A Son of Hagar: A Romance of Our Time

CHAPTER VII.

At midday Parson Christian came home from the fields to dinner.

"I've been away leading turf," he said, "from Cole Moss, for Robin Atkinson, to pay him for loaning me his gray mare on Saturday when I fetched my grain to the mill. Happen most of it is burned up, though—but that's no fault of Robin's. So now we neither owe t'other anything, and we're straight from the beginning of the world."

Greta was bustling about with the very efficient hindrance of Brother Peter's assistance, to get the dinner on the table. She smiled, and sometimes tossed her fair head mighty jauntily, and laughed out loud with a touch of rattling gayety. But there were rims of red around her bleared eyes, and her voice, beneath all its noisy merriment, had a tearful lilt.

The parson observed this, but said nothing about it.

"Coming round by Harras End I met John Lowthwaite," he said, "and John would have me go into his house and return thanks for his wife's recovery from childbed. So I went in, and warmed me, and drank a pot of ale with them, and assisted the wife and family to return praise to God."

Dinner was laid, little Jacob Berry came in from the kitchen, and all sat down together—Parson Christian and Greta, Brother Peter, and the tailor hired to sew.

"Dear me! I'm Jack-of-all-trades, Greta, my lass," said the parson, after grace. "Old Jonathan Truesdale came running after me at the bridge, to say that Mistress Truesdale wanted me to go and taste the medicine that the doctor sent her from Keswick, and see if it hadn't opium in it, because it made her sleep. I sent word that I had business to take me the other way, but would send Miss Greta if she would go. Jonathan said his missus would be very thankful, for she was lonesome at whiles."

"I'll go, and welcome," said Greta. The rims about her eyes were growing deeper; the parson chattered on, to banish the tempest of tears that he saw was coming.

"Well, Peter, and how did the brethren at the meeting house like the discourse yesterday afternoon?"

"Don't know as they thought you were varra soond on the point of 'lection," muttered Peter from the inside of his bowl of soup.

"Well, you're right homely folk down there, and I'd have no fault to find if you were not a little too disputatious. What's the use of wrangling over doctrine? Right or wrong, it will matter very little to any of us in a hundred years. We're on our way to heaven, and, please God, there'll be no doctrine there."

Greta could not eat. She had no appetite for food. Another appetite—the appetite of curiosity—was eating at her heart. She laid down her knife. The parson could hide his concern no longer.

"Dear me, my lass, you and that braw lad of yours are like David and Jonathan, and" (with a stern wag of his white head) "I'm not so sure that I won't turn myself into Saul and fling my javelin at him for envy."

The parson certainly did not look too revengeful at that moment, with the mist gathering in his eyes.

"Talking of Saul," said little Jacob, "there's that story of the witch of Endor, and Saul seein' Sam'el when he was dead. I reckon as that's no'but another version of what happened at the fire a' Saturday neet."

Parson Christian glanced furtively at Greta's drooping head, and then meeting the tailor's eye, he put his finger to his lips.

When dinner was over the parson lifted from the shelf the huge tome, "made to view his life and actions in." He drew his chair to the fire and began to turn over the earliest leaves. Greta had thrown on her cloak and was fixing her hat.

"I'm going to see poor Mrs. Truesdale," she said. Then, coming behind the old man, and glancing over his shoulder at the book on his knees, "What are you looking for?" she asked, and smiled; "a prescription for envy?"

The parson shook his old head gravely. "You must know I met young Mr. Ritson this morning?"

"Hugh?"

"Yes; he was riding home from his iron pits, but stopped and asked me if I could tell him when his father, who is dead and gone, poor fellow, came first to these parts, and how old his brother Paul might be at that time."

"Why did he ask?" said Greta, eagerly.

"Nay, I scarce can say. I told him I could not tell without looking at my book. Let me see; it must be a matter of seven-and-twenty years ago. How old is your sweetheart, Greta?"

"Paul is twenty-eight."

"And this is the year seventy-five. Twenty-eight from seventy-five—that's forty-seven. Paul was a wee toddle, I remember. I'll look for forty-seven. Eighteen forty-four, forty-five, forty-six—here it is—forty-seven. And, bless me, the very page! Look, here we have it."

Then the parson read this entry in his diary:

"'Nov. 18th.—Being promised to preach at John Skerton's church, at Ravenglass, I got ready to go thither. I took my mare and set forward and went direct to Thomas Storsacre's, where I was to lodge. It rained sore all the day, and I was wet, and took off my coat and let it run an hour. Then we supped and sat discoursing by the fire till near ten o'clock of one thing and another, and, among the rest, of one Allan Ritson, who had newly settled at Ravenglass. Thomas said Allan was fresh from Scotland, being Scottish born, and that his wife was Irish, and that they had a child, called Paul, only a few months old, and not yet walking.'

"The very thing! Wait, here's something more:

"'Nov. 19th (Lord's day).—Went to church, and many people came to worship. Parson Skerton read the prayers and Thomas Storsacre the lessons. I prayed, and preached from Matt. vii. 23, 24; then ceased, and dismissed the people. After service, Thomas brought his new neighbor, Allan Ritson, who asked me to visit him that day and dine. So I went with him, and saw his wife and child—an infant in arms. Mrs. Ritson is a woman of some education and much piety. Her husband is a rough, blunt dalesman, of the good old type.'

"The very thing," the parson repeated, and he put a pipe spill in the page.

"I wonder why he wants it?" said Greta.

She left Parson Christian still looking at his book, and went out on her errand.

She was more than an hour gone, and when she returned, the winter's day had all but closed in. Only a little yellow light still lingered in the sky.

"Greta, they have sent for you from the Ghyll," said the parson, as she entered. "Mrs. Ritson wants to see you to-night. Natt, the stableman, came with the trap. But he has gone again."

"I will follow him at once," said Greta.

"Nay, my lass; the day is not young enough," said the parson.

"I was never afraid of the dark," said Greta.

She took down a lantern and lighted it, drew her cloak more closely about her, and prepared to go.

"Then take this paper to young Mr. Hugh. It's a copy of what is written in my book."

Greta hesitated. But she could not tell Parson Christian what had passed between Hugh and herself. She took the paper and hastened away.

The parson sat for a while before the fire. Then he rose, walked to the door and opened it. "Heaven bless the girl, it's snowing! What a night for the child to be abroad!" He returned in disturbed humor to the fireside.

CHAPTER VIII.

When Greta set out, the atmosphere was yellow and vaporish. The sky grew rapidly darker. As she reached the village, thin flakes of snow began to fall. She could feel them driven by the wind against her face, and when she came by the inn she could see them in the dull, yellow light.

The laborers were leaving the fields, and, with their breakfast cans swung on their fork handles, they were drifting in twos and threes into the Flying Horse. It looked warm and snug within.

She passed the little cluster of old houses, and scarcely saw them in the deepening night. As she went by the mill she could just descry its ruined roof standing out like a dark pyramid against the dun sky. The snow fell faster. It was now lying thick on her cloak in front, and on the windward face of the lantern in her hand.

The road was heavier than before, and she had still fully a quarter of a mile to go. She hastened on. Passing the little church—Parson Christian's church—she met Job Sheepshanks, the letter-cutter, coming out of the shed in the church-yard. "Bad night for a young lady to be from home, begging your pardon, miss," said Job, and went on toward the village, his bunch of chisels clanking over his shoulder.

The wind soughed in the leafless trees that grew around the old roofless barn at the corner of the road that led to the fells. The gurgle of a half-frozen waterfall came from the distant Ghyll. Save for these sounds and the dull thud of Greta's step on the snow-covered road, all around was still.

How fast the snow fell now. Yet Greta heeded it not at all. Her mind was busy with many thoughts. She was thinking of Paul as Parson Christian's great book had pictured him—Paul as a child, a little, darling babe, not yet able to walk. Could it be possible that Paul, her Paul, had once been that? Of course, to think like this was foolishness. Every one must have been young at some time. Only it seemed so strange. It was a sort of mystery.

Then she thought of Paul the man—Paul as he had been, gay and heartsome; Paul as he was, harassed by many cares. She thought of her love for him—of his love for her—of how they were soon, very soon, to join hands and face the unknown future in an unknown land. She had promised. Yes, and she would go.

She thought of Paul in London, and how soon he would be back in Newlands. This was Monday, and Paul had promised to come home on Wednesday. Only two days more! Yet how long it would be, after all!

Greta had reached the lonnin that went up to the Ghyll. She would soon be there. How thick the trees were in the lane! They shut out the last glimmer of light from the sky. The lantern burned yellow amidst the snow that lay on it like a crust.

Then Greta thought of Mrs. Ritson. It was strange that Paul's mother had sent for her. They were friends, but there had never been much intimacy between them. Mrs. Ritson was a grave and earnest woman, a saintly soul, and Greta's lightsome spirit had always felt rebuked in her presence. Paul loved his mother, and she herself must needs love as well as reverence the mother of Paul. It was Paul first and Paul last. Paul was the center of her world. She was a woman, and love was her whole existence.

Here in the lonnin she was in pitch darkness. She stumbled once into the dike; then laughed and went on again. At one moment she thought she heard a noise not far away. She stood and listened. No, it was nothing. Only a hundred yards more! Bravely!

Then, by a swift rebound—she knew not why—her mind went back to the events of the morning. She thought of Hugh Ritson and his mysterious threat. What did he mean? What harm could he do them? Oh! that she had been calmer, and asked. Her heart fluttered. It flashed upon her that perhaps it was he and not his mother who had sent for her to-night. Her pulse quickened.

At that instant the curlew shot over her head with its deep, mournful cry. At the same moment she heard a step approaching her. It came on quickly. She stopped. "Who is it?" she asked.

There was no answer. The sound of the footstep ceased.

"Who are you?" she called again.

Then with heavy thuds in the darkness and on the snow, some one approached. She trembled from head to foot, but advanced a step and stopped again. The footstep was passing her. She brought the light of the lantern full on the retreating figure.

It was the figure of a man. Going by hastily, he turned his head over his shoulder and she saw his face. It was the face of Paul, colorless, agitated, with flashing eyes.

Every drop of Greta's blood stood still.

"Paul!" she cried, thrilled and immovable.

There was an instant of unconsciousness. The earth reeled beneath her. When she came to herself she was standing alone in the lane, the lantern half buried in the snow at her feet.

Had it been all a dream?

She was but twenty yards from the house. The door of the porch stood open. Chilled with fear to the heart's core, she rushed in. No one was in the hall. Not a sound, but the faint mutter of voices in the kitchen.

She ran through the passage and threw open the kitchen door. The farm laborers were at supper, chatting, laughing, eating, smoking.

"Didn't you hear somebody in the house?" she cried.

The men got up and turned about. There was dead silence in a moment.

"When?"

"Now."

"No. What body?"

She flew off without waiting to explain. The kitchen was too far away. Hugh Ritson's room opened from the first landing of the stairs. The stairs went up almost from the porch. Darting up, she threw open the door of Hugh's room. Hugh was sitting at the table, examining papers by a lamp.

