But Master Linseed did not respond warmly. He felt it a little beneath his dignity as a sign-painter to jump at the idea, though the rest of the company assented in a general murmur.

"Scrawling on a slate," the painter and decorator began—and at this point he paused, after the leisurely customs of the district, to light his pipe at the leaden-weighted candlestick which stood near; and then, as his hearers sat expectant, but not impatient, proceeded: "Scrawling on a slate is one thing, Master Chuter: painting and decorating's another. Painting's a trade; and not rightly to be understood by them that's not larned it, nor to be picked up by all as can scrawl a line here and a line there, as the whim takes 'em. Take oak-graining,"—and here Master Linseed paused again, with a fine sense of effect,—"who'd ever think of taking a comb to it as didn't know? And for the knots, I've worked 'em—now with a finger and now a thumb—over a shutter-front till it looked that beautiful the man it was done for telled me himself,—'I'd rather,' says he, 'have 'em as you've done 'em than the real thing.' But young hands is nowhere with the knots. They puts 'em in too thick."

The company said, "Ay, ay!" in a tone of unbroken assent, for Master Linseed was understood to have "come from a distance," and to "know a good deal." But an innkeeper stands above a painter and decorator anywhere, and especially on his own hearth, and Master Chuter did not mean to be put down.

"I suppose old hands were young uns once, Master Linseed," said he; "and if the boy were never much at oak-graining, I'd back him for sign-painting, if he were taught. Why, the pigs he draas out, look you. I could cut 'em up, and not a piece missing; not a joint, nor as much as would make a pound of sausages. And if a draas pigs, why not osses, why not any other kind?"

"Ay, ay!" said the company.

"I be thinking," continued Master Chuter, "of a gentlemen as draad out that mare of my father's that ran in the mail. You remember the coaches, Daddy Angel?"

"Ay, ay, Master Chuter. Between Lonnon and Exeter a ran. Fine days at the Heart of Oak, then, Master Chuter."

"He weren't a sign-painter, that I knows on. A were somethin' more in the gentry way," said Master Chuter, not, perhaps, quite without malice in the distinction. "He were what they calls in genteel talk a" -

"Artis'," said Master Linseed, removing his pipe, to supply the missing word with a sense of superiority.

"No, not a artis'," said Master Chuter, "though it do begin with a A, too. 'Twasn't a artis' he was, 'twas a" -

"Ammytoor," said the travelled sign-painter.

"That be it," said the innkeeper. "A ammytoor. And he was short of money, I fancy, and so 'twas settled a should paint this mare of my father's to set against the bill. And a draad and a squinted at un, and a squinted at un and a draad, and laid the paint on till the pictur' looked all in a mess, and then he took un away to vinish. But when a sent it home, I thought my vather would have had the law of un. I'm blessed if a hadn't given the mare four white feet, and shoulders that wouldn't have pulled a vegetable cart; and she near- wheeler of the mail! I'd lay a pound bill Jan Lake would a done her ever so much better, for as young a hand as a is, if a'd squinted at her as long."

"Well, well, Master Chuter," said the painter and decorator, rising to go, "let the boy draw pigs and osses for his living. And I wish he may find paint as easy as slate-pencil."

Master Linseed's parting words produced upon the company that somewhat unreasonable depression which such ironical good wishes are apt to cause; but they only roused the spirit of contradiction in Master Chuter, and heightened his belief in Jan's talents more than any praise from the painter could have done.

"Here's a pretty caddle about giving a boy's due!" said the innkeeper. "But I knows the points of a oss, and the makings of a pig, if I bean't a sign-painter. And, mark my words, the boy Jan 'ull out-paint Master Linseed yet."

Master Chuter spoke with triumph in his tone, but it was the triumph of delivering his sentiments to unopposing hearers.

There were moments of greater triumph to come, of which he yet wotted not, when the sevenfold fulfilment of his prediction should be past dispute, and attested from his own walls by more lasting monuments of Jan's skill than the too perishable sketch which now stood like a text for the innkeeper on the mantelpiece of the Heart of Oak.



CHAPTER XVI.

THE MOP.—THE SHOP.—WHAT THE CHEAP JACK'S WIFE HAD TO TELL.—WHAT GEORGE WITHHELD.

A mop is a local name for a hiring-fair, at which young men and women present themselves to be hired as domestic servants or farm laborers for a year. It was at a mop that the windmiller had hired George, and it was at that annual festival that his long service came to an end. He betook himself to the town, where the fair was going on, not with any definite intention of seeking another master, but from a variety of reasons: partly for a holiday, and to "see the fun;" partly to visit the Cheap Jack, and hear what advice he had to give, and to learn what was in the letter; partly with the idea that something might suggest itself in the busy town as a suitable investment for his savings and his talents. At the worst, he could but take another place.

The sun shone brightly on the market-place as George passed through it. The scene was quaint and picturesque. Booths, travelling shows, penny theatres, quack doctors, tumblers, profile cutters, exhibitors and salesmen of all sorts, thronged the square, and overflowed into a space behind, where some houses had been burnt down and never rebuilt; whilst round the remains of the market cross in the centre were grouped the lads and lasses "on hire." The girls were smartly dressed, and the young men in snowy smocks, above which peeped waistcoats of gay colors, looked in the earlier part of the day so spruce, that it was as lamentable to see them after the hours of beer-drinking and shag tobacco-smoking which followed, as it was to see what might have been a neighborly and cheerful festival finally swamped in drunkenness and debauchery.

George's smock was white, and George's waistcoat was red, and he had made himself smart enough, but he did not linger amongst his fellow- servants at the Cross. He hurried through the crowd, nodding sheepishly in answer to a shower of chaff and greetings, and made his way to the by-street where the Cheap Jack had a small dingy shop for the sale of coarse pottery. Some people were spiteful enough to hint that the shop-trade was of much less value to him than the store-room attached, where the goods were believed to be not all of one kind.

The red bread-pans, pipkins, flower-pots, and so forth, were grouped about the door with some attempt at effective display, and with cheap prices marked in chalk upon their sides. The window was clean, and in it many knick-knacks of other kinds were mixed with the smaller china ware. And, when George entered the shop, the hunchback's wife was behind the counter. Like Mrs. Lake, he paused to think where he could have seen her before; the not uncomely face marred by an ugly mouth, in which the upper lip was long and cleft, and the lower lip large and heavy, seemed familiar to him. He was still beating his brains when the Cheap Jack came in.

George had been puzzled that the woman's countenance did not seem new to him, and he was puzzled and disturbed also that the expression on the face of the Cheap Jack was quite new. Whatever the hunchback had in his head, however, he was not unfriendly in his manner.

"Good morning, George, my dear!" he cried, cheerfully; "you've seen my missus before, eh, George?" George was just about to say no, when he remembered that he had seen the woman, and when and where.

"Dreadful night that was, Mr. Sannel!" said the Cheap Jack's wife, with a smile on her large mouth. George assented, and by the hospitable invitation of the newly married couple he followed them into the dwelling part of the house, trying as he did so to decide upon a plan for his future conduct.

Here at last was a woman who could probably tell all that he wanted to know about the mystery on which he had hoped to trade, and—the Cheap Jack had married her. If any thing could be got out of the knowledge of Jan's history, the Cheap Jack, and not George, would get it now. The hasty resolution to which George came was to try to share what he could not keep entirely to himself. He flattered himself he could be very civil, and—he had got the letter.

It proved useful. George was resolved not to show it until he had got at something of what the large-mouthed woman had to tell; and, as she wanted to see the letter, she made a virtue of necessity, and seemed anxious to help the miller's man to the utmost of her power.

The history of her connection with Jan's babyhood was soon told, and she told it truthfully.

Five years before her marriage to the Cheap Jack, she was a chambermaid in a small hotel in London, and "under notice to leave." Why—she did not deem it necessary to tell George. In this hotel Jan was born, and Jan's mother died. She was a foreigner, it was supposed, and her husband also, for they talked a foreign language to each other. He was not with her when she first came, but he joined her afterwards, and was with her at her death. So far the Cheap Jack's wife spoke upon hearsay. Though employed at the hotel, which was very full, she was not sleeping in the house; she was not on good terms with the landlady, nor even with the other servants, and her first real connection with the matter was when the gentleman, overhearing some "words" between her and the landlady at the bar, abruptly asked her if she were in want of employment. He employed her,—to take the child to the very town where she was now living as the Cheap Jack's wife. He did not come with her, as he had to attend his wife's funeral. It was understood at the hotel that he was going to take the body abroad for interment. So the porter had said. The person to whom she was directed to bring the child was a respectable old woman, living in the outskirts of the town, whose business was sick-nursing. She seemed, however, to be comfortably off, and had not been out for some time. She had been nurse to the gentleman in his childhood, so she once told the Cheap Jack's wife with tears. But she was always shedding tears, either over the baby, or as she sat over her big Bible, "for ever having to wipe her spectacles, and tears running over her nose ridic'lus to behold." She was pious, and read the Bible aloud in the evening. Then she had fainting fits; she could not go uphill or upstairs without great difficulty, and she had one of her fits when she first saw the child. If with these infirmities of body and mind the ex- nurse had been easily managed, the Cheap Jack's wife professed that she could have borne it with patience. But the old woman was painfully shrewd, and there was no hoodwinking her. She never allowed the Cheap Jack's wife to go out without her, and contrived, in spite of a hundred plans and excuses, to prevent her from speaking to any of the townspeople alone. Never, said Sal, never could she have put up with it, even for the short time before the gentleman came down to them, but for knowing it would be a paying job. But his arrival was the signal for another catastrophe, which ended in Jan's becoming a child of the mill.

