"'No stranger,' I said, 'indeed, by marriage a kinsman of your own, Sir Richard.'

"'No kinsman of mine!' he said, 'nor of my lady's neither. When I married Susan Ellery I did not wed her brother, nor any beggar's brat'—those were his words, sir—'any beggar's brat he was fool enough to keep off the parish. If you had the will I'd dispute it against all the attorneys in England.'

"He is a hard man, Captain. He demands possession in a week."

"And your draft has no value in law?"

"Not a whit, I am sorry to say."

"Then devil take the law," the captain snapped out.

"Hang me, I'll go myself and see Cludde and tell him what I think of him."

"Not for me, Captain," said I, feeling my face burn. "I'll take nothing from Sir Richard Cludde, beggar's brat as I am."

"You won't be a fool, Humphrey," said the captain. "Half a loaf is better than no bread, and if I don't wring an allowance out of the rogue, I'm a Dutchman."

The captain would have his way, in spite of my protestation. But he returned from his visit to Cludde Court in a towering passion. The knight refused point blank to acknowledge any claim upon him, and swore that if Mistress Pennyquick and I were not out of the house by the day he named, he would come with bailiffs and constables and fling us out neck and crop.

Captain Galsworthy was more concerned than I was at the failure of his well-meant intervention. In my ignorance of the world, and how hardly it uses those who have nothing, I did not foresee, as my wise old friend did, the arduous course I was to follow, nor the many buffets in store for me, but thought, like many lads before and since, that with the equipment of health and strength I could ride a tilt against circumstance. Youth is green and unknowing, as Mr. Dryden hath it, and sure 'tis a mercy.

Before the day was out, we had a piece of news that confirmed the captain's suggestion as to the disappearance of the will. Cyrus Vetch had vanished, together with the contents of his uncle's cash box. When Mr. Vetch went home to his dinner, he found the cash box broken open, and Cyrus gone. I could not doubt now that 'twas my old enemy had wreaked on me the vengeance that had smouldered in his breast ever since Joe Punchard sent him down Wyle Cop in the barrel, and was fanned into a flame by my action on the night of the adventure in Raven Street. Mistress Pennyquick was firm in her belief that the Cluddes were party to the crime, but that I could not credit then, and never will.

Mr. Vetch himself came to see me the next day. The poor old man was quite broken down. He humbly begged my forgiveness for the trouble he had brought upon me, for so he chose to regard it; and he confessed to me, what I am sure he never revealed to a living soul beside, that Cyrus had been for years a thorn in his flesh. He was a spendthrift and a gambler, and had bled his uncle many a time to discharge what he called his debts of honor. This drain upon the lawyer, together with losses he had sustained in the failure of Chamberlain's Land Bank scheme—that monstrous attempt of the Tories to set up a rival to the Bank of England—had brought him to the verge of ruin, and with tears in his eyes he expressed to me his fear that the matter of my father's will would bring him into such ill repute that the Shrewsbury folk would no longer trust him and would give their business into other hands.

This set me a-thinking, and during the week I was allowed to remain in the old farmhouse I turned over in my mind a plan which, I own, mightily pleased me. It was clear that I must do something for myself. I had never had any great liking for farming work, and now that the position of a yeoman on my own land was denied me I was not inclined to accept service on the land of another. Mr. Lloyd, the master of the school, when I went to take leave of him, was kind enough to say that he would use his interest to obtain for me a servitorship at Oxford or a sizarship at Cambridge, which would put me in the way of making a livelihood as a tutor or perhaps as a parson. But I was not in the mind to be any more subsistent on charity, even of this modified sort, nor had I indeed any hope of achieving excellence in the classical tongues, so I thanked him, but declined his offer.

The idea that had entered my noddle was that I might join Mr. Vetch, and do something in the practice of law to make amends for the ill fortune which, unwittingly and indirectly, I had been the means of bringing upon him. When I had made up my mind, I mooted the project to Captain Galsworthy, who laughed at it as quixotic, but confessed that he saw no better course open to me.

"I had liever you took up a more active trade—one in which you could put to use the sciences you have learned of me," said the old warrior. "But that would take you from Shrewsbury, to be sure, and I should miss our little bouts, Humphrey boy. And when you come to think of it, a man needn't be the worse lawyer for a passable dexterity with the small sword."

Mr. Vetch was quite overcome when I set my proposal before him. He embraced it eagerly, drew out my articles at once, and swore that I would be his salvation. And as I must needs have somewhere to live, he insisted on my taking up my abode with him; he had a roomy house, he said, and I need not occupy Cyrus' chamber unless I pleased.

"But what about poor old Becky?" I said. "She is really harder hit by this unlucky affair than I, and 't would break her heart to go to the poor house."

"Let her come, too," said Mr. Vetch. "My housekeeper is leaving me; the fates are conspiring in our favor, you see. Let her come and mother us both, and I will give her twenty pounds a year."

I had as yet broken nothing of my designs to Mistress Pennyquick, foreseeing trouble in that quarter. It was pitiful to see her, who had been such a bustling housewife, sitting the greater part of the day with her hands in her lap, or dabbing the tears from her eyes, and to hear her melancholy plaints, which grew the more frequent as the time drew nearer for leaving the old house. After concluding my arrangement with Mr. Vetch I went back to the farmhouse, flung my cap into a chair, and, sitting across the corner of the table, said:

"Only two days more, Becky."

"And what will become of us I don't know," says the old woman. "'Tis the poor house for me, and water gruel, and I've had my rasher regular for forty year. And as for you, my poor lamb, never did I think I'd live to see you put on an apron, and say 'What d'ye lack, Madam?' to stuck-up folks as'll look on ye as so much dirt."

"What's this talk of aprons?" says I, laughing.

"How can ye laugh?" she says, the tears rolling down her cheeks. "Beggars can't be choosers, and ye'll have to ask Mr. Huggins to have pity on ye and take ye into his shop, and ye'll tie up sugar and coffee for Susan Cludde belike, and—oh, deary me!"

"Nonsense, Becky," says I. "I shan't have that pleasure. I'm going to join Mr. Vetch."

"What!" she shrieks.

"'Tis true. Mr. Vetch has given me my articles, and instead of tying up coffee and sugar I shall tie deeds and conveyances and become a most respectable lawyer."

"Oh! 'twill kill me!" she moans. "Of all the dreadful news I ever heard! And wi' Lawyer Vetch, too; the man as devours widows' houses and makes away with good men's wills! I wish I were in my grave, I do!"

"Wouldn't you rather be with me, Becky?" I said, smiling at her.

"'Tis cruel to talk so," she cried, sobbing. "How can I be with 'ee? What you get from Lawyer Vetch won't keep two—if you get anything at all. They say his nephew has ruined him—the wretch! Indeed, if you ask me, I say you'll get more from Mr. Huggins than from the lawyer. You'll have enough to do to keep yourself, without being saddled with a poor, forlorn old widow woman."

"But won't you come? I am going to live with Mr. Vetch."

"Live with the devil!" she screamed, lifting her hands with a gesture of utter despair. "It is downright wicked of you, Humphrey—and your poor father not a week in the grave. Sure the end of the world be coming, when the leopard and the kid shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox."

"And donkeys won't bray, I suppose," says I. "There, I don't mean you, Becky, though you are an old goose. Mr. Vetch wants a housekeeper, and you are to come with me and mother us both, he says, and he'll give you twenty pounds a year."

The good creature's look sent me into a fit of laughter. She stared solemnly at me for a while through her tears, saying never a word. Then the drooping corners of her mouth lifted; she folded her hands across her plump person and said:

"Your father only gave me eighteen, Humphrey: are you sure 'twas twenty the lawyer said?"

"Quite sure. The devil isn't as black as he's painted, eh Becky?"

"Ah! you never know a man till yon've lived with him. Pennyquick was—but there, he's gone, poor soul, as we all must, and tis ill work saying anything against one as can't answer ye back: not that Pennyquick was ever much of a hand at that, poor soul!"

I heard no more vilification of Mr. Vetch. Becky recovered her old activity with surprising ease, and went about the house collecting such personal belongings of her own and mine as the lawyer told us we might remove without question. He himself came to the house on our last day, and made an inventory of the articles we removed, and having seen these safely bestowed in a pannier on the back of Ben Ivimey's son, who came to carry them away, we shut the doors of the old place, Mr. Vetch pocketed the keys, and we set off for the town.

Mistress Pennyquick shed a plenitude of tears, and I had a monstrous lump in my throat that threatened to choke me if I tried to speak. With a discretion that raised him mightily in Becky's esteem, Mr. Vetch fell behind, leaving us two together; and so with full hearts we took the road, going into our new life hand in hand.



Chapter 7: A Crown Piece.

This turn in our affairs was a nine days' wonder in Shrewsbury. And whether it was that some chord of sympathy was touched in our townsfolk, or that Mr. Vetch worsted his only rival, Mr. Moggridge, in a case of breach of covenant that was tried at the next assizes, I know not; but certain it is that my friend's business took a leap upward from that very time. Clients flocked to him; he soon had to employ an additional clerk; and Mistress Pennyquick, who was twice as tyrannical as before on the strength of her extra two pounds a year, declared privately to me one day that she wished for nothing now but that she might live to see me a partner with Mr. Vetch, in a house of my own, with a sensible wife and five pretty children.

But I have come to believe that as an Ethiopian can not change his skin, nor a leopard his spots, so a man can not alter the bent of mind he was born with, nor follow any course with success but the one to which his nature calls. I entered Mr. Vetch's office with the best will in the world to please him, and to master the principles of legal practice and procedure; but I found it hard to reconcile myself to the atmosphere of a stuffy room filled with musty tomes, and to the unvarying round of desk work—copying from morning to night agreements, deeds and other documents bristling with a jargon unintelligible to me.

I soon tired of freehold and copyhold tenure, of manorial rights and customs, and the hundred and one legal fictions connected with actions at law and bills in chancery that constitute the routine of an attorney's profession. I yearned to breathe an ampler air; and when one day I saw Dick Cludde, returned home on leave, strutting past with Mytton and other boon companions, in all the bravery of cocked hat, laced coat and buckled shoes, I flung down my pen and donned my cap, and set off, with bitter rage and envy in my heart, to pour out my soul to my constant friend, Captain Galsworthy.

"Halt!" cried the captain, when I was in the midst of a tirade. "We'll have a bout."

And forthwith we donned the gloves, and for a full quarter of an hour we sparred, he with the cool mastery that never deserted him, I with a blind rage and fury which had its natural end. In the third round I aimed a blow at my adversary's neck with my right hand, but failing in my reach, he returned it full swing with his left, and dealt me such a staggerer on my cheekbone that down I went like a ninepin and measured my length on the floor.

"Capital!" says the captain, sitting down (the old fellow was puffing not a little). "Capital! That was a settler, eh, my boy? Now you can get up and talk sense."

I got up, rubbing my cheek, and grinning a rueful smile, as the captain told me. We remained long in talk; never had my old friend been wiser or more kindly. He listened to me with patience as I told him—quietly, for he had fairly knocked my rage out of me—how desperately sick I was of my occupation, and how I longed to stretch my limbs and do something.

"I knew it, my boy," he said. "I had seen it coming. I understand it. Haven't I been through it myself? I was bred for commerce: you might as well have harnessed a pig. One day—I was younger than you-I took French leave and a crown piece and trudged to London. I enlisted in old Noll's army, shipped to Flanders and served under Lockhart—he was a man, sir!—at the siege of Cambrai, deserted when the campaign was at an end, and roamed over half Europe; took service with the Emperor; fought with the Swedes against the Poles, and the Poles against the Swedes; fell in with Patrick Gordon, and was beguiled by him to Muscovy; and should have been with the Czar Peter at this day if he hadn't called me a fool when he was sober; we paid no heed to what he called us when he was drunk.

"Ah! I see your eyes glistening, you young dog. You were never born to be tied up with red tape."

This brief account of his life, and he never told me more, had indeed set my heart leaping. What would I not give, I thought, to see what he had seen, and do what he had done!

"But now to be practical," said the captain. "You want to go: very well, go. But you won't sneak off like Cyrus Vetch; you can't go with a commission like young Cludde. How much money have you got?"

"A few guineas I have saved."

"Well, keep them; you may be in a tight place some day, and find 'em handy. You have a hankering for the sea, you say. Then tramp to Bristowe, as your champion Joe Punchard did, and hitch on to John Benbow if you can find him. He'll work you hard, if all that's said about him is true; but he'll either make you or break you. That's my advice."

Advice that jumps with one's own inclinations hath ever a comfortable appearance of soundness. I told the captain that he had hit on the very scheme I had proposed to myself, adding, however, that I had thought to go a-horseback.

"A-horseback!" he cried. "What want you with a horse? You don't own a horse, and to hire one you would expend all your guineas and have nothing to feed either him or yourself. No, go on your shanks; there's a world of knowledge to be gained by footing it on the open road."

And so we settled that Captain Galsworthy should himself come to our house on Pride Hill and break the news to my good friends there. They were both downcast when they heard it, Mr. Vetch more than Mistress Pennyquick, which somewhat surprised me. He plied me with innumerable reasons for remaining with him, spoke of the long miles I should have to trudge before I reached the port, described the perils of the road, even foresaw that I should be arrested as a vagrant and clapped into jail! He conjured up dismal pictures of the seafaring life, and waxed quite eloquent in drawing a contrast between the bare windswept deck and the cosy fireside, the dangers from storm and pirates and the serenity of our quiet town. And then the captain broke in upon his speech with a great laugh.

"Gad, Mr. Attorney, you have o'ershot your bolt," he cried. "Mark you the sparkle in the boy's eyes and the catch in his breath? The bogies you raise are beacons to him. D'you think to frighten him as you would a girl? Spare your breath, man, to cool your porridge; what fellow of spirit would be deterred from a life of action by your vision of slippers and a basin of gruel?"

And indeed the lawyer's eloquence fell on deaf ears; or rather, as the captain said, all his reasons did but whet my eagerness until I fairly tingled with the imagined delight of matching myself against the hostility of the elements and man. And so he at last desisted, and gave a grudging compliance to my purpose; and Mistress Pennyquick concluded the discussion with a shot at Captain Galsworthy.

"This is all along o' you, Captain," she cried. "This is what comes of teaching little boys to fight. I knew years ago 't'ud have a bad end, and I told his poor father so, and I'm sure I hope you are satisfied."

"Abundantly, ma'am," says the captain, bobbing her a bow. "My pupil does me credit, and will do me more."

My preparations were soon made; indeed, I had nothing to prepare save a few garments, which poor Becky blessed with a copious baptism of tears. Then, one fine spring morning, when the buds on tree and hedge were bursting and the air was full of song, I set off on my long journey. Captain Galsworthy accompanied me for a few miles on the road—across English Bridge, past our old farmhouse (now held by a tenant of Sir Richard Cludde's), through the beautiful vale of Severn, till at Cressage my way led me southward from the river. Then he held me fast by the hand and looked me in the face.

"God bless you, Humphrey," he said. "Live clean, and—and—hit straight from the shoulder, my boy."

And then he turned away—not before I had seen a film of moisture gather in his eyes.

Now I was fairly started on my travels—in a customary suit of plain gray homespun, with worsted hose, knit for me by Mistress Pennyquick, a pair of stout shoes, a round hat, and a stout staff in my hand. I carried a few extra garments in a knapsack strapped to my back, and my few guineas were safely stowed in a wallet beneath my belt.

For a mile or two after leaving the captain I was in as black a fit of the dumps as ever beset a man. I was but halfway through my eighteenth year, and had as yet never gone more than ten miles from my native town, nor slept a night away from home. 'Tis true, no close ties of blood now bound me to Shrewsbury, but it held dear memories and kind friends, and I felt a natural heart sickness at thus cutting myself adrift from all and ranging forth alone into the great unknown world. But healthy youth can not long lie under such an oppression; my low spirits lasted just so long as it took me to gain the crest of the hill towards Harley, and when I had turned and taken a parting look behind—at the fields in their fresh green, and the spires of Shrewsbury beyond, and the Severn winding like a bright ribbon through the vale—when I had fed my eyes on this charming scene, and breathed a prayer that in good time I should behold it again, I set my face once more to the south, and stepped briskly down the slope that hid my home from sight and stood as the dividing line between my past and my future. And as I trudged on between the bright hedgerows, and heard the song of birds all about me, and felt the warm sunbeams on my face, I began to exult in my youth and strength, and the words of a song from one of my father's play books came to my mind, and I hummed them aloud:

A merry heart goes all the day, A sad tires in a mile a.

About half a mile out of Harley, the road makes a long ascent to the market town of Much Wenlock. I was pretty warm by the time I arrived there, and mighty hungry, so I repaired to the inn where my father was wont to eat on market days, and where I had several times been with him, and ordered a dinner of bread and cheese and ale. The innkeeper, Mr. Appleby, was not a little surprised to see me, and was fairly staggered when I told him I was off to Bristowe to seek my fortune. To the stay-at-home folk of the countryside Bristowe was as distant as Brazil, and he would have heard that I was starting for the ends of the earth with but little more amazement.

"Betsy," he called through the half-open door into the little parlor behind, "here be young Master Bold a setting off to Bristowe."

