TABLE of CONTENTS

CHAPTER I—LITTLE PATTY WINTERHEAD.

CHAPTER II—AROUND THE HEARTH.

CHAPTER III—THE LAST LIFE OH UBLEY.

CHAPTER IV—THE CROWNER’S QUEST.

CHAPTER V—A LITTLE RIFT.

CHAPTER VI—SHIPHAM GREEN.

CHAPTER VII—AN INVITATION.

CHAPTER VIII—WEEK’S END.

CHAPTER IX—WHERE RAVENS BUILT.

CHAPTER X—ABOUT THEM TEASELS.

CHAPTER XI—AUNT MARTA.

CHAPTER XII—THE WAT MADE EAST.

CHAPTER XIII—THE PARTY.

CHAPTER XIV—THE EMPTY HOUSE.

CHAPTER XV—THE PROMISE.

CHAPTER XVI—THE LAST SHEAF A-TIED.

CHAPTER XVII—THE BECKONING.

CHAPTER XVIII—FALL.

CHAPTER XIX—THE END.

CHAPTER I

LITTLE PATTY WINTERHEAD.

When little Patty Winterhead took to talking, how she would go on, to be sure! No matter what came into the head of her, out it popped as straight as a gun-barrel. She didn’t keep anything back—not she— not for the time being. But then again, sometimes, when all the folk were cackling away like a charm of birds, Patty Winter-head would sit so silent as a mumchance, and never so much as speak one word.

This afternoon there was no stopping her. Her tongue—“ the little red rag o’ her,” as Sophia Pierce would have called it—ran nineteen to the dozen and more. But that her prattle was too sweet to injure any living creature on God’s earth, she could have talked a horse’s hind-leg off, as the saying is. And still, for all that, little Patty

Winterhead had never been known to say a sour thing, or tell an unkind tale, of any mortal soul. But, then, people upon this earth are all so different-like—some for everlasting nag, nag, nag, and some that can never so much as ope their lips but what the words must drop out smiling.

They were standing together in the porch of Charterhouse Farm, little Patty Winter-head and Sophia Pierce.

“ What! not heard the goo-koo afore to-year? ” cried Patty in astonishment. “ Why, I heard un more ’an a week agone, first time! An’ over Ubley way, too, then.”

“I ha’n’t a-noticed un myzelf,” replied Sophia with a sniff, and all the superiority of a fine commonplace mind having other things to think about.

Sophia was born and bred at Ubley Farm.

That bright April afternoon she had walked over to Charterhouse for company’s sake; the more so because Patty Winter-head was alone too, and of late Sophia had taken a great fancy to Patty. The day was a holiday. All the folk were gone abroad. Across the breadth of Mendip neither man nor woman was to be seen—nor even a horse, for the matter of that, unless some rough unbroken colt, maybe, that none could ride. A mount had been worth money that morning, when he who neither had nor was able to hire must rise at daybreak and tramp his score of miles and more to be in time for the fun. Every miner from Priddy on the one hand up to Shipham on the other had gone to fair that day. And so for certain had all the quiet farming folk as well.

“There, to be sure, summer is a’most come now; for not only the swallows but the devil-scritches so well be all back. Look! Sophia, there’s one o’ ’em—there— now.”

Patty Winterhead raised her finger and pointed across the narrow garden in front of the house at a swift, glistening black in the sunlight, as it darted down the road between the long stone walls which serve instead of hedgerows in that bleak hill country.

Sophia looked without seeing, as one who has no mind for such nonsense, and little Patty Winterhead went rattling on again.

“ Ay, summer’s a’most here, sure enough. Not but what the nights be cold, mind. Why, early ’is morning the moors were all over wi’ a white vrost like a ground o’ snow.

For a’ter vather had a-rod off I went away right up ’pon top o’ Cheddar Hill. La! Sophia, you never zeed sieh a sight o’ folk. I never did. All along the road, in twos an’ drees, an’ vowers an’ vives, some a-voot an’ some a-ho’seback, an’ some in carts. Ay, up ten or a dozen to a two-wheel cart, a-zot, anyhow, ’pon one another’s laps. There ’tes really a merciful providence that ’t have a-held up same as’t have. For there were a black cloud or two, middle day; did really make me wonder whe’er or no I’d put on my light vrock. There, I did. For you zee, Sophia, when vather do go out there’s no knowing but what all creation mid come home wi’ un. Why, when Gerrish the highwayman was hanged in 1810, that’s dree years agone this very spring, there were thirteen o’ us a-zot down together, an’ none dared to move. I tell ee then, ’twas lucky Solomon Moggridge the constable corned along late, else we should ha’ bin there now, I do verily believe, please God to spare us so long. An’ Cheddar Fair, when young Giles Standerwick cracked the crown o’ the champion from down the country, there were one-an’-twenty. For ’tis ‘Come along, come in,’ wi’ vather—open heart—open house an’ everybeddy well met. Zo, look-y-zee, I’ve a-tidied up a bit, an’ filled the kettle so full up as ever you dare, that is to say, not to boil over an’ spout out an’ scald anybeddy’s knees, or a’most drown the whole place, so to speak; and hitched un up on chimbley-crook, han’-pat again he’s wanted, an’ put on my best vrock, or what have a-bin my best, an’ here we be.”

She stopped abruptly, not for lack of matter, but because she was out of breath. She leaned back against one side of the arch and laughed. Sophia was leaning back against the other.

In appearance they were wide apart as a last year’s kecksie from a Cheddar pink.

LittlePatty Winterhead was rightlynamed. She was very small—short in stature, slight in figure, and little in limb. Only her eyes were large and very round and brown. Her honey-coloured hair fell parted over her forehead above brows ever so slightly arched. And her skin was delicate and white, except when she talked and grew excited. Then the colour rose upon her cheek, her eyes danced, and a mischief went twitching around the corners of the little crimson mouth of her.

The plain, unimaginative folk of those bleak hills did not understand the maid. She was as changeable as the wind, they said, and had as many moods. Yet when she sat silent she was watching, no fear, and drank in all that was said and done like milk, though she never might move a lip. This strange uncertainty made people shy. They thought of her as a child with an uncommon wayward wit And indeed, as she stood there in her pale cream-coloured frock, covered with a spring-time of lilac sprigs, she looked no more than seventeen at the most Yet little Patty Winterhead was over twenty, and going on for twenty-one.

As to Sophia Pierce, she was tall as a maypole and hard as a nail. She had high cheek-bones, a dark complexion and black hair. Her long face was thin and sharp as a hatchet, with a prominent chin and a nose like a reaping hook. Still, Sophia was not altogether bad-looking, and, as everybody knew, had gumption enough for two. But that being strictly in the nature of things was much to be commended, since Sophia was getting to be a very old girl. Nobody thought of her as young. People only wondered why somebody or other hadn’t picked her up years ago. Ah! she’d a-made a good wife for any sensible man, sure enough. And what an arm she had for work! And what an eye—to business!

At present she was in black for an uncle by her mother’s side who had left her a hundred pounds.

“Let’s go up along road an’ zee if any-beddy is a-coming,” suddenly cried the younger girl in her quick, impulsive way. “ Or, no! let’s run down over hill so fur as the Cheddar road. Why, the primroses an’ cowslips too be out beautiful in the lew between Black-rocks. Anybeddy can pick a ton, well, a goodish double han’ful then, enough to fill a quart cup in ten minutes, if they do try, an’ some o’ ’em so big as oxslips too.”

“La! Patty Winterhead, I should want to be paid to pick ’em,” laughed Sophia in her short way. “An’ maybe your vather ’ull come home, too, an’ not like to vind ee out o’ the way.”

“ Ho! he wouldn’t trouble his head about that, so long as I corned in sound an’ happy. Why, he’ve never found a word o’ fau’t wi’ me in all his life! ” boasted the girl gaily.

“ What! never once in all his life, Patty Winterhead? ”

As she spoke Sophia leant forward, and her voice assumed a searching tone calculated to drag hidden truth from the innermost recess of the deepest human heart.

Patty reflected.

“ Well, then,” she said, nodding her head with the deliberation of one determined to be exact and stick to it, “not since poor mother were a-tookt, an’ that’s zix year agone just upon next Midsummer that ever is.”

For a moment she was serious. Then she burst out again.

“ Look here! Let’s run down an’ climb up ’pon top o’ the Wind Cliff an’ look down over. The folk a-ho’seback crawling up the road do look so small as mites—well, the size o’ house-sparrows, then, a-perched upon rats wi’ their tails a-cut short. Why, a Devon cow out ’pon moor is about so big as a horse-chestnut. You can look down ’pon the backs o’ the jackdaws a-flying in an’ out the chinks; an’ ofttimes there’s a great hunting falcon-hawk, wi’ broad wings all a-spread, up five foot or more across, a-sailing roun’ so smooth an’ easy—verily an’ truly! do a’most make anybeddy believe that, wi’ the leastest bit of a push like, you need only to stick out your arms to fly too Come on.”

“ I wun’t,” was the reply of Sophia, sharp and decisive. “ Why ’tis wo’th all a crown to get up there any day o’ the wick.”

The young girl laughed merrily. Her nimbler wit could follow Sophia’s simple astonishment, but Sophia did not understand her in the least Then her capricious little mind leapt back abruptly to her father.

“ No; I think ’twould break the heart o’ me if vather an’ I were ever to fall out There! we never couldn’. Not but what vather, mind, have a-got a pretty hot temper when he’s crossed. But all the Winterheads be like that A Winterhead have a-got to have his way an’ then he’s all right. But a Winterhead is always so good as his word. That’s his pride—to act up to what’s right, no matter how mid turn out. Why, wi’ forty thousand against un vather ’ud speak out his mind just the same. I tell ee what, Sophia, I’d believe my vather in the face o’ all the world.”

As she spoke she stepped out upon the path. What between pride and affection her small, slight figure looked quite defiant.

Sophia’s eyes watched her narrowly.

Then her voice became quite coaxing as she said:—

“He do think a wonderful lot o’ you, Patty. Shall I tell ee what he zaid over to Ubley two nights agone? ”

“What?” cried the girl, eagerly turning back into the porch.

“ He zaid the wish nearest to his heart is to zee ee wed an’ happy wi’ a good man o’ your own choice.”

Little Patty Winterhead blushed and laughed.

“What good is it to talk o’ that?” she cried, looking frankly up into Sophia’s face. “ Why, I be one-an’-twenty come Old Midsummer Day! None o’ ’em ha’n’t a-caught a mind to me, nor ever so much as pretend to, not eet. ’Tis because I be so little, I do allot. I tell ee what ’tis, Sophia. I do bide heart-whole myzelf, an’ the young chaps do bide heart-whole too for all me. But I don’t trouble. I be happy enough as ’tis.”

“ Well, I thought I’d tell ee what he zaid,” added Sophia complacently.

Such friendliness naturally kindled in little Patty Winterhead’s open nature a burning desire to impart a confidence. She could no more help herself than fly.

“Sophia,” she began in a mysterious whisper, “if you’ll take your Bible oath never to let out, I’ll tell ee what I ha’n’t never a-breathed to any soul alive.”

“ What’s that? ” demanded Sophia, sharp-set with curiosity.

“ Vather is so fond o’ me as ever his heart can hold. I do know that. When poor dear mother was handy her last end she begged of him never to give another mother to ‘ the little mouse ’. That’s what they always called me ever since I was knee-high. An’ he promised he wouldn’. That’s why he never thought o’ marrying again. So 'tis all so well that nobody don’t want me, to be sure, for there, I couldn’ never leave vather for no man ’pon earth. Unless, in cou’se, it so turned out that we all lived here together, or—”

She broke off abruptly. Sophia was craning forward her lean neck as she drank in every word with greedy interest. A misgiving crossed Patty Winterhead’s mind that she was talking foolishly. That was the way sometimes when she ran on so fast without thought, to be sorry for it afterwards.

“ There, come on! ” she cried impulsively, seizing Sophia by the wrist. “ Let’s go out to gate and look up an’ down road a bit.”

To so short an excursion Sophia could raise no objection, and arm in arm they strolled along the garden path. To right or left no one was in sight, and Sophia stood with her back against the gate and looked at Charterhouse. She ran her eye over the whole homestead with the alertness of an appraiser.

Afternoon was growing towards evening. The sun, hanging just above the hill, shone upon the front and pointing end of the old house like a smile of prosperity. It lit the sides of the double row of stacks in the mow-barton with a gleam of gold. There were ten in all Sophia saw that at a glance. Sure enough it was a fine old place, with its porch as big as a cottage a-most, its great square diamond-paned windows and' the little pointed arch in the end wall at which people sometimes stopped to look. She had seen it before hundreds of times. Once was enough for Sophia for a thing of that sort, so as to be able to say she had seen it, instead of having to sit and gape when other folk talked. But to-day a momentary romance, bright as the evening sunlight, yet somewhat sad, fell unbeknown upon her elderly heart. Her romance was a dream of excellent management. She pictured herself the mistress of such a house; to have been wed in a well-to-do way, to work for herself, and never to waste so much as a straw, instead of living at home to be nobody and working for her father for neither pay nor thanks. It was in the blood of a Pierce to get money, and Sophia was a perfect Pierce. The ivy ought to be seen to where it was pushing over the roof—nasty crawling stuff, only fit to harbour snails and for sparrows to build in. In the grass ground beyond the barton stood a rick of old hay—five-and-twenty tons or more, Sophia would be bound. John Winterhead must be laying by year by year. And to think he had nobody in the world but that little feather-brained Patty! Sophia had lived long enough to learn that life is hard and uneven. She felt envious.

All the while Patty unheeded went talking on.

She had got a new frock never yet seen on. Well, verily and truly, quite so good as new. For Patty wore after Aunt Maria, who was really a-most so big as a house, and her gowns so voluminous that when the rubbed places were taken out, there was plenty enough left to make for Patty, without skimping one morsel-bit. And Patty herself was never the maid to be hard on clothes. So soon as ever a body began to show shiny under the arms she sent it on to Cousin Selina to be cut up for the chiels. Such was Aunt Maria's wish impressively stated, because there were so many, you see, an’ all wi’ mouths to fill. And Patty was the soul of honour, doing towards Cousin Selina as she had a right to expect that Aunt Maria would do towards her. All of which, though Sophia heard none of it, must be taken to prove that the Winterheads of Charterhouse were a respectable race, with relations both rich and poor, and the double advantage of deriving lustre from one side, whilst upon the other they received respect.

“Harky, then! What’s that?”

As Sophia spoke she turned quickly towards the road. “ There’s somebody about,” she added, lowering her voice to a whisper. Then they both watched and listened.

Scarcely were the words uttered, when a short distance away a man came clambering over a shard in the wall by the roadside. One moment he stood tottering on the loose stones, balancing himself with outstretched arms, then leapt heavily upon the rough waste by the wayside with so little heed that he almost fell.

“ Some drunken groover, up to no good, you may be sure, or he wouldn’t be about when every Kerstin soul is far away. He —he’s coming this way.”

As she spoke, in alarm Sophia drew back a step from the gate.

Patty Winterhead raised one hand to her forehead and peered at this unexpected newcomer who had broken in so suddenly upon her talk. With hasty steps he came striding towards them, but now and again reeled half way across the road, and then, as by an effort of will, recovered himself “ ’Tis the young—the young Standerwick —son o’ the man that’s hanged,” stammered Patty Winterhead, and her face became very white. “Stand more back, Sophia. Don’t let un zee us. Come back here behind the lilac bushes out o’ sight till he’ve a-passed by. He must ha’ come away to once to be here so soon a-foot. Poor fellow. Come in close, Sophia, do.”

They hid beneath the broad leaves and sweet-smelling blossoms.

The young groover—for so the miners of those days were called—came on apace.

In the first flush of early manhood, well grown, tall and straight, at most he could be no more than three-and-twenty years of age. For a long while he had been a celebrity in that neighbourhood, and was well known by sight to the girls who now watched him unobserved between the bushes. Not a feast or revel within ten miles, but he was there—the prettiest cudgel-player in the county. Not a hearth upon the hills that had not heard his praises. For next to money, above everything on earth, the frugal yeomen loved sport, and men game enough to stand up and show it. In their minds the young Giles Standerwick stood apart from the race of wild miners of whom law-abiding folk went in awe. “Odds rabbet un’ he’s so quick’s a bird. Got a eye like a hawk,” they said, and agreed in adding the highest praise that Somersetshire tongue can utter; they never didn’ hear so much as a word agen the man in all their lives.

So for Patty Winterhead this young gamester was already a romantic figure.

"He’s close handy,” she breathed in Sophia’s ear as he passed; and she thrust her head further between the boughs.

The change that had taken place in young Giles Standerwick since she saw him on the platform so alert and triumphant last Cheddar winter fair startled her.

Dressed in an old suit of rusty black, he staggered on, looking neither to right nor left. One of his sleeves was tom. Somewhere in his course across country—pushing his way through a thorn hedge or leaping a rhine on the moor—he had lost his hat. His head was bent forward. His black hair had fallen over his forehead. His teeth were clenched, and his features, formerly fine and sharp, looked thick and swollen. He was a man distraught—beside himself And on and on he went, fleeing in vain from his own wretchedness.

At sight of this overwhelming passion the girl was afraid. Such tragedy was far removed from her own quiet life, and she shrank in terror from the sight of it It overawed her, like the flash and thunder of a distant tempest over the hills. But for the presence of Sophia, she would have run indoors out of the way; just as she always ran to hide in the milk-house when the jagged lightning forked beyond Black Down or above the crags of Cheddar Cliffs. People laughed, but still she did it just the same. For when something touches you deep down within, and the soul shivers, neither thinking nor words can alter that.

“I wish I’d never a-zeed un,” she cried with strong emotion. “ I can’t bear to think o’ it. Poor man! I do pity un.”

“Then I don’t,” replied Sophia shortly, her eyes still fixed upon the turn of the road where Giles Standerwick had disappeared.

“ But ’tis his vather, Sophia.”

Little Patty Winterhead turned away to conceal her tears.

“Well, folk should be honest and live respectable. They groovers do earn money enough in all conscience, more than steady folk. Why, they do get up a poun’ a day when they do meet wi’ luck, so ’tis zaid.”

“ But ’tis terrible to think o’, Sophia. An’ he’ve a-done no harm anyway.”

Sophia snorted contempt of such weak-mindedness.

“They be all alike—a wild, drinking, fighting lot,” she cried. “A good thing there’s one the less o’ ’em. An’ what have it got to do wi’ you? ”

What could it have to do with little Patty Winterhead, happy and safe in that quiet prosperous homestead from which passion and sorrow were as far removed as shipwreck? Certain of the soundness of her argument, and realising that no more was to be seen, Sophia turned round.

“Why, you silly thing, you be all to a tremble,” she said. “An’ look-y-zee, the green off the laylock boughs is on your vrock, an’ on your cheek too. But hearken then! I do hear horses! ”

Patty was too disturbed and too angry with Sophia’s want of heart to answer. It was a relief to stand silent, listening to the clatter of distant hoofs.

CHAPTER II

AROUND THE HEARTH.

“That’s vather,” cried Patty Wintemead with sudden delight. “ I can tell the mare’s step up a mile away. Harky, Sophia! I do know the beat o everybeddy’s nag round about here. That’s Solomon Moggridge the constable’s cob. He do clacky just-about, an’ shoeing can’t cure un. An’ there’s your vather’s old pony too, Sophia—dree-ha'pence an’ tuppence, dree-ha’pence an’ tuppence—but there, he’s vive-an’-thirty year old, an’ nothing ’pon earth can’t cure that.”

“Then now we shall hear all about it,” responded Sophia, too expectant of news to dispute about facts.

Patty was right Far away between the straight stone walls three horsemen were already in sight. In her excitement she ran into the road, and stood with her hand raised to shade her eyes from the setting sun. Her father was riding by himself in front Next trotted great Solomon Moggridge the constable, and by his side little Joey Pierce on his broken-kneed pony, cantering to keep up. A few lengths behind appeared long Jims Matravis, and one o’ Cheddar, and three or four o’ Blagdon. Heart alive! There was to be company to-night, then, sure enough.

But the girl had no eyes for any but her father. As she watched him, at the head of the nondescript regiment of neighbours which his spirit of hospitality had enlisted, her heart glowed with pride. Taller than any, and also mounted on a higher horse, to her mind he made the rest look mean; for he bore a finer countenance, and something within told her that he was a better man.

“Hullo, little mouse!” he cried with a rough tenderness as he drew rein before the gate. “ What? Peeping out o’ your hole, then? ”

She stepped forward to stroke the glossy neck and brown muzzle of the mare.

“ There, take her along, if that’s what you do want,” he told her, with an affectation of indulgence; and, springing from the saddle, he slipped the rein under the stirrup-strap and stood aside.

The mare reached out her head as if to bite, but only kissed the girl’s shoulder.

“ Cup, Cup,” called Patty, holding out her hand. And the mare followed her like a dog.

“There, Constable Moggridge! There, Joseph Pierce!” shouted John Winterhead in his strong, hearty voice. “ There’s a sight for sore eyes. You won’t zee the like of her, no, not in vive-an’-twenty mile. Good as gold, an’ a temper, well! like an angel.”

He wore corduroy breeches, and a blue swallow-tail coat with brass buttons. His whip under his arm, his legs slightly apart, he stood six feet two in his top-boots, a man every inch of him, in the very prime of life, and firm and sound as an oak tree. And he was proud too. There was pride in the way he glanced around at the company and pride in the way he eyed the mare. To him, everything his was best, and so he was contented.

Bom and bred in the old homestead close by, he dreamt of nothing better than to live and die there, when his time should come, and leave land and money to the little maid, and a good name behind him, as the Winter-heads had always done. For him no place was so good as Charterhouse, and no name so good as Winterhead. Body and soul he lived on these traditions, and they made his life complete; for the land grew the row of golden stacks, and John Winterhead, like his father before him, “owed no man money once asked for”. That was a maxim of his race.

He took off his low beaver hat, for his forehead was moist with riding. His features were strong, and his frank clean-shaven face wore an air of honest prosperity. Not a trace of grey was mingled with his crisp brown hair.

Patty was right. In his presence the neighbours became insignificant both in look and speech.

“Ha! ha!” chuckled little Joey Pierce in his grasping way. He could never talk of property except in a sly guttural sort of voice that sounded avaricious. “ Ah! she’d vetch money, Mr. Winterhead. A lot o’ money she’d vetch.” He half shut the little grey eyes that gleamed under his bushy eyebrows, and pulled at his short grizzly beard.

“ Haw! haw! ” roared . great Solomon Moggridge. He laid the rein on his cob’s neck, set his arms akimbo, and laughed loud enough to burst any but lungs of leather. “If I didn’t think Mr. John Winterhead meant the little maid. ’Pon my life, I did then, sure.” And he looked from one to another, greatly gratified to find he had made this mistake.

Nature had blessed Solomon with a good disposition and a flat fallow-field of a face, which art had fenced around with a hedgerow of ragged whisker. Never in his life had he been known to apprehend anything aright—not even a criminal. That was what made him such a good quiet man for constable. He could be trusted not to see too much, not to raise strife, nor to stir up bad blood, nor to go poking his nose where he had no call to. And so, year after year, Solomon was unanimously elected, and enjoyed life well, and gave great satisfaction.

“ Come then, all o’ ee,” cried John Winter-head heartily. “Come, you lazy Blagdon chaps, hop off, hitch up your nags in the cow-stall, one an’ all, an’ come in. You do know the way well enough. But help your-zelves you must, for every mother’s son’s away but one, an’ he’s down wi’ the cows. I do gi’e ’em the day, little an’ big, to encourage honesty. Come on so quick as you can, an’ find out what’s best in Charter-house.”

Some little diffidence seemed to withhold the party. Nothing serious of course, but quite enough for good manners. Perhaps it would be all so well to get home afore dark. Perhaps it might be better to come some other night. Perhaps——

“ If you don’t come when you be asked, don’t ee never dare to come without asking.” This threat settled the matter entirely. As John Winterhead uttered it, he hospitably held open the barton gate, and the visitors hurried through like sheep.

“ Come along then, be sprack,” he shouted good-humouredly, and presently led the way into the house for the merriest, jolliest company that ever rode home together from Ilchester Hang Fair.

Dusk was now beginning to creep into the kitchen, although it was still light outside. The room was low but very large, with a great square window having diamond panes of greenish-coloured glass. Across one of them had been scrawled aslant the name “ John Winterhead, 1720 ”—the signature of the old navigator, it was said, who brought home much money from abroad and bought the place more than a hundred years ago. Greatly did the Winterheads value this tradition; and times out of number had John Winterhead boisterously affirmed that he wouldn’t have the pane a-brokt—no, not for a vive-poun’ note. The tall eight-day clock in the comer, the high-backed settle shutting the draught from the door away from the great open fireplace, the black beams across the ceiling were all of oak, very old and dark. This was before the days of gim-cracks. Every ornament was either a relic, like the buccaneer’s old pair of pistols hanging like cross-bones upon the chimney-board, or a thing of use judiciously displayed, like the bladders against the wall or the couple of hams hooked up to the beam. There was also a small bookcase, with a shelf half filled with leaning volumes bound in calf,

“Come, then, little mouse, bring on a han’ful o’ dry sticks, an’ put out whatever you’ve a-got to eat. An’ zit down all o’ ee. Don’t stand about an’ wait for words. Come, Jims Matravis; come, Mr. Pierce, you be too old to be shy. There, get into the comer, both o’ ee, an’ zit yourzelves down out o’ the way.”

The wood fire sprang into a sudden blaze. Admonished and cheered, the guests began to shuffle into places. One o’ Cheddar and one o’ Blagdon on the settle. Two o’ Blag-don in the left-hand chimney-corner, and James Matravis and little Joey Pierce on the opposite side, as they had been told. Their faces glowed with expectation as the little mouse crept in and lowered the kettle.

But at the outset, a most unfortunate incident threatened to disturb the harmony of the evening.

Great Solomon Moggridge was left standing in doubt. Too polite to take Mr. John Winterhead’s own chair, he drew his broad hand across his wide flat forehead and thought. Certainly Jims Matravis was so lean as a rail, and little Joey Pierce was but a tom-tit of a man, look at him as you would. So Solomon stepped in and wedged himself down between these two. Nothing in the world, except the walls of Charterhouse, could withstand his weight, and little Joey Pierce gave a shriek of mingled rage and pain.

“ You girt vlat-vooted, gorbelly, stunpole, Zolomon Moggridge,” he yelled, louder and louder with each word, “ you’ve a-squot I so vlat as a dough-fig.”

Solomon slowly rose, looked round in perplexity, and apologetically pulled his tow-coloured whisker.

“ Ton the life o’ me, then,” he explained, in blushing confusion, “ I never didn’ think but what there were room.”

“Think!” cried little Joey Pierce, so spiteful as a toad. “You can’t think, you girt yaller-headed calf.” And he stood up and limped out in front the better to rub his hurt huckle.

The three o’ Blagdon chuckled; Jims Matravis laughed outright, but John Winterhead frowned.

Solomon Moggridge scratched his head and searched for a retort Ten minutes afterwards he found one, but that was too late.

Now Joey Pierce was a nervous little man, and to see Solomon standing there so ignorant like had more power to irritate him than the neatest answer on earth. “ Zo you be,” he cried in a still louder voice, “ an’ no more fit to be a constable than my wold hat.”

“Enough said! Enough said!” interposed

Mr. John Winterhead sternly. For it is one thing to call a friend a stunpole, even embellished with adjectives, and hard names break no bones; bat to attack a man in his own office is very unneighbourly behaviour, and a horse of quite a different colour.

So Jims Matravis’s laugh fell flat, the smiles faded from the faces of the three o’ Blagdon, and little Joey Pierce limped back into his corner and sat glum under the rebuke. From these simpler folk such deference was due by right to the masterful character which must speak its mind outright, without fear or favour, indoors and out.

The silence which followed was but brief. In a moment John Winterhead regained his good humour.

“ There, friends all. Bring along the jar, little mouse, an’ some glasses. Drown ill-will an’ hard words. Zit down, Solomon, where you can. There’s a wheaten loaf an’ cheese, so help yourzelves all o’ ee. An’ pull up the settle an’ draw closer round. Do turn off cold at dark here on the hills. An’ bring on some pipes, Patty, there’s a good maid.”

The effect was instantaneous. Everybody became merry again, and even the kettle began to boil. As John Winterhead drew the cork, every eye winked at its next door neighbour. A delicate odour filled the whole kitchen, and made little Joey Pierce sniff. Well enough he knew the smell of a toothful of moonshine, and liked it the better because no duty had been paid. It did his heart good to know that anybody had been cheated except himself.

“Zay when,” cried John Winterhead, as he went round with the kettle.

“When,” laughed Solomon.

“When,” croaked little Joey Pierce.

Thus all differences became covered by the flowing tide of hospitality, yet not altogether forgotten. An underlying sympathy held with Solomon Moggridge. Of course it did. To be called a stunpole about a trifle of that sort. And if Solomon was not so very nimble-tongued, he was at least good-natured.

Sophia had slipped away unbeknown to get home before nightfall. The little mouse brought a four-legged oaken footstool and sat down in the firelight beside her father’s chair to listen.

Then they told the grim story of that day, corroborating each other upon the minutest details. How there were thousands at Hang Fair. Yes, there were, more than had ever been known before; ay, groovers and civil folk so well. And Standerwick, he died game. Yes, he died like a man, he did. And young Giles Standerwick, the cudgel-player, walked alongside the cart, well, so close as ever the constables would allow, and talked to his father from the gallows’ foot, and bade him good-bye, and stayed to the end; and then ran, like one mad, head-first amongst the crowd, and was seen no more.

“ Draw up closer, maid,” said her father. “Be cold? How you do tremley!”

But the girl only drew on one side out of the way.

“ There was half Shipham at the Bull Inn, wild drunk,” whispered Solomon Moggridge. “ There, I bustled on so quick as I could. I was thankful to God, I hadna a-had hand in taking the man. For constable or no constable, what ’ud they care about that? If you had but meddled wi’ a groover. Why, if they did catch ee out ’pon hill one o’ these dark nights, they’d so soon drop ee down a old mine as look. An’ never a soul on earth to hear when you did hollar, or be the wiser where you was gone.”

A murmur of assent wandered around the company. Joseph Pierce moved uneasily and looked grave. Then they puffed their pipes in silence; and, greatly encouraged, Solomon, wagging his head, went on.

“ You zee, what I do zay is this. Tis a ticklish place to live if you be a bit misliked. Tis better to let a thing pass. I should myzelf, I know.”

Solomon revelled in a red waistcoat, and, having spoken, he thrust his thumbs into the armholes and leaned back in his chair, the picture of easy-going contentment.

Little Joey Pierce glanced sharply up. “Pretty talk that for a constable,” he sneered.

Supported by general sympathy on a solid foundation of common sense, Solomon stood his ground.

“Well,” he said with slow deliberation, “ I do call ’twere a bold thing—a’most too bold for wisdom—o’ Mr. Pierce to lay thik information. So there.”

One after another the company chimed in like a peal of bells.

“’Twere.”

“ Iss ’twere.”

“ Zo ’twere.”

“ I’ve a-zaid ’twere more ’an once.” “What do Mr. John Winterhead think now? Let’s hear that,” cried Jims Matravis, and at once each tongue was hushed.

John Winterhead solemnly scratched his chin with the stem of his pipe and reflected.

“ ’Tis law,” he began gravely, with a wave of the long clay to force home his argument. “An’ what’s law we know is right. But I could never bring my mind to think ’twere duty to hang a man for one sheep—not for one. I’d sooner to count one double an’ hold my tongue. But neighbour Pierce, you zee, God so made un that he’s boun’ to hollar when he’s a bit hurt. He’ve a-got a maggot in the brain o’ un that won’t let un bide still. He’s too hasty for calm judgment, to my mind. Come, come, Mr. Pierce, you don’t drink.” At these pleasantries the company laughed outright, and laughter at himself was a recreation in which little Joey Pierce could in no wise join. Stung by the taunt, he fidgeted a moment with his glass and spoon. Then, in spite of himself, his irritability burst forth in words.

“ I can hold my tongue, an’ bide so still as any man living—when I be a-minded,” he cried with growing warmth. “ But what

I’ve a-got is my own, an’ I’ve a-got a use for it. Some o’ us ben’t so well off as some. We didn’ begin wi’ money an’ land a-left us; an’ we ha’n’t a-done so well since. We can’t afford to be afeard——”

“ Afeard! ”

That was a word to strike sparks out of John Winterhead.

“Don’t you ever use the word afeard to me, Joseph Pierce,” he retorted hotly. “ Man an’ boy I’ve a-lived here vive-an’-vorty year, an’ coming or going, night or day, since I were high enough to look a man in the face, I’ve never turned back out o’ fear o’ what were in front; an’ I never had a word stick in the throat o’ me for want o’ heart to spit un out. An’ so I tell you, Joseph Pierce, I would not hang a man for a sheep —not for one. Not for forty thousand judges and juries, I wouldn’ hang a man for one sheep. For murder now, there’s the command o’ God. An’ for a ho’se—that’s different. These here gipsy ho’se thieves up an’ down the country, I should like to zee ’em all strung up ’pon one gallis. But a groover do earn too much money to steal for a trade, an’ never one o’ ’em owed grudge against John Winterhead; an’ I don’t mean he should. But that’s calm judgment, Joseph Pierce—not afeard.”

Little Joey Pierce looked crestfallen, and all would have been well if Solomon Moggridge had but held his peace. Yet Solomon’s words contained wisdom almost worthy of his name.

“Ay, ’tis better to lost a little,” he said, “’an what ’tis to breed ill-will.”

“Better for you, Zolomon Moggridge, better for you,” snarled Joseph Pierce.

The retort just now thought of, laboriously but late, came in handy after all.

“I thank God,” continued the constable with pious gratitude, “ if I ben’t so quick as some, I ben’t so covetchous.”

Little Joey Pierce sprang in a fury to his feet.

“I’ll never zit in company to be called names, not if the man’s so big as a house! ” he cried, and glared on Solomon, as everybody afterwards agreed, as if he would swallow him.

“ Pack o’ nonsense,” laughed John Winter-head, stretching forward his great arm as a barrier. “ Zit down, I tell ee.”

“Unless that word’s a-took back I’ll go to once,” threatened the irascible little man.

“ Zit down, I tell ee. In an honr or so the moon’ll be up, an’ you can ride on comfortable wi’ the rest.”

“ Let un take back that word!” cried Joey Pierce, more implacable than ever.

“Then you take back vlat-vooted, gor-belly, stunpole! ” returned Solomon with a readiness which surprised himself for a long time afterwards.

