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Title: The Garotters

Author: William D. Howells

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*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.12.12.00*END*
Contents:

The Merry Men

i. Eilean Aros
ii. What the wreck had brought to Aros
iii. Land and sea in Sandag Bay
iv. The gale
v. A man out of the sea

Will o' the Mill
i. The plain and the stars
ii. The Parson's Marjory
iii. Death

Markheim

Thrawn Janet

Olalla

The Treasure of Franchard
i. By the dying Mountebank
ii. Morning tale
iii. The adoption
iv. The education of the philosopher
v. Treasure trove
vi. A criminal investigation, in two parts
vii. The fall of the House of Desprez
viii. The wages of philosophy




***
THE MERRY MEN




CHAPTER I. EILEAN AROS.


IT WAS a beautiful morning in the late July when I set forth on foot
for the last time
for Aros.

A boat had put me ashore the night before at Grisapol;
I had such breakfast as the little inn afforded,
and,
leaving all my baggage till I had an occasion
to come round
for it by sea,
struck right across the promontory
with a cheerful heart.

I was far from being a native of these parts,
springing,
as I did,
from an unmixed lowland stock.

But an uncle of mine,
Gordon Darnaway,
after a poor,
rough youth,
and some years at sea,
had married a young wife in the islands;
Mary Maclean she was called,
the last of her family;
and when she died in giving birth
to a daughter,
Aros,
the sea-girt farm,
had remained in his possession.

It brought him in nothing but the means of life,
as I was well aware;
but he was a man whom ill-fortune had pursued;
he feared,
cumbered as he was
with the young child,
to make a fresh adventure upon life;
and remained in Aros,
biting his nails at destiny.

Years passed over his head in that isolation,
and brought neither help nor contentment.

Meantime our family was dying out in the lowlands;
there is little luck
for any of that race;
and perhaps my father was the luckiest of all,
for not only was he one of the last
to die,
but he left a son
to his name and a little money
to support it.

I was a student of Edinburgh University,
living well enough at my own charges,
but without kith or kin;
when some news of me found its way
to Uncle Gordon on the Ross of Grisapol;
and he,
as he was a man who held blood thicker than water,
wrote
to me the day he heard of my existence,
and taught me
to count Aros as my home.

Thus it was that I came
to spend my vacations in that part of the country,
so far from all society and comfort,
between the codfish and the moorcocks;
and thus it was that now,
when I had done
with my classes,
I was returning thither
with so light a heart that July day.

The Ross,
as we call it,
is a promontory neither wide nor high,
but as rough as God made it
to this day;
the deep sea on either hand of it,
full of rugged isles and reefs most perilous
to seamen - all overlooked from the eastward by some very high cliffs and the great peals of Ben Kyaw.

THE MOUNTAIN OF THE MIST,
they say the words signify in the Gaelic tongue;
and it is well named.

For that hill- top,
which is more than three thousand feet in height,
catches all the clouds that come blowing from the seaward;
and,
indeed,
I used often
to think that it must make them
for itself;
since when all heaven was clear
to the sea level,
there would ever be a streamer on Ben Kyaw.

It brought water,
too,
and was mossy
(1)
to the top in consequence.

I have seen us sitting in broad sunshine on the Ross,
and the rain falling black like crape upon the mountain.

But the wetness of it made it often appear more beautiful
to my eyes;
for when the sun struck upon the hill sides,
there were many wet rocks and watercourses that shone like jewels even as far as Aros,
fifteen miles away.

The road that I followed was a cattle-track.

It twisted so as nearly
to double the length of my journey;
it went over rough boulders so that a man had
to leap from one
to another,
and through soft bottoms where the moss came nearly
to the knee.

There was no cultivation anywhere,
and not one house in the ten miles from Grisapol
to Aros.

Houses of course there were - three at least;
but they lay so far on the one side or the other that no stranger could have found them from the track.

A large part of the Ross is covered
with big granite rocks,
some of them larger than a two- roomed house,
one beside another,
with fern and deep heather in between them where the vipers breed.

Anyway the wind was,
it was always sea air,
as salt as on a ship;
the gulls were as free as moorfowl over all the Ross;
and whenever the way rose a little,
your eye would kindle
with the brightness of the sea.

From the very midst of the land,
on a day of wind and a high spring,
I have heard the Roost roaring,
like a battle where it runs by Aros,
and the great and fearful voices of the breakers that we call the Merry Men.

Aros itself - Aros Jay,
I have heard the natives call it,
and they say it means THE HOUSE OF GOD - Aros itself was not properly a piece of the Ross,
nor was it quite an islet.

It formed the south- west corner of the land,
fitted close
to it,
and was in one place only separated from the coast by a little gut of the sea,
not forty feet across the narrowest.

When the tide was full,
this was clear and still,
like a pool on a land river;
only there was a difference in the weeds and fishes,
and the water itself was green instead of brown;
but when the tide went out,
in the bottom of the ebb,
there was a day or two in every month when you could pass dryshod from Aros
to the mainland.

There was some good pasture,
where my uncle fed the sheep he lived on;
perhaps the feed was better because the ground rose higher on the islet than the main level of the Ross,
but this I am not skilled enough
to settle.

The house was a good one
for that country,
two storeys high.

It looked westward over a bay,
with a pier hard by
for a boat,
and from the door you could watch the vapours blowing on Ben Kyaw.

On all this part of the coast,
and especially near Aros,
these great granite rocks that I have spoken of go down together in troops into the sea,
like cattle on a summer's day.

There they stand,
for all the world like their neighbours ashore;
only the salt water sobbing between them instead of the quiet earth,
and clots of sea-pink blooming on their sides instead of heather;
and the great sea conger
to wreathe about the base of them instead of the poisonous viper of the land.

On calm days you can go wandering between them in a boat
for hours,
echoes following you about the labyrinth;
but when the sea is up,
Heaven help the man that hears that cauldron boiling.

Off the south-west end of Aros these blocks are very many,
and much greater in size.

Indeed,
they must grow monstrously bigger out
to sea,
for there must be ten sea miles of open water sown
with them as thick as a country place
with houses,
some standing thirty feet above the tides,
some covered,
but all perilous
to ships;
so that on a clear,
westerly blowing day,
I have counted,
from the top of Aros,
the great rollers breaking white and heavy over as many as six-and-forty buried reefs.

But it is nearer in shore that the danger is worst;
for the tide,
here running like a mill race,
makes a long belt of broken water - a ROOST we call it - at the tail of the land.

I have often been out there in a dead calm at the slack of the tide;
and a strange place it is,
with the sea swirling and combing up and boiling like the cauldrons of a linn,
and now and again a little dancing mutter of sound as though the ROOST were talking
to itself.

But when the tide begins
to run again,
and above all in heavy weather,
there is no man could take a boat within half a mile of it,
nor a ship afloat that could either steer or live in such a place.

You can hear the roaring of it six miles away.

At the seaward end there comes the strongest of the bubble;
and it's here that these big breakers dance together - the dance of death,
it may be called - that have got the name,
in these parts,
of the Merry Men.

I have heard it said that they run fifty feet high;
but that must be the green water only,
for the spray runs twice as high as that.

Whether they got the name from their movements,
which are swift and antic,
or from the shouting they make about the turn of the tide,
so that all Aros shakes
with it,
is more than I can tell.

The truth is,
that in a south-westerly wind,
that part of our archipelago is no better than a trap.

If a ship got through the reefs,
and weathered the Merry Men,
it would be
to come ashore on the south coast of Aros,
in Sandag Bay,
where so many dismal things befell our family,
as I propose
to tell.

The thought of all these dangers,
in the place I knew so long,
makes me particularly welcome the works now going forward
to set lights upon the headlands and buoys along the channels of our iron-bound,
inhospitable islands.

The country people had many a story about Aros,
as I used
to hear from my uncle's man,
Rorie,
an old servant of the Macleans,
who had transferred his services without afterthought on the occasion of the marriage.

There was some tale of an unlucky creature,
a sea- kelpie,
that dwelt and did business in some fearful manner of his own among the boiling breakers of the Roost.

A mermaid had once met a piper on Sandag beach,
and there sang
to him a long,
bright midsummer's night,
so that in the morning he was found stricken crazy,
and from thenceforward,
till the day he died,
said only one form of words;
what they were in the original Gaelic I cannot tell,
but they were thus translated:

'Ah,
the sweet singing out of the sea.'

Seals that haunted on that coast have been known
to speak
to man in his own tongue,
presaging great disasters.

It was here that a certain saint first landed on his voyage out of Ireland
to convert the Hebrideans.

And,
indeed,
I think he had some claim
to be called saint;
for,
with the boats of that past age,
to make so rough a passage,
and land on such a ticklish coast,
was surely not far short of the miraculous.

It was
to him,
or
to some of his monkish underlings who had a cell there,
that the islet owes its holy and beautiful name,
the House of God.

Among these old wives'
stories there was one which I was inclined
to hear
with more credulity.

As I was told,
in that tempest which scattered the ships of the Invincible Armada over all the north and west of Scotland,
one great vessel came ashore on Aros,
and before the eyes of some solitary people on a hill-top,
went down in a moment
with all hands,
her colours flying even as she sank.

There was some likelihood in this tale;
for another of that fleet lay sunk on the north side,
twenty miles from Grisapol.

It was told,
I thought,
with more detail and gravity than its companion stories,
and there was one particularity which went far
to convince me of its truth:

the name,
that is,
of the ship was still remembered,
and sounded,
in my ears,
Spanishly.

The ESPIRITO SANTO they called it,
a great ship of many decks of guns,
laden
with treasure and grandees of Spain,
and fierce soldadoes,
that now lay fathom deep
to all eternity,
done
with her wars and voyages,
in Sandag bay,
upon the west of Aros.

No more salvos of ordnance
for that tall ship,
the
'Holy Spirit,'
no more fair winds or happy ventures;
only
to rot there deep in the sea-tangle and hear the shoutings of the Merry Men as the tide ran high about the island.

It was a strange thought
to me first and last,
and only grew stranger as I learned the more of Spain,
from which she had set sail
with so proud a company,
and King Philip,
the wealthy king,
that sent her on that voyage.

And now I must tell you,
as I walked from Grisapol that day,
the ESPIRITO SANTO was very much in my reflections.

I had been favourably remarked by our then Principal in Edinburgh College,
that famous writer,
Dr. Robertson,
and by him had been set
to work on some papers of an ancient date
to rearrange and sift of what was worthless;
and in one of these,
to my great wonder,
I found a note of this very ship,
the ESPIRITO SANTO,
with her captain's name,
and how she carried a great part of the Spaniard's treasure,
and had been lost upon the Ross of Grisapol;
but in what particular spot,
the wild tribes of that place and period would give no information
to the king's inquiries.

Putting one thing
with another,
and taking our island tradition together
with this note of old King Jamie's perquisitions after wealth,
it had come strongly on my mind that the spot
for which he sought in vain could be no other than the small bay of Sandag on my uncle's land;
and being a fellow of a mechanical turn,
I had ever since been plotting how
to weigh that good ship up again
with all her ingots,
ounces,
and doubloons,
and bring back our house of Darnaway
to its long-forgotten dignity and wealth.

This was a design of which I soon had reason
to repent.

My mind was sharply turned on different reflections;
and since I became the witness of a strange judgment of God's,
the thought of dead men's treasures has been intolerable
to my conscience.

But even at that time I must acquit myself of sordid greed;
for if I desired riches,
it was not
for their own sake,
but
for the sake of a person who was dear
to my heart - my uncle's daughter,
Mary Ellen.

She had been educated well,
and had been a time
to school upon the mainland;
which,
poor girl,
she would have been happier without.

For Aros was no place
for her,
with old Rorie the servant,
and her father,
who was one of the unhappiest men in Scotland,
plainly bred up in a country place among Cameronians,
long a skipper sailing out of the Clyde about the islands,
and now,
with infinite discontent,
managing his sheep and a little
'long shore fishing
for the necessary bread.

If it was sometimes weariful
to me,
who was there but a month or two,
you may fancy what it was
to her who dwelt in that same desert all the year round,
with the sheep and flying sea- gulls,
and the Merry Men singing and dancing in the Roost! CHAPTER II.

WHAT THE WRECK HAD BROUGHT
to AROS.

IT was half-flood when I got the length of Aros;
and there was nothing
for it but
to stand on the far shore and whistle
for Rorie
with the boat.

I had no need
to repeat the signal.

At the first sound,
Mary was at the door flying a handkerchief by way of answer,
and the old long-legged serving-man was shambling down the gravel
to the pier.

For all his hurry,
it took him a long while
to pull across the bay;
and I observed him several times
to pause,
go into the stern,
and look over curiously into the wake.

As he came nearer,
he seemed
to me aged and haggard,
and I thought he avoided my eye.

The coble had been repaired,
with two new thwarts and several patches of some rare and beautiful foreign wood,
the name of it unknown
to me.

'Why,
Rorie,'
said I,
as we began the return voyage,
'this is fine wood.

How came you by that?'
'It will be hard
to cheesel,'
Rorie opined reluctantly;
and just then,
dropping the oars,
he made another of those dives into the stern which I had remarked as he came across
to fetch me,
and,
leaning his hand on my shoulder,
stared
with an awful look into the waters of the bay.

'What is wrong?'
I asked,
a good deal startled.

'It will be a great feesh,'
said the old man,
returning
to his oars;
and nothing more could I get out of him,
but strange glances and an ominous nodding of the head.

In spite of myself,
I was infected
with a measure of uneasiness;
I turned also,
and studied the wake.

The water was still and transparent,
but,
out here in the middle of the bay,
exceeding deep.

For some time I could see naught;
but at last it did seem
to me as if something dark - a great fish,
or perhaps only a shadow - followed studiously in the track of the moving coble.

And then I remembered one of Rorie's superstitions:

how in a ferry in Morven,
in some great,
exterminating feud among the clans;
a fish,
the like of it unknown in all our waters,
followed
for some years the passage of the ferry-boat,
until no man dared
to make the crossing.

'He will be waiting
for the right man,'
said Rorie.

Mary met me on the beach,
and led me up the brae and into the house of Aros.

Outside and inside there were many changes.

The garden was fenced
with the same wood that I had noted in the boat;
there were chairs in the kitchen covered
with strange brocade;
curtains of brocade hung from the window;
a clock stood silent on the dresser;
a lamp of brass was swinging from the roof;
the table was set
for dinner
with the finest of linen and silver;
and all these new riches were displayed in the plain old kitchen that I knew so well,
with the high-backed settle,
and the stools,
and the closet bed
for Rorie;
with the wide chimney the sun shone into,
and the clear-smouldering peats;
with the pipes on the mantelshelf and the three-cornered spittoons,
filled
with sea-shells instead of sand,
on the floor;
with the bare stone walls and the bare wooden floor,
and the three patchwork rugs that were of yore its sole adornment - poor man's patchwork,
the like of it unknown in cities,
woven
with homespun,
and Sunday black,
and sea-cloth polished on the bench of rowing.

The room,
like the house,
had been a sort of wonder in that country-side,
it was so neat and habitable;
and
to see it now,
shamed by these incongruous additions,
filled me
with indignation and a kind of anger.

In view of the errand I had come upon
to Aros,
the feeling was baseless and unjust;
but it burned high,
at the first moment,
in my heart.

'Mary,
girl,'
said I,
'this is the place I had learned
to call my home,
and I do not know it.'

'It is my home by nature,
not by the learning,'
she replied;
'the place I was born and the place I'm like
to die in;
and I neither like these changes,
nor the way they came,
nor that which came
with them.

I would have liked better,
under God's pleasure,
they had gone down into the sea,
and the Merry Men were dancing on them now.'

Mary was always serious;
it was perhaps the only trait that she shared
with her father;
but the tone
with which she uttered these words was even graver than of custom.

'Ay,'
said I,
'I feared it came by wreck,
and that's by death;
yet when my father died,
I took his goods without remorse.'

'Your father died a clean strae death,
as the folk say,'
said Mary.

'True,'
I returned;
'and a wreck is like a judgment.

What was she called?'
'They ca'd her the CHRIST-ANNA,'
said a voice behind me;
and,
turning round,
I saw my uncle standing in the doorway.

He was a sour,
small,
bilious man,
with a long face and very dark eyes;
fifty-six years old,
sound and active in body,
and
with an air somewhat between that of a shepherd and that of a man following the sea.

He never laughed,
that I heard;
read long at the Bible;
prayed much,
like the Cameronians he had been brought up among;
and indeed,
in many ways,
used
to remind me of one of the hill- preachers in the killing times before the Revolution.

But he never got much comfort,
nor even,
as I used
to think,
much guidance,
by his piety.

He had his black fits when he was afraid of hell;
but he had led a rough life,
to which he would look back
with envy,
and was still a rough,
cold,
gloomy man.

As he came in at the door out of the sunlight,
with his bonnet on his head and a pipe hanging in his button-hole,
he seemed,
like Rorie,
to have grown older and paler,
the lines were deeplier ploughed upon his face,
and the whites of his eyes were yellow,
like old stained ivory,
or the bones of the dead.

'Ay'
he repeated,
dwelling upon the first part of the word,
'the CHRIST-ANNA.

It's an awfu'
name.'

I made him my salutations,
and complimented him upon his look of health;
for I feared he had perhaps been ill.

'I'm in the body,'
he replied,
ungraciously enough;
'aye in the body and the sins of the body,
like yoursel'.

Denner,'
he said abruptly
to Mary,
and then ran on
to me:

'They're grand braws,
thir that we hae gotten,
are they no?

Yon's a bonny knock
(2),
but it'll no gang;
and the napery's by ordnar.

Bonny,
bairnly braws;
it's
for the like o'
them folk sells the peace of God that passeth understanding;
it's
for the like o'
them,
an'
maybe no even sae muckle worth,
folk daunton God
to His face and burn in muckle hell;
and it's
for that reason the Scripture ca's them,
as I read the passage,
the accursed thing.

Mary,
ye girzie,'
he interrupted himself
to cry
with some asperity,
'what
for hae ye no put out the twa candlesticks?'
'Why should we need them at high noon?'
she asked.

But my uncle was not
to be turned from his idea.

'We'll bruik
(3)
them while we may,'
he said;
and so two massive candlesticks of wrought silver were added
to the table equipage,
already so unsuited
to that rough sea-side farm.

'She cam'
ashore Februar'
10,
about ten at nicht,'
he went on
to me.

'There was nae wind,
and a sair run o'
sea;
and she was in the sook o'
the Roost,
as I jaloose.

We had seen her a'
day,
Rorie and me,
beating
to the wind.

She wasnae a handy craft,
I'm thinking,
that CHRIST-ANNA;
for she would neither steer nor stey wi'
them.

A sair day they had of it;
their hands was never aff the sheets,
and it perishin'
cauld - ower cauld
to snaw;
and aye they would get a bit nip o'
wind,
and awa'
again,
to pit the emp'y hope into them.

Eh,
man! but they had a sair day
for the last o't! He would have had a prood,
prood heart that won ashore upon the back o'
that.'

'And were all lost?'
I cried.

'God held them!'
'Wheesht!'
he said sternly.

'Nane shall pray
for the deid on my hearth-stane.'

I disclaimed a Popish sense
for my ejaculation;
and he seemed
to accept my disclaimer
with unusual facility,
and ran on once more upon what had evidently become a favourite subject.

'We fand her in Sandag Bay,
Rorie an'
me,
and a'
thae braws in the inside of her.

There's a kittle bit,
ye see,
about Sandag;
whiles the sook rins strong
for the Merry Men;
an'
whiles again,
when the tide's makin'
hard an'
ye can hear the Roost blawin'
at the far-end of Aros,
there comes a back-spang of current straucht into Sandag Bay.

Weel,
there's the thing that got the grip on the CHRIST-ANNA.

She but
to have come in ram-stam an'
stern forrit;
for the bows of her are aften under,
and the back-side of her is clear at hie-water o'
neaps.

But,
man! the dunt that she cam doon wi'
when she struck! Lord save us a'! but it's an unco life
to be a sailor - a cauld,
wanchancy life.

Mony's the gliff I got mysel'
in the great deep;
and why the Lord should hae made yon unco water is mair than ever I could win
to understand.

He made the vales and the pastures,
the bonny green yaird,
the halesome,
canty land - And now they shout and sing
to Thee,
For Thou hast made them glad,
as the Psalms say in the metrical version.

No that I would preen my faith
to that clink neither;
but it's bonny,
and easier
to mind.

"Who go
to sea in ships,"
they hae't again - And in Great waters trading be,
Within the deep these men God's works And His great wonders see.

Weel,
it's easy sayin'
sae.

Maybe Dauvit wasnae very weel acquant wi'
the sea.

But,
troth,
if it wasnae prentit in the Bible,
I wad whiles be temp'it
to think it wasnae the Lord,
but the muckle,
black deil that made the sea.

There's naething good comes oot o't but the fish;
an'
the spentacle o'
God riding on the tempest,
to be shure,
whilk would be what Dauvit was likely ettling at.

But,
man,
they were sair wonders that God showed
to the CHRIST-ANNA - wonders,
do I ca'
them?

Judgments,
rather:

judgments in the mirk nicht among the draygons o'
the deep.

And their souls -
to think o'
that - their souls,
man,
maybe no prepared! The sea - a muckle yett
to hell!'
I observed,
as my uncle spoke,
that his voice was unnaturally moved and his manner unwontedly demonstrative.

He leaned forward at these last words,
for example,
and touched me on the knee
with his spread fingers,
looking up into my face
with a certain pallor,
and I could see that his eyes shone
with a deep-seated fire,
and that the lines about his mouth were drawn and tremulous.

Even the entrance of Rorie,
and the beginning of our meal,
did not detach him from his train of thought beyond a moment.

He condescended,
indeed,
to ask me some questions as
to my success at college,
but I thought it was
with half his mind;
and even in his extempore grace,
which was,
as usual,
long and wandering,
I could find the trace of his preoccupation,
praying,
as he did,
that God would
'remember in mercy fower puir,
feckless,
fiddling,
sinful creatures here by their lee-lane beside the great and dowie waters.'

Soon there came an interchange of speeches between him and Rorie.

'Was it there?'
asked my uncle.

'Ou,
ay!'
said Rorie.

I observed that they both spoke in a manner of aside,
and
with some show of embarrassment,
and that Mary herself appeared
to colour,
and looked down on her plate.

Partly
to show my knowledge,
and so relieve the party from an awkward strain,
partly because I was curious,
I pursued the subject.

'You mean the fish?'
I asked.

'Whatten fish?'
cried my uncle.

'Fish,
quo'
he! Fish! Your een are fu'
o'
fatness,
man;
your heid dozened wi'
carnal leir.

Fish! it's a bogle!'
He spoke
with great vehemence,
as though angry;
and perhaps I was not very willing
to be put down so shortly,
for young men are disputatious.

At least I remember I retorted hotly,
crying out upon childish superstitions.

'And ye come frae the College!'
sneered Uncle Gordon.

'Gude kens what they learn folk there;
it's no muckle service onyway.

Do ye think,
man,
that there's naething in a'
yon saut wilderness o'
a world oot wast there,
wi'
the sea grasses growin',
an'
the sea beasts fechtin',
an'
the sun glintin'
down into it,
day by day?

Na;
the sea's like the land,
but fearsomer.

If there's folk ashore,
there's folk in the sea - deid they may be,
but they're folk whatever;
and as
for deils,
there's nane that's like the sea deils.

There's no sae muckle harm in the land deils,
when a's said and done.

Lang syne,
when I was a callant in the south country,
I mind there was an auld,
bald bogle in the Peewie Moss.

I got a glisk o'
him mysel',
sittin'
on his hunkers in a hag,
as gray's a tombstane.

An',
troth,
he was a fearsome-like taed.

But he steered naebody.

Nae doobt,
if ane that was a reprobate,
ane the Lord hated,
had gane by there wi'
his sin still upon his stamach,
nae doobt the creature would hae lowped upo'
the likes o'
him.

But there's deils in the deep sea would yoke on a communicant! Eh,
sirs,
if ye had gane doon wi'
the puir lads in the CHRIST-ANNA,
ye would ken by now the mercy o'
the seas.

If ye had sailed it
for as lang as me,
ye would hate the thocht of it as I do.

If ye had but used the een God gave ye,
ye would hae learned the wickedness o'
that fause,
saut,
cauld,
bullering creature,
and of a'
that's in it by the Lord's permission:

labsters an'
partans,
an'
sic like,
howking in the deid;
muckle,
gutsy,
blawing whales;
an'
fish - the hale clan o'
them - cauld-wamed,
blind-eed uncanny ferlies.

O,
sirs,'
he cried,
'the horror - the horror o'
the sea!'
We were all somewhat staggered by this outburst;
and the speaker himself,
after that last hoarse apostrophe,
appeared
to sink gloomily into his own thoughts.

But Rorie,
who was greedy of superstitious lore,
recalled him
to the subject by a question.

'You will not ever have seen a teevil of the sea?'
he asked.

'No clearly,'
replied the other.

'I misdoobt if a mere man could see ane clearly and conteenue in the body.

I hae sailed wi'
a lad - they ca'd him Sandy Gabart;
he saw ane,
shure eneueh,
an'
shure eneueh it was the end of him.

We were seeven days oot frae the Clyde - a sair wark we had had - gaun north wi'
seeds an'
braws an'
things
for the Macleod.

We had got in ower near under the Cutchull'ns,
an'
had just gane about by soa,
an'
were off on a lang tack,
we thocht would maybe hauld as far's Copnahow.

I mind the nicht weel;
a mune smoored wi'
mist;
a fine gaun breeze upon the water,
but no steedy;
an'
- what nane o'
us likit
to hear - anither wund gurlin'
owerheid,
amang thae fearsome,
auld stane craigs o'
the Cutchull'ns.

Weel,
Sandy was forrit wi'
the jib sheet;
we couldnae see him
for the mains'l,
that had just begude
to draw,
when a'
at ance he gied a skirl.

I luffed
for my life,
for I thocht we were ower near Soa;
but na,
it wasnae that,
it was puir Sandy Gabart's deid skreigh,
or near hand,
for he was deid in half an hour.

A't he could tell was that a sea deil,
or sea bogle,
or sea spenster,
or sic-like,
had clum up by the bowsprit,
an'
gi'en him ae cauld,
uncanny look.

An',
or the life was oot o'
Sandy's body,
we kent weel what the thing betokened,
and why the wund gurled in the taps o'
the Cutchull'ns;
for doon it cam'
- a wund do I ca'
it! it was the wund o'
the Lord's anger - an'
a'
that nicht we foucht like men dementit,
and the niest that we kenned we were ashore in Loch Uskevagh,
an'
the cocks were crawin'
in Benbecula.'

'It will have been a merman,'
Rorie said.

'A merman!'
screamed my uncle
with immeasurable scorn.

'Auld wives'
clavers! There's nae sic things as mermen.'

'But what was the creature like?'
I asked.

'What like was it?

Gude forbid that we suld ken what like it was! It had a kind of a heid upon it - man could say nae mair.'

Then Rorie,
smarting under the affront,
told several tales of mermen,
mermaids,
and sea-horses that had come ashore upon the islands and attacked the crews of boats upon the sea;
and my uncle,
in spite of his incredulity,
listened
with uneasy interest.

'Aweel,
aweel,'
he said,
'it may be sae;
I may be wrang;
but I find nae word o'
mermen in the Scriptures.'

'And you will find nae word of Aros Roost,
maybe,'
objected Rorie,
and his argument appeared
to carry weight.

When dinner was over,
my uncle carried me forth
with him
to a bank behind the house.

It was a very hot and quiet afternoon;
scarce a ripple anywhere upon the sea,
nor any voice but the familiar voice of sheep and gulls;
and perhaps in consequence of this repose in nature,
my kinsman showed himself more rational and tranquil than before.

He spoke evenly and almost cheerfully of my career,
with every now and then a reference
to the lost ship or the treasures it had brought
to Aros.

For my part,
I listened
to him in a sort of trance,
gazing
with all my heart on that remembered scene,
and drinking gladly the sea-air and the smoke of peats that had been lit by Mary.

Perhaps an hour had passed when my uncle,
who had all the while been covertly gazing on the surface of the little bay,
rose
to his feet and bade me follow his example.

Now I should say that the great run of tide at the south-west end of Aros exercises a perturbing influence round all the coast.

In Sandag Bay,
to the south,
a strong current runs at certain periods of the flood and ebb respectively;
but in this northern bay - Aros Bay,
as it is called - where the house stands and on which my uncle was now gazing,
the only sign of disturbance is towards the end of the ebb,
and even then it is too slight
to be remarkable.

When there is any swell,
nothing can be seen at all;
but when it is calm,
as it often is,
there appear certain strange,
undecipherable marks - sea-runes,
as we may name them - on the glassy surface of the bay.

The like is common in a thousand places on the coast;
and many a boy must have amused himself as I did,
seeking
to read in them some reference
to himself or those he loved.

It was
to these marks that my uncle now directed my attention,
struggling,
as he did so,
with an evident reluctance.

'Do ye see yon scart upo'
the water?'
he inquired;
'yon ane wast the gray stane?

Ay?

Weel,
it'll no be like a letter,
wull it?'
'Certainly it is,'
I replied.

'I have often remarked it.

It is like a C.'

He heaved a sigh as if heavily disappointed
with my answer,
and then added below his breath:

'Ay,
for the CHRIST-ANNA.'

'I used
to suppose,
sir,
it was
for myself,'
said I;
'for my name is Charles.'

'And so ye saw't afore?'
,
he ran on,
not heeding my remark.

'Weel,
weel,
but that's unco strange.

Maybe,
it's been there waitin',
as a man wad say,
through a'
the weary ages.

Man,
but that's awfu'.'

And then,
breaking off:

'Ye'll no see anither,
will ye?'
he asked.

'Yes,'
said I.

'I see another very plainly,
near the Ross side,
where the road comes down - an M.'

'An M,'
he repeated very low;
and then,
again after another pause:

'An'
what wad ye make o'
that?'
he inquired.

'I had always thought it
to mean Mary,
sir,'
I answered,
growing somewhat red,
convinced as I was in my own mind that I was on the threshold of a decisive explanation.

But we were each following his own train of thought
to the exclusion of the other's.

My uncle once more paid no attention
to my words;
only hung his head and held his peace;
and I might have been led
to fancy that he had not heard me,
if his next speech had not contained a kind of echo from my own.

'I would say naething o'
thae clavers
to Mary,'
he observed,
and began
to walk forward.

There is a belt of turf along the side of Aros Bay,
where walking is easy;
and it was along this that I silently followed my silent kinsman.

I was perhaps a little disappointed at having lost so good an opportunity
to declare my love;
but I was at the same time far more deeply exercised at the change that had befallen my uncle.

He was never an ordinary,
never,
in the strict sense,
an amiable,
man;
but there was nothing in even the worst that I had known of him before,
to prepare me
for so strange a transformation.

It was impossible
to close the eyes against one fact;
that he had,
as the saying goes,
something on his mind;
and as I mentally ran over the different words which might be represented by the letter M - misery,
mercy,
marriage,
money,
and the like - I was arrested
with a sort of start by the word murder.

I was still considering the ugly sound and fatal meaning of the word,
when the direction of our walk brought us
to a point from which a view was
to be had
to either side,
back towards Aros Bay and homestead,
and forward on the ocean,
dotted
to the north
with isles,
and lying
to the southward blue and open
to the sky.

There my guide came
to a halt,
and stood staring
for awhile on that expanse.

Then he turned
to me and laid a hand on my arm.

'Ye think there's naething there?'
he said,
pointing
with his pipe;
and then cried out aloud,
with a kind of exultation:

'I'll tell ye,
man! The deid are down there - thick like rattons!'
He turned at once,
and,
without another word,
we retraced our steps
to the house of Aros.

I was eager
to be alone
with Mary;
yet it was not till after supper,
and then but
for a short while,
that I could have a word
with her.

I lost no time beating about the bush,
but spoke out plainly what was on my mind.

'Mary,'
I said,
'I have not come
to Aros without a hope.

If that should prove well founded,
we may all leave and go somewhere else,
secure of daily bread and comfort;
secure,
perhaps,
of something far beyond that,
which it would seem extravagant in me
to promise.

But there's a hope that lies nearer
to my heart than money.'

And at that I paused.

'You can guess fine what that is,
Mary,'
I said.

She looked away from me in silence,
and that was small encouragement,
but I was not
to be put off.

'All my days I have thought the world of you,'
I continued;
'the time goes on and I think always the more of you;
I could not think
to be happy or hearty in my life without you:

you are the apple of my eye.'

Still she looked away,
and said never a word;
but I thought I saw that her hands shook.

'Mary,'
I cried in fear,
'do ye no like me?'
'O,
Charlie man,'
she said,
'is this a time
to speak of it?

Let me be,
a while;
let me be the way I am;
it'll not be you that loses by the waiting!'
I made out by her voice that she was nearly weeping,
and this put me out of any thought but
to compose her.

'Mary Ellen,'
I said,
'say no more;
I did not come
to trouble you:

your way shall be mine,
and your time too;
and you have told me all I wanted.

Only just this one thing more:

what ails you?'
She owned it was her father,
but would enter into no particulars,
only shook her head,
and said he was not well and not like himself,
and it was a great pity.

She knew nothing of the wreck.

'I havenae been near it,'
said she.

'What
for would I go near it,
Charlie lad?

The poor souls are gone
to their account long syne;
and I would just have wished they had ta'en their gear
with them - poor souls!'
This was scarcely any great encouragement
for me
to tell her of the ESPIRITO SANTO;
yet I did so,
and at the very first word she cried out in surprise.

'There was a man at Grisapol,'
she said,
'in the month of May - a little,
yellow,
black-avised body,
they tell me,
with gold rings upon his fingers,
and a beard;
and he was speiring high and low
for that same ship.'

It was towards the end of April that I had been given these papers
to sort out by Dr. Robertson:

and it came suddenly back upon my mind that they were thus prepared
for a Spanish historian,
or a man calling himself such,
who had come
with high recommendations
to the Principal,
on a mission of inquiry as
to the dispersion of the great Armada.

Putting one thing
with another,
I fancied that the visitor
'with the gold rings upon his fingers'
might be the same
with Dr. Robertson's historian from Madrid.

If that were so,
he would be more likely after treasure
for himself than information
for a learned society.

I made up my mind,
I should lose no time over my undertaking;
and if the ship lay sunk in Sandag Bay,
as perhaps both he and I supposed,
it should not be
for the advantage of this ringed adventurer,
but
for Mary and myself,
and
for the good,
old,
honest,
kindly family of the Darnaways.

CHAPTER III.

LAND AND SEA IN SANDAG BAY.

I WAS early afoot next morning;
and as soon as I had a bite
to eat,
set forth upon a tour of exploration.

Something in my heart distinctly told me that I should find the ship of the Armada;
and although I did not give way entirely
to such hopeful thoughts,
I was still very light in spirits and walked upon air.

Aros is a very rough islet,
its surface strewn
with great rocks and shaggy
with fernland heather;
and my way lay almost north and south across the highest knoll;
and though the whole distance was inside of two miles it took more time and exertion than four upon a level road.

Upon the summit,
I paused.

Although not very high - not three hundred feet,
as I think - it yet outtops all the neighbouring lowlands of the Ross,
and commands a great view of sea and islands.

The sun,
which had been up some time,
was already hot upon my neck;
the air was listless and thundery,
although purely clear;
away over the north-west,
where the isles lie thickliest congregated,
some half-a-dozen small and ragged clouds hung together in a covey;
and the head of Ben Kyaw wore,
not merely a few streamers,
but a solid hood of vapour.

There was a threat in the weather.

The sea,
it is true,
was smooth like glass:

even the Roost was but a seam on that wide mirror,
and the Merry Men no more than caps of foam;
but
to my eye and ear,
so long familiar
with these places,
the sea also seemed
to lie uneasily;
a sound of it,
like a long sigh,
mounted
to me where I stood;
and,
quiet as it was,
the Roost itself appeared
to be revolving mischief.

For I ought
to say that all we dwellers in these parts attributed,
if not prescience,
at least a quality of warning,
to that strange and dangerous creature of the tides.

I hurried on,
then,
with the greater speed,
and had soon descended the slope of Aros
to the part that we call Sandag Bay.

It is a pretty large piece of water compared
with the size of the isle;
well sheltered from all but the prevailing wind;
sandy and shoal and bounded by low sand-hills
to the west,
but
to the eastward lying several fathoms deep along a ledge of rocks.

It is upon that side that,
at a certain time each flood,
the current mentioned by my uncle sets so strong into the bay;
a little later,
when the Roost begins
to work higher,
an undertow runs still more strongly in the reverse direction;
and it is the action of this last,
as I suppose,
that has scoured that part so deep.

Nothing is
to be seen out of Sandag Bay,
but one small segment of the horizon and,
in heavy weather,
the breakers flying high over a deep sea reef.

From half-way down the hill,
I had perceived the wreck of February last,
a brig of considerable tonnage,
lying,
with her back broken,
high and dry on the east corner of the sands;
and I was making directly towards it,
and already almost on the margin of the turf,
when my eyes were suddenly arrested by a spot,
cleared of fern and heather,
and marked by one of those long,
low,
and almost human- looking mounds that we see so commonly in graveyards.

I stopped like a man shot.

Nothing had been said
to me of any dead man or interment on the island;
Rorie,
Mary,
and my uncle had all equally held their peace;
of her at least,
I was certain that she must be ignorant;
and yet here,
before my eyes,
was proof indubitable of the fact.

Here was a grave;
and I had
to ask myself,
with a chill,
what manner of man lay there in his last sleep,
awaiting the signal of the Lord in that solitary,
sea-beat resting-place?

My mind supplied no answer but what I feared
to entertain.

Shipwrecked,
at least,
he must have been;
perhaps,
like the old Armada mariners,
from some far and rich land over-sea;
or perhaps one of my own race,
perishing within eyesight of the smoke of home.

I stood awhile uncovered by his side,
and I could have desired that it had lain in our religion
to put up some prayer
for that unhappy stranger,
or,
in the old classic way,
outwardly
to honour his misfortune.

I knew,
although his bones lay there,
a part of Aros,
till the trumpet sounded,
his imperishable soul was forth and far away,
among the raptures of the everlasting Sabbath or the pangs of hell;
and yet my mind misgave me even
with a fear,
that perhaps he was near me where I stood,
guarding his sepulchre,
and lingering on the scene of his unhappy fate.

Certainly it was
with a spirit somewhat over-shadowed that I turned away from the grave
to the hardly less melancholy spectacle of the wreck.

Her stem was above the first arc of the flood;
she was broken in two a little abaft the foremast - though indeed she had none,
both masts having broken short in her disaster;
and as the pitch of the beach was very sharp and sudden,
and the bows lay many feet below the stern,
the fracture gaped widely open,
and you could see right through her poor hull upon the farther side.

Her name was much defaced,
and I could not make out clearly whether she was called CHRISTIANIA,
after the Norwegian city,
or CHRISTIANA,
after the good woman,
Christian's wife,
in that old book the
'Pilgrim's Progress.'

By her build she was a foreign ship,
but I was not certain of her nationality.

She had been painted green,
but the colour was faded and weathered,
and the paint peeling off in strips.

The wreck of the mainmast lay alongside,
half buried in sand.

She was a forlorn sight,
indeed,
and I could not look without emotion at the bits of rope that still hung about her,
so often handled of yore by shouting seamen;
or the little scuttle where they had passed up and down
to their affairs;
or that poor noseless angel of a figure-head that had dipped into so many running billows.

I do not know whether it came most from the ship or from the grave,
but I fell into some melancholy scruples,
as I stood there,
leaning
with one hand against the battered timbers.

The homelessness of men and even of inanimate vessels,
cast away upon strange shores,
came strongly in upon my mind.

To make a profit of such pitiful misadventures seemed an unmanly and a sordid act;
and I began
to think of my then quest as of something sacrilegious in its nature.

But when I remembered Mary,
I took heart again.

My uncle would never consent
to an imprudent marriage,
nor would she,
as I was persuaded,
wed without his full approval.

It behoved me,
then,
to be up and doing
for my wife;
and I thought
with a laugh how long it was since that great sea-castle,
the ESPIRITO SANTO,
had left her bones in Sandag Bay,
and how weak it would be
to consider rights so long extinguished and misfortunes so long forgotten in the process of time.

I had my theory of where
to seek
for her remains.

The set of the current and the soundings both pointed
to the east side of the bay under the ledge of rocks.

If she had been lost in Sandag Bay,
and if,
after these centuries,
any portion of her held together,
it was there that I should find it.

The water deepens,
as I have said,
with great rapidity,
and even close along-side the rocks several fathoms may be found.

As I walked upon the edge I could see far and wide over the sandy bottom of the bay;
the sun shone clear and green and steady in the deeps;
the bay seemed rather like a great transparent crystal,
as one sees them in a lapidary's shop;
there was naught
to show that it was water but an internal trembling,
a hovering within of sun-glints and netted shadows,
and now and then a faint lap and a dying bubble round the edge.

The shadows of the rocks lay out
for some distance at their feet,
so that my own shadow,
moving,
pausing,
and stooping on the top of that,
reached sometimes half across the bay.

It was above all in this belt of shadows that I hunted
for the ESPIRITO SANTO;
since it was there the undertow ran strongest,
whether in or out.

Cool as the whole water seemed this broiling day,
it looked,
in that part,
yet cooler,
and had a mysterious invitation
for the eyes.

Peer as I pleased,
however,
I could see nothing but a few fishes or a bush of sea-tangle,
and here and there a lump of rock that had fallen from above and now lay separate on the sandy floor.

Twice did I pass from one end
to the other of the rocks,
and in the whole distance I could see nothing of the wreck,
nor any place but one where it was possible
for it
to be.

This was a large terrace in five fathoms of water,
raised off the surface of the sand
to a considerable height,
and looking from above like a mere outgrowth of the rocks on which I walked.

It was one mass of great sea-tangles like a grove,
which prevented me judging of its nature,
but in shape and size it bore some likeness
to a vessel's hull.

At least it was my best chance.

If the ESPIRITO SANTO lay not there under the tangles,
it lay nowhere at all in Sandag Bay;
and I prepared
to put the question
to the proof,
once and
for all,
and either go back
to Aros a rich man or cured
for ever of my dreams of wealth.

I stripped
to the skin,
and stood on the extreme margin
with my hands clasped,
irresolute.

The bay at that time was utterly quiet;
there was no sound but from a school of porpoises somewhere out of sight behind the point;
yet a certain fear withheld me on the threshold of my venture.

Sad sea-feelings,
scraps of my uncle's superstitions,
thoughts of the dead,
of the grave,
of the old broken ships,
drifted through my mind.

But the strong sun upon my shoulders warmed me
to the heart,
and I stooped forward and plunged into the sea.

It was all that I could do
to catch a trail of the sea-tangle that grew so thickly on the terrace;
but once so far anchored I secured myself by grasping a whole armful of these thick and slimy stalks,
and,
planting my feet against the edge,
I looked around me.

On all sides the clear sand stretched forth unbroken;
it came
to the foot of the rocks,
scoured into the likeness of an alley in a garden by the action of the tides;
and before me,
for as far as I could see,
nothing was visible but the same many-folded sand upon the sun- bright bottom of the bay.

Yet the terrace
to which I was then holding was as thick
with strong sea-growths as a tuft of heather,
and the cliff from which it bulged hung draped below the water-line
with brown lianas.

In this complexity of forms,
all swaying together in the current,
things were hard
to be distinguished;
and I was still uncertain whether my feet were pressed upon the natural rock or upon the timbers of the Armada treasure-ship,
when the whole tuft of tangle came away in my hand,
and in an instant I was on the surface,
and the shores of the bay and the bright water swam before my eyes in a glory of crimson.

I clambered back upon the rocks,
and threw the plant of tangle at my feet.

Something at the same moment rang sharply,
like a falling coin.

I stooped,
and there,
sure enough,
crusted
with the red rust,
there lay an iron shoe-buckle.

The sight of this poor human relic thrilled me
to the heart,
but not
with hope nor fear,
only
with a desolate melancholy.

I held it in my hand,
and the thought of its owner appeared before me like the presence of an actual man.

His weather-beaten face,
his sailor's hands,
his sea-voice hoarse
with singing at the capstan,
the very foot that had once worn that buckle and trod so much along the swerving decks - the whole human fact of him,
as a creature like myself,
with hair and blood and seeing eyes,
haunted me in that sunny,
solitary place,
not like a spectre,
but like some friend whom I had basely injured.

Was the great treasure ship indeed below there,
with her guns and chain and treasure,
as she had sailed from Spain;
her decks a garden
for the seaweed,
her cabin a breeding place
for fish,
soundless but
for the dredging water,
motionless but
for the waving of the tangle upon her battlements - that old,
populous,
sea-riding castle,
now a reef in Sandag Bay?

Or,
as I thought it likelier,
was this a waif from the disaster of the foreign brig - was this shoe-buckle bought but the other day and worn by a man of my own period in the world's history,
hearing the same news from day
to day,
thinking the same thoughts,
praying,
perhaps,
in the same temple
with myself?

However it was,
I was assailed
with dreary thoughts;
my uncle's words,
'the dead are down there,'
echoed in my ears;
and though I determined
to dive once more,
it was
with a strong repugnance that I stepped forward
to the margin of the rocks.

A great change passed at that moment over the appearance of the bay.

It was no more that clear,
visible interior,
like a house roofed
with glass,
where the green,
submarine sunshine slept so stilly.

A breeze,
I suppose,
had flawed the surface,
and a sort of trouble and blackness filled its bosom,
where flashes of light and clouds of shadow tossed confusedly together.

Even the terrace below obscurely rocked and quivered.

It seemed a graver thing
to venture on this place of ambushes;
and when I leaped into the sea the second time it was
with a quaking in my soul.

I secured myself as at first,
and groped among the waving tangle.

All that met my touch was cold and soft and gluey.

The thicket was alive
with crabs and lobsters,
trundling
to and fro lopsidedly,
and I had
to harden my heart against the horror of their carrion neighbourhood.

On all sides I could feel the grain and the clefts of hard,
living stone;
no planks,
no iron,
not a sign of any wreck;
the ESPIRITO SANTO was not there.

I remember I had almost a sense of relief in my disappointment,
and I was about ready
to leave go,
when something happened that sent me
to the surface
with my heart in my mouth.

I had already stayed somewhat late over my explorations;
the current was freshening
with the change of the tide,
and Sandag Bay was no longer a safe place
for a single swimmer.

Well,
just at the last moment there came a sudden flush of current,
dredging through the tangles like a wave.

I lost one hold,
was flung sprawling on my side,
and,
instinctively grasping
for a fresh support,
my fingers closed on something hard and cold.

I think I knew at that moment what it was.

At least I instantly left hold of the tangle,
leaped
for the surface,
and clambered out next moment on the friendly rocks
with the bone of a man's leg in my grasp.

Mankind is a material creature,
slow
to think and dull
to perceive connections.

The grave,
the wreck of the brig,
and the rusty shoe- buckle were surely plain advertisements.

A child might have read their dismal story,
and yet it was not until I touched that actual piece of mankind that the full horror of the charnel ocean burst upon my spirit.

I laid the bone beside the buckle,
picked up my clothes,
and ran as I was along the rocks towards the human shore.

I could not be far enough from the spot;
no fortune was vast enough
to tempt me back again.

The bones of the drowned dead should henceforth roll undisturbed by me,
whether on tangle or minted gold.

But as soon as I trod the good earth again,
and had covered my nakedness against the sun,
I knelt down over against the ruins of the brig,
and out of the fulness of my heart prayed long and passionately
for all poor souls upon the sea.

