Halifax, Sunday, 26th August, 1778.—“Understanding there was great need of it, I preached on ‘Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.’ I spoke with all plainness, and yet did not hear that anyone was offended.”

JOHN WESLEY.

Halifax, 1836.—“I am very sorry that there was a ‘great need’ for Mr. Wesley to bring (this) charge ... though unable to unravel the secret.”

URIAH WALKER
(Methodist Historian).

As the knock-knocking ceased entirely, the parson became conscious that men and women had come softly out into the street behind him, and he knew without looking that behind every blind and shutter there was a pair of eyes. A raw-boned fellow lounged against the horse-trough of the inn, and he had taken off one of his wood-soled clogs and was peering into it as if for a stone. The parson had been warned that few in his new cure were known by their baptismal names, and had been told the name by which he must seek his own verger and bellringer. Approaching the fellow with the clog, he asked where he should find one Pim o’ Cuddy. The fellow jerked his head in the direction of the church under the dark Scout, and continued to peer into the clog. The dogs trailed after the parson as he crossed the square.

The weavers of Wadsworth and beyond have a sort of thwarted sense of the droll, and first they smiled sourly, and then guffawed, as the full humour of the parson’s coming broke on them. They chuckled at the looms that had been the cause of the knock-knocking, caught their fellows’ eyes in the steep street and roared again. For Pim o’ Cuddy’s pigeons knew their way home through the broken louver-boards of the squat belfry by this. If sometimes a ferret refused to come out of the air-hole by the buttress into which he had been put (and the church “lifted,” as they said, with rats), well, it was cheaper to take up a floorboard or two than to pull the church down. As for the unhinged church-door, it was a wit from Booth, over the moors far beyond the mountainous Scout, who observed that doorways were made to let folk into church and not to keep them out; and for the rest—the broken windows, the hen-coops in the aisle, the parchments taken by the lads to make kites, and the single elm of the churchyard that had been cut down to furnish galley-baulks for the looms of they knew whom—the responsibility for these things rested somewhere between Pim o’ Cuddy and the bishop of the diocese.

Then began the parson’s observations of his new parish.

The parson chanced to pass as they were badgering this Mish for the secret of his breeding, and to hear Mish’s reply—something about “in and in and in.” He stopped abruptly before Murgatroyd.

“Yes,” he interposed; “and in again on top of that, Murgatroyd, till they’re wrong in their heads and afraid of nothing. Look——”

He shook his head and passed on his way.

And though the winter that was drawing near proved afterwards to be a green and mild one, the parson seemed able to guess without knowing what these same Scouts and hills would be like when the snow lay thick on them, and the packmen went before the horses with spades, seeking for the black-topped guide-posts, and of each hamlet it became true that there was “one way in and none out.”

Under the arches of the raised Piece Hall the fullers and dyers and merchants moved, and the arcades sounded with the shuffle of their leather shoes and the hum of their voices as they discussed the arrival of the new Supervisor of Excise, now breakfasting in the “Cross Pipes” opposite. The bailiff’s books, wherein he entered his proper market charges, lay unopened on the small table at the top of the steps, and his two clerks moved among the Back o’ th’ Mooiners at the pieceboards. The square stone pillars were placarded with lists, broadsheets, handbills and public notices, and against the pillar immediately behind the bailiff’s table Matthew Moon, the merchant, leaned.

His fists were doubled deep in his breeches pockets, and his brow was closely contracted. He was forty, heavily built, with a square and solid head. As he moved slightly, there showed over the brown homespun of his shoulder one corner of a proclamation. The royal arms were visible, and the letters, plain and heavy and black, “COIN....” He moved again, and the letters became hidden.

“So we’ve got William Huggins’s successor, Matthew,” he said cheerfully; “have you seen him yet?”

As Matthew Moon moved slightly again, the “....ING” of the proclamation showed.

“No,” he replied.

“Nor I. Well, we must entertain him. King’s Excise or not, William Huggins was always companionable. A fair show of the lads here. You’ll be at the meeting to-night?”

The merchant grunted. Presently he said, “What sort o’ man does Sally say he is?”

“I don’t know. Sally’s out of heart, with Jim and Haigh all these months in York. Small wonder.”

The big man laughed. “If I remember, they wanted to set the dogs on Huggins at first; none of that,” he said; and as the merchant moved away the whole word “COINING” showed on the stone pillar.