"Have you seen Paul?" she cried, in an agonized whisper, and with a panic-stricken look.

Hugh dropped the papers and rose stiffly to his feet.

"Great God! Where?"

"Here—this moment!"

Their eyes met. He did not answer. He was very pale. Had she dreamed? She looked down at the snow-crusted lantern in her hand. It must have been all a dream.

She stepped back on to the landing, and stood in silence. The serving people had come out of the kitchen, and, huddled together, they looked at her in amazement. Then a low moan reached her ear. She ran to Mrs. Ritson's room. The door to it stood wide open; a fire burned in the grate, a candle on the table.

Outstretched on the floor lay the mother of Paul, cold, still, and insensible.

When Mrs. Ritson regained consciousness she looked about with the empty gaze of one who is bending bewildered eyes on vacancy. Greta was kneeling beside her, and she helped to lift her into the bed. Mrs. Ritson did not speak, but she grasped Greta's hand with a nervous twitch, when the girl whispered something in her ear. From time to time she trembled visibly, and glanced with a startled look toward the door. But not a word did she utter.

Thus hour after hour wore on, and the night was growing apace. A painful silence brooded over the house. Only in the kitchen was any voice raised above a whisper. There the servants quaked and clucked—every tongue among them let loose in conjecture and the accents of surprise.

Hugh Ritson passed again and again from his own room to his mother's. He looked down from time to time at the weary, pale, and quiet face. But he said little. He put no questions.

Greta sat beside the bed, only less weary, only less pale and quiet, only less disturbed by horrible imaginings than the sufferer who lay upon it. Toward midnight Hugh came to say that Peter had been sent for her from the vicarage. Greta rose, put on her cloak and hat, kissed the silent lips, and followed Hugh out of the room.

As they passed down the stairs Greta stopped at the door of Hugh Ritson's room, and beckoned him to enter it with her. They went in together, and she closed the door.

"Now tell me," she said, "what this means."

Hugh's face was very pale. His eyes had a wandering look, and when he spoke his voice was muffled. But by an effort of his unquenchable energy he shook off this show of concern.

"It means," he said, "that you have been the victim of a delusion."

Greta's pale face flushed. "And your mother—has she also been the victim of a delusion?"

Hugh shrugged his shoulders, showed his teeth slightly, but made no reply.

"Answer me—tell me the truth—be frank for once—tell me, can you explain this mystery?"

"If I could explain it, how would it be a mystery?"

Greta felt the blood tingle to her finger-tips.

"Do you believe I have told you the truth?" she asked.

"I am sure you have."

"Do you believe I saw Paul in the lane?"

"I am sure you think you saw him."

"Do you know for certain that he went away?"

Hugh nodded his head.

"Are you sure he has not got back?"

"Quite sure."

"In short, you think what I saw was merely the result of woman's hysteria?"

Hugh smiled through his white lips, and his staring eyes assumed a momentary look of amused composure. He stepped to the table and fumbled some papers.

This reminded Greta of the paper the parson had asked her to deliver. "I ought to have given you this before," she said. "Mr. Christian sent it."

He took it without much apparent interest, put it on the table unread, and went to the door with Greta.

The trap was standing in the court-yard, with Natt in the driver's seat, and Brother Peter in the seat behind. The snow had ceased to fall, but it lay several inches deep on the ground. There was the snow's dumb silence on the earth and in the air.

Hugh helped Greta to her place, and then lifted the lamp from the trap, and looked on the ground a few yards ahead of the horse. "There are no footprints in the snow," he said, with a poor pretence at a smile—"none, at least, that go from the house."

Greta herself had begun to doubt. She lacked presence of mind to ask if there were any footprints at all except Peter's. The thing was done and gone. It all happened three hours ago, and it was easy to suspect the evidence of the senses.

Hugh returned the lamp to its loop. "Did you scream," he asked, "when you saw—when you saw—it?"

Greta was beginning to feel ashamed. "I might have done. I can not positively say—"

"Ah, that explains everything. No doubt mother heard you and was frightened. I see it all now. Natt, drive on—cold journey—good-night."

Greta felt her face burn in the darkness. Before she had time or impulse to reply, they were rolling away toward home.

At intervals her ear caught the sound of suppressed titters from the driver's seat. Natt was chuckling to himself with great apparent satisfaction. Since the fire at the mill he had been putting two and two together, and he was now perfectly confident as to the accuracy of his computation. When folks said that Paul had been at the fire he laughed derisively, because he knew that an hour before he had left him at the station. But an idea works in a brain like Natt's pretty much as the hop ferments. When it goes to the bottom it leaves froth and bubbles at the top. Natt knew that there was some grave quarrel between the brothers. He also knew that there were two ways to the station and two ways back to Newlands—one through the town, the other under Latrigg. Mr. Paul might have his own reasons for pretending to go to London, and also his own reasons for not going. Natt had left him stepping into the station at the town entrance. But what was to prevent him from going out again at the entrance from Latrigg? Of course that was what he had done. And he had never been out of the county. Deary me, how blind folks were, to be sure! Thus Natt's wise head chuckled and clucked.

At one moment Natt twisted his sapient and facetious noddle over his shoulder to where Brother Peter sat huddled into a hump and in gloomy silence. "Mercy me, Peter!" he cried, in an affrighted whisper, and with a mighty tragical start, "and is that thee? Dusta know I thowt it were thy ghost?"

"Don't know as it's not—dragging a body frae bed a cold neet like this," mumbled Peter, numbed up to his tongue, but still warm enough there.

CHAPTER IX.

Hugh Ritson was content that Greta should think she had been the victim of a delusion. He was not unwilling that she should be tortured by suggestions of the supernatural. If she concluded that Paul had deceived her as to his departure from Newlands, he would not be unlikely to foster the delusion. The one thing of all others which Hugh Ritson was anxious to prevent was that Greta should be led to draw the purely matter-of-fact inference that when she thought she saw Paul she had really seen another man.

But that was his own conviction. He was now sure beyond the hope of doubt that there was a man alive who resembled Paul Ritson so closely that he had thrice before, and now once again, been mistaken for him by unsuspecting persons. That other man was to be the living power in his own life, in his brother's life, in his mother's life, in Greta's life. Who was he?

Left alone in the court-yard when the trap drove away, Hugh Ritson shuddered and looked round. He had laughed with the easy grace of a man no longer puzzled as he bid Greta good-night, but suspense was gnawing at his heart. He returned hastily to his room, sat down at the table, picked up the paper which Parson Christian had sent him, and read it with eager eyes.

He read it and reread it; he seemed to devour it line by line, word by word. When he would have set it down his fingers so trembled that he let it fall, and he rose from his chair with rigid limbs.

What he had dreaded he now knew for certainty. He had stumbled into an empty grave. He opened a drawer and took out three copies of certificates that Mr. Bonnithorne had brought him. Selecting the earliest of these in order of date, he set it side by side with the copy of the extract from Parson Christian's diary.

By the one—Paul, the son of Grace Ormerod, by her husband Robert Lowther, was born August 14, 1845.

By the other—Paul, the reputed son of Grace Ormerod by her husband, Allan Ritson, was an infant still in arms on November 19, 1847.

Paul Ritson could not be Paul Lowther.

Paul Ritson could not be the half-brother of Greta Lowther.

Hugh Ritson fell back as one who had been dealt a blow. For months he had been idly hatching an addled villainy. The revenge that he had promised himself for spurned and outraged love—the revenge that he had named retribution—was but an impotent mockery.

For an hour he strode up and down the room with flushed face and limbs that shook beneath him. Natt came home from the vicarage, put in his horse, and turned into the kitchen—now long deserted for the night. He heard the restless footstep backward and forward, and began to wonder if anything further had gone wrong. At last he ventured upstairs, opened noiselessly the door, and found his master with a face aflame and a look of frenzy. But the curious young rascal with the sleepy eyes had not time to proffer his disinterested services before he was hunted out with an oath. He returned to the kitchen with a settled conviction that somewhere in that mysterious chamber his master kept a capacious cupboard for strong drink.

Like master, like man: Natt brewed himself an ample pint of hot ale, pulled off his great boots, and drew up to warm himself before the remains of a huge fire.

Hugh Ritson's bedroom opened off his sitting-room. He went to bed; he tried to sleep, but no sleep came near him; he tossed about for an hour, rose, walked the room again, then went to bed once more.

He was feeling the first pangs of honest remorse. A worse man would have accommodated himself more speedily to the altered conditions when he found that he had pursued a phantasm. To do this erring man justice, he writhed under it. A better man would have fled from it. If, at the outset, if when the first step in the descent had been taken, he had seen clearly that villainy lay that way, he would not have gone further. But now he had gone too far. To go on were as easy as to go back; and go on he must.

While he honestly believed that Greta was half-sister to the man known to the world as Paul Ritson and his brother, he could have stood aside and witnessed without flinching the ceremony that was to hold them forever together and apart. Then without remorse he could have come down and separated them, and seen that woman die of heart's hunger who had starved to death the great love he bore her. There would have been a stern retribution in that, and the voice of nature would have whispered him that he did well.

But when it was no longer possible to believe that Greta and Paul were anything to each other, the power of sophistry collapsed, and retribution sunk to revenge.

He might go on, but there could be no self-deception. The blind earthworms of malice might delude themselves if they liked, but he could see, and he must face the truth. If ever he did what he had proposed to do, then he was a scoundrel, and a conscious scoundrel!

Hugh Ritson leaped out of his bed. The perspiration rolled in big beads from his forehead. His tongue grew thick and stiff in his mouth. The great veins in his neck swelled.

Without knowing whither he went, he walked out of his own into his mother's room. A candle still burned on the table. The fire had smoldered out. A servant-maid sat by the bedside with head aslant, sleeping the innocent sleep. He approached the bed. His mother was breathing softly. She had fallen into a doze; the pale face was very quiet; the weary look of the worn cheeks was smoothed out; the absent eyes were lightly closed. Closed, too, on the rough world was the poor soul that was vexed by it.

Hugh Ritson was touched. Somewhere deep down in that frozen nature the angel of love troubled the still waters.

Bending his head, he would have touched the cold forehead with his feverish lips. But he drew back. No, no, no! Tenderness was not for him. The good God gave it to some as manna from heaven. But here and there a man, stretched on the rack of life, had not the drop of water that would cool his tongue.

With stealthy steps, as of one who had violated the chamber of chastity, Hugh Ritson crept back to his own room. He took brandy from a cupboard and drank a glass of it. Then he lay down and composed himself afresh to sleep. Thoughts of Greta came back to him. Even his love for her was without tenderness. It was a fiery passion. It made him weep, nevertheless. Galling tears, hot, bitter, smarting tears, rolled from his eyes. And down in that deep and hidden well of feeling, where he, too, was a man like other men, Hugh Ritson's strong heart bled. He would have thought that love like his must have subdued the whole world to its will; that when a woman could reject it the very stones must cry out. Pshaw!

Would sleep never come? He leaped up, and laughed mockingly, drank another glass of brandy, and laughed again. His door was open, and the hollow voice echoed through the house.

