THE
 SECRET IN THE HILL

 BY
 BERNARD CAPES

 LONDON
 SMITH, ELDER & CO.,
 15, WATERLOO PLACE
 1903
 (_all rights reserved_)




 [DEDICATION.]

 To
 MISS PRECISION
 AND
 “YOUR AFFECNUT LITTLE FRIEND”
 _THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED_
 WITH DEFERENCE
 BY
 ITS AUTHOR AND THEIRS




 CONTENTS.

 PART I
  I. I first see Joshua Pilbrow
  II. A Great Loss and a Queer Equivalent
  III. Uncle Jenico
  IV. My First View of the Hill
  V. The Story Of The Earthquake
  VI. Mrs. Puddephatt and Fancy-Maria
  VII. Mr. Sant
  VIII. Treasure-Hunting
  IX. Harry Harrier
  X. Friends at Last
  XI. Mischief of Sorts
 PART II
  I. The Badger
  II. The Great Storm
  III. Open Sesame
  IV. The Secret in the Hill
  V. A Reappearance
  VI. An Odd Compact
  VII. “Facilis Descensus Averni”
  VIII. The Feast of Lanterns
  IX. The Weary Sands
  X. The Darkest Hour
  XI. Joshua Speaks
  XII. Rescue
  XIII. Rampick Speaks
  XIV. What the Letter said
  XV. Out of the Depths
  Conclusion




 THE SECRET IN THE HILL.
 PART I.

 CHAPTER I.
 I FIRST SEE JOSHUA PILBROW.

When I was a very little boy my mother died. I was too young to feel
her loss long, though I missed her badly at first; but the
compensation was that it brought my father nearer to me. He was a
barrister, a prodigal love of a man, dear bless him! And he felt his
bereavement so cruelly that for a time he seemed incapable of rallying
from the blow. But presently he plucked up heart, and went, for my
sake, to his business again.

He was more liked than lucky, I believe. I had evidence enough, at
least of the former; for after my mother’s death, not bearing that we
should be parted, he carried me with him on the last circuit he was
ever to go. Those were the days when Bench and Bar dined well, and sat
up late telling tales. Sometimes my father would slip me into his
pocket, so to speak, and from its shelter--when, to be candid, I had
been much better in bed--I heard fine stories related by the gentlemen
who put off gravity with the horsehair they wore all day. They were a
merry and irresponsible lot, rather like a strolling company of
actors; and, indeed, it was no less their business to play many parts.
There were types among them which I came to associate with certain
qualities: such as the lean vivacious ones, who ate and drank
hungrily, and presently grew incoherent and quarrelsome; such as the
rosy bald-headed ones, who always seemed to make most laughter; such
as the large, heavy-browed ones, who sulked when they were bettered in
argument. But my friend amongst them all, next to my father, was Mr.
Quayle, Q.C.

I fancied I had discovered, after much consideration, why he was
called Q.C. He was a little man, quite bald and round all over his
head and face except for a tuft of hair on his chin, and there was the
Q; and he wore a pouter-pigeon ruff under his chin like this, Q/C, and
there was the Q.C. I may have been wrong; but anyhow I had precedent
to justify me, for many of these jolly souls bore such characteristic
nicknames. There was Plain John, for instance, who had so christened
himself for ever during a dispute about the uses or abuses of multiple
titles. “Plain John” had been enough for him, he had said. Again,
there was Blind Fogle, so called from his favourite cross-examination
phrase. “I don’t quite see.” They were all boys together when off
duty, chaffing and horse-playing, and my father was the merriest and
most irrepressible of the crew.

There was one treat, however, of which he was persistent in baulking
me. Pray him as I might, he would never let me see or hear him in his
character of Counsel. The Court where he would be working by day was
forbidden ground to me, and for that very reason I longed, like
Bluebeard’s wife, to peep into it. This was not right, even in
thought, for I knew his wishes. But worse is to be confessed. I once
took an opportunity, which ought never to have been given me, to
disobey him; and dreadful were the consequences, as you shall hear.

We were travelling on what is called the Home Circuit, and one day we
came to Ipswich, a town to mark itself red in the annals of my young
life. On the second morning after our arrival I was playing at horses
with George, my father’s man, when Mr. Quayle looked in at our hotel,
and, dismissing George, took and sat me upon his knee.

“Dad gone to Court?” said he.

“Yes,” I answered; “just.”

He grunted, and rubbed his bald head, with a look half comical, half
aggravated. His eyes were rather blinky and red, and he seemed
confused in manner and at a loss for words.

“Dicky,” he said, suddenly, “did you live very well, very rich-like,
when mamma was alive?”

“Yes,” I answered; “’cept when mamma said we must retrench, and cried;
and by’m-by papa laughed, and threw the rice pudding into the fire,
and took us to dine at a palace.”

“And that was--very long before--hey?”

“It was a very little while before mamma went away for good,” I
murmured, and hung my head, inclined to whimper.

Mr. Quayle twitched at me compunctious.

“O, come!” he said, “we must all bear our losses like men. They teach
us the best in the world to stand square on our own toeses. There!
Shall I tell you a story--hey?”

I brightened at once. He knew some good ones. “Yes, please,” I said.

“O, lud!” he exclaimed, rubbing his nose with his eye-glasses. “I am
committed! Judex damnatur. Dicky, I sat up late last night, devouring
briefs, and they’ve given me an indigestion. Never sit up late, Dicky,
_or you’ll have to pay for it_!”

He said the last words with an odd emphasis, giving me a little shake.

“Is that the beginning of the story?” I asked, with reserve.

“O, the story!” he said. “H’m! ha! Dear take my fuddled caput! Well,
here goes:

“There were once two old twin brothers, booksellers, name of Pilbrow,
who kept shop together in a town, as it might be Ipswich. Now books,
young gentleman, should engender an atmosphere of reason and sympathy,
inasmuch as we talk of the Republic of letters, which signifies a sort
of a family tie between A, B, and C. But these fellows, though twins,
were so far from being united that they were always quarrelling. If
Joshua bought a book of a stranger, Abel would say he had given more
than its worth, and sell it at his own valuation; and if Abel attended
a sale, there was Joshua to bid against him. Naturally, under these
conditions, the business didn’t flourish. The brothers got poorer and
poorer, and the more they lost the worse they snapped and snarled,
till they took to threatening one another in public with dear knows
what reprisals. Well, one day, at an auction, after bidding each
against t’other thremenjus for a packet of old manuscripts and book
rubbish--which Abel ended by getting, by-the-by--they fastened
together like tom-cats, and had to be separated. The people laughed
and applauded; but the end was more serious than was expected. Abel
disappeared from the business, and a few days later the shop took
fire, and was burned to the ground.

“So far, so plain; and now, Mr. Dickycumbob, d’ye know what’s meant by
Insurance?”

“No, sir?”

“Well, look here. If I want to provide against my house, and the goods
in it, being lost to me by fire, I go to a gentleman, with a gold
watch-chain like a little ship’s cable to recommend him, and says
I:--‘If I give you so much pocket-money a year, will you undertake to
build up my house again for me in case it happens to be burned down?’
And the gentleman smiles, and says ‘Certainly.’ Then I say, ‘If I
double your pocket-money will you undertake to give me a thousand
pounds for the value of the goods in that house supposing they are
burned too?’ And the gentleman says, ‘Certainly; in case their value
really _is_ a thousand pounds at the time.’ So I go away, and
presently, strange to say, my house _is_ actually burned to the
ground. Then I ask the gentleman to fulfil his promise; but he says,
‘Not at all. The house I will rebuild as before, and for the goods I
will pay you; but not a thousand pounds, because I am given to believe
that they were worth nothing like that sum at the time of the fire?’
Now, what am I to do? Well, I will tell you what this Joshua did. He
insisted upon having the whole thousand pounds, and the gentleman
answered by saying that he believed Joshua had purposely set fire to
his own house in order to secure a thousand pounds for a lot of old
rubbish in it that wasn’t worth twopence ha’penny. D’yunderstand?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Very well, then, and listen to this. If the gentleman spoke true,
Joshua had fallen _in Scyllam cupiens vitare Charybdim_, which means
that he had jumped out of the frying-pan into the fire, or, in other
words had, in trying to catch the Insurance gentleman, been nabbed
himself by the law. For arson is arson, and fraud fraud, and the
gentleman with the watch-chain isn’t to be caught with a pinch of salt
on his tail. But that was not the worst. Human bones had been found
among the _débris_ of the building, and ugly rumours got about that
these bones were Abel’s bones--the bones of an unhappy victim of
Joshua’s murderous hate. The man had disappeared, the brothers’ deadly
quarrel was recalled; it was whispered that the fire might owe itself
to a double motive--that, in short, Joshua had designed, at one blow,
to secure the thousand pounds and destroy the evidences of a great
crime. Joshua, sir, was arrested and put upon his trial for murder and
arson.”

I was listening with all my eyes and ears.

“Who defended him?” I whispered, gulping; for I knew something of the
legal terms.

The answer took me like a smack.

“Your father, sir.”

“O!” I exclaimed, thrilling. And then, after a pause, with a pride of
loyalty: “He got him off, didn’t he?”

Mr. Quayle put me down, and yawned dyspeptically.

“What!” he said. “If any man can, papa will. I ask your pardon, Master
Dicky, I really do, for palming off fact instead of fiction on you.
But my poor brain wasn’t equal. The case is actually _sub
judice_--being tried at this moment. Yesterday began it, and to-day
will end. If you whisper to me to-night, I’ll whisper back the
result.”

The delay seemed insupportable. He had read and worked me up to the
last chapter of the story, and now proposed to leave me agonising for
the end. It was the first time I had ever been brought so close to the
living romance of the law, and my blood was on fire with the
excitement of it.

“O, I wish----” I began.

The barrister looked down at me oddly, and shook his head.

“Ah, you little rogue!” he chuckled.

I felt too guilty to speak. He knew all that was in my mind. Suddenly
he took my hand.

“Come along, then,” he said, “and let’s have a peep. Papa needn’t
know.”

He shouldn’t have tempted me, nor should I have succumbed. A murder
romance was no book for a child, though my father figured in it as a
Paladin championing the wronged and oppressed.

I hung back a moment, but the creature cooed and whistled to me. “Come
and see Joshua,” he said, “with his back to the wall, and papa in
front daring ’em all to come on.”

The picture was irresistible. I let myself be persuaded and run out,
tingling all over.

It was a dingy November morning. The old town seemed dull and uneasy,
and a tallow-faced clock on a church dawdled behind time, as if it had
stopped to let something unpleasant go by. That might have been a
posse of melancholy javelin-men, who, with a ludicrous little
strutting creature at their head--a sort of pocket drum-major, in
sword and cocked hat and with a long staff in his hand--went splashing
past at the moment. The court-house, what with the fog and drip, met
us like the mouth of a sewer, and I was half-inclined to cry off so
disenchanting an adventure, when my companion tossed me up in his arms
and carried me within. Through halls and passages, smelling of cold,
trodden mud, we were passed with deference, and suddenly were swung
and shut into a room where there were lights and a great foggy hush.

I saw before me the scarlet judge. I knew him well enough, but never
awful like this--a shrunk ferret with piercing eyes looking out of a
gray nest. I saw the wigs of the counsel; but their bobtails seemed
cocked with an unfamiliar viciousness. I saw the faces of the Jury,
set up in two rows like ghostly ninepins; and then I saw another, a
face by itself, a face like a little shrewd wicked gurgoyle, that hung
yellow and alone out of the mist of the court. And that face, I knew,
was the face of Joshua.

The terrible silence ticked itself away, and there suddenly was my
father standing up before them all, and talking in a quick impassioned
voice. My skin went cold and hot. If I reaped little of the dear
tones, I understood enough to know that he spoke impetuously for the
prisoner, heaping scorn upon the prosecution. Never, he said, in all
his experience had he known calumny visit a soul so spotless as the
one it was now his privilege to defend. The process would be laughably
easy, it was true, and he would only dwell upon what must be to the
jury a foregone conclusion--the accused’s innocence, that was to
say--with the object to crush with its own vicious fallacies a
_pro_secution which, indeed, he could not help remarking bore more the
appearance of a _per_secution.

Mr. Quayle at this point laughed a little under his breath and
whispered, “Bravo!” in my ear, as he eased his burden by resting my
feet on the back of a bench. As for me, I was burning and shooting all
over with pride, as my eyes went from my father to the poor little
ugly prisoner in the dock, and back again.

The accused, went on my father (in substance. I can only give the
briefest abstract of his speech), would not deny that there had been
differences between him and his brother. Indeed, it would be useless
to, in the face of some recent notorious evidence to the contrary. But
did not all history teach us the folly of jumping, on the strength of
an unguarded word, to fatal conclusions? Had not one of our own
monarchs (surnamed Fitz-Empress, as he need not remind the jury)
suffered a lifelong regret from the false interpretation put upon a
rash utterance of his? “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”
he had cried, in an unthinking moment. “You shall pay for this!” had
been Joshua Pilbrow’s threat to his brother, under a like aggravation,
in the sale-room. “Gentlemen,” said my father, “how deadly the seeming
import, how laughable the explanation in either case. King Henry cried
only distractedly for some one to persuade his importunate Chancellor
to leave him alone. Joshua Pilbrow meant no more than to insist that
his brother should ‘stand the whole racket’ of a purchase of which he
himself had disapproved. Hence, gentlemen, these tears!”

There was a little stir in court, and my companion chuckled
delightedly in my ear again.

My father then proceeded triumphantly to give the true facts of the
case. The packet of books had, it appeared when opened, revealed one
item of unexpected value, in the profits from which Joshua, as
partner, insisted upon sharing. To this, however, Abel, quoting his
own words against him, demurred. It was his--Abel’s purchase, Abel
contended, to do with as he chose. The dispute ran so high as to
threaten litigation; when all of a sudden one night Abel was found to
have taken himself off with the cherished volume. Joshua, at first
unable to credit such perfidy, bided his time, expecting his brother
to return. But when, at last, his suspicion of bereavement settled
into a conviction, he grew like one demented. He could not believe in
the reality of his loss; but, candle in hand, went hunting high and
low amongst the litter with which the premises were choked, hoping
somewhere to alight, in some forgotten corner where cupidity had
concealed it, on the coveted prize. Alas! it never rains but it pours.
He not only failed to trace the treasure, but, in his distracted hunt
for it, must accidentally have fired the stock, which, smouldering for
awhile, burst out presently into flame, and committed all to ruin.

 * * * * * *

Such was the outline of the story, and, for all that I understood of
it, I could have clapped my father to the echo, with the tears gulping
in my throat, for his noble vindication of a wronged man. There were
other points he made, such as that Joshua had himself escaped with the
utmost difficulty from the burning building (and did that look like
arson?); such as that he had instructed his lawyers, after committal,
to advertise strenuously, though vainly, for his brother’s whereabouts
(and did that look like murder?); such as that the bones found amongst
the ruins were the bones of anatomical specimens, in which the firm
was well known to have dealt. I need not insist on them, because the
end was what I knew it must be if men were not base and abominable
enough to close their ears wilfully to those ringing accents of truth.

The prosecution, poor thing! answered, and the judge summed up; and
still Mr. Quayle, quite absorbed in the case, did not offer to take me
away. I had my eyes on my father all the time. He had sunk back, as if
exhausted, after his speech, and sat in a corner of the bench, his
hand over his face. The jury gave their verdict without leaving their
places. I heard the demand and the answer. The cry, “Not Guilty,” rang
like a pæan in my ears; and still I kept my eyes on my father.

The prisoner, freed from the dock, had left the court, when suddenly
some people stirred, and a whisper went round. A barrister bent over
the resting figure, and arose hurriedly. In a moment there was a
springing up of heads everywhere, so that the dear form was blotted
from my sight. Mr. Quayle, looking over my shoulder, caught a word,
and gave a quick little gasp.

“Dicky,” he said, catching at me, “come out at once! We must get away
before--before----” and he left the sentence unfinished as he hurried
me into the street.




 CHAPTER II.
 A GREAT LOSS AND A QUEER EQUIVALENT.

I looked in Mr. Quayle’s face; but I asked him no question. The mud
we trod seemed colder, the houses we passed more frowning than before;
but I asked no question. I could not form one in my mind; only
suddenly and somehow I felt frightened, as if in dreams before a great
solitude. Then in a moment I was sobbing fast and thickly.

Ah, what is the use to skate round the memory! Let it clutch me for a
moment, and be faced and dismissed. My father, my dear, ardent, noble
father was dead--struck down in an instant--shaken out of life by the
poignant utterances of his own spirit. While the flower of his fervour
was blossoming and bearing fruit, the roots thereof were dead
already--smitten in their place in his heart. That, its work done, had
ceased beating. Sometimes afterwards in my desolation I recalled the
church clock, with its poised motionless hands, and thought what a
melancholy omen it had been.

Mr. Quayle was kindness itself to me in my utter terror and
loneliness. He took upon himself, provisionally, the whole conduct of
my affairs. One morning he came in, and drew me to him.

“Dicky--Dicky-bird, me jewl!” he said. “I’ve found the fine cuckoo
that’s to come and father the poor little orphaned nestling.”

I must observe that he had his own theories about this same “harbinger
of spring,” which, according to him, was the “bird that looked after
another bird’s young.” I remembered the occasion on which he had so
defined it, and the laughter which had greeted him; and his
alternative, “Well, then, ’tis the bird that doesn’t lay its own eggs,
and that’s all one!” But the first definition, it appeared, was the
one he kept faith in.

“D’you remember Mr. Paxton?” he said.

“Uncle Jenico?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Uncle Jenico Paxton, mamma’s own only brother. Poor papa, my
dear--always a wonder and an honour to his profession--has left, it
seems, a will, in which he bequeathes everything to Uncle Jenico in
trust for his little boy, Master Dicky Bowen. And Uncle Jenico has
been found, and is coming to take charge of little Dicky Bowen.”

Was I glad or sorry? I was too stunned, I think, to care one way or
the other. Any one would do to stop the empty place which none could
ever fill, and neither my sympathies nor my dislikes were active in
the case of Uncle Jenico. I had seen him only once or twice, when he
had come to spend a night or so with us in town. My memory was of a
stout, hoarse old man in spectacles, rather lame, with a little nose
and twinkling eyes. He had seemed always busy, always in a hurry. He
bore an important, mysterious reputation with us as a great inventive
genius, who carried a despatch-box with him choked with invaluable
patents, and always left something behind--a toothbrush or an
umbrella--when he left. Let it be Uncle Jenico as well as another.

While we were talking there was a flurry at the door of the room, and
a man, overcoming some resistance outside, forced his way in. I gave a
little cry, and stood staring. It was the acquitted prisoner, Joshua
Pilbrow. George appeared just behind him, flushed and truculent.

“He would do it, sir,” said the servant, “for all I warned him away.”

Mr. Quayle had put me from him and arisen. There was a bad look on his
face; but he motioned to George to go, and we were left alone.

The intruder stood shrugging his disordered clothes into place, and
looking the while with a sort of black stealth at the barrister. His
face held and haunted me. It was bleak and sallow, and grey in the
hollows, with fixed dark eyes--the face, I thought, of a malignant,
though injured, creature. But it did not so affect Mr. Quayle, it was
evident.

“The verdict was ‘Not guilty,’ sir,” said the man, quite suddenly and
vehemently.

Mr. Quayle gave an unpleasant laugh.

“Or else you wouldn’t be intrudin’ here,” he said shortly.

“I came to thank my benefactor,” said the man. “I had heard nothing
till this moment of the tragic sequel.”

“Well,” said the barrister, in the same cynical tone, “you have come
too late. The price of your acquittal is this little orphaned life.”

He put his arm about my shoulders. The stranger looked hard at me.

“His son?” he muttered.

“There are some verdicts,” said Mr. Quayle, “bought too dear.”

In a moment the man turned upon him in a sort of fierce concentrated
bitterness.

“With the inconsistency of your evil profession,” he cried, “you
discount your own conclusions. The law guarantees and grudges me my
innocence. A curse upon it, I say! Did he there sacrifice his life for
me? He sacrificed it for truth, sir, and it’s that which you, as a
lawyer, can’t forgive.”

“You will observe,” said Mr. Quayle, icily, “that I have not
questioned the truth.”

“Not directly,” answered the visitor. “I know, I know. You damn by
innuendo; it’s your trade.”

The little lawyer laughed again.

“You malign our benevolence,” he said. “The law, by its artless
verdict, has entitled you to sue on the insurance question. Think, Mr.
Pilbrow; it actually offers itself to witness to your right to the
thousand pounds.”

“And I shall force it to,” cried the other; “and would to heaven I
could make it bleed another thousand for the wrong it has done me. It
would, if equity were justice.”

“Equity _is_ justice,” said Mr. Quayle. “Good morning.”

The man did not move for a moment, but stood looking gloomily at me.

Now, I cannot define what was working in my little soul. The pinched,
shorn face was not lovely, the eyes in it were not good; yet there was
something there of loss and hopelessness that touched me cruelly. And
was not my father lying in the next room in solemn witness to its
innocence? Suddenly, before Mr. Quayle could stay me, I had run to the
visitor and plucked at his coat.

“You did not do it,” I cried. “My father said so!”

He gave a little gasp, and fluttered his hand across his eyes,
sweeping in a wonderful way the evil out of them.

“Ah!” he said, “if your father, young gentleman, would whisper to you
where Abel lies hidden! He knows now.”

He stepped back, with a strange, wintry smile on his lips, stopped,
seemed about to speak, waved his hand to me, and was gone.

“Dicky, Dicky,” cried Mr. Quayle, “you’re the son of your father; but,
dear me, not so good a lawyer!”




 CHAPTER III.
 UNCLE JENICO.

That same evening Uncle Jenico arrived. I was just put to bed at the
time, but he came and stood by me a little before I went to sleep and
dreamt of him. He was not the least grown from his place in my
memory--only, to my wonder, a little more shabby-looking than I seemed
to recollect. The round gold spectacles were there, and the big beaver
hat, and the blue frock coat, and the nankeen trousers, and the
limp--all but the first and last a trifle the worse for wear. His
smile, however, was as cherubic, his despatch-box as glossy, his
walking-stick as stout as ever; and he nodded at me like a benevolent
Mandarin.

“Only we two left, my boy,” he said. “Poor papa, dear papa! He’s
learnt by now the secret of perpetual motion.”

It was an odd introduction. I cried a little, and, moved by his
kindness, clung to him.

“There!” he said, soothing me. “That’s all right. We are going to be
famous friends, _we_ are. _We’ll_ invent things; _we’ll_ set the
Thames on fire, _we_ will.”

Whether from exhaustion or from the dreamy contemplation of this
amazing feat to be performed by us, I fell asleep in his arms, lulled
for the first time out of my grief, and did not awake till bright
morning. The fog was gone; the birds were singing to us to carry my
father to his rest under the blue sky.

By-and-by we set out, Uncle Jenico very grave, in black, with a long
weeper round his hat. Mr. Quayle, and one or two more, who had
lingered a day behind the Assizes to do honour to the dead, came with
us; and others, including the judge, sent flowers. It was a simple,
pathetic service, in a green corner of the churchyard. I felt more
than understood its beauty, and when once I caught a glimpse of Uncle
Jenico busily and stealthily writing something with a pencil on the
inside lining of his hat, I accepted the fact naturally as a detail of
the ceremony.

But it was on the way home in the carriage that he disillusioned me by
removing his hat, and showing me a little drawing of a gravestone he
had made therein.

“Just an idea that occurred to me,” he said, “to perpetuate the memory
of poor papa. We want to do something better than keep it _green_, you
see. The weather and the lichen pay us all _that_ compliment. So I
suggest having the inscription very small, on a stone something the
shape of a dining-room clock, and over it a magnifying glass boss,
like one of those paperweights, you know, that have a little view at
the back. The tooth of Time could never touch that. What do you think
now?”

I thought it a very pleasant and kind idea, and told him so, at which
he was obviously pleased. But it was never carried out, no more than
many another he developed; and in the end--but that was long
afterwards--a simple headstone, of my own design, commemorated my
beloved father’s virtues.

The few mourners returned with us to the hotel, where, in a private
room, we had cake and sherry wine. Afterwards Mr. Quayle, when all but
he were gone, asked the favour of a final word with Uncle Jenico.

He appeared to find it a word difficult of utterance, walking up and
down, and puffing, and getting a little red in the face, while Uncle
Jenico sat beaming in a chair, his legs crossed and finger-tips
bridged.

At length Mr. Quayle stopped before him.

“Mr. Paxton,” said he, “when time’s short formalities are best
eschewed, eh?”

Uncle Jenico nodded.

“Surely,” said he. “I ask nothing less.”

“Then,” said Mr. Quayle, stuttering a little, “you are prepared to
accept our friend’s trust, _for all it’s worth_?”

Uncle Jenico nodded again, though I thought his countenance fell a
trifle over the emphatic qualification. However, he recovered in an
instant, and rubbed his hands together gleefully.

“Capital, sir,” he said; “a little capital. That’s all Richard and I
need to make our fortunes.”

He spoke as if we had been long partners, but hampered by insufficient
means.

“Ah!” said Mr. Quayle, decisively; “but that’s just the point.”

“Just the point,” echoed Uncle Jenico, still nodding, but weakly, and
with a dew of perspiration on his forehead.

“Just the point,” repeated Mr. Quayle. “I stood close to our friend. I
know something of his affairs--and habits. He was--d’ye understand
French, Mr. Paxton?”

“Yes, certainly,” answered my uncle, proudly.

“Well, listen to this, then: ‘Il a été un joueur invétéré celui
là; c’est possible qu’il a mangé son blé en herbe.’”

He drew back, to let his words take effect.

“God bless me!” said Uncle Jenico, weakly. “You have reason to know?”

“My dear sir,” replied Mr. Quayle, “I know how some of us occupy our
time on circuit when we’d be better abed. I know a punter when I see
one. I may be right; I may be wrong; and for your sake I hope I’m
wrong. But the point is this: A good deal of our friend’s paper has
come my way; and I want to know if, supposing I take it to market with
bad results to the estate, you are going to swear off your trust?”

Then Uncle Jenico did an heroic thing; how heroic I could not realise
at the time, though even then I think a shadow of the truth was
penetrating my bewilderment. He got to his feet, looking like an
angel.

“Mr. Quayle,” he said, “you’ve spoken plainly, and I don’t conceal
your words are a disappointment. But if they are also a prophecy, rest
assured, sir, that Richard and I stand or fall together. We are the
surviving partners of an honourable firm, and there is that in there,
sir” (he pointed to his inseparable despatch-box), “to uphold our
credit with the world.”

Mr. Quayle seized his hand, with an immense expression of relief on
his face.

“You’re a good soul,” he said. “Without that assurance I should have
felt like robbing the orphan. I hope it may turn out better than we
suppose.”

“I hope so, too,” said Uncle Jenico, rather disconsolately.




 CHAPTER IV.
 MY FIRST VIEW OF THE HILL.

It turned out not so badly, yet pretty badly. Uncle Jenico took
cheap lodgings for us in the town, and for two or three months was
busy flitting between Ipswich and London winding up my father’s
estate. At the end, when the value of every lot, stick, and warrant
had been realised, and the creditors satisfied, a sum representing
perhaps £150 a year was secured to us, and with this, and the
despatch-box, we committed ourselves to the future.

It appeared that my Uncle Jenico’s inventions had always been more
creditable than profitable to him, and this for the reason that
unattainable capital was necessary to their working. Given a few
hundreds, he was confident that he could make thousands out of any one
of them. It was hard, for the lack of a little fuel, so to speak, to
have so much power spoiling on one’s hands. I would have had him, when
once I understood, invest our own capital in some of them; but, though
I could see he loved me for the suggestion, he had the better strength
of affection to keep loyal to his trust, which he administered
scrupulously according to the law. Afterwards, when I came to know him
better, I could not but be thankful that he had shown this superior
genius for honesty; for his faith in his own concerns was so complete,
and at the same time so naïve, that he might otherwise have lacked
nothing but the guilt to be a defaulter.

As to the patents themselves, they represented a hundred phases of
craft, every one of which delighted and convinced me by its
originality. There was a design amongst them for an automatic
dairy-maid, a machine which, by exhausting the air in a number of
flexible tubes, could milk twenty cows at once. There was a design for
making little pearls large, by inserting them like setons in the
shells of living oysters. There was a plan for a ship to be driven by
a portable windmill, which set a turbine spinning under the stern.
Uncle Jenico’s contrivances were mostly on an heroic scale, and
covered every form of enterprise--from the pill which was to eliminate
dyspepsia from the land, to a scheme for liquidating the National Debt
by pawning all England for a term of years to an International Trust.
At the same time, there was no human need too mean for his
consideration. He was for ever striving to economise labour for the
betterment of his poorer fellow-creatures. His inventiveness was a
great charity, which did not even begin at home. His patents, from
being designed to improve any condition but his own, suffered the
neglect of a world to which selfishness is the first principle of
business competence. His “Napina,” a liquid composition from which old
clothes, after having been dipped therein, re-emerged as new, could
find no market. His “Labour-of-Love Spit,” which was turned by a
rocking-chair moving a treadle, like that on a knife-grinder’s
machine, so that the cook could roast her joint in great comfort while
dozing over her paper, could make no headway against the more
impersonal clock-work affair. And so it was with most of his designs,
but a few of which had been actually tested before being condemned on
insufficient evidence. What more ridiculous, for instance, than to
denounce his “Burglar’s Trap” on the score that one single idiot of a
householder had blundered into his own snare and been kept there while
the robbers were rifling his premises? What more scandalous than to
convict his Fire-Derrick--a noble invention, like a crane dangling a
little cabin, for saving life at conflagrations--because the first
time it was tested the box would not descend, but kept the insurance
gentlemen swinging in the air for an hour or two; or his Infallible
Lifebelt, which turned upside-down in the water for the single reason
that they tried it on a revenue officer who had lost his legs in an
explosion? No practical innovation was surely ever started without a
stumble. But Uncle Jenico had no luck. He sunk all his capital in his
own patents without convincing a soul, or--and this is the notable
thing--losing his temper. That one only of his possessions remained to
him, fresh and sound as when, as a little boy, he had invented a
flying top, which broke his grandmother’s windows. No neglect had
impaired it, nor adversity ruffled for more than a moment. If he had
patented it and nothing else, he could have made his fortune, I am
certain.

Still, when we came to be comrades--or partners, as he loved to call
us--his restless brain was busy as ever with ideas. Nothing was too
large or small for him to touch. He showed me, on an early occasion,
how his hat--not the black one he had worn at the funeral, but the big
beaver article that came over his eyes--explained its own proportions
in a number of little cupboards or compartments in the lining, which
were designed to carry one’s soap, toothbrush, razor, etc., when on a
short visit. He had the most delightful affection for his own
ingenuities, and the worldliest axioms for explaining the secret of
their success. On the afternoon when Mr. Quayle, after the kindest of
partings with me, had left us, and while he was yet on the stairs,
Uncle Jenico had bent to me and whispered: “Make it a business
principle, my boy, never to confess to insolvency. You heard the way I
assured the gentleman? Well, Richard, we may have in our despatch-box
there all Ophir lying fallow for the lack of a little cash to work it;
but we mustn’t tell our commercial friends so--no, no. We must let
them believe it is their privilege to back us. Necessity is a bad
recommendation.”

It may be. But I was not a commercial gent; and Uncle Jenico had all
my faith, and should have had all my capital if it had rested with me
to dispose of it as I liked.

During the time my uncle was engaged in London, George, good man,
remained at Ipswich to look after me, though we were forced
reluctantly to dismiss him as soon as things were settled. It was
impossible, however, on a hundred and fifty pounds a year to keep a
man-servant; and so presently he went, and with him my last connection
with the old life. Not more of the past than the clothes I stood in
now remained to me. It was as if I had been shipwrecked and adopted by
a stranger. But the final severance seemed a relief to Uncle Jenico,
who, when it was accomplished, drew a long breath, and adjusted his
glasses and looked at me rosily.

“Now, Richard,” he said, “with nobody any longer to admonish us, comes
the question of our home, and where to make it. Have you any choice?”

Dear me; what did I know of the world’s dwelling-places? I answered
that I left it all to him.

“Very well,” he said, with a happy sigh; “then I have an original
plan. Suppose we make it nowhere?”

He paused to note how the surprise struck home.

“You mean----” I began, hesitating.

“I mean,” said he, “supposing we have no fixed abode, but go from
place to place as it suits us?”

What boy would not have jumped at the suggestion? I was in ecstasies.

“You see,” said Uncle Jenico, “moving about, I get ideas; and in ideas
lies our future prosperity. Let’s look at the map.”

It was a lovely proposal. To enter, in actual being, the mysterious
regions of pictures-on-the-wall; to breathe the real atmosphere, so
long felt in romance, of tinted lithographs and coloured prints; to
find roads and commons and phantom distances, wistful, unattainable
dreams hitherto, made suddenly accessible to me--it was thrilling, it
was rapturous. My uncle humoured the thought so completely as to leave
to me the fanciful choice of our first resting-place.

“Only don’t let it be too far,” he said. “Just at present we must go
moderate, and until I can realise on the sale of a little patent,
which I am on the point of parting with for an inadequate though
considerable sum.”

I spent a delightful hour in poring over the county map. It was
patched with verdant places--big farms and gentlemen’s estates--and
reminded me somehow of those French green-frilled sugarplums which
crunch liqueur and are shaped like little vegetables. One could feel
the cosy shelter of the woods, marked in groves of things that looked
like tiny cabbages, and gaze down in imagination from the hills
meandering like furry caterpillars with a miniature windmill here and
there to turn them from their course. The yellow roads were rich in
suggestion of tootling coaches, and milestones, and inns revealing
themselves round corners, with troughs in front and sign-boards, and
perhaps a great elm shadowed with caves of leafiness at unattainable
heights. But the red spit of railway which came up from the bottom of
the picture as far as Colchester, and was thence extended, in a dotted
line only, to Ipswich, gave me a thrill of memory half sad and half
beautiful. For it was by that wonderful crimson track that my father
and I had travelled our last road together as far as the old Essex
town, where, since it ended there for the time being, we had taken
coach for Suffolk.

“Made up your mind?” asked Uncle Jenico, by-and-by, with a chuckle.

I flushed and wriggled, and came out with it.

“Can’t we--mayn’t we go to the sea? I’ve never been there yet; and
we’re so close; and papa promised.”

“The sea?” he echoed. “Why, to be sure. I’ve long had an idea that
seaweed might be used for water-proofing. It’s an inspiration,
Richard. We’ll beat Mr. Macintosh on his own ground. But whereabouts
to the sea, now?”

I could not suggest a direction, however; so he borrowed for me a
local guide-book, which dealt with places of interest round the coast,
and left me to study it while he went out for a walk to get ideas.

I had no great education; but I could read glibly enough for my eight
years. When Uncle Jenico returned in an hour or two, our choice, so
far as I was concerned, was made. I brought the book, and, laying it
before him, pointed to a certain description.

“Dunberry,” he read, skipping, so as to take the gist of it--“the
Sitomagus of the Roman occupation, and later the Dunmoc of East
Anglia. Population, 694. (H’m, h’m!) Disfranchised by the Reform Act
of ’32. (H’m!) Formerly a place of importance, owning a seaport,
fortifications, seven churches and an abbey. In the twelfth century
the sand, silting up, destroyed its harbour and admitted the
encroachments of the sea, from which date its prosperity was gradually
withdrawn. (H’m, h’m!) Since, century by century, made the devouring
sport of the ocean, until, at the present date, but a few crumbling
ruins, toppling towards their final extinction in the waves below,
remain the sole sad relics of an ancient glory which once proudly
dominated the element under which it was doomed later to lie
’whelmed.”

Uncle Jenico stopped reading, and looked up at me a little puzzled.

“There’s better to come,” I murmured, blushing.

He nodded, and went on--

“A hill, called the Abbot’s Mitre, as much from its associations,
perhaps, as from its peculiar conformation, overlooks the modern
village, and is crowned on its seaward edge by the remains of the
ancient foundation from which it takes its name. Some business is done
in the catching and curing of sprats and herrings. There is an annual
fair. Morant states that after violent storms, when the shingle-drifts
are overturned, bushels of coins, Roman and other, and many of
considerable value, may be picked up for the seeking.”

Uncle Jenico’s face came slowly round to stare into mine. His hair
seemed risen; his jaw was a little dropped.

“Richard!” he whispered, “our fortune is made.”

“Yes,” I thrilled back, delighted. “That’s why I chose it. I thought
you’d be pleased.”

He looked out the direction eagerly on the map. It was distant, by
road, some twenty-five miles north-east by north from Ipswich; by sea,
perhaps ten miles further. But the weather was fine, and
water-transport more suited to our finances. So two days later we had
started for Dunberry, in one of the little coasting ketches that ply
between Harwich and Yarmouth carrying farm produce and such chance
passengers as prefer paying cheap for a risk too dear for security.

It was lovely April weather, and a light wind blowing up the shores
from the south-east bowled us gaily on our way. I never so much as
thought of sickness, and if I had, Uncle Jenico, looking in his large
Panama hat like a benevolent planter, would have shamed me, with his
rubicund serenity, back to confidence again. Our sole property, for
all contingencies, was contained in the despatch-box and a single
carpet bag; and with no more sense of responsibility than these
engendered, we were committing ourselves to a future of ravishing
possibilities.

Throughout the pleasant journey we hugged the coast, never being more
than a mile or two distant from it, so that its features, wild or
civilized, were always plain to us. It showed ever harsher and more
desolate the farther we ran north, and the tearing and hollowing
effect of waves upon its sandy cliffs more evident. All the way it was
fretted, near and far, with towers--a land of churches. They stood
grey in the gaps of hills; brown and gaunt on solitary headlands.
Sometimes they were dismantled; and once, on a deserted shore, we saw
a belfry and part of a ruined chancel footing the tide itself. It was
backed by a great heaped billow of sand, which--so our skipper told
us--had stood between it and the sea till storms flung it all over and
behind, leaving the walls it had protected exposed to destruction.

As evening came on I must confess my early jubilation waned somewhat.
The thin, harsh air, the melancholy cry of the birds, the eternal
desolation of the coast, chilled me with a creeping terror of our
remoteness from all that friendly warmth and comfort we had rashly
deserted. Not a light greeted us from the shore but such as shone
ghastly in the lifeless wastes of foam. The last coast town, miles
behind, seemed to have passed us beyond the final bounds of
civilization. So that it was with something like a whimper of joy that
I welcomed the sudden picture of a hill notched oddly far ahead
against the darkening sky. I ran hurriedly to Uncle Jenico.

“Uncle!” I cried. “Uncle, look! The Abbot’s Mitre!”

The skipper heard me, and answered.

“Aye,” said he, “it’s the Mitre, sure enow,” and spat over the
taffrail.

There was something queer in his tone. He rolled his quid in his
cheek.

“And like enow, by all they say,” he added, looking at Uncle Jenico,
“to figure agen for godliness.”

“Eh?” said my uncle; “I beg your pardon?”

“Granted,” answered the skipper shortly; and that was all.

There was an uneasy atmosphere of enigma here. But we were abroad
after adventure, when all was said, and had no cause to complain.

I stood holding my uncle’s hand, while we ran our last knot for home
in the twilight. As we neared the hill its peculiar shape was
gradually lost, and instead, looking up from below, we saw the cap of
a broken tower showing over its swell. Then hill and ruin dropped
behind us, a shadowy bulk, and of a sudden we were come opposite a
sandy cleft cutting up into the cliff, and below on the shingle a
ghostly group of boats and shore-loafers, though still no light or
sign of houses.

We brought to, the sails flapping, and the skipper sent a long
melancholy boom sounding over the water from a horn. It awoke a stir
on the beach, and presently we saw a boat put off, and come curtseying
towards us. It was soon alongside, revealing three men, of whom the
one who sat steering was a little remarkable. He was immensely tall
and slouching, with a lank bristled jaw, a swarthy skin, and, in
spectral contrast, eye-places of such an odd sick pallor as to give
him the appearance, at least in this gloaming, of wearing huge
spectacles. However, he was the authoritative one of the three, and
welcomed us civilly enough for early visitors to Dunberry, hoping we
should favour the place.

“None so well as thee, Jole, since thy convarsion,” bellowed the
skipper, as we pushed off.

There followed a chuckle of laughter from the ketch, and I noticed
even that the two men pulling us creased their cheeks. Their
companion, unmoving, clipped out something like an oath, which he
gruffly and hastily coughed over.

“The Lord in His wrath visit not the scoffer,” he said aloud, “nor
waft him blindfold this night upon the Weary Sands!”

In a few minutes we slid up the beach on the comb of a breaker, and
half a dozen arms were stretched to help us out. One seized the
carpet-bag, another--our tall coxswain’s itself--the despatch-box; and
thereby, by that lank arm, hangs this tale. For my uncle, who was
jealous of nothing in the world but his box, in scrambling to resecure
it from its ravisher, slipped on the wet thwarts, and, falling with
his head against a corner of the article itself, rolled out bleeding
and half-stunned upon the sand.

I was terribly frightened, and for a moment general consternation
reigned. But my uncle was not long in recovering himself, though to
such a dazed condition that a strong arm was needed in addition to his
stick to help him towards the village. We started, a toilful
procession, up the sandy gully (Dunberry Gap its name), I carrying the
precious case, and presently, reaching the top, saw the village going
in a long gentle sweep below us, the scoop of the land covering it
seawards, which was the reason we had seen no lights.

It had been Uncle Jenico’s intention to look for reasonable lodgings;
but this being from his injury impracticable, we let ourselves be
conducted to the Flask Inn, the most important in the place, where we
were no sooner arrived than he consented to be put to bed, with me in
a little closet giving off his room. It was near dark by the time we
were settled, and feeling forlorn and bewildered I was glad enough,
after a hasty supper, to tuck my troubles between the sheets and
forget everything in sleep. But how little I guessed, as I did so,
that Uncle Jenico had, in falling, taken possession, like William the
Conqueror, of this new land of our adoption.




 CHAPTER V.
 THE STORY OF THE EARTHQUAKE.

Providence, I cannot but believe, had all this time humoured us
along a seeming “Road of Casualty,” which was, in truth, the direct
path to its own wonderful ends. We talk of luck and accident and
coincidence. They are, I am certain, but the veils with which It
blinds us to Its inexorable conclusions. My chance selection of our
destination, my uncle’s mishap--what were these but second and third
acts in the strange drama which had begun in the law courts of
Ipswich, where my father had given his life for a truth, which was to
be here, thirty miles away, proven and consummated. The _dénouement_
was distant yet, to be sure, for Providence, having all eternity to
plot in, works deliberately. Nevertheless, It never loses sight, I
think, of what we call the Unities of Art.

I awoke from a dreamless sleep, a restored and avid little giant. It
was bright morning. A clock on the stairs cleared its throat and sang
out six times. The house was still, save for a shuffling of drowsy
maids at their dusting below. I lay quiet, conscious of the most
unfamiliar atmosphere all about me--of whitewashed walls; of a smell
between wood-smoke and seaweed and the faint sourness of beer; of cold
boarded floors gritty with sand; of utter remoteness from the noise of
traffic habitual to a young denizen of towns. This little gap of time
had lifted me clean out of my accustomed conditions, and dumped me in
an outpost of civilization, amongst uncouth allies, friendlies in
name, but as foreign as foes to my experience.

I got up soon very softly, and washed and dressed and went out. I had
to pass, on my way, through my uncle’s room; and it relieved me to see
him slumbering peacefully on his pillow, though the white bandage
across his forehead gave me a momentary shock.

I emerged upon a landing, on a wall of which, papered with varnished
marble, hung a smoke-stained print of a hunt, with a case of stuffed
water-birds on a table beneath. No one accosted me as I descended the
little creaking flight of stairs. I passed out by the unlatched
private door of the tavern, and found myself at the sea-end of the
village street. It was a glowing morning. Not a soul appeared abroad,
and I turned to the path by which we had come the night before,
thrilling to possess the sea.

The ground went gently up by the way of a track that soon lost itself
in the thin grass of the cliffs. Not till I reached the verge did I
pause to reconnoitre, and then at once all was displayed about me. I
drew one deep delighted breath, and turned as my foremost duty to
examine the way I had come. The village, yawning from its chimneys
little early draughts of smoke, ran straight from the sea, perhaps for
a quarter of a mile, under the shelter of a low, long hill on which a
few sheep were folded. Beyond this hill, southwards, and divided from
it by a deepish gorge, whose end I could see like a cut trough in the
cliff edge, bulged another, the Abbot’s, the contour which gave it its
name but roughly distinguishable at these closer quarters. The ruins
we had passed overnight crowned this second slope near its marge; and
inland both hills dropped into pastures, whence the ground rose again
towards a rampart of thick woods which screened all Dunberry from the
world beyond.

It looked so endearing, such a happy valley of peace, one would
scarcely have credited the picture with a single evil significance;
yet--but I am not going to anticipate. Tingling with pleasure, I faced
round to the sea.

