comment for about eight years. Well, all this woke the bairns; the lights dazzled them, the people scared them. Each hid a little face on the paternal shoulder.

The fathers, like wild beasts, each carrying off a lamb, withdrew, glaring at each other; but the very next moment the stronger and better sentiment prevailed, and they kissed and blessed their restored treasures, and forgot their enemies for a time.

Sir Charles's party followed him, and supped at Huntercombe, every man Jack of them.

Reginald, who had delivered a terrific cat-call, now ran off to Lady Bassett. There she was, still on her knees.

"Found! found!" he shouted.

She clasped him in her arms and wept for joy.

"My eyes!" said he, "what a one you are to cry! You come home; you'll catch your death o' cold."

"No, no; take me to my child at once."

"Can't be done; the governor has carried him off through the wood; and I ain't a going to let you travel the wood. You come with me; we'll go the short cut, and be home as soon as them."

She complied, though trembling all over.

On the way he told her where the children had been discovered, and in what attitude.

"Little darlings!" said she. "But he has frightened his poor mother, and nearly broken her heart. Oh!"

"If you cry any more, mamma—Shut up, I tell you!"

"Must I? Oh!"

"Yes, or you'll catch pepper."

Then he pulled her along, gabbling all the time. "Those two swells didn't quarrel after all, you see."

"Thank Heaven!"

"But they looked at each other like hobelixes, and pulled the kids away like pison. Ha! ha! I say, the young 'uns ain't of the same mind as the old 'uns. I say, though, our Compton is not a bad sort; I'm blowed if he hadn't taken off his tippet to put round his gal. I say, don't you think that little chap has begun rather early? Why, I didn't trouble my head about the gals till I was eleven years old."

Lady Bassett was too much agitated to discuss these delicate little questions just then.

She replied as irrelevantly as ever a lady did. "Oh, you good, brave, clever boy!" said she.

Then she stopped a moment to kiss him heartily. "I shall never forget this night, dear. I shall always make excuses for you. Oh, shall we never get home?"

"We shall be home as soon as they will," said Reginald. "Come on."

He gabbled to her the whole way; but the reader has probably had enough of his millclack.

Lady Bassett reached home, and had just ordered a large fire in Compton's bedroom, when Sir Charles came in, bringing the boy.

The lady ran out screaming, and went down on her knees, with her arms out, as only a mother can stretch them to her child.

There was not a word of scolding that night. He had made her suffer; but what of that? She had no egotism; she was a true mother. Her boy had been lost, and was found; and she was the happiest soul in creation.

But the fathers of these babes in the wood were both intensely mortified, and took measures to keep those little lovers apart in future. Richard Bassett locked up his gate: Sir Charles padlocked his; and they both told their wives they really must be more vigilant. The poor children, being in disgrace, did not venture to remonstrate! But they used often to think of each other, and took a liking to the British Sunday; for then they saw each other in church.

By-and-by even that consolation ceased. Ruperta was sent to school, and passed her holidays at the sea-side.



To return to Reginald, he was compelled to change his clothes that evening, but was allowed to sit up, and, when the heads of the house were a little calmer, became the hero of the night.

Sir Charles, gazing on him with parental pride, said, "Reginald, you have begun a new life to-day, and begun it well. Let us forget the past, and start fresh to-day, with the love and gratitude of both your parents."

The boy hung his head and said nothing in reply.

Lady Bassett came to his assistance. "He will; he will. Don't say a word about the past. He is a good, brave, beautiful boy, and I adore him."

"And I like you, mamma," said Reginald graciously.

From that day the boy had a champion in Lady Bassett; and Heaven knows, she had no sinecure; poor Reginald's virtues were too eccentric to balance his faults for long together. His parents could not have a child lost in a wood every day; but good taste and propriety can be offended every hour when one is so young, active, and savage as Master Reginald.

He was up at five, and doing wrong all day.

Hours in the stables, learning to talk horsey, and smell dunghilly.

Hours in the village, gossiping and romping.

In good company, an owl.

In bad, or low company, a cricket, a nightingale, a magpie.

He was seen at a neighboring fair, playing the fiddle in a booth to dancing yokels, and receiving their pence.

He was caught by Moss wiring hairs in Bassett's wood, within twenty yards of the place where he had found the babes in the wood so nobly.

Remonstrated with tenderly and solemnly, he informed Sir Charles that poaching was a thing he could not live without, and he modestly asked to have Bassett's wood given him to poach in, offering, as a consideration, to keep all other poachers out: as a greater inducement, he represented that he should not require a house, but only a coarse sheet to stretch across an old saw-pit, and a pair of blankets for winter use—one under, one over.

Sir Charles was often sad, sometimes indignant.