“Hares? Birds? Nay!” Mish said, setting his cap back from his forehead that had a bull’s-front of rough hair over his brows, but showed two great calf-licks over his temples. “Keep off him, Charley, for all he’s muzzled. Sometimes I think I wouldn’t like to slip him at a man; no, not muzzled. Sitha!” A terrier had approached the brindled dog. The ferocious creature had not growled, but the terrier crawled away, tail and belly to earth. “What d’ye think o’ that?” exclaimed Mish, exultingly.

They have, as the Wadsworth parson had discovered, a humour of their own Horwick way. As if at a signal, there was a general catching of breath, and then a shout of laughter went up. Men clambered to the pieceboards to look over their neighbours’ shoulders at the oddity that had been sent to them for an exciseman.

He was ludicrous, half a man only, a dwarf. An ordinary flight of steps would have taxed his diminutive legs; his body and shoulders were those of an undersized lad; and, awkwardly set on them, an enormous head wagged. His complexion was floury, and looked as if, had you touched it, a mothy dust would have adhered to your finger. A pair of round, black-rimmed spectacles made a double-O under his forehead, and behind them a pair of drowsy, blinking eyelids, purple with veining, showed scarce half of the greenish irises beneath them. He made alarmed and nervous movements with his hands as a hundred dogs pressed about him.

The infection caught and spread instantaneously. The tall pieceboards became an avenue of legs regularly moving—legs in casings of hide, in wrappings of straw-band, calves and tibias in stockings of grey and white and blue and brown—and an appalling racket of sound arose. In a second they had taken their time from the original clackers; the rhythmic high noise filled the market-place, rang under the Piece Hall arches, spread in a harsh, splitting cascade to the hills, affronted the sense of hearing. A man from Booth tossed up a pigeon. The derisive, puerile noise fell to a soft beat; it rose again as if a regiment of paviors had been at work; and the villainous dogs that pressed round the preposterous exciseman seemed but to await a signal from their masters. The bell in the turret of the Piece Hall struck eight; the wooden heels accompanied it; and then, as if by magic, there came a silence. Eyes still streaming with tears of enjoyment turned towards the Piece Hall steps. The big red man was descending them.

Monjoy extended his hand and snapped his fingers.

“Our new Resident Supervisor?” he said courteously, his lips twitching as if he himself had to strive not to make drollery of it.

The heavy, livid lids behind the round black spectacles lifted a little, and the dwarf gave a short nasal “Hn, hn!”

“Yes, yes; I am he; hn, hn! My name is Cope—Jeremy Cope.”

This time Big Monjoy could not resist the smile. “It is a historic name in these parts,” he said.

“Yes, yes, yes.... I should say, rather, How so, Mr. ——?”

“How so? Well, if the fellows you see about you are anything at all in politics (which I doubt), they are for—you know whom: not the Elector. A gentleman of your name made himself famous some thirty years ago, and things move slowly hereabouts. But perhaps you have heard my own name from William Huggins—Arthur Monjoy.”

“From William—from whom?” queried the little man; and to those on the pieceboards he seemed pleased that any should take the trouble to talk to one so insignificant as he.

“The poor fellow is—hn, hn!—dead, then?”

“One foggy evening last November, with a pot in his hand and a pipe in his mouth, like the gentleman in the ballad. Died of a Halo Punch.—But you must let me show you our market.”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you. A barren country hereabouts, Mr. ——”

“(Monjoy).... Barren? So-so. Yes, the hills are barren, and breed a rough homely folk. Our staple is cloth, as you see. I see you are looking at the stains on my old coat. You are right; they are of acid. I am no clothier myself; I am a seal-engraver.—What was I saying? Ah, our cloth! Our cloth goes far afield, much to Liverpool; and in return the good folk of Liverpool press on us a certain number of these metal pieces, the possession of which is vulgarly supposed to constitute wealth. But we know better than that, you and I—eh, Cope? ‘Fill me with your corn and I’ll cover you with my cloth; a third shall build us roof and hearth’—that’s the true wealth, the commonwealth, eh?—But your pardon. I carry my coals to Newcastle—that is to say, my cloth to Horwick.”

“Best let the hills alone; these gentlemen at the pieceboards are not always in a merry humour. Come and see the market.”

As Monjoy passed up the square with the supervisor, talking pleasantly, and explaining that save for the cloth-staple the district would be a wilderness, cachinnations, as if at some hidden jest, passed along the pieceboards. For all the bell had rung, not a man had unstrapped his budget. Big Monjoy pointed out this feature, or that man—goîtred John Raikes, dusty with the earth of the fulling-mill; Mish, with the brindled dog squatting under the pieceboard beneath him; the pack-road winding up the Shelf to the Causeway, and so forth. And every now and then the weavers seemed to see the ludicrous figure afresh and to break into fresh chuckles.

Matthew Moon drew James Eastwood, the Wadsworth flockmaster, aside under the pillars of the Piece Hall, and took him by the sleeve.

“There’s times, James, when Arthur wants libbing of his tongue,” he growled. “Two at Ouse Bridge now ... he’s daft. He cuts our dies well enough; but look here—right in our midst!” He rapped with the back of his hand on the proclamation.

“Leave the bills to John Emmason,” he said; “John knows what he’s about when he sticks bills up. The more bills the more safety.—Did ye ever see aught more like a frog nor yon?”

“That daft talk o’ Arthur’s! There’s more fox in Arthur’s cap than in all the rest of him put together. Listen to him now!” And again the voice of the big red man was heard.

“...That may be; but many of them saw Charles Edward in the ’45, in Manchester. For that matter, his drummer was a Horwick lad; there’s a tale about that I’ll tell you some time. But King or Elector, it’s small odds now, and I shouldn’t wonder (this, of course, is unofficial) but my own word carried as much weight in Back o’ th’ Mooin as another man’s.—Our Piece Hall is considered a fine building. The statue in the niche is of Queen Anne; a good piece of work, take an engraver’s word for it.—The market is very late.—Ah, let me make you known to John Emmason, one of our magistrates. You and he will doubtless work in some measure together....”

The eyes beneath the bruised-looking lids blinked up at Monjoy.

“Certainly, certainly, certainly; but I fear I must confess—hn! hn!—that I have a weakly stomach. The weakest glass of brandy and water—a very little excess—ah!” His narrow chest rose in a quick little sigh.

“Ay? Well, Huggins was the other way. ‘Four-in-Hand Huggins,’ we called him; but it beat him at the finish. Come.”

THROUGH the wall-stones of the end of the “Cross Pipes” that abutted on the market-place the soot of the chimneys had in some mysterious way worked, so that the flues and branchings from the various chambers showed like some grimy inverted cactus. An addition had been built forward to the cobbled space, and up and down it, following the pitch of the roof, ran the name of the house, with every “S” turned the wrong way about. From this again projected the red-curtained bow-window of the parlour; and while the public entrance lay to the right within the stable-arch, the approach to the kitchen and private parts of the house lay on the other side, up a cobbled alley.

In the kitchen a fire of peats smouldered on the hearth and made a rich glow on the copper kettle that bubbled before it. The lid of the kettle vibrated with a continuous sound of purring metal. Two oil-lamps hung side by side from the low ceiling; and the blur of lamp carbon on the plaster above them was patterned with concentric circles that intersected and made as it were the eyes of an enormous owl. A deep recess formed a window-seat; opposite, a niche in the wall was hidden by a curtain on a string; and the kitchen was spotlessly clean and smelt of new bread.

The purring of the kettle seemed to irritate Matthew Moon; he set the lid on edge, the sound ceased, and a little cloud of vapour escaped. Presently Monjoy spoke.

“Well, say you have it so,” he said. “I’ll not deny the prudence of watching, setting an extra crow or two along the Causeway, and all that; but why do you want to shift the Forge? We were glad enough to move from Fluett; before that we were Booth way, and a pretty time we had getting there; and now you’d set it up in Brotherton Slack, the dampest, darkest hole in all the district, five miles from the Causeway—Brotherton Slack, where the ground steams like a tip and toadstools come up out o’ the bog rank as sink-strippings and red as a runner’s waistcoat——”

Matthew Moon answered earnestly.

“Do listen, Arthur. If the Causeway’s handy for us, it’s handy for others too. Fluett was different. You know why we left Fluett. Fluett was over-easy got at t’other side, Trawden side, and the lime-trade was brisk at Fluett, too, and folk about. As for toadstools, it’s safety we’re taking to the Slack for, not health.”

“I thought he stirred,” she said, replacing the curtain; and then she hesitated, her hands fumbling with her apron.

“Ye’ve no word, I suppose, Arthur? Cicely hasn’t been gone an hour; she knew o’ no news, she said——”

“No word’s a good word, Sally,” Monjoy replied gently. “He has all he wants—money for garnish, ease o’ irons, and all you can think of; and the lawyers shall have every penny but he shall be back. Don’t worry. ‘No case’ is what John Emmason says.”

“What did he say o’ Jimmy?” She glanced towards the niche.

“His love he sent, and a kiss. That’ll make his home-coming glad. Keep all as tidy as a new pin for a little longer, and let Cicely help you all she can.”

“D’ye want anything now?”

“No.”

“Another thing,” said the merchant. “John there brings the silver in, and I keep the books, and bring most o’ the gold. John and me’s your outriders, that can tell the way things are going. Now ask John if this isn’t true. Though the most shuts their eyes and thinks none the worse of a guinea after we’ve had it a day or two, yet there’s others wouldn’t lend us a crown or a Portugal, no, not to have it back an hour after with interest paid safe as a bank. They’re quiet, that sort, but they’re always there. They’ve been there all along, and I know who they are.—Ay, I see this plating idea well enough; it’s good, and does away with a deal o’ borrowing; but these others is still there. So this new man has that to start wi’. He may be another Huggins, or he mayn’t; give him no advantage. He must be watched for the present from getting up to doffing his shirt again. The clogger’s shop—we’re agreed on that; and past Wadsworth Scout a crow must be set behind every whin and stone. It’s expense, but it’s the cheapest. We’re the Exec’tive, and that’s my vote; that, and shift the Forge to Brotherton, and all meetings after this at the ‘Gooise.’”

“It’s right what Matthew says about them others,” Raikes observed from the window-seat; “things has got very tight lately. Your plating-notion’s naught but just come i’ time.”

“Well, I’ll not hold out; we may as well eat the devil as sup the broth he’s boiled in,” he said. “So we shift the forge. Well, what next?”

Moon glanced quickly at the door by which Sally Northrop had gone out; then he dropped his voice.

“This next, that I was saying to James this morning, Arthur,” he said. “Ye give too much away wi’ your tongue. It’s folly to talk as ye did this morning. They say ye told him ye’d thought o’ copying the Queen Anne yonder i’ metal.”

“I never said so,” cried Monjoy.

“Well, you talk o’ Charles Edwards and Commonwealths. Remember, there’s a bairn i’ yon niche that his father hasn’t seen yet——”

James Eastwood interposed quickly.

“To be sure,” murmured John Raikes.

“That’s agreed,” said Monjoy, curtly. He had not ceased to frown since Matthew Moon’s rebuke.

The infant in the niche gave a feeble cry, and Moon rose to call Sally. Sally took up babe and bedclothes in a bundle.

Presently the ale was brought. Monjoy took a deep draught, and bestrode the hearth again.

“Tell me, Matthew—tell me, John and James,” he said slowly, “what d’ye think this trade of ours, as it stands, is worth? (Wait a minute and let me finish.) Is it worth a deal? Reckon the risk. Reckon the cost, time and money. Reckon we’ve to dodge about with the Forge, Fluett, Booth, Brotherton, and so on. Reckon what I could make at engraving; John at the stocks and teazels; James with his flocks; Matthew at the pieceboards and his warehouse. Is it a deal better than honesty?”

The amazed faces of the three told how deeply they were committed to the traffic; for a minute they were motionless. Then Moon said, “Ye haven’t finished.”

“I say, as it stands, it’s poor wages,” Monjoy said.

There was no chair to his hand; he drew up the infant’s stool that the merchant had vacated. His chin was just above the edge of the table, and he took the bright crown-piece and weighed it thoughtfully in his hand. After a minute’s pondering he continued:

“This—the plating—is well enough; but suppose there’s better to be done?—Tell me, which of you’ve heard of Bulmer’s workings, Trawden side?”

“Of course, of course; my tongue will be running away with me, I suppose. Never mind Bulmer, then. Instead, what about the bellpits all along the Causeway, and the alum mine still working a mile or two over the Edge?”

“Come to something, Arthur,” Eastwood interposed.

“By and by.—Lead has been found hereabouts, and some of it’s been shipped to Holland, and worked over again, and a tithe of it lost in the working, but a profit made even then. How, think you?” He advanced his chin along the table, flipped away the crown-piece, and quietly pronounced the word “Silver.”

By and by he continued.

“I’ve had a busyish winter in that garret over your warehouse, Matthew. This is our first meeting since last November, and perhaps I’m over-shooting myself a little. Never mind. At Rimington in Craven, and on Brunghill Moor in Craven, they’ve had it. Lead ore it is, and a test-master has assayed it (Basby, they called him), and it worked out at sixty pounds more or less to the ton.”

“In Craven,” observed Matthew Moon, drily.

“It were me closed up th’ last bellpit,” John Raikes remarked; “go on, Arthur; it’s grand hearing.”

“Very well; and you’ll laugh at this; Matthew will, because it isn’t business-like. What else d’you think I’ve studied this winter? Why, a ballad-book. Hugh Pudsay’s ballad. You’ve heard of Pudsay’s cockleshell-shillings (when you were dandled, maybe), and so had I; but I thought twice. I’m not talking now of his making silver dilly-spoons and selling them for a shilling, and then waking up to it that he might just as well make the shilling. Perhaps he didn’t work a silver mine without patent, and get tripped by some Cope or other, and set off on horse-back for London to save his neck. Perhaps that’s only a song about his getting patent and pardon and meeting the exciseman coming in ten minutes after the fair. But that cockleshell he stamped his shillings with—follow me—it was an escallop, and a mint-mark for that very year of Elizabeth. D’you take me?”

James Eastwood was tilted back in his chair, watching the intersecting rings of light on the ceiling; he let the chair slowly down.

“We haven’t got quite so far yet,” Monjoy replied, rising from the low stool; and James Eastwood gave a low whistle.

Presently Matthew Moon shoved out his lip.

“Pshaw! It’s a ballad, Arthur, a ballad,” he said.

“What do you say, John?” Monjoy demanded of Raikes in the window-seat.

“Tell us some more; it’s grand,” murmured Raikes.

“Very well; now take this in. Within this ten years money’s been put up in Lancashire to open Bulmer’s workings again. Reason they didn’t do it, it was blabbed, and the excise pricked up its ears. They prayed for a patent for lead, but that wasn’t what they wanted. They’d have mixed their ores and done the Dutchmen’s trick; but as soon as that pays and the excise wakes up, pff!—it’s a Mine Royal at once.”

“If they stopped it in Lancashire, they’d stop it here,” Eastwood said thoughtfully.

“In Back o’ th’ Mooin?” said Monjoy, meaningly; and there was a long silence, broken only by the sound of the leaves of the ledger that Matthew Moon turned over at arms-length.

Suddenly he closed the ledger with a flap.

“Ah, well!” he observed, “then we’ve only to walk there and get it.”

Monjoy spoke composedly, ignoring the irony.

“Tell us, Arthur,” said Raikes.

“Not I! If I don’t find it, I’m fool enough already without that.”

Raikes and Eastwood were plainly engaged by the idea, and soon Eastwood ejaculated under his breath: “My God! the risk!”

At that Monjoy flung out his arms, displaying his vast chest.

“Risk?” he cried. “What can you risk more than you’re risking now—a white cap and the mortal push? You’ve risked that this dozen years; and for what? Clippings and scrapings and filings! You’ve risked Ouse Bridge for that! Now by ——, there are those in Back o’ th’ Mooin ready to call Arthur Monjoy king, but I’ll kick my shoes off at the end of a tow for the chance of being a king in truth!... Risk? Could an army rout us out o’ that wilderness? Who gets far over Wadsworth Scout without a ‘by-your-leave’? The country’s made for it!—To Pudsay and the ballad, Matthew!” He drank.

THE house occupied by the new supervisor of excise lay up a narrow cobbled croft, turning sharp from the Fullergate by the “Fullers’ Arms.” It was, in reality, half of what had once been a considerable house, extending along the top of the croft; but the right-hand portion had for long been boarded and shuttered, and a pear-tree, planted by design or lack of thought close to the wall, divided the two portions. The lower part of the tree grew of necessity outwards; but at the eaves it spread back and embowered in its branches two dormer windows. Between the cobbles of the croft grass grew; the place was retired and quiet; and on the roof-flags pigeons crooned and flirted and made white droppings.

A facetious soul, Cole the clogger was, and apparently a well-beloved by his neighbours. He was seldom without visitors, on his steps, on the bench within his door, or supporting his outer wall. As he shaped the wooden soles in his vice, or with his cobbler’s knife carved the stiff uppers, Cole ever declared that the odour of the leather that soaked in his tubs of black water was as good for the lungs as his sister’s gentian, and none who wore his clogs (he vowed) suffered from toothache or neuralgia.

Cole the clogger had one gift that endeared him to his gossiping neighbours, and to Back o’ th’ Mooin especially—that of mimicry; and Cole vowed that no such pair of legs as the supervisor’s had ever passed his window. The clogger recognised the chance of his lifetime.

“Eh!” he cried one day, to one or two laughter-loving souls gathered in his basement, “but he pods down th’ croft like I can’t tell ye what—sitha!” He ducked his head into his fat shoulders, crooked his knees, and began to make a little creeping perambulation among his tubs of soaking leather. “Pit, pat, pit, pat—like a cat on a hot bak’stone—and his laugh—a sort of whinney—‘Hn! hn!’ like summat snapping i’ th’ bridge of his nose. A haw on his eyes an’ all——”

Then the clogger was seized with a rare idea.

“By Gow! I can just show ye! Pass me my coat!” he cried.

Roars of laughter broke out. That, to be sure, was just Cope—Cope to a T! It was a’most worth sending a pigeon off for. Cole would never beat that!—And Cole, in an artist’s transport, practised little variations.

There was free ale for a month for Cole.

Once, and once only (if the drawing of his chair up to the table be excepted), he showed sensitiveness, and of that Arthur Monjoy was unwittingly the cause.

They were leaving the “Cross Pipes” one evening together, and had passed to the outer door; and Monjoy, who was a couple of paces in front, held open the heavy door (which else would have swung to again) in such a manner that Jeremy Cope was compelled to walk under his outstretched arm. It was dark in the entry, but Monjoy heard a little sound as of teeth gritted together, and the exciseman passed under his arm with a foot or so to spare. On the steps he turned to Monjoy.

“That—that, Mr. Monjoy,” he stammered, “that was a little gratuitous, was it not? I think you will agree, Mr. Monjoy——”

“Eh?” said Monjoy, and suddenly he took his meaning. “Oh, the devil!—Nay, hang me, Cope, if I meant to pain you!”

“You must pardon me, Mr. Monjoy, if I suggest that you, as compared with most men, are as exceptional as I. I—I—I——”

“Nay, you shall not say another word about it. I was to blame——”

Cope sniggered.

And, as the dwarf became conciliatory again, and seemed to dread nothing so much as that the other should renew his apologies, it was odd that what in another man might have been dignity seemed, somehow, something less in him.

At the supper, to which John Emmason, as a magistrate, had been in courtesy bound to invite the new supervisor, there were present, besides three of the Executive (Raikes being left out), John Leedes (a fellow magistrate), and Hemstead, the solicitor. This Emmason was a long-nosed, horse-faced, pompous spoken man, who delivered his opinions with his eyes all but closed, and, when interrupted, waited and resumed again at his own last word. The supper was remarkable on the official, rather than on the social side, and after supper the conversation turned to the subject of certain transferences recently made from the Customs to the Excise. In this connection it would have been neither feasible nor advisable to avoid mention of the proclamation on the pillar of the Piece Hall; and on this Emmason delivered himself sententiously.

“For the two foolish fellows now in York,” he pronounced, “although the warrant for their arrest was not of my making out——”

“Parker, of Ford, made it,” Hemstead interrupted; “they were seized at the ‘Sun Inn’——”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you—silly, silly fellows!” Cope murmured.

“Most nefarious!” Emmason assented. “I desire that you will not hesitate to come to me in your need. In regard, now, to any possible line of action you might elect to pursue....”

But he could get nothing from the blinking image in the black spectacles. He failed, also, in his hospitable intention of making his guest drunk, and if anybody made a profit out of the occasion, it was not the magistrate.

Whenever the engraver turned up the croft to the shop of Cole the clogger, he took with him some morsel for Jacko Macacco, the magpie—a biscuit, a hard-boiled egg, or a bit of sugar. The bird knew his coming, and, indeed, would answer nobody’s whistle but his; and Monjoy had taught it scraps of songs. Among these was an air of which the words began, “I don’t like a Dutchman, I’m damned if I do”; and he would cry, “No more we do, Jacko; we may as well have it as they, eh?”

One morning he came into the shop, not thinking of the magpie, but whistling the air of Johnny Cope. The bird took to it, and after a couple of days (the merry clogger saw to that) the diminutive step of the supervisor down the croft was accompanied by a shrilly whistled, “Hey, Johnny Cope, are ye waukin yet?”

As they talked in desultory fashion, there came along the passage a whistled stave of Johnny Cope. Cole the clogger entered, and he stood for a moment wondering at the laughter that greeted him. Then he bethought him and laughed also.

All at once, when, among other matters, mention had been made of Hawley’s misadventure at Falkirk, the excise officer was seen to be chuckling extraordinarily to himself. His narrow shoulders heaved, he sobbed with his private mirth, and the whole parlour watched in amazement his soft convulsion of delight.

“Come, out with it, Cope!” Monjoy cried, and the exciseman gave a sigh, took off and wiped his glasses, and the edges of his battered purple lids shone with tears.