It was withdrawn a distance away, creaming at the ebb. All beyond was
a sheet of golden lustre fading into the bright mists of dawn. Right
under the rising sun, like a bar beneath a crest, stretched the line
of the Weary Sands, a perilous bank situate some five miles from
shore; and between bank and coast rode a solitary little two-masted
lugger, with shrouds of gossamer and hull of purple velvet, it seemed,
in the soft glow. Even while I looked, this shook out sails like
beetles’ wings, and, drawing away, revealed a tiny boat speeding
shorewards. I bent and peered over. Ten fathoms beneath me the gully
we had climbed in the dark discharged itself, a river of sand, upon
the beach; and tumbled at its mouth, as it might be _débris_, lay a
dozen pot-bellied fishing boats. Right and left the cliffs rose and
dropped in fantastic conformations, until they sank either way into
the horizon. It was a wonderful scene to the little town-bred boy.

Presently I looked for the rowing-boat again, and saw it close in
shore. In a minute it grated on the shingle, and there heaved himself
out of it the tall fisherman who had escorted us last night. I was
sure of him, and he also, it appeared, of me; for after staring up
some time, shading his eyes with his hand, he turned, as if convinced,
to haul his craft into safety. I watched him awhile, and was then once
more absorbed in the little vessel drawing seawards, when I started to
hear his voice suddenly address me close by. He must have come up the
gully as soft-footed as a cat.

His eyes were less like a marmoset’s by daylight; but they were still
a strange feature in his gaunt forbidding face. I felt friendly
towards every one; yet somehow this man’s expression chilled me, as he
stood smiling down ingratiatory without another word.

“Is that your little ship out there?” I asked, for lack of anything
better.

“Lor’ bless ’ee, no, sir,” he answered, heartily, but in a sort of
breathless way. “What makes ’ee think so?”

“Weren’t you coming from it?”

“Me!” He protested, with a panting chuckle. “Jole Rampick own that
_there_ little tender beauty! I’d skipped out _fur_ my morning dip,
sir--_if_ you must know. A wonderful bracing water this--_if_ folks
would only credit it.”

His unshorn dusky face was not, I could not help thinking, the best
testimony to its cleansing properties. But I kept my wisdom to myself,
and turned to go back to the inn. Mr. Rampick volunteered his company,
and on the way some instructive information.

“Aye,” he panted huskily; “man and boy _fur_ nigh on fifty year have I
known this here Abbot’s Dunberry, but never--_till_ three months
ago--the healing vartues of its brine.”

“Who told you of them?” I asked.

“The Lord,” he answered, showing the under-whites of his eyes a
moment. “The Lord, sir, _through_ his minister the parson--that’s Mr.
Sant. Benighted we were--_and_ ignorant--till the light was vouchsafed
us; and parson he revealed the Bethesda lying _at_ our very doors.”

“What’s Bethesda?” I had, I am sorry to say, to ask.

“A blessed watering-place,” he said--“I’m humbly surprised, sir; like
as parson calc’lates _to_ make of this here, if the Almighty will
condescend to convart our former wickedness _to_ our profit.”

“Were you wicked?”

“Bad, bad!” He answered, setting his lips, and shaking his head. “A
nest of smugglers _and_ forswearers, till He set His hand on us.”

“Mr. Rampick! How?”

“It tuk the form of an ’arthquake,” he said, with a little cough.

I jumped, and ejaculated: “O! Where?”

“Yonder, in the Mitre,” he said, waving his hand towards the hidden
bluff. “It’ll be fower months ago, won’t it, _as_ they run their last
contraband to ground _in_ the belly of that there hill. A cave, _it_
was supposed, sir; but few knew for sarten, and none will ever know
now till the day _when_ the Lord ‘shall judge the secrets of men.’
There was a way in, _as_ believed, known only to the few; and one
night, _as_ believed, them few entered by it, each man with his brace
o’ runlets--_and they never come out agen_!”

I gasped and knotted my fingers together. It did not occur to my
innocence to question the source of his knowledge, or conjecture.

“Why?” I whispered.

“Why?” he echoed in a sort of asthmatic fury. “Why, sir, because it
was a full cargo, and their iniquity according; and so the Lord He
spoke, _and_ the hill it closed upon ’em. In the dark, when we was all
abed, there come a roaring wind _from_ underground what turned our
hearts to water; and in the morning when we gathered to look, there
was the hill twisted _like_ a dead face out of knowledge, and the
Abbey--two-thirds of what was left--scrattled abroad.”

I could only stare up at him, breathing quick in face of this
wonderful romance. It had, I knew, been a year strangely prolific in
earth-shocks.

“Yes, sir,” he said soberly; “_if_ all what’s believed is Gospel true,
there at this moment lays those poor sinners, bedded like flints in
chalk--_and_ the hill fair reeking with Nantes brandy.”

He groaned hoarsely.

“Hallerloojer! It was a sign _and_ a warning. The shock of it carried
off th’ old vicar, and in a week or two arter Mr. Sant he come _to_
take his place. He found us a sober’d people, Hallerloojer! and soil
meet _fur_ the Lord’s planting. You be the fust fruits, sir; and we
favourably hope _as_ when you go away you’ll recommend us.”

Perhaps I vaguely understood by this something of the nature of our
welcome. Given an isolated fishing village skipped by tourists because
of its remoteness; given the sudden withdrawal from that village of
its natural advantages for an illicit trade; given a clerical
enthusiast, introduced at the right moment, to point out to a
depressed population it’s locality’s potentialities as a
watering-place, and to show the way for them to win an honest
prosperity out of the ruins of evil; given, to top all, a dressing of
local superstition, and the position was clear. Such deduction, no
doubt, was for the adult rather than the child; but though I could not
draw it at the time, it was there to _be_ drawn, I am sure.

As we talked we had reached the inn, and my companion, touching his
cap, passed on. But he came back before I had time to enter, and
addressed me breathlessly, as if on an after-thought.

“Begging _your_ pardon, sir--but you makes me laugh, you reely
does--about that there lugger belonging to poor Jole Rampick.” And he
went off chuckling, and looking, with his little head and slouching
shoulders and stilts of legs, like the hind-quarters of a pantomime
elephant.

I found my uncle sitting up in preparation to breakfast in bed. He was
very genial and happy; but, so it seemed to me, extraordinarily vague.
I told him about my adventure and the story of the earthquake, which
he seemed somehow unable to dissociate from his own accident.

“I knew it, Richard,” he said; “but it was taking rather a mean
advantage of a lame man, eh? There’s no security against it but
balloons--that I’ve often thought. You see, when the ground itself
gives underneath you, where are you to go? If one could only pump
oxygen into one’s own head, you know. I’ll think about it in the
course of the morning. I don’t fancy I shall get up just at present.
That despatch-box, now--it was a drastic way of impressing its claims
upon me, eh? Well, well!”

He laughed, rather wildly I thought.

“Uncle,” I said, “you’ve never told me--how did you get lame?”

“How did I get lame?” he murmured, pressing the bandage on his
forehead. “Why, to be sure, it was a parachute, Richard--a really
capital thing I invented. But the wires got involved--the merest
accident--and I came to the ground.”

He was interrupted by two young ladies, daughters of the inn, who came
themselves--out of curiosity, I think--to serve us breakfast. They
were over-dressed, all but for their trodden slippers, with large bows
of hair on their heads, and they giggled a good deal and answered
questions pertly.

“Well, my dears,” said Uncle Jenico, “how about the earthquake?”

They stared at him, and then at one another, and burst out laughing.

“O, there now!” said one; “earthquake yourself, old gentleman! Go
along with you!” And they ran out, and we heard them tittering all
down the stairs.

Uncle Jenico got clearer after his meal, though he was still
disinclined to move. I sat with him all the morning, while he showed
and explained to me more of the contents of his box; and about midday
a visitor, the Reverend Mr. Sant, was announced. I stood up expectant,
and saw a thin, dark young man, in clerical dress, enter the room at a
stride. He had the colourless face, large-boned nose, and burning eyes
of a zealot, and not an ounce of superfluous flesh anywhere about him.
Much athletic temperance had trimmed him down to frame and muscle, but
had not parched the sources of a very sweet smile, which was the only
emotional weakness he retained. He came up to the bed, took my uncle’s
hand, and introduced himself in a word.

“Permit me,” he said; “I heard of your accident. I know a trifle of
surgery, and our apothecary visits us but twice in the month. May I
look?”

He examined the hurt, and, saying he would send a salve for it,
settled down to talk.

Now, I could not follow the persuasive process; but all I know is that
within a quarter of an hour he had learned all my uncle’s and my
history, and the reason for our coming to Dunberry, and that, having
once mastered the details, he very ingeniously set himself to
appropriating them to the schemes of Providence.

“It is clear,” he said, “that you, free-lances of Destiny, were
inspired to select this, out of all the world, for your operations.
_We_ looked for visitors to report for us upon the attractions of the
place; _you_ for a quiet and healthful spot in which to develop your
schemes.”

“Very true,” said Uncle Jenico. “I’ve long had an idea for extracting
gold from sea-water.”

“You see?” cried Mr. Sant, greatly pleased. “It’s a clear
interposition of Providence. This coast is, I am sure, peculiarly
adapted, from the accessibility of its waters, to gold-seeking.”

I could not restrain my excitement.

“Please,” I said, “did-d-d the smugglers hide it there?”

Mr. Sant glanced at me sharply.

“Who told you about smugglers?” he demanded.

“Mr. Rampick,” I whispered, hanging my head.

“Ah!” he exclaimed, and turned to my uncle. “Old Joel Rampick, was it?
One of the most cherished of my converts, sir; a deeply religious man
at bottom, though circumstances long obscured the light in him. Old
Rampick, now! And talked about smuggling, did he? He’ll have drawn the
moral of it from his own experience, _I_ don’t doubt. Dunberry,
there’s no use concealing, has been a long thorn in the side of the
Revenue, though happily the earthquake has changed all that.”

“Ah, to be sure!” said my uncle; “the earthquake.”

“It was without question a Divine visitation,” said Mr. Sant,
resolutely.

“Do you think so?” said my uncle, his face falling. “My purpose in
coming here was really most harmless, sir.”

Mr. Sant looked puzzled; then went on, with a dry smack of his lips:

“I am afraid that my predecessor lacked a little the apostolic
fervour. He was old, and liked his ease, good man. Perhaps long
association with the place had blunted his prejudices. I must not play
the Pharisee to him, however. No doubt so circumstanced I should have
failed no less to sow the seed. Heaven sent me at a fruitful moment:
to Heaven be the credit and the glory! This little boy now--nephew
Dicky? He knows his catechism?”

“Ah!” said Uncle Jenico, with a cunning look; “does he?”

“Chit-chit!” protested the clergyman. “I hope not altogether ignorant
of it?”

He was decently shocked, and won an easy promise from my uncle that I
should come up to him for an hour’s instruction every day. Then he
rose to go.

“You’ll excuse me,” he said, bending his brows, “but I trust you are
satisfied with your quarters?”

“Well, yes,” answered my uncle, hesitating; “but--an inn, you see.
It’s a little more than we can--than we ought to--eh?”

Mr. Sant brightened immediately. We came to know afterwards that he
strongly disapproved of these flashy Miss Flemings, and had once
expressed in public some surprise that they had not been impounded as
skittish animals not under proper control.

“There’s the widow Puddephatt, ripe and ready for visitors,” he said,
“and perfectly reasonable, I am sure. May I give you her address? It’s
No. 3, the Playstow.”

My uncle thanked him warmly; and, smitten with a sudden idea, caught
at his coat as he was leaving.

“O, by the way!” he said, “these coins to be picked up on the beach,
now. There are enough left to make it profitable, I suppose?”

Mr. Sant stared at him.

“The coins, Roman and other,” persisted Uncle Jenico, anxiously
scanning the clergyman’s face; “the antiques, which Morant tells us
litter the beach like shells after storms?”

Mr. Sant shook his head.

“I have heard nothing of them during _my_ time,” he said; “but I
should hardly think smuggling would have got such a hold here if it
were the Tom Tiddler’s ground your friend supposes it to be.”

Directly he was gone, Uncle Jenico turned to me, rubbing his hands,
with a most roguish smile puckering his mouth.

“Richard,” he said, “we are in plenty of time. The obtuseness of the
rustic is a thing astonishing beyond words! Here, with all Pactolus at
his feet, he needs a stranger to come and show him his opportunities.
But, mum, boy, mum! We’ll keep this little matter to ourselves.”




 CHAPTER VI.
 MRS. PUDDEPHATT AND FANCY-MARIA.

The following day my uncle was near himself again, and we left the
Flask inn and took lodging with the widow Puddephatt. The Playstow was
a little green, about half-way down the village, where the villagers
reared their may-pole on May-day, and built their fires on Midsummer’s
Eve, and caroused in September on the harvest-largesse won from
passers-by. Round about, in a little _square_, were cottages, detached
and exclusive, the _élite_ of Dunberry; and to one side was the
church--but now in process of completion--in whose porch the daring
would seat themselves on St. Mark’s eve to see, at midnight, the
wraiths of the year’s pre-doomed come and knock at the door. Mr. Sant
had, however, limited that custom, as well as some others less
reputable; and the fact that he was able to do so spoke volumes for
his persuasiveness. At the present time the villagers, under his
stimulus, were transferring, stone by stone, to the long unfinished
fabric and its adjoining school-house, the less sacred parts of the
ruined foundation on the hill.

Mrs. Puddephatt, though Dunberry-born, was a comparative acquisition
to the village, to which she had been summoned, and to her natural
succession in No. 3, the Playstow, through the death of an only sister
without encumbrances. She had, in fact, gone very young, a great many
years ago, into service in London, and had never set foot again in her
native place until this inheritance, now two years old, had called
her. She brought with her an ironic atmosphere of the great world, and
a disdainful tolerance towards the little, in which her lot was now to
vegetate. She had, in her high experience, “’tweenied,” “obliged,”
scullery-maided, kitchen-maided, house-maided, parlour-maided, and
old-maided; and she had somehow emerged from this five-fold chrysalis
of virginity the widow Puddephatt--no one knew by what warrant, other
than that of a sort of waspish charity-girl cap, with a knuckle-bone
frill round her face. But then her knowledge of men was so matrimonial
that it was admitted nothing but a husband could have inspired it. Her
dictums, in respect to this mystic experience, were _merum sal_ to the
wives of Dunberry.

“Look in the pot for your new gownd,” and “The way to a man’s purse is
through his mouth,” may be bracketed for utterances cryptic to the
“general,” but not to _their_ delighted understandings.

“A hopen ’and comes empty ’ome.”

“A man shuts his sweet’art’s mouth with a kiss, but his wife’s heyes.”

“Be careful of a Saturday morning to mend the ’ole in your man’s
pocket.”

“When your ’usband talks of his hage, be sure he means yours.”

Such and the like shrewd axioms served the widow Puddephatt at least
as well as marriage lines; and, if more were needed, her mastery of
the exact science of nagging and of the conquering resource of
hysterics supplied it. Sometimes, it was whispered, she was to be seen
in her front garden viciously dusting a man’s coat with a stick; and
on this moral implication alone, late tavern roysterers, lurching home
after closing-time past the little wicket where she was often to be
seen watching spectral and ironic, had been known to slink by, meanly
conscious of deserting, and surrendering into her gloating hands a
purely imaginary Puddephatt, their late boon companion.

This tremendous lady undertook the care of us with infinite
condescension, and, hearing that we were Londoners bred, gathered us
at once under the protection of her maternal and metropolitan wing.

“Lork, Fancy-Maria!” she would say, with an air of amused tolerance
towards the little Suffolk rawbones who “generalled” for her; “we
don’t breathe on the knives and polish ’em in our haprons in
_London_!” Or, “That won’t do, Fancy-Maria! We know better in London
than to dust the ’ot plates with our helbers.”

With this shibboleth of sarcastic comparison, she had won, not only
Fancy-Maria, but all feminine Dunberry to a perspiring emulation of
her gentility, so that in the course of her two years the social code
had grown quite elevated, and it was no longer fashionable to dine in
one’s shirt-sleeves.

Fancy-Maria was her adoring, but unable lieutenant. She tried hard,
and breathed _very_ hard; yet her fervour led to frequent disaster. It
was the management of trays that tested her most severely. If she rose
with one from the depths, she invariably struck it against the lintel
of the parlour door, and shot everything from it into the hall. If she
descended with one from the heights, she tripped at the corner where
the stairs turned, and tobogganed down on it the rest of the way,
preceded by an avalanche of cups and dishes. She always did her best
to keep the contents steady with her thumbs; but her thumbs, though
large, were not universal, and were generally occupied in holding
secure the bread and butter, for choice, on one side, and the fried
fish on the other. Some people make a point of leaving a little piece
on each dish “for manners.” We always cut out and left Fancy-Maria’s
thumb-marks for that mysterious retainer of our childhood.

It was not long before Uncle Jenico questioned Mrs. Puddephatt about
the earthquake. She turned up her nose at the first mention of it, and
tittered the shrillest sarcasm.

“Lork, sir!” she said, “you’ve never abin took hin by that stuff!
_And_ you a Londoner!”

“Stuff, is it?” said Uncle Jenico, genially. “And why, now?”

She cocked her head and folded her arms across her chest, like a
tricksy saint in an old woodcut.

“I wouldn’t a’ believed it of you,” she said; “no, not if you’d gone
and took me by the ears and battered my ’ed on the table.”

“But, my good woman,” began my uncle, “Mr. Sant----”

“Bless ’im for a hinnercent suckling-dove o’cooing among the
sarpints!” she interrupted, with a tight little laugh.

We looked at her quite bewildered, and Uncle Jenico was evidently at a
loss for an answer.

“What ’e wants, that ’e believes,” said Mrs. Puddephatt, nodding her
head many times. “But _he_ ain’t a Londoner, and _hi ham_!”

The advantage, one would have thought, lay with the untainted
clergyman.

“_Herthquake_, indeed!” exclaimed Mrs. Puddephatt, with withering
contempt. “And grace took hout of it? No, sir; not more than what
Elijah looked to find in his’n, and was deceived in the Almighty. A
fine show convert we’ve got in our Mr. Rampick, haven’t we? Ho, yes!
Tee-hee! And I ’opes as he makes it pay, sinst the loss of his
liveli’ood by the _herthquake_.”

The amount of scorn she got each time into the word was simply
blasting.

“He lost----” began my uncle, surprised.

“Ah! what would he lose, now?” interrupted the lady, acridly humorous.
“That’s just _hit_, sir. Talked of the wicked smugglers to Master
Bowen here, didn’t he? Well, supposin’ he were hisself the most
howtdacious of the lot? I don’t say he was, you know. I wouldn’t so
commit myself. I merely states as a curious fact that this Rampick, as
was formerly as warm and dangerous a man as the best in the place, is,
sinst the _herthquake_, become a loafer, without any visible means of
substance. Ho, yes! A pretty convert, I _don’t_ think!”

“You believe him to be at heart a smuggler still?” said my uncle.
“Now, now, Mrs. Puddephatt!”

“Sir,” she answered, with dignity, “I thank you for the himplication;
but whatever my apperient greenness, I wasn’t born yesterday. We may
have our faults in London, but to be Suffolk paunches isn’t among
them. Once a smuggler, sir, is halways a smuggler.”

“Indeed?” said Uncle Jenico, much abashed.

“Yes, sir,” said Mrs. Puddephatt; “just as to be born a gipsy is to
laugh at the rates. A ’ottentot, sir, isn’t ashamed of his own
nekkedness, nor a smuggler of his smugness. Reform, hindeed!”

“Well, well,” said Uncle Jenico. “But what makes you suppose it
_wasn’t_ an earthquake?”

The landlady laughed sarcastic.

“In London, sir,” she said, “_herthquakes_--as is p’raps beknownst to
you--sends out sulfurious perfumes, and not the heffluvium of brandy.”

“Good heavens!” exclaimed my uncle. “But what----?”

“I reveal nothing, Mr. Paxton,” she interrupted him, “but what my nose
tells me. You may smell it yet, sir, begging your pardon, about the
Mitre.”

“But----”

“I’ve ’eard tell, sir, of ile wells, but never of brandy. I may be
wrong; and halso I may be wrong in doubting that gunpowder forms of
itself in the ’oller places of the herth,” and with these enigmatic
words she left us.

But it must be said that, for all her withering gentility, she made us
an excellent landlady, as we had full opportunity of proving. For--I
may as well out with it at once--we had come to Dunberry to stay.




 CHAPTER VII.
 MR. SANT.

I think, perhaps, Uncle Jenico foresaw it no more than I. Without
doubt, at first, he would have laughed to scorn the idea of sinking
all his eager interests in this little Suffolk fishing village, whose
communications with any town of even fifth-rate importance, such as
Yokestone, were by seven miles at least of villainous roads. Our
settlement was gradual; our departure postponed, in the beginning,
week by week, probably like that of the man who went to Venice for a
fortnight and stayed for thirty years. The initiatory step towards our
continued residence was certainly my uncle’s acceptance of Mr. Sant’s
offer to instruct me. That was, as the French say, _le premier pas qui
coûte_. Afterwards, the offer--being extended, with infinite
consideration for our means, to one for my general tuition by the
clergyman--grew to confirm our attachment to the place, until it came
to be tacitly understood that Dunberry was to see me through my
education.

But there was another reason. Uncle Jenico seemed never _quite_ to
recover from the stun inflicted upon him at his landing. His
affection, his geniality, his inventiveness were no whit impaired; yet
somehow the last, one could have thought, had relapsed from the
practical upon the theoretic. He was a trifle less restless; a trifle
more inert. He appeared to bask in a sort of luminous placidity, and
more and more his concern in his patents diminished. I do not mean by
this to imply that his schemes for our enrichment were all forgotten.
On the contrary, they concentrated to an intensity as pathetic as it
was single in its object. I know at this date that Uncle Jenico was a
lovable failure. I recognize, moreover, as I hardly recognized then,
that a wistful realization of this fact--minus its qualifying
adjective--was beginning to dawn upon him, and that he was inclining
to consider his “lame and impotent conclusions” a right judgment upon
him for his self-seeking. God bless him, I say! He thought to atone
for this, his egotism, dear charitable soul, by devoting all his
remaining energies to the task of making the fortune of the little
trust committed to his care. He wrought, in fact, that he might die
content, leaving me rich; and, in the furtherance of this object, his
schemes were not, as I say, forgotten, but transferred. They were
consolidated, in short, into one, which in the end was to become an
obsession. But of that I will treat in its place.

As soon as we were settled, I began at once to go to Mr. Sant’s for my
daily lesson, the scope of which imperceptibly enlarged itself from
Catechism to the Classics. The rectory stood inland beyond the
Playstow, in a rather lonely position under the drop of the hill. It
was a dark, mossy old building, shrouded in trees, and a by-road went
past its gates up to the woods beyond, in the depths of whose shadows
lay the Court Manor-house and its bed-ridden old squire.

Mr. Sant was a bachelor, a tough militant Churchman and Church
reformer. He taught me the uses of my fists as well as of the
Decalogue. No doubt it was this constitution of his which made such
way with the villagers, for Englishmen respect piety the better for
its being knocked into them. I took my share of his excellent
influence, and I trust it helped to make a man of me. You shall hear
by-and-by about the first practical use to which I put it.

He had the motto from Cicero framed and hung over the mantelpiece in
his study. I will quote it to you, because it speaks the man more
perfectly than I can do. _Quidquid agas, agere pro viribus_! Whatever
you do, to do with your whole strength--that was it. It was a maxim
very apt to one whose own strength, both of will and body, was of
tempered steel.

One among his many characteristic innovations was “The Feast of
Lanterns,” as he called it. A lecture, to combine instruction with
amusement, would be called for delivery in the church after dark.
Whosoever listed might, on a single condition, attend this. He would
find set up, spectrally discernible in the chancel, which, like the
rest of the building, would be unlighted, a screen of white linen, on
which had been roughly sketched in crayon, by the courageous lecturer
himself, a number of objects--to become, in their turn,
subjects--which might range, say, from a leg of mutton to the dome of
St. Paul’s. The condition of attendance was simply that each comer
should bring his or her own lantern, with the natural consequence that
the greater the company the brighter the illumination. Now, with the
first arrival began hymns, and were so continued until sufficient
lights were congregated to reveal the drawings on the screen, a right
identification of any one of which, by any member of the audience, at
the close of any verse, put a period to the singing and started a
disquisition on the object named. It must be said that the
identification was not always accurate, in which case the singing was
continued. For religious and artistic fervour are not necessarily
associated, and the splendid daring which Mr. Sant put into his work
sometimes obscured its intentions, as when his bellows, designed to
introduce a dissertation on pulmonics, were taken for a ham. But the
vigour and resourcefulness of the lecturer neither allowed an
_impasse_, nor, while he was always quite ready to join in the
laughter over his own artistic shortcomings, permitted criticism to
degenerate into fooling. He did not object to laughter; on the
contrary (I am afraid it will scandalize some people), he credited the
Almighty with an almighty sense of humour, only he insisted upon its
being tempered to the sacredness of the place in which it was evoked.
And, for the rest, he had a fund of bright and ready information at
his constant disposal.

Such is an example of his methods, and, if any pious reactionaries
object, I can only say that in the result it was educational; that it
won tavern-loafers to at least one wholesome evening in the week;
that, in short, it attained such popularity, that any dissipated
seceder attempting to sneak out of the church, and thereby obscure the
light by so much as the loss of a taper, would be roughly grabbed back
by his fellows, and forced, willy-nilly, to hear the lecture out.

Mr. Sant, to sum him up, was a zealot without being a bigot, and a
devoted servant to his Master without prejudice to human nature. He
was also a capable boxer. I came to love as much as to respect him.




 CHAPTER VIII.
 TREASURE-HUNTING.

For a fortnight succeeding our arrival the weather remained calm and
bright, so that Uncle Jenico and I were able to explore the locality
with great comfort and satisfaction. The coast, which we followed up
both north and south for miles, was extremely desolate and unvisited,
though bearing at intervals all along it the traces of former
settlements. It would seem to have been quite thickly populated once,
during a period which dated probably from the incursions, first, of
the Roman legions, and, after, of those salt sea-wolves who preferred
squatting round the fringes of their conquered island--with the open
door of the sea beside them, and its smell in their briny nostrils--to
penetrating into the traps of the close-shut valleys. Later,
Christianity had come to fret these windy, foam-whipped settlements
with pinnacles, and monastic walls, and stone fanes with jewelled
windows and airy bell-towers, so that church might peal to church all
down this long front line of the position it had won. But corruption
creeping in with prosperity, and lawlessness with the tides, God had
withdrawn His countenance from the temples that abused His service,
and had permitted the ocean to break in their defences and one by one
devour them. The priest who had evaded his vows had ages ago tucked up
his cassock and fled; the parson who succeeded him, and to the
reversion of his benefices, could not so hoodwink Heaven by taking his
tithes of smuggled tobacco and brandy, as to stay for one season the
hunger of the gluttonous waters. Year by year, century by century, the
storms had fed on these devoted sand-built coasts, and were still
feeding when we came to know them. Towns and once-flourishing colonies
had disappeared as utterly as if they had never existed. Not only
they, but the very soil on which they had been planted, paved the
floor of the ocean for miles out. There were legends of foundered
bells rung by unseen mermen at incredible distances from shore. There
were stories of treasure chests and sculptured marbles revealed to
storm-belated fishermen in the deep troughs of monstrous,
bottom-scouring waves. So far away as the Weary Sands themselves, it
was said, traces of the ancient Dunberry could be spelt out, in calm
seasons, by those who gazed intently enough and long enough into the
green, deep waters. It was a fable, probably, in a land of fables; yet
it served to emphasize the wreck of time, and will show upon what a
haunted border-land of ghosts we had come to make our home. The modern
village itself was old. How ancient, then, those grey ruins on the
cliff, which had survived to see the last of the glory, of which they
had once been a part, claimed by the deep, and their own hoary
traditions engulfed into the pettier traditions of a little clan!

These same ruins consisted of the great tower of the abbey, with a
mass of tumbled and complicated masonry at its foot; of the line of
the nave, picked out in an avenue of shattered arches which ran
seawards until stopped by the upward and outward sweep of the cliff;
and, finally, of a maze of huge fragments, mostly on the inland side,
which marked the sites of monastic buildings, lazar house, boundary
walls, and so forth. Elsewhere were traces of aisles, cloisters and
supernumerary offices uncountable, the whole buttressed with ivy. But
the most significant ruin of all, to my thinking, was one which stood
under the cliff, and for three-fourths of its depth apart from it.
This was no other than the abbey well, which generations of storms had
gnawed out of its deep bed in the ground without being able to crunch
and devour the sturdy relic itself. There it stood, a Titan of the
vanished race, sprouting stubborn from the littered sand below,
cemented, as it seemed, by the very drift which was yearly flung upon
it to destroy. Exposed and isolated, choked with parching rubbish as
it was, how thrilling was the thought of the monks who had once drunk
from it; of the waters it had drained from the hill; of the hill
itself with its one-time springs lying under the salt sea! It was the
very gaunt dead monument to the desolation of this land, and as such,
it seemed, would endure when all else was vanished. The storms which
took the rest stone by stone, could do no more than stone by stone
reveal this; the earthquake, which at a blow had rent the massive
tower and tumbled half the remaining walls, had left this unshaken. It
was a wonderful and impressive relic.

The first time I had entered among the ruins was by myself. I climbed
the slope early on the morning before breakfast, and stood in the
midst of them, thrilled and awestricken. A little grassy valley
divided me from the hill which concealed the village, of which not so
much as a roof was visible from where I stood. I seemed entirely cut
off and alone, a pigmy in the stupendous shadows of these “ruined
choirs.” The ground swept in a steepish curve to the cliff edge, and
again, inland, in one slightly shallower. These were the “Old and New
Testaments” of the Mitre; and in the “Valley of Knowledge” that lay
between, was built the abbey, its monastery, chapter-house, refectory
and other buildings taking and topping the western slope, which, on
its further side, went shelving down to the _Cemeterium Fratrum_, and
the confines of the old grounds.

I poked about among the shattered stones with a feeling between fear
and curiosity. I could tell by the fresh edges of the rents, and the
way in which little avalanches of mortar were constantly falling with
a whispering sound, that much of the devastation was recent. The tower
had been breached by the earthquake all down its seaward front,
opening a monstrous gap from which a cataract of stones had thundered,
and piled themselves in foam, as it were, at the foot. In one place,
near the cliff slope, a mighty plinth had been heaved on to its side,
and I saw the mould on the under surface of it yet grooved with the
tracks of slugs and beetles. It had sunk, with the mass of masonry
cemented to it, two-thirds of its breadth into the earth, and all
about the ground was strangely wryed, and distorted, and cracked, and
bubbled up into mounds, as if here the underheaval had made itself
peculiarly felt. I was gazing on it half-fascinated, when, happening
to raise my eyes, I started to see other regarding me fixedly from a
face which seemed to have sprouted from the earth.

I gave a little cry and uttered Mr. Rampick’s name. At the word, the
man himself rose to his height, from the position in which it appeared
he had been crouching, and ascended the last steps of a cliff pathway,
of the existence of which I had not known. He came up to me, rubbing
the back of his bony hand across his mouth.

“Come to see _fur_ yourself, sir?” he said, in his breathless, fawning
way.

“Yes,” I answered. “It was here, wasn’t it?”

He stamped with his great foot.

“Here, or hereabouts,” he said, “they lays under--_as_ supposed--each
with his brace o’ runlets.”

It was a fearful but thrilling thought.

“Why don’t they dig for them?” I whispered.

He gazed at me a moment, breathing hard. His eyes seemed blacker, the
rims round them more livid than I had yet noticed.

“What!” he cried, so hoarsely that his voice cracked. “Displace these
here sacred ruins _fur_ the likes of they! The Lord, sir--begging
_your_ pardon--set His own trap for them _in_ His own way; and it
been’t fur us to rise His dead. _May_ I make so bold to axe _if_ your
uncle knows you’re out?”

I felt the insolence of the question, but was too young to resent it.

“No!” I exclaimed, surprised.

“Ah!” he said. “I lay he won’t be best pleased, sir, _with_ humility.
This here hill, sir, _if_ all what’s said is Gospel true--is risky
ground to walk fur them as knows it not, nor its toppling stones, sir,
_nor_ its hidden abscesses. I’d go home, sir, _if_ I was you, with
favour, sir.”

I was offended, but a little frightened also. Blushing scarlet, I
turned away, without a word, and ran down the slope homewards.

I told Uncle Jenico of my adventure and encounter. To my further
surprise he commended Mr. Rampick’s warning.

“What should I do, if anything happened to you, Richard, when I was
not by?” he pleaded.

There was a note of emotion in his voice which touched me, and I
promised I would never seek the Mitre again out of his company. I
meant it when I said it; but, alas! the venturesomeness of youth led
me later on, I am ashamed to confess, to disregard my promise.

That was not till long after, however; and in the meanwhile the
weather remaining fine, as I have said, we had plenty of opportunity
for exploring the district. Not a day was allowed to pass, moreover,
without our investigating at least once in the twelve hours, a section
of the coast. Uncle Jenico would prod all the way, with his thick
stick, into the moraine of shingle which ran along the shore above the
high tide mark. At these times he would be very absent-minded,
answering my questions at random, and I knew that he had Morant and
his golden bushels in his thoughts. He never found anything, however,
and each evening would look up at the sky and predict stormy weather
with a sham deprecation of the inconvenience it would be to us.

But at last the weather really did break, and dark evening settled in,
with a high wind and rising sea. It blew a gale all night and
throughout the following day, and Uncle Jenico bemoaned our detention
in the house with a gratified face.

It was not until the second morning that it had cleared sufficiently
to enable us to go out, which we did immediately after breakfast. The
sun was blinking waterily, and the surf pounding yellow as we came
down to the beach; but the wind had fallen and the rain ceased, which
was enough for us.

Uncle Jenico, with his blue coat fastened tightly across his chest,
was looking extraordinarily swollen, I thought, until the reason was
explained to me. We had not gone far, when--first glancing all about
him with an air of twinkling mystery--he cautiously unbuttoned, and
revealed, neatly folded upon his chest, a little bushel sack such as
they use for potatoes.

“Hush!” he whispered, though not a soul was in sight; “the difficulty
will be to avoid observation when we bring it back full. I dare say
they’re honest here, Richard; but it’s a wrong business principle to
presume upon a sentiment. We must dine and sup out--I’ve brought some
sandwiches with me, and Mr. Sant will excuse you for once--and return
with our booty after dark.”

“Do you expect to fill _that_, Uncle?” I said, aghast for all my
infancy.

“Well,” he answered, laughing joyously but privately, “I hope not
_quite_, or it would puzzle us to carry it. But, in common wisdom we
must make the best we can of this rare opportunity.”

He hung the sack over his arm, and we started off. The storm had
certainly overturned the shingle, and scattered much of it abroad in a
tangle of seaweed and dead dog-fish. For hours we hunted on, groping
sedulously among the litter; and at last, late in the afternoon, we
found a penny. At least, _I_ was convinced it was one, being
intimately acquainted, like most boys, with the coin. But Uncle Jenico
would not hear of it. He was shaking with excitement as he examined
it. It was so rubbed by the action of the waves as to exhibit nothing
but a near-obliterated bust, which I was sure was that of our late
lamented King. My uncle, however, pointed out to me distinct traces,
though I could not see them, of a Latin inscription, and was jubilant
over the find. It did not make much impression on the sack, it is
true; but he was careful to point out to me that the value of a
nugget, such as it would take two men to carry, might all be contained
in a diamond which one could slip into one’s waistcoat pocket. It was
not so much quantity we needed, he said, as quality; and he was quite
satisfied, entirely so, with the result of our day’s exploration.

I was glad of this, at least, being dog-tired long before the
sun-setting, as it justified us in going home to supper. But my faith
in Morant, I am afraid, was already sadly shaken.




 CHAPTER IX.
 HARRY HARRIER.

It was that obnoxious penny, I believe, which was responsible for my
uncle’s continued pursuit of his new Lobby, until the hobby itself
became an obsession. If we had come home that first day empty-handed,
I have little doubt but that his baulked imagination would have found
itself some other and more practical outlet. As it was, the discovery
was held by him to justify every proverb which values itself upon
small beginnings. He was so little cast down by its meagreness, that
there was no limit to the golden dreams of which he made it the basis.
Most crazes, I fancy, are so built upon a pennyworth of fact.

He did not take out the sack again, but replaced it by a sponge-bag,
and the bag, later, by a stout leathern purse. Finally, he decided
that his trouser-pockets would serve all our needs, with the
additional advantage that our hands would be freer thereby, and the
risk of comment on our proceedings avoided. It may have been, for it
had certainly little to feed upon. During those early weeks, beyond
some scraps of old iron, we found nothing.

At first, it must be said, Uncle Jenico was not so entirely possessed
by his infatuation, but he found time to experiment in other
directions. For days he made our lodgings almost uninhabitable by
boiling and decomposing seaweed, until Mrs. Puddephatt complained that
her reputation was suffering by the incessant “hodour of ’ot putrid
fish” which emanated from her premises.

The patent, upon which he had expected to realize, turned out, after
all, a disappointment, and had never, it appeared, been regarded as
other than a joke by the man who, he had supposed, had been going to
buy it. He was a little disconsolate at first, but soon brightened up
when he thought of the potential riches lying under the shingle.

“_We’ll_ laugh at ’em all by-and-by, Richard,” he said. “What a joke
it’ll be when we’ve got our own capital to work upon, and these
ninnies find out the good things they’ve missed. But we won’t be
relentless, my boy, and disinherit the honest labourer because of the
shortsightedness of his employer. Work for the good of mankind,
remember, and you work for your own.”

Fine weather, at this time, made him thoughtful and restless. It was
only when the wind blew and the waves rose that he cheered up and
became excited like a seagull. Then he would laugh aloud, and button
up his coat and, telling me to follow him when my lesson was over,
limp off to the beach, and there untiringly weave his ropes of sand,
growing more and more absorbed in his task the faster it melted
beneath his hands. The coins were there, he was convinced; and it only
needed patience and luck (and he plumed himself upon his being rather
a spoilt child of the latter) to hit upon the deposits.

In the meanwhile I was going to my daily lesson, and getting absorbed
in my own way. Mr. Sant was a delectable tutor, inspiring and
invigorating, and by-and-by, unconsciously to me, my hour extended
itself to two, and sometimes more. So months passed, and then a year,
and I was nine.

One morning I was on my way to the rectory when I made a notable
acquaintance. I had to pass, on my setting out, the new school, which
was now in full activity, and battling its first successful steps in
the moral and intellectual reformation of infant Dunberry. The
children were generally trooping to the bell-call as I started, and I
have no doubt that the sense of superiority my consciousness of
private tuition gave me made itself apparent to some of them in my air
and demeanour.

A little beyond the Playstow the road to the rectory, and to the Court
on the hill, ran up obliquely through the village side, passing very
soon into privacy and loneliness. I had almost reached the rectory
palings when I saw a boy start out, at sight of me, from the shadow of
them and come swiftly on, as if to accost me while yet short of
shelter. He was about my own age or a little older, and had a round,
freckled face, with dark red hair curled as tight as astrakhan, and a
very fat little pug-nose. He was dressed in a brown velveteen jacket
and strong corduroy breeches and leathern gaiters, and he looked what,
in fact, he was, a miniature gamekeeper. I knew him well enough by
sight, having passed him for the last two or three weeks near the
school-house, and always, I verily believe, with an odd little tremor
of foreboding in my inside. He had proved, on inquiry, to be the only
child of Harrier, the squire’s gamekeeper, from whom, and that only on
his master’s initiative, a scowling consent to his son’s attending the
new school had been wrung by Mr. Sant. But the boy came, though near
as rebellious as his father, and had even, until this morning, arrived
punctual.

Now he advanced, swaggering and whistling, with his hands in his
breeches’ pockets, and a fine air of abstraction. I tried to dodge
him, but for all that, in spite of his pretended preoccupation, he
brought his shoulder smack against mine with a force that knocked me
sprawling, and, from the mere pain of it, drove the angry tears to my
eyes.

He wheeled round at once, as I gathered myself up, with a mock apology
so impudent that I longed to hit him, but was deterred by the front he
showed me. He stood square, balancing on his heels, as tight-knit a
young mischief as health and muscle could produce.

“Mighty!” he said, with a pretence of being scared. “What I done, Lor?
Blest if I ain’t knocked into the dirt the young gen’leman what treats
we for sich!”

Then my uneasy consciousness understood the nature of this
retaliation.

“You did it on purpose,” I said sullenly, trying not to whimper as I
dusted myself.

“_Me_!” he cried, in beautiful astonishment. “Why, howsomever can you
charge it to me, master, walking with your nose in the air?”

“It’s you that has your nose in the air,” I retaliated malevolently.

He flushed through his tan, and squared up to me.

“Say that agen!” he hissed, lifting his lip like a weasel.

“Once is enough,” I answered.

He danced about me, making play in the air with his fists.

“Is it!” he gasped, spasmodic. “O yus, o’ course!--I’ll larn you--you
dursen’t--foonk!--private poople--yah!--take your lickun, then!”

Something must have stirred in the garden at the moment, for he
suddenly flounced round and off, his mouth drawn down contemptuous,
and his chin stuck out. But I had not done with him by any means.

Mr. Sant received me that morning, I thought, oddly, and made no
allusion to my battered appearance. Neither did I, at which, perhaps,
he cleared a little.

The next morning Harry Harrier--for such was the young sportsman’s
name--met me as before. I gave him the path, though with anger in my
heart; and he openly jeered at me as he went by. The following day it
was the same, and for many days after. He would have risked, I
believe, ten times the punishment he deserved, and got, for being
late, rather than baulk himself of this recurrent treat. Presently he
altered his tactics in such a way as to eat his cake and have it, so
to speak. He did not pass me one day at the usual hour, and I confess
I breathed relief, for all my own inefficiency was gall to me. Mr.
Sant’s manner, as was usual now, was chilling almost to repulsion. I
was very unhappy. I had grown to brood on my grievance until it almost
choked me. Dunberry was becoming to me a miserable Siberia, and I
longed to be out of it, and hinted as much to my uncle. But, to my
dejection, he would not understand--could not, perhaps, as pride had
always prevented me from revealing my difficulty to him or to any of
my real friends. Moreover, the picking-up of some trumpery oddments on
the beach had by now established him unshakably in his craze, which
had been further confirmed by the action of certain unscrupulous
Dunberryites in palming off on him some faked-up coins, which I could
have sworn had never been minted out of my own generation.

The relief I enjoyed on this particular morning was, however,
delusive. The cunning little gamekeeper had got himself credited with
punctuality, only that he might descend upon me on his return journey
as I left the rectory. Nor was this the worst; for he came reinforced
by half a dozen schoolfellows, the dirty little parasites of his
corduroy lordship. I found them awaiting me at a quiet turn of the
road, and, before I knew it, was being hustled and insulted. I pushed
my way through, however, with a lump swelling in my throat, and was
trying to stifle the inclination to run, when a cry from Harrier
brought me to the roundabout with a scarlet face.

“Cowardy-cowardy-custard! Dursen’t peach to old Crazy, what broke his
leg a-kicking of yer!”

I rushed back and faced him.

“He broke his leg falling from a parryshoot. He isn’t crazy. I’m not
such a coward as you!” I blazed out in a breath. I was bristling and
tingling all over. The worm had turned at last.

Harry Harrier, whistling softly, took his hands from his pockets.

“Yus?” he said. “Anythink else?”

“You’re a liar!” I answered, boiling; “you’re a coward and liar!”

I was down and up again in a moment, and rushing blindly at him with a
cut lip and bloody mouth. He kept quite cool, and met me over and over
again with stunning blows. I didn’t care. I hardly felt them in my
rage; my long pent-up feelings had burst their bonds and I was quite
beside myself. In the midst I was caught in the leash of a sinewy hand
and torn away. For some moments I fought and screamed in my madness;
then suddenly desisted, gasping and trembling all over. Red seemed to
clear from my eyes, and I saw. The parasites were fled; Harry Harrier
stood opposite me, hanging his head and his twitching hands; and in
possession of us both was Mr. Sant.

A little silence followed; then suddenly the clergyman released me and
stepped aside.

“You’re a strong boy, Harrier,” he said, quietly. “You’ve had the
advantage of some training, too. This was hardly brave.”

“He called me a coward, sir,” muttered the boy.

“You’ve got to prove he was wrong, then.”

Harrier twitched his shoulders, and gave a defiant upward look.

“What!” said Mr. Sant. “Do you call it proving it to attack him six to
one?”

“I takes no count of that raff, sir,” said the boy. “’Twas him and me
fought.”

“But you used them to provoke him--not content with insulting him
yourself day by day as he came to his lesson. Yes; I know.”

I looked up amazed, and then down again. Certain tell-tale rustlings
that had reached my ears occasionally from the back of the rectory
palings occurred to me, so that I hung my head with shame.

“Well, your reverence,” said the boy, rather insolently, “pay me, and
get it over. I takes my capers with my mutton.”

“I shall pay you, sir,” said Mr. Sant, with, I could have thought, the
ghost of a grin, “as one gentleman pays another. You think, perhaps,
that Master Bowen here has told of your bullying him. He has not
breathed a word about it to anybody. Now that, I think, shows him to
be the better man of the two.”

The surprise, the gratification were so great, I could have cried out
to him like a silly girl.

The young gamekeeper grinned, incredulous and sarcastic.

“You think not?” said Mr. Sant. “Well, I’ll tell you what I’m going to
do--I’m going to back _my_ man to whop you by-and-by.”

The boy looked up at him, breathless now.

“You’ve all the advantage at present, you know,” went on the
clergyman. “You’ve got constitution, muscle, and a little of the
science--not so much as you think, but still a little. Now Master
Bowen isn’t your equal in any of these, as I suspect you knew, or you
wouldn’t have attacked him.”

“I would!” said the boy, furiously.

“Well,” said Mr. Sant, smiling, “I’ll take your word for it, because I
believe, after all, it’s an honest word. But the point is this. Muscle
and constitution are slow growers, and while my man was training to
improve his, you could be improving yours. Science, on the other hand,
can be taught, and I mean to teach him science until I consider he’s
your equal and better. When that comes about you shall fight again,
and I’ll umpire. Do you agree?”

“_Don’t_ I!” said the boy.

“Very well. Only I must have an understanding. You must leave him
unmolested in the mean time.”

“I’ll do it!” cried the lad. “I’ll do more. I’ll fight any one as
putts a finger on un.”

“The right spirit, that,” said Mr. Sant, with an approving face.
“We’ll agree to decide it, then--in a month’s time, say? I’d keep it
to myself if I were you. Good morning!”

The boy pulled his forelock, hesitated, mumbled with a blush and grin,
“You’re a gen’leman, sir,” and casting a saucy, triumphant glance at
me, retreated. Simultaneously, Mr. Sant took me by the shoulder, and,
hurrying me back to the rectory study, procured cold water and a
sponge, and shut himself in with me.

I felt half stupefied between the blows I had received and the
prospect of others yet to come, in the matter of which, it appeared, I
was to be allowed no choice. But there I was wrong. Mr. Sant, as he
sponged with great consideration my swollen places, took up the tale
at once.

“Now, Richard,” he said, “this is going to be, I think, the first
great test of your life. You can refuse it if you like, without any
loss of honour. You were bullied by a stronger boy, and you endured
your ill-treatment without telling tales. That was to be a gentleman.
You suffered insult--a little too long, perhaps--and only resented it
when directed against some one whom you very rightly love and respect.
Well, that was again to be a gentleman.”

I flushed crimson with pleasure, and he mopped hard away, talking all
the time.

“You heard the engagement I made for you? Well, I tell you, you can
decline quite honourably to stand by it. If you do, don’t think I
shall blame you. On the contrary, I will see that an effective end is
put to this tyranny. You have proved yourself, and that is enough.
Now, if you would like me to state the facts to your uncle, I will do
so at once.”

“Yes, please,” I stuttered through the sponge.

“Very well,” he answered, but dryly, I thought. “I could have trained
you, perhaps, to stand up to this young bruiser; but without doubt you
choose the Christian part. I will speak to Mr. Paxton.”

“Please, sir,” I said, “I don’t think he’d understand why I’ve _got_
to fight, unless you told him.”

His hand quite bumped my poor nose with the start he gave.

“You want it to come off, then, Richard? This is a little shocking,
I’m afraid; but perhaps I can’t altogether blame you. He’s a young
Samson, mind.”

“You said, sir, that science----” I began, but he plugged my mouth
hastily, and gave me no opportunity to speak more till he had cleaned
my wounds to his satisfaction. Then he put me up between his knees
and, while dabbing my face spasmodically with a towel, recited to me
the fable of the brass and the earthenware pots.

“The brass pot, you see, was the gentleman,” he said. “He illustrated
the Christian science of self-defence. He didn’t invite an encounter;
but, when it was forced upon him, his art got the better of the
coarser clay.”

He stretched out my arms and pinched their muscles.

“Well enough,” he said; “but that little Antaeus owes his to his
mother earth. He could lick you with one hand, Dicky--easy, he could.
Aren’t you afraid?”

“Yes, I am,” I said, honestly.

He nodded approvingly.

“Real courage, Dicky, doesn’t mean not being afraid. We must all be
afraid sometimes, when we are called upon to fight men or animals who
are much stronger and fiercer than we are. But when we know that wrong
or unjust things are being done to us by people who do these things
just _because_ they are stronger, then, if we fight them in spite of
our being afraid, that is the _real_ courage. On the other hand, it
isn’t brave to force people to fight who we know are much weaker than
we are. But when God has given us good health and strong arms, it is
noble to use them to help people who are weaker than we are, and to
punish the bullies who would take advantage of their weakness. That’s
what it is makes a true gentleman--not riches, nor titles, nor having
a tutor instead of a public teacher. The little boy who is just, and
very truthful, and who never does anything that he would be ashamed of
good people knowing, is on the way to be a gentleman, whether he lives
in a palace or a cottage. But if, added to these, he trains all his
faculties to oblige other people to repay him the truth and justice
and honour which he gives them, then he is a complete gentleman
already.”

He broke off to feel me all up and down.

“There’s good material here,” he said; “very good. We’ll use it to
counterbalance brute strength. That’s the fine moral of boxing, little
man--to see that the weak don’t go to the wall. Now, shall I confess a
secret? I love Harry Harrier pretty equal with you, sir. He’s got the
makings of a gentleman--my sort--in him; only no amount of persuasion
from me will educate him like a scientific licking from one less than
his own size. You don’t see that, perhaps; but, all the same, I look
to you to knock him into my fold for me. You are the Church’s
champion, Richard, and you shall gain me a new convert, or I’ll never
put faith in the gloves again. Now come along with me home.”

Uncle Jenico received us with surprise, and some consternation over my
appearance; nor did the recital of the affray much reassure him. Still
more was he confounded by the rector’s frank avowal of his object in
approaching him.

“He is a mere child, sir,” said my uncle.

“‘The childhood shows the man,’” quoted the other.

“To be sure. But, as he isn’t going to be a prize-fighter----”

“Every true Christian, sir, is a prize-fighter. He champions the right
in order to win heaven.”

“Well, where was the right here?”

“I regret to have to confess, sir, in an insulting expression about
you, which he very properly resented.”

“_Me_!” cried my uncle, amazed. Then suddenly he stumped across to
where I stood, and patted my shoulder rather tremulously. “Well,
well,” he said; “no doubt I’m a funny old fellow. So you stood up for
old Uncle Jenico, Dicky?”

His voice shook a little. I wriggled and flushed up crimson.

“It was a lie!” I cried, choking; “and I’m going to fight him and lick
him for it.”

Mr. Sant struck in.

“Broughton rules, sir, I pledge my word.”

“Eh?” said my uncle. “Who’s Broughton, and what does he rule?”

“I mean,” said Mr. Sant, “this little affair shall be conducted
strictly according to the regulations of Broughton, the famous boxer.”

“O!” exclaimed Uncle Jenico, palpably misled by the last word, and
proportionately relieved. “O, to be sure! ‘Mufflers,’ you call ’em, I
think?”

“Yes, yes!” said Mr. Sant, hastily. “A contest of science, sir; no
vulgar hammering;” and he repeated, with warm conviction, his little
dissertation on the true moral courage.

“If Richard, sir, don’t assert himself at the outset,” he ended with,
“I won’t answer for his life here remaining endurable.”

Perhaps this prospect of our moral banishment clinched the matter with
Uncle Jenico, whose attachment to the place was becoming quite morbid.
He stipulated only that the umpire should stop the fight the moment it
might appear I was getting the worst of it. More or less satisfied on
this point, he rubbed his hands, and rallied me on being the young
gamecock I was.

“I’ve given some thought, myself, to a new boxing-glove,” he
confessed; “one with a little gong inside to record the hits, you
know.”

Mr. Sant lost no time in taking me in hand. He fashioned me a little
pair of gloves out of some old ones of his own, and gave me half an
hour’s exercise with them every day after lessons. I am not going to
record the process. The result was the important thing.

During all this interval, with the single exception of the morning
following that of my encounter with Harry Harrier, I was left in peace
by the village boys. On that morning, however, I again found myself in
the midst of a little mob of them, who, emboldened by yesterday’s
sport, were come to waylay me after school hours. I was not yet so
proficient as to regard the situation with equanimity; when, behold!
my enemy resolved it for me. He appeared suddenly in the midst, his
knees and elbows in a lively state of agitation. One or two fell away,
protesting, their hands caressing their injured parts.

“Where be a coomen, ’ar-ree!” expostulated one boy, holding his palm
to his ear.

“Mighty!” exclaimed the young ruffler; “bain’t the road free to none
but yourself, Jarge? Here be a yoong gen’lman waiting to pass, now.”

They took it as aimed at me, and hedged in again. He clawed two by the
napes of their necks, and cracking their heads comfortably together,
flung both aside. His intentions were quite unmistakable, and his
strength a thing to regard. I was painfully conscious of it as I went
through the sullen lane the others, discomfited, made for me; but I
plucked up courage, as I passed, to express my gratitude.

“Thank you, Harry!” I said.

He was after me in a moment.

“It’s not a’going to make no differ’,” he whispered fiercely. “You
onderstand that?”

“It shan’t, anyhow, till after the fight,” I answered back in his ear,
and nodded and ran on.

At last the great day came. Mr. Sant, in order that my uncle might be
saved anxiety, and me the necessity of deception, had given me no
warning until the very moment was on me. He had manœuvred to hold me
a little longer than usual over my lessons; and suddenly returned to
me after a short absence from the room.

“Dick,” he said, “Harrier’s waiting for you in the garden.”

My heart gave a twist, and for a moment pulled the blood out of my
cheeks. Then I saw Mr. Sant looking at me, and was suddenly glowing
all over, as if after a cold douche.

“For the right, Dicky!” he said. “To win your spurs in Christendom!
Remember what I’ve taught you, and keep your head.”

It was all very well to say so, with that part of me like a bladder
full of hot air. But I followed him stoutly, trusting to the occasion
to inspire me with all the science which, for the moment, had clean
deserted me.

There was a little plat of lawn at the back, very snug and private
behind some trees; and here we found my adversary waiting, in charge
of Jacob, the gardener, a grizzled, comfortable old fellow in complete
Christian subjection to his master. Jacob was to second Harry, and Mr.
Sant me. The old fellow grinned and ducked as we appeared. There were
no other witnesses.

“Now,” said Mr. Sant, “when I say ‘Go!’ go; when I call ‘Time!’ stop.”

He fell back with the words, and we stood facing one another. I was
utterly bemused, at that instant, as to the processes by which I had
reached this situation. I could only grasp the one fact that I was put
up to batter, if I could (which seemed ridiculous), this confident,
taut little figure in the shirt and corduroy smalls and gaiters, who
held out, as if for my inspection, two bare brown arms, made all of
bone and whipcord; and that I must proceed to _try_ to do this,
without any present quarrel--but rather the reverse--to stimulate me.
It was so different to the circumstances of that other mad contest. I
could have laughed; I----

“Go!” said Mr. Sant.

Something cracked on my forehead, and I fell.

“Time!” cried Mr. Sant.

He pulled me to my feet.

“Get your wits, Dicky,” he said.

I had got them. The bladder seemed to have burst, and let out all the
hot air. I was quite cool, now, and pretty savage over this treatment.

“All right, sir,” I said; and I think he understood. He kept me
simmering, however, for the regulation three minutes.

I came up to time now, Broughton’s commendable pupil. The first round
had been, what we call in cricket, a trial ball. This that followed
was the game--muscle and a little science against science and a little
muscle. The brass pot, I am happy to say, prevailed, and sent the
earthenware spinning with a crack on its stubborn little nose. Jacob
mopped the vanquished, who could hardly be kept still to endure it. As
for me, I was cockahoop, crowing inside and out. My second laughed,
and let me go on, warning me only that the battle wasn’t won.

It was not, indeed. Our bloods were up, and the next round was a hot
test of our qualities. It was give and take, and take and give; until,
lunging under a loose defence, Harry hit me in the wind, and, while I
was gasping and staggering, levelled me to the ground with a blow on
my mouth. He was mad by now, and was rushing to pummel me, prostrate
as I was, when Jacob, with a howl, clutched him and bore him
struggling away.

“Law, ye little warmint!” cried the old man.

“No more of that, Harrier!” said Mr. Sant, from where he was kneeling,
nursing and reviving me; “or I take my man away. To hit one that’s
down, sir! That’s neither Christian nor professional.”

Then he whispered in my ear, “Three minutes, Dicky! Can you do it?
else I’m bound in honour to throw up the sponge.”

There was an agitation in his voice which he tried vainly to control.
I made a desperate effort, and rose as he began to count. I felt a
little sick and wild; but the lesson of over-confidence had gone home.
This time I played warily, tiring out my adversary. At last the moment
came. He struck out furiously, missed, and, as he recovered his guard,
I hit him with all my strength between the eyes. He staggered, gave a
little cry, and, quite blinded for the moment, began to grope
aimlessly with his fists.

“Noo, sir!” howled old Jacob, excited (I am afraid he was an
unsympathetic second); “noo, sir’s your time. Walk in and finish en!”

“I won’t,” I cried. “It isn’t fair. He can’t see.”

Trying to mark me by my voice, the boy let out a furious blow, and, as
his fist whizzed near me, I caught and clutched it in my own.

“Harry!” I said hurriedly, “let’s be friends!”

He tore his hand away, stood with his face quivering a moment, then
all of a sudden fell upon his knees, and, putting his arm across his
eyes, began to sob as if his heart were broken.

A silence and embarrassment fell upon us all. Then Mr. Sant walked
over to the boy and addressed some words to him. He turned a deaf ear,
repulsing him.

“You have fought like a man,” said the clergyman. “Come, take your
beating like one.”

The lad started and looked up. He could see again now, but
glimmeringly.

“Be the three minnuts past?” he said.

“I’m afraid so,” said the other.

The boy got to his feet, sniffing, and, without uttering a word, began
rolling down and buttoning his shirt sleeves.

“There’s a good hot dinner waiting for you inside,” said Mr. Sant.
“Come now, and do the man’s part by it and by us!”

Still he would not speak; but shook his head sullenly, and, fetching
his coat and cap, walked off.

“Humoursome, humoursome!” said old Jacob. “Let en go for a warmint.”

“No,” said Mr. Sant, rather wistfully. “He’s got the stuff in him.
We’ll have him on our side yet, Richard.”




 CHAPTER X.
 FRIENDS AT LAST.

When I had been washed, and my cuts and bruises salved, Mr. Sant
took me in to dinner, having already sent a message to my uncle that I
should be late. I was horribly stiff, with blubber lips, and knobs and
swellings everywhere; yet I would not for the world have missed one
pang which my jaws suffered in eating. For was not each twinge an
earnest to me that I was redeemed in my own eyes? The penance was as
gratifying as, I think, a Catholic’s must be after confession and
absolution given.

Before we were well finished Uncle Jenico came in, a little flurried
and apologetic over his intrusion. He had guessed pretty well the
reason of my detention, and his anxiety would not let him rest. His
hands trembled as he adjusted his spectacles to look at me, and
removed and wiped them, and put them on again for a second scrutiny.

“So you have conquered?” he said, “My poor boy; my poor, dear boy! Why
I had no idea boxing punished so. You should not have minded what they
said about me, Richard--a tough old rascal, and ready to take it all
in the day’s luck.”

“I don’t think Richard will agree with you, sir,” said Mr. Sant. “He
has won his spurs, and a convert, I hope. He has fought like a
gentleman and a Christian--by George, sir, it was poor Broughton and
the Norwich butcher over again--and you, I am sure, are as proud of
him as I am.”

“Eh?” said my uncle, half laughing and half crying; and then falling
suddenly grave. “If it’s to inculcate respect--the stitch in time, you
know--certainly. But I can’t help wondering, if this is the victor,
what is the state of the vanquished?”

“A state of grace, I hope,” said the clergyman, smiling. “But it’s a
very proper reflection, sir, and one which, I am sure, Richard will
take to heart.”

The reminder, nevertheless, was not out of place. It is well at the
feast of triumph to remember who pays the cost. I had been
self-glorifying a little overmuch; and here, of a sudden, was the
picture before me of my beaten enemy slinking away to hide his
battered face, at the very moment that I was crowing to everybody to
come and look at mine. Uncle Jenico was the true gentleman among us
all; and it was he who had been insulted.

I soon mended of my knocks, and the very next day was ruffling it to
my lessons with a new self-confidence that made nothing of possessing
the world. Dunberry was no longer a Siberia to me, but a conquered
country full of breezy possibilities. I should have welcomed the
prospect of an attack; but no one interfered with me. On the contrary,
awed and covert glances greeted me on my way past the school. I
dropped a book. An obsequious little courtier scurried to pick it up
for me. The news of the fight had got abroad, it was evident, and
Harry was no longer the cock of the walk. From this moment, with other
than the youth of Dunberry, I am afraid, my position was secured.

I hope I took no base advantage of the knowledge; yet I won’t say but
I might have if Mr. Sant had not been at my back to prevent it.

“Don’t forget you fought for a principle,” he would remind me. “It’s
no manner of Christian use to turn out a bully that you may usurp his
place.”

To prove to me that boxing was not the whole duty of a gentleman, and
to school me from presuming on any idea of indulgence because of my
victory, he rather put the screw on in my education, and for a time
was something of a martinet on questions of study and discipline. I
was hurt, and a little bit rebellious at first; but soon, having a
fair reason of my own, came to recognize his consistency.

During this time, and for some weeks after the fight, I saw next to
nothing of Harry Harrier. He kept out of my way, sulking and grieving,
though he attended school--with phenomenal punctuality, too, I
believe--regularly. His father, I heard from old Jacob, had been very
savage over his beating, and had dressed him well for it. I was
furious when I was told, and wanted Mr. Sant to complain to the
Squire; but, before he could do so, something happened which made any
complaint futile. A new steward, a Draco of a man, was appointed to
the Court, and one day, shortly after his arrival, lo and behold!
there was the gamekeeper handcuffed, and being carried off to Ipswich
gaol in a tax-cart by the officers of the law. It had been discovered
that for years he had been in collusion with a gang of poachers, and
in the end he had been watched, and caught _in flagranti delicto_. His
wife followed him to the county town, and devoted most of her savings,
poor woman, to his defence, but without avail. He was convicted and
transported, and I may as well say at once that that was the end of
him so far as his family was concerned, for he never turned up again.
While the trial was pending, Harry--it is not, under all the
circumstances, to be wondered at--gave the schoolhouse a wide berth;
but, after his father had been sentenced and their home broken up, to
the surprise of every one he put in an appearance there again, coming
dogged and punctual to a task which must have grown nothing less than
a perpetual ordeal to him. We did not, in truth, know the strength of
will of the desperate humbled little spirit--not any of us, that is to
say, but Mr. Sant. _He_ had gauged it, I am sure; and, having set his
heart on the boy’s reclamation, was watching with an anxious interest
the development of the odd little drama which he had helped to
engineer. He visited, of course, in virtue of his office, the
gamekeeper’s unhappy wife, who had been forced to betake herself to a
mean little tenement in the village, where she eked out the small
means remaining to her by washing for the rectory; and though, as yet,
the son would hardly notice or be civil to him, the mother did not
fail to acquaint him, with many fond tears, of her poor, wild little
fellow’s real love and resolution, and of the courage which was
determining him to train himself to take the place of the breadwinner
they had lost. All of which, I knew, made Mr. Sant the more eager to
have the lad recognize him for a friend; only pride stood in the way.
For, the truth is, poor Harry’s prestige was gone down to zero. Always
owing in some part to the local reputation of his father for a bully
and rowdy, the removal of that gentleman had finished what my victory
had begun. And now it was the case of the sick lion. The cowardly
little jackals who had formerly cringed to him, egged on by their more
cowardly elders taunted him with his disgrace. If he retaliated, they
overwhelmed him with numbers, or ran, squealing injured righteousness,
to appeal against him to their parents. His heart, swelling in his
plucky little breast, must often have had a business of it not to let
loose the tears; but he had an indomitable soul, and only time and
tact could find the way into it.

One day Mr. Sant and I, when walking together, came unnoticed upon the
rear of such a scene. The victim moved on in front, his head hanging a
little, though he would not force his pace an inch to accommodate his
tormentors, who followed behind, at a safe distance, hooting and
jeering at him.

“OO stole the pawtridges! When did ’ee last ’ear from the ’ulks! Why
don’t ’ee git your mawther to wash your dirty linen, ’ar-ree?” and
such-like insults they bawled.

I burned with indignation, and was running to retaliate on my enemy by
helping him as he had once helped me, when Mr. Sant seized me with a
determined hand, and bent to whisper in my ear--

“He will hate you, if you do. Leave him to fight his own battles.”

As he spoke the little wretches let fly a shower of small missiles,
and a stone struck the boy smartly on the neck. He leapt about at
once, and came rushing back with clenched fists and a blazing face.
The mob dispersed before his onset; but he cut off one panic-stricken
unit of it, and smote the lubberly coward with a thorny crash into the
hedge. His eyes looked red, his breast was heaving stormily; he would
have done some evil, I think, had not Mr. Sant run and put himself
between. Then he backed away, without a word; but his cheeks were
quite white now, and the wings of his nostrils going like a little
winded horse’s.

Consternation held the scattered enemy. They stood each where he had
been halted by the unexpected vision of their rector and me. The
assaulted one, sitting on spikes, stuffed his face into his elbow and
boo-hoo’d from stentorian lungs. Mr. Sant smiled with rather an ugly
look.

“Blubber away, Derrick,” he said. “You’ve been well served for a dirty
act.” Then he scowled abroad. “Are you English boys, to kick a downed
one! Not one of you, cowards, but if he passed this Harrier alone
would hug his fists in his pockets! It is no shame of his, but yours.
To bait him ten to one--O! what fine courageous fellows! But I’ll have
no more of it; d’ye hear? I’ll have no more of it!”

He stamped, in a little access of passion, and again turned sharply on
the fallen.

“Get up!” he said.

His tone was so peremptory that the boy rose, snuffling and wiping his
eyes with his cuff.

“It was you threw the stone,” said Mr. Sant. “I saw you. Very well,
then, it’s got to be one of two things: fight, or put your tail
between your legs and run. Quick now! Which is it to be?”

Derrick did not move, but raised his wail to a pitch so artificially
dismal that I had to laugh.

“Ah!” exclaimed Mr. Sant, still very grim for his part, and snapped
himself round. “He means fight, Harrier.”

If he did, the battle he contemplated was a Battle of the Spurs.
Clapping his hand to the thorns in him, and too frightened now to
remember to cry, he took to his heels and, turning a corner, was out
of sight in a moment. His answer to the resolution claimed for him was
so ludicrous that even his little abettors were set off chuckling.

I was looking across at Harry, and saw his face, too, relax and
lighten. Drawn by its expression, I walked up to him, with my hand
held out.

“Why won’t you, Harry?” I said.

He stared at me, but made no response.

“We knew you could look after yourself,” I went on, “and--and I wasn’t
going to interfere; at least--I mean--why won’t you let us stand up
for one another, Harry?” I ended, with a burst and a blush.

His face, too, was very red again, and I could see his lips were
trembling. Pride and gratitude were fighting within him for mastery;
but the former--still too hot with recent suffering to
surrender--remained the more stubborn of the two. While my hand was
yet held out, he turned his back on me, on us all, and walked off
erect.

I was bitterly hurt and chagrined. I felt that I had done the handsome
thing by a boor, and had been meetly rebuffed for my condescension. I
came back to Mr. Sant, swelling with indignation. He understood at a
glance.

“Give him time, Dick,” he said quietly; “give him time.”

“He shall have all the time he likes, sir,” I said, “before _I_ meddle
with him again.”

He did not answer, which was perhaps wise; and we continued our walk.
But thenceforth my heart was darkened to my unchivalrous foe, and when
we passed in the street I ignored him.

My studied indifference had not, however, the effect of making him
avoid me. On the contrary, he seemed rather to resume his earlier
practice, going out of his way to get in mine, and strutting by
whistling to show his unconsciousness of my neighbourhood. Yet all the
time, I knew, he was never more in need of a friend. Mr. Sant’s
protest, followed by a public rebuke in the school, had put an end to
the active bullying; but, to compensate themselves for this
deprivation, his companions had, by tacit agreement, sent poor Harry
to perpetual Coventry. He was disclaimed and excluded from all games
and conversation; isolated in the midst of the others’ merriment. What
this meant to the bright fallen little spirit only Lucifer himself,
perhaps, could say; and only Lucifer himself, perhaps, so endure with
unlowered crest while the iron ate into his soul. But, in justice to
myself, I could make no further overtures where my every advance was
wilfully misunderstood.

So the year went its course without any reconciliation between us; and
early in November fell a hard frost, with snow that seemed disposed to
stop. Awaking one morning, we saw the whole land locked in white under
a stiff leaden canopy, as if sea and sky had changed places. The
desolation of this remote coast winter-bound it is impossible to
describe. We seemed as cut off from the world as Esquimaux; and Uncle
Jenico, who had never conceived such a situation, stood aghast before
the prospect of a beach ankle-deep in snow. So we found it. The golden
sand was all replaced by dazzling silver, into which the surf, so
spotless in summer, thrust tongues of a bilious yellow. The sea, from
being sportive with weak stomachs, looked sick unto death itself; and
the wind in one’s teeth was like a file sharpening a saw. And all this
lifelessness cemented itself day by day, until it seemed that we could
never emerge again from the depths of winter into which we had fallen.

One afternoon I was loitering very dismal, and quite alone as I
thought, near the foot of Dunberry Gap, when a snowball took me full
on the back of the head and knocked my cap off. I was stooping to pick
it up, when another came splosh in my face, blinding, and half
suffocating me. I staggered to my feet, gasping, only to find myself
the butt of a couple of snow forts, between whose fires I had
unconsciously strayed. A row of little heads was sprung up on either
side, and I was being well pounded before I could collect my wits.

I must premise that at this time my empire was much fallen from its
former greatness. Never having confirmed it by a second achievement,
it had gradually lost the best of its credit, and, though I was still
respected by the unit, there was a psychologic point in the
association of units beyond which my reputation was coming to be held
cheap. I was learning, in fact, the universal truth that to rest on
one’s laurels is to resume them, in case of emergency, in a lamentably
squashed condition.

Now, with half the breath knocked out of my body and my arm protecting
my face, I tried to struggle out of the line of fire, only to find the
opposing forces basely combining to pelt me into helplessness. I made
some show of retaliating; but what was one against twenty? In the
midst, I looked up the Gap, my one way of retreat, and there, standing
halfway down, watching the fray, was Harry Harrier. I was smarting all
over, with rills of melted snow running down my neck, and still the
bombardment took me without mercy.

“Harry!” I cried. “Come and help me!”

The appeal did at a stroke what months of propitiation would have
missed. It put him right with himself once more. Like a young deer he
came leaping down, stooping and gathering ammunition as he approached.
The shower ceased on the instant; the craven enemy retreated pell-mell
to its double lines of shelter.

“Are you ready, sir?” said Harry, excitedly. “Git your wind and coom
on. We’ll drive en out of one o’ them places, and take cover there
ourselves.”

He was eagerly gathering and piling the snow as he spoke. In a minute
I was myself again, and burning for reprisals. Each of us well armed,
we charged upon the left-hand position, which seemed the more
accessible of the two, and carried it by storm against a faint show of
resistance. The garrison shot out and fled, encountering a volley from
the opposing force, while we peppered it in the rear. Our victory was
complete. As we sank back, breathed but glowing, I looked Harry
silently in the face and held out my hand for the last time. He took
it in his own, hanging his silly head; but the nip he gave it felt
like a winch’s.

“That’s all right, then,” said I. “It’s pax between us, ain’t it, you
old fool?”

He nodded. A long silence fell between us, and I began to whistle.
Suddenly he looked up shyly, but his eyes were quick with curiosity.

“I say,” he said, “what’s a parryshoot?”

The problem had evidently haunted him ever since I had told him that
my uncle had fallen from one.

“Well, what do you think?” says I.

“I dunno,” he answered carelessly. “Thought, maybe, ’twas one o’ them
things that shoots the malt refuge out of brewhouses.”

I sniggered with laughter. Fancy Uncle Jenico having been shot out of
a brewery!

“It’s an umbrella,” I said; “a thing that you jump into the air with
off a cliff, and come down without hurting yourself.”

“Mighty!” he cried, all excitement. “Is it reelly? Let’s make one--and
try it first on that Derrick,” he added, with commendable foresight.

My heart crowed at the idea. We discussed it for many minutes. In the
midst we heard a sound of distant jeering, and cautiously raised our
heads above the snow rampart. The whole body of our enemies was in
full retreat, and already nearing the top of the Gap. We were left
alone, sole inseparable masters of the field. It was the happiest omen
of what was to be.




 CHAPTER XI.
 MISCHIEF OF SORTS.

I came in all glowing to Mr. Sant, who greeted my good news with a
sigh of such relief that one could have thought a nightmare had rolled
off his chest.

“We have him,” he said gleefully. “You did very well, Dick; better
than I could have told you. And now--h’m!”

He fell into a fit of abstraction, the fruits of which did not appear
till the following day. Then, as I was leaving him after lessons, he
detained me a moment.

“Are you going to meet him?” he asked.

“Yes, if he will,” I answered.

“Then,” he said, “tell him that if he likes, and can obtain his
mother’s consent, he can come here with you for the future instead of
going to school.”

I could only breathe a great round “O!” of rapture.

“Yes,” said Mr. Sant, between relish and severity; “I cannot have so
promising a spirit warped by a sense of injustice. He has grit--I must
put my foot down--he--yes, tell him I will undertake his education, if
he is willing.”

I ran off, big with the delight of my mission; and, sure enough, met
Harry loitering near the Playstow by the way I should come, though he
would not let me suppose it was intentional. His freckled face flushed
as he spied me, and he grinned. There was already observable towards
him an attitude of increased respect on the part of some of his
schoolfellows who played near.

“Mighty!” he exclaimed, as I accosted him, “Who’d ever a-thought o’
meeting _you_ here!”

“Harry!” I whispered, too eager to get him away to feel any
embarrassment. “Come with me. I’ve got something to tell you.”

He came, looking both pleased and curious, but still with a certain
half-defiant swagger.

“Tell away,” he said; “I’m listening;” and he began to whistle.

“Mr. Sant,” I said, “wants you to chuck up the old school and come and
be his pupil with me, if you and your mother’s willing.”

He was fairly hipped. He stopped whistling, and rubbed his round nose
till it shone; then suddenly halted, in a quiet place, and stared at
me.

“Was it you axed him that?” he said.

“No, indeed.”

“Honour bright?”

“Of course. Why should I lie, you old stoopid?”

He tried to whistle again, and broke down. I didn’t know the depths of
the little soul, nor what it had endured.

“I dunno,” he said, hesitating, and with a curious husky sound in his
voice, “as--if it had been--I could a-brought myself to it. Now----”

He held out his hand quickly, and his eyes were shining.

“Ef you’ll let me be your friend, master, I’ll swear to be yours--till
death do me part--and so help me God!”

We shook hands firmly on it. “Only,” I said, “I’m Dick to you, you
know, just as you are Harry to me.”

“I’ll get used to it in time,” he answered; and so the compact was
made, and I am sure we had none of us reason to regret it.

He was a pretty untamed colt at first, with a little of the savage
lingering about him. But he was wonderfully sensitive and intelligent,
and soon got, under Mr. Sant’s vigorous and manful tuition, not only
to cultivate the graces of a scholar and the muscles of an athlete,
but to understand those right principles of a gentleman, which are to
temper natural combativeness with consideration for others. In this
respect, no doubt, his misfortunes had helped to shape him; but I am
not going to moralise over the result, which I dare say not one boy in
a thousand, coming from such a stock, would have effected. Harry
seemed to have inherited all the hardihood, with none of the
brutality, of his father; and, for the rest, we became inseparable
chums, who, so combined, were a match for any puling forces the
village could bring against us.

Mischief? Of course, we were always in it. One of our first escapades
was to make a parachute out of Uncle Jenico’s big sun umbrella, and,
having beguiled Derrick to the cliff edge by the Gap, tie his wrists
to the handle and push him over. We might have killed him; only we
didn’t. He fell into a snow-drift, with no more hurt than to rasp his
nose on the broken ice. But he smashed the umbrella, for which Mr.
Sant made us pay with extra lines.

We scoured the coast together, and were for ever, forgetting my
embargo, prowling about the Mitre, dislodging bits of the ruin and
imperilling our precious necks. On such occasions Rampick was always
our self-elected policeman, watching us and warning us away. Singly, I
think, we had an awe of this great sinister hulk of a creature,
though, together, we flouted him a good deal, resenting his
interference. But he was a pet of Mr. Sant’s, which made any open
affront from us difficult.

Harry, by virtue of his training, knew a heap about animals. I am
afraid we snared, in our time, more than one of the Squire’s rabbits,
fixing loops of copper wire in the runs under the hedgerows. The
“kill” went to Mrs. Harrier, whose poverty I used for salve to my
conscience, and whose rather weak fondness accepted the tribute with
some nervous deprecation. But it was not long before our mighty
reverence for Mr. Sant, both as a gentleman and a sportsman, cured us
of this temporary obliquity. A poacher gives no “law” to the game he
kills; a gentleman does; we gave no “law”; _ergo_ we were poachers,
_ergo_ we were not gentlemen. The revelation came upon us one day when
our tutor was illustrating some forgotten parable. “The man of
honour,” said he, “the God’s gentleman, don’t bet on a certainty, or
run his fox with a line tied to his tail, or kill a disarmed enemy, or
shoot his pheasant sitting. He sports for the glory of the battle, the
test between skill and skill.”

Harry and I looked at one another, and then down. After lessons he
addressed me rather resentfully--

“It’s all very well for you, as was brought up to it.”

“What do you mean?” I answered; “that you ain’t going to take the
hint?”

“If ever I snare another,” he said, growling, “may I be shot myself
and nailed to a barn door!”

“Well, then,” I said, “for all my being brought up to it, as you call
it, you’re the better gentleman, because I was still in two minds
about giving it up, it was such fun.”

“You’ll have to,” he said. He was grown more loyal even than I to Mr.
Sant.

“O! shall I?” I retorted. “Who’s going to make me?”

We were both bristling for a moment. Then Harry chuckled.

“Guess you won’t catch a-many without me to help you, anyhow,” he
said; which was so disgustingly true that I had to laugh in my turn.

Before this moral reformation occurred, however, we made some
thrilling captures. One day it was a hare, which Harry caught in the
most wonderful way with his hands alone. We were crossing an open
space between two copses, when he suddenly threw down his hat in the
snow, bidding me at the same time to take no notice, but walk on with
him as if unconcerned. There were tufts of gorse and withered bracken
projecting all over the clearing. We advanced briskly a short
distance, then quickly wheeled and came back, making a crooked line
for the hat. As we neared it, Harry, as swift as thought, swerved
aside to a patch of red dead fern and bramble, and, plunging down his
hand, brought up what looked like a mat of leaves and snow. But it was
a hare, which in that unerring swoop he had clutched behind the poll;
and before the startled creature could shriek or struggle, he had
seized its hind legs in his other hand, stretched its body, and
cracked its neck upon his knee. I could not have imagined such
quickness of eye and action. It could only be done, he told me, in
cold weather, when the frost gets in the animals’ brains and makes
them stupid. They are sort of fascinated by the hat thrown down,
watching for it to move; and when the steps return, finding
themselves, as it were, between two fires, they can think of nothing
but to crouch close. I have seen Harry bring out rats from a rick in
the same way. It was just a question of unwincing nerve; but I never
had the courage to try it myself. They say that if one has the
resolution to hold one’s hand unmoved to a snapping dog, the beast’s
teeth will close on it without inflicting an injury. It may be true;
only the first time I put it to the test will be in boxing-gloves.

A more legitimate poaching of ours--but that was later, in the
spring--was on the preserves of a beautiful unfamiliar sea-bird, which
came nesting upon our coasts, driven there by storms probably. We were
on the Mitre one day, when we saw it fly out from the top of the
Abbot’s well, and swoop down upon the shore, where, no one being by,
it gorged itself on a heap of dead dog-fish. We immediately fell flat
on the cliff edge to watch for its return. The broken top of the well
was perhaps thirty feet below us, but the ground sloping obtusely from
where we lay, prevented us from seeing far into it. Presently the bird
came back and settled on the rim, so that we could mark it plainly. It
was gull-shaped, but unlike any of the species we
knew--white-waistcoated, yellow-beaked, and a tender ash colour on the
wings--a St. Kilda’s petrel, in fact, we came to learn, which had
likely been driven down from the Orkneys. It hopped into the well and
disappeared.

“Mighty!” said Harry. “It’s got its nest there, I do believe.”

By-and-by the mother bird showed herself, and the fact was virtually
settled. Then there was nothing for it but to climb the well and see.
Harry accomplished it somehow, when the village was at dinner and the
beach deserted. He got up, claw and toe (the well inclined a little
outwards from the land), and availing himself of every hole and
projection reached the top and sprawled over the edge, so that I could
see nothing but his legs waving in the air. The birds shot out, and
wheeled screaming about him. I heard him utter a cry; and then he
emerged and descended with a very blank face, coming down the last
yard or two with a run. His hands were barked and bloody, and the
right one smeared with an orange slime.

“There was one egg,” he said, “white and a whopper; but it just broke
to pieces when I clawed it.”

It was a pity we had not left it alone, for, as it turned out, the
bird was a rarity on our coasts, and, laying as it does only a single
egg, would not likely outstay so cruel a welcome. Which, indeed,
proved to be the case; and the only reward we got for our venture was
the knowledge that the well was choked with sand to near its top, a
discovery which dissipated for ever some long-cherished dreams of ours
as to the ineffable secrets it would reveal if once surmounted and
looked down into.

During all this time, I am afraid, I neglected Uncle Jenico a good
deal. He was so sweet and kind, he made no complaint, but only
rejoiced that I had found a companion more suited than he to my years.

“He’s a fine boy, Richard,” he would say; “a fine promising boy. And
if he reconciles you to staying here----”

“Do _you_ want to leave Dunberry, uncle?”

Then he would look at me wistfully.

“I, my dear? No, no; I am content, if you are. We are doing
wonderfully well. It’s a place of really extraordinary possibilities.
Do you know, Richard, I shouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be
our promised land, after all. The extent of coast to be explored makes
it a little tiring sometimes, but that’s a trifle. We can’t expect to
find all Tom Tiddler’s ground in an acre or so, can we?”

That should have been a jog to my conscience; but youth, I fear, is
selfish. A dull day’s hunt with Uncle Jenico through the shingle had
come to show very blank by contrast with the exciting adventures
contrived by Harry and me. So I kept my deaf side to the calls of
duty, and Uncle Jenico pursued his hobby alone.

During the continuance of the frost he had, however, to divert his
imagination into other channels, as the beach was impracticable; and
really, I think, the distraction did him no harm. Being confined much
to the house, he turned his thoughts to an old invention of his for
cleaning chimneys, with which he had competed ages ago for a prize
offered by a syndicate of anti-climbing-boy philanthropists. I am
sure, if simplicity and economy counted for anything, Uncle Jenico
ought easily to have come out first; but it was the usual story of
showiness being preferred to plain utility. The contrivance was
homeliness itself; just a huge compressible ball of wool, attached
through its centre to the middle of a cord of indefinite length; and
the only objection to it--which was, after all, an extremely idle
one--was that it required two operators, one to stand on the roof, and
the other on the hearth below. But, once they were in a position, the
task was a pastime rather than a labour. The top-sawyer, so to speak,
lowered one end of the cord, weighted, down the flue; his companion
seized it, and between them they worked the ball up and down till
every particle of soot was dislodged. Could anything be more obvious?
And yet the committee rejected it! Well, all I can say is that Harry
and I proved its efficacy beyond a doubt; though, of course, Mrs.
Puddephatt, while she benefited by it, was sarcastic about an
invention which had failed to recommend itself to the particularity of
London.

“It _may_ be all right,” she would say; “and so may the himage of a
piece of fat pork pulled up and down one’s throat with a string,
which, I am told, is hemployed at sea to encourage ’eaving. At the
same time, sir, I may venture to remark, that there are remedies known
to Londoners to be worse than their diseases.”

Uncle Jenico, in the first instance, secretly inveigled Fancy-Maria
into helping him in his experiment. The parlour fire was extinguished,
and the worthy girl despatched to the roof through a trap-door, where
she performed her share of the task with such inflexible tenacity that
when my uncle tugged at his end of the cord, which she had dutifully
lowered, he pulled her head into the chimney, and would have ended by
drawing her bodily down, I believe, if her gasps and chokings reaching
him below had not warned him in time. Then he slackened his hold, and
commended her excess of loyalty and instructed her further; but in the
end she descended from the roof an absolute negress, and for days
afterwards shed soot from her boots and sneezed it from her hair in
little clouds that flavoured everything.

Subsequently, Harry and I were taken into his confidence and made his
operators, much to our gratification. Climbing-boys, indeed! It was
become a luxury to be a sweep, thanks to Uncle Jenico; and the world
called him a crank! Every one but himself might profit by his
inventions. Certainly Harry and I did. We polished every flue in Mrs.
Puddephatt’s house as clean as a whistle, and, until we tired of the
sport, whatever other chimneys in the village the housewives would lay
open to us. And it was only when we took to angling with the great
sooty ball over parapets for unsuspecting faces pausing below, that
Mr. Sant, giving ear to furious complaints, stepped in with his
authority, and put an end to the game.

So, on us, black and joyous and inseparable, I will let down the
act-drop of our little stage, to raise it on a later development of
the drama I set out to record.

 END OF PART I.




 PART II.

 CHAPTER I.
 THE BADGER.

It is with an odd sense of nervousness, and almost of oppression,
that I open upon the second act of my story. In the first, the
schoolboy, with his “shining morning face” and serene
irresponsibility, had it all his own way. Now--an interval of five
years having been supposed, as the play-bills say, to elapse--the
“shining morning face” shows a little sobered, a little greyer in the
dawn of manhood, like a young moon in the dawn of day. We have not
eschewed adventure, Harry and I; only the spirit of it in us is
beginning to be tempered with a sense of moral obligations. We are
indulgent to the flippancies of youth but in so far as they do not
venture to presume upon our patronage. Only when alone together do we
relax our vigilance in the matter of what is due to ourselves and our
extremely incipient moustaches.

Harry, in short, takes up the tale at sixteen, and I at a few months
younger. The interval had served to shape us, I do believe, after a
manly enough model. We might have been “oppidans”--to put an extreme
case--at Eton, and had our characters stiffened, like cream, by
whipping, and have coursed hares, and drunk small-beer at the
Christopher, and enjoyed all the other social and educational
advantages which, according to the evidence put before the late
Commission, [_Reported in 1864._] are peculiar to this seminary of the
gods, and not found in its Provost such a leader, counsellor and noble
confidant as little remote Dunberry was able to furnish us with in the
person of Mr. Sant. And this I say in no Pharisaic spirit of
self-satisfaction, but simply as a testimony to the qualities of this
prince among tutors, whom we loved and respected with the best reason
in the world.

Not much had figured to us, perhaps, during these five years except
the shapes of romance with which strong young souls can always people
a desert. We had put on mind and muscle. We could run, swim, fight,
eat anything that was set before us, and want more. Our excursions
were further afield; our walks more extended along the road to
Parnassus. We were very fine fellows, no doubt, in our own opinions;
and our voices were beginning to growl handsomely.

Harry had, for his part, developed into a shapely, fearless young
figure, with a good manner of speech and a great attachment to my
uncle. He had, moreover, developed a decided bent towards mechanics,
and went now on two days in the week to a technical school in
Yokestone, making the journey to and from on foot, and sleeping each
night with a cousin of his mother’s, who owned a small foundry there,
and who, since the boy’s proof of himself, had taken a practical
interest in his welfare. The periodic partings were without savour to
us, had it not been that to them the periodic reunions supplied the
salt. But no doubt they were helpful in giving us opportunity for a
more individually independent growth; and certainly during them “Coke
upon Littleton” (for Mr. Sant was training me with an eye to the Law)
secured my less divided attention.

As to Dunberry itself and its familiar figures, there was little
change to be noted. On the one side there was the ripening of the
young fruit towards maturity; on the other, a little whiter growth of
lichen on the decaying branches. Uncle Jenico must count among the
latter; though surely no tree past fruiting ever retained more
unimpaired the sweetness of its sap. He had collected during this
period enough antiquities to furnish out an old rag, bone, and iron
shop; and, indeed, I am afraid the bulk of his stock was not suited to
a much more exclusive repository. There was little which, provided it
was gathered from the beach and had once been a part of something
living or manufactured, he would not give a place in it. His
veneration for rust was the most artless thing. An object had only to
be corroded with it, to figure in his eyes for an assured antique. In
this way he amassed great quantities of bolts, links, sheet-iron
fragments, and other rarities, to most of which he assigned a use and
period, which, I am convinced, had never been theirs. There was, for
instance, a breastplate of the Renaissance era, which I do believe had
never been anything but a dish-cover of our own. There was an iron
skull-cap, or morion, of Edward the First’s time, which I will swear
was nothing but a saucepan without its handle; the handle itself,
indeed, being found near the same spot a few days later, and
catalogued for the head of a boar spear. Part of a whale’s under jaw,
much decayed, figured for the prow of a Viking ship; and divers teeth,
mostly, I think, horses’, for the grinders of prehistoric monsters.
There were some bronze coins certainly--none too many--whose value was
conjectural, and whose legends were largely undecipherable. Uncle
Jenico would never submit these, the cream of his collection, to
expert criticism. He hugged them as a miser hugs his gold, but with a
diviner intent. I alone was permitted to gloat with him over the
hoard.

