Knock at a Venture

“If I be wrong, I’ll beg his pardon on my knees.”

“You be most wickedly wrong.  He is the soul of honour.”

“Then let me come now with you.”

“Not for the world.  He would never forgive me if anybody heard of this meeting.  It is vital to his interests that it should be supposed he is far away.”

“Cannot you see there is danger for you in this?”

“Danger with him?  How little you know what love means for all your talk, Elias!”

“It is because I know what love means that I care so much.  Let me be somewhere near—out of sight and earshot of speech, but not too far off for a cry to reach me if you wanted help.”

“Each word you say makes me hate you worse, Elias Bassett.”

“At least let me stop here an’ see you home again afterward.”

“And if you never come home again, Minnie Merle?”

“Then you may tell all men what you have heard to-night, an’ go an’ seek for me.  If Nicholas knowed you were his enemy, he would shoot you like a dog.  So be warned.”

“And yet you cannot see that if he is married already, you are his worst enemy!  He can’t marry you and get the money that way, so—”

She turned and ran from him without another word, and he watched her sink into grey moonlight until the Moor swallowed her up.  A dim spot a mile away on the night marked Wistman’s Wood; and from it, through the fitful noise of the river, an owl’s cry came faintly, like the sound of a wailing child.

Elias sat upon a rock and so remained a long while with his head between his hands.  Then he got up and walked slowly homeward; while Minnie Merle, despite the fact that she was far too early for her appointment, proceeded steadily toward Wistman’s Wood.  Presently, with a light, sure foot, she entered the old forest and passed where auburn autumn foliage rustled under the wan light.  The wind sighed here and there in the stunted timber, then died off and left the place breathless, awake, watching as it seemed.

Gazing about her and wondering from whence her mysterious lover would appear, Minnie was suddenly startled to see a huge creature moving in the night.  It came toward her, magnified by the moon.  Supposing it some wandering ox from the herds of half-wild cattle that roamed the Moor, she was glad of her elevated security; but the object proved a horse, and on it a man sat—the man she loved best in the world.  Nicholas was also very early, and, well pleased to find it so, his sweetheart prepared to leap out of her refuge and run to him, when something made her hesitate and she waited a moment and watched her lover dismount.

He carried a curious long parcel under his arm, and the girl wondered what manner of gift this might be.  Then, within twenty yards of her hiding-place, Nicholas Merle, having consulted a big watch, proceeded to a curious occupation that first puzzled the watcher, then froze her young limbs with an awful chill not born of cold.

“A pickaxe, and a spade, a spade,
   For and a shrouding sheet:
O! a pit of clay for to be made
   For such a guest is meet.”

Half an hour before their appointed time of meeting Merle finished his labours, hid his tools, trailed the weeds over his work and then, putting on his coat, blew out the lantern and sat down to wait his cousin’s arrival.  And presently, while Minnie watched and wondered how long his patience would keep him in Wistman’s Wood, and how long her strength would bear the ordeal of this terror under nightly cold, she saw another shape, and a tall man’s form suddenly heaved up out of the darkness.

He approached the other, and spoke.  Then the girl felt her fears almost at an end, for it was Elias Bassett.  He had indeed turned his face homeward, but could not find it in his heart to obey Minnie.

“Late work and strange work, neighbour,” said the keeper.  “I’ve bided hidden an’ watched you this hour, an’ yet I be so much in the dark as when I comed.  Who are you, and what do you here?”

“I mind my business, and do you the like, if you are a wise man!”

The other rose and Elias saw his teeth flash white under the moon.

“You rash fool, are you so weary of living that you come here to hunt for your death?  Yes, Nick Merle—a name that if you were a northern clown instead of a Westerner, would make you shake in your shoes.  You know too much, my good clod.  You had been wiser to leave this wood alone to-night, for leave it again you never will.”

“Yet that grave was not dug for me, I suppose?”

“No, since you are curious.  But I can find room for two in it.”