He put on a dressing-gown, took his lamp in his hand, and walked down-stairs and into the hall. The wind had risen. It moaned around the house, then licked it with hissing tongues. Hugh Ritson walked to the ingle, where no fire burned. There he stood, scarcely knowing why. The lamp in his hand cast its reflection into the mirror on the wall. Behind it was a flushed face, haggard, with hollow eyes and parted lips.

The sight recalled another scene. He stepped into the little room at the back. It was in that room his father died. Now it was empty; a bare mattress, a chair, a table—no more.

Hugh Ritson lifted the lamp above his head and looked down. He was enacting the whole terrible tragedy afresh. He crept noiselessly to the door, opened it slightly, and looked cautiously out. Then, leaving it ajar, he stood behind it with bent head and inclining ear. His face wore a ghastly smile.

The wind soughed and wept without.

Hugh Ritson threw the door open and stepped back into the hall. There he stood some minutes with eyes riveted on one spot. Then he hurried away to his room. As he went up the stairs he laughed again.

Back at his bedside he poured himself another glass of brandy, and once more lay down to sleep. He certainly slept this time, and his sleep was deep.

Natt's dreamy ear heard a voice in the hall. He had drunk his hot ale, and from the same potent cause as his master, he also had slept, but with somewhat less struggle. Awakened in his chair by the unaccustomed sound, he stole on tiptoe to the kitchen door. He was in time to see from behind the figure of a man ascending the stairs carrying a lamp before him. Natt's eyes were a shade hazy at the moment, but he was cock-sure of what he saw. Of course it was Mister Paul, sneaking off to bed after more "straitforrad" folk had got into their nightcaps and their second sleep. That was where Natt soon put himself.

When all was still in that troubled house, the moon's white face peered through a rack of flying cloud and looked in at the dark windows.

CHAPTER X.

Next morning, Tuesday morning, Hugh Ritson found this letter on his table:

Hugh Ritson had risen in a calmer mood. He was prepared for a disclosure like this. Last night he had been overwhelmed by the discovery that Paul Ritson was not the son of Robert Lowther. With the coming of daylight a sterner spirit of inquiry came upon him. The question that now agitated him was the identity of the man who had been mistaken for Paul.

After Mercy's letter the mystery was in a measure dispelled. There could hardly be the shadow of a doubt that the man who had slept at the Pack Horse—the man who had been seen by many persons at the fire—the man who Greta had encountered in the lane—was one and the same with the man whom Mercy knew for Paul Drayton, the innkeeper at Hendon.

But so much light on one small spot only made the surrounding gloom more dark. Far more important than any question of who this man was by repute was the other question of why he was there. Wherefore had he come? Why did he not come openly? What hidden reason had he for moving like a shadow where he knew no one and was known of none?

Hugh thought again of the circumstance of his mother's strange seizure. Last night he had formulated his theory respecting it. And it was simple enough. The second man, whoever he was, had, for whatever reason, come to the house, and, failing to attract attention in the hall, had wandered aimlessly upstairs to the first room in which he heard a noise. That room happened to be his mother's, and when the stranger, with the fatal resemblance to her absent son, presented himself before her in that strange way, at that strange hour, in that strange place, the fear had leaped to her heart that it was his wraith warning her of his death, and she had fainted and fallen.

The theory had its serious loop-holes for incredulity, but Hugh Ritson minded them not at all. Another and a graver issue tortured him.

But this morning, by the light of Mercy's letter, his view was clearer. If the man who resembled Paul had come secretly to Newlands, he must have had his reasons for not declaring himself. If he had wandered when none was near into Mrs. Ritson's room, it must have been because he had a purpose there. And his mother's seizure might not have been due to purely superstitious fears, or her silence to shattered nerves.

There was one thing to do, and that was to get at the heart of this mystery. Whoever he was, this second man was to be the living influence in all their lives.

Thus far, one thing only was plain—that Paul Ritson was not the half-brother of Greta.

Hugh determined to travel south forthwith. If the other man was still beating about Newlands, so much the better. Hugh would be able to see the old woman, his mother, and talk with her undisturbed by the suspicions of a cunning man.

Hugh spent most of that day in his office at the pit-head, settling up such business as could not await his return. On Wednesday morning early he dispatched Natt on foot with a letter to Mr. Bonnithorne, explaining succinctly, but with shrewd reservations, the recent turn of events. Then he stepped for a moment into his mother's room.

Mrs. Ritson had risen, and was sitting by the fire writing. Hugh observed, as she rose, that there were tears in her eyes, and that the paper beneath her pen was stained with great drops that had fallen as she wrote. A woman was busy on her knees on the floor sorting linen into a trunk. This garrulous body, old Dinah Wilson, was talking as Hugh entered.

"It caps all—you niver heard sec feckless wark," she was saying. "And Reuben threept me down, too. There he was in the peat loft when I went for the peats, and he had it all as fine as clerk after passon. 'It was Master Paul at the fire, certain sure,' he says, ower and ower again. 'What, man, get away wi' thy botheration—Mister Paul was off to London!' I says. 'Go and see if tha can leet on a straight waistcoat any spot,' I says. But he threept and he threept. 'It was Master Paul or his own birth brother,' he says."

"Hush, Dinah!" said Mrs. Ritson.

Hugh told his mother, in a quiet voice, that business was taking him away. Then he turned about and said "Good-day" without emotion.

She held out her hand to him and looked him tenderly in the eyes.

"Is this our parting?" she said, and then leaned forward and touched his cheek with her lips.