“There’s your jointure, Dicky,” he would say. “Look at it accumulating
for you, without an effort of its own, at compound interest. There’s
no trustee like a collector who knows his business. You may turn over
current money to increase it; but the more you leave that alone the
better you’ll realize on it some day. The antiquity market is always a
rising one. Every year adds its interest to it. We won’t touch the
principal yet--not till you come of age. Then we’ll put it up, my
boy--then we’ll put it up; and you shall eat your dinners, and follow
in your dear father’s footsteps, and have chambers in Fountain Court
itself.”

Did he have a real faith in this picture? He had a faith in having a
faith in it, anyhow. Yet sometimes I could not help thinking he shrunk
from that same test of criticism; from the conceivable discovery that
he had wasted all these years of his life on a fond chimera. I am glad
that in the end the test was never forced; that circumstances came to
lay for ever the necessity of it, and in a way than which none other
could have delighted him better. For I believe a realization of the
truth would have broken his kind, unselfish heart.

He had not during this time altogether eschewed his former habits and
enthusiasms. Periodic inventions of purely local inspiration marked
it. He designed a respirator to be lined with porous shavings of
driftwood, so that the asthmatic merchant might inhale ozone in the
thickest fogs of Lombard Street. He planned a boat to be steered from
the front by means of a rudder which was merely a jointed elongation
of the prow, or false beak hinging to the neck, like a fish’s head and
gills: a splendid conception, seeing how the steersman would be also
the look-out, and the crew aft suffer no more responsibility than
passengers in a train.

Other happy notions of his were “the luminous angler,” a hook rubbed
with phosphorus for night fishing; a scheme for pickling sandhoppers;
and an uncapsizable boat, the buoyant principle whereof was an armour
of light iron pipings, each tube of which was to be divided into a
number of little water-tight compartments.

None of these was ever, to my knowledge, put to the actual test, so
pledged is our conservatism to run in a circle. The old stern-steerer
was good enough for our fathers, and were we to be more exacting than
they, who stand to us for all holy prescription? No inspired inventor
ever yet profited by his inspiration; nor did his descendants find
that inspiration marketable until it was mellowed to a tradition. For
which reason Uncle Jenico had to be content, like the magnanimous soul
he was, with planting for the generations to come.

He never dreamt now, more than I, of leaving the village in which
circumstance had laid us to take root. Aliens at first, we were become
of the soil, and bound to it by many ties of interest and affection.
As to the place itself, Mr. Sant’s hopes of seasonable visitors, of
whom we had been welcomed for the pioneers, were doomed to
non-fulfilment. Whether it was its isolation, its shocking
primitiveness in those days of antimacassars and the social
proprieties, or perhaps its rather forbidding reputation for
inhospitality, which kept strangers away, I do not know; but in any
case they came rarely, and then only as birds of passage. I think it,
at least, quite likely that the third consideration was most
operative. Dunberry, before the days of Mr. Sant, had borne, it must
be confessed, a sinister notoriety--a name for determined and
organized smuggling. Visitors then were neither desired nor welcomed,
the whole native population, or at least with few exceptions, forming
a lawless confederacy for the disposal of contraband. But after the
earthquake (or what was generally cited for such, and by many, I am
persuaded, who knew better, though it made no difference in the
moral), things should have been otherwise, when the new rector, using
its opportunity to reclaim his wayward flock to godliness, sought to
compensate by legitimate trade for the lost wages of sin. But it is
easier to cure the itch than to convince others of your patient’s
recovered cleanness. And so Dunberry reformed had still to suffer the
penalty of Dunberry unregenerate. Visitors came not to it, and it was
in the position of having dropped the carnal substance for the moral
shadow. And what made it worse was that the Excise, unpersuaded of its
reclamation, chose this very penitential time to dump down a
coastguard station on the cliffs a mile south, and so knocked on the
head for ever any possibility of its relapse into the old prosperous
condition.

The blow fell in the second year of our stay; and from it dated, I
think, the final demoralisation of the ancient order, of which Rampick
might be considered the prominent expression. This man deteriorated
thenceforth year by year, recognizing, I suppose, the practical
uselessness of his hypocrisy. His gradual self-revelation was a real
grief to Mr. Sant, whose worldly common sense was not always proof
against his missionary zeal. He had the pain to see this cherished
convert of his sink into an idle, drunken loafer, with a heart
poisoned with a shapeless black resentment against all whom he chose
to consider were in any way responsible for his ruin; amongst whom he
included, for some unaccountable reason, my uncle and me, and in only
less degree, the dear clergyman himself. But bankruptcy knows no
reason.

At the date at which I reopen my story, Joel Rampick was a shambling,
degraded, evil-looking man, half crazed between drink and his sense of
injury; full of suppressed snarlings and mutterings; still, as of old,
the watchful spirit of the ruins on the hill; still, as of old,
policing Harry and me, though secretly rabid now in his impotency to
control or terrify us; still, as of old, nevertheless, a hypocrite in
form, while he carried his heart on his tattered sleeve. And so, as a
main factor to be in the development of the strange drama, to the dark
accomplishment of which in this year of our opening manhood I have
been reluctantly leading, I reintroduce, and for the moment leave him.

 * * * * * *

It was a wild, wet November, a season full of tempest and the promise
of it, when guns would boom beyond the fatal sandbanks, and sudden
rockets tear the sky; when the wives would gather a rich harvest of
driftwood, coming down in the morning to a prospect of frenzied
waters, and black spots of wreckage swooping in them like swallows
blown about a storm. Near the end of the month the winds quieted, and
one afternoon fell dead calm, so that Harry and I were moved to stroll
out after dark to stretch our long unexercised limbs. It was so
peaceful after the turmoil, that to enlarge our sense of
convalescence, we took the way of the lonely valley, and climbed the
Abbot’s Mitre. The moon was in its last quarter, and stooping towards
its rest in the earth like a bent and wearied old soul; an idle drift
or two of cloud pursued it, trying the effect of a star here and there
on its gauze, as it loitered; and not a sound broke the stillness but
the whispering chuckle of the small surf on the shingle below.

We sat down on a block of stone in the midst of the huge and silent
congress of ruin. Here were ghostly corridors, which the sea still
mocked with an echo of monkish footsteps; pitch-black corners, where
the faint rustle of mortar falling might have been the muttering
whisper of the confessional; drifts of broken arches,
colossal-shouldered, heaven-supporting in their time, now bowed under
the weight of their hanging-gardens of ivy; shattered windows that
were without a purpose, like open gates set up in a desert. Dim and
tragic in the moonlight, they stood around us, a spectral deputation
of giants, making its unearthly appeal for some human redress or
sympathy. They seemed to hem us in, to throng closer and closer. An
odd nightmare mood possessed me. I shivered, and stamped on the
ground.

“Harry,” I said, with a nervous giggle; “supposing these smuggler
chaps down here ever _walk_!”

With my very words he started, and nipped my arm like a vice.

“Look!” he whispered thickly, and pointed.

Out from the blackness of the overturned plinth hard by slipped a grey
shadow, a thing that might have been a dog, but was not.

“O!” I shuddered, falling against my friend. “Let’s get away--Harry!
at the back here.”

The sound of my voice, little though it was, appeared to startle the
creature. It turned, paused as if regarding us, seemed to be coming
our way, and vanished again into the glooms from which it had emerged.
I had had a dreadful moment; and so it was with a sense of outrage
that I heard Harry laugh out as he sprang to his feet.

“O!” he cried, skipping and sniggering before me; “to see it come so
pat, and hear his tone change. Wasn’t it beautiful? And him not to
know a bogey from a badger! O, Master Dicky, really!”

“A badger!” I echoed awfully. Then recovered myself and added with a
rather agitated laugh; “Well, don’t pretend you weren’t startled
yourself at first.”

“I?” he exclaimed. “Why, you old donkey, I brought you up here on
purpose, on the chance of seeing it.”

“Bosh!” I snapped.

“Very well,” he said. “I’ll show you its tracks in the mud to-morrow,
if you don’t believe me. I guessed it was somewhere in the hill, and
now I know.”

“Did you?” I said resentfully. “Then I’d rather you played the fool
with me by day.”

“Played!” said he; “what have I played? ’Twas you began with your
ghosts and things. Besides, any fool knows that badgers only _walk_ at
night.”

He sniggered again; then, seeing that I was hurt, took my arm in his,
and patted me down.

“It’s really rather a start, though,” said he--“I mean the thing being
here at all; because they live in woods, you know. But I’ll tell you
what I make of it; that it was driven down by those burnings” (it had
been a very hot summer, with two fires, destroying some acres, up in
the Court woods) “to get near the water. Anyhow, I spotted its tracks
in the soft ground here some days ago, and made up my mind to run it
to earth. We’ll come up to-morrow and have a look by daylight.”

We did as he proposed, and found, amongst the bramble and other
vegetable and miscellaneous litter which choked the neighbourhood of
the great tumbled mass of masonry, indubitable signs of a passage
leading to the creature’s earth.

“Don’t say anything about it,” said Harry, desisting, excited, from
his examination; “and we’ll just have a try to dig it out some day.
Wonder if it could tell us anything about the earthquake?”

He was staring at me, and I at him.

“Harry,” I whispered, thrilling all through; “supposing there’s a way
down after all!”

“Don’t _you_--believe it, sir,” said Rampick’s breathless voice.

The man had, after his customary fashion, come softly upon us from
some hidden coign of espial. His hands were slouched in his pockets,
and he mumbled a little black clay pipe, shaped like a death’s head,
between his teeth.

“I wouldn’t think--_if_ I were you,” he went on, “_fur_ to pry into
the Lord’s secrets. Let the grave keep its own--_per_vided I may be so
bold.”

“I wish _you_ wouldn’t pry into our secrets, Mr. Rampick,” said Harry,
loftily. “It’s got to be rather a nuisance this, you know.”

The ex-smuggler snatched his pipe from his lips, and seemed for an
instant as if he were about to dash it to the ground in a fury. But he
recovered himself, and pretended only to be shaking out the ashes
before he returned the cutty to his mouth.

“Secrets?” said he. “Why, you makes me laugh to talk of having secrets
here!”

He broke off, restless in a shaking way to get his pipe to draw; then
turned suddenly upon me.

“_You’re_ a gen’leman, sir,” he said, “and should know better--nor to
meddle _in_ things what don’t concarn you. The Lord has putt His seal
on this here hill: _you_ let it alone--_if_ I may make free to be His
mouthpiece, like Ezekiel what was told to warn the evil doers that
they come not to grief--_and_ die.”

I laughed.

“O, you flatter yourself, Mr. Rampick!” I said. “You aren’t a bit like
Ezekiel.”

He stood regarding me, half perplexed, half malignant, for a minute;
then settled himself down on a stone and smoked away, silent, his eyes
staring and full of a vicious resolution.

“Come on, Dick,” said Harry, seeing it obvious that the man meant to
outstay us, and took my arm and walked me off.

“But we’ll have the badger, nevertheless,” he said, when we were out
of hearing, “and in spite of that sot. Can’t make him out, can you?
Should have thought he’d have welcomed the chance of recovering some
of his old brandy tubs.”




 CHAPTER II.
 THE GREAT STORM.

“Which it’s well known that ’ope deferred maketh a cat sick,” said
Mrs. Puddephatt, with unintentional irreverence, referring to my
report to my uncle of our late meeting with Mr. Rampick. She was by
this time quite in the family confidence. “Bless you, Master Richard,”
said she, “it’s not the Lord’s secret the man’s so keerful of; it’s
’is hown, living all these years on the ’opes of salvidge from the
’ill, and jealous of hothers steppin’ hin and anticepting of ’im.”

Uncle Jenico laughed.

“You’re still as sceptical as ever about the earthquake, Mrs.
Puddephatt,” said he. “Now, it occurs to me, if the hill was, as you
suppose, a rendezvous for smugglers, who by some folly entombed
themselves therein, why wasn’t the whole village plunged immediately
into mourning for the loss at a blow of so many fathers and brothers?”

Mrs. Puddephatt, standing with folded arms and a bleak, patient smile,
awaited his good pleasure to answer.

“Hev you adone, sir?” she now demanded. “Don’t let me hinterrupt you
before you’ve got it hall hout.”

“Thank you,” said Uncle Jenico, a little abashed. “I think there’s
nothing more.”

“Ho!” said the lady, drawing in a sharp breath. “Then let me hexpress
at once, sir, before more’s said, my hobligation for your supposing as
I’m supposing.”

“I admit it was unpardonable,” answered my uncle, with a beaming but
rather frightened smile. “I should have understood, of course, that
you have warrant for your smugglers.”

“Not _my_ smugglers, sir,” she said, “begging _your_ pardon. Faults
there may be in my pronounciation; but ’awking and spitting in his
langwidge was never yet, so far as I know, laid to the charge of a
Londoner.”

“My dear soul!” began Uncle Jenico. But she interrupted him--

“No, sir; nor to hend the names of his towns with a hoath, which it is
not permitted to a lady’s lips to pollute themselves with huttering.”

“O, really, Mrs. Puddephatt, I don’t understand!” said my uncle in
despair.

“I dare say not, sir,” went on the inexorable female. “But you must
excuse me if I draw the line at Hamster and Rotter.”

“O!” said Uncle Jenico, gathering light through the gloom. “You mean
to imply that these smugglers were Dutchmen?”

She condescended to smile a little, and, pursing her lips, nodded at
him with a very stiff neck.

“Bein’, you see, a Londoner yourself, sir, to which a nod is as good
as a wink. It was Dutchmen what landed and stowed the stuff, and
Dunberry what distributed of it. They howned to no connection with one
another, and worked apart, which was their safety. Dunberry, bless
you, would be dreaming in their beds that hinnercent, while ’Olland
would be stuffing of the ’ill with contraband. Honly that Rampick was
the master sperrit and go-between; and now you knows the truth about
’im.”

We both stared at her breathless.

“Then,” said my uncle at last, “the unfortunate creatures caught up
there, if caught they were----”

“Made no widders in Dunberry, sir,” she put in decisively.

“God bless me!” said Uncle Jenico, much agitated. “Then Rampick----”

He turned to me.

“Don’t bait the man, Dick,” he said. “Remember, whoever’s to blame for
it, he’s half crazed by his misfortunes; and small wonder, when some
of us find it difficult to keep our heads in prosperity. Why, dear,
dear! It isn’t the part of luck to throw stones, and certainly not at
a dog in a trap. It’s like enough the poor creature’s dangerous. I
dare say _I_ should be if things had gone against me. Don’t bait him,
Dick. Give him a wide berth.”

He had always been a little nervous about this fellow and our attitude
towards him. His appeal was, however, superfluous. The ex-smuggler was
not attractive; and Harry and I were certainly never the first to
invite collision with him. For, what with blight and rum and
sanctimony--which last, from being assumed for a disguise, had become
a half-demoniac possession in him--he was little better at this day
than a smouldering madman. Nevertheless, I tried loyally henceforth to
emulate Uncle Jenico’s better Christianity by making allowances for
the man because of his provocation. After all, calumny could visit him
with no more formidable charge than that of having been a successful
smuggler--a negative indictment even in these days. And perhaps, the
main impeachment admitted, Mrs. Puddephatt’s cockney perspicacity was
not so deadly a detective as she supposed.

I took Mr. Sant and Harry, of course, into my confidence with regard
to our landlady’s story. It was little more than a confirmation to
them, if that were needed, that Rampick had been the head and front of
the old trade. But the Dutch part was news to us, and nothing less, I
do believe, to Mrs. Puddephatt herself, who, however she had become
acquainted with it, had acquired her knowledge recently, I am sure, or
she would not have omitted hitherto to impress us with it in her many
allusions to the “herthquake.” The rector, for his part, had
speculated, no doubt, like my uncle, upon the equanimity with which
the village had accepted the supposed visitation of God upon a number
of its bread-winners; but had never to this day, I think, in spite of
the respect in which he was held, succeeded in getting behind the
local _esprit de corps_ which hid the real truth from him. Now much
was explained--provided Mrs. Puddephatt had actually been permitted to
discover what had been kept from us--much, that is to say, except the
nature and cause of the catastrophe; and that, I supposed, we should
never find out. But there I was mistaken, as events will show. For
Destiny, having got her puppets at last into position, was even now
gathering the strings into her hands for the final “Dance of Death.”

In the meanwhile, the last month of the year opened upon us with a
falling barometer and fresh menace of tempest, which it was not long
in justifying. The little calm had been but a breathing time, to
enable Winter to brace his muscles and fill out his lungs. It was on
the night of the fifteenth, I think, that the great storm which
followed, notable even on those coasts, rose to its height. The wind
came from the north-east, with a high tide, which, racing obliquely,
cut the cliffs like a guillotine. The whole village hummed and shook
with the roar of it. Not a chimney but was a screaming gullet into
which its breath was sucked like water. There were ricks scattered
like chaff on the uplands, and trees uprooted with mandrake groans of
agony. God knows, too, what the quicksands knew that night! When the
day broke the worst was already over, and the sea, scattered with the
bones of its prey, sullenly licking its jaws. Far on the drifts of the
Weary Sands gaped the ribs of a mammoth it had torn, the solitary
monument to its rage. The rest was matchwood.

That same night Uncle Jenico and Harry and I were supping at the
rectory. The occasion is vivid in my memory because of a story which
Mr. Sant told us. After the meal we had drawn our chairs to the fire,
and moved, perhaps, by the unearthly racket overhead, were fallen upon
talk of the supernatural. The house lay so close-shut within trees
that the booming of the tempest came to us half muffled. In its
pauses, we could even hear the drip from broken gutters treading the
drive beneath, upon which the dining-room windows looked, with a sound
like stealthy footsteps. It brought to his mind, said Mr. Sant, a
legend he had once heard about a werewolf--the German vampire. These
creatures, men by day, but condemned, for their unspeakable crimes, to
become wolves with the going down of the sun, are like nothing mortal.
It is forbidden to notice, to pity, to sympathize with them in any
way. Whosoever does, yields himself to their thrall.

One winter evening a peasant-woman, belated in the snow-bound woods,
was hurrying home, with her basket of provisions for the morrow over
her arm, when she heard a pattering behind her, and looking back,
there was a werewolf following. In the hunger of the miserable
creature’s face she saw an expression which haunted while it terrified
her. It was faintly suggestive of something, or somebody; but of what
or whom she could not tell. Yet the lost horror in it moved her in
spite of herself. Her pity mastered her fear. She took meat from her
basket and threw it back, conscious of her secret sin. “But who will
know!” she thought; “and I could not sleep without.” The creature
stopped to devour the morsel, which enabled the woman to escape and
reach her home in safety. But all the following day her deed dwelt
with her, so that towards evening, unable to bear her own sole
confidence any longer, she went down to the lonely church to confess
her sin and be absolved of it. She rang the little sacristy bell, and
summoned the solitary confesser. He came, and behind the bars heard
her avowal. Then, as listening to it he turned his face, she saw that
snap and change in the gloom. The eyes rounded, the brows puckered and
met, the jaw shot down and forth. Before her, glaring through the
bars, was the werewolf of the preceding night. It barked and snapped
at the grating which divided them, then dropped, and she heard it
issue forth and come pattering round to the side where----

We were never to know, for at that instant, weird and unearthly in a
pause of the storm, there rose a long melancholy bay outside the
window. We all fell like mutes, staring at one another; then, moved by
a single impulse, jumped to our feet and made for the front door. The
wind battled to crush us with it, driving us back as we raised the
latch, and so whipped our eyelashes and flared the lights in the hall
that for a minute we could do nothing. But when at last we emerged and
stood in the drive, not a living shape of any sort was to be
seen--only the tossed bushes and black tree trunks.

“It must have been a wandering dog,” said Mr. Sant; “something
attracted by the light. Come in again, all of you.”

But we would only re-enter to get our coats and caps for the homeward
march. Some growing sense of unbounded licence in the storm awed us, I
think, and drew us like cowed beasts to our lairs.

As we butted through the darkness, a form detached itself from the
shadows in a deep part of the lane, and followed staggering and
hooting in our wake. It was Rampick, blazing drunk, and his maniac
laugh pursued my uncle and me long after we were housed and shuddering
between the sheets.




 CHAPTER III.
 OPEN SESAME.

I had a vision sometimes of our tight little island lying on the sea
like a round of bread and butter on a plate, and the Angel of the
Storm amusing himself by biting patterns out of its edges. The coast
in our part of the world was particularly inviting to him, because, I
suppose, it was crumb, and not rocky with crust like other parts.
Anyhow he never flew near without setting his teeth in it somewhere,
and on this occasion to such gluttonous effect that he must have blown
himself out before he had fairly settled down to his meal. His attack
was as short as it was violent. For miles north and south the cliffs
had been torn and gulped--only the birds, mapping them from above,
could have said into what new fantastic outline. Landmarks were gone,
and little bays formed where had been promontories. Here and there a
fisherman’s boat had been licked out of its winter perch, that that
same angel might play bounce-ball with it on the cliffs until it was
broken to bits. The wreck and flotsam on the shore were indescribable;
and sad and ugly was the sight of more than one drowned mariner
entangled in them. I turn my memory gladly from such retrospects, to
concentrate it upon those features of the havoc which most concern
this history.

Waterside folk are a strangely incurious and fatalistic race. Once
having satisfied themselves after a storm that their craft, disposed
here and there in winter quarters, are untouched, the changes wrought
on their sea-front interest them only in so far and so long as those
changes mean profitable wreckage. When that is all gathered, they
withdraw again to their winter burrows and winter occupations, and
leave the foreshore to its natural desolation.

At least, that is what Dunberry did after the gale and within a couple
of days following it, than which no longer was needed, it appeared, to
secure any salvage worth the landing. For there is this characteristic
of great tempests, that from their destructive rage they yield a
poorer harvest of “whole grain,” so to speak, than do moderate ones.
The latter, maybe, deposit some literal pickings in the shape of
crates, barrels, seamen’s chests, etc., yet compact; the former for
the most part mere _disjecta membra_. It followed, therefore, that
when Harry and I next visited the beach--which, as it happened, he
having been away, and I confined to the house with a beastly cold, we
did not do until the afternoon of the third day succeeding that night
of uproar--we found we had the whole place virtually to ourselves.

Uncle Jenico, who, from his anxious concern for me, had also kept at
home during the interval, came with us, full of suppressed eagerness
to glean the torn fields of shingle for relics. I think I only
realized the self-restraint which his affection must have imposed upon
him in those two days, when I saw the almost childish joy with which
he greeted the sight of the weedy litter strewn, as far as the eye
could reach, along the shore.

“Why, Richard!” he exclaimed, rubbing his hands, while his spectacles
seemed to twinkle again, “here’s a chance indeed! It’s an ill wind
that blows nobody---- Poor souls, poor souls! I feel like robbing the
grave to take such advantage of their misery.”

His countenance fell a moment; but his mood was not proof against the
stupendous prospect.

“The sea’s a pretty big grave, sir,” said Harry. “You might as well
have scruples about digging gold out of the earth, seeing we’re all
buried there.”

“That’s true,” said Uncle Jenico, with serious delight. “That’s quite
true, my boy. I only hope I’ve not left it to too late.”

This gave me a little qualm.

“Shall I come with you, uncle?” I said.

“No, Dicky,” he answered; “no, no, no. You and Harry amuse yourselves
as you will. I wouldn’t deny myself for anything the gratification of
the treat I’m going to bring you by-and-by. It’s selfish, no doubt;
but--but I’d rather be alone.”

And he hobbled away, calling out to us not to let our expectations run
_too_ high, or he might be defrauded of his opportunity to surprise
us.

“He’s a real trump,” said Harry. “I hope you think so, Dick.”

“Of course I do,” I answered, rather testily, and began to whistle.

“That’s all right, then,” said he. “And now let’s explore.”

It was a fine, still afternoon, with the tide at quiet ebb, and a
touch of frost in the air. The sun, low down, burned like a winter
fire, and gleamed with a light of sadness on the ribs of the gaunt
wreck lying far away on the Weary Sands. She was visible only at low
water; at high being completely submerged. No one, so far as I knew,
had yet had the curiosity or venturesomeness to row out and
investigate the poor castaway. It was just plain to see, by the aid of
glasses, that she had broken her back on the drift, and that only her
stern half remained, wedged into the sand. But what her name or
condition Dunberry had not had the energy to inquire.

We were standing at gaze at the foot of the Gap, and when Uncle Jenico
went north, we, in obedience to his wish to be left alone, turned our
faces down the coast. But we had not taken a score or so of steps when
we hooted out simultaneously over the sight that was suddenly revealed
to us. The storm had bolted a great hunk, good ten feet through at its
thickest, of the Mitre, obliterating the already half-effaced step-way
by which Rampick had been wont to ascend, and laying bare, high up in
the cliff, a mass of broken masonry. From the character of this last
it was evident at a glance what had happened. The seaward limit to the
crypts of the old abbey had been shorn through, and the extreme
vaulting of that ancient underworld exposed. Nor was this all. The
well, now thus further isolated from the hill which had once contained
it, was grown, from the washing away of the sand at its base, an
apparent five feet or so taller, and was leaning outwards at a
distinctly acuter and more ominous angle with the shore.

We stood excited a moment, then, without a word, raced to get a closer
view. The wrack and downfall, as we looked up at their traces, must
have been stupendous; yet so great had been the pulverising force of
the waves, the mighty silt from them, except for a few tumbled blocks
of stone, was all dispersed and distributed about the shore below, so
that a new cliff face, clear of ruin, went up in a pretty clean sweep
from beach to summit sixty feet above. From the lower curve of this,
where it ran out and down into the sand, the well projected, not ten
feet above us, like a little tower of Pisa; and yet thirty feet
higher, at a point in the hill face about on a level with the well
top, gaped the jagged ruin of masonry which the storm had laid bare.

“Dick!” whispered Harry--“Dick!” (He was gulping and gripping my arm
hard, as he stared up.) “Supposing we could climb to there and look
in!”

“Yes!” I choked back. I knew what was in his mind; and the thought
fascinated while it frightened me horribly.

“I’ve never seen a Dutchman,” he said. “Mrs. Puddephatt, she--it would
be fun to find out the truth. What are they like?”

“I don’t know,” I answered, shivering. “They wear lots of breeches, I
believe. But it’s no good. The place is all choked up. You can see for
yourself.”

There was no apparent entrance that way, indeed. The contour of the
vaulting was roughly discernible, it is true, but so stopped with mud
and _débris_ as to offer no visible passage.

“Besides,” I went on, swallowing fast and trying to escape from the
fluttering spell the mere suggestion had laid upon me,--“whether it
was an earthquake or gunpowder, it’s all the same. It must be just all
squash and ruin inside; and--and the things----” I stuck, feeling that
I dare not speculate further.

Harry released my arm, and for some time looked down, making
thoughtful patterns with his foot in the sand.

“Well, I don’t know,” he said, raising his face suddenly. “But I’d
mighty like to see.”

We were both rather silent for the rest of the afternoon; and, though
we neither of us alluded to the subject for a day or two afterwards,
it was evident it stood between us. We avoided the spot, too; until
one evening a long ramble brought us back by the shore past it. Then,
by a common impulse, we stopped, and stood gaping silent up once more.
The light from the sinking sun smote level upon the face of the cliff,
so that it stood out as bright as a grate back. Its surface, quite
dried from the tempest, reflected no glaze of water. The rivulets of
mud, which had flowed over and sealed the scar of ruin above, were
hardened like plaster, though shrinkage had opened black fissures in
them here and there.

Harry, softly whistling, left me suddenly, and, with his hands in his
pockets, toiled indifferently up the slope to the well foot. Here,
still whistling, he began kicking round the base; but in a moment
desisted and called to me. I went up, and he fell upon his knees, and
set to scraping with his fingers.

“See?” he said, stopping.

“No; what?” I answered.

“Why, look, you bat!” said he. “Nothing under; nothing deeper. Here’s
the last bottom course of the thing; the foundation stones, or I’m
a----”

He checked himself, grinning.

“I was going to say ‘Dutchman,’” said he; “and, for all we know, they
may be listening up there.”

“O, don’t be a beast!” I exclaimed, with a wriggle of discomfort.

He chuckled again.

“Well, anyhow,” he said, “here’s the old well just standing on its
end, like a drain-pipe with a tilt to it. If we brought spades and dug
away underneath on the outside, it would fall--and on the top of us,
too; but that’s a detail. Wonder the storm didn’t finish it, don’t
you? Must have come pretty near to.”

As he spoke, staring up at me, he suddenly uttered a soft exclamation,
and scrambling to his feet, pulled at my arm.

“Look there!” he whispered. “Don’t move!”

I followed the direction of his hand, which was pointing to the scar
in the cliff-face above. I could see nothing.

“Hush, you old fool!” he said impatiently. “Keep quiet!”

I did not stir; till, at the end of a long interval, something made me
start involuntarily. It was a wink--a flutter--a motion of some sort,
I knew not what, on the hill front.

“Did you see?” whispered Harry.

“Yes,” I muttered back. “What was it?”

He ran down the slope to the sand, and I followed at a leap, thinking
he meant that the cliff was falling. But when I saw his face I knew
that some excitement other than fear was moving him.

“It was the badger,” he said, turning sharp on me. “Now, do you
understand what that means?”

Perhaps I had a glimmering; but I shook my head feebly to repudiate
it.

“Why!” he cried reproachfully. “Dicky, you gowk! If he goes to earth
at the top and comes and puts his nose out here, what does it mean but
that the crypts ain’t as blocked as we supposed!”

“There must be a passage through, of course,” I murmured.

Harry nodded, primming his lips. “Well?” said he.

“Why, it don’t follow that where a badger can go, we can.”

“It does with me,” he said shortly.

An odd little silence fell between us. Then Harry turned away, and
began to move off, whistling. At a bound I was after him, with a
furious red face, and, seizing his arm, had whipped him round.

“I’m going to try to get into the hill up there,” I cried. “If you’re
afraid to come too, stop behind like a coward!”

He stared at me amazed; then fell a’ grinning.

“I never said you were a coward,” he retorted.

“But you meant it,” I answered, fuming.

We were bristling, actually, as on that far-off day when we had first
come into collision. Our fists were clenched; the backs of our necks
tingled; it was really a pregnant moment.

But the good old fellow resolved it, and in the best way possible. The
fire suddenly left his eyes.

“O, Dick,” he said; “what asses we are! Look here, I’ll tell you--I
should funk it going up there alone, and you wouldn’t, it seems;
that’s the truth. I only wanted to dare you, for my own sake.”

“O, all right!” I said, pocketing my fists, and pretty ashamed of
myself. I kicked the sand about, not knowing how to escape the
situation gracefully. At last I in my turn blurted out: “What rot this
is! Let’s forget it all, and just discuss ways and means.”

“You really intend to try?” said Harry, his face relighting.

“If I die for it now,” I answered.

“O, well!” he said, heaving a profound sigh. “It’s simple enough.
We’ll just climb up there, and say ‘open sesame,’ and walk in.”

This little inspiration to identify our adventure with Ali Baba’s was
quite a happy one. Not forty Dutch smugglers, but forty beautiful
Persian thieves with scimitars and waxed moustaches! It tinctured with
romance at once the thought of the ugly sights it was possible we
might encounter. Our half fearful design became, in a flash of
coloured light, a tingling conspiracy.

It was too late, of course, to attempt anything that evening. But the
following afternoon was a half-holiday with us, and quite apt to our
purpose. In the interval we secured some candles and a box of the
friction matches then lately come into use, as also, privately, Uncle
Jenico’s geological hammer, a sturdy tool with a heavy butt and a long
steel pick to balance its head. And with these, and nothing else
whatever but our trust in ourselves, we issued forth after a hasty
early dinner, and no word said to anybody, to dare and do.

We had resolved, after consultation, to make the attempt from above
rather than below; because, in the first place, we should be less
likely to attract attention, and, in the second, because a descent of
twenty feet appeared easier of accomplishment than a climb of thirty
up that slippery glacis. So we started, unregarded of any one, as we
supposed, by way of the valley, and were not long in reaching the brow
of the Mitre where it overlooked the well and the recent landfall.

It was all strangely altered here, and, near the edge, risky footing
at the best. But we stole up cautiously, and, going upon our stomachs
the last yard or two, looked down. Below us, at a rather giddy
distance, projected some spars and ledges of the fractured masonry.
Fortunately, however, the interval between us and them was not balked
by any bulge in the cliff, but showed a smooth descent, and not too
sheer for the essay. Still, it did not do to dwell upon it.

“Are you ready?” I whispered. “I’m going down.”

“No, you aren’t,” said Harry. “Me first.”

I only answered by crooking my elbow to keep him back.

“Don’t be a fool!” he protested. “We shall break away, and both go
faster than we want, if you aren’t careful.”

I made no reply but to resist him doggedly, till at last, with a
grunt, he let me go, and I turned, lying flat-faced, and swung my legs
over the precipice.

“O, you old brute!” he said. “Well, go easy, then, and dig your toes
in.”

And with that I let go and slid away, clawing and scratching like a
cat coming down a tree. It was just to fasten on and commit one’s self
to luck, which, fortunately for me, directed my feet to a ledge, on
which I brought up, gasping and spitting out dirt. But once secure of
my hold, and in a state to look about me, I was relieved to find that
the position was much more possible than it had seemed either from
above or below, the projecting spits of stonework being more and more
pronounced than had showed at a distance.

I took a minute to get my wind, and then called up to Harry to follow;
but he was already on his way. I saw him coming at a risky pace, and
by a slightly divergent course, which he had taken to avoid me. It
would have carried him clear of the ruin altogether had I not, at the
psychologic moment, clapped my hand to the seat of his small-clothes
and checked his descent.

“O!” he howled, “let go!”

“I won’t!” I cried. “Don’t be an ass! Stick your foot out here!”

With a desperate effort he managed to wriggle oblique, and in a moment
we were standing together on the ledge.

“That was give and take,” he panted. “Like being saved from drowning
by a shark. Can’t say your bark’s worse than your bite.”

I chuckled so that I was near falling off our perch, till a sudden
thought sobered me.

“Supposing, after all, we can’t get in, or up or down neither?” I said
dismayed. “A pretty picture we shall make, stuck up here.”

“Well, it’s too late to think of that now,” answered Harry, coolly.
“Lend me a hand while I kick.”

He let out on the wall of mud in front, which we had hoped was just a
mask or screen hiding a cavity behind; but his foot only sunk to the
ankle in it without effect.

“So there!” he said. “We must look for a better place, that’s all.”

We were standing, so far as we could judge, about midway up the
groining of the vault, and right under the apex, a little above and to
the right of us, gaped a small round fissure.

“See?” said Harry, excitedly; “that’s the place. It don’t go
perpendicular like the others, which means that it’s sunk away from
some support above it. Hold me, now.”

I clutched him the best I could, gripping a stone with my other hand,
and he brought the big hammer from his jacket pocket, and poised
himself, standing high on his toes. “Open sesame!” says he, and struck
with all the force he could muster on the soil just under the hole.
The result made him stagger, for he had expected some resistance, and
there was none. The whole top of a mound of silt, which stopped the
neck, it seemed, of the decapitated crypts, and into the thick base of
which he had first struck his foot, broke away and fell inwards,
revealing an aperture, already, under that one blow, large enough for
a man to crawl through.

Harry, recovering himself, quietly repocketed the tool, and turned to
me. His face was a little white, but his mouth was set as grim as sin.

“It’s my turn,” he said. “Think you can give me a leg up?”

It was no use my disputing, as he was on the right side. Working with
infinite caution and difficulty on that perilous eyrie, I managed to
stoop, and, getting my hands under one of his feet, levered him slowly
up, while he drew on every projection he could reach, until he was
able to claw his arms into the hole and hang on.

“Now,” came his voice out, muffled and hollow, “one shove, and----”

I drove with the word; dig went his feet and knees; he sprawled
convulsively a moment; got hold; the mound jerked and sunk a little
under him, a clatter of _débris_ went down the cliff face, and he was
in.

Almost in the same instant his face, hot and staring, re-emerged, and
then his arms.

“Here,” he panted. “Can you reach?”

Not by a couple of feet could I.

“Hold tight and catch me,” I said. “I’m going to jump.”

Fixing my eyes on him, and crouching to the lowest I dared, I sprang,
and he snatched and gripped my wrists.

“Now!” he gasped; and instantly the both of us were battling and
struggling, he to hold me firm, and I to get way on and leverage.

For a minute the issue was doubtful; the mound sunk and crumbled still
lower; I clawed frantically with my toes, my legs going like a frog’s
on a slippery basin. But at last I got hold, and a little ease to my
lungs; and so, hauling on to the hands held out to me, and wriggling
up foot by foot, was drawn into the opening, now much enlarged, and
crawling through, rolled, tangled up with Harry, down a slope into
darkness.




 CHAPTER IV.
 THE SECRET IN THE HILL.

My first impression, as I sat up to gather my wits, was of awakening
from a falling nightmare to the comfortable security of bed and early
morning. The frantic fears engendered of that fathomless descent were
all resolved in laughter. I giggled as I recalled them, shaking my
dusty noddle to get the brains into place in it. Opposite me I could
discern a shadowy figure, squatting in a like process of
self-recovery.

“Well, old chap,” I said; “here we are!”

The sound of my voice, clanging in a vaulted space, gave me a start.

“O!” I exclaimed; and the monosyllable rolled away into the darkness
like a barrel.

We scrambled up, while it was still echoing, and catching
involuntarily at one another, looked fearfully about us. At a height
of twelve feet or so behind us shone the opening through which we had
entered. It made a great splotch of light, with a dim tail running
fanlike from it down the slope by which we had fallen. The effect to
us, standing possessed by gloom, was as of our being involved in the
tail of a comet. So long as we looked that way, it dazzled and
perplexed us. We turned our backs on it.

Then, gradually, the obscure details of the place gathered coherence;
and we saw that we were standing in a low vaulted chamber, giving at
its further end upon a sewer-like mouth of blackness.

“Dicky,” said Harry, in a rather tremulous whisper, “have you got the
candles and lucifers all safe? This is p-p-prime, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I gulped, to either question. But I answered without heart,
being sick to postpone the advance, by whatever means, for a little.

“Don’t let me go, you old idiot!” I complained in a panic, as he made
as if to step forward. “Supposing we lost one another. Ha-Harry, do
you know what I saw under my arm as you p-pulled me up outside there?”

“No. What?”

“Rampick--the b-beast--scuttling for the Gap. He must have been
watching us again, hidden below somewhere this time; and like enough
now he’s making for the cliff overhead.”

Harry began chuckling, but stopped in a fright to hear himself
answered, as it were, by a patter of little laughing hiccoughs.

“He won’t find much,” he whispered, “and we needn’t be afraid he’ll
follow us down here. Light a candle, Dicky, for goodness’ sake. There
seem to be all sorts of things creeping and rustling.”

My hands shook so that I boggled three good matches in coaxing the
wick to take; but I would not let Harry hold the candle, for fear that
he might run ahead with it, and perhaps in some labyrinth of passages
leave me to follow the wrong one.

The flame caught at last, flared with a momentary brilliancy, and
shrunk to a mere blink. It is the common way with candles, yet I know
nothing more maddening in a nervous emergency. And if philosophy
sneers over that statement, let it ponder, and be thankful but take no
credit, because it had nothing whatever to do with the making of its
own temperament. At length, after a moment of tension indescribable,
the wicked little tongue stretched, and glowed steady; and I lifted it
high, while we glared right and left.

The cellar in which we found ourselves was, or had been till shorn of
its seaward end, a four-square room, with Norman vaulting--crossed
flat half-hoops of stone--going down into the corners. It was very
small, and very low (the candle flame, as I lifted it, blackened the
roof), and very massive; and because of the three, very ancient.
Probably it had once been a death-chapel under some older foundation
than the abbey, and connected only as a matter of piety with the newer
crypts, which, to meet it, had been tunnelled eastwards, in a manner
very unusual, from beneath the nave. But, so far as we could see, it
was quite empty, and undamaged by the earthquake, or explosion.

I waved the light to and fro.

“Nothing here,” whispered Harry. “Let’s get on!”

The black sewer faced us. There, we knew, was our way. If for a minute
or two we hesitated to follow it, by so long was Providence our
friend. For, indeed, we had never thought to take account of the
stale, confined gases which for years must have been poisoning these
glooms, and our delay gave the draught that we had created time to
take effect.

For draught there was, though we were unconscious of the significance
of it when we saw the flame of our candle draw towards the tunnel. But
in truth we had forgotten in our excitement all about the badger.

At last we made a move, holding on to one another’s hands like Hansel
and Gretel entering the witch’s forest. We reached the black mouth of
the passage, and went in on tiptoe. It was arched, and high enough in
its middle to enable one to walk erect; yet not so wide but that Harry
must drop behind and follow me. I sniggered a little to feel him
treading nervously on my heels, and the sense of laughter was like a
tonic. If one touch of nature makes the world kin, it is surely the
touch that tickles one under the fifth rib.

The passage seemed to run on endlessly--just a high stone drain with a
floor of hammered earth driving straight into the hill. No other
diverged from it, nor did any ruin block our path; and we were
beginning to move quite merrily, when suddenly the end came in a
flight of half a dozen steps going down, and at the bottom a great
door torn off its hinges and shivered into splinters.

At the sight we drew back on the very brink, and stood gaping and
dumbstruck, afraid for the moment to proceed.

“Dicky,” said Harry, staring over my shoulder, “here comes the tug,
don’t it?”

I did not answer. Suddenly he dipped under my arm and ran down, and,
terrified at the thought of being left alone, I followed him.

The fragments of the door stood wrenched at any angle; but through the
black gaps in the wreck flowed the sense of shattered spaces beyond.

“Now for it!” said Harry. “Hand me the light when I’m in, and follow
yourself.”

I would have lingered yet, but he broke from me, and, fearing to
precipitate I knew not what nameless ruin, I let him go with only a
show of interference.

He was through in a moment, and calling back to me, “Pass the light,
and come on. It’s all serene.”

And then in an instant I had followed him.

The draught was still strong enough here to flutter the candle flame,
so that for a little we could make out nothing of our surroundings.
But stepping cautiously to one side, away from the door, we found the
light to stand suddenly steady, and immediately before our eyes there
grew into grotesque and shadowy being a vision of enormous
destruction.

It was again a vaulted chamber we were in, but of apparent proportions
infinitely greater than the other. Apparent, I say, for for two-thirds
of its extent it was just one unresolvable ruin. A great part of the
roof had collapsed, snapping in its downfall, like sticks of celery,
the squat massive piers which had supported it. The walls on either
side were bowed to an arch above, or swayed drunkenly with colossal
knees bent outwards. To the further side, gaping at us across the
havoc, a huge blackened rent seemed to invite to nameless horrors
beyond; and scattered and spattered and spurted from under the fringe
of the stony avalanche were staves of casks, and fragments of burst
chests from which fountains of tea had showered all over the floor.

We stood awestruck, scarce daring to breathe. The sense of yet
impending disaster, the terror of calling it down upon us by a
stumble, a false step, kept us as still as mice. Before us a path went
clear round the ruin to another broken archway, and yet remoter
vaults. But by this time my curiosity was become something less than a
negative quantity.

“Harry,” I whispered at last, almost querulously, “we’ve seen enough.
I’m going back.”

His face looked into mine like a little ghost’s.

“I’m not,” he said. “But I don’t want you to come. Light me another
bit of candle from yours, and stay here while I go and explore. We’ve
found out nothing yet, you know.”

I am ashamed to say I let him go, only imploring him to return
soon--to be satisfied with a look. He did not answer, but stole off
resolutely with his bit of a torch, and it was with a feeling of agony
that I saw him disappear through the opening.

It is a question with psychologists how much one can dream in a
second. I will answer for the eternity of nightmare I suffered during
those few moments of Harry’s absence. He could hardly, in point of
fact, have set foot in the further chamber when a strange little cry
from him made me start violently. And immediately, as if in response,
there sprang into voice near me a step, a rustle, the menace of a
coming roar, and I screamed out and fled towards my friend. The crash
answered behind me as I ran, and a film of dust followed. Half blinded
and deafened, I almost fell at Harry’s feet as he met me. We clutched
one another convulsively, and for a minute could not speak.

The concussion was succeeded by an appalling silence. Presently he was
staring over my shoulder, swaying his light to and fro.

“Dick!” He went muttering in my ear: “Dick! Dick! Dick! the roof has
fallen, down by the door, and blocked our way back!”

Horror took me of a heap. I could only bite into Harry’s arm up and
down with my fingers, dumbly entreating him to do something to save us
from going crazy.

“O, why did we come?” I moaned at last. “Why didn’t you come when I
asked you?”

“What good would that have been,” he said miserably, “if we’d been
caught and squashed?”

If he could not see the way to save, he could to make a man of me. He
was the first to return to his sturdy self. It struck me like
sacrilege to hear him suddenly emit a faint little laugh.

“O, don’t!” I said. “It’s too awful!”

“What is?” he answered. “Look here, Dick, we’re just fools, that’s
all, There must be a way out somewhere--we’d forgotten what the badger
showed us.”

In an instant, at his words, I had leapt to the ultimate pole of hope.

“O, Harry!” I said, “you good old fellow to think of it! Why, of
course there must be; if only we could----”

“Wait a bit!” he interrupted me. “You’ll have to make up your mind to
go on.”

“I’ll go anywhere,” I said, “to get safe out of this. O, don’t stop!
Any moment may bring down some more of it.”

I was wriggling and sweating in a perfect agony over his hesitation.

“All right,” he said; “pull a long breath and prepare yourself.”

“For what?”

The truth came upon me in a flash. I fell back, panting at him.

“_Harry! They’re there!_”

He nodded.

“Yes, they’re there. If you like to shut your eyes, I’ll lead you
past.”

But he had shamed me once.

“No,” I said, with a catch in my voice. “If you stood it, so can I. Go
on--quick. Are they--are they--very----”

We were in the further vault before I could shape my question; and I
took one glance, and shrieked, and shrunk back under the wall. And so,
in the very act, at a leap the horror was gone.

Why? I cannot tell. The problem is again for the psychologists. All I
know is that, as I cried out, the sickness left me. A spring of some
human sympathy gushed up in my heart and expelled it. These pitiful
remnants seemed to greet us as with a wistful hail of comradeship.
They were ugly, disjointed, ghastly enough in all conscience; but they
appealed as from the lost to the lost, and seeing them, their quiet,
sad decay, I no longer feared them as I had feared them unseen. Who
might swear, indeed, that our own bones would not mingle with these
others presently? They were dust of our dust in the great Commonwealth
of death. If I had been a desert castaway, lying down to die beside
some parched human skeleton, I could not better have testified to my
sense of the sorrow that makes us kin than I did now in my changed
emotions.

Yet, indeed, the scene was a very awful one. Near the whole of the
further side of the crypt had collapsed, making of the place a huge
cave-like mouth stuck with blackened splinters of teeth, and gorged to
the throttle with a litter of human remains. They lay scattered all
over the vast jaw of it--chewed, dismembered, scarce one to be
identified in its entirety. Here it might be a red-capped skull, with
a naked brown cutlass tilted across its teeth; here a limbless body,
horribly suggestive in its crumbling stumps of a mangled doll
dribbling sawdust; here something, whole but for its head, crooking
its fingers into the dusty scalp of a comrade from whom the legs had
been torn. They may have counted to near a dozen in all, if one had
had the stomach to tally the flannel caps and brass-buttoned jackets
and disjointed slops. But, ten or twenty, the moral was the same. Here
at the crook of a finger was the whole life of the hill blown into
fragments; and the legend of the earthquake laid.

I understood that plain enough before Harry’s low excited voice
sounded over my shoulder.

“Come away, Dick! Look there; don’t you see how it happened?”

He drew me back and we stood, figures of tragedy, flashing the light
from our candle-ends into dark corners. In all the hideous _mélange_
there were two details unmistakable in their significance. To our
right, lying front-downwards with its face smashed into the floor, and
its legs caught into the closing throat of the vault, was a little
flattened blue-coated figure, its hands flung out, and the left yet
closed upon the butt of a pistol. To our left, bolt upright against
the wall through which the great rent had been blown into the
adjoining crypt, sat a thing grotesque almost beyond naming. It wore,
with a little air of sagging weariness, a seaman’s common jersey and
good white ducks and shoes with shining buckles, and its right elbow
was crooked and the hand beneath rested with a sort of exhausted
jauntiness on its bent right knee. In all of which there was wonder,
but no indecency, had it not been that, above, the thing had no head,
nor any left arm but a stump, which stood oddly upraised from its
shoulder.

And somehow one knew that these two were correlative in the tragedy,
and somehow responsible for the human scatteration between them--for
the bright gleams and splotches of colour which budded from the
ancient soot of the holocaust--for these gaudy, half-perished
weed-heaps scoring the garden of death.

“Do you see?” urged Harry again.

I sighed and shook my head, not meaning ignorance, but simply
overwhelmed under the weight of my own conclusions.

“Why,” he whispered, in an awestruck voice; “that--_that_ there was
reaching up for the ammunition, the--the armoury in the wall where
they kept their powder and things, and, as he opened the cupboard, the
other fired his pistol across. The bullet must have missed who it was
meant for and gone into a powder barrel.”

As he spoke, one of the lights sputtered and went dim; and he caught
suddenly at me.

“Come away!” he cried. “Why don’t you come? We haven’t candles and to
spare.”

His words reawoke me instantly to the unresolved horror of our
situation.

“I’m coming,” I answered tremulously. “Which way? Harry, don’t go
without me!”

We stumbled a few blind paces, dazzled again for the nonce.

“Look here,” he said; “we must economize these. It won’t do to waste
our lights.”

Instantly, in a panic, I blew out my candle, and simultaneously he
blew out his. Thus was illustrated the weakness of generalities; and,
correspondingly, the value, as you shall see, of accidents. We were
plunged, on the breath, into subterranean night; lapped in lead and
buried beyond hope of release. At least, so it seemed for the moment;
and moments make the sum of time.

We stood rigid, paralysed, too dumb-stricken for speech or movement.
And, in that pass, if you will believe me, the most unearthly horror
of a voice hard by came to complete our demoralization. It rose
between a hiss and bark, a swinish indescribable thing that tailed off
into a bubbling snarl; and I thought it was the dead man caught by the
legs struggling to rise and get at us.

I could not have survived and kept my reason, I think, had not Harry
at this instant scattered all shadows with a jubilant shout--

“Daylight! Look up there, Dicky! We’ve found the way.”

I shook with the cry, and raised my despairing eyes. Sure enough, at a
good height before and above us, a gleam of blessed dawn filtered down
through the superincumbent soil. The accident of darkness had revealed
it to us so soon as our pupils had forgotten the false glare of the
candles.

“O, Harry!” I cried, half hysterical. “O, Harry! what was that noise?”

And he laughed out--“Light up again, you old funk! It was the best
friend in the world to us.”

Amazed, without understanding, I tremblingly rekindled the candle; and
there, right before us, was a flight of stone steps going up--the
ancient entrance to the crypts; and, risen bristling from his bed of
straw and sticks at the foot of it, was our ally, our preserver, our
most noble and honoured _the badger_.

He was a surly auxiliary, resentful for his broken slumber. He stood
setting at us, and bubbling, and showing his teeth, as cross a little
Cerberus as ever divided his duty between guarding the way down and
keeping damned souls from escaping. Harry softly pulled the geological
hammer from his pocket.

“Don’t!” I gasped. “You mustn’t! He saved us.”

“I’m not going to attack,” said Harry. “But I must defend, if he makes
a rush. Try a bite of him first, if you’re doubtful. I tell you, if he
once fastens on, you’ll have to take him up with you.”

Keeping close together, and our eyes on the little grey gentleman, we
edged gingerly round towards the foot of the flight. Fortunately, as
we advanced, he withdrew, coming behind us in a circle.

“Go up first,” whispered Harry, “while I keep the rear.”

Holding the candle to light him, I went backwards up the steps, until
my head touched the canopy of soil and ruin which blocked their exit;
and then, backwards, Harry followed me. The badger snuffed and
gurgled, pointing his snout at us, but not offering to follow.

“Now,” said Harry, turning round, “for the way!”

It was a narrow one as it first offered--a mere beast-earth driven
down between chance interstices in the ruins above to meet the
stair-head. But all the time while we wrought at to enlarge it, the
sweet light was stretched to us to comfort and inspire, and the smell
of liberty came down more and more in draughts like wine, as if Harry
with his strenuous hammer were tapping the very reservoir of day. The
only fear was that, striking carelessly, he might loosen some poised
mass, and bury us under an avalanche of stone. But luckily, both sunk
vault and tumbled ruin had so well adjusted between them the balance
of collapse that our puny grubbing was all insufficient to disturb it.

For which, thank God! And tenfold for that glorious moment when,
struggling and pushing up by way of the last of the littered steps, we
shouldered and tore ourselves through into the mid-thicket of brambles
by the fallen plinth, and felt the light of day, broken by the
branches, burst over us like a salvo of resplendent rockets!




 CHAPTER V.
 A REAPPEARANCE.

On the day following that of our adventure Harry was due at
Yokestone. I had arranged to walk part of the way with him, for we had
much and momentous matter to discuss--our discovery, and the
responsibility, moral and legal, which it entailed upon us, to wit.
But, to my disturbance, the morning found Uncle Jenico knocked up with
a chill; and the dear soul’s hope that I would stay to keep him
company was so patent, that I had not the heart to disoblige him. I
just took an opportunity to run out and tell Harry I could not come,
and to re-decide with him upon postponing all action until we could
consider the matter in its every bearing; and then returned, very much
depressed, I must own, to my duty.

I don’t know if any suspicion of the past, any premonition as to the
future was operating in the old man’s mind. Pure spirits, one must
think, must be strangely sensitive to any disturbance in their moral
atmosphere. He was certainly oddly solicitous about me, wistfully
attentive, loth that I should leave him, and for my sake, not his own.
But after dinner, as luck would have it, he fell asleep in his chair,
and, restless beyond endurance, I took the chance to go for a stroll.

Once outside the door, I hesitated. I had not yet slept soundly or
exhaustively enough to shake off all the horror of our late
experience. I dreaded to go by the hill; I dreaded to go by the beach;
but at last the prospective quiet of the latter drew me, and I turned
my face seawards.

I had expected to find the shore deserted, and so, reaching the cliff
edge, was put out a little to see a figure, that of a stranger,
already down there before me. It went to and fro, this figure, on the
fringe of the surf, thoughtfully, its head bent, its hands clasped
behind its back--a lean, small old man, it seemed. But I observed it
with unspeculative eyes, because of my pondering all the time,
abstractedly and rather dismally, on the events of yesterday.

We had not canvassed our adventure much as yet, Harry and I. The shock
and the shame of it, the body and brain-weariness, had disinclined us,
during our walk home, to comment on a very frightening experience, out
of the reach of whose shadow we could not escape, for all our
hurrying. Morning, indeed, found it still with us, like a motionless
fog, which, however, we should have endeavoured to dissipate by the
breath of frank discussion, had not Uncle Jenico’s illness supervened.
In consequence of which I had to face the rather depressing prospect
of enduring for a whole day and night the burden of unrelieved
silence. Still, about one thing we had been agreed: that we must weigh
all the pros and cons before deciding to suppress or confess our
discovery. At first, I had been for telling Mr. Sant everything the
moment he returned; for he was away in London, as it chanced, on a
short visit. But Harry had at once vetoed the idea.

“It wouldn’t be fair to foist all the responsibility on him,” he had
said, emphatically. “Being a parson, he’d be bound to call in the law,
and if he did that, his influence here would be lost, and you might
burst your cheeks trying to whistle it back. Who knows who’d be found
to be mixed up in the business, if once we talked? Most of the
village, likely. And we’re not going to do anything to force him into
becoming unpopular, and losing what he’s been years in getting.”

“But, Mrs. Puddephatt,” I had complained feebly, “said the village had
nothing to do with it.”

“Nonsense!” Harry had answered. “She didn’t neither. She said that
Dunberry and the Dutchmen worked separate, with Rampick for
go-between.”

“Well,” I had still protested, “isn’t that much the same?”

“Much the same, you gaby!” he had cried. “O yes, of course! Much the
same as if two engine wheels connected by a rod turned up their noses
about knowing one another.”

The technical inspiration of his simile had thereupon surprised him
into a grin, and me, even, into a dismally funny attempt at a
retort:--

“Well, they _would_ move in different circles, you know. But we’ll
sleep on it--that’s the best; and thrash it out between us to-morrow.”

That, however, as I have explained, we were debarred from doing; and
now there was nothing for me but to possess my troubled soul in
patience until Harry’s return. In Uncle Jenico, we had neither of us
thought for a moment of confiding. Some instinctive sense of his lack
of grasp, of his unpractical weakness prevented us. We would not
confound or agitate the dear old fellow; and so here, in the result, I
was solitarily and tragically cogitating our problem on the cliff
edge.

We had, indeed, already come to one conclusion too obvious for
dispute. The secret entrance to the smugglers’ lair had been patently
near the spot whence we had emerged, and the significance of the now
obliterated cliff-path was thus revealed. Those, however, were points
which only concerned indirectly the main sources of our confusion,
which sources were necessarily the nature of the tragedy and Rampick’s
presumptive connection with it. There lay the deep core of the
shadow--the stress of the moral obligations our reckless adventure had
imposed upon us. We had opened the forbidden chamber, and our fingers
were bloody.

Was it murder, in short? And, if so, was Rampick an accessory? And, if
so, were we also become accessories?

I started at the thought, and went hurriedly down the Gap impelled by
a sudden vision, It took the form of a tax-cart, and a handcuffed man
in it being carried off to Ipswich Gaol. I felt the cold grip of the
iron on my own wrists, and had to thrust my hands deep into my
breeches’ pockets for some familiar reassurance of warmth. The
stranger still paced the sands, a mechanic irritating figure. Now
noticing my advent, he stopped to regard me, his hands behind his
back, the wind gently undulating his coat-tails. Going northwards, I
should come under the rake of his eyes. My nerves were on the jump. I
flounced peevishly, and went down the coast, till, come opposite the
scene of our yesterday’s escapade, I stopped involuntarily and stared
up.

I had not intended to. I could master the inclination no more than I
could the morbid concentration of my thoughts. They were drawn like
smoke into that black gash high up in the cliff.

It was not very noticeable even now. Another storm, any hurricane of
rain, might seal it once more, and close the evidence of our passage
thereby. Why let any thought of our responsibility to it vex us? Our
enterprise had been a purely private one, and----

Like a blow came the memory of Rampick’s cognisance of it, of my
vision of him hurrying agitated for the Gap as I was drawn in. He had
seen us enter; possibly, emerge. He must at least suspect us of having
made some sort of discovery, and his knowledge of our knowledge was
the terror.

I still stared up. If it was really murder, then, and this man an
accessory?

He might have been, and yet none know the truth of his guilt but
himself. Grant it a fact that the local and foreign gangs had worked
apart. Had he not been, according to the same authority, their
connecting link? What more likely then that he alone of all alive
should be informed of the real nature of the act which at a stroke had
shattered his connection? It would account for his eternal haunting of
the neighbourhood, for his terror lest some one, exploring too far,
should unearth his secret--if guilty secret it were. And what proof of
that? Why, none that was direct--no proof of anything; not of murder,
certainly. And yet I was as sure as if my soul had witnessed it that
murder, in deed or intention, had been committed. It was the position,
the _settlement_ of the bodies, flung down with all that atmosphere of
deadly suggestion. I felt that I could restore the scene, as sculptors
restore a statue from a few significant fragments. That the man under
the stone had been attacked, and had fired in a desperate
self-defence, accidentally sending all to perdition, I had no doubt.
He might have been a spy, a deposed chief--his clothing seemed to
pronounce him above the order of the rest--he might have been one of,
or other than themselves; he had precipitated a greater tragedy in
trying to avert a lesser, of that I was sure. And Rampick?

It all resolved upon him, this doubt, this haunting stress of
conscience--all concentrated itself upon the wretched, degraded
creature in the tissue of whose story our destiny had entangled us. I
stirred, and gave a little groan.

“Ha!” exclaimed a voice at my elbow.

With a shock I jerked round; and there was the stranger of the sands
come softly up, and intently scrutinising me.

I felt unreasoningly ashamed, as if caught in some self-soliloquy. My
face went like fire. “What do you----” I was beginning loud enough;
and on the instant bit my teeth on the cry, and stood gaping. I could
feel my jaw slackening idiotically. Minute by minute, it seemed to me,
we stood silent there, regarding one another.

“Mr. Pilbrow!” I whispered at last.

It all came back to me across that shining gulf of years. I had forded
the valley in the mean time, descending into deep glens and
unremembering woods, distancing for ever, as I had supposed, the
landmarks of childhood. And, lo! climbing the further side, and
looking back, here was the past quite close; for the valley had been
but a little fairy cleft after all, and all the time the memory of old
things had been waiting there for me to resume them. Six years, with
their fulness of growth and interest, stood between me and this man;
yet I saw and knew him as if the interval were but a span. The story
of him, the tragedy of my own connection with it, became in this
moment the instant thing with me, bridging the abysmal lapse between.

He was not much changed, it is true. The face was the same haunting
unearthly mask which had hung up before me in the court. A gurgoyle, I
had called it; and still the stony inhumanity of it was the first
thing to impress me. It was older only, and more scarred by wind and
weather. The drench of unhealing waters had streaked its forehead and
darkened the pits of its eyes; but with no other result than to
emphasize the fire in them, and intensify the loneliness of the lost
soul they windowed. I gave a little foolish fluttering laugh.

“So you remember me?” he said.

“Yes,” I answered. “But how do you know me?”

That was the wonder, indeed. Medusa might not change to Perseus as
Perseus to Medusa.

“Were you looking for me?” I asked. “Did you know I was living here?”

He shook his head slightly.

“No more, young sir, than I know the ultimate goal of my destiny.”

It suddenly occurred to me that, after all, he had said nothing to
associate me with any memory of his own. I blushed like a fool, and
stammered out--

“I suppose you aren’t mistaking----”

He put up his hand to interrupt me.

“Your father gave his life for me, sir. Not a shadowed feature, not a
transmitted gesture of his, but I should feel myself cursed for
failing to identify, if I lived to the age of Methuselah. You are
Master Richard Bowen. You will hardly deny it, I think.”

I giggled again, more foolish than ever.

“No, I won’t,” I said. “And have you yet found Abel, Mr. Pilbrow?”

Now, in a wonderful way, my ingenuous question wrought a sudden
transformation in the man. As once before, his hand swept the hard
evil from his eyes, and when those looked at me again, they were as
soft as a weary woman’s. The change was infinitely pathetic,
illuminating; and in the light of it, I seemed to see for the first
time how worn was this poor creature, how tired and woeful, and how,
perhaps, he wore his outlawry for a mask.

“If I doubted before, could I doubt now!” he cried. “Staunch, and
unspoiled by the years! And how could it be otherwise with _his_ son!”

He had seized my hands in his; and, embarrassed as I was, his words
moved me to a strange understanding.

“Mr. Pilbrow,” I cried, as I had cried those long years before, “he
said you did not do it.”

He gazed at me rapturously a moment, then fell to urging me to walk
with him.

“Come,” he cried. “I must move, or I shall be a woman. Ask me, ask me
everything. This accident--this destiny--this heart-filling spring in
the desert! No, I have not found Abel, my friend, my dear friend,
though I have never ceased to seek him, like the spectral dog I am.”

I thought of the werewolf of Mr. Sant’s story. So damned, so
abhorrent, so pitiful appeared this grey shadow moving at my side. He
put his arm within mine, and hurried me up and down the desolate
beach. The grinding of the sea seemed to hush itself, the drooping
pall of sky to rise aloof from us. I was full of excitement and
agitation, carried altogether without the oppression of the thoughts
which had been vexing me.

“Ask,” he cried, feverishly pressing my arm. “Give me the chance to
unburden my heart to my one true friend, I do believe, God help me, in
all the world! I have not found Abel, Richard--ah! may I call you
Richard?--I have not found Abel, though through these long years I
have never ceased to hunt him--his shadow, some sound of his voice,
some track of his footsteps.”

“To right yourself with the world?” I asked.

“Let it fall from me--the vampire!” he cried, contemptuously. “You are
all the world I care, as your father was before you. It is not Abel I
want, Richard; it is the secret he carried away with him--the secret,
or the clue to it, which I have maddened after, pursuing it, the
wicket friar’s-lantern, down the long mire of these coasts.”

“Secret?” I said, wondering. “What secret?”

“The book,” he answered--snapped, rather.

I turned and stared at him as we walked.

“You mean the book that--that you fought about?”

He nodded.

“Why,” I sniggered, incredulous, “was it worth all this?”

He did not resent my youthful irony--met it with a solemn
self-deprecation, in fact.

“God knows, dear boy!” he said. “This, and more, I thought once. Now,
Richard, forbear to indulge a lust till it masters you. I have damned
myself like the wandering Jew. I have no rest in rest. The quest has
become an obsession, a craze, which not even the discovery of the
treasure itself could, I believe, appease.”

“Phew!” I whistled, soft and amazed. “A treasure, was it?”

“Yes,” he said.

“And somewhere on these coasts, I think you said?”

“Somewhere on these east coasts.”

I stopped in sheer excitement.

“I don’t wonder. They are choke full of--of things. And have you been
tramping them ever since I saw you last?”

“On and off; up and down; to and fro.”

“It must have been tiring, and--and a bit expensive.”

He smacked his hand to his breast.

“There is a hundred or two left here yet. ‘Equity’--you remember your
friend’s words?--‘equity is justice.’”

“You got your thousand pounds?”

“I got my thousand pounds.”

A longish silence fell between us.

“Mr. Pilbrow,” I said at last, “what has brought you here?”

“Destiny,” he answered at once; “yours and mine.”

“It was quite accidental, this meeting?”

“As the world would consider it--quite.”

“Well,” I said, after a pause, “it is very wonderful; and most of all
your knowing me again. I--I hope you will be here a day or two. I must
be going home.”

He looked at me with his strange wolf’s eyes.

“I only arrived last night,” he said. “You live here?--but, of
course.”

“I live here--have lived, ever since that time, with my guardian.”

He started back with a gesture of repulsion.

“Not that man, that crow, that Quayle?”

I laughed. He had no sense of humour. In all my knowledge of him I
never knew him even to smile.

“O dear no!” I said. “A very different person; my uncle, Mr. Paxton.”

“He could not be too different to satisfy me as your guardian,” he
responded grimly. Then his face softened, and he took my hands in his.
“So long as I stay,” he said sorrowfully, “you will let me see you
sometimes?”

Now, at that, my heart melted to him. He was so fierce, so vicious to
the rest of the world, it was a certain glory to be his chosen.

“Won’t you come and see my uncle?” I said. “He is at home, not very
well. He knows all about that trial, Mr. Pilbrow, and--and he loved my
father dearly.”

I believe there were tears sprung to his eyes. I turned away abashed.

“Does he love _you_?” he asked low.

“He lives for me, I think.”

“Then,” he said, “we shall have that sympathy in common, and I will
risk it.”

All the way back I chattered to him of my life since we had last met.
He had been so associated with my father’s end, I could not shake off
the impression that we were old friends. He listened intently, sharing
in all my sympathies, grinding his teeth over my little local
misfortunes. And when we reached our door, he took my hand again
before entering, and said in a full voice, “Thy people shall be my
people, and thy God my God.”




 CHAPTER VI.
 AN ODD COMPACT.

Age, that forgets its yesterday’s company, often puts one to shame
in the memories of long ago. I had pondered the problem, even while
proposing it, of Joshua’s introduction to my uncle; and, behold! the
dear soul recognized his guest at the first mention. His name was
associated indirectly, it is true, with a momentous decision in his
own life; yet, even so--well, one was not wont to look upon Uncle
Jenico’s memory as the active partner in his constitution. It saved me
some perplexity.

I had left Joshua by his own request in the porch while I went to
prepare my relative, who I found much refreshed by his sleep, and to
whom I briefly recapitulated the tale of my rally with this old
client, as I might call him.

“Bring him in, by all means,” he said, adjusting his spectacles, and
then beaming at me through them. “Poor soul, poor fellow, to have
suffered all these years under the stigma of an unfounded slander!”

He spoke with a new-awakened loudness; the door was close at hand; the
visitor heard. In a moment he came striding in, hat in hand, his eyes
glittering.

“Mr. Paxton,” he said; “Mr. Paxton! You are worthy to be this dear
lad’s guardian! I can say no more.”

The two men shook hands, with a full understanding, it seemed; and a
pregnant minute ticked itself out between them.

“You come off a long journey?” asked my uncle, at the end.

“Off a long journey, sir--a journey of six years. I had hardly
expected to find this haven by the way. I hardly know now what it
means; yet Fate grant it has a meaning!”

“You are making a considerable stay?”

“If I have not lost the faculty to rest. I don’t know. I am all
confounded at present.”

“He is seeking for a treasure hidden on these coasts,” I put in, and I
could have put in nothing apter. My uncle kindled.

“A treasure!” he cried. “Why, so am I, Mr. Pilbrow. Only, I gather, I
have the advantage of you in having already collected a part of mine.
And did you read of yours, too, in Morant?”

“Morant, sir!” said the bookseller. “No, his name was Victor--Carolus
Victor.”

He checked himself instantly--jealously. He had been carried away
emotionally, I think, over his reception. But in the same breath his
reserve was gone.

“You shall have the whole story from me,” he said; “but not now. Give
me time to order my thoughts, to realize what this encounter means to
me.”

“Certainly,” said my uncle, kindly. And being all openness and
simplicity himself, he proceeded to relate to our visitor the entire
history of our sojourn in Dunberry, and of the events and prospects
which had brought us there.

“The result has justified my utmost hopes,” he ended with,
enthusiastically; and then cast a sudden wistful look at me. “It is
something in an otherwise empty life, Mr. Pilbrow, to have this object
in accumulating. Heaven has seen fit, sir, to deny me the blessing of
a family, lest by my improvidence I turned it into a curse. But it has
compensated with the left hand while it withheld the right. What
prouder trust to have committed to one than the welfare of the child
of him who died to prove the truth!”

The visitor stepped back, shading his eyes with his hand.

“You rebuke me, sir,” he said in a stifled voice; “you teach me. Is
_this_ the meaning, the atonement? If I, too, might so earn quittance
of this curse of emptiness! _The child of him who died to prove the
truth!_ My God, my God! To bequeath to him the fruits of this so
wretched quest! To turn the curse into a blessing!”

He advanced, and seized my uncle’s hand with a strenuous entreaty.

“Let me be joint trustee with you. By that sacred life laid down for
mine, I have a right. If I could so convert this evil--to enrich his
son--so perhaps to earn rest.”

My uncle was distinctly snuffling. He took off his spectacles and
wiped them, and put them on again tremulously.

“So be it, Mr. Pilbrow,” he said. “We have been two selfish souls,
perhaps. We will win our redemption through Richard.”

Thus was I made the inheritor of phantom fortunes. I felt quite
inclined to put on airs, as the sole legatee to a vast atmospheric
estate. Mr. Pilbrow even came to claim me with some show of kind
judicial authority, as if the law had appointed him my part guardian.
But that was by-and-by.

Now, he uttered a sound, as if his emotions had been too much for him,
and stepped back.

“I must go,” he said. “You will excuse me. This wonder--this
kindness--I am unused; it overwhelms me. I must rest the body, even if
the brain works. You will let me come and see you again?”

“But why not accept a----” began my uncle.

“No, no,” he interrupted him, gasping. “I understand your generosity,
sir. I have stood, I can stand the rack. There are limits to my
endurance of benignity--such human consideration. I have a good bed at
the Flask. I entreat you to let me go--to----”

He left hurriedly. I would have accompanied him; but Uncle Jenico,
with a better delicacy, detained me. The moment the door slammed on
him he smacked one hand decisively in the palm of the other.

“That man a murderer!” he cried. “Richard, I wish your Mr. Quayle no
worser fate than to die in refuting such another calumny!”




 CHAPTER VII.
 “FACILIS DESCENSUS AVERNI.”

I had forgotten all our late troubles in this wonderful encounter.
Aaron’s snake had swallowed the others. This peaked wintry little
ghost out of the past, starved and frost-bitten and shabby as it
looked, had yet a strange suggestion of vicious force about it which,
inasmuch as it seemed sworn for good or evil to my service, comforted
me unconsciously in the sense of fear and helplessness which had got
me in grip. Somehow Rampick seemed less formidable, my feeling of
bondage to an ugly responsibility less acute, in the knowledge of this
new acrid ally.

But, beyond this, there was curiosity--still-breathing, wide-eyed
curiosity to know what enduring mystery yet held the footsteps of that
ancient tale of The King _versus_ Joshua Pilbrow. I had learned
something, had had my adventure tooth tickled with a taste of the
truth. It had whetted my hunger for more, had tantalized me with that
sharpest spur to youthful appetite--the dream of hidden treasure. When
would Joshua serve up the whole dish--or would he ever? It seemed
incredible that a man who had pursued such a secret, morose and
self-contained, for six years, could yield it at last to a sentiment.
Yet he had promised, and, though I sickened of the delay, I must not
dare to risk making that eternal by over-precipitation.

In the meantime, as there could be no harm in the attentions natural
to hospitality, I walked over to the Flask inn, after breakfast the
following morning, to see how our visitor had slept.

It was within three or four days of Christmas, and sharp, beautiful
weather. I have always since associated the deadliest scheming of Fate
with such tranquillity. The robin, like a tiny phœnix, burned,
singing on a spray. There was a glaze of rime on the ground, and the
sweetest coldness to take into the lungs. The ringers were already
practising their carols; the ruddiness of the holly was reflected in
the genial cheeks of the wives; the prospect of holiday and fat fare
smiled from every door. One had thought that the village, like its
geese, had been gutted of the last foulness, and that Nature beamed
approval. Alas! it is not the blackest thought that rides the storm.
Nature, like the man, may “smile and smile and be a villain.”

The younger Miss Fleming had made herself a sad misalliance, running
away with the ostler, and coming to grief and indigence. But her fate
had wrought no impression on her sister, who remained as pert and
coquettish as ever, and wore the same gaudy finery and shoes down at
heel. She always rather courted me because of Harry, of whom she was
gigglingly enamoured, and who detested her.

“Lork, Mr. Dicky!” she said, when I came in. “Is the old gentleman a
friend of yours? I’m sure I’d have give him every attention if I’d
known.”

She was glancing fitfully, all the time she spoke, at a little lozenge
of looking-glass which stood on the bar rack.

“Whatever you could have spared from that, Tilly?” I said. “I’m sure
I’m much obliged to you.”

“O, get along!” she protested. “You’re always poking your fun at me!”
And I made my way upstairs, as directed, to number seven.

I found Joshua not yet out of bed when I entered to his summons. He
sat up to greet me, like Lazarus new-risen--a wasted corpse-like
little figure, white and grim and unshorn. But his face lighted
rapturously at sight of me.

“It was no dream, then!” he said, and lay back again, with a very
gentle expression. I came and stood over him, and he nodded to me.

“Richard, I shall lie abed to-day. This passion of luxury after the
toil! Most restful, most wonderful! Yet the sickness is not out of my
bones.”

“You will do very well,” I said. “When you are rested, we must show
you all there is of the place--the local lions, you know. To-night it
is a Feast of Lanterns--rather fun. Do you think you could manage it?”
And between question and answer he learned all about Mr. Sant, and
Harry, and what remained untold of our simple history. It might have
been Hume to him, so profound an attention he gave to it.

“I shall like that Harry,” he said at the end; “and the sensible
clergyman. Yes, I will come to the Feast, if you can find me a
lantern.”

After arranging to fetch him at a given hour, I left him to his trance
of rest. He told me no more of his story. I had hardly expected he
would; yet I retreated in an itch of half-injured excitement. Ah! if I
could have foreseen under what circumstances the revelation was to
come to me, I would have sworn a compact of eternal silence with him,
and baffled Fate.

That morning Harry returned from Yokestone, and I walked a mile to
meet him. He was near as excited as I over Joshua’s coming. He knew
all about him, of course. We had no secrets from one another.

“What does he look like?” he said. “I’ve never seen an acquitted
murderer.”

Joshua had shaved the gallows. He was not the rose, but he had lived
near it.

“I can’t say he looks like everybody else,” I said, “because he
doesn’t. But his nose is in the middle of his face.”

By-and-by we fell to our long-postponed discussion of the great
adventure and its moral.

“I’ve been thinking,” said Harry, “that perhaps after all we’ll tell
Sant.”

“O, you may snigger!” he said. “But supposing anything were to happen
to us.”

“Why, what’s going to happen to us?”

“I don’t know. One can never tell.” He spoke quite sombrely. “It
wouldn’t be right, would it, to carry that secret to the grave,
especially----”

“Especially what?”

“Why, I was going to say, especially if we thought we were going to be
sent there by some one on purpose to keep it.”

“Look here, Harry,” I exploded; “I wish you’d speak plain, and not
hint and nudge and set a fellow jumping. Who do you mean? Say out!”

“Rampick, then.”

I walked on, staring at the road. He had but given actuality to a
rather haunting spectre of my own.

“You think he’ll be wanting to shut our mouths?” I said, low.

“I think--yes. He saw us go in; and--well, look here, Dick--why’s he
been watching there all these years, unless out of fear that some such
thing might happen? Ah, you’ve thought the same yourself, I see! It
looks black against him, in my opinion, and----”

“He’s half crazed. We two ought to be a match for him.”

“Suppose he took us separate? He’s strong as the devil still, I tell
you. I’m not afraid; but I don’t want to be tipped over a cliff, or
have a stone fall on me, and mother be left to think I didn’t take
care of my life for her sake.”

“Very well; we’ll tell Sant, then,” I said, graciously conceding the
point--with much private relief.

“Then the sooner the better,” said Harry. “I’ve thought it all out
since yesterday, and concluded that not to tell him would be to make
him out less of a man than we are. Supposing anything were to happen
to us, and some chance brought to his knowing after all what we’d died
to keep from him. A pretty opinion he’d think we had of him, and a
pretty ghost to haunt his conscience, to know that he might have saved
us. The sooner the better, I say.”

“All right. Only he won’t be back till this evening.”

“No more he will. Very well; what do you say, then, to filling up the
time by going _there_ again?”

I actually stumbled, as if he had tripped me.

“Harry!”

I had clutched hold of him to stop him, and we stood face to face.

“You ain’t afraid?” he asked.

“Afraid! I’m sick at the very thought.”

“O, that’s rot! We’ve seen the worst, and got over it.”

“_Have_ we? We’ve seen enough anyhow to serve me for a lifetime.”

“Don’t you bother, then. I’ll go by myself.”

“You shan’t, I tell you.”

“Shan’t I? We’ll see.”

“What do you want to go for?”

“To find out whether _he’s_ been there since or not.”

“What does it matter if he has? Besides, he’d never get his great
carcase through the way we came.”

“I dare say; but I want to see. Forewarned is forearmed.”

“Wait till we’ve spoken to Mr. Sant.”

“I’d rather have the latest facts to put before him.”

I clutched my forehead. I knew the dogged side of this friend of mine.
Then I fell into a fury, and stamped.

“You’re a beast! If I have a fit, you’ll have to answer for it, that’s
all.”

“I don’t want you to come!”

“Don’t you? Who gave you leave to dictate to me, I should like to
know?”

“Well, come if you like.”

“Thank you, Mr. Harrier, for the permission.”

We resumed our way, and I walked by Harry’s side, ruffling. Presently
he said--

“I say! Supposing that old Pilbrow’s treasure had anything to do with
the secret in the hill! What a lovely complication!”

“I don’t see why it particularly should,” I snapped. “It had to do
with a book; not--not with a hash of smugglers.”

I took no longer interest in Joshua for the moment. Harry had put all
that story out of my head. He saw I was worked up, and said no more.
We parted where our roads branched, on my side in a very depressed
condition. My dinner choked me, and my desperate efforts to simulate
appetite only brought me observation. Uncle Jenico was quite
concerned, and Mrs. Puddephatt disgustingly critical.

“It’s the hair,” she said. “Soon or late it was bound to find ’im
hout. I don’t blame you, sir, for noticing at the eleventh hour what’s
long been apperient to the casual. The heyes of love is blind, and
incapable of seeing into the stomach. The young gentleman, sir, is
sickening for London, and no wonder. We know, sir, what Scripture says
is the dog’s fancy; and is a human to be judged more himpervious to
what he’s give up? Let Master Richard breathe the hair of his native
’eath once more is _my_ advice.”

“Is there any truth in this, Dick?” said Uncle Jenico, when she had
gone. “Have you been, perhaps unconsciously, thinking of London
lately, because----”

“O, don’t be a dear old idiot!” I interrupted him impatiently. “I was
never less in the mood to leave Dunberry. Can’t I keep up my character
for health without stuffing myself when I ain’t hungry!”

I laughed vexedly; but still I could see he was anxious about me, and
I was working myself up to the last pitch of irritability, when
suddenly I was conscious that Harry had gone past the window outside.
I waited for his rap at the door. It did not follow. I jumped up,
stung to fury, and disregarding my uncle’s cry, ran out of the house
and came up with my friend.

“What do you mean?” I said. “Were you going without me?”

“I thought,” he answered, “you’d see me; and then you could come or
not as you liked.”

“Now, look here,” I said, “I won’t be treated in this way. I think
it’s just beastly. Because I don’t jump at being made sick, every
one’s going to pity me or be my superior.”

“Why, what’s happened?” said Harry, with a twinkle.

“Mrs. Puddephatt,” I answered. “I wish she’d leave my inside alone.
And here you are going along with your nose in the air.”

Harry was chuckling out loud; but he reddened as I ended.

“I can’t help my nose,” he said gravely. “I don’t see the point.”

“No more do I,” I answered, looking at it, and beginning to come round
with a vexed laugh. It is strange what self-respect we can acquire
from other people’s weaknesses. Harry’s “pug” was always a rather
delicate subject with him.

He flushed truculent a moment, then shrugged his shoulders and gave a
good-natured laugh.

“I must take what comfort I can out of its being a cushion,” he said.
“It’s very resting to the eyes--better than yours, that they can’t
settle on without slipping.”

“Tit for tat,” I said. “You’ve answered me like a witty little
gentleman, my darling. And now you can pull my ear, if you like, for
having been cross and rude with you.”

He responded, with the addition of an amiable kick, and Richard was
himself again.

The air being thus cleared, we went swiftly for the Mitre, chattering
spasmodically all the way in a desperate pretence of swagger. I really
think the greater credit was due to me, as I was being engaged to this
anticlimax, as I considered it, entirely against my judgment. But my
heart sank once more, when at last we came up on the hill among the
ruins, and I realized at first hand the sinister futility of our
design.

The day had fallen wintry close and breathless. The sun was not
blotted out, but dulled, as if a ground-glass window had been shut
upon it. A light fog was stretching shorewards from the water,
chilling and isolating us. It brought the very spirit of ghostly
echoes with it, and wickedness and watchfulness; and it seemed to
demoralize the pith in one’s bones.

“O, if it’s got to be done, let’s get it over!” I said, with a shiver.
“Why--Harry, look there!”

He nipped my arm, and we both stood staring--at the place of our
yesterday’s exit.

There was no doubt about it. We had never effected, had never thought
to effect, in the litter of dead stuff and bramble, so complete a
concealment of our passage therethrough, for our ecstasy had taken no
account at the moment of the rending evidences of our adventure which
we were leaving behind us. Now, all trace of such was gone,
obliterated, had been cunningly effaced and built in with other litter
torn from the thicket elsewhere. The deadly spot was returned, to all
appearance, to its wonted condition.

“Won’t that do?” I whispered, gulping. “We needn’t look any further.”

“We need,” returned Harry, short and grim. “Who’s to know, if we
don’t, that he found his way down?”

“What does it matter if he did or didn’t? This shows plains enough
that he saw us come out.”

“But it doesn’t show that he knows what we know.”

“Harry!”

He was pulling at the dead stuff as I shook out his name. A great pad
of it came bodily away in his hands, revealing a savage gap behind--a
hole torn and trodden beyond anything that we had made.

“Harry!” I whispered again. “Supposing--supposing he should be down
there now!”

Nothing would persuade or deter him. He broke from me, and was in
while I spoke; and I had in decency to follow.

Now, if more proof were needed, here it was in the black rent at our
feet. It was flagrantly enlarged from our memory of it by the forced
passage of a huger body. It offered no difficulty of descent, and
Harry let himself down into it cautiously, but without hesitation.

“Wait,” he muttered, as he disappeared, “while I light up.”

He had brought matches and candles with him; but he paused a moment to
listen before he fetched them out.

Not a sound reached us. The hill, inside and out, was wrapped in
deadliest silence. The next instant a soft glow spread itself below
me, and I went down into it, tingling with the horror of what it
should reveal.

Not a sound; not even the snarl of the badger, which I believe I
should have welcomed. The brute, scared out of his security, I think,
had betaken himself to other quarters. We reached the floor, and crept
on.

Again the dead came about us; but now, knowing and holding the road to
flight, I could recover nothing of the sad appeal to comradeship with
which they had before greeted me. They were terrors apart: ghastly
chuckling grotesques without name in the kind world I had left. I
hated them as they hated me.

Suddenly Harry uttered a little cry, and, stooping, rose again with
some object in his hand.

“Look!” he whispered, and held it to the light.

It was the bowl, broken off short, of a blackened death’s-head pipe,
such as was familiar to us in the lips of Joel Rampick.

Do you know what the French call a _pièce de conviction_? Here it
was, and we needed nothing further.

He had been here, and he shared our secret. What was he going to do?




 CHAPTER VIII.
 THE FEAST OF LANTERNS.

I remember I ate a very large supper that night, to the happy
reassurance of Uncle Jenico. That suffocating tightness of the
midriff, which anxiety brings, seems to expand, in its reaction, to a
quite exaggerated emptiness. Have we not all had that experience? What
meals we’ve made after a visit to the dentist’s! Who would have
thought that this Berserker, dashing his beard with wine and roaring
contempt of wounds and death, was the same individual who in the
morning cowered sick-cropped in Mr. Forceps’s waiting-room? The
thought of having vindicated, and proved, and so honourably acquitted
one’s self of further responsibility to a much-dreaded task, is one of
the most appetizing reflections in the world. And besides, I had
arrears to make up.

For the moment, I was quite congratulatory to Fate on its having found
so strong an instrument as myself to help it with its schemes. I even,
I think, took credit for that brilliant conception of shifting the
whole burden as soon as possible upon Mr. Sant’s shoulders. Through
the glaze of repletion I saw, bedimmed, and even perhaps glorified,
the figures of two ghostseers scuttling home that afternoon, with
their tails between their legs, before the vision of a vengeance they
had evoked. Now I laughed and snapped my fingers at the shadow of that
vengeance left standing outside the window.

But it came to be just a leetle a different matter when it fell
evening, and when shadow enwrapped the shadow, and I must go out into
the first, perhaps after all to find the second also claiming and
involving me. We were still, Harry and I, bound unrelieved to our
secret, and must be so till late night, at least. For Mr. Sant was to
return from London but in time to keep his evening engagement at the
church, or, rather, the schoolrooms adjoining--to which, since their
completion, the lectures had been relegated--and no opportunity could
be ours to speak with him till after the entertainment. In the
meanwhile, we had arranged to meet at the Flask, when I went to fetch
Joshua, that Harry might be introduced; and about half-past seven I
set out.

I confess I looked over my shoulder more than once as I sped for the
inn. The night was very black, with a sense of creeping inquisitive
mists in it. I had brought a lantern for myself and one for Joshua;
but for some reason I did not want to light them as yet. Perhaps it
was the thought of my moving a marked object through the gloom which
prevented me. However, I reached my destination without mishap, and
finding Harry already waiting for me there, took him up at once to our
visitor’s bedroom.

We found Mr. Pilbrow dressed, and expecting me with some eagerness. He
was quite spruce, so far as the contents of the little hand-bag, his
sole baggage, it seemed, could make him. But he had been shaved and
brushed, and his boots cleaned; and if his heavy green surtout was
worn and smeared with a hundred stains, the character of it was
redeemed by that of the little, alert, forcible face, which looked out
of the frayed collar.

“So,” he said, pleased, but stiffly, “here’s the lantern, and here’s
Harry, I presume?”

“How dee do, sir?” said my friend, grinning rather shy, but in his
frank, attractive way. “I hope you’ll like Dunberry. We haven’t much
in the way of local sights to recommend us; but what there is we’ll
show you, if you’ll let us.”

“I’m obliged to ye,” said Joshua. “My young friend here mentioned some
ruins.”

“Yes, there’s the ruins,” said Harry; “and--and--what else is there,
Dick?”

I had hoped, under the circumstances, we might have let the ruins
alone. I did not care much to think of them, for my part.

“O,” I said, airily, “there’s the wreck on the sands. It’s the only
other thing I can call to mind.”

“Mighty!” said Harry. “What a genius you are, Dicky! I’d never thought
of that. Would you care to pull out and see a wreck, Mr. Pilbrow?”

“Infinitely,” said the old man, handsomely. “And what wreck is it
now?”

We told him.

“It’d be rather a lark,” said Harry. “Only we must time our visit to
the tide. It’ll be low about to-morrow midday, if that’ll suit. If
you’ll believe me, sir, we shall be the first to show any curiosity
about the thing. There it’s sat for a week, and Dunberry not taken the
trouble to pull five miles out to learn its name, even.”

We must go now, if we wanted to hear the lecture; and so we lighted
our lanterns and descended those private stairs which I had used on
the morning first after our coming. I led, and as I issued forth, I
lifted my lantern to show Joshua, who followed, the way. The light
shone full upon his face, where it hung, like the gurgoyle of my
memory, I could have thought, in the dark entry. And on the instant a
little strained scream broke at my elbow, and something staggered back
against the closed door of the tap which stood hard by.

The latch burst; there was a snap and tinkle of glass, and the door
flying open, let down a heavy sprawling body into the lighted bar
beyond. A volley of oaths from the landlord sprung out with the glow,
and some one was cursed for a crazy, drunken lout. Startled beyond
measure, I hurried our guest on.

“What was it?” he asked, unruffled.

“Nothing,” I said, “but a boozy ruffian of our acquaintance.”

But by-and-by I took an opportunity to pull Harry back and whisper in
his ear--

“Did you see?”

“Yes. Rampick.”

“What was he doing there?”

“What is he always doing there?”

“Yes. But to give out that screech at the sight of us!”

“It shows, anyhow, that he’s more frightened of us than we are of
him.”

I was agitated, nevertheless, and more eager than ever to unburden
myself to Mr. Sant. This giving of himself away was hardly to be
reconciled with the drunkard’s stealthy effacement of his traces up on
the hill yonder. I wanted the thing all over and taken out of our
hands.

We found the road to the schools, now we came to retrace it, all
dotted and lively with wandering sparks of lanterns. There was to be a
good attendance, it was evident. The holiday spirit was in the air,
and these lectures, after all, were the best of holiday tasks. And,
indeed, when we entered the building we perceived it so crowded as, in
the brilliancy of its illumination, to preclude any chance of that
first fun of obscured revelations; for the drawings on the sheet were
plain as truth, or anyhow as plain as good intentions. We were forced
to satisfy ourselves with back places near the door. However, the room
was not so large but that we could distinguish every one of the
freehand objects depicted in charcoal on the screen, which, with a
“Seraphine”--a late invented reed instrument blown with the feet, and
the joy of Mr. Sant’s heart--was the whole of the lecturer’s
paraphernalia.

“What’s that first thing?” whispered Harry, giggling.

“Hush!” I said. “I don’t know. It looks like an oyster.”

The lights, and the company, and the prospect of our tutor’s near
restoration to us, were beginning to recover me, and already I was
tickled with the thought of some fun ahead. And then, in a moment,
there he was, the whimsical strong soul; and I breathed a great sigh
of relief, and joined tumultuously in the welcome which greeted him.

His discourse this night (and the illustrations to it, presumably) was
all of an appropriate observance of the sacred and festive occasion
now upon us. He urged his audience to honour it with sobriety. “In the
very teeth,” he said, “of that foreign clergyman who exhorted his
English congregation to temperance in these words: ‘Myself I do not
say no drink. Myself I would drink a pot of porter with you every
minute,’ I must assure you that it is not excess which is the friend
of festivity, nor is it sport to choose the devil for bottle holder,
and let one’s self be knocked out of time at the first round. Take
your share and drink fair is our motto; and put it down that you may
keep it up, the ‘father of lies.’ A drunken christening is never a
pleasant sight; but when Christ Himself is the baby, it is damning as
well as shameful. What would you think, as honest men, of repaying the
author of a feast by excluding him from a share in it, and not even,
like the Model Constituency, in order to point a moral? You have never
heard of the Model Constituency?” (“No, your reverence, no!”) “Well,
I suppose not. But the one that came nearest to it was the one to the
independent and enlightened electors of which a candidate once
appealed with a free lunch and drinks on the day of the poll. And very
polite and ingratiatory he came to it himself, too, to take a snack
and a glass with his good friends and guests. Only his good friends
and guests wouldn’t let him in On the contrary, a burly, red-faced
elector barred his way as he was entering.

“‘Vait a minute, sir,’ says the elector. ‘Ve likes this idea of
yours,’ he says, ‘only there’s vun thing: ve doesn’t want to be
disfranchised for corruption,’ says he. ‘The bony fiddles of our
borough is wery dear to us,’ he says.

“‘And to me,’ says the candidate. ‘Rather sacrifice twenty seats than
imperil that and my good name,’ he says.

“‘So ve thought, sir,’ says the elector. ‘And therefore ve’re going to
eat your wittles, and drink your hale, and arterwards go down in a
body and plump for the other gentleman, in order to prove,’ says he,
‘that our incorruptibility was what you stood on. And we’ll be wery
much obliged,’ he says, ‘if you’ll give us your countenance by
clearing out.’”

The illustration went home--we were not so far from the Reform Act of
’32--and was greeted with laughter and cheers.

“Now, you have not that excuse,” said the lecturer. “The author of
this feast comes to save, not to corrupt you; and if you would honour
Him, consider His sober innocence in your midst, or His Father will
withdraw Him. Christmas without Christ! That is to play the devil’s
game.”

He sat down, as he spoke, to his “Seraphine,” and broke into a
hymn--his own production, and very characteristic--which ran,
literally, as follows--

 “’Tis Christ His feast,” said Short to Long.
 “Let’s pass the night in drink and song.”

 “The liquor must not be too mild
 For toasting of that holy Child,”

 Said Long. “Them Jews was blind,” said he;
 “But not so blind as we will be.”

 They drank Him once, and twice, and thrice;
 The main brace they began to splice.

 A child’s voice wailed outside the door:
 “O, let me enter, I implore!

 “’Tis freezing cold, and dark, and dire.
 O, let me warm me at your fire!”

 “No place for children here,” said Long,
 And bid him “cut his lucky” strong.

 “We’re keeping of Christ Jesus’ feast,
 Clear out,” said Short, “you little beast!”

 They sang to “David’s royal Son,”
 And not till all the drink was done

 Abstained; then staggered to the door,
 And sobered at the sight they saw.

 Stark on the snow Christ baby lay.
 ’Twas Him those sots had cursed away.

 Now tell me, what availed them, then,
 To keep Christ out and Christmas in?

He had set his words to the tune of “Immortal Babe who this dear day,”
and you may question, if you are purists, a cockney rhyme or two; and
you may question, if you are Pharisees, his methods. Well, all I can
tell you is that women wiped their eyes over the homely theme, and
that our Christmas was the sweeter for the lesson it taught.

At the end Mr. Sant jumped up, and taking his rod, pointed to the
first object on the screen.

“Now, then!” sniggered Harry, kneading his hands between his knees.

There followed a pause and a general stir, rippled through with a
little undercurrent of laughter.

“Go on!” whispered Harry, nudging me.

“Oyster!” I sung out.

Mr. Sant caught sight of us, and nodded and laughed.

“Thank you, Mr. Bowen,” said he. “No, it’s not an oyster!” and he sat
down and began trolling out a new carol.

The little ex-bookseller shifted; blushed faintly, I do believe, and
turned to me.

“I fancy I’ve got it,” said he.

“Have you?” I answered delightedly. “Cry up, then!”

“Christmas pie!” he piped, in his thin, cracked voice.

Every head was turned momentarily our way. Mr. Sant left his stool and
bowed.

“The artist is vindicated,” said he. “The gentleman has the right
penetrative vision. A mince-pie it is.” And he made his illustration
forthwith the text for a lovely disquisition on plum-porridge and
frumenty and goose-pie, “on beef and plum-pudding and turkey and
chine,” and, generally, the history and rationale of Christmas fare,
till his audience shifted and sighed under the influence of an
illusive surfeit.

A thing guessed for “one o’ them tree worms,” and turning out to be a
yule log, came next, and provoked an allusion to a Norfolk custom on
certain farms of dealing out the strong cider to the household at
meals for so long as the block was in consuming; for which reason the
servants would select for Yule the biggest and most cross-grained
stump of elm they could find--a shrewd providence which tickled the
simple fancy of this fishing community, where wood for burning was
economized to the last spark it would yield.

A leathern jack coming third, and passing, by way of a wading boot,
the ordeal of identification, led to the liveliest little essay on the
drinking vessels of our ancestors; the “cocker-nuts” and hornes of
beasts; the “goords” and ostrich eggs; the “mazers, broad-mouthed
dishes, noggins, whiskins, piggins, crinzes, ale-bowls, wassell-bowls,
court-dishes, tankards, Kannes, from a pottle to a pint and a pint to
a gill;” and, last of all, the great jacks and bombards, which indeed
were not unlike the cavalry boot of William III.’s time.

Then we came to a fowl of some sort, most unnamable and amazing. Every
species of partlet known to Dunberry, from a barn-door to a
guinea-hen, was named without success, while Mr. Sant at the
“Seraphine” laughed so that he could hardly sing, and from the hall a
peal of merriment went up with every guess. But at last, a dear fat
boy, Hoogan by name, was inspired, and to an explosion of chuckles
gave up the secret.

“I’ve got un, Muster Sarnt, I’ve got un! It’s a tor-key!”

The lecturer brought down his hands to a little scream of laughter,
and sprang to his feet.

“Hoogan,” he cried, “you redeem me. Not know him! Look here--his vain,
empty, strutting, intolerable self-importance! Isn’t it all there to
the life? The very manner of the creature that imposed so abominably
upon the Mayor of Bantam.”

Cries and cheers greeted him as the laughter subsided.

“Your reverence, your reverence! Tell us who was the Mayor of Bantam.”

“Why, he was the Mayor of Bantam, to be sure, and so puffed up with
pride and good living, that when he sat down, I tell you for a fact,
he couldn’t see his own lap. He could only see, resting on it, what he
loved best in the world; and you may guess what that was. Anyhow,
there are two ways of running to waste, and his wasn’t the consumption
of the stomach one.

“Well, one Christmas, when he was at the height of his glory and
appetite, he conceived the happy idea of making that part of himself a
present of the primest and most promising bird which money could
procure. ‘It’s no less than a duty,’ thinks he, ‘to so faithful a
servant; and I’ll go to Huggins myself this day about it.’

“Now, this Huggins bred turkeys; and what he didn’t know about ’em
wasn’t worth knowing. He knew their pride and their self-sufficiency;
he knew that of all the fowls that came strutting out of the ark they
were the vainest about their election; he knew how a little flattery,
properly administered, would serve them for food and drink till they
came near bursting; and he had a grudge against this Mayor of Bantam
for having once fined him for being incapable when he had never felt
so _powerful_ drunk in his life. So, ‘Ho-ho!’ says he to himself, when
the mayor comes upon his quest, ‘I’ve a bone to pick with you, my
friend; and fine pickings you shall have!’

“‘You want such a turkey as never was, my lord?’ says he. ‘And you
want to take and fatten him, and watch him fattening, and enjoy him in
anticipation, do you?’ he says. ‘But turkeys is queer beasts,’ says
he; ‘and whited sepulchres to them as doesn’t know their tricks.’

“‘How do you mean “whited sepulchres?”’ asks the Mayor of Bantam.

“‘_Bones_, when all’s told,’ says Huggins, shaking his head darkly,
‘_if_ you don’t know the trick of inducing of ’em to swell.’

“‘Well, what is the trick?’ says the mayor.

“‘Flattery, my lord,’ says Huggins. And then he pointed to a bird.

“‘Do you see him?’ says he. ‘There’s the proudest, healthiest cock in
my yard--one as, if humoured, would fill a whole corporation, down to
its hungriest kitchen gal on two and six a week and what she could
pick up, with the marrer of deliciousness. A dream, he is.’

“‘A nightmare, by the looks of him,’ says the mayor, ‘There’s more of
sepulchre than of meat about him,’ he says.

“‘Ah!’ says Huggins; ‘and that shows your ignorance. It’s just
slighting that keeps him in his place till he’s wanted. If I was to
flatter that bird, sir, he’d puff himself out that amazing with
self-importance, he’d burst in a week and anticipate his own market.
You take him home, and feed him judicious on admiration and little
else, and you’ll have such a feast of him in the end as you never
dreamed.’

“‘How much for him?’ says the mayor.

“‘Not a penny less than two guineas,’ says Huggins.

“‘Preposterous!’ says the mayor.

“‘O, very well!’ says Huggins. ‘I’d as lief you refused. He shall be
three to the next customer.’

“Well, the mayor allowed himself to be persuaded; and he had the bird
sent home and put in a coop. And every day, and half a dozen times a
day, he’d go down and praise the creature to its face till its very
wattles turned purple with pleasure. There’s nothing too fulsome for a
turkey to swallow. The very ‘gobble-gobble’ of him set the mayor’s
jaws going with a foretaste of delight.

“‘Gobble-gobble! I could eat you, my beauty!’ says he, just as a
rapturous mother talks to her child.

“You should have seen the turkey ruffle and swell to be called beauty.

“‘Put up your tail,’ says the mayor, ‘and the dear little pope’s nose!
There’s no Juno’s peacock can spread such a fan!’ says he.

“The cage would hardly contain the bird at that. He expanded at the
very sound of the mayor’s footstep afterwards; and he discarded his
food almost entirely, as something too gross for the consideration of
a better than Juno’s peacock. The mayor wondered; but he couldn’t
discount the evidence of his own eyes.

“‘That Huggins is a cunning one,’ he thought. ‘He knows what he’s
about’--which was very true.

“Well, at length the festive day arrived, and the mayor went to take a
last look at his beauty before consigning him to his cook. He was
almost in tears. He’d been starving himself for a week, in
anticipation of the feast, and perhaps that was the reason.

“‘Darling!” he said, ‘my whole being craves for you! There never was
such a beautiful turkey in the world!’

“Bang! went the bird. It was like a paper bag exploding. And there
before the mayor’s eyes was just a little sack of bones and feathers.
The creature’s pride had been nothing but wind; and that was a turkey
all over.

“It was Christmas Day, not a market open, and Huggins was avenged.”

The lecturer ended amidst shouts of laughter and applause. In the
midst, he sat down to the “Seraphine,” and was fingering out the first
bars of a new hymn, when some one coming up on to the platform
whispered to him. He rose hurriedly, and, listening a moment or two,
as hurriedly left the room. The audience, including ourselves,
relaxed, at his going, into a babble of talk and merriment.

“Prime, isn’t it, Mr. Pilbrow?” said Harry, grinning and rubbing his
hands.

“If you introduce me to nothing worse,” answered the visitor, “I shall
love Dunberry for itself.”

“That reminds me,” I said. “I never thought of it before. If we’re
going to take him to see the wreck to-morrow, Harry, where shall we
get a boat?”

“H’m!” said my friend. “That requires consideration, to be sure.
They’re all laid up for the holidays, I suppose.”

“Well, we must see,” said I, and, in the act of speaking, turned my
head.

Now there was a row of wooden pillars behind us, supporting a gallery,
which threw into comparative darkness the space underneath; and
projected round that pillar nearest us, and leaned out of the
darkness, hung the face of Rampick. It was ghastly pale, the jaw
loose, the livid spectacles about the eyes horribly emphasized; and
its expression was one of an unnerved and listening sickness that made
me shudder. In the very act of my looking, it was snatched back; and I
saw the man himself going, lurching heavily, but on tiptoe, into the
gloom and away.

To say that I was startled would be but to express ill my feelings.
All the doubts and agitations of the earlier evening trooped upon me
again, like a cold cloud. Had he followed us for a purpose? and, if
so, for what purpose? He had long slunk out of all attendance at these
feasts. For some reason, it seemed--we could only assume what--we had
become objects of mixed terror and fascination to him. He must have
picked himself up from that fall, and stealthily shadowed us hither,
where, it was evident, he had taken up a position cautiously to
observe and overhear us.

I bent towards Harry to whisper to him; but before I could secure his
attention, a stir and silence ran through the room, and there, on the
platform, was our parish clerk holding up his hand. He came to say
that Mr. Sant had been summoned hastily to the Court, where an old
servant of the squire was reported at death’s door, and to request the
audience to take his apologies and disperse.

As we rose, I looked at Harry dumbly and significantly.

So here were we again baulked for the moment of our confession. It was
under the spirit of a fall from gaiety to a very real depression that
I said good night to my friends.




 CHAPTER IX.
 THE WEARY SANDS.

But the morning, rising cold and bright, though still misty, found
me on the rebound once more. The day, after all, is what we make it,
and I _would_ not think evil of so smiling a one. Mr. Sant was back,
even if we could not see him yet, and his mere neighbourhood was a
splint to a weak-knee’d conscience.

Uncle Jenico, though still oppressed with some odd premonition, some
formless concern about me, permitted himself to be reassured so far by
my high spirits as to let me go presently, with nothing more than an
earnest entreaty that I would take care of myself. I had told him
nothing about our proposed trip to the Weary Sands. It would have
served no purpose but to trouble him all day with anxiety as to our
return. I was glad to think, later, that I had not done so; that I had
sat content with him for an hour or two after breakfast; had kept him
chatting genially, and made him laugh; had taken a genuine bright
interest in the “Colossal Wrench,” an invention (which he was engaged
in perfecting at the time) somewhat on the principle of the Spanish
garrotte, for applying tremendous haulage to an object--the most
gratifyingly practical of all his inspirations, as you shall see. And
I was glad to think that when at last I had left him, well on in the
morning, in a sudden access of emotion he had kissed me, and then
driven me away with his stick, and a laugh, and the tears in his eyes.
I had been half shamefaced, it is true, at the moment; but presently
was to sentimentalize more over the memory than he had over the fact.

We were engaged, Harry and I, by arrangement for this day to the
convoying of Mr. Pilbrow about the place, in order to his making
acquaintance with its objects of interest. It was nothing, in fact,
but an excuse for a ramble; only, to give it a holiday complexion, we
had arranged to bring our lunch with us, and our visitor back to high
tea at the end of the jaunt.

I set forth about eleven o’clock for the Flask, where we were to meet.
The shadows of the previous night were dispelled. A still, shining
mist half hid and half revealed, like a bridal veil, the pretty face
of nature. There was a smile and a sparkle of gems through it all, and
I whistled, as happy as a blackbird, as I went. It was within three
mornings of Christmas, a time of peace and good-will, and I was
determined to let the day be sufficient for itself in evil without
troubling to force its hand.

On the wall of the inn I found a wonderful notice posted. It was
written crooked, in great black letters and without any stops, and ran
as follows:--

 “Nekt Thrusday 26t Desrember there will be on Plaistoo Jingling
 matches for Hats grinning thro coler Catching of a pig with the Tail
 greazed climing of a pole of wemen Running For Snuff old Men for
 tobakker there will be also a place receved for dancing and seats Will
 be also receved for the Leadies there will be a band including marrow
 bons and clever to conclude with a grand Exbitrition of Fire wax and
 Cullerd bumps by J.F.”

Harry joined me while I was spluttering over this, and read the
exciting legend across my shoulder.

“I say,” he said, “Mr. Pilbrow’s in luck. He’ll think we’re a game
lot. I only hope the reaction won’t be too severe. But what does
‘bumps’ mean? Is Sant getting up a sparring match?”

“Bombs, you gaby,” I said, sniggering.

“Mighty!” said he. “Old Fleming’s going it. But won’t it be fun!”

Then he fell to a little gravity.

“By the way,” he said, “Sant hasn’t come home yet, and they don’t
expect him at the rectory till this afternoon.”

It was the first little damper on my serenity.

“O, well!” I said, with a sigh; “we shall be out for the day anyhow;
and it don’t make much difference if we can only get hold of him this
evening. You saw Rampick last night?”

“Yes,” he answered. “Bother Rampick for this day at least!”

We ran up in good spirits to Joshua, and in a little while were
launched upon our explorations. Our odd dry old companion was quite
excited, too, in his way. It was the most novel, most wonderful
experience to him, I think, thus to chaperon a couple of lively lads,
and be their favoured charge and mentor in one. He kept himself acrid
and reserved--it was the habit of his life; but a certain glistening
in his pale eyes, a spot of colour that established itself in his lean
cheek, spoke of some spark reawakening in those long-chilled ashes of
his soul underneath. There was even some glow of self-marvelling
enthusiasm in that haunting gaze of his, of which I found myself from
time to time the cynosure. It was like the glare of a remorseful ghost
coveting recognition in heaven’s nursery by its own child’s happy
spirit. “What human sympathy have I foregone and realized too late!”
it seemed to express.

We betook ourselves in the first place--by Joshua’s rather insistent
wish, but, secretly, against our own--to the ruins, and for an hour
poked about among them wearily, loitering after our guest, and
supplying, scarcely volunteering, all that of their history with which
we were acquainted--impersonally, that is to say. The truth is, the
place had become odious to us--as full of sordid significances as is a
house in which a murder has been committed, when we know ourselves
subpoena’d to give evidence on the crime. But naturally our companion
felt none of this, and was only absorbed and interested, so far as
appeared, in the archaeological testimony. Once, at the end, he
paused, as fatality would have it, close by the plinth and the
encumbered thicket. I glanced at Harry. _A second time, patiently and
scrupulously, had the hole been stopped, and the traces of our visit
effaced._

What did the man mean? Did he, in his diseased imagination, think thus
to convince us in the face of our actual experience? It was like
enough. His unnerving dreams are so real to the drunkard, he cannot
but think that others must see what he sees and be blind to what he
has successfully hidden from himself. He is like the ostrich in his
amazing digestion of both facts and fables, Whether he puts fire in
his stomach or his head in the sand, he is equally the confident and
incurable dupe of his own imagination.

Suddenly Joshua, after a prolonged reverie, half turned to us.

“Are there any legends of crypts, underground vaults, anything that we
have not seen about here?” he demanded.

I was startled; I could not order my thoughts. I mumbled out
involuntarily--

“I--there used to be a talk of smugglers.”

He turned upon me like a snapping dog.

“Smugglers! What about them?”

Harry glanced at me warningly.

“O!” I said, recovering myself with a flush, “it was an old tale when
we came, Mr. Pilbrow; and, since, the weather and the coastguard have
been knocking it to pieces between them.”

He stood thoughtfully rubbing his chin.

“So?” he murmured. “Knocking what to pieces?”

“Why, the tale,” said I; for I did not wish to be more particular.

I don’t know if he understood my reluctance. He did not persist in his
questions, anyhow, but lapsed into a brown study. He seemed to have
forgotten our presence.

“So it ever vanishes,” he muttered, with a stark and melancholy frown.
“From Dungeness to Spurn Head it is always the same. The past breaks
away and falls into the sea as I approach. The ghosts lead, the mirage
beckons me; and, behold! the precipice and the boom of waters where I
had thought a treasure house!”

He gave a sigh that was nothing less than heart-rending. A certain awe
and discomfort kept us mute. Here was some tragedy beyond our
guessing, but to which we were guiltily conscious that our
secretiveness contributed. Then in a moment he turned upon us with a
laugh in which there was not even a tinge of mirth.

“If there is any land too much in the world,” said he, “put me to walk
upon its shore, and it will vanish before me yard by yard. My breath
is blasting powder; my feet are earthquakes. I must drown if I live
long enough.”

He walked off towards the cliff, and paused at its edge, looking down
gloomily on the leaning shaft of the well.

“He is thinking of Abel and his book,” I whispered to Harry as we
followed.

Suddenly he turned to me, and put his arm through mine with an air
emotional and apologetic.

“Dear lad,” he said, “you mustn’t consider my moods. I talk to myself,
Richard--the bad habit of a lonely man. What is that thing, now? I
have wondered before this.”

I told him.

“Ah!” he said, with a bleak jocosity: “let well be. It should have
confronted me six years ago; and I see it only now, the moral of all
my wanderings. Yet in a good hour is it spoken, Richard, since chance
has brought me to your company again. Or is it destiny, which leading
me to neglect this scrap of shore hitherto, points its lesson at the
end with the broken shaft yonder? Let well be. I am hungry.”

So we sat down then and there and got out our provisions. They put
astonishing comfort into us, and we two boys, at least, grew
hilarious. Sound-livered and hardened, we took no thought of chill;
and indeed the weather for the time of year was balm. A light
glistening fog still slept over everything; there was no breath of
wind, and the whisper of the surf came up to us drowsily.

“Now, this wreck,” said Joshua presently: “where will it be?”

Harry jumped to his feet.

“Mighty!” he exclaimed. “We must be thinking of moving if we want to
pull out to it. Tide’s at ebb, Dicky, and near the turn. Thereabouts
it lies, Mr. Pilbrow, on the Weary Sands; but we can’t just make it
out in this haze.”

“Well, for the boat,” I said, scrambling up; and we all made for the
Gap together. It was then half an hour past midday.

“A bad time,” said I. “What fools we were not to think of it before!
There won’t be a soul about.”

There was one soul, however, it appeared--a gaunt solitary figure,
which, as we neared the head of the sandy slope, we could see
silhouetted against the sky--a figure, too, which, from its restless
craning attitude, one might have thought was expecting us.

Harry edged up to me, and was on the point of whispering, when he
caught Joshua’s eyes fixed upon him. He giggled, and looked silly.

“I was thinking, sir,” began he, “that that man there----” and then he
stopped.

“Well, what about him?” said the other.

“Why,” said Harry, so confused as to forget himself--“if--if you want
to know about smugglers, he’s the chap to tell you, that’s all.”

I nudged my friend.

“Well,” he muttered peevishly; “I’ve not said anything, have I?
Rampick can look after himself.”

Joshua did not answer, and we went on--and in the same moment Rampick
was gone.

But we saw him again when we came into view of the beach. He was down
by the water, ostentatious with a boat, which lay stern on to the
surf--the only man and the only craft handy in all the waste prospect.

Joshua stopped in admiration.

“A providence, it seems to me!” said he.

“We can’t go with _him_!” I muttered.

Our visitor looked at me in wonder.

“Why not?” he said.

How could I answer? That this seeming opportuneness was nothing more,
as I was convinced, than a deliberate self-appropriation by this man
of a scheme which he had overheard us discussing in the hall last
night? And what then, save a confession on his part of a good trading
instinct? I must find something better than that.

“He’s a drunkard,” I said, flushing. “He isn’t to be trusted, in my
opinion.”

“Why?” said Joshua. “Isn’t it his own boat?”

“O yes!” I answered; for it was, indeed--the single sound piece of
goods which Rampick had saved and clung to out of the wreck of his
past.

“Isn’t it big enough?” insisted the visitor.

“Quite big enough.”

“Why,” said Joshua, “a seaman never loses his legs but ashore. And we
are three to one, gentlemen. I’m small; but I’ll back myself for a rat
to grip. If it’s me you’re thinking of----”

Harry hung his head. I was ashamed to say more. It did seem ridiculous
that three vigorous bodies should be timorous of this one crazy oaf.
The half-truth made us out cravens, and the whole was impossible.
Nevertheless, the prospect of such a boatman for the trip quite took
off the edge of its pleasure. We followed Joshua hangdog, as he strode
down the Gap and across the beach.

“You’ve whetted my curiosity,” he said over his shoulder. “A drunken
smuggler should be good company.”

I scowled at Harry, dropping behind.

“Well, why didn’t you take upon yourself to answer him?” he muttered
viciously. “We’re in for a nice thing, it seems, knowing what we know.
It’ll be pleasant to have to hob-nob with the fellow, and a warrant
for his hanging like in our pockets!”

“He’s brought it on himself,” I answered. “He heard us last night; and
I’ll swear he’s been ready and waiting for us all the morning.”

“Well, look out for squalls, that’s all I can say,” said my friend;
and, as he spoke, we reached the boat.

Rampick, busy over it, never even looked up as we came. But I could
see his great hands trembling on the thwarts, as he leaned down.

“We want to pull out to the wreck, Mr. Rampick,” I faltered. “Can you
let us have your boat?”

I essayed to exclude him, as a last resource. He did not raise his
head, but answered in a heavy shaking voice from where he bent.

“Which it’s well known _to_ you, sir, that my boat and me don’t part
company.”

“It’s a special occasion, Mr. Rampick.”

He came up, with a sudden heaving together of all his bulk, and
subsiding rigidly backwards against the gunwale, stood breathing
softly, and staring with intense unblinking eyes, _not at us, but at
our companion_.

So a cat stares at bay, crouching before a watchful snuffing dog. I
don’t think he ever once looked at Harry or me. From that moment he
seemed to focus all the panic of his haunted soul on the stranger who
had come in our train. It was inexplicable, though in its way a relief
to us for the time being--the sort of relief one feels when some
deriding gutter urchin attracts from one to himself the unwelcome
notice of the town drunkard.

“_Which_, it’s well known,” he whispered breathless.

His demented gaze wandered from Joshua’s face to his knees, where it
fixed itself.

“‘And He said,’” he muttered, “‘Lazarus, come forth!’ And they found
the stone rolled away from the sepulchre. It’s come to it--a special
occasion. One _or_ the other of us. Boat, sir, yes. But I never done
it. _You_ ought to know--one, _or_ the other of us.”

“Then the other, by all means,” said Joshua, caustic but interested.
“My good man, we don’t want to separate you from your boat. If your
presence is indispensable, why, we’ll put up with it.”

Rampick, I could have thought, went a shade more livid. His dry lips
seemed to crackle under his hand as he passed the back of it over
them. Yet, strangely enough, I did not believe him drunk. He seemed
rather in that arid, aghast condition which, with such a man, bespeaks
a temporary abstinence.

Suddenly he heaved himself upright, and began heavily to busy himself
with preparations for launching his craft. We all lent a hand, and in
another minute, with a slide and a jump, were on board and slipping
easily over the shoreward swell.

Not then, when he had settled himself to his sculls, we being all
seated in the stern, did he for a moment take his eyes off our
visitor. Sympathetically, I shrunk under that concentrated stare; but
Joshua bore it unruffled. Still, there was something in the atmosphere
to freeze our loquacity. For a long time none of us spoke at all.
There had not been air enough to fill a sail; and the monotonous bump
and creak of the oars in the rowlocks beat a dreary accompaniment to
our depression.

At length Harry essayed a little weak conciliation.

“Tide’ll hold for us to land and see the wreck, won’t it, Mr.
Rampick?” he said.

His voice broke the spell, and to strange effect. The ex-smuggler did
not answer him; but he suddenly ceased rowing, and, resting on his
sculls, felt out with his foot, and kicked Joshua softly on the shins.

“What are you doing?” snapped the victim, jerking his insulted limbs
under him. “What do you mean, man?”

Rampick cowered where he sat.

“I see you walk, sir,” he said hoarsely. “I see you _with_ my own
eyes. It’s not in nature, is it? You was kep’ from it, I say--held by
the legs from rising. Who let you loose? Who patched you up to follow
me? My God, I’ll be even with ’em, I will!”

He was working himself up to a mad pitch of excitement. I half rose in
agitation, and looked behind me. We were already so far from the shore
that its line of cliffs was a mere blurred bank in the haze. But
Joshua, in the same instant, had seized the occasion to justify the
character he had given of himself.

“Silence!” he said, not loud, but in a tone like a vice. “Who speaks
of being out of nature, you crazy patch! Row on, and mind your
business, which is to take us to the wreck!”

The maniac creature shrunk, as quickly as he had flamed up, under the
bitter voice. Lowering and trembling he applied himself to his sculls
once more, and the boat sped on.

“Harry,” I whispered, pale and gulping. “Did you understand?”

“Yes. Him that lies with the pistol in the hill yonder. He thinks it’s
Mr. Pilbrow, and that we’ve set him free!”

He ended with an hysterical giggle. Here, in truth, it appeared, was
this bedlamite’s attitude towards our guest explained. The infection
of Harry’s laugh over the absurdity seized me. I struggled in vain to
control myself. In another moment we were both of us doubling and
rolling as if the devil were tickling our ribs.

Joshua expressed no surprise, but nodded intelligently as we gasped
ourselves sober again. He attributed our merriment, no doubt, to a
general sense of the ludicrous in this wretched creature’s wanderings,
of the likelihood of any significance or coherence in which he had, of
course, no idea. As for the man himself, he regarded Harry and me no
further than if we had been squeaking mice behind a wainscot; but sat
with his vision attached once more, and more cringingly than ever, to
the little wintry, venomous figure in the stern.

We recovered ourselves, half fearful, from our convulsion, feeling
rather, I think, like fugitives who had consciously betrayed their own
whereabouts. But the explosion, in fact, had relieved the air; and
thenceforth we began to talk together, moved by a common rebellion
against the moral tyranny of the depression which had held us
hitherto. But, for all that, it startled us near out of our skins,
when Joshua of a sudden turned upon Rampick, and asked him roundly if
he hadn’t any good smuggling yarns to recount to him.

“Of hidden stores, and black nights,” said he; “and the ground giving
up a sudden swarm of mushroom creatures, things squat and stealthy,
shouldering kegs?”

Rampick’s chest had seemed to fall in at the first word. It was
painful to hear his breathing. But he made no attempt to answer.

“Come!” said Joshua. “It’s fast confidences, man. You know what you
know. These young gentlemen have given you away--but no further than
to me, mind. Come! What happened underground in those days, before the
sea took its toll of the vaults?”

“Why, you should know, sir--_as_ well as me!”

Such a funny little voice, so strained and hoarse, like a cry at a
great distance. Joshua himself was startled by it, moved, perhaps, by
its distress. He persisted no further, but shrugged his shoulders, and
turned to address us again.

In the meanwhile we were approaching the wreck, which for some time
now had been visible to us. It hung oddly in the mist--suspended, as
it seemed, in the mid-haze of sky and water, like a wreck painted on
glass. Still, seen through that illusive medium, it appeared a
phantom, far-off thing, when to our surprise, grown absorbed as we
were in contemplation of it, our boatman gave a final stroke, and
finished on it with his sculls poised.

“No further?” said I, rising all excitement now. “Can’t you take us
any further, Mr. Rampick?”

I’ll swear that not once during our approach had he turned his head to
canvass our distance or direction. Old crafty smuggler as he was, he
had hit his mark blindfold as it were. Even as I spoke, I was aware of
something stretching its endless length across our course--a great
soft, iridescent fish-shaped bulk, as it might be a vast submarine
monster floating dead and motionless on the surface. It shone sleek
and fawny, and pitted with little blue scales of water; and in the
instant of my recognizing it, our boat had floated on, and, with the
way given it, had grated its nose softly in its flank.

Following the little shock and recoil, we were all on our feet.

“The sands!” whispered Harry, with glistening eyes. “That was clever
of you, Mr. Rampick.”

We did not, he or I, demur to our enemy’s silence. It would have made
no difference if we had. His regard, his consideration, were still all
for our companion.

Across the glimmering lifts of sand, the wreck, now we were brought
stationary, seemed to draw nearer and clearer--a phantom still, yet
claiming some foothold on this unreal reality of an amphibious little
continent. Only a broken poop it was, tilted up and its mighty
entrails spilt into the drift. Another storm, any rough weather, would
scatter it for ever; yet no plundered town could have stood a symbol
of more awful and pathetic desolation. The haze blurred and magnified
it to us where we stood; so that, huge relic as it was in reality, it
looked nothing less than gigantic. Gazing on it, its ruin and
isolation in that mist of waters, I felt as one might feel in
alighting on a fallen colossus in a desert.

“Are we to land here?” said Joshua, breaking through the spell which
had overtaken me.

“Aye,” answered the smuggler, in that one terse, low monosyllable, and
with his eyes never leaving the other’s face.

“Go, you,” said Joshua, turning briskly to us two. “I will wait here,
and take my turn when you’ve finished.”

We hesitated, questioning him with a dumb glance.

“Come!” he said. “The tide, as I reckon, don’t stand on ceremony.”

“Why should we any of us go, Mr. Pilbrow?” I spoke up quickly. “We can
see all we want to see from here.”

“Nonsense!” he said sharply. “Who’ll credit our adventure if we don’t
bring back her name?”

We still hung reluctant; but he drove us good-humouredly forward, and
out over the bow. Looking back, after we had leapt to the reeking sand
and were hurrying to cross it, I saw him still standing there, taut
and resolute, to wave us on.

“I don’t like it, Harry,” I said; “I don’t like it. And no more did
he, or he wouldn’t have stayed by Rampick. Let’s hurry all we can.”

“Well, come on!” panted my friend. “The quicker we’re there, the
quicker we shall be back.”

Yard by yard, as we traversed the broad spit of sand, the looming ribs
of the wreck seemed to shrink, and materialize, and take on outline.
And then, in a moment, with an involuntary gasp, we had pulled up, and
were standing staring. For between us and our quarry had come suddenly
into view an unguessed-at channel of dim water, a hundred feet it
might be across.

Harry wheeled.

“He’s done us!” he exclaimed. “He’s meaning some mischief, I’ll swear.
Come back, Dick!”

With the word we were running. For a moment the bulge of the drift hid
the boat from our view. The next, we had topped it, and breathed with
relief to see the figure of Joshua still standing up at the bow as we
had left him. For an instant only; and, in that instant, Rampick,
catching sight of our returning forms, rose hurriedly and stealthily,
with one of his sculls clubbed to strike. We screeched out together.
The warning was quick to save Joshua from the worst, but not from
secondary consequences. Instinctively he ducked, as the blade flashed
over his head; but the act toppled him from his balance, and he fell
from the boat prone upon the sand, from which he rolled down,
clutching, into the sea. In the same moment, Rampick, using the scull
he had swung for lever, pushed off from the bank, hurriedly seated
himself, and in a stroke or two was out at safe distance and in deep
water, where he held up, breathing stertorously as he regarded us.

By this time we were down at the edge, and, flinging ourselves flat,
had caught at Joshua’s hands, where they clawed and slipped in the
slobber of wet sand. The drift took the water at a deepish angle, but
it was firm above for knee-hold; and in a minute or two we had drawn
him up far enough to enable him to get a bite with his own nails, and
then the rest was easy. As he sat to recover himself, crowing and
spitting but not otherwise greatly discomposed, Harry jumped to his
feet, and hailed the madman furiously--

“Come back!”

Rampick, resting on his oars, chewed his dry lips for moisture, but
answered nothing.

“Come back!” screamed Harry; “or I’ll fetch you!”

He dropped, and slipped knee-deep into the water as he cried, as if to
verify his threat, insane one as he knew it to be. The sea was near
quiet as a mill-pond, and Rampick had only to pull a couple of
indifferent strokes to increase the distance between us by some
fathoms. I thought he was going to abandon us altogether and at once,
and in an agony hailed him on my own account--

“Mr. Rampick! why don’t you come back? You aren’t going to leave us to
drown here!”

He leaned forward, always watchful of us, and, groping under the
thwarts, fetched up a black bottle, which he uncorked and put to his
lips--a rejoicing swill. It gave him nerve and voice. He sagged down,
between maudlin and triumphant, and answered, with a hoarse defiant
laugh--

“I am, though!”

“Mr. Rampick!” I cried, “what have we done to you?”

He drank again. Every addition of this fuel made the devil roar in
him.

“Done!” he yelled. “See _how_ you done--_fur_ yourselves, my hearties!
You’d let him out, would you! You’d make the dead walk _to_ testify
agen me! I know you. You’ve plotted and schemed agen me from the
first, you parson’s whelps--and here’s what it come to. I was on the
way to salvation--_till_ you crossed me--once too often. The sands ’ll
keep my secret _and_ yourn. Let him out to walk, you will; but not to
swim--my God, I had you there--old Jole had you there, my bucks!”

He poured down more fire, and howled and drummed his feet in a
gloating frenzy.

“Had you there!” he shrieked. “You may quicken him out of fire--_out_
of rocks and fire; but you _fur_got as water squenches fire. Thought
old Jole crazy, did you--poor old Jole, whose fortunes went out in the
spark as him there lighted. And all the time he lay low _to_ get even
with you. _Has_ he done it? _Did_ he choose his time crafty? _Did_ any
one see us? When your drownded corpses comes in with the tide, who’ll
know the truth? Jole--and Jole can keep a secret, once all prying apes
is laid _from_ forcing his hand.”

He shook to the roaring of his own voice. The reverberating fire in
his brain deafened him to any reason, reassurance, protest. We cried
to him in our distraction to listen, only to calm himself and listen.
Our appeals could not penetrate the pandemonium in that maniac soul.
In the midst Joshua, all amazed and at sea as he was, rose to add his
entreaties to ours. The effect was disastrous. At the vision of him,
strung as if to fly, his coat-tails spread, the madman gripped his
oars convulsively.

“Lie down!” he screamed. “What’s death to you! I ain’t going to stop!
I never could abide the sight of it!”

And with the word he was pulling furiously away.

We still shrieked to him vainly. We ran up and down the sand. For the
moment I felt quite blind and delirious.

All was of no avail. Yard by yard the boat drew away into the
thickening mist; grew dim and dimmer, a phantom of itself; and, while
still the thump of its rowlocks drummed thickly into our ears,
vanished and was gone.

And then at last we came together, and, halting, looked into one
another’s pallid faces like dead souls meeting on the banks of Styx.




 CHAPTER X.
 THE DARKEST HOUR.

The memory of that awful time is soothed and assuaged to me by
virtue of the strong soul who, under Providence, was given to us to
command it. If destiny had used him its instrument to precipitate the
tragedy, long, I am sure, hanging over our heads, it had done so
consciously, by higher command, in order to neutralize the effects of
its own inexorable decree. So thought Mr. Sant presently; and
gratefully we acquiesced, giving thanks to Providence. Like children,
we had played with fire, not realizing, nor, I think, deserving the
consequences. All honour, then, after God, to His little
self-possessed deputy, who of his confidence and resolution helped us
to the nerve to escape them.

For a time Harry and I--I may surely admit it without shame--were
beside ourselves. To be thus cast away and abandoned on a sandbank in
mid-ocean--for to all appearances, and intents and purposes, our fate
seemed nothing less--it was horrible beyond words. An hour--perhaps
two hours--and a lingering death must overtake us. Already--we could
see by the near lines of foam, could gather from the changed whisper
of the tide--the seaward surges were freshening to their return. We
hurried to and fro, wringing our hands, crying for impossible help,
never once in our distraction holding escape as conceivable save by
external agency. The bank on which we stood stretched north and south,
a sleek, hateful mockery. It were useless to traverse it up and down;
yet we went, as if to hurry this way and that over it were to summon
of our agonized need a causeway to the unseen shore five miles
distant; we went, until the terror of ranging adrift, beyond recovery,
from our one hope of resource, already grown a desolate phantom behind
us in the mist, sent us frantically back to the side of the motionless
figure, which had not once stirred since we parted from it raving.

“Mr. Pilbrow!” I cried. “_What_ are we to do?”

“Ah!” he answered, sharp as an echo: “to command yourselves!”

It was like a tonic of steel served from a pistol.

“We will--we do,” said Harry, forcing down his terror in one great
gulp. “Dick, don’t be a fool!”

Some shame, I think, stiffened me. The debility of despair conceded a
hope to the mere prospect of discussion. What a courage was this to
succumb without an effort; to have reason, and yield it to the shadow
falling before the fact!

“All right,” I muttered. “I’m an ass. Only let him tell us what we’re
to do. He brought this on us, you know.”

He showed no resentment of my bitterness.

“Yes,” he said, in a strong quiet voice. “I brought this on you,
Richard; for you warned me and I overruled your warning, being
sceptical without knowledge, which is the boast of fools. The man was
mad, and I thought to control him with reason, having failed in that
as in everything else. Now accursed shall I be in the eyes of my
co-trustee, your dear uncle.”

His mention of Uncle Jenico quite upset me again.

“O!” I cried violently, “what do _you_ matter! If you drown, you’ve
only yourself to thank. _He_ would have stopped my going, but I
wouldn’t tell him anything about it, because I thought it was nonsense
to be afraid. And now he’ll wait and wait, and we shall never come,
and it will break his heart.”

He stood before me, dripping wet, a most wretched, pathetic expression
on his face. It was due less, I knew, to despair than to sorrow over
my revolt against him. At the vision of it I was moved even against my
will to remorse.

“Well,” I said miserably, “I don’t want to put all the blame on you,
though you might have given me credit for a reason. You don’t know
what we know about the man, or his interest in shutting our mouths. I
ought to have told you, perhaps; but the secret was saving for another
who has more right to it. It doesn’t matter now. We only want to get
out of this--Mr. Pilbrow, do you hear? O, please think of something!
There must be a way! To stand here, and----”

“Richard!” he cried, in great emotion. He half advanced, holding out
his hand, then suddenly commanded himself, let it fall, and became in
a moment a figure of passionless resolution.

“You are right,” he said, dryly defining and articulating each word.
“This is no time for recriminations. We must compose ourselves--must
think. The way out of a trap is never the way in. That is where men
waste themselves. Now, tell me: nobody knows of our coming here?”

“Nobody,” I said, “nor saw us take the boat. There isn’t a hope of our
being rescued from the shore. We can’t see it, even; and if _we_ could
be made out here, who’s abroad to mark us? Besides, even if any one
did, there’s bare time, even now, to put off and cover the distance
before----”

“H’mph!” he pondered, frowning and fondling his gritty chin. Then he
turned to my friend.

“How long have we?” he asked.

Harry gave a desperate glance seawards.

“Say an hour here--perhaps two, if we climbed the wreck. But there’s
deep water between. Ah! you didn’t know that, did you? but there
is--and you----”

Joshua made a gesture of dissent.

“No,” he said, “I can’t swim. Leave me out of the question. But you
two can, I know. Why shouldn’t _you_ reach the shore?”

Harry shook his head.

“The tide’s running in, it’s true; but five miles, and in December!”