A generous prayer is never presented in vain;
the petition may be refused,
but the petitioner is always,
I believe,
rewarded by some gracious visitation.

The horror,
at least,
was lifted from my mind;
I could look
with calm of spirit on that great bright creature,
God's ocean;
and as I set off homeward up the rough sides of Aros,
nothing remained of my concern beyond a deep determination
to meddle no more
with the spoils of wrecked vessels or the treasures of the dead.

I was already some way up the hill before I paused
to breathe and look behind me.

The sight that met my eyes was doubly strange.

For,
first,
the storm that I had foreseen was now advancing
with almost tropical rapidity.

The whole surface of the sea had been dulled from its conspicuous brightness
to an ugly hue of corrugated lead;
already in the distance the white waves,
the
'skipper's daughters,'
had begun
to flee before a breeze that was still insensible on Aros;
and already along the curve of Sandag Bay there was a splashing run of sea that I could hear from where I stood.

The change upon the sky was even more remarkable.

There had begun
to arise out of the south-west a huge and solid continent of scowling cloud;
here and there,
through rents in its contexture,
the sun still poured a sheaf of spreading rays;
and here and there,
from all its edges,
vast inky streamers lay forth along the yet unclouded sky.

The menace was express and imminent.

Even as I gazed,
the sun was blotted out.

At any moment the tempest might fall upon Aros in its might.

The suddenness of this change of weather so fixed my eyes on heaven that it was some seconds before they alighted on the bay,
mapped out below my feet,
and robbed a moment later of the sun.

The knoll which I had just surmounted overflanked a little amphitheatre of lower hillocks sloping towards the sea,
and beyond that the yellow arc of beach and the whole extent of Sandag Bay.

It was a scene on which I had often looked down,
but where I had never before beheld a human figure.

I had but just turned my back upon it and left it empty,
and my wonder may be fancied when I saw a boat and several men in that deserted spot.

The boat was lying by the rocks.

A pair of fellows,
bareheaded,
with their sleeves rolled up,
and one
with a boathook,
kept her
with difficulty
to her moorings
for the current was growing brisker every moment.

A little way off upon the ledge two men in black clothes,
whom I judged
to be superior in rank,
laid their heads together over some task which at first I did not understand,
but a second after I had made it out - they were taking bearings
with the compass;
and just then I saw one of them unroll a sheet of paper and lay his finger down,
as though identifying features in a map.

Meanwhile a third was walking
to and fro,
polling among the rocks and peering over the edge into the water.

While I was still watching them
with the stupefaction of surprise,
my mind hardly yet able
to work on what my eyes reported,
this third person suddenly stooped and summoned his companions
with a cry so loud that it reached my ears upon the hill.

The others ran
to him,
even dropping the compass in their hurry,
and I could see the bone and the shoe-buckle going from hand
to hand,
causing the most unusual gesticulations of surprise and interest.

Just then I could hear the seamen crying from the boat,
and saw them point westward
to that cloud continent which was ever the more rapidly unfurling its blackness over heaven.

The others seemed
to consult;
but the danger was too pressing
to be braved,
and they bundled into the boat carrying my relies
with them,
and set forth out of the bay
with all speed of oars.

I made no more ado about the matter,
but turned and ran
for the house.

Whoever these men were,
it was fit my uncle should be instantly informed.

It was not then altogether too late in the day
for a descent of the Jacobites;
and may be Prince Charlie,
whom I knew my uncle
to detest,
was one of the three superiors whom I had seen upon the rock.

Yet as I ran,
leaping from rock
to rock,
and turned the matter loosely in my mind,
this theory grew ever the longer the less welcome
to my reason.

The compass,
the map,
the interest awakened by the buckle,
and the conduct of that one among the strangers who had looked so often below him in the water,
all seemed
to point
to a different explanation of their presence on that outlying,
obscure islet of the western sea.

The Madrid historian,
the search instituted by Dr. Robertson,
the bearded stranger
with the rings,
my own fruitless search that very morning in the deep water of Sandag Bay,
ran together,
piece by piece,
in my memory,
and I made sure that these strangers must be Spaniards in quest of ancient treasure and the lost ship of the Armada.

But the people living in outlying islands,
such as Aros,
are answerable
for their own security;
there is none near by
to protect or even
to help them;
and the presence in such a spot of a crew of foreign adventurers - poor,
greedy,
and most likely lawless - filled me
with apprehensions
for my uncle's money,
and even
for the safety of his daughter.

I was still wondering how we were
to get rid of them when I came,
all breathless,
to the top of Aros.

The whole world was shadowed over;
only in the extreme east,
on a hill of the mainland,
one last gleam of sunshine lingered like a jewel;
rain had begun
to fall,
not heavily,
but in great drops;
the sea was rising
with each moment,
and already a band of white encircled Aros and the nearer coasts of Grisapol.

The boat was still pulling seaward,
but I now became aware of what had been hidden from me lower down - a large,
heavily sparred,
handsome schooner,
lying
to at the south end of Aros.

Since I had not seen her in the morning when I had looked around so closely at the signs of the weather,
and upon these lone waters where a sail was rarely visible,
it was clear she must have lain last night behind the uninhabited Eilean Gour,
and this proved conclusively that she was manned by strangers
to our coast,
for that anchorage,
though good enough
to look at,
is little better than a trap
for ships.

With such ignorant sailors upon so wild a coast,
the coming gale was not unlikely
to bring death upon its wings.

CHAPTER IV.

THE GALE.

I FOUND my uncle at the gable end,
watching the signs of the weather,
with a pipe in his fingers.

'Uncle,'
said I,
'there were men ashore at Sandag Bay -
'
I had no time
to go further;
indeed,
I not only forgot my words,
but even my weariness,
so strange was the effect on Uncle Gordon.

He dropped his pipe and fell back against the end of the house
with his jaw fallen,
his eyes staring,
and his long face as white as paper.

We must have looked at one another silently
for a quarter of a minute,
before he made answer in this extraordinary fashion:

'Had he a hair kep on?'
I knew as well as if I had been there that the man who now lay buried at Sandag had worn a hairy cap,
and that he had come ashore alive.

For the first and only time I lost toleration
for the man who was my benefactor and the father of the woman I hoped
to call my wife.

'These were living men,'
said I,
'perhaps Jacobites,
perhaps the French,
perhaps pirates,
perhaps adventurers come here
to seek the Spanish treasure ship;
but,
whatever they may be,
dangerous at least
to your daughter and my cousin.

As
for your own guilty terrors,
man,
the dead sleeps well where you have laid him.

I stood this morning by his grave;
he will not wake before the trump of doom.'

My kinsman looked upon me,
blinking,
while I spoke;
then he fixed his eyes
for a little on the ground,
and pulled his fingers foolishly;
but it was plain that he was past the power of speech.

'Come,'
said I.

'You must think
for others.

You must come up the hill
with me,
and see this ship.'

He obeyed without a word or a look,
following slowly after my impatient strides.

The spring seemed
to have gone out of his body,
and he scrambled heavily up and down the rocks,
instead of leaping,
as he was wont,
from one
to another.

Nor could I,
for all my cries,
induce him
to make better haste.

Only once he replied
to me complainingly,
and like one in bodily pain:

'Ay,
ay,
man,
I'm coming.'

Long before we had reached the top,
I had no other thought
for him but pity.

If the crime had been monstrous the punishment was in proportion.

At last we emerged above the sky-line of the hill,
and could see around us.

All was black and stormy
to the eye;
the last gleam of sun had vanished;
a wind had sprung up,
not yet high,
but gusty and unsteady
to the point;
the rain,
on the other hand,
had ceased.

Short as was the interval,
the sea already ran vastly higher than when I had stood there last;
already it had begun
to break over some of the outward reefs,
and already it moaned aloud in the sea- caves of Aros.

I looked,
at first,
in vain
for the schooner.

'There she is,'
I said at last.

But her new position,
and the course she was now lying,
puzzled me.

'They cannot mean
to beat
to sea,'
I cried.

'That's what they mean,'
said my uncle,
with something like joy;
and just then the schooner went about and stood upon another tack,
which put the question beyond the reach of doubt.

These strangers,
seeing a gale on hand,
had thought first of sea-room.

With the wind that threatened,
in these reef-sown waters and contending against so violent a stream of tide,
their course was certain death.

'Good God!'
said I,
'they are all lost.'

'Ay,'
returned my uncle,
'a'
- a'
lost.

They hadnae a chance but
to rin
for Kyle Dona.

The gate they're gaun the noo,
they couldnae win through an the muckle deil were there
to pilot them.

Eh,
man,'
he continued,
touching me on the sleeve,
'it's a braw nicht
for a shipwreck! Twa in ae twalmonth! Eh,
but the Merry Men'll dance bonny!'
I looked at him,
and it was then that I began
to fancy him no longer in his right mind.

He was peering up
to me,
as if
for sympathy,
a timid joy in his eyes.

All that had passed between us was already forgotten in the prospect of this fresh disaster.

'If it were not too late,'
I cried
with indignation,
'I would take the coble and go out
to warn them.'

'Na,
na,'
he protested,
'ye maunnae interfere;
ye maunnae meddle wi'
the like o'
that.

It's His'
- doffing his bonnet -
'His wull.

And,
eh,
man! but it's a braw nicht for't!'
Something like fear began
to creep into my soul and,
reminding him that I had not yet dined,
I proposed we should return
to the house.

But no;
nothing would tear him from his place of outlook.

'I maun see the hail thing,
man,
Cherlie,'
he explained - and then as the schooner went about a second time,
'Eh,
but they han'le her bonny!'
he cried.

'The CHRIST-ANNA was naething
to this.'

Already the men on board the schooner must have begun
to realise some part,
but not yet the twentieth,
of the dangers that environed their doomed ship.

At every lull of the capricious wind they must have seen how fast the current swept them back.

Each tack was made shorter,
as they saw how little it prevailed.

Every moment the rising swell began
to boom and foam upon another sunken reef;
and ever and again a breaker would fall in sounding ruin under the very bows of her,
and the brown reef and streaming tangle appear in the hollow of the wave.

I tell you,
they had
to stand
to their tackle:

there was no idle men aboard that ship,
God knows.

It was upon the progress of a scene so horrible
to any human-hearted man that my misguided uncle now pored and gloated like a connoisseur.

As I turned
to go down the hill,
he was lying on his belly on the summit,
with his hands stretched forth and clutching in the heather.

He seemed rejuvenated,
mind and body.

When I got back
to the house already dismally affected,
I was still more sadly downcast at the sight of Mary.

She had her sleeves rolled up over her strong arms,
and was quietly making bread.

I got a bannock from the dresser and sat down
to eat it in silence.

'Are ye wearied,
lad?'
she asked after a while.

'I am not so much wearied,
Mary,'
I replied,
getting on my feet,
'as I am weary of delay,
and perhaps of Aros too.

You know me well enough
to judge me fairly,
say what I like.

Well,
Mary,
you may be sure of this:

you had better be anywhere but here.'

'I'll be sure of one thing,'
she returned:

'I'll be where my duty is.'

'You forget,
you have a duty
to yourself,'
I said.

'Ay,
man?'
she replied,
pounding at the dough;
'will you have found that in the Bible,
now?'
'Mary,'
I said solemnly,
'you must not laugh at me just now.

God knows I am in no heart
for laughing.

If we could get your father
with us,
it would be best;
but
with him or without him,
I want you far away from here,
my girl;
for your own sake,
and
for mine,
ay,
and
for your father's too,
I want you far - far away from here.

I came
with other thoughts;
I came here as a man comes home;
now it is all changed,
and I have no desire nor hope but
to flee -
for that's the word - flee,
like a bird out of the fowler's snare,
from this accursed island.'

She had stopped her work by this time.

'And do you think,
now,'
said she,
'do you think,
now,
I have neither eyes nor ears?

Do ye think I havenae broken my heart
to have these braws
(as he calls them,
God forgive him!)
thrown into the sea?

Do ye think I have lived
with him,
day in,
day out,
and not seen what you saw in an hour or two?

No,'
she said,
'I know there's wrong in it;
what wrong,
I neither know nor want
to know.

There was never an ill thing made better by meddling,
that I could hear of.

But,
my lad,
you must never ask me
to leave my father.

While the breath is in his body,
I'll be
with him.

And he's not long
for here,
either:

that I can tell you,
Charlie - he's not long
for here.

The mark is on his brow;
and better so - maybe better so.'

I was a while silent,
not knowing what
to say;
and when I roused my head at last
to speak,
she got before me.

'Charlie,'
she said,
'what's right
for me,
neednae be right
for you.

There's sin upon this house and trouble;
you are a stranger;
take your things upon your back and go your ways
to better places and
to better folk,
and if you were ever minded
to come back,
though it were twenty years syne,
you would find me aye waiting.'

'Mary Ellen,'
I said,
'I asked you
to be my wife,
and you said as good as yes.

That's done
for good.

Wherever you are,
I am;
as I shall answer
to my God.'

As I said the words,
the wind suddenly burst out raving,
and then seemed
to stand still and shudder round the house of Aros.

It was the first squall,
or prologue,
of the coming tempest,
and as we started and looked about us,
we found that a gloom,
like the approach of evening,
had settled round the house.

'God pity all poor folks at sea!'
she said.

'We'll see no more of my father till the morrow's morning.'

And then she told me,
as we sat by the fire and hearkened
to the rising gusts,
of how this change had fallen upon my uncle.

All last winter he had been dark and fitful in his mind.

Whenever the Roost ran high,
or,
as Mary said,
whenever the Merry Men were dancing,
he would lie out
for hours together on the Head,
if it were at night,
or on the top of Aros by day,
watching the tumult of the sea,
and sweeping the horizon
for a sail.

After February the tenth,
when the wealth-bringing wreck was cast ashore at Sandag,
he had been at first unnaturally gay,
and his excitement had never fallen in degree,
but only changed in kind from dark
to darker.

He neglected his work,
and kept Rorie idle.

They two would speak together by the hour at the gable end,
in guarded tones and
with an air of secrecy and almost of guilt;
and if she questioned either,
as at first she sometimes did,
her inquiries were put aside
with confusion.

Since Rorie had first remarked the fish that hung about the ferry,
his master had never set foot but once upon the mainland of the Ross.

That once - it was in the height of the springs - he had passed dryshod while the tide was out;
but,
having lingered overlong on the far side,
found himself cut off from Aros by the returning waters.

It was
with a shriek of agony that he had leaped across the gut,
and he had reached home thereafter in a fever-fit of fear.

A fear of the sea,
a constant haunting thought of the sea,
appeared in his talk and devotions,
and even in his looks when he was silent.

Rorie alone came in
to supper;
but a little later my uncle appeared,
took a bottle under his arm,
put some bread in his pocket,
and set forth again
to his outlook,
followed this time by Rorie.

I heard that the schooner was losing ground,
but the crew were still fighting every inch
with hopeless ingenuity and course;
and the news filled my mind
with blackness.

A little after sundown the full fury of the gale broke forth,
such a gale as I have never seen in summer,
nor,
seeing how swiftly it had come,
even in winter.

Mary and I sat in silence,
the house quaking overhead,
the tempest howling without,
the fire between us sputtering
with raindrops.

Our thoughts were far away
with the poor fellows on the schooner,
or my not less unhappy uncle,
houseless on the promontory;
and yet ever and again we were startled back
to ourselves,
when the wind would rise and strike the gable like a solid body,
or suddenly fall and draw away,
so that the fire leaped into flame and our hearts bounded in our sides.

Now the storm in its might would seize and shake the four corners of the roof,
roaring like Leviathan in anger.

Anon,
in a lull,
cold eddies of tempest moved shudderingly in the room,
lifting the hair upon our heads and passing between us as we sat.

And again the wind would break forth in a chorus of melancholy sounds,
hooting low in the chimney,
wailing
with flutelike softness round the house.

It was perhaps eight o'clock when Rorie came in and pulled me mysteriously
to the door.

My uncle,
it appeared,
had frightened even his constant comrade;
and Rorie,
uneasy at his extravagance,
prayed me
to come out and share the watch.

I hastened
to do as I was asked;
the more readily as,
what
with fear and horror,
and the electrical tension of the night,
I was myself restless and disposed
for action.

I told Mary
to be under no alarm,
for I should be a safeguard on her father;
and wrapping myself warmly in a plaid,
I followed Rorie into the open air.

The night,
though we were so little past midsummer,
was as dark as January.

Intervals of a groping twilight alternated
with spells of utter blackness;
and it was impossible
to trace the reason of these changes in the flying horror of the sky.

The wind blew the breath out of a man's nostrils;
all heaven seemed
to thunder overhead like one huge sail;
and when there fell a momentary lull on Aros,
we could hear the gusts dismally sweeping in the distance.

Over all the lowlands of the Ross,
the wind must have blown as fierce as on the open sea;
and God only knows the uproar that was raging around the head of Ben Kyaw.

Sheets of mingled spray and rain were driven in our faces.

All round the isle of Aros the surf,
with an incessant,
hammering thunder,
beat upon the reefs and beaches.

Now louder in one place,
now lower in another,
like the combinations of orchestral music,
the constant mass of sound was hardly varied
for a moment.

And loud above all this hurly-burly I could hear the changeful voices of the Roost and the intermittent roaring of the Merry Men.

At that hour,
there flashed into my mind the reason of the name that they were called.

For the noise of them seemed almost mirthful,
as it out-topped the other noises of the night;
or if not mirthful,
yet instinct
with a portentous joviality.

Nay,
and it seemed even human.

As when savage men have drunk away their reason,
and,
discarding speech,
bawl together in their madness by the hour;
so,
to my ears,
these deadly breakers shouted by Aros in the night.

Arm in arm,
and staggering against the wind,
Rorie and I won every yard of ground
with conscious effort.

We slipped on the wet sod,
we fell together sprawling on the rocks.

Bruised,
drenched,
beaten,
and breathless,
it must have taken us near half an hour
to get from the house down
to the Head that overlooks the Roost.

There,
it seemed,
was my uncle's favourite observatory.

Right in the face of it,
where the cliff is highest and most sheer,
a hump of earth,
like a parapet,
makes a place of shelter from the common winds,
where a man may sit in quiet and see the tide and the mad billows contending at his feet.

As he might look down from the window of a house upon some street disturbance,
so,
from this post,
he looks down upon the tumbling of the Merry Men.

On such a night,
of course,
he peers upon a world of blackness,
where the waters wheel and boil,
where the waves joust together
with the noise of an explosion,
and the foam towers and vanishes in the twinkling of an eye.

Never before had I seen the Merry Men thus violent.

The fury,
height,
and transiency of their spoutings was a thing
to be seen and not recounted.

High over our heads on the cliff rose their white columns in the darkness;
and the same instant,
like phantoms,
they were gone.

Sometimes three at a time would thus aspire and vanish;
sometimes a gust took them,
and the spray would fall about us,
heavy as a wave.

And yet the spectacle was rather maddening in its levity than impressive by its force.

Thought was beaten down by the confounding uproar - a gleeful vacancy possessed the brains of men,
a state akin
to madness;
and I found myself at times following the dance of the Merry Men as it were a tune upon a jigging instrument.

I first caught sight of my uncle when we were still some yards away in one of the flying glimpses of twilight that chequered the pitch darkness of the night.

He was standing up behind the parapet,
his head thrown back and the bottle
to his mouth.

As he put it down,
he saw and recognised us
with a toss of one hand fleeringly above his head.

'Has he been drinking?'
shouted I
to Rorie.

'He will aye be drunk when the wind blaws,'
returned Rorie in the same high key,
and it was all that I could do
to hear him.

'Then - was he so - in February?'
I inquired.

Rorie's
'Ay'
was a cause of joy
to me.

The murder,
then,
had not sprung in cold blood from calculation;
it was an act of madness no more
to be condemned than
to be pardoned.

My uncle was a dangerous madman,
if you will,
but he was not cruel and base as I had feared.

Yet what a scene
for a carouse,
what an incredible vice,
was this that the poor man had chosen! I have always thought drunkenness a wild and almost fearful pleasure,
rather demoniacal than human;
but drunkenness,
out here in the roaring blackness,
on the edge of a cliff above that hell of waters,
the man's head spinning like the Roost,
his foot tottering on the edge of death,
his ear watching
for the signs of ship-wreck,
surely that,
if it were credible in any one,
was morally impossible in a man like my uncle,
whose mind was set upon a damnatory creed and haunted by the darkest superstitions.

Yet so it was;
and,
as we reached the bight of shelter and could breathe again,
I saw the man's eyes shining in the night
with an unholy glimmer.

'Eh,
Charlie,
man,
it's grand!'
he cried.

'See
to them!'
he continued,
dragging me
to the edge of the abyss from whence arose that deafening clamour and those clouds of spray;
'see
to them dancin',
man! Is that no wicked?'
He pronounced the word
with gusto,
and I thought it suited
with the scene.

'They're yowlin'
for thon schooner,'
he went on,
his thin,
insane voice clearly audible in the shelter of the bank,
'an'
she's comin'
aye nearer,
aye nearer,
aye nearer an'
nearer an'
nearer;
an'
they ken't,
the folk kens it,
they ken wool it's by wi'
them.

Charlie,
lad,
they're a'
drunk in yon schooner,
a'
dozened wi'
drink.

They were a'
drunk in the CHRIST-ANNA,
at the hinder end.

There's nane could droon at sea wantin'
the brandy.

Hoot awa,
what do you ken?'
with a sudden blast of anger.

'I tell ye,
it cannae be;
they droon withoot it.

Ha'e,'
holding out the bottle,
'tak'
a sowp.'

I was about
to refuse,
but Rorie touched me as if in warning;
and indeed I had already thought better of the movement.

I took the bottle,
therefore,
and not only drank freely myself,
but contrived
to spill even more as I was doing so.

It was pure spirit,
and almost strangled me
to swallow.

My kinsman did not observe the loss,
but,
once more throwing back his head,
drained the remainder
to the dregs.

Then,
with a loud laugh,
he cast the bottle forth among the Merry Men,
who seemed
to leap up,
shouting
to receive it.

'Ha'e,
bairns!'
he cried,
'there's your han'sel.

Ye'll get bonnier nor that,
or morning.'

Suddenly,
out in the black night before us,
and not two hundred yards away,
we heard,
at a moment when the wind was silent,
the clear note of a human voice.

Instantly the wind swept howling down upon the Head,
and the Roost bellowed,
and churned,
and danced
with a new fury.

But we had heard the sound,
and we knew,
with agony,
that this was the doomed ship now close on ruin,
and that what we had heard was the voice of her master issuing his last command.

Crouching together on the edge,
we waited,
straining every sense,
for the inevitable end.

It was long,
however,
and
to us it seemed like ages,
ere the schooner suddenly appeared
for one brief instant,
relieved against a tower of glimmering foam.

I still see her reefed mainsail flapping loose,
as the boom fell heavily across the deck;
I still see the black outline of the hull,
and still think I can distinguish the figure of a man stretched upon the tiller.

Yet the whole sight we had of her passed swifter than lightning;
the very wave that disclosed her fell burying her
for ever;
the mingled cry of many voices at the point of death rose and was quenched in the roaring of the Merry Men.

And
with that the tragedy was at an end.

The strong ship,
with all her gear,
and the lamp perhaps still burning in the cabin,
the lives of so many men,
precious surely
to others,
dear,
at least,
as heaven
to themselves,
had all,
in that one moment,
gone down into the surging waters.

They were gone like a dream.

And the wind still ran and shouted,
and the senseless waters in the Roost still leaped and tumbled as before.

How long we lay there together,
we three,
speechless and motionless,
is more than I can tell,
but it must have been
for long.

At length,
one by one,
and almost mechanically,
we crawled back into the shelter of the bank.

As I lay against the parapet,
wholly wretched and not entirely master of my mind,
I could hear my kinsman maundering
to himself in an altered and melancholy mood.

Now he would repeat
to himself
with maudlin iteration,
'Sic a fecht as they had - sic a sair fecht as they had,
puir lads,
puir lads!'
and anon he would bewail that
'a'
the gear was as gude's tint,'
because the ship had gone down among the Merry Men instead of stranding on the shore;
and throughout,
the name - the CHRIST-ANNA - would come and go in his divagations,
pronounced
with shuddering awe.

The storm all this time was rapidly abating.

In half an hour the wind had fallen
to a breeze,
and the change was accompanied or caused by a heavy,
cold,
and plumping rain.

I must then have fallen asleep,
and when I came
to myself,
drenched,
stiff,
and unrefreshed,
day had already broken,
grey,
wet,
discomfortable day;
the wind blew in faint and shifting capfuls,
the tide was out,
the Roost was at its lowest,
and only the strong beating surf round all the coasts of Aros remained
to witness of the furies of the night.

CHAPTER V.

A MAN OUT OF THE SEA.

Rorie set out
for the house in search of warmth and breakfast;
but my uncle was bent upon examining the shores of Aros,
and I felt it a part of duty
to accompany him throughout.

He was now docile and quiet,
but tremulous and weak in mind and body;
and it was
with the eagerness of a child that he pursued his exploration.

He climbed far down upon the rocks;
on the beaches,
he pursued the retreating breakers.

The merest broken plank or rag of cordage was a treasure in his eyes
to be secured at the peril of his life.

To see him,
with weak and stumbling footsteps,
expose himself
to the pursuit of the surf,
or the snares and pitfalls of the weedy rock,
kept me in a perpetual terror.

My arm was ready
to support him,
my hand clutched him by the skirt,
I helped him
to draw his pitiful discoveries beyond the reach of the returning wave;
a nurse accompanying a child of seven would have had no different experience.

Yet,
weakened as he was by the reaction from his madness of the night before,
the passions that smouldered in his nature were those of a strong man.

His terror of the sea,
although conquered
for the moment,
was still undiminished;
had the sea been a lake of living flames,
he could not have shrunk more panically from its touch;
and once,
when his foot slipped and he plunged
to the midleg into a pool of water,
the shriek that came up out of his soul was like the cry of death.

He sat still
for a while,
panting like a dog,
after that;
but his desire
for the spoils of shipwreck triumphed once more over his fears;
once more he tottered among the curded foam;
once more he crawled upon the rocks among the bursting bubbles;
once more his whole heart seemed
to be set on driftwood,
fit,
if it was fit
for anything,
to throw upon the fire.

Pleased as he was
with what he found,
he still incessantly grumbled at his ill- fortune.

'Aros,'
he said,
'is no a place
for wrecks ava'
- no ava'.

A'
the years I've dwalt here,
this ane maks the second;
and the best o'
the gear clean tint!'
'Uncle,'
said I,
for we were now on a stretch of open sand,
where there was nothing
to divert his mind,
'I saw you last night,
as I never thought
to see you - you were drunk.'

'Na,
na,'
he said,
'no as bad as that.

I had been drinking,
though.

And
to tell ye the God's truth,
it's a thing I cannae mend.

There's nae soberer man than me in my ordnar;
but when I hear the wind blaw in my lug,
it's my belief that I gang gyte.'

'You are a religious man,'
I replied,
'and this is sin'.

'Ou,'
he returned,
'if it wasnae sin,
I dinnae ken that I would care for't.

Ye see,
man,
it's defiance.

There's a sair spang o'
the auld sin o'
the warld in you sea;
it's an unchristian business at the best o't;
an'
whiles when it gets up,
an'
the wind skreights - the wind an'
her are a kind of sib,
I'm thinkin'
- an'
thae Merry Men,
the daft callants,
blawin'
and lauchin',
and puir souls in the deid thraws warstlin'
the leelang nicht wi'
their bit ships - weel,
it comes ower me like a glamour.

I'm a deil,
I ken't.

But I think naething o'
the puir sailor lads;
I'm wi'
the sea,
I'm just like ane o'
her ain Merry Men.'

I thought I should touch him in a joint of his harness.

I turned me towards the sea;
the surf was running gaily,
wave after wave,
with their manes blowing behind them,
riding one after another up the beach,
towering,
curving,
falling one upon another on the trampled sand.

Without,
the salt air,
the scared gulls,
the widespread army of the sea-chargers,
neighing
to each other,
as they gathered together
to the assault of Aros;
and close before us,
that line on the flat sands that,
with all their number and their fury,
they might never pass.

'Thus far shalt thou go,'
said I,
'and no farther.'

And then I quoted as solemnly as I was able a verse that I had often before fitted
to the chorus of the breakers:- But yet the Lord that is on high,
Is more of might by far,
Than noise of many waters is,
As great sea billows are.

'Ay,'
said my kinsinan,
'at the hinder end,
the Lord will triumph;
I dinnae misdoobt that.

But here on earth,
even silly men-folk daur Him
to His face.

It is nae wise;
I am nae sayin'
that it's wise;
but it's the pride of the eye,
and it's the lust o'
life,
an'
it's the wale o'
pleesures.'

I said no more,
for we had now begun
to cross a neck of land that lay between us and Sandag;
and I withheld my last appeal
to the man's better reason till we should stand upon the spot associated
with his crime.

Nor did he pursue the subject;
but he walked beside me
with a firmer step.

The call that I had made upon his mind acted like a stimulant,
and I could see that he had forgotten his search
for worthless jetsam,
in a profound,
gloomy,
and yet stirring train of thought.

In three or four minutes we had topped the brae and begun
to go down upon Sandag.

The wreck had been roughly handled by the sea;
the stem had been spun round and dragged a little lower down;
and perhaps the stern had been forced a little higher,
for the two parts now lay entirely separate on the beach.

When we came
to the grave I stopped,
uncovered my head in the thick rain,
and,
looking my kinsman in the face,
addressed him.

'A man,'
said I,
'was in God's providence suffered
to escape from mortal dangers;
he was poor,
he was naked,
he was wet,
he was weary,
he was a stranger;
he had every claim upon the bowels of your compassion;
it may be that he was the salt of the earth,
holy,
helpful,
and kind;
it may be he was a man laden
with iniquities
to whom death was the beginning of torment.

I ask you in the sight of heaven:

Gordon Darnaway,
where is the man
for whom Christ died?'
He started visibly at the last words;
but there came no answer,
and his face expressed no feeling but a vague alarm.

'You were my father's brother,'
I continued;
'You,
have taught me
to count your house as if it were my father's house;
and we are both sinful men walking before the Lord among the sins and dangers of this life.

It is by our evil that God leads us into good;
we sin,
I dare not say by His temptation,
but I must say
with His consent;
and
to any but the brutish man his sins are the beginning of wisdom.

God has warned you by this crime;
He warns you still by the bloody grave between our feet;
and if there shall follow no repentance,
no improvement,
no return
to Him,
what can we look
for but the following of some memorable judgment?'
Even as I spoke the words,
the eyes of my uncle wandered from my face.

A change fell upon his looks that cannot be described;
his features seemed
to dwindle in size,
the colour faded from his cheeks,
one hand rose waveringly and pointed over my shoulder into the distance,
and the oft-repeated name fell once more from his lips:

'The CHRIST-ANNA!'
I turned;
and if I was not appalled
to the same degree,
as I return thanks
to Heaven that I had not the cause,
I was still startled by the sight that met my eyes.

The form of a man stood upright on the cabin-hutch of the wrecked ship;
his back was towards us;
he appeared
to be scanning the offing
with shaded eyes,
and his figure was relieved
to its full height,
which was plainly very great,
against the sea and sky.

I have said a thousand times that I am not superstitious;
but at that moment,
with my mind running upon death and sin,
the unexplained appearance of a stranger on that sea-girt,
solitary island filled me
with a surprise that bordered close on terror.

It seemed scarce possible that any human soul should have come ashore alive in such a sea as had rated last night along the coasts of Aros;
and the only vessel within miles had gone down before our eyes among the Merry Men.

I was assailed
with doubts that made suspense unbearable,
and,
to put the matter
to the touch at once,
stepped forward and hailed the figure like a ship.

He turned about,
and I thought he started
to behold us.

At this my courage instantly revived,
and I called and signed
to him
to draw near,
and he,
on his part,
dropped immediately
to the sands,
and began slowly
to approach,
with many stops and hesitations.

At each repeated mark of the man's uneasiness I grew the more confident myself;
and I advanced another step,
encouraging him as I did so
with my head and hand.

It was plain the castaway had heard indifferent accounts of our island hospitality;
and indeed,
about this time,
the people farther north had a sorry reputation.

'Why,'
I said,
'the man is black!'
And just at that moment,
in a voice that I could scarce have recognised,
my kinsman began swearing and praying in a mingled stream.

I looked at him;
he had fallen on his knees,
his face was agonised;
at each step of the castaway's the pitch of his voice rose,
the volubility of his utterance and the fervour of his language redoubled.

I call it prayer,
for it was addressed
to God;
but surely no such ranting incongruities were ever before addressed
to the Creator by a creature:

surely if prayer can be a sin,
this mad harangue was sinful.

I ran
to my kinsman,
I seized him by the shoulders,
I dragged him
to his feet.

'Silence,
man,'
said I,
'respect your God in words,
if not in action.

Here,
on the very scene of your transgressions,
He sends you an occasion of atonement.

Forward and embrace it;
welcome like a father yon creature who comes trembling
to your mercy.'

With that,
I tried
to force him towards the black;
but he felled me
to the ground,
burst from my grasp,
leaving the shoulder of his jacket,
and fled up the hillside towards the top of Aros like a deer.

I staggered
to my feet again,
bruised and somewhat stunned;
the negro had paused in surprise,
perhaps in terror,
some halfway between me and the wreck;
my uncle was already far away,
bounding from rock
to rock;
and I thus found myself torn
for a time between two duties.

But I judged,
and I pray Heaven that I judged rightly,
in favour of the poor wretch upon the sands;
his misfortune was at least not plainly of his own creation;
it was one,
besides,
that I could certainly relieve;
and I had begun by that time
to regard my uncle as an incurable and dismal lunatic.

I advanced accordingly towards the black,
who now awaited my approach
with folded arms,
like one prepared
for either destiny.

As I came nearer,
he reached forth his hand
with a great gesture,
such as I had seen from the pulpit,
and spoke
to me in something of a pulpit voice,
but not a word was comprehensible.

I tried him first in English,
then in Gaelic,
both in vain;
so that it was clear we must rely upon the tongue of looks and gestures.

Thereupon I signed
to him
to follow me,
which he did readily and
with a grave obeisance like a fallen king;
all the while there had come no shade of alteration in his face,
neither of anxiety while he was still waiting,
nor of relief now that he was reassured;
if he were a slave,
as I supposed,
I could not but judge he must have fallen from some high place in his own country,
and fallen as he was,
I could not but admire his bearing.

As we passed the grave,
I paused and raised my hands and eyes
to heaven in token of respect and sorrow
for the dead;
and he,
as if in answer,
bowed low and spread his hands abroad;
it was a strange motion,
but done like a thing of common custom;
and I supposed it was ceremonial in the land from which he came.

At the same time he pointed
to my uncle,
whom we could just see perched upon a knoll,
and touched his head
to indicate that he was mad.

We took the long way round the shore,
for I feared
to excite my uncle if we struck across the island;
and as we walked,
I had time enough
to mature the little dramatic exhibition by which I hoped
to satisfy my doubts.

Accordingly,
pausing on a rock,
I proceeded
to imitate before the negro the action of the man whom I had seen the day before taking bearings
with the compass at Sandag.

He understood me at once,
and,
taking the imitation out of my hands,
showed me where the boat was,
pointed out seaward as if
to indicate the position of the schooner,
and then down along the edge of the rock
with the words
'Espirito Santo,'
strangely pronounced,
but clear enough
for recognition.

I had thus been right in my conjecture;
the pretended historical inquiry had been but a cloak
for treasure-hunting;
the man who had played on Dr. Robertson was the same as the foreigner who visited Grisapol in spring,
and now,
with many others,
lay dead under the Roost of Aros:

there had their greed brought them,
there should their bones be tossed
for evermore.

In the meantime the black continued his imitation of the scene,
now looking up skyward as though watching the approach of the storm now,
in the character of a seaman,
waving the rest
to come aboard;
now as an officer,
running along the rock and entering the boat;
and anon bending over imaginary oars
with the air of a hurried boatman;
but all
with the same solemnity of manner,
so that I was never even moved
to smile.

Lastly,
he indicated
to me,
by a pantomime not
to be described in words,
how he himself had gone up
to examine the stranded wreck,
and,
to his grief and indignation,
had been deserted by his comrades;
and thereupon folded his arms once more,
and stooped his head,
like one accepting fate.

The mystery of his presence being thus solved
for me,
I explained
to him by means of a sketch the fate of the vessel and of all aboard her.

He showed no surprise nor sorrow,
and,
with a sudden lifting of his open hand,
seemed
to dismiss his former friends or masters
(whichever they had been)
into God's pleasure.

Respect came upon me and grew stronger,
the more I observed him;
I saw he had a powerful mind and a sober and severe character,
such as I loved
to commune with;
and before we reached the house of Aros I had almost forgotten,
and wholly forgiven him,
his uncanny colour.

To Mary I told all that had passed without suppression,
though I own my heart failed me;
but I did wrong
to doubt her sense of justice.

'You did the right,'
she said.

'God's will be done.'

And she set out meat
for us at once.

As soon as I was satisfied,
I bade Rorie keep an eye upon the castaway,
who was still eating,
and set forth again myself
to find my uncle.

I had not gone far before I saw him sitting in the same place,
upon the very topmost knoll,
and seemingly in the same attitude as when I had last observed him.

From that point,
as I have said,
the most of Aros and the neighbouring Ross would be spread below him like a map;
and it was plain that he kept a bright look-out in all directions,
for my head had scarcely risen above the summit of the first ascent before he had leaped
to his feet and turned as if
to face me.

I hailed him at once,
as well as I was able,
in the same tones and words as I had often used before,
when I had come
to summon him
to dinner.

He made not so much as a movement in reply.

I passed on a little farther,
and again tried parley,
with the same result.

But when I began a second time
to advance,
his insane fears blazed up again,
and still in dead silence,
but
with incredible speed,
he began
to flee from before me along the rocky summit of the hill.

An hour before,
he had been dead weary,
and I had been comparatively active.

But now his strength was recruited by the fervour of insanity,
and it would have been vain
for me
to dream of pursuit.

Nay,
the very attempt,
I thought,
might have inflamed his terrors,
and thus increased the miseries of our position.

And I had nothing left but
to turn homeward and make my sad report
to Mary.

She heard it,
as she had heard the first,
with a concerned composure,
and,
bidding me lie down and take that rest of which I stood so much in need,
set forth herself in quest of her misguided father.

At that age it would have been a strange thing that put me from either meat or sleep;
I slept long and deep;
and it was already long past noon before I awoke and came downstairs into the kitchen.

Mary,
Rorie,
and the black castaway were seated about the fire in silence;
and I could see that Mary had been weeping.

There was cause enough,
as I soon learned,
for tears.

First she,
and then Rorie,
had been forth
to seek my uncle;
each in turn had found him perched upon the hill-top,
and from each in turn he had silently and swiftly fled.

Rorie had tried
to chase him,
but in vain;
madness lent a new vigour
to his bounds;
he sprang from rock
to rock over the widest gullies;
he scoured like the wind along the hill-tops;
he doubled and twisted like a hare before the dogs;
and Rorie at length gave in;
and the last that he saw,
my uncle was seated as before upon the crest of Aros.

Even during the hottest excitement of the chase,
even when the fleet-footed servant had come,
for a moment,
very near
to capture him,
the poor lunatic had uttered not a sound.

He fled,
and he was silent,
like a beast;
and this silence had terrified his pursuer.

There was something heart-breaking in the situation.

How
to capture the madman,
how
to feed him in the meanwhile,
and what
to do
with him when he was captured,
were the three difficulties that we had
to solve.

'The black,'
said I,
'is the cause of this attack.

It may even be his presence in the house that keeps my uncle on the hill.

We have done the fair thing;
he has been fed and warmed under this roof;
now I propose that Rorie put him across the bay in the coble,
and take him through the Ross as far as Grisapol.'

In this proposal Mary heartily concurred;
and bidding the black follow us,
we all three descended
to the pier.

Certainly,
Heaven's will was declared against Gordon Darnaway;
a thing had happened,
never paralleled before in Aros;
during the storm,
the coble had broken loose,
and,
striking on the rough splinters of the pier,
now lay in four feet of water
with one side stove in.

Three days of work at least would be required
to make her float.

But I was not
to be beaten.

I led the whole party round
to where the gut was narrowest,
swam
to the other side,
and called
to the black
to follow me.

He signed,
with the same clearness and quiet as before,
that he knew not the art;
and there was truth apparent in his signals,
it would have occurred
to none of us
to doubt his truth;
and that hope being over,
we must all go back even as we came
to the house of Aros,
the negro walking in our midst without embarrassment.

All we could do that day was
to make one more attempt
to communicate
with the unhappy madman.

Again he was visible on his perch;
again he fled in silence.

But food and a great cloak were at least left
for his comfort;
the rain,
besides,
had cleared away,
and the night promised
to be even warm.

We might compose ourselves,
we thought,
until the morrow;
rest was the chief requisite,
that we might be strengthened
for unusual exertions;
and as none cared
to talk,
we separated at an early hour.

I lay long awake,
planning a campaign
for the morrow.

I was
to place the black on the side of Sandag,
whence he should head my uncle towards the house;
Rorie in the west,
I on the east,
were
to complete the cordon,
as best we might.

It seemed
to me,
the more I recalled the configuration of the island,
that it should be possible,
though hard,
to force him down upon the low ground along Aros Bay;
and once there,
even
with the strength of his madness,
ultimate escape was hardly
to be feared.

It was on his terror of the black that I relied;
for I made sure,
however he might run,
it would not be in the direction of the man whom he supposed
to have returned from the dead,
and thus one point of the compass at least would be secure.

When at length I fell asleep,
it was
to be awakened shortly after by a dream of wrecks,
black men,
and submarine adventure;
and I found myself so shaken and fevered that I arose,
descended the stair,
and stepped out before the house.

Within,
Rorie and the black were asleep together in the kitchen;
outside was a wonderful clear night of stars,
with here and there a cloud still hanging,
last stragglers of the tempest.

It was near the top of the flood,
and the Merry Men were roaring in the windless quiet of the night.

Never,
not even in the height of the tempest,
had I heard their song
with greater awe.

Now,
when the winds were gathered home,
when the deep was dandling itself back into its summer slumber,
and when the stars rained their gentle light over land and sea,
the voice of these tide-breakers was still raised
for havoc.

They seemed,
indeed,
to be a part of the world's evil and the tragic side of life.

Nor were their meaningless vociferations the only sounds that broke the silence of the night.

For I could hear,
now shrill and thrilling and now almost drowned,
the note of a human voice that accompanied the uproar of the Roost.

I knew it
for my kinsman's;
and a great fear fell upon me of God's judgments,
and the evil in the world.

I went back again into the darkness of the house as into a place of shelter,
and lay long upon my bed,
pondering these mysteries.

It was late when I again woke,
and I leaped into my clothes and hurried
to the kitchen.

No one was there;
Rorie and the black had both stealthily departed long before;
and my heart stood still at the discovery.

I could rely on Rorie's heart,
but I placed no trust in his discretion.

If he had thus set out without a word,
he was plainly bent upon some service
to my uncle.

But what service could he hope
to render even alone,
far less in the company of the man in whom my uncle found his fears incarnated?

Even if I were not already too late
to prevent some deadly mischief,
it was plain I must delay no longer.

With the thought I was out of the house;
and often as I have run on the rough sides of Aros,
I never ran as I did that fatal morning.

I do not believe I put twelve minutes
to the whole ascent.

My uncle was gone from his perch.

The basket had indeed been torn open and the meat scattered on the turf;
but,
as we found afterwards,
no mouthful had been tasted;
and there was not another trace of human existence in that wide field of view.

Day had already filled the clear heavens;
the sun already lighted in a rosy bloom upon the crest of Ben Kyaw;
but all below me the rude knolls of Aros and the shield of sea lay steeped in the clear darkling twilight of the dawn.

'Rorie!'
I cried;
and again
'Rorie!'
My voice died in the silence,
but there came no answer back.

If there were indeed an enterprise afoot
to catch my uncle,
it was plainly not in fleetness of foot,
but in dexterity of stalking,
that the hunters placed their trust.

I ran on farther,
keeping the higher spurs,
and looking right and left,
nor did I pause again till I was on the mount above Sandag.

I could see the wreck,
the uncovered belt of sand,
the waves idly beating,
the long ledge of rocks,
and on either hand the tumbled knolls,
boulders,
and gullies of the island.

But still no human thing.

At a stride the sunshine fell on Aros,
and the shadows and colours leaped into being.

Not half a moment later,
below me
to the west,
sheep began
to scatter as in a panic.

There came a cry.

I saw my uncle running.

I saw the black jump up in hot pursuit;
and before I had time
to understand,
Rorie also had appeared,
calling directions in Gaelic as
to a dog herding sheep.

I took
to my heels
to interfere,
and perhaps I had done better
to have waited where I was,
for I was the means of cutting off the madman's last escape.

There was nothing before him from that moment but the grave,
the wreck,
and the sea in Sandag Bay.

And yet Heaven knows that what I did was
for the best.

My uncle Gordon saw in what direction,
horrible
to him,
the chase was driving him.

He doubled,
darting
to the right and left;
but high as the fever ran in his veins,
the black was still the swifter.

Turn where he would,
he was still forestalled,
still driven toward the scene of his crime.

Suddenly he began
to shriek aloud,
so that the coast re-echoed;
and now both I and Rorie were calling on the black
to stop.

But all was vain,
for it was written otherwise.

The pursuer still ran,
the chase still sped before him screaming;
they avoided the grave,
and skimmed close past the timbers of the wreck;
in a breath they had cleared the sand;
and still my kinsman did not pause,
but dashed straight into the surf;
and the black,
now almost within reach,
still followed swiftly behind him.

Rorie and I both stopped,
for the thing was now beyond the hands of men,
and these were the decrees of God that came
to pass before our eyes.

There was never a sharper ending.

On that steep beach they were beyond their depth at a bound;
neither could swim;
the black rose once
for a moment
with a throttling cry;
but the current had them,
racing seaward;
and if ever they came up again,
which God alone can tell,
it would be ten minutes after,
at the far end of Aros Roost,
where the seabirds hover fishing.

WILL O'
THE MILL.

CHAPTER I.

THE PLAIN AND THE STARS.

THE Mill here Will lived
with his adopted parents stood in a falling valley between pinewoods and great mountains.

Above,
hill after hill,
soared upwards until they soared out of the depth of the hardiest timber,
and stood naked against the sky.

Some way up,
a long grey village lay like a seam or a ray of vapour on a wooded hillside;
and when the wind was favourable,
the sound of the church bells would drop down,
thin and silvery,
to Will.

Below,
the valley grew ever steeper and steeper,
and at the same time widened out on either hand;
and from an eminence beside the mill it was possible
to see its whole length and away beyond it over a wide plain,
where the river turned and shone,
and moved on from city
to city on its voyage towards the sea.

It chanced that over this valley there lay a pass into a neighbouring kingdom;
so that,
quiet and rural as it was,
the road that ran along beside the river was a high thoroughfare between two splendid and powerful societies.

All through the summer,
travelling-carriages came crawling up,
or went plunging briskly downwards past the mill;
and as it happened that the other side was very much easier of ascent,
the path was not much frequented,
except by people going in one direction;
and of all the carriages that Will saw go by,
five-sixths were plunging briskly downwards and only one-sixth crawling up.

Much more was this the case
with foot-passengers.

All the light-footed tourists,
all the pedlars laden
with strange wares,
were tending downward like the river that accompanied their path.

Nor was this all;
for when Will was yet a child a disastrous war arose over a great part of the world.

The newspapers were full of defeats and victories,
the earth rang
with cavalry hoofs,
and often
for days together and
for miles around the coil of battle terrified good people from their labours in the field.

Of all this,
nothing was heard
for a long time in the valley;
but at last one of the commanders pushed an army over the pass by forced marches,
and
for three days horse and foot,
cannon and tumbril,
drum and standard,
kept pouring downward past the mill.

All day the child stood and watched them on their passage - the rhythmical stride,
the pale,
unshaven faces tanned about the eyes,
the discoloured regimentals and the tattered flags,
filled him
with a sense of weariness,
pity,
and wonder;
and all night long,
after he was in bed,
he could hear the cannon pounding and the feet trampling,
and the great armament sweeping onward and downward past the mill.

No one in the valley ever heard the fate of the expedition,
for they lay out of the way of gossip in those troublous times;
but Will saw one thing plainly,
that not a man returned.

Whither had they all gone?

Whither went all the tourists and pedlars
with strange wares?

whither all the brisk barouches
with servants in the dicky?

whither the water of the stream,
ever coursing downward and ever renewed from above?

Even the wind blew oftener down the valley,
and carried the dead leaves along
with it in the fall.

It seemed like a great conspiracy of things animate and inanimate;
they all went downward,
fleetly and gaily downward,
and only he,
it seemed,
remained behind,
like a stock upon the wayside.

It sometimes made him glad when he noticed how the fishes kept their heads up stream.

They,
at least,
stood faithfully by him,
while all else were posting downward
to the unknown world.

One evening he asked the miller where the river went.

'It goes down the valley,'
answered he,
'and turns a power of mills - six score mills,
they say,
from here
to Unterdeck - and is none the wearier after all.

And then it goes out into the lowlands,
and waters the great corn country,
and runs through a sight of fine cities
(so they say)
where kings live all alone in great palaces,
with a sentry walling up and down before the door.

And it goes under bridges
with stone men upon them,
looking down and smiling so curious it the water,
and living folks leaning their elbows on the wall and looking over too.

And then it goes on and on,
and down through marshes and sands,
until at last it falls into the sea,
where the ships are that bring parrots and tobacco from the Indies.

Ay,
it has a long trot before it as it goes singing over our weir,
bless its heart!'
'And what is the sea?'
asked Will.

'The sea!'
cried the miller.

'Lord help us all,
it is the greatest thing God made! That is where all the water in the world runs down into a great salt lake.

There it lies,
as flat as my hand and as innocent-like as a child;
but they do say when the wind blows it gets up into water-mountains bigger than any of ours,
and swallows down great ships bigger than our mill,
and makes such a roaring that you can hear it miles away upon the land.

There are great fish in it five times bigger than a bull,
and one old serpent as lone as our river and as old as all the world,
with whiskers like a man,
and a crown of silver on her head.'

Will thought he had never heard anything like this,
and he kept on asking question after question about the world that lay away down the river,
with all its perils and marvels,
until the old miller became quite interested himself,
and at last took him by the hand and led him
to the hilltop that overlooks the valley and the plain.

The sun was near setting,
and hung low down in a cloudless sky.

Everything was defined and glorified in golden light.

Will had never seen so great an expanse of country in his life;
he stood and gazed
with all his eyes.

He could see the cities,
and the woods and fields,
and the bright curves of the river,
and far away
to where the rim of the plain trenched along the shining heavens.

An over-mastering emotion seized upon the boy,
soul and body;
his heart beat so thickly that he could not breathe;
the scene swam before his eyes;
the sun seemed
to wheel round and round,
and throw off,
as it turned,
strange shapes which disappeared
with the rapidity of thought,
and were succeeded by others.

Will covered his face
with his hands,
and burst into a violent fit of tears;
and the poor miller,
sadly disappointed and perplexed,
saw nothing better
for it than
to take him up in his arms and carry him home in silence.

From that day forward Will was full of new hopes and longings.

Something kept tugging at his heart-strings;
the running water carried his desires along
with it as he dreamed over its fleeting surface;
the wind,
as it ran over innumerable tree-tops,
hailed him
with encouraging words;
branches beckoned downward;
the open road,
as it shouldered round the angles and went turning and vanishing fast and faster down the valley,
tortured him
with its solicitations.

He spent long whiles on the eminence,
looking down the rivershed and abroad on the fat lowlands,
and watched the clouds that travelled forth upon the sluggish wind and trailed their purple shadows on the plain;
or he would linger by the wayside,
and follow the carriages
with his eyes as they rattled downward by the river.

It did not matter what it was;
everything that went that way,
were it cloud or carriage,
bird or brown water in the stream,
he felt his heart flow out after it in an ecstasy of longing.

We are told by men of science that all the ventures of mariners on the sea,
all that counter-marching of tribes and races that confounds old history
with its dust and rumour,
sprang from nothing more abstruse than the laws of supply and demand,
and a certain natural instinct
for cheap rations.

To any one thinking deeply,
this will seem a dull and pitiful explanation.

The tribes that came swarming out of the North and East,
if they were indeed pressed onward from behind by others,
were drawn at the same time by the magnetic influence of the South and West.

The fame of other lands had reached them;
the name of the eternal city rang in their ears;
they were not colonists,
but pilgrims;
they travelled towards wine and gold and sunshine,
but their hearts were set on something higher.

That divine unrest,
that old stinging trouble of humanity that makes all high achievements and all miserable failure,
the same that spread wings
with Icarus,
the same that sent Columbus into the desolate Atlantic,
inspired and supported these barbarians on their perilous march.

There is one legend which profoundly represents their spirit,
of how a flying party of these wanderers encountered a very old man shod
with iron.

The old man asked them whither they were going;
and they answered
with one voice:

'To the Eternal City!'
He looked upon them gravely.

'I have sought it,'
he said,
'over the most part of the world.

Three such pairs as I now carry on my feet have I worn out upon this pilgrimage,
and now the fourth is growing slender underneath my steps.

And all this while I have not found the city.'

And he turned and went his own way alone,
leaving them astonished.

And yet this would scarcely parallel the intensity of Will's feeling
for the plain.

If he could only go far enough out there,
he felt as if his eyesight would be purged and clarified,
as if his hearing would grow more delicate,
and his very breath would come and go
with luxury.

He was transplanted and withering where he was;
he lay in a strange country and was sick
for home.

Bit by bit,
he pieced together broken notions of the world below:

of the river,
ever moving and growing until it sailed forth into the majestic ocean;
of the cities,
full of brisk and beautiful people,
playing fountains,
bands of music and marble palaces,
and lighted up at night from end
to end
with artificial stars of gold;
of the great churches,
wise universities,
brave armies,
and untold money lying stored in vaults;
of the high-flying vice that moved in the sunshine,
and the stealth and swiftness of midnight murder.

I have said he was sick as if
for home:

the figure halts.

He was like some one lying in twilit,
formless preexistence,
and stretching out his hands lovingly towards many-coloured,
many-sounding life.

It was no wonder he was unhappy,
he would go and tell the fish:

they were made
for their life,
wished
for no more than worms and running water,
and a hole below a falling bank;
but he was differently designed,
full of desires and aspirations,
itching at the fingers,
lusting
with the eyes,
whom the whole variegated world could not satisfy
with aspects.

The true life,
the true bright sunshine,
lay far out upon the plain.

And O!
to see this sunlight once before he died!
to move
with a jocund spirit in a golden land!
to hear the trained singers and sweet church bells,
and see the holiday gardens!
'And O fish!'
he would cry,
'if you would only turn your noses down stream,
you could swim so easily into the fabled waters and see the vast ships passing over your head like clouds,
and hear the great water-hills making music over you all day long!'
But the fish kept looking patiently in their own direction,
until Will hardly knew whether
to laugh or cry.

Hitherto the traffic on the road had passed by Will,
like something seen in a picture:

he had perhaps exchanged salutations
with a tourist,
or caught sight of an old gentleman in a travelling cap at a carriage window;
but
for the most part it had been a mere symbol,
which he contemplated from apart and
with something of a superstitious feeling.

A time came at last when this was
to be changed.

The miller,
who was a greedy man in his way,
and never forewent an opportunity of honest profit,
turned the mill-house into a little wayside inn,
and,
several pieces of good fortune falling in opportunely,
built stables and got the position of post master on the road.

It now became Will's duty
to wait upon people,
as they sat
to break their fasts in the little arbour at the top of the mill garden;
and you may be sure that he kept his ears open,
and learned many new things about the outside world as he brought the omelette or the wine.

Nay,
he would often get into conversation
with single guests,
and by adroit questions and polite attention,
not only gratify his own curiosity,
but win the goodwill of the travellers.

Many complimented the old couple on their serving-boy;
and a professor was eager
to take him away
with him,
and have him properly educated in the plain.

The miller and his wife were mightily astonished and even more pleased.

They thought it a very good thing that they should have opened their inn.

'You see,'
the old man would remark,
'he has a kind of talent
for a publican;
he never would have made anything else!'
And so life wagged on in the valley,
with high satisfaction
to all concerned but Will.

Every carriage that left the inn-door seemed
to take a part of him away
with it;
and when people jestingly offered him a lift,
he could
with difficulty command his emotion.

Night after night he would dream that he was awakened by flustered servants,
and that a splendid equipage waited at the door
to carry him down into the plain;
night after night;
until the dream,
which had seemed all jollity
to him at first,
began
to take on a colour of gravity,
and the nocturnal summons and waiting equipage occupied a place in his mind as something
to be both feared and hoped for.

One day,
when Will was about sixteen,
a fat young man arrived at sunset
to pass the night.

He was a contented-looking fellow,
with a jolly eye,
and carried a knapsack.

While dinner was preparing,
he sat in the arbour
to read a book;
but as soon as he had begun
to observe Will,
the book was laid aside;
he was plainly one of those who prefer living people
to people made of ink and paper.

Will,
on his part,
although he had not been much interested in the stranger at first sight,
soon began
to take a great deal of pleasure in his talk,
which was full of good nature and good sense,
and at last conceived a great respect
for his character and wisdom.

They sat far into the night;
and about two in the morning Will opened his heart
to the young man,
and told him how he longed
to leave the valley and what bright hopes he had connected
with the cities of the plain.

The young man whistled,
and then broke into a smile.

'My young friend,'
he remarked,
'you are a very curious little fellow
to be sure,
and wish a great many things which you will never get.

Why,
you would feel quite ashamed if you knew how the little fellows in these fairy cities of yours are all after the same sort of nonsense,
and keep breaking their hearts
to get up into the mountains.

And let me tell you,
those who go down into the plains are a very short while there before they wish themselves heartily back again.

The air is not so light nor so pure;
nor is the sun any brighter.

As
for the beautiful men and women,
you would see many of them in rags and many of them deformed
with horrible disorders;
and a city is so hard a place
for people who are poor and sensitive that many choose
to die by their own hand.'

'You must think me very simple,'
answered Will.

'Although I have never been out of this valley,
believe me,
I have used my eyes.

I know how one thing lives on another;
for instance,
how the fish hangs in the eddy
to catch his fellows;
and the shepherd,
who makes so pretty a picture carrying home the lamb,
is only carrying it home
for dinner.

I do not expect
to find all things right in your cities.

That is not what troubles me;
it might have been that once upon a time;
but although I live here always,
I have asked many questions and learned a great deal in these last years,
and certainly enough
to cure me of my old fancies.

But you would not have me die like a dog and not see all that is
to be seen,
and do all that a man can do,
let it be good or evil?

you would not have me spend all my days between this road here and the river,
and not so much as make a motion
to be up and live my life?

- I would rather die out of hand,'
he cried,
'than linger on as I am doing.'

'Thousands of people,'
said the young man,
'live and die like you,
and are none the less happy.'

'Ah!'
said Will,
'if there are thousands who would like,
why should not one of them have my place?'
It was quite dark;
there was a hanging lamp in the arbour which lit up the table and the faces of the speakers;
and along the arch,
the leaves upon the trellis stood out illuminated against the night sky,
a pattern of transparent green upon a dusky purple.

The fat young man rose,
and,
taking Will by the arm,
led him out under the open heavens.

'Did you ever look at the stars?'
he asked,
pointing upwards.

'Often and often,'
answered Will.

'And do you know what they are?'
'I have fancied many things.'

'They are worlds like ours,'
said the young man.

'Some of them less;
many of them a million times greater;
and some of the least sparkles that you see are not only worlds,
but whole clusters of worlds turning about each other in the midst of space.

We do not know what there may be in any of them;
perhaps the answer
to all our difficulties or the cure of all our sufferings:

and yet we can never reach them;
not all the skill of the craftiest of men can fit out a ship
for the nearest of these our neighbours,
nor would the life of the most aged suffice
for such a journey.

When a great battle has been lost or a dear friend is dead,
when we are hipped or in high spirits,
there they are unweariedly shining overhead.

We may stand down here,
a whole army of us together,
and shout until we break our hearts,
and not a whisper reaches them.

We may climb the highest mountain,
and we are no nearer them.

All we can do is
to stand down here in the garden and take off our hats;
the starshine lights upon our heads,
and where mine is a little bald,
I dare say you can see it glisten in the darkness.

The mountain and the mouse.

That is like
to be all we shall ever have
to do
with Arcturus or Aldebaran.

Can you apply a parable?'
he added,
laying his hand upon Will's shoulder.

'It is not the same thing as a reason,
but usually vastly more convincing.'

Will hung his head a little,
and then raised it once more
to heaven.

The stars seemed
to expand and emit a sharper brilliancy;
and as he kept turning his eyes higher and higher,
they seemed
to increase in multitude under his gaze.

'I see,'
he said,
turning
to the young man.

'We are in a rat- trap.'

'Something of that size.

Did you ever see a squirrel turning in a cage?

and another squirrel sitting philosophically over his nuts?

I needn't ask you which of them looked more of a fool.'

CHAPTER II.

THE PARSON'S MARJORY.

After some years the old people died,
both in one winter,
very carefully tended by their adopted son,
and very quietly mourned when they were gone.

People who had heard of his roving fancies supposed he would hasten
to sell the property,
and go down the river
to push his fortunes.

But there was never any sign of such in intention on the part of Will.

On the contrary,
he had the inn set on a better footing,
and hired a couple of servants
to assist him in carrying it on;
and there he settled down,
a kind,
talkative,
inscrutable young man,
six feet three in his stockings,
with an iron constitution and a friendly voice.

He soon began
to take rank in the district as a bit of an oddity:

it was not much
to be wondered at from the first,
for he was always full of notions,
and kept calling the plainest common-sense in question;
but what most raised the report upon him was the odd circumstance of his courtship
with the parson's Marjory.

The parson's Marjory was a lass about nineteen,
when Will would be about thirty;
well enough looking,
and much better educated than any other girl in that part of the country,
as became her parentage.

She held her head very high,
and had already refused several offers of marriage
with a grand air,
which had got her hard names among the neighbours.

For all that she was a good girl,
and one that would have made any man well contented.

Will had never seen much of her;
for although the church and parsonage were only two miles from his own door,
he was never known
to go there but on Sundays.

It chanced,
however,
that the parsonage fell into disrepair,
and had
to be dismantled;
and the parson and his daughter took lodgings
for a month or so,
on very much reduced terms,
at Will's inn.

Now,
what
with the inn,
and the mill,
and the old miller's savings,
our friend was a man of substance;
and besides that,
he had a name
for good temper and shrewdness,
which make a capital portion in marriage;
and so it was currently gossiped,
among their ill-wishers,
that the parson and his daughter had not chosen their temporary lodging
with their eyes shut.

Will was about the last man in the world
to be cajoled or frightened into marriage.

You had only
to look into his eyes,
limpid and still like pools of water,
and yet
with a sort of clear light that seemed
to come from within,
and you would understand at once that here was one who knew his own mind,
and would stand
to it immovably.

Marjory herself was no weakling by her looks,
with strong,
steady eyes and a resolute and quiet bearing.

It might be a question whether she was not Will's match in stedfastness,
after all,
or which of them would rule the roast in marriage.

But Marjory had never given it a thought,
and accompanied her father
with the most unshaken innocence and unconcern.

The season was still so early that Will's customers were few and far between;
but the lilacs were already flowering,
and the weather was so mild that the party took dinner under the trellice,
with the noise of the river in their ears and the woods ringing about them
with the songs of birds.

Will soon began
to take a particular pleasure in these dinners.

The parson was rather a dull companion,
with a habit of dozing at table;
but nothing rude or cruel ever fell from his lips.

And as
for the parson's daughter,
she suited her surroundings
with the best grace imaginable;
and whatever she said seemed so pat and pretty that Will conceived a great idea of her talents.

He could see her face,
as she leaned forward,
against a background of rising pinewoods;
her eyes shone peaceably;
the light lay around her hair like a kerchief;
something that was hardly a smile rippled her pale cheeks,
and Will could not contain himself from gazing on her in an agreeable dismay.

She looked,
even in her quietest moments,
so complete in herself,
and so quick
with life down
to her finger tips and the very skirts of her dress,
that the remainder of created things became no more than a blot by comparison;
and if Will glanced away from her
to her surroundings,
the trees looked inanimate and senseless,
the clouds hung in heaven like dead things,
and even the mountain tops were disenchanted.

The whole valley could not compare in looks
with this one girl.

Will was always observant in the society of his fellow-creatures;
but his observation became almost painfully eager in the case of Marjory.

He listened
to all she uttered,
and read her eyes,
at the same time,
for the unspoken commentary.

Many kind,
simple,
and sincere speeches found an echo in his heart.

He became conscious of a soul beautifully poised upon itself,
nothing doubting,
nothing desiring,
clothed in peace.

It was not possible
to separate her thoughts from her appearance.

The turn of her wrist,
the still sound of her voice,
the light in her eyes,
the lines of her body,
fell in tune
with her grave and gentle words,
like the accompaniment that sustains and harmonises the voice of the singer.

Her influence was one thing,
not
to be divided or discussed,
only
to he felt
with gratitude and joy.

To Will,
her presence recalled something of his childhood,
and the thought of her took its place in his mind beside that of dawn,
of running water,
and of the earliest violets and lilacs.

It is the property of things seen
for the first time,
or
for the first time after long,
like the flowers in spring,
to reawaken in us the sharp edge of sense and that impression of mystic strangeness which otherwise passes out of life
with the coming of years;
but the sight of a loved face is what renews a man's character from the fountain upwards.

One day after dinner Will took a stroll among the firs;
a grave beatitude possessed him from top
to toe,
and he kept smiling
to himself and the landscape as he went.

The river ran between the stepping-stones
with a pretty wimple;
a bird sang loudly in the wood;
the hill-tops looked immeasurably high,
and as he glanced at them from time
to time seemed
to contemplate his movements
with a beneficent but awful curiosity.

His way took him
to the eminence which overlooked the plain;
and there he sat down upon a stone,
and fell into deep and pleasant thought.

The plain lay abroad
with its cities and silver river;
everything was asleep,
except a great eddy of birds which kept rising and falling and going round and round in the blue air.

He repeated Marjory's name aloud,
and the sound of it gratified his ear.

He shut his eyes,
and her image sprang up before him,
quietly luminous and attended
with good thoughts.

The river might run
for ever;
the birds fly higher and higher till they touched the stars.

He saw it was empty bustle after all;
for here,
without stirring a feet,
waiting patiently in his own narrow valley,
he also had attained the better sunlight.

The next day Will made a sort of declaration across the dinner- table,
while the parson was filling his pipe.

'Miss Marjory,'
he said,
'I never knew any one I liked so well as you.

I am mostly a cold,
unkindly sort of man;
not from want of heart,
but out of strangeness in my way of thinking;
and people seem far away from me.

'Tis as if there were a circle round me,
which kept every one out but you;
I can hear the others talking and laughing;
but you come quite close.

Maybe,
this is disagreeable
to you?'
he asked.

Marjory made no answer.

'Speak up,
girl,'
said the parson.

'Nay,
now,'
returned Will,
'I wouldn't press her,
parson.

I feel tongue-tied myself,
who am not used
to it;
and she's a woman,
and little more than a child,
when all is said.

But
for my part,
as far as I can understand what people mean by it,
I fancy I must be what they call in love.

I do not wish
to be held as committing myself;
for I may be wrong;
but that is how I believe things are
with me.

And if Miss Marjory should feel any otherwise on her part,
mayhap she would be so kind as shake her head.'

Marjory was silent,
and gave no sign that she had heard.

'How is that,
parson?'
asked Will.

'The girl must speak,'
replied the parson,
laying down his pipe.

'Here's our neighbour who says he loves you,
Madge.

Do you love him,
ay or no?'
'I think I do,'
said Marjory,
faintly.

'Well then,
that's all that could be wished!'
cried Will,
heartily.

And he took her hand across the table,
and held it a moment in both of his
with great satisfaction.

'You must marry,'
observed the parson,
replacing his pipe in his mouth.

'Is that the right thing
to do,
think you?'
demanded Will.

'It is indispensable,'
said the parson.

'Very well,'
replied the wooer.

Two or three days passed away
with great delight
to Will,
although a bystander might scarce have found it out.

He continued
to take his meals opposite Marjory,
and
to talk
with her and gaze upon her in her father's presence;
but he made no attempt
to see her alone,
nor in any other way changed his conduct towards her from what it had been since the beginning.

Perhaps the girl was a little disappointed,
and perhaps not unjustly;
and yet if it had been enough
to be always in the thoughts of another person,
and so pervade and alter his whole life,
she might have been thoroughly contented.

For she was never out of Will's mind
for an instant.

He sat over the stream,
and watched the dust of the eddy,
and the poised fish,
and straining weeds;
he wandered out alone into the purple even,
with all the blackbirds piping round him in the wood;
he rose early in the morning,
and saw the sky turn from grey
to gold,
and the light leap upon the hill-tops;
and all the while he kept wondering if he had never seen such things before,
or how it was that they should look so different now.

The sound of his own mill-wheel,
or of the wind among the trees,
confounded and charmed his heart.

The most enchanting thoughts presented themselves unbidden in his mind.

He was so happy that he could not sleep at night,
and so restless,
that he could hardly sit still out of her company.

And yet it seemed as if he avoided her rather than sought her out.

One day,
as he was coming home from a ramble,
Will found Marjory in the garden picking flowers,
and as he came up
with her,
slackened his pace and continued walking by her side.

'You like flowers?'
he said.

'Indeed I love them dearly,'
she replied.

'Do you?'
'Why,
no,'
said he,
'not so much.

They are a very small affair,
when all is done.

I can fancy people caring
for them greatly,
but not doing as you are just now.'

'How?'
she asked,
pausing and looking up at him.

'Plucking them,'
said he.

'They are a deal better off where they are,
and look a deal prettier,
if you go
to that.'

'I wish
to have them
for my own,'
she answered,
'to carry them near my heart,
and keep them in my room.

They tempt me when they grow here;
they seem
to say,
"Come and do something
with us;"
but once I have cut them and put them by,
the charm is laid,
and I can look at them
with quite an easy heart.'

'You wish
to possess them,'
replied Will,
'in order
to think no more about them.

It's a bit like killing the goose
with the golden eggs.

It's a bit like what I wished
to do when I was a boy.

Because I had a fancy
for looking out over the plain,
I wished
to go down there - where I couldn't look out over it any longer.

Was not that fine reasoning?

Dear,
dear,
if they only thought of it,
all the world would do like me;
and you would let your flowers alone,
just as I stay up here in the mountains.'

Suddenly he broke off sharp.

'By the Lord!'
he cried.

And when she asked him what was wrong,
he turned the question off and walked away into the house
with rather a humorous expression of face.

He was silent at table;
and after the night hid fallen and the stars had come out overhead,
he walked up and down
for hours in the courtyard and garden
with an uneven pace.

There was still a light in the window of Marjory's room:

one little oblong patch of orange in a world of dark blue hills and silver starlight.

Will's mind ran a great deal on the window;
but his thoughts were not very lover-like.

'There she is in her room,'
he thought,
'and there are the stars overhead:

- a blessing upon both!'
Both were good influences in his life;
both soothed and braced him in his profound contentment
with the world.

And what more should he desire
with either?

The fat young man and his councils were so present
to his mind,
that he threw back his head,
and,
putting his hands before his mouth,
shouted aloud
to the populous heavens.

Whether from the position of his head or the sudden strain of the exertion,
he seemed
to see a momentary shock among the stars,
and a diffusion of frosty light pass from one
to another along the sky.

At the same instant,
a corner of the blind was lifted and lowered again at once.

He laughed a loud ho-ho!
'One and another!'
thought Will.

'The stars tremble,
and the blind goes up.

Why,
before Heaven,
what a great magician I must be! Now if I were only a fool,
should not I be in a pretty way?'
And he went off
to bed,
chuckling
to himself:

'If I were only a fool!'
The next morning,
pretty early,
he saw her once more in the garden,
and sought her out.

'I have been thinking about getting married,'
he began abruptly;
'and after having turned it all over,
I have made up my mind it's not worthwhile.'

She turned upon him
for a single moment;
but his radiant,
kindly appearance would,
under the circumstances,
have disconcerted an angel,
and she looked down again upon the ground in silence.

He could see her tremble.

'I hope you don't mind,'
he went on,
a little taken aback.

'You ought not.

I have turned it all over,
and upon my soul there's nothing in it.

We should never be one whit nearer than we are just now,
and,
if I am a wise man,
nothing like so happy.'

'It is unnecessary
to go round about
with me,'
she said.

'I very well remember that you refused
to commit yourself;
and now that I see you were mistaken,
and in reality have never cared
for me,
I can only feel sad that I have been so far misled.'

'I ask your pardon,'
said Will stoutly;
'you do not understand my meaning.

As
to whether I have ever loved you or not,
I must leave that
to others.

But
for one thing,
my feeling is not changed;
and
for another,
you may make it your boast that you have made my whole life and character something different from what they were.

I mean what I say;
no less.

I do not think getting married is worth while.

I would rather you went on living
with your father,
so that I could walk over and see you once,
or maybe twice a week,
as people go
to church,
and then we should both be all the happier between whiles.

That's my notion.

But I'll marry you if you will,'
he added.

'Do you know that you are insulting me?'
she broke out.

'Not I,
Marjory,'
said he;
'if there is anything in a clear conscience,
not I.

I offer all my heart's best affection;
you can take it or want it,
though I suspect it's beyond either your power or mine
to change what has once been done,
and set me fancy-free.

I'll marry you,
if you like;
but I tell you again and again,
it's not worth while,
and we had best stay friends.

Though I am a quiet man I have noticed a heap of things in my life.

Trust in me,
and take things as I propose;
or,
if you don't like that,
say the word,
and I'll marry you out of hand.'

There was a considerable pause,
and Will,
who began
to feel uneasy,
began
to grow angry in consequence.

'It seems you are too proud
to say your mind,'
he said.

'Believe me that's a pity.

A clean shrift makes simple living.

Can a man be more downright or honourable,
to a woman than I have been?

I have said my say,
and given you your choice.

Do you want me
to marry you?

or will you take my friendship,
as I think best?

or have you had enough of me
for good?

Speak out
for the dear God's sake! You know your father told you a girl should speak her mind in these affairs.'

She seemed
to recover herself at that,
turned without a word,
walked rapidly through the garden,
and disappeared into the house,
leaving Will in some confusion as
to the result.

He walked up and down the garden,
whistling softly
to himself.

Sometimes he stopped and contemplated the sky and hill-tops;
sometimes he went down
to the tail of the weir and sat there,
looking foolishly in the water.

All this dubiety and perturbation was so foreign
to his nature and the life which he had resolutely chosen
for himself,
that he began
to regret Marjory's arrival.

'After all,'
he thought,
'I was as happy as a man need be.

I could come down here and watch my fishes all day long if I wanted:

I was as settled and contented as my old mill.'

Marjory came down
to dinner,
looking very trim and quiet;
and no sooner were all three at table than she made her father a speech,
with her eyes fixed upon her plate,
but showing no other sign of embarrassment or distress.

'Father,'
she began,
'Mr. Will and I have been talking things over.

We see that we have each made a mistake about our feelings,
and he has agreed,
at my request,
to give up all idea of marriage,
and be no more than my very good friend,
as in the past.

You see,
there is no shadow of a quarrel,
and indeed I hope we shall see a great deal of him in the future,
for his visits will always be welcome in our house.

Of course,
father,
you will know best,
but perhaps we should do better
to leave Mr. Will's house
for the present.

I believe,
after what has passed,
we should hardly be agreeable inmates
for some days.'

Will,
who had commanded himself
with difficulty from the first,
broke out upon this into an inarticulate noise,
and raised one hand
with an appearance of real dismay,
as if he were about
to interfere and contradict.

But she checked him at once looking up at him
with a swift glance and an angry flush upon her cheek.

'You will perhaps have the good grace,'
she said,
'to let me explain these matters
for myself.'

Will was put entirely out of countenance by her expression and the ring of her voice.

He held his peace,
concluding that there were some things about this girl beyond his comprehension,
in which he was exactly right.

The poor parson was quite crestfallen.

He tried
to prove that this was no more than a true lovers'
tiff,
which would pass off before night;
and when he was dislodged from that position,
he went on
to argue that where there was no quarrel there could be no call
for a separation;
for the good man liked both his entertainment and his host.

It was curious
to see how the girl managed them,
saying little all the time,
and that very quietly,
and yet twisting them round her finger and insensibly leading them wherever she would by feminine tact and generalship.

It scarcely seemed
to have been her doing - it seemed as if things had merely so fallen out - that she and her father took their departure that same afternoon in a farm- cart,
and went farther down the valley,
to wait,
until their own house was ready
for them,
in another hamlet.

But Will had been observing closely,
and was well aware of her dexterity and resolution.

When he found himself alone he had a great many curious matters
to turn over in his mind.

He was very sad and solitary,
to begin with.

All the interest had gone out of his life,
and he might look up at the stars as long as he pleased,
he somehow failed
to find support or consolation.

And then he was in such a turmoil of spirit about Marjory.

He had been puzzled and irritated at her behaviour,
and yet he could not keep himself from admiring it.

He thought he recognised a fine,
perverse angel in that still soul which he had never hitherto suspected;
and though he saw it was an influence that would fit but ill
with his own life of artificial calm,
he could not keep himself from ardently desiring
to possess it.

Like a man who has lived among shadows and now meets the sun,
he was both pained and delighted.

As the days went forward he passed from one extreme
to another;
now pluming himself on the strength of his determination,
now despising his timid and silly caution.

The former was,
perhaps,
the true thought of his heart,
and represented the regular tenor of the man's reflections;
but the latter burst forth from time
to time
with an unruly violence,
and then he would forget all consideration,
and go up and down his house and garden or walk among the fir-woods like one who is beside himself
with remorse.

To equable,
steady-minded Will this state of matters was intolerable;
and he determined,
at whatever cost,
to bring it
to an end.

So,
one warm summer afternoon he put on his best clothes,
took a thorn switch in his hand,
and set out down the valley by the river.

As soon as he had taken his determination,
he had regained at a bound his customary peace of heart,
and he enjoyed the bright weather and the variety of the scene without any admixture of alarm or unpleasant eagerness.

It was nearly the same
to him how the matter turned out.

If she accepted him he would have
to marry her this time,
which perhaps was,
all
for the best.

If she refused him,
he would have done his utmost,
and might follow his own way in the future
with an untroubled conscience.

He hoped,
on the whole,
she would refuse him;
and then,
again,
as he saw the brown roof which sheltered her,
peeping through some willows at an angle of the stream,
he was half inclined
to reverse the wish,
and more than half ashamed of himself
for this infirmity of purpose.

Marjory seemed glad
to see him,
and gave him her hand without affectation or delay.

'I have been thinking about this marriage,'
he began.

'So have I,'
she answered.

'And I respect you more and more
for a very wise man.

You understood me better than I understood myself;
and I am now quite certain that things are all
for the best as they are.'

'At the same time - ,'
ventured Will.

'You must be tired,'
she interrupted.

'Take a seat and let me fetch you a glass of wine.

The afternoon is so warm;
and I wish you not
to be displeased
with your visit.

You must come quite often;
once a week,
if you can spare the time;
I am always so glad
to see my friends.'

'O,
very well,'
thought Will
to himself.

'It appears I was right after all.'

And he paid a very agreeable visit,
walked home again in capital spirits,
and gave himself no further concern about the matter.

For nearly three years Will and Marjory continued on these terms,
seeing each other once or twice a week without any word of love between them;
and
for all that time I believe Will was nearly as happy as a man can be.

He rather stinted himself the pleasure of seeing her;
and he would often walk half-way over
to the parsonage,
and then back again,
as if
to whet his appetite.

Indeed there was one corner of the road,
whence he could see the church-spire wedged into a crevice of the valley between sloping firwoods,
with a triangular snatch of plain by way of background,
which he greatly affected as a place
to sit and moralise in before returning homewards;
and the peasants got so much into the habit of finding him there in the twilight that they gave it the name of
'Will o'
the Mill's Corner.'

At the end of the three years Marjory played him a sad trick by suddenly marrying somebody else.

Will kept his countenance bravely,
and merely remarked that,
for as little as he knew of women,
he had acted very prudently in not marrying her himself three years before.

She plainly knew very little of her own mind,
and,
in spite of a deceptive manner,
was as fickle and flighty as the rest of them.

He had
to congratulate himself on an escape,
he said,
and would take a higher opinion of his own wisdom in consequence.

But at heart,
he was reasonably displeased,
moped a good deal
for a month or two,
and fell away in flesh,
to the astonishment of his serving-lads.

It was perhaps a year after this marriage that Will was awakened late one night by the sound of a horse galloping on the road,
followed by precipitate knocking at the inn-door.

He opened his window and saw a farm servant,
mounted and holding a led horse by the bridle,
who told him
to make what haste he could and go along
with him;
for Marjory was dying,
and had sent urgently
to fetch him
to her bedside.

Will was no horseman,
and made so little speed upon the way that the poor young wife was very near her end before he arrived.

But they had some minutes'
talk in private,
and he was present and wept very bitterly while she breathed her last.

CHAPTER III.

DEATH Year after year went away into nothing,
with great explosions and outcries in the cities on the plain:

red revolt springing up and being suppressed in blood,
battle swaying hither and thither,
patient astronomers in observatory towers picking out and christening new stars,
plays being performed in lighted theatres,
people being carried into hospital on stretchers,
and all the usual turmoil and agitation of men's lives in crowded centres.

Up in Will's valley only the winds and seasons made an epoch;
the fish hung in the swift stream,
the birds circled overhead,
the pine-tops rustled underneath the stars,
the tall hills stood over all;
and Will went
to and fro,
minding his wayside inn,
until the snow began
to thicken on his head.

His heart was young and vigorous;
and if his pulses kept a sober time,
they still beat strong and steady in his wrists.

He carried a ruddy stain on either cheek,
like a ripe apple;
he stooped a little,
but his step was still firm;
and his sinewy hands were reached out
to all men
with a friendly pressure.

His face was covered
with those wrinkles which are got in open air,
and which rightly looked at,
are no more than a sort of permanent sunburning;
such wrinkles heighten the stupidity of stupid faces;
but
to a person like Will,
with his clear eyes and smiling mouth,
only give another charm by testifying
to a simple and easy life.

His talk was full of wise sayings.

He had a taste
for other people;
and other people had a taste
for him.

When the valley was full of tourists in the season,
there were merry nights in Will's arbour;
and his views,
which seemed whimsical
to his neighbours,
were often enough admired by learned people out of towns and colleges.

Indeed,
he had a very noble old age,
and grew daily better known;
so that his fame was heard of in the cities of the plain;
and young men who had been summer travellers spoke together in CAFES of Will o'
the Mill and his rough philosophy.

Many and many an invitation,
you may be sure,
he had;
but nothing could tempt him from his upland valley.

He would shake his head and smile over his tobacco-pipe
with a deal of meaning.

'You come too late,'
he would answer.

'I am a dead man now:

I have lived and died already.

Fifty years ago you would have brought my heart into my mouth;
and now you do not even tempt me.

But that is the object of long living,
that man should cease
to care about life.'

And again:

'There is only one difference between a long life and a good dinner:

that,
in the dinner,
the sweets come last.'

Or once more:

'When I was a boy,
I was a bit puzzled,
and hardly knew whether it was myself or the world that was curious and worth looking into.

Now,
I know it is myself,
and stick
to that.'

He never showed any symptom of frailty,
but kept stalwart and firm
to the last;
but they say he grew less talkative towards the end,
and would listen
to other people by the hour in an amused and sympathetic silence.

Only,
when he did speak,
it was more
to the point and more charged
with old experience.

He drank a bottle of wine gladly;
above all,
at sunset on the hill-top or quite late at night under the stars in the arbour.

The sight of something attractive and unatttainable seasoned his enjoyment,
he would say;
and he professed he had lived long enough
to admire a candle all the more when he could compare it
with a planet.

One night,
in his seventy-second year,
he awoke in bed in such uneasiness of body and mind that he arose and dressed himself and went out
to meditate in the arbour.

It was pitch dark,
without a star;
the river was swollen,
and the wet woods and meadows loaded the air
with perfume.

It had thundered during the day,
and it promised more thunder
for the morrow.

A murky,
stifling night
for a man of seventy-two! Whether it was the weather or the wakefulness,
or some little touch of fever in his old limbs,
Will's mind was besieged by tumultuous and crying memories.

His boyhood,
the night
with the fat young man,
the death of his adopted parents,
the summer days
with Marjory,
and many of those small circumstances,
which seem nothing
to another,
and are yet the very gist of a man's own life
to himself - things seen,
words heard,
looks misconstrued - arose from their forgotten corners and usurped his attention.

The dead themselves were
with him,
not merely taking part in this thin show of memory that defiled before his brain,
but revisiting his bodily senses as they do in profound and vivid dreams.

The fat young man leaned his elbows on the table opposite;
Marjory came and went
with an apronful of flowers between the garden and the arbour;
he could hear the old parson knocking out his pipe or blowing his resonant nose.

The tide of his consciousness ebbed and flowed:

he was sometimes half-asleep and drowned in his recollections of the past;
and sometimes he was broad awake,
wondering at himself.

But about the middle of the night he was startled by the voice of the dead miller calling
to him out of the house as he used
to do on the arrival of custom.

The hallucination was so perfect that Will sprang from his seat and stood listening
for the summons
to be repeated;
and as he listened he became conscious of another noise besides the brawling of the river and the ringing in his feverish ears.

It was like the stir of horses and the creaking of harness,
as though a carriage
with an impatient team had been brought up upon the road before the courtyard gate.

At such an hour,
upon this rough and dangerous pass,
the supposition was no better than absurd;
and Will dismissed it from his mind,
and resumed his seat upon the arbour chair;
and sleep closed over him again like running water.

He was once again awakened by the dead miller's call,
thinner and more spectral than before;
and once again he heard the noise of an equipage upon the road.

And so thrice and four times,
the same dream,
or the same fancy,
presented itself
to his senses:

until at length,
smiling
to himself as when one humours a nervous child,
he proceeded towards the gate
to set his uncertainty at rest.

From the arbour
to the gate was no great distance,
and yet it took Will some time;
it seemed as if the dead thickened around him in the court,
and crossed his path at every step.

For,
first,
he was suddenly surprised by an overpowering sweetness of heliotropes;
it was as if his garden had been planted
with this flower from end
to end,
and the hot,
damp night had drawn forth all their perfumes in a breath.

Now the heliotrope had been Marjory's favourite flower,
and since her death not one of them had ever been planted in Will's ground.

'I must be going crazy,'
he thought.

'Poor Marjory and her heliotropes!'
And
with that he raised his eyes towards the window that had once been hers.

If he had been bewildered before,
he was now almost terrified;
for there was a light in the room;
the window was an orange oblong as of yore;
and the corner of the blind was lifted and let fall as on the night when he stood and shouted
to the stars in his perplexity.

The illusion only endured an instant;
but it left him somewhat unmanned,
rubbing his eyes and staring at the outline of the house and the black night behind it.

While he thus stood,
and it seemed as if he must have stood there quite a long time,
there came a renewal of the noises on the road:

and he turned in time
to meet a stranger,
who was advancing
to meet him across the court.

There was something like the outline of a great carriage discernible on the road behind the stranger,
and,
above that,
a few black pine-tops,
like so many plumes.

'Master Will?'
asked the new-comer,
in brief military fashion.

'That same,
sir,'
answered Will.

'Can I do anything
to serve you?'
'I have heard you much spoken of,
Master Will,'
returned the other;
'much spoken of,
and well.

And though I have both hands full of business,
I wish
to drink a bottle of wine
with you in your arbour.

Before I go,
I shall introduce myself.'

Will led the way
to the trellis,
and got a lamp lighted and a bottle uncorked.

He was not altogether unused
to such complimentary interviews,
and hoped little enough from this one,
being schooled by many disappointments.

A sort of cloud had settled on his wits and prevented him from remembering the strangeness of the hour.

He moved like a person in his sleep;
and it seemed as if the lamp caught fire and the bottle came uncorked
with the facility of thought.

Still,
he had some curiosity about the appearance of his visitor,
and tried in vain
to turn the light into his face;
either he handled the lamp clumsily,
or there was a dimness over his eyes;
but he could make out little more than a shadow at table
with him.

He stared and stared at this shadow,
as he wiped out the glasses,
and began
to feel cold and strange about the heart.

The silence weighed upon him,
for he could hear nothing now,
not even the river,
but the drumming of his own arteries in his ears.

'Here's
to you,'
said the stranger,
roughly.

'Here is my service,
sir,'
replied Will,
sipping his wine,
which somehow tasted oddly.

'I understand you are a very positive fellow,'
pursued the stranger.

Will made answer
with a smile of some satisfaction and a little nod.

'So am I,'
continued the other;
'and it is the delight of my heart
to tramp on people's corns.

I will have nobody positive but myself;
not one.

I have crossed the whims,
in my time,
of kings and generals and great artists.

And what would you say,'
he went on,
'if I had come up here on purpose
to cross yours?'
Will had it on his tongue
to make a sharp rejoinder;
but the politeness of an old innkeeper prevailed;
and he held his peace and made answer
with a civil gesture of the hand.

'I have,'
said the stranger.

'And if I did not hold you in a particular esteem,
I should make no words about the matter.

It appears you pride yourself on staying where you are.

You mean
to stick by your inn.

Now I mean you shall come
for a turn
with me in my barouche;
and before this bottle's empty,
so you shall.'

'That would be an odd thing,
to be sure,'
replied Will,
with a chuckle.

'Why,
sir,
I have grown here like an old oak-tree;
the Devil himself could hardly root me up:

and
for all I perceive you are a very entertaining old gentleman,
I would wager you another bottle you lose your pains
with me.'

The dimness of Will's eyesight had been increasing all this while;
but he was somehow conscious of a sharp and chilling scrutiny which irritated and yet overmastered him.

'You need not think,'
he broke out suddenly,
in an explosive,
febrile manner that startled and alarmed himself,
'that I am a stay-at-home,
because I fear anything under God.

God knows I am tired enough of it all;
and when the time comes
for a longer journey than ever you dream of,
I reckon I shall find myself prepared.'

The stranger emptied his glass and pushed it away from him.

He looked down
for a little,
and then,
leaning over the table,
tapped Will three times upon the forearm
with a single finger.

'The time has come!'
he said solemnly.

An ugly thrill spread from the spot he touched.

The tones of his voice were dull and startling,
and echoed strangely in Will's heart.

'I beg your pardon,'
he said,
with some discomposure.

'What do you mean?'
'Look at me,
and you will find your eyesight swim.

Raise your hand;
it is dead-heavy.

This is your last bottle of wine,
Master Will,
and your last night upon the earth.'

'You are a doctor?'
quavered Will.

'The best that ever was,'
replied the other;
'for I cure both mind and body
with the same prescription.

I take away all plain and I forgive all sins;
and where my patients have gone wrong in life,
I smooth out all complications and set them free again upon their feet.'

'I have no need of you,'
said Will.

'A time comes
for all men,
Master Will,'
replied the doctor,
'when the helm is taken out of their hands.

For you,
because you were prudent and quiet,
it has been long of coming,
and you have had long
to discipline yourself
for its reception.

You have seen what is
to be seen about your mill;
you have sat close all your days like a hare in its form;
but now that is at an end;
and,'
added the doctor,
getting on his feet,
'you must arise and come
with me.'

'You are a strange physician,'
said Will,
looking steadfastly upon his guest.

'I am a natural law,'
he replied,
'and people call me Death.'

'Why did you not tell me so at first?'
cried Will.

'I have been waiting
for you these many years.

Give me your hand,
and welcome.'

'Lean upon my arm,'
said the stranger,
'for already your strength abates.

Lean on me as heavily as you need;
for though I am old,
I am very strong.

It is but three steps
to my carriage,
and there all your trouble ends.

Why,
Will,'
he added,
'I have been yearning
for you as if you were my own son;
and of all the men that ever I came
for in my long days,
I have come
for you most gladly.

I am caustic,
and sometimes offend people at first sight;
but I am a good friend at heart
to such as you.'

'Since Marjory was taken,'
returned Will,
'I declare before God you were the only friend I had
to look for.'

So the pair went arm-in- arm across the courtyard.

One of the servants awoke about this time and heard the noise of horses pawing before he dropped asleep again;
all down the valley that night there was a rushing as of a smooth and steady wind descending towards the plain;
and when the world rose next morning,
sure enough Will o'
the Mill had gone at last upon his travels.

MARKHEIM
'YES,'
said the dealer,
'our windfalls are of various kinds.

Some customers are ignorant,
and then I touch a dividend on my superior knowledge.

Some are dishonest,'
and here he held up the candle,
so that the light fell strongly on his visitor,
'and in that case,'
he continued,
'I profit by my virtue.'

Markheim had but just entered from the daylight streets,
and his eyes had not yet grown familiar
with the mingled shine and darkness in the shop.

At these pointed words,
and before the near presence of the flame,
he blinked painfully and looked aside.

The dealer chuckled.

'You come
to me on Christmas Day,'
he resumed,
'when you know that I am alone in my house,
put up my shutters,
and make a point of refusing business.

Well,
you will have
to pay
for that;
you will have
to pay
for my loss of time,
when I should be balancing my books;
you will have
to pay,
besides,
for a kind of manner that I remark in you to-day very strongly.

I am the essence of discretion,
and ask no awkward questions;
but when a customer cannot look me in the eye,
he has
to pay
for it.'

The dealer once more chuckled;
and then,
changing
to his usual business voice,
though still
with a note of irony,
'You can give,
as usual,
a clear account of how you came into the possession of the object?'
he continued.

'Still your uncle's cabinet?

A remarkable collector,
sir!'
And the little pale,
round-shouldered dealer stood almost on tip- toe,
looking over the top of his gold spectacles,
and nodding his head
with every mark of disbelief.

Markheim returned his gaze
with one of infinite pity,
and a touch of horror.

'This time,'
said he,
'you are in error.

I have not come
to sell,
but
to buy.

I have no curios
to dispose of;
my uncle's cabinet is bare
to the wainscot;
even were it still intact,
I have done well on the Stock Exchange,
and should more likely add
to it than otherwise,
and my errand to-day is simplicity itself.

I seek a Christmas present
for a lady,'
he continued,
waxing more fluent as he struck into the speech he had prepared;
'and certainly I owe you every excuse
for thus disturbing you upon so small a matter.

But the thing was neglected yesterday;
I must produce my little compliment at dinner;
and,
as you very well know,
a rich marriage is not a thing
to be neglected.'

There followed a pause,
during which the dealer seemed
to weigh this statement incredulously.

The ticking of many clocks among the curious lumber of the shop,
and the faint rushing of the cabs in a near thoroughfare,
filled up the interval of silence.

'Well,
sir,'
said the dealer,
'be it so.

You are an old customer after all;
and if,
as you say,
you have the chance of a good marriage,
far be it from me
to be an obstacle.

Here is a nice thing
for a lady now,'
he went on,
'this hand glass - fifteenth century,
warranted;
comes from a good collection,
too;
but I reserve the name,
in the interests of my customer,
who was just like yourself,
my dear sir,
the nephew and sole heir of a remarkable collector.'

The dealer,
while he thus ran on in his dry and biting voice,
had stooped
to take the object from its place;
and,
as he had done so,
a shock had passed through Markheim,
a start both of hand and foot,
a sudden leap of many tumultuous passions
to the face.

It passed as swiftly as it came,
and left no trace beyond a certain trembling of the hand that now received the glass.

'A glass,'
he said hoarsely,
and then paused,
and repeated it more clearly.

'A glass?

For Christmas?

Surely not?'
'And why not?'
cried the dealer.

'Why not a glass?'
Markheim was looking upon him
with an indefinable expression.

'You ask me why not?'
he said.

'Why,
look here - look in it - look at yourself! Do you like
to see it?

No! nor I - nor any man.'

The little man had jumped back when Markheim had so suddenly confronted him
with the mirror;
but now,
perceiving there was nothing worse on hand,
he chuckled.

'Your future lady,
sir,
must be pretty hard favoured,'
said he.

'I ask you,'
said Markheim,
'for a Christmas present,
and you give me this - this damned reminder of years,
and sins and follies - this hand-conscience! Did you mean it?

Had you a thought in your mind?

Tell me.

It will be better
for you if you do.

Come,
tell me about yourself.

I hazard a guess now,
that you are in secret a very charitable man?'
The dealer looked closely at his companion.

It was very odd,
Markheim did not appear
to be laughing;
there was something in his face like an eager sparkle of hope,
but nothing of mirth.

'What are you driving at?'
the dealer asked.

'Not charitable?'
returned the other,
gloomily.

Not charitable;
not pious;
not scrupulous;
unloving,
unbeloved;
a hand
to get money,
a safe
to keep it.

Is that all?

Dear God,
man,
is that all?'
'I will tell you what it is,'
began the dealer,
with some sharpness,
and then broke off again into a chuckle.

'But I see this is a love match of yours,
and you have been drinking the lady's health.'

'Ah!'
cried Markheim,
with a strange curiosity.

'Ah,
have you been in love?

Tell me about that.'

'I,'
cried the dealer.

'I in love! I never had the time,
nor have I the time to-day
for all this nonsense.

Will you take the glass?'
'Where is the hurry?'
returned Markheim.

'It is very pleasant
to stand here talking;
and life is so short and insecure that I would not hurry away from any pleasure - no,
not even from so mild a one as this.

We should rather cling,
cling
to what little we can get,
like a man at a cliff's edge.

Every second is a cliff,
if you think upon it - a cliff a mile high - high enough,
if we fall,
to dash us out of every feature of humanity.

Hence it is best
to talk pleasantly.

Let us talk of each other:

why should we wear this mask?

Let us be confidential.

Who knows,
we might become friends?'
'I have just one word
to say
to you,'
said the dealer.

'Either make your purchase,
or walk out of my shop!'
'True true,'
said Markheim.

'Enough,
fooling.

To business.

Show me something else.'

The dealer stooped once more,
this time
to replace the glass upon the shelf,
his thin blond hair falling over his eyes as he did so.

Markheim moved a little nearer,
with one hand in the pocket of his greatcoat;
he drew himself up and filled his lungs;
at the same time many different emotions were depicted together on his face - terror,
horror,
and resolve,
fascination and a physical repulsion;
and through a haggard lift of his upper lip,
his teeth looked out.

'This,
perhaps,
may suit,'
observed the dealer:

and then,
as he began
to re-arise,
Markheim bounded from behind upon his victim.

The long,
skewerlike dagger flashed and fell.

The dealer struggled like a hen,
striking his temple on the shelf,
and then tumbled on the floor in a heap.

Time had some score of small voices in that shop,
some stately and slow as was becoming
to their great age;
others garrulous and hurried.

All these told out the seconds in an intricate,
chorus of tickings.

Then the passage of a lad's feet,
heavily running on the pavement,
broke in upon these smaller voices and startled Markheim into the consciousness of his surroundings.

He looked about him awfully.

The candle stood on the counter,
its flame solemnly wagging in a draught;
and by that inconsiderable movement,
the whole room was filled
with noiseless bustle and kept heaving like a sea:

the tall shadows nodding,
the gross blots of darkness swelling and dwindling as
with respiration,
the faces of the portraits and the china gods changing and wavering like images in water.

The inner door stood ajar,
and peered into that leaguer of shadows
with a long slit of daylight like a pointing finger.

From these fear-stricken rovings,
Markheim's eyes returned
to the body of his victim,
where it lay both humped and sprawling,
incredibly small and strangely meaner than in life.

In these poor,
miserly clothes,
in that ungainly attitude,
the dealer lay like so much sawdust.

Markheim had feared
to see it,
and,
lo! it was nothing.

And yet,
as he gazed,
this bundle of old clothes and pool of blood began
to find eloquent voices.

There it must lie;
there was none
to work the cunning hinges or direct the miracle of locomotion - there it must lie till it was found.

Found! ay,
and then?

Then would this dead flesh lift up a cry that would ring over England,
and fill the world
with the echoes of pursuit.

Ay,
dead or not,
this was still the enemy.

'Time was that when the brains were out,'
he thought;
and the first word struck into his mind.

Time,
now that the deed was accomplished - time,
which had closed
for the victim,
had become instant and momentous
for the slayer.

The thought was yet in his mind,
when,
first one and then another,
with every variety of pace and voice - one deep as the bell from a cathedral turret,
another ringing on its treble notes the prelude of a waltz-the clocks began
to strike the hour of three in the afternoon.

The sudden outbreak of so many tongues in that dumb chamber staggered him.

He began
to bestir himself,
going
to and fro
with the candle,
beleaguered by moving shadows,
and startled
to the soul by chance reflections.

In many rich mirrors,
some of home design,
some from Venice or Amsterdam,
he saw his face repeated and repeated,
as it were an army of spies;
his own eyes met and detected him;
and the sound of his own steps,
lightly as they fell,
vexed the surrounding quiet.

And still,
as he continued
to fill his pockets,
his mind accused him
with a sickening iteration,
of the thousand faults of his design.

He should have chosen a more quiet hour;
he should have prepared an alibi;
he should not have used a knife;
he should have been more cautious,
and only bound and gagged the dealer,
and not killed him;
he should have been more bold,
and killed the servant also;
he should have done all things otherwise:

poignant regrets,
weary,
incessant toiling of the mind
to change what was unchangeable,
to plan what was now useless,
to be the architect of the irrevocable past.

Meanwhile,
and behind all this activity,
brute terrors,
like the scurrying of rats in a deserted attic,
filled the more remote chambers of his brain
with riot;
the hand of the constable would fall heavy on his shoulder,
and his nerves would jerk like a hooked fish;
or he beheld,
in galloping defile,
the dock,
the prison,
the gallows,
and the black coffin.

Terror of the people in the street sat down before his mind like a besieging army.

It was impossible,
he thought,
but that some rumour of the struggle must have reached their ears and set on edge their curiosity;
and now,
in all the neighbouring houses,
he divined them sitting motionless and
with uplifted ear - solitary people,
condemned
to spend Christmas dwelling alone on memories of the past,
and now startingly recalled from that tender exercise;
happy family parties struck into silence round the table,
the mother still
with raised finger:

every degree and age and humour,
but all,
by their own hearths,
prying and hearkening and weaving the rope that was
to hang him.

Sometimes it seemed
to him he could not move too softly;
the clink of the tall Bohemian goblets rang out loudly like a bell;
and alarmed by the bigness of the ticking,
he was tempted
to stop the clocks.

And then,
again,
with a swift transition of his terrors,
the very silence of the place appeared a source of peril,
and a thing
to strike and freeze the passer-by;
and he would step more boldly,
and bustle aloud among the contents of the shop,
and imitate,
with elaborate bravado,
the movements of a busy man at ease in his own house.

But he was now so pulled about by different alarms that,
while one portion of his mind was still alert and cunning,
another trembled on the brink of lunacy.

One hallucination in particular took a strong hold on his credulity.

The neighbour hearkening
with white face beside his window,
the passer-by arrested by a horrible surmise on the pavement - these could at worst suspect,
they could not know;
through the brick walls and shuttered windows only sounds could penetrate.

But here,
within the house,
was he alone?

He knew he was;
he had watched the servant set forth sweet-hearting,
in her poor best,
'out
for the day'
written in every ribbon and smile.

Yes,
he was alone,
of course;
and yet,
in the bulk of empty house above him,
he could surely hear a stir of delicate footing - he was surely conscious,
inexplicably conscious of some presence.

Ay,
surely;
to every room and corner of the house his imagination followed it;
and now it was a faceless thing,
and yet had eyes
to see with;
and again it was a shadow of himself;
and yet again behold the image of the dead dealer,
reinspired
with cunning and hatred.

At times,
with a strong effort,
he would glance at the open door which still seemed
to repel his eyes.

The house was tall,
the skylight small and dirty,
the day blind
with fog;
and the light that filtered down
to the ground story was exceedingly faint,
and showed dimly on the threshold of the shop.

And yet,
in that strip of doubtful brightness,
did there not hang wavering a shadow?

Suddenly,
from the street outside,
a very jovial gentleman began
to beat
with a staff on the shop-door,
accompanying his blows
with shouts and railleries in which the dealer was continually called upon by name.

Markheim,
smitten into ice,
glanced at the dead man.

But no! he lay quite still;
he was fled away far beyond earshot of these blows and shoutings;
he was sunk beneath seas of silence;
and his name,
which would once have caught his notice above the howling of a storm,
had become an empty sound.

And presently the jovial gentleman desisted from his knocking,
and departed.

Here was a broad hint
to hurry what remained
to be done,
to get forth from this accusing neighbourhood,
to plunge into a bath of London multitudes,
and
to reach,
on the other side of day,
that haven of safety and apparent innocence - his bed.

One visitor had come:

at any moment another might follow and be more obstinate.

To have done the deed,
and yet not
to reap the profit,
would be too abhorrent a failure.

The money,
that was now Markheim's concern;
and as a means
to that,
the keys.

He glanced over his shoulder at the open door,
where the shadow was still lingering and shivering;
and
with no conscious repugnance of the mind,
yet
with a tremor of the belly,
he drew near the body of his victim.

The human character had quite departed.

Like a suit half-stuffed
with bran,
the limbs lay scattered,
the trunk doubled,
on the floor;
and yet the thing repelled him.

Although so dingy and inconsiderable
to the eye,
he feared it might have more significance
to the touch.

He took the body by the shoulders,
and turned it on its back.

It was strangely light and supple,
and the limbs,
as if they had been broken,
fell into the oddest postures.

The face was robbed of all expression;
but it was as pale as wax,
and shockingly smeared
with blood about one temple.

That was,
for Markheim,
the one displeasing circumstance.

It carried him back,
upon the instant,
to a certain fair-day in a fishers'
village:

a gray day,
a piping wind,
a crowd upon the street,
the blare of brasses,
the booming of drums,
the nasal voice of a ballad singer;
and a boy going
to and fro,
buried over head in the crowd and divided between interest and fear,
until,
coming out upon the chief place of concourse,
he beheld a booth and a great screen
with pictures,
dismally designed,
garishly coloured:

Brown-rigg
with her apprentice;
the Mannings
with their murdered guest;
Weare in the death-grip of Thurtell;
and a score besides of famous crimes.

The thing was as clear as an illusion;
he was once again that little boy;
he was looking once again,
and
with the same sense of physical revolt,
at these vile pictures;
he was still stunned by the thumping of the drums.

A bar of that day's music returned upon his memory;
and at that,
for the first time,
a qualm came over him,
a breath of nausea,
a sudden weakness of the joints,
which he must instantly resist and conquer.

He judged it more prudent
to confront than
to flee from these considerations;
looking the more hardily in the dead face,
bending his mind
to realise the nature and greatness of his crime.

So little a while ago that face had moved
with every change of sentiment,
that pale mouth had spoken,
that body had been all on fire
with governable energies;
and now,
and by his act,
that piece of life had been arrested,
as the horologist,
with interjected finger,
arrests the beating of the clock.

So he reasoned in vain;
he could rise
to no more remorseful consciousness;
the same heart which had shuddered before the painted effigies of crime,
looked on its reality unmoved.

At best,
he felt a gleam of pity
for one who had been endowed in vain
with all those faculties that can make the world a garden of enchantment,
one who had never lived and who was now dead.

But of penitence,
no,
not a tremor.

With that,
shaking himself clear of these considerations,
he found the keys and advanced towards the open door of the shop.

Outside,
it had begun
to rain smartly;
and the sound of the shower upon the roof had banished silence.

Like some dripping cavern,
the chambers of the house were haunted by an incessant echoing,
which filled the ear and mingled
with the ticking of the clocks.

And,
as Markheim approached the door,
he seemed
to hear,
in answer
to his own cautious tread,
the steps of another foot withdrawing up the stair.

The shadow still palpitated loosely on the threshold.

He threw a ton's weight of resolve upon his muscles,
and drew back the door.

The faint,
foggy daylight glimmered dimly on the bare floor and stairs;
on the bright suit of armour posted,
halbert in hand,
upon the landing;
and on the dark wood-carvings,
and framed pictures that hung against the yellow panels of the wainscot.

So loud was the beating of the rain through all the house that,
in Markheim's ears,
it began
to be distinguished into many different sounds.

Footsteps and sighs,
the tread of regiments marching in the distance,
the chink of money in the counting,
and the creaking of doors held stealthily ajar,
appeared
to mingle
with the patter of the drops upon the cupola and the gushing of the water in the pipes.

The sense that he was not alone grew upon him
to the verge of madness.

On every side he was haunted and begirt by presences.

He heard them moving in the upper chambers;
from the shop,
he heard the dead man getting
to his legs;
and as he began
with a great effort
to mount the stairs,
feet fled quietly before him and followed stealthily behind.

If he were but deaf,
he thought,
how tranquilly he would possess his soul! And then again,
and hearkening
with ever fresh attention,
he blessed himself
for that unresting sense which held the outposts and stood a trusty sentinel upon his life.

His head turned continually on his neck;
his eyes,
which seemed starting from their orbits,
scouted on every side,
and on every side were half-rewarded as
with the tail of something nameless vanishing.

The four-and-twenty steps
to the first floor were four-and-twenty agonies.

On that first storey,
the doors stood ajar,
three of them like three ambushes,
shaking his nerves like the throats of cannon.

He could never again,
he felt,
be sufficiently immured and fortified from men's observing eyes,
he longed
to be home,
girt in by walls,
buried among bedclothes,
and invisible
to all but God.

And at that thought he wondered a little,
recollecting tales of other murderers and the fear they were said
to entertain of heavenly avengers.

It was not so,
at least,
with him.

He feared the laws of nature,
lest,
in their callous and immutable procedure,
they should preserve some damning evidence of his crime.

He feared tenfold more,
with a slavish,
superstitions terror,
some scission in the continuity of man's experience,
some wilful illegality of nature.

He played a game of skill,
depending on the rules,
calculating consequence from cause;
and what if nature,
as the defeated tyrant overthrew the chess-board,
should break the mould of their succession?

The like had befallen Napoleon
(so writers said)
when the winter changed the time of its appearance.

The like might befall Markheim:

the solid walls might become transparent and reveal his doings like those of bees in a glass hive;
the stout planks might yield under his foot like quicksands and detain him in their clutch;
ay,
and there were soberer accidents that might destroy him:

if,
for instance,
the house should fall and imprison him beside the body of his victim;
or the house next door should fly on fire,
and the firemen invade him from all sides.

These things he feared;
and,
in a sense,
these things might be called the hands of God reached forth against sin.

But about God himself he was at ease;
his act was doubtless exceptional,
but so were his excuses,
which God knew;
it was there,
and not among men,
that he felt sure of justice.

When he had got safe into the drawing-room,
and shut the door behind him,
he was aware of a respite from alarms.

The room was quite dismantled,
uncarpeted besides,
and strewn
with packing cases and incongruous furniture;
several great pier-glasses,
in which he beheld himself at various angles,
like an actor on a stage;
many pictures,
framed and unframed,
standing,
with their faces
to the wall;
a fine Sheraton sideboard,
a cabinet of marquetry,
and a great old bed,
with tapestry hangings.

The windows opened
to the floor;
but by great good fortune the lower part of the shutters had been closed,
and this concealed him from the neighbours.

Here,
then,
Markheim drew in a packing case before the cabinet,
and began
to search among the keys.

It was a long business,
for there were many;
and it was irksome,
besides;
for,
after all,
there might be nothing in the cabinet,
and time was on the wing.

But the closeness of the occupation sobered him.

With the tail of his eye he saw the door - even glanced at it from time
to time directly,
like a besieged commander pleased
to verify the good estate of his defences.

But in truth he was at peace.

The rain falling in the street sounded natural and pleasant.

Presently,
on the other side,
the notes of a piano were wakened
to the music of a hymn,
and the voices of many children took up the air and words.

How stately,
how comfortable was the melody! How fresh the youthful voices! Markheim gave ear
to it smilingly,
as he sorted out the keys;
and his mind was thronged
with answerable ideas and images;
church- going children and the pealing of the high organ;
children afield,
bathers by the brookside,
ramblers on the brambly common,
kite- flyers in the windy and cloud-navigated sky;
and then,
at another cadence of the hymn,
back again
to church,
and the somnolence of summer Sundays,
and the high genteel voice of the parson
(which he smiled a little
to recall)
and the painted Jacobean tombs,
and the dim lettering of the Ten Commandments in the chancel.

And as he sat thus,
at once busy and absent,
he was startled
to his feet.

A flash of ice,
a flash of fire,
a bursting gush of blood,
went over him,
and then he stood transfixed and thrilling.

A step mounted the stair slowly and steadily,
and presently a hand was laid upon the knob,
and the lock clicked,
and the door opened.

Fear held Markheim in a vice.

What
to expect he knew not,
whether the dead man walking,
or the official ministers of human justice,
or some chance witness blindly stumbling in
to consign him
to the gallows.

But when a face was thrust into the aperture,
glanced round the room,
looked at him,
nodded and smiled as if in friendly recognition,
and then withdrew again,
and the door closed behind it,
his fear broke loose from his control in a hoarse cry.

At the sound of this the visitant returned.

'Did you call me?'
he asked,
pleasantly,
and
with that he entered the room and closed the door behind him.

Markheim stood and gazed at him
with all his eyes.

Perhaps there was a film upon his sight,
but the outlines of the new comer seemed
to change and waver like those of the idols in the wavering candle- light of the shop;
and at times he thought he knew him;
and at times he thought he bore a likeness
to himself;
and always,
like a lump of living terror,
there lay in his bosom the conviction that this thing was not of the earth and not of God.

And yet the creature had a strange air of the commonplace,
as he stood looking on Markheim
with a smile;
and when he added:

'You are looking
for the money,
I believe?'
it was in the tones of everyday politeness.

Markheim made no answer.

'I should warn you,'
resumed the other,
'that the maid has left her sweetheart earlier than usual and will soon be here.

If Mr. Markheim be found in this house,
I need not describe
to him the consequences.'

'You know me?'
cried the murderer.

The visitor smiled.

'You have long been a favourite of mine,'
he said;
'and I have long observed and often sought
to help you.'

'What are you?'
cried Markheim:

'the devil?'
'What I may be,'
returned the other,
'cannot affect the service I propose
to render you.'

'It can,'
cried Markheim;
'it does! Be helped by you?

No,
never;
not by you! You do not know me yet;
thank God,
you do not know me!'
'I know you,'
replied the visitant,
with a sort of kind severity or rather firmness.

'I know you
to the soul.'

'Know me!'
cried Markheim.

'Who can do so?

My life is but a travesty and slander on myself.

I have lived
to belie my nature.

All men do;
all men are better than this disguise that grows about and stifles them.

You see each dragged away by life,
like one whom bravos have seized and muffled in a cloak.

If they had their own control - if you could see their faces,
they would be altogether different,
they would shine out
for heroes and saints! I am worse than most;
myself is more overlaid;
my excuse is known
to me and God.

But,
had I the time,
I could disclose myself.'

'To me?'
inquired the visitant.

'To you before all,'
returned the murderer.

'I supposed you were intelligent.

I thought - since you exist - you would prove a reader of the heart.

And yet you would propose
to judge me by my acts! Think of it;
my acts! I was born and I have lived in a land of giants;
giants have dragged me by the wrists since I was born out of my mother - the giants of circumstance.

And you would judge me by my acts! But can you not look within?

Can you not understand that evil is hateful
to me?

Can you not see within me the clear writing of conscience,
never blurred by any wilful sophistry,
although too often disregarded?

Can you not read me
for a thing that surely must be common as humanity - the unwilling sinner?'
'All this is very feelingly expressed,'
was the reply,
'but it regards me not.

These points of consistency are beyond my province,
and I care not in the least by what compulsion you may have been dragged away,
so as you are but carried in the right direction.

But time flies;
the servant delays,
looking in the faces of the crowd and at the pictures on the hoardings,
but still she keeps moving nearer;
and remember,
it is as if the gallows itself was striding towards you through the Christmas streets! Shall I help you;
I,
who know all?

Shall I tell you where
to find the money?'
'For what price?'
asked Markheim.

'I offer you the service
for a Christmas gift,'
returned the other.

Markheim could not refrain from smiling
with a kind of bitter triumph.

'No,'
said he,
'I will take nothing at your hands;
if I were dying of thirst,
and it was your hand that put the pitcher
to my lips,
I should find the courage
to refuse.

It may be credulous,
but I will do nothing
to commit myself
to evil.'

'I have no objection
to a death-bed repentance,'
observed the visitant.

'Because you disbelieve their efficacy!'
Markheim cried.

'I do not say so,'
returned the other;
'but I look on these things from a different side,
and when the life is done my interest falls.

The man has lived
to serve me,
to spread black looks under colour of religion,
or
to sow tares in the wheat-field,
as you do,
in a course of weak compliance
with desire.

Now that he draws so near
to his deliverance,
he can add but one act of service -
to repent,
to die smiling,
and thus
to build up in confidence and hope the more timorous of my surviving followers.

I am not so hard a master.

Try me.

Accept my help.

Please yourself in life as you have done hitherto;
please yourself more amply,
spread your elbows at the board;
and when the night begins
to fall and the curtains
to be drawn,
I tell you,
for your greater comfort,
that you will find it even easy
to compound your quarrel
with your conscience,
and
to make a truckling peace
with God.

I came but now from such a deathbed,
and the room was full of sincere mourners,
listening
to the man's last words:

and when I looked into that face,
which had been set as a flint against mercy,
I found it smiling
with hope.'

'And do you,
then,
suppose me such a creature?'
asked Markheim.

'Do you think I have no more generous aspirations than
to sin,
and sin,
and sin,
and,
at the last,
sneak into heaven?

My heart rises at the thought.

Is this,
then,
your experience of mankind?

or is it because you find me
with red hands that you presume such baseness?

and is this crime of murder indeed so impious as
to dry up the very springs of good?'
'Murder is
to me no special category,'
replied the other.

'All sins are murder,
even as all life is war.

I behold your race,
like starving mariners on a raft,
plucking crusts out of the hands of famine and feeding on each other's lives.

I follow sins beyond the moment of their acting;
I find in all that the last consequence is death;
and
to my eyes,
the pretty maid who thwarts her mother
with such taking graces on a question of a ball,
drips no less visibly
with human gore than such a murderer as yourself.

Do I say that I follow sins?

I follow virtues also;
they differ not by the thickness of a nail,
they are both scythes
for the reaping angel of Death.

Evil,
for which I live,
consists not in action but in character.

The bad man is dear
to me;
not the bad act,
whose fruits,
if we could follow them far enough down the hurtling cataract of the ages,
might yet be found more blessed than those of the rarest virtues.

And it is not because you have killed a dealer,
but because you are Markheim,
that I offer
to forward your escape.'

'I will lay my heart open
to you,'
answered Markheim.

'This crime on which you find me is my last.

On my way
to it I have learned many lessons;
itself is a lesson,
a momentous lesson.

Hitherto I have been driven
with revolt
to what I would not;
I was a bond- slave
to poverty,
driven and scourged.

There are robust virtues that can stand in these temptations;
mine was not so:

I had a thirst of pleasure.

But to-day,
and out of this deed,
I pluck both warning and riches - both the power and a fresh resolve
to be myself.

I become in all things a free actor in the world;
I begin
to see myself all changed,
these hands the agents of good,
this heart at peace.

Something comes over me out of the past;
something of what I have dreamed on Sabbath evenings
to the sound of the church organ,
of what I forecast when I shed tears over noble books,
or talked,
an innocent child,
with my mother.

There lies my life;
I have wandered a few years,
but now I see once more my city of destination.'

'You are
to use this money on the Stock Exchange,
I think?'
remarked the visitor;
'and there,
if I mistake not,
you have already lost some thousands?'
'Ah,'
said Markheim,
'but this time I have a sure thing.'

'This time,
again,
you will lose,'
replied the visitor quietly.

'Ah,
but I keep back the half!'
cried Markheim.

'That also you will lose,'
said the other.

The sweat started upon Markheim's brow.

'Well,
then,
what matter?'
he exclaimed.

'Say it be lost,
say I am plunged again in poverty,
shall one part of me,
and that the worse,
continue until the end
to override the better?

Evil and good run strong in me,
haling me both ways.

I do not love the one thing,
I love all.

I can conceive great deeds,
renunciations,
martyrdoms;
and though I be fallen
to such a crime as murder,
pity is no stranger
to my thoughts.

I pity the poor;
who knows their trials better than myself?

I pity and help them;
I prize love,
I love honest laughter;
there is no good thing nor true thing on earth but I love it from my heart.

And are my vices only
to direct my life,
and my virtues
to lie without effect,
like some passive lumber of the mind?

Not so;
good,
also,
is a spring of acts.'

But the visitant raised his finger.

'For six-and-thirty years that you have been in this world,'
said be,
'through many changes of fortune and varieties of humour,
I have watched you steadily fall.

Fifteen years ago you would have started at a theft.

Three years back you would have blenched at the name of murder.

Is there any crime,
is there any cruelty or meanness,
from which you still recoil?

- five years from now I shall detect you in the fact! Downward,
downward,
lies your way;
nor can anything but death avail
to stop you.'

'It is true,'
Markheim said huskily,
'I have in some degree complied
with evil.

But it is so
with all:

the very saints,
in the mere exercise of living,
grow less dainty,
and take on the tone of their surroundings.'

'I will propound
to you one simple question,'
said the other;
'and as you answer,
I shall read
to you your moral horoscope.

You have grown in many things more lax;
possibly you do right
to be so - and at any account,
it is the same
with all men.

But granting that,
are you in any one particular,
however trifling,
more difficult
to please
with your own conduct,
or do you go in all things
with a looser rein?'
'In any one?'
repeated Markheim,
with an anguish of consideration.

'No,'
he added,
with despair,
'in none! I have gone down in all.'

'Then,'
said the visitor,
'content yourself
with what you are,
for you will never change;
and the words of your part on this stage are irrevocably written down.'

Markheim stood
for a long while silent,
and indeed it was the visitor who first broke the silence.

'That being so,'
he said,
'shall I show you the money?'
'And grace?'
cried Markheim.

'Have you not tried it?'
returned the other.

'Two or three years ago,
did I not see you on the platform of revival meetings,
and was not your voice the loudest in the hymn?'
'It is true,'
said Markheim;
'and I see clearly what remains
for me by way of duty.

I thank you
for these lessons from my soul;
my eyes are opened,
and I behold myself at last
for what I am.'

At this moment,
the sharp note of the door-bell rang through the house;
and the visitant,
as though this were some concerted signal
for which he had been waiting,
changed at once in his demeanour.

'The maid!'
he cried.

'She has returned,
as I forewarned you,
and there is now before you one more difficult passage.

Her master,
you must say,
is ill;
you must let her in,
with an assured but rather serious countenance - no smiles,
no overacting,
and I promise you success! Once the girl within,
and the door closed,
the same dexterity that has already rid you of the dealer will relieve you of this last danger in your path.

Thenceforward you have the whole evening - the whole night,
if needful -
to ransack the treasures of the house and
to make good your safety.

This is help that comes
to you
with the mask of danger.

Up!'
he cried;
'up,
friend;
your life hangs trembling in the scales:

up,
and act!'
Markheim steadily regarded his counsellor.

'If I be condemned
to evil acts,'
he said,
'there is still one door of freedom open - I can cease from action.

If my life be an ill thing,
I can lay it down.

Though I be,
as you say truly,
at the beck of every small temptation,
I can yet,
by one decisive gesture,
place myself beyond the reach of all.

My love of good is damned
to barrenness;
it may,
and let it be! But I have still my hatred of evil;
and from that,
to your galling disappointment,
you shall see that I can draw both energy and courage.'

The features of the visitor began
to undergo a wonderful and lovely change:

they brightened and softened
with a tender triumph,
and,
even as they brightened,
faded and dislimned.

But Markheim did not pause
to watch or understand the transformation.

He opened the door and went downstairs very slowly,
thinking
to himself.

His past went soberly before him;
he beheld it as it was,
ugly and strenuous like a dream,
random as chance-medley - a scene of defeat.

Life,
as he thus reviewed it,
tempted him no longer;
but on the further side he perceived a quiet haven
for his bark.

He paused in the passage,
and looked into the shop,
where the candle still burned by the dead body.

It was strangely silent.

Thoughts of the dealer swarmed into his mind,
as he stood gazing.

And then the bell once more broke out into impatient clamour.

He confronted the maid upon the threshold
with something like a smile.

'You had better go
for the police,'
said he:

'I have killed your master.'

THRAWN JANET THE Reverend Murdoch Soulis was long minister of the moorland parish of Balweary,
in the vale of Dule.

A severe,
bleak-faced old man,
dreadful
to his hearers,
he dwelt in the last years of his life,
without relative or servant or any human company,
in the small and lonely manse under the Hanging Shaw.

In spite of the iron composure of his features,
his eye was wild,
scared,
and uncertain;
and when he dwelt,
in private admonitions,
on the future of the impenitent,
it seemed as if his eye pierced through the storms of time
to the terrors of eternity.

Many young persons,
coming
to prepare themselves against the season of the Holy Communion,
were dreadfully affected by his talk.

He had a sermon on lst Peter,
v.

and 8th,
'The devil as a roaring lion,'
on the Sunday after every seventeenth of August,
and he was accustomed
to surpass himself upon that text both by the appalling nature of the matter and the terror of his bearing in the pulpit.

The children were frightened into fits,
and the old looked more than usually oracular,
and were,
all that day,
full of those hints that Hamlet deprecated.

The manse itself,
where it stood by the water of Dule among some thick trees,
with the Shaw overhanging it on the one side,
and on the other many cold,
moorish hilltops rising towards the sky,
had begun,
at a very early period of Mr. Soulis's ministry,
to be avoided in the dusk hours by all who valued themselves upon their prudence;
and guidmen sitting at the clachan alehouse shook their heads together at the thought of passing late by that uncanny neighbourhood.

There was one spot,
to be more particular,
which was regarded
with especial awe.

The manse stood between the high road and the water of Dule,
with a gable
to each;
its back was towards the kirk-town of Balweary,
nearly half a mile away;
in front of it,
a bare garden,
hedged
with thorn,
occupied the land between the river and the road.

The house was two stories high,
with two large rooms on each.

It opened not directly on the garden,
but on a causewayed path,
or passage,
giving on the road on the one hand,
and closed on the other by the tall willows and elders that bordered on the stream.

And it was this strip of causeway that enjoyed among the young parishioners of Balweary so infamous a reputation.

The minister walked there often after dark,
sometimes groaning aloud in the instancy of his unspoken prayers;
and when he was from home,
and the manse door was locked,
the more daring schoolboys ventured,
with beating hearts,
to
'follow my leader'
across that legendary spot.

This atmosphere of terror,
surrounding,
as it did,
a man of God of spotless character and orthodoxy,
was a common cause of wonder and subject of inquiry among the few strangers who were led by chance or business into that unknown,
outlying country.

But many even of the people of the parish were ignorant of the strange events which had marked the first year of Mr. Soulis's ministrations;
and among those who were better informed,
some were naturally reticent,
and others shy of that particular topic.

Now and again,
only,
one of the older folk would warm into courage over his third tumbler,
and recount the cause of the minister's strange looks and solitary life.

Fifty years syne,
when Mr. Soulis cam first into Ba'weary,
he was still a young man - a callant,
the folk said - fu'
o'
book learnin'
and grand at the exposition,
but,
as was natural in sae young a man,
wi'
nae leevin'
experience in religion.

The younger sort were greatly taken wi'
his gifts and his gab;
but auld,
concerned,
serious men and women were moved even
to prayer
for the young man,
whom they took
to be a self-deceiver,
and the parish that was like
to be sae ill-supplied.

It was before the days o'
the moderates - weary fa'
them;
but ill things are like guid - they baith come bit by bit,
a pickle at a time;
and there were folk even then that said the Lord had left the college professors
to their ain devices,
an'
the lads that went
to study wi'
them wad hae done mair and better sittin'
in a peat-bog,
like their forbears of the persecution,
wi'
a Bible under their oxter and a speerit o'
prayer in their heart.

There was nae doubt,
onyway,
but that Mr. Soulis had been ower lang at the college.

He was careful and troubled
for mony things besides the ae thing needful.

He had a feck o'
books wi'
him - mair than had ever been seen before in a'
that presbytery;
and a sair wark the carrier had wi'
them,
for they were a'
like
to have smoored in the Deil's Hag between this and Kilmackerlie.

They were books o'
divinity,
to be sure,
or so they ca'd them;
but the serious were o'
opinion there was little service
for sae mony,
when the hail o'
God's Word would gang in the neuk of a plaid.

Then he wad sit half the day and half the nicht forbye,
which was scant decent - writin',
nae less;
and first,
they were feared he wad read his sermons;
and syne it proved he was writin'
a book himsel',
which was surely no fittin'
for ane of his years an'
sma'
experience.

Onyway it behoved him
to get an auld,
decent wife
to keep the manse
for him an'
see
to his bit denners;
and he was recommended
to an auld limmer - Janet M'Clour,
they ca'd her - and sae far left
to himsel'
as
to be ower persuaded.

There was mony advised him
to the contrar,
for Janet was mair than suspeckit by the best folk in Ba'weary.

Lang or that,
she had had a wean
to a dragoon;
she hadnae come forrit
(4)
for maybe thretty year;
and bairns had seen her mumblin'
to hersel'
up on Key's Loan in the gloamin',
whilk was an unco time an'
place
for a God-fearin'
woman.

Howsoever,
it was the laird himsel'
that had first tauld the minister o'
Janet;
and in thae days he wad have gane a far gate
to pleesure the laird.

When folk tauld him that Janet was sib
to the deil,
it was a'
superstition by his way of it;
an'
when they cast up the Bible
to him an'
the witch of Endor,
he wad threep it doun their thrapples that thir days were a'
gane by,
and the deil was mercifully restrained.

Weel,
when it got about the clachan that Janet M'Clour was
to be servant at the manse,
the folk were fair mad wi'
her an'
him thegether;
and some o'
the guidwives had nae better
to dae than get round her door cheeks and chairge her wi'
a'
that was ken't again her,
frae the sodger's bairn
to John Tamson's twa kye.

She was nae great speaker;
folk usually let her gang her ain gate,
an'
she let them gang theirs,
wi',
neither Fair-guid-een nor Fair-guid-day;
but when she buckled to,
she had a tongue
to deave the miller.

Up she got,
an'
there wasnae an auld story in Ba'weary but she gart somebody lowp
for it that day;
they couldnae say ae thing but she could say twa
to it;
till,
at the hinder end,
the guidwives up and claught haud of her,
and clawed the coats aff her back,
and pu'd her doun the clachan
to the water o'
Dule,
to see if she were a witch or no,
soum or droun.

The carline skirled till ye could hear her at the Hangin'
Shaw,
and she focht like ten;
there was mony a guidwife bure the mark of her neist day an'
mony a lang day after;
and just in the hettest o'
the collieshangie,
wha suld come up
(for his sins)
but the new minister.

'Women,'
said he
(and he had a grand voice),
'I charge you in the Lord's name
to let her go.'

Janet ran
to him - she was fair wud wi'
terror - an'
clang
to him,
an'
prayed him,
for Christ's sake,
save her frae the cummers;
an'
they,
for their pairt,
tauld him a'
that was ken't,
and maybe mair.

'Woman,'
says he
to Janet,
'is this true?'
'As the Lord sees me,'
says she,
'as the Lord made me,
no a word o't.

Forbye the bairn,'
says she,
'I've been a decent woman a'
my days.'

'Will you,'
says Mr. Soulis,
'in the name of God,
and before me,
His unworthy minister,
renounce the devil and his works?'
Weel,
it wad appear that when he askit that,
she gave a girn that fairly frichtit them that saw her,
an'
they could hear her teeth play dirl thegether in her chafts;
but there was naething
for it but the ae way or the ither;
an'
Janet lifted up her hand and renounced the deil before them a'.

'And now,'
says Mr. Soulis
to the guidwives,
'home
with ye,
one and all,
and pray
to God
for His forgiveness.'

And he gied Janet his arm,
though she had little on her but a sark,
and took her up the clachan
to her ain door like a leddy of the land;
an'
her scrieghin'
and laughin'
as was a scandal
to be heard.

There were mony grave folk lang ower their prayers that nicht;
but when the morn cam'
there was sic a fear fell upon a'
Ba'weary that the bairns hid theirsels,
and even the men folk stood and keekit frae their doors.

For there was Janet comin'
doun the clachan - her or her likeness,
nane could tell - wi'
her neck thrawn,
and her heid on ae side,
like a body that has been hangit,
and a girn on her face like an unstreakit corp.

By an'
by they got used wi'
it,
and even speered at her
to ken what was wrang;
but frae that day forth she couldnae speak like a Christian woman,
but slavered and played click wi'
her teeth like a pair o'
shears;
and frae that day forth the name o'
God cam never on her lips.

Whiles she wad try
to say it,
but it michtnae be.

Them that kenned best said least;
but they never gied that Thing the name o'
Janet M'Clour;
for the auld Janet,
by their way o't,
was in muckle hell that day.

But the minister was neither
to haud nor
to bind;
he preached about naething but the folk's cruelty that had gi'en her a stroke of the palsy;
he skelpt the bairns that meddled her;
and he had her up
to the manse that same nicht,
and dwalled there a'
his lane wi'
her under the Hangin'
Shaw.

Weel,
time gaed by:

and the idler sort commenced
to think mair lichtly o'
that black business.

The minister was weel thocht o';
he was aye late at the writing,
folk wad see his can'le doon by the Dule water after twal'
at e'en;
and he seemed pleased wi'
himsel'
and upsitten as at first,
though a'
body could see that he was dwining.

As
for Janet she cam an'
she gaed;
if she didnae speak muckle afore,
it was reason she should speak less then;
she meddled naebody;
but she was an eldritch thing
to see,
an'
nane wad hae mistrysted wi'
her
for Ba'weary glebe.

About the end o'
July there cam'
a spell o'
weather,
the like o't never was in that country side;
it was lown an'
het an'
heartless;
the herds couldnae win up the Black Hill,
the bairns were ower weariet
to play;
an'
yet it was gousty too,
wi'
claps o'
het wund that rumm'led in the glens,
and bits o'
shouers that slockened naething.

We aye thocht it but
to thun'er on the morn;
but the morn cam,
an'
the morn's morning,
and it was aye the same uncanny weather,
sair on folks and bestial.

Of a'
that were the waur,
nane suffered like Mr. Soulis;
he could neither sleep nor eat,
he tauld his elders;
an'
when he wasnae writin'
at his weary book,
he wad be stravaguin'
ower a'
the countryside like a man possessed,
when a'
body else was blythe
to keep caller ben the house.

Abune Hangin'
Shaw,
in the bield o'
the Black Hill,
there's a bit enclosed grund wi'
an iron yett;
and it seems,
in the auld days,
that was the kirkyaird o'
Ba'weary,
and consecrated by the Papists before the blessed licht shone upon the kingdom.

It was a great howff o'
Mr. Soulis's,
onyway;
there he would sit an'
consider his sermons;
and indeed it's a bieldy bit.

Weel,
as he cam ower the wast end o'
the Black Hill,
ae day,
he saw first twa,
an syne fower,
an'
syne seeven corbie craws fleein'
round an'
round abune the auld kirkyaird.

They flew laigh and heavy,
an'
squawked
to ither as they gaed;
and it was clear
to Mr. Soulis that something had put them frae their ordinar.

He wasnae easy fleyed,
an'
gaed straucht up
to the wa's;
an'
what suld he find there but a man,
or the appearance of a man,
sittin'
in the inside upon a grave.

He was of a great stature,
an'
black as hell,
and his e'en were singular
to see.

(5)
Mr. Soulis had heard tell o'
black men,
mony's the time;
but there was something unco about this black man that daunted him.

Het as he was,
he took a kind o'
cauld grue in the marrow o'
his banes;
but up he spak
for a'
that;
an'
says he:

'My friend,
are you a stranger in this place?'
The black man answered never a word;
he got upon his feet,
an'
begude
to hirsle
to the wa'
on the far side;
but he aye lookit at the minister;
an'
the minister stood an'
lookit back;
till a'
in a meenute the black man was ower the wa'
an'
rinnin'
for the bield o'
the trees.

Mr. Soulis,
he hardly kenned why,
ran after him;
but he was sair forjaskit wi'
his walk an'
the het,
unhalesome weather;
and rin as he likit,
he got nae mair than a glisk o'
the black man amang the birks,
till he won doun
to the foot o'
the hill-side,
an'
there he saw him ance mair,
gaun,
hap,
step,
an'
lowp,
ower Dule water
to the manse.

Mr. Soulis wasnae weel pleased that this fearsome gangrel suld mak'
sae free wi'
Ba'weary manse;
an'
he ran the harder,
an',
wet shoon,
ower the burn,
an'
up the walk;
but the deil a black man was there
to see.

He stepped out upon the road,
but there was naebody there;
he gaed a'
ower the gairden,
but na,
nae black man.

At the hinder end,
and a bit feared as was but natural,
he lifted the hasp and into the manse;
and there was Janet M'Clour before his een,
wi'
her thrawn craig,
and nane sae pleased
to see him.

And he aye minded sinsyne,
when first he set his een upon her,
he had the same cauld and deidly grue.

'Janet,'
says he,
'have you seen a black man?'
'A black man?'
quo'
she.

'Save us a'! Ye're no wise,
minister.

There's nae black man in a Ba'weary.'

But she didnae speak plain,
ye maun understand;
but yam-yammered,
like a powney wi'
the bit in its moo.

'Weel,'
says he,
'Janet,
if there was nae black man,
I have spoken
with the Accuser of the Brethren.'

And he sat down like ane wi'
a fever,
an'
his teeth chittered in his heid.

'Hoots,'
says she,
'think shame
to yoursel',
minister;'
an'
gied him a drap brandy that she keept aye by her.

Syne Mr. Soulis gaed into his study amang a'
his books.

It's a lang,
laigh,
mirk chalmer,
perishin'
cauld in winter,
an'
no very dry even in the tap o'
the simmer,
for the manse stands near the burn.

Sae doun he sat,
and thocht of a'
that had come an'
gane since he was in Ba'weary,
an'
his hame,
an'
the days when he was a bairn an'
ran daffin'
on the braes;
and that black man aye ran in his heid like the ower-come of a sang.

Aye the mair he thocht,
the mair he thocht o'
the black man.

He tried the prayer,
an'
the words wouldnae come
to him;
an'
he tried,
they say,
to write at his book,
but he could nae mak'
nae mair o'
that.

There was whiles he thocht the black man was at his oxter,
an'
the swat stood upon him cauld as well-water;
and there was other whiles,
when he cam
to himsel'
like a christened bairn and minded naething.

The upshot was that he gaed
to the window an'
stood glowrin'
at Dule water.

The trees are unco thick,
an'
the water lies deep an'
black under the manse;
an'
there was Janct washin'
the cla'es wi'
her coats kilted.

She had her back
to the minister,
an'
he,
for his pairt,
hardly kenned what he was lookin'
at.

Syne she turned round,
an'
shawed her face;
Mr. Soulis had the same cauld grue as twice that day afore,
an'
it was borne in upon him what folk said,
that Janet was deid lang syne,
an'
this was a bogle in her clay- cauld flesh.

He drew back a pickle and he scanned her narrowly.

She was tramp-trampin'
in the cla'es,
croonin'
to hersel';
and eh! Gude guide us,
but it was a fearsome face.

Whiles she sang louder,
but there was nae man born o'
woman that could tell the words o'
her sang;
an'
whiles she lookit side-lang doun,
but there was naething there
for her
to look at.

There gaed a scunner through the flesh upon his banes;
and that was Heeven's advertisement.

But Mr. Soulis just blamed himsel',
he said,
to think sae ill of a puir,
auld afflicted wife that hadnae a freend forbye himsel';
an'
he put up a bit prayer
for him and her,
an'
drank a little caller water -
for his heart rose again the meat - an'
gaed up
to his naked bed in the gloaming.

That was a nicht that has never been forgotten in Ba'weary,
the nicht o'
the seeventeenth of August,
seventeen hun'er'
an twal'.

It had been het afore,
as I hae said,
but that nicht it was hetter than ever.

The sun gaed doun amang unco-lookin'
clouds;
it fell as mirk as the pit;
no a star,
no a breath o'
wund;
ye couldnae see your han'
afore your face,
and even the auld folk cuist the covers frae their beds and lay pechin'
for their breath.

Wi'
a'
that he had upon his mind,
it was gey and unlikely Mr. Soulis wad get muckle sleep.

He lay an'
he tummled;
the gude,
caller bed that he got into brunt his very banes;
whiles he slept,
and whiles he waukened;
whiles he heard the time o'
nicht,
and whiles a tyke yowlin'
up the muir,
as if somebody was deid;
whiles he thocht he heard bogles claverin'
in his lug,
an'
whiles he saw spunkies in the room.

He behoved,
he judged,
to be sick;
an'
sick he was - little he jaloosed the sickness.

At the hinder end,
he got a clearness in his mind,
sat up in his sark on the bed-side,
and fell thinkin'
ance mair o'
the black man an'
Janet.

He couldnae weel tell how - maybe it was the cauld
to his feet - but it cam'
in upon him wi'
a spate that there was some connection between thir twa,
an'
that either or baith o'
them were bogles.

And just at that moment,
in Janet's room,
which was neist
to his,
there cam'
a stramp o'
feet as if men were wars'lin',
an'
then a loud bang;
an'
then a wund gaed reishling round the fower quarters of the house;
an'
then a'
was aince mair as seelent as the grave.

Mr. Soulis was feared
for neither man nor deevil.

He got his tinder-box,
an'
lit a can'le,
an'
made three steps o't ower
to Janet's door.

It was on the hasp,
an'
he pushed it open,
an'
keeked bauldly in.

It was a big room,
as big as the minister's ain,
an'
plenished wi'
grand,
auld,
solid gear,
for he had naething else.

There was a fower-posted bed wi'
auld tapestry;
and a braw cabinet of aik,
that was fu'
o'
the minister's divinity books,
an'
put there
to be out o'
the gate;
an'
a wheen duds o'
Janet's lying here and there about the floor.

But nae Janet could Mr. Soulis see;
nor ony sign of a contention.

In he gaed
(an'
there's few that wad ha'e followed him)
an'
lookit a'
round,
an'
listened.

But there was naethin'
to be heard,
neither inside the manse nor in a'
Ba'weary parish,
an'
naethin'
to be seen but the muckle shadows turnin'
round the can'le.

An'
then a'
at aince,
the minister's heart played dunt an'
stood stock-still;
an'
a cauld wund blew amang the hairs o'
his heid.

Whaten a weary sicht was that
for the puir man's een!
for there was Janat hangin'
frae a nail beside the auld aik cabinet:

her heid aye lay on her shoother,
her een were steeked,
the tongue projekit frae her mouth,
and her heels were twa feet clear abune the floor.

'God forgive us all!'
thocht Mr. Soulis;
'poor Janet's dead.'

He cam'
a step nearer
to the corp;
an'
then his heart fair whammled in his inside.

For by what cantrip it wad ill-beseem a man
to judge,
she was hingin'
frae a single nail an'
by a single wursted thread
for darnin'
hose.

It's an awfu'
thing
to be your lane at nicht wi'
siccan prodigies o'
darkness;
but Mr. Soulis was strong in the Lord.

He turned an'
gaed his ways oot o'
that room,
and lockit the door ahint him;
and step by step,
doon the stairs,
as heavy as leed;
and set doon the can'le on the table at the stairfoot.

He couldnae pray,
he couldnae think,
he was dreepin'
wi'
caul'
swat,
an'
naething could he hear but the dunt-dunt-duntin'
o'
his ain heart.

He micht maybe have stood there an hour,
or maybe twa,
he minded sae little;
when a'
o'
a sudden,
he heard a laigh,
uncanny steer upstairs;
a foot gaed
to an'
fro in the cha'mer whaur the corp was hingin';
syne the door was opened,
though he minded weel that he had lockit it;
an'
syne there was a step upon the landin',
an'
it seemed
to him as if the corp was lookin'
ower the rail and doun upon him whaur he stood.

He took up the can'le again
(for he couldnae want the licht),
and as saftly as ever he could,
gaed straucht out o'
the manse an'
to the far end o'
the causeway.

It was aye pit-mirk;
the flame o'
the can'le,
when he set it on the grund,
brunt steedy and clear as in a room;
naething moved,
but the Dule water seepin'
and sabbin'
doon the glen,
an'
yon unhaly footstep that cam'
ploddin doun the stairs inside the manse.

He kenned the foot over weel,
for it was Janet's;
and at ilka step that cam'
a wee thing nearer,
the cauld got deeper in his vitals.

He commanded his soul
to Him that made an'
keepit him;
'and O Lord,'
said he,
'give me strength this night
to war against the powers of evil.'

By this time the foot was comin'
through the passage
for the door;
he could hear a hand skirt alang the wa',
as if the fearsome thing was feelin'
for its way.

The saughs tossed an'
maned thegether,
a lang sigh cam'
ower the hills,
the flame o'
the can'le was blawn aboot;
an'
there stood the corp of Thrawn Janet,
wi'
her grogram goun an'
her black mutch,
wi'
the heid aye upon the shouther,
an'
the girn still upon the face o't - leevin',
ye wad hae said - deid,
as Mr. Soulis weel kenned - upon the threshold o'
the manse.

It's a strange thing that the saul of man should be that thirled into his perishable body;
but the minister saw that,
an'
his heart didnae break.

She didnae stand there lang;
she began
to move again an'
cam'
slowly towards Mr. Soulis whaur he stood under the saughs.

A'
the life o'
his body,
a'
the strength o'
his speerit,
were glowerin'
frae his een.

It seemed she was gaun
to speak,
but wanted words,
an'
made a sign wi'
the left hand.

There cam'
a clap o'
wund,
like a cat's fuff;
oot gaed the can'le,
the saughs skrieghed like folk;
an'
Mr. Soulis kenned that,
live or die,
this was the end o't.

'Witch,
beldame,
devil!'
he cried,
'I charge you,
by the power of God,
begone - if you be dead,
to the grave - if you be damned,
to hell.'

An'
at that moment the Lord's ain hand out o'
the Heevens struck the Horror whaur it stood;
the auld,
deid,
desecrated corp o'
the witch-wife,
sae lang keepit frae the grave and hirsled round by deils,
lowed up like a brunstane spunk and fell in ashes
to the grund;
the thunder followed,
peal on dirling peal,
the rairing rain upon the back o'
that;
and Mr. Soulis lowped through the garden hedge,
and ran,
wi'
skelloch upon skelloch,
for the clachan.

That same mornin',
John Christie saw the Black Man pass the Muckle Cairn as it was chappin'
six;
before eicht,
he gaed by the change- house at Knockdow;
an'
no lang after,
Sandy M'Lellan saw him gaun linkin'
doun the braes frae Kilmackerlie.

There's little doubt but it was him that dwalled sae lang in Janet's body;
but he was awa'
at last;
and sinsyne the deil has never fashed us in Ba'weary.

But it was a sair dispensation
for the minister;
lang,
lang he lay ravin'
in his bed;
and frae that hour
to this,
he was the man ye ken the day.

OLALLA
'Now,'
said the doctor,
'my part is done,
and,
I may say,
with some vanity,
well done.

It remains only
to get you out of this cold and poisonous city,
and
to give you two months of a pure air and an easy conscience.

The last is your affair.

To the first I think I can help you.

It fells indeed rather oddly;
it was but the other day the Padre came in from the country;
and as he and I are old friends,
although of contrary professions,
he applied
to me in a matter of distress among some of his parishioners.

This was a family - but you are ignorant of Spain,
and even the names of our grandees are hardly known
to you;
suffice it,
then,
that they were once great people,
and are now fallen
to the brink of destitution.

Nothing now belongs
to them but the residencia,
and certain leagues of desert mountain,
in the greater part of which not even a goat could support life.

But the house is a fine old place,
and stands at a great height among the hills,
and most salubriously;
and I had no sooner heard my friend's tale,
than I remembered you.

I told him I had a wounded officer,
wounded in the good cause,
who was now able
to make a change;
and I proposed that his friends should take you
for a lodger.

Instantly the Padre's face grew dark,
as I had maliciously foreseen it would.

It was out of the question,
he said.

Then let them starve,
said I,
for I have no sympathy
with tatterdemalion pride.

There-upon we separated,
not very content
with one another;
but yesterday,
to my wonder,
the Padre returned and made a submission:

the difficulty,
he said,
he had found upon enquiry
to be less than he had feared;
or,
in other words,
these proud people had put their pride in their pocket.

I closed
with the offer;
and,
subject
to your approval,
I have taken rooms
for you in the residencia.

The air of these mountains will renew your blood;
and the quiet in which you will there live is worth all the medicines in the world.'

'Doctor,'
said I,
'you have been throughout my good angel,
and your advice is a command.

But tell me,
if you please,
something of the family
with which I am
to reside.'

'I am coming
to that,'
replied my friend;
'and,
indeed,
there is a difficulty in the way.

These beggars are,
as I have said,
of very high descent and swollen
with the most baseless vanity;
they have lived
for some generations in a growing isolation,
drawing away,
on either hand,
from the rich who had now become too high
for them,
and from the poor,
whom they still regarded as too low;
and even to-day,
when poverty forces them
to unfasten their door
to a guest,
they cannot do so without a most ungracious stipulation.

You are
to remain,
they say,
a stranger;
they will give you attendance,
but they refuse from the first the idea of the smallest intimacy.'

I will not deny that I was piqued,
and perhaps the feeling strengthened my desire
to go,
for I was confident that I could break down that barrier if I desired.

'There is nothing offensive in such a stipulation,'
said I;
'and I even sympathise
with the feeling that inspired it.'

'It is true they have never seen you,'
returned the doctor politely;
'and if they knew you were the handsomest and the most pleasant man that ever came from England
(where I am told that handsome men are common,
but pleasant ones not so much so),
they would doubtless make you welcome
with a better grace.

But since you take the thing so well,
it matters not.

To me,
indeed,
it seems discourteous.

But you will find yourself the gainer.

The family will not much tempt you.

A mother,
a son,
and a daughter;
an old woman said
to be halfwitted,
a country lout,
and a country girl,
who stands very high
with her confessor,
and is,
therefore,'
chuckled the physician,
'most likely plain;
there is not much in that
to attract the fancy of a dashing officer.'

'And yet you say they are high-born,'
I objected.

'Well,
as
to that,
I should distinguish,'
returned the doctor.

'The mother is;
not so the children.

The mother was the last representative of a princely stock,
degenerate both in parts and fortune.

Her father was not only poor,
he was mad:

and the girl ran wild about the residencia till his death.

Then,
much of the fortune having died
with him,
and the family being quite extinct,
the girl ran wilder than ever,
until at last she married,
Heaven knows whom,
a muleteer some say,
others a smuggler;
while there are some who uphold there was no marriage at all,
and that Felipe and Olalla are bastards.

The union,
such as it was,
was tragically dissolved some years ago;
but they live in such seclusion,
and the country at that time was in so much disorder,
that the precise manner of the man's end is known only
to the priest - if even
to him.'

'I begin
to think I shall have strange experiences,'
said I.

'I would not romance,
if I were you,'
replied the doctor;
'you will find,
I fear,
a very grovelling and commonplace reality.

Felipe,
for instance,
I have seen.

And what am I
to say?

He is very rustic,
very cunning,
very loutish,
and,
I should say,
an innocent;
the others are probably
to match.

No,
no,
senor commandante,
you must seek congenial society among the great sights of our mountains;
and in these at least,
if you are at all a lover of the works of nature,
I promise you will not be disappointed.'

The next day Felipe came
for me in a rough country cart,
drawn by a mule;
and a little before the stroke of noon,
after I had said farewell
to the doctor,
the innkeeper,
and different good souls who had befriended me during my sickness,
we set forth out of the city by the Eastern gate,
and began
to ascend into the Sierra.

I had been so long a prisoner,
since I was left behind
for dying after the loss of the convoy,
that the mere smell of the earth set me smiling.

The country through which we went was wild and rocky,
partially covered
with rough woods,
now of the cork-tree,
and now of the great Spanish chestnut,
and frequently intersected by the beds of mountain torrents.

The sun shone,
the wind rustled joyously;
and we had advanced some miles,
and the city had already shrunk into an inconsiderable knoll upon the plain behind us,
before my attention began
to be diverted
to the companion of my drive.

To the eye,
he seemed but a diminutive,
loutish,
well-made country lad,
such as the doctor had described,
mighty quick and active,
but devoid of any culture;
and this first impression was
with most observers final.

What began
to strike me was his familiar,
chattering talk;
so strangely inconsistent
with the terms on which I was
to be received;
and partly from his imperfect enunciation,
partly from the sprightly incoherence of the matter,
so very difficult
to follow clearly without an effort of the mind.

It is true I had before talked
with persons of a similar mental constitution;
persons who seemed
to live
(as he did)
by the senses,
taken and possessed by the visual object of the moment and unable
to discharge their minds of that impression.

His seemed
to me
(as I sat,
distantly giving ear)
a kind of conversation proper
to drivers,
who pass much of their time in a great vacancy of the intellect and threading the sights of a familiar country.

But this was not the case of Felipe;
by his own account,
he was a home- keeper;
'I wish I was there now,'
he said;
and then,
spying a tree by the wayside,
he broke off
to tell me that he had once seen a crow among its branches.

'A crow?'
I repeated,
struck by the ineptitude of the remark,
and thinking I had heard imperfectly.

But by this time he was already filled
with a new idea;
hearkening
with a rapt intentness,
his head on one side,
his face puckered;
and he struck me rudely,
to make me hold my peace.

Then he smiled and shook his head.

'What did you hear?'
I asked.

'O,
it is all right,'
he said;
and began encouraging his mule
with cries that echoed unhumanly up the mountain walls.

I looked at him more closely.

He was superlatively well-built,
light,
and lithe and strong;
he was well-featured;
his yellow eyes were very large,
though,
perhaps,
not very expressive;
take him altogether,
he was a pleasant-looking lad,
and I had no fault
to find
with him,
beyond that he was of a dusky hue,
and inclined
to hairyness;
two characteristics that I disliked.

It was his mind that puzzled,
and yet attracted me.

The doctor's phrase - an innocent - came back
to me;
and I was wondering if that were,
after all,
the true description,
when the road began
to go down into the narrow and naked chasm of a torrent.

The waters thundered tumultuously in the bottom;
and the ravine was filled full of the sound,
the thin spray,
and the claps of wind,
that accompanied their descent.

The scene was certainly impressive;
but the road was in that part very securely walled in;
the mule went steadily forward;
and I was astonished
to perceive the paleness of terror in the face of my companion.

The voice of that wild river was inconstant,
now sinking lower as if in weariness,
now doubling its hoarse tones;
momentary freshets seemed
to swell its volume,
sweeping down the gorge,
raving and booming against the barrier walls;
and I observed it was at each of these accessions
to the clamour,
that my driver more particularly winced and blanched.

Some thoughts of Scottish superstition and the river Kelpie,
passed across my mind;
I wondered if perchance the like were prevalent in that part of Spain;
and turning
to Felipe,
sought
to draw him out.

'What is the matter?'
I asked.

'O,
I am afraid,'
he replied.

'Of what are you afraid?'
I returned.

'This seems one of the safest places on this very dangerous road.'

'It makes a noise,'
he said,
with a simplicity of awe that set my doubts at rest.

The lad was but a child in intellect;
his mind was like his body,
active and swift,
but stunted in development;
and I began from that time forth
to regard him
with a measure of pity,
and
to listen at first
with indulgence,
and at last even
with pleasure,
to his disjointed babble.

By about four in the afternoon we had crossed the summit of the mountain line,
said farewell
to the western sunshine,
and began
to go down upon the other side,
skirting the edge of many ravines and moving through the shadow of dusky woods.

There rose upon all sides the voice of falling water,
not condensed and formidable as in the gorge of the river,
but scattered and sounding gaily and musically from glen
to glen.

Here,
too,
the spirits of my driver mended,
and he began
to sing aloud in a falsetto voice,
and
with a singular bluntness of musical perception,
never true either
to melody or key,
but wandering at will,
and yet somehow
with an effect that was natural and pleasing,
like that of the of birds.

As the dusk increased,
I fell more and more under the spell of this artless warbling,
listening and waiting
for some articulate air,
and still disappointed;
and when at last I asked him what it was he sang -
'O,'
cried he,
'I am just singing!'
Above all,
I was taken
with a trick he had of unweariedly repeating the same note at little intervals;
it was not so monotonous as you would think,
or,
at least,
not disagreeable;
and it seemed
to breathe a wonderful contentment
with what is,
such as we love
to fancy in the attitude of trees,
or the quiescence of a pool.

Night had fallen dark before we came out upon a plateau,
and drew up a little after,
before a certain lump of superior blackness which I could only conjecture
to be the residencia.

Here,
my guide,
getting down from the cart,
hooted and whistled
for a long time in vain;
until at last an old peasant man came towards us from somewhere in the surrounding dark,
carrying a candle in his hand.

By the light of this I was able
to perceive a great arched doorway of a Moorish character:

it was closed by iron-studded gates,
in one of the leaves of which Felipe opened a wicket.

The peasant carried off the cart
to some out-building;
but my guide and I passed through the wicket,
which was closed again behind us;
and by the glimmer of the candle,
passed through a court,
up a stone stair,
along a section of an open gallery,
and up more stairs again,
until we came at last
to the door of a great and somewhat bare apartment.

This room,
which I understood was
to be mine,
was pierced by three windows,
lined
with some lustrous wood disposed in panels,
and carpeted
with the skins of many savage animals.

A bright fire burned in the chimney,
and shed abroad a changeful flicker;
close up
to the blaze there was drawn a table,
laid
for supper;
and in the far end a bed stood ready.

I was pleased by these preparations,
and said so
to Felipe;
and he,
with the same simplicity of disposition that I held already remarked in him,
warmly re-echoed my praises.

'A fine room,'
he said;
'a very fine room.

And fire,
too;
fire is good;
it melts out the pleasure in your bones.

And the bed,'
he continued,
carrying over the candle in that direction -
'see what fine sheets - how soft,
how smooth,
smooth;'
and he passed his hand again and again over their texture,
and then laid down his head and rubbed his cheeks among them
with a grossness of content that somehow offended me.

I took the candle from his hand
(for I feared he would set the bed on fire)
and walked back
to the supper-table,
where,
perceiving a measure of wine,
I poured out a cup and called
to him
to come and drink of it.

He started
to his feet at once and ran
to me
with a strong expression of hope;
but when he saw the wine,
he visibly shuddered.

'Oh,
no,'
he said,
'not that;
that is
for you.

I hate it.'

'Very well,
Senor,'
said I;
'then I will drink
to your good health,
and
to the prosperity of your house and family.

Speaking of which,'
I added,
after I had drunk,
'shall I not have the pleasure of laying my salutations in person at the feet of the Senora,
your mother?'
But at these words all the childishness passed out of his face,
and was succeeded by a look of indescribable cunning and secrecy.

He backed away from me at the same time,
as though I were an animal about
to leap or some dangerous fellow
with a weapon,
and when he had got near the door,
glowered at me sullenly
with contracted pupils.

'No,'
he said at last,
and the next moment was gone noiselessly out of the room;
and I heard his footing die away downstairs as light as rainfall,
and silence closed over the house.

After I had supped I drew up the table nearer
to the bed and began
to prepare
for rest;
but in the new position of the light,
I was struck by a picture on the wall.

It represented a woman,
still young.

To judge by her costume and the mellow unity which reigned over the canvas,
she had long been dead;
to judge by the vivacity of the attitude,
the eyes and the features,
I might have been beholding in a mirror the image of life.

Her figure was very slim and strong,
and of a just proportion;
red tresses lay like a crown over her brow;
her eyes,
of a very golden brown,
held mine
with a look;
and her face,
which was perfectly shaped,
was yet marred by a cruel,
sullen,
and sensual expression.

Something in both face and figure,
something exquisitely intangible,
like the echo of an echo,
suggested the features and bearing of my guide;
and I stood awhile,
unpleasantly attracted and wondering at the oddity of the resemblance.

The common,
carnal stock of that race,
which had been originally designed
for such high dames as the one now looking on me from the canvas,
had fallen
to baser uses,
wearing country clothes,
sitting on the shaft and holding the reins of a mule cart,
to bring home a lodger.

Perhaps an actual link subsisted;
perhaps some scruple of the delicate flesh that was once clothed upon
with the satin and brocade of the dead lady,
now winced at the rude contact of Felipe's frieze.

The first light of the morning shone full upon the portrait,
and,
as I lay awake,
my eyes continued
to dwell upon it
with growing complacency;
its beauty crept about my heart insidiously,
silencing my scruples one after another;
and while I knew that
to love such a woman were
to sign and seal one's own sentence of degeneration,
I still knew that,
if she were alive,
I should love her.

Day after day the double knowledge of her wickedness and of my weakness grew clearer.

She came
to be the heroine of many day-dreams,
in which her eyes led on to,
and sufficiently rewarded,
crimes.

She cast a dark shadow on my fancy;
and when I was out in the free air of heaven,
taking vigorous exercise and healthily renewing the current of my blood,
it was often a glad thought
to me that my enchantress was safe in the grave,
her wand of beauty broken,
her lips closed in silence,
her philtre spilt.

And yet I had a half-lingering terror that she might not be dead after all,
but re-arisen in the body of some descendant.

Felipe served my meals in my own apartment;
and his resemblance
to the portrait haunted me.

At times it was not;
at times,
upon some change of attitude or flash of expression,
it would leap out upon me like a ghost.

It was above all in his ill tempers that the likeness triumphed.

He certainly liked me;
he was proud of my notice,
which he sought
to engage by many simple and childlike devices;
he loved
to sit close before my fire,
talking his broken talk or singing his odd,
endless,
wordless songs,
and sometimes drawing his hand over my clothes
with an affectionate manner of caressing that never failed
to cause in me an embarrassment of which I was ashamed.

But
for all that,
he was capable of flashes of causeless anger and fits of sturdy sullenness.

At a word of reproof,
I have seen him upset the dish of which I was about
to eat,
and this not surreptitiously,
but
with defiance;
and similarly at a hint of inquisition.

I was not unnaturally curious,
being in a strange place and surrounded by string people;
but at the shadow of a question,
he shrank back,
lowering and dangerous.

Then it was that,
for a fraction of a second,
this rough lad might have been the brother of the lady in the frame.

But these humours were swift
to pass;
and the resemblance died along
with them.

In these first days I saw nothing of any one but Felipe,
unless the portrait is
to be counted;
and since the lad was plainly of weak mind,
and had moments of passion,
it may be wondered that I bore his dangerous neighbourhood
with equanimity.

As a matter of fact,
it was
for some time irksome;
but it happened before long that I obtained over him so complete a mastery as set my disquietude at rest.

It fell in this way.

He was by nature slothful,
and much of a vagabond,
and yet he kept by the house,
and not only waited upon my wants,
but laboured every day in the garden or small farm
to the south of the residencia.

Here he would be joined by the peasant whom I had seen on the night of my arrival,
and who dwelt at the far end of the enclosure,
about half a mile away,
in a rude out- house;
but it was plain
to me that,
of these two,
it was Felipe who did most;
and though I would sometimes see him throw down his spade and go
to sleep among the very plants he had been digging,
his constancy and energy were admirable in themselves,
and still more so since I was well assured they were foreign
to his disposition and the fruit of an ungrateful effort.

But while I admired,
I wondered what had called forth in a lad so shuttle-witted this enduring sense of duty.

How was it sustained?

I asked myself,
and
to what length did it prevail over his instincts?

The priest was possibly his inspirer;
but the priest came one day
to the residencia.

I saw him both come and go after an interval of close upon an hour,
from a knoll where I was sketching,
and all that time Felipe continued
to labour undisturbed in the garden.

At last,
in a very unworthy spirit,
I determined
to debauch the lad from his good resolutions,
and,
way-laying him at the gate,
easily pursuaded him
to join me in a ramble.

It was a fine day,
and the woods
to which I led him were green and pleasant and sweet-smelling and alive
with the hum of insects.

Here he discovered himself in a fresh character,
mounting up
to heights of gaiety that abashed me,
and displaying an energy and grace of movement that delighted the eye.

He leaped,
he ran round me in mere glee;
he would stop,
and look and listen,
and seem
to drink in the world like a cordial;
and then he would suddenly spring into a tree
with one bound,
and hang and gambol there like one at home.

Little as he said
to me,
and that of not much import,
I have rarely enjoyed more stirring company;
the sight of his delight was a continual feast;
the speed and accuracy of his movements pleased me
to the heart;
and I might have been so thoughtlessly unkind as
to make a habit of these wants,
had not chance prepared a very rude conclusion
to my pleasure.

By some swiftness or dexterity the lad captured a squirrel in a tree top.

He was then some way ahead of me,
but I saw him drop
to the ground and crouch there,
crying aloud
for pleasure like a child.

The sound stirred my sympathies,
it was so fresh and innocent;
but as I bettered my pace
to draw near,
the cry of the squirrel knocked upon my heart.

I have heard and seen much of the cruelty of lads,
and above all of peasants;
but what I now beheld struck me into a passion of anger.

I thrust the fellow aside,
plucked the poor brute out of his hands,
and
with swift mercy killed it.

Then I turned upon the torturer,
spoke
to him long out of the heat of my indignation,
calling him names at which he seemed
to wither;
and at length,
pointing toward the residencia,
bade him begone and leave me,
for I chose
to walk
with men,
not
with vermin.

He fell upon his knees,
and,
the words coming
to him
with more cleanness than usual,
poured out a stream of the most touching supplications,
begging me in mercy
to forgive him,
to forget what he had done,
to look
to the future.

'O,
I try so hard,'
he said.

'O,
commandante,
bear
with Felipe this once;
he will never be a brute again!'
Thereupon,
much more affected than I cared
to show,
I suffered myself
to be persuaded,
and at last shook hands
with him and made it up.

But the squirrel,
by way of penance,
I made him bury;
speaking of the poor thing's beauty,
telling him what pains it had suffered,
and how base a thing was the abuse of strength.

'See,
Felipe,'
said I,
'you are strong indeed;
but in my hands you are as helpless as that poor thing of the trees.

Give me your hand in mine.

You cannot remove it.

Now suppose that I were cruel like you,
and took a pleasure in pain.

I only tighten my hold,
and see how you suffer.'

He screamed aloud,
his face stricken ashy and dotted
with needle points of sweat;
and when I set him free,
he fell
to the earth and nursed his hand and moaned over it like a baby.

But he took the lesson in good part;
and whether from that,
or from what I had said
to him,
or the higher notion he now had of my bodily strength,
his original affection was changed into a dog-like,
adoring fidelity.

Meanwhile I gained rapidly in health.

The residencia stood on the crown of a stony plateau;
on every side the mountains hemmed it about;
only from the roof,
where was a bartizan,
there might be seen between two peaks,
a small segment of plain,
blue
with extreme distance.

The air in these altitudes moved freely and largely;
great clouds congregated there,
and were broken up by the wind and left in tatters on the hilltops;
a hoarse,
and yet faint rumbling of torrents rose from all round;
and one could there study all the ruder and more ancient characters of nature in something of their pristine force.

I delighted from the first in the vigorous scenery and changeful weather;
nor less in the antique and dilapidated mansion where I dwelt.

This was a large oblong,
flanked at two opposite corners by bastion-like projections,
one of which commanded the door,
while both were loopholed
for musketry.

The lower storey was,
besides,
naked of windows,
so that the building,
if garrisoned,
could not be carried without artillery.

It enclosed an open court planted
with pomegranate trees.

From this a broad flight of marble stairs ascended
to an open gallery,
running all round and resting,
towards the court,
on slender pillars.

Thence again,
several enclosed stairs led
to the upper storeys of the house,
which were thus broken up into distinct divisions.

The windows,
both within and without,
were closely shuttered;
some of the stone-work in the upper parts had fallen;
the roof,
in one place,
had been wrecked in one of the flurries of wind which were common in these mountains;
and the whole house,
in the strong,
beating sunlight,
and standing out above a grove of stunted cork- trees,
thickly laden and discoloured
with dust,
looked like the sleeping palace of the legend.

The court,
in particular,
seemed the very home of slumber.

A hoarse cooing of doves haunted about the eaves;
the winds were excluded,
but when they blew outside,
the mountain dust fell here as thick as rain,
and veiled the red bloom of the pomegranates;
shuttered windows and the closed doors of numerous cellars,
and the vacant,
arches of the gallery,
enclosed it;
and all day long the sun made broken profiles on the four sides,
and paraded the shadow of the pillars on the gallery floor.

At the ground level there was,
however,
a certain pillared recess,
which bore the marks of human habitation.

Though it was open in front upon the court,
it was yet provided
with a chimney,
where a wood fire would he always prettily blazing;
and the tile floor was littered
with the skins of animals.

It was in this place that I first saw my hostess.

She had drawn one of the skins forward and sat in the sun,
leaning against a pillar.

It was her dress that struck me first of all,
for it was rich and brightly coloured,
and shone out in that dusty courtyard
with something of the same relief as the flowers of the pomegranates.

At a second look it was her beauty of person that took hold of me.

As she sat back - watching me,
I thought,
though
with invisible eyes - and wearing at the same time an expression of almost imbecile good-humour and contentment,
she showed a perfectness of feature and a quiet nobility of attitude that were beyond a statue's.

I took off my hat
to her in passing,
and her face puckered
with suspicion as swiftly and lightly as a pool ruffles in the breeze;
but she paid no heed
to my courtesy.

I went forth on my customary walk a trifle daunted,
her idol-like impassivity haunting me;
and when I returned,
although she was still in much the same posture,
I was half surprised
to see that she had moved as far as the next pillar,
following the sunshine.

This time,
however,
she addressed me
with some trivial salutation,
civilly enough conceived,
and uttered in the same deep-chested,
and yet indistinct and lisping tones,
that had already baffled the utmost niceness of my hearing from her son.

I answered rather at a venture;
for not only did I fail
to take her meaning
with precision,
but the sudden disclosure of her eyes disturbed me.

They were unusually large,
the iris golden like Felipe's,
but the pupil at that moment so distended that they seemed almost black;
and what affected me was not so much their size as
(what was perhaps its consequence)
the singular insignificance of their regard.

A look more blankly stupid I have never met.

My eyes dropped before it even as I spoke,
and I went on my way upstairs
to my own room,
at once baffled and embarrassed.

Yet,
when I came there and saw the face of the portrait,
I was again reminded of the miracle of family descent.

My hostess was,
indeed,
both older and fuller in person;
her eyes were of a different colour;
her face,
besides,
was not only free from the ill-significance that offended and attracted me in the painting;
it was devoid of either good or bad - a moral blank expressing literally naught.

And yet there was a likeness,
not so much speaking as immanent,
not so much in any particular feature as upon the whole.

It should seem,
I thought,
as if when the master set his signature
to that grave canvas,
he had not only caught the image of one smiling and false-eyed woman,
but stamped the essential quality of a race.

From that day forth,
whether I came or went,
I was sure
to find the Senora seated in the sun against a pillar,
or stretched on a rug before the fire;
only at times she would shift her station
to the top round of the stone staircase,
where she lay
with the same nonchalance right across my path.

In all these days,
I never knew her
to display the least spark of energy beyond what she expended in brushing and re-brushing her copious copper-coloured hair,
or in lisping out,
in the rich and broken hoarseness of her voice,
her customary idle salutations
to myself.

These,
I think,
were her two chief pleasures,
beyond that of mere quiescence.

She seemed always proud of her remarks,
as though they had been witticisms:

and,
indeed,
though they were empty enough,
like the conversation of many respectable persons,
and turned on a very narrow range of subjects,
they were never meaningless or incoherent;
nay,
they had a certain beauty of their own,
breathing,
as they did,
of her entire contentment.

Now she would speak of the warmth,
in which
(like her son)
she greatly delighted;
now of the flowers of the pomegranate trees,
and now of the white doves and long-winged swallows that fanned the air of the court.

The birds excited her.

As they raked the eaves in their swift flight,
or skimmed sidelong past her
with a rush of wind,
she would sometimes stir,
and sit a little up,
and seem
to awaken from her doze of satisfaction.

But
for the rest of her days she lay luxuriously folded on herself and sunk in sloth and pleasure.

Her invincible content at first annoyed me,
but I came gradually
to find repose in the spectacle,
until at last it grew
to be my habit
to sit down beside her four times in the day,
both coming and going,
and
to talk
with her sleepily,
I scarce knew of what.

I had come
to like her dull,
almost animal neighbourhood;
her beauty and her stupidity soothed and amused me.

I began
to find a kind of transcendental good sense in her remarks,
and her unfathomable good nature moved me
to admiration and envy.

The liking was returned;
she enjoyed my presence half-unconsciously,
as a man in deep meditation may enjoy the babbling of a brook.

I can scarce say she brightened when I came,
for satisfaction was written on her face eternally,
as on some foolish statue's;
but I was made conscious of her pleasure by some more intimate communication than the sight.

And one day,
as I set within reach of her on the marble step,
she suddenly shot forth one of her hands and patted mine.

The thing was done,
and she was back in her accustomed attitude,
before my mind had received intelligence of the caress;
and when I turned
to look her in the face I could perceive no answerable sentiment.

It was plain she attached no moment
to the act,
and I blamed myself
for my own more uneasy consciousness.

The sight and
(if I may so call it)
the acquaintance of the mother confirmed the view I had already taken of the son.

The family blood had been impoverished,
perhaps by long inbreeding,
which I knew
to be a common error among the proud and the exclusive.

No decline,
indeed,
was
to be traced in the body,
which had been handed down unimpaired in shapeliness and strength;
and the faces of to-day were struck as sharply from the mint,
as the face of two centuries ago that smiled upon me from the portrait.

But the intelligence
(that more precious heirloom)
was degenerate;
the treasure of ancestral memory ran low;
and it had required the potent,
plebeian crossing of a muleteer or mountain contrabandista
to raise,
what approached hebetude in the mother,
into the active oddity of the son.

Yet of the two,
it was the mother I preferred.

Of Felipe,
vengeful and placable,
full of starts and shyings,
inconstant as a hare,
I could even conceive as a creature possibly noxious.

Of the mother I had no thoughts but those of kindness.

And indeed,
as spectators are apt ignorantly
to take sides,
I grew something of a partisan in the enmity which I perceived
to smoulder between them.

True,
it seemed mostly on the mother's part.

She would sometimes draw in her breath as he came near,
and the pupils of her vacant eyes would contract as if
with horror or fear.

Her emotions,
such as they were,
were much upon the surface and readily shared;
and this latent repulsion occupied my mind,
and kept me wondering on what grounds it rested,
and whether the son was certainly in fault.

I had been about ten days in the residencia,
when there sprang up a high and harsh wind,
carrying clouds of dust.

It came out of malarious lowlands,
and over several snowy sierras.

The nerves of those on whom it blew were strung and jangled;
their eyes smarted
with the dust;
their legs ached under the burthen of their body;
and the touch of one hand upon another grew
to be odious.

The wind,
besides,
came down the gullies of the hills and stormed about the house
with a great,
hollow buzzing and whistling that was wearisome
to the ear and dismally depressing
to the mind.

It did not so much blow in gusts as
with the steady sweep of a waterfall,
so that there was no remission of discomfort while it blew.

But higher upon the mountain,
it was probably of a more variable strength,
with accesses of fury;
for there came down at times a far-off wailing,
infinitely grievous
to hear;
and at times,
on one of the high shelves or terraces,
there would start up,
and then disperse,
a tower of dust,
like the smoke of in explosion.

I no sooner awoke in bed than I was conscious of the nervous tension and depression of the weather,
and the effect grew stronger as the day proceeded.

It was in vain that I resisted;
in vain that I set forth upon my customary morning's walk;
the irrational,
unchanging fury of the storm had soon beat down my strength and wrecked my temper;
and I returned
to the residencia,
glowing
with dry heat,
and foul and gritty
with dust.

The court had a forlorn appearance;
now and then a glimmer of sun fled over it;
now and then the wind swooped down upon the pomegranates,
and scattered the blossoms,
and set the window shutters clapping on the wall.

In the recess the Senora was pacing
to and fro
with a flushed countenance and bright eyes;
I thought,
too,
she was speaking
to herself,
like one in anger.

But when I addressed her
with my customary salutation,
she only replied by a sharp gesture and continued her walk.

The weather had distempered even this impassive creature;
and as I went on upstairs I was the less ashamed of my own discomposure.

All day the wind continued;
and I sat in my room and made a feint of reading,
or walked up and down,
and listened
to the riot overhead.

Night fell,
and I had not so much as a candle.

I began
to long
for some society,
and stole down
to the court.

It was now plunged in the blue of the first darkness;
but the recess was redly lighted by the fire.

The wood had been piled high,
and was crowned by a shock of flames,
which the draught of the chimney brandished
to and fro.

In this strong and shaken brightness the Senora continued pacing from wall
to wall
with disconnected gestures,
clasping her hands,
stretching forth her arms,
throwing back her head as in appeal
to heaven.

In these disordered movements the beauty and grace of the woman showed more clearly;
but there was a light in her eye that struck on me unpleasantly;
and when I had looked on awhile in silence,
and seemingly unobserved,
I turned tail as I had come,
and groped my way back again
to my own chamber.

By the time Felipe brought my supper and lights,
my nerve was utterly gone;
and,
had the lad been such as I was used
to seeing him,
I should have kept him
(even by force had that been necessary)
to take off the edge from my distasteful solitude.

But on Felipe,
also,
the wind had exercised its influence.

He had been feverish all day;
now that the night had come he was fallen into a low and tremulous humour that reacted on my own.

The sight of his scared face,
his starts and pallors and sudden harkenings,
unstrung me;
and when he dropped and broke a dish,
I fairly leaped out of my seat.

'I think we are all mad to-day,'
said I,
affecting
to laugh.

'It is the black wind,'
he replied dolefully.

'You feel as if you must do something,
and you don't know what it is.'

I noted the aptness of the description;
but,
indeed,
Felipe had sometimes a strange felicity in rendering into words the sensations of the body.

'And your mother,
too,'
said I;
'she seems
to feel this weather much.

Do you not fear she may be unwell?'
He stared at me a little,
and then said,
'No,'
almost defiantly;
and the next moment,
carrying his hand
to his brow,
cried out lamentably on the wind and the noise that made his head go round like a millwheel.

'Who can be well?'
he cried;
and,
indeed,
I could only echo his question,
for I was disturbed enough myself.

I went
to bed early,
wearied
with day-long restlessness,
but the poisonous nature of the wind,
and its ungodly and unintermittent uproar,
would not suffer me
to sleep.

I lay there and tossed,
my nerves and senses on the stretch.

At times I would doze,
dream horribly,
and wake again;
and these snatches of oblivion confused me as
to time.

But it must have been late on in the night,
when I was suddenly startled by an outbreak of pitiable and hateful cries.

I leaped from my bed,
supposing I had dreamed;
but the cries still continued
to fill the house,
cries of pain,
I thought,
but certainly of rage also,
and so savage and discordant that they shocked the heart.

It was no illusion;
some living thing,
some lunatic or some wild animal,
was being foully tortured.

The thought of Felipe and the squirrel flashed into my mind,
and I ran
to the door,
but it had been locked from the outside;
and I might shake it as I pleased,
I was a fast prisoner.

Still the cries continued.

Now they would dwindle down into a moaning that seemed
to be articulate,
and at these times I made sure they must be human;
and again they would break forth and fill the house
with ravings worthy of hell.

I stood at the door and gave ear
to them,
till at,
last they died away.

Long after that,
I still lingered and still continued
to hear them mingle in fancy
with the storming of the wind;
and when at last I crept
to my bed,
it was
with a deadly sickness and a blackness of horror on my heart.

It was little wonder if I slept no more.

Why had I been locked in?

What had passed?

Who was the author of these indescribable and shocking cries?

A human being?

It was inconceivable.

A beast?

The cries were scarce quite bestial;
and what animal,
short of a lion or a tiger,
could thus shake the solid walls of the residencia?

And while I was thus turning over the elements of the mystery,
it came into my mind that I had not yet set eyes upon the daughter of the house.

What was more probable than that the daughter of the Senora,
and the sister of Felipe,
should be herself insane?

Or,
what more likely than that these ignorant and half- witted people should seek
to manage an afflicted kinswoman by violence?

Here was a solution;
and yet when I called
to mind the cries
(which I never did without a shuddering chill)
it seemed altogether insufficient:

not even cruelty could wring such cries from madness.

But of one thing I was sure:

I could not live in a house where such a thing was half conceivable,
and not probe the matter home and,
if necessary,
interfere.

The next day came,
the wind had blown itself out,
and there was nothing
to remind me of the business of the night.

Felipe came
to my bedside
with obvious cheerfulness;
as I passed through the court,
the Senora was sunning herself
with her accustomed immobility;
and when I issued from the gateway,
I found the whole face of nature austerely smiling,
the heavens of a cold blue,
and sown
with great cloud islands,
and the mountain-sides mapped forth into provinces of light and shadow.

A short walk restored me
to myself,
and renewed within me the resolve
to plumb this mystery;
and when,
from the vantage of my knoll,
I had seen Felipe pass forth
to his labours in the garden,
I returned at once
to the residencia
to put my design in practice.

The Senora appeared plunged in slumber;
I stood awhile and marked her,
but she did not stir;
even if my design were indiscreet,
I had little
to fear from such a guardian;
and turning away,
I mounted
to the gallery and began my exploration of the house.

All morning I went from one door
to another,
and entered spacious and faded chambers,
some rudely shuttered,
some receiving their full charge of daylight,
all empty and unhomely.

It was a rich house,
on which Time had breathed his tarnish and dust had scattered disillusion.

The spider swung there;
the bloated tarantula scampered on the cornices;
ants had their crowded highways on the floor of halls of audience;
the big and foul fly,
that lives on carrion and is often the messenger of death,
had set up his nest in the rotten woodwork,
and buzzed heavily about the rooms.

Here and there a stool or two,
a couch,
a bed,
or a great carved chair remained behind,
like islets on the bare floors,
to testify of man's bygone habitation;
and everywhere the walls were set
with the portraits of the dead.

I could judge,
by these decaying effigies,
in the house of what a great and what a handsome race I was then wandering.

Many of the men wore orders on their breasts and had the port of noble offices;
the women were all richly attired;
the canvases most of them by famous hands.

But it was not so much these evidences of greatness that took hold upon my mind,
even contrasted,
as they were,
with the present depopulation and decay of that great house.

It was rather the parable of family life that I read in this succession of fair faces and shapely bodies.

Never before had I so realised the miracle of the continued race,
the creation and recreation,
the weaving and changing and handing down of fleshly elements.

That a child should be born of its mother,
that it should grow and clothe itself
(we know not how)
with humanity,
and put on inherited looks,
and turn its head
with the manner of one ascendant,
and offer its hand
with the gesture of another,
are wonders dulled
for us by repetition.

But in the singular unity of look,
in the common features and common bearing,
of all these painted generations on the walls of the residencia,
the miracle started out and looked me in the face.

And an ancient mirror falling opportunely in my way,
I stood and read my own features a long while,
tracing out on either hand the filaments of descent and the bonds that knit me
with my family.

At last,
in the course of these investigations,
I opened the door of a chamber that bore the marks of habitation.

It was of large proportions and faced
to the north,
where the mountains were most wildly figured.

The embers of a fire smouldered and smoked upon the hearth,
to which a chair had been drawn close.

And yet the aspect of the chamber was ascetic
to the degree of sternness;
the chair was uncushioned;
the floor and walls were naked;
and beyond the books which lay here and there in some confusion,
there was no instrument of either work or pleasure.

The sight of books in the house of such a family exceedingly amazed me;
and I began
with a great hurry,
and in momentary fear of interruption,
to go from one
to another and hastily inspect their character.

They were of all sorts,
devotional,
historical,
and scientific,
but mostly of a great age and in the Latin tongue.

Some I could see
to bear the marks of constant study;
others had been torn across and tossed aside as if in petulance or disapproval.

Lastly,
as I cruised about that empty chamber,
I espied some papers written upon
with pencil on a table near the window.

An unthinking curiosity led me
to take one up.

It bore a copy of verses,
very roughly metred in the original Spanish,
and which I may render somewhat thus - Pleasure approached
with pain and shame,
Grief
with a wreath of lilies came.

Pleasure showed the lovely sun;
Jesu dear,
how sweet it shone! Grief
with her worn hand pointed on,
Jesu dear,
to thee! Shame and confusion at once fell on me;
and,
laying down the paper,
I beat an immediate retreat from the apartment.

Neither Felipe nor his mother could have read the books nor written these rough but feeling verses.

It was plain I had stumbled
with sacrilegious feet into the room of the daughter of the house.

God knows,
my own heart most sharply punished me
for my indiscretion.

The thought that I had thus secretly pushed my way into the confidence of a girl so strangely situated,
and the fear that she might somehow come
to hear of it,
oppressed me like guilt.

I blamed myself besides
for my suspicions of the night before;
wondered that I should ever have attributed those shocking cries
to one of whom I now conceived as of a saint,
spectral of mien,
wasted
with maceration,
bound up in the practices of a mechanical devotion,
and dwelling in a great isolation of soul
with her incongruous relatives;
and as I leaned on the balustrade of the gallery and looked down into the bright close of pomegranates and at the gaily dressed and somnolent woman,
who just then stretched herself and delicately licked her lips as in the very sensuality of sloth,
my mind swiftly compared the scene
with the cold chamber looking northward on the mountains,
where the daughter dwelt.

That same afternoon,
as I sat upon my knoll,
I saw the Padre enter the gates of the residencia.

The revelation of the daughter's character had struck home
to my fancy,
and almost blotted out the horrors of the night before;
but at sight of this worthy man the memory revived.

I descended,
then,
from the knoll,
and making a circuit among the woods,
posted myself by the wayside
to await his passage.

As soon as he appeared I stepped forth and introduced myself as the lodger of the residencia.

He had a very strong,
honest countenance,
on which it was easy
to read the mingled emotions
with which he regarded me,
as a foreigner,
a heretic,
and yet one who had been wounded
for the good cause.

Of the family at the residencia he spoke
with reserve,
and yet
with respect.

I mentioned that I had not yet seen the daughter,
whereupon he remarked that that was as it should be,
and looked at me a little askance.

Lastly,
I plucked up courage
to refer
to the cries that had disturbed me in the night.

He heard me out in silence,
and then stopped and partly turned about,
as though
to mark beyond doubt that he was dismissing me.

'Do you take tobacco powder?'
said he,
offering his snuff-box;
and then,
when I had refused,
'I am an old man,'
he added,
'and I may be allowed
to remind you that you are a guest.'

'I have,
then,
your authority,'
I returned,
firmly enough,
although I flushed at the implied reproof,
'to let things take their course,
and not
to interfere?'
He said
'yes,'
and
with a somewhat uneasy salute turned and left me where I was.

But he had done two things:

he had set my conscience at rest,
and he had awakened my delicacy.

I made a great effort,
once more dismissed the recollections of the night,
and fell once more
to brooding on my saintly poetess.

At the same time,
I could not quite forget that I had been locked in,
and that night when Felipe brought me my supper I attacked him warily on both points of interest.

'I never see your sister,'
said I casually.

'Oh,
no,'
said he;
'she is a good,
good girl,'
and his mind instantly veered
to something else.

'Your sister is pious,
I suppose?'
I asked in the next pause.

'Oh!'
he cried,
joining his hands
with extreme fervour,
'a saint;
it is she that keeps me up.'

'You are very fortunate,'
said I,
'for the most of us,
I am afraid,
and myself among the number,
are better at going down.'

'Senor,'
said Felipe earnestly,
'I would not say that.

You should not tempt your angel.

If one goes down,
where is he
to stop?'
'Why,
Felipe,'
said I,
'I had no guess you were a preacher,
and I may say a good one;
but I suppose that is your sister's doing?'
He nodded at me
with round eyes.

'Well,
then,'
I continued,
'she has doubtless reproved you
for your sin of cruelty?'
'Twelve times!'
he cried;
for this was the phrase by which the odd creature expressed the sense of frequency.

'And I told her you had done so - I remembered that,'
he added proudly -
'and she was pleased.'

'Then,
Felipe,'
said I,
'what were those cries that I heard last night?

for surely they were cries of some creature in suffering.'

'The wind,'
returned Felipe,
looking in the fire.

I took his hand in mine,
at which,
thinking it
to be a caress,
he smiled
with a brightness of pleasure that came near disarming my resolve.

But I trod the weakness down.

'The wind,'
I repeated;
'and yet I think it was this hand,'
holding it up,
'that had first locked me in.'

The lad shook visibly,
but answered never a word.

'Well,'
said I,
'I am a stranger and a guest.

It is not my part either
to meddle or
to judge in your affairs;
in these you shall take your sister's counsel,
which I cannot doubt
to be excellent.

But in so far as concerns my own I will be no man's prisoner,
and I demand that key.'

Half an hour later my door was suddenly thrown open,
and the key tossed ringing on the floor.

A day or two after I came in from a walk a little before the point of noon.

The Senora was lying lapped in slumber on the threshold of the recess;
the pigeons dozed below the eaves like snowdrifts;
the house was under a deep spell of noontide quiet;
and only a wandering and gentle wind from the mountain stole round the galleries,
rustled among the pomegranates,
and pleasantly stirred the shadows.

Something in the stillness moved me
to imitation,
and I went very lightly across the court and up the marble staircase.

My foot was on the topmost round,
when a door opened,
and I found myself face
to face
with Olalla.

Surprise transfixed me;
her loveliness struck
to my heart;
she glowed in the deep shadow of the gallery,
a gem of colour;
her eyes took hold upon mine and clung there,
and bound us together like the joining of hands;
and the moments we thus stood face
to face,
drinking each other in,
were sacramental and the wedding of souls.

I know not how long it was before I awoke out of a deep trance,
and,
hastily bowing,
passed on into the upper stair.

She did not move,
but followed me
with her great,
thirsting eyes;
and as I passed out of sight it seemed
to me as if she paled and faded.

In my own room,
I opened the window and looked out,
and could not think what change had come upon that austere field of mountains that it should thus sing and shine under the lofty heaven.

I had seen her - Olalla! And the stone crags answered,
Olalla! and the dumb,
unfathomable azure answered,
Olalla! The pale saint of my dreams had vanished
for ever;
and in her place I beheld this maiden on whom God had lavished the richest colours and the most exuberant energies of life,
whom he had made active as a deer,
slender as a reed,
and in whose great eyes he had lighted the torches of the soul.

The thrill of her young life,
strung like a wild animal's,
had entered into me;
the force of soul that had looked out from her eyes and conquered mine,
mantled about my heart and sprang
to my lips in singing.

She passed through my veins:

she was one
with me.

I will not say that this enthusiasm declined;
rather my soul held out in its ecstasy as in a strong castle,
and was there besieged by cold and sorrowful considerations.

I could not doubt but that I loved her at first sight,
and already
with a quivering ardour that was strange
to my experience.

What then was
to follow?

She was the child of an afflicted house,
the Senora's daughter,
the sister of Felipe;
she bore it even in her beauty.

She had the lightness and swiftness of the one,
swift as an arrow,
light as dew;
like the other,
she shone on the pale background of the world
with the brilliancy of flowers.

I could not call by the name of brother that half-witted lad,
nor by the name of mother that immovable and lovely thing of flesh,
whose silly eyes and perpetual simper now recurred
to my mind like something hateful.

And if I could not marry,
what then?

She was helplessly unprotected;
her eyes,
in that single and long glance which had been all our intercourse,
had confessed a weakness equal
to my own;
but in my heart I knew her
for the student of the cold northern chamber,
and the writer of the sorrowful lines;
and this was a knowledge
to disarm a brute.

To flee was more than I could find courage for;
but I registered a vow of unsleeping circumspection.

As I turned from the window,
my eyes alighted on the portrait.

It had fallen dead,
like a candle after sunrise;
it followed me
with eyes of paint.

I knew it
to be like,
and marvelled at the tenacity of type in that declining race;
but the likeness was swallowed up in difference.

I remembered how it had seemed
to me a thing unapproachable in the life,
a creature rather of the painter's craft than of the modesty of nature,
and I marvelled at the thought,
and exulted in the image of Olalla.

Beauty I had seen before,
and not been charmed,
and I had been often drawn
to women,
who were not beautiful except
to me;
but in Olalla all that I desired and had not dared
to imagine was united.

I did not see her the next day,
and my heart ached and my eyes longed
for her,
as men long
for morning.

But the day after,
when I returned,
about my usual hour,
she was once more on the gallery,
and our looks once more met and embraced.

I would have spoken,
I would have drawn near
to her;
but strongly as she plucked at my heart,
drawing me like a magnet,
something yet more imperious withheld me;
and I could only bow and pass by;
and she,
leaving my salutation unanswered,
only followed me
with her noble eyes.

I had now her image by rote,
and as I conned the traits in memory it seemed as if I read her very heart.

She was dressed
with something of her mother's coquetry,
and love of positive colour.

Her robe,
which I know she must have made
with her own hands,
clung about her
with a cunning grace.

After the fashion of that country,
besides,
her bodice stood open in the middle,
in a long slit,
and here,
in spite of the poverty of the house,
a gold coin,
hanging by a ribbon,
lay on her brown bosom.

These were proofs,
had any been needed,
of her inborn delight in life and her own loveliness.

On the other hand,
in her eyes that hung upon mine,
I could read depth beyond depth of passion and sadness,
lights of poetry and hope,
blacknesses of despair,
and thoughts that were above the earth.

It was a lovely body,
but the inmate,
the soul,
was more than worthy of that lodging.

Should I leave this incomparable flower
to wither unseen on these rough mountains?

Should I despise the great gift offered me in the eloquent silence of her eyes?

Here was a soul immured;
should I not burst its prison?

All side considerations fell off from me;
were she the child of Herod I swore I should make her mine;
and that very evening I set myself,
with a mingled sense of treachery and disgrace,
to captivate the brother.

Perhaps I read him
with more favourable eyes,
perhaps the thought of his sister always summoned up the better qualities of that imperfect soul;
but he had never seemed
to me so amiable,
and his very likeness
to Olalla,
while it annoyed,
yet softened me.

A third day passed in vain - an empty desert of hours.

I would not lose a chance,
and loitered all afternoon in the court where
(to give myself a countenance)
I spoke more than usual
with the Senora.

God knows it was
with a most tender and sincere interest that I now studied her;
and even as
for Felipe,
so now
for the mother,
I was conscious of a growing warmth of toleration.

And yet I wondered.

Even while I spoke
with her,
she would doze off into a little sleep,
and presently awake again without embarrassment;
and this composure staggered me.

And again,
as I marked her make infinitesimal changes in her posture,
savouring and lingering on the bodily pleasure of the movement,
I was driven
to wonder at this depth of passive sensuality.

She lived in her body;
and her consciousness was all sunk into and disseminated through her members,
where it luxuriously dwelt.

Lastly,
I could not grow accustomed
to her eyes.

Each time she turned on me these great beautiful and meaningless orbs,
wide open
to the day,
but closed against human inquiry - each time I had occasion
to observe the lively changes of her pupils which expanded and contracted in a breath - I know not what it was came over me,
I can find no name
for the mingled feeling of disappointment,
annoyance,
and distaste that jarred along my nerves.

I tried her on a variety of subjects,
equally in vain;
and at last led the talk
to her daughter.

But even there she proved indifferent;
said she was pretty,
which
(as
with children)
was her highest word of commendation,
but was plainly incapable of any higher thought;
and when I remarked that Olalla seemed silent,
merely yawned in my face and replied that speech was of no great use when you had nothing
to say.

'People speak much,
very much,'
she added,
looking at me
with expanded pupils;
and then again yawned and again showed me a mouth that was as dainty as a toy.

This time I took the hint,
and,
leaving her
to her repose,
went up into my own chamber
to sit by the open window,
looking on the hills and not beholding them,
sunk in lustrous and deep dreams,
and hearkening in fancy
to the note of a voice that I had never heard.

I awoke on the fifth morning
with a brightness of anticipation that seemed
to challenge fate.

I was sure of myself,
light of heart and foot,
and resolved
to put my love incontinently
to the touch of knowledge.

It should lie no longer under the bonds of silence,
a dumb thing,
living by the eye only,
like the love of beasts;
but should now put on the spirit,
and enter upon the joys of the complete human intimacy.

I thought of it
with wild hopes,
like a voyager
to El Dorado;
into that unknown and lovely country of her soul,
I no longer trembled
to adventure.

Yet when I did indeed encounter her,
the same force of passion descended on me and at once submerged my mind;
speech seemed
to drop away from me like a childish habit;
and I but drew near
to her as the giddy man draws near
to the margin of a gulf.

She drew back from me a little as I came;
but her eyes did not waver from mine,
and these lured me forward.

At last,
when I was already within reach of her,
I stopped.

Words were denied me;
if I advanced I could but clasp her
to my heart in silence;
and all that was sane in me,
all that was still unconquered,
revolted against the thought of such an accost.

So we stood
for a second,
all our life in our eyes,
exchanging salvos of attraction and yet each resisting;
and then,
with a great effort of the will,
and conscious at the same time of a sudden bitterness of disappointment,
I turned and went away in the same silence.

What power lay upon me that I could not speak?

And she,
why was she also silent?

Why did she draw away before me dumbly,
with fascinated eyes?

Was this love?

or was it a mere brute attraction,
mindless and inevitable,
like that of the magnet
for the steel?

We had never spoken,
we were wholly strangers:

and yet an influence,
strong as the grasp of a giant,
swept us silently together.

On my side,
it filled me
with impatience;
and yet I was sure that she was worthy;
I had seen her books,
read her verses,
and thus,
in a sense,
divined the soul of my mistress.

But on her side,
it struck me almost cold.

Of me,
she knew nothing but my bodily favour;
she was drawn
to me as stones fall
to the earth;
the laws that rule the earth conducted her,
unconsenting,
to my arms;
and I drew back at the thought of such a bridal,
and began
to be jealous
for myself.

It was not thus that I desired
to be loved.

And then I began
to fall into a great pity
for the girl herself.

I thought how sharp must be her mortification,
that she,
the student,
the recluse,
Felipe's saintly monitress,
should have thus confessed an overweening weakness
for a man
with whom she had never exchanged a word.

And at the coming of pity,
all other thoughts were swallowed up;
and I longed only
to find and console and reassure her;
to tell her how wholly her love was returned on my side,
and how her choice,
even if blindly made,
was not unworthy.

The next day it was glorious weather;
depth upon depth of blue over-canopied the mountains;
the sun shone wide;
and the wind in the trees and the many falling torrents in the mountains filled the air
with delicate and haunting music.

Yet I was prostrated
with sadness.

My heart wept
for the sight of Olalla,
as a child weeps
for its mother.

I sat down on a boulder on the verge of the low cliffs that bound the plateau
to the north.

Thence I looked down into the wooded valley of a stream,
where no foot came.

In the mood I was in,
it was even touching
to behold the place untenanted;
it lacked Olalla;
and I thought of the delight and glory of a life passed wholly
with her in that strong air,
and among these rugged and lovely surroundings,
at first
with a whimpering sentiment,
and then again
with such a fiery joy that I seemed
to grow in strength and stature,
like a Samson.

And then suddenly I was aware of Olalla drawing near.

She appeared out of a grove of cork-trees,
and came straight towards me;
and I stood up and waited.

She seemed in her walking a creature of such life and fire and lightness as amazed me;
yet she came quietly and slowly.

Her energy was in the slowness;
but
for inimitable strength,
I felt she would have run,
she would have flown
to me.

Still,
as she approached,
she kept her eyes lowered
to the ground;
and when she had drawn quite near,
it was without one glance that she addressed me.

At the first note of her voice I started.

It was
for this I had been waiting;
this was the last test of my love.

And lo,
her enunciation was precise and clear,
not lisping and incomplete like that of her family;
and the voice,
though deeper than usual
with women,
was still both youthful and womanly.

She spoke in a rich chord;
golden contralto strains mingled
with hoarseness,
as the red threads were mingled
with the brown among her tresses.

It was not only a voice that spoke
to my heart directly;
but it spoke
to me of her.

And yet her words immediately plunged me back upon despair.

'You will go away,'
she said,
'to-day.'

Her example broke the bonds of my speech;
I felt as lightened of a weight,
or as if a spell had been dissolved.

I know not in what words I answered;
but,
standing before her on the cliffs,
I poured out the whole ardour of my love,
telling her that I lived upon the thought of her,
slept only
to dream of her loveliness,
and would gladly forswear my country,
my language,
and my friends,
to live
for ever by her side.

And then,
strongly commanding myself,
I changed the note;
I reassured,
I comforted her;
I told her I had divined in her a pious and heroic spirit,
with which I was worthy
to sympathise,
and which I longed
to share and lighten.

'Nature,'
I told her,
'was the voice of God,
which men disobey at peril;
and if we were thus humbly drawn together,
ay,
even as by a miracle of love,
it must imply a divine fitness in our souls;
we must be made,'
I said -
'made
for one another.

We should be mad rebels,'
I cried out -
'mad rebels against God,
not
to obey this instinct.'

She shook her head.

'You will go to-day,'
she repeated,
and then
with a gesture,
and in a sudden,
sharp note -
'no,
not to-day,'
she cried,
'to-morrow!'
But at this sign of relenting,
power came in upon me in a tide.

I stretched out my arms and called upon her name;
and she leaped
to me and clung
to me.

The hills rocked about us,
the earth quailed;
a shock as of a blow went through me and left me blind and dizzy.

And the next moment she had thrust me back,
broken rudely from my arms,
and fled
with the speed of a deer among the cork-trees.

I stood and shouted
to the mountains;
I turned and went back towards the residencia,
waltzing upon air.

She sent me away,
and yet I had but
to call upon her name and she came
to me.

These were but the weaknesses of girls,
from which even she,
the strangest of her sex,
was not exempted.

Go?

Not I,
Olalla - O,
not I,
Olalla,
my Olalla! A bird sang near by;
and in that season,
birds were rare.

It bade me be of good cheer.

And once more the whole countenance of nature,
from the ponderous and stable mountains down
to the lightest leaf and the smallest darting fly in the shadow of the groves,
began
to stir before me and
to put on the lineaments of life and wear a face of awful joy.

The sunshine struck upon the hills,
strong as a hammer on the anvil,
and the hills shook;
the earth,
under that vigorous insulation,
yielded up heady scents;
the woods smouldered in the blaze.

I felt the thrill of travail and delight run through the earth.

Something elemental,
something rude,
violent,
and savage,
in the love that sang in my heart,
was like a key
to nature's secrets;
and the very stones that rattled under my feet appeared alive and friendly.

Olalla! Her touch had quickened,
and renewed,
and strung me up
to the old pitch of concert
with the rugged earth,
to a swelling of the soul that men learn
to forget in their polite assemblies.

Love burned in me like rage;
tenderness waxed fierce;
I hated,
I adored,
I pitied,
I revered her
with ecstasy.

She seemed the link that bound me in
with dead things on the one hand,
and
with our pure and pitying God upon the other:

a thing brutal and divine,
and akin at once
to the innocence and
to the unbridled forces of the earth.

My head thus reeling,
I came into the courtyard of the residencia,
and the sight of the mother struck me like a revelation.

She sat there,
all sloth and contentment,
blinking under the strong sunshine,
branded
with a passive enjoyment,
a creature set quite apart,
before whom my ardour fell away like a thing ashamed.

I stopped a moment,
and,
commanding such shaken tones as I was able,
said a word or two.

She looked at me
with her unfathomable kindness;
her voice in reply sounded vaguely out of the realm of peace in which she slumbered,
and there fell on my mind,
for the first time,
a sense of respect
for one so uniformly innocent and happy,
and I passed on in a kind of wonder at myself,
that I should be so much disquieted.

On my table there lay a piece of the same yellow paper I had seen in the north room;
it was written on
with pencil in the same hand,
Olalla's hand,
and I picked it up
with a sudden sinking of alarm,
and read,
'If you have any kindness
for Olalla,
if you have any chivalry
for a creature sorely wrought,
go from here to-day;
in pity,
in honour,
for the sake of Him who died,
I supplicate that you shall go.'

I looked at this awhile in mere stupidity,
then I began
to awaken
to a weariness and horror of life;
the sunshine darkened outside on the bare hills,
and I began
to shake like a man in terror.

The vacancy thus suddenly opened in my life unmanned me like a physical void.

It was not my heart,
it was not my happiness,
it was life itself that was involved.

I could not lose her.

I said so,
and stood repeating it.

And then,
like one in a dream,
I moved
to the window,
put forth my hand
to open the casement,
and thrust it through the pane.

The blood spurted from my wrist;
and
with an instantaneous quietude and command of myself,
I pressed my thumb on the little leaping fountain,
and reflected what
to do.

In that empty room there was nothing
to my purpose;
I felt,
besides,
that I required assistance.

There shot into my mind a hope that Olalla herself might be my helper,
and I turned and went down stairs,
still keeping my thumb upon the wound.

There was no sign of either Olalla or Felipe,
and I addressed myself
to the recess,
whither the Senora had now drawn quite back and sat dozing close before the fire,
for no degree of heat appeared too much
for her.

'Pardon me,'
said I,
'if I disturb you,
but I must apply
to you
for help.'

She looked up sleepily and asked me what it was,
and
with the very words I thought she drew in her breath
with a widening of the nostrils and seemed
to come suddenly and fully alive.

'I have cut myself,'
I said,
'and rather badly.

See!'
And I held out my two hands from which the blood was oozing and dripping.

Her great eyes opened wide,
the pupils shrank into points;
a veil seemed
to fall from her face,
and leave it sharply expressive and yet inscrutable.

And as I still stood,
marvelling a little at her disturbance,
she came swiftly up
to me,
and stooped and caught me by the hand;
and the next moment my hand was at her mouth,
and she had bitten me
to the bone.

The pang of the bite,
the sudden spurting of blood,
and the monstrous horror of the act,
flashed through me all in one,
and I beat her back;
and she sprang at me again and again,
with bestial cries,
cries that I recognised,
such cries as had awakened me on the night of the high wind.

Her strength was like that of madness;
mine was rapidly ebbing
with the loss of blood;
my mind besides was whirling
with the abhorrent strangeness of the onslaught,
and I was already forced against the wall,
when Olalla ran betwixt us,
and Felipe,
following at a bound,
pinned down his mother on the floor.

A trance-like weakness fell upon me;
I saw,
heard,
and felt,
but I was incapable of movement.

I heard the struggle roll
to and fro upon the floor,
the yells of that catamount ringing up
to Heaven as she strove
to reach me.

I felt Olalla clasp me in her arms,
her hair falling on my face,
and,
with the strength of a man,
raise and half drag,
half carry me upstairs into my own room,
where she cast me down upon the bed.

Then I saw her hasten
to the door and lock it,
and stand an instant listening
to the savage cries that shook the residencia.

And then,
swift and light as a thought,
she was again beside me,
binding up my hand,
laying it in her bosom,
moaning and mourning over it
with dove-like sounds.

They were not words that came
to her,
they were sounds more beautiful than speech,
infinitely touching,
infinitely tender;
and yet as I lay there,
a thought stung
to my heart,
a thought wounded me like a sword,
a thought,
like a worm in a flower,
profaned the holiness of my love.

Yes,
they were beautiful sounds,
and they were inspired by human tenderness;
but was their beauty human?

All day I lay there.

For a long time the cries of that nameless female thing,
as she struggled
with her half-witted whelp,
resounded through the house,
and pierced me
with despairing sorrow and disgust.

They were the death-cry of my love;
my love was murdered;
was not only dead,
but an offence
to me;
and yet,
think as I pleased,
feel as I must,
it still swelled within me like a storm of sweetness,
and my heart melted at her looks and touch.

This horror that had sprung out,
this doubt upon Olalla,
this savage and bestial strain that ran not only through the whole behaviour of her family,
but found a place in the very foundations and story of our love - though it appalled,
though it shocked and sickened me,
was yet not of power
to break the knot of my infatuation.

When the cries had ceased,
there came a scraping at the door,
by which I knew Felipe was without;
and Olalla went and spoke
to him - I know not what.

With that exception,
she stayed close beside me,
now kneeling by my bed and fervently praying,
now sitting
with her eyes upon mine.

So then,
for these six hours I drank in her beauty,
and silently perused the story in her face.

I saw the golden coin hover on her breaths;
I saw her eyes darken and brighter,
and still speak no language but that of an unfathomable kindness;
I saw the faultless face,
and,
through the robe,
the lines of the faultless body.

Night came at last,
and in the growing darkness of the chamber,
the sight of her slowly melted;
but even then the touch of her smooth hand lingered in mine and talked
with me.

To lie thus in deadly weakness and drink in the traits of the beloved,
is
to reawake
to love from whatever shock of disillusion.

I reasoned
with myself;
and I shut my eyes on horrors,
and again I was very bold
to accept the worst.

What mattered it,
if that imperious sentiment survived;
if her eyes still beckoned and attached me;
if now,
even as before,
every fibre of my dull body yearned and turned
to her?

Late on in the night some strength revived in me,
and I spoke:-
'Olalla,'
I said,
'nothing matters;
I ask nothing;
I am content;
I love you.'

She knelt down awhile and prayed,
and I devoutly respected her devotions.

The moon had begun
to shine in upon one side of each of the three windows,
and make a misty clearness in the room,
by which I saw her indistinctly.

When she rearose she made the sign of the cross.

'It is
for me
to speak,'
she said,
'and
for you
to listen.

I know;
you can but guess.

I prayed,
how I prayed
for you
to leave this place.

I begged it of you,
and I know you would have granted me even this;
or if not,
O let me think so!'
'I love you,'
I said.

'And yet you have lived in the world,'
she said;
after a pause,
'you are a man and wise;
and I am but a child.

Forgive me,
if I seem
to teach,
who am as ignorant as the trees of the mountain;
but those who learn much do but skim the face of knowledge;
they seize the laws,
they conceive the dignity of the design - the horror of the living fact fades from their memory.

It is we who sit at home
with evil who remember,
I think,
and are warned and pity.

Go,
rather,
go now,
and keep me in mind.

So I shall have a life in the cherished places of your memory:

a life as much my own,
as that which I lead in this body.'

'I love you,'
I said once more;
and reaching out my weak hand,
took hers,
and carried it
to my lips,
and kissed it.

Nor did she resist,
but winced a little;
and I could see her look upon me
with a frown that was not unkindly,
only sad and baffled.

And then it seemed she made a call upon her resolution;
plucked my hand towards her,
herself at the same time leaning somewhat forward,
and laid it on the beating of her heart.

'There,'
she cried,
'you feel the very footfall of my life.

It only moves
for you;
it is yours.

But is it even mine?

It is mine indeed
to offer you,
as I might take the coin from my neck,
as I might break a live branch from a tree,
and give it you.

And yet not mine! I dwell,
or I think I dwell
(if I exist at all),
somewhere apart,
an impotent prisoner,
and carried about and deafened by a mob that I disown.

This capsule,
such as throbs against the sides of animals,
knows you at a touch
for its master;
ay,
it loves you! But my soul,
does my soul?

I think not;
I know not,
fearing
to ask.

Yet when you spoke
to me your words were of the soul;
it is of the soul that you ask - it is only from the soul that you would take me.'

'Olalla,'
I said,
'the soul and the body are one,
and mostly so in love.

What the body chooses,
the soul loves;
where the body clings,
the soul cleaves;
body
for body,
soul
to soul,
they come together at God's signal;
and the lower part
(if we can call aught low)
is only the footstool and foundation of the highest.'

'Have you,'
she said,
'seen the portraits in the house of my fathers?

Have you looked at my mother or at Felipe?

Have your eyes never rested on that picture that hangs by your bed?

She who sat
for it died ages ago;
and she did evil in her life.

But,
look- again:

there is my hand
to the least line,
there are my eyes and my hair.

What is mine,
then,
and what am I?

If not a curve in this poor body of mine
(which you love,
and
for the sake of which you dotingly dream that you love me)
not a gesture that I can frame,
not a tone of my voice,
not any look from my eyes,
no,
not even now when I speak
to him I love,
but has belonged
to others?

Others,
ages dead,
have wooed other men
with my eyes;
other men have heard the pleading of the same voice that now sounds in your ears.

The hands of the dead are in my bosom;
they move me,
they pluck me,
they guide me;
I am a puppet at their command;
and I but reinform features and attributes that have long been laid aside from evil in the quiet of the grave.

Is it me you love,
friend?

or the race that made me?

The girl who does not know and cannot answer
for the least portion of herself?

or the stream of which she is a transitory eddy,
the tree of which she is the passing fruit?

The race exists;
it is old,
it is ever young,
it carries its eternal destiny in its bosom;
upon it,
like waves upon the sea,
individual succeeds
to individual,
mocked
with a semblance of self-control,
but they are nothing.

We speak of the soul,
but the soul is in the race.'

'You fret against the common law,'
I said.

'You rebel against the voice of God,
which he has made so winning
to convince,
so imperious
to command.

Hear it,
and how it speaks between us! Your hand clings
to mine,
your heart leaps at my touch,
the unknown elements of which we are compounded awake and run together at a look;
the clay of the earth remembers its independent life and yearns
to join us;
we are drawn together as the stars are turned about in space,
or as the tides ebb and flow,
by things older and greater than we ourselves.'

'Alas!'
she said,
'what can I say
to you?

My fathers,
eight hundred years ago,
ruled all this province:

they were wise,
great,
cunning,
and cruel;
they were a picked race of the Spanish;
their flags led in war;
the king called them his cousin;
the people,
when the rope was slung
for them or when they returned and found their hovels smoking,
blasphemed their name.

Presently a change began.

Man has risen;
if he has sprung from the brutes,
he can descend again
to the same level.

The breath of weariness blew on their humanity and the cords relaxed;
they began
to go down;
their minds fell on sleep,
their passions awoke in gusts,
heady and senseless like the wind in the gutters of the mountains;
beauty was still handed down,
but no longer the guiding wit nor the human heart;
the seed passed on,
it was wrapped in flesh,
the flesh covered the bones,
but they were the bones and the flesh of brutes,
and their mind was as the mind of flies.

I speak
to you as I dare;
but you have seen
for yourself how the wheel has gone backward
with my doomed race.

I stand,
as it were,
upon a little rising ground in this desperate descent,
and see both before and behind,
both what we have lost and
to what we are condemned
to go farther downward.

And shall I - I that dwell apart in the house of the dead,
my body,
loathing its ways - shall I repeat the spell?

Shall I bind another spirit,
reluctant as my own,
into this bewitched and tempest-broken tenement that I now suffer in?

Shall I hand down this cursed vessel of humanity,
charge it
with fresh life as
with fresh poison,
and dash it,
like a fire,
in the faces of posterity?

But my vow has been given;
the race shall cease from off the earth.

At this hour my brother is making ready;
his foot will soon be on the stair;
and you will go
with him and pass out of my sight
for ever.

Think of me sometimes as one
to whom the lesson of life was very harshly told,
but who heard it
with courage;
as one who loved you indeed,
but who hated herself so deeply that her love was hateful
to her;
as one who sent you away and yet would have longed
to keep you
for ever;
who had no dearer hope than
to forget you,
and no greater fear than
to be forgotten.'

She had drawn towards the door as she spoke,
her rich voice sounding softer and farther away;
and
with the last word she was gone,
and I lay alone in the moonlit chamber.

What I might have done had not I lain bound by my extreme weakness,
I know not;
but as it was there fell upon me a great and blank despair.

It was not long before there shone in at the door the ruddy glimmer of a lantern,
and Felipe coming,
charged me without a word upon his shoulders,
and carried me down
to the great gate,
where the cart was waiting.

In the moonlight the hills stood out sharply,
as if they were of cardboard;
on the glimmering surface of the plateau,
and from among the low trees which swung together and sparkled in the wind,
the great black cube of the residencia stood out bulkily,
its mass only broken by three dimly lighted windows in the northern front above the gate.

They were Olalla's windows,
and as the cart jolted onwards I kept my eyes fixed upon them till,
where the road dipped into a valley,
they were lost
to my view forever.

Felipe walked in silence beside the shafts,
but from time
to time he would cheek the mule and seem
to look back upon me;
and at length drew quite near and laid his hand upon my head.

There was such kindness in the touch,
and such a simplicity,
as of the brutes,
that tears broke from me like the bursting of an artery.

'Felipe,'
I said,
'take me where they will ask no questions.'

He said never a word,
but he turned his mule about,
end
for end,
retraced some part of the way we had gone,
and,
striking into another path,
led me
to the mountain village,
which was,
as we say in Scotland,
the kirkton of that thinly peopled district.

Some broken memories dwell in my mind of the day breaking over the plain,
of the cart stopping,
of arms that helped me down,
of a bare room into which I was carried,
and of a swoon that fell upon me like sleep.

The next day and the days following the old priest was often at my side
with his snuff-box and prayer book,
and after a while,
when I began
to pick up strength,
he told me that I was now on a fair way
to recovery,
and must as soon as possible hurry my departure;
whereupon,
without naming any reason,
he took snuff and looked at me sideways.

I did not affect ignorance;
I knew he must have seen Olalla.

'Sir,'
said I,
'you know that I do not ask in wantonness.

What of that family?'
He said they were very unfortunate;
that it seemed a declining race,
and that they were very poor and had been much neglected.

'But she has not,'
I said.

'Thanks,
doubtless,
to yourself,
she is instructed and wise beyond the use of women.'

'Yes,'
he said;
'the Senorita is well-informed.

But the family has been neglected.'

'The mother?'
I queried.

'Yes,
the mother too,'
said the Padre,
taking snuff.

'But Felipe is a well-intentioned lad.'

'The mother is odd?'
I asked.

'Very odd,'
replied the priest.

'I think,
sir,
we beat about the bush,'
said I.

'You must know more of my affairs than you allow.

You must know my curiosity
to be justified on many grounds.

Will you not be frank
with me?'
'My son,'
said the old gentleman,
'I will be very frank
with you on matters within my competence;
on those of which I know nothing it does not require much discretion
to be silent.

I will not fence
with you,
I take your meaning perfectly;
and what can I say,
but that we are all in God's hands,
and that His ways are not as our ways?

I have even advised
with my superiors in the church,
but they,
too,
were dumb.

It is a great mystery.'

'Is she mad?'
I asked.

'I will answer you according
to my belief.

She is not,'
returned the Padre,
'or she was not.

When she was young - God help me,
I fear I neglected that wild lamb - she was surely sane;
and yet,
although it did not run
to such heights,
the same strain was already notable;
it had been so before her in her father,
ay,
and before him,
and this inclined me,
perhaps,
to think too lightly of it.

But these things go on growing,
not only in the individual but in the race.'

'When she was young,'
I began,
and my voice failed me
for a moment,
and it was only
with a great effort that I was able
to add,
'was she like Olalla?'
'Now God forbid!'
exclaimed the Padre.

'God forbid that any man should think so slightingly of my favourite penitent.

No,
no;
the Senorita
(but
for her beauty,
which I wish most honestly she had less of)
has not a hair's resemblance
to what her mother was at the same age.

I could not bear
to have you think so;
though,
Heaven knows,
it were,
perhaps,
better that you should.'

At this,
I raised myself in bed,
and opened my heart
to the old man;
telling him of our love and of her decision,
owning my own horrors,
my own passing fancies,
but telling him that these were at an end;
and
with something more than a purely formal submission,
appealing
to his judgment.

He heard me very patiently and without surprise;
and when I had done,
he sat
for some time silent.

Then he began:

'The church,'
and instantly broke off again
to apologise.

'I had forgotten,
my child,
that you were not a Christian,'
said he.

'And indeed,
upon a point so highly unusual,
even the church can scarce be said
to have decided.

But would you have my opinion?

The Senorita is,
in a matter of this kind,
the best judge;
I would accept her judgment.'

On the back of that he went away,
nor was he thenceforward so assiduous in his visits;
indeed,
even when I began
to get about again,
he plainly feared and deprecated my society,
not as in distaste but much as a man might be disposed
to flee from the riddling sphynx.

The villagers,
too,
avoided me;
they were unwilling
to be my guides upon the mountain.

I thought they looked at me askance,
and I made sure that the more superstitious crossed themselves on my approach.

At first I set this down
to my heretical opinions;
but it began at length
to dawn upon me that if I was thus redoubted it was because I had stayed at the residencia.

All men despise the savage notions of such peasantry;
and yet I was conscious of a chill shadow that seemed
to fall and dwell upon my love.

It did not conquer,
but I may not deify that it restrained my ardour.

Some miles westward of the village there was a gap in the sierra,
from which the eye plunged direct upon the residencia;
and thither it became my daily habit
to repair.

A wood crowned the summit;
and just where the pathway issued from its fringes,
it was overhung by a considerable shelf of rock,
and that,
in its turn,
was surmounted by a crucifix of the size of life and more than usually painful in design.

This was my perch;
thence,
day after day,
I looked down upon the plateau,
and the great old house,
and could see Felipe,
no bigger than a fly,
going
to and fro about the garden.

Sometimes mists would draw across the view,
and be broken up again by mountain winds;
sometimes the plain slumbered below me in unbroken sunshine;
it would sometimes be all blotted out by rain.

This distant post,
these interrupted sights of the place where my life had been so strangely changed,
suited the indecision of my humour.

I passed whole days there,
debating
with myself the various elements of our position;
now leaning
to the suggestions of love,
now giving an ear
to prudence,
and in the end halting irresolute between the two.

One day,
as I was sitting on my rock,
there came by that way a somewhat gaunt peasant wrapped in a mantle.

He was a stranger,
and plainly did not know me even by repute;
for,
instead of keeping the other side,
he drew near and sat down beside me,
and we had soon fallen in talk.

Among other things he told me he had been a muleteer,
and in former years had much frequented these mountains;
later on,
he had followed the army
with his mules,
had realised a competence,
and was now living retired
with his family.

'Do you know that house?'
I inquired,
at last,
pointing
to the residencia,
for I readily wearied of any talk that kept me from the thought of Olalla.

He looked at me darkly and crossed himself.

'Too well,'
he said,
'it was there that one of my comrades sold himself
to Satan;
the Virgin shield us from temptations! He has paid the price;
he is now burning in the reddest place in Hell!'
A fear came upon me;
I could answer nothing;
and presently the man resumed,
as if
to himself:

'Yes,'
he said,
'O yes,
I know it.

I have passed its doors.

There was snow upon the pass,
the wind was driving it;
sure enough there was death that night upon the mountains,
but there was worse beside the hearth.

I took him by the arm,
Senor,
and dragged him
to the gate;
I conjured him,
by all he loved and respected,
to go forth
with me;
I went on my knees before him in the snow;
and I could see he was moved by my entreaty.

And just then she came out on the gallery,
and called him by his name;
and he turned,
and there was she standing
with a lamp in her hand and smiling on him
to come back.

I cried out aloud
to God,
and threw my arms about him,
but he put me by,
and left me alone.

He had made his choice;
God help us.

I would pray
for him,
but
to what end?

there are sins that not even the Pope can loose.'

'And your friend,'
I asked,
'what became of him?'
'Nay,
God knows,'
said the muleteer.

'If all be true that we hear,
his end was like his sin,
a thing
to raise the hair.'

'Do you mean that he was killed?'
I asked.

'Sure enough,
he was killed,'
returned the man.

'But how?

Ay,
how?

But these are things that it is sin
to speak of.'

'The people of that house .

.

.

'
I began.

But he interrupted me
with a savage outburst.

'The people?'
he cried.

'What people?

There are neither men nor women in that house of Satan's! What?

have you lived here so long,
and never heard?'
And here he put his mouth
to my ear and whispered,
as if even the fowls of the mountain might have over-heard and been stricken
with horror.

What he told me was not true,
nor was it even original;
being,
indeed,
but a new edition,
vamped up again by village ignorance and superstition,
of stories nearly as ancient as the race of man.

It was rather the application that appalled me.

In the old days,
he said,
the church would have burned out that nest of basilisks;
but the arm of the church was now shortened;
his friend Miguel had been unpunished by the hands of men,
and left
to the more awful judgment of an offended God.

This was wrong;
but it should be so no more.

The Padre was sunk in age;
he was even bewitched himself;
but the eyes of his flock were now awake
to their own danger;
and some day - ay,
and before long - the smoke of that house should go up
to heaven.

He left me filled
with horror and fear.

Which way
to turn I knew not;
whether first
to warn the Padre,
or
to carry my ill-news direct
to the threatened inhabitants of the residencia.

Fate was
to decide
for me;
for,
while I was still hesitating,
I beheld the veiled figure of a woman drawing near
to me up the pathway.

No veil could deceive my penetration;
by every line and every movement I recognised Olalla;
and keeping hidden behind a corner of the rock,
I suffered her
to gain the summit.

Then I came forward.

She knew me and paused,
but did not speak;
I,
too,
remained silent;
and we continued
for some time
to gaze upon each other
with a passionate sadness.

'I thought you had gone,'
she said at length.

'It is all that you can do
for me -
to go.

It is all I ever asked of you.

And you still stay.

But do you know,
that every day heaps up the peril of death,
not only on your head,
but on ours?

A report has gone about the mountain;
it is thought you love me,
and the people will not suffer it.'

I saw she was already informed of her danger,
and I rejoiced at it.

'Olalla,'
I said,
'I am ready
to go this day,
this very hour,
but not alone.'

She stepped aside and knelt down before the crucifix
to pray,
and I stood by and looked now at her and now at the object of her adoration,
now at the living figure of the penitent,
and now at the ghastly,
daubed countenance,
the painted wounds,
and the projected ribs of the image.

The silence was only broken by the wailing of some large birds that circled sidelong,
as if in surprise or alarm,
about the summit of the hills.

Presently Olalla rose again,
turned towards me,
raised her veil,
and,
still leaning
with one hand on the shaft of the crucifix,
looked upon me
with a pale and sorrowful countenance.

'I have laid my hand upon the cross,'
she said.

'The Padre says you are no Christian;
but look up
for a moment
with my eyes,
and behold the face of the Man of Sorrows.

We are all such as He was - the inheritors of sin;
we must all bear and expiate a past which was not ours;
there is in all of us - ay,
even in me - a sparkle of the divine.

Like Him,
we must endure
for a little while,
until morning returns bringing peace.

Suffer me
to pass on upon my way alone;
it is thus that I shall be least lonely,
counting
for my friend Him who is the friend of all the distressed;
it is thus that I shall be the most happy,
having taken my farewell of earthly happiness,
and willingly accepted sorrow
for my portion.'

I looked at the face of the crucifix,
and,
though I was no friend
to images,
and despised that imitative and grimacing art of which it was a rude example,
some sense of what the thing implied was carried home
to my intelligence.

The face looked down upon me
with a painful and deadly contraction;
but the rays of a glory encircled it,
and reminded me that the sacrifice was voluntary.

It stood there,
crowning the rock,
as it still stands on so many highway sides,
vainly preaching
to passers-by,
an emblem of sad and noble truths;
that pleasure is not an end,
but an accident;
that pain is the choice of the magnanimous;
that it is best
to suffer all things and do well.

I turned and went down the mountain in silence;
and when I looked back
for the last time before the wood closed about my path,
I saw Olalla still leaning on the crucifix.

THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD.

CHAPTER I.

BY THE DYING MOUNTEBANK.

They had sent
for the doctor from Bourron before six.

About eight some villagers came round
for the performance,
and were told how matters stood.

It seemed a liberty
for a mountebank
to fall ill like real people,
and they made off again in dudgeon.

By ten Madame Tentaillon was gravely alarmed,
and had sent down the street
for Doctor Desprez.

The Doctor was at work over his manuscripts in one corner of the little dining-room,
and his wife was asleep over the fire in another,
when the messenger arrived.

'Sapristi!'
said the Doctor,
'you should have sent
for me before.

It was a case
for hurry.'

And he followed the messenger as he was,
in his slippers and skull-cap.

The inn was not thirty yards away,
but the messenger did not stop there;
he went in at one door and out by another into the court,
and then led the way by a flight of steps beside the stable,
to the loft where the mountebank lay sick.

If Doctor Desprez were
to live a thousand years,
he would never forget his arrival in that room;
for not only was the scene picturesque,
but the moment made a date in his existence.

We reckon our lives,
I hardly know why,
from the date of our first sorry appearance in society,
as if from a first humiliation;
for no actor can come upon the stage
with a worse grace.

Not
to go further back,
which would be judged too curious,
there are subsequently many moving and decisive accidents in the lives of all,
which would make as logical a period as this of birth.

And here,
for instance,
Doctor Desprez,
a man past forty,
who had made what is called a failure in life,
and was moreover married,
found himself at a new point of departure when he opened the door of the loft above Tentaillon's stable,
It was a large place,
lighted only by a single candle set upon the floor.

The mountebank lay on his back upon a pallet;
a large man,
with a Quixotic nose inflamed
with drinking.

Madame Tentaillon stooped over him,
applying a hot water and mustard embrocation
to his feet;
and on a chair close by sat a little fellow of eleven or twelve,
with his feet dangling.

These three were the only occupants,
except the shadows.

But the shadows were a company in themselves;
the extent of the room exaggerated them
to a gigantic size,
and from the low position of the candle the light struck upwards and produced deformed foreshortenings.

The mountebank's profile was enlarged upon the wall in caricature,
and it was strange
to see his nose shorten and lengthen as the flame was blown about by draughts.

As
for Madame Tentaillon,
her shadow was no more than a gross hump of shoulders,
with now and again a hemisphere of head.

The chair legs were spindled out as long as stilts,
and the boy set perched atop of them,
like a cloud,
in the corner of the roof.

It was the boy who took the Doctor's fancy.

He had a great arched skull,
the forehead and the hands of a musician,
and a pair of haunting eyes.

It was not merely that these eyes were large,
or steady,
or the softest ruddy brown.

There was a look in them,
besides,
which thrilled the Doctor,
and made him half uneasy.

He was sure he had seen such a look before,
and yet he could not remember how or where.

It was as if this boy,
who was quite a stranger
to him,
had the eyes of an old friend or an old enemy.

And the boy would give him no peace;
he seemed profoundly indifferent
to what was going on,
or rather abstracted from it in a superior contemplation,
beating gently
with his feet against the bars of the chair,
and holding his hands folded on his lap.

But,
for all that,
his eyes kept following the Doctor about the room
with a thoughtful fixity of gaze.

Desprez could not tell whether he was fascinating the boy,
or the boy was fascinating him.

He busied himself over the sick man:

he put questions,
he felt the pulse,
he jested,
he grew a little hot and swore:

and still,
whenever he looked round,
there were the brown eyes waiting
for his
with the same inquiring,
melancholy gaze.

At last the Doctor hit on the solution at a leap.

He remembered the look now.

The little fellow,
although he was as straight as a dart,
had the eyes that go usually
with a crooked back;
he was not at all deformed,
and yet a deformed person seemed
to be looking at you from below his brows.

The Doctor drew a long breath,
he was so much relieved
to find a theory
(for he loved theories)
and
to explain away his interest.

For all that,
he despatched the invalid
with unusual haste,
and,
still kneeling
with one knee on the floor,
turned a little round and looked the boy over at his leisure.

The boy was not in the least put out,
but looked placidly back at the Doctor.

'Is this your father?'
asked Desprez.

'Oh,
no,'
returned the boy;
'my master.'

'Are you fond of him?'
continued the Doctor.

'No,
sir,'
said the boy.

Madame Tentaillon and Desprez exchanged expressive glances.

'That is bad,
my man,'
resumed the latter,
with a shade of sternness.

'Every one should be fond of the dying,
or conceal their sentiments;
and your master here is dying.

If I have watched a bird a little while stealing my cherries,
I have a thought of disappointment when he flies away over my garden wall,
and I see him steer
for the forest and vanish.

How much more a creature such as this,
so strong,
so astute,
so richly endowed
with faculties! When I think that,
in a few hours,
the speech will be silenced,
the breath extinct,
and even the shadow vanished from the wall,
I who never saw him,
this lady who knew him only as a guest,
are touched
with some affection.'

The boy was silent
for a little,
and appeared
to be reflecting.

'You did not know him,'
he replied at last,
'he was a bad man.'

'He is a little pagan,'
said the landlady.

'For that matter,
they are all the same,
these mountebanks,
tumblers,
artists,
and what not.

They have no interior.'

But the Doctor was still scrutinising the little pagan,
his eyebrows knotted and uplifted.

'What is your name?'
he asked.

'Jean-Marie,'
said the lad.

Desprez leaped upon him
with one of his sudden flashes of excitement,
and felt his head all over from an ethnological point of view.

'Celtic,
Celtic!'
he said.

'Celtic!'
cried Madame Tentaillon,
who had perhaps confounded the word
with hydrocephalous.

'Poor lad! is it dangerous?'
'That depends,'
returned the Doctor grimly.

And then once more addressing the boy:

'And what do you do
for your living,
Jean- Marie?'
he inquired.

'I tumble,'
was the answer.

'So! Tumble?'
repeated Desprez.

'Probably healthful.

I hazard the guess,
Madame Tentaillon,
that tumbling is a healthful way of life.

And have you never done anything else but tumble?'
'Before I learned that,
I used
to steal,'
answered Jean-Marie gravely.

'Upon my word!'
cried the doctor.

'You are a nice little man
for your age.

Madame,
when my CONFRERE comes from Bourron,
you will communicate my unfavourable opinion.

I leave the case in his hands;
but of course,
on any alarming symptom,
above all if there should be a sign of rally,
do not hesitate
to knock me up.

I am a doctor no longer,
I thank God;
but I have been one.

Good night,
madame.

Good sleep
to you,
Jean-Marie.'

CHAPTER II.

MORNING TALK DOCTOR DESPREZ always rose early.

Before the smoke arose,
before the first cart rattled over the bridge
to the day's labour in the fields,
he was
to be found wandering in his garden.

Now he would pick a bunch of grapes;
now he would eat a big pear under the trellice;
now he would draw all sorts of fancies on the path
with the end of his cane;
now he would go down and watch the river running endlessly past the timber landing-place at which he moored his boat.

There was no time,
he used
to say,
for making theories like the early morning.

'I rise earlier than any one else in the village,'
he once boasted.

'It is a fair consequence that I know more and wish
to do less
with my knowledge.'

The Doctor was a connoisseur of sunrises,
and loved a good theatrical effect
to usher in the day.

He had a theory of dew,
by which he could predict the weather.

Indeed,
most things served him
to that end:

the sound of the bells from all the neighbouring villages,
the smell of the forest,
the visits and the behaviour of both birds and fishes,
the look of the plants in his garden,
the disposition of cloud,
the colour of the light,
and last,
although not least,
the arsenal of meteorological instruments in a louvre- boarded hutch upon the lawn.

Ever since he had settled at Gretz,
he had been growing more and more into the local meteorologist,
the unpaid champion of the local climate.

He thought at first there was no place so healthful in the arrondissement.

By the end of the second year,
he protested there was none so wholesome in the whole department.

And
for some time before he met Jean-Marie he had been prepared
to challenge all France and the better part of Europe
for a rival
to his chosen spot.

'Doctor,'
he would say -
'doctor is a foul word.

It should not be used
to ladies.

It implies disease.

I remark it,
as a flaw in our civilisation,
that we have not the proper horror of disease.

Now I,
for my part,
have washed my hands of it;
I have renounced my laureation;
I am no doctor;
I am only a worshipper of the true goddess Hygieia.

Ah,
believe me,
it is she who has the cestus! And here,
in this exiguous hamlet,
has she placed her shrine:

here she dwells and lavishes her gifts;
here I walk
with her in the early morning,
and she shows me how strong she has made the peasants,
how fruitful she has made the fields,
how the trees grow up tall and comely under her eyes,
and the fishes in the river become clean and agile at her presence.

- Rheumatism!'
he would cry,
on some malapert interruption,
'O,
yes,
I believe we do have a little rheumatism.

That could hardly be avoided,
you know,
on a river.

And of course the place stands a little low;
and the meadows are marshy,
there's no doubt.

But,
my dear sir,
look at Bourron! Bourron stands high.

Bourron is close
to the forest;
plenty of ozone there,
you would say.

Well,
compared
with Gretz,
Bourron is a perfect shambles.'

The morning after he had been summoned
to the dying mountebank,
the Doctor visited the wharf at the tail of his garden,
and had a long look at the running water.

This he called prayer;
but whether his adorations were addressed
to the goddess Hygieia or some more orthodox deity,
never plainly appeared.

For he had uttered doubtful oracles,
sometimes declaring that a river was the type of bodily health,
sometimes extolling it as the great moral preacher,
continually preaching peace,
continuity,
and diligence
to man's tormented spirits.

After he had watched a mile or so of the clear water running by before his eyes,
seen a fish or two come
to the surface
with a gleam of silver,
and sufficiently admired the long shadows of the trees falling half across the river from the opposite bank,
with patches of moving sunlight in between,
he strolled once more up the garden and through his house into the street,
feeling cool and renovated.

The sound of his feet upon the causeway began the business of the day;
for the village was still sound asleep.

The church tower looked very airy in the sunlight;
a few birds that turned about it,
seemed
to swim in an atmosphere of more than usual rarity;
and the Doctor,
walking in long transparent shadows,
filled his lungs amply,
and proclaimed himself well contented
with the morning.