"Bless us!" cried his wife, bustling out, and bringing with her an odor of roast meat that somewhat slacked my appetite for bread and cheese. "Deary me! You doesn't say so now! Well, to be sure! 'Tis a fearsome long way, by all accounts; but there, you be growed a great big chap, Master Bold, and I'm sure I wish 'ee good luck. Come away in, sir, dinner's just off the jack, and me and my man 'ud be main proud if you'd eat a morsel with us afore ye goes."

I was nothing loath, and found the roast of mutton a deal more to my liking than the frugal fare I had ordered. I was still but halfway through my second helping when there came through the door a great clatter of hoofs from the street, and then a loud voice crying "Appleby! here, sirrah, stir your stumps!" with an oath or two by way of seasoning.

My host got up in a hurry and ran to the outer door, and I laid down my knife and fork, and I think my cheeks must have gone a trifle pale, for Mistress Appleby asked me anxiously what was amiss. I hastened to reassure her, but begged her to close the door into the inn place which her husband had left open. She wonderingly complied, but was enlightened a moment afterwards, when she saw Dick Cludde swagger in, followed by the two naval captains whom his lady mother had been entertaining.

"I understand your feeling, sir," said the good wife. "'Tis a sin and a shame ye lost the farm, which was yours by right; but doan't 'ee let 'em spoil your dinner; I can't abear mutton half, cold."

A more important matter, however, than the cooling of my mutton was troubling me. I had heard Cludde call for wine and dice, from which it was clear that he did not intend to leave yet awhile. There was no way out except by going through the inn taproom, and I was not inclined to face Dick Cludde there, for he would of a certainty make some sneering or belittling remark, and my temper being not of the meekest I feared things might come to a brawl. Not that I cared a fig's end for Cludde, or feared any ill result from a personal encounter; but I knew the inn was a property of Sir Richard's, who would speedily find a new tenant if Dick got a broken head there.

There was nothing for it but to stay where I was, and bear with what patience I might the interruption to my scarcely begun journey. So I sat in my chair, and even through the closed door could hear the loud voices of the naval men and the rattle of the dice on the board. They called often for more wine, and grew more and more boisterous as their potations lengthened, giving me a hope that they would by and by be so fuddled as to make it possible for me to escape unrecognized. But this hope was soon dashed.

"Let's have another bottle!" cried one of the three; his speech was very thick. "Let's have another."

"No, no," said another. "You've had enough, Kirkby; and Cludde there is half asleep already."

"Ads bobs, Walton," returned the man addressed as Kirkby, "are you growing like Benbow? No wine, no gentlemen! What's things comm' to, I say, when a fellow like Benbow, no gentleman"—(he pronounced it "gemman")—"flies his flag on a king's ship!"

And then, being perfectly tipsy, he launched out into violent abuse of Joe Punchard's captain, who was, it is true, a rough and ready seaman, and, I must own, somewhat uncouth in his manners. From his words I learned that Kirkby had been a lieutenant on Benbow's ship, and was deeply incensed that any one who was not a "gemman" should have had the right to give him orders. For a full half hour he inveighed against that brave man, the head and front of whose offense appeared to be that he rated bravery more highly than blood, and seamanship than breeding, and often took sides with the tars against their officers.

"Why, what d'ye think of this now?" cried Kirkby. "'Twas on Portsmouth Hard, and a dirty old apple woman shoved her basket under my nose and begged me to buy, and wouldn't be denied, and followed me whining up the road, and out of all patience I turns round and tips up her basket, and all the apples roll into the mud. A tar who was smoking against the wall says something under his breath and begins to gather up the apples. 'Leave that, sirrah!' says I. He begs my pardon and goes on as before.

"I up with my cane and was laying on for his insolence when Benbow roars out ('twas under the window of his inn) 'What be you a-doin' of?' That's how he speaks. 'What be you a-doin' of?' says he.

"'I'm a-teachin' of him manners,' says I.

"'I'll teach you manners,' he roars, and orders me back to my ship, and humiliates a gemman before a lout with hair as red as fire and legs that made a circle."

"Why, sure 'twas Joe Punchard," cries Cludde, "a fellow that near killed a friend o' mine," and he breaks into the old School distich—

"O, pi, rho, bandy-legged Joe, Turnip and carrots wherever you go."

and the others screamed with maudlin laughter.

"I know who was the gemman," whispers Mistress Appleby, who had heard it all.

Shortly afterwards, being in high good humor after vindicating their quality as gentlemen, the three called for their reckoning and went round to the stables to see to their horses. I seized the opportunity to make my escape, taking leave very heartily of my kind host and hostess. I was not sorry to get upon the road again, having purposed to cover at least twenty-five or thirty miles before night. It was downhill now, and I was swinging along at a good pace when I heard horses behind me and saw, with annoyance, that I might not escape unnoticed, after all. Cludde and his companions were cantering down the hill, at the risk of mishap, for naval officers are notoriously bad horsemen, and one of them— Kirkby, I doubt not—was swaying in his saddle. I stepped down to the side of a brook which skirted the road, hoping they would pass me by; but my lanky body was not one to escape remark, and Kirkby himself as he came up threw a jest at my height. Cludde gave me a glance, and a malicious smile sat upon his face.

"Poor beggar!" he said in an undertone, but loud enough for me to hear, and he flung me a coin, which struck my arm and rolled to the brink of the brook. In a trice I was up the bank, hot with a mad rage to come to grips with the fellow. But he had anticipated the movement, and setting spurs to his horse was beyond my reach. I disdained to pursue him; indeed it would have been vain; I could but stomach the affront. But I was not yet seasoned to petty slights, and in my bitterness of spirit I sat down on the grassy bank and for a while gave the rein to my feelings, brooding moodily on my wrongs. Then I chanced to spy the coin which he had flung to me as a man might fling a bone to a dog. I picked it up: it was a crown piece. For a moment I was tempted to pitch it into the brook; but on a sudden impulse I bestowed it in a little inner pocket apart from the rest of my money.

"There it is, Dick Cludde," I muttered between my teeth, "and there it shall remain until the day when I return it you, with interest."

After that I felt more composed, and walked on with a lightened heart.



Chapter 8: I Fall Among Thieves.

For some time past the sky had been clouding over, and the wind blowing up with a threat of rain. Before long it began to fall in a steady drizzle, and I saw that if I would not be drenched to the skin I must renounce my purpose of completing thirty miles, and seek a shelter for the night. Coming to a small hamlet of two or three cottages, I inquired of a laboring man whom I saw entering one, how far I must go to find an inn. He told me that there was one a mile or so on, just before coming to Morville, and thanking him, I hastened on my way.

But before I had gone a mile I espied a ruined barn in a field by the roadside, and being already tired and little inclined to encounter strangers, I turned into it to see if it would afford me sufficient protection against the weather. The interior was cosier than the outward aspect promised, and finding a quantity of clean hay at one end, I stripped off my coat, set down my knapsack for a pillow, and, rolling myself in the hay, was soon fast asleep.

I was roused while it was still dark by the sound of voices. Being wide awake in an instant, I had sufficient presence of mind to avoid betraying my whereabouts by a rustling among the hay, and lay and listened, wondering who the intruders might be, and fearing lest they should approach my end of the barn to seek a couch for the remainder of the night. But they made no movement in my direction, and before many minutes had passed I understood by their voices that they were three, and gathered from their talk that they were poachers who had been plying their stealthy trade in the coverts of a neighboring park, and had turned into the barn, which they evidently knew well, for a brief rest before making for their homes at Bridgenorth.

I hoped that they would leave before daylight, without discovering me; but just as the sparrows on the roof were twittering a greeting to the dawn, as ill luck would have it, one of the men spied my coat, spread on staddles against the wall to dry. He uttered a sharp exclamation, and called to his comrades. I heard them come in my direction, and guessed by their silence that they were looking warily around for the owner of the coat. But they did not see me, being completely covered by the hay; and, remarking that it looked a "rare good coat," one of them put his hand into all the pockets in turn, and from the inner one fetched out Cludde's crown piece.

"A silver crown, Jo," he says.

"Bite it," said another.

"Good as gold," returned the first. "This be rare luck."

Now, if I had been a few years older and more expert in dealing with men, I should doubtless have parleyed with the fellows; but in the heat of youth and inexperience, indignant at the freedom with which they were handling my belongings, I sprang out of the hay, made for the man who held the coat, and peremptorily called on him to drop it.

His answer was a sudden well-planted blow which sent me incontinently backward into the hay from which I had risen. I was up in an instant, and then began a struggle, short and decisive. The three men were all shorter than I, but thick-set and powerfully made, and struggle as I might I soon had to own myself beaten, and was borne to the floor, one holding my head, another my feet, and the third discommoding me very much by sitting on my middle.