He seemed surprised, and turned pale; but he went out calmly and without speaking. In half an hour he was walking rapidly over the snow-crusted road to the station.

CHAPTER XI.

When Paul parted from Natt at the station on Saturday night, he had told the stableman to meet him with the trap at the same spot and at the same hour on Wednesday. Since receiving these instructions, however, Natt had, as we have seen, arrived at conclusions of his own respecting certain events. The futility of doing as he had been bidden began to present itself to his mind with peculiar force. What was the good of going to the station for a man who was not coming by the train? What was the use of pretending to bring home a person who had never been away? These and other equivocal problems defied solution when Natt essayed them.

He revolved the situation fully on his way home from Mr. Bonnithorne's, and decided that to go to the station that night at eight o'clock would be only a fine way of making a fool of a body. But when he reached the stable, and sat down to smoke, and saw the hour approaching, his instinct began to act automatically, and in sheer defiance of the thing he called his reason. In short, Natt pulled off his coat and proceeded to harness the mare.

Then it was that, relieved of the weight of abstract questions, he made two grave discoveries. The first was that the horse bore marks of having been driven in his absence; the next, that the harness was not hanging precisely on those hooks where he had last placed it. And when he drew out the trap he saw that the tires of the wheels were still crusted with unmelted snow.

These concrete issues finally banished the discussion of general principles. Natt had not entirely accounted for the strange circumstances when he jumped into his seat and drove away. But the old idea of Paul's dubious conduct was still fermenting; the froth and bubbles were still rising.

Natt had not gone half-way to the station when he almost leaped out of the trap at the sudden advent of an original thought: The trap had been driven out before! He had not covered a mile more before that thought had annexed another: And along this road, too! After this the sequence of ideas was swift. In less than half a league, Natt had realized that Paul Ritson himself had driven the mare to the station in order that he might be there to come home at eight o'clock, and thus complete the deception which he had practiced on gullible and slow-witted persons. But in his satisfaction at this explanation Natt overlooked the trifling difficulty of how the trap had been got home again.

Driving up into the station, he was greeted by a flyman waiting for hire.

"Bad on the laal mare, ma man—two sec journeys in ya half day. I reckon tha knows it's been here afore?"

Natt's face broadened into a superior smile, which seemed to desire his gratuitous informant to tell him something he didn't know. This unspoken request was about to be gratified.

"Dusta ken who came down last?"

Natt waved his hand in silent censure of so much unnecessary zeal, and passed on.

Promptly as the clock struck eight, the London train drew up at the station, and a minute afterward Paul Ritson came out. "Here he be, of course," thought Natt.

Paul was in great spirits. His face wore the brightest smile, and his voice had the cheeriest ring. His clothes, seen by the lamp, looked a little draggled and dirty.

He swung himself into the trap, took the driver's seat and the reins and rattled along with cheerful talk.

It was months since Natt had witnessed such an access of geniality on Paul's part.

"Too good to be true," thought Natt, who, in his own wise way, was silently making a study in histrionics.

"Anything fresh while I've been away?" asked Paul.

"Humph!" said Natt.

"Nothing new? Nobody's cow calved? The mare not lost her hindmost shoe—nothing?" asked Paul, and laughed.

"I know no more nor you," said Natt, in a grumpy tone.

Paul looked at him and laughed again. Not to-night were good spirits like his to be quenched by a servant's ill humor.

They drove some distance without speaking, the silence being broken only by Paul's coaxing appeals to the old mare to quicken the pace that was carrying him to somebody who was waiting at the vicarage.

Natt recovered from his natural dudgeon at an attempt to play upon him, and began to feel the humor of the situation. It was good sport, after all—this little trick of Master Paul. And the best of it was that nobody saw through it but Natt himself. Natt began to titter and look up significantly out of his sleepy eyes into Paul's face. Paul glanced back with a look of bewilderment; but of course that was only a part of the game.

"Keep it up," thought Natt; "how we are doing 'em!"

The landscape lying south was a valley, with a double gable of mountains at the top; the mill stood on a knoll two miles further up, and on any night but the darkest its black outlines could be dimly seen against the sky that crept down between these fells. There was no moon visible, but the moon's light was behind the clouds.

"What has happened to the mill?" said Paul, catching sight of the dismantled mass in the distance.

"Nowt since Saturday neet, as I've heard on," said Natt.

"And what happened then?"

"Oh, nowt, nowt—I's warrant not," said Natt, with a gurgling titter.

Paul looked perplexed. Natt had been drinking, nothing surer.

"Why, lad, the wheel is gone—look!"

"I'll not say but it is. We know all about that, we do!"

Paul glanced down again. Liquor got into the brains of some folk, but it had gone into Natt's face. With what an idiotic grin he was looking into one's eyes!

But Paul's heart was full of happiness. His bosom's lord sat lightly on its throne. Natt's face was excruciatingly ridiculous, and Paul laughed at the sight of it. Then Natt laughed, and they both laughed together, each at, neither with, the other. "I don't know nothing, I don't. Oh, no!" chuckled Natt, inwardly. Once he made the remark aloud.

When they came to the vicarage Paul drew up, threw the reins to Natt, and got down.

"Don't wait for me," he said; "drive home."

Natt drove as far homeward as the Flying Horse, and then turned in there for a crack, leaving the trap in the road. Before he left the inn, a discovery yet more astounding, if somewhat less amusing, was made by his swift and subtle intellect.

CHAPTER XII.

An itinerant mendicant preacher had walked through the valley that day, and when night fell in he had gravitated to the parson's door.

"Seeing the sun low," he said, "and knowing it a long way to Keswick, and I not being able to abide the night air, but sure to catch a cold, I came straight to your house."

