Their sudden hush recalled him with a start. He had heard nothing of their debate. Slowly he lifted his eyes and let them rest upon Mr. Benny, who sat on his right, patiently waiting to take down the next entry for the minutes.

"If you will trust me," he said, "I can find you a teacher—a woman—whom you will all accept."

He had spoken without premeditation, and paused now, doubtful of the sound of his own voice. The five Managers were looking at him with respectful attention. Apparently, then, he was speaking sense; and he spoke on, still wondering by what will (not his own) the words came.

"If you leave her and the children alone, I think her religion will not trouble you. She is accustomed to boys, and teaches them to be honourable to one another and gentle to their sisters."

He paused again and drummed with his fingers on the table. He heard the voices break out again, and gathered that the majority assented. Mechanically he put the resolution, declared it carried, and closed the meeting; as mechanically he shook hands with all the Managers and wished them good-night. "And on your way, Benny, you may tell the maids they may go to bed. I'll blow out the candles myself."

When all had taken their leave he sat for a while, still staring at the reflected lights along the board. Then he arose and passed into his counting-house, where an oil lamp burned upon his writing-table.

He took pen and paper and wrote, addressed the letter, sealed it carefully, and leaned back in his chair, studying the address.

"There is to-morrow," he muttered. "I can reconsider it before post-time to-morrow."

But the restlessness had vanished and left in its stead a deep peace. If Death waited for him in the next room, he felt that he could go quietly now and take it by the hand. He remembered the candles still burning there, and stood up with a slight shiver—a characteristic shake of his broad shoulders. As he did so his eyes fell again upon the addressed letter. He turned them slowly to the door—and there, between him and the lights on the long table, a vision moved towards him—the figure of a girl dressed all in black. His hand went up to the phial in his breast-pocket, but paused half-way as he gazed into the face and met her eyes. . . .



CHAPTER VI.

THE RAFTERS.

Two children came stealing downstairs in the early dawn, carrying their boots in their hands, whispering, lifting their faces as if listening for some sound to come from the upper floors. But the whole house kept silence.

Their plan was to escape by one of the windows on the ground floor. Tiptoeing along the hall to the door of the great parlour, Myra noiselessly lifted the latch (all the doors in the house had old-fashioned latches) and peeped in. The candles on the long table had burned themselves out, and the shuttered room lay in darkness save for one long glint of light along the mahogany table-top. It came from the half-open doorway in the far corner, beyond which, in the counting-house, a ghost of a flame yet trembled in Rosewarne's lamp.

Myra caught at Clem's arm and drew him back into the hall. For the moment terror overcame her—terror of something sinister within—of their grandfather sitting there like Giant Pope in the story, waiting to catch them. She hurried Clem along to the kitchen-passage, which opened out of the hall at right angles to the front door and close beside it. The front door had a fanlight through which fell one broken sunray, filtered to a pale green by the honeysuckle of the porch; and reaching it, she caught her breath in a new alarm. The bolts were drawn.

After a furtive glance behind her, she peered more closely, holding Clem fast by the sleeve. Yes, certainly the bolts were drawn, and the key had not been turned in the lock. Very cautiously she tried the heavy latch. The door opened easily—though with a creak that fetched her heart into her mouth.

But there was no going back. Whatever might be the explanation of the unbolted door, they were free now, at large in the dewy morning with the world at their feet. The brightness of it dazzled Myra. It broke on Clem's ears with the dinning of innumerable birds.

They took hands and hurried down the gravel path. Did ever Madonna lilies, did ever clove carnations smell as did these, lifting their heads from their morning bath? Yet field challenged garden with the fragrance of new-mown hay wafted down through the elms from Parc-an-hal, that great meadow.

On the low wall by the garden-gate Myra found a seat for Clem, helped him to lace his boots, and then did on her own.

"What's the time?" Clem demanded.

"I don't know, but he'll be coming soon. It can't be four o'clock yet, or we should hear Jim Tregay knocking about the milk-pails."

The boy sat silent, nursing his knee, drinking in a thousand scents and sounds. Myra watched the great humble-bees staggering from flower to flower, blundering among their dew-filled cups. She drew down a lily-stem gently, and guided her brother's hand so that it held one heady fellow imprisoned, buzzing under his palm and tickling it. Clem laughed aloud.

"Listen!"

A lad came whistling Up the road from the village. It was Tom Trevarthen, and the sunshine glinted on his silver earrings.

"Good-morning, missy! Good-morning, Master Clem! I'm good as my word, you see; though be sure I never reckoned to find 'ee up and out at this hour."

"Myra woke me," said Clem. "I believe she keeps a clock in her head."

"When I want to wake up at any particular hour, I just do it," Myra announced calmly. "Have they begun the rafting?"

"Bless your life, they've been working all night. There's one raft finished, and the other ought to be ready in a couple or three hours, to save the tide across the bay."

"I don't hear them singing."

"'Tisn't allowed. The Bo—your Aunt Hannah, I mean—says she don't mind what happens to sea, but she won't have her nights in harbour disturbed. Old Billy Daddo hadn't laid hands on the first balk before he began to pipe, 'O for a thousand tongues to sing,' starting on the very first hymn in the collection like as if he meant to sing right through it. He hadn't got to 'music in the sinner's ears' before the old woman pushed her face overside by the starboard cathead, nightcap and all—in that time she must ha' nipped out of her berth, up the companion, and along the length of the deck—and says she, 'I ben't no sinner, William Daddo, but a staid woman that likes her sleep and means to have it.' 'Why, missus,' says Billy, 'you'll surely lev' a man ask a blessing on his labours!' 'Ask quiet then,' she says, 'or you'll get slops.' Since then they be all as mute as mice."

Myra took Clem's hand, and the three hurried down the hill and through the sleeping village to the ferry-slip, where Tom had a ship's boat ready. In fifty strokes he brought her alongside the barque where the rafters— twenty-five or thirty—were at work, busy as flies. The Virtuous Lady had been towed up overnight from her first anchorage to a berth under Hall gardens, and a hatch opened in her bows, through which the long balks of timber were thrust by the stevedores at work in the hold and received by a gang outside, who floated them off to be laid raftwise and lashed together with chains. The sun, already working around to the south, gilded the barque's top-gallant masts and yards, and flung a stream of gold along the raft already finished and moored in midstream. But the great hull lay as yet in the cool shadow of the hillside over which the larks sang.

Tom Trevarthen found the children a corner on the half-finished raft, out of the way of the workmen, and a spare tarpaulin to keep their clothes dry; and there they sat happily, the boy listening and Myra explaining, until Mrs. Purchase, having slept her sleep and dressed herself (partly), emerged on deck with a teapot to fill at the cook's galley, and, looking over the bulwarks, caught sight of them.

"Hullo! You don't tell me that Susannah,"—this was the housekeeper at Hall—"allows you abroad at this hour!"

Now the risk of Susannah's discovering their escape and pursuing was the one bitter drop in the cup of these truants' happiness. Susannah—a middle-aged, ill-favoured spinster, daughter of a yeoman-farmer, with whose second wife she could not agree—scorned the sea and all sailors. Once, as a girl, she had committed her ample person to a sailing boat, and, thank God! that one lesson had been enough. Ships came and went under the windows of Hall, but in the children's eyes they and their crews belonged to an unknown world. Things real to them were the farm and farm stock, harvests and harvest-homes, the waggoners' teams, byres, orchards, garden, and cool dairy. Ships' captains arrived out of fairyland sometimes, and crossed the straw-littered townplace to hold audience with their grandfather; magic odours of hemp and pitch, magic chanty songs and clanking of windlasses called to them up the hill; but until this morning they had never dared to obey the call. Had Clem been as other boys—. But, being blind, he trusted to Myra, and Myra was a girl.

"Come aboard and have a drink of something cordial!" continued Mrs. Purchase, holding the teapot aloft. She walked forward and looked down on the workers. "Now you may sing, boys, if't pleases 'ee."

"Thank'ee, ma'am," answered up Billy Daddo; "then lev' us make a start with Wrestling Jacob, Part Two—"

'Lame as I am, I take the prey'—

"'Tis a pleasant old tune and never comes amiss, but for choice o' seasons give me the dew o' the mornin'."

He pitched the note in high falsetto, and after a couple of bars five or six near comrades joined in together—

"Speak to me now, for I am weak, But confident in self-despair: Speak to my heart, in blessings speak; Be conquer'd by my instant prayer! Speak, or thou never hence shall move, And tell me if thy name is Love."

Billy Daddo's gang hailed from a parish, three miles up the coast, noted for containing "but one man that couldn't preach, and that was the parson." Their fellow-labourers—the crew of the barque and half-a-score longshoremen belonging to the port—heard without thought of deriding. Though themselves unconverted—for life in a town, especially in a seaport town, makes men curious and critical rather than intense, and life in a ship ruled by Mrs. Purchase did not encourage visionaries—they were accustomed to the fervours of the redeemed.

"'Tis Love! 'tis Love! thou diedst for me: I hear thy whisper in my heart—!"

"Brayvo! 'tis workin'! 'tis workin'! Give it tongue, brother Langman!" cried Billy, as a stevedore within the hold broke forth into a stentorian bass that made the ship rumble—

"The morning breaks, the shadows flee, Pure universal Love thou art: To me, to me thy bowels move, Thy nature and thy name is Love!"

Meanwhile young Tom Trevarthen had brought the children under the vessel's side, and was helping Clem up the ladder. Mrs. Purchase greeted them with a kiss apiece, and carried them off to the cabin, where they found Mr. Purchase eating bread and cream.

Skipper Purchase, a smart seaman in his day and a first-class navigator, had for a year or two been gradually weakening in the head; a decline which his wife noted, though she kept her anxiety to herself. She foresaw with a pang the end of their voyaging, and watched him narrowly, having made a compact with herself to interfere before he imperilled the Virtuous Lady. Hitherto, however, his wits had unfailingly cleared to meet an emergency. While she could count upon this, she knew herself competent to rule the ship in all ordinary weather.

"Help yourselves to cream," said Mr. Purchase, after giving them good-morning. "Clever men tell me there's more nourishment in a pound o' cream than in an ox. Now that may seem marvellous in your eyes?" He paused with a wavering, absent-minded smile. "'Tis the most nourishing food in the animal, vegetable, or mineral kingdoms,—unless you count parsnips."

"T'cht!" his wife put in briskly, banging down a couple of clean teacups on the swing-table. "Children don't want a passel o' science in their insides. Milk or weak tea, my dears?"

"I don't know," the skipper went on after another long pause, bringing his Uncertain eyes to bear on Clem, "if you've ever taken note what astonishing things folks used to eat in the Bible. There's locusts, and wild honey, and unleavened bread—I made out a list of oddments one time. Nebbycannezzar don't count, of course; but Ezekiel took down a whole book in the shape of a roll."

Mrs. Purchase signed to Myra to pay no heed, and engaged Clem in a sort of quick-firing catechism on the cabin fittings, their positions and uses. The boy, who had been on board but once in his life before, stretched out a hand and touched each article as she named it.

"The lamp, now?"

Clem reached up at once and laid his fingers on it, gently as a butterfly alights on a flower.

"How does it swing?"

"On gimbals."

"Eh? and what may gimbals be?"

"There's a ring fastened here,"—the boy's fingers found it—"and swinging to and fro; and inside the ring is a bar, holding the lamp so that it tips to and fro crossways to the ring. You weight the bottom of the lamp, and then it keeps plumb upright however the ship moves."

"Wunnerful memory you've got, to be sure—and your gran'father tells me you can't even read!"

"But he knows his letters," Myra announced proudly; "and when the new teacher comes he's to go to school with me. Susannah says so."

"How in the world did you teach'n his letters, child?"

"I cut them on the match-boarding inside the summer-house, and he traces them out with his fingers. If you go up you can see for yourself—the whole lot from A to Ampassy! He never makes a mistake—do you, Clem? And I've begun to cut out 'Our Father,' but it's slow work."

"Did ever you hear tell!" Mrs. Purchase turned to her husband, who had come out of his reverie and sat regarding Clem with something like lively interest. He had, in fact, opened his mouth to utter a scriptural quotation, but, checked on the verge of it, dropped back into pensiveness.

At this point Mrs. Purchase's practised ear told her that the stevedores were ceasing work, and she bustled up the ladder to summon her crew to swab decks. The old man, left alone with the children, leaned forward, jerked a thumb after her, and said impressively, "I named her myself."

"Who? Aunt Hannah?" stammered Myra, taken aback.

"No, the ship. I named her after your aunt. 'Who can find a virtuous woman?' says Solomon. 'I can,' says I; 'and, what's more, I done it: only I changed the word to lady, as more becoming to one of her haveage. Proverbs thirty-one, fourteen—turn it up when you get home, and you'll find these words: 'She is like the merchant ships, she bringeth her food from afar.'"

"Uncle," put in Myra breathlessly, "I want you to listen for a moment! Clem and I have run away this morning, and by this time Susannah will have found it out and be searching. If she sends down here, couldn't you hide us—just for a little while? The—the fact is, we've set our hearts on going with the rafts. There's no danger in this weather, and Tom Trevarthen has promised to look after us. I don't dare to ask Aunt Hannah; but if you could have a boat ready just when the rafts are starting, and hide us somewhere till then."—

Mr. Purchase did not seem to hear, but rose and opened a small Dutch corner-cupboard, inlaid with parrots and tulips, and darkly varnished. From it he took a large Bible.

"I'll show you the text I was speaking of."

"But, uncle."—

"They'm washing-down already," said he, lifting his head to the sound of rushing water on deck. "Your aunt will be back in a moment, and 'tis time for prayers."

Sure enough, at that instant the feet and ankles of Mrs. Purchase appeared on the ladder. "Tide's on the turn," she announced. "Keep your seats, my dears; the Lord knows there's no room to kneel, and He makes allowance." She set a small packed basket on the table, and turned to her husband. "You'll have to pray short, too, if the children are going with the rafts."

"Going?—Oh, Aunt Hannah!"

"Why, I'd a notion you wanted to! To be sure, if I'm wrong, I'm wrong, and 'tisn' the first time; but young Tom Trevarthen didn' seem to reckon so. There, get your prayers over and cut along; I'll make it all right with your grandfather and Susannah."

Ah, but it was bliss, and blissful to remember! The rafts dropped down past the town quay, past the old lock-houses, past the ivied fort at the harbour's mouth, and out to the open sea that twinkled for leagues under the faint northerly breeze, dazzling Myra's eyes. Tom Trevarthen grinned as he tugged at an enormous sweep with two other men, Methodists both, and sang with them and with Billy Daddo, who steered with another sweep, rigged aft upon a crutch—

"Praise ye the Lord! 'Tis good to raise Your hearts and voices in His praise."—

"Now what should put it in my noddle to take up with that old hemn?" asked Billy aloud, coming to a halt at the close of the first verse and scratching his head. "'Tidn' one of my first fav'rites—nothing in it about the Blood o' the Lamb—an' I can't call to mind havin' pitched it for years. Well, never mind! The Lord hev done it with some purpose, you may be sure."

"I call it a very pretty hymn," said Myra, for he seemed to be addressing her. "And isn't it reason enough that you're glad to be alive?"

"But I bain't," Billy argued, shaking his head. "You wouldn' understand it at your age, missy; but as a saved soul I counts the days. Long after I was a man grown, the very sound of 'He comes, He comes! the Judge severe,' or 'Terrible thought, shall I alone,' used to put me all of a twitter. Now they be but weak meat, is you might say. 'Ah, lovely appearance of death'—that's more in my line—

"Ah, lovely appearance of death! What sight upon earth is so fair? Not all the gay pageants that breathe Can with a dead body compare."—

"Don't!" Myra put both hands up to her ears. "Oh, please don't, Mr. Daddo! And I call it wicked to stand arguing when the Lord, as you say, put a cheerfuller tune in your head."

"Well, here goes, then!" Billy resumed "Praise ye the Lord." At the fifth verse his face began to kindle—

"What is the creature's skill or force? The sprightly man, or warlike horse? The piercing wit, the active limb, Are all too mean delights to Him. But saints are lovely in His sight, He views His children with delight; He sees their hope, he knows their fear, And looks and loves His image there."

"Ay, now," he broke out, "to think I didn' remember that verse about children when I started to sing! And 'twas of you, missy, and the young master here the dear Lord was thinkin' all the time!"

He dropped his eyes and, leaning back against the handle of the sweep, suddenly burst into prayer. "Suffer little children, O dear Jesus! suffer little children. Have mercy on these two tender lambs, and so bring them, blessed Lord, to Thy fold!"

As his fervour took hold of him he left the sweep to do its own steering, and strode up and down the raft, picking his way from balk to balk, skipping aside now and again as the water rose between them under his weight and overflowed his shoes. To Myra, unaccustomed to be prayed for aloud and by name, the whole performance was absurd and embarrassing. She blushed hotly under the eyes of the other men, and glanced at Clem, expecting him to be no less perturbed.

But Clem did not hear. The two children had taken off their boots, and he sat with the water playing over his naked insteps and his eyes turned southward to the horizon as if indeed he saw. With his blind gaze fastened there he seemed to wait patiently until Billy's prayer exhausted itself and Billy returned to the steering; and then his lips too began to move, and he broke into a curious song.

It frightened Myra, who had never heard the like of it; for it had no words, but was just a sing-song—a chant, low at first, then rising shrill and clear and strong, and reaching out as though to challenge the waters twinkling between raft and horizon. Through it there ran a note of high courage touched with tremulous yearning—yearning to escape yonder and be free.

She touched his hand. So well she loved and understood him, that even this strange outbreak she could interpret, though it caught her at unawares. For the moment he did not feel the touch; he was far away. He had forgotten her—alas!—with his blindness. She belonged to his weakness, not to his strength. For the while he dwelt in the vision of his true manhood, which only his one infirmity forbade his inheriting; and she had no place in it.

He came back to reality with a pitiful break and quaver of the voice, and turned his eyes helplessly toward her. She answered his gaze timidly, as though he could see her. She was searching his eyes for tears. But there was no trace of tears in them. He took the food she handed him from Aunt Purchase's basket; and, having eaten, laid his head in her lap and fell asleep.

Slowly under the noonday heat and through the long afternoon the two rafts moved across the bay, towing each its boat in which the rafters would return in the cool of the evening.

But the children did not return in them; for on the quay, where the balks were due, to be warped ashore unlashed and conveyed inland to the mines, stood Jim Tregay waiting with their grandfather's blood-mare Actress harnessed in a spring-cart. How came Jim here, at this distance from home?

"Been waiting for you these two hours!" he called to the children. "Jump into the boat there and come ashore. You'm wanted to home, and at once!"



CHAPTER VII.

THE HEIRS OF HALL.

They landed and clambered into the spring-cart.

"Nothing wrong at home, I hope?" called Tom Trevarthen from the quay's edge, as he pushed off to scull back to the raft.

"Oh, this is Susannah's nonsense, you may be sure!" called back Myra. "I suppose she carried her tales to grandfather, and he packed you off after us, Jim Tregay? Well, you needn't look so glum about it. Aunt Hannah gave us leave, and told Tom to look after us, and we've had a heavenly day, so Susannah may scold till she's tired."

"Hold the reins for a moment, Miss Myra, if you please." Jim left the mare's head and walked down the quay, holding up his hand to delay the young sailor, who slewed his boat round, and brought her alongside again. The pair were whispering together. Myra heard a sharp exclamation, and in a moment Tom Trevarthen was sculling away for dear life. Jim ran back, jumped into the cart, and took the reins.

"But what is he shouting?" asked Myra, as the mare's hoofs struck and slid on the cobbles and the cart seemed to spring forward beneath her. She clutched her brother as they swayed past mooring-posts, barrels, coils of rope, and with a wild lurch around the tollman's house at the quay-head, breasted the steep village street. "What's he shouting?" she demanded again.

Jim made no answer, but, letting the reins lie loose, flicked Actress smartly with the whip. Even a child could tell that no horse ought to be put at a hill in this fashion. Faces appeared at cottage doors—faces Myra had never seen in her life—gazing with a look she could not understand. All the faces, too, seemed to wear this look.

"What has happened?"

At the top of the hill, on a smoother road, the mare settled down to a steady gallop. Jim Tregay turned himself half-about in his seat.

"From battle and murder and from sudden death—good Lord, deliver us!"

"Oh, Jim, be kind and tell us!"

"Your grandfather, missy—the old maister! They found 'en in the counting-house this mornin' dead as a nail!"

Myra, with an arm about Clem and her disengaged hand gripping the light rail of the cart, strove to fix her mind, to bring her brain to work upon Jim's words. But they seemed to spin past her with the hedgerows and the rushing wind in her ears. A terrible blow had fallen. Why could she not feel it? Why did she sit idly wondering, when even a dumb creature like Actress seemed to understand and put forth all her fleetness?

"Who sent you for us? Susannah?"

"Susannah's no better than a daft woman. Peter Benny sent me. He took down the news to Mrs. Purchase, and she told him where you was gone. He called out the horse-boat and packed me across the ferry instanter."

Myra gazed along the ridge of the mare's back to her heaving shoulders.

"Clem!" she whispered.

"Yes," said the boy slowly, "I am trying to understand. Why are we going so fast?"

So he too found it difficult. In truth their grandfather had stood outside their lives, a stern, towering shadow from the touch of which they crept away to nestle in each other's love. Because his presence brooded indoors they had never felt happy of the house. Because he seldom set foot in the garden they had made the garden their playground, their real nursery; the garden, and on wet days the barn, the hay-lofts, the apple-lofts, any Alsatia beyond the rules, where they could run free and lift their voices. He had never been unkind, but merely neglectful, unsmiling, coldly deterrent, unapproachable. They knew, of course, that he was great, that grown men and women stood in awe of him.

When at length Jim Tregay reined up in the roadway above the ferry, they found a vehicle at a stand there, with a rough-coated grey horse in a lather of sweat; and peering over the wall from her perch in the spring-cart, Myra spied Mr. Benny on the slipway below, in converse with a tall, black-coated man who held by the hand a black-coated boy. As a child, she naturally let her gaze rest longer on the boy than on the man; but by and by, as she led Clem down the slipway, she found herself staring at the two with almost equal distaste.

Little Mr. Benny ran up the slipway to meet the children. His eyes were red, and it was with difficulty that he controlled his voice.

"My dears," he began, taking Myra by the hand and clasping it between his palms, "my poor dears, a blow indeed! a terrible blow! Your uncle—dear me, I believe you have never met! Let me present you to your uncle, Mr. Samuel, and your cousin, Master Calvin Rosewarne. These are the children, Mr. Samuel—Miss Myra and Master Clem—and, as I was saying, I sent a trap to fetch them home with all speed."

The man in black shook hands with the children gloomily. Myra noted that his whiskers were black and straggling, and that, though his upper lip was long, it did not hide his prominent yellow teeth. As for the boy, he shook hands as if Under protest, and fell at once to staring hard at Clem. He had a pasty-white face, which looked the unhealthier for being surmounted by a natty velveteen cap with a patent-leather up-and-down peak, and he wore a black overcoat, like a minister's, knickerbockers, grey woollen stockings, and spring-side boots, the tags of which he had neglected to turn in.

"You sent for them?" asked Mr. Samuel sourly as he shook hands, turning a fishy eye upon Mr. Benny. "Why did you send for them?"

"Eh?" stammered Mr. Benny. "Their poor grandfather, Mr. Samuel! I could not have forgiven myself. It was, after telegraphing to you, my first thought."

"I can't see with what object you sent for them," persisted Mr. Samuel, and pulled at his ragged whiskers. "Were they—er—away on a visit? staying with friends? If so, I should have thought they were much better left till after the funeral."

He shifted his gaze from Mr. Benny and fixed it on Myra, who flushed hotly. What right had this Mr. Samuel to be interfering and taking charge?

"We were not staying with friends," she answered, "or paying any visit. Clem and I have never slept away from home in our lives. We have been across the bay with the rafts—that's all; and Aunt Hannah gave Us leave."

He ignored her display of temper. "You've been let run wild, you two, I daresay," he replied, in a tone almost rallying. "I guess you have had matters pretty much your own way."

Poor Myra! This was the first whole holiday she and Clem had ever taken. But how could she tell him? She gulped down her tears—she was glad he had turned away without perceiving them—clutched Clem's hand in silence, and followed down to the boat, which Uncle Vro was bringing alongside.

As the party settled themselves in the sternsheets Master Calvin fixed his pale, gooseberry-coloured eyes on hers.

"You needn't show temper," he said slowly, with the air of a young ruminant animal.

"I'm not showing temper!" Myra retorted in a tone which certainly belied her.

"Yes, you are; and you've told a fib, which only makes things worse." He smiled complacently at having beaten her in argument, and Myra thought she had never met such an insufferable boy in her life.

He transferred his unblinking stare to Clem, and for half a minute took stock of him silently. "Is he blind," he asked aloud, "or only pretending?"

Myra's face flamed now. A little more, and she had boxed his ears; but she checked herself and, caressing the back of Clem's hand, answered with grave irony, "He was blind, up to a minute ago; but now, since seeing you, he prefers to be pretending."

Master Calvin considered this for almost a minute. "That's rude," he announced at length decisively.

But meanwhile other passengers in the boat had found time to get themselves at loggerheads.

"Your servant, Master Samuel!" began old Nicky affably, as he fell to his oars. "I hope I see 'ee well, though 'tis a sad wind that blows 'ee here. Ay, there's a prophet gone this day from Israel!"

Mr. Samuel frowned. "Good-evening," he answered coldly, and added, with an effort to be polite, "I seem to know your face, too."

"He-he!" Uncle Nicky leaned on his oars with a senile chuckle. "Know my face, dost-a? Ought to, be sure, for I be the same Nicholas Vro that ferried 'ee back and forth in the old days afore your father's stomach soured against 'ee. Dostn't-a mind that evening I put 'ee across with your trunks for the last time? 'Never take on, Master Sam,' said I— for all the parish knew and talked of your differences—'give the old man time, and you'll be coming home for the Christmas holidays as welcome as flowers in May.' 'Not me,' says you; 'my father's is a house o' wrath, and there's no place for me.' A mort o' tide-water have runned up an' down since you spoke they words; but here be I, Nicholas Vro, takin' 'ee back home as I promised. Many times I've a-pictered 'ee, hearing you was grown prosperous and a married man and had took up with religion. I won't say that years have bettered your appearance; 'tisn't their way. But I'd ha' picked out your face in a crowd—or your cheeld's, for that matter. He features you wonderful."

"I remember you now," said Mr. Sam. "You haven't grown any less talkative in all these years." He turned to Mr. Benny. "Your telegram was sent off at nine-forty-five. Was that as early as possible?"

"I can say 'yes' to that, Mr. Samuel. Of course I had to begin by quieting the servants—they were scared out of their wits, and it took me some time to coax them out of their alarm. Then, taking boat, I rowed down to the post-office, stopping only at the barque yonder, to break the news to Mrs. Purchase. She put on her bonnet at once and was rowed ashore. 'Twas from her, too, I learned the whereabouts of Miss Myra and Master Clem; for up at the house they could not be found, and this had thrown Miss Susannah into worse hysterics—she could only imagine some new disaster. At first I was minded to send a boat after them, but by this time the rafts were a good two miles beyond the harbour, and Mrs. Purchase said, 'No, they can do no good, poor dears; let them have their few hours' pleasure.' From the barque I pulled straight to the post-office, and sent off the telegram, and—dear me, yes—at the same time I posted a letter. I had found it, ready stamped, lying on the floor by my poor master's feet. It must have dropped from his hand; no doubt he had just finished writing it when the end came."

"But why such a hurry to post it?"

"It was marked 'Private and Immediate.'"

"For whom?"

Mr. Benny hesitated. "You will excuse me, Mr. Samuel."—

"Confidential?"

"As a matter of fact, sir, when Mr. Rosewarne marked his letters so I made it a rule never to read the address. But this one—coming upon it as I did—I couldn't help."—

"You prefer to keep the address to yourself?"

"With your leave, sir."

Mr. Samuel eyed him sharply. "Quite right!" he said curtly, with a glance at Uncle Vro; but the old man was not listening.

"Lord! and I mind his second marriage!" he muttered. "A proper lady she was, from up Tamar-way. He brought her home across water, and that's unlucky, they say; but he never minded luck. Firm as a nail he ever was, and put me in mind of the nail in Isaiah: 'As a nail in a sure place I will fasten him, and they shall hang upon him all the glory of his father's house, the offspring and the issue, all vessels of small quantity, from the vessels of cups even to all the vessels of flagons.' But the offspring and the issue, my dears," he went on, addressing Clem and Myra, "was but your poor mother. Well-a-well, weak or strong, we go in our time!"

As they landed and climbed the hill, Mr. Sam spoke with Peter Benny aside.

"They may ask about that letter at the inquest. You have thought of the inquest, of course?"

"If they do, I must answer them."

"So far as you know, there was nothing in it to cause strong emotion— nothing to account—?"

"Dear me, no," answered Mr. Benny, staring at him in mild astonishment; "so far as I know, nothing whatever."

After packing Susannah off to her room with a Bible and a smelling-bottle, Mrs. Purchase had set herself to reduce the household to order. "'Tisn't in nature to think of death," confessed Martha the dairy-girl, "when you'm worrited from pillar to post by a woman in creaky boots."

Above and beside her creaky boots Aunt Hannah had a cheerful, incurable habit of slamming every door she passed through. It came, she would explain, of living on shipboard where cabin was divided from cabin either by a simple curtain or by sliding panels. Be this is it may, she kept the house of mourning re-echoing that day "like a labouring ship with a cargo of tinware," to quote Martha again, whose speech derived many forcible idioms from her father, the mate of a coaster.

Nevertheless—and although it appeared to induce a steady breeze through the house, rising to a moderate gale when meals were toward—Aunt Hannah's presence acted like a tonic on all. She presented to Mr. Sam a weather-ruddied cheek, receiving his kiss on what, in so round a face as hers, might pass for the point of the jaw. In saluting Master Calvin she had perforce to take the offensive, and did so with equal aplomb. After a rapid survey of some three seconds she picked off his velveteen cap and kissed him accurately in the centre of the forehead.

"I meant to do it on the top of his head," she informed Myra later, "but the ghastly child was smothered in bear's-grease. Lord knows that, as 'twas, I very nearly slipped in my thumb and kissed that, as I've heard tell that folks do in the witness-box."

Myra did not understand the allusion; but from the first she divined that her aunt misliked Master Calvin and found that mislike consolatory.

"As for these two," the good lady announced, indicating brother and sister, "I allow to myself they'll be best out of the way till the funeral. I've been through the clothes-press, and put up their night-clothes and a few odd items in a hand-bag. 'Siah will be here at eight-thirty sharp, to take 'em aboard with him. For my part, I reckon to sleep here to-night and look after things till that fool Susannah comes to her senses. And as for you, Peter Benny, you'll stay supper, I hope, for there's supper ready and waiting to be dished—a roast leg of lamb, with green peas. It puts me in mind of Easter Day," she added inconsequently. "You may remember, Sam, that your poor father always stickled for a roast leg of lamb at Easter. He was a good Christian to that extent, I thank the Lord!"

"And I thank you, ma'am," protested Mr. Benny, "but I couldn't touch a morsel—indeed I couldn't, though you offer it so kindly."

"To my knowledge, you've not eaten enough to-day to keep a mouse alive. Well, if you won't, you won't; but I've been through the garden, and there's a dish of strawberries to take home to your wife."

Mrs. Purchase could not know—good soul—that in removing the two children to shipboard, to spare them the ugly preparations for the funeral, she was connecting their grandfather's death in their minds for ever with the most delightful holiday in life. Yet so it was. Punctually at half-past eight Mr. Purchase appeared and escorted them on board the Virtuous Lady; and so, out-tired with their long day, drugged and drowsed by strong salt air and sunshine and the swift homeward drive, they came at nightfall, and as knights and princesses come in fairy tales, to the palace of enchantment. As they drew close, its walls towered up terribly and overhung them, lightless, forbidding; but far aloft the riding-lamp flamed like a star, and Myra clapped her hands as she reached the deck and peered down into a marvellous doll's-house fitted with couches, muslin blinds, and brass-locked cupboards that twinkled in the lamplight. There was a stateroom, too, with a half-drawn red curtain in place of a door, and beyond the curtain a glimpse of two beds, one above the other, with white sheets turned back and ready for the sleepers—at once like and deliciously unlike the beds at home. The children, having unpacked their bag and undressed, knelt down side by side as usual in their white night-rails. But Myra could not pray, although she repeated the words with Clem. Her eyes wandered among marvels. The lower bed (assigned to Clem by reason of his blindness) was not only a bed but a chest of drawers.

"Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, Look upon a little child; Pity my simplicity."—

Her fingers felt and tried the brass handles. Yes, a real chest of drawers! And the washstand folded up in a box, and in place of a chair was a rack with netting in which to lay their garments for the night! "God bless dear Clem, and grandfather."—What was she saying? Their grandfather was dead, and praying for dead people was wicked. Susannah had once caught her praying for her mother, and had told her that it was wicked, with a decisiveness that closed all argument. None the less she had prayed for her mother since then—once or twice, perhaps half a dozen times—though slily and in a terror of being punished tor it and sent to hell. "And Susannah, and Martha, and Elizabeth Jane,"—this was the housemaid—"and Peter Benny, and Jim Tregay, and all kind friends and relations,"—including Uncle Sam and that odious boy of his? Well, they might go down in the list; but she wouldn't pretend to like them.

"Ready, my dears?" asked Uncle Purchase from outside. "Sing out when you're in bed, and I'll come and dowse the lights."

He did so, and stood for a moment hesitating, scarcely visible in the faint radiance cast through the doorway by the lamp in his own cabin. Maybe the proper thing would be to give them a kiss apiece? He could not be sure, being a childless man. He ended by saying good-night so gruffly that Myra fancied he must be in a bad temper.

"Clem!" she whispered, after lying still for a while, staring into darkness. "Clem!"

But Clem was already sound asleep.

She sighed and turned on her pillow. She had wanted to discuss with him a thought that vexed her. Did folks love one another when they grew up? And, if so, how did they manage it, seeing that so few grownups had anything lovable about them? Clem and she, of course, would go on loving each other always; but that was different. When one grown-up person died, were the others really sorry? No one seemed sorry for her grandfather—no one—except, perhaps, Peter Benny. . . .

For two days the children lived an enchanted life, interrupted only by a visit to Miss de Gruchy, the dressmaker across the water, and by a miserable two hours in which they were supposed to entertain their Cousin Calvin, who had been sent to play with them. The boy—he was about a year older than Myra—greeted them with an air of high importance.

"I've seen the corp!" he announced in an ogreish whisper.

Myra had the sense to guess that if she gave any sign of horror he would only show off the more and tease her. She met him, therefore, on his own ground.

"Well, you needn't think we want to, because we don't!"

"Oh, they'll show it to you before they screw it down. But I saw it first!"

For the next forty-eight hours this awful possibility darkened her delight. For it was a possibility. Grown people did such monstrous unaccountable things, there was no saying what they might not be up to next. And here, for once, was an ordeal Clem could not share with her. He was blind. Alone, if it must be, she must endure it.

She did not feel safe until the coffin had been actually packed in the hearse and the long procession started. To her dismay, they had parted her from Clem. He rode in the first coach beside Aunt Hannah and vis-a-vis with her Uncle Samuel and Cousin Calvin; she in the second with Mr. Purchase, Peter Benny, and Mr. Tulse the lawyer, a large-headed, pallid man, with a strong, clean-shaven face and an air of having attended so many funerals that he paid this one no particular attention. His careless gentility obviously impressed Mr. Purchase, who mopped his forehead at half-minute intervals and as frequently remarked that the day was hot even for the time of year. Mr. Benny was solicitous to know if Mr. Tulse preferred the window up or down. Mr. Tulse preferred it down, and took snuff in such profusion that by and by Myra could not distinguish the floating particles from the dust which entered from the roadway, stirred up by the feet of the crowd backing to let the carriages pass. Myra had never seen, never dreamed of, such a crowd. It lined both sides of the road almost to the church gate—and from Hall to the church was a good mile and a half; lines of freemasons with their aprons, lines of foresters in green sashes, lines of coastguards, of fishermen in blue jerseys crossed with the black-and-white mourning ribbons of the local Benevolent Club; here and there groups of staring children, some holding tightly by their mothers' hands; here and there a belated gig, quartering to give way or falling back to take up its place in the rear of the line. The sun beat down on the roof of the coach drawing a powerful odour of camphor from its cushions. For years after the scent of camphor recalled all the moving pageant and the figure of Mr. Tulse seated in face of her and abstractedly taking snuff. But at the time, and until they drew up at the churchyard gate, she was wondering why the ships in the harbour had dressed themselves in gay bunting. The flags were all half-masted, of course; but she had not observed this, nor, if she had, would she have known the meaning of it.

In the great family pew she found herself by Clem's side, listening to the lesson, of which a few words and sentences somehow remained in her memory; and again, as they trooped out, Clem's hand was in hers. But to the ceremony she paid little attention. The grave had been dug hard by the south-east corner of the churchyard, close by a hedge of thorn, on the farther side of which the ground fell steeply to a narrow coombe. The bright sun, sinking behind the battlements of the church tower, flung their shadow so that a part cut across the parson's dazzling surplice, while a part fell and continued the pattern on the hillside across the valley. And while the parson recited high over the tower a lark sang.

Someone asked her if she wished to look down on the coffin in its bed. She shrank away, fearing for the moment that the trick of which she had stood in dread for two days was to be played on her now at the last.

But the mysterious doings of her elders were not yet at an end, for no sooner had they reached home again than she and Clem were hustled into the parlour, to find Mr. Tulse seated at the head of the long table with a paper in his hand, and Mr. Samuel in a chair by the empty fireplace with Cousin Calvin beside him. Aunt Hannah disposed herself between the two children with her back to a window, and Uncle Purchase, having closed the door with extraordinary caution, dropped upon the edge of a chair and sat as if ready to jump up at call and expel any intruder.

Mr. Tulse glanced around with that quiet, well-bred air of his which seemed to take everything for granted. Having satisfied himself that all were assembled, he cleared his throat and began to read. His manner and intonation suggested family prayers; and Myra, not doubting that this must be some kind of postscript to the burial service for the private consolation of the family, let her mind wander. The word 'testament' in the first sentence seemed to make this certain, and the sentence or two that followed had a polysyllabic vagueness which by habit she connected with the offices of religion. The strained look on Aunt Hannah's face drew her attention away from Mr. Tulse and his recital. Her ear had been caught, too, by a low whining sound in the next room. By and by she heard him speak her own name—hers and Clem's together—and glanced around nervously. She had a particular dislike of being prayed for by name. It made her blush and gave her a curious sinking sensation in the pit of the stomach. Her eyes, as it happened, came to rest on her Uncle Samuel's, who withdrew his gaze at once and stared into the fireplace.

A moment later Mr. Tulse brought his reading to an end. There was a pause, broken by someone's pushing hack a chair. She gazed around inquiringly, thinking that this perhaps might be a signal for all to kneel.

Her aunt had risen, and stood for a moment with twitching face, challenging a look from Mr. Samuel, who continued to stare at the shavings in the fireplace.

Whatever Mrs. Purchase had on her lips to say to him, she controlled herself. But she turned upon Myra and Clem, and her eyes filled.

"My poor dears!" she said, stretching out both hands. "My poor, poor dears!"

Myra thought it passing strange that, if she and Clem were to be pitied for losing their grandfather, Aunt Hannah should have waited till now. She paid, however, little heed to this, but ran past her aunt's outstretched arms to the door of the counting-house. Within, on the rug beside the empty chair, weak with voluntary starvation, lay stretched the little greyhound, and whined for her master.



BOOK II.



CHAPTER VIII.

HESTER ARRIVES.

Hester Marvin stood on the windy platform gazing after the train. Her limbs were cramped and stiff after the long night journey; the grey morning hour discouraged her; and the landscape—a stretch of grey-green marsh with a horizon-line of slate-roofed cottages terminated by a single factory chimney—was not one to raise the spirits. Even the breeze blowing across the marsh had an unfamiliar edge. She felt it, and shivered.

She had been the only passenger to alight here from the train, which had brought her almost all the way from the Midlands; and as it steamed off, its smoke blown level along the carriage roofs, her gaze followed it wistfully, almost forlornly, with a sense of lost companionship. She knew this to be absurd, and yet she felt it.

Between the chimney and this ridge the train passed out of sight; but still her gaze followed the long curve of the metals across the marsh. They stretched away, and with them the country seemed to expand and flatten itself, yielding to the sky an altogether disproportionate share of the prospect—at any rate in eyes accustomed to the close elms and crooked hedgerows of Warwickshire.

She withdrew her gaze at last, and glancing up the long platform spied her solitary trunk, as absurdly forlorn as herself. A tall man—the stationmaster—bent over it, examining the label, and she walked towards him, glancing up as she passed the station clock.

"No use your looking at him," said the station-master, straightening himself up in time to observe the glance. "He never kept time yet, and don't mean to begin. Breaks my heart, he do."

"How far is it from here to Troy?"

"Three miles and a half, we reckon it; but you may call it four, counting the hills."

"Oh, there are hills, are there?" said Hester, and looking around she blushed; for indeed the country was hilly on three sides of her and flat only in the direction whither she had been staring after the train.

The stationmaster did not observe her confusion. "Were you expecting anyone to meet you, miss?" he asked.

"Yes, from Troy. A Mr. Benny—Mr. Peter Benny." She felt for the letter in her pocket.

The stationmaster's smile broadened. "Peter Benny? To be sure—a punctual man, too, but with a terrible long family. And when a man has a long family, and leaves these little things to 'em—But someone will be here, miss, sooner or later. And this will be your luggage?"

"Three miles and a half, you say?—or four at the most?" Hester stood considering, while her eyes wandered across to a siding beyond the up-platform, where three men stood in talk before a goods van. Two of them were porters; the third—a young fellow in blue jersey, blue cloth trousers, and a peaked cap—was apparently persuading them to open the van, which they no sooner did than he leapt inside. Hester heard him calling from within the van and the two porters laughing. "Four miles?" She turned to the station-master again. "I can walk that easily. You have a cloak-room, I suppose, where I can leave my trunk?"

"I'll take it home with me, miss, for safety: that is, if you're really bent on walking." He jerked his thumb toward a cottage on the slope behind. "No favour at all. I'm just going back to breakfast, and it won't take me a minute to fetch out a barrow and run it home. Whoever comes for your luggage will know where to call. You'd best give me your handbag too."

"Thank you, but I can carry that easily."

"The Bennys always turn up sooner or later," he went on musingly. "If they miss one train, they catch the next. Really, miss, there's no occasion to walk. But if you must, and I may make so bold, why not step over to my house and have a cup of tea before starting? The kettle's on the boil, and my wife would make you welcome. We've a refreshment-room here in the station," he added apologetically, "but it don't open till the nine-twenty-seven."

Hester thanked him again, but would not accept the invitation. He fetched the barrow for her trunk, and walked some little distance with her, wheeling it. Where their ways parted he gave her the minutest directions, and stood in the middle of the roadway to watch her safely past her first turning.

The aspect of the land was strange to her yet, but the stationmaster's kindness had made it less unhomely. The road ran under the base of a hill to her left, between it and the marsh. It rose a little before reaching the line of slate-roofed cottages; and as she mounted this rise the wind met her more strongly, and with more of that tonic sharpness she had shrunk from a while ago. It was shrewd, yet she felt that it was also wholesome. Above the cottage roofs she now perceived many masts of vessels clustered near the base of the tall chimney. She bent her head against the breeze. When she raised it again after a short stiff climb, she looked—and for the first time in her life—upon the open sea.

It stretched—another straight line—beyond the cottage roofs, in colour a pale, unvaried grey-blue; and her first sensation was wonder at its bare simplicity. She rested her bag upon the low hedge, and stood beside it at gaze, her body bent forward to meet the wind.

For five minutes and more she stood there, so completely absorbed that the sound of footsteps on the road drew near and passed her unheard. A few paces beyond they came to a halt.

"Begging your pardon, miss, but that bag is heavy for you," said a voice.

She turned with a start, and, as she did so, was aware of a scent about her, not strong, but deliciously clean and fragrant. It came from a tuft of wild thyme on which her palm had been pressing while she leaned.

"Thank you, it is not heavy," she answered, in some confusion. "I—I just rested it here while I looked out to sea."

She knew him at once for the blue-jerseyed young man she had seen in talk with the porters; and apparently he had prevailed, for he stooped under the weight of a great burden, in which Hester recognised a blackboard, an easel, a coloured globe, and sundry articles of school furniture very cleverly lashed together and slung across his shoulder by a stout cord. He was smiling, and she smiled too, moved perhaps by the sight of these familiar objects in a strange land.

"If you'm bound for Troy, you may so well let me carry it, miss. There's a terrible steep hill to go up, and a pound or two's weight won't make no difference to what I got here."

She had taken up her bag resolutely and was moving on. The young man—it was most awkward—also moved on, and in step with her. She compressed her lip, wondering how to hint that she did not desire his company. A glance told her that he was entirely without guile, that he had made his offer in mere good-nature. How might she dismiss him and yet avoid hurting his feelings?

"They argued me down at the station," he went on. "Would have it the traps couldn' possibly be in the van. But I wasn't going to have my walk for nothing if I could help it. 'Give me leave to look,' said I; and I was right, you see!"

He nodded his head as triumphantly as his burden allowed. It weighed him down, and the stoop gave his eyes, when he smiled, an innocent roguish slant. Hester noted that he wore rings in his brown ears, and somehow these ornaments made him appear the more boyish.

"But what are you doing with a blackboard and easel?" she asked.

"They're for old Mother Butson. She lives with my mother and keeps school. Tidy little outlay for her, all this parcel! but she must move with the times, poor soul."

"Then hers is not a Board School?—since she is buying these things for herself."

"Board School? Not a bit of it. You're right there, miss: we're the Opposition." He laughed, showing two rows of white regular teeth.

"Are you a teacher too?"

She had no sooner asked the question than she knew it to be ridiculous. A teacher, in blue jersey and earrings! He laughed, more merrily than ever.

"Me, miss? My name's Trevarthen—Tom Trevarthen: and I'm a seaman; ordinary till last voyage, but now A.B." He said this with pride: of what it meant she had not the ghost of a notion. "A man don't need scholarship in my way o' life; but, being on shore for a spell, you see, miss, I'm helping the old gal to fight the School Board. 'Tis hard on her, too."

"What is hard?" Hester asked, her professional interest aroused.

"Why, to have the bread taken out of her mouth at her time of life. She sent in an application, but the Board wouldn't look at it. Old Rosewarne, they say, had another teacher in his eye, and got her appointed—some up-country body. Ne'er a man on the Board had the pluck to say 'Bo' when he opened his mouth."

"Rosewarne?" Hester came to a halt.

"That bag is too heavy for you, miss. Hand it over—do'ee now!"

"Are you talking of Mr. John Rosewarne?"

"Ay, Rosewarne of Hall—he did it. If you was a friend of his, miss, I beg your pardon; but a raspin' old tyrant he was. Sing small, you might be let off and call yourself lucky; stand up to 'en, and he'd have you down and your face in the dust if it cost a fortune."

"Wait a moment, please!" Hester commanded, halting for breath. They had reached a steep hill, and the tall hedgerows shut out the sea; but its far roar sounded in her ears. She nodded toward the bundle on his shoulders. "Are those things meant to fight the new schoolmistress?"

"That's of it. The old woman has pluck enough for a hunderd. But, as I tell her, she may get the billet now, after all, since the old fellow's gone, and Mr. Sam—they do say—favours the Dissenters."

"I don't understand. 'Gone'? Who is gone?"

"Why, old Rosewarne. Who else?"

"You are not telling me that Mr. Rosewarne is dead?"

"Beggin' your pardon, miss—but he's dead, and buried last Saturday. There! I han't upset you, have I? I took it for certain that everyone knew. And you seeming an acquaintance of his, and being, so to speak, in black."—

"But I heard from him only last Thursday—less than a week ago!" Hester's hand went to her pocket. To be sure she possessed, with Rosewarne's letter, a second from a Mr. Peter Benny, acknowledging her acceptance of the post, and promising that she should be met on her arrival, on the day and hour suggested by her. But Mr. Benny's letter had been cautiously worded, and said nothing of his master's death.

The young sailor had come to a halt with her, evidently puzzled, and for the fourth time at least was holding out a hand to relieve her of her bag.

"No!" she said. "You must walk on, please; I am the new schoolmistress."

It took him aback, but not in the way she had expected. His face became grave at once, but still wore its puzzled look, into which by degrees there crept another look of pity.

"You can't know what you'm doing then, miss; I'm sure of that. They haven't told you. She's a very old woman, and 'tis all the bread she has."

He stared at her, seeking reassurance.

"You are certainly right, so far: I have tumbled, it seems, into mysteries. But for aught I know, I am the new schoolmistress, and we are enemies, it seems. Now will you walk ahead, or shall I?"

Still he paused, considering her face.

"But if you knew what a shame it is!" he stammered. "And you look good, too!"

With a movement of the hand she begged him to leave her and walk ahead. But as she did so she caught sound of hoofs and wheels on the road above. They drew apart to let the vehicle pass, she to one side of the road, the young sailor to the other. A light spring-cart came lurching round the corner; and its driver, glancing from one to the other, drew rein sharply, dragging the rough-coated cob back with a slither on the splashboard, and bringing him to a stand between them.



CHAPTER IX.

MR. SAMUEL'S POLICY.

Hester's letter accepting the teachership had put Mr. Sam in something of a quandary. It came addressed, of course, to his father, and as his father's heir and executor he had opened it.

"'Hester Marvin'?" He read the signature and pondered, pulling his ragged whisker. "So that was the name on the letter you posted?" (No question had been asked about it at the inquest.)

"That was the name, sir," said Mr. Benny.

"Who is she? How did my father come to select her?"

Mr. Benny had not a notion.

"By her tone, they must have been pretty well acquainted," continued Mr. Sam, still pondering. "She signs herself 'Yours very truly,' and hopes he has been feeling better since his return. You know absolutely nothing about her?"

"Absolutely nothing, sir."

"I wish,"—Mr. Sam began, but checked himself. What he really wished was that Mr. Benny had used less haste in posting the letter—had intercepted it, in short. But he did not like to say this aloud. "I wish," he went on, "I knew exactly what the old man wrote; how far it committed us, I mean." And by 'us' again, he meant the Board of Managers, upon which he had no doubt of being elected to replace his father.

"You may be sure, sir," answered Mr. Benny, "that he made her a definite offer. My dear master was never one to make two bites of a cherry."

"Well, we must let her come, and find out, if we can, how far we're committed. Better write at once and fix a date—say next Thursday. You needn't say anything about my father's death. Just make it a formal letter, and sign your own name; you may add 'Clerk of the School Board.'"

"Can I rightly do that, sir?" Mr. Benny hesitated.

"Why not? You are the clerk, aren't you? As clerk, you answer her simply in the way of business. There's no need to call a meeting of the Board over such a trifle; though, if you wish, I'll explain it personally to the Managers. We may have a dozen cases like this before we get into working order—small odds and ends which require, nevertheless, to be dealt with promptly. We must do what's best, and risk small irregularities."

Mr. Benny, not quite convinced, fell to composing his letter. Mr. Sam leaned back in his chair and mused, tapping his long teeth with a paper-knife. He wondered what kind of a woman this Hester Marvin might be, and of what religious 'persuasion.' In a week or two he would succeed to his father's place on the Board. There would be no opposition, and it seemed to him natural and right that there should be none. Was he not by far the richest man in the parish? Samuel Rosewarne studied his Bible devoutly; but he did not seek it for anything which might stand in the way of his own will or his private advantage. When he came upon a text condemning riches, for instance, or definitely bidding him to forgive a debtor, he told himself that Christ was speaking figuratively, or was, at any rate, not to be taken literally, and with that he passed on to something more comfortable. He did not, of course, really believe this, but he had to tell himself so; for otherwise he would have to alter his whole way of life, or confess himself an irreligious man. But he was, on the contrary, a highly religious man, and he had no disposition to alter his life.

He hated the Church of England, too, because he perceived it to be full of abuses; and he supposed that the best way to counteract these abuses was to put a spoke in the Church's wheel wherever and whenever he could. In this he but copied the adversary—Parson Endicott, for example—who hated Dissent, perceiving that it rested on self-assertiveness, encouraging unlearned men to be opinionative in error. Perceiving this, Parson Endicott supposed himself to be combating error by snatching at every advantage, great or small, which exalted the supremacy of his Church and left Dissent the worse in any bargain. To neither of these men, both confident in their 'cause,' did it occur for a moment to leave that cause to the energy of its own truth.

The parson, however, was not likely to bring forward an opposition candidate; for that would conflict with a second principle of conduct, the principle of siding with the rich on all possible occasions. By doing this in his small way he furthered at once the cause of stable government—that is to say, the rule of the poor by the wealthy—and the cause of his own Church, which (he fully believed) in these times depends for existence upon mendicancy. Therefore Mr. Samuel would certainly be elected; and counting on this, he felt sorry to have missed the chance of giving the teachership, by his casting vote, to one of his own sect—some broad-minded, undenominational person who would teach the little ones to abhor all that savoured of popery. To be sure, this Hester Marvin might be such a person. On the other hand, his father had been capable of choosing some Jew, Turk, infidel, or heretic, or even papist. It remained to discover, first, what kind of woman this Hester Marvin might be; and next, whether or not the terms of her engagement amounted to a contract.

"By the way," said Mr. Sam, as Mr. Benny sat pursing his lips over the letter, "you take in a lodger now and then, I believe?"

"Now and then," Mr. Benny assented, looking up and biting the end of his quill. He did not understand the drift of the question. "Now and then, sir," he repeated; "when my wife's health allows."

"Then add a line, telling her she shall be met at the station, and that you will put her up."

"But, Mr. Samuel, I could scarcely bring myself to offer."—

"Tut, man; you don't ask her to pay. I'll see to that. Merely say that you hope she will be your guest until she finds suitable lodgings."

"That is very kind of you, sir."

"Not at all." He reached out a hand for Mr. Benny's letter, read it through, and nodded. "Yes, that will do; seal it up and let it go by next post. My father had great confidence in you, Benny."

"He ever did me that great honour, sir."

"I hope we shall get on together equally well. I daresay we shall."

"It comforts me to hear you say so, sir. When a man gets up in years— with a long family depending on him."—

"Of course, if this Miss Marvin should happen to give you further particulars of my father's offer, so much the better," said Mr. Sam negligently.

As the little man went down the hill toward the ferry he was pounced upon by Mother Butson, who regularly now watched for him and waylaid him on his way home.

"Hold hard, Peter Benny—it's no use your trying to slip by now!"

"I wasn't, Mrs. Butson; indeed, now, I wasn't!" he protested; though indeed this waylaying had become a torment to him.

"Well, and what have they decided?" The poor old soul asked it fiercely, yet trembled while waiting for his answer, almost hoping that he would have none.

Mr. Benny longed to say that nothing was decided; but the letter in his pocket seemed to be burning against his ribs. He was a truthful man.

"It don't lie with me, Mrs. Butson; I'm only the clerk, and take my orders. But I must warn you not to be too hopeful. The person that Mr. Rosewarne selected will come down and be interviewed. That's only right and proper."

All the village knew by this time what had happened at the last Board meeting.

"Coming, is she? Then 'tis true what I've heard, that the old varmint went straight from the meetin' and wrote off to the woman, and that the hand of God struck 'en dead in his chair. Say what you will,"—the cracked voice shrilled up triumphantly—"'tis a judgment! What's the woman's name?"

"That I'm not allowed to tell you. And look here, Mrs. Butson—you mustn't use such talk of my poor dead master; indeed you mustn't." He looked past her appealingly and at Mrs. Trevarthen, who had come to her doorway to listen.

"I said what I chose to 'en while he was alive, and I'll say what I choose now. You was always a poor span'el, Peter Benny; but John Rosewarne never fo'ced me to lick his boots. 'Poor dead master!'" she mimicked. "Iss fay!—dead enough now, and poor, he that ground the poor!" At once she began to fawn. "But Mr. Sam'll see justice done. You'll speak a word for me to Mr. Sam? He's a professin' Christian, and like as not when this woman shows herself she'll turn out to be some red-hot atheist or Jesuit. To bring the like o' they here was just the dirty trick that old heathen of yours would enjoy. Some blasphemy it must ha' been, or the hand o' God'd never have struck 'en as it did."

"Folks are saying," put in Mrs. Trevarthen from the doorway, "that Sall here ill-wished 'en. But she didn't. 'Twas his own sins compassed his end. Look to your ways, Peter Benny! Your master was an unbeliever and an oppressor, and now he's in hell-fire."

Mr. Benny put his hands to his ears and ran from these terrible women. For the moment they had both believed what they said, and yet old Rosewarne's belief or unbelief had nothing to do with their hatred. They gloated because he had been removed in the act of doing that which would certainly impoverish them. They, neither less nor more than Mr. Sam and Parson Endicott, made identical the will of God with their own wants.

Peter Benny as he crossed the ferry would have been uneasier and unhappier had he understood Mr. Sam's parting words. He had not understood them because he had never laid a scheme against man, woman, or child in his life. Still he was uneasy and unhappy enough: first, because it hurt him that anyone should speak as these old women had spoken of his dead master; next, because he really felt sorry for them, and was carrying a letter to their hurt; again because, in spite of Mr. Sam's reassuring words, he could not shake off a sense of having exceeded his duties by signing that letter without consulting the Board; and lastly, because in his confusion he had forgotten his wife's state of health, and must break to the poor woman, just arisen from bed and nursing a three-weeks'-old baby, that he had invited a lodger. Now that he came to think of it, there was not a spare bedroom in the house!



CHAPTER X.

NUNCEY.

The driver of the spring-cart was a brown-skinned, bright-eyed, and exceedingly pretty damsel of eighteen or twenty, in a pink print frock with a large crimson rose pinned in its bodice, and a pink sun-bonnet, under the pent of which her dark hair curtained her temples in two ample rippling bands.

"Why, hullo!" She reined up. Hester and the young sailor had fallen apart to let her pass, and from her perch she stared down from one side of the road to the other with a puzzled, jolly smile. "Mornin', Tom!"

"Mornin', Nuncey!"

"Sakes alive! What be carryin' there 'pon your back?"

"School furnitcher."

The girl's eyes wandered from the bundle to Hester, and grew wide with surmise.

"You don't mean to tell me you're the new schoolmistress!"

"Yes, I'm Hester Marvin."

"And I pictered 'ee a frump! But, my dear soul," she asked with sudden solemnity, "what makes 'ee do it?"

"Do what?"

"Why, teach school? I al'ays reckoned that a trade for old persons— toteling poor bodies, 'most past any use except to worrit the children."

"And so 'tis," put in the young sailor angrily.

"Han't been crossed in love, have 'ee? But there! what be I clackin' about, when better fit I was askin' your pardon for bein' so late? I'm sent to fetch you over to Troy. Ought to have been here more'n a half-hour ago; but when you've five children to wash an' dress an' get breakfast for an' see their boots is shined, and after that to catch the hoss and put'n to cart—well, you'll have to forgive it. That's your luggage Tom's carryin', I s'pose?—and a funny passel of traps school teachers travel with, I will say. You must be clever, though; else you couldn't have coaxed Tom Trevarthen to shoulder such a load. He wouldn't lift his little finger for me." She shot this unrighteous shaft with a mischievous side-glance, and laughed. She had beautiful teeth, and laughing became her mightily.

"But that is not my luggage."

"Not your luggage! Then where—Hullo! have you two been quarrellin'? Well, I never! You can't have lost much time about it."

"I left my trunk at the station," Hester went on, flushing yet redder with annoyance.

"And this here belongs to Mother Butson," declared Tom Trevarthen, red also. "I'm fetchin' it home for her."

"Then take and pitch it into the tail of the trap; and you, my dear, hand up your bag and climb up alongside o' me. We'll drive back to station, fetch your trunk, and be back in time to overtake Tom at the top o' the hill and give him a lift home. There's plenty room for three on the seat—that is, by squeezin' a bit."

"You're very kind, Nuncey," said Tom Trevarthen sullenly. "But I'll not take a lift alongside o' she; and I'll not trouble you with my load, neither."

"Please yourself, you foolish mortal, you. But—I declare! You must have had a tiff!"

"No tiff at all," corrected Tom, sturdily wrathful. "It's despise her I do—comin' here and drivin' an old 'ooman to the workhouse!"

He turned on his heel and trudged away stubbornly up the hill.

Nuncey gazed back at him for a moment over her shoulder.

"Never saw Tom in such a tear in all my life," she commented cheerfully. "Take 'en all the week round, you couldn't find a better-natered boy. Well, jump up, my dear, and we'll fit and get your trunk. He may be cured of his sulks by time we overtake 'en."

Undoubtedly Hester had excuses enough for feeling hurt and annoyed; yet what mainly hurt and annoyed her (though she would not confess it) was that this sailor and this girl had each taken her as one on equal terms with themselves. She was a sensible girl, by far too sensible to nurse on second thoughts a conceit that she was their superior simply because she spoke better English. Yet habit had taught her to expect some degree of deference from those who spoke incorrectly; and we are all touchier upon our vaguely reasoned claims than upon those of which we have perfect assurance.

"J'p, Pleasant!" Nuncey called to the grey horse, flicking him lightly with the whip. The ill-balanced trap seesawed down the slope, and soon was spinning along the cliff-road, across which the wind blew with such force that Hester caught at her hat.

"Never mind a bit of breeze, my dear. And as for the touch of damp, 'tis nobbut the pride o' the mornin'. All for heat and pilchar's, as the saying is: we shall have it broiling hot afore noon. Now I come to think of it, 'tis high time we made our introductions. I'm Nuncey Benny—that's short for Annunciation. This here hoss and trap belongs to my mother. She's a regrater when in health; but there's a baby come. That makes eleven of us. You'll find us a houseful."

"Your father was kind enough to offer me,"—began Hester.

"Iss," broke in Nuncey; "father's kind, whatever else he may be. As for considerin' where to stow you, that never crossed his head. You mustn't think, my dear, that you bain't welcome. Only—well, I may so well get it over soon as late—you'll have to put up with a bed in the room with me. Shall you mind?"

"Of course I shall not mind," said Hester, conquered at once.

"Well, that's uncommon nice of you; and I don't mind tellin' 'ee 'tis the second load you've a-lifted off my mind. For, to start with, I made sure you was goin' to be a frump."

"But why?"

Nuncey had no time to explain, for they were now arrived at the stationmaster's cottage. The station-master himself welcomed them at the door, wiping his mouth.

"You'll step in and have a dish of tea, the both of you. It'll take off the edge of the mornin'."

Nuncey declined, after a glance at Hester, and at once fell to discussing the weather with the station-master while he hoisted in the trunk. Two of Hester's earliest discoveries in this strange land were that everyone talked about the weather, and everyone addressed everyone else as 'My dear.'

"Well, so long!" said the stationmaster. "Wind's going round wi' the sun, I see, same as yesterday. We're in for a hot spell, you mark my words."

"So long!" Nuncey shook the reins, and they started again. "Is that how sleeves are wearin', up the country?" she asked, after two or three glances at Hester's jacket.

"They are worn fuller than this, mostly," Hester answered gravely. "But you mustn't take me for an authority."

"I can see so far into a brick wall as most. Don't tell me! You're one to think twice about your clothes, for all you look so modest. Boots like yours cost more than I can spend on mine in a month o' Sundays; iss, and a trifle o' vanity thrown in. You've a very pretty foot—an' I like your face—an' your way o' dressin', if you weren't so sad-coloured. What's that for, makin' so bold?"

"It's for my father."

"There now, I'm sorry!—Always was a clumsy fool, and always will be. I thought it might be for old Rosewarne, you bein' hand-in-glove with him."

"But I scarcely knew him. It was only just now I heard the news."— Hester broke off, colouring again with annoyance. What did these people mean, that they persisted in taking for granted her complicity in some mysterious plot?

By and by, at the top of the hill, they overtook the young sailor.

"Got over your sulks, Tom?" inquired Nuncey cheerfully. "If so, climb up and be sociable—there's plenty room."

But Tom shook his head without answering, though he drew close to the hedge to let the trap pass. It is difficult to look dignified with a blackboard, an easel, and a coloured globe on one's back. The globe absurdly reminded Hester of a picture of Atlas in one of her schoolbooks, and she could not help a smile. A moment later she would have given all her pocket-money to recall that smile, for he had glanced up, glowering, and observed it.

Nuncey laughed outright.

"But all the same," she remarked meditatively as they drove on, "I like the lad for't. 'Tisn' everyone would do so much for the sake of an old 'ooman that never has a good word to fling at nobody, and maybe spanked 'en blue when he was a tacker and went to school wi' her. He's terrible simple; and decent, too, for a sailor. I reckon there's a many think Mother Butson hardly used that wouldn't crack their backs for her as he's a-doing."

"He spoke to me," said Hester, "quite as if I were doing a wickedness in coming—as if, at least, I were selfish and unjust. And I never heard of this Mother Butson till half an hour ago! Do you think I'm unjust?"

"Well," Nuncey answered judiciously, "if any person had asked me that an hour ago, I'd have agreed with Tom. But 'tis different now I've seen your face."

Nuncey and the stationmaster were wise weather prophets. Here on the uplands the grey veil of morning fell apart, and dissolved so suddenly that before Hester had time to wonder the miracle was accomplished. A flood of sunshine broke over the ripening cornfields to right and left; the song of larks rang forth almost with a shout; beyond the golden ridges of the wheat the grey vapour faded as breath off a mirror, and lo! a clear line divided the turquoise sky from a sea of intensest iris-blue. As she watched the transformation her heart gave a lift, and the past few hours fell from her like an evil dream. The stuffy compartment, the blear-eyed lamp, the train's roar and rattle, the forlorn arrival on the windy platform—all slipped away into a remote past. She had passed the gates of fear and entered an enchanted land.

As she looked abroad upon it she marvelled at a hundred differences between it and her native Midlands. It was wilder—infinitely wilder—than Warwickshire, and at the same time less unkempt; far more savage in outline, yet in detail sober almost to tidiness. It seemed to acknowledge the hand of some great unknown gardener; and this gardener was, of course, the sea-breeze now filling her lungs and bracing her strength. The shaven, landward-bending thorns and hollies, the close-trimmed hedgerow, the clean-swept highroad, alike proclaimed its tireless attentions. It favoured its own plants, too—the tamarisk on the hedge, the fuchsia and myrtle in the cottage garden. As the spring-cart nid-nodded down the hill towards Troy, the grey roofs of the town broke upon Hester's sight beyond a cloud of fuchsia blossoms in a garden at the angle of the road.

So steep was the hill, and so closely these roofs and chimneys huddled against it, that Hester leaned back with a catch of the breath that set Nuncey laughing. For the moment she verily supposed herself on the edge of a precipice. She caught one glimpse of a blue water and the masts of shipping, and clutched at the cart-rail as the old grey began to slither at a businesslike jog-trot down a street so narrow that, to make way for them, passers-by on foot ran hastily to the nearest doorways, whence one and all nodded good-naturedly at Nuncey. Of some houses the doors were reached by steep flights of steps tunnelled through the solid rock; of others by wooden stairways leading to balconies painted blue or green and adorned with pot-plants—geraniums, fuchsias, lemon-verbenas—on ledges imminent over Hester's head. The most of the passers-by were women carrying pails of water, or country folks with baskets of market stuff. The whole street seemed to be cleaning up and taking in provisions for the day, and all amid a buzz of public gossip, one housewife pausing on her balcony as she shook a duster, and leaning over to discuss market prices with her neighbour chaffering below. The cross-fire of talk died down as the dealers dispersed, snatching up their wares from under the wheels of the spring-cart, while the women took long, silent stock of Hester's appearance and dress. Behind her it broke forth again, louder than ever.

At the foot of the hill they swung round a corner, and passing a public-house and the rails of the parish church, threaded their way round two more corners, and entered a street scarcely less narrow than the other, but level. Here Nuncey drew up before an ope through which Hester caught another glimpse of blue-green water. They had arrived.

A grinning lad lifted out Hester's trunk and bore it down the ope to a green-painted doorway, where a rosy-faced, extremely solemn child stared out on the world over a green-painted board, fixed across with the evident purpose of confining him to the house. Having despatched this urchin to warn his mother that 'the furriner was come,' the lad heaved his burden over the board, dumped it down inside with a bang, and returned, still grinning amiably, to take charge of horse and cart.

"If you want to know t'other from which in our family," said Nuncey, "there's nothing like beginning early. This is Shake."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Father had him christened Shakespeare, but we call him Shake for short. It sounds more natural, somehow. And this here is Robert Burns," she went on, leading the way to the green-painted doorway where the small urchin had resumed his survey of the world beyond home. "That's another of father's inventions; but the poor cheeld pulled down the kettle when he was eighteen months old and scalded hisself all over, so he's gone by his full name ever since. Mother!" Nuncey called aloud, stepping over the barrier. "Here's the new school-teacher!"

A middle-aged, fair-haired woman, with a benign but puzzled smile, appeared in the passage, holding a baby at the breast.

"You're kindly welcome, my dear; that is, if you'll excuse my hair being in curl-papers. Dear me, now!" Mrs. Benny regarded Hester with a look of honest perplexity. "And I was expectin' an older-lookin' person altogether!"

Hester followed her into a kitchen which, though untidy and dim, struck her as more than passably clean; and it crossed her mind at once that its cleanliness must be due to Nuncey and its untidiness to Mrs. Benny. The dimness was induced by a crowd of geraniums in the window and a large bird-cage blocking out the light above them. A second large bird-cage hung from a rafter in the middle of the ceiling.

"And you've been travellin' all night? You must be pinin' for a dish of tea."—

But here a voice screamed out close to Hester's ear—

"What's your name? What's your name? Oh, rock and roll me over, what's your darned name?"

"Hester Marv—" she had begun to answer in a fright, when Nuncey broke out laughing.

"Don't 'ee be afraid of 'en—'tis only the parrot;" and Hester laughed too, recovering herself at sight of a grey and scarlet bird eyeing her with angry inquisitiveness from the cage over Mrs. Benny's head. Her gaze wandered apprehensively to the second cage by the window.

"Oh, he won't speak!" Nuncey assured her. "He's only a cat."

"A cat?"

"Iss. He ate the last parrot afore this one, and I reckon he died of it. Father had 'en stuffed and put 'en in the cage instead. Just go and look for yourself; he's as natural as life."

"I was thinkin' a ham rasher," suggested Mrs. Benny, with her kindly, unsettled smile. "Nuncey, will you hold the baby, or shall I?"

"You give me the frying-pan," commanded Nuncey, turning up her sleeves. "What's the matter with you, Robert Burns? And what's become of your manners?" she demanded of the urchin who had followed them in from the passage, and now stood gripping Hester's skirts and gazing up at her, as she in turn gazed up at the absurd cat in the parrot's cage.

"What great eyes she've got!" exclaimed Robert Burns in an awe-stricken voice.

"'All the better to see you with,'" quoted Hester, laughing and looking down on him.

"That's in Red Riding Hood. She knows about stories!" The child clapped his hands.

"Well," put in Mrs. Benny, seating herself with a sigh as the ham rasher began to frizzle, "you may say what you like about education, but mothers ought to thank the Lord for it. Sometimes, as 'tis, I feel as if the whole world was on my shoulders, and I can't be responsible for it any longer; but what would happen if 'twasn't for the school bell at nine o'clock there's no knowing. You'd like a wash, my dear?"

"I should indeed," answered Hester.

"Sometimes I loses count," went on Mrs. Benny, not pursuing her invitation, but standing with a faraway gaze bent upon the geraniums in the window; "but there's eleven of 'em, and three buried, and five at school this moment. I began with two boys—two years between each—and then came Nuncey. There's four years between her and Shake, but after that you may allow two years to each again, quite like Jacob's ladder."

"Lord bless 'ee, mother!" interrupted Nuncey, glancing up from the frying-pan, "she don't want to be told I'm singular. She've found out that already. Here's the kettle boilin'—fit and give her a cup of tea, and take her upstairs. 'Tis near upon half-past nine already, and at half-past ten father was to be here to fetch her across to see Mr. Samuel—though, for my part, I hold 'twould be more Christian to put her to bed and let her sleep the forenoon out."

When Hester descended to breakfast Mr. Benny had already arrived; and he too could not help showing astonishment at her youthful appearance.

"But twenty-five is not so young, after all," she maintained, laughing. "I feel my years, I assure you. Why are you all in conspiracy to add to them?"

"The late Mr. Rosewarne had given us no particulars," began Mr. Benny.

"He wrote at length to me about the school and his hopes for it."

"You knew him, then, Miss Marvin?"

"He was, in a fashion, a friend of my father's. He used to visit us regularly once a year.—But let me show you his letter."

"Not on any account!" Mr. Benny put up a flurried hand. "It—it wouldn't be right." He said it almost sharply. Hester, puzzled to know what offence she had nearly committed, and in some degree hurt by his tone, thrust the letter back in her pocket.



CHAPTER XI.

HESTER IS ACCEPTED.

"Well?" Mr. Sam lifted his eyes from his writing-table.

"Miss Marvin has arrived, sir, and is waiting in the morning-parlour," Mr. Benny announced.

"Let her wait a moment. I suppose she takes the line that we've definitely engaged her?"

"I don't know, sir, that she takes what you might call a line; but there's no doubt she believes herself engaged. She talks very frankly, and is altogether a nice, pleasant-spoken young person."

"You didn't happen to find out what my father wrote to her?"

"Of her own accord she offered to show me his letter."

"Well, and what did it say?"

"I didn't read it, sir."

"You didn't read it?" Mr. Sam repeated in slow astonishment.

"No, sir. I felt it wasn't fair to her," said Mr. Benny.

His employer regarded him for a moment with sourly meditative eyes.

"You had best show her in at once," he commanded sharply.

He reseated himself, and did not rise when Hester entered, but slewed his chair around, nodded gloomily in response to her slight bow, and, tapping his knees with a paper-knife, treated her to a long, deliberate stare.

"Take a seat, please."

Hester obeyed with a quiet 'Thank you.'

"You have come, I believe, in answer to a letter of my father's? Might I ask you what he said, exactly?"

Hester's hand went towards her pocket, but paused. She had taken an instant aversion from this man.

"My father," he went on, noting her hesitation, "has since died suddenly, as you know. His affairs are in some confusion, of course." This was untrue, but Mr. Sam had no consciousness of telling a lie. The phrase was commonly used of dead men's affairs. "In this matter of your engagement, for instance, I am moving in the dark. I can find no record of it among his papers."

"I answered him, sir; but my letter arrived, it seems, after his death. Mr. Benny replied to it."

"Yes, to be sure, I saw your letter, but it did not tell me how far the negotiations had gone."

"You are one of the Managers, sir?"

"Well, not precisely; but you will find that makes little difference. I am to be placed on the Board as my father's successor."

"The offer was quite definite," said Hester calmly. "I would show you the letter, but some parts of it are private."

"Now why in the world was she ready to show it to Benny?" he asked himself. Aloud he said, "You were a friend, then, of my father's? Is it for him, may I ask, that you wear mourning?"

"No, sir; for my own father. Mr. Rosewarne and he were friends—oh, for many years. I asked about it once, when I was quite a girl, and why Mr. Rosewarne came to visit us once every year as he did. My father told me that it had begun in a quarrel, when they were young men; it may have been when my father served in the army, in the barracks at Warwick. I don't remember that he said so, yet somehow I have always had an idea that the quarrel went back to that time; but he said that they had hated one another, and made friends after a long time, and that your father had the most to forgive, being in the wrong. I remember those words, because they sounded so queer to me and I could not understand them. When I was eighteen, I went out to get my living, and did not see Mr. Rosewarne for many years until the other day, though he came regularly."

"The other day?" Mr. Sam stared at her blankly.

"On the 5th. Mr. Rosewarne always paid his visit on the 5th of June."

"I don't understand you in the least. A minute ago you told me that your father was dead!"

"Yes; he died almost two months ago. But Mr. Rosewarne wrote and asked leave to come, since it was for the last time."

"Your mother entertained him?"

Hester shook her head. "I have no mother. He came as my guest, and that evening—for he never spent more than one night with us—we talked for a long while. He knew, of course, that I was a schoolmistress; and he began to mock at some things in which I believe very deeply. He did it to try me, perhaps. I don't know whether he came meaning to try me, or seeing me alone in the world, and making ready to leave the old home, he suddenly took this notion into his head. At any rate, I did not guess for a moment; and when he spoke scorn of girls' teaching, I answered him—too hotly, I thought at the time; but it seems that he forgave me." She rose. "I have told you all this, sir, because you say you are in the dark. I am here because Mr. Rosewarne offered me the post. But you seem disposed to deny this; and so in fairness I must consult a friend, if I can find one, or a lawyer perhaps, before showing you the letter."

"Wait a moment, please." Hester's story had held a light as it were, though but a faint one, to an unexplored passage in old Rosewarne's life; and to Mr. Sam every unexplored corner in that life was now to be suspected. "You jump to conclusions, Miss Marvin. I merely meant to say that as my father's executor I have to use reasonable caution. Might I inquire your age? Excuse me, I know that ladies—"

"I am twenty-five," she struck in sharply.

"Married, or unmarried?"

"Unmarried."

"You will excuse me for saying that I am surprised. A young person of your attractiveness—"

"Have you any more questions, sir?"

"Eh?—ah, to be sure! Qualifications?"

Hester briefly enumerated these. He did not appear to be listening, but sat eyeing her abstractedly, while he rattled the point of the paper-knife between his Upper and lower teeth.

"Yes, yes—quite satisfactory. Religious views?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Religious views?"

"If you really think that a necessary question, I was baptised and brought up in the Church of England."

"Not a bigoted Churchwoman, I hope?"

"Not bigoted, I certainly hope," Hester answered demurely.

"I feel sure of it," said Mr. Sam, rising gallantly. "In the matter of so-called apostolic succession, for instance—"

But here there came a tap at the door, and Elizabeth Jane, the housemaid, announced that Parson Endicott had called. "Show him in," ordered Mr. Sam promptly, and at the same time—having suddenly made up his mind—he flung Hester an insufferably confidential glance, which seemed to say, "Never mind him; you and I are in the same boat."

Parson Endicott suffered from shortness of sight and a high parsonic manner. He paused on the threshold to wipe his eyeglasses, adjusted them on his nose, and gazing around the room, cleared his throat as if about to address a congregation.

"Good-day, parson." Mr. Sam saluted him amiably, still without rising. "You've come in the nick of time. I have just been chatting with Miss Marvin here—our new schoolmistress."

Hester divined that, for some reason, Mr. Samuel had decided to accept her claim; and that for some reason equally occult he meant to give the clergyman no choice but to accept it.

"Indeed?—er—yes, to be sure, I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Marvin," said Parson Endicott mellifluously, with a glance which seemed to distinguish Hester kindly from the ordinary furniture of the room. This was his habitual way of showing cordial goodwill to his social inferiors, and the poor man had lived to the age of fifty-six without guessing that they invariably saw through it. Having bestowed this glance of kindness upon Hester, he turned to Mr. Sam with another, which plainly asked how far (as one person of importance conferring with another) he might take it that the creature before them was a satisfactory creature.

"You're in luck's way," said Mr. Sam, answering this look. "She's a Churchwoman."

"My dear Mr. Rosewarne,"—Parson Endicott pressed the finger-tips of both hands together, holding them in front of his stomach—"I am gratified— deeply gratified; but you must not suppose for one moment—h'm—whatever my faults, I take some credit to myself for broad-mindedness. A Churchwoman, eh?"—he beamed on Hester—"and in other respects, I hope, satisfactory?"

"Quite." Mr. Sam turned to Hester. "Would you mind running over your qualifications again? To tell the truth, I've forgotten 'em."

Hester, with an acute sense of shame, again rehearsed the list.

"Quite so," said Parson Endicott, who had obviously not been listening. He turned to Mr. Sam with inquiry in his eye. "I think, perhaps—if Miss Marvin—"

"I daresay she won't mind stepping into the next room," said Mr. Sam, turning his back on her, and calmly reseating himself. The parson glanced at Hester with polite inquiry, and, as she bowed, stepped to open the door for her. With head bent to hide the flush on her cheeks, she passed out into the great parlour.

Now the great parlour overlooked the garden through three tall windows, of which Susannah had drawn down the blinds half-way and opened the lower sashes, so that the room seemed to Hester deliciously fresh and cool. It was filled, too, with the fragrance of a jarful of peonies, set accurately in the middle of the long bare table; and she stood for a moment—her sight yet misty with indignant, wounded pride—staring at the reflection of their crimson blooms in the polished mahogany.

These two men were intolerable: and yet they only translated into meaner terms the opinion which everyone in this strange country seemed to have formed of her. She thought of the young sailor, of Nuncey, of Mr. Benny. All these were simple souls, and patently willing to believe the best of a fellow-creature; yet each in a different way had treated her with suspicion, as though she were here to seek her own interests, and with a selfish disregard of others'. The young sailor had openly and hotly accused her of it. Nuncey and her father, though kind, and even delicately eager to make her welcome, as clearly held some disapproval in reserve—were puzzled somehow to account for her. And she was guiltless. She had come in response to a plain invitation, thinking only of good work to be done. No; what she found intolerable was not these two men, but the whole situation.

She turned with a start. Something had flown in through the open midmost window, and fallen with a thud on the floor a few yards from her feet.

She stepped across and stooped to examine it. It was the upper half of a tattered and somewhat grimy rag doll.

To account for this apparition we must cross the garden, to the summer-house, where Myra and Clem had hidden themselves away from the heat with a book, and, for the twentieth time perhaps, were lost in the adventures of Jack the Tinker and the Giant Blunderbuss. As a rule Myra would read a portion of the story, and the pair then fell to acting it over together. In this way Clem had slain, in the course of his young life, many scores of giants, wizards, dragons, and other enemies of mankind, his sister the while keeping watch over his blindness, and calling to him when and where to deliver the deadly stroke. But to-day the heat disinclined them for these dramatic exertions, and they sat quiet, even on reaching the point at which Jack the Tinker, his friend Tom, the good-natured giant, and Tom's children, young Tom and Jane, fare forth with slings for their famous hunting.

"'They soon knocked down as many kids, hares, and rabbits as they desired. They caught some colts, placed the children on two of them and the game on the others, and home they went.'"

Myra glanced up at Clem, for this was a passage which ever called to him like a trumpet. But to-day Clem spread out both hands, protesting.

"'On their return, whilst waiting for supper, Jack wandered around the castle, and was struck by seeing a window which he had not before observed. Jack was resolved to discover the room to which this window belonged; so he very carefully noticed its position and then threw his hammer in through it, that he might be certain of the spot when he found his tool inside the castle. The next day, after dinner.'"—

"Wait a moment, Clem dear!"

"Oh, but we must!" Clem had jumped to his feet.

"It's too dreadfully hot. Very well, then; but wait for the end.

"'The next day, after dinner, when Tom was having his snooze, Jack took Tom's wife Jane with him, and they began a search for the hammer near the spot where Jack supposed the window should be; but they saw no signs of one in any part of the walls. They discovered, however, a strangely fashioned worm-eaten oak hanging-press. They carefully examined this, but found nothing. At last Jack, striking the back of it with his fist, was convinced from the sound that the wall behind it was hollow. He and Jane went steadily to work, and with some exertion they moved the press aside and disclosed a stone door. They opened this, and there was Jack's hammer lying amidst a pile of bones, evidently the relics of some of old Blunderbuss's wives, whom he had imprisoned in the wall and left to perish there!'"