"What be you a-doing here?" says the man called Job.

"I might ask you the same question," I replied, again choosing the wrong method of dealing with them.

"You might, but you wouldn't get no answer," was the grim retort. "You've heard what we've a-said?" the fellow went on.

I replied that I had heard it all. The men joined in a chorus of oaths, and then began to discuss among themselves what they should do with me, with a freedom and a disregard of any view I might hold on the matter which in other circumstances I might have found amusing.

"If we lets him go," said the man called Job, "he peaches, sure enough, and then 'tis the collar for us all," by which I understood he meant the hangman's noose. "If we don't let him go we must ayther take him with us or tie him up, and then belike his friends will find him, and 'twill be the same end for us."

"Rest easy on both points," I said, having recovered somewhat of my composure. "I won't peach, and I have no friends within twenty miles."

"'S truth?" said the man.

"It is quite true," I replied.

Whereat they burst into a guffaw, and I knew that I had made another mistake.

"He bain't over ripe," said the man on my middle.

"True, he was born young," said Job. "Well, now, I'm a gemman, I am, and fair exchange is no robbery, and as I've took a fancy for this 'ere coat, being a trifle newer nor mine, I'll chop with you; me being a trifle older nor you makes all square, I reckon. Bill, what about the breeches?"

"To be sure, Job, mine be worn thin; I'll have measter's breeches."

"And what's for me?" growled the man at my feet.

"There's only the shirt and the boots left," said Job, "for bein' gemmen we can't let him go bare. You take the boots, Topper."

And having thus apportioned my habiliments, they proceeded to divest me of boots and breeches, threatening to knock me on the head if I made any resistance. In stripping me they came upon the wallet in which my precious guineas were stowed. Job opened it in a twinkling, and I had the mortification of seeing all the money I possessed divided among these three ruffians.

When the exchange of clothing had been effected, I found myself attired in a dirty, greasy coat much too small for me, my arms protruding far beyond the sleeves, a pair of grimy patched leather smalls, that left an inch or two of bare flesh above my stockings, and boots that, rent and battered though they were, cramped my feet terribly.

"How we have overgrowed!" quoth Job with a leer.

The others laughed; then suddenly the man called Topper looked at Job with a frown and said:

"Fair's fair; that there silver crown—I want a bit of that, Job."

This set them squabbling, though they kept a wary eye on me all the time. In the end they decided to settle the ownership of the coin by the arbitrament of chance. Job first spun it; Bill called "heads" and lost. At the second spin Topper called "tails," and was about to pocket the crown when I made a suggestion.

"Gentlemen," I said, in a conciliatory tone which I ought to have adopted before, "I value that crown piece more highly than all the guineas you have appropriated. 'Tis clear you are sportsmen"—I glanced at the hares that lay on the floor, the booty of their night's depredations. "I make you an offer which as sportsmen you will not refuse. Let Mr. Topper and me fight it out, man to man, and the coin go to the winner."

"Spoke like a man; what dost say, Topper?" said Job.

"Done!" says Topper, forthwith flinging off his coat, and rolling up his shirt sleeves.

It was clear that I was incurring a risk, for the muscles of his arms stood up like great globes; but if I could not match him in strength, I hoped at least to have some little advantage of him in science, thanks to the lessons of my good friend Captain Galsworthy. I pulled off my coat, or rather Job's, starting a seam as I did so, and then, the other two men standing between us and the door, Topper and I began our bout.

I could see that he, as well as his companions, expected to win an easy victory. But when at the end of the first round, we stopped at Job's call for a breather, neither of us had got home more than a few body blows, and Topper was patently chagrined, more especially as the others could not forbear twitting him. He began the second round with an impetuosity that kept me wholly on the defensive, and pressed me so hard that I gave back and failed to counter a blow that sent me spinning on to the hay behind. This afforded the others much satisfaction, and at the call of time, they encouraged Topper with a cry to give me a settler and have done with it.

But this was his undoing. He came at me with the same ferocity as before, and, confident of a speedy victory, gave me an opening of which I was quick to take advantage. In a trice I was within his guard; I dealt him a right-hander with all my force; he staggered, and before he could recover, a left-hander got him on the point of the chin, and over he went with a thud on to the floor.

His companions bent over him in consternation. At that moment I could have made my escape, I doubt not, had I chosen to dash for the door, and indeed, I was on the point of doing so when I was stayed by some feeling that it would be hardly becoming to take flight then. Besides, the coin for which I had fought was still in the fallen man's pocket.

He got up by and by, somewhat dazed and rubbing his head. He glowered at me for a moment, then flung the crown towards me with a curse.

"Who said he was green?" he muttered, allowing Job to help him on with his coat.

"He's a viper," said Job consolingly. "We won't tell no one, Topper."

It was light by this time, and Bill remarked that they had best be getting back to Bridgenorth, or they would find folk astir. They looked at me with some hesitation; then Job said:

"We're a-going to make you fast, my bawcock, and don't make no mistake. Ads bobs, if ye come to Bridgenorth Fair we'll find some 'un to down you, strike me if we don't."

They bound my legs and arms with withes that are used for tying trusses of hay, and left me.

I felt some natural satisfaction in the issue of this fight; but it made poor amends for the loss of my clothes and my guineas. Luckily my knapsack, hidden in the hay, had escaped the poachers' observation; and the recovery of Dick Cludde's crown piece gave me a good deal of pleasure.

The moment the poachers were gone, I began to try to free myself from my bonds, but it was only after much painful wriggling and straining that I at length released my hands. My clasp knife had departed with my breeches; Bill's pockets were empty; but after some search, crawling about the barn, I discovered a broken slate wherewith to cut the fastenings of my feet. And then, when I stood upright, and with leisure for thought became fully aware of the sorry figure I cut, in foul garments a world too small for me, I was nigh overwhelmed with a feeling of despair, and was almost ready to wait until nightfall, and slink back by byways to Shrewsbury. But after a while I got the better of this heartsickness, and, rating myself for a poltroon, I strapped on my knapsack and issued forth from the barn, doggedly resolved to pursue my journey.

It was many an hour since I had eaten, and, once more in the open air, my stomach cried out for breakfast. When a man has never had to want for food, it is with a disagreeable shock he realizes that he must be hungry. True, I had the crown piece, and before the sun had mounted I was sore tempted to spend it; but the vow I had inwardly made to keep it for its owner, together with a shame-faced reluctance to appear in my present condition before a fellow man, helped me for a time to bear my hunger. Yet I knew that I could not go long without food, and it would soon become imperative that I should pocket my pride and either change the crown or seek some means of earning enough to buy myself a meal.

For a time I trudged through the fields, avoiding the public eye. Coming at length to a road, which I took to be the highroad, I set off along it, stiffening my resolution to ask for a job at the first village I reached. But just as a row of cottages came in sight, and I was considering in what terms to make my request, a parson and a lady on horseback turned into the road from a by-lane, and when they had passed I heard a ripple of laughter from the lady, no doubt in response to some jest from her companion on my ridiculous appearance.

This set my blood a-boiling; I flung away in a rage, leapt a stile into a field, and felt that I would rather starve than ask assistance of a living soul. I sat down beneath a hedge, utterly woebegone, and chewed the bitter cud of my misfortunes until for sheer weariness I fell asleep.

When I awoke, the sun, which had shone brilliantly all day, was already sloping to the west. My rage was gone now, and I cursed myself for a fool. A pretty spirit I had shown indeed! What was I good for if I could not bear a little ridicule?

"Let 'em laugh, and go hang!" I cried, and up I sprang, resolved to accost the first person I met, whoever it might be, and at any rate earn a crust.

I walked along the field, took a long draught from a clear brook that crossed it, and coming into the road, spied a large house lying some way back amid trees. True to my resolve, I made towards it, entered an iron gate that stood open, and was marching up the broad gravel walk leading to the house when I was checked by a voice.

"Hi, you fellow, what do you want here?"

I turned, and saw a well-dressed boy of about my own age coming out of a shrubbery into the walk. I stopped, feeling a certain awkwardness, and stood before him, looking sheepish enough, no doubt. He eyed me for a moment; then burst out a-laughing.

"You have no business here; get you gone, fellow," he said, when he had recovered.

I gulped down the wrath that rose in me, and said quietly:

"I was but on my way to ask if I might do something to earn a meal and a night's lodging."

He looked at me curiously, perceiving that in mode of speech I was somewhat different from the low tramp I looked. But youth is often impatient and hard; my appearance consorted so little with my tongue that he had much excuse for regarding me as a ne'er-do-well, the less deserving of pity because he probably owed his plight to vicious courses.

"There's the poorhouse for tramps, and the lock-up for rascals," he added. "Be off with you!"

"Pardon me, sir," said I, as quietly as before, "I have eaten nothing for thirty hours or longer, and if you would but give me speech with the master of the house, I doubt not he would allow me milk and bread, for which I would willingly do a turn of work in the morning."

"D'you hear me, sirrah!" cries the boy. "You're a poacher if the truth were known. We want no lazy louts here, and if you're not outside the gates instantly I vow I'll set the dogs on to you."

And with that he came up to me and gave me a shove with his shoulder. He had courage, for he was smaller than I. 'Twas the spirit that prompts a gentleman, however puny, to despise the churl, however big.

His words I had borne patiently enough, but I could endure no more. Wrenching myself away, I dealt him a buffet that stretched him flat on the ground.

This scene had passed within a few paces of the gate, and I had been so preoccupied that I had not heard the clatter of an approaching horse, and in consequence was taken utterly aback when a loud voice behind me cried, "What's this? What's this?" and immediately afterwards the lash of a whip fell smartly on my back, causing me to spring round in a heat of indignation. A gentleman had just ridden in at the gate, and, taking in the situation at a glance, had begun the chastisement which he had much reason to suppose I deserved.

What with my hunger, the boy's insults, and the sting of the lash, I was now roused to as high a pitch of fury as I had ever in my life reached. I had taken a step towards the horse, to drag the rider from his saddle, and he had raised the whip once more to strike, when a voice from the direction of the house caused us both to pause.

"Don't, uncle; oh, please don't!"

Involuntarily I turned, and saw a young girl flying down the path, her long unloosed black hair streaming behind her. She came to us with flushed cheeks, and breathless with running.

"It was all Roger's fault," she cried. "I saw it, heard it all. The poor man is starving and wanted to work for food, and Roger was rude to him."

Her uncle looked at her, and at me, and at the boy, who had risen from the ground, wearing a sullen and crestfallen look.

"Is that the right of it, Roger?" asked the gentleman.

"He said so, sir," he replied, "but he looks such a villainous tramp, and you know what lies they tell—why, look here!" He stooped and picked something from the ground. "He said he was hungry, and look at this!"

He held up my crown piece, which in the violence of my movements, I suppose, had sprung out of my tattered garment. I felt my cheeks flush hotly, and was stricken dumb in the face of this mute evidence giving me the lie. The girl gazed at me for a moment; then, her lip curling with disdain, she turned her back and walked up the path towards the house.

"Well, rascal?" said the gentleman sternly.

"It is mine, truly," I said. "But—"

"Go fetch the men," he said to the boy.

"As sure as I'm alive I'll commit you for a rogue and vagabond, for mendicancy and assault."

He drew his horse across the gate so that I could not escape, while the boy hastened to the house.

"You are a magistrate, sir," I ventured to say, "and sure 'tis not your custom to condemn your prisoners unheard."

"Adzooks, you teach me my duty?" he cried in a rage. "You insolent scoundrel!"

I held my peace, and in a few moments the boy returned, with two stablemen.

"Take this fellow to the coach house," said their master.

"I'll go where you please," I cried hotly, "but if those men lay a finger on me I'll crack their skulls for them."

My height and my fierce aspect so well promised that I could perform my threat that the men held off and eyed their master dubiously.

"Lead on, Roger!" he cried with an oath, too much incensed for further speech.

The boy led the way. I followed, the two stablemen stepping behind me, but at a reasonable distance, and the horseman brought up the rear. Thus in procession we went round the house to the back; I entered the coach house, and the gentleman having dismounted, came in after me, and commanded me to give an account of myself.



Chapter 9: Good Samaritans.

During the short passage to the coach house I had been trying to consider my course: but my state of famishment and the agitation into which I had been thrown had bereft me of all power of consecutive thought; so that when the gentleman called upon me, in no gentle tones, to give an account of myself, I stood like a stock fish before him. Then I was amazed to feel my legs giving way under me; I stretched forth my arms in an instinctive attempt to steady myself, and, clutching at empty air, fell heavily forward on to the stone floor.

When I came to myself, I saw a kind, motherly face bending over me, and was aware of a hot taste in my mouth.

"Are you better now?" said the lady, in tones the like of which I had seldom heard.

I smiled, and she held a spoon to my lips, and I swallowed its contents—a mixture of rum and milk, I think—as obediently as a baby.

"Poor boy! he must have been starving," said the lady.

"And what right had a fellow to be starving with a crown piece in his pocket?" said the gentleman behind.

"He will explain by and by," replied the lady. "He must not be vexed tonight, James. I have made up a bed in the loft, and Martha is preparing some food.

"Can you walk, my poor boy?" she asked me.

"I am quite well, ma'am," I said, staggering to my feet. "I don't know what came over me."

She told me that I had fainted, which surprised me mightily, though when I came to reflect it was not much to be wondered at, seeing that never in my life before had I been for more than four hours without food.

"The gentleman asked me to explain—" I began, remembering what had preceded my fall.

"Never mind about that now," said the lady. "You will go to bed, and when you have had some food you will sleep, and you can tell my husband all about it in the morning."

And then she directed the two stablemen who were standing at the door to help me up the ladder into the loft of the coach house. A bed, spread with linen as good as ever I lay on, was arranged at one end; and, dropping on to this, I was asleep immediately. They told me next morning that the mistress had herself brought up the posset which her servant had prepared; but, finding me in such deep slumber, had carried it away again, saying that sleep was as good as food to me then.

The sunlight, streaming in at the little window above my bed, wakened me early. I was at first perplexed at my unfamiliar surroundings, but, recollecting at length the happenings of the previous day, I got up and descended the stairs. At the door of the coach house one of the men I had already seen was swilling the wheel of a big coach with pails of water, whistling the while. He grinned when he saw me, and said:

"Mistress said you was to go straight to kitchen when you waked, and fill your stomick."

"I am mighty hungry, to be sure, but I should like to wash first," I replied.

"Why, you do look 'mazing grimy," he said with another grin. "Do ye feel better this marnin'? You went into a faint like as I never did see—a real female faint it was. I reckon as how you be overgrowed, young man."

"Where shall I find the pump?" I asked, restive under this reference to my unhappy attire.

"Ho, Giles!" he called, "take the young man to the poomp."

At this cry, Giles, in whom I recognized the second man whose skull I had threatened to crack, appeared from round the corner of the coach house. His face also wore a grin.

"Ay, true now, you do want the poomp," he said. "Come, and I'll show 'ee. It do make a young feller weak-like when he overgrows his strength. There was my sister Jane's Billy, to be sure, shot up like a weed, he did, was for ever falling into fits, and a bit soft in his noddle, too, poor soul.

"Here's the poomp; be 'ee strong enough to draw for yourself, think 'ee, or shall I do it for 'ee?"

I was strongly tempted to catch the fellow by the middle and give him a back throw which would enlighten him as to my physical aptitude; but I forbore, and allowed him to pump for me, which he did with great willingness, discoursing the while on the infirmities of all his kin. Refreshed by my ablutions, I was nothing loath to follow him to the kitchen, where a red-faced little dumpling of a cook set before me such a breakfast as would have made Mistress Pennyquick stare.

"Eat away," she said, setting her arms akimbo and eying me up and down as I ravenously began my meal. "Lawks! I don't wonder ye fainted if 'tis true, as they say, that ye hadn't had bite or sup for a week. You've a big body to keep a-goin', to be sure; overgrowed your strength seemingly. The likes of me don't faint."

And at this Susan the housemaid, who had just come in, giggled, and put her hand over her mouth, and I felt as if my ears had rims of fire. Would they never have done with their personal allusions? Mentally I cursed Job and Bill and Topper very heartily, and as heartily wished that my inches were a little less.

Luckily I was not born without a certain sense of humor. It had deserted me under stress of what I had gone through during the last two days, but when my cavities had been well filled with Martha's excellent viands, I was suddenly able to see myself as I must appear to others, and I astonished the servants by laying down my knife and fork, leaning back in my chair, and emitting a long ripple of laughter.

"Goodness alive!" exclaimed Martha. "Giles said a' was a natural, and I believe a' spoke true."

"No, no," I spluttered. "My noddle's sound enough. I think; 'tis only that—that I'm overgrown!"

And with that I laughed again, and my merriment was infectious, for the round little cook laughed until she dropped exhausted into a chair, and the housemaid uttered shrill little titters from behind her hands, bending forward at each explosion, opening her hands to take a peep at me, and then "going off," as they say, again.

In the midst of this hilarity there sounded suddenly a jangling and creaking of wires in the neighborhood of the ceiling, followed by a clang.

"Measter's bell!" cried Susan, and, smoothing her apron, and settling her countenance to a wonderful demureness and sobriety, the little rascal tripped away. She was back in a minute.

"Measter wants to see tha," she said.

I got up and followed her from the room and up the stairs, comfortable in body and mind, for sure, I thought, such cheerfulness was of good augury: the master of such happy servants could not be a very terrible man. Susan showed me into a large and well-furnished room, where, though it was summer time, a big fire was crackling merrily in the grate. On one side of it sat the master in a deep chair, smoking a pipe of tobacco; on the other the kind mistress was knitting. She smiled at me as I approached, and I knew that she was not thinking of my strange garb. The master hummed and hawed, as if in embarrassment how to address me; then, in a jovial tone intended to set me at my ease he said:

"Had a good breakfast?"

I assured him that I had never made such a meal in my life.

"That's right. Now, we want you to tell us your story in your own way; but mind, no beating about the bush."

I had already resolved to tell just so much as was necessary, without naming names, so I began:

"I was on my way to Bristowe, sir, and two nights ago, being overtaken by the rain, I sought shelter in a decayed barn near the roadside, and slept among some hay. Before morning three men came in whom I soon discovered from their speech to be poachers. They found me, robbed me of my money—not a vast sum—and forced me to exchange garments with them."

Here the flicker of a smile crossed the gentleman's face.

"They left me tied hand and foot, and when I released myself I was in such a taking at the scarecrow figure I must cut that I shunned the sight of men, and kept to the fields. But I had not eaten since noon of the day of my misadventure, and, being desperately hungry, I entered your gate to beg a meal, purposing to pay for it by some service for you."

"Hum! What then of this crown piece which you confessed was yours? Why need ye starve with that in your pocket?"

"To that, sir, I have no answer, save that I would not spend it till the last extremity."

"Hum! How old are you?"

"Somewhat past seventeen, sir."

"Just the age of our Roger," said the lady.

"And what's your name?"

At this I hesitated. I could not be more than thirty miles from Shrewsbury, and if I told my name perchance it might travel back, and I was in no mind to have my mischances retailed in the town. The gentleman saw my hesitation.

"Well, well," he said, "no matter for that. You have run away, eh?"

"No, sir. I have no relatives, and I came with full consent of my friends."

"And what think you to do at Bristowe? Have you friends there?"

"No, sir. I purposed to find employment on a ship."

"The old story!" quoth the gentleman with a grunt. Then, with a shrewd look at me, he said: "Contra mercator, novem jactantibus austris."

"Militia est potior," I said, capping his tag from Flaccus' first satire, without reflecting whereto he was luring me.

"I knew it!" he cried, waving his pipe triumphantly at his wife. "And you haven't run away from school?"

"Indeed I have not, sir. I left school some months ago."

The lady smiled at his crestfallen look. It was plain that, in talking over myself and my situation, he had declared with the positiveness which I found was part of his character, that I had fallen into some trouble at school and fled the consequences.

There was a brief silence; then he said:

"You spoke of work. What can you do?"

"Little enough, sir," I replied. "But I lived for some years on a farm, and could do something in that kind."

Husband and wife glanced at each other, and the gentleman said:

"Well, well, go downstairs now; presently I will send for you again."

I went down, and found my way, by the back of the house, the door standing open, into the garden. I had not taken more than half a dozen paces down the middle path when a big dog of the retriever kind came barking towards me. Stooping down, I patted his head and tickled his ears, a thing which all animals love, and then went on, the dog trotting by my side in most friendly wise.

And at a turn of the walk I came without warning upon the girl who had interposed to save me from a thrashing and had then gone scornfully away, thinking me a liar. The consciousness of my ridiculous appearance rushed upon me in a flood, and, having but small experience of womankind save as represented by Mistress Pennyquick and our maids, I must stand stock still, red to the roots of my hair.

The girl had been walking towards me, swinging by its riband a garden hat, for the air was hot. The dog ran to her, with a bark that might have been of reassurance. She stopped, and, with a pretty shyness far short of embarrassment, said:

"Are you better now, poor man?"

I mumbled something, I know not what, and she smiled and passed on.

Then I felt I would have given anything to live that moment again.

"Dolt! Fool! Jackass!" I called myself. "What a baby she must think me! 'Poor man!' she said. Good heavens! Does she think I am forty?"

And thus fuming at my tongue-tied awkwardness, I went along the path.

I walked up and down for some time, and was still pacing along with my back to the house, when I heard a light footstep behind me, and for a foolish moment fancied it was the girl whose aspect and kind words had lately put me in such a commotion. But on turning about, I felt relief and disappointment mingled (the disappointment was, I think, the greater) to see that it was only Susan.

"Measter wants tha," she said.

I stepped along in silence beside her, she taking three steps for my one, and giggling to sicken a man.

"Tha'lt never get a sweetheart," she said by and by.

"Oh! and why not?" I asked.

"'Cos tha'rt such a great big feller," she said.

"What in the name of all that's wonderful has that to do with it?"

The minx looked archly up into my face.

"Tha'rt too high for a maid to kiss," says she.

To this I made no answer, being no whit inclined to bandy words with this pert young housemaid. And so we came to the house.

"We have been considering your case," said the master, when I again stood before him. "Are you still set on going to Bristowe?"

"Truly, sir, I have seen nought to change my mind."

"You know you are miles out of your road?"

"'Tis through coming over the fields," I said.

"Well, if you are bent upon it, I will furnish you with money enough to take you there, and trust to you to repay me in good time."

"'Tis good of you, sir," I said, guessing, and not wrongly, I think, at whose persuasion he made that offer.

Then I was silent. The name "charity brat," bestowed on me years before by Cyrus Vetch, still rankled in my soul, and though, now that I look back upon it, there was nothing that need have wounded my pride in accepting the proffered loan, I was loath to be beholden to any man. Maybe my feeling on this point was complicated with another of which I was as yet hardly conscious; but certain it is that, after standing silent for a brief space, I said suddenly:

"I thank you heartily, sir, but I had liever earn the money."

"Pish, lad!" cried the gentleman. "'Tis easy to see you are not of laboring rank, and as for the money, I shall not break if I never see it again."

That was the worst argument he could have devised. My pride was up in arms now, in good sooth, and I said firmly:

"With your leave, sir, I will earn what money I need."

"Didst ever see such an obstinate youth?" said he testily, turning to his wife. "Well, as you will. I warrant you will soon sing another tune. Go and see my steward, one of the men will take you to him, and tell him what you know of husbandry; 'tis no more, I warrant, than you have learned out of Vergil's Georgics.

"Stay," he added, as I turned to go, "we must have a name for you. You can not be a mere cipher in my estate books."

"Call me Joe, sir," I said, he thinking me of my friend Punchard.

"Joseph in the house of bondage," says he with a laugh, "Well, Joe it shall be."

I was some paces towards the door when remembrance came to me.

"May I have my crown piece, sir?" I said, turning back.

"God bless the boy! Here, take it; 'tis the same that jumped from your pocket. And now I bethink me, those poachers' tatters sit very ill on your long carcass.

"We must find something better suited to his frame, mistress."

"We will have, a clothier from Bridgenorth," said the lady.

"I trust you will be very happy with us the short while you stay, Joe," she added with her gentle smile, and I went from the room with my heart very warm towards her.



Chapter 10: The Shuttered Coach.

Thus I entered on a period which I look back upon, after fifty years, as one of the happiest in my life. The steward, Mr. Johnson, an active, silent man, employed me alternately in practical work upon the estate—felling trees, repairing fences, and so. forth—and in keeping his books, for which latter duty my service with Mr. Vetch had in some sort fitted me. For a week I saw nothing of my master, and caught but fugitive glimpses of the members of his family. I suspected, and rightly, as it turned out, that he was deliberately keeping out of my way, but receiving careful reports of me from Mr. Johnson.

His name, I learned, was James Allardyce, and his rank was something above that of a yeoman. He was choleric in temper and hasty in judgment, but the soul of kindness and generosity, and the servants loved him. The boy I had felled was his only son, just home from the school at Rugby; and his niece, Mistress Lucy, as everyone called her, had but lately become a member of his household. She was an orphan. Her father had been a planter with large estates in Jamaica, and on his death she had been brought to England at his wish by an old nurse, and delivered into the care of her mother's brother. She had another uncle, it was said—a squire, her father's brother, who lived somewhat north of Shrewsbury. 'Twas Susan who told me this; she was a chatterbox, and would have talked all day to me had I not discouraged her, and then she said I gave myself airs.

But it was from Roger Allardyce I learned things so surprising that I wonder I did not betray myself. About a week after I came to the Hall (so the house was called) I was returning early one morning from bathing in a stream that crossed the estate, when I met the boy face to face. He was striding along, whistling, with his towel over his shoulder, and gave me a look aslant as he passed, then halted and called after me: "I say, Joe!"

I turned at once, and knew that he bore me no malice for the blow I had dealt him at our first meeting.

"I say," he repeated, "how did you manage to keep your crown piece when those poacher fellows bagged your money?"

I could not forbear smiling at this blunt manner of holding out the olive branch. I told him of my fight with the man called Topper.

"Wish I had seen it," he said, laughing heartily. "And I wish it had happened a day or two before, for if you had been settled here then you could have plied your fists to some better purpose."

I asked him to explain.

"Why, a lubber of a fellow rode over from Shrewsbury; he's a cousin of mine, more's the pity, and a king's officer, by George! There were two other officers with him, and they had been drinking, and they insisted on coming in, and stayed ever so long playing the fool. Father was in Bridgenorth, and Giles with him, and the other men were not at hand, and we had to put up with their tomfoolery, which soon drove mother and Lucy from the room: but if you had been there we could have contrived to fling them out between us."

"I would have done my best," I said.

"How is the water?" he asked.

"Fresh, with a wholesome sting," I replied, and then, giving me a friendly nod, he went on to his bath.

Here was strange news, I thought, as I returned to the house. I could have no doubt that the obnoxious visitors were Dick Cludde and his friends: for it was hardly possible that three other king's officers should have ridden out of Shrewsbury in this direction on the same day. If Cludde had come once he might come again, and should he catch sight of me my story would not only be known to my employer, but would be spread all over Shrewsbury—a thing I could not contemplate with satisfaction. It crossed my mind that 'twould be safer to leave Mr. Allardyce and seek employment with some other yeoman; but from this course two reasons deterred me: first, the liking I had taken for him and his family; second, an obstinate reluctance to allow Dick Cludde in any way to alter my plans. It would not be difficult, I reflected, for one in my humble position to avoid him should he come to the house, and if I needs must meet him, I should even welcome the occasion for bundling him out neck and crop if he proved a troublesome visitor.

My resolution was strengthened a few days afterwards. Since the morning when Roger Allardyce had first addressed me, a friendship had sprung up between us, with a rapidity only possible to boys. We bathed together of mornings; he would come and chat to me when I was at my work; and the hours of work being over, he would lug me into a little outhouse he kept as his own, and show me his treasures—guns, and fishing tackle, a breastplate worn by his grandfather in the Civil War, an oak-apple from the tree in which King Charles had hidden after the battle of Worcester. He treated me as his equal, and once, when I alluded to my dependent position, his curiosity, which with excellent well-bred delicacy he kept in check, got the better of him, and he begged me to tell him all about myself, swearing never to reveal it to a soul. But I cleaved to my determination; all I would tell him was what he knew already, that I was a penniless orphan bent on making my way in the world.

Well, one evening, when I returned from my work in the fields, I found him waiting for me with excitement plainly writ on his open face. He dragged me to his outhouse, and having shut the door, said:

"I say, Joe, there's a storm brewing, and we may need your fists. You remember I told you about my cousin riding over from Shrewsbury? Well, his father came today—Sir Richard Cludde, a big red-faced bully of a man. He's Lucy's uncle, you know; her father was his brother, and they quarreled, and hadn't seen each other for twenty years. But now he declares that he is Lucy's legal guardian; his brother died suddenly and left no will, and he came today to claim her as his ward. Father wouldn't hear of it; but told him Lucy had been brought here by the express command of her father, and he refused to give her up. The squire was in a terrible rage: 'tis said he has fallen on evil times, and is set on getting a hold on Lucy's property in Jamaica, and making a match between her and his son Dick—the lubber I told you of. There was an angry scene 'twixt him and father, you could have heard him roaring all over the house, and he went away in a towering passion, swearing that we'd not heard the last of it, and he'd go to law, and he'd beat us even though it cost him his last penny, and more to the same effect. Father makes light of it, but I know he is uneasy: he has been several times of late to see his lawyer in Bridgenorth, and 'tis by no means clear how the law will decide. There will be trouble, for Sir Richard is an obstinate man, and I'm glad you are here, for we are not going to let Lucy leave us, and if he comes one day to take her by force we'll make a fight for it, Joe. And I'll tell you what: you must teach me how to use my fists. Shall we begin now, Joe?"

I smiled at his eagerness, and though I was tired after my day's work I would not disappoint him, but stripped off my coat, and then and there began his instruction in what my old friend the captain called the noble art of self defense. He proved an apt pupil, and I a conscientious teacher, pleasing myself with the thought that by making him expert in boxing I was maybe gathering interest on Dick Cludde's crown piece. And being then of the age when romantic ideas get some hold upon a boy's mind, I flattered myself also that by staying on at the Hall I became in some sort a defender of fair Lucy Cludde, who was far too good, I vowed, for that pudding-headed lubber Dick.

After this Roger and I became faster friends than ever. We had constant sparring matches and some practice also with singlestick and foils; and Mr. Johnson would let me off sometimes of an afternoon to go a-fishing with the boy. Before I had been a month at the Hall there were few likely streams for miles around that I did not know. All this time I had seen very little of the other members of the family. Mr. Allardyce was putting me to probation, inquiring of my diligence from Mr. Johnson, and hearing somewhat of me from his son. As for Mistress Lucy, I deliberately avoided her. I had cut anything but an heroic figure at our two meetings, and though I was ready to engage in mortal fray as her champion, the recollection of my abashment before her caused me to hold aloof. She and Roger would sometimes go riding together, and I thought with a bitter envy that, but for the misfortune that had befallen me, I might have made one of the party, though in truth I remembered, a moment afterwards, that but for this same misfortune I should very likely never have seen her.

Thus matters went on for upwards of a month. My wages, which I had scrupulously saved, amounted to something above twenty-five shillings—enough to pay my way to Bristowe. There was no reason why I should remain longer at the Hall, and indeed I was beginning to grow restive under my servitude, light as it was, and to think more and more eagerly of my interrupted purpose. One day, therefore, I sought an interview with Mr. Allardyce, and told him that having now enough money for my needs I wished to leave his service and set forth on my way. He laughed and said:

"I wondered how long 'twould go on. You are still bent upon your travels, then?"

I assured him that such was the case, thanked him for his kindness, and asked to be allowed to go on the following Monday: it was then Friday.

"Well, Joe," says he, "I won't stay you. Mr. Johnson has given me good reports of you, and as for Roger, he is never tired of singing your praises. According to him, you are a past master in exercises of arms, and I confess I had hopes you would give up your scheme and return to your friends and take the position you were clearly bred for: then Roger and you might have been companions still. But 'twas not to be; very well; on Monday we shall bid you our adieux, and we shall look to see you someday when you have made a name for yourself—which to be sure will not be Joe."

I was up early next morning, and was going off for my customary swim when, on crossing a stile, I saw a figure draw back into a coppice bounding the field. Thinking it was Roger who had been before me, I called to him, but receiving no answer, and wondering who could be abroad at that early hour—for the men of the estate were engaged in their duties elsewhere—I sprang down and strode off to the coppice, moved by some little curiosity. But though I walked to and fro among the trees for some time, I saw no one, and concluding that it was probably some poacher returning home from his night's work I went on to the bathing place, resolved to give a hint to Mr. Johnson.

Roger joined me presently, with a glum face.

"Oh, I say, Joe," he said, "this is deuced bad news. Father says you are leaving us on Monday."

"Yes, I have been here long enough," I said.

"Of course, I didn't expect you to work here forever, but I did think you would change your mind and remain friends with me."

"We shall always be friends, you and I, I hope," I said, "but it will be on a different footing. I could not work here forever, as you say: and if I mean to do anything in the world 'tis time I set about it. Maybe five years hence I shall return, and you will not be ashamed to own me for a friend."

"Ashamed! When was I ever ashamed? Why, we think a world of you, father and mother and Lucy, too. When father told us last night, they were sorry, yet glad, too, I own. Mother said she was sure you would get on, and I know you will, but all the same I wish you were not going. I say, tell me your real name, and if you have a bother with your people I'll go and see them, I swear I will, and persuade 'em to forgive you."

How surprised he would have been, I thought, if I had told him that the people whom I had not wronged, but who had done me wrong, were relatives of his own! But I would not tell him, and when we had finished our swim and were returning to the house, he declared that he also would leave home; there was no fun in being a yeoman, he said: and if a fellow like Dick Cludde could be an officer in the king's navy, so could he—or in the army, and he would persuade his father to let him go, by George he would! And he asked me to write to him, so that he might know where to find me when his great plan came to execution.

On Monday morning at half-past seven, after a good breakfast, I was at the gate, girt and equipped for my journey. The poachers' garments had, of course, long been discarded, and I was clad in the suit of serviceable homespun obtained for me from Bridgenorth in the first days of my service, and now but little the worse for wear. All the family was at the gate to bid me farewell, even Mistress Lucy, in her riding habit, for she was wont to go for an hour's canter on fine mornings, before breakfast at half-past eight. The adieux were said; all wished me well; Mr. Allardyce, as a parting shot, said that I should always find a job on his estate if I fell in with more poachers, or if my fortunes at Bristowe did not turn out to my liking; and then, my heart warm with their kindness, I set off up the road.

Six or seven miles lay between me and the highroad to Bristowe through Worcester and Gloucester, but I knew of a short cut four miles from the Hall, which would bring me into the road at the turnpike at Deuxhill, some way farther south, and save a good three miles of the road. I had learned of this short cut in the course of my fishing expeditions with Roger; it was the nearest way to the Borle Brook, where our angling had ever the best success—a narrow track striking off to the right, very rutty and rough, bordered by hedges, and uphill but not steep.

I had tramped three miles or more, at a good pace, when I heard galloping horses behind me, and the rumble of wheels. Turning about, I saw a coach drawn by three horses, with a postilion on the leader, approaching at a great rate, jolting and swaying in a manner that bespoke desperate haste.

I stood aside to let it pass, holding my nose against the whirling dust cloud it raised, and giving it but a glance as it rattled by. The shutters were up; I could not see whether it held anybody; and when it had passed I again took the middle of the road, wondering idly what necessity there might be for so great speed. Only a minute or two afterwards I heard a light patter close at my heels, and looking back without stopping, I was surprised to see the big black retriever which belonged to Mistress Lucy, and with which, since my first meeting with him in the garden, I had been on friendly terms. The dog uttered a low bark when he recognized me, fawned upon me, and then set off running ahead. I noticed now that the beast left a thin trail of blood on the ground. He had not run far when he stopped, turned round, and barked as if to invite me on, not waiting, however, to see whether I responded.

For a moment I was too much taken up with wondering by what mishap the dog had been wounded to connect his appearance, and his evident wish to urge me on, with the coach that had lately passed. But then the connection struck upon me in a flash, and I began to run with all my might. The dog had doubtless accompanied his mistress on her morning ride; he could only have been wounded in defending her; she must have been waylaid, and, thought linking itself with thought, I guessed that Sir Richard Cludde had taken this means of asserting his claim to her guardianship, and the man I had seen in the coppice a few days before was an emissary of his. Without a doubt she was now a prisoner in the coach, being carried against her will to Shrewsbury.

The road here ran steeply downhill, and the coach was out of sight round a bend. Without pausing to consider the chances of overtaking it, I leapt rather than ran forward, soon outstripping the dog, which had done his best, poor beast, but was now well-nigh exhausted. I flung away my staff, that encumbered me, and tore headlong down the hill, till, coming to the bend, where the road sloped upwards, I caught sight once more of the coach, no more than half a mile ahead of me. This surprised me, for neither the ascent nor my speed could account for its nearness, and I wondered, as I pounded after it, whether I had after all been mistaken.

But the matter was explained when I came to the inn that stood at the point where my short cut branched off. I saw wheel tracks to the right, crossed by similar tracks back again to the road, and I guessed that the postilion had intended to drive his horses down the byroad, but having found it too rough or too narrow had been compelled to return, even at the cost of loss of time in backing.

My heart leapt with exultation; the kidnappers were not making for Shrewsbury after all; they purposed driving southward, with what design I could not guess, nor did I stop to consider, for in a twinkling I saw a possibility of intercepting them. Dashing into the inn, much to the amazement of the innkeeper, who had sometimes served Roger and me with a pot of ale as we returned from fishing, I told him my suspicions in quick, breathless gasps, and bade him send to Mr. Allardyce for assistance, and to follow me, if he could, along the byroad to Deuxhill. The man was not too quick-witted, and I could have beaten him for his slowness to comprehend the urgency of the affair. But some glimmering of it dawning upon him, he promised to borrow a horse from Farmer Grubb close by, he having none of his own, and to send a messenger back to the Hall. Without further parley I left him, and set off along the byroad, scarce giving a glance to the poor dog limping painfully towards the inn.



Chapter 11: I Hold A Turnpike.

Could I reach the turnpike in time? I wondered. I had lost perhaps three minutes at the inn. The coach must already have reached the crossroads, and was now, without doubt, speeding southward on a course parallel with my own, but downhill, whereas the byroad, though shorter, was for the most part uphill, and so rough that I risked spraining my ankle on a stone or in a rut.

And even supposing I gained the turnpike before the coach, would the keeper be persuaded to close his gates against a three-horsed vehicle on the highway? I knew the man, and luckily had done him a slight service which perchance he would be willing to repay. Once, when Roger and I had gone to the Borle Brook to fish, we came upon a little girl some five years old sitting by the brink, weeping bitterly. One foot was bare, her little shoe was floating down the stream, she had lost herself, and was so frightened that it was long before we could make out from her sobbing answers to our questions that she was daughter to the turnpike man. Then Roger rescued her shoe, and I set her aloft on my shoulder, to her great contentment, and she was laughing merrily when we reached the turnpike, and gave her into the hands of her distracted mother. Remembering this, I raced on at my best speed, resolved, if only I arrived in time, to turn this little incident to account.

It did but add to my anxiety that the highroad was nowhere visible to me as I ran, so that I could not measure my progress with that of the coach, but was forced to go on at the same break-neck pace, not daring to moderate it in any degree. And I could almost have cried with vexation when that plaguey stitch in the side seized me, and I had to stand a while to recover my breath. Then I raced on again, desperately anxious to make up for the lost time. My work upon the Hall estate, and my exercise with Roger, had kept my body in good condition: yet to run for four miles or more at a stretch with the mind in a ferment would tax any man, and by the time I came in sight of the turnpike I was fairly overdone, dripping with sweat—'twas a sunny day in July—and trembling in every limb.

And then I heard, or fancied I heard, the rattle of the coach on my left, and I picked up my heels and scampered along the last half-mile at a pace which, in other circumstances, I should have deemed impossible, the loose stones flying from beneath my feet.

I emerged upon the highroad, threw a glance over my left shoulder, and gave a great gasp of relief when I spied the coach plunging down the road, but nearly a mile distant. I had had no clear notion of what I was going to do beyond attempting to keep the gate closed, and now I realized with a sinking heart that, even if I should succeed therein, the coach could scarcely be delayed long enough for help to arrive. But certainly that was the first step, and I dashed straight into the keeper's cottage, the door of which stood open, and found Mistress Peabody, his wife, paring potatoes at the table, her little girl by her side.

"Where is Peabody?" I blurted out.

"Sakes alive!" cried the woman, "but you did give me a start. Whatever be amiss?"

What more I said I know not, but at my demand that she should refuse to open the gate for the coming coach the poor bewildered soul dropped her potatoes and declared she could never do it; 'twould cause terrible trouble with Peabody, and maybe bring about his dismissal by the justices, and where he was she did not know, and she had told him many a time he would get into a coil if he left his duty and went so often to the King William a-fuddling himself with—

"For God's sake, woman," I broke in, exasperated, "take the child into the garden and leave it to me."

I fairly pushed her out at the back door, the little girl clinging to her skirts, terrified at my appearance and the fierceness of my words. I shut the door upon them, whipped the key of the gate from its nail on the wall, flung it into the pan of water among the potatoes, and then, a desperate expedient coming into my mind, sauntered leisurely out of the front door, picking up as I passed a stick of wood from among a heap with which the child had been playing on the floor.

I climbed the gate, and sat upon the topmost bar, with my feet on the third. Then, having pulled the broad brim of my hat down over my eyes, I took out my clasp knife (it had been given me a few days before by Roger as a memento) and began to whittle the stick, whistling a doleful tune.

The coach was by this time within a hundred yards of me.

"Gate! gate!" shouted the postilion, but I paid no heed. There was now a man on the box; I suppose he had been picked up at the crossroads. He joined his cry to the postilion's, and together they roared "Gate!" with many imprecations of the kind that men who deal with horses have at command.

But I still went on whittling my stick, not without some feeling of insecurity, for the coach was approaching at a furious speed, and it seemed impossible that the postilion could draw up in time to prevent the horses from dashing themselves against the barrier. He accomplished that feat, however, and the leading horse came to a standstill within little more than a foot of me; I could feel its hot breath on my hand. Like the other two, it was covered with foam, and their sides were heaving like a bellows.

"Gate!" roared the postilion, looking in at the open door, and receiving no reply he turned his head towards me and demanded with an oath to know where the turnpike keeper was.