Quickened by the loud and ignorant mirth of the three o’ Blagdon, Joey Pierce tried to push his way towards the door.

“ I won’t bide! I won’t bide! ” he shouted at the top of his voice.

The lines on John Winterhead’s shaven face grew stem. Then he put down his arm.

“Joseph Pierce,” he said, with more of dignity than anger, “ you corned into Charterhouse so welcome as the light; an’ you mid go so free as the air. But if you do, you’ll never come in again so long as you do live, ’ithout you do come unasked.”

But argument was of no avail. You might as well talk to the wall when the little man’s dander was up. Scarcely were the words spoken, before Joey Pierce slammed the door behind him and was gone.

His departure was a relief. For what good is it to spoil a pleasant evening with so much foolery? “ Give and take," to be sure. That’s the way to go on comfortable like. And Solomon took stunpole like a lamb, so he did. They listened for the ambling of Joey Pierce’s broken-kneed pony as he cantered down the road, and laughed anew. Only John Winterhead was vexed, for no man ever before in anger left his house.

’Tis enough to make good drink get up in the head o’ ee, to talk to sich a feller,” muttered Solomon, proud of having outshone himself in argument; “ an’ like pushing your head into a black thorn bush every word you do speak.”

“ ’Tes.”

“ Iss ’tes.”

“ Zo ’tes.”

“ I’ve a-zaid ’tes more ’an once.”

Then for awhile they fell to discussing with neighbourly liberality the many frailties of their late companion: how grasping he was for what he could get—how stingy over what he had already got—how quick to borrow and slow to lend; and never could a-bear one word in dispraise of himself. And yet withal so foolish that he must go to make bad blood. For it was easy enough to pay off a grudge on these lonely hills. Just a spark of a dark night, on the windy side of a stack, and in five minutes the flames would leap sky-high. Why, a man might be half ruined before he was half awake.

Then they forgot all that. The wind roared in the great open chimney; the little mouse put on more logs; and as they rubbed their knee-breeches and grey worsted hose against the heat, the spirit of gossip that haunts the hearth loosened their tongues, and they told old tales of the hills.

How Jims Matravis’s girt-gran’-vather— well, his gran’-vather’s wife’s vather, look-y-zee—had seen “ the burning of the hill ” with his own eyes. There was one o’ Shipham who stole ore, an’ they shut him up in his own wood hut, there on the slope over against Callow, and piled dry “vuz” all round right up to roof an’ all, till it looked more like one o’ the humps ’pon Black Down than any man’s house. And they set fire to, it, three places at once, hap what may. But the thief tore ope the door ’pon inside, an’ ran through for the life o’ un, where the blaze rushed up like a furnace. He had a long brown beard, so ’twas said, and by the time he was out, his chin was so smooth as the back of a spring chicken plucked and singed.

“An’ that was the groovers’ very own law,” explained Jims, “ that the King hiszelf had no power to gainsay.”

“N’eet the constable,” suggested Solomon with approval.

“Hark! What’s that?” said the one'o’ Blagdon from his comer, holding up his hand for silence.

They turned their heads to listen.

“’Tis folks a-zinging their way home merry from Hang Fair,” whispered another.

“ An’ I hope to God they’ll get there. I do, sure,” beamed the good-natured constable. “ For there’s more ’an one ’ull lost his way an’ lie under the stars to-night I’ll go bail.”

“You lost yourzelf one time, didn’ ee, Solomon?” asked John Winterhead with a wink.

“ I did so,” replied Solomon.

“In your own home groun’, didn’ ee? Leastways so ’tis a-zaid.”

“ I did so. For I trapsed roun’ an roun’ for hours till I wur so mazed as a sheep.

An’ there I should a-bin now, I do lot, if our Tom hadn’ a-comed out wi’ a lantern an’ voun’ me,” chuckled Solomon. “But ’tis a nasty thing to lost yourzelf,” he added, suddenly becoming mighty serious.

“’Tes.”

“ Iss ’tes.”

“ Zo ’tes.”

“But I tell ee what ’tes,” said John Winterhead, leaning back and nodding his head dogmatically at every other word. “There’s nothing ’pon earth—so dark—at night—as a fine rain. In a thick drizzle, mind me, you can’t keep a coach-road, let alone a track across the common. An’ you can’t trust a ho’se then, not even when he’s old an’ waywise. Why, we’ve a-bin in a hole together, ho’se an’ man, five foot deep, an’ stayed there too, wet to the skin, till daylight. An’ should again. For, look-y-zee, there’s only one way right an’ all else roun’ is wrong. An’ if you can’t zee, bide still, I tell ee, till light do come. For, hap what may, this side o’ Judgment, day is boun’ to break. An’ one step more, for all you do know, you mid be down, not vive voot, but vive fathom.”

“ Or ten.”

“Ay. Or more’an ten.”

“ But this is poor talk I do call it,” put in Solomon. “Why, the little maid ha’n’t a-spoke a word to-night. Come, wake up, Missie. Ope your eyes an’ look up.”

The girl, still on her footstool, was awake. Her great eyes, open wide, stared into the fire; but her thoughts were far away upon the common, in the dark, the cold, and the rain.

“Come, strike upl I’ll zing the ‘Blue Muselin ’ wi’ ee myzelf, or you’ll lost the use o’ your tongue else.”

And before she could refuse, Solomon, looking up through the chimney at the stars, in a little tin, cracked, falsetto voice, began that time-honoured song

“ Oh! will you accept of the muselin so blue

To wear all in the morning and to dabble in the dew? ”

And willy-nilly Patty was forced to reply:—

“ No, I will not accept of the muselin so bine

To wear all in the morning and to dabble in the dew ”.

Then Solomon, growing dramatic, held out his great freckled hand towards the maid, and as he gained courage his voice cracked the more:—

“ Oh! will you accept of the pretty silver pin

To pin your golden hair wi' the fine muselin? ’’

And Patty replied, just like a response in church:—

“ No, I will not accept of the pretty silver pin

To pin my golden hair with the fine muselin

A gust of smoke came driving down into the kitchen. John Winterhead got up and went on tiptoe, ever so little to open a window. But Solomon, now well started, in spite of coughing, continued to sing with great feeling:—

“ Oh I will you accept of a pair of shoes of cork——”

“Stop! There’s somebeddy a-hollaring,” suddenly cried John Winterhead.

The song ceased. Every mouth was opened wide to listen. Sure enough an impatient rattling of the garden gate could be distinctly heard, and presently came a cry shrill and clear:—

“ Mr. Winterhead! Mr. Winterhead! ”

The cold night air rushed in as he drew back the heavy oak door. The little mouse followed him, and stood shivering in the porch.

“ Dash my wig! ’Tis Sophia! ” he muttered in alarm.

And almost before the company had found time to shuffle to their feet, Sophia came running breathless into the house.

“ Full half an hour have I been a-fiddling wi’ that fool of a latch; an’ ran every voot o’ the way from Ubley, too,” she cried in anger at the delay. Glancing from one to another, her quick eye took in every detail, and her tone of complaint suddenly changed to dismay.

“ Where’s vather? Where’s my vather? ”

In consternation at her father’s absence, she turned abruptly towards John Winter-head, and the demand contained both accusation and reproach.

“But isn’t he home, Sophia?”

“ I never thought but what he was here,” she went on in breathless anxiety. “The wold pony have a-comed in wi'out a soul ’pon his back; the rein all a-brokt an’ a-dragging half a mile under the hoofs o’ un. I never thought but what he’d a-brokt loose—”

“ An’ didn’t you meet your vather ’pon the road, Sophia?” interrupted Solomon, his broad, good-natured face covered with dismay.

“If I had, should I want to ask you?” she answered contemptuously. “ No, I know what ’tis. He had a glass too much, an’ you teased un so mad as a bull. An’ he up an’ went. An’ you let un go. An’ then, like a fool, he mus’ needs take some short cut, an’ fall off. An’ who’ll have to pomster un up wi’ his rheumatics, an’ put up wi’ his ways, I should like to know, when he’ve a-got scrammed a’most to death, a-lying out in the vrost? ”

“Zit down, zit down a minute, Sophia,” said John Winterhead kindly, laying a hand upon her shoulder. “You were too quick. Ten to one your vather had a-comed home all right if you had but waited a bit. Zit down an’ warm yourzelf while we do get ready. We’ll ride on all together. If he ha’n’t a-got home to Ubley, we’ll find un quick enough, no fear.”

But these well-meant assurances did not belie the doubt which lay at the bottom of his heart. To the quick ear of Patty, attentive to the slightest turn of her father’s voice, his anxiety was manifest. Sophia sat down. In a moment John Winterhead was prompt and masterful, as always when something must be done.

“Look alive, all o’ ee—quick’s you can! Sprack, little mouse. Light the lantern an’ run out to stable, an’ find a physic bottle for a drop of brandy, if you can.”

The company wisely drained their glasses, for to waste good liquor is sin, and bustled out.

Little Patty Winterhead, kneeling down upon the hearth with her lantern, drew a burning stick from the fire to get a light But all the while she was wondering how Sophia was to ride.

“ An’ get out the pillion, Patty, there’s a good maid,” her lather shouted back from the porch.

The pillion! Sophia to ride with him on the pillion!

Unused since her mother's death, it was hanging half forgotten in a cupboard of the inner room. It went to her heart to get it out—and for Sophia of all people. For though in a sort of way they were friends, there was no tenderness between them. And Sophia looked harder than ever, leaning forward from the comer seat, with her palms stretched out to catch more heat from the burning sticks.

A spirit of revolt arose within the girl. Her hand shook so much that the candle would not light.

“ Here, gi’e it here,” said Sophia, snatching it away in her abrupt, short manner. In spite of her anxiety, she held' the wick quite still in a dancing little blue flame.

Already was heard the clatter of horses as they came into the road, and somebody shouted to Patty to be quick.

There was no help for it. She ran in the dark, and fumbled with the pillion as she reached it down from the peg. Sophia, indeed! A sentiment was outraged, and she cried as if she had been hurt. But there was no time to lose. Before she got back into the kitchen Sophia had gone.

Little Patty Winterhead ran out with it into the road. When all was ready she held the lantern by the uppingstock beside the gate for Sophia to mount

“ Hold tight! ” shouted John Winterhead to Sophia, as the neighbours rode straggling away, very much as they had come.

Left alone, the little mouse set her teeth and stamped her foot It made her mad with jealousy to see Sophia’s arm around her father’s waist

CHAPTER III

THE LAST LIFE OH UBLEY.

The April showers were not all gone. Now and again a pattering raindrop threatened storm, as black masses of hurrying cloud went chasing each other across the sky. But the north wind drove them on too fast to fall. Great solitary stars shone out undimmed in the gaps between the darkness; and then for awhile the wide expanse of heaven was swept clear. The distant ridge of the down, the winding of the road, even the long grey walls—undulating for miles across the open common—became discernible under the soft whiteness of the Milky Way; and like a halo upon the brow of Cheddar Hill grew the pale light of the rising moon.

“ ’Tis none so dark,” called John Winter-head to those behind. “Mr. Pierce’ll have found his way home all right afore we do get there.”

At the entrance to Ubley, a low thatched homestead half hidden amongst sheltering beech trees, he drew up and peered into the gloom.

“Ride on,” urged Sophia in his ear. “I trigged the gate wide ope myzelf, for vather to ride straight in if he should be late. But he ha’n’t a-comed. He’d be out at the sound o’ us if he had a-comed.”

She jumped to her feet, even before the mare was still, stumbled upon the rough ground of the farmyard, and ran into the house.

The neighbours drew closer together and talked in loud whispers. Dark, shapeless figures, against the black background of hedge and trees, they could with difficulty distinguish each other.

“Who’s that, Solomon?” “No, Jims.” “He can’t ha’ corned home, never in this world.” “Not that. When Joey Pierce is about he’s boun’ to show hiszelf” “Ay. If he’s mad wi’ us still, he must run out to hollar; an’ if he’ve a-got good-tempered, he must pop the head o’ un out o’ winder to call us all the fools ’pon earth for the trouble we’ve a-tookt.” “If he’ve a-brokt a lag or anything, I suppose Sophia could manage.” “Manage? She’d manage all Mendip.”

The laughter which greeted this tribute to the greatness of Sophia was promptly stifled as she came running back into the barton.

“ He’s not there,” she cried, frantic with apprehension of mishap. “There’s never beenso much as a sound, so the maid do zay. Ah! he’ve a-met wi’ harm. He’d a-heard us else, as we corned by. ’Tis two hours agone the ho’se runned in—an’ more too. A pretty upsetting, sure enough, if he’s to be laid on the back o’ un, God only knows how long. An’ the man a-coming first thing in morning about buying o’ the pigs.”

Even in distress, no sentimental weakness marred Sophia’s excellent common sense. No tears dimmed her insight into the inconvenience of an accident to her father. Nor could she easily overcome a natural impatience with one of his years who had been fool enough to get lost.

“ Well, he’ve a-got to be foun’, I suppose,” she added, in her short discontented way. “ What can us do, Mr. Winterhead? ”

“ Ay, to be sure. What had us better to do, Mr. Winterhead? ” echoed Solomon.

In any party whatsoever of the yeomen of that neighbourhood, John Winterhead was the acknowledged leader. This position was his by Nature, and Fortune had confirmed the gift. Without hesitation he took the whole matter into his hands.

“ Neighbours,” he began sententiously, “Joseph Pierce is a man wi’ more headpiece ’an heart”

“ He is,” agreed Solomon.

“ An’ he’d play so many pranks as a fox to take care o’ the skin o’ un.”

“He’ood.”

“ If he heard folk upon the road, sooner ’an fall in wi’ a drunken groover on a night like this he’d turn off the track—ay, an’ lie so quiet as a mouse when we went by, not knowing who we mid be.”

He paused for a more general assent “ An’ wait for the moon to be up to make his way home,” suggested long Jims Matravis, and the rest chimed in again.

“ Iss, he ’ood.”

“ Zo he ’ood.”

“ But for all that we mus’ waste no time. Part up all o’ ee, two an’ two together. One lot ride athirt the down—an* one up by the cross roads—an’ tothermy along the common. An’ stop now an’ again, look-y-zee, to call the man by name. Then if he’s hurt, he’ll know who ’tis an’ answer.”

“ But what’ll you do yourzelf, Mr. Winter-head?” It was Sophia who asked. She was quicker witted than the men.

“I’ll ride across to the mineries, myzelf, so quiet as I can. If there’s anybeddy a-moving, mayhap I mid find out who ’tis.” His voice sank into a whisper, and the neighbours said not a word; they knew full well the thought that was working in his mind.

By this time one half the moon had risen above the hill. It cast a pale light upon the field beyond the trees. Without many words the company paired up as they would, Solomon and Jims, two o’ Blagdon together, and the other with the one o’ Cheddar. Sophia followed out of the shadow of the homestead and watched them depart John Winterhead, mounted upon his high mare, turned away alone, a tall black figure against the sky.

A few yards away he stopped.

“ Sophia,” he called back to the girl, and she ran at once and stood beside his stirrup.

“Get a drop of brandy,” he told her. “ The little mouse forgot it, but her mind’s too quick for thought. There, it mid come in handy. ’Tis cold to lie upon the grass by night. Look, you can zee the groun’ all white wi’ vrost.”

In a minute she was gone and back.

“What a sprack nimble maid you be, Sophia!” he cried in admiration. And when she handed up the bottle he leaned forward and patted her underneath the chin. “Why, what have all the young chaps bin a-thinking about to lef ee alone? ” he laughed.

He slowly crossed the field and passed through a gate into a tract of wild, uncultivated land. The young stock that wandered over it at will had worn for themselves beaten paths across the heather and between the clumps of gorse. Along one of these the mare picked her way, sometimes striking her hoof against hard masses of projecting rock. Here and there a boulder of mountain limestone, jutting from the hillside, shone in the light. A herd of some half-dozen white heifers was huddled together in the shelter of a ruined kiln, and the mare pricked forward her ears. “Steady, mare,” he said to her in a low voice. And she kept on at his word, for well enough they knew the place and were at home together.

At last they stood upon the brow of a promontory overlooking a hollow. The great full moon, now free of the hill, hung in the sky and killed the stars with light; but the valley below was dark as pitch. A whitewashed cottage, standing above a row of round buddling-ponds in which ore was washed, cast a faint ghostly glare upon the black stagnant water. Upon the deep shadow the wooden huts of the minery stood out like blots.

John Winterhead watched and listened.

No one moved. From no chimney darted up a single spark, and not so much as a rushlight gleamed from any window in the place.

Far away upon the hills behind, at intervals, he heard a shout—now from one part, then another. This was the only sound that broke the silence of the night. Without knowing them, from the lusty throat of Solomon Moggridge he could have caught the words:—

“ Mr. Joseph Pierce! Joseph Pierce! ”

“ They don’t drop in wi’ un,” he muttered to himself.

He did not call. He was not afraid. It was no idle fireside boast that he had never turned back nor held his tongue through fear; but he felt it prudent to look well around before arousing that dusky valley with his voice. The night was now very bright and clear. Upon a white-beam bush, springing from a crevice in the rock below, he could see the swollen buds bursting into green leaf against the sombre purple of the rind. Upon his right, for a quarter of a mile, the crown of the hill was covered thick with pits and holes, close together, like the cells of a honeycomb. More than a thousand years ago, men said, the hands that delved them had gone to dust. But none knew when they were made or when abandoned; and in the lonely moonlight this was the most desolate, forsaken place on earth.

He raised himself in the saddle and narrowly scanned the ground around.

It was conceivable that the missing man might have chosen to go home this way, yet none but a fool would take such broken path, upon a stumbling pony without a leg to stand upon.

A dread, amounting to a certainty of evil, came over him.

He turned his mare, and, skirting the old diggings, peered in vain into these mysterious pits, one after another, as he passed. Then he called, not loudly, and only once:—

“Joseph Pierce!”

No answer came. Afar off, Solomon Moggridge and the rest, more anxious as time went by, kept hooting to each other like owls. To hear them angered him. What good was so much of it? Did they want to call up the whole country? If the man was near enough to hear, he could hear, couldn’t he? They were getting round towards Charterhouse too. It would be as well to get back at once and decide what ought to be done.

Beyond the abandoned mines, across the common, lay an unfenced drove. He took it and cantered towards home.

His mind was as free to think on horseback as in his armchair beside the hearth, and thoughts came crowding pell-mell into his brain. Joseph Pierce would never be found. Lord! A couple o’ groovers—and it might have been half a dozen that went singing by—mad wi’ drink an’ riotous from Hang Fair, would carry the man a mile in mere frolic to drop him deep into the earth, where he might lie out of sight, unheard of and unburied, to the last trump.

He turned into the straight road between the two walls leading to his house.

It would be a slur upon Charterhouse if anything had happened, and he leaving like that. Yet what could be done with one so hot and “ voreright ” as Joey Pierce? And Joseph Pierce was the last life on Ubley.

Love of the land was second nature in John Winterhead’s yeoman blood, and now the thought of it came uppermost, pushing all else aside, like the thought of a thing beloved.

Joseph Pierce the last life on Ubley! If anything amiss had befallen, Ubley Farm must fell into hand. Mercy ’pon us! Why, left alone, the man was sound and good for ten—fifteen—ay, a score o’ years, wi’ luck, an’ Sophia to manage, if—

“ Steady, mare. Steady.”

The mare had swerved. With the irritability of one disturbed in mind, he spoke impatiently and kicked her with his heel.

But she would not go on. She tried to turn. Then, as he held her straight, with legs and neck outstretched, she trembled and backed, and snorted as if to drive an evil smell out of her nostrils.

On the rough wayside grass, close by the gap where the stones had fallen off the wall, his eye caught sight of the thing that frightened her. It looked like a man. It might be a groover lying there dead drunk. But John Winterhead knew better. His heart leapt into his mouth. Something told him, sure enough, that the shapeless heap was little Joey Pierce, and that the mare sniffed blood.

He twisted the mane around his finger and sprang from the saddle.

Even in his excitement, with prudence characteristic of the Winterheads, he led the mare on a few yards, slipped off the bridle lest she should catch herself up, and let her go head-free. It was little better than a furlong to the house; her stable door was open. She would find her way home, safe enough—trust her for that.

He knelt down and gently turned over the injured man to look upon his face. The earth was moist. Hoar-frost lay like silver upon the grass, but a deep stain of red remained across his knuckles where his hand had touched the ground. John Winterhead was of good nerve, yet he shivered at the sight.

Yes. It was little Joey Pierce who sat just now by the fireside and quarrelled with his friends.

His cheeks were cold and white as ashes. Not a sign of breathing came through his parted lips. Upon one side the grizzled hair was black and stiff with blood, but the great cut upon his head had ceased to bleed.

Seized with sudden fury, John Winter-head cursed all the groovers upon earth between his clenched teeth Then a softness of pity crept into his heart so that he could well-nigh cry. Joseph Pierce! whom he had known from the first—who was up a hardish lad when he was a child. He gently lifted the poor limp body to a more level place nearer the road. As he laid it down it quivered in his hands. It heaved a sigh.

Quick as thought John Winterhead drew the bottle from his pocket. The brandy was what was wanted to save Joseph Pierce from death. Little by little he poured the spirit between his lips and was glad to hear it gurgle in his throat. All the while he kept speaking to him, recalling him to sense, as he would have aroused him from sleep.

Warmed into life, Joseph Pierce opened his eyes and stared half-dazed into the face bent over him.

For one moment his mind came back.

“Giles Standerwick,” he gasped, with something of his old eagerness. “ It was— young Giles Stan—”

With the effort of speaking the bleeding burst out afresh; and before the sentence could be completed he fainted again. slight tremor passed over him from head t$ foot, like when old people tell you some one is treading upon your grave. Once he sighed—his jaw dropped—and Joseph Pierce was dead.

Away up the road Solomon Moggridge, Jims Matravis, the one o’ Cheddar and three o’ Blagdon had met at last. Emboldened by numbers they kept calling together.

“Joseph Pierce! Mr. Joseph Pierce!”

The irony, the futility of it begot in John Winterhead a passing contempt.

Ay, they might call in vain for Joseph Pierce.

It flashed across his mind that it might be prudent to say nothing to these open-mouthed fellows of what he knew. Sure as the light one or another would blab, and the murderer make good his escape before the law could touch him. He would not tell to-night that the dying man had spoken at all, but whisper a word in the ear of Constable Moggridge to-morrow—when nobody was about—in time to give evidence at the crowner’s quest. That was the wisest way without doubt.

And now the others were in sight. He got up and slowly walked to meet them. He had no heart to call aloud and tell them what had happened.

Opposite the body they all dismounted. They stood around silent and overawed, as simple souls must always be in the presence of death.

“ It must ha’ bin the groovers that went by a-hollaring,” whispered one.

“ To be sure. 'Twere soon after he went,” agreed another.

“ Unhang the nearest gate, two o’ ee, an’ we’ll carr’ un into Charterhouse,” said John Winterhead in a hoarse voice.

“ Why, ’tis the last life ’pon Ubley,” whispered Solomon to Jims as they passed under the porch.

CHAPTER IV

THE CROWNER’S QUEST.

A clear day and night had passed, and again it was afternoon. The sunlight gilded homestead and stacks, just as when Sophia stood with little Patty Winterhead by the gate and looked at Charterhouse with longing eyes. Only the solitude was gone. Along the road, drawn up in row two deep, were empty carts; and wherever there was gate or rail, horses, big and small, with saddles or harness left upon their backs, had been made feist. A crowd of people thronged in the great porch. Others stood to listen under the open window. For the crowner had come at noon to hold his quest, and the court was sitting still John Winterhead pushed his way out of the house. Beads of sweat stood upon his forehead and he drew a deep breath of the open air.

“ ’Tis enough to stifle a man,” he said to those aronnd. “The folk be packed like sheep in a pen. ’Tis so hot’s a oven in there.” And he walked out into the road.

For two nights he had not closed his eyes. Ever since the murdered man was brought in, he had stayed in the kitchen and watched; and want of sleep, to one who never even dreamed, of air, to one who lived a-horseback on the hill, had made his face thin and haggard in a day.

So it was over—so far as he was concerned at least.

The last four-and-twenty hours had been a nightmare; and now, with the horror of it still upon him, he was awake. The whole thing, every little word and incident that had carried weight with him, came back, as it were, and passed rapidly before his mind.

How the thought wormed its way into his brain—that it would be easy not to tell— and wise.

At first it startled him. It was so new, so different from all his pride had ever imagined when he pictured himself. The foremost yeoman of those parts, he held always before his eyes an ideal John Winterhead, in whom he firmly believed, and of whom he was wont to talk with bold certainty as of a third person intimately known and vouched for. “John Winterhead, thank God, could look any man in the face.” “John Winter-head never begged nor borrowed, an’ never said ‘no’ to a friend in need.” “John Winter-head’s han’s could take care o’ the head o’ un.” “ If ever day should shine an’ no welcome in Charterhouse, let John Winterhead put on the green waistcoat,” by which he meant lie under the graveyard sod. And now in the guise of prudence came a temptation to haunt him and sap the manhood out of his heart.

Even at the outset a strange occurrence settled, in the minds of all, the story of the death of Joseph Pierce.

Without wasting a moment, Jims Matravis and one o’ Cheddar galloped down into the town for Dr. William Haggett, a hard-riding, deep-drinking practitioner of those days, whose hearty manner and vigorous treatment never failed to win the confidence of the sick and the admiration of the sound. But the doctor having also been to Hang Fair was not readily found, and being found, showed no inclination for rapid travelling. He was too dead-beat to be hurried. His horse was tired as a dog. “Is the man dead?” he kept asking. “Yes.” “Well, then, when a man’s dead, neither bleeding nor physic can do any good in the world.” But at last they got him off, and slowly jogged up the long winding road between Cheddar Cliffs and along the drove. And all the way they talked—of when Joseph Pierce went out; of how they heard the drunken groovers go past; and how and when John Winterhead found him. And the doctor asked questions all the while, and, having heard what they had to say, dismissed their answers as of slight importance with a “ Well! We shall see; we shall see.” So by the time they got to Charterhouse two hours had elapsed.

Important and blustering he staggered into the kitchen, a round red-faced man in boots and breeches, with a hunting-whip tucked under his arm.

With John Winterhead he shook hands, nodded to the company at large, elbowed Solomon aside, and stepped forward to where the body lay.

“ Dead! ” he said shortly, raising the dead man’s arm. “ Stone dead. Dead—and cold —and stiff.”

He glanced around the little circle of neighbours standing open-mouthed with wonder, and noted how they dwelt upon his words. Then he half shut his beady eyes, looked up at the great oak beam, and deliberated.

“ I should say,” he went on with impressive slowness, “I should say—that Joseph Pierce—has been dead—five hours.”

The three o’ Blagdon all did sums in their heads. So did Solomon Moggridge, but his worked out wrong. Yes; ’twur about that time agone that Mr. Pierce went out. And he mus’ ha’ been lying there dead even when Sophia ran by, for she hollared at the gate, to be sure she did.

Thus encouraged the doctor began freely to impart from the rich stores of his mind.

“Now I’ll tell you how I know this, gentlemen,” he cried, with a dogmatic shake of the head, and tapping with gentle familiarity on the corpse with his riding-whip. “I can tell this by the rigor mortis—the rigor mortis, gentlemen, a learned name signifying the stiffness of death. And I’ll tell you more ”—he lowered his voice to a whisper and became confidential—“Joseph Pierce, gentlemen, was knocked down. He never knew what happened to him. He never uttered a sound. He bled to death in—in twenty minutes, and not all the surgeons and ’pothecaries in England could tell you different.” He paused, and became fierce against imaginary opposition. “Not if they knew what they were talking about,” he added with bland superiority.

There are inferior practitioners all the world over, as everybody knows, who will say anything. But, bless you I for the people on that side of Mendip no surgeon nor ’pothe-cary on earth was the fellow of Dr. William Haggett. His remarkable clearness of insight on this occasion went far to increase his already great reputation. Solomon Moggridge, in a flight of enthusiasm, afterwards declared that he’d sooner be blooded by Dr. William Haggett than he’d drink wi’ many another fellow. “ Zo’d I too,” agreed Jims Matravis, “if you did but chance to catch un sober.”

“Summon me to the inquest, Constable Moggridge,” cried the doctor magnanimously. “ It’s a poor fee, but I was never the man to think of that in a matter of duty.” Then he turned round to the fire to comfprt himself a little before riding home. And so there was an end to the matter.

By the first glimmer of daybreak all the neighbours had gone, and left John Winter-head alone, sitting in his armchair. The great logs, burnt in two in the middle, and long ago fallen abroad, lay in disorder upon the hearth. Yet he took no notice. His elbows on his knees, he rested his face upon his hands as if he had fallen asleep. But all the while he was thinking.

It would be easy not to speak. Dr. William Haggett (and a lot he knew) would tell his story in the beginning, when he explained the injuries to the jury, and after that no questions were likely to be asked.

It must be understood, no fear for his personal safety troubled the mind of John Winterhead. The loss of maybe twenty years estate in Ubley had already greater hold of his imagination than the death of the man. And all about a fat wether sheep worth no more than forty shillings, well sold! The folly of it was so pitiable to him. And before it was broad day Sophia came running across, weeping and lamenting, but always with the same woe-begone refrain of homelessness to end each outburst of grief. “Ah! if he but held the tongue o’ un, he mid ha’ bin alive an’ well now, instead o’ leaving his folk ’ithout a roof over their heads.”

If he offered this evidence and became a marked man, he could never again be free from care. Not but what he would come and go at will, as he had always done—let those meddle with him who thought it safe. But the land lies open to ill-doers as it does to the light. The beasts beside the lonely hill—the stacks standing together close, bum one bum all—the house itself, with the thatch against the backlet down within reach o’ hand—he thought of all these things. He could never again lie sound abed if John Winterhead was a name misliked.

And the little mouse. Should anything ever befall to him and she were left, Patty was not the maid to take care of her own— like Sophia for instance.

Many a time he had wished the girl wed. Ay, she ought to marry well for herself— she had a right so to do with Charterhouse falling to her and all. He hoped to watch her child grow up a man to whom the place must come. He loved Patty both with tenderness and pride. She was his. She was the very moral of her mother, as they say in Somerset, only smaller still — the very daps o’ her, so to speak—and her mother had been his. He loved her the more for her strange ways. They made her one by herself, just as he, John Winterhead of Charterhouse, was different from all the rest about. Patty was quick as a bird. If he went in danger she would know without telling. With the fate of Joseph Pierce always before her mind, she would go in fear and trembling if he were only out of her sight.

And two lives taken already for one sheep! Could the hanging of young Giles Standerwick bring back Joseph Pierce lying there under the sheet dead and cold? Joseph Pierce was beyond help. It could do no good to any on earth, and he himself might be the worse.

Yet Joseph Pierce was his friend, had eaten at his board hundreds of times, had sat by his fire, and——

Stronger than prudence, than the instinct of possession—stronger than all else in his heart was this man’s pride in himself. Many a time his chair jarred upon the smooth stones of the kitchen floor as he suddenly stood up and shook himself free from thought.

Come what might, John Winterhead would speak out.

He was still of that mind this morning, when Solomon Moggridge came to set all things ready and fit. The constable brought half a dozen jurors in his two-wheeled cart, because they had so far to come. He was filled with the importance of office. He had done the thing well Three-and-twenty good and legal men had he summoned, “ Because, look-y-zee, out o’ dree-an’-twenty, to a ‘ aye ’ or a ‘no’ there’s boun’ to be twelve o’ one mind ”.

The jurors came in handy, for there was a deal to be done. They strewed a han’ful o’ clean oaten straw to cover the cold flags o’ the floor. They set the chairs for the jury at the end of the kitchen farthest from the door and general public. They placed a table in front with pen and ink for the crowner himself.

And as the work progressed Solomon became talkative. “Nothing could be better nor more han’pat,” he declared with pride, “ not at the best inn in Cheddar. But la! ’tis but for form. Nobeddy’ll ever know who killed poor Joseph Pierce, not this zide o’ the grave.” He gravely shook his head, but the reflection gave him great satisfaction, and the jurors also looked relieved.

Quite early people began to arrive in twos and threes, and sometimes more together. Their presence aroused in John Winterhead a desire for the credit of Charterhouse. “Come along, some o’ ee, an’ help put up a trestle-table in milk-house for a bit o’ victuals, an’ roll out a half-hogshead o’ cider,” he shouted in his old hospitable way.

Then he went to the foot of the stairs and called for Patty.

“Come, little mouse. Don’t be afeard,” he said to her kindly, touched by her pale frightened look. “Bring out the week’s batch, an’ a cheese, an’ put a fresh ham in cut. Then anybeddy a bit leary can go in ’ithout words and help theirzelves.”

So the crowner’s quest was like to be a funeral feast as well The kitchen was already filled with people when the coroner and Dr. Haggett drove up together. Many were waiting in the garden too and watching by the gate, talking at the tops of their voices. But as these two personages pushed their way through the throng every tongue was hushed.

The crowner was of good family, well known in the neighbourhood; and, as the country people doffed their hats, he merely nodded to right and left and passed on, until in the porch he met John Winterhead. Then he stopped to shake hands.

With all his sturdy independence of character John Winterhead was pleased with this distinction.

The coroner spoke in the everyday tone of a man whose interest in the matter in hand is purely official.

“A sad thing, Mr. Winterhead. Very sad indeed. The constable has told me all about it. Poor Pierce was unwise. It’s as much as a man’s life is worth up here to set the law in motion against a groover.” Then his voice sank into a confidential whisper. “I—I’ll call the doctor first and get at the cause of death. Then the men who brought in the body. And as he was last in your house, and there was a bit of a quarrel, so they say, I’ll get you to prove that none of your party went out after he was gone.”

Then, as they turned to walk indoors together, he added pleasantly:—

“What a nice place you have here, Mr.

Winterhead! I was admiring it as I came down the road.”

John Winterhead made no answer. All was so simple and natural that again it seemed easy not to tell. He went in and leaned against the arm of the settle, too absorbed in his own thoughts even to hear the lusty voice of Solomon opening the court by proclamation, “Oh, yes! Oh, yes! Oh, yes!” and calling upon the jurors to answer to their names, “ every man at the first call, upon the pain and peril that shall fall thereon ”.

But when it came to the taking evidence, John Winterhead looked and listened with all his senses alert.

It would be easy not to tell.

Yet the words of the oath kept ringing in his ears.

“ The evidence you shall give at this inquest, on behalf of our sovereign lord the King, touching the death of Joseph Pierce, shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So help you God."

One phrase staggered him. “ The whole truth.” He would have to -kiss the book upon that oath. Then he sought to explain it away. “ The whole truth.” Of course, that is to say to question put.

Yet even this would not avail. One after another the constable, Jims Matravis, and the rest were examined and their very words taken down, and as each finished, his answers were read aloud to him. Then the crowner, pen in hand, would glance up from the paper and ask, “Is this the whole evidence you can give? ” And the witness, replying “ Yes,” stepped up to the table and laboriously scrawled a sprawling signature in the right-hand corner of the sheet.

To keep his secret it would be necessary to lie on oath. To say “So help me God” and lie.

Suddenly a strange thought came into the brain of John Winterhead. Hundreds of times he had heard it said that hearsay is not evidence. Who could know that of a dark night Joseph Pierce saw aright? If hearsay were not evidence, he did not break ' his—

At that moment his name was called. He stood forward at once with the quibble fresh in his mind.

So imperfectly in time of excitement can men observe, that every witness had honestly sworn the body was cold and stiff. Everything was clear, and little more remained to ask. How long was he there before the others came? Only a few minutes—they were already in hearing. He moved the face to make certain it was Joseph Pierce and went to meet the constable. Then he told the story of the quarrel, of the voices passing in the road, of Sophia’s coming, and the search.

The crowner also made it easy for him unawares. When it came to signing the information, he chanced to ask in a less formal way—

“ Is there anything you wish to add, Mr. Winterhead? ”

John Winterhead hesitated. For one minute his native outspoken honesty hung against prudence in the balance. The court was quite silent. It seemed like an age. Surely he was acting strangely to pause so long.

“ No,” he answered, with abrupt decision, but in a low voice.

At once he took the pen, boldly put his hand to the paper, and everything was done.

After that the place suffocated him. He could scarcely breathe, and without waiting for the verdict he hurried out into the air. He had done it—had broken the law of

God and man. Yet how it happened he scarcely knew. He felt cowardly and mean —no longer the upright and down-straight John Winterhead of the past. Something within kept saying he had wronged the dead —yes, he had wronged the dead. And yet no harm to the living could follow what he had done. That was clear enough. A cool breeze blowing down the road brought him back to himself, as it were. The spring was pushing upon every side. A skylark was singing overhead as if it would never stop, and a cuckoo calling down by the wood. He glanced across at the field where stood the rick. How the grass was coming on! Most wonderful well! He could see the difference since he looked three days agone. The sight of it soothed him. And how the cows had mended this last month 1

It was good to have the land, and live in plenty and peace, and wise to hold his tongue. For, after all, what he had done was not from fear, but out of pride in Charterhouse, and love for the little mouse.

Presently the people began to come out of the porch, and he walked quickly down the path towards them.

“ Person or persons unknown, I suppose?” he asked of the first he met.

“ Person or persons unknown,” they told him.

Then they stood by the gate, gossiping of how the young Giles Standerwick, half-mad, had run straight home to Shipham that afternoon, so it was said, and had never been seen out since.

Nobody once suspected him. It was the gang of drunken groovers, sure as the day.

CHAPTER V

A LITTLE RIFT.

Less than a month had gone by, and the murder of poor Joseph Pierce had almost passed out of mind. He was already forgotten; or if the countryfolk, when they jogged along the road by Charterhouse, recalled his name, it was only to point a moral, or to wonder about the future of Ubley Farm. Other matters of greater importance held their thoughts. The orchards on the south of the hill down by the moor were all a-blow. “ Please God not to send any late vrostes, an’ what a sight o’ apples there will be to be sure! ” “An’ how wonderful rathe the grass do come on to-year!””

“

“Ay, therell be a terrible good crop o’ hay, and no mistake, if the Almighty do chance to gi’e us a dry zummer to carr it, that is.” But for this little uncertainty as to the future movements of Providence they had never a care in the world. For this once they really couldn’t ha’ done things no different-like, not if they had a-had the hands o’ it their very own selves.

Yet, in spite of this prospect of prosperity, a change, perceptible to the quick sense of little Patty Winterhead, had come over the domestic life of Charterhouse.

Her father was not the same. She could see it in his manner and hear it in every word he spoke. Never once since that night had he brought home from market an unexpected guest; and when Solomon Moggridge, on his road home from Cheddar Fair, chanced to look in towards the after part of the day, there was no boisterous welcome such as she knew so well.

That was a quiet evening early in May. She ran for a pipe a-piece and a two-handled cup between them, and they sat over-right each other on the stone seats in the cool of the old porch and talked. She fetched out a little rush-bottomed chair from the kitchen to sit down in the open and listen, for a gloom still hung over everything, and she was glad of a change; and every word spoken that night went deep into her memory, for whilst they were there a thought first hit into her mind which never again left her from morning to night.

Her father said little, but Solomon talked a deal.

Solomon was excited, for there had been sad doings at Cheddar Fair.

“Why, a little ginger-headed foreigner from down t’other zide o’ Taunton Dean carr’d it all avore un, so he did. I were so mad’s a bull myself to think the young Giles Standerwick werden there to cut the comb o’ un, then. But the young Giles Standerwick, so the tale is, ’ull never play at the back-swording no more. ’Tes zaid he’ve a-had wonderful luck this three year an’ saved his money. An’ then the trouble fell upon un, an’ that have a-brokt the heart o’ un, so’s he’ll never stan’ up no more for volk to throw his shame at un like. Ah! ’tes a woful pity, I do call it.”

Solomon sighed; but the finest consolation in Somerset is cider, so he drank deep and handed the cup.

A cloud darkened the face of John Winterhead. That was but natural, for he had always been an ardent lover of the sport and loud in his praises of the young miner; yet his answer was strange.

“ If he’ve a-got a grain o’ sense lie’ll never show his face again,” he cried contemptuously. “ If I were in his place I’d carry my body out o’ this country afore I was a day older.”

The girl looked up quickly. Not the words, but his manner startled her. Had he said this out of pity for a man in misfortune, she could have understood; but his tone was sharp with dislike. For the first time in her life she felt herself in disagreement with the father whom she worshipped. But he had not seen the young Giles Standerwick in his distress.

“ Mus’ be most terrible hard,” she sighed, “to lef the place where you’ve a-bin bom an’ bred an’ be doing well; an’ all no fau’t o’ your own, too. La! I sim I couldn’ go away from Charterhouse—not for all the world.”

“ That’s quite another thing,” retorted her father angrily. And although for the life of her she could not see why, she said no more. The colour came to her cheek, and she turned away her head like a child who has been chid.

Great clumsy Solomon saw it, and could not hold his tongue.

“Heart alive, Mr. Winterhead! ” he blurted out, with good-natured dulness; “ you’ve a-frightened the little maid, so you have. Why, if she idden all to a flitterment an’ so red as a piney, then! ” And he laughed, with his great guffaw, loud enough to be heard half-way to Blagdon.

The girl rose hurriedly from her chair. To hide her confusion she turned away and took a narrow path leading to a walled garden beyond the house. Scarcely had she passed the great window before her father called her back.

“ Here, Patty! Come here, an’ don’t make yourzelf so silly,” he cried, still impatiently.

One moment she hesitated and was about to answer; but he took the empty cup from beside him on the stone seat and held it out towards her.

“There, catch hold. Run out in cellar an’ draw a drop more cider,” he added in a kinder tone.

The girl stepped forward to obey; but, shaking from head to foot, as she reached out her hand to take the cup the handle slipped between her trembling fingers. The cup fell and smashed to pieces with a crash upon the flags of the porch floor.

“ Why, what be 'bout? ” he burst out in sudden nervous anger. “Whatever be fit for, to get in such a state for nothing at all?”

Startled and hurt beyond words, she stooped down and began slowly to gather the shards into her apron; but he would not wait. “ Lef it as ’tis,” he cried shortly. “Run in to once an’ take down another; an’ mind not to let un drop ’pon the road.”

Glad of the opportunity, little Patty Winterhead hastened in with this admonition ringing in her ears.

The so-called cellar was an out-building at the back of the house, and through the door, left half open, came only enough light to distinguish a row of great cider-butts standing against the wall. To the farthest of these she groped her way. There, on the projecting corner of a beam which kept the barrel from the moist earth-floor, she sat down and cried.

What could it mean?

All his life through her father had never been impatient as during the last few weeks. Now nothing was right; she could never please him. What could have happened? What had she done? His words cut her to the quick, and she kept saying them over to herself between her sobs. “ Whatever be fit for?” “Mind not to let un drop ’pon the road.” And all about a thing of a cup bought of a travelling van for four-pence! A month agone and he would have laughed: “There, there! Good for trade. The crockery-man must live so well as the rest.” And now he never laughed; just as if something weighed upon his mind.

Suddenly came to her a sense of her own insufficiency, many a time vaguely doubted, but now clearly seen.

No! She was not like the rest of the girls about. She was not so big. And she hadn’t the gumption for things, and that Up to now her father had treated her as a child; at last he saw aright. She was grown up. He looked for more and was disappointed. What good could she ever be to anybody? At this her heart sank and her tears fell thick and fast.

Yet for all that what she said was right. There was no harm in it, and no call to get bad-tempered. It was cruel upon the young Giles Standerwick, who had done no harm. Her sense of justice stuck to that It was cruel. So there.

With this she plucked up courage, and bent forward to turn the tap, for there was no time to waste. The cider slowly gurgled into the cup, and with her apron she patted her eyes lest Solomon Moggridge should see them red and say she had been crying. Then she ran back for fear of keeping her father waiting.

They were talking, and took no heed of her now.

She would not go away to look as if she were out of temper or afraid, but she loitered beside the little knot of flowers in the comer between the window and the porch. On one side was a briar-bush. She picked a little green leaf to pinch between finger and thumb. How fresh it was! The last of the warriors below the sill were in full flower —blood-red; and gilawfers, coming into bloom, made the air quite sweet. And everything was quiet except the song-thrush high up upon the garden pear-tree, the blackcap hidden in the orchard hard by, and the voices of Solomon and her father sitting there quite close but out of sight. The scent, the sounds, the quietude of growing eventide, crept over her senses and calmed her soul. Little Patty Winterhead came back to herself. Her father was upset with all the botheration and caddie; but a little bit, and that would die out, and everything be the same as in the time agone. So she set her mind at rest. But then, whether she listened or no, she could not help but hear.

In the manner of their talk her quick ear found something unusual and unreal, which caught and held her attention.

Solomon was “ sucking up” to Mr. John Winterhead with a flattery more than fulsome. Good honest soul! If one thing more than another put the constable out, it was to have “any disturvance ”. The brittleness of John Winterhead’s temper had made Solomon mild as milk, and insinuating as rum-shrub. He was chanting her father’s praises in his sing-song Somersetshire voice.

“ Ay! that’s what they all zaid in to fair. ‘Mr. John Winterhead have a-bin a true friend in time o’ need; an’ acted wi’ so much judgment too.’ That’s what Jims Matravis zaid. ‘ Where could Sophia ha’ found another to counsel her as Mr. John Winter-head have a-done? ’ An’ Dr. William Haggett, he spoke up too: ‘ I’d so soon take advice o’ John Winterhead as any lawyer in Bristol town, so I would ’. An’so’d I too,’ said I, ‘ for you do know there’s nothen in his mind arkep’ back.’ Ah! that’s where ’tis, Mr. Winterhead—there’s so many do keep things back for their own ends like.”

Solomon stopped to chuckle over the double-fac&dness of human kind..

What a fuss! thought the girl Why, what had her father done? La! he had but ridden round Ubley once or twice. Nothing at all to make so much talk about.

She heard him tap the ashes from his pipe against the wall Then he answered strangely, as it seemed to her. Instead of dismissing all this flummery with a bluff honest phrase, he was clearly pleased with it.

“ Well, Solomon Moggridge,” he said slowly, “ I don’t say I’ve a-done the best that could be done, but I’ve a-done the best I could.”

“ You couldn’ ha’ done better, Mr. John Winterhead, not if Sophia Pierce had a-bin your own,” replied Solomon with enthusiasm.

“ I shouldn’ ha’ done no ways different,” her father went on, keeping up the quibble o’ phrase. “ I’ve a-bin into Wells vive times —no, ’tis zix wi’ yesterday—’bout the will, an’ the lan’, an’ one thing an’ t’other. An’ I’ve arranged it all. Sophia is to stay on to Milemas rent-vree, so as to get in her crops. An’ then anybeddy ’pon earth can take Ubley for me.”

“ I hope to God, wi’ all my heart, she’ll manage right an’ do well! ” cried Solomon devoutly, and drank so cordially to the wish that he could be heard.

“ I tell ee what ’tis, Solomon. What Sophia Pierce don’t know about business idden wo’th no man’s while to stop to learn. Besides, I do goo across an’ tell her what to do, myzelf, day by day ——

The girl could bear it no longer. Without waiting to hear more she ran quickly along the path and into the orchard beyond the house. These praises of Sophia for the qualities lacking in herself were bitter to her. And why had her father told her nothing of what was taking place? Of the will, of the journeys to Wells, and how it was all to be settled. Not a word had he spoken, and yet these things were known to the neighbours and an open talk at Cheddar

Fair. She had been set aside as if she were nobody.

She had never liked Sophia, and now she hated her. Sophia Pierce indeed! What were the Pierces to the Winterheads? Or Ubley to Charterhouse? But she saw it all. The moody silence of her father, his uneasiness of mind, and his impatience with herself, were accounted for. He wished to marry Sophia Pierce.

Yes. He wished to marry Sophia Pierce.

The thought got hold of her like a madness. She hurried on between the trunks of the apple-trees, black in the dusk of the overspreading branches. As she went, her quick imagination fashioned every little fact and fancy to fit this new-found belief. He wished to marry Sophia Pierce. His promise not to marry again, which he was too much a man to break, fretted and galled him beyond bearing. The restraint had eaten away his affection. For weeks, ever since the death of Joseph Pierce, he had not once called her his little mouse, nor laughed with her as of old; and he was grown silent and secret in his ways.

Then she grew suspicious. Her father wished her wed. Sophia told her so some time ago. He was too proud to say a thing like that in company, as if she were left and he disappointed. They must have been talking alone. So they met even then before all this business brought them together. If she were married and gone he would be free. Her mother’s wish meant only that no one should be set over her in the house. How displeased he was by now when she thought she could be nowhere so happy as at Charterhouse—just as though he wished her away. Oh, well! She should never marry and go—so they might rest their hearts content.

This anger, suddenly kindled, just as suddenly went out. There fell upon her a hopelessness under which her spirit sank, and all the courage was crushed out of her heart. Darkness came creeping over the orchard. Even the white blossoms, lying in places upon the ground like snow, could no longer be distinguished from the rank grass and nettles growing so lush beneath the trees. But she did not go in. There was no hurry. Solomon was there to hold her father with his talk; and her pride was gone. Nothing would ever be the same to her again. She must always stand in the way of his wish.

Well! let him marry Sophia if he was so minded. What did it matter? That was just as well as to make life miserable because he must keep his word. Oh yes. Let him marry Sophia.

“Patty! Patty!”

He was calling from the garden. Before she had time to reply he went into the barton and called again.

Wont to wait upon his every word she ran in haste. It would look odd to be in the orchard. If only she might get into the house unobserved, and answer him from there! But by the orchard gate she came upon him, as the country-people say, “full-butt ”.

“ Hullo, little mouse,” he cried, just in his old way. “ Where have you been a-hiding yourself away then? There, come along into house. The constable’s gone. Tis a’most dark, an’ high time to lock up.” By the path he stopped and put his hand upon her arm. “How sweet your flowers do smell! ’Tis the dew do freshen ’em, I count,” he said quite kindly to make amends.

It took no more than this to drive away the clouds. Her heart warmed to him at once, and her quick emotional nature turned upon itself with upbraiding and reproach. How could she have believed him changed? except that he was worried in mind, of course. It was no more than right, and like him too, to help Sophia. Sophia indeed! And the talk with Solomon had done him good. A little while and he would be hearty and glad enough to see the house full again.

And indeed it seemed that Patty was right.

“ There’s a new hat an’ ribbon an’ a sight o’ money come Whitsun Tuesday to be played for on Shipham Green,” he shouted to her whilst he barred the door. “ So get ready your new vrock, little mouse, an’ pull out your zummer fal-lals, for ’tis time now, sure enough. An’ we’ll just go across an’zee the sport.”

CHAPTER VI

SHIPHAM GREEN.

They rode along together, three or four— Solomon and long Jims and a couple from the Warren—neighbours all. Patty was on the pillion behind her father, he insisted upon that. Of course she’d ride! Why not? He had clean forgot the thing for years, ever since she was a child, that is; for her mother never went a-horseback a longful while afore she passed away. And the mare would never know she was there—not no more than if it were a little hen dunnock a-perched upon the back o’ her. He was so pleased with the idea, that, although Patty felt some fears, having never before travelled in this fashion, she fell in with his whim without a word.

And very fine they looked, he in his blue coat and she in her white frock put on for the first time that year in honour of “ White-suntide

The sunshine, the open air, the expectation of sport kept the men merry. Every little thing along the road caught the quick eye of the girl and made her heart glad. The little whinchat fluttering above the gorse in yellow flower as they passed Black Down, the wheatears that flew in front and pitched again upon the loose stone wall. And above Beacon Batch, high up in the blue sky, a sparrowhawk was fighting with a crow. How they circled one above the other, and struck! She pointed them out.

" ’Tis a hawk an’ a crow,” said Solomon.

“ Zo ’tis—a hawk an’ a crow,” agreed long Jims.

“Ay. That’s what ’tis—a hawk an’ a crow,” echoed the others.

Her father just looked but did not condescend to speak at all.

Since the evening in the porch he had not once been angry; but she watched him narrowly when he went and when he came, and her suspicion had grown into certainty. She knew he rode across to Ubley every day, but nothing was said. And yet he never started as if to go that way, nor returned as if he came therefrom. He wished to hold it from her, as well enough he might; but such petty shifts, so out of keeping with the outspoken fearlessness which raised him in her estimation above everybody she had ever known, were undermining her respect. It was enough to love Sophia. The passion of a staid man, who should know better, cannot clothe its folly in that gauzy vesture of romance which gives to the wildest freak of youthful love the beauty of a dream. It is ridiculous, look at it how you may. And all this secrecy made it mean. So something had come between little Patty Winterhead and her father which it would take more than time to remove.

He did not dream of this, yet he knew that things were changed.

Open house, a good horse, a stout heart, and a clear conscience—these in his imagination made up the joy of life; and these had been his* in fact One may have house and horse and be of little worth for want of heart and conscience. Another, with heart of gold and conscience white as silver, to earn his bread must be another man’s man, and that is a sorry thing. But to have all is enough for any but a fool, or a knave with a covetous eye that nothing on earth can satisfy.

And the delight of real manhood must be in the true thing and no outside show. For what comfort is there in wheaten bread got on trust, wi’ no money, and pay-day well-nigh due? Or, if the mare were unsound, yet nobody but he had found it out, she would have been no pleasure in his eyes though she stood as handsome as a picture.

All this John Winterhead had clearly seen and said in his own way hundreds of times, never dreaming that it might come to him to suffer any lasting discontent. But now he was never at ease. His self-respect, the high horse he used to ride, was hurt and carried him limping, so that he could never go easy and satisfied, or look at an upright John Winterhead in the old proud way. If, in heat of anger or smarting under a wrong, he had done the murder himself, he would have stood in better plight than to-day, with his heart softened towards his dead neighbour, and the knowledge that he had feared to speak out always before his mind. And he was no longer free to come and go, as he used to boast. For when the thought was on him, rather than pass the place where Joseph Pierce was found, he would turn off and ride a mile farther round to come home to Charterhouse upon the other side. Once, when he saw young Giles Standerwick coming up from the mineries, he cantered his mare away across the common sooner than meet the fellow upon the king’s high-road. And these things, known to none but himself, kept his temper always on the edge.

But, to - day, troubles were forgotten. Father and daughter jogged along together high up on the open down, with the brown heather for a mile or more on each hand, and the broad valley rich and green stretching far away below. White homesteads gleamed between the orchards and elm trees, and beyond the distant hills a narrow strip of sea glistened in the sun. Then, as they passed over the brow and began to pick their way down the steep road, they could look down upon a nest of thatched roofs and see people gathering on a village green.

“ Shipham,” said Solomon.

“Ay, sure, Shipham,” corroborated long ^ Jims.

At the village itself the girl scarcely glanced.

The two or three decent farmhouses clustering around the church, the scattered huts upon the hillside, built of stone, but white- washed so that they glared in the sun fit to make your eyes ache, possessed neither charm nor novelty to quicken her imagination. Short as was the distance from Charterhouse, she had never been there before. But the wild deeds of the Shipham men, a never-failing subject for winter fireside gossip, had many a time made her shiver as she sat silent in the chimney comer beside the burning logs. Her only thought was of the groovers, for the place had no other meaning in her mind.

A bend of the road, and they came upon a few straggling cottages, with narrow garden plots enclosed within walls of loose stones, lying along the wayside. Upon the right, against the slope of the hill, a house, rather larger, stood apart from the rest. It was low and long-roofed, with a small square porch contrived of three slabs of blue stone. But the door was shut, a thing to note in that warm June weather. A vine covering half the front, tom down by the wind, hung neglected away from the wall; and although the windows showed the place not untenanted, the garden was uncropped.

Solomon Moggridge, jogging along behind, bestowed a kick upon the ribs of his stout cob, and quickly brought him alongside the mare.

He pointed mysteriously with his thumb over the shoulder, and nodded and winked. To ensure secrecy he put his great brown hand over his lips and in a whisper, to which a nor’-west wind is a trifle, he breathed the confidence:—

“ Standerwick’s. Young Giles Standerwick’s.”

John Winterhead frowned and hastened his pace, but the girl eagerly turned and fixed her eyes upon the house. The forlorn appearance of the place went to her heart At once her ready apprehension, seizing upon every detail, grasped to the full the horror of a tragedy which had so often haunted her mind. She was overcome with terror—and with pity, too. The delight of sunshine, sky, and open air was gone. She wished she had not come. Her own trouble came back. Trembling, she hid her face behind her father’s broad back of blue for fear the rest should see.

But the attention of the others was otherwise occupied.

They had now reached the slope close above Shipham; and the hillside, dotted here and there with wooden huts in which the groovers kept their tools, was burrowed like a rabbit-warren. Out of holes, big enough to take the body of a man, but many of them with little to spare, miners came crawling, their clothes earth-stained and yellow-red with “ calamy ”. They were giving up work to go down to the cudgel-playing, and they swarmed into the road before and behind the little party of yeomen riding down from the hills.

Between the one and the other was a wide contrast indeed.

The law-abiding husbandman, with his love of quiet and security, hoping by years of patient frugality to add another acre to his holding, was of a different race from the reckless groover, who cared for no law but his own wild code, and might be rich ten -times over if he would only be respectable. His wealth easily gotten was ill spent; yet sometimes there were weeks together when he found nothing, or not so much as would bring him bread. Then who knows? He might stop a man by night upon the hills. Or if a sheep should be missing who dared say whither it was gone? For the groovers held together as thick as thieves, and that was the great virtue of their class.

Down the hill they came, laughing and shouting to each other. But John Winter-head did not turn his head, and Patty was a-most afeard to look, and Solomon only squinted out of one corner of his eye, as a good constable should. And so they got along together to Shipham Green, and put up their nags at the “ Miners’ Arms ” by the corner.

Upon one side of this grass plot, in the very heart of the village, where the roads meet, a platform had been set up. A few yards behind, a sort of scaffold, with a tier of seats one above the other, was already half filled with substantial folk to whom a shilling was not all the world. Here and there a groover or two in luck, sitting cheek by jowl with people of consequence, Dr. William Haggett and the crowner himself— good-now! and women-folk who would see the sport but were shy of being in the crowd.

To this stand John Winterhead pushed his way through the people, now and again looking back to be sure that Patty was at his heels. The front seats were taken, all but two at the end. and nodding to one and another as he passed, he sat down at the very edge of the foremost row. Dr. William Haggett waved his hand from a distance and shouted in his great blustering way, “ Hullo! Mr. John Winterhead. Pity the young Giles Standerwick isn’t here.”

There was nothing but Standerwick— Standerwick at every turn he took. He waved back a civil assent, but Patty noticed that he swayed to and fro impatiently and shook his head.

His vexation was soon forgotten. Sightseers came thronging in by every road. The green was nearly filled. Wherever there was a window there were folk to look, and people standing upon every bit of wall. Why, at one cottage the men had put a ladder against the thatch and climbed up and sat astraddle upon the ridge. So there was enough around to hold all eyes and keep every mind at work. And John Winterhead, like all the rest, felt that the moment was at hand when the credit of that side o’ Mendip was at stake.

For this meeting was the outcome of the play at Cheddar, when the old gamester from below Taunton carried all before him; and Dr. William Haggett had talked loud, and offered the prize, and made bold to say that he would find a Mendip man who could stand up before the best, come from where he might. But in his boast he was thinking of the young Giles Standerwick, who would have no more of it.

It wanted full five minutes to the time fixed for the playing to begin when over the heads of the crowd a hat came spinning and pitched plump in the middle of the platform.

Some around set up a cheer.

Beside the ladder for gamesters to mount the stage a huge groover with a fair freckled face and a red head was standing, and at this sound of exultation he mounted one step and turned round to the rest.

“What’s that about?” he cried angrily. “That’s no Shipham hat, I tell ee.”

At once there was a murmur and discontented talk, for many a head in Shipham was hot from Whit Monday revelling, and tongues, having already been well oiled today, were apt to run loose. What would have shown high spirit in one of themselves was no better than taking a mean advantage in a man from the other side o’ Taunton. “ Why hadn’ er a-drowed in his hat the day afore yesterday? ” “ Ay! or the week afore last?” Then came a shower of Shipham hats, half a score of them. “There! Let him take it out o’ that! ” shouted John Winterhead, catching the excitement.

The church-clock began to strike; but before it had gone three, the sticklers took their places to see fair-play, and in a trice two players were face to face upon the platform. Long Jims Matravis was to play the first bout against the champion from the other side of Taunton. As he stepped forward in yellow cord breeches and grey hose, and a shirt fresh-washed as white as snow, John Winterhead clapped his hands. “ Keep up your butt, Jimmy,” he cried, for a man must be cold-blooded indeed who can see a friend stand up for the place where he was bred and say nothing. Jims turned round, laughed, and shook up the little basket-guard so named and held in the left hand. Then they measured distance. “Keep up your butt an’ God preserve your eyesight,” said each to the other, and so they fell to play.

The sticks rattled, ten times in ten seconds, quicker than eye could follow. Then they stopped. Blood came running down Jims’s forehead, though nobody quite knew by what stroke this was brought about. The thing was so quick that Jims himself was “ dumb-foundered,” and without one word of explanation stepped down amongst the crowd.

There was cheering of course, yet applause must needs be half-hearted when all the world is wishing the upshot otherwise. John Winterhead alone was of mind large enough to give honour where it was due.

“ Perty play. Perty play. I never wish to zee quicker,” he called out, and looked around the stand with now and again a stubborn nod o’ the head, let any man say “no” to him who might.

As it began so the thing went on; for if a man will play all the country, he has his work cut out, and no time to waste in fanciful tricks and showing off and that One after another they came up, sometimes a yeoman in his white shirt, sometimes a groover in his working dress, for like enough he had but that; and one after another, maybe in two minutes, maybe five, they went down again with broken crowns, until Shipham men felt very sore and many of the faces round about looked sullen too.

At last came the turn of the great redheaded groover beside the steps. Before picking up his cudgel he stopped to roll up his sleeves, and he spat in his hands, just as if he were going to work. Six feet four, with his long hairy arms bare, he towered like a giant half a head above the other, who was a smart man too, for all they said he was little. But when the set-to began it was seen that all the play was changed. There was no rattle of the sticks, but now and then a sharp blow, hard enough to break any but a stout ground ash in two. The Taunton man grew wary, for height told, and he could not hope to get behind or beat down the groover’s guard, and he of Shipham, with all the people shouting on his side, laid on with all his might.

At last he hit the stranger across the shoulder, a blow with a dull-sounding thud that might be heard half-way up the hill Some drew in their breath to see it, others only laughed. It made little Patty Winter-head turn sick and wish she had not come. And John Winterhead hallooed across to Dr. William Haggett by name, that this was all too savage for true science.

But the gamester did not wince. He only played more warily whilst the groover grew still more fierce. And there was such a fascination about it, that, although little Patty’s heart was in her mouth, she could not help looking; and the goodwill of her wayward little spirit, which always saw things different from other folk, was with the “ foreigner ” and not with the Mendip man.

Then for a minute or more there was nothing done. Then, just in the same way, the groover struck again. But before he could recover his guard, the other hit him with all his force upon the head, so that it was no question of a broken crown, but rather of a cracked skull. And the groover fell back all along-straight, there where he stood, and lay upon the stage as still as if he were dead.

At once the place was in an upstir. People by the steps rushed up upon the platform. Dr. William Haggett, raising both hands, warned them back, calling out in his blusterous, pompous way to let none touch the man until he came, or he would not be responsible. But between the stand of seats and the players’ stage people were packed as tight as wax, and by the time he had pushed his way through, there was a pool of blood upon one of the deal planks as big as a pewter platter.

All the while the gamester stood there stick in hand, not certain what might be to follow. He was to play all comers, and like enough there were more to come. But scattered all about the crowd, wherever there was a groover, rose an oath and a growl; and by the comer where Patty and her father were sitting, a score, or maybe more, in a group together, kept hallooing to throw the man off the stage, “ an’ twist the neck o’ un ”. And when the senseless groover was lifted down they made an ugly rush towards the steps, so that quiet people, seeing fear, shuffled out of the way as quickly as they could.

Then the spirit of fair-play in the heart of John Winterhead was stirred.

Red in the cheek and angry he sprang to his feet, with both fists clenched, and ready to face the whole lot of them.

“ ’Tis fair,” he cried out in his lusty voice. “ All fair, an’ nothing but fair, an’ the best stickler ’pon earth must zay the same. I zay, what you do gi!e, you mus’ make up your mind to take, The man played so light as a feather, till t’other cut un a’most in two. There’s no one among ’em wi’ more ’an a scratch on the fore part of his head, like. An’ if he’ve a-beat ’em—why, respec’ ’un the better for it.”

At these words the hindermost of the crowd had turned about to see who was speaking, and one shouted back that he never thought to see Mr. John Winter-head o’ Charterhouse against the Mendip country.

“Against the Mendip country?” roared John Winterhead, for his blood was up, and he never bore contradiction meekly. “ I tell ee what, I’ll gi’e any mother’s son o’ ee the best golden guinea that ever were coined to stan’ up afore the man.”

He stopped, but no one answered. Then he struck with his fist upon his open palm and went on louder still.

“ I’ll gi’e two—so there. Look-y-here. I’ll gi’e a vi-pun-note, so crisp that he’ll rottle ’twixt your vinger an’ thumb, to any man on Mendip that can draw blood. So the next is well paid, win or lose.”

Scarcely had the offer passed his lips when at the far end of the green a fresh hubbub arose. Presently a hat, quickly handed over the heads of the people, was thrown to pitch right at the feet of the man from below Taunton. With great pushing and angry cries to “ make way,” a passage was slowly forced for one more adventuresome gamester with pluck enough to try his luck. Then cheers burst from every throat as the young Giles Standerwick stepped upon the stage.

“ And there’s one’ll take your money, Mr. Winterhead,” laughed the groover who had before spoken.

But John Winterhead had already sat down.

The girl’s attention fixed, eagerly upon this young miner, whose sad story so deeply moved her sympathies, and whilst her eyes seized upon every detail of his appearance, her imagination found reasons to account for his unlooked-for presence that afternoon. Against his will he had been persuaded to play, for honour of the hills. Yet how he was dressed! Not in working clothes, but a white shirt, like a decent man. That must be pride, the outcome of the shame he suffered. She liked him for being proud. He had done nothing. He did not look like a groover, with his thin face and black hair. And he was taller than she had thought— or slighter. She hoped with all her heart that he would win.

But how would her father take it? for it was clear to see he hated the very name of Standerwick.

The thought agitated her. The cheering died away, and every eye was fixed upon the back-sworders as they stepped towards each other. She turned to speak a word— but lo! the seat beside her was empty. Without a word her father had stepped down from the end of the stand and was gone.

She glanced on all sides—down the road —amongst the crowd—but nowhere was he to be seen. It made her angry. To think that, after getting so excited, he should steal away because he did not like this man! She felt ashamed. It would look as if he begrudged his five-pound note. Not that she thought that. Too well she knew him, and was too proud to harbour such a doubt. For if, as they say, he had opened his mouth too wide, he would be the last to own it But it was strange.

The sticks clattered. There was an outcry and a clapping of hands. The sticklers cried “ Bout,” and the players stood back a breathing-while. Little Patty Winterhead watched narrowly, as if her heart were there, but all the while her inner thoughts were worrying, so that for the life of her she could not have told what she had seen. And she felt afraid, for in the pause the groovers hard by began to talk again of what they should like to do—but not aloud, in low voices and words that made her shudder.

The gamesters fell to again. How it happened Patty did not know, but in a minute there was a cry of “ blood,” and a red spot on the forehead of him from the other side o’ Taunton, just by the parting of his hair. So Mendip triumphed after all. And to hear the noise, and see men dance and throw up their hats, you might have thought one half the people had gone well-nigh mad. As the young Giles Standerwick stepped down they pressed around to catch him by the hand, wild enough with joy to almost squeeze the breath out of his body.

Now whilst all this was taking place, many decent men, and such as loved fair-play, hearing the discontent, and having an inkling of what might come, had gathered close about the stage. And well they did. With autumn gorse under Callow rocks it was a spark—a flame—and all ablaze. And a Shipham crowd in those days was just like this. A word—a blow—and then full riot.

So in a moment, before Patty was aware, the whole place was astir.

The groovers made a rush; but the others, stronger than they, pushed and beat them slowly back, inch by inch, with fists and sticks, until, gaining force as they went, like a running tide, they came all around, and the stand where Patty sat stood like an island in a sea of strife.

The girl was afraid. Not so much that she saw fear for herself, but there was many a broken head; and the people who were pushed back against the scaffold by the weight of the crowd kept shrieking and crying that they were crushed to death. Such as were able climbed up upon the stand. Some crawled under, for it only stood on poles, and was open upon three sides out of four.

There came a sharp crack, and then the tearing sound of splitting wood. The seats swayed. The post by the comer where Patty sat broke off short, and without power to help herself she was thrown into the midst of the struggling mob.

For some yards she was carried along; but the press became looser now the barrier was gone. She felt herself falling. She clutched at the one nearest to her and cried for help.

Then a voice shouted to hold back, for a child was being trampled under foot.

Quicker than it can be told she found herself lifted from the ground. With no more ado than if she had been a maid of five years, a man had got her in his arms and was battling his way with her, thrusting the people aside with both elbows, and shouting to them to make room.

He held her higher than his shoulder above the crush and she had not seen his face. But he was strong, and the firmness of his grip gave her confidence, so that she was no more frightened than if it were her father.

On the farther side of the green, by the mouth of a drang-way, which at that time led between and behind the cottages along the hill, a laburnum tree leaned over a garden wall. Masses of “golden-chain,” knocked off in sport by the village boys, strewed the ground. Here on the edge of the grass, by a path of rough stones, he set her down.

She turned to thank this unknown friend in need.

It was the young Giles Standerwick.

Still breathless from her alarm, and quivering with excitement, in her surprise her tongue could shape no words together to say how greatly she was beholden to him. Something she managed to stammer—of no account. How that she was much obliged —and—and then she stopped.

Partly she was mute, because he had been so often in her thoughts. She reddened like one found out and ashamed, and looked down.

He too, on his part, was ill at ease to find this village child, as he supposed, whom he had so readily picked up, a girl of twenty and woman grown. He knew her too as John Winterhead’s maid o’ Charterhouse, one of the well-to-do sort—of the people who looked down on him and his.

“I was afeard you’d get hurt,” he said bluntly, but half in apology. “’Tis to be hoped you be nothing the worse.”

Her white frock, crumpled and soiled, was strent from the pocket-hole right down through.

“ No, thank you,” she faltered, with a rueful glance at herself. “Thanking you for your kindness, I—I be none the worse.” The fight was still going forward behind them on the green; it grew even noisier as it became less fierce.

Then round the comer at the head of the drang-way, in haste to see what was the matter, hurried John Winterhead.

But not alone. Close at his elbow walked Sophia Pierce.

CHAPTER VII

AN INVITATION.

When John Winterhead found Patty standing with the young Giles Standerwick his anger grew beyond bounds. Suddenly breaking off in his talk he strode down the drang faster than Sophia could follow. In his heat he took no heed of what her quick eye seized at the first glance—that the girl’s frock was tom and tumbled, and her hair over her eyes. He only saw her talking to this groover, whose very name he hated, who had doubtless won the five-pound note. That must be the meaning of the noise, and that the reason why Standerwick dared to speak to Patty. What did the rascal think then? With such haste to ask for his pay before a man had time to put hand to pocket.

As to the money, he begrudged it not one moment to any honest fellow who could win it by fair-play. To laugh at himself, and say

his tongue had outrun judgment, then to cast aside all thought of what was gone, that would have been his way. But it galled him deeply to pay this man. It was an eye-sore to see the scoundrel about—alive and well. He muttered an oath, and wished with all his heart the old gamester had knocked the villain dead upon the stage.

Then he might forget that he, John Winterhead, had robbed the gallows, and get rid of this everlasting inward reproach.

As to Patty, when she saw her father with Sophia Pierce, her first feeling was of utter astonishment. Then the misery of her doubts and the rage of her jealousy came back.

She could see he was angry—in his face and gait, and by the very way he walked; and all because of his unreasoning dislike for the man who had just befriended her!

And this dislike, forsooth, only from his fondness for Sophia, as if no other person in the world had suffered trouble, or had feelings to be thought of. For if there was an Ubley fallen into hand, there was also a cottage by the hillside as lonesome as a grave.

And Sophia knew how to make a market of her misfortune, sure enough. No fear!

The young Giles Standerwick stood back. He raised a hand to his forehead in salute as her father came up.

John Winterhead passed him unnoticed and turned directly to the girl.

“ Why couldn’ you bide where you were? ” he asked, and the words came hard and slow between his clenched teeth; “ but what you mus’ go a-tearing about so wild as a March hare, as if you had nobeddy in the world to belong to ee. There! You’d better walk on with Sophia Pierce, since you can’t be left alone a minute by yourzelf. I’ll come on an’ catch ee up when I’ve a-fetched the mare.”

He made as if to go down to the green on his way to the inn stable.

A few weeks ago she would have trembled under his frown and presently cowered away to hide. But in her excitement she felt no fear. An angry spot glowed upon her freckled cheek, and her answer was an outburst of pent-up bitterness.

“ I’ll walk on by myzelf,” she said. “ For when they that do belong to ee do creep away to go about wi’ other folk, ’tis high time to take care o’ yourzelf. Why, the whole thing came down crush. I mid ha’ bin squot to death an buried under it, if it hadn’ a-bin that the young Giles Standerwick pulled me out, and carr’d me up here out o’ the way.”

At the recollection of her fright she fairly broke down.

“An’ a good thing too if I had, for all I can zee,” she sobbed in a passion of tears.

The hard look still upon his face, at the mention of the groover’s name John Winter-head turned about. He had it in mind to give him one word of thanks, but the young Giles Standerwick was no longer there. Just for a moment the sunlight fell upon a white shirt as he passed out of the shadow of the wall under the laburnum tree.

The girl was still crying as if her heart would break when Sophia came up.

“ La, Patty Winterhead 1 let I,” was what she said.

Scarce were the words out of her mouth before Sophia found two pins in her waistband, put them in readiness between her teeth, turned up her black skirt knee-high, and was down on her marrow-bones upon the hard road to fasten together the torn frock; for such torrent of grief the practical Sophia could divine no cause deeper than that.

Little PattyWinterhead indignantly pushed her aside. She would have nothing to do with this woman who was taking away her father, and whose friendliness was mere double-faced deceit. She hated such suck-ing-up ways.

“ Let it be,” she told her sharply. “ I don’t care if I be all to rags an’ libbets.”

“ But massy ’pon us!” urged Sophia, “ you can’t go all down street like that.”

“ I don’t care. I’ll go on by myzelf. I don’t want anybeddy wi’ me; an’ I’d sooner walk, if ’tis every step o’ the way. I’ll go up behind the houses an’ into road, till father do come along.”

“ Leave her alone,” said John Winterhead in the discontented tone of a man who feels it no good to reason with womankind. “ Let her go her own gait.”

And because he thus gave ready consent, the poor girl was filled with the misgiving that he was glad to have her gone.

She went nevertheless. At the drang’s end was an upright stile of blue stone with a step let into the wall, and then a short footpath through a piece of grass into the highway. Not a person was in sight, for every man and woman had run down to the green. The grass, half grown to hay and yellow with buttercups, nearly covered the dusty little beaten track. Skylarks were in full song—a concert of them high above; and when one tiny dot after another, whiver-ing against a great white cloud, closed its wings and dropped to earth, the music did not cease.

But neither quiet nor solitude had power to soothe the soul of this young girl. Never before had sorrow befallen too great for open fields and fresh air to charm away. Now the spell was broken. The sensibility, so strange to all the neighbours, which made the cliffs, the birds, and flowers like familiar friends, magnified her trouble into a despair. She was wounded. She was angry and ashamed. She would go from home. She would live with Aunt Maria and never go to Charterhouse again. Then, stronger for the moment than her hatred of Sophia, was the humiliation which blushed to think of her father’s rudeness to the young Giles Standerwick; it made her hold her breath and wish to hide her face.

At last she came out upon the road.

The brown-thatched village lay below her now, and only the straggling cottages and the neglected house in front. Panting with excitement, and breathless from walking up the hill so fast, she went to the wayside and leaned against a gate to rest. Then she remembered her tattered state, smoothed back her hair, set straight her hat, fastened together the tom frock, and was ready to go on again. If she could once reach Black Down she would leave the highway for the open country and get back to Charterhouse alone.

There came a step upon the road. Disturbed by the sound, she quickly turned and leaned forward to peer out of the gateway and see if any one were near.

She started and drew back out of sight.

Close by, on his way homeward, was the young Giles Standerwick.

He had not seen her. He was coming very slowly, head bent, and looking 'down upon the ground.

She felt beyond all measure abashed. She must speak to him, but what could she say? What must he think? There was still time to go into the field and hide until he was gone by. Her first impulse was to creep away unseen; and then the pride and spirit of the Winterheads, as strong in her, the smallest, as in any who ever lived, bade her stand fast.

She would speak out her mind. She would find a tongue to tell her thanks, ay, and walk on too a little ways in company, to show that she, anyhow, harboured no trumpery false pride or ill thought.

Yet at any moment her father might come cantering along upon the mare to catch her up.

She faltered in her purpose, for still she went in awe of him although her heart was in revolt.

Ha! an’ like enough, Sophia Pierce a-riding up behind, having a lift upon her road.

At this every fear and scruple vanished. What did she care? Not one straw, whether she were seen or no.

With the same she went boldly into the road, and stood there waiting.

The afternoon sun poured hot upon the hill. The hedgerow cast a dark shadow across the white dust He was just as she had seen him before, except that now he wore his hat His jacket, which he had fetched, for coolness he was carrying across his arm. He was coming very slowly, but at seeing her he quickened his pace and hurried up to where she stood.

He was the first to speak.

He took up the phrase as he had left it, and hoped she felt nothing the worse.

“ No; not one mossel-bit,” she answered warmly, and looked him frankly in the face. “ Though I can’t say what mid a-happened, I’m sure, if it hadn’ a-bin for you, or whe’er any o’ me would a-bin left or no by this time. I’m wonderful much obliged, Mr. Standerwick. I couldn’ say so whilst I were so gallied. An’ then vather — not knowing anything at all o’ what had happed—so put out to think I’d a-moved——”

She stopped abruptly. Resentment was creeping into what was meant for explanation and excuse.

“ Don’t name it,” he said hastily, and took one‘step as if to go on his way. Then he loitered, looking down upon the dusty road. “ There, I felt mad to see how things turned out,” he went on with sudden impatience. “ They’d never ha’ got me down there if I could ha’ knowed. There’s no rightship in so much fighting over nothing but what’s fair.” It was an echo of her father’s anger upon the stand. So this young groover, crushed beneath misfortunes, and looked down upon for what he could not help, had the same upright thoughts as honest folk.

“ I was going up along myzelf,” she said with warmth, her heart aglow with sudden respect.

He glanced at her keenly, to be sure of what she meant. Then they walked on together side by side.

“ If I mid make so bold, you’re never going back to Charterhouse a-foot an’ all alone?” he asked her, with some surprise in his tone.

“ Oh! that’s just as mid fall out. I shall go on till vather do catch me up. I don’t care if ’tis all the ways. I do like to walk.”

“ So I’ve a-heard tell—an’ zeed ee myzelf too, times out o’ number. Out by the Black Bocks or up ’pon top o’ Cheddar Cliffs. I’ve a-wondered what you did do there, all by yourzelf.”

She was about the height of his shoulder, and as he finished speaking he looked down at her and waited. It was clear that he not only wondered, but would like to know.

She hesitated. She had gone because she must, and never tried to put her longing into words.

“ I—I do love to be up there dearly,” she stammered. “I—I don’t know, but when you be happy do sim so grand like; and if you do troubley ’bout anything, why, you do look round, an’ ’tis so big that you do lost it all.”

She felt frightened at what she had said. The man was such a stranger, and so far away from her life, that she was startled to find herself talking to him straight out of her heart. Not even to her father, when most of all his “little mouse,” could she have found courage to say so much. It sounded so silly, too, when spoken. She drew back within herself, and they went on in silence.

Over-right the hatch opening into his garden he stopped. He made no movement towards it, and once he was about to speak but checked himself.

Was he going to ask her in to sit down and wait?

The thought was natural enough, for hospitality, at least with decent folk, was free as air upon the hills. She could also understand the doubt. But she dared not do that. Now that she had talked to him her boldness was gone. There came an eager wish, whilst all was well, to get away.

She quickly held out her hand. “Then I’ll zay good-bye to ee, Mr. Standerwick,” she said. “An’ thank ee, once again.”

He shook hands with her, and at the moment of parting made up his mind.

“ Would ee like to zee a good cave? ” he said, dropping his voice into a whisper.

Of the wonders of these caverns in the limestone rock she had heard many a time, but never had she seen one.

“Is it very far away?” she asked, and her face brightened at once.

He drew quite close to her as if to impart a secret.

“ Tisn’ here at all,” he went on in a still lower voice. “’Tis in one o’ the cliffs. I vound it myzelf, an’ I’ve never breathed a word o’ it to any soul alive. I went up to cut a straight whitebeam stick for a good haft. ’Tis only a little mouth to ope behind the bushes, but inside ’tis so big as a house, all crystals, so red as blood an’ so white as milk.”

“But how could I find it? I could never find it,” she cried, like a child disappointed of some treat.

He raised his hand to his forehead and reckoned the days.

“ I’m oftentimes to Charterhouse,” he said slowly, “ but I shan’t be there this wick. O’ Monday, now, I could meet ee in the road below Black Bocks about this same time, if you liked, an’ lead ee to the place.”

She was taken with the thought. To know of a crystal cave which, so to speak, the eyes of man had never seen was beyond the brightest fancy of her day-dreams. Yet how angry her father would be if he should find her out! Always until to-day the fear of his displeasure had been enough to withhold her from anything. Nothing on this earth had she loved so greatly as his approbation. She wavered. Uncertainty of mind was plain to see upon her face.

The young Giles Standerwick noted it and misunderstood.

“ Anyways, I shall be there,” he said in an off-hand way, and turning to the gate. “An’ if you couldn’ come, then I mid hap to zee ee somewhere thereabouts some day.”

With the same, not waiting for her to answer, he went in.

Half afraid she had offended him, she was on the eve of running to say that she would come; but just then, horsemen came trotting round the bend at the foot of the hill She scanned them eagerly, to be sure who they were. Her father, Solomon, Jims, all as they had ridden over; and Sophia was not there.

More easy in mind, she kept on her way. As the hill was steep the nags must walk, and it was some while before she was overtaken.

Then her father drew in to the wayside, and she climbed upon a wall-top to mount the pillion as before.

And all along the road the talk was praise of the young Giles Standerwick, and how glad everybody was that he had again come to the fore; and how Mr. John Winter-head had stood word about the five pounds, to be sure he had, and settled the same wi’ Dr. William Haggett, who was to pay the stakes.

Only her father rode silent upon the saddle before her and said never a word.

CHAPTER VIII

WEEK’S END.

It was week’s end just in the dimmet of a midsummer night.

The stacks were still standing beside the homestead, brighter in summer than in spring. The apple trees in the orchard had kerned a better crop, the grass in home-field, fresh cut, bad thrown a heavier swath than had been seen for years. John Winterhead’s waggons came jolting down the road, and louder than the rattle of the wheels was the singing of the work-folk riding home from carrying hay.

By the barton gate they stopped. The song ceased. But instead arose a charm of voices merry all with jokes and laughter, as one after another married women and men, young chaps and maids, stepped down by the sharps or clambered upon the rails and jumped.

John Winterhead had just come in, and, money-bag in hand, was waiting by the flower-knot. He walked to the garden wall and hallooed.

“ Have ee hauled it all? ”

“ Ay, Measter, every bit an’ crnmb,” the carter shouted back, in the lusty voice of one who has done well and looks for praise.

But John Winterhead had none to give. He only turned to Patty with a “Make haste, maid,” and went back to the path.

Along the milk-house wall, an oaken board on trestles and a long form had been set out; and there the girl, in cotton frock and sun-bonnet, was busy cutting a loaf into hunks to put with the cheese. “Then he han’t a-bin down in hayfield, or he’d have no need to ask,” was the thought that flashed across her brain. But she hurried as best she could, and before there was time to look round, the waggons were under the shed, the horses turned out in ground (Patty heard them whinny and prance, as if they too knew it was week’s end), and the folk came trapesing down the garden path.

They stood in a group a little below the great porch, but this side of the milk-house door. The last glow before the grey of twilight glistened upon the milk pails ranged upside-down in a row ready for morning use, and fell on the sunburnt faces of these people of the open air and fields.

“ Now, Isaac.”

“ Come then, Ann.”

One after another the labourers stepped forward to John Winterhead to get the week’s money counted into hand, and then passed on to sit down at the bench. There they cut the sweetest of all bread against their thumbs with clasp knives, only stopping to stretch out a drinking horn, or maybe a cup, for Patty the better to pour, when, busy as a bee, she went down through with the great brown jug and a word for every one, until their wants were all supplied.

It was the happiest half-hour of all the year, this week’s end in summer with the work a-done. Every heart was gladdened with a bit and drop, and how the maidens would chackle to be sure and the women talk! Then Patty slipped away to her flower-knot to pick a nosegay a-piece, for the folk that worked at Charterhouse must have a tutty sure to carry or wear o’ Zun-day. As the last gleam faded out of the sky, with peas and pinks and boy’s love in their hands, and a “Good-night, Missie,” “Good-night, Zur,” on every tongue, they parted, and some one way, some another, all went home.

The last voice was hushed, the last footstep out of hearing on the road.

John Winterhead had paid little heed to the people that night, although of old he was wont to stand by the board and laugh and talk with the best. Once he walked away into the orchard. Now they were gone he came across to Patty whilst she cleared the things.

He did not speak, yet from his manner she felt sure he had something to say. Her heart sank under a misgiving that he had made up his mind, and was about to tell her that he would marry Sophia. On edge with excitement she went about the work with a hastier step and more alert hand. In her nervous agitation she longed for him to break silence, but gave him no time to utter so much as a word.

He stood there a still dark figure in the gloom and waited.

An impatience also had got hold of him. He had done a thing she would not like, and that he knew. Yet the downright outspoken frankness of the man chafed itself under a consciousness of hesitation.

Unable longer to wait, with a suddenness which struck her as unkind, he called her by name.

“ Patty! ”

She was passing into the milk-house as he spoke. At once she turned about, and stood in the doorway, a cup in each hand, a couple more held by her arm against her bosom.

“ I—I was over to Ubley, by now——”

He stopped, expecting some word of curiosity or assent to help him on his way, but she did not open her lips.

He went on sternly, with the growing firmness of a man who feels himself withstood.

“’Tis a lonesome place for a woman to bide wi’ no men-folk about. ’Tis most terrible out o’ the way by night. I’ve a-counselled Sophia to get rid o’ the stock an’ zell the keep to Milemas. For look-y-here, Patty.” His voice sank almost to a whisper, but she could feel an intensity of hatred in the way he went on to speak the name. “ That hang-gallis fellow Standerwick do come round there. He do sneak up to the very house towards night, when there’s nobeddy about. A skulking, lie-in-wait rogue! he’d so soon set the place a-vire as look. An’ so I’ve a-told Sophia she mid come to Charterhouse if she is a-minded. ’Tis handy enough to get in the har’est just so well. An’ she’ve a-got head-piece. She’ll take a lot off the han’s o’ ee, Patty——”

“ What 1 to bide here?—to live? ” broke in the girl, her voice shrill from sheer amazement.

“I didn’ say for good, did I?” he cried sharply. “But till everything is settled, or sich time as she mid vind something to suit.” “ Ha! She’ll never vind nothing to suit.” The sneer angered him. He fired up in Sophia’s defence.

“ She will if she do want to. She’s one in a thousand for management. She’d be wo’th a jew’s-eye in any house.”

This praise of Sophia fell upon Patty Winterhead’s ears as dispraise of herself. She could see it all, she was to be pushed aside. Sophia would take everything in hand—overlook everything—count everything—save everything.Then, some fine morning, become mistress of the lot.

The girl was beside herself with wounded pride. She was not going to be under Sophia—not she. Maddened at the thought of such indignity she stepped out from the doorway into the dusk, her slight figure white against the gloom of the milk-house wall. In her passion words came she knew not how. She was telling him to do the thing she hated most

“You’d better to marry your Sophia to once,” she cried in a fury. “If I be but little I’ve a-got wit enough in the head o’ me to zee that. Take an’ marry her, an’ a good thing too; for I’ve never been able to please ee since you took up wi’ her so thick, an’ never shall. I’ve a-got no hope to. But I won’t bide to live wi’ her—so there. Not if I’ve a-got to crack stones, I won’t.”

She could not see the look of surprise upon his face. She only heard his answer, hard and short, for John Winterhead thwarted was not the man to spend time in argument.

“ Sophia Pierce is coming. I’ve a-zaid so. An’, Patty Winterhead, don’t make yourzelf such a fool.”

He turned away. A night-jar, hawking above the lilac bushes, darted down the road, as he went indoors by way of the porch and left her alone.

Dark had crept over the hills, and great stars peered through the soft dim grey of summer night.

The day was done. The week was at an end. The light and charm had fled from Charterhouse, and the happiness of girlhood from the heart of little Patty Winterhead.

She stamped her foot with anger, then she burst into tears.

“ There have never been one to real care for me since poor mother were a-tookt,” she cried, in an outburst of broken-hearted shame. “Not one.”

CHAPTER IX

WHERE RAVENS BUILT.

So the great misfortune was fallen upon Charterhouse, that father and maid, who, up to now, had been everything to each other, caught in the deeper currents which underlie the surface of human life, were drifting far apart.

When John Winterhead went indoors the altercation ceased. But it was never to be forgotten. Nothing could bring back the simple confidence of bygone days, or the pride in themselves, and all the little passing joys of every hour in which of old they took delight. On the Sunday he scarcely spoke. On Monday he went about his work or where he would, and she to the calls of house and dairy; but whether within walls or in the open air, a load weighed upon the heart of each of them from which there was no getting away.

In the afternoon she crept upstairs. Her window, looking out upon the east, was in the pointing end. The sun had passed around and left it in the shade; and she sat down upon the low window-sill, her sun-, bonnet in her lap, and leaned her head against the wall.

Her room was plainly furnished, but all in keeping with the life of sound-hearted plenty without pretence, which for generations had gone on in Charterhouse. The walls were whitewashed, so was the beam across the ceiling. The four-post bedstead was of oak, the coverlet of brilliant patch-work, the curtains white as snow. At the foot stood an old coffer, as the oaken chest was called in those days, carved with a simple tracery and the letters J. W. cut in the middle panel. Over a small washhand-stand, with a brown pitcher but a basin of blue, hung a sampler framed in black. The alphabet— from the A, B, C, to what Patty would have called the X, Y, Zad, Anpassy—the numerals, the flourish of forget-me-nots around the margin, were faded, and moths had eaten holes through the half-forgotten name in the comer. For this, like everything else, was a relic, handed down from Patty’s greatgrandmother by her mother’s side.

The girl looked out across the broad undulating tableland upon the hill-top, with miles of rough common, and here and there a wood. Most of the ground walled in for tillage was fresh and green with growing oats, but far away in the direction of Ubley, in a wide, open field, were men busy at work speddling teasels. Near by the trees that hid the homestead the folk were making a rick. She could see the load come alongside with the loaders ’pon top, the pitchers by the side, and the women raking after plow. But although these doings of every-day life lay spread before her eyes she took no heed of them. She was too agitated with anxious thoughts.

When, in the heat of her excitement after the cudgel-playing at Shipham, she said to herself that she would go to Aunt Maria, it was but the meaningless cry of jealousy and anger. Aunt Maria was an elderly maid living on her means, and with money to leave. She was proud and particular, stout, afflicted with spasms, and short of breath and temper. Even a day spent in her company, with, a frock to boot, meant no unmixed joy, and before afternoon was out, begot a longing for nightfall. It was like cutting off your nose to spite your face, as they say, to think of going to live with Aunt Maria.

And she could not go into service. Not that she cared, but she had not the strength for it. Who would think of hiring a maid but little higher than the bottom dresser shelf. Cousin Selina’s eldest girl was in the drapery, a nice genteel clean trade, as everybody must agree. But, la! the child had to go at fourteen, and be bound for seven years, so what chance could there be in that for a woman of one-and-twenty come old Midsummer day, close at hand now, sure enough!

Little Patty Winterhead' felt herself old and left. People did not care for her. Life had no gifts. The things that came to other girls were not for her.

Suddenly she sat upright upon the window-sill and stared across the common. Just as a strange sound will wake a sleeper who lies unmoved amidst familiar noise, an unexpected sight had broken in upon her day-dream. Away upon the drove some one came walking quickly towards Charterhouse. Patty watched intently. It must be Sophia, by her black. Then she had changed her frock, and made up her mind to stay the afternoon. Without doubt she wanted to look around—to worm out by falseness what Patty thought of her coming there to stay.

Oh well! let Sophia come, and then let her go again, for nobody should she find.

There was no time to lose, for the unwelcome visitor, in spite of heavy mourning, trapsed along in the summer heat. To be safe, Patty must get out of sight and hearing before Sophia should come to door to ask. Her sun-bonnet had fallen upon the floor. She snatched it up and clapped it on her head. Her room opened upon a narrow passage leading to a back staircase of elm board, very old and warped. One moment she stopped to listen. It was quiet below. The maid who helped in the dairy and about the house had run out with her bucket to the sow. The men were all a-field. She ran downstairs, across the backlet, where the lean-to thatched roof reached down so low, and into the little home-ground behind the house.

Before her lay a valley with a gentle slope of grass on either side. It led down to the mineries, but she did not choose to take that way. A beaten path went winding up die hill, and by this she climbed, never wasting a step nor stopping to gain breath until she stood panting upon the other side of the brow. Then she felt safe. Like enough Sophia might go in and sit down, maybe an hour or two, in the thought that she must come in. Let Sophia sit.

She looked into the hollow which winds between the Black Rocks and enters at last at the head of Cheddar Gorge. There was not a soul in sight. On the other hand, a mile away above the mineries hung a mist of bine smoke from the furnace fires. But for that the sky was clear, and a glaring sun had driven her father’s heifers into the meagre shade of a clump of hazel and hornbeam bushes at the foot of the rock.

The narrow way below was little trodden, and winter ruts were hidden under summer grass. It glistened fresh and green. Great blue stones jutting out abrupt and tall, here and there overhanging and sometimes straight as walls, cast deep shadows across the drove. The soft coolness of the place enticed her. From the brown hill-side she went down upon the bright strip of sward.

Here, unless mayhap she might fall upon some stray foot-traveller, she was out of the way of the world. In places the winds and bends of the drove were short, and shut her out of sight of anybody not standing close upon the brim of the ledge. Not once in a year had any person call to go upon these slopes of rock and stone, with scarce picking enough to make a bite for a sheep. She went on. Presently she would come to the high cliffs and go up to look across the miles of moor.

She came within view of the opening into the high road. In the corner where the ways meet stood a small copse of stunted trees and thick undergrowth. As she drew near, a man stepped out from the cover and waited, leaning against the gate.

At once the thought came back to her. This was the day, the time, and place fixed by young Giles Standerwick when he offered to take her to the cave. She had not meant to meet him. Her growing trouble of the last two days had taken possession of her and driven all else out of her brain. Now, as she saw him there, and knew that he had seen her too, the quick blood rushed to her cheeks. She stopped, half-a-minded to turn back. For the moment her heart gave out and was afraid. Could she dare to trust herself with this groover whom she scarcely knew? The modesty and fears of maidenhood forbade. Perhaps there might be some distance to walk, and if folk should chance to see, what would they think and say? The pride of the Winterheads was in her blood. The respectability of Charterhouse clung around her like a garment. Should any one meet them, the country thereabouts would be alive with the news in half a jiffy, sure enough. Yet how well everybody had always spoken of the young Giles Standerwick, until of late her father, if he did but hear the name, could find nothing too bad to think, nor words too strong to lay his tongue to. With that she felt ashamed, and upon the impulse strode towards the gate.

He came forward to meet her. He did not offer to shake hands as they had done before, but stood a little away and lifted his hat by the crown—a new hat she noticed, won without doubt at the back-swording.

“ I was afeard you couldn’ bring yourzelf to come,” he said, and as he spoke she saw his face brighten with a sort of triumph.

Again her misgivings came back. Some thing within, like a warning of misfortune, bade her withdraw before it was too late.

“Is it far to go?” she wavered.

“ ’Tis close handy. Why, if you’ve a-got heart for a bit of a climb, you mid be back here again in little better than a half-hour.”

With the same he led the way through the gate into the road.

They were now at the head of the Cheddar Gorge. The huge grey cliffs, with only a narrow way between, front each other, as if in some vast upheaval rent asunder. Sharp against the sky, so high that the head grows dizzy to look up, are crags and peaks of weather-beaten rock; but here and there, in cleft and crevice, the ivy finds a rooting-place, and clings to the sheer cliff as it will to a ruined castle wall.

The wildness of the place had always a fascination for the girl, and held her in awe. The wonder of it impressed her deeply; for the folk in those days said it had been washed out by the sea—the sea which she had never seen, except from the crest of those very heights, miles away beyond the moor, like a shaft of silver under the line of the sky. And to-day the sunlight, blazing over a shoulder of the hill, lit up the summits of the rocks and glinted from the outspread wings of daws and hawks that wheeled around. For this reason the gloomy pass below had never looked more dark.

“’Tis but just out o’ sight,” he said, pointing with his finger to a narrow ledge and clump of bushes on the edge of the nearmost cliff. “’Tis easy to get up the slope ’pon this zide, an’ there’s good wide foothold all along, more than do look here-vrom. Why, I’d think nothing to carr’ ee in my arms again!”

He looked down at her and laughed, as he called to mind the fight after the backsword play, and how he lifted her out of the crowd. A trifling riot of that sort, the mere thought of which made her shudder, was but sport to him. Again there crept over her heart a feeling of admiration mingled with awe at his courage and great strength; and with it came a spirit of adventure, so that she must go, be the ledge narrow as it may.

“I must be quick, then,” she cried, thrusting aside with sprightliness her last lingering doubt.

The slope was steep. As they climbed, loose weather-worn stones and shale went slipping from beneath their feet and rolled down to the road-side. So far she had been before, and therefore felt no fear, but all the while she was quivering with excitement.

He went in front, and sometimes he stopped and waited. Then, against the toilsome roughness of the way, there came to her a growing eagerness to show what she could do. He had laughed and offered to carry her. Where one could go, so could another. As her limbs grew tired she only hastened her pace, until at last they gained the edge of the cliff and stopped to breathe.

The ledge was broad enough and leaned towards the rock; but below, the fall went sheer and headlong full two hundred feet. Although before now she had stood upon the very pinnacle of the cliff, to-day it made her shudder to look down. For, it might be, six or eight yards or so the way was open, and there a white-beam tree, growing out of a cleft, and thick in green leaf and berry, hid everything beyond.

“ What do ee think? ” he asked her. “ 'Tis safe enough. But do ee zee fear? When you do get to the bush, ’tis easy after.”

For answer she set her lips and ran across.

She stood clutching the stem of the beam-tree, a limb as big as her arm above the elbow, or bigger. Thick branches shut out from her eyes the depth below. The young Giles Standerwick held them back for her to pass, and, ’twixt boughs and cliff, she pushed her way into an open space, a kind of platform of rock, level and smooth as the footworn flagstones of a kitchen floor. Farther than that was no passing. The place was seemingly so secret and safe from mankind, that in a cranny of the rock lay a great nest of sticks where a raven that same spring had hatched her young.

Where, then, was the cave?

As this question flashed across her mind, again she was afraid, seeing how fully she had thrown herself into this man’s power.

He had followed close behind. “ ’Tis in here,” he said, dragging away a mat of ivy which hung like a curtain over the side of the cliff. This brought to sight a rift, about as big as the little arched doorway in the wall at home. And then again, because of her groundless doubt, she was ready in a moment to trust him to the full.

He led the way in. Close at his heels, she groped with her hands along the damp sides of a passage so small that they themselves blocked out the light. Suddenly it opened into a great vaulted cavern, across which, from a broad crevice upon the top, fell a bright shaft of golden sunshine.

The girl could not forbear a cry of joy and wonder.

Never in her life had she beheld anything so beautiful. From a ceiling glistening with sharp square crystals, such as she had often picked up upon roadside stones, hung cones, in shape like icicles, but of the colour of ivory, of amber, and of rose; and from below reared pinnacles, some slender, like the bulrushes behind the rhines upon the moor, and some stout and taller than a man. In places these had joined into columns like pillars in a church. In the light they shone with a whiteness of marble veined with blood.

This chamber was quite dry. The water, which through countless ages wrought these wonders long ago, had found some other channel and turned aside. Only at times the winter rain, beating through the cleft above, darkened one side against which it fell and dried again in the summer sun.

The girl stood with parted lips, dumb with astonishment.

“Why don’t ee zit yourzelf down?” he said to her, and pointed to a slab of stone fantastically fashioned with back and arms in shape like a chair.

She sat down.

He had picked a kecksie as he climbed the slope. He lightly tapped with it one' after another upon the smaller of the hanging cones, and they rang with a clear tone. It made her think of the distant sound of Blagdon bells on a frosty Christmas Eve. And back from the inmost part of the cavern came an echo, like another peal across the hill.

As the first marvel of all this wore away, she found eyes to note things merely strange.

Upon the ground in a tinder-box lay a flint and steel. Under the rift was a round black spot strewed with ashes, fragments of charcoal, and half-burnt sticks. She had often seen the like when gipsies overnight had camped upon the drove. Laid aside in the farther corner were a crock, a large brown pan for water and a blanket

Her thoughts turned to the neglected cot- tage by the hillside. Was it possible that at times the young Giles Standerwick lived in this cave?

She glanced up. He had marked her surprise at seeing these things, and his face grew stem and gloomy. She felt uneasy, as if caught prying into what was in no wise her concern. Disconcerted and abashed, she turned her head aside.

Her sun-bonnet was whiter than the alabaster chair in which she sat. Her honey-coloured hair had caught a tinge of gold. Her cheek reddened with self-consciousness.

For a long time, in the days before his trouble, he had felt his pulses quicken at sight of this young girl. Often he stopped to watch her out of sight when she passed him on the road. Her station was far above his own, but fancy is free, and many a time, deep underground, he pictured her in the darkness. To-day she was there, so small, so bold, and yet so timid. And hidden in the man’s heart was that which of late had held him aloof from his fellow-men; yet by nature he was human, and so, short of telling his secret, he needs must talk.

“You were eyeing the few traps,” he burst out bluntly. “Maybe you do think in your- zelf, mus’ be a lonesome place to bide of a night here, half-way up the cliff. But that’s nothing to a groover. ’Tis months agone, back in the winter, I foun’ out this cave. I never oped my mouth. I was turning it over in the head o’ me like, how to make a road to un, and that sometime he mid be some good. Only for years I’d a-had luck, and saved a goodish bit o’ money, too. I aimed to get together a bit more, an’ gi’e up a-working undergroun’ an’ take up a bit o’ lan’, maybe, an’ live out in the light. An’ then it so fell out I had no heart for one thing or t’other.”

He walked across the cave and sat down on the side opposite her.

“But you will, Mr. Standerwick,” cried the girl, looking up, forgetful of her shyness in the warmth of her sympathy. “Why, there’s everybody do wish ee well, along o’ the back-sword playing.”

