"I suppose Rufus'll insist on your coming in," said he; and Jan rushing in hid his face in Rufus's curls, and sobbed heavily.

"Tut, tut!" said the schoolmaster. "No more of that, child. There's bitters enough in life, without being so prodigal of your tears."

"Come and sit down with ye," he went on. "You're very young, lad, and maybe I'm foolish to be angry with ye that you're not wise. But yet ye've more sense than your years in some respects, and I'm thinking I'll try and make ye see things as I see 'em. I'm going to tell ye something about myself, if ye'd care to hear it."

"I'd be main pleased, Master Swift," said Jan, earnestly.

"I'd none of your advantages, lad," said the old man. "When I was your age, I knew more mischief than you need ever know, and uncommon little else. I'm a self-educated man,—I used to hope I should live to hear folk say a self-made Great Man. It's a bitter thing to have the ambition without the genius, to smoulder in the fire that great men shine by! However, it's something to have just the saving sense to know that ye've not got it, though it's taken a wasted lifetime to convince me, and I sometimes think the deceiving serpent is more scotched than killed yet. However, ye seem to me to be likelier to lack the ambition than the genius, so we may let that bide. But there's a snare of mine, Jan, that I mean your feet to be free of, and that's a mischosen vocation. I'm not a native of these parts, ye must know. I come from the north, and in those mining and manufacturing districts I've seen many a man that's got an education, and could keep himself sober, rise to own his house and his works, and have men under him, and bring up his children like the gentry. For mark ye, my lad. In such matters the experiences of the early part of an artisan's life are all so much to the good for him, for they're in the working of the trade, and the finest young gentleman has got it all to learn, if he wants to make money in that line. I got my education, and I was sober enough, but— Heaven help me—I must be a poet, and in THAT line a gentleman's son knows almost from the nursery many a thing that I had to teach myself with hard labor as a man. It was just a madness. But I read all the poetry I could lay my hands on, and I wrote as well."

"Did you write poetry, Master Swift?" said Jan.

"Ay, Jan, of a sort. At one time I worshipped Burns. And then I wrote verses in the dialect of my native place, which, ye must know, I can speak with any man when I've a mind," said Master Swift, unconscious that he spoke it always. "And then it was Wordsworth, for the love of nature is just a passion with me, and it's that that made the poet Keats a new world to me. Well, well, now I'm telling you how I came here. It was after my wife. She was lady's-maid to Squire Ammaby's mother, and the old Squire got me the school. Ah, those were happy days! I was a godless, rough sort of a fellow when she married me, but I became a converted man. And let me tell ye, lad, when a man and wife love GOD and each other, and live in the country, a bit of ground like this becomes a very garden of Eden."

"Did your wife like your poetry, sir?" said Jan, on whom the idea that the schoolmaster was a poet made a strong impression.

"Ay, ay, Jan. She was a good scholar. I wrote a bit about that time called Love and Ambition, in the style of the poet Wordsworth. It was as much as to say that Love had killed Ambition, ye understand? But it wasn't dead. It had only shifted to another object.

"We had a child. I remember the first day his blue eyes looked at me with what I may call sense in 'em. He was in his cradle, and there was no one but me with him. I went on like a fool. 'See thee, my son,' I said, 'thy father's been a bad 'un, but he'll keep thee as pure as thy mother. Thy father's a poor scholar, but he's not THAT dull but what he'll make THEE as learned as the parson. Thy father's a needy man, a man in a small way, but he and thy mother'll stick here in this dull bit of a village, content, ay, my lad, right happy, so thou'rt a rich man, and can see the world!' I give ye my word, Jan, the child looked at me as if he understood it all. You're wondering, maybe, what made me hope he'd do different to what I'd done. But, ye see, his mother was just an angel, and I reckoned he'd be half like her. Then she'd lived with gentlefolks from a child, and knew manners and such like that I never learned. And for as little as I'd taught myself, he'd at any rate begin where his father left off. He was all we had. There seemed no fault in him. His mother dressed him like a little prince, and his manners were the same. Ah, we WERE happy! Then" -

"Well, Master Swift?" said Jan, for the schoolmaster had paused.

"Can't ye see the place is empty?" he answered sharply. "Who takes bite or sup with me but Rufus? SHE DIED.

"I'd have gone mad but for the boy. All my thought was to make up her loss to him. A child learns a man to be unselfish, Jan. I used to think, 'GOD may well be the very fount of unselfish charity, when He has so many children, so helpless without Him!' I think He taught me how to do for that boy. I dressed him, I darned his socks: what work I couldn't do I put out, but I had no one in. When I came in from school, I cleaned myself, and changed my boots, to give him his meals. Rufus and I eat off the table now, but I give ye my word when he was alive we'd three clean cloths a week, and he'd a pinny every day; and there's a silver fork and spoon in yon drawer I saved up to buy him, and had his name put on. I taught him too. He loved poetry as well as his father. He could say most of Milton's 'Lycidas.' It was an unlucky thing to have learned him too! Eh, Jan! we're poor fools. I lay awake night after night reconciling my mind to troubles that were never to come, and never dreaming of what WAS before me. I thought to myself, 'John Swift, my lad, you're making yourself a bed of thorns. As sure as you make your son a gentleman, so sure he'll look down on his old father when he gets up. Can ye bear that, John Swift, and HER dead, and him all that ye have?' I didn't ask myself twice, Jan. Of course I could bear it. Would any parent stop his child from being better than himself because he'd be looked down on? I never heard of one. 'I want him to think me rough and ignorant,' says I, 'for I want him to know what's better. And I shan't expect him to think on how I've slaved for him, till he's children of his own, and their mother a lady. But when I'm dead,' I says, 'and he stands by my grave, and I can't shame him no more with my common ways, he'll say, "The old man did his best for me," for he has his mother's feelings.' I tell ye, Jan, I cried like a child to think of him standing at my burying in a good black coat and a silk scarf like a gentleman, and I no more thought of standing at his than if he was bound to live for ever. And, mind ye, I did all I could to improve myself. I learned while I was teaching, and read all I could lay my hands on. Books of travels made me wild. I was young still, and I'd have given a deal to see the world. But I was saving every penny for him. 'He'll see it all,' says I, 'and that's enough,—Italy and Greece, and Egypt, and the Holy Land. And he'll see the sea (which I never saw but once, and that was at Cleethorpes), and he'll go to the tropics, and see flowers that 'ud just turn his old father's head, and he'll write and tell me of 'em, for he's got his mother's feelings.' . . . My GOD! He never passed the parish bounds, and he's lain alongside of her in yon churchyard for five and thirty years!"

Master Swift's head sank upon his breast, and he was silent, as if in a trance, but Jan dared not speak. The silence was broken by Rufus, who got up and stuffed his nose into the schoolmaster's hand.

"Poor lad!" said his master, patting him. "Thou'rt a good soul, too! Well, Jan, I'm here, ye see. It didn't kill me. I was off my head a bit, I believe, but they kept the school for me, and I got to work again. I'm rough pottery, lad, and take a deal of breaking. I've took up with dumb animals, too, a good deal. At least, they've took up with me. Most of 'em's come, like Rufus, of themselves. Mangy puppies no one would own, cats with kettles to their tails, and so on. I've always had a bit of company to my meals, and that's the main thing. Folks has said to me, 'Master Swift, I don't know how you can keep on schooling. I reckon you can hardly abide the sight of boys now you've lost your own.' But they're wrong, Jan: it seemed to give me a kind of love for every lad I lit upon.

"Are ye thinking ambition was dead in the old man at last? It came to life again, Jan. After a bit, I says to myself, 'In a dull place like this there's doubtless many a boy that might rise that never has the chance that I'd have given to mine. For what says the poet Gray? -

"But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page, Rich with the spoils of Time, did ne'er unroll."'

"I think, Jan, sometimes, I'm like Rachel, who'd rather have taken to her servant's children than have had none. I thought, 'If there's a genius in obscurity here, I'll come across the boy, being schoolmaster, and I'll do for him as I'd have done for my own.' Jan, I've seen nigh on seven generations of lads pass through this school, but HE'S NEVER COME! Society's quit of that blame. There's been no 'mute, inglorious Miltons' here since I come to this place. There's been many a nice-tempered lad I've loved, for I'm fond of children, but never one that yearned to see places he'd never seen, or to know things he'd never heard of. There's no fool like an old one, and I think I've been more disappointed as time went on. I submitted myself to the Lord's will years ago; but I HAVE prayed Him, on my knees, since He didn't see fit to raise me and mine, to let me have that satisfaction to help some other man's son to knowledge and to fame.

"Jan Lake," said Master Swift, "when I found you in yon wood, I found what I've looked for in vain for thirty-five years. Have I been schoolmaster so long, d'ye think, and don't know one boy's face from another? Lad? is it possible ye don't CARE to be a great man?"

Jan cared very much, but he was afraid of Master Swift; and it was by an effort that he summoned up courage to say, -

"Couldn't I be a great painter, Master Swift, don't 'ee think?"

The old man frowned impatiently. "What have I been telling ye? The Fine Arts are not the road to fame for working-men. Jan, Jan, be guided by me. Learn what I bid ye. And when ye've made name and fortune the way I show ye, ye can buy paints and paintings at your will, and paint away to please your leisure hours."

It did not need the gentle Abel's after-counsel to persuade Jan to submit himself to the schoolmaster's direction.

"I'll do as ye bid me, Master Swift; indeed, I will, sir," said he.

But, when the pleased old man rambled on of fame and fortune, it must be confessed that Jan but thought of them as the steps to those hours of wealthy leisure in which he could buy paints and indulge the irrepressible bent of his genius without blame.



CHAPTER XXIII.

THE WHITE HORSE IN CLOVER.—AMABEL AND HER GUARDIANS.—AMABEL IN THE WOOD.—BOGY.

The white horse lived to see good days. He got safely home, and spent the winter in a comfortable stable, with no work but being exercised for the good of his health by the stable-boy. It was expensive, but expense was not a first consideration with the Squire, and when he had once decided a matter, he was not apt to worry himself with regrets. As to Amabel the very narrowness of the white horse's escape from death exalted him at once to the place of first favorite in her tender heart, even over the head (and ears) of the new donkey.

"Miss Amabel's" interest in the cart-horse offended her nurse's ideas of propriety, and met with no sympathy from her mother or grandmother. But she was apt to get her own way; and from time to time she appeared suddenly, like a fairy-imp, in the stable, where she majestically directed the groom to hold her up whilst she plied a currycomb on the old horse's back. This over, she would ask with dignity, "Do you take care of him, Miles?" And Miles, touching his cap, would reply, "Certainly, miss, the very greatest of care." And Amabel would add, "Does he get plenty to eat, do you think?" "Plenties to heat, miss," the groom would reply. And she generally closed the conversation with, "I'm very glad. You're a good man, Miles."

In spring the white horse was turned out into the paddock, where Amabel had begged that he might die comfortably. He lived comfortably instead; and Amabel visited him constantly, and being perfectly fearless would kiss his white nose as he drooped it into her little arms. Her visits to the stable had been discovered and forbidden, but the scandal was even greater when she was found in the paddock, standing on an inverted bucket, and grooming the white horse with Lady Louisa's tortoise-shell dressing-comb.

"They wouldn't let me have the currycomb," said Amabel, who was very hot, and perfectly self-satisfied. Lady Louisa was in despair, but the Squire laughed. The ladies of his family had been great horsewomen for generations.

In the early summer, some light carting being required by the gardener, he begged leave to employ "Miss Amabel's old horse," who came at last to trot soberly to the town with a light cart for parcels, when the landlord of the Crown would point him out in proof of the Squire's sagacity in horse-flesh.

But it was not by her attachment to the cart-horse alone that Amabel disturbed the composure of the head-nurse and of Louise the bonne. She was a very Will-o'-the-wisp for wandering. She grew rapidly, and the stronger she grew the more of a Tom-boy she became. Beyond the paddock lay another field, whose farthest wall was the boundary of a little wood,—the wood where Jan had herded pigs. Into this wood it had long been Amabel's desire to go. But nurses have a preference for the high road, and object to climbing walls, and she had not had her wish. She had often peeped through a hole in the wall, and had smelt honeysuckle. Once she had climbed half way up, and had fallen on her back in the ditch. Louise uttered a thousand and one exclamations when Amabel came home after this catastrophe; and Nurse, distrusting the success of any real penalties in her power, fell back upon imaginary ones.

"I'm sure it's a mercy you have got back, Miss Amabel," said she; "for Bogy lives in that wood; and, if you'd got in, it's ten to one he'd have carried you off."

"You SAID Bogy lived in the cellar," said Amabel.

Nurse was in a dilemma which deservedly besets people who tell untruths. She had to invent a second one to help out her first.

"That's at night," said she: "he lives in the wood in the daytime."

"Then I can go into the cellar in the day, and the wood at night," retorted Amabel; but in her heart she knew the latter was impossible.

For some days Nurse's fable availed. Amabel had suffered a good deal from Bogy; and, though the fear of him did not seem so terrible by daylight, she had no wish to meet him. But one lovely afternoon, wandering round the field for cowslips, Amabel came to the wall, and could not but peep over to see if there were any flowers to be seen. She was too short to do this without climbing, and it ended in her struggling successfully to the top. There were violets on the other side, and Amabel let down one big foot to a convenient hole, whence she hoped to be able to stoop and catch at the violets without actually treading in Bogy's domain. But once more she slipped and rolled over,—this time into the wood. Bogy lingered, and she got on to her feet; but the wall was deeper on this side than the other, and she saw with dismay that it was very doubtful if she could get back.

I think, as a rule, children are very brave. But a light heart goes a long way towards courage. At first Amabel made desperate and knee-grazing efforts to reclimb the wall, and, failing, burst into tears, and danced, and called aloud on all her protectors, from the Squire to Miles. No one coming, she restrained her tears, and by a real effort of that "pluck" for which the Ammaby race is famous began to run along the wall to find a lower point for climbing. In doing so, she startled a squirrel, and whizz!—away he went up a lanky tree. What a tail he had! Amabel forgot her terrors. There was at any rate some living thing in the wood besides Bogy; and she was now busy trying to coax the squirrel down again by such encouraging noises as she had found successful in winning the confidence of kittens and puppies. Amabel was the victim of that weakness for falling in love with every fussy, intelligent, or pitiable beast she met with, which besets some otherwise reasonable beings, leading to an inconvenient accumulation of pets in private life, though doubtless invaluable in the public services of people connected with the Zoological Gardens.

The squirrel sat under the shadow of his own tail, and winked. He had not the remotest intention of coming down. Amabel was calmer now, and she looked about her. The eglantine bushes were shoulder- high, but she had breasted underwood in the shrubberies, and was not afraid. Up, up, stretched the trees to where the sky shone blue. The wood itself sloped downwards; the spotted arums pushed boldly through last year's leaves, which almost hid the violets; there were tufts of primroses, which made Amabel cry out, and about them lay the exquisite mauve dog-violets in unplucked profusion. And hither and thither darted the little birds; red-breasts and sparrows, and yellow finches and blue finches, and blackbirds and thrushes, with their cheerful voices and soft waistcoats, and, indeed, every good quality but that of knowing how glad one would be to kiss them. In a few steps, Amabel came upon a path going zig-zag down the steep of the wood, and, nodding her hooded head determinedly, she said, "Amabel is going a walk. I don't mind Bogy," and followed her nose.

It is a pity that one's skirt, when held up, does not divide itself into compartments, like some vegetable dishes. One is so apt to get flowers first, and then lumps of moss, which spoil the flowers, and then more moss, which, earth downwards (as bread and butter falls), does no good to the rest. Amabel had on a nice, new dress, and it held things beautifully. But it did not hold enough, for at each step of the zig-zag path the moss grew lovelier. She had got some extinguisher-moss from the top of the wall, and this now lay under all the rest, which flattened the extinguishers. About half way down the dress was full, and some cushion-moss appeared that could not be passed by. Amabel sat down and reviewed her treasures. She could part with nothing, and she had just caught sight of some cup- moss lichen for dolls' wine-glasses. But, by good luck, she was provided with a white sun-bonnet, as clean and whole as her dress; and this she took off and filled. It was less fortunate that the scale-mosses and liverworts, growing nearer to the stream, came last, and, with the damp earth about them, lay a-top of every thing, flowers, dolls' wine-glasses, and all. It was a noble collection— but heavy. Amabel's face flushed, and she was slightly overbalanced, but she staggered sturdily along the path, which was now level.

She had quite forgotten Nurse's warning, when she came suddenly upon a figure crouched in her path, and gazing at her with large, black eyes. Her fat cheeks turned pale, and with a cry of, "It's Bogy!" she let down the whole contents of her dress into one of Jan's leaf- pictures.

"Don't hurt me! Don't take me away! Please, please don't!" she cried, dancing wildly.

"I won't hurt you, Miss. I be going to help you to pick 'em up," said Jan. By the time he had returned her treasures to her skirt, Amabel had regained confidence, especially as she saw no signs of the black bag in which naughty children are supposed to be put.

"What are you doing, Bogy?" said she.

"I be making a picture, Miss," said Jan, pointing it out.

"Go on making it, please," said Amabel; and she sat down and watched him.

"Do you like this wood, Bogy?" she asked, softly, after a time.

"I do, Miss," said Jan.

"Why don't you sleep in it, then? I wouldn't sleep in a cellar, if I were you."

"I don't sleep in a cellar, Miss."

"Nurse SAYS you do," said Amabel, nodding emphatically.

Jan was at a loss how to express the full inaccuracy of Nurse's statement in polite language, so he was silent; rapidly adding tint to tint from his heap of leaves, whilst the birds sang overhead, and Amabel sat with her two bundles watching him.

"I thought you were an old man!" she said, at length.

"Oh, no, Miss," said Jan, laughing.

"You don't look very bad," Amabel continued.

"I don't think I be very bad," said Jan, modestly.

Amabel's next questions came at short intervals, like dropping shots.

"Do you say your prayers, Bogy?"

"Yes, Miss."

"Do you go to church, Bogy?"

"Yes, Miss."

"Then where do you sit?"

"In the choir, Miss; the end next to Squire Ammaby's big pew."

"DO YOU?" said Amabel. She had been threatened with Bogy for misbehavior in church, and it was startling to find that he sat so near. She changed the subject, under a hasty remembrance of having once made a face at the parson through a hole in the bombazine curtains.

"Why don't you paint with paints, Bogy?" said she.

"I haven't got none, Miss," said Jan.

"I've got a paint-box," said Amabel. "And, if you like, I'll give it to you, Bogy."

The color rushed to Jan's face.

"Oh, thank you, Miss!" he cried.

"You must dip the paints in water, you know, and rub them on a plate; and don't let them lie in a puddle," said Amabel, who loved to dictate.

"Thank you, Miss," said Jan.

"And don't put your brush in your mouth," said Amabel.

"Oh, dear, no, Miss," said Jan. It had never struck him that one could want to put a paint-brush in one's mouth.

At this point Amabel's overwrought energies suddenly failed her, and she burst out crying. "I don't know how I shall get over the wall," said she.

"Don't 'ee cry, Miss. I'll help you," said Jan.

"I can't walk any more," sobbed Amabel, who was, indeed, tired out.

"I'll take 'ee on my back," said Jan. "Don't 'ee cry."

With a good deal of difficulty, Amabel was hoisted up, and planted her big feet in Jan's hands. It was no light pilgrimage for poor Jan, as he climbed the winding path. Amabel was peevish with weariness; her bundles were sadly in the way, and at every step a cup-moss or marchantia dropped out, and Amabel insisted upon its being picked up. But they reached the wall at last, and Jan got her over, and made two or three expeditions after the missing mosses, before the little lady was finally content.

"Good-by, Bogy," she said, at last, holding up her face to be kissed. "And thank you very much. I'm not frightened of you, Bogy."

As Jan kissed her, he said, smiling, "What is your name, love?"

And she said, "Amabel."

To her parents and guardians, Amabel made the following statement: "I've seen Bogy. I like him. He doesn't sleep in the cellar, so Nurse told a story. And he didn't take me away, so that's another story. He says his prayers, and he goes to church, so he can't be the Bad Man. He makes pictures with leaves. He carried me on his back, but not in a bag" -

At this point the outraged feelings of Lady Craikshaw exploded, and she rang the bell, and ordered Miss Amabel to be put to bed with a dose of rhubarb and magnesia (without sal-volatile), for telling stories.

"The eau-de-Cologne, mamma dear, please," said Lady Louisa, as the door closed on the struggling, screaming, and protesting Amabel. "Isn't it really dreadful? But Esmerelda Ammaby says Henry used to tell shocking stories when he was a little boy."



CHAPTER XXIV.

THE PAINT-BOX.—MASTER LINSEED'S SHOP.—THE NEW SIGN-BOARD.—MASTER SWIFT AS WILL SCARLET.

On Sunday morning Jan took his place in church with unusual feelings. He looked here, there, and everywhere for the little damsel of the wood, but she was not to be seen. Meanwhile she had not sent the paint box, and he feared it would never come. He fancied she must be the Squire's little daughter, but he was not sure, and she certainly was not in the big pew, where the back of the Squire's red head and Lady Louisa's aquiline nose were alone visible. She was a dear little soul, he thought. He wondered why she called him Bogy. Perhaps it was a way little ladies had of addressing their inferiors.

Jan did not happen to guess that, Amabel being very young, the morning services were too long for her. In the afternoon he had given her up, but she was there.

The old Rector had reached the third division of his sermon, and Lady Craikshaw was asleep, when Amabel, mounting the seat with her usual vigor, pushed her Sunday hood through the bombazine curtains, and said, -

"Bogy!"

Jan looked up, and then started to his feet as Amabel stuffed the paint-box into his hands. "I pushed it under my frock," she said in a stage whisper. "It made me so tight? But grandmamma is such" -

Jan heard and saw no more. Amabel's footing was apt to be insecure; she slipped upon the cushions and disappeared with a crash.

Jan trembled as he clasped the shallow old cedar-wood box. He wondered if the colors would prove as bright as those in the window. He fancied the wan, ascetic faces there rejoiced with him. When he got home, he sat under the shadow of the mill, and drew back the sliding lid of the box. Brushes, and twelve hard color cakes. They were Ackermann's, and very good. Cheap paint-boxes were not made then. He read the names on the back of them: Neutral Tint, Prussian Blue, Indian Red, Yellow Ochre, Brown Madder, Brown Pink, Burnt Umber, Vandyke Brown, Indigo, King's Yellow, Rose Madder, and Ivory Black.

It says much for Jan's uprightness of spirit, and for the sense of duty in which the schoolmaster was training him, that he did not neglect school for his new treasure. Happily for him the sun rose early, and Jan rose with it, and taking his paint-box to the little wood, on scraps of parcel paper and cap paper, on bits of wood and smooth white stones, he blotted-in studies of color, which he finished from memory at odd moments in the windmill.

In the summer holidays, Jan had more time for sketching. But the many occasions on which he could not take his paints with him led him to observe closely, and taught him to paint from memory with wonderful exactness. He was also obliged to reduce his outlines and condense his effects to a very small scale to economize paper.

About this time he heard that Master Chuter was going to have a new sign painted for the inn. Master Linseed was to paint it.

Master Linseed's shop had been a place of resort for Jan in some of his leisure time. At first the painter and decorator had been churlish enough to him, but, finding that Jan was skilful with a brush, he employed him again and again to do his work, for which he received instead of giving thanks. Jan went there less after he got a paint-box, and could produce effects with good materials of his own, instead of making imperfect experiments in color on bits of wood in the painter's shop.

But in this matter of the new sign-board he took the deepest interest. He had a design of his own for it, which he was most anxious the painter should adopt. "Look 'ee, Master Linseed," said he. "It be the Heart of Oak. Now I know a oak-tree with a big trunk and two arms. They stretches out one on each side, and the little branches closes in above till 'tis just like a heart. 'Twould be beautiful, Master Linseed, and I could bring 'ee leaves of the oak so that 'ee could match the yellows and greens. And then there'd be trees beyond and beyond, smaller and smaller, and all like a blue mist between them, thee know. That blue in the paper 'ee've got would just do, and with more white to it 'twould be beautiful for the sky. And" -

"And who's to do all that for a few shillings?" broke in the painter, testily. "And Master Chuter wants it done and hung up for the Foresters' dinner."

Since the pressing nature of the commission was Master Linseed's excuse for not adopting his idea for the sign, it seemed strange to Jan that he did not set about it in some fashion. But he delayed and delayed, till Master Chuter was goaded to repeat the old rumor that real sign-painting was beyond his powers.

It was within a week of the dinner that the little innkeeper burst indignantly into the painter's shop. Master Linseed was ill in bed, and the sign-board lay untouched in a corner.

"It be a kind of fever that's on him," said his wife.

"It be a kind of fiddlestick!" said the enraged Master Chuter; and turning round his eye fell on Jan, who was looking as disconsolate as himself. Day after day had he come in hopes of seeing Master Linseed at work, and now it seemed indefinitely postponed. But the innkeeper's face brightened, and, seizing Jan by the shoulder, he dragged him from the shop.

"Look 'ee here, Jan Lake," said he. "Do 'ee thenk THEE could paint the sign? I dunno what I'd give 'ee if 'ee could, if 'twere only to spite that humbugging old hudmedud yonder."

Jan felt as if his brain were on fire. "If 'ee'll get me the things, Master Chuter," he gasped, "and'll let me paint it in your place, I'll do it for 'ee for nothin'."

The innkeeper was not insensible to this consideration, but his chief wish was to spite Master Linseed. He lost no time in making ready, and for the rest of the week Jan lived between the tallet (or hay-loft) of the inn and the wood where he had first studied trees. Master Chuter provided him with sheets of thick whitey-brown paper, on which he made water-color studies, from which he painted afterwards. By his desire no one was admitted to the tallet, though Master Chuter's delight increased with the progress of the picture till the secret was agony to him. Towards the end of the week they were disturbed by a scuffling on the tallet stairs, and Rufus bounced in, followed at a slower pace by the schoolmaster, crying, "Unearthed at last!"

"Come in, come in! That's right!" shouted Master Chuter. "Let Master Swift look, Jan. He be a scholar, and'll tell us all about un."

But Jan shrank into the shadow. The schoolmaster stood in the light of the open shutter, towards which the painting was sloped, and Rufus sat by him on his haunches, and blinked with all the gravity of a critic; and in the half light between them and the stairs stood the fat little innkeeper, with his hands on his knees, crying, "There, Master Swift! Did 'ee ever see any thing to beat that? Artis' or ammytoor!"

Jan's very blood seemed to stand still. As Master Swift put on his spectacles, each fault in the painting sprang to the front and mocked him. It was indeed a wretched daub!

But Jan had been studying the scene under every lovely light of heaven from dawn to dusk for a week of summer days: Master Swift carried no such severe test in his brain. As he raised his head, the tears were in his eyes, and he held out his hand, saying, "My lad, it's just the spirit of the woods.

"But d'ye not think a figure or so would enliven it?" he continued. "One of Robin Hood's foresters 'chasing the flying roe'?"

"FORESTERS! To be sure!" said Master Chuter. "What did I say? Have the schoolmaster in, says I. He be a scholar, and knows what's what. Put 'em in, Jan, put 'em in! there's plenty of room."

What Jan had already suffered from the innkeeper's suggestions, only an artist can imagine, and his imagination will need no help!

"I'd be main glad to get a bit of red in there," said Jan, in a low voice, to Master Swift; "but Robin Hood must be in green, sir, mustn't he?"

"There's Will Scarlet. Put Will in," said Master Swift, who, pleased to be appealed to, threw himself warmly into the matter. "He can have just drawn his bow at a deer out of sight." And with a charming simplicity the old schoolmaster flung his burly figure into an appropriate attitude.

"Stand so a minute!" cried Jan, and seizing a lump of charcoal, with which he had made his outlines, he rapidly sketched Master Swift's figure on the floor of the tallet. Thinned down to what he declared to have been his dimensions in youth, it was transferred to Jan's picture, and the touch of red was the culminating point of the innkeeper's satisfaction.

On the day of the dinner the new sign swung aloft. "It couldn't dry better anywhere," said Master Chuter.

Jan "found himself famous." The whole parish assembled to admire. The windmiller, in his amazement, could not even find a proverb for the occasion, whilst Abel hung about the door of the Heart of Oak, as if he had been the most confirmed toper, saying to all incomers, "Have 'ee seen the new sign, sir? 'Twas our Jan did un."

His fame would probably have spread more widely, but for a more overwhelming interest which came to distract the neighborhood, and which destroyed a neat little project of Master Chuter's for running up a few tables amongst his kidney-beans, as a kind of "tea garden" for folk from outlying villages, who, coming in on Sunday afternoons to service, should also want to see the work of the boy sign- painter.

It is a curious instance of the inaccuracy of popular impressions that, when Master Linseed died three days after the Foresters' dinner, it was universally believed that he had been killed by vexation at Jan's success. Nor was this tradition the less firmly fixed in the village annals, that the disease to which he had succumbed spread like flames in a gale. It produced a slight reaction of sentiment against Jan. And his achievement was absolutely forgotten in the shadow of the months that followed.

For it was that year long known in the history of the district as the year of the Black Fever.



CHAPTER XXV.

SANITARY INSPECTORS.—THE PESTILENCE.—THE PARSON.—THE DOCTOR.—THE SQUIRE AND THE SCHOOLMASTER.—DESOLATION AT THE WINDMILL.—THE SECOND ADVENT.

I remember a "cholera year" in a certain big village. The activity of the sanitary authorities (and many and vain had been the efforts to rouse them to activity BEFORE) was, for them, remarkable. A good many heads of households died with fearful suddenness and not less fearful suffering. Several nuisances were "seen to," some tar- barrels were burnt, and the scourge passed by. Not long ago a woman, whose home is in a court where some of the most flagrant nuisances existed, in talking to me, casually alluded to one of them. It had been ordered to be removed, she said, in the cholera year when the gentlemen were going round; but the cholera went away, and it remained among those things which were NOT "seen to," and for aught I know flourishes still. She was a sensible and affectionate person. Living away from her home at that time, she became anxious at once for the welfare of her relatives if they neglected to write to her. But she had never an anxiety on the subject of that unremedied abomination which was poisoning every breath they drew. That "the gentlemen who went round" felt it superfluous to have their orders carried out when strong men were no longer sickening and dying within two revolutions of the hands of the church clock will surprise no one who has had to do with local sanitary officers. They are like the children of Israel, and will only do their duty under the pressure of a plague. The people themselves are more like the Egyptians. Plagues won't convince them. A mother with all her own and her neighbors' children sickening about her would walk miles in a burst shoe to fetch the doctor or a big bottle of medicine, but she won't walk three yards farther than usual to draw her house- water from the well that the sewer doesn't leak into. That is a fact, not a fable; and, in the cases I am thinking of, all medical remonstrance was vain. Uneducated people will take any thing in from the doctor through their mouths, but little or nothing through their ears.

When such is the state of matters in busy, stirring districts, among shrewd artisans, and when our great seat of learning smells as it does smell under the noses of the professors, it is needless to say that the "black fever" found every household in the little village prepared to contribute to its support, and met with hardly an obstacle on its devastating path.

To comment on Master Salter's qualifications for the post of sanitary inspector would be to insult the reader's understanding. Of course he owned several of the picturesque little cottages where the refuse had to be pitched out at the back, and the slops chucked out in front, and where the general arrangements for health, comfort, and decency were such as one must forbear to speak of, since, on such matters, our ears—Heaven help us!—have all that delicacy which seems denied to our noses.

If the causes of the calamity were little understood, portents were plentifully noted. The previous winter had been mild. A thunderbolt fell in the autumn. There was a blight on the gooseberries, and Master Salter had a calf with two heads. As to the painter, a screech-owl had been heard to cry from his chimney- top, not three weeks before his death.

There was a pause of a day or so after Master Linseed died, and then victims fell thick and fast. Children playing happily with their mimic boats on the open drain that ran lazily under the noontide sun, by the footpath of the main street, were coffined for their hasty burial before the sun had next reached his meridian. The tears were hardly dry in their parents' eyes before these also were closed in their last sleep. The very aged seemed to linger on, but strong men sickened and died; and at the end of the week more than one woman was left sitting by an empty hearth, a worn-out creature whom Death seemed only to have forgotten to take away.

At first there was a reckless disregard of infection among the neighbors. But, after one or two of these family desolations, this was succeeded by a panic, and even the noble charity which the poor commonly show to each other's troubles failed, and no one could be got to nurse the sick or bury the dead.

Now the Rector was an old man. Most of the parish officers were aged, and patriarchs in white smock frocks were as plentiful as creepers at the cottage doors. The healthy breezes and the dull pace at which life passed in the district seemed to make men slow to wear out. If the Rector had profited by these features of the parish in health, it must be confessed that they had also had their influence on his career. He was a good man, and a learned one. He stuck close to his living, and he was benevolent. But he was not of those heroic natures who can resist the influence of the mental atmosphere around them; and in a dull parish, in a sleepy age, he had not been an active parson. Some men, however, who cannot make opportunities for themselves, can do nobly enough if the chance comes to them; and this chance came to the Rector in his sixty-ninth year, on the wings of the black fever. To quicken spiritual life in the soul of a Master Salter he had not the courage even to attempt; but a panic of physical cowardice had not a temptation for him. And so it came about that of four men who stayed the panic, by the example of their own courage, who went from house to house, and from sick-bed to sick-bed—who drew a cordon round the parish, and established kitchens and a temporary hospital, and nursed the sick, and encouraged the living, and buried the dead,—the most active was the old Rector.

The other three were the parish doctor, Squire Ammaby, and the schoolmaster.

On the very first rumor of the epidemic, Lady Louisa had carried off Amabel, and had gone with Lady Craikshaw to Brighton. Both the ladies were indignant with the Squire's obstinate resolve to remain amongst his tenants. In her alarm, Lady Louisa implored him to sell the property and buy one in Ireland, which was Lady Craikshaw's native country; and the list she contrived to run up of the drawbacks to the Ammaby estate would have driven a temper less stolid than her husband's to distraction.

When the fever broke out among the children, the schools were closed, and Master Swift devoted his whole time to laboring with the parson, the doctor, and the Squire.

No part of the Rector's devotion won more affectionate gratitude from his people than a single act of thoughtfulness, by which he preserved a record of the graves of their dead. He had held firmly on to a decent and reverent burial, and, foreseeing that the poor survivors would be quite unable to afford gravestones, he kept a strict list of the dead, and where they were buried, which was afterwards transferred to one large monument, which was bought by subscription. He cut the village off from all communication with the outer world, to prevent a spread of the disease; but he sent accounts of the calamity to the public papers, which brought abundant help in money for the needs of the parish. And in these matters the schoolmaster was his right-hand man.

The disease was most eccentric in its path. Having scourged one side only of the main street, it burst out with virulence in detached houses at a distance. Then it returned to the village, and after lulls and outbreaks it ceased as suddenly as it began.

It was about midway in its career that it fell with all its wrath upon Master Lake's windmill.

The mill stood in a healthy position, but the dwelling room was ill- ventilated, and there were defective sanitary arrangements, which Master Swift had anxiously pointed out to the miller. The plague had begun in the village, and the schoolmaster trembled for Jan. But Master Lake was not to be interfered with, and, when the schoolmaster spoke of poison, thought himself witty as he replied, -

"It be a uncommon slow pison then, Master Swift."

It must also be allowed that such epidemics, once started, do havoc in apparently clean houses and amongst well-fed people.

It was a little foster-sister of Jan's who sickened first. She died within two days. Her burial was hasty enough, but Mrs. Lake had no time to fret about that, for a second child was ill. Like many another householder, the poor windmiller was now ready enough to look to his drains, and so forth; but it may be doubted if the general stirring up of dirty places at this moment did not do as much harm as good. It was hot,—terribly hot. Day after day passed without a breeze to cool the burning skins of the sick, and yet it was not sunshiny. People did say that the pestilence hung like a murky vapor above the district, and hid the sun.

Trades were slack, corn-grinding amongst the rest, and Master Lake did the housework, helped by Jan and Abel. He was stunned by the suddenness and the weight of the calamity which had come to him. He was very kind to Mrs. Lake, but the poor woman was almost past any feeling but that which, as a sort of instinct or inspiration, guided a constant watching and waiting on her sick children. She never slept, and would not have eaten, but that Master Lake used his authority to force some food upon her. At this time Jan's chief occupations were cookery and dish-washing. His constant habit of observation made all the experiences of life an education for him; he had often watched his foster-mother prepare the family meals, and he prepared them now, for Abel and the windmiller could not, and she was with the sick children.

Before the second child died, two more fell ill on the same day. Only Abel and Jan were still "about." The mother moved like an automaton, and never spoke. Now and then a deep sigh or a low moan would escape her, and the miller would move tenderly to her side, and say, "Bear up, missus; bear up, my lass," and then go back to his pipe and his cherry-wood chair, where he seemed to grow gray as he sat.

Master Swift came from time to time to the mill. He was everywhere, helping, comforting, and exhorting. Some said his face shone with the light of another world, for which he was "marked." Others whispered that the strain was telling on him, and that it wore the look it had had in the brief insanity which followed his child's death. But all agreed that the very sight of him brought help and consolation. The windmiller grew to watch for him, and to lean on him in the helplessness of his despair. And he listened humbly to the old man's fervid religious counsels. His own little threads of philosophy were all blowing loose and useless in this storm of trouble.

The evening that Master Swift came up to arrange about the burial of the second child, he found the other two just dead. The first two had suffered much and been delirious, but these two had sunk painlessly in a few hours, and had fallen asleep for the last time in each other's arms.

It did not lessen the force of Master Swift's somewhat stern consolations that in all good faith he conveyed in them an expectation that the Last Day was at hand. Many people thought so, and it was, perhaps, not unnatural. In these days, which were long years of suffering, they were shut off from the rest of humanity, and the village was the world to them,—a world very near its end. With Death so busy, it seemed as if Judgment could hardly linger long.

It is true that this did not form a part of the Rector's religious exhortations. But some good people were shocked by the tea-party that he gave to the young people of the place, and the games that followed it in the Rectory meads, at the very height of the fever; though the doctor said it was better than a hogshead of medicine.

"To encourage low spirits in this panic is just to promote suicide, if ye like the responsibeelity of that," said the doctor to Master Swift, who had confided his doubts as to the seemliness of the entertainment. "I tell ye there's a lairge proportion of folk dies just because their neighbors have died before them, for the want of their attention being directed to something else. Away wi' ye, schoolmaster, and take your tuning-fork to ask the blessing wi'. What says the Scripture, man? 'The living, the living, he shall praise Thee!'"

The doctor was a Scotchman, and Master Swift always listened with sympathy to a North countryman. He was convinced, too, and took his tuning-fork to the meals, and led the grace.

Nor could his expectation of the speedy end of all things restrain his instinctive anxiety and watchfulness for Jan's health. On the evening of that visit to the mill, he used some little manoeuvring to accomplish Jan's being sent back with him to the village, to arrange for the burial of the three children.

A glow of satisfaction suffused his rough face as he got Jan out of the tainted house into the fresh evening air, though it paled again before that other look which was now habitual to him, as, waving his hand towards the ripening corn-fields, he quoted from one of Mr. Herbert's loftiest hymns, -

"We talk of harvests,—there are no such things, But when we leave our corn and hay. There is no fruitful year but that which brings The last and loved, though dreadful Day. Oh, show Thyself to me, Or take me up to Thee!"



CHAPTER XXVI.

THE BEASTS OF THE VILLAGE.—ABEL SICKENS.—THE GOOD SHEPHERD.—RUFUS PLAYS THE PHILANTHROPIST.—MASTER SWIFT SEES THE SUN RISE.—THE DEATH OF THE RIGHTEOUS.

Amid the havoc made by the fever amongst men, women, and children, the immunity of the beasts and birds had a sad strangeness.

There was a small herd of pigs which changed hands three times in ten days. The last purchaser hesitated, and was only induced by the cheapness of the bargain to suppress a feeling that they brought ill-luck. Cats mewed wistfully about desolated hearths. One dog moaned near the big grave in which his master lay, and others, with sad sagacious eyes, went to look for new friends and homes.

It was a day or two after the burial of the miller's three children, that, as Jan sat at dinner with Abel and his two parents, he was struck by the way in which the mill cats hung about Abel, purring and rubbing themselves against his legs.

"I do think they misses the others," he whispered to his foster- brother, and his tears fell thick and fast on to his plate.

Abel made no answer. He did not wish Jan to know that he had given all his food by bits to the cats, because he could not swallow it himself. But, later in the day, Jan found him in the round-house, lying on an empty sack, with his head against a full one.

"Don't 'ee tell mother," he said; "but I do feel bad."

And as Jan sat down, and put his arms about him, on the very spot where they had so often sat together, learning the alphabet and educating their thumbs, Abel laid his head on his foster-brother's shoulder, saying, -

"I do think, Janny dear, that Mary, she wants me, and the others too. I think I be going after them. But thee'll look to mother, Janny dear, eh?"

"But I want thee, too, Abel dear," sobbed Jan.

"I be thinking perhaps them that brought thee hither'll fetch thee away some day, Jan. But thee'll see to mother?" repeated Abel, his eyes wandering restlessly with a look of pain.

Jan knew now that he was only an adopted child of the windmill, though he stoutly ignored the fact, being very fond of his foster- parents.

Abel's illness came with the force of a fresh blow. There had been a slight pause in the course of the fever at the mill, and it seemed as if these two boys were to be spared. Abel had been busy helping his father to burn the infected bedding, etc., that very morning, and at night he lay raving.

He raved of Jan's picture which swung unheeded above Master Chuter's door, and confused it with some church-window that he seemed to fancy Jan had painted; then of his dead brothers and sisters. And then from time to time he rambled about a great flock of sheep which he saw covering the vast plains about the windmill, and which he wearied himself in trying to count. And, as he tossed, he complained in piteous tones about some man who seemed to be the shepherd, and who would not do something that Abel wanted.

For the most part, he knew no one but Jan, and then only when Jan touched him. It seemed to give him pleasure. He understood nothing that was said to him, except in brief intervals. Once, after a short sleep, he opened his eyes and recognized the schoolmaster.

"Master Swift," said he, "do 'ee think that be our Lord among them sheep? With His hair falling on's shoulders, and the light round His head, and the long frock?"

Master Swift's eyes turned involuntarily in the direction in which Abel's were gazing. He saw nothing but the dark corners of the dwelling-room; but he said, -

"Ay, ay, Abel, my lad."

"What be His frock all red for, then? Bright red, like blood. 'Tis like them figures in—in" -

Here Abel wandered again, and only muttered to himself. But when Jan crept near to him, and touching him said, "The figures in the window, Abel dear," he opened his eyes and said, -

"So it be, Janny. With the sun shining through 'em. Thee knows."

And then he wailed fretfully, -

"Why do He keep His back to me all along? I follows Him up and down, all over, till I be tired. Why don't He turn His face?"

Jan was speechless from tears, but the old schoolmaster took Abel's hot hand in his, and said, with infinite tenderness, -

"He will, my lad. He'll turn His face to thee very soon. Wait for Him, Abel."

"Do 'ee think so?" said Abel. And after a while he muttered, "You be the schoolmaster, and ought to know."

And, seemingly satisfied, he dozed once more.

Master Swift hurried away. He had business in the village, and he wanted to catch the doctor, and ask his opinion of Abel's case.

"Will be get round, sir?" he asked.

The doctor shook his head, and Master Swift felt a double pang. He was sorry about Abel, but the real object of his anxiety was Jan. Once he had hoped the danger was past, but the pestilence seemed still in full strength at the windmill, and the agonizing conviction strengthened in his mind that once more his hopes were to be disappointed, and the desire of his eyes was to be snatched away. The doctor thought that he was grieving for Abel, and said, -

"I'm just as sorry as yourself. He's a fine lad, with something angelic about the face, when ye separate it from its surroundings. But they've no constitution in that family. It's just the want of strength in him, and not the strength of the fever, this time; for the virulence of the poison's abating. The cases are recovering now, except where other causes intervene."

Master Swift felt almost ashamed of the bound in his spirits. But the very words which shut out all hope of Abel's recovery opened a possible door of escape for Jan. He was not one of the family, and it was reasonable to hope that his constitution might be of sterner stuff. He turned with a lighter heart into his cottage, where he purposed to get some food and then return to the mill. There might be a lucid interval before the end, in which the pious Abel might find comfort from his lips; and if Jan sickened, he would nurse him night and day.

Rufus welcomed his master not merely with cordiality, but with fussiness. The partly apologetic character of his greeting was accounted for when a half starved looking dog emerged from beneath the table, and, not being immediately kicked, wagged the point of its tail feebly, keeping at a respectful distance, whilst Rufus introduced it.

"So ye're for playing the philanthropist, are ye?" said Master Swift. "Ye've picked up one of these poor houseless, masterless creatures? I'm not for undervaluing disinterested charity, Rufus, my man; but I wish ye'd had the luck to light on a better bred beast while ye were about it."

It is, perhaps, no disadvantage to what we call "dumb animals" if they understand the general drift of our remarks without minutely following every word. They have generally the sense, too, to leave well alone, and, without pressing the question of the new comer's adoption, the two dogs curled themselves round, put their noses into their pockets, and went to sleep with an air of its being unnecessary to pursue the topic farther.

Master Swift shared his meal with them, and left them to keep house when he returned to the mill.

His quick eye, doubly quickened by experience and by anxiety, saw that Jan's were full of fever, and his limbs languid. But he would not quit Abel's side, and Master Swift remained with the afflicted family.

Abel muttered deliriously all night, with short intervals of complete stupor. The fever, like a fire, consumed his strength, and the fancy that he was toiling over the downs seemed to weary him as if he had really been on foot. Just before sunrise, Master Swift left him asleep, and went to breathe some out-door air.

The fresh, tender light of early morning was over every thing. The windmill stood up against the red-barred sky with outlines softened by the clinging dew. The plains glistened, and across them, through the pure air, came the voice of Master Salter's chanticleer from the distant farm.

It was such a contrast to the scene within that Master Swift burst into tears. But even as he wept the sun leaped to the horizon, and, reflected from every dewdrop, and from the very tears upon the old man's cheeks, flooded the world about him with its inimitable glory.

The schoolmaster uncovered his head, and kneeling upon the short grass prayed passionately for the dying boy. But, as he knelt in the increasing sunshine, his prayers for the peace of the departing soul unconsciously passed almost into thanksgiving that so soon, and so little stained, it should exchange the dingy sick-room—not for these sweet summer days, which lose their sweetness!—but to taste, in peace which passeth understanding, what GOD has prepared for them that love Him.

It was whilst the schoolmaster still knelt outside the windmill that Abel awoke, and raised his eyes to Jan's with a smile.

"Thee must go out a bit soon, Janny dear," he whispered, "it be such a lovely day."

Jan was too much pleased to hear him speak to wonder how he knew what kind of a day it was, and Abel lay with his head in Jan's arms, breathing painfully and gazing before him. Suddenly he raised himself, and cried,—so loudly that the old man outside heard the cry, -

"Janny dear! He've turned his face to me. He be coming right to me. Oh! He" -

But HE had come.



CHAPTER XXVII.

JAN HAS THE FEVER.—CONVALESCENCE IN MASTER SWIFT'S COTTAGE.—THE SQUIRE ON DEMORALIZATION.

Jan took the fever. He was very ill, too, partly from grief at Abel's death. He had also a not unnatural conviction that he would die, which was unfavorable to his recovery.

The day on which he gave Master Swift his old etching as a last bequest, he fairly infected him also with this belief, and during a necessary visit to the village the schoolmaster hung up the little picture in his cottage with a breaking heart.

But the next time Rufus saw him, he came to prepare for a visitor. Jan was recovering, and Master Swift had persuaded the windmiller to let him come to the cottage for a few days, the rather that Mrs. Lake was going to stay with a relative whilst the windmill was thoroughly cleansed and disinfected. The weather was delightful now, and, feeble as he had become, Jan soon grew strong again. If he had not done so, it would have been from no lack of care on Master Swift's part. The old schoolmaster was a thrifty man, and had some money laid by, or he would have been somewhat pinched at this time. As it was, he drew freely upon his savings for Jan's benefit, and made many expeditions to the town to buy such delicacies as he thought might tempt his appetite. Nor was this all. The morning when Jan came languidly into the kitchen from the little inner room, where he and the schoolmaster slept, he saw his precious paint-box on the table, to fetch which Master Swift had been to the windmill. And by it lay a square book with the word Sketch-book in ornamental characters on the binding, a couple of Cumberland lead drawing pencils, and a three-penny chunk of bottle India-rubber, delicious to smell.

If the schoolmaster had had any twinges of regret as he bought these things, in defiance of his principles for Jan's education, they melted utterly away in view of his delight, and the glow that pleasure brought into his pale cheeks. Master Swift was regarded, too, by a colored sketch of Rufus sitting at table in his arm-chair, with his more mongrel friend on the floor beside him. It was the best sketch that Jan had yet accomplished. But most people are familiar with the curious fact that one often makes an unaccountable stride in an art after it has been laid aside for a time.

It must not be supposed that Master Swift had neglected his duties in the village, or left the Parson, the Squire, and the doctor to struggle on alone, during the illness of Abel and of Jan. Even now he was away from the cottage for the greater part of the day, and Jan was left to keep house with the dogs. His presence gave great contentment to Rufus, if it scarcely lessened the melancholy dignity of his countenance; for dogs who live with human beings never like being left long alone. And Jan, for his own part, could have wished for nothing better than to sit at the table where he had once hoped to make leaf-pictures, and paint away with materials that Rembrandt himself would not have disdained.

The pestilence had passed away. But the labors of the Rector and his staff rather increased than diminished at this particular point. To say nothing of those vile wretches who seem to spring out of such calamities as putrid matter breeds vermin, and who use them as opportunities for plunder, there were a good many people to be dealt with of a lighter shade of demoralization,—people who had really suffered, and whose daily work had been unavoidably stopped, but to whom idleness was so pleasant, and the fame of their misfortunes so gratifying, that they preferred to scramble on in dismantled homes, on the alms extracted by their woes, to setting about such labor as would place them in comfort. Then that large class—the shiftless— was now doubly large, and there were widows and orphans in abundance, and there was hardly a bed or a blanket in the place.

"I have come," said Mr. Ammaby, joining the Rector as he sat at breakfast, "to beg you, in the interests of the village, to check the flow of that fount of benevolence which springs eternal in the clerical pocket. You will ruin us with your shillings and half crowns."

"Bless my soul, Ammaby," said the Rector, pausing with an eggshell transfixed upon his spoon, "shillings and half crowns don't go far in the present condition of our households. There are not ten families whose beds are not burnt. What do you propose to do?"

"I'll tell you, when I have first confessed that my ideas are not entirely original. I have been studying political economy under that hard-headed Sandy, our friend the doctor. In the first place, from to-morrow, we must cease to GIVE any thing whatever, and both announce that determination and stick to it."

"And THEN, my dear sir?" said the Rector, smiling; and nursing his black gaiter.

"And THEN, my dear sir," said Mr. Ammaby, "I shall be able to get some men to do some work about my place, and those people at a distance who have widows here will relieve them (at least the widows will look up their well-to-do relatives), and the Church, in your person, will not be charged. And some of the widows will consent to scrub for payment, instead of sitting weeping in your kitchen—also for payment. They will, furthermore, compel their interesting sons to mind pigs, or scare birds, instead of hanging about the Heart of Oak, begging of the visitors who now begin to invade us. Do you know that the very boys won't settle to work, that the children are taking to gutter-life and begging, that the women won't even tidy up their houses, and that the men are retailing the horrors of the fever in every alehouse in the county, instead of getting in the crops? I give you my word, I had to go down to the inn yesterday, and a lad of eleven or twelve, who didn't recognize me in Chuter's dark kitchen, came up and began to beg with a whine that would have done credit to a professional mendicant. I stood in the shadow and let him tell his whole story, of a widowed mother and three brothers and sisters living, and six dead; and when he'd finished, and two visitors were fumbling in their pockets, I took him by the collar and lifted him clean through the kitchen and down the yard into the street. I nearly knocked Swift over, or rather I nearly fell myself, from concussion with his burly person, but he was the very man I wanted. I said, 'Mr. Swift, may I ask you to do me a favor? This boy—whose father was a respectable man—has been begging— BEGGING! in a public room. His excuse is that his mother is starving. Will you kindly take him to the Hall, and put him in charge of the gardener, with my strict orders that he is to do a good afternoon's work at weeding in the shrubbery. And that the gardener is to see that he comes every day at nine o'clock in the morning, and works there till four in the afternoon, till the day you reopen school, meal-times and Sundays excepted. I will pay his mother five shillings a week, and, if he is a good boy, I'll give him some old clothes. And if ever you see or hear of his disgracing himself and his friends by begging again, if you don't thrash him within an inch of his life, I shall.' I promise you, the widow might starve for the want of that five shillings if the young gentleman could slip out of his bargain. His face was a study. But less so than the schoolmaster's. The job exactly suited him, and I suspect he knew the lad of old."

"From what I've heard Swift say, I fancy he sympathizes with your theories," said the Rector.

"I fear he sympathizes with my temper as well as my theories!" laughed the Squire. "As I felt the flush on my own cheek-bone, I caught the fire in his eye. But now, my dear sir, you will consent to some strong measures to prevent the village becoming a mere nest of lazzaroni? Let us try the system at any rate. I propose that we do not shut up the soup kitchen yet, but charge a small sum for the soup towards its expenses. And I want to beg you to write another of those graphic and persuasive letters, in which you have appealed to the sympathy of the public with our misfortune."

"But, bless me!" said the Rector, "I thought you were a foe to assisting the people, even out of their own parson's pocket."

"Well, I taunted the doctor myself with inconsistency, but we do not propose to make a sixpenny dole of the fund. You know there are certain things they can't do, and some help they seem fairly entitled to receive. We've made them burn their bedding, in the interests of the public safety, and it's only fair they should be helped to replace it. Then there is a lot of sanitary work which can only be done by a fund for the purpose; and, if we get the money, we can employ idlers. The women will tidy their houses when they see new blankets, and the sooner the churchyard is made nice, and that monument of yours erected, and we all get into orderly, respectable ways again, the better."

"Enough, enough, my dear Ammaby!" cried the Rector; "I put myself in your hands, and I will see to the public appeal at once; though I may mention that the credit of those compositions chiefly belongs to old Swift. He knows the data minutely, and he delights in the putting together. I think he regards it as a species of literary work. I hope you hear good news of Lady Louisa and little Amabel?"

"They are quite well, thank you," said the Squire; "they are in town just now with Lady Craikshaw, who has gone up to consult her London doctor."

"Well, farewell, Ammaby, for the present. Tell the doctor I'll give his plan a trial, and we'll get the place into working order as fast as we can."

"He will be charmed," said the Squire. "He says, as we are going on now, we are breeding two worse pests than the fever,—contentment under remediable discomfort, and a dislike to work."



CHAPTER XXVIII.

MR. FORD'S CLIENT.—THE HISTORY OF JAN'S FATHER—AMABEL AND BOGY THE SECOND.

Among the many sounds blended into that one which roared for ever round Mr. Ford's offices in the city was the cry of the newsboys.

"Horful p'ticklers of the plague in a village in —shire!" they screamed under the windows. Not that Mr. Ford heard them. But in five minutes the noiseless door opened, and a clerk laid the morning paper on the table, and withdrew in silence. Mr. Ford cut it leisurely with a large ivory knife, and skimmed the news. His eye happened to fall upon the Rector's letter, which, after a short summary of the history of the fever, pointed out the objects for which help was immediately required. There was a postscript. To give some idea of the ravages of the epidemic, and as a proof that the calamity was not exaggerated, a list of some of the worst cases was given, with names and particulars. It was gloomy enough. "Mary Smith, lost her husband (a laborer) and six children between the second and the ninth of the month. George Harness, a blacksmith, lost his wife and four children. Master Abel Lake, windmiller of the Tower Mill, lost all his children, five in number, between the fifth and the fifteenth of the month. His wife's health is completely broken up" -

At this point Mr. Ford dropped the paper, and, unlocking a drawer beside him, referred to some memoranda, after which he cut out the Rector's letter with a large pair of office scissors, and enclosed it in one which he wrote before proceeding to any other business. He had underlined one name in the doleful list,—ABEL LAKE, WINDMILLER.

Some hours later the silent clerk ushered in a visitor, one of Mr. Ford's clients. He was a gentleman of middle height and middle age,—the younger half of middle age, though his dark hair was prematurely gray. His eyes were black and restless, and his manner at once haughty and nervous.

"I am very glad to see you, my dear sir," said Mr. Ford, suavely; "I had just written you a note, the subject of which I can now speak about." And, as he spoke, Mr. Ford tore open the letter which lay beside him, whilst his client was saying, "We are only passing through town on our way to Scotland. I shall be here two nights."

"You remember instructing me that it was your wish to economize as much as possible during the minority of your son?" said Mr. Ford. His client nodded.

"I think," continued the man of business, "there is a quarterly payment we have been in the habit of making on your account, which is now at an end." And, as he spoke, he pushed the Rector's letter across the table, with his fingers upon the name ABEL LAKE, WINDMILLER. His client always spoke stiffly, which made the effort with which he now spoke less noticed by the lawyer. "I should like to be certain," he said. "I mean, that there is no exaggeration or mistake."

"You have never communicated with the man, or given him any chance of pestering you," said Mr. Ford. "I should hardly do so now, I think"

"I certainly kept the power of reopening communication in my own hands, knowing nothing of the man; but I should be sorry to discontinue the allowance under a—a mistake of any kind."

Mr. Ford meditated. It may be said here that he by no means knew all that the reader knows of Jan's history; but he saw that his client was anxious not to withhold the money if the child were alive.

"I think I have it, my dear sir," he said suddenly. "Allow me to write, in my own name, to this worthy clergyman. I must ask you to subscribe to his fund, in my name, which will form an excuse for the letter, and I will contrive to ask him if the list of cases has been printed accurately, and has his sanction. If there has been any error, we shall hear of it. The object of the subscription is—let me see—is—a monument to those who have died of the fever and" -

But the dark gentleman had started up abruptly.

"Thank you, thank you, Mr. Ford," he said; "your plan is, as usual, excellent. Pray oblige me by sending ten guineas in your own name, and you will let me know if—if there IS any mistake. I will call in to-morrow about other matters."

And before Mr. Ford could reply his client was gone.

The peculiar solitude to be found in the crowded heart of London was grateful to his present mood. To have been alone with his thoughts in the country would have been intolerable. The fields smack of innocence, and alone with them the past is apt to take the simple tints of right and wrong in the memory. But in that seething mass, which represents ten thousand heartaches and anxieties, doubtful shifts, and open sins, as bad or worse than a man's own, there is a silent sympathy and no reproach. Mr. Ford's client did not lean back, the tension of his mind was too great. He sat stiffly, and gazed vacantly before him, half seeing and half transforming into other visions whatever lay before the hansom, as it wound its way through the streets. Now for a moment a four-wheeled cab, loaded with schoolboy luggage, occupied the field of view, and idle memories of his own boyhood flitted over it. Then, crawling behind a dray, some strange associations built up the barrels into an old weatherstained wooden house in Holland, and for a while an intense realization of past scenes which love had made happy put present anxieties to sleep. But they woke again with a horrible pang, as a grim, hideous funeral car drove slowly past, nodding like a nightmare.

As the traffic became less dense, and the cab went faster, the man's thoughts went faster too. He strove to do what he had not often tried, to review his life. He had unconsciously gained the will to do it, because a reparation which conscience might hitherto have pressed on him was now impossible, and because the plague that had desolated Abel Lake's home had swept the skeleton out of his own cupboard, and he could repent of the past and do his duty in the future. His conscience was stronger than his courage. He had long wished to repent, though he had not found strength to repair.

