TABLE of CONTENTS

CHAPTER I—ONE RATCLIFFE LIVES TO FIGH

CHAPTER II—AS THE TREE GROW

CHAPTER III—THE AXE WITH THE LONG HAF

CHAPTER IV—WAYNE’S SON FARES OU

CHAPTER V—THE BEGINNING OF I

CHAPTER VI—HOW LITTLE BAIRN CAME DOWN TO MARS

CHAPTER VII—HOW TWO AND ONE MEET AT WILDWATE

CHAPTER VIII—THE QUIET HEART OF THE STOR

CHAPTER IX—HOW MARSHCOTES STREET RAN RE

CHAPTER X—MOONLIGHT ON THE LAN

CHAPTER XI—THE DO

CHAPTER XII—RED RATCLIFFE MEETS A KINSMA

CHAPTER XIII—LOVE BENEATH THE FEU

CHAPTER XIV—AT THE BOG’S EDG

CHAPTER XV—PARSON’S LAS

CHAPTER XVI—HOW THE WAYNES CROSSED THE BOG

CHAPTER XVII—THE MASTER RIDES ABROA

CHAPTER XVIII—HOW AUDREY CAME TO BLACK HOUS

CHAPTER XIX—RED RATCLIFFE STAYS AT HOM

CHAPTER XX—THE FEUD-SPEAR FLAME

CHAPTER XXI—THE PARSON FALLS TO PRAYE

CHAPTER XXII—BATHSHEBA PLAYS HER PAR

CHAPTER XXIII—HOW THE RAINS CAME TO ALL THE MOORSID

CHAPTER XXIV—HOW WAYNES MET RATCLIFFES ON THE MOO

CHAPTER XXV—THE LAST FIGH

CHAPTER XXVI—AND AFTERWARDS

CHAPTER I

ONE RATCLIFFE LIVES TO FIGHT

The great fight was over, and far across the moor—far up into the molten darkness of the sky—the red flames glowed and quivered. Beam by beam, stone by blackened stone, the old house of the Ratcliffes at Wildwater crashed to its last disaster. Tempests had battered at its walls, wild thunderstorms had come from the barren wilderness that hemmed Wildwater in and had striven to undo the sturdy homestead; all had been unavailing; grim, stalwart, unbending as the folk who had dwelt there through the generations, the house had reared its proud head to the moor and had shown its graven challenge of the Ratcliffes to their foes: “We hate, we kill.” And now its insolence was past, for the flames had done in one short night what all the tempest fury of the years had failed to do.

Under the falling embers, under the reek of running flames, lay dead and dying of those who had fought the last—or what surely was the last—great fight of Wayne and Ratcliffe. The cries of men who died hard, died unrepentant and hating to the last, struck now and then across the stealthier uproar of the flames; but the living Waynes were gone, and there was not one of the Ratcliffes screaming there who had not found a mortal hurt. That had been the purpose of the Waynes when the wild fight began to-night; too often they had been sneered at as the courteous Waynes; too often they had let one adversary go for lack of gracelessness enough to kill him in the face of odds; and the Ratcliffes had rewarded them in the Ratcliffe way—had killed and maimed and ambushed their old enemies as occasion served, until at last the head of all the Waynes—Shameless Wayne they called him, by reason of his youthful devilries, repented long ago— had hardened his heart for this last battle, had gathered his folk and met the Ratcliffes in their own hall, had cried above the din and slaughter: “No quarter, Waynes! Let none escape."

That was an hour ago, and now the Waynes were gone, and the wide moor and the sky looked on while Wildwater buried its own dead under the stones that once had sheltered them. There had been no quarter, and not a man, not a man-child, had escaped. The feud was surely stilled; yet across the waste—far off and fitful, yet not to be mistaken— came the howl of Barguest, the Brown Dog of the Waynes, whose voice was lifted always in prophecy of Wayne disaster. The smoke sprang ruddy to the sky, hiding the stars; only at the edges of the moor, where the wind blew wide the scurrying clouds, a lone star peeped and twinkled now and then, as if afraid of what it looked upon.

The Waynes had reason to know Barguest well. He had been their ghostly ally through too many centuries to let them doubt his friendliness and power. Yet even they, had they heard the Dog’s insistent whine, would have laughed to-night at his forebodings. How could disaster await them now—now that their foes lay piled beneath the wreckage, and not a Ratcliffe lived to wear his sword? But they did not hear the Dog this once; they had unbuckled their swordbelts, down yonder at the house of Shameless Wayne, had filled their goblets, and were taking that ease which comes only after battle well-sustained.

They did not hear the Dog; but a woman heard him in the house of Wildwater, as she stooped beside her goodman and listened to his dying words.

“Go, go! ” he muttered. “The flames are licking at you—remember the burden that you carry.”

“I remember, and yet I will not go just yet.” Her voice seemed palpable, a thing of shape, so full was it of courage, dread, great anguish, and great pride. “I shall carry on the feud, dear lad; I shall be spared until I have set my burden down. See! Rest your head just so, and dream we’re lad and lass again—dream ’tis our first kiss stolen by the Brigg of Tryst.”

She smiled into his eyes, a piteous smile by reason of its bravery. And into the man’s face crept a tenderness beyond belief; wild he had lived, and wild he was dying, with his naked sins upon him and a sword-cut gaping in his side; but his glance was fearless, free of shame or anguish, for they had loved each other well.

“There was a laverock singing right above us,” he said, in low and hard-won tones, “and the sun was hiding in your hair. ’Twas the Ratcliffe hair, lass—red as the blood that kept our pride and sword-arms strong.”

“It pleased you; that was all I asked.”

The flames were licking round her; a stone crashed down at her right hand, and the splinters fell like hail against her face; they did not heed, for their courtship was for life, and life had not reached the limit of its ebb-tide yet. The strange, deep things of wedlock, the mysteries that were older than the ruined house, older than the steadfast hills themselves, abode with them in this last hour; just lad and lass they were, with the laverock singing in the blue.

At last the summons came, and he answered it un-flinchingly.

“We’ll meet again, or not. I’ve led a life of sword and spear, and know naught of that. But I love you, lass.” Then he sat upright, the sweat raining from his face.

“They had killed the last man-child of us all, they thought,” he said. “Go with your burden, and they shall one day know their folly.”

He lay back, weakening to his end; and Barguest’s howl came nearer. Even in his agony the man raised himself on one weak arm; his red hair, wet as it was with toil and the after-pain, glowed vivid in the firelight; he was a Ratcliffe through and through.

“Hark ye, lass! ” he said. “D’ye hear the Dog? ”

Her ear, too, was turned towards the eastward moor. “I hear,” she said.

“’Tis a good sound for dying Ratcliffe ears. Never in this world did Barguest sing for Waynes’ happiness. Hark! He’s baying now as if-”

He fell back once more, his effort spent; and, though his lips moved, his wife could hear no words until she stooped with her face close to his.

“What is it, heart o’ mine? ” she asked, in the old, homely speech.

“If it should be no man-child, after all? ” he gasped, and there was panic in his failing voice.

“It shall be; that is all; sleep well, dear lad, and trust me with my burden.”

Her courage heartened him. She spoke as the doomed folk speak, with equal knowledge of disaster and success. She was not lying to him now to ease his parting from the flesh; it was the faith that lay at her heart which had found a voice, and he was well content.

“The little Brigg of Tryst—the laverock—our first kiss, lass—and—Lord God, the feud! We hate, we kill! We hate—we—why, ’tis summer weather, wife, and the moon above the hay-ricks.”

And so he died, with love and feud as closely woven as ever they had been in life. And the woman kissed the still face bravely—not with tears, for the time for weakness had not come—and she went out between the falling stones, the charred, thick beams, the flame and smoke and crying of the late-to-die, unhappy folk. The full wind greeted her, and as she stood there, free as the out-reaching moor, she noted, without knowing it, that scent of the winter heather, reek of the barren boglands, crisp fragrance of the bracken, were mingled with the smoke that lay behind her. She was free to go her ways. The moor, fettered only by the grey sky-line, had always stood for freedom with the folk at Wildwater, yet now she wished for guidance, not for freedom. Where should they turn, she and her burden? For herself she cared little, knowing that she would live to do her work, and do it speedily, and die; but, for the burden’s sake, which way to turn?

As she stood irresolute, there came a whimpering from across the moor; and the whimpering grew to a running whine; and she knew that Barguest was afoot, close at her side. She took heart again, for the Brown Dog cried for Wayne disaster always, not for hers. The moon, struggling through the murk of smoke, showed round and red; and this, too, was a solace, for it spoke of fight to come. Yet still, which way to turn?

The Brown Dog howled and whimpered. There was a new note in his voice—the note of dread. And in a measure the woman understood, as folk who are soon to die will understand the real things of destiny. She laughed, and the laugh was more eerie than the Brown Dog’s wail.

“Your Dog has served you well, Waynes! ” she cried to the wind as it hurried past. “Well, he has found fiis master now. Courteous Waynes! We always sneered at you for that, and we shall sneer again—Hark, bonnie lad! ”

She talked as if the unborn child were grown to knowledge of the feud, and it may be the child’s soul was awake and hearkened.

“Hark ye, bonnie lad! When a Wayne struck thy father in the side awhile since, I snatched a dagger from the floor and sprang at him. He cut at me and would have sliced thee straight in two, bonnie bairn, but Shameless Wayne—most courteous of them all—struck up his sword. ‘ No feud with women-folk,’ he said, and I went free. Ah, but ’tis like them! The Brown Dog cries his loudest when Waynes show courtesy, and they little guessed that it was I—I, wee bairn—who carried the Ratcliffes’ hope with me.”

Ghoulish as the woman showed, she was not strange at all when measured by the moor, the night, the shuddering whine of the Brown Dog, the stillness of the moon and stars—not strange when the tale of the years was conned aright, as the heath and the stars had conned it; for she was a Ratcliffe, loving a Ratcliffe, and she had learned the feud-tale at her mother’s knee; there was the past night’s carnage, moreover, and she had seen her folk go down before the glinting steel. For one purpose only she kept heart alive; her goodman had given her a dying trust, and in the teeth of pain and hardship she would keep her troth. Wild she had lived, as her goodman had; but at least she had been true to her heart’s faith.

While she stood there, with the wind in her face and the clear moon lighting up the farther reek of fire, a will-o’-the-wisp rose up above the southward marshes and danced, so it seemed, towards her. And now again, as she watched it, it danced away from her, and then again came near, as a friendly farmer’s dog might do that claimed her notice.

“A light above the waste—an idle light above the waste—Wildwater House itself is neither more nor less than that,” she muttered. “I’ll take the omen.”

With the natural, quiet leaning upon superstition which was inbred in the Ratcliffes, she set off across the heath, taking the will o’-the-wisp for her guide. And now a sullen stretch of bog lay underfoot, tempting a false step; and now again the marshes showed their perilous, fair tufts of green to snare the heedless or unwitting folk. Mistress Ratcliffe skirted bog and marsh alike, yet never lost her dancing guide.

At last, when her senses gathered strength again after the numbness following great battle and great pain, she saw the land stretched naked under the high moon, and knew its every feature, and wondered that this will-o’-the-wisp had guided her to a sanctuary so safe, yet so unthought of.

In Marshcotes village they reckoned Wildwater a lone and haunted spot; yet Wildwater was near men’s haunts when measured by the desolation of these farther lands. Mystery lurked in every hollow; each clump of stunted firs or crooked thorn-trees seemed full of ghostly shapes; the streams that hurried through the land made little noise, as if they feared to make their presence known ; the wind crept by, holding its breath for dread. Not a voice there was, save the cry of a curlew wandering helplessly between the heath and the white moon. And over all— over bog and running stream, over peat and ling and stony deserts where the bracken rustled in weak and thriftless patches—over all there was a shuddering unrest not any way to be explained. This was the Lonesome Land which moor-folk shunned, a land peopled, so they said, by monstrous shapes and filmy terrors. Lonesome Pool stretched wide and black in the dead heart of it, and on the far bank of the pool stood Black House, built long ago by Ratcliffes as a sanctuary and peopled with their tragedies.

It was Black House that Mistress Ratcliffe sought, as she threaded her way between the marshland and the quaking-bog. The moonlight, showing plain the dreariness of this far land, had no terrors for her; she stood too near to life, too near to death, to heed such matters, and she moved fast toward the solitary light that blinked and quavered from the front of the grim house above the pool.

The will-o’-the-wisp still danced before; and once, as she pressed too rashly forward, it sprang aside so suddenly that she, too, leaped to the left hand. She missed the quaking bog by a foot’s width, and hurried on, and knew, as she had only guessed before, that the marsh-candle was busy with the Ratcliffe hopes.

“Courage, little lad,” she murmured, though it was she who needed all her bravery to keep her strength alive. “Courage! ’Tis not so far, and they’ve lighted a candle— see it blinking yonder !—to welcome home the heir.”

She came to the^edge ofJLonesome Pool, and skirted it. There were rushes on its banks, and they quavered one against the other, fearful as the wind that faltered through them. Mistress Ratcliffe did not heed; nor did she mark that the will-o’-the-wisp, a faithful guide till now, was leading her no longer, but dancing fitfully across the marshes. One thing only did she note, and that was Charley’s Wain, with its seven lamps hung high above Black House; she and her dead Ratcliffe had loved Charley’s Wain of old, for it had lighted many a wooing-time.

She came to the great door, and knocked as one who knew herself the mistress—nay, more, as one who knew herself the mother of its future master. The candle-light gleamed fitfully behind the window, but, slight as the flame was, she saw in it a welcome.

There was the sound of footsteps pattering on the stone floor of the hall, the creaking of hinges too little used; and then a woman, short, round of face, with the red hair of the Ratcliffes, stood half between the moonlight on the threshold and the light of the candle which she carried.

“Ah, ’tis you, Bathsheba. I have come to you with all the Ratcliffe hopes.”

“You are welcome, mistress. We’re foster-sisters, and all night I have felt your need of me. I kept the candle lighted.”

Each spoke as of a thing well-known beforehand. The expected guest had come, and found her welcome ready; that was all. They shared strange sympathies, these two, for they had lived in the broken lands that bordered Wildwater.

“The feud was up to-night, and they sent the fiery spear to my man, Joseph,” said Bathsheba, as she ushered her guest into the parlour on the right hand of the passage, where a peat-fire was glowing purple-red.

“Ay, the feud was up. And what of Joseph? He has a strong arm for the fight-”

She halted, remembering that this night no Ratcliffe had come alive from Wildwater.

“But ’twas broken, as it chanced,” said Bathsheba. “Only yestreen he was breaking a young horse to the saddle, and they fell together, and his right arm snapped in two. He could not come, and he cursed like one gone mad when I told him he could never look to fight with his left hand.”

“He has been spared,” said Mistress Ratcliffe gravely. “No other has been spared, save one-”

Bathsheba glanced at her. “It will be a boy,” she said.

The two women eyed each other fearlessly, while the red peats crumbled into grey-brown dust and the candle guttered in its socket.

They understood, and the time had not come for weeping. There was a man-child to be born, and that was duty with the Ratcliffe women.

“Come to the Red Room, mistress,” said Bathsheba. “I’ve made it trim for you, and there’s little time before you.”

“True—ay, ’tis true. Listen, Bathsheba! I shall die to-night—oh, never stut and stammer, woman, for we know it, you and I—I shall die, but the child will live, and it will be a boy.”

“Now, don’t you take to fancies, mistress—you will live, and he will live-”

“Bathsheba, we’re foster-sisters. You need not lie to me, for you, too, understand. When I am gone, look to the boy. The Waynes will never seek him here. Rear him to the feud. Feed his sinews till he’s like an ox for bigness; feed his heart with hatred of the Waynes; swear this to me, Bathsheba.”

“By the Lean Man I swear it,” said Bathsheba.

Mistress Ratcliffe laughed, not gladly, but very soberly.

“The Lean Man died to-night, but he will conquer death,” she said. “Look to your oath, for he is not merciful to traitors. And Bathsheba, good-bye. We have loved each other well, and there may be a life hereafter. Think no ill of me ’twixt now and then, if any then there be.”

Bathsheba, after all the terror and the sorrow of this night—waiting for a sure calamity, and keeping watch about a fretful man who cursed his pain and impotence, felt the quick tears run down her face. This was’the foster-sister she had known—proud, erect, and strangely sensible of old affections—and she was half across the floor already, going to her death in the Red Room above their heads.

“But, mistress, I must watch with you! ” she cried. “Bairns are untimely bom sometimes, and-”

“I have carried my burden hither, Bathsheba. I was alone. I have the will and the strength to die unaided.”

“Ay, but-”

“May the Lean Man’s curse rest upon you if you come to me before the dawn; and the dawn reddens late at this time of the year. Farewell, Bathsheba, and rear the ladling in the old Ratcliffe faith.”

Bathsheba, obedient of old to the stronger will—a will stronger only by a little—Bathsheba held her peace, and watched the doomed woman go up the oaken stair with the proud step she knew. And, now in the midst .of her grief for a foster-sister so well-loved and so soon to be lost, the woman shuddered to remember the Lean Man’s curse. The Lean Man was dead, but he had been of those who live beyond the grave; gaunt, undismayed, and terrible, he had had his will through seventy years of life; the moor-folk felt that he would have his will hereafter, sneering at death as he had always done.

For that reason, and because Mistress Ratcliffe’s word had ever been a strait command with Bathsheba, she did not go near the door of the Red Room until the dawn; she kept the peats alive on the parlour-hearth, and watched beside the glow, and stepped softly now and then to the stair-foot. Twice she heard a moaning, deep but undismayed; no shriek rang through the house, no sudden cry for help, and Bathsheba kept troth until the first of the red dawn crept out across the eastward lands. Then she went up to the Red Room, and knocked, and entered. Two candles were alight upon a table, and on the bed was Mistress Ratcliffe, a male child in her arms, and a look of happy weariness upon her face. Only in the pallor of the face, the lines across the brow, were left the traces of last night; for the rest, she was a mother, happy in the new life on her breast, happy in the nearness of a death she did not fear.

“Good-morrow, Bathsheba,” she murmured, as she had done on many a morn in the old house at Wildwater, when Bathsheba was her maid.

“Good-morrow, mistress,” the other answered huskily.

“Untimely born, you said? Nay, he is timely born. The Ratcliffes needed him, and he has come. See, Bathsheba! Take him in your arms—look well at him—is he not lusty, and big-eyed, and long of limb, just as his father was? ”

Bathsheba took the child, and felt its limbs, and nursed its crumpled toes in one hand, as women do.

“Ay, he is lusty, and the Ratcliffes need a man-child now,” she answered.

But she did not say that she had looked into the big eyes of the babe, and had seen there a fear, a sorrow, a hatred, which reflected, clearly as a summer tarn reflects the gorse upon its banks, the passions that had riven Mistress Ratcliffe yesternight, when she left the reeking house of Wildwater to carry her burden into the wilderness. Yet, though she kept silence, it was plain to Bathsheba that the boy would bear to his life’s end the mark of that night’s journey. It was well that it should be so, she told herself; it would fit him for the work to come; but, for all that, the woman in her sorrowed to see the seal so closely fastened upon one so helpless and so small.

“Give him back to me. I have not long to stay,” said Mistress Ratcliffe, still with a smile upon her face.

It was little to her that she had gone through a threefold anguish; such things were asked of Ratcliffe women when the feud-spear flamed abroad.

“Nay, you’ll live to see him grow into a gradely man,” said Bathsheba, although she knew it for a lie.

The other shook her head, and the splendid Ratcliffe hair fell ever a little looser round her pallid face.

“I shall not live, Bathsheba. What is to come is dark, as Ratcliffe said to me before he died ; we may know naught of anything—and yet—and yet I think we shall live again, and find each other. We loved too well—far, far too well—for'this to be the end.”

The Red Room had its windows facing east, and Mistress Ratcliffe, turning her eyes towards the casement, saw that the sky was washed with purple, amethyst, and glowing red. The dawn had come—the dawn of a new feud-day— and her heart beat high again, not to remembered music of her love, but to the tune that dying Ratcliffe had planted in her heart.

“Oh, we waste time, Bathsheba! ” she cried with sudden strength. “It is the boy—the boy we must talk of now. Your own baby died a week ago, did he not? I remember you came to me in bitter trouble.”

“He died. I can foster this lad of yours,” said Bathsheba, catching her thought.

“Foster him well. Rear him to be strong, and to fear as little as the Lean Man feared. He came to me awhile since as I lay here—this same Lean Man, with his withered arm and the scar of fire across his face—and he seemed to say ‘ well done.’ ”

Ah, surely the Lean Man, dead and cold as he lay, was living yet, for his name brought dread into Bathsheba’s eyes.

“Rear him, too, on the old tales,” went on the mother. “Give him hate of the Waynes to drink with the mother-milk; let your goodman teach him to strike quick and hard with sword or spear or axe; keep him safe by Lonesome Pool until his manhood comes, then send him out to fight. I have finished, Bathsheba.”

“I swear by the Lean Man,” said Bathsheba, and crossed herself.

There was a silence, broken first by the wailing of the child, then by a sudden howl, a whine, a bark, that came from underneath the window—you could not say whether it were bark, or whine, or howl, only that no farm-dog on the moor could so gather into the one note all the remembered and the half-forgotten tragedies which clothed the Ratcliffe flesh from cradle-time to burial.

“The Dog! ” cried Mistress Ratcliffe. “He comes to bid me die in peace, Bathsheba. Nay, never weep, woman! ’Tis folly at the best. Listen, Bathsheba! I am going into the Strange Land, and yet I am not leaving the good moor that we love so well—so well, Bathsheba, thou and I. Through the months the child and I have lived together; they have been months of feud and blood and heartache, Bathsheba; through all last night we were together, and I talked to him as we crossed to Lonesome Pool; I shall live on in him, for he knows my faintest heart-beat, Bathsheba.”

And Bathsheba assented, for she remembered the look behind the babe’s big eyes.

Mistress Ratcliffe kissed the child, then suddenly she stretched her arms out to the casement.

“I come, dear lad,” she cried. “There’s a laverock in the blue, and harebells go a-nodding on the Brigg o’ Tryst, and-”

She had done her task, and Bathsheba bound up the loosened jaw. Without, the dawn grew redder and more red, and all about the house there was a whimpering, as of a dog left out-o’-doors upon a winter’s night.

And so the heir of the Ratcliffes came home to the Black House, and took up in infancy a task which grown men might have shirked. Yet for the moment he could do naught but cry and whimper in Bathsheba’s ready arms.

CHAPTER II

AS THE TREE GROWS

The years went by at Black House, which frowned as heavily at sky and sullen moor as did Lonesome Pool itself. The feud was old, the moor was older still; they had too often watched men grow to manhood, too often watched them fight through their prime and reach the limit of their days, to take note of the lull in the strife ’twixt Wayne and Ratcliffe. It was as if the struggle had ceased for a night, an hour, and the heath had never known impatience.

How should it? Under its peat lay forests, laid low these scores of centuries; under these again lay peat, and older forests hid their blackened timber underneath. Each tree had been a sapling once, and the moor had reared it against wind and weather; she was an old, old mother, this heath with the old, lined face, and it was a little thing to her that one of her men-children had waited twenty years before he could take up the burden of the feud. Twenty years was a moment to the moor, who watched for renewal of the strife, yet waited till the feud was ripe.

To Bathsheba—and to Joseph, her goodman—the years were full of work, anxiety, and they seemed long in the passing, though short in the retrospect now that young Ratcliffe stood on the edge of manhood. He was heir, not to Wildwater alone, but to all the Ratcliffe lands which the Waynes, asking no man’s seal or sanction, had claimed as the spoils of fight; he had the feud to carry on, the lands to recover; truly, it had been no easy task to nurse him through the ills of childhood, to teach his body hardships and the sense of danger, when danger and hardship might at any moment speed him on that journey to the grave which so many of his kin had travelled. They were simple folk, and simply bom, these foster-parents of the master, though each was of a Ratcliffe father; and to one who knew little of the wild, red-headed clan which had lived within the wilderness it would have seemed a task beyond their courage, beyond their power, to bring the last-bom of the race to manhood. Yet to them it was a simple thing, a duty measured by the calls of each new day. They had married because Joseph was a foster-brother to the boy’s father, and Bathsheba his mother’s foster-sister; and the same quiet acceptance of family duty stood by them through the years. They had their faith, moreover, and the poetry of their lives was all wrapped up in looking forward to the day when the feud should wake again from sleep, and the Waynes go down like sheep before the shearer.

There was but one lad to do the work. To a faith less deep, less simple the issue showed fore-determined, as if the Wayne star blazed too high for any man to reach. To Joseph and Bathsheba it seemed otherwise. Had not the Dog howled and whimpered on the night when Mistress Ratcliffe came to lay down her burden in the Red Room overhead? The Dog told only of disaster for the Waynes, and his rede was final to Bathsheba and Joseph.

Had faith failed Bathsheba at times—say, when she was wearied out with churning and the like—there was another force to keep her spirit quick. By the Lean Man she had sworn to guard the boy, and the Lean Man, dead now these twenty years, was shorn of none of his old power—nay, rather, he had gained, since here and there belated folk had seen him, grim and lean, ride up and down the moorland ways, with his sword-arm hanging palsied by his side, with his face scarred red by fire, with the unalterable, bright eyes that had been his in life. Bathsheba feared little in this world; but she dreaded the Lean Man and his curse.

And so the heir had grown to manhood, fed by rough food and rougher tales of battle. If the twenty years had seemed long in passing to his guardians, they had been longer still to him; for he was a child of destiny, and destiny is no soft mother. Bathsheba did not know, nor did her goodman, how hard the years had been to the boy whom they had named Red Ratcliffe, in memory of a kinsman of his own. They did not know—though Bathsheba, remembering the look in his eyes when he was but a few hours old, must now and then have guessed it—they did not know how full his boy’s life had been of the things of manhood. When the house was quiet, and the peats below-stairs fell grey and dumb to sleep, the boy lay on his bed, with ears wide open to the wind that roared, or whined, or whistled through the casement; he saw strange pictures of strong men drawing blood from one another; he was at one moment hot with the ecstasy of fight, at another weak with pain; this was the tale of the months when he had lain unborn, when the feud had reddened about the moor, and his mother had told him, not knowing that she told, the tale of fight and death. Most of all, he had suffered by reason of a nameless terror that took him unawares by night; it had no meaning, for in the world of action he did not know the face of dread; yet it held a shame that stung him—stung him, while he lay half palsied on the bed, his eyes shut close against the things he feared to see. This, too, was his mother’s legacy, and the things he feared—the maddening things, which never showed their faces—were the ghouls, the stealthy joumey-ings of the Dog, the treacherous dangers of the bogs and marshes, which had met Mistress Ratcliffe on her journey to the child-bearing at Lonesome Pool. He did not know the cause of these blind terrors, that shamed his growing years; and it may be that, because he fought them blindly, without solace or excuse, he profited in soul, and learned to trust no man’s credit, to judge no man’s disrepute. As a ten-year lad he knew the pang of fear and fear’s peculiar shame, and neither Bathsheba nor Joseph—Joseph, with his skill in sword-craft—could teach him a sterner lesson for the future; for in the mastery of fear lies a peculiar strength denied to those—if any such there be—who through their days walk unafraid.

There was a matter that puzzled Bathsheba. A Rat-cliffe to the core at most times—quick to act, quick to do what lay to his hand—at other times the boy would leave Black House for days, would sleep among the heather, would return without a word of explanation or excuse.

“There have been few dreamers in the family,” sighed Bathsheba, each time that he returned. “ Lord grant he gets into mischief at these times—does aught a lad may do, save dream. Did not his mother give him strength enough? Then what ails the lad to go loitering like a want-wit when the moon’s at full? ”

“Leave the lad to his ways,” Joseph would reply, in his deep, slow tones. “He fears neither man nor devil, and the Waynes will know of him before the tale is told to its last end.”

Yet did not the boy fear? It was when his dreads lay heaviest on him that he sought solitude ; and under the winking stars, the grave, impassive sky, he fought his battles with the unseen foe. And each battle was a victory and a strengthening, teaching him to meet the future.

And so Red Ratcliffe grew to his splendid manhood, fed by the wind, by toil and sport, and tales of grievous feud. From dawn to dusk he was astir, now helping Joseph to till the scanty fields, now brealcing-in a new horse or hawking in the marshes where the wild geese, the ducks and widgeons and slant-flighted snipe had dwelling, now testing his growing muscles in bouts of quarter-staff, in sword-play, in swinging of the long-hafted axe which was one day to drip red as his own red, close-cropped hair. And Joseph watched his height increase by steady inches, his chest grow deep and wide, his arms attain the supple girth which reminded him always of the branches of a well-grown sycamore.

“There was never a Wayne of them all to match him,” he said one night to Bathsheba. “The lad’s but twenty of his years as yet, and he’s brawnier by the half than me.”

“His mother would be proud,” said Bathsheba, faithful always to the one great love of her life. For Joseph, dear from long communion, had seldom reached the corner of her heart where dead Mistress Ratcliffe held pride of place.

An hour later, as it chanced, Red Ratcliffe stamped his way into the house, and called for supper. Simple as their life was, and sincere the comradeship between the boy and his foster-parents, neither he nor they forgot that he was the heir; nay, it pleased Bathsheba to find that now and then he gave his orders with the quick, half-insolent aloofness that had always marked the Ratcliffe men-folk. At twenty, so far as taking his rightful mastery was concerned, he was a man full-grown.

Yet after supper—on this night, as on many others— he carried his flagon of ale into the kitchen, where Bathsheba’s oat-bread hung drying from the creel and the smell of new-baked loaves mixed pleasantly with the fragrance of the peat-fire. He sat him down, moreover, in the hooded chimney-chair which was sacred to his use, and stretched his big legs out towards the fire-glow.

“I met a lass on the moor just now,” he said; and it was the boy in him, not the man, who spoke, showing his wish to talk of a new, strong note that had come to unsettle the usual order of his days.

Old Joseph smiled across at him; but Bathsheba thrust out her lower lip, for she distrusted her own sex, as being harmless at the best, and, at the worst, a menace to such work as lay ready to Red Ratcliffe’s hand.

“There’s more bilberries than lasses grow nigh to Lonesome Pool,” chuckled Joseph. “Where did you find her, master? ”

“Over beyond Wildwater House. I rode there on the black mare, as I’ve done once in the week since you first took me there, Joseph, and showed me the blackened walls, and bade me count the dead men crying on me to avenge them.”

“Ay, ay, I took you there,” said Joseph. “There’s never a fallen stone but calls to you, lad; and the timber-beams you saw lying yonder, with twenty years of weather-rot in them—they’re quiet enough, you’d think, and yet they talk—oh, ay, they talk, if you stoop low enough to hearken. Here the Lean Man died unsatisfied, they’re saying, and yonder by the empty hearth your father dropped with a sword-cut in his side. Talk? There’s not a stone nor splintered rafter but has its message for you.”

Red Ratcliffe nodded gravely over his flagon. Such matters were the usual business of his life to him, as to Bathsheba and Joseph. This talk of feud, of vengeance sure to come, did not disturb the homely warmth of the fireside, did not seem harsh or any way unwonted amid the fragrance of the new-baked loaves and all the orderly, quiet snugness which told of Bathsheba’s good housewifery. For the one fine reality in life to these three dwellers in the wilds, the one work more urgent than tilling of the land for necessary food, was the quarrel which had flamed and dwindled and burst forth again through the long generations; and so they talked, as people do at eveningtide, gravely, reflectively, with scarce a sign of the passion and heart-zeal that lay underneath. A child of destiny was the boy; and foster-parents of his destiny were Joseph and Bathsheba; and the churn moved at Black House, and the plough went forward, and the swelling com was garnered, all to the one end. Not by tranquil toil and tranquil after-rest did they seek peace; the long-hafted axe, which was growing to fit the master’s hand so snugly, was to them the symbol of life’s work, and the downfall of the Waynes the only recompense they sought for toil.

It was inevitably so. Did not Black House and Lonesome Pool, and all the shuddering wastes of heath that shut them in, nurse sedulously the unforgotten quarrel with the Waynes? Had not the grandfathers of the folk—ay, and their grandfathers before them—learned from their cradles a simple and peculiar gospel, embodied in the motto “We hate, we kill ”? And the dignity that settles with the years on all strong and single-hearted passions lay now upon these three, so like and yet so unlike, who sat beside the peats and moved in talk about that future which showed naught as yet save danger, blows, and need of constant watchfulness.

To-night, however, the boy had sounded a fresh note, and Bathsheba, after listening to her husband for awhile, gave way for once to curiosity.

“This lass that you met upon the moor. What fashion was she of? ” she asked.

A change crept slowly over Red Ratcliffe’s face, over the haunted eyes which seemed for ever to be seeing visions beyond his neighbour’s ken.

“Of what fashion was she? ” he echoed softly. “I could not tell you, save that the moor seemed full of sun, though the day was grey as an old dog’s coat before she came.”

“Ah!” murmured Joseph, and chuckled grimly to himself.

“Your mother was no dreamer! ” snapped Bathsheba, stung into unwonted disrespect. “Her hair was golden, I take it; well, there have been lasses with gold hair before, and will be again—but ’tis no colour for a man to trust.”

Red Ratcliffe scarcely heard her. He was puzzled by the throng of gentle thoughts that came to him.

“Ay, ’twas gold,” he answered, in the same quiet voice, “gold as a corn-stook in September, and the wind ran in and out and played with it.”

“The wind had naught better to do, likely. ’Tis wind’s work to play with a lass’s hair—but not a man’s.”

Old Joseph glanced at her, shrewdly and with a sort of friendly malice; and Bathsheba faltered in her sternness, for the look said plainly, “Hast forgotten, lass, the days when our own sap ran young? ”

“What did she seek so far across the moor? ” she went on, with more kindliness. “It was never at Wildwater, surely, that you met her? We may be dead and gone, the most of us Ratcliffes, but there are boggarts enough at the old house, I should have said, to scare yond Marsh-cotes folk away.”

“It was half between Marshcotes and Wildwater I met her, Bathsheba. I had ridden out to catch a glimpse of the home where Shameless Wayne lives high, and drinks deep, and waits for the coming of Judgment.”

“’Twas unwise,” growled Joseph. “Have I not warned you, lad, to keep apart and hidden as well as may be until your manhood comes on you? ”

“The Waynes would not know me if I fell in with one or another of them.”

“They would know the colour of your hair. ’Tis as good as wearing ‘ Ratcliffe ’ written across your forehead to carry such a ruddy head as yours.”

“Ah, well, I met neither man nor woman, as it happened, Joseph, save this one maid.”

“You talked with her? ” said Bathsheba jealously.

“She asked her road to Marshcotes, and I told her. That was all, for my speech came slowly when I most wanted it.”

Again old Joseph chuckled. The sobriety with which the boy approached his first subservience to a lass’s power, his puzzled, dreamy air, were full of a dry humour for this man who found few such gleams to light his path. To be sure, the youngster had been tongue-tied; and, to be sure, he had longed to set her on the way to Marshcotes, and had stood halting till too late; he would learn more adroitness in such matters by-and-by, when he found time to step aside from battle and to take his ease.

“Tall, was she, and slender as a rush? ” asked Bathsheba.

“Ay, tall and slender, and the sky was in her eyes.”

“Humph! 'Twill be the old parson’s lass over at Marshcotes. I’ve heard of her, though ’tis little news comes down the wind to Lonesome Pool. Reared in the Low Country, they say, because Marshcotes winds were overcold for her, and Marshcotes folk a thought too rough. Hoity-toity! ’Twould do such maidens good to be wakened at the mid of night, as I have been, and to run down in what gear they wore, or lacked, to find the sword-blades dripping, and to take their share of fighting. Look ye, lad, I’ve given my milk to you, and I’ve weaned you, and I’ve reared you to as sound a piece of flesh and blood as ever walked the moor. Is it naught you owe to me? ”

“I know my debts—every one of them, to a Wayne or to a Ratcliffe—and I will pay them all one day,” said the boy, with a quiet dignity beyond his years.

“Then hearken to me now. Leave gold hair alone; ’tis soft to handle and ’tis sweet to see, but it doesn’t fit with the work that lies before you, lad of mine.”

Red Ratcliffe did not answer, but got to his feet, and went out moodily into the hall, where the full moon, shining through the great window at the southward end, made wondrous patterns, grey shadows traced on a blue ground, across the floor. For he knew in his heart that the feud-love, nourished through these twenty years, had grown blurred for awhile since the coming of the stranger-lassie; and the knowledge brought a keen disquiet, since in some way he seemed to have been guilty of treachery. Too simple of life and too hard of habit to probe into his own feelings, he could but suffer at such times with a patience all his own.

To-night, however, the moonlight glinted on the brave blade of his axe, where it hung upon the wall; he took it down, and felt the cold, clean edge of it, and swung it softly to and fro; and he was disquieted no longer, but felt his trouble leave him, as a man might do who comes home weary and finds a well-loved wife awaiting him.

“A foster-mother I’ve had, and a foster-father,” he muttered, “but you are my foster-brother, bonnie blade.” His eyes were on the window-space, though still he swung the axe in the blue light of the moon; and on the sudden his right arm and his left dropped to his side. Slow beads of sweat came out upon his face. Thrice haunted the boy looked, as he stood and watched the filmy figure take shape this side the moonlit window. From the kitchen came old Joseph’s voice, deep and slow, and Bathsheba’s quick tones; he heard them as in a dream, but the presence that kept him company here in the silent hall was real as the four walls.

Just the tall figure of a man, lean almost to deformity, with one hand hanging useless at his side and a cere-cloth round his haggard jaws. That was the lad’s companion— one seen before, but never quite so palpably as now. Red Ratcliffe could scarce remember the time, indeed, when the first faint shadow of the phantom was not with him; as his strength grew, so this other-world companion had grown in clearness; it seemed that Ratcliffe’s body-vigour threw a light, as it were, upon the place of ghosts, and found there its counterpart in phantom clearness. Yet not until to-night had he traced the full, clearoutline which, from Joseph’s tales and Bathsheba’s, he knew to be the Lean Man’s of Wildwater—that dread Lean Man who had counterfeited death to snare the Waynes into an ambush, who had died with the Brown Dog of the Waynes at his throat, who had, by force of a hate that would not die, come back to seek the pleasant haunts of feud, disaster, and swift fight. Vf.j Ratcliffe, for one long moment, was afraid. ..Then came a long moment of hesitancy, doubt, while the moon shone ever on the spears and swords that lined the oaken walls, while the long-hafted axe lay prone where it had dropped from the boy’s nerveless hands. Then came the knowledge—deep, sure, unalterable—that the Lean Man was his friend; that the feud was soon to rise again from the dead ashes of the House of Wildwater; that the presence he had feared was an ally true and staunch.

Joseph, coming from the kitchen on some errand such as Bathsheba was fond of giving him, to try his patience and subdue his temper, found the young master standing there in the hall, a fine light in his face, and his two hands tight again about the long-hafted axe.

“What ails you, lad? ” he asked, coming close to the other’s side.

Red Ratcliffe did not hear. He was watching the Lean Man fade and flicker in the moonlight, and Joseph was still unreal as a dream.

“Nay, nay! ” insisted Joseph, shaking the other roughly. “You’re not just canny to-night, and the moon works queer pranks when she’s at full.”

Slowly the boy came out of his long vision, and understood that Joseph was no dream.

“Did you see him, Joseph? ” he asked simply.

Joseph followed his glance, and saw the leaded panes that intervened between the rising wind and sheltered hall.

“What d’ye mean, master? I see naught at all, save the moonlight and the bright axe in your hands.”

Red Ratcliffe yawned, stretching himself to his full height. “Then I’ll go to bed, Joseph,” he said, abruptly, “for I’m tired with the day’s work.”

Old Joseph watched him cross the hall, and nodded soberly as the master turned the bend of the stairway.

“Lord! The girth and height of him, and only twenty a three month since,” he murmured. “ What has he seen to-night, I’m wondering? Some brave show, to judge from his prideful bearing.”

He turned away, mindful of the errand he had come upon; and, when that was done, he sought Bathsheba in the kitchen, and told her the tale of the master’s “queer, unchancy look.”

“‘ Did you see him, Joseph? ’ quoth the lad,” he finished. “Yet I could see naught, though he seemed to be looking at something as plain as his own face.”

Bathsheba glanced at him with tolerant contempt. It was odd to see the fire—glamour, almost—in her eyes, and to find it tempered by the long habit of half despising her husband’s outlook upon life. Joseph was blunt as a weather-beaten rock toward that unseen world behind the seen which was as real to her as it was to her foster-son; and his bluntness angered her at times.

“Nay, you would not see him, Joseph,” she answered. “Not if the Dog himself came in at the doorway yonder and licked your face, would you know aught save that a puff of ice-cold wind had crept beneath the threshold. What did master see, you ask? I can tell you, though I doubt I might as well pour water into a wide-meshed sieve. He saw the Lean Man—half-palsied, branded with the fire, yet with his eyes bright and troublesome—for troublesome and quick he was in life, and so he will be to the end.” Joseph deliberately filled himself a measure of ale from the round-bellied cask in the chimney-corner, and with equal slowness he tasted the first creamy mouthful before answering.

“The Lean Man is dead, lass, and you and I are quick. The quick and the dead lie far apart, and they’ll no way come together till the Judgment.”

“They’re together always, want-wit,” cried Bathsheba, with sudden passion. “Mary Mother, what was it they left out of you at birth, Joseph? You’ve lived at Wild-water and the Black House, you’ve heard Barguest whining like a devil left out among the moorland rains to starve— and yet you say the ghosties are not with us.”

A doubt, a fear, crossed Joseph’s face. “I’ve heard the Dog, to be sure,” he said, slowly. “ There’s no mistaking that.”

“There’s no mistaking, either, what came to the master in the hall just now. ’Twas just the Lean Man he saw.”

“May be, and may be not,” said the other sturdily. “I’ve only your word for’t, Bathsheba, and wenches— young or not just so young—are full of whimsies.”

“I saw him before supper-time. That’s how I know. The scar on his forehead, under the red thatch—the crumpled arm—all was as plain as that oak-tree face of yours, Joseph, and if I don’t know the Lean Man at sight, there’s few people on the moor that do. Now, hearken, for this touches you as ghost-talk never would. The feud is up again—the feud is up, dost hear?—and before the week is out—before to-morrow’s morn is out, may be— the first of the new tale will be told.”

“I’d well like to think it, Bathsheba. But I doubt. Oh, ay, I was a good ’un to doubt at all times, I.”

“His mother—the master’s mother, rest her soul!— lived near to the Lean Man during those last months. She knew his power, and just before she died it was he who came to her, with a smile on his lips and a whispered word of cheer. Does that count for naught? Does the master —does any lad—walk free of the mother who bore him, dead though she be? Nay, I think not; we’re childless, Joseph, thee and me—we’ve had but the one, and he died at the day’s end—or you'd have learned”

“May be, may be. That little lad of ours brought queer thoughts to me, Bathsheba, but I’d forgotten them.”

“Remember, then! ’Tis no time for doubts, lad. The feud is up, I tell thee, and we need friends like the Lean Man. When he came to the dead mistress, when he came just now to the master, it was with the self-same promise—aid against these cursed Waynes, against their evil Dog.”

Joseph answered nothing for a while. Faintly the ghost-world peopling all the lands about Black House was calling him, asking faith behind the blows which he was ready to give or take in honour of the Ratcliffe name. Dimly he understood that faith is the reality, that sword-skill and a knotty arm are but its ministers. As if to strengthen the new glimmering of faith, the wind got up with a peevish restlessness that Bathsheba knew well, and from the moor there came a whine—a dog’s whine, lonely and afraid.

“Hark! ” she whispered. “Barguest is afraid—but the Lean Man is not.”

Red Ratcliffe heard the Dog’s note, too, as he lay abed. It brought the brightness of the long-hafted hatchet to his mind, and half between sleep and waking he turned and muttered, “ There’s work to be done to-morrow.” Bathsheba, meanwhile, had lost her passion, and was bustling about the kitchen with all the whimsical alertness of the housewife who makes needless work at bed-time. Her thoughts were running now, not upon the Lean Man, but upon the lass with corn-ripe hair who had set the master’s wits astray this afternoon.

“She’ll come into his life again, and yet again. Could not the Lean Man keep these pests, the women-folk, away?” she grumbled.

CHAPTER III

THE AXE WITH THE LONG HAFT

The morrow dawned as if the light September mists, with a crisp breeze to stir them into fantastic shapes, held some happy augury of the day’s well-being hidden under their frail cloak. The dawn grew full, and far-off Pendle Hill crept, big and fair to look upon, from out the scattered haze; yet still Red Ratcliffe slept, nor did he turn and mutter restlessly, as men do who know, even in their sleep, that their wonted waking-time is past. The sun, a fiery red not long ago, was gold as buttercups in June, and made wide, level pathways through the lingering thickets of the mist; yet still the lad slept on; it seemed he knew the length of the day’s work to come, and would not stir till he had fed his strength with a full meal of sleep.

At last the sun got round to the wide window-space, with its casement fastened back to let the moor-air fill the room perpetually. Its beams fell on the sleeper’s eyelids, and in a moment he was wide awake and on his feet. Just the one stretch he gave, then slipped into his clothes, and ran down the stair, calling for Joseph as he went.

“Here, master, here! ” came the other’s voice from the kitchen. “I was astir two hours agone. You’ll be lateish for Colne market—if ye’re not, ye may give me a Wayne name, and hang me from the nighest tree.”

“I shall be in time, Joseph,” said the other, in the curious tone which marked his deeper moods. “’Tis neither to sell a cow nor to buy one that I ride to Colne to-day.”

Joseph came out into the hall, though from the distant mistals he could hear Bathsheba calling him.

“I ride with you to-day,” he said; “the Dog was baying all last night, and, though I don’t hold with such matters, ’tis well to be on the safe side.”

“I ride alone,” Red Ratcliffe answered curtly. “There’s work for you on the farm, and your place is here.”

“Then give up this market-day, lad. To be sure, the Waynes find their markets on the Halifax and Bradforth side, and leave Lancashire alone—but still—’tis not so far from Marshcotes out to Colne, and one, or two, or three of them might well take it into their pride-sick heads to buy a horse in a fresh market.”

“I said I would go, and go I will. You, I said, would stay and mind the farm, Joseph, and stay you will. I am master here, and I have finished.”

Old Joseph, fearful as he was lest this strong, young life, whose blossom-time he had guarded so sedulously against the coming time of fruit, should be cut off—Joseph could not but warm to the downright fashion of the lad. That terse “I have finished ”—a common trick of the master’s when enforcing his authority with words—rang straight and true as the old motto of “We hate, we kill.”

“Ay, master, ay,” he growled, “but take the great axe with you.”

“Do I ever fail? Do they not laugh at me, these folk I meet at market, because I cling to the old fashion, and carry foster-brother instead of their new-fangled swords? ” His eyes were on the axe, where it hung, between the armour, pikes, and quarter-staves upon the wall.

“You asked me yesternight if I saw him standing at the window yonder? ” said Joseph, after a silence. “Was it the Lean Man you saw? ”

“To be sure—I see his shadow now beneath the axe.” He took the weapon down and fingered the keen edge of it. There was a sombre glory round about the lad as he stood there in the shadowed silence of the hall; today at least he knew no fear, and at his heart there was a ruddy glow, such as the singing of dead fighting ballads rouses in days when peace has ousted fighting altogether.

“What’s come to your face, master?” cried Joseph, moving back a pace or two. “The Lord knows I look for Judgment when times are ripe, but there’s a gulf fixed now ’twixt quick and dead, as I told Bathsheba awhile since.”

“What should have come to my face? ” laughed Ratcliffe—but the laugh was quiet and grave. “ Thou’rt a dreamer, Joseph, after all, and I thought thee a plain man of thy hands.”

" I was born so, and I hope to die no less. Yet—ay, and yet—by the Dog, I saw the Lean Man’s look in your eyes just now, and round about your jaw, and in the wideness of those horse’s nostrils of yours. He was lean as a willow, and you’re thick as an oak—yet there it was, a likeness plain for any man to see.”

The boy’s nostrils, sensitive indeed and quick to widen as a horse’s, quivered with a fine alertness.

“Shall I tell thee the meaning of the riddle, Joseph? ” he said. “The feud was in his blood, and the feud’s in mine; the axe was his once, in the days before he learned to love a sword, and now ’tis mine; he spent his life in waking to the next swift fight, and I have waked to my first battle. D’ye wonder that I have borrowed something of his look?—Now, Joseph,” he broke off, “have you had your swim, or did you wait for me?”

“Waited, to be sure. Master and man must follow the same rule, though I’ve been itching for the water these two hours past.”

Red Ratcliffe hung the axe again upon its nail, and together he and Joseph went out into the sunlight. The breeze was merry from the west; the moor was one sweet maze of purple heather merging into red-brown beds of peat; even Lonesome Pool showed fairer than its wont, and let the wind play antics with its waters. It was here that, in winter-cold or summer-warmth, the lad and Joseph took their morning bath. Thrice out to the far bank, and thrice home again—that was one of the daily-exercises which, almost from his babyhood, had stiffened Red Ratcliffe's body for the coming years. And now the first of the fighting days was here, unless the Dog and the Lean Man and his own heart were liars all; and now, as of old, he said his morning prayer—the prayer for strength to battle—as he plunged into the Pool.

“Winter has stroked the water already,” gasped Joseph. “Ay, ’tis cold,” laughed Red Ratcliffe. “Yet the warmth and tingle of it through a body’s body, Joseph! ” “Tingle? Ay, master! But warmth—well, ’tis the last lap home, and I for one am glad of it. I’m growing old, lad, and that’s no welcome thought for any man.”

“You’ll grow young by-and-by,” laughed the other, as they scrambled to the bank. “Bide till the Bloody Spear goes round, Joseph, and see if you’re not a lad again.” Following their wonted custom, they left their wearing-gear at the water’s edge, and ran across the heath and back again till they were dry and glowing. Even Joseph had no quarrel with the cold when they were clothed again, and his wits, moving more quickly now, returned to the other’s mention of the Bloody Spear.

“Who will you send the Spear to, master? ” he asked, as they moved briskly up toward the house. “The Wildwater Ratcliffes—all save you—are dead; the Rat-cliffes who dwelt once at Wuthrums are dead, too; you stand the male child of the race, master, and there’s none to see or know the Spear if so you rode with it.”

Red Ratcliffe halted in his stride, and stared at Joseph. “By the Heart, I never once took that view of it,” he cried, “though you bred me to the knowledge that we stood alone, just you and I. Always the thought came to me, Joseph, ‘ The Red Spear will go round ’—and even now I cling to that old picture of the riding man, the sweating horse, the dripping Spear held high aloft.”

“You were ever one for pictures, master. I know little myself, save what I see with my two eyes.”

“What you see, you see, Joseph, and what I see, I see.

And, though we think there’s never a Ratcliffe left alive beside us two, I tell you the Spear will go mad again in the old, good way, and the rider will gallop till he drops beside his horse, and the clansmen will come in by twos, and threes, and fours. I know it, Joseph—and now for breakfast, for I’m almost past it.”

Once again was Joseph puzzled, as he moved about the table spread in the main hall and waited on his master— puzzled to explain the sharp contrasts in Red Ratcliffe’s character. Who would count him a dreamer who saw him now, ruddy and aglow, as he ate a breakfast likelier for two men than for one lad scarce fully grown? Yet a moment since he had talked darkly of the Feud Spear, and had worn that look of his which seemed to pierce beyond the Veil.

“’Tis the same with Bathsheba, just,” thought Joseph. “’Tis so, I take it, with all folk who have the Sight. Yet ’tis unchancy queer to see how sharp, and brisk to do, and ready to pick a fault, both the wife and the young master can be time and time.—Lad,” he cried, breaking short his musings on the sudden, “you will have a care of yourself to-day? Lord knows it may be fancy, and us a pack of fools to think that aught is going to happen at Colne market, but still—but still-”

Red Ratcliffe finished his tankard of small-ale, stretched himself as he had done on first awaking, in a free, reckless fashion that was all his own, and laughed in Joseph’s face with something near akin to gaiety.

“There’s a fine proverb, Joseph,” he said. “Wkat will be, will be, and I can hear the long axe singing to itself up yonder on the wall.”

Not lightly had he named the axe his foster-brother. As he took it in his hands, ready for the fencing-bout which was as usual a beginning to his day as the swim across the Pool, it was plain, not only that he knew and loved it, but that the axe itself had learned from long association with its master a dumb, instinctive knowledge of his moods, as a favourite horse or dog might do. So snug it lay within his hands, so nicely balanced in spite of its five-foot length of haft, so quietly ready, so it seemed, to swing in wide and ever-quickening circles round Red Ratcliffe’s head. Bathsheba was fanciful, to be sure, and cherished the belief that there was a strong soul imprisoned in its steel and wood; yet even Joseph held the weapon in awe, for strange tales were told of it in days gone by.

The old man and the young stood facing each other, ready for the bout; and Joseph’s weapon was a sword, neither long nor short, neither broad nor narrow in the blade, such as were in favour now with all the gentry of the moorside. It was for such a fighting tool as Joseph’s that the Lean Man, many and many a year ago, had discarded the great axe—to his undoing, so folk said.

To and fro the two of them moved, the sword striving constantly to get through the axe’s guard, and failing constantly to reach beyond that slender-looking haft. Not to-day, not yesterday, not in a year of yesterdays, had Red Ratcliffe learned to parry so adroitly with his weapon; he knew each trick of sword-play now, had taught the axe to know it, and the two of them were ready, as if they had been parts of one united body, to parry first and afterwards to strike. Thrice Red Ratcliffe had Joseph at his mercy this morning; thrice the axe swung high above the elder man; thrice, with the gentle laugh of one who knows his power, the lad let his blade slip harmlessly to ground.

" Never heed, Joseph,” he cried. “’Twas you who taught me every trick of it, and surely you’ll not grumble if I prove a scholar to your liking.”

“Grumble? Nay, nay, master, nay. I may be dull, as Bathsheba will tell you, but I’ve had my visions, too, since you were big enough to leave your cradle. When it comes to steel and a man’s sinews—when I’ve got food to dream on, as a man might say—there’s none to beat me at the looking-forward. How oft have I seen you, lad, with your axe swung high as it was a moment since, and a Wayne head under it instead of mine. Swish! The sweet sound of it as it comes down—’tis a heavy axe—and the blind rolling in the mire of him you strike—it heartens me like Spring a-coming, laddie.”

Joseph did but claim his due, and this morning, with the last night’s to-and-froing of the ghosts, with the present over-brooding sense of battle to come, he was a dreamer with the best of them. Slow he might be in certain ways, but it was he who had had the wit to understand the axe’s real power in an age when sword-skill was the only vogue. This blade with the slim-looking haft had been terrible, by reason of its length and weight, when axes were proper weapons of the feud; to-day, when the uses of a hatchet were forgotten quite, it must surely prove invincible; and it was Joseph who had foreseen this, when, twenty years ago, an heir was born to the Ratcliffes and entrusted to Bathsheba’s keeping; it was he who, true to his faith throughout those twenty years, had taught the youngster, almost as soon as he could lift it, to treat the big axe as a foster-brother. Fighting had been the true love of Joseph’s life before the sad day came when the feud-flames were quenched for awhile; and with the skill of a good leader he had laid his plans for the success of this one lad who had such heavy odds to meet. Not by usual warfare would the coming fights be won; it was the weak against the strong, and by surprises, quickness of attack, would Red Ratcliffe force his way. The long axe was potent in surprises; within that slim and dainty-moulded haft of rowan-wood was a straight steel bar, giving weight where little weight was looked for, making the dint of swords of little moment. A heavy sword might cut clean through the wood of rowan, hard as it was; but it could only jar against, and shudder back from, the steel beneath. J oseph trusted “big foster-brother,” and his faith had shrewdest sense to back it.

They finished their quick bout, and Red Ratcliffe donned his coat again.

“Saddle the roan stallion, Joseph. Tis time I started for Colne market.”

Joseph went out to do the master’s bidding, while Ratcliffe stayed to play with foster-brother. Bathsheba, her sleeves to her elbows, and flour on both her strong, red arms, came fresh from rolling out the dough for an apple-pasty, and found the master standing there in the hall. Without a word she took the weapon from him and ran her fingers down the handle; and then she smiled, the dread smile of a woman cradled in the feud.

“Joseph was sick to fare with you to-day, and I was sick to let him,” she said, after a long silence. “Yet just now, when he came to me in the kitchen, and said you had bidden him mind the farm instead, my heart rose up for gladness. 'Tis you—just you, my bonnie bairn, who’ll blow the feud-fires into flame again. I’ve given you my milk, and your mother gave her life for you, and there’s a Lord God of the moor who knows the price of women’s gifts. Up to the saddle, lad, and tell me before parting what you look to find at Colne.”

Red Ratcliffe laughed.

“’Tis market-day, Bathsheba. We’ve no kine ready for killing here at Black House, and you said awhile since that you longed to get forward with the curing of the winter’s meat. Well, it may be I shall find a beast or two at Colne, just ready for the slaughtering.”

The grim stress and storm of it—this smiling talk of slaughter, between a lad scarce grown and the foster-mother who had done all a mother could, save bear him—was lost in the fine passion of the two. They spoke of killing, not for killing’s sake, but as a means, usual and to-be-belauded, to the end of rearing up the House of Ratcliffe once again.

“Go, bonnie lad, and take the Lean Man at your stirrup,” said Bathsheba, hearing the horse at the door.

The boy stooped, and kissed her—an unwonted tenderness—then took the axe, slipped it into the leathern holster of the saddle, and leaped to back.

“God-speed,” mumbled Joseph, as he let the horse have his head.

“Ay, surely,” answered the lad, and set off at a canter along that winding four-foot path which was the only road of safety between the marshes and the shifting bogs.

“Tis easier for you than me, lad,” said Joseph, watching the retreating figure. “You have the ride, and the fight and the speed of it—while I am left to eat my heart out, wondering how it fares with you. Yet there are fools who say that the stay-at-homes have all the easiest of it.”

He hinted something of his thoughts to Bathsheba, who was busy once more with her apple-pasties.

“Oh, you’re fit to rear kine and clover-grass, Joseph,” snapped the goodwife, “but the Lord gave you no other gifts, I’m thinking. By the Rood, why canst not do as I am doing—follow thy wonted work and know that the years of peace have not gone by for naught, and earn a pleasant face to greet the master with when he comes home from the killing? ”

And Joseph slunk away, to plough a four-acre field for the autumn-sowing of black oats.

Red Ratcliffe, meanwhile, rode across the wastes of Lonesome Moor, and his eyes were on the glory of this sterile land. He had known little of women—nothing of young girls, save of the lass, with hair as gold as a September dawn, who had stricken him to dumbness yesterday— and, because the men-folk of this world must have a glamour of some sort to round the rough edges of their lives, he had taken the moor for wife before he was of age to think of usual wedlock. Reared in solitude, with thoughts that were older and deeper than his years, he had learned to seek the tenderness, the dread, majestic beauty, that underlay the wilderness. Not in the blackest of the winter-time, not in the peevish days of early spring, was she less than beautiful to him, this heath with her cruel bogs, her sterile peat, her ling that flowered to no useful harvest. The^eath was his wife, and claimed from him a loving-tenderness which neither Bathsheba’s fostering nor Mistress Ratcliffe’s death at child-bearing could win. The heath could set his pulses singing. The heath could give him strength to meet his dreads and conquer them. The heath, in fine, was nurturing a love which, given once to a lass of flesh and blood, would mount high up toward the stars.

Past Lonesome Pool he rode, and between the dangerous lands that flanked the bridle-way beyond. And now the width and wonder of the moor lay stretched before him beneath the gold September sun. Savage and taciturn she might be, this moor; but she had her days of softer beauty, and the autumn now was tender with her as a bridegroom with his mate. East and west, north and south, the broken ridges raked outward to the blue horizon-mist, and all between lay plain to the least detail of heather-patch, or clump of rushes, or breeze-blown yellow of the bracken. God had mixed strange colours on his palette, and had strewn them broadcast; away yonder toward Marshcotes glowed a field of white-gold bents, their slim stems curtseying to the wind; out Bouldsworth way there was a sea of ling, billow upon purple billow, barbarous and majestic as the blood feud that had dyed the moor aforetime; here, close at the stallion’s feet, as Ratcliffe rode upon his way, the gorse shone butter-yellow in the sun. And in between the sunlight and the glory of these broken lands the peaty waters ran perpetually, with a gurgling softness and a creeping stealth, singing such tales of mystery as they went that he who stayed to learn their tongue would surely stay for ever, hearkening to the stories of the brave, dead days and caring little for the weaker times that were about him.

Red Ratcliffe, free of the dangerous path by now, and heading for the rough, upstanding bulk of Pendle Hill, lost nothing of the fine day’s message; he was ready for what awaited him at Colne, but meanwhile he was listening to the moor, and thinking of the maid whom Bathsheba had named the Parson’s lass. What had he to do with softness of this sort? Could such as she look on without a cry while he swung the long-hafted axe, and crashed through flesh and bone? Yet, for all that, he thought much of her, and nearly missed his way through forgetting that he had to guide his path by Pendle Hill.

It was just as he found the track again and leaped the stone fence that bordered the bridle-way to Colne that a chill came unawares upon him. And then there came a sudden wind, and following that Red Ratcliffe heard the patter of four feet upon the track. The stallion heard it, too, and reared and whinnied, and would scarcely heed the curb when Ratcliffe tried to bring him to a stand. Out of the sunlight, out of the usual, grey bridle-track he knew so well, a dog’s shape flickered and was lost—a brown dog, lean of body, thick of hide, with eyes that held a flame.

“There’s naught to fright thee, lad,” muttered Ratcliffe to his frightened beast. “Never, so Bathsheba says, has the Wayne Dog shown himself to any but a Wayne, and only when some danger pressed them close. What does the new omen mean, lad? For you and I have seen him close. Just this, I take it—that Ratcliffe is up in the saddle, and Wayne is down in the mud.”

He gave the stallion a flick of the spur, and straight and hard they rode for Colne; but the Brown Dog whimpered • down the way to Marshcotes, rousing the farm-folk in the scattered hamlets as he passed, yet never heeding them. No pause nor halt the Dog made till he reached old Marsh House, where Shameless Wayne, head of all his folk, was entertaining a great company to breakfast.

CHAPTER IV

WAYNE’S SON FARES OUT

Breakfast ruled late these days at Marsh House. There was wine upon the board in place of the simple ale that once had served the older generation. About the women there was a proneness toward the softer things of ornament which had not been there aforetime; among the men there was a growing looseness of carriage, a constant tendency to linger over wine and meat, which showed itself in slackening of the tissues. Yet, changed as they were since these twenty years of peace began, it was Shameless Wayne himself who stood out from them all, by reason of the altered fashion of his face, his voice, his cooling eagerness to seek hardship rather than wait for difficulties to press in upon him. Once, in his extreme youth, he had been over-fond of liquor, over-fond of riot and wild pleasures; then the feud-call had come to him, handed down by the father dead before his time at a sly Ratcliffe’s hand; he had answered the call, had answered it straight and true, forgetting his old follies. In those days it was the Ratcliffes who held the mastery, and Wayne and his had had a steep, hard fight to wage before they were assured of that last sweeping victory which had stricken the Ratcliffes into silence for awhile. He had come well, with honour and a good repute that bordered upon magical, from his redemption and his battles; they said still in Marshcotes and Ling Crag that he carried a charmed life; but the years of peace had followed, and peace sits ill upon the moor men always. What the farmer folk found of pleasure and content in fighting barren lands to win a lean and troubled harvest, this the Waynes and Ratcliffes sought—had ever sought—through ploughing with the sword that asks not rain, but blood, to rear its seedling crops. It was in the marrow of them, gentry or simple farming men; they must have sweat and toil, must find something that offered them a stem resistance, something that gave them a victory to be won.

Shameless Wayne, when long ago he conquered his youthful taste for devilry, when he settled, grim as an old man, to meet the foe which was stronger both in numbers and in guile, had stood straight to his six-foot height, had given commands as one who had the right—had held himself, in tmth, much as Red Ratcliffe did in these latter days, knowing that he had the family honour to uphold and a destiny to achieve. He had achieved his victory, he thought, at the end of the last awful fight, which had left the Lean Man dead, with Barguest’s teeth upon his throat, which had hacked the Ratcliffe men to pieces and sent their women-folk forth—wandering from the flame-lit House of Wildwater. He had achieved his destiny, he thought; and yet he lived; and so the slow years fastened on him, and their touch was cold, and he sank back, from very sloth, into the habits of his youth.

A fine man still he showed, as he sat at the head of the long table and jested with his kinsfolk. His eyes were bright, his chin was wilful and as proud as ever; yet his flesh was heavier than need be, and across his face, just every now and then, there crept a look of restlessness, of shame almost, as of one who was not doing a brave work in the world, and knew that he was not.

His wife—and she a Ratcliffe—sat at the far end of the board. And to the more fanciful of the Waynes it seemed that the souls of the men who had died for the feud’s sake were heavy on the air of the old dining-hall, with its dinted swords and axes on the walls; for not one of them forgot that Shameless Wayne and his wife Janet had come together through a sea of good men’s blood. Had he not taken her at the end of that last awful fight, and carried her to Marsh House, herself a willing captive, and married her in face of the Parson’s warning that sundered blood was an offence in the sight of God? They had long memories, the Waynes, and to-day, as they drank their host’s new-fangled wines and ate their pasties of venison and hare, the older heads remembered how this same Parson, quiet as one of his own church mice at most times, had thundered forth his disapproval of a wedlock he was bound to solemnise.

Strange forces seemed at work on this September morning. It was as if the purple ling, the gold and blue of the happy sky, were echoes only of the joy of fight to come. Not one of the Wayne men in hall—not Shameless Wayne himself—but felt their swords move fitfully within their slothful scabbards; not one of them denied in his own heart that thunder-weather was breeding under all this calm; as for the women, they did not know what ailed them, and Janet’s eyes sought those of Shameless Wayne with the pleading of a mother for the safety of the child she loved.

“By the Dog, quiet these many years,” cried Wayne, sick of the horror brooding over them before its time, “are we going to sit like funeral-mutes because the feud is dead and done with ? ”

In his peevishness he had told the secret of his own disquiet; yet none noted it, for the women were busy with their fears, and the men had each the same disquiet at heart.

None answered him, as he drained his cup and filled it once again—these many once-agains—to the wide brim.

“A toast! ” he cried, getting to his feet. “To Waynes and Ratcliffes both! The one house is alive to drink, the other is too low in the mire to ask for aught but pity. To the Ratcliffes, friends, and to the good Dog of the Waynes! ”

The devilry of the toast could not be fully understood by any there, save by the greybeards, who, older than their host, yet owed him fealty because he was of the prime blood. It was one of these who spoke, before the men, awe-struck despite their liquor, had risen to their feet.

“Lad,” he said, though the man he spoke to had turned forty, “lad, ’tis ill to jest with the names of enemies, who, if they were treacherous, were brave. You younger fools, who said twenty years ago that you had stamped the Ratcliffes out of life, you did not heed, as may be I did not heed, the wisdom of the fathers. No lusty race is ever killed outright; they live, and they are overnumbered, and the call comes to the weak to fight the strong, and there’s a God somewhere that helps the weak against the strong.”

“Gad, here’s a toast to you instead. Wayne of Cran-shaw,” cried his host, with a boisterous laugh. “We never had a parson in the family aforetime.”

The youngsters laughed, but the older men looked grave; for Wayne of Cranshaw was the Bayard of the race —a man as keen in sword-play as he was prone to pity weakness and to love strength—a man shrewd of judgment, and, in the rare moments when he yielded to the bidding of another world, not one to prophesy amiss concerning disaster or success. To mock at Wayne of Cranshaw was to mock at each individual excellence of life, and such laughter boded well to none.