“ I’ll tell ee,” he went on, slowly and in a whisper. MI hid here o’ nights for weeks till jus’ afore Whitsun. A man mid hide here all his life, if he did but go down now an’ again to bring up a bit o’ victuals. If he’d a-done anything now—why, not all the constables ’pon earth could lay han’ ’pon un, or so much as gi’e a guess where he mid be.”

“ But what good’s that when you’ve a-got no call to hide?” she asked him simply. “Why, I was glad o’ my heart to zee ee step ’pon top o’ stage t’other day. Folk zaid you’d never play no more.”

She hesitated. What she had said without thought sounded heartless and crueL Then, upon the spur of the moment, her words came fast and full of spirit; her eyes sparkled; her voice rang as she went on:—

“ I should do as I thought, if I were you. I’d never let myself be put off, if I was a man, by what was no fau’t o’ my own.”

Then she stopped again, for now it sounded so like a taunt.

He sprang to his feet, and stood there at his full height, fists clenched, every muscle firm and rigid, a picture of the lissome strength of early manhood.

“ That’s right enough,” he cried. “ I was never beat yet. An’ no man ever did hurt to me or mine who didn’ repent o’ it, so sure as the light.”

A look of anger—the look she had seen when he passed staggering home from Hang

Fair—was upon his face. It faded out as he went on.

“Not that I do love blows an’ fighting more than another, ’ithout ’tis in sport. I’ve a-bin bent in mind these years to take a little farm. I’ve a-worked for it, an’ I’ll do it, too. Well, I’ll tell ee, then. I’ve a-thought of a place. Perhaps mid be settled by this time. ’Tis a little place, an’ Dr. William Haggett he’ve a-promised to help me into it. There’s one or two have a-zaid a word for me quiet like, to get it on my own life an’ another.”

So his one longing was for decent, law-abiding life. As little Patty Winterhead thought of the suspicions so groundless and unjust which had been thrown upon the young Giles Standerwick, and all because of his misfortune, she could scarcely keep her own counsel. She burned to go straight home and set her father right; and as this was impossible, she softened the more towards this man so deeply wronged.

“I do wish ee luck wi’ all my heart 1” she burst out with real feeling. “ I do hope you’ll get what you do want, an’ find it turn out well. La! an’ then you’ll be a farmer too, so well as the rest. There, you’ve a-told me so much, I shall never have no peace till I do know more.”

She had already outstayed her time, and now she hastily rose to go.

“ But you’ll come up here again? he said eagerly. “ ’Tis yours as much as mine, an’ never another have a-zet voot here. An’ I’ll bring up a tool or two an’ make it better for ee.”

“Ay, I shall hope to come up an’ look at it many a time, Mr. Standerwick.”

She held out her hand to bid good-bye. “ But when’ll ee come, then? Come a Thursday, an I’ll meet ea”

“I couldn’ be sure o’ Thursday.

“ Well, then, a Vriday,” he went on with growing impatience.

“ But Vriday is bad luck to go or come,” she laughed.

“Then come a Zaturday, an’ I’ll tell ee what’s a-done.”

“ I shall zee whe’er I can or no,” she said, moving towards the opening.

“I shall look for ee day an’ night from now to then. An’ if you don’t come, I shall still look for ee life drough.”

The words had leapt out unawares. He spoke because he needs must. But the girl, not waiting to hear more, hastened through the narrow passage, thrust aside the screen of ivy, and stepped out into the sunlight. Without heed to the abyss below, she pushed her way through the bushes and ran along the ledge. His sudden outburst startled her. Down the shifting hillside and on the road her steps did not slacken, until having gained the quiet drove she stood a moment to collect her thoughts.

Out of the dim, cool shadow of the cave she was back in the sun. Out of the wonder and romance once more, upon the common earth of every-day life. But she felt dazed, like one but just awaked from a dream. The intense heat glared full upon her; it glanced from the bare rocks and stones around, and glistened upon the parched bents and sunburnt grass that grew between, so that her eyes ached. In her heart was a vague fear. Never through all her girlhood until to-day had she done a thing to hide, but now not for the world would she have it known where she had been. She trembled lest any should have seen her climb the cliff; and yet, whilst she mounted the slope in open day, the young

Giles Standerwick close by, in the loneliness of the place no danger of that had ever entered her head.

But underneath the excitement of her adventure, the wonder of all she had seen and the strangeness of all she had been told, she was conscious of a great joy. When, with the careless gaiety of her girl’s tongue, she cried that she was one-and-twenty, yet no man had cast eye upon her or caught a mind to her in the way of love, it was in no spirit of complaint. That was her lot, and, fancy free, she could laugh at it. Now at a word, a host of emotions, unknown and undreamt of, sprang up within her breast. That a groover, whose father had been hanged, should thus speak to her was an affront. Even if he should get the farm he spoke of, what did he think? What was a life on some few fields and a homestead to the having of Charterhouse for one’s own? Half her bitterness against Sophia was because she was not good enough for a Winterhead. And yet, in spite of pride, because no man had hitherto loved her, little Patty Winterhead felt glad.

But she must get home. Like enough her father would be out, and she longed for her little room away from everybody. There she would throw herself upon her bed, and rest and think.

She lost no more time. Instead of going by the meadow at the back of the house, she took a path leading into the high road, to run in by the porch.

The great hobnailed door stood open, as always in summer time, from mom to night. For all that, the passage was somewhat dark, and in her haste she stumbled against a small paper-covered trank. Then Sophia must have come to stay. A month or two ago a guest unlooked-for would have been more welcome than the light, but everything in Charterhouse was changed of late. It made her mad to think her father had not let her know. Then by the foot of the stairs, all “ han-pat,” as they say, and close handy to be carried up, she saw a great carpet-bag, stuffed full fit to burst, two bandboxes tied together, a footy little reticule, and a trunk covered with badger-skin and brass-headed nails. Why, Sophia must have brought on every thread and stitch that she had to the back of her. Enough for all Ubley, one would a-thought. But sure enough some folk have no shame.

Well, there was no help for it. Since Sophia was come, she must be looked to. But as to pretending she was glad to see her, little Patty Winterhead was not going to be so double-faced.

All was still and quiet. She marched into the kitchen.

The chimney-back in summer time was dressed with a fresh green bough, and that morning between the hand-dogs she had stood a brown quart cup with a handful of dog daisies brought up from the moor.

Now on each side, just as if there were a fire, a guest was sitting.

Sophia, on the settle, stiff and uncomfortable—from work and worry, worn even sharper-featured than she used to be, and with her lips firm set.

And over-right in the armchair, Aunt Maria, in her yellow gown with the great purple flowers, her face large and red as a peony full blown and ready to drop. Full an hour had they stared at each other with never a word, for Aunt Maria was upon her dignity, as any true Winterhead well might be.

“ Well, Patty Winterhead, an’ where have you bin a-taven about? An’ where’s your vather? ” was her greeting, in the querulous voice of a relative of means suffering under a slight

“ There, kiss your aunt,” she added, and held up her cheek.

CHAPTER X

ABOUT THEM TEASELS.

When Patty Winterhead told her father to marry Sophia Pierce, he could find no words to express his astonishment, except to tell her not to make herself a fool. That Sophia was a wonderful woman, and would make a useful wife to any man, he had thought during the last few weeks hundreds of times. But no project of marrying her himself ever entered his head. His silence as to going and coming was but the mystery of business, and not the secrecy of love; for if there is a thing of any niceness to carry out, you have no call to blab it to all the world. Sophia’s business at Shipham the other afternoon was to sell five heifers, a matter of delicacy and tact. He no more thought of taking a wife than if he were still wed.

In those days the dead had claims. Even the wild groovers had this much grace— that if one were stifled or killed by falling earth, though he were forty fathom deep, they would fetch him out and bring him to Christian burial at their own cost, that his spirit might cease from troubling and be at peace. Upon the hills was many a tale of dead who could not rest within their graves by reason of some secret crime, be it but a hoard ill-gotten and hidden under ground. And many a restless ghost, with something on earth to be amended, must walk at night, being so ill at ease and “ troublesome ”

An awful import, therefore, hung upon a passing soul’s “last dying words”; a deep sense that no man could hope to live happy upon earth who left undone such unalterable behest. For what must be his thoughts when some little thing or another, maybe the memory of a time or place, called back to mind that last entreaty thrown aside? Ay, and the dead look down and see! John Winterhead had never wavered from his promise given, not to give another mother to the little mouse. So Patty’s taunt filled him the more with anger and with doubt. Could the neighbours about be grinning and saying that he was catching a mind to Sophia Pierce? Not that he cared what they said. These thoughts went whirling through his brain when he rode off to Ubley that Monday afternoon. As he set his foot in the stirrup to mount the mare, he muttered to himself that he did not care. Yet to be at odds with Patty worried him more than he knew.

He had ridden scarce a mile when away across the common he caught sight of a man travelling afoot. He raised a hand to shade his eyes and looked. It was just as he had thought—again the young Giles Standerwick. And the fellow was trapesing on as if he were getting away out of sight, or had somewhere in haste to go.

John Winterhead cursed him under his breath.

This constant prowling day by day around Ubley could be for no good. When, in his love for house and land and little maid, he held his tongue rather than live on Mendip a man misliked, he little thought that before summer was out he should go in the very uncertainty he had feared. But now he worried about Ubley as if it were his own. He had even sent men to work there, in the busy summer time, to his own hurt. He owed it to the memory of poor Joseph Pierce, who was always so sharp about sixpence, that not a mote nor a straw that had been his should be wasted.

Of late he thought a deal of poor Joseph Pierce. Again and again the murdered man’s last dying words kept coming back. To-day his brain was so eager and so full, he had no eye to mark how the oats were turning colour for want of a drop o’ rain, and that the sheep had broken fence upon the hill. Out in the fields alone, in the still silence of a summer calm, just as if spoken in his ear, he heard the gasp: “ The young Giles Standerwick. It was the young Giles

Stan—” True to his nature, Joseph

Pierce had spent his last breath that the man who did him wrong should not escape. It was a trust, and now a broken trust.

Then in an agony of self-reproach he said: By God! and he would speak out now. For all the groovers upon Mendip, he would tell what he knew, and the skulking rogue should hang for it yet. What did he care? He had no fear. As for a stack or two, or even the house itself, what was that to get back freedom of mind and peace with himself? And yet to stand in open court and own that he had been afraid. John Wirterhead could not face the shame of that He pricked the mare and rode on quickly. The very thought broke up his dream.

As he drew near to the homestead, Sophia had just run out from the house to the new rick. She pulled a handful from the load, looked at it, smelt, and felt it with her hands. There was a green lock amongst the dry, and she twisted it tight to see how moist it was.

“I be a’most afeared we’ve a-carr’d it a bit too gay,” she cried in doubt, looking up to the man upon the rick, a neighbour, who, in the good old way, had turned in to help.

The rickmaker rested a moment, leaning on the stem of his pick.

“La! Do ee rest your heart content, Sophia Pierce,” he shouted down to her in all good humour. “’Tis all the better to heat a bit”

“Ah!” replied Sophia sharply, and only half assured; “ but we don’t want no vires here.”

John Winterhead was close enough to hear the talk. To burn a rick or two, he said to himself, would raise no thought of foul play. Folk would only say Sophia

Pierce was hungry to carry afore she had a-made.

The girl turned up her sleeve and thrust her bare arm well above the elbow into the rick. What head-piece the maid had 1 She looked quite taking with her brown, sunburnt face pressed against the hay. Let folk chatter or no, if Patty should ever go to a home of her own, for a staid man like John Winterhead, come to years of sense, why, Sophia Pierce, without a penny to her name, would be worth more than all the highflyers that ever wore shoe-leather.

John Winterhead rode up, shouted to one and another, and then beckoned Sophia aside. They passed along the rough hedgerow, sprawling rank and wild over a dry ditch that shut in one side of the homestead, and stopped beside a glossy-leafed beech-tree.

“ Have ee zeed young Standerwick about since?”

His manner was so eager that she glanced up at him in alarm.

“He was here last night that ever was,” she answered anxiously. “He came right in to barton. The old dog is so deaf, the last trump, so to speak, ’ud never wake un.

But I heard a step an’ looked out There’s a new moon, an’ momin’ were just a-break-ing, an’ I could zee un well enough. He went in all round the mow-barton, stalls an’ all. I was afeared to hollar or make a noise, an’ in the end he went away oi hiszelf, jus’ as he corned.”

John Winterhead’s face darkened. Then he spoke in a tone of authority, as if the girl belonged to him:—

"Bun into house, Sophia, an’ put what you do want together to once, then hurry over to Charterhouse to tell Patty to get ready. The little waggon can run down wi’ your things after a bit. I’ll get a man to bide here by night—”

The girl did but ope her lips, about to speak, but he waved his hand impatiently.

“Make haste, I tell ee. So quick’s you can, so as for Patty to know. Lef all the work to me, I’ll zee to it for ee.”

She had no will to do other than she was bid. As she went slowly towards the house he called to her again, and bent over the mare’s neck to whisper.

“Look here, Sophia,, don’t tell a word o’ what you’ve a-zeed to any soul alive, there’s a good maid.”

So Sophia went indoors and got ready; put on her mourning, lest she should meet anybody upon the way, and started upon her unexpected visit to Charterhouse.

John Winterhead turned away from the rickmakers and rode at a walk across the hill Every sentiment at the back of his manhood was outraged and every passion astir. That a skulking rogue should come, sly as a fox, by night, and spy around the stacks that decent toil had won, filled him with an anger more than he could bear. Two months ago he thought it pity that a man’s life should go for a sheep; now, in the madness of his wrath, he cried that any man ought to be hanged who so much as set foot off the high-road after dark. What could he want there but thieving or wickedness? He would kill any such an one with his own hands. And even this cry of lawlessness came out of his love of righteous, law-abiding life.

Then a dark thought crept over his mind.

If he were to watch the night at Ubley he might meet with Standerwick. He might catch him red-handed, so that none could gainsay the justice of the deed, and shoot him like a dog. It seemed to John Winter- head that if he could only see the murderer lying dead, as he had seen poor Joseph Pierce, the past would be set right, and all his restless self-upbraidings blown to the winds. He need feel no burning of the heart after that, when, by the word of God itself, the villain’s life was forfeit by direct command.

Unawares he had ridden towards the teasel-ground. As his eye fell upon the speddlers, out of the mere custom of watching men at work he pressed a finger upon the rein and cantered up to the gate to look at them. One just glanced up; but they were working for themselves and did not stop.

The weeding of teasels, a common crop in those days of West of England cloth, was a matter calling for such skill and care that a farmer rarely entrusted it to a hired labourer. He tilled the soil and sowed Then he bargained with the speddlers to do all else for half the produce, and the crop was in the ground two years. Thus a speddler worked for himself and not for a wage, and thought himself so much the better man.

One o’ Blagdon, who came to Charterhouse on the night of Hang Fair, had agreed with

Joseph Pierce some time ago. Presently, seeing John Winterhead, he shouldered the long, narrow spade that took the place oi a hoe and walked across to speak to him.

“Well, Mr. John Winterhead. How’s Mr. John Winterhead? ” he shouted.

He had a broad, honest face, much puckered with the sun, but it was clear as noonday that something weighed upon his mind. Without waiting for his salutation to be returned, he went on in a lower voice:— “ Look here, Mr. John Winterhead; how’ll all this here be managed? How’ll it all be ’ranged about the speddlen wi’ the incoming man? Will he have to hold by what Joseph Pierce have a-done? For a nicer-looking lot o’ teasels the heart o’ no one never couldn’ wish for.”

“So ’tis,” agreed John Winterhead. “A very tidy lot o’ teasels.”

“Ay, an’ that’s where ’tis,” went on the one o’ Blagdon. “You zee, if ’twere a plainish lot o’ teasels I shouldn’ worrit my head about ’em so much. For teasels is a thing, look-y-zee, if they don’t get a goodish start God A’mighty Hiszelf, in a manner o’ speakin’, can’t do no good wi’ ’em. But this ’ere is so pretty a groun’ o’ teasels -—”

“Well, well,” interrupted John Winter-head, “ wait an’ zee who do come here, then you can talk about an arrangement.”

The one o’ Blagdon looked up with a sly twinkle in the eye of him. He lifted the spade from his shoulder and planted it upon the ground to rest upon like a walking-stick.

“Ah, Mr. Winterhead 1” he said, with a double-cunning shake of the head. “Ah, very good, zir—very good indeed! ”

“ What do you mean? ” asked John Winterhead crisply, for he could not see the ioke.

“ You do know. You do know, Mr. Winterhead, well ’nough.”

“ I don’t know what you do mean in the least.”

But as John Winterhead grew impatient, the speddler only leered the more, and a broader grin stretched across his face.

“ I thought you’d be a-looking into things for Sophia Pierce.”

“An’ I thought it took two to a deal,” returned John Winterhead with some heat, and getting as red as a turkey-cock.

The speddler became a little crestfallen. As he afterwards told his friends, he wished he hadn’ a-spoke.

“ I hope no offence,” he stammered. “Anyways, there were no harm meant. But sure you do know who’ve a-got Ubley, Mr. Winterhead.”

“ There’s nothing talked o’, is there? ”

John Winterhead’s manner softened, and he bent forward in the saddle, for, after all, in a lonely country news is news.

“ Why, ’tis all a-zettled.”

“ Who, then? ”

One o’ Blagdon came slowly up and leaned upon the gate.

“Well, well, to be surel” he reflected, with a seriousness rarely found in a man of sense. “ An’ I should have allowed Mr. John Winterhead would a-bin the fust to hear.”

“ Who is it, then? Speak out,” snapped in John Winterhead.

“ Wull, wull! I be surprised, an’ no mistake. I do know ’tis true myzelf, for I had it out o’ his own mouth. Dr. William Haggett that have a-carr’d it drough like. An’ they’ve a-got it ’pon two lives. The young John Bragg, by the same token, he’s one o’ ’em. Thik fresh-coloured young chap what do live into Cheddar just up street. Dr. William Haggett he chose un because he do come o’ sich a long-lived family, an’ is so beautiful pitted wi’ the smallpox ——”

“ There, do stop thee tongue an’ tell out.” “ Wull, so I be,” answered one o’ Blagdon in a hurt tone. “ In half a minute then, so quick’s I can. ’Tis—’tis the young Giles

Standerwick—”

“ Wha-at? That’s a lie, I know.”

At such a sudden yell the mare started.

“ What the devil is coming to everything?” muttered John Winterhead as he sharply pulled up the rein. She had been nervous and shy to stand of late.

“ That’s a lie,” he said again.

One o’ Blagdon remained unmoved. Strangely enough, these words intended no charge of untruthfulness, but only surprise and disbelief. And whilst the mare pawed and pranced, and John Winterhead jogged up and down, one o’ Blagdon leaned stolidly over the gate and brought reasons to bear himself out. How that it was all settled but not signed. How that Dr. William Haggett had said so much out of his own mouth. How that the young Standerwick had been bent in mind for years to turn to the farmering. And having unladen his whole freight of knowledge, one o’ Blagdon wiped the tickling sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, hoped that Mr. John Winterhead would turn it over in his head like about the teasels, supposed he had better get back to his speddling, wished “ Good-a’temoon ” and went.

The first impulse of John Winterhead was to ride away to Wells and offer any money to take up the land himself. And yet, if things were settled, Standerwick must be bought out, and to pay the villain, and thus better him, was more than he could bear. So this was the reason of all this skulking around Ubley; and at once, no doubt, as soon as the writings were signed, he would walk about the place as large as life in the full light of day. John Winterhead could see him already on the road, along the common, in the field—all the week alike, just where Joseph Pierce used to be. This was something so unnatural that he ground his teeth and swore that he would never stand it.

But now he went no longer in fear for the homestead or Sophia’s crops. Every twist and turn in the taking up of land he knew, and the need of secrecy, as well as Stander-wiek’s desire to see, lay clear before his understanding. Next must come all the business of poor Joseph Pierce’s farming stock, some of which none but the newcomer could well buy. There was no one but himself to take all this in hand. He would have to meet, and treat, and higgle, ay, and be pleasant too, or mayhap Sophia’s bargain might fall awry. It was more than was in his nature to do. He could never carry it through. Imagination could not call up a John Winterhead so false.

He had ridden back and was again drawing near to Ubley Farm.

Each new perplexity strained tight anothei mesh to hamper him, and every knot chafed the sore upon his soul till he could bear with it no longer. The frenzy to tear himself free, no matter by what means, once more returned. The thought of laying wait for Standerwick at Ubley was gone. There was no reason in that, with the knowledge that the fellow came there for no harm.

A blacker temptation arose to try John Winterhead.

An hour ago he would have killed this man, so that every honest person, with ten farthings to his name, must say that he wdb right How much easier to choose time and place out of all sight and hearing, and kill him when none should know. The loneliness oi the Black Down, the desolation of the disused mines, the wild solitude of the open plain, and who could there be to witness? Done under cover of night, not once in fifty years had any deed of violence been brought home to the doer. A buzz of horror, a sinking of the heart at dark, then another fireside story—that was all that came of murder upon the hills.

In the fierceness of his anger he gripped his heavy hunting-whip by the stem and struck in the air. He would strike him down and leave him by the way just as he had done with Joseph Pierce. He struck again and again. The men upon the rick stopped work to watch. At another but John Winterhead they would have laughed, and called him drunk. They wondered whether the sun——

At the very height of his excitement a sudden insight came to John Winterhead. He saw himself, as the country people say. In his vision he had fallen upon a man unlooked for, and knocked him down without a‘ word. At once his native pride stood up to him and called him “ coward ”. A shame crept over him. He dropped his upraised hand upon his knee and leaned forward over the pummel. And then the old stoutness of heart that knew no fear came back.

He had no longer any doubt what to do. At the time to speak he held his tongue, and to the world he would keep silence still. But not to Standerwick. Meet him he must as sure as day. On the first occasion, no matter where, so long as there was no one else to hear, he would accuse him of the murder to his face. That should scare this gallows-bird out of the Mendip country. If not, let him stand up there and then, and fight for his life.

This plan satisfied John Winterhead, and for the time being set him at rest with himself. He rode across and stayed with the haymakers. The old hearty ring came back in his voice as he shouted to fetch out more cider when they brought in the last load. One of the labourers held up the cup and drank to his good health. “An’ good luck to Miss Sophia Pierce too, wherever she mid hap to goo.” It struck him he could hear a hidden meaning underneath the words.

It was late in the afternoon when he got back to Charterhouse, and he walked into the kitchen so close upon the heels of Patty, that Aunt Maria’s inquiry for him had scarcely passed her lips.

“What, Maria?” he shouted. “Well, heart alive! this is a sight for sore eyes. Come, Patty, put out your aunt a bit an’ a drop, somethin’ to eat an’ drink. Pull oft your bonnet, Maria. Here, have a toothful o’ brandy, Maria, to once, after your journey. Why,what have ee been a-thinking o’, Patty? Come, quick then. Well done, Maria! ”

Yet although the welcome was loud as ever, it lacked something of the old hearty ring, and there was just a flavour of vinegar in the pleasantry of Aunt Maria’s reply.

“ Sure, John, you’ve a-axed me to Charter-house manies o’ times, an’ zo now I’ve a-come wi’out axen. Though I little thought (for how should I?) to find visitors (leastways, I should say, a visitor), or maybe I should ha’ zend word afore to find out whe’er or no mid be convenient to drop in so to speak unbeknown. But what wi’ Patty’s birthday in a week, an’ her twenty-first too, an’ grand doings no doubt—”

“ Patty’s birthday? Her twenty-first? Dash my wig! I clean forgot all that, an’ she’ve never so much as breathed a word.

To be sure, Maria, we must have a party an’ kick up our heels. Here, Patty.”

As he looked round his eyes fell upon Sophia. The thought of Standerwick came back. He broke off short in his boisterous surprise and said in a lower voice:—

“ So they’ve a-got somebody to take Ubley by all accounts ”.

“What?”

Sophia leaned forward on the settle with eager interest; Patty stopped on her way to the cupboard, and Aunt Maria pricked up her ears.

“Ayl that fellow Standerwick, so they do zay, is to have Ubley.”

“ Standerwick? ” cried Sophia, in disbelief.

“ Ubley? ” cried Aunt Maria, with a toss of the head.

“Giles Standerwick take Ubley? Then he would be their next neighbour! ” thought little Patty Winterhead. The crevices of the kitchen floor went gliding each one into the next. She pulled out the dresser drawer and held fast with both hands, for her head swam.

The others took no note of her, but sat open-mouthed to swallow such startling news.

“ He ought never to have it. ’Tis a disgrace,” roared John Winterhead. “ I can’t think how the fellow can have the face. Here, where everything about un is in everybeddy’s mouth.”

But after the first shock Aunt Maria and Sophia Pierce soon found their tongues again. They were sensible people and did not echo her father’s discontent.

“ Not but what folk do one an’ all speak well o’ the man,” said Aunt Maria, with an air of deliberate justice. “An’ ’tis zaid he’ve a-saved a goodish bit o’ money.” Sophia was business-like as ever.

“He can’t have a thing to his name to bring. There’s that,” she cried in her shrewd way. “I should think he’d be glad to take off all o’ it—ho’ses, tackle an’ traps—inzide an’ out—at a fair valuation.”

CHAPTER XI

AUNT MARTA.

“ Massy ’pon us, Patty Winterhead! ” cried Aunt Maria, and whacked the dough with the rolling-pin; “I couldn’ never ha’ believed it”

She had said this so often that now the girl only laughed and got red in the faca “ There! there! there! A man never can gi’e a thought to anything any sense; but that any maid can goo a-wool-gatheren to forget her twenty-first—verily an’ truly ’tis beyon’ belief. An’ ’twere only by chance that I thought to come.”

They were standing at a bench in the little back kitchen, rolling pastry to make pies. Only a day or two had passed by, but just as when clouds have blown over, there came another light and a fresh air into Charterhouse. Everything looked different. There was such bustle, such a lot to do, such a lot to say, that what wi’ the clatter o’ work and the chatter o’ tongues the music went on all day long, so gay as spring time wi’ two drashells thumping on a bam’s-floor and a cuckoo calling in the welsh-nut tree. And this was all along of the coming of Aunt Maria.

There was to be a party, and no mistake —the biggest ever seen in Charterhouse. John Winterhead was boisterous about that. Everybody was to be asked—every Dick, Tom, and Harry that they knew to speak to within ten mile. It was, “ Look out for the constable an’ he can tell one or two his way ”; and, “ zend to one o’ Blagdon to drop a word to the rest”; “and Patty had better to run down to the fiddler, and zend same time to let Cousin Selina know”. Forget Patty’s birthday!,Well, well! He laughed at the thought. He was in heart again. Aunt Maria had come in from the outside and brought back the old life.

Yet it was a wonder to see her there. This unlooked-for arrival was a far more important matter than the mere dropping in of a relative from a distance; for Aunt Maria found meat and drink in a grievance; a slight was the consolation of her soul.

Grown-up sister when John was a boy she had smacked him hundreds of times, and yet had not set foot in Charterhouse for years. There had been no quarrel, never so much as a word between them—only, well 1 she should ha’ thought that when it pleased God to leave John a widow-man wi’ a little maid to bring up, the very first thing would ha’ been to ha’ send for his very own sister to ha’ took things off his hands like. She should ha’ thought none so fit to look after Charterhouse an’ the child as one bom an’ bred there, and knowing every stick an’ stone o’ the place. She should ha’ thought the one to breed up Patty was a aunt by her father’s side, to say nothing o’ godmother to boot, and that it was all so well to let a near relative save money, instead of keeping up a home, so as to have more to leave. But John, without doubt, having his own mind to use, thought different.

Her house was at Winscombe, a village some miles over the hill. There she lived closely observed and deeply respected of all her neighbours. She never tired of talking of Charterhouse, and she talked of nothing else. She was welcome there as the day, she told them, but sure she wanted nothing o’ nobody, being left independent under her father’s wilL She should go, come midsummer, she added carelessly, to Patty’s twenty-first But how to get away was a’most more than she could tell there was too much to look to at home without gadding about.

But as the time sped by and brought no word, she became haunted with the fear that she was forgotten. She grew feverish with the thought that folk about would say she was left out. In her delirium she walked down street and gave out that she had sent to say she could not come. “ An’ if do affront ’em,” she bemoaned with resignation, “ I can’t help it; for verily an’ truly, unless I were a snail to go about wi’ my house to my back, I’d zooner by half bide at home.”

In the midst of these heart-burnings Aunt Maria heard a sound. Yet for two whole days and nights she secretly nursed her supposed slight, and then she could bear it no longer. Her mind was made up. In sheer desperation she hurried down to shop for a padlock and chain.

There was a stir in Winscombe when it became known that Miss Winterhead had purchased a padlock and chain. Dear heart I what on earth could she want with a padlock and chain? And half a ream o’ green tissue too! La, enough to make fly-cages for all creation! The women-folk, as they talked it over there by the four cross-roads, began to wonder whatever could have come to the good soul, to be sure.

“Though, mind, she were always lavish, for look at her things.”

“ Ay, sure, chimies an’ drawers an’ all, all up dozens an’ made o’ the best.”

“ Iss, make ’em up dozens.”

“ Mark ’em up dozens.”

“An’ number ’em off up dozens—zo she do.”

“ An’ put ’em out to use up dozens.”

“ An’ dirt ’em up dozens—always did.”

“ An’ wash an’ hang ’em out—”

The fame of Aunt Maria’s wardrobe did not rest upon gowns handed on to Patty for frocks. How Well she secretly upheld the dignity of the name of Winterhead and independent means could never have been told had not the periodical publicity of the clothes-line held spell-bound an admiring world. Then to think of the sheets and table-linen she had a-got put away in drawers. There! let they that come after live so long as they mid, they could never need to buy.

But before the gossips of Winscombe had time, as it were, to look round, she had wrapped her chimney ornaments in paper, put trousers round the legs of her parlour chairs, put her linnet out to keep, pulled down the blinds, and locked up the garden hatch. In all the glory of a hired four-wheel trap she drove down street, waving her fat hand to the neighbours as she passed, and calling back that they wouldn’ have the party wi’out her, and so she was bound to go to Charterhouse after all for Patty’s twenty-first.

And the bottom of all this was that Aunt Maria had heard a sound.

She said so much to Patty that morning as she rolled the pies. They were quite alone, for Sophia wisely went to Ubley all day long. Aunt Maria, white with flour up to the elbows, pushed her spectacles above her forehead on to her front hair, which was her habit when she talked.

In face she was strikingly like her brother, but older by ten years, and her hair was sprinkled with grey. She had the same strong features, the open, fearless counte nance of the Winterheads. She was so tall, Patty could never keep down the thought that she had been meant for a man; and a moustache—if the truth must be told, a short, distinct moustache, just at the comers of the good soul’s mouth—favoured the idea. She was in a white print, with a purple pattern of great leaves and flowers running all over it like kidney beans on a trellis.

“Iss, Patty Winterhead,” she went on under a compulsion of duty, but itching to find out all she could, “ ’tis all a wonder that I made up my mind to come. But if speak out I must, I did hear a bit of a soun’.”

The girl looked up from pleating the edge of a crust with a three-pronged fork.

“ About what, Aunt Maria? ” she asked, quick with suspicion.

“ Why, that your vather had a-got a bit of an inkling a’ter Sophia Pierce.”

“Then folk do talk,” said Patty, with a sinking of the heart.

“An’ have ever since creation. Why, massy ’pon us, what be tongues for? ” and, although she lived in awe of the tattle of Winscombe,Miss Maria Winterhead laughed aloud.

“ But who was it? ”

“Well, more ’an one, an’ more ’an two, Patty Winterhead,” Aunt Maria went on, resting with her arms akimbo to sum them up. “There was the young outride from the wine an’ spirit man to Cheddar—not that I keep more ’an a bottle a-piece of boughten wine, both white an’ red, so as to be able always to pass the compliment, but never to press—he did drop a word, mind.”

“He!” said Patty, with a toss o’ the head.

“ An’ your Cousin Selina’s Emily Jane— girt over-growed maid ——”

“She!”

“An’ Dr. William Haggett—he stopped a-Friday in passing, just to see how I were a-keeping, but not to charge—he put the question straight out. So put one wi’ another, Patty Winterhead, I do not deny that I have a-heard a bit of a sound.”

The girl’s old loyalty to her father sprang up anew. She could not bear that other folk should say what she herself had thought.

“The more fools they, then. Though he’ve a-got his own mind to use, I suppose.”

“ Not to marry Sophia Pierce,” cried Aunt Maria, putting down the fork and leaning forward with her great red fists upon the table. “No. I be a Winterhead, and I don’t like to think the name’ll die out.” She paused a moment, and then, with a good-humoured laugh, went on: “ You ought to ha’ bin a bwoy, Patty, christened John, instead of a little tomtit of a maid. That ’ud ha’ bin all very welL But what good can it all be to you? No, I should like to zee your vather marry again. So there. But I sim, I couldn’ lie a-bed happy to be kin to a Pierce.”

A little snort of disgust, and unconcerned Aunt Maria went on with her work in silence.

The girl hung down her head. A host of new emotions were begotten of this downright speech, and she felt the agitation tingling on her tell-tale face. She could see now to the very bottom of her father’s discontent. It was the love of the name and the pride of the land and house. She, a Winterhead herself, could understand. Whilst she was a child, and a plaything, all went well enough. Now her father could only see in her the woman, unable to carry on Charter-house as it had come to him. She wished he had never promised to keep single for her sake. He would have loved her none the less, if mayhap he had married years agone; but all the more, with nothing to grow up between. Ay, a tomtit of a maid, that touched the truth—

“La! you needn’t to worrit yourself about it. I reckon you be safe,” broke in Aunt Maria, chuckling with good nature to see the girl so put about.

“ And I wish he would marry. I do with all my heart,” cried Patty, and truly meant it too. She was vexed with herself to look so foolish. Her conscience pricked her when Aunt Maria misunderstood. “I wish he’d marry Sophia Pierce to-morrow, if ’tis what he do want, and ’ud make un happy. He needn’t to think about me.”

Such quick changes of feeling were unknown to Aunt Maria. She went on with her pie, talking all the while in just the same strain.

“Ah!” she said, shaking her head with the wisdom of elderly experience. “But tidden John Winterhead that do gi’e a thought to that. Verily an’ truly, I do believe that he’ve a-had nothing in his mind but the land an’ the business. Mind, it did gi'e me a turn like to see her there a-quat in the comer o’ the settle as if she were at home. But la! Patty, the girt brazen thing is all eyes an’ ears for un, when he is about. She do watch all he do do, an’ drink in every word he do let falL There, I can’t a-bear to look at her. But ’tis all no good. Why, he’d a-axed her an’ put in the banns all same day—ay, an’ married her afore he brought her to Charterhouse, if that were what he meant. There’d be no hang-back about John Winterhead, once his mind was made up.”

She looked up suddenly.

“ Now do ee know what I do think? ”

“No,” answered Patty briskly, for she had somewhat regained tranquillity.

“Then I do think,” cried Aunt Maria, holding up both floury palms to glorify a great idea; “ I do think Sophy Pierce ought to zet her cap at this young Standerwick that have a-got Ubley. There, she did really ought to be tookt off in the valuation. She can’t have much, we know; and he can’t have much, for sure. But her little put to his ’ud be all the use in the world. An’ he must have a wife. For what’s a house ’ithout a wife? An’ she’d gi’e her eyes for a husband. For what’s a woman

’ithout a husband?—unless, o’ course, she’ve a-got independent means. An’ so, Patty, ’pon my word, I do verily believe ’tis a Providence, an’ ’ull come to pass.”

The girl did not join in Aunt Maria’s mirth.

Except for the chirping of the sparrows by the eaves and the clucking of a hen with chickens close to the open door, there was silence.

“ Penny for your thoughts, Patty.”

“I were a-thinking o’ running down about the fiddler,” replied Patty.

CHAPTER XII

THE WAT MADE EAST.

Her errand into Cheddar was done, the services of the fiddler were secured, and Patty, hurrying homewards through the gorge, came again into the winding road at the head of the pass.

She could see nothing of the cave from below. White, fleecy clouds were drifting so fast across the gap of blue sky between the peaks, that the sharp pinnacles appeared to be falling forward, and it made her giddy to look up. The narrow ledge was like a line upon the face of the rock. Nobody could have discovered it there.

A strange feeling crept over her that she was not herself. As if the Patty Winter-head, bred at Charterhouse and running fancy free over the hills, were one—and she, the sunlit cavern still before her eyes, and thoughts of Standerwick for ever in her brain, were another person.

His evil fortune and his success, his longing for decent life, and the unjust prejudice against him had alike thrown a spell over her imagination and taken captive her simplicity of souL That one glance of passion, like a burning spark, lodged within her bosom. She could think of nothing else. Out of all the world, only this man had given her a word of love. At thought of it, she must needs sigh to ease her heart; and ever since, she trembled if she did but hear his name.

Now that she knew he had got his wish, she felt eager to tell him that she was glad; but this was not the time when he asked her to come. It was no good to go, only labour lost to climb the hill; yet the place held over her a fascination not to be withstood, and in spite of herself she went toiling up the steep.

The white-beam trees she found cut back on the side against the rock, so that she could pass quite easily. All the gaps between the stems had been wattled with halsen sticks close and strong like a hurdle, and safe as a wicker cradle. A child might pass now without fear.

For a moment she wavered in her pur- pose. Then she thrust aside the ivy and went on. The little passage had been widened, and was now so much lighter that she could clearly see her way. But as she stepped into the cave she stood stock-still, astonished at the changes which had taken place in a time so short. The ground under foot had been smoothed and plentifully bespread with small shale and stones until it was more level than the kitchen floor. The charred blot was either hidden or removed, and the smoke - stained alabaster above washed white as snow. He must have been working day and night, she thought.

Then as she looked around, a new wonder fell upon her eyes.

Under the gloom of the vault, but close beneath the open rift, lay a miracle of bright blue sky with white clouds chasing by, just as she had seen. And there too was the pinnacle, but upside down; and grasses quivering upon the brink of a cliff. The effect was heightened by the pale shadows in which the cave was dim, for sunshine only came towards afternoon, with the westering of the day. It presented all the fantastic unreality together with the vivid clearness of a dream.

She ran across.

In a hollow like a natural basin in the rock lay a lake of water, deep and clear, and still as a mirror of glass. She peered into it But moving cloud and quivering grass were gone. She saw only the image of her own face.

She sat down on a low smooth slab. The coolness of this cell was sweet after her dusty walk upon the road, and she leaned back against the rock to rest. Her fancy began to trace strange resemblances — a yellow pillar stood like a sheaf of wheat, ruddy-golden and ripe, ears, reed, and all, even to the twist of the bind. There was a tallow-candle and a china rat on a marble shelf. And always, with her head against the stone, she could hear a drip-drip of distant water, keeping on and on, like the ticking of the kitchen clock.

He had taken away all his things. She marked that nothing was left, not a tool nor a thread to show he had ever stayed there. And all this to make it the better for her. She thrilled with gladness at the thought. Yet now that he had taken Ubley, with so much business on his shoulders, he could have no time to spare.

Henceforth he meant to come but little to the cave, if he had not quit it altogether. With this she felt a longing to see him again, and a sense of disappointment because he was not thera

With the coolness, the rest, and the heavy air of a cavern little open to the wind, a drowsiness crept over her. She was in no haste. Her errand, so soon done, might have taken twice as long. She fell half asleep; and in forgetfulness, the constant drip of falling water changed to the clink-clink of workmen in a distant quarry dressing stone.

Suddenly the sound stopped. This struck her as strange, and she aroused herself to listen. The place was still as a grave, and the unlooked-for silence puzzled her. But before she could recover her thoughts there was a noise within the cave. Then, from a cleft close by where she was sitting, like a miner climbing out of a “ calamy ” pit, crawled Giles Standerwick.

His shirt loosened at the throat, and his sleeves turned up to the arm-pits, showed that he had been hard at work. He carried nothing in his hands; and, seeing Patty, he quickly buttoned his collar and covered his bare arms.

“ I little thought to find anybeddy here,” he stammered, a bit abashed at his condition. “ I looked for ee to come somewhen, an’ so I put it all straight, so quick’s I could.”

“But you shouldn’ ha’ done it for me,” she told him with real regret. “I can’t bear to think you should take so much trouble, an’ you wi’ such a lot to think about bezides.”

“ Then you don’t care about it? ”

He spoke with the sharp disappointment of one who has taken pains in vain, and done a thankless labour. He glanced at her keenly to read her mind.

“I do love it!” she cried with all her heart. “ ’Tis most wonderful — beautiful more ’an anything I ever zet eyes on in all my lifa An’ the water, too——”

“’Tis nothing.” He turned and pointed to the hole through which he had just come. “ Nothing at all to what’s in there. There’s a open place so big as a church, only there’s no daylight; ’tis all so dark as night. I thought to cut a doorway like, and make some steps, an’ light it up for ee to zee, only now you’ve a-found me out afore ’tis ready.” “But you mustn’,” she urged more warmly, “for it can do no good to you yourzelf.”

“ ’Tis the joy o’ my life, so long as do but tole ee up here now an’ then, that I mid zee your face,” he cried with passion, and took one step forward as if to catch her in his arms. She started and drew back. Her movement recalled to him the gap that lay between her state and his, and checked his hasty impulsa “But that’s nothing to anybeddy but myzelf,” he added in a low voice, as he turned away.

Nothing to be said or done could have drawn the girl more powerfully towards him than this sudden outburst and instant self-restraint. The momentary fear removed, her heart leapt with joy in the full certainty of his love. Then she felt a pity for this man whose path had been so thickly beset with thorns.

“Oh, but now you’re to have Ubley we shall be next neighbours. You’ll come to know vather well then. You’ll be bound to, living so close.”

Her voice was quick with gladness and encouragement. The sound of it raised his spirits, and the eagerness of hope came back upon his face. He strode three paces to and fro across the cave, and then sat down at the farther end of the slab, but looking towards her.

“I’ll tell ee what ’tis,” he said boldly. “ I’ll show ee all that’s in the heart o’ me. There’s nothing, nothing ’pon this earth ”— to add force to his words he clenched his fist and struck upon his knee—“that I’ve a-bin long bent upon, that I haven’t a-got or can’t zee in reach. By hook or by crook I’ve a-laid hands ’pon it. I never told my own vather what I do tell you now. He could never keep a penny to his name. But I worked day an’ night. I oped a shaft all unbeknown in my hut and went down after dark, when all the rest were drunk or a-bed asleep. An’ I had luck—the very luck o’ the devil—an’ kep’ it close, too close.”

He paused a moment, hesitating to go on. The varying emotions of the past, as he spoke of them, lived again in his speech, so that his words were alive with force and feeling. His voice had sunk into a whisper as it told the tale of his secret working and hoard. The girl sat spell-bound, fascinated by an energy of will and passion that had no place in her homely life at Charterhouse.

“ Too close? ” she faltered.

“ I got it for my own good,” he cried, as if in self-defence. “ I knew he’d only spen’ it to his hurt. But he did worse. Well, that’s done. Nothing can ever wipe out that.”

Again he stopped, and swayed backwards and forwards in shame and distress of mind.

Then he sprang to his feet. His face was flushed, his teeth set; carried away with a madness of revenge, and forgetful of the girl’s presence, he cried out:—

“ But the man who did it were zoon paid. An’ there’s a thing—that I should get the very groun’ he trod upon an’ called his own.”

At the height of his grim triumph he laughed aloud. Then he caught sight of the startled eyes of the girl staring at him open wide, as she drew back shuddering into a corner against the rock.

At once he sat down again and went on in a lower tone.

“ When I think of it I go half mad. All my thought was to live in peace an’ plenty like the folk about that be looked up to. I had no liking for a life all noise an’ revel. Though there’s this about the Shipham men, mind, fight an’ quarrel as they will, they do stan’ by one another. ’Tis touch one, wake all An’ that’s what he found that used to live at Ubley—”

“But let the dead be,” interrupted the girl quickly; “ I can’t a-bear to think o’ it myself. I do feel for ee, wi’ all my heart, Mr. Standerwick. I do really now, an’ understand too. But—well—there—go on to get what’s good for yourself, an’ leave what’s past, an’ hard thoughts, an’ that.”

Her sympathy softened him. He drew nearer upon their stone seat, and in his excitement leaned forward until his face was close to her.

“ There’s only one thing can ever gi’e my mind rest from thoughts like that,” he whispered, fixing his eyes intently upon her. “ If a maid brought up wi’ everything about her ’ud gi’e me her heart, so as to wish nothing better ’an to throw in her lot wi’ mine, then I could think no more o’ shame or trouble.”

Her lips moved, but she did not speak. She felt her breathing quicken and her heart beat fast The moment had come. She wanted to put it off, yet she had not power to move, nor tongue to utter word to help herself.

“ Then I’d take a pride in myzelf an’ in her,” he went on. “ I’d take sich care o’ her that she should never in this World know want or fear. What do ee think? I do love ee dearly. Could ee ever bring yourzelf to come to Ubley? ”

With an effort she got up, but he put out his hand to keep her from leaving him.

“ Could ee ever love me well enough for that?” he asked again.

“ Vather ’ud never hear o’ no such thing,” she cried, and tried to pass him, but he caught her by the arm and held her fast,

“ But you yourzelf—tell me. Could you love me?” In his eagerness to know her mind his manner sounded overbearing, almost unkind.

“ But I do scarce know ee, Mr. Standerwick,” she pleaded. “ I’ve only zeed ee to speak to twice afore in all my lifa How could I tell? ”

“ But I do know that I do love ee better than the light.”

“ Oh, let me go. Do ee let me go,” she sobbed.

“ There’s no man can ever love ee more ’an I do now. I do know that a’ready, if ’tis but twice. An’ there’s none can stand between us, for in a day or two, so the tale is, you’ll be one-an’-twenty—an’ woman-growed —an’ free to do as you will.”

He waited for some answer, but she had none to give. The haste of it frightened her; the maid at whom no man had ever looked had learnt neither vanity in love nor trifling. Something in her heart forbade her to say “No”; yet to promise so strange a thing was impossible.

“You do hurt, Mr. Standerwick.”

He quickly drew away his hand. He had grasped tighter than he knew, and red marks from his fingers were upon her wrist. He stamped with vexation. He was overcome with sorrow. The recollection of humble birth and wild life, always alert with resentments, now forced itself upon him with shame. How could a man so rough hope for the love of such a maid as this?

“I’d rather ha’ cut my hand off than to treat ee so,” he cried in a despair.

“’Tis o’ no account,” she told him, and moved towards the opening of the cave.

He stepped forward and stood in her way, but did not touch her.

“ But you ha’n’t a-gi’ed me so much as a word,” he said.

“ ’Tis all too strange,” she stammered. “ I can’t think about it.”

“ I had a thing to beg o’ ee that I thought o’ days agone, when I heard the talk about your birthday. I should like to speak to ee ’pon your birthday. I should like to wish ee all happiness an’ good luck. If I had happed to meet ee, I should ha’ axed ee to come up here that day if no other.”

“ I could never get away,” she broke in. “There’ll be something to be done every minute o’ the day.”

“ But I’d come up close to the house. I’d wait in the wood below the orcha’d if ’twere for hours, on the chance that you mid come,” he whispered.

“ I never could.”

“ In the evening now.”

“ There’ll be a party.”

“But couldn’ ee slip out—just for one minute like, if no more? ” he beseeched, “ or I shall be the only one not to wish ee a good wish—in words that is. For in my heart I do wish ee nothing but good from day’s light to dark night.”

It went against her to refuse so small a thing. “I couldn’ promise,” she said after some hesitation, “ nor—nor fix a time so as to say when.”

“But I’d bide till midnight,” he cried, overjoyed that she seemed in part to consent. “ I tell ee what, I’ll go there an’ wait out o’ sight, just under the trees, for I do want to speak to ee that day of all others. I’ve a-thought o’ it ever since I heard. Just for a minute. I’ll stop to hear the clock strike twelve afore I do move. Slip away from the dancers an’ run out. There’s no harm, an’ none the wiser. But if that time do pass, I shall believe you be affronted wi’ what I’ve a-zaid to-day.”

“ I’m not that,” she said quickly, and held out her hand.

“ Good-bye.”

“ Good-bye.”

He stood aside and she passed out and stood upon the ledge. He did not follow, and she was alone. It was noon or later, and over everything reigned the silence of summer at mid-day. Not a song was in the air, nor any bird upon the wing, and from the wind she was sheltered by the overshadowing cliffs.

A strange feeling crept over her, as if she were helpless and with no will.

“ I shall marry him,” she gasped beneath her breath.

Her own words frightened her. She was overawed as if an oracle had spoken from her heart.

CHAPTER XIII

THE PARTY.

“ Come on, Solomon! Step out then, Jims, with they long lags o’ thine. An’ here’s Selina. Glad to zee ee, Selina—glad to zee ee, sure. What? An’ who’s this then? Why, cousin Selina’s Emily Jane. Ha! ha! a-growed up out o’ knowledge, an’ put into long vrocks. Goo down by the welsh-nut tree, one an’ all o’ ee. You’ll vind Patty there, an’ plenty o’ victuals an’ drink.”

Never had John Winterhead’s best floptailed coat looked so blue, nor his buttons so bright. Never did his voice sound more rich and lusty than when he stood by the gate that afternoon and welcomed in and showed the way for Patty’s birthday guests.

Across the common, along the drove, and both ways up and down the road, jogged men on horseback; and women-folk in twowheeled carts, packed as tight as they could hold, came jolting over the ruts. Such was the sociable nature of people in those days that they waited for each other, and came along in shoals, talking at the top of their voices and laughing all the way. But once in sight of Charterhouse conversation ceased. The solemnity of a Sunday-clothes occasion began to weigh upon the guests; they became more silent than when going to church.

So only John Winterhead was to be heard, for, overburdened with good manners, all the rest were mute.

The welsh-nut tree, with its shade of shining green leaves, stood in the middle of home-field. Upon one side was the orchard, below that a small copse, and the ground sloped down into a level hollow between hills. Near by, a fire had been lighted and a kettle set on to boil.

The visitQrs sidled shyly up to Patty, standing with Aunt Maria under the branches, to wish her happy returns. Some brought presents, and produced them with such modesty and self-disparagement, that the gift might really have been thought no good if the giver had not presently sounded its praises to prevent any such mistake.

One o’ Blagdon laid a mysterious sack-bag on the grass at Patty’s feet while he shook hands.

“ I’ve a-brought ee on a bit of a remembrance,” he stammered.

He held the mouth of the bag between his knees, the better to untie the string, and, what with pride and bending his head so low, blushed like a maid.

The knot was tight, but at last in went his arm. He groped awhile without success in the innermost corners of the bag, and anxiety became depicted on his face.

“Ha! I’ve a-got un,” he laughed in triumph, and dragged forth a struggling, squeaking little pig, which he held by the hind leg to the admiration of all.

“’Tis only a little pig we do know,” he began with humility. “ But ’tis a very tidy little pig—a perty pig I do call un.”

He affectionately put his hand round the pig’s neck, and lifted his head to look at the pleasing expression of its countenance.

All the company agreed that when you did come to look at un, like, ’ twere really a wonderful perty little pig.

Fired by this appreciation one o’ Blagdon became warmed to loftier praise. It then appeared that not personal beauty, but family pride and fine tradition were the crowning glories of this little pig.

“ Ay! ” he cried with enthusiasm, as well he might. “The zow that’s the mother o’ thik little pig, have a-had a hunderd an’ zixty-two little pigs, an’ I’ve a-zold ’em, one wi’ another, not less ’an a poun’ a-piece—zo there.”

He clapped the pig back in the bag with an air of having made Patty’s fortune, and wandered around the party saying to everybody he could buttonhole: “ Hunderd an’ zixty-two little pigs—zold ’em all—poun’ a-piece

Cousin Selina’s Emily Jane carried a flat paper parcel in her hand.

“ Come on,” urged Cousin Selina.

That Emily Jane was awkward is beyond doubt, but it was consciousness of real merit that made her hang back. So Cousin Selina, a faded little over-worked woman with fair hair, pushed the silly maid forward. “ Why, you’ve a-got nothing to be ashamed about, sure,” she cried with pride.

The package opened, the most beautiful piece of white crochet work ever beheld by eyes was brought to light

“ La! ” cried Sophia Pierce, standing by.

“ There then! ” gasped Aunt Maria, holding up her hands.

And out of sheer wonder all the others, women and men too, burst out: “Well done!” Not a voice withheld its praise except the bass of one o’ Blagdon waxing louder and louder as he explained to new arrivals from a distance: “Hunderd and zixty-two little pigs. Zo true as Godalmighty made little apples. Zold ’em all Poun’ a-piece. Poun’ a-piece.”

Never before had so fine a work of art been seen on Mendip. As Aunt Maria said: “ Nobeddy could ever ha’ thought that Emily Jane had it in her”. The subject was Scriptural, to hang on the back of a chair.

“ No. They really wouldn’—if they didn’ know,” agreed Cousin Selina. Though she was but a poor relation, and looked down upon, she plucked up with a mother’s pride. “ You do all zee the subjec’,” she added, in a tone more superior than if she had married well, “ in cou’se.”

The design was a four-post bedstead, and a fine child with singularly chubby legs kneeling in an attitude of devotion on a patchwork counterpane. To look at it made Aunt Maria sentimental “La! I sim I could a’most hear the words,” she said and repeated the old rhyming prayer taught to children in days agone:—

Matthew, Mark, Lake and John,

Bless the bed that I lie on.

Zix angels roan’ my bed,

Two to voot, an’ two to head,

An’ two to car me when I be dead.

“But do ee know who ’tis?” inquired Cousin Selina, her pale face beaming with delight at the notice she was receiving.

“No.”

Thinking it might be meant for one of the family the company drew closer to search for a likeness.

“ No,” they one and all repeated, shaking their heads.

“ Why, 'tis the little Zammle to be sure,” smiled Cousin Selina, and she laid the work against Sophia’s black skirt, the better to show off the picture.

“ La! an’ so ’tis,” they all agreed at once.

“ An’ look at his little eye, so natural like,” said Aunt Maria with tender feeling; for Cousin Selina’s Emily Jane, artist as she was, had worked a round hole where the eye ought to be, and the expression of spirituality thus given to the countenance was truly wonderful.

But of all the neighbours who gave presents, Solomon Moggridge, who was thought so dull, yet richly possessed the sense that belongs to a good heart, brought the sweetest —a little rose-wood tea-caddy, silver-lined.

In those days a dish of tea was a treat, but this afternoon there was plenty, sure enough. And crock-cakes, brown as nuts and steaming hot, were brought out every whip’s while, another ready to cut as the last were finished. There was no stint. All the guests sat round on chairs and forms under the welsh-nut tree, except Jims Matravis, who found himself a little one-legged milking stool. The ladies spread their white “ hankichers ” upon their laps and smoothed them out like table-cloths. The men mostly carried red, and hung them elegantly over the small of the right knee. And what with their breeches and blue worsted hose, with here and there a waistcoat redder than their cheeks, and what with the fresh-washed white of the maidens, with faces rosier than the morning creeping up the hill, and the comeliness of middle-aged mothers in their Sunday gowns, and a granny here and there in a bit of stiff black silk—never in this world a brighter, happier lot o’ folk sat down to blow into their saucers before they drank. Only Cousin Selina, who had not done well for herself, glanced around with a hungry eye, and tried to reckon in her head the cost of boughten things, wi’ “ tay ” at ten shillings a pound and sugar at-

But the solemnity of all this was terrible, for at first people felt too fine to talk, until from the other side of the tree, against which the fiddler sat and ate and drank in solitude, was heard a little squeak.

“ Ha! ” shouted John Winterhead, holding up his forefinger to listen. “ So heVe a-got the crowd up to the chin o’ un then.”

And so he had. Just a scrape or two with his fiddle-stick, and the crowder struck up a wonderful tune that kept running back into itself and went on over and over again. Then heads began to nod, and feet to shuffle. But nobody liked to make the first move. And really they might have been there to this day if Solomon, urged and elbowed on either side, had not at last jumped up and offered an arm to Aunt Maria. At that everybody laughed and felt at home. And Aunt Maria, not to be outdone, took Solomon at his word and footed it toe and heel in a four-hand reel as everybody said, “So dapper as any young maid, until the sweat did run down Solomon’s face by the gallon If it hadn’ a-bin for a cup o’ cider, as he told everybody himself, he must ha’ dropped.

However, after moderate refreshment he stood up again as fresh as a daisy. And they had “Hunt the squirrel” and the handkerchief dance, and every mortal thing they could think of. All the men and some of the maids got out, but Cousin Selina, glad of the chance, must needs set everybody right, more than was called for, as many thought, particularly in “Upzides an’ down the Middle,” a-making herself really too fess wi’ her tongue, a-showing folk what they ought not to do afore they had a-done it. This was unseemly, not to say downright “ondacent,” in one who had never done well for herself.

Everything went merry as a belL Sophia, after the dancing began, did not come out, being in black, but looked after the house. So Patty was free from care, except that when the fiddler stopped, and the rest sat down to puff and blow, and to wipe their faces and fan themselves with their hanki-chers, her eyes stole away to the little dark copse below the orchard.

She knew that Standerwick was there. The thought made her unhappy. He would stay there all these hours in vain. She could not bear to be unkind. After all, she might easily slip away unseen for one minute and not be missed; yet she dared not go. It came as a relief when the crowder twanged his string again, and the young chaps bustled around to pick up partners. Another opportunity had passed. She could not go for awhile if she would.

Peeper and deeper grew the shadows under the welsh-nut tree, and dew settled upon the grass as wet as rain. “ ’Tis really wonderful,” cried Aunt Maria, “how do work through a body’s shoes,” and she and the staid folk began to toddle off indoors. But the young only laughed the more and danced the harder until it grew quite dark.

Then John Winterhead, scarcely to be seen against the black orchard at the top of the slope, came out and shouted:—

“Now then, all o’ ee. ’Tis blind-man’s holiday. There idden a man o’ ee can tell for certain what maid he’ve a-got by the waist. Come in. Supper's ready. Come into house or they’ll eat up all the victuals.”

So the dance broke up, and two by two the company slowly found their way into the great kitchen.

The board and trestles had been brought in. The table reached from window right back to wall. -Cousin Selina glanced to right and left, eyeing everything with mixed feelings of pride and envy. Cold roast and boiled, ham, chicken, pies, ducks—there was a sight to see. Selina felt a thrill of cousinship, and then sighed because she was poor. But all the rest fell to as merry as sandboys. Solomon out-did himself. Talk about dull! He made more noise than all the others put together. Passed more plates, drank more cider. He went all round the table more than once drinking healths, and then got up to make speeches —only Jims Matravis, reaching his long arm behind Aunt Maria, pulled him down by the coat-tail. On so great an occasion it was pardonable, and may be readily excused, but truth demands it should be recorded— Constable Moggridge got a little fresh.

Supper over, in a twinkling they cleared the kitchen to play games. But for an hour they had a rest and a song or two, whilst the men drew a whiff from churchwarden pipes, and all of ripe years took a spoonful or so of the right sort

John Winterhead made up a party inside the chimney for three-card loo; but with the young and nimble “ Bline-buckey Davey ” was all the cry.

“ An’ let I be blindfold first,” cried Cousin Selina’s Emily Jane, for having risen into fame about the chair-cover, she was in high spirits and panted for notoriety. So Solomon tied up her eyes with a duster, and held up his great broad hand before the face of her.

“Buck, buck, how many vingers do I hold up? ” asked the constable, and the rest breathlessly awaited the answer.

“Vive,” guessed Cousin Selina’s Emily Jane.

“You can zee,” cried Solomon, for five it was sure enough.

But this was over-ruled, for, as Cousin Selina said, no maid in her senses would be such a fool as to tell right if she really could see.

“ Then what good to pot the question! ” argued the constable.

Though sound in reason this was universally perceived to show a poor insight into human nature. Emily Jane, without more ado, was twirled round in the middle of the floor until she didn’t know her head from her heels, and then the fun became uproarious.

How they all scouced and screamed and ran, excepting Patty, who kept nervously edging her way towards the door.

The longing to run out and meet Standerwick grew keener and keener as the time went by. He had been kind to her. He only wanted to wish her luck. She could never look him in the face again if she did not go—never enter the cave after such a slight. How awkward all the men here were, with their elbows up as they dodged away. He stood straight and supple as an ash sapling. Groover or no, he was better than they, and he loved her. Her heart beat fast at the thought. Come what may she must go.

Somebody came behind on tiptoe and slapped Emily Jane on the back.

Emily Jane turned round and round, like a kitten after her own tail, and pounced on Patty just as she got to the door.

“ Patty Winterhead,” she cried, and pulled the cloth from her eyes.

Patty was caught. In vain she told them she was not playing at that moment—that she would be back in a jiffy if anybody would take her turn. No one would hear of any such nonsense. Willy - nilly, she must be blinded—birthday and all With shouts and laughter they clapped on the duster. She felt so out of spirits, she could have cried.

In her excitement she ran hither and thither, but never so much as a sleeve could she touch with a finger-tip. She was beside herself. The time must be gone. He would think it was pride. She held a heartful of misery in a house full of mirth. She rushed into the chimney comer and took her father by the neck.

Somebody dragged her back by the tail of her skirt. She turned and caught somebody by the arm—sure enough. Cousin Selina, quick as thought, hopped ’pon the little footstool, and, being so tall—well, Patty guessed:—

“Sophia Pierce”.

“Haw! haw!” Solomon Moggridge laughed his great laugh.

She darted at him and caught his yellow whiskers.

Solomon, honest soul, with the simplicity of a great overgrown boy, croopied down to make himself small, and went on his knees, as Jims afterwards said, “ fore all the wordle like the little Zammle ”.

But once bitten is twice shy. Patty was “ upzides wi’ un ” this time.

“ Constable Moggridge.”

“Zo ’tis,” cried one.

“ Ay, that’s who ’tis,” echoed another.

Then they all clapped their hands.

So Patty was free at last. “ I shall stan’ out a bit,” she cried, and sat down out of the way close to the old oak clock in the comer. She leaned forward and glanced anxiously up at its silver face. The long hand was beginning to climb the last half-hour before midnight. There was still time, but none to waste. The maid who worked in the dairy was standing open-eyed, open-mouthed in the open doorway. There could be nobody to see her go.

She slipped out, ran across the garden, and into the orchard, as if the doing so had never been open to doubt. All her fears were lost in eagerness to get to the copse before it was too late. The moon was up and nearly at the full The slanting light splashed in patches between the heavy-leafed apple-trees, planted in even rows like a grove. It shone upon her white frock as she ran by.

At the end of the orchard was a hatch, half hidden under sprawling brambles from an overgrown hedgerow that parted off the wood. Here she stooped — panting with haste and excitement, not knowing what next to do. The copse was darker than the orchard, and thick with underwood. The little wicket dragged upon the ground; it had not been opened for months.

The midnight stillness was broken by a rustling amidst hazel boughs. Little Patty Winterhead shook more than the leaves, as Standerwick clambered through a gap in the hedge and came to her.

Suddenly in the house behind her the fiddle struck up afresh. Then an outburst of mirth and voices, so loud and clear in the silence that its nearness startled her. She turned her head. The window-lights of

Charterhouse were gleaming between the black trunks of the apple-trees.

“ I can’t bide here. I can’t,” she whispered in alarm. “ Mayhap somebeddy mid come out upon us.”

He put his hand under her arm.

“ Let’s go out on the hill,” he said in her ear.

Skirting the copse he led her to the head of the orchard, and through a gate into the open country. There the house was out of sight. The music, although not out of hearing, sounded far away. The grass beneath her feet had been cropped short by sheep, and limestone boulders, white in the moonlight, lay scattered everywhere like a sleeping flock.

He put his arm around her. She had no will to say him “ nay

“ Let us zit down.”

They were by a large flat stone and they sat down side by side.

“ I’ve a-brought ee a keepsake,” he said, pressing a small packet into her hand. “ ’Tis little worth, except in memory o’ the day. But I got it out o’ groun’ myzelf, an’ had it made a purpose.”

She was about to open it, but he stopped her.

“ Put it away now,” he said, “ an* hang it, out o’ sight, round your neck for a token.”

“ But how can I thank ee if I don’t know what ’tis? ”

“ ’Tis nothing to thank for unless do bring luck.”

He had thrown his hat upon the turf, and she was bare-headed just as she ran out from the party. The music in the house had stopped. He laid his hand upon her shoulder, and they looked each into the other’s face in the calm pale light, so close that she could feel his breath upon her cheek.

“Hark!”

From beyond the cliffs sounded the boom of Cheddar clock.

“ ’Tis striking twelve,” he said in her ear. “ Do ee know what they do zay? The maid first kissed upon the stroke o’ midsummer midnight shall be wed afore the year is out.”

He drew her nearer still and snatched a kiss where the hair parted over her forehead.

The saying was well known to her, and at the party any maid left out of the frolic might think herself neglected, sure enough. But Patty Winterhead pulled herself away, and blazed up in sudden anger, as if it were a thing of weight.

“ I didn’ come for that. I had no thought you’d take advantage, or I wouldn’ a-zot down. I just slipped out because we were friends. But I shall know again.”

With this threat to come no more, she sprang up and would have gone.

“ I meant no harm,” he said humbly, “ nor ever could. I wouldn’ raise a finger to offend ee—no, not to save my life. But I do zee how ’tis. Any or all o’ ’em up to house mid ha’ kissed ee, an’ no matter—but since ’tis I—”

His words broke off in bitterness, and at once she felt sorry and ashamed. He had risen and was standing by the stone. What he said was true. With another she would only have laughed. There was nothing to get so mad about in a little thing like that. Only—only, he loved her. And she could never rest from thinking of him. So it was different. His very touch startled her. And now he thought her anger only pride.

She turned and came a step towards him.

“ There, I didn’ think to speak so sharp,” she said quite softly, wishing to make amends, “ but you gallied me, and then it came out straight.” Then she laughed lightly to pass the matter by. “ Oh, ay, I do know what, they do zay. There’s nothing in that. I shall never be wed if I do live to fourscore.”

“Don’t ee go away. Come back for a bit,” he begged of her.

She wavered a moment. “ I mus’n’t bide long,” she said, and they sat down again.

“ If I had a-bin bred to Ubley, instead of earning it for myzelf,” he went on very slowly, “ you would a-took me, an’ nobeddy a-found a word o’ fau’t. Yet I couldn’ love ee more, if I had a-bin born to all the wealth o’ Dolberry Hill. An’ which do take the better man, to have or to get? If you had the will to wed there’s none can stop ee now. An’ there’s never another’ll love ee as I do.”

She knew it for a truth. She could hear it in his voice—see it in his face. Her heart gladdened with the knowledge. Yet what could she say? The fear of her father, the habit of her life were still upon her. For the world she dared not tell him that she loved him.

She looked down upon the ground and did not speak.

In the moonlight, a few paces from her feet, her eyes made out a darker line upon the turf.

“Look!”

She held out her finger, and traced upon the parched grass the greener round of a pixy ring.

“We be in a gallow-trap,” she laughed. “ If either of us have a-done wrong ’tis sure to be brought to light.”

He started as if struck unawares, then with a low cry he hid his face in his hands.

What had she done? what had she said? Fool that she was, she had called back to memory his shame and disgrace. The superstition that any man of crime stepping into a fairy circle should surely come to justice was thrust out of her mind. She had carelessly struck the wound that never could be healed In the keenness of her self-reproach all fears and backwardness were thrown to the winds.

Carried away by love and overwhelming pity for his lot, she threw her arms around his neck.

“I said it wi’out thought,” she sobbed. “ I’d keep the past from ee if I could; for I do love ee—I do love ee wi’ all my heart! ”

“ I do care for nothing,” he cried, “ if I’ve a-got that 1 ”

She felt his kisses burning on her cheek— her lips, but she nestled closer and hid her face upon his shoulder. He pressed his cheek against her hair, and she lay quite still, like a child, in his arms. She had no care for the future. The moment was enough A feeling of safety and content crept over her. The open hill, where nobody could pry, with the pale stars overhead, was more secret than any hiding-place.

The dancing struck up again, and the sound called home her thoughts.

“I mus’ go,” she whispered eagerly, and struggled to be free.

“ I can’t let ee out o’ my arms.” And he pressed her nearer still.

“ I shall be missed; an’ then they’ll hunt for me, an’ question when I do come.”

“ Zay you’ll come to the cave to-morrow.”

“ I will the day after,” she promised.

“ Then kiss me.”

And he let her go.

She stood up and smoothed the creases from her frock, and pushed back her hair where it had fallen loose. Then they walked quickly towards the orchard gate.

“ Good-bye, dear.”

“ Good-bye.”

She ran homewards, keeping in the shadow of a line of trees until she reached the arched doorway in the wall beyond the barton stalls.

Then she stopped and opened the packet, still clutched in the palm of her hand. It contained a little silver charm—a heart and lovers’ knot How it glistened in the clear moonlight! and round the edge was a posy:—

No heart more true

Than mine to yon.

She pressed it to her lips, kissed it again and again, then hid it away upon her bosom out of sight

She looked back, and in an ecstasy of longing held out her arms towards the place where they had parted.

“I love him!” she cried. “If I cannot have him I shall die.”

Then she lifted the latch, ran across the yard, and went on tiptoe into the house.

She found the kitchen in an upstir. The fiddler was at work, harder than ever, and two or three young couples were dancing the very soles from their feet The more thoughtful of the company, however, were gathered together in bunches to discuss with the greatest heat a point of the most delicate nicely.

“I do call constable to blame,” cried one o’ Blagdon dogmatically. “ Iss I do.”

“ An’ zo do I”

“An’ I too.”

“ Though Miss Maria Winterhead had no need to make so much fuss about a little thing o’ that sort,” put in Jims Matravis, and opinion veered.

“ No more she had.”

“ No more she hadn’,”

As lor Solomon himself, he stood in the middle of the floor, as helpless as a thing of wood, staring from one to another like a mazed sheep. And Cousin Selina was shaking her finger at him too.

“La, Mr. Moggridge, I should never ha’ thought it o’ ee,” she said, “for I always heard you were so quiet as a snail.”

The truth is, Solomon, fired by social success and cider, had seized the midnight moment for the kissing of Aunt Maria. And Aunt Maria sprang up like a wild cat, and cried out that it was “ terr’ble bad taste,” and if John did not take it up, she’d go to bed.

“An’ then your Aunt Maria,” as Jims Matravis afterwards informed Patty, “showed up most wonderful red about the wattle, an’ put up her veathers, so she did, an’ went up to roost.”

But in the hubbub the girl stepped in un- observed. Nobody had noted her absence except her hither, who, turning round from his card-playing to shout: “Enough said, enough said,” caught sight of her and beckoned.

“ Ha, you little mouse! So you ran away to hidey then when the clock struck midnight! ” he said in her ear.

CHAPTER XIV

THE EMPTY HOUSE.

The party was over. The folk were all gone —and so was Aunt Maria.

They had kept it up full late, and danced through the night into broad daylight

“ An’ now have a bit o’ breakfast,” shouted John Winterhead.

So one and all set to work. They brought back the trestles and board, the boiled and roast, ducks and ham, all that was left of them, and sat down to start the day upon a good round meal. They were merrier than overnight. “An’ better off,” as John Winter-head declared to solace Solomon, who was a little quiet, “than Maria, though she had gone off to blanket fair.” Then the guests all drove away in the sweet sunshine of early morning, singing as they went.

An hour later, a hired trap drew up before the front gate. Cousin Selina, a sly thing, had taken the order to Cheddar, and never breathed so much as a word. The driver and the dairymaid brought downstairs the carpet-bag, the boxes, and the badger-skin trunk. Cousin Selina must have slipped up in the night to help pack—a double-faced woman, to laugh wi’ Solomon, an’ side wi’ Aunt Maria. Last of all came Miss Winterhead herself. “John ought to ha’ took it up,” she said, as she wished Patty “ goodbye ”. “ An’ if I do live to be Methuselah I shall never hold no different Kiss your aunt.” With her head in the air she sailed down the garden path and departed from Charterhouse as unexpectedly as she had arrived.

So Patty was left to the companionship of Sophia Pierce. Sophia stayed home from Ubley that morning to help to put things to rights, and they talked as they hurried to and fro, just as they used to do before trouble came to Sophia, or jealous thoughts entered Patty’s head.

“ I tell ee what ’tis,” the girl went prattling on, as she piled up a stack of plates to carry into the back kitchen. “ I don’t feel a bit tired—not one mo’sel bit—not any more ’an if I’d a-bin a-bed all night. Nor eet a-sleepied. La! I do verily believe, once wound up an’ started, I be like the old clock, an’ good to go for a week.”

Sophia glanced up in wonderment. Of late Patty had spoken scarcely a word to her.

“Odds bobs!” she laughed. “An’ when you be down, the tongue o’ ee can’t so much as go ‘ tick ’.”

A consciousness of having been unkind came stealing over little Patty Winterhead. She felt sorry and ashamed. Her love for Standerwick had taken such possession of her mind and soul that it left no room for hardness or ill-will It was more than heart could hold. She longed to be able to tell. She wanted to stop Sophia, there and then, bustling around the table, knife-box in hand, and to cry out to her, “ I love him! I love him! ” Only, Sophia Pierce, more businesslike than ever in her black frock, was not the one to understand. How wild she had been against the groovers at the garden gate that night of Hang Fair! Yet such a woman would keep Charterhouse as she had never done. That might make it easier to leave home. Patty wished with all her heart that her father would marry to-morrow.

“ There, an’ what’s come to ee now? ” cried

Sophia, striding across to the dresser. “I didn’ zay any harm, sure. An’ you be dumb to once. Why, ’tis all up or all down wi’ ee, Patty Winterhead. Now take las’ night. So much as ever you could be got to play. An’ then you couldn’ be vound. An’ then it looked as if earth couldn’ hold ee, you did dance so wild. Where did ee go when you went out? ”

Sophia had faced about and was staring with that sharp inquisitiveness which took note of everything.

Catching her eye Patty blushed and was disconcerted. Then her father’s words came back to her aid.

“I ran out, till—till all the tomfoolery were over,” she said, and glanced up again as she spoke.

Sophia was still closely watching her.

“I thought you mus’ ha’ slipped out to sweethearty,” she laughed, “only your Cousin Selina counted up all the young chaps.” Then she went on with her work.

A strange misgiving came over the mind of little Patty Winterhead that Sophia had seen more than she told, or at least suspected more than she said. It was one of those flashes of insight which come of a quick imagination. But in the same moment she cast it aside as a foolish fear.

“Sophia!”

“What is it?”

“ Let’s look sharp. An’ I’ll walk across to Ubley wi’ ee, when you do go.”

“ All right,” said Sophia.

The morning was still young and all the day before them when they were ready to start. At first, until they left the road, Sophia’s homestead was out of sight. But when the walls were passed and they turned into the drove, here a chimney-stack and there a slope of roof peered between the sheltering trees. Hundreds of times had Patty seen the place, and been there too, often enough, but now she looked at it, as they say, “ with all her eyes ”.

“Have ee settled anything yet, Sophia?” she asked suddenly, when they had gone some way in silence.

“ He’s willing to take it off. An’ he’ll go in at Milemas.”

“But that was what you wanted,” said Patty in surprise, for the answer sounded discontented.

“ ’Tis better than a sale, for certain. But he’ll get it half the wo’th, you mid be sure.”

Patty thought of the saying that the Pierces were so having, get what they would, they could never be easy in their minds. Then she felt sorry for Sophia upon whom so much had fallen.

They could now see the whole front of the farm. The sun had caught the row of dormer windows jutting from the thatch, and the panes of glass gleamed out like stars. And this might some day be her home! In summer-time the place was at its best, and to-day it shone a welcome that won the girl’s love.

“ I do like Ubley myzelf. I a’ways did,” she burst out with a warmth of feeling beyond all that Sophia could understand. “No wonder you do feel to quit the place where you’ve a-lived so many years.”

“Not that,” returned the other with a sniff for such sentiment “Only I’ve a-got to do it all now. Mr. Winterhead, he’s so mad that this Standerwick should come here, he won’t speak to sich a fellow, so he do zay.”

“ Will he take the furniture? ”

“ Every stick.”

They trudged on until they came to Ubley. Sophia dragged from her pocket the front- door key, turned the lock, and led the way into a straight passage with a door at the other end.

“ What have ee got to do? ” asked Patty.

“ Oh! a plenty. Go all out roun’.”

“ I don’t know but what I’d so soon rest,” sighed the girl, and sat down on the bottom step of the stairs.

“ Very well. Bide where you be. Please yourzelf an’ you’ll please me,” cried Sophia shortly as she trapesed away about her business. From the garden, as an after-thought, she called back:“ There’s a ho’se-hair couch in the parlour; you could lie down an’ go to sleep

But sleep was far away from Patty’s eyelids. She was tired with dancing, and with being up all night, but never in her life had she been more wide-awake. Sophia’s company wearied her and she wanted to be alone—that was all

Since midnight she had not found a moment to think of what had happened. She was lifted into the “ zebbenth heab’m,” as they say, upon the new wonder and delight of loving and being loved. Her head was in the clouds; her feet scarce rested upon the earth. And yet to walk a mile with

Sophia had dragged her down upon the stony road of every-day life. Sophia always made one see the plain side of things.

In the stillness of this empty house, her courage sank at the thought of the difficulties in her way. Where did it lead? How would it end? This love which went to the very bottom of her heart There had never been any one besides—there never could be another. The whole happiness of life hung upon her marriage with this man. Without him there was nothing—nothing. That her father would not even speak to him on business was almost more than mind could grasp. It had been her father’s pride, ever since she could recollect, that John Winter-head was not proud. And this was unnatural—out of all right and reason. He would never consent. There was no hope of that. And she would never have the strength to withstand him. Yet underneath her fear was the will to follow Standerwick, if needs be, to the other end of the world.

Upon one side and along the frame of the open door grew a rose-bush thick and green, and small loose flowers hung below the dum-head, in clusters, blood-red. The bright colour caught her eya She loved a house covered with growing things. She got up and went outside to look. Ubley was smiling in the morning sunshine.

Her troubles fled. A dream of married life—of a home all her own, arose before her. Everything became straight and simple. Her father would be angry and storm; but he could not hinder her. When he found her bent upon it, and that all the happiness of life hung on her love for Standerwick, he would give way. And when he saw her contented and doing well, he would understand, and come to love the man himself.

Straightway she felt a longing to peep into every nook and cranny of the place. She ran into the garden, across a grass plot with a hen-coop or two, and round by the stalls. In her present mood everything enchanted her. It had all run wild to be sure, since Sophia was going to leave. And so much the better. She could have it her own way, and plant a many more flowers too.

But she must not stay about, and leave no time to go indoors. She wanted to see it all, ay, and look out of every window, front and back. The kitchen, the parlour, and the little middle chamber above she knew. In those days, when things were kept for use, kitchens and parlours were as like each other as peas. She went upstairs, along the creaking passage into the cheese room, and the inner place, not much bigger than a cupboard, with a faint smell, where last year’s apples had been stored. She went up into the attics, with the slanting ceilings and windows in the roof. Then down again, and into the sleeping rooms one after another.

Hark! Surely some one was moving in the house below.

She stopped to listen.

There was a step upon the stair.

Half afraid she ran out into the passage —and there, full-butt, she bounced against Sophia.

“Why, Patty Winterhead, whatever be up to?”

“I—I thought it was no harm to look roun’ the house,” she faltered, getting very red, for Sophia was eyeing her with suspicion and surprise.

“None at all. Anybeddy would a’most think you had a-took Ubley yourself.”

Then little Patty Winterhead felt uncomfortable—as if Sophia Pierce had a double meaning in the words.

CHAPTER XV

THE PROMISE.

“ No, dear, I don’t think I can ever bear it much longer. Only when I were away, for the life o’ me, I couldn’ help coming. An’ when I be here, ’long wi’ ee an’ got nothing to fear, then I do sim as if I could never go home again. An’ that’s how ’tis—day after day— till I do a’most think my heart’ll break to hold back so much.”

She was sitting on his knee with her face half hidden against his breast, and she raised her arms, and drew his head down until his lips pressed against her cheek.

“An’ Sophia Pierce do watch, like a cat waiting for a mouse; I know she do. Only now I do stop till they be all a-bed, she can’t get hold o’ anything. An’ eet, I could be so happy as the day—an’ so I be—if it wasn’t for thinking for poor vather, an’ what he’ll feel when he do know it.”

Three weeks had passed since the birthday party, and it was now the end of July. The entrance to the inner cave was finished. The steps were cut, the floor smoothed, so that it was like an upstairs room. At the farther end it narrowed into a little passage, leading, as Standerwick discovered, into a deeper cavern beyond.

This cell was lighted with candles, each one firm in a socket of its own grease. Except for the flame, which never flickered in the still air, they might have been taken for the stalagmites amidst which they stood. The white stone, behind, around, and above, glistened and cast strange reflections upon the roof and walls. In places the light shone through curtains, half transparent and thin as lantern-horn, only red. But Patty had been here many times by now, and the wonder of all this was gone.

It was night; though, for that matter, in broadest day the inner cave was dark. But then he had his work, and fear of Sophia’s inquisitiveness, if she were much away with no errand to show, made Patty fearful of leaving home for long. Sophia was so sharp. She saw so much and thought of so much more. And in little Patty Winterhead there was no room for a lie.

At Charterhouse, as in all the homesteads upon the hill, when there was no company folk went to bed by twilight, and got up with the lark. So fully did they follow the old proverb of “early to bed and early to rise,” that in winter-time more candle was burnt before daylight than after dark-night. Now the hay was carried and the oats just coming fit to cut. John Winterhead, sitting in the porch at dusk, already noted that the days began to draw in. He was wont to fill just one pipe more—that smoked, they went to bed. Then Patty listened until the house was still, and trembling lest a hinge might grate or creak, she crept down barefoot with her shoes in her hand, softly drew the door behind her and ran out But the secret weighed heavy upon her heart Only when she was safe within the cave, with many hours before dawn, could she cast aside her care and feel the full happiness of his love.

“ I’ve a-done all that you wanted me,” she went on in a low voice. “ I’ve a-come night after night If anything should happen to make ee change to me, I could never live. I’d come here all by myzelf, so as to be lost, an’ lie down an’ die.”

“ I could never change, not even to love ee more—for there’s no room for it,” he cried, caressing her.

“But vather’ll be rough wi’ ee. He’ll call ee everything he can lay his tongue to,” she urged, no longer doubting, but to hear him say it the more.

“ It’ll be all o’ no account. He can never make me angry now, whatever he do zay. Patty, what need is there to wait?”

“ What do ee mean? ”

As she spoke she raised her head to look into his face.

“I do mean—if the first he heard were that we were man and wife, what could he zay then? ”

“ How could that be? ”

“We could marry by licence. There’s none could stop us, now you be of aga Do ee know the pa’son to Shipham? ”

“No!”

“ Nor he you? ”

“ Not that I do know o’.”

“ An’ if he do know the name, he’ll never think. We could say Witham; for Charter-house is in Witham, though they be twenty mile apart Martha, daughter o’ John Winterhead, o’ the parish o’ Witham, o’ full aga I’d only tell un over night, an’ let drop that for good reason I didn’ care to have any talk. He’d have no choice but to marry us, when I did come, licence in han’.”

“I could never do it; I could never go drough wi’ it,” she murmured beneath her breath, as if unconsciously giving tongue to her inner thoughts.

“I’ve a-worked it all out,” he went on very softly and with great tenderness. “ I’d meet ee, dear, a mile from your house, an’ drive ee all but into Shipham. An’ there you could get down, an’ we’d walk to church apart. You could have on your oldest vrock. Why, there’s nobeddy but sexton ’ud know there was a wedding; and I’d get over he not to tell; an’ parson, he’d read the book, an’ pocket his pay an’ go, wi’ never another thought in the head o’ un. There’s nothing to come between us then—but death.”

He pressed her closer still, and kissed her again and again. He had put into words the dearest longing of her soul. To be his, to do for him and change his lot, and to have him for her own so long as their lives could last.

“ Where should we go then? ” she asked quickly.

“ I’d drive ee back, an’ nothing so much as guessed, we’d go on just as we be. Tis but two months now, an’ Ubley ’ull be mine. Then you can come away to your new home, an’ let your vather know how and when you were wed.”

“ But if he should find out? If any should learn it out an’ tell? ”

“ I’d find ee a place for the time being,” he pleaded eagerly; “ a place you’d have no call to be ashamed o’ for the few weeks, or whatever mid chance to be.”

“ It wasn’t that—I wasn’t thinking o’ that. It ’ud be all alike if we were together, and I’d ask no more—if only vather were content. But I should be afeared to face un when he knew.”

What with her passion and her fear, he could feel her shiver in his arms.

“ He’d never know until we told him,” he cried with all the force of firm belief. “An’ like enough I mid get the house afore the time is up. He’s empty a’ready; an’ in coming to a settlement I could agree to that. Miss Pierce’U never want to go back there, will she, now she’s to Charterhouse? ”

“No; Miss Piereell never want to go back.”

There was a mockery in the way she re- peated his words, for the mention of Sophia’s name recalled her jealousy and dislike.

“ She'd be willing to have it off her han’s if she could get a poun’ the more.”

“ Ha, she’d be glad.”

Even in the midst of her emotion the girl laughed. He understood Sophia so exactly.

“ Then do as I do want, Patty, dear,” he coaxed, close to her ear. “’Tis better so; an’ it can’t be for long. I’ll make ee happy —I will.”

For a while she did not speak. In the cave there was no sound but her breathing, fast and short, as her longing struggled to overcome her fear.

“An’ if I do marry ee, an’—an’ then don’t please ee after all, what could I do—cut off, like—maybe cut off from all? ”

“ You can’t but please me, Patty, dear, I do love ee so. ’Tis as if a man could be displeased wi’ the apple of his eye.”

“ If you should ever gi’e me only so much as a look in anger, it ’ud break the heart o’ me! ” she cried.

“ I never could—never in the world——”

“ But I’ve a-zeed ee wild wi’ rage only at a thought.”

“ ’Tis all gone an’ past,” he told her; “ ’tis all forgotten, if yon do but do what I do ask.”

She drew a deep sigh.

“ I can’t help myself! ” she burst out, carried away by her love for him, and clinging around his neck. “I be boun’ to do it. You’ve a-took me, so that I’ve a-got no power nor wish o’ my own, only to act as you do want.”

“Then I’ll go to Wells first thing tomorrow, an’ get—”

She put her hand over his lips and stopped him.

“Don’t ee zay another word now,” she begged.

She had promised. She hid her face away from his kisses, and at that time would talk no more. A glow of contentment and unmixed happiness came stealing into her bosom. She would marry him, and gain the great desire of her life. A little while, and her father must come round to understand and respect him; then everything would be well.

They took no count of passing time, but the air within the cave grew close and heavy to suffocation.

She roused herself with an effort

“Look,” she cried, “the can’les do bum low, an’ ’tis so hot in here as a ovem. Let’s go out in the open, it must be later than we do think.”

He lighted her through the outer cave, and they went out and stood upon the ledge.

It was the last hour before sunrise. The early light of morning grey was lifting above the eastern range, and every bush and tree upon the line of the hill-top stood black against the first faint streak of coming day, but the pass beneath was black as night Only on the cliff’s head could the eye dimly make out the bolder crags and peaks, to lose them as they overlapped each other in the winding gorge.

“ The day do grow fast, an’ the reapers’ll be out betimes,” she said anxiously. “ I must go so soon as ever I can zee to put my foot”

“ Then I’ll make all ready to-day.”

“ Ay, make all ready when you will,” she told him, speaking very slowly. “ My mind’s a-made up. I won’t ran word.”

CHAPTER XVI

THE LAST SHEAF A-TIED.

We have a-done. We have a-done.

An’ all a-done. An’ all a-done.

Hurrah! Hurrah!

The shouts of the distant reapers came in through the open window of Charterhouse kitchen, where Sophia Pierce was at work. A pewter platter in one hand, a dumpling-spoon of brass in the other, she was bent two-double over the hearth. Upon the fire was a crock—one of those round, pot-bellied cooking vessels with three little legs, and three little rings and a bow-handle to hang on the chimney-crook. Sophia dipped out her dumplings without haste; then she got up, straightened her back, and stood to listen.

We have a-done. An’ all a-done.

The last sheaf a-tied.

“ How they do whoopey, sure ’nough,” she snorted, out of all patience with herself and everybody else. “Could hear ’em a’most ten mile.”

The last load in Ubley had been carried the day before yesterday, and the place was off her hands for good. She had got out of it “ wonderful well John Winterhead and everybody agreed that her talent for business was beyond belief. Standerwick had taken the house, and might go in to-day or tomorrow if he wished. There was a piece of luck! Without a word he paid what she asked—an uncomfortable thing to happen in business, after all, and apt to leave the seller a prey to doubt. Perhaps she ought to have put the price higher, though the “rattletraps” could never have fetched half the money in open sale. Never. Yet Sophia was unhappy, and at odds with all the world.

The time had come when she must look things in the face and make up her mind what to do. During her stay at Charter-house she had grown leaner and leaner, not only with work, though of that she had done enough in the last three months, but from a fever of longing, and hope, and continual disappointment. It began long ago, when John Winterhead laughed and praised her to her face in her father’s house. A secret thought, hidden in her heart, like a seed underground, silently it grew and grew. In her trouble, when he did more than if she had been of his kin, the belief that he meant marriage dazzled her. His care to squeeze the last penny-piece out of Ubley, the time he spent and pains he took fostered the expectation. To one bred as she, to hold getting for the highest good, unmixed kindness of heart had no place in life. There must be something else. In everything a deeper motive unseen. She watched for his coming day by day, and waited for the word he did not speak. It was all because of Patty, she thought. She hated the silly little fool, with no more sense in her head than a wash-dish.

Suddenly John Winterhead changed.

Sophia Pierce was no longer a chicken, and she could see it all Patty, taking alarm, must have sent for Aunt Maria unbeknown, and that unlooked-for arrival was nothing but a blind. Since then he had never helped her in word or deed. Why, if she did but ask for counsel, he turned the question off with some short answer nothing worth. As for letting a dislike for Stander- wick stand in the way of business—any such excuse she laughed to scorn. That was all “ my eye an’ Betty Martin Only his promise about Patty held John Winterhead from doing what he would.

The reapers kept on shouting—sometimes they shouted for an hour.

She was to send a “ nunchin” out into the field. All the neighbours were there, for in those days folk turned in to help one another, and sheared and harvested, they and their sons, from one farm to the next. To-year, the season was so wonderful fine and dry, that every mote so far had been carried without so much as a drop o’ rain. To-day they looked to cut in the morning, and haul it home to mow, every bit an’ crumb, before night.

Sophia stood by the window in doubt. Since John Winterhead took less notice of her, she could scarcely bear to be out of his sight. Her passion for the man, deeply inwrought upon the grain of self-interest, which went to the very core of a Pierce, gave her no rest. Her eyes followed him when he was about the house. Her thoughts went after him afield. She would make herself so necessary in Charterhouse that he could never let her go. Then she laughed at herself for a fool to be so hungry for this man’s praise.

She turned away briskly, strode into the backlet, and called:—

“ Patty! Patty Winterhead! ”

Then out so far as the pump and called again.

The shrill voice of the maid replied from the dairy-house. “Miss Patty went away by now, athirt the hill,” it said.

A smile flickered around Sophia’s thin lips, and a gleam of satisfaction glanced from her eyes. In a moment they were gone.

“Very well. Then keep on wi’ your work,” she cried, just as if she were mistress in the place. “ I’ll put the victuals together, an’ carr’ it out in groun’ myzelf.”

She took the cross-handled basket hanging by a hook from the back-kitchen beam and went into the larder. She packed white bread and cheese, a spare-rib of small pork handy to cut between the. bones, and the dumplings. Sophia would have begrudged to give so much of her own. But she knew John Winterhead must be glad in heart—to haul his wheat and never stand the sheaves in stitch. Then she set out with the basket on her arm.

The harvest field lay over against the cliffs, but between them was a valley and a long wood. Sophia trapesed along, eager to be there before the fun was over and the men at work again. The peasant in her understood so well, and did not want to hinder time.

Louder and louder grew the shouts and laughter as she drew near. Across a broad close of grass were wheel-ruts, and all along on both sides straggling motes of bearded wheat. There was a gate “ a-post ope,” and above it every sprawling briar was thickly hung with straw, where the load in passing had scraped the hedge. Sophia walked through, on to the crisp yellow stubble.

The reapers, each one with his reap-hook overhead as high as his bare arm could reach, were drawn around in a ring. In the middle stood the last sheaf as big as three, and tied about with three binds; and close to it long Jims, holding up a knitch of ruddy corn, in those days called “ a neck ”—a double handful tightly bound just below the ears, with the straw plaited together smooth and round into the shape of a bee-butt.

Then they hallooed again and again:—

“ We have a-done. An’ all a-done.

A neek—a neck—a neck,”

and danced and whooped “Hurrah! Hurrah!” until they were hoarse.

From that they “fell a-rompsing, and to pretty highdigees, sure enough ”.

One o’ Blagdon was lying fast asleep under the hedgerow, with his back against an elm tree. Solomon Moggridge, crafty man, crept up to him on tiptoe.

“ Goo on, constable,” cried Jims. “ Why, a’ter all this noise, if a elephant was to step ’pon the man’s stumick, ’t’ud never wake un in theas world.”

“ No more ’t’oodn’.”

“ No more ’food.”

“ I never don’t believe’t’oodn’! ”

Greatly encouraged by this consensus of opinion, Solomon tied up the legs of one o’ Blagdon just below the knee-breeches and above the thick of his calves.

One o’ Blagdon slept like a top.

“ Let’s fakket un up wi’ sheaves, an’ put a vower-quart virkin under the head o’ un.”

The suggestion gave the greatest delight. They gently laid the sheaves around, close together like staves in a cask, and bound him up with a waggon line. They pillowed him upon one of the little barrels in which cider is carried into the fields. As Jims said, ’twas “nothing but the act of a friend, an’ all so good as a veather bed an’ a bolster ”.

One o’ Blagdon went on sleeping sound.

But now an argument arose.

Solomon, always thoughtful if a little slow, supposed that the man must ha’ had a drop too much.

And yet how could that be? Look at it how you would, his virkin couldn’ a-bin villed above dree times.

“Not a drop too much—not a drop!” shouted John Winterhead hotly, in his character of hospitable host.

“Ha, tidden the cider,” said long Jims Matravis, with the grave shake of the head which comes of conviction. “ Cider’s a thing no man can ha’ too much o’. Tidden the cider.”

“ He can have too much to once,” replied Solomon briskly. “ What is it then? ”

“’Tis the zitten down, you vool. He’d a-bin all right if he hadn’ a-zot down.”

Then they all laughed, for Solomon looked sheepish and a little bit upset. And after all, think of it how you would, it must have been the sitting down.

“Look here, constable,” cried Jims, stretching out his long, brown arm, “it can’t be cider. Why, I can get drunk ’pon cider dree times avore noon, an’ do a day’s work a’ter that.”

“An’ so you can, Jims—so you can,” agreed the constable thoughtfully, “ for I’ve a-zeed ee hundreds o’ time.”

“ But mind me,” Jims went on, gratified, but not wishing to boast, “ if I do get drunk once ’pon beer, I be so wooden-headed as a gate-post”

“An’ so you be, Jims—so you be, said Solomon, all for kindliness and peace.

“ Enough zaid. Come along, Sophia. Zit down on the bank, all o’ ee. What have ee got in your basket then? ” shouted John Winterhead. “ Here, bring it into the shade. That’s good. Come, Solomon; now then, Jims; set to work, my lads.”

Suddenly he looked Sophia full in the face.

“ Where’s Patty then? ” he asked.

“ I—I don’t know,” she stammered, taken aback by the abruptness of this question; but Sophia always fluttered when he spoke to her now.

He saw her out of countenance and cast down. She and Patty must have had some words, he thought. Patty had been so quiet of late and out of heart, moving silently about the house as if she had lost her tongue, that a fear often worried him lest Sophia, with her masterful ways, might be pushing the little mouse out of her place. He frowned at the thought. However, he said no more, but turned his back and went on to the harvesters.

“ Look alive, my lads, an’ be sprack. The nights do close in now, an’ the days be none too long. Come, help yourzelves; come, Solomon; if you don’t, ’tis your own fau’ts.”

Then they sat in the cool shadow under the elm, and cut their pork with clasp-knives, and passed around the cup with laughter and jokes, until every one had got his fill and was ready again for work.

Sophia was packing the things back in the basket; and, because he stood watching, her hand shook.

“ Where is Patty then? ” he asked sternly.

“How should I know? She never told me. She went out.”

The handle of the basket was across her arm and she was ready to stark

“ Put it down under hedge,” he said impatiently; “ they’ll want another bit bime-bye.” She did as she was bid and started to go home. Not to be put off, he walked along by her side.

“You do know well enough,” he insisted. “ Where is the maid, I say? ”

His harshness cut her to the quick, and deeper still because of old he had been so kind. Within her heart arose the wild fury of a woman cast aside. In her anger she was capable of anything. He would never look at her whilst he held his Patty so dear Patty, indeed 1 If he only knew!

“ An’ if I were to tell,” she cried, with the spitefulness of a spitfire, “I should only breed mischie’, an’ like enough get myzelf misliked the more.”

“ What do ee mean? If Patty have a-hurt ee, do take an’ speak out—if you can. I do hate sich undercreeping ways.”

He was in shirt-sleeves, and his red waistcoat, unbuttoned, hung apart. He had no time to waste to-day. He stopped with the air of a man determined to fool no longer.

She stepped towards him and craned forward her thin neck. Her grey eyes had never looked so shrewd and eager. She spoke in a low voice, as if she feared the nuts hanging in green clusters upon the hedge might overhear.

“I’ve a-had it in mind more ’an once to tell—for ’tis too late when harm is a-done. Patty have a-got a sweetheart, Mr. Winter-head, as I do well know.”

“ Ho!”

The word was little more than a grunt of discontent. He was not going to speak too fast. He stooped, picked up two ears of ruddy wheat, slowly rubbed out the berries in his brown hands, and then threw them away.

“Ho! Young Tom Duckett o’ Priddy, I s’pose. I thought once afore he had a bit of an inkling. I’ve never a-had the fellow to Charterhouse since.”

He was not looking at her now. A deep line came between Sophia Pierce’s black eyebrows as she scanned him narrowly. Then in a more wheedling tone she went on:— “Who mid be I can’t zay. There, I do scarce know how to tell ee, but speak I mus’. I can’t hold such a thing back, an’ you so kind too. But depen’ ’pon it, Mr. Winterhead, ’tis nobody any good to make a maid act so sly. For hours every day—when you be away—an’ night a’ter night, she do go out. She do leave her bed and creep away—”

“It’s a lie!”

He turned and roared it at her. Only to think such a thing, the woman must be mad. His little mouse, fresh and clean as a flower, with never a bad thought to stain her soul. The veins upon his temples swelled, and the hot blood glowed through his sunburnt cheek, as he cried again:—

“ It’s a lie! There was never a maid o’ the Winterheads yet ’ud do it.” He paused, and added with contempt: “ Unless she was witched

“ But that mid be, Mr. Winterhead. I’ve a-followed her myzelf—more ’an once—ay, a good half-mile all alone in the dark. I’ve a-zeed ’em meet; an’ then I’ve a-lost ’em.” The belief in witchcraft was no unreal fancy to be lightly treated by Sophia.

“You’ve a-zeed it, do ee zay? Zeed Patty meet the man, wi’ your own eyes? ”

“ Ay, so close as we be to the gate.”

At finding her so sure, he wavered. He could not find a word to say.

Just as at a glance she counted the mows and valued the rick of old hay in home-field when she talked with Patty on the day that Standerwick was hanged, she was quick now to mark her opportunity.

“I wouldn’ have her to know I told ee,” she went on in a rapid whisper, “ but she’s out wi’ un now. They do meet by the cliff’s end. If you did go an’ wait, an’ look down ’pon the road from this zide, ’tis like enough you’d zee ’em part Anyway, I’ve a-done what I can; for I do wish Patty well, as you mid think.”

With that she broke off abruptly and went on her way home. He called to her, but she neither looked nor answered, and in a few hasty steps passed out of sight into the grass-field.

The harvesters were hard at work. A waggon came creaking by with another load; but his gladness and pride in the crop were gone, and he moved away out of hearing of the merriment and jokes. In the farther corner of the ground was a shard stopped with a hurdle. He clambered through out upon the open hill.

“Ay, she’ve a-bin another maid of late —another maid of late,” he muttered to himself. By nature he was not for prying and peeping, but in spite of his true self he slowly made his way towards the cliffs. Then came a burning eagerness to know who the man might be, and for fear he should be late he quickened his pace.

He was far beyond the bounds of his own farm. To be loitering there at noon, coatless, in the height of the work, too, was so unnatural and strange, that on the brink of the chasm he searched around for covert to screen him from view. Hard by, a slanting path led down some twenty yards to a gentle slope, covered with moss and bracken, and in places overgrown with brake. He sat down upon a stone and leaned against the hot rock. On the brambles by his feet blackberries reddened in the sun. He was quite hidden by the thicket, though he could watch the road both ways.

The time was long and he grew impatient. Not a wayfarer of any sort came up or down. Now and again he pulled a great double-cased silver watch from his fob, and cursed to see the minutes fly. What would the neighbours think, left to sweat at his work, and he away?

He clenched his fists. If Patty had picked up with young Tom Duckett, he would never hear of it, never give consent—no, not if he had to lock her up for a twelvemonth and a day.

For all that, there was something behind in Sophia. He could hear it in her voice.

“It’s a lie!” he cried again; “or something and nothing that a woman’s tongue have a-made up into a tala”

And yet Sophia had such head-piece— ay, and was too wide-awake to see double. What good to her to say more than was true? His brain was in such a ferment with these doubts and thoughts that he talked aloud. “If Patty have a-stole out by night I’ll turn her out o’ house an’ home,” he hissed between his teeth.

All at once the jackdaws on the cliff before him arose with cries and circled in the air. Disturbed by the noise and movement, he looked up. Quite close as the sight glances, but on the other side of the gap, upon the cliff-side, stood Standerwick. A woman, whose face was turned away, hung clinging around his neck. John Winterhead felt his heart fail, and the blood stopped in his veins. He knew that it was Patty.

She lifted her head and spoke to Standerwick. There was no other spot on earth from which they could be seen; but here they were in full view, near and clear, like the back-sworders at a revel, or, better still, like play-actors upon a stage.

She was crying. John Winterhead could mark the tears upon her cheeks. Standerwick bent down, whispered in her ear, and kissed her. She smiled through her grief, and a light of love and happiness shone in her eyes.

Then they parted quietly, less like lovers than a couple some time wed who will meet again in an hour. Patty passed away behind the bushes, and Standerwick was left alone upon the ledge.

John Winterhead stood spell-bound, like one at sight of something beyond all belief. Then he threw himself upon the ground, a broken man, and writhed and sobbed. Charterhouse and the land were nothing; Patty was worse than dead. For him, what he had seen could have but one meaning. The little mouse had been led away and ruined by the murdering son of a gallows-thief, whose life out of cowardice he had spared. He lay there on the rocks and moaned.

Then he sprang up. He felt a strength of manhood in his limbs more than he had ever known. It seemed to him that nothing on earth could stand before him. He would go across and seize the villain there upon the ledge, and wrestle with him, man to man, never losing grip until one should throw the other headlong from the cliff.

But Standerwick, little dreaming that he could be seen, drew aside the ivy and went slowly into the cave.

CHAPTER XVII

THE BECKONING.

He was standing on the level floor in the middle of the cave. The sweat streamed down his cheeks, his heart throbbed so hard and fast that he panted and gasped for breath. He stood at his full height, but his knees shook under him as if he had been called upon for some great effort to the utmost of his strength. Yet he struck but one blow—only one blow—and Standerwick lay at his feet.

It happened so quickly, that now it seemed impossible and beyond belief.

He knew that Standerwick was dead— lying there out of all living shape, just as Joseph Pierce in the shadow of the wall that night The madness of his anger was gone. He felt weak, as if in a moment he must fall away, like water; and something within him said that he, John Winterhead, had done the very thing he hid.

No longer empty-handed, as when he came from the harvest-field, his fingers grasped a stout hazel cudgel, dragged from a broken hurdle in a hedgerow gap as he hurried from hill to hill. All the changes and working of his passion since he saw Patty leave the ledge were fresh and clear before his mind. His fear that Standerwick might be gone; his growing haste, as he stumbled over the rocks and broken road. To see the cunning wattled path behind the bushes, put there that the maid might come and go, roused him into a burning fury. The fellow was but vermin—he could kill him as he would a rat or a stoat.

And yet, for all the madness of his anger, within the narrow passage he had gone warily, not knowing what was before; until, himself in darkness, in the bright light of the cave he could see Standerwick kneeling on the ground, tying together the four comers of a handkerchief to make a bundle. The knot slipped. Standerwick bent down and drew tight the short end with his teeth; then, hearing a sound behind him, raised his head quickly and glanced over his shoulder.

The hatred of the last six months was in that moment. The blood of Joseph Pierce the gnawing reproach of his own cowardice —the longing to be free from all the secret ill his heart had known and suffered, cried out to him. The hurt that never can be healed— the burning shame of Patty—his Patty—little mouse—led astray and ruined by the cursed cunning of a murdering rogue, who should be swinging in the wind and rotting long ago upon the wayside gibbet tree, was swelling in his heart. At sight of him, in his frenzy he grasped the stake in both hands, rushed forward, set his teeth and struck with all his might. There was no help for it—no hope. Without cry or moan the groover dropped forward upon the stones.

Now, his anger gone, John Winterhead stood dazed and weak, looking at what he had done.

The knot, not yet securely tied, slipped again. The bundle burst abroad; a part of the contents fell out upon the shale. He was so shaken that, although it happened straight before his eyes, he started and looked around the cave, half fearing to see some one there. Then he was taken by a fierce desire to hide what he had done and get away unseen.

His strength returned. His senses became so keen that he noted every little thing, and saw a meaning where he did not understand. Some tools—a shovel, crowbar, pickaxe, and the hook with which the bushes had been cut back—were laid together close by the mouth of the entrance. They were ready to be taken away. There was a basket, too, filled, and covered with a cloth. Upon the slab of white stone lay a door-key. Ay, Sophia gave up the key of Ubley last night. The things upon the ground belonged to Patty. Many of them he knew well. The likeness of her mother cut in black paper. Strange that it should be here. Yet that was meant for Ubley, for it had been packed. Everything in the cave was just “ han’ pat ” to be carried away. They must be leaving, not meaning to come again.

The thought flashed upon him that the bottom of the deepest disused mine upon the hills was not more secret than this place. The dead man might lie there lost until the crack of doom. He had only to cut away the trees after the cliff’s edge, and not a soul could come a-nigh the ledge. And not a stain of blood was on his hands or clothes. Let him do that quickly, and then back to his wheat Nothing could ever be brought to light; or if so, he alone would know the truth. It was safer than the murder of Joseph Pierce.

He threw down the hazel stick, caught up the hook, and went out upon the ledge. He stood a moment and glanced anxiously across the gap. He had seen—another might see him. He cursed himself for a coward, to be haunted by these idle fears. Not once in ten years did any set foot on the other side. He went on to the bushes.

But the noise of chopping, the crash of falling boughs, when people might be passing up or down the road! Better leave it until dusk.

He dragged away all the wattling and cast it down out of sight. Here and there he cut out a growing stick, leaving a space, wide to step, from stem to stem. Then he hid the hook under a stone, and hurried down the slope towards Charterhouse.

Within sight of the homestead he turned off and went into the wheat-field, as if he were but just come out from house.

The commonplace doings of every-day life sounded strange, and he walked on like one in a dream.

The mirth had grown more noisy whilst he was away. The men, their hats trimmed with flowers, were working with a will, pitching and loading with all the pride of strength. They had got it under-leg, as they say. They could see the end of it, and every mote would be to mow by dark. They had not missed him, as it seemed, or at least they said nothing.

He found his pick stuck in the ground where he bad left it, and turned to with all his might. There was relief in labour, and in his excitement he beat the best The folk were all laughing, a-telling how they had hauled one o’ Blagdon home to mow; and how he hollared “Murder!” to be sure, enough to rear the place. And every whip’s-while as they pitched, the carter’s boy shouted “Ho!’ vast! ” and the waggon moved on again down the field.

Then John Winterhead became boisterous beyond himself.

“ Never mind to pick it up too tidy, my lads,” he cried. “ Let the leazers have a good picking to-year. You can turn in, Ann, so soon as you be a-minded. You that do work here, do ee hear, Isaac? ” and he turned round to the labouring folk.

One might well have thought that between earth and sky was no such thing as care.

But all the while John Winterhead was thinking that when it came to the last load he must slip across to the cliffs and get home again before the neighbours were ready to go indoors. For Charterhouse to-night was like to be as full as a fair. Well, he was glad of it. Everything being safe, the talk would help him to forget. Then again, as if there were some meaning in it, and the two things hung together, his heart kept saying, that he, John Winterhead, had done the very thing he hid.

It was just in the dimmet when the work was finished. The waggon had gone on. The last of the neighbours were together by the hedgerow as he came up to put on his jacket.

“ Get on, all o’ ee,” he cried. “ I’ve a-got a thing or two to zee to, an’ I’ll catch ee up.”

He stood watching them through the gate, and waited until their voices died low in the distance. The broad stubble grew a paler yellow under the fading sky. The field was empty, but for the one sheaf standing in the middle to hold the leazing until the folk of Charterhouse had picked up first. Partridges, driven out by the reapers, now that all was still, began to call their scattered coveys home.

This was his moment, whilst light enough to see, yet so dumpsy, a man could scarce read another’s face across a road. But after the turn o’ the year, days close in very fast; and when he came into the hollow of the gloomy cliffs it was already almost dark. In his haste to get back he lost no tima He quickly cut away the trees. The boughs fell crashing down the steep cliff-side. Then hurrying by way of the drove between Black rocks, he soon came within hearing of home.

What a racket they were making at Charterhouse to be sure!

We have a-done. We have a-done.

An’ a good loaf o’ bread.

Then they had tipped the mow and were all around a-top to have a last drink before they went indoors.

John Winterhead quickened his pace. Everything was safe. He had not met a soul nor so much as heard a footstep, and now he was within sight of home.

Suddenly his courage fell. Unknown to himself, he had brought away Standerwick’s hook and still carried it in his hand. What did it matter? That was of no account Yet to find it there gave him a turn which made every pulse throb. He was in the home-field. In another minute he might have taken it into the house, and like enough Patty would have known. He turned aside, went up to the orchard copse, and threw it far as he could amongst the trees.

The kitchen, by the time he got there, was full of noise and folk. For Jims Matravis had a-brought in the neck as dry as flour, and there stood Solomon, his arms held down straight as pump-handles, dripping wet and drenched to the skin. And such a chackle as there was with the women’s tongues to be sure!

“ For Solomon didn’ ha’ the neck, look-y-zee.”

“ No, no, ’twere long Jims what had the neck.”

“ Ha! ha! An’ Solomon wi’ a little half-peck measure under the coat o’ un took the ducking.”

“Ay! Massy 'pon us! Sophia Pierce poured a whole milk pail down ’pon top o’ un from little winder up above dairy door.”

“ An’ the maid wur out to porch——

“ So she wur—

An’ so Jims all unbeknow’d sneaked in by the back—

“ Well then. Where wur Patty?””

“

“ Ay, where wur Patty?” “Now, where wur Patty?”

From sill sides this question greeted John Winterhead’s ears as he hastened into the house.

The harvest supper was spread, and midway down the table stood the neck. Not a drop had touched it, that was the main thing, for the harvester who got it wet was not to drink that night, and all the women in the house might lie in wait, however they would, to throw water by the bucketful at any who came in. So there was point in this inquiry as to Patty’s whereabouts.

Her absence struck John Winterhead as strange.

Sophia, busy about the serving-up, pushed by him, and he followed down the passage into the back-house.

“ Where’s Patty? ” he asked uneasily.

“ She’ve a-locked herzelf up in her room. She’ve a-carr’d up paper an’ ink. An’ she do bide an’ sobby fit to break the heart o’ her. She—”

Sophia spoke in the rapid whisper of a tell-tale seeking to curry favour, but John Winterhead cut her short

"What’s it about? Has she got herself into trouble do ee think 1 Speak out.”

He looked keenly at Sophia as if suspicious that she knew more than she told.

" But didn’ you meet wi’ her? ” she asked in real surprise. "I put it down you and she mus’ ha’ had a few words.”

He felt the wisdom of keeping to himself what he had seen.

“I went on a fool’s errand,” he said gruffly. " Not a living soul went up or down the road as I could zee. I had better by far ha’ stayed where I was.”

His words sounded so rough that Sophia fired up at once.

" I had better ha’ held my tongue, sim-zo,” she cried sharply. "But that’s always the way if you do meddle, mean as well as you mid.” She made as if to go about the work, but he laid his hand upon her arm and held her back.

" Look here, Sophia,” he said in her ear in a softer tone. " Run up an’ try to get the maid to come down. Tou can do it. Zay the supper is in, an’ folk’ll wonder.” Then his voice became quite coaxing. "An’ try to worm out what ’tis all about. I shall take it a kindness if you could—so there.”

She snatched a candle from the bench and went at once. He waited in the dark by the foot of the stairs and listened. The door of Patty’s room was close at hand, but not a sound of tapping nor so much as a word did he hear, and scarcely was Sophia out of sight before she came hurrying down again.

“There’s nobeddy there,” she cried in great excitement. “ The door was wide open. But on the counterpane, so as to catch the eye to once, was this.”

She held towards him a letter. Upon the envelope was his name in Patty’s hand.

He tore it open. “ Gi’e us the light,” he said impatiently.

He turned his back upon her and held the candle close above the paper the better to see. Sophia, standing on the bottom step, leaned forward and peered over his shoulder as he read.

DEAR FATHER,—I could not bear to speak it to your face and so I take my pen to write and tell what I have a-done. 0 father, what will you think when you do find that I be gone from Charterhouse? But I be gone, dear father, to my husband’s home. I am married to Giles Standerwick. We was married by licence to Shipham Church up a month agone, and nobeddy have ever found it out. O father, I was afeard to breathe a word because you thought so bad of Giles and said such things. But if you do but think how he have raised hisself you will see he is a good man. You would respeck him if you saw that. And my heart were set upon him, dear father, so I could never love another in this world. If I could not marry him I would sooner die, for I never thought of any other man. And so you must forgive me, father, when you see I am not here, seeing I have only gone to Ubley, to the home my husband have a-made.

There the poor girl, not knowing how to write, had stopped, and then below she simply signed her name. It stretched across the sheet with letters dwindling small towards the end to crush them in:—

MARTHA STANDERWICK.

Unseen of any one a gleam of satisfaction brightened Sophia’s face, but John Winter-head burst out like a man distracted.

“She’s to Ubley! Fetch her back, Sophial I’d make it wo’th your while. You should never repent o’ it, if you could catch her afore she do get there and bring her back here safe. She’s all I’ve a-got. All I do live for—”

He stopped and moaned. Clearly before his mind rose a vision of Ubley, dark and empty, and the little mouse shut out alone.

“ I’ll saddle the mare and overtake her, an’ bring her back,” he cried in an agony, and turned towards the door.

Sophia stood in the way.

“ But you can’t part man and wife,’’she said.

“ I mus’ bring her back, if ’tis afore me on the pummel,” he wailed.

But the cry was of weakness, not of will, and he wrung his hands where of old he would have clenched his fists.

Just then the harvesters and neighbours in the kitchen laughed afresh.

Quick as thought Sophia saw her chance. His love for Patty must soon overcome his dislike for Standerwick, and then all would be friends. She would advise him well and win his gratitude.

“I tell ee what, Mr. Winterhead,” she urged, with a wealth of common sense that sounded like warmth of heart, “ fetch ’em both, here-right. There’s a houseful of folk. What’s a-done is a-past mending. Put on a good face an’ make the best o’ it, Mr. Winterhead. The young Giles Standerwick is well-liked, an’ every tongue ’ull praise ee for it Then to-morrow you’ll be glad, an’ zay Sophia Pierce wur the best friend you ever had in all your life. You will, Mr. Winterhead.”

His face turned white as ashes. He moistened his dry lips but did not speak.

“ Go on an’ do it to once,” she cried quite gaily.

She took him by the arm and led him to the door. Her voice, hard as it was, sounded soft and womanly. “I’ll keep back the supper. I’ll look to everything for ee, as if 'twere my own. Don’t ee gi’e it another thought but fetch ’em both.”

Too dazed to answer, he went as if to do as he was bid. Only one purpose stood out clearly in the wild confusion of his mind. To find Patty and persuade her to come home.

The mare’s hoofs rattled away upon the road. He would tole the girl back with kind words—“wi’ kind words,” he kept saying to himself

But neither at Ubley nor elsewhere was any trace of Patty to be found.

CHAPTER XVIII

FALL.

Day after day went creeping by, but no tidings of Patty came to Charterhouse.

Her secret marriage and sudden disappearance were the tale of the whole country and the talk of every hearth. There were tongues enough to carry it abroad, sure enough, for the harvesters who sat waiting for their supper could tell the rights of it, and no mistake. How it was after midnight before John Winterhead came in. And he looked like one beside himself, and would taste neither bit nor sup. Patty was gone. He should never see her again. That was all his cry. For Ubley was shut up, with not a living soul about the place.

For a week he was like a madman, riding from outlying farm to farm to ask if Patty had been seen. He was so terrible fond of the maid, folk said, that it had half turned his head. Yet not a man or woman upon the hills believed that she had come to any harm. Some even laughed. Husband and wife had gone away together, as was nothing but right they should. Lauk! The young Giles Standerwick was such a likely young fellow, sure. Patty Winterhead was nothing to blame at all.

After dark, John Winterhead sat in the chimney-corner, so they said, and never spoke.

Night after night, out of kindness of heart, the neighbours dropped in, one at a time or two together, and reasoned with him to cheer up his heart

Solomon from the first could see through it all as clear as daylight.

He wagged his head and held out his fat finger. He set his faith on Milemas—old Milemas Day. “Ah, Mr. Winterhead,” he said, in the most comfortable voice that ever wheezed under a weight of wisdom, “ you do trouble yourzelf too much. Why, the young couple be but keeping out o’ the way for a bit, for the gossip to blow over like. And though Ubley is agreed about, there’s no money to pass till Milemas. Milemas Day. That’s the day, Mr. Winterhead. Then you’ll zee they’ll be home to Ubley, so brisk as birds in spring—no fear.”

But Milemas rolled by and not a sound was heard.

Then Solomon wagged the other way.

“Sure now, Mr. Winterhead,” he said, “there’s many about thought Ubley too much of a mouthful for young Giles Standerwick’s means. Depen’ ’pon it, at the las’ moment he zaw that, an’ perhaps wi’ one thing an’ t’other were glad to get away. An’ he dursn’t let out where he is for the time being, now he’ve a-run word about the lan’. But you’ll hear, Mr. Winterhead, so sure as the light.”

The well-meant foolishness of Solomon’s friendly talk was more than John Winter-head could bear. He did not doubt what had happened. Patty, finding Ubley shut, and broken-hearted when Standerwick did not come, had made away with herself. She was lying in some forsaken pit, never again to see the light. As Solomon babbled on, with empty words barren of all comfort, John Winterhead scarce knew how to hold his peace. He could not listen and sit still. He felt that he must start up, then and there, Sophia sitting by in the bright firelight, and shout out all he had done. Even to tell was not enough. He must throw the truth into the face of Solomon’s smiling nothings. “It’s a lie 1 She’ll never come back. I killed the man wi’ my own hands, and' he’s lying in a cave. An’ the little mouse have a-brokt her heart for love, an’ drowed herzelf away.”

The impulse to do this grew so strong, that at times he could bear himself no longer. He needs must go or speak. Then he would get up without a word and walk out into the night. Hours he wandered under the calm starlight upon the lonely hill, and in the ferment of his brain, thoughts, strange and deep, came to him he knew not whence. He had done the thing he hid. It held together and was all of a piece. That haunted him like a superstition, half-believed, but never to be cast off. And always the words he had said, when they talked that night of sheep-stealing and the hanging of the old Standerwick, kept buzzing in his brain: “ Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed ”. It was like a prophecy as well as a command. It had worked out twice but wrong. Yet the life he took was owing to the law. Even now, this winter assize, by good right the young Giles Standerwick was a dead man. Ay, but after fair trial. Like a threatening shadow, darker than the night, came to him the old saying, “ Murder will out ”, For still a life was owing to the law.

No matter how late he returned, if it were morning, Solomon was still in the kitchen when he went in. Sophia was afeard to go to bed, she said, with the house empty, the door unlocked, and him so strange in his ways.

Yet in spite of his distress of mind, John Winterhead went about the farm by day as if all his thoughts were bent only upon Charterhouse, the cattle, and the plough. His sense of duty to the land remained unshaken, though his joy in it was gone. He turned up his wheat-arrish betime for a long winter fallow. It was his pride in himself that he had lost.

If he had only fought Stapderwick when first the talk was of Ubley, and killed him fair and square, he could have looked himself in the face and said he was the better man. There would have been no pricking of the conscience then, even though it were wise to keep the matter secret. That would have wiped out the recollection of the past and set him free, and Patty would be there still.

For her, more than his own safety, he held his tongue and kept back poor Joseph Pierce’s last words. But there had been no happiness since, and never could be again. There was no more good in life. As well give himself up and have done with it.

And yet that every mouth should blab his story, and every idle fellow upon the hills walk down to Wells to gape at John Winter-head, a prisoner in the dock, that held him back. The disgrace of it made him shudder. His fathers, dead and gone, from him who first got Charterhouse and passed it on, must turn in their graves if they could know such shame had fallen upon the name. And he, the last of the Winterheads too! That had troubled him many a time. If Patty married, at his death he always meant the man to take the name by will.

Then for a while his mind was made up. He must marry Sophia Pierce—then save every penny that did not go upon the land, but do his best for that, heart and soul. He had thought to plant a narrow copse of Scotch fir and beeches just where the south-west gale drives so bleak over the brow. He would put it in hand at once; ay, and year by year enclose the waste, and lime the grass grounds, say twenty acres a spring, till all were done, and begin again. Please God to send one to come after, he might stand up a prouder man than any gone before.

But what if Patty had only run away and were still alive. In his heart was no hope of this; but the uncertainty came back again and again to hinder all he did.

So the weeks passed, and winter was drawing nigh apace. Over everything hung the gloom of later fall. Hedgerows were red and yellow. The leaves, scanty and parched, had almost gone from orchard and copse. Overhead were clouds, and mud with pools of shining water underfoot. And from behind Black Down came the cry of the wind with coming rain.

They had been winnowing the day before and John Winterhead was standing by the barn’s door. A man kept going to and fro, carrying wheat across the barton and up the stone steps leading to the granary. As he came by the sack slipped, and he let it down. It splashed into a deep puddle at John Winterhead’s feet, and bespattered him.

“What, can’t you hold up a zack o’ wheat?” he blazed up, in the sadden fury of a temper overwrought “There, lef it alone. Fd rather do it myzelf than Fd stan’ to watch sich a fool of a feller.”

Suiting his action to the word, he strode into the barn and put off his hat. The sacks stood ready one upon the other against the spirting-board. He set his back to the nearest and took it up. Through all his life it had been his pride to be able to do anything better that any man whom he could hire. But to-day he staggered under the weight. As he stepped from the barn’s floor on to the open ground he tottered as if he were drunk, and then fell all along-straight on the pitching of pebbles in front of the door.

The man ran to help, but he angrily set him aside.

“ I—I catched my heel,” he faltered as he scrambled to his feet. His face was red with shame, his eyes downcast with humiliation. He had torn a three-cornered rent in the elbow of his jacket. “ Yes, I hitched my voot again’ the stone,” and he pointed to a pebble higher than the rest.

“ Catch hold,” he cried, for his spirit was up and he was not to be beat.

Together they lifted the sack upon the low barton wall. Then he set his teeth and carried it up the steps into the granary.

He sat down. His knees were still shaking from the shock of the fall, and his courage was so broken that he could have cried. John Winterhead was not the man he was. He would never again be what he used to be. The truth hung heavily upon his heart beyond all that his soul could carry.

In the end wall of the granary was a small square window looking up the road, and through it he saw the constable strolling down to Charterhouse. It was a slack time o’ the year, and Solomon had looked in pretty often of late. He stopped on his way and looked down the valley across the home-field. Glad of the excuse to get away from the barton, John Winterhead went out to meet him.

“ Ho! ho! ” roared Solomon, laughing to see the mud. “What’s this then—what’s this?”

“I—I hitched my voot, wi’ a zack o’wheat to my back,” explained John Winter-head irritably, and Solomon laughed again.

Then he pointed to the welsh-nut tree.

“ Why, you never picked your nuts to-year,

Mr. Winterhead,” he said in his sing-song voice. “You forgot all about it, didn ’ee? Ha! ha! An’ the rooks carr’d ’em off, every one. But rooks,” Solomon shook his head wisely, “rooks be most wonderful fond o’ welsh-nuts.”

Even now upon the bare branch sat a solitary sentinel, and as Solomon raised his arm a flock of birds rose from the grass below and flew in circles above the head of the tree. A host of sad memories crowded into John Winterhead’s brain.

No, the welsh-nuts were not picked. That was because Patty was not there. How she used to harp to be sure, till she could get the chaps to climb and knock them off the boughs with poles, ay, and go for days with fingers brown as the old clock, and sit at night with a lapful, and crack, and throw the empty shells upon the fire.

Quick as thought he turned to Solomon. His face was pale, his lips quivered, but his eyes were firm, and stared so fiercely that the other wavered under his gaze.

“ Constable,” he said hoarsely, “ I’ve a-got something on my mind that I be bound to tell. My heart can’t hold it. Come wi’ me. Come.”

He pushed open the gate.

Solomon Moggridge stood in doubt and scratched his poll

“ But you’ll catch cold if you do go abroad wi’ no hat, this time o’ year an’ all,” he urged with his unfailing good nature.

With a gesture of impatience John Winterhead beckoned and led the way.

There was a beaten path across the grass field winding with the undulations of the ground, and Solomon followed some paces behind. Over the stony hill, through the dead bracken and brown gorse, John Winterhead neither spoke nor turned his head until they came to the cliff’s edge. Then with one hand he took Solomon by the arm.

Solomon drew back. It struck him that trouble had turned the brain of John Winterhead.

“ Constable,” he began in a low deliberate tone, “ I’ve a-brought ee here to gi’e myzelf up. I’ve a-done murder. I be boun’ to speak, for I can’t live wi’ the thought o’ it. ’Twere the young Giles Standerwick that killed poor Joseph Pierce. The old man told me so, wi’ his dying breath. But I held my tongue. For peace an’ quiet wi’ the groovers I kep’ it dark. But knowing what I did I hated the feller. Twere like poison to me, to zee the gallows rogue about. An’ then he took up'wi’ Patty, an’ I fell ’pon un an’ killed un. Ay, an’ the maid have a-made away wi’ herzelf for the loss o’ un.”

Whilst speaking he had raised his voice to the highest pitch of excitement. An echo from the rocks before him threw back his words.

“ Hush! Mr. Winterhead,” breathed Solomon in a frightened whisper, and glanced on all sides and behind. “ If there’s anybeddy about they’ll hear.”

“Let ’em hear. They mus’ know zoon enough. I do call ee by your title, constable, an’ gi’e myzelf up.”

“But what have ee done wi’—wi’ the body?” gasped Solomon.

He was very pale, and shivered as if with cold. John Winterhead still held him by the arm. To have seen them, one might have thought that he was the wrong-doer, whom Justice had just taken in her grip.

John Winterhead pointed across the gorge.

“ You do zee the linch. Behind the ivy is a hole into a cava ’Tis partly open from above, and light—”

“But how could such a place be foun’ out?” put in the constable. “A man mid climb down to one side by help of a waggonline, but if he did he’d never find it. Or if he chanced to fall upon it, ten to one he’d never go in. Or if he should, what is there to show who did it? Keep counsel, Mr. Winterhead. Keep your own counsel, an’ ’t ’ull never come to light.”

But his earnestness did not move John Winterhead.

“I’d sooner die than carr’ about the thought o’ it,” he replied doggedly. “ For I tell ee, Solomon, what ’tis. I never had fear in my life till I thought o’ the house an’ the little maid, an’ hid what I should ha’ spoke. I cheated the law then; an’ I’ve never a-had peace o’ mind since nor contentment in myzelf. But I’ve a-got no fear now—so help me God, I’ve a-got no fear! an’ 111 gi’e myzelf up.”

The storm came rolling on. A fine drizzle had begun to fall. The distant hills were all hidden in mist, and even the cliffs close by grew dim as the slanting rain was driven up the gorge.

“ But what good could it do? An’ think o’ the disgrace. An’ what if the little maid have only hid herzelf away, an’ should be alive to know it all? She couldn’ be wi’ her Aunt Maria, I suppose.” At mention of that name Solomon blushed. “No, Mr. Winterhead, constable or no constable, we’ve a-bin neighbours all our lives, an’ you’ll think better o’ what you’ve a-zaid. Come on; we shall be wet to the skin.”

Yielding to this persuasion, without another word John Winterhead suffered himself to be led home; but at the comer of the barton wall they parted, for Solomon refused to come on to the house. Like enough he would drop in after dark, he said.

John Winterhead sat down in his accustomed seat. The unburdening of his secret, like the laying down a load upon the way, though it must be taken up again, brought him passing ease. The words of the constable had touched a tender place in his heart A mere fool’s saying, that about Aunt Maria; but what if the little mouse might be alive—hiding away—in fear and shame of being left? Some one, mayhap, knew about the wedding—some one of Stan-derwick’s friends or kin—to whom her first thought would be to ran. With what contempt he had looked on Standerwick because his father was hanged; and this disgrace must fall upon the little mouse if ever she should be found. For the first time the hope kindled within him that Patty might some day come back.

The afternoon went by, but as night drew on the storm only gained in strength.

Gusts of wind roared in the great chimney and beat down the smoke, and the rain rattled against the window, as Sophia said, “ a’most fit to break the panes ”. Early after supper she left him and went to bed. Mr. Moggridge held sense enough in the head o’ un to bide at home, she would be bound. But John Winterhead sat where he was.

He had given up all thought that the constable would come, when the door creaked, and without knocking Solomon walked in. He wore a sack bag over his shoulders like a cape, and under it his Sunday flop-tail coat. He looked like a man going a-courting, only he bore a countenance both frightened and grave. He shook the rain off his hat upon the floor, and that duty done, sat down upon the settle.

“ I wur so good as my word, you zee,” he said, glancing anxiously round the kitchen.

“I thought you’d come,” replied John Winterhead.

“ Sophia out o’ hearing? ”

“Ay.”

“A-bed?”

“Ay.”

The constable moistened his lips as if about to speak, and swallowed as if the words stuck in his throat Then he bent down and built together the burning sticks, without need, just to spend time.

“No, I wur never a fair-weather friend; but to-night I had somethen to zay. I couldn’ lef ee in doubt, Mr. Winterhead.”

As he rose slowly from the hearth and took his seat John Winterhead fixed his eyes keenly upon him. The constable had thought, and come to say that he must do his duty.

“ I don’t deny, Mr. Winterhead,” Solomon went on with constant pauses, and a puzzled look upon his face as if words dodged him and were hard to find, “ I don’t deny I didn’ believe what you told me. I allowed in my mind that—that trouble had a-turned the brain o’ ee; but I’ve a-bin down over the cliff. There could be no better time, for the rain wur thick as a misk, an’ not a soul about to zee. I wur wet drough every rag an’ stitch, but I found you had a-told true. ’Twur just the very same as you zaid, only—”

John Winterhead leaned forward.

“ What? Have anybeddy foun’ it out? ”

“ Ay,” replied the constable slowly. “There was another in the cave.”

Still the truth did not come to John Winterhead.

“ She do lie by his zide wi’ the arms o’ her roun’ his neck,” said Solomon. “ She mus’ a-broke the heart o’ her for love, for there’s a bastick a-packed wi’ victuals, all stale and blue-vinnied now, a-put down where you do jus’ go in.”

John Winterhead stared at the constable. Then the meaning came home to him. He covered his face and cried.

They talked no more, until in the small hours of early morning he stood up and held out his hand.

“ Good-bye, Solomon,” he said quite firmly. “ I don’t ask ee any more to take me, but 1’11 go on.”

It was on the tip of the constable’s tongue again to argue that nobody need ever know, but overwhelmed by the sadness of it all he held his peace, awe-stricken and dum-founded by the quiet self-possession of John Winterhead.

Mile after mile, through the darkness, the wind, and the rain, John Winterhead trudged along the lonely road that runs throughout the ridge of the hills. When morning opened, a grey old city with square towers loomed out before him and below. But he did not falter. On and on he went slowly down the hillside to give himself up.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE END.

April again. Over towards Ubley the cuckoo was calling, and swallows, with here and there a “ devil-scritch,” darted to and fro along the road. The primroses were out most beautiful in the valley, and cowslips in the lew between Black rocks; some of them so big as oxslips too. Buds were swelling— the lilac bushes thick in leaf. Again the sunlight shone across the stacks, and glistened upon the ivy too. The grass was fresh and green, for Mother Earth enrobed herself anew, caring no more for what was past and gone than the merry thrushes for their last year’s brood.

Sophia Pierce was waiting by the porch alone, just where last spring she watched with little Patty Winterhead. The length and breadth of Mendip was as bare as then. Neither man nor woman came in sight upon the hills. They were all gone as before, far away across the moors.

Sophia walked restlessly up the path and stood by the gate. There had been so much talk, and now all was over.

After John Winterhead gave himself up and was taken to gaol, she stayed at Charterhouse as caretaker. Solomon looked over day by day, and they put in the crops most wonderful well. Solomon was a tidy farmer, mind, for all his simple ways, and John Winterhead could have done no better himself. So everybody agreed, and the neighbours were all glad. They looked to see John Winterhead back after a while; for, as Solomon argued, and, sure then, his law ought to be good, he being a constable:—

“ If 'twere a fight there’s no murder; an’ if ’twerden a fight, ’twere a sudden occasion; so that if John Winterhead struck a blow that chanced to kill, be it in anger but wi’out intent, look-y-zee, why then ’tis manslaughter, an’ not o’ the wo’st neither”. And all the fireside gossip was of one tale; that never a jury in Somerset, knowing the rights o’ it, and one or two maybe acquainted with the man, would convict.

Jims Matravis and one o’ Blagdon had come to words the day before yesterday, as they jogged along together down to Wells to hear the trial. Jims was most terrible afeard that John Winterhead would get two years. But one o’ Blagdon said: “ Never in this world — not wi’ a good counsellor to plead for un. Not a day more ’an six months.” And so they contradicted and wrangled all along the road.

But neither subtleties nor good-will were to be of any account.

John Winterhead had kept counsel so well, that not even his own lawyer knew what was in his mind.

The neighbours saw him standing in the dock, and called upon to plead. The court was stilL Every eye was bent upon him, for his story was in every mouth; folk were craning forward to hear him speak.

“ Guilty,” he answered, in a voice low but clear.

A rustle of surprise passed over the rows of people who heard.

Then followed remonstrance and whispered explanation, as if he could not know what he was doing. But John Winterhead stood firm. He only knew what was in his thoughts, he said, and he had no mind to hide or keep anything back. If he had always given the law its own, all would have been well. If he had never seen fear to speak out and act the honesty in his heart, there was never a thing on earth could have come nigh to hurt him. He would rather die than lie and live with the thought of what was past.

So there was nothing for it but to pass sentence. That was but one clear day ago, for in those days the law was swift; and now Sophia was watching once again to see the people back from Hang Fair.

They were so slow in coming that she could be still no longer. She took the path which Patty had trod so often, and went down the drove to the head of Cheddar Gorge and waited. The place was quite solitary. Not a sound broke in upon her ear. The tall cliffs towered cold and grey on either side, and she glanced up at the narrow ledge and shuddered. If she had never set John Winterhead to watch, Patty would have been at Ubley now, and she mayhap mistress of Charterhouse. Yet how was she to know? It was not her fault. But whilst she reasoned thus she could not reassure herself; and slowly over the lonely hills the dusk crept on.

From down the gap came the sound of horses’ hoofs. So they were coming. Yes. That was the “ clackety-clack ” of Solomon’s cob, sure enough. She leaned forward, looking for them to loom out of the darkness into sight.

They rode on in silence. Yet when they saw her by the gate beside the bit of copse, one o’ Blagdon whispered to Solomon, and they drew rein.

It was all over—ay, all over, they said. Then they told John Winterhead’s last words —that he was willing to die as ever he had been to pay a debt in all his life—and Solomon cried like a child. He should never take delight in being constable or anything again, he sobbed. And so they went slowly on together, until they presently stood once more before the old ivy-covered house, and there, too sad for company, they parted, some one way, some another, to their homes.

Yet Solomon, strange as it may seem, a short while afterwards married Aunt Maria, and lived happy to a fine old age, as a good heart should.

And Sophia got her chance like the rest, for she wed wi’ the one o’ Blagdon that gave Patty the pretty little pig.

Charterhouse was sold. But the new owner did not love and care for it as John Winterhead had done; and long ago the walls crumbled into decay, so that now not even the foundations can be traced.

Cousin Selina became well-off; and Cousin Selina’s Emily Jane was the wife of young Tom Duckett o’ Priddy, whose name mayhap you have heard.

And still the ancient, weather-beaten rocks look down, cold and unchangeable, as if human love and passion, sorrow and tears, are all too brief to be of moment in the vast immensity of time.

THE END