"I don't think you will."

"Then good-night to you."

"Good-night, Zeb. I don't fancy you'll suit me; but I'm not so sure as before you began to speak.".

There was no answer to this but the slamming of the front door.

At half-past seven that morning, Parson Babbage, who had risen early, after his wont, was standing on the Vicarage doorstep to respire the first breath of the pale day, when he heard the garden gate unlatched and saw Young Zeb coming up the path.

The young man still wore his festival dress; but his best stockings and buckled shoes were stained and splashed, as from much walking in miry ways. Also he came unsteadily, and his face was white as ashes. The parson stared and asked—

"Young Zeb, have you been drinking?"

"No."

"Then 'tis trouble, my son, an' I ask your pardon."

"A man might call it so. I'm come to forbid my banns."

The elder man cocked his head on one side, much as a thrush contemplates a worm.

"I smell a wise wit, somewhere. Young man, who taught you so capital a notion?"

"Ruby did."

"Pack o' stuff! Ruby hadn't the—stop a minute! 'twas that clever fellow you fetched ashore, on Monday. Of course—of course! How came it to slip my mind?"

Young Zeb turned away; but the old man was after him, quick as thought, and had laid a hand on his shoulder.

"Is it bitter, my son?"

"It is bitter as death, Pa'son."

"My poor lad. Step in an' break your fast with me—poor lad, poor lad! Nay, but you shall. There's a bitch pup i' the stables that I want your judgment on. Bitter, eh? I dessay. I dessay. I'm thinking of walking her—lemon spot on the left ear—Rattler strain, of course. Dear me, this makes six generations I can count back that spot—an' game every one. Step in, poor lad, step in: she's a picture."



CHAPTER VI.

SIEGE IS LAID TO RUBY.

The sun was higher by some hours—high enough to be streaming brightly over the wall into the courtlage at Sheba—when Ruby awoke from a dreamless sleep. As she lifted her head from the pillow and felt the fatigue of last night yet in her limbs, she was aware also of a rich tenor voice uplifted beneath her window. Air and words were strange to her, and the voice had little in common with the world as she knew it. Its exile on that coast was almost pathetic, and it dwelt on the notes with a feeling of a warmer land.

"O south be north— O sun be shady— Until my lady Shall issue forth: Till her own mouth Bid sun uncertain To draw his curtain, Bid south be south."

She stole out of bed and went on tiptoe to the window, where she drew the blind an inch aside. The stranger's footstep had ceased to crunch the gravel, and he stood now just beneath her, before the monthly-rose bush. Throughout the winter a blossom or two lingered in that sheltered corner; and he had drawn the nearest down to smell at it.

"O heart, her rose, I cannot ease thee Till she release thee And bid unclose. So, till day come And she be risen, Rest, rose, in prison And heart be dumb!"

He snapped the stem and passed on, whistling the air of his ditty, and twirling the rose between finger and thumb.

"Men are all ninnies," Ruby decided as she dropped the blind; "and I thank the fates that framed me female and priced me high. Heigho! but it's a difficult world for women. Either a man thinks you an angel, and then you know him for a fool, or he sees through you and won't marry you for worlds. If we behaved like that, men would fare badly, I reckon. Zeb loved me till the very moment I began to respect him: then he left off. If this one . . . I like his cool way of plucking my roses, though. Zeb would have waited and wanted, till the flower dropped."

She spent longer than usual over her dressing: so that when she appeared in the parlour the two men were already seated at breakfast. The room still bore traces of last night's frolic. The uncarpeted boards gleamed as the guests' feet had polished them; and upon the very spot where the stranger had danced now stood the breakfast-table, piled with broken meats. This alone of all the heavier pieces of furniture had been restored to its place. As Ruby entered, the stranger broke off an earnest conversation he was holding with the farmer, and stood up to greet her. The rose lay on her plate.

"Who has robbed my rose-bush?" she asked.

"I am guilty," he answered: "I stole it to give it back; and, not being mine, 'twas the harder to part with."

"To my mind," broke in Farmer Tresidder, with his mouth full of ham, "the best part o' the feast be the over-plush. Squab pie, muggetty pie, conger pie, sweet giblet pie—such a whack of pies do try a man, to be sure. Likewise junkets an' heavy cake be a responsibility, for if not eaten quick, they perish. But let it be mine to pass my days with a cheek o' pork like the present instance. Ruby, my dear, the young man here wants to lave us."

"Leave us?" echoed Ruby, pricking her finger deep in the act of pinning the stranger's rose in her bosom.

"You hear, young man. That's the tone o' speech signifyin' 'damn it all!' among women. And so say I, wi' all these vittles cryin' out to be ate."

"These brisk days," began the stranger quietly, "are not to be let slip. I have no wife, no kin, no friends, no fortune—or only the pound or two sewn in my belt. The rest has been lost to me these three days and lies with the Sentinel, five fathoms deep in your cove below. It is time for me to begin the world anew."

"But how about that notion o' mine?"

"We beat about the bush, I think," answered the other, pushing back his chair a bit and turning towards Ruby. "My dear young lady, your father has been begging me to stay—chiefly, no doubt, out of goodwill, but partly also that I may set him in the way to work this newly found wealth of his. I am sorry, but I must refuse."

"Why?" murmured the girl, taking courage to look at him.

"You oblige me to be brutal." His look was bent on her. He sat facing the window, and the light, as he leant sidewise, struck into the iris of his eyes and turned them blood-red in their depths. She had seen the same in dogs' eyes, but never before in a man's: and it sent a small shiver through her.

"Briefly," he went on, "I can stay on one condition only—that I marry you."

She rose from her seat and stood, grasping the back rail of the chair.

"Don't be alarmed. I merely state the condition, but of course it's awkward: you're already bound. Your father (who, I must say, honours me with considerable trust, seeing that he knows nothing about me) was good enough to suggest that your affection for this young fish-jowter was a transient fancy—"

"Father—" began the girl, rather for the sake of hearing her own voice than because she knew what to say.

Farmer Tresidder groaned. "Young man, where's your gumption? You'm makin' a mess o't—an' I thought 'ee so very clever."

"Really," pursued the stranger imperturbably, without lifting his eyes from Ruby, "I don't know which to admire most, your father's head or his heart; his head, I think, on the whole. So much hospitality, paternal solicitude, and commercial prudence was surely never packed into one scheme."

He broke off for a minute and, still looking at her, began to drum with his finger-tips on the cloth. His mouth was pursed up as if silently whistling an air. Ruby could neither move nor speak. The spell upon her was much like that which had lain on Young Zeb, the night before, during the hornpipe. She felt weak as a child in the presence of this man, or rather as one recovering from a long illness. He seemed to fill the room, speaking words as if they were living things, as if he were taking the world to bits and re-arranging it before her eyes. She divined the passion behind these words, and she longed to get a sight of it, to catch an echo of the voice that had sung beneath her window, an hour before. But when he resumed, it was in the same bloodless and contemptuous tone.

"Your father was very anxious that I should supplant this young jowter—"

"O Lord! I never said it."

"Allow me," said the stranger, without deigning to look round, "to carry on this courtship in my own way. Your father, young woman, desired—it was none of my suggestion—that I should insinuate myself into your good graces. I will not conceal from you my plain opinion of your father's judgment in these matters. I think him a fool."

"Name o' thunder!"

"Farmer, if you interrupt again I must ask you to get out. Young woman, kindly listen while I make you a formal proposition of marriage. My name, I have told you, is Zebedee Minards. I was born by London Docks, but have neither home nor people. I have travelled by land and sea; slept on silk and straw; drunk wine and the salt water; fought, gambled, made love, begged my bread; in all, lost much and found much, in many countries. I am tossed on this coast, where I find you, and find also a man in my name having hold over you. I think I want to marry you. Will you give up this other man?"

He pursed up his lips again. With that sense of trifles which is sharpest when the world suddenly becomes too big for a human being, Ruby had a curiosity to know what he was whistling. And this worried her even while, after a minute's silence, she stammered out—

"I—I gave him up—last night."

"Very good. Now listen again. In an hour's time I walk to Porthlooe. There I shall take the van to catch the Plymouth coach. In any case, I must spend till Saturday in Plymouth. It depends on you whether I come back at the end of that time. You are going to cry: keep the tears back till you have answered me. Will you marry me?"

She put out a hand to steady herself, and opened her lips. She felt the room spinning, and wanted to cry out for mercy. But her mouth made no sound.

"Will you marry me?"

"Ye—e—yes!"

As the word came, she sank down in a chair, bent her head on the table, and burst into a storm of tears.

"The devil's in it!" shouted her father, and bounced out of the room.

No sooner had the door slammed behind him than the stranger's face became transfigured.

He stood up and laid a hand softly on the girl's head.

"Ruby!"

She did not look up. Her shoulders were shaken by one great sob after another.

"Ruby!"

He took the two hands gently from her face, and forced her to look at him. His eyes were alight with the most beautiful smile.

"For pity's sake," she cried out, "don't look at me like that. You've looked me through and through—you understand me. Don't lie with your eyes, as you're lying now."

"My dear girl, yes—I understand you. But you're wrong. I lied to get you: I'm not lying now."

"I think you must be Satan himself."

The stranger laughed. "Surely he needn't to have taken so much trouble. Smile back at me, Ruby, for I played a risky stroke to get you, and shall play a risky game for many days yet."

He balanced himself on the arm of her chair and drew her head towards him.

"Tell me," he said, speaking low in her ear, "if you doubt I love you. Do you know of any other man who, knowing you exactly as you are, would wish to marry you?"

She shook her head. It was impossible to lie to this man.

"Or of another who would put himself completely into your power, as I am about to do? Listen; there is no lead mine at all on Sheba farm."

Ruby drew back her face and stared at him. "I assure you it's a fact."

"But the ore you uncovered—"

"—Was a hoax. I lied about it."

"The stuff you melted in this very fire, last night—wasn't that lead?"

"Of course it was. I stole it myself from the top of the church tower."

"Why?"

"To gain a footing here."

"Again, why?"

"For love of you."

During the silence that followed, the pair looked at each other.

"I am waiting for you to go and tell your father," said the stranger at length.

Ruby shivered.

"I seem to have grown very old and wise," she murmured.

He kissed her lightly.