Lady Bassett excused each enormity with pathetic ingenuity; excused, but suffered, and indeed pined visibly, for all this time he was tormenting her as few women in her position have been tormented. Her life was a struggle of contesting emotions; she was wounded, harassed, perplexed, and so miserable, she would have welcomed death, that her husband might read that Manuscript and cease to suffer, and she escape the shame of confessing, and of living after it.

In one word, she was expiating.

Neither the excuses she made nor the misery she suffered escaped Sir Charles.

He said to her at last, "My own Bella, this unhappy boy is killing you. Dear as he is to me, you are dearer. I must send him away again."

"He saved our darling," said she, faintly, but she could say no more. He had exhausted excuse.

Sir Charles made inquiries everywhere, and at last his attention was drawn to the following advertisement in the Times:



UNMANAGEABLE, Backward, or other BOYS, carefully TRAINED, and EDUCATED, by a married rector. Home comforts. Moderate terms. Address Dr. Beecher, Fennymore, Cambridgeshire.



He wrote to this gentleman, and the correspondence was encouraging. "These scapegraces," said the artist in tuition, "are like crab-trees; abominable till you graft them, and then they bear the best fruit."

While the letters were passing, came a climax. Reckless Reginald could keep no bounds intact: his inward definition of a boundary was "a thing you should go a good way out of your way rather than not overleap."

Accordingly, he was often on Highmore farm at night, and even in Highmore garden; the boundary wall tempted him so.

One light but windy night, when everybody that could put his head under cover, and keep it there, did, reckless Reginald was out enjoying the fresh breezes; he mounted the boundary wall of Highmore like a cat, to see what amusement might offer. Thus perched, he speedily discovered a bright light in Highmore dining-room.

He dropped from the wall directly, and stole softly over the grass and peered in at the window.

He saw a table with a powerful lamp on it; on that table, and gleaming in that light, were several silver vessels of rare size and workmanship, and Mr. Bassett, with his coat off, and a green baize apron on, was cleaning one of these with brush and leather. He had already cleaned the others, for they glittered prodigiously.

Reginald's black eye gloated and glittered at this unexpected display of wealth in so dazzling a form.

But this was nothing to the revelation in store. When Mr. Bassett had done with that piece of plate he went to the paneled wall, and opened a door so nicely adapted to the panels, that a stranger would hardly have discovered it. Yet it was an enormous door, and, being opened, revealed a still larger closet, lined with green velvet and fitted with shelves from floor to ceiling.

Here shone, in all their glory, the old plate of two good families: that is to say, half the old plate of the Bassetts, and all the old plate of the Goodwyns, from whom came Highmore to Richard Bassett through his mother Ruperta Goodwyn, so named after her grandmother; so named after her aunt; so named after her godmother; so named after her father, Prince Rupert, cavalier, chemist, glass-blower, etc., etc.

The wall seemed ablaze with suns and moons, for many of the chased goblets, plates, and dishes were silver-gilt: none of your filmy electro-plate, but gold laid on thick, by the old mercurial process, in days when they that wrought in precious metals were honest—for want of knowing how to cheat.

Glued to the pane, gloating on this constellation of gold suns and silver moons, and trembling with Bohemian excitement, reckless Reginald heard not a stealthy step upon the grass behind him.

He had trusted to a fact in optics, forgetting the doctrine of shadows.

The Scotch servant saw from a pantry window the shadow of a cap projected on the grass, with a face, and part of a body. She stepped out, and got upon the grass.

Finding it was only a boy, she was brave as well as cunning; and, owing to the wind and his absorption, stole on him unheard, and pinned him with her strong hands by both his shoulders.

Young Hopeful uttered a screech of dismay, and administered a back kick that made Jessie limp for two days, and scream very lustily for the present.

Mr. Bassett, at this dialogue of yells, dropped a coffee-pot with a crash and a tinkle, and ran out directly, and secured young Hopeful, who thereupon began to quake and remonstrate.

"I was only taking a look," said he. "Where's the harm of that?"

"You were trespassing, sir," said Richard Bassett.

"What is the harm of that, governor? You can come over all our place, for what I care."

"Thank you. I prefer to keep to my own place."

"Well, I don't. I say, old chap, don't hit me. 'Twas I put 'em all on the scent of your kid, you know."

"So I have heard. Well, then, this makes us quits."

"Don't it? You ain't such a bad sort, after all."

"Only mind, Mr. Bassett, if I catch you prying here again, that will be a fresh account, and I shall open it with a horsewhip."

He then gave him a little push, and the boy fled like the wind. When he was gone, Richard Bassett became rather uneasy. He had hitherto concealed, even from his own family, the great wealth his humble home contained. His secret was now public. Reginald had no end of low companions. If burglars got scent of this, it might be very awkward. At last he hit upon a defense. He got one of those hooks ending in a screw which are used for pictures, and screwed it into the inside of the cupboard door near the top. To this he fastened a long piece of catgut, and carried it through the floor. His bed was just above the cupboard door, and he attached the gut to a bell by his bedside. By this means nobody could open that cupboard without ringing in his ears.