Like other guests of high degree, the shoeless being made a virtue of accepting hospitality.

"Come in, brother, and welcome," said Parson Christian; and that night the wayfarer lodged at the vicarage. He was a poor, straggle-headed creature, with a broken brain as well as a broken purse, but he had the warm seat at the ingle.

Greta heard Paul's step on the path and ran to meet him.

"Paul, Paul! thank God you are here at last!"

Her manner was warm and impulsive to seriousness, but Paul was in no humor to make nice distinctions.

Parson Christian rose from his seat before the fire and shook hands with feeling and gravity.

"Right glad to see you, good lad," he said. "This is Brother Jolly," he added, "a fellow-soldier of the cross, who has suffered sore for neglecting Solomon's injunction against suretyship."

Paul took the flaccid hand of the fellow-soldier, and then drew Greta aside into the recess of the square window.

"It's all settled," he said, eagerly; "I saw my father's old friend, and agreed to go out to his sheep runs as steward, with the prospect of farming for myself in two years' time. I have been busy, I can tell you. Only listen. On Monday I saw the good old gentleman—he's living in London now, and he won't go back to Victoria, he tells me—wants to lay his bones where they were got, he says—funny old dog, rather—says he remembers my father when he wasn't as solemn as a parish clerk on Ash Wednesday. Well, on Monday I saw the old fellow, and settled terms and things—liberal old chap, too, if he has got a hawk beak—regular Shylock, you know. Well—where was I? Oh, of course—then on Tuesday I took out our berths—yours, mother's, and mine—the ship is called the 'Ballarat'—queer name—a fine sea-boat, though—she leaves the London docks next Wednesday—"

"Next Wednesday?" said Greta, absently, and with little interest in her tone.

"Yes, a week to-day—sails at three prompt—pilot comes on at a quarter to—everybody aboard at twelve. But it didn't take quite four-and-twenty hours to book the berths, and the rest of the day I spent at a lawyer's office. Can't stomach that breed, somehow; they seem to get all the clover—maybe it's because they're a drift of sheep with tin cans about their necks, and can never take a nibble without all the world knowing. Ha! ha! I wish I'd thought of that when I saw old Shylock."

Paul was rattling on with a glib tongue, and eyes that danced to the blithe step of an emancipated heart.

In the slumberous fire-light the parson and the itinerant preacher talked together of the dust and noise in the great world outside these sleepy mountains.

Greta drew back into the half-light of the window recess, too greedy of Paul's good spirits to check them.

"Yes, I went to the lawyer's office," he continued, "and drew out a power of attorney in Hugh's name, and now he can do what he likes with the Ghyll, just as if it were his own. Much luck to him, say I, and some bowels, too, please God! But that's not all—not half. This morning—ah, now, you wise little woman, who always pretend to know so much more than other folks, tell me what I did in London before leaving it this morning?"

Greta had hardly listened. Her eyes had dropped to his breast, her arms had crept about his neck, and her tears were falling fast. But he was not yet conscious of the deluge.

"What do you think? Why, I went to Doctors' Commons and bought the license—dirt cheap, too, at the price—and now it can be done any day—any day—- think of that! So ho! so ho! covering your face, eh?—up, now, up with it—gently. Do you know, they asked me your complexion, the color of your eyes, or something—that old Shylock or somebody—and I couldn't tell for the life of me—there, a peep, just one wee peep! Why, what's this—what the d—— What villain—what in the name of mischief is the ma—Why, Greta, you're cry—yes, you are—you are crying!"

Paul had forced up Greta's face with gentle violence, and now he held her at arm's length, surveying her with bewildered looks.

Parson Christian twisted about in his chair. He had not been so much immersed in wars and rumors of wars as to be quite ignorant of what was going on around him. "Greta is but in badly case," he said, pretending to laugh. "She has fettled things in the house over and over again, and she has if't and haffled over everything. She's been longing, surely." The deep voice had a touch of tremor in it this time, and the twinkling old eyes looked hazy.

"Ah, of course!" shouted Paul, in stentorian tones, and he laughed about as heartily as the parson.

Greta's tears were gone in an instant.

"You must go home at once, Paul," she said; "your mother must not wait a moment longer."

He laughed and bantered and talked of his dismissal. She stopped him with a grave face and a solemn word. At last his jubilant spirit was conquered; he realized that something was amiss. Then she told him what happened at the Ghyll on Monday night. He turned white, and at first stood tongue-tied. Next he tried to laugh it off, but the laughter fell short.

"Must have been my brother," he said; "it's true, we're not much alike, but then it was night, dark night, and you had no light but the dim lamp—and at least there's a family resemblance."

"Your brother Hugh was sitting in his room."

Paul's heart sickened with an indescribable sensation.

"You found the door of my mother's room standing open?"

"Wide open."

"And Hugh was in his own room?" said Paul, his eyes flashing and his teeth set.

"I saw him there a moment later."

"My features, my complexion, my height, and my build, you say?"

"The same in everything."

Paul lifted his face, and in that luminous twilight it were an expression of peculiar horror: "In fact, myself—in a glass?"

Greta shuddered and answered, "Just that, Paul; neither more nor less."

"Very strange," he muttered. He was shaken to the depths. Greta crept closer to his breast.

"And when my mother recovered she said nothing?"

"Nothing."

"You did not question her?"

"How could I? But I was hungering for a word."

Paul patted her head with his tenderest touch.

"Have you seen her since?"

"Not since. I have been ill—I mean, rather unwell."