If the sight of the baby had nearly overpowered the old nurse, the sight of the dark-eyed gentleman overwhelmed her yet more. Then they were closeted together for a long time, and the old woman's tongue hardly ever stopped. Sal explained that she would not have been such a fool as to let this conversation escape her, if she could have helped it. She took her place at the keyhole, and had an excuse ready for the old woman, if she should come out suddenly. The old woman came out suddenly; but she did not wait for the excuse. She sent the Cheap Jack's wife civilly on an errand into the kitchen, and then followed her, and shut the door and turned the key upon her without hesitation, leaving her unable to hear any thing but the tones of the conversation through the parlor wall. She never opened the door again. As far as the Cheap Jack's wife could tell, the old woman seemed to be remonstrating and pleading; the gentleman spoke now and then. Then there was a lull, then a thud, then a short pause, and then the parlor-door was burst open, and the gentleman came flying towards the kitchen, and calling for the Cheap Jack's wife. The fact that the door was locked caused some delay, and delay was not desirable. The old nurse had had "a fit." When the doctor came, he gave no hope of her life. She had had heart disease for many years, he said. In the midst of this confusion, a letter came for the gentleman, which seemed absolutely to distract him. He bade Sal get the little Jan ready, and put his clothes together, and they started that evening for the mill. Sal believed it was the doctor who recommended Mrs. Lake as a foster- mother for the baby, having attended her child. The storm came on after they started. The child had been very sickly ever since they left London. The gentleman took the Cheap Jack's wife straight back to the station, paid her handsomely, and sent her up to town again. She had never seen him since. As to his name, it so happened she had never heard it at the hotel; but when he was setting her off to the country with the child, she asked it, and he told her that it was Ford. The old nurse also spoke of him as Mr. Ford, but—so Sal fancied—with a sort of effort, which made her suspect that it was not his real name.

"Yes, it be!" said George, who had followed the narrative with open- mouthed interest. "It be aal right. I knows. 'Twas a gentleman by the name of Ford as cried his pocket-book, and the vive-pound bill in the papers. 'Tis aal right. Ford—Jan Ford be the little varment's name then, and he be gentry-born, too! Missus Lake she allus said so, she did, sartinly."

George was so absorbed by the flood of information which had burst upon him all at once, and by adjusting his clumsy thoughts to the new view of Jan, that he did not stop to think whether the Cheap Jack and his wife had known of the lost pocket-book and the reward. They had not. The dark gentleman had no wish to reopen communication with the woman he had employed. He thought (and rightly) that the book had fallen when he stumbled over his cloak in getting into the carriage, and he had refused to advertise it except in the local papers. And at that time the Cheap Jack and Sal were both in London.

But George's incautious speech recalled one or two facts to them, and whilst George sat slowly endeavoring to realize that new idea, "Master Jan Ford, full young gentleman, and at least half Frenchman" (for of any other foreigners George knew nothing), the Cheap Jack was pondering the words "five-pound bill," and connecting them with George's account of his savings when they last met; and his quicker spouse was also putting two and two together, but with a larger sum. At the same instant the Cheap Jack inquired after George's money, and his wife asked about the letter. But George had hastily come to a decision. If the tale told by the woman were true, he had got a great deal of information for nothing, and he saw no reason for sharing whatever the letter might contain with those most likely to profit by it. As to letting the Cheap Jack have any thing whatever to do with the disposal of his savings, nothing could be further from his intentions.

"Gearge bean't such a vool as a looks," thought that worthy, and aloud he vowed, with unnecessary oaths, that the money was still in the bank, and that he had forgotten to bring the letter, which was in a bundle that he had left at the mill.

This disappointment did not, however, diminish the civility of the Cheap Jack's wife. She was very hospitable, and even pressed George to spend the night at their house, which he declined. He had a dread of the Cheap Jack, which was almost superstitious.

For her civility, indeed, the Cheap Jack's wife was taken to task by her husband in a few moments when they were alone together.

"I thought you was sharper than to be took in by him!" said the hunchback, indignantly. "Do you believe all that gag about the bank and the bundle? and you, as soft to him, telling him every blessed thing, and he stowed the cash and the letter somewheres where we shall never catch a sight of 'em, and got every thing out of you as easy as shelling a pod of peas." And in language as strong as that of the miller's man the Cheap Jack swore he could have done better himself a hundred times over.

"Could you?" said the large-mouthed woman, contemptuously. "I wouldn't live long in the country, I wouldn't, if it was to make me such a owl as you've turned into. It ain't much farther than your nose YOU sees!"

"Never mind me, Sal, my dear," said the hunchback, anxiously. "I trusts you, my dear. And it seems to me as if you thought he'd got 'em about him. Do you, my dear, and why? And why did you tell him the truth, straight on end, when a made-up tale would have done as well, and kept him in the dark?"

"Why did I tell him the truth?" repeated the woman. "'Cos I ain't such a countrified fool as to think lies is allus the cleverest tip, 'cos the truth went farthest this time. Why do I think he's got 'em about him? First, 'cos he swore so steady he hadn't. For a ready lie, and for acting a lie, and over-acting it at times, give me townspeople; but for a thundering big un, against all reason, and for sticking to it stupid when they're downright convicted, and with a face as innercent as a baby's, give me a country lump. And next, because I can tell with folks a deal sharper than him, even to which side of 'em the pocket is they've got what they wants to hide in, by the way they moves their head and their hands."

"Which side is it of him, Sal?" said the hunchback, with ugly eagerness.

"The left," said Sal; "but it won't be there long."



CHAPTER XVII.

THE MILLER'S MAN AT THE MOP.—A LIVELY COMPANION.—SAL LOSES HER PURSE.—THE RECRUITING SERGEANT.—THE POCKET-BOOK TWICE STOLEN.— GEORGE IN THE KING'S ARMS.—GEORGE IN THE KING'S SERVICE.—THE LETTER CHANGES HANDS, BUT KEEPS ITS SECRET.

For some years the ex-servant of the windmill had been rather favored by fortune than otherwise. He found the pocket-book, and, though he could not read the letter, he got the five-pound note. Since then, his gains, honest and dishonest, had been much beyond his needs, and his savings were not small. Suspicion was just beginning to connect his name and that of the Cheap Jack with certain thefts committed in the neighborhood, when he made up his mind to go.

His wealth was not generally known. Many a time had he been tempted to buy pigs (a common speculation in the district, and the first stone of more than one rustic fortune), but the dread of exciting suspicion balanced the almost certain profit, and he could never make up his mind. For Master Lake paid only five pounds a year for his man's valuable services, which, even in a district where at that time habits were simple, and boots not made of brown paper, did not leave much margin for the purchase of pigs. The pig speculation, though profitable, was not safe. George had made money, however, and he had escaped detection. On the whole, he had been fortunate. But that mop saw a turn in the tide of his affairs, and ended strangely with him.

It began otherwise. George had never felt more convinced of his power to help himself at the expense of his neighbors than he did after getting Sal's information, and keeping back his own, before they started to join in the amusements of the fair. He was on good terms with himself; none the less so that he had not failed to see the Cheap Jack's chagrin, as the woman poured forth all she knew for George's benefit, and got nothing in return.

The vanity of the ignorant knows no check except from without; under flattery, it is boundless, and the Cheap Jack's wife found no difficulty in fooling George to the top of his bent.

George was rather proud, too, of his companion. She was not, as has been said, ill-looking but for her mouth, and beauty was not abundant enough in the neighborhood to place her at much disadvantage. Fashionable finery was even less common, and the Cheap Jack's wife was showily dressed. And George found her a very pleasant companion; much livelier than the slow-witted damsels of the country-side. For him she had nothing but flattery; but her smart speeches at the expense of other people in the crowd caused the miller's man to double up his long back with laughter.

A large proportion of the country wives and sweethearts tramped up and down the fair at the heels of their husbands and swains, like squaws after their Indian spouses. But the Cheap Jack's wife asked George for his arm,—the left one,—and she clung to it all the day. "Quite the lady in her manners she be," thought George. She called him "Mr. Sannel," too. George felt that she admired him. For a moment his satisfaction was checked, when she called his attention to the good looks of a handsome recruiting sergeant, who was strutting about the mop with an air expressing not so much that it all belonged to him as that he didn't at all belong to it.

"But there, he ain't to hold a candle to you, Mr. Sannel, though his coat do sit well upon him," said the Cheap Jack's wife.

It gratified George's standing ill-will to the Cheap Jack to have "cut him out" with this showy lady, and to laugh loudly with her upon his arm, whilst the hunchback followed, like a discontented cur, at their heels. If there was a drawback to the merits of his lively companion, it was her power of charming the money out of George's pocket.

