A PIXY IN
PETTICOATS

NEW YORK:
MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY
1909

CONTENTS

I. HOW BURROUGH PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE

II. HOW BURROUGH HAD THE VISION

III. HOW BURROUGH WALKED WITH BEATRICE

IV. HOW BURROUGH VISITED BEDLAM

V. HOW BEATRICE CULTIVATED LOCAL TALENT

VI. HOW THEY BOILED A KETTLE IN THE DEVIL’S KITCHEN

VII. HOW BURROUGH CHATTED WITH A FELLOW-SCHOLAR

VIII. HOW THEY WENT SWALING

IX. HOW THEY PLAYED AT HIDE-AND-SEEK

X. HOW THEY SAT UPON THE PIXIES’ BOWLING-GREEN

XI. HOW THE SCHOLAR FAILED IN ORIENTAL LANGUAGES

XII. HOW THEY STARTED FOR THE MOTHER OF RIVERS

XIII. HOW THEY STOOD UPON CRANMERE

XIV. HOW THEY TOOK SHELTER IN TOM-TIT-TOT’S PALACE

XV. HOW BEATRICE TOLD THE STORY OF TREGEAGLE

XVI. HOW BURROUGH BECAME A DUMMY MAN

XVII. HOW TONGUES WENT WAGGING IN THE VILLAGE

XVIII. HOW BEATRICE FORGOT TO BE FRIVOLOUS

XIX. HOW BURROUGH SPOKE FOOLISHLY

XX. HOW THEY SEARCHED FOR WHITE HEATHER

XXL HOW THEY WENT INTO THE COPSE

XXII. HOW WILLUM WENT ROUND WITH A PAPER

XXIII. HOW BURROUGH LONGED TO ENTER LYONESSE

XXIV. HOW BURROUGH RECEIVED VISITORS

XXV. HOW BEATRICE SAT IN THE DIMPSY

XXVI. HOW IT WAS DREARY BESIDE THE GORGE

XXVII. HOW BURROUGH WENT TO DART HEAD

A PIXY IN PETTICOATS.

CHAPTER I.
HOW BURROUGH PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE.

The first thing John Burrough saw, when he had crossed the bog, was a crumpled newspaper lying upon the turf beside the river. He paused to regard it with a frown. Crusoe himself could not have been much more surprised at beholding the footprint upon the sand in his desert island.

By the presence of that piece of paper Burrough knew that his secret nook had been discovered. Someone shared his secret. Someone had found a way through the bog to the bend in the river, and had dared thus to desecrate the spot. The secret was out. Burrough sighed when he reflected that a crowd of holiday-makers might invade his solitude at any moment.

The river was the East Okement upon Dartmoor. It came sliding down a bed of stone, which was here and there as smooth as a billiard-table, tumbled over a succession of ledges, and finally swept round a bend to enter the little patch of unexplored territory which Burrough had made his own.

At the foot of a descent, so steep as to be generally avoided, stretched an immense bog always choked with water, even in summer, because it was fed by springs—the largest could be seen bubbling like a miniature fountain not very far from that obnoxious piece of paper. Apparently there was no pathway through this bog. Beyond was a towering fortification, composed of blocks of granite covered with black and grey lichens, and piled one upon the other in a wild confusion which was yet suggestive of method.

On the opposite side of the tiny river sloped a precipice almost sheer in places, everywhere covered with trees, oak, ash, and beech, plentifully besprinkled with hornbeam, hazel, and mountain-ash. That precipice was a wall of mud and saturated mosses. No wonder the foliage was so green and bright. Red streamlets trickled into the river after filtration through the bog forest. At the summit pink-coned larches could be seen nodding against the intense blue of the sky; lower, the wine-coloured plumes of a copper-beech; still lower the silvery bark of birches. A rowan covered with creamy blooms dipped to the river as though admiring its beauty in the broken water. Beneath its branches appeared pink spikes of rose-bay, and raspberry canes covered with unripe fruit.

Draping the boggy wall were ferns in tropical luxuriance. The royal osmunda could be seen in clumps and thickets; fronds, ten feet in length, bending to touch the shining water, or towering towards the oak-leaves. Beside the river was a natural arm-chair of granite, comfortably upholstered with golden mosses. There Burrough lolled day after day reading or writing. Below was a pool free from rocks and bedded with yellow sand. Black trout were always waiting for what the river might bring down to them, and very little in awe of the man in the granite chair. Probably they regarded him as the very latest kind of Dartmoor pony. Burrough seated himself, lighted a cigarette, and tried to forget that crumpled sheet of paper. He looked at the tender ivy trailing across the blocks of granite, at a brown lizard flashing by, and a viper basking on a warm shelf. Butterflies flitted past, bees were working in and out of their nests, flycatchers flirted their tails upon the rocks, and to the music of the birds was added the sleepy symphony of the river singing about the big stones.

“Bother that newspaper,” said Burrough.

He rose and went about his tiny kingdom, to search for other traces of the unwarrantable intrusion. Just below the pool a tiny island divided the river. The main current swept beneath a tangle of boughs, caused by the trees of the eyot and those of the bog forest hanging over and meeting, compelling the stickles to descend through perpetual twilight. The smaller channel separated the eyot from the great quaking bog. There the water, slightly tinged with sulphate of iron, could be seen bubbling restlessly amid the brilliant mosses. The edge of the bog appeared to have broken out into a scarlet rash, into numerous red blotches rather suggestive of tiny scraps of raw meat. These were carnivorous sundews, hard at work catching and eating flies. Beyond the sundew shambles were the olive-green leaves and tender grey flowers of the bog violet; and all along the “coast-line” of the eyot were big clumps of bog asphodel.

Burrough breathed a sigh of relief. The affairs of his kingdom appeared to be in perfect order. There were no tins nor bottles, nor any sign of the past pleasures of a picnicking party. He decided to burn the offending paper and then forget all about it; but before doing so he thought it advisable to go through the eyot, which was not, strictly speaking, a part of his kingdom, but merely a dependant state.

The young man reached the eyot by means of the great stones which during the winter were submerged. Once there he had to imagine himself a tailed being. Progress could only be made by resorting to Simian methods, on account of the huge boulders, the hidden pools, and the tropical luxuriance of the undergrowth. The water-birds, which had their nests among the sedges, were not unduly alarmed by his presence. Sometimes, while feeling for a safe spot to rest upon, his foot crushed the shells of eggs which had lately given forth young birds. The river was just visible as it tumbled from one shelf of rock to another. At the other end of the eyot the channels united to plunge away between two steep and shining walls of stone. There tall thickets of osmunda lifted their flowering plumes where the rough winds could not reach, and every rock was covered with asphodel, and the banks of the bog were lurid with mosses of every tint. Burrough balanced himself upon a giant’s pebble and looked upward. He saw a dense wavering screen composed of oak foliage and that of rowan, mingled with long fern fronds, and for background the river falling and flashing in lines of silver. It was as though the river was forcing itself between the boughs and leaves and fronds; that it was the weight of the water, not the motion of the breeze, which caused them to sway and dance. Burrough gazed upon the scene with the selfish joy of knowing he had the place to himself. No one saw the beauties of that hidden nook except himself. He began to assure himself that the crumpled newspaper had been carried over the precipice by a wind, and had not been dropped by any invader.

Then his eyes fell upon a dry sand-spit at the foot of a rock, beneath the thicket of osmunda. Right in the centre appeared the impression of a single footprint.

There was no mistake. It was a woman’s footprint, in spite of its ridiculous smallness. There was the deep imprint made by the heel—a half-crown would have covered it. There was the dainty point. Burrough wondered how five pink feminine toes could possibly be compressed within so slight a compass.

In fancy Burrough saw the hand which had dropped that piece of paper. He could guess what it was like after looking at that footprint. Give a distinguished palæontologist the fossil bone of some extinct species, and he will proceed to construct and describe the creature by that one bone. In like manner Burrough built up the perfect image of the unknown damsel, who had penetrated into the interior of his little kingdom, and had dared to desecrate it by throwing paper about, by that single tiny footprint in the sand.

She was young. That was certain, because none but an agile girl could have fought her way across the eyot. She was small. That was evident by the ridiculous footprint. The young man decided she was dark, with bright colour, eyes of deep blue, rather thick eyebrows, and laughing mouth. He arrived at this conclusion because he knew such a face would look exceedingly well against the thicket of osmunda and the falling water. He decided she would be dressed in grey, and he added a ribbon at her waist. He was not sure of the colour of that ribbon. It was a tan shoe that had made the imprint. He was sure of that. It suited the grey skirt exactly.

The young man drew a tape-measure from his pocket. He carried it about with him for the purpose of measuring the stone remains upon the moor. He was finding out all he could about these remains, because he intended to write a book on the subject. The sort of book a few people might buy, to adorn a table or shelf, but nobody would ever read.

This was much better than measuring hoary antiquities of the stone age. Already he was far more interested in that footprint than in all the remains of prehistoric man. From heel to toe six inches and a fraction. He did not record the measurement in his note-book. Somehow he felt sure he would remember it; and, as a matter of fact, his memory justified the confidence he placed in it.

The crumpled sheet of newspaper was not nearly so objectionable an object as it had been. Indeed, it was with quite friendly eyes that Burrough regarded it when he returned from the eyot. Had a man dropped it there, or some picnicking matron, or even any ordinary young person, the act would have remained unpardonable. But the girl with the dainty footprint might surely do as she pleased. She was quite justified in leaving it there, for how could she be expected to carry it about with her if she did not require it? Really it was not an eyesore at all. It looked rather well lying crumpled upon the turf beside a clump of whortleberries. That secluded nook had needed a civilising touch, and now it had been supplied by the kindly thought and gracious presence of the fair invader. Something was gleaming beside the newspaper. It was a hairpin—not a common, unsightly, black object, but a slender golden hairpin, delicately shaped and deliciously fragrant.

So the unknown was a fair girl, and not dark, as he had supposed. She would not secure dark tresses with a golden hairpin. Burrough constructed her over again. The face was much the same—rather less colour, perhaps—and the eyes were grey. The figure was a trifle fuller, and the frock was of some dark material. He did not remove the tan shoes, but he added brown silk stockings to match.

Burrough slipped the hairpin into his pocket. He thought it would come in handy for cleaning his pipe. Then he picked up the piece of paper. It was damp, and so he knew it must have been dropped the day before. It would have been in the evening, for he had been there till four o’clock on the previous afternoon. He opened the paper and shook it out, then dropped it with a shudder. It seemed to him that the folds were smeared with stains like blood.

He had forgotten those horrible things which are the lot of human beings—sickness, sorrowing, suffering, and death. But when he looked up he saw upon a patch of ground, which made the centre of a small amphitheatre of rocks, the carcase of a horned mountain sheep, every bit of flesh well cleaned from its ribs and skull. Around were evidences of a struggle. The greater portion of the fleece was twisted into a shapeless mass, but scraps of wool were held upon every bramble and gorse-bush, and here and there were wisps torn from the poor hunted creature by its ravenous pursuers. That sheep had been hunted, dragged down, and destroyed by starving dogs. Burrough knew that another carcase—that of a pony—was lying in a hole just beyond the wall of rocks. Those bones, too, were white and well-cleaned by the busy ants. The hide had been gnawed by dogs, and nest-making birds had found the mane and tail very useful. That pony had been bitten by a viper. Burrough remembered it when he saw the red stains upon the piece of paper.

The next minute he was laughing. He had spread out the paper, and other marks became at once visible.

“My lady is an aristocrat,” he said; “she has blue blood.”

After all, the paper had only been used for cleaning paint-brushes. Probably the Lady of the Footprint had been trying to put the sunset upon canvas—it was just the sort of impossible task a pretty young girl would attempt—and the blood-red stains represented the fiery clouds, and the blue smears were the sky above. Burrough pushed the paper into a gorse-bush and burnt it, bush and all. After all, he was sorry he had discovered it. He was glad he had found the golden hairpin and the footprint. But the piece of paper remained an unsightly object. He could not forget how it had reminded him, if only for a moment, of the destroying dogs and the malevolent viper.

CHAPTER II.
HOW BURROUGH HAD THE VISION.

Burrough was thirty-five, at which age most men have closed the romantic chapter of their lives. Most men also go forth as knight-errants to seek their adventures; Burrough had waited for his to come to him. He did not look his age. He was a handsome giant, slightly over six feet in height, and broad in proportion; his face was clean-shaven; his hair was fair; his eyes were blue. He was also clever—too clever for the work-a-day world. He had taken classical honours; only a second-class because his health broke down. For some years he managed to maintain himself by contributing essays and reviews to various periodicals, until the atmosphere of Fleet Street became too much for his lungs, and, on the advice of an eminent specialist, he removed to Dartmoor, where he built a tiny cottage beside a gorge, in a dreary solitude upon the moor near the village of Lew.

He became well and strong in the bracing air, but with the return of health came also the sense of his loneliness. His cottage was quite apart from the village. It was surrounded by great boulders of granite, heather, gorse, bracken and whortleberries. He could not afford a housekeeper. A woman came out from the village twice a week to put the place in order. For the rest he was alone. He mended his own clothes and prepared his own meals.

Being clever with his hands, Burrough had assisted in the building of his cottage. He had done all the painting and made a good deal of the furniture. The interior was really comfortable. The cottage was not beautiful externally; it was built of granite and roofed with corrugated iron. Creepers would not grow up it on account of the winds. Gorse and heather were thick beside the walls. The windows overlooked a gorge. In winter the water in this gorge would rise and roar so loudly as to make conversation difficult. Not much conversation took place in the cottage. Burrough had only his cat to argue with.

Within, the change was startling. To cross the threshold was literally to step from dreariness into comfort. One step led from the barren moor into a room of refinement: one second it was granite, bog, and heath; the next green curtains, shaded lamps, old books, and pictures. Burrough was proud of his little home. Every morning he swept and dusted it while he waited for the kettle to boil. He never allowed his fire to go out. It was easy to smother it with a couple of turves before going to bed, and these turves were always warm and glowing in the morning.

Burrough felt that a change had come over him as he walked back from the secret nook, with the hairpin in his pocket, and the measurement of the tiny footprint in his brain. A change had come over the weather too; black clouds were racing across the High Willhays range, and the rain began before the ugly tin roof of the cottage beside the gorge appeared beneath the tors. Burrough liked to feel the wind and rain. The storm suited his mood. How foolish he had been to try and banish the thoughts of love! He thought he had not needed it. He thought he could live and work without it. He had kept his inclinations subdued for years, but some force had been secretly at work undermining his resolution all the time. He had always been a shy man in the presence of women. He had envied the ease with which young fellows would address girls, while he would withdraw to a corner and look on, feeling somehow that such pleasures were not for him. He did not know how to address young women of his own class. He had nothing to offer them. He believed that a woman would not look at a man if he could not give her fine clothes, jewellery, a mansion, position in society, and as much money to spend as she wanted. That had always been his wrong-headed idea of love. It was what the world had taught him. Love was a thing to be bought easily, and won with difficulty.

Burrough neglected his work that evening. Outside the wind howled, and the water in the gorge roared. He sat in his easy-chair, smoking more than was good for him, worrying over his poverty, and thinking all the time of the golden hairpin in his pocket and the dainty footprint in the sand. His big black cat was seated on the rug, blinking at the flames, and purring a short stave whenever he felt the touch of his master’s foot.

“Advise me, King o’ the Cats,” said Burrough at length. He was accustomed thus to address his sole companion. “Don’t you think it’s folly and madness for a man to live alone? If there are more women than men in the world, surely there must be one for me. I’m in love at the present moment, King o’ the Cats, hopelessly in love, over head and ears in love, you blinking, purring, many-wived Solomon. No man has ever been more in love, though I don’t know who she is. Attend to me—rake, roué, blasé old bigamist! Why should I keep you in affluence and much matrimony, and myself in poverty and singleness of life? Tell me that, King o’ the Cats. I have as much right to my one wife as you to your dozen.”

Peter yawned, and made preparations for slumber.

“She wouldn’t come here though,” Burrough went on. “She wouldn’t come to the doll’s house, to my granite ark with its roof of tin. It would be coming down too low, King o’ the Cats. She couldn’t do it. Fancy her trailing silks and laces, and all the fluffy wonders women wear, across the bog, through the heather and gorse, and over the granite. She would have to array her sweet self in canvas, sackcloth, tarpaulins. She would not give up her world of fashion, and the world of shops, for miserable me. Turn hermit in the wilderness for a wretched man, a fool of a man, a beast of a penniless man. What a mad idea it is, old King Peter! No wonder you yawn. I make you tired. Sit up, my beauty, sit up in your majesty, and purr to me truly whether there be in this rolling sphere, between the poles thereof, maid or widow, not younger than twenty, nor yet older than thirty, who would take John Burrough by the hand, and say, ‘I will’? Is there one who would say, ‘I will come under your tin roof for better or for worse?’ ”

Peter scratched his right ear vigorously. Burrough went across the room, and returned to his chair with an armful of classics.

“What do the poets say? Leave your ear alone, King o’ the Cats. I will make it smart and tingle before I have done. Goddess of the golden hairpin, goddess of the small brown shoe, what do the wise men say of you? ‘Not any man shall escape, not even the gods. Love, thou triumphest even over gold.’ No, no, Sophocles. It won’t do. Every man has his price, and even Cupid is corruptible. A millionaire will buy up the boy’s whole stock. ‘Take away the pleasures of love from life, and there is nothing left but to die.’ That’s the opinion of Marcus Aurelius, most excellent ear-scratcher. I observe you wink sympathetically. ‘A woman is a great evil,’ says Euripides. ‘Faithless is the female race.’ Out upon you, swarthy Greek. What do the gallant Romans say? ‘Love and wisdom are incompatible.’ Do you hear that, King o’ the Cats? We must give up our wise ways. ‘Love is full of bitterness,’ declares Plautus, and Terence quite agrees with him; but Plautus is man and brother enough to admit there is honey with the gall. Ovid states that the disease is incurable, the which I doubt. It is easily conveyed. True! It may be communicated by a hairpin, for instance. Now let me try the Sortes Virgilianæ. ‘Love conquers all things, and we must yield to love.’ That is the conclusion of the whole matter.”

Burrough pushed the books from his knee, and sat frowning at the fire.

“Eh, my pussy,” he said sadly, stroking his favourite’s head. “We are a pair of puir fules. Watch me go forth to-morrow to my sunny hollow beyond the bog. You shall see me with my hose ungartered, my bonnet unbanded, my sleeve unbuttoned, my shoe untied, and everything about me demonstrating a careless desolation. That might have been all very well in the days of chivalry, eh, Chat Noir? In this present unpoetic age I should be dubbed a male slut, even if I could unbutton my sleeve or unband my bonnet.”

Burrough indulged in a good deal of such vicious rhetoric before going to bed. The next morning it was raining. He went down to the secret nook beside the river, although he could not have expected to find anything of surpassing interest. The ferns were drooping, the river had risen, the blooms of the rowan and rose-bays looked draggled and tawdry; they were like the artificial flowers on some Italian altar. There was an odour of mud in the wind. Burrough climbed back to the moorland track, and took the way which led into the village.

The vicar was standing at his garden door. The vicarage was nothing more than a long cottage thatched with rushes. Mr. Yeoland was an old man, weak, childish, and entirely incapable of performing his slight duties. He clung somehow to life and office, the former a burden because of his weakness, the latter a sinecure since all the villagers went to chapel. The old man lived alone with a housekeeper, who scolded him, and sometimes pushed him about roughly when she was the worse for liquor. The old man spent most of his time in the house sitting in a state of lethargy. Two or three times a day he would shuffle to his garden door, which was overshadowed by a large sycamore, and ogle the girls as they passed.

Mr. Yeoland was not alone. A girl stood beneath the sycamore talking to him. She was of medium height, neither slender nor plump. She had gathered up her skirts boldly, possibly on account of the mud, possibly because a pretty ankle was not made to be hidden. A tiny tan shoe nestled in the mud, and above was the brown silk stocking of Burrough’s fancy. It fulfilled its purpose in a shapely manner, until it disappeared, melted away into, or became blended with, a summer cloud of diaphanous wonders. Her back was towards Burrough, but he could see that her hair was dark brown, and that it was studded with little gleaming points like fireflies. She wore a white tam-o’-shanter. Secured to it on the left side was a jewelled butterfly with wings outspread.

Burrough came to a stand beside the wall opposite, where he could both see and hear. The Vicar did not appear to notice him. The old man was chuckling in his senile way, delighted at having caught the young lady as she passed. His speech was affected. He spoke out of the corner of his mouth, and every word was accompanied by a grimace.

“Go along with you,” Burrough heard him say with a sly chuckle.

The young lady laughed. It was not a particularly pleasing laugh, Burrough thought. Yet he was singularly anxious to hear it again. He saw her put up a bare hand to brush the hair back from her forehead.

“I’ll pull it,” said the amorous old man, putting out his trembling hand. “I will. I’ll pull it.”

“You will not,” said the young lady, rather coldly Burrough thought, as she stepped back from the uninviting caress.

“If I was forty years younger,” mumbled the Vicar out of the corner of his mouth, “I’d take off my white tie, and we’d go on the spree.”

“Are you so sure I would come with you?” said she.

A gust of wind passed through the sycamore and brought down a shower of big drops. The young lady moved and cried, “What have you in the garden—anything? May I go in and pick some flowers for my room?”

“Nothing but weeds,” mumbled the Vicar. “The garden’s like me—rough and ready.”

“But I can see some syringa,” said she, raising herself on tip-toe.

“There are snakes in that long grass,” the Vicar warned her, as she was about to enter.

“I’m not afraid of them. I like them,” came the answer.

“Afraid of mice?” he chuckled.

“Love them,” she declared.

“And men?” he went on.

“Silly apes,” she laughed.

They went into the garden. Burrough crossed the road, whipped the tape-measure from his pocket, and measured the tiny imprint in the mud.

“It is she,” he murmured.

He waited about beside the wall. From time to time he heard a merry laugh, and the mumbling of old Yeoland, who was probably trying to steal a kiss among the syringa. Burrough could not believe she would permit that dirty and unpleasant old man to approach her. While he waited the rain ceased and a flash of sunlight pierced the clouds. It struck upon the garden, and he heard the exclamation, “The sun! I must go.”

A moment later the girl stood in the doorway, and Burrough saw her face at last.

She was like a bride with orange-blossoms. She held a quantity of syringa covered with pearly rain-drops. The rain was in her dark-brown hair too, and upon her face, and it was sprinkled upon her tam-o’-shanter where the jewelled butterfly quivered in the sunshine. She was not pretty. She had not a single good feature. Her skin was brown. Her nose was not straight. It was a maddening face. No one who fell in love with that face could ever love another.

When she saw Burrough she swished round, and said to the Vicar, who was hobbling amorously in her wake, “Thanks very much for the syringa, but I don’t know what I shall do with it now I’ve got it. The scent is too heady for a room.”

“Have it beside your bed. Then you’ll dream of me,” the old man muttered.

“I should wake with a headache, and pitch it out of the window.”

“As Gerard did,” said Burrough as the Vicar appeared, addressing himself to the old man. “Good morning, Mr. Yeoland.”

“Good morning,” said the Vicar, somewhat gruffly, as he did not like to have such little affairs interrupted.

“Good morning,” murmured the young lady. “As Mr. Yeoland does not introduce me. As a matter of fact I’ve never been introduced to him. One doesn’t stand upon ceremony much in a mountain village.”

Her eyes said plainly enough, “You spoke to me first.” Which was true.

“Gerard. Who’s he?” mumbled the Vicar.

“The sixteenth-century herbalist,” Burrough replied.

“Bookworm, pedant, scholar, idiot,” was what he thought the girl’s eyes were saying to him then.

“I must go and take my auntie for a stroll,” was what her tongue said, as she moved away a step, shaking the rain from her dainty skirts. “She’s like a butterfly. Comes out when the sun shines. Goes in when it doesn’t. It sounds giddy.”

“Go along! Naughty girl!” chuckled the Vicar.

“I see you are out in all weathers,” Burrough ventured, yet without looking at her.

“Morning, noon, and night,” she laughed. “Up with the lark, out all day, and in with the—what are the things that fly about at night, Mr. Yeoland?”

“Bats,” croaked the Vicar.

“Beast!” she cried.

“Owls,” he chuckled, his face distorted with mirth.

“My eyes are not big and round, and I do not shriek at nights.”

“I think you mean moths,” Burrough said nervously.

“Moths. Yes, the stupid things fly into our lamp and roast themselves. Auntie says, ‘poor dears,’ and tries to rescue them. I say, let the idiots grill if it gives them such enjoyment. They ought to have the sense to keep in the dark. Directly they come into the light they lose their heads.”

“And their lives,” Burrough added.

“But I like the beetles,” the girl rattled on. “They are such jolly old boys. I believe they are always on the spree, and they never know what they’re doing. Last night I was out and I heard one coming—boom! He came crack upon my nose, nearly splitting it, and it’s crooked enough already, then he fell on the road, and cussed. Presently a lot of clockwork or something went whirr inside him. He got up, fell back again, said he was all right, then tried again. He got off that time, boomed hard for a dozen yards, then charged a wall—bang! I left him lying on his back in the road, kicking and swearing. Really he wanted someone to look after him.”

“Like me,” mumbled the Vicar.

“I must run,” said the girl. “Good-bye.”

She nodded, laughed, and was off at full speed.

CHAPTER III.
HOW BURROUGH WALKED WITH BEATRICE.

Towards evening Burrough had the vision again. In the interval he had made inquiries. Her name was Beatrice Pentreath; her home was in Cornwall; and she lived with a maiden aunt of uncertain age. They came upon Dartmoor every summer. The woman who cleaned Burrough’s cottage had a poor opinion of the young lady, because it was her custom to ride astride like a man, she was shamelessly plainspoken, and had a disgusting habit of using tobacco in the form of cigarettes.

“And she’s been seen on the moor, naked—naked, sir,” went on the matron in a tragic manner.

Further questioning elicited the statement that Miss Beatrice went up Taw Marsh sometimes to bathe in one of the river pools; and after bathing she would run about to dry herself. There was nothing very shocking about that, the region being exceedingly lonely, and the chances of the young lady being detected in her Garden of Eden gambols therefore exceedingly slight.

“Who saw her?” Burrough asked.

“Don’t matter who saw her,” said the matron severely. “She was seen from Oke Tor. Not even a towel round her, sir.”

“Oke Tor is a long way from the river,” Burrough said, and added impatiently, “Why shouldn’t she bathe? I have been up there to bathe too.”

“You’re a gentleman, sir,” the good woman reminded him.

Burrough was not listening. He was thinking how well that tinted skin would look against the pink heather and grey granite. He thought too of the little pool of black trout at the secret nook, where he had discovered the footprint and the piece of paper, and he wondered if she had ever bathed there.

It was in the village Burrough met her. She was alone. At first he thought he would turn back, as the sight of her made him nervous; but he reflected she had probably seen him, and his flight would look ridiculous. He decided to pass her, and bow if she chose to acknowledge his presence.

“Good evening,” she said, as they drew together.

His first impression had been correct. That face was maddening. He stopped, feeling as though he had just swallowed something strong and burning. He looked down, and saw a tiny tan shoe nestling in the dust beside his big boot. He looked up, and caught her eyes. He did not know how she was dressed; but he was aware she was bare-headed, and that her hair was dark-brown. He could smell syringa, and he supposed she was wearing some of that which she had obtained from the Vicar during the rain-storm.

“Are you going for a walk?” he asked.

“Yes, I’m off duty. My auntie is as sleepy as a dormouse, and is hugged over the fire. The room was too hot for me, so I came out among the moths and beetles—and—it’s lonely dull in the evenings.”

The scented languorous atmosphere of early summer was about them, that atmosphere so dangerous to youth and innocence. Burrough felt the charm working upon him with every breath of that warm air. There was too much fragrance. In winter there was not enough. In his cottage there was the odour of stale tobacco and the musty smell of books. It was “lonely dull” in the evenings there.

“Have you ever seen the aftermath from the top of the village?” he asked her timidly.

“Let me think,” said she, laughing, but a trifle puzzled.

“I mean the glow in the sky above High Willhays,” he explained.

“I’ve seen it,” she replied; then added, “And I should like to see it again.”

Side by side they began to ascend the hill. Burrough had only once before been a maiden’s squire. While living in London he went one night to a music hall, and found himself sitting next to a girl who was unaccompanied. A remark led up to a conversation. After the entertainment he had the politeness to escort her as far as her door-step. The following Sunday he met her by appointment and they walked in the Park. She was a good-looking girl, and he thought he would improve her mind. The girl, however, did not want her mind improved. After she had met the young man a few times, and found that he had not the sense or inclination to respond to the hints she gave him, she transferred her affections to someone more demonstrative.

Of course the shop-girl of the London days was not to be thought of in comparison with the young lady at his side. He thought of Beatrice’s bathing exploits, and the drying process found favour in his eyes. It showed virtue, naturalness, freedom of soul, and purity of mind. No prude would do such a thing as expose herself to Nature, because it is a commonplace that a prude is at heart a rake.

“You live in a little crooked house?” Beatrice said suddenly.

“Cottage,” he amended. “Quite a shell. I feel that I ought to carry it about with me like a snail.”

“And you walk a crooked mile to get to it, and you have a crooked cat,” she went on, with a gasp of laughter, humming the old nursery rhyme. “You must take care you don’t become a crooked man,” she added.

“How do you know about me or my cat?” he asked her.

“You live in a Dartmoor village, and ask me that question. Don’t you know that your down-sittings and up-risings are known long before? The villagers have nothing to do but gossip. Whenever I want to know how I am getting on, I go and ask one of them. If you cannot remember how you have spent your time, they will enlighten you, and add side-lights upon your character which are both instructive and interesting. Old Ann Cobbledick, our landlady, has told me your history; and if you are interested in the future she will tell you that too. You are a source of great vexation to Ann.”

“Why?” asked Burrough.

“She wants you to have a housekeeper, so that she may have a new scandal to discuss and circulate. Of course, there is plenty of scandal about you, but there does not appear to be anything very solid to build upon. I may tell you that Ann is quite prepared to sacrifice a niece of hers for the benefit of herself and of the village in general. Do you think you will be public-spirited enough to accept the girl’s services, and make the poor people happy?”

Burrough laughed, and ventured to glance at the distracting profile of this plain-spoken young lady. Really, it was quite easy to chat with her. With the shop-girl there had been innumerable difficulties. Her conversation had consisted chiefly of monosyllables, with such phrases as, “Go on,” “Well, I never,” and “That’s all right.” The shop-girl and the doddering old Vicar would have suited each other admirably. Burrough could not resist the conclusion that Beatrice and he were equally well matched.

“I have a bone to pick with you,” he said in a deferential manner.

“With me! Why, before this morning you had never——” She stopped, as if mindful of the informality of their introduction, then rattled on merrily, “What sort of a bone?”

“People who go painting should not spoil the beauties of Nature by dropping waste-paper,” Burrough went on.

“They should not,” Beatrice agreed. “But they do. It’s beastly of them.”

“Pieces of paper smeared with paint,” said Burrough.

“Torn into pieces, and scattered all over the place,” she added tragically.

“No, rolled into a ball, and dropped beside the river,” he concluded.

“Oh, my dear little life! It’s the ghost! The very pisky itself! To be regardless of grammar, it’s him!” laughed Beatrice.

Burrough sought to learn why she made merry at his expense. Thereupon the young lady drew herself up, glanced at him wickedly, and imitating his voice and manner, said like a saucy parrot:

“People who go smoking should not absolutely ruin the beauties of Nature by dropping matches and cigarette-ends about.”

“They were not conspicuous,” Burrough urged somewhat lamely.

“Cigarette-ends stained with tobacco juice, and half-burnt wax-matches,” she went on ruthlessly.

“I thought they were hidden by the bracken,” he pleaded.

“They are scattered all over the grass beside the river,” she said.

“I am guilty,” he confessed.

“I could not think who the man was who had discovered my hiding-place,” Beatrice rattled on. “I discovered it during my childhood, in those happy days when I would rush about the moor with nothing on but a rag of a frock, a jersey, and pair of sandals. I wish I might do it now! I thought nobody knew of that place except myself, until I saw the cigarette-ends. I sighed, and said, ‘le jeu est fait.’ How did you know I was the trespasser?”

“By the piece of paper,” Burrough answered foolishly.

“I haven’t the slightest remembrance of writing my name upon it,” she said.

“You left the marks of your paint-brushes, red marks and blue marks,” he rambled on.

“You looked at them, and you said, said you, ‘Sure, and ’tis Beatrice Pentreath entirely!’ That was cleverer than telling fortunes by coffee-grounds.”

Driven to desperation Burrough divulged a portion of the truth. He would not own how he had measured the footprint.

“I saw your footprints at the edge of the bog—ninety-nines,” she murmured. “You ought to have taken an impress, and gone to a cobbler, and got him to make you a slipper. Then you should have collected all the girls in the neighbourhood, and tried the slipper on each one until you found Cinderella. I shouldn’t have let you try it on me, for I think I have got a big hole in my stocking. I can’t understand how you recognised me by my footprint. It’s the same as any other girl’s.”

“Isn’t it smaller?” he suggested.

“Do you think so? There!” she exclaimed, putting out a tiny shoe, and twisting the foot about. “It’s not very large, is it?”

Burrough felt something ringing in his ears. An almost irresistible longing swept over him, urging him to kneel and press his lips upon that thinly-covered ankle. It was curious, because the shop-girl of his London days had not affected him in the least. He had been perfectly cool and level-headed in her presence.

“No, it’s not large,” Beatrice said, answering her own question with perfect truth and innocence. “I shall have to cover my tracks in future, or else wherever you go you will see them, and say, ‘There’s that girl of the paint-pot.’ ”

“What do you paint?” Burrough asked, thankful to find a question.

“Anything,” she laughed. “I painted a most lovely sunset, and when I showed it to my auntie she pointed to one of my pink clouds, and said, ‘Oh, my dear, how prettily you have painted the heather!’ Then she mistook the setting sun for a lump of granite, and a beam of light for the river, so I made the discovery that my sunset was after all quite a nice picture of moorland scenery. I can never do the right thing. Last year I made a study of a sheep’s face—just the face and nothing else—and showed it to old Y. That’s the vicar. He was so pleased. Before I could explain anything he declared it was the best likeness of himself he had ever seen, and wanted to know how I had done it without his knowledge. For the future I shall label my works of art. Every picture wants labelling. A big painter showed me a picture he had just done once, and I made him so angry because I said I couldn’t see any stockings. I thought it was meant for Christmas Eve, and the father was bringing in presents for the kiddies; and it was really the murder of the two young princes in the Tower.”

Beatrice rattled on in this lively strain for some time, while her companion listened intently and laughed in a subdued fashion. Somehow he could not rid himself of the idea that Miss Pentreath, the girl’s Aunt, might not approve of this tête-à-tête. In the meantime it had grown dark. White moths fluttered here and there, and the beetles boomed.

“I thought we were going up on the moor to see the afterglow. Here we are in the lane which has no turning and goes nowhere,” Beatrice exclaimed. “And the dew is falling. My hair is quite wet.” She passed her hand across the brown curls, and caressed them into their proper place. Then she turned to him with a smile. In that voluptuous gloom her face was more distracting than ever.

“You have told me nothing about the little crooked house,” she said.

Burrough winced. Her remark suggested everything that was sacred and tender and purely passionate. He imagined her there. Already he loved her in his quiet self-restrained fashion. Only to have her there, to worship, to care for, protect and adore; to kiss that tiny foot; and aspire at last to those ruby-red lips and that maddening little nose. But it was not to be thought of. Dainty Beatrice, in her silks and laces, beneath the tin roof of his wild moorland cottage home. It would be asking the princess to become Cinderella. He caught a glimpse of her lace-trimmed petticoat as she walked, and he thought of the bog near his cottage, and of the gorse and granite beside its door.

“And they all lived together in a little crooked house,” she hummed thoughtlessly.

“Well,” said she, “you must describe it to me another time.”

“Are you going to the secret nook to-morrow?” he asked eagerly.

“Perhaps,” she said. “To paddle.”

“Then I must not be there.”

“I might postpone the paddling,” she went on. “Let me see. To-morrow: In the morning I shall take Auntie for a toddle, if she’s good. In the afternoon I shall put her into a chair, and give her a sermon to read, and a heap of stockings to mend. Then ‘Ho and away for the riverside!’ ”

“If I brought a kettle…” began Burrough timidly.

“I might provide a basket of buttered splits,” the girl said delightedly.

Never had the cottage on the moor appeared so dreary to its owner as it was that summer’s night. He went in, lit his lamp, and sat for some time motionless, with his hands upon his knees, while the big moths passed through the open window to bombard the lamp-shade. Presently he felt something against his legs, and looking down he beheld Peter with a rat in his mouth. It was a gift for the master, and the cat put it down upon the carpet and purred in noisy triumph.

“What have you done, King o’ the Cats?” said Burrough sorrowfully. “Wilfully and with malice doing murder on this peaceful night, and presenting your ghastly victim at my feet. Shame on you, Lord of Darkness! This rat may have been a king’s daughter, a brown-haired princess, metamorphosed by some vile magician. What, my green-eyed monster, did you imagine I should come home weary and hungry, and did you decide therefore to serve me up savoury meat? Eat it yourself, my Pete, for I have no appetite. And, tell me truly, do you not think Beatrice is the sweetest and most adorable name between the lowest earth and the highest heaven?”

CHAPTER IV.
HOW BURROUGH VISITED BEDLAM.

Like everybody else Burrough was affected by the weather, but unlike most he appreciated wind and rain. When in London he revelled in a fog. Upon Dartmoor he felt himself exhilarated by a thick mountain mist. Sunshine he delighted in, of course, but the enjoyment was usually alloyed with sadness, because on those bright days, when Nature was at her best, he felt outside all the happiness. He knew that he ought to be having what is called a good time. He had neither means nor opportunities so to do. When it rained, or there was a close pall of mist over the high moor, he had the idea that he was as happy as most people.

It was a glorious morning, and as a consequence Burrough was somewhat low-spirited. He was almost sorry Beatrice had come into his life. His love was only a dream, which would pass away and never come again. He would be left to his loneliness with the memory of her. She would go; and he be left. The winter would return.

He prepared his breakfast, swept out the sitting-room, tidied the kitchen while he smoked a pipe, then looked out over the moor. A few rough ponies were the only living creatures in sight. Peter finished his milk, and emerged, licking his lips like a toper leaving an alehouse. He said plainly enough that he didn’t know what his master intended doing that morning; but so far as he was concerned there was a comfortable shelf of granite a little higher up on the moor where he contemplated basking all day. He shook his paw and marched off, treading gingerly because of the gorse-prickles.

“Leave the lizards alone, Pete,” his master called.

The cat looked round, and appeared to wink. “You mind your own business,” he seemed to say. “Sit down and work, will ye, and keep a warm roof over us. As for the lizards, it’s no use catching them, because you never will eat them.”

“You can bring me a young rabbit, son of Anak,” shouted Burrough.

Peter swished his tail, which was his way of terminating an interview, and continued his delicate career towards the warm rocks.

Burrough went into his study, forced himself into a chair, seized a pen, and addressed himself thus: “Now, my friend, you shall sit here until noon, whether you are idle or industrious. Therefore I should advise you to be industrious.”

Palæolithic Remains! An admirable subject on a sensuous summer’s morning for a man in love. He had reached the chapter entitled Hut Circles. For some minutes he remained engrossed, presumably upon his opening sentence, then he said gently, “I wonder why she uses those bright hairpins.”

He applied himself seriously to that problem. Had he brought the same amount of intelligence to bear upon the subject of Hut Circles he might possibly have evolved a new theory. Precisely this idea occurred, and he struggled to turn his thoughts into the palæolithic channel. He was so far successful that he soon found himself considering that the stone, which stood at the edge of the river in the secret nook and which he believed was a tolmen, would do very nicely for boiling the kettle on that afternoon.

“Perhaps she won’t come,” he muttered dolefully.

The distracting vision of Beatrice remained in the foreground, although Burrough firmly persuaded himself he was working. That work, could he have presented it to an honest critic, would have received the kind of verdict which Miss Pentreath had passed upon her niece’s picture of the setting sun. “Stone remains! Hut Circles! Why, my dear fellow, there is nothing here but a girl.”

“This won’t do,” Burrough cried, bringing his hand down upon the table. “In the words of Samuel Johnson, this won’t do at all. I have done nothing for the last three days. Idleness and infatuation will lure me into the mad-house, or the poor-house, or the charnel-house, or some other horrible kind of house. I must practise concentration. I will not allow my mind to wander. I will not let her face come between me and my work again. Now where was I?.… ‘This stone was probably used by the occupant of the hut to stand upon during his morning devotions to the sun, and… it was here’ ” … But the association of feet with stones suggested nothing that was neolithic. He saw tiny tan shoes, brown silk stockings, and lace-trimmed petticoat; and it was Beatrice who stood upon the stone, not a hairy and uninteresting prehistoric man.

So he began to wonder what she was doing just then. Probably escorting her maiden Aunt from one fixed point to another. He felt he was wasting his time, as indeed he was; but what he meant was that he might have been out watching her from a respectful distance, instead of sitting in that chair thinking of her. He wondered how she was dressed. Was there any analogy between the foam of the sea, out of which Venus rose at her birth, and the foam of underclothing worn by twentieth-century maidens? What was the use of the Church denouncing a general laxity in the moral tone, while the law permitted girls to walk abroad clad as it were in foam o’ the sea, and had nothing to say against pictorial advertisements of the same sea foam appearing week by week in fashion papers? He wondered whether Turkish breeches and yashmak would depress the matrimonial mart. But what had these matters of life, love, and passion to do with cold, grey, lichen-covered granite?

It was no use. Burrough felt that his brain was on fire. He was raving mad. He had been bitten by the tarantula. He might write a love-story, but not a sermon upon stones. The eyes of Beatrice had done his business. For life or for death he was hers.

Decidedly she was no prim maid; no Jane-Austen virgin, prone to excessive bouts of weeping or fainting-fits. Did she, he wondered, incline just a little towards the opposite scale? Was she, in short, a flirt? Was she a mere incendiary, who would kindle a fire, and then run away, not daring to look at the consequences? She had been free and easy with him, but then he had almost forced himself upon her in the first instance. Besides, she had known who he was. She knew him to be a gentleman. The affair with Mr. Yeoland was nothing. Most of the girls allowed that amorous old personage a certain amount of licence. He remembered Beatrice would not even permit the dotard to pull her hair. Why shouldn’t she be free and friendly with himself? Burrough pulled himself upright, and regarded his face in the glass of the over-mantel. He was not a bad-looking fellow, and he was in the prime of life.

All this had nothing to do with stone-remains; but the young man was just then past praying for.

What passionate pilgrim will confess honestly to every foolish action before his sacred fire has been quenched by marriage? Probably the country bumpkin is the only really sensible lover. He has a good resounding kiss, and goes back to his plough, and thinks no more of Polly until he sees her again. Burrough was a scholar, and therefore a fool in love. The greater a man’s knowledge the fiercer his passion. A young woman with her first baby is bad enough; but a scholar with his sweetheart is worse. How many would confess to the initials they had carved on beech-trees? To the nonsense they had scrawled upon the sands? To the doggerel they had penned, or the mad phrases they had mouthed? Every wise man is a Bedlamite for a few hours of his life.

Burrough took up his pen, and began to scratch on the sheet, which by that time of day should have been covered with hieroglyphics concerning the stone age. He wrote the one word “Beatrice.” This was not only foolish but unnecessary, as he was in no danger of forgetting it. Besides, it rendered the paper unfit for literary purposes. He added the monosyllable “John.” Then he enclosed the two words within a bracket, and made noises of gratification like a baby nuzzling its bottle.

Burrough had often seen a servant-girl and her swain embracing upon a bench, and engaged with each other’s lips like bees on clover. He had questioned the propriety of these aphrodisiac courtships; yet he had admitted there was something pretty and poetic about such a couple, wandering down a lane clasped together. It suggested the indissoluble bond of love as nothing else could suggest it. Merely the desire to be together; with nothing to talk about; but to step together, think together, cling together. The man who buys love ready-made would have no sympathy with that poetry of motion, where hands and waists are clasped, and the feet move in harmony with the heart-beats. It must have been very early in time that some cave-dweller—and this distinctly referred to Burrough’s work on stone-remains—discovered that it was a sweet and pleasant thing to have his arm around the probably undraped waist of some other cave-dweller’s daughter. No doubt it was a great deal later when some fair damsel—it would have been a feminine discovery—found a fearful joy in bestowing shy and tender bites upon the loved one. Naturally he would have been impelled by gallantry to return the salutation, and so love-bites came into fashion; until the time arrived when some warrior, who had lost his teeth in a brawl, was compelled to use his lips, thus inaugurating a new fashion in the best hut-circle society. Finally some tender creature of the bon ton conceived the idea of thus biting the lips which had bitten her, and in this manner created the kiss of modern society. There was something delightfully sweet and tender, Burrough thought, about primitive courtship. What could be more tender—and more idiotic—than a dove billing and cooing to its mate? It was delightful just because it was idiotic. There was something enthralling about the illiterate cooing of lovers, about the nonsense-verses, the baby-talk, the mispronounced and misspelt words—the first fruits of the intoxicating madness of pubescence.

The scholar ceased his thinking, and proceeded to action. In a bold round hand he wrote upon the paper, “My dere letele angel.”

This was pretty good for a man who had taken honours. Had he been a clodhopper he would have scratched his head and aspired to the grandiose. Being a scholar he found it a delight to coo the part of the idiotic dove.

The door was wide open. In stalked Peter, bearing a ridiculous rabbit, not so large as the rat he had captured the previous night. He went through his usual performance of presenting the offering and purring his own triumph; while Burrough blushed, actually blushed, to be caught at such egregious folly by his cat, and to discover that the animal had made better use of the morning than he had. He caught up the sheet, tore it into fragments, and tried to be sane again.

“Another small soul despatched into limbo,” he said lightly, bending to stroke the cat. “What a rapacious beast you are! You bring lizards and rats to grace my table, and when I refuse to have my palate thus tickled, and charge you to bring me instead young rabbits, you proceed to tear an innocent babe from its mother’s breast. In a few short hours, my Herod, you have made some poor rat a widow, broken up a previously happy lizard home, and left some poor Rachel of a rabbit weeping for her children.”

Peter went forth, with his tail at the perpendicular, and his mind set upon more slaughter.

It was noon at last. Still too early to cook the mid-day chop; and much too early to get ready the kettle, the packet of tea, and flask of milk. What was Beatrice doing? What a fool he had been to fret away the morning when he might have gone out, seen her, perhaps spoken, touched her hand, felt her eyes, and above all, been thrilled by the momentary flicker of her frock against his legs!

“I must read,” he cried, springing towards his books. “Read hard for an hour, since I cannot work. The solitude is getting on my brain.”

He chose the Andromache of Euripides. It was no use reading English while in that mood. It was necessary to have something which would compel him to concentrate his thoughts; and he chose the Andromache because it was the tragedy of that particular dramatist with which he was least familiar. For a time he read with resolution. He had banished Beatrice more or less into the background. It was not for long. The Greek poet had a message for him. The voice from the remote past was soon ringing into his ears the two tremendous lines:—

“If he be passionate, he shall meet with passion,
And receive deeds for deeds.”

CHAPTER V.
HOW BEATRICE CULTIVATED LOCAL TALENT.

When Beatrice came out to offer her morning devotions to the sun the first sight which greeted her eyes was Ann Cobbledick, her landlady. The good soul was seated upon a stool, milking her cow in the centre of the road. There was not much traffic through the moorland village; but what there was had to make room for Ann and her cow. Her geese waddled and cackled around her, and her son Willum leaned against the wall of the linhay, blinking complacently and catlike.

“ ’Tis a fine marning this marning,” greeted the widow.

“Why do you always milk your cow in the middle of the road?” Beatrice asked.

“Mother milked ’en here, so did her mother, so did hers, and I be going to long as I lives. They laugh at I,” Ann went on, referring indirectly to the villagers. “Let ’en laugh. They can’t make butter same as me. I wouldn’t grease my boots wi’ the butter they makes. Bide still wi’ that tail, Artful, will ye? Them flies be that worriting,” she muttered.

“You should let Willum do the milking,” said Beatrice.

“Willum!” cried the fond mother. “Willum mun’t du nothing. Willum be dying o’ decline.”

Willum shuffled his feet into the dust, and muttered a hoarse acknowledgment of this fiction.

“Poor Willum!” said Beatrice sweetly.

“Willum wun’t die whiles he has his old mother to look arter he,” Ann went on. “I makes ’en eat and drink plenty. I wun’t let ’en work. Work would kill Willum. He be a scholar. There b’ain’t many as knows what Willum du. Willum says ’isself work would kill ’en.”

“I’m sure it would,” said Beatrice.

“Willum walks about the village all day,” continued Ann, warming to her subject. “He takes it easy, and that be good for ’en. And he smokes a lot. Smoking does Willum good. And he drinks a lot o’ beer. Beer be fattening, Willum says, and he knows ’cause he be a scholar. Willum would like to work, he says, but knows he mun’t. Make ’en decline faster, he says.”

“I shoots rabbuts,” muttered Willum, in self-defence.

“He shoots rabbuts,” echoed the proud mother. “Hear ’en? Shoots a lot, Willum du. That be good for ’en, and he trains dogs, and he brings the goosies home.”

“He mustn’t do too much,” said ironical Beatrice.

“That’s what I tell ’en,” cried Ann. “Mun’t du too much and strain yeself, Willum, I says. They boys be that daring! Willum thinks nothing o’ walking five mile wi’ his gun. Makes I worrit often, he du.”

“How will he manage when he hasn’t got you to look after him?” asked Beatrice.

“I’ll be finding a maiden for ’en soon,” said Ann. “A lusty maiden, what can work, and keep Willum same as I du.”

Willum smiled complacently. Mrs. Cobbledick’s plans for his future received his entire approval.

“That will be nice for him,” Beatrice murmured. “But she might want him to work.”

“She wun’t,” declared Ann. “Willum have promised me he wun’t work as long as it pleases God to spare ’en. Ain’t ye, Willum?”

“Iss,” said her son, in no uncertain fashion. “I wun’t work.”

“Hear ’en?” said the widow again. “Allus does what I tell ’en. Ain’t many sons like my old dear. And he be a scholar too.”

Exactly what Willum’s attainments were nobody knew except the fond mother. Somebody had given him a decrepit violin, and he would scrape upon it with terrifying results. Somebody else had given him an old camera, with which he pretended to operate, although without visible results. His library consisted of two books, a “Crockford’s Clerical Directory,” ten years out of date, and a “Guide to Devon.” Over these volumes he would pore during winter evenings, watched in silent admiration by his mother who could neither read nor write. At such moments Willum was studying, and was not to be disturbed by trivial matters. Whenever a clergyman came to the village, Willum would dive into his Crockford and enlighten his fellow-villagers as to the cleric’s “pedigree,” as he called it. From the guide-book he would cull much information regarding his native moor for the benefit of visitors. He would inform them for instance, “The church be Perp,” and evade further questioning by simply repeating the statement. When some enlightened visitor enquired whether he meant perpendicular, he would reply in the negative, and repeat his assertion that the church was perp., the word being thus abbreviated in his guide-book.

Anything more ludicrous than Ann Cobbledick’s belief that her son was dying of consumption could hardly be imagined. A stronger-lunged creature than Willum did not exist. Since a good many people came to the little mountain village to undergo the open-air treatment, it had become the fashion among the villagers to pretend they were similarly affected; just in the same way as certain people of lowly birth in times past would try to persuade themselves they had contracted the aristocratic gout. Mrs. Cobbledick’s logic was curious. She saw the patients roaming about the moor. They were unmistakably gentlemen. Willum was, in her estimation, a complete gentleman. Therefore he too must be in a decline. Willum hastened to agree; and nobly submitted to a life of laziness and vice to please his mother and gratify himself.

Willum spent most of his time leaning up against something. So long as he had a support for his back he was happy. When he saw a wall he would make for it instinctively, and set his back against it. He was a human buttress. While Beatrice talked to his mother he looked at her with the eyes of a brute, thinking no doubt what a dainty morsel she was.

“Have you got your tombstone yet?” Beatrice asked the widow, with mischief in her eyes.

“I ain’t got ’en,” Ann replied, with a sign of anger. “It be up to Eastaway’s, and he can’t sell ’en cause my name’s on’t. It be a gurt stoane, and a good ’un. If Willum could work I’d get he to go up there one night when ’twas dark and fetch ’en away. There be room for ’en in the linny. But Eastaway be that left-handed he’d call it stealing. I be a widow, and Willum be an orphan, so they be agin we. They be agin I cause o’ my butter,” she went on shrilly. “They knows theirs ain’t fit for waggon-grease. They knows the secret o’ butter-making will die wi’ me. And they hates Willum ’cause he be book-learned. Ain’t ye a scholar, old dear?”

“I be intellectual,” Willum admitted.

“Hear ’en,” said Ann. “There bain’t many like Willum. Gets things out o’ books, Willum du. Everyone knows Willum. They comes here to shake hands wi’ ’en.”

The tombstone, to which Beatrice had referred, was Ann’s special grievance. Some time after her husband’s death it had been pointed out to the widow that she might show suitable respect to his memory by erecting a stone above his resting-place. She had discussed the matter with Willum, and had arrived at the conclusion that a stone would cost money. Further she did not see why her husband should have a stone all to himself. She went to Eastaway, the granite-merchant, and opened her mind to him. He suggested that a small portion of the proposed tombstone should be occupied by the name of the late Cobbledick, while the greater part should receive inscriptions relative to the virtues of Ann; and that the stone should not be erected until her bones were mingled with those of her husband. This proposal was eminently satisfactory. One Sunday evening Ann went with Eastaway upon the moor, and after much rambling among bracken, heather, and whortleberries a slab of granite was perceived which met with the widow’s approbation. Eastaway marked it, and the next day sent a waggon and a couple of stone-crackers to secure it.