He ended with a despairing shrug.

“Very well,” said Joshua, so prompt and decided that he made us jump.
“Then the wreck’s our one asset; and we’ll just go and see the best
use we can make of it.”

With the word, he was striding over the sand, and, sprung to some
sudden thrill of hope at his confidence, we followed him, our hearts
thumping.

When we came down to the little strait, we found it already and
undoubtedly widened. The cream of incoming surf showed more boldly
over the lip of the further bank where the wreck lay; and between that
and ourselves there was a sense of busier movement, as it might be
water yawning and stretching after sleep.

“Now,” said Joshua, sharp as a lash, “swim across to her.”

“Swim! At once?” I exclaimed. “And what about you?”

“I’ve told you to leave me out,” he said, dry and composed. “You must
swim, as you can’t jump. I’ll wait you here. Maybe you’ll find the
means to float back on boards or such.”

Then we saw what was in his mind. It was a chance against all odds,
and so poor a one, that we had hardly considered it, I think, in our
agitation. The storm, we felt, must have gutted the carcase as clean
as a dressed ox’s. Nothing detachable, but must have been wrenched and
flung away. From where we stood, indeed, only the framework of the
poop, gaunt, and inflexible, and rigid in its suggestion of ribs and
spars shattered but unyielding, appeared to have survived its furious
sacking by the waves. Moreover, a certain suspicion had come to us
that Rampick had not now made his first acquaintance with the wreck;
that, even perhaps so early as the serving of the last ebb, when fresh
from hearing of our plans, he had rowed over to examine his ground by
lantern-light, and to make sure--as so cunning a madman would--that no
contingency of crate or cask or loosened plank should be allowed to
mar his wicked purpose.

Though we might or might not be right in this (in point of fact, I
believe, we were right), our hope, looking upon that lean account of
ruin, was a very little hope. Still, for what it was, it lost nothing
in inspiration from the self-confidence of our companion. I turned a
desperate inquiring glance on Harry.

“Come!” he said, in answer; and, without another word between us, we
had slipped down and taken the water.

As for that, it was chill enough, but, to traverse the interval,
child’s play for swimmers so young and hardy. In five minutes we had
emerged, sleek and dripping, on the further side, and the wreck was
close before us.

We shook ourselves like dogs, and ran up the sand. The shivered frame
of the thing lay pitched on the sharp back of the drift, where the
poor ship must have dumped herself to be broken like a stick across a
housemaid’s knee. What remained was a melancholy witness to the
impotence of man’s bravest efforts to command Nature in her passions.
She must have been a fine craft, of many thousand tons burden, by
evidence of this fragment. _Ex pede Herculem_. Now, the forlorn
remnant of her was so shattered as to look, at these close quarters,
more like the wreck of a blown-down hoarding than of a gallant vessel.
Wryed, and gaping, and burst apart, her ribs had been stripped, inside
and out, of everything that could be torn away and swallowed; so that
what survived, survived by virtue of a tenacity, which, inasmuch as it
had defied the wrench of the storm, was little likely to yield _us_
salvage.

And, indeed, we reached her only to find our apprehensions confirmed.
Shorn through her waist, it appeared, close off by the poop, and her
fore-part lifted, and rolled, and ravished God knew whither, she had
disgorged her vitals into the gulf to the last bolt, so that not one
loose board of her remained to reward us, unless buried beyond our
recovery in the sand, into which the jagged wound of her emptied trunk
was plugged.

We climbed, and pulled, and tested, running hither and thither. We
fell upon our knees, and with our hands dug frantically, until they
bled, into the wedged drift. It yielded nothing. From time to time we
desisted, and gazed, in a panic of fear, at the water, where, but a
few yards beyond and below her stern, it rustled and curvetted,
advancing and retreating, and advancing yet another step to play
cat-like with our anguish.

At last, and for the last time of many, we mounted the slope of
stubborn planks, to struggle with some fractured balk of timber, some
broken rib end, which might seem to promise yielding to our frenzied
blows and kicks. It was all of no avail. Like lost souls we paused,
looking down on a litter of splinters, our great need’s only
recompense; and, “O, my God!” whispered Harry, and staggered back
where he stood, and flung himself, quite ill and overcome, upon the
bulwarks.

He was up by the broken stern-post, and, sick to note the rising of
the tide, he looked down. On the instant he uttered a wild
exclamation, jumped to his feet, went over the side, and vanished.

I was poising myself a little below on the slope of the deck. At his
cry I dropped and slipped, landed at the bottom, recovered my feet,
and raced round to meet him. Then I, too, uttered a yell; for here,
unnoticed by us before, was at least a straw of hope to catch at.

It was a great spar, which lay down the slope of the sand, with some
wreck of tackle yet tangled about it, and its butt wedged under the
stern of the ship.

“Lord!” shrieked my friend. “Come and pull, Dicky! O, Lord! Come and
pull!”

He was skipping and sobbing as if he were cracked. “Get a purchase!”
he screeched. “We must have it out if we bust ourselves!”

I had sprung and seized on it even as he spoke. To lift it was far
beyond our strength; but straining and hauling our mightiest, we found
we could shift it a little, right and left, like a colossal dead tooth
in its socket.

“O, if we only had Uncle Jenico’s wrench!” I panted, as we paused a
moment in exhaustion. We were quite breathless and white. The sweat,
for all the weather, was running down our faces.

“Harry!” I groaned piteously, “if we can’t get it out now, after all
this--this----”

The look in his eyes stopped me. The despair was quite gone from them,
and the old breezy fearlessness returned.

“But we’re going to get it out,” he cried, “and without Uncle Jenico’s
wrench, too.”

His gay new confidence was revivifying, amazing. My heart, for all its
terror, was beginning to expand in the radiance of it.

“How?” I gasped. “Don’t keep me waiting, you--you old beast!”

“I’ll show you,” he said; and with the word was down among the tackle,
unknotting and pulling.

I watched him breathless--helped him where I could. Between us, in a
few minutes, we had disentangled many fathoms of unbroken rope, and
still there was more to come. We wrought hurriedly, feverishly, with
one eye always on the rising water.

“Let it only wait,” said Harry through his teeth, “till we’ve got this
clear, and then it may come as fast as it likes.”

I worked on hard, not asking him why. Perhaps I had a lingering horror
that his answer would disillusion me, show this shadow of hope a
heart-breaking chimera. And still stealthily the tide crept up, and
still we had not done.

But at length the last kink was unravelled, and we rose with a shout.
One end of the rope was still fastened tight to a ring-bolt in the
spar at its seaward end. The other Harry shouldered, and with it
turned to run up the bank.

“Do you understand yet, gaby?” he demanded, grinning triumphant.

“You are going to get a haul on the thing, to one side and further
up?”

“Yes, I am.”

My spirits sank a little.

“We shan’t be able to move it that way any more than we did
before--anyhow, not to pull it out of its hold.”

“Shan’t we? Wait and see.”

“O, Harry! Don’t be such a fiend.”

“Why, Dicky, you stoopid, look here. I examined the thing, which you
didn’t, no more than Rampick himself, if it’s true he’s been here
already. He thought it wedged tight, maybe, and safe from us. Well, I
tell you it’s only caught by the tip of its nose--far enough in to
baffle us lying as it does, _but easy enough to pull out floating_.”

I stared at him a moment; then gave a wild hoot, and began to dance
about as he had done before, and threw up my cap, and ended by hugging
him.

“You beauty, you beauty! You dear old positive genius and darling! We
shall get away, after all, with nothing but a ducking. And Uncle
Jenico----”

A sudden choke stopped me. I turned away so that my friend shouldn’t
see my shame.

“Dick, old man,” he said, soberly. “You mustn’t be too wild even now.
It’s all right, I hope; only--well, it’s cold, and three of us to
drift five miles on a spar----”

But I wouldn’t heed a word of his admonition. The recoil from despair
had sent my wits toppling clean head over heels. If nothing but a bowl
had offered, I should have been as joyous as a wise man of Gotham to
commit our destinies to it. To have some means, any, to escape this
hideous nightmare of enchainment to a living death!

“Hi! Gee-whoa! Get on!” I cried, chuckling hysteric, and drove Harry,
holding the rope-end, up the sand before me. It paid out behind, and
did not pull taut till we were well on the slope. Then, for the first
time, we thought of Joshua, and turned to look for him.

He was standing, with some suggestion of agitation, on the edge of the
further drift. The water had crept up since we left him, widening
ominously the channel between. We waved our hands to him, and he
responded.

“Look here,” said Harry. “He mustn’t be left in his ignorance; it’s
torture. Besides---- Hold on, Dicky, while I go to him.”

“Why don’t you bawl across?”

“He’d never gather. We must have him ready, and I can’t explain here.
Don’t drop the rope for a moment while I’m gone.”

“All right. But why not have a pull first, to see if it’ll come free
without?”

“Mighty! Not for the world! It’s been rotting in the water: supposing
it snapped? There’ll hardly be a strain when the tide lifts the thing,
and gets under the seat of the old girl--you believe me. Did you see
her name?”

“No.”

“Well, it’s _The Good Hope_. Hurrah!”--and he scuttled from me, and
the next moment was squattering through the water of the little
strait. I watched his chestnut ball of a head lovingly as it drew a
line across the channel; and I danced with excitement again to see his
streaming shoulders emerge presently, and Joshua, as near wrought-up
as I, run out knee-deep to help him ashore, and support him--as if he
needed support--and kneel to wring out his clothes, while the faint
gabble of their voices came to me. And then I turned to look seawards
once more, and, behold! the comb of a little wave struck the spar-end,
and seethed up and over it, and the sight made my heart flutter.

“Harry!” I screeched; and gripped the rope as if I feared some
unnamable wickedness were seeking to snatch it out of my hands. I did
not dare to turn again; but watched the hurrying tide fascinated; and,
almost before I knew it, Harry was at my side.

“Lord, Dicky!” he whispered, his eyes glistening; “it comes, don’t it!
Don’t let go! We mustn’t give it a chance.”

If it had only answered to our thoughts! How slow it crawled, without
haste or flurry, sometimes seeming to drop dormant as if to take us
off our guard. Presently, what with the strain and our shivering, we
were fain to squat gingerly upon the sand, and grip, and watch,
setting our chattering teeth. What if our expectations were to be
cruelly baffled after all! What if the spar were anchored by some
unexpected unseen grapnel to the bank! I turned sick at the thought.
The water by now lipped along it, covering some three feet of its end.
And still, to any gentle test of pulling it responded nothing.

Suddenly, eccentric as always in its motions, the tide bowled a
succession of heavier wavelets shorewards. The first found us sitting,
the rope taut between us and the spar, and left us sprawling backwards
in a puddle of water. I thought the mere wash of it had upset us,
till, in the midst of my spluttering and clutching to recover
purchase, I heard my friend sing out--

“Get up! Hold on! Dick! O, come, come!”

Then, scrambling, gasping, to my feet, I saw what had happened. The
spar, answering to our strain in the bobble of water, had swung
towards us, the rope had slackened, and over we had tumbled.
Chattering with excitement, we got hold once more, and pulled.

Still it did not come free, nor for long minutes yet. We tugged and
hauled what we dared, and ceased, and tugged again. Not--to cut short
that tale of agony and suspense--until we were ankle deep in water;
not until the rush of little incoming waves foamed high on the stern
of _The Good Hope_, kicking her up, and loosening her nip on that
grim-held relic of her own; not until the sands were whelmed near and
far, so that we seemed to sprout, three fantastic trunks of humanity,
from the surface of the ocean itself, did a great surge and vortex,
answering to our last despairing wrench, show us that we had been
successful.

And even then some dreadful moments passed--moments of terror lest the
rope had given--before the mass, rolling sluggishly to the surface,
revealed itself.

We were panting and sobbing as we hauled it in. But Harry kept his
wits through all.

“Get astride, Dick,” he said, “and help me to fasten this home.”

“This” was the running gear, which he wanted to dispose about the spar
in such way as to give us all some hold to cling by. We wrought quick
and hard, and in a little had it looped to our satisfaction. The
wreckage consisted of a huge segment of a main lower and top-mast,
with the step, pretty complete, and the whole of the over-lapping part
bolted snug, on either side of which the great sticks had snapped. It
was in all some twenty feet long, perhaps, with rings and shroud
fastenings and cut ends of rigging yet attached; and it floated
massive, on an even keel, so to speak, so that in places we could even
walk on it without fear of upsetting in that tranquil sea.

“Now,” said Harry at last, “to get to Mr. Pilbrow!”

I swear till that moment we had realized no difficulty; and then, with
the word, we were staring aghast at one another. The spar sat too deep
to move; not till the tide had risen another two feet at least would
she ride over the bank; we knew no way round. Could he plant himself
firm in that hurrying sway of water until we reached him?

We stood up and waved and shouted: “We’re coming in a little! Hold on
till we come!” I don’t know if he heard us. He stood there plunged to
the knees--the oddest, most tragic sight. He waved back and screeched
something--what, we could not understand. Every few minutes we dropped
overboard, and heaved our utmost at the great hulk, only to have her
ride a few feet and ground again. But at last, when the water was up
to his shoulders, she gave a little dip and curtsey, and the following
wave washed her on. We yelled, then, and slipped into the water for
the last time, and, finding no bottom, kicked out frantic, holding
each to a loop of the rope, and propelled her slowly before us, The
tide took her now, and do what we would, we could not coax her in a
direct course for our friend. We saw we should miss him by a full
fathom; he was staggering, desperate to keep his foothold; we drove
near.

“Fling yourself forward!” shrieked Harry. “It’s your only chance!” And
with the word scrambled on to the spar again. I was on Joshua’s side;
and I dwelt in an agony, holding on to the rope with one hand, while I
strained to draw her closer.

It was no use, and seeing we must float past, I echoed Harry’s scream.
Joshua sprang out and forward on the instant, and, with a mighty
flounder of water, disappeared. But the impetus of his leap carried
him towards me, and suddenly, like a crooked bough borne on a flood,
an arm of him was stuck out within a yard of my reach. I let go my
hold to dash and clutch it, and as I swerved, Harry, snapping down,
caught at one of my kicking ankles and held on. My head went under;
but I had the wrist like a vice; and in another minute I and my quarry
were drawn to the spar side, and our noddles, gobbling and clucking
and purple with suffocation, helped right way up.

We were saved! So far we had won free. _Vogue la galère_!




 CHAPTER XI.
 JOSHUA SPEAKS.

What a fantastic nightmare in my memory is that amazing voyage! Were
souls as oddly consorted ever launched on an odder? Looking back at
this date on all the circumstances, our isolation, our helplessness,
our exhaustion of mind and body following on the strain--and that, by
long hours yet, not to be withdrawn--it appears to me little less than
miraculous that we ever won to harbour. Had it not been for the
strange distraction of a certain recital which the occasion called
forth, and which, occupying our thoughts both during and after its
telling, rendered us partly oblivious to our condition, a very
creeping paralysis of terror would, I believe, have ended by
destroying us. To swing there unrelated to any visible hold on life
but the sodden, weltering stick beneath us: lost atoms in a vast
immensity of mist and water! My mind, save I gripped it frenziedly to
its own consciousness, would have reeled and forsaken me, I think.
Sometimes for a moment, indeed, it would be almost gone, dropping
through the seeming clouds on which we swam into immeasurable abysses
of space; and it was only on these occasions by grappling aghast with
the figures of reality before it, that it could recover and control
itself. If only we could have seen the shore--could have steadied
nothing more than our vision on that ghost of moral support, it would
have been something. But by now the haze had shut down, and we were
derelicts utterly committed to the waste. It was a bad time--a bad,
forsaken time, and I do not much like to recall it, that is the truth.

We had perched Joshua, having with some distress got him on board,
between us on the twin spar, where he could set his back against the
broken top and hold on mechanically till he was in the way to
convalescence. Fore and aft of him, squatting or straddling on our
slippery bed, we made at first fitful attempts to dig a little way on
our craft with our feet; but the load was too heavy thus lightly to be
influenced, and we soon gave up the effort. We might, perhaps, have
affected our course a trifle by swimming and pushing; we did not dare.
It had been a different matter in the first excitement of escape, with
the sand under our feet. Now, in the reaction to a consciousness of
our drenched, and overwrought, and half benumbed condition, the water
had become a fathomless horror, lapping after us with hiss and hurry
to devour what it had seduced from its shallows. There was a
heaviness, a deadliness in it, level and undisturbed as it seemed,
which it was sickening to contemplate. And so we sat close and
drifted, and essayed--did Harry and I, while Joshua was recovering--to
reassure ourselves and one another with fitful banter--the most
cheerless, hollow stuff, God knew, and soon to expire of its own
pretence.

For a time, undoubtedly, the tide carried us shorewards, leisurely and
with no affectation of charity. The wreck sunk and disappeared behind
us: was a wreck--a bulwark--a stile in mid-desert--a post--a
stump--was gone. We distanced it so slowly that scarce a quarter of a
mile could have separated us from it when its last token was
submerged--and our hearts seemed to founder with it.

“Harry!” I cried, in a sudden shock of terror: “what if, at this rate,
we never reach the shore at all, and are carried out again by the
ebb!”

He wriggled and snarled.

“What’s the use of meeting trouble half-way? We’ve four or five hours
before us, and if we can’t drift close enough by then to finish
swimming, the deuce is in it. Hold tight, Dicky--that’s all you’ve got
to do; and I’ll answer for the rest.”

His self-confidence soothed me supremely. And I was the more comforted
to see Joshua stir himself at that moment and sit upright.

“What’s that?” he said. “Leave me out of the question if you want to
swim.”

“We don’t want to swim, Mr. Pilbrow--not unless the tide won’t serve
us to the end; and then I hope it’ll be only a little way.”

“Well,” he answered, “go when you will; only I want to have a word
with you first, Richard.”

“You are all right again, sir?”

“Right?” he muttered. “I don’t know. The land drops and flees before
me. The cold is in my heart. I must ease it, Richard--I must ease it
of its secret load before that winter gets home.”

“O, don’t talk like that!” I complained. “It’s to flout Providence in
the face after this mercy.”

“Well,” he said, with a melancholy smile, “I shall be lighter anyhow
for the easing. With this weight continuing in me, I should sink like
a plumb.”

“There’s to be no thought of sinking, Mr. Pilbrow,” I said. “But if
there’s something you’ll feel the better for ridding yourself of, why
say it and have done.”

He turned stiffly in his place so that the spar rocked, and looked at
me, where I sat behind him, with a most yearning affection.

“If you were entitled to the truth before,” he said, “how much more
now, when you have saved my life.”

“Saved your life!” I exclaimed.

“Didn’t you!” he answered. “Didn’t you risk your own by letting go to
reach me, when I might have pulled you down?”

“O, nonsense!” I cried, with a real laugh. “We should have both been
in a bad way, I dare say, if Harry hadn’t had the sense to catch my
foot. He towed us in. If there’s any credit it’s to him.”

“He did the resourceful thing, and you the brave,” persisted Joshua.
“I owe to him through you; but to you first. If I live, I will honour
that debt. If I am to die----”

“In good time, Mr. Pilbrow!” I cried reassuringly. “This little
contest had flushed and rallied us all. “In good time! We aren’t going
to give up, I can assure you, having come so far as this.”

“By God’s providence!” answered the ex-bookseller, with unwonted
devoutness. “Only I feel that while I delay to tell you, the devil
struggles to hale me into the deeps.”

“Out with it, then!” I said lightly, “and let’s crow to see him gnash
his ugly teeth at being anticipated.”

I realized that he was about to give us the long-expected story, with
a shadowy abstract of which he had only as yet tantalized me, and,
through me, of course, Harry. Could we have had our curiosity
satisfied under circumstances more tragically wet-blanketing? Yet
there was a providence in that no less. The little sparks of
inquisitiveness which survived in us, expanded in the revelation to
flames of heat, which, in warming us, distracted our thoughts from our
miseries. I will not believe this opportuneness was accidental. Mercy,
in all the Committee of Destiny, is jealous to keep to herself the
casting vote, I think.

His face fell; the evil shadow I knew darkened on it a moment; but
almost in the same thought was gone. He wrung his lips with his hand,
and heaved a profound sigh.

“Succeed, then,” he said, in a sad inspired voice, “succeed to the
truth for which your father died; and God spare you to find your
inheritance a rich one! If He will; if for your most loyal faith in
me, dear child, I could so requite you, I could pass contented under
the waters to the rest the land has denied me. I am weary, Richard; I
am wearied to death; and to lie floating off my legs appears
beatitude.”

He sighed again, and setting his teeth in the very act, forced himself
frowningly and inexorably to his task.

“I have hinted to you already,” he said, “that this long fever of my
quest dates from Abel’s disappearance with a certain book which
contained the clue to an important secret. Hear, then, at last, what
that secret was, and how it came into our hands.

“My brother Abel and I were twins and enemies, partners and apart.
Why? I cannot tell. Look at two dogs of a litter quarrelling over a
bone, and seek for the reason there. We thwarted one another--at every
turn we did, and ruined our common business in a mutual spite. You
know as much; yet in fairness I must urge that his was the more
rancorous and vindictive spirit. I would have cried halt sometimes;
but Abel, never. He had the fiercer resolution; he went armed; I
feared while I hated him. ... The book in question was one of a packet
over which we had perversely disputed in the sale-room; an old
scorched and dog’s-eared commonplace book of the seventeenth century,
in contemporary crimson calf, and bearing inside its cover the name of
‘Carolus Victor, Chaplain in ordinary to his Majesty’s Prison of
Newgate.’ Yes, you remember the name. I once let it out unguarded.
Well, he was our inspirer, as some Morell or Morant was your uncle’s.
... There was nothing of note about this book. It contained just the
jottings and excerpta of a decent unremarkable man; ‘tips’ for
homilies; memoranda of ‘last testaments;’ mere personal data of a
conscientious and commonplace clergyman, whose lines had fallen in
incongruous places. With all that we have nothing to do. Our business
is with a folded letter, in the handwriting of this same Carolus
Victor, which ages ago had been slipped between the leaves, and had
there adhered through the melting of the wax with which it was
sealed.”

“How had it got there?” I asked, because he here came to a dramatic
pause, which seemed to challenge questioning.

“Ah!” he answered. “How? And why it had remained undelivered? I can
submit only a plausible theory. A second-hand book-shop, gentlemen, is
a mine of reference. Research presently revealed to me that this
Carolus Victor, Chaplain of Newgate, had died--suddenly, by
presumption--in that very year, 1679, which dates not only his letter,
but the last entries in his diary where it was found. Suppose, then,
the letter written by this Victor, and never delivered to him to whom
it was addressed; suppose the book containing it tied up unexamined
with the deceased’s other manuscript effects, and put away on some
remote shelf and forgotten; suppose some jealous no-Popery bookdealer
snatching it years later from the flames of Newgate, and consigning it
to his own store, where, in the excitement, it was again forgotten
till finally brought to light in the sale-room, a scorched and
smoke-stained packet to excite the ridicule of the dealers. Suppose
anything or nothing; conjecture and account as you will. The fact
remains that Carolus Victor’s commonplace book came intact, and
holding fast to its enclosure, into our hands. ... Into our
hands--into _our_ hands, I say. Were we not brothers, twins, partners?
Abel, before bidding for it, had known or guessed nothing of what the
packet contained. He had bought the lot, a business transaction,
merely to spite me. And yet now he would claim the whole fruits for
himself!”

A fury and excitement took the narrator’s voice at this point. The
heat he exhaled was communicated to us in part.

“Go on!” I said, giving a vigorous kick into the water. “There was a
letter in the book, you say. What was it about?”

He struggled with himself a moment, dropped his face into his hands
with a groan, looked up, and resumed in a more ordered voice--

“I am coming to it. It is stereotyped on my brain--all of its accursed
riddle, that is to say, but the key. It was dated Newgate, 1679, and
was superscribed to one Peachumn, a doctor of divinity, (to whom, you
will always bear in mind, it never was delivered), from which honoured
friend and counsellor the writer craved certain instruction and advice
in a very private and particular matter. He had had confessed to him
that night, he said, a passing strange story by one Vining, a
prisoner, and grey in iniquity, who was condemned to suffer on the
morrow for piracy on the high seas. This Vining, according to his own
statement, had been, about the second decade of the century, a student
in the great English College of Douai, in France, whence one winter he
had been sent, in company with an ordained brother collegiate, on an
extraordinary secret mission across the water to a little town on our
east coast. This mission, said Vining, was nothing less than to
recover, if possible, from its secret hiding-place in the crypts of a
certain long abandoned church, a great treasure of gold pieces, which
had lain there ever since the suppression of the religious houses--a
suppression which, in this case, had but hardly anticipated a natural
dissolution more complete. For the church in question was, it
appeared, already doomed when the king’s edict fell. Lingering, a
relic of the greater past, amidst the ruin of those eastern shores,
the sea had since taken its outworks; and now the treasure (the
existence and depository of which had been made known through the
death-bed confidence of a former sacristan) must be secured without
delay, if recovered it were to be at all ... Richard! it _was_ secured
by those two--a loaded box of iron. And then the madness of possession
smote the wretched clerk. In the darkness of the crypts he murdered
his companion, and in the darkness the curse of God fell upon him. His
hands were scarlet with consecrated blood. He loathed to handle the
price of his iniquity; but, like Judas, he cast it from him, and with
it hid the body of his victim in a place whence he hoped neither could
again be brought to light to testify against him.”

He paused. And “Where was that?” I asked faintly. An extraordinary
fancy had taken possession of me--a thought so stunning, so
bewildering in its first weak conception, yet so explanatory, if
admitted, of Rampick’s incomprehensible behaviour, that I fairly
shivered under it. I looked dumfounded at Harry. He also, if I was not
mistaken, had been smitten with a like shock of expectancy.

“Where was that?” I repeated; and so, innocently, applied the match to
this tow. Joshua did not answer, to my surprise, for a moment; and
then suddenly I was conscious of the flame rising and blazing in him.

“Where!” he shrieked. “Give me the key if you pity me! It is that has
kept me hunting these long years, ravenous like the dogs that devoured
Sin, their mother, and yet were unappeased. Give me the key; give me
rest, or here and now the waters of oblivion!”

For an instant I really believed he was going to rise and plunge. Had
he done so, I doubt if, in our weakened condition, we could have saved
him a second time. But in the thought, he had clutched at himself once
more; and his passion grew inarticulate, and ceased.

When at last he resumed his tale, it was with a manner of some
suffering shame.

“Richard,” he said, “touch me there and I am mad. Rebuke me with thine
eyes, sweet boy, and I am sane and sorry. I will not offend again.
Listen, the story breaks off with the night of our quarrel--Abel’s and
mine. He had discovered and was reading this letter spread out before
him on the table, when I came up unnoticed behind him and read over
his shoulder. The confession was all there, to the flight of the
murderer and his subsequent life of crime; to the agony of his haunted
soul and his desire, in the shadow of death, to make restitution. Some
words by the chaplain followed; some prayer of the weak soul to his
stronger confidant to guide him in this pass, whether for action or
unconcern. And at the foot of the sheet he ended with the words. ‘_And
the confessed Place and deposit of this treasure are_----’ and there
passed over the page, and I never learned them, was never to learn
them, Richard. ... Some sound I made roused Abel from his absorption.
He leapt to his feet, cramming the paper into his pocket, and faced
me.

“‘Well, where are they?’ I asked, smiling. Yet in that moment I knew
he would never tell me.

“‘Miles under the sea, probably, by this time,’ he answered. ‘You will
understand that, if you have pryed to any purpose.’

“‘Abel,’ I said quietly, ‘you are lying. The place still exists, or
you would not wish to conceal its name from me.’

“‘Well,’ he said, with an evil grin, ‘the book is mine, and the secret
with it. You disputed its purchase, remember.’

“‘I may have,’ I replied. ‘But bought it is, and with our money--_our_
money, Abel. I will not yield my right to a share in it.’

“I advanced upon him. I was hell inside, though calm outwardly. And as
I came, he pulled a pistol from his breast--he was left-handed, like
the crooked beast he was--and held it at me. I told you he always went
armed. ... Richard, I confess the creature appalled me. He would have
made nothing of shooting me like a dog. I hesitated; and then fell to
entreaty, expostulation, threats. He was grey and hard as steel. In
the end I must desist, though still resolved to get at the paper by
fair means or foul. When he was gone, in a hunger of agitation I threw
myself upon the book. It told me nothing, of course. I flung it down
again, and went to bed, poisoned with black thoughts. In the morning
when I rose, late and racked with fever, I found him gone, him and the
book and the paper--gone, without leaving anywhere a trace of his
direction. I could not believe it for a time; then madness took me. I
went up and down, mouthing like a beast--by day and night, Richard--by
day and night. It was then I must inadvertently have fired the stock.
You know the rest.”

He ended in a deep depression, and burying his face in his hands, set
to rocking to and fro.

“Rest!” he suddenly cried. “No rest for me! All these years I have
pursued him, a wicked, laughing shadow, in the likely places of the
land--always on these eastern coasts or near them, exploring ruins or
the histories of them--recognizing at last my own madness, yet unable
to lay it. And still the shadow flies before; and still I follow,
myself a shadow!”

Again I looked at Harry. He understood, and answered my mute inquiry.

“Yes, tell him,” he said. “Tell him, if he’ll believe, how he’s been
mistaken by a madman for the risen ghost of his brother yonder.”

It was the conviction in both our minds. It grew inevitably out of the
tale just told us. Time, place, circumstance; the combative brother
who went armed; the pistol clutched in the dead _left_ hand--these,
taken together with Rampick’s discovery of our discovery, and his
imagined identification of the dead, invoked by us, as he thought, to
rise and denounce him, left us in no moral doubt whatever. Yet still,
the coincidence was so amazing, I hesitated to commit myself. I must
take breath, fencing a little longer with the truth.

“Mr. Pilbrow,” I faltered, “were you and Abel so much alike?”

He had started at Harry’s words, and was sitting rigid, awaiting my
answer.

“We were twins,” he said quietly, “scarce separable, perhaps, in
feature, unless by the lines which hate had chiselled to distinguish
us. His were deeper scored than mine.”

“And his dress?” I said: “how did he go dressed?”

He bent over the step to stare at me.

“He wore a blue coat, Richard. Why do you ask?”

I gave a little gasp.

“Tell him,” said Harry again.

“Wait a moment!” I fluttered. “Why, who could say, Mr. Pilbrow, that
thieves or the sea hadn’t taken this treasure long ago?”

“Abel,” he answered, in the same voice. “Abel, the direct consignee of
the secret, which was sealed by Carolus Victor, and never opened or
delivered till it came to light in our parlour. Abel, who knew this
coast, had written guide-books, about it--misleading guide-books,
indeed, to me in my killing search--and who was aware that the place,
the actual _caché_ of the treasure, still survived--or why should he
have sought to hide the truth from me, and have fled in the night,
himself like a thief? Abel, the cursed shadow that I follow, and
cannot run to earth!”

“O, Dick, tell him!” cried Harry once more.

“Mr. Pilbrow!” I broke out, trembling with excitement. “I believe you
have hunted counter; I believe we can show you where your shadow lies.
It is in the hill under the abbey ruins, and you must take off your
curse from it.”




 CHAPTER XII.
 RESCUE.

Confession, discussion, incredulity, conviction, with all their
concomitants of amazement, awe, emotion, were long over; long put
aside in reservation was the unsolvable problem of Rampick’s part in
the dark mystery of the hill; long had our last exhausted
consideration of these questions lapsed into something like a silence
of despair, as we drifted, with gentle lap and wallow, over those
immeasurable heart-breaking wastes.

At least with Harry and me, I think, hope had attenuated almost to the
vanishing point. Brain-sodden, benumbed, half lifeless, grown near
unconscious of time or place, the instinct to hold on, the power to
keep at bay the last fatal drowsiness alone remained to us in
ever-diminishing degree. We did not know, in the confusion of our
senses, whether we were drawing inshore or to sea; we did not know
whether we were rocking, an idle log, virtually unprogressive, or
slipped into one of the coast currents, and speeding silent on an
interminable journey. We could not tell the sick drawl of the hours,
for our watches had, of course, stopped. But we dreaded horribly the
time when dusk should fall, if it should find us derelicts still. And
so it found us, drooping down and closing in; and then Providence
seemed hidden, and we despaired.

I cannot picture, indeed, the terror of that darkening desolation; the
running fields of water, spectral with foam, fenced within an
ever-contracting cyclone of dusk, devouring their own boundaries, and
committing us slowly to entombment in one final sepulchre of night. It
is all an impossible dream, in my mind--a sort of horrible pantomime,
in which a sense of induration, of fixity, while I watched grotesque
figures, born of my imagination, come and go in my brain, was
ineffably dissolved by the spirit of the moon, and changed into
consciousness of heaven.

Joshua, I knew, felt nothing of what we did, except, in a measure,
physically; and, even there, the exultation in his soul was tonic to
his body. Since our capping of his secret with our own, he had been a
changed creature--a bent bow released and snapped upright. It is
difficult to describe his transformation--his translation, rather,
inspired as Bottom’s. Where had been sombreness, depression, some
self-deprecation, was self-assurance, some rallying blitheness,
boisterousness almost. He had been crushed, and was expanded; beaten,
and was triumphant. That he should have run, when near broke with the
chase, his shadow to earth, and through me, the son of the man whose
memory he worshipped! It was stupendous. He could not contain his
glee, or discipline his expectancy, now it had once burst those
year-long bonds. He was convinced with, more utterly convinced than,
us, that the body was Abel’s. He would tolerate no suggestion of
error. And where the body was, would be the book, the clue--finally
the treasure. I doubted if, in all these generations, it could still
lie hidden there undiscovered and unravished. He laughed my scepticism
to scorn. That Vining would never have concealed the evidences of his
crime in a place easy or inviting to be come at, he declared.
Probably, indeed, he had restored them to the original _oubliette_,
which, I might make sure, would have been chosen by the monks with a
cunning genius for its inaccessibility, either by smugglers or other
casual squatters in their abandoned vaults. Moreover history, or at
least gossip, might be trusted to have left us record of such costly
treasure-trove thus unearthed, if unearthed it had been. Nevertheless,
he questioned us closely as to our underground observations, which,
indeed, had not been exhaustive. But they were enough, it appeared, to
confirm his assurance. Desire is the most credulous of all
enthusiasts.

All this was before the last abandonment to despair had overwhelmed
us, Harry and me; and it was useful in helping us to a sort of
fictitious endurance. We might have succumbed sooner, otherwise, and
actually foregone our living rescue. He was so strong and hopeful; so
certain that Destiny would not have led him thus far, by such tortured
ways, only to see him founder when within sight of his goal, that some
part of his faith could not fail to communicate itself to us with
vital results. At the same time, I think, we shrunk from the merciless
expression of his triumph. _Our_ concern, in revealing the truth as we
supposed it, had been with the tragic end of his brother. Not so his.
He had no sentiment for Abel even now; no pity for the fate which had
overtaken him. The best he could find to say about him was that he had
paid the penalty and called quits, and left the better man to come
into his own. Not for himself--that was the moral reservation, after
all, which silenced and confounded us. He longed for the treasure; he
gloated in the thought of its resurrection; but now for my sake, not
his own. With the prospect of its recovery instant in his mind, he
never wavered in his intention to bestow it all on the son of the man
who had died to vindicate his honesty. I could have laughed again over
this tragic, comical, chimerical bequest to me; only tears were too
near the source of humour. It was terrible, and indecent, and pathetic
in one. _We_ sought life for no end but sweet life’s own. The rest was
a mockery.

Well, he kept us alive with it, that I believe. Even after he himself
was numbed and silenced from stimulating us, from encouraging us by
sympathy and example to prevail through hope, he would keep nodding
brightly to us to rally our spirits, until his neck got too stiff to
nod at all.



It must have been half-past six and near the time of ebb, when the
spectral dark which engulphed us knew a change. The fog, lying low on
the water, grew slowly diaphanous, waxing from a weak dawn, like
heaven seen through dying lids, to a sweet and solemn lightness. For
long we were too exhausted, body and mind, to consider what this
portended. The lightness increased; and suddenly high over the bank
shone a little red spark like a lantern. We lifted our dazed heads; we
stirred stiffly where we sat. O God! O God! what did it mean?

Swiftly it broadened, glowing like a rising fire. It mounted, or the
haze shrunk beneath it--who could tell? In a moment it was free, and
we knew it, in wonder and thankfulness, for the moon.

She was in her first quarter--a child moon, swelling into maidenhood.
Slowly, slowly she rose, while we watched her, gloating, absorbed.
Gradually the blush with which she had first observed us, sole
spectators of her girlish disrobing, faded into a white glow of pity.
Her tresses fell from her neck upon the sea, the mist parting to let
them by, and were extended to us, “Climb to me by them,” she seemed to
whisper; “here is the way to hope.” And lo! full in the midst of that
shining path rode a little boat.

There was a man in it, a solitary fisherman trawling for soles. The
agony of the moment gave us life and voice. We screamed to him; we
waved; we made every frantic demonstration that was possible to us in
our condition. He heard and saw us--and he sat as if stricken.
Ghostly, leisurely, we drifted past, and the boat faded and became a
phantom behind us.

We could not believe it. We never ceased to cry out. It was too
hideous, too cruel for truth. Harry, with a dying effort, half rose. I
don’t know what desperate thought was in his mind.

“Hush!” I suddenly implored; and we all became stone.

There was a little knock and paddle coming to us out of the mist. In a
moment the boat forged into sight, approached us, and hung off.

“Who be ye?” said a fearful voice.

We answered all together in a babble.

“Nay, let me speak alone,” said Joshua; and he hailed the man clearly.

“We went to visit the wreck on the sands; we were abandoned there by a
scoundrel, and we have been floating on this spar ever since.”

Still the man was not convinced. We could hear him distinctly spit
into the water. It is so his class exorcises all demons.

“What might be your names, now?” he asked cunningly.

Here was a poser for the devil.

“First of all, Master Richard Bowen,” began Joshua.

“Hey!” interrupted the boatman, with all his voice of wonder; and he
sculled rapidly up, and alongside. “Master!” He peered through the
mist. “Lord have mercy on ’s, ’tis himself trewthfully!”

“Old Jacob!” I cried, in a faint voice between laughing and sobbing.
“Old Jacob, help us off this before we die!”

And after that I remember nothing.




 CHAPTER XIII.
 RAMPICK SPEAKS.

You remember old Jacob? ’Twas he seconded Harry so unhandsomely in
the great fight. He had retired upon his savings now, and did no work,
save when a still night persuaded him forth with line and
trawling-net, and the loan of a friend’s boat could be procured. Such
had been the case when we ran across him. He had taken advantage of
the holiday spirit, which kept all “afternoon farmers” of the sea
scrupulously away from it, to pull a few miles out in a borrowed
craft, and try for a basket of fish to make a welcome garnish to his
Christmas pot.

He was lying, when he picked us up, off the banks some four miles from
land in a southerly direction, and in a few minutes was to have hauled
in and returned home. By so narrow a margin of Providence were we
acquitted. In all these hours, it appeared, we had made no nearer the
coast than this; had just swung hither and thither gently, drifting
south, on the whole, and making two feet shoreward, perhaps, for every
one we retired. Probably, in the end, we should have dropped
sluggishly on the banks again, unless the outward race of the tide,
more vicious than the inward, had swept us over them. In either case,
however, the result would have been the same, I believe. Another hour
or two must have seen the finish of our endurance.

As it was, I don’t know how they got me on board. Harry, with his
stronger fibre, rallied immediately under the excitement: the strain
off, I collapsed--that was the difference between us. I was physically
and mentally frozen; I could not make an effort on my own account; but
lay on the planks, my head on my friend’s knees, listening, in a sort
of staring dream, to the murmur of voices above me punctuated by old
Jacob’s exclamations. They were telling him, I knew, enough of the
facts to explain our situation; and I heard Harry impress upon him the
necessity of keeping all to himself, until we had seen Mr. Sant, and
learned what course he proposed to take. Old Jacob made no demur. He
was honoured in their confidence for one thing, and, for another, his
admiration for his former master was still so unspeakable, that he
chuckled at the mere idea of temporarily sharing a secret with that
great man.

Harry questioned him about Rampick’s doings since our abandonment on
the sands. He knew nothing of the fellow; had neither seen nor heard
of him. Probably, he thought, if he were convinced no one had
witnessed our departure, he would, after deserting us, have pulled
oblique up or down the coast, to some outlying station on it, in order
to establish an _alibi_ in case of inquiry.

“He were free to go his gait, without risk o’ being observed in these
merry times,” said he. “Reckon he’s turned up late, with his story of
Jack or Jim visited, and the wur-rds spoke, and mayhap some proof of
what Jack give him or Jim lent, to the very tune of innercence.”

I heard them all. Their speech drummed on my brain, as if it were
parchment, which was just what it felt like. I lay staring at the
light of the moon, for my back was turned to the beautiful thing
herself; and I was not unhappy, only utterly cold-blooded. I thought,
perhaps, from my long semi-immersion I had become a fish. What a fate,
to go gasping through the world, with round lidless eyes and ears
palpitating like gills, and never to feel warm again!

Presently we came to shore; and they tilted me up, as if I were a
board, and stood me on end, so that I could not help laughing. But
even then, in the most extraordinary way, _cold_ air seemed to come
from my lungs. Some one, with a whisper and nudge, as if to fire my
interest, pointed out to me a boat, Rampick’s, pulled up on the beach,
its sides gleaming wet in the moonshine. I crowed and acquiesced, very
knowing about nothing, as they seemed to wish me to be; and then,
having my legs pointed out to me, tried seriously to remonstrate with
and command them, for they were in the most drunken condition. I
supposed, indeed, that they were quite detached from me, until,
between Harry’s and Jacob’s support, I set them moving; and then I
understood that they still acknowledged my control, and I was
gigglingly interested in them, looking down on them idiotically as
they went splayed, and giving, and pulling themselves respectable over
the hard. They found the Gap a tough business; but once up and over
it, the descent beyond appeared a matter of moments. While I was still
chuckling to Harry, and failing in words to express to him what the
joke was, there close before our faces was the door of number three,
the Playstow; and I gaped and grinned and delightedly pointed out my
discovery to my friends. While I was yet in the act, it opened
hurriedly to a great surge of light; and I saw the figures of Uncle
Jenico and Mr. Sant, standing blowzed and flurried, in the midst of
the furnace. Suddenly they moved and came towards us; and at that I
tried to hail them with a shout of laughter; but, instead, staggered
and slipped down into their midst. It was very restful, after all; and
I thought I would stop where I was. But the jangle of many voices
worried me, and I closed my eyes. Then, instantly, as it seemed to me,
I was lifted up, and borne aloft, and smothered in down, or snow,
which embraced me very cold and peaceful. The light sunk low, and the
voices to a whisper. I was quite content, so long as they would leave
me packed there frozen. But presently I was conscious that this was
not to be. Something, by creeping degrees, tickled, and bit, and stung
at my feet. The poison rose, giving me intolerable pain. I moaned and
cried; and, at the sound of my voice, they lifted me up and poured
fire down my throat. The rising and the falling heat met, it seemed,
at my heart, and I believed it was consuming. I struggled to beat out
the flames, to reproach these demons with their cruelty--and then in a
moment, in a blazing swerve to consciousness, I saw them. They, or
their shadows, leapt gigantic on the ceiling; furious, gnashing
caricatures of my uncle, Mrs. Puddephatt, Mr. Sant, Fancy-Maria. A
furnace glared and reverberated behind them. They sprang and held me
down, and rasped my limbs till they crackled and smoked. From prayers
and anguish I passed to frenzied defiance. If they would torture me so
pitilessly, I would of myself stultify their efforts. I felt the
waters of revolt rising within me. An instant, and they gushed to the
surface of my body, putting out the fires all over. Surcease from
pain, a delicious oblivion overwhelmed me, and I sank back and forgot
everything.

Once out of dreams of dewy meadows I awoke, and found my hand in the
hand of my uncle, who sat beside the bed. He was himself once more,
the real loving normal Uncle Jenico, and I smiled drowzily on him, and
dropped away again. A second time I awoke; and there was Fancy-Maria
beside my pillow, softly rubbing a smut into her nose with her thumb,
and repeating to herself the multiplication table to keep from
nodding.

“Three sevens ain’t twenty-four, Fancy-Maria,” I said, and off I went
again.

At last, and finally, after unravelling a great endless jest of a
rope, I stuck at a prodigious knot, and gasped, and opened my eyes.

“I thought that last snore would finish you,” said a voice.

I sat up. I was in bed in my own room; the noonday sun glowed on the
blind, and squatted down before the dead embers of the fire,
sniggering like a Bonanza, was Harry. He rose, yawning, and came
across to me.

“All right?” he said.

“Right as a trivet.”

“Hungry?”

“Just!”

“You’ll do, then.”

“Think I should--when I’ve had something to eat.”

Sweet is the constitution of youth. It all came back to me now, and
without distress.

He sat down on the bed.

“Why, whatever was up with you last night?” he asked curiously.

“I don’t know,” I answered, shame-faced. “Didn’t you feel it?”

“Not much. Not in that way. It was good enough for me to be safe. I
say, you gave us a precious fright.”