“I am no parson, lad,” returned the other quietly. “If I said more prayers, may be ’twould be the better for me; but I say few, and I have no gift of words. Only, I have seen thee a true Wayne—I have seen thee do such feats of strength and bravery as set thy name once and for all in the front of honour—and it cuts me like steel to see thee less than thyself at any time.”

From the past there came a touch of manliness to Shameless Wayne. His brow cleared, the smile returned to his fine mouth. His follies, for the moment, slipped from him like a cloak that is done with.

“Wayne of Cranshaw,” he said, in a voice that all might hear, “I did you wrong. I have done myself wrong in these last years. I would^that you, and not myself, were head of the old race.”

Janet looked up at her husband, a sudden passionate love and honour in her tired eyes: He caught the glance, and answered it, and counted well worth while the effort it had cost him to subdue his pride. And not Janet only, but the youngest of the lads in hall, saw something new in Wayne’s face and round about his straightened figure as he stood there with the untasted wine-cup in his hand. It was as if the glamour of the old days lay, palpable almost, upon him; the mists of wine, of self-indulgence, of idle years close following years of hardship, were cleared away, and he stood up before them once again the man of many battles against odds, the man of courtesy even in his own despite, the man who, more than any other Wayne of a brave race, had set his deeds upon the hilltops, to stand in the days of his children and his children’s children. And the elders dimly understood that they had learned one of life’s deeper truths to-day; they saw—looking at this Wayne, who for the second time was bidding fair to earn his name of Shameless—saw that the follies of a man are but the dry husk of what lies within, that his good deeds are the sweet and living kernel.

It was Wayne of Cranshaw now who filled his tankard and lifted it. The fret of imminent disaster had lain upon him all the morning, and his heart leaped to see the new fashion of his kinsman.

“Waynes all! ” he cried. “A health to the head of our house. When the fight comes—and it will come soon— I shall be glad to follow where he leads.”

The words let loose a storm of cries. All the old, healthy love of battle was renewed; the feud-song seemed to rock and sway like a tempest under the blackened rafters of the hall. They were men again, and eager to acknowledge their bom leader. Only the women sat with lowered eyes and tremulous mouths; for they were followers only in the wake of battle, and there is little gladness in weeping over husbands gone to their account, in wiping blood from abhorred and gaping wounds, in moistening, with water from the well, lips that may never speak again.

There was a silence following the toast, and Wayne of Cranshaw had his ear toward the window that looked out upon the courtyard. He heard something that was not audible as yet to those who sat at meat.

“What is it? ” asked a youngster fearfully, his eyes upon the elder’s face.

Wayne did not answer, but presently there came a whining, a scraping as of phantom feet upon the courtyard stones, a sudden howl, thin, high, and long drawn out. Wine-cups dropped from nerveless fingers; each man sought courage from his neighbour’s glance, and horror sat, a naked guest, among the company.

“’Tis the Dog,” said Wayne of Cranshaw simply, as if he had been awaiting this.

“Quiet these score years. What ailed me to lift a flagon to his health just now? ” muttered Shameless Wayne.

And then a strange thing chanced, for Shameless Wayne himself, and Wayne of Ludworth, and a stripling of the Cranshaw Waynes, all looked toward the great main door, and there was something in their eyes that drew the glances of the rest in the like direction. Yet only they three saw the guest come late to join the feast—the guest, soft-footed, lean and thick of hide, whom Red Ratcliffe had seen hurrying to the tryst not long ago.

“What ails you, lad? ” asked Wayne of Cranshaw of his host. “I can see naught.”

“What ails me? I have seen the Dog.”

“And I,” said Wayne of Ludworth.

“And I—Lord God, how cold my body is! ” the stripling stammered.

None doubted, though only three of them had seen the shaggy beast come into hall; but all pitied the doomed three, for Barguest never lied, and their fathers had told them that to hear him spoke of trouble, but to see him spelt disaster. A laugh rang oddly through the silence; it was Shameless Wayne’s.

“Friends,” he said—and again the glamour of old days was on him—“friends, I am j glad to have seen the old brown beast. He may warn me of death, or only of a grievous hurt; but either way I am fain to know that the feud is up again, and the years of drink and dice gone by a second time. My father died by a Ratcliffe hand, and if there’s one left of the breed—and surely the Dog knows— I will die, if need be, to lay him stark beside the Ratcliffes who have gone before.”

“But you’ll not go to Colne market to-day’s morn as you meant to do? ” said one of the younger men, who had been born too late to understand more than the romance of feud—too late to realise the grim and instant call, in face of any danger, when the Brown Dog told of battle.

“I go to-day as I said I \vould<, and these two go with me, as they said they would, though all three of us have seen the Dog. Strange, that we should all see it.”

“Not so strange,” put in another. “There are stranger tales about the moor these latter days. Folk here and there have lost themselves on the moor behind Wildwater, and have come upon a No Man’s Land, they say, peopled with red-headed folk—the Ratcliffe red. Some of the folk are old, or middle-aged, but these are women, while all the men are striplings; and 'tis whispered that the ghosts of those who died in the last fight at Wildwater have come back, changed to a youthful shape by the tricksy gnomes that live among the bogs.”

“I, too, have heard the same tales,” said Wayne of Cranshaw, as one who knew that many rumours, put together, make for a truth which one, or two, or three old wives’ tales could not make him credit. “I have heard, too, of a red-headed giant who is seen, just now and then, about the moor. He carries a long-hafted axe in his hand, and in his face a look of Judgment, if all they say be true.”

“Uncle,” cried a youngster impetuously, to Shameless Wayne, " why go to-day to Colne? ”

“Because I have said that I would go to Colne.”

“Ay, but if you’ve to fight with ghosts-”

“I’d liefer have live men, I own; but Ratcliffe flesh or Ratcliffe ghost shall not come ’twixt me and my own purpose.”

“Who was it started this wild game of going to Colne? ” asked another. “We’ve left the Lancashire side to Ratcliffes until now. Is Halifax, or Bradford, or Skip-ton town, too poor for us? ”

“’Twas I who first suggested it,” said Wayne of Lud-worth, who was by way of being the dare-devil of the younger race. “We needed better horses than we could find in the old markets—Lord knows we’ve bought the best of them long since—and I bethought me that there would have been little trade in horse-flesh done in Colne since the Ratcliffes ceased to journey thither.”

His tone was jaunty, yet his eyes kept wandering fitfully toward the door, as if he feared to see the unbidden, quietfooted guest a second time.

“There’s no luck in running into Ratcliffe haunts, take it how you will,” said Wayne of Cranshaw gravely. “Men may be dead, but their spirits work for mischief in the places loved aforetime, when the feud bites deep as this of ours has done.”

“We’ll risk it,” cried the Ludworth Wayne, though his face was touched with death already, and he knew it as well as any of them there who looked upon the grey, dead pallor of his flesh.

Shameless Wayne stood silent, with bent brows. Then, with a shrug of his wide shoulders and a leaping as of fire into his grey eyes, he drank his measure of wine and pushed his chair aside.

“Come saddle, lads,” he said. “The sun is getting noonward, and they’ll not keep their market waiting for us as they do elsewhere when we are late.”

“We’ll ride with you! We’ll ride with you! ” cried one of the ladlings at the board.

“Nay! ” said Shameless Wayne. “What comes, comes. We’ll play no jests with fate—though the wish becomes you, lad.”

What comes, comes—it was the philosophy voiced not long ago by Red Ratcliffe of the rival house—it is the fruit which ripens always when once the blossom, feud, has set and hardened. All were eager to ride out with the doomed three; yet all obeyed the curt command of Shameless Wayne, knowing that he had the right to ask obedience from them.

“Go, and God prosper you,” said Wayne of Cranshaw.

“If the Dog wants you, he will have you—at least he has warned you to keep your swords loose in your scabbards.”

Red Ratcliffe’s axe, the foster-brother, must surely have laughed quietly to itself could it have listened to this talk of swords, which were as children to grown men when measured by its power; but Red Ratcliffe and the axe were far away at Colne Market, and not heeded just as yet by the Waynes who finished their last after-breakfast measures.

Janet sent a piteous glance to Shameless Wayne, to stay him from the feud; but, though he knew its meaning, he would not heed it.

“A race! ” he cried. “Whether the youngsters will saddle before Wayne of Marsh has got to back. I warrant I shall be the first to ride out westward.”

“Shall I not come, father? ” said a lad of seventeen, silent until now.

Shameless Wayne looked curiously at the boy, as he stood there, with his narrow shoulders, his stooping gait, the thatch of red hair that seemed a perpetual reminder of his Ratcliffe blood. This was the sole issue of the love-match Wayne had made with J anet Ratcliffe, and he told himself, this morning as on many other mornings, that God had mocked their love. This lank-limbed echo of a man to be his heir, to be the fruit of a passion that had been hot enough to thaw the chill of feud, that had been strong enough to force its way through such a mire of blood and tears as surely never yet had lain between a man and the lass of his heart’s choice! And that accursed crown of the boy’s, red as the feud itself—did he hate this son of his, he wondered ?

“Shall you go? ” echoed Wayne. “Have I not said that three of us, and three only, ride to Colne? ”

“I thought—I thought,” the boy faltered, “that there was likely to be trouble; and I am reckoned of no account at Marsh here; and I wished to try my sword, for I have greater skill, may be, than any of you know.”

To Janet, listening to her boy’s every word, watching the scowl grow deeper on her husband’s face, the scene was torture. It was as if the unrighteousness of all her twenty years of wedlock were made manifest before her; it was as if the feud, after long quiet, had felt its old wounds break with some sudden strain, as old wounds will. And the lad’s halting words, the lad’s wry face of pathos, with its freckles and its hunted weariness, spoke plainly to the mother’s heart, telling a story not good to dwell upon. She knew, too, her husband’s disdain of the boy; nor could she blame him, for he was not strong, and lithe, and blackhaired, as the heir of Marsh should be.

“Your sword? ” cried Wayne impatiently. “Oh, it will flesh itself in time—meanwhile, stay with the women, lad, and learn their gossip.”

“That was a cruel word,” said Wayne of Cranshaw, but his kinsman, clanking already to the door, did not catch the speech.

“Ay, ’twas cruel,” murmured Janet; “but both are right and both are wrong, father and son. The one had reason to look for a likelier heir; the other cannot help his weakness. ’Twas my fault, after all; for on that night at Wildwater, when blood ran wide between my husband and myself, I was weak to think that love could bridge so much.”

Weak to think that love could bridge so much! It was the woman’s cry, not of this age of sleeping feud alone, but of all the generations since Marshcotes Heath and Lonesome Moor first saw the light. Yet to Janet it was hard to bear, and the sorrows of dead sisters did not any way relieve her burden. She watched the doomed three— and one of them the man she loved—go out at the main door. She bade her guests farewell. She smiled bravely and with unconcern when Wayne of Cranshaw, courteous and kind of heart, stayed for a parting word with her.

“Do not fret, Janet,” he whispered. “The days come chill and raw to all of us when the wind sits that way. Say, would you have us follow your goodman without his knowledge? ” he added, still more gently. “What is to come will come, but at least we can ride to Colne and do our best, if that is your good will.”

“You will not ride to Colne,” said Janet, sharply. “Do you think—oh, I know that you are kind, but you cannot know the fret of all these years gone by—do you think I have not learned that Fate, who could give so much if she would, gives less than a beggar on the road? It is the poor who give to the poor in this life, and Fate, the richest of us all, with happiness—my God, what happiness in her lap!—gives naught at all. What will be, will be, Wayne of Cranshaw—and thanks for your kind thought.”

She swept him out of the hall with the depth and self-possession of her curtsey, and he—the solitary Wayne who had treated her from the disastrous start of her wedded life as a friend and not an enemy—could do nothing but kiss her hand and murmur “Courage ” and go his ways, to wonder what the end would be.

Yet Janet stumbled at the word “Courage,” and the weakness of her womanhood came on her. She had been brave—God knew how brave—and now she was weak as the tears that ran so quietly down her cheeks. At the far end of the hall her son, with his narrow shoulders and his Ratcliffe hair, was answering the taunts of the youngsters who • had heard Shameless Wayne’s last mockery; she dimly understood that the father, by his treatment of the son—flinging a gibe to him now and then as he would fling a bone to a dog, but scarce noticing him at most times— was setting the keynote of the boy’s life. The youngsters, those who should have been his friends and playmates, understood right well the meaning of his father’s scorn; this red-head was a Ratcliffe in their midst, as was his mother, and he was the target for their arrow-gibes, barbed, not with malice, but with a straightforward boyish cruelty that was hard to bear.

Dimly Janet understood what was passing at the far end of the hall; but she had no leisure, just this little while, to give to the unhappy son whom she loved the more dearly for his shortcomings; she must be alone, to meet her misery face to face, and wrestle with it, and pluck from the struggle what measure of content she could.

There was a little room behind the main hall, a room given up, as long ago as any of the folk at Marsh could remember, to the women of the house. The walls were tapestried; there were curious odds and ends about the room which only women could have either bought or kept; and round about the casement played tendrils of a creeper unknown elsewhere about these wind-swept highlands. Yet this morning, as she went to the window-space and stood looking out, it was the creeper, a softening touch at most times to the grim old house, which set Janet’s heart beating with a new disquiet; for its leaves, soon to wither and to be blown to dust by the approaching winter, had taken on a red that glowed and revelled in the sun, as if to fill these last days with a spendthrift glory they had never known in the sober middle-age of life.

“Red! Red everywhere! ” she murmured. “If ’tis not the red Ratcliffe hair, ’tis the red of blood. The double-daisies bloomed redder than their wont this spring, I noted, and now the very autumn leaves are stained a deeper hue. Red—red everywhere—and ever deepening red! So the tale was foretold, when twenty years ago I stood between the moor-wind and the house of slaughter, and Wayne said that we would wed in spite of all, and I was weak in my love of him, as I am weak to-day, though I knew that God was crying to me that such wedlock was a sin. That poor old fool at Marshcotes here—the parson who put my hand in Wayne’s on the marriage-morn—he' said the same. And now my harvest is growing ripe, and all the ears are red.”

From the dusk of the comer farthest from the window-space came a voice—a little, pleasant voice that had naught of the full-throated uplands in it, but rather a lovable, quaint softness, as of some gentle southern land where winds did not blow harsh across the peat and ling and sterile bogs.

“What is it, Janet? You are sad to-day.”

The other turned, and saw for the first time a little fairhaired woman, with a babyish face and babyish blue eyes, who sat at her embroidery-frame and noiselessly worked in and out among its many threads.

“Ay, I am sad, Little Bairn, for I see Fate working at its broidery, as you are doing; yet there’s no pattern shows, for every thread is of one colour.”

Janet had come here to be alone; yet the little woman’s presence did not disturb her mood, for she went and sat beside her and let her hand rest on the soft yellow hair. This woman was Wayne’s stepmother—the baby-wife whom the then Wayne of Marsh had brought from out the south—and yet she was so frail, so childish, that Janet had caught from her husband the trick of naming her “Little Bairn,” the trick of being vastly tender to her, and of talking as one talks only to one’s self or to one of the folk called fairy-kist. These twenty years had brought the fines to Janet’s face and to her husband’s; but they had passed the Little Bairn as if they had not been, and a stranger would have said that she was no older now than on that far-off night when the feud had reopened, and she had seen a man die for her, and her wits had gone into a far land. Fairy-kist she was—just that—and among the rugged folk of Marshcotes the word was the tenderest that they knew. This Mistress Wayne was lacking only in the power to understand the daily miseries of fife; she rarely troubled about anything, but rested like a sapling in some sheltered hollow, herself unbuffeted by the wild tempests of the open moor, or at most just bending now and then to some breeze that pierced her shelter. For this cause she was restful to men and women who had fife to face each day, and, moreover, she was credited with a foreknowledge deeper even than belonged to those who had the second sight.

It may be that Janet had a closer link with Little Bairn, for the two of them, each in her own time, had come as a stranger-woman to the House of Marsh, and had suffered from displeasure veiled or open, and had wondered, many and many a weary time, how love—the woman’s love that gives with both hands and asks nothing in return, yet looks for all—how love could shiver so and feel its emptiness because a husband’s folk had looked askance. Yet the answer to that wonderment in each case had been the same, had either of the women dared acknowledge it; the husband, too, had shown, faintly it may be, and in a way unnoticed by less jealous eyes, that kinship lies closer to a man’s heart than a woman’s, and that this cold acceptance of his choice had planted restlessness, misgiving, both in the dead father and in the living son.

And so, for the queer love she bore the Little Bairn, Janet came and sat beside her this morning, and smoothed her hair, and talked as to herself.

“To be sure I am sad,” she went on, in her deep, quiet voice. “Listen, Little Bairn, while you weave in and out among those coloured threads of yours. The past comes back on me this morning, do as I will, and wants to crush me; and I will not be crushed; and so I must talk of it. We built our house on the treacherous bog, Wayne and I; we knew it, yet would not heed. Hark ! ” she broke off, her ear toward the window. “Didst hear aught, Little Bairn? ”

“I heard a shouting of boys’ voices, high and thin, like the music the wind makes among the reeds. They are at play, Janet.”

“God grant it. It sounded more as if they were at battle. What were we talking of? Ay, of the bog on which we built our house. The Lean Man—he who walks nowadays shod ghost-wise, so the country tales run—was my grandfather, and I loved him only a little less than Wayne, and I was his idol. Wayne came wooing me; we met by stealth upon the moor, and first I loved him a little, and then a little more than I loved the Lean Man; and for his sake I was treacherous to my folk, saying that his people should be my people henceforth. Wayne killed my kinsmen ; it did not matter; I loved him. Then he fought the Lean Man, and would have killed him, too, if the lightning had not snatched victory before him; it did not matter, for I loved him. Then the last battle came, and after it was done—I can smell the horror of it now, Little Bairn, and it sickens and appals me—after it was done, we stood, just he and I, at the edge of the windy moor; and we knew what we had done, and the wrongs that roared and raced breast-high between us; it did not matter, for we loved.”

The Little Bairn went on with her embroidery, and no trouble lay upon her face.

“I loved once,” she said, in her soft, rounded southern speech, “it was sweet while it lasted, but the mists came down, and I was lost in them.”

“Thank your God for that. Stay lost in them. Never seek the plain daylight, Little Bairn, that shows you where you blundered, knowing you were blundering; for it is not good to pray to die. Oh, listen, listen! When we stood there, Wayne and I, and hearkened to the groans of dying men behind us, and felt the keen moor-wind against our faces, I said that all that would yet be well— my old cry—because we loved. Ah, but I knew—my heart kept telling, telling me—that if I loved, I should find courage now to prove my love; I should send him from me; I should bid him be braver in this moment than in the hottest of his battles; and he would have understood, for a strong man knows a woman’s strength and reverences it. He would have hearkened, and I—I did not say the word. He took me to him suddenly, and the night and all its horrors swooned before his kisses, and I came with him here to Marsh, a bride of shame.”

“Do not be sad,” said the little woman placidly.

“Naught’s worth grieving for, Janet—that is the lesson I have learned among the mists.”

“Some day I may learn it, too, but not just yet, Little Bairn. Has not the shame gone deep and deeper all these years? When I lay at Wayne’s side those first days, did not the feud come shuddering in between us? Ay, like a sword it lay between us, and I would the sword had killed the one or both of us when we dared cross it. And then the child was born, and he was the living answer to the lie that I had told when I said that our love could bridge disaster and the feud. And I loved the ladling all the more because he was so weak; and yet he fastened shame more closely on me every year, as he grew to a puling half-boy between the Waynes and Ratcliffes; and I longed sometimes for him to die—I—oh, hearken! That was no lad’s play, Little Bairn; it was a cry of anguish.”

Janet ran to the window, but her companion still worked at her embroidery, scarce heeding that the busy world which lay outside her mists was big with portents and alarms. The window looked out upon a garden first, full of clipped yews and straggling autumn flowers, and then upon a field where the Waynes were wont to practise sword-play and the like; and in the field a Wayne of Cranshaw—one of the Bayard’s grandsons—was lying with his face toward the sky. His friends were gathered round him, but Janet looked in vain for the tell-tale head of her own son.

While she stood there, fearing everything, yet knowing naught, nor able to hazard even a likely guess, her son came in at the door and stood beside her at the window, looking out, as she had done, upon the fallen Wayne.

“’Twas I who did it,” he said, his breath coming thickly, with the echo of a sob in it. “ They taunted me, and I had borne it far too long, and I struck him on the face. Then our swords ran out, and I was the better, and I struck him through the side.”

Janet stood with both hands pressed against her brow. The little storm, beneath the greater one which Wayne had gone to face at Colne, seemed the last drop in her cup; and yet she knew what the boy had had to suffer through the years, and in a fashion she was proud of the spirit he had shown, proud of the victory he had won against an adversary broader and taller than himself.

“Tell me,” she said at last, still keeping both hands on her forehead, but looking at him now with tired curiosity, “tell me how you came to have such skill in fence? They always said, your father and the rest, that you had no liking for a sword.”

“They would not teach me, saying I was too lean and mis-shapen to think of such matters; and so I went to Wayne of Cranshaw, who was always kind to me, and I asked him if I were a fool; and he said, No, and that he would teach me how to use the sword. That was years ago, when I first went to him, and they saw to-day that I was not foolish altogether.”

The simplicity of the words, the troubled look of inquiry on the boy’s face, were witness to the cruelty which half-wittingly had been meted out to him. And yet he had won his first fight, and the knowledge gave him a dignity which never before had sat on his uncomely body.

“Is young Wayne of Cranshaw dead?” asked Janet.

“Nay, nor like to die. I am glad, because he is grandson to the man who taught me all my sword-play—and yet —mother, what came to me out yonder? When I saw him fall, when I saw the blood leap out from his side, I ran mad, and would have killed him outright; but the others got their arms about me from behind and held me back; and then I came to myself, and the red fight stopped dancing before my eyes, and I could no longer hear the song that had sung in my heart, saying ‘ Kill, kill.’ ”

“What came to you? ” said Janet, huskily, and there was an awful dread, an awful shame and pity, in the look she gave her son. “What came to you, ill-starred flesh of my flesh? The song of the feud came to you, as it has come to every Wayne in hall to-day, as it is singing now,'belike, at Colne Market. And, because you are half a Ratcliff e, you lifted your hand blindly against a Wayne, not knowing which way to seek for loyalty.”

“I hear them whisper often one to the other that I should play traitor if the feud were back again. Is it true, mother? They hate me, they will not let me be a Wayne— and yet I do not wish to be a traitor.”

With a suddenness unlooked for by the mother, he broke down utterly. The excitement, the strain, the half-remorse that followed, the sense of loneliness, had found the child’s heart which beats in all of us, whether we be old or young. He was ashamed, and yet the sobs would come ; and so he ran like a hunted beast out of the parlour, out of the hall, away to the lonely heather-lands, where he could weep unseen.

The wind kept blowing fitfully, and now a sharper gust rattled the creeper churlishly against the window-panes. Janet, seeking for omens now in everything, turned and saw the sunlit, living red of the leaves that tapped the casement.

“Red everywhere! ” she echoed, looking out again upon the field where the youngsters were carrying their fallen comrade to the house. “’Twill be feud now to the end, and Wayne and I will reap our harvest to the full.”

She felt a hand upon her arm, and saw that the Little Bairn had left her broidery. There was a world of softness in the babyish blue eyes.

“Never heed, Janet,” she whispered. “Naught matters —that is what I’ve learned among the mists.”

CHAPTER V

THE BEGINNING OF IT

Red Ratcliffe had done his business at Colne market and had bought the fat steer which Bathsheba required for furnishing their winter’s supply of salted meat. He had despatched it to a friendly farmer in the neighbourhood, to be kept by him till Joseph could ride over and drive it home. And now he lingered idly among the farmers, the gentry, the women-folk, who thronged Colne’s narrow street. All was as it had been since first he came with J oseph to the market here; there were the like knots of hard, fine-featured men, the like sheep bleating in the pens, the like graceless pedlars casting a roguish eye at the women and tempting them to buy all manner of things useful for the house or useless as ornaments for the adornment of their persons. And it was this sameness that puzzled Ratcliffe; young yet to the ways of destiny, he had looked for some scene out of the ordinary when first he rode up the Colne street to-day. For had he not last night seen the Lean Man come between the moonlight and the darkened hall? Had he not slept weightily, soberly, as one who is to awake to a great trust on the morrow? Had he not ridden out beneath the gold September sun, and communed with the heath, and seen the Brown Dog creeping busily toward Marsh House?

Ay, he had seen these things, and his heart had beat in answer to the call of a world unseen; and now he was here in market, talking with this farmer, nodding to that, showing all his skill of barter when the steer was in the buying; listening to, and parrying, the old jest touching his fondness for carrying the axe, his foster-brother. And now, as he waited idly, not knowing why he waited, nor for what, a restlessness and disillusion fastened on him. So long he had listened to the old, wild tales of feud from Joseph and from Bathsheba; so long had he prepared himself for the man’s work that lay before him; and now, to-day, he had looked for the first sweet thrill of action, had looked to play his axe, not against Joseph’s steel, but against the sword-craft of the Waynes.

“Look’st moody, Mister Ratcliffe,” said a rough-spoken, hulking fellow at his elbow.

“Ay, Nick,” said the other, glancing from the sheep, the cattle, the horses still unsold. “I was astir betimes, and now my business is done I begin to feel a tiredness in my bones.”

“Carriest thy great axe still, Mister? ” went on the man, who from long use had grown to be the licensed jester of the market, free of speech, rough or smooth, to any one. “At your age, I shpuld have said a lass would be a likelier burden, but there’s no reckoning on tastes.”

On the sudden Red Ratcliffe thought of the lass whom yesterday he had met upon the moor—the lass with hair as bright as sunlight on the benty upland fields—and Nick o’ Trawdon’s raillery angered him.

“Go put thy tongue in the halter, Nick,” he snapped, “or talk to thy equals when thou needs must jest.”

Nick looked at him in wonderment; for he knew the boy’s story, and had a certain tenderness toward him, and they two, until to-day, had felt, without acknowledging it, a curious sympathy and friendliness.

“He’s not like himself, not like himself at all,” muttered Nick, as he watched Red Ratcliffe ride across the street and disappear between the doorstones of the Crown and Angel tavern. “I warrant they’ve fed him fat on the old feud, that unchancy couple at Black House, and his temper snaps, like, when he least looks for it. Ay, ay, ’tis sad, when all is said, to think he stands alone, with his red hair to point him out to any passing Wayne, and never a chance for all his axe, to straighten the account between them.”

Nick o’ Trawdon voiced the feeling of the market-folk, for here and there stood little knots of those who had been the Ratcliffes’ well-wishers in olden days, who looked at the young giant as he passed, and nodded one to the other, and whispered that they’d well have liked to see him fighting in the brave times gone by—gone by for ever.

Red Ratcliffe knew nothing of their gossip; he was out of joint with the world, and moody, and his order to the landlord of the Crown and Angel to bring his horse rang like a threat of vengeance if the other were tardy in the doing. As he waited, taking long pulls at his flagon of ale, a country lass stepped lissome down the passage and brushed his elbow as she passed; the girl had flaxen hair, noteworthy among the swarthy folk who lived on either the Wayne or Ratcliffe edges of the moor, and the sight of it brought back again the memory of yesterday’s meeting with the Parson’s Lass between Marshcotes and Wildwater.

“What ails me? ” muttered Ratcliffe. “A slip of a lass asks me the way to Marshcotes, and I’m dumb before her witchery, and then the memory clings to me as close as boot to foot. This girl who passed me now—she’s fair enough, I fancy, as men who know about such matters reckon fairness; but she’s like the other only in the colour of her hair.”

Yet for all that his interest was roused, because in any case she called to mind her fairer sister; and when his horse had been brought round, and he was moving at a foot-pace through the busy street, he caught sight of her again, standing on the outskirts of a little crowd which had gathered round about a fiddler and three dancing couples. For a moment he halted, to watch the jig, he told himself; yet his eyes were on the girl, whose feet were tap-tapping on the roadway, as if she would have welcomed any likely partner. And the lass, glancing up and seeing again the biggest man that ever to her knowledge had sought Colne market, half-smiled at him.

“There’s to be no fighting for me; what if I snatch a moment’s foolery, instead? ” muttered Red Ratcliffe.

He was about to throw himself out of the saddle when three strangers sauntered up on foot and stood between Red Ratcliffe and the group to watch the dancing. And one and all, as they passed Ratcliffe, glanced at his red hair, at his great bulk, at the axe which swung beside his saddle; and then they looked at one another questioningly; but none spoke to him. Gentlefolk they were assuredly, and yet their faces were unfamiliar to Ratcliffe, though he knew all the gentry who frequented Colne. One was a man near forty, or just turned, dark, big in the build, with something between recklessness and sternness in his air; of the others, one was a stripling, the other older by a few years, with the bearing of a roue and a dare-devil. It was this last who saw the fair-haired lass stand tapping with her feet in time to the fiddler’s measure, and without more ado he crossed to her and slipped an arm about her waist, and would have snatched a kiss had not the girl turned and slapped him smartly on the cheek. His comrades laughed, but Red Ratcliffe, watching from the saddle, felt his hand reach down to foster-brother. Fanciful the boy was in some matters, and new to that feeling of mingled reverence, awe, and keen desire which yesterday the Parson’s Lass had roused in him; and so, because this other maid was like her, as the moon is like the sun, he resented any slight put on her by a stranger. Again he half leaped to the ground, and again held back, seeing the girl stand off from her assailant. There was pride and venom in her eyes, for once before these three had come across her in the Marshcotes street, and they were known to her.

" What are you doing at Colne, you Waynes? ” she cried. “Have you come to teach us manners—us poor folk who five upon the Ratcliffe side of the moor? Well, then, you have your answer, and I warrant your cheek will tingle with it, Wayne of Ludworth, for an hour to come.”

Red Ratcliffe turned to fire, and then to frost. A thousand hatreds, a thousand yearnings, fed by Bath-sheba and Joseph, a thousand feud-songs of his race, were calling to him, turning him for the moment to the fashion of one drunk. Here, then, were three of the Wayne folk, and the Lean Man had not come to him last night for naught. Strange that instinct had not warned him of their breed!

Wayne of Ludworth, a red mark down his cheek where the lass had struck him, was standing undecided, not knowing whether to run in and force a kiss or to hold back. His rage was evident, nor was it lessened by the laughter of the more reckless among the crowd, who hated all Waynes by habit, and who were watching curiously to see what the red-head sitting quietly in the saddle would do next.

“Who dares talk of Ratcliffes to a Wayne? ” blustered Wayne of Ludworth. “We killed them to a man once on a day, and they’ll not rise again to praise you hulking folk of Colne for loving them.”

On a sudden Red Ratcliffe laughed, so clearly and so eerily that a shudder crept among the crowd, no man knew why. For Ratcliffe had seen what they had not, and the irony of that last, “ We killed them to a man, and they’ll not rise again,” was clear to him and roused him from his stillness. Among the usual traffic of the street, between the well-known houses which in their sturdiness seemed to speak of everyday, plain matters, a stranger walked Colne market—a stranger now, though once he had trafficked and made merry here. Lean to deformity the stranger was, with a red scar across his filmy brow and his right arm swinging uselessly by his side; and in his eyes there was a keen and awful joy. Yet only Red Ratcliffe saw him, and knew that one had come again from the dead Ratcliffes, just as he had come from the living, to disprove Wayne of Ludworth’s boast.

“Who laughed? Who was it dared to mock at me? ” cried Wayne of Ludworth.

“I did,” answered Ratcliffe, and slipped foster-brother gently from its sheath.

There was a moment’s silence, noisier than any hum of voices could have been, so full was it of the crowd’s deep restlessness and wonderment and awe. The three Waynes did not even draw their swords, but looked at Ratcliffe as if asking whether he were flesh or ghost. Wayne of Ludworth, dare-devil always, was the first to find speech.

“Come down from saddle and get the answer to thy mockery,” he said.

“Ay, if it pleases you,” the other answered; “though you’re three to one, I’ll take no vantage of my horse.”

“But first, before I deal with thee,” went on Wayne of Ludworth jauntily, “I’ll kiss the maid here, and so the two of you will get your answers, each in order.”

He ran forward, surprising the girl as she watched the scene with eager eyes that followed Red Ratcliffe’s every movement, and he took his kiss and another, and then flung her from him with a laugh that was coarser than his lout’s embrace. He turned to find Red Ratcliffe out of saddle, standing to the top of his six-foot-four of height, and holding the axe in his two brawny hands while he swayed it gently to and fro. What followed passed with the speed of a tempest flung from the belly of a clear blue sky. Wayne of Ludworth got his sword out somehow and leaped back; before his friends could get to him Red Ratcliffe had run forward, had parried his first wild sword-thrust as one turns aside a bramble in one’s path, had lifted foster-brother high and higher yet, swinging it like a flail above his head. And then the great axe fell, and Wayne of Ludworth’s day was done, and Red Ratcliffe, with little time to spare if the on-coming Waynes were to be met, set his two feet firmly on the ground and tugged and tugged at the axe, where it lay in Wayne’s big skull, and wrenched it loose in the nick of time. The stripling Wayne, lighter of foot than his kinsman, had outpaced him, and his sword was perilously near to Ratcliffe when at last he wrenched the axe-head free and swung it high again; once more the sword was turned aside, lightly as with contempt, and foster-brother whistled as it cut the air. Shameless Wayne was close in now, and made a desperate leap to save the lad; his fore-foot lit upon a patch of offal in the road, and he stumbled under the haft of the big axe as it purred and whistled down the wind and bit the stripling through the bone. Fair on the crown Shameless Wayne caught half the blow as it descended and the haft, with thick steel at its core, was weighty—and like a log he rolled beside his fallen kinsmen.

Again there had fallen a pregnant silence on the crowd. The folk scarce dared to breathe, and their faces were grey with dread, or keen with battle-joy, according to the fashion in which God had made them. After it was done, moreover, they were silent for awhile, and then a deep “ Ah— hi” went up, and men pressed forward, striving to grasp Ratcliffe’s hand, and crying, like so many folk run wild, that the sleeping feud had wakened. But Ratcliffe fell back from them and stood apart; for his thoughts were big, and the babel of men’s voices interrupted them.

As they stood there, a portly, deep-wigged man, followed by two men-at-arms, walked the street and saw the crowd, and pushed his way among them—not easily, for the Colne folk had so lost their wonted calm that, forgetting the Sheriff was in town to-day on business of the King’s, they did not heed when he went crying, “Make way, make way, good folk,” as he strove to gain the front.

When at last he reached the clear space and saw the fallen men—when he saw Red Ratcliffe, ruddy now from his hair downwards, standing with both hands resting on foster-brother’s haft—his pompousness deserted him for a moment, and he shrank back in horror. He was not the man to lose his self-possession for long, however, and he found voice again.

“What is this? What is this? ” he said. “Murder in the public street, and the sun scarce past its noon.”

“Nay,” said Ratcliffe quietly, not stirring from his place. “’Tis no murder, but justice long delayed.”

“Justice? Justice? / have control of the King’s justice in this country. What do you mean, sir ? ”

“That these three, or their folk, killed mine aforetime. Now I have killed them. That is the justice I’ve been bred to understand.”

The Sheriff was nonplussed. This stalwart fellow not only confessed himself the slayer, but he spoke as one who in very truth believed himself the instrument of a righteous cause. There was no hesitancy about him, but rather a subdued exaltation, and his eyes met those of the Sheriff with honesty, if with a certain half-contemptuous grimness. For King’s law and King’s Sheriffs seemed little matters to this man who had had twenty years with nature, with Joseph, and with Bathsheba.

There was a pause, and the Colne folk—most of all the fair-haired lass whose injury he had wiped out so quickly— looked at Red Ratcliffe, with his splendid bulk, his indifference to the law, as if he came among them" from the far-off days, which many there remembered not by hearsay only, when the Ratcliffes bred their heroes for the fight, when there was never a market held on Thursdays but brought its tale of prowess.

At last the Sheriff beckoned to his men-at-arms, and the two of them pressed forward to his side.

“This man is found red-handed here. Arrest him in the King’s name,” he cried.

Ratcliffe, not sorry to enjoy the relief of all this child’s play after the grave work was done, stretched his arms wide above his head—foster-brother resting at his knee—and yawned.

“’Tis true,” he said. “I am caught red-handed. Arrest me at your pleasure.”

The Sheriff’s men did not move forward, nor did their master repeat his command; there was something so quietly menacing about this long man with the axe that was as high as his own shoulders almost, that the time seemed one for prudence. Had he not met three already and worsted them—they more skilled in sword-play, likely, than his own escort?

“Your name, your name? ” said the Sheriff, irritably.

“Ratcliffe, at your service—and these are Waynes,” the other answered grimly.

“And your abode? ”

“Ait the Edge of No Man’s Land.”

“Tut-tut, I am not one to jest with, sir. I—

“Nor do I jest. First there are the broken lands, behind Ling Crag; then Wildwater, where the wilderness begins; and behind the wilderness again is No Man’s Laid, at the edge of which I dwell. You will need more men than two, or twenty, to reach out yonder, Sheriff.” “What is this of Wayne and Ratcliffe? ” went on the Sheriff, after another disconcerted pause. “To be sure, we had trouble aforetime with some feud of the two houses; but the feud is dead—dead long ago, I tell you, sir—and these are times of law and order.”

“To be sure,” said Ratcliffe, in the same even voice; “to be sure, the feud is dead, or thought to be. One of the three lying here was saying as much not long since, c.nd yet he was mistaken. And now, Sheriff, with your leave I’ll get to saddle again, for I have far to ride.”

The Sheriff, swayed between duty, pride, and the certainty that it was useless to withstand this Ratcliffe giant, turned savagely upon the crowd.

“In the King’s name! ” he cried. “I bid all and sundry of you aid the Sheriff in this matter, on peril of your liberty.”

None answered, though none made himself conspicuous beyond his fellows by too evident refusal—save only Nick o’ Trawdon, the ne’er-do-weel and jester of the market, who laughed out loud.

“’Tis only the skirts of law and order that brush us here at Colne, Sheriff,” he muttered. “ We’re over near to the broken lands, and we love a Ratcliffe better than a score of King’s men.”

The words, rash as they were, aroused a hum of approbation, such as warned the Sheriff to let Nick’s laugh go by unnoticed. And then Red Ratcliffe whistled to his horse, and the beast came through the crowd to him; and in a moment he was cantering, without farewell of any sort, along the street.

“Ye’ll hear of this again, ye Colne folk,” stammered the Sheriff. “To your houses now, and when I come this way again, ’twill be with a company behind me.”

The crowd split up into fives and sixes, scarce pretending to hear the Sheriff’s “To your houses! ”—a command so greatly in excess of his prerogative that only spleen could have driven him to issue it. And he, for his part, was glad to get away with what dignity he could muster, and swear softly at his men-at-arms, on their way to the inn, because they had hung back.

“’Twas not that we played the coward, Sir John,” said one of them, stung at last into retort. “We know something of a sword, but not enough to meet a red-headed devil’s giant with' an axe; and, though we had our pistols, the powder all got wet—as you know, Sir John—when we fell into a bog while guiding you to Colne.”

The Sheriff was a just man according to his lights, and he knew that these honest rogues of his were no cowards— nay, he knew that, had he been in their place, he would not have risked Red Ratcliffe’s axe.

“Well, well,” he answered gruffly. “We’ll come again another day, with dry powder and a greater company. ’Tis not alone this Ratcliffe with the axe that we shall have to meet, unless I mistake the temper of the Colne folk. Pest to him! They were ever a thorn in the side of law and order.”

Red Ratcliffe, riding fast toward home meanwhile, brought his horse to a sudden halt, and turned to glance behind him. In the hurry of the fight, the press of thoughts that followed, the coming of the Sheriff, he had not once asked himself how it had fared with the Wayne who had fallen, not under the axe-blade, but under its long haft. The other two were dead, of a certainty, and the third should be so—yet what if his skull were thicker than the ordinary, and he lay stunned only and not dead?

“Fool, fool, that I was!” he muttered. “The Lean Man would have made sure—and yet—how could I have killed him when he lay there like a log and could not answer for himself? ”

He halted for awhile, perplexed and undecided. The Ratcliffe lesson had been grafted too surely on his character to lie unremembered now, and that lesson bade him kill a Wayne always, whether his adversary could lift an arm in self-defence or not. He knew, too, that his state was desperate, that he was one against them all, that generosity was a crime against the dead men of his house who cried unceasingly for vengeance. Had not the Waynes roused laughter many a time among their enemies, in the old days, by showing courtesy to the fallen? Was he, in this desperate latter day, to fall into the like snare?

Once he was on the point of riding back to Colne, and finishing the work, if finishing it needed. And then his young, hot generosity cried out against him and would not let him do this thing. Deep as Bathsheba’s lessons had gone, they could not touch the boy’s nature which was passionate and fierce and unrelenting, which yet was free of cruelty for sake of cruelty, a trait which had disfigured all save a very few of the dead Ratcliffes. Nor could these lessons touch that curious, wild racing of the blood which the Parson’s Lass had taught him yesterday; and in these two matters, where nature was at issue with long training, there were stormier fights awaiting Ratcliffe of Black House, may be, than the battle he had won to-day.

“It may be he is dead,” said the lad, and headed straight for home again. “The blow was heavy, and foster-brother carries death in haft as well as blade. I’ll leave him to his chance.”

Behind him, in Colne market-place, Shameless Wayne was waking dizzily from out his swoon. Across his forehead were bands of pain, as if it were fastened round about with wires thrice-heated in the furnace; his throat ached with an intolerable dryness; and when at last he forced his eyelids open, he saw the street, the moving folk, the cattle and the sheep, like so many dancing heat-waves seen far out across the ling upon a moorland summer’s day. The axe had missed its full purpose by that little which spelt torture now for Shameless Wayne.

The crowd was shifting restlessly about, never straying far from the place where the three bodies lay. And a great disquiet was upon them, now that the fever-heat had cooled, now that the living Ratcliffe had gone from them, with his assurance and his strength, now that the dead men only kept them company. In the forefront of the crowd stood the lass from whom Wayne of Ludworth had snatched a kiss not long ago, with Nick o’ Trawdon at her side; and the way of his eyes with her showed plain enough the tenderness that lay between them.

“The man is dead who kissed thee, heart o’ mine,” Nick whispered.

She turned with a shudder from a second glance which, against her will, she had given the fallen three.

“Yet ’twas not thou that killed him—and it should have been,” she answered, with a flash of the spirit she had shown the Waynes.

“How could I? I had never a sword, nor a cudgel even, and there were three of them, all armed. Besides, Red Ratcliffe was in at them before I could bestir myself.”

“Yet it was thy quarrel, Nick—and thou’rt a ne’er-do-weel, when all is said; and father was right, may be, when he warned me to have few dealings, or none at all, with thee. Nick, Nick, wilt ever understand that a lass likes her man to do something? Just now, when I saw this Ratcliffe whirl and swing his axe above his head, I thought ’twas he, not thou, I loved.”

Nick o’ Trawdon, with his thin six feet of height that tempted him to stoop more than a man should, stood straighter on a sudden; and into his whimsical grey eyes there stole a look of purpose new to them. He understood, faintly as yet, that the girl complained, not just of to-day’s inaction, but of the something that had always been lacking in their courtship; she had given him, in brief, a battle of some sort to fight for her, as a woman must do always before the care of herself is given happily, and given once for all.

“Say that again, my lass,” he muttered.

She looked at him, and his serious, strong air became him better, she told herself, than all his wonted rollick.

“I said I was near to loving Ratcliffe, with his big red head,” she answered, slow and clear. " I say now that you must give me the same excuse as he. Nick, I’m fond of thee—surely I’ve given proof of that—but I ask myself, and get no answer—what hast done with thy life till now? ”

The scene had a grimness of its own; for, just as Shameless Wayne and the woman who was now his wife had stood amid the slaughter and the horror of Wildwater, twenty years ago, and let their love take precedence of death, so now these two, with the restful dead before them, with the restless crowd close-pressing in their rear,- were full of the tenderness—not love as yet, because not proven—which lay between them.

“There’s no way shows as yet,” said Nick o’ Trawdon— “but a way will show itself, or else I’ll make one.”

“Are you not kin to the Ratcliffes on the mother’s side? Hearken, lad! To-day is the beginning, but the end is far off. This bonnie Ratcliffe with his axe will do much, and suffer much, and risk much, before another year has gone. Canst help him in the fight? ”

“Ay,” said Nick o’ Trawdon simply, and he spoke from heart-faith, not from the book of reason.

There was a silence; and in the midst of it Shameless Wayne awoke to the anguish of his wound, and stirred, and looked about him with eyes that saw only heat-waves playing up and down Colne market.

“By God, he lives! ” muttered Dick.

" Know’st thou who he is? ” said the girl.

" Nay, I know none of them. My hair is reddish, and I’ve kept wide of the Wayne haunts.”

“’Tis Shameless Wayne himself—he that fought the Lean Man and worsted him. I would he had died here, Nick, for neither thou nor I could kill a man lying helpless at our feet.”

“Water—water—love of the Virgin, give me water,” moaned Wayne.

Nick o’ Trawdon did not stop to weigh the matter in his mind, but ran to the Crown and Angel tavern and returned with a mug, half filled with rum and half with well-water. Gently, as if he were ministering to a friend, he took the man’s head on his knees and aided him to drink; and the crowd looked on, and growled, and asked why any man in Colne should help a Wayne to live.

“’Tis breeding sorrow for us, may be,” said the girl. “Say, Nick, could’st do what I dare not—run him through the side with his own sword, and make an end of it? ”

Nick looked up at her. “Nay, lass, I couldn’t,” he answered, “for I should never look a good man in the face again.”

“Art right, Nick o’ mine. May God forgive me for the thought! ”

For the first time in their courtship she knew that she was weaker than her man. Perhaps it was a foreshadowing of what was soon to come; but sure it was that her heart beat high and steadfastly, and her eyes rested on Nick o’ Trawdon with something of the look she had given Red Ratcliffe earlier in the day. Wayne, meanwhile, drank, and drank again; and they knew, watching the returning clearness of his eyes, that they were risking much, though they dared do no less than help him back to life.

Nick o’ Trawdon looked at her, and they had no secrets now from one another.

“Never heed, lass,” he whispered. “We’re doing what we must do, and we’ll just wait for what’s to follow.”

But the crowd was growing more and more impatient, and its growl was ominous. They had seen Red Ratcliffe fight, as their fathers had loved to see a Ratcliffe fight; and these two—Nick o’ Trawdon and the girl were helping a Wayne in his accursed need.

“Let him die, or kill him if he will not! ” came a sudden cry from the middle of the throng.

“Nay! ” said Nick o’ Trawdon, snatching Wayne’s sword from out its scabbard and facing round about to meet the rabble.

And Margaret, watching him, knew that he had begun to be a man.

CHAPTER VI

HOW LITTLE BAIRN CAME DOWN TO MARSH

Red Ratcliffe did not halt between Colne and Black House. His horse had wearied of waiting round about Colne market, and now, helped forward by impatience and a wish to see his stall again, he did not need the spur. And a good sight it was, so the lonely shepherds said, who watched them pass, to see them outlined clear against the blue—the big man, on the big, raking horse, the two so close a part of the one body that it seemed there was not a pair of them at all, but one.

To the broken lands they came, and to the marshes splashed with vivid green; and round about them the peewits wheeled unceasingly, crying, crying to them as Ishmael must have cried amid the wilderness. The sun got down and farther down, and dusk crept magical from out the purpling dingles; a thousand murmurs were abroad—tired murmurs, as if the day, at the end of all its toil, were stretching wearied arms and muttering a thanksgiving. Peace spread her wings above these broken lands, and the dread width and harshness of them were hidden by a veil of tenderness. Reared in the wilderness, his senses tuned from cradle-time to understand the moods of his mother-heath, Red Ratcliffe had never come so close to her as now, had never read her speech so plainly. His day’s work was done, just as hers was; there had been the garish sunlight, the task, the glow and fervour; and now there was the quiet gloaming-tide, to lull his strength to sleep, that so another day might find him strong to labour.

“Well done, Ratcliffe. Oh, lad, well done! ” That was the moor’s cry to its chosen man, and a quiet and happy thrill ran through him as he rode.

He was at the edge of No Man’s Land by this, threading the tangled way which was the only safe approach to Black House. To the right were shifting bogs, and marshes to the left; one false step would have meant danger at the least, and at the worst a cruel death. But the horse made no false step, fast as they were going, and by-and-by the width of Lonesome Pool showed near ahead. The dusk was deepening now, and a mist hung light and grey above the tarn; and in and out among the mist a Jack-o’-lanthom played, as it had played a score years since, when Mistress Ratcliffe came to bear her son in the red-room whose windows yonder frowned upon the mere.

It may be that the years were cancelled, now at this gloaming-hour; for sure it was that Red Ratcliffe lost the peace which had run beside his stirrup, and for a moment— a long and fearsome moment—he seemed to be hurrying with a sense of woe unutterable, from the phantom terrors that would not show themselves. The dead mother had left him a twofold legacy, it seemed, and no gladness in the battle, no swinging of the sharp-toothed foster-brother, could save him from these after-terrors which were not his at all, but the woman’s who had died at child-birth.

The horse felt something, if not all, of Red Ratcliffe’s sudden terror, as a beast will who lives close in sympathy with his master. He whinnied with disquiet, and turned his head about in question, heedless for the moment of the dangers of their bridle-way.

Red Ratcliffe killed his fears, as he had done aforetime, and laughed, and patted the beast’s neck.

“We’ve won our fight, thou fool,” he murmured. “Why worry thyself to find trouble? ”

And the other accepted his reproof in a horse’s patient fashion, though it was Ratcliffe’s terror, not his own, that was at fault. Together they skirted Lonesome Pool, and Bathsheba and Joseph—who had hearkened eagerly, be sure, for the master’s homecoming—were standing at the hall-door to welcome them. And Joseph held the stirrup-cup aloft; for tradition bade the Ratcliffe serving-folk come always to welcome home the master with a cup.

Bathsheba held a candle—one hand shielding it from the little sideways wind that came from the Pool—and its light fell full upon the horse and man and axe. And axe and man and horse were red as the feud that they had freshly lit at Colne, for Ratcliffe had not stayed to wipe the stains from himself or from his foster-brother.

“Good hap! ” she cried, her woman’s dread of blood quenched altogether by the long yearning for the feud to re-awaken.

“It is good hap,” the other answered, with a sober laugh. “’Tis begun, Bathsheba! Joseph, this foster-brother has a fault. He bites too deep, and the second man comes at you before you’ve well cleared the blade.” “’Tis a good fault,” chuckled Joseph. “Oh, ay, ’tis a good fault in an axe, to bite too deep. Come you down from the saddle, master, and . stretch yourself across the lang-settle, for I warrant you’ve earned a rest.”

“I’ll fare to the well-spring first, Joseph, and get a little of the red away before I eat.”

Joseph nodded briskly, then took the horse to stable, and groomed him, whistling all the while with great content. He did not care to ask any question yet awhile as to the details; it was enough for him that the patience of the years had been rewarded, that the master had proved himself well-fitted for the battle when it came. To the younger Waynes, sheltered among less broken lands, with senses dulled by twenty years of luxury to the finer calls of a world behind their own—to the younger Waynes it would have seemed strange that Joseph and Bathsheba should both accept last night’s fore-warnings, to-day’s quick answer, with a quietness so assured. For Joseph, prone at all times to think more of farming matters than of ghosts, had shared Bathsheba’s sense that Colne would this day see great doings such as had not stirred the town since the Ratcliffes perished in the last big fight.

And while he groomed the horse, Bathsheba took the master, after he had washed, not into the parlour, but into the sweet, firelit kitchen, where the peats were banked high up the chimney, where the hooded chair sat snugly in its comer and every bit of household gear spoke cheerily of comfort.

“See, ye, master, I made shift to get your supper here,” she said. “’Twas homelier-like, I thought, and I could bake the hearth-cakes for you as you watched—’twas ever a joy to you, I call to mind, to watch them in the making.”

Red Ratcliffe stretched himself to the top of his six-foot-four, and then sat down to table; for the quiet of his welcome, and the firelit warmth and homeliness of the old kitchen, were dear to him to-night, as such things can only be after hard battle and long toil.

“Trust thee to know the way of a man’s comfort, Bathsheba,” he said, falling to upon the good cheer waiting for him.

“When cattle are kittle, us poor women must find some way to drive them,” the other answered, with the tartness that was crisp and wholesome as a wind from off the peat.

She had a bowl before her, and was mixing cream and flour into a dough—Ratcliffe watching her the while, and going back in mind to childhood’s days, which would ever hold for him this picture of Bathsheba, the raftered beams above her head, the ruddy glow of the firelight on her capable, bare arms, the brown bowl, sacred to the making of the hearth-cakes, standing before her yonder on the side-table. Still busy with his food, he watched her, too, take out the dough, and make it into little rounded cakes, and place these in the hottest of the peat-ash, and take them out again when they were ready.

“They wear the same brown look as of old about them, Bathsheba,” he said; “and they’re flaked, just as they always were, like little brown leaves in autumn.”

And in truth the cakes, made in Bathsheba’s fashion and flavoured with the peat-odour, were as dainty fare as any man need ask; and Red Ratcliffe finished the last of the brave dish-full, as if he had not proved his manhood once for all, as if he were a ladling still and fond of the things of appetite. He had killed two men to-day, if not a third; but the time had not yet come for him to feel the sick reality of his work at Colne; for the present, he knew only that he had struck hard and true in obedience to the fathers’ call, and that his ride had sharpened hunger.

Joseph came in as he was finishing, and his eye dwelt tenderly and proudly on the master.

“I’ve groomed foster-brother, as well as the horse,” he said. “Ay, I’ve made him bright and clean again, and given him just a stroke or so of the whetstone. By the Lean Man, he’s a lovesome tool to work with, master! ”

Red Ratcliffe moved to the lang-settle, and stretched his bulk along it, while Bathsheba brought him a measure and set it down upon the floor beside him. Made of their own rye the spirit was, and for twenty years it had lain in the barrel here, scarce touched as yet; for ale at usual times was more to the master’s liking, and Joseph counted spirits “a drink for gentle-folk, and over heady at that.”

“A lovesome tool? ” echoed Ratcliffe, with a quiet laugh. “’Tis no tool at all, but just a part of one’s right hand. Should’st hear him sing, Joseph, when the battle-hunger takes him.”

And then the tale of the day’s doings was drawn out from him, not easily; for the lad was learning that reluctance to talk of his slain which comes to every fighter. Yet Joseph gleaned enough, and Bathsheba gleaned enough, to know the way of it at Colne; and a gladness, terrible in its surety and in its lack of pity, came to both of them. Bathsheba was no longer the woman of her hands, bustling about the master’s welfare; she was a Ratcliffe, thrilled by the dead folk of her race who still lived on to whisper kill!

“So the Lean Man came home, they say, to this very house when his first fight was over! ” she cried. “He was in hiding then, in Black House here—but you know it well as I, master—it was built long,long ago, to give shelter when the Waynes were uppermost. And the Lean Man came here in his youth when times had fallen ill; and he brought the long-hafted axe with him, and ’twas my own mother’s mother welcomed him and listened to the story of his battle. He should have kept to the axe, say I, instead of letting the prosperous days wean him from its use; ay, ay, he would have been quick among us to this day if he’d not forsaken the long foster-brother.”

Red Ratcliffe sat upright on the settle, his eyes big and luminous. “The Lean Man is quick among us,” he said, “for I saw him walk Colne market not many hours ago.” Old Joseph looked drily at him. “Some folk are born to see, I reckon, and some are born blind on that side of things; for my part, I’d liefer handle the big axe than see a score of ghosties.”

“I saw him; that is all,” Red Ratcliffe answered.

“To be sure,” murmured Bathsheba. “’Twould be unnatural if he’d not come back to hearten you, not come back to see foster-brother swing aloft and to hear the purring song of him. Purrs like cat with mouse, does foster-brother, so I’ve heard the old folk say that knew his ways. As for Joseph yonder, he lives in a stone-walled field, as I tell him pretty well every day; for me, ’tis the free moor I was reared to, and I thank God for giving me the Sight. Ah, hearken, lad,” she broke off, with one of her quick changes, “d’ye think I did not know that it was faring well with you to-day? The picture was all broken, and I could not see what head the axe came down upon, but I knew that you stood high and unafraid.”

“Yet Joseph taught me how to swing the axe,” said Ratcliffe, smiling at the grizzled comrade who had been with him, sun and shower, these twenty years.

And Joseph nodded, tongue-tied, yet sensible that his own work, too, was recognised, that his shortcomings, so constantly brought under notice by the goodwife, were after all no real blot upon his record. Had not the master fought to-day with men, had not the training of the years been justified?

“What of the third Wayne—the one you tapped with the axe-haft? ” he asked, after a long silence.

“He’s alive, or dead—I did not stay to ask,” said the master, knowing well what was to come.

“You did not stay to ask? ” cried Joseph, startled from his wonted calm. “The Lean Man always stayed to ask, and I fancied I had bred you to the same gospel.”

“He lay there at my feet, Joseph. He was the answer to your gospel. I could not kill him, and there was an end of it.”

“Lord God,” cried Bathsheba—and there was tragedy deep, not-to-be-denied, in the air of this woman who so short a while ago had baked hearth-cakes for the little lad, grown big, whom she had fostered. “Lord God, you dared to stand there, and remember what the Ratcliffes owe the Waynes, and not make sure? ”

“I dared not kill him, Bathsheba. He lay so still and quiet.”

“Then you followed your, own whimsies—I’ll say it, whether you be the Ratcliffe heir or no—you followed your own whimsies, and you forget that blood asks blood. Oh, Mother of God, is it a time to play the maid, and shrink, and look aside? The Waynes are to be killed, by open fight, or stealth, .or any way that offers. And if you shrink, the Lean Man, who blesses you to-day, will curse you till you die in misery.”

The years had gathered their waters to a head to-night. Bathsheba, who alone knew what Mistress Ratcliffe had endured, how bravely she had suffered all, how unfalteringly she had given her dying will that the boy should be reared to kill and spare not—Bathsheba could see no issue but the one. Perhaps, if her own boy had lived, she would have come nearer to remembrance of her younger days, when the heart was readier for pity than for hate; but her boy had died, almost at birth, and she had closed her heart, she thought, once and for all.

The years had gathered their waters to a head to-night, for Ratcliffe as for Bathsheba. The sudden terror he had felt not long ago, by Lonesome Water, was not to be put away as lightly as he thought; and now the agony of Mistress Ratcliffe, when she fled a score years since to bear him to his doom, came on him with a new, surprising vigour. The Lean Man’s curse, invoked by Bathsheba, was a very present menace; he saw with the Lean Man’s eyes, and knew that he should have struck a second time to-day at Colne; he was learning, too, the last lesson of the brave, that they must come to courage through extreme and sickening dread.

Joseph pulled at his ale-flagon; but Bathsheba, as women do, sought for the lad’s feelings in his face, when she had better have been blind to outward signs. What she saw there frightened her ; it was as if the terrors of the generations were gathered into her hand, as when women go a -harvesting in the wake of the goodman with his sickle and hold the gold-ripe barley to their breasts. Terror— blank, shivering terror—was in the face of this foster-son of hers who had lately killed his enemies; and she was sorry, as women are when it is over-late, that she had seen this thing.

It was only for a moment, and then Ratcliffe was his own man again.

“Bathsheba,” he said, with the quietness that was strong as a steady dawn above the moor. “ Bathsheba, fill me another measure. I have done what I have done, and left undone the rest—yet somehow I know that I have earned my leisure.”

It was Joseph who broke the ensuing pause, while Bathsheba obeyed the master she had almost cursed.

“Say, master, of what fashion was this Wayne you spared? ” he asked.

“Tall, as men are reckoned—forty or so, at a rough guess—a big and handsome face, with a look of drink and tiredness in it.”

“God, ’twas Shameless Wayne himself! ” muttered Bathsheba. “Wayne, whose house you went to look at yesternight, when you met Parson’s Lass upon the moor, and thought her better than any maid I’ve seen in my long life.”

“Well, he is dead, or is not. I cannot tell,” said Rat-cliffe. “What will be, will be, Bathsheba—but I’m glad I spared him if he’s yet alive.”

“The maid taught you that,” snapped Bathsheba; “Parson’s Lass, with her hair of gold, and her dainty, south-bred ways.”

“May be. She was the sweetest thing I ever saw on Marshcotes Moor; she could teach any lesson well, I think. And now good-night, for I’m fain of my bed, I own.”

“What of the morrow?” asked Joseph, never long forgetful of the farming-side of the lone life they shared, these three, at Black House. “There’s the four-acre field to plough, if we’re to get the oats sown before winter comes.”

“The field must wait, or thou must plough it by thyself,” said Ratcliffe, halting for a moment at the door. “I shall ride to Wildwater to-morrow, to tell the old house what I’ve done.”

It was after the master had gone up to bed, with sleep and weariness upon him, that Bathsheba gave outlet to her feelings.

“Joseph,” said she, “this Parson’s Lass will make trouble by and by.”

“I’m not thinking of trouble just to-night, Bathsheba,” the other answered sturdily. “The lad is right to go to Wildwater, for we’ve taught him what the stones say yonder, and the crumpled beams, and the ling that’s springing up already between the flooring-stones. Sakes, what does the farm matter just this once? Foster-brother has had his way, and the dead folk at Wildwater will be glad of the tale young master brings them.”

And so it seemed that the influence of the dead took hold at times of Joseph also, though Bathsheba to-night would not applaud him for the feeling.

“Bundle o’ rushes! ” she cried fretfully. “D’ye think he goes to the old house for any reason but the one? He’ll go beyond Wildwater, as he did before, in hope of meeting Parson’s maid upon the moor. ’Tis just these slight, bemannered, gold-haired maids that trick the strong men always.”

“Why should she trick him? ” demanded Joseph. “I was young myself once, and so wast thou, lass, and the maidens stiffen a man’s sinews time and time, as well as loosen them at other times, if I remember aught.”

“She’s southern-bred. Oh, ay, I know about her, though gossip runs far and runs tired before it gets to Black House here. The old Parson is a foreigner, and always was, as I remember, from his first coming; had little money and big kinsfolk down in the Low Country; held himself above us country folk.”

“Nay, lass, nay! ” protested Joseph. “He’s been a good man and a just man, according to his lights. Dost not remember how he railed at Shameless Wayne and his wife Janet when they came to kirk together? ’Twas only yesternight the master heard thee praise him for it.”

“Yet the Parson is proud, I tell thee, Joseph, and this lass must needs go to her big folk down in London yonder. They say the King was pleased to notice her—and King’s notice of a lass, from all I’ve heard, is not as decent as it might be. And she’s but seventeen.”

“Smaller years, smaller call to blame.”

“Thou’rt braver than thyself to-night, Joseph. ’Tis not thy wont to answer when Bathsheba tells thee what she knows.”

“Likely. I have heard how the foster-brother sang at Colne, and I do not fear thee, Bathsheba, somehow.” Bathsheba looked at him, and wondered; he had been tame in her hand until to-night, yet now he was a wild bird of the marshes; she did not understand that, after twenty years of quiet, he was a man again.

“That other maid,” she went on, shifting her battleground, “the one whom Wayne of Ludworth kissed—and the master, poor fool, seems never to have guessed that kisses come and go!—he must needs take her quarrel on him because her hair was light in colour. He did not mean to tell the reason, but it slipped from him unawares as he lay talking yonder on the lang-settle; this maid of Colne was like the Parson’s Lass, as a dog-rose favours the big blooms that grow down yonder in the valley-lands—and so he took her quarrel on him.”

“Very like. Very like, Bathsheba, lass. ’Tis the way of a man, as I have seen it, and the way of a man is the way of the world, when all’s said and done.”

Again the goodwife eyed her husband. “The way of the world is the way of its women, Joseph,” said she.

“Ay, so the women think,” the old man chuckled. “The fancy has tickled me, Bathsheba, more than once or twice.”

And again Bathsheba shifted her ground, since few women fight when they are worsted. Perhaps she liked her goodman better for his spirit.

“Like mistress, like maid, they say. This maid at Colne —I knew her from the master’s talk of her—she’s daughter to Phineas "Fletcher at the Crown and Angel. He’s a bit like Marshcotes Parson, is Phineas, too poor of gear, and too rich of his kinsfolk. Well, naught would do but Margaret Fletcher must go as maid to Parson’s Lass, till her father got so driven that he had to call her back from service.”

“Well, thou wast foster-sister, and I was foster-brother, to the Ratcliffes, and we wedded for that reason,” said Joseph slowly. “I’d have liked to see the master wedded to a Ratcliffe, had there been such ’ for him. As ’tis, he’ll marry Parson’s Lass, I fancy.”

“Bundle o’ rushes! ” Bathsheba interrupted, for the second time to-night. It was, indeed, her most familiar expression of contempt. “He’ll want a fine, upstanding lass, will the master, with honest red hair to her head, and the Ratcliffe look about her. We’ve seen what comes of marrying into another house, by what’s happened to Shame- less Wayne and his cursed wife. Hast ever set eyes on that boy of theirs, Joseph? ”

“Nay, not as I know of; but I’ve heard he’s just a weakling.”

“Just a weakling? Ay, just that. I saw him once, and only once, and it made me laugh to see what sort of finish they had put to their brave wedlock. Thin and narrow, with shoulders that drop into a heap, like, and his eyes as full of ‘ Don’t in mercy strike me ’ as a dog’s—that’s young Wayne of Marsh House, Joseph, and I tell thee that I laughed to see him.”

“’Twas like to be,” said Joseph, whose outlook upon Janet Ratcliffe was ever grim and unrelenting. “Ay, ’twas just like to be, I’m fond of speaking ill against no woman, myself, for I’ve a fondness for ’em all; but I will say this of Mistress J anet—that when she wedded Shameless Wayne she lit hell-fire in her own soul for good and all, and weil deserved to do.”

Bathsheba had been looking at the peats, down-crumbling on the hearth, but now she raised her eyes to Joseph’s.

“Man,” she said hoarsely, “it makes me sicken when I think of what they did, those two. Wayne went through fire and water for her, so he boasted openly when the Parson spoke against their marriage. Ay, so he did— but the water ran as red as Wayne and Ratcliffe blood could dye it. And they came together through the red of it, and their son—their heir, Joseph, save the mark !—lives on to show them what they did.”

And this same son—though Bathsheba did not know it— was lying on the open moor between Wildwater and Marsh-cotes; was telling himself that he had all but killed a kinsman of his own to-day; was wondering, not for the first time in his lonely life, why God had set him in the midst of a world which so perplexed him. Could Joseph and his wife have seen the lad now, as he lay with his sleepless eyes upon the stars and listened to that underfret among the ling which comes always from out the silence of a moorland night, they might have thought less of their abhorrence of Shameless Wayne and Janet, and more of the victim of that wedlock—the wedlock whose altar had dripped ruddy and unclean. Ay, surely, down in that mother’s corner of the heart which nowadays she tried to latch securely—the corner which had peeped from its prison-house to-night when she made hearth-cakes for her boy—surely Bathsheba would not have laughed to see this stripling Wayne so weak. Surely, too, she would have asked herself—as the boy was asking himself with fierce rebellion—what had he sown that he should reap this bitter harvest of shame, self-doubt, and separation from those who were his kinsmen and should have been his friends?

But Bathsheba and Joseph, as they went up to bed, thought nothing of the lad’s view of it, but only of the feud. J oseph halted for a moment in the hall, took down the big axe, sleek and shining and well-groomed as the master’s horse, and held it in his hands awhile.

“Good brother! Good lad! ” he murmured, stroking it as if indeed it were a horse that waited for the grooming. “’Twas a rare bite you had at Colne to-day, and there’ll be others by-and-by.”

Above them, in the Red Room where he had been bom to the feud, the master slept, dreamless and untroubled. The tall clock on the stairway ticked out the peaceful moments. Only the wind was restless round about Black House—that, and a wandering night-bird—disturbed, belike, by a wild-cat—which plained and whimpered round the chimney-stacks.

