The Counting House—so he called the single apartment in which he slung his hammock, wrote up his ledgers, interviewed his customers, and in the intervals cooked his meals on an oil-stove—was, in pact, a store of ample dimensions. To speak precisely, it measured thirty-six feet by fourteen. But Mr. Hucks had reduced its habitable space to some eight feet by six, and by the following process.

Over and above the activities mentioned on his business card, he was a landlord, and owned a considerable amount of cottage property, including a whole block of tenement houses hard by The Plain. Nothing could be simpler than his method of managing this estate. He never spent a penny on upkeep or repairs. On a vacancy he accepted any tenant who chose to apply. He collected his rents weekly and in person, and if the rent were not forthcoming he promptly distrained upon the furniture.

By this process Mr. Hucks kept his Counting House replete, and even crowded, with chattels, some of which are reckoned among the necessaries of life, while others—such as an accordion, a rain-gauge, and a case of stuffed humming-birds—rank rather with its superfluities. Of others again you wondered how on earth they had been taken in Mr. Hucks's drag-net. A carriage umbrella, for example, set you speculating on the vicissitudes of human greatness. When the collection impinged upon Mr. Hucks so that he could not shave without knocking his elbow, he would hold an auction, and effect a partial clearance; and this would happen about once in four years. But this clearance was never more than partial, and the residuum ever consisted in the main of musical instruments. Every man has his own superstitions, and for some reason Mr. Hucks—who had not a note of music in his soul—deemed it unlucky to part with musical instruments, which was the more embarrassing because his most transitory tenants happened to be folk who practised music on the public for a livelihood—German bandsmen, for instance, not so well versed in English law as to be aware that implements of a man's trade stand exempt from seizure in execution. Indeed, the bulk of the exhibits in Mr. Hucks's museum could legally have been recovered from him under writ of replevy. But there they were, and in the midst of them to-night their collector sat and worked at his ledger by the light of a hurricane lamp.

A knock at the door disturbed his calculations.

"Come in!" he called, and Dr. Glasson entered.

"Eh? Good evenin'," said Mr. Hucks, but without heartiness.

He disliked parsons. He looked upon all men as rogues more or less, but held that ministers of religion claimed an unfair advantage on the handicap. In particular this Dr. Glasson rubbed him, as he put it, the wrong way.

"Good evening," said Dr. Glasson. "You will excuse my calling at this late hour."

"Cert'nly. Come to pay for the coals? Fifteen tons best Newcastle at eighteen shillin' makes thirteen ten, and six pounds owin' on the last account—total nineteen ten. Shall I make out the receipt?"

"You don't seriously expect me, Mr. Hucks, to pay for your coals on the same day you deliver them—"

"No," Mr. Hucks agreed, "I didn' expect it; but I looked for ye to pay up the last account before I sent any more on credit. I've told Simmonds he was a fool to take your order, and he'll get the sack if it happens again. Fifteen tons, too! But Simmonds has a weak sort of respect for parsons. Sings in the choir somewhere. Well, if you ain't come to pay, you've come for something; to explain, may be, why you go sneakin' around my foreman 'stead of dealin' with me straight an' gettin' 'no' for an answer."

"Your manner is offensive, Mr. Hucks, but for the moment I must overlook it. The fact is, I want information, if you can give it, on an urgent matter. One of my charges is missing."

"Charges?" repeated Mr. Hucks. "Eh? Lost one of your orphans? Well, I haven't found him—or her, if it's a girl. Why don't you go to the police?"

"It is a boy. Naturally I hesitate to apply to the police if the poor child can be recovered without their assistance. Publicity in these matters, as no doubt you can understand—"

Mr. Hucks nodded.

"I understand fast enough."

"The newspapers exaggerate . . . and then the public—even the charitable public—take up some groundless suspicion—"

"Puts two and two together," agreed Mr. Hucks, still nodding, "and then the fat's in the fire. No, I wouldn' have the police poke a nose into the 'Oly Innocents—not if I was you. But how do I come into this business?"

"In this way. One of your employees was delivering coal to-day at the Orphanage—"

"Fifteen ton."

"—and I have some reason to believe that the child escaped by way of the coal-cellar. I am not suggesting that he was helped."

"Aren't you? Well, I'm glad to hear you say it, for it did look like you was drivin' at something o' the sort. I don't collect orphans, for my part," said Mr. Hucks with a glance around.

"What I meant to say was that your man—whoever he was—might be able to give some information."

"He might," conceded Mr. Hucks guardedly, "and he mightn't; and then again he might be more able than willin'."

"Must I remind you, Mr. Hucks, that a person who abets or connives at the sort of thing we are discussing is likely to find himself in trouble? or that even a refusal of information may be awkwardly construed?"

"Now see here, Glasson"—Mr. Hucks filled his pipe, and having lit it, leaned both elbows on the table and stared across at his visitor— "don't you ride the high horse with me. A moment ago you weren't suggestin' anything, and you'd best stick to that. As for my man— whoever he was—you can't charge him with stealin' one o' your blessed orphans until you lay hold on the orphan he stole and produce him in court. That's Habeas Corpus, or else 'tis Magna Charter—I forget which. What's more, you'd never face a court, an' you know it." He cast a curious glance at the Doctor's face, and added, "Sit down."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Sit down. No, not there." But the warning came too late. "Not hurt yourself, I hope?" he asked, as the Doctor rubbed that part of himself which had come into collision with the sharp edge of a concertina. "Clear away that coil of hose and take a seat on the packing-case yonder. That's right; and now let's talk." He puffed for a moment and appeared to muse. "Seems to me, Glasson, you're in the devil of a hurry to catch this child."

"My anxiety is natural, I should hope."

"No it ain't," said Mr. Hucks with brutal candour.

"And that's what's the matter with it. What's more, you come to me. Now," with continued candour, "I ain't what you might call a model Christian; but likewise you don't reckon me the sort that would help you pick up orphans just for the fun of handin' 'em over to you to starve. So I conclude," Mr. Hucks wound up, "there's money in this somewhere."

Doctor Glasson did not answer for a few seconds. He seemed to be considering. His eyes blinked, and the folds of his lean throat worked as if he swallowed down something.

"I will be frank with you, Mr. Hucks," he said at length. "There may or may not be, as you put it, money in this. I have kept this child for close upon eight years, and during the last two the Orphanage has not received one penny of payment. He was brought to us at the age of two by a seafaring man, who declared positively that the child was not his, that he was legitimate, and that he had relatives in good position. The man would not tell me their names, but gave me his own and his address—a coast-guard station on the East coast. You will pardon my keeping these back until I know that you will help me."

"Go on."

"Sufficiently good terms were offered, and for six years my charges were regularly met without question. Then payment ceased. My demands for an explanation came back through the Dead Letter Office, and when I followed them up by a journey to the address given, it was to learn that my man—a chief boatman in the coast-guard service—had died three months before, leaving no effects beyond a pound or two and the contents of his sea-chest—no will—and, so far as could be traced, no kith or kin. So far, Mr. Hucks, the business does not look promising."

"All right, Glasson. You keep a child for two years on charity, and then get into a sweat on losing him. I trust your scent, and am not disheartened—yet."

"The boy has considerable natural refinement."

"You didn't keep him for that?"

"It has often suggested to me that his parentage was out of the ordinary—that he probably has relatives at least—er—well-to-do. But the main point is that he did not escape to-day of his own accord. He was kidnapped, and in circumstances that convince me there has been a deliberate plot. To my mind it is incredible that these children, without collusion—" But here Doctor Glasson pulled himself up and sat blinking.

"Eh? Was there more than one?" queried Mr. Hucks, sharp as a knife.

"There was a small girl, not one of my charges. She called on me shortly after midday with a story that an aunt of hers, who may or may not exist, but whom she pretended to anticipate, took an interest in this child. While she waited for this aunt's arrival, the—er—matron, Mrs. Huggins, incautiously allowed her access to the kitchen garden, where—without my knowledge and against my rules—the boy happened to be working. The pair of them have disappeared; and, further, I have convinced myself that their exit was made by way of the coal-shaft."

"A small girl, you say? What age?"

"About ten, as nearly as I can guess. A slip of a child, very poorly dressed, and walking with a decided limp."

"I follow you this far," said Mr. Hucks, ruminating. "—Allowin' there's a plot, if 'tis worth folks' while to get hold o' the child, 'tis worth your while to get him back from 'em. But are you sure there's a plot? There it don't seem to me you've made out your case."

Mr. Hucks said it thoughtfully, but his mind was not working with his speech. The coals, as he knew—though he did not propose to tell the Doctor, at any rate just yet—had been delivered by Sam Bossom. Of complicity in any such plot as this Sam was by nature incapable. On the other hand, Sam was just the fellow to help a couple of children out of mere kindness of heart. Mr. Hucks decided to have a talk with Sam before committing himself. He suspected, of course—nay, was certain—that Glasson had kept back something important.

Thus his meditations were running when the Doctor's reply switched the current in a new direction.

"You have not heard the whole of it. As it happens, the man in charge of the coal-boat was not, as I should judge, one of your regular employees—certainly not an ordinary bargeman—but a person whose speech betrayed him as comparatively well educated."

"Eh?" Mr. Hucks sat upright and stared.

"I am not suggesting—"

"No, damme—you 'd better not!" breathed Mr. Hucks.

"Very possibly he had bribed your man with the price of a pot of beer. At all events, there he was, and in charge of the boat."

"You saw him? Spoke to him?"

"To be accurate, he spoke to me—down the coal-shaft, as I was examining it. I judged him to be simulating drunkenness. But his voice was a cultivated one—I should recognise it anywhere; and Mrs. Huggins, who saw and spoke with him, describes him as a long-faced man, of gentlemanly bearing, with a furred collar."

"Good Lord! Mortimer!" ejaculated Mr. Hucks, but inwardly.

"I need hardly point out to you that a bargee in a furred collar—"

"No, you needn't." Mr. Hucks rose from his chair. "See here, Glasson, you've come with a notion that I'm mixed up in this. Well, as it happens, you're wrong. I don't ask you to take my word—I don't care a d—n whether you believe me or not—only you're wrong. What's more, I'll give no promise to help—not to-night, anyway. But I'm goin' to look into this, and to-morrow I'll tell you if we play the hand together. To-morrow at nine-thirty, if that suits? If not, you can go and get the police to help."

"Time may be precious," hesitated Glasson.

"Mine is, anyway," Mr. Hucks retorted. "Let me see you out. No, it's no trouble. I'm goin' to look into this affair right away."

He handed the Doctor his lantern, opened the door for him, and walked with him three parts of the way across the yard. As they passed the caravan door his quick ear noted a strange sound within. It resembled the muffled yap of a dog. But Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer did not keep a dog.

He halted. "There's the gate. Good night," he said, and stood watching while Glasson passed out. Then, swinging on his heel, he strode back to the caravan.

"Mortimer!" he challenged, mounting to the third step and knocking.

"Ha! Who calls?" answered the deep voice of Mr. Mortimer after two seconds' interval.

"Hucks. And I want a word with you."

The door opened a little way . . . and with that someone within the van uttered a cry, as a dark object sprang out over the flap, hurtled past Mr. Hucks, and hurled itself across the court towards the gate.

"'Dolph! 'Dolph!" called an agonised voice—a child's voice.

"The dog's daft!" chimed in Mr. Mortimer.

"'E'll kill 'im!"

As Mr. Hucks recovered his balance and stared in at the caravan doorway, now wide open, from the darkness beyond the gate came a cry and a fierce guttural bark—the two blent together. Silence followed. Then on the silence there broke the sound of a heavy splash.



CHAPTER VIII.

FLIGHT.

"_So all night long and through the dawn the ship cleft her way." —ODYSSEY, ii.

Mr. Hucks ran. Mr. Mortimer ran. As they reached the gate they heard the voice of Doctor Glasson uplifted, gurgling for help.

They spied him at once, for by a lucky chance his lantern—one of the common stable kind, with panes of horn—had fallen from his grasp as he pitched over the edge of the basin. It floated, bobbing on the waves cast up by his struggles and splashings, and by the light of it they quickly reached the spot. But unluckily, though they could see him well enough, they could not reach Doctor Glasson. He clung to the head-rope of a barge moored some nine feet from shore, and it appeared that he was hurt, for his efforts to lift himself up and over the stem of the boat, though persistent, were feeble, and at every effort he groaned. The dog—cause of the mischief—craned forward at him over the water, and barked in indecent triumph.

Mr. Mortimer, who had gone through the form of tearing off his coat, paused as he unbuttoned his waistcoat also, and glanced at Mr. Hucks.

"Can you swim?" he asked. "I—I regret to say it is not one of my accomplishments."

"I ain't goin' to try just yet," Mr. Hucks answered with creditable composure. "They 're bound to fetch help between 'em with the row they 're making. Just hark to the d—d dog."

Sure enough the alarm had been given. A voice at that moment hailed from one of the boats across the water to know what was the matter, and half a dozen porters, canal-men, night watchmen from the warehouses, came running around the head of the basin; but before they could arrive, a man dashed out of the darkness behind the two watchers, tore past them, and sprang for the boat. They heard the thud of his feet as he alit on her short fore-deck, and an instant later, as he leaned over the stem and gripped Dr. Glasson's coat-collar, the light of the bobbing lantern showed them his face. It was Sam Bossom.

He had lifted the Doctor waist-high from the water before the other helpers sprang on board and completed the rescue. The poor man was hauled over the bows and stretched on the fore-deck, where he lay groaning while they brought the boat alongside the quay's edge. By this time a small crowd had gathered, and was being pressed back from the brink and exhorted by a belated policeman.

It appeared as they lifted him ashore that the Doctor, beside the inconvenience of a stomachful of dirty canal water, was suffering considerable pain. In his fright (the dog had not actually bitten him) he had blundered, and struck his knee-cap violently against a bollard close by the water's edge, and staggering under the anguish of it, had lost his footing and collapsed overboard. Then, finding that his fingers could take no hold on the slippery concrete wall of the basin, with his sound leg he had pushed himself out from it and grasped the barge's head-rope. All this, between groans, he managed to explain to the policeman, who, having sent for an ambulance stretcher, called for volunteers to carry him home; for home Dr. Glasson insisted on being taken, putting aside—and with great firmness—the suggestion that he would be better in hospital.

Sam Blossom was among the first to offer his services. But here his master interposed.

"No, no, my lad," said Mr. Hucks genially, "you've behaved pretty creditable already, and now you can give the others a turn. The man's all right, or will be by to-morrow; and as it happens," he added in a lower tone, "I want five minutes' talk with you, and at once."

They watched while the sufferer was hoisted into his stretcher. So the escort started, the policeman walking close behind and the crowd following the policeman.

"Now," said Mr. Hucks as they passed out of sight, "you'll just step into the yard and answer a few questions. You too, sir," he turned to Mr. Mortimer and led the way. "Hullo!"—he let out a kick at Godolphus snuffling at the yard gate, and Godolphus, smitten on the ribs, fled yelping. "Who the devil owns that cur?" demanded Mr. Hucks, pushing the gate open.

"I do," answered a voice just within, close at his elbow. "An' I'll arsk you not to fergit it. Ought to be ashamed o' yerself, kickin' a pore dumb animal like that!"

"Eh?" Mr. Hucks passed down into the darkness. "Sam, fetch a lantern . . . So you 're the young lady I saw just now inside o' the van, and unless I'm mistaken, a nice job you're responsible for."

Tilda nodded. 'Dolph's indiscretion had put her in a desperate fix; but something told her that her best chance with this man was to stand up to him and show fight.

"Is he drowned?" she asked.

"Drowned? Not a bit of it. Only a trifle wet, and a trifle scared— thanks to that poor dumb animal of yours. A trifle hurt, too."

"I'm sorry he wasn't drowned," said Tilda.

"Well, you 're a nice Christian child, I must say. Start with kidnappin', and then down on your luck because you haven't wound up with murder! Where's the boy you stole?"

"In the caravan."

"Fetch him out."

"Shan't!"

"Now look here, missie—"

"I shan't," repeated Tilda. "Oh, Mr. Bossom, you won't let them! They're strong, I know . . . but he's got a knife that he took when Mr. Mortimer's back was turned, and if they try to drag 'im back to that Orph'nige—"

"Stuff and nonsense!" Mr. Hucks interrupted. "Who talked about handin' him back? Not me."

"Then you won't?"

"I'm not sayin' that, neither. Fetch the boy along into my Counting House, You and me must have a talk about this—in fact, I want a word with everybody consarned."

Tilda considered for a moment, and then announced a compromise.

"Tell you what," she said, "I don't mind comin' along with you first— not if you let 'Dolph come too."

"I shan't let him murder me, if that's in your mind."

Mr. Hucks grinned.

"You can call the others in if he tries," Tilda answered seriously. "But he won't, not if you be'ave. An' then," she went on, "you can arsk me anything you like, an' I'll answer as truthful as I can."

"Can't I see the boy first?" asked Mr. Hucks, hugely tickled.

"No, you can't!"

"You're hard on me," he sighed. The child amused him, and this suggestion of hers exactly jumped with his wishes. "But no tricks, mind. You others can look after the boy—I make you responsible for him. And now this way, missie, if you'll do me the honour!"

Tilda called to 'Dolph, and the pair followed Mr. Hucks to the Counting House, where, as he turned up the lamp, he told the child to find herself a seat. She did not obey at once; she was watching the dog. But 'Dolph, it appeared, bore Mr. Hucks no malice. He walked around for thirty seconds smelling the furniture, found a rag mat, settled himself down on it, and sat wagging his tail with a motion regular almost as a pendulum's. Tilda, observing it, heaved a small sigh, and perched herself on the packing-case, where she confronted Mr. Hucks fair and square across the table.

"Now you just sit there and answer me," said Mr. Hucks, seating himself and filling a pipe. "First, who's in this?"

"Me," answered Tilda. "Me and 'im."

Mr. Hucks laid down his pipe, spread his fingers on the table, and made as if to rise.

"I thought," said he, "you had more sense in you 'n an ord'nary child. Seems you have less, if you start foolin'."

"I can't 'elp 'ow you take it," Tilda answered. "I got to tell you what's true, an' chance the rest. Mr. Sam Bossom, 'e gave us a 'and at the coal-'ole, an' Mr. Mortimer got mixed up in it later on; an' that's all they know about it. There's nobody elst, unless you count the pore woman at the orspital, an' she's dead."

"That aunt of yours—is she dead too?"

Tilda grinned.

"You've been talkin' to Glasson."

"P'r'aps," suggested Mr. Hucks, after a shrewd glance at her, "you'd best tell me the story in your own way."

"That's what I'd like. You see," she began, "I been laid up three weeks in 'orspital—the Good Samaritan, if you know it—along o' bein' kicked by a pony. End o' last week they brought in a woman—dyin' she was, an' in a dreadful state, an' talkin'. I ought to know, 'cos they put her next bed to mine; s'pose they thought she'd be company. All o' one night she never stopped talkin', callin' out for somebody she called Arthur. 'Seemed as she couldn' die easy until she'd seen 'im. Next day—that's yesterday—her mind was clearer, an' I arsked her who Arthur was an' where he lived, if one had a mind to fetch 'im. I got out of her that he was called Arthur Miles Surname Chandon, an' that he lived at 'Oly Innercents. So this mornin', bein' allowed out, I went down to the place an' arsked to see Arthur Miles Surname Chandon. First thing I noticed was they didn' know he was called Chandon, for Glasson took a piece o' paper an' wrote it down. I was afraid of Glasson, an' pitched that yarn about an aunt o' mine, which was all kid. I never 'ad no aunt."

"What's your name, by the way?"

"Tilda."

"Tilda what?"

"That's what they all arsks," said Tilda wearily. "I dunno. If a body can't do without father an' mother, I'll make up a couple to please you, same as I made up a aunt for Glasson. Maggs's Circus is where I belong to, an' there 'twas Tilda, or 'The Child Acrobat' when they billed me."

"You don't look much like an acrobat," commented Mr. Hucks.

"Don't I? Well, you needn't to take that on trust, anyway."

The child stepped down from the packing-case, stretched both arms straight above her, and began to bend the upper part of her body slowly backward, as though to touch her heels with the backs of her fingers, but desisted half-way with a cry of pain. "Ow! It hurts." She stood erect again with tears in her eyes. "But 'Dolph will show you," she added upon a sudden happy thought, and kneeling, stretched out an arm horizontally.

"Hep, 'Dolph!"

The dog, with a bark of intelligence, sprang across her arm, turned on his hind legs, and sprang back again. She crooked her arm so that the tips of her fingers touched her hip, and with another bark he leapt between arm and body as through a hoop.

"He don't properly belong to me," explained Tilda. "He belongs to Bill, that works the engine on Gavel's roundabouts; but he larned his tricks off me. That'll do, 'Dolph; go an' lie down."

"He's a clever dog, and I beg his pardon for kicking him," said Mr. Hucks with a twinkle.

"He's better 'n clever. Why, 'twas 'Dolph that got us out."

"What, from the Orph'nage?"

"Yes." Tilda described how the Doctor had shut her in his drawing-room, how she had escaped to the garden and found the boy there, and how 'Dolph had discovered the coal-shaft for them. "An' then Mr. Bossom 'e 'elped us out an' put us across the canal. That's all the 'and 'e took in it. An' from the canal I 'urried Arthur Miles up to the Good Samaritan; but when we got there his mother was dead—becos o' course she must a-been his mother. An' so," Tilda wound up, "I turned-to an' adopted 'im, an' we came along 'ere to arsk Mr. Bossom to 'elp us. An' now—if you give 'im up it 'll be a burnin' shame, an' Gawd'll pull your leg for it."

"That's all very well," said Mr. Hucks after a few moments' thought. "That's all very well, missie," he repeated, "but grown-up folks can't take your easy way wi' the law. You're askin' me to aid an' abet, knowin' him to be stolen; an' that's serious. If 'twas a matter between you an' me, now—or even between us an' Sam Bossom. But the devil is, these playactors have mixed themselves up in it, and the Doctor is warm on Mortimer's scent."

"I thought o' that d'reckly he told me. But O, Mr. 'Ucks, I thought on such a neav'nly plan!" Tilda clasped hands over an uplifted knee and gazed on him. Her eyes shone. "They told me you was keepin' them here for debt; but that's nonsense, becos they can't never pay it back till you let 'em make money."

"A fat lot I shall ever get from Mortimer if I let him out o' my sight. You don't know Mr. Mortimer."

"Don't I?" was Tilda's answer. "What d'yer take me for? Why everybody knows what Mr. Mortimer's like—everybody in Maggs's, anyway. He's born to borrow, Bill says; though at Hamlet or Seven Nights in a Bar-Room he beats the band. But as I said to his wife, 'Why shouldn' Mr. 'Ucks keep your caravan against what you owe, an' loan you a barge? He could put a man in charge to look after your takin's, so's you wouldn' get out o' reach till the money was paid: an' you could work the small towns along the canal, where the shows don't almost never reach. You won't want no more'n a tent,' I said, 'an' next to no scenery; an' me an' Arthur Miles could be the Babes in the Wood or the Princes in the Tower for you, with 'Dolph to fill up the gaps.'"

"Darn me," said Mr. Hucks, staring, "if you're not the cleverest for your size!"

"'Eav'nly—that was Mrs. Mortimer's word for it; an' Mr. Mortimer said 'twas the dream of 'is life, to pop—"

"Eh?"

"It began with pop—to pop something Shakespeare in places where they 'adn't 'eard of 'im. But you know 'is way."

Mr. Hucks arose, visibly pondering. 'Dolph, who had been keeping an eye on him, rose also, and 'Dolph's tail worked as if attached to a steam engine.

"There's a cargo, mostly beer, to be fetched up from Stratford," said Mr. Hucks after a pause. "Sam Bossom might take down the Success to Commerce for it, and he's as well out o' the way wi' the rest o' you."

Tilda clapped her hands.

"Mind you," he went on, "I'm not includin' any orphan. I got no consarn with one. I haven't so much as seen him."

He paused, with his eyes fixed severely on Tilda's.

She nodded.

"O' course not."

"And if, when you go back to the van and tell the Mortimers, you should leave the door open for a minute, forgetful-like, why that's no affair o' mine."

"I'm a'most certain to forget," owned Tilda. "If you'd been brought up half yer time in a tent—"

"To be sure. Now attend to this. I give Sam Bossom instructions to take the boat down to Stratford with three passengers aboard—you and the Mortimers—as a business speckilation; and it may so happen—I don't say it will, mind you—that sooner or later Mortimer'll want to pick up an extry hand to strengthen his company. Well, he knows his own business, and inside o' limits I don't interfere. Still, I'm financin' this voyage, as you might say, and someone must keep me informed. F'r instance, if you should be joined by a party as we'll agree to call William Bennetts, I should want to know how William Bennetts was doin', and what his purfessional plans were; and if you could find out anything more about W. B.—that he was respectably connected, we'll say—why so much the better. Understand?"

"You want Mr. Mortimer to write?" asked Tilda dubiously.

"No, I don't. I want you to write—that's to say, if you can."

"I can print letters, same as the play-bills."

"That'll do. You can get one o' the Mortimers to address the envelopes. And now," said Mr. Hucks, "I 'd best be off and speak to Sam Bossom to get out the boat. Show-folks," he added thoughtfully, "likes travellin' by night, I'm told. It's cooler."

Two hours later, as the Brewery clock struck eleven, a canal-boat, towed by a glimmering grey horse, glided southward under the shadow of the Orphanage wall. It passed this and the iron bridge, and pursued its way through the dark purlieus of Bursfield towards the open country. Its rate of progression was steady, and a trifle under three miles an hour.

Astride the grey horse sat Mr. Mortimer, consciously romantic. The darkness, the secrecy of the flight—the prospect of recovered liberty—beyond this, the goal! As he rode, Mr. Mortimer murmured beatifically—

"To Stratford! To Stratford-on-Avon!" Sam Bossom stood on the small after-deck and steered. In the cabin Mrs. Mortimer snatched what repose was possible on a narrow side-locker to a person of her proportions; and on the cabin floor at her feet, in a nest of theatrical costumes, the two children slept dreamlessly, tired out, locked in each others arms.



CHAPTER IX.

FREEDOM.

"O, a bargeman's is the life for me, Though there's nothin' to be seen but scener-ee!"—OLD SONG.

A pale shaft of daylight slanted through the cabin doorway. It touched Tilda's eyelids, and she opened them at once, stared, and relaxed her embrace.

"Awake?" asked Mrs. Mortimer's voice from the shadow above the locker. "Well, I'm glad of that, because I want to get to the stove. Sardines," said Mrs. Mortimer, "you can take out with a fork; but, packed as we are, when one moves the rest must follow suit. Is the boy stirring too?"

"No," answered Tilda, peering down on him. But as she slipped her arm from under his neck, he came out of dreamland with a quick sob and a shudder very pitiful to hear and to feel. "Hush!" she whispered, catching at his hand and holding it firmly. "It's me—Tilda; an' you won't go back there never no more."

"I—I thought—" said he, and so with an easier sob lay still.

"O' course you did," Tilda soothed him. "But what's 'appened to the boat, ma'am?"

"We are at anchor. If you want to know why, you had best crawl out and ask Mr. Bossom. He gave the order, and Stanislas has gone ashore to buy provisions. Marketing," said Mrs. Mortimer, "is not my husband's strong point, but we'll hope for the best."

The cabin doorway was low as well as narrow. Looking through it, Tilda now discerned in the gathering daylight the lower half of Sam Bossom's person. He sat with his legs dangling over the break of the stairway, and as the children crawled forth they perceived that he was busy with a small notebook.

"Why are we stoppin' here?" demanded Tilda, with a glance about her.

The boat lay moored against the bank opposite the towpath, where old Jubilee stood with his face deep in a nosebag. He stood almost directly against the rising sun, the effect of which was to edge his outline with gold, while his flank presented the most delicate of lilac shadows. Beyond him stretched a level country intersected with low hedges, all a-dazzle under the morning beams. To the left the land sloped gently upward to a ridge crowned, a mile away, by a straggling line of houses and a single factory chimney. Right astern, over Mr. Bossom's shoulder, rose the clustered chimneys, tall stacks, church spires of the dreadful town, already wreathed in smoke. It seemed to Tilda, although here were meadows and clean waterflags growing by the brink, and a wide sky all around, that yet this ugly smoke hung on their wake and threatened them.

"Why are we stoppin'?" she demanded again, as Sam Bossom, with a hurried if friendly nod, resumed his calculations.

"And four is fifteen, and fifteen is one-an'-three," said he. "Which," he added, looking up as one who would stand no contradiction, "is the 'alf of two-an'-six . . . You'll excuse me, missy, but business first an' pleasure afterwards. We're stoppin' here for the day."

"For the day?" echoed Tilda, with a dismayed look astern. "An' we've on'y come this far!"

"Pretty good goin', I should call it," Mr. Bossom assured her cheerfully. "Six locks we've passed while you was asleep, not countin' the stop-lock. But maybe you 're not used to travel by canal?"

"I thank the Lord, no; or I'd never 'ave put Mr. 'Ucks up to it. Why, I'd walk it quicker, crutch an' all."

"What'd you call a reas'nable price for eggs, now—at this time o' year?" asked Mr. Bossom, abstractedly sucking the stump of a pencil and frowning at his notebook. But of a sudden her words seemed to strike him, and he looked up round-eyed.

"You ain't tellin' me you put this in 'Ucks's mind?"

"'Course I did," owned Tilda proudly.

"An' got me sent to Stratford-on-Avon!" Mr. Bossom added. "Me that stood your friend when you was in a tight place!"

"No, I didn'. It was 'Ucks that mentioned Stratford—said you'd find a cargo of beer there, which sounded all right: an' Mortimer jumped at it soon as ever he 'eard the name. Mortimer said it was the dream of his youth an' the perspiration of his something else—I can't tell the ezact words; but when he talked like that, how was I to guess there was anything wrong with the place?"

"There ain't anything wrong wi' the place, that I know by," Mr. Bossom admitted.

"But I remember another thing he said, because it sounded to me even funnier. He said, 'Sweet swan of Avon upon the banks of Thames, that did so please Eliza and our James.' Now what did he mean by that?"

Mr. Bossom considered and shook his head.

"Some bank-'oliday couple, I reckon; friends of his, maybe. But about that swan—Mortimer must 'a-been talkin' through his hat. Why to get to the Thames that bird'd have to go up the Stratford-on-Avon to Kingswood cut, down the Warwick an' Birmingham to Budbrooke—with a trifle o' twenty-one locks at Hatton to be worked or walked round; cross by the Warwick an' Napton—another twenty-two locks; an' all the way down the Oxford Canal, which from Napton is fifty miles good."

"She'd be an old bird before she got there, at our pace," Tilda agreed. "But, o' course, Mr. Bossom, if we want to get to Stratford quick, an' you don't, you'll make the pace what you like an' never mind us."

"Who said I didn' want to get to Stratford?" he asked almost fiercely, and broke off with a groan.

"Oh, it's 'ard!—it's 'ard! . . . And me sittin' here calcilatin' eggs an' milk domestic-like and thinkin' what bliss . . . But you don't understand. O' course you don't. Why should you?"

Tilda placed her hands behind her back, eyed him for half-a-minute, and sagely nodded.

"Well, I never!" she said. "Oh, my goodness gracious mercy me!"

"I can't think what you 're referrin' to," stammered Mr. Bossom.

"So we're in love, are we?"

He cast a guilty look around.

"There's Mortimer, comin' down the path, an' only two fields away."

"And it's a long story, is it? Well, I'll let you off this time," said Tilda. "But listen to this, an' don't you fergit it. If along o' your dawdlin' they lay hands on Arthur Miles here, I'll never fergive you— no, never."

"You leave that to me, missie. And as for dawdlin', why if you understood about canals you 'd know there's times when dawdlin' makes the best speed. Now just you bear in mind the number o' things I've got to think of. First, we'll say, there's you an' the boy. Well, who's goin' to look for you here, aboard an innercent boat laid here between locks an' waitin' till the full of her cargo comes down to Tizzer's Green wharf or Ibbetson's? Next"—he checked off the items on his fingers—"there's the Mortimers. In duty to 'Ucks, I got to choose Mortimer a pitch where he'll draw a 'ouse. Bein' new to this job, I'd like your opinion; but where, thinks I, 'll he likelier draw a 'ouse than at Tizzer's Green yonder?—two thousand op'ratives, an' I doubt if the place has ever seen a travellin' theayter since it started to grow. Anyway, Mortimer has been pushin' inquiries: an' that makes Secondly. Thirdly, I don't know much about play-actors, but Mortimer tells me he gets goin' at seven-thirty an' holds 'em spellbound till something after ten; which means that by the time we've carted back the scenery an' shipped an' stowed it, an' got the tarpaulins on, an' harnessed up, we shan't get much change out o' midnight. Don't lose your patience now, because we haven't come to the end of it yet—not by a long way. By midnight, say, we get started an' haul up to Knowlsey top lock, which is a matter of three miles. What do we find there?"

"Dunno," said Tilda wearily. "A brass band per'aps, an' a nillumynated address, congratylatin' yer."

Sam ignored this sarcasm.

"We find, likely as not, a dozen boats hauled up for the night, blockin' the fairway, an' all the crews ashore at the 'Ring o' Bells' or the 'Lone Woman,' where they doss an' where the stablin' is. Not a chance for us to get through before mornin'; an' then in a crowd with everybody wantin' to know what Sam Bossom's doin' with two children aboard. Whereas," he concluded, "if we time ourselves to reach Knowlsey by seven in the mornin', they'll all have locked through an' left the coast clear."

Said Tilda, still contemptuous—

"I 'd like to turn Bill loose on this navigation o' yours, as you call it."

"Oo's Bill?"

"He works the engine on Gavel's roundabouts; an' he's the best an' the cleverest man in the world."

"Unappre'shated, I spose?"

"Why if you 'ad Bill aboard this boat, in less'n a workin' day he'd 'ave her fixed up with boiler an' engine complete, an' be drivin' her like a train."

Mr. Bossom grinned.

"I'd like to see 'im twenty minutes later, just to congratilate 'im. You see, missie, a boat can't go faster than the water travels past 'er—which is rhyme, though I made it myself, an' likewise reason. Can she, now?"

"I s'pose not," Tilda admitted doubtfully.

"Well now, if your friend Bill started to drive th' old Success to Commerce like a train, first he'd be surprised an' disappointed to see her heavin' a two-foot wave ahead of her—maybe more, maybe less—along both banks; an' next it might annoy 'im a bit when these two waves fell together an' raised a weight o' water full on her bows, whereby she 'd travel like a slug, an' the 'arder he drove the more she wouldn' go; let be that she'd give 'im no time to cuss, even when I arsked 'im perlitely what it felt like to steer a monkey by the tail. Next an' last, if he should 'appen to find room for a look astern at the banks, it might vex 'im—bein' the best o' men as well as the cleverest—to notice that he 'adn't left no banks, to speak of. Not that 'twould matter to 'im pers'nally—'avin' no further use for 'em."

Tilda, confounded by this close reasoning, was about to retreat with dignity under the admission that, after all, canal-work gave no scope to a genius such as Bill's, when 'Dolph came barking to announce the near approach of Mr. Mortimer.

Mr. Mortimer, approaching with a gait modelled upon Henry Irving's, was clearly in radiant mood. Almost he vaulted the stile between the field and the canal bank. Alighting, he hailed the boat in nautical language—

"Ahoy, Smiles! What cheer, my hearty?"

"Gettin' along nicely, sir," reported Mr. Bossom. "Nicely, but peckish. The same to you, I 'ope."

"Good," was the answer. "Speak to the mariners: fall to't yarely, or we run ourselves aground. Bestir, bestir!"

Tilda, who for the last minute or so had been unconsciously holding Arthur Miles by the hand, was astonished of a sudden to find it trembling in hers.

"You mustn' mind what Mr. Mortimer says," she assured the child encouragingly—"it's on'y his way."

Mr. Mortimer stepped jauntily across the gang-plank, declaiming with so much of gesture as a heavy market-basket permitted—

"The pirates of Parga, who dwell by the waves, And teach the pale Franks what it is to be slaves, Shall leave by the beach, Smiles, the long galley and oar—"

"I have done it, Smiles. In the words of the old-time classical geometer, I have found it; and as he remarked on another occasion (I believe subsequently), 'Give me where to stand, and I will move the Universe.' His precise words, if I recall the original Greek, were Dos Pou Sto—and the critical ear will detect a manly—er—self-reliance in the terse monosyllables. In these days," pursued Mr. Mortimer, setting down the market-basket, unbuttoning his furred overcoat, extracting a green and yellow bandanna from his breastpocket and mopping his heated brow, "in these days we have lost that self-confidence. We are weary, disillusioned. We have ceased to expect gold at the rainbow's foot. Speaking without disrespect to the poet Shelley"—here he lifted his hat and replaced it—"a new Peneus does not roll his fountains against the morning star, whatever that precise—er—operation may have been. But let us honour the aspiration, Smiles, though the chill monitor within forbid us to endorse it. 'A loftier Argo'"—Mr. Mortimer indicated the Success to Commerce with a sweep of the hand—

"A loftier Argo cleaves the main Fraught with a later prize; Another Orpheus—you'll excuse the comparison—sings again, And loves, and weeps—and dies."

"Stanislas, you have not forgotten the eggs, I hope?" interposed the voice of Mrs. Mortimer from the cabin.

"I have not, my bud. Moreover, as I was just explaining to our friend, I have secured a Pou Sto—a hall, my chick—or perhaps it might be defined more precisely as a—er—loft. It served formerly—or, as the poets would say, whilom—as a barracks for the Salvation Army; in more recent times as a store for—er—superphosphates. But it is commodious, and possesses a side-chamber which will serve us admirably for a green-room when the proprietor—an affable person by the name of Tench— has removed the onions at present drying on the floor; which he has engaged to do."

"Are you tellin' me," inquired Sam, "that you've been and 'ired the room?"

"At the derisory charge of four-and-six for the night. As a business man, I believe in striking while the iron is hot. Indeed, while we are on the subject, I may mention that I have ordered the bills. Professor and Madame St. Maw—my Arabella will, I know, forgive my reverting to the name under which she won her maiden laurels—it cost me a pang, my dear Smiles, to reflect that the fame to be won here, the honour of having popularised HIM, here on the confines of his native Arden, will never be associated with the name of Mortimer. Sic vos non vobis, as the Mantuan has poignantly observed. But for the sake of the children— and, by the way, how do my bantlings find themselves this morning? Tol-lollish, I trust?—for the sake of the children it was necessary, as we used to say with the Pytchley, to obscure 'the scent. Talking of scent, Smiles, it might be advisable—what with the superphosphates and the onions—to take some counteracting steps, which your ingenuity may be able to suggest. The superphosphates especially are—er—potent. And, by one of those coincidences we meet, perhaps, oftener than we note, Mr. Tench's initial is 'S'—standing for Samuel."

Mr. Mortimer extracted an egg from his basket and rubbed it with his bandanna thoughtfully before passing it down to his wife.

"So you've been an' ordered the bills too?" murmured Mr. Bossom. "And what will the bills run to?—if, as the treasurer, I may make so bold."

"To the sum of five shillings precisely, which will, of course, be hypothecated as a first charge upon our takings, and which I ask you, my dear Smiles, as treasurer to debit to that account in due form, here and now." It would have been hard to conceive any manner more impressively business-like than Mr. Mortimer's as he made this demand. "You will excuse my putting it so plainly, Smiles, but I may venture a guess that in the matter of conducting a theatrical tour you are, comparatively speaking, a tiro?"

"I've got to account to 'Ucks, if that's what you mean," Sam assented.

"The bill, Smiles, is the theatrical agent's first thought; the beginning which is notoriously half the battle. For three-inch lettering—and to that I restricted myself—five shillings can only be called dirt cheap. Listen—"

PROFESSOR AND MADAME ST. MAUR, OF THE LEADING LONDON THEATRES

PART I.—WITH VOICE AND LUTE, A POT-POURRI PART II.—AN HOUR WITH THE BEST DRAMATISTS

THE WHOLE TO CONCLUDE WITH THAT SIDE-SPLITTING DUOLOGUE ENTITLED,

'COURTSHIP IN THE RAIN'

PASSION WITH REFINEMENT AND MIRTH WITHOUT VULGARITY

Reserved Seats, One Shilling. Unreserved, Sixpence. Gallery (limited), Threepence only

DOORS OPEN AT 7.30; TO COMMENCE AT 8. CARRIAGES AT HALF-PAST TEN

"Why carriages?" asked Mr. Bossom.

"It's the usual thing," answered Mr. Mortimer.

"You bet it isn't, at Tizzer's Green. Well, the first job is breakfast, an' after breakfast we'll get Old Jubilee round by the footbridge an' make shift to borrow a cart down at Ibbetson's, for the scenery. You didn' forget the bacon?"

Mr. Mortimer unwrapped a parcel of greasy paper and exhibited six slices.

"A Baconian—O, Shakespeare, forgive!" He said this in a highly jocular manner, and accompanied it with a wink at Tilda, who did not understand the allusion. But again she felt the child's hand thrill and tremble, and turned about, eyeing him curiously. Her movement drew upon him the Mortimerian flow, ever ebullient and ever by trifles easily deflected.

"Yes, Arthur Miles—if I may trouble you to pass it down to the cook's galley—thank you; these eggs too—be careful of them—Yes, we are bound for Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespeare's birthplace!" Again he lifted and replaced his hat. "Enviable boy! What would young Stanislas Mortimer not have given at your age to set eyes on that Mecca! Yet, perchance, he may claim that he comes, though late, as no unworthy votary. A Passionate Pilgrim, shall we say? Believe me, it is in the light of a pilgrimage that I regard this—er—jaunt. Shall we dedicate it to youth, and name it Childe Arthur's Pilgrimage?"

By this time smoke was issuing in a steady stream from the stove-pipe above the cabin-top, and presently from within came the hiss and fragrance of bacon frying. Sam Bossom had stepped ashore, and called to the children to help in collecting sticks and build a fire for the tea-kettle. Tilda, used though she was to nomad life, had never known so delightful a picnic. Only her eyes wandered back apprehensively, now and then, to the smoke of the great town. As for Arthur Miles—Childe Arthur, as Mr. Mortimer henceforth insisted on their calling him—he had apparently cast away all dread of pursuit. Once, inhaling the smell of the wood fire, he even laughed aloud—a strange laugh, and at its close uncannily like a sob. Tilda, watching him quietly, observed that he trembled too—trembled all over—from time to time. She observed, too, that this happened when he looked up from the fire and the kettle; but also that in looking up he never once looked back, that his eyes always wandered along the still waterway and to the horizon ahead. This puzzled her completely.

Breakfast followed, and was delightful, though not unaccompanied by terrors. A barge hove in sight, wending downwards from Bursfield, and the children hid. It passed them, and after ten minutes came a couple from the same direction, with two horses hauling at the first, and the second (which Sam called a butty-boat) towed astern. Each boat had a steersman, and the steersman called to Sam and asked for news of his young woman; whereupon Sam called back, offering to punch their heads for twopence. But it was all very good-natured. They passed on laughing, and the children re-emerged. The sun shone; the smoke of the embers floated against it, across the boat, on the gentlest of breezes; the food was coarse, but they were hungry; the water motionless, but Mr. Mortimer's talk seemed to put a current into it, calling them southward and to high adventures—southward where no smoke was, and the swallows skimmed over the scented water-meads. Even the gaudily-painted cups and saucers, which Mr. Mortimer produced from a gaudily-painted cupboard, made part of the romance. Tilda had never seen the like. They were decorated round the rims with bands of red and green and yellow; the very egg-cups were similarly banded; and portraits of the late Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort decorated the cupboard's two panels.

Breakfast over, she helped Mr. Mortimer to wash up, and while she helped was conscious of a new and uncomfortable feeling, of which she could make no account with herself. It was not the stuffiness of the cabin that oppressed her; nor the dread of pursuit; nor anxiety for Arthur Miles, lest he should run off and fall into mischief. By stooping a little she could keep him in view, for he had settled himself on the after-deck, and was playing with 'Dolph—or, rather, was feeling 'Dolph's ears and paws in a wondering fashion, as one to whom even a dog was something new and marvellous; and 'Dolph, stretched on his side in the sunshine, was undergoing the inspection with great complaisance. No; the cause of her restlessness was yet to seek.

She went out and sat upon the cabin step for awhile, deep in thought, her eyes fixed on Sam Bossom, who, just beyond the cabin roof, was stooping over the well and untying its tarpaulins. By and by she sprang to her feet and walked forward to him.

"Mr. Bossom," she said with decision, "I know what's the matter with me."

"Then," answered Sam, "you 're luckier than most people."

"I want a wash."

"Do you, now? Well, as to that, o' course you're the best judge; but I 'adn't noticed it."

"You wouldn't, 'ardly," said Tilda, "seein' as I 'ad one on'y yestiddy. But that's the worst of 'orspitals. They get you inside, an' a'most before you know where you are, they've set up a 'abit. I dessay it'll wear off, all right; but oh, Mr. Bossom—"

"Would you mind callin' me Sam? It's more ushual."

"Oh, Mr. Sam, this mornin' I'm feelin' it all over. If I got a pailful out o' the canal, now?"

"I wouldn' recommend it—not 'ereabouts." Sam, eyeing her with his head cocked slightly aside, spoke gently as one coaxing a victim of the drink habit. "But, as it 'appens, a furlong this side of Ibbetson's you'll find the very place. Take Arthur Miles along with you. He'll be thankful for it, later on—an' I'll loan you a cake o' soap."



CHAPTER X.

THE FOUR DIAMONDS.

"Where the hazel bank is steepest, Where the shadow falls the deepest, Where the clustering nuts fall free, That's the way for Billy and me."—JAMES HOGG.

The spot was a hollow between two grassy meadows, where a brook came winding with a gentle fall, under coverts of hazel, willow and alder, to feed the canal. It was a quite diminutive brook, and its inflow, by the wharf known as Ibbetson's, troubled the stagnant canal water for a very short distance. But it availed, a mile above, to turn a mill, and— a marvel in this country of factories—it had escaped pollution. Below the mill-dam it hurried down a pretty steep declivity, dodging its channel from side to side, but always undercutting the bank on one side, while on the other it left miniature creeks or shoals and spits where the minnows played and the water-flies dried their wings on the warm pebbles; always, save that twice or thrice before finding its outlet it paused below one of these pebbly spits to widen and deepen itself into a pool where it was odds that the sun, slanting through the bushes, showed a brown trout lurking.

By such a pool—but they had scared away the trout—our two children were busy. Tilda, her ablutions over, had handed the cake of soap to Arthur Miles, scrambled out on the deeper side, and ensconced herself in the fork of an overhanging hazel-mote; where, having reached for a cluster of nuts and cracked them, she sat and munched, with petticoat dripping and bare legs dangling over the pool.

"Be sure you don't fergit be'ind the ears," she admonished the boy. "You may think you're on'y a small boy an' nobody's goin' to search yer corners; but back at the Good Samaritan there was a tex' nailed up— Thou Gawd seest me; and Sister said 'E was most partic'lar just in the little places you wouldn't think."

By her orders the boy had stripped off shirt and stockings, and stood now almost knee-deep in the water, lathering his hair and face and neck and shoulders with vigour. Tilda observed that his skin was delicately fair and white. She had never seen a more beautiful boy. But he was slender, and would need mothering.

"You're comin' to it nicely," she called down to him. "It feels funny to start with, but in the end you'll a'most get to like it."

"I do like it."

She considered for a while.

"If that's so," she said, "you 'd better strip all over an' 'ave done with it. I was bringin' you to it gradual."

"But—"

"Oh, that's all right. I knows my manners. Be quick as you can, so's not to catch cold, an' I'll take a stroll up the bank an' give a call if anyone's comin'."

She scrambled back to firm ground and set off for a saunter up stream, pausing here to reach for a nut, there to pluck a ripe blackberry, and again to examine a tangle of bryony, or the deep-red fruit of the honey-suckle; for almost all her waking life had been spent in towns among crowds, and these things were new and strange to her. She met no one on her way until, where the stream twisted between a double fold of green pasture slopes, she came to the mill—a tall rickety building, with a tiled roof that time had darkened and greened with lichens, and a tall wheel turning slowly in a splash of water, and bright water dancing over a weir below. In the doorway leaned a middle-aged man, powdered all over with white, even to the eyelids. He caught sight of her, and she was afraid he would be angry, and warn her off for trespassing; but he nodded and called out something in a friendly manner—"Good day," perhaps. She could not hear the words for the hum of the weir and the roaring of the machinery within the building.

It was time to retrace her steps, and she went back leisurably, peering for trout and plucking on the way a trail of the bryony, berried with orange and scarlet and yellow and palest green, to exhibit to Arthur Miles. She found him seated on the near bank, close beside her hazel-mote. He did not hear her barefooted approach, being absorbed in the movements of a wagtail that had come down to the pebbly spit for its bath; and Tilda started scolding forthwith. For he sat there naked to the waist, with his shirt spread to dry on the grass. He had given it a thorough soaping, and washed it and wrung it out: his stockings too.

"You'll catch yer death!" threatened Tilda.

But he was not shivering—so blandly fell the sun's rays, and so gently played the breeze.

"I can't make you out," she confessed. "First when I came on yer—an' that was on'y yestiddy—you was like a thing afraid o' yer own shadder. An' now you don't appear to mind nothin'—not even the chance o' bein' found an' took back."

The boy drew a long breath.

"You're shakin' with cold, though. There! What did I tell yer?" But a moment later she owned herself mistaken. He was not cold at all.

"It's all so—so good," he murmured, more to himself than to her.

"What's good?"

He reached out for the trail of bryony in her lap and fingered it wonderingly, without speaking for a while. Then, lifting his hand, he laid it for a moment against her upper arm—the lightest touch—no more.

"You," he said. "You—and everything."

"Of all the queer boys—" she began, and broke off with a catch of the breath. "Hulloa!"

The boy looked up to see her eyes fixed, round and wide, on his naked shoulder.

"What's that mark you got there?" she demanded.

"This?" He put up a hand to a pattern of four diamonds joined in a horizontal line. "I don't know. I've wondered sometimes—"

"But you must 'ave come by it some'ow. Can't you remember?"

He shook his head.

"It has been there always. And yet I couldn't have been born with it."

"'Course yer couldn'," she agreed

The mark was pencilled in thin lines of red a little below the right shoulder, across the width of the deltoid muscle, and in figures about half an inch tall. "'Course yer couldn'," she repeated. "That's tattooin', if ever there was tattooin'; an', what's more," she went on, nodding her head with great positiveness, "I know who done it, leastways I know part of 'is name . . . Don't stare, now; lemme think . . . Yes, it's plain as plain. 'Four di'monds,' she said; an' di'monds they are, same as on a pack o' cards—me all the time thinkin' of them as the ladies wear on their fingers. But 'on his coat,' she said; nothin' about yer shoulder."

"'She'? Who was 'she'?" asked the boy. "Never you mind," said Tilda hurriedly. "But him as done it was called Ned. Now try to think if you ever came across a party as was called Ned?"

"There was a boy called Ned at Holy Innocents; but he died in the time we all had sore throats—and, besides, he was the youngest of us. I don't remember any other."

"Any sailor-man, then? It's mostly sailors that know about tattooin'."

"Oh, yes," he answered promptly, to her surprise. "There were lots of sailors—five or six, I think. They had long glasses, and used to watch the sea. And one played music on a thing that went so."

He brought his hands together, drew them wide, and brought them together again—the palms open.

"That would be a concertina," nodded Tilda, "or elst an accordion. Now try to think, becos' all this is very important . . . Where was this place? and what like was it?"

He considered for a while, frowning to help his memory.

"There was a line of white houses, and one had red flowers in the window . . . and a pole, with flags on it . . . and ships passing . . . and from the houses a path went down to the sea. I remember quite well what it was like down there . . . with waves coming in, but not reaching to us, and sand where I played, and rocks, and pools full of shells and brown flowers. There were shells, too, on the rocks, with live things inside—though they never moved. I don't think I knew their name; but I know it now. They were called 'scammels.'"

"I've ate limpets," said Tilda; "limpets an' whelks. But I never 'eard o' scammels. An' you don't remember the name o' this place?"

"It must have been the Island," said the boy slowly.

"Wot Island? Island's a sort o' place, but no place in partic'lar."

"I don't know . . . It must have been the Island, though."

"Now listen. Did you ever 'appen to 'ear tell of 'Olmness?"

She asked it eagerly, watching his face. But it gave no answer to her hopes. His eyes were dreamy. The word, if it struck at all on his hearing, struck dully.

"I don't see that the name matters," he said after a long pause, "so long as it's the Island. We 're going there, and we shall find out all about it when we get to Stratford."

"Shall we?" asked Tilda, considerably astonished. "But why, in the world?"

"Because . . . Didn't you hear Mr. Mortimer say that Shakespeare was born there?"

"I did," said Tilda. "'Ow's that goin' to 'elp us?"

"I don't know," the boy confessed, dragging a book from his pocket. It was a ragged copy of the "Globe" Shakespeare, lacking its covers and smeared with dirt and blacking. "But he knows all about the Island."

"So that," said Tilda, "is what 'urt me in the night! It made my ribs all sore. I fergot the book, an' thought you must be sufferin' from some kind o' growth; but didn't like to arsk till I knew yer better— deformed folks bein' mostly touchy about it. When you stripped jus' now, an' nothin' the matter, it puzzled me more'n ever. 'Ere—show me where 'e tells about it," she demanded, taking the volume and opening it on her lap.

"It's all at the beginning, and he calls it The Tempest . . . But it will take you ever so long to find out. There was a ship wrecked, with a wicked duke on board, and he thought his son was drowned, but really it was all brought about by magic . . . In the book it's mostly names and speeches, and you only pick up here and there what the Island was like."

"But what makes you sure it's your Island?"

"You wait till we get to Stratford and ask him," said the boy, nodding, bright and confident.

"Arsk'oo? Shakespeare? Sakes alive, child! Don't yer know 'e's been dead these 'undreds o' years?"

"Has he?" His face fell, but after a moment grew cheerful again. "But that needn't matter. There must be heaps of people left to tell us about it."

Tilda closed the book. She had learnt a little, but had been disappointed in more. She felt desperately sorry for the child with this craze in his head about an Island. She had a suspicion that the memories he related were all mixed up with fictions from the play. As she put it to herself, "'E don't mean to kid, but 'e can't 'elp 'isself." But there was one question she had omitted and must yet ask.

"You said, jus' now, you used to play by the sea, somewheres beneath that line o' white houses you was tellin' of. Well, you couldn' a-got down there on your own, at that age—could yer, now? W'ich means you must a-been carried."

"I suppose so."

"No supposin' about it. You must a-been. Wot's more, you talked about the waves comin' in an' not reachin'—'us,' you said. 'Oo was it with yer? Think now! Man or woman?"

"A woman," he answered after a pause, knitting his brows.

"Wot like?"

Then happened something for which—so quiet his words had been—Tilda was in no wise prepared. He turned his eyes on her, and they were as the eyes of a child born blind; blank, yet they sought; tortured, yet dry of tears. His head was tilted back, and a little sideways. So may you see an infant's as he nuzzles to his mother's breast. The two hands seemed to grope for a moment, then fell limp at his side.

"Oh, 'ush!" besought Tilda, though in fact he had uttered no sound. "'Ush, an' put on your shirt, an' come 'ome! We'll get Mrs. Mortimer to dry it off by the stove."

She helped him on with it, took him by the hand, and led him back unresisting.

They reached the canal bank in time to see Sam Bossom leading Old Jubilee down the towpath, on his way to borrow a cart at Ibbetson's. And 'Dolph—whom Tilda had left with strict orders to remain on board— no sooner caught sight of the children than he leapt ashore and came cringing.

The dog appeared to be in mortal terror; a terror at which the children no longer wondered as they drew near the boat. Terrible sounds issued from the cabin—cries of a woman imploring mercy, fierce guttural oaths of a man determined to grant none.

"Good Lord!" exclaimed Tilda, gripping Arthur Miles more tightly by the hand and hurrying him into a run. "Whatever's taken the couple?"

She paused at the gangway and listened, peering forward.

"Oh, banish me, my lord, but kill me not!" wailed the voice of Mrs. Mortimer.

"Down, base one!" shouted her husband's.

"Kill me to-morrow; let me live to-night!"

"Nay, if you strive—a little more stress, dear, on 'to-night,' if I may suggest—Nay, if you strive—!"

"Shall we take it again, Stanislas? You used to take the pillow at 'Kill me not.'"

"I believe I did, my bud. We are rusty—a trifle rusty—the both of us."

"Kill me to-morrow; let me live—" entreated Mrs. Mortimer.

"What's all this, you two?" demanded Tilda, springing down the cabin steps and hurling herself between them.

"Hullo! Come in!" answered Mr. Mortimer genially. "This? Well, I hope it is an intellectual treat. I have always looked upon Mrs. Mortimer's Desdemona as such, even at rehearsal."



CHAPTER XI.

THE "STRATFORD-ON-AVON"

"Day after day, day after day We stuck."—COLERIDGE, Rime of the Ancient Mariner

"Well, and 'ow did the performance go off?"

When Tilda awoke at seven o'clock next morning, the Success to Commerce had made three good miles in the cool of the dawn, and come to anchor again (so to speak) outside the gates of Knowsley top lock, where, as Sam Bossom explained later, the canal began to drop from its summit level. Six locks, set pretty close together, here formed a stairway for its descent, and Sam would hear no word of breakfast until they had navigated the whole flight.

The work was laborious, and cost him the best part of an hour. For he had to open and shut each pair of gates single-handed, using a large iron key to lift and close the sluices; and, moreover, Mr. Mortimer, though he did his best, was inexpert at guiding the boat into the lock-chamber and handling her when there. A dozen times Sam had to call to him to haul closer down towards the bottom gates and avoid fouling his rudder.

The children watched the whole operation from shore, now and then lending their small weight to push open the long gate-beams. 'Dolph, too, watched from shore; suspiciously at first, afterwards with a studied air of boredom, which he relieved by affecting, whenever the heel of a stern-post squeaked in its quoin, to mistake it for a rat—an excuse for aimless snuffling, whining and barking. And Mrs. Mortimer looked on from the well by the cabin door, saucepan in hand, prepared to cook at the shortest notice. It was fascinating to see her, at first in the almost brimming lock, majestically erect (she was a regal figure) challenging the horizon with a gaze at once proud, prescient of martyrdom, and prepared; and then, as Sam opened the sluices, to watch her descend, inch by inch, into the dark lock-chamber. Each time this happened Mr. Mortimer exhorted her—"Courage, my heart's best!"—and she made answer each time, "Nay, Stanislas, I have no terrors."

Mr. Mortimer, at the fifth lock, left Old Jubilee and walked around to remark to Tilda that on the boards some such apparatus—"if it could be contrived at moderate expense"—would be remarkably effective in the drowning scene of The Colleen Bawn; or, in the legitimate drama, for the descent of Faustus into hell; "or, by means of a gauze transparency, the death of Ophelia might be indicated. I mention Ophelia because it was in that part my Arabella won what—if the expression may be used without impropriety—I will term her spurs. I am given to understand, however," added Mr. Mortimer, "that the apparatus requires a considerable reservoir, and a reservoir of any size is only compatible with fixity of tenure. An Ishmael—a wanderer upon the face of the earth—buffeted this way and that by the chill blast of man's ingratitude, more keenly toothed (as our divine Shakespeare observed) than winter's actual storm—but this by the way; it is not mine to anticipate more stable fortune, but rather to say with Lear—"

"'Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!'"

"I merely drop the suggestion—and I pass on."

He folded his arms and passed on. That is to say, he strode off in a hurry at a summons from Sam to stand by and pole the boat clear as the lower lock-gates were opened.

Somehow Tilda divined that Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer were in high spirits this morning, and it was with reasonable confidence that, after they had moored below locks and breakfasted, she sought Sam—who had withdrawn to the bows with his account book—and inquired how the performance had gone off.

"There was a small misunderstandin' at the close," he answered, looking up and pausing to moisten the lead of his pencil, "owin' to what the bills said about carriages at ten-thirty. Which the people at Tizzer's Green took it that carriages was to be part of the show, an' everyone to be taken 'ome like a lord. There was a man in the gallery, which is otherwise back seats at threppence, got up an' said he'd a-come on that contrack, an' no other. Mortimer made 'im a speech, and when that wouldn' do I copped 'im on the back o' the neck."

"An' after that, I s'pose, there was a free fight?"

"No," said Sam; "you 'd be surprised how quiet 'e took it. 'E was unconscious."

She eyed him thoughtfully.

"It don't seem like you, neither," she said, "to strike a man so 'ard, first blow."

"You're right, there; it ain't like me, an' I felt sorry for the fella'. But I 'ad to relieve my feelin's."

"What was the matter with yer feelin's?"

"'Arrowed—fairly 'arrowed." Sam shot an uneasy glance aft towards the cabin top where Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer sat amicably side by side, he conning a part while she mended a broken string on her guitar. Beyond them, stretched on the after deck with 'Dolph for company, Arthur Miles leaned over the gunwale, apparently studying the boat's reflection in the water. "Between you an' me," Sam confessed, "I can't get no grip on play-actors; an' I'm sorry I ever took up with 'em." He consulted his accounts. "He cleared three pound twelve an' nine las' night—but 'ow? That Mortimer carried on something 'ateful. There was 'is wife—you wouldn' think it in ordinary life, but, dressed up, she goes to your 'eart; an' she wore, first an' last, more dresses than you could count. First of all she 'it a little tambourine, an' said she was a gipsy maid. 'I'm a narch little gipsy,' she said, 'an' I never gets tipsy'—"

"Why should she?"

"'But I laugh an' play,' she said, 'the whole o' the day, such a nartless life is mine, ha, ha!' which wasn' none of it true, except about the drink, but you could see she only done it to make 'erself pleasant. An' then she told us ow' when they rang a bell somebody was goin' to put Mortimer to death, an' 'ow she stopped that by climbin' up to the bell and 'angin' on to the clapper. Then in came Mortimer an' sang a song with 'er—as well 'e might—about 'is true love 'avin' 'is 'eart an' 'is 'avin' 'ers, an' everyone clappin' an' stampin' an' ancorein' in the best of tempers. Well, an' what does the man do after an interval o' five minutes, but dress hisself up in black an' call 'er names for 'avin' married his uncle? This was too much for the back seats, an' some o' them told 'im to go 'ome an' boil 'is 'ead. But it 'ad no effect; for he only got worse, till he ended up by blackin' 'is face an' smotherin' 'er with a pillow for something quite different. After that he got better, an' they ended up by playin' a thing that made everybody laugh. I didn' 'ear it, but took a walk outside to blow off steam, an' only came back just as the fuss began about the carriages. Fact is, missy, I can't abear to see a woman used abuseful."

"That's because you 're in love," said Tilda. "But, if you'll listen to me, women ain't always what you take 'em for."

"Ain't they?" he queried. "I'd be sorry to believe that; though 'twould be 'elpful, I don't mind tellin' you."

"I've known cases—that is, if you want to be cured—"

"I do, an' I don't," he groaned. But it was clear that in the main he did not; for he changed the subject hastily. "See 'ere, would you mind takin' 'old o' the book an' checkin' while I counts out the money. Total takin's—four, three, three—less 'ire of 'all, four-an'-six—"

"I can read figures an' print," owned Tilda, "but 'andwriting's too much for me; an' yours, I dare say, isn' none o' the best."

"I've improved it a lot at the night school. But what is it puzzlin' you?" he asked, looking up as he counted.

She held out the book, but not as he had handed it. The light breeze had blown over two or three of its leaves, covering the page of accounts.

"Oh, that?" he stammered, and a blush spread to his ears. "I didn' mean you to see—"

"What is it?"

"Well—it's potery, if you must know. Leastways it's meant to be potery. I make it sometimes."

"Why?"

"To relieve my feelin's."

"'Pears to me your feelin's want a deal o' relievin', one way an' another. Read me some."

"You're sure you won't laugh?"

"Bless the man! 'Ow can I tell till I've 'eard it? Is it meant to be funny?"

"No."

"Well, then, I'm not likely to laugh. It don't come easy to me, any'ow: I seen too many clowns."

She handed him the book. He chose a poem, conquered his diffidence, and began—

"Stratford-on-Avon, Stratford-on-Avon— My heart is full of woe: Formerly, once upon a time It was not ever so."

"The love that then I faltered I now am forced to stifle; For the case is completely altered And I wish I had a rifle."

"I wish I was wrecked Like Robinson Crusoe, But you cannot expect A canal-boat to do so."

"Perhaps I ought to explain, though?" he suggested, breaking off.

"If you don't mind."

"You see I got a brother—a nelder brother, an' by name 'Enery; an' last year he went for a miner in South Africa, at a place that I can't neither spell nor pronounce till it winds up with 'bosh.' So we'll call it Bosh."

"Right-o! But why did he go for that miner? To relieve 'is feelin's?"

"You don't understand. He went out as a miner, havin' been a pit-hand at the Blackstone Colliery, north o' Bursfield. Well, one week-end— about a month before he started—he took a noliday an' went a trip with me to Stratford aboard this very boat. Which for six months past I'd 'ad a neye upon a girl in Stratford. She was a General—"

"Salvation Army?"

"—A Cook-general, in a very respectable 'ouse'old—a publican's, at the 'Four Alls' by Binton Bridges. Me bein' shy—as you may 'ave noticed— I 'adn't, as you might say, put it to 'er; an' likewise until the matter was settled I didn' like to tell 'Enery. But I interjuced 'im—the same bein' 'er Sunday out; an' afterwards, when he called 'er a monstrous fine girl, I felt as 'appy as if he'd given me ten shillin'. Which only proves," Sam commented bitterly, "what I say in the next verse—"

"I'd rather be in prison Than in this earthly dwellin', Where nothin' is but it isn'— An there ain't no means of tellin'!"

"—Which when, the night before he started, he comes to me an' says that he an' Mary 'ave made a match of it, an' would I mind keepin' an eye on 'er an' writin' regilar to say 'ow she was gettin' on, it fair knocked me out."

"You never told 'im?"

"I didn' like to. To start with 'e was always my fav'rite brother, an' I couldn' bear his startin' in low sperits an' South Africa such a distance off; beside which, I told mysel', the girl must surely know 'er own mind. So now you know," concluded Sam, "what I means by the nex' verse—"

"Stratford-on-Avon, Stratford-on-Avon— My true love she is false; I 'd rather not go to Stratford-on-Avon If I could go anywheres else."

"But you promised to keep an eye on her."

"'Enery 'ears from me regilar," said Sam evasively.

"If you don't pay 'er no visits," Tilda insisted, "the more you write the more you must be tellin' lies; an' that's not fair to 'Enery."

Sam considered this for a while, and ended by drawing a folded scrap of paper from his trouser-pocket.

"I don't tell no more than can't be 'elped, missie. You just list'n to this."

He read:—

Dear Brother 'Enery,—This comes opin' to find you well as it leaves me at Stratford. M. sends her love, an' you will be pleased to 'ear she grows beautifuller every day an' in character likewise. It do seem to me this world is a better place for containin' of her; an' a man ought to be 'appy, dear 'Enery, when you can call 'er mine—"

"That don't seem right to me some'ow," commented Tilda.

Sam scratched his head.

"What's wrong with it?"

"'Pears to me it ought to be 'yours'—'When you can call her yours.'"

"I don't like that neither, not altogether. S'pose we scratch it out an' say, 'A man ought to be 'appy when 'e can call 'er 'isn'? That what schoolmaster calls the third person."

"There didn' ought to be no third person about it," said Tilda severely; "on'y 'Enery an' 'er. Well, go on."

"I can't. That's so far as I've written up to the present. It's a rough copy, you understand; an' at Stratford I allow to write it out fair an' post it."

Tilda took a turn at considering.

"The further I go on this v'yage," she announced,—"w'ich, per'aps, 'twould be truthfuller to say the longer it takes—the more I seems to get mixed up in other folks' business. But you've done me a good turn, Sam Bossom; an' you've been open with me; an' I reckon I got to keep you straight in this 'ere. There! put up yer verses while I sit an' think it out."

"You don't like 'em?"

Sam was evidently dashed.

"If on'y I 'ad Bill 'ere—"

"Ha, yes: 'im! 'E'd put a boiler inside 'em, no doubt; an' a donkey-engin', an'—"

"What'yer talkin' about? . . . Oh, yer verses! Bless the man, I wasn' thinkin' of yer verses. I was wantin' Bill 'ere, to advise somethin' practical. Lor' sake! Look at Arthur Miles there, the way 'e's leanin' overboard! The child'll drown' isself, nex' news!" She rose up and ran to prevent the disaster. "'Pears to me there's a deal o' motherin' to be done aboard this boat. Trouble aft, an' trouble forrard—"

She was hurrying aft when Mr. Mortimer intercepted her amidships. He held a book in one hand, and two slips of paper in the other.

"Child," he asked, "could you learn a part?—a very small part?"

"'Course I could," answered Tilda promptly; "but I ain't goin' to play it, an' don't yer make any mistake. 'Ere, let me get to Arthur Miles before 'e tumbles overboard."

She darted aft and dragged the boy back by his collar.

"What d'yer mean by it, givin' folks a shock like that?" she demanded.

"I was looking at the pictures," he explained, and showed her.

The Success to Commerce bore on her stern panels two gaily painted landscapes, the one of Warwick Castle, the other of ruined Kenilworth. Tilda leaned over the side and saw them mirrored in the still water.

"And then," the boy pursued, "down below the pictures I saw a great ship lying in the seaweed with guns and drowned men on the deck and the fishes swimming over them. Deep in the ship a bell was tolling—"

"Nonsense!" Tilda interrupted, and catching up a pole, thrust it down overside. "Four feet at the most," she reported, as the pole found bottom. "You must be sickenin' for somethin'. Put out your tongue."

"A child of imagination," observed Mr. Mortimer, who had followed her. "Full fathom five thy father lies—"

"'Ush!" cried Tilda.

"—Of his bones are coral made. Those are pearls that were his eyes—"

The boy sat and looked up at the speaker, staring, shivering a little.

"You know? You know too?" he stammered.

"He knows nothin' about it," insisted Tilda. "Please go away, Mr. Mortimer?"

"A young Shakespearian? This is indeed delightful! You shall have a part, sir. Your delivery will be immature, doubtless; but with some tuition from me—"

"If you try it on, I'll tell 'Ucks," the girl threatened, by this time desperate. "You're like all the actors—leastways you're like all that ever I met; an', take it 'ow you will, I got to say it. Once get started on yer own lay, an' everything elst goes out o' yer 'eads. You don't mean to 'urt, but selfish you are and 'eedless, an' somebody 'as al'ays the world's trouble clearin' up the mess. 'Ere, 'and me the part you was tellin' about; an' I'll learn it an' say it, though not within a 'undred miles of Glasson—which," she added, "I'll be an old woman before that, at the rate we're goin'. But you don't drag Arthur Miles into it, an' I give you fair warnin'. For, to start with, 'e's 'idin', an' 'tis only to keep 'im 'id that I got 'Ucks to let yer loose. An' nex' 'e's a gentleman, and why you should want to mix 'im up with yer Shakespeares I can't think."

It is doubtful if Mr. Mortimer heard the conclusion of her outburst. At the mention of Mr. Hucks he pressed a palm dramatically to his forehead; and now, withdrawing it, he handed her the two slips of paper with great politeness.

"True, I had forgotten," he murmured. "Take your time, child—you will take your time, I beg."

He waved his hand, and withdrew to rejoin his wife on the cabin-top. Tilda studied the slips of paper, while Arthur Miles edged away again towards the gunwale for another look into the magic water.

"Stop that!" she commanded, glancing up and catching him in the act. "Stop that, and read these for me: I can't manage handwriting."

The boy took the first slip obediently and read aloud—

"Madam, a horseman comes riding across the hill. The sun flashes full on his arms. By my halidame 'tis the Knight Hospitaller!"

"That seems pretty fair rot," criticised Tilda. "Let's 'ave the other."

" Madam, he has reined up his steed. He stands without."

Here Arthur Miles paused and drew breath.

"Without what?"

"It doesn't say. He stands without: he waves a hand. Shall I go ask his errand? "

"Is that all? . . . And Mortimer reckons I'll take from 'ere to Stratford learnin' that little lot! Why, I can do it in arf-a-minute, an' on my 'ead. You just listen. Madam, a 'orseman—No, wait a moment. Madam, a Norseman—" Tilda hesitated and came to a halt. "Would you mind sayin' it over again, Arthur Miles?" she asked politely.

"Madam, a horseman comes riding—"

"That'll do. Madam, a—H—h—horseman—Is that better?"

"You needn't strain at it so," said the boy. "Why, you're quite red in the face!"

"Oh, yes, I need," said Tilda; "first-along, any'ow." She fell silent for a space. "That Mortimer," she conceded, "isn' quite the ass that 'e looks. This 'as got to take time, after all." She paused a moment in thought, and then broke out, "Oh, Arthur Miles, the trouble you're layin' on me—First, to be a mother—an' that's not 'ard. But, on top o' that, lady!"

"Why should you be a lady?" he asked.

"Why?" Tilda echoed almost bitterly. "Oh, you needn' think I'll want to marry yer when all's done. Why? Oh, merely to 'elp you, bein' the sort you are. All you've got to do, bein' the sort you are, is to sit quiet an' teach me. But I got to be a lady, if it costs me my shift."



CHAPTER XII.

PURSUED.

At ten o'clock Sam harnessed up again, and shortly before noon our travellers left the waterway by which they had travelled hitherto, and passed out to the right through a cut, less than a quarter of a mile long, where a rising lock took them into the Stratford-on-Avon Canal.

Said Sam as he worked the lock, the two children standing beside and watching—

"Now see here, when you meet your clever friend Bill, you put him two questions from me. First, why, when the boat's through, am I goin' to draw the water off an' leave the lock empty?"

Before Tilda could answer, Arthur Miles exclaimed—

"I know! It's because we 're going uphill, and at the other locks, when we were going downhill, the water emptied itself."

"Right, so far as you go," nodded Sam. "But why should a lock be left empty?"

The boy thought for a moment.

"Because you don't want the water to waste, and top gates hold it better than lower ones."

"Why do the top gates hold it better?"

"Because they shut with the water, and the water holds them fast; and because they are smaller than the bottom gates, and don't leak so much."

"That's very cleverly noticed," said Sam. "Now you keep your eyes alive while we work this one, an' tell me what you see."

They watched the operation carefully.

"Well?" he asked as, having passed the Success to Commerce through, he went back to open the lower paddles—or slats, as he called them.

"I saw nothing," the boy confessed disappointedly, "except that you seemed to use more water than at the others."

"Well, and that's just it. But why?"

"It has something to do, of course, with going up-hill instead of down . . . And—and I've got the reason somewhere inside my head, but I can't catch hold of it."

"I'll put it another way. This boat's mod'rate well laden, an' she takes more water lockin' up than if she was empty; but if she was empty, she'd take more water lockin' down. That's a fac'; an' if you can give me a reason for it you'll be doin' me a kindness. For I never could find one, an' I've lain awake at nights puzzlin' it over."

"I bet Bill would know," said Tilda.

Sam eyed her.

"I'd give somethin'" he said, "to be sure this Bill, as you make such a gawd of, is a real person—or whether, bein' born different to the rest of yer sex, you've 'ad to invent 'im."

Many locks encumber the descending levels of the Stratford-on-Avon Canal, and they kept Sam busy. In the intervals the boat glided deeper and deeper into a green pastoral country, parcelled out with hedgerows and lines of elms, behind which here and there lay a village half hidden—a grey tower and a few red-tiled roofs visible between the trees. Cattle dotted the near pastures, till away behind the trees—for summer had passed into late September—the children heard now and again the guns of partridge shooters cracking from fields of stubble. But no human folk frequented the banks of the canal, which wound its way past scented meadows edged with willow-herb, late meadow-sweet, yellow tansy and purple loosestrife, this last showing a blood-red stalk as its bloom died away. Out beyond, green arrowheads floated on the water; the Success to Commerce ploughed through beds of them, and they rose from under her keel and spread themselves again in her wake. Very little traffic passed over these waters. In all the way to Preston Bagot our travellers met but three boats. One, at Lowsonford Lock, had a pair of donkeys ("animals" Sam called them) to haul it; the other two, they met, coming up light by Fiwood Green. "Hold in!" "Hold out!" called the steersmen as the boats met. Sam held wide, and by shouts instructed Mr. Mortimer how to cross the towropes; and Mr. Mortimer put on an extremely knowledgeable air, but obeyed him with so signal a clumsiness that the bargees desired to know where the Success to Commerce had shipped her new mate.

The question, though put with good humour, appeared to disturb Sam, who for the rest of the way steered in silence. There are three locks at Preston Bagot, and at the first Mr. Mortimer took occasion to apologise for his performance, adding that practice made perfect.

"I wonder, now," said Sam delicately, "if you could practise leavin' off that fur collar? A little unhandiness'll pass off, an' no account taken; but with a furred overcoat 'tis different, an' I ought to a-mentioned it before. We don't want the children tracked, do we? An' unfort'nitly you're not one to pass in a crowd."

"You pay me a compliment," Mr. Mortimer answered. "Speaking, however, as man to man, let me say that I would gladly waive whatever show my overcoat may contribute to the—er—total effect to which you refer. But"—here he unbuttoned the front of his garment—"I leave it to you to judge if, without it, I shall attract less attention. Laudatur, my dear Smiles, et alget. Paupertas, dura paupertas—I might, perhaps, satisfy the curious gazer by producing the—er—pawntickets for the missing articles. But it would hardly—eh, I put it to you?"

"No, it wouldn'," decided Sam. "But it's unfort'nit all the same, an' in more ways'n one. You see, there's a nasty 'abit folks 'ave in these parts. Anywheres between Warwick an' Birming'am a native can't 'ardly pass a canal-boat without wantin' to arsk, ''Oo stole the rabbit-skin?' I don't know why they arsk it; but when it 'appens, you've got to fight the man—or elst I must."

"I would suggest that, you being the younger man—"

"Well, I don't mind," said Sam. "On'y the p'int is I don't scarcely never fight without attractin' notice. The last time 'twas five shillin' an' costs or ten days. An' there's the children to be considered."

During this debate Tilda and Arthur Miles had wandered ashore with 'Dolph, and the dog, by habit inquisitive, had headed at once for a wooden storehouse that stood a little way back from the waterside— a large building of two storeys, with a beam and pulley projecting from the upper one, and heavy folding-doors below. One of these doors stood open, and 'Dolph, dashing within, at once set up a frantic barking.

"Hullo!" Tilda stepped quickly in front of the boy to cover him. "There's somebody inside."

The barking continued for almost half a minute, and then Godolphus emerged, capering absurdly on his hind legs and revolving like a dervish, flung up his head, yapped thrice in a kind of ecstasy, and again plunged into the store.

"That's funny, too," mused Tilda. "I never knew 'im be'ave like that 'cept when he met with a friend. Arthur Miles, you stay where you are—" She tiptoed forward and peered within. "Lord sake, come an' look 'ere!" she called after a moment.

The boy followed, and stared past her shoulder into the gloom. There, in the centre of the earthen floor, wrapped around with straw bands, stood a wooden horse.

It was painted grey, with beautiful dapples, and nostrils of fierce scarlet. It had a tail of real horse-hair and a golden mane, and on its near shoulder a blue scroll with its name Kitchener thereon in letters of gold. Its legs were extended at a gallop.

"Gavel's!" said Tilda. "Gavel's, at ten to one an' no takers! . . . But why? 'Ow?"

She turned on 'Dolph, scolding, commanding him to be quiet; and 'Dolph subsided on his haunches and watched her, his stump tail jerking to and fro beneath him like an unweighted pendulum. There was a label attached to the straw bands. She turned it over and read: James Gavel, Proprietor, Imperial Steam Roundabouts, Henley-in-Arden. Deliver Immediately . . . "An' me thinkin' Bill 'ad gone north to Wolver'ampton!" she breathed.

Before the boy could ask her meaning they heard the rumble of wheels outside; and Tilda, catching him by the arm, hurried him back to the doors just as a two-horse wagon rolled down to the wharf, in charge of an elderly driver—a sour-visaged man in a smock-frock, with a weather-stained top hat on the back of his head, and in his hand a whip adorned with rings of polished brass.

He pulled up, eyed the two children, and demanded to know what they meant by trespassing in the store.

"We were admirin' the 'orse," answered Tilda.

"An' likewise truantin' from school," the wagoner suggested. "But that's the way of it in England nowadays; the likes o' me payin' rates to eddicate the likes o' you. An' that's your Conservative Government . . . Eddication!" he went on after a pause. "What's Eddication? Did either o' you ever 'ear tell of Joseph Arch?"

"Can't say we 'ave."

"He was born no farther away than Barford—Barford-on-Avon. But I s'pose your schoolmaster's too busy teachin' you the pianner."

Tilda digested the somewhat close reasoning for a moment, and answered—

"It's fair sickenin', the amount o' time spent on the pianner. Between you an' me, that's partly why we cut an' run. You mustn' think we 'ate school—if on'y they'd teach us what's useful. 'Oo's Joseph Arch?"

"He was born at Barford," said the wagoner; "an' at Barford he lives."

"'E must be a remarkable man," said Tilda, "an' I'm sorry I don't know more of 'im. But I know Gavel."

"Gavel?"

"'Im as the 'orse belongs to; an' Bill. Gavel's a remarkable man too in 'is way; though not a patch on Bill. Bill tells me Gavel can get drunk twice any day; separate drunk, that is."

"Liberal or Conservative?"

"Well," hesitated Tilda, playing for safety, "I dunno as he 'd tell, under a pint; but mos' likely it depends on the time o' day."

"I arsked," said the wagoner, "because he's hired by the Primrose Feet; an' if he's the kind o' man to sell 'is princerples, I don't so much mind 'ow bad the news I breaks to him."

"What news?"

The man searched in his pocket, and drew forth a greasy post card.

"He sent word to me there was six painted 'osses comin' by canal from Burning'am, to be delivered at the Wharf this mornin'; an' would I fetch 'em along to the Feet Ground, Henley-in-Arden, without delay?"

"Henley-in-Arden!" exclaimed a voice behind the children; whereat Tilda turned about with a start. It was the voice of Mr. Mortimer, who had strolled across from the lock bank, and stood conning the wagon and team. "Henley-in-Arden? O Helicon! If you'll excuse the remark, sir. OParnassus!"

"Maybe I might," said the wagoner guardedly, "if I understood its bearin's."

"Name redolent of Shakespeare! Of Rosalind and Touchstone, Jaques and Amiens, sheepcrooks and venison feasts, and ballads pinned to oaks! What shall he have who killed the deer, Mr.—?"

"'Olly," said the wagoner.

"I beg your pardon?"

"'Olly—James 'Olly and Son, Carters an' 'Auliers."

"Is it possible? . . . better and better! Sing heigho! the Holly, this life is most jolly. I trust you find it so, Mr. Holly?"

"If you want to know," Mr. Holly answered sourly, "I don't."

"You pain and astonish me, Mr. Holly. The penalty of Adam, the season's difference"—Mr. Mortimer turned up his furred collar—"surely, sir, you will allow no worse to afflict you? You, a dweller on the confines of Henley-in-Arden, within measurable distance, as I gathered?"

"Mile an' a 'arf."

"No more? O Phoebus and the Nine!"

"There was," said Mr. Holly, "to 'a been six. An' by consequence here I be with a pair of 'osses an' the big wagon. Best go home-along, I reckon, an' fetch out the cart," he grumbled, with a jerk of his thumb indicating a red-tiled building on the hillside, half a mile away.

"Not so." Mr. Mortimer tapped his brow. "An idea occurs to me—if you will spare me a moment to consult with my—er—partner. A Primrose Fete, you said? I am no politician, Mr. Holly, but I understand the Primrose League exists—primarily—or ultimately—to save our world-wide empire. And how shall an empire stand without its Shakespeare? Our tent and appliances will just load your wagon. As the younger Dumas observed, 'Give me two boards, two trestles, three actors'—but the great Aeschylus did with two—'two actors,' let us say—'and a passion'—provided your terms are not prohibitive . . . Hi, Smiles! Approach, Smiles, and be introduced to Thespis. His charge is three shillings. At the price of three shillings behold, Smiles, the golden age returned! Comedy carted home through leafy ways shall trill her woodnotes—her native woodnotes wild—in Henley-in-Arden!"

The wagon had been packed and had departed, Mrs. Mortimer perched high on a pile of tent cloths, and Mr. Mortimer waving farewells from the tail-board.

The two children, left with instructions to keep near the boat and in hiding, had made a nest for themselves among the stalks of loosestrife, and sat watching the canal for sign of a moorhen or a water-rat. The afternoon was bright and very still, with a dazzle on the water and a faint touch of autumn in the air—the afterglow of summer soon to pass into grey chills and gusts of rain. For many minutes neither had spoken.

"Look!" said Tilda, pointing to a distant ripple drawn straight across the surface. "There goes a rat, and I've won!"

The boy said—

"A boat takes up room in the water, doesn't it?"

"0' course it does. But what's that got to do with rats?"

"Nothing. I was thinking of Sam's puzzle, and I've guessed it. A boat going downwards through a lock would want a lock full, all but the water it pushes out from the room it takes up. Wouldn't it?"

"I s'pose so," said Tilda doubtfully.

"But a boat going up will want a lock full, and that water too. And that's why an empty boat going downhill takes more water than a loaded one, and less going up."

To Tilda the puzzle remained a puzzle. "It sounds all right," she allowed. "But what makes you so clever about boats?"

"I've got to know about them. Else how shall we ever find the Island?"

She thought for half a minute.

"You're sure about that Island?" she asked, a trifle anxiously.

Arthur Miles turned to her with a confident smile.

"Of course I'm sure."

"Well, we'll arsk about it when we get to Stratford-on-Avon."

She was about to say more, but checked herself at sight of a barge coming down the canal—slowly, and as yet so far away that the tramp of the tow-horse's hoofs on the path was scarcely audible. She laid a hand on 'Dolph's collar and pressed him down in the long grass, commanding him to be quiet, whilst she and the boy wriggled away towards an alder bush that stood a furlong back from the bank.