On one point he did not delude himself as he looked back over his life. He had no sentimental regrets for the careless happiness of youth. Is any period of human life so tormented with cares as a self-indulgent youth? He had been a slave to expensive habits, to social traditions, to past follies, ever since he could remember. He had been in debt, in pocket or in conscience, from his schoolboy days to this hour. His tradesmen were paid long since, and, if death had cancelled what else he owed, how easy virtue would henceforth be!

It had not been easy at the date of his first marriage. He was deeply in debt, and out of favor with his father. It was on both accounts that he went abroad for some months. In Holland he married. His wife was Jan's mother, and Jan was their only child.

Her people were of middle rank, leading quiet though cultivated lives. Her mother was dead, and she was her old father's only child. It would be doing injustice to the kind of love with which she inspired her husband to dwell much upon her beauty, though it was of that high type which takes possession of the memory for ever. She was very intensely, brilliantly fair, so that in a crowd her face shone out like a star. Time never dimmed one golden thread in her hair; and Death, who had done so much for Mr. Ford's client, could not wash that face from his brain. It blotted the traffic out of the streets, and in their place Dutch pastures, whose rich green levels were unbroken by hedge or wall, stretched flatly to the horizon. It bent over a drawing on his knee as he and she sat sketching together in an old-world orchard, where the trees bore more moss than fruit. The din of London was absolutely unheard by Mr. Ford's client, but he heard her voice, saying, "You must learn to paint cattle, if you mean to make any thing of Dutch scenery. And also, where the earth gives so little variety, one must study the sky. We have no mountains, but we have clouds." It was in the orchard, under the apple-tree, across the sketch-book, that they had plighted their troth—ten years ago.

They were married. Had he ever denied himself a single gratification, because it would add another knot to the tangle of his career? He had pacified creditors by incurring fresh debts, and had evaded catastrophes by involving himself in new complications all his life. His marriage was accomplished at the expense of a train of falsehoods, but his father-in-law was an unworldly old man, not difficult to deceive. He spent most of the next ten months in Holland, and, apart from his anxieties, it was the purest, happiest time he had ever known. Then his father recalled him peremptorily to England.

When Mr. Ford's client obeyed his father's summons, the climax of his difficulties seemed at hand. The old man was anxious for a reconciliation, but resolved that his son should "settle in life;" and he had found a wife for him, the daughter of a Scotch nobleman, young, handsome, and with a good fortune. He gave him a fortnight for consideration. If he complied, the old man promised to pay his debts, to make him a liberal allowance, and to be in every way indulgent. If he thwarted his plans, he threatened to allow him nothing during his lifetime, and to leave him nothing that he could avoid bequeathing at his death.

It was at this juncture that Jan's mother followed her husband to England. Her anxieties were not silenced by excuses which satisfied her father. The crisis could hardly have been worse. Mr. Ford's client felt that confession was now inevitable; and that he could confess more easily by letter when he reached London. But before the letter was written, his wife died.

Weak men, harassed by personal anxieties, become hard in proportion to their selfish fears. It is like the cruelty that comes of terror. He had loved his wife; but he was terribly pressed, and there came a sense of relief even with the bitterness of the knowledge that he was free. He took the body to Holland, to be buried under the shadow of the little wooden church where they were married; and to the desolate old father he promised to bring his grandson—Jan. But just after the death of an old nurse, in whose care he had placed his child, another crisis came to Mr. Ford's client. On the same day he got letters from his father and from his father-in-law. From the first, to press his instant return home; from the second, to say that, if he could not at once bring Jan, the old man would make the effort of a voyage to England to fetch him. Jan's father almost hated him. That the child should have lived when the beloved mother died was in itself an offence. But that that freedom, and peace, and prosperity, which were so dearly purchased by her death, should be risked afresh by him, was irritating to a degree. He was frantic. It was impossible to fail that very peremptory old gentleman, his father. It was out of the question to allow his father-in-law to come to England. He could not throw away all his prospects. And the more he thought of it, the more certain it seemed that Jan's existence would for ever tie him to Holland; that for his grandson's sake the old man would investigate his affairs, and that the truth would come out sooner or later. The very devil suggested to him that if the child had died with its mother he would have been quite free, and intercourse with Holland would have died away naturally. He wished to forget. To a nature of his type, when even such a love as he had been privileged to enjoy had become a memory involving pain, it was instinctively evaded like any other unpleasant thing. He resolved, at last, to let nothing stand between him and reconciliation with his father. Once more he must desperately mortgage the future for present emergencies. He wrote to the old father-in-law to say that the child was dead. He excused this to himself on the ground of Jan's welfare. If the truth became fully known, and his father threw him off, he would be a poor embarrassed man, and could do little for his child. But with his father's fortune, and, perhaps, the Scotch lady's fortune, it would be in his power to give Jan a brilliant future, EVEN IF he never fully acknowledged him. As yet he hardly recognized such an unnatural possibility. He said to himself, that when he was free, all would be well, and the Dutch grandfather would forgive the lie in the joy of discovering that Jan was alive, and would be so well provided for.

Mr. Ford's client was reconciled to his father. He married Lady Adelaide, and announced the marriage to his father-in-law. After which, his intercourse with Holland died out.

It was a curious result of a marriage so made that it was a very happy one. Still more curious was the likeness, both physical and mental, between the second wife and the first. Lady Adelaide was half Scotch and half English, a blonde of the most brilliant type, and of an intellectual order of beauty. But fair women are common enough. It was stranger still that the best affections of two women of so high a moral and intellectual standard should have been devoted to the same and to such a husband. Not quite in vain. Indeed, but for that grievous sin towards his eldest son, Mr. Ford's client would probably have become an utterly different man. But there is no rising far in the moral atmosphere with a wilful, unrepented sin as a clog. It was a miserable result of the weakness of his character that he could not see that the very nobleness of Lady Adelaide's should have encouraged him to confess to her what he dared not trust to his father's imperious, petulant affection. But he was afraid of her. It had been the same with his first wife. He had dreaded that she should discover his falsehoods far more than he had feared his father-in-law. And years of happy companionship made it even less tolerable to him to think of lowering himself in Lady Adelaide's regard.

But there was a far more overwhelming consideration which had been gathering strength for eight years between him and the idea of recognizing Jan as his eldest son, and his heir. He had another son, Lady Adelaide's only child. If he had hesitated when the boy was only a baby to tell her that her darling was not his only son, it was less and less easy to him to think of bringing Jan,—of whom he knew nothing—from the rough life of the mill to supplant Lady Adelaide's child, when the boy grew more charming as every year went by. Clever, sweet-tempered, of aristocratic appearance, idolized by the relatives of both his parents, he seemed made by Providence to do credit to the position to which he was believed to have been born.

Mr. Ford's client had almost made the resolve against which that fair face that was not Lady Adelaide's for ever rose up in judgment: he was just deciding to put Jan to school, and to give up all idea of taking him home, when death seemed once more to have solved his difficulties. An unwonted ease came into his heart. Surely Heaven, knowing how sincerely he wished to be good, was making goodness easy to him,—was permitting him to settle with his conscience on cheaper terms than those of repentance and restitution. (And indeed, if amendment, of the weak as well as of the strong, be GOD'S great purpose for us, who shall say that the ruggedness of the narrow road is not often smoothed for stumbling feet?) The fever seemed quite providential, and Mr. Ford's client felt quite pious about it. He was conscious of no mockery in dwelling to himself on the thought that Jan was "better off" in Paradise with his mother. And he himself was safe—for the first time since he could remember,—free at last to become worthier, with no black shadow at his heels. Very touching was his resolve that he would be a better father to his son than his own father had been to him. If be could not train him in high principles and self-restraint, he would at least be indulgent to the consequences of his own indulgence, and never drive him to those fearful straits. "But he'll be a very different young man from what I was," was his final thought. "Thanks to his good mother."

His mind was full of Lady Adelaide's goodness as he entered his house, and she met him in the hall.

"Ah, Edward!" she cried, "I am so glad you've come home. I want you to see that quaint child I was telling you about."

"I don't remember, my dear," said Mr. Ford's client.

"You're looking very tired," said Lady Adelaide, gently; "but about the child. It is Lady Louisa Ammaby's little girl. You know I met her just before we left Brighton. I only saw the child once, but it is the quaintest, most original little being! So unlike its mother! She and her mother are in town, and they were going out to luncheon to-day I found, so I asked the child here to dine with D'Arcy. Her bonne is taking off her things, and I must go and bring her down."

As Lady Adelaide went out, her son came in, and rushed up to his father. If Mr. Ford's client had failed in natural affection for one son, his love for the other had a double intensity. He put his arm tenderly round him, whilst the boy told some long childish story, which was not finished when Lady Adelaide returned, leading Amabel by the hand. Amabel was a good deal taller. Her large feet were adorned with ornamental thread socks, and leathern shoes buttoned round the ankle. Her hair was cropped, because Lady Craikshaw said this made it grow. She wore a big pinafore by the same authority, in spite of which she carried herself with an admirable dignity. The same candor, good sense, and resolution shone from her clear eyes and fat cheeks as of old. Mr. Ford's client was alarming to children, but Amabel shook hands courageously with him.

She was accustomed to exercise courage in her behavior. From her earliest days a standard of manners had been expected of her beyond her age. It was a consequence of her growth. "You're quite a big girl now," was a nursery reproach addressed to her at least two years before the time, and she tried valiantly to live up to her inches.

But when Amabel saw D'Arcy, she started and stopped short. "Won't you shake hands with my boy, Amabel?" said Lady Adelaide. "Oh, you must make friends with him, and he'll give you a ride on the rocking-horse after dinner. Surely such a big girl can't be shy?"

Goaded by the old reproach, Amabel made an effort, and, advancing by herself, held out her hand, and said, "How do you do, Bogy?"

D'Arcy's black eyes twinkled with merriment. "How do you do, Mother Bunch?" said he.

"My DEAR D'Arcy!" said Lady Adelaide, reproachfully.

"Mamma, I am not rude. I am only joking. She calls me Bogy, so I call her Mother Bunch."

"But I'm NOT Mother Bunch," said Amabel.

"And I'm not Bogy," retorted D'Arcy.

"Yes, you are," said Amabel. "Only you had very old clothes on in the wood."

Lady Craikshaw had cruelly warned Lady Adelaide that Amabel sometimes told stories, and, thinking that the child was romancing, Lady Adelaide tried to change the subject. But D'Arcy cried, "Oh, do let her talk, mamma. I do so like her. She is such fun!"

"You oughtn't to laugh at me," said poor Amabel, as D'Arcy took her into the dining-room, "I gave you my paint-box."

The boy's stare of amazement awoke a doubt in Amabel's mind of his identity with the Bogy of the woods. Between constantly peeping at him, and her anxiety to conduct herself conformably to her size in the etiquette of the dinner-table, she did not eat much. When dinner was over, and D'Arcy led her away to the rocking horse, he asked, "Do you still think I'm Bogy?"

"N—no," said Amabel, "I think perhaps you're not. But you're very like him, though you talk differently. Do you make pictures?"

D'Arcy shook his head.

"Not even of leaves?" said Amabel.

When she was going away, D'Arcy asked, "Which do you like best, me or Bogy?"

Amabel pondered. "I like you very much. You made the rocking-horse go so fast; but I liked Bogy. He carried me all up the hill, and he picked up my moss. I wasn't afraid of him. I gave him a kiss."

"Well, give me a kiss," said D'Arcy. But there was a tone of raillery in his voice which put Amabel on her dignity, and she shook her head, and began to go down the steps of the house, one leg at a time.

"If I'm Bogy, you know, you HAVE kissed me ONCE," shouted D'Arcy. But Amabel's wits were as well developed as her feet.

"Once is enough for bogies," said she, and went sturdily away.



CHAPTER XXIX.

JAN FULFILS ABEL'S CHARGE.—SON OF THE MILL.—THE LARGE-MOUTHED WOMAN.

By the time Jan went back to the windmill he was quite well.

"Ye'll be fit for the walk by I open school," said Master Swift.

Jan promised himself that he would redouble his pains in class, from gratitude to the good schoolmaster. But it was not to be.

The day before the school opened, Jan came to the cottage. "Master Swift," said he, "I be come to tell ye that I be afraid I can't come to school."

"And how's that?" said Master Swift.

"Well, Master Swift, I do think I be wanted at home. My father's not got Abel now; but it's my mother that mostly wants me. I be bothered about mother, somehow," said Jan, with an anxious look. "She do forget things so, and be so queer. She left the beer-tap running yesterday, and near two gallons of ale ran out; and this morning she put the kettle on, and no water in it. And she do cry terrible," Jan added, breaking down himself. "But Abel says to me the day he was took ill, 'Janny,' he says, 'look to mother.' And so I will."

"You're a good lad, Jan," said the schoolmaster. "Sit ye down and get your tea, and I'll come back with ye to the mill. A bit of company does folk good that's beside themselves with fretting."

But the windmiller's wife was beyond such simple cure. The overtasked brain was giving way, and though there were from time to time such capricious changes in her condition as led Jan to hope she was better, she became more and more imbecile to the end of her life.

To say that he was a devoted son is to give a very vague idea of his life at this time to those for whom filial duty takes the shape of compliance rather than of action, or to those who have no experience of domestic attendance on the infirm both of body and of mind.

It was not in moments of tender feeling, or at his prayers, or by Abel's grave, that Jan recalled his foster-brother's dying charge; but as he emptied slops, cleaned grates, or fastened Mrs. Lake's black dress behind. Nor did gratitude flatter his zeal. "Boys do be so ackered with hooks and eyes," the poor woman grumbled in her fretfulness, and then she sat down to bemoan herself that she had not a daughter left. She had got a trick of stopping short half way through her dressing, and giving herself up to tears, which led to Jan's assisting at her toilette. He was soon expert enough with hooks and eyes, the more tedious matter was getting up her courage, which invariably failed her at the stage of her linsey-woolsey petticoat. But when Jan had hooked her up, and tied her apron on, and put a little shawl about her shoulders, and got her close- fitting cap set straight,—a matter about as easy as putting another man's spectacles on his nose,—and seated her by the fire, the worst was over. Mrs. Lake always cheered up after breakfast, and Jan always to the very end hoped that this was the beginning of her getting better.

Even after a niece of the windmiller's came to live at the mill, and to wait on Mrs. Lake, the poor woman was never really content without Jan. As time went on, she wept less, but her faculties became more clouded. She had some brighter hours, and the company of the schoolmaster gave her pleasure, and seemed to do her good. When the Rector visited her, his very sympathy made him delicate about dwelling on her bereavement. When the poor woman sobbed, he changed the subject in haste, and his condolences were of a very general character. But Master Swift had no such scruples; and as he sat by her chair, with a kindly hand on hers, he spoke both plainly and loudly. The latter because Mrs. Lake's hearing had become dull. Nor did he cease to speak because tears dropped perpetually from the eyes which were turned to him, and which seemed day by day to lose color from the pupils, and to grow redder round the lids from weeping.

"Them that sleep in Jesus shall GOD bring with Him. Ah! Mrs. Lake, ma'am, they're grand words for you and me. The Lord has dealt hardly with us, but there are folk that lose their children when it's worse. There's many a Christian parent has lived to see them grow up to wickedness, and has lost 'em in their sins, and has had to carry THAT weight in his heart besides their loss, that the Lord's counsels for them were dark to him. But for yours and mine, woman, that have gone home in their innocence, what have we to say to the Almighty, except to pray of Him to make us fitter to take them when He brings them back?"

Through the cloud that hung over the poor woman's spirit, Master Swift's plain consolations made their way. The ruling thought of his mind became the one idea to which her unhinged intellect clung,- -the second coming of the Lord. For this she watched—not merely in the sense of a readiness for judgment, but—out of the upper windows of the windmill, from which could be seen a vast extent of that heaven in which the sign of the Son of Man should be, before He came.

Sky-gazing was an old habit with Jan, and his active imagination was not slow to follow his foster-mother's fancies. The niece did all the house-work, for the freakish state of Mrs. Lake's memory made her help too uncertain to be trusted to. But, with a restlessness which was perhaps part of her disease, she wandered from story to story of the windmill, guided by Jan, and the windmiller made no objection.

The country folk who brought grist to the mill would strain their ears with a sense of awe to catch Mrs. Lake's mutterings as she glided hither and thither with that mysterious shadow on her spirit, and the miller himself paid a respect to her intellect now it was shattered which he had not paid whilst it was whole. Indeed he was very kind to her, and every Sunday he led her tenderly to church, where the music soothed her as it soothed Saul of old. As the brain failed, she became happier, but her sorrow was like a pain numbed by narcotics; it awoke again from time to time. She would fancy the children were with her, and then suddenly arouse to the fact that they were not, and moan that she had lost all.

"Thee've got one left, mother dear," Jan would cry, and his caresses comforted her. But at times she was troubled by an imperfect remembrance of Jan's history, and, with some echo of her old reluctance to adopt him, she would wail that she "didn't want a stranger child." It cut Jan to the heart. Ever since he had known that he was not a miller's son, he had protested against the knowledge. He loved the windmill and the windmiller's trade. He loved his foster-parents, and desired no others. He had a miller's thumb, and he flattened it with double pains now that his right to it was disputed. He would press Mrs. Lake's thin fingers against it in proof that he belonged to her, and the simple wile was successful, for she would smile and say, "Ay, ay, love! Thee's a miller's boy, for thee've got the miller's thumb."

Two or three causes combined to strengthen Jan's love for his home. His revolt from the fact that he was no windmiller born gave the energy of contradiction. Then to fulfil Abel's behests, and to take his place in the mill, was now Jan's chief ambition. And whence could be seen such glorious views as from the windows of a windmill?

Master Lake was very glad of his help. The quarterly payment had now been due for some weeks, but, in telling the schoolmaster, he only said, "I'd be as well pleased if they forgot un altogether, now. I don't want him took away, no time. And now I've lost Abel, Jan'll have the mill after me. He's a good son is Jan."

And, as he echoed Jan's praises, it never dawned on Master Swift that he was the cause of the allowance having stopped. Jan was jealous of his title as Master Lake's son, but the schoolmaster dwelt much in his own mind on the fact that Jan was no real child of the district; partly in his ambition for him, and partly out of a dim hope that he would himself be some day allowed to adopt him. In stating that the windmiller had lost all his children by the fever, he had stated the bare fact in all good faith; and as neither he nor the Rector guessed the real drift of Mr. Ford's letter, the mistake was never corrected.

Jan was useful in the mill. He swept the round-house, coupled the sacks, received grist from the grist-bringers, and took payment for the grinding in money or in kind, according to custom. The old women who toddled in with their bags of gleaned corn looked very kindly on him, and would say, "Thee be a good bwoy, sartinly, Jan, and the Lard'll reward thee." If the windmiller came towards one of these dames, she would say, "Aal right, Master Lake, I be in no manners of hurry, Jan'll do for me." And, when Jan came, his business-like method justified her confidence. "Good day, mother," he would say. "Will ye pay, or toll it?" "Bless ye, dear love, how should I pay?" the old woman would reply. "I'll toll it, Jan, and thank ye kindly." On which Jan would dip the wooden bowl or tolling-dish into the sack, and the corn it brought up was the established rate of payment for grinding the rest.

But, though he constantly assured the schoolmaster that he meant to be a windmiller, Jan did not neglect his special gift. He got up with many a dawn to paint the sunrise. In still summer afternoons, when the mill-sails were idle, and Mrs. Lake was dozing from the heat, he betook himself to the water-meads to sketch. In the mill itself he made countless studies. Not only of the ever-changing heavens, and of the monotonous sweeps of the great plains, whose aspect is more changeable than one might think, but studies on the various floors of the mill, and in the roundhouse, where old meal- bins and swollen sacks looked picturesque in the dim light falling from above, in which also the circular stones, the shaft, and the very hoppers, became effective subjects for the Cumberland lead- pencils.