“I’m very sorry. I couldn’t help it. What happened? Was Uncle Jenico
very put out about our not coming home?”

“Near off his head, I should think. He’d sent for Sant. Nobody had
heard or knew anything about us. But, of course, they never supposed
it was quite so bad as it was.”

“Poor old chap! I was an ass to go off like that. Well, what was
decided?”

His face fell a little sombre.

“Sure you’re in a fit state to hear?”

“O, I’m all right, I tell you. It would worry me not to know.”

“Very well. Then, when we’d got rid of you at last, and had something
to eat and drink, we held a council of war. Mr. Paxton was in a rare
state. I think he’d have liked to shoot that beast at sight. I’d never
thought he could be like that, and I tell you it made me crow to see
him. But your friend Joshua was for a postponement, until he could
visit the crypts. He went through his whole story again, just as he’d
said it to us. We told your uncle everything, of course, from first to
last; and Sant, naturally. And then _he_ came down. He would hear of
no course but the direct one. He’d go straight up to the Court for a
warrant against Rampick for attempted murder; and, after that, to
wring out and air the whole dirty business. He didn’t mind about
risking his own popularity; he didn’t value at a brass piece the
insane flummery of the treasure, as he called it. He and Mr. Pilbrow
near came to words about it; and then----”

“What then?” I asked him, for he had stopped.

“I hardly like to tell you,” he said. “Sure you’re all right?”

“O yes, of course!” I said impatiently. “Do go on!”

“Well, we’d all gone out on the step, to see Mr. Pilbrow off, and he
and Sant were standing wrangling there, when who should come slouching
past but Rampick himself.

“I tell you he gave a screech, and dropped in a heap where he stood.
We all ran out, thinking him dead. I don’t know now whether he is or
not.”

“It would be the best way out of it all, perhaps,” I muttered.

“Maybe it would,” said Harry. “They got help and carried him home, and
Sant went with him. He’s been there ever since, I think. At least he’s
not come back here. Anyhow it stops the warrant business for the time.
And there we are. Nobody knows the real truth but old Jacob; and Sant
bound him to silence for the present. We’ve been looking after you
ever since, young gentleman; and here I am, having taken my turn by
the fire.”

“It’s very good of you, you old idiot,” I said rather tremulously.
“Harry, if--if he’s rested, do you think you could send Uncle Jenico
to me now?”

He nodded, comprehending perfectly, and went out. I don’t intend to
recount the meeting that followed. If I had loved the old man before,
you may understand what penitence now made of my feelings. I was
painfully suspicious that that secrecy as to my own movements had been
dictated rather by private selfishness than consideration for my
relative. Certainly I had feared that, had he been told of our
purposed trip to the sands, he would, in his uneasiness of mind, have
put forward all sorts of objections, even, perhaps, had I proved
obstinate, to a personal appeal to me not to desert him in his
depressed condition. And now, supposing that eternal seal _had_ been
put on our actions, what a heritage of mental torture, of unfounded
self-accusations to impose on that blameless soul! I ended by swearing
that for the future no simplest scheme of mine should take shape
without his sanction. And then he was pacified, though still, while
Rampick’s fate was undecided, in a fever of nervousness to keep me
within sight and touch.

I came down to dinner, at which Harry was an invited guest, and made
up handsomely for my late abstinence. We had a merry meal, though
still in some perturbation as to Mr. Sant’s prolonged absence. During
the course of it, I suddenly found a huge 21, scrawled on a scrap of
paper, lying on the table beside me. A smutty thumb print in one
corner informed me at once of the authorship.

“Three times seven, Fancy-Maria?” I said. “That’s a good girl! I knew
you’d come round to my point of view in the end.”

She backed, giggling, out of the room; and a heavy sound in the hall
which followed, endorsed, so to speak, by a pasty disc on her bustle
when she reappeared, showed us that she had sat down in the pudding.
But that, fortunately, was when we were at the cheese.

Mrs. Puddephatt was genteel and a little distant in her visitations
during the meal; and, finally, with such spectral significance, that
Uncle Jenico, though she had not spoken, felt constrained to offer her
a sort of apology.

“There’s something behind, you think,” said he. “Well, candidly, there
is, but it’s not exactly our secret as yet, my dear woman. When it is,
you shall have all the facts.”

She gave a sharp wince, as if suddenly recalled to herself with a pin;
and, drawing herself up with her arms folded, gazed at him with stony
abstraction.

“Which you was addressing me, Mr. Paxton?” she said. “Would you take
the liberty now to repeat yourself?”

Much confused, Uncle Jenico did.

“Ho!” she exclaimed, with decision. “Well, I must believe my ears for
the future, I suppose, when they accuses me of curihosity, and
pryingness into things which people no doubt has their very good
reasons for keeping dark, and not becoming to a decent woman to
pollute herself with hearing. I thank you for your consideration, Mr.
Paxton, venturing to remark honly as it were uncalled for; me being
the last person to worrit herself about her neighbour’s concerns, nor
accustomed in London to know so much as the name of the next door,
which is a feature of the metropulis neither hunderstood nor hemulated
by provincial rustication.”

“I’m very sorry,” began Uncle Jenico. “I really thought----”

“Permit me to say, sir,” she broke in rather shrilly, “that you should
not think about a woman at all, save in the way of kindness; and
leastways, not to adopt her to your fancies. Suspicion begets the
shadows of its own rising, Mr. Paxton.”

And, with these enigmatical words, she left us quite crushed and
flabby.

We had hardly recovered, indeed, when steps outside woke us alert, and
the next instant Mr. Sant entered.

He looked pale, and worn, and unshaved; but his eyes lightened at
sight of me sitting there rested and confident.

“Ha, Dick!” he said. “What a brave constitution, you little dog! Is it
fit for another strain yet, do you think?”

He came and put an affectionate arm over my shoulders.

“Is it fit?” he repeated, while Harry and Uncle Jenico stood
wondering.

“You’ve nothing else for him at present?” said my uncle suddenly, and
almost fiercely. “I’m not going to have him overtired, Sant.”

The rector said “Hush!” and crossing over to see that the door was
tight shut, turned to us with his back against it.

“He’s dying,” he said. “It was a stroke, or fit, and the heart is just
doing time for a little. The hope of your forgiveness is all, I do
believe, that keeps it going.”

He looked intently at us. None of us spoke.

“He knows the truth now, and in his turn confesses everything,” said
the clergyman, clearly. “He understands the terrible mistake he made.
His brain clears of its delusions in the searching atmosphere of
death. If you can forgive him, forgive the great wrong he designed
you, he may be saved for God yet. But there is no time to lose.”

I felt that the blood had left my face, making my head swim and my
heart beat suffocatingly. This was a hard relapse upon horror. But had
we not learned to hit and be hit and nurse no resentment? I pulled
myself together.

“Broughton regulations, sir,” I said, with a rather shaky smile. “Come
on, Harry. Let’s go and find Mr. Pilbrow, and bring him, too.”

“Stay,” said our tutor, in a very sweet voice. “I’ve fetched him
already. He’s waiting outside now. He will abide by your decision,
Richard.”

“Then, let him be my dear boy’s deputy to forgive,” spoke up Uncle
Jenico, sharply. “There’s no occasion to submit Richard to this fresh
ordeal.”

Mr. Sant looked at me.

“He’s got a bad enough road to go, uncle,” I said. “I don’t want to
lay up more remorse for myself. We’ll cheer him on his way. Come, Mr.
Sant!”

My uncle uttered what sounded like an oath. But he objected no
further.

“In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum suum!” I heard him mutter
viciously; and I ran up, and shook his hand hard, and hurried out.

In the little garden we found Joshua. He understood without a word. He
was very sombre; but quiet, and glad, by his glistening eyes, to see
me well.

We hastened up the village street. News of our mission had got abroad;
vague and speculative as yet, for Jacob had been loyal. But the people
we passed looked at us covertly and curiously, scenting strange
revelations in the air.

The ex-smuggler lived, was dying, in a little cottage up a squalid
alley near the head of the village. It was a poor, dreary hovel, the
mere lair of a beast, self-degraded, God-forsaken. His wretched wife,
the real scapegoat of his sins, took us in to him.

“He’s dyin’ hard,” she said, in a thin fretful voice; “hard as a lord,
wi’ the whole world to lose. He allers was above his station, was
Jole. Lived on dreams, he did. I mind the time he promised me a
kerridge; and now we’ll be bad set to find a hearse.”

He sat propped up under a frowzy patchwork quilt. A silhouette under
broken glass was clutched in one of his hands. The whole man was sunk
in upon his frame; his breath, always difficult to him to draw,
laboured heavily; his eyes, in their livid halos, were quite
unearthly. The woman went to him, and made some show of easing the
coverlet on his chest.

“I was telling the gentlemen,” she said, shrilly, “that time was we
was to have our kerridge, and now summut less than a hearse must
serve.”

He nodded, and moved his ashy lips, and fingered the picture in his
hand.

“He’s daft on it,” she said, turning to address us. “’Tis our little
Martha, gentlemen, took at the fair before her going. I tell him he
needn’t look to join her where she sings among the angels. He should
have thought about it earlier, if he wanted to curry favour. Better to
pass on what he can get from you, if so be as you’re agreeable.”

I felt a sudden thickness in my throat.

“We forgive you, Mr. Rampick!” I cried out, and hung my head, and
turned in dumb entreaty to Mr. Sant. He hurried to the bed-head, and
put a gentle manly arm about the dying sinner.

“Do you hear, Rampick?” he said. “As God witnesses, they forgive you.”

The smuggler moved his exhausted hands. Mr. Sant, understanding,
lifted them both for him in an attitude of prayer.

“Mr. Pilbrow,” he said softly, “he wants you to hear the truth, if
possible, from his own lips. Will you come?”

Joshua moved up, and knelt by the bed. We all heard the broken,
gasping confession--

“Tuk you--_fur_ him, I did. ’Twas in the days--afore the--’arthquake.
We had our store--_where_ you know, in the underground vaults of th’
old abbey. Over above, in the hopen, was a knot of arches--running
together, like the bow ribs of a ship; and--set in the pavement
under--_in_ a dark corner behind ruins, were a stone moving _on_ a
pivot--what let down him--as knew the trick--_by_ a flight of steps,
to the crypts. The powder--was kep’ handy--just below; and beyond--in
th’ old cellars running seaward--till they bruk off--in a choke of
ruin, behind the cliff face--lay the tea _and_ brandy.

“At that time we was a good deal chafed--_as_ one might call it. What
with a revenue cutter--and a sloop of war to back it--our last run had
been a run _fur_ life--and--at the end it were touch and go to
get--the stuff housed. And in the thick, _of_ the excitement, who
should be sprung--upon us--as we thought, _but_ a spy. He come from
nowhere--it seemed. He was just up there one day poking--_and_
prying--among the ruins--and I see him. For hours he went--sniffing
round--while I watched secret. He squinted, and he tapped, and he
went--in and out--cautious; and sometimes, he’d stamp _on_ the ground,
and listen--_fur_ the holler echer--with his ear down like a dog.
Then--by-and-by--off he went, _on_ tiptoe, and I follered, tracken
en--_to_ the Flask. They could tell me nothing--about en there; save
_as_ he’d walked over--by his own statement--from Yokestone. The thing
looked as black _as_ hell; and what we done--we done--in justice to
ourselves as we thought--because we was druv, _to_ it. I had no hand
_in_ what follered. I wouldn’t have: I never--could abide--the sight
of death.

“We was stowing--the last of the cargo--_by_ starlight, when I
see--the man agen. He was setting, behind a stone, his eyes
shining--like a cat’s--upon each of us--tradesmen--_as_ we
disappeared, down the hole. We was druv to it--_as_ we thought--and
tuk our plans--cautious and seized en. He was a cat--he was. We bled,
a few on us. But we got en down, he screeching--all the time--about
some treasure, he was come arter,--and then I left en, _and_ went
up--to keep watch. I couldn’t stand--what I knew was to foller. I’m a
peaceable man--by disposition, I am. It was a providence--arter all.
_Fur_ I hadn’t abin--there not a minute--when all hell
bruk--underneath me, and went out _with_ a roar. The blessed
ground--heaved itself--_like_ so much bed-clothes; the arches--come
thumping down, and all--in a noise--_as_ if, the Almighty was a
tearing--of His world--to tatters. I were spilt on my face--lucky,
_fur_ me, I’d moved away to git--out o’ earshot--of the thing,
under--and when I come--to my senses, I didn’t know myself--or the
place. I crep’ home--dazed-like--to bed; _and_ kep’ it--_fur_ a
week--hearing of the ’arthquake. But I knew, in my heart, what had
happened. Some fool had fired--the powder--_and_ closed up, the hill.
It were so--I was sure--when I come at last--to look. It seemed all
fallen, _in_ upon itself. Where the passage--had been--were just, a
shipload, of ruin, the half of it turned over--_and_ sunk, into the
herth. I never believed--from that moment--_till_ the day I seen it,
proved otherwise--that so much--_as_ a babby--could find its way
agen--_into_ them shattered vaults. But the Lord--has His way.”

He ended, amidst a deep silence, and sank back exhausted. Joshua got
quietly to his feet.

“You are forgiven, Rampick,” he said, “by me and by us all. Make your
peace with God.”

Mr. Sant motioned to us.

Silently we filed out, and left the dying and his minister alone.




 CHAPTER XIV.
 WHAT THE LETTER SAID.

We were all sitting very sombrely in the gloaming, when Mr. Sant
came in to us. There was no need to question anything but his face.

“Yes,” he said, “it is over. God give him mercy!”

By common consent we would speak no more on the subject until nature
had been restored. There was a scent of battle, not to speak of eggs
and bacon, in the air, which inspired us somehow to brace up our loins
before the ordeal. Tea was on the table, and we sat down to it, and
presently were doing justice to Uncle Jenico’s plentiful fare. Then,
refreshed and reinvigorated, we pulled our chairs to the fire, and the
ball began.

“Now, Mr. Pilbrow,” opened the rector, cautiously, “what is your next
move?”

“To find and search my brother Abel’s body,” answered Joshua, prompt
and perfectly cool. “What is yours?”

“To go straight to the squire, and put the whole matter into the hands
of the law,” said Mr. Sant.

“You will give me a day or two first?”

“No!”

“One day?”

“No.”

Joshua scrambled to his feet, and went to and fro.

“This is intolerable, sir. It is my brother who was done to death, and
the cause is mine.”

“It is the cleansing of my parish, sir, and the cause is mine.”

“I must secure my treasure first, sir.”

“Your treasure be----!”

I am sorry to say Mr. Sant went the whole length of the expression.

“Your parish,” said Joshua, viciously, “has postponed its cleansing
six years. A couple of days longer won’t spoil it.”

“It would spoil my conscience in my own eyes, Mr. Pilbrow. I do not
compound a felony, now I know of it, for an hour.”

“Then go at once, sir, to be consistent, and, to satisfy your
conscience, defraud this orphan, your pupil, of his just
indemnification.”

The clergyman rose to his feet.

“Indemnification? For what, sir?” he said, very sternly.

“For the loss of his fortune, of his father, sir,” said Joshua, as
resolutely; “who, to vindicate the truth, died and left him bankrupt
of his legitimate expectations.”

Uncle Jenico, shifting nervously in his seat, put in a pacifying word.
The truth is, the dear old fellow had been in a suppressed state of
excitement ever since our visitor’s first dark allusion to his mission
on these coasts had begun to shadow itself out into some form and
substance.

“Sant,” he said, “I think you must be reasonable. We don’t stand first
in this matter. The treasure----”

“Nonsense!” interrupted the clergyman loudly. “Do you credit a word of
the stuff!”

“To be sceptical without knowledge--the boast of fools!” cried Joshua,
repeating himself.

“Hush!” said Uncle Jenico. “Sant, hadn’t we better first learn from
Mr. Pilbrow how he proposes to act in event of the--the clew really
coming to light?”

The rector was silent.

“You are an adept in matters of conscience, sir,” said the bookseller,
bitterly and rather violently. “There was no question of hurry when
you wanted to use us to help you smuggle a soul into salvation. I
won’t say that, if I’d foreseen your intention, I should have
postponed my forgiveness till I’d gone to the hill and verified the
man’s words; but I do say that in acting on a generous impulse,
without a thought of possible consequences to myself, I was playing a
better Christian part than you, who had this damning sequel in your
mind all the time.”

Harry, very restless, cried out here sensibly enough--

“Aren’t we rather fighting in the dark? It mayn’t be Mr. Pilbrow’s
brother that was the supposed spy, after all, in which case there’s no
question of treasure. I think he’s the right to go and see first,
before any steps are taken. I beg your pardon, sir.”

Mr. Sant sighed, his brow lightened, and he patted the boy’s shoulder
approvingly.

“Good fellow!” he said. “No doubt it would be best to clear the air of
this fantastic stuff, before we begin to set our house in order.”

Then he turned to Joshua genially.

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Pilbrow. I was betrayed into some
unwarrantable heat. I confess we look at this matter from different
points of view; but that is not to say that mine is necessarily the
right one. Indeed, you have given me a lesson in Christianity, to
which I seem to make, I admit, a scurvy return.”

The little bookseller bowed, grimly still, but without answer.

“If then,” said the clergyman, biting under the irony that would make
itself felt in his words, “you find this clew--find this marvellous
deposit of wealth--there are laws of treasure-trove: you cannot think
for a moment that I will, that I can, counsel secrecy--allow Richard
to share in the profits of a felony----”

“Felony, sir!” cried Joshua.

“Is not that what a hoodwinking of the law would amount too? You agree
with me, Mr. Paxton?”

“Yes, yes--O yes, of course!” assented Uncle Jenico, faintly.

“Harkee, Mr. Parson!” cried Joshua, in a heat. “I throw the word in
your teeth. I am no suborner, sir, no, nor glorifier of my own
ignorance neither. Be sure I don’t know the law better than you,
before you tax me in advance with cheating it.”

“Well, well,” said Mr. Sant, smiling. “I don’t know the law on the
subject, I confess.”

“Then take this, sir, for your rebuke,” said the other, sourly; “and
be less apt--for a clergyman--to damn without book. The law of
England--I _do_ know it, and have reason to--takes its definition of
treasure-trove from the jurist Paulus, who lays down that ‘_vetus
depositio pecuniae cujus dominus ignoratur_,’ that is to say, ancient
concealed treasure of which the lord of the soil is ignorant, becomes,
being discovered, the property of the Crown, if presumptively
deposited by some one who at the time intended to reclaim it.”

“Exactly,” put in Mr. Sant. “And yet, in the face of----”

“Will you permit me?” interrupted the bookseller, with a manner of
most frosty sarcasm. “For all your cloth, sir, I would not have you on
a jury, lest you stopped the case before hearing the other side.”

The rector muttered an apology. He really did look abashed.

“I say,” repeated Joshua, “that the Crown, to prove its title to
treasure-trove, must prove the depositor’s intention to reclaim first.
Where that is wanting, or _where an intention to abandon can be
shown_--as when the goods were thrown away in a panic, or for other
reason, to be rid of them--the treasure remains wholly and solely in
the possession of the finder.”

“Very well,” said Mr. Sant, plucking up heart. “And what benefit is
that alternative to you?”

“What benefit! To me!” cried Joshua. “Have you heard my story, sir?
Did you listen to it? Did you hear me quote the man Vining’s
confession that he had abandoned the price of his iniquity, and cast
it from him?”

Mr. Sant reflected. He was getting interested, I was sure, after all.

“’Tis a subtle legal point, I think,” said he. “I foresee, anyhow,
fine complications; even if you had evidence--which you have not--of
this intention to abandon.”

“Which I have not,” repeated Joshua, “at present. And which I shall
never have, to the right effect, if your delicate conscience can
forestall me.”

“You are unnecessarily sarcastic, sir,” said the clergyman, gravely.
“You must give me the credit of my intentions. This Augean stable in
our midst--it must be cleaned out as soon as recognized, or I become
an accomplice in its condition. Why should any prompt summoning of the
sweeper--of our legal Hercules--affect your position?”

“Because, sir,” said Joshua, vigorously, “he would, a thousand to one,
lay bare, in so drastic a process, the golden deposit underneath, and
so rob me of any title to its discovery.”

Mr. Sant grunted uneasily.

“The better title is certainly yours,” he conceded.

I believe there was enough of the imaginative boy yet left in him to
thrill and respond to this exciting legend of gold. Uncle Jenico felt
the change, and fell back, glistening, and softly rubbing his hands
together.

“Mr. Pilbrow,” said the clergyman, suddenly and decisively, “will you
tell me plainly what you propose?”

“I propose,” said Joshua, as instantly, “to visit, and identify, and
search the remains of my unhappy brother to-morrow; I propose to take
advantage of the letter which, I am convinced, will be found on them,
and which, by every right, is legally mine, to secure the treasure.
After that, sir, let in your Hercules with a fire-hose, if you will. I
shall be content for my part. Possession is eleven points in the law,
and for the twelfth I will go to pitch-and-toss with it.”

“Sant, that is certainly fair!” cried out Uncle Jenico, impulsively,
and immediately fell abashed.

A longish silence ensued.

“Very well,” said our dear rector at last. “I will agree to defer my
action till after to-morrow; but on condition that, once having
secured his wonderful haul, Mr. Pilbrow openly challenges the law to
deprive him of it. It is buying a pig in a poke, I believe; but I must
guard myself by insisting.”

He uttered a rather enjoying laugh, which he tried to make ironic.

“That’s capital,” said Uncle Jenico. “You don’t object to the
condition, Mr. Pilbrow?”

“No,” said Joshua, shortly. “I ask for complete secrecy in the mean
time--that is all. That man’s wife----”

“She will say nothing,” said Mr. Sant. “The honour of her poor rogue
is safe with her.”

Then we fell excitedly to discussing ways and means. The embargo once
off my conscience, I was eager to join in the search. But here Uncle
Jenico was quite absolute and imperative in vetoing my taking any part
in it. He would not, on any condition whatever, have me descend into
the hill again. I was disappointed; but he was unshakable, and in the
end I had to submit.

It was finally arranged that Mr. Sant, Joshua, and Harry should meet
early on the following morning, and complete their expedition, if
possible, before the village was awake. And, on this understanding, at
a latish hour we parted.

The next day was Christmas eve. I had never known one to drag so
wearily. Uncle Jenico and I were up betimes, and making a show of
following with serenity our customary occupations. But it was all a
transparent pretence. I took no more interest in my books, nor he in
his new invention, than if they had been prison tasks. We just
perspired for the return of one or other of the party to put an end to
our intolerable suspense; and that was the beginning and end of it.

At last a shadow danced on the window, and the door opened, and Harry
hurried in. In the first sight of his face we read momentous news. I
could hardly control myself as I said--

“Well?”

He had shut the door behind him, and stood there, breathing quickly,
his eyes like white pebbles.

“Harry,” I whispered, “_was_ it Abel?”

“Yes.”

“And the letter was there?”

“Yes--in his pocket. He--I could hardly look--he seemed to fall to
pieces.”

“And--and it said where?”

“Yes. You’ll never believe.”

“Where?”

“In the well.”

“In the----”

“In the well. What fools we were never to think of that before! Of
course it stood at the end of the crypts once--the most natural place
for him to throw them into.”

His “them” seemed to hit me in the throat. I had forgotten about the
murdered priest. I stood gaping like an idiot, lost in the plain
marvel of the thing. I had forgotten Uncle Jenico, till his voice,
speaking in a queer, shaky way, recalled me to the thought of him.

“My wrench!” he said. “They will have sunk to the bottom. We shall
have to pull it down!”

“That’s just what we’re going to do,” said Harry “to-night, after
every one’s asleep.”




 CHAPTER XV.
 OUT OF THE DEPTHS.

The village was long asleep when at last we issued forth, as
blamelessly agitated a body of brigands as ever trod the corridors of
night. We had taken our measures with infinite precaution, so that not
a hint of our designs should leak out; yet still we had delayed,
sitting, like the party in the parlour, “all silent and all damned,”
while Dunberry sunk into deep and deeper unconsciousness of our
conspiracy in its midst. We were assembled, in fact, in the rector’s
study, Joshua, Mr. Sant himself, my uncle, and we two; and there we
stuck, spelling out the blessed quarters, until the chimes of the
school clock, coming in a flurry out of silence, called up a single
rebukeful stroke from Time, and subsided upon it. So late as this, an
hour after midnight, had we resolved to linger, to make assurance
double sure; and at the sound, with a great pouf! of relief, we were
on our feet and tingling to depart.

There had been no longer any question, of course, since our learning
where the treasure was, or should be, concealed, of my foregoing my
share in the attempt to recover it. No possible peril, within reason,
could attach to this purely open-air sport; though, indeed, Uncle
Jenico had made, even now, some presumptive risk to me the excuse for
his joining us in the expedition.

It was a question, at this last, if he or Mr. Sant were the more
excited. Our dear comical tutor and sceptic still made a show, it is
true, of subscribing to a madness in order to humour a party of
lunatics under his charge; but this affectation, I do believe, took in
none of us. Was it not he, in solemn fact, who had insisted upon the
necessity of this postponement of the foray until the small hours? Was
it not he who had manœuvred to enwrap our plans in a profound mist of
secrecy? Was it not he who had appointed the present rendezvous with a
masterly eye to contingencies? As to wit: (1) His house stood remote,
and we could reach the sea-front from the back of it, without ever
touching the village; (2) A French window gave from his study upon the
garden to the rear; (3) There was a little hand-cart for luggage in a
shed in this garden, which cart offered itself apt to a dual
purpose--(A) to convey down to the shore a pick and a shovel, together
with Uncle Jenico’s colossal wrench, which, under pretence of its
being submitted to some test, had already been brought to the rectory;
(B) to serve as vehicle for the carrying back of the treasure.

On the top of all which, I ask you, was Mr. Sant the incredulous
humourist he professed to be?

Whatever _he_ thought, however, Uncle Jenico was patently and
irresistibly the enthusiast of the undertaking. He stumped along, dear
soul, his face one moon of hilarity. The adventure was to his very
heart. To be called upon, in _such_ an enterprise, to advertise the
merits of _such_ an invention, his own! It was unspeakable--beyond
expectation! He laughed constantly, holding my arm, and rebuking me
for being a sluggard when I tried to regulate his pace lest he upset
himself.

Harry trundled the cart, making the softest track he could manage,
under the hill towards the Gap. It was a brilliant moonlit night, with
a singing wind. We had brought lanterns; but had no need of them. It
was near as bright as day, indeed, and we sped rapidly on our course,
never having need to pause or pick our way till we reached the sands.
The great shaft of the well, when we stood over against it, seemed to
topple towards us, tragically anticipating its doom. The sight of it,
so lonely and so ancient in this moon-drowned solitude, thrilled me
with a sort of pity. It had stood so long, baffling the winds and
tides, foregathering with such generations of dead and departed
ghosts! And now at last man’s cupidity was scheming to compass the
final ruin of what Nature had been impotent to wreck. Ah! a more fatal
force than any storm! the one against which no monument, however
venerable, is proof.

If the others were touched by this spirit of regret, they were
sensible enough to subordinate it to the inevitably practical. While I
was, literally, mooning, they had already lifted the wrench from the
barrow, and were busy, under Uncle Jenico’s directions, getting it
into position on the sand.

I can only hastily elucidate the idea of this machine. Pinned to a
sort of frame, or trestle, which was anchored all round with stout
grapnels, and shored up in front against a bracket, was a ship’s
steering-wheel, which the inventor had picked up cheap at a marine
auction. A good rope (length indefinite), to be passed round the
subject of the proposed haulage, and its two ends then carried to the
wheel and clamped, one on each side, to its rim, completed the design.
So disposed, nothing remained but to turn the wheel by its spokes,
when the rope would garrotte the object, and, mechanically contracting
of itself, induce a forward strain.

Now, I know little about scientific values; but certainly in this case
the result justified the means, as you shall hear.

We had got all in place but the rope; and then suddenly Mr. Sant drew
himself up, scratching his head in an unclerical manner.

“Whereabouts is it to be passed round?” he said.

“O!” answered Uncle Jenico: “as high up on the shaft as one can
reach.”

“My good man,” cried the rector sarcastically, “do you really imagine
we are going to haul that thing over by tugging at its base, or near
it?”

“It is tottering already. It is laid bare to its lowest course. These
boys examined and proved it!” answered Uncle Jenico.

Nevertheless, I could see he was taken by surprise and dismayed.

“That may be,” said Mr. Sant, “but----”

He paused, shrugged his shoulders, and laughed out comically.

“O, it will never do!” he said. “We must give this insanity a better
chance. By hook or by crook, we must get the thing fixed up near the
top.”

I started forward.

“I’ll carry the rope up, sir. I know the way. Harry and I climbed it
once before.”

“No,” cried Uncle Jenico, sharply and decisively. “I won’t have you go
on any account, Richard!”

“Then it’s to be me!” cried Harry; and, as I muttered discontentedly,
trying to block his way, he evaded me and ran for the shaft. Mr. Sant,
trailing the rope, followed him, and in a moment they were under its
shadow.

I chafed, watching them: but my relative was inexorable. And, indeed,
to speak truth, there was considerably more risk in the venture than
formerly before the storm. Harry, however, accomplished his part in
safety; and, while he still dwelt aloft, holding the loop in place,
Mr. Sant captured the two ends of the rope, and came running towards
us with them. In a moment we had pulled them taut and clamped them in
place to the wheel. And then we hailed Harry to come down, which he
did, rather with a run, so afraid was he of missing any detail of the
sport.

Uncle Jenico had already given a half-turn to the wheel, in order to
clinch the hold of the rope; and now he stood in a tense eagerness,
dwelling on the psychologic moment. He held, by right of patent, the
larboard spokes; Mr. Sant, the port. The dear old man was so wrought
up out of feebleness, that I was apprehensive of the part he insisted
upon taking in the manipulation of his own design. He would not be
denied, however; and who could have had the heart to disappoint him?
Was not this the very first time that his genius for invention
promised him a harvest of gold? He took a long breath, and tightened
his hold on the spokes.

Joshua stood rigid, awaiting the result. Harry and I shook on wires,
staring from the wrench to the shaft, and hardly stifling the
exclamations that rose to our lips. It was a solemn moment.

“Go!” cried Uncle Jenico; and the wheel spun a little, stiffened, and
began to cry ominously.

Something cracked; thank Heaven it was only Uncle Jenico’s braces! The
old man tugged and puffed, wrestling with his task. Suddenly he
staggered--the wheel seemed to give and spin away from him--and he was
almost on his face. In the same moment I fancied the shadow of a
night-bird had crossed my vision--and I looked; and where had been the
well was nothing. It was fallen prone upon the sand, so wearily, so
softly, that in that humming wind no sound of the concussion had
reached us.

Hardly suppressing a cry of triumph, we dropped everything, and raced
for the place. The shaft in falling had broken into three pieces, of
which the middle one was in a proportion of two-fourths. The fracture
nearest the base was only three or so inches in width; but the top
fragment was quite detached, and tilted over a little away from the
neck.

Where the shaft had stood was surprisingly little scar in the
ground--nothing to see, in fact, but a pyramid of sand, which had run
from the stuffed base of the well in its parting. Upon this we flung
ourselves, scrambling and scraping like children about a burst sugar
cask. We clawed, as badgers claw, throwing the draff behind us. A hole
opened under our furious assault, and sunk, and deepened--and revealed
nothing. We ran for the tools, and picked and dug like madmen.
Presently Mr. Sant threw down his shovel.

“We are feet below the well bottom. Are you satisfied at last, Mr.
Pilbrow?” he said, really in a quite quarrelsome way. He had been
cheated, he felt, of the fruits of his own condescension.

“No,” snarled Joshua, “I’m not. Here was mud, perhaps, once. It was a
loaded box of iron--we know that. It may have sunk far.”

Mr. Sant laughed offensively. The best of us bear awakening from
engaging dreams badly. As for me, I had desisted from working when he
did, and was sitting disconsolately on the lower part of the shaft,
fumbling with my fingers in the fracture.

All in a moment the blood seemed to rush to my heart, making me gasp.
I jumped to my feet.

“Here it is!” I screeched. “I’ve found it! I felt it!”

My fingers, burrowing through the crack into a choke of sand, had
touched upon the iron-bound corner of a box.

They were all up and swarming about me directly. One by one, quite
cavalier to each other in their eagerness to dive and feel, they
exclaimed and fell back, Some people say that colours are
indiscernible by moonlight. I can answer for the flush which suffused
our rector’s cheek as he looked at Joshua.

But it was Uncle Jenico who commanded the situation.

“We must rope this lowest piece, and pull it away from the other,” he
cried, full of bustle and excitement. “What a providential thought was
this wrench of mine! Hey, my boys? Ha-ha!”

It was brilliantly the obvious course, and at the word we were all
scurrying to put it into execution, Uncle Jenico directing us in a
perfect and quite lovable rapture of self-importance. He and I, when
the rope had been readjusted to its new position, hurried to
manipulate the machine, while the others remained to watch the result
of our efforts on the huge pipe of masonry. We seized the spokes.

“Right!” said my uncle, with a laugh of joyous confidence.

Now, I don’t know if the first test had amounted to no more than a
little soft extra persuasion applied to an already tottering article.
I know only that _that_ success was not to be repeated.

“Right!” said Uncle Jenico; and the wheel turned under our hands,
tightened, and began to scream as before, only infinitely more
distressfully. We strained our mightiest, putting our backs into it.

“It gives, I think,” said Uncle Jenico, in a suffocating voice.

And with the word, an explosive lash whistled by my ear, the machine
bounded and pitched, and there were we rolling on the sand amidst a
mad wreck of everything.

We were neither of us hurt. Uncle Jenico sat up ruefully. Mr. Sant
came running to us across the sand.

“Anybody killed?” he panted, as he rushed up.

Nobody, by God’s mercy! It was the nearest shave. If I had had a
whisker, it would have been shorn off, I think. The rope had snapped
like a piece of string, and we were right in the path of its recoil.

“Anyhow, I suppose we moved the thing a little?” said Uncle Jenico.

“Not an inch,” was the answer.

“Eh!” cried my uncle. “I can’t understand. It must have severed itself
on a sharp stone, I suppose.”

“That was the case, without doubt,” said the clergyman, kindly. “Well,
there’s nothing for us now but to take pick and shovel, and dig out
the pith of the thing. It will take a little longer, that’s all.”

Indeed, we found the other two, once assured of our safety, already
hard at the job. It proved a tough one, for the silt inside from long
pressure was grown as compact as mortar, and every fragment of it had
to be chipped off and pulled away--a difficult matter, when from the
depth of our boring it was no longer possible to wield the pick.
However, we got through it, taking turns at the tools, and working now
by lantern light, for the end of the great trunk was turned from the
face of the moon.

Suddenly Harry, when he and I were once more hammering and shovelling
together, uttered a stifled sound, and scrambled up, so quickly as
half to fracture his skull against the roof of the tube. Then, holding
his head, and squatting out backwards, he gingerly raked after him a
little white thing--a human bone.

I scuttled to join him, and we all looked at one another.

“We’re coming to it,” muttered Mr. Sant; and almost on the instant, as
we plunged in again to resume our burrowing, the end was wrought. A
slab of concreted stuff, falling detached to our renewed blows and
tilting outwards, let down an avalanche of loosened sand, and,
slipping on its torrent--what?

We did not wait to discriminate. The dead, it seemed to us only, had
come sliding and chuckling to meet us half way, with his, “Here we are
again!” like a clown.

“It’s there!” gasped Harry, as we stood up outside. “Some one else
must fetch it--not me: I won’t.”

Joshua dived on the instant: we heard him scuffling and chattering
inside. And then he emerged.

“The rope!” he cried like a madman. “Fetch it--a bit of it--anything!”

I ran off, unknotted the shorter length from the wreck of the machine,
and returned with it to him. He disappeared again into the tunnel,
drawing the slack after him, and in a minute reissued, unkempt and
agitated beyond measure, and disposed us all to haul. Without a
question we obeyed, and, at his word, set our shoulders to a
simultaneous tug. Slowly the capture responded to our efforts, and
drew out heavily into the open--a great iron-ribbed box, with the
upper half of a human skeleton chained to it by the neck.

Joshua seized the pick, and, before Mr. Sant could stop him, had
parted at a blow the skull from its vertebræ. It leapt and settled,
grinning up at us from the sand.

“That was basely done,” said our rector. “Take your spoil, sir. These
poor remains are my concern.”

Joshua had thrown away the tool, and was standing, as if petrified,
looking down on the chest. It might have measured a yard by two feet,
and some two feet and a half in depth. The wood, under the corroded
clamps of iron, was spongey, half-eaten by water, and, half-eaten,
preserved in sand. But of the immense antiquity of the whole there was
no question.

“We must secure what of these bones we can,” said Mr. Sant. “Well,
Dick? Well, Harry?”

His quiet appeal overcame our repugnance. Once more we grovelled and
groped in the bowels of the well. It was a gruesome task; but we
fulfilled it. Excitement, no doubt--an eagerness to be done with it,
and so earn the sweeter reward of adventure, stimulated us. At the end
we had found, and gathered into a heap outside, all evidence that
remained to mortality of that ancient deed of murder. It made one’s
brain swim to look down on this wonderful tragic salvage of the
centuries. It was all true, then--all true! And Destiny had made us
her instruments in this unspeakable resurrection!

All this time Joshua, and even my uncle, had remained as if tranced.
Now, suddenly, the former raised his voice in a shrill ecstatic cry.

“Poor Abel! poor fool! Come, let us load up! What are we waiting for?”

It was evident he was wrought far beyond any susceptibility to moral
warning or rebuke. The rector perceived this, I think, and submitted
himself to circumstance.

The truck was hurried up, and the chest placed upon it. It needed our
united efforts to raise the thing; and at our every stagger Joshua
sawed out a little jubilant laugh. We gathered the tools and the ropes
and the ruin of the wrench, and piled all on top. Then we disposed the
broken skeleton amidst, and started on our way home.

It was a hard pull now, though we all gave a hand to it. Three o’clock
had struck, when at last, exhausted and agitated, we drew the little
cart cautiously up to the study window, and unloaded it of its
weightest burden, leaving the rest temporarily outside while we
examined our haul.

The box had been stoutly fastened and secured; but the wood being
shrunk away from its clamps rendered our task an easy one. A little
wrenching with forceps, and the whole lid came apart, sinking upon the
floor with a dusty clang. And then----

Sleeking and glinting through a dust of perished rags--piled to the
throat, and kept burnished by the sand that had filtered in--a glut of
gold!

Gold in rouleaux and ingots; gold in sovereigns and ryals; gold in
angels and rose-nobles--near all of Henry the Seventh’s and Henry the
Eighth’s reigns, and of incalculable antiquarian, apart from their
intrinsic, value; gold in patens; gold and more in a jewelled
ciborium; chased gold and ivory in an exquisite chalice with handles,
and little queer figures of saints in rich enamel; gold in such wealth
as we had never dreamt.

The vessels had been wrapped, it appeared, in soft skins of
suckling-calf vellum, which had long crumpled into a floury meal,
keeping all bright as blossoms preserved in sand, and easy to dust and
blow away, We felt fairly drunk with the sight, as we gazed down
spell-bound into that brimming reservoir of all wealth.

And then suddenly Mr. Sant had fallen upon his knees.

“O Lord!” he prayed, in a low half-agonized tone; “teach thy servant
to deal rightly with this, converting it to fair uses, and justifying
himself of Thy generosity.”

A little dead silence followed; and at the end Joshua bowed his head,
and raising his hands clasped together, cried twice, in a firm voice--

“Amen!”

And so at last was consummated that wonderful and tragic tale of
mystery and fatality, which had begun for me in the old court house of
Ipswich. Truly, other things than hanging and wiving go by destiny.




CONCLUSION.

There was a sequel, which I must relate. Stories of recovered
treasure, if true like this, do not always end with the emotional
unities and the final chapter. Morning does not always bring a
confirmation of pious resolves. A little sourness of digestion
sometimes impairs the glamour of last night’s feast of righteousness.
That is the deuce of it.

Now, I will not say that Joshua repudiated in the slightest reality
the sense of that “Amen” of his; but, once awake and restored to the
full realization of his possession, he certainly did try to back out
of his undertaking to challenge the law to deprive him of it. Not
unscrupulously--not in the least. He merely strove to convince Mr.
Sant as to the actual letter of that law, and, consequently, of the
Quixotry of calling upon it to establish his claim--probably at
considerable expense to both sides--to do what was already, by its own
decreeing, indubitably his.

But he was entirely unsuccessful. The rector, seeing in this only a
personal obstructive policy, designed to shackle that main moral
question of the cleansing of his Augean stable, utterly declined to
forego his bond, and wrung a promise out of my reluctant relative
himself that I should not be allowed to touch a penny of this treasure
until it could be proved well-gotten.

So Joshua, forced at last to give way, though with a very ill grace,
sent in his notice to the Ipswich coroner.

In the mean time the process of cleansing was carried through with all
despatch. The hill was cleared, at some risk, of its tragic
impedimenta, which--after a jury had sat on them, and brought in a
verdict of accidental death--were consigned to rest in the
churchyard--Abel’s, with some distinction, in a separate grave. The
whole story was wrung out at the inquest, and aired, and hung up on
the lines for gossips to find holes in; and gradually the
village--with the entire country-side, to boot--subsided from its
fever heat of excitement, which was only to suffer a temporary
recrudescence in the _cause célebre_ which came presently to provide
the epilogue.

One day, a tax-cart, a coroner’s clerk, a posse of insurance-office
firemen, and a couple of cavalrymen from the barracks to escort the
whole, appeared before the rectory, and, removing the treasure-box,
well encased and sealed, from the clerical strong-room--where it had
lain perdu since its discovery--mounted that and Joshua in the
vehicle, and incontinently drove away with both.

We saw him go, sitting darkly on the top of his coffin, like a
dyspeptic Jack Sheppard being jogged off to Tyburn; and thereafter for
a desperate week or more heard or saw nothing of him. Then one day, a
great trumpeting and cheering in the street brought us all out
pell-mell; and there he was, worshipful in the repute of fabulous
riches, being carried shoulder high.

He had won his cause; and through whom do you think? Why, Mr. Quayle.
The little Q.C. accompanied the procession, and shared in its triumph.
Joshua had alighted on him, quite accidentally, in Ipswich, and
revealing to him everything--not without an ironic satisfaction, one
may be sure, in returning at this eleventh hour a Rowland for his
Oliver--had engaged him to conduct his case. And he had done it, and
won it; and the treasure was ours.

“Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings,” said the little man,
meeting me again with delight. “Richard, I am rebuked. I once said you
were the son of your father, but not so good a lawyer. I withdraw the
riservation, entirely. You could see further than some of us into a
stone wall. To think now that your friend spoke the truth through ut
all! I’ll never trust the evidence of me nine senses again. Five, is
ut? Well, I was thinking of the Muses, I suppose. ’Tis a weakness I
have, and will prove my undoing in the end. Never you bother about the
girls, Richard. They spoil your law.”


I have only a word or two to add. I am afraid to declare what that box
of gold realized. The sum, anyhow, was so large as to enrich us all. A
great part of its treasures was distributed into the cabinets of
collectors, the beautiful chalice finding its way, I believe, at an
immense figure, into the museum of a famous cardinal and virtuoso in
Rome. From the total proceeds Joshua handsomely presented to Harry the
equivalent of a comfortable income, which was the means of helping my
dear friend to the very satisfactory position to which he attained a
few years later in London. For me he held the residue nominally in
trust till I was come of age, when he proposed to establish himself
and Uncle Jenico as pensioners on my bounty. The question was one
merely of terms. We made, in fact, our common home together until the
end, even after I had so far neglected Mr. Quayle’s advice as to
bother my head very much indeed about one girl, and to wive her into
the bargain.

We had left Dunberry soon after the events narrated above, taking Mrs.
Puddephatt with us for housekeeper, and not forgetting Fancy-Maria.
For some time, I understand, after our departure, the famous crypts
were a gazing-stock, attracting so many visitors that in the end Mr.
Sant’s dearest wish was realized, and a popular watering-place
established on the foundations of the old smugglers’ haunt. But long
before that the vaults had been closed, as unsafe, by councillors’
authority; and at this day only a deep depression in the soil above
denotes the spot under which the tragedy of Abel Pilbrow was enacted.

So the old order changes--all, that is to say, but Uncle Jenico, who
is engaged at this moment, very bent and white, in demonstrating to my
little boy the method of his latest machine for solving the riddle of
perpetual motion.

 THE END




 TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES.

Minor spelling inconsistencies (_e.g._ drowzily/drowsily,
schoolhouse/school-house, barn-door/barn door, etc.) have been
preserved.

Alterations to the text:

Assorted punctuation corrections.

[Part I/Chapter I]

Change “mamma said we must _restrench_, and cried” to _retrench_.

[Part II/Chapter VIII]

“watch him fattening, and _enjy_ him in anticipation” to _enjoy_.

[Part II/Chapter X]

“He stood before me, _dropping_ wet, a most wretched” to _dripping_.

[Part II/Chapter XV]

“It was a brilliant _moonlight_ night” to _moonlit_.

[End of Text]