The head of the Ratcliffes slept in great content; but the heir of the Wayne headship, lying yonder on the moor, had no such ease of soul and body. Red Ratcliffe had a lonely fight before him, to be sure; but at the least he knew himself straight-bred, a Ratcliffe born of Ratcliffes on either side. Young Wayne of Marsh had no such solace. His hair was Ratcliffe, his name was Wayne, his body was a thing to laugh at when measured by the stalwart men about him; moreover—and this bit deeper than foster-brother had done at Colne to-day—there was a slur upon his birth. It was as if he had been born out of wedlock, so far as open sneers went, and covert gibes more hard to bear. And deeper yet—surely God knew the agony of it, and was only waiting to reward the pain—deeper yet struck the knowledge that his mother was despised among the Waynes. His mother, with her beauty free and splendid yet after twenty years of hell; his mother, with that courage and that straight, clean look of the fine eyes which reminded him at all times of deep, deep waters, reflecting wide and truthful skies; his mother, to whom, before his dawning manhood made him shamed to come to her with troubles, he had brought his troubles and the long, corroding sneers and insults of the years—insults which the boy feels more keenly than the man, may be, because he cannot shake them off. It was a discourteous mention of his mother that had brought out his sword to-day and had made him cut his cousin through the side, that had made him see the red of battle as clearly as ever a stalwart Wayne or Ratcliffe of them all could do.

And now he lay and pondered, here on the quiet moor, with its underfret of restlessness, with Charley’s Wain and all the stars of heaven bright above him, with his loneliness and sullen doubt of God for only company. His mother to be slighted! Ay, that found the manhood hiding under his lank body; for he was not of the feud, but he could fight for the woman whose love of him, and care of him—in spite of all her sorrow that he should be framed so weak—had been the only teaching that could reach his heart. His mother! Why, the name was magical; he could not choose but fight for her, and he, who was compact of fears, had no dreads at all when, as a few hours ago, he was compelled to prove his love for her.

Round and about the boy’s thoughts went, seeking shelter and finding none—round and about, as the stars wheeled overhead, yet faster and less tranquil than the motion of the stars. He had to fight his cousin; he had to long to kill him, if only to wipe out that lying sneer; and yet—and yet—Wayne of Marsh his father, claiming obedience to the law, old, old by now, that the Wayne who lifted hand against a Wayne was guilty of a crime too monstrous to be thought of? If his father had only spoken kindly to him once, if he could once have held back that look of grey and passionless contempt which the boy had known throughout his life, if in one detail of his treatment of this son, bom to show the father’s sin as in a mirror—if Wayne had been in any way the man who long ago had made his name heroic wherever peat and ling looked up at the moor-sky—the boy might still have reverenced him, have halted half-way between the mother and the father, have failed to run in that groove of destiny which to-night’s anguish and reflection were graving deep.

It was but a little sign of his great pain that suddenly he stretched his arms toward the sky and cried aloud in a voice that was deeper and fiercer than his years.

“Cannot you speak, you damned, smiling stars? I cannot go back to Marsh, for I have lifted my hand against a Wayne. I cannot bide away, for the mother waits me there, and sorrows for me, and has none to help her—not even father, who loved her once, they say.”

There was a silence. The little stars smiled down on him; and he waited for the message that was slow to come; and the sweat dripped from him in his agony.

Behind him was Wildwater, with the jealous wastes of Lonesome Moor behind again; in front lay Marsh cotes with its hilly street, its gentler usages, its weaknesses that come of luxury; it seemed that this ill-shapen boy, whose fashion had made Bathsheba laugh for glee, was, as it were, the half-way guiding post ’twixt Black House and the House of Marsh. For certainly his doubts were finding a clear echo at this moment in the great hall at Marsh.

Late toward the gloaming-tide Shameless Wayne had ridden home, had blundered from the saddle, had called for a long measure and a deep to be brought him here in hall. The wine heartened him, and he called for more;

Janet, watching with knowledge of the years gone by, knew well that Wayne would drink his fill to-night.

“How chanced it, lad, at Colne? ” she asked.

Wayne clapped a hand to his dark head, where he felt the foster-brother’s smart.

“It chanced ill, Janet,” he said. “Two of the three of ns were killed, and I am here alive through Ratcliffe mercy.”

“Ratcliffe mercy? I never heard of it before.”

In Janet’s voice there was a bitterness which Wayne had heard too often; it was as if she knew the faults of her own people, yet counted them so many virtues; it was as if she taunted him, out of the great sickness of her heart, because they had fancied they could bridge the feud by love.

“Nor I,” he answered gravely. “Nor do I like it when it comes, this Ratcliffe mercy. I had rather lie cold in Colne Street yonder than be alive to thank their pity.”

Janet found her womanhood upon the sudden. The fret and terror of Wayne’s going—for she had loved him more deeply, it may be, because the barriers reared themselves so red between them—the after-trouble touching her son’s sword-fight with his cousin—had made her weak to the call of her own heart. Without a word she came into Wayne’s arms, and reached up her lips to his.

“Ned, I love you through it all,” she said, in answer, not to what had passed between them at their greeting, but in reply to the fiery years gone by.

It was many a day since Wayne and she had come together in this wise; and now again, as on the day, a score years ago, when he and she had cried wildly to their God that love bridges all, they lay in each other’s arms, and kissed like lad and lass, and, for their little moment, found life beautiful. But their son, out yonder with his eyes upon the stars, did not find sweetness in this life, and perhaps his anguish reached them ; for they left their kiss half-spoken, and fell apart, and looked at one another wistfully.

“Ned, what chanced at Colne? ” she asked again.

“A red-headed man came at us with an axe—a tool of the Lean Man’s in his younger days, my father told me— and killed Wayne of Ludworth before I could run in to help him. I was in time to save the second, so I thought— and I slipped and caught the axe’s haft on my skull as I was running in to strike.”

“Would I liefer have you dead than quick, I wonder? ” said Janet, looking gravely at him.

“Would I liefer be dead or quick, dear lass? I do not know.”

Again her arms went round him, and they were lad and lass again, as God lets all folk be, just time and time.

“’Tis thou, dear lad—just thou—till the red finish of it all,” she said.

Not in their early love-days, not in their forbidden prime of love, had they known the gladness of this moment. The red finish was assured, but they gathered meanwhile what flowers they could from the broken fields of life.

“There have been two fights to-day,” said Janet, by-and-by. “The boy—our boy—has broken the Wayne law and thrust his kinsman through the side.”

Shameless Wayne again pressed both hands tight about his aching head, and in and about the dizziness there played a remembrance of the days when he, too, had not done well at all.

“He was ever a fool,” he snapped, borne down by his own troubles.

“He was what we made him—you and I, my husband. And he played a better blade than any of your sword-proud Waynes.”

Again the taunt. Again the joy in a Wayne’s defeat. The lessons of the Lean Man, who once had loved and spoiled her, could not be unlearned by Janet in a moment; like the lad out yonder on the moor, she would of her own free will be traitorous to none, and yet there were two loyalties that fought within her at these times—loyalty to her goodman, and loyalty to those who had been blood of her own blood.

“Who taught him sword-craft? ” Wayne demanded, wearily.

“Your uncle of Cranshaw.”

“I am glad the lad won, at any rate, if fight he must. Where is he now, Janet? ”

“He ran up into the moor, they tell me, and has not since returned. ’Tis an old trick of his, to take his troubles to the moor.”

Wayne strode up and down with moody brows, halting now and then to snatch a gulp at his wine-flagon.

“He had better bide there,” he said grimly. “You know how strict the law is among us Waynes, Janet? In the old days, when we had stamped the Ratcliffes out, or thought we had, our men fell into idleness, and wearied of the days that brought no Ratcliffe to the fight, and took to picking quarrels with each other. And so we made a strict law, not to be broken any way.”

“You have told me of it. That was long ago; and now for the second time the Ratcliffes are not quite stamped out, for the second time a Wayne fights a Wayne-”

“For the second time there’s a long fight ahead,” Wayne interrupted, “unless we get this red-head with the axe. Say, Janet, who can he be? We made so sure of every Ratcliffe of them all that night.”

Janet looked at him in wonder, to find him speak so openly of a night that should be hidden from his sight and hers; and then she realised that his thoughts were moving forward, that he thought only of the interests of his house; and she subdued herself, remembering she was his wife, and so a Wayne.

“There were Ratcliffe wives,” she answered, “and you did not slay the women, Wayne.”

“God, how blind men are! A woman would have understood,” he cried. “Which of the women was it, I wonder, and where did she hide with this red-headed bantling who has grown «« h\& ? ”

“Was he big beyond the ordinary? ”

“He topped the biggest in Colne Market by a head, and his chest was like a bull’s.”

“There was one of the Ratcliffe women—wife of the Lean Man’s heir—and she was near to child-birth. I remember. If she’s the mother, there’s no wonderment that the lad is big of body, big of the feud, for she was a Ratcliffe to the bone of her.”

• Again their eyes met, not with the glamour of their love in them, but with the shame and degradation that they shared.

. “I know your meaning,” Wayne cried, with the weary bitterness that twice before had crept into his voice tonight. “What is our son like, you’re thinking? Oh, by the Virgin, if we had had a son like yond red-headed devil with his axe! I tell you, Janet, the thought ran through me even as I leaped to strike him.”

“We asked what could not be,” said Janet, and, though quiet, the words were as full of bitterness as Wayne’s. “How could it be, when at the altar we mocked the God who made us—ay, earned the gentle Parson’s curse, spoken in face of all the congregation? ”

Wayne paced about the hall, the wine-cup ever ready to his hand; and,, when he saw that Janet looked askance at this same cup, he laughed.

“’Twill be put away, Janet, ’twill be put away,” he cried. “To-night the old house seems full of ghosts, and dead men cursing me, and tumults of the fights to come. D’ye want a madman for a husband, or will you let me drink in peace to-night, letting the wine be my physician? ”

She understood. Nay, she filled the cup afresh for him, knowing his sorrows, and handed it to him.

“It will be put away,” she said, like a child who trusted him. “Not just to-night, but very soon. Oh, Ned— Ned, Ned, my own dear lad—you must come through your battles, for I cannot live without you.”

About the house the slim, pad-footed ghosts were stirring, and the wind was all uneasy in between the gables^overhead; yet they were two together, and they did not heed.

Into the dusk of the hall, lit only by the peat-glow, crept a frail figure, more like a brown leaf of the autumn than a woman. It was Little Bairn, Wayne’s stepmother.

“The mists have lifted for awhile, Ned,” she murmured, coming close to him, as if for protection, in the fashion he had known these twenty years and odd. “The mists have lifted, and I do not like this naked sunlight on the world.”

“Why, ’tis dark, Little Bairn. There’s no sun to frighten thee,” said Wayne, smoothing her hair, as if she had been his daughter, not his stepmother. In truth, she looked more like it; for the score years and odd had gone by her like a dream.

“Ah, but I know! The sun came out, and he was a round world of fire; and the ling was crimson-red, as if men had trampled one another to the death. And the wind —little Mother of God, it sobbed and was afraid.”

Wayne’s eyes met Janet’s, not for the first time in this night of pregnant sorrows. The Little Bairn, they knew, had never lied in these moments of clear prophecy; she did not lie to-night, they knew.

“Didst see the men who fought and trampled one another, child? ” asked Wayne.

“Only the one, and he was red as the sun itself—the red sun that maddened me.”

“Was he big? ” Wayne was driven to ask the question, though of his own will he would have let it slumber.

“Yes, big. A great man in his height and in his breadth. He carried something long, and sharp, and red, whose use I did not know.”

There was a silence, and now both Wayne and Janet heard the ghosts creep up and down, and marked the peevish, cold complaining of the wind.

“Why, Ned, the sun is hidden, and the sweet, quiet mists have crept about me once again,” murmured Little Bairn.

“What do the mists tell you, child? ” asked Wayne, a desperate weariness in his deep voice.

“That nothing matters, Ned. Oh, nothing matters, surely. The daisies grow one day above the heads of all of us.”

She reached her Ups up for a good-night kiss, in her old, quiet way, and drifted out between the blackened pillars of the door.

“It tallies, Janet, with what I felt on the way home from Colne to-day,” said Wayne, after another restless silence. “The man that saved me was red-headed as the Ratcliffe who clipped me with his axe; he had drawn my own sword, and was facing the greasy townsfolk who were crying for my death. He got me free, too, and into the saddle; and I cannot tell you why he did it, save that he had a lass beside him—a lass with kind, clean hazel eyes, and she it was who bade him save me, likely.”

“There’s an old proverb of the feud,” said Janet,^low and tremulously.

“Dost think I have not called it back to mind? Seek for trouble when a Ratcliffe saves. Ay, the Lean Man came down once on a day to this very house of Marsh to heal the feud; and I was glad of his coming, for I had killed too many men and I was weary. I listened—and what came of it? That last night of slaughter came of it, Janet, because I hearkened to the Lean Man’s cry of peace.”

“There is no peace, my husband, nor will there be till the daisies grow above us—the daisies that the Little Bairn spoke of awhile since.”

Again, their eyes met in grave and questioning trouble. And God, who ever loves brave folk, must surely have looked down upon these two, who, if they had sinned, had also learned the lesson of great honesty, great steadfastness to meet what must be met.

“What of our boy, Ned? ” she asked suddenly. “Surely you will not let him live apart from us for ever? ”

“I’ve no choice, lass. Our law is law, to-day as twenty years ago, and it says that the Wavne who lifts his hand against a Wayne, in aught save play, must go into the wilderness. See you, Janet, the feud is up again. They will say that Wayne of Marsh, who leads them, shows favour to his son and brings disaster on the house.”

“True! ” she murmured. “He must live an exile to the end—and yet—and yet—Ned, Ned, I bore him, and I can’t forget! ”

CHAPTER VII

HOW TWO AND ONE MEET AT WILDWATER

Red Ratcliffe woke beumcs on the morrow, and leaped from bed witlf 'the quickness of a man who feels there’s something to be done with his day. The night’s sleep had brought such vigour to him that, as he stood and stretched himself to the top of his insolent young strength, he seemed more like some happy giant of an older day than a man born in dread, and. weakness—bom in this very room— to play his lonely part in life.

There were sleeker men than Ratcliffe about the moors, men likelier to take the fancy of unthinking lasses; but there was none like him in that comeliness which is bred of great health, great width and height, great singleness of soul and heart.

“The feud is up! ” was his first thought, and Bath-sheba, breaking her fast in the kitchen, heard him come singing down the stair.

“Ay, that’s the spirit to start out with,” she muttered grimly, spreading the yellow, heartsome butter on her oaten bread. “He’s thinking of what chanced yesterday at Colne, and he’s merry as a throstle when the warm spring’s coming in.”

Joseph finished his breakfast-ale before replying. “Ay, lass,” he said, setting down the mug with a clatter. “Ay, he’s thinking of Colne. ’Twas the bonniest market-day I ever heard of, and there’ll be othersome to follow.”

They had their swim together, Joseph and the young master. They had their ran across the heather, their play with foster-brother, pitted against Joseph’s sword. It was a sign of the years gone by—and therefore a sure sign of the years to come—that they took no rest from the day’s tasks, though the order of their lives was changed. Heretofore they had dwelt in quietness, nursing the master’s strength and biding till the time was ripe; but now the glove was thrown to every Wayne who dwelt about the moor, and instant battle must be looked for at any moment of the day. It did not matter; they must take their swim, their run, their hour of mimic fight; for of these things, and of the discipline they taught, came strength and steady faith.

It was a sign of the new times, however, that Ratcliffe fulfilled his purpose of last night, and called for his horse as soon as breakfast was well finished. There was much to be done on the farm—matters which a week ago he would not have neglected; to-day the visit to Wildwater House seemed the first duty, for he had to tell the dead men of his race how swiftly and how well the day had run at Colne.

Bathsheba watched him mount and ride away, foster-brother peeping snugly from his saddle, and then she turned to Joseph.

“May the good God keep Parson’s Lass away,” she said, her last night’s doubts returning.

“God have his own will in the matter,” answered Joseph, with the new-born courage that surprised his goodwife. “If thou think’st to keep pigeons from the com-stooks, or a lad as grown and lusty as the master from some lass or other, thou’rt just day-dreaming, Bathsheba. What ails this Parson’s Lass that she’s not as good as another? ”

“She’s southern bred, and pranksome therefore. They lie over soft and lap too much rich cream down yonder in the Low Country, and I trust none of them.”

“And yet there’s no great harm in cream. I’ve seen the master thrive on it, and may be one here and there about the South is well-set-up and likely. ’Twould be unchancy queer, Bathsheba, if there were no good folk reared south of Lonesome Moor.”

Bathsheba turned on him with a sparkling eye and a tongue that would have cowed him before these new, sweet days of feud had come.

“Just hearken to me, Joseph,” she said. “You’re plain as any oak tree, and a man would call you hard, to look at you; yet you’re soft as a shifting bog when a lass comes by your way. The master had fine talk of Parson’s Lass—her hair was this and that, and her face was that and this, and she was all a maid new-come from wonderland— and I watched thee soften to his talk. Shame on thee, at thy years, Joseph, to go softening toward a maid thou’st never seen.” .

“I’ve a fancy for her, all the same; but we’ll judge better, Bathsheba, when master brings her home as wife and all. For I have a feeling he’ll do that one day.”

She looked at him as if he were some other than her goodman, known and flouted through the years.

“Joseph,” she murmured, “what has come to thee? ”

He laughed. “Nay, I cannot tell thee, lass! The feud is up, and the master’s big and quick to strike, and the old days seem surely coming back. Let him meet Parson’s Lass upon the moor, and welcome; she’ll may be teach him more than ever I could do.”

Bathsheba knew, from the straightforward, fearless way of him, that he was right; and yet she had never gauged that truth so difficult for women to understand—the truth that a good lass may lead where stronger folk would drive in vain. She was perplexed by Joseph’s courage; and so she flicked her apron in disdain and went indoors.

“Bundle o’ rushes! ” was all her answer.

Joseph looked after her, and chewed a straw picked clean and yellow from the yard, and smiled in his quiet way. He knew himself for a man, and a free man, in these latter days.

Red Ratcliffe, like his foster-father, like the foster-brother swinging at his saddle, was feeling a free man as he rode to Wildwater. He had no fear of death, and did not look for death, even had he known its fear, before the feud was righted between Wayne and Ratcliffe. His terrors lay all in those ghost-lands, where his mother lived, and on this yellow, sun-lit morning he could not well remember that there were ghosts at all about this lonely land.

The track to Wildwater, after he had passed the perilous way between the marshes and the shifting bogs, lay fair, and clean, and sweet, across the dying purple and the living yellow of the heath. The wind was merry, but warm as summer; and in the long, slant pathway of the sunbeams the grey gnats rose and fell. Past the ruin known as Perilous Gap he went—few knowing its story or the meaning of its name—and on across the broken lands which blossomed now in tints of gold, and red, and russet, honey-hearted brown.

He passed a clump of bracken—gold across the moor’s rude face—and checked his horse for a moment in his eager stride. The wind was blowing the gold dust of the fronds high up toward the blue, clean sky, making a halo such as he had seen about the Virgin’s head in Marshcotes Kirk, once when, a little lad, he had been taken there by Joseph, stealthily and without Bathsheba’s knowledge, to see the wonder of its painted windows.

It was like Parson’s Lass, he told himself. Just so the glory of her hair had shown like gold dust in the sunlight; just so he had seen her haloed, magical, as men must always see the first love of their days.

“She would not care to see me in the fashion I came yesterday from Colne,” he muttered.

And somehow a shadow crossed his great serenity of mood. The red that had been so righteous to Joseph, to Bathsheba, to himself—the red of his hands, and clothes, and face, the red of foster-brother—would it have been acceptable to this slim, tall lassie, with the glory of her hair, the glory of her flower-like face, about her?

“Bundle o’ rushes, as Bathsheba would say! ” he cried. “What am I doing, to go thinking all the way of a lass I’ll likely never meet again? ”

Yet he hoped that he would meet her; and Bathsheba’s shrewd instinct had been right in part, for his pilgrimage to Wildwater, single-hearted as it was in its wish to tell the forefathers what he had done, held all the same a lurking thought that he might afterwards ride out to Marshcotes, might afterwards-

“There is no chance of it, no chance at all,” he muttered, rating himself for the folly of the thought.

And now his horse had carried him to a dark and rocky land, where no gorse was, nor ling, nor bracken golden in the sunlight; only the red-black of the peat, the grey of the boulders, answered sullenly the blue sky’s message; and overhead the peewits and the curlews plained incessantly. Down a steep cleft they went, and past a crooked thorn, whose limbs seemed twisted in an agony of supplication, and out again on to the open land where the house of Wildwater stood roofless and smoke-blackened.

It was here that his folk had lived in pride, here that they had perished in the last sweeping fight, here that the peewits wheeled and cried as if the souls of these dead Ratcliffes were wandering still about the ruined homestead, restless ever till the feud was reawakened. It was here, too, that Joseph had brought the master as soon as he was old enough to sit a horse, here that the lad had drunk in so many Ratcliffe stories, here that he had learned that cool, unfaltering surety of vengeance which had become to him a religion and a pride.

His horse grew uneasy, as he always did, when they drew near the house. He seemed to find the warm day grow chilly on the sudden, and there was a look in the eyes he turned upon the master now as if he saw things to which he would gladly have been blind. For no thing that lives has a sense at once so lively and so delicate for the world unseen as these dumb, four-footed beasts, the horses and the dogs.

“Oh, quiet thyself, old lad! ” Red Ratcliffe whispered. “If there are ghosts here—and your sight seems keener than my own—why, after all, I come with a fine message for them.”

He got from saddle, and went in between the falling doorway posts. From old habit, old desire, he looked up at the motto—all that was left of the pride of Wildwater— which still stood out in great stone letters above the door.

We hate, we kill! That was all. Yet to Red Ratcliffe it was a welcome and a promise both in one.

Into the great hall he came, where the last fight had reddened to its end. Yonder in the corner by the casement—latticed once, but eaten by the flames a score years since—yonder the Lean Man, pretending death, had had his bier drawn up. Yonder he had watched the fight go forward. Yonder he had felt the Brown Dog— whom folk call Barguest—go tearing at his throat.

Surely the Lean Man must show himself to-day, thought Ratcliffe, as a great awe and a great gladness came on him, lifting him, as it were, into the free upper spaces where the curlews hovered and the peewits glanced, complaining constantly between the sun-rays and the black, black moor.

“Ye dead folk, hearken! ” cried the lad. “I have killed two Waynes at Colne, and a third is either dead, or near to it.”

Not one of the younger Waynes, living a sheltered life at Marshcotes, or at Cranshaw, or at Ludworth, could have understood this red young giant’s faith, not in himself alone, but in the power of his dead kin to hear his voice and understand his message. For the younger Waynes had not been bred in solitude, bred in a wilderness so far remote that Wildwater, compared with it, was on the edge of busy life, bred in a faith so grim and so assured as that which Bathsheba had taught, and Joseph had taught, and foster-brother, with his sharp but silent speech, had taught.

Yet no vision of the Lean Man came to him. An owl flew screaming from the black and sundered chimney-stalk. Up in the gossamer blue and cloudy whiteness of the sky that showed through broken rafters he could see the peewits wheeling, wheeling constantly. But the dead men were very still; for they had a longer life before them now than our lean three score years and ten of flesh-carrying, and they were not impatient, as this lusty lad was, to have a battle every day.

As he stood there—the white owl brushed his cheek in flying past—he heard his horse move softly over the moss-grown courtyard stones. And under the sound of hoof-beats was another sound, more soft and delicate, as if a fairy trod the courtyard-way, though fairies could not bide to stay a moment, so the moor-folk said, in a place so haunted and so accursed as Wildwater.

He glanced up sharply, and there in the falling doorway, with the gold September sun behind them stood his horse and Audrey Clare, the Parson’s Lass of Marshcotes, whom Bathsheba distrusted, whom Ratcliffe had half-hoped to see to-day. Her hair blew gently in the gentle wind, till it shimmered like the gold-dust he had seen not long ago above the autumn bracken; her face looked soft, and magical, and gay, between the blown, free tresses; a man who had seen many women—and Ratcliffe had seen few as yet—might well have felt his heart go beating hard and painfully, as the lad’s was beating now. The horse—no friend of strangers at most times—was pliant and well pleased beneath the lass’s touch, and the dread in his great eyes had gone.

“See! ” she cried, as if she had known long this giant who was a friend of yesterday, or the last day’s yesterday. “See, I found the poor beast shivering and afraid when I came here just now, after leaving my own pony at the outer gate. I do not like to see a horse so full of terror, and I talked to him; and then he needs must follow me, though I told him ’twas ill manners to cross the threshold.”

Red Ratcliffe looked at her and was afraid. The Waynes, when they met him three to one at Colne, had caused no terror; yet now he was afraid and vastly dumb.

As for the lass, she smiled half-pityingly at him, and understood his case, without confessing that she understood. She had seen the same look—smoother, may be, and rounded by some pleasant speech—in the King’s face, when she had made her curtsey to him in far-off London yonder; she had seen the look in many faces since; yet, lacking the experience, she would still have had the woman’s gift of knowing when a man loves her well and loves her without question. For herself, she loved her pony, her free young vigour, the joy of galloping across untrammelled moors. Men were very foolish, and this man surely, the most foolish of them all.

“I fancy you are dumb,” she said demurely, when he did not answer.

Again he looked at her, with the straight glance of a man bred honestly and near to nature. And now for the first time he spoke, and his words frightened her, as her beauty frightened him.

“God of the feud! ” he cried. “I have too many words—too many words—and I am dumb because I cannot choose between them.”

Straight to the top of his six-foot-four, as he had stood yesterday at Colne, he stood to-day amid the blackened ruins of the home to which he was the heir; yet, for the moment, he did not think of feud or battle, but just of the wonder of this lass.

Audrey Clare fell to stroking the horse’s muzzle, and then to playing with her riding-whip; for she knew that Ratcliffe’s glance was on her, savage almost in its very tenderness, and she feared to meet it. And yet the little he had said—just that sudden cry of, “I have too many words! ”—did not displease her. Even her fear had in it an unconfessed delight.

“How do you come here? ” he asked at length, still with his eyes upon her as if they never meant to leave her face. “The place lies far from Marshcotes—farther even than the spot I met you at two days ago when you had lost your way.”

“I was seeking it then, when I lost my way, and this morning I had better fortune. Who would not wish to have a peep at the old house, though Witherlee, my father’s sexton, tells me it is full of ghosts? ”

She looked about her, with a curiosity frank and almost childish, and Ratcliffe marvelled that a thing so slim and bright, a thing so like a taller sister of the fairies, should stand here in the black and broken hall where men had died with the feud-cry in their throats, where the women had looked on, and afterwards had fled, bearing great terror with them out into the stark and friendless moor.

“It is strange,” she said, moving from one comer to another of the hall, “strange that all this happened here just twenty years ago. Why, Witherlee was an old man even then, and yet he is alive to tell me stories of what he watched with his own eyes—wild stories that used to set my pulses beating when as a child I crept out at gloaming-tide, and sat beside him on a gravestone when his work was done, and listened to his talk. ’Twas he who told me how to find Wildwater.”

“I have heard of Sexton Witherlee. Was it not he who saw the Ratcliffes come to a Wayne burying—he who saw the swords flash in and out—he who saw the accursed Waynes snatch victory when we had them safe? ”

He was not looking at her now, and the face of him was changed. He had seemed to her till now a tongue-tied boy, despite his bulk and strength; but now his manhood shone beautiful, and terrible, and sure, from the grey eyes that seemed to see the hall re-peopled with his kin.

“Then you, too, know the feud-tales? ” she asked him wonderingly.

“Strange if I did not. My foster-mother was a Ratcliffe, and she told me them almost before I left the cradle.”

“To look at you, I could almost fancy you come back from those far-off days that Sexton Witherlee harps on so constantly. And yet ’tis laughable to think of feud in these quiet times.”

Red Ratcliffe gave her one long glance, and then he laughed, suddenly, and with a grimness that made Audrey shiver as with cold.

“Why do you laugh? ” she asked, vexed by her moment’s terror.

“Because I stand here the heir to all this house of Wild-water—each stone is mine, each fallen rafter, each quarrel of the Ratcliffes who died here twenty years agone. Twenty years? What are twenty years, when measured by the years that went before—the blood-sick generations that came and went, and now the Waynes were down, and now the Ratcliffes, and all the folk cried, ‘ Peace is come! ’ Peace? There can be no peace till the Trump of Judgment Day.”

Again the Parson’s Lass grew fearful. She had found few things to dread as yet, for under all her slimness, under the grace that recalled harebells and all winsome things to a man’s mind, there was a courage waiting only to be tested. Her very presence here, in this house of fearful memories, alone and thinking naught of danger, was proof that she was no dainty coward. And yet this giant, with the feud-red of his hair, the quiet, unalterable fire of vengeance in his eyes, roused undreamed-of dreads in her. He was the living presence of every feud-tale she had hearkened to down yonder on the gravestone where Sexton Witherlee would sit, and smoke, and bring the past before her.

And now Red Ratcliffe told her, spot by spot, where this mm fell and that man recovered from the first sickness of his wound and fought again. He told her all, just as Bathsheba had chronicled the tale, just as Bathsheba herself had heard it from the mistress who had watched the fight—the mistress who had fled to bear her boy in sanctuary—the mistress who had found time, in the short period of her agony, to mark these points, that Bathsheba might afterwards bring up the heir in knowledge of them.

And the girl listened, listened. For her, as for Red Ratcliffe, the feud was rosy-red again, and she forgot her dread in swaying to the splendour and the faith of this redheaded man who knew that he would surely fight against immeasurable odds, knew that he would surely conquer in the end.

It was in this hour that the girl’s love was born, though she was unaware of it. It was here, amid the ruin of the years gone by, the ruin of the days to come, that their hearts found each other once for all; and he, had he known it, was never again to be the tongue-tied boy to her, but the man who could ask and have, and, if need were, command. And all the while the noon-day sun came soft and • yellow through the broken door; and all the while Red Ratcliffe’s horse, who long ago had stepped boldly into hall, went following Audrey and asking for her touch.

“Does news travel slowly over at Marshcotes yonder? ” asked Ratcliffe by-and-by. “Is there no gossip there of three Waynes who went to Colne and came not back again? ”

“None,” said she. “Yet gossip travels fast in Marshcotes.”

“Ah, well, ’twas only yesterday it chanced, and they’ll not be eager to give out the news before they need.”

For awhile they stood looking at each other, and the girl’s eyes told a wondrous tale of fear, and hope, and pride that conquered dread of bloodshed.

‘ Were you at Colne? ” she asked.

“Ay, with the big axe I name foster-brother—the one you saw sleeping in my saddle yonder, and asked me why I did not wear a sword.”

“And you—you killed them all? ” she asked.

“Two I killed, but the other may live still. He slipped, and the haft caught him instead of the blade, and I foigot to look more closely at him until afterwards. They tell me it was Shameless Wayne himself.”

“Then he was spared, if it was he, for I saw him—sick and dazed, I thought—ride down the street this morning.” Again Red Ratcliffe laughed, in a fashion that had chilled her a few moments since.

“It does not matter,” he said. “We shall meet again in a day, or a week, or a year—God knows I have learned my lesson of no haste”

And then his face went soft and tender on the sudden, so that Parson’s Lass was glad to see how soon this newborn love of his had grown to manhood. He was no longer silent, and was scarce afraid of her.

“What was it, think you, made me not return to Colne, when I remembered that this Wayne lay there, perhaps in need of a second tap from foster-brother? ”

“Nay, I can give no guess,” she said, knowing all the time that she spoke less than truth. For his eyes were full of her again, and the simplest maid from Marshcotes out to Ludworth could have guessed their speech.

“It was the thought of you—just that. I saw the bracken-dust lie all about your hair, gold as the sun himself, and somehow it came to me that I must let Wayne take his chance.”

In her new understanding of herself and him—a glad, yet restless understanding—she moved to the corner where a little window, empty now of lead and glass alike, looked out upon the moor. She wanted time for thought, excuse to turn her eyes away from him—wanted all, in brief, that women want at such a time.

He was beside her in a moment, gripping her rudely by the arm.

“Not that comer,” he cried. “Ah, not that! You must not stand there.”

“And why? ” she asked, with dainty wonder, as she freed herself.

“Has Sexton Witherlee told you nothing of the last big fight here? Have / told you nothing? It was in the corner here the Lean Man died, with Barguest at his throat, and I—I am afraid for you.”

She had seen something from this same window-corner that startled her; but mention of the Lean Man caused her to spring back in real terror. So many tales old Witherlee had told her, yonder on the mossy gravestone-slab at Marshcotes, and in all of them the Lean Man had been a horror and a scourge, scarce man at all, but ghoul.

‘‘It was there he lay and watched the last big fight? ” she murmured. “The Sexton told me of it, and said the Lean Man was too strong to die; and, when I interrupted him, saying that he talked blasphemy, he laughed that withered laugh of his—like a brown leaf driving down the wind—and said the Lean Man would live on. What did he mean? ” she finished, with a frightened glance toward the comer where the ruined casement let the sunlight and and the grey gnats through.

Red Ratcliffe looked at her in grave, inquiring fashion. So early in his love, so early in the feud, it seemed that he had found one in fullest sympathy with him.

“What does it mean? ” he cried. “Why, that the Lean Man does live on, as yond dry old Witherlee has told you. Since I was a little lad he has shown himself to me—faint as a mist at first, but growing clearer as my strength grew. I saw him plain in the noonday sun at Colne Market yesterday; he seemed to be helping me to wield the axe.”

Parson’s Lass glanced fearfully about her. Nay, more, she bent an ear toward the casement, as if she heard that ghostly underfret which was the living voice of dead Wildwater House. Such things—the rising of the dead in this life, and the power of spirits, good or evil, to return —were contrary to her faith taught by the old parson since the days when she was no higher than his knee. Then, too, the loose, faithless habit of those about the Court in London yonder had made light of ghosts- and mocked at so-called superstitions. Yet now the father’s quiet teaching, the restless chatter of the city went by her like the wind, and she saw only this ruined house—the moor’s grim loneliness about it—where blood had run as fast as February streams, and men had fought, and the feud had withered every Ratcliffe hope save one. And now again she saw Red Ratcliffe come late to the avenging, big and brawny, and ready, so it seemed, to split asunder the twenty years of peace. She had to make her choice, once and for all, between the velvet ways of cities and the rough road of Nature; and for one little moment her heart grew sick. The sickness passed, and her pulses tingled with a warmth she had not known till now. Choice?

What choice was there, save this of the real things—love, and hate, and battle—which knew no lie nor subterfuge?

Red Ratcliffe watched her curiously, not guessing that she was leaving her light girlhood in this house of Wild-water. Courage she had in plenty, and she needed it just now; for she was learning the lesson which few women dare to understand. The dead men came from out the corners of the hall and talked to her with voices almost palpable; and she listened, and shivered at the first, and then grew strong again. They told her, these dead, restless folk, that life is no lass's sport, made up of whims and roundelays and dainty trickeries, but a thing of tears, and blood, and desperate endeavour—a thing of battle always —a thing which knows love only as a spur to battle or as a brief solace—say at gloaming-tide—when fight is over for awhile. They told her—and the face Red Ratcliffe watched grew pale and wan—that from cradle-time till the hour when Sexton Witherlee’s well-handled spade was needed, men's days are days of tumult and unrest. They told her lastly—and the colour came again—that there is joy in strenuous days and recompense in toil.

The sunlight filled the doorway; the gnats still followed the grey mazes of their dance. The day was scarce older than it had been when she entered ruined Wildwater; yet now she was a woman grown.

Slowly her eyes were lifted to Red Ratcliffe's; and both were silent. Strong love and strong men-children come from such-like silences.

Then she came and stood beside him, her slim height dwarfed. “You bring the old saying back to mind," she said. “Thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things.”

“I never heard the saying—yet it rings true, somehow,” he answered soberly.

“Why, 'tis in the Book.”

“But I have read no books, save that Joseph, when he used to bring me here as a lad, was wont to say that every stone and every fallen rafter was a printed page for me to read.”

Again a wonderment came on her. This man, whose bearing spoke in every line of well-bred forefathers, had read no books—nay, did not know that the Book she named was the Bible—did not know, it seemed, that there was . a Bible which all good folk should read at times. Truly, it was a far step from her old life to this new one ; and yet her fears were gone.

The horse, still following Audrey like a dog, lifted his head on the sudden, and the girl’s pony, tethered at the broken courtyard-gate without, gave a low whinny.

“He hears something more than we do,” said Ratcliffe, glancing at his horse.

“Ay, I know what he hears.” A deeper colour came into her cheeks, warmed already by excitement; she fidgeted with her whip, and looked, now toward the doorway, now at Red Ratcliffe’s face.

“Then you’ve the better of me,” he answered, “for, often as I’ve been to Wildwater, I never saw man or maid here save yourself and Joseph. This nag of mine would never set his ears back so if ’twere just another horse, or a dog, that came wandering across the moors.”

“He hears a man’s step—and so do I,” said Audrey Clare.

And now he,too, could hear a sharp footfall on the stones without, moss-grown as they were and softened to the tread.

“What does he seek at Wildwater? You almost seemed to look for him,” asked Ratcliffe jealously.

“Yes, I looked for him, and he seeks-”

She halted a moment, doubtful if, so early in their knowledge of each other, she should trust him with her quarrel ; then she went on, quickly and without faltering.

“Waynes are your food, are they not? Well, here is one—and he has persecuted me.”

Red Ratcliffe laughed, not harshly this time, but as if a great content had come to him. Never again would he and she be very far from one another now, for she had given her gauntlet into his keeping. And, as he laughed, a blackheaded, prettyish youth ran across the threshold, hiding the sunlight and the dancing gnats—ran, and halted suddenly, and gazed open-mouthed at the two who stood side by side in this drear hall of Wildwater.

Now Audrey Clare had been accounted tall in the south country, and even in Marshcotes, where big men were reared, she had seemed to dwarf their height. Partly her upright carriage aided her ; then, too, it was usual for the Marshcotes women to reach to their men’s shoulders only, and for this reason the Waynes had credited her with a height beyond her due. Yet now, as young Wayne of Marsh stood open-mouthed within the threshold, he saw that the Parson’s Lass showed almost little—saw that the man beside her towered up and up till his red head seemed lost in the dark upper gloom that rested day and night upon the hall—saw that he had two folk to meet, instead of the one maid he had come to seek.

The three of them were silent for awhile, and it was Wayne who first found voice.

“By God, ’tis the red-head Shameless Wayne met yesterday at market! ” he cried.

“Ay, the same,” said Ratcliffe, soft as the purr of foster-brother when he meant to strike. “ And you are kin to Shameless Wayne, I take it? Well, sir, your business here? For this is a Ratcliffe house, and I am here to claim it.”

The new-comer, coxcomb as he was and half ruined by soft living, lacked nothing of the Wayne courage. Without a word he snapped his sword from the scabbard and made at the man whose bulk had startled and dismayed him. Ratcliffe had no time to pluck foster-brother from the horse’s saddle, nor did he feel in need of the good axe; he just stepped to one side, let the lad blunder past, stumbling from the back-set of his useless blow, and caught him in his arms. As a farmer lifts a sheaf of oats he raised the youngster high above his head, and looked at Audrey Clare.

The question in his eyes was not to be mistaken. The same instinct that had led him to spare Shameless Wayne at Colne bade him now be merciful, if so she wished it. Ay, in defiance of his upbringing, in spite of that old cry, “We hate, we kill,” which had rung down the Ratcliffe generations like a trumpet-note, the last of the race was minded to give quarter—if she wished it—only if she wished it.

There was a strange light in Audrey’s face as she looked on. Not once, nor twice, had men fought for her; but there had been an orderly, quiet duel, far out of sight of the lass for whom the sword-blades played; it was here, amid the bleak and riven moor, amid the bleak and riven hate of centuries, that she saw the brief combat in the doing and knew that she held the scales of life and death in her own hands. It may be that the skein of cruelty which is intertwined with even the good women’s lives was threaded through this lissome girl’s; it may be she had an impulse to murmur, “Kill! ” For she had suffered in her pride from this stripling, and pride was at once her weakness and her strength.

The impulse, if such there were, went by her, and she shook her head.

“Not in cold blood,” she said.

Red Ratcliffe tossed his burden to the far side of the hall, and there young Wayne lay still and helpless.

“Have you—have you killed him? ” murmured Audrey Clare.

“Not I. See how the boards have rotted, and how the peat has made a carpet for his fall. He’s only stunned Now, I shall see you safe to Marshcotes, for on the road one fool has travelled there may be others.”

Despite the gravity of all that had passed between them since she came, a thoughtless girl, to Wildwater, the Parson’s Lass smiled faintly. She was thinking of the time, not long ago, when he should have offered escort of this kind and had found instead a dumbness not to be believed.

As he was helping her to saddle, her gravity returned. “You must not come,” she said. “There are many Waynes in Marshcotes, and they do not love you.”

“It is not the Waynes I fear, and I shall come,” he answered, with a quietness that checked her protests.

He got to saddle, and together they rode out in the light of the dipping sun—rode through the rough ways of the wilderness, and across the tamer heath that bordered Marshcotes, and so by the stony bridle-way which led through Marshcotes kirkyard to the Parsonage.

And Audrey Clare was repeating, over and over, those words of his, “It is not the Waynes I fear ”; for he had spoken in sombre fashion, as if there were some fear or other—some live and pressing dread—close-hidden in the rear of all his courage. What could he fear, she wondered, not knowing that the mother who bore him for the feud had left him, too, a colder legacy.

Yet now Red Ratcliffe thought of nothing but the lass beside him, who rode in her straight young beauty as if she queened the moor. It was as Bathsheba had said—this girl was all a maid new-come from wonderland to him, and the glamour-tide of life was over and beneath and all about him as he rode.

But the Waynes, at Marshcotes yonder behind the kirkyard and the Parsonage, were thinking of their dead and wondering how to come to grips with the red-head who had mocked them.

CHAPTER VIII

THE QUIET HEART OF THE STORM

While the Parson’s Lass rode homeward with Red Ratcliffe, while the Wayne youngster, who had brought them closer to each other than he dreamed of, came slowly back to consciousness in the hall of Wildwater, there were softer doings in Marshcotes kirkyard. Here the September sun shone, not upon the moor all naked in its beauty, but on a well-kept place of graves; restrained, and trim, and sober the place was, and the headstones, black at most times, showed unsuspected softnesses of green and yellow lichen which the sun had found. Faint as the breeze was, and merry till it reached the graveyard, the few trees here— rowans mostly, with here and there a thorn—were sobbing, dropping one by one their weather-beaten leaves. A robin sang, and his was the only happy note amid the rustle of dead leaves, the sorrowful complaining of the trees. For the rest, there was peace; but it was the peace of forced inaction, and with it all the dead men, underneath their lichened slabs, did not seem full of cheer.

At the far end of the kirkyard, nearest the moor, there was a low, flat vault-stone, and on it Sexton Witherlee was seated, with Wayne’s step-mother—known as Little Bairn to all and sundry—beside him. Witherlee had just finished trimming a new-made grave as Little Bairn came drifting up the path, and he had pointed silently to their accustomed seat and had prepared himself for one of the gossips which were the daily food of their odd companionship.

Audrey had likened the sexton’s laugh to the sound of a dry and wind-blown leaf; but, indeed, the sexton himself— ay, and Little Bairn—was like a fallen leaf, and the sport of any breeze. He was so old that spade-work now was done by stronger hands, and he could only potter up and down among the graves he loved. He was so old that the past was his true life, the present a mere troubled dream of food that it burdened him to eat, of sleep that brought no dreams like his waking ones. He was so old that he could meet little Mistress Wayne, the fairy-kist, on the footing of their common childhood.

Such tales they told each other, sitting there upon the vault-stone! Hers were fairy-stories, the most of them gathered, so old Witherlee believed, from the little green folk with whom she had communion; but his were of big fights fought long ago, of ambush and surprise, of battle-men who stood in their brawny strength and lived again from out the broken past. And the folk who crossed the kirkyard now and then would see the two together, would smile and wag their heads, and say that one and one went well together when both were witless; but they did not know that Little Bairn and Witherlee wove such romance from the crude threads of life as made their days full of great glory and great ease.

This afternoon, while the sun bent down toward Ling Crag, they watched the gold leaves fall, and watched the red leaves fall, and were silent until Witherlee began to laugh that withered laugh of his.

“Puts me in mind, mistress, watching the leaves float down—puts me in mind of Timothy Hirst. He’s buried snug yonder, just under the big rowan; as I should know, for I sodded him up more years agone than I can call to mind. A sad miser, Timothy; never cared for the lasses, he; never cared for wine and revel and what not; ’twas guineas he had taken to bed and board with him.”

“Guineas? ” echoed Little Bairn. “What are guineas, Sexton? I’m all among the mists these days, where nothing matters, and I—I do not seem to know what guineas are.”

“I’ve near forgotten myself,” chuckled Witherlee, his thin voice sharp as the reed-note of the breeze among the trees. “Ay, I’m nigh past thought of guineas, for they nail no coffins down ; and yet yond gold leaves falling call them back to mind. Hark how the trees moan and shiver at parting with their gold! ’Twas just so, they tell me, Timothy Hirst cried out and groaned when Death came yammering at his door and plucked him bare as a winter oak. Oh, ay! Oh, ay! He couldn’t take the gold to Marshcotes kirkyard—now, could he, little mistress? "

“It would be heavy. Gold is very heavy, Sexton. I seem to remember so much from the days before the mists came down.”

She looked at him in some perplexity—childish perplexity, as of one who sought the wisdom of an older head. Then, in a moment, her face changed, and she stooped down to pluck a yellow flower, last of the autumn-tide, and held it up against the sun.

“There’s gold for you,” she lisped. “We can take this sort of gold with us, Sexton, at the last. Surely, surely, for it grows upon our graves, and it is good to think of sleeping under such a coverlet.”

“True, very true,” murmured Witherlee, his eyes fixed dreamily upon the rowans. “Yet I’m not thinking of the gold leaves so much just now, mistress—I’m looking at the red leaves—see ye! The one that fell just now— ’tis crimson as a dawn-sun, and there’s a sort of fire about it that won’t any way be quenched. It calls the old feud to mind, somehow.”

She crept closer to his side and put a little white hand into his seamed, discoloured palm—a brown-black palm, which showed that he worked in the peat soil of the graveyard.

“I do not like your red,” she whispered. “It frights me, Sexton. It seems to bring back some—some ghost or other from the past. There was a gravestone, wide and flat, and my lover fighting for me—and the stone was wet and slippery, so that he nearly fell—and again he nearly fell—and then the other one thrust at him with his sword, and he dropped, and—and I forget the rest, Sexton, I always forget the rest, save that the stone grew red, so red— and after that the red patch spread and spread, till it covered the whole moor.”

Sexton Witherlee kept silence; for the face of Little Bairn was a child’s face no longer, but the face of one who looks before and after and knows the things of fate. The robin still sang on. Not a sleeper in Death’s garden but held his peace as Witherlee was doing. The red leaves fell, and the breeze still wandered, homeless and afraid, down the straight alleys of the graveyard. Only the Sexton and Little Bairn were changed.

“Let me come closer yet, Sexton,” pleaded the little woman. “The mists have left me, and I see the hard, cold world again, and I am frightened. Hearken! There were three Waynes went to market yesterday, and only one came back. There was bloodshed, for one who called himself a Ratcliffe came with a great axe-”

“Mary Mother! ” mumbled Witherlee. “A Ratcliffe, say ye? And he killed two Waynes? Nay, nay, the Ratcliffes died from out the moor these score years since. Nay, mistress! Could that have chanced and us not heard of it in Marshcotes? ”

“They brought home the bodies stealthily by night. They did not wish it to be known in Marshcotes. ’Tis true, ’tis sadly true, Sexton, for Shameless Wayne it was who ’scaped—the one Wayne who has always treated me with kindness—and I heard him telling Janet of it yesternight.”

“I saw him ride down Marshcotes street this morn, with a sort of grey, quiet devil in his face,” muttered Witherlee. “Ay, I thought when I saw him that there was either drink or sorrow in him—or both, may be, for one breeds t’other.”

“He was riding to tell Wayne of Cranshaw what had chanced. He was riding—Sexton, cannot you see the red waters flowing at the kirkyard foot? ” she broke off, pointing downward with one baby finger.

The Sexton saw no flowing waters there; but, turning to his comrade, he saw the echo of some such picture in her strained and frightened face.

“I can see it all! ” she cried, scarce louder than a whisper. “Tis all as it was years ago—red, red everywhere, and the moor all drowned in crimson waters. Ah, God, for peace! I was so happy while the mists lay over me, and now-”

Quickly as the mists had lifted, so they fell again on Little Bairn. Her face was strained no longer, and she fell to playing with the yellow flower again.

“Naught matters; naught matters, Sexton, whatever things may chance,” she murmured.

The Sexton lifted his head upon the sudden, as the sound of hoofs came from the bridle-track that crossed the lower comer of the graveyard.

“By the Heart, there’s a Ratcliffe yonder, if my old eyes have not forgotten the red look of the breed,” he murmured. “Ay, and Parson’s Lass—God bless her—in queer company.”

Little Bairn did not glance up from her flower, and the two rode on unheeded by her.

“Did you see that odd, unchancy couple on the gravestone? ” Ratcliffe asked, as they were drawing rein beside the Parsonage gate.

“Yes. Wayne’s stepmother of Marsh and Sexton Witherlee, of whom I told you—I find them often here, telling stories each to other.”

“Wayne’s stepmother? What, she who all but dishonoured old Wayne of Marsh by running from him with a Ratcliffe? How should that be—for the little one yonder is a child, yet her tale has been told these twenty years.”

“True; but the fairies kissed her on that night, and now the years slip by her, and never seem to touch her as they pass. Poor Little Bairn! There’s only Shameless Wayne at Marsh who treats her well.”

The years had fallen, too, from Witherlee, were one to judge by the eyes which followed Red Ratcliffe out of sight, or by the hands which, nerveless awhile since, played up and down his narrow legs. First had come little Bairn’s prophecy of blood that should cover all the moor, and now, hard on the heels of this same prophecy, had come a red young giant, with a great axe swinging at his saddle; and the Sexton chuckled as he sat and talked with his companion.

“’Tis queer—oh, ay, ’tis queer,” he muttered, “but I always loved a fight, little Mistress—love to watch a fight, I should be saying, for Lord knows I’ve no swordcraft of my own, and I’m no way what a man could call brave of heart.”

Little Bairn nodded, to show that she was listening, but her thoughts seemed far away.

“When the goodwife was living—see, she’s buried close under the kitchen windows of the tavern yonder —when Nanny was alive, I was mortal feared of her. Many’s the time I’ve crept out among the wee, soft graves here just to hide from her sharp tongue. Nay, I’m not brave, Mistress, not brave at all; and yet my heart warms, like, to a fight, and always has. ’Tisn’t the killing, just, that pleases a body, and ’tisn’t the maiming, just, and ’tisn’t the bonnie work of clearing up the litter after all is finished—there’s more in a fight than that. When you see the sun go dripping off their swords like water—when you see the big chests bared and the big arms swinging like so many flails—when there’s two or three come racing against one, and the one stands his ground and mows them down— oh, by the Lord, Mistress, ye cannot help your heart go beating happily—ye cannot help forgetting that you’re weak, and old, and never over-brave! ”

“My heart is beating happily,” said Little Bairn, catching at the phrase. “I am in the mists again, and they are cool and very quiet.”

The Sexton did not heed her. He, too, was in the mists, but not the grey, cool mists which his companion knew. And while the old man—lingering over the recital as one who tastes and knows good wine will roll it round his tongue —went over the old tale of how the Ratcliffes came to a Wayne burying and fought to the death in this same kirk-yard where the robin sang so peacefully to-day, Red Rat-cliffe was talking to Parson Clare in the low, cool parlour which looked out upon the graveyard.

Ratcliffe was unused to houses, and distrusted any alien roof above his head; yet Audrey had been so insistent that her father should acknowledge the service done her, so eager in her wish to offer hospitality, now that he had ridden far in the teeth of danger and had come to her own door, that the other could not but consent. The meeting had been a strange one at the first, but the Parson, stiff and over-full of dignity, had unbent when Audrey told him what this huge, well-favoured man had done at Wildwater.

“Wast a fool, child, to go so far abroad, especially when the Waynes grow unmindful of good manners nowadays. Our debt to you, sir, is no less, and I acknowledge it; though—with your pardon—you also are a fool to venture into Marshcotes.”

He rapped smartly on the table with his cane—he had been about to walk abroad when they arrived—and when a serving-maid came in he ordered venison-pasty, oat-cake and cheese, and a tankard of October ale to be set updn the board. And Ratcliffe, deep in love as he was, and listening, too, for the signs of danger which lay close to him, he knew in Marshcotes here—Ratcliffe warmed to the good food when it came, for at all times he was ready to give his six-foot-four of bone and muscle its rightful due. From time to time he glanced at Audrey, and twice he met her eyes; and he was glad that he had broken bread in this quiet Parsonage which sheltered her. Once in a while he had taken bite and sup at the Colne tavern, and once in a while he had supped with some farmer dwelling near the wilderness; but never until now had he sat at the board of gentlefolk and equals.

The Parson, for his part, stood by the hearth, and watched these two; and there were lines of pain and disquiet about his face, had the others cared to notice it.

This lass was dearer to him than any maid should be, save to her lover; it was the solace and delight of his last years to have her beside him in the bleak and wind-swept Parsonage, in the life which was so at variance with the gentle blood in him, though it fitted well with a poverty that had been too proud to beg of richer kinsfolk down in London yonder. The lass was dear to him ; and out of such love as his comes terror always—terror lest harm should touch even the skirts of the loved maid.

The Parson stood and watched the two of them, as they sat there at the board; and ever his thoughts grew gloomier as he recalled his daughter’s tale of what had chanced at Wildwater. Of old, when the feud flamed red and hot above the moor, he had seen the Ratcliffes as a folk unscrupulous, unforgiving, ready always to make war instead of peace, and he had favoured the Waynes in their uphill battle against a tricky foe. Then had come the downfall of the Ratcliffes, and Shameless Wayne’s disastrous marriage; at the altar he had cursed the pair he came to marry, and since then he had seen Shameless Wayne return to dice and liquor, had seen the younger Waynes grow up unbridled and licentious, had watched the persecution of his daughter, had determined twenty times to send her out o: harm’s way, back to the London life which he dreaded only less for her than he feared this less polished devilry of Marshcotes. Yet each time he had said to himself, “I am old, and I cannot live without my lass; surely I can protect her.” And so the girl had stayed with him—indeed, she would have grudged to leave him now, seeing how weak he was and old—and the Waynes had grown a little fuller of wine, a little emptier of grace, as the months wore on through winter-tide and summer. And now—this very morning—it seemed the danger had grown so big that only another's presence at Wildwater had saved Audrey from insult, if from nothing worse.

Audrey herself still sat at table, crumbling her oat-cake and watching Red Ratcliffe as he ate ; but only God knew what a storm of tears—impotent, wild tears—was flooding the old Parson’s heart. His little girl, bom late in life to him, whom he had watched and tended since her mother died and left her, a week old, to his care—his little girl, with the fragrance of her innocence upon her and the dainty dawn of womanhood scarce golden yet above the pale horizon-edge of life—his little girl, whom a breath of evil would outrage as direr tragedy would hurt her hardier sisters—was she to be the sport of such as drank and ate and hawked at Marsh.

It may be that the Parson did not understand his daughter, for fathers and lovers do not often understand a maid. It may be that Audrey Clare knew well enough the risks she ran, that her innocence was of a hardier growth, and one less easily besmirched, than either Parson Clare or Red Ratcliffe knew. Yet the Parson did not guess as much, and his heart was weak within him as he thought of Audrey’s danger. Must he find courage, after all, to send her to her London kinsfolk? It might be well—and yet the King bore no good name, and it was common gossip that His Majesty had looked too curiously at Audrey. An upright man, the Parson was, and he was nearing the end of days well-spent; and for a moment, in his bitterness of soul and heart, he cried out upon the God who had brought this trouble on him at the last. Yet he was a brave man also, and for that reason he checked the cry, and thmst it back, and was ashamed of it.

Red Ratcliffe, meanwhile, had pushed his plate away, and he and Audrey were looking at each other across the board, a certain shyness, as of understanding newly come by, in their glances. For the first time a sense of hope came to the old Parson, as he watched these youngsters with the clear, unerring eye of age. This lad with the ruddy hair and wind-blown face—there was an honesty about him, a downright self-assurance that was neither arrogant nor foolish, but fashioned of some inner strength of mind and purpose. And he had succoured Audrey when her need was dire. What if—ay, what if-

The Parson halted, an^ mhhed his long hand on his chin, and looked at Ratcliffe with a dawning wonder. The boy’s red thatch, the shape of his jaw and forehead, the whole look of him, had been familiar once to Parson Clare. How could that be, he wondered? Then he recalled that these two had met at Wildwater, and Wildwater was a place that none save a Ratcliffe or a random lass would seek. Again he watched his guest—who missed the scrutiny because he could look only at his wonder-maid—and the riddle was plain to him at last. Yet it seemed strange; in the Ratcliffe faces he had known aforetime there had been guile, a certain look of the fox, that could not be mistaken; in the face of this lad there was honesty as clean as the wind and the moor and the sky that had found a mirror there; yet the family likeness, too, was stamped on him, as good coin and bad may be marked with the same superscript. A moment longer the Parson stood by the hearth, his thoughts shifting to and fro; and then a cry escaped him before he knew that he had meant to utter it. “Why you’re a Ratcliffe, sir! ” he cried.

Ratcliffe had pushed his chair aside, and now he rose and met his host’s eyes with the simple dignity that had marked all his doings in this house.

“I am, sir, and I am proud of it. Was that why you named me a fool for coming into Wayne haunts? ”

“Nay, I had not guessed your name then. I warned you because of what you did at Wildwater, and because the Wayne you overthrew may well have got home again by now, to tell his fellows what you did! ”

“I did worse—or better—at Colne market yesterday,” laughed Ratcliffe, all the ease and vigour of his growing manhood on him. “The glove is thrown, sir, once for all, and I—well, I shall die when God wills, but I need not die just yet in fearing it beforehand.”

Audrey stole a glance at him; a great fear, a greater pride, were in her heart; and pride and fear alike would dwell there till the feud was staunched.

But the Parson, who had been young and hot in his day, laid his cane upon the table, and settled himself in the high chair by the hearth, and beckoned Ratcliffe also to be seated. Then he took his snuff-box out, and tapped it gravely, and handed it across.

“Young man,” he said, in his clear-cut, silvery voice, scarce weakened yet by age, “young man, I seem to have found little courage and little honesty in Marshcotes parish since the idle days came on us. For this reason I bid you welcome. Peace is my trade, sir, but in war or peace I like to meet a man.”

Audrey crept to her father’s knee and watched the logs that crackled on the hearth; but the warmth that gave new beauty to her face came from the fire within. So quickly the hours had moved since her first meeting with Red Ratcliffe, so quickly her heart had passed from the primrose-ways into the troubled ways of love, that she knew little as yet of what had chanced to her; she did not know that this new warmth had come because she had heard her father, whom she loved, give praise to the man who could claim love for the asking.

Red Ratcliffe, for his part, had learned from Joseph a fondness for snuff, and he passed by the old man’s praise while lifting the pinch to his nostrils between a thumb and forefinger. The lad was not used to praise, indeed, and he saw no use for it in the fife which stretched before him.

Then, little by little, the Parson led him on to talk of his life out yonder at Black House, and Ratcliffe forgot himself—almost forgot Audrey now and then, as she sat at her father’s knee with her great eyes fixed upon their guest—in telling of his mother’s flight from Wildwater, of his own birth in the Red Room, of the long, unfaltering years that followed, of Joseph and Bathsheba, and all the faithfulness of the old couple. Then he talked of the late fight at Colne, and the fights to come; and the Parson kept forgetting that he was a man of peace, and the fight danced in his old, tired eyes, and he found no rebuke to offer to this lad who preached, in every word, in every deed, the righteousness of feud and bloodshed.

In after days, when storm and stress had grown to be companions to her, Audrey returned in mind to this quiet, fireside scene, and wondered that her heart, maiden until Red Ratcliffe came, should have yielded in so short a space to the man’s strength, to the pity of his loneliness, to the tale of the good fight at Colne, and his certainty of goodlier fights to come. And yet this afternoon, as she sat and listened, she did not guess that she was fancy-free no longer, that she had lost that dainty disregard of men and of men’s foolish passions which down in London yonder had maddened and enthralled her cavaliers.

The sun, yellow still as harvest-gold, got low toward the western moor, and from the window of the Parsonage a big, white moon rose steadfastly above the church. And still the Parson renewed his own hot youth in listening to Red Ratcliffe; and the three of them were deaf for the moment to a danger that already was gathering head in Marshcotes Street.

The danger was set a-foot, as danger is apt to be, by a gossip’s tongue; for, when Ratcliffe and the Parson’s Lass rode down together through the kirkyard, close past the spot where Sexton Witherlee’s wife lay under her black headstone, the hostess of the Bull tavern was looking through her kitchen window. She saw the couple pass, and when, a half-hour later, one of the Waynes of Marsh came striding into the inn and called for liquor, she was pleased to speed the time by speaking of the big, red-headed stranger who had drawn rein at the Parsonage gate and entered.

“Why, master, you might have killed me with a feather, as the saying is,” she finished, one comer of her apron lifted to her mouth. “I mind what the Ratcliffes looked like twenty years agone, before your house—God rest it, sir— settled all differences between ye. And I thought, this is a Ratcliffe ghostie, thought I, come back to plague us; and then I saw how Parson’s maid was chatting with him, easy-like, and I had to own he must be flesh and blood; and yet it puzzled me, for hair and eyes and face were Ratcliffe to the life.”

To her dismay, young Wayne flung down his tankard, turned on his heel, and went out without a word.

“Wayne or no Wayne, he might learn gentler manners —ay, and pay his score,” she muttered, picking up her cherished pewter and noting where the fall had dinted it.

Wayne himself was half down the narrow road that led to Marsh, and when he reached the house and found two of his kinsmen drinking wine in hall he laughed.

“We’ve snared the fox! ” he cried.

“What fox, Ned? ” said they, looking up from their half-finished measures.

“Why the red fox, lads—the one who worried two of us to death at Colne, and all but had a third.”

• “What, Ratcliffe? ”

“To be sure. Audrey Clare has led him in a silken chain —as she leads most of us—and now he’s at the Parsonage ripe-ready for us when we care to knock.”

All was bustle in a moment. Sword-belts were snatched from the table or the floor, and girded on; there was a buzz of talk and speculation.

“We’ll knock at once,” laughed the taller of the two, as he gulped down the remainder of his wine.

“To be sure we will,” said he who brought the news, with judgment riper than his years. “Yet remember there were three met him face to face at Colne, and they were tried men all. There are three of us, untried—shall we fare better, think ye? ”

“Oh, to the deuce with your wisdom! ” cried the youngest of the three. “Let’s be at him, and have done.”

“’Tis not my wisdom,” the other answered drily. “’Tis the wisdom of a long axe, held in two long arms—and Shameless Wayne himself said the axe was half-devil, and the man half-devil, and the two of them together just a devil out of hell. Listen, lads! We’ll be at him, and at once—but Shameless Wayne for one will curse us if he adds us to the number of his slain.”

“Oh, let us hasten! The fox may well slip past us while we’re talking here.”

“Nay, he’ll not leave Marshcotes yet awhile, if we know aught of Audrey Clare. There’s one here and there at Marsh who would give his ears for such hospitality as this red-headed outcast is enjoying.”

“By that token, what of Maurice? ” put in the third. “He has not been seen since we broke fast this morning, and I fancied he was dangling after Audrey Clare again; it has grown a habit with him lately.”

“He told me he was riding out to meet her,” put in another.

“That is like Maurice! Vowed he had a tryst, eh, though all the while we know she’s cold as a snow-wind from the moors. Well, Maurice has missed the maid, it seems, and he has missed a fight as well. Come, lads ’ 'Tis only a half-mile from here to Marshcotes Parsonage, and we’ll need no horse-flesh to carry us.”

Even the youngest of the three, and the lightest-hearted, felt his heart beat fast as they went out at the courtyard gate and up the stony bridle-way. “I wonder, is he man or devil, this red-head? ” was his thought.

It was a sign of the new times that Ratcliffe already showed gigantic and mysterious to the Waynes, though it was only yesterday that he had fought his first battle. It was a sign of the new times, moreover, that Shameless Wayne before he rode out to-day to take counsel with his Cranshaw kinsman, had given strict commands to all these lads at Marsh.

“The feud is up again,” he had said. “Watch for a red-head with an axe; if you meet him in the way, be swift with the first blow, for he strikes once, and only once; run in before he is aware, and strike—’tis your only chance.”

For Shameless Wayne, whose life, once boyish wildness was laid aside, had been full of destiny, full of battle, full of big issues framed round about with bigger superstitions —Shameless Wayne was not the man to undervalue such a foe as Ratcliffe, though he was one and the Waynes were numbered by their scores. Nay, more, this had been looked for by Wayne of Marsh; amid the peaceful years that followed the ruin of Wildwater, amid the wine he drank too freely, amid the fret of idleness, while his manhood ached for action, Wayne had watched for some such bolt from out the grey, impassive sky of peace. His union with Janet called for retribution; and sometimes he told himself that he and she had suffered enough within the boundaries of each evil day that found them more divided than the last; yet oftener he told himself, and knew it true, that only the wrath of heaven could wash their sinning clean. The feud had not been killed; in some way, at some time, the smouldering ashes would be stirred anew, and once again the Waynes would be fighting for their lives, speeding the Fiery Spear from Cranshaw out to Lud-worth, from Stony Heights to Wuthrum’s Ghyll. For this reason the fight at Colne had come on him as a thing half-expected; for this reason he had ridden out to Cranshaw, to take counsel of that Wayne who was the Bayard and cool-headed counsellor of the race; yet in the very exercise of this foresight he was leaving, had he known it, three striplings to attempt an onslaught which he himself had tried in vain.

“Gad, how Shameless Wayne will fret when he returns to find that we have done his work,” cried the youngest of the three, as he made up the hill and saw a corner of the market-square peep down upon him from the top of the steep lane.

Yet Ratcliffe, talking of old days and new within the shelter of the Parsonage, was not aware of trouble until on the sudden he checked himself in the middle of some tale, and glanced at the window, through which the full white moon was staring. Audrey, whose eyes had not been far from his since he began to weave his glamour-tales, followed the direction of his glance, but could see nothing; the old Parson glanced that way in turn, and he was blind likewise to what Red Ratcliffe saw.

“Go on, go on, sir,” muttered the Parson. “You were telling how your mother came to Black House, and how the Lean Man appeared to her-”

“Ay, just as he is appearing now—there at the casement, beckoning me to come.”

Again the others tried to see with his own vision, and failed; and yet the quietness of his voice left little doubt that he spoke of something which, to him at any rate, was real as the white moon shining in on them.

“Tut-tut!” the Parson said, tapping his snuff-box fretfully. “Such things are not seen, sir—’tis contrary to godliness to traffic with the under-world.”

“It is the over-world, sir,” Ratcliffe answered gravely. “It is above us always, guiding us, shaping us, making the little things of big account and the big things little. Lord God, have I not learned that lesson out yonder in the wilderness? ”

“Spirits of the earth below, or the heaven above, do not appear to us,” snapped Parson Clare, angered that this lad’s sincerity half carried him away.

“What of the Witch of Endor, father? Her tale is told in Scripture,” put in Audrey, whose faith was swayed more surely by Ratcliffe’s warm conviction than by her father’s cold dissent.

“I know naught of Scripture, and little of the ins-and-outs of speech,” said Ratcliffe, in the same deep tone; “but the Lean Man stands there, and beckons me—and by your leave, sir, I must say farewell and go about my business.”

He was already near the door, and Audrey, forgetting everything except the dread that seemed to loosen all her limbs, went and clutched him by the arm.

“Does it mean—does He come to bid you fight? Is this the business that you talk of? ”

He looked down at her, from the height of his stature and the height of his clear resolve. “ He bids me fight,” he answered. “I was born for that, and bred for that; what then? ”

Parson Clare felt the years slip lightly from him. Peace was peace, and a goodly thing in its own place; but could he say that this lad’s question, “What then? ”—the question which summed up a past of effort and a future of stern fight—could he say that the question was not in truth its own good and fitting answer? Moreover, the Waynes were pride-sick and a scourge, and it might be that another David had come to quiet Marshcotes here to pit his stone and sling against the daintier weapons of the adversary.

Ratcliffe’s horse was at the door, fretting the garden-path with his impatient hoofs. In silence Ratcliffe took the long axe from its sheath; and Audrey, pale and sorrowful, could not do less than watch his every movement, though now the axe, so good and brave a fellow in the stories lately told, showed murderous and unhallowed.

“You—you will not get to saddle? ” she asked.

“No, I will leave the horse in your own charge. I noted the steps, down yonder at the kirkyard-foot, as we rode by, and it is there I mean to take my stand.”

“But are you sure that there is danger? ”

“The Lean Man never lies, save to an enemy. I looked for him at Wildwater, when I went just now to tell him how the axe had fared at Colne; and he did not come, knowing his own time best. And now, knowing his own time best, he beckons me.”

“And you will go without—without a farewell said? ”

Through the fore-glee of the battle, through the iron walls of purpose, the girl’s voice crept. He looked clear down into her eyes, but did not touch her, nor make any nearer movement.

“My farewell is this,” he said, deep and low and clear as if he stood, a happy bridegroom at the altar, and uttered his responses. “If I die, I die loving; and if I live, I live loving, to my life’s end; and, whether I die or live, you are the sweetest lass that ever I shall see in this world or the next.”

Not the words alone, but the voice, went home to Audrey Clare. There in the Parsonage garden, with the dying sun and rising moon conflicting as to which should cull the sweetness of the stocks, the lavender, the bushy rosemary— there with the grim Parsonage behind, and in front the ordered headstones, hiding each its tale of love and strife and after-rest—there, with the freedom of the sky above them and a robin singing of the winter near at hand, her heart went out to him.

“And I—do you ask naught from me? ” she said.

“Not yet. Not till foster-brother has been proved afresh. Not till-”

But her hand was on his arm again, and the wonder in her eyes was such as dizzied Ratcliffe, as wine will dizzy one not used to it.

“Neither you nor foster-brother need be proved; and what you give you take again. God bless you,” said Audrey Clare, who had disdained, folk said, the King himself.

CHAPTER IX

HOW MARSHCOTES STREET RAN RED

J ust after the Waynes strode up the bridle-track in search of Ratcliffe, a company of their kinsfolk from Stony Heights, some twelve or so in all, came riding to the gates of Marsh, dismounted there, and thundered at the door of the main hall. They had been hawking all the day, and, finding themselves at the sport’s end not far from Marsh, had turned aside to claim hospitality from Shameless Wayne.

Their knocks were answered presently by a sleepy serving-man, who carried those marks of an easy, slothful life which stamped his master and his master’s kin. Once on a day the servants of Marsh House had been staunch fighters, ready at any time to pick a quarrel with the Ratcliffe underlings; but that day had gone by, and the history of the Waynes seemed written on the fleshy face, the insolent, half-sloughing gait, of the man who opened to the visitors.

The guests swore carelessly on hearing that Shameless Wayne and all the household were abroad; but when they learned that three of the Waynes had set off on foot in the direction of the village, they turned their horses’ heads.

“If they’re not mounted, be sure they’re drinking at the Bull. Let us join them there,” said one.

“Ay,” put in another, “and catch a sight of Parson’s Lass, may be. ’Tis odd, but that slim bundle of cantrips could queen the country-side, if she were minded.”

“’Twill take a warmish sun to thaw that bit office,” laughed a third. “I tried it once myself—and cursed if I’ve been less than frozen ever since.”

“It needs men, ’twould seem, not ladlings, to deal with a headstrong maid,” sneered Black Wayne, the swarthiest of them all, and, judging from his air, their leader. “If I had no wife at home to keep my thoughts from straying, would I let such a rose go hanging on the hedge, think ye ? There’s the fool here at Marsh—Maurice, the pretty dandy of the flock—who spends his days in following and his nights in sighing for her. Tut! He should clip her round the waist, and kiss her mouth, and then see how she took him.”

“Gossip says that one or two have followed that advice already—and carried home a long scar on their cheeks from my lady’s riding-whip. She—hark, lads! Did ye hear aught? ”

Ay, they heard. From the market-square above a wild, clear cry had sounded.

“A Ratcliffe! A Ratcliffe! ”

And now, neither so loud nor yet so clear, there rang, an answering cry, “A Wayne! A Wayne! Wayne and the Dog! ”

They pushed their horses forward, reaching the market-square in time to see such a sight as Marshcotes village, even in the prime of the old fighting days, had never witnessed. For Red Ratcliffe, with the failing sun behind him and the gaining moon in front, was standing on the topmost of the wide stone steps which lead from street to kirk-yard; and in this strange light, half moon’s, half sun’s, with the advantage of the higher ground, moreover, he looked gigantic beyond the six-foot-four which he could claim. In his hands was a great axe, which, just as they approached, came down upon a second Wayne and stretched him mute beside the first.

“A Wayne! A Wayne! ” yelled the new-comers, slipping from their saddles, since Ratcliffe’s vantage-ground compelled them to attack on foot. The third of the Marsh Waynes—he who had brought his fellows to meet Ratcliffe and had found him waiting at the churchyard steps—the third Wayne, heartened by the cries of those behind him, ran in afresh and aimed a quick blow at Red Ratcliffe’s thigh; but Ratcliffe stepped aside, more nimbly than could have been expected from his bulk, and once again foster-brother purred and whistled through the air, and clove a way through flesh and bone.

“A Ratcliffe! A Ratcliffe! ” cried the red-head on the steps, and waited—waited, so it seemed, without a sign of heat or of impatience.

The twelve Waynes drew back a pace, took counsel of each other, then came on with a sweeping battle-cry. And now it was that the face of Ratcliffe changed, and glowed with a strange inward fire, as he met the shock of their first coming, and drove them back, adding one more to the number of the slain who lay in uncouth postures on the steps. And now it was that Sexton Witherlee came out of his dreams of days gone by, and hobbled down the path, rubbing his lean hands for joy; and Audrey Clare crept nearer, and the old Parson; and Little Bairn, her eyes alive with prophecy, came sobbing over the grey-green headstones and crying that all the moor was reddening fast; and the Bull Inn, and the houses fronting on the market-square, held each its faces pressed against the casement; ay, there were some even of the villagers who stood in the tavern-doorway and looked on, forgetting any danger they might run in watching the glory that rested like a halo round about Red Ratcliffe and that awful space which was covered by the swing of foster-brother.

And not the village folk alone looked on; for in the fields that neighboured Marshcotes the barley and the oats were ripe, and the men of half a dozen upland farms were busy with the harvest. News of Ratcliffe’s coming, news of the beginning of the fight, had spread among them, none knew how, as a gorse-fire spreads when a dry March has brittled all the moorland slopes.

“There’s Waynes a-fighting. Th’ owd, good days are come again,” the murmur passed from one to another.

They left their husbandry, and ran headlong down the slopes, and up the braes, and into the market-square.

Wide-built men they were, for the most part, with bared arms the colour of a walnut’s juice, with kerchiefs, red as the feud, tied round about their brows, with sickles in their hands, because their haste to see the battle had been too eager to let them think of dropping an accustomed tool. Into the market-square they ran, each striving to outstrip the other; and they came in time to see Ratcliffe’s axe sweep down upon the fourth Wayne’s head, to see his comrades linger and withdraw .a space. And they lifted their voices, these reapers, and the noise of it drew all eyes to them, and the villagers, seeing the sickles in their hands, seeing the hot, keen look of them, fancied at the first that they had come from No Man’s Land, like Ratcliffe, to make war with Waynes. For a moment, too, the Waynes themselves held this belief, until they recognised first one, and then another, of these farm-folk dwelling on the moor’s edge.

Red Ratcliffe, waiting on the steps, did not so much as turn his head. It seemed he was deaf and blind to all except the dozen Waynes, less one, who talked together hurriedly before returning to the steep attack. And ever the fire glowed brighter in his face; single he was, with a single purpose, and the clustered onlookers might cry and murmur as they would—for they were naught to him, because they were not Waynes.

The silver moon crept up, and the ruddy sun swooned down, and the Waynes gathered courage to come on again.

They rushed the steps, as many as could stand abreast while their comrades forced them upwards from behind. Again Red Ratcliffe moved with the lightness of one born to sword-play, and again the axe came down—the axe that had known battle before Wayne swords were forged, the axe that had no niceties of play, but only the one downward sweep that hurled the foremost Wayne, riven and red, hard back upon his fellows, disordering them and rendering their foothold perilous upon the wet and cumbered steps.

A deep “Ah! ” went up from the watching throng, and to a man they longed for Ratcliffe’s victory, for the redhead was one against hard odds. And Sexton Witherlee kept rubbing his two withered hands together and muttering to himself. And even Audrey Clare forgot to be afraid, forgot that she was looking on at what should have been for ever hidden from her maiden eyes; she knew only that her man was being proved this day, that the beauty of his strength lay on him like a fire.

No wonder that afterwards no man could think of Rat-cliffe as being of the like flesh-and-blood with himself. In his face was the light of many battles, waged by his fathers for three hundred years and odd; he was as one who had dead men’s honour to maintain, one who knew that strength and righteousness were ranged beside him. Straight at the topmost of the steps he stood, while the Waynes again fell back and talked together; and his voice rang out once more above the heads of those who watched the fight.

“By the Dog you boast of, Waynes, this is no fight, but butchery! There were fifteen of you, and I am one—and yet you force me into butchery.”

Stung by his cry, they tried again to mount the steps; but the bodies cumbered them, and another had reeled back into their midst before the second step was gained. And the village folk sent up again their deep “Ah-h! ” And the reapers, with their red kerchiefs and their sickles —white in the blue-white moonlight, and red where the dying sunset struck this side of the steel—the reapers cried and yelled, not knowing which side they favoured—Wayne or Ratcliffe—but knowing they had seen a man strike hard to-day.

And now it was that a strange thing befell, a thing strange, not in itself, but in its bearing on an issue so terrible as this that lay between one Ratcliffe and the Waynes. For Nick o’ Trawdon—the same who had succoured Shameless Wayne at Colne—had gone across to Cranshaw a little before noon to fetch a three-year bull that he had bought not long ago; and at this moment, thinking little of bloodshed and much of his bargain, he was urging the bull— a great, sulky fellow, with crisp, brown curls upon his forehead—up the narrow Marshcotes street. This was while Ratcliffe flung his taunt abroad; and just as Nick got into the market-square—the bull making his own way with little difficulty—the Waynes were standing back, leaving a wide space between themselves and Ratcliffe into which no man intruded.

The bull, growing restive at the uproar of the crowd, scenting the blood, moreover, that trickled down the churchyard steps, stayed in the middle of this open space, and put his head down, and began to bellow fitfully. Round and round his glance went, till it rested on Red Ratcliffe, and on the axe which, held aloft to meet the sunlight and the sun-rays, shone crimson. The colour maddened him, and the Waynes, seeing it, began to mutter —though even in their panic they were shamed of it—that the bull might accomplish what they had failed to do.

Again the deep “Ah—ah! ” rose from the crowd, as the beast laid his head lower still, and drove straight up the steps, trampling the fallen, yet carried forward without slipping by the very blindness of his rush. The onlookers feared then for Ratcliffe, as they had not feared before; but he himself stood quiet, as if it were naught to him to meet this changing issue of the fight. And now the bull was scarce five feet from him, and foster-brother twice whirled crimson into the upper light, dropping a ruddy dew, then hid himself deep in the bull’s curled front. Without a tremor the brute fell prone among the littered heap of Waynes; and there were men among the watchers who followed the flesher’s trade; and these, knowing the matter that they spoke of, said there was no other on the moorside who could drive a blade so deep. And afterwards, from these same fleshers, came the whisper that ran far and wide about the heath, and fixed itself as deep into moor legends as ever Ratcliffe’s axe had struck— the whisper that foster-brother, when battle was toward, was tenanted by the soul of the Lean Man.

Indeed, there was angel or devil in Red Ratcliffe and his blade to-day. Naught could touch them, naught could stand against them; and heretofore they had defended only. What if they leaped to the attack instead—what then, the Waynes asked each other in high, broken voices? It was now, in the midst of a panic deepened by the bull’s intrusion and his overthrow, that they lost their one fair chance. So deep the axe lay in the skull that Ratcliffe was defenceless, as yesterday at Colne; this way and that he tugged, and for a moment—a long moment—it seemed that he was lost.

“Pick up a sword, lad! ” muttered Sexton Witherlee between his toothless gums. “Pick up a sword, and have at them! There are plenty good blades lying at your feet.”

Yet still Red Ratcliffe tugged at foster-brother; and the Waynes recovered sense to see what had befallen, and on they came again with a hoarse cry of “Wayne! Wayne and the Dog! ” And the village folk, and those who had come with sickles from the harvest fields, were vastly still and vastly watchful.

Just on the stroke of fate the axe released its hold, and Ratcliffe, though he stumbled backward with the force of his own tug, had time to recover and to strike.

All this, though long to the onlookers, had lasted scarce the tenth part of an hour. The sun lay, a ball of fire, at a hand’s-breadth from the westward roofs of Marshcotes; the moon was not far up above the eastern chimney-stacks. And Ratcliffe, though his breath came hard, thought that a moment’s ecstasy, no more, had passed since first the fight began; but to Audrey Clare it seemed that time had leaped into eternity.

It was Audrey who saw what was in the doing, there at the far side of the open space where the Waynes, driven back for a third time, were seeking a new way of onslaught. It was idle to think of flight, for that would bring disgrace, and exile worse than death; it was idle to charge up the steps in face of what awaited them; there seemed no hope at all, until their swarthy leader bethought him of a feint.

A great silence, following the roar and tumult of the fight, had settled on the folk; Red Ratcliffe, too, was silent, save that he was drawing big, sobbing gulps of breath; and out of this uncanny silence came the Wayne stratagem.

Audrey, watching keenly, saw two of the attacking party edge their way toward the right hand of the market-square, whilst the others made as if to risk another onslaught; she saw the pair move forward until they reached the track that led upward to the Parsonage, and so, in a roundabout fashion, to the kirkyard itself. She guessed the meaning of it; and when the Waynes in front came on again, or seemed to do in order to keep Ratcliffe’s eyes and ears engaged, the girl looked backward and saw, as she had looked to see, two Waynes come running down the path. Sexton Witherlee and Little Bairn, the Parson, and herself, were straight between Ratcliffe and these two, though hitherto they had watched from the safe rearward of the battle; and scarcely had they time to spring aside when the two came bearing down on Ratcliffe with their swords uplifted.

“Turn, turn! Ah, God, will you not turn? ” cried Audrey.

Red Ratcliffe heard the voice, as he would have heard it if the grave mould lay upon him—heard it as he could have heard no other voice just now. On the sudden he faced about, and because he knew that time was brief and he would have to meet the upcoming Waynes at once, he did no more than tap the two rearward Waynes with the flat of foster-brother’s blade and lay them senseless on the path.

Truly this giant, fighting for his race, had much for which to thank old Joseph’s training. Had he been only strong to ply his axe, without the quickness which big men rarely show, he would have been taken either front or rear; but Joseph had taught him that peculiar speed of turn and feint which, seen in a. swordsman now and then, reminds one of the glancing of a plover’s wing, so free it is and so unfettered. A second’s delay in turning round upon the two attacking from the rear, and Ratcliffe’s tale would have been told on this September afternoon; a moment’s halt in despatching the two behind, in turning again to meet the massed enemy that waited him in front, and the Feud Spear of the Ratcliffes might well have slumbered for many a year to come.

Red Ratcliffe was true to his breeding, and it was a pity Joseph could not stand and watch just now—could not see his lessons, taught patiently and long, show palpable in the ease, and swing, and balance of this lad who fought against the many, and meant to worst them at the finish.

The Waynes below, meanwhile, were making a pretence of their attack, being sure that their comrades would take the enemy at unawares; and so quickly did Red Ratcliffe turn to smite the two behind, so swiftly did he turn again to face the steps, that the Waynes in front had scarce time to understand the peril before their foe was at them.

Red Ratcliffe had defended until now, had kept his judgment and his temper well in hand; but now he meant to take his holiday. With a yell that broke against the casements of the Marshcotes houses, a yell that fell back splintered into little echoes, he leaped the whole six steps— leaped over the bull’s carcase and the bodies of the Waynes —leaped full into the middle of the bewildered seven, and cut down one, and drove the rest like witless sheep across the square and into the narrow way that led to Marsh. The Waynes—the proud Waynes an hour ago, God save the mark !—were in full flight, and one pursued the six remaining. It was a shameful and a bitter thing, no doubt; yet none who saw that battle in the market-square could afterwards find blame for those who fled; nay, they were wont to say in later days that twenty men might well have given way before the weight and fury of Red Ratcliffe’s onset, unlooked for as it was, and coupled with a roaring cry that split the blue sky like a thunder-blast.

Yet, blame or no to the six flying Waynes, it was a drear day for their house. Down the steep lane to Marsh they raced, Red Ratcliffe claiming one just as they reached the little brig of stone that stood at the bottom of the hill. Their aim was to rush into Marsh House and bolt the door against their red pursuer; but Ratcliffe would have none of this, and headed them—still witless-wild as driven sheep—straight up the lane, while he took toll again, and felled the rearmost with his axe.

He rested then, and leaned awhile on foster-brother to regain his breath, and watched the four remaining Waynes show big for a moment on the moonlit hill-crest, then disappear. His day’s task was done, so far as slaying went; but there was one thing left to do, and he remembered this as he looked at the quiet, grey front of the House of Marsh.

It was now for the first time that his heart grew sick. To kill men in hot blood and righteous battle was one thing, but to do what Ratcliffe custom asked, as the sign and pledge of further feud to come, was nauseous to him. The Lean Man, once on a day, had not hesitated to do this thing; for the tale was wakeful yet of how he killed a Wayne, and cut off his right hand, and fixed the same high up above the Marsh House doorway. Others before the Lean Man had done as much ; but this last of his house, Ratcliffe to the bone in many matters, could no more do disrespect to a dead foe than yesterday he could kill Shameless Wayne at Colne.

He halted there, and found his breath again while thinking out the matter. The gage must be set up above the door of Marsh; he could not do it, and yet he must decide in one way or the other. Joseph, when he returned, would ask if he had done as much, and what answer could he give ?

Suddenly his eyes fell on the fallen man, and on the gauntlets that he wore. With a sense of heart’s-ease he stripped one gauntlet gently from the dead right hand, and crossed to the main door, which was open now and half-filled by the bulk of the same serving-man who awhile since had opened to the Waynes of Stony Heights. The man had heard the awful panic-screams of the pursued, had come to the door to see what devil’s game was going forward, and stood there now with dropped jaw and bulging eyes.

" Quick, fool! Time presses,” cried Red Ratcliffe. " I want a stout nail and a hammer.”

The serving-man, though half a dozen of his fellows were within call, had forgotten the old tradition that underlings, like masters, must fight to the death for the house whose bread they ate. He saw only a giant, red from thatch to heel, who carried an axe of a bright crimson hue; had there been fifty men behind him in the House of Marsh, he would not once have thought of fight. Like a whipped hound he went to do the stranger’s bidding, and Ratcliffe, when the man came cringing with nails and a hammer in his hand, laughed to think that he stood here, a lonely red-head against unknown odds of Waynes—stood here in the heart of the Wayne country, with only the big axe for friend, and claimed the services of a hireling here at Marsh.

Now the Lean Man had been tall, but less by a good four inches than Red Ratcliffe; and so it chanced that the gauntlet—symbol of a dead right hand—was nailed far higher over the Marsh doorway than any hand had yet been nailed throughout the stormy past. And Ratcliffe, when his task was done, nodded gravely, first at the gauntlet, then at the gaping serving-man.

" Look ye, fool,” he said. " When Shameless Wayne comes home, bid him look up and see that the gage stands higher than aforetime. And if he asks the reason, tell him that the feud-smoke will rise higher above Marshcotes Moor, and Ling Crag Moor, and Lonesome Heath, than in the days gone by. And if again he asks who called at Marsh to-day—why, say 'twas Red Ratcliffe, at his service, and that his visitor dwells hard by Lonesome Pool.”

“God save us! ” muttered the man. " Lonesome Pool is where the brownies come from and the boggarts, and the Sorrowful Woman, and the Lean Man who, they say, came here on just such another errand of the nailed right hand. And he lives there, this fellow with the axe. Small wonder that evil days are coming.”

But Red Ratcliffe was already out of ear-shot. With the easy stride which showed that he did not trust altogether to horse-flesh when he moved abroad, he went up the bridle-way and into the market-square. All Marshcotes was abroad, clustered into groups, some peering at the bodies, some standing apart and chattering of the fight; yet, when Red Ratcliffe came, walking as if the village were his own and no man his master from this to the end of the world’s highways, the gossips fell into silence, and the timid tried to shrink into a smaller compass, and not a cheer was raised, for the braver sort, who would have given Ratcliffe his due meed, felt somehow that his deeds were over-big for praise.

Only one voice was lifted, and that was Nick o’ Trawdon’s, who, from the moment when his bull first charged the churchyard steps, had followed the shifting issues of the battle with a zest that only a nature like his own—undisciplined, and gay, and lawless—could fully know. When he had crossed to Cranshaw earlier in the day he had thought only of the bargain he would make; when he returned, driving his bull and telling himself that he was guineas in pocket by the deal, his thoughts were pastoral still until he came to Marshcotes market-square; but now he counted the bull’s loss as nothing, and he raised one mighty shout.

" God rest you, master! God rest you for a fighter born! ” he cried.

" Ah, Nick, is it thou? ” said Ratcliffe quietly; for indeed he was in that high exaltation of mood when it was easy to see clearly, though the face before him had been less familiar than Nick o’ Trawdon’s.

“The same, at your service, and God speed to you.”

“Better not let a Wayne hear you say as much,” muttered a bystander.

“And why not? ” retorted Nick. “You’ve seen what happens to Waynes when a Ratcliffe seeks them out. I’m from Colne way, I, and we’ve said these twenty years that the Ratcliffes would one day come to their own again.”

An angry murmur rose, for this was Marshcotes, after all, and pledged of old to keep loyal toward the Waynes; but Red Ratcliffe heard no more, for he had passed on, and mounted the steps which were littered by his handiwork, and crossed to the spot where Audrey Clare was standing, hard by the Parsonage gate. He did not see the Parson, who stood contrite by the steps, viewing the dead and repenting of the warmth that had crept into his blood while watching Ratcliffe fight; he did not see the Sexton, rubbing his old hands together and chattering of the days gone by; he did not see Little Bairn, nor hear her piteous cry that a red flood was drowning all the moor; he only saw the slim figure that drooped across the wicket-gate.

“Audrey! Lass, what ails you? ” he muttered, putting one arm close about her.

She lay a moment so, then passed a hand across her eyes and looked him in the face.

“You went out of sight,” she said, “and the joy of watching you was gone, and I was left alone—alone with —with the dead folk you left. Oh, ’tis your life’s work, I know—but—but—surely Little Bairn was right just now when she said that all the moor was crimson.”

“Let be! ” said Ratcliffe, quickly, masterfully. “Did I shed the blood yonder? Nay, the Waynes shed it long ago, and I am but returning them their gift.”

“I’ll not weep—not sicken, or any way be weak,” she whispered, cowed for the moment by his heat.

“Audrey, there was something whispered between us, and I said that I would wait until the axe had proved himself. Well, what now? Am I too big, or over red, or too much of a fool, to ask for you? ’Twill be a hard life yonder at Black House; think twice about it, lass.”

She glanced at him, and it seemed to Ratcliffe like sunlight creeping through the mists that of a morning hugged the edge of Lonesome Pool.

“They say that second thoughts are best,” she murmured; “so I’ll think twice, even as you bid me.”

“And what then? What then? D’ye think I’m stone or bog-oak, to keep me waiting on your whimsies? ”

“What then? Why, that second thoughts are first thoughts often.”

Since he was a man, and simple as the winds, his lifelong tutors, it was strange to him that she could stoop to coquetry—she who had watched men fall into the crimson sea of war and perish there—she who had wept a moment since, remembering the slain. He did not know as yet that woman’s coquetry is sometimes like their tears, indulged lest they should feel too keenly the hard and cruel hand of life.

He gripped her rudely by the arm. “Am I to win or lose you, lass? ” he asked.

The bluntness of his mood, the clear honesty of him, broke down her waywardness.

“To win,” she answered, in a low voice that carried magic with it. ” My first thoughts and my last thoughts are just this—that I think of one day loving you.”

It was well that Ratcliffe’s horse, though wild to join the fight, had stayed where he was bidden; for Ratcliffe and the Parson’s Lass had now no other shelter from the moonlit kirkyard. What went to those moments, hidden by the horse’s bulk, no man need pry into; but those who have waited, keeping their manhood brave until the finding of the one right maid, may know what silence and what speech they gave each other.

” And now I’ve a command for you,” the girl whispered. “'Tis my first, and surely you’ll obey ? ”

" Ay, will I.”

“Then get to saddle at once, and ride as straight as the moor-tracks take you to Black House. At any moment other Waynes may ride through Marshcotes—nay, news may have been sped to them already-”

“I have got my wind again,” said Ratcliffe simply; “and my business lies with all the Waynes, at any time they care to meet me.”

“And ’tis my first request! And you deny it. Well, then, you do not love so very much, it seems—perhaps no more than those little puppet-folk who live about the Court, and talk of love, and play with love, and never come to the understanding of it.”

Red Ratcliffe halted between two minds; then he stooped and kissed her, and got up to saddle, and rode off without a word. And Audrey, knowing it was hard for him to go, loved him the better for his answer to her wish.

Near to the scene of the late fight, as he rode by, Red Ratcliffe saw the Parson, and drew rein.

“Give you good-day, sir,” he said gravely, “and thanks for the hospitality you’ve shown me.”

The Parson looked hard and long at him before replying; it seemed as if he could not reconcile Red Ratcliffe’s courage and clean honesty with the work of the lad’s hands —the work whose proofs lay evident about the churchyard steps.

“God forgive you for your slain,” he said at last, and bowed with much ceremony, and kept tap-tapping at his snuff-box, nervously, long after he had watched man and horse go up into the moor and out beyond the farther rise.

And now, to judge from the uproar that floated upward from the market-square, the strife had not been stilled by Ratcliffe’s going; and Sexton Witherlee, hobbling to the steps again to see what was toward, found Nick o’ Trawdon in the middle of a noisy throng of Marshcotes folk.

Nick, a well-wisher of the Ratcliffes always, as Colne men were, and fired, moreover, by what he had seen Red Ratcliffe do to-day and yesterday—Nick had thrown prudence to the winds, had followed up his first taunt with a second still more stinging, and now was in the thick of as pretty a broil as even he could wish. On all sides fists were near him, and staves, and here and there a drover cracked his whip with ominous clearness; while Nick had no more in his hands than the slim hazel-switch which he had cut on setting out to drive the bull from Cranshaw. He was not dismayed in any way, for it had been the instinct of his patched and many-coloured life to get himself into the thick of a trouble first, and afterwards to trust to heaven and his wits for the finding of the outward way.

A moment more, and the crowd would have been at him; for the scent of fight was in the air, and Nick had taunted them outrageously. It was now that Nick o’ Trawdon looked about him, spied the horses left by the Waynes when they dismounted, and saw his way clear upon the sudden. With a yell that was a feeble echo of Red Rat-cliffe’s, he charged the crowd, head down, like his own bull; the quickness of the attack bewildered them for a moment; and in that moment Nick o’ Trawdon gained the first of the horses—a black, raking mare—and leaped into the saddle. Then, with an airy wave of the hand and a last taunt, he took the road that led to Ling Crag village.

“He’s a rare second to yond Ratcliffe giant,” chuckled Witherlee, who at all times loved to see the one against the many. “By the Mass, ’twould be right fitting if one and t’other could come together, master and man. Ay, and by that token Ratcliffe will be needing one or two about him, now he’s stirred this hornet’s nest.”

CHAPTER X

MOONLIGHT ON THE LAND

Shameless Wayne came riding home from Cranshaw a half-hour after the great fight was over. His fine face, marred just a little by the traces of hard living, was sombre and hard set; for Wayne of Cranshaw, with whom he had taken counsel touching Ratcliffe’s doings yesterday at Colne, had given him little comfort.

“He is but one—ay, true,” the old man had said; “or not true, may be. Hast ever thought, lad, that we let the women go, that night at Wildwater, and that there may be twenty such as this Ratcliffe, reared in hiding and reared to meet us one day? ”

“Janet said as much. I had not thought of it before she spoke,” the younger man had answered.

And then they had fallen into talk of ways and means to kill this feud rekindled; and each had felt the other’s instinct that long battle and disaster were in store; and Shameless Wayne rode now with doom and old regrets for company.

The night helped his mood; for the sun was down by now, and only the white moonlight shone on the gnarled hummocks of the moor. The larks no longer sang, but a curlew plained unceasingly, seeming to follow him as he made forward. His thoughts were with these misspent twenty years that intervened between the present trouble and the days when he had been a man, fighting a man’s battles steadfastly and in the face of odds. Had he been younger, remorse would have been more bearable, for it would then have been a scourge, keen and wholesome as a leech’s knife when blood-letting is needful; but remorse was a dull and shiftless comrade now—as little like the young, hot fire of boyhood’s shame as the boy is like the grey elder he must come to be if he lives long enough.

A man came hurrying from Marshcotes to seek out Shameless Wayne and tell him of the slaughter done by Ratcliffe; and the man met him now, half-way between home and Cranshaw—yet, looking at Wayne’s face, he did not dare to give his message.

“Best let him see it for himself,” he muttered, passing by with lowered glance. “There’s that in his face would kill the man who brought bad news just now.”

Wayne did not heed him, but rode on, seeing only the chill moonlight and the rough, wild waste of moor whose voice was lonely as the curlew’s—the curlew that followed wailing, his horse’s every forward step. He thought of Janet, of their son who was exiled into this lonesome waste of peat and bracken, of the height of his love for Janet, and of the long, crashing fall; he remembered, as if he had lived in another life and could recall it, with what desperate hardship, as a boy, he had changed from Wayne the Shameless to Wayne the Avenger of his people; ay, the very thrill of battle he could recall, and the awed peace that came to him amid the hottest of his fights. Gone! All gone! The moor itself was not more chill and lonely than his life; like his own son, he was in bitter exile, but his son at least had never known the breadth and glory of a passion such as his had been for Janet, of a passion marred by force of outward circumstance, of a passion which lay now between them like a foul and trackless bog. And then there were the youngsters of the race, the cousins and the nephews who shared the shelter of Marsh House with him. Had he done right by them? Had he shown a fair example? No; quite contrary.

" I have ill-spent the years—and God, whom our youngsters jest at nowadays, is well aware of it.”

The cry escaped him unawares; it was the summing up of all his thoughts throughout this lonely ride. And truly, if God saw level with the man—if Wayne indeed were black as his own judgment of himself—his punishment was near at hand. For he had reached the nearer corner of the churchyard now, and already he was aware of folk scattered here and there in little knots, aware that something out of the ordinary was going forward. Audrey and the Parson were no longer here, for they had sought their chambers, and were striving, each of them, to shut out the memory of what their eyes had seen so lately. But Sexton Witherlee was here, and Little Bairn, and women of the village, whose children clutched their aprons and hid their heads therein, and cried because they scented slaughter.

“Like the old days, just,” muttered Witherlee, as he saw Shameless Wayne come riding in between the double line of graves. “Twas so he came, twenty years gone by, to find himself too late for the first fight of the feud. And now again he comes too late. Oh, Lord, Lord, ’twill stiffen him, as it did long ago. Ay, there’ll be Wayne to reckon with before so long.”

Yet Witherlee did not draw near to Wayne; and it was Little Bairn who first gave the Master of Marsh an inkling of the truth. Frail, with her bright hair round her like a cloud, she stepped in front of the big horse Wayne rode; and the beast, being kind like his master to all weaker things, stopped midway in his stride lest he should trample her. And then she crept to Wayne’s stirrup, and reached up her baby hands; and Wayne, heavy-hearted as he was and sure of trouble near at hand, smiled gravely at this little woman whom he had sheltered, loved, and petted since first she came, unwelcome and a stranger, to the grey house of Marsh.

“What is’t, Little Bairn? ” he asked. “Dost want to ride pillion as far as home? Why, then, here’s my foot— set thy own on it, and spring to saddle. My beast will never feel thy weight.”

She shook her head. “I cannot bear to come to Marsh just yet,” she pleaded. “Nay, Ned, you must not ask me to come down to Marsh. There’s a crimson carpet—no bridal-carpet, either—stretched from the kirkyard here to Marsh and I dare not cross it.”

“What has frightened thee, Bairn? ” asked Wayne, with the tender patience that in itself disproved his own hard judgment of himself.

“Oh, everything has frightened me. See! I was sitting on the gravestone yonder, and Sexton Witherlee was telling tales to me, and for once these dreadful moors of yours were kind, and the sun was shining yellow, and the sky was blue. And then—I cannot tell how it chanced—the sun grew red, and the sky grew red, and crimson tears began to fall. Ah, Ned, Ned, I cannot live among your moors—I told your father so—how long since, Ned?— when he brought me a young bride to Marsh. How came I to live among them, when even the sunniest day turns round to rain before you can find shelter? ”

Wayne laughed sadly. “Tis not the moor you need blame, Little Bairn. Tis life’s at fault, and on the hills or in the valleys sunshine means always rain to come.” “There was one with an axe,” went on the other, looking wistfully up into her stepson’s face, as if to ask the meaning of life’s riddle. “He was big, and red like the carpet stretched from here to Marsh, and when your kinsmen came to talk with him, he swung his axe up-”

“My God! Thy hand is heavy on me,” was Wayne’s cry.

And then he loosed the Little Bairn, and left her standing there, and rode on until he reached the churchyard steps. Just as they had fallen lay his kinsmen; and mingled with them was the bull’s savage bulk; and, out beyond, Red Ratcliffe's way across the square was marked by one silent body, face down against the stones. The crowd, awed by Wayne’s unhappy face, kept silence, and he, without a word, turned back upon his paces and rode out by the gate, 'twixt Parsonage and church, which was the outlet for all but foot-travellers. Down the steep road to Marsh he went, and found another body at the gate; up to the main door he rode, and saw a gauntlet nailed high above the cross-beam. Still without a word he called for a stable-boy, and got from his horse, and threw the reins to the lad who came answering to the master’s call.

He went into the hall then, and, with a face set like a millstone, poured out a measure of red wine, and, when this was drunk and a second measure filled, he rapped upon the table. The man who had brought Red Ratcliffe nails and hammer not long ago came sideways in, and peered at Wayne as if he knew not whether to take instant flight or hold his ground.

“Come forward—curse you, stand straight, and remember you are of the Waynes!—come forward—there, stand with the moonlight on you, so that I can read lies or truth in that full-fleshed face of thine. Now, how comes the gauntlet to be fixed above the door? And what has chanced to-day at Marshcotes? ”

“I—I saw nothing, until a red fellow with an axe came to the door here and called for nails and a hammer-”

Wayne started forward and seemed about to strike the man, then checked himself.

“And thou—thou, of a Wayne household—didst bring him the hammer and the nails? ”

The man stood opposite the big window of the hall, and his face was wan and pale as the moon’s face, shining on him mercilessly.

“I—I had no choice,” he stammered.

“That is the cry nowadays! ” said Wayne, in a voice whose coldness seemed to hide a core of fire. “No choice! Ay, but a score of years since thou and thy kind would have fought to the death for the Wayne honour, rather than do this shameful thing. A score of years since—but why do I talk of that, when the day is gone by for good and ail, and for followers we’ve only full-fed fools like thee. Go forward with the tale! Did I not bid thee tell what chanced to-day? ”

“I know not, save what they tell me, those who saw the battle on the churchyard steps. There came a red man of the Ratcliffes, carrying an axe; and he met fifteen of the Waynes, and killed some, and chased the others as far as the gates of Marsh House here.”

“Chased? ”

“Ay, for they could not stand against him, and they fled.”

Wayne’s voice grew colder still; and yet the fire within it seemed ten times hotter than before.

“Of old, we did not flee ; we died, if need were. But it is all the same! They had no choice, they’d say, mimicking your own jackdaw-cry. Ay, if Ratcliffe had asked thee for nails and a hammer to fasten my hands and feet upon the floor-boards here, thou’dst still have said, ‘ I have no choice.’ Now, listen, and tell your fellows what I say. The feud is up again, and the old rules shall be observed while I am master; and the first I hear complaining that he had no choice, the first who skulks or shows the white feather to the red breed of Ratcliffe—by the God who’ll one day judge me, I will kill him where he stands.”

The man stood in the moon-glare, his foolish mouth agape. Was this the master, who had drunk and diced and let discipline trot lightly on the rein these many years? Just so the folk had wondered, twenty years ago, when Wayne had been compelled to pit his misused youth against adversity; for Wayne was of the metal which rings true always on the hard surface of adversity.

“Have you—have you more to ask? ” stammered the man. “I fear this moonlight—it drives men mad, folk say.”

“Thou fearest everything, it seems, and thou’lt be never madder than to-night. Ay, I have more to ask. Why is the house so empty? Where are all my folk? ”

“Some went to Ludworth—for a dicing night, they said —and three went up against this Ratcliffe, and did not come again.”

“The mistress—where is she? ”

“She rode up into the moor just after noon.”

A fear took the master unawares. “She rode up into the moor? Did she name her errand? ”

“No, but there was trouble in her face.”

Up and down the hall tramped Shameless Wayne; and the frightened serving-man followed his every movement with his glance. And then at last the master noticed him, though he had forgotten all save Janet.

“Go, fool! Go to thy kennel, dost thou hear? ” he snapped.

The man obeyed, and Wayne filled up his tankard.

“Wine, wine! ” he muttered. “I drink, and drink, and it serves only to fix the old troubles more securely. Well, I’ll be rid of it to-morrow—or to-morrow’s morrow— and ’tis but a lying helpmate at the best. That poor, fleshy rogue whom I rated awhile since—was his fault more deep than mine? Janet gone, the feud awake again, our folk showing Wayne heels to a Ratcliffe face— have I no blame to share? Ay, for my sins cry out to God, and, though my brain is sick, I must fight down the past.”

The moonlight crept to the right hand of the window, and found out the master’s face, and showed a story tragic as the sum of life itself.

“Janet has gone,” he muttered by-and-by. “She has left me—Janet has left me—yet not because the evil days have come.”

In his voice, in the simple words, there was something J anet should have been at hand to listen to; his need of her, his faith in her, were equal; and a weary sort of pride sounded in that “yet not because the evil days have come.” He thought that she had left Marsh House for ever, and a weaker man, smitten hip and thigh at every turn as Wayne was now, might well have fancied that she had fled from doom and misery; but Wayne knew that, if she had indeed forsaken him, it was because of the dread gulf between them, because of that bloodshed which had ushered in their marriage-morn, and which, reopened now, had brought new sickness to her soul.

Ah, how he missed her! True, there had been that gulf between them, widening with the years; true, there had been bitterness at times, and taunts had leaped from the full heart of misery; true, the curse of God and man had lain on them. Ay, true, all true; yet she had been all in all to him, and was so still.

Again he filled his wine-cup and stood listening to the voices that inhabit an old house when it is quiet. Men cannot sorrow and rejoice in any place, and leave no after-whispers of their frets behind them.

Gone! All were gone! There should have been a troop of lusty sons about him now; instead, there was that puling outlaw, half Wayne, half Ratcliffe, who was wandering, God knew where, about the moor. There should at least have been cousins, nephews, and the like; but some of these were dicing out at Ludworth yonder, and seven of them were dead at Ratcliffe’s hands. There should have been a wife to put both arms upon his shoulders and look him in the eyes and whisper that the world at least held love; but the wife whom he had chosen should never in this world have been his wife.

The master of Marsh was wading deep just now, so deep that on the sudden he shook the waters of anguish from him lest they should' overwhelm him.

“I am needed,” was all he said. “And if there’s none to fight with me—ay, if I am given bound into Ratcliffe’s hands—I’ll not be less than Wayne of Marsh.”

He glanced at the four walls of the hall. Men did not then — on the moorside, at anyrate — adorn their walls with painted semblances of themselves; they placed there instead the swords and axes, the gauntlets, spears, and clubs which stood for deeds. It was deeds that life asked of Wayne just now; and he took heart from these weapons, light and heavy, which all had eaten Ratcliffe flesh in generations past.

" First, to see the dead,” he muttered. “There’ll be few wounded, if I remember how the axe played yesterday at Colne.”

He buckled on his sword-belt—unloosed when he came into the hall—and made sure that the blade sat easy in its scabbard. Red Ratcliffe might be lurking still in Marshcotes or its neighbourhood.

The moon, high, round, and virgin-white, looked down on Marshcotes market-square when he strode up. And, like a virgin, she looked coldly and without passion on a world she did not understand. What was it to her that rude men fought and trampled one another into clay? It was dismaying, and the sight of blood was an offence; but for the feelings of the dead, the feelings of their slayer, she had no thought, because she could not understand.

It was Wayne’s part to know these things, as he stood for a moment looking at the dead. Here lay a lad of whom he had expected much; there, just wide of the bull’s carcase on the churchyard steps, was the body of his dearest cousin. Not one was alive to feel the anguish of his wounds, and it seemed to Wayne that he, in his own body, felt the gathered anguish of them all.

The square was full of excited folk who could not tear themselves from watching, like the carrion crow, above the place of slaughter—an instinct deep-planted in mankind as is the love of battle. Yet even now tradition bound them. They had made no effort to remove the bodies, to change in any way the grim aspect of the street; for, whatever side the country folk might take in their own hearts, they left the field clear always to Waynes and Ratcliffes. Alive, the two houses were free to fight their battles, and afterwards they must be free likewise to bury their own dead.

“I am one, and the dead are many. Will none help me to carry my folk to Marsh? ” said Wayne.

Unwillingly, not because they wished him anything but well, but because he asked them to forsake old instincts, unwillingly a few of the men came forward; then others followed, and soon the slain were lying in the hall at Marsh, with tapers winking in the draught at each man’s head and feet, to light his soul across that Dead Man’s Moor which lies between this life and the next.

Two Waynes there were whom Ratcliffe’s axe had only tapped; but the Master of Marsh knew naught of these, for the villagers were prone to reticence, and long before Wayne came, old Parson Clare, repenting of his selfish communing with his own misery, had gone out to give what help he could to the wounded. He had found two only yet alive, had had them carried to the Parsonage, and had seen the younger of the two die of the skull-wound foster-brother’s haft had given him. The other was Black Wayne, the wanton leader of the Waynes from Stony Heights, who not long ago had ridden up the lane from Marsh and had wondered if he’d snatch a glimpse of Audrey Clare. It was he who had planned the trick of taking Red Ratcliffe from the rear; he had been one of the pair who carried out the plan, and now he was opening dazed eyes in the Parsonage and was looking full into the eyes of Mistress Clare herself.

“Why ’tis Parson’s Lass,” he muttered. “I came to see you—and—and a brute with a red axe got in between _J l “Hush! ” said Audrey, forgetting insults suffered at his hands aforetime. ‘‘You are to rest, and to ask nothing. You have a grievous hurt.”

“D’ye think I care? ” he said, with a touch of his wonted recklessness. “I always said—always said—curse me if I know what I said—something about Parson’s Lass, and how I had a wife at home, and wished-”

He began to wander in his talk, and in his ravings he cried constantly that he feared no man, but did fear the devil, when the devil came in scarlet wearing-gear and tapped men’s skulls as if they were no more than hazelnuts.

Audrey watched patiently beside him, and now and then the Parson entered and walked restlessly about the room, tapping his snuff-box and forgetting to take accustomed pinches. And the girl’s heart was light, .though battle lay behind, and certain battle lay ahead; for she remembered the fashion of Red Ratcliffe’s wooing, when he kissed her in the churchyard. Down pillows, say the moor folk, are no help to love when it is out of gear; but, when it prospers, violets blossom from the mire and stones of life.

Not so with Wayne of Marsh. His work for the day was over, and he sat in hall, with none but the dead to keep him company. The moon by now had travelled wide of the great window, and only her phantom after-light was left to add a subtle gloom to the wind-blown flickerings of the death candles. Only once had he been disturbed, and that was when the man-servant came softly in to say that his stepmother had sought through the house for him while he was busy with the carrying of the bodies.

“Ay, and when she did not find me? ” Wayne had asked.

“She went out again, crying that the very roof was dripping red.”

“Get to thy kennel again, if thou canst find no news more stirring. Stay, though! The wine runs low.”

The wine had been brought, and Wayne had settled himself again into the big oaken chair beside the hearth. Even the logs burned fitfully, as if afraid of what a merrier blaze might show; and the master did not stir them.

“So even Little Bairn has gone? ” said Wayne, who was in the mood to trust shadows with his confidences. “First, the lads go, to dice or to be slain; then Janet goes; and now Little Bairn has left me. Small blame to any of them! For ’tis no house for a wedding.”

He looked round at the bodies—ten in all—with the shifting lights and shadows on their faces, and saw in their stillness a dignity which life had never granted them. And then again he glanced at the swords and spears upon the walls; and, measured by the tale of death they told, the presence of these dead folk was a light matter, drifting like flotsam on the wide and crimson sea of centuries.

“By God, my father gave me a big heritage! ” said Wayne, after a long silence.

No man, to see him there, his head half lolling against the chair-back, the wine-cup ever ready to his lips, would have guessed that he was stronger and more sober than he had been since the last feud was stilled. Without haste, without fear, without self-doubt, he was planning how to take Red Ratcliffe; and, because he was old in warfare, he did not despise the enemy for that he was alone and single-handed.

To the gossips yonder in Marshcotes it was the chief part of their wonder that Ratcliffe was one against so many; yet to Wayne of Marsh there was no sort of surprise in this. To him, Red Ratcliffe was the weapon in fate’s hands—a weapon of that fate which had been waiting for himself throughout the years of luxury. Had he not known, when Janet and he were joined together, that the price would one day be demanded of him? The reckoning-day had tarried in the coming, but his account with God was all the longer.

Well, all was gone, and for that reason Wayne of Marsh grew almost gay; for he was of a breed that had always found prosperity a curse and battle a sure friend. Then suddenly, as he sat there and planned—the dead men making never a murmur—the silence was disturbed; for the wind, quiet as a whisper before, got up and wailed, and the wailing note grew shrill and cold; and then there was the patter as of ghostly feet upon the floor, a whining at the master’s elbow—these, and afterwards a silence heavier than before.

“Ah, ’tis the Dog! ” murmured Wayne, still with the same quiet air that seemed near to gaiety. “And he’s afraid, it seems—afraid of something more than danger threatening Marsh—afraid-”

He paused, trying to catch some message from the unseen world. Of what was the Ghostly Dog afraid? What new note was there in that running whine which Wayne had heard before, which yet had never sounded so full of panic and dismay? Of what was the Dog afraid? Ah, he had it!

“He fears for his own shaggy hide,” said the Master of Marsh. “First, the lads fear, and then the Dog falls into terror. Truly, there are red, queer days to come! ”

And then his quiet acceptance of the future left him; he was a man again, with a man’s disquiet; and, because Barguest had come and gone down a pathway of cold wind, he raked the logs together on the hearth and sat with numbed hands spread above the blaze. But he looked no longer at the dead, though the firelight lay upon their faces and showed each grey, still line of them.

CHAPTER XI

THE DOG

When the Brown Dog left Wayne to warm his fingers at the blaze—though it was soul-warmth that the Master needed—he took the uphill road which to-day had seen more turmoil and unrest than it had known for twenty years; and ever as he went the Dog kept halting as if to scent the tracks of the day’s battle, and ever as he went he howled with gaining terror.

There was one in Marshcotes—a man not far from death, who had that gift of the Sight which coming death will give his victims now and then—who was crossing the road to reach the field-track leading to his farm above. And he, though nothing could be seen, heard the patter of the Dog’s feet, his lonesome howl, and felt the cold wind of his passing. He reached home with difficulty, took to the bed he would never quit again, and, when the good-wife asked him why he stared so blankly at the house wall, he answered that he was hearkening to Barguest, who had gone up the lane to feast upon the kirkyard dead. And the good-wife said naught at all to that, for even the children knew that the Brown Dog of the Waynes fed stealthily by night upon the bodies of poor buried folk. And the man died that night, crying with his last breath that evil days were coming on them all.

Indeed, the weight of evil days to come lay heavy upon all who lived about the moorside, though many of these, dwelling solitary beyond the village, knew nothing of the fight upon the steps. It was as if thunder-weather were abroad, and even the farm hinds, wearied with the day’s toil, could not drink their evening ale in peace beside the hearth, but kept unbuttoning their shirts at the neck, passing their hands across their foreheads, growling, “Ay,

’tis warm and cold in the one breath. Surely there’s thunder brewing.” It seemed that the rising storm of feud, and hate, and reckless battle had in it something so palpable, so strong after long repression, that it could reach, not the dreamers only, but those who carried thick thews and thicker skulls as a sort of buttress ’gainst another world.

And if the rest of Marshcotes felt so much, what of Witherlee, grown old in reaching truth by aid of fantasy? Warmed by the fight, he had no way been at ease indoors, where he had gone to snatch a bite of supper, and soon he had come but again and settled himself upon the grey-green slab of stone which marked the bourn of one tired wayfarer; and here his dreams came on him, and the shadows lifted from his eyes, and he saw strange happenings in the kirkyard, which lay, so quiet to all appearance, under the white light of the moon.

Little Bairn had left him for awhile, had sought companionship at Marsh, had found instead a silent hall that awed her by its emptiness; and now she, too, was back again at Witherlee’s side, for to each of them this gravestone was a sanctuary in time of trouble or unrest.

Ah, the loneliness of these two figures, their faces making little spots of white amid the dark and close-packed headstones! With the sun and the blue sky above them, they had seemed odd enough, moving the passer-by to smile indulgently, as elders smile at children; but now they were not odd at all—they were so in keeping with the awed stillness of the place that passers-by, if any there had been at this late hour, would have held their breath at sight of them and murmured, “Boggarts! ”

Perhaps it was the width of the sky above them, the coldness of the moon whose light hid all the stars, save one which trembled far across the moor; or, again, it may have been the quietness of the old Sexton’s laughter that gave the scene its eerie note. For Witherlee was laughing, and in his talk there was that touch of comedy which illumines and makes plain life’s tragedies.

“Hark ye, Mistress! ” he was saying now. “Ye’re scared of all these to-doings of a long axe and a longer man behind it, and I’ll ease your mind a bit by telling ye what I can see i’ this same kirkyard.”

“What do you see, Sexton? ” asked Little Bairn, her hand stealing into his like a child’s who asks for one more tale at bed-time.

“See? What I see every night, whether there be moon or no. I see the tale of Marshcotes Parish brought to life again—I see the graves slip open, Mistress, and the white folk creep abroad.”

Hither and thither his bright eyes glanced. And now a chuckle would escape him, and now a low indrawing of the breath between his toothless gums that might have been a whistle of surprise; but it was long before he spoke.

“You promised me a tale, Sexton,” said the little woman, fretfully.

“Ay, promised ye a tale ”—yet still his eyes were on the graveyard—“to be sure I promised ye a tale. Eh, eh, but cannot ye see the tales for yourself, Mistress? This bit o’ God’s land, as Parson calls it, is full this minute of folk who’re fair perplexed wi’ tales—their own tales, mind ye, that they’re living through again. D’ye see the headstone yonder—nay, more to your right hand—the one fashioned like a cross, with the moon asleep among the lichens? ”

“I see it,” whispered Mistress Wayne.

“And do ye see naught else about the grave? ”

“Nothing—nothing at all, Sexton.”

“Ah, well, ye’ve got the Sight, but not my sort. Ye see things to come, while I see things that are gone. ’Twas my way always to hark back. I’ve a kind o’ love for things gone by; they smell like rosemary, to my thinking.”

Again there was a silence, while the Sexton watched and chuckled. And again the Little Bairn crept closer to him and pleaded for the promised tale.

“Well, now, as I was saying, there’s the headstone yonder with the moonlight fast asleep on it. If ye were to go down, little Mistress, and read what’s carved on the stone, ye’d see it was sacred to the memory of Jonathan Sunderland, who lived in righteousness, and died in peace at the age of three score and twelve, and left a second wife to mourn his going. Oh, ay, he showed a good face to the world, did Jonathan Sunderland, and I thought him wonderful myself, I did—until I came to bury him. It’s there I’m terrible, little Mistress, to see into the heart of a man; for Parson thinks he knows men’s hearts, and the Marshcotes leech has the same fancy, because men come and lie to them time and time, not daring to speak truth; but men don’t lie to Witherlee, when he’s popped them snug-like under sod.”

“How can they lie, when they are dead? All men cease lying then,” said Little Bairn, with innocent avowal of her distrust in all things.

“Ay, but they begin to speak plain truth,” chuckled Witherlee, “seeing they can’t help themselves. Whether they will or no, out they come each night with their secrets; and I sit here and smoke my pipe; and I know as much of every man and woman buried here as would have made ’em walk in naked shame if I’d known it before they died— and if I’d told on ’em. We were talking o’ Jonathan Sunderland, and he would show ye what I mean if ye could see him now as I do.”

Again the Sexton watched the headstone with the lichened cross, and it was plain he talked of what he saw being done before his eyes down yonder.

“Jonathan Sunderland has had to leave yond trim, quiet bed of his, little Mistress. He sleeps by day now, and wakes by night, just contrary to what he did i’ life; but then his doings likewise show just contrary to what they used to do. See ye, he’s not left lonely! See ye, he no sooner creeps up above ground than there’s company all waiting ready for him—here a lass and there a lass, comes from her grave in search of Jonathan Sunderland. And I know the lassies, Mistress; and they fawn on Jonathan in a way ye can’t mistake; and they’re telling you and me —if only you could see 'em, little Mistress, sidling up to him all like so many kittens—they’re telling of the way of things with Jonathan while he was quick among us. Sakes! There’s little Tabitha Eamshaw, with her arms around him at this minute. I mind Tabitha; she was bonnie and pranksome as a lark, was Tabitha, until a day came when she fell into quietness, like, and naught would move her from the corner by the hearth where she’d sit and cry till her eyes were red as a Ratcliffe head. Well, her shame came on her by-and-by, and she died; and she took to wandering in my bit of a garden here, though God knows I kept her grave as trim as might be, for I was fondish of the lass. But Jonathan Sunderland still went to kirk, and held his head aloft, and there was never a soul about the moorside knew that he’d had aught to do with Tabitha—until they came to bury him. And then I knew about it, right enough, for th’ very night he was buried, he got up all in his burial-shroud, and Tabitha got up and just ran to him over graves and all.”

“Life is always that, Sexton! ” murmured Little Bairn, as the other stopped to light his pipe afresh. “God made us women to be played with, and men to play with us! ”

“Seems like it, Mistress. Cat and mouse—mouse and cat—ye've life in a nutshell there, so far as I can tell. Which is mouse, and which cat, I wouldn’t be for saying, though I have my own notions like another man. 'Tis only when men fight that women-folk are soft-like; there’s a deal of wholesomeness in fighting, so far as I’ve seen things.”

He smoked in silence for awhile; and then again the smile crept in among the wrinkles of his face, and again he chuckled quietly.

“Nay, they won’t let him bide! ” he went on. “'Tis not just Tabitha, but there’s others round about him, all a-chattering and a-cheeping at him in their dumb, ghost’s way. Some are kitten soft, like Tabitha, and seem to bear no malice; but other some are of the bold sort, and they're asking him, all in a sort of frenzy, why he lived soft i’ life, while they lived hard for his sake—oh, ay, oh, ay, Jonathan Sunderland has got no feather bed to lig in now o’ nights.”

His eyes wandered to the grave from which J onathan had lately crept, and again the Sexton could no way keep back that chuckle which summed up, it seemed, his outlook upon life.

“And now the first wife’s getten out of bed, and now the second wife has followed her. D’ye see ’em yonder, little Mistress? They sleep a thought later than Jonathan always, having better consciences, may be. And now they’re coming down the path; the first wife is saying to the second that Jonathan Sunderland is hers, for that he wedded her and swore to love her till he died; and the second wife is saying to the first that Jonathan is hers, because he swore that he’d never thought so much of th’ first ’un and that he’d found his true mate at long last. And there they go a-wrangling—I’ve watched them nights without number—and now they’ve come to where Jonathan is being set on by every lass he’s wronged about the moor-side, and the two wives seem to understand it on a sudden, and ’tis plain to both that their goodman never had a first and last love in this world, but just loved easy as he went along. Ay, wives and wantons find little difference ’twixt ’em when they come to die; but as for Jonathan—well, I often wish Parson, with his talk of hell to come, could see what I see here i’ Marshcotes kirkyard. He’s punished enough and to spare, is Jonathan Sunderland.”

“Ah, Sexton, Sexton! ” pleaded Little Bairn, her voice as sweet and pitiful as a winter linnet’s when the snow is falling. “Sexton, you should not mock at love so; do you not know that all women look for the first love and the last love both in one, or they are shamed for ever ? You should not mock at love, Sexton.”

“Nay, ’tis not I who mock—’tis the ghosties telling me their secrets that mock at love. Hark ye, Mistress! I’m so old that it makes God laugh to think I’m still alive; and I’ve kept bright eyes to the world’s doings; and I tell ye love is well for play of lads and maidens, but ’tis fight that keeps a man’s stomach sweet against his latter end.”

“Love is everything, Sexton. Indeed it is, though I lost it by the way and have never found it since. I-”

She halted and crept nearer still to Sexton Witherlee; and he, for his part, strained his eyes to find among the gravestones what had given out that sudden, eerie howl. The night had been warm before—unwontedly so for late September—but now a peevish wind played hide-and-seek between the tombs with its own echoes.

“What was it? ” whispered Little Bairn. “Was it a farm-dog, Sexton? ”

“Nay, ’twas a bigger dog than that. Ay, see him yonder. Mistress! There, ’twixt Jonathan Sunderland’s headstone and the next! He’s crouching low and whining, as if he wanted to be hid.”

And now Little Bairn could see with the Sexton’s eyes, for this touched the past and future equally. She saw a great, rough-hided beast that crouched in the shadow of the headstone; she saw—as Witherlee, his toothless jaws agape, saw also—saw the Lean Man, one arm lying helpless at his side, the scars showing plain upon his face beneath the moonlight; and the Lean Man drew slowly nearer to the Dog, and the Dog whined piteously.

“’Tis the Lean Man of Wildwater,” said Little Bairn. “He frightened me once on a day, and I never forget the face of one who frightens me.”

“Ay, ’tis he. Now watch, little Mistress—watch! ”

The Lean Man drew nearer yet to Barguest; then, with a spring, he was at him, and a fight began which was as high above Red Ratcliffe’s battle of to-day as hell is lower than the earth. The Dog had got the better of the Lean Man of Wildwater once on a day; but the Lean Man then was hampered by the flesh, while now he met the enemy on • equal terms.

“I am sick—and, oh, so weary, Sexton! ” pleaded Little Bairn, not able, though she wished it, to take her • eyes from that moonlit SDace. as bright as day almost, where the high feud of Wayne and Ratcliffe was being waged afresh.

“Nay, now! ” muttered Witherlee. “Tis well worth viewing, little Mistress. A fight always is. See yonder! The Lean Man has him by the throat! ”

“I would the mists might cover me again; there is peace beneath the mists.” Yet still the little woman watched and shivered.

And still the dreadful fight went on, and still the virgin moon looked down, wide-eyed, with a maid’s disdainful wonderment. Yet the fight was bigger than the sum of every battle seen on Marshcotes moorside since Wayne and Ratcliffe first threw the gauntlet down and picked it up. Round and about the gravestones went the Lean Man and the Dog, one clutching the other with his teeth, the other wrapping his old foe with that phantom arm which, steel in life, seemed now to be something harder, yet more pliant, than any steel could be.

And the Dog kept whimpering, whimpering, even as he fought, and bit and snarled; but the Lean Man was quiet, and on his fire-scarred face there was a look of victory.

“Lord, he was ever a fighter, the Lean Man! ” muttered Witherlee, too lost in his love of watching battle to feel dread. “Didn’t I say he was too strong, too full of hate, to die? Haven’t I glimpsed him, time and time, creeping in and about the kirkyard here? Oh, ay, he was seeking the Dog, I reckon, and now he’s found him.”

The graveyard now was icy-cold, for the wind of Bar-guest’s passing to and fro stirred every fallen leaf from off the pathways. The sky, too, grew overcast, and in the midmost of the fight the moon’s light was quenched, and naught was to be seen by Witherlee or Little Bairn; but there was a sudden howl, a quicker rush of wind that seemed to cut them like a knife, a sobbing and a whining that grew faint and fainter still across the moor. And then there rose, it seemed, a shout of “Ratcliffe, Ratcliffe! ”—a shout so big and long sustained that it seemed the Ratcliffe dead had joined in plaudits of the Lean Man’s victory.

“Th' Dog is beaten, little Mistress! D’ye hear? The Lean Man was over strong to die.”

“Ay, but the mists have covered me again, Sexton,” said Little Bairn, her voice as silver-sweet as if no fears had ever troubled her. “I will get home to Marsh, Sexton, for when the mists are kind I sleep with pleasant dreams.”

Old Witherlee scarce bade her a good-night, for his thoughts were full of the Lean Man, full of the new feud which had been ushered in by the day’s fight of a living Ratcliffe against living Waynes, by this night’s battle between the guardian spirits of either house.

The cold wind had passed, and now the moon shone white and tranquil once again above the land. Yet Witherlee could no way get to bed. Up and down, down and up, he paced between the graves, rubbing his hands together as if he warmed them at the fire of feud. Only once did his thoughts stray from bloodshed, and that was when he came to the grave, just under the windows of the Bull tavern, which marked his goodwife’s resting-place.

“I was saying this and that of Jonathan Sunderland a while back,” he murmured, stroking his sharp chin and smiling that old, old smile of his. “Well, I was never by way of being just so free wi’ the lasses as Jonathan, but there’ll be tales—oh, ay, there’ll be tales told when I come to my long home. And the wife will fratch, I’m thinking, when she learns how Hetty Wood—there, there! I’m quick, not dead, for all my years, and I’ll not dwell on what may chance.”

Yet for a moment he halted there, looking at the grave, for his wife had owned a shrewd tongue in her lifetime, and he could not think that its lash would be any the less keen when he joined her in the world of ghosts.

Then he went forward—a hobbling, solitary figure under the unheeding moon—until he reached the kirkyard steps and looked upon the scene where Ratcliffe and foster-brother had proved themselves to-day.

“Nay, nay,” said Witherlee, shaking his head. “They’ve carried the bodies off, and that’s just so much waste of time. It seemed so plain and easy-like to fight it out so close to th’ graveyard, with naught to do save dig their graves, and put them in, and no more said. And now they’ll have to be brought all up yond stony lane from Marsh, and I call it a sad waste, seeing the Waynes will soon be busier folk than some of them will like.”

And so, still grumbling, he crossed over to his cottage, and the churchyard was left to its own people. Only a solitary candle, burning in an upper window of the Parsonage, showed that Audrey Clare was sitting with the wounded man, giving him drink at times and at other times ministering as best she could, with little skill, to the bandages about his head. She had not heard the tumult of the Lean Man’s fight with Barguest; for she was young as yet, and had not earned by suffering either the Sight or the Hearing which were life’s doubtful gifts to Witherlee and Little Bairn.

In the middle of her watch—the moon had long since dipped behind the Parsonage roof—she turned to find Black Wayne regarding her.

“Do you love this red-head with the axe? ” he asked abruptly.

The blood came to her face, brought there by pride or shame, she knew not which. “That, sir, is a question he may ask, but not another.”

“Ah, well, I know the answer. Hark ye, then! I’ll win you, Audrey Clare—ay, I’ll be well to-morrow, and I’ll take you. They say that sickness weakens a man toward love, but I’ve forgotten that I have a wife—forgotten all, save that the glory of your face has turned my wits.”

“Oh, coward, coward! To take help at a woman’s hands, and then to turn upon her! ”

“I care not. I love you, and I’ll take you.”

“What, with Red Ratcliffe there? I think not. He has taught you one fair lesson—the next time you will not live to benefit.”

“I will take you, Audrey Clare. There! I’m full of sleep again—run your bodkin into me, if you’re afraid, and end the matter that way.”

“I have no fear,” said Audrey quietly. “Have I not seen you worsted by one dear to me? ”

And yet the hand of fate, heavy on all the moorside, seemed to have touched her shapely shoulder, too, in passing. For she feared she knew not what, and a low prayer escaped her.

“God keep me safe for him—oh, keep me safe for him! ” she cried.

No answer reached her from the kirkyard, and the little stars winked down upon the Parsonage as if they sat too high to think of human troubles.

CHAPTER XII

RED RATCLIFFE MEETS A KINSMAN

Red Ratcliffe, after bidding farewell to the Parson, had ridden straight across the moor toward the broken lands; and he could think of nothing but the lass who had given herself into his keeping.

Over the gnarled clumps of ling he rode, across the peat-beds, dark and savage even with the moonlight on them, through russet bracken that clutched his horse’s fetlocks as he passed. Yet the moor, whose face was hard and dinted as a fighter’s, for once suggested naught of battle to Red Ratcliffe. True, he had done what he had done on the steps of Marshcotes churchyard; true, the feud was his life’s work; but now his thoughts were all of Audrey Clare.

For Joseph and Bathsheba, though they had trained him patiently, had left him, after all, a strong and vastly simple child of nature on the one side of him. No woman had written on his heart before his manhood was alive to judge 'twixt love and makeshift; he had squandered no treasure in following light fancies; all the strength in him— that strength which bends a man toward a woman as if he were a sapling in a gale—had been husbanded until the coming of the Parson’s Lass. Life had given him a hard road to follow, but had given him recompense in this, that Audrey was his one fit mate.

Ah, nothing ailed the world to-night! And Ratcliffe, as he cantered over a stretch of peat—the horse’s hoofs padding soft as if they trod on velvet—could hear the big, warm heart of life a-beating. His way was clear now, he told himself; and he was over young to know that men are nearing a knot in the skein of life when they make bold to say the way is clear before them.

He passed the belt of peat and came to a stretch of bracken once again; and suddenly a figure leaped from underneath his horse and sprang aside in time to miss the hoofs. The horse, fretful already because of the blood-reek that had come to him at Marshcotes, reared suddenly, and spread his legs abroad; and Ratcliffe, thinking of the lass who had kissed him yonder in the kirkyard, lost his seat. He fell on his right side, against a grey old rock that lurked beneath the bracken ; and, when he rose, there was a stabbing pain half-way between his shoulder and his middle. Slowly, as he recovered from the shock, he realised that a lanky, ill-made lad stood close beside him. His first instinct was to reach out for foster-brother, but then he looked again at the stripling and did not move.

“Well, fool? Hast naught better to do than lie in wait to startle travellers? ” he asked—not harshly, for the boy was frail of build, and Ratcliffe ever had a tenderness for weakly things.

“I did not lie in wait,” said the other, and his voice was tired beyond his years. “I was wearied out, and lay here trying to sleep, and your horse was all but on me before I knew.”

Ratcliffe noted the lad’s weariness, and looked more closely at him.

“Why, thou hast the Ratcliffe hair! ” he cried.

“Ay, to my sorrow, for I’m a Wayne by birth, and they twit me with my Ratcliffe thatch at Marsh House yonder.”

Red Ratcliffe broke into a laugh. “See, ladling, d’ye know that I'm a Ratcliffe—just come from killing kinsmen of your own? Are you mad, or what, to name yourself a Wayne? D’ye remember nothing of our motto, ‘ We hate, we kill ’? Oh, run and hide yourself, fool, before I lift my hand against you.”

Yet, even as he talked of lifting his hand, Red Ratcliffe felt a sharper stab in his right side, and knew that his hurt was grave.

“I’m neither Wayne nor Ratcliffe, God pity me,” said the lad—helplessly, as one who did not care to flee from death. “Were I a Wayne, I’d have my sword out at you now, and kill you; but the Waynes will have naught of me.

“Your sword? Why, ladling, can you use it? ” Again Red Ratcliffe laughed, in kindly pity.

“I used it yesterday at Marsh, and thrust a kinsman through the side. That is why I am here for ever in the wilderness.”

And Ratcliffe understood in a dim way that the lad was brave, despite his weakliness, and that he was at war with life and destiny.

“You have no home? ” he asked, arid not one of those who had watched him fight at Marshcotes would have known his gentleness of face and voice.

“Not any,” said the other simply. “And they called me a traitor, those who live at Marsh; and I do not wish to be a traitor, if God would tell me on which side to fight.”

Red Ratcliffe looked the youngster up and down. In this weak body, behind this sad, uncomely face, he recognised a spirit dauntless as his own; ay, and before he knew it his hand was out, and though the pain clutched at his right side, he gripped the other’s hand.

“Lad,” he said, “come home with me, and I will show you on which side to fight.”

For a moment it seemed the youngster would break into tears; such sympathy, such tacit faith in his power to be braver than his body warranted, were rare in his marred life; he wished to go with this red, upstanding giant of a man—yet he conquered his desire, for, like so many outcasts he had thought much, and prayed a little, and plucked strength, from out the wreckage of his life, to keep his conscience clean.

“I cannot come with you,” he said, each word demanding effort. “I cannot come, because you are a Ratcliffe, and I dare not fight against my people.”

“Who was your mother? ” asked Ratcliffe gently. “She was never a Wayne, or you’d carry a dark head.”

“She was a Ratcliffe—Janet, the Lean Man’s granddaughter. It was for her I fought; they called her—God, I daren’t so much as think the name they called her—and I saw a red light come dancing ’cross the fields, and I ran my cousin through.”

Ratcliffe held his breath awhile. This lad was Janet’s son—Janet, who was cursed by Waynes and Ratcliffes both—Janet, who stood out above the wild feud-story of the centuries as a woman scarcely human, a woman who had crossed the seas of hell to seek her lover on the farther brink. And this mis-shapen lad, with the brave heart and the clean way of following his conscience, was her son? Surely, surely, Red Ratcliffe had stumbled into matters too deep and tangled for foster-brother’s skill.

“You saw the red light dancing? ” he muttered absently. “Ay, I have seen the same—once yesterday at Colne, and once to-day at Marshcotes.”

“’Tis a fierce light, but good to fight by, and it seems to warm one,” said the lad, with a simplicity of speech that claimed Red Ratcliffe’s sympathy.

“You’re a fighter,” cried Ratcliffe, forgetting Janet, forgetting all except the boy’s forlomness. “Come to Black House with me, and you shall find a battle every day.”

The lad still shook his head. “It cannot be. How can I fight against the Waynes, when my father is the leader of them all? How can I lift a hand against the Ratcliffes? I heard father mutter one day that he wondered why such fools as I were born to cripple a strong world; and he was right; father is always right—but then he was born of Waynes—born strong and good to look at—while I-”

He broke down suddenly, for he had wandered long and far since yesterday, with little food, and his grief had been a man’s, too heavy for his stripling shoulders.

“There, there! ” said Ratcliffe, chilled by the fury of the other’s tears. “You need a fire and such cheer as Bath-sheba can give you. Climb up beside me, lad, and come where you will find a welcome.”

Red Ratcliffe stood beside the stirrup, ready to get to saddle; but the boy dried his tears, and looked at horse and master with a longing not to be mistaken, and shook his head. For others was the speed, the gallant fury of pitched battle; his own fights lay amid the silences, and he had harder foes to meet—to meet alone, unfriended— than came with sword or axe.

“I cannot come,” he repeated dully. “Some day I may learn which are my kin, but now-”

As if he feared temptation, he ran lightly through the bracken, not waiting to finish what he had in mind to say; and Red Ratcliffe followed him with his eyes until the lad had disappeared.

“Why couldn’t Wayne and Janet Ratcliffe pay their own debts to God? ” he muttered, angered by his pity. “Why must this poor devil of an outcast, with the man’s heart inside him, go weeping for their sins? God o’ Mercy, but ’tis a world turned upside-down! ”

To hunt, to till the land, to practise axe-play, had been Red Ratcliffe’s world till yestermorn. But now the thing called love, and that other thing called battle-lust, had sharpened all his senses; and he was asking, for the first time, why justice walked abroad in the guise of wrongdoing. Some day, may be, he was to learn, through travail and unrest, the secrets of that hidden justice which, after all, attends the seeming whimseys and contempts of fate; but to-night he could see only the picture of that weeping lad, who roamed the empty moor in payment for his parents’ sin.

At last he shook himself from out what he was pleased to name “a woman’s mood,” and leaped into the saddle. He had forgotten the sharp pain in his side, but he remembered it when he was in the middle of his spring, and he could scarce find his other stirrup for a moment, so sudden was the sickness that came over him. The horse, impatient to be home and weary of all these senseless haltings by the way, set off at a hard gallop ; and Rat-cliffe, too spent to hinder him, just bore the pain as well as might be, and came to the edge of No Man’s Land, and began to cross, still at a reckless gallop, that winding path ’twixt marsh and bog whose every turn was known to his good beast.

Nick o’ Trawdon, meanwhile, had galloped likewise from the market-square at Marshcotes, had passed Ling Crag, and only when he reached the boundary-stone that cuts off Yorkshire from the sister county did he check his borrowed mare. Then, too, for the first time, he looked the situation in the face. It had been easy to applaud Red Ratcliffe’s battles on the steps, easy to twit the Marshcotes folk with the downfall of the Waynes, easy to leap to the first saddle that he found and ride away; but now the dangers of the days to come showed plain enough. His hair was red as that of his Ratcliffe father; he would be marked henceforward in the Wayne country as one who had applauded Ratcliffe and thereafter stolen a Wayne horse; and even to Nick’s careless mind the future showed dark clouds.

Yet Nick was never prone to gloom, and he was wont to snatch at the first haphazard thought that came to promise better things. Had he not warmed to Ratcliffe’s uphill fight? Had not his sweetheart, so short a while ago as yesterday, bidden him be more like a man, less like a ne’er-do-weel, before she wedded him?

" I’ll do it! ” he cried, turning the mare’s head away from Lancashire. “Ay, if the Waynes want me—and I’ve a fancy that they will—they shall kill me in fair fight, and not like a ratten in a hole.”

He touched the mare with his heels and swung away, whistling as he went, toward the edge of No Man’s Land. As it chanced, he reached the beginning of the perilous, bog-strewn track to Black House just after Red Ratcliffe’s horse had set his hoofs on it.

“Hoy! ” called Nick o’ Trawdon carelessly, as if he hailed a shepherd on the hills.

Ratcliffe, thinking it was a Wayne who called, pulled in his horse, then forced him to turn round upon the narrow path, though all the while his right side hurt him grievously.

“Who calls? ” he answered, feeling painfully for the haft of foster-brother.

“Nick o’ Trawdon, at your service. By the Brown Dog, don’t you know a friend? Or d’ye think I’ve seen you play to-day and yesterday with that long axe, and yet go risking the sharp tooth of it? ”

“What is’t you want, Nick? I’m full of aches and hunger, and can’t hold in my horse much longer.”

“I want to come with you and be your man. That’s plain speech, I take it? I want to learn the way of a hatchet and to fight beside you.”

Red Ratcliffe laughed. “Wast a jester ever, Nick. What fool’s talk are you at? ”

“Lead on, and I’ll tell you by-and-by,” said Nick.

The stallion, as it fell out, ended the matter on his own account, by turning suddenly and setting off along the track.

“Follow me closely, if thou wilt come, Ned! ” called Ratcliffe. “The track winds in and out, and there’s death on either hand of it.”

“I’ll follow! ” Nick answered cheerily.

And so they came to Black House, and Bathsheba and Joseph were standing on the moonlit edge of Lonesome Water, straining their eyes to see if the master were coming at long last.

Red Ratcliffe swayed as he slipped from the saddle, and would have fallen had not Nick o’ Trawdon clutched him.

“Why, you’re wounded! ” muttered Nick. “Yet I never saw a sword-blade touch you.”

Joseph pushed the stranger roughly aside. “Who ye be, I know not,” he growled, “but ’tis I will see to master. ’Twas I who reared him, eh? Well, then, let be, for ’tis my work to see to him.”

Yet the master was so lumbering in his gait that it needed both of them to get him safe indoors and stretched along the settle in the kitchen.

“Eh, eh! ” groaned Bathsheba, as she stirred the peats and set the kettle lower on the reckan. “’Twas like to be, or it couldn’t be; yet I little thought to see him i’ this plight, late as his coming is.—D’ye know aught of this? ” she broke off, eyeing Nick o’ Trawdon jealously.

“I know he fought at Marshcotes, for I watched him; and he took never a hurt, that I could see.”

“And what brings you here, if a body may ask? ”

Joseph had been watching the new-comer closely, and now he interposed. “Nay, lass! His hair is Ratcliffe-red, and if so be he’s helped to fight the Waynes—why, we must e’en keep civil tongues and bid him welcome.”

“Bundle o’ rushes, Joseph! Bundle o’ rushes I See where the wind sits before you start a-whistling for a new one.”

Red Ratcliffe opened his eyes and looked about him; and Bathsheba, unable to rest unless she were ministering to him in some way—whether that way were right or wrong—Bathsheba poured out a measure of rye-spirit, filled up with water from the steaming kettle, and bade him drink it.

“Gad, how trimly it slips down! ” said Ratcliffe. “Joseph, I’ve killed a few at Marshcotes to-day—and I came home with never a mark on me—and I was thrown in riding here. Oh, by the Feud, ’twas bitter to be fooled like that when all the moil was over! See, though, I’m well again—I-”

He tried to rise, then clutched his side and fell back again. In a moment Bathsheba had thrust the men aside, had stripped the master to the waist, and now was passing careful hands across his side.

“’Tis naught but two broken ribs, thanks be,” she said, “You may be sick and dizzyish now, master, but you’ll mend o’ that i’ a day, and in a two weeks you’ll be sound again.”

" Two weeks? ” echoed Ratcliffe. “Why, Bathsheba,

I’ve lit the feud-fire, I tell thee, and to-morrow they’ll be on us.”

“There, there! Go easy-like. They’ll have the bogs to cross, I reckon,.and there’s none to show them the right way.”

Ratcliffe, drowsied by the spirit, lay still; and his breathing came and went with gaining peacefulness.

“Audrey, I'll win or lose you by this fight,” he muttered drowsily. “If I win—if I win—Audrey, there’s a darkness coming over me—I cannot see you-”

Only Bathsheba could catch the words, and her face went sour as cream in thunder-weather. This was her lad, though he was her master, too; had she not fended for him, spent wakeful nights and toilsome days for his sake? And was a lass with naught save sun-gold hair to commend her, a lass who had never lifted finger-tip to do him service, to rob her of her boy? So have all mothers and foster-mothers felt, since Eve bore Cain to slay his brother; and such sadness makes women, good or bad, a little gusty in their moods and kin to the March winds when they come from Marschotes out to Colne.

“As for thee,” she flashed, turning on Nick o’ Trawdon as being a welcome whipping-post, “I know not what has brought thee to Black House. Thou look’st as proper a ne’er-do-weel as I ever set een upon—the sort to hang over mistal-doors, and chew a straw, and watch good men earn bread and milk for thee.”

“Ay, I’m all that,” assented Nick, with the good-humoured air that rarely left him. “I’m all that, and more—or have been. And now, after seeing the fight at Marshcotes, I’ve taken a fancy to settle down, like, in life, and earn my living honest by fighting Waynes.”

Bathsheba tossed her head; but Joseph, full of the coming troubles so clearly shadowed by these two battles of the master’s, Joseph was quick to recognise a strong man and a friend beneath the other’s lazy air. It was Joseph who filled the new-comer a measure and added water from the kettle, and bade him pay no heed to Bathsheba.

“Sit ye down, lad,” said he. “The master’s sleeping like a bairn, and if ye happen to speak low he’ll never hear you. Now, what happened out yonder when the master fought? ”

Nick o’ Trawdon drank half his measure at a gulp; pulled his chair up to the peat-fire; nursed the remaining liquor between his knees. Joseph, too, drew up; and Bathsheba, outraged as she was by the conspiracy of the two against herself, could not forbear to do the like.

And then Nick told them of the battle on the churchyard steps, of the bull—his own bull—which had so nearly marred the master’s chances, of Red Ratcliffe’s sudden leap and downward rush across the market-square, of the glory and the light upon his face. He could tell a tale as well as most men, this graceless Nick o’ Trawdon, and point by point he made his hearers see the shifting issues of the day.

“Lack-a-day, and me not there! ” sighed Joseph, when he had done. “That’s twice the master has stolen off and had his play, leaving me here to toil.”

“Well! ” cried Nick. “The third time pays for all— and I fancy you and I, Joseph, will have the fighting to ourselves.”

“Ay, they’ll come to-morrow, if I know aught. Shameless Wayne was never one to sit on warm ashes when the feud was lit. What then? He’ll bring a few with him— to-morrow, say—and he’ll try to cross, and the bogs will have him. There’s no sport for us there, lad, that I can see.”

“There may be some to find the bog-path; or Wayne’s wife—Janet Ratcliffe once on a day—may point him out the road. There’s a devil in the woman bids her do anything for Shameless Wayne.”

Red Ratcliffe tossed uneasily upon the settle, and muttered in his sleep. “Poor fool! Poor mis-shapen lad! And your mother’s Janet Wayne, is she? No wonder you’re in hell, for she crossed to hell to bear you, and you’ve to carry all her load.”

“What says he? ” whispered Joseph.

“I couldn’t rightly catch it,” said Bathsheba. “Sharp as my ears are-”

“Ay! ” murmured the good man. “Sharp as a weasel’s when there’s a cony nigh at hand.”

“Sharp as my ears are, I couldn’t reckon up his speech. Sick men are always so; he’ll mend before so long.”

“Who are you, lad? ” said Joseph, breaking a long silence, as he turned to their unknown guest.

“Nick o’ Trawdon is all the birth-name folk will give me; but my father was a Ratcliffe, if I did chance to be born the wrong side of the hedge. See ye, Joseph! There’s a lass at Colne.”

“Seems to me there’s lasses everywhere,” said Bathsheba. “That’s why men never get through with the work God lays ready to their hands.”

“And I’ve a fancy for her, Joseph, you’ll understand.” “Oh, ay, I understand! Nay, Bathsheba, ’tis of no use to frown, for a man must be a man, just time and time.” " And the lass of Colne bade me be a man, just as you say, Joseph. And then ’twas my bull, after all, that went near to spoil a bonnier fight than ever I’d seen before; and I stole a Wayne horse, moreover; and somehow I reckoned I’d throw in my lot with his, for I fancied you’d hhve need of company, like, before so very long.”

And now, not Joseph only, but Bathsheba as well, knew the they had a man beside them on the hearth—a man who, ne’er-do-weel or no, would stand beside them in the days to come.

“I’ll fill your measure for you,” said Bathsheba, “for I’ve ever heard a wastrel swallows liquor as a ring-dove swallows corn. And if we have to make the best of you— well, life’s always a making the best of something— weather, or men-folk, or crops—and us poor women learn our lesson early.”

But Joseph, who could sometimes play the visionary amid the hard affairs of life, was looking into the red peats, as the moor folk always do when their hearts commune with God and Destiny. There is a warmth and calm about the glowing peats that give to men the restfulness of churches.

“Hark ye,” he said, in his slow fashion, “I’ve lived hard, and had no time to fatten fancies. But I know this—that this stranger laddie comes like a May-swallow, leading others to the summer of the Feud. Thou’st laughed at me, Bathsheba—thou, that see’st ghosts where I can see naught at all save moonshine—because I’ve said that one day yet the Feud-spear would go round among the Ratcliffes. The master would do all—that was thy cry—and yet I knew that hurt must come to him, soon or late, and other help be needed. Nick o’ Trawdon, I care not which side of the hedge you came to birth—but, by the Dog, I’m pleased to see you here.”

“Joseph, didst hear aught stirring? ” the good-wife asked, pointing to the window.

“I heard a farm dog yelping ’cause he found himself too far from home,” said Nick o’ Trawdon.

“There’s no farm on this side,” said Bathsheba. “’Twas the Wayne Dog, if I know aught—and he seemed to be running for dear life.”

“Fancies: thou’rt full of fancies, Bathsheba,” growled Joseph, though a moment since he, too, had harboured fantasy. “Nick o’ Trawdon, thou’rt a thirsty rogue; fill up again, and drink to the health of him who’s slumbering there as if he’d never wake till Judgment.”

Without, the moon lay placid on the waste of No Man’s Land. She showed the flat, black bogs, the flat, green marshes. And it seemed that, least of all, she remembered the deep floods of hatred gathering to a head amid the moors; for the Brown Dog raised a stricken cry, and the shadow of the Lean Man chased him over bog and marsh and shivering bracken, and the moon sailed out from a cloud of grey-blue haze, unheeding still that the heath was in travail with big deeds to come.

CHAPTER XIII

LOVE BENEATH THE FEUD

Shameless Wayne, sitting moodily in hall at Marsh, had not reached the end of the day’s sorrows; for presently the outer door was opened, and Maurice Wayne stole in. The lad’s shoulders were bent forward; he slouched as he walked; and when he saw his uncle sitting there, with only wine and bier-candles for company, he tried to slip away among the shadows.

“Come to the hearth here, Maurice,” said Wayne, in a voice whose coldness made the youngster shiver. “Now, say why you carry the look of a whipped dog. They told me you were dicing out at Ludworth with your fellows.” “I did not go with them. I—I chose to ride across the moor instead.”

“On mischief of some sort? So much is plain from your face. Well? Your errand, whatever it was, sped all amiss? For I see you come without your sword.”

Maurice, full enough before of his own trouble, grew chillier and more like a beaten hound. He had known this uncle as a reveller, an elder comrade who had always a jest for the youngsters when he touched wine-cups with them. How came it then that in a moment he had hardened, that his voice carried terror with it, that his eyes were quick to note the disordered details of his person?

“I rode to Wildwater,” he said sullenly, “to—to see the old house of the Ratcliffes-”

“That is a lie,” Wayne interrupted, with the same weary coolness. “You went on some private errand of your own—to meet some wench or other, if I know your ways. Well? ”

“I found a red brute there—a big fellow, who named himself a Ratcliffe, and sprang at me before I could thrust him through, and threw me with my head against the floor. He—he must have broken my sword, for when I came to myself again it was lying on the ground in two clean pieces.”

“This Ratcliffe seems to have had a harvest-day,” said Shameless Wayne.

And on the sudden the coolness of his manner went, and he got to his feet and strode up and down the hall with a fury easier to be borne than his quiet mood had been.

“Oh, come, all you others—you who went to dice at Ludworth! Come, one by one, and creep into the old house with tails between your legs—come and say that you, too, have met Red Ratcliffe by the way, and given your swords for him to break. See ye, lad,” he broke off, seizing the other by the arm and leading him to the ten bodies that lay quiet beneath their death-candles. “D’ye know who these are? Or are you so full of your own cursed troubles that you care not what has chanced to others? ” Maurice, shaken out of his own grief, looked at each remembered face, and shivered ; for until now he had been wandering abroad in misery, not daring to come home, and so no gossip of the day’s affairs had reached him.

“There’s Ned yonder,” he said, in a low voice. “I loved him best of all my kin, and he—he is dead. Say, uncle, what has chanced to-day? ”

“Naught to grieve about,” Wayne answered bitterly. “Only that Ratcliffe came to Marshcotes, and our folk went up against him, and he killed them to a man. And after that he came to Marsh here and nailed a gauntlet up above the door. Was it on his homeward way that he fell in with you, and, being tired of slaughter, gave you no more than a cracked skull? ”

“No, 'twas at noon I met him.”

“Odd, odd! I never heard of Ratcliffe mercy till I myself was spared at Colne; and now again this red fool gives another Wayne his life.”

“Suppose I had got him when I struck at Wildwater? ” said Maurice. “I aimed true enough, but he leaped aside, and then—uncle, if I had got him! ”—he glanced overshoulder at the dead—“ all these would have been alive to-night to drink to me.”

“Ay, true; but the feud has no stomach for might-have-beens, and there’s never a drop of wine will go between their teeth again.”

And then Wayne’s heart softened to the lad, for he was young, and spent with shame and grief. Moreover, had not Wayne himself, who dared to judge him, been worsted by this same Red Ratcliffe ?

“Maurice,” he said, “I was minded to send you out into the moor, as I sent my own son; but older men than you have met this Ratcliffe and not returned again, and God knows I am not fit to be your judge. Look in the faces of the dead once more, and swear that you will take their quarrel up.”

“I swear. Uncle, do you think it’s nothing to me that I have lost my honour? Do you think that I am too light to care? Give me one chance to fight beside you, and you’ll find me brave.”

By the light of the flickering candles Wayne eyed his nephew and approved him.

“Get to thy bed,” he said, with a kindly hand on his shoulder; “and remember that the feud is up.”

He was alone again; and, though his body craved for sleep, his mind was restless as a stream that runs through stony ways, seeking it knows not what and never finding it. The house, too, was full of roving wind-gusts, and the ghosts, deceived by the man’s stillness, crept out again and chattered ceaselessly.

What ailed him? Something more than death, and other deaths to come; something more than the weight of misused years; something he could not name, which yet was the one thing lacking to his courage.

The door opened softly—so softly that he did not heed it, thinking a sharper gust of wind was taking holiday. There was a footstep on the floor. A freshness, as of the open moor, swept by him. He lifted his eyes from the wine-cup in his hand, and there before him stood Janet, looking down on him—Janet, with tears and many love-lights on her face—Janet, her rich hair blown abroad despite the hood that covered it.

Wayne knew now what had been lacking. Without a word he went to her and caught her in his arms ; and the ten dead folk were very quiet, so that Janet did not heed them.

“I thought that you had left me,” said Wayne at last.

“Left you? I to leave you, when the troubles came? Lad, did you think so meanly of me? ”

“Hush, little fool! What I thought of you at twenty, I think now. There was never a doubt of you, Janet, but I fancied that you had found the misery too hard to bear.”

“What misery? This of the feud new-awakened? ”

“No, but the misery of knowing that we came together over dead men’s bodies.”

“I love you, and ’tis over-late to cure me of that sickness, lad. Shall I tell you why I went abroad? My boy went out into the wilderness—the boy I had bom and suckled— and my heart yearned for him. I found him after long search, and—and he told me, Ned, the reason of his quarrel with a kinsman. Hush! Bend your ear, for they had named me something that should not be said of any woman, and I should not like the walls to hear it said of their own mistress.”

“They named you that? ” cried Wayne. “My own kin named you that? Then let Red Ratcliffe wipe it out for me, since I’m forbidden to lift hand against them.”

“Ah, never heed for me! I’ve been glad to bear such things for you these many years. But the boy, Ned— cannot you see that no lad could hear his mother so be-named and not strike for her honour? And he is brave, though poor to look at and mis-shapen-”

She hid her face against his own, and Wayne, whose cup was brimming-full to-night with remorse, saw how he had misjudged, belittled, harried this poor lad who, in the end of all, had found strength to choose outlawry as the price of defending Janet’s honour.

“I’ve been hard with him,” he muttered. “An outlaw he must be, Janet, yet awhile—for never did we need discipline as much as now—but he shall earn his own way home again, if he be willing. Let him do some great deed— he has sword-play, you tell me—and I will bring him to his own again.”

Janet shook her head. “He cannot, Ned. So much I learned from him when I met him on the moor. He knows not on which side to fight.”

“I have dealt all amiss with him,” said Wayne abruptly. “See you, Janet, I’ve watched the years go past me with their ghosts while I have sat here to-night—and I have known something of what that lad of ours has suffered. Ay, I would not even teach him how to use his sword, though I am glad a better man than I has taught him.”

“After I had left him on the moor a strange thing happened, Ned. I looked back for a last glimpse at him, as mothers will, and saw him fling himself among the bracken; and then I guessed that he was crying his heart out, and I could not bear it, and ran toward him; and then, before I could get to him, a big man on a raking horse came galloping up against the moonlit sky—and our boy sprang out from the bracken—and the rider was thrown out of the saddle.”

“’Twould be Red Ratcliffe. Was he hurt, wife? ”

“Not overmuch, I fancy, for the boy and he talked long together, and then he got to saddle and away. Ned, there are candles burning,” she broke off, noting the bier-lights for the first time.

“There has been a fight, lass. Red Ratcliffe liked yesterday at Colne so well that he must needs come here to-day—and I was off to Cranshaw—and I came home to find ten of our folk killed and the rest put to shameful flight. Oh, Janet, lass, when I found you gone to-night, I was almost glad to think that you were free of coming troubles.”

She put her hands in his. “Ned, did you not miss me? ” “Miss you? Ay, as I should miss the winds of Marsh-cotes moor if I were thrust into a dungeon.”

“And I? D’ye fancy I could live without you? What was it that we said—lad and lass together—at the Brigg of Tryst? We said that love bridged all.”

Her eyes kept stealing to the bodies of the slain, but she would not think of them too much; battle and turmoil had ushered in her birth and the first days of her wedlock, and she was not one to swoon at sight of death.

“Listen, dear lad! ” she went on, and her voice was low and soft. “The years have done their best to set strife between us. We have failed often to say the good word, or look the kindly look, when each was hungering for it. Well, then, let’s welcome all disaster, for it has taught us— Ned, what has not trouble taught us? ”

As moor grasses in a dry March breeze take light from a tinder-spark, so love was lit afresh between these two. For Shameless Wayne had fought, in days past, like one greater than a man; and he loved as few men ever find the way of loving. Ay, big as the Marshcotes hills, big as the long traditions of their races, had been this love of Wayne’s and Janet’s; but it came to its full height to-night, and laughed disaster in the face.

“Ned, they have whispered all these years that we have paid our souls as the price of wedlock. They have whispered that hell waited for us.”

“If they were right, we have paid our debts in full, Janet. There is no hell that you and I have not passed through.” “That may be, lad; but if 'tis not so? ”

“We care so little. If there’s heaven to come, or hell to come, we’ll be together, lass.”

Janet lifted her voice amid the dead men’s silence.

“Thank God for all our troubles. Even at the Brigg of Tryst we never loved like this.”

As a mist that is gathered into the dawn, the veil between them parted, grew frail and frailer yet, and disappeared. Man and wife, in honour and all trust, they gave the nuptial kiss, and knew that ruin might rattle on the roof-stones, yet find them undismayed.

“To-morrow I shall take our folk at Marsh with me, and rout out this Ratcliffe with the axe,” said Wayne, feeling the need of action as a physic against over-stress of passion.

“You cannot find him,” cried Janet, full of new disquiet. “Ned, I know Wildwater, and I know the wilderness beyond where Black House lies. Black House was wont to be our sanctuary, because the bogs and marshes wrap it round so closely that only one who knows the path can reach it.”

“Yet we shall find it to-morrow, or die in these same bogs. How can I let this Ratcliffe ride abroad as it pleases him and take his toll? ”

“Ned, for our love’s sake, stay at home! ”

“For our love’s sake I shall go. Would you have me shamed in your own eyes? ”

“No, lad. You must fare out. Sorrow o’ women, all life seems a faring out! Yet—yet—oh, Ned, I’m broken by this love of ours, now it has waked from sleep. Ned, I can show you the true path to Black House.”

Janet, for her love’s sake, had risen to strange sacrifice; for she was Ratcliffe of the Ratcliffes still, so far as feud went, and this was treachery. Wayne understood her— saw her sacrifice in the clear, strong light of love.

“Little Lass,” he said, “we may be bairns of hell, as the folk say we are, but at the least we’ll each be loyal. I shall go to-morrow to find out this red devil’s brat, and you’ll not hinder me, nor come to point the way.”

For a moment she wavered, eager to dissuade him.

“Go,” she said at last. “There’s God behind such cleanliness as thine, Ned, and I’ll bide patiently till you come home again.”

And now the dead men were forgotten quite, and the candles flickered all unheeded. This was a second marriage —each safely in the other’s arms—and the wonder of their love was on them.

“Ned, the moon was cold and harsh to-night,’ she whispered. “I bethought me of the time when she was gentle—long since, at the Brigg of Tryst—and seemed to know our inmost thoughts. Ah, surely the moon is fickle as a wanton.”

“Our love is steady, though. Let the moon shift for her own wanton self,” laughed Wayne.

They parted at the door, and then Wayne called her back.

“Nay, naught,” he said, “save that the coming years grow light beneath your touch, Janet.”

The dead men slept, and Wayne, seeing how low their guardian-candles guttered in the sockets, replenished them. He had no longer any war with fate; what would be, would be, and Janet was his own above the little ins-and-outs of destiny.

CHAPTER XIV

AT THE BOG’S EDGE

Bathsheba was full of cheerfulness and bustle on the morrow of the fight at Marshcotes. The master had returned, after the doing of great deeds; and now he was, for the time being, beyond all danger of attempting deeds yet greater. For Bathsheba, though she was hot upon the trail of feud, found leisure now and then to listen to her heart, and at these times she feared for the master’s safety— feared so deeply that a passing hurt, such as this which kept him to his bed, became a matter of rejoicing. There was nursing to be done, moreover, and Bathsheba had a natural love of attending ailing folk.

“Well, how fares it with the master? ” asked Joseph, coming into the kitchen where she was preparing a brew of simples.

“A bit light-headed, as he’s like to be. Sakes, dost think a man can fight all day, and break two ribs at th’ end on’t, and never feel no worse? I’ve braced his ribs up fine, and they’ve naught to do but knit and mend; but the shock has unsettled his wits, and I for one am glad on’t—’twill keep him tame awhile. Hast seen aught of the Waynes? ”

“Not yet, but they’ll be coming before so very long, if I know their temper. Stands to reason, Bathsheba, you can’t go killing a round dozen of a man’s kin and not look for an early visit from him.”

“Why art idling there, by that token? ” snapped the goodwife, adding a few sprigs of horehound to her brew of herbs.

“Because I am as dry as a bone, lass, and Nick o’ Traw-don took the watching while I slipped in to snatch a drink of ale. We’ve watched since sunrise, one or t’other of us, and ’tis weary work to stand on your legs waiting for folk that willun’t no way come.”

“Oh, Nick o’ Trawdon? He comes from Lord knows where, and what’s he seeking here is my question? Folk don’t join the weaker side for choice, so far as I've seen life.”

“Tuts! Thou know’st as well as I, lass, that Nick o’ Trawdon, light though he be without, is right good steel within. Shame on thee, Bathsheba, to sneer at one who comes to help us in our need.”

‘‘ The master will be well before long. His arm is enough, I should have thought.”

Joseph dipped deep into his mug of ale, then smiled at his goodwife across the froth-tipped edge.

“You’ve got the Sight, lass, and you fancy that the master’s full of destiny, and power o’ Ratcliffe spirits risen from the dead, and such-like makes o’ moonshine. Well, I haven’t the Sight, thanks be, and can only guide myself by common-sense.”

“Common-sense? Ay, thou’st a lot of that, Joseph. ’Tis common-sense, I take it, bids thee step inside to fill thyself with old October ale, when Waynes are up and ready to murder us where we stand this minute.”

“Waynes are up, doubtless, but ’twill take them a tidy while to find their way ’twixt bogs on one hand and marshes on the other. Meanwhile, I’m heartening my body with good ale, and I call that the best of common-sense, Bathsheba.”

She looked at him with that curious, half-bewildered glance which she had never given Joseph until the reawakening of the feud had cheered him to revolt against domestic tyranny. Yet she liked him better in his bravery than ever she had done in his long-suffering days.

“As I was saying,” went on Joseph, after another mighty pull at the October. “As I was saying, Bathsheba, I can see with my own een that the master is good to carry an axe, and good to meet a two-three Waynes at any time—but there’s such a thing as luck in this life, lass, and luck will out at times. The Lean Man and all the ghosts about the moor will do him little service if once he fails to bite with foster-brother—for, mark ye, that’s the weak spot in an axe—if ye miss with him, the weight of your own blow carries you forrard, like, and a Wayne can cut you with his sword before you’ve time to say amen. That’s why I say that we’re in need of Nick o’ Trawdon and such-like; he’s no ghost-seer, he, and the two of us will keep master out of hurt through using a bit of foresight.”

“Well, then, I reckon Nick must be made welcome, though I never liked such fly-by-sky, light-mannered men myself.”

“So the master’s mending, is he? ” said Joseph, setting down his mug with a clatter.

“Ay, thanks to me. You’ve jested time and time, Joseph, about that bit of a herb-garden I’ve kept so trim; but let me tell you it has been the saving of the master. Where should I have been without my camomile, and fever-few, and horehound? ”

“I’m saying naught against your herb-garden, Bath-sheba,” he answered, in that new-found tone of raillery and assurance that so perplexed his wife. “Women do well to look to herbs when men are fighting; herbs keep a woman out o’ mischief, like, and they do less harm, when all’s said, than a body might have thought.”

Bathsheba finished the preparation of her brew, then flounced away.

“I’m going to master,” she said, turning at the door. “He’s wandering, but he talks more sense to a minute than ye’ll talk to a year, Joseph.”

“I shouldn’t wonder, lass. And he’s a strong-bodied lad, and all, and will likely overcome thy simples as he overcame the Waynes at Marshcotes yesterday.”

He waited for an answer, since Bathsheba was ever fain of the last word; but she went away in silence, and Joseph filled himself the half of another measure.

" Good ale never harmed a man yet,” said he to his^ frothing mug, “and Lord knows there’s enough to come to need what strength a man can buy or borrow. Heigho! But master’s lit a fire we shan’t see quenched this side of next year’s Christmas.”

He finished the ale, then went to the edge of Lonesome Pool, where Nick o’ Trawdon looked out across the water in search of the coming Waynes.

" Dost see aught, Nick? ” he asked, shadingjhis eyes likewise and looking far across the sunlit waste.

“Ay, moving specks—two, three, five, and more behind —they’re coming due south from Wildwater way.”

“Then thy eyes are quicker than my own, lad.”

" Bide a while, bide a while—now, d’ye see ’em yonder where they show against the bracken-patch? ”

And now Joseph, too, could see the moving specks, and Nick o’ Trawdon, with his sharper eyes, could count their number—a round score in all. And Joseph laughed, that grim, quiet laugh of his.

“They’re two miles away,” said he, “for I know just where that strip of bracken lies. Well, now, watch ye, Nick o’ Trawdon; they’ll find sentries waiting for them before they’ve covered a mile more of ground.”

“What, bogs and such-like? ”

" Ay, bogs and such-like. And they’re fearful good at sentrying, are bogs, for they never sleep, you may have noticed.”

Nick, too, laughed quietly, and they stood watching the horsemen draw near the spot where the perilous ways began; for they were at a mile’s distance now, and the sun was bright on them, and even J oseph could distinguish the figures of the men and of the horses which they rode.

“There’s Shameless Wayne himself rides at the head,” said Nick.

“So much the better. Ah, now bide and watch! There’ll be some bonnie things to see out yonder.”

And while they watched, these two, the Waynes came nearer still to the treacherous lands; and the younger men looked up at the bulk of Black House, where it towered from the summit of its hill.

“Egad! ” cried one. “This is a Ratcliffe hiding-house, so we’ve been taught. It seems more like the city set upon a hill that Parson Clare keeps prosing of on Sabbaths.”

Now, Shameless Wayne, not a godly man at any time, had ever set his face against the loose contempt of Scripture of which the younger sort were proud, and this mention of the city set upon a hill drew a black look from him; for the proven men of this world, when they go to war, may happen to have few prayers at command, but, at the least, they refrain from mocking God.

“Hark ye, lad,” he flashed, “clean lips keep company with courage. Steady, you behind! D’ye think to push forward as if the marshes were a well-found highroad? ”

Carefully, this way and that, he guided his horse along the first steps of the track, for he had learned from Janet, and from traditions of the long ago, that Black House needed no other shelter than its bogs. But all his care was useless, for in a moment his beast was floundering. Wayne pulled him back, not much too soon, and again made search for firmer ground, and again was hard put to it to win safety. The others, thinking they could find a road where Wayne himself had failed, sought each a pathway for himself and met with a like fate. And last of all Wayne bade them all ride up and down the margin of the bog-land till they found an inlet. Mile after mile they skirted this drear land, always with Black House looking down upon them as if in mockery; and some hugged the bog-land to the right, and some sought the edges of the marsh on the left hand; but none found out a way. For Black House, looking them so openly in the face across the marshes, was girdled, north and south, east and west, by such natural defences as never a castle in the land possessed. Only the round hill on which it stood, just big enough to pasture its sheep and cattle, and to rear its crops, was free of bogs and marshes, and Joseph, when at rare moments he lapsed into poetry, was wont to say that “God’s sort of armour was the best, when all was said.”

There was something uncanny in the stillness of the scene, and Joseph, no less than Nick o’ Trawdon, grew weary of the stillness. After yesterday’s hot fight—seen by Nick and pictured clearly by old Joseph—this watching of an enemy that could not get to them was tame and shadowy, and they were learning already, these two, that it is easier always to run in and strike your foe, whatever the odds may be, than to wait amid the silence of the siege.

“Oh, by the Heart, let’s wake the rogues! ” cried J oseph suddenly, tired of watching the Waynes ride up and down, down and up, in search of a surer foothold for their horses.

“I’m with you,” laughed graceless Nick o’ Trawdon.

Together they raised the old feud shout, “A Ratcliffs! A Ratcliffs! ” And the Waynes all pulled their horses up, and looked across that obstinate half-mile of bog that would not let them through.

“Wayns—Wayns and ths Dog / ” they cried in answer.

“Ay,” shouted Joseph, " but your dog goes whining nowadays, with’s tail between its legs and the Lean Man after him. Come find us, Waynes all; there’s only two of us to meet the score of you.”

It was odd how this boy’s sort of banter raised Joseph’s spirits. If it were not fight of sword with sword, it was better, at any rate, than waiting idly for a foe who could not cross to them. For this reason the old man went along the winding track, Nick following him, until two hundred yards or so alone lay between the Waynes and themselves.

" Where is the red-head with the axe? ” cried one of the younger Waynes, after a wild and useless effort to cross those ten score yards.

“Abroad,” answered Joseph grimly, rejoicing in his lie. “He was so full of yesterday that a body couldn’t no how hold him at after breakfast-time this morn. Full o’ talk, the master was, of going down to Marsh House again, just to see, like, what he could pick up yonder.”

Shameless Wayne, from the far side of the bog, lifted his big head; and the sunlight showed each line, of strength and weakness, as if it were cut from solid rock.

“Are you lying, red-head? ” he asked.

“Not more than usual,” growled Joseph. “If ye doubt me, Wayne o’ Marsh, ride down and see.”

Joseph had no wish to let the adversary know that Red Ratcliffe lay indoors with a couple of broken ribs; the old Ratcliffe guile was his, and the sly suggestion that Ratcliffe was abroad met with an instant answer. Twice already he and his foster-brother had gone abroad among the Waynes and left their message; and now Shameless Wayne fell back a little, and looked across the marshes at Joseph’s inscrutable, hard face, and thought of Janet.

“Stay you here, you six,” he said abruptly, pointing this and that man out from among his younger kinsmen. “The rest of you ride down with me to Marsh. If Red Ratcliffe is abroad, we’re seeking an empty nest up here.” “That’ll do, Nick o’ Trawdon,” chuckled Joseph softly. “Seems we’ve only to hint the master is gone abroad on his business and they get skeery-like, these Waynes. I mind the time when Shameless Wayne was playing just that part, and so much as a whisper to a Ratcliffe that he was riding up and about the moor was as good as saying the Dog was at their heels. Time brings matters shipshape, I’ve noticed, after ups-and-downs, same as a seesaw with a bairn at either end on’t.”

“Ay,” murmured Nick o’ Trawdon. " We’re few enough, Joseph, and I could laugh, if times were not just so solemn-like, to think how one man with broken ribs, and two fools like ye and me, asking your pardon, Joseph, can set panic going all about a country-side.”

“By God, we have set panic going; leastways, the master has,” answered the other, still keeping watchful eyes upon the enemy. “And panic is a fearsome word, lad, when ye speak it of brave folk. Waynes are brave, and Ratcliffes are brave, whatever their differences may be; and now I’m seeing the Dread go walking all abroad for th’ second time. 'Tis sickness, so to say, and sickness ever takes the strong folk hardest.”

Joseph, with all his contempt for other worldly matters, had also a second sight of his own, the sight which comes to old folk when they have held to one straight, strenuous road of life, have fought their battles and have still a little strength to meet the future, have learned the lesson which it is good to learn when nearing the edge of the Beyond, the lesson that time may seem careless of his debts, but in the end pays every farthing that he owes.

“Nick, lad, I’ve been fearful,” whispered the old man in his comrade’s ear, “but now I’m fearful not at all. There’s summat come to me, lad, from watching those black-headed Waynes who seek to get at us. I can see the few go scattering the many, and the Ratcliffe feud-spark blazing up and down the moor again, and the master coming safely home from many dangers.”

“Be damned if I can,” answered Nick o’ Trawdon, with the careless laugh which is at all times like food and drink to troubled men. “Seems to me, Joseph, we’re just nigh-to, or thereby, to being killed like two pullets in a hen roost.”

“We’ll all die one day,” snarled the other, his Ratcliffe lips going bare, like a wolf’s, about his teeth. “I’m not talking o’ dying just yet, Nick o’ Trawdon, for we’ve set the panic blazing like a fire about the Waynes; and the Dread, God knows, is a better friend than sword, or five-foot axe, or all these tricksy bogs that hem us in.”

“I’ll take your word for it, Joseph—but I happen, like, to love a lass out Colne way, and I’ve rather a fancy for living on to wed her.”

“Oh, 'tis that way wi’ ye? Well, it ’ull do ye no great harm, I reckon, to have a lass to fight for. Master, for his part, is full of some maid or other, and as I said to Bath-sheba only this morn, when she was grumbling at his talk o’ Parson’s lass, ‘ Bathsheba,’ says I—by th’ Heart, look yonder! ” he broke off. “There’s more Waynes coming up to take us, Nick.”

Five Waynes, indeed, and after them three others, and three again behind, were riding swiftly over the broken lands; news had gone round that the siege of Black House had begun, and from the four quarters of the moor the Waynes were riding out.

To Shameless Wayne, who had been waiting, after his last commands, to view the land again and see how best to order the attack of those left behind—to Shameless Wayne the coming of these eleven kinsmen was only a further menace, for, if Red Ratcliffe were indeed abroad, the house at Marsh down yonder, and Janet, and Little Bairn, whose comfort was dear to him even in his darkest and busiest hours, were in such peril as he dared not think of. They were alone, these women, and Marsh House was alone, and yesterday a Wayne gauntlet had been nailed up above the doorway. Janet and he last night had come together in that new love and trust which is ever and ever the stronger after troubles past; and now he was bearing the brunt of the new happiness, for in the cold, rough moors it comes more easily to men to meet evil times than good.

“Ride back with us,” he said to the new-comers. “The six we’re leaving here are enough—too many, I doubt, seeing that Red Ratcliffe is this side, not the other, of the marshes.”

“Why leave us here, then? ” said a hasty lad. “’Tis no man’s sport, uncle, this of riding up and down the marshes’ edge.”

It was significant of loosened discipline that any voice should be raised against the head of all the Wayne houses; it was significant of the coming days that Shameless Wayne turned in his saddle, and looked the lad over from crown to heel, and answered him in a voice that was quiqt in its depth and passion.

“Youngster, we’ve done with the days of asking, ‘ Why, why? ’ When I command, I command, and there’s an end. Listen! The feud got up and blazed like a gorse-fire twenty years ago; and our striplings did not ask,

‘ What next? What are we to do? ’ They did the thing that lay ready to their hand, wasting no time with words, and God showed them in good time where work was waiting for them.”

And not the youngsters only, but the hard elders who heard Wayne’s words and saw the look on his dark face, were abashed, and ready to obey, and mindful that they had not spent the past years very well. Shameless Wayne had done many things amiss—he had disguised no tittle of his record, good or ill, and these elder folk could judge him fairly—and yet in every hour of need he had shaken his wide shoulders free of follies; ay, when the aftersickness of these follies lay upon him, and heart and soul were sick in him, he had, not once or twice, gone out to meet his destiny in the open, had faced danger when its front showed big and sullen as the winter hills, had, last of all, retrieved the whole Wayne fortunes. For that reason he claimed obedience to-day, though disaster had come like a thunder-bolt from a June sky upon his folk; for that reason they would follow him to the end, these kinsmen who were now half hardy and half spoiled by luxury. Feud and long battles rear such men as Shameless Wayne, and when they come among us, they are apt to find lesser folk forget their follies, remembering only that a man is judged by times of need, not by the dawdling hours of his prosperity.

On the sudden, there in the sunlight, with the wild moor and the bogs about them, and Joseph watching silently with Nick o’ Trawdon across the marshes, Shameless Wayne laughed—a laugh sharp and quick as the call of a grouse when he seeks his mate in early spring.

“Look ye, the six I’m leaving here,” he cried, “you’re youngsters, all of you—I chose you for that reason—and you’ve to find your work. When the fox leaves his covert, ’tis something, after all, to bum it down before he comes to it again.”

It was Maurice Wayne—whom yesterday Red Rat-cliffe had thrown into a corner of the House of Wildwater— who answered.

“Until we find a way across the bogs, and burn Black House,” he said, “we six will not return.”

And now the witchery of fight was gripping all of them; and now the wind sang in the withering heather-bells, shrill as the battle which was coming, like its own self, from the belly of a sunlit sky; and now these men looked at each other, like so many school-lads spoiling for a fight.

“By God, the feud is up! ” cried one whose grey head should have warranted a quieter voice. “We’re living again, we Waynes, after twenty years of death.”

A great cry went up; and Joseph, listening to it, felt a stirring of the heart, and nudged his comrade, and murmured, “Leastways, Nick, howe’er the matter ends, we are fighting men, not rattens.”

"Ay, begow,” answered Nick, with one of his comical, dry smiles; “but ye’re too old, Joseph, to love a lass overmuch, and what of my maid waiting for me at Colne? ” “Tuts, she’ll bide, and love ye better afterwards.”

“Ay, that’s varry weel, but I’m not just dealing wi’ corpses nowadays—and I heard Wayne’s voice just now, and the temper on’t—and I rather fancy, Joseph, we haven’t long to live. ’Tis harder on me than ye, when all’s said, for I needn’t see my grave so close as ye do,” he added, still with the same gay humour, “if I hadn’t followed Red Ratcliffe yestereen, and all for foolishness.”

“Let be,” growled Joseph. “There’s many a folly turns out wisdom. Let be, and remember ye came in our hour’s need, and look to see yon silly wench of Colne when you’re proved worth a lass’s having.”

“There’s summat in that,” assented the other, half blithely, and part in earnest. “Ay, there’s summat i’ that, Joseph.—Look ye, they’re riding down the moor, all but six of them. ’Twas a rare stroke o’ thine to hint that Red Ratcliffe was abroad.”

“I’m wearying for a harder sort o’ stroke, Nick. Come now, six to two looks likelier than it did awhile since. We’ll may be see some man’s work soon.”

The old man ran his fingers softly along his sword’s edge, and hummed a song to himself, all harshly out of tune; but Shameless Wayne rode, with his friends behind him, over and across the moor, leaving only the half-dozen striplings to watch Lonesome Marsh.

Joseph, surely, had spoken a true word just now when he said that time measured with just scales; for Shameless Wayne, no coward, and the Waynes with him, brave folk all, were ill at ease as they recrossed the wide stretch of moor that lay between themselves and Marshcotes. They looked from the right hand to the left, and they rode wide of the thicker bracken-clumps, lest these should hide Red Ratcliffe and his axe; they moved, in brief, like men who meant to reach their goal, but like men who feared also an enemy scarcely human.

Just so had Shameless Wayne once stricken fear into the Ratcliffes; had ridden out of the mid-day or the moonlit moor; had left his dead behind him and vanished into emptiness again. J ust so had each new tale of his prowess added fresh terror to his next appearance. Just so had the Ratcliffes looked over shoulder, right and left, whenever they moved abroad.

“Times change,” said Wayne grimly, catching one of these side-glances of his kinsmen. “The red fox runs behind the hounds nowadays, my masters.”

The others answered nothing—only rode down the moor, a silent company, with faces dark as if death had cast his shadow on them.

Behind them, where six were left to conquer two at the bog’s edge, the scene was in strange contrast to yesterday’s fight upon the churchyard steps. At Marshcotes there had been feud-cries ringing up amid the jar of sword on axe; there had been the shouts, the groans, the hushed murmurs, of the folk who watched the battle; there had been the roar of a maddened bull, and all the speed and fury of Red Ratcliffe’s leap from the steps into the middle of his enemies. Now, there were six silent lads on the one side, two quiet men upon the other, and between them the deeper silence of the marshes.

Now and then a grouse went grumbling by, so close that the creak of his wings was plainly to be heard; once a peewit cried, and wheeled quickly down the wind at sight of strangers; for the rest, the blue sky and the sun looked down upon the waste of scarcely moving bracken, of bilberry, of russet heather, which girdled the green land of the marshes. Ratcliffes and Waynes alike were by way of acknowledging no over-lord; yet God was master here, and, between the firm land where the Waynes stood and the firm land where Black House frowned out across at them, there was a barrier such as man’s hand could never rear. Nay, more, there was a lesson being taught to Waynes and Ratcliffes both, here at the bog’s edge, could they have hearkened to it; for the silence was pregnant with a man-child, to be named the Future, and that future at the last end of the feud was to be guided by God’s hand after a fashion which all would be compelled to understand.

Meanwhile, the Waynes sought up and down the edge for some passage to Black House; and Joseph and his comrade waited silently ; and, last of all, the youngiest of the Waynes gave a great shout, and galloped over what he fancied was good ground, and came helter-skelter toward the waiting two until he was no more than a hundred yards from them.

His comrades watched him enviously—Maurice specially, for he had hoped to wipe his shame out once for all to-day. Then, on the sudden, they saw his horse plunge into what looked like a green and lawny island set amid the darker land: they saw the beast strive furiously, yet making not an inch of forward ground, until he sank fetlock high, then to the level of his knees. It was<when the marsh reached his belly that the horse ceased to strive, and lifted a head of human agony, and cried aloud in terror and great anguish, while his rider, who had sprung from saddle, sank quietly in his turn. And no Wayne out of the five was minded now to envy his comrade, for they knew what had befallen him —knew that Black House was all the more secure, by reason of the thousand paths which seemed to promise safety for awhile, then ended in this treacherous “Green o’ Death.”

Joseph watched the horse sink low and lower yet, and his face was full of a hard joy.

“Ratcliffe luck is in,” he muttered. “and going bonnily.”

“Nay, Joseph, nay! ” said Nick o’ Trawdon. “May be I’m softish, may be I never could bide to hear a dumb thing screaming—but ye and me must fare out to help yond lad.”

The old man looked once at him. “This comes o’ hearkening to-maids. Varry weel i’ their place, is maids, seeing men-childer must be bom, or th’ world wouldn't go its round. Only hark ye, Nick o’ Trawdon—d’ye come to fight Ratcliffe battles, or just to play at kiss-me-quick behind the hedge? ”

“I’d crack his skull, and laugh to do’t,” said the other obstinately; “but to see him sink and sink—by God, 'tis no man’s work, this.”

“Oh, ay, but 'tis! Matters naught, lad, whether ye kill ’em wi’ the edge or wi’ the point. So long as a ratten is dead, he’s dead, and who needs hold a Crowner’s Quest over above his body and his longish tail? ”

The horse, his head still uplifted to the blue of the September sky, had sunk to the saddle pommel now, and his master was hidden to the waist.

“I can’t abide that sort o’ death,” repeated Nick; “hast never a heart i’ thy body, Joseph ? Thy face is all in a twisted grin.”

“If it’s thy mind to save him, lad, well, go and do it,” answered the other drily.

And Nick o’ Trawdon stepped from off the track, and made toward the struggling pair who seemed to be so near him. Three strides he took, and at the fourth his foot went into oozy ground, and at the fifth he sank so far that he had to throw himself flat upon his back and drag his right leg out as best he could.

“Let be, thou fool,” said Joseph. “I tell ye, not fifty of us could get the ladling out—even if we would. He’s in the worst o’ the marsh, save for one spot I know of, and— look ye, how he sinks. The beast takes longer, for he’s a broad belly stretched across yond green, moist place.”

Nick, seeing the uselessness of effort, returned to Joseph’s side; but his right leg was numbed to the bone by that brief contact with the bog, and he dared not glance at the sinking man, the crying horse, for their anguish seemed to him a monstrous thing, unfit for any eyes to look upon.

The Waynes, too, turned their eyes away, and a great sickness fell on them. This was not battle such as they had sought; rather, it was battle such as falls to most of us in this life—the weary waiting, the seeing friends go under cold and sullen waters beyond reach of help from us, the silent dread of what’s to come and the need to keep our hearts alive and our hands busy through it all.

Only once did they look at their drowning comrade; and that was when the ooze was licking at his chin, when he knew that he had little speech left to him in this life. Lad as he was he gathered his courage in remembering that he was a Wayne.

“Wayne and the Dog! ” he cried. “A Wayne—a Wayne l ”

And then he sank to the mouth; but the horse, to whom death came less quickly and less mercifully, still raised piteous cries. Joseph alone of them all was no way daunted; for he saw one foe the less, and, because he was old, and had seen many ways of feud, pity was a thing abhorred by him, a creeping sickness that weakened a man’s hold on his sword.

And by-and-by the horse ceased his cries; and the marsh, disturbed awhile, began to bury its own dead, in its own quiet fashion. First, the bubbles rose, and settled, and rose again; and then the islands of black peat, marking where horse and rider had disturbed the surface, grew less and less, as the oily green spread quietly over them; till, last of all, none could have told that the bright, tempting marsh had any secrets to be hidden.

“Joseph, Joseph! ” cried Nick o’ Trawdon, fear and sorrow in his voice. “By the Heart, let’s get to skullcracking, lest we go thinking overmuch of what has chanced. Let’s across, and into them, Joseph! There’s only five against us two.”

“Now, quiet, will ye? ” growled his elder. “D’ye think I’m not fair longing to run in and take our chance? But the master’s lying ill yonder, and there’s just yourself and me, lad, to take care of him. We must bide, Nick, lad, we must bide.”

“Lord, how the sickness comes across my eyes! ” said Nick, after a long silence.

Joseph patted him on the shoulder with rough kindliness. “I know, lad, I know,” he said. “I used to be taken that way myseln, when I was younger. Ye’ll grow to think .naught on’t, when ye’ve seen a few more die. Tuts! What’s dying? Easier nor living, the good God knows —easier by th’ half nor living, Nick o’ Trawdon.”

And so the sun drew westward, and more westward still, ruddying the bracken, lighting the green of the marshes, till it settled into sleep behind the farther hills. The moon who had striven hours ago to rival her goodman’s power, began to throw a gentle light across the moor; and then her power increased, though still the red of sunset lingered in the west; and then, save for a star-point here and there, she was the one lantern of the heath, lighting the knolls and dingles of the moor so plainly that wayfarers might cross as easily as if ’twere noonday.

And still the Waynes waited on this side of the marsh. Had their comrade died less evilly, there might have been a grumble heard; but, as it was, no answer came, save a “We’re with you,” when Maurice Wayne said once again, at the edge of dusk, that they five must not return till they had won their right. Shameless Wayne, no less than Joseph, had the true instinct of a leader, and he was wise in leaving boys, not men, to lay siege to the marshes round about Black House—wisest of all in giving Maurice, last night, a tacit claim to leadership. It was Maurice who took the watch, bidding his comrades sleep until Red Ratcliffe came, or till he wakened them; it was Maurice who paced up and down the marshes’ edge, long after the others had stretched themselves amid the warm and fragrant bracken; it was Maurice who thought a little of the Parson’s Lass, but more of the shame gone by and of the honour soon to come.

God knows what dreams he had, stifling his yawns as he watched on the edge of this drear land—watched with the ghosts for company, while he hoped and feared that Red Ratcliffe would swoop down at any moment with foster-brother glinting in the moonlight. May be he dreamed of honour won again—and, indeed, he was soon to win it— and may be he thought, as all of us have thought, that honour comes in state, with beat of drums and plaudits of the simpler folk, instead of coming humbly, like a wistful maid who fears all eyes except her lover’s. May be—for moonlight on the silent moors shows strange mirrors to a man—he fancied he would meet Red Ratcliffe here tonight, and face him, and beat down that five-foot length of axe, and afterwards ride out to Marshcotes to wed the Parson’s Lass.

Little the moon cared, as she lit the bogs and the marshes and the higher grounds—as she showed Joseph’s burly figure, with Nick o’ Trawdon’s slighter bulk" beside him, both watching and both waiting—as she showed the sleeping four among the bracken, and Maurice moving restlessly along the margin’s edge. The moon had seen too much of human to-and-froings, and she longed to see the peace of nature’s desolation once again about the moors she loved.

“Oh, be damned! ” growled Joseph, from across the marshes. “We must get our sleep, Nick, one time or another, and these bogs are safer blankets—wet though they be—than most folk sleep beneath. We’ll get to Black House, lad, and fill a measure or so, and wake to-morrow.”

“Why not run in and kill ’em? ” said Nick o’ Trawdon smoothly.

“Because that youngster watching on the hither bank would rouse his folk before we could win to them; because I’m not so handy with a sword as I used to be, and you’ve scarce had a lesson yet; I tell ye again, Nick, lad—we must leave all risk-taking to the master. He’s got the Luck o’ Nine Necks, while thou and I have only one apiece to lose.”

Maurice saw them turn away and move toward Black House, and wondered if there were some Ratcliffe guile at work; then he fell to watching the path they took, hoping he might remember it. The hope was vain, however; could he have found the track for the first fifty yards, he saw, by the windings and the sudden turns which Joseph made, that no stranger could hope to cross unless he had a guide immediately in front of him.

“Well, the Red Rat is this side the bog,” he muttered, as he took up again his ceaseless pacing to and fro along the margin. “God, if only he would come, and let me have one thrust at him! ”

No answer came from out the beautiful, quiet moonlight of the moor. Now and then a horse neighed from the dreary line of thorn-trees which stood like bent old men on a neighbouring hillock of dry ground—the thorns which had served the Waynes for tethering posts. For the rest, the feud slept tranquilly, gathering strength to meet the coming days.

CHAPTER XV

PARSON’S LASS

“Audrey, I’ve to cross the moor,” said Parson Clare, coming into the room where his daughter sat beside Black Wayne, her fingers moving silently about some bit of embroidery. It was eight of the same evening on which Maurice Wayne strode up and down the edge of No Man’s Land, waiting for an enemy who did not come.

“Ah, not to-night, father! ”

She had looked up quickly at him, had seen the worn, tired face, the hair grown white and scanty through patient following of his duty.

“Child, there’s a dying man out between here and Wildwater. He has asked for me. That is all.”

It was strange to see how firm the Parson was when he had work to do. Perhaps, judging from the zest with which he had yesterday listened to Red Ratcliffe’s tales, from his eagerness to watch the after-fight, he had had leanings, earlier in life, toward the battles of this world; but that was long gone by, and his work now lay amid the warfare of human souls that strove against the God who made them.

“But, father-”

“Peace! ” he said peremptorily. “There might have been snow upon the moors, and yet I should have gone. ’Tis child’s play now, with the heath dry as June and the moon at full. How is the sick man, Audrey? ” he broke off, with a glance of distaste at the couch on which Black Wayne was sleeping heavily.

“All but well, I think,” answered the girl, not adding that a few hours ago he had been well enough to make wild love to her. “All but well, father, judging by the quietness of his sleep.”

“Lack-a-day,” murmured Parson Clare, taking a pinch of snuff before he set out on his mission. “Life gets no simpler, child, as we get older. We are bringing this rascah back to health, because pity lets us do no other way —and yet—and yet-”

The Parson took another pinch, shut his snuff-box with a snap, and went out into the passage.

“Life gets more tangled every day,” sighed Audrey, sorrowing that a man so old must have so much to fear, so many labours to undergo. “If only Red Ratcliffe would come back and rid us of these Waynes! ”

It was no easy task for the girl, this of sitting beside a rogue whose rude health, once returned, would be a menace and an outrage to her. Yet she could do no less than tend him; nay, when the sick man’s folk had come to bear him down to Marsh after the great fight, she had herself refused to let him go, thinking it would put his life in jeopardy.

Indeed, this night of moonlit calm seeemd to be full of unrest for all upon the moorside. Down yonder at Marsh House the Waynes sat looking grimly at each other, their unburied dead still lying with the bier-candles throwing ghostly lights and shadows on their upturned faces— sat looking at each other, and asking where Red Ratcliffe was. At the bog’s edge Maurice Wayne paced up and down, repenting of his past, and seeking ways and means to wipe its misdeeds out. Up here at the Parsonage sat Audrey Clare, feeding the wonder of her new-found love, fearing the defenceless days to come, when Black Wayne and his like should find leisure to maltreat her.

“Ah, God, and I was made for him! ” came the sudden cry, at the end of all her thoughts. And the pity of life struck sharply at her, so that she wished the tears would come.

Black Wayne stirred on his couch, half-raised himself, and asked for wine. She brought it to him, and he drank it greedily, and asked for more. Then there fell a silence, broken by the man. His eyes were on the girl; and she, meeting the glance, held down her head in misery and shame.

“I’m strong again,” he said. “’Twas only a passing blow, Audrey, and I’m strong again. Did I talk of wife and bairns awhile since? Well, they mean naught—for there’s something in your face that lights the devil in a man.”

“You are our guest, and I have tended you,” she answered, lifting her head with a weary sort of pride.

“Iam your guest, and you have tended me,” he echoed. “True, and Waynes are gently bred, they say. May be the blow has sent my wits astray, Audrey; may be I was never gentle, like yon Shameless Wayne whose courtesy has wrecked the Wayne hopes more than once.”

“You are pleased to talk, sir, but you would be wiser to keep silence and to rest. You are not recovered yet.” “I’m not often pleased to talk,” he said, sitting upright and clearing the sickness from his eyes. There was a certain rude devilry about the man, a carelessness of pain, a headlong disregard of all that threatened him, which had earned him many a man’s love and many a woman’s. “I’m rarely pleased to talk, Mistress Audrey. Life’s too brief, and there’s too much sap in it, to let a plain man waste time in words. See you! I’m your guest, and you have tended me; and I care not a snap of the finger for’t, seeing I cannot make my record blacker than it stands; and to-night I mean to take you with me.” Audrey Clare stood back, her hands behind her, her eyes bright, and clear, and full of that eagerness which comes when folk stand upon the edge of battle. Red Ratcliffe had not seen so dire a fight before him yesterday; for he had only life to lose—a thing we must all lose soon or late—but she had something which every woman must carry safely to her grave, or lie thereunder without ease until all graves gape wide for Judgment Day.

There was a maid-servant or two somewhere about the Parsonage. There was the man-of-all-work who looked after her pony and her father’s glebe-land. It was useless, though, to make an outcry ; for this man, so weak awhile since, was almost whole again, helped by his great strength and by his passion, and it was plain that not gratitude nor any pity could move him from his purpose. Of what use were maid-servants and one unhandy groom against such as Black Wayne? Of what use was her honour, guarded jealously, yet hidden in ~a casket so frail that any man might steal it?

“Are you black to the heart of you? ” she asked, with sudden vehemence.

“They tell me so, and I seem to thrive on the easy reputation. At least I love you, and I mean to take you, Audrey.”

Through fear and turmoil Audrey kept her courage, remembering Red Ratcliffe.

“You talked of the warmth o’ life,” she said, with quiet scorn. “Knowing I love another, and am as cold as frost upon the ling to you—say, would you care for that? Would you care each day to know that I thought you less than the dogs? For the dogs have honour, after all— they are faithful to the hand that feeds them.”

“Ay, for I’ve lived, and seen frost turn to April sunshine. D’ye think your red fool of a lover knows how to thaw a frost? He’s a boy, Audrey—just a boy—and he’d weary you within the month.”

Audrey went to the window, and looked out upon the bleak and moonlit graveyard. Sexton Witherlee was there, had she but known it, seeing the dead return, and living in the past he loved; Little Bairn was there, seated beside the Sexton on the grey, mossy tomb and talking of the primroses she gathered with old Wayne of Marsh these twenty years gone by, when she, a little more and a little less of a child than now, was learning the lesson of all brides; and they were chattering, these two, in their own queer way, with none to overhear them.

Audrey looked out, seeing neither the Sexton nor the Bairn. She saw the moonlight only, and the star that winked and trembled over Cranshaw Rise, and the grey rows of headstones lying, head to foot, from end to end of the packed graveyard. She was seeking for a pathway of escape, just as Maurice Wayne, yonder by the bogs, was seeking for a way of entry to Black House.

Black Wayne smiled as he waited; he was used to find women fall like ripened apples into his hand, and he misunderstood the silence of the girl.

“They say the King looked on you, Audrey,” he said, with a sneer. “Well, there’s no King here in Marshcotes, save the Wayne who can prove himself the best of a bad breed. Kings come and go, girl, but a man’s love is a thing to reckon with.”

“So is an adder on the moor,” she answered, turning sharply.

Wayne only laughed. It pleased him to see the shame come red into her cheeks, for he knew—as the lowest hind upon the moorside knew—that this Parson’s Lass was pure as a summer’s dawn upon the hills.

“You’re courteous, Audrey,” he murmured. “Fool Wayne of Marsh must have been giving you a lesson. It makes no difference. You’re mine, and you’ll learn to love me before another moon comes shining through the casement yonder.”

Audrey made no answer, but looked out again upon the graveyard. She had no sword-skill, and little strength, as matched against Black Wayne; but she had a love for Red Ratcliffe—a love bigger than the hills, though builded only yesterday.

“You love me? ” she said, turning suddenly.

“Ay, and will make you happy.”

She showed no trace of doubt, and her eyes lingered on his own. “You swear to make me happy? ” she asked.

“I’ve never failed with women yet—oh, by God, that’s not the thing I meant to say—Audrey-”

“You swear to make me happy? ” she repeated.

“By the Rood—or by the Dog, though I’ve little faith in the brown brute.”

Round and about the churchyard, as if in answer to the challenge, there stole a running whine—a whine that ended in a yell of dread.

“Hark ye,” murmured the Sexton to Little Bairn, as they sat beneath the moonlight. “There’s Barguest a-calling and a-crying. Sure, Mistress, there’s brave deeds in the making.”

“Naught matters,” answered the other, in her cool, sweet voice. “What should matter, Sexton, when the moon’s asleep so quietly on the moor? ”

Black Wayne, disdain the Dog as he would, had heard what the Sexton had heard, and for the moment he was daunted. Live recklessly, crush down the under-realities of life as he might, he could not forget the Wayne tradition —could not forget how, two days ago, certain of his kinsmen had heard the Dog, and had afterwards ridden out to Colne to prove it a true prophet.

Audrey had heard nothing, nor seen Wayne’s fear; full of her own scheme still, she turned again to him.

“I will come with you,” she said. “Only give me time—a short few moments—in which to take some wearing-gear.”

Now Wayne was only half recovered, and the chill of Barguest’s voice was on him still; so that, too dazed to think of trickery, he let her go.

“They’re all of the same clay,” he muttered, filling his tankard afresh and draining it. “ These lads came dancing, after her whims, and thought to capture her with poodle’s antics. She was needing a master all the while—and, gad, she’s found one! ”

He waited patiently, glad to feel the warmth of the wine drive out all recollection of Barguest’s running yelp; but as he waited, there came the sound of horse-hoofs from behind the Parsonage—galloping hoofs upon the hard, stony road that led into the moor. Not for a moment did he doubt his folly now; and he told himself, as he ran out into the churchyard and through the wicket-gate, that he was more daft than any of the lads whom he had lately laughed at. He was right; for, braggart as he was, he knew in his heart that such as Audrey Clare did not go welcoming shame as if it were a bridal-gift.

Audrey, soon as she was free of the house—wondering that her simple plot had carried well—ran to the stable, where her pony was nodding in the stall after a feed of oats and hay. There was none to help her saddle, nor would she have wasted time had the man-of-all-work been about the stable. She led the little mare out into the moonlight, clapped a bridle on her, leaped to her back from the horsing-steps that stood near by, and turned her head toward the moor.

A true word she had spoken, after all, when she told Black Wayne that she was going to take woman’s gear with her. For she carried the bonniest and most fragrant of all such gear—she and the little black pony— and yet its woof and weft were spun only from the moonbeam threads of honour.

“Gallop, lass! ” she cried, as she reached the moor. “Gallop away from Black Wayne, and find my lover for me.”

The pony was sound of heart, for she was of a breed that even Audrey’s kindness could not spoil. She seemed to know, the little black beast, that she was carrying treasure minted, not by the King, but by the sweet and cleanly winds of Heaven. Yet the moor was full of pit-falls, and, even this side of Wildwater and of No Man’s Land, there were slippery places where horse or man might sink, and on the drier lands there lay rabbit-burrows waiting for unwary feet.

Audrey gave no heed to pitfalls. Over the silent moor she galloped, and under the silent moon ; and the pad of her pony’s hoofs, soft as they struck upon the peat, seemed like a voice lifted loud amid the wilderness. But ever and ever she made for Wildwater, because her lover had been wont to journey thither, because she sought him now.

Black Wayne, meanwhile, had run to the stable, only to find it empty; then he had run to the highway, thinking to cross over to the Bull tavern and hire a horse there. As good or ill luck chanced, however, a horseman came riding up at the trot, just as he reached the joining of Parson’s Lane and the wide highroad. Wayne caught the stranger’s horse by the bridle, so roughly that it reared upon its haunches.

“Be damned, sir,” said the rider—a peaceful merchant, thinking of a bargain to be made in Halifax to-morrow. “What fool’s play is this? ”

“Wayne’s play,” answered the other. “I want a horse, and yours looks good to go.”

With a twist of the arm he threw the horseman out of saddle, then set his foot into the stirrup and mounted.

“Wayne’s thanks for the horse! ” he cried, and galloped, and turned the horse with a swerve that all but lost him his seat, into Parson’s Lane; and the merchant picked himself from out the road, and dusted his broadcloth carefully, and thought of sending for the Sheriff.

Half-way up the lane there was a rutty, ill-found hollow in the track, which at times was scarcely to be crossed, which even now in the dry season allowed no horseman to gallop over it. Wayne checked his beast’s gallop instinctively as he neared the hollow, for he had known Parson’s Lane and all its trickeries too long to be heedless of them now. And, as he checked, another horse came neighing down the lane to meet him—a horse that stopped never at all to consider the dangers of the rutty hollow, but came hot-foot and turned about in the narrow bridle-way soon as he reached Black Wayne, and threw his head back like a dog let out of kennel for a scamper, and reached a smooth tongue up to lick Wayne’s face.

“Why, lass! ” cried Wayne. “Where hast been through these damned hours of sickness since Ratcliffe dizzied me upon the churchyard steps? ”

The horse Wayne rode, wearied out after a long journey from Lancashire to-day, stood passive, only lifting his ears and widening his nostrils to ask if this four-footed kinsman were friend or foe. But the other beast was Wayne’s own horse, and felt the saddle on him ache to carry the master once again, and licked his hands and face—all to tell him that, since the churchyard fight, he had been wandering homeless on the moor, waiting for Black Wayne, and seeking him, and cropping, when his needs demanded, the barren grass-lands of the heath.

“Thou’rt better than this packman’s fat-ribbed brute,” laughed Wayne, drawing his horse close in and slipping from one saddle to the other.

He gave the merchant’s nag a kick of the foot, and the horse, tired out, stood still and waited for the enemy to leave him to his peace. And some say that afterwards this merchant’s horse went down the lane to Marshcotes village, and that his rightful owner found him there; but most folk to-day believe that he went up into the moor and there fell in with, and joined, the roving band of horses which, since the far days of the earlier feud, had carried riders into battle, had lost their masters from the saddle, and had fled to live and breed and die upon the heath.

However that might be, Black Wayne rode forward up the lane and into the moor—the moor that was soft and tranquil as a kind maid’s eyes to-night. He had no thought of sickness; he felt the throb of a good horse under him, and he followed Audrey as men hunt the fox, for sport’s sake and for lust of chase.

And by-and-by he saw her, riding fast ahead of him; for her pony had stumbled twice, and the second time, forgetting her pursuer, Audrey had stayed to give the little mare her ease, until she heard the thud of hoofs behind her; but, at the sound, she thought of the mare no longer, but of Red Ratcliffe, who yesterday had fought upon the churchyard steps.

Over and over the desolate, moonlit heath they rode. No broken ground came now to spoil the chase. Forward and forward they galloped, and the little mare seemed to know that she was carrying a jewel beyond price, for the big horse could not overtake her.

The moon looked down upon them dispassionately, as she had looked upon the fight of yestereven on the churchyard steps; it was all one to her whether this girl, riding so furiously and with a heart half broken by anxiety, won or lost her race of honour.

Over and over the heath they galloped; and the moon shone blue and tranquil on the land; and they two had the wilderness to share between them, for well-content or woe.

As for Black Wayne, he had lost all his sickness now; nay, he was glad the maid had fooled him, for the speed of the chase was in his blood, and he had no doubt of the finish, and this seemed the blithest road of wooing he had ever ridden.

Swing, and skelter, and gallop, over the rises they went, and down the steep brae-sides, and pad-foot over the bare peat-lands. The little mare was sobbing now, and Wayne’s bigger horse was fetching deep, raking breaths; but still they kept their stride, and still the moor wind whistled by them, singing the perilous fight of woman’s honour.

And now one gained, and now the other; and neither guessed that a stranger kept pace with one and the other— a great, rough-coated hound, filmy as a moon shadow, with filmy breath running in a wide stream from out his nostrils. And, whether Audrey gained, or whether the hulking beast that carried Black Wayne drew nearer to the fugitive, the ghostly hound went forward, always forward, licking the heels of Wayne’s horse.

Near to Wildwater—and her heart aching for her lad to come—Audrey’s mare galloped hard into a spur of rising ground, and stumbled, and fell prone, unseating her. But Wayne galloped on, and sprang from saddle, and laughed like a boy who finds his play at last.

The filmy hound ran up and put his snout into Wayne’s hand, and whined as if every Rachel on the moor were mourning for her children. And Wayne looked down, feeling a touch as cold as the bog itself, and saw the brown rough brute; but he only laughed again, for his mood was hot, and proof against all terror.

“A good race, lass! ” he cried. “And now you’re mine. Did I not swear to make you happy? ”

A great and piteous cry escaped her, as Audrey faced him under the blue, wide moonlight of the wilderness. Her hour was come, it seemed, and Red Ratcliffe had been deaf to her call across the waste that he should ride and succour her; and now she called to the tender mother of all women in their time of need.

“Mary Mother, look from the sky and see my plight! ” she cried, in a voice that awed Black Wayne himself for a moment.

They stood there, he and she, and the moonlight showed their strained and eager faces; and suddenly Wayne laughed.

“You’re mine,” he said.

CHAPTER XVI

HOW THE WAYNES CROSSED THE BOGS

It might be a half-hour, or more, after Joseph and Nick o’ Trawdon had left the bogs to guard Black House, that a little lad came over the moor, skirting the edge of the bog from the direction of a farm—named Intakes—which lay neighbour to Black House at three-miles distance. Secure and self-contained as Joseph and his master were, with their bit of land and their farm stock to supply all needs, they were not altogether independent of their neighbours. Beasts had to be bought and sold, and interchange of help had to be given now and then—say, when the hay crop ripened or the oats were yellowing for harvest—and so it chanced that Farmer Hird of Intakes had grown friendly with Joseph, after the fashion of men who till the soil together; and Hird’s lad, through running often to and fro with messages between the two farms, had learned the way across the marshes, and could follow it by night or day. Farmer Hird was abed with a sharp attack of rheumatism. Neither he nor his wife had left the farm during the last few days, and no news of the re-awakened feud had come to them; and to-night he had sent his boy to ask Joseph if he would drive a beast to Colne for him to-morrow, as he could not follow it himself.

The lad came whistling down the bog’s edge. He had no dread of ghosts, nor of the marshes, and was thinking of the hot cakes and the rabbit pie which Bathsheba— motherly in all her instincts—was wont to spread for him on such occasions. Maurice Wayne, still seeking some way of getting to Black House, lifted his head, surprised by the boy’s whistle, so cheery and so out of keeping with the work which he and his sleeping kinsmen had to do.

“What art doing here, youngster? ” he said, putting himself in the boy’s way.

“Going to Black House,” answered the other—sturdily enough, although Wayne had startled him.

“Well, so are we—I and my four friends—and we lack a guide across the marshes.”

The boy Timothy looked at the horses, pulling at their bridles up yonder where the crooked thorn-trees fringed the sky—looked at the four men sleeping in the bracken— and felt lonely and afraid, as if he knew that danger was threatening, yet could not guess its nature.

“What d’ye want there at this time o’ neet, master? ” he asked bluntly.

“What dost thou want, fool, if it comes to that? ” growled Wayne.

“I’ve to take a message from my father.”

“And we’ve to take a message from my uncle. So lead on, and play no tricks on us.”

Timothy, so brave awhile since, fell a-blubbering suddenly.

“I’m feared,” he sobbed. “Ye look so tall and black— and I wullun’t lead ye to Black House. Red Ratcliffe would kill me if I did.”

“Tut, Red Ratcliffe is abroad. Look ye, youngster, we shall not hurt you, and we’ll not let another hurt you, if only you do our bidding.”

" I’m feared. He’d kill me soon or late. I’m feared, for he’s big, is Red Ratcliffe, and father says his temper gets unchancy queer at times.”

Maurice Wayne was young in patience; here, by rare luck, had come his chance of getting to Black House— was he to stand wasting time, wheedling a silly farm boy out of his fears? He took the youngster by his neck and swung him lightly to and fro toward the marshes.

“Choose,” he snapped. “Safety or the bog, thou clown? ”

So Timothy, having no real choice at all, consented; and Maurice whistled his comrades out of their slumber, and the little lad struck out along the perilous way, and they five followed.

Once Maurice felt his heart fail him, as they passed near that silent patch of green which hid his cousin; but he would not think of it, for he had promised Wayne of Marsh that he would redeem his past.

On and on they went, the moon making witchery of the land; and here a black bog hugged the path, and there a green marsh slumbered evilly; but Timothy knew his road, and well he guided them.

They came at last to the rising ground which sloped to the front of Black House; and the farm dog heard them and gave tongue; and Joseph—who slept at all times with a dog’s lightness—was roused by the furious barking.

“Get up, Nick o’ Trawdon! ” he cried, shaking his comrade where he slept upon the settle. “ We’re wanted, so it seems.”

Nick roused himself and gave a mighty yawn. " Was dreaming of the lass at Colne,” he muttered.

“Well, ’twill be the last o’ such dreams, unless thou’rt minded to bestir thyself.”

Joseph was looking through the window, and down below, climbing the broken ground, he saw five men who carried swords in their hands—swords that shone blue, and long, and thin, in the full moonlight. He saw, too, a little lad who stood apart and wept.

“They’ve found us, after all,” he growled.

Nick o’ Trawdon, wide-awake now, followed Joseph into the hall; but when the old man handed him his sword, he looked askance at it; for on the wall, near to the place where Red Ratcliffe’s axe was wont to rest o’ nights, there hung a weapon laid aside these hundred years—a shaft of oak, only a little shorter than the axe’s, and at the end of it a ball of iron, covered over with sharp spikes.

" This for choice, Joseph,” he said, gay and careless as his wont was. " 'Tis nearest like the mell we used for beating heavy ground—and farmyard tools come ever easier to my hand than gimcrack swords and what not.”

“As ye will—only aim to kill, lad.”

When Joseph opened the hall door—his hard old heart going blithely as if summer sang the hay-time in—it was about the hour when Audrey Clare ran to the stable of the Parsonage, got to her pony’s back, and gave Black Wayne the race for honour. And sure it was that, under all this silence of the moon-lit moors, the feud was crying loud again to heaven: not only would this house of Ratcliffe, if Joseph’s sword-arm failed him, or Nick o’ Trawdon struck amiss, be burnt with fire—not only this, the less calamity, might chance—but yonder on the moor Red Ratcliffe’s heart-o’-life galloped over and down, and down and over, the raking hillocks—rode for something which, once lost, would rob Ratcliffe altogether of that joy which lay behind, and sweetened, all his victories.

Yet the Master slept, his ribs braced tight by Bath-sheba; for the weariness of the last fight was on him. And Joseph with his sword, and Nick o’ Trawdon, swinging his heavy, ill-looking weapon, stood for a moment in the moonlight, watching the foe come up.

“’Tis speed, and only speed, will do’t,” whispered Joseph. “They’re devils with the sword, and always were.”

“By the Lord, it purrs like a kitten in my hand,” laughed Nick, as he gripped his tool afresh.

With a roar of “Ratcliffe, Ratcliffe! ” they raced down the hill. And Nick o’ Trawdon heeded naught that the Wayne who met him had his sword on guard—he just swirled his weapon over his head, and brought it down, and whirled man and sword into the moonlit lower ground. Joseph had waited likewise for no pretty game of thrust and parry, but had chosen his man, had set his sword moving to the speed of his downward run, had struck once, beating down all trick of fence and cutting his enemy clean through the collar-bone.

And now it was three Waynes against two Ratcliffes; and Maurice Wayne, unhurt as yet, minded himself that he had come to the gates of Black House, but had lost three out of six in doing it, and must move warily if he were to fulfil the promise made to Wayne of Marsh.

And now, out yonder between Wildwater and the Parsonage, Audrey Clare was galloping with her own fortune and her lover’s, racing—racing on a loose rein—under the little pony’s charge, under the stark and heedless moonlight.

And still the Master slept, though his dreams were troubled, and foster-brother sat ever closer in his sleeping hand—he would not part with the big axe when Bathsheba entreated him—and in the hidden land of sleep he fought strange battles, all made up of Barguest howling down the wind, of sunlight shining on the bracken dust, of maidens going, sweet as God had made them, between the bracken and the bogs.

Yet Joseph and Nick o’ Trawdon still stood upon the higher ground, and fought the Ratcliffe fight alone; and the Waynes held off, obedient to Maurice’s command, and waited for their chance. It was then that Nick, thinking to repeat his first good blow, raised a big shout and rushed down the hill again, calling to Joseph to come on. At the second step he stumbled, at the third fell headlong, and his weapon, slipping from his grasp, struck Maurice Wayne upon the thigh, half deadening the limb for a moment.

“Fool, fool! ” grumbled Joseph, clambering down, just on the stroke of time, and standing between Nick o’ Trawdon and the enemy. “Why couldn’t ye have bided? ”

“’Tis too late to think of that, Joseph,” said the other drily, as he got to his feet and looked about him for another weapon.

And now the odds were changed again, and the three Waynes raised a laugh as they made forward at one Ratcliffe. Joseph’s arm was stiff already; and once more it seemed that the Ratcliffe hopes were hanging on a thread as light as gossamer.

The little lad, meanwhile, who had guided these men to the fight, stood shivering in the rear, daring scarce to breathe, yet no way able to take his eyes from those who fought.

“Come on, striplings! ” snarled Joseph, with his old wolf’s trick of baring his teeth. “The Master takes a dozen such as ye in a bunch, and surely I can do for an odd two or three.”

They were at him now; and Joseph’s skill was greater than theirs, but he could not keep up this thrust and parry as long as they, by reason of his age. And the moon looked down on them, and her light trickled like blue water from their blades: but Timothy, the farm boy, shivered as he heard the purring and the hiss of stricken steel.

CHAPTER XVII

THE MASTER RIDES ABROAD

Red Ratcliffe still lay sleeping in the room where he had first set eyes upon the feud. The room lay at the rearward of the house, and no sound of the fight without came strong enough to pierce his sleep. And none may say what came to him as he slept—whether it were a sick man’s vision, made up of weariness and random odds and ends of memory, or whether it were that Audrey, fighting her battle out yonder over the moor, did in sober truth send him a dream-message that carried well.

And Ratcliffe’s dream was this—that he saw Audrey galloping, with loosened hair and loosened rein, across the heath—that, following hard, there came a man who gripped the saddle of a raking horse. Once or twice he saw the girl’s pony stumble, and his sleeping hand went tight about the haft of foster-brother. Then she rode on again, the big horse close behind. And then Red Ratcliffe woke, and he, at least, had no doubt of his vision. Had the ghost-world, all these years at Black House, not taught him terrible things, just as his right hand—gripping the big axe now—had taught him things as terrible? Had he not seen the Lean Man come from the under-world to beckon him to combat? Nay, did he not see a lean, scarred shape take filmy substance now, as he lifted sleepy eyes to the moonlit window-space? And the ghostly right hand lay withered down the length of the lean body, but the left hand beckoned—beckoned with a grey forefinger showing plain against the blue of the moonlit casement.

Red Ratcliffe got to his feet, laid foster-brother on the floor while he poured water into the ewer and plunged his head into the crisp, clear cold of it. Then he took up the axe again, and went out.

Bathsheba was sleeping in the next room, ready to serve the master if his sickness turned to fever, as she half looked for; and now, as he went through, she sat upright, regarding him with wonder and with awe.

“Nay, now, nay! ” she said. “All the fight ye’ve had, master, and two ribs-”

“You’ve tightened them into their place again,” said Ratcliffe, in the quiet, deep voice which she had learned to know, “and now my lass waits for me across the moor.”

“Oh, then ye must have your way, I reckon,” said Bathsheba, with something of her wonted tartness. “Asking your pardon, though, how come ye to know she waits at this queer time o’ neet ? ”

“The Lean Man goes in front of me,” was all Ratcliffe’s answer; but the other understood, and she did not seek to stay him further.

He went out into the moonlight, by the door which opened on the stable-yard; and the haft of foster-brother lay warm and quiet in his hands. He had learned to saddle quickly, and Bathsheba, listening above-stairs, was astonished to hear so soon the clatter of horse-hoofs on the stones.

Joseph, meanwhile, was fighting against three youngsters, sound of wind, and scarce less skilled in sword-play than himself. Only by keeping constantly to the higher ground —moving upward step for step with them—could he hold out against the odds; and well it was for him that Maurice Wayne could not do more than limp in following, by reason of the blow upon the thigh which Nick o’ Trawdon’s weapon had given him. As it was, the old man felt his breath come wheezily, and his arm twinged sharply with re-awakened rheumatism, and he saw death face to face.

“A poor end—a poor end! ” he thought. “I’d reckoned on a few good fights afore I died—but ’ tis overed with. Oh, ay, ’tis overed with.”

Nick o’ Trawdon, seeing his companion’s distress, sought round and about for a weapon, and found none, until he glanced toward the lower ground, and caught the moonlight glinting on the round, barbed head of the tool which had smitten Maurice Wayne so grievously. He crept quietly down, regained his weapon, then climbed again, and clubbed the heavy bulk of iron and oak above his head.

“We’re not done yet,” he muttered gaily.

Before he could run in and strike, there came a rattle of hoofs from the direction of Black House; and the Waynes looked up in sudden wonder, and down upon them, heeding naught, Red Ratcliffe rode to save his lass. Joseph leaped aside, and so did Nick o’ Trawdon; but the Waynes, secure till now in their belief that Red Ratcliffe was abroad, stood staring helplessly at this huge, galloping fellow who rode as if the devil had shod his horse.

Through the three Waynes the horseman crashed, scattering them to one hand and the other; and, because his mind was dizzy, and because his sense of Audrey’s need was keen, Red Ratcliffe did not stay to ask what men these were through whom he rode. Like shadows of a shadow he saw them, for he was looking only for Audrey Clare, who called to him from out the moor. His good horse found the bog path, and once again it was well for Ratcliffe that the beast knew his way so well; true to each twisting of the road, as if he were a hound close following on the scent, the horse kept the dangerous way, and gave his master the dry, wide moor beyond, and galloped faster even than Audrey and Black Wayne were galloping to meet him.

Behind, where the three Waynes lay scattered by the horse, Joseph and Nick o’ Trawdon did quickly what needed to be done. Stark the work was, and stark the moonlight shone upon it; and, when it was over, they carried the bodies to the marshes, one by one, and threw them in with a “ one-two-three ” and a mighty heave; and their graves, black for a while, grew quietly green again, as grass will cover the grave-mound of a year ago.

“We’ve been cleaning our mistals out,” said Joseph grimly.

But Nick o’ Trawdon shuddered. “Joseph, I’d liefer have had my strike at yond Wayne while he was up and fighting. The master spoiled all the frolic for me.”

“Now, lad,” said the other, “we’re here to fight Red Ratcliffe’s battles, and I’ve no fancy for these maidish tricks that come to thee. Would’st see rattens in the haymow, and not knock ’em on the head?—Now, come and get into thy bed, Nick, for we’ll see naught of the Waynes before to-morrow’s morn, if I know aught.”

Nick o’ Trawdon looked behind him as he turned to follow Joseph—looked at the green, quiet marsh, which hid lives as big with hope until a moment since as his own quick-beating heart. For Nick, like all folk who are gay persistently in face of good or evil hazard, had a kind heart and a pitiful.

“’Tis cold under yond green slime,” he said.

“Ay—and ’tis cold on the top o’ the hill here, when winter comes setting her teeth in a man. Life’s cold, Nick, take it how ye will, and it seems to me ye’ve got to think o’ what’s to come, same as I have.”

“Why, then, thou’rt right! ” asserted Nick,' with an attempt at jauntiness. “We’ve our work set, sure, afore we’ve done wi’ Shameless Wayne.”

Yet even Joseph, his grim face set toward Black House, turned, as his comrade had done, for one last look upon the bogs. And he saw the little lad, who stood and whimpered in the moonlight; and he went and lifted him to his shoulder.

“Come ride a horse,” he growled, with droll, pathetic memory of the days before Bathsheba and he had buried their own child—those first days of the child’s brief life when he had looked forward, with a father’s tenderness, to games of pick-a-back.

“I’m feared,” said Timothy. “There’s Red Ratcliffe waiting with his big red axe—and, besides, mother’s biding up for me.”

“Mother must bide awhile,” snarled Joseph. “Thou’st let a few Waynes in, laddie, and may well let more, if we leave thee free to roam the moorside.”

“Eh, but the beast that mun be driven to Colne tomorrow? ” pleaded the lad, who had learned already that the first needs of a farmer were the needs of his own lands and sheep and cattle.

“It will bide, laddie—but the feud willun’t bide. Thou’lt come pick-a-back wi’ me, and lie at Black House for a while.”

They moved up the slope, the three of them; and down below, meanwhile, the six Waynes were keeping to their word, for not one of them would now return to Marsh, unless some riot of the bogs—such riots had been known—should carry their dead bodies to the valley. At the edge of Black House they would wait perpetually, with the green o’ the bog above them; and it may be Maurice Wayne had found a warmer bed than Nick o’ Trawdon fancied, for the lad had taken honour with him into the Far Country.

But Ratcliffe, warm and alive to his finger-tips, galloped wide across the moor, taking the line past Wildwater and intent on reaching the Parsonage with speed, whether or no his horse dropped dead at the finish. And ever the moon rose higher, and ever the dingles and the rises, the ling and the fern and the peat, grew clearer, clearer, till they lay like a sculptured fairyland, fresh from the hand of God.

“You’re mine,” said Black Wayne again, as he and Audrey Clare stood facing each other across that slender bridge of shame which it was death for her to cross.

Straight to her slim height she stood; and her eyes were haunted and afraid; but there was no faltering in her voice.

“You scorn me—but do you guess what scorn you meet? ” she said, and the distinctness, the surety of her loathing, struck like a whip.

‘‘Do I care? ” he answered. “Oh, damn you, girl, you will lie tame as a cushat in my hands before the winter comes.”

From out the moor, this side of Wildwater, there came the scurrying beat of hoofs; and Audrey turned and looked, and saw her lad ride over and down toward her, his fine bulk chiselled by the moonlight into the likeness of a giant.

“Shall I lie tame? ” she cried, with a sob and a sudden laugh. “Go fight with a man, and, if you win, you shall learn the way of a cushat when she’s tame within your hand.”

Red Ratcliffe had seen the two of them by now; and he swerved from the straight line to Marsh cotes, and came riding down on Wayne from five-score yards oi so away. And Wayne, seeing the axe in Ratcliffe’s hands, knowing himself on foot, and helpless against the horse’s bulk and the bulk of foster-brother—Wayne dropped into the bracken, and, when the horse was a score yards from him, he leaped to his feet witn a yell, swaying his arms in the moonlight. The horse shied, then reared, and, onlj. by that luck which attends the few who fight against the many, did Red Ratcliffe light upon his feet.

Wayne had no time to get his sword out, and foster-brother lay among the bracken; and Audrey Clare looked on, her lips apart, her blood on fire, while these two closed one with the other and fought with their naked hands.

Nay, but the fight was over-short and over-certain. The strength of two was Red Ratcliffe’s at any time, and now he had bitter rage to back his strength. For a while Black Wayne resisted; for a while they turned and twisted in the bracken, its brittle stems scratching long wounds across their faces and their hands; and then Ratcliffe fetched a deeper breath, and took a firmer hold, and Wayne sank back among the yellowing fern. They said afterwards—Wayne’s kinsmen who found him dead upon the moor and took him down for burial—that ribs and spine were crushed into the one shapeless mass; and those who had seen Red Ratcliffe swing his axe could well believe the tale.

Ratcliffe looked once at his enemy, then crossed to the hillock where Audrey stood with lips apart.

“Audrey,” he said, very quietly and very tenderly, “I came to save you.”

She gazed and gazed at him, and the moonlight in her beautiful, clear eyes seemed recompense for any hardship.

“He is dead? ” she asked.

“Ay, and in hell, I doubt.”

“That is just,” she answered, after a long silence. “He aimed to take me into hell with him—and then—and then, my dear, you came.”

Just as they had come together yesterday after the great fight on the churchyard steps, they came together now; for, sure and round as Bouldsworth Hill itself, this love of theirs was reared toward the sky, with the free winds blowing keen about it.

“Audrey,” he said, “you are coming to Black House. These Waynes grow noisy nowadays.”

“Yes,” she answered, the moonlight still within her eyes, “I will come, for I trust you and I love you.”

And now Red Ratcliffe saw the fairies, for the first time since his eyes opened on the world—he saw them, moon-reflected, in the girl’s brave eyes. Light-footed things they were, these fairies, all made of gold and gossamer; but they were kind, and they were real, and they nodded gently at him, bidding him take heart o’ luck in the midst of this wild wooing. For the fairies, when a maid moves single-hearted toward her lover, attend on her and seek her company. So the moor folk say, at least; and Red Ratcliffe now was proving the old fable true, for with mortal eyes he saw the green folk dance.

He had had no easy life. Full of labour, full of the ripening feud, his boyhood’s days had been; and now the sullen clouds of battle had gathered, and blood was raining from them throughout the length and breadth of Marsh-cotes Moor; but here in the moonlight, with Audrey’s heart against his own, he tasted joy—joy exquisite and pure and fresh, that creamed and bubbled like water from some unsullied hill-top stream.

“I thought battle was good, and only battle,” he said, with a sort of wondering awe. “I lived for it, Audrey— until I met you on the moor.”

“And now! Ah, tell me—what now? ”

“Why, you—just you.”

Audrey no longer scorned him for his brief way of saying and of doing. Rather, she knew that love such as this needed but a broken sentence here, a short word there, to interpret and to make it plain. They had the dead about them—those slain at Colne, at Marshcotes, and here at Wildwater—and it was not theirs to throw light shuttlecocks of talk between them, as gallants and their ladies did in the Low Country.

“Come and lie safe in old Bathsheba’s care,” said Rat-cliffe by-and-by. “There’ll be things to see at Black House I had liefer you could be spared, lass—but leave you in this wasp’s nest I will not.”

“I come, and I lie safe,” she answered, wondering at the care he showed for the least scruple of her modesty. “Take me with you, lad o’ mine, and I’ll not waver when the battles come.”

They plighted their troth, as troth is rarely plighted in this life; and they looked long and steadfastly at one another, and saw faith and strength and high endeavour each in the other’s face. Then Ratcliffe whistled to his horse; and the beast came safely to his hand, ashamed of his late fright and asking pardon, and Audrey’s pony shaking her rough hide still, in anger that she had stumbled in such foolish fashion, followed in Red Ratcliffe’s wake. But Wayne’s horse had moved to the place where his master lay—lay with crushed body and with grim, shut lips that would never call to his beast again; and the horse had scented death, and, after his kind, he had fallen into panic, and now was racing home across the moor. And first he sought his master’s house; and all the lights were out, and no hand clutched his bridle, to lead him into stable. And next he told himself—for the beasts and the human folk are alike in this, that they trick themselves, when the first grief lies cold upon them, with the belief that their dead are alive and happy somewhere, if only they could find them—the black horse told himself that his master must have recovered from his swoon up yonder on the moor and be supping now at Marsh House, as he so often did.

He came to the House of Marsh, and cried like a lost bairn outside the door. And Shameless Wayne looked at his wife, and at the kinsmen who kept watch with him— waiting for Red Ratcliffe’s coming—and Janet, wearied out with fear, with new love for her husband, answered the questions raised by all these glances and cross-glances.

“First the Dog comes howling, and now a horse comes empty in the saddle and cries to us. What do you make of it, friends? ”

“Disaster,” said the youngest of the company.

“Nay!” cried Janet, lifting her fine head, with its tell-tale hair of Ratcliffe colour. “’Tis not disaster, but the beginning of what is soon to be. Trouble came evei like a north wind to the Waynes—it makes them cold, and afterwards the glow of fighting warms all their blood. Waynes, you have doubted me, but I’m a true wife to your leader.”

They looked at her—these men who sat among the wine-flagons, with the dread of Ratcliffe’s axe upon them— and they ceased to scorn her because her hair was Ratcliffe red.

“Waynes all,” said one of them impulsively, “we are hearing a crying and a wailing all across the moor, and at our gates. Our dead are with us, too, and every wind seems whistling trouble’s song. And yet I can think of naught, save this—that we have persecuted Wayne’s wife of Marsh, and done amiss.”

A little pleasure crept into Wayne’s tired face. “Sneers are for time of peace, friends,” he said. “And now there is no peace, and you will know, if we come to win our battle, that all the praise of it is owing to my wife, and neither yours nor mine. May each of you get such strength and comfort from your mates as I have done.”

Full of awe the scene was, and full of that simplicity which does not fear to tell its heart’s faith to the world.

The dead slept between their bier-candles, waiting tomorrow’s burial. The living glanced reverently at Wayne and at his wife, and saw how two brave folk could love each other. And their hate of J anet died; for it is war, not peace, that oft-times heals long-standing quarrels.

The horse was crying still outside the door, and Wayne bade one of them go open it; and the beast, soon as he saw the door ajar, pushed his way in with little ceremony and looked about him, and went nosing each of the great company in turn. And the tears came to Janet’s eyes, for she understood that love, through life and death and hardship, is the birth-gift, not of us human folk alone, but of the four-footed beasts as well.

To and fro went the horse, great anguish in his eyes, till last of all he came to where the candles winked and spluttered over the dead. It may be he was wearied out with galloping across the lands of fear; it may be his wits were riding on an easy rein; but sure it was that, in some muddled horse’s way of reasoning, he thought that one of the dead lying there was his master, never again to be carried over hill and dingle. For he gave one cry—a human cry—and then his head dropped low, and he went out into the moonlight. And they tell in Marshcotes still of how they found him at the morrow’s dawn lying dead beside the roadway, and no mark of hurt on him ; for brave hearts, when they break, are wont to show no outward wounds.

“’Tis Black Wayne’s horse,” said one, watching the moonlight filter through the door. “Has he, too, been the plaything of Ratcliffe’s axe? ”

“We can lose him, and not grieve,” said Shameless Wayne. “Such as lie soft and love too many women are no steel to meet Red Ratcliffe with.”

And though Black Wayne had friends there—he was ever one to make men and women love him—no voice was raised in protest, for they knew the judgment true.

It might be a moment later—time went by these folk, waiting for the wrath to come—that Little Bairn, Wayne’s stepmother, crossed the blue strip of moonlight which the open door let in. She had tired of sitting by the Sexton’s side, and was coming home to bed, to dream, perhaps, that Wayne’s father came wooing her afresh, yonder in the Low Country where no feuds stirred and never the voice of Barguest whined about the land.

She halted on the threshold, the moonlight nestling in her hair and rounding all her baby-prettiness.

“Good-even, gentles all,” she said, with the little lisp that disarmed men’s judgment of her. “They say the moor is all in flood-red and impetuous, because so many men have died, and must die yet. Ah, will you never learn my wisdom? Naught matters, gentles, in this life— naught matters, and men have died, and still the world goes on.”

And because they stood very near to death, each one of them, they did not smile at Little Bairn. Rather, they remembered that the fairy-kist are true prophets always, and their silence was deep as the graves which most of them were soon to fill.

“The moor goes sobbing,” said Shameless Wayne; “but we are men, and this child is afraid. Come hither, Little Bairn, and find your comfort.”

She ran to him and nestled in his arms. “Ah, Ned, how ruddy all the sky is,” she murmured. “You’ll not let the red floods drown me? ”

“Not I,” said Wayne; and Janet, his wife, and every kinsman looking on, approved Shameless Wayne for the kindness which spared always time in trouble’s hour to soothe the weaker folk—unless, indeed, his son claimed pity. But his son was wandering exiled on the moor, and all, save Janet, had forgotten him.

CHAPTER XVIII

HOW AUDREY CAME TO BLACK HOUSE

They had ridden half a mile or more along the track to Black House, Audrey Clare and Ratcliffe; and the pony kept near to Ratcliffe’s horse, as if she knew that the two of them must needs be friendly; and those who rode kept silence, seeing the beauty of the night before them and finding it in keeping with their mood. Deep in the heart of each lay an exquisite, fine sense of trust, of glamour and of comradeship; and now and then they turned to look at one another, and rode on again with hearts at ease.

Just as they reached the spot named Gallows Rigg, where the track wound through a steep and barren place of rocks, a stooping figure turned the corner of the way. It was Parson Clare, returning from his work of speeding a farmer’s soul into the after-world; and he was weary, for his years lay heavily upon him, and he was anxious, bitterly anxious, as to Audrey’s fate. Even now, as he turned the comer of the track, he was thinking of her, of the lawless Waynes, of the turmoil and the insults which beset her; and he was making feints and passes with his cane —pretending that it was a sword—and harking back to the days before he took the oath of peace: and he looked up, to see Audrey herself riding joyously beside Red Ratcliffe.

At first he thought that weariness had played him some odd trick; and then his voice came low and stern.

“Audrey, Audrey, what is this? ”

Audrey glanced at her lover; and he answered with that blunt simplicity which from the first had won the heart of Parson Clare.

“I found your daughter helpless, sir. in the hands of a Wayne who had driven her out from your own house, and afterwards pursued her. We plighted our troth, and I am carrying her to Black House.”

“Damme, and are you, sir? ” said the Parson, the man out-peeping through his raiment, as always chanced in moments of astonishment.

“She will lie under my foster-mother’s care, and I shall be ready, day or night, to fight her battles. Sir, I have no nice way of using words, and I tell you, there is none to guard her at the Parsonage yonder. By your leave, or without it, I mean to take her with honour to Black House.”

Unrest took hold of Parson Clare. He got his snuffbox out, tapped it and took a pinch, then looked at Audrey, sitting quietly in the saddle—looked at Red Ratcliffe, with battle and high purpose graved already on his youthful face. He was an old man, helpless save in the war of evil spirits against good; this Red Ratcliffe, whose axe swung staunchly at his saddle, was master of the moor to-night, and of his daughter’s honour, and he proposed to take the maid with him. Parson Clare, looking at the boy’s face, could find no guile there ; and he took another pinch of snuff, distended his nostrils delicately, and put the box back into its place.

“It is as you say. I cannot guard my daughter. Are you very sure, you two, that to the world’s end you would follow each other faithfully? ”

Red Ratcliffe laughed, and a sound heart beat behind the laugh, “We have no doubts, sir,” he answered, and Audrey’s silence said the same.

" I have lived long,” said the Parson, in a voice not altogether sad, yet full of pathos. “I have lived long, and have seen the world a little, and I waited for Audrey’s mother till my heart grew sick. I’ve no faith in long betrothals, and you twain may go to Black House as man and wife, if you desire it.”

Audrey glanced aside, a sudden fear in her eyes. Wedlock was an unknown land as yet, though betrothal, sweet to her already, was no older a land than yesterday. But Ratcliffe held his head yet higher to the blue of the moonlit sky.

“Can you wed us now, here on the open moor? ” he said. “We ask no better, sir.”

And Parson Clare grew straighter, too; for he was proud of his cloth, as once he had been proud of his horsemanship, and of his duelling, down yonder in the Low Country.

“My office gives me power. You may go from me, if you will, man and wife in the sight of God.” Again he looked at Audrey with that wistful, anxious gaze of his. “My dear, have you no doubts? Remember that God himself will never sunder two folk plighted in this wise— and you have little knowledge each of the other.”

“I have knowledge enough, father, and I go gladly with him,” said Audrey, forgetting all her fears. Into the unknown land she was journeying, where the ghosts of maidenhood lie round about a new-made wife and cumber her; yet she looked at her goodman, and she, on whom the King had smiled, was well-content.

Parson Clare saw, with the eyes of a long and hard experience, that both were happy in their choice; and he beckoned them to leave their saddles. There in the bracken they knelt, and the Parson put their hands together, and thereafter they got to their feet and looked wonderingly at one another, scarce realising they were man and wife.

And then it was that Audrey’s heart misgave her, for it was time to say farewell—to say farewell, and to know that her father must walk lonely over the moor, only to find a lonely house awaiting him. And she came and slipped her hand into the old man’s.

“Oh. but ’tis hard for you, father. Say, have I done right? ”

“We had no choice, Audrey. Send word to me, just every little while, that you are faring well, and I shall ask no more.”

He kissed her, and gave Red Ratcliffe a God-speed; and he went home to a desolate parsonage—simple and brave, a man after God’s own heart, in this as in all other trials. He went indoors, took down a bunch of keys from the nail on his study wall and crossed to the squat, grey church; and there he opened the register, and wrote Audrey’s name and Red Ratcliffe’s, with the date and place of the marriage; for he was too old to risk one night’s delay, and this record that his girl went in honour, not in shame, to Black House, must be plain for all men’s eyes to see.

He crossed the graveyard once again; and his heart lay very still and cold within him, and he murmured to himself as he went, “Audrey a wife! Little Audrey! What would her mother think of this night’s work could she but see it? ”

When he was half across the graveyard Sexton Witherlee came hobbling down from the stone where he had been keeping vigil with the ghosts.

“Give you good-e’en, Parson,” he said, glad always of a gossip. “You’re late abroad to-neet.”

“Ay, late,” the other answered wearily.

“Eh, Parson! 'Tis a rum make of a world,” went on the Sexton, noting the listlessness of Parson Clare. “Here’s ye and here’s me, and we’re both old enough to make a body laugh. Ten year and a day it is, for sure, since first I says to myseln, ‘ Witherlee,’ says I,‘ which is like to bury t’other first, thee or Parson? ’ And still we’re here, and still I’m wondering which ’twill be. Ay, 'tis a rum ’un, this old world, choose how ye take it; ye’re o’ th’ gentry, and I’m o’ the common mud, and yet we’re close as brothers— for one is bound to bury t’other.”

They fronted each other in the moonlight; and the wind went whispering among the graves, blowing the scanty grey that covered Parson’s head and Sexton’s.

“We die when the" Lord chooses, Witherlee. Get ye to bed, and pray that you come to a good grave in the end.’ “Come to a good grave? ” muttered Witherlee, watching him go up the path. “ Few do, judging by what I see o’ nights. We play over many pranks i’ this world to lig easy in the next. Parson, Parson, if only ye had the Sight, same as I have! Ye’d know what sort of after-life men get.”

The Sexton hobbled, laughing quietly and eerily to himself, to the westward gate of the graveyard, then across the roadway—up which Black Wayne had lately ridden in pursuit of Audrey—and into his cottage. And may be, had he known what Parson Clare was feeling now, he would have credited him with another sort of Sight, and one as real as his own.

For something came to the Parson as he crossed his threshold: and he stood like a dazed man in the doorway, listening to the message that came to him from out the silence. And he knew that his days were numbered; but he knew also that, before he laid down the burden of his years, some work as big as Red Ratcliffe’s, as big as Shameless Wayne’s, was coming to his hand.

“I am old for such labour,” said the Parson simply; “but I will do my uttermost.” . And he stumbled into the parlour, and felt for the tinder-box, and, when he had lit the candles, looked round about the place where Audrey’s hand was manifest in every corner.

“May Ratcliffe guard her well, since I cannot,” he said.

At Black House, meanwhile, Joseph and Nick o’ Trawdon were sitting by the hearth, too wearied-out to sleep; and Bathsheba was listening, for the second time, to the tale of the night’s work—was wondering, for the fiftieth time, how the master was faring yonder in the broken lands. And wide-awake in the settle-corner sat Timothy Hird, the lad whom J oseph had carried home upon his shoulder. Timothy was no longer frightened; he had been made much of by Bathsheba, had found the supper which he had thought of long and earnestly, and now was listening to the talk of feud and battle. And, because the boy’s soul is a dim, but faithful, mirror of the man’s, young Timothy found warmth and comfort in these tales of blows well driven home.

“Did father tell ye what he saw, a se’nnight since? ” said the boy, breaking into the silence that had fallen on his elders.

“Nay, laddie. Come tell us,” said Bathsheba, whose heart was motherly, over-lay it as she would.

Timothy looked warily at her, as the young of all animals look at their elders; then he crept to her side, and sat upon the floor, nestling his head against her knee. He felt a hero, too, for he had news to give, and saw that all these older folk were listening.

“Father went up the moor a week gone by, seeking strayed sheep—a wild lot o’ ewes he’d bought i’ Skipton— and he couldn’t find ’em, choose where he went. And he got into what he called No Man’s Land, and he peeped over the edge of a hillock, trying, like, to spy out the ewes, and he saw a great, big, queerish line o’ houses, all builded out o’ peats and stones; and he saw a lot o’ red lads moving down and about; and there was a score on’ em, and he could tell, by nose and chin and red o’ the hair—ay, he could tell, said father—that they were Ratcliffes bred and bom.”

“They were no way ghosties, lad? ” said Bathsheba.

“Ghosties? Nay! They were washing theirselns at the well-springs; and father says he never saw a ghostie wash itseln. Don’t need to, says he, seeing they never sweat and mucky theirselns.”

On the sudden Joseph smacked his knee.

“Bathsheba, we’re want-wits, ye and me! ” he cried.

“Speak for thyseln, Joseph. I alius guessed yt were, but-”

“Oh, cease clacking wi’ thy tongue, Bathsheba! Why didn’t we think that Wayne spared all the women twenty years agone? And the Mistress came hither to bear Red Ratcliffe; and surely other-some went carrying men-children, too, across the moors. And the feud dies never at all, Bathsheba, wi’ Ratcliffe men or Ratcliffe women; and the Master spoke a true word, though I laughed at him, when he said that the Feud Spear would go round.”

“Why, now,” said Nick o’ Trawdon, with his easy laugh, “I made naught so much o’ the fighting to-night, Joseph, but give me a horse under me, and a lighted spear i’ my hand, and the mom’s mom sees me seeking out these kin o’ thine.”

“If the Master comes safely home,” said Joseph, “thou shalt go, Nick.”

“The Master does come safely home,” put in Bathsheba. “I feel warm to the tips o’ my fingers, Joseph, and that means there’s no hurt come to him.”

Yet at that moment, the farm-dog, sleeping on the hearth, got to his haunches with a sudden yelp, and ran to the door, and, for the second time to-night, barked furiously.

“Begow, they’re come again! ” muttered Joseph.

He snatched his weapon, Nick o’ Trawdon did the like, and the dog ran out before them into the moonlight soon as the door opened. They heard the sound of horses coming up the hill, and the dog’s barking changed to a whimper of delight, and Joseph saw the Master, riding big under the big moon, with a slender lass beside him; and the lass sat cross-legged on her pony because it had no saddle.

“We’re being wakened up, like,” said Joseph. “Here’s Master, but devil kens who the wench is riding straddle-wise beside him.”

“’Tis the Parson’s Lass, I fancy,” muttered Nick. “My girl at Colne was maid to her, and showed her to me once, and, even by the moon’s light, Joseph, there’s not two as straight and slim as this i' all the moorside.”

Up and up the slope came Ratcliffe and his wife; and the farm-dog ran to meet them, barking a welcome at their horses’ heels; and at the door Red Ratcliffe leapt from saddle, and lifted Audrey down.

“Give you good-even, Joseph,” he said, as if he came from hunting or from tillage. “ Good-even, Nick o’ Trawdon. I’ve brought a wife to the old house.”

Bathsheba had run to the door; and she was looking hard at Audrey, while listening to the Master’s words.

“Bundle o’ rushes! ” said she, surprised into discourtesy. “Men don’t wive in half an hour, and never did.”

“Sometimes, Bathsheba,” the master laughed. “Prepare the Red room, and give my wife your hand, and tell her she’s bonnie, in moonlight or in sun.”

Bathsheba drew nearer, and saw how sweetly this maiden-wife stood under the white moon; and, because she had been new-wedded once herself, and because her heart went always beating after a fashion that the moor folk call “mother-kind,” she took Audrey in her arms, and kissed her, and found that jealousy, as between herself and the new wife, was killed for ever.

“So ye were right, master? ” she said. “Ye rode out after hearing the lassie call to ye, and ye won her here to Black House. Lad, what of your broken ribs to-mom? ”

“They’ve slipped your bandages, Bathsheba, but somehow I pay no heed. Bring supper, for we’ve travelled long and travelled far, we two.”

That was how Audrey came to Black House: and the tale is handed down to-day how into that place of terror, into the house where Red Ratcliffe’s mother had sheltered from the feud-storm, the young bride came, with a great and lasting joy in her blue eyes. So bright she was, so bonnie, so straight and simple in her pride, that the bitter hatreds, cradled here for generations, seemed dwarfed and foolish; and the hearts of all felt lighter, and braver to meet the coming days.

And the farm-dog ran from one to the other of them, whining joyously, as if to say he was no ghost, like Barguest, but a living comrade and a friend.

CHAPTER XIX

RED RATCLIFFE STAYS AT HOME

A quietness settled on Black House. No summons came to the master from abroad; rather, his wife was calling to him every moment, in a score of subtle ways, that he should stay at home. Moreover, he was compelled to give his ribs a chance of healing, for the struggle with Black Wayne had wrenched him terribly.

They had taken counsel together, he and Joseph and Nick o’ Trawdon; and all had agreed that there might be truth behind what the little lad had told them of the Red Folk living in their moorland huts; they agreed, too, that it was better to bide still awhile, until the master’s ribs were whole—counsel which Audrey, when she heard of it, approved.

And so the tranquil weather came to them between the storms; and ever the bracken grew more russet, and the sun more golden, and the sky more crisp and blue; and the little family, so near disaster’s edge, so anxious day and night to know what the Waynes were doing, grew notwithstanding strangely happy, strangely intimate and friendly. Joseph and Nick o’ Trawdon were busy winning home the bracken for mistal bedding, and Red Ratcliffe would go and watch them—he had ever loved the brackengathering—and Timothy, his fears of the huge man disappearing, would follow at his heels like any dog. And Audrey would steal into Bathsheba’s kitchen and talk with her while she bustled through her work, and creep nearer, day by day, to the farm-wife’s heart.

Timothy’s mother, indeed, still knowing naught of the re-awakened feud, had come to Black House in grievous trouble, asking where her lad was, and fore-certain that he had perished in the bogs. She was met by J oseph, who grudgingly allowed her sight and speech of the boy, but would not let him go with her.

“Tuts, he’s safe enough! ” the old man growled. “Get back to your farm, woman, for I tell ye feelings may be feelings, but the bonnie feud is up, and here the lad bides till the end.”

The days wore on; and the moon, which had seen such turmoil of swinging swords, of galloping horses, of men hurrying to their death, and of two folk hastening into wedlock—the moon had dwindled into a filmy crescent that only showed by day; but the stars were strewn each night across the dusky blue, and on one such evening, as Nick o’ Trawdon came from working over-late at the bracken, it was these same stars that set him thinking of his lass at Colne—set him thinking, too, that the moors were safe to cross, since there was light enough by which to guide a horse, but not enough to show him to a prowling Wayne.

“Joseph,” he said, “I’ve been thinking.”

“Tuts! ” growled Joseph. “Doing’s more i’ my line.”

“Each in their place, says I. I’ve been thinking, J oseph, and it seems to me that, fond as we are o’ Parson’s lass, and willing to watch for her little finger turning, we’re roughish, all on us.”

“Well? ” asked Joseph guardedly.

“She’s been gently reared, and used to having a trim maid to serve her. And my lass at Colne was close in fondness with her when they lived together, mistress and maid. Ye see-”

“Oh, ay, I see,” said the old man grimly. “Wedlock’s like good ale—one good pewter-full goes asking for a second.”

“Ay, but there’s more than that. Roughish I am, Joseph, and roughish I’m like to remain—but I have my feelings same as other folk. Red Ratcliffe brought his maid fro’ Marshcotes, because the Waynes were after her. Well, Waynes looked at my lass t’other day, and—I’m riding out to-night, Joseph.”

“’Tis thy risk, lad; but I see ye mean it, and I’ll say naught when there’s a maid at one end of an apron-string and a man at t’other.”

So Nick o’ Trawdon had his way; and through the perilous land he rode that night; and he halted on his way at the farm where Timothy Hird’s father lay abed, and quieted the old man’s fears touching his lad, and learned from him just where to seek the Red Folk—if they were more than a tired man’s vision—across the wilds of the moor .After that he came to Colne, safely and with spirits running high; and he found his lass, persuaded her that he was learning to be somewhat of a man, carried her straightway to the parson, and rode back again with the girl pillionwise behind him.

Bathsheba feigned great anger at what she called “this flood o’ new-made wives ”; but Audrey’s joy was plain, for they two, living lonely in the Marshcotes Parsonage, had loved each other as well as mistress and maid ever loved one another in this world. By - and - by Bathsheba changed her mood, as often chanced with her; and she told Nick o’ Trawdon that, for a ne’er-do-weel, he had shown a pretty thoughtfulness for Parson’s Lass; and Nick eyed her roguishly, and said he was well-satisfied, and took no praise.

For the Waynes, meanwhile, it was black winter, let the sun shine as warmly as he might upon October’s pomp. They had gone, a score of them, to the bog’s edge in search of their kinsmen who had not returned; they had found naught but emptiness, and green of the marshes, and Black House scowling at them from its hill. And last of all they had gone down again to Marsh House, waiting always for the coming of Red Ratcliffe, and seeking some way of finding the perilous bog-path.

They supped on unrest, and woke to break their fast upon an unrest greater still. And in and out, between the churchyard and the house, fluttered Little Bairn, like a bird that seeks shelter from the coming storm. Only Shameless Wayne kept a jest upon his lips; and only Janet knew how, in the long night hours, his anguish came upon him, re-acting from the day’s persistent endeavour to keep their hearts warm in his folk.

Wayne of Cranshaw—the Bayard and the clean-lived gentleman who did not look to see his good deeds rewarded in this life—came in to join their councils or their rides abroad, with ever the same look in his face. A still, awed look it was, and his comrades knew it for the shadow which death sends before his coming.

And Parson Clare went heavily about his business likewise, feeling his years increase each day, and waiting, not for Red Ratcliffe, but for that other call which he knew was surely coming. His house was lonely now, and one by one he removed the tokens whereby Audrey had made her presence manifest in every room; for it was not good that he should dwell too much on by-gone memories when the finish and the great battle of his life were near at hand.

As if disaster did not howl loud enough at the doorway of Marsh House, new rumours reached the Waynes each day. The country folk, excited by the fight upon the churchyard steps, began to see things real and unreal when they walked afield o’ nights; but chiefly their eyesight played them false, for they reported that Red Ratcliffe had been seen here, seen there, riding with his red axe swung above his shoulder. This they were sure of; whereas the less-credited rumour chanced to be true—that a colony of red-heads were living God-knew-where behind the wildest of the moors, and had been seen by one and sundry who had not stayed to ask them face to face whether they were men or boggarts.

It was this latter rumour which Wayne of Cranshaw heeded.

“Wayne of Marsh,” he said to his kinsman, as they sat by the hearth one night, “we spoke a true word when we said that other Ratcliffes must have been bom after that night at Wildwater. They’re foxes to hide, when the hunt runs over-strong behind them. Red Ratcliffe does not ride this side of his own house, I doubt, but waits to send the Feud Spear round.”

And Shameless Wayne looked at him, and saw the soft, grey shadow on his face, and knew that the wisdom of those near to death was on him.

“’Twould be better than this one man shaming all of us. I would he had fifty to his back, Wayne of Cranshaw, and fifty more, and fifty after that—for I ever found the losing battle easier to fight.”

“God’s hands are shaping us,” the other answered, speaking, as he spoke always now, in the voice of one who knows and does not hazard guesses. “Whether ’tis one or many—naught matters, as Little Bairn would say.”

And on the morrow, Wayne of Cranshaw, saying nothing to his fellows, rode up into the dangerous lands, and past Wildwater. He might meet Red Ratcliffe, or he might avoid him; but he hoped that he would live to skirt the marshes round about Black House, live to ride on the wide outskirts of the bog, and follow the track which rumour said would take him to the Red Folk’s hiding-place.

Just as he came to the brink of the marsh, however, just as he turned sharp to the right hand because his horse began to sink, it chanced that Joseph came from out Black House and cast a wary eye across the bog. He saw Wayne seeking for a drier ground, and the old fox rose in him.

Now, Timothy Hird stood near the house, throwing stones at any bird that came in sight; and J oseph beckoned to the youngster, and, “Lad,” said he, “wilt cross the bog again, and let yond stranger catch thee, and lead him here as pratly as thou didst the others? ”

“’Tis a fearsome job,” said Timothy, looking up into the old man’s face.

“Oh, away wi’ thee, there’s naught to fear! Bring him over, laddie, and see what Bathsheba will do for thee at supper-time to-night.”

May be the boy was moved by a love of sheer adventure, as grown men have been moved before and since his time. May be he had heard of slaying and of feud so often, round about the moorside hearths, that the sharp edge of reality was dulled.

Or perchance he had foddered a cow in the mistal one day and had seen it butchered on the next, and so had learned a little of the way in which life mingles heart-softness with cruelty. At any rate, he set off, whistling in the sunlight, across the winding path; and old Joseph dropped into the bracken, dumb as a fox when he hears the far-off hounds; and Wayne of Cranshaw was too busy finding a fair going for his horse’s footsteps to note Joseph or the little lad, until Timothy came whistling to the dry lands, almost under the feet of Wayne’s horse.

“Hallo, lad, d’ye know the way across? ” asked Wayne.

“Ay,” said Timothy.

“Wilt show it me? ”

“Ay.”

Wayne of Cranshaw turned quickly from his purpose of going out to find the Red Folk. He had instead the chance which all his friends had sought—the chance of coming to Black House. His life was soon to end, he knew, and if Red Ratcliffe was there to meet him, it was well; and if Ratcliffe was abroad, it was also well, for he would kill all men-folk in the house, and afterward would bum the roof-trees to the ground. There were six men sleeping underneath the bogs who could have told him of the way that Timothy Hird led Waynes to gossip with a Ratcliffe; but his kinsfolk’s mouths were closed by the green and slippery ooze, and Wayne went forward.

“Wilt lead me faithfully, little lad? ” he asked.

“Ay,” said Timothy, for the third time; and the heart of him went pit-a-pat for glee, as he thought how full these new days were of likelier sport than snaring conies at the burrow’s mouth, or stoning wildish moor birds.

Wayne curbed his horse to a gentle pace. Over and down and round about the perilous marsh-way the horseman followed the boy; and Timothy still whistled as he went.

They came to the high and well-found ground at last, these two, and Joseph leaped from the bracken, and his sword was sharp in his hand.

“A Ratcliffe, you! ” he cried, while Timothy stood aside and watched, his eyes as big as only a boy’s can be.

“A Wayne! ” cried the master of Cranshaw in return. And his horse reared at the cries, at the dreariness of this lonely land through which his master rode him; high and higher still he reared, and his left fore-foot struck Joseph on the chest, and Wayne of Cranshaw had a clear gallop up the hill to Black House, soon as he had halted to despatch his enemy.

Once again did the Wayne courtesy step in to mar their battles; for Wayne of Cranshaw saw that this man was old, and that the onset of the horse had stunned him partially; and, because he could not butcher him in cold blood, he waited for a moment till Joseph should recover and get his sword into his hand again.

“Get up and face me! ” he cried, seeing Joseph sit up dizzily.

“Ay, darn ye,” growled the other, and got to his feet, and reached out for his sword, where it lay five yards away.

Red Ratcliffe, meanwhile, had been wandering on the hill-top pastures with his wife; and the breeze was low and quiet; and they loved each other, disdaining perils by the way and letting the sunshine enter through the opened shutters of their hearts. Men’s hearts, they felt, are like men’s houses—it is wholesome to unshutter every window so long as the sun is in the blue; since God knows the times come oft enough when every casement must be closed against the storms.

October’s lap was full of flower-children to-day. Sparse the fields were, and the wild moor grumbled at them constantly for daring to be there; yet, wherever Audrey and Red Ratcliffe wandered, the flowers were growing at their feet. Near the beck, which slipped and gurgled over its smooth stones and its trout, the yarrow lifted its white head; and up the slopes the harebells nodded to the wind; and all across the pastures the bugle-flower lifted its tiny, deep-blue trumpets. From the moor there came the constant scent of bracken.

“It is good to be alive,” laughed Ratcliffe.

“Ay, surely,” answered Audrey.

And then he tired of honey, remembering that he had been brought into the world for other work than this.

“I have my strength again,” he said.

“And you must go abroad at last. Well, I shall stay at home, and keep my heart from breaking as best I can— but I had rather see you dead than waiting on my fears, instead of faring out where you must go.”

They stood there, in the breeze-swept pasture, and they looked at one another, steadily and tranquilly; and to Red Ratcliffe there came the last consecration of all human love. Young, and slim, and new to the needs of a man, as this girl-wife was, she had mastered already the lesson which Janet, down yonder at Marsh House, was learning for the second time. She knew that fighting of some sort is the man’s work; she knew that the woman’s battles lie in the waiting lands, where dreads foregather and patience proves a hard stepmother; she knew that love-in-idleness is lower than love-in-hardship, as the stars are higher than the hills.

“I have found a help-mate for the future days,” said Ratcliffe suddenly, in the true voice which women know.

“By God’s mercy, yes,” she answered simply. “I do not like sun-weather always.”

Red Ratcliffe stretched his shoulders wider and straighter still, rejoicing in his strength; and he took his wife, and lifted her, and played to and fro with her, as if she were as little as Timothy Hird—Timothy, who led men across the bogs to meet their death.

“My ribs are whole again, lass. Come down, and see me play with foster-brother.”

They crossed the breezy fields, and they came to Black House, and Ratcliffe ran in to fetch the big axe from its nail; but, just as he pame out, thinking to try his strength once more, he was aware of Audrey, standing in the courtyard and beckoning him down the slope. And there below him he saw Wayne of Cranshaw riding up—saw the horse strike Joseph to the ground—and, during the grace allowed by Wayne to his fallen enemy, he raised a mighty shout of “Ratcliffe, Ratcliffe l ”

Wayne looked up, and saw a big man, swinging a big axe, run down toward him, and knew that this must be Red Ratcliffe, and turned aside from Joseph. And, even with death’s shadow on him, even with his sword-arm ready for the coming onset, Wayne was lost in admiration of his foe. Like a wind out of heaven Ratcliffe came, tempestuous and unafraid; like a wind he hurled Wayne’s guard aside, and cut him through the shoulder, sundering his left arm; and the axe glanced down his ribs and lighted on the saddle; they also say—those who pass on the wars of Wayne and Ratcliffe and keep the story quick among us—that the axe-blade cut through the saddle, and hid itself in the middle of the horse’s spine; and there it stayed a while, for Wayne was lying on the ground, and Ratcliffe’s madness had died out of him, and, as he looked in the face of the dying man, he saw something of the fresh, clean beauty of the fields where he had lately walked with Audrey.

“Ah, let me help you die! ” he cried, running to Wayne’s side and lifting him. “Better I had died than you—for Audrey talks of God, though I never knew him, and there’s a light upon your face that calls the summer’s dusk to mind.”

Wayne throbbed with agony, and yet he smiled. “Red Ratcliffe,” he whispered, “’tis no fault of yours. Two fools fought generations since, and you and I are only reaping what they sowed.”

And so he died, with forgiveness in his eyes; and Ratcliffe, because he loathed the work of foster-brother, carried the body to the marshes—carried it gently—and hid it out of sight.

Then he went up the hill, like a broken man. And Audrey was standing near the house, her face to the wall; for such things must be done, she knew, but the crude seeing of them was like the breath of pestilence.

“Well? ” she asked, turning half about when he touched her on the arm.

“He is sleeping. Think of your prayers, Audrey—I never yet knew one, saving ‘ We hate, we kill ’—think of your prayers, for I want his slumbers to be sound.”

And Audrey went indoors; and all that day and all that night they feared to look at one another, though Ratcliffe’s deed was righteous in his own eyes and in hers; and the mystery of life lay heavy on them both, so that they could not scent the bracken-wind that rustled through Black House.

Joseph had been a dazed spectator of the fight; but, after Ratcliffe had buried the dead and gone up into the house, he gathered his wits together, and looked about him. The first thing he did was to pluck the axe out from its lodging in the horse’s spine.

“Queer talk the master held with Wayne,” he muttered, “Queer talk, for sure. And at th’ end on’t he leaves foster-brother i’ the lurch—to say naught o’ me. Oh, ay, he saved my skin, I’m well aware, but he’d forgotten me quite at after th’ killing was done.—It willun’t do, master! ” he went on, as if reasoning earnestly with the lad whom he had reared, a suckling, to the fight, “Rat-cliffes never fought i’ that style, and never should do. Whimsies are good for maids and wives, but not for menfolk when the feud is up.”

Then he took the axe with him into the kitchen, wiped the blade with exceeding tenderness, and gave it a touch of the whetstone.

“By th’ Heart, though, ’twas a rare blow, yond o' Master’s! ” he growled, as he hung the axe up on the wall. “Never look to see a better, I.”

The day wore on to gloaming; and down at Marsh House they waited, waited till the mood of each man was like a bow-string drawn too tight.

“’Tis easy to fight, Wayne of Marsh,” said an elder of the company suddenly; “but God’s curse on this cold o’ the waiting-time! ”

“We are Waynes,” said their leader. “Whether to fight or wait, we bear what comes.”

The elder settled into silence, and wondered that they had dared to name this man The Shameless. And at the moment One came into hall, flushed with a gallop that had left his horse half dead at the outer door.

“Wayne of Cranshaw’s dead,” he cried.

Wayne of Marsh put a hand across his eyes, and for a while his heart was sick. Then he lifted his head.

“He was the bravest and the truest of us all,” he said. “How died he? ”

“I was riding round and about the moor, seeking for Red Ratcliffe; and suddenly I saw Wayne of Cranshaw five-score yards ahead of me; and I called to him, but he would not hear, and galloped on.”

“Ay? ” said Shameless Wayne, as the other paused for breath.

“I followed, but could no way catch him up. And still I followed, till I sighted him again; and he was in the middle of the marsh that guards Black House, and a little lad was guiding him; and I tried to follow, but could find no beginning to the track, though they were plain and clear before me, Wayne of Cranshaw and the little lad.”

“Why did he ride alone? God, if only we could chance upon the lad! ” broke in a youngster.

“Peace! ” said Shameless Wayne, and waited for the tale.

“He came in safety to the high land round about Black House; and one met him there, and Wayne’s horse struck him to the ground. Luck of Our Lady, it was all so plain to me across the bogs, and yet I could not follow, because the track winds in and out like a maid when you court her in the spring. Then a great red-head with an axe came roaring down, and he cleft Wayne of Cranshaw and his horse with the one stroke, and afterward he carried him to the marsh, and—I have done.”

He filled a tankard and drained it greedily. And a great murmur rose, disquieting as the wind when winter’s fury comes.

“So that old fox of a Ratcliffe lied once again,” said Shameless Wayne. “He swore Red Ratcliffe was abroad, when I rode to the bog’s edge yesterday: and for the second time I believed him, for I can never measure wits with a liar, and never could.”

“But that was yesterday,” said one who had been at the bog-brink with him. “He may have chanced to be abroad, and yet be home again by now.”

“Ah, yes, ’twas yesterday,” answered Shameless Wayne, a storm of bitterness upon him; “but for all that I warrant the old fox lied. They feed on lies, these red-heads, as a hare crops parsley-tops.”

His eyes were roaming about the hall, richer than Black House in trophies of battle-fields gone by; and presently he went and took down an axe discarded long ago.

“I am over old to learn the way of an axe at this late day,” he said; “but I, and all of you, must find how to parry a hatchet with the sword.—See,” he went on, turning to the tallest of his kinsmen, “take you the axe, and make what play you can with it, and I will try my blade against it.”

The Waynes gathered round the two; and more and more they understood that Wayne of Marsh was their leader in fact, and not in name alone. Not one of them had thought of meeting Ratcliffe with his own weapon; but Shameless Wayne had thought of it, in the midmost of this last grief which had befallen him.

To and fro they went, Wayne and his adversary; and, when the first man tired of wielding his axe, another took his place, and then another; and Shameless Wayne was learning constantly new tricks of parry and withdrawal, was framing a desperate resolve to meet Red Ratcliffe, when the last fight came, on equal terms.

Yet, do as they would, the waiting-dread fell on them once again, when the bouts were over. The dumb, majestic sanctuary of the marsh in which Red Ratcliffe hid, was a thing that overpowered their reason and fed their superstitions, just as to this day men cross the bogs with doubt and ghostly fears for company. And they sat and whispered, one with another, and drank the wine which cheered them not a whit, and watched the candles brighten, drip, and flicker.

Little Bairn was in the hall, unnoticed, when first the play of axe and sword began; and to her child’s mind it had seemed that her folk were fighting now in earnest among themselves. So she crept out to Marshcotes graveyard, and found the Sexton sitting on their wonted trysting-stone.

“Sexton,” she whispered, with Charley’s Wain and all the bright stars looking down on her. “ Sexton, men go out from Marsh House and come never again, to drink their wine—save one now, and one again, who comes to say that Waynes are hid beneath the bog. Did I not tell you all the moor brooks were running crimson-high? The harebells growing on the brink are drowned, Sexton—and, when they lift their heads again, Our Lady knows they’ll wave red belfries in the wind instead of blue.”