“Brave heart!” he cried.  “You had come to my rescue, dear Minnie, but, thank Heaven, I was one too many for this blackguardly footpad myself.  He had traced me, how I know not, and wanted my watch.  But he’ll need the time no more.  He sleeps, and no stroke but the stroke of doom will waken him again.  Give me my pistol, dear heroine!”

“Nay,” she said.  “I am not deceived.  I know my life is in my hand, and I am not going to put it into yours.  Come an inch nearer and I will shoot you, for you are a murderer, and worse than a murderer.”

The man fell back.  He had himself taught Minnie to shoot with small arms, and he knew that she was a good pupil.

“Sit down and let us talk,” he said.

“With that poor man groaning his life out there—for me?  Go—go now.  If I was not a weak fool, I would shoot you in cold blood.”

He reflected rapidly, then so acted that he might deceive her into his reach, and surprise the weapon from her before she could use it.

He went slowly toward his horse and she hung back and let him lead the way.

“Little did I think when I taught you how to use that toy that you would one night turn it against your faithful lover,” he said with deep sorrow in his voice.

“I have seen you dig my grave,” she answered.  “You are not worthy to live.  Go, because I have loved you.”

He slowly mounted into his saddle, very slowly gathered his heavy hunting-crop that hung hitched to the holster; then, as quick as lightning, he hit out with the heavy handle, trusting to strike the girl on the head and bring her down before she could fire.

Bassett lived, as Minnie soon discovered.  His wound still bled, but she tore her linen, stanched the flow and supported him upon the way until his strength gave out again and he sank down upon the Moor, while she fled forward for succour.

*     *    *

“I publish the banns of marriage between Jonas Lethbridge, bachelor, and Dinah Mary Hannaford, spinster, both of this parish.  If any of you know cause, or just impediment, why these two persons should not be joined together in holy matrimony, ye are to declare it.  This is for the first time of asking.”

A pleasant rustle ran through the little congregation—an amiable and friendly sound.  Jonas and Dinah sat together through the ordeal of the banns, and, out of sight, he squeezed her hand to support her.

“The maiden went so red as a rose, an’ the man pale as a dog’s tooth.  Did ’e note it?” asked Blacksmith Chugg of Sexton Lethbridge, after service was at an end and the village folk had vanished.

“I hope as Dinah Hannaford will be such a wife an’ mother as your missis an’ mine,” said the blacksmith.  “But why for did tenor bell—that chap, Amos Thorn, the woodman—get up an’ leave the church when they was axed out?  A very unseasonable think to do.”

“I marked it,” answered Mr. Lethbridge.  “Jonas says that Dinah kept company two years back with Thorn.  But they falled out, because he have such a surly habit of mind an’ her couldn’t put up with his tantrums no more.  If her so much as looked at another man or gived a chap ‘good-day,’ Thorn would go crazy; an’ as life promised to be a burdensome business wi’ such a touchy fashion o’ man, she took courage to break off.”

“A very sensible maid, they say.”

Elsewhere the lovers walked and talked in a Devon lane.  Her arm rested upon his, and grim exultation marked his features.  Stern and hard was his countenance, yet his eyes glowed kindly and flashed with love as he looked down at her face.  Ferns in all the glory of new green hung fronds about the way; seeding grasses softened the verdant banks, and flowers brightened them with red and purple.  Field-roses and dog-roses trailed their beauty above, and in the air was scent of eglantine and song of bird.  Speedwells and cinquefoil made blue-and-gold lace-work in the vernal walls of the lane; hawthorn turned to roseal harmonies in death, and the last bluebells faded.

“You’ll love me for ever, my own dear?” she said.

“Till my heart be done wi’ beating, Dinah,” he answered.  “No trouble as was ever hatched by man or the devil will come betwixt you an’ me.”

“I publish the banns of marriage between Amos Thorn, bachelor, and Dinah Mary Hannaford, spinster, both of this parish.  If any of you know cause, or just impediment, why these two persons should not be joined together in holy matrimony, ye are to declare it.  This is for the first time of asking.”