Parson Christian twisted again in his chair. "What do you think, my lad? Greta in a dream last night rose out of bed, went to the stair-head, and there fell to the ground."

"My poor darling," said Paul, the absent look flying from his eyes.

"But, blessed be God, she has no harm," said the parson, and turned once more to his guest.

"Paul, you must hurry away now. Good-bye for the present, dearest. Kiss me good-bye."

But Paul stood there still.

"Greta, do you ever feel that what is happening now has happened before—somehow—somewhere—and where?—when?—the questions keep ringing in your brain and racking your heart—but there is no answer—you are shouting into a voiceless cavern."

His face was as pale as ashes, his eyes were fixed, and his gaze was far away. Greta grew afraid of the horror she had awakened.

"Don't think too seriously about it," she said. "Besides, I may have been mistaken. In fact, Hugh said—"

"Well, what did he say?"

"He made me ashamed. He said I had imagined I saw you and screamed, and so frightened your mother."

"There are men in the world who would see the Lord of Hosts come from the heavens in glory and say it was only a water-spout."

"But, as you said yourself, it was in the night, and very dark. I had nothing but the feeble oil-lamp to see by. Don't look like that, Paul."

The girl lifted a nervous hand and covered his eyes, and laughed a little, hollow laugh.

Paul shook himself free of his stupor.

"Good-night, Greta," he said, tenderly, and walked to the door. Then the vacant look returned.

"The answer is somewhere—somewhere," he said, faintly. He shook himself again, and shouted, in his lusty tones:

"Good-night, all—good-night, good-night!"

The next instant he was gone.

Out in the road, he began to run; but it was not from exertion alone that his breath came and went in gusts. Before he reached the village his nameless sentiment of dread of the unknown had given way to anxiety for his mother. What was this strange illness that had come upon her in his absence? Her angel-face had been his beacon in darkness. She had lifted his soul from the dust. Tortured by the world and the world's law, yet Heaven's peace had settled on her. Let the world say what it would, into her heart the world had not entered.

He hurried on. What a crazy fool he had been to let Natt go off with the trap! Why had not that coxcomb told him what had occurred? He would break every bone in the blockhead's skin.

How long the road was, to be sure! A hundred fears suggested themselves on the way. Would his mother be worse? Would she be still conscious? Why, in God's name, had he ever gone away?

He came by the Flying Horse, and there, tied to the blue post, stood the horse and trap. Natt was inside. There he was, the villain, in front of the fire, laughing boisterously, a glass of hot liquor in his hand.

Paul jumped into the trap and drove away.

It was hardly in human nature that Natt should resist the temptation to show his cronies by ocular demonstration what a knowing young dog he could be if he liked. Natt never tried to resist it.

"Is it all die-spensy?" he asked, with a wink, when, with masterly circumlocution, he had broached his topic.

"It's a fate, I tell tha'," said Tom o' Dint, taking a churchwarden from between his lips; and another thin voice, from a back bench—it was little Jacob Berry's—corroborated that view of the mystery.

A fine scorn sat on the features of Natt as he exploded beneath their feet this mine of supernaturalism.

"Shaf on your bogies and bodderment, say I," he cried; "there are folks as won't believe their own senses. If you'll no' but show me how yon horse of mine can be in two places at once, I'll maybe believe as Master Paul Ritson can be here and in London at the same time. Nowt short o' that'll do for me, I can tell you."

And at this conclusive reasoning Natt laughed, and crowed, and stirred his steaming liquor. It was at that moment that Paul whipped up into the trap and drove away.

"Show me as my horse as I've tied to the post out there is in his stable all the time, and I's not be for saying as maybe I won't give in."

Gubblum Oglethorpe came straggling into the room at that instant, and caught the words of Natt's clinching argument.

"What see a post?" he asked.

"Why, the post afore the house, for sure!"

"Well, I wudna be for saying but I's getten a bit short-sighted, but if theer's a horse tied to a post afore this house, I's not be for saying as I won't be domd!"

Natt ran to the door, followed by a dozen pairs of quizzing eyes. The horse was gone. Natt sat down on the post and looked around in blank astonishment.

"Well, I will be domd!" he said.

At last the bogies had him in their grip.

CHAPTER XIII.

By the time that Paul had got to the Ghyll his anxiety had reached the point of anguish. Perhaps it had been no more than a fancy, but he thought as he approached the house that a mist hung about it. When he walked into the hall his footsteps sounded hollow to his ear, and the whole place seemed empty as a vault. The spirit-deadening influence of the surroundings was upon him, when old Dinah Wilson came from the kitchen and looked at him with surprise. Clearly he had not been expected. He wanted to ask twenty questions, but his tongue cleaved to his mouth. The strong man trembled and his courage oozed away.

Why did not the woman speak? How scared she looked, too! He was brushing past her, and up the stairs, when she told him, in faltering tones, that her mistress was gone.

The word coursed through his veins like poison. "Gone! how gone?" he said. Could it be possible that his mother was dead?

"Gone away," said Dinah.

"Away! Where?"

"Gone by train, sir, this afternoon."

"Gone by train," Paul repeated, mechanically, with absent manner.

"There's a letter left, sir; it's on the table in her room."

Recovering his self-possession, Paul darted upstairs at three steps a stride. His mother's room was empty; no fire in the grate; the pictures down from the walls; the table coverless; the few books gone from the shelf; all chill, voiceless, and blind.

What did it mean? Paul stood an instant on the threshold, seeing all in one swift glance, yet seeing nothing. Then, with the first return of present consciousness, his eye fell on the letter that lay on the table. He took it up with trembling fingers. It was addressed in his mother's hand to him. He broke the seal. This is what he read: