CHAPTER XXIII

"Not yet, Damer," said I, hoping that my answer conveyed my willingness to learn. For I was quite prepared for all the duties of fag life from Mr. Clerke's descriptions. And I was prepared to perform them, pending the time when I should have a fag of my own.

I must do Leo justice. His tyranny was merciful. I was soon expert in preparing his breakfast. I used to fetch him hot dishes from the shop. My own cooking was not good, and I made, so he said, the most execrable coffee, which led him to fling the contents of the pot at me one morning, ruining my shirt, trickling hot and wet down my body under my clothes, and giving me infinite trouble in cleaning his carpet. (As to his coffee, and the salad dressing he made, and his cooking generally, when he chose to do it, I have never met with anything like it since. However, things taste well in one's school-days.)

Leo Damer was one of those people who seem able to do everything just a little better than his neighbours, without attaining overwhelming superiority in any one line. The masters always complained that he did not do as much in school as he might have done, and yet he stood well with them. His conduct was of the highest. I may say here that, knowing him intimately in boyhood and youth, I am able to assert that his moral conduct was always "without reproach." His own freedom from vice, and the tight hand he kept over me, who lived but to admire and imitate him, were of such benefit to me in the manifold temptations of school-life as I can never forget. His self-respect amounted to self-esteem, his love for other people's good opinion to a failing, he was refined to fastidiousness; but I think these characteristics helped him towards the exceptional character he bore. A keen sensitiveness to pain and discomfort, and considerable natural indolence, further tended to keep him out of scrapes into which an adventurous spirit led many more reckless boys. He had never been flogged, and he said he never would be. "I would drown myself sooner," he said to me. And if any dark touch were wanting to complete my hero's portrait, it was given by this terrible threat, in which I put full faith.

He was a dandy, and his dressing-table was the plague of my life. Well do I remember breaking some invaluable toilette preparation on it, and the fit of rage in which he flung the broken bottle at my head. He was very sorry when his first wrath was past, and he bound up my head, and gave me a pound of sausages, and a superbly bound copy of Young's "Night Thoughts," which I still possess. I also retain a white scar above one of my eyes, in common with at least eight out of every ten men I know.

"Do you ever hear from your cousin?" Sir Lionel asked one day in careless tones.

"Polly writes to me sometimes," said I.

"You can show me the next letter you get," said Sir Lionel condescendingly; which I accordingly did, and thenceforward he saw all my letters from her. I was soon clever enough to discover that Leo liked to be asked after by his old friends, and to receive messages from them, which led me to write to Polly, begging her always to send "nice messages" to Sir Lionel, as he would then treat me well, and perhaps give me some of his smoked bacon for breakfast. Her reply was characteristic:

"My dear Regie,—"

"I am your affectionate cousin,

"Polly."

I was obliged to hide this letter from Leo; but when he asked me if I had heard from Polly I could not lie to him, and he sent me to Coventry for withholding the letter. I bore a day and a half of his silence and neglect; then I could endure it no longer, and showed him the letter. He was less angry than I expected. He coloured and laughed, and called me a little fool for writing such stuff to Polly, and said her answer was just like her. Then he gave me some of the bacon, and we were good friends again.

But the seal of our friendship was a certain occasion when I saved him from the only flogging with which he was ever threatened.

He was unjustly believed to be concerned in an insolent breach of certain orders, and was sentenced to a flogging which was really the due of another lad whom he was too proud to betray. He would not even condescend to remonstrate with the boy who was meanly allowing him to suffer, and betrayed his anguish in the matter so little that I doubt if the real culprit (who never was a week unflogged himself) had any idea what the punishment was to poor Leo.

He hid himself from us all; but in the evening I got into his room, where I found him, pale and silent, putting some things into a little bag.

"Little one!" he cried, "I know you can keep a secret. I want you to help me off. I'm going to run away."

"Oh Damer!" I cried; "but supposing you're caught; it'll be much worse then."

"They won't catch me," he said, his lip quivering. "I can disguise myself. And I shall never come back till I'm a man. My guardian would bring me here again. He thinks a man can hardly be a gentleman unless he was well flogged in his youth. Look here old fellow, I've left everything here to you. Keep out of mischief as I've shown you how, and—and—you'll tell Polly I wasn't to blame."

I was now weeping bitterly. "Dear Damer," said I, "you can't disguise yourself. Anybody would know you; you're too good-looking. Damer," I added abruptly, "did you ever pray for things? I used to at home, and do you know, they always came true. Wait for me, I'll be back soon," I concluded, and rushing to my room, I flung myself on my knees, and prayed with all my heart for the averting of this, to my young mind, terrible tragedy. I dared not stay long, not knowing what Leo might do, and on the stairs I met the real culprit, who was in our house. To this day I remember with amusement the flood of speech with which, in my excitement, I overwhelmed him. I painted his meanness in the darkest colours, and the universal contempt of his friends. I made him a hero if he took his burden on his own back. I dwelt forcibly on Leo's bitter distress and superior generosity. I bribed him to confess all with my many-weaponed pocket-knife (the envy of the house). I darkly hinted a threat of "blabbing" myself, as my meanness in telling tales would be as nothing to his in allowing Leo to suffer for his fault. Which argument prevailed I shall never know. I fancy Leo's distress and the knife did it between them, for he was both good-natured and greedy. He told the truth by a great effort, and took his flogging with complete indifference.

Thenceforward Leo and I were as brothers. He taught me to sketch, we kept divers pets together, and fused our botanical collections. He cooked unparalleled dishes for us, and read poetry aloud to me with an exquisite justness and delicacy of taste that I have never heard surpassed.

His praise was nectar to me. When he said, "I tell you what, Regie, you've an uncommon lot of general information, I can tell you," my head was quite turned. Whatever he did seemed right to me. When I first came to school, my hat was duly peppered and pickled by the boys and replaced by me with one of unexceptionable shape. My shirts then gave offence to my new master.

"I suppose," he said, surveying me deliberately, "a good many of your things are made by Mrs. Baggage?"

"Nurse Bundle makes my shirts, Damer," said I.

"It's all the same," said Damer. "I knew it was connected with a parcel somehow. Well, the Package patterns are very pretty, no doubt, but I think it's time you were properly rigged out."

Which was duly done; and when holidays came and the scandalized Mrs. Bundle asked what I had done "with them bran-new fine linen shirts," and where "them rubbishing cotton rags" had come from that I brought in their place, I could only inform her, with a feeble imitation of Leo's lofty coolness, that I had used the first to clean Damer's lamp, and that the second were the "correct thing."

One day I said to him, "I don't know why, Damer, but you always make me think of a vision of one of the Greek heroes when I see you walking in the playing-fields."

I believe my simply-spoken compliment deeply gratified him; but he only said, like Mr. Clerke, "You do say the oddest things, little 'un!"

CHAPTER XXIV

Our natural history manias in their respective directions came upon us like fevers. We "sickened" at the sight of somebody else's collection, or because we had been reading about butterflies, or birds' eggs, or water-plants, as the case might be. When "the complaint" was "at its height," we lived only for specimens; we gave up leisure, sleep, and pocket-money to our collection; we made notes and memoranda in our grammars and lexicons that had no classical reference. We sent letters to country newspapers which never appeared, and asked questions that met with no reply. We were apt, also, to recover from these attacks, leaving Nurse Bundle burdened with boxes or folios of dry, dusty broken fragments of plants and insects, which we did not touch, but which she was strictly forbidden to destroy. We pursued our fancies during the holidays. I have now a letter that I got from Damer after my fourth half:

"London.

"My dear Regie,—

"Thine ever,

"Lionel Damer."

Of course this ended in Leo's being invited to Dacrefield. He came, and, wonderful to relate, we got Polly too. My father invited her and my aunt to visit us, and they came. As Leo said, Aunt Maria "behaved better than we expected." Indeed, Leo had no reason to complain of her treatment of him as a rule, for he was constantly at the Ascotts' house during his holidays.

And so we rambled and scrambled about together, Leo, and Polly, and I. And we added largely to our collections, and made a fernery (the Rector helping us), and rode about the country, and were thoroughly happy. We generally went to the nursery for a short time before dressing for dinner, where we teased and coaxed Mrs. Bundle, and ate large slices of an excellent species of gingerbread called "parliament," which she kept in a tin case in the cupboard. In return for these we entertained her with marvellous "tales of school," rousing her indignation by terrible narratives of tyrannous and cruel fagging, and taking away her breath by tales of reckless daring, amusing impudence, or wanton destructiveness common to boys. Some of these we afterwards confessed to be fables, told—as we politely put it—to "see how much she would swallow."

After dinner we were expected to sit with my father and Aunt Maria in the drawing-room. Then, also, poor Polly was expected to "give us a little music," and dutifully went through some performances which were certainly a remarkable example of how much can be acquired in the way of mechanical musical skill where a real feeling for the art is absent. After politely offering to turn over the leaves of her music, which Polly always declined (it was the key-note of her energetic character that she "liked to do everything herself"), my father generally fell asleep. I whiled away the time by playing with Rubens under the table, Aunt Maria "superintended" the music in a way that must have made any less stolid performer nervous, and Leo was apt to try and distract Polly's attention by grimaces and pantomime of a far from respectful nature behind Aunt Maria's back.

Sir Lionel was not a favourite with Nurse Bundle. I was unfortunate enough to give her a prejudice against him, which nothing seemed to wear out. Thinking his real, or affected mistake about her name a good joke, and having myself the strongest relish and admiration for his school-boy wit, I had told Nurse Bundle of his various versions of her name; and had tried to convey to her the comic nature of the scenes when my hat was pickled, and when Leo condemned my home-made shirts.

But quite in vain. Nurse Bundle's sense of humour (if she had any) was not moved by the things that touched mine. She looked upon the destruction of the hat and the shirts as "a sinful waste," and as to Leo's jokes—

"Called me a baggage, did he?" said the indignant Mrs. Bundle. "I'll Sir Lionel him when I get the chance. At my time of life, too!"

And no explanation from me amended matters. By the time that Leo did come, Nurse Bundle had somewhat recovered from the insult, but he was never a favourite with her. He "chaffed" her freely, and Mrs. Bundle liked to be treated with respect. Still there was a fascination about his beauty and his jokes against which even she was not always proof. I have seen her laugh and fetch out the parliament box when Leo followed her about like a dog walking on its hind legs, wagging an old piece of rope at the end of his jacket for a tail, and singing—

And when he got the parliament he would "sit up" and balance a slice of the gingerbread on his nose, till Polly and I cheered with delight, and Rubens became frantic at the mockery of his own performances, and Mrs. Bundle complained that "Sir Lionel never knowed when to let nonsense be."

But I think she was something like the housemaid who "did the bedrooms," and who complained bitterly of the additional trouble given by Leo and me when we were at Dacrefield, and who was equally pathetic about the dulness of the Hall when we returned to school. "The young gentlemen be a deal of trouble, but they do keep a bit of life in the place, sure enough."

CHAPTER XXV

He seemed to be gone. The beautiful curls were limp and tangled. He lay on his side with his legs stretched out; his eyes were closed. But when I stooped over him and cried "Ruby!" his flabby ears pricked, and he began to struggle.

"It's a fit," said the groom.

But it was nothing of the kind. Rubens knew what he was about, and at last actually got on to his feet, when, after swaying feebly about for a moment, he staggered in my direction (he could not see) and literally fell into my arms, with one last wag of his dear tail.

"They say care killed the cat," said Mrs. Bundle, when I went up to the nursery, "but if it could cure a dog, my deary, your dog would have been alive now. I never see the Squire so put about since you had the fever. He was up at five o'clock this very morning, the groom says, putting stuff into the corners of its mouth with a silver teaspoon, and he've had all the cow doctors about to see him, and Dr. Gilpin himself he've been every day, and Mr. Andrewes the same. And I'd like to know, my deary, what more could be done for a sick Christian than the doctor and parson with him daily till he dies?"

"A Christian would be buried in the churchyard," said I; "and I wish poor dear Rubens could."

But as he couldn't, I made his grave where the churchyard wall skirted the grounds of the Hall. "Perhaps, some day, the churchyard will have to be enlarged," I explained to the Rector, who was puzzled by my choice of a burying-place, "and then Rubens will get taken in."

My father was most anxious to get me another pet. I might have had a dog of any kind. Dogs of priceless breeds, dogs for sporting, for ratting, and for petting; dogs for use or for ornament. From a bloodhound and mastiff almost large enough for me to ride, to a toy poodle that would go into my pocket—I might have chosen a worthy successor to Rubens, but I could not.

"I shall never care for any other dog," I was rash enough to declare. But my resolve melted away one day at the sight of a soft, black ball, like a lump of soot, which arrived in a game-bag, and proved to be a retriever pup. He grew into a charming dog, of much wisdom and amiability. I called him Sweep.

Thus half by half, holidays by holidays, changes, ceaseless changes went on. Births, deaths, and marriages furnished my father with "news" for his letters when I was away, and Nurse Bundle and me with gossip when I came back.

I heard also at intervals from Polly. Uncle Ascott's wealth increased yearly. The girls grew up. Helen "was becoming Tractarian and peculiar," which annoyed Aunt Maria exceedingly. Mr. Clerke had got a curacy in London, and preached very earnest sermons, which Aunt Maria hoped would do Helen good. Mr. Clerke worked very hard, and seemed to like it; but he said that his happiest days were Dacrefield days. "I quite agree with him," Polly added. Then came a letter:—"Oh, my dear Regie, fancy! Miss Blomfield is married. And to whom, do you think? Do you remember the old gentleman who sent us the cinder-parcel? Well, it's to him; and he is really a very jolly old man; and thinks there is no one in the world like Miss Blomfield. He told her he had been carefully observing her conduct in the affairs of daily life for eight years. My dear Regie, fancy waiting eight years for one's next door neighbour, when one was quite old to begin with! You have no idea how much younger and better she looks in a home of her own, and a handsome silk dress. Can you fancy her always apologising for being so happy? She thinks she has too much happiness, and is idle, and who knows what. It makes me feel quite ill, Regie, for if she is idle, and has too much happiness, what am I, and what have I had? Do you remember the days when you proposed that we should be very religious? I am sure it's the only way to be very happy: I mean happy always, and underneath. Leo says the great mistake is being too religious, and that people ought to keep out of extremes, and not make themselves ridiculous. But I think he's wrong. For it seems just to be all the heap of people who are only a little religious who never get any good out of it. It isn't enough to make them happy whatever happens, and it's just enough to make them uncomfortable if they play cards on a Sunday. I know I wish I were really good, like Miss Blomfield, and Mr. Clerke, and Helen. * * *"

It was the year of Miss Blomfield's marriage that Ragged Robin's wife died. We had all quite looked forward to the peace she would enjoy when she was a widow, for it was known that delirium tremens was surely shortening her husband's life. But she died before him. Her children were wonderfully provided for. They were girls, and we had them all at the Hall by turns in some sort of sub-kitchenmaid capacity, from which they progressed to higher offices, and all became first-class servants, and "did well."

"My dear," said Nurse Bundle, "there ain't no difficulty in finding homes for gals that have been brought up to clean, and to do as they're bid. It's folk as can't do a thing if you set it 'em, nor take care of a thing if you gives it 'em, as there's no providing for."

I almost shrink from recording the hardest, bitterest loss that those changeful years of my school-life brought me—the death of Mr. Andrewes. It was during my holidays, and yet I was not with him when he died.

I do not think I had noticed anything unusual about him beforehand. He had not been very well for some months, but we thought little of it, and he never dwelt upon it himself. I was in the fifth form at the time, and almost grown up. Sweep was a middle-aged dog, the wisest and handsomest of his race. The Rector always dined with us on Sunday, but one evening he excused himself, saying he felt too unwell to come out, and would prefer to stay quietly at home, especially as he had a journey before him; for he was going the next day to visit his brother in Yorkshire for a change. But he asked if my father would spare me to come down and spend the evening with him instead. I rightly considered Sweep as included in the invitation, and we went together.

As we went up the drive (so familiar to me and poor little Rubens!) I thought I had never seen the Rector's garden in richer beauty, or heard such a chorus from the birds he loved and protected. Indeed the border plants were luxuriant almost to disorder. It struck me that Mr. Andrewes had not been gardening for some time. Perhaps this idea led me to notice how ill he looked when I went indoors. But dinner seemed to revive him, and then in the warm summer sunset we strolled outside again. The Rector leant heavily on my arm. He made some joke about my height, I remember. (I was proud of having grown so tall, and secretly thought well of my general appearance in the tail-coat of "fifth form.") With one arm I supported Mr. Andrewes, the other hung at my side, into the hand of which Sweep ever and anon thrust his nose caressingly.

"How well the garden looks!" I said. "And your birds are giving you a farewell concert."

"Ah! You think so too?" said the Rector, quickly.

I was puzzled. "You are going to-morrow, are you not?" I said.

"Yes, of course. I see," said the Rector laughing. "I was thinking of a longer journey. How superstitions do cling to north-countrymen! We've a terrible lot of Paganism in us yet, for all the Christians that we are!"

"What was your superstition just now?" said I.

"Oh, just part of a belief in the occult sympathy of the animal world with humanity, which, indeed, I am by no means prepared to give up."

"I should think not!" said I.

"Though doubtless the idea that they feel and presage impending death to man must be counted a fable."

"Awful rot!" was my comment. "I say, sir, I'm sure you're not well, to get such stuff into your head."

"It's just that," said the Rector. "When I was a boy, I was far from strong, and being rather bookish, I was constantly overworking my head. What weird fancies and fads I had then, to be sure! I was haunted by a lot of nervous plagues which it's best not to explain to people who have never been tormented with them. One of the least annoying was a sensation which now and then took possession of me that everything I saw, heard, or did, was 'for the last time.' I've often run back down a lane to get another glimpse of home, and done over again something I had just finished—to break the charm! The old childish folly has been plaguing me the last few days. It is strong on me to-night."

"Then we'll talk of something else," said I.

Eventually our conversation became a religious one. It was like the old days before I went to school. We had not had much religious talk of late years. To say the truth, since I became an Eton man the religious fervour of my childhood had died out. A strong belief in the practical power of prayer (especially "when everything else failed") was almost all that remained of that resolution to which Polly had alluded in her letter. In discussions with her, I took Leo's view of the subject. I warned her in a common-sense way against being "religious overmuch" (not that I had any definite religious measure in my mind); I laughed at Helen; I indulged a little cheap wit, and made Polly furious, by smart sneers about women and parsons. I puzzled her with scraps of old philosophy, and theological difficulties of venerable standing, and was as proud to discomfit her faith as if my own soul had no stake in the matter. I fairly drove her to tears about the origin of evil. Sometimes I would have "Sunday talks" with her in a different spirit, but even then she said I "did her no good," for I would not believe that she could "have anything to repent of."

I fancy Mr. Andrewes had asked me to come to him that evening greatly for the purpose of having a "Sunday talk." My father had wished me to be confirmed at home rather than at school, and as Bishops did not hold confirmations at such short intervals then as they do now, an opportunity had only just occurred. Mr. Andrewes was preparing me, and it was a great annoyance to him that his ill-health obliged him to go away in the middle of his instructions. I think he was feverish that night. Every now and then he spoke so rapidly that I could hardly follow him. Then there were pauses in which he seemed lost, and abrupt changes of subject, as if he could hardly control the order of his thoughts. And in all the evident strain and anxiety to say everything that he wished to say to me appeared that morbid fancy of its being "the last time."

After we had talked for some time he said, "Life goes wonderfully fast, Regie, though you may not think so just now. I do so well remember being a child myself. I was eight years old, I think, when I prayed for money enough to buy a Fuchsia coccinea (they had not been in England more than ten or twelve years then). My brother gave me half-a-crown, and I got one. It seems as if that one yonder must be it. I began a model of my father's house in card-board one winter, too. Then I got bronchitis, and did not finish it. I have been intending to finish it ever since, but it lies uncompleted in a box upstairs. So we purpose and neglect, till death comes like a nurse to take us to bed, and finds our tasks unfinished, and takes away our toys!"

Presently he went on: "Our mechanical arbitrary division of time is indeed a very false one. See how one day drags along, and how quickly another passes. The true measure of time is that which makes each man's life a day, his day. The real night is that in which no man can work. Indeed, nothing can be more true and natural than those Eastern expressions. I remember things that happened in my childhood as one remembers what one did this morning. What a lot of things I meant to do to-day! And one runs out into the garden instead of setting to work, and it is noon before one knows where he is, and other people take up one's time, and the afternoon slips away, and a man's day had need be fifty times its length for him to do all he means and ought to do, and to run after all the distractions the devil sends him as well. So comes old age, the evening when one is tired, and it's hard to make any fresh start; and then we're pretty near the end, at 'the last feather of the shuttle,' as we say in Yorkshire. I often think that the pitiful shortness of this life, compared with a man's hopes and plans, is almost proof enough of itself that there must be another, better fitted to his aims and capacities. And then—measure the folly of not securing that! And talking of proofs, Regie, and whilst I'm taking the privilege of this season of your confirmation to proffer a little advice, above all things make up your mind as to what you believe, and on what grounds you believe it. Ask yourself, my boy, if you believe the articles of the Apostles' Creed to be real positive truths. Do you think there is evidence for the facts, as matters of history? Are you ever likely to have the time or the talent to test this for yourself? And, if not, do you consider the authority of those who have done so, and staked everything upon their truth, as sufficient? Will you receive it as the Creed of your Church? Make up your mind, my boy, above all things make up your mind! Have some convictions, some real opinions, some worthy hopes; and be loyal to, and in earnest about, whatever you do pin your faith to, I assure you that vagueness of faith affects people's every-day conduct more than they think. The sort of belief which takes a man to church on Sunday who would be ashamed to look as if he were really praying, or confessing real sins when he gets there, is small help to him when the will balances between right and wrong. It is truly, as a matter of mere common sense, a poor bargain, a wretched speculation, to be half religious; to get a few checks and scruples out of it, and no real strength and peace; and, it may be, to lose a man's soul, and not even gain the world. For who dare promise himself that Christ our Judge, who spent a self-denying human youth as our example, and so loved us as to die for us, will accept a youth of indifference, and a dissatisfied death-bed on our part? And if it be all true, and if gratitude and common sense, and self-preservation, and the example and advice of great men, demand that we shall serve God with all our powers, don't you think the devil must, so to speak, laugh in his sleeve to see us really conceited of being too large-minded to attend too closely, or to begin to attend too early, to our own best interests?"

"Ah!" he added after a while, "my dear boy—dearer to me than you can tell—the truth is, I covet for you the unutterable blessing of a youth given to God. What that is, some know, and many a man converted late in life has imagined with heart-wrung envy: an Augustine, already numbered with the Saints, a Prodigal robed and decked with more than pardon, haunted yet by dark shadows of the past, the husks and the swine. My boy, with an unstained youth yet before you to mould as you will, get to yourself the elder son's portion—'Thou art ever with Me, and all that I have is thine.' And what God has for those who abide with Him, even here, who can describe? It's worth trying for, lad; it would be worth trying for, on the chance of God fulfilling His promises, if His Word were an open question. How well worth any effort, any struggle, you'll know when you stand where I stand to-night."

We had reached the front steps of the house as he said this. The last few sentences had been spoken in jerks, and he seemed alarmingly feeble. I shrank from understanding what he meant by his last words, though I knew he did not refer to the actual spot on which we stood. The garden was black now in the gloaming. The reflection from the yellow light left by the sunset in the west gave an unearthly brightness to his face, and I fancied something more than common in the voice with which he quoted:

But I was fanciful that Sunday, or his nervous "fads" were infectious ones; for on me also the superstition was strong to-night that it was "the last time."

CHAPTER XXVI

Sweep himself looked rather foolish as he wagged his tail in answer to the Rector's greeting. He had the air of saying, "We were all a little excited last night. Let it pass."

For my own part I felt quite reassured. The Rector was in his sunniest mood, and as he watched us from the window to the very last, his face was so bright with smiles, that he hardly looked ill.

For some days Sweep and I were absent, fishing.

When I returned, I found on my mantelpiece a black-edged letter in an unfamiliar hand. But for the black I should have fancied it was a bill. The writing was what is called "commercial." I opened it and read as follows:

"North Side Mills, Blackford,

Yorks. 4/8, 18—.

"Sir,

"Yours respectfully,

"Jonathan Andrewes.

"Reginald Dacre, Esq., Jun."

It is useless to dwell upon the bitterness of this blow. My father felt it as much as I did, and neither he nor I ever found this loss repaired. One loses some few friends in a lifetime whose places are never filled.

We went to the funeral. Had the cause of our journey been less sad, I should certainly have enjoyed it very much. The railway ran through some beautiful scenery, but it was the long coach journey at the end which won my admiration for the Rector's native county. I had never seen anything like these noble hills, these grand slopes of moorland stretching away on each side of us as we drove through a valley to which the river running with us gave its name. Not a quiet, sluggish river, keeping flat pastures green, reflecting straight lines of pollard willows, and constantly flowing past gay villas and country cottages, but a pretty, brawling river with a stony bed, now yellow with iron, and now brown with peat, for long distances running its solitary race between the hills, but made useful here and there by ugly mills built upon the banks. Sometimes there was a hamlet as well as a mill. Tracts of the neighbouring moorland were enclosed and cultivated, the fields being divided by stone walls, which looked rude and strange enough to us. The cottages were also built of stone; but as we drove through a village I could see, through several open doors, that the rooms were very clean and most comfortably furnished, though without carpets, the floors, like everything else, being of stone.

It was dark before we reached Blackford. The latter part of our journey was through a coal and iron district, and the glare of the furnace fires among the hills was like nothing I had ever seen. At the coach office we were met by Mr. Jonathan Andrewes. He was a tall, well-made man, with badly-fitting clothes, rather tumbled linen, imperfectly brushed hair and hat, and some want of that fresh cleanliness and finish of general appearance which went to my idea of a gentleman's outside. I found him a warm-hearted, cold-mannered man, with a clear, strong head, and a shrewdness of observation which recalled the Rector to my mind more than once. The tones of his voice made me start sometimes, they were so like the voice that I could never hear again in this life. He spoke always in the broad dialect into which the Rector was only wont to relapse in moments of excitement.

A carriage, better appointed than the owner, and a man-servant rather less so, were waiting, and took us to Oak Mount. In the hall our host apologized for the absence of Mrs. Andrewes, who was at the sea-side, out of health.

"But Betty 'll do her best to make you comfortable, sir," he said to my father, and turning to a middle-aged woman with a hard-featured, sensible face, and very golden hair tightly braided to her head, who was already busy with our luggage, he added, "You've got something for us to eat, Betty, I suppose?"

"T' supper 'll be ready by you're ready for it," said Betty, when she had finished her orders to the man who was taking our things upstairs. "But when folks is come off on a journey, they'll be glad to wash their 'ands, and I've took hot water into both their rooms."

The maid's familiarity startled me. Moreover, I fancied that for some reason she was angry, judging by the form and manner of her reply; but I have since learned that the ordinary answers of Scotch and Yorkshire folk are apt to sound more like retorts than replies.

In the end I became very friendly with this good woman. Her real name, I discovered, was not Betty. "They call me Alathea," she said, meaning that that was her name, "but I've allus gone by the name of Betty." From her I learnt all the particulars of my dear friend's last illness, which I never should have got from the brother.

"He talked a deal about you," she said. "But you see, you're just about t' age his son would have been if he'd lived."

"His son!" I cried: "was Mr. Andrewes married?"

"Ay," said she, "Master Reginald were married going i' two year. It were his wife's death made him that queer while he couldn't abide the business, and he'd allus been a great scholard, so he went for a parson."

Every detail that I could get from Alathea was interesting to me. Apart from the sadly interesting subject, she had admirable powers of narration. Her language (when it did not become too local for my comprehension) was forcible and racy to a degree, and she was not checked by the reserve which clogged Mr. Jonathan's lips. The following morning she came to the door of the drawing-room (a large dreary room, which, like the rest of the house, was handsomely upholstered rather than furnished), and beckoned mysteriously to me from the door. I went out to her.

"You'd like to see the body afore they fastens it up?" she said.

I bent my head and followed her.

"He makes a beautiful corpse," she whispered, as we passed into the room. It was an incongruous remark, and stirred again an hysterical feeling that had been driving me to laugh when I felt most sad amid all the grotesquely dreary preparations for the "burying." But, like some other sayings that offend ears polite, it had the merit of truth.

It was not the beauty of the Rector's face in death, however, noble as it was, that alone drew from me a cry of admiration when I stooped over his coffin. From the feet to the breast, utterly hiding the grave clothes, and tastefully grouped about his last pillow, were the most beautiful exotic flowers I ever beheld. Flowers lately introduced that I had never seen, flowers that I knew to be rare, almost priceless—flowers of gorgeous colours and delicate hothouse beauty, lay there in profusion.

"Mr. Jonathan sent for 'em," Betty murmured in my ear. "There's pounds and pounds' worth lies there. He give orders accordingly. There warn't to be a flower 'at warn't worth its weight in gowd a'most. Mr. Reginald were that fond of flowers."

I made no answer. Bitterly ached my heart to think of that dear and noble face buried out of sight; the familiar countenance that should light up no more at the sight of me and Sweep. "He looks so happy," I muttered, almost jealously. Alathea laid her hand upon my arm.

"Them that sleeps in Jesus rests well, my dear. And, as I said to Master Jonathan this morning, it ain't fit to overbegrudge them 'ats gone Home."

I think it was the naming of that Name, in which alone we vanquish the bitter victories of death, that recalled the verse which had been floating in my head ever since that evening at the Rectory: