.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 54464
   :PG.Title: John Herring, Volume 2 (of 3)
   :PG.Released: 2017-03-31
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Sabine Baring-Gould
   :DC.Title: John Herring, Volume 2 (of 3)
              A West of England Romance
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1883
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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JOHN HERRING, VOLUME 2 (OF 3)
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      JOHN HERRING

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      *A WEST OF ENGLAND ROMANCE*

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      BY SABINE BARING-GOULD

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      AUTHOR OF 'MEHALAH'

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      IN THREE VOLUMES

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      VOL. II.

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      LONDON
      SMITH, ELDER, & CO, 15 WATERLOO PLACE
      1883

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      [All rights reserved]

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   CONTENTS

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   OF

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   THE SECOND VOLUME

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   CHAPTER

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XXI.  `The Cub`_
XXII.  `Moonshine and Diamonds`_
XXIII.  `Paste`_
XXIV.  `The Oxenham Arms`_
XXV.  `A Levée`_
XXVI.  `The Shekel`_
XXVII.  `Cobbledick's Rheumatics`_
XXVIII.  `Caught in the Act`_
XXIX.  `A Race`_
XXX.  `Between Cup and Lip`_
XXXI.  `Joyce's Patient`_
XXXII.  `Destitute`_
XXXIII.  `Transformation`_
XXXIV.  `Herring's Stockings`_
XXXV.  `Beggary`_
XXXVI.  `Mirelle's Guests`_
XXXVII.  `A Second Summons`_
XXXVIII.  `A Virgin Martyr`_
XXXIX.  `Welltown`_
XL.  `Noel!  Noel!`_





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.. _`THE CUB`:

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   JOHN HERRING.

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   CHAPTER XXI.

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   THE CUB.

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Mirelle was conscious of a change in
Trecarrel towards her.  She ceased to engross
his attentions, which were now directed
towards Orange.  She could not recall
anything she had said or done that would account
for this change.  When the Captain was alone
with her, he was full of sympathy and
tenderness as before, but this was only when they
were alone.  Trecarrel argued with himself
that it would be unfair and ungentlemanly to
throw her over abruptly.  He would lower
her into the water little by little, but the
souse must come eventually.  Some of the
martyrs were let down inch by inch into
boiling pitch, others were cast in headlong,
and the fate of the latter was the preferable,
and the judge who sentenced to it was the
most humane.  Mirelle suffered.  For the first
time in her life her heart had been roused,
and it threw out its fibres towards Trecarrel
for support.  She was young, an exile, among
those who were no associates, and he was the
only person to whom she could disclose her
thoughts and with whom she could converse
as an equal.  He had met her with warmth
and with assurances of sympathy.  Of late
he had drawn back, and she had been left
entirely to herself, whilst his attention was
engrossed by Orange Tramplara.

But Orange, with no small spice of
vindictiveness in her nature, urged the Captain
to show civility to Mirelle.  She knew the
impression Trecarrel had made on her cousin's
heart, and, now that she was sure of the
Captain, she was ready to encourage him to
play with and torture her rival.  Women are
only cruel to their own sex, and towards them
they are remorseless.

'Do speak to Mirelle, she is so lonely.
She does not get on with us.  She does not
understand our ways, she is Frenchified,' said
Orange, with an amiable smile.  The Captain
thought this very kind of his betrothed, and
was not slow to avail himself of the
permission.  Nevertheless, Mirelle perceived the
insincerity of his profession.  She was
unaware of the engagement.  This had not been
talked about, and was by her unsuspected.
Orange was well aware of the fascination
exerted over Trecarrel by Mirelle: she knew
that her own position with him had been
threatened, almost lost.  She was unable to
forgive her cousin for her unconscious rivalry.
She did not attempt to forgive her.  She
sought the surest means of punishing her.
Mirelle was uneasy and unhappy.  She
considered all that had passed between her and
Trecarrel.  He had not professed more than
fraternal affection, but his manner had
implied more than his words had expressed.
She became silent and abstracted, not more
than usual towards the Trampleasures, for
she had never spoken more than was necessary
to them, nor had opened to them in the
least, but silent before Trecarrel, and
abstracted from her work at all times.  The
frank confidence she had accorded him was
withdrawn, their interchange of ideas
interrupted.  She found herself now with no one
to whom she could unfold, and she suffered
the more acutely for having allowed herself to
open at all.  She began now to wish that
John Herring were nearer, and to suspect
that she had not treated him with sufficient
consideration.

Mirelle was not jealous of Orange: she
was surprised that Captain Trecarrel should
find attractions in her.  Mirelle had formed
her own conception of her cousin's character;
she thought her to be generous, warm, and
impulsive; coarse in mind and feeling, but
yet kindly.  How could a gentleman such as
the Captain find charms in such a person?
Mirelle did not see the money, nor did she
measure correctly the character of Orange.

About this time young Sampson Tramplara
began to annoy her with his attentions,
offered uncouthly.  The youth was perfectly
satisfied with himself, he believed himself to
be irresistible and his manner to be
accomplished.  He was wont to chuck chambermaids
under the chin, and to lounge over the
bar flirting with the 'young lady' at the tap,
but was unaccustomed to the society of ladies,
and felt awkward in their presence.

Mirelle at once allured and repelled him.
He could not fail to admire her beauty, but
he was unable to attain ease of manner in her
presence.  She seemed to surround herself
with an atmosphere of frost that chilled him
when he ventured near.  After a while, when
the first unfamiliarity had worn off, through
meeting frequently at meals and in the
evenings, he attempted to force himself on her
notice by bragging of his doings with dogs
and horses, addressing himself to his father
and mother, but keeping an eye on Mirelle
and observing the effect produced on her
mind by his exploits.

After that he ventured to address her; to
admire her embroidery, her tinsel flowers, her
cut-paper lace, and to pass coarse flatteries on
them and her; and when this only froze her
into frostier stiffness, to attempt to take her
by storm, by rollicking fun and insolent
familiarities.

He was hurt by the way in which she
ignored him.  He never once caught her eye
when telling his best hunting exploits.  His
raciest jokes did not provoke a smile on her
lips.  He could extract from her no words
save cold answers to pointed questions.

Her position in the house became daily
less endurable, and she could see no means
of escape from it.  She had appealed to her
guardian to allow her to return to the convent
of the Sacred Heart, but had met with a
peremptory refusal.  A fluttering hope had
sprung up that Trecarrel might be her saviour,
a hope scarce formulated, indistinctly existing,
but now that had died away.

Once she appealed to Mr. Trampleasure
against his son.  She begged that he would
insist on young Sampson refraining from
causing her annoyance by his impertinence.
But she obtained no redress.  'My dear
missie! the boy is a good boy, full of spirit.
He comes of the right stuff—true Trampleasure,
girl!  We don't set up to Carrara
marble here.  You must treat him in the
right way.  Flip him over the nose with your
knitting pins, or run your needle into his
thumb, and he will keep his distance.  You
can be sharp enough when you like, and say
words that cut like razors.  Try some of
your smartness on Sampy, and he will sneak
away with his ears down.  I know the boy;
he is not smart at repartee.  You should
have heard how Polly Skittles set him down
t'other day.'

'Pray, who is Polly Skittles?'

'The barmaid at the Pig-and-Whistle.'

'I decline absolutely to take lessons from
a Pig-and-Whistle barmaid how to deal with
a booby.'

'Missie!' exclaimed the old man, flaming
red.  'You forget—he is my son.'

'No one could possibly doubt it,' said
Mirelle, and walked away.

After that, so far from old Tramplara
making his son desist from annoying Mirelle,
he egged him on to it.  The old man's pride
was hurt at the scorn with which the girl
treated both him and his son—a scorn she
took no pains to conceal.

'Look you here, Sampy,' said Tramplara,
'if the girl is to be had, you had better say
Snap.  There is her six thousand pounds,
which must be kept in the family.  True by
you, it is now sunk in Ophir; but I expect
some day to bring it out of Ophir turned into
twelve thousand.  If she marries, her
husband will be demanding the money, and that
might lead to unpleasantness.  As Scripture
says, "Live peaceably with all men," and I
say the same, when money is involved.  I will
tell you something more.  I do not believe,
I cannot believe, that six thousand pounds
represent the total of old Strange's estate.
There must be more money somewhere—perhaps
in a Brazilian bank; and all that is
wanted is for one of us to go over and find
out.  You won't convince me that a diamond
merchant doing a roaring trade for a quarter
of a century made no more than six thousand
pounds.  I have always heard that the
diamond trade is a very beautiful and delicate
business, giving rich returns.  With caution
you manage to get as many diamonds out of
the niggers as from their masters, and you
pay five shillings to the former where fifty
pounds won't satisfy the latter.  I leave you
to guess what profits are made.  If we had
not our hands full of Ophir, I would go myself
to Brazil, or send you, to see about James
Strange's leavings.  Six thousand pounds!
Why, that is what he sent over to meet
present contingencies.  He intended drawing
the rest when settled.  Mark this, Sampy.
Should a breath of cold air come down off
the moors on Ophir, and somewhat chill that
warm concern, so as to make it advisable for
either or both of us to take a turn out of
England—Brazil is the word.'

'Have you written to Brazil?'

'Of course I have.  To the English
Consul at Bahia, and have offered to tip
him handsomely if he sends me word that
old Strange left money there.  But I have
had no answer as yet.'

As the attentions of young Tramplara
became more offensive and more difficult to
avoid, Mirelle appealed in despair to Captain
Trecarrel.

'My dear Mirelle, what can I do?  He is
the son of the house, and I visit there.  If I
were to quarrel with him, I should be
forbidden the house, and then,' with a tender
look out of the Trecarrel blue eyes, 'I should
see no more of you.'

'I thought gentlemen could always take
action in such matters.  Voyez!  In France I
step up to a gentleman, and say, That person
yonder has looked at me insultingly.  Then
the gentleman who is a perfect stranger
goes across the street and knocks down the
insolent one.'

'That would involve an action for assault,
and the estate would not bear it,' said
Trecarrel, sadly.  'If it were worth a couple
of hundred more, I might do it.  I know an
excellent fellow who knocked a young farmer
head over heels in the graveyard on leaving
church, because he had looked from his pew
admiringly at the young lady this
gentleman was about to marry.  He compromised
the matter by getting a commission for the
young farmer, but it cost him a lot of money.
These are not the days, my dear Mirelle,
when any man may be heroic; heroism is
only compatible with a balance at the bank.
I'll tell you, however, what I can do, and that
I will do, as it falls within my means to do
it.  I will invite young Sampson to a supper
at the King's Arms, and I will then talk
the thing over reasonably with him.  Put
your mind at ease.  I have great influence
with the cub, who looks up to me as a sort of
model, and I do not doubt that I shall induce
him to desist from his attentions.'

But Captain Trecarrel had overrated his
influence.  The cub continued his offensive
conduct.

One day when he had intruded on her in
the summer-house, where she was writing at
her desk—her father's desk—she suddenly
recalled Herring's interference at West Wyke.

'What—-writing a love-letter,' asked
young Sampson, lounging on the table
opposite her, and trying to look into her eyes.
'Oh dear, how I wish it was to me!'

Mirelle lifted the flap of the writing-case,
and took out the small square ruler, and with
her finger pushed it across the table in the
direction of Mr. Sampson, without raising her
eyes from the writing.

Young Tramplara looked at the ruler,
then at Mirelle.  She took no more notice of
him, except that she wrote on a piece of
folded paper the name and address of John
Herring, and when Sampson attempted again
to speak she tossed the paper before him and
pointed to the ruler.

He rose scowling.  He perfectly understood
what she meant: another impertinence,
and she would write to John Herring to
break that ruler across his skull.  Her
coolness, her utter contempt for him, the galling
of his pride, filled him with rage; but he was
a coward, and so he rose from his seat, thrust
his hands into his pockets, and sauntered out
of the summer-house whistling 'The girl I
left behind me.'





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.. _`MOONSHINE AND DIAMONDS`:

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   CHAPTER XXII.


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   MOONSHINE AND DIAMONDS.

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Mirelle and Orange were dressing for the
ball in the same room; that is, Orange had
come into the room of Mirelle for her to do
her hair.  Mirelle was perfect in this art; her
delicate fingers turned the curls in the most
graceful and becoming arrangement.  This
was an art above the sweep of the powers
of the maid-of-all-work.  Orange, in return,
offered to do Mirelle's hair.

'But Mirelle, my dear Mirelle!  You look
like a ghost, all in white.  Not a particle of
colour!  It does not suit you; you are so
pale.  Good heavens! let me look at your
hands.'  Orange took the long narrow fingers
in hers, and held the delicate hand before the
candle.  It was transparent, and thus only
did it show a rosy red.

'Unless I had seen it, I would not have
believed that there was blood in you,' said
Orange; and then she glanced at herself
proudly in the cheval glass.  'Do look at me,
Mirelle.  I am glowing with life.  See my
lips, my cheeks—how warm they are!  My
eyes flicker, whereas you are as though spun
out of moonshine.  There is not the faintest
rose in your cheek, and your lips alone show
the least tinge of life.  Your eyes have no
sparkle in them; they are dark pools in which
nothing lives.  I wish you would stand
between me and the lamp; I believe I should
see the light through you.  Whoever saw
flesh like yours?  It is not flesh, it is wax.
You must paint.  You are unendurable like
this—like a corpse of a bride risen from her
coffin come to haunt the living.'

'I shall put on my diamonds,' said Mirelle.

'What diamonds?'

'My mother's.'

'I did not know you had them.'

'Yes, I kept them with my own things,
in my own box.  When my mother died
they were committed to me.'

'You cannot wear diamonds; a girl in
England does not put on jewelry.'

'I am going to wear them.'

Then Mirelle opened a little case, and
drew from it a coronet and a necklace of
diamonds.

'Fasten the crown about my head,' she
said; 'I can put the necklace on myself.'

Orange stepped back in astonishment.
She had never seen anything so beautiful.

'Why, Mirelle, they must be very
valuable.  How they twinkle, how they will
sparkle downstairs among the many lights.'  Then
with a touch of malice, 'What will
Captain Trecarrel think?  Now you look
like a queen of the fairies.  He will fairly
lose his heart to you to-night.'

She saw a spot of colour come into each
cheek.  It angered her, and she went on
with bitterness in her soul, 'You know that
you belong to his class; and he will think
so as well to-night.  I suppose he and you
will despise us humble folk who have to
do with trade and business, and you will
have eyes only for each other.  What a
couple you will make, side by side, he with
his aristocratic air, and you bejewelled like
a princess!'

She looked at herself in the glass and
then at Mirelle, and was reassured.  No
comparison could be drawn between them.
She, Orange, was splendid.  She wore pink
with carnation ribands, and a red rose in her
hair, another in her bosom.  Her dark and
abundant hair and her large dark eyes looked
well, set in red.  The colour in her cheeks
was heightened.  Her bosom heaved, she had
a fine bust and throat, and her features were
handsome.  There was life, love, heat in her.
Who could care for a snowdrift—nay, for a
frozen fog, though it sparkled?

'Come down, Mirelle: it is time.  I have
already heard one carriage drive up.  How
we shall get every one who is invited into this
house I do not know.'

'I will go down presently.  You go on
without me.  I am not wanted as yet.'

Mirelle did not descend for half an hour.

When she entered the room where the
guests were assembled, it was full.  She did
not look round her except for a seat, and
when she had discovered one she walked to it.
She knew nothing of the persons there: they
were excellent on their appropriate shelf, but
their shelf was not her shelf.

Trecarrel and Herring were both present,
and saw her.  They had been watching for
her to come in.  Her appearance surprised
them.  In the well-lighted room, in her white
muslin, with white satin bows, and with her
head and delicate throat glittering with
diamonds, she seemed a spirit; a spectral White
Lady.  Her face was as colourless as her dress,
save for the fine blue veins that marked her
temples.  She seemed too fragile, too ethereal
to belong to the earth.  Her beauty was of
an order rare in England, unknown in the West.

Captain Trecarrel started forward.  'Countess
Mirelle,' said he, 'you are unprovided
with a flower.  Am I too impertinent if I offer
you one?  I thought you might possibly be
without, and I have brought you a spray of
white heath.  Will you accept it?'

She raised her eyes, smiled somewhat
sadly at him, and took the sprig with a slight
bow.  Then she put it to her bosom.  As she
was doing so, her eye encountered that of
Herring, who stood by.  She recalled his offer
of white heath made on the day of her father's
funeral.

'It brings good luck,' said Trecarrel.  The
same words that Herring had employed.
Mirelle's hand trembled, and she looked
timidly, flutteringly, at Herring.

'Ah!' said he, 'all the bells have fallen off.'

Then she said, in a half-pleading tone,
'Mr. Herring, I was once very rude and
very wrong when I refused the same from
you.  Now I am rightly punished.'

She removed the sprig.  'You see, Captain,'
she said, as she handed it back to Trecarrel,
'the heath has rained off all its white
bells.  I am not destined to receive good luck
from either you or Mr. Herring.  I thank you
for the kind attention.  I cannot wear the
heath now.'

'Are you engaged for the first dance?'
asked Herring.

Mirelle looked at Trecarrel, who turned
his head away.  He must, of course, open the
ball with Orange.  After a pause, in a tone
tinged with disappointment, she said she was
not engaged, and Herring secured her.

The appearance of Mirelle in the ball-room
caused general surprise.  It was an apparition
rather than an appearance.  The prevailing
opinion admitted her beauty, but decided
that it was of too refined and pure a type
to be pleasing; it was a type suitable for a
statue but not for a partner.  Men love
after their kind; blood calls for blood, not
for ice.

The ladies discussed her diamonds, and
concluded unanimously that they were paste.
No one allows to another what he does not
possess himself.

'You know, my dear, she comes from
Paris, and in Paris they make 'em of paste
for tenpence to look as natural as real stones
worth a thousand pounds.'

'But her father was a diamond merchant.'

'True by you, but these stones were her
mother's I make no doubt, and that mother
was a gambling old Spanish Countess, who
would sell her soul for money.  I've heard
Mr. Trampleasure say as much.'

'She don't look as if she had any constitution
to speak of,' observed one old lady.

'That transparent skin,' answered another,
'always means that the heart is bad.  I ought
to know, for my uncle was a chemist.  The
highest person in the land—and when I say it,
I mean the highest—came into my uncle's
place one morning and asked for a seidlitz-powder,
and he took it on the premises, and
he told my uncle that he never took a better
seidlitz in his life.'

'She is proud as Lucifer,' said one.
'Look! she's gone and refused Mr. Sampson
Tramplara.  That is too bad, and she owes her
meat and bread, and the roof that covers her,
to the charity of his father.'

'He is getting angry,' said the lady whose
uncle was in the chemical line.  'Sampson
is not one who can bear to be treated impolitely.'

'She will dance with no one but that
strange gentleman whom they call Herring,
and Captain Trecarrel.  Stuck up because of
her rank, I suppose.'

'Ah! as if her rank was anything.  The
highest in the land spoke quite affable to my
uncle, and said his seidlitz was the best seidlitz
he had ever drunk.'

'Do you call Mr. Sampson handsome?'

'Handsome!  I should rather say so; and
better than that, he will be rich.'

'Better than all, he will be good,' said a
serious lady, Mrs. Flamank, impressively.

'The highest in the land put down twopence
for his seidlitz like any other man.
But that seidlitz cost my uncle five-and-twenty
pounds, for he paid that sum for a Royal
arms, lion and unicorn and little dog all
complete, to put up over his shop door; and
an inscription, "Chemist (by appointment) to
His Royal Highness."  But I never heard that
it brought him more custom.  Still, there
was the honour, and if that were a satisfaction
to him, I don't blame him.'

'What do you think of Orange Tramplara
hooking the Captain?'

'The hooking was quite as much on his
side as on hers.  He is poor as a rat, and she
wants position, so the transaction is one of
simple sale and barter.'

'The highest in the land,' began again
the lady whose uncle had been a chemist; but
at these words the ladies broke up their party
round her, and escaped to other parts of the
room.

Sampson Trampleasure would not take his
refusal.  He stood by the side of Mirelle, his
cheek flushed, and his eye twinkling with
anger.

'I don't see why you should dance with
some gentlemen and refuse others,' he said
sulkily.

'I have refused no gentleman,' answered
Mirelle, looking across the room.

He was too stupid to understand the
rebuff.  He persisted in worrying her.  'Well,'
he said, 'if you won't stand up with me, you
must let me take you to supper.'

She was silent a moment, raised her eyes
timidly and entreatingly to John Herring,
and said, 'I am already engaged.'  Herring
coloured with pleasure and stepped forward
to her assistance.

'You must not tease the Countess,' he said.
'She confesses that she is not strong and able
to dance often.  She has fixed on the number
of dances she will engage in, and more
fortunate applicants have forestalled you, and
put their names on her card.  You have only
yourself to blame that you did not press your
claim in proper time.'

'I say,' observed Sampson, with an ugly
smile on his lips, 'Mirelle, don't you go
dancing too often with Trecarrel.  Orange won't
like it.  When a girl is about to be married
to a man, she don't like to have another girl
coquetting with her deary.'

'Mr. Sampson Trampleasure,' said Herring,
stepping forward, 'this is your father's
house, and I——' but Mirelle's hand grasped
his arm, and arrested what he was about to
say.  He looked round.  At the same moment
a pair of waltzers caught Sampson, and with
the shock he was driven into the midst of the
whirling circle, when he was struck by another
couple, and sent flying at a tangent to the
door.

Herring looked at Mirelle.  She was
trembling slightly, and her face was, if
possible, whiter than before.  Dark shadows
formed under her eyes, making them look
unusually large and bright.

She did not speak, but continued grasping
Herring's arm, unconscious what she was
doing; he could feel by the spasmodic
contraction of her fingers that she was more
agitated than she allowed to appear.  He stood
patiently at her side, seeing that she was
distressed, and supposing that the insolence of
young Tramplara was the occasion of her
distress.

Presently she recovered herself enough to
speak.  She put her handkerchief to her brow,
and then, with feminine address, gave her
emotion an excuse that would disguise its
real cause.

'He offends me,' she said; 'I am
unaccustomed to this sort of treatment.  Some
persons when they go among wolves learn to
howl.  With me it will be a matter of years
before I can school myself to endure their
bark.  I have lived hitherto in a walled garden
among lilies and violets and faint sweet roses,
and suddenly I am transplanted into a field of
cabbages, where some of the plants are mere
stumps, and all harbour slugs.'  She paused
again.  Just then Trecarrel came up.  She
let go her grasp of Herring's arm.  She had
forgotten that she was still holding it.
Trecarrel came smiling his sunniest, with his
blue eyes full of languor.  As he approached
she shrank back, and then drew herself up.

'I think, Mirelle,' said he, 'you are
engaged to me for the next quadrille.'  He was
looking at her diamonds and appraising them;
and he wondered whether, after all, he had
not made a mistake in taking Orange instead
of Mirelle.

'If I were her husband,' he considered, 'I
could keep a tight hand on Tramplara, so that
he could not very well make away with the
six thousand pounds.  I wish I had known of
these diamonds a few weeks ago.'

Mirelle looked at him steadily.  She had
by this time completely recovered her
composure.  'Am I to congratulate you, Captain
Trecarrel?'

'What on?' he asked.

'I have just learned your engagement to Orange.'

'That is an old story,' he said, getting
red; 'I thought you were admitted into
the plot six months ago.'

'I did not know it till this minute.'

'There is the music striking up.  Will
you take my arm?'

'I must decline.  I shall not dance this
quadrille.  See, Orange is without a partner.'

She rose, and to avoid saying more
walked into the hall, and thence, through the
front door, upon the terrace.  The moon was
shining, and the air without was cool.  In the
ball-room the atmosphere had become oppressive.

'Would you kindly open the window?'
asked Orange, turning to Herring, and casting
him a smile.  She was standing up for the
quadrille with her Captain.  The young man
at once went to the window and threw it open.

The night was still without.  A few curd-like
clouds hung in the sky; the leaves of the
trees, wet with dew, were glistening in the
moonlight like silver.  Far away in the
extensive landscape a few stars twinkled out
of dark wooded background, the lights from
distant villages.

There was a vacant settee in the window,
and Herring sat on it, leaning on his arm, and
looking out.

Poor Mirelle!  What could be done for
her?  Her position was intolerable.  The
only escape that he could devise was for her
to return to West Wyke.  But was it likely
that Mr. Trampleasure would consent to this?
And in the next place, would Cicely Battishill
care to receive her?

'Mr. Herring,' said Orange, 'a gentleman
is needed to make up a set.  May I introduce
you to Miss Bowdler?'

Of course he must dance, and dance with
the fascinating Bowdler—a thin young lady,
with harshly red hair, red eyelashes, a freckled
skin, and eyes that had been boiled in soda.
Miss Bowdler was the daughter of a banker,
an heiress, and Trecarrel had thought of her,
but could not make up his mind to the
colourless eyes and red lashes.

Herring danced badly.  His thoughts were
not in the figures, nor with his partner.  He
mistook the figures.  He spoke of the weather,
and had nothing else to say.  Miss Bowdler
considered him a stupid young man, and that
this quadrille was the very dullest in which
she had danced.  When it was over, he
returned to the window, and as there was an
end of the settee unoccupied, and the rest of it
was occupied by the chemist's niece and a
raw acquaintance to whom she was telling the
story of the highest in the land—'And when
I say the highest, I mean the highest,'—and
his seidlitz, Herring was able to take his place
at the window without being obliged to speak
to anyone.  He looked again into the moonlight,
and towards the dark woods of Werrington,
still revolving in his mind the question, What
was to become ef Mirelle?  He saw that she
would take the matter into her own hands and
insist on being allowed to go elsewhere.  She
could not remain in a house where the son
was allowed to treat her with insolence.  She
would like to return to France, to her dear
convent of the Sacré Coeur.  The thought was
dreadful to Herring, for it implied that he
should never see her again.

He fancied, whilst thus musing, that he
heard voices on the terrace, and next that he
caught Sampson Tramplara's tones.  He did
not give much attention to the sounds, till
he heard distinctly the bell-like voice of
Mirelle, 'Let go this instant, sir!'

He sprang to his feet and was outside the
window in a moment.  He had been sitting
looking in the opposite direction from that in
which he heard the voices; now he turned in
the direction of the garden house.

At the door of this summer-house he saw
young Tramplara, and the white form of
Mirelle.  The moon was on her, and her head
sparkled with the diamonds of her coronet,
but there was no corresponding sparkle about
her neck.

Herring flew to the spot, and saw that
young Sampson had snatched the necklet from
her throat.  The diamond chain hung
twinkling from his hand.

'Restore that instantly,' said Herring,
catching the young man's hand at the wrist.
'You scoundrel, what are you about?'

'Keep off, will you!' said the cub.  'I
should like to know your right to interfere
between me and my cousin, Mirie Strange.
I only want to test the stones of her chain.
The chaps in the dancing-room say they be
paste and a cussed sham.  I reckon their
mothers have put them up to it.  I've got a
bet on with young Croker, and I want to try
if they'll scratch glass, that is all.  So now
will you remove your hand and take yourself off?'

Herring doubled up Tramplara's hand,
and wrenched the necklace from it.

'Take your chain, Countess.  And now
for you, you ill-conditioned cur, I warn you.
Touch her again, and I will fling you over the
wall.  Offer her another insult, and you shall
suffer for it.  If I spare you this time it is
because this is your father's house, and I have
been his guest.  But I will not eat at his
table again, that I may reserve my liberty of
action, and have my hands free to chastise
you should you again in any way offend the
Countess Mirelle Garcia.'  He turned to
Mirelle.  'I once before offered you what
help and protection it was possible to me to
render, and now I renew the offer.'

'Oh, Mr. Herring,' said she, 'before, I
refused your offer very ungraciously.  I said
then that I was able to help myself.  I did
not then know the rude elements with which
I should have to contend, and I was unaware
of my own weakness.  Now, with my better
knowledge, I accept your offer.'

'Thank you,' he replied: 'you make me
this night a very proud man.'

'Mr. Herring,' she pursued, 'I will give
you at once the only token I have that I rely
upon you.  This person who snatched the
jewels from my neck, if capable of such an
act as that, is capable of another.'  Her voice
came quick, her bosom heaved, the angry
blood was hammering at her temples.  'I do
not believe that these diamonds are secure in
this house.  If he could wrench them from
my throat, he would take them from my trunk.
Voyez! je vous donne toutes les preuves
possibles que j'ai de la confiance en vous.'  She
disengaged the tiara from her hair.

'There, there!' she said hastily, 'take
both the crown and the necklace.  I intrust
them to you to keep for me.  I know that I
can rely upon you; I do not know in whom
else I can place trust.  All are false except
you: you are true.'

'Countess!  I cannot do this.'

'Why not?  Do you shrink already from
exercising the trust you offered?'

'Not so, but——'

'But I entreat you,' she interrupted with
a trembling voice.  'Ces diamants-ci appartenaient
à ma mère—à ma chère, chère mère;
c'est pour ça qu'ils ont tant de valeur pour
moi.'  She forced a smile and made a slight
curtsey, and turned to go.

Young Sampson Tramplara was standing
near, scowling.  Mirelle's eyes rested on him.

'Mr. Herring,' she said, 'should I need
your help at any time, may I write?'

'Certainly, and I place myself entirely at
your service.'

Young Tramplara burst into a rude laugh.

'The guardianship of the orphan was
committed to Tramplara, then it passed to
Tramplara and Herring, and now, finally, it is
vested in Herring alone.'

To what extent the guardianship of that
frail white girl had passed to Herring, to what
an extent also he had become trustee for her
fortune, neither she nor Sampson Tramplara
guessed.  He had uttered his sneer, but the
words were full of truth.

Then there floated faintly on the air,
whether coming from the house or from without
could not be told—mingling with the dance
music, yet distinct from it—the vibrations of
metallic tongues in a musical instrument like
an Æolian harp, and the tune seemed to be
that of the old English madrigal—

   |  Since first I saw your face, I resolv'd
   |    To honour and renown you!
   |  If now I be disdain'd, I wish
   |    My heart had never known you.





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.. _`PASTE`:

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   CHAPTER XXIII.


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   PASTE.

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Mirelle was subjected to no annoyance after
the ball, for both old Tramplara and his son
were at Ophir nearly the whole of their time.
They returned occasionally to Launceston,
but never together.  One was always left in
charge of the mine, and this was usually
young Sampson.  When he did come home, he
kept out of the way of Mirelle, and old Sampson
was too much engrossed in his gold mine to
think of her.

She lived in the house, but hardly belonged
to it.  Her life was apart from all its
interests, pursuits, and pleasures.  She spoke
little and showed herself seldom.  Orange
was full of her approaching marriage, and
could give attention only to her dresses.  Her
friend and confidante, Miss Bowdler, was
constantly there, discussing the bridal garments
and the costume of the bridesmaids.  In her
own little pasty mind Miss Bowdler
harboured much rancour and verjuice.  She was
envious of Orange's happiness; she had
herself aspired to Trecarrel, and she felt no
tender delight in the better success of Orange.
But she disguised her spite for the sake of
Sampson, whom she hoped to catch, now that
Trecarrel had escaped her net.  Orange knew
perfectly the state of the Bowdlerian mind,
but that mattered little to her.  Women
naturally hate each other, and are accustomed
to live in an atmosphere of simulated
affection.  She wished greatly to secure the
Bowdler for Sampson, so as to bring money
into the family.

Mrs. Trampleasure was a harmless old
woman, who sniffed about the house, being
troubled with a perpetual cold in the head
and a perpetual forgetfulness of the handkerchief
in her pocket.  Mrs. Trampleasure had
got very few topics of conversation, for her
limits of interest were few—little local
tittle-tattle, and the delinquencies of Bella, the
maid-of-all-work.

The horrible evening concerts were
discontinued, and Mirelle ventured to sit at the
piano and play for her own delectation,
knowing that Orange was too wrapped up in her
new gown, and Mrs. Trampleasure too
absorbed in counting the stitches of her
knitting, to give her a thought.  Whenever the
Captain appeared, Mirelle retired either to
her room or to the summer-house.  Whether
in one or the other, she sat at the window,
looking out but seeing nothing, her chin in
her hand, steeped in thought.

Any one who had watched Mirelle from
her arrival in England would have noticed a
change in her face.  It was more transparent
and thinner than before.  But this was not
that which constituted the principal change.
The face had gained in expression.  At first
it was impassive; now it was stamped with
the seal of passive suffering, a seal that can
never be disguised or effaced.  According to
Catholic theology certain sacraments confer
character, and these cannot be iterated.  But
the sacrament of suffering confers character
likewise, and it can be repeated again and
again, and ever deepens the character
impressed.  This stamp gave to Mirelle's face a
sweetness and pathos it had not hitherto
possessed.  Before this time a cold and
haughty soul had looked out of her eyes, now
warmth had come to that frozen soul, and it
was flowing with tears.  She was still proud,
but she was no longer self-reliant.  Hitherto
she had repelled sympathy because she had
felt no need for it, now her spirit had become
timorous, and though it still resented
intrusion it pleaded for pity.

As she sat, evening after evening in the
window, doing nothing, seeing nothing, her
thoughts turned with painful iteration to all
that had passed between herself and Captain
Trecarrel since they had first met.  For a
few days after the ball she was resentful.  She
considered that he had treated her badly; he
had attempted, and attempted successfully, to
win her heart, and he had gained his end
without making a return of his own.  He had
been cruel to her.

After a while, however, she saw the whole
course of affairs in a different light.  It struck
her that in all probability he had been engaged
to Orange—tacitly, may be, and not formally—for
a very long while.  Something that
Orange had said led her to suppose this, and
she remembered that the Captain had
admitted as much in his answer at the ball when
she congratulated him on his engagement.
'That is an old story,' he had said; 'I thought
you had been admitted to the plot six months
ago.'  If he really had been engaged to
Orange ever since she had known him, his
conduct was explicable in a manner that cleared
him of blame.  He had looked on Mirelle as
one about to become a cousin by marriage.
Mirelle was much with Orange, and therefore
it was his duty to be kind to her, and
to act and speak to her as to a relation of
her who was about to become his wife.
Perhaps Orange had considered how unpleasant it
would be for Mirelle to remain in Dolbeare
after she had gone, and had proposed to the
Captain that she should accompany them to
Trecarrel.  If that were so, and it was very
probable, the Captain's solicitude to be on a
friendly footing was explained, so was also the
interest he took in her money affairs.

'If I had only known!' sighed Mirelle.
'If I had only guessed that they were engaged,
I would never have been led to think of him
in any other light than as a sort of brother or
dear friend and adviser.  Why did Orange
not tell me?'  But when she felt disposed to
reproach Orange, she was conscious that she
was unjust.  She and Orange had not been
more than superficially friendly.  She had
kept Miss Trampleasure at a distance, and had
declined to open her heart to her.  What
right then had she to expect the confidence of
Orange?  Both the Captain and his betrothed
no doubt supposed from the first that Mirelle
was aware of the engagement, or at least
suspected it; and he was friendly because he
knew that his friendliness was incapable of
misconstruction.  The colour tinged Mirelle's
brow and cheeks, and the tears of humiliation
filled her eyes.

She endeavoured to undo the past by
forcing herself to think of Captain Trecarrel
as the betrothed of Orange, but it is not easy
to tear a new passion out of the heart that is
young and has never loved before.  The heart
of Mirelle was not shallow, and feelings once
received struck deep root.

It was a comfort to her that Orange was
too much occupied in her own concerns to
notice that she was unhappy; it was at least a
satisfaction to be able to bleed without vulgar
eyes marking the blood, and rude fingers
probing the wound.

At first, when she thought that Captain
Trecarrel had trifled with her affections, she
had felt some bitterness spring up in her soul
towards him, but when she had changed her
view of the situation, and his conduct was
explicable without treachery, the idol that had
tottered stood again upright, and, alas! remained
an idol.

In reviewing the events of the ball, she
saw now that she had acted very unwisely.  She
had offered an unpardonable insult to the
family with which she was staying, and which
was, in its clumsy way, kind to her.  Young
Sampson had found his way to the dining-room
before supper, and had helped himself to
the wine.  She had seen him in the empty
room engaged on the various decanters; she
had seen him, for the room was on the ground-floor,
with large French windows opening on
to the terrace.  After he had tried the wines,
Sampson had come out to Mirelle, and,
attracted by the sparkle of the diamonds, had
demanded whether they were paste or real
stones.  She had refused to answer him, and
he had put out his hand to take the chain,
saying that he would soon ascertain by trying
them on a window-pane.  She was not justified
in thinking that he intended to keep them.
She was not justified in supposing that they
would not be safe from his cupidity in her
trunk.  When she had said as much in her
anger and excitement, she had offered him, and
through him the whole family, a gross and
unwarranted insult; and this insult she had
accentuated in the most offensive manner by
giving the jewels to a stranger to keep for her.

Mirelle put her hands over her face.  She
was ashamed of what she had done.  She had
acted unworthily of herself.  If Sampson had
insulted her with brutality, she had dealt him
in return a mortal blow.  Her only consolation
was, that neither Orange nor Mrs. Trampleasure
knew of the incident, and she hoped
that Sampson, for his own sake, would not
tell his father.

She made what amends she was able, but
it cost her proud spirit a struggle before she
could bring herself to it.  One Sunday that
young Sampson was at home, when he was
alone in the office, she went into the room
and stood by the table at which he was
writing.  He looked up, but had not the grace
to rise when he saw who stood before him.
Her eyes seemed preternaturally large, and
her lips trembled; she had her delicate fingers
folded on her bosom.

'Mr. Sampson,' she said, in a voice that
shook in spite of her effort to be firm, 'I
apologise to you for what I said.  You had
offended me, but the punishment exceeded
your deserts.'

'What did you say?  And when?'

'I am speaking of the evening of the ball.
You acted rudely in wrenching off my necklace,
and I spoke hastily respecting your conduct.
The language I used on that occasion
was injudicious and wrong.'

He looked at her puzzled.  Then, with an
ugly smirk, he said, 'So, as you have failed to
catch the Captain, you want to be sweets with me!'

Is it ever worth while stooping to conciliate
the base?  The ignoble mind is unable
to read the promptings of the generous spirit.
Mirelle was learning a lesson, as John Herring
was learning his, both in the same school—the
school of life, and the lessons each learned
were contrary to those they had been taught
in childhood.  They were finding out that
those lessons were impracticable, at least in
the modern world.

Mirelle recognised that she had made a
mistake.  The noble mind must fold its robes
about it, and not soil them by contact with
the unworthy.  She withdrew with her cheek
tingling as though it had been smitten.

Young Tramplara began to fawn on Miss
Bowdler, and she to flirt with him, in the
presence of Mirelle.  This was meant on his
part as a token to Mirelle that he was acceptable
to other ladies, and that they had charms
for him.  The uncouthness of young Sampson,
the squirms and languishings of the
red-eyelashed heiress, his heavy jokes and her
vapid repartees, were grotesque, and would
have provoked laughter, had not Mirelle been
too refined to find amusement in what is vulgar.

Mr. Sampson returned to the 'diggings,'
and his absence brought relief to Mirelle.

Captain Trecarrel had been away for some
days, staying in Exeter.  On his way thither
he visited Ophir, and got some of the
gold-grains from the working.  Ophir puzzled him;
Ophir hung on his heart.  It oppressed his
mind; it was a constant source of uneasiness
to him.  He resolved on his return from Exeter
to revisit it.  But if he had his doubts, others
had not; that was clear from the current of
visitors setting that way, and the influx of
applications for shares.  Shares went up.
Money came in, not in dribblets but in streams;
it had not to be squeezed out, it exuded
spontaneously.

In Exeter Captain Trecarrel had the gold
tested.  It was gold, not mundic; not
absolutely pure gold, there was copper with it,
but still it was gold.  Trecarrel got rid of
the gold-grains to the jeweller in part payment
for a ring to be presented to Miss Orange.  He
also purchased a handsome China mantelshelf
ornament as a present for Mrs. Trampleasure.
He got it cheap because the handle was broken
off.  He ordered it to be packed and sent to
Launceston to the old lady.  Then, when the
box was opened, the handle would be found
broken off, and the blame would be laid on
the carrier.  Unfortunately, however, the
tradesman wrapped the handle as well as
the ornamental jar in silver paper—each in a
separate piece.

When the box arrived and was opened, a
laugh was raised over the handle.  Then it
struck Mirelle that she ought to make a
present to Orange on her marriage.  But what
could she give her?  She had no money.
Then she thought of her diamonds, and
resolved to ask Mr. Herring to detach the
pendant from her necklet and send it her.
This she would give to Orange.  She took out
her desk and wrote the letter.  It was a formal
letter, but the ice was broken, she had begun
to write to him, and cold though the
communication was, the receipt of the letter filled
Herring with delight.  He at once complied
with her request.

Orange was profuse in her thanks.  She
kissed Mirelle, and admired the brooch.  Miss
Bowdler was at Dolbeare at the time, and
both looked at it in the window, with many
whispers and much raising of eyebrows.

That same afternoon Mirelle was with
Orange and the Bowdlers.  'Thank you so
very much,' said Orange.  'I shall value the
pendant quite as much as though the stones
were real diamonds.'

'They are real,' said Mirelle.

'The French make these things so wonderfully
like nature, that only experts can tell
the difference,' said Miss Bowdler.

'I suppose these were some of your
mother's stones,' said Orange.

'They were,' answered Mirelle.

'How generous, how kind of you to give
them to me,' said Orange, without a trace of
sarcasm in her voice—(English can make paste
imitations as well as the French)—'And
though these are only paste, still, I dare say
no one will know the difference.'

'They are real stones,' said Mirelle,
haughtily.

'My dear,' answered Orange, 'do you
know what a Cornish compliment is?  "Take
this, it is of no more use to me."  If these had
been genuine diamonds you would have kept
them for yourself; they would have been far
too valuable to be parted with lightly.  No
one gives away anything but what is worthless.
Look at Trecarrel's china jar.  He got
it cheap because it was faulty.  He gave it to
mother because he was bound to make her a
present; if she had been worth money, he
would not have sent her a worthless gift,
but because she has nothing he sends her a
nothing.  That is the way of the world.'

'The stones form part of a set my father
sent from Brazil to my mother in Paris.'

'Nevertheless they are imitations,' said
Orange.  'I took them to the jeweller here,
because, you see, my dear, if they had been
diamonds, I could not have accepted such a
costly present from you, but he unhesitatingly
pronounced them to be paste.  That,
however, does not matter to me; it justifies my
accepting and keeping the charming present,
which will always be valued by me, not for
the intrinsic worth, but as a memorial of your
love.'

'Give me the pendant instantly,' said
Mirelle, full of pride and anger.  'It is
impossible that my father, a diamond merchant,
could have offered my dear suffering mother
such an insult as to send her a set of sham
diamonds.'

She took the ornament, and went at once
to the jeweller.  She came away resentful and
humbled.  'That Mr. Strange should have dared!'

Not for a moment did it occur to her that
perhaps her mother had sold the stones, and
replaced them with paste.





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.. _`THE OXENHAM ARMS`:

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   CHAPTER XXIV.


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   THE OXENHAM ARMS.

.. vspace:: 2

As the time for his marriage approached,
Captain Trecarrel's uneasiness increased.  On
his way back to Launceston from Exeter he
got off the coach at Whiddon Down,
determined to have another look at Ophir.
He had heard a good deal about Ophir in
Exeter, and not much in its favour.  His
lawyer whom he had consulted had a rich
fund of reminiscences concerning Tramplara.
Lawyers as a rule are not squeamish, but
there was something about old Tramplara
which was not to the taste of the solicitor
Trecarrel employed.  He had been engaged
in a Cornish mining action in which his client
had prosecuted Tramplara; a good deal had
transpired on this occasion not encouraging
to those about to transact business with
Mr. Tramplara.  Much had come out, but more
had not come out, but was perfectly well
known to those engaged in the case.

'My advice to you is, give a wide berth to
the man.'

'I am going to marry his daughter,'
answered Trecarrel, ruefully.

'Oh!'—a pause ensued.  'How about settlements?'

'I am all right there,' said the Captain;
'till five thousand pounds is paid down, I do
not put my neck into the noose.  They may
bring me to the altar, but I will fold my arms
and sit down on the steps.  They cannot
legally marry a man against his will.'

'How about the family——' began the lawyer.

'Thank God, I don't marry the family,'
interrupted Trecarrel.  'When I have the
money and the girl—she is not bad-looking,
and will pass muster when clipped and
curry-combed—I kick the rest over.'

'Well, I wish you joy.'

Captain Trecarrel next consulted his
banker, and found that the money world was
shy of Ophir, and held Tramplara in much
the same esteem as did the legal world.

'Who are the directors of the company?'
asked the banker.

'There is a provisional list,' answered
Trecarrel.  'Old Tramplara tried hard to get
me on to it, but vainly is the trap set in the
sight of the bird.  Here is the prospectus.
You see the names: Sampson Trampleasure, of
Dolbeare, Launceston, Esq., Arundell Golitho
of Trevorgan, Esq., the Rev. Israel Flamank,
and some others of no greater importance.  I
have Tramplara's own copy, that is to say,
one he favoured me with, and, as you see,
he has pencilled in a few more names.  Here
is Mr. Battishill of West Wyke, the owner
of the estate, but whether he is already a
director, or only a possible director, I do not
know.'

'Who is Arundell Golitho, Esq., and
where is Trevorgan?'

'Never heard of the man, nor of the place.'

When Captain Trecarrel got off the coach,
he saw Herring waiting for the coach, to
intrust the diamond pendant to the coachman
for transmission to Mirelle.

'Halloo! you here?' exclaimed the Captain;
'I thought you lived at the extremity of
the known world, at Boscastle.'

'So I do; but I am here starting a mine.'

'Not a director of Ophir, eh?' asked
Trecarrel, eagerly, his blue eyes lighting up.

'No, I am not so ambitious as to embark
in gold, I content myself with lead; but if
my lead mine promises less than Ophir, its
performance, I trust, will be more sure.'

'Ah,' responded Trecarrel, dismally, 'you
are bitten with the prevailing distrust.  I
presume you have not taken shares in Ophir.'

'No; have you?'

'I am going to take a big share in the
concern.  I marry the Queen of Sheba.
Herring, I say, is there a public house near
where I can get a chop?  I am hungry and
wretched.  Come with me for charity's sake
and let us have a talk together about this
same Ophir.  I want your opinion; and
look here, I have old Tramplara's list of
directors, and on it in pencil is the name of
Squire Battishill of West Wyke.  He is a
respectable man, is he not?  You know him.'

'Yes; I am staying with him.'

'What sort of a man is he?'

'A gentleman every inch,—honourable and true.'

'Oh yes, I don't mean that.  They be
all honourable men, especially the Hon. Lawless
Lascar, who figures on the list.  Is he a
man of fortune?  If Ophir goes "scatt," as
they say here, is there property on which the
shareholders can come down?'

'Mr. Battishill is certainly not a director.'

'He is pencilled down as one, at all events,
and pencilled by Tramplara himself.  Tell
me, is there a decent inn hereabouts?'

'There is a very tolerable inn in Zeal, if
you do not mind descending a steep hill to
reach it—the Oxenham Arms.'

'Come with me.'

Zeal is a quaint village of one street, that
street being the high road from Exeter to
Launceston.  Since the time of which we
treat the high road has been carried by a new
line above the village, which has been left on
one side forgotten, and has gone quietly to
sleep.  In the midst of the street stands a
small chapel built of granite, and before it an
old granite cross mounted on several steps.
The houses are of 'cob,' that is, clay,
white-washed and thatched, with projecting
chambers over the doorways resting on oak posts
or granite pillars.  Below the chapel stood
the stately mansion of the Burgoynes facing
the road, with vaulted porch, mullioned
windows, and sculptured doorways.  The
Burgoyne family has gone, and now there swings
over the entrance a board adorned with the
arms of the Oxenham family.  The manor-house
has descended to become the village inn.

Into this inn, clean, but humble in its
pretensions, Herring introduced the Captain.

'I say, girl,' called Trecarrel to the maid,
'throw on some logs; the turf only smoulders.
And bring me some hot water and rum.  I am
cold and damp, and altogether dispirited and
drooping.  Let me have a steak as soon as
you can.'  Then to Herring: 'I am put out
confoundedly.  Ophir will not digest.  Tell
me candidly your opinion.'

'You are not treating me fairly,' said
Herring.  'You have no right to ask me
this question when you are about to become
closely allied to Mr. Trampleasure——'

'Oh, confound Tramplara.  I am not going
to marry him, nor his sniffing wife, nor his
cub of a son, heaven be praised! nor, better
than all, Ophir.  Nevertheless I want to know
something about Ophir, for though I am
going to be allied to the family, I do not want
to be linked by so ever small a link to a
concern that may smash, least of all to one that
is not exactly on the square.  What do you
make out about the gold mine?'

'It puzzles me.  I have been over it and
seen the gold dust washed out of the gozzen.'

'So have I.'

'And yet I am not satisfied.'

'Nor am I.'

'In the first place, I mistrust the way in
which Ophir has been puffed and brought
into the market.'

'I do not believe a word about the
Phoenicians,' said the Captain.

'Again,' Herring went on, 'who have
taken the mine in hand?'

'That I can tell you.  There is Arundell
Golitho, Esq. of Trevorgan.  Do you know
him?  You are a Cornish man, bred in its
deepest wilds.  Does he hail from your parts?'

'Never heard of him.'

'Nor has any one else, that I can learn.
Then there is the Reverend Israel Flamank,
but he counts for nothing.  He is a
crack-brained preacher, not worth a thousand
pounds, and every penny he has he has sunk
in Ophir.'

'Here is another: the Honourable Lawless
Lascar.  Who is he?'

'I have heard about him from my lawyer
in Exeter,' said Trecarrel.  'Lends his name
to rickety ventures for a consideration, and
when wanted, not at home.'

'And Colonel Headlong Wiggles?'

'Colonel Headlong is a man who has not
been happy in matrimonial matters—I mean,
has been exceptionally unhappy; this would
not concern us were it not that it has cost
him a good deal of money.  He has been
endeavouring to recover moral tone lately by
taking up vigorously with Temperance, and he
has become rather a prominent orator on Total
Abstinence platforms.  He has lately edited a
revised New Testament in which the miracle
of Cana has been accommodated to Temperance
views—the wine in his version is turned
into water.'

'That is all.'

'Except those added in pencil.  I do not
like the looks of the board of directors.  Tell
me, Herring, have you any suspicion of
trickery?'

Herring hesitated.  He had, but he was
without grounds to justify the open
expression of his suspicion.

'By George!' exclaimed Captain Trecarrel,
'if I thought it were not on the
square, I would break off my engagement.
I inherit a respectable, I may say an
honourable, name, and I do not choose that the
name of Trecarrel should be trailed in the
mire.  The thing cannot last long without
declaring its nature.  If the gozzen that is
crushed yields as much gold daily as I have
seen extracted at one washing, then the
dividends will begin to run.  The working of
the mine does not entail a heavy outlay.
There are not many men on it.'

'Very few indeed.'

'And the machinery is not enormously
expensive, I suppose.'

'No.'

'Then, why the deuce did Tramplara
make a company of the concern, and call for
shares?  If he had been sanguine, he might
have worked it himself, and made his fortune
in a twelvemonth.'

'Another thing that makes me suspicious,'
said Herring, 'is that the lease is only for a year.'

'For a year!' exclaimed the Captain, and
whistled.  'Then be sure Tramplara will
blow Ophir up before the twelvemonth has
elapsed.  If he had been sure of gold, he
would have taken a lease for ninety-nine
years.  I will have nothing to do with the
family.  I will put off the marriage.  Listen
to this, Herring.  I carried off all the bits of
stone I could from the auriferous vein of
quartz, and I crushed them myself.  I
borrowed a hammer from a roadmaker, for which
I paid him fourpence, and I pounded them,
and then washed the crumbled mass in my
basin, and not a trace of gold could I
discover.'

'That proves nothing.  You could hardly
expect to find the precious metal in a few
nubbs you conveyed away in your coat
pocket.'

'There ought to have been indications of
gold.  I should not have minded had I found
as much as a pin's point.  No!  I believe
Ophir to be a swindle, but how the swindling
is done passes my comprehension.'

He sat looking into the fire, and kicking
the logs with the toe of his boot.  Then he
threw himself back in his chair.

'I shall go to bed, Herring,' he said, 'and
I shall stick there till there is a clearing in
the air over Ophir.  I am not going to be
married whilst the cloud broods heavily.  I
shall go to bed.'

'Go to bed!' echoed Herring.  'It is
early still.'

'I always go to bed when I want to get
out of a difficulty.  Old Tramplara is not far
off, and he can come and see me.  Young
Sampson can come and see me also; but I defy
both of them to get me out of my bed and
into my breeches and blue coat against my
pleasure.  The marriage must be postponed.'

'Nonsense.  You cannot do this.'

'I shall.  I have got out of a score of
difficulties by this means.  There I stick till
things have come round.  My dear Herring,
there is no power in the world equal to *non
possumus*.'

'But what of the lady's feelings?'

'Oh, blow the lady's feelings!' said Trecarrel,
coarsely.  'Ladies' feelings are superficial;
that is why they are so sensitive about
dress.  Men's feelings lie deep; they line their
pockets.  Orange is a good girl; but she
won't feel, or, if she does, she will rather like
it.  Women like to have their feelings fretted,
just as cats like having their backs scratched.
Orange can come and see me in bed, and
nurse me, if she chooses.  Polly!' he called
to the maid of the inn, 'get your best
bedroom ready, and the sheets and blankets and
featherbed well aired.  I am going to retire
for a week or ten days between the sheets.'

Herring burst out laughing.

'This is no laughing matter,' said Trecarrel,
testily.  'I would not go to bed unless
I could help it; but, upon my life, I do not
see any other mode of escape.  You will
come and see me sometimes, old fellow, for
time will drag.'

'Certainly I will; but what will you say
to the Tramplaras?—to Miss Orange?'

'Say—say! why, that I am indisposed.
That will be strictly within the bounds of
truth, and what is consistent with a gentleman
to say.  Indisposed—the word was
coined for my case.  I'll send to Tramplara
himself, and get it over as soon as I am in
bed.'

'You are joking.'

'I am perfectly serious.  I have cause to
be so.  I am, or was, not so very far from
my marriage day, and I do not relish the
prospect.  Bring old Tramplara here.  When
he sees me embedded and indisposed to rise,
he will grow uneasy and the money will be
forthcoming.  I have no doubt in the world
that he is meditating a trick upon me.  He is
wonderfully clever; but he met his equal in
the matter of the Patagonians—I'll tell you
all about them some day.  Herring, by some
infernal blunder I was pricked as sheriff of
the county one year.  It was supposed that
I was worth about five times my actual
income.  I could not endure the cost of office,
and I did not want to pay the fine for refusal,
so I went to bed, and wrote to the Lord
Lieutenant from bed.  I said that I was
confined to my couch, and could not rise from it,
which was true, strictly true, under the
circumstances, and that I could not say that I
would live through the year, which was also
true, strictly true; and I got off without fine.
On another occasion my creditors were
unreasonable and urgent.  I took to my bed
again, and after I had laid there a fortnight,
they mellowed; at the end of a month they
were ripe for a composition of eight shillings
in the pound.  I find that, in difficulties, if
I take at once to my bed I constitute myself
master of the situation.  It is the Hougoumont
of all my Waterloos.'

Herring was still laughing.

'You may laugh,' pursued Trecarrel, 'but
my plan is superlative.  Judge of it by the
faces of Tramplara and his son when they
visit me.  You know the look that comes
over a chess-player, when his adversary says
"checkmate."  I suspect you will see some
very similar expression steal over the
countenances of Tramplara and young Hopeful.
The old man will coax, and the young one
bluster.  They can do nothing.  Here I lie,
and they bite their nails and rack their brains.
They are powerless.  They cannot bring
Orange and a parson here and have me
married in bed.  I should bury my head
under the clothes.  They would not attempt
it.  It would hardly be decent.  I do not
think it would be legal.'

'You will write, I suppose, to Miss Orange?'

'No; I shall send for her father.  I do
not put hand to paper if I can help it.  I
never commit myself.  *Litera scripta manet*.
You have no idea, Herring, how successful
my system is.  Difficulties solve themselves;
mountains melt into molehills; tangles
unravel of their own accord.  The perfectness
of the system consists in its extreme
simplicity.  Polly! run the warming-pan through
the sheets before I retire.  Whilst I am
upstairs, Herring, there is a good fellow, keep a
sharp look out on Ophir.'





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.. _`A LEVÉE`:

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   CHAPTER XXV.


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   A LEVÉE.

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In France it was anciently the custom for the
Kings to hold *lits de justice*—that is to say
they lay in bed, and whilst reposing on their
pillows, and the vapours of sleep rose and
rolled from their exalted brows, heard appeals
and pronounced judgments.  The royal
example found hosts of imitators.  No one
ever dreams of following a good example, but
one that is mischievous has eager copyists.
It was so in France under the ancient *régime*.
Nobles received their clients, ladies their
suitors, in bed.  Magistrates heard cases in
the morning, before rising, whilst sipping their
coffee.  So far down, had this habit descended,
that Scarron, in his 'Roman Comique,'
describes a respectable actress receiving an abbé,
a magistrate, and various ladies and gentlemen
in her bedroom, whilst she lay between
the sheets.  In the Parisian world, the world
of salt and culture, the bedroom—the very bed
itself—of a distinguished lady was the centre
round which the wit and gossip of the gay
and literary world circled and sparkled.

The getting out of bed of a prince, and of
those who imitated the prince, was as public
as his lying in state.  That was not the day
of baths and Turkish towels, and therefore
there was not the same reason against the
admission of the public to a levée that would
exist at present, at least in England.

Whilst the King drew on his stockings,
he heard petitions; as he encased himself in
his black satin breeches, he determined suits.
When his shirt-frills were being drawn out,
he dictated despatches; whilst his wig was
being dusted, he granted concessions; and as
he washed his fingers and face in a saucer, he
conferred bishoprics and abbacies.

In like manner, the toilettes of ladies of
rank and the queens of beauty and fashion
were times for the reception of their favoured
friends.  Hogarth's picture of the toilette of
the lady in the *Mariage à la mode* shows that
this custom had extended to England.  A
*levée* was then, as the name implies, an
assembly held during the process of getting out
of bed.

Captain Trecarrel was not consciously
copying the ancient *régime*.  He lay in bed
because it suited his convenience.  He received
visitors there because he did not choose to
receive them elsewhere, till he had carried a
point on which his heart was set.

'Why, bless my soul, Trecarrel! what
ails you?  Laid up in this wretched
inn—caught cold on your way down?  I hope
nothing serious; not rheumatic fever, eh?'

'Severe indisposition,' said Trecarrel,
looking at Mr. Trampleasure calmly out of his
celestial blue eyes, innocent as those of a child,
little spots of sky, pure and guileless.

'Good gracious!' blustered Tramplara,
'not anything gastric, is it?  No congestion
of any of the organs?'

'There is tightness in the chest,' said the
Captain; 'that is normal.'

'Bless my soul! couldn't you push on to
Launceston?  Were you so bad that you broke
down here?

   |  When a man's a little bit poorly,
   |    Makes a fuss, wants a nurse,
   |  Thinks he's going to die most surely,
   |    Sends for the doctor who makes him worse.

You know the lines, but whether by the Bard
of Avon, or by Chalker in his "Canterbury
Tales," I cannot recall.  Poor Orange!  What
a state of mind she will be in!'

'I dare say,' said the Captain, composedly.

'The child will be half mad with alarm.
What does the doctor say?  What has he given
you?  Something stinging or routing, eh?'

'I have not sent for him.'

'Not sent for the doctor?  By Grogs! and
you seriously ill.  How do you know but
that it may interfere with your marriage on
the eighth?'

'That is what I have been supposing.'

'You must get well, my dear boy.  You
positively must.'

'I hope so, but that does not altogether
depend on me.'

'I insist on a doctor being sent for.'

'His coming will be of no use.  I know
my own constitution.'

'Have you sent word to Orange?'

'No, I left that for you.  You see I am
in bed, and I cannot write.  I don't think the
people of the inn would permit it, lest I should
ink the sheets.  Salts of lemon are not always
satisfactory in removing stains.'

'Orange will be heartbroken.'

'The recuperative power of the female
heart cannot be overestimated.'

'Mrs. Trampleasure will be in such
distress, she will do nothing but cry——'

'And sniff.  I say, father-in-law that
want to be, how goes Ophir?'

'Oh, my dear boy! magnificently.'

'Like the Laira at Plymouth?—eh,
father-in-law elect?'

'What do you mean?'

'The rendezvous of all the gulls in the
Western counties.  Only, with this difference,
the gulls go to the Laira for what they can
get, and they come to Ophir for what they
can give.'

'I do not like these flippant jokes,' said
Tramplara, puffing and waxing red.

'The joke is too near the truth.  You
see, father-in-law prospective, I have been
in Exeter, and have talked Ophir over with
lawyers, bankers, mining agents, and men of
the world.'

'Well?'

'And I find that the general verdict on
Ophir is, that it is a —— swindle.'

Tramplara stamped, turned purple in face,
and strode up and down the room.

'You insult me.  Look at my white hairs.
This is an outrage on my character, on my
age.  Do you dare to say that an old man
like me, with one foot in eternity,
would—would——'

'Reserve that for the Flamanks,' said the
Captain; 'it is an argument without weight
with me.'

'This is intolerable.  You wish to break
off connection with me.'

'Not at all,' said the Captain, smiling
and twisting his fair moustache.  'I am
only telling you what is said in Exeter about
Ophir.  My own opinion is inchoate.
Sometimes I am inclined to believe in the
genuineness of the article, but generally, I admit,
what I admire most is not its genuineness,
but the skill with which a spurious article is
disposed of.'

'You have seen the gold?'

'But I have not found it.'

'You have dug out the quartz yourself
and followed the entire process, to the last
washing and sifting.  Will not that content
you?'

'I brought home with me some of the
auriferous stone, and crushed it myself, and
washed it myself, but not a particle of gold
was there.'

'Simply because you took pieces in which
there was no gold.  Gold is not so common
as hornblend.'

'Nor, apparently, as discernible in the
stone.  Look here, father-in-law that want
to be.'

'I won't be spoken to in this style.'

'You want me to marry Orange, do you not?'

'I do not care a penny about you.  All I
care for is poor Orange, and her feelings.'

'You are ready to pay me five thousand
pounds for taking Orange off your hands,
are you not?' asked the imperturbable Captain.

'I am ready to pay you five thousand
pounds as her jointure, because she is my
daughter, whom I dearly love, and I wish to
provide for her comfort and happiness in the
future when I am dead and forgotten.'

'And you were thinking only of her comfort
and happiness when you offered us those
Patagonian bonds,' said Trecarrel.
'Fortunately, I was equally interested in the dear
creature's comfort and happiness, and in her
interest I declined them.'

'Have done with those Patagonian bonds,'
said Tramplara, impatiently.  'You will bring
my white hairs with exasperation to the grave.
I shall go down stairs, and leave you to soak
in bed.  Do you intend to lie here for a
twelve-month?  I do not believe you are seriously
ill.'

'Seriously indisposed is what I said,'
answered the Captain.

'You have done this sort of thing before,'
said old Tramplara, very hot and angry; 'I
have heard of you.  Ridiculous! not like a
man.'

Trecarrel was wholly unmoved.  He
turned round in his bed with his face to the
wall.  The old man stamped about the room,
swearing and uttering his opinions freely,
without eliciting a word from the Captain.  After
a while he cooled down, finding that his
wrath and remonstrances were ineffectual,
and he seated himself on a chair by the bedside.

'Be reasonable, Captain,' he said.  'What
is the drift of this farce?'

Trecarrel turned round in bed, and faced
him with perfect equanimity in his handsome
features.

'I say, Trampleasure, the second Solomon
who draws gold out of Ophir, I give it up.
How do you manage it?'

The fiery flush again came into the old
man's face.

'There, there, I do not want to anger
you,' said Trecarrel.  'I have a proposal to
make to you, father-in-law *in nubibus*!  Let
me go with you into the mine.  You shall
indicate to me the auriferous vein, and I will
pick out pieces and submit them to you.
Those about which you are doubtful shall be
cast aside; those you approve I will retain.
I will pound them myself, and wash them
myself.'

'Where—in our works?'

'By no means.  Anywhere that suits my
convenience and pleasure.  At John Herring's
lead mine, if I choose.  Then, if I find
gold, you shall have my name on your list
of directors, and I will go heartily with you
in the concern.'

'I do not care to have you as a director.'

'That is not true.  You have several times
urged me to be one.  You want some respectable
names on your list, which is sadly deficient
in them.  Will you oblige me with some
particulars about Arundell Golitho, Esq. of
Trevorgan?  By some strange omission he has
not been made a Justice of the Peace and a
Deputy Lieutenant of the county of Cornwall.'

'I will answer no questions.  You want
to force a quarrel on me.'

'On the contrary, I want to dispel my
doubts.  I am, what I think you call in your
chapel, an earnest inquirer.  I can tell you
one thing for certain, father-in-law that may,
might, would, could, and should be, I am not
going to be married to your Orange without
the fulfilment of one of two conditions.'

'What are they?' asked Tramplara, sulkily.

'One is, that I may make the proposed
investigation into the qualities of Ophir.'

'I refuse it,' said Trampleasure, hastily.

'You refuse to allow me fairly to test its
value as a mine?'

'I do not say that.  I refuse the proposed
test, because it is unfair and insulting.  You
may come and extract as much quartz as you
like from the rock, and crush and wash it on
my floors, but you shall not carry it elsewhere.'

'What is your objection?'

'I say the proposal is insulting.  Look at
my white hairs.  Do you suppose——'

'Leave the white hairs out of the matter.
What is unfair in my proposal?'

'I will not consent.  I will die before I
permit it.'

The old man sprang from his seat.  'Good
heavens!  I shall have every visitor and
applicant for shares pestering me to carry off
specimens.'

'Why should they not?'

'Because it is against regulations.  I have
laid down a strict rule, to be relaxed to none,
that every specimen raised is to be tested on
the spot, and not elsewhere.  I will have the
trial take place where I can see that it is fairly
conducted.  How do I know but that behind
my back the trial may be incorrectly,
imperfectly, or dishonestly carried on?'

'I do not ask to do anything behind your
back.  You shall select half a dozen
specimens.  We will bring them here.  I will
smash them up in the backyard with a paviour's
hammer under your eye, and I will wash
them in the water-trough there, with you
looking on.  Will that suffice?'

'What is your other alternative?' asked
Trampleasure, sullenly.

'Mv second proposal is this.  You have
promised me five thousand pounds along with
Orange.'

'I know I have, and I shall be ready to
pay it when you are married.'

'My good father-in-law prospective, that
does not quite satisfy me.  Of course I do not
question your honour and your intention to
discharge what you propose.  But speculation,
above all, speculation in mines, superlatively
such a speculation as Ophir, is risky.  I do
not wish to risk my chance of getting that
five thousand pounds (and connubial felicity)
on the continuance of the Ophirian gold
yield.'

'You don't suppose I will pay you down
the money now, before you are married.'

'No, I do not, and I do not want to run the
chance of getting married, only to discover
that the five thousand pounds has been sunk
in Ophir, and is only available in the shape
of paper on Ophir, or only to discover that
Ophir has collapsed like a pricked bladder
the day before.'

'What, then, do you want?' asked Trampleasure,
very angrily, rubbing his knuckles
with the palm of his hand in his irritation and
impatience.

'What I want is, that you should lodge
the money now in the hands of a third party,
say of Mr. John Herring.  If I fail to fulfil
my part of the contract within a given time,
say on the day already fixed for the wedding,
or seven days after, I forfeit it and it returns to
you.  When I am married to Orange, then
Herring is empowered to hand the money
over to me.'

'Upon my word. Captain Trecarrel, of all
audacious and exacting men I ever came across.
you are the most audacious and exacting.
And what if I refuse this condition also?'

'Then I remain in bed.'

'What is the advantage of that?'

'I am engaged to be married on the
eighth.  If I am ill, my illness serves as an
excuse for my absence from the hymeneal
altar when expected there.  The world can
say nothing against that; and I am bound to
maintain my character as a *chevalier sans
reproche*.'

'Pray how long will this farce continue?'

'What farce?'

'Your lying in bed.'

'You will find a looking-glass yonder,
father-in-law anticipative.  Examine your
countenance in it, and see if the expression is
that of a spectator at a farce.  It looks deuced
more like that of a witness at a melodrama.'

'How long do you soak here?' exclaimed
Trampleasure, sulkily.

'I shall await events from this commanding
position.  Ophir will blow up before long.
It cannot continue, and will send you and
yours head over heels into space, and where
you will drop, heaven only knows.  Then, of
course, I shall be free.'

Trampleasure paced the room, his face blazing.
He was very angry, he was also greatly
perplexed.  He was particularly anxious to
get Orange married to the Captain.  Presently
he turned round, and said in a sullen tone,
and with an angry lower on his brows, 'I will
give you an answer shortly.'

'All right, I am in no hurry.  The bed is
not uncomfortable.  Herring is coming here
this evening to smoke a pipe with me, and I
will ask him to hold the stakes.'

The next visitor was young Sampson.
He came in fuming, and asked the Captain
his intentions.  He was Orange's brother.  It
was his duty to see that she was treated fairly,
and, by God, he would do his duty.  He was
not going to let a militia captain play fast
and loose with the poor girl's affections, and
possibly blight her entire future by his heartless
desertion.  Trecarrel listened to him with
the utmost coolness.  He had expected this
visit, and knew what its character would be.

'Sampson the little and weak,' he said,
'your father has sent you here to try what
bluster will effect.  May I trouble you to
convey to him a message from me, and say
that the effects are nil?'

'Are you going to desert Orange?  If
you are, I'll shoot you.'

'No, you won't,' said the Captain.  'In the
first place, I am not going to desert Orange;
and in the second place, if I were, the utmost
you would do would be to try to get money
compensation out of me, and that would be
like squeezing a stone for milk.  In one
particular I am like Ophir.  If you want to
extract gold out of me, you must first put it
into me.'

Sampson's face became mottled, and his
eyes, with a startled expression in them, turned
to the Captain, but, seeing his eyes fixed
inquiringly on him, his fell.  Trecarrel chuckled,
and drew the sheets over his head.  Presently
he looked out again.  Sampson was at the
window killing flies.  He had his back turned
to the bed, and was stabbing at the flies with
the pin of his stock.

'I have placed two alternatives before
your father,' said the Captain: 'I will marry
Orange to-morrow if he will comply with
either.  Either let him give me a fair chance of
testing the ore of Ophir, and satisfy myself
that the mine is genuine, or let him pay five
thousand pounds into the hands of a third
party, to be held till the marriage is
concluded.'

'I refuse—I refuse each alternative, in his
name and my own,' said young Sampson,
stabbing at a fly with such fury that he broke
a pane in the window.

'There goes eighteen pence,' said the
Captain, 'beside letting a current of cold
air in on me.  Leave the room.  I need
repose.  My indisposition gains upon me.'

The next to visit Captain Trecarrel was
John Herring.  Herring was not very willing
to undertake the obligation the Captain was
desirous of forcing upon him: however, he
was good-natured, that is, easily imposed on,
and in the end he consented to act as the
third party, and receive the money into his
keeping till the marriage took place.

On the morrow old Tramplara came back;
he remained some time, and attempted to
coax Trecarrel into good humour and the
surrender of his ultimatum.  Trecarrel especially
urged the former of his alternatives, as
he perceived that it was eminently distasteful
to both the old man and his son.  Tramplara
went away, refusing both alternatives.

On the third day Tramplara did not come
at all, but Trecarrel heard through the
hostess that young Sampson had been there
to inquire whether he was still confined to
his bed.

On the fourth day the old man came,
very sulky and rude, and gave way—not to
the first alternative, but to the second.
Herring was sent for, and the transaction was
arranged to the satisfaction of the Captain.

'Now then,' said Trecarrel, 'my indisposition
is better.  Ring for shaving water.
Clear every one out of the room.  I am going
to rise.'





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.. _`THE SHEKEL`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXVI.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE SHEKEL.

.. vspace:: 2

'Miss Cicely,' said John Herring.

'Yes, Mr. John,' answered Cicely, with a
smile.

'Well—Cicely—if you wish it.'

'I do wish it; I dislike formality.  You
have stayed with us so long, and have been
so good to us, and helped us so greatly, that
I suspect a cousinship between us, if the
respective Battishill and Herring pedigrees were
worked.  The West of England families are
all united by marriage.'

'My family boasts of no dignity or antiquity,'
said Herring.  'We have been humble
yeomen down to my father, and never
dreamed of calling ourselves gentlemen,
certainly not of tacking an esquire after our
names.'

'If your ancestors were humble yeomen,
ours were very humble gentlemen.  Do look
at West Wyke.  Did you ever see a gentleman's
house elsewhere so small, and yet so
full of self-consciousness?  An embattled
gateway in a wall that a boy could overleap,
guarding a garden of hollyhocks.  A front
door with a huge beam to close it, running
back into the wall, to protect the family plate,
which consists of one silver caudle cup, and
a whalebone-handled punch-ladle with a Queen
Anne's shilling in the bowl.  I believe our
family stood barely above high water mark,
the line where the yeoman ended and the
gentleman began; but so barely above it,
that we were always liable to be submerged,
and never able to lift ourselves wholly into a
more exalted and secure position.'

'I dare say,' observed John Herring, 'that
the smallness of your house has been the
salvation of your family.  You have not been
expected to keep a large establishment; to
entertain much, and to have a stable and
furniture and a cellar.'

'I dare say you are right.  By the way,
how is the sick gentleman at the Oxenham Arms?'

'There is not much change in his
condition.  He is still indisposed.'

'Who is he?'

'A Cornish squire, Trecarrel by name,
who is engaged to the daughter of Mr. Trampleasure.'

'No doubt Miss Mirelle will have had
some of her airs taken out of her in the
Trampleasure household.'

This was the first time that Cicely had
voluntarily, and of her own prompting, spoken
of Mirelle.  Herring had mentioned her
occasionally, but Cicely showed plainly that she
retained no pleasant recollection of the
Countess, and was uninterested in what had
become of her.  There was a spice of
vindictiveness in her tone as she spoke.  She was
rejoicing that Mirelle should have her airs
taken out of her.

'The poor Countess,' said Herring, 'has
suffered much annoyance among those
wretched people——'

'I have no patience with her,' interrupted
Cicely, 'giving herself airs, and calling herself
a Countess.  Why, her father was only a
merchant, and I cannot see how she can
inherit her mother's title.  The wife of an
Earl is a Countess, and the daughters are
Ladies, not Countesses.'

'It is different abroad.'

'You ought not to have humoured her.
However, as you see no more of her now, no
harm has been done by your falling in with
her fancy.  The Tramplaras are the last
persons in the world to feed her vanity, and
so by this time, it is to be hoped, she has
learned to stand on the same level as those
she is called to associate with.'

'Do you not think it must be intolerable
for one so refined and sensitive?'

'Oh, there, there!' interrupted Cicely,
again laughing.  'We have had enough of
Mirelle; let us banish her from our
conversation.  The very thought of her gives me
a shiver.'

'Cicely, tell me, has old Tramplara been
pretty frequently to West Wyke of late?'

'He has been to see my father now and then.'

'Do you know that he has put down your
father on his list as one of the directors of
Ophir?  His name is not yet printed, but
Tramplara is counting on him.'

'Why should he require my father's name?'

'To give respectability to the concern.'

'I hope my father will not consent.'

'He *must* not.  I am persuaded that
Ophir is a fraud, and your father must be
saved from being involved in what will cover
with disgrace, and involve in ruin, all who
are connected with it.'

'Good heavens!  Do you think my father
has already given his consent?  Oh, please
go in and see him, and stop him.  I know he
is becoming excited about Ophir.  He laughed
at it at first, but he has changed his tone of
late.'

'I will go at once.'

Herring stepped into the hall to Mr. Battishill.

'Well, Herring!' exclaimed the old man,
brightening up; 'back from Zeal!  How goes
the sick man—Captain Trecarrel?  Dear me! he
represents a fine old family, de Esse, alias
Trecarrel, argent two chevronels sable, with
a mullet for a difference.  A Devonshire
family—the Esse of Ashe, and the elder
branch, died out in an heiress who carried
Ashe to the Drakes; but the second son, a
long way back, married the heiress of
Trecarrel, and dropped the patronymic for the
place name.  How is the last limb of a
splendid tree?'

'There is nothing more serious the matter
with him than that he is going to marry the
daughter of old Tramplara.'

'Good Lord! what a mésalliance!  The
Trampleasures are mushrooms—I had almost
said toadstools.  I suppose it is a case of
money; the needy gentleman with centuries
behind him takes the daughter of the wealthy
founder of Ophir for the sake of the mountain
of gold she brings.  How is it that
Trampleasure has not secured Trecarrel as a
director?  His name would carry weight.'

'Exactly,' answered Herring; 'that is
what Tramplara wants—he has not got a
name of importance on his list.  Do you know
anything of Arundell Golitho, Esq. of Trevorgan?'

'Never heard his name before.'

'Nor have I, nor has any one else.'

'He must be some one of importance, or
Tramplara would not have put him on the
board?'

'I do not believe in his existence.  You
were asking why Captain Trecarrel has not
become a director.  For the best of reasons.
He does not care to cover an honourable
name with disgrace.'

Mr. Battishill's face changed colour.

'That is a strong expression, Herring,
and ought to be justified.'

'Dear Mr. Battishill, you know what
Polpluggan did for you.'

'Polpluggan was a disastrous venture,
certainly.'

'You told me yourself it was a swindle.'

'Well, well, the word was too strong.  I
thought so at the time; but Tramplara has
been frank with me about it.  Since he has
been here so much, engaged on Ophir, I have
seen his books; he showed them me in the
most open manner possible, he insists on my
going over them myself.  Polpluggan was a
failure, not a swindle.  I withdraw the
expression.'

'And Ophir, I believe, is nothing less
than a swindle, and will cover every one who
has to do with it with infamy.  That is why
Captain Trecarrel will not lend his name to
the concern.'

'Why then does he marry the daughter of Ophir?'

'That is another affair.  He has been
engaged to her for some time, and cannot
with honour break away.'