Again there followed a rustle of many curious folk; but a different emotion animated it, a different sound infused it.  Human nature woke up and buzzed.  This was more than merely pleasant; it was interesting.  Mr. Thorn and Dinah Hannaford were not in the little church to face two hundred pairs of eyes.  Jonas Lethbridge accompanied his father, and while the ancient grave-digger’s head drooped and his mouth trembled, where it fell in over naked gums, the young man gazed unflinchingly before him, and no quiver marked his strong, hard face and dark eyes.  He kept them fixed unblinking on a stained glass window that represented Christ bidding the waves be still.

“Very sorry for your son, my dear soul; for I lay the fire in his eye was burning out of his heart if us could have but seen it,” said Mr. Chugg, the blacksmith.  “What a courage he’ve got to come to worship!”

“’Tis a very dreadful thing for all of us, Chugg.”

Mr. Lethbridge spoke wearily.  Of late his natural forces were abated, and Jonas did much of the work of the churchyard.

“Every maiden in the village be sorry for him,” said the blacksmith.

“An’ well they might be.”

“Thorn hadn’t the brass to be there hisself, I see.  A chap from Princetown ringed tenor bell to-day.”

“God won’t never prosper such treachery, you mark me,” said Mr. Lethbridge.

“If ’tis God’s business to put down treachery, He’m a thought behind His work—to say it respectful.  My experience is that the ungodly do very well ’pon Dartymoor.  Be your sister going to bide with you?”

“Yes; she’m stopping.  Her wouldn’t go in the almshouse when the wedding fell through.  But it won’t be for long.  I’m getting ripe an’ ready for the grave myself now.”

“Not him.  He’ll bide a bachelor for evermore.  He’m so bitter as gall to the roots of his being since she wrote that letter.  It have turned him away from the Almighty’s Self.”

“Chucked him over with a letter, did her?”

“Ess—an’ a very nice fashion of penmanship.  Yet all written wi’ needles, so to say, as stabbed the poor young youth cruel.  He gasped when he read it, as if he’d swallowed his meat wrong way.  Then he handed it to me.  She just said as she’d been wickedly deceived in him, and that she’d rather have trusted the sun not to shine than believe he could have acted so bad to her.  An’ she also hoped the Lord would forgive him for treating a poor maiden so crooked.”

“That weern’t enough for Jonas Lethbridge, was it?”

“’Tis a dark story, to be sure.  That’s why us never heard the third axing of the banns, then?”

“It happened last spring, afore the last axing.  Then, come winter, Dinah Hannaford’s mother died, an’ next thing us heard was that she’d got on wi’ Amos Thorn again.”

“A very womanly piece of work.”

“I don’t know whether ’tis woman or man be at the bottom.  I’d throw blame on Thorn if I dared wi’out running danger of violence; but I be old an’ weak, an’ ’tis no good saying things you can’t enforce wi’ your right arm.  Still, I do think he kindiddled her away from my boy.”

“’Tis no libel to think it, anyway,” said Mr. Chugg, and the sexton nodded.

“There’s parties as ought to be punished wheether or no,” he said, “and I hope the A’mighty won’t let it pass, an’ that I’ll live to see the wicked come by their deserts.”

A mile away Amos Thorn and Dinah walked together where immortal flowers bloomed about them at the dawn of June.

The big blond man turned and hugged her to himself and kissed her.

“For ever an’ ever, Amen, my pretty!” he said.

“Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of His great mercy to take unto Himself the soul of our dear brother here departed, we therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope—”

The clods fell; the familiar rite ended.  There was a smell of earth and bruised grass.  Dinah Thorn looked down into her husband’s grave; and her child of three, clutching tight his mother’s black-gloved hand, peeped fearfully into the abyss that had swallowed his father.  Suddenly the infant appeared to realize his loss, and howled with all his little heart.

Anon every man went to his own house, while Mr. Lethbridge began to fill the grave.  His friend the blacksmith had been one of the bearers.  He, too, stayed behind; and now Chugg lighted his pipe, and sat upon a tomb, and watched the sexton.  Once more they played the part of chorus.

“’Tis a wonder to see you with the spade again.”

The earth dropped from the shovel, and the coffin beneath rumbled to the thud.

Old Lethbridge worked slowly, and stopped often to talk.

“’Twas always said he’d got a careless way of throwing elms.  An’ now an elm have throwed him.  A great tree in Widecombe Park falled when he was looking t’other way, an’ a bough scat his brains out.  An’ now he’m coffined in elm, an’ never good wood held a worse man.”

The blacksmith smoked and shook his head.

“Yet the Church feels no doubts of him.  Have ’e ever marked the cocksureness of the parsons?  ’Tis that I marvels at!  ‘Sure and sartain hope’ be the words.  When they buried Sam Pridham, the poacher—him as beat his wife and drinked the boots an’ shoes off his children’s feet—parson was just so dead positive ’bout it as when he put away my old woman, who was a holy saint o’ God, bar her temper.  How can us know that it have pleased the A’mighty to take to Hisself the soul of this here Amos Thorn?”

“Don’t puff an’ fret, my dear.  He’m gone now, an’ ’tis very bad for you to be so hot at your age.  He’ll get his proper payment.  For that matter, he have got it.”

“I say us have no right to believe that God have took this man’s soul to Hisself.  It ban’t justice, an’ I won’t stomach it.  Nice company for the bettermost in heaven!  The like of Amos Thorn—!  Tchut!  I can’t onderstand it.”

“’Tis a very difficult question, and best left alone,” said the blacksmith, uneasily.  “It be quite enough to know there is such a place.  I never much like to think about it.”

“The punishment do fall on his wife an’ child, come to think of it.  He was cut off so sudden, an’ left no provision for ’em at all.”

“That’s the law and the prophets,” declared Mr. Lethbridge.  “Sins of the fathers be visited on the children—also pretty often on the widows, though they ban’t named by name.”

“Where’s the justice of that, then?  Got you there!” cried the blacksmith, triumphantly.

“If you’ve got anybody, you’ve got the Old Testament,” answered the other, grimly, “an’ I’d advise you to call home your words again, an’ not flout the Book o’ Life in a graveyard.  ’Twon’t be for your good.  An’ such things will turn the scale at Judgement.  The man was cut off, an’ ’tis the quality of punishment not to stop at the sinner, but to catch the innocent folk all around him—like measles or a fever do.”

“As a husband, it be generally granted he was a very good an’ proper man,” ventured Mr. Chugg.

“You can’t be a good husband and a bad man.”

“You’m so quick at words, there’s no being even with ye!”

“Justice be justice; an’ for my part I’ll always tell the truth, as I always have, whether it be to a man’s face or his coffin-lid.”

There came a day after long years, and June smiled as of yore, and the scythe of Jonas Lethbridge smoothed the grassy graveyard, even as the scythe of Time filled it.  He took a gloomy pride in the place; and while his father, who now slept beneath, had been content to dig deep and bury well, this silent man passed his abstracted days among the graves, and made the face of the little churchyard fair to see.

Few problems troubled him; yet upon this hour in young summer he was faced with a difficulty.  He paused, looked with down-drawn brows at a faint path worn in the grass between certain tombs.  It was a way trodden there by a woman’s feet, and it led—not to the grave of Amos Thorn, but to a little mound near it, where the woodman’s son slept beside him.

“Haven’t spoke a word to her since her flinged me over, an’ never thought to; but ’tis my duty,” the sexton reflected, “an’ my duty I must do.  I could set sticks across, but she’d only think I was ’feared of her.  For that matter, so I be.”

Then came a woman, and her feet pressed the grasses where Lethbridge had too often marked their passing.  His face grew white, his brows frowned, and he put down his scythe and came forward.  Dinah saw him, and hesitated and stood still.  A little bunch of purple columbines fell out of her hand, and she bent and picked them up.