The money that he disbursed came from the right-hand pocket of his red waistcoat. In the left-hand pocket (and the pockets, like the pattern of the waistcoat, were large) was the lost pocket-book. It was a small one, and just fitted in nicely. In the pocket-book were George's savings, chiefly in paper. Notes were more portable than coin, and, as George meant to invest them somewhere where he was not known, no suspicions need be raised by their value. The letter was there also.

There were plenty of shows at the mop, and the Cheap Jack's wife saw them all. The travelling wax-works; the menagerie with a very mangy lion in an appallingly rickety cage; the fat Scotchman, a monster made more horrible to view by a dress of royal Stuart tartan; the penny theatre, and a mermaid in a pickling-tub.

One treat only she declined. The miller's man would have paid for a shilling portrait of her, but she refused to be taken.

The afternoon was wearing away, when Sal caught sight of some country bumpkins upon a stage, who were preparing to grin through horse-collars against each other for the prize of a hat. As she had never seen or heard of the entertainment, George explained it to her.

It was a contest in which the ugliest won the prize. Only the widest-mouthed, most grotesque-looking clowns of the place attempted to compete; and he won who, besides being the ugliest by nature, could "grin" and contort his features in the mode which most tickled the fancy of the beholders. George had once competed himself, and had only failed to secure the hat because his nearest rival could squint as well as grin; and he was on the point of boasting of this, but on second thoughts he kept the fact to himself.

Very willing indeed he was to escort his companion to a show in the open air for which nothing was charged, and they plunged valiantly into the crowd. The crowd was huge, but George's height and strength stood him in good stead, and he pushed on, and dragged Sal with him. There was some confusion on the stage. A nigger, with a countenance which of itself moved the populace to roars of laughter, had applied to be allowed to compete. Opinions were divided as to whether it would be fair to native talent, whilst there was a strong desire to see a face that in its natural condition was "as good as a play," with the additional attractions of a horse-collar and a grin.

The country clowns on the stage fumed, and the nigger grinned and bowed, and the crowd yelled, and surged, and swayed, and weak people got trampled, and everybody was tightly squeezed, and the Cheap Jack's wife was alarmed, and withdrew her hand from George's arm, and begged him to hold her up, which he gallantly did, she meanwhile clinging with both hands to his smock.

As to the hunchback, it is hardly necessary to say that he did not get very far into the crowd, and when his wife and George returned, laughing gayly, they found him standing outside, with a sulky face. "Look here, missus," said he; "you're a enjoying of yourself, but I'm not. You've got the blunt, so just hand over a few coppers, and I'll get a pint at the King's Arms."

Sal began fumbling to find her pocket, but when she found it, she gave a shriek, and turned it inside out. It was empty!

If the miller's man had enjoyed himself before, he was not to be envied now. The Cheap Jack's wife poured forth her woes in a continuous stream of complaint. She minutely described the purse which she had lost, the age and quality of her dress, and the impossibility of there being a hole in her pocket. She took George's arm once more, and insisted upon revisiting every stall and show where they had been, to see if her purse had been found. Up and down George toiled with her, wiping his face and feeling that he looked like a fool, as at each place in turn they were told that they might as well "look for a needle in a bottle of hay," and that pickpockets were as plenty at a mop as blackberries in September.

He was tired of the woman now she was troublesome, and fidgetingly persevering, as women are apt to be, and he was vexed to feel how little money was left in his right-hand pocket. He did not think of feeling in the left one, not merely because the Cheap Jack was standing in front of him, but because no fear for the safety of its contents had dawned upon him. It was easy for a woman to lose her purse out of a pocket flapping loosely in the drapery of her skirts, but that any thing stowed tightly away in a man's waistcoat under his smock could be stolen in broad daylight without his knowledge did not occur to him. As little did he guess that of all the pickpockets who were supposed to drive a brisk trade at the fair, the quickest, the cleverest, the most practised professional was the Cheap Jack's wife.

She had feigned to see "something" on the ground near an oyster stall, which she said "might be" her purse. As indeed it might as well as any thing else, seeing that the said purse had no existence.

As she left them, George turned to the Cheap Jack. "Look 'ee here, Jack," said he; "take thee missus whoam. She do seem to be so put about, 'tis no manner of use her stopping in the mop. And I be off for a pint of something to wash my throat out. I be mortal dry with running up and down after she. Women does make such a caddle about things."

"You might stand a pint for an old friend, George, my dear," said the Cheap Jack, following him. But George hurried on, and shook his head. "No, no," said he; "tak' thee missus whoam, I tell 'ee. She've not seen much at your expense today, if she have lost her pus."

With which the miller's man escaped into the King's Arms, and pushed his way to the farthest end of the room, where a large party of men were drinking and smoking.

At a table near him sat the recruiting sergeant whom he had noticed before, and he now examined him more closely.

He was of a not uncommon type of non-commissioned officers in the English service. Not of a very intellectual—hardly perhaps of an interesting—kind of good looks, he was yet a strikingly handsome man. His features were good and clearly cut; his hair and moustache were dark, thick, short and glossy; his dark eyes were quick and bright; his figure was well-made, and better developed; his shapely hands were not only clean, they were fastidiously trimmed about the nails (a daintiness common below the rank of sergeant, especially among men acting as clerks); and if the stone in his signet ring was not a real onyx, it looked quite as well at a distance, and the absence of a crest was not conspicuous. He spoke with a very good imitation of the accent of the officers he had served with, and in his alertness, his well-trained movements, his upright carriage, and his personal cleanliness, he came so near to looking like a gentleman that he escaped it only by a certain swagger, which proved an ill-chosen substitute for well-bred ease.

To George's eyes this was not visible as a fault. The sergeant was as much "the swell" as George could imagine any man to be.

George Sannel could never remember with distinctness the ensuing events of that afternoon. Dim memories remained with him of the sergeant meeting his long stare with some civilities, to which he was conscious of having replied less suitably than he might have wished. At one period, certainly, bets were made upon the height of himself and the handsome soldier, respectively, and he was sure that they were put back to back, and that he proved the taller man; and that it was somehow impressed upon him that he did not look so, because the other carried himself so much better. It was also impressed upon him, somehow, that if he would consent to be well- dressed, well-fed, and well-lodged, at the expense of the country, his own appearance would quickly rival that of the sergeant, and that the reigning Sovereign would gladly pay, as well as keep and clothe, such an ornamental bulwark of the state. At some other period the sergeant had undoubtedly told him to "give it a name," and the name he gave it was sixpenny ale, which he drank at the sergeant's expense, and which was followed by shandy-gaff, on the same footing.

At what time and for what reason George put his hand into his left- hand waistcoat pocket he never could remember. But when he did so, and found it empty, the cry he raised had such a ring of anguish as might have awakened pity for him, even where his ill deeds were fully known.

The position was perplexing, if he had had a sober head to consider it with. That pickpockets abounded had been well impressed upon his slow intellect, and that there was no means of tracing property so lost, in the crowd and confusion of the mop. True, his property was worth "crying," worth offering a reward for. But the pocket-book was not his, and the letter was not addressed to him; and it was doubtful if he even dare run the risk of claiming them.

His first despair was succeeded by a sort of drunken fury, in which he accused the men sitting with him of robbing him, and then swore it was the Cheap Jack, and so raved till the landlord of the King's Arms expelled him as "drunk and disorderly," and most of the company refused to believe that he had had any such sum of money to lose.

Exactly how or where, after this, the sergeant found him, George could not remember, but his general impression of the sergeant's kindness was strong. He could recall that he pumped upon his head in the yard of the King's Arms, to sober him, by George's own request; and that it did somewhat clear his brain, his remembrance of seeing the sergeant wipe his fingers on a cambric handkerchief seems to prove. They then paced up and down together arm in arm, if not as accurately in step as might have been agreeable to the soldier. George remembered hearing of prize money, to which his own loss was a bagatelle, and gathering on the whole that the army, as a profession, opened a sort of boundless career of opportunities to a man of his peculiar talents and appearance. There was something infectious, too, in the gay easy style in which the soldier seemed to treat fortune, good or ill; and the miller's man was stimulated at last to vow that he was not such a fool as he looked, and would "never say die." To the best of his belief, the sergeant replied in terms which showed that, had he been "in cash," George's loss would have been made good by him, out of pure generosity, and on the spot.

As it was, he pressed upon his acceptance the sum of one shilling, which the miller's man pocketed with tears.

What recruit can afterwards remember which argument of the skilful sergeant did most to melt his discretion into valor?

The sun had not dried the dew from the wolds, and the sails of the windmill hung idle in the morning air, when George Sannel made his first march to the drums and fifes, with ribbons flying from his hat, a recruit of the 206th (Royal Wiltshire) Regiment of Foot.

As the Cheap Jack and his wife hastened home from the mop, Sal had some difficulty in restraining her husband's impatience to examine the pocket-book as they walked along.

Prudence prevailed, however, and it was not opened till they were at home and alone.

In notes and money, George's savings amounted to more than thirteen pounds.

"Pretty well, my dear," said the Cheap Jack, grinning hideously. "And now for the letter. Read it aloud, Sal, my dear; you're a better scholar than me."

Sal opened the thin, well-worn sheet, and read the word "Moerdyk," but then she paused. And, like Abel, she paused so long that the hunchback pressed impatiently to look over her shoulder.

But the letter was written in a foreign language, and the Cheap Jack and his wife were no wiser for it than the miller's man.



CHAPTER XVIII.

MIDSUMMER HOLIDAYS.—CHILD FANCIES.—JAN AND THE PIG-MINDER.—MASTER SALTER AT HOME.—JAN HIRES HIMSELF OUT.

Midsummer came, and the Dame's school broke up for the holidays. Jan had longed for them intensely. Not that he was oppressed by the labors of learning, but that he wanted to be out of doors. Many a little one was equally eager for the freedom of the fields, but the common child-love for hedges and ditches, and flower-picking, and the like, was intensified in Jan by a deeper pleasure which country scenes awoke from the artist nature within him. That it is no empty sentimentality to speak of an artist nature in a child, let the child-memories of all artists bear witness! That they inspired the poet Wordsworth with one of his best poems, and that they have dyed the canvas of most landscape painters with the indestructible local coloring of the scenes of each man's childhood, will hardly be denied.

That this is against the wishes and the theories of many excellent people has nothing to do with its truth. If all children were the bluff, hearty, charmingly naughty, enviably happy, utterly simple and unsentimental beings that some of us wish, and so assert them to be, it might be better for them, or it might not—who can say? That the healthy, careless, rough and ready type is the one to encourage, many will agree, who cannot agree that it is universal, or even much the most common. It is probably from an imperfect remembrance of their nursery lives that some people believe that the griefs of one's childhood are light, its joys uncomplicated, and its tastes simple. A clearer recollection of the favorite poetry and the most cherished day-dreams of very early years would probably convince them that the strongest taste for tragedy comes before one's teens, and inclines to the melodramatic; that sentimentality (of some kind) is grateful to the verge of mawkishness; and that simple tastes are rather a result of culture and experience than natural gifts of infancy.

But in this rummaging up of the crude tastes, the hot little opinions, the romance, the countless visions, the many affectations of nursery days, there will be recalled also a very real love of nature; varying, of course, in its intensity from a mere love of fresh air and free romping, and a destructive taste for nosegays, to a living romance about the daily walks of the imaginative child,—a world apart, peopled with invisible company, such as fairies, and those fancy friends which some children devise for themselves, or with the beasts and flowers, to which love has given a personality.

To the romance child-fancy weaves for itself about the meadows where the milkmaids stand thick and pale, and those green courts where lords and ladies live, Jan added that world of pleasure open to those gifted with a keen sense of form and color. Strange gleams under a stormy sky, sunshine on some kingfisher's plumage rising from the river, and all the ever-changing beauties about him, stirred his heart with emotions that he could not have defined.

There was much to see even from Dame Datchett's open door, but there was more to be imagined. Jan's envy of the pig-minder had reached a great height when the last school-day came.

He wanted to be free by the time that the pig-herd brought his pigs to water, and his wishes were fulfilled. The Dame's flock and the flock of the swineherd burst at one and the same moment into the water-meadows, and Jan was soon in conversation with the latter.

"Thee likes pig-minding, I reckon?" said Jan, stripping the leaves from a sallywithy wand, which he had picked to imitate that of the swineherd.

"Do I?" said the large-coated urchin, wiping his face with the big sleeve of his blue coat. "That's aal thee knows about un. I be going to leave to-morrow, I be. And if so be Master Salter's got another bwoy, or if so be he's not, I dunno, it ain't nothin' to I."

Jan learned that he had eighteen pence a week for driving the pigs to a wood at some little distance, where they fed on acorns, beech- mast, etc.; for giving them water, keeping them together, and bringing them home at teatime. He allowed that he could drive them as slowly as he pleased, and that they kept pretty well together in the wood; but that, as a whole, the perversity of pigs was such that— "Well, wait till ee tries it theeself, Jan Lake, that's aal."

Jan had resolved to do so. He did not return with his foster- brothers to the mill. He slipped off on one of his solitary expeditions, and made his way to the farm-house of Master Salter.

Master Salter and his wife sat at tea in the kitchen. In the cheerful clatter of cups, they had failed to hear Jan's knock; but the sunshine streaming through the open doorway being broken by some small body, the farmer's wife looked hastily up, thinking that the new-born calf had got loose, and was on the threshold.

But it was Jan. The outer curls of his hair gleamed in the sunlight like an aureole about his face. He had doffed his hat, out of civility, and he held it in one hand, whilst with the other he fingered the slate that hung at his waist.

"Massey upon us!" said the farmer, looking up at the same instant. "And who be thee?"

"Jan Lake, the miller's son, maester."

"Come in, come in!" cried Master Salter, hospitably. "So Master Lake have sent thee with a message, eh?"

"My father didn't send me," said Jan, gravely. "I come myself. Do 'ee want a pig-minder, Master Salter?"

"Ay, I wants a pig-minder. But I reckon thee father can't spare Abel for that now. A wish he could. Abel was careful with the pigs, he was, and a sprack boy, too."

"I'll be careful, main careful, Master Salter," said Jan, earnestly. "I likes pigs." But the farmer was pondering.

"Jan Lake—Jan," said he. "Be thee the boy as draad out the sow and her pigs for Master Chuter's little gel?" Jan nodded.

"Lor massey!" cried Master Salter. "I' told'ee, missus, about un. Look here, Jan Lake. If thee'll draa me out some pigs like them, I'll give 'ee sixpence and a new slate, and I'll try thee for a week, anyhow."

Jan drew the slate-pencil from his pocket without reply. Mrs. Salter, who had been watching him with motherly eyes, pushed a small stool towards him, and he began to draw a scene such as he had been studying daily for months past,—pigs at the water-side. He had made dozens of such sketches. But the delight of the farmer knew no bounds. He slapped his knees, he laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks, and, as Jan put a very wicked eye into the face of the hindmost pig, he laughed merrily also. He was not insensible of his own talents, and the stimulus of the farmer's approbation gave vigor to his strokes.

"Here, missus," cried Master Salter; "get down our Etherd's new slate, and give it to un; I'll get another for he. And there's the sixpence, Jan; and if thee minds pigs as well as 'ee draas 'em, I don't care how long 'ee minds mine."

The object of his visit being now accomplished, Jan took up his hat to depart, but an important omission struck him, and he turned to say, "What'll 'ee give me for minding your pigs, Master Salter?"

Master Salter was economical, and Jan was small, and anxious for the place.

"A shilling a week," said the farmer.

"And his tea?" the missus gently suggested.

"Well, I don't mind," said Master Salter. "A shilling a week and thee tea."

Jan paused. His predecessor had had eighteen pence for very imperfect services. Jan meant to be beyond reproach, and felt himself worth quite as much.

"I give the other boy one and sixpence," said the farmer, "but thee's very small."

"I'm sprack," said Jan, confidently. "And I be fond of pigs."

"Massey upon me," said Master Salter, laughing again. "Tis a peart young toad, sartinly. A might be fifty year old, for the ways of un. Well, thee shall have a shilling and thee tea, or one and sixpence without, then." And seeing that Jan glanced involuntarily at the table, the farmer added, "Give un some now, missus. I'll lay a pound bill the child be hungry."

Jan was hungry. He had bartered the food from his "nunchin bag" at dinner-time for another child's new slate-pencil. The cakes were very good, too, and Mrs. Salter was liberal. He rose greatly in her esteem by saying grace before meat. He cooled his tea in his saucer too, and raised it to his lips with his little finger stuck stiffly out (a mark of gentility imparted by Mrs. Lake), and in all points conducted himself with the utmost propriety. "For what we have received the Lord be praised," was his form of giving thanks; to which Mrs. Salter added, "Amen," and "Bless his heart!" And Jan, picking up his hat, lifted his dark eyes candidly to the farmer's face, and said with much gravity and decision, -

"I'll take a shilling a week and me tea, Master Salter, if it be all the same to you. And thank you kindly, sir, and the missus likewise."



CHAPTER XIX.

THE BLUE COAT.—PIG-MINDING AND TREE-STUDYING.—LEAF-PAINTINGS.—A STRANGER.—MASTER SWIFT IS DISAPPOINTED.

When Jan returned to the windmill, and gravely announced that he had hired himself out as pig-minder to Master Salter, Mrs. Lake was, as she said, "put about." She considered pig-minding quite beneath the dignity of her darling, and brought forward every objection she could think of except the real one. But the windmiller had no romantic dreams on Jan's behalf, and he decided that "'twas better he should be arning a shillin' a week than gettin' into mischief at whoam." Jan's ambition, however, was not satisfied. He wanted a blue coat, such as is worn by the shepherd-boys on the plains. He did not mind how old it was, but it must be large; long in the skirt and sleeves. He had woven such a romance about Master Salter's swineherd and his life, as he watched him week after week from Dame Datchett's door with envious eyes, that even his coat, with the tails almost sweeping the ground, seemed to Jan to have a dignified air. And there really was something to be said in favor of sleeves so long that he could turn them back into a huge cuff in summer, and turn them down, Chinese fashion, over his hands in winter, to keep them warm.

Such a blue coat Abel had possessed, but it was not suitable for mill work, and Mrs. Lake was easily persuaded to give it to Jan. He refused to have it curtailed, or in any way adapted to his figure, and in it, with a switch of his own cutting, he presented himself at Master Salter's farm in good time the following morning.

It could not be said that Jan's predecessor had exaggerated the perversity of the pigs he drove. If the coat of his choice had a fault in Jan's estimation, it was that it helped to make him very hot as he ran hither and thither after his flock. But he had not studied pig-nature in vain. He had a good deal of sympathy with its vagaries, and he was quite able to outwit the pigs. Indeed, a curious attachment grew up between the little swineherd and his flock, some of whom would come at his call, when he rewarded their affection, as he had gained it, by scratching their backs with a rough stick.

But there were times when their playful and errant peculiarities were no small annoyance to him. Jan was growing fast both in mind and body. Phases of taste and occupation succeed each other very rapidly when one is young; and there are, perhaps, no more distinct phases, more sudden strides, than in the art of painting. With Jan the pig phase was going, and it was followed by landscape-sketching.

Jan was drawing his pigs one day in the little wood, when he fancied that the gnarled elbow of a branch near him had, in its outline, some likeness to a pig's face, and he began to sketch it on his slate. But in studying the tree the grotesque likeness was forgotten, and there burst upon his mind, as a revelation, the sense of that world of beauty which lies among stems and branches, twigs and leaves. Painfully, but with happy pains, he traced the branch joint by joint, curve by curve, as it spread from the parent stem and tapered to its last delicate twigs. It was like following a river from its source to the sea. But to that sea of summer sky, in which the final ramifications of his branch were lost, Jan did not reach. He was abruptly stopped by the edge of his slate, which would hold no more.

To remedy this, when next he drew trees, he began the branches from the outer tips, and worked inwards to the stem. It was done for convenience, but to this habit he used afterwards to lay some of the merit of his admirable touch in tree-painting. And so "pig-making" became an amusement of the past, and the spell of the woods fell on Jan.

It was no very wonderful wood either, this one where he first herded pigs and studied trees. It was composed chiefly of oaks and beeches, none of them of very grand proportions. But it was little cut and little trodden. The bramble-bowers were unbroken, the leaf- mould was deep and rich, and a very tiny stream, which trickled out of sight, kept mosses ever green about its bed. The whole wood was fragrant with honeysuckle, which pushed its way everywhere, and gay with other wild flowers. But the trees were Jan's delight. He would lie on his back and gaze up into them with unwearying pleasure. He looked at his old etching with new interest, to see how the artist had done the branches of the willows by the water- mill. And then he would get Abel to put a very sharp point to his own slate-pencil, and would go back to the real oaks and beeches, which were so difficult and yet so fascinating to him.

He was very happy in the wood, with two drawbacks. The pigs would stray when he became absorbed in his sketching, and the slate and slate-pencil, which did very well to draw pigs in outline, were miserable implements, when more than half the beauty of the subject to be represented was in its color. For the first evil there was no remedy but to give chase. Out of the second came an amusement in favor of which even the beloved slate hung idle.

In watching beautiful bits of coloring in the wood, contrasted greens of many hues, some jutting branch with yellowish foliage caught by the sun, and relieved by a distance of blue grays beyond,- -colors and contrasts which only grew lovelier as the heavy green of midsummer was broken by the inroad of autumnal tints,—Jan noticed also that among the fallen leaves at his feet there were some of nearly every color in the foliage above. At first it was by a sort of idle trick that he matched one against the other, as a lady sorts silks for her embroidery; then he arranged bits of the leaves upon the outline on his slate, and then, the slate being too small, he amused himself by grouping the leaves upon the path in front of him into woodland scenes. The idea had been partly suggested to him by a bottle which stood on Mrs. Salter's mantelpiece, containing colored sands arranged into landscapes; a work of art sent by Mrs. Salter's sister from the Isle of Wight.

The slate would have been quite unused, but for the difficulties Jan got into with his outlines. At last he adopted the plan of making a sketch upon his slate, which he then laid beside him on the walk, and copied it in leaves. More perishable even than the pig- drawings, the evening breeze generally cast these paintings to the winds, but none the less was Jan happy with them, and sometimes in quiet weather, or a sheltered nook, they remained undisturbed for days.

Dame Datchett's school reopened, but Jan would not leave his pigs. He took the shilling faithfully home each week to his foster-mother. She found it very useful, and she had no very high ideas about education. She had some twinges of conscience in the matter, but she had no strength of purpose, and Jan went his own way.

The tints had grown very warm on trees and leaves, when Jan one day accomplished, with much labor, the best painting he had yet done. It was of a scene before his eyes. The trees were admirably grouped; he put little bits of twigs for the branches, which now showed more than hitherto, and he added a glimpse of the sky by neatly dovetailing the petals of some bluebells into a mosaic. He had turned back the long sleeves of his coat, and had with difficulty kept the tail of it from doing damage to his foreground, and had perseveringly kept the pigs at bay, when, as he returned with a last instalment of bluebells to finish his sky, he saw a man standing on the path, with his back to him, completely blotting out the view by his very broad body, and with one heel not half an inch from Jan's picture.

He was a coarsely built old man, dressed in threadbare black. The tones of his voice were broad, and quite unlike the local dialect. He was speaking as Jan came up, but to no companion that Jan could see, though his hand was outstretched in sympathy with his words. He was looking upwards, too, as Jan was wont to look himself, into that azure sky which he was trying to paint in bluebell flowers.

In truth, the stranger was spouting poetry, and poems and recitations were alike unknown to Jan; but something caught his fancy in what he heard, and the flowers dropped from his fingers as the broad but not ungraceful accents broke upon his ear: -

"The clouds were pure and white as flocks new shorn, And fresh from the clear brook; sweetly they slept On the blue fields of heaven, and then there crept A little noiseless noise among the leaves, Born of the very sigh that silence heaves; For not the faintest motion could be seen Of all the shades that slanted o'er the green."

The old man paused for an instant, and, turning round, saw Jan, and put his heavy foot into the sky of Jan's picture. He drew it back at Jan's involuntary cry, and, after a long look at the quaint figure before him, said, "Are ye one of the fairies, little man?"

But Jan knew nothing of fairies. "I be Jan Lake, from the mill," said he.

"Are ye so? But that's not a miller's coat ye've on," said the old man, with a twinkle in his eye.

Jan looked seriously at it, and then explained. "I be Master Salter's pig-minder just now, but I've got a miller's thumb, I have."

"That's well, Master Pig-minder; and now would ye tell an old man what ye screamed out for. Did I scare ye?"

"Oh, no, sir," said Jan, civilly; and he added, "I liked that you were saying."

"Are ye a bit of a poet as well as a pig-minder, then?" and waving his hand with a theatrical gesture up the wood, the old man began to spout afresh: -

"A filbert hedge with wild briar overtwined, And clumps of woodbine taking the soft wind Upon their summer thrones; there too should be The frequent chequer of a youngling tree, That with a score of light green brethren shoots From the quaint mossiness of aged roots: Round which is heard a spring-head of clear waters Babbling so wildly of its lovely daughters, The spreading bluebells; it may haply mourn That such fair clusters should be rudely torn From their fresh beds, and scattered thoughtlessly By infant hands, left on the path to die."

Between the strange dialect and the unfamiliar terseness of poetry, Jan did not follow this very clearly, but he caught the allusion to bluebells, and the old man brought his hand back to his side with a gesture so expressive towards the bluebell fragments at his feet, that it hardly needed the tone of reproach he gave to the last few words—"left on the path to die"—to make Jan hang his head.

"'Twas the only blue I could find," he said, looking ruefully at the fading flowers.

"And what for did ye want blue, then, my lad?"

"To make the sky with," said Jan.

"The powers of the air be good to us!" said the stranger, setting his broad hat back from his face, as if to obtain a clearer view of the little pig-minder. "Are ye a sky-maker as well as a swineherd? And while I'm catechising ye, may I ask for what do ye bring a slate out pig-minding and sky-making?"

"I draws out the trees on it first," said Jan, "and then I does them in leaves. If you'll come round," he added, shyly, "you'll see it. But don't tread on un, please, sir."

The old man fumbled in his pocket, from which he drew a shagreen spectacle-case, as substantial looking as himself, and, planting the spectacles firmly on his heavy nose, he held out his hand to Jan.

"There," said he, "take me where ye will. To bonnie Elf-land, if that's your road, where withered leaves are gold."

Jan ran round willingly to take the hand of his new friend. He felt a strange attraction towards him. His speech was puzzling and had a tone of mockery, but his face was unmistakably kind.

"Now then, lad, which path do we go by?" said he.

"There's only one," said Jan, gazing up at the old man, as if by very staring with his black eyes he could come to understand him. But in an instant he was spouting again, holding Jan before him with one hand, whilst he used the other as a sort of baton to his speech: -

"And know'st thou not yon broad, broad road That lies across the lily levin? That is the path of sinfulness, Though some think it the way to heaven."

"Go on, please!" Jan cried, as the old man paused. His rugged speech seemed plainer in the lines it suited so well, and a touch of enthusiasm in his voice increased the charm.

"And know'st thou not that narrow path So thick beset with thorns and briars? It is the path of righteousness, And after it but few aspires.

"And know'st thou not the little path That winds about the ferny brae? That is the road to bonnie Elf-land, Where thou and I this night maun gae."

"Where is it?" said Jan, earnestly. "Is't a town?"

The old man laughed. "I'm thinking it would be well to let that path be, in your company. We'd hardly get out under a year and a day."

"I'd go—with you," said Jan, confidently. Many an expedition had he undertaken on his own responsibility, and why not this?

"First, show me what ye were going to show me," said the old man. "Where's this sky you've been manufacturing?"

"It's on the ground, sir."

"On the ground! And are ye for turning earth into heaven among your other trades?" What this might mean Jan knew not; but he led his friend round, and pointed out the features of his leaf-picture. He hoped for praise, but the old man was silent,—long silent, though he seemed to be looking at what Jan showed him. And when he did speak, his broken words were addressed to no one.

"Wonderful! wonderful! The poetry of 't. It's no child's play, this. It's genius. Ay! we mun see to it!" And then, with clasped hands, he cried, "Good Lord! Have I found him at last?"

"Have you lost something?" said Jan.

But the old man did not answer. He did not even speak of the leaf- picture, to Jan's chagrin. But, stroking the boy's shoulder almost tenderly, he asked, "Did ye ever go to school, laddie?"

Jan nodded. "At Dame Datchett's," said he.

"Ah! ye were sorry to leave school for pig-minding, weren't ye?"

Jan shook his head. "I likes pigs," said he. "I axed Master Salter to let me mind his. I gets a shilling a week and me tea."

"But ye like school better? Ye love your books, don't ye?"

Jan shook his head again. "I don't like school," said he, "I likes being in the wood."

The old man winced as if some one had struck him in the face, then he muttered, "The wood! Ay, to be sure! And such a school, too!"

Then he suddenly addressed Jan. "Do ye know me, my lad?"

"No, sir," said Jan.

"Swift—Master Swift, they call me. You've heard tell of Master Swift, the schoolmaster?"

Jan shrank back. He had heard of Master Swift as a man whose stick was more to be dreaded than Dame Datchett's strap, and of his school as a place where liberty was less than with the Dame.

"See thee!" said the old man, speaking broader and broader in his earnestness. "If thy father would send thee,—nay, what am I saying?—if I took thee for naught and gladly, thou'dst sooner come to the old schoolmaster and his books than stay with pigs, even in a wood? Eh, laddie? Will ye come to school?"

But the tradition of Master Swift's severity was strong in Jan's mind, and the wood was pleasant to him, and he only shrank back farther, and said, "No." Children often give pain to their elders, of the intensity of which they have no measure; but, had Jan been older and wiser than he was, he might have been puzzled by the bitterness of the disappointment written on Master Swift's countenance.

An involuntary impulse made the old man break the blow by doing something. With trembling fingers he folded his spectacles, and crammed them into the shagreen case. But, when that was done, he still found nothing to say, and he turned his back and went away in silence.

In silence Jan watched him, half regretfully, and strained his ears to catch something that Master Swift began again to recite: -

"Things sort not to my will, Even when my will doth study Thy renown: Thou turn'st the edge of all things on me still, Taking me up to throw me down."

Then, lifting a heavy bramble that had fallen across his path, the schoolmaster stooped under it, and passed from sight.

And a sudden gust of wind coming sharply down the way by which he went caught the fragments of Jan's picture, and whirled them broadcast through the wood.



CHAPTER XX.

SQUIRE AMMABY AND HIS DAUGHTER.—THE CHEAP JACK DOES BUSINESS ONCE MORE.—THE WHITE HORSE CHANGES MASTERS.

Squire Ammaby was the most good-natured of men. He was very fond of his wife, though she was somewhat peevish, with weak health and nerves, and though she seemed daily less able to bear the rough and ready attentions of her husband, and to rely more and more on the advice and assistance of her mother, Lady Craikshaw. From this it came about that the Squire's affection for his wife took the shape of wishing Lady Louisa to have every thing that she wished for, and that the very joy of his heart was his little daughter Amabel.

Amabel was between three and four years old, and to some extent a prodigy. She was as tall as an average child of six or seven, and stout in proportion. The size of her shoes scandalized her grandmother, and once drew tears from Lady Louisa as she reflected on the probable size of Miss Ammaby's feet by the time she was "presented."

Lady Louisa was tall and weedy; the Squire was tall and robust. Amabel inherited height on both sides, but in face and in character she was more like her father than her mother. Indeed, Lady Louisa would close her eyes, and Lady Craikshaw would put up her gold glass at the child, and they would both cry, "Sadly coarse! QUITE AN AMMABY!" Amabel was not coarse, however; but she had a strength and originality of character that must have come from some bygone generation, if it was inherited. She had a pitying affection for her mother. With her grandmother she lived at daggers drawn. She kept up a pretty successful struggle for her own way in the nursery. She was devoted to her father, when she could get at him, and she poured an almost boundless wealth of affection on every animal that came in her way.

An uncle had just given her a Spanish saddle, and her father had promised to buy her a donkey. He had heard of one, and was going to drive to the town to see the owner. With great difficulty Amabel had got permission from her mother and grandmother to go with the Squire in the pony carriage. As she had faithfully promised to "be good," she submitted to be "well wrapped up," under her grandmother's direction, and staggered downstairs in coat, cape, gaiters, comforter, muffatees, and with a Shetland veil over her burning cheeks. She even displayed a needless zeal by carrying a big shawl in a lump in her arms, which she would give up to no one.

"No, no!" she cried, as the Squire tried to take it from her. "Lift me in, daddy, lift me in!"

The Squire laughed, and obeyed her, saying, "Why, bless my soul, Amabel, I think you grow heavier every day."

Amabel came up crimson from some disposal of the shawl after her own ideas, and her eyes twinkled as he spoke, though her fat cheeks kept their gravity. It was not till they were far on their way that a voice from below the seat cried, "Yap!"

"Why, there's one of the dogs in the carriage," said the Squire.

On which, clinging to one of his arms and caressing him, Amabel confessed, "It's only the pug, dear daddy. I brought him in under the shawl. I did so want him to have a treat too. And grandmamma is so hard! She hardly thinks I ought to have treats, and she NEVER thinks of treats for the dogs."

The Squire only laughed, and said she must take care of the dog when they got to the town; and Amabel was encouraged to ask if she might take off the Shetland veil. Hesitating between his fear of Amabel's catching cold, and a common-sense conviction that it was ludicrous to dress her according to her invalid mother's susceptibilities, the Squire was relieved from the responsibility of deciding by Amabel's promptly exposing her rosy cheeks to the breeze, and they drove on happily to the town. The Squire had business with the Justices, and Amabel was left at the Crown. When he came back, Amabel jumped down from the window and the black blind over which she was peeping into the yard, and ran up to her father with tears on her face.

"Oh, daddy!" she cried, "dear, good daddy! I don't want you to buy me a donkey, I want you to buy me a horse."

"That's modest!" said the Squire; "but what are you crying for?"

"Oh, it's such a poor horse! Such a very old, poor horse!" cried Amabel. And from the window Mr. Ammaby was able to confirm her statements. It was the Cheap Jack's white horse, which he had been trying to persuade the landlord to buy as a cab-horse. More lean, more scarred, more drooping than ever, it was a pitiful sight, now and then raising its soft nose and intelligent eyes to the window, as if it knew what a benevolent little being was standing on a slippery chair, with her arms round the Squire's neck, pleading its cause.

"But when I buy horses," said the Squire, "I buy young, good ones, not very old and poor ones."

"Oh, but do buy it, daddy! Perhaps it's not had enough to eat, like that kitten I found in the ditch. And perhaps it'll get fat, like her; and mamma said we wanted an old horse to go in the cart for luggage, and I'm sure that one's very old. And that's such a horrid man, like hump-backed Richard. And when nobody's looking, he tugs it, and beats it. Oh, I wish I could beat him!" and Amabel danced dangerously upon the horsehair seat in her white gaiters with impotent indignation. The Squire was very weak when pressed by his daughter, but at horses, if at any thing, he looked with an eye to business. To buy such a creature would be ludicrous. Still, Amabel had made a strong point by what Lady Louisa had said. No one, too, knew better than the Squire what difference good and bad treatment can make in a horse, and this one had been good once, as his experienced eye told him. He said he "would see," and strolled into the yard.

Long practice had given the Cheap Jack a quickness in detecting a possible purchaser which almost amounted to an extra sense, and he at once began to assail the Squire. But a nearer view of the white horse had roused Mr. Ammaby's indignation.

"I wonder," he said, "that you're not ashamed to exhibit a poor beast that's been so ill-treated. For heaven's sake, take it to the knacker's, and put it out of its misery at once."

"Look ye, my lord," said the Cheap Jack, touching his cap. "The horse have been ill-treated, I knows. I'm an afflicted man, my lord, and the boy I've employed, he's treated him shameful; and when a man can't feed hisself, he can't keep his beast fat neither. That's why I wants to get rid on him, my lord. I can't keep him as I should, and I'd like to see him with a gentleman like yourself as'll do him justice. He comes of a good stock, my lord. Take him for fifteen pound," he added, waddling up to the Squire, "and when you've had him three months, you'll sell him for thirty."

This was too much. The Squire broke out in a furious rage.

"You unblushing scoundrel!" he cried. "D'ye think I'm a fool? Fifteen pounds for a horse you should be fined for keeping alive! Be off with it, and put it out of misery." And he turned indignantly into the inn, the Cheap Jack calling after him, "Say ten pound, my lord!" the bystanders giggling, and the ostler whistling dryly through the straw in his mouth, "Take it to the knacker's, Cheap John."

"Oh, daddy dear! have you got him?" cried Amabel, as the Squire re- entered the parlor.

"No, my dear; the poor beast isn't fit to draw carts, my darling. It's been so badly treated, the only kindness now is to kill it, and put it out of pain. And I've told the hunchback so."

It was a matter of course and humanity to the Squire, but it overwhelmed poor Amabel. She gasped, "Kill it!" and then bursting into a flood of tears she danced on the floor, wringing her hands and crying, "Oh, oh, oh! don't, PLEASE, don't let him be killed! Oh! do, do buy him and let him die comfortably in the paddock. Oh, do, do, do!"

"Nonsense, Amabel, you mustn't dance like that. Remember, you promised to be good," said the Squire. The child gulped down her tears, and stood quite still, with her face pale from very misery.

"I don't want not to be good," said she. "But, oh dear, I do wish I had some money, that I might buy that poor old horse, and let him die comfortably at home."

It was not the money the Squire grudged; it was against all his instincts to buy a bad horse. But Amabel's wan face overcame him, and he went out again. He never lingered over disagreeable business, and, going straight up to the Cheap Jack, he said, "My little girl is so distressed about it, that I'll give you five pounds for the poor brute, to stop its sufferings."

"Say eight, my lord," said the Cheap Jack. Once more the Squire was turning away in wrath, when he caught sight of Amabel's face at the window. He turned back, and, biting his lip, said, "I'll give you five pounds if you'll take it now, and go. If you beat me down again, I'll offer you four. I'll take off a pound for every bate you utter; and, when I speak, I mean what I say. Do you think I don't know one horse from another?"

It is probable that the Cheap Jack would have made another effort to better his bargain, but his wife had come to seek him, and to her sharp eyes the Squire's resolution was beyond mistake.

"We'll take the five guineas, and thank you, sir," she said, courtesying. The Squire did not care to dispute the five shillings which she had dexterously added, and he paid the sum, and the worthy couple went away.

"Miles!" said the Squire. The servant he had brought with him in reference to the donkey appeared, and touched his hat.

"Miss Amabel has persuaded me to buy this poor brute, that it may die in peace in the paddock. Can you get it home, d'ye think?"

"I think I can, sir, this evening; after a feed and some rest."

The white horse had suddenly become a centre of interest in the inn- yard. Everybody, from the landlord to the stable-boy, felt its legs, and patted it, and suggested various lines of treatment.

Before he drove away, Mr. Ammaby overheard the landlord saying, "He be a sharp hand, is the Squire. I shouldn't wonder if he brought the beast round yet." Which, for his credit's sake, the Squire devoutly hoped he might. But, after all, he had his reward when Amabel, sobbing with joy, flung her arms round him, and cried, -

"Oh, you dear, darling, GOOD daddy! How I love you and how the white horse loves you!"



CHAPTER XXI.

MASTER SWIFT AT HOME.—RUFUS.—THE EX-PIG-MINDER.—JAN AND THE SCHOOLMASTER.

It was a lovely autumn evening the same year, when the school having broken up for the day, Master Swift returned to his home for tea. He lived in a tiny cottage on the opposite side of the water-meadows to that on which Dame Datchett dwelt, and farther down towards the water-mill. He had neither wife nor child, but a red dog with a plaintive face, and the name of Rufus, kept his house when he was absent, and kept him company when he was at home.

Rufus was a mongrel. He was not a red setter, though his coloring was similar. A politely disposed person would have called him a retriever, and his curly back and general appearance might have carried this off, but for his tail, which, instead of being straight and rat-like, was as plumy as the Prince of Wales's feathers, and curled unblushingly over his back, sideways, like a pug's. "It was a good one to wag," his master said, and, apart from the question of high breeding, it was handsome, and Rufus himself seemed proud of it.

Since half-past three had Rufus sat in the porch, blinking away positive sleep, with his pathetic face towards the road down which Master Swift must come. Unnecessarily pathetic, for there was every reason for his being the most jovial of dogs, and not one for that imposing melancholy which he wore. His large level eyelids shaded the pupils even when he was broad awake; an intellectual forehead, and a very long Vandykish nose, with the curly ears, which fell like a well-dressed peruke on each side of his face, gave him an air of disinherited royalty. But he was in truth a mongrel, living on the fat of the land; who, from the day that this wistful dignity had won the schoolmaster's heart, had never known a care, wanted a meal, or had any thing whatever demanded of him but to sit comfortably at home and watch with a broken-hearted countenance for the schoolmaster's return from the labors which supported them both. The sunshine made Rufus sleepy, but he kept valiantly watchful, propping himself against the garden-tools which stood in the corner. Flowers and vegetables for eating were curiously mixed in the little garden that lay about Master Swift's cottage. Not a corner was wasted in it, and a thick hedge of sweet-peas formed a fragrant fence from the outer world.

Rufus was nodding, when he heard a footstep. He pulled himself up, but he did not wag his tail, for the step was not the schoolmaster's. It was Jan's. Rufus growled slightly, and Jan stood outside, and called, "Master Swift!" He and Rufus both paused and listened, but the schoolmaster did not appear. Then Rufus came out and smelt Jan exhaustively, and excepting a slight flavor of being acquainted with cats, to whom Rufus objected, he smelt well. Rufus wagged his tail, Jan patted him, and they sat down to wait for the master.

The clock in the old square-towered church had struck a quarter-past four when Master Swift came down the lane, and Rufus rushed out to meet him. Though Rufus told him in so many barks that there was a stranger within, and that, as he smelt respectable, he had allowed him to wait, the schoolmaster was startled by the sight of Jan.

"Why, it's the little pig-minder!" said he. On which Jan's face crimsoned, and tears welled up in his black eyes.

"I bean't a pig-minder now, Master Swift," said he.

"And how's that? Has Master Salter turned ye off?"

"I gi'ed HIM notice!" said Jan, indignantly. "But I shan't mind pigs no more, Master Swift"

"And why not, Master Skymaker?"

"Don't 'ee laugh, sir," said Jan. "Master Salter he laughs. 'What's pigs for but to be killed?' says he. But I axed him not to kill the little black un with the white spot on his ear. It be such a nice pig, sir, such a very nice pig!" And the tears flowed copiously down Jan's cheeks, whilst Rufus looked abjectly depressed. "It would follow me anywhere, and come when I called," Jan continued. "I told Master Salter it be 'most as good as a dog, to keep the rest together. But a says 'tis the fattest, and 'ull be the first to kill. And then I telled him to find another boy to mind his pigs, for I couldn't look un in the face now, and know 'twas to be killed next month, not that one with the white spot on his ear. It do be such a VERY nice pig!"

Rufus licked up the tears as they fell over Jan's smock, and the schoolmaster took Jan in and comforted him. Jan dried his eyes at last, and helped to prepare for tea. The old man made some very good coffee in a shaving-pot, and put cold bacon and bread upon the table, and the three sat down to their meal. Jan and his host upon two rush-bottomed chairs, whilst Rufus scrambled into an armchair placed for his accommodation, from whence he gazed alternately at the schoolmaster and the victuals with sad, not to say reproachful, eyes.

"I thought that would be your chair," said Jan.

"Well, it used to be," said Master Swift, apologetically. "But the poor beast can't sit well on these, and I relish my meat better with a face on the other side of the table. He found that too slippery at first, till I bought yon bit of a patchwork-cushion for him at a sale."

Rufus sighed, and Master Swift gave him a piece of bread, which, having smelt, he allowed to lie before him on the table till his master, laughing, rubbed the bread against the bacon, with which additional flavor Rufus seemed content, and ate his supper.

"So you've come to the old schoolmaster, after all?" said Master Swift: "that's right, my lad, that's right."

"'Twas Abel sent me," said Jan; "he said I was to take to my books. So I come because Abel axed me. For I be main fond of Abel."

"Abel was right," said the old man. "Take to learning, my lad. Love your books,—friends that nobody can kill, or part ye from."

"I'd like to learn pieces like them you say," said Jan.

"So ye shall, so ye shall!" cried Master Swift. "It's a fine thing, is learning poetry. It strengthens the memory, and cultivates the higher faculties. Take some more bacon, my lad."

Which Jan did. At that moment he was not reflecting on his doomed friend, the spotted pig. Indeed, if we reflected about every thing, this present state of existence would become intolerable.

At much length did the schoolmaster speak on the joys of learning, and, pointing proudly to a few shelves filled by his savings, he formally made Jan "free of" his books. "When ye've learnt to read them," he added. Jan thanked him for this, and for leave to visit him. But he looked out of the window instead of at the book- shelves.

Beyond Master Swift's gay flowers stretched the rich green of the water-meads, glowing yellow in the sunlight. The little river hardly seemed to move in its zig-zag path, though the evening breeze was strong enough to show the silver side of the willows that drooped over it. Jan wondered if he could match all these tints in the wood, and whether Master Swift would be willing to have leaf- pictures painted on that table in the window. Then he found that the old man was speaking, though he only heard the latter part of what he said. "—a celebrated inventor and mechanic, and that's what you'll be, maybe. Ay, ay, a Great Man, please the Lord; and, when I'm laid by in the churchyard yonder, folks'll come to see the grave of old Swift, the great man's schoolmaster. Ye'll be an inventor yet, lad, a benefactor to your kind, and an honor to your country. I'm not raising false hopes in ye, without observing your qualities. You've the quick eye, the slow patience, and the inventive spark. You can find your own tools and all, and don't stop where other folk leaves off: witness yon bluebells ye took to make skies with! But, bless the lad, he's not heeding me! Is it the bit of garden you're looking at? Come out then." And, putting the biography back in the book-shelf, the kindly old man led Jan out of doors.

"Say what you said in the wood again," said Jan.

But Master Swift laughed, and, stretching his hand towards the sweet-peas hedge began at another part of the poem: -

"Here are sweet peas on tiptoe for a flight: With wings of gentle flush o'er delicate white, And taper fingers catching at all things To bind them all about with tiny rings."

Then, bending towards the river, he continued in a theatrical whisper: -

"How silent comes the water round that bend! Not the minutest whisper does it send To the o'erhanging sallows" -

But here he stopped suddenly, though Jan's black eyes were at their roundest, and his attention almost breathless.

"There, there! I'm an old fool, and for making you as bad. Poetry's not your business, you understand: I'm giving ye no encouragement to dabble with the fine arts. Science is the ladder for a working-man to climb to fame. In addition to which, the poet Keats, though he certainly speaks the very language of Nature, was a bit of a heathen, I'm afraid, and the fascination of him might be injurious in tender youth. Never mind, child, if ye love poetry, I'll learn ye pieces by the poet Herbert. They're just true poetry, and manly, too; and they're a fountain of experimental religion. And, if this style is too sober for your fancy, Charles Wesley's hymns are touched with the very fire of religious passion."

"Are your folk religious, Jan?" he added, abruptly. And whilst Jan stood puzzling the question, he asked with an almost official air of authority, "Do ye any of ye come to church?"

"My father does on club-days," said Jan.

"And the rest of ye,—do ye attend any place of worship?" Jan shook his head.

"And I'll dare to say ye didn't know I was the clerk?" said Master Swift. "There's paganism for ye in a Christian parish! Well, well, you're coming to me, lad, and, apart from your secular studies, you'll be instructed in the Word of GOD, and in the Church Catechism on Fridays."

"Thank you, sir," said Jan. He felt this civility to be due, though of the schoolmaster's plans for his benefit he had a very confused notion. He then took leave. Rufus went with him to the gate, and returned to his master with a look which plainly said, "We could have done with him very well, if you had kept him."

When Jan had reached a bit of rising ground, from which the house he had just left was visible, he turned round to look at it again.

Master Swift was standing where he had left him, gazing out into the distance with painful intensity. The fast-sinking sun lit up his heavy face and figure with a transforming glow, and hung a golden mist above the meads, at which he stared like one spellbound. But when Jan turned to pursue his way to the windmill, the schoolmaster turned also, and went back into the cottage.



CHAPTER XXII.

THE PARISH CHURCH.—REMBRANDT.—THE SNOW SCENE.—MASTER SWIFT'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

In most respects, Jan's conduct and progress were very satisfactory. He quickly learned to read, and his copy-books were models.

The good clerk developed another talent in him. Jan learned to sing, and to sing very well; and he was put into the choir-seats in the old church, where he sang with enthusiasm hymns which he had learned by heart from the schoolmaster.

No wild weather that ever blustered over the downs could keep Jan now from the services. The old church came to have a fascination for him, from the low, square tower without, round which the rooks wheeled, to the springing pillars, the solemn gray tints of the stone, and the round arches that so gratified the eye within. And did he not sit opposite to the one stained window the soldiers of the Commonwealth had spared to the parish! It was the only colored picture Jan knew, and he knew every line, every tint of it, and the separate expression on each of the wan, quaint faces of the figures. When the sun shone, they seemed to smile at him, and their ruby dresses glowed like garments dyed in blood. When the colors fell upon Abel's white head, Jan wished with all his heart that he could have gathered them as he gathered leaves, to make pictures with. Sometimes he day-dreamed that one of the figures came down out of the window, and brought the colors with him, and that he and Jan painted pictures in the other windows, filling them with gorgeous hues, and pale, devout faces. The fancy, empty as it was, pleased him, and he planned how every window should be done, and told Abel, to whom the ingenious fancy seemed as marvellous as if the work had been accomplished.

Abel was in the choir too, not so much because of his voice as of his great wish for it, and of the example of his good behavior. It was he who persuaded Mrs. Lake to come to church, and having once begun she came often. She tried to persuade her husband to go, and told him how sweetly the boys' voices sounded, led by Master Swift's fine bass, which he pitched from a key which he knocked upon his desk. But Master Lake had a proverb to excuse him. "The nearer the church, the further from GOD." Not that he pretended to maintain the converse of the proposition.

Jan learned plenty of poetry; hymns, which Abel learned again from him, some of Herbert's poems, and bits of Keats. But his favorites were martial poems by Mrs. Hemans, which he found in an old volume of collected verses, till the day he came upon "Marmion," and gave himself up to Sir Walter Scott. He spouted poetry to Abel in imitation of Master Swift, and they enjoyed all, and understood about half.

And yet Jan's progress was not altogether satisfactory to his teacher.

To learn long pieces of poetry was easy pastime to him, but he was dull or inattentive when the schoolmaster gave him some elementary lessons in mechanics. He wrote beautifully, but was no prodigy in arithmetic. He drew trees, windmills, and pigs on the desks, and admirable portraits of the schoolmaster, Rufus, and other local worthies, on the margins of the tables of weights and measures.

Much of his leisure was spent at Master Swift's cottage, and in reading his books. The schoolmaster had marked an old biographical dictionary at pages containing lives of "self-made" men, who had risen as inventors or improvers in mechanics or as discoverers of important facts of natural science. Jan had not hitherto studied their careers with the avidity Master Swift would have liked to see, but one day he found him reading the fat volume with deep interest.

"And whose life are ye at now, laddie?" he asked, with a smile.

Jan lifted his face, which was glowing. "'Tis Rembrandt the painter I be reading about. Eh, Master Swift, he lived in a windmill, and he was a miller's son!"

"Maybe he'd a miller's thumb," Jan added, stretching out his own, and smiling at the droll idea. "Do 'ee know what ETCHINGS be, then, Master Swift?"

"A kind of picture that's scratched on a piece of copper with needles, and costs a lot of money to print," said Master Swift, dryly; and he turned his broad back and went out.

It was one day in the second winter of Jan's learning under Master Swift that matters came to a climax. The schoolmaster loved punctuality, but Jan was not always punctual. He was generally better in this respect in winter than in summer, as there was less to distract his attention on the road to school. But one winter's day he loitered to make a sketch on his slate, and made matters worse by putting finishing touches to it after he was seated at the desk.

It was not a day to suggest sketching, but, turning round when he was about half way to the village, the view seemed to Jan to be exactly suitable for a slate sketch. The long slopes of the downs were white with snow; but it was a dull grayish white, for there was no sunshine, and the gray-white of the slate-pencil did it justice enough. In the middle distance rose the windmill, and a thatched cattle shed and some palings made an admirable foreground. On the top and edges of these lay the snow, outlining them in white, which again the slate-pencil could imitate effectively. There only wanted something darker than the slate itself to do those parts of the foreground and the mill which looked darker than the sky, and for this Jan trusted to pen and ink when he reached his desk. The drawing was very successful, and Jan was so absorbed in admiring it that he did not notice the schoolmaster's approach, but feeling some one behind him, he fancied it was one of the boys, and held up the slate triumphantly, whispering, "Look 'ee here!"

It was Master Swift who looked, and snatching the slate he brought it down on the sharp corner of the desk, and broke it to pieces. Then he went back to his place, and spoke neither bad nor good to Jan for the rest of the school-time. Jan would much rather have been beaten. Once or twice he made essay to go up to Master Swift's desk, but the old man's stern countenance discouraged him, and he finally shrank into a corner and sat weeping bitterly. He sat there till every scholar but himself had gone, and still the schoolmaster did not speak. Jan slunk out, and when Master Swift turned homewards Jan followed silently in his footsteps through the snow. At the door of the cottage, the old man looked round with a relenting face.