'What leads him to suppose that Ophir is
a—a——'

'A swindle!  Because he has been in
Exeter consulting those who are likely to
know; because he knows the antecedents of
the man who has started it.  I trust, sir, you
have not given Tramplara grounds to hope
that you will become a director?'

'Well, he has been pressing, very pressing,
I may say, and I have not positively
said I will not.  You see, my dear Herring,
the mine is sure to be a success.  The
applications for shares increase instead of falling
off; that is a pretty good proof of public
confidence.'

'That proves nothing, except that there
are many fools in the world ready to part
with their money.'

'They would hardly take shares unless
they had convinced themselves that the speculation
was sound.  Nothing, I understand, can
be more above board than the proceedings of
Mr. Trampleasure.  The gold ore is crushed
and washed before the eyes of the public.  I
cannot see where the fraud can be.'

'There is roguery somewhere, I am convinced.'

'My dear Herring, that is your opinion.
Others equally capable of forming opinions
think differently.  The mine is on my
property, it is only reasonable that I should be
a director and benefit by it.  As Mr. Trampleasure
put it to me—the world asks, Why
is not the lord of the manor on the board of
directors?  The absence of his name from it
damages the prospects of the mine.  Other
men of position and property hold back
because I do not sanction the venture.  It is
necessary that I should lend my name.'

'You must on no account lend your name,
sir,' said Herring, earnestly.

'You are very peremptory, Mr. Herring,'
said the old man, nettled.  'The lead mine
halts; nothing is being done there, no lead
turned out, no machinery set up, no company
got together to work it.  And hard by is the
auriferous quartz vein of Ophir——'

'Excuse my interrupting you,' said Herring,
'but may I know whether you believe
in Upaver having ever been Ophir?'

'That is a matter into which I do not
enter.  I put all these antiquarian theories
aside.  I look at the plain facts.  Is gold
found there, or is it not?'

'Gold is certainly washed there.  How it
comes there I do not pretend to say.'

'You mean to insinuate that it is not dug
out of the mine.'

'I doubt it, because I mistrust old Tramplara,
and I think the way in which the affair
has been got up is suspicious.  Did you ever
hear the old people call Upaver Ophir?'

'No, but there is a similarity in the
names.  However, as I told you, I put all
these antiquarian conceits on one side.'

'Mr. Battishill, we must consider them
as an integral part of the swindle, if swindle
it be.  You do not, I presume, believe in the
Jews and Phoenicians having worked this
mine in remote ages?'

'I tell you I do not think of this at all; I
am not qualified to enter into and examine
this question.  But when it comes to gravel
containing gold dust, why, bless my soul! my
eyes are the best judges.  As for the Jews
and Phoenicians, there is, at all events, this to
be said for the theory of their having been
here, that they dropped a shekel—a silver
shekel—I saw it with my own eyes.  I have
an impression of it in my desk.  Thus where
a Jewish coin has been found, there in all
probability a Jew has been to drop it.'

'Who found the coin?'

'The Reverend Israel Flamank bought it
of Grizzly Cobbledick, who had picked it up
in his garden, or somewhere near the Giant's
Table.'

'I beg you, sir, I entreat you, as you
love your home and respect the name you
bear, not to have anything to do with Ophir
till I have followed this shekel up to its origin.
It may serve as a clue by which the mystery
will be unravelled.  I will go and see Grizzly
himself, and ascertain from his own lips where
he found it, or rather, whether he found it
at all.'

'You are a sceptic,' said Mr. Battishill,
'steeped in the spirit of the age.'

'Well,' asked Cicely, when Herring came
out, 'what is the result?'  She noticed that
he was looking excited.

'Your father is bitten with Ophir,' he
answered.  'He and I have nearly come to
hard words.  It is the first time we have had
any difference, and we have been warm on
both sides.  I must find out about Ophir, if
only to save him; for Tramplara has woven
his web round him, and has so dusted his
eyes with gold that he can neither free
himself nor see clearly where he is.  He will
infallibly be brought to ruin again by that
wretched old man, unless I get to the bottom
of the mystery of this accursed Ophir.'

'Oh, Mr. Herring!' pleaded Cicely,
putting her hands together; 'do—do help us.'

'Yes, *Miss* Cicely.'

'I beg your pardon,' she said, and the
clouds cleared from her pleasant face.  'Cousin
John, what should we—what should I do
without you?'

'I have done nothing as yet.  But I am
determined to expose Ophir, and by so doing
to save your father.'

'How will you set about it?'

'I have a clue—a shekel.'

John Herring went in search of Grizzly.
The old savage was now generally to be found
near Ophir.  The mine exercised a strange
attraction on the wild old man.  The visitors
spoke to him, and asked him questions about
the Giant's Table, and the Jews, and the gold,
and then made him presents.  Some of the
more intemperate among the Temperates had
serious thought of setting him up as a
representative of Jonadab the son of Rechab,
and put leading questions to him, to elicit
from him traditions of such descent.  But
further inquiries into the habits and
peculiarities of his parent stock at Nymet
damped their enthusiasm.  The Nymet
savages, even if temperate, which was doubtful,
were not shining moral lights to hold up
as examples in other particulars.  Grizzly had
become somewhat civilised by association
with human beings.  When he was tired of
being questioned, he rambled off upon the
moors, and disappeared up the stream in the
direction of Rayborough Pool, but not for
long.  The stir of Ophir drew him back.  He
liked watching the stampers, and to stand on
the bank above the washing floors, chuckling
and sniggering at the people examining the
sediment and picking out the glittering
grains.

There Herring found him.  He at once
attacked him on the subject of the shekel.

'I found 'n in the airth just below the
great stone to the head o' the Giant's Table.
I found 'n about six foot vour inches below
the surfass o' the ground.  There was dree or
vour more, all alike, but Loramussy!  I didn't
give mun (them) no heed.  I thought they
warn't worth nothing, and I gived mun to my
little maid to play wi'.  But her, I reckon,
ha' lost the lot, all but thicky as I sold to
the Reverend Israelite Flamank, and he sed it
were an Israelitish shekel.  I've a-heard the
old volks used to call the Giant's Table a
Gilgal, but they don't do that no more; and
I can mind how this were always called
Hophir, but the folks as is skollards took to
naming 'n Upaver, and that be all I've a got
to say.  I can't say nothing about Jonadab
the son o' Rechab, as were my great-granfer,
cos a died when I was a baby.  I'll thankee
to remember a poor man as is nigh vour-score
years old, and 'ud die afore he'd let a
drop o' other liker down his throat but pure
water, glory rallaluley, harmen.'  And he
held out his hand.  'Oh!  I beg pardon;
didn't think 'twere the young Squire.  No
offence.'

'Cobbledick,' said Herring, 'have you
ever found any more silver shekels about the
Table?'

'No, never; only once for all.'

'How deep down did you say they were?'

'What did I say?  I found 'n in the airth
just below the big stone to the head o' the
Giant's Table.  I found 'n about six foot vour
inches below the surfass o' the ground.'

'I have heard that already, word for word.
Can you give me any idea of the depth, not in
words, but by showing me about the depth
that you call six foot four inches?'

Cobbledick looked blankly at him.

'What do you take your own height to be?'

Grizzly was posed.

'I suppose it took a deal of sinking
to reach the depth where—you found the
shekels?'

'Loramussy, maister!' exclaimed the old
wretch, 'weeks and weeks; that shaft yonder
were nothing to it.'

'That will do, Grizzly.'

Herring was convinced that the old man
was repeating by rote a lesson that had been
taught him.  However much he was questioned
and cross-questioned he returned to the same
story, in the same words.  Herring gave up
the hope of getting anything more in this
quarter.  Cobbledick had degenerated into a
beggar—a wretched, canting beggar, accommodating
his whine to the craze of the persons
who visited Ophir.

But Herring was not going to abandon
the clue of the shekel because he could find
out nothing from Grizzly.  He went to the
Giant's Table to catechise Joyce, but she was
not there.

Joyce was now nearly well.  The splints
had been taken off her arms, and she could
use her hands, and do light work; but the
hands were stiff, and long inaction had
weakened her arms.

Herring could not spare the time to wait
for her return; he did not know where she
was, and he was due at the Oxenham Arms
for the final settlement of the arrangement
between Trecarrel and Trampleasure, in which
he was a party.

On the morrow, Captain Trecarrel left.
In the evening Herring went in quest of
Joyce and found her hoeing in the little field.
He called, and she ran to him as a dog to its
master, and with as marked demonstrations
of delight at seeing him.

'Joyce.  I came here yesterday to find
you, and you were away.'

'Oh dear, oh dear, though!' she
exclaimed; 'I were wiring a rabbit.'

'Joyce, I want a word with you.'

'You can have scores; as many as you wants.'

'I know.  A woman is free of her words.
You must tell me the truth now, my little
maid, for a good deal depends on it.'

'Did I ever tell'y a lie, now?' asked
Joyce, offended.  'You may cut me in pieces
afore I'll say other than what be true to you.'

'What I want to know, Joyce, is, where
did your father get that shekel?'

'I don't know what that be.'

'A silver coin.  He says he found three
or four here under one of the stones of the
Table.  There is a branch on one side, and
on the other a cup with a flame rising out
of it.'

'I never seed nothing of the sort, nowhere.'

'Your father says that he gave them to
you, and that you lost all, except one which
he retained and sold to Mr. Flamank.'

Joyce shook her head.

'You have never seen anything of the kind?'

'It be just one o' vaither's pack o' lies,'
answered the candid Joyce; 'vaither hev
been lying finely since Ophir began.  He
never showed me nothing like that; he never
gived me no silver money.  He never had
none to give till Ophir began.'

'You are very positive.'

'If you doubt, I'll say, Blast me blue——'

'That will do,' interrupted Herring;
'your word will suffice without the blue
blazes to colour it.'

The old man had lied about the shekel.
He had not given it to the girl, he had therefore
probably not found it at all, but it had
been given him by those who had put the
story into his mouth.

'I'll ax vaither if you likes,' said Joyce;
'he'll tell me, all right.'

'I do not think he will.  That is all I
wanted to know, my dear girl.'

'I say,' said Joyce, 'doant'y go off now
right on end.  Sit you down a mite here in
the sun and have a chat.  I never see nothing
of you now, not as it used to be when I were
ill and scatt to bits.  I a'most wish my airms
was broke again, that you could come and see
me ivery day.  That were beautiful.'

'Very well, Joyce, by all means.  I have
nothing particular to do, so I am quite at
your service.'  He sat down by the girl
under the lee of the great stones.  It was
warm there and pleasant, leaning against the
grey blocks of hoar antiquity and unknown
use, stained orange and silvery white with
lichen, and with white frosty moss like antlers
of elfin deer filling the nooks in the stones.
The ants were crawling over the moss in the
sun; they were migrating and wore their
wings for that one day.  Turf was heaped up
at the side of the cromlech, forming a rude
bench.  On this the two sat.  As he took his
place the thought came into Herring's head
that far away in the dim prehistoric age, some
such a savage as that which sat beside him
had assisted when it was reared.

'It be lew (sheltered) here,' said Joyce;
'vaither hev took to sitting here mostly on
a Sunday when he ain't wanted to the mine.'

'He leaves you very much alone now.'

'That he does.  Vaither be much changed
o' late.  The vokes there ha' taught 'n to
smoke, and they give 'n a bit o' backie now and
then, and when he haven't got no backie, then
he flips off this here moss, this black sort o'
trade on the moorstones, and he smokes that.'

'A new sort of life for him,' said Herring.

'It amuses he,' answered the girl.  'He
says he didn't know as Gorolmity had so
many vules in the world.  He says they be as
plenty as stones on Dartmoor.'

'I dare say they are, and certainly those
are fools who congregate about Ophir.'

'Vaither likes to hear mun talk, and go
sifting and cradling and washing for the gold.
It makes 'n laugh, it do.'

'Why, Joyce?'

'Why, because there bain't none of 'em
knows where the gold comes from, and there
bain't one of 'em as don't think himself as
wise as Cosdon is big.'

'Where does the gold come from?' asked
Herring, eagerly, so eagerly that Joyce
turned sharply round and looked him hard
in the face.

'Don't'y know neither?'

'Indeed I do not.'

'Vaither said as you didn't and nobody
didn't.  And larned and skolards as the volk
be, vaither be too much for mun.'

'Joyce, if you can tell me where the gold
comes from I shall indeed be thankful.'

'Do you wish very much to know?'

Joyce was silent.  She looked straight
before her.  Something was working in her
mind.

'Well, Joyce?' asked Herring; he laid
his hand on hers.  'If you will tell me this,
you will repay me for all the little trouble I
took to make your poor hands sound and
strong again.

'Then I'll tell you, come what may.  It
is just this that made me doubt to say.
Vaither 'd kill me sure as vuzz blooms all the
year, if he knowed as I had told you.  Look
here,' said Joyce; 'do'y see thicky ant there.
Well, he took up a great moorstone, and sez
he, "You, Joyce, be that ant, and I'll treat
you the same," and down with the stone.'

'Yes,' said Herring, his blood curdling,
'I understand you.'

'And after that he sed, Glory rallaluley.'

'Joyce, your father shall never know that
you told me.'

'Whether he knows or not I'll tell, because
you wish it.  If he does kill me, it don't
matter much.'  Then she looked him steadily
in the eyes, and said: 'This be the way in
which it be done.  Vaither puts the gold dust
in.  When the bell rings, that's the signal for
he to be ready up at the head o' the launder'
(wooden channel) 'where the water runs along
to go to the washing pans, and he just slips in
some of the gold into the water.  So the stream
carries it down into the washing places where
the pounded stone is ready to be washed.'

Herring almost laughed.  The solution of
the puzzle was simplicity itself—so simple
that it had escaped every one.  Every eye had
watched the stone, no one had thought that
the water might be salted.

'I'll show you some of it,' said Joyce.
'There is a little bag hid away under the
table.  You understand vaither don't put
none in when there be no vules to find it.
Old Tramplara pulls a cord, and that lets the
water on; and when the water is let on,
vaither sprinkles the gold in it.  He don't do
it when there be no vules there, for
Tramplara sez he ha'n't got much of the gold to
waste.  Then, after it has been washed and
sorted out, he gives it back to vaither, and in
it goes again for more vules to find.  I've
done it once or twice myself for vaither, when
he couldn't go hisself.  That be how I came
to know about it.'

'I am lastingly indebted to you, Joyce, for
telling me this.'

'You won't bring vaither to no harm
because of this, will'y now?  That 'ud be too
cruel onkind o' you.  But no—you'll never
do no hurt to me nor vaither, I be sure.'

'Indeed I will not, dear Joyce.  I shall
never forget what I owe to you for having
told me this; and I promise you your father
shall not suffer for it.'





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.. _`COBBLEDICK'S RHEUMATICS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXVII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   COBBLEDICK'S RHEUMATICS.

.. vspace:: 2

John Herring did not go at once to
Mr. Battishill with the account of what he had
heard.  He waited till he had himself
witnessed the transaction.  Some time before the
public were admitted to the mine, he went in
that direction, making however a wide
circuit, and secreted himself behind some of the
rocks that commanded the head of the
'launder.'  There he remained till Old Grizzly
arrived, and, after having looked about him,
lay down beside the stream close to the sluice
that let the water into the wooden conduit
for the washing floors.

Herring saw him strew the dust in the
stream as it was admitted; he remained at
his post of observation till some time after
Cobbledick had departed, and then he went
direct to West Wyke.

He told Mr. Battishill what he had learned
from Joyce, and how he had verified the
account with his own eyes.  It was true he
had not arrested Grizzly's hand and taken
the gold dust out of it; but he had seen some
of the gold supplied to the old man by
Tramplara, and which he kept secreted under the
Giant's Table, and there was no moral doubt
that what the old man had strewn in the
water was that gold powder which Tramplara
intended should be found in the pans.

The revelation of the fraud made
Mr. Battishill excited and angry.

'What,' he exclaimed, helpless in his
agitation—'what is to be done?  Good
heavens! what can be done?'

'That is what I have been considering.
You are a justice of the peace, and you must
sign a warrant for the arrest of Mr. Tramplara
and his son.  There can be no question
that young Sampson is involved in the swindle
equally with his father, who is the originator
and mainspring of the whole concern.'

'I have not acted for many years.  I had
rather not.'

'But, sir, I think it most important that
you should take this matter up.  Remember,
this fraud has been carried out on your
property, under a lease granted by you, and
that you come out of it without the loss
of a penny.  I think it possible—I only say
possible—that some inconsiderate persons
may cast reflections on you.  Fortunately,
your name is not on the list of directors, so
that you will not be involved in the ruin this
discovery will bring on many; but your
abstention from becoming one may be
commented on unfavourably, unless you cut the
occasion away.  If you issue a warrant for
the apprehension of the wretched swindlers,
and become the main instrument of the
break-up of the company and the exposure
of the dishonest trick that has been played,
no one can wag his tongue against you.'

'You are right,' said the old man.  He
held out his hand to Herring, and the tears
came into his eyes.  'John, I cannot thank
you sufficiently for having protected me
against myself.  I confess to you that old
Tramplara had talked my suspicions down,
and had raised in my breast the demon of
cupidity.  No, I will not say cupidity, but
speculation.  I do not care for money in
itself, but I do delight in making it, or, what
is the same thing, in scheming how to make
it.  I suspect I have been too overweening in
my esteem of my own powers, and now you
have given that conceit a fatal fall.  Do you
remember the wrestle in "As You Like it?"  "Sir,"
I say with Rosalind, "you have
wrestled well, and overthrown more than"
Tramplara.  I trust my self-esteem is dead
as Charles.  I shall never again venture to
have an opinion contrary to yours.'

'But, Mr. Battishill, is not this a little
wandering from the point?  I want a
warrant for the apprehension of father and
son.'

'It is no wandering at all.  I am explaining
to you the reason of my submission.  I
tell you that you have but to propose a
measure, and I carry it out as best I may.
Go to Okehampton, and get a clerk to make
out a warrant, and I will sign it.'

'One thing more.  I do not wish old
Cobbledick to be arrested.  He is too stupid
and too ignorant to know what he has been
doing, and it must be managed that he is
allowed to escape.  I have passed my word
to Joyce that he shall not be brought into
trouble.  Poor Joyce is in terror of her life
of him, and if he were to suspect that she
had betrayed the secret it would go hard
with her.'

'Oh no,' said Mr. Battishill, hastily;
'Cobbledick is my tenant, that is, a squatter
on my land, and I must protect him if I can.'

'It can be managed,' said Herring.  'I
will go to him, and tell him plainly what I
saw to-day, and threaten that I will have him
apprehended, unless he absents himself
to-morrow, and gets the Tramplaras to appoint a
substitute.  After that I will communicate
with the constable, and we shall succeed
in arresting gold-handed the fellow who salts
the water.'

'Poor Cobbledick!  I should be very sorry
for trouble to come on him.  He is a beast,
not a man, and these Tramplaras have put
him in shafts and driven him where they
chose to go.'

'One thing more,' pursued Herring.
'Directly we have caught the man in the act,
I must ride to Launceston at full speed.  Old
Tramplara is not here.  He has gone home
because his daughter is about to be married;
by the way, the marriage is to take place this
week, I believe.  If the news were to reach
him before he is arrested, he would draw
every penny of the shareholders' money from
the bank, and make a bolt with it.  Before
we knew whether he were gone to Plymouth
or Falmouth, he would be on the high seas,
and those who have invested in Ophir would
lose everything.'

'You are right, John, right again.  You
take every one's interests under your
protection.  I suspect there will be wailing and
wringing of hands when this scandal breaks
on the religio-speculative world.'

Herring did not see Cobbledick till next
morning.  After the interview with
Mr. Battishill, he rode into Okehampton and
obtained the warrant.  He did not wish to
speak to Grizzly long before he dealt the
stroke, lest he should give the alarm.  When
he did speak, he was straightforward with
him.

'Cobbledick,' he said, 'I have long
entertained suspicions of Ophir.  I knew it was a
swindle, but how the swindling was managed
I did not know till yesterday.  I had gone
through every process of the mine attentively,
except one, and I was satisfied that the
trickery was not committed under my eyes
in the mine itself.  There was only one
process I had not studied, and that was one
which took place above the workings.  I allude
to the letting on of the water that washes the
gozzen.  Yesterday I watched that, hiding
under a rock, and I saw you steal to the head
of the launder, and I observed you salting the
water with gold-dust.  Now I know exactly
how the fraud is carried out.  Are you aware
of the consequences?  I have only to apply
to a magistrate for a warrant, and you are
arrested and committed to gaol, and there you
will probably lie for many months.'

Cobbledick's face became livid.

'I do not want to throw you into prison,
partly because I believe you have acted in
ignorance of what you were doing, but chiefly
because I wish to fix the noose round the
right throats.'

'Cap'n[1] Tramplara set me on it,' said
Cobbledick; 'he sed, if I didn't do 'zackly
as he wanted, he'd tear down the Giant's
Table, and be altogether the ruin o' me.
He'd got that hold on Squire Battishill that
he couldn't help me.  And I did it to save
myself.'

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[1] The head of a mine bears the title of captain.

.. vspace:: 2

'I am quite aware that Mr. Tramplara
made you his tool, and I do not want you
to suffer, if it can be avoided, because you
have been an ignorant and unwilling tool.'

'Unwilling,' echoed Grizzly, 'I'll swear;
glory rallaluley.'

'I repeat that I wish to spare you because
you were an ignorant tool, and also, and that
especially, because of poor Joyce, who would
be heart-broken were anything to happen to
you, unnatural father though you be.'

'Ah! sure-ly it 'ud kill Joyce.  Her be
that tooked up wi' me, her can't abide as no
harm should come to I.  What 'ud her do
without me, I'd like to know?  Where'd her
get meat, and clothes, and fire?  If I
were tooked and put in the lock-up, her'd
die right on end wi' fright and hunger.'

The mean old man enforced this view of
the case, thinking to deepen Herring's
reluctance to compromise him.

'There may be two opinions about that,'
said Herring: 'suffice it, however, that for
the sake of Joyce I would spare you.  Now
the only way this can be done is for you to
decline salting the water to-morrow, when I
and other witnesses will be there to see the
thing done, and I shall be prepared to arrest
the doer.'

'If I don't do it, then it be Joyce who does.'

'But Joyce must not do it.  Who is in
charge of the mine this week?'

'Young Sampson Tramplara.'

'Very well; tell him that you can't be
there.'

'Ow!' yelped the old man, 'I be took
already cruel wi' the rheumatics.  I reckon
in another half a wink I shan't be able to stir
neither voot nor hand.'

'So let it be.  Your rheumatism
incapacitates you from attending to your work,
and Joyce is sent far off, on an errand.
Then Mr. Sampson will employ another man.'

'He'll do it hisself.  He don't let no one
else into the dodge except me and Joyce.'

'So much the better.  Then we shall catch
the prime culprit in the act.  Now, Cobbledick,
you understand.  Not one word of this
must be repeated.  If you let out what I have
told you, then your chance of escape is gone.
I shall have you arrested this evening, and
you will spend the night in the lock-up.
You comprehend this?'

The old man put his dirty finger to
his eye and winked.  'My grandfer wasn't
Jonadab the son o' Rechab.  I arn't a vule,
it be them as goes to Ophir as be the
vules.'

Herring left him.  Then Cobbledick's face
changed.  He was fairly frightened.  He
sought Joyce at once; no suspicion crossed
him that she had betrayed the secret.

'Joyce,' he said in a hoarse whisper, 'the
thing's a' busted blazes high.'

'What be, vaither?'

'Hophir, as they calls it.  The young
maister hev a found out all about 'n.'

Joyce was alarmed; she looked uneasily at
her father, but there was no anger in his face.

'Joyce,' he went on, 'that old Cap'n
Tramplara hev never gived me what he've a
promised.'

'What hev he a promised'y?'

'He sed he'd a give me as many pounds
o' backie as I worked days for he, a salting
o' the water.  He arn't paid me not these
three weeks.  See here, I ha' notched it
on thicky stone.  Now he don't know nothing
o' this here bust-up.  And when he do hear,
then he'll not give me no backie more.  And,
I reckon, he won't pay me that he already
owes me.  So you cut along to Lanson so
vast as your legs can carry you.'

'Vaither, I know nothing o' the road.'

'You cut right on end after the tip o'
your nose,' he said, 'and you cut so vast as
you can.  You cannot miss 'n.  And mind,
you must get there afore the news of the
bust-up do come to the Cap'n, and you tell 'n
this: "Give me the backie in pounds"—that's
just so many pounds as you've fingers and
toes on your body, and one over for your
head.  Now don't you be a jackass and forget
that one over.  A head is every mite as much
consekance to a human cretur as his little toe.
And you say to 'n: "Give me as much backie
in pounds as I've fingers and toes, and a
head;" and you hold 'n out all straight afor 'n
that he may count mun hisself.  And you mind
you don't forget to reckon your head in.
Then you go on and say, "I'll tell'y something
mighty partickler about Ophir."  Say as
vaither sent me lopping all the way, so hard
as I could lop.  And if he gives you the backie,
then you can tell 'n all—how the young
maister hev found out all about 'n, and be
agoing to lock up him and the young Cap'n
Sampson in gaol.  But if he don't give'y the
backie, then you can just please yourself and
tell 'n nothing.  There now, don't'y bide
about, but cut away.'

'But you, vaither!  Will you get into trouble?'

'I—I'm about to be took cruel bad wi'
rheumatics, and what they calls the loinbagey.
Now, afore you goes to Lanson, just you cut
down to Ophir, and tell Cap'n Sampson I
wants to see 'n mighty partickler here to the
Table.'

An hour later, young Sampson Tramplara
was at the cromlech.  As he approached, he
heard moaning and cries issuing from the
interior.

'What the devil is the matter here?' he
asked, looking in.  'Who is that howling and
groaning?'

'Oh, Cap'n, it be me; I be took cruel bad
wi' rheumatics and the loinbagey.'

'Well, I'm not your doctor.'

'I sent to tell'y that I couldn't fulfil my
duty to-day there to Ophir.'

'Then your daughter can do it.'

'Her's off to Lanson.'

'What the devil is she gone there for?'

'Sure, after my backie.  Your vaither
he promised me a pound a day for the work
I did, and he arn't paid me for a long while.
Look'y there, I ha' notched it all on the
stone.  There be as many days as you have
fingers and toes, and your head chucked in as
well.'

'You fool!' exclaimed young Tramplara,
'why did you not apply to me, instead of
sending all the way to Launceston for it?'

'Cos, if I'd ha' axed you, you'd ha'
throwed a curse at me instead o' a pound o'
backie.'

'You damned blockhead,' swore the young
man, angrily.

'There—I sed as much.  I'd rather hev
the backie, though 'tother don't hurt, it only
tickles.'

'Curse it,' exclaimed Sampson, in a violent
rage; 'there is a particular reason to-day
why I want the water well salted.  Damn
your rheumatism; you *must* be at your post.'

'I can't and I won't,' said Grizzly, sulkily.

'It is.  You won't, not you can't,' blustered
Sampson; then he gathered his stick short in
his hand, and catching the old man by the
ragged collar of his coat, he beat him well,
pouring forth at the same time a volley of
curses.

'This is all sham; I don't believe in your
rheumatism.  This is idleness.  You are a
good-for-nothing scoundrel.  I'll give you
occasion to moan and cry out.'

'You leave me alone, Cap'n,' yelled
Cobbledick.  'You forget, I reckon, that I hev
got the hanging of'y in my hands.'

'It may be so, but you forget that if I
swing you swing also; one rope will do for
both of us,' said Sampson.  'And for that
reason I do not fear you in the least.  Now
then, will you do your work again to-day?'

'I can't.'

'I'll give you five pounds of backie.'

'I say what I sez; I can't do it.'

'Then,' said young Sampson, 'there is
no help for it; I must manage the job myself.'

'You'd better,' assented Grizzly; 'if I
was you, I wouldn't trust nobody else.'

'I don't mean to,' answered Sampson.
He was panting after the thrashing he had
administered, and as he cooled he began to
question his discretion in giving way to his
brutality.  'I say, Cobbledick, you mind this;
you and I and my father are all in the same
box, and you in the worst compartment of
it, for it is you who have put the dust in.
My father and I can always put on the look
of innocence and throw the blame on you.
You, if the rope has to be tasted, you will
have the first bite.'

'I understand,' said the old man, putting
his finger to his eye.  'Jonadab the son of
Rechab weren't my father.  I ain't a vule;
it be they as goes to Ophir be the vules.'

'You won't take it ill that I thrashed
you.  You put me out, and I am naturally of
a quick temper.'

'I say, Cap'n; I wouldn't let none else
do the job to-day.  I'd do it myself if I was
you.'

'I intend to.  I told you I did.'

'That be right.  Do it yourself.'

Then young Sampson left the den.  As
he was turning away, he thought he heard
loud laughter from within.  He was of a
suspicious nature, and he turned back.

'What are you laughing at, Cobbledick?'

'I bain't laughing; I be screeching wi'
pain.  What wi' the rheumatics, and the
loinbagey, and the licking I ha' had, I hev cause
to, I reckon; and I sez glory rallaluley
between the twinges by way of easement.'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CAUGHT IN THE ACT`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXVIII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   CAUGHT IN THE ACT.

.. vspace:: 2

Whilst young Sampson was with Old Grizzly
in his den, Herring was on his way down the
Okehampton road to meet the constable at a
spot already agreed upon.  When he came to
the point near the stream where the track to
Ophir diverged from the high road, he found
two post carriages drawn up in the way, from
which were descending a party of grave-looking
persons of a hard appearance of face, as if
they were all in a spiritual and mental
ironmongery trade.  They were under the lead
of the Rev. Israel Flamank, who was about
to conduct them over the mine.

The way to it across the moor was rough,
and not good travelling for a carriage.  The
chaises were ordered to go to Zeal, and the
party, well supplied with comestibles,
prepared to walk to Ophir, examine the washing
of the gold, and then picnic in a
serio-speculative mood on the moor.

Mr. Flamank was a veritable decoy-duck
to the Tramplaras.  Full of enthusiasm,
earnest in belief, transparently sincere, he
impressed even those who had cool
judgments.  He looked on Ophir as his own
discovery, and was proud of it.  To hear
him talk, the Bible was written as a huge
puff of Ophir, and the Christian ministry
called into existence to tout for shares.

Herring was slightly acquainted with him.
He had seen him several times at Ophir, and
he knew that the man was sincere and honest.
He pitied him because he saw him running
headforemost to moral and pecuniary ruin.
As he passed, he raised his hat to Mr. Flamank,
who responded with a few words on
the weather.

Herring observed him for a moment
or two.  Flamank was an excitable little
man, and was specially excited on this
occasion.  On this occasion he had brought with
him several men of means as well as piety,
whom he particularly desired to secure for
Ophir.  Their faith was weak.  They were
ready enough to believe, with a thin kettle-broth
faith, in any folly that would not cost
them money, but when it came to embarking
capital they asked to be established in their
faith.

Herring was so kind at heart that, moved
by a sudden impulse of pity, he resolved to
give Flamank a chance of extricating himself
from the wreck, unhurt in character if not in
pocket.  He called the pastor aside, and asked
him to spare him a few moments.

'I am very busy,' said the minister, looking
over his shoulder; 'I have a large party
here, I cannot well be spared.'

'Sir, what I have to say to you is of the
utmost importance.  Send the party on with
the promise of rejoining it.  There is no
possibility of their mistaking the way, which
is well trampled like that which led to the
den of the sick lion.'

'Very well, as you wish,' answered Israel,
resignedly.

When all had departed, and Herring was
quite alone with Mr. Flamank, he told him
everything with complete frankness, and
assured him of the total and irretrievable
collapse of Ophir within a couple of hours.
To say that the pastor was aghast is to
understate the case; and yet he was unable at once
to realise the completeness of the ruin with
which he and Ophir were menaced.

'Nothing will shake my faith in the Phoenicians
having been here,' he said.  'We are
expressly told that Ophir lies between
Meshaw and Sheepstor, and this place is
exactly halfway between them as the crow flies.'

'But it is a long flight for the crow, and
there are many other places where Ophir may
be found beside this.  Here we have distinct
evidence of dishonesty.'

'There is evil always mixed with good,
and falsehood is associated with truth,' sighed
Mr. Flamank.  'It may be—of course, as you
state you have seen it, it must be—that there
is trickery here, but still Ophir is somewhere
hereabouts.'

'That of course is possible.  But we have
not now to consider the whereabouts of Ophir,
but the whereabouts of your reputation and
your capital, both sunk in this swindle.'  Then
the full truth of Herring's words came home
to the Reverend Israel.  He sobbed and
clasped his hands convulsively.  'Good Lord!'
he moaned, 'avert this blow from me.  I
am prostrate!  I do not so much mind the
loss of all my little savings intrusted to
Trampleasure for the purposes of the mine, as
the loss of my character, the ruin of my
influence, the destruction of my position.  I
have spoken and written about Ophir, and
induced so many to embark their little means
in it!  Believing widows and Christian old
maids have ventured their all in Ophir.  I
have urged them to it, assuring them it was
a sound venture; I have shown them the sure
word of prophecy speaking of Ophir; and
now, what will become of them and of me?'

'My purpose is to ride to Launceston and
have old Mr. Trampleasure arrested before he
hears the news and can decamp with the
money.'

'Oh, Mr. Herring, what is to be done?
What can I do to put myself right?'

'I see one course open to you.  You come
with me and the constable and watch the
process of salting, and help us to secure young
Sampson Tramplara, or whoever does it.
You will give evidence against those who
are acting fraudulently.  You will assist me
in exposing the rascality.  It will not then be
possible for your good name to suffer, though
your pocket may and probably will be
lighter.'

'Thank you, thank you so much, Mr. Herring,'
said the unfortunate man; 'I shall
never be able to repay what you are doing
for me save by my prayers.  I accept your
proposal.  How is it to be carried out?'

'You must go after your friends, and
make some excuse for deserting them.  Then
return to me, and I will take you with me.
I must start the constable, who is going to the
same spot by another route.  Stay! you
have a brown speckled shawl over your
arm.'

'It belongs to a lady of my party.'

'Take it with you.  Your black suit
might be visible, but enveloped in the shawl
you will be unobserved amidst the heather.'

The moor was clear.  No one was visible
on the flank of Cosdon or on the hill-side
opposite, as Herring and his companion stole
cautiously under cover to a place which
commanded the sluice.  Herring placed the pastor
at some distance from himself; he wished the
constable to be with him, so that they might
make a rush together on the man they desired
to take.

The constable had made a considerable
detour; he had, in fact, worked round the
hill from an opposite direction.  Herring was
on the look-out for him, and signed to him
with a handkerchief fluttered behind a rock
where to rejoin him.

The day was bright, but a cool wind blew
from the north-west, rolling scattered masses
of white cloud, like giant icebergs floating in
a polar sea.  Autumn was closing in.  The
days were shortening, the fern becoming
russet, the heath had lost its bells; only a
few sprigs of heather retained their harsh, dry
blossoms.  The gorse no longer bloomed
throughout, though here and there one little
gold flower still showed.  'When the furze is
out of bloom, then sweet love is out of tune,'
says a Devonshire proverb, which acquires
its force from the fact that the gorse is in
flower throughout the year.  The whortleberry
leaves were turned orange and
crimson.  Out of the peat the coral moss
showed its scarlet incrustations.

'To my thinking,' said the constable, who
found silence irksome, 'the worts' (whortleberries)
'of the wood ain't to compare with the
worts of the moor.  The wood worts is the
bigger, but the moor worts is the sweeter.
Do you like wort-pie with clotted cream on it
as thick as the pastry?'

Herring nodded.

'He who don't like that don't know what
good living is,' said the constable.

This functionary was a stout man, with
a florid face and very pale blue eyes.  He
was silent for a while, and then he began
again.

'I suppose I mightn't stand up and stretch
my legs,' he asked; 'I'm in such a constrained
and awkerd position sitting here on my
'aunches so long.'

'Certainly not,' said Herring, hastily.  'I
entreat you to remain as you are.'

'There was a little fellow I knowed when
I was a boy in Tawton—he's dead now.  He
had been to sea, but he warn't good for much,
he were so small in size.  He've a told me
oft and oft the tale how he were tooked by
pirates in the Mediterranean, and sold as a
slave at Morocco, in one of them American
States, I reckon.  He said that the Moors
couldn't make much of 'n, he were so small.
He were no good to work in the mines, and
he were no good to wheel weights.  So, as
they was determined to have their money's
worth out of he, they made 'n sit day and
night in one constrained and unnatteral
position—hatching turkey eggs.'

Then he relapsed into silence, but not for
long.

Presently he spoke again.  'I s'pose I
mayn't light a pipe?' his faint mild eyes
looked pleadingly at Herring.

'Certainly not.'

'I didn't s'pose I might.  I axed because
it be tedious waiting.  No offence meant.'

After a further weary pause, he said in an
undertone—'You don't think now, master,
that he we be going to take will prove
dangerous?'

'I dare say he will show fight.  If he be
young Mr. Sampson Tramplara, he probably will.'

'Oh!' the rosy apple cheeks looked less
cheery.  'Look here, sir; my body be as
big as a rhinoceros, but my soul be no bigger
than a nit.  There seems a deal o' me, looking
at me cursorily, sir; but it ain't heart,
sir, it be bacon.'

'Hush!' whispered Herring, 'look out.
Here comes some one from the mine.'

'That be young Mr. Sampson Tramplara,'
said the constable.  'From battle, murder, and
sudden death, good Lord deliver us.'  He
spoke in an undertone.  The wind blew up
the valley, and there was not the remotest
chance of his being heard.  Then he added in
a whisper, 'You'll mind what I said, in
confidence, sir, about my courage.  I'll back any
one up, sir, but don't'y thrust me forrard.
There be divarsity of gifts, and I be famous
at backing.'

Herring held up his finger.  He looked in
the direction of Flamank, but could not
distinguish him.  He was among the tufts of
brown heather, and the speckled cloak was
over him, completely merging him in the
bushes.

'Keep a sharp look-out,' whispered
Herring, 'and when I touch you, spring up,
and run with me down on Sampson Trampleasure.
We must not let him slip away.'

They saw the young man come stealthily
up the valley, looking right and left, evidently
somewhat uneasy.  The 'leat' or channel of
water came to a grip in the moor-side, and
was carried over it in a long wooden launder
on daddy long-legs' supports.  The stream
was conveyed thence, still in wood, and
covered, round an elbow of hill, and reached
the washing-floors by a rapid incline.  A wire
conducted on poles from the mine to the
sluice let the water on without the necessity
of ascending to the launder head, which was
invisible from the mine itself.

The stamping-mills were working, and the
drum was revolving and grinding.  A second
leat carried the water to put these in motion.
Herring and the constable could hear the
thud, thud of the hammers and the
monotonous crunching of the crusher.

Young Tramplara knelt down by the
sluice, and took a packet from his breast
pocket.  Presently the poles supporting the
wire creaked and swung in the direction of
Ophir, and the sluice door was lifted.  At
once the water rushed down the wooden
trough, and Sampson was seen, after a furtive
glance round, to sprinkle the advancing stream
with the contents of his packet.

Herring touched the constable, and both
rose and advanced from behind the rock.
Tramplara's back was towards them, and he
was unaware of their approach.  The wind
was from him, and he did not hear their steps.
At the same time the Reverend Israel Flamank
rose and shook off his brown shawl.  Herring
and the constable were within a few paces of
the young man, when he stood up, dusted
his hands, and turned.  Instantly he saw them,
and uttered a cry of mingled rage and alarm.
He turned sharply to run; then, thinking
better of it, turned back again, and faced
them, and, quick as thought, drew a pistol
from his pocket and presented it at the head
of John Herring.  As he fixed him with his
eye, Sampson recognised with whom he had
to do, and Herring saw the flash of
recognition in his evil eye.  'By God!' said
Sampson between his teeth, 'I am not sorry
for this.  I'll settle old accounts with you
this minute.'

Herring saw the finger twitch at the
trigger, and instinctively bent his head.  He
heard the report at the same moment, followed
by a cry and a heavy fall behind him.
He was himself unhurt, and his first
impulse was to close with Sampson, but, turning
his head, he saw the constable lying motionless,
and, with a call to Mr. Flamank to run
after Sampson, he stooped over the prostrate man.

The constable's face was mottled; all
colour had deserted it but a dead purple in
blotches in the cheeks.  His eyes were closed,
and he was motionless.  Seeing the pistol
produced, the worthy man had sprung behind
John Herring, true to his word that he was
good at backing.  When Herring bent his
head, the constable had received the charge
which was designed to blow out Herring's
brains.

John Herring scooped water out of the
stream, and threw it over the poor fellow's face.
Then he tore off his neckcloth, and ripped
open his waistcoat in search of the wound.
The freshness of the water brought the man
round.  He opened his pale eyes, looked
scaredly at Herring, and closed them again.

'Are you much hurt?  Where did the
shot strike?' asked John Herring.

Again the constable opened his eyes
cautiously, and now he turned his head stiffly.

'Where is he?' he asked huskily.

'He has run away.  Are you seriously hurt?'

'Very,' sighed the poor man.

'But where?'

'I can't speak yet.  Wait a bit, and I will
tell'y.'

In the meantime Sampson Trampleasure
was running.  He stopped his flight after he
had gone some little distance, and looked
back.  He saw Herring bowed over the
prostrate man, opening his waistcoat and
uncovering his breast.  With a curse, he turned
and ran on.

Flamank, with tails flying, waving the
brown shawl like a lasso over his head, ran
after him, shouting, 'Heigh! stop, Mr. Sampson! stop!
You have killed the constable!
You must be hung!  Stay and let me catch you!'

'Try to stand,' said Herring to the
constable.  He lifted him to his feet.

'I be the father of fourteen, and another
coming,' said the poor man.  He was dreadfully
frightened; he peered about him in all
directions.

'And the eldest fifteen,' he murmured.
'Be you sure the murderous ruffian be out o'
harm's way?'

'Certain.  Have you been hit?'

'Ay, I have.'

'Then where?'

'Here,' said the constable, holding up his hat.

The ball had gone clean through it.

Just then Mr. Flamank returned, panting
and very hot.

'I can't catch him.  I have run and
shouted my best, but he would not wait to be
caught.'

'He shall not escape me,' said Herring.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A RACE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXIX.


.. class:: center medium bold

   A RACE.

.. vspace:: 2

Sampson Trampleasure ran to the mine,
burst through the assembled visitors, who
tried to arrest him with inquiries after
Mr. Flamank, and about the washings and
cradlings and puddlings, and the whips and
whims.  He had an oath and a curse for all
who stood in his way.  He thrust to the
stable, where he saddled and bridled his horse,
and, in another moment, was galloping over
the rough road.

The shocked visitors shook their heads,
and concluded that there had been a breakage
in the machinery.  It did not occur to them
that there had been a break-up of the entire
concern.  That fact was revealed to them
later by the Rev. Israel Flamank.

Sampson Trampleasure reached the Okehampton
road and sped along it in the Launceston
direction.  When he had crossed the
bridge over the Taw at Sticklepath, and was
ascending the hill on the other side, he looked
back and saw some one on a grey in pursuit.
He knew the grey mare—she belonged to
Mr. Battishill, and he was certain that John
Herring bestrode her.

'Ah!' said Sampson; 'a race between
us which shall reach Launceston first.'

Mr. Battishill's mare had been a good
horse once, but was now old.  Sampson had
a young and sound cob under him.  The mare
would be unable to endure so long a journey,
she must be exchanged at one of the next
stations.  Sampson knew he could keep his
distance and get first to Launceston, but that
was not sufficient.  He must delay Herring
long enough to allow him to see his father,
and, with or without his father, to leave
Launceston before Herring rode through its
gate.  Believing that he had killed a man, he
was in great fear for himself, and he would
not have scrupled to fly without warning his
father, but that he was misapplied with
money.  He must make for a seaport that
same night; an hour would suffice, if he
could gain that.

The sun was setting as he rode over Sourton
Down.  There was a turnpike there.  He
called the man of the bar to him.

'You know me.  I am Sampson
Trampleasure, junior.  I am riding a race with a
gentleman for a wager; my horse is getting
beat, and I must secure a fresh mount at
Bridestowe.  Here is a guinea; I will give
you four more if you will delay the gentleman
a quarter of an hour.'

'All right, sir!  We have to go some ways
for our tea-water; I'll fasten the bar and go
for mine.'

Sampson did not wait to hear how Herring
was to be detained; he rode as hard as he
could down the hill to Bridestowe, and drew
up at the inn door.

'Here!' he shouted, 'give my horse some
gruel; he is beat.  Have you a horse I can
hire, hostler?  Mine won't carry me to
Launceston.'

'He's not done yet,' said the hostler.
'Most of our osses be gone on wi' two chaises,
but there be one in the stables that be fresh.
But how about getting of her back again?'

'I'll leave mine if I take her,' said
Sampson.  'I'm back again to-morrow, and
I'll ride her here.'

'You can look at her,' said the hostler;
'her ain't a beauty to look at, but her can go
brave enough.'

Sampson went into the stable.  Presently
he came out.

'No, Daniel, I don't like her looks.  Be
sharp with the gruel and put a quart of your
strongest ale into it; my bay will carry me
with that inside him.'

The hostler went leisurely about his work.

'Daniel, this won't do.  There has been
a breakage at Ophir, and I must be sharp
and tell my father.  We must be back
to-morrow before daybreak, or everything will
be spoiled.'

'All right, sir; I'll look peart.'

Sampson was not satisfied with the man's
undertaking to look alert.  He went himself
to the bar and gave his bay a quart of ale.

As he was galloping out of Bridestowe,
he heard the clatter of horse's hoofs
descending the hard road from Sourton Down, and he
knew that Herring was at his heels.

Herring had reached the toll-gate, and
found it barred.  He had been unable to
make the man hear.  He found both the
gate-house and bar locked.  He was greatly
annoyed, and, riding back, lashed his grey,
and tried to make her leap the bar.  But the
mare was too old and tired to risk it, and she
swerved.  Then he tried to get round by a
side lane, and through fields, but found this
also impracticable.  Full a quarter of an hour
passed before he could get through.  The man
arrived at last, put down his water-can, and
leisurely unfastened the bar.  Herring was
in too great haste to waste time in remonstrance.

The grey was failing; she tripped, and
almost fell several times in descending the
hill to Bridestowe.  He drew rein at the inn,
and called, 'Hostler! here, I say!'

'All right, sir.'

'Have you a spare horse?  I must ride on
at once.'

'There've a been a gent here already inquiring,'
said Daniel.  'Be you come from the
same quarter?'

'I want a horse at once.  I have no time
for answering questions.'

'Because, if you be,' continued Daniel,
composedly, 'there be no 'urry.  The gent, that
be young Mr. Tramplara, have a gone ahead
already with the news.  He says he must tell
his father at once, and they'll be back early
to-morrow morning.'

'Have you a horse, or not?'

'He sed, afore daybreak.  Them was his
very words.'

Herring was out of his saddle.  'The grey
cannot go on.  You must let me have a
horse.'

'This grey ain't got the go in her like the
bay Maister Tramplara rode.  How old be her?'

'Never mind the age.'  He drew the
fellow's hand away as he was turning up the
lips to examine the teeth.  'Is there a horse
available?'

'There be one, sure,' answered Daniel; 'I
offered her to the young Maister Tramplara,
but he wouldn't have her.  Her's not so bad
to go, but the looks of her ain't nothing to
boast of.'

'Off with the saddle and bridle, and bring
her round.'

The hostler, a little man, with his toes
turned in, very broad in body but short in
stature, scuffled into the stable, and was a
long time before he reappeared.  Herring
was impatient.  He took a glass of cyder at
the bar, and then went to the stable and met
the little man coming out.

'There be summat the matter wi' the oss,'
he said.  'Her's lame.  Bide a wink, and I'll
fetch a lantern.'

After having found a lantern, adjusted a
tallow candle in the socket, and lighted it,
Daniel went with Herring into the stable.
The horse that was so good to go could not
go a step.  She was dead lame.

'Here,' said Herring; 'hold the light.
Take the candle out of the lantern, and I'll
turn up her hoofs.  There it is!'

A knife-blade had been driven into the
frog of the off front hoof, and snapped short
in it.

'Is the Squire home at Lea Wood?' asked
Herring.  He set his teeth, and his brow
contracted; his blood was up.

'I reckon he be, unless he be away,'
answered Daniel.

Herring ran to his grey, re-saddled her,
and rode out of the village to the house,
situated a mile outside.  He rang the bell,
and asked to be allowed to see Mr. Hamlyn
for a moment, and the Squire came to him
in the hall.  Herring told his story—that he
was in pursuit of a man, with a warrant for
his apprehension in his pocket.  He drew it
forth.  He related how the horse had been
wilfully lamed at the post-house to arrest
him, and he begged to be allowed the use of
one of the Squire's horses.  His request was
at once and readily granted.  In a quarter of
an hour he was well-mounted on a fine
horse—Squire Hamlyn was noted for his good
horses—a horse perfectly fresh, and was in
full and fast pursuit.  'If I do not catch you
now,' said Herring, laughing bitterly, 'it
will not be my fault.'

But much time had been lost.  It was
already dusk.  In another half-hour it would
be dark.  The heavy clouds that had rolled
in broken masses through the sky all day
had spread out over the entire surface, and
obscured all light from the stars.  Only to
the west the declining day looked wanly over
the ragged fringe of Cornish moorland heights.
The road was no longer over open down, but
ran between hedges, with trees on both sides.
It lay in valleys with high hills well wooded
folding round; the hills cut off the light, the
dark foliage absorbed it.  Sampson Tramplara
was pushing on as well as he could, but
his bay was feeling the length of the journey
and the pace.

'Get out of the road, confound you!'
shouted Sampson, as a dark figure was
overtaken and made his horse swerve.  'What
the devil do you mean by not standing
aside?'  Sampson had a hunting whip, his
hand through the loop.  He lashed at the
foot-traveller, as he trotted by, with an oath.
It was too dark for him to discern a face, but
he saw that the person was a woman.  It did
not matter, the lash had curled round her.
She must learn a lesson—so hard to teach
women and pigs—that when a rider is in the
road she must get on one side.  He could not
have hurt her, as she uttered no cry.
Sampson was without spurs, but he dug his heels
into the flanks of his bay and urged him on
to a canter.  Then he heard distinctly the
clatter of horse-hoofs coming along the road
at a good pace—at a gallop.  Herring had got
a fresh mount, and would be up with him
in ten minutes.  His bay could not get on
faster—that was impossible.  What was to be
done?

Sampson looked back along the road.  He
could no longer see the foot-passenger.  She
had doubtless gone down a side lane.  There
was light enough for him to see that the road
was clear.  He had come to a place where
heavy oak woods closed in on the highway,
and the trees overarched making it doubly
obscure.  If Herring was to be stayed, this
was the place, now was the time; in another
ten minutes it would be too late.  Further on
the road would be lighter and less solitary.

Quick as thought, Tramplara dismounted
and led his horse along the road to a gate,
He unfastened the gate, and took the bay
through into the wood, where he tied him up
behind the hedge.  Then he unhinged the
gate—it was a large five-barred gate—and
with some little effort carried it into the
road, and threw it down across it.

He looked at his legs; he wore light tight
breeches—they would be seen if he stood aside
in the hedge, waiting the result.  So he went
through the gateway and leaned his back
against the post, standing inside with his
arms folded.  If there had been sufficient
light, and any one had been there to note his
face, an ugly smile would have been seen
covering it.  'By God,' he muttered, 'he
escaped me once to-day: this time he shall
not escape.'

He heard the tramp of the horse approach
nearer; it was descending a hill, and muffled,
then ascending the next.  Herring's voice
was audible, cheering on his horse.  Not
another sound but the rush of the Lew
Water, a petty river, swirling over its stony
bed, and breaking against snags of timber
that had fallen from the banks.

Yes! a night-jar in the wood screeched;
then was silent, then screeched again
intermittently, as though signalling danger.

Late in the year though it was, in the
hedge, close to Sampson, was a glow-worm.
The light annoyed him.  He could distinguish
by it the crane's-bill leaf on which the insect
sat.  He put up his foot and broke down the
earth, and then stamped it and the luminous
little creature together.  Through the
interstices of the clouds one star was visible.  He
would have torn it out of the sky and
stamped it to darkness in the mire, if he
could have reached it.

Louder, more distinctly, came the clatter
of hoofs.  The road was level, and the pace
of the horse accelerated.  'On, old fellow, we
shall soon be up with him!'

Sampson heard Herring's voice almost
in his ear.  His heart gave a bound, and
then—a cry, a crash, and, for a moment,
silence.

'The gate has done it,' said Sampson
Tramplara, stepping lightly into the road.

He was right; the gate had done it.  The
horse had been spurred on to a good speed,
and neither he nor his rider had noticed the
obstruction till the poor brute's legs were
between the rails, and he was down and
floundering.  Herring was flung, and lay his
length on the road.  Sampson went up to
him; he was unconscious.  Then Sampson
turned his attention to the horse.

'Where did Herring get this brute?' he
asked.  'He'll do for me, if he has not hurt
himself.  Come up, old fellow, don't lie and
go to sleep there.'

He took the reins, and brought the horse
up on his haunches, but the poor animal was
unable to stand.  He had broken or severely
injured one foot.

'No good to me,' said Sampson; 'lie as
you are.  I must force my bay to go on.'

He went back to Herring, and stood over
him, a foot on each side.  Then he drew the
pistol out of his pocket.

'This time you shall not escape me,' he
said with an oath; 'I'll take precious good
care of that.'  And he put the muzzle of his
weapon to the ear of the unconscious man.
'Ah! you're deaf enough now, but I'll bark
into your ear such a bark as will make you
jump into eternity.  I reckon I have done for
one man to-day, and if I have to run at all, I
may as well run for two as for one.'

He drew the trigger, but no report followed.

'Curse it!' he said, and flung the weapon
on the road; 'I forgot I had already fired it
off, and haven't had time to load again.'  He
paused, still astride over Herring.  'It is just
as well,' he said; 'I can beat your brains out
as well as blow them out, and then no one
will know but what you smashed your skull
in your fall.  Where's that pistol?'

He turned to look for it where he had
thrown it.  It was too dark for him to see, so
he groped in the road till he found it.

Then he came back to Herring, lying
unconscious and without motion.

'I wonder is he dead already?' he said,
and felt him, and put his hand to his heart.

'He's alive for the moment,' muttered
Sampson, 'but not enjoying life now, nor
like to have another and a sweeter taste of it.
So, my boy—one for Ophir—one for me—and
one for Mirelle!  You threatened to break a
ruler across my head, did you?  I'll break
something a deal harder over yours, or batter
yours in.'  He drew a long breath and raised
his hand, holding the pistol by the muzzle.
'Ready,' he shouted; 'here goes!—one
for——'

A scream of fury and fear combined, the
scream of a beast rather than of a human
being, and, in a moment, some one was on
him, grasping his arm, and wrapping him
round in rags rank with peat smoke.  He
could hardly make out who or what had
grappled with him.  He tried to disengage
himself, but the hands, with long nails like
claws, tore at him, and the rags entangled his
arms, and the hoarse, discordant shrieks in
his ear deafened, bewildered him.

Had a scarecrow assumed life, or leaped
on him from a field, to arrest his murderous
hand, or had some spectre of the wood,
some dead creature, risen out of the leaf-mould
that had covered it to attack him?  For a
moment fear curdled his heart's blood and
paralysed his arm; and the creature, whatever
it was, took advantage of the moment to
wrench the whip out of his hand.

'I'll kill you!  I'll rip your heart and
liver out wi' my nails.  I'll bite my way
through to 'em——'

Then Sampson recovered himself.  He
knew with whom he had to do.

'Keep off, Joyce, you fool!' he shouted,
and thrust her from him with a blow.  But
like a tiger she leaped at him again, and bit
at his hand and screamed.  In her mad fury
she could scarce form and utter words.
Sampson Tramplara backed to the gate, defending
himself with his pistol.  He struck her
repeatedly, but she felt nothing.  If he had cut
her with a knife she would not have known
it, dominated as she was by her fury.

'You fool, Joyce, let me alone, or I will
kill you!'

'You've killed the maister, you've killed 'n.
I'll tear you to bits, I will.'

'Stand back! look to your master.  If
you want him to live, you must mind him at
once.'

That answered; that alone could have answered.

She drew back.

'I'll see,' she said; 'if you've killed 'n,
you'll niver escape me.  I'll hunt you over
airth and under water; I'll go after'y through
the very fire.  You'll not escape me.  I'll see
if he be alive or dead, but happen what may,'
she said, and raised his whip over her head,
'you shall take that for a first taste.'  Then she
brought the lash down with all the weight of her
arm, and the force her fury lent her, across his
face.  The lash cut it, and he staggered back
and put his hands over his eyes, and cried out
with pain.  Then she stepped back to where
Herring lay in the road.  Young Tramplara
stood for a moment, blinded with the blow
and convulsed with rage.  His first impulse
was to rush after her and beat her down and
stamp the life out of her.  But prudence
prevailed; he took the opportunity to unhitch
his horse, mount, and ride away.

Joyce flung herself in the road beside
Herring.  All the rage and roughness went out
of her instantly.  She felt him, to find if his
bones were broken.  Then she drew him up
and laid his head in her bosom, and listened
for his breath.

'My maister! my dear, dear maister!'
she cried, between fear and tears.  'My
darling, my darling maister! speak now,
speak, do'y?'

She rocked herself from side to side,
moaning, swaying his head in her arms.

'Oh, maister, maister! what can I do?'  She
put her mouth to his, and breathed into
his lungs the contents of her own.  'I'll give'y
all the life that be in me, and welcome, if only
I can make thee open your eyes again.  You
must not die.  Speak, and let me know that
you hear me.  It be Joyce, your own poor
Joyce, that has'y, and is a rocking of'y, and
calling of'y to wake up.  Maister, darling
maister, do'y hear me?  None shall touch
you but me.  I'll die afore I lets another
near'y.'  Then her tears broke forth; she felt
her utter helplessness.  'They'll be coming for
to take'y away, but they shall not do it.'
She laid him back in the road, then stood up,
removed the gate, and put it in its place;
and then lifting Herring, she partly carried,
partly drew him away, through the gate-opening
into the wood; there she could hide
both him and herself.

She took him again in her arms, and
swayed herself to and fro, moaning and then
breaking into snatches of song.  In the wood
she resolved she would remain; no one should
take him from her.  If he were dead, there he
should lie, dead, in her arms, on her lap, and
she would sit over him watching and waiting
patiently till she died also, and the leaves
came down—copper-gold off the beech, and
russet-brown off the oak—and buried them
together.

But no! no!—he must not die!  What
could she do for him?  He had known
exactly what was right to do for her when 'she
were all a broked in pieces.'  He had known
how to mend her, so that now she was well and
strong again.  But then he was a 'skollard'
and she—she was but a poor ignorant savage.
What should she do?  Go to a cottage and
ask that he might be taken in there?  Her
heart shrank from this.  She could not breathe
in a house.  There, others would surround
him, and she would be thrust out.  No! she
would nurse him there, under the sky and the
green trees, where the wind blew, and the
grass sprang up, and the birds sang.  All at
once a thought struck her.  In her sense of
loneliness, helplessness, misery, an unutterable
yearning came over her for some help that
she could not define, not even understand.  It
was a vague effort of the poor dumb soul
within to articulate a cry for help to—she
knew not whom.  She threw herself on her
knees beside the body, and stretched her arms
from which depended the wretched rags torn
to shreds, upwards towards the sky, and raised
her face, quivering with agony, and cried
hoarsely, again and again—'Our
Vaither—kinkum-kum—kinkum-kum!  Glory
rallaluley!'

The star that Sampson Tramplara had
seen and would have stamped out was shining
aloft, and it smote through the leafy vault
over her head, and sparkled in the tears that
streamed over her cheeks.

So, throughout the night, she rocked her
burden, and moaned, and pressed it to her
bosom, and then knelt and wept, and
cried—'Kinkum-kum!  Kinkum-kum!'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`BETWEEN CUP AND LIP`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXX.


.. class:: center medium bold

   BETWEEN CUP AND LIP.

.. vspace:: 2

That same evening which had seen Herring
flung senseless in the road was to decide the
fate of Orange Tramplara.  She was to be
married that evening to Captain Trecarrel in
the little chapel at his place.  A dispensation
had been obtained from the bishop (*in
partibus*) to allow of the celebration out of
canonical hours.  The reason for this was that
a priest was on his way to Plymouth from
Camelford, and would arrive only in the
afternoon—indeed, somewhat into the evening—by
coach, and he would have to proceed very
early next morning on his way to Plymouth.
Consequently, the only manner in which it
was convenient for the pair to receive the
nuptial benediction from a Catholic priest was
for the function to take place in the chapel
at Trecarrel that evening somewhat late.  On
the morrow the Protestant ceremony was to
be performed in Launceston parish church,
followed by the wedding breakfast.  Thus it
happened that, about the time the accident—if
accident it may be called—happened to
John Herring, as related in the last chapter,
Orange was dressing for the marriage ceremony
that was to take place in the Catholic
chapel at Trecarrel, and Mirelle was assisting
her, at Orange's special request.

Mirelle was not to be a bridesmaid.  Orange
had asked her to be one; she could not well
have failed to do so; but Mirelle had declined,
and the request had not been urged.  Mirelle
was glad to escape thus.  She would have to
be present during the ceremony at Trecarrel,
but she would kneel in some shady corner,
where her face could not be seen and her tears
noticed.  Mirelle had passed a trying time.
A weight lay on her heart which she was
unable to shake off.  Even Mrs. Trampleasure
had observed the change in her appearance:
the sunken eyes, and the transparency of her
cheek; but Mirelle had explained this by the
climate, which affected her.  She had been
accustomed to sun.  Cloud and rain depressed
her, and affected both her health and her
spirits.  Orange was elated; victory was all
but achieved.  In a few hours she would be
Mrs. Trecarrel of Trecarrel, and be translated
to another sphere from that in which circled
her father and mother, Miss Bowdler, and the
Reverend Flamank.  Bah! her bridesmaids
expected to be made much of after she was
lady of Trecarrel, to be invited to her dances,
to meet county people at her receptions, to be
still 'Dear Jane,' and 'Darling Sophy,' and
'My sweet Rose.'  They were very much
mistaken.  Once she had risen to her new
perch she would peck at every presumptuous
fowl that aspired to sit beside her.

'Mrs. Trecarrel of Trecarrel!' repeated
Orange, as she surveyed herself in the glass.
She would become her station, with her proud,
handsome face and erect bearing.  She had
the figure and the dignity of a duchess.  At
least she supposed she had.  That she was a
fine woman could not be disputed, with a
swelling bust, large and luscious eyes, a bright
colour, ripe and sensuous lips, and magnificent
dark, glossy, and abundant hair.  A slight
down, not enough to disfigure, showed on her
upper lip—the badge of a warm and passionate
nature.

'Father will be too much engaged to
worry me,' she thought, 'and mother's cold
will keep her from wetting her feet at
Trecarrel.  That is a comfort.  As for Sampson,
he shall not cross my threshold, unless I
invite him to shoot rabbits when I am sure
no gentleman will be present.'

Mirelle was engaged on the rich but coarse
hair of Orange.  The delicate white fingers
trembled, and were less skilful than usual.

'Really, Mirelle, you are clumsy this
evening,' said Orange; 'you pull my hair
and hurt me.'  She looked before her into
the glass.

'Are you crying, child?'

'No, Orange.'

'I thought I saw something glistening in
your eye.'

Mirelle had the strength to repress her
tears.  She devoted her whole attention to
that on which she was engaged.

'You will come occasionally and see me,'
said Orange.  'I shall be so pleased to show
you all I am doing; and I am certain the
Captain will be delighted.  Now, don't run
the hair-pins into my head!  I tell you, you
hurt me.  Really, Mirelle, you are very clumsy.
What ails you this evening?'

Mirelle made no reply.

'Try on the orange-wreath and the veil,
child,' said Miss Trampleasure.

Mirelle took up the wreath and adjusted it.

'The Captain has always been partial
towards you,' continued Orange.  She was aware
that what she said gave pain, but then, what
triumph is complete without the infliction of
wounds and agonies?

'Do you not think Harry is a handsome
man?  I do not believe I have ever seen, even
in a woman, such beautiful and expressive
eyes.  There, Mirelle, is a pin with a large
Cornish crystal in the head; put it in my hair
and fasten my wreath with it.'

Mirelle did not, could not, speak.  It was
as much as she could do to maintain the
mastery over her feelings.

'Do you know, you palefaced witch, I
was at one time almost jealous of you.  I
thought the Captain was attentive to you—more
attentive than he ought to be, and that
you were trying to draw him away from me.
Of course that was natural.  Every girl
begrudges another her lover, and would rob her
of him if she could.  It is a natural instinct.
But Harry never really cared for you; he
told me so; he was only playing——  Good
heavens, Mirelle!'  Orange sprang up, and
the tears, tears of pain, started into her eyes.
In a moment, in a flash of passion, she struck
Mirelle on the cheek with her open hand.

'Do you know what you have done?  You
have run the pin into my head.  Look—look!'  She
snatched off her veil.  'How can I wear
this?  There is a spot of blood on it.'

Then Mirelle burst into tears.  She had
an excuse for them—she had been struck.

'I am sorry,' said Orange; 'but really you
hurt me.  Look at the blood, and convince
yourself.  I did not mean to strike you; but
the pain was sharp, and I forgot myself.  Do
control yourself.  Hark!  I hear horses' feet.
The carriage will be here directly, and we
shall start for Trecarrel.  Dry your eyes and
control your feelings.  You must not let
people see that you have been crying, or they
will say'—her malice gained the mastery once
more—'that you loved the Captain, and were
envious of me.'

Mirelle covered her face.

'Of course,' said Orange, looking hard at
her, with her red lips twitching, 'there is not
a shadow of truth in this; still, tongues are
sharp and venomous, and such things will be
said if you give occasion for them.'

Mirelle stood up, proud, cold, and
impassive.  In a moment she had conquered her
feelings.  Her pride was touched, and that
recovered her.

'No one shall dare to say such things of
me,' she answered.  'Sit down, and I will
finish your toilette.'

The hoofs on the gravel that Orange had
heard were those of Sampson's bay, now
utterly tired out, and scarce able to carry his
master up the steep ascent from the valley of
the Tamar.

He sprang out of his saddle, and burst
into the hall as his mother descended the stairs
in a stiff myrtle green satin dress, with a cap
on her head adorned with rose-coloured bows.

'Where is my father?' asked Sampson, abruptly.

'He is dressed, Sampy darling, and in the
parlour.  I'm going in there too.  We expect
the carriage shortly.  The bridesmaids will
be picked up at their own doors, but our
carriage is coming here.'

He did not wait to hear her, but rushed
into the drawing-room.

'By Grogs!  Sampy,' exclaimed
Mr. Trampleasure, 'what brings you here?  I
thought you were to remain in charge at
Ophir, and give us your visits, as the wisest
of men said, like angel visits, few and far
between.  I want you there, and not here,
boy.'

'Father, I must speak with you instantly,
and alone,' he added, as he saw his mother
come rustling and sniffing in at the door.
'Let us go into the office.'

'Nothing wrong with Ophir, lad, eh?'
asked the old man, his colour changing.

'Everything,' answered Sampson.  'For
heaven's sake lead on.  Not a moment is to
be lost.'

Mr. Trampleasure was arrayed in evening
dress, with a very white tight neckcloth, and
very stiff projecting frills to his shirt.  He
was in a fine black cloth dress coat.  His hair
was as white as his frills.  He took up a
plated branch candlestick, and led the way.
His hand shook.

'Take care, Tram, darling,' said
Mrs. Trampleasure, 'you be a joggling of the wax
all over the carpet, and it do take a time
getting of it out with a hiron and blotting
paper.'

He opened the door of the office and went
in.  He had been working, and smoking, and
drinking there that afternoon; there was a
fire burning red on the hearth.  The room
reeked with rum and tobacco.

The old man put the candle down, and
then stayed himself with one hand on the
table.  'By Grogs!' he said, 'you've given
me a turn, Sampy.  What do you mean by
saying that everything is wrong with Ophir?'

'I mean what I say,' answered the young
man.  'Ophir is smashed up.  That cursed
fool Herring has found all out.  Flamank
knows also.  They saw me salting the stream.'

The old man's face turned purple.

'That's not the worst—there's worse
behind,' continued young Sampson.  He
hesitated a moment, and looked at his father.
Mr. Trampleasure was feeling about him with
the disengaged hand for his arm-chair.  He
gripped the table with the left.  He tried to
speak; he opened his mouth and shut it
again.  It was horrible to see him, like a fish,
gasping, and nothing proceeding from his lips.
'It must come out.  But first; father—we
shall have to run for it.  I especially.  Where
is the money?'

The old man pointed with a faltering hand
in the direction of a strong box, let into the
wall.  Then he put his hand in his pocket
and pulled out a bunch of keys.  He tried to
indicate a single key, but could not take his
other hand from the table.  The bunch fell on
the floor.

'All right, governor,' said Sampson.  'Now
I will tell you the worst, and a cursed ugly
worst it is.  You may as well hear it from
me as from another.  I must be off to-night—at
once; you suit your convenience.  Do
as you like.  You have nothing to fear but
the stone jug; I the wooden horse.  I have
shot one man dead to-day, the constable, and
broken the neck of another, John Herring,
so the two can keep each other company; and
I must make off.'

Then old Trampleasure dropped like a
stone on the floor.  There came a sudden
blow within his head, as from a hammer, and
he saw nothing more.

Sampson stood over him for a moment.
No time was to be lost.  Every minute was
important.  Whatever happened to his father,
he—Sampson—must get clear away.  He saw
in a moment what had occurred.  His father
had been struck down with an apoplectic fit,
and could not escape.  Time was too precious
to be wasted in attending to him.  He could
not afford to call for assistance.  He stooped
and took up the bunch of keys, and went to
the strong box.  Without much difficulty he
unlocked it, and fell to wondering over his
father's wisdom.

Old Trampleasure had feared discovery,
and was prepared for a sudden emergency.
All the money that had come into his hands
had been reduced to the most portable form
possible, in hundred-pound, fifty-pound, and
ten-pound notes.  There they lay in thick
packets.  Sampson took them all.  He left
not one behind, and stowed them away in a
travelling valise of his father's, which the old
man took with him when he went to Ophir for
a few days.

Then Sampson opened the private door of
the office, and, without another look at the old
man lying prostrate, darted forth.

'What a time them two are in there
together!' grumbled Mrs. Trampleasure; 'and,
oh dear! there comes the chaise to take us to
Trecarrel.'  She ran to the foot of the stairs,
and called, 'Orange dear!  Orange! the
carridge be here!'

'I am ready, mother,' answered the bride,
descending.

The hall was well lighted; and as she
came down, followed by Mirelle, she looked
radiant, proud, triumphant.  She waved back
Mirelle, lest she should step on her veil, with
an angry, insolent gesture.

'My word, Orange! you are a beauty!
I'll run and call your father.'

But he was beyond call.





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.. _`JOYCE'S PATIENT`:

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   CHAPTER XXXI.


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   JOYCE'S PATIENT.

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Joyce and her patient could not remain
concealed.  Her cries had been heard when she
fell—literally tooth and nail—on Sampson
Tramplara, and those who heard them, being
superstitious, thought best to keep away from
the spot whence they had sounded.

Later in the evening the farmer of Coombow,
coming home from a cattle fair, heard
the moans and wailing in the wood, and was
greatly scared by the injured horse, which had
thrust itself into the hedge.  So sincerely
alarmed was he, and so thoroughly did his
account of what he had heard and seen
frighten his household, that not one of his
sons—no, not all of them in phalanx, armed
with pitchforks and lighted by lanthorns,
would venture that night into the high road
to ascertain the cause of the alarm.

With morning, however, courage came,
and early, when the day began to break,
nearly the entire household, male and female,
went out to see whether there was any natural
explanation to be found for those things that
had, in the darkness, so scared Farmer Facey.

The horse was found.

'Why!  I'm blessed if this bain't Squire
Hamlyn's roan,' said the farmer.  'I ought to
know 'n becos I reared 'n.  Now this be reg'lar
curious.'

Joyce had been unable to retire with her
burden far into the wood.  The hillside was
steep, and she could not carry the unconscious
load far up.  She had attempted to do so,
fearing lest she should be seen, but when she
raised him he moaned with pain.  She was
like a cat playing with a dead bird, putting it
down, then lifting it and carrying it away,
then putting it down again.

It was not long before she was discovered
and surrounded.

'Who is he?  How comes he here?  How
did this happen?  Why didn't you bring him
to the farm?'

Questions were poured upon her.  She
looked about her angrily, suspiciously, as a
cat would look when surrounded with those
who, she thinks, will deprive her of her bird,
or at least dispute her sole possession of it.

'He be mine.  I found 'n.  I saved 'n.
Capt'n Sampson Tramplara would ha' killed
'n, but I pervented 'n.'

'But who is he?'

'He be the maister.  He mended me when
I were gone scatt.  Nobody shan't so much
as touch 'n.  I've got 'n fast, and I'll care
for 'n, that I will.  There—you can go, and
leave us alone here.  What be you a bothering
here for?  I didn't call'y.'

'Nonsense.  He must be taken into a
house, and put to bed,' said Mrs. Facey.
'Poor soul!  Dear alive!'

'He shan't go under no house.  If he goes
anywhere, he shall go home.'

'Where is his home?'

'Where should it be but West Wyke?'

'What!  West Wyke in South Tawton?'

'Sure-ly.  Where else should it be?  It
don't jump about, now here, now there, I
reckon.'

After much difficulty with Joyce, who
was unreasonable in her jealousy and
suspicion, it was decided that the farmer should
send a waggon well bedded with straw, and
that Joyce should be conveyed in this, with
the still insensible man in her arms, to West
Wyke.

There was no medical man nearer than
Okehampton, and West Wyke was not as
distant from Okehampton as Coombow, the
place where they were.

'I arn't got no money,' said Joyce, 'but
I'll pay you for the waggon, sure enough.'

'I do not expect payment,' said Farmer
Facey in a mildly deprecatory tone—a tone
that implied he would yield the point if
pressed.  'I dare say the gentleman, when
he gets well, will remember me.  And if he
don't, well—he'll be sure to have relations as
will do what be proper and respectable.'

'It be I,' said Joyce, defiantly, 'it be I as
has to pay, and blast me blue if I don't.'

'Where will the money come from?' asked
Facey, surveying her rags.

'I'll pay wi' thicky arms!' said Joyce,
thrusting forth her hands.  'See! is there a
man among you can work as I can?  When
the young maister be well, then, sure.  I'll
come and work for'y two months by the
moon, I will, for the loan of the waggon
to-day; and I'll ax for no meat nor no housing.
I'll feed myself, and I'll sleep where I
can, in the open air.'

'Her must be one of the Nymet savages,
sure-ly,' said the farmer, in an undertone, to
his wife.

Joyce's ears were keen, and she heard him.

'What if I be a savage?' she asked.  'I
baint, like mun [them] to Nymet.  Them be
proper savages.  Vaither be a head above
they.  He hev a got what he may call his own.'

The waggon was brought to the place,
and two men lifted Herring into it.  Joyce
climbed in, and, after having seated herself
in the straw, took him again in her arms.

'If the cart go over rough stones, it shall
joggle me,' she said; 'I'll hold'y, maister
dear, that you shan't feel it.'

'I say, maiden,' said Farmer Facey, looking
over the rail of the waggon as they were
about to start, 'when the young gentleman
gets better, just tell him he was took home
in Farmer Facey's waggon, with his team and
horseman, Farmer Facey, to Coombow.  He
might like to know, you see, and, being a
gentleman, as I take it, he won't forget.'

Just as the cart was off, he called to the
driver, 'Stay a bit, Jim!  I think I'll take a
lift, too, as far as to Bridestowe, and I'll just
up and see the Squire.  I'll tell him what has
happened to poor Major; and, as it chances,
I've another horse out of the same mare, I
can sell 'n—a tidy sort of a dark roan, you
minds 'n, Jim.  Mebbe we'll strike a bargain.
I'll go wi' you now on the chance.'

At Bridestowe the waggon came to a long
halt.  Farmer Facey descended; the driver
was thirsty.  He had much to tell.  A crowd
gathered round the cart.  Daniel, the hostler,
climbed up the wheel to look into the face of
Herring, and would have mounted the waggon
had not Joyce beat him off with Sampson's
whip.

'Sure it be he, poor young man,' said
Daniel.  'I know by token he forgot to chuck
me a sixpence last night.  'Tis he as went
after the Squire's horse.  How came this
about?  Do'y say as Major hev a foreleg
broke?  Well, now, Loramussy! how can that
have happened?  The young gent may come
round, right enough, but the oss—he must
be shot.  'Tis a thousand pities.'

'There be nothing happens but what be
good for trade,' observed Farmer Facey.

'You're right there, maister!' answered
Daniel.  'There's not a sparrer falls, nor an
oss breaks his knees, nor gets spavined, but
what it be good for them as is vetinaries, or
has osses to sell.  And it be the same wi'
'uman beings; them goes scatt at times, and
it be for the good o' the doctors.  So the Lord
sends to every man his meat.'

'But how did it come about?'  This was a
question asked of Joyce repeatedly.  But Joyce
was uncommunicative.  She kept her eyes
fixed on the face of the injured man, and
only now and then turned them with a sharp,
defiant glance at any one who approached too
near.

The hostess kindly brought her a hunch
of bread.  She tore and ate it much as an
animal devours its food.  She returned no
thanks for it.  She could think of nothing
but him whom she held to her bosom, watching
every change in his face, or fearing lest
he should die in her arms.

The journey was long, but Joyce did not
relax her hold nor relinquish her place for
one moment.

'Won't'y get down and hev a drop o'
cyder?' asked the driver, at every public
house they passed.  'It be a faint day for
the horses, and they need refreshing.'

Joyce shook her head in reply.  But if
Joyce would not assist in cooling the horses
by drinking herself, the driver was more
considerate.

Between each of these refreshment stations,
the man endeavoured to open conversation
with her.  He was a young fellow,
fresh in colour, and not bad looking.  He
had a sufficiently observant eye to see that
Joyce was a fine girl, though a very rough
one.  But she would not answer him; she
did not even look at him, unless he ventured
too near her charge.

She was patient at the stoppages, which
were many.  They rested Herring.  She saw
in his face that he suffered with the motion
and was easy when the motion ceased.  That
sufficed her.

In the midst of Sourton Down stands a
very humble tavern, backed by a few stunted
trees, twisted and turning from the west; and
by the roadside is to be seen a tall granite
cross, once a burial monument of a British
chief, and bearing an inscription that was
cut into and rendered illegible in medieval
times, when the upright stone was converted
into a wayside cross.

As the waggon halted before this little
tavern, Joyce saw Herring's eyes open.  He
raised his arms and waved them in an
unmeaning manner; then, looking intently
upwards, as though he saw something far above
him in the depths of the blue sky, he drew a
deep sigh and murmured 'Mirelle!'

Then his eyes closed again, and his hands
dropped.

'Right, right, maister!' said Joyce; 'it
be the Whiteface you want and would seek.
But why do'y look up there?  Her be on
earth, not in heaven.  I be a nursing of'y,
none for Joyce, nor for Miss Cicely, but for
her you cries after and looks for up above.'

At Okehampton they met with no interruption,
and were surrounded by no throng
of inquisitive persons, and the reason was
this.  The parson of a neighbouring moorland
parish had been summoned that day before
the magistrates, on a charge of maltreating
and starving a poor boy in his house, his
wife's son by a former husband.  The
magistrates dismissed him with a reprimand and
a caution; but the people were not disposed
to treat the matter so lightly and the man so
leniently.  All the fluid portion of the
populace had flowed out on the moor road after
the retiring parson, with hoots, and clots of
earth, and expressions of aversion.  The
rabble manifested an intimate acquaintance
with his domestic arrangements, and taunted
him with them.  If the reverend gentleman
could have commanded his temper, he might
have speedily tired out his pursuers; but this
he was unable to do, and unwise enough not
to attempt.  He was a remarkably ugly
man, ill-made, short in leg and long in arm,
with large hands and feet, and a lace with
low brow and protruding jaws.  He became
mad with rage and humiliation, and turned
savagely, whenever the crowd ventured near
his heels, to charge them with his green
gingham umbrella, and smite them furiously,
uttering unclerical exclamations of abuse and
contempt.  His face was simian in its ugliness
and malignity.  The whalebones of his
umbrella were dislocated, and the wires
protruded.  One boy was cut with the iron, and
when this was perceived there rose a howl of
indignation, and a moorstone whizzed through
the air and knocked the parson's hat off his
head.  He was a poor man, and the injury
done to his best hat and to his umbrella was
more than he could endure.  He ran as fast
as his short legs could fly over the ground,
and took refuge in a cottage, the door of
which he barred; and then, escaping up the
rude stair, he spat at his pursuers from the
window.

Parson-baiting is not an every-day treat,
and the luxury had emptied the streets of
Okehampton.  Consequently the waggon
passed through almost unnoticed.

As the waggon crossed the bridge over
the Taw, it encountered the two chaises with
the party of serious speculators returning
from Ophir.  They had slept at Zeal.  Mr. Flamank,
as a director of the mine, had felt it
incumbent on him to make a complete
investigation into the method of working, and into
the accounts.  The men engaged on the mine
had been examined by him, and he had
overhauled the books in the office.  Among these
he had discovered a private book of the
Tramplaras, which contained a register of the
amount of gold expended in the salting, and
the amount recovered after the washing.
Those serious men whom the Reverend Israel
had taken with him, in the hopes of inducing
them to sink capital in Ophir, assisted him
zealously in the detection of the imposture.

The transaction was humiliating to the
little man, but he was a thoroughly conscientious
person, and he did not shrink from that
which he felt it was at once his duty and his
interest to do, however galling it might be to
his self-esteem.  He carried away the books
with him, and dismissed the workmen, warning
them that they would be required to give
evidence in the trial of the Tramplaras, which,
as he supposed, would inevitably follow.

'I have been considering,' said Israel
Flamank to those with him in the same carriage,
'that I have been very blind.  Last night I
was unable to sleep, and so I turned prophecy
over in my head, and I saw clearly, at last,
that the whole affair had been foretold.  The
name Trampleasure, if rightly estimated—that
is, with a certain value given to each
letter, and the capital letter *T* being reckoned
as double a small *t*, and the *ea* in pleasure
being turned into an *i*, Tramplisure instead
of Trampleasure, which is the way in which
some persons would pronounce the name,
and the *e* at the end of the name omitted as
a mute—I say, thus valued, the name makes,
when summed up, exactly six hundred and
sixty-six, which is the number of the Beast,
and which is also, we are distinctly told, the
number of a man's name.  Now this, I take
it, is a very significant fact.  The Beast, we
are further informed, would deceive the very
elect; and what else are we, I ask, but the
very elect?'

'That is true,' responded all those in the
chaise, and shook their heads affirmatively.

'And he spake great swelling words,' went
on the Reverend Israel.  'Now old
Mr. Trampleasure had a certain pomposity of
manner about him that exactly tallies with
the description given by the inspired penman.'

'Very true,' answered the carriage-load,
and the heads all shook together again.

'It is remarkable also,' continued the
minister, 'that in the sacred text the Beast
Trampleasure is associated with the Woman,
Babylon—that is, with Rome.  For Babylon
is Rome, as every schoolboy knows,
ethnographically, entomologically, and enterically.
Now, I ask you, is not a young Roman
Catholic lady staying in Dolbeare with the
family, and is not Miss Trampleasure about
to be, or already, married to a Roman Catholic
gentleman?'

'To be sure,' responded those in the chaise,
and shook their heads knowingly.

'And, remember, the seer of Patmos saw
two Beasts, and the little one derived his
power from the elder, which was wounded,
though not to death.  That wound I take to
be the failure of Polpluggan, from which old
Trampleasure recovered.  As to the little
Beast, there can be no question about
him—Sampson Trampleasure, junior.'

'That is certain!' exclaimed the chorus,
and all the heads shook to the left.

'But, good heavens, what have we here!'
cried Mr. Flamank.

The carriage stopped.

'What's the matter there?' inquired the
driver of the chaise, as he drew up.

'Why, bless me!' said the minister, starting
to his feet.  'As sure as I am alive that
is Mr. John Herring.  Stay, young man,' he
called to the waggoner.  'How comes the
gentleman in such a plight?  Girl,' to Joyce,
'where did you find him?  Is he alive?  Is
he badly hurt?  How came this about?'

The little man jumped out of the carriage
in a fever of excitement, and pity, and alarm.
Joyce gave him no information, but he picked
up something from the boy who drove, and
learned that, in some way or other, Sampson
Tramplara was involved.

'Bless my soul!' exclaimed Mr. Flamank.
'One cannot be too thankful for mercies.
Actually John Herring made me—me run after
this cut-throat murderer—and yet I remain
unhurt; whereas John Herring, who takes up
the chase, is killed.  A really startling
interposition of Providence.'

'He be not dead,' said Joyce, fiercely; 'I
shan't let 'n die, I shan't.'

Then the waggon, moved on.

'Where be West Wyke to?' asked the driver.

'I'll tell'y where to stop,' answered Joyce.
'Go right on till I shout Wo!'

She allowed him to proceed past the turning
over the turf leading to West Wyke, and
then she suddenly gave the signal to halt.

'The road over the moor be too bad to
travel wi' wheels,' said Joyce.  'You bide
here, and I will fetch vaither, and he'll carry
the maister home, along of I.'

Joyce was not long gone before she returned
with old Cobbledick, carrying a hurdle.
With the carter's help, Herring was lifted on
to it; and then Joyce and her father departed
over the moor, without another word to the
man, conveying Herring between them.

'They be rum folk in these parts,' said
Jim White, the waggoner, 'not to offer a fellow
a glass of cyder, and the hosses all of a lather
with the journey.'





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.. _`DESTITUTE`:

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   CHAPTER XXXII


.. class:: center medium bold

   DESTITUTE.

.. vspace:: 2

Mr. Trampleasure's death, through the
bursting of a blood-vessel on the brain, and the
escape of Sampson, left the three women at
Dolbeare without a head.  Captain Trecarrel
did not appear, except to make a formal call
of condolence, or to offer his services in a
manner that implied that this offer was not to
be accepted.

'Lucky dog that I am,' said he to himself;
'saved at the last moment in a manner
melodramatic.  There is a sweet little cherub that
sits up aloft, and takes care of the fate of
Trecarrel.  By George! suppose I had been
noosed and turned off before this terrible
scandal came out, what should I have done?
Now there lies before me one clear course of
action.  There is an opera company at this
time performing in Exeter, and I am fond of
music.  I must positively go to the faithful city[1]
by the next coach, and not return till the
clouds have cleared somewhat.  But before I
go, there is one duty I must perform.  I must
let the directors of Ophir know of old
Trampleasure's five thousand pounds lodged in the
hands of John Herring.'

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[1] The motto of Exeter is 'Semper fidelis.'

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It is needless to say that the marriage had
not taken place.  It is needless also to say that
Trecarrel did depart to Exeter to hear the
opera company.  It is also needless to say
that he thoroughly enjoyed himself, liked the
music, caught some of the airs, ate, drank, and
smoked, and blessed his stars every day that
he was a free man.  He not only blessed his
luck, but he flattered himself that he had
extricated himself by his own shrewdness.
'And now,' said he, 'here am I in Exeter,
enjoying myself.  Had I remained at Trecarrel,
I must have gone to bed, and one may have
too much even of a good thing.'

The affairs of the Ophir Gold Company
were wound up.  All the directors met, except
Arundell Golitho, of Trevorgan, Esquire, who
did not appear.  But that was hardly
wonderful, as no one knew who Arundell Golitho,
Esq. was, and as the letter addressed to him,
stating the circumstances of the company, the
death of Mr. Trampleasure, and the
disappearance of Mr. Sampson with the funds of
the company, was returned unopened.  The
post-office was unable to discover Trevorgan.
When the affairs were wound up, it was discovered
that there were liabilities, but no assets
except the five thousand pounds held by
Mr. Herring.  The shareholders had lost
everything they had embarked in the concern,
except what little would come to them out of
the five thousand pounds after the liabilities
had been discharged, and the lawyers had
sweated the little sum to a cipher.

Then it was that the Reverend Israel
Flamank's character shone out.  The man's
vanity had received a crushing blow, he would
never entirely recover from the ridicule that
descended on him for his discovery of Ophir.
He had lost his small capital sunk in the mine.
He alone, however, had thought and compassion
at this juncture for the orphan and
the widow.  He found that Orange and her
mother were left absolutely destitute.  The
five thousand pounds known to be in Herring's
hands would be absorbed and dissipated, and
the furniture of Dolbeare sold.  There was
nothing, absolutely nothing, left, on which
Mrs. Trampleasure and her daughter and
Mirelle could live; for old Trampleasure had
thrown Mirelle's money into the same venture,
and it was gone past recovery.

Mr. Flamank exerted his powers of
persuasion on the directors to induce them to
propose to the shareholders a surrender of a
small portion of the money that they were able
to lay their hands on, for the maintenance of
the widow and her daughter.  But none are
so remorseless as pious persons touched in
pocket.  He pleaded to deaf ears.  The liabilities
of the mine were considerable, and would
eat into the little fund.  The men's wages
were in arrear.  The builders had received
only a trifle on account for the sheds they had
erected.  The company owed for the water-wheel,
for the drum, for the stamping-mill, for
the cradles, the buddles, and the whips and the
whims.  Nothing, in short, had been paid for.
As for the receipts, they were nil, for nothing
had been got out of Ophir but what had been
put in.  Old Tramplara, it was supposed, had
sunk his own money in the concern, at least it
appeared so; for he had drawn everything out
of the bank, had sold all his investments
except the Patagonians which were unsaleable.
The gold employed in salting the mine had
undoubtedly consumed a great deal, and what
remained had gone, with the shareholders'
money, into the pocket of Mr. Sampson.  It
was fortunate that only the first call had been
made on the shareholders, and that few of the
shares were fully paid up.  Nevertheless the
loss was considerable, so considerable as to
sour the sincerest Christian among them, and
make them indifferent to the woes of the
arch scoundrel's widow and daughter.

When Mr. Flamank found that nothing
was to be saved out of the wreck for the
Trampleasures, he went about collecting
contributions for them.  But his credit was
suffering eclipse, and exasperation against
Tramplara too great for him to do much.  He
was unable to get together more than fifty
pounds, given grudgingly, and not obtained
without great personal effort and the
endurance of many humiliations.

The five thousand pounds lodged with John
Herring lay in the bank in his name.  It was
the only sum standing to his account.  But
when Herring was written to, no answer was
returned.  That was not greatly wondered at,
for it was known that he had been found
insensible on the road, and had been carried in
the same condition to West Wyke.

The directors wrote him to the effect that
the affairs of Mr. Trampleasure, deceased,
were so involved in those of the Ophir Mining
Company that it was necessary to settle both
together.  Mr. Trampleasure had died insolvent.
His chief creditors were the directors
of the company, and the administration of his
effects had been granted to them.  They were,
therefore, empowered to call in all moneys
due to the deceased, and, as such, they claimed
the five thousand pounds which were to be
repaid to Mr. Trampleasure in the event of
the marriage of his daughter with Captain
Trecarrel not taking place on a certain day.
That marriage had not been solemnized at
the time specified, nor was it probable that it
would be within a reasonable period, therefore
the money was due to them as a debt to the
late Mr. Trampleasure.

The cheque did reach them after a time,
written with a shaking hand, and the money
was drawn.  Herring could not have refused it.
With the cheque came a letter offering to
purchase the entire plant of Ophir, wheel, and
stampers, and crushers, everything in fact, at a
moderate valuation.  The offer was too good
to be refused.  The directors closed with it by
return of post.  There was, consequently, no
sale by auction at Ophir, but everything in
Dolbeare was condemned to go by the hammer,
except the personal effects of Mrs. and
Miss Trampleasure, and of Mirelle.  The
house was to be cleared of everything, except
the clock on the stairs, the crayon portraits,
and the walking-sticks.  The ladies could not
remain for the auction.  They would have
had no home to go to, had not the Reverend
Israel Flamank intervened and opened his
doors to them.  He did this in a gush of
benevolence, and, unhappily, without first
consulting Mrs. Flamank, who, when told
what he had done, went into 'tantrums,' and
made the house so unpleasant for the Reverend
Israel that he spent the rest of the day in
making pastoral calls and eating pastoral
meals with his sheep.

By evening Mrs. Flamank became calmer,
and, when her husband returned late, was so
far subdued that she yielded a reluctant
consent to giving the Trampleasures shelter for
a month.

'You know, Betsy Delilah, dear saint,'
said Israel, 'if we do not take them in, the
poor creatures will be turned into the street,
and that your tender heart would be unable
to bear, sweet angel!'

'I'm sure, Izzy, we have lost enough by
the Trampleasures already.  However, I will
not say nay, because it will look well, and
people will say we practise what we preach.
Only—I warn you, Izzy!' she held up her
finger; 'mind yourself.'

What Mrs. Betsy Delilah meant by this
warning, he understood perfectly.  With his
many excellent qualities, Mr. Flamank had a
weakness: he was given to caress his female
devotees.

In the Established Church there are two
schools differing in their tendencies.  The
tendency of the extreme of the High Church
is towards plunging into pecuniary difficulties;
the tendency of the extreme of the Low Church
is towards lapses into amatory difficulties.  If
this be the case in the Established Church—if
this be done in the green tree, what goes on in
the dry?—in the nonconformist churches,
where the ministers are not independent of
their congregations—where the mercury of
their salary rises and falls with their
popularity.  It is natural that in such
circumstances there should be developed a tendency
towards fawning on and fondling of pious
ladies with money.  A little coaxing retains
a sheep that inclines to err into another fold.
The pressing of the hand changes a shilling
subscription into a guinea, and an arm round
the waist elevates it to five pounds.  When the
habit has been acquired of showing these
tendernesses to the well-to-do, old and ugly
ladies, it sometimes extends also to those who
are good-looking and young, and becomes at
last wholly indiscriminate.

Now the Reverend Israel Flamank was a
sincere and good man, and he drew the line,
with singular moderation, at kisses.  These
were scriptural—the Apostle Paul had a fancy
for them, and recommended them wholesale.
But the arm round the waist he did not
allow.  He found no warranty for it in Holy
Writ.  But he would take a lady's hand in
one of his, and stroke it with the other, and
read and expound to her the Song of Solomon.
There was no harm in that; and it was really
remarkable how these innocent attentions told
on his income and his acceptableness to his
congregation.

Mrs. Flamank did not like these
familiarities.  Though she knew they were as
harmless as the love-making of actors and
actresses on the stage, and were inseparable
from the position of a minister in an
Unestablished Church, she objected to them.
She was very determined, if she received
Mrs. Trampleasure, Orange, and Mirelle into her
house, she would permit none of these Pauline
caressings under her eyes.  But it is easier
for a resolution to be taken than to enforce it.
Mr. Flamank was very discreet for a week or
ten days, but after that he began to soften
towards the ladies.  Mirelle kept him at a
distance from the outset.  He had been highly
pleased at the prospect of getting a daughter
of the Scarlet Woman into his house.  He
looked on her as an erring sheep, one who
erred through ignorance; and he hoped to
enlighten her, and lead her into the paths of
truth.  He was, however, somewhat puzzled
how to set about it.  Mirelle withdrew from
family devotion, and declined to assist at his
scriptural readings.  She would not attend
his chapel.  She allowed him no opportunity
of opening a conversation with her on religious
topics.  She was cold, reserved, and silent.
Mrs. Flamank rather liked her: there was no
fear of Israel patting her hand.

The pastor attempted to dazzle her with
his evangelical talk, much in the same way
that young Sampson had attempted to
impress her with his brag of feats performed
with dogs and horses.  On one or two occasions
he had the temerity to attack her, but
he came off with falls which damped his
ardour.  Once, when he assailed her on the
subject of belief, she cut him short with the
observation, 'We do not speak the same
language.  When I say, I believe, I mean
that I hold as certain, but I notice that you
use the word differently, as synonymous with
I suppose.  We look at different objects and
through different instruments; I through a
telescope at constant verities, you through a
kaleidoscope at vari-coloured and ever-varying
opinions.'

With Orange it was not the same.  She
was in trouble.  Mortified pride and wounded
love brought frequent tears into her eyes.
She looked very handsome in her mourning
suit.  What is the first duty of a pastor, but
to comfort the sorrowful, to soothe the
ruffled soul, to apply the balm of Gilead to
open wounds?  So Mr. Israel Flamank was
assiduous in his comforting and soothing, and
dabbing on of balm,—more assiduous than
Betsy Delilah liked.  Orange was coarse of
grit, and did not object to the little attentions
of the pastor which would have been insufferable
to Mirelle.  She accepted them with
indifference; she was without religious
instincts, and the words of the shepherd fell
empty on her ear.  But there was something
flattering in his efforts to console her, and at
the present time, when her pride was hurt,
any flattery was pleasing.  Captain Trecarrel
was not there to staunch her tears, to cheer
her and give her assurance of a future; any one
who could afford her some alleviation to her
humiliation, and encourage her with a hope of
better things, was acceptable, even though he
were a dissenting minister.

Flamank was perfectly sincere.  His heart
was full of kindness and devoid of guile.  He
was troubled at her distress, and unhappy at
his inability to help her.  It was unfortunate
that his mode of expressing these justifiable
feelings did not meet with the approval of
Betsy Delilah.  They irritated her, and she
determined to shake herself free of her guests
at the first opportunity.

Captain Trecarrel had returned to the
neighbourhood.  Orange heard of it, and
waited several days in expectation of a visit.
But he neither called nor sent to inquire after
her and her mother.  She brooded over this
neglect.  Did he really mean to desert her?
He could not behave so cruelly, so unworthily.
Her hot blood raced through her veins.  She
resolved that she would go herself to Trecarrel.
She would go alone; no one should know of
the visit.  She would speak to Harry face to
face.  When he had her before him, and saw
her in her black, her face—her beautiful face,
wet with tears, his love would blaze up, his
manly pity and generosity would force him to
assert his right to protect her.

He was staying away only because of the
scandal about Ophir.  He was waiting for
that to blow away, and then he would return
to her.  She felt sure of that; she measured
his love by her own.  Would she have
forsaken him had ruin overtaken him?  A
thousand times no—no—no!  She must
know his intentions for certain.  Her future
depended on knowing this.  She was unable
to endure the thought that she should be seen
going to seek him, and therefore she resolved
to go by herself after dark.  She would not
tell Mrs. or Mr. Flamank, nor her mother,
nor, of course, Mirelle.  The thing could be
done with ease.  The drawing-room had
French windows, through which the little
garden could be entered.  The drawing-room
was rarely sat in; it was used for company
occasions.  The family occupied the dining-room,
in which they had their meals, and in
which they worked and talked afterwards,
amidst the fumes of meat, cabbage, and cheese.
This was economical; it saved carpets and
furniture, and an extra fire.

Orange waited till all had gone to bed.
They were early risers, and retired early in
that house.  Then she softly descended the
stairs, her shoes in her hand, and entered the
drawing-room.  She easily unclosed the
shutters, without making any noise, unlocked
and unbolted the French window, opened it,
put on her shoes, and stepped forth on the
gravel.

The street was deserted; only a low tavern
at the end had the door open, and a light
shone forth into the road.  In that gleam, a
young woman, adorned with gay ribands,
was laughing and romping with two nearly
tipsy young men.  The language, the gestures,
were gross and disgusting.

'Have another nip of gin, Polly.'

'No, you shan't have none of his, Polly,
I'll give you some, my duck.  You be my
sweetheart, and not his.'

'Who goes there?' screamed the girl, and
made a rush at Orange.  'Here's a girl for
you, Tom, and then you let me alone with Joe.'

Orange flung her off with scorn, and ran
along the road.  A burst of laughter and
jeers followed her.

'She be going after her young man down
to the lane end,' cried the girl.

Orange's cheek burned.  That was
true—hatefully true.  She was going to seek her
lover, but only because he did not come to
see her.  After this incident she was
unmolested.  She met no one else on her long
walk to Trecarrel.

Would she find the Captain up?  She
hoped so, she supposed so, for she knew that
he sat up late; he had often told her as
much.  It was as she had conjectured and
hoped.  When she reached the house, she
saw a light from his smoking-room, a
comfortable room, where he kept his whips and
guns; a room ornamented with stuffed foxes'
heads and their tails, and with the antlers of
red deer.  A door from this little room opened
on to the lawn.  Orange went to the window,
but the blind was down and she could not
see in; but she heard Trecarrel within
whistling an air; it was an operatic air he
had recently heard in Exeter, and which had
caught his fancy.  How splendidly La
Fontana had sung!  What schooling her
voice had gone through, and what quality
was in it!  How graceful she was, and what
passionate action she showed.  'You never
get that sort of a thing out of an
Englishwoman,' he mused.  'Our countrywomen
cannot act; they have no fire, no passion, they
are dolls, and move mechanically.  Their
voices, moreover——  Good heavens!  Who
is that?'

He started up.  The door opened, and
Orange came in.  He had been seated over
his fire, with his cravat off, a bottle of claret
and a glass on the table at his side; he had
just finished a pipe.

'No fire, no passion in an English girl!'

There were both before him, flaming in
Orange's eye, and heaving in her bosom.

'Bless my soul, Orange, what on earth
has brought you here?'

'You, Harry, you!'  She was out of
breath, and choking with emotion.  'Oh,
Harry, dear Harry, why have you not been
to see me?'

'Come over to the fire.  You must be cold.'

'I—I, cold!' she laughed bitterly.  'I
am burning; feel my hand.  I have run; but
it is not that.  The flame is here.'  She
touched her heart.  'It is eating its way, it is
consuming me.  Oh, Harry, why have you
not been to see me?  You do not know what
I have suffered.'

'We have both suffered,' he answered:
but there was not much token of pain in his
blue eyes, nor tone in his voice.  'Come
over here; I am sure you must be damp
with the night air.  This is most indiscreet
of you, Orange; I hope you have come
attended.'

'I am alone.'

'You ought not to have come.  It is
wrong—it is indelicate.'  He was fitting on
his cravat as he spoke.  'Good heavens,
what would be said had you been seen?'

'No one has seen me; no one knows where
I am.'

'This is madness,' he said.  He twirled
his moustache; he was greatly discomposed.
'I wish you had been more reasonable,
Orange.'  Then to himself, 'I wish I had
remained in Exeter, or gone to bed.'

'I dare say it is madness and unreasonable,'
she said; 'I am mad.  Do you know,
Harry, all that has happened?  Do you
know that my mother and I are beggars?
We have nothing left to us.'

'My good Orange, I have been myself on
the verge of that same condition all my life,
and so can sympathise with you.'

'You have a house of your own, we have
none.  You have land that no man can take
from you, and you can at least dig that and
live on its produce.  But my mother and I
have nothing; no house, no land, no money.
We eat the bread of charity, and how long is
it to last?  Harry, I ask you?'

He was silent, engaged on his cravat.  It
offended his delicacy to be seen and to
converse with a lady without his cravat.

'You do not answer me, Harry; you are
not going to desert me now I am down.  If
you had been poor and an outcast, would
not I have taken you, though I were
wealthy?'

'But there is the rub,' said the Captain,
interrupting her.  'If I were rich I would
share it with you and welcome, but I am
not rich; I am miserably poor, hardly able
to keep my head out of a debtor's prison.'

'Harry, I do not mind that.  You are
bound to me; you cannot desert me in my
misery.  No, I know you too well.  You
are too good, too noble, too true a gentleman.
I cannot, I will not believe it.  Take me as I
am.  We can but be poor together, and I
will work as your slave.  With love labour is
light, and poverty is made rich.'

'That is rather a pretty sentiment,
Orange, but it is impracticable.'

'It is not impracticable.  Try me.'

'That is absurd.  I cannot try you, and,
if the experiment fails, dissolve the
partnership.'

She was silent, and looked him full in the
face.  Then her feelings overcame her.  She
stretched out her arms to him.  'Harry,' she
gasped, 'Harry, I love you!'

He did not put out his arms to encircle
her, to take her to his heart; but he put his
hand to his pipe and began to scrape out the
ashes with a bit of stick—a toothpick that
was on the mantelpiece.

'Be reasonable, Orange; it is impossible
for us to marry now.  There is this terrible
scandal about Ophir barring it for one thing;
there is my poverty for another.  We must
wait.'

'I knew it,' she said, relieved; 'I knew
the delay was for a time only.  But, Harry,
in the meanwhile I have no home.  Where
am I to live?  What roof is to cover me from
the rain and the snow?  Where am I to get
food to put in my mouth, whence the clothes
to cover me?  Whilst you are waiting for
Ophir to be forgotten, I am starving.'

'This calls for consideration,' he said, still
cleaning his pipe; and now he blew through
it, to assure himself that the passage was
clear.

'Harry, you have an aunt at Penzance,
take me to her.  I will live with her a few
years, till this trouble about Ophir is passed,
and then you shall marry me from her house.'

'That is not possible, Orange.  My aunt
strongly disapproved of my engagement.
She is a most bigoted Catholic, and could not
endure the thought of my taking a Protestant
to wife.'

'I will be a Catholic; I do not care.'

'But,' said he, coldly, 'that is not all.
Our families are so wide apart in the social
scale.  My aunt is very proud of her race,
and you know your stock is not—well, neither
ancient nor gentle.  You may change your
creed, but not your blood.  I think nothing
of this.  If I had considered it, I would not
have sought to marry you, but my aunt—you
see we are speaking of her, and you propose
that I should take you to her—my aunt is very
stiff in these matters.  I cannot force you
into her house.  So you see this scheme is
impracticable also.'

'Where am I to go?' asked Orange,
desperately; 'I must live somewhere.  You are
my proper protector, to whom I fly.  I
ask you, find me, give me a home.  See,
Harry, I am poor now, but it may not always
be so.  The directors of Ophir have left us
some thousands of pounds in Patagonian
bonds.'

'Oh!  I know them.  They were left
because worthless.'

'They are worthless now, but they may
become valuable hereafter.  Let us wait till
then; I will be patient, and in time you will
marry me.'

'Oh, certainly, when the Patagonians are
at par.'

'But in the meantime, Harry, what is to
become of me?'

'Really, I am at a loss to know.  I am
at my wits' end what to propose.'

Then her cheek and brow became crimson.

'Harry!  I am sunk so low that I care not
what the world says, and what becomes of me.
I will stay here; you shall not send me
away.  I have no pride left.  Let me be a
poor serving maid, a kitchen-wench in the
house, and work for you.  If the world talks,
let it—I defy it.'

Trecarrel sprang back.  This was indeed
madness.  She must be cured.

'Orange!' he said, 'I am too honourable
to listen to such words with composure.  Go
back whence you came.  Here!  I will accompany
you.  You must not be alone.'

'No, I came alone, and I can go alone.
But—what is to become of me?'

'You think only of yourself, Orange;
you are selfish.  Poor Mirelle! how she
must suffer also.  What is to become of that
sweet and fragile flower?'

Orange looked him full in the eyes.  A
light flickered and flashed in hers, a terrible
light.  She stood as a statue before him for
a moment.  Fierce thoughts, wild, dark, like
smoke from the bottomless pit, rose, and
rolled over and obscured her brain.

'Poor Mirelle!  Sweet and fragile flower!'  At
that moment, with her, Orange, pleading
before him, with her in an agony and
in abasement before him, he could think of
Mirelle, and throw Mirelle in her teeth.

Then she turned to the door.  All hope
was gone.

'Let me attend you home,' he said.

'I have no home,' she answered hoarsely.

'Let me go with you to where you are
lodging.'

'I came alone, I will return alone,' she
said, and left the room.

She hurried into the road.  When there,
however, she stood and waited.  Would he
come after her?  She waited on; the light
in his smoking-room disappeared, it reappeared
at another window, and travelled upwards,
then shone out of an upstair room.  Captain
Trecarrel was going to bed.

Then Orange ran back to Launceston.

As she passed the low public-house, she
stumbled over something.  It was the young
woman, drunk, lying in the road.  She
reached the house of the Flamanks, and thrust
open the drawing-room window and went in.

'Hah!' exclaimed Mrs. Flamank, standing
there, with Mrs. Trampleasure trembling and
sniffling behind her; 'this is fine goings on in
my house.  Out to one o'clock in the morning,
cutting about, heaven knows where, and with
whom.  This is a Christian habitation.  Out
of my house you go to-morrow.'

'Betsy Delilah!' remonstrated Mr. Flamank
from the door, 'the poor souls have no
house to go to.'

'She,' exclaimed Mrs. Flamank, indicating
Orange—'she don't want one.  She likes the
street at night, apparently.'

'Madam,' said Mirelle, stepping forward,
and speaking with composure, 'give us but
two days' shelter, and then we will trouble
you no more, I undertake.  I have a friend
to whom I will appeal.'

Then she went upstairs, and wrote:—

'Mr. Herring!—Come to us.  Help us!—MIRELLE.'





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.. _`TRANSFORMATION`:

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   CHAPTER XXXIII.


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   TRANSFORMATION.

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Grizzly Cobbledick and Joyce carried John
Herring to the Giant's Table.  Joyce had not
the smallest intention of surrendering her
charge to Cicely.  She had feared lest the
farmer should accompany the waggon, and
insist on the injured man being conveyed to
West Wyke House.  Fortunately, the chance
of making a bargain with the Squire had
arrested him at Bridestowe, and the young
lout who acted as driver was easily managed.

Grizzly consented to receive Herring into
his den, not because he felt gratitude to him
for having saved him from imprisonment, and
for having cured Joyce of her injuries, but
because he thought that 'backie' might be
extracted from him.

Gratitude is not a savage virtue; but
then, is gratitude to be found anywhere?  It
is a figment of the poet and moralist, like
the unicorn and the mermaid.  A simulation
of this ideal virtue is assumed by those who
are cultured, but the genuine plant grows on
no human soil and under no known climate.

Grizzly bore Herring no ill-will, and he
thought it possible that the tobacco which was
lost to him through the insolvency of
Tramplara might be made up to him by the
indebtedness of Herring.  He would see to
that; he would hold Herring in captivity
till as much 'backie' was produced as could
be counted on the toes and fingers, with the
head thrown in.  If he died, he died.
Speculations succeed or fail; there are blanks and
prizes in the lottery, disappointments and luck
in life.

'Cut off,' said Grizzly to his daughter,
'and go and wire a rabbit.  The young
maister, if he comes round, will want some'ut
to eat, sure.'

'But what if he wakes up whilst I be gone?'

'Then he wakes—that be all.'

'You'll be good and kind to 'n, vaither,'
entreated Joyce.

'Why not?  He ain't done me no hurt,'
answered Grizzly.

It took a little persuading and threatening
on Grizzly's part before Joyce could be
induced to relinquish her place.  She would
not have gone, but have sat on in unreasoning
jealousy and fear of losing Herring, unless her
father had insisted on her giving him proper
food.

'What'll the likes o' he say to turnips, eh?
He ain't one to eat num.  The quality eat
nort but meat.  You may give a horse the
best beef-steak, and you may set before a man
the choicest hay, and neither will begin to
bite.  You must give mun what them likes,
not what you think best.  So wi' the maister;
he be quality, and, when you offers 'n your
turnip and cabbidge, that be there a biling
over the turves, he'll turn his head away.  It
be all the same to he as giving 'n hay or a
horse beef.  You must give to ivery creeter
its proper food.'

When Joyce was gone, old Cobbledick
surveyed Herring carefully and examined his
bones.  No bones were broken.  His head was
suffering from concussion, not from fracture.
The old fellow had wit enough to ascertain
this.  Then he proceeded to partly undress
him.  It was not the custom of the Cobbledick
tribe to unclothe themselves when they
retired to rest; but then they were hardly
clothed when about by day.  If Cobbledick
now stripped Herring it was not in the interest
of the patient, but in his own.  Having
removed a portion of the garments of the still
unconscious man, he proceeded to vest himself
in them.  Inexperience made him put on the
clothes clumsily, and neither in their traditional
order nor in their proper manner.  Still,
the general effect was one of transformation.
He tried on Herring's boots, but was unable
to compress his great flat feet into them; so
he flung them aside; but he laboriously
removed the spurs, and buckled them on his
own heels.  The stockings he left on Herring's
legs; he knew he would be unable to wear
them.  His own limbs, from the knees downwards,
were swathed in hay-bands.  He assumed
the waistcoat, but not the shirt, and was
careful to set the watch in the pocket—the wrong
pocket, of course—and let the seals dangle
from the fob.  The waistcoat was open, and
his brown, dirty skin showed dark against the
nankin.  The coat was rather tight,
high-collared, with a roll; Cobbledick was mightily
pleased with it.  He jumped and swung the
tails from side to side, and ran after them,
round and round, like a kitten pursuing its
own tail.  He sallied forth to a pond and
contemplated himself in it.  The effect was not
perfect.  He went back and deprived Herring of
his cravat, which till now he had left about his
neck.  This he wrapped about his own throat,
making it very stiff, and holding his chin high
in the air.  Herring's hat was there; it had
not been left in the road; Farmer Facey had
picked it up and tossed it into the waggon as
it departed.  Cobbledick put the beaver on,
somewhat on one side, as he had seen Sampson
Tramplara cock his hat when tipsy; and he
took up the hunting-whip Joyce had brought
with her, and, so accoutred, he lounged in the
door of his den.  But Grizzly was not satisfied
with himself.  His hay-swathings were not in
character.  He proceeded to divest himself of
these.  Then his bare legs looked incongruous
with the remainder of his equipment.  Now
Herring had worn cloth gaiters over his
stockings.  Grizzly had unbuttoned these with
much difficulty.  Indeed, it can hardly be
said that he had unbuttoned them; he had
rather torn them off, sending the buttons
flying.  To button them on his own calves was
a feat beyond his powers.  His fingers were
incapable of performing such work as passing
a button through a hole.  He tried, and
abandoned the attempt in despair.

He flung his own rags over Herring, and
went forth to examine himself again in the
pool.  The brown shins and calves did not
please him.  He sat down and thought.

Then he remembered that the masons
engaged at Ophir had been mixing lime for
whitewashing.  What if he stole down there
and whitewashed his legs!  That would
complete his transformation.  The old man was
as conceited as a young buck newly accoutred
by a fashionable tailor.

So Cobbledick started for the mine, walking
with difficulty.  The constraint of the
garments encasing his nether limbs was to
him as great as that caused by Saul's armour
to David.  David, finding he could not go in
this, put it off him.  Grizzly was less wise;
he waddled on in suffering and constraint,
and was caught and thrown occasionally by
the spurs that dangled at his bare heels.  The
gorse scratched his shins, usually protected by
hay-bands; but he heeded not these
inconveniences.  With his head in the air, one arm
akimbo, and the hand holding the riding-whip
resting on his hip, he strutted on, wishing,
and yet fearing to be seen—desirous of
admiration, and yet shy of the reception he
might meet with from those accustomed to
see him half-naked.

He mounted a flat slab of granite, and,
taking off his hat, bowed and waved it, as he
had seen old Tramplara salute distinguished
and wealthy visitors to Ophir.  Imitation is
strong in the savage and in the idiot.  By the
help of this faculty the social world gets on
without jars, for there are savages and idiots
in all ranks of life, and the deeper their
savagery and their idiocy the more
pronounced is the development of their imitative
powers.  They copy the manners of those
around them, simulate their breeding and
virtues, and so disguise their nature and pass
muster.  Social education consists in the
training of neophytes what to copy and what to
disregard in the bearing and manners of those
with whom they associate.  But such as are
left without instructors pick up and imitate
all that they ought to avoid, and overlook
what they should copy.  Thus it is that
servant maids reproduce in themselves the
pretences and follies of their mistresses, and not
their thrift and good sense; and the butler
apes his master's vices and eschews his virtues.

Left alone in the den, lying on the fern,
with the smoke of the peat fire and the reek
of stewing vegetables filling it, Herring opened
his eyes and looked about him.

It was some time before he recognised
where he was, and then he was unable to
account for his being there.  The evening was
stealing on, the sun was setting; there was a
glow of golden light outside the door, and a
streak of yellow glory came from a notch in
the stone at the back of the table, unfilled
with moss.  Herring's head was painful, and
all his limbs ached.  He could scarce move
his arms; they were sprained and bruised.
He tried to stand up, but the effort gave him
torture, and he was forced to lie down again.
He was, however, satisfied that he was sound
in limb, though sprained and bruised.  He
could close his hands and move his feet.
Then he thought of the events that had recently
taken place.  He could follow the thread
to one point—after that it was broken off.
He had borrowed a horse at Bridestowe, he
had ridden hard in pursuit of Sampson
Tramplara—and then ensued darkness and
a blank.

Had Sampson shot him?  He tore open
his shirt and felt; there was no wound.  He
felt his head; it was not bandaged.

How came he in the den of the Cobbledicks?
As he was puzzling over this question,
the entrance was darkened, and Joyce
entered, carrying a fowl by the legs.  The
moment she saw that he was conscious, she
uttered a cry of joy, and was at his side, on
her knees, grasping his hands, with tears and
flashes of delight in her eyes.

'Oh, maister! the dear maister! you be
alive and not going to sleep away dead!  You
can see who be here—your own poor Joyce.
Right glad I be to see the life in your eyes
and the blood in your cheeks again.  Oh,
glory rallaluley!  I be joyful!  I could sing
my heart up over my lips, and away through
this great covering stone.'

'Joyce!' said Herring, 'I do not understand.
What is the meaning of this?  How
came I here?'

'Sure, my maister, it were I as brought
you here.  The young Cap'n Sampson
Tramplara would ha' killed'y, but I fought 'n
for'y, and I were too much for 'n.  You
mended my arms and made them strong, and
they were strong enough to keep 'n off from
killing of you.  He'd ha' done it.  He had
that in his hand would ha' scatted your head
all to smash, and he were about to do it, but
I were too strong for he, thanks be to you for
mending of me up.  Glory rallaluley!'

'But how came I here, Joyce?'

'Sure enough, because I brought'y in a
waggon as grand as a king.  Sure,' she said,
laughing and crying in one breath, 'I never
went on nothing but my own bare feet afore,
and but for the grandness, I'd rather walk any
day.  But I could not ha' carried you thus far.
That were why I were forced to hire a waggon.
Not but as though I wouldn't ha' done it.  I'd
ha' carried you the world over in my airms, if
I could, and never let you drop till I died.
But—Loramussy! what have become of your
clothes?  By the blue blazes! this be vaither's
doing.'

'Joyce, how did this take place?  I cannot
understand.'

'The horse were throwed and you with
him.  Cap'n Sampson had put a gate across
the road; and you rode quite innocent like
right on to it.  After you were down, he came
out from behind the hedge, and would ha'
killed you, but your own poor Joyce were
there, and her fought 'n, and her tore at 'n.
He might ha' cut her flesh off her bones, and
scat her bones, but her'd not hev let 'n hurt
you no more.'

Then she seized his hands in a paroxysm of
joy and covered them with kisses, and pressed
them to her beating heart.  'It were I, your
own Joyce, as saved'y.'

See what self-respect will do—how it lifts
out of the slough!  Once Joyce had licked
his hand like a dog.  Now she had learned
her own worth, she had battled for and saved
his dear life; and her pride had heaved her
from the low estate of bestiality to the level of
a human being.  She kissed his hand, she no
longer licked it.  That marked a distinct stride
in civilisation.

'But,' she added, as she knelt over him,
still holding his hand to her bosom, and looked
out of her wet and burning eyes into his face,
'it were none for Joyce, nor for Miss Cicely,
I did all this—it were for you and the Whiteface.'

Joyce loved him; her love for him filled
her whole dim soul with light.  She was
perfectly humble; she knew she was a poor
savage, and as widely removed from him on one
side as she was from the fox or badger on the
other.  There was no self-seeking in her love.
It was in this simple, pure, unselfish devotion
that the human soul broke into flame and
transformed Joyce.  She looked up to Herring
as she might to a star; she had no thought
of attaining to either.  It was enough for her
to look up and be led by the light each shed
on her way.

Her father was also transformed externally,
but remained the same low brute at
heart.  There was no outer change in the girl,
the same foul rags, only more ragged than
before, the same dishevelled wretchedness of
aspect; but within, all was different.  God
spake, and there was light.

Herring looked up at her, wondering, but
still much confused; his head could not
endure much thought.  She was swaying herself
from side to side, still holding his hand
between hers in her bosom; and the tears ran
down her tanned cheeks and fell over him—a
soft and soothing rain, a rain bearing balm
and blessing.  She had raised her eyes, and
her lips moved.

'What are you saying, Joyce?' he asked,
thinking she was speaking to him, but that he
could not hear.

'I were saying nort to you,' she said;
'I do not know hardly what I were saying,
but my heart were that nigh to bursting wi'
joy, that I felt I must speak—but not to
you—sure I didn't know to whom I were speaking
and saying that I were so happy as I never
was afore and never will be again.  And I
tried to say glory rallaluley turned
backsy-foremost but the words wouldn't out, and I
just cried for gladness, and looked up—that
were all.'

'What is that noise?' asked Herring.

'What?' she asked, dropping his hand
and listening.

There were shouts and cries approaching.
Then the crash of a stone against the supporters
of the table.  Next moment in dashed old
Grizzly, without the hat, wild with alarm, and
threw himself on the ground, where he tore
off his coat and neckcloth, waistcoat and
breeches, and, screaming with rage and terror,
threw each article, as it came off, in the faces
of the men that peered in at the entrance.

'Take mun! take mun!  I will none of
'em!  I will never have none o' the sort
again.'

His legs were torn and bleeding.  One was
smeared with white to the knee, the other was
of its natural tan.

Some of the miners had seen Cobbledick
engaged in adorning his shins with whitewash,
dressed out in his borrowed garb, and had set
upon him with jeers.  He had fled and been
pursued.

'I'll hev none of it never more,' he
cried, and swore horribly.  'Give me my
rags again.'

That was the end of the transformation
of Grizzly.  But the transformation of Joyce,
which was from within, was more enduring.





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.. _`HERRING'S STOCKINGS`:

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   CHAPTER XXXIV.


.. class:: center medium bold

   HERRING'S STOCKINGS.

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Joyce was unable to retain Herring.  Those
who had pursued her father saw him lying in
the old cromlech, and the secret was out.
Moreover, she herself began to see that it
was not possible for her to keep him in the
den.  Her father's behaviour, when left in
charge of the patient, had shown her how
utterly untrustworthy he was, and Joyce
could not always be there.

Ophir had exerted a deteriorating effect
on Grizzly.  He had become idle; he had
learned to beg; he had acquired a taste for
rum.  He expected Joyce to do everything
for him, that he might lounge away his time
about the mine, repeating his parrot story to
the visitors, putting the dust into the water,
and watching them find it.

Old Tramplara and young Sampson had
given him money, and the workmen, supposed
all to be sworn abstainers, had indulged him
from their bottles of cold alcoholic tea.  Like
a savage brought suddenly into association
with civilised man, he learned their vices, and
unlearned none of his own brutality.

When it was known at West Wyke that
John Herring was lying ill under the Giant's
Table, Mr. Battishill and Cicely sent to have
him removed to their house, and poor Joyce
offered only a faint, though sullen, resistance.
She knew she could not keep him, but she
was reluctant to lose him.  She knew that it
was good for him to go, and she did violence
to her own heart in suffering him to be carried
away.  She followed him to the doorway of
West Wyke, holding his hand, and without
taking her eyes off him.

'Come, Joyce,' said Cicely, 'you have
been so good and devoted hitherto, that you
had best remain as nurse.  Come in and
attend to Mr. Herring till he is well.'

But Joyce shook her head.

'I'll not go under no hellens [slates], or
I should smother,' she said.  'Where be you
a-going to take 'n to?'

'We shall put him in that room,' answered
Cicely, indicating the window.

'There'll be a light there of nights, I
reckon.  I shall see 'n.  And of day, when
vaither don't want nort a-doing, I'll just hop
over and sit down outside, in thicky corner o'
the garden wall.'  Then Joyce grasped Herring's
hand in both hers, and the tears filled
her eyes.  'It were I, your poor Joyce, as
saved you.  You'll not forget that, will'y now?'

Then she turned away, and wiped her
eyes with the back of her hand.  Cicely
looked after her.  Joyce did not turn back;
she walked on with her peculiar free stride,
her head down, and her arm across her face.

Herring had been jarred and contused by
his fall, and he suffered greatly for a few days.
Every movement caused pain.  The doctor
visited him, and insisted on quiet, and that
his head should be kept cool and his mind
unoccupied.

The news of Mr. Trampleasure's death
and of Sampson's evasion were not communicated
to him till it was seen that he troubled
his mind about the result of the exposure of
Ophir.  Nothing could be done, at least by
him, in the matter.

Every day Joyce came and sat in a nook
of the garden against the wall, looking up at
the window.  Her hands were unoccupied;
she could neither knit nor sew.  She platted
her fingers about one knee and remained in
the corner as still as though carved out of
stone, almost as rugged as though cut out of
granite.  Herring's bed was near the window,
and he went to the casement, and leaning on
the sill looked forth and spoke to her.  Then
her eyes, in which a strange wistfulness had
risen up, lighted, and she smiled.  She had
brought him something, a little bunch of late
wild flowers, some coral lichen daintily folded
in green moss, a cluster of blackberries, old
and inedible, but the sole cluster she could
find.  These little gifts she would intrust to
no one to convey to Herring.  No other hand
should touch them and divert from him the
something which went out from her with
them.  When he came to the window and
looked out, she threw them up at him with
so sure an aim that the bunch of borage and
crane's-bill, the sprig of heather, or the
blackberries, always reached his open hand.

This devotion of Joyce was embarrassing
to Herring.  As he lay in his bed he thought
about her, whether something could not be
done to bring her out of her rude life.  He
spoke his thoughts to Cicely, and she promised
co-operation.

Next day, Cicely took a chair into the
garden, and seated herself beside Joyce.  The
poor girl did not seem pleased with the visit,
she had rather be alone.

'I do not think you will see Mr. Herring
to-day, Joyce.  His head is worse, and he
will not be able to rise and speak to you from
the window.'

'Why don't he get well faster?' asked
Joyce.  'He'd ha' been right by this time wi' me.'

'Well, certainly, you treated him very
well.  He tells me you gave him capital
boiled chicken.  How did you manage to get
that?'

'I took her,' answered Joyce.

'You stole it!' exclaimed Cicely.  'From whom?'

'From you.  I know'd the young maister
must have 'n, and so I took 'n.  If he'd hev
chanced to want milk, I'd ha' milked
anybody's cow for 'n.  If he'd ha' wanted your
head, I'd ha' cut 'n off for him—my own
likewise, for that matter.  Would you?'

'I do not think I would, Joyce.'

'Then he ought to hev been with us out
to the Giant's Table, not here.'

'You profess great readiness to do
anything for him, Joyce.  He was speaking to
me about you yesterday, and wishing I could
teach you something.'

'I don't want no teaching of nort,' said
Joyce, sullenly.

'But would you not like to learn to knit?'

'No,' answered Joyce, 'I don't want to
larn nort.  What do'y knit with them long
sticking pins?'

'Stockings, Joyce.'

'Vaither don't wear none; I don't, neither.
Them's no good to us.'

Then the upper casement opened and
Herring leaned out.

'What, Joyce!' he called; 'is Miss Cicely
teaching you to knit?  That is right.  You
are going to knit my stockings for me in
future.  I promise you I will wear none but
those of your knitting.'

'Give me the pins,' said Joyce, vehemently.
'I'll larn.'

'Go back, Mr. John,' said Cicely; 'you
know you are forbidden to rise to-day.  Go
back, or you will be worse to-morrow.'

'Is the maister not getting better?' asked
Joyce, anxiously.

'He is; but his recovery is slow.  His
head has been injured, and we must take care
that there be no relapse.  We can pray to
God for him, Joyce.'

The girl looked round full in her face
inquiringly.

'Will that make 'n well?'

'I trust so.'

'Better than the doctor's medicine?'

'It helps the doctor to cure him.'

'I know nothing about it,' said Joyce.
'Did the maister pray for me when I were scat?'

Cicely could not take on herself to answer.

'I be sure he did,' said Joyce, confidently.
'Why did I ax you about it?  If that would
hev made me well, he'd a done it.  You don't
know the maister as I do.'

'Do you know about God?' asked Cicely.

'See there, now!' exclaimed Joyce, with
animation, 'that be 'zackly what the maister
once axed of I; and I sed, Sure I do, I see 'n
every day when it bain't raining and there be
no clouds.  I reckon I thought he meant the
sun.  But I know better now, and I'll tell'y
how I comed to know.  Thicky night as the
maister were thrown down and hurted by
Cap'n Sampson, I thought he were sure to die
in my airms.  And I felt then that I must
say something and ax some one for help—some
one as wouldn't want to take 'n away
from me.  It weren't the sun as I spoke to,
for the sun had gone down.  I don't know
'zackly what and where he was I called to,
but I knowed very well he were up where
the sun be by daytime, but he as I mean
were there o' night time ekally well.  Then,
after that, when the young maister were able
to open his eyes and speak, I were that lifted
up with gladness that my heart were nigh to
starting, and I could do nort but cry tears,
and tell he as I mean—but I don't know a
mite who he be—how glad I were.  I know
very well he weren't the sun, for, you sees,
the sun were then a-sinking, and I never gave
'n a thought for a minute to look at 'n.  I
looked right up, up, up; and there were over
me the great covering table stone, and I
seemed to go right through thicky and see
above the clouds as well, and the stars, and
I'm blessed if I know where to.  I be no
skollard I can say nort but glory rallaluley
and kinkum-kum.'

'Kinkum-kum!' repeated Cicely, with a
puzzled look.

'Sure—what else?  I reckon he begins
with Our Vaither, and he goes on to
kinkum-kum; but I know nort more nor that.  I
ha' heard the Methody vellers a say it at their
meetings on the moor.'

Cicely laughed; she could not help it—she
was tickled.

'You have made a comical muddle of it,'
she said, and turned her head to conceal her
amusement.

'I don't know, and I don't care,' said
Joyce, doggedly.  'He heard it, up there,
when I said it, that I knows, sure-ly; and he
didn't laugh, that I knows also.'

'Shall I teach you what it really is?'

'No,' said Joyce, resentfully; 'you laugh.
If it be good for me, I'll ax the young maister
to larn me when he be well.  I sed them
same words to he once—what make you
giggle—and he didn't laugh; he didn't even
smile, but I saw that in his eyes was more
like tears.  However, the words be good as
they be, and I sez them scores and scores of
times by day and by night, thinking of him
as is sick, and he up there;' she pointed
with her finger—not to the window, but
far, far above it.  'He as I knows nort
about, don't laugh, but listens, just as the
maister listened when I said them to he at
first; and he takes off his hat, as did the
maister.'

'I wish I could persuade you to come
indoors, Joyce.  It is cold out here, the wind
blows keenly over the garden wall, and I
cannot remain here.'

'I bain't cold,' said Joyce; 'you can go
in, I don't want'y here.  I'll bide here alone
a bit.  But I'll larn the knitting and make
the maister his stockings.  I will, sure.  He
sed he'd never wear none but what I made,
and what he sez he sticks to.'

A few days later Herring came down.  He
was now much better, though still stiff and
bruised.  His mind was perfectly clear, and
he was impatient of his confinement.

'Mr. Battishill,' said he, 'now is our
opportunity; Ophir is done, and Upaver
begins.  I will make a bid for the plant of
Ophir, and remove it to the silver lead.  I
will rent Upaver of you, and mine there on
my own account.'

'Very well,' answered Mr. Battishill, 'I
can say with the shepherd in the "Winter's
Tale," "Now, bless thyself, I meet with
things dying, thou with things new-born."  I
was set on Ophir; you never doubted in
Upaver.'

'You forget, sir, you were the finder of
the silver lead.'

'Ah, yes; but I was drawn aside by the
glitter of the gold of Ophir.  I am sorry for
Ophir, too.  It was a dream of splendour.
But again, with Paulina, "To the noble
heart, what's gone and what's past help,
should be past grief."'

'You have been at your Shakespeare, sir,
whilst I have been upstairs.'

'To whom else should I go, John?  "For
I do love that man," said rare Ben Jonson
of him; and who that has mind and heart
does not say the same.  Shakespeare is the
common and personal friend of humanity.
By the way, John, there are some letters for
you.  We would not let you have them before
now, as, no doubt, they are on business—they
come from Launceston.'

Herring looked at them.  Their purport
is already known.  They were from the
directors of Ophir.

'If Miss Cicely will write for me a letter
about the machinery at Ophir, I will sign it,'
he said; 'we had better secure it at once.  I
knew that Ophir would fail, and that was the
reason why I did not hurry to get machinery
for the silver lead.  Now we shall secure the
entire plant under half-price.'

'Oh, John, how far further ahead you
see than do I!  But you are calculating on
working the mine yourself.  How can you
combine a mineralogical captaincy with
military duties?'

'I have sold out,' said Herring, slightly
colouring.

'Sold out, my boy! sold out after having
been in the army only a few years!  That is
a very rash and inconsiderate proceeding.'

'I could hardly help myself,' he answered.
'I got into trouble.  When the accident to
Mr. Strange and his daughter took place I
was on my way to Exeter to rejoin my
regiment.  I had been summoned back.  I could
not desert the Countess Mirelle, with her
father dead and without a protector; and so
I wrote to my Colonel for a short extension
of leave.  He refused it; but addressed his
reply to Welltown, my little place in
Cornwall, to which he had written before.  At
Welltown my presence here was unknown,
and the letter was forwarded to Exeter, and
it lay at my quarters till I went there, which,
as you know, was not for some time.  When
I got to Exeter at last, I found that my
neglect had got me into a serious scrape.  Not
only so, but the regiment was at Portsmouth,
under immediate orders to sail for Honduras.
I had difficulty in exchanging.  Moreover, I
felt that I must be here, to superintend the
working of the silver lead mine; so I sold out.'

'John,' exclaimed Mr. Battishill, 'it is all
very fine your pretending that interest in the
icy Countess and enthusiasm over a mine
detained you.  Nothing of the sort.  You
found us in trouble and unable to help
ourselves, and so you sacrificed your own
prospects for the sake of pulling us through.'  He
pressed the young man's hand.  'I owe
you a debt I can never repay.'

Mr. Battishill did not know all.  He
knew nothing of Mirelle's diamonds consigned
to Herring's trust.  He entertained no
suspicion of the interest Herring felt in that
cold and haughty girl.  He little dreamed
that Herring had taken on himself the double
office of guardian angel to Mirelle as well as
to the house of Battishill.  He did not
suppose that even care for that poor savage, Joyce,
had mingled with the other motives in
deciding the young man on abandoning his
military career.

When Herring came out of doors for the
first time, he found Joyce in the garden
awaiting him.  She was crying and laughing
for joy.

'Maister,' she said, 'you will keep your
word about them stockings.'

'Certainly,' he replied with a smile.  'I
give you three months in which to learn to
knit, and after that I will wear no stockings
but those of your knitting.'

'Good-bye,' she said abruptly.

'Whither are you going?'

'To larn to knit,' she answered.





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.. _`BEGGARY`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXV.


.. class:: center medium bold

   BEGGARY.

.. vspace:: 2

Hope is hard to kill.  One last desperate
effort Orange made to recover the Captain.
That same night, whilst Mirelle was writing
to John Herring, Orange wrote to Trecarrel,
but her letter was not as brief as that of
Mirelle.

'Harry,—Now the last shelter is refused
us.  We must leave this house the day
after to-morrow.  That is, the day when
the sale at Dolbeare takes place.  We cannot
go thither, we cannot stay here.  We have
none to look to for advice but you.  You
must give it us; you are bound to assist us.
Remember, had the disclosure and death of
my father taken place one hour later,
everything would have been changed, and I should
have been your wife; then I would have
opened Trecarrel to my poor mother.  You
cannot take advantage of an accident which
intervened to break off our marriage.  I do
not ask you now to renew that contract; I
ask you only to come to the aid of a widow
and an orphan, and to help them to find
shelter for their heads.'

She sent this note to Trecarrel by a boy
next morning.  He brought answer that the
reply would arrive later.  Then Orange went
out.  She was not sanguine of success with
the Captain, for she had failed in a personal
interview, and it is easier to refuse by letter
than by word of mouth.  Still, some sort of
hope fluttered in her heart.  She could not
believe that the Captain would be so mean as
wholly to desert them, and deny them his
advice.  She had not asked in her letter for
more than that.  Perhaps she had been too
exacting when she forced her presence upon
him last night.

She went to visit her friend Miss Bowdler.
If the Captain had failed her, Miss Bowdler
would not.  Miss Bowdler was a well-to-do
young lady, who lived with her 'Pa' in a
large, handsome, red-brick house of Queen
Anne's period, a house rich within with
plaster-work of exquisite design and
wood-carving by Grinling Gibbons.  The house was
one of many rooms, and it was solely tenanted
by the young lady with the red eyelashes
and her 'Pa.'  They were rich, but were not
received into county society; a source of
vexation to Miss Bowdler, though her 'Pa'
was indifferent so long as his creature
comforts were attended to.  Surely Miss Bowdler
would give her friends shelter for a few days.
Orange was not aware that Miss Bowdler had
reckoned on using her (Orange) when Mrs. Trecarrel
as her door into society of a superior
class; and that now the marriage was broken
off and this door was shut, the disappointment
was bitter.

Orange rang the bell, and the summons
was answered by the footman, working himself
into his coat, with unbuttoned waistcoat.
He looked at Miss Trampleasure superciliously,
and proceeded leisurely to button his
waistcoat.

'Is Miss Bowdler at home?'

'I don't know.'  Then, with a jerk, he
brought a red hand through the sleeve.

'I asked if your mistress were in,' said
Orange, with indignation.

'I ain't deaf—I heard,' replied the footman.
'I don't think she is what is called
"At Home."'

'She is to be seen?'

'I can't take on myself to say that.  You
can stop in the 'all, and I'll go and inquire.'

Slowly, still buttoning himself, the serving
man stalked away.

Orange's cheek flamed, and the tears
mounted.  This man had been all obsequiousness
before the crash.

Suddenly a loud voice in her ear startled her.

'You're a beggar, you're a beggar!  Oh,
shock-ing, shock-ing!  Not a penny.  Cluck,
cluck, cluck!'

Orange recovered herself at once.  Near
the door on a perch sat a white cockatoo with
pink feathers on her face, and cold, hard,
unsympathetic eyes, staring at her.

'Polly,' said Orange, bitterly, 'what you
say is too true.'

'Oh, shock-ing!  Does your mother know
you are out?  What o'clock, you beggar?
Oh, oh!  Notapen-ny!  Hot cockles!  Cluck, cluck!'

'Polly, Polly, don't make such a noise!
Pa!—oh!'

A door opened, and a red-haired head
appeared.  It was that of Miss Bowdler.  The
moment she saw Orange she started back.
The footman had gone to the greenhouse in
quest of her.

'Oh, Sophy! dear Sophy!' exclaimed
Orange, springing forward.

Miss Bowdler recoiled from the outstretched hands.

'Good gracious, Miss Trampleasure, what
a time of day for a call!  My dear Pa does
not like to be interrupted at this time; I read
to him his newspaper of a morning.  You
will not, I know, detain me.  Yes, Pa! coming,
Pa! coming in an instant!  There
have been disturbances in the North among
the cotton-spinners.  Pa is in a fever to hear
the particulars.'

'Hot cockles!' said the parrot, sentimentally,
putting her head on one side and
winking.

'Oh, Sophie, do listen to me.  I want so
much to see you.  I have a favour I wish to
ask you.'

'Pa, Pa!  I'm coming.'

'Tol-de-rol-de-rol!' said the parrot.  Then,
swinging herself round on her perch, she went
into convulsions of laughter.

'I pray you excuse me,' said Miss Bowdler;
'I told John Thomas expressly to say I
was not at home in the morning, because Pa
is so particular.'

'Do you hear?' asked the footman, who
had appeared on the scene, now in full condition,
every button in its place.  'Miss Bowdler
is NOT AT 'OME.'  Then he opened the door
pompously.  The red-haired lady took the
opportunity to dart back into her room.

'You're a beggar!' shouted the cockatoo,
with a look of devilry in her eye; 'you're a
beggar!  Not a pen-ny!  Shock-ing, shock-ing!
Oh, oh!' and then screamed and ran round
and round her perch, laughing.

The door shut with a slam behind Orange.
She set her teeth and stamped her foot.

'Would that I were Mrs. Trecarrel for
one day only,' she said, 'that I might insult
this wretched girl before county people.'

Her mother had a friend in the town, a
very intimate confidante, a stout old lady,
Mrs. Trelake, widow of a mayor of Launceston,
a brewer.  Mrs. Trampleasure had insisted
on her daughter going to this old lady,
and asking her to receive them for a week.
Orange went thither, with her heart on fire
from the humiliations she had undergone at
Miss Bowdler's house.  Orange was received
at once with cordiality by Mrs. Trelake.  She
was a lady of moderate stature, with an
immense throat.  The throat was not a column
supporting the head, but the face was
sculptured out of the column.  There was
something good-natured in the face.  Possibly she
may have been good-looking when young;
but it was now impossible, on seeing her, to
observe anything but the solid trunk of
throat.  The old lady was stout, but neither
her stoutness nor her throat incommoded her;
she moved with nimbleness.  She was,
moreover, robust in health.  Mrs. Trelake was a
woman destitute of vanity.  She had a neat
hand, and was ignorant of it.  She was aware
that her neck was ugly, but she took no pains
to hide it.  She was one of those persons who
make no effort to please, and are themselves
easily pleased.  She liked every one with whom
she was brought in contact, but she loved
nobody.  She was the same genial person with
every one, rich and poor, with her servants and
with her guests.  All she asked of her
acquaintances was that they should amuse her,
and of her servants that they should give her
no trouble.  Her sympathy was superficial.
If an acquaintance spoke to her of trouble or
good fortune, of embarrassment or great
expectations, she entered into the situation from
the outside, and without the smallest internal
appreciation.  If she cried with a companion,
it was not because her friend had occasion for
tears, but because her friend was in tears.  If
she laughed, it was not at a joke which she
made no effort to understand, but because the
joker laughed.

If you who knew her so well had told her
your wife was dead with inexpressive voice,
she would have received the information with
indifference; if you had told her the same
news with broken utterance, she would have
sobbed; if you had told her the same fact
with a smile on your lips, she would have
sniggered.  And your wife, remember, was
her intimate friend.

People of this description are more
common than is generally supposed.  We have
occupied some time over the portrait of
Mrs. Trelake, not because she acts a prominent
part in this story, but because we desire to
inform our readers what to expect from the
Mrs. Trelakes of their acquaintance when
they appeal to them for help in their troubles.

Mrs. Trelake received Orange with
warmth and pity.  She saw that the girl
was in trouble.  The heart of Orange was
full of her reception at Miss Bowdler's, and
she recounted it to the old lady.  Mrs. Trelake
was shocked: she held up her hands, she
blessed her stars, she vowed she could never
look on Miss Bowdler again with regard; she
undertook to cut her in the streets.
(Mrs. Trelake dined with Miss Bowdler the same
evening, and, when Miss Sophy told her
version of the story, Mrs. Trelake was
indignant over the dinner table at the audacity
of Orange in presuming to thrust herself upon
the Bowdlerian privacy.)

'To-morrow is the sale at Dolbeare,' said
Orange.

'The sale, my dear!  How dreadful!'  Mrs. Trelake
looked round the room at her
pretty china and her case of stuffed hummingbirds.
'I could not bear to part with my
things.  Every article sold, I suppose.  Will
those pretty china jars go, with the dragons
on them?  I wonder whether I could get
them cheap?'

'Even to the beds and chairs.  The house
still belongs to us.  That is, we have the
lease, but we shall have to let it, so as to pay
the rent.'

'Not able to let the house nor pay the
rent!  Oh, my dear, how dreadful!'

'I said that we should have to let it.'

'I understood perfectly, my sweet child.'

'We cannot go into the house stripped of
everything.  We cannot stay longer at
Mr. Flamank's.  It was very good of him to take
us in, but we are unable to trespass further on
his kindness.'

'Certainly, my poor child, it would not do.'

'Then—to-morrow, whither are we to go?'

'Really, my dear, I don't know.  I have
a bad head at guessing conundrums.  Is it
a conundrum, though?' asked Mrs. Trelake,
doubtfully.  She had not been listening.
She was calculating her chance of securing
the dragon vases at the sale.

'You knew and loved my mother.  I am
sure you love her now.'

'Ardently, tenderly,' said Mrs. Trelake,
effusively.

'Will you take it ill if I ask a favour of
you?'

'Not at all.'

'Would you receive us for a week?  I do
not ask for more.  In a week we shall have
had time to settle something as to our future.'

'Oh, Orange! don't say a week; say a
month.  My house is at your disposal.  I
really have a fair cook; and now tell me,
what does your mother like?  For breakfast,
now?  Is it grilled kidneys?  You must put
me up to all her little fancies, and I will
instruct my cook to meet them.  She is a
good soul and does what I desire.  When will
you come?  To-morrow?  Oh, try to come
this evening.  Well—if not, at what o'clock?
Tell me the time and I will have a dainty
meal ready.  Orange!  I have a pheasant in
the larder.  I hope you like pheasant.'

'We shall be with you at noon.  How
good and kind you are, Mrs. Trelake!'

'Not at all.  I am delighted.'

Then Orange left.  Ten minutes later
Mrs. Trelake wrote an elaborate note of
apology, to say that her servants objected to
receiving so large a party at once.  The cook
would not stay, and how could she replace so
valuable and obliging a servant?  The
housemaid said that three persons extra would
throw too much work upon her, and she
would go.  So, she, Mrs. Trelake, was very
sorry, but for peace and quietness sake, she
had to yield, and must withdraw the promise
to receive the Trampleasure party.  She herself
had nothing to do with this, but servants
were becoming so masterful that the only way
in which she, an elderly lady, could get on
was to yield to them in every point.

'We live in the world, we didn't make it,'
concluded Mrs. Trelake; 'we must shape
ourselves to the world, not force the world
to fit us.'

Whilst Orange was standing at the
window, reading this letter to her mother,
she saw a woman whom she knew coming to
the back door.  This was a rough girl who
did the scullery work at Trecarrel.  She
brought the answer from the Captain.

Orange at once darted into the garden
and intercepted the girl on her way to the
kitchen.

'You bear a letter for me.'

'Yes, miss.'

She handed her a letter.  Orange turned
it in her hands.  The address was badly
written by some uneducated person.

'Who gave you this?'

'Mrs. Kneebone, the housekeeper.'

'Is there nothing from Captain Trecarrel?'

The girl hesitated.

Orange tore the note open.  It was written
in the same hand as the address.

'Please, miss, the Captain be very serius
indispodged, and heve a took to his bed.  He
carnt rite, according hev axed me to say so.
Your's full of respex, JOANNA KNEEBONE.'

Orange looked up, angry, her heart beating
violently.  The girl was still there, but
moving towards the kitchen.

'What do you want in the house?' asked
Orange.

'There be another letter, miss, I hev to
deliver.'

'Well, give it to me.'

'It be for the other young lady,' answered
the girl; 'and I hev to give it only into her
hand.'

'You cannot do that,' said Orange; 'she
is gone out.'

'Please, miss, will she be gone for long?'

'She will not return till late at night.
Give it me.'

'But, miss, I were told by the Cap'n partickler
not to let nobody hev it but the young
lady herself; it were very partickler.'

'Then you must wait here till night.  This
is not my house.  I cannot ask you into the
kitchen to sit down; you must wait about
in the road.  It is raining, and you will be
wet through.  I cannot help it; it must be
so unless you let me have the letter.'

'You'll be sure to give it, miss?'

'Of course I will.  Do you mistrust me?'

'There it be, miss; but I doubt if the
Captain will be best pleased I haven't waited
and let the lady have it herself.'

The letter was delivered.  The address
was in the Captain's handwriting.  The seal
was large, in red wax, stamped with the
Trecarrel arms; Orange knew them well—two
chevronels, a crescent for a difference.  The
girl turned to go away.

'Good afternoon, miss.'

Orange took no notice of the salutation.
She was looking at the letter.  As the girl
departed, she glanced back.  Orange was
turning the letter, and examining, first the
superscription, then the seal.  There was an
expression in her face which made the girl
say, 'I doubt if I have done right now in
giving her thicky letter.'

Orange went in.  She ascended the stairs
to her own room, or rather, to the room she
shared with Mirelle.  Mirelle was there.
That which Orange had told the girl was
not true; Orange had told an untruth
deliberately, knowing it was an untruth.
Orange stood in the doorway and looked at
Mirelle, and a flash shot from her dark eyes.
Mirelle had not raised her head to see who
entered, and she did not therefore encounter
and observe the glance of hatred and jealousy
flung at her.

Orange quickly shut the door and
descended the stairs again.

She took her bonnet and went out,—went
out into the rain.  What cared she for rain?
She went into a lane where she saw no one,
and would be unobserved.  Then she tore
the letter open.  It was written in Captain
Trecarrel's best hand, and ran as follows:—

.. vspace:: 2

'My dear Mirelle,—Indisposition prevents
my calling and paying my respects to you as
I should have desired.  I am in profound
distress to learn the predicament in which you
have been placed by the unscrupulousness of
a man whom I will not designate as he
deserves, because he is dead.  *De mortuis nil
nisi bonum*.  Observe this maxim strictly,
and Mr. Trampleasure will never be heard of
again.  I write now to entreat you to accept
the asylum of my aunt's house.  She lives at
Penzance, and is both a charming old lady
and a strict Catholic.  I have written to her
to-day, stating your case, and by the middle
of the week will have her reply.  I make no
question but that she will open her house and
her heart to you.  One little bit of advice I
know you will excuse my offering.  I saw, on
the night of the ball at Dolbeare, that you
wore a very valuable set of diamonds, worth,
I dare say, over a thousand pounds.  On no
account allow the vultures—you know to
whom I allude—to set their claws in them.
Mrs. T. and Miss O. are at the present
moment impecunious, and impecuniosity is a
temptation to unscrupulousness,—an infirmity
that runs in the blood of a family that I will
not name.  You do not know the value of
these stones, and might be sorely taken in if
you disposed of them to a country jeweller.
Moreover, I presume they belonged to your
dear mother, and it would be unjust to her
memory to get rid of them to relieve the
present pressing necessities of persons in
whom she could feel no possible interest.  If
you doubt being able to keep them safely—I
feel convinced that you will be besieged with
entreaties to sell them—trust them to my
aunt or to me.  I remain, my dear Mirelle,
yours very faithfully,

.. vspace:: 1

'HARRY TRECARREL.'

.. vspace:: 2

Mirelle never saw that letter.  Orange
tore it with her teeth, and then trampled the
fragments into the mire.  She walked up and
down that lane in a fever, regardless of the
rain that fell and drenched her.

Her faith in Trecarrel was gone.  She
was a girl who had been brought up to believe
in nothing; neither in truth, nor honesty, nor
sincerity.  But she had believed in Trecarrel,
and now that one faith was in fragments.
She saw him as he really was, in all his
despicable meanness.  She scorned him, she
hated him, but with that hate was mingled
love, or rather that hate was but wounded,
writhing, anguished love.  During the night
she rose from her bed.  Mirelle slept with
her.  The rain had ceased, the clouds had
broken, and the moon shone into the room.
She left her bed because she could not endure
the silver glare over her face.  As she stood
by the bed she looked down on the face of the
sleeping Mirelle.  It was like the face of a
dead woman sculptured in the purest Carrara
marble, and lovely as the noblest chisel could
cut.

Orange drew the pillow from the bed.
and held it up, that the pillow might shadow
the white face.  The heart of Orange beat
furiously.  She hated Mirelle.  She had but
to put that pillow over her mouth, throw
herself upon it, and with her strong arms hold
down the tossing figure,—that figure so frail
and feeble, and then she could laugh at the
schemes of Captain Trecarrel.

But no.  Orange put the pillow back
with a curl of the lip.  She could not do that,
easy as it was to do.  But as she stood over
Mirelle she vowed never to permit Captain
Trecarrel to take that pale girl to the hearth
from which he had cast Orange Tramplara.

'You're a beggar! you're a beggar!' that
terrible screech of the parrot came back in
her ear at that moment.  'True, true!' said
Orange, between her teeth, 'I am a beggar.
I have asked for love!  I have begged for
help!  I have begged for sympathy!  I have
implored advice!  I have been refused everything,
and given rebuffs and insults.  I have
but one thing remaining to me, a hold on
Mirelle, beggar though I be, and never shall
he who has refused me all I asked, give to
her what he has denied to me, his betrothed.'

The sleeping girl turned her head away.
The fierce eyes of Orange stabbed her and
distressed her, even in sleep.

Orange put her hands over her heart.  It
was bounding noisily, the moonlight throbbed
in her eyes, the thoughts beat in her brain.
That horrible idea of the pillow, and Mirelle
under it, came over her again.  She saw the
feet beating in the bed in rhythm with the
pulsation of her heart, and her hands clenched
as though gripping the delicate wrists.  As
one at the edge of a precipice turns giddy and
feels impelled to throw himself where he fears
to fall, so was it now with Orange.  A dread—a
dread was on her lest this horrible
thought might in a moment become a fact.
She turned away.  She paced the room; she
could not rest in a bed.  She was like a wild
beast in a cage.

'Orange!'

She started.  Mirelle was sitting up.

'What do you want?' asked Orange
hoarsely, and stood between Mirelle and the
moonlight, that her face might not be seen
and betray her heart.

'He is coming.'

'Who is coming?' asked Orange, fiercely.

'I knew he would.'

'Who? who? who?'  Orange clutched
the pillow convulsively.

'John Herring.  I wrote to him.  I have
been dreaming, and I saw him open my
letter, and he started up and cried, "I am
coming to you, Mirelle.  I am coming to you
with help."'





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.. _`MIRELLE'S GUESTS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXVI.


.. class:: center medium bold

   MIRELLE'S GUESTS.

.. vspace:: 2

A truce was concluded between the Reverend
Israel and his wife.  He undertook to depart
on a missionary circuit during the remainder
of the time that the ladies were in her house.
Mrs. Flamank very unreasonably charged her
husband with encouraging Orange in disorderly
ways, the encouragement consisting
in privately combating his wife's attack on
Orange's character, and finding a charitable
explanation for her leaving the house at
night.  Mr. Flamank departed early in the
morning as a deputation for the parent
missionary society of the religious community
to which he belonged, to advocate the claims
of a very promising mission to the heathen in
the Imaginary Islands.

Hitherto this station had been promising
rather than performing, but now it had real
cause for congratulation and for appealing to
the charitable.  A native chieftain, with his
entire family, consisting of several wives and
a tail of children like the tail of a comet, had
become a convert.

Ho-hum was the capital of the Imaginary
Isles, situated in the largest of them, with a
good port at which vessels from England
called with gowns and novels for the
missionaries' wives and daughters.  At Ho-hum
there were four rival missionary churches.
The Imaginary group formed an archipelago,
but as Ho-hum was most considerable of all
the islands, not one of the churches would be
content with evangelising a smaller island,
and thereby confess itself inferior in
pretensions to those communities which occupied
the major island.  Penelope by night
unravelled her embroidery of the day.  The
work of Christian missions is like that of
Penelope, with this difference, that each is
engaged in unravelling the work of all the
others.

In the island of Ho-ha, a chieflet of
indifferent character, Hokee-Pokee-Wankee-Fum
by name, had proved himself such a
nuisance to the heathen society that he was
expelled the island with his family and took
refuge in that of Ho-hum, where, however, he
met with a chilling reception from his native
friends.  Finding himself destitute of means,
and cold-shouldered by his own people, he
lent a ready ear to the solicitations of the
One-and-Only-Christian missionary to receive
instructions in his catechetical school.  As
this instruction was supplemented with
mealies, he listened and ate.  He liked the
chapel of the station, because it was adorned
with pictures and gilding and much frippery.
Then the Reverend the Superior of the
establishment wrote home to the 'Annals of the
Faith' a letter in the most remarkable English
ever penned.  It was to this effect, 'that
Ho-kee, a chieftain of the island of Ho-ha,
having heard the verities which were at this
time now inculcated at the mission of the
Immaculate Joseph in Ho-hum, had left, like
Abraham, his home, and had come, to seek
the verity.  This aborigine, passionated with
a vivid desire to apprehend, had commenced
to receive the holy instructions into a heart
truly recognisant,' &c.

But, presently, the rival station of the
Pure and Reformed Christians drew away the
'recognisant aborigine,' having offered him
meat as well as mealies with its instructions.
At this station the missionary laboured to
divest his catechumen of the imprimitive and
erroneous teaching in which his mind had
been enveloped by the One-and-Onlies.  And
he wrote home, in good English, an account
of the enlightened 'native chief Pokee, who
had been unable to digest the erroneous
doctrines of the sister Church of the
One-and-Onlies, and whose soul was refreshed by the
pure and primitive truths (divested of human
accretions); but as some expense had been
incurred,' &c. &c.

Hokee-Pokee-Wankee-Fum was, however,
before long shaken in his attachment to the
Pure and Reformed, by the missionary insisting
on his limiting himself to one wife.  This
was more than he could endure, and he opened
his ears to the ministrations of the pastor of
the Universal Christians.  By him also he
was told that he must have but one wife, but
a concession was made that the rest might be
retained under the designation of domestics.
With the Universals, the name, not the thing,
was essential.  The Universal teacher set
vigorously to work to strip the mind of
Wankee of all the unevangelical instructions
he had received from the Pure and Reformed,
and he wrote home concerning his convert,
to the 'Universal Missionary Reporter,' that
Wankee in testimony of his sincerity had
retained but one wife out of the three score;
but he added, as wives were valuable
commodities, this was much like a farmer voluntarily
abandoning his flock of sheep and limiting
himself to one ewe lamb.  Under these
circumstances, it became the duty of Christians to
indemnify this zealous Wankee, therefore he
must solicit subscriptions, &c. &c.

Unfortunately, this missionary was strict
on the subject of temperance, and forbade the
use of spirits.  Now Wankee was fond of grog,
and when he had been reprimanded and put
on short commons of food, for yielding to his
passions, he grew sulky and deserted to the
Particular Christians, who allowed grog and
had no sharp and defined belief or code of
morals, but a very decided disbelief in everything
taught in the other churches.  Accordingly
the missioner proceeded still further to
divest Wankee-Fum of his acquired faith, and
he was brought to that condition in which he
protested against every thing and professed
nothing.  To his bewildered mind, Christianity
seemed a bird of paradise on which the
sectaries had fallen with the object of restoring
it to its primitive condition as it emerged
from the egg.  One pulled out the gorgeous
tail, another stripped off the coronal of
plumes, a third reft off the wing feathers, and
the last, after having plucked and singed it,
held up a naked and expiring monster as
typical primitive Christianity.

The Particular pastor wrote home to say
that he had converted a native prince of the
name of Fum, with his entire family,
consisting of one hundred and six souls; that a
great door was open for the advance of vague
and vapid Christianity.  He was resolved
(D.V.) to send Prince Fum to his own island
of Ho-ha, as native teacher and founder of a
church.  To do this effectually, money was
needed, &c. &c.

This was the glad news received by
Mr. Flamank, and he hastened to divulge it
in missionary meetings of the Particular
Christians in Cornwall, and to collect money
for establishing Hokee-Pokee-Wankee-Fum
in the island of Ho-ha as an evangelist.

On the one condition that the Reverend
Israel Flamank should absent himself from
home did his 'sweet soul' Betsy Delilah
consent to allow Mrs. Trampleasure, her
daughter, and Mirelle to remain a couple of
days longer in the house.

Mrs. Flamank was a kind woman in her
way, but that way was a hard one.  She felt
pity for the widow, and as much tenderness
as it was possible for her to feel for Mirelle;
but she detested Orange.  And the reason
why she liked Mirelle was because Mirelle
had snubbed her husband, and if there was
one thing in the world that Mrs. Flamank
delighted in it was in seeing Israel suffer
rebuff.

Thus it was that Mrs. Trampleasure and
Orange were left without even the minister to
advise them what to do and whither to go.

The day had come on which they must
depart.  It was the day announced for the
auction at Dolbeare.  Whenever Orange
went into the town and passed under the old
gateway she saw plastered against the wall
an announcement of the sale, and details of
the desirable lots into which the Trampleasure
furniture had been assorted.

Mrs. Trampleasure was all day in tears.
She was thinking of mats and cushions, worked
with her own hands, which would go to the
hammer.  The cruet-stand, also; O woe! woe!
There was, moreover, a set of Blair's
'Sermons' she had been wont to read on
rainy Sundays—sermons devoid of ideas, and
therefore adapted to a mind incapable of
receiving ideas.  She lamented, likewise, a
Rollin's 'Ancient History,' which she had
attempted ineffectually to read for the last
thirty years.  Though she had not read
Rollin, the sight of his back on her shelf, in
many volumes, gave her a sensation of solidity
and well-grounding.  But the thought that
especially troubled her was that she had left
behind in Dolbeare two pillow pincushions
fastened to the back of the best bed.  In her
hurry and distress at leaving she had forgotten
these treasures, and they would be sold with
the furniture.  The pincushions were of white
satin, ornamented with figures and flowers in
coloured beads.  They were heart-shaped—of
the size of a bullock's heart, heavily stuffed.
They depended, by white satin ribands, from
mother-of-pearl buttons.  These pincushions
had been given to Mrs. Trampleasure on her
marriage by a great-aunt.  They would hold,
on a moderate computation, a thousand pins
apiece.  What any one in bed could want
two thousand pins for did not enter into the
consideration of the artist who constructed
them.  For some years these pincushions had
adorned the head of the bed occupied by
Mr. and Mrs. Trampleasure.  But they exhibited
a tendency to fall down on the sleepers in
an unprovoked and startling manner.
Mrs. Trampleasure had sewn them up repeatedly,
passing the stitches through the mother-of-pearl
buttons; but whether spiders ate the
threads, or the damask bed back was unable
to support the burden, down one or other
would come, till at length Mr. Trampleasure,
upon whose nose one had pounded whilst
enjoying a refreshing slumber, woke with an
oath, and flung both the guilty and the
innocent pincushion across the room, vowing not
to suffer their re-erection above his head any
more.  After this they were banished to the
spare bedroom, and, though not under
Mrs. Trampleasure's daily observation, they did
not cease to be dear to her soul.  These
precious pincushions, through inadvertence, were
doomed to fall into strange, perhaps
inappreciative, hands.  The thought made her
weep and sniff.

'Mother,' said Orange, 'everything is
packed.  All is ready for us to start.  We
must decide now whither we will go.'

'There was Charity on one, with a feeding-bottle
in her hand—I believe a Florence
flask, and a backie-pipe stem stuck through
the cork—as nat'ral as nat'ral; and on the
other was Hope with her anchor, and a
serpent twined round it, as I thought; but your
dear father would insist it was a rope.  "But,"
said I, "look: it has an eye."  However, your
father maintained that was only a loop in the
cord.'  Mrs. Trampleasure was thinking of
the pincushions.

'Whither are we to go, mother?' asked Orange.

'I am sure I don't know,' answered
Mrs. Trampleasure, 'without my Blair, and my
Rollin, and my pinkies.'  Mirelle was sitting
at the window.  The day was passing, and no
signs were seen of John Herring.

'I wonder how them pinkies have sold,'
mused the old woman; 'I shouldn't wonder
if they've fetched a lot of money.  I should
say they were cheap at five pounds.  If I get
a chance I'll buy them back at that figure.'

'We have no money,' said Orange, 'except
a trifle which will be consumed in inn
expenses; we must go to one, as we have
seen nothing about lodgings.  Mirelle, are
you awake?'

'Yes, Orange.'

'You will have to give French lessons,
and I will do the housework at home and
take in sewing.  So perhaps we shall be able
to keep body and soul together.'

'I am waiting,' answered Mirelle.

'What nonsense!' said Orange, impatiently.
'Do you suppose that Mr. Herring
will trouble himself about us?'

'I am sure he will.'

'He has not come, and he must have
received your letter.'

'Please, ma'am'—it was the servant who
spoke from the doorway—'the mistress hev
sent to say, shall I go and fetch a coach?'

Orange looked at her mother.  Mrs. Trampleasure
wept.

'Yes,' said Orange; 'we will go at once.
Yes, girl: go and fetch one.'

'It is unnecessary,' said Mirelle, rising.
'A coach has come.  John Herring is here.'

A rap at the door, and in another moment
John Herring was ushered into the room.

'Thank you! thank you for coming,' said
Mirelle, advancing to meet him, and holding
out both her hands.

Herring was not looking strong.  His fall,
and a hard ride during the night from West
Wyke to Launceston, had made him look
pale and worn and unwell.  But Orange,
her mother, and Mirelle were too engaged
in their own troubles to notice the change
in him.

'You have come to take us away from
this house?' asked Mirelle.

'Yes, I have.  You called me.'

He held her hands, and looked into her
eyes, and was lost in wonder at their depth
and beauty, and in a dream of love.  She met
his gaze frankly, but, as it was prolonged, her
eyes fell.

'Whither are you going to take us?'
asked Orange.

But Herring had ears for one voice only;
he had thoughts at that moment for one
person only, who stood before him.

'Oh, Mr. Herring,' said Mirelle—and she
looked up timidly again, but, again
encountering his eyes, lowered her dark
lashes—'take us away—anywhere.  We cannot
remain here any longer.  We are turned out of
the house.  We trust you perfectly; take us
where you will.'

'Let me lead you to the coach.'

Then Orange said to Mrs. Trampleasure,
'Mother, you must go and thank Mrs. Flamank
before leaving.'  But at that moment this
good lady appeared, relieved by the sight of
the carriage standing at the house door.  Her
visitors were departing.

She received the thanks given her for her
hospitality with graciousness.  She even kissed
Mirelle on the brow.  'I hope,' she said,
condescendingly, 'that you will find a comfortable
and happy home, my child.  Aha!'—she
looked at Herring, and then at Mirelle—'I
have my suspicions.  Well, well!  Time will
show if they are justified.'

Herring saw the ladies into the coach, and
mounted the box beside the driver.

The carriage drew up at the door of
Dolbeare.  Herring descended, opened the coach
door, let down the steps, and presented his
arm to Mrs. Trampleasure.

'Mr. Herring,' exclaimed Orange, turning
white, 'what is the meaning of this?  Do
you not know that this is no longer our
home?  You have not heard.  You have
made a mistake.'

'Pray step inside, ladies,' said he, smiling.

Bewildered, not knowing what to say, all
three descended.  No; Mirelle was not
bewildered; she was perfectly collected.  What
Mr. Herring did was right.  Where he led
she followed with confidence; she had entire
reliance on him.

They entered the hall.  Everything was
as it had been: the clock on the stairs was
ticking; the door of the dining-room was
open; a fire burned in the grate; on the
table lay a bundle of old walking-sticks, tied
together.  Herring took up this bundle.

'But, Mr. Herring,' said Orange, passing
her hand across her eyes, 'what is the
meaning of this?  Are we walking in a dream?'

'This is no dream,' answered Herring.
'Countess, I make over this bundle of old
sticks to you; the house goes with them;
the rent has been paid for the current year,
in your name; the lease is made over to you.
Everything the house contains is yours.
Everything has been bought as it stands, in your
name.'

Orange and Mirelle stood silent.  Neither
could comprehend the situation.

Herring did not speak to them for some
minutes, he could understand their perplexity.
Orange looked round for her mother, but
Mrs. Trampleasure had not entered the room.

Presently Herring went on: 'You will
find, Countess, that a sum sufficient for the
maintenance of the house, and for your
comfort, is lodged in the bank, in your name,
and that the same sum will be paid quarterly.
You can draw as you require.  This house,
with all its contents, is yours.  Everything
has been purchased and paid for in your
name.'

'Mr. Herring,' put in Orange, speaking
with a flushed cheek and a quivering lip,
'what are we here?'

'You have been kind to her when she
needed a home, you have done your best to
make her comfortable, now you are the guests
in this house of the Countess Mirelle Garcia.'

A cry of joy from the upper story, and
down the flight and into the room rushed
Mrs. Trampleasure, laughing and crying.  'They
are there, they are there, my Orange!  Oh, joy!'

'What are there, mother?'

'My own satin pinkies.'

'They are not yours,' said Orange, with a
curl of the lip and a hard look settling into
her eyes.  'They, like everything else, have
been purchased in the name of the Countess
Mirelle Garcia de Cantalejo.'  She stood and
looked at Mirelle from head to foot.  A battle
was raging in her heart.  Should the rage and
hate boiling there overflow her lips?  She
caught Herring's eye fixed inquiringly,
suspiciously, on her.  Then she dropped a
profound curtsey to Mirelle, and said, 'We are
not your guests, gracious Countess, but your
most humble and obliged servants.'

Then Mirelle threw her arms round
Orange, and kissed her cheeks and brow and
mouth.

'Dear, dear Orange!' she said, and her tears
flowed, 'do not speak thus.  You are nothing
other to me than a sister.'

Then she looked round to thank Herring,
but he was gone.





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.. _`A SECOND SUMMONS`:

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   CHAPTER XXXVII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   A SECOND SUMMONS.

.. vspace:: 2

Herring was gone.  He did not remain to
explain how it was that everything had fallen
to Mirelle.  He went because he did not
desire to explain anything.  In his own mind
he had debated what was best to be done.
Should he inform her that she had a fortune,
part of which he had invested in the West
Wyke mortgages, and part he was about to sink
in the Upaver lead mine, and part still
remained in uncut diamonds, not disposed of?
Should he make over everything to her, and
free himself of further responsibility?

He hesitated about doing this, and
throwing off a charge he had laid on himself.
Mirelle was unable of herself to manage what
was properly hers.  Her ignorance of the world
would place her at the mercy of any one who
offered to conduct her affairs for her.  Orange
was engaged to Captain Trecarrel, and would
probably marry him when the trouble
about Ophir, and the time of mourning
for her father, was over; and, though
Trecarrel was a gentleman and, no doubt, of
unimpeachable integrity, still he was a needy
man, and might not be a discreet adviser.  So
Herring resolved to retain his hold over the
property, at all events for a while, till the
Captain had married Orange, and he had time
to decide whether Trecarrel was a man to be
trusted to act as guardian to Mirelle.

In a small town every one holds his nose
over his neighbour's chimney-top, and knows
exactly what is cooking below.  In Launceston
it was a matter of general conversation that
the Countess Mirelle Garcia had come to the
aid of the Trampleasures, that she had
arranged with the creditors and had made such
an offer before the sale took place, that the
auction had been abandoned.  Every one knew
this; the mayor, the chimney-sweep, the
barber, the milliner, and Polly Skittles
behind the bar of the Pig and Whistle.
Every one knew that Mirelle had money in the
bank, and multiplied the sum by four.  Now,
every one believed that her diamonds were
real, and that they were the outward sign of a
magnificent fortune behind.  Every one, we
say, for after the ball at Dolbeare the entire
town knew of the diamonds, but the mayor,
the chimney-sweep, the barber, the milliner,
and Polly Skittles of the Pig and Whistle
concluded they were paste.  The one jeweller
had tested them and found them paste, and
the one jeweller had a wife, and the wife
had a tongue.  Now, also, every one began
to regret that more attention had not
been shown her.  Those mothers who were
burdened with cubs were especially regretful,
and resolute to make amends, and bring
the Countess to their little parties, and
hitch their cubs on to her.  Now also Miss
Bowdler began to regret having been inhospitable
to Orange Trampleasure.  Mirelle was a
Countess—a foreign Countess, it is true, but
still, where titles are rare, a foreign title is
better than none.  Hitherto, she, as well as
the rest of Launceston, down to Polly Skittles,
had delighted to talk of her as Miss Strange,
because they supposed her poor—a sort of
hanger-on to the Tramplaras, but now that
the conditions were reversed Launceston
society reconsidered the question of her
treatment.  If foreign titles do descend through
the female line—well, this was a foreign title,
and the young lady had a legitimate right to
bear it.  So Launceston, from the mayoress,
the chimney-sweeperess, the barber's wife, the
milliner, to Polly Skittles behind the bar of
the Pig and Whistle, began to speak of her
as the Countess, and Polly went so far as to
call the Tramplaras Trampleasures, because of
their kinship to Mirelle.

Miss Bowdler speedily convinced herself
that she had made a mistake.  There were no
baronets and their ladies near the capital of
Cornwall, and if there had been they would
have moved in a sphere unapproachable by
Sophy.  There was not even a retired oil and
colourman, who, as mayor, had been knighted
on a royal visit; for royalty never did visit
Launceston, not even the Duke of Cornwall,
though the city was the capital of the county
from which he drew his title, and in which he
owned estates.  It would be something for
Sophy Bowdler to be able to talk of her
friend the Countess, and to describe her
diamonds, when visiting her relatives in
Redruth and Bodmin.

She had made a mistake, and she hastened
to repair it.  She was the first to visit
Dolbeare after the return of the Trampleasures.
She did more.  She offered a holocaust to
secure a renewal of friendship, and the
holocaust she offered was John Thomas, the
footman, who found himself summarily
dismissed for the impertinence of his manner
to Miss Trampleasure.

Sophy Bowdler pushed her way into
Dolbeare, past the maid who appeared at the
door.  She herself opened that of the sitting-room,
in the old familiar style, and rushed to
Orange, to take her to her heart.

Orange hesitated a moment, and then
received her overtures with simulated pleasure.
It was not her interest to quarrel with old
friends.

'You must excuse me, darling Orange, if
I was abrupt with you the other day.  My
Pa, my dear Pa, is, you know, rather short in
temper, and I had begun to read to him an
account of the riots in the north, when I
heard the parrot screaming, and she disturbed
him.  He swore he would wring Polly's neck.
You know I dote on that bird; and I was
so frightened.  Pa is a man of his word.  So
I ran out, and then he called me back, and I
was distracted between my desire to see you,
and my fears for Poll, and my duty to Pa.'

'Pray do not mention this.'

'But I must, Orange.  That impudent
John Thomas made me so angry with his
want of manner that I had to dismiss him,
and now we are on the look-out for another
footman.  Can you—or can the
Countess—recommend me one?'

The next to come was Mrs. Trelake, very
pleased to see her dear old friend,
Mrs. Trampleasure, back in Dolbeare again.  She
was provoked at not having been able to
receive her; 'But, my dear, put yourself in
my place; what else could I do?  However,
all is well that ends well!  Hah! the China
vases with the dragons were not sold after
all!  We shall have our game of cribbage
together as of old.'

Then came Mr. Flamank.  His excursion
among the Particular Christians on behalf of
the mission to Ho-ha, under the ministry of
the native prince, Hokee-Pokee-Wankee-Fum,
had not been crowned with success.  Ophir
was too fresh in the memories of men.  Some
of the Christian auditors had suffered through
it; all knew how Flamank had helped to
launch the concern, and, although he had
taken an active part in exposing the fraud, it
was surmised that he had pocketed something
by the transaction.  Some rudely asserted
that the Ho-ha mission was but another
Ophir, and that Wankee-Fum was as mythical
as Arundell Golitho of Trevorgan, Esq.
Mr. Flamank returned from his round much
disappointed and depressed.  He heard from his
wife what had occurred.  Then he went to
Dolbeare to offer his congratulations.  He
was surprised and puzzled.  If Mirelle were
rich and willing to rescue her kinsfolk from
their difficulties, why had she said nothing of
her intention before?  Why had she allowed
him to invite the party to his house and
embroil himself with his wife about them?

Perhaps her remittance had not arrived.
Perhaps——  But why form conjectures?
He did not understand her.  Her ways were
radically different from the ways of plain
Christians.  Where these went straight, those
went crooked.  There are persons mentally
shaped like boomerangs.  They go out of the
hand in one direction, make a sweep half
round the horizon, and return to the hand
whence they started.

It was possible, as the Countess was rich,
that she might interest herself in Ho-ha, and
Flamank thought that, by dwelling on the
social and moral aspects of the case, and not
pressing the religious, she might be induced
to help Wankee-Fum liberally.

Mirelle received Mr. Flamank civilly.  She
felt that he had acted with kindness and
unselfishness towards her and the Trampleasures,
and she respected his goodness, though she
did not like its fashions.

After some desultory conversation, Mr. Flamank
broached the subject of the Ho-ha
mission.  Mirelle at once became chilly.
When he asked her for a donation she declined
to subscribe.

'You forget, I am a Catholic.'

'Not at all, my dear young friend, not at
all.  But this is distinctly a case of enlightenment,
where all around is dark; and although
Hokee-Pokee-Wankee-Fum may have embraced
the tenets of the Particular Christians,
still you must remember he is a Christian,
and we are all travelling in the same direction.'

'Sir,' said Mirelle, 'as I was walking
along the Bodmin road, I saw three children
going along the same way and in the same
direction as myself—only they were walking
backwards.  One tumbled into a furzebush
on the right, another fell over the bank into
a ditch on the left, and the third went under
the hoofs of carthorses in the middle of the
road.  It would have been better for all those
children not to have travelled along the road
at all, than to have attempted it with
perverted views.'  Then she rose, bowed, and left
the minister with Orange and her mother.

The next caller was Captain Trecarrel.
Orange had been expecting him, and had
given instructions to the servant on no
account to admit him.  Accordingly, when he
called, neither the Countess nor the
Trampleasures were 'at home,' and the Captain
was forced to depart, leaving three cards.

Orange took possession of the cards, tore
them in half, and put them in an envelope.

'Dear Mirelle,' she said, 'I have been
writing to Harry, poor fellow.  He has been
so troubled about our affairs that he has
taken to his bed.  He is seriously unwell.  I
have been writing full particulars to him of
all that has taken place, but since my letter
was finished I have sprained my hand, and
cannot hold a pen.  Would you mind directing
the letter for me, dear?'

So the address was in Mirelle's handwriting.
The letter was posted, and reached
the Captain on the morrow.

'Now,' said Orange, 'he will be forced to
keep his distance for a while, till I have time
to look round.'

Orange was not satisfied.  Mirelle was
certain to go to Trecarrel for mass, when
next the priest came that way, and then an
explanation would follow.  Orange did not
understand how it was that Herring had
bought in all the furniture in Mirelle's name,
and had placed a sum in the bank to her
account.  She questioned Mirelle thereon.

'My dear, how comes it that you have so
much money? that you are able to do so
much, and to live independently?'

'I do not know.'

'What has become of your diamond necklace
and tiara?  Have you sold them?'

'No, Mr. Herring keeps them for me.  I
do not want them now.  I mean—for wear.'

'Mr. Herring has them!'

'Yes; I asked him to take care of them—that
was before I knew they were paste.'

'But, perhaps they are not paste, but real
diamonds, Mirelle.'

'What I gave you formed part of the set,
and that was certainly paste.'

'Yes, that is true; but it is possible that
the rest may have been genuine stones, in
which case the value must be great.'

'I do not know, Orange.'

'But, my dear, whence comes the money
lodged in the bank?  Whence the money that
bought all this furniture?'

'I do not know.  I have not asked.'

'You ought to know.  It is imperative on
you to ascertain.  Do you think that
Mr. Herring has sold your diamonds for this
purpose?'

'I am certain he has not.  He would not
dare to dispose of my mother's jewels without
consulting me.  I gave them to him to keep
for me.  I did not authorise him to sell them.'

'Have you any means of which we know
nothing?—money not given to my father
which you trusted to Mr. Herring along with
the diamonds?'

'No, Orange.'

'Has nothing been forwarded to you of
his property from Brazil?'

'No, Orange.'

'Then, whence comes this money?  I
suppose Mr. Herring has spent a hundred
and fifty pounds on the furniture.  He has
lodged a hundred pounds in the bank, and
promises you as much quarterly.'

'Yes, it is so.'

'But, Mirelle, do you not see that, in this
case, you are living on Mr. Herring's alms!
He is not a rich man.  I have heard from my
father about him.  I do not believe he is
worth more than six to seven hundred pounds
a year, and he is giving you four out of the
six or seven—nay, he has given you more.'

Mirelle looked before her.  She had not
thought of this before.  Brought up without
care of money, everything she had being paid
for by her father, it had not struck her that
she was now living on the bounty of one who
was no relative.

'It is very good of Mr. Herring,' she said.

'My dear Mirelle, this must not go on.'

'Why not?'

'What right have you to accept and spend
the money of Mr. Herring?  He is no relative.
You have no claim on him.'

Mirelle was uneasy.  'Why, then, has he
done so much for me?'

'That is what I ask.  Realise what this
means.  He is impoverishing himself to
support you?  What will the world say?  What
must it say?  That which Mr. Herring is
doing for you he has no right to do for any
woman except a *wife*.'

Then Mirelle sprang to her feet trembling;
she could not colour over brow and bosom
like Orange, but two rosy tinges came into
her cheeks.  Her whole delicate frame quivered,
and her eyes became dull.  She placed
her hands over her heart, and looked at Orange
speechlessly.

'Yes,' said the latter, 'you cannot; what
is more, you must not receive all this from
a young man without having a shadow of
claim upon him.  The only claim you can
have to justify the receiving of so much is the
legitimate claim of a wife.'

'Have done!' gasped Mirelle, holding out
her hand entreatingly.

'No, Mirelle, I must be plain with you.
In this town it will soon be known that you
are being supported in comfort by a young
officer, who is neither a brother nor even a
cousin.  What conclusion will be drawn?'

'Orange,' said the girl, pleadingly, 'I pray
you to be silent.'

'I will not be silent,' answered Orange.
'One of two things must be done; must, I
say.  Do you hear me, MUST.  Either you
give Mr. Herring a legitimate right to maintain
you, or my mother and I leave this place
and do not speak to you again.'

'I do not understand you,' said Mirelle.
'Why should you cast me off?'

Orange looked at her, and a scornful
smile played over her lips.  She was unable
to believe in the purity and guilelessness of
the soul before her.  She thought Mirelle a
hypocrite, and as a hypocrite she despised her.

'Oh! you want further explanation, do
you?  Learn then that it is not the custom
in England for a woman of character to live
on the generosity of a gentleman who is
neither a husband nor a kinsman.'

'I see that I have no right to expect this
of Mr. Herring.  But he is so good, so
generous, and so thoughtful, that he has not
considered himself, in his pity and solicitude
for me.  However, it shall not remain so.
I will tell him that I cannot accept his
liberality.'

'Or—that you can only accept it when he
has given you legitimate claims on him.'

'I will not accept his liberality.'

'What is to become of us—of you—if he
hears this from your lips?  Remember, we
have nothing.  We must starve.  You—what
will you do?'

'I do not know.'

'Listen to me, Mirelle.  There is only one
thing that you can do.  Next time
Mr. Herring comes here, if he tells you that he
loves you, and asks you to be his wife—accept
him.'

'I cannot.  Oh, I cannot!'

'You must do it.  It is the only salvation
for us and for you.  Then, no one can say
anything to his furnishing you with every
penny of his income.'

Mirelle put her hands over her eyes.
Orange watched her contemptuously.  The
girl was very still, but the tears oozed between
her slender fingers and dripped on her lap.

'Have you been so blind as not to see
that his heart is bound up in you?  He has
loved you from the beginning, and, you little
fool, you have not known it.  He has done so
much for you because he loves you.  He
cares nothing for us—my mother and me.
He is a good and worthy man.  Make him
happy.  Repay him for what he has done for
you.  You are not likely to find another who
would make as trustworthy a husband.  Do
not sigh after the man in the moon; he will
not come down to you.  Mr. Herring is a
gentleman, an officer in His Majesty's army;
has a private fortune, not large, but enough to
support a wife in comfort; and he is
honourable, truthful—and soft.'

Mirelle made no response.

'Now, suppose that you refuse him, and
tell him, as you are bound to do, that because
you refuse him you will no longer burden
him for your support.  What then?  Why,
you and we are placed in precisely the same
predicament we were in before.  We shall
have a sale here after all; have to leave this
house, and be adrift in the world.  Will you
hire yourself to be cook to Mrs. Trelake, or
shall I recommend you as parlour-maid to
Miss Bowdler, for her John Thomas to flirt
with in the pantry?  This is not all.  After
everything that Mr. Herring has done for you,
you cannot refuse him without being guilty of
black ingratitude.  Now, what do you say?
There seems to me no option as to what
your choice should be.  But some persons do
not know on which side their bread is
buttered.  Are you prepared to go into service?
Shall I write you a character to Sophy
Bowdler? clean, obliging, and steady;
understands glass and china.  There is really no
alternative.  Remember, also, that my mother
and I depend on your election likewise.  Reject
Mr. Herring, and when you go to Miss Bowdler
as parlour-maid, my mother becomes cook, and
I, barmaid at an inn.'

Mirelle rose; she did not speak, but left
the room with tottering feet, and her eyes so
full that, to find her way, she felt about her
with trembling hands.  When she was gone,
Orange laughed.

'Now,' said she, 'the next thing to be
done is to bring that other fool here.'  Then
she wrote a note to Herring, requesting him
to come to Launceston, as her mother and she
wished to consult him on important business.
She added in a postscript, 'Mirelle will be
most happy to see you.'





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.. _`A VIRGIN MARTYR`:

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   CHAPTER XXXVIII.


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   A VIRGIN MARTYR.

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In the privacy of her own room, by night, in
the little garden house, her favourite refuge
by day, Mirelle considered what Orange had
said to her.  She was hurt and offended by
the manner in which Orange had spoken,
without quite understanding why.  Her
refined nature winced before the rough touch
of one coarse as Orange, not only because the
touch was rude, but because it sullied.

Mirelle believed that Orange was her
friend, a rude friend, but sincere.  What had
she done to convert her into an enemy?  She
was not a friend to whom she could open her
heart, and she had no desire to receive the
outpourings of that of Orange.  They were
friends so far as this went, that each wished
well to the other, and would do her utmost to
promote each other's happiness.

Orange was the interpreter of the world's
voice to Mirelle, the guide through its mazes.
That voice was odious to her, nevertheless
she must hear it.  Its ways were distasteful,
nevertheless she must tread them.  She knew
nothing of the world, except what she had
been taught in the convent.  She believed
it to be wicked and ungodly.  The virgin
martyrs had been cast to wild beasts, some
had been devoured by leopards, others hugged
by bears.  The world was an arena in which
she was exposed, and Orange the rough but
kindly executioner who offered her a choice
of martyrdom.  An angel, a captain of the
heavenly militia, with eyes blue as the skies
of paradise, had been sent to stand by, and
guard many a virgin; but she, Mirelle, must
endure her agony undefended, and see the
angel stand by one who seemed rude and
dauntless enough to fight the battle unaided.

King Alphonso X. of Castile said that, if
he had been consulted at the creation of the
universe, he would have made it much better;
the sisters of the Sacred Heart had intimated as
much in their instructions.  In the first place
they would have made a world without men,
and that world would have remained a paradise.
Men are the cankers that corrode the roses,
the thorns that strangle the lilies in the garden
of the Church, the moths that fret the garments
of the saints, the incarnation of the
destructive principle.

Mirelle remembered how her mother had
suffered through union with Mr. Strange.
She thought of Mr. Trampleasure, of
Sampson—she really knew very few men, and those
she knew were not of the best type.  There
was the Captain, indeed, but he was unattainable,
and Herring was at least inoffensive
and well-meaning.  If she must be thrown
to beasts, let her be cast to such a gentle
beast as this.  Hereafter, only, will there be
no marrying nor giving in marriage, and
women will be at peace; there, into that
blessed country, the men, if admitted at all,
will be like priests, wear petticoats and be
shaven; above all, will be in such a minority
that they will be obliged to keep their distance
and adopt a submissive manner.  Mirelle
had a good deal of natural shrewdness, but
no experience of life.  Brought up in a
convent, the only world she knew was the little
world within four walls, in which the wildest
hurricane that raged was occasioned by a
junior appropriating the chair properly
belonging to a senior, and the fiercest jealousies
blazed when a father director addressed four
words to Sister Magdalen of S. Paul, and only
three to Sister Rose of the Cross.  When she
had gone out, it was on visits to her mother,
and there she had met very artificial old
gentlemen, and still more artificial old ladies,
persons who looked like pictures in illustrated
story-books, and talked like the people she
read of in the same books.  She supposed
that her board and education were paid for at
the Sacré Coeur.  She supposed so, she took
it for granted.  She considered it probable
that those pupils who could afford, paid, and
those who could not afford, were received
gratuitously.  The sisters never mentioned
such matters, her mother never alluded to
them, and Mirelle had scarce accorded such
sordid cares a passing thought.  Bread and
instruction came to her as food and light to
the birds; the birds take what is sent, and
do not trouble their feathery heads about
the how and whence.  Now she was driven
to consider how she might live, and whether
it was right for her to subsist on alms,
and those the alms of a gentleman who was
no relation, and how, if these means were
withdrawn or rejected, she was to live at all.

After much thought, little sleep, and
many tears, she decided that she would accept
John Herring.

She had made up her mind.  Now, she
must obtain command of herself to go through
the approaching ordeal with dignity.

As Orange had anticipated, her letter
brought Herring to Launceston.  He had
gone to Welltown, his house in Cornwall
on the coast, to look after his business there.
He had let the farm, but he had a slate-quarry
in the cliffs overhanging the sea, and
he liked to keep an eye on it.  This
slate-quarry had been worked in a desultory manner,
chiefly to supply local requirements, but
Herring's ideas had expanded since he had
seen the rise and fall of Ophir, and since he
had embarked in silver lead, and he saw his
way to an extension of the business.  He
knew that Bristol was a port where he could
dispose of any amount of slate, if he were
able to convey it thither.  Below Welltown
the cliffs rose sheer from the beach; that
beach was a thin strip of sand, only to be
reached by a dangerous path cut in the face
of the rock.  Welltown cove was to some
extent sheltered from the roll of the Atlantic
by a reef from Willapark, as a headland was
called, which started out of the mainland into
the ocean, and was gnawed into on both
sides by the waves, threatening to convert it
into an island.

Herring had a scheme in his head; he
thought to construct a breakwater on a
continuation of the reef.  Then he would be able
to bring boats under the face of his
slate-quarries, and lower the roofing stone upon
their decks.  The idea had not occurred to
him before, because he had been poor and
unable to command a few thousand pounds.
But now he had Mirelle's diamonds to draw
upon.  He could invest her capital in his own
slate-quarry as well as in Upaver lead mine,
and benefit himself as well as Mr. Battishill.
He would look after both investments himself.
He would hold both the slate and the lead in
his own hands.  Mirelle's money would not
only be safe, but would bring in rich
dividends.  Was he justified in acting thus—in
speculating with the fortune of another
without her knowledge and consent?  He asked
himself this question, and answered it in the
affirmative.  Without his seeking,
Providence had thrust on him the charge of
Mirelle's fortune, and he must do the best he
could with it.  Her father had done what he
thought best, and every penny that had been
intrusted to her guardians had been lost.
Then Providence had overruled matters so
as to constitute him her guardian.  He
would act justly by her.  He was not
self-seeking.  It was true that the development
of the Welltown slate-quarry would improve
his own fortune, but this thought influenced
him far less than consideration how best to
dispose of Mirelle's money.  He would sink
her diamonds in his slate, not because it was
his slate, but because he knew the security
and value of the investment.  He was working
for her, not for himself, to increase her
fortune, not his own, to insure her a future,
not himself.  Thus it was for Mirelle that he
was erecting machinery at Upaver and planning
a breakwater at Welltown.  In the midst
of his schemes he received the letter of
Orange, and the postscript made his heart
leap.  He had been too humble-minded to
hope.  Mirelle stood aloof from him, high
above his sphere.  She was to him the ideal
of pure, beautiful, and saintly maidenhood, to
be dreamed of, not aspired to, to be venerated,
not sought.  She had of late received him
with more kindliness than heretofore, had
put away her early disdain, and had treated
him as an equal.  There had transpired
through face and manner something even of
appeal to him.  Was it possible that she had
begun to regard him with liking, perhaps
even with love?  He was so modest in his
estimation of himself that he blushed at the
thought—the audacious thought—that this
was possible.

Herring posted to Launceston, and went
at once to Dolbeare.  Mirelle was in the little
garden house as he passed.  She saw him, and
knew that the crisis in her life was come.  He
was admitted to Dolbeare, and sat with
Mrs. Trampleasure and Orange for half an hour.
The latter had discovered some important
business requiring advice, and this was
discussed; yet Herring saw plainly enough that
this was not of sufficient importance to have
made Orange summon him.  Mr. Flamank
could have advised her equally well.  There
was something behind.  What that was Orange
let him understand.

'And now,' said she, 'we must detain you
no longer.  Mirelle is in the summer-house.
She likes to be alone, dear girl, and she wants
to see you.  You slipped away, on the
occasion of our return hither, without awaiting
her thanks.  She has been troubled at this;
she knows she owes you some return.  Go
and see her; she is expecting you, and angry
with us for keeping you from her so long
over our own poor affairs.'

Herring coloured.  Orange had not a
delicate way of putting things.  He knew
that Mirelle had not asked Orange to act as
intermediary between them, yet this was what
the words and manner of Orange implied.

He bowed and withdrew.

Mirelle was awaiting him, She had been
given time to school herself for the trial.
Twilight had set in, and but for the fire that
glowed on the hearth it would have been dark
in the little room.  The fire was of peat,
without flame, colouring the whole room very
red.

Mirelle rose from her seat and stepped
forward to meet Herring.  He looked her in
the face.  She was very pale; the colour had
deserted even her lips, but the light of the
burning turf disguised her death-like
whiteness.  As he took her hand he felt how cold
it was; it trembled, and was timorously
withdrawn the moment it had touched his fingers.
His heart was beating tumultuously.  Hers
seemed scarce to pulsate; it was iced by
her great fear and misery, and the strong
compulsion she exerted to keep herself calm.

'I am glad to see you, Mr. Herring,' she
said.  She spoke first, and she spoke, as on a
former occasion, like one repeating a lesson
learned by heart.  'I was told that you were
coming, and I have prepared myself to speak
to you, and say what has to be said.  You
have been good to me, very good.  You have
done more for me than I had any right to
expect.  I have no claim on you, save the
claim which appeals to every Christian heart,
the claim of the friendless and helpless.  That
is a great claim, I have been taught, the
greatest and most sacred of all.  But the
world does not recognise it; it does not allow
you permission to pour on me so many
benefits.  You have bought everything the house
contains with your own money—for me.
You have taken the lease of the house, and
paid the rent out of your own purse—for me.
You have undertaken to find me an income
on which I can live in comfort; you rob
yourself—for me.'

She paused a moment.

A conflict woke up in the mind of John
Herring.  Should he tell her all?  Should he
say that this was not true—he had used her
money, not his own?  If at that moment he
had done so, that event which was to trouble
and darken both their futures would not have
occurred.  Herring was young; he was without
strength of character to decide in a
moment what to do.  He let the occasion slip.
He would wait; the revelation could be made
later.  He did not understand the supreme
importance of the moment.  He did not realise
to what Mirelle's words led.

'Countess,' he said——

'No,' she interrupted hastily, 'do not
speak.  You must let me say what I want.  Il
me faut me décharger le coeur.  If I had been
a nun at the head of an orphanage, I would
have said, Give all, and God on high will
repay you.  Give; no one will deny you the
right, and I will accept with joy.  I will be
your almoner to the little ones of Christ.
But, alas! it is not so.  I can spend what you
provide only on myself, and I do not find that
this is right.  In the world is one fashion, in
religion is another fashion.  You see well
yourself it cannot be.'

'Countess, will you allow me to explain?'

'No; I need no explanation.  One only
question I ask, for there is one thing I desire
greatly to know.  That neck-chain and that
coronet of diamonds, have you sold them?'

'No, I have them yet.  You intrusted
them to me.'

'They are false.  Do you know the brooch
you sent me for Orange was all of false
stones—of paste?  I doubt not the rest of the set
is the same.  Did you know this?'

'Certainly not.  I have not examined and
proved the stones.  I had no suspicion that
they were not genuine.'

'My father sent the set as a present to my
mother,' said Mirelle, 'and they were of
paste.'

Herring was surprised.

'This cannot be, Countess; your father
was a diamond merchant, and knew perfectly
the false from the true.  He could not have
sent your mother what was worthless.  The
stones must have been changed later.'

'They were in my mother's keeping,' said
Mirelle.

That was answer enough.  Her father
might be guilty of a mean act; her mother,
never.

Herring had his own opinion, but he had
the prudence not to express it.

'But enough about this,' Mirelle went
on.  'I only asked for this reason.  If you
had sold my stones, supposing them to be
real, and had used them to relieve me and
the Trampleasures in the moment of our
need, when we had not a house to cover our
heads, I should have been very, very thankful.'

She said this with an involuntary sigh,
and with such an intense expression of
earnestness that Herring caught the words
up, and said eagerly:—

'Do you mean this?  Do you mean that
you would have thanked me if I had sold
your diamonds and used the proceeds to
relieve your necessities?'

'Yes, I do mean this.'

'Why did you not ask me to do this?'

'Because I supposed the stones were
paste, and worthless.'

'Tell me, dear Countess Mirelle, if you
had confided diamonds to me, knowing them
to be diamonds, you would not be angry with
me for selling them for this very purpose—to
provide you with the means of living yourself,
and of returning the kindness shown you by
Mrs. Trampleasure and her daughter?'

'I would go down on my knees to thank
you.  I would be full of gratitude to you.'

He breathed freely; he had received his
absolution.  He had been justified in acting
as he had done; Mirelle had approved of his
conduct with her own lips.  He had carried
out her wishes.  It was unnecessary for him
to tell her all, now that he was certain that he
acted as she would have him act.

But he did not read her heart.  He did
not understand the real significance of her
words.  She would indeed have been thankful
to know that she had received her own money,
so as to be free from all obligations to
him—so as not to be forced to take the step the
thought of which killed the life out of her
heart.  That hope was gone—a poor hope, but
still a hope.  Nothing remained for her but
the surrender; she must become a sacrifice.

'It was not so,' she went on sadly, 'I
knew it was not so, for you would not have
parted with my mother's set of stones without
consulting me.  No, Mr. Herring, I have not
the poor pride of knowing I am my own
mistress, and independent of every one.  You
have been to me a generous friend and a
guardian when I needed assistance and protection.'

'Dear Countess Mirelle, I am ready still
to act as your friend, your guardian, and your
protector.'

'I know it, Mr. Herring, and I frankly
accept your offer.  I am willing that you
should continue such for the rest of my life.'

'Countess!'  Herring's voice shook; 'how
happy, how proud you make me!'

'Let me speak,' she said.  Then her heart
failed her.  She went to the fire, and rested
her hands on the mantelpiece, folded as in
prayer, and leaned her brow for a moment
on them.  The red glow of the fire smote
upwards and illumined and warmed the face.
She was praying.  Her strength was ebbing
away; the dreaded moment had come.  'I
holy and innocent Agnes, pure lamb!  Thou
who didst bow thy neck to the sword,
intercede for me!  O Cicely, thou whose heart
was filled with heavenly music, making thee
deaf to the voice of an earthly bridegroom,
pray for me!  O Dorothy, thou who didst
pine for the lilies and roses of Paradise, plead
for me!'

She raised her white brow from its
momentary resting-place.  The strength had
come.  The moment of agony had arrived,
and she was nerved to pass through.

'Mr. Herring,' she spoke slowly, leisurely,
'I have no right to accept your offer, unless
you confer on me the right—the only
right——'

She could speak no more.  Her white,
quivering face, her sunken eyes, and uplifted
hands that shook as with a palsy, showed her
powerlessness to proceed.

Herring took a step forward.  She drew
back, shrinking before him as perhaps the
martyr shrinks before the executioner.

'Stand there, I pray—oh, do not come
nearer!' she pleaded, with pain in her voice.

'Mirelle, dear Mirelle!' he said; and then
the pent-up love of his heart broke forth.
He told her how he had loved her from the
moment that he first saw her, how, hopeless
of ever winning her, he had battled with his
love, how vain his efforts had been, and how
his highest ambition was to live for her and
make her happy.  He spoke in plain, simple
words, with the rough eloquence of passion
and sincerity.

She listened to him, with her hands again
on the mantelpiece, looking at him, with her
dark eyes wide open, and the red glow of the
fire in them.  She did not follow his words,
she heard them without comprehending them.
She was full of her own grief and could think
of nothing else.

She woke out of abstraction when he
asked her, 'Mirelle, may I think myself so
happy as to be able to count on your being
mine?'

'I will be your wife,' she said.

'Oh, dear, dear Mirelle!  My whole life
shall be devoted to you.  This is the happiest
day I have ever known.'

'One thing I must say,' said she; 'you
know I am a Catholic.  I will never give up
my faith.  You will assure me perfect freedom
to follow my own dear religion.  I could live
without everything, but not without that.'

He gave her the requisite assurance.

'You and I,' she said sadly, 'have not
the same faith—that is, as far as I can see,
you disbelieve in more than half of the verities
which are the very life of my soul.  We
cannot be united in the holiest and most beautiful
of all bonds, which has eternity before it,
to which both press on together.  That
cannot be.  You go one way, I another.  But
as far as can be, I will be all that you will
require.'

'You are everything I desire now.  I
have but to look at you, and I think I see a
saint or angel from heaven.'

She put up her hand, and brushed his
words away.  They offended her.  But they
were sincere; there was no flattery in them.
Mirelle was an ideal to Herring.  Again he
stepped forward.  He would take her hands,
he would kiss colour and heat into those cold
and faded lips.  He had a right to do this.
Was she not about to become his wife?

But again she drew back, and in a tone of
mingled terror and entreaty said, 'Oh,
Mr. Herring.  I pray you do not come nearer to
me.  I am so frightened and bewildered.
The thoughts that rise up beat my temples
and contract my heart.  I have gone through
a great deal to-day, I have said that I will
be your wife.  Do not exact of me more than
I can bear.  Do not press the advantage you
have gained over me, I entreat you.  You are
kind and considerate.  I am not very strong,
and I think not very well.  Leave me to
myself, I pray you; go away now.  If I have
made you happy, I am glad of it; let my
promise suffice.  Come here to-morrow, if you
will.  No, no'—again with her fear overmastering
her, she grasped at a respite—'not
to-morrow.  I shall not be sufficiently myself
to receive you.  The day after will do.  Then
I shall have more strength to speak to you
about the future.  Not now.  I pray you
leave me alone now.'

'Will you not even give me your hand?'

She hesitated, then timidly drew near,
with her large eyes on him full of anxiety,
and she held out the long shaking white
fingers.  He kissed them.  They were cold
as the fingers of the dead.

'I shall return the day after to-morrow,'
he said.

'I shall be ready then to receive you,' she
replied.

He went out.  Then, when she knew
that she was alone, at once all her strength
gave way, and she fell on her knees, clasping
her hands together, swaying her body in the
agony of her pain, and broke into a storm of
tears.

Mirelle did not keep her word to Herring.
She was unable to do so.  That night she was
attacked by a nervous fever, and became
delirious.  The strain had been too great for
her delicate system.

Herring called, and heard how ill she was.
He did not leave Launceston; he remained
till the crisis was past.

The doctors were uncertain what turn
her illness would take, and how to treat one
constituted so differently from their run of
patients.  In this uncertainty they did nothing,
and, because they did nothing, Mirelle recovered.

There was a natural elasticity in her youth
which triumphed over the disease.

Orange sat up with her, night after night.
She would allow no one else to share the burden
with her till Mirelle's delirium was over.

During the height of the fever, Mirelle
talked.  Orange stayed with her, not out of
love for her cousin, but out of fear lest others
should discover, from the rambling talk of
Mirelle, the secret which she alone possessed.
The name of Trecarrel was often on the lips
of Mirelle; she prayed, and broke off in the
midst of a prayer to speak of Trecarrel.  At
the same time she seemed oppressed by a
great terror, and she cried out to be saved
from what was coming.  Not once did the
name of John Herring pass her lips.

When, at length, Mirelle was well enough
to be moved downstairs, then Herring was
admitted to see her.  He had repeatedly sat
before, by the hour, with Mrs. Trampleasure
or with Orange, talking of the poor girl lying
ill upstairs.

'She has been delirious,' said Orange,
'and, if it were not unfair, I could tell you
how often your name——'

'It is unfair,' interrupted Herring, 'and I
decline to listen.'

'As you like,' said Orange, shrugging her
shoulders; and, as she left the room, she
sneered.

When John Herring saw Mirelle at last,
he could hardly command his tears, she looked
so thin and transparent; her eyes were very
large and bright, her face like ivory.  She
held out her hand to him.  He scarce
ventured to touch it.  She seemed to him like
the ghost-moth which, when grasped by the
hand, vanishes, leaving only silvery plumes
sprinkled over the fingers.

He kissed the wasted hand with reverence
and love, not with passion, and Mirelle smiled.

'Mr. Herring,' she said, 'I have had a
long time to myself, whilst I have been ill,
in which to prepare my thoughts.  What
must be—must be, and may be soon.  It is
now Advent, a season in which it is forbidden
by the Church to marry; but I will be yours
as soon after Christmas as you like.  Do not
doubt.  When I am your wife I will do my duty.'





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.. _`WELLTOWN`:

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   CHAPTER XXXIX.


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   WELLTOWN.

.. vspace:: 2

John Herring returned to Welltown.  There
was much to occupy him there.  He must
prepare the house to receive its mistress.  He
must get what he could ready for the
extension of the slate-quarry.  The breakwater
could not be begun in winter, but the stone
could be quarried for it among the granite of
Row-tor, and the head taken off where the
slate was to be worked.

Welltown was a bleak spot.  It stood
against a hill, only a little way in from the
head of the cliffs.  The hill had been quarried
for the stone of which the house was built,
and then the end of the house had been
thrust into the hole thus scooped.  The hill
rose rapidly, and its drip fell over the eaves
of the old quarry about the walls of the
house.  If the hill had been to seaward it
would have afforded some shelter, but it was
on the inland side, and the house was
therefore exposed to the raging blasts, salt with
Atlantic spray, that roared over the bare
surface of the land.  Not a tree could stand
against it, not a shrub, except privet and the
so-called teaplant.  Larches shot up a few feet
and lost their leaders; even the ash died
away at the head, and bore leaves only near
the ground.  A few beech-trees were like
broken-backed beggars bent double.

Day and night the roar of the ocean filled
the air, the roar of an ocean that rolled in
unbroken swell from Labrador, and dashed
itself against the ironbound coast in surprise
and fury at being arrested; beneath its stormy
blows the very mainland quivered.

Welltown was an old house, built at the
end of the sixteenth century by a certain
Baldwin Tink, who cut his initials on the
dripstone terminations of the main entrance.
The Tinks had owned the place for several
generations, yeomen aspiring to become
gentlemen, without arms, but hoping to acquire a
grant.  Baldwin had built one wing and a
porch, and proposed in time to erect another
wing, but his ability to build was exhausted,
and none of his successors were able to
complete the house; so it remained a queer
lopsided erection, the earnest of a handsome
mansion unfulfilled.  Baldwin Tink was an
ambitious man; he expected to be able to
form a quadrangle, and pierced his porch
with gateways opposite each other, so that
the visitor might pass through into the
courtyard, and there dismount in shelter.  But as
he was unable to add a second wing to the
front, so was he also unable to complete his
quadrangle; and the porch served as a
gathering place for the winds, whence they rushed
upstairs and through chambers, piping at
keyholes, whizzing under doors, extinguishing
candles, fluttering arras.  The windows were
mullioned and cut in granite, the mullions
heavy and the lights narrow.  The porch was
handsomely proportioned and deeply moulded,
but as want of funds had prevented Baldwin
Tink from completing his exterior, so had it
prevented him from properly furnishing the
house inside.  The staircase was mean,
provisional, rudely erected out of wreck timber,
and the impanelled walls were plastered white.
As the rain drove against the house, fierce,
pointed as lances, it smote between the joints
of the stones, and, though the walls were
thick, penetrated to the interior and blotched
the white inward face with green and black
stains.  There was no keeping it out.  When
the house was built, nothing was known of
brick linings, and the only way in which the
builders of those days treated defects was to
conceal them behind oak panelling.  Poverty
forbade this at Welltown, and so the walls
remained with their infirmities undisguised.
Our readers may have seen a grey ass on a
moor in a storm of hail.  The poor brute is
unable to face the gale, and therefore presents
his hinder quarters to it, and if there be a
rock or a tree near, the ass sets his nose
against it, and stands motionless with drooping
ears, patiently allowing his rear to bear
the brunt.  Welltown presented much this
appearance—a dead wall was towards the sea,
and the head of the house was against the
hill.  The furiousness of the gales from the
south and west prevented Baldwin Tink facing
his house so as to catch the sun in his
windows, and the only casement in the entire
house through which a golden streak fell was
that of the back kitchen.

What the house would have been when
completed can only be conjectured; as it was,
it was picturesque, but dreary to the last
degree.

The Tinks had long since passed away
from Welltown.  The final representative of
the family, unable to complete the house, sold
the estate.  With the proceeds he started a
drapery shop at Camelford, and died a rich
man.  Political economists lament the
extinction of the old race of English yeomen,
and advocate the creation of a race of peasant
proprietors.  A natural law has fought
against the yeoman, and will forbid the spread
of peasant proprietorships.  The capital that
is sunk in land produces two and a half per
cent., that sunk in trade brings in ten, twenty,
twenty-five per cent.  The young yeoman
had rather sell his paternal acres to the squire
and invest the purchase-money in business,
than struggle on upon the farm all his life,
without the prospect of becoming, in the end,
more wealthy than when he started.

Welltown passed through one or two
hands, and then came to the Herrings, who
occupied it for three generations, and, having
married women with a little money, had got
on some little way, not far, in the social
scale.  The slate-quarry had brought in
money, not much, for the demand was limited.
The neighbourhood was thinly populated, and
little building was done.  But the equinoctial
gales came to the assistance of the Herrings,
for after every gale carts came for slates to
repair the devastation done to roofs by the
wind.  The sale of slates enabled the Herrings
to enlarge their dairy by the purchase of
additional cows.  They salted their butter,
and sent it in firkins to Bristol by the little
boats that plied up the Channel from the port
of Boscastle.

John Herring had let the farm, on his
father's death, to an old hind, Hender[1]
Benoke, who had married John's nurse,
Genefer; and this couple lived in the house,
and when he was there attended to him.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[1] Hender is the modern Cornish form of Enoder.  There
was a Cornish saint of the name.  Genefer is Gwenever.

.. vspace:: 2

Now that Herring was interested in the
slate-quarry, he built himself an office near it,
on the cliff above a deep gulf called Blackapit,
gnawed by the waves in the headland of
Willapark.  In this office were a fireplace and
a bed.

Welltown had to be done up to receive
the bride, and whilst it was in the hands of
plasterers, carpenters, and painters, Herring
lived in his office by the slate-quarry.  He
was comfortable and independent there.
Genefer came there every day to attend to
his wants; but he dined at Welltown in the
evening, after the quarrymen had left work.

One morning, after Genefer had made his
breakfast, she stood beside the table, with her
hands folded, watching him.

Genefer Benoke was a handsome woman
still, though over fifty.  She had very thick
brown hair, high cheekbones, a dark complexion,
and large, wild, pale grey eyes.  She
was a tall, well-built woman, abrupt in
manner and capricious in temper.  Hender, her
husband, was a gloomy, sour man, always
nursing a grievance and grumbling against
some one; a man who considered himself
wronged by every one with whom he dealt; by
his master, who treated him liberally; by his
wife, whom, however, he feared; by his
workmen, because they were idle.  He was dragged
by his wife to chapel, and he grumbled
because he was obliged to pay for his pew, and
he was angry with the minister because he
was making a good thing out of the credulity
of his congregation.  He was jealous of the
storekeepers at Boscastle, because they were
making unfair profit on their goods.  He was
sulky with his pigs because they ran to bone
rather than to fat, and with his poultry
because they laid their eggs where they were
not readily found.  He growled at his Bible
because the printing was too small for his
eyes, and was bitter against his clothes
because they wore out.

Genefer was a strange woman.  The Keltic
blood in her veins was pure.  A wild, dreamy
woman, who had acted as white witch till she
thought the profession sinful and had given it
up, to throw herself with all the vehemence of
her nature into one of those fantastic forms
of dissent that thrive so vigorously on Keltic
soil.  She prophesied, she saw visions, and
dreamed.  None hunted the devil with more
vehemence and pertinacity than Genefer
Benoke—the devil-hunting with her was no
pretence; she saw him, she smelt him, and
she pursued him, now with a broom, then
with her bare hands.[1]  She went into fits, she
had the 'jerks,' she foamed at the mouth,
she rolled on the floor and shrieked, and
exhibited all the outward signs of a regenerate
and converted person.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[1] Devil-hunting is a favourite feature
among some of the
wilder sects in Cornwall.
Very extraordinary scenes may be
witnessed at one of these chases.

.. vspace:: 2

There was no hypocrisy in her.  If there
had been the least tinge of unreality, her
husband would have fastened on it, and her
power over him would have been at an end.
But her trances and fits and visions were real,
and he regarded her as a person of superior
spiritual powers, almost inspired, gifted with
supernatural clearness of vision.

'Master John,' said Genefer, 'you've
a-told me sure enough why there be all that
havage (disturbance) in the old house, fit to
worry a saint of God out of life, what with
the smeech (smell) of paint, and the
hammerings, and the sawings, and the plasterings.
You've a-told me, right enough, that there be
a new mistress coming, and I be not that
footy to go against it.  The Lord said, "It is
not good for man to be alone," and that settles
the matter; but I want to know what she be like.'

'Oh, dear Jenny, she is everything that
she ought to be.  You may take my word for
that.'

'Ah! all fowl be good fowl till you come
to pluck 'em.  There be maidens and maidens,
and you must not take 'em by what they
purfess, but by what they be.  When the Lord
were by the Sea of Tiberias, He seed a poor
man coming out of the tombs, exceeding
fierce, and He axed, What be thy name?
Then he answered, Legion, which means six
thousand.  But the Lord knowed better than
that, and He sed, sed He; "Come out of him
thou one unclean spirit, and go into the
swine."  Ah! if you listen to what they sez
of themselves, they be Legion—six thousand.
Loramussy! with their airs and their graces,
and their good looks, and their fortune, and
their learning, and their pianny-playing, and
their flower-painting, and this and
that—they'd make you believe they was possessed
with a legion of graces, but when you come to
get hold and look close, there be naught
there but one mean and selfish spirit, bad
enough to make a pig mazed.'

'My dear Jenny, I hope and trust your
future mistress will please you, but you don't
expect that I should put the choosing into
your hands.'

'I don't that 'xactly, Master John.  No,
I don't go so far as that.  But you might
have done worse.  There be none but a
woman as can see into a woman.  It be just
the same as with the Freemasons.  They
knows one another wherever they be, and in
the midst of a crowd; but you as bain't in the
secret have no idea how.  It be just the same
with women.  Us knows one another fast
enough, and what is hid from you men be
clear to we.  There were a battle against
Ephraim, and the men of Gilead took the
passages of Jordan, and when the Ephraimites
were a-flying, then said the Gileadites to 'em,
"Say Shibboleth!" and they said Sibboleth,
for they could not frame to pronounce it right.
So they took them and slew them there.  I
tell you, Master John, there don't at no time
meet two women wi'out one putting the
Shibboleth to the other and finding out whether
her belongs to Ephraim or Gilead.  I'd like
to know of the missis as be coming what her
be like, but I know very well it be no good
my axing of you.  You've not took her down
to the passages of Jordan and tried her there.'

'Ask me what I can tell you, and I will
satisfy you to the best of my power.'

'Master John, it be a false beginning
papering the porch room with white and gold.
The bare whitewash were good enough for
your mother and your grandmother, and it
would be good enough for your wife, I reckon,
if her were of the proper sort.  And if her be
not, let her take herself off from Welltown.
Will you tell me this, Master John; be she a
Cornish woman?'

'No, Jenny, I do not think she is.'

'Be she strong and hearty, wi' brave red
rosy cheeks and a pair of strong arms?'

'She is slender and pale, Jenny.'

'A fine wife that for Welltown!  Pale
and weak: that be as I dreamed.  But it were
no dream—it were a revelation.  What sort
be her as to her religion?  Be her a
Churchwoman, or one of God's elect?'

'That is an unfair way of putting it,'
laughed Herring.

'I put it the way it be written in the
Book of Light,' answered Genefer, doggedly.

'She is a Roman Catholic,' said Herring.
'I hope now you are satisfied.'

'See there!' exclaimed Genefer.  'What
sez the Scriptur?—"Thou shalt not plough
with the ox and the ass together."  What do
that mean but that two of a sort should run
together under the same yoke of matrimony?
If you be Church, take a Church wife; if you
be a Cornishman, don't fetch an ass out of
Devon to plough the lands of Welltown wi'
you.  What sez the prophet?—"Can two
walk together except they be agreed?"  Here
be you two arn't agreed about what be chiefest
of all, and how will you walk together along
the way of life?'

'My dear Jenny, you have had the management
so long that you presume.  I am not
any longer a boy to be ordered about, and I
must insist on no more of this sort of
interference with my affairs.  You acted as a
mother to me when I was deprived as an
infant of my own natural mother, and I shall
ever love you dearly for all you have done for
me.  But, Jenny, there are limits to forbearance,
and you transgress.'

'Ah, sure!' exclaimed Genefer Benoke,
'it were I as made you what you 'm be.  I
didn't spoil you as some would have done.
You 'm a good and proper squire, because I
trained the sapling.  "Spare the rod, spoil
the child," said the wise king, Master John,
when the old miners were seeking a lode they
took a hazel-rod in their hands, and they went
over the ground a holding of thicky.  And
when they passed above a lode the rod turned
in their hands.  It were all the same wi'
hidden treasure.  I've a heard of a Trevalga
man, as he went over the mounds of Bosinney
wi' such a divining-rod, and it turned, and he
dug and found King Arthur's golden crown
and table.  It be all the same with mortal
earth.  If you want to bring to light the pure
ore, the hidden treasure, you must go over it
wi' a stick.  There be good metal in you,
Master John, and you may thank your old
nurse that her didn't spare the rod.  Her
explored you pretty freely with the divining-wand.'

'I am thankful, Genefer,' said Herring,
laughing; 'I recall many of these same
explorations, and they have left on me an
ineffaceable respect for you, and some fear is
mingled with the love I bear you.'

'It is right it should be so.  What 'ud
you have been without me?  Your mother
died when you was a baby.  Your father
couldn't be a nursing of you by night and
day.  It were I as did all that.  I'd had
a chance child,'—in a self-exculpatory tone,
'the lambs o' the Lord must play;' then
louder: 'and I'd a lost it.  I did everything
for you, I were a proper mother to you, and
so it be that I love you as my own child; and
as the Lord has not seen fit to give me none
of my own body, saving that chance child as
died—and I reckon the stock of Hender be
too crabbed and sour to be worth perpetuating—what
have I to live for, and care for, and
provide for, but you?  And see this, Master
John.  King David said as the Lord rained
snares out of heaven: snares be ropes with
nooses at the end; and King David sez the
Lord hangs these out of every cloud, whereby
them as walks unawares may hang themselves.
What be them hangman's ropes dangling about,
thick as rain-streaks, but all those things God
has made, and with which he surrounds us,
by which we may lift ourselves above the
earth if we be prudent; but if we be fools,
then we shall strangle ourselves therein.  I
reckon the new mistress be one of the Lord's
snares hanging down out of heaven.  If you
use a wife properly, and lay hold of her, and
pull yourself up by her, then you will mount
to heaven; but if you let her get round your
throat, her'll sure to throttle you.  That
be what makes me badwaddled' (troubled)
'about you, now I see you wi' such a rope
before you.  Keep your feet and hands a
working up her, and don't you never let her
knot herself round you.'

Such was the house and such were the
persons destined to receive Mirelle.  John
Herring loved Welltown; he had been born
there and bred there.  Every stone was dear
to him.  The dreary scenery was full of
romance and beauty because associated with
early memories.  Old Genefer he loved; she
had been his nurse, his guide, his friend.  She
was masterful, and exercised the authority of
a mistress; but this had grown with years,
and was at first endured, at last disregarded.
It had become a part of Welltown, and was
sacred accordingly.  Herring was too full of
content with his own home, of admiration for
the barren coast scenery, to suppose that the
same would not equally delight Mirelle.  He
would explain to Mirelle the good points in
Genefer's character, the greatness of the debt
due to her, and for the sake of these she
would overlook her faults.

Alas! the place and the persons that were
to receive Mirelle were the most uncongenial
to her nature that could have been
selected.

But to return to the office on Willapark,
and Genefer standing at the table before her
foster child.

'I told you,' said the old woman, 'that I
had dreamed; but it weren't a dream, but a
vision, falling into a trance, but having my
eyes open.  I thought, Master John, that it
were a wisht' (wild) 'night, and the wind were
a tearing and a ramping over the hills and
driving of the snow before it in clouds.  And
I saw how that, in the whirl of the wind, the
snow heaped herself up like the pillar of salt
between Zoar and Sodom.  And I saw how
you, Master John, thought it were wonderful
and beautiful, that you stood before it mazed.
And when the night were gone, and the sun
came out, and it glittered like a pillar of
diamonds, then you cast your arms round it,
to hold it to your heart; and you looked up
to it for all the world as though expecting
something as never came and never could
come.  And you laid your heart against that
pillar of snow, and when I would have drayed
you away you sed, "See, Jenny, how fair and
pure she be!"  But I could not take you
away; and still you looked up into the snow,
asking wi' your eyes for something that never
came, and in nature never could come.  But
wi' the warmth of your heart it all began to
melt away; and still you looked; and it ran
between your fingers, and dripped in streams
from your heart, and trickled down your face
like tears; and so it thawed slowly away, and
still you held to the snow, and looked, and
nothing came.  That be the way the heat went
out of your heart, and the colour died from
your cheek, and your lips grew dead, and your
hands stiff, and the tears on your cheeks were
frosted to icicles, and your hair waxed white
as wool; and when all had melted clean away
still you was the same, wi' your arms stretched
out and your eyes uplifted—not now to the
snow bride, for that were gone, but to a star
that twinkled aloft over where she had been,
and I touched you, for I were troubled, but
could not move you—you were hard ice.'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`NOEL!  NOEL!`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XL.


.. class:: center medium bold

   NOEL!  NOEL!

.. vspace:: 2

Christmas had come, not a day of frost or
snow, but of warm south breezes charged with
rain; no sun shining, but grey light struggling
through piles of vapour.  Mirelle was so
much better that she was able to go in a coach
to Trecarrel to mass.  A priest was staying
there for a few days.

The mass was early, and she left before
dawn, but the day broke while she was at
Trecarrel, and there was as much light in the
sky, when she prepared to leave, as there would
be throughout the day.

Captain Trecarrel came to her, to insist on
her coming into the house and having some
breakfast.  It would not do for her, in her
delicate condition, recovering from illness, to
remain so long without food.  She declined,
gently, and the utmost he could bring her to
accept was a cup of coffee and some bread,
brought to the carriage in which she had
seated herself, wrapped in shawls, for her
return journey.

Captain Trecarrel, standing at the coach-door,
thought her lovelier than he had ever
seen her.  There was none of the proud
self-reliance in her face now that had marked her
when she first came to Launceston.  She was
thin, tremulous, and frail as a white harebell;
with a frightened, entreating look in her large
dark eyes, a look that seemed to confess
weakness, and entreat that she might be left
to herself.

Captain Trecarrel knew nothing about her
engagement to John Herring.  If it had been
known in Launceston, it would have come to
his ears, for the Captain was a great gossip.
The secret had been well kept; it was not only
not known, it was unsuspected.  Orange had
not spoken of it, and her mother had been
restrained from cackling by sharing in the
general ignorance.

'In case I do not see you before the new
year, I must wish you a happy one,' said
Mirelle, holding out her hand.  'Now, please
tell the coachman to drive on.'

'The year can hardly be nappy for me,'
said the Captain, and sighed.  'Dear Countess
Mirelle, suffer me to take a place beside you.
I want to go into Launceston on business, and I
shall be grateful for a lift.'

'Business to-day!  Do not these English
keep the feast?  I have heard Orange and her
mother anticipate Christmas, but almost wholly
because of the plum-pudding.'

'The bells are ringing,' answered Trecarrel.
And on the warm air came a merry peal of
village bells.  Captain Trecarrel saw the
supplicating look in her eyes, a look entreating
him not to take advantage of her weakness;
but he was too selfish to regard it, he accepted
her silence as consent, jumped into the chaise,
and told the coachman to drive on.

There was no sign in the manner of either
that a thought was given to the return of the
visiting cards.  That was Christmas day, a
day of joy and reconciliation, of peace on earth,
and general goodwill.  Why rip up a sore?
Let the past be forgotten, at least for a day.
Captain Trecarrel was puzzled about those
cards.  Were they Mirelle's answer to the letter
he had written to her?  His offer of protection
under the wing of his aunt at Penzance had
been unnecessary, because Mirelle was not
penniless.  She had means at her disposal of
which he knew nothing.  Probably her father's
money in Brazil had been forwarded to her,
and reached her, fortunately, after the death
of her trustee.

Trecarrel was not a man to love deeply
any one but himself.  His feelings for Orange
had never been strong; if he cared for any one
beside himself, it was for Mirelle.  Had he
offended her by his letter?  Was it really she
who had sent the cards back to him?  He
was determined to find out.

'You directed a letter to me some weeks
ago,' he said.

'Yes; Orange had sprained her wrist, and
she asked me to address the letter for her.'

'I was disappointed on opening it.  I knew
your handwriting at once; it was so unlike
that of an Englishwoman, so French in its
neatness.  An Englishwoman scrawls, a
Frenchwoman writes.'

'I have noticed that.'

'I was disappointed on opening the cover.
I thought it might contain your reply to my
letter.'

'What letter?'

'That which I wrote to you when you were
at Mr. Flamank's house.'

'I did not receive it.'

'The loss is not great.  It was sent to
inform you that I was confined to my bed,
and that I was too gravely indisposed to
follow the dictates of my heart and fly to your
succour.'

'Orange, I am sure, felt your absence greatly.'

'You, also, would have been thankful for
my assistance, surely.'

'Yes; but I had no right to expect it.
Orange had a right to exact it.'

Trecarrel bit his lip.

'You seem, dear Countess, to have been
very ill.  You look terribly fragile and white.'

'I have been unwell——'

'More than unwell—ill; dangerously ill?'

'Yes; my head was bad.  I did not know
anything or any person for several days.'

'I fear these wretched troubles have been
the cause.  O that I could have been near to
give advice and protection; but important
business—military, of course—called me to
Exeter, and when I returned to Trecarrel, I
was prostrated by a nervous attack for a week.
I fear you have been embarrassed for money,
but now, I understand, matters are settled
agreeably.'

'We are not troubled about money
matters any more, nor likely to be so.'

'I trust not.'

'Because, if you were, I would say,
command me.  I am not a rich man, but still,
bless my soul, I can help a friend at a pinch,
and am proud to do so.'

'There is no occasion, Captain Trecarrel.
All fear of pecuniary embarrassment is at an end.'

'I hear everything at Dolbeare was bought
by you.'

'All was bought in my name.'

'And the Trampleasures, *mère et fille*,
are your guests.  How long will this continue?'

'I do not know.'

'It is not pleasant to be sponged on,
especially——'

'I beg your pardon.  I feel it a duty and
a pleasure to do everything I can for them.
They have been kind to me.'

'Then you saddle yourself with them indefinitely.
I hope the load will not crush you.'

Mirelle made no reply.  She did not like
the contemptuous tone in which he spoke of
the Trampleasures, and Orange was to be his
wife.  She looked out of the coach window on
her side.

'Old Tramplara's death was, of course, a
great shock to me,' continued Trecarrel; 'so
sudden, too, arresting me on the threshold of
my marriage.  It was a trial to my nervous
system; but I am frank to confess, it was to
some extent a relief.'

Mirelle looked round with surprise.

'I may as well tell you the whole truth,'
said the Captain.  'You are in the midst of
cross purposes, and do not understand the
game.  It is only fair that I should give you
your orientation.  I always admired Orange;
she is a handsome, genial girl, somewhat
brusque and wanting in polish, but
good-hearted.  I called a good deal at Dolbeare,
not only to see her, but to keep Mr. Trampleasure
in good humour.  I am a man of
very small income and with good position in
the county, which I am expected to live up to.
I have been pinched for money, and I wanted
Mr. Trampleasure to advance me a loan.  So
I got on intimate terms with the family, and,
somehow, he made my prospects contingent
on my taking Orange as wife.  Then the sum
I wanted would be given as her dower.  You
understand.  Well, being a light-hearted,
giddy young fellow, I fell into the arrangement,
and all went smoothly enough till you came.'

Mirelle gasped for breath.  She put her
hand to the window.

'You want air,' said the Captain.  'I will
let down the glasses.'

Mirelle thanked him with a bend of the
head; she could not speak.  A great terror
had come over her.

'When you came,' continued Trecarrel,
'then I woke to the fact that I had never
loved Orange.  I had admired her beauty as
I might admire a well-built horse or spaniel,
but my heart had not been touched.'

'Oh, Mr. Trecarrel!' exclaimed Mirelle,
putting her white fingers together, 'let me
out of the carriage.  I must walk; I shall
faint; I feel very ill.'

'Dear Mirelle—you will let me call you
Mirelle?—you must not walk; you are not
strong enough.'

'I pray you!  I pray you!'

Then he stopped the coach, opened the
door, and had the steps lowered.

'The lady is faint.  Go slowly, coachman.
She wishes to walk a little way.'

Then he helped Mirelle to alight, and
pressed her fingers as he did so, and looked
at her tenderly out of his beautiful blue eyes.

'No,' she said, as he offered her his arm,
'I must walk alone.  The road is rough.  I
shall be better presently.  The carriage jolts.'

'You cannot walk,' answered the Captain;
'I see that you have not the strength.  I
insist on your taking my arm, or stepping
back into the carriage.  I am very thankful
that I came with you.  You are not in a fit
state to be alone.'

She turned and looked at him.  'Oh,
Mr. Trecarrel, I should have been far better
alone.'

'Why so, Mirelle?'

'I cannot say.  I need not have talked.'

'Do not talk now; listen, whilst I speak
to you.'

'Speak then of something else—not of Orange.'

'I do not wish to speak of Orange.  I will
speak only of yourself.'

She held up her hands again, in that same
entreating manner.  'I am too weak,' she
whispered.

Her ankle turned as she stepped on the
loose stones.  A mist drifted across her eyes,
so that she could not see the road.  The air
was rich with the music of church bells, the
merry Christmas peal of Launceston tower
and the village churches round, calling and
crying, Noel!  Noel!  Noel!  Glad tidings of
great joy!  Roast beef and plum pudding and
mince-pies!  Good Christian men rejoice!
Pudding sprigged with holly, and over the
pudding brandy sauce, blazing blue!  Noel!
Roast beef garnished with horse-radish!
Noel!  Mince-pies piping hot.  Turn again,
Whittington, to your Christmas dinner.
Noel!  Noel!  Noel!

Mirelle did not hear the bells.

'No, I cannot walk,' she said.

Then Captain Trecarrel helped her back
into the coach.

'I shall be better alone,' she said.

'You must not be left alone,' he replied.
'I cannot in conscience allow you to go on
without me to look after you.  As you are so
weak after your illness, it was madness to
come out this Christmas morning.'

She sighed and submitted.  He stepped in
beside her and closed the door.

'Mirelle,' he said, 'I will not be interrupted
in what I was saying, because I have
determined to throw my mind and heart open
to you.  I dare say you have wondered how
my engagement to Orange hung fire.  I was
bound to her, but my heart was elsewhere.
You cannot understand the distressing
situation in which I found myself, bound in honour
to hold to an engagement which I detested,
when all my hopes of happiness lay in
another direction.  You do not know what it
is to be tied to one person and to love
another.  It is now many months since I first
saw you, and the more I have seen of you the
deeper, the more intense has been my love for
you, and my repugnance towards a marriage
with Orange.  You and I are one in sympathies,
in rank, and in faith.  We understand
each other; we are, as it were, made to
constitute each other's happiness.'

Mirelle put her hand on the Captain's arm,
and tried to speak—to avert what he was
saying; but the words died on her tongue.
She trembled helplessly.  Then she clasped
her hands, and wrung them on her lap,
despairingly.  Speak she could not; but if
Trecarrel had looked into her face, he would
have seen the agony of her soul, and how she
implored him, with her terrified eyes and her
quivering lips, to forbear.  He did not look.
If he had, and read that appeal, it would not
have stayed him.

'I did not venture to declare to you—no,
not even to allow you to suspect—what was
passing within me.  I am a gentleman of
high and honourable feelings.  I knew that I
had allowed myself, through inadvertence, to
become entangled in an engagement to a
person whom I could regard, but could not
love.  All at once I became aware that my
heart was elsewhere.  I proceeded, however,
as an honourable man, to fulfil that which I
had undertaken.  What my misery was, you
can ill conceive.  I saw the fatal day approach
with feelings of disgust and despair.  That
day would bind me for life to an uncongenial
companion, and separate me for ever from her
whom I felt, whom I knew, to be essential to
my happiness.  Is it a marvel that, when
circumstances occurred which arrested the
marriage, I felt relief?  Is it to be wondered
at that now I feel a doubt whether I ought to
go further in this matter?  Ask yourself, am
I further tied—in duty—in honour?  Can
I conscientiously marry a girl whom I do
not love, whom I have even come to regard
with repugnance, with whom I can never be
happy, and whose whole life will be
embittered by the knowledge that though she
has my name and my hand, she has not
gained my heart?  No, Mirelle; dear, dearest
Mirelle, no!'

'Stay—in heaven's name, stay!' gasped
Mirelle.  'You must not speak to me thus.'

'Why not?'

'I must ask you a question,' she said, and
wiped the cold dew from her lips and brow.
'I must ask of you a favour.'

'Ask me anything; it is yours.'

'Captain Trecarrel, this is Christmas Day.
After eight days I shall belong to another.
I ask you—allow me to be married in
Trecarrel Chapel.'

Her heart beat so fast that it took away
her breath.  She was unable to proceed.

Captain Trecarrel's blue eyes opened with
amazement.  He could not believe his ears.

'I shall be married to—John Herring.'

Then she sank back in the coach, and
threw her handkerchief over her face.  The
wheels rattled over the pavement of the
street.

'Stop!' shouted the Captain.  'Damnation! stop!'

He got out.  'Drive on hard to Dolbeare,
coachman; the young lady has fainted.'

So the coach rattled through the marketplace
and along the High Street, whilst the
bells rang merrily, merrily, Glad tidings of
great joy!  Roast beef and plum pudding and
mince-pies to those who can afford it; to the
poor—nothing.

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