“Mrs. Thorn,” said the man, “I must ax you to go around t’other way to your graves in future.  I won’t have ’e trapsing about here.  You’m wearing the young grass away.  See how bad it do look.  An’ if you’d only let your child’s grave alone, the turves would jine suent and smooth; but you’m always putting in jam-jars wi’ flowers in ’em, an’ planting things that die, an’ worrying the place so cruel that no grass can grow.  I don’t want to say nought to hurt your mother’s heart, but the grave will never look seemly the way you treat it; and I shall be blamed.”

She stood in a dream to hear his voice again.  “If tears could make it grow—”

“Tears!  ’Tis a poor, feeble sorrow tears will drown.”

He looked hard at her, and the mists of memory rose a little from off his spirit.  Life had left him petrified, while for the woman the years were full, mostly of sorrow.  Her husband and child were both dead, and she lived alone.

Now the man’s cold heart felt a throb.

“’Tis strange to hear your voice,” he said.  “Do ’e ever think ’bout the old days, ma’am, or do they hurt ’e?”

“Both,” she said.  “I think an’ I suffer.  But I’ve lived a lifetime since then.”

“Yet you ban’t very old now?”

“Twenty-six, Mr. Lethbridge.”

“I know that well enough—twenty-six come tenth o’ next month—July.”

“I was very sorry for ’e when your old faither died.”

“So was I.”

“He never would speak to me after—”

“Faither was a very great man for justice.  An Old Testament man, you might say.  ’Twas he as digged your husband’s grave, Mrs. Thorn.  I couldn’t do it.”

“An’ he wronged you?”

“I’ve forgived him,” she said.

“He told you as I had a woman an’ a child hidden down to Newton Abbot.”

“I’ve forgived him.”

“An’ you could believe it?”

“I’ve never forgived myself, nor never shall.”

There was a silence.

“Well, if you’ll keep off this here place an’ go round by the old stones there, I’ll thank you.  I take a pride in the burying-ground, as be well known.  The graves be wife and children to me.  If you’ll look around at other churchyards, you’ll see there ban’t one this side of Plymouth that’s so trim and tidy as this.”

“It’s well known; people comes from long ways off to see it.  I’ll be careful in future not to do harm.”

She turned, and followed the road that he pointed out.  Then she put fresh water in a jam-pot, and arranged the columbines upon a little mound of sickly turf.  Hard by his scythe began its measured rhythm in the heart of the green grass.

The light took a golden tincture before dusk, and nature rested.  Mellow sunshine cast long shadows, interspersed with a tender radiance; the cottages and house-places were still; and peace brooded over hamlet and homestead, for the day’s work was done.

The 10th of July sank to lovely close, and through a blue dusk one window glimmered on the confines of the village.

Toward it walked a man, and in his pocket he carried a little parcel.  Once he hesitated, and seemed disposed to hurl his gift into the hedge and return whence he came.  But he held on, and presently reached the cottage door and knocked at it.

“Might I come in an’ have a tell, Mrs. Thorn?” he asked in a deep voice.

There was a moment of silence, then a fluttered uprising.

“Yes, if you’m in a mind to, Mr. Lethbridge.”

“So there her lies at peace,” I said in my civil way.

An’ farmer takes his pipe out of his mouth an’ spits ’pon the grave, but not with any rude meaning.

“Yes, John,” he says to me.  “There Sarah lies, poor old dear—at peace, I hope, I’m sure.  Anyway, if she’s so peaceful as I be since her’s gone, she’ll do very well.”

Two year after that he was in the pit beside her, an’ the space left ’pon the stone was filled up with his vartues.

Well, this here carmudgeon of a young Yelland—first thing he done, out of pure sourness of disposition, was to shut up the field-path an’ stick up a lot o’ scowling nonsense ’bout “trespassers would be prosecuted.”  So much for his radical ideas an’ everybody being equal!  But it’s always that sort who talk loudest about the rights of men, be the sharpest about the rights of property.  Belted Earls will throw open their beautiful parks, but you won’t catch common men doing it.  An’ the boys knocked young Yelland’s boards down with stones, an’ broke his hedges; an’ the Widecombe people, as didn’t care a snap of the finger for the man, took their even way as usual.  He spent half his time storming up an’ down the great meadow in the farm-bottom, where Webburn river goes clattering to meet Dart; but he only turned back women an’ children, for he was a little chap—thin an’ not overstrong—so men just told him to get out of their road, else they’d knock him upsy-edgeways into the hedge.

But parson, whose heart was in gooseberries, said the cases weren’t similar; an’ Nicholas held out they were.

Matters was let sink for a bit after that, but the upshot made a story, an’ people laugh yet when you tell ’em about it.

Then things happened that helped Mary Jane to decide.

The rights of it got out long after, but what took place was this, for I heard it direct from Nicholas.  Whatever else he was, he was a truth-teller.  One fine evening in late summer, when Yelland was walking down his field-path in a devil of a gale, because he found that folks had been breaking his hedge again for the hazel-nuts an’ running all about the meadow after mushrooms, there comed by Ben Pearn, an’ he marked the trouble an’ spoke.

“’Tis a shame to see what you get for your goodness in letting folks go up an’ down your field-path, Mr. Yelland,” he says.

But Nick looked at him sideways, for he knowed Ben was his rival, an’ didn’t feel like trusting him a yard.

“They wouldn’t be here if I could help it.  But seemingly I can’t,” he answered back.

Ben nodded.

“The law won’t help ’e?  ’Tis a crying shame; but if I was you, I’d help myself an’ hang the law.”

“Well, there’s man-traps an’ man-traps.  The meadow be yours to do what you please with, ban’t it?” says Ben, very artful like.

“It did ought to be.”

“You can graze sheep in it?”

“Yes.”

“Or cattle?”

“Of course.  What’s that to do with the matter?”

“You might even let your great red Devon bull, as takes so many prizes an’ have got such a douce an’ all of a temper, run loose there, if you was minded to—eh?”

“By Gor!” said Nick Yelland.  “If that ban’t an idea!”

“I judge you wouldn’t have no more trouble then, Nicholas.  Better’n notice-boards.  He’d work quicker, too.  One sight of him would be enough for most people.”

“Thank you,” said the farmer.  “Thank you very much.  You’m a quick-witted chap, for sartain, an’ I’m greatly obliged to you.  I’ll turn him in this very evening, an’ be damned to everybody.”

An’ when young Ben left Yelland he went straight down to see Mary Jane Arscott.  A crooked game he played, sure enough!

They had a bit of love-making by the river, for she lived in a cot down that way; an’ then Ben arranged to meet her next day an’ go out upon Bellever Tor an’ pick whortleberries.  But he never said no word touching his talk with Nicholas Yelland.

She dropped her basket an’ ran for her life.  She weren’t built for running, but nature will do a great deal, even for the roundest of us, in a pinch like this, an’ for once her got over the ground in very fine fashion.  She’d reached within ten yards of the hedge, when she heard a shout, an’ a man came tearing along; but he was too late.  Mary Jane went head first into the hazel hedge, screaming to the Everlasting to spare her; an’ the bull’s horn just gave her the ghost of a touch—enough to swear by after—as she went through, all ends up.  She weren’t really hurt, an’ only took a chair a thought gingerly for a day or two; but by God! her temper didn’t heal so easy, I promise you—not by no means; an’ presently, when the man as had shouted an’ runned to help her took the poor maiden home, she let him know what she thought about the world in general an’ Nicholas Yelland in particular, so soon as she had got wind enough to tell with.

“To think!” gasped Mary Jane.  “To think as I might be a lifeless jelly this moment but for my own legs!  As ’tis, that gert beast’s horn have horched me somewheres, an’ I may die of it yet.  An’ if you’m a man, Benjamin Pearn, you’ll go an’ get your gun an’ shutt him.”

“God’s goodness! you don’t mean Mr. Yelland?” said Ben.

“No, I don’t; you can leave him to me,” the maiden answered; “I won’t have no living soul come between me an’ Nicholas Yelland now.  He’ll be sorry as he was born afore his dinnertime, if I’ve got a tongue in my head; an’ he shall have all Postbridge hooting at him in the open street—an’ Widecombe too—come to-morrow.  But ’tis your part to shutt thicky beastly bull wi’ a gun; an’ if you love me, you’ll do it.  He shan’t take no more prizes, if I can stop him.”

Her black eyes flashed an’ her gipsy-dark face growed darker still.  She still panted an’ puffed a bit.  But Ben confessed arter that she never looked so lovely afore or since as she did when he pulled her out of the brambles in the hedge an’ comforted her.

“You’d best to borrow a gun, then,” she told him.  “Anyway, I won’t marry you while that bull’s alive; an’ if you was a man, you’d never sleep again till you’d put a bullet through it.”

Same afternoon she went up with her mother to Cator Court an’ gave Nicholas Yelland the whole law an’ the prophets, by all accounts.  I seem his ears must have tingled to hear her; but he was a pretty cool hand; an’ when she’d talked herself out of breath an’ falled back on torrents an’ oceans of tears; an’ when her mother had also said what she comed to say, which was mere tinkling brass after Mary Jane, Nick popped in a word or two edgeways.

“He axed me to come,” said Mary Jane.

“Did he?  Then ’tis him you’ve got to thank, not me.  ’Tis only by the mercy of Heaven he ban’t a murderer.”

“You’d better look after him, then,” said Mary Jane, thoughtful like, “for I’ve told un to kill your bull.”

“Let un,” answered Nicholas, very cunning.  “I’ve a good mind to shoot the old devil myself for daring to run after you.”

Then Mrs. Arscott struck the iron while it was hot, an’ afore she left that farm parlour, Mary Jane had named the day!

’Twas rather a funny case of a chap over-reaching himself in a love affair.  You see, Ben Pearn was so blessed soft-headed, that he couldn’t look on to the end of the game like any cleverer man might.  He said to his silly self, ‘I’ll make her hate the chap, so she’d like to scratch his eyes out’; but he never seed that the end must be differ’nt; he never remembered that Nicholas Yelland had a tongue in his head same as other people.

There is a desolation that no natural scene has power to invoke.  The labour of Nature’s thousand forces upon earth’s face may awaken awe before their enduring record, but can conjure no sense of sorrow; for high mountains, huge waste places and rivers calling shall make us feel small enough, not sad; but cast into the vast theatre some stone that marks a man’s grave, some ruined aboriginal hut or roofless cottage, some hypæthral meeting-place or arena of deserted human activity, and emotions rise to accentuate the scene.  Henceforth the desert is peopled with ghosts of men and women; and their hopes and ambitions, their triumphs, and griefs glimmer out of dream pictures and tune the beholder to a sentiment of mournfulness.

But at this moment all things were forgotten before a supreme and new experience.  The boy had just caught his first trout, and a little fingerling fish now flapped and gasped out its life under his admiring eyes.  Davey was a plain child, with a narrow brow and hard mouth.  Now he smelt the trout, patted it, chuckled over his capture, then casting down an osier rod, with its hook and a disgorged worm halfway up the gut, he prepared to rush home and display his triumph to his mother.  As he climbed up from the stream and reached a little bridge that crossed it, his small face puckered into a fear, for he heard himself called harshly, knew the voice and felt little love for the speaker.

Out of the deepening gloom under the fir trees a young man appeared with a gun under his arm.

“Be that you, Davey, an’ did I see a rod?  If so, I’ll break it in pieces, I warn ’e.  Fishin’ season ended last Saturday, an’ here’s the keeper’s awn brother poachin’.  A nice thing!”

“Oh, Dick!  I’ve catched one!  First ever I really catched.  Won’t mother be brave an’ glad to eat un?  Ban’t very big, but a real trout.  I be just takin’ it home-along.”

“You’ll do no such thing, you little rascal.  Give it to me this instant moment, or else I’ll make you.”

“Please, Dick—just this wance—’tis awnly a li’l tiny feesh—first ever I took, too.  An’ I swear I’ll not feesh no more—honour bright.  Please—for mother never won’t believe I ackshually catched one if her doan’t see it.”

“Give it to me, or I’ll take it, I tell you, you dirty little thief.”

Davey’s lip went down.  “’Tis a damn, cruel shame.  You’m always against me.  I wish you was dead, I do.  I never knawed no chap in all my days what have got such a beast of a brother as I have.”

“Give up that feesh, else I’ll throw you in the river, you lazy li’l good-for-nought.”

“You’m a gert bully,” began the boy; then he fell upon a happy thought, and braced himself to sacrifice his most treasured secret.  To let it go into his brother’s keeping was bad, but anything seemed better than that his first trout should be lost to him.

“Look ’e here, Richard,” he said, “will ’e let me keep this feesh if I tell ’e something terrible coorious ’bout these auld mills?”

The keeper laughed sourly.  “A lot more you’m likely to knaw ’bout ’em than I do!”

“What’s this ’mazin’ secret, then?”

“You’ll swear?”

“Ess, if the thing be any good.”

“Good!  I should just reckon ’twas good.  Come an’ see for yourself—I was awful ’feared at first.  Now I doan’t care nothin’, an’ many a time I’ve took a gert handful an’ lighted it, an’ seen it go off ‘pouf’!”

He led the way to a low building with a dull red roof.  It was windowless, but had a door that swung at the will of the wind.  This erection was lined inside with matchboarding, and it contained a board of regulations that prohibited all metal within the shed.  Even a nail in a boot was unlawful.

“’Tis Case House No. 4.—used once for storing powder,” said Richard Daccombe; “that’s a pile of sulphur in the corner.”

“Ess, but theer’s mor’n you can see, Dick.  Look here.  Another floor lies under this, though nobody minded that, I reckon, else they’d have took what’s theer.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about this before, you little fool?”

“Why for should I?  ’Twas my gert secret.  But you’ll not let it out, will you, Dick?  If chaps comed to hear, they’d steal every atom.”

This Richard knew very well.

“I’ll be dumb, and mind that you are,” he said.  “And no more playing games with gunpowder.  You might have blowed the whole countryside to glory.  Keep away in future.  If I catch you within a hunderd yards of this place, I’ll lather you.”

“Finding be keeping,” answered Davey, indignantly.

“Perhaps ’tis; an’ might be right.  You’ve heard me.  That powder’s mine henceforth.”

Davey knew his brother pretty well, but such injustice made him gasp.  His small brains worked quickly, and remembering that Richard’s business on the rabbit warren took him far from the powder-mills, the boy held his peace.

“Now you can just fork out that trout, and be quick about it.”

“You promised on your honour!” cried Davey.

“Promises doan’t hold wi’ poachers.”

They were walking from the valley to their home; and the younger, seeing the farm-house door not two hundred yards distant, made a sudden bolt in hope to reach his mother and safety before Dick could overtake him.  But he was soon caught and violently flung to the ground.

“Would you, you whelp?”

A blow upon the side of the head dazed the child, and before he could recover or resist, his brother had thrust a rough hand into Davey’s pocket, dragged therefrom the little trout, and stamped it to pulp under his heel.

“There—now you go home-along in front of me, you young dog.  I’ll teach you!”

The boy stood up, muddy, dishevelled, shaking with rage.  His eyes shone redly in the setting sunlight; he clenched his little fists, and his frame shook.

“Get in the house an’ shut your rabbit-mouth, or I’ll give ’e something to swear for,” answered the keeper.

Then his great loss settled heavily upon Davey’s soul, and he wept and went home to his mother.