On one of the posts before Tentaillon's carriage entry he espied a little dark figure perched in a meditative attitude,
and immediately recognised Jean-Marie.

'Aha!'
he said,
stopping before him humorously,
with a hand on either knee.

'So we rise early in the morning,
do we?

It appears
to me that we have all the vices of a philosopher.'

The boy got
to his feet and made a grave salutation.

'And how is our patient?'
asked Desprez.

It appeared the patient was about the same.

'And why do you rise early in the morning?'
he pursued.

Jean-Marie,
after a long silence,
professed that he hardly knew.

'You hardly know?'
repeated Desprez.

'We hardly know anything,
my man,
until we try
to learn.

Interrogate your consciousness.

Come,
push me this inquiry home.

Do you like it?'
'Yes,'
said the boy slowly;
'yes,
I like it.'

'And why do you like it?'
continued the Doctor.

'(We are now pursuing the Socratic method.)
Why do you like it?'
'It is quiet,'
answered Jean-Marie;
'and I have nothing
to do;
and then I feel as if I were good.'

Doctor Desprez took a seat on the post at the opposite side.

He was beginning
to take an interest in the talk,
for the boy plainly thought before he spoke,
and tried
to answer truly.

'It appears you have a taste
for feeling good,'
said the Doctor.

'Now,
there you puzzle me extremely;
for I thought you said you were a thief;
and the two are incompatible.'

'Is it very bad
to steal?'
asked Jean-Marie.

'Such is the general opinion,
little boy,'
replied the Doctor.

'No;
but I mean as I stole,'
explained the other.

'For I had no choice.

I think it is surely right
to have bread;
it must be right
to have bread,
there comes so plain a want of it.

And then they beat me cruelly if I returned
with nothing,'
he added.

'I was not ignorant of right and wrong;
for before that I had been well taught by a priest,
who was very kind
to me.'

(The Doctor made a horrible grimace at the word
'priest.'

)
'But it seemed
to me,
when one had nothing
to eat and was beaten,
it was a different affair.

I would not have stolen
for tartlets,
I believe;
but any one would steal
for baker's bread.'

'And so I suppose,'
said the Doctor,
with a rising sneer,
'you prayed God
to forgive you,
and explained the case
to Him at length.'

'Why,
sir?'
asked Jean-Marie.

'I do not see.'

'Your priest would see,
however,'
retorted Desprez.

'Would he?'
asked the boy,
troubled
for the first time.

'I should have thought God would have known.'

'Eh?'
snarled the Doctor.

'I should have thought God would have understood me,'
replied the other.

'You do not,
I see;
but then it was God that made me think so,
was it not?'
'Little boy,
little boy,'
said Dr. Desprez,
'I told you already you had the vices of philosophy;
if you display the virtues also,
I must go.

I am a student of the blessed laws of health,
an observer of plain and temperate nature in her common walks;
and I cannot preserve my equanimity in presence of a monster.

Do you understand?'
'No,
sir,'
said the boy.

'I will make my meaning clear
to you,'
replied the doctor.

'Look there at the sky - behind the belfry first,
where it is so light,
and then up and up,
turning your chin back,
right
to the top of the dome,
where it is already as blue as at noon.

Is not that a beautiful colour?

Does it not please the heart?

We have seen it all our lives,
until it has grown in
with our familiar thoughts.

Now,'
changing his tone,
'suppose that sky
to become suddenly of a live and fiery amber,
like the colour of clear coals,
and growing scarlet towards the top - I do not say it would be any the less beautiful;
but would you like it as well?'
'I suppose not,'
answered Jean-Marie.

'Neither do I like you,'
returned the Doctor,
roughly.

'I hate all odd people,
and you are the most curious little boy in all the world.'

Jean-Marie seemed
to ponder
for a while,
and then he raised his head again and looked over at the Doctor
with an air of candid inquiry.

'But are not you a very curious gentleman?'
he asked.

The Doctor threw away his stick,
bounded on the boy,
clasped him
to his bosom,
and kissed him on both cheeks.

'Admirable,
admirable imp!'
he cried.

'What a morning,
what an hour
for a theorist of forty-two! No,'
he continued,
apostrophising heaven,
'I did not know such boys existed;
I was ignorant they made them so;
I had doubted of my race;
and now! It is like,'
he added,
picking up his stick,
'like a lovers'
meeting.

I have bruised my favourite staff in that moment of enthusiasm.

The injury,
however,
is not grave.'

He caught the boy looking at him in obvious wonder,
embarrassment,
and alarm.

'Hullo!'
said he,
'why do you look at me like that?

Egad,
I believe the boy despises me.

Do you despise me,
boy?'
'O,
no,'
replied Jean-Marie,
seriously;
'only I do not understand.'

'You must excuse me,
sir,'
returned the Doctor,
with gravity;
'I am still so young.

O,
hang him!'
he added
to himself.

And he took his seat again and observed the boy sardonically.

'He has spoiled the quiet of my morning,'
thought he.

'I shall be nervous all day,
and have a febricule when I digest.

Let me compose myself.'

And so he dismissed his pre-occupations by an effort of the will which he had long practised,
and let his soul roam abroad in the contemplation of the morning.

He inhaled the air,
tasting it critically as a connoisseur tastes a vintage,
and prolonging the expiration
with hygienic gusto.

He counted the little flecks of cloud along the sky.

He followed the movements of the birds round the church tower - making long sweeps,
hanging poised,
or turning airy somersaults in fancy,
and beating the wind
with imaginary pinions.

And in this way he regained peace of mind and animal composure,
conscious of his limbs,
conscious of the sight of his eyes,
conscious that the air had a cool taste,
like a fruit,
at the top of his throat;
and at last,
in complete abstraction,
he began
to sing.

The Doctor had but one air - ,
'Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre;'
even
with that he was on terms of mere politeness;
and his musical exploits were always reserved
for moments when he was alone and entirely happy.

He was recalled
to earth rudely by a pained expression on the boy's face.

'What do you think of my singing?'
he inquired,
stopping in the middle of a note;
and then,
after he had waited some little while and received no answer,
'What do you think of my singing?'
he repeated,
imperiously.

'I do not like it,'
faltered Jean-Marie.

'Oh,
come!'
cried the Doctor.

'Possibly you are a performer yourself?'
'I sing better than that,'
replied the boy.

The Doctor eyed him
for some seconds in stupefaction.

He was aware that he was angry,
and blushed
for himself in consequence,
which made him angrier.

'If this is how you address your master!'
he said at last,
with a shrug and a flourish of his arms.

'I do not speak
to him at all,'
returned the boy.

'I do not like him.'

'Then you like me?'
snapped Doctor Desprez,
with unusual eagerness.

'I do not know,'
answered Jean-Marie.

The Doctor rose.

'I shall wish you a good morning,'
he said.

'You are too much
for me.

Perhaps you have blood in your veins,
perhaps celestial ichor,
or perhaps you circulate nothing more gross than respirable air;
but of one thing I am inexpugnably assured:- that you are no human being.

No,
boy'
- shaking his stick at him -
'you are not a human being.

Write,
write it in your memory -
"I am not a human being - I have no pretension
to be a human being - I am a dive,
a dream,
an angel,
an acrostic,
an illusion - what you please,
but not a human being."

And so accept my humble salutations and farewell!'
And
with that the Doctor made off along the street in some emotion,
and the boy stood,
mentally gaping,
where he left him.

CHAPTER III.

THE ADOPTION.

MADAME DESPREZ,
who answered
to the Christian name of Anastasie,
presented an agreeable type of her sex;
exceedingly wholesome
to look upon,
a stout BRUNE,
with cool smooth cheeks,
steady,
dark eyes,
and hands that neither art nor nature could improve.

She was the sort of person over whom adversity passes like a summer cloud;
she might,
in the worst of conjunctions,
knit her brows into one vertical furrow
for a moment,
but the next it would be gone.

She had much of the placidity of a contented nun;
with little of her piety,
however;
for Anastasie was of a very mundane nature,
fond of oysters and old wine,
and somewhat bold pleasantries,
and devoted
to her husband
for her own sake rather than
for his.

She was imperturbably good-natured,
but had no idea of self-sacrifice.

To live in that pleasant old house,
with a green garden behind and bright flowers about the window,
to eat and drink of the best,
to gossip
with a neighbour
for a quarter of an hour,
never
to wear stays or a dress except when she went
to Fontainebleau shopping,
to be kept in a continual supply of racy novels,
and
to be married
to Doctor Desprez and have no ground of jealousy,
filled the cup of her nature
to the brim.

Those who had known the Doctor in bachelor days,
when he had aired quite as many theories,
but of a different order,
attributed his present philosophy
to the study of Anastasie.

It was her brute enjoyment that he rationalised and perhaps vainly imitated.

Madame Desprez was an artist in the kitchen,
and made coffee
to a nicety.

She had a knack of tidiness,
with which she had infected the Doctor;
everything was in its place;
everything capable of polish shone gloriously;
and dust was a thing banished from her empire.

Aline,
their single servant,
had no other business in the world but
to scour and burnish.

So Doctor Desprez lived in his house like a fatted calf,
warmed and cosseted
to his heart's content.

The midday meal was excellent.

There was a ripe melon,
a fish from the river in a memorable Bearnaise sauce,
a fat fowl in a fricassee,
and a dish of asparagus,
followed by some fruit.

The Doctor drank half a bottle PLUS one glass,
the wife half a bottle MINUS the same quantity,
which was a marital privilege,
of an excellent Cote-Rotie,
seven years old.

Then the coffee was brought,
and a flask of Chartreuse
for madame,
for the Doctor despised and distrusted such decoctions;
and then Aline left the wedded pair
to the pleasures of memory and digestion.

'It is a very fortunate circumstance,
my cherished one,'
observed the Doctor -
'this coffee is adorable - a very fortunate circumstance upon the whole - Anastasie,
I beseech you,
go without that poison
for to-day;
only one day,
and you will feel the benefit,
I pledge my reputation.'

'What is this fortunate circumstance,
my friend?'
inquired Anastasie,
not heeding his protest,
which was of daily recurrence.

'That we have no children,
my beautiful,'
replied the Doctor.

'I think of it more and more as the years go on,
and
with more and more gratitude towards the Power that dispenses such afflictions.

Your health,
my darling,
my studious quiet,
our little kitchen delicacies,
how they would all have suffered,
how they would all have been sacrificed! And
for what?

Children are the last word of human imperfection.

Health flees before their face.

They cry,
my dear;
they put vexatious questions;
they demand
to be fed,
to be washed,
to be educated,
to have their noses blown;
and then,
when the time comes,
they break our hearts,
as I break this piece of sugar.

A pair of professed egoists,
like you and me,
should avoid offspring,
like an infidelity.'

'Indeed!'
said she;
and she laughed.

'Now,
that is like you -
to take credit
for the thing you could not help.'

'My dear,'
returned the Doctor,
solemnly,
'we might have adopted.'

'Never!'
cried madame.

'Never,
Doctor,
with my consent.

If the child were my own flesh and blood,
I would not say no.

But
to take another person's indiscretion on my shoulders,
my dear friend,
I have too much sense.'

'Precisely,'
replied the Doctor.

'We both had.

And I am all the better pleased
with our wisdom,
because - because -
'
He looked at her sharply.

'Because what?'
she asked,
with a faint premonition of danger.

'Because I have found the right person,'
said the Doctor firmly,
'and shall adopt him this afternoon.'

Anastasie looked at him out of a mist.

'You have lost your reason,'
she said;
and there was a clang in her voice that seemed
to threaten trouble.

'Not so,
my dear,'
he replied;
'I retain its complete exercise.

To the proof:

instead of attempting
to cloak my inconsistency,
I have,
by way of preparing you,
thrown it into strong relief.

You will there,
I think,
recognise the philosopher who has the ecstasy
to call you wife.

The fact is,
I have been reckoning all this while without an accident.

I never thought
to find a son of my own.

Now,
last night,
I found one.

Do not unnecessarily alarm yourself,
my dear;
he is not a drop of blood
to me that I know.

It is his mind,
darling,
his mind that calls me father.'

'His mind!'
she repeated
with a titter between scorn and hysterics.

'His mind,
indeed! Henri,
is this an idiotic pleasantry,
or are you mad?

His mind! And what of my mind?'
'Truly,'
replied the Doctor
with a shrug,
'you have your finger on the hitch.

He will be strikingly antipathetic
to my ever beautiful Anastasie.

She will never understand him;
he will never understand her.

You married the animal side of my nature,
dear and it is on the spiritual side that I find my affinity
for Jean-Marie.

So much so,
that,
to be perfectly frank,
I stand in some awe of him myself.

You will easily perceive that I am announcing a calamity
for you.

Do not,'
he broke out in tones of real solicitude -
'do not give way
to tears after a meal,
Anastasie.

You will certainly give yourself a false digestion.'

Anastasie controlled herself.

'You know how willing I am
to humour you,'
she said,
'in all reasonable matters.

But on this point -
'
'My dear love,'
interrupted the Doctor,
eager
to prevent a refusal,
'who wished
to leave Paris?

Who made me give up cards,
and the opera,
and the boulevard,
and my social relations,
and all that was my life before I knew you?

Have I been faithful?

Have I been obedient?

Have I not borne my doom
with cheerfulness?

In all honesty,
Anastasie,
have I not a right
to a stipulation on my side?

I have,
and you know it.

I stipulate my son.'

Anastasie was aware of defeat;
she struck her colours instantly.

'You will break my heart,'
she sighed.

'Not in the least,'
said he.

'You will feel a trifling inconvenience
for a month,
just as I did when I was first brought
to this vile hamlet;
then your admirable sense and temper will prevail,
and I see you already as content as ever,
and making your husband the happiest of men.'

'You know I can refuse you nothing,'
she said,
with a last flicker of resistance;
'nothing that will make you truly happier.

But will this?

Are you sure,
my husband?

Last night,
you say,
you found him! He may be the worst of humbugs.'

'I think not,'
replied the Doctor.

'But do not suppose me so unwary as
to adopt him out of hand.

I am,
I flatter myself,
a finished man of the world;
I have had all possibilities in view;
my plan is contrived
to meet them all.

I take the lad as stable boy.

If he pilfer,
if he grumble,
if he desire
to change,
I shall see I was mistaken;
I shall recognise him
for no son of mine,
and send him tramping.'

'You will never do so when the time comes,'
said his wife;
'I know your good heart.'

She reached out her hand
to him,
with a sigh;
the Doctor smiled as he took it and carried it
to his lips;
he had gained his point
with greater ease than he had dared
to hope;
for perhaps the twentieth time he had proved the efficacy of his trusty argument,
his Excalibur,
the hint of a return
to Paris.

Six months in the capital,
for a man of the Doctor's antecedents and relations,
implied no less a calamity than total ruin.

Anastasie had saved the remainder of his fortune by keeping him strictly in the country.

The very name of Paris put her in a blue fear;
and she would have allowed her husband
to keep a menagerie in the back garden,
let alone adopting a stable-boy,
rather than permit the question of return
to be discussed.

About four of the afternoon,
the mountebank rendered up his ghost;
he had never been conscious since his seizure.

Doctor Desprez was present at his last passage,
and declared the farce over.

Then he took Jean-Marie by the shoulder and led him out into the inn garden where there was a convenient bench beside the river.

Here he sat him down and made the boy place himself on his left.

'Jean-Marie,'
he said very gravely,
'this world is exceedingly vast;
and even France,
which is only a small corner of it,
is a great place
for a little lad like you.

Unfortunately it is full of eager,
shouldering people moving on;
and there are very few bakers'
shops
for so many eaters.

Your master is dead;
you are not fit
to gain a living by yourself;
you do not wish
to steal?

No.

Your situation then is undesirable;
it is,
for the moment,
critical.

On the other hand,
you behold in me a man not old,
though elderly,
still enjoying the youth of the heart and the intelligence;
a man of instruction;
easily situated in this world's affairs;
keeping a good table:- a man,
neither as friend nor host,
to be despised.

I offer you your food and clothes,
and
to teach you lessons in the evening,
which will be infinitely more
to the purpose
for a lad of your stamp than those of all the priests in Europe.

I propose no wages,
but if ever you take a thought
to leave me,
the door shall be open,
and I will give you a hundred francs
to start the world upon.

In return,
I have an old horse and chaise,
which you would very speedily learn
to clean and keep in order.

Do not hurry yourself
to answer,
and take it or leave it as you judge aright.

Only remember this,
that I am no sentimentalist or charitable person,
but a man who lives rigorously
to himself;
and that if I make the proposal,
it is
for my own ends - it is because I perceive clearly an advantage
to myself.

And now,
reflect.'

'I shall be very glad.

I do not see what else I can do.

I thank you,
sir,
most kindly,
and I will try
to be useful,'
said the boy.

'Thank you,'
said the Doctor warmly,
rising at the same time and wiping his brow,
for he had suffered agonies while the thing hung in the wind.

A refusal,
after the scene at noon,
would have placed him in a ridiculous light before Anastasie.

'How hot and heavy is the evening,
to be sure! I have always had a fancy
to be a fish in summer,
Jean-Marie,
here in the Loing beside Gretz.

I should lie under a water-lily and listen
to the bells,
which must sound most delicately down below.

That would be a life - do you not think so too?'
'Yes,'
said Jean-Marie.

'Thank God you have imagination!'
cried the Doctor,
embracing the boy
with his usual effusive warmth,
though it was a proceeding that seemed
to disconcert the sufferer almost as much as if he had been an English schoolboy of the same age.

'And now,'
he added,
'I will take you
to my wife.'

Madame Desprez sat in the dining-room in a cool wrapper.

All the blinds were down,
and the tile floor had been recently sprinkled
with water;
her eyes were half shut,
but she affected
to be reading a novel as the they entered.

Though she was a bustling woman,
she enjoyed repose between whiles and had a remarkable appetite
for sleep.

The Doctor went through a solemn form of introduction,
adding,
for the benefit of both parties,
'You must try
to like each other
for my sake.'

'He is very pretty,'
said Anastasie.

'Will you kiss me,
my pretty little fellow?'
The Doctor was furious,
and dragged her into the passage.

'Are you a fool,
Anastasie?'
he said.

'What is all this I hear about the tact of women?

Heaven knows,
I have not met
with it in my experience.

You address my little philosopher as if he were an infant.

He must be spoken
to
with more respect,
I tell you;
he must not be kissed and Georgy-porgy'd like an ordinary child.'

'I only did it
to please you,
I am sure,'
replied Anastasie;
'but I will try
to do better.'

The Doctor apologised
for his warmth.

'But I do wish him,'
he continued,
'to feel at home among us.

And really your conduct was so idiotic,
my cherished one,
and so utterly and distantly out of place,
that a saint might have been pardoned a little vehemence in disapproval.

Do,
do try - if it is possible
for a woman
to understand young people - but of course it is not,
and I waste my breath.

Hold your tongue as much as possible at least,
and observe my conduct narrowly;
it will serve you
for a model.'

Anastasie did as she was bidden,
and considered the Doctor's behaviour.

She observed that he embraced the boy three times in the course of the evening,
and managed generally
to confound and abash the little fellow out of speech and appetite.

But she had the true womanly heroism in little affairs.

Not only did she refrain from the cheap revenge of exposing the Doctor's errors
to himself,
but she did her best
to remove their ill-effect on Jean- Marie.

When Desprez went out
for his last breath of air before retiring
for the night,
she came over
to the boy's side and took his hand.

'You must not be surprised nor frightened by my husband's manners,'
she said.

'He is the kindest of men,
but so clever that he is sometimes difficult
to understand.

You will soon grow used
to him,
and then you will love him,
for that nobody can help.

As
for me,
you may be sure,
I shall try
to make you happy,
and will not bother you at all.

I think we should be excellent friends,
you and I.

I am not clever,
but I am very good-natured.

Will you give me a kiss?'
He held up his face,
and she took him in her arms and then began
to cry.

The woman had spoken in complaisance;
but she had warmed
to her own words,
and tenderness followed.

The Doctor,
entering,
found them enlaced:

he concluded that his wife was in fault;
and he was just beginning,
in an awful voice,
'Anastasie - ,'
when she looked up at him,
smiling,
with an upraised finger;
and he held his peace,
wondering,
while she led the boy
to his attic.

CHAPTER IV.

THE EDUCATION OF A PHILOSOPHER.

THE installation of the adopted stable-boy was thus happily effected,
and the wheels of life continued
to run smoothly in the Doctor's house.

Jean-Marie did his horse and carriage duty in the morning;
sometimes helped in the housework;
sometimes walked abroad
with the Doctor,
to drink wisdom from the fountain-head;
and was introduced at night
to the sciences and the dead tongues.

He retained his singular placidity of mind and manner;
he was rarely in fault;
but he made only a very partial progress in his studies,
and remained much of a stranger in the family.

The Doctor was a pattern of regularity.

All forenoon he worked on his great book,
the
'Comparative Pharmacopoeia,
or Historical Dictionary of all Medicines,'
which as yet consisted principally of slips of paper and pins.

When finished,
it was
to fill many personable volumes,
and
to combine antiquarian interest
with professional utility.

But the Doctor was studious of literary graces and the picturesque;
an anecdote,
a touch of manners,
a moral qualification,
or a sounding epithet was sure
to be preferred before a piece of science;
a little more,
and he would have written the
'Comparative Pharmacopoeia'
in verse! The article
'Mummia,'
for instance,
was already complete,
though the remainder of the work had not progressed beyond the letter A.

It was exceedingly copious and entertaining,
written
with quaintness and colour,
exact,
erudite,
a literary article;
but it would hardly have afforded guidance
to a practising physician of to-day.

The feminine good sense of his wife had led her
to point this out
with uncompromising sincerity;
for the Dictionary was duly read aloud
to her,
betwixt sleep and waning,
as it proceeded towards an infinitely distant completion;
and the Doctor was a little sore on the subject of mummies,
and sometimes resented an allusion
with asperity.

After the midday meal and a proper period of digestion,
he walked,
sometimes alone,
sometimes accompanied by Jean-Marie;
for madame would have preferred any hardship rather than walk.

She was,
as I have said,
a very busy person,
continually occupied about material comforts,
and ready
to drop asleep over a novel the instant she was disengaged.

This was the less objectionable,
as she never snored or grew distempered in complexion when she slept.

On the contrary,
she looked the very picture of luxurious and appetising ease,
and woke without a start
to the perfect possession of her faculties.

I am afraid she was greatly an animal,
but she was a very nice animal
to have about.

In this way,
she had little
to do
with Jean-Marie;
but the sympathy which had been established between them on the first night remained unbroken;
they held occasional conversations,
mostly on household matters;
to the extreme disappointment of the Doctor,
they occasionally sallied off together
to that temple of debasing superstition,
the village church;
madame and he,
both in their Sunday's best,
drove twice a month
to Fontainebleau and returned laden
with purchases;
and in short,
although the Doctor still continued
to regard them as irreconcilably anti-pathetic,
their relation was as intimate,
friendly,
and confidential as their natures suffered.

I fear,
however,
that in her heart of hearts,
madame kindly despised and pitied the boy.

She had no admiration
for his class of virtues;
she liked a smart,
polite,
forward,
roguish sort of boy,
cap in hand,
light of foot,
meeting the eye;
she liked volubility,
charm,
a little vice - the promise of a second Doctor Desprez.

And it was her indefeasible belief that Jean-Marie was dull.

'Poor dear boy,'
she had said once,
'how sad it is that he should be so stupid!'
She had never repeated that remark,
for the Doctor had raged like a wild bull,
denouncing the brutal bluntness of her mind,
bemoaning his own fate
to be so unequally mated
with an ass,
and,
what touched Anastasie more nearly,
menacing the table china by the fury of his gesticulations.

But she adhered silently
to her opinion;
and when Jean-Marie was sitting,
stolid,
blank,
but not unhappy,
over his unfinished tasks,
she would snatch her opportunity in the Doctor's absence,
go over
to him,
put her arms about his neck,
lay her cheek
to his,
and communicate her sympathy
with his distress.

'Do not mind,'
she would say;
'I,
too,
am not at all clever,
and I can assure you that it makes no difference in life.'

The Doctor's view was naturally different.

That gentleman never wearied of the sound of his own voice,
which was,
to say the truth,
agreeable enough
to hear.

He now had a listener,
who was not so cynically indifferent as Anastasie,
and who sometimes put him on his mettle by the most relevant objections.

Besides,
was he not educating the boy?

And education,
philosophers are agreed,
is the most philosophical of duties.

What can be more heavenly
to poor mankind than
to have one's hobby grow into a duty
to the State?

Then,
indeed,
do the ways of life become ways of pleasantness.

Never had the Doctor seen reason
to be more content
with his endowments.

Philosophy flowed smoothly from his lips.

He was so agile a dialectician that he could trace his nonsense,
when challenged,
back
to some root in sense,
and prove it
to be a sort of flower upon his system.

He slipped out of antinomies like a fish,
and left his disciple marvelling at the rabbi's depth.

Moreover,
deep down in his heart the Doctor was disappointed
with the ill-success of his more formal education.

A boy,
chosen by so acute an observer
for his aptitude,
and guided along the path of learning by so philosophic an instructor,
was bound,
by the nature of the universe,
to make a more obvious and lasting advance.

Now Jean-Marie was slow in all things,
impenetrable in others;
and his power of forgetting was fully on a level
with his power
to learn.

Therefore the Doctor cherished his peripatetic lectures,
to which the boy attended,
which he generally appeared
to enjoy,
and by which he often profited.

Many and many were the talks they had together;
and health and moderation proved the subject of the Doctor's divagations.

To these he lovingly returned.

'I lead you,'
he would say,
'by the green pastures.

My system,
my beliefs,
my medicines,
are resumed in one phrase -
to avoid excess.

Blessed nature,
healthy,
temperate nature,
abhors and exterminates excess.

Human law,
in this matter,
imitates at a great distance her provisions;
and we must strive
to supplement the efforts of the law.

Yes,
boy,
we must be a law
to ourselves and
for ourselves and
for our neighbours - lex armata - armed,
emphatic,
tyrannous law.

If you see a crapulous human ruin snuffing,
dash from him his box! The judge,
though in a way an admission of disease,
is less offensive
to me than either the doctor or the priest.

Above all the doctor - the doctor and the purulent trash and garbage of his pharmacopoeia! Pure air - from the neighbourhood of a pinetum
for the sake of the turpentine - unadulterated wine,
and the reflections of an unsophisticated spirit in the presence of the works of nature - these,
my boy,
are the best medical appliances and the best religious comforts.

Devote yourself
to these.

Hark! there are the bells of Bourron
(the wind is in the north,
it will be fair).

How clear and airy is the sound! The nerves are harmonised and quieted;
the mind attuned
to silence;
and observe how easily and regularly beats the heart! Your unenlightened doctor would see nothing in these sensations;
and yet you yourself perceive they are a part of health.

- Did you remember your cinchona this morning?

Good.

Cinchona also is a work of nature;
it is,
after all,
only the bark of a tree which we might gather
for ourselves if we lived in the locality.

- What a world is this! Though a professed atheist,
I delight
to bear my testimony
to the world.

Look at the gratuitous remedies and pleasures that surround our path! The river runs by the garden end,
our bath,
our fishpond,
our natural system of drainage.

There is a well in the court which sends up sparkling water from the earth's very heart,
clean,
cool,
and,
with a little wine,
most wholesome.

The district is notorious
for its salubrity;
rheumatism is the only prevalent complaint,
and I myself have never had a touch of it.

I tell you - and my opinion is based upon the coldest,
clearest processes of reason - if I,
if you,
desired
to leave this home of pleasures,
it would be the duty,
it would be the privilege,
of our best friend
to prevent us
with a pistol bullet.'

One beautiful June day they sat upon the hill outside the village.

The river,
as blue as heaven,
shone here and there among the foliage.

The indefatigable birds turned and flickered about Gretz church tower.

A healthy wind blew from over the forest,
and the sound of innumerable thousands of tree-tops and innumerable millions on millions of green leaves was abroad in the air,
and filled the ear
with something between whispered speech and singing.

It seemed as if every blade of grass must hide a cigale;
and the fields rang merrily
with their music,
jingling far and near as
with the sleigh-bells of the fairy queen.

From their station on the slope the eye embraced a large space of poplar'd plain upon the one hand,
the waving hill-tops of the forest on the other,
and Gretz itself in the middle,
a handful of roofs.

Under the bestriding arch of the blue heavens,
the place seemed dwindled
to a toy.

It seemed incredible that people dwelt,
and could find room
to turn or air
to breathe,
in such a corner of the world.

The thought came home
to the boy,
perhaps
for the first time,
and he gave it words.

'How small it looks!'
he sighed.

'Ay,'
replied the Doctor,
'small enough now.

Yet it was once a walled city;
thriving,
full of furred burgesses and men in armour,
humming
with affairs;
-
with tall spires,
for aught that I know,
and portly towers along the battlements.

A thousand chimneys ceased smoking at the curfew bell.

There were gibbets at the gate as thick as scarecrows.

In time of war,
the assault swarmed against it
with ladders,
the arrows fell like leaves,
the defenders sallied hotly over the drawbridge,
each side uttered its cry as they plied their weapons.

Do you know that the walls extended as far as the Commanderie?

Tradition so reports.

Alas,
what a long way off is all this confusion - nothing left of it but my quiet words spoken in your ear - and the town itself shrunk
to the hamlet underneath us! By-and-by came the English wars - you shall hear more of the English,
a stupid people,
who sometimes blundered into good - and Gretz was taken,
sacked,
and burned.

It is the history of many towns;
but Gretz never rose again;
it was never rebuilt;
its ruins were a quarry
to serve the growth of rivals;
and the stones of Gretz are now erect along the streets of Nemours.

It gratifies me that our old house was the first
to rise after the calamity;
when the town had come
to an end,
it inaugurated the hamlet.'

'I,
too,
am glad of that,'
said Jean-Marie.

'It should be the temple of the humbler virtues,'
responded the Doctor
with a savoury gusto.

'Perhaps one of the reasons why I love my little hamlet as I do,
is that we have a similar history,
she and I.

Have I told you that I was once rich?'
'I do not think so,'
answered Jean-Marie.

'I do not think I should have forgotten.

I am sorry you should have lost your fortune.'

'Sorry?'
cried the Doctor.

'Why,
I find I have scarce begun your education after all.

Listen
to me! Would you rather live in the old Gretz or in the new,
free from the alarms of war,
with the green country at the door,
without noise,
passports,
the exactions of the soldiery,
or the jangle of the curfew-bell
to send us off
to bed by sundown?'
'I suppose I should prefer the new,'
replied the boy.

'Precisely,'
returned the Doctor;
'so do I.

And,
in the same way,
I prefer my present moderate fortune
to my former wealth.

Golden mediocrity! cried the adorable ancients;
and I subscribe
to their enthusiasm.

Have I not good wine,
good food,
good air,
the fields and the forest
for my walk,
a house,
an admirable wife,
a boy whom I protest I cherish like a son?

Now,
if I were still rich,
I should indubitably make my residence in Paris - you know Paris - Paris and Paradise are not convertible terms.

This pleasant noise of the wind streaming among leaves changed into the grinding Babel of the street,
the stupid glare of plaster substituted
for this quiet pattern of greens and greys,
the nerves shattered,
the digestion falsified - picture the fall! Already you perceive the consequences;
the mind is stimulated,
the heart steps
to a different measure,
and the man is himself no longer.

I have passionately studied myself - the true business of philosophy.

I know my character as the musician knows the ventages of his flute.

Should I return
to Paris,
I should ruin myself gambling;
nay,
I go further - I should break the heart of my Anastasie
with infidelities.'

This was too much
for Jean-Marie.

That a place should so transform the most excellent of men transcended his belief.

Paris,
he protested,
was even an agreeable place of residence.

'Nor when I lived in that city did I feel much difference,'
he pleaded.

'What!'
cried the Doctor.

'Did you not steal when you were there?'
But the boy could never be brought
to see that he had done anything wrong when he stole.

Nor,
indeed,
did the Doctor think he had;
but that gentleman was never very scrupulous when in want of a retort.

'And now,'
he concluded,
'do you begin
to understand?

My only friends were those who ruined me.

Gretz has been my academy,
my sanatorium,
my heaven of innocent pleasures.

If millions are offered me,
I wave them back:

RETRO,
SATHANAS! - Evil one,
begone! Fix your mind on my example;
despise riches,
avoid the debasing influence of cities.

Hygiene - hygiene and mediocrity of fortune - these be your watchwords during life!'
The Doctor's system of hygiene strikingly coincided
with his tastes;
and his picture of the perfect life was a faithful description of the one he was leading at the time.

But it is easy
to convince a boy,
whom you supply
with all the facts
for the discussion.

And besides,
there was one thing admirable in the philosophy,
and that was the enthusiasm of the philosopher.

There was never any one more vigorously determined
to be pleased;
and if he was not a great logician,
and so had no right
to convince the intellect,
he was certainly something of a poet,
and had a fascination
to seduce the heart.

What he could not achieve in his customary humour of a radiant admiration of himself and his circumstances,
he sometimes effected in his fits of gloom.

'Boy,'
he would say,
'avoid me to-day.

If I were superstitious,
I should even beg
for an interest in your prayers.

I am in the black fit;
the evil spirit of King Saul,
the hag of the merchant Abudah,
the personal devil of the mediaeval monk,
is
with me - is in me,'
tapping on his breast.

'The vices of my nature are now uppermost;
innocent pleasures woo me in vain;
I long
for Paris,
for my wallowing in the mire.

See,'
he would continue,
producing a handful of silver,
'I denude myself,
I am not
to be trusted
with the price of a fare.

Take it,
keep it
for me,
squander it on deleterious candy,
throw it in the deepest of the river - I will homologate your action.

Save me from that part of myself which I disown.

If you see me falter,
do not hesitate;
if necessary,
wreck the train! I speak,
of course,
by a parable.

Any extremity were better than
for me
to reach Paris alive.'

Doubtless the Doctor enjoyed these little scenes,
as a variation in his part;
they represented the Byronic element in the somewhat artificial poetry of his existence;
but
to the boy,
though he was dimly aware of their theatricality,
they represented more.

The Doctor made perhaps too little,
the boy possibly too much,
of the reality and gravity of these temptations.

One day a great light shone
for Jean-Marie.

'Could not riches be used well?'
he asked.

'In theory,
yes,'
replied the Doctor.

'But it is found in experience that no one does so.

All the world imagine they will be exceptional when they grow wealthy;
but possession is debasing,
new desires spring up;
and the silly taste
for ostentation eats out the heart of pleasure.'

'Then you might be better if you had less,'
said the boy.

'Certainly not,'
replied the Doctor;
but his voice quavered as he spoke.

'Why?'
demanded pitiless innocence.

Doctor Desprez saw all the colours of the rainbow in a moment;
the stable universe appeared
to be about capsizing
with him.

'Because,'
said he - affecting deliberation after an obvious pause -
'because I have formed my life
for my present income.

It is not good
for men of my years
to be violently dissevered from their habits.'

That was a sharp brush.

The Doctor breathed hard,
and fell into taciturnity
for the afternoon.

As
for the boy,
he was delighted
with the resolution of his doubts;
even wondered that he had not foreseen the obvious and conclusive answer.

His faith in the Doctor was a stout piece of goods.

Desprez was inclined
to be a sheet in the wind's eye after dinner,
especially after Rhone wine,
his favourite weakness.

He would then remark on the warmth of his feeling
for Anastasie,
and
with inflamed cheeks and a loose,
flustered smile,
debate upon all sorts of topics,
and be feebly and indiscreetly witty.

But the adopted stable-boy would not permit himself
to entertain a doubt that savoured of ingratitude.

It is quite true that a man may be a second father
to you,
and yet take too much
to drink;
but the best natures are ever slow
to accept such truths.

The Doctor thoroughly possessed his heart,
but perhaps he exaggerated his influence over his mind.

Certainly Jean-Marie adopted some of his master's opinions,
but I have yet
to learn that he ever surrendered one of his own.

Convictions existed in him by divine right;
they were virgin,
unwrought,
the brute metal of decision.

He could add others indeed,
but he could not put away;
neither did he care if they were perfectly agreed among themselves;
and his spiritual pleasures had nothing
to do
with turning them over or justifying them in words.

Words were
with him a mere accomplishment,
like dancing.

When he was by himself,
his pleasures were almost vegetable.

He would slip into the woods towards Acheres,
and sit in the mouth of a cave among grey birches.

His soul stared straight out of his eyes;
he did not move or think;
sunlight,
thin shadows moving in the wind,
the edge of firs against the sky,
occupied and bound his faculties.

He was pure unity,
a spirit wholly abstracted.

A single mood filled him,
to which all the objects of sense contributed,
as the colours of the spectrum merge and disappear in white light.

So while the Doctor made himself drunk
with words,
the adopted stable-boy bemused himself
with silence.

CHAPTER V.

TREASURE TROVE.

THE Doctor's carriage was a two-wheeled gig
with a hood;
a kind of vehicle in much favour among country doctors.

On how many roads has one not seen it,
a great way off between the poplars! - in how many village streets,
tied
to a gate-post! This sort of chariot is affected - particularly at the trot - by a kind of pitching movement
to and fro across the axle,
which well entitles it
to the style of a Noddy.

The hood describes a considerable arc against the landscape,
with a solemnly absurd effect on the contemplative pedestrian.

To ride in such a carriage cannot be numbered among the things that appertain
to glory;
but I have no doubt it may be useful in liver complaint.

Thence,
perhaps,
its wide popularity among physicians.

One morning early,
Jean-Marie led forth the Doctor's noddy,
opened the gate,
and mounted
to the driving-seat.

The Doctor followed,
arrayed from top
to toe in spotless linen,
armed
with an immense flesh-coloured umbrella,
and girt
with a botanical case on a baldric;
and the equipage drove off smartly in a breeze of its own provocation.

They were bound
for Franchard,
to collect plants,
with an eye
to the
'Comparative Pharmacopoeia.'

A little rattling on the open roads,
and they came
to the borders of the forest and struck into an unfrequented track;
the noddy yawed softly over the sand,
with an accompaniment of snapping twigs.

There was a great,
green,
softly murmuring cloud of congregated foliage overhead.

In the arcades of the forest the air retained the freshness of the night.

The athletic bearing of the trees,
each carrying its leafy mountain,
pleased the mind like so many statues;
and the lines of the trunk led the eye admiringly upward
to where the extreme leaves sparkled in a patch of azure.

Squirrels leaped in mid air.

It was a proper spot
for a devotee of the goddess Hygieia.

'Have you been
to Franchard,
Jean-Marie?'
inquired the Doctor.

'I fancy not.'

'Never,'
replied the boy.

'It is ruin in a gorge,'
continued Desprez,
adopting his expository voice;
'the ruin of a hermitage and chapel.

History tells us much of Franchard;
how the recluse was often slain by robbers;
how he lived on a most insufficient diet;
how he was expected
to pass his days in prayer.

A letter is preserved,
addressed
to one of these solitaries by the superior of his order,
full of admirable hygienic advice;
bidding him go from his book
to praying,
and so back again,
for variety's sake,
and when he was weary of both
to stroll about his garden and observe the honey bees.

It is
to this day my own system.

You must often have remarked me leaving the
"Pharmacopoeia"
- often even in the middle of a phrase -
to come forth into the sun and air.

I admire the writer of that letter from my heart;
he was a man of thought on the most important subjects.

But,
indeed,
had I lived in the Middle Ages
(I am heartily glad that I did not)
I should have been an eremite myself - if I had not been a professed buffoon,
that is.

These were the only philosophical lives yet open:

laughter or prayer;
sneers,
we might say,
and tears.

Until the sun of the Positive arose,
the wise man had
to make his choice between these two.'

'I have been a buffoon,
of course,'
observed Jean-Marie.

'I cannot imagine you
to have excelled in your profession,'
said the Doctor,
admiring the boy's gravity.

'Do you ever laugh?'
'Oh,
yes,'
replied the other.

'I laugh often.

I am very fond of jokes.'

'Singular being!'
said Desprez.

'But I divagate
(I perceive in a thousand ways that I grow old).

Franchard was at length destroyed in the English wars,
the same that levelled Gretz.

But - here is the point - the hermits
(for there were already more than one)
had foreseen the danger and carefully concealed the sacrificial vessels.

These vessels were of monstrous value,
Jean-Marie - monstrous value - priceless,
we may say;
exquisitely worked,
of exquisite material.

And now,
mark me,
they have never been found.

In the reign of Louis Quatorze some fellows were digging hard by the ruins.

Suddenly - tock! - the spade hit upon an obstacle.

Imagine the men fooling one
to another;
imagine how their hearts bounded,
how their colour came and went.

It was a coffer,
and in Franchard the place of buried treasure! They tore it open like famished beasts.

Alas! it was not the treasure;
only some priestly robes,
which,
at the touch of the eating air,
fell upon themselves and instantly wasted into dust.

The perspiration of these good fellows turned cold upon them,
Jean-Marie.

I will pledge my reputation,
if there was anything like a cutting wind,
one or other had a pneumonia
for his trouble.'

'I should like
to have seen them turning into dust,'
said Jean- Marie.

'Otherwise,
I should not have cared so greatly.'

'You have no imagination,'
cried the Doctor.

'Picture
to yourself the scene.

Dwell on the idea - a great treasure lying in the earth
for centuries:

the material
for a giddy,
copious,
opulent existence not employed;
dresses and exquisite pictures unseen;
the swiftest galloping horses not stirring a hoof,
arrested by a spell;
women
with the beautiful faculty of smiles,
not smiling;
cards,
dice,
opera singing,
orchestras,
castles,
beautiful parks and gardens,
big ships
with a tower of sailcloth,
all lying unborn in a coffin - and the stupid trees growing overhead in the sunlight,
year after year.

The thought drives one frantic.'

'It is only money,'
replied Jean-Marie.

'It would do harm.'

'O,
come!'
cried Desprez,
'that is philosophy;
it is all very fine,
but not
to the point just now.

And besides,
it is not
"only money,"
as you call it;
there are works of art in the question;
the vessels were carved.

You speak like a child.

You weary me exceedingly,
quoting my words out of all logical connection,
like a parroquet.'

'And at any rate,
we have nothing
to do
with it,'
returned the boy submissively.

They struck the Route Ronde at that moment;
and the sudden change
to the rattling causeway combined,
with the Doctor's irritation,
to keep him silent.

The noddy jigged along;
the trees went by,
looking on silently,
as if they had something on their minds.

The Quadrilateral was passed;
then came Franchard.

They put up the horse at the little solitary inn,
and went forth strolling.

The gorge was dyed deeply
with heather;
the rocks and birches standing luminous in the sun.

A great humming of bees about the flowers disposed Jean-Marie
to sleep,
and he sat down against a clump of heather,
while the Doctor went briskly
to and fro,
with quick turns,
culling his simples.

The boy's head had fallen a little forward,
his eyes were closed,
his fingers had fallen lax about his knees,
when a sudden cry called him
to his feet.

It was a strange sound,
thin and brief;
it fell dead,
and silence returned as though it had never been interrupted.

He had not recognised the Doctor's voice;
but,
as there was no one else in all the valley,
it was plainly the Doctor who had given utterance
to the sound.

He looked right and left,
and there was Desprez,
standing in a niche between two boulders,
and looking round on his adopted son
with a countenance as white as paper.

'A viper!'
cried Jean-Marie,
running towards him.

'A viper! You are bitten!'
The Doctor came down heavily out of the cleft,
and,
advanced in silence
to meet the boy,
whom he took roughly by the shoulder.

'I have found it,'
he said,
with a gasp.

'A plant?'
asked Jean-Marie.

Desprez had a fit of unnatural gaiety,
which the rocks took up and mimicked.

'A plant!'
he repeated scornfully.

'Well - yes - a plant.

And here,'
he added suddenly,
showing his right hand,
which he had hitherto concealed behind his back -
'here is one of the bulbs.'

Jean-Marie saw a dirty platter,
coated
with earth.

'That?'
said he.

'It is a plate!'
'It is a coach and horses,'
cried the Doctor.

'Boy,'
he continued,
growing warmer,
'I plucked away a great pad of moss from between these boulders,
and disclosed a crevice;
and when I looked in,
what do you suppose I saw?

I saw a house in Paris
with a court and garden,
I saw my wife shining
with diamonds,
I saw myself a deputy,
I saw you - well,
I - I saw your future,'
he concluded,
rather feebly.

'I have just discovered America,'
he added.

'But what is it?'
asked the boy.

'The Treasure of Franchard,'
cried the Doctor;
and,
throwing his brown straw hat upon the ground,
he whooped like an Indian and sprang upon Jean-Marie,
whom he suffocated
with embraces and bedewed
with tears.

Then he flung himself down among the heather and once more laughed until the valley rang.

But the boy had now an interest of his own,
a boy's interest.

No sooner was he released from the Doctor's accolade than he ran
to the boulders,
sprang into the niche,
and,
thrusting his hand into the crevice,
drew forth one after another,
encrusted
with the earth of ages,
the flagons,
candlesticks,
and patens of the hermitage of Franchard.

A casket came last,
tightly shut and very heavy.

'O what fun!'
he cried.

But when he looked back at the Doctor,
who had followed close behind and was silently observing,
the words died from his lips.

Desprez was once more the colour of ashes;
his lip worked and trembled;
a sort of bestial greed possessed him.

'This is childish,'
he said.

'We lose precious time.

Back
to the inn,
harness the trap,
and bring it
to yon bank.

Run
for your life,
and remember - not one whisper.

I stay here
to watch.'

Jean-Marie did as he was bid,
though not without surprise.

The noddy was brought round
to the spot indicated;
and the two gradually transported the treasure from its place of concealment
to the boot below the driving seat.

Once it was all stored the Doctor recovered his gaiety.

'I pay my grateful duties
to the genius of this dell,'
he said.

'O,
for a live coal,
a heifer,
and a jar of country wine! I am in the vein
for sacrifice,
for a superb libation.

Well,
and why not?

We are at Franchard.

English pale ale is
to be had - not classical,
indeed,
but excellent.

Boy,
we shall drink ale.'

'But I thought it was so unwholesome,'
said Jean-Marie,
'and very dear besides.'

'Fiddle-de-dee!'
exclaimed the Doctor gaily.

'To the inn!'
And he stepped into the noddy,
tossing his head,
with an elastic,
youthful air.

The horse was turned,
and in a few seconds they drew up beside the palings of the inn garden.

'Here,'
said Desprez -
'here,
near the table,
so that we may keep an eye upon things.'

They tied the horse,
and entered the garden,
the Doctor singing,
now in fantastic high notes,
now producing deep reverberations from his chest.

He took a seat,
rapped loudly on the table,
assailed the waiter
with witticisms;
and when the bottle of Bass was at length produced,
far more charged
with gas than the most delirious champagne,
he filled out a long glassful of froth and pushed it over
to Jean-Marie.

'Drink,'
he said;
'drink deep.'

'I would rather not,'
faltered the boy,
true
to his training.

'What?'
thundered Desprez.

'I am afraid of it,'
said Jean-Marie:

'my stomach -
'
'Take it or leave it,'
interrupted Desprez fiercely;
'but understand it once
for all - there is nothing so contemptible as a precisian.'

Here was a new lesson! The boy sat bemused,
looking at the glass but not tasting it,
while the Doctor emptied and refilled his own,
at first
with clouded brow,
but gradually yielding
to the sun,
the heady,
prickling beverage,
and his own predisposition
to be happy.

'Once in a way,'
he said at last,
by way of a concession
to the boy's more rigorous attitude,
'once in a way,
and at so critical a moment,
this ale is a nectar
for the gods.

The habit,
indeed,
is debasing;
wine,
the juice of the grape,
is the true drink of the Frenchman,
as I have often had occasion
to point out;
and I do not know that I can blame you
for refusing this outlandish stimulant.

You can have some wine and cakes.

Is the bottle empty?

Well,
we will not be proud;
we will have pity on your glass.'

The beer being done,
the Doctor chafed bitterly while Jean-Marie finished his cakes.

'I burn
to be gone,'
he said,
looking at his watch.

'Good God,
how slow you eat!'
And yet
to eat slowly was his own particular prescription,
the main secret of longevity! His martyrdom,
however,
reached an end at last;
the pair resumed their places in the buggy,
and Desprez,
leaning luxuriously back,
announced his intention of proceeding
to Fontainebleau.

'To Fontainebleau?'
repeated Jean-Marie.

'My words are always measured,'
said the Doctor.

'On!'
The Doctor was driven through the glades of paradise;
the air,
the light,
the shining leaves,
the very movements of the vehicle,
seemed
to fall in tune
with his golden meditations;
with his head thrown back,
he dreamed a series of sunny visions,
ale and pleasure dancing in his veins.

At last he spoke.

'I shall telegraph
for Casimir,'
he said.

'Good Casimir! a fellow of the lower order of intelligence,
Jean-Marie,
distinctly not creative,
not poetic;
and yet he will repay your study;
his fortune is vast,
and is entirely due
to his own exertions.

He is the very fellow
to help us
to dispose of our trinkets,
find us a suitable house in Paris,
and manage the details of our installation.

Admirable Casimir,
one of my oldest comrades! It was on his advice,
I may add,
that I invested my little fortune in Turkish bonds;
when we have added these spoils of the mediaeval church
to our stake in the Mahometan empire,
little boy,
we shall positively roll among doubloons,
positively roll! Beautiful forest,'
he cried,
'farewell! Though called
to other scenes,
I will not forget thee.

Thy name is graven in my heart.

Under the influence of prosperity I become dithyrambic,
Jean-Marie.

Such is the impulse of the natural soul;
such was the constitution of primaeval man.

And I - well,
I will not refuse the credit - I have preserved my youth like a virginity;
another,
who should have led the same snoozing,
countryfied existence
for these years,
another had become rusted,
become stereotype;
but I,
I praise my happy constitution,
retain the spring unbroken.

Fresh opulence and a new sphere of duties find me unabated in ardour and only more mature by knowledge.

For this prospective change,
Jean-Marie - it may probably have shocked you.

Tell me now,
did it not strike you as an inconsistency?

Confess - it is useless
to dissemble - it pained you?'
'Yes,'
said the boy.

'You see,'
returned the Doctor,
with sublime fatuity,
'I read your thoughts! Nor am I surprised - your education is not yet complete;
the higher duties of men have not been yet presented
to you fully.

A hint - till we have leisure - must suffice.

Now that I am once more in possession of a modest competence;
now that I have so long prepared myself in silent meditation,
it becomes my superior duty
to proceed
to Paris.

My scientific training,
my undoubted command of language,
mark me out
for the service of my country.

Modesty in such a case would be a snare.

If sin were a philosophical expression,
I should call it sinful.

A man must not deny his manifest abilities,
for that is
to evade his obligations.

I must be up and doing;
I must be no skulker in life's battle.'

So he rattled on,
copiously greasing the joint of his inconsistency
with words;
while the boy listened silently,
his eyes fixed on the horse,
his mind seething.

It was all lost eloquence;
no array of words could unsettle a belief of Jean-Marie's;
and he drove into Fontainebleau filled
with pity,
horror,
indignation,
and despair.

In the town Jean-Marie was kept a fixture on the driving-seat,
to guard the treasure;
while the Doctor,
with a singular,
slightly tipsy airiness of manner,
fluttered in and out of cafes,
where he shook hands
with garrison officers,
and mixed an absinthe
with the nicety of old experience;
in and out of shops,
from which he returned laden
with costly fruits,
real turtle,
a magnificent piece of silk
for his wife,
a preposterous cane
for himself,
and a kepi of the newest fashion
for the boy;
in and out of the telegraph office,
whence he despatched his telegram,
and where three hours later he received an answer promising a visit on the morrow;
and generally pervaded Fontainebleau
with the first fine aroma of his divine good humour.

The sun was very low when they set forth again;
the shadows of the forest trees extended across the broad white road that led them home;
the penetrating odour of the evening wood had already arisen,
like a cloud of incense,
from that broad field of tree-tops;
and even in the streets of the town,
where the air had been baked all day between white walls,
it came in whiffs and pulses,
like a distant music.

Half-way home,
the last gold flicker vanished from a great oak upon the left;
and when they came forth beyond the borders of the wood,
the plain was already sunken in pearly greyness,
and a great,
pale moon came swinging skyward through the filmy poplars.

The Doctor sang,
the Doctor whistled,
the Doctor talked.

He spoke of the woods,
and the wars,
and the deposition of dew;
he brightened and babbled of Paris;
he soared into cloudy bombast on the glories of the political arena.

All was
to be changed;
as the day departed,
it took
with it the vestiges of an outworn existence,
and to-morrow's sun was
to inaugurate the new.

'Enough,'
he cried,
'of this life of maceration!'
His wife
(still beautiful,
or he was sadly partial)
was
to be no longer buried;
she should now shine before society.

Jean-Marie would find the world at his feet;
the roads open
to success,
wealth,
honour,
and post-humous renown.

'And O,
by the way,'
said he,
'for God's sake keep your tongue quiet! You are,
of course,
a very silent fellow;
it is a quality I gladly recognise in you - silence,
golden silence! But this is a matter of gravity.

No word must get abroad;
none but the good Casimir is
to be trusted;
we shall probably dispose of the vessels in England.'

'But are they not even ours?'
the boy said,
almost
with a sob - it was the only time he had spoken.

'Ours in this sense,
that they are nobody else's,'
replied the Doctor.

'But the State would have some claim.

If they were stolen,
for instance,
we should be unable
to demand their restitution;
we should have no title;
we should be unable even
to communicate
with the police.

Such is the monstrous condition of the law.

(6)
It is a mere instance of what remains
to be done,
of the injustices that may yet be righted by an ardent,
active,
and philosophical deputy.'

Jean-Marie put his faith in Madame Desprez;
and as they drove forward down the road from Bourron,
between the rustling poplars,
he prayed in his teeth,
and whipped up the horse
to an unusual speed.

Surely,
as soon as they arrived,
madame would assert her character,
and bring this waking nightmare
to an end.

Their entrance into Gretz was heralded and accompanied by a most furious barking;
all the dogs in the village seemed
to smell the treasure in the noddy.

But there was no one in the street,
save three lounging landscape painters at Tentaillon's door.

Jean-Marie opened the green gate and led in the horse and carriage;
and almost at the same moment Madame Desprez came
to the kitchen threshold
with a lighted lantern;
for the moon was not yet high enough
to clear the garden walls.

'Close the gates,
Jean-Marie!'
cried the Doctor,
somewhat unsteadily alighting.

'Anastasie,
where is Aline?'
'She has gone
to Montereau
to see her parents,'
said madame.

'All is
for the best!'
exclaimed the Doctor fervently.

'Here,
quick,
come near
to me;
I do not wish
to speak too loud,'
he continued.

'Darling,
we are wealthy!'
'Wealthy!'
repeated the wife.

'I have found the treasure of Franchard,'
replied her husband.

'See,
here are the first fruits;
a pineapple,
a dress
for my ever- beautiful - it will suit her - trust a husband's,
trust a lover's,
taste! Embrace me,
darling! This grimy episode is over;
the butterfly unfolds its painted wings.

To-morrow Casimir will come;
in a week we may be in Paris - happy at last! You shall have diamonds.

Jean-Marie,
take it out of the boot,
with religious care,
and bring it piece by piece into the dining-room.

We shall have plate at table! Darling,
hasten and prepare this turtle;
it will be a whet - it will be an addition
to our meagre ordinary.

I myself will proceed
to the cellar.

We shall have a bottle of that little Beaujolais you like,
and finish
with the Hermitage;
there are still three bottles left.

Worthy wine
for a worthy occasion.'

'But,
my husband;
you put me in a whirl,'
she cried.

'I do not comprehend.'

'The turtle,
my adored,
the turtle!'
cried the doctor;
and he pushed her towards the kitchen,
lantern and all.

Jean-Marie stood dumfounded.

He had pictured
to himself a different scene - a more immediate protest,
and his hope began
to dwindle on the spot.

The Doctor was everywhere,
a little doubtful on his legs,
perhaps,
and now and then taking the wall
with his shoulder;
for it was long since he had tasted absinthe,
and he was even then reflecting that the absinthe had been a misconception.

Not that he regretted excess on such a glorious day,
but he made a mental memorandum
to beware;
he must not,
a second time,
become the victim of a deleterious habit.

He had his wine out of the cellar in a twinkling;
he arranged the sacrificial vessels,
some on the white table-cloth,
some on the sideboard,
still crusted
with historic earth.

He was in and out of the kitchen,
plying Anastasie
with vermouth,
heating her
with glimpses of the future,
estimating their new wealth at ever larger figures;
and before they sat down
to supper,
the lady's virtue had melted in the fire of his enthusiasm,
her timidity had disappeared;
she,
too,
had begun
to speak disparagingly of the life at Gretz;
and as she took her place and helped the soup,
her eyes shone
with the glitter of prospective diamonds.

All through the meal,
she and the Doctor made and unmade fairy plans.

They bobbed and bowed and pledged each other.

Their faces ran over
with smiles;
their eyes scattered sparkles,
as they projected the Doctor's political honours and the lady's drawing- room ovations.

'But you will not be a Red!'
cried Anastasie.

'I am Left Centre
to the core,'
replied the Doctor.

'Madame Gastein will present us - we shall find ourselves forgotten,'
said the lady.

'Never,'
protested the Doctor.

'Beauty and talent leave a mark.'

'I have positively forgotten how
to dress,'
she sighed.

'Darling,
you make me blush,'
cried he.

'Yours has been a tragic marriage!'
'But your success -
to see you appreciated,
honoured,
your name in all the papers,
that will be more than pleasure - it will be heaven!'
she cried.

'And once a week,'
said the Doctor,
archly scanning the syllables,
'once a week - one good little game of baccarat?'
'Only once a week?'
she questioned,
threatening him
with a finger.

'I swear it by my political honour,'
cried he.

'I spoil you,'
she said,
and gave him her hand.

He covered it
with kisses.

Jean-Marie escaped into the night.

The moon swung high over Gretz.

He went down
to the garden end and sat on the jetty.

The river ran by
with eddies of oily silver,
and a low,
monotonous song.

Faint veils of mist moved among the poplars on the farther side.

The reeds were quietly nodding.

A hundred times already had the boy sat,
on such a night,
and watched the streaming river
with untroubled fancy.

And this perhaps was
to be the last.

He was
to leave this familiar hamlet,
this green,
rustling country,
this bright and quiet stream;
he was
to pass into the great city;
his dear lady mistress was
to move bedizened in saloons;
his good,
garrulous,
kind-hearted master
to become a brawling deputy;
and both be lost
for ever
to Jean-Marie and their better selves.

He knew his own defects;
he knew he must sink into less and less consideration in the turmoil of a city life,
sink more and more from the child into the servant.

And he began dimly
to believe the Doctor's prophecies of evil.

He could see a change in both.

His generous incredulity failed him
for this once;
a child must have perceived that the Hermitage had completed what the absinthe had begun.

If this were the first day,
what would be the last?

'If necessary,
wreck the train,'
thought he,
remembering the Doctor's parable.

He looked round on the delightful scene;
he drank deep of the charmed night air,
laden
with the scent of hay.

'If necessary,
wreck the train,'
he repeated.

And he rose and returned
to the house.

CHAPTER VI.

A CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION,
IN TWO PARTS.

THE next morning there was a most unusual outcry,
in the Doctor's house.

The last thing before going
to bed,
the Doctor had locked up some valuables in the dining-room cupboard;
and behold,
when he rose again,
as he did about four o'clock,
the cupboard had been broken open,
and the valuables in question had disappeared.

Madame and Jean-Marie were summoned from their rooms,
and appeared in hasty toilets;
they found the Doctor raving,
calling the heavens
to witness and avenge his injury,
pacing the room bare-footed,
with the tails of his night-shirt flirting as he turned.

'Gone!'
he said;
'the things are gone,
the fortune gone! We are paupers once more.

Boy! what do you know of this?

Speak up,
sir,
speak up.

Do you know of it?

Where are they?'
He had him by the arm,
shaking him like a bag,
and the boy's words,
if he had any,
were jolted forth in inarticulate murmurs.

The Doctor,
with a revulsion from his own violence,
set him down again.

He observed Anastasie in tears.

'Anastasie,'
he said,
in quite an altered voice,
'compose yourself,
command your feelings.

I would not have you give way
to passion like the vulgar.

This - this trifling accident must be lived down.

Jean-Marie,
bring me my smaller medicine chest.

A gentle laxative is indicated.'

And he dosed the family all round,
leading the way himself
with a double quantity.

The wretched Anastasie,
who had never been ill in the whole course of her existence,
and whose soul recoiled from remedies,
wept floods of tears as she sipped,
and shuddered,
and protested,
and then was bullied and shouted at until she sipped again.

As
for Jean-Marie,
he took his portion down
with stoicism.

'I have given him a less amount,'
observed the Doctor,
'his youth protecting him against emotion.

And now that we have thus parried any morbid consequences,
let us reason.'

'I am so cold,'
wailed Anastasie.

'Cold!'
cried the Doctor.

'I give thanks
to God that I am made of fierier material.

Why,
madam,
a blow like this would set a frog into a transpiration.

If you are cold,
you can retire;
and,
by the way,
you might throw me down my trousers.

It is chilly
for the legs.'

'Oh,
no!'
protested Anastasie;
'I will stay
with you.'

'Nay,
madam,
you shall not suffer
for your devotion,'
said the Doctor.

'I will myself fetch you a shawl.'

And he went upstairs and returned more fully clad and
with an armful of wraps
for the shivering Anastasie.

'And now,'
he resumed,
'to investigate this crime.

Let us proceed by induction.

Anastasie,
do you know anything that can help us?'
Anastasie knew nothing.

'Or you,
Jean-Marie?'
'Not I,'
replied the boy steadily.

'Good,'
returned the Doctor.

'We shall now turn our attention
to the material evidences.

(I was born
to be a detective;
I have the eye and the systematic spirit.)
First,
violence has been employed.

The door was broken open;
and it may be observed,
in passing,
that the lock was dear indeed at what I paid
for it:

a crow
to pluck
with Master Goguelat.

Second,
here is the instrument employed,
one of our own table-knives,
one of our best,
my dear;
which seems
to indicate no preparation on the part of the gang - if gang it was.

Thirdly,
I observe that nothing has been removed except the Franchard dishes and the casket;
our own silver has been minutely respected.

This is wily;
it shows intelligence,
a knowledge of the code,
a desire
to avoid legal consequences.

I argue from this fact that the gang numbers persons of respectability - outward,
of course,
and merely outward,
as the robbery proves.

But I argue,
second,
that we must have been observed at Franchard itself by some occult observer,
and dogged throughout the day
with a skill and patience that I venture
to qualify as consummate.

No ordinary man,
no occasional criminal,
would have shown himself capable of this combination.

We have in our neighbourhood,
it is far from improbable,
a retired bandit of the highest order of intelligence.'

'Good heaven!'
cried the horrified Anastasie.

'Henri,
how can you?'
'My cherished one,
this is a process of induction,'
said the Doctor.

'If any of my steps are unsound,
correct me.

You are silent?

Then do not,
I beseech you,
be so vulgarly illogical as
to revolt from my conclusion.

We have now arrived,'
he resumed,
'at some idea of the composition of the gang -
for I incline
to the hypothesis of more than one - and we now leave this room,
which can disclose no more,
and turn our attention
to the court and garden.

(Jean-Marie,
I trust you are observantly following my various steps;
this is an excellent piece of education
for you.)
Come
with me
to the door.

No steps on the court;
it is unfortunate our court should be paved.

On what small matters hang the destiny of these delicate investigations! Hey! What have we here?

I have led on
to the very spot,'
he said,
standing grandly backward and indicating the green gate.

'An escalade,
as you can now see
for yourselves,
has taken place.'

Sure enough,
the green paint was in several places scratched and broken;
and one of the panels preserved the print of a nailed shoe.

The foot had slipped,
however,
and it was difficult
to estimate the size of the shoe,
and impossible
to distinguish the pattern of the nails.

'The whole robbery,'
concluded the Doctor,
'step by step,
has been reconstituted.

Inductive science can no further go.'

'It is wonderful,'
said his wife.

'You should indeed have been a detective,
Henri.

I had no idea of your talents.'

'My dear,'
replied Desprez,
condescendingly,
'a man of scientific imagination combines the lesser faculties;
he is a detective just as he is a publicist or a general;
these are but local applications of his special talent.

But now,'
he continued,
'would you have me go further?

Would you have me lay my finger on the culprits - or rather,
for I cannot promise quite so much,
point out
to you the very house where they consort?

It may be a satisfaction,
at least it is all we are likely
to get,
since we are denied the remedy of law.

I reach the further stage in this way.

In order
to fill my outline of the robbery,
I require a man likely
to be in the forest idling,
I require a man of education,
I require a man superior
to considerations of morality.

The three requisites all centre in Tentaillon's boarders.

They are painters,
therefore they are continually lounging in the forest.

They are painters,
therefore they are not unlikely
to have some smattering of education.

Lastly,
because they are painters,
they are probably immoral.

And this I prove in two ways.

First,
painting is an art which merely addresses the eye;
it does not in any particular exercise the moral sense.

And second,
painting,
in common
with all the other arts,
implies the dangerous quality of imagination.

A man of imagination is never moral;
he outsoars literal demarcations and reviews life under too many shifting lights
to rest content
with the invidious distinctions of the law!'
'But you always say - at least,
so I understood you'
- said madame,
'that these lads display no imagination whatever.'

'My dear,
they displayed imagination,
and of a very fantastic order,
too,'
returned the Doctor,
'when they embraced their beggarly profession.

Besides - and this is an argument exactly suited
to your intellectual level - many of them are English and American.

Where else should we expect
to find a thief?

- And now you had better get your coffee.

Because we have lost a treasure,
there is no reason
for starving.

For my part,
I shall break my fast
with white wine.

I feel unaccountably heated and thirsty to- day.

I can only attribute it
to the shock of the discovery.

And yet,
you will bear me out,
I supported the emotion nobly.'

The Doctor had now talked himself back into an admirable humour;
and as he sat in the arbour and slowly imbibed a large allowance of white wine and picked a little bread and cheese
with no very impetuous appetite,
if a third of his meditations ran upon the missing treasure,
the other two-thirds were more pleasingly busied in the retrospect of his detective skill.

About eleven Casimir arrived;
he had caught an early train
to Fontainebleau,
and driven over
to save time;
and now his cab was stabled at Tentaillon's,
and he remarked,
studying his watch,
that he could spare an hour and a half.

He was much the man of business,
decisively spoken,
given
to frowning in an intellectual manner.

Anastasie's born brother,
he did not waste much sentiment on the lady,
gave her an English family kiss,
and demanded a meal without delay.

'You can tell me your story while we eat,'
he observed.

'Anything good to-day,
Stasie?'
He was promised something good.

The trio sat down
to table in the arbour,
Jean-Marie waiting as well as eating,
and the Doctor recounted what had happened in his richest narrative manner.

Casimir heard it
with explosions of laughter.

'What a streak of luck
for you,
my good brother,'
he observed,
when the tale was over.

'If you had gone
to Paris,
you would have played dick-duck-drake
with the whole consignment in three months.

Your own would have followed;
and you would have come
to me in a procession like the last time.

But I give you warning - Stasie may weep and Henri ratiocinate - it will not serve you twice.

Your next collapse will be fatal.

I thought I had told you so,
Stasie?

Hey?

No sense?'
The Doctor winced and looked furtively at Jean-Marie;
but the boy seemed apathetic.

'And then again,'
broke out Casimir,
'what children you are - vicious children,
my faith! How could you tell the value of this trash?

It might have been worth nothing,
or next door.'

'Pardon me,'
said the Doctor.

'You have your usual flow of spirits,
I perceive,
but even less than your usual deliberation.

I am not entirely ignorant of these matters.'

'Not entirely ignorant of anything ever I heard of,'
interrupted Casimir,
bowing,
and raising his glass
with a sort of pert politeness.

'At least,'
resumed the Doctor,
'I gave my mind
to the subject - that you may be willing
to believe - and I estimated that our capital would be doubled.'

And he described the nature of the find.

'My word of honour!'
said Casimir,
'I half believe you! But much would depend on the quality of the gold.'

'The quality,
my dear Casimir,
was -
'
And the Doctor,
in default of language,
kissed his finger-tips.

'I would not take your word
for it,
my good friend,'
retorted the man of business.

'You are a man of very rosy views.

But this robbery,'
he continued -
'this robbery is an odd thing.

Of course I pass over your nonsense about gangs and landscape-painters.

For me,
that is a dream.

Who was in the house last night?'
'None but ourselves,'
replied the Doctor.

'And this young gentleman?'
asked Casimir,
jerking a nod in the direction of Jean-Marie.

'He too'
- the Doctor bowed.

'Well;
and if it is a fair question,
who is he?'
pursued the brother-in-law.

'Jean-Marie,'
answered the Doctor,
'combines the functions of a son and stable-boy.

He began as the latter,
but he rose rapidly
to the more honourable rank in our affections.

He is,
I may say,
the greatest comfort in our lives.'

'Ha!'
said Casimir.

'And previous
to becoming one of you?'
'Jean-Marie has lived a remarkable existence;
his experience his been eminently formative,'
replied Desprez.

'If I had had
to choose an education
for my son,
I should have chosen such another.

Beginning life
with mountebanks and thieves,
passing onward
to the society and friendship of philosophers,
he may be said
to have skimmed the volume of human life.'

'Thieves?'
repeated the brother-in-law,
with a meditative air.

The Doctor could have bitten his tongue out.

He foresaw what was coming,
and prepared his mind
for a vigorous defence.

'Did you ever steal yourself?'
asked Casimir,
turning suddenly on Jean-Marie,
and
for the first time employing a single eyeglass which hung round his neck.

'Yes,
sir,'
replied the boy,
with a deep blush.

Casimir turned
to the others
with pursed lips,
and nodded
to them meaningly.

'Hey?'
said he;
'how is that?'
'Jean-Marie is a teller of the truth,'
returned the Doctor,
throwing out his bust.

'He has never told a lie,'
added madame.

'He is the best of boys.'

'Never told a lie,
has he not?'
reflected Casimir.

'Strange,
very strange.

Give me your attention,
my young friend,'
he continued.

'You knew about this treasure?'
'He helped
to bring it home,'
interposed the Doctor.

'Desprez,
I ask you nothing but
to hold your tongue,'
returned Casimir.

'I mean
to question this stable-boy of yours;
and if you are so certain of his innocence,
you can afford
to let him answer
for himself.

Now,
sir,'
he resumed,
pointing his eyeglass straight at Jean-Marie.

'You knew it could be stolen
with impunity?

You knew you could not be prosecuted?

Come! Did you,
or did you not?'
'I did,'
answered Jean-Marie,
in a miserable whisper.

He sat there changing colour like a revolving pharos,
twisting his fingers hysterically,
swallowing air,
the picture of guilt.

'You knew where it was put?'
resumed the inquisitor.

'Yes,'
from Jean-Marie.

'You say you have been a thief before,'
continued Casimir.

'Now how am I
to know that you are not one still?

I suppose you could climb the green gate?'
'Yes,'
still lower,
from the culprit.

'Well,
then,
it was you who stole these things.

You know it,
and you dare not deny it.

Look me in the face! Raise your sneak's eyes,
and answer!'
But in place of anything of that sort Jean-Marie broke into a dismal howl and fled from the arbour.

Anastasie,
as she pursued
to capture and reassure the victim,
found time
to send one Parthian arrow -
'Casimir,
you are a brute!'
'My brother,'
said Desprez,
with the greatest dignity,
'you take upon yourself a licence -
'
'Desprez,'
interrupted Casimir,
'for Heaven's sake be a man of the world.

You telegraph me
to leave my business and come down here on yours.

I come,
I ask the business,
you say
"Find me this thief!"
Well,
I find him;
I say
"There he is! You need not like it,
but you have no manner of right
to take offence.'

'Well,'
returned the Doctor,
'I grant that;
I will even thank you
for your mistaken zeal.

But your hypothesis was so extravagantly monstrous -
'
'Look here,'
interrupted Casimir;
'was it you or Stasie?'
'Certainly not,'
answered the Doctor.

'Very well;
then it was the boy.

Say no more about it,'
said the brother-in-law,
and he produced his cigar-case.

'I will say this much more,'
returned Desprez:

'if that boy came and told me so himself,
I should not believe him;
and if I did believe him,
so implicit is my trust,
I should conclude that he had acted
for the best.'

'Well,
well,'
said Casimir,
indulgently.

'Have you a light?

I must be going.

And by the way,
I wish you would let me sell your Turks
for you.

I always told you,
it meant smash.

I tell you so again.

Indeed,
it was partly that that brought me down.

You never acknowledge my letters - a most unpardonable habit.'

'My good brother,'
replied the Doctor blandly,
'I have never denied your ability in business;
but I can perceive your limitations.'

'Egad,
my friend,
I can return the compliment,'
observed the man of business.

'Your limitation is
to be downright irrational.'

'Observe the relative position,'
returned the Doctor
with a smile.

'It is your attitude
to believe through thick and thin in one man's judgment - your own.

I follow the same opinion,
but critically and
with open eyes.

Which is the more irrational?

- I leave it
to yourself.'

'O,
my dear fellow!'
cried Casimir,
'stick
to your Turks,
stick
to your stable-boy,
go
to the devil in general in your own way and be done
with it.

But don't ratiocinate
with me - I cannot bear it.

And so,
ta-ta.

I might as well have stayed away
for any good I've done.

Say good-bye from me
to Stasie,
and
to the sullen hang-dog of a stable-boy,
if you insist on it;
I'm off.'

And Casimir departed.

The Doctor,
that night,
dissected his character before Anastasie.

'One thing,
my beautiful,'
he said,
'he has learned one thing from his lifelong acquaintance
with your husband:

the word RATIOCINATE.

It shines in his vocabulary,
like a jewel in a muck-heap.

And,
even so,
he continually misapplies it.

For you must have observed he uses it as a sort of taunt,
in the sense of
to ERGOTISE,
implying,
as it were - the poor,
dear fellow! - a vein of sophistry.

As
for his cruelty
to Jean-Marie,
it must be forgiven him - it is not his nature,
it is the nature of his life.

A man who deals
with money,
my dear,
is a man lost.'

With Jean-Marie the process of reconciliation had been somewhat slow.

At first he was inconsolable,
insisted on leaving the family,
went from paroxysm
to paroxysm of tears;
and it was only after Anastasie had been closeted
for an hour
with him,
alone,
that she came forth,
sought out the Doctor,
and,
with tears in her eyes,
acquainted that gentleman
with what had passed.

'At first,
my husband,
he would hear of nothing,'
she said.

'Imagine! if he had left us! what would the treasure be
to that?

Horrible treasure,
it has brought all this about! At last,
after he has sobbed his very heart out,
he agrees
to stay on a condition - we are not
to mention this matter,
this infamous suspicion,
not even
to mention the robbery.

On that agreement only,
the poor,
cruel boy will consent
to remain among his friends.'

'But this inhibition,'
said the Doctor,
'this embargo - it cannot possibly apply
to me?'
'To all of us,'
Anastasie assured him.

'My cherished one,'
Desprez protested,
'you must have misunderstood.

It cannot apply
to me.

He would naturally come
to me.'

'Henri,'
she said,
'it does;
I swear
to you it does.'

'This is a painful,
a very painful circumstance,'
the Doctor said,
looking a little black.

'I cannot affect,
Anastasie,
to be anything but justly wounded.

I feel this,
I feel it,
my wife,
acutely.'

'I knew you would,'
she said.

'But if you had seen his distress! We must make allowances,
we must sacrifice our feelings.'

'I trust,
my dear,
you have never found me averse
to sacrifices,'
returned the Doctor very stiffly.

'And you will let me go and tell him that you have agreed?

It will be like your noble nature,'
she cried.

So it would,
he perceived - it would be like his noble nature! Up jumped his spirits,
triumphant at the thought.

'Go,
darling,'
he said nobly,
'reassure him.

The subject is buried;
more - I make an effort,
I have accustomed my will
to these exertions - and it is forgotten.'

A little after,
but still
with swollen eyes and looking mortally sheepish,
Jean-Marie reappeared and went ostentatiously about his business.

He was the only unhappy member of the party that sat down that night
to supper.

As
for the Doctor,
he was radiant.

He thus sang the requiem of the treasure:-
'This has been,
on the whole,
a most amusing episode,'
he said.

'We are not a penny the worse - nay,
we are immensely gainers.

Our philosophy has been exercised;
some of the turtle is still left - the most wholesome of delicacies;
I have my staff,
Anastasie has her new dress,
Jean-Marie is the proud possessor of a fashionable kepi.

Besides,
we had a glass of Hermitage last night;
the glow still suffuses my memory.

I was growing positively niggardly
with that Hermitage,
positively niggardly.

Let me take the hint:

we had one bottle
to celebrate the appearance of our visionary fortune;
let us have a second
to console us
for its occultation.

The third I hereby dedicate
to Jean-Marie's wedding breakfast.'

CHAPTER VII.

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF DESPREZ.

THE Doctor's house has not yet received the compliment of a description,
and it is now high time that the omission were supplied,
for the house is itself an actor in the story,
and one whose part is nearly at an end.

Two stories in height,
walls of a warm yellow,
tiles of an ancient ruddy brown diversified
with moss and lichen,
it stood
with one wall
to the street in the angle of the Doctor's property.

It was roomy,
draughty,
and inconvenient.

The large rafters were here and there engraven
with rude marks and patterns;
the handrail of the stair was carved in countrified arabesque;
a stout timber pillar,
which did duty
to support the dining-room roof,
bore mysterious characters on its darker side,
runes,
according
to the Doctor;
nor did he fail,
when he ran over the legendary history of the house and its possessors,
to dwell upon the Scandinavian scholar who had left them.

Floors,
doors,
and rafters made a great variety of angles;
every room had a particular inclination;
the gable had tilted towards the garden,
after the manner of a leaning tower,
and one of the former proprietors had buttressed the building from that side
with a great strut of wood,
like the derrick of a crane.

Altogether,
it had many marks of ruin;
it was a house
for the rats
to desert;
and nothing but its excellent brightness - the window-glass polished and shining,
the paint well scoured,
the brasses radiant,
the very prop all wreathed about
with climbing flowers - nothing but its air of a well-tended,
smiling veteran,
sitting,
crutch and all,
in the sunny corner of a garden,
marked it as a house
for comfortable people
to inhabit.

In poor or idle management it would soon have hurried into the blackguard stages of decay.

As it was,
the whole family loved it,
and the Doctor was never better inspired than when he narrated its imaginary story and drew the character of its successive masters,
from the Hebrew merchant who had re-edified its walls after the sack of the town,
and past the mysterious engraver of the runes,
down
to the long-headed,
dirty-handed boor from whom he had himself acquired it at a ruinous expense.

As
for any alarm about its security,
the idea had never presented itself.

What had stood four centuries might well endure a little longer.

Indeed,
in this particular winter,
after the finding and losing of the treasure,
the Desprez'
had an anxiety of a very different order,
and one which lay nearer their hearts.

Jean-Marie was plainly not himself.

He had fits of hectic activity,
when he made unusual exertions
to please,
spoke more and faster,
and redoubled in attention
to his lessons.

But these were interrupted by spells of melancholia and brooding silence,
when the boy was little better than unbearable.

'Silence,'
the Doctor moralised -
'you see,
Anastasie,
what comes of silence.

Had the boy properly unbosomed himself,
the little disappointment about the treasure,
the little annoyance about Casimir's incivility,
would long ago have been forgotten.

As it is,
they prey upon him like a disease.

He loses flesh,
his appetite is variable and,
on the whole,
impaired.

I keep him on the strictest regimen,
I exhibit the most powerful tonics;
both in vain.'

'Don't you think you drug him too much?'
asked madame,
with an irrepressible shudder.

'Drug?'
cried the Doctor;
'I drug?

Anastasie,
you are mad!'
Time went on,
and the boy's health still slowly declined.

The Doctor blamed the weather,
which was cold and boisterous.

He called in his CONFRERE from Bourron,
took a fancy
for him,
magnified his capacity,
and was pretty soon under treatment himself - it scarcely appeared
for what complaint.

He and Jean-Marie had each medicine
to take at different periods of the day.

The Doctor used
to lie in wait
for the exact moment,
watch in hand.

'There is nothing like regularity,'
he would say,
fill out the doses,
and dilate on the virtues of the draught;
and if the boy seemed none the better,
the Doctor was not at all the worse.

Gunpowder Day,
the boy was particularly low.

It was scowling,
squally weather.

Huge broken companies of cloud sailed swiftly overhead;
raking gleams of sunlight swept the village,
and were followed by intervals of darkness and white,
flying rain.

At times the wind lifted up its voice and bellowed.

The trees were all scourging themselves along the meadows,
the last leaves flying like dust.

The Doctor,
between the boy and the weather,
was in his element;
he had a theory
to prove.

He sat
with his watch out and a barometer in front of him,
waiting
for the squalls and noting their effect upon the human pulse.

'For the true philosopher,'
he remarked delightedly,
'every fact in nature is a toy.'

A letter came
to him;
but,
as its arrival coincided
with the approach of another gust,
he merely crammed it into his pocket,
gave the time
to Jean- Marie,
and the next moment they were both counting their pulses as if
for a wager.

At nightfall the wind rose into a tempest.

It besieged the hamlet,
apparently from every side,
as if
with batteries of cannon;
the houses shook and groaned;
live coals were blown upon the floor.

The uproar and terror of the night kept people long awake,
sitting
with pallid faces giving ear.

It was twelve before the Desprez family retired.

By half-past one,
when the storm was already somewhat past its height,
the Doctor was awakened from a troubled slumber,
and sat up.

A noise still rang in his ears,
but whether of this world or the world of dreams he was not certain.

Another clap of wind followed.

It was accompanied by a sickening movement of the whole house,
and in the subsequent lull Desprez could hear the tiles pouring like a cataract into the loft above his head.

He plucked Anastasie bodily out of bed.

'Run!'
he cried,
thrusting some wearing apparel into her hands;
'the house is falling!
to the garden!'
She did not pause
to be twice bidden;
she was down the stair in an instant.

She had never before suspected herself of such activity.

The Doctor meanwhile,
with the speed of a piece of pantomime business,
and undeterred by broken shins,
proceeded
to rout out Jean-Marie,
tore Aline from her virgin slumbers,
seized her by the hand,
and tumbled downstairs and into the garden,
with the girl tumbling behind him,
still not half awake.

The fugitives rendezvous'd in the arbour by some common instinct.

Then came a bull's-eye flash of struggling moonshine,
which disclosed their four figures standing huddled from the wind in a raffle of flying drapery,
and not without a considerable need
for more.

At the humiliating spectacle Anastasie clutched her nightdress desperately about her and burst loudly into tears.

The Doctor flew
to console her;
but she elbowed him away.

She suspected everybody of being the general public,
and thought the darkness was alive
with eyes.

Another gleam and another violent gust arrived together;
the house was seen
to rock on its foundation,
and,
just as the light was once more eclipsed,
a crash which triumphed over the shouting of the wind announced its fall,
and
for a moment the whole garden was alive
with skipping tiles and brickbats.

One such missile grazed the Doctor's ear;
another descended on the bare foot of Aline,
who instantly made night hideous
with her shrieks.

By this time the hamlet was alarmed,
lights flashed from the windows,
hails reached the party,
and the Doctor answered,
nobly contending against Aline and the tempest.

But this prospect of help only awakened Anastasie
to a more active stage of terror.

'Henri,
people will be coming,'
she screamed in her husband's ear.

'I trust so,'
he replied.

'They cannot.

I would rather die,'
she wailed.

'My dear,'
said the Doctor reprovingly,
'you are excited.

I gave you some clothes.

What have you done
with them?'
'Oh,
I don't know - I must have thrown them away! Where are they?'
she sobbed.

Desprez groped about in the darkness.

'Admirable!'
he remarked;
'my grey velveteen trousers! This will exactly meet your necessities.'

'Give them
to me!'
she cried fiercely;
but as soon as she had them in her hands her mood appeared
to alter - she stood silent
for a moment,
and then pressed the garment back upon the Doctor.

'Give it
to Aline,'
she said -
'poor girl.'

'Nonsense!'
said the Doctor.

'Aline does not know what she is about.

Aline is beside herself
with terror;
and at any rate,
she is a peasant.

Now I am really concerned at this exposure
for a person of your housekeeping habits;
my solicitude and your fantastic modesty both point
to the same remedy - the pantaloons.'

He held them ready.

'It is impossible.

You do not understand,'
she said
with dignity.

By this time rescue was at hand.

It had been found impracticable
to enter by the street,
for the gate was blocked
with masonry,
and the nodding ruin still threatened further avalanches.

But between the Doctor's garden and the one on the right hand there was that very picturesque contrivance - a common well;
the door on the Desprez'
side had chanced
to be unbolted,
and now,
through the arched aperture a man's bearded face and an arm supporting a lantern were introduced into the world of windy darkness,
where Anastasie concealed her woes.

The light struck here and there among the tossing apple boughs,
it glinted on the grass;
but the lantern and the glowing face became the centre of the world.

Anastasie crouched back from the intrusion.

'This way!'
shouted the man.

'Are you all safe?'
Aline,
still screaming,
ran
to the new comer,
and was presently hauled head- foremost through the wall.

'Now,
Anastasie,
come on;
it is your turn,'
said the husband.

'I cannot,'
she replied.

'Are we all
to die of exposure,
madame?'
thundered Doctor Desprez.

'You can go!'
she cried.

'Oh,
go,
go away! I can stay here;
I am quite warm.'

The Doctor took her by the shoulders
with an oath.

'Stop!'
she screamed.

'I will put them on.'

She took the detested lendings in her hand once more;
but her repulsion was stronger than shame.

'Never!'
she cried,
shuddering,
and flung them far away into the night.

Next moment the Doctor had whirled her
to the well.

The man was there and the lantern;
Anastasie closed her eyes and appeared
to herself
to be about
to die.

How she was transported through the arch she knew not;
but once on the other side she was received by the neighbour's wife,
and enveloped in a friendly blanket.

Beds were made ready
for the two women,
clothes of very various sizes
for the Doctor and Jean-Marie;
and
for the remainder of the night,
while madame dozed in and out on the borderland of hysterics,
her husband sat beside the fire and held forth
to the admiring neighbours.

He showed them,
at length,
the causes of the accident;
for years,
he explained,
the fall had been impending;
one sign had followed another,
the joints had opened,
the plaster had cracked,
the old walls bowed inward;
last,
not three weeks ago,
the cellar door had begun
to work
with difficulty in its grooves.

'The cellar!'
he said,
gravely shaking his head over a glass of mulled wine.

'That reminds me of my poor vintages.

By a manifest providence the Hermitage was nearly at an end.

One bottle - I lose but one bottle of that incomparable wine.

It had been set apart against Jean-Marie's wedding.

Well,
I must lay down some more;
it will be an interest in life.

I am,
however,
a man somewhat advanced in years.

My great work is now buried in the fall of my humble roof;
it will never be completed - my name will have been writ in water.

And yet you find me calm - I would say cheerful.

Can your priest do more?'
By the first glimpse of day the party sallied forth from the fireside into the street.

The wind had fallen,
but still charioted a world of troubled clouds;
the air bit like frost;
and the party,
as they stood about the ruins in the rainy twilight of the morning,
beat upon their breasts and blew into their hands
for warmth.

The house had entirely fallen,
the walls outward,
the roof in;
it was a mere heap of rubbish,
with here and there a forlorn spear of broken rafter.

A sentinel was placed over the ruins
to protect the property,
and the party adjourned
to Tentaillon's
to break their fast at the Doctor's expense.

The bottle circulated somewhat freely;
and before they left the table it had begun
to snow.

For three days the snow continued
to fall,
and the ruins,
covered
with tarpaulin and watched by sentries,
were left undisturbed.

The Desprez'
meanwhile had taken up their abode at Tentaillon's.

Madame spent her time in the kitchen,
concocting little delicacies,
with the admiring aid of Madame Tentaillon,
or sitting by the fire in thoughtful abstraction.

The fall of the house affected her wonderfully little;
that blow had been parried by another;
and in her mind she was continually fighting over again the battle of the trousers.

Had she done right?

Had she done wrong?

And now she would applaud her determination;
and anon,
with a horrid flush of unavailing penitence,
she would regret the trousers.

No juncture in her life had so much exercised her judgment.

In the meantime the Doctor had become vastly pleased
with his situation.

Two of the summer boarders still lingered behind the rest,
prisoners
for lack of a remittance;
they were both English,
but one of them spoke French pretty fluently,
and was,
besides,
a humorous,
agile-minded fellow,
with whom the Doctor could reason by the hour,
secure of comprehension.

Many were the glasses they emptied,
many the topics they discussed.

'Anastasie,'
the Doctor said on the third morning,
'take an example from your husband,
from Jean-Marie! The excitement has done more
for the boy than all my tonics,
he takes his turn as sentry
with positive gusto.

As
for me,
you behold me.

I have made friends
with the Egyptians;
and my Pharaoh is,
I swear it,
a most agreeable companion.

You alone are hipped.

About a house - a few dresses?

What are they in comparison
to the
"Pharmacopoeia"
- the labour of years lying buried below stones and sticks in this depressing hamlet?

The snow falls;
I shake it from my cloak! Imitate me.

Our income will be impaired,
I grant it,
since we must rebuild;
but moderation,
patience,
and philosophy will gather about the hearth.

In the meanwhile,
the Tentaillons are obliging;
the table,
with your additions,
will pass;
only the wine is execrable - well,
I shall send
for some to-day.

My Pharaoh will be gratified
to drink a decent glass;
aha! and I shall see if he possesses that acme of organisation - a palate.

If he has a palate,
he is perfect.'

'Henri,'
she said,
shaking her head,
'you are a man;
you cannot understand my feelings;
no woman could shake off the memory of so public a humiliation.'

The Doctor could not restrain a titter.

'Pardon me,
darling,'
he said;
'but really,
to the philosophical intelligence,
the incident appears so small a trifle.

You looked extremely well -
'
'Henri!'
she cried.

'Well,
well,
I will say no more,'
he replied.

'Though,
to be sure,
if you had consented
to indue - A PROPOS,'
he broke off,
'and my trousers! They are lying in the snow - my favourite trousers!'
And he dashed in quest of Jean-Marie.

Two hours afterwards the boy returned
to the inn
with a spade under one arm and a curious sop of clothing under the other.

The Doctor ruefully took it in his hands.

'They have been!'
he said.

'Their tense is past.

Excellent pantaloons,
you are no more! Stay,
something in the pocket,'
and he produced a piece of paper.

'A letter! ay,
now I mind me;
it was received on the morning of the gale,
when I was absorbed in delicate investigations.

It is still legible.

From poor,
dear Casimir! It is as well,'
he chuckled,
'that I have educated him
to patience.

Poor Casimir and his correspondence - his infinitesimal,
timorous,
idiotic correspondence!'
He had by this time cautiously unfolded the wet letter;
but,
as he bent himself
to decipher the writing,
a cloud descended on his brow.

'BIGRE!'
he cried,
with a galvanic start.

And then the letter was whipped into the fire,
and the Doctor's cap was on his head in the turn of a hand.

'Ten minutes! I can catch it,
if I run,'
he cried.

'It is always late.

I go
to Paris.

I shall telegraph.'

'Henri! what is wrong?'
cried his wife.

'Ottoman Bonds!'
came from the disappearing Doctor;
and Anastasie and Jean-Marie were left face
to face
with the wet trousers.

Desprez had gone
to Paris,
for the second time in seven years;
he had gone
to Paris
with a pair of wooden shoes,
a knitted spencer,
a black blouse,
a country nightcap,
and twenty francs in his pocket.

The fall of the house was but a secondary marvel;
the whole world might have fallen and scarce left his family more petrified.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE WAGES OF PHILOSOPHY.

ON the morning of the next day,
the Doctor,
a mere spectre of himself,
was brought back in the custody of Casimir.

They found Anastasie and the boy sitting together by the fire;
and Desprez,
who had exchanged his toilette
for a ready-made rig-out of poor materials,
waved his hand as he entered,
and sank speechless on the nearest chair.

Madame turned direct
to Casimir.

'What is wrong?'
she cried.

'Well,'
replied Casimir,
'what have I told you all along?

It has come.

It is a clean shave,
this time;
so you may as well bear up and make the best of it.

House down,
too,
eh?

Bad luck,
upon my soul.'

'Are we - are we - ruined?'
she gasped.

The Doctor stretched out his arms
to her.

'Ruined,'
he replied,
'you are ruined by your sinister husband.'

Casimir observed the consequent embrace through his eyeglass;
then he turned
to Jean-Marie.

'You hear?'
he said.

'They are ruined;
no more pickings,
no more house,
no more fat cutlets.

It strikes me,
my friend,
that you had best be packing;
the present speculation is about worked out.'

And he nodded
to him meaningly.

'Never!'
cried Desprez,
springing up.

'Jean-Marie,
if you prefer
to leave me,
now that I am poor,
you can go;
you shall receive your hundred francs,
if so much remains
to me.

But if you will consent
to stay
'
- the Doctor wept a little -
'Casimir offers me a place - as clerk,'
he resumed.

'The emoluments are slender,
but they will be enough
for three.

It is too much already
to have lost my fortune;
must I lose my son?'
Jean-Marie sobbed bitterly,
but without a word.

'I don't like boys who cry,'
observed Casimir.

'This one is always crying.

Here! you clear out of this
for a little;
I have business
with your master and mistress,
and these domestic feelings may be settled after I am gone.

March!'
and he held the door open.

Jean-Marie slunk out,
like a detected thief.

By twelve they were all at table but Jean-Marie.

'Hey?'
said Casimir.

'Gone,
you see.

Took the hint at once.'

'I do not,
I confess,'
said Desprez,
'I do not seek
to excuse his absence.

It speaks a want of heart that disappoints me sorely.'

'Want of manners,'
corrected Casimir.

'Heart,
he never had.

Why,
Desprez,
for a clever fellow,
you are the most gullible mortal in creation.

Your ignorance of human nature and human business is beyond belief.

You are swindled by heathen Turks,
swindled by vagabond children,
swindled right and left,
upstairs and downstairs.

I think it must be your imagination.

I thank my stars I have none.'

'Pardon me,'
replied Desprez,
still humbly,
but
with a return of spirit at sight of a distinction
to be drawn;
'pardon me,
Casimir.

You possess,
even
to an eminent degree,
the commercial imagination.

It was the lack of that in me - it appears it is my weak point - that has led
to these repeated shocks.

By the commercial imagination the financier forecasts the destiny of his investments,
marks the falling house -
'
'Egad,'
interrupted Casimir:

'our friend the stable-boy appears
to have his share of it.'

The Doctor was silenced;
and the meal was continued and finished principally
to the tune of the brother-in-law's not very consolatory conversation.

He entirely ignored the two young English painters,
turning a blind eyeglass
to their salutations,
and continuing his remarks as if he were alone in the bosom of his family;
and
with every second word he ripped another stitch out of the air balloon of Desprez's vanity.

By the time coffee was over the poor Doctor was as limp as a napkin.

'Let us go and s