She found no comfort here, for the Sexton, long before her coming, had been shivering on the gravestone, and the ghosts that walked by starlight failed to move his cynic fancy.

“Old December’s crept into my blood, somehow,” he said, in his husky, dry-leaf voice. “I’m feeling old at last; and Parson’s sinking into his six-by-three, failing each day and forgetting to wake me up to ring the Vesper Bell when I fall asleep of afternoons; and I’ve a fancy— the ghost o’ my wife Nancy, stirring yonder, is yapping at me now, saying I was alius full o’ dreams—I’ve a fancy that Parson and Sexton will never settle their quarrel i’ this world. Parson said he’d like as he’d bury me, and I said I’d like as I’d bury Parson. And now I feel in need of the shroud that Nancy wove for me before she died; and Parson is dying, I know; and ’twill be a wry jest if some third party, like, comes burying the twain of us.”

They did not always listen to each other, these two, since friendship can afford deaf ears; and Little Bairn had drifted already from trouble into peace.

“Naught matters, Sexton,” she said, in the voice that was like summer’s wind stirring the summer’s fields. “The sun will rise, and the moon will set, and nobody cares at all.”

“Well, then,” said Sexton Witherlee, “we mun just bide still and wait. But I tell ye, Mistress, the Parson is no way going to over-live me. I’d be shamed, I wod, to find Parson laughing at me, Over Beyond, because he’d overlived me by an hour. Lordie, Lordie, I wonder if Parson will take his snuff-box over the Brink wi’ him! Reckon he will, for it fits him like a glove. Sexton wi’ his bit o’ baccy, and Parson wi’ his snuff—they’d be lonesome, little Mistress, if ghosties look askance at such-like habits.”

And silence fell on them. Over their drooping heads the feud-storm piped and whistled. They did not heed. The little fears, the little needs, of this life or another, were theirs, and the bigger winds passed over them.

Old Joseph, meanwhile, up at Black House, had seen his goodwife go to bed, taking her rush-light with her; and Nick o’ Trawdon’s wife was sleeping likewise; • and the two men sat cosily beside the hearth, and stirred the peats with either foot whenever the fancy took them.

“Nick,” said the older man, replenishing his ale-mug, ” the Master was contrary-wise to-day. He oft-times is, though I fancied loving a lass was good for any proper man.”

“So ’tis,” laughed Nick; “naught better i’ this world, Joseph. Ye take my word for that.”

“Tuts, I’m past it! I’ve seen kine go wantoning i’ the spring, Nick, and four feet go like two, as the saying is. Breath o’ the heather, and the light i’ bonnie brown een— I know ’em, lad, I know ’em—and so does every fourlegged thing that ever found a mate. What I was saying was just this—the Master’s softening, like, and only the red-litten spear will wake him out of his lass’s arms. Just ride to-morn, lad, and take the best horse we can lend ye, and gallop out with the spear aflame to yond Red Folk living wide and behind of where we’re sitting now.”

“I’ll go,” said Nick o’ Trawdon. “I seldom get good horse-flesh under me, but Lord knows I like the feel of it at all times—Joseph,” he broke off, “I’m not one to fancy aught, but all night long, sleeping and waking, I hear your dog go howling round the house, as if dead folk lay round about and he had scented them.”

“’Tis terrible far ahead he scents,” snapped Joseph; “or may be Bathsheba gave him over-good a supper. By the heart, thou’lt be scared by Barguest next, or by the Lean Man’s ghost. We’re fighting now, lad, not toying round about wi’ ghosties.”

“I’ll take your word for’t, Joseph—but I wish ye’d stop your farm-dog’s yelping, I can’t he easy-like, and neither can the wife.”

And Joseph answered nothing; for he knew that his dog had a bark that wakened him at once, or, failing that, waked Bathsheba; and yet they two had been no way disturbed o’ nights.

“Get thee to bed, lad,” said the older man. “Thou’st too much ale in thee.”

“Likely,” answered Nick, with a sober laugh; “yet, granting that, ’tis ill when a dog’s voice comes yowling ’twixt a new-made groom and bride.”

“Want your bread buttered on the hither and the t’other side. Tuts! ” said Joseph.

And so they went to bed. Yet, had they been abroad upon the moor, they would have known—hard-bitten Joseph, even, would have known—that out of the starlit heaven there came troubles bigger than the span of this wild heath.

It was all abroad, the brewing tempest, though it was no storm of this world’s wind and rain. To one lad lying on the open moor, the ghosts of men long dead, the ghosts of horses ridden into old time battles, the ghosts of women who had suffered, generations since, seemed to come out from the warm and peaceful night and mock the stars’ serenity. And dead men fought again, and dead women prayed, and havoc went on windy feet about the heath.

The lad was Janet’s son; and all, save Janet, had forgotten him, although his troubles were greater than those of any kinsmen who waited yonder at Marsh House. They could fight, at least, when the hour came; but his own hands were tied.

Forgotten, exiled, depending on his father’s farm-folk for furtive bite and sup, the lad kept heart somehow; and Shameless Wayne, had he but known it, possessed indeed the thing he craved for—a worthy son to follow him.

And now the boy lay, as he loved to lie o’ nights, with his face to the stars; and he wrestled with that never-ending question which came and talked to him as plainly as did the ghosts of men slain in long-syne feud. Only by proving himself a peace-maker could he take his share of the world’s burden; and, because he was no idler, he could not rest till work came to his hands; and the irony that rawed his wounds lay in this—he would rather have been a man of war than a man of peace, would rather have felt the sword-blade whistle in his hand than have owned all the world of charity.

This could not be; and he lay there, facing the stars, facing that question, “How could he bring peace between his mother’s and his father’s house? ” And no answer came; and he cried aloud to the God who made him.

“I am forsaken,” he said.

And then he closed his eyes; and sleep, the healer, spun cobwebs all across his drooping lids ; and in his dreams he saw a moorland brook run down to join its river, and knew that the brook despaired, over and over again, when its bed was all made hard with stones and shingle, when rocky headlands met its course, thrusting it aside as if it had no business there. And in his dreams he learned the lesson of the brook, and saw the river gained at last—saw, too, the rocky headlands worn, by great patience, into smooth, relenting slopes.

And then he woke. And the stars were looking down upon him. And he saw no way of peace-making as yet, but peace was on him—peace, soft as that which comes with summer weather, when a man goes out to meet his maid after the milking time.

CHAPTER XX

THE FEUD-SPEAR FLAMES

Nick o’ Trawdon looked at Joseph across the table where they sat at breakfast. It was the morning after they had talked beside the hearth together, while Wayne’s son lay out among the bracken and dreamed of peace.

“I’ll get yond horse saddled, Joseph,” he said.

“And where will you ride? ” said the Master, who, coming on some errand to the kitchen, had stood unheeded in the doorway for a moment.

“To carry the Spear to the Red Folk. Naught less was in my mind.”

“Oh, ay? ” said Ratcliffe grimly. “And by whose orders, Nick o’ Trawdon? ”

“Well, by mine,” answered Joseph, scratching his chin and feeling that, in the warmth of last night’s chat beside the hearth, he had overstepped discretion. “Ye see, Master, I fancied ye would doubt whether these Red Folk were more than just so many boggarts—ye’ll believe fifty times in a boggart for my once—and I wanted ye to have more friends about ye—and, if my judgment goes for aught, and if these Red Folk live, as we’ve heard they do, be sure they’ve been taught to know the Feud-Spear, same as a cur-dog is trained to know the smell o’ wool when sheep lies over-blown i’ winter.”

“And you fancied another thing,” snapped Ratcliffe, with that quick insight into the truth of any matter which was one of life’s many gifts to him. “You thought my arms were tied with apron-strings, and dalliance was all my work. Well, you shall ride, Nick, to point me out the way, but unless you chance to be head of the Ratcliffes, ’tis I who carry the Spear.”

So they went out to the stable, and they got to horse; and, according to a usage old almost as the hills about them, Bathsheba came out into the courtyard, and moved to the Master’s side, and gave him the stirrup-cup to drain. And Joseph, sour of face because Ratcliffe had read his thoughts aright, brought the long spear which had hurried fast as doom about the moor since first the Waynes and Ratcliffes fought at time of sheep-washing. At the spear’s end was a great ball of tar and peat, and Joseph showed a fair-weather face again as he struck flint on steel, kindled the tinder, and lit the flame which had smouldered throughout these twenty years of peace.

And now Audrey came to her husband’s side; and her eyes were bright and clear, because afterwards she would find time for tears; and her voice rang true and brave. “Ride straight, and come safe home again,” she said.

“Your God wills it, lass, I think. Good-bye.”

And now Nick o’ Trawdon’s wife snatched a brief word with the ne’er-do-weel whom she had wedded; and she was a younger wife than Ratcliffe’s by a day or so, and not so full of courage.

“Thou hast so little skill in fighting yet, Nick, and I’m not fain to be a widow.”

“Ay, but I’ve a power o’ luck behind me—and that’s always more than skill,” he laughed. “We ride out, and we ride in—keep thy heart warm for me.”

And so they crossed by the bog-path, he and Red Ratcliffe; and no Wayne had ventured to the edge to spy upon them or to meet them; and they swerved to the left, hugging the marshes as they went, but keeping always on October’s dry and russet lands. Up to higher and still higher ridges they mounted, Nick guiding his horse skilfully by the landmarks of which Farmer Hird had told him.

Neither broke the silence until two miles were past. Red Ratcliffe, reared to superstition, had no great faith that these kinsmen they rode out to see were flesh and blood; a company of ghosts, who mazed man’s eyesight on the lonely moor, were what he looked for—but, ghosts or no, it was his duty to rear up the Feud Spear so long as any chance there was of bringing Ratcliffes in.

This same spear, its end glowing dull and fitfully at first, was flaming wide by now, as the speed of the horse’s going caught and harried it. And up the desolate lands they galloped, and down the rough dene-sides; and the spear burned brighter in the sunlight; and a shepherd, following the track of lost ewes upon the hills above, looked down and saw the flaming brand, and, till he died, he swore that he had watched the devil blowing coals of hell into a flame across the heath.

They had passed Wuthrums Ghyll by now, the galloping two, and for the first time Ratcliffe spoke.

“The mist is getting up,” he said. “See how it creeps from the hollows, Nick, see how the sunlight laps it up.” “’Twill be thick upon the moor before we win back home again,” the other answered briefly. “We’re near the Red Folk now, howsiver, if I’ve not led ye wrong.”

They crossed a deepish cleft, all full of rowan-trees and hazel, where little moorbirds chirruped at the sunlight; and they mounted the farther rise, and came to a level stretch of peat, dead-black beneath the blue-white of the sky, save where the mists crawled gently in and out. And then they came to a deeper cleft, with a steep face of rock falling abruptly from the moor, to guard its privacy. They plucked their horses back on the very edge of it, and saw what they had come to find.

Beneath them lay many huts, heather-thatched: and women were washing garments in the stream that ran through the bottom of the valley; and men were wielding uncouth weapons, striving one against the other in play, with laughter and great shouts when either got beneath his fellow’s guard. And all the men were thatched with red, as their huts were thatched with weather-beaten ling; and all the women had hair as russet-red as bracken when the first cold nips it; and the master, looking down, knew that these were Ratcliffes, flesh and blood. There was no doubt of it; and all his blood came flooding through Red Ratcliffe’s body, singing the battle-cry.

“A Ratcliffe, ye! ” he cried, and he whirled the Red Spear round his head.

The men below ceased playing, and the women all ceased washing by the stream-side; and they saw the Feud Spear, hoped and prayed for all these years, go swinging up into October’s sky.

Soberly down the hill rode Red Ratcliffe and his friend; and up the hill to meet them came a withered dame who surely had not known her youth these forty years; and she clutched the spear from Ratcliffe’s hand, and waved it high, and sang the Nunc Dimittis of the Feud.

“The Spear has come, Ratcliffes! Did I not tell ye? Ride in upon the horses we have stolen all these years gone by, and thrust the Waynes over and down into the Pit of Hell. Thank Mary Mother that I’ve lived to see this day.”

And then she fell, clutching the Feud Spear to her breast; and they tell us—those who to-day pass on the feud-lore of the heath—that on her dead face there was peace, such as lives on the faces of brave men and women when their tale is told.

The men-folk left their play, and they ran to the rude stables—ling-thatched, like their houses—where each kept his stolen horse. In exile they had lived, each one of them; and that black night of twenty years ago, which saw Wild-water House fall burning on the slain, had given them no lawful mothers’ milk. A wild, shock-headed band they were; for women, when the fathers of their unborn bairns are slain before their eyes, do not go harbouring mercy for the victors, and these red-heads, to whom at last the Feud Spear came, galloped ravening like a pack of wolves about Red Ratcliffe. Their horses, too, gently stabled once on a day, were shaggy and rough-ridden now, and all they could remember of this life was that stable and moor alike were hard to live within.

They swarmed about Red Ratcliffe, men and horses neglecting the dead woman who lay with her face—grown youthful on the sudden—to the sky. This was the hour of battle, and what had they to do with women, alive or dead?

They rode bare-back on their horses, with both hands free; and Nick o’ Trawdon—who on the edge of death would never learn to hold his gay moods back—laughed when he saw that their weapons were vastly like the tool that he had chosen when he went to meet the Waynes in company with Joseph. Long hafts the weapons had, and at the end a clump of iron; and only a few of them had chosen to wear the swords which they had got by theft from the riders of their stolen horses.

“A Ratcliffe, a Ratcliffe! ” yelled the Master, glad that these crying wolves were flesh-and-blood, not ghosts.

And that was the cry taught them by their mothers; and the red-heads crowded like so many well-trained dogs about Red Ratcliffe, and answered back, “A Ratcliffe! We hate, we kill, and you shall be our leader.”

“Ay,” said the Master soberly; “or else I’ll split one and another with my axe.”

They rode up the face of the steep valley, and came to the open moor; and the mist crept always round about their horses’ hocks, and the blue of the sky grew dim? up above, the sky was blue enough, but, underneath, the grey fog moved and hindered them.

Fast as they rode, the mists rode faster still. Before they had come to Wuthrums Ghyll, the fog was up to their horses’ middles; and Nick o’ Trawdon, who had brought them hither, pulled up his nag and sought for the remembered landmarks. The moor was full of pranks today, as she is wont to be; for the middle of the sky was sunlit over them, and blue as violets; but the way beneath a man’s feet or a horse’s was over-hidden quite in a grey fog, whilst all the farther landmarks, by which alone a man could guide himself in these wild lands, were blotted out.

“We’ve lost our way,” said Nick o’ Trawdon bluntly. “Plague on the mist, to come just when we want her least! ”

The red-heads riding with them could give no help; for, in their forays into the gentler lands, in search of food or horses, they had constantly gone south toward Ludworth, not north toward Marshcotes.

Then suddenly the mist lifted for a space, as these autumn fogs will do, not knowing their own mind; and Nick o’ Trawdon looked about him.

“We can wend forrard,” he said. “See ye, there’s Hell Dog Ghyll this side yond hummocky spur of moor; and yonder to the left is Hangman’s Snout. Oh, ay, I’m learning where we’re getten to.”

They trotted briskly forward; and the red-heads raised a cry of “Ratcliff & l A Ratcliff e! ” that billowed down the moor like thunder. This was their holiday at last, and Red Ratcliffe, bigger than their dreams of a big leader, and the axe whose sharp edge peeped from his saddle, roused the wild mood in them as no strong drink could do.

Terrible, and naked of compunction, was that battle-roar; and the Waynes, could they have heard it, would have known that they had to meet a foe more stark and forthright than Red Ratcliffe. Hardship had been meat and drink to these children of the outer wilderness; snow, and frost, and bite of the bitter winds, had toughened them until their flesh was hard as bog-oak; and their hearts were free of mercy, for the women who had borne them had seen their fathers killed.

As it chanced, one of their foes did hear them—for Shameless Wayne had ridden out alone to seek an inlet to Black House across the marshes. Like Wayne of Cran-shaw, he would not take his friends with him on so rash a venture; and, like Wayne of Cranshaw, who slept beneath the marsh, he had a settled purpose in his mind. Black House might be impregnable on this side, but what of the moors behind it? Surely the bogs did not circle it altogether, as sea surrounds an island; and he hoped, by taking a wide compass, to find dry land and easy going for the horses of his folk.

He was well on the Ludworth side by now, and was reining his horse in the direction of Black House, when that thunder-roar went up from the Ratcliffes. He turned in the saddle, and looked across the heath, on which the sun shone through the lifted fog; and he saw Red Ratcliffe, big on a big horse, and the other red-heads with him, all roaring lustily.

Across the moor he called. “A Wayne, a Wayne! ” he cried, prepared to lay his life down now, if only he could have one clear thrust before he died.

The red-heads heard and answered; and the thunder of their cry redoubled, and the dingles of the moor caught and re-caught it, till it seemed that a thousand cries of “Ratcliffe, Ratcliffe ! ” fell into splintered shreds against the rocks.

Against them all rode Shameless Wayne, setting his horse to the gallop. It was a hard matter to live, but a vastly easy thing to die; and at the least he might cut through Red Ratcliffe before he fell.

There might be eight hundred yards between them; and because men are apt to think in time of battle that God is sleeping, the one Wayne and the many Ratcliffes galloped hard to meet each other, their minds frill of the feud alone. And then the moor laughed in her homespun sleeve, and the mist came down as suddenly as rain in April and blanketed them about. White as a lass’s hand the mist was, but it was thick as a stone-built wall, and there was none of them who did not strive to check his horse’s gallop.

And then the moor-sprites chuckled, seeing with eyes free of mist how ’wildered men can be when fog comes on them. Some of the Ratcliffes fell, their horses striking rabbit-burrows or spurs of rock; some rode wide; and over the moor there was a muffled roar of men befooled.

Red Ratcliffe kept the saddle, but his horse was startled by the uproar and frightened by the mist, and carried him far from his folk; and Wayne’s horse, too, would not be curbed at once; and when the mist lifted for a space, suddenly as it had come, they found themselves—one Ratcliffe now against one Wayne—alone together in a wide and shallow dingle, with peat beneath and the untroubled sunshine over them. Perhaps a score yards, perhaps a score and ten, lay between them when first the fog’s bewilderment cleared from their eyes.

“It is well, Wayne of Marsh,” said Ratcliffe, slipping foster-brother from its sheath. “I like you better now than when I should have killed you in cold blood at Colne.”

And Wayne answered nothing, for it was hard to fight with one to whom he owed his life. Courteous he was, and courteous he would remain till death came knocking at his door; and it hindered him to know that for his kin’s sake he must fight, and find either way a losing chance. Yet he got his sword out, and he crushed his scruples down, and the fire of youth came to him once again, as it had come a score years since when he rode the moorland like a pestilence, carrying weakness and nameless tremors to the sword-arms of the Ratcliffes. Across the black of the peat he rode at Ratcliffe; and across the naked peat Red Ratcliffe rode to meet him; and one of the two it seemed, must surely lie in peace to-day, his still face to the sky.

All night Wayne’s son had lain among the bracken; and his fate lay heavy on him. About the time when Red Ratcliffe took the lighted spear from Joseph’s hand, the lad had wakened, to find the stark blue sky above him, and, under the sky, the reality of pain. He wandered in and out about the moor; and then the mist came on him, as it came on the Ratcliffes and on Shameless Wayne; but he did not heed, since, sun or mist, he had never yet found sure going for his feet in this life.

The lad found himself, when the mist lifted, in that wide and shallow dingle where Wayne and Ratcliffe faced each other; and suddenly he knew the past night’s dreams prophetic, knew that he, who was neither Wayne nor Ratcliffe, could fight the hardest battle of the three—the fight of the peace-maker. He ran like a hunted fox down the quiet slope of the hill; and he came between the axeman and the swordsman; and Wayne’s horse reared, and all but threw him; and Ratcliffe’s horse shot up his forefeet to the sky; but both kept the saddle.

“Art mad, or what, to come between us? ” roared Ratcliffe, the battle-hunger in his voice.

“I am he that got up beneath your horse the other night, and threw you,” answered the other, breathlessly, “and I am well-advised to come between you.”

“Who art thou? ” 'cried Shameless Wayne, with a bitter longing to seem forgetful of this ill-shapen lad— this lad with the Wayne eyes and the Ratcliffe hair, who was his sin, and Janet’s, made manifest in flesh.

“I am your son,” the boy answered, searching his father’s face for some token of pity or relenting. “And I am half a Wayne, and half a Ratcliffe, and I would ask you twain to give the hand of friendship to each other.”

They stared at him in blunt surprise, and may be with some liking for his courage. Like a torrent, gaining and ever gaining bulk as it ran down to snatch its tributaries, the feud had grown in these last days to a flood that overmastered all it met; and men’s hopes, and men’s desires, and women’s natural gentleness, raced like straws upon the froth and bubbles of its surface. Yet this boy dared stand in the middle of its onset now, and thought to dam it with a few fair words of peace.

“Half a Wayne, and half a Ratcliffe,” cried Ratcliffe suddenly, with a laugh like a wild beast’s growl. “Why, then, stand off, and watch the battle! None likelier than yourself to make sure of fair play. Stand off, you cur-pup, d’ye hear? ”

A wave of hopelessness swept over the boy again. His plans had all miscarried, for not by persuasion would these two come to friendship. He glanced wearily across the moor, and hope returned to him; for he had lived too lonely, had sought the heath’s companionship too often, to miss any knowledge of its moods. The mist was creeping over and down again, and he asked only for a little time.

So he held his ground, and talked with them; and once Red Ratcliffe threatened to ride him down; and thrice his father cursed him for a son unnatural; but still he held his ground, and the mist swept over them—and none could see his hand before him.

“Where are you, Wayne? ” yelled Ratcliffe, and his voice struck dumb against the fog.

“Here, Ratcliffe! ” answered Wayne. “The boy must take his chance.”

Hard they rode, each at the other, and thought that they rode true; but the mist’s enchantment was upon them, and crooked ways seemed straight, and straight ways crooked, and they went crying to each other through this white midnight of the fog, till Wayne’s sword and Rat-cliffe’s axe were beaded over with little, blue-grey drops of moisture. And still they could not find each other; and the boy, because he had no fear and did not run abroad, escaped the onset of their horses.

And then it was that Wayne’s son remembered how mists will lift as suddenly as they come down ; and he ran near and far, crying now A Wayne and now A Ratcliffe till the dumbness of the shrouding mist grew big with feud-calls—calls deadened, as the sound of heavy boots is deadened when the snow cakes under men’s nailed heels, but clear to be heard for all that.

The men’s hoarse cries were mingled with the boy’s, till last of all Wayne rode up and down three separate dingles on the Marshcotes side of the moor, and Ratcliffe crossed wide out toward Colne, each thinking he was getting near to grips with his prime enemy.

“’Tis scarce the work I sought,” said Wayne’s son to himself; “but they’ll not find each other, this one day at least.”

The fog lifted once again, and the sun shone yellow from the blue-o’-violets sky, and it lit the beaded bracken and the bearded ling. And Wayne’s son saw his father, dim on the sky-line, galloping hard toward Marshcotes, thinking his enemy had chosen to seek him in his weakest place— the place where Janet and his honour lay. And he saw Ratcliffe’s head against the sky-line on the Colne side. And, with his many sorrows, he found heart to laugh aloud.

“There’s peace for one day,” he muttered. “Lord God, why did you not put battle into my hands instead? ”

CHAPTER XXI

THE PARSON FALLS TO PRAYER

Nick o’ Trawdon, soon as the fog came down and upset all his reckonings, had called to his friends to keep still upon their horses till the mists lifted; and most of them obeyed him, so that, when the sunlight came again, they drew together, though some were fouled with slime in token of a fall. And then the stragglers here and the stragglers there spied where their comrades stood, and all gathered to the one spot—all, save Red Ratcliffe. Up and down the moor they sought him, and then Nick saw the mist come light-fingered across the land again.

“He must be well ahead, lads,” he said, “and at the worst he’ll find his way to Black House—as we must do, lest this unchancy fog benights us.”

“Yond was a Wayne that rode at us? ” growled one.

“Ay, the head of all the breed. He has what we call cat-lives, has Shameless Wayne, and ever had.”

“Would have had a few lives less,” said the other, “if the White Lady had not come riding down the wind.”

“Well, she’s riding now again,” put in Nick o’ Trawdon drily. “We’d best be jogging, friends, for I’m wide by many a mile of all the best-known tracks.”

So they won to Black House at last, after many stoppages to wait the passing of the mist. And Nick o’ Trawdon’s wife, because she was the latest wedded of the women, heard their hoof-beats first. Then Audrey heard, and Bathsheba snatched the stirrup-cup, standing ready by the hearth; and Joseph wakened from a doze—a heavy doze, fathered by long watching of the bog—and reached out for his sword, and followed.

The sky was clear as the Red Folk clattered up the hill; and Nick’s wife was selfish in her joy at sight of her good-man riding at the head of them, unhurt and laughing, and she forgot her mistress.

“Ah, lad, thou’rt home again! ” said she, reaching up her lips to his.

“Why, I fancy so. What else? ” he answered gaily.

Then Audrey came among them, with a white and tragic face; and she heeded not at all that stranger-Ratcliffes were come to fight the Waynes; rather, the shock-headed, uncouth crowd were like a dream to her, for she could not find the one reality she craved—the big head and big shoulders of the man she loved.

“Where is the Master? ” she asked, in a voice as low as sorrow’s.

“Home here before us, surely,” said Nick o’ Trawdon.

“He has not come,” was all the girl-wife answered; and she went indoors, and laid herself upon the bed where, twenty years gone by, her husband had been born in grief more bitter than her own.

Her maid came to her presently, full of repentance for her joy in Nick’s home-coming, full of all sympathy and wish to make sorrow blossom into hope.

“You are kind,” said Audrey, “but help there is none for me.” And she turned her face to the wall, and Nick’s wife crept softly out, finding no longer any joy in another’s safe return.

But by-and-by Bathsheba came; and she knelt by Audrey’s side, and talked to her, as only the women can whose hearts are simple and whose hands have worked at churn or dairy.

“Ah, now, whisht ye, lass,” she murmured. “I’m warm, I tell ye, and that alius means the Master’s safe. Once, when he fell as a little lad and cut his forehead nigh in two against a stone, I was cold for hours afore they brought the boy-lad in, and I knew that summat was by way o’ happening, like. To-day I’m warm, thanks be, and your man is riding home to ye, I know.”

Audrey lifted heavy lids, her eyes were blue and serious. “Would I had your gift of seeing after and before, Bathsheba,” she murmured. “I’d give all my tears for one little ray of hope.”

“Better as ye are, Mistress,” said Bathsheba, with a wholesome spice of tartness in amongst her pity. “I’ve seen before, and I’ve seen after, and oft-times ye get cold o’ nights, lassie, when ye have that kind o’ sight.”

On the sudden Audrey lifted herself from the bed; and like a trumpet in her ears there rang the beat of a horse’s feet.

“He has come—Bathsheba, he has come! ” she cried.

“As I telled ye, lassie. He was bound to come, soon or late—and, unlike most men-folk, he has chosen to come soon.”

But Audrey did not hearken. She had dried her eyes, and straightened her gown, and she was down tl^g stair and out to meet him in the sunlit courtyard.

“I thought you dead,” she whispered, as she clutched his stirrup, and reached up toward him just as her own maid had reached to Nick o’ Trawdon not long ago.

His answer chilled her; for Ratcliffe had ridden far, through sun and fog, and he had missed his prey.

“Wayne rides in safety, lass,” he said, “and, seek as I would, I could not find him.”

“Hast found naught better than a Wayne? ” she asked demurely.

And he looked at her; and in her face there was the softness of a dawn when day comes early up the hills.

“Audrey,” he said gently, “a man’s wife is dear—but my folk passed on the feud to me.”

And so at last she understood what this new life must be, knew that it would be keener in joy than the old, but keener also in pain—knew that the times must come when she would have to stand aside a little, as now, until her husband’s work was done. Ay, for sake of the love between them, she must not grudge him his work, nor look always to find him the hot lover when he came home chilled by failure.

“You’ll meet him once again upon the moor,” she said. “Let be, dear, and come in, and see these wild kinsfolk of yours who followed Nick o’ Trawdon.”

Not Red Ratcliffe only returned disheartened, but Wayne also, and for the same cause; for Wayne, when he reached Marsh House, found that his enemy had not passed by that way; and he repented of his haste in riding down the moor so quickly, and longed bitterly for his lost chance of finding Ratcliffe.

Janet was above-stairs, thinking of her son, and planning, so far as planning availed aught, to keep Shameless Wayne from riding out on such lonely ventures as to-day’s. Wayne looked round the hall for her, soon as he crossed the threshold, and her’absence seemed the last disappointment of a day, which from the start had not sped well.

“You are moody, Wayne of Marsh,” said one of those who sat about the board. “We have lately dined; will you not sit, and eat and drink some comfort into you? ” Wayne shook his head. “ Moody? ” he snapped, losing the temper which at most times was fine and yielding as a well-found sword. “Am I always and always to go screening a sad heart with a merry face? Moody? Ay! Now take your turn, one or the other of you, and show me that the clouds are not so thick, and not so thunder-black, as they appear. I’ve done as much for you since this accursed Ratcliffe roamed abroad.”

None answered; but one brought him a flagon of wine, and Wayne took a deepish draught.

“That was a child’s outburst,” he said by-and-by, recovering himself. “Friends, we shall die, or we shall live; but at the least they’ll nail down our coffin-lids upon good gentlemen.”

Steady, quiet of voice, a man to tempt even cowards into bravery, Shameless Wayne looked round upon his folk; and a common impulse came to them, and they lifted their wine-cups high and toasted him, as if they dined with him in time of peace and revelry.

“Am I wont to be over-superstitious? ” he went on.

“Yet now I am disposed to be. I went up to Black House to-day, seeking to find an inlet from the rear; and I met Red Ratcliffe and all his Red Folk with him, and the mist came down and scattered us as we galloped to the shock.” “What, you against them all? ”

“Odds are of God’s making, not of mine,” said Wayne, with a quiet laugh. “The fog sundered us, and, when it cleared, I found Red Ratcliffe in a shallow dingle; and we were alone; and then the mist came down again, and hid us, and led us roaming wide apart across the moor. Friends, you know the feel of a sword, when it lives and is restless in your hand, and you know your blow is going to strike well home? Well, it was such a blow the mist robbed me of, and I fear this Ratcliffe is no man at all, but a devil red from hell, who’s leagued with the mist and the wind and the rain against us.”

“And these Red Folk? How many of them, Wayne? ” “I had no time to count; but they were many, carrying long-shafted clubs like these upon the wall yonder. We could deal with them—but this Ratcliffe shows like to slay us one by one. God, the feel of the blade in my hand to-day! I could have counted twenty, biding my time, and the stroke would have run as sweet as a lass to the pedlar when he comes with fairings in his pack. I could not have missed him, Waynes! ”

They knew—at least, the elders did—that strange, lithe feel of a blade when a swordsman’s luck runs high as a moor brook after snow; and they cursed the mist, each after his own fashion, and afterwards they talked of ways and means, of what were best be done to meet the^Ratcliffes, but on them all there lay a hopelessness, disguise it as they would, and they listened for the sound of Barguest a-crying and a-yelping at the door, and pretended, when at last they heard it, that it was the wind—though wind there was none, save a gentle stirring of the breeze.

Down to the starlit dusk the day wore on; and still the moor was throbbing with that nameless shuddering of the things to come; and Little Bairn crept out to her accustomed place upon the gravestone, and found the Sexton there, blinking his old eyes at the graveyard and the stars.

“I’m tired of crimson skies and crimson moors,” she said; “tired of the Black Wayne faces, Sexton, and the red, red blood they spill upon the ground. Will there never be a blue sky over us again, Sexton? I love the blue skies so, and these moors affright me.”

The Sexton shivered. His years lay cold upon him, and he was seeing now, not ghosts of the folk who stirred his humour, but ghosts of the buried Waynes and Ratcliffes who could not rest within their graves. He saw, too, the days to come so soon, when he should be as one of them, lying under sod and only creeping out o’ nights to roam, a dead man among the dead.

“You’re fond of saying, Mistress, that naught matters,” he muttered, his toothless gums all chattering, “but ’twould seem to Witherlee—and that’s myseln—as if death mattered a fearful deal. There’s my wife Nancy, sleeping quiet-like once in a way to-night, but waiting for me, Mistress—ay, biding till I come to join the ghosties, and ready to pay off a few old scores. She knows my bad old doings now, ye see. Besides, I’ve a sort of a clinging to life, rheumatiz, and Parson’s cranks to put up with, notwithstanding. Mistress, I’ve no wish to die! I want to see another winter’s robins come i’ their red waistcoats and pick the snod worms up from the shovel’s end; I want—my old heart’s like to break to think on’t—I want to see another spring come bringing the tree-buds out and heartening the speckled throstles into song. Oh, by th’ Heart, ’tis a cold and solemn business, this going under ground! ”

They were silent, and the stars looked down on them: and then the Sexton tried to lift his spirits, but his chuckle had no heart in it.

“’Twould be fine and queer if neither Parson buried me, nor me th’ owd Parson,” he said.

Little Bairn clutched at his arm, and pointed down between the graves.

“Do you see aught, Sexton? ” she whispered.

Witherlee looked down; and they both saw what was going forward. As of old, the Lean Man and the Dog were in and out among the headstones, and the Dog was crying like a child left out of doors at night, and the Lean Man was chasing him. But suddenly, as they watched, the Brown Dog found his courage, and turned and closed with his old enemy; and Little Bairn and Witherlee looked on, because they could not take their eyes away, and they saw a fight so wild, and close, and awful, that Witherlee would have given his remaining days of life in exchange for power to turn his head aside.

And then there chanced what seemed a miracle; for, when the fight was hottest between the lean ghost, with his palsied arm, and the shaggy dog, whose eyes glared ruddy in the starlight, they fell apart upon the sudden, and each looked at the other, and the Lean Man beckoned to the Dog, and the beast came and fawned on him, and they were friends. And up between the graves they went, and farther up into the moors above, the Dog ever at the Lean Man’s heels, and ever barking joyously like some homeless cur that finds a friend at last.

A wonderful, soft breeze came down and fanned the cheeks of Little Bairn and Witherlee; and the Sexton felt a cool and childish hand within his own.

“’Tis like the spring you talked of, Sexton, is it not— and the throstles all are singing.”

“Throstles—ay,” said Witherlee; “but what has the Dog to do with songs o’ spring? ”

In one man’s heart, at least, no joy of spring was sounding. Parson Clare, still seeking for his mission, had gone up into the hills, as all men living near the moor are wont to do when trouble comes to them; and he had looked at the starry dust that marked the highroad of the Milky Way, had looked at Charley’s Wain, swinging its lamps across the void, had asked for an answer to the riddle of his fast-declining days.

The answer came at last; and he fell on his knees among the heather, and prayed for strength to carry his labours through; and the great stars wheeled above him, and the breeze came soft as early violets, and he did not know that the task appointed him was the first mile-stone set upon a road which led to a farther goal.

Then he went down to the Parsonage; and he was spent with prayer; and all about the old house Audrey's voice seemed crying, crying to him; yet he knew that she lay far-off, and would likely never sit at his knee again, and he yearned for his little girl.

Just as Wayne’s son had sent up his cry to-day, so Parson Clare did now, amid the silence of the Parsonage.

“Lord God, if only you had asked strength from my youth, and not from my old age! ” he cried.

CHAPTER XXII

BATHSHEBA PLAYS HER PART

" They make a deal of dirt about a house, Joseph,” said Bathsheba, on the morning after the Red Folk had ridden in.

“And who might they be who make such a power of dirt? ” asked Joseph, with a sly twinkle round his lips.

“Why, these wild folk from the moor. Luckily, Black House was built to give room for twice as big a company —but 'tis not one woman’s work, but twenty, to follow them.”

“Then dunnot follow, lass. They’ll be busy out o’ doors afore so long, and some o’ the poor rogues will never come again to trouble thee. Waynes, too, have a trick of making dirt, Bathsheba, when they meet Ratcliffes; they do it wi’ their swords. But the moor’s not like a four-walled house—soon clears up her litter, she, with a shower o’ rain or so.”

Bathsheba was no match for her goodman nowadays, and knew it. Moreover, she was never far away from battle, and from battle chances, and these lads, who had come in to fight for the master’s cause, were gradely-built and good to look upon.

“I’d sorrow to see one of the ladkins killed, I own,” she murmured. “Yet they showed littlish pity yester-morn themselves, Joseph. 'Twas well and away for them to Black House—but what o’ the women-folk they left behind? ”

“Tuts! We want only men here, lass—saving Master’s wife, and Nick’s, and mine. D’ye think the Red Folk were minded to crowd us out wi’ chattering women? ”

“Ask me,” said the goodwife sharply, “and I’d say they never once thought of their women-kind, but just rode hot and away i’ search o’ frolic soon as the Master came. Poor wenches out yonder on the lonesome lands! Poor wenches everywhere, say I! They’ve to carry and fetch, and kicks come quicker in than ha’pence for all their trouble.”

“Thou’st so little sense, when all’s said, Bathsheba. Did they go out into the Lonesome Lands these score years gone? Did they go out across a threshold reeking-hot as a mistal—but warmed by no good kine—and fare out into the mirk? Did these women live for months in shelters made by their own hands, and brave it out, and live to rear men-children? Did they, or didn’t they, Bathsheba? ”

“Why, ay, they did,” agreed Bathsheba, who found it hard to know her Master in these latter days.

“Then, tuts! Will they be scared, think ye, to live on i’ the old place, and bide, and look to see us coming when we’ve done our work? I tell ye, we want men, not women, here, for days as red as a Ratcliffe’s thatch are coming on us all.”

There was a pause; and Bathsheba came straight to her goodman’s arms, and her tears lay moist upon his cheek; and Joseph realised, dimly under the stress of coming battle, that good women, to their lives’ end, are not children altogether, and not lassies altogether, but that the gusty sweetness of young Primrose April will come at times upon them all, turning strife and evil days and surly weather into glamour of the budding spring.

“Lad Joseph,” she said, “I’ve troubled thee with whimsies through the years. And thou wast right, and I was wrong, and thou’st the better wisdom of us two. And, Joseph, the feud is good, and I’ve fostered it, same as I fostered the Master—but I’m thinking—just thinking, lad, that life ’ud be a drearyish thing if ye were to be slain.”

Joseph was daunted now. “Nay, now,” he muttered. “Nay, Bathsheba. I wouldn’t have thee cry—I wouldn’t no way have thee cry.”

She looked up quickly. “Tears are like rain, J oseph— good for well-found land, but evil for the sourer fields.”

“That’s good farming-lore, any way, Bathsheba. Good fighting-wisdom, too, if ye ask Joseph. Rain never did aught to a well-found man, or a well-found bit o’ field save moisten his hand-grip on the axe o’ life. I’m bothered, lass, for all that,” he broke off. “I’m not by way o’ harbouring fancies, but Red Ratcliffe rode home to-day without the Feud-Spear.”

“And what of that? ” asked Bathsheba, half lost among the lands where fairies danced about her love for weather-beaten Joseph.

Joseph looked through the kitchen-window, hearing a footstep on the stones outside; and he saw Red Ratcliffe coming to the door.

“I’ll tell the Master what of that,” he answered grimly. “He should know by now what comes o’ letting the Feud Spear drop.”

The Master came in with a brisk step. “Joseph--” he began, intent on giving some order for the day.

But the other interrupted him. “Master, where does the Feud Spear lie this moment? ” he asked.

“I had forgotten it,” said Ratcliffe,- after an uneasy silence, “forgotten it till this moment, Joseph. When we found the Red Folk and sent up the call, an old, old woman ran up the hill to meet us, and clutched the spear; and then the lads came swarming round about us, and I thought of naught save bringing them to Black House.”

“As I said,” put in Bathsheba, herself again. “Women are never heeded when they’ve done their work.”

“Ye should have called one thing to mind,” said Joseph. “When the Spear’s lost, comes peace’s frost.” Didn’t I teach ye that, Master, when ye were dandling-high, and I rode ye on my knee o’ nights! Afore ye were bom—afore I or my father’s father was bom—the Ratcliffes knew that when the Spear was lost, there’d be an end of feud. And the fight was only just beginning—only just beginning,” he finished ruefully.

“I’ll ride to the far lands to-day and fetch it back,” said Ratcliffe.

Now superstition—which, after all, is but another name for faith—is a thing hard to reckon with. Joseph had little faith, and Bathsheba had much; yet the woman, who so often saw before and after, who had watched the Lean Man come and go, and had listened to countless voices from the over-world—the woman chanced to have small belief in this legend of the Spear which was dear to her goodman’s heart. And in that she erred, for the one faith of a plain man is more to be depended on than the many faiths of the more fanciful.

“Master, ye’ve enough to do,” she said; “these raw lads have to be trained to fight—you said it yourself yestreen—and ’tis throwing fairy-money into th’ bog to go riding outward now, just when the terror’s chilling all the Waynes, just when we’ve got our lads about us, asking only to be taught.”

“Bathsheba, ’twas half an excuse, I own. I want to find Shameless Wayne again—there’s no mist on the hills to-day—and I’ve a fancy he is riding somewhere about the moors, as restless as myself.”

“Lad, if ye’d bided twenty years, as I have done, for the feud to re-waken—if ye’d seen me suckling ye, when your hands were just two podgy bits o’ weakness, things to laugh at and to cry over—if ye’d learned my patience, ye would not be sorrowing now because Shameless Wayne does not drop under your axe in a moment, like an o’er-ripe plum falls into a lass’s lap.”

“’Tis not out

Red Ratcliffe looked at Bathsheba, and so did Joseph. There’s a strange cogency about the speech of the child-bearers when they show their hidden records of patience and long-suffering, and the farm-wife’s face was fair to look upon—so fair that Joseph thought himself a lad again, wooing stealthily beneath the moon, and hearing the hares go cropping sweet o’ the grass while Bathsheba reached up a glamoured face to him.

“Let the Spear bide,” said Bathsheba. o’ Ratcliffe hands, and the women yonder will care for it as well as a mother would.”

Red Ratcliffe listened to her, since the business of training these unruly lads seemed the more urgent; moreover, he feared to leave Audrey unguarded in the midst of men who longed for battle, and could not find it instantly. And Joseph acquiesced reluctantly. Yet not one of them guessed now—or ever knew—that Red Ratcliffe had been saved from almost certain death by following Bathsheba’s advice.

Wayne himself, with a great company, had chosen this morning for a foray into the broken lands ; for it was his hope that Red Ratcliffe with his folk might be abroad on yesterday’s battle-ground, eager as himself to fight in open sunlight. They travelled far into the lands that lay behind Black House, and by chance they rode to a hill-crest, to see the better whether any horseman were coming up across the moor; and down below them they saw no men, indeed, but a hive of women moving to and fro in the secluded glen.

“See the colour of them! ” said one. “Only a fox’s brush, or a Ratcliffe’s head, can carry such a colour.”

Shameless Wayne looked down the sunlit brink, and he read the riddle of the scene below him.

“They’re the mothers and the sisters of those Red Folk I saw yestermom,” he answered. “What will the sons be, friends, with mothers such as those to suckle them? ”

“Pity we spared them, twenty years ago,” said a grizzled elder. “Kill all, say I, when the feud has hardened women into men.”

“Let none again speak words from hell in my hearing,” cried Wayne, his face keen and hard with anger. “Were a Wayne to slay a woman, I would kill him with my own hand.—Oh, shame on you, friends, shame on you! ” he broke off, the passionate, tender heart of the man awaking. “Let us live, if we may, and die if we must—but those women yonder might well have been mother or sister to each one of you. They are brave, and God give them rest for it.”

And now the women had spied them, had seen their black heads swart against the hill-top sky; and they ran up, the old and the young together, and the Waynes stayed still in their saddles, and watched them in amazement.

“Ye are Waynes? ” cried the foremost of the women, breathless after her climb.

“Ay,” said Wayne of Marsh.

And then a storm of cries arose, and curses rattled on the Waynes, like hail with a northern wind behind it; and the women leaped in among the horsemen, and clutched at them, and, because their strength was fed by open air and hardship, they were as men to reckon with, though they came unarmed.

For the first and the last time in his life, Shameless Wayne was bent on flight. Even to loose, as gently as he could, the grip of the woman who had fastened on him, hurt him in what had always been a weak place in his armour. Courtesy to all, but courtesy toward women ’specially, had seemed often to ruin Wayne’s hopes in this stark and forthright feud; and now he loathed his work of getting free from all these crying folk.

May be his comrades would have been less gentle, had they not heard their leader’s passionate rebuke. As it was, they forced the women off as best they could, not hurting them, and they followed Shameless Wayne at a gallop over the gold and the red and the black of the moor, and left the Ratcliffe women crying shrilly still behind them.

And no man spoke, as they skirted the marshes round Black House and cast wistful eyes toward the bogs whose secret was denied them. For the silence of the learning-time was on them; since out of battle men are born, and from battle only do men come, by favour of their God, to peace. They had learned this, at least, these Waynes who a few days since were living in folly’s peace and ease— had learned that Wayne, who led them, could draw off from trouble and find grace to plead for women—had learned, perhaps, a little of that exquisite, clean chivalry which not all the faults of Shameless Wayne could take from him.

Ratcliffe, meanwhile, lay safe at home. If, disdaining Bathsheba, he had ridden out to find the Feud Spear, he would have galloped straight into the whole of the Wayne company. Moreover, he would not in any case have found the Spear; for the beldame who had clutched it first had clasped it so close to her withered breasts that, when they came to bury her on the quiet glen-side, they could not force it from her hands; and so they had hidden it with her, beneath the yellowing hazel shrubs whose nuts were late to ripen.

It was after this that another of those quiet and eerie silences crept down about the feud. To Audrey, in her inexperience—ay, even to Bathsheba, who should have learned the way of feud by now—there was something monstrous in these days of peace. After the fight which she had watched on the steps of Marshcotes churchyard, Audrey could not understand that Red Ratcliffe did not come in, with wounds upon him, three times a day at least; but then she had never known how fields will grow lush with the hay-crop and thereafter must rest a while—the veriest idlers—till the second harvest of the year grows quietly in the night and in the sunshine. But Joseph knew these things, and his old blood warmed in him; and he forgot that the Feud Spear had gone out of sight.

Little by little Joseph and Bathsheba drew the story of the years from the red-heads who slept now within the shelter of Black House. Just as Red Ratcliffe’s mother had come into the wilderness to bear her child, so these other women had gone out, each with her burden, into the farther lands; so they had passed on the tale of feud, and had reared these lusty lads—of themselves, if they survived the wet night’s perils, or by foster-mothers if they died— to carry on the battle.

Men who asked no man’s leave, were these Red Folk; and, though in speech they differed little from their leader, they were more lawless than ever their own kin had been. These, when the feud was up, disdained the Sheriffs interference in their private quarrel; but they did not rob their peaceful neighbours, as the Red Folk had been reared to do. Nay, when Joseph and Nick o’ Trawdon questioning how long their supplies of cattle, sheep, or meal could last, with all these mouths to feed, one of the newcomers promised they would see to that, and, to Joseph’s question, “How, lad? ” he answered simply that they would ride and bring in all the stock from the nearest farm—and, when these supplies were finished, they would go to the next nearest. And he and all his friends were astonished when they learned that such things were not done on this side of the moor.

Red Ratcliffe’s fears for Audrey weakened and died out as the days wore on. For these wild cousins of his looked on her from the first as a being almost supernatural; her beautiful, soft eyes, her hair all spun by sunshine out of golden bracken-dust, the slimness and the graceful height of her—such things were miracles to these boys who until now had only seen their own weather-roughened women, or perchance some farm wench when they went a-raiding. They called her “ the gold fairy grown to woman’s size,” and there was not one of them but answered her least nod, asking no thanks except the joy of serving her.

Nick’s wife, moreover, because she was a little like her mistress, and because the two were such fast friends, enjoyed the same immunity from insult; and this oddly-sorted company, which waited at Black House for the next battle to begin, found much to like in one another, and worked together quietly for the coming end.

Yet they, who thought the feud was theirs and the Waynes’ alone, counted nothing on the work which an old and lonely Parson was doing all these days—the work, which, in its last result, was to determine the fortunes of both Waynes and Ratcliffes.

Parson Clare did not know, for that matter, what final mark his prayers would reach—the prayers which might be truly aimed, which might, for all that, glance like an arrow from a tree-bole and hit some further object quite unthought of. He had only the one goal in sight; and day and night he prayed to reach it—prayed sometimes in the desolation left behind by Audrey at the Parsonage, but oftener on the open moor. And at last a chance meeting —or what seemed a chance encounter—brought his heart to his lips, and he threw down the gage for all Marshcotes village to see and to take up.

CHAPTER XXIII

HOW THE RAINS CAME TO ALL THE MOORSIDE

Parson Clare’s encounter was with the landlord of the Bull Inn, which adjoined the steps of his own churchyard. The Parson had come out, weak with long prayer, to visit one of his flock who lived half down the village street; and the landlord stood at his own door, his coat off and his sleeves rolled up above the elbow, and hailed the old man as he passed. For there was a grudge between them of long-standing, since Parson Clare strove constantly to keep good customers away from the Bull, and the host strove constantly to entice them thither.

“Give ye good-day, sir,” said the landlord, touching a grey forelock.

“Give ye good-day,” said the Parson, one finger lifted to his beaver hat, in token that he always answered courtesy with courtesy.

“Rare fine weather for the horse-races, Parson, a week come to-day,” went on the other, knowing that these same races had been a perpetual thorn in his enemy’s side since first he came to Marshcotes. “Rare fine weather, and it couldn’t no way break to rain—nay, not if it tried ever so.”

It was then that Parson Clare lost his weariness—forgot that he was old, and tired, and near his end—remembered not at all that Audrey had gone from him into the doubtful lands of wedlock. The landlord, roughly enough, had touched the hidden nerve which had been aching throughout the Parson’s days of prayer.

The Parson came near the threshold of the Bull; and men who, in his old days, had met him in the dawning, sword in hand, would have known that look upon his face, had they lived to see it now. The face of a younger man it was, all strung to the pitch of a harp after the player has brought it into tune; and his voice came true and keen, and the landlord quailed before him.

“The weather will break to rain,” said Parson Clare. “Year after year I have prayed against your accursed races; but I did not pray enough. Listen, you, and spread the tale about, and judge afterward if I am lying! Night and day, day and night, an old man has prayed that rain will come three days before to-morrow’s week—and three days before to-morrow’s week the rain will come, and it will drown your race once and for all in the pit of Hell.”

The Parson lifted a finger to his beaver again in token of good-day, and passed down the street. And the landlord watched him out of sight, and not till evening brought his cronies round about him, not till old ale had mellowed his remembrance of the Parson’s face and voice, did he find heart to laugh at the prophecy of Parson Clare.

“What was Parson saying this mom, think ye? ” he asked, looking from one unsober face to another. “Why, that he’d drown our races for us by force of prayer—‘ Parson,’ says I, ‘ ’twill take a bigger nor ye to pray Marshcotes races out of Marshcotes village. Old drones never made new honey yet,’ I says, ‘ nor prayers a stopping-gate for race-horses.’ ”

The landlord, after twice repeating this imaginary speech, began to believe that he had indeed replied to Parson Clare in this brave fashion; and they all laughed with him, and asked how the old mad-wit proposed to make his promise true.

“’Twill rain three days and nights beforehand, so he says.”

An old farmer present rattled his mug on the table, and grinned from one red ear to another. “ Dang me, that’s good! ” he cried. “I’ve seen Marshcotes weather, man and boy, these seventy years, and I should know it a bit by now. Terrible changeful weather, ay, at most times— but I’ll lay any man a guinea to a boot-sole that we get no rain this side o’ this day fortnight. A real St Martin’s summer, this, that willun’t break for fancy-prayers and fancy-parsons.”

“Th’ owd Parson’s gone doiting-like,” said the landlord. “Th’ wind blew the thatch off his roof once on a day, I reckon, and he’s ne’er recovered it. Small wonder, say I, when a man’s getten a rich-ripe slip of a daughter, and all these Waynes about; ’twould be enough to crazy most on us.”

So they laughed their fill, and went each in due time to his bed; but on the morrow they spread the rumour wide that Parson Clare had sworn to stop the races. It was not only that there was an element of sport in this struggle of one man against them all; that alone would have aroused their interest, but there was more behind. These races, held every year in the long pasture-field between Marshcotes and the moors, were vastly dear to all the village folk; they brought the riff-raff of two counties in, and scenes were common that outraged law and decency, but for all that it was the one great holiday they had, and they clung to it with fierce persistency. What matter that the horses which came to the starting-point were bare of rib and blundered in their gallop? One horse would win, and wagers could be laid, and afterward good money could be spent in liquor.

The folk of Marshcotes clung to their holiday; and the report went near and far that Parson Clare was striving to upset it; and he, when he met their scowling glances or their open laughter, was glad that he had thrown the gauntlet down. His faith was strong on him, and each day found it stronger; and at such times men welcome opposition.

“’Tis well,” he would mutter as he went about his usual affairs. “Out of a clear sky the rain shall come and wash their unbelief away.”

And now, as the day of the races grew nearer, his strength increased, and ever his prayers redoubled, while the sun was warm in the unclouded sky by day and the new moon grew bigger in the heavens night by night.

“Where’s the Parson’s rain-fall now! ” the landlord of the Bull would ask his cronies.

“Away to the back o’ Daft Man’s Land,” they would laugh, strong in their weather-faith as was the Parson.

And so Parson Clare one night found himself half between the mirk and the dawn, on the moor above the graveyard. On the morrow it must rain, or his faith would be broken into pieces for all the moor folk to gibe at as they passed.

All was still and clear, and through the light haze came a breeze as kind as summer; and far off the young moon traced the pattern of the distant hills.

“Belike the rain has lost its way crossing the moor,” they were saying one to another down in Marshcotes.

But Parson Clare prayed steadfastly, till soul and body seemed strung to breaking-pitch with the one last, mighty effort. And suddenly, as he prayed, the breeze began to move more briskly, and shifted to the south of west, and from the core of it there came a little moan whose meaning no man could mistake.

The Parson got to his feet, stumbling a little—for he was wearied out—and listened to the new note in the wind; and then he went down to the Parsonage, and slept in great tranquillity.

And folk in Marshcotes, so they say, awoke from sleep that night and heard the rising wind that whimpered round the casements; and a man would stir uneasily, and turn to the wife beside him, and murmur that may be Parson had the right of it, when all was said. But others pushed their doubts aside, and growled that this was only some frolic of the breeze, meaningless and soon to pass.

Far across the moor the old Parson’s prayers seemed to spread to-night; for at Black House the Master woke from sleep, in the dead middle of the night, and looked at the moonlit window, and saw the Lean Man beckoning with his one unpalsied hand. He rose, and Audrey heard him donning his riding-gear.

“What is it, heart o’ mine? ” she asked.

“I know not, lass, save that the Lean Man calls to me.”

And Audrey, though she shivered as with cold, let him go out, knowing that, with her leave or lacking it, he must answer to the call.

He saddled quickly, slipped foster-brother into his sheath, and rode out with the sickle moon to guide him. The Lean Man went before him; and Ratcliffe thought his errand was to rescue the Feud Spear from the farther lands; but the Lean Man guided him instead straight out toward Marshcotes, and Red Ratcliffe then was sure that he was meant to take the Waynes at unawares.

And so he was, but not in the fashion that he looked for.

When near Wildwater, Ratcliffe’s heart misgave him; for he saw that his guide was not alone, but that a rough and wistful hound went following the Lean Man, a spectre attending on a spectral master; and the dog would fawn on the man at times, and the man would turn to pat his shaggy hide.

“Can a ghost go into dotage? ” muttered Ratcliffe, perplexed and half-dismayed. “The Lean Man is friends with Barguest, ’twould seem—by Audrey’s God, I’ll soon be clasping the hand of Shameless Wayne and calling him my friend, if this queer work goes on.”

Yet still he followed his two guides till they came to a drear and lonely dingle, which even the moonlight could not hearten into warmth. And here the Lean Man halted, and the dog crouched at his heel; and through their filmy bodies Ratcliffe saw a youngster, black of head and broad in build. He was a Wayne, riding out—as others had done before him—on the forlorn hope of finding, unaided, a way to cross the bogs that fortressed Black House round about. Not a youngster of those at Marsh but hoped to succeed where all before had failed, and this was only the last of many who had ridden on the same fruitless quest— and some had returned as empty as they went, and others had been enticed by the tracks which promised fair footing across the bog and had returned no more.

“Hi, you, d’ye carry a Wayne head? ” cried Ratcliffe, as he drew the long axe from its sheath.

The other saw, beneath the sickle moon, a great bulk of a man against the sky, and up above his head the shadowed outline of the axe; and he knew that he was face to face with Red Ratcliffe—gigantic in the flesh, but bigger still in these last days by virtue of the deeds that had lifted him into the upper spaces of the supernatural. He saw, and fear ran through him like water from an ice-cold well-spring on the moor; and then he got his sword out, and galloped hard at Ratcliffe, and struck with the frenzy of a great hope and a great despair. If only he could bring this red-head down, and carry the long axe home with him to show to those at Marsh!

As it chanced, his sudden onslaught came nearer to success than an attack more studied could have done; the light, clear enough to show the ground beneath a horse’s feet, was vague and maidish for the play of sword on axe, and only on the edge of death did Ratcliffe lift the haft of foster-brother to parry the wild stroke. Through the wood of the haft the stroke bit forward, and jarred against the inner core of steel; and the sword ran like a live thing from Wayne’s hand, and fell with a gentle thud against the peat.

Even now the boy could have brought his rearing horse to discipline, could have turned him sharp to the right, and have galloped for his life. But he would not; for disdain of death was a creed handed down by generations long almost as the number of his years. He saw the axe swing up above Red Ratcliffe’s head. He saw the blue of the sickle moon run off from the blade like showers of molten dew; and he gathered the glory of the fathers to his aid, and knew himself a man.

“Wayne and the Dog l ” he cried, as another had cried not long ago when the cold marsh came licking at his mouth.

Yet Ratcliffe’s axe lay still. Perhaps he remembered his wife’s farewell, the softness and the mercy of it; perhaps he looked aside, and saw the Dog fawn friendly at the Lean Man’s heel, and was puzzled by this friendship in the midst of enmity; or it might be that the moon’s light was strong enough to show him that this boy was young, and good to look upon, and quite defenceless, waiting bravely for his fate.

“Lad,” said he, sheathing foster-brother with a sudden snap, “a Ratcliffe does not fight with unarmed folk. Pick up your sword from the peat—lest shame come on you, going empty of it to Marsh House—and tell your folk that I and mine will ride out to-morrow’s morrow morn, just after sunrise, and meet you and yours upon the naked moor. We’ll take no ’vantage of our bogs. On the high ground, half between this and Marshcotes, we’ll ride out to meet you.”

The words came to him, he knew not whence; but he glanced aside again, and the ghost of the Lean Man looked at him in friendly-sort, and the shadowy dog whined happily.

So they parted, after Wayne, bewildered altogether, had stooped for his sword, after Ratcliffe had bidden him a strange farewell, half serious and half mocking.

“Give you a restful night,” he had said, “and a less speedy rest to-morrow’s morrow morn if we meet upon the moor.”

This was the God-speed Wayne took home with him— this, and the coldness, which none but a Wayne could understand, that came of taking mercy from a Ratcliffe. He stabled his horse, and stole, not wanting to, into the hall of old Marsh House. He had looked to find a company of kinsmen there, sitting the night through in restless expectation of the Ratcliffes’ coming; but only Shameless Wayne sat hugging the peat fire, hugging the new-lit love for Janet and the old regrets of years gone by.

“Well, lad? ” asked the older man, looking up. “What new disaster comes on us? Your face tells me you have evil. news.—God o’ the feud! ” he broke off impatiently, “will none ever come with good cheer to me—must it be always, ‘ This one lies dead of an axe’s stroke on the moor,’ or, ‘ That one lies among the bogs ’? ”

The boy told him then the tale, and gave him Ratcliffe’s message; and Shameless Wayne lost all his moodiness.

“To-morrow’s morrow mom! ” he cried. “I had liefer he had named to-morrow, and saved us one day’s waiting. Lad, ’tis good news you bring, not evil news at all!”

“He gave me my life, and I am ashamed.”

Wayne looked at his kinsman, and saw how great his trouble was; and he went to him and laid a kind hand on his shoulder, and out of the depths of his own past shame and trouble he plucked that sympathy which all men understand.

“He gave me my life at Colne, lad, and it was greater shame than yours. Forget it, and let the coming fight wipe out your debt.”

And presently other Waynes came trooping in, and heard the news, and the shadow of their quiet and desperate time of idleness was lifted, and they talked far into the night of battle and of battle only.

And Ratcliffe, too, returned to Black House, and roused his sleeping red-heads, and told them what message he had sent to Marsh; and a great hubbub rose, and the keen light came into their faces, and old Joseph stood apart and rubbed his hands with quiet glee.

“Why not have given them a meeting-place at dawn to-day? ” asked a rash youngster.

“Because you all have had a hard day, and a long one, in the fields. We must be rested, friends, lest our arms grow tired with killing Waynes,” laughed Ratcliffe.

So at Black House and Marsh alike, there was thought only of the coming fight; and a frail old Parson, near his death, but sleeping now after long toil, had no place in their reckonings.

It was ten of the next morning when Parson Clare awoke. He rose, dressed without haste, and went, out across the churchyard and through the wicket-gate that led him to the moor. A great peace was on him, and his step was firm.

Away across the moor he looked; and he saw the clouds come up from the south-west, fleecy as moorland sheep and shepherded by the fast-rising wind. White clouds they were, but, as he watched, a darkness crept across them. Up and up they came, hurrying as if they feared the shepherd-wind behind them; and the darkness followed, keeping pace with them; and the russet moor of yesterday showed as a sad and barren land, where the bracken made only surly patches of dark brown amid the dead acres of the peat.

Then the first rain-drops fell, and the storm thickened, till at last there was neither hill nor dingle to be seen, but only the blinding sheets of water. And no sound was to be heard, save the wild challenge of the wind as it drove its clouds before it, save the hiss of rain against the sullen ground.

And then again the wind dropped suddenly, and left the sky close-packed; and now there was only one sound in heaven and earth—that of rain descending in straight, persistent fines.

The Parson did not heed that he was wet to the skin, that his beaver was dripping like runnels from the eaves of some moor-top farmstead. The glow of a fine victory was on him, and he watched the rain as if it were a well-'loved child, tended carefully and grown to manhood to repay his father at the last.

“’Tis as though all the tears of all the feuds gone by were gathered to a head,” he murmured.

The words slipped from him unawares. Yet he felt, in some dim way, that he had spoken prophecy—felt that this challenge he had given, to drown the horse-races, was but the first step of some bigger enterprise.

“Would they were such tears indeed,” he said, standing there in the rain that warmed and heartened him. “Out of tears come charity and peace—ah, would to God that they might staunch the feud of Wayne and Ratcliffe! ”

It was his last prayer, and it was answered; though may be, in a fiercer and more relentless fashion than he guessed.

All that day it rained, and all that night; and, whenever the skies showed signs of clearing, the wind got up again and hurried the clouds into the void above wet Marshcotes Moor. The dingles of the heath were rivers now. The steep and narrow face of Marshcotes street was a running water-way. There was none so hardened now as to deny that Parson Clare had proven his challenge to the hilt; and the landlord of the Bull, when he rescued bottles from his swimming cellars, to drink with his cronies in the evening, moved softly, like a man afraid.

Three days and three nights it rained, and the rogues who brought their bare-ribbed racers from the fine, clear weather sleeping over Lancashire were met by such floods as the oldest of them had not seen before.

The Parson’s work was done, and they tell us—what surely would have gladdened him, had he foreknown it— that Parson’s Flood stopped Marshcotes Races once for all. They tell us, too, that the mystery and the terror of those three days’ rain were passed on by mothers to their children, so that, when other parsons came in due course to minister at Marshcotes, they found a people, not easy to control, indeed, but softened by three days of insight into another world than theirs.

But the Parson’s work was done; and when at last the rains were blown abroad, and the fourth day wore to the dusk of a calm and moonlight night, he laid his burden down. Out into the graveyard he crept, for it was quieter here than in the Parsonage, which echoed with the voices of his dead wife and of his daughter lost to him; and he walked gently to and fro between the graves, stopping at times to look at the unshadowed moon above him, and to see in it an image of his own life at its close. His prayers were said, his deeds in this life finished, and like a brave and simple gentleman he walked with death as with a well-found comrade.

The Sexton, going to his accustomed haunt, spied the bent figure walking just ahead of him; and the Parson was moving with great feebleness, he saw, and so he came and thrust a tottering hand through the other’s nerveless arm.

“Parson, I’ve been thinking,” said Witherlee, his dry-leaf voice all broken up with sobs. “ We’ve fratched, an’ proper—ay, we’ve fratched—but I reckon I’ve had a queerish sort of liking for ye all along. We’re going laiocking at the door, ye and me—the door ’twixt this world and the next—and ’tis a drearsome latch that’s lifted to ye, so folk say, at after all your knocking. Mud we be friends-like, Parson, at th’ end of all the moil? ”

“Friends, Witherlee? Ay, with each other and with all men.”

The Parson laughed, as quietly as a child might when the first of its night’s slumbers falls on it; and Witherlee stole a glance at his face, uplifted to the sky, and saw a rarer light upon it than the moonbeams brought there. Never by moor, or tarn, or coppice, had the Sexton seen this light; for these things—the moor and the tarn and the woodlands—are fairer than the men who walk them, until a good man comes to the death-hour and catches the reflected sheen from farther moons, and clearer suns, and brighter and more steadfast stars.

The Sexton drew Parson Clare—there was pathos in the quiet action—drew him down to the gravestone near at hand, thinking he would be the better of a rest. It chanced to be the slab on which Little Bairn and he had sat, nights without number, to watch the ghosts at their grim hour of play.

“Parson, I’m not just easy about this labour o’ dying,” said Witherlee. “Would rather sweat at burying another for my part. See ye the gravestones all about us! Each is like a well-kenned bairn to me. I love ’em, Parson, and I’m soon to lose ’em all.”

“They hide men’s bones, Witherlee,” came the gentle, well-bred voice in answer. “Look up, and see the stars, and feel the warm comfort of the resting day.”

“Ay,” said Witherlee, his wry old humour peeping out again. “But I was reared to grave-digging, Parson, and ’tis the only trade I know. Empty o’ my hands I’ll go into t’other world, where no sexton finds a job; and I doubt they’ll ask me what I’ve come for.”

He waited for reply; and then he looked again at his companion, and saw by the drooped shoulders and the fallen head that Parson Clare had found his resting-day.

“Well, ’twar coming fast,” he muttered, “and yet I’m grieved. Led him a sad dance time and time, did this old Witherlee, and fondlike o’ Parson all the while.—Reckoned I would bury him, I! Well, now I haven’t strength for it; and that’s the way life laughs at ye, come winter-storm or summer-weather. A sad jumble-up, is life, but Lord knows I cling to it. Give me another four-score years o’ rheumatiz and devilment, and I’ll ask nothing better.” It was an hour later—judging by the dip of the moon —that Little Bairn crept up to find the Sexton, and, afterwards crept back again, and came into the hall where Wayne and Janet were alone. “I went to seek old Witherlee,” she said, standing frail within the inner doorway, her gold hair light about her like a mist; “and he was there, Ned, and I spoke to him. I wanted him to tell me fairy-tales, all made up of gnomes and goblins pranking round about the moor; but he answered never at all, and I touched him on the arm, and still he did not stir; and then I touched his cheek, and it was cold, and something told me he was dead.”

Wayne was striding up and down the hall, his mind full of that meeting with Ratcliffe on the moor which the flood had made impossible.

“Do you not hear me, Ned? ” said Little Bairn, an odd note of command in her lisping baby-voice. It was always to Shameless Wayne that she appealed in times of stress.

“Why, yes, Bairn,” he answered, halting in his wild-brought him to Black House—“lads, we are going down to kill. Leave Shameless Wayne to me, and take the others as they come.”

A great shout went up into the sunlit, over-lying sky. It was like the cry of hounds when they see the fox before them—a cry that would hearten any leader going into battle.

“We’ll take them as they come! ” they echoed, swinging their uncouth weapons round about their heads.

“Remember,” went on Ratcliffe, forgetting no detail of the fight to come, “remember to strike hard, and quick, and true, or the sword will get the better of you.”

Another cry went up, like the baying of a strong and well-fleshed pack. Then Ratcliffe turned his horse about, and they followed him through the wet and ill-found lands which lay between Black House and Wildwater.

“Will they come, think ye?” asked Joseph, whose doubts were always stronger than his faith. “ ’Tis foul going for a horse’s feet, and they might well tarry for a drier day.”

“Trust Waynes to come, if Ratcliffes can,” answered the Master.

And they rode in silence for, it might be, half a league; and then Red Ratcliffe saw a company of men riding far-off to meet them.

“Did I lie, Joseph? ” he asked, pointing down the moor.

“Nay, thanks be. We couldn’t have held these redheads a day longer, Master. ’Tis lucky they’ve the chance of striking at other-some instead of us.”

And now they neared each other, the down-riding Ratcliffes and the up-coming Waynes; and the sky was blue above them, and the gauzy gnats were playing in the sunshine. Yet underfoot there was the voice of many waters, and Parson’s Flood, though all the rains were over, was racing down each separate dingle of the moor.

“A Ratcliffe! ” yelled the Master, soon as they came within hailing-distance of the enemy.

His lusty rascals took up the cry, as they swept fast in Ratcliffe’s wake; and the Waynes answered; and up and down the moor there was a running moil of shouts.

There was only one who did not lift his voice. Wayne’s son, since he had played peace-maker among the mists, had wandered over and about the moor. Day by day his loneliness increased. He was too proud to seek death by his own hand, but he would have welcomed death if it had stolen across the moor to give him rest. Twice Janet and he had met by stealth, and each time that she left him he had felt the lonelier; and the tragic grief in his mother’s eyes would haunt his slumbers afterwards, and he would dream of gallant fights on her behalf—dream that he was a man at last, knowing his enemy and J anet’s. Then he would wake, with the bracken - scents about him, and the clear stars looking down on him; and he would realise, always with a keener stab of pain, that he had neither enemy nor friend, for he was half Ratcliffe and half Wayne.

Then the rains had come; and first he had sheltered in a cave which lay between Gallows-Rigg and Bouldsworth Hill—a cave whose rain-washed entry-way was strewn, had he been minded to observe such matters, with arrowheads of flint, and like relics of the far-off people who had used the same. The rains increased, and drove him from his shelter; landless and homeless, he went out, and the storm licked at his face; and again he raised his bitter cry to God.

“I am forsaken! Forsaken utterly! ”

He found shelter with a kindly farmer while the worst of the rain lasted; though he got little joy from his refuge, knowing that his host, guilty of the death-sin of harbouring an exiled Wayne, went quaking up to bed each night. So, after the floods had ceased, he went out again; and, when the Waynes’ cries and the Ratcliffes’ ran across the moor at the dawn of this last fight, he chanced to be little more than half a mile away; and he heard the wild yapping of the Red Folk, and the answering roar of his dark-headed kin, and he ran to see what was on foot.

CHAPTER XXIV

HOW WAYNES MET RATCLIFFES ON THE MOOR

There were two women at Black House who, like Janet, had welcomed the storm which to this day is known as Parson’s Flood. One was Audrey, the other was Nick o’ Trawdon’s wife; and these two, mistress and maid, would meet together secretly, and stand at the casement watching the rains descend, and say to each other that no sunshine ever looked so fair—for no sunshine could have kept their goodmen to the house.

But the men-folk moved restlessly all day about the house, and slept restlessly by night; and it needed'all Ratcliffe’s over-mastery, all Joseph’s wry diplomacy, to keep the Red Folk, their guests, in hand. The lads had been spoiling for a fight since Ratcliffe woke them from . their beds to tell how he had sent a message to the Waynes; and their tempers, little controlled at any time, broke utterly under the long strain of waiting for the rains to cease.

Yet, somehow, Ratcliffe bridled them, and now at last they were free to-night to look out upon the moonlight and the calm, to hear the Master tell them that with the dawn they should ride out to meet the Waynes.

Shameless Wayne had sent his kinsmen to their beds, to snatch what sleep they could against the morrow; but none at Black House could have rested on this night. They waited, and they watched the growing moon ride white and high into the dusk-blue of the void, and they counted the minutes till the dawn. And each man had his weapon, and time and time he fingered it, and time and time he talked to it as if the weapon were a foolish maid and he a want-wit lad. And the moon climbed to the steepest of her hill o’ sky, and started on her easy, downward path, and moved farther and ever farther from the eastern hills toward which her mate, the sun, was mounting.

“’Twill soon be dawn,” said one of the Red Folk to another.

“Ay, a red dawn,” his comrade answered.

And all their fellows laughed, fingering their weapons; and the laughter was not good to hear, for it was harsh as the snarl of a dog-fox when he meets you unawares upon the moors and snaps at you in passing.

Joseph and Red Ratcliffe stood apart, and talked together.

“I was looking at the bogs to-day,” said Joseph.

“They’ve been filling, Master, many and many a year gone by. This storm has worsened them.”

“We’ll win across to meet the Waynes? ” asked Ratcliffe anxiously.

“Oh, ay, for aught that I can tell. Takes more than one storm—bad as this one was—to hide the track across.”

“We were right to leave these lads their usual weapons, Joseph. You could not have taught them sword-play in a year.”

“No way wanted to,” growled Joseph. “Did I teach ye sword-play, master, or did I put the old, big axe instead into your growing hands? Old times were best, I reckon, and old weapons puzzle these new-fangled men.”

“We may be dead, or we may be living, Joseph, you and I, soon after this dawn comes up. My thanks to you for rearing me to feel the axe-haft fit me like a friendly hand.”

“No thanks wanted. ’Twas my own pleasure to see a bonnie bairn-child grow big enough to fight the Waynes.”

And so they waited—the lads all crowded at the casement, and Joseph and the Master talking quietly apart— waited till the moon paled down behind the rise of Gallows’ Rigg, waited till the fingers of the dawn wove tapestry, all threaded through with pearl and crimson threads, across the wet and smiling moor.

Then they went out to saddle; and presently Bath-sheba brought out the stirrup-cup, and raised it to the Master’s hand.

“Strike hard and handily,” she said, “but, for Mary Mother’s sake, come home unwounded. I fostered ye, and blood on the body of a foster-child is not good to look upon at all.”

“Bathsheba,” said the Master, “I thanked Joseph, just this while gone by, for teaching me the use of foster-brother. Shall I thank you, too, for the red milk you reared me on? ”

Then Audrey came, and he stooped and kissed her, and .she hid her tears. And Nick o’ Trawdon’s wife was brave as her mistress, when she said farewell to Nick. And the sun leaped up as red as blood, and all the men rode down the hill, and the Red Folk sang some uncouth song of war and victory.

They came to the path across the bog, and Ratcliffe, as he led the way, could not help heeding how Parson’s Flood had altered all this land he knew so well. Some of the green marshes had shifted and grown less; some of the blacker islands had increased their girth. It was only by instinct that they found their track across at all, since most of the landmarks—a bed of rushes here, a strip of cotton-grass there—had been over-hidden by the ooze.

Another change Red Ratcliffe noted, and one that filled him with a sense of woe to come. Among these marshes there had always been what the moor folk called Shuddering Bogs—sullen, grey-black pools of ooze, that would lie stagnant for a while, then shiver upward from their hidden depths—shiver with a quietness terrible to watch. And now there were fifty of these Shuddering Bogs where only one had been before the rains; and, looking out across this wet land which from of old had been the guardian of Black House, Ratcliffe could see the grey-black patches, score upon score of them, shuddering under the sunlight with what seemed to him a dumb and slothful menace.

“D’ye see how all is changed by these three days of rain? ” he asked, turning round in the saddle to speak with Joseph, who rode close behind him.

“I reckon I do! ’Twas one thing to promise ye we’d win over to fight the Waynes, but ’tis another matter, I’m thinking, to say we’ll find our way back home again. Lord, how the land has altered, master. I knew the bogs were filling, but never thought ’twould be as bad as this.”

“They’ll settle, now the rains are over—and here we find good ground again, Joseph.”

They had reached the end of the perilous track; yet Joseph, as they rode down the moor, kept turning his head about to view the marshes left behind.

“’Twould be unchancy queer,” he muttered, “if we could find no way back at all. There would be our women up yonder at Black House, and us on this side, and none could get to t’other.”

But Ratcliffe was looking straight ahead, and foster-brother lay naked in his hand.

“Joseph,” said he, with a sober laugh, “suppose that few, or none, are left to seek the homing-track? ”

“Tuts! ” answered the old man. “Every man thinks, or ought tq, that he’ll come safe out of any battle. That’s how fights are won.”

“Not when he’s newly-wedded,” thought Red Ratcliffe. “Not when he’s wakened out of fairy-land to this grim work of killing.”

Then he put Audrey clean out of mind, and halted for a moment, and faced the wild, Red Folk who followed to the slaying. A strange company they were; for all the men were near alike in age, and all showed that old, hard look on youthful faces which Red Ratcliffe wore—the look of men who in their cradles are taught the lust of battle and the stepmother’s charity of winter on the open moor.

“Lads,” he said—and he wondered that the softness of late days went from him, like a garment that is shaken off, wondered that now there was neither after nor before, but only the warm blood in his veins, the hot feud in his brain—hot as when, years and years ago, his mother had brought him to Black House—“lads, we are going down to kill. Leave Shameless Wayne to me, and take the others as they come.”

A great shout went up into the sunlit, over-lying sky. It was like the cry of hounds when they see the fox before them—a cry that would hearten any leader going into battle.

“We’ll take them as they come! ” they echoed, swinging their uncouth weapons round about their heads.

“Remember,” went on Ratcliffe, forgetting no detail of the fight to come, “remember to strike hard, and quick, and true, or the sword will get the better of you.”

Another cry went up, like the baying of a strong and well-fleshed pack. Then Ratcliffe turned his horse about, and they followed him through the wet and ill-found lands which lay between Black House and Wildwater.

“Will they come, think ye? ” asked Joseph, whose doubts were always stronger than his faith. “’Tis foul going for a horse’s feet, and they might well tarry for a drier day.”

“Trust Waynes to come, if Rat cliff es can,” answered the Master.

And they rode in silence for, it might be, half a league; and then Red Ratcliffe saw a company of men riding far-off to meet them.

“Did I lie, Joseph? ” he asked, pointing down the moor.

“Nay, thanks be. We couldn’t have held these redheads a day longer, Master. ’Tis lucky they’ve the chance of striking at other-some instead of us.”

And now they neared each other, the down-riding Ratcliffes and the up-coming Waynes; and the sky was blue above them, and the gauzy gnats were playing in the sunshine. Yet underfoot there was the voice of many waters, and Parson’s Flood, though all the rains were over, was racing down each separate dingle of the moor.

“A Ratcliffe! ” yelled the Master, soon as they came within hailing-distance of the enemy.

His lusty rascals took up the cry, as they swept fast in Ratcliffe’s wake; and the Waynes answered; and up and down the moor there was a running moil of shouts.

There was only one who did not lift his voice. Wayne’s son, since he had played peace-maker among the mists, had wandered over and about the moor. Day by day his loneliness increased. He was too proud to seek death by his own hand, but he would have welcomed death if it had stolen across the moor to give him rest. Twice Janet and he had met by stealth, and each time that she left him he had felt the lonelier; and the tragic grief in his mother’s eyes would haunt his slumbers afterwards, and he would dream of gallant fights on her behalf—dream that he was a man at last, knowing his enemy and J anet’s. Then he would wake, with the bracken - scents about him, and the clear stars looking down on him; and he would realise, always with a keener stab of pain, that he had neither enemy nor friend, for he was half Ratcliffe and half Wayne.

Then the rains had come; and first he had sheltered in a cave which lay between Gallows-Rigg and Bouldsworth Hill—a cave whose rain-washed entry-way was strewn, had he been minded to observe such matters, with arrowheads of flint, and like relics of the far-off people who had used the same. The rains increased, and drove him from his shelter; landless and homeless, he went out, and the storm licked at his face; and again he raised his bitter cry to God.

“I am forsaken! Forsaken utterly! ”

He found shelter with a kindly farmer while the worst of the rain lasted; though he got little joy from his refuge, knowing that his host, guilty of the death-sin of harbouring an exiled Wayne, went quaking up to bed each night. So, after the floods had ceased, he went out again; and, when the Waynes’ cries and the Ratcliffes’ ran across the moor at the dawn of this last fight, he chanced to be little more than half a mile away; and he heard the wild yapping of the Red Folk, and the answering roar of his dark-headed kin, and he ran to see what was on foot.

It was the moment of his life’s great agony, when he came to a hillock overlooking the broad, wet space across which the red and the dark horsemen were splashing through the mire to meet each other. All the longings of the years—all the keen, well-tempered manhood that was hidden in his ill-shapen body—came to a head beneath this crimson dawning of the last day’s feud. He yearned to swing his sword aloft, to bite through bone and marrow, to hear his comrades send their plaudits up into the ruddy sky. These things were denied him; for, if he had no friend, he had no enemy. A great sickness came on him, so that for a moment his eyes were hidden by a mist, and he could not see what was chancing yonder on the slope below him.

He heard Red Ratcliffe cry, “You, Shameless Wayne! Draw apart, and meet me on the hill. Twice we’ve met, but the third time pays for all, they say.”

He heard his father’s voice—keen, and low, and quick —go answering Ratcliffe’s challenge. “ I’m with you, Ratcliffe, I! ”

And the boy loved his father in that moment; for he forgot the hardships he had suffered, and heard only the brave, gay voice go singing out across the moorland—such a voice as might have been his own, could he have met his enemy with sword-blade and a single heart, as did his father.

The mist lifted from his eyes, and the splashy beat of hoofs on miry ground ceased suddenly. He looked down the slope, and saw that the Ratcliffes were pulling at the curb of restive horses, that the Waynes sat quietly in their saddles. And first he wondered what had stayed their gallop, and then he saw the Lean Man, filmy as the hound that fawned upon and followed him, go passing up and down between the Waynes and the Ratcliffes. And, because there was a wind abroad which did not stir the dead heather-bells at all—a wind from another world, that left men’s bodies undisturbed and sought their souls instead —because of this, and may be, too, by reason of the dead Parson’s prayers, there was none so dull, Ratcliffe or Wayne, but he saw the Lean Man pass between his foeman and himself, saw the Brown Dog in friendly converse with his new master.

“Even the Dog’s forsaken us! ” cried Wayne, his own son’s bitterness upon him. “See how the brute goes fondling at the Lean Man’s hand! We are forsaken, friends.”

“What’s come to the Lean Man?” muttered Joseph in Red Ratcliffe’s ear. “Ay, even my old eyes can see him, though I’ve mocked at ye aforetime touching ghosts and visions. I can see him, Master, and I can see the Dog, and it bodes ill for either side, I’m thinking.”

It was as if a hand had gripped every man—ay, gripped the horses, too—a hand that plucked them back from meeting one another. Even the wild folk behind Ratcliffe were dismayed a while; and they faced each other, all these men who had ridden out to battle, and the sky lay fair and quiet and blue above them, and there was no sound through all the barren lands. Such a silence, waiting to give birth to uproar, might well precede the dawn of J udgment Day; and such a terror, likely, would hold every living thing that waited for the dread breaking of the silence.

Between the silent foemen paced the Lean Man and the Dog; and then they left the battle-ground and moved up into the moor, Barguest fawning ever on his late-found friend; and the hearts of the Red Folk came back to them, and they raised their battle-cry again.

“We hate, we kill! Down on these cursed Waynes, Ratcliffe the Red! ”

And all took fire at the new-kindled spark, and the Waynes sent up their cry in turn, and the horses reared and plunged, and curveted like things gone mad. There were three hundred yards or so between the one side and the other; but Wayne’s son, watching from the hill above, did not tarry to see the coming shock of horses against horses, of men against men. Both houses were in part his allies, and to look on at this sort of warfare was to see kinsmen slain, and never by any chance to find joy in victory.

The boy glanced along the track which Barguest and the Lean Man took across the moor; and it seemed to him—may be his fancy was over-heated, or perhaps he looked forward with that Sight which none can deny when it settles like clear sunshine on a man—it seemed that the Lean Man turned and beckoned to him with his unpalsied arm, and asked him to come up across the moor.

He followed, up and up and up till Wildwater was passed, till he and his ghostly guides were nearing the bogs that lay, like quiet and watchful sentries, round about Black House. And the blue sky was over them, and all was still and happy in the sunshine; but the echoes of the Red Folk’s wild-beast cries, as they swung their wood-and-iron clubs about their heads, pursued him constantly.

Yet, down yonder where the high lands met the low lands, where Waynes met Ratcliffes for the last big fight, the sun shone never at all, and the sky was black as winter’s midnight.

Surely old Parson Clare, dead beside the Sexton who was helpless now to bury him—surely the Parson had not prayed for naught. Out of God’s sky the rains had come, and the little briggs of stone, spanning little brooks, had rocked and quavered at the onset of the waters. There were few in Marshcotes dared lay a wager on a horse-race for many a year to come. Yet the rains were the beginning only, and on this day when, soon after dawn, the Ratcliffes met the Waynes upon the moor, a thing more terrible was coming on them all. It was not Waynes against the Ratcliffes on this morn, but the will of the skies against them both; and to this day the moor folk drop their voices when they speak of what came between Parson’s Flood and the greater flood to follow.

Soon after Wayne’s son had gone up into the sunlight of the higher moor, following his phantom guides, and while the Ratcliffes galloped down upon the Waynes, shouting old feud cries as they went, a sudden darkness came across the sun, and, where the light had been a moment since, there was only a blank and empty void. The Red Folk sent their curses up amid the mirk, and the Waynes answered them; but not the darkest winter’s night in man’s memory had been as black as this daytime of late autumn, and they could not find each other. Rat-cliffe and Shameless Wayne remembered how the mists had fooled them near this self-same spot not long ago; yet no fog in this world was dark as the night-in-day which God launched at them, a weapon stronger than their own.

The darkness spread to Marshcotes and to Cranshaw, so they say, and at Colne the market-day was spoiled because—and no man knowing why—the sunlight changed on the sudden to what the folk who had buried kindred named “black as any dead man’s hearse.”

There was thunder, too, and lightning cleft the sky in twain; and the thunder’s roar was all that broke the silence now, and only the lightning showed hurried glimpses of Waynes and Ratcliffes to each other. And then the Red Folk snarled like wolves, hungering for their enemy; and the Waynes answered back, but it was useless. In the dread dark they fought, striving each to come to other; and once a Wayne was struck, and once a Ratcliffe, but the strokes came from their own kin, who could not single out dark heads from red amid the constant mirk, amid the momentary, fitful flashes of the lightning.

“God’s anger lies on us! ” cried Shameless Wayne, after calling uselessly to Red Ratcliffe across the dark. “God’s anger is abroad, and He blackens this last day of feud.” Old Joseph heard his cry, and his voice came rough and harsh across the mirk. “Ye’re saying farewell to the Feud, Shameless Wayne! Ye’re sick and weary of it—but we are not. Bide on, and see this devil’s weather lift, and ye'll find us near ye—near, or thereabouts.”

And then Wayne laughed, knowing the reason of his laugh as little as the folk at Colne knew why the darkness had come down to spoil their market; and his own men and Red Ratcliffe’s heard the laughter, but it did not cheer them; and still they rode seeking one another, blind men upon blind horses—rode through the thunder and the lightning and the dark.

On the moor above, where Wayne’s son followed after the Lean Man and the Dog, it was clear sunlight. No thunder rattled in their ears, and no lightning came to dazzle them. Up in the blue sky rode the sun, and the scent of bracken was sweet in the boy’s nostrils. They came near to Black House—the Lean Man, and the Dog, and Wayne’s son of Marsh; and up above them was the long, black ridge which marked the limits of the bogs on this side of the Ratcliffe’s stronghold. For those marshes lay lower than the house, but higher than the moor in front of them, and only the narrow ridge dammed up their ooze.

And now Wayne’s son heard a roaring as of many waters, though the streams had long ago run off from these, the higher lands; and the marshes up above were wont to be dumb, he knew, and the wind was quiet; and yet in his ears there was that constant roar—a roar more terrible than any battle-shouting of the Red Folk or the Waynes. The Lean Man seemed to hear it, too, for he looked upward at the marshes; and the Dog fawned closer on him, whining piteously; and Wayne’s son saw the two of them move, like things afraid, up and up until he lost them at the topmost of the bog-ridge.

CHAPTER XXV

THE LAST FIGHT

Wayne’s son was alone upon the moor, and awful terror shook him, so that his knees were weak beneath him and he could scarce stand upright. And ever and ever the roar of surly waters rang louder in his ears; and, while he watched the ridge across which the Lean Man and the Dog had disappeared, he saw the beginning of that second deluge which was the dread and last result of Parson’s Storm. It came so suddenly, and the horror of it was so black against the sky, that afterwards he could remember only the one rough, vivid picture.

The bogs that girdled Black House had burst at last. They had filled and filled during these last days, had pressed and pressed against the ridge that held them in; and now the victory was theirs, and to Wayne’s son it seemed that the whole moor above turned over and down upon him, as deep com will bend across the sickle to meet the farmer at ripe harvest-time. He could not see the sun, nor the blue sky, though both were over him. He could see only the high wall of ooze that broke across the sky’s face, and moved toward him, roaring like a beast in pain.

He came out of his bewilderment, to find himself running hard and fast downhill. The water hidden in the bog moved faster than the ooze, and already it was swirling cold about his feet.

He did not care overmuch for life, and had dreamed at times that death was good to look upon; but now he was obeying every brave man’s instinct, and longed to save his life, feeling that, after all, there might chance to be good work waiting for him in the world.

It was at Wildwater, with its blackened walls still standing to mark where the fight of twenty years ago had been fought out—it was at Wildwater that Wayne’s son halted to find his breath again. The flood was racing behind him and before him, but reached no higher than his boot-tops, for he kept to the higher grounds, and the deeper streams were hurrying down the dingles. Behind him—half a mile away, may be—he could see the ooze come creeping down the moor; and the roar and fret of loosened water was child’s-play when mated against this slow, relentless coming of the bog, unchained at last. It brought great rocks along with it, this ooze that moved no faster than a strong man’s walking-stride; it brought its treasures, hidden through the centuries, of bones of men and sheep and cattle, of tree-trunks buried long before the feud of Wayne and Ratcliffe came to birth; and, as it brought them, it snapped and growled about them, like a dog who sees a stranger come to steal his bone away.

And Wayne’s son turned and fled once more, afraid of the black tumult that came down upon him, half a league in width, across the heath. On the low side of Wildwater he turned again, and saw the ooze approach across the sunlit moor, and watched it creep up and up, and round about the ruined house, till all was hid—watched it creep down and down, relentless and no way to be resisted—watched it, from the higher ground, go seeking the deep and narrow dingle that led to the place where Waynes and Ratcliffes fought.

He forgot his love of life, remembering only that he might yet find work to-day, though sword-play was forbidden him. He knew nothing of the darkness that had come on the Red and the Black Folk both down yonder; he judged that most were slain by now; yet he ran, till his heart went throbbing at his ribs, to tell those still alive that the bog was coming.

Lone shepherds’ huts upon the moor were smothered over by the bog, long after Wildwater lay a twice-ruined token of the feuds gone by. And sheep went bleating to their death, afraid, as their wont is, to flee from any near, unusual disaster. And, if the tales they tell us to this day are more than old wives’ gossip, the terror of the bog-flood roved like thunder round about the moor, so that men fell upon their knees and cried to God like frightened children.

Wayne’s son went down across the heath, turning now and then to see how near the bog-flood was. He had found his breath again, and he sought constantly to rescue the Waynes and the Ratcliffes left alive upon the lower lands. But ever the bog pursued him, and the foremost waters trickled round his feet; and the ooze gained speed, for the slope of the land was steeper now, and twice he thought it would out-distance him and reach his kinsmen first. And then a spur of rising ground stood between pursuer and pursued, and the bog was checked a while.

The grim race went on, until at last he heard a great shouting down in front of him, and came to the high ground overlooking Waynes and Ratcliffes. And, though he heard the shouts, he could see nothing, for between him and the cries there lay a wall of darkness. On his own side of the moor the sun was shining, but on the lower side there was a straight and upright wall of black, reaching up toward the sky as the sheer and steep face of a precipice might reach. Once in a life-time men see this horror to-day— the horror of the moor when light and darkness fight for mastery, and the two are sundered by a clear-cut wall, just as Waynes and Ratcliffes were sundered now from striking each other. It is no good sight to see at any time; and Wayne’s son was strained, and weary, and fearful for his kin; and he was frightened, hearing the bog roar down from the sunlit upper lands.

Then, as he watched, the wall of black grew brighter and faded into grey; and the grey was split asunder by the sun, and suddenly the lower moor was brave with brown o’ the bracken once again, save where in the far distance a white mist hugged the cloud-line.

Wayne’s son looked on, and thought himself the only one compelled to know that kith and kin of his were warring one against the other, while he was forbidden to take his part in it. Yet at Marsh House the darkness had fallen on J anet also, as she waited lonely for the issue of the fight; and, because she loved much, she feared overmuch, and it seemed a token, this mid-day’s night, that Shameless Wayne had found his death. And she wondered, as folk will ask curious questions of themselves in times of stress, whether she had rather see him he stricken on the moor, or give him home-welcome after he returned from slaying her own kin. She had crossed that gulf of welcome once, and had found the tears and sorrows of twenty years upon the farther side.

“Is there no middle-way? ” she whispered. “God knows I cannot see it, and yet—and yet—dear God, if I could only see my husband come bloodless home to Marsh—could only see my son—his son and mine.”

She halted, her love for the mis-shapen son—his son and hers—too great for her; and the darkness lifted round about the house of Marsh, suddenly as it had lifted from the moor above; and she, persuading herself that this was a new and brighter omen, went out into the bridle-way, and up to Marshcotes, and through the churchyard till she reached the moor. Then she halted, and shaded her eyes against the sunlight; but no man rode toward her, and far to the crumpled edge of sky she could see no live thing save the peewits and the grouse. Faint in the distance came a softened roar, as of thunder that was breaking over some less tranquil hill than this; but J anet did not heed it.

“Ah, send him back to me! ” she cried, the reserve of years swept clean away. “Send him back to me, in safety and in honour! ”

Up above, between Marshcotes and Wildwater, her son looked down upon the valley where his kin were facing one another across the lifted darkness.

The Red Folk, awed for a while, swung up their weapons as he watched, and their wolves’-cry rang across the moor.

The Waynes answered; and, though the lad shouted that the bog was all but on them, none heard him.

Hard and true the Ratcliffes galloped down upon their enemy, and true and hard the Waynes rode up to meet them. The bog was roaring near at hand; but the feud cries, and the wind of the battle-madness in men’s ears, and the rattle of the onset, as horse met horse and rider struck at rider, deafened all but Wayne’s son to the greater battle that awaited them.

Shameless Wayne had drawn apart to the higher ground, in answer to Red Ratcliffe’s challenge; and foster-brother swirled and twinkled above Ratcliffe’s head, and Wayne’s sword cut the sunlight into little, running brooks of fire.

It was then that Wayne’s son—exiled, faint of heart, hearing ever the roar of the bog above him—turned aside from the hill which gave him safety, and ran half down it till he reached the flat round of turf, standing half between the hill-top and the valley, which Wayne and his enemy had chosen for their combat. For him there was no glow of battle, no lusty madness such as comes from sword-blades when they kiss; it was his part to do well in cold blood, with full remembrance of the horror he had seen up yonder on the moors, with full knowledge, too, that every downhill stride brought him nearer to the track by which alone the bog-flood could make its way into the lower lands.

Just as Red Ratcliffe swung foster-brother for the third time round his head, just as Wayne was tightening his knee-grip in readiness for the quick onset, the lad leaped down upon their grassy meeting-place.

“Father you—and you, Red Ratcliffe—fight if ye will, but first look up into the moor! ” he cried.

Startled by the sudden cry, both held their horses back; and Wayne glanced sideways, to see who this intruder was; and a bitter curse escaped him.

“May you be damned, boy! ’Tis the second time you come-”

“Look—look, I tell vou! ” broke in the lad, pointing up the moor. “Look, for Mary Mother’s sake, and fight afterwards, if ye are minded to! ”

Something in the boy’s voice, in his wild and haggard face, compelled these older men to do his bidding. They looked up the moor, Red Ratcliffe and Wayne of Marsh; and by this time the bog, checked for a while, had pushed and smitten and thundered at the hill which barred its progress, until the solid ground gave way, and the hill was now no more than a part of the down-racing ooze. Swift it came, and a terror loosened Ratcliffe’s knees and Wayne’s, just as the boy’s knees had been loosened when first he saw this black and steep-walled precipice turn over and down upon him.

“There’s little time! ” cried Wayne’s son, giving his commands like one older in experience, while they sat helpless and irresolute in the saddles of their frightened horses. “Run up the hill, ye two—and pray that the flood will not win to the top—and fight afterwards—fight afterwards, Ratcliffe and Wayne, or ye will never fight at all.”

His voice rang shrill, with sobs and laughter in it; for the boy was strung to fever-pitch, knowing himself no longer an outcast, but the guardian of all these fighting folk.

Red Ratcliffe turned his horse’s bridle without a word; and Shameless Wayne turned likewise; and they galloped up the hill. The bog was roaring now at ten-score yards away; yet, when they won the hill-crest, and looked round to find the lad, they saw that he had not followed them to safety. Further down the hill they looked, these two who now were silent, not eager to pit sword against the sweep of foster-brother; and they saw the Red Folk fighting with the Waynes, down in the peaty hollow; and they heard the screams of horses, the cries of wounded men and dying, the wild-wolf yells of those who still were left to fight. They saw, too, Wayne’s son leap down among them, heedless of his safety, and heard him cry that the bog was close upon them.

Not since Waynes and Ratcliffes fought to the death in the House of Wildwater had men struggled to such a clamorous and desperate end. The Red Folk yelled and snarled, the Waynes sent up their feud-cry; and the uncouth hammers of the Ratcliffes, long in the haft, went whistling round and about the heads of the Waynes who plied their sword-blades with no less good-will. So fierce the youngsters were, that Joseph and Nick o’ Trawdon, striving to get to the forefront of the fight, were constantly thrust back by their own kin, till at the last they found themselves on the outskirts of the battle, not able any way to strike a blow.

“Let’s slip round to the back o’ them,” muttered Nick o’ Trawdon, his laugh as careless as when, not long ago, he brought his wife home to Black House. “We’ll raise the Ratcliffe cry, and strike, and they’ll fancy a fresh batch o’ Ratcliffes has ridden in.”

“Thou’st a head screwed on right foremostway, Nick,” growled old Joseph; “though, for all that, I doubt thou’lt be a raffle-coppin till the green sods stop thy mouth.”

“Likely,” laughed Nick; “but I’m stalled of getting no nearer and no nearer to these Waynes—our wolf-lads snatching all the frolic meanwhile—and I’ve a fancy, Joseph, we might well take our turn in our own way.”

It was while they reined their horses in the wide half of a circle, down in the peaty hollow which was soon to be a lake of ooze, that Wayne’s son ran, shouting as he went, to warn them that the bog was near. And Joseph followed the direction of his finger, and Nick o’ Trawdon followed it; but the Red Folk who fought, and the Black Waynes who met them in the battle-din, were deaf to any calls except their own. Not the bog itself—grinding its hidden tree-trunks against its hidden rocks, and thundering down upon them all—could rouse the Red Folk from the magic of that battle-lust which had ripened with their manhood. And half the Ratcliffes were dead or wounded; and a great part of the Waynes lay helpless, stricken by those long-hafted hammers which, like foster-brother, struck once and only once; and still the fury of the fight redoubled, and down in the peaty hollow the living yelled above the dead.

Shameless Wayne looked from the hill-top, and saw the whole wild scene—saw his boy racing in among them —saw, too, the black, steep wall of ooze that broke like the wave of a sullen sea, turn over, and come down, a present menace, toward the combatants.

Not long ago the son had learned to love the father; it was Wayne’s moment now to catch, and to hold fast, a moment of clear insight. What this boy was doing was a thing from which older men might well have fled in terror; his son—whom he, God’s pity, had despised—was halting in the valley, when only on the hill-top there was doubtful safety—was halting to save men who would .not listen to his warnings.

“The bog is on you, Waynes and Ratcliffes! The bog is on you, fools and deaf that ye are! ” came the boy’s shrill voice. And his father started down the hill to rescue him, but was forestalled.

Nick o’ Trawdon, recovering quickly from his panic, as his wont was, looked up again and saw that the black flood was tumbling down on them, scarce three-score yards away. He ran and clutched Wayne’s son about the middle, and carried him up the hill; and his breath came quickly, for the slope was steep, although the lad was light of weight after his lean sojourning in the wilderness.

“The red wolves and the black will never listen to us, Joseph,” he panted over his shoulder. “We’ll all die one day, I reckon—but not just this day, if I can fend it off. Besides, the lad is brave, and we must spare a few odd ’uns of that breed in an unchancy world.”

Joseph followed him; he had worked and longed for this last battle, yet in all things he was practical of mind, and it was plain that the bog-wall turning over and down above them might take as many victims as chose to meet it rashly.

To the hill-top they came, Nick, and Wayne’s son, and old Joseph; and the lad, soon as he was set on solid ground, struck Nick o’ Trawdon on the face in helpless rage, and Nick no way resented it.

“Ah, now, cower quiet, will ye? ” said the ne’er-do-weel, with his easy, rolling laugh. “ Better be carried up a hill by a plain man than be drowned by a bonnie bog-flood.”

“I would have forced them to see what was coming— I could have made them hear, and saved them-”

“Tuts!” said Joseph. “’Twould have taken the Trump o’ Doom, let alone a laddie’s voice, to waken the Red and the Black down yonder out of their bonnie fight. Yet I fancy the Black has it,” he added, with a touch of his sour pleasantry, as he looked down and saw the bog-wall creep and creep toward the fighting men. “The Waynes had ever Devil’s luck, and now the bog, we thought so much of, sides wi’ them.”

What followed was blurred in outline ever afterwards to those five watchers on the hill. The issue was so tragical and big; and yet all was over before Joseph and Nick o’ Trawdon had well recovered breath.

The Red Folk were not men at all by now; and the Waynes grew frenzied in their turn; and, while they fought, seeing only lines of crimson dance before their eyes, hearing only the surging of the blood about their ear-drums—while they fought, the bog came on them, and the five who watched from the hill grew sick and weak, seeing the end of this last fight of all.

For the ooze had fastened on Waynes and Ratcliffes both—fastened quietly, stickily, as the sun-dew plant will wrap a fly round with its leaf before it feeds on it. Yet none looked up or down; their feet were numbed and chained—for the ooze had risen above their horses’ stirrups now—but each man kept the free use of his arms as yet, and to look down or up, to find the cause of their imprisonment, was to meet certain death from sword or haften hammer.

And so the slime of the bog reached up until it numbed their knees, and then their thighs; for the forward haste it made, after conquering the hill that had barred its progress up above, was slackened now, and, though its lighter waters raced and played ahead of it, the bog moved quietly, as if it took joy from banqueting unhurriedly.

And still the Red Folk and the Black Folk fought; they dared do nothing else, though now their hands could scarcely grip their weapons; for each was looking warily to snatch a blow as best he could. And still the bog fought either side impartially, and rose to the horses’ mouths; and, amid the roar of “A Wayne! ” and the answering roar, “A Ratcliffe! ” there came the death-cry of the beasts who had no fair part in the quarrel—a cry exceeding piteous to hear.

Higher the bog rose; and one and one they fought together still, though the chattering of their teeth cut half their shouts in twain. And the five upon the hilltop watched, and could do naught to save. And then the bog, pressed hard by a sudden inrush from behind, moved quickly on the sudden, and hid them all; and the watchers saw that still, above the ooze, the sword-blades and the hafted hammers were pointing to the sky, just as their dead masters had last lifted them.

And now there was no peaty hollow to be seen, nor horses, nor fighters ravenous to kill; there was only a wide and ever-deepening river of ooze that licked nearer and always nearer at the high ground from which five had seen the deaths of many.

“Ratcliffe the Red,” said Wayne of Marsh, “the last fight was like the first—bitter, and keen, and to the death —but there’s a difference.”

Ratcliffe fingered the naked edge of foster-brother. Bewildered he was, and awed, but Joseph’s teaching—dimmed just a little by Audrey’s glamour-lore—was not to be gainsaid in a moment.

“How so? ” he asked, still fingering the axe.

“I’ve lived hard, they say,” Wayne answered, “and lived on a loose rein, and men laugh at such when they talk of God’s hand upon them. But I tell you this—that God has sent His own to join issue with us in this feud, and there are no longer Waynes and Ratcliffes.”

“There are two,” said the other drily, “not counting Joseph yonder, and Nick o’ Trawdon. They will stand aside and leave us to it. There’s high ground left to fight on yet, Wayne of Marsh.”

“You’ll fight with a heartless man, then; but, if your will’s that way-”

“It is,” said Ratcliffe simply.

And now Wayne’s son was all distraught, for it seemed the dreads and struggles of the day were to go without reward; none of those drowned by the bog down yonder had listened to him, and now these two, it seemed, would fight till one or other of the two was slain. Unwillingly his father fought; but the boy had learned to know that deep note in his voice, half gay, half stern, which always spoke of battle to the death.

“Master, the bog is rising fast! ” said Joseph suddenly. For, tough as his hatred of the Waynes was, the down-rush of the flood had sobered and disheartened him.

“Let it rise,” snapped Ratcliffe. “Wayne of Marsh, come on! You were not wont to be a coward before the soft days weakened you.”

“I am with you,” answered Wayne, and touched his horse with either spur.

Yet even as he spoke there was a second rush of ooze from the high lands of the moor, and in a moment the black edge of the stream was lipping the hill-crest where they stood. On one side was the bog, on the other a slope that fell abruptly into the neighbouring dingle; if once the stream climbed full to the top of their vantage-ground and filled the valley on their right, they were in no better case than their kin who lay buried in the peaty hollow— nay, they were in worse case, for these at the least had died with the heat of battle in their throats.

And now Red Ratcliffe owned the stronger hand at last. He saw the ooze come licking upward, ever upward; he smelt the strong, harsh odour of the bog; he knew that foster-brother, strike keen and true as he might, could no way meet this silent adversary.

None spoke, but all watched the bog climb, swift and stealthy as a wild-cat, up to the margin of their feet.

“If ’twere our last meeting, Ratcliffe the Red? " said Wayne, astonished that he felt no dread of this up-creeping thing.

Red Ratcliffe groped among the darkness that had fallen on his courage, and knew dimly what was asked of him, yet shrank from denial of the hatred taught him at Bathsheba’s knee.

“Well, and if it were? ” he muttered sullenly.

“They say there’s joy in peace-making when men go near to knocking at the Gate o’ Doom.”

Wayne’s son forgot the bog. He was looking at his father, and he saw the stains of wine and careless living wiped away—saw the man’s clean, upright soul go shining like a lamp through the big, crow’s-foot-wrinkled face— saw the fairest thing, save one, that ever his eyes had chanced upon. And the one fairer thing was Janet, waiting now on the edge of Marshcotes Moor, and shading her eyes against the sunlight in weary hope of seeing Shameless Wayne ride home.

“Can you and I make peace, Wayne of Marsh? ” said Ratcliffe. “Better this cold death of the bog than peace between a Ratcliffe and a Wayne.”

Nick o’ Trawdon felt the ooze about his feet, and, near to death, he found a little laughter, as his wont was, to soften trouble. “Foster-brother will soon be resting,” he said, nodding at Red Ratcliffe. “Well, we can never tell, somehow—but ’tis pity all these years o’ polishing, and sharpening on the grindstone, and what not, should go for naught, Joseph. Look ye, sirs, we’re on the edge o’ death, or thereabout; cannot we no way raise a laugh betwixt us? And cannot we let a Wayne join in this once or so, seeing none will know a red head from a black when once the bog is over us? ”

And now a silence fell upon them, for none had heart to answer Nick o’ Trawdon. And the bog crept, it may be, a half-foot higher. And suddenly jthe clearer waters, which came after and before the more slowly-moving ooze, swirled round about their horses’ knees; and, when they trickled from the steep ground on which the five remaining stood, they showed something which the bog, surfeited with food, had cast up at the feet of Shameless Wayne.

The worst of the flood was over now, and sullenly the bog moved forward, spent with its climb to the hill-top and growing shallower moment by moment. But that which it had thrown up at Wayne’s feet, it left, and Wayne and Red Ratcliffe were staring down at the new-comer in wonderment and dread.

The body of a man, it was; and, as they watched, there came another swirl of clearer water, which played about the dead man’s face, washing it clean of peat and mud as if in tenderness. And Wayne of Marsh looked down into the open eyes of Wayne of Cranshaw—eyes so calm, with courage and with hope, that it was hard to believe them blind to this world’s sights.

“Red Ratcliffe, see’st thou him? ” Wayne muttered hoarsely.

“Ay,” answered Ratcliffe—and foster-brother dropped quietly from his hands, and the feud-hunger left him, he knew not why. “I see him, Wayne of Marsh. ’Tis he I killed between Black House and the marshes; and I buried him among the bogs; and now he’s come to make me sure that the deed was no glory, but a shame. It was so I felt it when I buried him, but I would not heed such daft-man’s tenderness.”

Ratcliffe’s voice had now no sullenness or fight in it. Like a broken man he spoke, easing his heart by some sort of confession, yet scarce knowing what he said. And Shameless Wayne, who more than once had crossed the threshold of a like despair, let his sword drop among the sodden ling, where it lay cheek by jowl with foster-brother; and he reined his horse close in to Ratcliffe’s, and put a hand upon his shoulder, and the younger man heard the voice of many sorrows, of many troubles bravely overcome, go ringing though Wayne’s simple words.

“Do not fret, lad. We fret too much in this queer life. ’Twas not you, but the feud, that slew Wayne of Cran-shaw.”

“The axe and the hand were mine. Wayne, Wayne, d’ye see the forgiveness in his quiet, dead eyes? Let’s pick our weapons up, and fight, or else I’ll cry like a lad-kin at his mother’s knee.”

Wayne’s son looked on. Such griefs and tears had been his portion, time out of mind; it was news to him that well-fleshed, fighting folk could feel the same, and in some odd way of his own he was cheered and comforted. He was learning that adversity finds out our friends for us —friends who lie hiding in the ling so long as we are prosperous.

But Joseph snarled. For danger from the bog was past—its ooze was dwindling, dwindling down the peaty hollow and working havoc on the lower farmsteads—and the man’s hard-bitten love of feud was reawakened.

“By the Heart, there’s room enough for those two pap-babes to fight! ” he growled. “Peace? I never heard peace did lasting good to man or beast.”

“Oh, whisht! ” said Nick o’ Trawdon, with unwonted gravity. “We’ve been spared, Joseph, from a worser and a colder death than I can bear to think on. And I’ve a wife, Joseph, lad, and no wife gets warm comfort from a corpse.”

“Tuts! ” said Joseph wearily. “I’ve a wife myself, for that matter—not just so young as thine, and may be by that token I love her all the better. But there’s summat more in life, Nick, than wives and love-making and foolishness. I bred yond red lad to the feud, and now he’s all for peace.”

Nick o’ Trawdon pointed to the peaty hollow, where the ooze crept up and down in grey-black, sullen currents. “There’s enough o’ both sides given to the feud,” he said. “Let be, Joseph, and think upon your sins instead.” “Nay, lad,” answered Joseph—and for the first time he laughed—“I’d liefer think o’ bonnier things. Well, then, ’tis peace—I see it coming, unless I run in and crack this Wayne upon the crown.”

“Ye’U not do that,” said Nick o’ Trawdon drily, “for I’m watching ye, and, peace or war, these two are going to settle their own business for themselves.”

There was another watching Nick o’ Trawdon and old Joseph, too, had they but known it. For Wayne’s son had his right hand on his sword-hilt, and he knew at last which side to take—the side that first interfered between Red Ratcliffe and his father.

CHAPTER XXVI

AND AFTERWARDS .

As for Red Ratcliffe, he felt Wayne’s touch upon his arm, and looked into the big, kindly face, and wondered why the enmity of years went by him like a God-forsaken wind.

“The axe and the hand were yours,” said Shameless Wayne; “but ’twas the feud that guided them.—Oh, boy, make friends! ” he broke off passionately. “Make friends amid the wreckage and disaster. If we fight, ’tis not just you and I, but all the devils out of hell that lit the feud-fire first.”

“So Wayne of Cranshaw said,” Red Ratcliffe answered, in a dull, affrighted voice. “See his -dead eyes that harbour all forgiveness! As he lay dying at the call of foster-brother, he said that the death-wound was not mine at all, but given by the generations buried long ago.”

“He spoke a true word,” said Shameless Wayne.

“Ay, but the charity in those up-staring eyes! I had rather have seen hatred than forgiveness there, Wayne of Marsh.”

Again Wayne touched him on the shoulder.

“So would we all. ’Tis always hard to meet forgiveness, lad—hard to take mercy at another’s hands, moreover, as I did from yours at Colne.”

And now it was plain to Ratcliffe that half at least of Wayne’s reluctance for the combat was owing to his courtesy, in that he counted his life, after that day at Colne, as a debt which his enemy might bid him pay at any hour.

“You were unarmed. How could I kill you? ” said Red Ratcliffe vehemently, striving constantly to remember Joseph’s teaching, though his heart was weak toward peace.

“Now ’tis different—and we stand upon high ground— and your sword lies neighbour to my axe.”

So then Wayne laughed, the chastened laugh of one who stands for a moment looking with clear eyes through life’s perplexities and bickerings and ill-intents.

“Pick up your axe, then, Ratcliffe,” he said, “and I am with you.”

And Ratcliffe stooped; but, as Wayne had guessed, he turned from the axe to look at the dead face of Wayne of Marsh, and he could not pluck his glance away.

“He—he will not let me,” stammered Ratcliffe, with a sideway look.

“Likely. Such as he do not die idly, or for naught. See how he died, Ratcliffe the Red! In grief and agony, and shame of knowing himself defeated—yet see the brave look on his face.”

“’Tis the brave look that haunts me—that, and the forgiveness in it. Wayne, Wayne, d’ye wish me to go mad for grief, or will you fight? ”

Old Joseph was not snarling now; he, and Nick o’ Trawdon, and Wayne’s ill-shapen son, were gathered in a knot about them; and they saw Ratcliffe stoop and fumble for his axe, time and again, while ever his eyes sought those of Wayne of Cranshaw. Deeper and wilder than the bog-burst was this strife of men, reared up in feud, who found the way of peace come hardly to them.

“I was unarmed at Colne, you say,” Wayne’s voice broke in. “What are we now, Ratcliffe, the two of us? You cannot lift your axe, and I’ve no heart to pick my sword up. I tell you, this cloven bog, that but swept us down into the valleys, is bigger than the feud.”

And now there was silence; and something snapped and broke, near to Red Ratcliffe’s heart, as a bow-string snaps when the archer’s arm is stronger than his weapon. He did not fear the dead man’s forgiveness now; straight into the eyes of the living he looked, and he saw a hungry pity, a hungry pride, a hungry love of charity, reflected in Wayne’s face.

“Wayne of Marsh,” he said, “my mother bore me to the feud.”

“As mine did,” answered Wayne; “but the God who sits above the moor is fuller of knowledge than our mothers, Ratcliffe.”

“Wayne, Wayne! ” the lad's cry rang out—and he called, not to an enemy now, but with the voice which fathers know when their boys come sorrowing to them.

“Wayne, I was left a legacy! We hate, we kill. For God’s sake, get your sword into your hand, for all else is perplexity and doubt.”

“I’ll get your hand into my hand,” said Wayne. “If this dead face of Wayne of Cranshaw preaches peace for naught, you may take the debt I’ve owed you since that day at Colne. See my hand, Ratcliffe—clasp it, or hew it off, according to your will.”

Red Ratcliffe looked about him; saw the ooze melt downward through the peaty hollow, and the waters race before it and behind; saw the stark moorland glimmer in the sun; saw everywhere the wreckage—boulders and trees and blocks of the drier peat left stranded—that marked the road taken by the bog. He heard, moreover —and the sound touched the better man in him—heard a lark, high up toward the sun, go singing bravely above the ruin and disaster of the flood. For the first time he saw the feud at something near to its true height and girth; it was no longer a giant, towering huge before him and shutting out the starlight and the sun; it was a pigmy now, accursed and evil, that shrank from true men’s sight and sought a hiding-place. Nay, it was dwarfed beyond its due, for out of the bog-flood, so it seemed, a cleaner flood had come to sweep Ratcliffe beyond his depth; and, where this morning there was war, and only war, he now could see only the welcome lands of peace.

Shameless Wayne was watching the.lad’s face; it was all one to him at this moment whether he lived or died, whether he fought or made peace; the struggles and the backslidings of the years, the fights and fevers and repentances, lay stretched before the older man—as the moor stretched out before him, a broken land of turmoil—with Janet’s voice somewhere among the blue of heaven, like the lark’s, threading disaster through with silver threads. All rested with Red Ratcliffe now; and Wayne watched his face, and saw it soften, line by line, into a comeliness unusual to it.

Suddenly Red Ratcliffe pointed to the sundered moor, then up to the middle-blue where the lark was singing. “Audrey’s God must have been tarrying here,” he said. " She spoke a true word, Wayne of Marsh, when she told me, only yestre’en, that there were bigger things than feud.”

And then the older and the younger man looked each other in the face again; and neither found reason to mis-like the other; and Ratcliffe’s hand crept out to Wayne’s, and they brought their fretting horses to a stand, and gave the clasp of friendship.

“May the bog cover us each in turn,” said Ratcliffe, “when there is aught but peace 'twixt you and me.”

“The bog has buried our dead,” Wayne answered simply, “and a new day will dawn above the moor.” Then Ratcliffe turned to the three who looked on at this strife between the leaders of the peace-in-feud. "Joseph,” he said peremptorily, "make thy peace, as I have done.”

" I’m old, Master—sadly old—and I’ve lived only to see ye kill yond black hillock of a man. ‘Tis light for ye to go a-pcace-making, seeing ye’ve known the feud a short score years or so. I’ve known it longer, Master, and I hate the Waynes, root and branch of the whole damned breed.” Wayne’s laugh came deep and heartsome. "No breed is altogether damned, old Joseph, for men of all breeds have suffered in their time. Say, were I called a Ratcliffe, would you find so much amiss with me? ”

It was Wayne’s son who broke into their talk.

" Father! ” he cried, pointing down the moor. “The danger is not over-past! See where the bog is flowing.”

They looked and saw the ooze—a river half-a-league in width—shine dully in the sunlight far below; and the track it took was along the sloping ground that dipped and fell abruptly into Hazel Dene; and at the foot of Hazel Dene lay Wayne’s own house of Marsh.

And now it was Wayne’s turn to be afraid, though he had met fearlessly all the terrors and mischances of the day.

“Janet is waiting for me yonder! ” he muttered. And then he turned to his son, and the lad’s face kindled as he listened to the first word of praise that he had heard from Shameless Wayne. “ You’re a proven man. Borrow a horse from one of these Ratcliffe friends, and you and I will race the flood.”

“Shall we ride with you, Wayne of Marsh? ” asked Red Ratcliffe.

“No. Get back to your wife, Ratcliffe, and tell her there is peace. I only ask to have my son beside me.”

So Ratcliffe quickly got from, saddle, and snatched Wayne’s son about the middle and set him on his own fleet horse; and neither Wayne nor his son halted to give thanks, but galloped down along the ridge which this day had saved their lives.

“Would have fain made peace, after all,” growled Joseph. “He’s summat like a man, or thereabouts, is Shameless Wayne.”

They watched the horsemen gallop till horses and men were only specks upon the ravished moor; and they knew the danger of this ride across land, which, high as it was, was sodden with the ooze and water that had trickled to its top; and, when at last the riders disappeared, still safely in the saddle, Red Ratcliffe gave a quick, fierce sigh.

“They will tell of Wayne and his son, and of their ride,” he said, “when you and I are dead and stiff, old Joseph. Good hap to them, say I, and would that I rode withUhem! ”

But Wayne and his son said nothing. Their knees were riveted into their saddles, and the flying ooze got up from under the horses’ hoofs, and fell like heavy rain behind them. And still the good beasts galloped, as if, like the men who rode them, they saw the bigness of the issue, and by disdaining peril conquered it.

The river of ooze grew near and nearer to them, for the slope of its fall was gentle, and it moved as if surfeited with food and slaughter. And now they passed it— keeping to the high lands still—and turned into the dry and grassy hollow where there was good going for a horse. Past Hill End Farm they rode—shouting a warning to the farmer as they galloped by—and down to the House of Marsh, whose windows winked untroubled at the sun.

If fire were licking at the gables, their case could not well have been more desperate. They had passed the bog; but, soon as it reached the steep fall into Hazel Dene, its speed would be a gallop like their own.

They did not heed. Wayne’s courage and his son’s sat cool upon them, and they dismounted at the door as if they came to pledge each other in a cup of wine.

“Janet, Janet! ” cried Wayne, so loudly that the serving-women ran from dairy and from kitchen. Serving-men there were none, for these had gone out to fight, and the bog was carrying their bodies all too swiftly down to their old home.

“She went up toj Marshcotes, some hour ago,” said one of the women.

“Thank God for that,” cried Wayne. “Look ye, wenches, the bog has burst, and naught can save this house of Marsh. Look to yourselves.”

The women huddled close against each other, like frightened sheep. And then they fell to crying, and one lass, weaker than the rest, was taken with tears and laughter mingled.

“'Tis Parson’s Storm! ” she whimpered. ” Oh, Lord o’ mercy, wenches, did I say ’twas no way overed-with when God’s rains ceased? Did I say there was worse to follow? ”

“Fool! ” snapped Wayne. “There’ll be worse unless you get up the road that leads to Marshcotes, and get there quickly.”

So then they followed him—foolish and crying, still like so many sheep—and Wayne and his son took their horses by the bridles, and led the way.

Half up the hill a woman clutched Wayne’s arm. “I -was dazed and all forgetful-like, Master. There’s Priscilla old and bed-ridden, left in the upper chamber.”

Now Priscilla had grown old in service of the Waynes, and in his young, hot days, had often soothed and mothered Wayne of Marsh when he came home with shame and too much wine upon him. And Wayne was apt to remember such-like matters; and, though he heard the thunder of the bog as it rolled and crashed into the depths of Hazel Dene, he got to saddle and turned, and shouted to his son to lead the women safely into Marshcotes.

“Not I! ” cried the lad. “We’ll live or we’ll die, father—but it must be together.”

“Good lad! ” said Wayne, the words slipping from him unawares. “I’ve wronged you through the years—but we’re together now.”

The women, scared and helpless, turned to follow them, but Wayne moved in the saddle and looked at the huddled, daft-wit flock.

“Go up to Marshcotes,” he said peremptorily, “or the bog will have you in its teeth.”

Sheep-witted, fearing everything that it is possible to fear in life, and terrified by Wayne’s threat of danger, they went up the steep and narrow lane. But Wayne and his son rode down the lane, dismounted once again at the hall-door, each keeping headlong pace with the other, to find Priscilla. And, high up Hazel Dene, they heard the flood’s roar coming down on them, and marked the sharp, quick cries and groanings of the trees as they were riven from their roots.

Up the stair they went, and they found Priscilla in the little chamber above the porch.

“There’s ruin coming on the house,” said Wayne. “Fear naught, but let me carry you down the stair.” And now the aged woman laughed, none asking her the reason; and her toothless gums went moving swiftly, and at last she found the words she sought.

“I should die, Master, if my roots were snapped away from the old house. Let ruin come then, and let it wanton —not for the first time since I grew to love ye, Master. Eh, eh, I mind! The wine came on ye like a cloud, and the wine lifted always soon as there was work to do, and ye were ever the baim-child of my heart. I’m wandering, belike, for I remember listening for your footstep, as folk listen for the wind o’ spring when winter’s all but over. ’Tis nearly time for old Priscilla to go—oh, ay, ’tis nearly time—but I’d love, and dearly love, to hear your step go sounding on the courtyards of the farther life.”

So then Wayne wrapped the blanket round about her and snatched her up, and went down the stair with no word in reply. Priscilla was lean and shrivelled, and should have been an easy load; but, on the other hand, she went unwillingly, and for that cause all the little weight she had lay dead and heavy in Wayne’s arms.

The bog-roar sounded near at hand when they came out into the courtyard. Wayne set his burden on the fore-front of the saddle and leaped into his seat behind it, and at the moment the splintered crash of trees again came to them—came from the wood which guarded Marsh House from the moor winds at scarce ten-score yards away.

“You ride lighter than I, son of mine,” panted Wayne. “Gallop, and leave me to win out and up as best I can.” ” Not so,” the boy answered, and the glow of a forthright courage meeting forthright danger lit up his face, so that the likeness to his father was strangely marked.

“’Tis a grim death, boy, and only one of us need risk it.”

“Pace for pace I go with you, father—’tis both or neither of us.”

So then Wayne saw the lad’s will was stubborn; and, between a glance at the horror of the down-coming bog and a glance at the hill-front which they must climb at once or not at all, he found space to thank God for this son whom he had once despised. And the boy’s insistence saved his life, as it chanced; for it heartened Wayne to coax and force his beast to do its utmost, seeing that not Priscilla’s life and his alone were at stake, but his son’s also.

Between the splintered wood and Marsh House there was a steepish fall—smooth pasture-land, with not a hillock or a boulder to stay the bog’s on-coming. With thunder and with wrath it turned over and down, as it had done at Black House, and it filled the pastured hollow, and before Wayne could win the last few strides to safety, the ooze swept half to his horse’s knees and clung there.

“Ride on, boy, I tell you! ” he yelled.

But his son had seen how short a length of hill stretched between safety and the bog’s upcoming. He had not kept stride for stride, as he had promised, but had ridden a little forward ; and now he turned about—his own horse just beyond the ooze’s greedy Ups—and reached out and clutched his father’s bridle. And Wayne of Marsh gave a ringing cry, such as his beast understood ; and Red Ratcliffe’s borrowed horse strained like a mad thing up the hill; and between them they won free of this last desperate attack, compared with which ’twas mercy to be slain by Ratcliffes’ weapons.

They were safe on the hill-top now, and halted while their beasts fetched sobbing breaths. And old Priscilla stirred in her master’s arms, and her laugh was like an owl’s hoot when the night is still.

“Best have left me, Master, best have left me! The Mistress will go jeering at you, to have ridden down to save an old, bed-cumbered scarecrow like myseln.”

But Wayne answered nothing. The brute splendour of the flood, the new-found stress of fathership, the knowledge that Janet was waiting for his safe return—these things were big upon him, so that he dwelt for a while in the farther lands of insight.

They came to the square which fronted the Bull Tavern. And ail the village was agog, as it had been when Ratcliffe fought with foster-brother on the churchyard steps. Men, snatching their lives at hazard from the bog, had run in to tell of what had happened on the moor; and all the folk were chattering, asking foolish questions as to why and wherefore; and some were crying that the flood might climb to the top of Marshcotes village, were telling their neighbours plainly that they might all have lived better lives in years gone by.

Wayne found the landlord of the Bull at his door, and with scant ceremony put old Priscilla into the man’s arms.

“Look well to her, or I’ll leave no bone whole in your fat body, Jabez,” he said, and reined his horse about.

“Where do we ride, father? ” asked his son.

“To the moor, lad. I’ve a fancy that your mother has gone to look for me.”

So the villagers made way, and they passed the churchyard on their left, and rode up the wide half-circle of the bridle-track that lost itself among the ling. And Janet was watching still, as Wayne had guessed, both hands above her eyes to shield the sunlight from them.

"Janet,” he said, dismounting before he reached her, and fetching a compass so that she should see him come from the looked-for quarter, “Janet, the big fight is over.”

“And you’re unwounded, lad? ” she said, her hands going motherlike about him to feel that he was whole.

“Ay, by God’s charity.”

“I heard a roar far up the heath, Ned, and it seemed to bode no good.”

“Dost not know, then, that the bog has broken down? ’Twas that you heard, lass—and no Wayne, save I and another, will ever sup in hall again. The last fight was the bog’s, Janet, and it has taken all save me—save me, and a better man than I.”

So then Janet looked behind, and saw her son standing mute beside a sweating horse, a horse whose owner was Red Ratcliffe. And she ran to the lad, and was foolish with him, and the tears went flooding down her cheeks.

“Better you and he, Ned, than all who supped at Marsh,” she cried.

“The dead are dead, Janet, and I speak no ill of them— but the boy is worth them all.”

It was in this wise, so they tell us, that those three, lonely on the lonely moor, came to their own at last; and the great love that had been Wayne’s and Janet’s, and the great sin which each had expiated by long and grievous toil, and this final sense of ail-forgiveness, were near the hearts of each as their glances met, and lingered, and returned to the son who had greatly suffered.

As the flood had dwindled down into the valleys, so had the uproar and unrest of twenty years gone by them— leaving scars, indeed, that they would carry to the end, but showing a land that they might tread with safety.

And Wayne’s son looked from one to the other, and found life dawn for him, remembering that Shameless Wayne had named him worthy.

And now the short October day drew on to gloaming; and the dusk moved with silent feet, and all the raking skyline of the moor was silver-grey, and the row of naked thorn-trees on this side the churchyard glistened in the afterlight. A light, sweet touch of coming frost was in the air, and all was quiet, save for the shouting of the Marshcotes folk as they ran down to see the havoc that had overtaken the House of Marsh.

They found no house there now, these villagers who snatched courage to follow in the flood’s wake. They saw a half-acre covered with walls and roofing-stones; they saw broken limbs of trees strewn random-wise, and a shallow depth of ooze that marked the passing of the bog. They saw, too, here and there, great, sodden bulks from which they turned their eyes away, knowing they were good men’s bodies.

“This comes o’ pride-sickness and feud,” said one— a little, wry-mouthed fellow, the Marshcotes cobbler. “Where are the Waynes to-night, friends all? The bog has carried them back to Marsh House—but not to sup— nay, not for wine and devilment, I fancy.”

“The Waynes are in a better place than thou’lt come to at thy latter end,” answered a comrade, who had looked on the dead men, on the riven stones, on the toothed, upstanding branches of the trees—had looked and read their message fearlessly. “They met death face-foremost. I reckon—I doubt ye’ll not do just as much, Cobbler Dick.” And now the moon rode up above the gloaming, and her light was pencilled on the branches of the trees left standing on the higher grounds; and the frost grew sharper, cleaner, till it was like the sweetness of a harp when maiden fingers touch the strings.

Red Ratcliffe and his two remaining folk had long ago gone up the higher ridges, seeking the best foothold they could find. They had come, at long last, to the bog-land which had lain like a watch-dog at the gates of Black House, and had found their home defenceless. Marshes, shuddering bogs, and all the sly defences made for them by the moor, were cleansed by this last, sudden flood. Wet going it was, and sticky for men’s feet or for horses’, but danger there was none.

“We’ve lost our bogs,” growled Joseph, as they went soft-footed over what had been the perilous land. “I alius loved ’em—they were so friendly-like, and always sucked those damned Waynes under.”

Young as he was—and perhaps because he knew his wife was waiting for him—Red Ratcliffe understood at last the over-lordship of God’s moor and sky.

” Joseph,” said he, “we do not go needing our bog now. There is peace, thanks be to Audrey’s God, and Wayne’s hand has lain in mine.”

“Tuts! ” said Joseph. “He’s well enough, but should’st have cracked him on the crown and have done wi’t.”

“I had rather he lived, Joseph,” was all the Master’s answer.

And with the word he crossed the last of the sticky bogland, and went up the hill; and Audrey stood, shading her eyes, as Wajme’s wife had done, and looking for her goodman’s home-return. And from the terrors of that day—the bog thundering wide almost at her feet and carrying all her safeguards down—it was Audrey’s turn to pluck the rosemary that grows on the steep hills of battle.

Not only Audrey watched; for Nick o’ Trawdon’s wife, who had been comforting her mistress as best she might throughout the day, looked out likewise, and feared her goodman would not come.

“Tuts!” growled Joseph, looking on. “Bathsheba and me’s too old for such young-blooded foolishness.”

Yet he rode forward, and found Bathsheba somewhere near the dairy, her apron close about her head to hide her fears; and he was glad to come safely to Black House.

On Waynes and Ratcliffes—such as were left of them— the moon rose high into the crisp October sky. Fragrant as violets in spring the frost crept in among the dingles, and its fingers traced patterns, never woven yet by hands of men, about the bog-ooze and the trickling waters.

Far down in the valley lands, the flood was racing on; and we know to-day what bridges broke apart, what huddled masses of the drier peat went riding down the valley rivers. They had clear weather in the valleys, and each man asked his neighbour why the floods were on them: and only after many days the tale of Parson’s Flood came down, along the road of gossip, to tell them why the waters had come so suddenly from the moors of which they knew naught, or little.

Meanwhile, the moon rode blue above the moor, and the frost grew keener and more wholesome in men’s nostrils. And Wayne, standing near his wife, remembered his own happiness, and with remembrance came the memory of one forgotten until now.

“Janet, what of Little Bairn? ” he cried. “I forgot her, remembering only you.”

“She was in the kirkyard when I came up, Ned. Shall we go find her—you, and the boy, and I? ”

They crossed into the place of graves, and there on her wonted headstone sat Little Bairn, weaving fairies’ garments from the loom of fancy. The moon, blue and crisp and no way troubled, shone upon her hair, making it like thread of gold; and just as Wayne had for a while forgotten her, she no way at this moment missed the Sexton, her dead and buried playmate.

“The moor was red not long ago,” she said, looking up at him with her child’s glance; “and now ’tis violet-blue, and all’s secure. Will you listen to my wisdom, Wayne of Marsh, and Janet, and the son ye treated ill?”

“We will listen! ” came the answer, and it was the son they had not treated well who answered, there among the graves, where the moon lay soft and blue upon the lichens.

“Then hearken! The moor ran red, but all is over now. Naught matters, Wayne of Marsh—naught matters any way. Will ye not hearken? ”

The bog-flood was wrecking the valleys lower down; but here its force was spent, and Janet gripped Wayne’s hand amid the silence and the peace.

“Little Bairn is right,” she whispered. “Naught matters, Ned—naught matters now that you have brought the boy to me.”

Yet Little Bairn was passing her hand before her eyes, as if she sought to clear away some troublous vision.

“And yet—and yet—I seem to see dead folk go passing by me,” she murmured. “And some have faces crimsoned o’er, and others of the faces are dark and hidden, as if the peat-bog lay over them. Ah, may be some things matter, after all! It is not a light thing, is it, Ned, that men should die?”

And Wayne bethought him of what this day had shown; and he bent his head, and the ghosts of all those slain since first the feud began seemed to pass by with dumb, tired feet and faces half-averted.

“I am weary, Ned,” said Little Bairn, peremptory as a child. “Take me home to Marsh.”

“’T'would be to sleep among the ooze to go there, Bairn,” Wayne answered gently. “I must seek some likelier bed for thee.”

So the four went to find a resting-place; and three of them were silent, but Little Bairn was plucking next year’s primroses, all the way down the kirkyard, though only she could see them. In the garden of her fancy she was playing, where soft winds roamed; but Wayne, and Janet, and their son, felt only the gathering frost that came to clean the pathway of the bog.