Jessie told Tom, Tom told Maria and Harriet; Harriet and Maria told everybody; somebody told Sir Charles. He was deeply mortified.

"You young idiot!" said he, "would nothing less than this serve your turn? must you go and lower me and yourself by giving just offense to my one enemy?—the man I hate and despise, and who is always on the watch to injure or affront me. Oh, who would be a father! There, pack up your things; you will go to school next morning at eight o'clock."

Mr. Reginald packed accordingly, but that did not occupy long; so he sallied forth, and, taking for granted that it was Richard Bassett who had been so mean as to tell, he purchased some paint and brushes and a rope, and languished until midnight.

But when that magic hour came he was brisk as a bee, let himself down from his veranda, and stole to Richard Bassett's front door, and inscribed thereon, in large and glaring letters,

"JERRY SNEAK, ESQ., Tell-Tale Tit."

He then returned home much calmed and comforted, climbed up his rope and into his room, and there slept sweetly, as one who had discharged his duty to his neighbor and society in general.

In the morning, however, he was very active, hurried the grooms, and was off before the appointed time.

Sir Charles came down to breakfast, and lo! young Hopeful gone, without the awkward ceremony of leave-taking.

Sir Charles found, as usual, many delicacies on his table, and among them one rarer to him than ortolan, pin-tail, or wild turkey (in which last my soul delights); for he found a letter from Richard Bassett, Esq.



"SIR—Some nights since we caught your successor that is to be, at my dining-room window, prying into my private affairs. Having the honor of our family at heart, I was about to administer a little wholesome correction, when he reminded me he had been instrumental in tracking Miss Bassett, and thereby rescuing her: upon this I was, naturally, mollified, and sent him about his business, hoping to have seen the last of him at Highmore.

"This morning my door is covered with opprobrious epithets, and as Mr. Bassett bought paint and brushes at the shop yesterday afternoon, it is doubtless to him I am indebted for them.

"I make no comments; I simply record the facts, and put them down to your credit, and your son's.

"Your obedient servant,

"RICHARD BASSETT."



Lady Bassett did not come down to breakfast that morning; so Sir Charles digested this dish in solitude.

He was furious with Reginald; but as Richard Bassett's remonstrance was intended to insult him, he wrote back as follows:



"SIR—I am deeply grieved that a son of mine should descend to look in at your windows, or to write anything whatever upon your door; and I will take care it shall never recur.

"Yours obediently,

"CHARLES DYKE BASSETT."



This little correspondence was salutary; it fanned the coals of hatred between the cousins.



Reckless Reginald soon found he had caught a Tartar in his new master.

That gentleman punished him severely for every breach of discipline. The study was a cool dark room, with one window looking north, and that window barred. Here he locked up the erratic youth for hours at a time, upon the slightest escapade.

Reginald wrote a honeyed letter to Sir Charles, bewailing his lot, and praying to be removed.

Sir Charles replied sternly, and sent him a copy of Mr. Richard Bassett's letter. He wrote to Mr. Beecher at the same time, expressing his full approval.

Thus disciplined, the boy began to change; he became moody, sullen, silent, and even sleepy. This was the less wonderful, that he generally escaped at night to a gypsy camp, and courted a gypsy girl, who was nearly as handsome as himself, besides being older, and far more knowing.

His tongue went like a mill, and the whole tribe soon knew all about him and his parents.

One morning the servants got up supernaturally early, to wash. Mr. Reginald was detected stealing back to his roost, and reported to the master.

Mr. Beecher had him up directly, locked him into the study alone, put the other students into the drawing-room, and erected bars to his bedroom window.

A few days of this, and he pined like a bird in a cage.

A few more, and his gypsy girl came fortune-telling to the servants, and wormed out the truth.

Then she came at night under his window, and made him a signal. He told her his hard case, and told her also a resolution he had come to. She informed the tribe. The tribe consulted. A keen saw was flung up to him; in two nights he was through the bars; the third he was free, and joined his sable friends.

They struck their tents, and decamped with horses, asses, tents, and baggage, and were many miles away by daybreak, without troubling turnpikes.

The boy left not a line behind him, and Mr. Beecher half hoped he might come back; still he sent to the nearest station, and telegraphed to Huntercombe.

Sir Charles mounted a fleet horse, and rode off at once into Cambridgeshire. He set inquiries on foot, and learned that the boy had been seen consorting with a tribe of gypsies. He heard, also, that these were rather high gypsies, many of them foreigners; and that they dealt in horses, and had a farrier; and that one or two of the girls were handsome, and also singers.