Transcriber's note: Unusual and inconsistent spelling is as printed.

"No Place Like Home"

BY

HESBA STRETTON

AUTHOR OF

"JESSICA'S FIRST PRAYER," "CAROLA," &c.

LONDON

THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY

56 PATERNOSTER ROW AND 65 ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD

BUTLER & TANNER
THE SELWOOD PRINTING WORKS
FROME, AND LONDON.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER

I. AN OLD HOVEL

II. IN THE WOODS

III. SATURDAY AND SUNDAY

IV. THE MAGISTRATES' MEETING

V. TURNED ADRIFT

VI. FIVE YEARS

VII. HER LAST COMMAND

VIII. GOING HOME

IX. A NEW HOME

"NO PLACE LIKE HOME"

CHAPTER I.

AN OLD HOVEL.

THERE was not another home like it in all the parish of Broadmoor. It was a half-ruined hut, with walls bulging outwards, and a ragged roof of old thatch, overgrown with moss and yellow stonecrop. A rusty iron pipe in one corner served as a chimney to the flat hearth, which was the only fireplace within; and a very small lattice-window of greenish glass, with a bull's-eye in each pane, let in but little of the summer sunshine, and hardly a gleam of the winter's gloomy light. Only a few yards off, the hut could not be distinguished from the ruins of an old lime-kiln, near which it had been built to shelter the lime-burners during their intervals of work.

There was but one room downstairs, with an earthen floor trodden hard by the trampling of heavy feet, whilst under the thatch there was a little loft, reached by a steep ladder and a square hole in the ceiling, where the roof came down on each side to the rough flooring, and nowhere was there height enough for even a short person to stand upright.

The furniture was as rude and simple as the home itself. The good household chattels, on which Ruth Medway had prided herself when she lived in her pretty cottage in the village street, had never come to this poor hovel. There was a broken chair or two, a table-top propped upon an unbarked trunk of a young fir-tree from the woods behind the lime-kiln, a little cracked crockery, two or three old boxes, and the indispensable saucepan and kettle in which she did all her cooking. Upstairs was a low pallet bedstead with a flock bed, and, on the floor beside it, a mattress stuffed with chaff, close under the roof, where the thatch must almost have touched the sleeper's face. There was no window into this loft; the only light came through the square hole in the floor.

"Home is home, be it never so homely;" and Ruth Medway had learned to love the quiet place where her youngest and her dearest child had been born. Behind the house lay the Lime-kiln Woods; once a busy place of quarries and kilns, but left long ago to the growth of trees and brushwood; the haunt of all kinds of wild woodland creatures, hollow with rabbit-burrows, and thickly peopled with singing birds, and with the game that the squire loved to preserve. Excepting in the shooting season, when the sharp crack of guns was to be heard all day long, there was no noise to drown the buzz of the humble-bee, and the low whirring of the unseen grasshopper, and the hundred faint and delicate sounds which fill the stillness of an unfrequented greenwood. Day and night, summer and winter, had their special signs and sounds there, all well-known to Ishmael, the youngest son of old Humphrey Medway.

He was the youngest son, and the most unwelcome to his father. Humphrey had given but a scanty welcome to his first-born child, and each successor had been received with growing surliness. Ishmael came the last, when his mother's hair was already grey, and her back bent with hard toil at out-door labour. The eldest son was grown up and married, and the little love he might have once felt for his mother had hardened into indifference, whilst the other children, those who were living, were scattered abroad, seldom caring to return home. Humphrey never mentioned any of them; but sometimes of an evening, when Ruth rested for a little while, and sat watching the kettle boil on the crackling fire of sticks, she would count their names over on her fingers; eight names over which she sighed, but at the ninth her brown wrinkled face wore a fleeting smile as she muttered, "Ishmael."

On the whole, Ruth was not given to brooding over the past; for she lived too hard a life to keep her memory green. She had grown fond of this lonely hut, where Ishmael had been born; and he had never known any other home. There was nothing in it to prevent him keeping pet dormice, and hedgehogs found in the hollows of the wood; though the gamekeeper would not let him have a rabbit, or allow Ruth to keep a cat; and a dog was not to be thought of. But a tame starling, and the white owl which had chosen its roost under their thatch, and answered his call in the dusk, swooping noiselessly through the air, made the place full of life and interest to him. All the woods behind had been his play-ground from his earliest childhood; and not the finest house in Broadmoor could have tempted Ishmael to exchange his home for it.

Ruth had taught herself to read after she was married; when Humphrey soon began to leave her alone in the evening, and kept her sitting up late for his return from the village inn. Her loneliness had led her to reading the Bible—the only book she possessed beside a Prayer-book and an old collection of hymns. She had learned to believe quite simply, with no doubt in her inmost heart, that "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life;" and that Jesus Christ had really "given His life as a ransom" for her. With these two thoughts firmly rooted in her mind she read the Bible eagerly; and it was from its old well-worn pages she had chosen the name of her youngest and dearest child, "Ishmael; because the Lord hath heard thy affliction."