"That's the natural result of being found out. I've felt it myself. Are you going?"

"You know that I cannot."

"You shall have twenty minutes to choose. At the end of that time I shall pass out at the gate and look up at your window. If the blind remain up, I go to the vicarage to put up our banns before I set off for Plymouth. If it be drawn down, I leave this house for ever, taking nothing from it but a suit of old clothes, a few worthless specimens (that I shall turn out of my pockets by the first hedge), and the memory of your face."

It happened, as he unlatched the gate, twenty minutes later, that the blind remained up. Ruby's face was not at the window, but he kissed his hand for all that, and smiled, and went his way singing. The air was the very same he had whistled dumbly that morning, the air that Ruby had speculated upon. And the words were—

"'Soldier, soldier, will you marry me, With the bagginet, fife and drum?' 'Oh, no, pretty miss, I cannot marry you, For I've got no coat to put on.'

"So away she ran to the tailor's shop, As fast as she could run, And she bought him a coat of the very very best, And the soldier clapped it on.

"'Soldier, soldier, will you marry me—'"

His voice died away down the lane.



CHAPTER VII.

THE "JOLLY PILCHARDS."

On the following Saturday night (New Year's Eve) an incident worth record occurred in the bar-parlour of the "Jolly Pilchards" at Porthlooe.

You may find the inn to this day on the western side of the Hauen as you go to the Old Quay. A pair of fish-scales faces the entrance, and the jolly pilchards themselves hang over your head, on a signboard that creaks mightily when the wind blows from the south.

The signboard was creaking that night, and a thick drizzle drove in gusts past the door. Behind the red blinds within, the landlady, Prudy Polwarne, stood with her back to the open hearth. Her hands rested on her hips, and the firelight, that covered all the opposite wall and most of the ceiling with her shadow, beat out between her thick ankles in the shape of a fan. She was a widow, with a huge, pale face and a figure nearly as broad as it was long; and no man thwarted her. Weaknesses she had none, except an inability to darn her stockings. That the holes at her heels might not be seen, she had a trick of pulling her stockings down under her feet, an inch or two at a time, as they wore out; and when the tops no longer reached to her knee, she gartered—so gossip said—half-way down the leg.

Around her, in as much of the warmth as she spared, sat Old Zeb, Uncle Issy, Jim Lewarne, his brother, and six or seven other notables of the two parishes. They were listening just now, and though the mug of eggy-hot passed from hand to hand as steadily as usual, a certain restrained excitement might have been guessed from the volumes of smoke ascending from their clay pipes.

"A man must feel it, boys," the hostess said, "wi' a rale four-poster hung wi' yaller on purpose to suit his wife's complexion, an' then to have no wife arter all."

"Ay," assented Old Zeb, who puffed in the corner of a settle on her left, with one side of his face illuminated and the other in deep shadow, "he feels it, I b'lieve. Such a whack o' dome as he'd a-bought, and a weather-glass wherein the man comes forth as the woman goes innards, an' a dresser, painted a bright liver colour, engaging to the eye."

"I niver seed a more matterimonial outfit, as you might say," put in Uncle Issy.

"An' a warmin'-pan, an' likewise a lookin'-glass of a high pattern."

"An' what do he say?" inquired Calvin Oke, drawing a short pipe from his lips.

"In round numbers, he says nothing, but takes on."

"A wisht state!"

"Ay, 'tis wisht. Will 'ee be so good as to frisk up the beverage, Prudy, my dear?"

Prudy took up a second large mug that stood warming on the hearthstone, and began to pour the eggy-hot from one vessel to the other until a creamy froth covered the top.

"'T'other chap's a handsome chap," she said, with her eyes on her work.

"Handsome is as handsome does," squeaked Uncle Issy.

"If you wasn' such an aged man, Uncle, I' call 'ee a very tame talker."

Uncle Issy collapsed.

"I reckon you'm all afeard o' this man," continued Prudy, looking round on the company, "else I'd have heard some mention of a shal-lal afore this."

The men with one accord drew their pipes out and looked at her.

"I mean it. If Porthlooe was the place it used to be, there'd be tin kettles in plenty to drum en out o' this naybourhood to the Rogue's March next time he showed his face here. When's he comin' back?"

No one knew.

"The girl's as bad; but 'twould be punishment enough for her to know her lover was hooted out o' the parish. Mind you, I've no grudge agen the man. I liked his dare-devil look, the only time I saw en. I'm only sayin' what I think—that you'm all afeard."

"I don't b'long to the parish," remarked a Landaviddy man, in the pause that followed, "but 'tis incumbent on Lanihale, I'm fain to admit."

The Lanihale men fired up at this.

"I've a tin-kettle," said Calvin Oke, "an' I'm ready."

"An' I for another," said Elias Sweetland. "An' I, An' I," echoed several voices.

"Stiddy there, stiddy, my hearts of oak," began Old Zeb, reflectively. "A still tongue makes a wise head, and 'twill be time enough to talk o' shal-lals when the weddin'-day's fixed. Now I've a better notion. It will not be gain-said by any of 'ee that I've the power of logic in a high degree—hey?"

"Trew, O king!"

"Surely, surely."

"The rarity that you be, crowder! Sorely we shall miss 'ee when you'm gone."

"Very well, then," Old Zeb announced. "I'm goin' to be logical wi' that chap. The very next time I see en, I'm goin' to step up to en an' say, as betwixt man an' man, 'Look 'ee here,' I'll say, 'I've a lawful son. You've a-took his name, an' you've a-stepped into his shoes, an' therefore I've a right to spake'" (he pulled at his churchwarden), "'to spake to 'ee'" (another pull) "'like a father.'" Here followed several pulls in quick succession.

The pipe had gone out. So, still holding the attention of the room, he reached out a hand towards the tongs. Prudy, anticipating his necessity, caught them up, dived them into the blaze, and drawing out a blazing end of stick, held it over the pipe while he sucked away.

During this pause a heavy step was heard in the passage. The door was pushed open, and a tall man, in dripping cloak and muddy boots, stalked into the room.

It was the man they had been discussing.

"A dirty night, friends, and a cold ride from Plymouth." He shook the water out of his hat over the sanded floor. "I'll take a pull at something hot, if you please."

Every one looked at him. Prudy, forgetting what she was about, waved the hot brand to and fro under Old Zeb's nose, stinging his eyes with smoke. Between confusion and suffocation, his face was a study.

"You seem astonished, all of you. May I ask why?"

"To tell 'ee the truth, young man," said Prudy, "'twas a case of 'talk of the devil an' you'll see his horns.'"

"Indeed. You were speaking good of me, I hope."

"Which o' your ears is burning?"

"Both."

"Then it shu'd be the left ear only. Old Zeb, here—"

"Hush 'ee now, Prudy!" implored the crowder.

"—Old Zeb here," continued Prudy, relentlessly, "was only a-sayin', as you walked in, that he'd read you the Riot Act afore you was many days older. He's mighty fierce wi' your goin's on, I 'sure 'ee."

"Is that so, Mr. Minards?"

Mr. Minards had, it is probable, never felt so uncomfortable in all his born days, and the experience of standing between two fires was new to him. He looked from the stranger around upon the company, and was met on all hands by the same expectant stare.

"Well, you see—" he began, and looked around again. The faces were inexorable. "I declare, friends, the pore chap is drippin' wet. Sich a tiresome v'yage, too, as it must ha' been from Plymouth, i' this weather! I dunno how we came to forget to invite en nigher the hearth. Well, as I was a-sayin'—"

He stopped to search for his hat beneath the settle. Producing a large crimson handkerchief from the crown, he mopped his brow slowly.

"The cur'ous part o't, naybours, is the sweatiness that comes over a man, this close weather."

"I'm waiting for your answer," put in the stranger, knitting his brows.

"Surely, surely, that's the very thing I was comin' to. The answer, as you may say, is this—but step a bit nigher, for there's lashins o' room—the answer, as far as that goes, is what I make to you, sayin'— that if you wasn' so passin' wet, may be I'd blurt out what I had i' my mind. But, as things go, 'twould seem like takin' an advantage."

"Not at all."

"'Tis very kind o' you to say so, to be sure." Old Zeb picked up his pipe again. "An' now, friends, that this little bit of onpleasantness have a-blown over, doin' ekal credit to both parties this New Year's-eve, after the native British fashion o' fair-play (as why shu'd it not?), I agree we be conformable to the pleasant season an' let harmony prevail—"

"Why, man," interrupted Prudy, "you niver gave no answer at all. 'Far as I could see you've done naught but fidget like an angletwitch and look fifty ways for Sunday."

"'Twas the roundaboutest, dodge-my-eyedest, hole-an'-cornerdest bit of a chap's mind as iver I heard given," pronounced the traitorous Oke.

"Oke—Oke," Old Zeb exclaimed, "all you know 'pon the fiddle I taught 'ee!"

Said Prudy—"That's like what the chap said when the donkey kicked en. ''Taint the stummick that I do vally,' he said, ''tis the cussed ongratefulness o' the jackass.'"

"I'm still waiting," repeated the stranger.

"Well, then"—Old Zeb cast a rancorous look around—"I'll tell 'ee, since you'm so set 'pon hearin'. Afore you came in, the good folks here present was for drummin' you out o' the country. 'Shockin' behayviour!' 'Aw, very shockin' indeed!' was the words I heerd flyin' about, an' 'Who'll make en sensible o't?' an' 'We'll give en what-for.' 'A silent tongue makes a wise head,' said I, an' o' this I call Uncle Issy here to witness."

Uncle Issy corroborated. "You was proverbial, crowder, I can duly vow, an' to that effect, unless my mem'ry misgives me."

"So, in a mollifyin' manner, I says, 'What hev the pore chap done, to be treated so bad?' I says. Says I, 'better lave me use logic wi' en'— eh, Uncle Issy?"

"Logic was the word."

The stranger turned round upon the company, who with one accord began to look extremely foolish as Old Zeb so adroitly turned the tables.

"Is this true?" he asked.

"'Tis the truth, I must admit," volunteered Uncle Issy, who had not been asked, but was fluttered with delight at having stuck to the right side against appearances.

"I think," said the stranger, deliberately, "it is as well that you and I, my friends, should understand each other. The turn of events has made it likely that I shall pass my days in this neighbourhood, and I wish to clear up all possible misconceptions at the start. In the first place, I am going to marry Miss Ruby Tresidder. Our banns will be asked in church to-morrow; but let us have a rehearsal. Can any man here show cause or just impediment why this marriage should not take place?"

"You'd better ask that o' Young Zeb, mister," said Prudy.

"Why?"

"You owe your life to'n, I hear."

"When next you see him you can put two questions. Ask him in the first place if he saved it at my request."

"Tut-tut. A man likes to live, whether he axes for it or no," grunted Elias Sweetland. "And what the devil do you know about it?" demanded the stranger.

"I reckon I know what a man's like."

"Oh, you do, do you? Wait a while, my friend. In the second place," he went on, returning to Prudy, "ask young Zebedee Minards, if he wants my life back, to come and fetch it. And now attend all. Do you see these?"

He threw back his cloak, and, diving a hand into his coat-pocket, produced a couple of pistols. The butts were rich with brass-work, and the barrels shone as he held them out in the firelight.

"You needn't dodge your heads about so gingerly. I'm only about to give you an exhibition. How many tall candlesticks have you in the house besides the pair here?" he inquired of Prudy.

"Dree pair."

"Put candles in the other two pairs and set them on the chimney-shelf."

"Why?"

"Do as I tell you."

"Now here's summat like a man!" said Prudy, and went out obediently to fetch them.

Until she returned there was dead silence in the bar-parlour. The men puffed uneasily at their pipes, not one of which was alight, and avoided the stranger's eye, which rested on each in turn with a sardonic humour.

Prudy lit the candles, one from the other, and after snuffing them with her fingers that they might burn steadily, arranged them in a row on the mantelshelf. Now above this shelf the chimney-piece was panelled to the height of some two and a half feet, and along the panel certain ballads that Prudy had purchased of the Sherborne messenger were stuck in a row with pins.

"Better take those ballads down, if you value them," the stranger remarked.

She turned round inquiringly.

"I'm going to shoot."

"Sakes alive—an' my panel, an' my best brass candlesticks!"

"Take them down."

She gave in, and unpinned the ballads.

"Now stand aside."

He stepped back to the other side of the room, and set his back to the door.

"Don't move," he said to Calvin Oke, whose chair stood immediately under the line of fire, "your head is not the least in the way. And don't turn it either, but keep your eye on the candle to the right."

This was spoken in the friendliest manner, but it hardly reassured Oke, who would have preferred to keep his eye on the deadly weapon now being lifted behind his back. Nevertheless he did not disobey, but sat still, with his eyes fixed on the mantelshelf, and only his shoulders twitching to betray his discomposure.

Bang!

The room was suddenly full of sound, then of smoke and the reek of gunpowder. As the noise broke on their ears one of the candles went out quietly. The candlestick did not stir, but a bullet was embedded in the panel behind. Calvin Oke felt his scalp nervously.

"One," counted the stranger. He walked quietly to the table, set down his smoking pistol, and took up the other, looking round at the same time on the white faces that stared on him behind the thick curls of smoke. Stepping back to his former position, he waited while they could count twenty, lifted the second pistol high, brought it smartly down to the aim and fired again.

The second candle went out, and a second bullet buried itself in Prudy's panel.

So he served the six, one after another, without a miss. Twice he reloaded both pistols slowly, and while he did so not a word was spoken. Indeed, the only sound to be heard came from Uncle Issy, who, being a trifle asthmatical with age, felt some inconvenience from the smoke in his throat. By the time the last shot was fired the company could hardly see one another. Prudy, two of whose dishes had been shaken off the dresser, had tumbled upon a settle, and sat there, rocking herself to and fro, with her apron over her head.

The sound of firing had reached the neighbouring houses, and by this time the passage was full of men and women, agog for a tragedy. The door burst open. Through the dense atmosphere the stranger descried a crowd of faces in the passage. He was the first to speak.

"Good folk, you alarm yourselves without cause. I have merely been pointing an argument that I and my friends happen to be holding here."

Then he turned to Calvin Oke, who lay in his chair like a limp sack, slowly recovering from his emotions at hearing the bullets whiz over his head.

"When I assure you that I carry these weapons always about me, you will hardly need to be warned against interfering with me again. The first man that meddles, I'll shoot like a rabbit—by the Lord Harry, I will! You hear?"

He slipped the pistols into his pocket, pulled out two crown pieces, and tossed them to Prudy.

"That'll pay for the damage, I daresay." So, turning on his heel, he marched out, leaving them in the firelight. The crowd in the passage fell back to right and left, and in a moment more he had disappeared into the black drizzle outside.

But the tradition of his feat survives, and the six holes in Prudy's panel still bear witness to its truth.



CHAPTER VIII.

YOUNG ZEB SELLS HIS SOUL.

These things were reported to Young Zeb as he sat in his cottage, up the coombe, and nursed his pain. He was a simple youth, and took life in earnest, being very slow to catch fire, but burning consumedly when once ignited. Also he was sincere as the day, and had been treacherously used. So he raged at heart, and (for pride made him shun the public eye) he sat at home and raged—the worst possible cure for love, which goes out only by open-air treatment. From time to time his father, Uncle Issy, and Elias Sweetland sat around him and administered comfort after the manner of Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar.

"Your cheeks be pale, my son—lily-white, upon my soul. Rise, my son, an' eat, as the wise king recommended, sayin', 'Stay me wi' flagons, comfort me wi' yapples, for I be sick o' love.' A wise word that."

"Shall a man be poured out like water," inquired Uncle Issy, "an' turn from his vittles, an' pass his prime i' blowin' his nose, an' all for a woman?"

"I wasn' blowin' my nose," objected Zeb, shortly.

"Well, in black an' white you wasn', but ye gave me that idee."

Young Zeb stared out of the window. Far down the coombe a slice of blue sea closed the prospect, and the tan sails of a small lugger were visible there, rounding the point to the westward. He watched her moodily until she passed out of sight, and turned to his father.

"To-morrow, did 'ee say?"

"Iss, to-morrow, at eleven i' the forenoon. Jim Lewarne brought me word."

"Terrible times they be for Jim, I reckon," said Elias Sweetland. "All yestiddy he was goin' back'ards an' forrards like a lost dog in a fair, movin' his chattels. There's a hole in the roof of that new cottage of his that a man may put his Sunday hat dro'; and as for his old Woman, she'll do nought but sit 'pon the lime-ash floor wi' her tout-serve over her head, an' call en ivery name but what he was chris'ened."

"Nothin' but neck-an'-crop would do for Tresidder, I'm told," said Old Zeb. "'I've a-sarved 'ee faithful,' said Jim, 'an' now you turns me out wi' a week's warnin'.' 'You've a-crossed my will,' says Tresidder, 'an' I've engaged a more pushin' hind in your place.' 'Tis a new fashion o' speech wi' Tresidder nowadays."

"Ay, modern words be drivin' out the old forms. But 'twas only to get Jim's cottage for that strong-will'd supplantin' furriner because Ruby said 'twas low manners for bride an' groom to go to church from the same house. So no sooner was the Lewarnes out than he was in, like shufflin' cards, wi' his marriage garment an' his brush an' comb in a hand-bag. Tresidder sent down a mattress for en, an' he slept there last night."

"Eh, but that's a trifle for a campaigner."

"Let this be a warnin' to 'ee, my son niver to save no more lives from drownin'."

"I won't," promised Young Zeb.

"We've found 'ee a great missment," Elias observed to him, after a pause. "The Psa'ms, these three Sundays, bain't what they was for lack o' your enlivenin' flute—I can't say they be. An' to hear your very own name called forth in the banns wi' Ruby's, an' you wi'out part nor lot therein—"

"Elias, you mean it well, no doubt; but I'd take it kindly if you sheered off."

"'Twas a wisht Psa'm, too," went on Elias, "las' Sunday mornin'; an' I cudn' help my thoughts dwellin' 'pon the dismals as I blowed, nor countin' how that by this time to-morrow—"

But Young Zeb had caught up his cap and rushed from the cottage.

He took, not the highway to Porthlooe, but a footpath that slanted up the western slope of the coombe, over the brow of the hill, and led in time to the coast and a broader path above the cliffs. The air was warm, and he climbed in such hurry that the sweat soon began to drop from his forehead. By the time he reached the cliffs he was forced to pull a handkerchief out and mop himself; but without a pause, he took the turning westward towards Troy harbour, and tramped along sturdily. For his mind was made up.

Ship's-chandler Webber, of Troy, was fitting out a brand-new privateer, he had heard, and she was to sail that very week. He would go and offer himself as a seaman, and if Webber made any bones about it, he would engage to put a part of his legacy into the adventure. In fact, he was ready for anything that would take him out of Porthlooe. To live there and run the risk of meeting Ruby on the other man's arm was more than flesh and blood could stand. So he went along with his hands deep in his pockets, his eyes fastened straight ahead, his heart smoking, and the sweat stinging his eyelids. And as he went he cursed the day of his birth.

From Porthlooe to Troy Ferry is a good six miles by the cliffs, and when he had accomplished about half the distance, he was hailed by name.

Between the path at this point and the cliff's edge lay a small patch cleared for potatoes, and here an oldish man was leaning on his shovel and looking up at Zeb.

"Good-mornin', my son!"

"Mornin', hollibubber!"

The old man had once worked inland at St. Teath slate-quarries, and made his living as a "hollibubber," or one who carts away the refuse slates. On returning to his native parish he had brought back and retained the name of his profession, the parish register alone preserving his true name of Matthew Spry. He was a fervent Methodist—a local preacher, in fact—and was held in some admiration by "the people" for his lustiness in prayer-meeting. A certain intensity in his large grey eyes gave character to a face that was otherwise quite insignificant. You could see he was a good man.

"Did 'ee see that dainty frigate go cruisin' by, two hour agone?"

"No."

"Then ye missed a sweet pretty sight. Thirty guns, I do b'lieve, an' all sail set. I cou'd a'most count her guns, she stood so close."

"Hey?"

"She tacked just here an' went round close under Bradden Point; so she's for Troy, that's certain. Be you bound that way, too?"

"Iss, I'll see her, if she's there."

"Best not go too close, my son; for I know the looks o' those customers. By all accounts you'm a man of too much substance to risk yourself near a press-gang."

Young Zeb gazed over the old man's head at the horizon line, and answered, as if reading the sentence there, "I might fare worse, hollibubber."

The hollibubber seemed, for a second, about to speak; for, of course, he knew Zeb's trouble. But after a while he took his shovel out of the ground slowly.

"Ay, ye might," he said; "pray the Lord ye don't."

Zeb went on, faster than ever. He passed Bradden Point and Widdy Cove at the rate of five miles an hour, or thereabouts, then he turned aside over a stile and crossed a couple of meadows; and after these he was on the high-road, on the very top of the hill overlooking Troy Harbour.

He gazed down. The frigate was there, as the hollibubber had guessed, anchored at the harbour's mouth. Two men in a small boat were pulling from her to the farther shore. A thin haze of blue smoke lay over the town at his feet, and the noise of mallets in the ship-building yards came across to him through the clear afternoon. Zeb hardly noticed all this, for his mind was busy with a problem. He halted by a milestone on the brow of the hill, to consider.

And then suddenly he sat down on the stone and shivered. The sweat was still trickling down his face and down his back; but it had turned cold as ice. A new idea had taken him, an idea of which at first he felt fairly afraid. He passed a hand over his eyes and looked down again at the frigate. But he stared at her stupidly, and his mind was busy with another picture.

It occurred to him that he must go on if he meant to arrange with Webber, that afternoon. So he got up from the stone and went down the steep hill towards the ferry, stumbling over the rough stones in the road and hardly looking at his steps, but moving now rapidly, now slowly, like a drunken man.

The street that led down to the ferry dated back to an age before carts had superseded pack-horses, and the makers had cut it in stairs and paved it with cobbles. It plunged so steeply, and the houses on either side wedged it in so tightly, that to look down from the top was like peering into a well. A patch of blue water shone at the foot, framing a small dark square—the signboard of the "Four Lords" Inn. Just now there were two or three men gathered under the signboard.

As Young Zeb drew near he saw that they wore pig-tails and round shiny hats: and, as he noticed this, his face, which had been pale for the last five minutes, grew ashen-white. He halted for a moment, and then went on again, meaning to pass the signboard and wait on the quay for the ferry.

There were half a dozen sailors in front of the "Four Lords." Three sat on a bench beside the door, and three more, with mugs of beer in their hands, were skylarking in the middle of the roadway.

"Hi!" called out one of those on the bench, as Zeb passed. And Zeb turned round and came to a halt again.

"What is it?"

"Where 're ye bound, mate?"

"For the ferry."

"Then stop an' drink, for the boat left two minutes since an' won't be back for another twenty."

Zeb hung on his heel for a couple of seconds. The sailor held out his mug with the friendliest air, his head thrown back and the left corner of his mouth screwed up into a smile.

"Thank 'ee," said Zeb, "I will; an' may the Lord judge 'atween us."

"There's many a way o' takin' a drink," the sailor said, staring at him; "but split me if yours ain't the rummiest I've run across."

"Oh, man, man," Zeb answered, "I wasn' thinkin' o' you!"

Back by the cliff's edge the hollibubber had finished his day's work and was shouldering his shovel to start for home, when he spied a dark figure coming eastwards along the track; and, putting up a hand to ward off the level rays of the sun, saw that it was the young man who had passed him at noonday. So he set down the shovel again, and waited.

Young Zeb came along with his head down. When he noticed the hollibubber standing in the path he started like a man caught in a theft.

"My son, ye 've come to lift a weight off my heart. God forgi'e me that, i' my shyness, I let 'ee go by wi'out a word for your trouble."

"All the country seems to know my affairs," Zeb answered with a scowl.

The hollibubber's grey eyes rested on him tenderly. He was desperately shy, as he had confessed: but compassion overcame his shyness.

"Surely," said he, "all we be children o' one Father: an' surely we may know each other's burdens; else, not knowin', how shall we bear 'em?"

"You'm too late, hollibubber."

Zeb stood still, looking out over the purple sea. The old man touched his arm gently.

"How so?"

"I've a-sold my soul to hell."

"I don't care. You'm alive an' standin' here, an' I can save 'ee."

"Can 'ee so?" Zeb asked ironically.

"Man, I feel sure o't." His ugly earnest face became almost grand in the flame of the sunset. "Turn aside, here, an' kneel down; I will wrestle wi' the Lord for thee till comfort comes, if it take the long night."

"You'm a strange chap. Can such things happen i' these days?"

"Kneel and try."

"No, no, no," Zeb flung out his hands. "It's too late, I tell 'ee. No man's words will I hear but the words of Lamech—'I ha' slain a man to my wounding, an' a young man to my hurt.' Let me go—'tis too late. Let me go, I say—"

As the hollibubber still clung to his arm, he gave a push and broke loose. The old man tumbled beside the path with his head against the potato fence. Zeb with a curse took to his heels and ran; nor for a hundred yards did he glance behind.

When at last he flung a look over his shoulder, the hollibubber had picked himself up and was kneeling in the pathway. His hands were clasped and lifted.

"Too late!" shouted Zeb again, and dashed on without a second look.



CHAPTER IX.

YOUNG ZEB WINS HIS SOUL BACK.

At half-past nine, next morning, the stranger sat in the front room of the cottage vacated by the Lewarnes. On a rough table, pushed into a corner, lay the remains of his breakfast. A plum-coloured coat with silver buttons hung over the back of a chair by his side, and a waist-coat and silver-laced hat to match rested on the seat. For the wedding was to take place in an hour and a half.

He sat in frilled shirt, knee-breeches and stockings, and the sunlight streamed in upon his dark head as he stooped to pull on a shoe. The sound of his whistling filled the room, and the tune was, "Soldier, soldier, will you marry me?"

His foot was thrust into the first shoe, and his forefinger inserted at the heel, shoe-horn fashion, to slip it on, when the noise of light wheels sounded on the road outside, and stopped beside the gate. Looking up, he saw through the window the head and shoulders of Young Zeb's grey mare, and broke off his whistling sharply.

Rat-a-tat!

"Come in!" he called, and smiled softly to himself.

The door was pushed open, and Young Zeb stood on the threshold, looking down on the stranger, who wheeled round quietly on his chair to face him. Zeb's clothes were disordered, and looked as if he had spent the night in them; his face was yellow and drawn, with dark semicircles underneath the eyes; and he put a hand up against the door-post for support.

"To what do I owe this honour?" asked the stranger, gazing back at him.

Zeb pulled out a great turnip-watch from his fob, and said—

"You'm dressin?"

"Ay, for the wedding."

"Then look sharp. You've got a bare five-an'-twenty minnits."

"Excuse me, I'm not to be married till eleven."

"Iss, iss, but they're comin' at ten, sharp."

"And who in the world may 'they' be?"

"The press-gang."

The stranger sprang up to his feet, and seemed for a moment about to fly at Zeb's throat.

"You treacherous hound!"

"Stand off," said Zeb wearily, without taking his hand from the door-post. "I reckon it don't matter what I may be, or may not be, so long as you'm dressed i' ten minnits."

The other dropped his hands, with a short laugh.

"I beg your pardon. For aught I know you may have nothing to do with this infernal plot except to warn me against it."

"Don't make any mistake. 'Twas I that set the press-gang upon 'ee," answered Zeb, in the same dull tones.

There was silence between them for half a minute, and then the stranger spoke, as if to himself—

"My God! Love has made this oaf a man!" He stood for a while, sucking at his under-lip, and regarding Zeb gloomily. "May I ask why you have deliberately blown up this pretty mine at the eleventh hour?"

"I couldn't do it," Zeb groaned; "Lord knows 'twas not for love of you, but I couldn't."

"Upon my word, you fascinate me. People say that evil is more easily learnt than goodness; but that's great nonsense. The footsteps of the average beginner are equally weak in both pursuits. Would you mind telling me why you chose this particular form of treachery, in preference (let us say) to poison or shooting from behind a hedge? Was it simply because you risked less? Pardon the question, but I have a particular reason for knowing."

"We're wastin' time," said Zeb, pulling out his watch again.

"It's extraordinary how a fool will stumble on good luck. Why, sir, but for one little accident, the existence of which you could not possibly have known, I might easily have waited for the press-gang, stated the case to them, and had you lugged off to sea in my place. Has it occurred to you, in the course of your negotiations, that the wicked occasionally stumble into pits of their own digging? You, who take part in the psalm-singing every Sunday, might surely have remembered this. As it is, I suppose I must hurry on my clothes, and get to church by some roundabout way."

"I'm afeard you can't, without my help."

"Indeed? Why?"

"'Cause the gang is posted all round 'ee. I met the lot half an hour back, an' promised to call 'pon you and bring word you was here."

"Come, come; I retract my sneers. You begin to excite my admiration. I shall undoubtedly shoot you before I'm taken, but it shall be your comfort to die amid expressions of esteem."

"You'm mistaken. I came to save 'ee, if you'll be quick."

"How?"

"I've a load of ore-weed outside, in the cart. By the lie o' the cottage none can spy ye while you slip underneath it; but I'll fetch a glance round, to make sure. Underneath it you'll be safe, and I'll drive 'ee past the sailors, and send 'em on here to search."

"You develop apace. But perhaps you'll admit a flaw in your scheme. What on earth induced you to imagine I should trust you?"

"Man, I reckoned all that. My word's naught. But 'tis your one chance—and I would kneel to 'ee, if by kneelin' I could persuade 'ee. We'll fight it out after; bring your pistols. Only come!"

The stranger slipped on his other shoe, then his waistcoat and jacket, whistling softly. Then he stepped to the chimney-piece, took down his pistols, and stowed them in his coat-pockets.

"I'm quite ready."

Zeb heaved a great sigh like a sob; but only said:—

"Wait a second while I see that the coast's clear."

In less than three minutes the stranger was packed under the evil-smelling weed, drawing breath with difficulty, and listening, when the jolting allowed, to Zeb's voice as he encouraged the mare. Jowters' carts travel fast as a rule, for their load perishes soon, and the distance from the coast to the market is often considerable. In this case Jessamy went at a round gallop, the loose stones flying from under her hoofs. Now and then one struck up against the bottom of the cart. It was hardly pleasant to be rattled at this rate, Heaven knew whither. But the stranger had chosen his course, and was not the man to change his mind.

After about five minutes of this the cart was pulled up with a scramble, and he heard a voice call out, as it seemed, from the hedge—

"Well?"

"Right you are," answered Young Zeb;

"He's in the front room, pullin' on his boots. You'd best look slippy."

"Where's the coin?"

"There!" The stranger heard the click of money, as of a purse being caught. "You'll find it all right."

"H'm; best let me count it, though. One—two—three—four. I feels it my dooty to tell ye, young man, that it be a dirty trick. If this didn't chime in wi' my goodwill towards his Majesty's service, be danged if I'd touch the job with a pair o' tongs!"

"Ay—but I reckon you'll do't, all the same, for t'other half that's to come when you've got en safe an' sound. Dirty hands make clean money."

"Well, well; ye've been dirtily sarved. I'll see 'ee this arternoon at the 'Four Lords.' We've orders to sail at five, sharp; so there's no time to waste."

"Then I won't detain 'ee. Clk, Jessamy!"

The jolting began again, more furiously than ever, as the stranger drew a long breath. He waited till he judged they must be out of sight, and then began to stir beneath his load of weed.

"Keep quiet," said Zeb; "you shall get out as soon as we're up the hill."

The cart began to move more slowly, and tilted back with a slant that sent the stranger's heels against the tail-board. Zeb jumped down and trudged at the side. The hill was long, and steep from foot to brow; and when at length the slope lessened, the wheels turned off at a sharp angle and began to roll softly over turf.

The weight and smell of the weed were beginning to suffocate the man beneath it, when Zeb called out "Woa-a!" and the mare stopped.

"Now you can come out."

The other rose on his knees, shook some of his burden off, and blinked in the strong sunlight.

The cart stood on the fringe of a desolate tract of downs, high above the coast. Over the hedge to the right appeared a long narrow strip of sea. On the three remaining sides nothing was visible but undulating stretches of brown turf, except where, to northward, the summits of two hills in the heart of the county just topped the rising ground that hid twenty intervening miles of broken plain.

"We can leave the mare to crop. There's a hollow, not thirty yards off, that'll do for us."

Zeb led the way to the spot. It was indeed the fosse of a half-obliterated Roman camp, and ran at varying depth around a cluster of grassy mounds, the most salient of which—the praetorian—still served as a landmark for the Porthlooe fishing boats. But down in the fosse the pair were secure from all eyes. Not a word was spoken until they stood together at the bottom.

Here Zeb pulled out his watch once more. "We'd best be sharp," he said; "you must start in twenty minnits to get to the church in time."

"It would be interesting to know what you propose doing." The stranger sat down on the slope, picked a strip of sea-weed off his breeches, and looked up with a smile.

"I reckon you'll think it odd."

"Of that I haven't a doubt."

"Well, you've a pair o' pistols i' your pockets, an' they're loaded, I expect."

"They are."

"I'd a notion of askin' 'ee, as a favour, to give and take a shot with me."

The stranger paused a minute before giving his answer.

"Can you fire a pistol?"

"I've let off a blunderbust, afore now, an' I suppose 'tis the same trick."

"And has it struck you that your body may be hard to dispose of? Or that, if found, it may cause me some inconvenience?"

"There's a quag on t'other side o' the Castle[1] here. I han't time to go round an' point it out; but 'tis to be known by bein' greener than the rest o' the turf. What's thrown in there niver comes up, an' no man can dig for it. The folks'll give the press-gang the credit when I'm missin'—"

"You forget the mare and cart."

"Lead her back to the road, turn her face to home, an' fetch her a cut across th' ears. She always bolts if you touch her ears."

"And you really wish to die?"

"Oh, my God!" Zeb broke out; "would I be standin' here if I didn'?"

The stranger rose to his feet, and drew out his pistols slowly.

"It's a thousand pities," he said; "for I never saw a man develop character so fast."

He cocked the triggers, and handed the pistols to Zeb, to take his choice.

"Stand where you are, while I step out fifteen paces." He walked slowly along the fosse, and, at the end of that distance, faced about. "Shall I give the word?"

Zeb nodded, watching him sullenly.

"Very well. I shall count three slowly, and after that we can fire as we please. Are you ready?—stand a bit sideways. Your chest is a pretty broad target—that's right; I'm going to count. One—two—three—"

The word was hardly spoken before one of the pistols rang out. It was Zeb's; and Heaven knows whither his bullet flew. The smoke cleared away in a blue, filmy streak, and revealed his enemy standing where he stood before, with his pistol up, and a quiet smile on his face.

Still holding the pistol up, the stranger now advanced deliberately until he came to a halt about two paces from Zeb, who, with white face and set jaw, waited for the end. The eyes of the two men met, and neither flinched.

"Strip," commanded the stranger. "Strip—take off that jersey."

"Why not kill me without ado? Man, isn't this cruel?"

"Strip, I say."

Zeb stared at him for half a minute, like a man in a trance; and began to pull the jersey off.

"Now your shirt. Strip—till you are naked as a babe."

Zeb obeyed. The other laid his pistol down on the turf, and also proceeded to undress, until the two men stood face to face, stark naked.

"We were thus, or nearly thus, a month ago, when you gave me my life. Does it strike you that, barring our faces, we might be twin brothers? Now, get into my clothes, and toss me over your own!"

"What's the meanin' o't?" stammered Zeb, hoarsely.

"I am about to cry quits with you. Hurry; for the bride must be at the church by this."

"What's the meanin' o't?" Zeb repeated.

"Why, that you shall marry the girl. Steady—don't tremble. The banns are up in your name, and you shall walk into church, and the woman shall be married to Zebedee Minards. Stop, don't say a word, or I'll repent and blow your brains out. You want to know who I am, and what's to become of me. Suppose I'm the Devil; suppose I'm your twin soul, and in exchange for my life have given you the half of manhood that you lacked and I possessed; suppose I'm just a deserter from his Majesty's fleet, a poor devil of a marine, with gifts above his station, who ran away and took to privateering, and was wrecked at your doors. Suppose that I am really Zebedee Minards; or suppose that I heard your name spoken in Sheba kitchen, and took a fancy to wear it myself. Suppose that I shall vanish to-day in a smell of brimstone; or that I shall leave in irons in the hold of the frigate now in Troy harbour. What's her name?"

He was dressed by this time in Zeb's old clothes.

"The Recruit."

"Whither bound?"

"Back to Plymouth to-night, an' then to the West Indies wi' a convoy."

"Hurry, then; don't fumble, or Ruby'll be tired of waiting. You'll find a pencil and scrap of paper in my breast pocket. Hand them over."

Zeb did so, and the stranger, seating himself again on the slope, tore the paper in half, and began to scribble a few lines on each piece. By the time he had finished and folded them up, Zeb stood before him dressed in the plum-coloured suit.

"Ay," said the stranger, looking him up and down, and sucking the pencil contemplatively; "she'll marry you out of hand."

"I doubt it."

"These notes will make sure. Give one to the farmer, and one to Ruby, as they stand by the chancel rails. But mainly it rests with you. Take no denial. Say you've come to make her your wife, and won't leave the church till you've done it. She's still the same woman as when she threw you over. Ah, sir, we men change our natures; but woman is always Eve. I suppose you know a short cut to the church? Very well. I shall take your cart and mare, and drive to meet the press-gang, who won't be in the sweetest of tempers just now. Come, what are you waiting for? You're ten minutes late as it is, and you can't be married after noon."

"Sir," said Zeb, with a white face; "it's a liberty, but will 'ee let me shake your hand?"

"I'll be cursed if I do. But I'll wish you good luck and a hard heart, and maybe ye'll thank me some day."

So Zeb, with a sob, turned and ran from him out of the fosse and towards a gap in the hedge, where lay a short cut through the fields. In the gap he turned and looked back. The stranger stood on the lip of the fosse, and waved a hand to him to hurry.

[1] Camp.



CHAPTER X.

THE THIRD SHIP.

We return to Ruan church, whence this history started. The parson was there in his surplice, by the altar; the bride was there in her white frock, by the chancel rails; her father, by her side, was looking at his watch; and the parishioners thronged the nave, shuffling their feet and loudly speculating. For the bridegroom had not appeared.

Ruby's face was white as her frock. Parson Babbage kept picking up the heavy Prayer-book, opening it, and laying it down impatiently. Occasionally, as one of the congregation scraped an impatient foot, a metallic sound made itself heard, and the buzz of conversation would sink for a moment, as if by magic.

For beneath the seats, and behind the women's gowns, the whole pavement of the church was covered with a fairly representative collection of cast-off kitchen utensils—old kettles, broken cake-tins, frying-pans, saucepans—all calculated to emit dismal sounds under percussion. Scattered among these were ox-bells, rook-rattles, a fog-horn or two, and a tin trumpet from Liskeard fair. Explanation is simple: the outraged feelings of the parish were to be avenged by a shal-lal as bride and bridegroom left the church. Ruby knew nothing of the storm brewing for her, but Mary Jane, whose ears had been twice boxed that morning, had heard a whisper of it on her way down to the church, and was confirmed in her fears by observing the few members of the congregation who entered after her. Men and women alike suffered from an unwonted corpulence and tightness of raiment that morning, and each and all seemed to have cast the affliction off as they arose from their knees. It was too late to interfere, so she sat still and trembled.

Still the bridegroom did not come.

"A more onpresidented feat I don't recall," remarked Uncle Issy to a group that stood at the west end under the gallery, "not since 'Melia Spry's buryin', when the devil, i' the shape of a black pig, followed us all the way to the porch."

"That was a brave while ago, Uncle."

"Iss, iss; but I mind to this hour how we bearers perspired—an' she such a light-weight corpse. But plague seize my old emotions!—we'm come to marry, not to bury."

"By the look o't 'tis' neither marry nor bury, Nim nor Doll," observed Old Zeb, who had sacrificed his paternal feelings and come to church in order to keep abreast with the age; "'tis more like Boscastle Fair, begin at twelve o'clock an' end at noon. Why tarry the wheels of his chariot?"

"'Tis possible Young Zeb an' he have a-met 'pon the road hither," hazarded Calvin Oke by a wonderful imaginative effort; "an' 'tis possible that feelings have broke loose an' one o' the twain be swelterin' in his own bloodshed, or vicey-versey."

"I heard tell of a man once," said Uncle Issy, "that committed murder upon another for love; but, save my life, I can't think 'pon his name, nor where 't befell."

"What an old store-house 'tis!" ejaculated Elias Sweetland, bending a contemplative gaze on Uncle Issy.

"Mark her pale face, naybours," put in a woman; "an' Tresidder, he looks like a man that's neither got nor lost."

"Trew, trew."

"Quarter past the hour, I make it," said Old Zeb, pulling out his timepiece.

Still the bridegroom tarried.

Higher up the church, in the front pew but one, Modesty Prowse said aloud to Sarah Ann Nan Julian—

"If he doesn' look sharp, we'll be married before she after all."

Ruby heard the sneer, and answered it with a look of concentrated spite. Probably she would have risked her dignity to retort, had not Parson Babbage advanced down the chancel at this juncture.

"Has anyone seen the bridegroom to-day?" he inquired of Tresidder. "Or will you send some one to hurry him?"

"Be danged if I know," the farmer began testily, mopping his bald head, and then he broke off, catching sound of a stir among the folk behind.

"Here he be—here he be at last!" cried somebody. And with that a hush of bewilderment fell on the congregation.

In the doorway, flushed with running and glorious in bridal attire, stood Young Zeb.

It took everybody's breath away, and he walked up the nave between silent men and women. His eyes were fastened on Ruby, and she in turn stared at him as a rabbit at a snake, shrinking slightly on her father's arm. Tresidder's jaw dropped, and his eyes began to protrude.

"What's the meanin' o' this?" he stammered.

"I've come to marry your daughter," answered Zeb, very slow and distinct. "She was to wed Zebedee Minards to-day, an' I'm Zebedee Minards."

"But—"

"I've a note to hand to each of 'ee. Better save your breath till you've read 'em."

He delivered the two notes, and stood, tapping a toe on the tiles, in the bridegroom's place on the right of the chancel-rails.

"Damnation!"

"Mr. Tresidder," interrupted the parson, "I like a man to swear off his rage if he's upset, but I can't allow it in the church."

"I don't care if you do or you don't."

"Then do it, and I'll kick you out with this very boot."

The farmer's face was purple, and big veins stood out by his temples.

"I've been cheated," he growled. Zeb, who had kept his eyes on Ruby, stepped quickly towards her. First picking up the paper that had drifted to the pavement, he crushed it into his pocket. He then took her hand. It was cold and damp.

"Parson, will 'ee marry us up, please?"

"You haven't asked if she'll have you."

"No, an' I don't mean to. I didn't come to ax questions—that's your business—but to answer."

"Will you marry this man?" demanded the parson, turning to Ruby.

Zeb's hand still enclosed hers, and she felt she was caught and held for life. Her eyes fluttered up to her lover's face, and found it inexorable.

"Yes," she gasped out, as if the word had been suffocating her. And with the word came a rush of tears—helpless, but not altogether unhappy.

"Dry your eyes," said Parson Babbage, after waiting a minute; "we must be quick about it."

So it happened that the threatened shal-lal came to nothing. Susan Jago, the old woman who swept the church, discovered its forgotten apparatus scattered beneath the pews on the following Saturday, and cleared it out, to the amount (she averred) of two cart-loads. She tossed it, bit by bit, over the west wall of the churchyard, where in time it became a mound, covered high with sting-nettles. If you poke among these nettles with your walking-stick, the odds are that you turn up a scrap of rusty iron. But there exists more explicit testimony to Zeb's wedding within the church—and within the churchyard, too, where he and Ruby have rested this many a year.

Though the bubble of Farmer Tresidder's dreams was pricked that day, there was feasting at Sheba until late in the evening. Nor until eleven did the bride and bridegroom start off, arm in arm, to walk to their new home. Before them, at a considerable distance, went the players and singers—a black blur on the moonlit road; and very crisply their music rang out beneath a sky scattered with cloud and stars. All their songs were simple carols of the country, and the burden of them was but the joy of man at Christ's nativity; but the young man and maid who walked behind were well pleased.

"Now then," cried the voice of Old Zeb, "lads an' lasses all together an' wi' a will—"

All under the leaves, an the leaves o' life, I met wi' virgins seven, An' one o' them was Mary mild, Our Lord's mother of Heaven.

'O what are 'ee seekin', you seven fair maids, All under the leaves o life; Come tell, come tell, what seek ye All under the leaves o' life?'

'We're seekin' for no leaves, Thomas, But for a friend o' thine, We're seekin' for sweet Jesus Christ To be our guide an' thine.'

'Go down, go down, to yonder town An' sit in the gallery, An there you'll see sweet Jesus Christ Nailed to a big yew-tree.'

So down they went to yonder town As fast as foot could fall, An' many a grievous bitter tear From the Virgin's eye did fall.

'O peace, Mother—O peace, Mother, Your weepin' doth me grieve; I must suffer this,' he said, 'For Adam an' for Eve.

'O Mother, take John Evangelist All for to be your son, An' he will comfort you sometimes Mother, as I've a-done.'

'O come, thou John Evangelist, Thou'rt welcome unto me, But more welcome my own dear Son Whom I nursed on my knee.'

Then he laid his head 'pon his right shoulder Seein death it struck him nigh; 'The holy Mother be with your soul— I die, Mother, I die.'

O the rose, the gentle rose, An the fennel that grows so green! God gi'e us grace in every place To pray for our king an' queen.

Furthermore, for our enemies all Our prayers they should be strong; Amen, good Lord; your charity Is the endin' of my song!

In the midst of this carol Ruby, with a light pull on Zeb's arm, brought him to a halt.

"How lovely it all is, Zeb!" She looked upwards at the flying moon, then dropped her gaze over the frosty sea, and sighed gently. "Just now I feel as if I'd been tossin' out yonder through many fierce days an' nights an' were bein' taken at last to a safe haven. You'll have to make a good wife of me, Zeb. I wonder if you'll do 't."

Zeb followed the direction of her eyes, and seemed to discern off Bradden Point a dot of white, as of a ship in sail. He pressed her arm to his side, but said nothing.

"Clear your throats, friends," shouted his father, up the road, "an' let fly—"

As I sat on a sunny bank, —A sunny bank, a sunny bank, As I sat on a sunny bank On Chris'mas day i' the mornin,

I saw dree ships come sailin' by, —A-sailin' by, a-sailin' by, I saw dree ships come sailin' by On Chris'mas day i' the mornin'.

Now who shud be i' these dree ships—

And to this measure Zeb and Ruby stepped home.

At the cottage door Zeb thanked the singers, who went their way and flung back shouts and joyful wishes as they went. Before making all fast for the night, he stood a minute or so, listening to their voices as they died away down the road. As he barred the door, he turned and saw that Ruby had lit the lamp, and was already engaged in setting the kitchen to rights; for, of course, no such home-coming had been dreamt of in the morning, and all was in disorder. He stood and watched her for a while, then turned to the window.

After a minute or two, finding that he did not speak, she too came to the window. He bent and kissed her.

For he had seen, on the patch of sea beyond the haven, a white frigate steal up Channel like a ghost. She had passed out of his sight by this time, but he was still thinking of one man that she bore.



THE HAUNTED DRAGOON.

Beside the Plymouth road, as it plunges down-hill past Ruan Lanihale church towards Ruan Cove, and ten paces beyond the lych-gate—where the graves lie level with the coping, and the horseman can decipher their inscriptions in passing, at the risk of a twisted neck—the base of the churchyard wall is pierced with a low archway, festooned with toad-flax and fringed with the hart's-tongue fern. Within the archway bubbles a well, the water of which was once used for all baptisms in the parish, for no child sprinkled with it could ever be hanged with hemp. But this belief is discredited now, and the well neglected: and the events which led to this are still a winter's tale in the neighbourhood. I set them down as they were told me, across the blue glow of a wreck-wood fire, by Sam Tregear, the parish bedman. Sam himself had borne an inconspicuous share in them; and because of them Sam's father had carried a white face to his grave.

My father and mother (said Sam) married late in life, for his trade was what mine is, and 'twasn't till her fortieth year that my mother could bring herself to kiss a gravedigger. That accounts, maybe, for my being born rickety and with other drawbacks that only made father the fonder. Weather permitting, he'd carry me off to churchyard, set me upon a flat stone, with his coat folded under, and talk to me while he delved. I can mind, now, the way he'd settle lower and lower, till his head played hidey-peep with me over the grave's edge, and at last he'd be clean swallowed up, but still discoursing or calling up how he'd come upon wonderful towns and kingdoms down underground, and how all the kings and queens there, in dyed garments, was offering him meat for his dinner every day of the week if he'd only stop and hobbynob with them— and all such gammut. He prettily doted on me—the poor old ancient!

But there came a day—a dry afternoon in the late wheat harvest—when we were up in the churchyard together, and though father had his tools beside him, not a tint did he work, but kept travishing back and forth, one time shading his eyes and gazing out to sea, and then looking far along the Plymouth road for minutes at a time. Out by Bradden Point there stood a little dandy-rigged craft, tacking lazily to and fro, with her mains'le all shiny-yellow in the sunset. Though I didn't know it then, she was the Preventive boat, and her business was to watch the Hauen: for there had been a brush between her and the Unity lugger, a fortnight back, and a Preventive man shot through the breast-bone, and my mother's brother Philip was hiding down in the town. I minded, later, how that the men across the vale, in Farmer Tresidder's wheat-field, paused every now and then, as they pitched the sheaves, to give a look up towards the churchyard, and the gleaners moved about in small knots, causeying and glancing over their shoulders at the cutter out in the bay; and how, when all the field was carried, they waited round the last load, no man offering to cry the Neck, as the fashion was, but lingering till sun was near down behind the slope and the long shadows stretching across the stubble.

"Sha'n't thee go underground to-day, father?" says I, at last.

He turned slowly round, and says he, "No, sonny. 'Reckon us'll climb skywards for a change."

And with that, he took my hand, and pushing abroad the belfry door began to climb the stairway. Up and up, round and round we went, in a sort of blind-man's-holiday full of little glints of light and whiff's of wind where the open windows came; and at last stepped out upon the leads of the tower and drew breath.

"There's two-an'-twenty parishes to be witnessed from where we're standin', sonny—if ye've got eyes," says my father.

Well, first I looked down towards the harvesters and laughed to see them so small: and then I fell to counting the church-towers dotted across the high-lands, and seeing if I could make out two-and-twenty. 'Twas the prettiest sight—all the country round looking as if 'twas dusted with gold, and the Plymouth road winding away over the hills like a long white tape. I had counted thirteen churches, when my father pointed his hand out along this road and called to me—

"Look'ee out yonder, honey, an' say what ye see!"

"I see dust," says I.

"Nothin' else? Sonny boy, use your eyes, for mine be dim."

"I see dust," says I again, "an' suthin' twinklin' in it, like a tin can—"

"Dragooners!" shouts my father; and then, running to the side of the tower facing the harvest-field, he put both hands to his mouth and called:

"What have 'ee? What have 'ee?"—very loud and long.

"A neck—a neck!" came back from the field, like as if all shouted at once—dear, the sweet sound! And then a gun was fired, and craning forward over the coping I saw a dozen men running across the stubble and out into the road towards the Hauen; and they called as they ran, "A neck—a neck!"

"Iss," says my father, "'tis a neck, sure 'nuff. Pray God they save en! Come, sonny—"

But we dallied up there till the horsemen were plain to see, and their scarlet coats and armour blazing in the dust as they came. And when they drew near within a mile, and our limbs ached with crouching—for fear they should spy us against the sky—father took me by the hand and pulled hot foot down the stairs. Before they rode by he had picked up his shovel and was shovelling out a grave for his life.

Forty valiant horsemen they were, riding two-and-two (by reason of the narrowness of the road) and a captain beside them—men broad and long, with hairy top-lips, and all clad in scarlet jackets and white breeches that showed bravely against their black war-horses and jet-black holsters, thick as they were wi' dust. Each man had a golden helmet, and a scabbard flapping by his side, and a piece of metal like a half-moon jingling from his horse's cheek-strap. 12 D was the numbering on every saddle, meaning the Twelfth Dragoons.

Tramp, tramp! they rode by, talking and joking, and taking no more heed of me—that sat upon the wall with my heels dangling above them—than if I'd been a sprig of stonecrop. But the captain, who carried a drawn sword and mopped his face with a handkerchief so that the dust ran across it in streaks, drew rein, and looked over my shoulder to where father was digging.

"Sergeant!" he calls back, turning with a hand upon his crupper; "didn't we see a figger like this a-top o' the tower, some way back?"

The sergeant pricked his horse forward and saluted. He was the tallest, straightest man in the troop, and the muscles on his arm filled out his sleeve with the three stripes upon it—a handsome red-faced fellow, with curly black hair.

Says he, "That we did, sir—a man with sloping shoulders and a boy with a goose neck." Saying this, he looked up at me with a grin.

"I'll bear it in mind," answered the officer, and the troop rode on in a cloud of dust, the sergeant looking back and smiling, as if 'twas a joke that he shared with us. Well, to be short, they rode down into the town as night fell. But 'twas too late, Uncle Philip having had fair warning and plenty of time to flee up towards the little secret hold under Mabel Down, where none but two families knew how to find him. All the town, though, knew he was safe, and lashins of women and children turned out to see the comely soldiers hunt in vain till ten o'clock at night.

The next thing was to billet the warriors. The captain of the troop, by this, was pesky cross-tempered, and flounced off to the "Jolly Pilchards" in a huff. "Sergeant," says he, "here's an inn, though a damned bad 'un, an' here I means to stop. Somewheres about there's a farm called Constantine, where I'm told the men can be accommodated. Find out the place, if you can, an' do your best: an' don't let me see yer face till to-morra," says he.

So Sergeant Basket—that was his name—gave the salute, and rode his troop up the street, where—for his manners were mighty winning, notwithstanding the dirty nature of his errand—he soon found plenty to direct him to Farmer Noy's, of Constantine; and up the coombe they rode into the darkness, a dozen or more going along with them to show the way, being won by their martial bearing as well as the sergeant's very friendly way of speech.

Farmer Noy was in bed—a pock-marked, lantern-jawed old gaffer of sixty-five; and the most remarkable point about him was the wife he had married two years before—a young slip of a girl but just husband-high. Money did it, I reckon; but if so, 'twas a bad bargain for her. He was noted for stinginess to such a degree that they said his wife wore a brass wedding-ring, weekdays, to save the genuine article from wearing out. She was a Ruan woman, too, and therefore ought to have known all about him. But woman's ways be past finding out.

Hearing the hoofs in his yard and the sergeant's stram-a-ram upon the door, down comes the old curmudgeon with a candle held high above his head.

"What the devil's here?" he calls out. Sergeant Basket looks over the old man's shoulder; and there, halfway up the stairs, stood Madam Noy in her night rail—a high-coloured ripe girl, languishing for love, her red lips parted and neck all lily-white against a loosened pile of dark-brown hair.

"Be cussed if I turn back!" said the sergeant to himself; and added out loud—

"Forty souldjers, in the King's name!"

"Forty devils!" says old Noy.

"They're devils to eat," answered the sergeant, in the most friendly manner; "an', begad, ye must feed an' bed 'em this night—or else I'll search your cellars. Ye are a loyal man—eh, farmer? An' your cellars are big, I'm told."

"Sarah," calls out the old man, following the sergeant's bold glance, "go back an' dress yersel' dacently this instant! These here honest souldjers—forty damned honest gormandisin' souldjers—be come in his Majesty's name, forty strong, to protect honest folks' rights in the intervals of eatin' 'em out o' house an' home. Sergeant, ye be very welcome i' the King's name. Cheese an' cider ye shall have, an' I pray the mixture may turn your forty stomachs."

In a dozen minutes he had fetched out his stable-boys and farm-hands, and, lantern in hand, was helping the sergeant to picket the horses and stow the men about on clean straw in the outhouses. They were turning back to the house, and the old man was turning over in his mind that the sergeant hadn't yet said a word about where he was to sleep, when by the door they found Madam Noy waiting, in her wedding gown, and with her hair freshly braided.

Now, the farmer was mortally afraid of the sergeant, knowing he had thirty ankers and more of contraband liquor in his cellars, and minding the sergeant's threat. None the less his jealousy got the upper hand.

"Woman," he cries out, "to thy bed!"

"I was waiting," said she, "to say the Cap'n's bed—"

"Sergeant's," says the dragoon, correcting her.

"—Was laid i' the spare room."

"Madam," replies Sergeant Basket, looking into her eyes and bowing, "a soldier with my responsibility sleeps but little. In the first place, I must see that my men sup."

"The maids be now cuttin' the bread an' cheese and drawin' the cider."

"Then, Madam, leave me but possession of the parlour, and let me have a chair to sleep in."

By this they were in the passage together, and her gaze devouring his regimentals. The old man stood a pace off, looking sourly. The sergeant fed his eyes upon her, and Satan got hold of him.

"Now if only," said he, "one of you could play cards!"

"But I must go to bed," she answered; "though I can play cribbage, if only you stay another night."

For she saw the glint in the farmer's eye; and so Sergeant Basket slept bolt upright that night in an arm-chair by the parlour fender. Next day the dragooners searched the town again, and were billeted all about among the cottages. But the sergeant returned to Constantine, and before going to bed—this time in the spare room—played a game of cribbage with Madam Noy, the farmer smoking sulkily in his arm-chair.

"Two for his heels!" said the rosy woman suddenly, halfway through the game. "Sergeant, you're cheatin' yoursel' an' forgettin' to mark. Gi'e me the board; I'll mark for both."

She put out her hand upon the board, and Sergeant Basket's closed upon it. 'Tis true he had forgot to mark; and feeling the hot pulse in her wrist, and beholding the hunger in her eyes, 'tis to be supposed he'd have forgot his own soul.

He rode away next day with his troop: but my uncle Philip not being caught yet, and the Government set on making an example of him, we hadn't seen the last of these dragoons. 'Twas a time of fear down in the town. At dead of night or at noonday they came on us—six times in all: and for two months the crew of the Unity couldn't call their souls their own, but lived from day to day in secret closets and wandered the country by night, hiding in hedges and straw-houses. All that time the revenue men watched the Hauen, night and day, like dogs before a rat-hole.

But one November morning 'twas whispered abroad that Uncle Philip had made his way to Falmouth, and slipped across to Guernsey. Time passed on, and the dragooners were seen no more, nor the handsome devil-may-care face of Sergeant Basket. Up at Constantine, where he had always contrived to billet himself, 'tis to be thought pretty Madam Noy pined to see him again, kicking his spurs in the porch and smiling out of his gay brown eyes; for her face fell away from its plump condition, and the hunger in her eyes grew and grew. But a more remarkable fact was that her old husband—who wouldn't have yearned after the dragoon, ye'd have thought—began to dwindle and fall away too. By the New Year he was a dying man, and carried his doom on his face. And on New Year's Day he straddled his mare for the last time, and rode over to Looe, to Doctor Gale's.

"Goody-losh!" cried the doctor, taken aback by his appearance— "What's come to ye, Noy?"

"Death!" says Noy. "Doctor, I hain't come for advice, for before this day week I'll be a clay-cold corpse. I come to ax a favour. When they summon ye, before lookin' at my body—that'll be past help—go you to the little left-top corner drawer o' my wife's bureau, an' there ye'll find a packet. You're my executor," says he, "and I leaves ye to deal wi' that packet as ye thinks fit."

With that, the farmer rode away home-along, and the very day week he went dead.

The doctor, when called over, minded what the old chap had said, and sending Madam Noy on some pretence to the kitchen, went over and unlocked the little drawer with a duplicate key, that the farmer had unhitched from his watch-chain and given him. There was no parcel of letters, as he looked to find, but only a small packet crumpled away in the corner. He pulled it out and gave a look, and a sniff, and another look: then shut the drawer, locked it, strode straight down-stairs to his horse and galloped away.

In three hours' time, pretty Madam Noy was in the constables' hands upon the charge of murdering her husband by poison.

They tried her, next Spring Assize, at Bodmin, before the Lord Chief Justice. There wasn't evidence enough to put Sergeant Basket in the dock alongside of her—though 'twas freely guessed he knew more than anyone (saving the prisoner herself) about the arsenic that was found in the little drawer and inside the old man's body. He was subpoena'd from Plymouth, and cross-examined by a great hulking King's Counsel for three-quarters of an hour. But they got nothing out of him. All through the examination the prisoner looked at him and nodded her white face, every now and then, at his answers, as much as to say, "That's right—that's right: they shan't harm thee, my dear." And the love-light shone in her eyes for all the court to see. But the sergeant never let his look meet it. When he stepped down at last she gave a sob of joy, and fainted bang-off.

They roused her up, after this, to hear the verdict of Guilty and her doom spoken by the judge. "Pris'ner at the bar," said the Clerk of Arraigns, "have ye anything to say why this court should not pass sentence o' death?"

She held tight of the rail before her, and spoke out loud and clear—

"My Lord and gentlemen all, I be a guilty woman; an' I be ready to die at once for my sin. But if ye kill me now, ye kill the child in my body—an' he is innocent."

Well, 'twas found she spoke truth; and the hanging was put off till after the time of her delivery. She was led back to prison, and there, about the end of June, her child was born, and died before he was six hours old. But the mother recovered, and quietly abode the time of her hanging.

I can mind her execution very well; for father and mother had determined it would be an excellent thing for my rickets to take me into Bodmin that day, and get a touch of the dead woman's hand, which in those times was considered an unfailing remedy. So we borrowed the parson's manure-cart, and cleaned it thoroughly, and drove in together.

The place of the hangings, then, was a little door in the prison-wall, looking over the bank where the railway now goes, and a dismal piece of water called Jail-pool, where the townsfolk drowned most of the dogs and cats they'd no further use for. All the bank under the gallows was that thick with people you could almost walk upon their heads; and my ribs were squeezed by the crowd so that I couldn't breathe freely for a month after. Back across the pool, the fields along the side of the valley were lined with booths and sweet-stalls and standings—a perfect Whitsun-fair; and a din going up that cracked your ears.

But there was the stillness of death when the woman came forth, with the sheriff and the chaplain reading in his book, and the unnamed man behind—all from the little door. She wore a strait black gown, and a white kerchief about her neck—a lovely woman, young and white and tearless.

She ran her eye over the crowd and stepped forward a pace, as if to speak; but lifted a finger and beckoned instead: and out of the people a man fought his way to the foot of the scaffold. 'Twas the dashing sergeant, that was here upon sick-leave. Sick he was, I believe. His face above his shining regimentals was grey as a slate; for he had committed perjury to save his skin, and on the face of the perjured no sun will ever shine.

"Have you got it?" the doomed woman said, many hearing the words.

He tried to reach, but the scaffold was too high, so he tossed up what was in his hand, and the woman caught it—a little screw of tissue-paper.

"I must see that, please!" said the sheriff, laying a hand upon her arm.

"'Tis but a weddin'-ring, sir"—and she slipped it over her finger. Then she kissed it once, under the beam, and, lookin' into the dragoon's eyes, spoke very slow—

"Husband, our child shall go wi' you; an' when I want you he shall fetch you."

—and with that turned to the sheriff, saying:

"I be ready, sir."

The sheriff wouldn't give father and mother leave for me to touch the dead woman's hand; so they drove back that evening grumbling a good bit. 'Tis a sixteen-mile drive, and the ostler in at Bodmin had swindled the poor old horse out of his feed, I believe; for he crawled like a slug. But they were so taken up with discussing the day's doings, and what a mort of people had been present, and how the sheriff might have used milder language in refusing my father, that they forgot to use the whip. The moon was up before we got halfway home, and a star to be seen here and there; and still we never mended our pace.

'Twas in the middle of the lane leading down to Hendra Bottom, where for more than a mile two carts can't pass each other, that my father pricks up his ears and looks back.

"Hullo!" says he; "there's somebody gallopin' behind us."

Far back in the night we heard the noise of a horse's hoofs, pounding furiously on the road and drawing nearer and nearer.

"Save us!" cries father; "whoever 'tis, he's comin' down th' lane!" And in a minute's time the clatter was close on us and someone shouting behind.

"Hurry that crawlin' worm o' yourn—or draw aside in God's name, an' let me by!" the rider yelled.

"What's up?" asked my father, quartering as well as he could. "Why! Hullo! Farmer Hugo, be that you?"

"There's a mad devil o' a man behind, ridin' down all he comes across. A's blazin' drunk, I reckon—but 'tisn' that—'tis the horrible voice that goes wi' en—Hark! Lord protect us, he's turn'd into the lane!"

Sure enough, the clatter of a second horse was coming down upon us, out of the night—and with it the most ghastly sounds that ever creamed a man's flesh. Farmer Hugo pushed past us and sent a shower of mud in our faces as his horse leapt off again, and 'way-to-go down the hill. My father stood up and lashed our old grey with the reins, and down we went too, bumpity-bump for our lives, the poor beast being taken suddenly like one possessed. For the screaming behind was like nothing on earth but the wailing and sobbing of a little child—only tenfold louder. 'Twas just as you'd fancy a baby might wail if his little limbs was being twisted to death.

At the hill's foot, as you know, a stream crosses the lane—that widens out there a bit, and narrows again as it goes up t'other side of the valley. Knowing we must be overtaken further on—for the screams and clatter seemed at our very backs by this—father jumped out here into the stream and backed the cart well to one side; and not a second too soon.

The next moment, like a wind, this thing went by us in the moonlight— a man upon a black horse that splashed the stream all over us as he dashed through it and up the hill. 'Twas the scarlet dragoon with his ashen face; and behind him, holding to his cross-belt, rode a little shape that tugged and wailed and raved. As I stand here, sir, 'twas the shape of a naked babe!

Well, I won't go on to tell how my father dropped upon his knees in the water, or how my mother fainted off. The thing was gone, and from that moment for eight years nothing was seen or heard of Sergeant Basket. The fright killed my mother. Before next spring she fell into a decline, and early next fall the old man—for he was an old man now—had to delve her grave. After this he went feebly about his work, but held on, being wishful for me to step into his shoon, which I began to do as soon as I was fourteen, having outgrown the rickets by that time.

But one cool evening in September month, father was up digging in the yard alone: for 'twas a small child's grave, and in the loosest soil, and I was off on a day's work, thatching Farmer Tresidder's stacks. He was digging away slowly when he heard a rattle at the lych-gate, and looking over the edge of the grave, saw in the dusk a man hitching his horse there by the bridle.

'Twas a coal-black horse, and the man wore a scarlet coat all powdered with pilm; and as he opened the gate and came over the graves, father saw that 'twas the dashing dragoon. His face was still a slaty-grey, and clammy with sweat; and when he spoke, his voice was all of a whisper, with a shiver therein.

"Bedman," says he, "go to the hedge and look down the road, and tell me what you see."

My father went, with his knees shaking, and came back again.

"I see a woman," says he, "not fifty yards down the road. She is dressed in black, an' has a veil over her face; an' she's comin' this way."

"Bedman," answers the dragoon, "go to the gate an' look back along the Plymouth road, an' tell me what you see."

"I see," says my father, coming back with his teeth chattering, "I see, twenty yards back, a naked child comin'. He looks to be callin', but he makes no sound."

"Because his voice is wearied out," says the dragoon. And with that he faced about, and walked to the gate slowly.

"Bedman, come wi' me an' see the rest," he says, over his shoulder.

He opened the gate, unhitched the bridle and swung himself heavily up in the saddle.

Now from the gate the bank goes down pretty steep into the road, and at the foot of the bank my father saw two figures waiting. 'Twas the woman and the child, hand in hand; and their eyes burned up like coals: and the woman's veil was lifted, and her throat bare.

As the horse went down the bank towards these two, they reached out and took each a stirrup and climbed upon his back, the child before the dragoon and the woman behind. The man's face was set like a stone. Not a word did either speak, and in this fashion they rode down the hill towards Ruan sands. All that my father could mind, beyond, was that the woman's hands were passed round the man's neck, where the rope had passed round her own.

No more could he tell, being a stricken man from that hour. But Aunt Polgrain, the house-keeper up to Constantine, saw them, an hour later, go along the road below the town-place; and Jacobs, the smith, saw them pass his forge towards Bodmin about midnight. So the tale's true enough. But since that night no man has set eyes on horse or riders.



A BLUE PANTOMIME.

I.

HOW I DINED AT THE "INDIAN QUEENS."

The sensation was odd; for I could have made affidavit I had never visited the place in my life, nor come within fifty miles of it. Yet every furlong of the drive was earmarked for me, as it were, by some detail perfectly familiar. The high-road ran straight ahead to a notch in the long chine of Huel Tor; and this notch was filled with the yellow ball of the westering sun. Whenever I turned my head and blinked, red simulacra of this ball hopped up and down over the brown moors. Miles of wasteland, dotted with peat-ricks and cropping ponies, stretched to the northern horizon: on our left three long coombes radiated seaward, and in the gorge of the midmost was a building stuck like a fish-bone, its twisted Jacobean chimneys overtopping a plantation of ash-trees that now, in November, allowed a glimpse, and no more, of the grey facade. I had looked down that coombe as we drove by; and catching sight of these chimneys felt something like reassurance, as if I had been counting, all the way, to find them there.

But here let me explain who I am and what brought me to these parts. My name is Samuel Wraxall—the Reverend Samuel Wraxall, to be precise: I was born a Cockney and educated at Rugby and Oxford. On leaving the University I had taken orders; but, for reasons impertinent to this narrative, was led, after five years of parochial work in Surrey, to accept an Inspectorship of Schools. Just now I was bound for Pitt's Scawens, a desolate village among the Cornish clay-moors, there to examine and report upon the Board School. Pitt's Scawens lies some nine miles off the railway, and six from the nearest market-town; consequently, on hearing there was a comfortable inn near the village, I had determined to make that my resting-place for the night and do my business early on the morrow.

"Who lives down yonder?" I asked my driver.

"Squire Parkyn," he answered, not troubling to follow my gaze.

"Old family?"

"May be: Belonged to these parts before I can mind."

"What's the place called?"

"Tremenhuel."

I had certainly never heard the name before, nevertheless my lips were forming the syllables almost before he spoke. As he flicked up his grey horse and the gig began to oscillate in more business-like fashion, I put him a fourth question—a question at once involuntary and absurd.