Ruth had never been a woman of many words; and she was very silent about those things which were deepest in her heart. Humphrey was accustomed to boast himself of her subjection to him, as not daring to "cheep" a word against him. In her young days she had been one of the village choir; and now Ishmael sat in the singing gallery in her old place. It was one of her greatest pleasures to creep just within the church door, where her poor clothing would be least noticed, and listen to the voices in the gallery overhead, and to join in singing "Glory be to the Father" at the close of each familiar Psalm. There her bent back seemed to ache less, and her wearied limbs felt rested.

Often in the week, as she picked stones or hoed thistles in the fields, her withered lips would murmur the words, "Glory be to the Father," and she would feel as a way-worn traveller feels in a hot and desert country, when he comes across a little fountain of fresh water springing up in his path. His journey is not over, but the living waters give him strength to go on with it.

So bad a name did Humphrey and his eldest son bear in the parish, as being idle and drunken vagabonds, that it overshadowed Ruth and Ishmael, and they found themselves banished by it from all intercourse with decent and friendly neighbours. Ishmael did not feel it until he went to the village school, where the other children were warned against Humphrey Medway's boy. The women who worked with Ruth in the fields kept aloof from her; not so much because they were better off than she was, but because she was so silent in her ways.

Thus there was no companionship for them but in each other; and it was sufficient. It was enough for Ruth to think of her boy all day, and to hear his regular healthful breathing beside her all night; and for Ishmael, the woods that lay all around his home gave him never-ending occupation and delight.

But though they were without friends, they were not without an enemy. The nearness of the low hovel to the woods was enough to arouse the suspicions of the squire's gamekeeper, even if he had had no reason to dislike Humphrey Medway and his family. But, before Ishmael was born, there had existed a bitter hatred between Nutkin, the gamekeeper, and young Humphrey, Ishmael's eldest brother.

Humphrey had succeeded in winning away from Nutkin the girl he had wished to make his wife; and though the keeper had himself married shortly afterwards, he had never forgiven the offence, or ceased to hold him and all belonging to him in bitter enmity. The very name of Medway was hateful to his ears. Of late, too, Ishmael had won two or three prizes at the village school over the head of his own boy, who was about the same age, and who lamented loudly over his defeat by old Humphrey's despised son.

Yet in spite of all Nutkin's efforts, he had been unable to dislodge old Humphrey from the miserable hut. The rent of a shilling a week was paid punctually by Ruth, who would rather have gone without food than omit its regular settlement, since nothing else could keep her drunken husband and herself from the parish workhouse. The farmer, who held a lease of the lime-kiln and the hut, found her work on his farmstead and showed her some little favour. So all the keeper could do was to suspect and to watch, ready to take advantage of any trespass that could be punished by the law.

For thirteen years now Ruth had worked upon the Willows Farm; and many a hot summer day had Ishmael, when a baby, lain all day long under the hedgerows, carefully swathed in an old shawl; while his mother toiled in the harvest fields. He had himself begun to earn a few pence as soon as he could scare crows from the springing corn, or could help to tend the sheep in the chilly days of spring during the lambing season.

For the last two years his father had been grumbling at his being an idle mouth to feed; though it was rarely Ruth saw a penny of his money, and it had been with difficulty that she had been able to keep her boy at school. But now the time was come when Ishmael must cease to be a child, and must begin to get his own living by regular work. Mr. Chipchase, the farmer, had consented to try him as waggoner's boy; and had promised if he was a good and steady lad, to "make a man of him."

"Mother," said Ishmael, as they sat together on their door-sill in the long, light June evening, listening to the cuckoo and the thrushes singing in the woods, "I told teacher I'm going to service on Monday; and she says I may take little Elsie into the woods to-morrow; and she'll give us dinner to eat there; for me as well as her, mother; because she says I've always been a good boy at school, and she's sorry to lose me."

"I'm glad she's sorry to lose thee," said Ruth; "and if thee weren't to sleep at home every night, I hardly know what I could do without thee, Ishmael. I almost wish thee were a tiny little lad once again."

"When I'm a man," he answered eagerly, "you shan't ever go out working in the fields, or tire yourself, mother. We'll never, never leave here, because there's no place like it; but get the master to let me build a better house that 'll keep you warm and dry, and we'll live together till we die: won't we, mother?"

"Please God!" she said softly, with a smile on her brown face, as she thought how much earlier she must die than the young lad, little more than a child, who sat beside her.

"I should think it would please God," answered Ishmael, in a quiet voice. "He doesn't want us to be always very poor, poorer than other folks, mother?"

"Nay, I don't know," she replied; "His own Son was born in a stable, and died upon the cross, with folks mocking at Him. I don't know what thee and me have to go through, Ishmael. We can only say 'Please God!'"

It was late before Ishmael mounted the ladder to the close loft overhead, and crept into his bed on the floor under the low thatch. But it was after midnight when Ruth, with her wrinkled yet sinewy arms, helped her drunken husband from one rung to another, fearful every night lest her strength should fail her, and that he might fall, crippled or lifeless, on the floor below.

"Thank God!" she always cried in the depth of her soul, when his sluggish and leaden feet were safely planted on the floor above.

CHAPTER II.

IN THE WOODS.

THE village schoolmistress, Mrs. Cliff, knew Ruth well, for she had employed her as her laundress from the time she had taken charge of the school; and no linen could be sweeter and whiter than that which Ruth washed, and dried in the sun on the gorse-bushes growing about the old lime-kiln. Ishmael had been one of the most constant and least troublesome of her scholars; and she was willing to mark her approbation of him by entrusting her little girl to his care for a long day in the Lime-kiln Woods.

The spring had come slowly on during May, and though it was already June the trees were not yet in full leaf. The delicate network of boughs overhead still kept many an open space for the sunshine to stream through; and the half-transparent leaves glistened with a green light. There was no thick tangle of burdock and thistle at present to catch their feet and hinder them as they strolled along under the hazel bushes. Here and there patches of bluebells covered the dusky earth; and in a few rare spots, known to Ishmael, white lilies of the valley were growing amid their broad green leaves. No very tall or massive forest trees grew in the thin soil; but now and then an elm or an oak, somewhat stunted, spread out its crooked branches; and there were clumps of larches, tall and thin, growing in close companionship, with their pointed tops piercing the sky.

And what a sky it was! A deeper blue than the bluebells under the hazels, with little clouds scattered over it whiter than the lilies, some of gleaming brightness, and others of a pearly grey, floating lazily along before the soft fresh westerly wind. Ishmael felt a pride in it all, as if the woods, and the flowers, and the sky belonged to himself.

"Sit down and listen, Elsie," he said, throwing himself under an elm tree, and holding his breath for very pleasure, as he strained his ear to catch the different notes of the birds, singing in these early hours of the sunny day.

There was the merry whistle of the starling—did Elsie hear that?—and the deep, soft cooing of the wood-pigeons from their great clumsy nests in the fir trees; and the harsh cry of the jay, as he flitted across the open space between some trees, displaying his bright blue wing-feathers. Oftener than any other note, except the chirp of the sparrows, came the deep, grave caw of the rooks, as they sailed by high in the air. Or was not the clear merry song of the thrushes and blackbirds in the bushes all about them the most frequent sound of them all?

But Ishmael knew also the note of the kingfisher and the woodpecker, and the plaintive cry of the lapwing, and the call of the little moor-lion in the swampy ground, overgrown with water weeds and tall bulrushes. Every sound, loud and low, of the busy woodlands was known to him; but they had never been so sweet to him as now, when, for the first time, he had a companion gazing admiringly into his face as he displayed his knowledge. Elsie was far before him in school; but here she sat with wide-open wondering eyes, drinking in every word he spoke.

"Oh, Ishmael!" she exclaimed, with a sigh of happiness and admiration, "I should think nobody in the world knows as much as you!"

Never before had Ishmael had such words spoken to him, and he felt almost dizzy. He began to think what other wonders he could show or tell to her. Yes, there were more wonderful things to disclose to her admiring eyes. The woods were beautiful; but he knew what was hidden underground as well as what lay open to the eye of day. For underneath their feet the earth was honeycombed with long, deserted galleries, and roadways, and tunnels, where ages ago the limestone had been dug, and brought to the surface by level shafts opening on the hill slopes. Far away from the light of the sun, these subterranean paths ran in many windings and twistings. Even on the surface there were indications of them in basin-like hollows of varying depths and sizes, where the treacherous ground had sunk in.

Some of these hollows were filled with water, forming little pools, which glistened up to the sun, while others were dry basins green with turf and coltsfoot, amongst which wild strawberries grew. Ishmael and Elsie had busily gathered the small red fruit, and strung it upon long bents of grass, to keep it as a dessert to the dinner they were going to eat in the woods. Ishmael hastily formed a surprise for Elsie. When the right minute came, when she was tired and hungry, and the sun beat hotly upon them, he would take her to the cool shelter of a cave near at hand, where he could show to her the entrance into the old limestone quarry.

They came at length to a broad open glade, stretching far away between two rows of trees, which was the famous spot for shooting-bouts in the autumn, when the squire's visitors spent whole days in sport. Here in the long, untrodden grass lay the old cartridge-cases thrown hastily away last year. Ishmael told Elsie how the cracking of the guns rang all day long, and how the smell of the gunpowder and its thick smoke tainted the sweet air; and how, at night, when all was over, there seemed a sorrowful silence in the wood, as if its timorous inhabitants had been scared into utter terror.

"And the rabbits keep in their burrows," said Ishmael, "and don't come out to play after sunset, like they do other nights, ay, by hundreds and thousands, running after one another, and tumbling about like us on the green, when we've a holiday; and you can see their little white pads tossing about in the dusk. If you sit very still they'll come a'most to your feet. And the bats fly about, and the cockchafers, and big white owls, that make no noise when they fly. I'll show you our big owl at home before you go home to-night."

They were sauntering along the glade slowly, when suddenly, from under their very feet, as it seemed to Elsie, there sprang up, with a loud whirr and a great fluttering of wings, a pheasant which had been sitting close on her nest among the long grass, till their feet nearly touched her. Elsie uttered a little scream of fright; but Ishmael went down on his knees in a moment, parting the tangled grass which hid the nest. There lay a cluster of brown eggs, ten of them, packed closely together, and warm with the brooding-heat of the mother-hen.

"Oh!" cried Elsie, eagerly. "Can't we have some of them for dinner? Only we can't cook them, you know, without a fire and a saucepan."

"Ay, but we can!" answered Ishmael, proud of doing what seemed impossible to his companion. "We can make a fire, and roast 'em in the ashes. We won't take more than four, two apiece; and I can tell which are the newest laid. See, I've got a match in my pocket, and we'll pick some sticks, and light a fire in a place I know of, where nobody can ever find us."

Gathering up the sticks as they went along, he led Elsie to his cave. It was situated about half-way down a steep slope which was overgrown with hazel bushes and brambles. The low archway of the entrance was little more than a yard high, and was quite concealed by the brushwood. Within, the roof rose to a good height, and the floor of limestone was dry, forming altogether a pleasant retreat, large enough to hold from twenty to thirty persons. A green twilight reached them through the closely-interwoven network of underwood; and a delicious coolness made it the pleasantest place possible now the sun was so high in the blue sky.

"Look, Elsie," said Ishmael, leading her to the back of the cave, where a small hole, not unlike a large rabbit-burrow, led darkly into some space beyond, "I've crawled through there many a time; and if it wasn't for your frock, we'd go now—you and me. Oh, it goes for miles and miles under the wood; and sometimes there's a little bit o' light coming through cracks in the ground; and there are pools all black and still, with just a tiny sparkle on them to show where they are; and there are glistening stones hanging down from the roof, and drops o' water always falling, falling from them. Oh, I wish you were a boy, and could creep in along with me!"

"Oh, couldn't I?" cried Elsie.

"No, it 'ud never do,"' he said, decisively. "Never mind; I'll light the fire now, and we'll have our dinner."

The fire was quickly kindled, and after it had died down a little, the four eggs were covered over with hot embers, and left to roast. Ishmael had brought a can of sparkling water from a little spring trickling down the rock, whilst Elsie had laid out their dinner. Now she was sitting beside it on a big stone, with her hands lying idly on her lap in simple enjoyment, and her blue eyes gazing out happily on the waving branches outside, whose shadows flickered up to her feet in a constant dance.

"Oh, Ishmael," she cried, "I must say the song mother taught me about 'That's the way for Billy and me.' It seems as if it was made for us: and I'll say them while the eggs are roasting.

"Where the pools are bright and deep,
 Where the grey trout lies asleep,
 Up the river and over the lea,
 That's the way for Billy and me.
 
"Where the blackbird sings the latest,
 Where the hawthorn blooms the sweetest,
 Where the nestlings chirp and flee,
 That's the way for Billy and me.
 
"Where the mowers mow the cleanest,
 Where the hay lies thickest and greenest,
 There to trace the homeward bee,
 That's the way for Billy and me.
 
"Where the hazel-bank is steepest,
 Where the shadow falls the deepest,
 Where the clustering nuts fall free.
 That's the way for Billy and me.
 
"Why the boys should drive away
 Little maidens in their play,
 Or love to banter and fight so well
 That's a thing I never could tell.
 
"But this I know, I love to play
 Through the meadow, among the hay,
 Up the water, and over the lea,
 That's the way for Billy and me." ¹

¹ This lovely little song is by James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, and is not as well-known as it deserves to be.

But Elsie had scarcely finished the last line when she saw the branches before her slowly parted, and a man's head bent down, and looking into their cave. It was a brown, sunburnt, rugged face: she knew it well enough, but she had never liked it, and at this moment it filled her with vague terror. Ishmael was kneeling by the red and smouldering fire, and touching the eggs with the tips of his fingers. So absorbed was he that he did not notice the darkening of the green twilight as the gamekeeper came stooping under the archway; and he laughed a low, quiet laugh of delight as he took one of the eggs from its hot bed.

"That one's done, Elsie!" he exclaimed, gaily.

"What's done?" asked Nutkin's harsh voice close beside him. "I saw the smoke from your fire, you young rascal, and I came to see what mischief you're up to. What, pheasant's eggs! Pheasant's eggs! Would nothing else serve you for your dinner?"

Ishmael knelt, unable to stir, and gazing up aghast into the gamekeeper's angry, yet triumphant face. What could he say? There were the eggs in the ashes between them; he could not even drop the one he was holding in his outstretched hand. He felt as if he could neither move nor speak. He had no right to those eggs; they were stolen; but he had not thought of that when Elsie had uttered her childish wish.

"I suppose you know," said Nutkin, very slowly, as if he meant every word to strike home, "that I shall take you to gaol for this?"

"Oh, no, no!" cried Elsie, in an agony of fright. "We didn't know it was any harm, did we, Ishmael? The eggs were on the ground, and we might have trodden on them. Don't send us to gaol!"

"It's not you, only this young scoundrel," continued Nutkin; "you may have to go before the justices, but it's him as 'll go to gaol for poaching and stealing. I've told the squire scores of times, and now he'll believe me. Get up, you rascal, and come along with me."

Suddenly Ishmael broke into a loud and bitter cry, which rang through the cave, and seemed to be muttered back again from the old quarry.

"Oh, what will mother say when she hears of it?" he cried.

"And what will father say?" jeered the gamekeeper. "And brother Humphrey? We'll take care you don't grow up a drunkard, and a disgrace to the parish, like them, my fine fellow. Come along! Elsie, you run home to your mother, and tell her to be more careful who you keep company with another time. The squire 'll believe me now."

So saying, he dragged Ishmael out of the cave, and taking a strong rope from his pocket, he knotted it into a sort of handcuff, by which he bound the lad fast to him. Elsie followed them, sobbing, to the white dusty road leading to Uptown, where there was a police-station; and then sadly watching them out of sight, she went home, almost heartbroken, to her mother.

CHAPTER III.

SATURDAY AND SUNDAY.

RUTH had been hard at work all day hoeing thistles. Many a time she lifted up her eyes to the green woods where Ishmael and Elsie were at play, and recalled the rare days of holiday like it which she had had when she was young. The thought of the children's pleasure made her own work lighter; and though she was tired enough when she heard the church clock strike the hour for leaving the field, she walked along briskly under the hedge, to be home the sooner. Elsie and Ishmael would be fine and hungry before she could get tea ready; and Mrs. Chipchase had promised her some buttermilk, to make them some buttermilk pikelets for a treat.

There was a pleasant stir and agitation in Ruth's mind, yet there was a vague disquiet mingled with the pleasure. Ishmael was about to cease to be a child, and was stepping into the perils and duties of boyhood, that dangerous crisis in which she had seemed to lose all her other children. He was about to escape from under her wing and flutter away; like these little half-fledged hedge-sparrows, which were twittering and hovering all along the thorn-bushes. Her other boys and girls seemed to care no more for their poor home than the nestlings of this year will care for the old nest next spring. But Ishmael was not like the others, who had all taken after their father, and only thought of their mother as a drudge to slave for them.

She had not been as good a mother to them, she said to herself; but then she had not believed in God as she did now. How marvellously good He had been to her to give her such a son as Ishmael, when she was a weary, worn-down, grey-haired woman!

Mrs. Chipchase nearly filled Ruth's large brown pitcher with buttermilk, and gave her two or three spoonfuls of tea in a screw of paper. Ruth was a favourite with her, as being a quiet, harmless old woman, and she lingered a moment at the door to speak a word or two to her.

"Mind Ishmael's here in time of a morning," she said, "for the master's very particular."

"I'm sure," answered Ruth falteringly, "as I don't know how to thank you and the master for taking him. It 'll be the makin' of him, I know; and he's a good lad, ma'am, God bless him!"

It was seldom Ruth uttered so many words together, except to Ishmael; but her heart was full.

The farmhouse was a homely place, but there was a rude abundance about it, which she seemed to feel for the first time, as if she also had a share in it. She stood at the kitchen door, and could see the big table at which Ishmael would eat, where a plough-boy was now sitting, deeply absorbed in the contents of a huge basin, which had been filled up from a big iron pot hanging a little way above the fire. The smell of the good broth reached her, and seemed to promise that Ishmael would grow a strong, hale man, when he could always satisfy his hunger.

"'He hath satisfied the hungry with good things,'" she murmured to herself, as she took up her brown pitcher, and with a curtsey to the mistress turned to go away.

"Ruth Medway!" shouted a loud, rough voice from the far end of the farmyard, "Nutkin the keeper's been and hauled Ishmael to gaol for stealing pheasant's eggs in the wood!"

"There's the master come home!" cried Mrs. Chipchase. "Whatever is he shouting, Ruth?"

Ruth was still standing with a smile on her wrinkled face; but it died away as the meaning of the words reached her brain. The sky grow black, and the sunshine fled away; a dizziness seized her, which made the solid ground she stood on reel beneath her. The loud crashing of her brown pitcher, as it slipped from her hand, and broke into a hundred fragments on the stone causeway, brought her back to her senses.

"What's the matter?" asked Mrs. Chipchase, running to the door, which her husband had now reached.

"Matter enough!" he answered. "Here's our new waggoner's lad, that was to come on Monday morning, taken off to gaol for poaching. Nutkin caught Ishmael and Elsie roasting eggs in the wood; pheasant's eggs, stolen from the nest! There's no chance of him getting off! For the squire's mad after game; and Nutkin swears he'll lock him up out of harm's way. I'm sorry for you, Ruth, to have such a husband and family. I did think Ishmael was going to be a comfort to you in your old age. But the lad knew better; and he's no excuse."

"It was naught but a lad's trick," said Mrs. Chipchase, "such as any one 'ud do. Ishmael never stole an egg of mine, when I set him to gather them. Our own boys never brought in more than he did. He's as honest as the day, I'm sure."

"Thank you kindly, ma'am," murmured Ruth, turning away and walking slowly down the causeway towards home, with a bowed head and feeble feet.

How heavily her sixty years seemed to weigh upon her all at once! How rough the road was, which she had trodden so many hundreds of times in all kinds of weather, to earn her own bread and Ishmael's! Was she half-blind, that everything looked so dim?

And where had all the merry sounds of the summer evening gone to? There was a sort of numbness and stupor over her mind, until she found herself trying to fit the old key into the lock of her poor hut, the home Ishmael had never yet left for a single night. He was not coming home to-night!

She sunk down on the door-sill, and swayed herself to and fro in mute despair. No tears came to her eyes; for she was old and her tears were exhausted; but she sobbed heavily again and again, and yet again. There was no hope in her heart. She thought of Nutkin's enmity, and her husband's bad character. The Rector's family had gone away to foreign parts for six months, and a stranger, who knew nothing of Ishmael, was taking the duty of the parish. The squire could not be reached, for Nutkin's influence was all-powerful with him. No, there was no chance for Ishmael.

To be in prison! Home was poor enough; she felt all at once what a dark, miserable, empty hovel it was. But if Ishmael could only be within, it would be a true home to both of them. She sat down on the desolate hearth, and tried to think of God; but she could think of no one but Ishmael yet. Her soul was in the deepest depths.

All night long she lay awake. The little bed on the floor beside her was empty for the first time; and her ear listened in vain for Ishmael's quiet breathing. Her husband had come home so drunk that she had not dared to get him up the ladder, and he was lying in a dead sleep on the floor below. Over and over again she counted her nine children on her fingers, some dead and some living, and a heavy sob broke from her lips as she whispered "Ishmael."

She had mourned over her dead, and grieved over her living children who had forsaken her; but no sorrow had been like this sorrow. None of them had ever been in prison, and now it was her youngest and dearest, yes, and her best, who was fallen into deep disgrace.

When the morning came her heart turned sick at the thought of going to church, and Humphrey with an oath forbade her to go to Uptown after Ishmael. Ishmael would not be in the singing gallery: and how could she sing, "Glory be to the Father" while he was in prison?

All the morning Humphrey, sitting by the wood-fire, to make sure that Ruth obeyed him, was cursing Ishmael as a disgrace; but she did not answer a word. She had kept silence so long that she hardly knew how to talk, except to Ishmael. It was a relief to her when her husband took himself off in the afternoon, and left her in solitude as well as silence.

She was sitting alone, with her wrinkled face hidden in her hands, deaf, blind, and mute to everything but her trouble, when she felt the warm pressure of loving arms round her neck. For a moment she thought it was Ishmael, but looking up she saw the face of Elsie. Her mother was standing near, and when Ruth rose to drop a curtsey to the schoolmistress, she took her hard cramped hand between both of her own, and, bending forwards, kissed the old woman's brown cheek. Ruth's face flushed a little, and a strange feeling of surprise and pleasure flashed across the darkness of her grief.

"I want you to get a cup of tea for me," said Mrs. Clift.

It was something for Ruth to do; and, as she busied herself in kindling her swift-burning fire, and filling her small tin kettle from the well, for a few fleet moments she forgot Ishmael. But she could eat nothing when the tea was ready, though Elsie had brought some dainty tea-cakes in order to tempt her appetite.

"I have been up to the Hall, and seen Mr. Lansdowne," said Mrs. Clift, as they sat together at the rough little table. "Elsie has to go before the magistrates to-morrow at Uptown; and I went to speak for poor Ishmael. But there's not much hope, Ruth. Mr. Lansdowne tells me Nutkin says Ishmael has infested the woods since his very babyhood, and all the village thinks him to be in league with poachers. That's not the truth, I know."

Ruth shook her head in sorrowful denial.

"I told the squire so," said the schoolmistress, softly; "and he answered women never could be made to believe that poaching was a crime. I did say I couldn't call taking a few eggs from a wild bird's nest any great sin—not bad enough for a young lad to be sent to gaol for. He said it was not only that, but all the Medways were a plague and a pest in the parish; and it would be a kindness to check Ishmael at the outset. Ruth, I'm more grieved than I can tell you."

Again Ruth shook her grey head in silence.

"I've been thinking how lonely you are, and how you have to bear the sins of your husband and sons," said Mrs. Clift; "and it seems to me that to think of our Lord's life here is the only thing to comfort you. Do you remember the words, 'He is despised and rejected of men; a Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from Him; He was despised, and we esteemed Him not'?"

The quiet voice speaking so gently to her ceased for a few minutes; and Ruth covered her troubled face again with her hands. It was the Lord Jesus who had been despised and rejected of men, as she was by her neighbours. He had been "a Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief," more deeply than she was.

Did her old companions in the village hide as it were their faces from her? Nay, all the world had hid their faces from Him who died to save them. Even on the cross those that passed by reviled Him, wagging their heads; and the chief priests and elders, and the thieves crucified with Him had mocked and jeered at Him.

"'Surely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows,'" resumed the quiet, gentle voice. "'He was wounded for our transgressions: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed.'"

She was not bearing her griefs alone, then, as she had fancied during the long dark night. The Lord Himself had carried her sorrows. He had been wounded for her transgressions, and for Ishmael's. A healing sense of His love and compassion and fellow-feeling was stealing over her aching heart.

"'All we like sheep have gone astray,'" went on the soothing voice; "' we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth: He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He openeth not His mouth.'"

Dumb, and opening not His mouth! Was not that again like herself? She could not cry aloud, and speak many words, and make her grief known to every ear. It was true. Jesus Christ had lived her life of sorrows, and grief, and scorn, and silence. Her head was bowed down still, but her heart was lifted up. The suffering Son of God made it easier for her to bear her own suffering.

It was growing dusk now, and the schoolmistress bade her good night; but Ruth would go a little way on the road with her. When she returned to her lonely home, she lingered for a minute, trembling and reluctant to re-enter its dark solitude.

It had always been her custom, since Ishmael was a baby in her arms, to sing, "Glory to Thee, my God, this night," as the last thing before he went to bed, except when Humphrey happened to be at home, which was very seldom. She had not thought of it last night, the first time that Ishmael had been away from her. But the thought crossed her mind, and could not be driven away from it, that, may be, this Sunday evening he was singing it alone in his cell at Uptown.

The tears, which had not come last night, stood in her dim eyes, as, sitting down in her old chair by the dark hearth, she sang the hymn right through, in a low and faltering voice, which could hardly have been heard beyond the threshold.

CHAPTER IV.

THE MAGISTRATES' MEETING.

UPTOWN was not worthy of the name of town; it could hardly be called a large village. But it was the centre of a wide agricultural district, and a small market was held in it once a week, chiefly for the sale of butter and eggs, as the farmers carried their corn to a more important market farther away, in the county town. A magistrates' meeting was held at Uptown at stated intervals; and there was a police-station just outside the village, provided with two cells, but seldom occupied, in one of which Ishmael had been safely kept since noonday on Saturday.

Heavy-hearted still, though with a fund of secret courage bearing her up, Ruth entered Uptown on the Monday morning. There was more stir than usual about the single street, as there always was on the days when the magistrates came to hear the trivial cases which awaited their judgment. Round the inn where the justices' room was, there were several groups of somewhat discreditable folks hanging about in readiness.

Nutkin was within the inn-yard, eagerly talking to one of the magistrates who had arrived before the others, and had just dismounted from his horse. Ruth saw him, but it was as if she did not see him, so absorbed was her whole soul in watching for Ishmael to come along the road between the town and the police-station. She was half unconscious of the increasing crowd and stir, as the magistrates rode in one after another; and the magistrates' clerk bustled down from his house with his blue bag full of papers. Mrs. Clift had arrived too with Elsie; and Squire Lansdowne was gone into the large room of the inn; but she only half knew it.

At last Ishmael appeared, walking beside a policeman, who kept his hand tightly on his collar, as if to remind him it was of no use to try to escape. But could this sullen, scowling lad, with rough uncombed hair and tear-stained face, be Ishmael? He was close beside her, yet he never raised his eyes; and he would have passed her by, if she had not cried out in a very lamentable voice, "Oh, Ishmael, Ishmael!"

"It's my mother," he said, as the policeman tightened his grasp of his collar. "Don't you come inside, mother dear. It 'ud do no good, and it 'ud make me cry. You go home again now you've seen me to say good-bye. You'll loose me to kiss my mother?" he added, looking at the policeman.

"Ay, if you're sharp about it," he answered.

For a minute the young boy, scarcely more than a child, and the bent, grey-haired woman stood with their arms fondly clinging about each other. Ruth felt as if she could not let him go; it seemed but a few days since he was but a baby in her bosom; and now he was a prisoner charged with an offence against the laws of his country. But Ishmael loosened his hands and let himself be led away inside the magistrates' room.

Then she sat down on the lowest step of a horse-block below its open window, through which she could hear the hum of voices coming indistinctly to her ear. How long it was she did not know, but a gaily-dressed, flaunting young woman came to her at length, and spoke in a pitying tone.

"Don't you take on, Mrs. Medway," she said; "you're a good woman, I know, but luck's agen you. Nutkin was very hard on him; and they've give him three months in the county gaol."

"Is it my Ishmael?" she asked, looking up with a wandering and vacant expression in her eyes.

"To be sure," answered the young woman. "'Ishmael Medway, thirteen years of age; three months for stealing pheasant's eggs.'"

Ruth heard no more, saw nothing more. But bending forward, as if to lift herself upon her feet, she fell heavily on the pavement, in a deep swoon. There was a crowd clustering about her, when Ishmael was marched out of the inn by the policeman; he looked round in vain for a last glance at his mother's face.

"It were best for her to go away," he said to himself, with a sob; "but I should ha' liked to ha' seen her again."

He felt as if he were going to die in the prison to which they were sending him, and as if he should never see his mother's face again. His young soul was in a bewilderment of grief and amazement. He had heard himself described as an incorrigible thief and poacher. Everything had gone against him: the notorious character of his father and elder brothers; his own admission of having haunted the woods until he knew every spot in them; even his tearful confession that he knew he had no right to the eggs, and did not know why he should take them then for the first time. All had been against him.

He was going away to gaol, a shame and disgrace to his poor mother. To-day too; the very day he was to have begun to earn his own living, and relieve her from the burden he had been upon her. He would be a worse trouble to her than any of the others had been, even than his father, who came home every night either drunk or angry. What could he ever do to make it up to her now? He could do nothing better than to die.

It was late before Ruth reached home in the evening, and she found her husband awaiting her return, sober and sullen; a hard, tyrannical old man, who looked upon her as a silent and spiritless drudge.

"So," he exclaimed, as she stepped feebly and weariedly over the threshold, "this is what it's come to: thy fine lad's got hisself into gaol! This comes o' book-learnin' and psalm-singin', eh? He brings shame on all on us. Ne'er a one on us was iver up afore the justices till now; and they say at the Labour in Vain as he's got three months. And serve him right, I say. I takes sides with Nutkin, and th' squire, and the justices, as are ivery one on 'em gentlemen. If I'd a bit o' land, I'd hang every poacher as set foot on it. And a young little lad o' his age! What 'll he be when he's a man? I'd ha' sent him to Botany Bay, I would. I'm on the side o' justice. And if ever Ishmael crosses o'er that door-sill agen, I'll thresh him to within an inch o' his life! I'll break ivery bone in his body! And thine, too," he shouted, with growing fury, "if thee don't open that cursed mouth o' thine, and say somethink!"

"I'm ill, Humphrey," she answered, meekly; "I swoonded away dead when they told me on it."

"Swoonded!" he repeated, sneeringly. "Don't tell me. It's only born ladies as can do that, not a workin' woman like thee. But swound or no swound, just hearken to my words. Ishmael niver sets his foot over yon door-sill. I'll harbour no poachers or gaol-birds under my roof."

Very quietly Ruth went on lighting the fire and boiling the kettle. It was a relief to her to be at home again, out of the stir and buzz of the little town, and out of sight of inquisitive eyes. Even her husband's threats and jeers could not altogether spoil the sense of having found rest at her own fireside.

And when he was gone, the unbroken silence of the dark hut suited her. Her harassed soul could recollect itself now. Even in dense darkness our eyes, by eager gazing, begin to see a little, and so in the deepest trouble the soul, by its earnest yearning towards God, begins to discern light. As Ruth sat alone in the dark hut, there came back to her memory the old story in the Bible, from which she had taken a name for her youngest boy. She thought of Hagar in the wilderness, a runaway slave, fleeing from her mistress, and how God heard her affliction; and how once more she was driven into the wilderness, wandering up and down homeless, until her son Ishmael was dying of thirst, and his mother cast him under a shrub to die, and went away out of sight—a good way off—lest she should see the death of her child; and how God heard the voice of the lad, and once again sent His angel to succour Hagar.

Ruth shut her aching and swollen eyelids with a feeling of comfort and awe, as she whispered, "'Thou God seest me.'"

Yes, God saw; God knew. There was unspeakable consolation in that. She felt no bitterness of heart, even against Nutkin. She had nothing to say against the law that had sent Ishmael to prison. She did not try to justify her boy; he had done wrong, though in lightheartedness and thoughtlessness, not in malice. None of these things occupied her simple mind. God had seen all; and He knew all about it. It was in that thought she was to find consolation and strength. She must endure, as seeing Him who is invisible.

CHAPTER V.

TURNED ADRIFT.

THE hay-harvest and the corn-harvest, with their long hours of labour in the sunshine, passed by; and Ruth was one of the busiest of the women working on Chipchase's farm. No one saw much change in her, for she had always been a silent, inoffensive woman, minding her own business, and leaving other folks alone.

But when harvest was ended, and the shooting season begun, the term of Ishmael's imprisonment was nearly over. Nutkin and his assistant-keepers were very busy about the woods, watching them all night, whilst all day long the crash of guns could be heard far and near. It was not a good time for Ishmael to be coming home; there was too much to put her husband in mind of his threats, and to keep his anger hot against his son. But surely he could not be so hard as to turn Ishmael out of doors when the law let him go free!

"Ishmael's time's up to-morrow," she said, in a tremulous voice one evening, with a deep anxiety she was striving to conceal.

"Ay," answered Humphrey, slowly, "that's what Nutkin says. So I up to the Hall this mornin' early, and I says to th' squire, 'Squire, I've been a honest man all my life; and I've worked on your hedges many a year; and I'm not a-goin' to harbour no poacher in my home. There's that lad o' mine, that's been a disgrace to me, a-comin' out o' the county gaol to-morrow. He'll niver set his foot o'er my door-sill, I promise you.

"The squire says, 'As you choose, Humphrey. Go into the kitchen, and get a draught o' ale.' And good ale it was; a sight better nor that at the Labour in Vain. I'm not the man to drink the squire's good ale, and go agen him in any way."

"Thou 'lt never turn the lad adrift on the world?" cried Ruth.

"Adrift! He's big enough to shift for himself," said Humphrey, doggedly. "The squire could get us turned out o' here neck-and-crop if he chosen; and what 'ud become of me, if we had to go to the workhouse? The squire won't have no poacher harboured close to his woods: and who's to save me from goin' into the house in my old age, eh? Me, as can't live without my drop o' goad ale, often and regular. I tasted the beer in the workhouse once. No; Ishmael niver sets his foot o'er that door-sill agen! And now thou knows it, and can make the best on it."

Ruth had a sleepless night again, as if the first bitterness of her sorrow had come back upon her with tenfold power. Early as the dawn came the next morning, she was up before it, making a bundle of all Ishmael's coarse clothing, the scanty outfit she had scraped together for him three months ago, when he was going out to earn his own living. Mrs. Chipchase was taking her butter to market in the county town, and had offered to carry Ruth with her in the gig, that she might meet Ishmael at the gate-of the county gaol.