Master Rayburn received the raven’s addled egg, and gave Ram Jennings a groat for his trouble, and for telling him all about how it was obtained, and what followed, keeping the man, and questioning him a good deal, as he smiled and frowned over the task he began at once, that of chipping a good-sized hole in one side of the egg, and extracting its contents in a little wooden bowl of clean water.
At last, after a great deal of sniffing and shuffling about, the man said, “Done with me, Master Rayburn?”
“Yes,” said the old man sharply. “Unless you can tell me any more. But why?”
“Well, master, I’m pretty hard about the smell, and it falls to me to clean out the pigsties; and when they’ve been left a month or two in the summer, and got pretty ripe, they aren’t so nice as bean-fields in bloom, or the young missus’s roses in her bit o’ garden; but pigsties aren’t nothing to that there egg. It’s enough to pyson a black dog.”
“Be off with you, then,” said the old man, with a dry chuckle; and as soon as he was alone, he threw the foul water away. “Yes,” he muttered, “it does smell; but that’s a splendid egg, and not stained a bit.”
“Hah!” he ejaculated a few minutes later. “I’d have given something to be there. Brave lads. True English, to the backbone; but with their young minds warped and spoiled by the traditions of this miserable feud. Why, it must have been grand,” mused the old man, shaking his grey locks. “How I should have liked to see and hear it all! What a fight to master the inborn hatred! On both sides the evil contending with the good; and, according to that man’s telling, that boy Mark did not show up well. I don’t know, though! He could not help it. He had to fight the black blood in his veins that has been handed down for generations. So young Ralph saved his life, made him prisoner, and set him at liberty like a true honest gentleman; and the other had to battle with his dislike and bitterness at receiving a favour from his enemy’s hands.
“Good Heavens!” he cried aloud. “Enemy’s! What contemptible worms we are, to dare to nurse up such a feeling from father to son, generation after generation! Why, with them it is an hereditary disease. But who knows? Those two lads may grow up to be friends, and kill the old feud. They cannot help respecting each other after such an encounter as that. I’ll try and get hold of young Darley, and then of Mark; and perhaps I may be able to— Bah! you weak-minded, meddlesome old driveller!” he cried impetuously. “You would muddle, and spoil all, when perhaps a Higher Hand is at work, as it always is, to make everything tend toward the best.
“But I should like to be present, by accident, the next time those two lads meet.”
The meeting took place before many days had passed.
In the interim Ralph Darley had told his father all that had happened, and Sir Morton had frowned, and looked pleased, and frowned again.
“You think I did wrong father,” said the lad.
“No, my boy; I think you behaved splendidly; but you see what a miserable race those Edens are. You do good to one of them, a boy of your own age, and he is ready to turn and rend you.”
“But I did not go on purpose to do good to him, father. I meant to catch him, tie him hand and foot, and bring him here to do what you liked with him.”
“Never mind: you acted bravely; and he like a roused wolf’s cub, as Nick Garth called him.”
“Felt humbled,” said Ralph thoughtfully.
“Yes, my boy. Well, it’s all over; but don’t go risking your life again for your enemies. We don’t want to quarrel with them unless they force it on, and I’m afraid they are going to, for I believe Eden has enlisted that gang of ruffians in his service. I can’t hear that they were seen to go away.”
Mark Eden told his father too, about the incident, and Sir Edward looked very grave.
“As the lad was a Darley, matters are different,” he said at last, “and I don’t like your conduct over the matter, Mark. To begin with—well, to go all through the business, you did wrong.”
“Yes, father,” said the lad bitterly.
“It was not right for you, a young scholar, and a gentleman, to go upon their land and invite a quarrel.”
“But I wanted the young ravens, father.”
“Yes. And they want my lead-mine; and if young Darley comes to try and take it, I hope you’ll break his neck.”
“Yes, father.”
“But you did not come out well, my boy,” said Sir Edward irritably. “The young cub has some good in him, and he behaved splendidly.”
“Yes, father; that made me feel so mad against him, and all the time I was feeling as if I would have given anything to shake hands, for he was very brave.”
“Well, it would have been, if he had not been a Darley.”
“And, of course, I could not shake hands and say thank you to a boy like him.”
“Shake hands—an Eden with a Darley! Impossible, my boy, impossible. There, it’s all over, and you must never give them the opportunity of insulting you again. That family has done us endless injury.”
“And we’ve done them a deal, too, father.”
“Yes, my boy, as much as ever we could. I mean in the old days; for I’m beginning to think that it’s best to let them go their way, if they let us go ours.”
“Yes, father.”
“I wish they lived on the other side of the county, instead of so near. But there, promise me that you will not run foul of any of the savages again.”
“Yes, father, I promise you,” said the lad quietly.
“By the way, Mark, you say young Darley had half-a-dozen ruffianly fellows with him, and they wanted to stone you, and then throw you off the cliff?”
“Yes, father.”
“Do you think any of them were part of the rough crew who came here with that red-faced captain?”
“I think not, father.”
“I’m afraid they went to Sir Morton Darley; so we must be watchful. Let that other trouble drop now, and be careful for the future. Don’t worry me now; Rugg wants to see me about the mining accounts. Keep out of mischief, and don’t let me hear any more about young Darley.”
Mark promised, and went out with the intention of going down the river to see old Master Rayburn, and ask him whether he had received the egg. But before he had gone far, the memories of the whole business seemed so distasteful, and he felt so much annoyed with himself, that he turned back.
“He’d make me tell him all about it, and I feel as if I couldn’t,” muttered the lad. “It tastes more and more bitter every time I think about it, and if Master Rayburn began to ask me questions, he’d get it all out of me, for he has such a way of doing it. I don’t believe any one could tell him a lie without being found out. Of course I shouldn’t tell him one. No, I won’t go. He’d say that I behaved badly, and I don’t want to be told, for though I wouldn’t own it, I know it better than any one could tell me. Hang the Darleys! I wish there wasn’t one on the face of the earth.”
So, instead of going to old Master Rayburn’s cottage, Mark walked back to the Black Tor, and after making up his mind to go down into the lead-mine, and chip off bits of spar, he went and talked to his sister, and told her, naturally enough, all that had passed.
Mary Eden, who was about a year older, and very like him in feature, shuddered a good deal over parts of his narration, and looked tearful and pained at the end.
“What’s the matter?” he said, rather roughly; “why, you’re going to cry!”
“I can’t help it, Mark,” she said sadly.
“Why: what makes you look like that?” said the lad irritably.
“Because—because—” she faltered.
“Well, because—because—” he cried mockingly.
“Because what?”
“Don’t be angry with me, dear. My brother Mark seems as if he behaved like a Darley, and that young Darley like my brother Mark.”
“Oh!” cried the lad, jumping up in a rage; and he rushed off, in spite of an appealing cry from Mary, and went down into the mine after all, where he met Dummy Rugg, old Dan’s son, and went for a ramble in the very lowest and grimmest parts, feeling as if to get away from the light of day would do him good, for his sister’s words had struck very deeply into his heart.
It was a gloomy place, that mine, and opened out into strange cavernous places, eaten away by water, or by strange crackings and subsidences of the earth, in the far distant ages when the boiling springs of the volcanic regions were depositing the beds of tufa, here of immense thickness, springs which are still in evidence, but no longer to pour out waters that scald, but of a gentle lukewarm or tepid temperature, which go on depositing their suspended stone to this day, though in a feeble, sluggish manner.
Dan Rugg was Sir Edward’s chief man over the mine. Not a gentleman superintendent, but a genuine miner, who gave orders, and then helped to carry them out. He had the credit of knowing more about mines than any man in the midland counties, knowledge gathered by passing quite half his life underground like a mole.
Dummy was his only child, so-called on account of his being a particularly silent, stupid-looking boy. But old Dan said he was not such a fool as he looked, and Dan was right.
Dummy hailed his young master’s coming with quiet satisfaction, for Mark was almost the only being to whom he ever said much; and as soon as he saw him come to where he was at work, he walked with him to a chest, and took out a flint and steel and a good supply of home-made candles, without stopping to ask questions; and then lighting one, he handed it to Mark, and led off into the part of the mine where the men were not at work.
“Aren’t you going to take a candle, Dummy?” said Mark.
“No, master; I can manage.”
“I believe you can see in the dark, like a rat or an owl. Can you?”
“Not very well, Master Mark; but I can see a bit. Got used to it, I s’pose.”
“Well, why are you going down there?” asked Mark.
“’Cause I thought you’d like to see the place I found while you were at school.”
“Ah! Is it worth seeing?”
“Dunno. It’s big.”
“Been dug out?”
“Nay. It’s a big split as goes up ever so far, and goes down ever so far. Chucked bits down; and they were precious long ’fore they hit bottom. There’s a place over the other side too, and I clum round to it, and it goes in and in, farther than I could stop to go. Thought I’d wait till you came home.”
“That’s right, Dummy. We will not go to-day; but start early some morning, and take a basket and bottle with us.”
“Ay, that’s the way. Water’s warm in there, I think.”
By degrees, from old acquaintance and real liking for the dull heavy lad, who looked up to him as a kind of prince, Mark dropped into telling his adventures over the ravens, while they trudged along the black passages, with Dummy leading, Mark still carrying the candle, and the lad’s huge long shadow going first of all.
The miner’s son listened without a word, drinking in the broken disconnected narrative, as if not a word ought to be lost, and when it was ended, breaking out with: “Wish I’d been there.”
“I wish you had, Dummy. But if you had been, what would you have done?”
“I d’know, Master Mark. I aren’t good out in the daylight; but I can get along on the cliffs. I’d ha’ come down to you. I should just like to ketch any one heaving stones down upon you. I wonder that young Darley didn’t kill you, though, when he’d cotched you. We should ha’ killed him, shouldn’t us, sir?”
“Don’t know, Dummy,” said the lad shortly. “Let’s talk about something else.”
Dummy was silent; and they went on and on till Mark spoke again.
“Well,” he said, “found any good bits of spar for Miss Mary?”
“Lots, sir. One big bit with two points like a shovel handle. Clear as glass.”
There was another silence, and then Mark spoke again.
“What’s going on?”
“Witches, master.”
“Eh? What?”
“Things comes in the night, and takes lambs, and fowls, and geese.”
“You mean thieves.”
“Nay, not like thieves, master. Old Mother Deggins saw ’em the other night, and they fluttered and made a noise—great black witches, in long petticoats and brooms. It was a noise like thunder, and a light like lightnin’, she says, and it knocked her down night afore last; and she won’t live in the cottage no longer, but come next to ours.”
“Somebody tried to frighten her.”
“P’r’aps. Frightened two of our men too. They was coming back from Gatewell over the hills; and they see a light up by Ergles, where there aren’t no lights, and they crep’ up to see what it was, and looked down and see a fire, with a lot of old witches in long gowns leaning over it, and boiling something in a pot; and they think it’s babies.”
“Why do they think that?”
“I d’know, master. Because they thought so, I think. Then, as they were looking, all at once there was a ter’ble squirty noise, and a rush like wings; and there was no fire, and nothing to see. Glad I warn’t there. Wouldn’t go across the moor by Ergles for anything.”
“But you’re not afraid to come along here in the dark.”
“’Fraid, Master Mark? No: why should I be? Nothing to hurt you here.”
“You’re a queer fellow, Dummy,” said Mark.
“Yes, master. That’s what father says. I s’pose it’s through being so much in the mine.”
“I suppose so. But you don’t mind?”
“Mind, Master Mark? I like it. Wish you was at home more, though.—I say—”
“Well?”
“If ever you go to fight the Darleys, take me, Master Mark.”
“I shall not go to fight the Darleys, Dummy. They may come to fight us, and if they do, you shall come and help.”
“Hah!” ejaculated the rough-looking boy. “I’m pretty strong now. If they come and meddle with us, do you know what I should like to do, Master Mark.”
“No: hammer them, I suppose.”
“Nay; I should like to drive ’em all down to the place I’m going to show you.”
“Well, where is it?”
“Oh, ever so far yet. ’N’our away.”
Mark whistled in surprise.
“Not tired, are you, sir?”
“Tired? No; but I didn’t think you could go so far.”
“Oh yes, you can, sir, if you don’t mind crawling a bit now and then. You can go miles and miles where the stone’s split apart. I think it’s all cracks under the hills.”
“On you go, then; but don’t you want a candle?”
“No, sir; I can see best like this, with you holding the light behind.”
Mark relapsed into silence, and his guide remained silent too, and went on and on, along passages formed by the busy miners of the past, in following the lode of lead, and along ways that were nature’s work.
At last, fully an hour after Dummy had announced how far they had to go, he stopped short, took a candle, lit it, and looked smilingly at Mark, who gazed round the natural cavern in which they were, and then turned to his guide.
“Well,” he said, “is this it? Not much of a place. I thought you said it went farther.”
“So it does, Master Mark. Shut your eyes while you count a hundred.”
Mark obeyed, and counted his hundred aloud, opened his eyes again, and he was alone.
“Here! Where are you?” he cried; and he looked about the place, up and down, but to all appearances, he was in a cul de sac, whose walls were dotted with the fossil stems of pentacrinites, over which stalagmitic petrifaction had gradually formed, looking as if dirty water had run over the walls in places, and hardened in the course of time to stone.
“Here, Dummy! Haven’t run back, have you?” shouted Mark, as it occurred to him that should the boy have played him a trick, he would have no little difficulty in getting back to the part where the men were at work.
But there was no occasion for so loud a cry; the words had hardly passed his lips when a hand holding a candle suddenly appeared against the wall in front, and upon stepping to it, he found that the sheet of stalagmite there, instead of touching the wall, was a foot away, leaving room for any one to creep up a steep slope for thirty or forty feet, and continue the way through a long crevice, whose sides looked as if they might have separated only a few hours before.
“This is the way,” said Dummy, and he led on for a quarter of an hour longer, with a peculiar rushing noise growing louder, till it became a heavy dull roar, as the narrow crack through which they had passed suddenly opened out into a vast cavity which, below the ledge on which they stood, ended in gloom, and whose roof was lost in the same blackness; but the echoes of the falling water below told them that it must be far enough above their heads.
“What a horrible hole!” cried Mark.
“Yes; big,” said Dummy. “Look: I climbed along there. It’s easy; and then you can go right on, above where the water comes in. It’s warm in here.”
“Yes, warm enough.”
“Shall we go any farther?”
“No, not to-day. Let’s stop and look. Shall I throw down my candle?”
“No, Master Mark: it’s no good. Goes out too soon. I’ll light a match.”
He took an old-fashioned brimstone match from his breast, lit both its pointed ends, waited till the sulphur was fluttering its blue flame, and the splint was getting well alight and blackening, and then he reached out and let it fall, to go burning brightly down and down, as if into a huge well. Then it went out, and they seemed for the moment to be in darkness.
“I don’t think it’s very, very deep,” said Dummy quietly; “but it’s all water over yonder. Seen enough, Master Mark!”
“Yes, for one day. Let’s go back now.”
Dummy topped the long wicks with his natural snuffers, to wit, his finger and thumb, and led the way back, after Mark had taken a final glance at the vast chasm.
“So you found this place out, Dummy?”
“Yes, Master Mark. I’m always looking for new holes when I’ve nothing to do and the men aren’t at work.”
“It’s of no use: there’s no lead.”
“No: aren’t any ore. All spar and stones like this.”
“Well, we must bring hammers and find some good pieces next time we come.”
“And go on along by the water, Master Mark?”
“If you like. Want to find how far it goes?”
“Yes: I want to find how far it goes, master. Perhaps it opens somewhere. I often think we must come out somewhere on the other side.”
“That would be queer,” said Mark thoughtfully; “but I don’t think my father would be pleased. Seem like making a way for the Darleys to come in and attack us.”
Dummy stopped short, and turned to stare open-mouthed at his young chief.
“What a head you’ve got, Master Mark,” he said. “I never thought of that.”
“Didn’t you? Well, you see now: we don’t want to find another way in.”
“Yes, we do, if there is one, Master Mark, and stop it up.”
Very little more was said as they went back, Mark becoming thoughtful, and too tired to care about speaking. But that night he lay in bed awake for some time, thinking about the visit to the cavernous mine, and how it honeycombed the mountainous place: then about Dummy’s witches, and the fire and caldron, at the mouth of the hole by Ergles, a mighty limestone ridge about three miles away. Then after a laugh at the easy way in which the superstitious country people were alarmed, he fell asleep, to begin a troublous dream, which was mixed up in a strangely confused way with the great chasm in the mine, down which he had worked his way to get at the ravens’ nest: and then he started into wakefulness, as he was falling down and down, hundreds upon hundreds of feet, to find his face wet with perspiration, and that he had been lying upon his back.
Days had passed, and strange reports were flying about the sparsely inhabited neighbourhood. Fresh people had seen the witches in their long gowns, and it was rumoured that if any one dared to make the venture, they might be found crouching over their fire any dark, stormy night on the slope of Ergles, where nobody ever went, for it was a desolate waste, where a goat might have starved.
The tales grew like snowballs, as they passed from mouth to mouth, but for the most part they were very unsubstantial in all points save one, and that possessed substance; not only lambs, but sheep, had disappeared, and in the case of a miner and his wife, who lived some distance off, and who had been away for a week to a wedding beyond the mountains, they returned to their solitary cottage to find that it had been entered in their absence, and completely stripped of everything movable, even to the bed, while the very cabbages in the garden had been torn up and carried away.
Mark had the news from the man himself, and he carried it to his father and sister, as he had carried Dummy Rugg’s rumour about the witches and their fire, which went out so suddenly on being seen.
“Humph!” said Sir Edward, smiling; “that looks as if the witches liked vegetables with their lamb and mutton. Stripped the cottage, and took the meal-tub too?”
“Everything, father,” said Mark.
“Then it’s time the men made a search, my boy,” said Sir Edward; “we must have a robber about. There is the whole explanation of the old women’s tales. Well, they will have to bestir themselves, and catch the thief.”
It was on that same morning that the news reached Cliff Castle, where similar stories had floated about witches and warlocks having taken possession of the shivering hills, where the slatey rocks were always falling, and forming what the country people called screes, which, at a distance, when wet and shiny, looked in the sunshine like cascades descending from on high.
“If it comes to any of our sheep being taken, we shall have to take to a hunt, Ralph,” Sir Morton had said. “The people like to have a witch or two to curdle their blood, but I’m not going to find them in sheep.”
It was a glorious morning, and the lad went into the courtyard with his sister to have a look at her new fad, as Nick Garth called it, that is to say, the well-plastered pool with its surrounding of rock-work, in which various plants were beginning to flourish and reflect themselves in the crystal water with which the little pond was filled.
“Capital!” cried Ralph; “but you ought to have a few fish in it. They’d look well.”
“That is just what I wanted you to say, sir,” cried Minnie, clapping her hands; “and if you hadn’t been such a solemn, serious brother, you would have taken your rod and line, and caught me a few.”
“Well, I will,” said the lad eagerly; “and some for a fry as well. The little ones will be best for you, and I’ll take a tin can for them, as well as a creel.”
An hour later, with a plentiful supply of caddis, caterpillars, and other tempting bait, and rod in hand, Ralph descended to the side of the stream. He was not long in following suit with old Master Rayburn as to his hose; and then stepping into the water, he began to wade upstream, where it was shallow, going on to the bank where it grew deep.
But the day was too bright and the water too clear for his task. The fish saw him, and darted away, and when his keen eyes followed them to their lair, they refused to be tempted out by any bait he threw.
“Just my luck when I come fishing,” muttered Ralph, as he waded slowly on, picking his way among the stones. “There’s always something wrong; either it’s too hot, or it’s too cold, or there’s too much water, or there isn’t enough, or the wind’s somewhere in the wrong quarter, or I haven’t got the right bait; and so sure as I was to meet old Master Rayburn, picking flowers on the bank, he’d say: ‘Ah, you should have come yesterday, or last week, and then you’d have caught a fish at every throw.’
“Stupid work, fishing,” he said, half-aloud, when he had waded as far as he could without getting wet, for the water had suddenly deepened and curved round out of sight, all calm and still beneath the boughs shading it on either side. “Seems very easy, though, when you watch old Rayburn. He always knows where to throw.”
For the moment, he was ready to give up, but feeling that his sister would be disappointed if he went back empty-handed, he waded out, and taking a short cut across the horseshoe formed by the stream, he reached it again beyond the deeps, where it was possible to wade once more; and before entering the bubbling waters, he stood looking upward, thinking how beautiful it all was, with the flashing water gurgling and swirling round the great stones which dotted the bed. Every here and there the sides were glowing with patches of the deep golden, yellow globe-flower; a little farther on, there was a deeper spot with a patch of the great glistening leaves of the water-lily, not yet in bloom; and as he stepped down into the water, there was a flutter from a bird seated on a dead twig, and a flash of azure light gleamed over the river, as the disturbed kingfisher darted upstream, to be watched till it disappeared.
Flies danced up and down above the water, and every now and then one dropped on the surface, with its wings closed, and sailed downward like a tiny boat. Bees swept by with a humming, slumberous sound; and among the sedges at the sides, where the golden irises displayed their lovely blossoms, the thin-bodied dragon-flies, steel-blue or green, darted on transparent wing, pairs every now and then encountering fiercely with a faint rustling of wings, and battling for a few seconds, when one would dart away with the other in pursuit.
Ralph waded on, catching nothing; but the beauties of the place increased, and satisfied him so that he began to forget his mission, and paused now to listen to the soft coo of the wood-pigeon in the grove, to the quick sharp tah! of the jackdaws sailing about high up, where they nested in the bare face of the creviced cliffs. Then on and on again, in sunshine or in shade, for quite a couple of hours, fishing in a desultory way, but with not the slightest result. Then his luck turned.
He had been driven ashore several times by the deep water, but always returned to the bed of the river where it shallowed, for it was easier going than forcing his way amidst the stones, bushes, and trees at the side; and now, as he was wading up toward where the water came over a ridge in a cascade, a little shoal of half-a-dozen fish darted upward, and he followed them, with the water growing more and more shallow, till his pulses beat with satisfaction, for a little investigation showed him that he would be able to drive the slippery prey right into a broad stretch where the water was but an inch or two deep, and dotted everywhere with shoals that were nearly dry.
Fishing was out of the question in a place like that, so twisting his line round his rod, he used the latter as a walking-staff, and followed till the prey he sought were compelled to flap themselves along upon their sides; two trout on finding themselves in such straits leaping right on to one of the half-dried pebbly shoals. Here Ralph pounced upon one after the other, and transferred them to his creel, after first taking out his shoes and hose, which had been reclining there, at rest from their ordinary avocation of protecting his feet.
“Queer fishing,” muttered the lad; “but I’ve caught them. Now for you.”
This to the rest of the shoal, which he chased so perseveringly that he caught four more by driving them into the shallowest water, the two largest succeeding by desperate rushes in getting through the treacherous part, and disappearing in the deeps toward the cascade.
“All too big to go in the little can,” thought Ralph. “Never mind; they will make a fry. Perhaps I can catch some smaller ones the same way.”
He tied his shoes together by the strings, and fastened them to the strap of his creel, tucked his hose through his belt, and went ashore again, to make his way beyond the little cascade which fell musically over the rocks; and as he was going on by the dammed-up deeps, there was suddenly a rush among the sedges and rushes, followed by a splash, the lad catching sight of a long, wet, brown body, as the animal made a plunge and disappeared in deep water.
The next moment his eyes rested upon the remains of a feast, in the shape of a fine trout, half-eaten, evidently quite freshly caught.
“Better fisherman than I am,” said Ralph to himself, as he searched the surface of the water to see if the otter he had disturbed would rise. But the cunning animal had reached its hole in the bank, and was not likely to return to its banquet: so Ralph went on beyond the deeps to where the river ran shallow again beneath the overhanging trees, just catching a glimpse at times of the great cliffs, whose tops often resembled the ruins of neglected towers, so regularly were they laid in fissured blocks.
Encouraged by his success, though conscious of the fact that it was the work of a poacher more than an angler, Ralph was not long in finding a suitable place for driving a few more fish. Fate favoured him in this, and in their being just of a suitable size for the little pool, and he had just secured one about six inches long, and was filling his little can with water, when he was startled by hearing a half-stifled bark uttered, as if by a dog whose muzzle was being held.
He looked sharply round, and suddenly woke to the fact that, for how long he could not tell, while he had been stalking the trout, he had been stalked in turn.
For a man suddenly appeared among the bushes on the right, looked across the river, and shouted, “Come on, now.”
Three more appeared on the other side, one of whom leaped at once into the river, while simultaneously a couple of dogs were let loose, and dashed into the shallow water.
“Don’t let him go back, lads,” shouted the first man. “Run him up: he can’t get away.”
Ralph was equal to the occasion. In a sharp glance round, while snapping his rod in two where the butt was lashed to the thinner part, he saw that his retreat was cut off down the river, and that his only chance of escape was to go forward, right and left being sheer wall, twenty feet on one side, two hundred, at least, on the other. He grasped, too, the fact that the men about to attack him were evidently lead-miners, and the thought flashed upon him that he had inadvertently come higher till, after a fashion, he was occupying Mark Eden’s position, trespassing upon an enemy’s ground.
These thoughts were lightning-like, as he swung his rod-butt round, and brought it down heavily upon a big mongrel dog that splashed through the shallows, knocked it right over, to lie yelping and whining as it tore up water and sand, the second dog contenting itself with yapping, snarling, and making little charges, till a lucky blow caught it upon the leg, and sent it howling back.
This was sufficient for the moment, and Ralph began to retreat, with the men following him.
“There,” shouted the one who seemed to be the leader. “It’s of no use, so you may give in. We know you, so come out, fish and all. You haven’t no right up here.”
Ralph made no reply, but flushing with anger and annoyance, he hurried on over the shallows, with the men now in full pursuit, shouting, too, at the dogs, and urging them to renew their attack.
“What an idiot I have been!” muttered the lad, as he splashed on, wishing that he was on open ground, so that he could run; but wishing was in vain. He was unarmed, too, save for the stout ash-butt of his spliced rod, and he knew that it would be impossible to defend himself with that for long against four strong men, who were apparently only too eager to get hold of the heir of the rival house, and drag him before their lord. For that they were Sir Edward Eden’s men the lad had not a doubt.
But Ralph had little time for thought; action was the thing, and he splashed on, glancing from right to left to find a spot where he could land and take to his heels—an impossibility there, for he soon saw that his only chance was to climb, and that chance was small.
Then, as the men followed some forty yards behind, he saw the light of hope. Not far ahead, the water looked black and still, as it glided through a narrow defile, shut in by the rocks. That meant deep water; but if he could reach that, he would have to swim, and the men probably would not dare to follow.
Already the shallows were coming to an end, the water reaching to his knees; and it was here that, encouraged and bullied into making a fresh attack, the dogs overtook him once more, and half swimming, half making leaps, they came at him, the bigger avoiding a blow, and seizing him by the left, fortunately without hurt, the animal’s teeth meeting only in the padding of the short breeches of the period; but it held on, growling, and shaking its head violently, while its companion, after a deal of barking, dashed in on the right.
This time Ralph’s aim was surer and quicker, the dog receiving a sharp cut across the ear from the butt of the rod, and going down at once, to begin howling, and swimming in a circle.
Rid thus of one enemy, the lad proceeded to get rid of the second by a very simple plan. Lowering his left hand, he got hold of the strap which formed the dog’s collar, and in spite of its struggles and worryings, went on as fast as he could go—slowly enough, all the same—to where the water deepened; and as it reached his thigh, he bent his knees, with the natural result that as the dog held tenaciously to its mouthful of cloth and padding, its head was beneath the water.
A few seconds were sufficient to make it quit its hold, and come up choking and barking; but in obedience to the urging on of one of the men, to pluckily renew the attack.
A sharp crack from the butt knocked all the remaining courage out of its head, and it turned, howling, to swim back toward its masters.
“Here, it’s no good, young Darley,” yelled one of the men. “You may give up now. We’ve got you fast.”
“And it’ll be the worst for you, if you don’t. We have got you now.”
“Hold me tight, then,” muttered the lad, with a triumphant feeling at his chances of escape beginning to make him glow.
“You mustn’t go there,” shouted another. “It’s woundy deep, and you’ll get sucked down.”
“Come and be sucked down after me,” muttered Ralph, as the dogs began barking again furiously, but refused to follow and attack, keeping close to the men, who were all now in the river, wading slowly, the walls having grown too precipitous for them to keep on the sides.
Ralph’s progress was slow enough too, for the water had deepened till it was above his waist, and the next minute was nearly to his armpits, while the river having narrowed now to half its width, the stream though deep came faster, and grew harder to stem.
“D’you hear, youngster!” roared the leader. “You’ll be drownded.”
“Better that than be caught and dragged up to the Black Tor for that wretched boor, Mark Eden, to triumph over me,” thought Ralph; and he pushed boldly on, forced his way a dozen yards, and then made a step, to find no bottom, and going down over his head.
“Told you so,” rang in his ears, as he struck out and rose, to find himself being borne back; but a few strokes took him to the right side, where he snatched at some overhanging ferns rooted in the perpendicular wall of rock, checked himself for a few moments, and looked back, to see the four men, nearly breast-deep, a dozen yards behind, waiting for him to be swept down to their grasp.
“There, give up!” cried another, “for you’re drownded. You don’t know the waters here, like we do. Some o’ that goes right down into the mine.”
To the astonishment of the men, who did not dare to venture farther, the lad did not surrender, but looked sharply about to try and fully grasp his position and his chances of escape. Ahead the water certainly appeared deeper, for it glided on towards him, looking black, oily, and marked with sinuous lines. There was no ripple to indicate a shallow, and he could feel, from the pressure against him, that it would be impossible to stem it in swimming; while most ominous of all, right in the centre, a little way ahead, there was a spot where the water was a little depressed. It kept circling round every now and then, forming a funnel-shaped opening about a foot across, showing plainly enough that the men were right, and that a portion of the stream passed down there into some hole in the rock, to form one of the subterranean courses of which there were several in the district, as he knew both where rivulets disappeared, and also suddenly gushed out into the light of day.
Ralph grasped then at once that it would be impossible to escape by swimming against such a stream; that if he could have done so, there was the horrible risk of being sucked down into some awful chasm to instant death; that he could not climb up the wall of rock where he hung on then; and that, if he let go, he would be borne along in a few moments to the men’s hands; and then, that he would be bound, and dragged away a prisoner, to his shame, and all through trying to get those unfortunate fish.
“It’s of no use,” he muttered despairingly, as he looked above him again, and, as he did so, saw that the men were laughing at his predicament, for, as Touchstone the clown told the shepherd, he was “in a parlous case.”
But hope is a fine thing, and gives us rays of light even in the darkest places. Just when Ralph felt most despondent, it occurred to him that there was another way out of the difficulty, and he proceeded to put it in force by looking straight ahead, along the wall of rock, which ran down into the water, and there, just beyond the tuft by which he held on, and certainly within reach, was one of the perpendicular cracks which divided the stone into blocks. In an instant he had stretched out his left hand, forced it in there, drawn himself along till he could get the other hand in, and was safe so far; and to his great joy found, by a little searching, that he could find foot-hold, for the horizontal crack ran some four feet below the surface, and afforded him sufficient standing room, if he could only find something to hold on by above.
For the moment he was safe, but his object was to get along the wall, till he could find a place where he could climb the rocky side of the river; and once clear of the water, he felt that it would go hard if he could not find some way to the top, the more easily from the fact that above the steep piece of wall down into the water the trees grew so abundantly that a climber would for a certainty find plenty of help.
The men remained motionless in the water, watching in the full expectation of seeing the lad swept down to them; but he held fast, and once more reaching forward, he strained outward till he caught a tuft of grass, crept on along the submerged ledge to that, and from there gained a large patch of tough broom. Then came two or three easy movements onward, bringing the fugitive abreast of the sink, which was larger than it had appeared from below, and Ralph shuddered as he felt that any one who approached the vortex would for a certainty be dragged down.
For a few moments he clung there, the nervous thoughts of what might be if he slipped and were caught in the whirlpool being sufficient to half paralyse him; then turning angry at his feeling of cowardice, he reached boldly out again, found fresh hand-hold, and did the same again and again, till he was a dozen yards beyond the sink-hole, and had to stop and think. For the wall was smoother than ever; the stream ran stronger; the distance between the two sides being less, it looked deeper; and the next place where he could find hand-hold was apparently too far to reach.
Still, it was his only chance, and taking fast hold with his right, and somehow thinking the while of Mark’s passage along the surface of the High Cliff, he reached out farther and farther, pressing his breast against the rock, edging his feet along, and then stopping at his fullest stretch, to find the little root of ivy he aimed at grasping still six or seven inches away.
The dead silence preserved by the men below was broken by the barking of one of the dogs. Then all was still again, and Ralph felt that his only chance was to steady himself for a moment with his feet, loosen his hold with his right hand, and let himself glide along the face of the rock forward till his left touched the ivy, and then hold on.
If he missed catching hold—?
“I mustn’t think of such a thing,” he muttered; and he at once put his plan into action, letting himself glide forward.
As a scholar, fresh from a big school, he ought to have been more mathematically correct, and known that in describing the arc of a circle his left hand would go lower; but he did not stop to think. The consequence was that as his fingers glided over the rough stone, they passed a few inches beneath the tough stem he sought to grasp, and once in motion, he could not stop himself. He clutched at the stone with his right hand, and his nails scratched over it, as he vainly strove to find a prominence or crevice to check him; but all in vain; the pressure of the running water on the lower part of his body helped to destroy his balance, and with a faint cry, he went headlong into the gliding stream, the men simultaneously giving vent to a yell, half of horror, half of satisfaction.
“The sink-hole! Shall I be sucked down?” was the thought that flashed across the lad’s brain, like a lurid light, as he went under; then he struck out vigorously for the side, and as he rose to the surface saw that he was being drawn toward the hole where it gaped horribly, and closed, and gaped again, a few yards away.
If any boy who reads this cannot swim, let him feel that he is sinning against himself, and neglecting a great duty, till he can plunge without a trace of nervousness into deep water, and make his way upon the surface easily and well. Fortunately for Ralph Darley, he was quite at home in the water, and the strong firm strokes he took were sufficient to carry him well in toward the side, so that he passed the little whirlpool where its force was weakest; and as the men below closed together, and waded a couple of steps to meet him, they had the mortification of seeing him clinging to the wall of rock, half-a-dozen yards above them, and then creeping forward again, step by step, till he reached the point from which he had been swept, and held on there once more.
Here, as they watched him curiously, they saw that he remained motionless, as if thinking what to do next, as was the case; and coming to the conclusion that he must manage somehow to grasp that tuft of ivy, he tried again, with the dread of the consequences the less from the experience he had gone through.
Coming to the conclusion that the only way was to raise himself upon his toes at the last moment, and jerk himself forward, he drew in a deep breath, reached out to the utmost, but raised his left hand more, then loosened his grasp with his right, and when he thought the moment had come, gave a slight bound.
That did it. He caught at the ivy, his fingers closed upon it tightly, and he tried hard to keep his feet upon the ledge below water. But this effort failed, his balance was gone, his feet glided from the ledge, and he swung round, holding on to the ivy, which seemed to be giving way at its roots.
But as Ralph fell, his hand slipped quite a foot down the ivy, and the water took a good deal of his weight, so that, though the strain upon the feeble growth was great, it remained firm enough to hold him; and he hung half in, half out of the water for some time, afraid to stir, but all the time energetically using his eyes, to seek for a way out of his perilous position.
He was not long in coming to a decision. Above the ivy there was one of the cracks, and he saw that if he could reach that, he could climb to the one above, and from there gain the roots of a gnarled hawthorn, whose seed had been dropped in a fissure by a bird generations back, the dryness of the position and want of root-food keeping the tree stunted and dwarfed. Once up there, another ten or twelve feet would take him to the top of the lower wall, and then he felt that it would go hard if he could not climb and hide, or escape up the cliff; so he set to at once to try.
Ralph Darley’s first step was to get his right hand beside his left, and his feet once more upon the ledge, but the ivy gave way a little more at this movement, and he paused. But not for long. Another danger was at hand.
Moved by the boldness of the lad’s efforts to escape, and in dread lest he might be successful, the leader of the four men, after a short consultation with the others, who tried to dissuade him, began to wade cautiously forward till the water grew too deep for him, and then creeping sidewise, he climbed on to the smooth wall, and began to imitate the course taken by Ralph; but before he had gone many yards, one of his companions shouted:
“You’ll go down, and be swep’ away, and sucked in.”
This checked him and made him hesitate, but rousing his courage again, he once more began to edge along the shelf below the surface, and this spurred the fugitive on to make another effort.
This time he caught at the ivy, which gave way a little more, but still held, and by moving cautiously, Ralph managed to get his feet upon the ledge. The next minute he had found another prominence below water, raised his foot to it, and caught at a rough bit of the stone above the ivy, stood firm, drew himself a little higher, and by a quick scramble, got a foot now on the ivy stem and his hands in the crack above, just as the growth yielded to his foot, dropped into the stream, and was swept away, leaving the lad hanging by his cramped fingers.
But though the ivy was gone, the crevice in which it had grown remained, and in another few seconds Ralph’s toes were in it, and the weight off his hands.
He rested, and looked down-stream, to see that the man was steadily approaching, but the lad felt safe now. The ivy was gone, and the enemy could not possibly get farther along the ledge than the spot from whence he had slipped.
Cheered by this, Ralph began to climb again, finding the task easier, and the next minute he had hold of the tough stem of the hawthorn; and heedless of the thorns, dragged himself up into it, stood upright, reached another good, strong hand-hold, and then stepped right up on to a broad shelf of grass-grown limestone. The men uttered a fierce shout, and their leader, seeing now that his task was hopeless, began to retire and join his companions.
Ralph watched him for a few moments, and then began to climb again, finding this part of the slope easy, for great pieces of stone were piled up, and made fast by the bushes which grew amongst them, hiding the fugitive from the sight of those below, and raising his hopes as he found how easily he could get up. Twice over he heard shouts and their echoes from the opposite side, but he was too busy to heed them, and soon felt confident enough to sit down in a niche, half-way up the cliff, and rest for a few minutes.
“Horribly wet,” he said to himself; “fishing-rod broken and lost, fish-can gone, and—ah! I did not expect that,” for he found that shoes, hose, and creel were safe. “Glad I shall take the fish home after all.”
He listened: all was still. Then he peered down, but he could see nothing save the bushes and trees on the other side; even the river was invisible from where he sat; and getting his breath now after his exertions, he turned, and began to look upward.
Ralph was born somewhere about three miles from where he sat, but he had inadvertently wandered into a part that was perfectly unfamiliar to him, the feud between the two families having resulted in its being considered dangerous for either side to intrude within the portion of the rugged mountainous land belonging to the other.
Still, the lad had some notion of the bearings of the cliff hills from seeing them at a distance, and he rapidly came to a conclusion as to which would be the best course for him to take to avoid the occupants of the Black Tor; but when any one is flurried he is liable to make mistakes, and much more likely when deep in a tangle of pathless wood, and listening for the steps of those who are seeking to make him a prisoner.
According to Ralph’s calculations, the narrow gap which led eastward to the edge of the huge hollow in which the narrow, roughly conical mass of limestone rose crowned with the Eden Castle, lay away to his left; and as he had in climbing kept on bearing to the right, he was perfectly certain that he had passed right over the men in the river. He felt, therefore, that he had nothing to do but keep steadily on in the same course, always mounting higher at every opportunity of doing so unseen, until close to the top, when he could keep along the edge unseen till well on his way homeward, and then take to the open downs above.
The silence below was encouraging, and in spite of being compelled often to creep beneath the bushes, and here and there descend to avoid some perpendicular piece of rock, he got on, so that he grew more and more satisfied that he had escaped, and had nothing to do but persevere, and be well out of what had promised to be a very awkward predicament. His clothes clung to his back, and his legs were terribly scratched, while one of his feet was bleeding; but that was a trifle which he hardly regarded.
Just before him was a steeper bit than usual, and he hesitated about trying to climb it; but the way up or down seemed to promise no better, so taking advantage of the dense cover afforded by the trees, he steadily attacked the awkward precipice, the dwarf trees helped him with their gnarled trunks, and he mastered the ascent, found himself higher up than he had expected, crawled a step or two farther, and arrived the next minute at the brink of a deep chasm, while to the left, not a couple of hundred yards away, rose the castle-crowned Black Tor.
He shrank back the next instant, and a feeling of confusion came over him. He could hardly understand how it was, but directly after it was forced upon his understanding that he had been quite wrong in his bearings; that when he began to climb, the Black Tor lay to his right instead of his left, and that, instead of going into safety, he had been making straight for the most dangerous place.
To go on was impossible, for the cliff beneath him was overhanging; to go to the left was equally vain; and to descend or return was in all probability to walk right into the arms of his pursuers.
Once more he cautiously advanced his head between the bushes to look out, but the prospect was not encouraging. There, fifty or sixty feet away, was the fellow cliff to that upon which he lay, split apart by some terrible convulsion of nature; and once there he could have made for home, but there was no way of passing the opening save by descending right to the river’s bank, and he felt pretty certain that he could not do this without being seen.
Still it was the only course, and his choice was open to him—to lie in hiding till the darkness came, many hours later, or boldly descend.
To lie there in the shadow with his wet clothes clinging to him was not a pleasant prospect, but it seemed the only one feasible under the circumstances; and he concluded that this was what he would do, wishing the while that he dared go and lie right out in the sunshine.
He had hardly thought this, when a hot thrill ran through him, for from somewhere below there came the sharp bark of a dog, and a voice rose cheering the animal on, and then shouted: “Close in, all of you: he’s up here somewhere. Dog’s got his scent.”
Then voices answered with hails from different parts, and Ralph’s next movement was to crawl forward again to the very edge of the precipice, look over, and seek for a place where he might perhaps descend.
But again he saw that it was utterly hopeless, and nerved now by his despair, he began to descend through the fringe of scrub oak and beech, close to the chasm, so as to get down to the river, where he meant to plunge in, and cross by wading or swimming to the other side.
But there is no hiding from the scent of a dog. Ralph had not gone down half-a-dozen yards before the dog gave tongue again, and kept on barking, coming nearer and nearer, and more rapidly as the scent grew hotter: while before another dozen yards were passed the lad had to seize the first block of stone he could lift, and turn at bay, for the dog had sighted him and rushed forward, as if to leap at his throat.
There is many a dog, though—perhaps taught by experience—that will face a staff, but shrink in the most timid manner from a stone; and it was so here. At the first threatening movement made by Ralph, the dog stopped short, barking furiously, and the lad glanced downward once more. But to proceed meant to turn his back upon his four-footed enemy, which would have seized him directly.
There was nothing then to be done but face it, and he prepared to hurl his missile, but, to the lad’s despair, the second dog, which had been silent, now rushed up, and he had to keep them both off as he stood at bay, the new-comer being more viciously aggressive than the first.
“I can’t help it: I must make a dash for freedom,” thought Ralph; and, raising his stone higher, he hurled it at the bigger dog, which avoided it by bounding aside. Then turning, he dashed downward, right into the arms of a man.
There was a sharp struggle, and the latter was getting worsted, being lower down, and having to bear the shock of Ralph’s weight in the bound, but the next moment unexpectedly the lad felt himself seized from behind, two more men came panting up, and, utterly mastered, he found himself upon his back, with one enemy seated upon his chest, another holding his arms outspread, and the others his legs, thoroughly spread-eagled upon the sloping rock.
“Got you now,” said the leader of the little party. “You, Tom, we can manage him.—Get out, will you, dogs!—Here, take them with you. Run to the mine hut, and get some rope to tie him. Be as smart as you can. The master’ll give us something decent for a job like this.”
The man addressed called the dogs to him, and was unwillingly obeyed, but a few stones thrown by the rest overcame the animals’ objections, and they trotted off, leaving the prisoner relapsed into a sulky silence; his captors chatted pleasantly together about his fate, banteringly telling him that for certain he would be hung over the castle wall.
Ralph paid no heed to what was said, and after a time the men grew tired of their banter, and began to wonder among themselves whether their companion would say anything to those whom he might meet.
“He’ll like enough be doing it,” said the leader. “I tilled him to fetch a rope, and if he does anything else, he’ll hear of it from me. What we wants is to take our prisoner up proper to the master, and get our reward.”
Then they began muttering in a low voice among themselves, taking care that their prisoner should not hear, as he lay upon his back, staring straight up at the blue sky, and thinking of how soon it had come upon him to be suffering Mark Eden’s reverse.
At last a hail came from below, and the man panted breathlessly up to them, throwing down a coil of thin rope, with which, after turning him over upon his face, the men, in spite of his struggles, tightly and cruelly tied their prisoner’s arms behind him, and then his ankles and knees. They were about to lift him up, when there was a sharp barking heard again.
“Here, you, Tom,” cried the leader, who had been most savage in dragging the knots as tightly as possible, “I told you to take those dogs back.”
“Well, so I did. I didn’t bring ’em.”
“They’ve come all the same,” cried the other. “Well, it don’t matter now. Perhaps Buzz wants a taste of these here naked legs.”
The dog barked close at hand now.
“Here, you, jump up, before he has you,” cried the leader brutally; and then he stared wonderingly, for there was a sharp rustling amongst the bushes, and the dog sprang out to them, closely followed by Mark Eden, who cried in wonder:
“Why, hallo: then this is what Buzz meant! Whom have you got there?”
The men drew back, and Mark stooped, as the dog barked violently, turned the prisoner over, and once more the two enemies were gazing curiously in each other’s eyes.
Ralph did not flinch, but a dull feeling of despair ran through him as he saw Mark Eden’s face light up, his eyes flashing, and a smile of triumph playing about his lips.
Mark did not speak for a time. Then he turned his back upon the prisoner.
“Do you know who this is?” he said to the men.
“Oh yes, Master Mark, we know him. Don’t you? It’s young Darley, from below there. We was having a bit of a ramble ’fore going down in the mine, and we’d got the dogs, to see if there was any chance of a rabbit pie for supper; but they didn’t find one; they found his nabbs here instead. We had to hold the dogs’ muzzles to keep ’em quiet till he’d got by.”
“What was he doing?”
“Wading, and ketching our trout. We let him go right up to the deep water, down below where the narrows are, and we thought we’d trapped him; but somehow he managed to scramble up the side and get up here, so we set the dogs on, and they run him down. Look here, Master Mark; he’d got all these trout. Fine ’uns too.”
The man opened Ralph’s creel, and held it out for Mark to see, the lad nodding at the sight.
“Know’d where the good uns was.”
“And what were you going to do with him?” said Mark quietly.
“We had to ketch him first,” said the man, with a savagely stupid grin. “And he give us a lot o’ trouble, and we thought best thing to do was to tie a stone to his neck and pitch him in one of the holes. But Tom, here, said the master wouldn’t like it, and seeing he was a Darley, might like to make a sample of him, or keep him down in the mine to work. So we tied him tight, and was going to swing him between us, and carry him up to the gateway for the master to see. Then you come.”
Mark made no sign of either satisfaction or anger, but stood thinking for a minute or so, before turning again to where Ralph lay gazing straight up to the sky, waiting for whatever fate might be his, and setting his teeth hard in the firm determination to die sooner than ask for mercy from the cruel young savage who stood before him with what seemed to be a malicious grin upon his face.
And as he lay, Ralph thought of his school life, and all that had passed there, and how strange it was that in the wild part of Midland England there, amongst the mountains of the Peak, people could still be so savage as to be able to follow their own wills to as great an extent as did the barons and feudal chiefs of a couple of hundred years before.
Such thoughts as these had never come to him till after he had left home for school, to find his level. Earlier in his boyhood his father had appeared to him to be chief or king of the district, with a neighbour who was a rival chief or king. He knew that King James ruled the land; but that was England, away from the Peak. There, Sir Morton Darley, knight, was head of all, and the laws of England did not seem to apply anywhere there. Then he had gradually grown more enlightened, and never more so than at the present moment, as he lay bound on the mossy stones, feeling that unless his father came with a strong enough force to rescue him, his fate might even be death. And the result? Would the law punish the Edens for the deed? He felt that they would go free. They were to a pretty good extent outlaws, and the deed would never be known beyond their district. The moors and mountains shut them in. But Sir Morton, Ralph felt, would never sit down quietly. He would for certain attack and try to punish the Edens, and the feud would grow more deadly than ever.
Thoughts like these ran through his brain as he lay there, till the silence was broken by Mark Eden, whose face plainly told of the supreme pleasure he felt in seeing his young enemy humbled thus before him.
“Well,” he said at last, “are you not going to beg to be set at liberty?”
Ralph looked at him defiantly.
“No,” he said.
“Want to be taken up to the Tor, and hung from the tower as a scarecrow to keep away all the other thieves?”
“What is it to you?” replied Ralph bitterly.
“You came and took our trout,” said Mark, with a sneer; and he raised his foot as if tempted to plant it upon the prisoner’s chest.
“Yes, I came and caught some trout: but I looked upon the river as free to me, as you thought our cliff was free to you.”
“Hah!” cried Mark triumphantly; “I knew you would begin to beg for your life.”
“I have not begged,” said Ralph coldly. “You spoke to me and I answered.”
“Ropes hurt?” said Mark, after a pause, during which he could find nothing else to say.
Ralph smiled.
“Look for yourself,” he said. “They don’t quite cut to the bone.”
“Our mine lads are strong,” said Mark proudly. “Strong enough to beat your wretched set of servants if ever they dare come up here.”
“So brave and strong that you are glad to hire a gang of ruffianly soldiers to help you,” said Ralph scornfully.
“What? Those fellows in rags and rust? Pooh! We would not have them.”
Ralph opened his eyes a little wider.
“The Edens want no paid help of that kind. We’re strong enough to come and take your place whenever we like; but as you won’t be there, it will not matter to you.”
“No,” said Ralph, who was sick with pain, and faint from the throbbing caused by his bonds.
“But it would be a pity for my father to have you hung as a scarecrow,” said Mark mockingly. “I don’t like to see such things about. What do you say to going down to work always in our lead-mine?”
“Nothing,” said Ralph coldly.
“Better to live in the dark there, on bread and water, than to be killed.”
Ralph made no reply, but gazed fixedly in the speaker’s eyes.
“Better beg for your life, boy,” said Mark, placing his foot now on the prisoner’s chest.
“What! of you?” cried Ralph.
“Yes: I might make you my lackey, to wait upon me. That is what the Darleys should do for the Edens.”
“You coward!” said Ralph, with his pale face flushing now.
“What!” cried Mark. “Oh yes, call names like a girl. Come: beg for your life.”
Ralph’s answer was a fierce and scornful look, which told of what he would do if his hands were free. Then for a few moments he struggled, and Mark laughed.
“No good,” he said; “our men can tie knots fast enough to hold a Darley.”
The men, who stood at a little distance, laughed together in their satisfaction as they eagerly waited to see what was to come. Mark did not keep them long in suspense, for his hand went to the hilt of his sword, which he half drew.
“Now,” he said, “beg for your life, Darley.”
“Coward!” cried Ralph, in a hoarse whisper.
“Very well,” said Mark. “I gave you the chance. You were caught by our men stealing on our land, and you ought to have begged. The Darleys always were beggars and thieves; but you will not. I gave you the opportunity.”
He thrust the sword back in its sheath, and let his right hand fall to his side, where a strong knife-like dagger hung by a short chain from his belt, and whipped it out of its case.
“Does for a hunting-knife,” he said, with a curious laugh. “My father has killed many a stag with it. Now, are you going to beg for your life?”
There was no reply, and the men took a step or two forward.
“Go back!” cried Mark fiercely; and the men obeyed.
Mark bent over the prisoner, with the mocking laugh intensifying.
“Too much of a coward to beg for your life,” he said: “well, I’m too much of a coward to make you see it taken. There!”
With a quick movement, he turned Ralph over upon his face, thrust the point of the dagger beneath the line where the cut would tell best, and the prisoner’s wrists were free; another quick cut divided the rope which drew his elbows together, and then the knees and ankles followed, the strained hemp easily parting at the touch of the keen blade, and Ralph Darley was free.
“Why, Master Mark,” cried the chief man of the party in astonishment, “what you doing of?”
“Can’t you see, idiot?” cried Mark, with a fierce snap.
“But what’s the good of our ketching and tying on him?” cried the man addressed as Tom, in an ill-used tone.
“Say another word, you brute, and I’ll have you tied as you tied him,” cried Mark fiercely.
“Well, I dunno what Sir Eddard’ll say when he knows.”
“What he says he’ll say to me,” cried Mark. “You fellows ought to be in the mine by now. Go back to your work.”
The youth stood pointing down the steep slope, and an angry murmur of opposition arose; but the men began to move off, only to be called back just as Ralph rose painfully to his feet.
“Come here,” cried Mark. “Pick up those pieces of rope.”
“Who’s going to take them back to the mine?” said the leader, in an ill-used tone. “What’s Dan Rugg going to say? Noo rope too.”
“Tell him I cut it,” said Mark imperiously. “You take it back.”
The man picked up the pieces, and Tom quietly took up the creel from where it lay, half hidden by a tuft of fern fronds, to begin moving off with the trout. But Mark let him get a few steps away before following with a rush and a kick which sent the man on his face. Then, as he struggled up, angry and threatening, the lad snatched the creel from his hands.
“The Edens are not thieves,” he said fiercely—“only when they want a few young ravens,” he added, turning with a mocking laugh to Ralph; and once more the two lads stood gazing in each other’s eyes for a few moments, the rustling made by the departing men and the murmur of their voices rising from below.
Then, imitating Ralph’s action of the last time they met, he pointed down to the river, and said, with a mocking laugh:
“It’s my turn now. The Darleys are not the only ones who know how to treat a fallen enemy. Your creel, sir; and you are welcome to our trout.”
Ralph took the basket without a word, and without taking his eyes from Mark’s, while it seemed as if each lad was fighting hard not to be the first to let his glance sink before the other’s.
Then Ralph raised the lid of the creel, and began to take out the fish, but hesitated, and laid them back. To have thrown them on the ground seemed to him contemptible and mean.
“Now go,” said Mark. “You and I are straight, sir. Next time we meet I hope you will wear your sword.”
Ralph hesitated, and remained standing in the same place; his eyes looking as if he wanted to speak, but no words would come; and at last he turned and took a step to go, but his numbed feet and ankles gave way beneath him, and he tottered, and would have fallen, had not Mark involuntarily sprung forward and caught him in his arms.
Ralph laughed painfully.
“Let me sit down on the enemy’s ground for a few minutes,” he said. “Your men have left me no use in my limbs.”
Mark gently let him down; and, faint with pain, the cold sweat breaking out in great drops all over his brow, Ralph said feebly, smiling the while:
“Not straight yet, Master Eden. I am in your debt now.”
Then a deathly feeling of sickness came over him; trees, rocks, and sunny sky were dim, and glided before his eyes till all was darkness, for how long he could not tell.
When he opened his eyes again the sickly feeling still troubled him, but he could not understand why. It was like awakening from some troubled dream, and full consciousness came back slowly. Then, by degrees, he grasped the fact that his head was resting on a tuft of heath, and bracken fronds shaded him from the sun. His wrists throbbed with sharp-shooting pains, which ran right up beyond his elbows. There were pains, too, about his knees and ankles, and there was something else which he could not make out, till he looked towards his feet, to see that some one was seated a little below him on the sharp slope, with back half-turned to him, and his bare legs across his lap, chafing the ankles gently, first one and then the other, over and over again.
Ralph was quite conscious now, but he did not speak. He lay back there, making no movement, no sign; but a curiously dark look came into his eyes, and his lips quivered a little, grew firm again, and were softened by a smile, while a strange glowing sensation set in about his heart.
Five minutes must have elapsed before Mark Eden turned his head, started as he saw that Ralph’s eyes were watching him, and his quiet intent gaze gave place to a frown; his face became scarlet, and he hastily placed his patient’s legs upon the ground.
“How long have you been watching me?” he said hotly.
“Only a minute or so. Did I faint?”
“I suppose so,” said Mark roughly. “Just like a great girl.”
“Yes: very weak of me,” said Ralph quietly.
“Yes, very,” said Mark. “The brutes tied you too tightly. Try if you can walk now. Get down by the river, and bathe them a bit.”
He stood up and thrust his hands behind him, looking at his young enemy scornfully; but the scarlet flush was in his face still, and would make him look as if he were ashamed of what he had been caught doing.
Ralph sat up, and struggled painfully to his feet, turning hot and faint again; but he made a brave effort to be firm, and took a step or two and then stopped, Mark making no effort to assist him. Then stifling a cry of pain, he took another step or two and tottered, when Mark caught his arm.
“You’re shamming,” he cried angrily.
Ralph’s brow wrinkled, and he looked down at his bare legs and feet, raising one a little, painfully, to draw attention to the terribly swollen state of his ankles and knees.
“Shamming!” he said quietly. “Am I? Well, they are not.”
Ralph held out first one leg, and then the other, before seating himself again, drawing his hose from his belt, and trying to draw them on; but at the end of a minute the pain from his swollen wrists forced him to give up the task, and he slowly replaced the hose in his belt.
Twice over, unseen by Ralph, his companion made a gesture as if to advance and help him, but he mastered the inclination; and after a while, Ralph sat perfectly still, waiting for the giddy feeling from which he suffered to go off. And at last, feeling a little better, he rose to his feet, bowed distantly, and began to descend the steep slope; but in a few minutes he was clinging to a tree, helpless once more, and he started, as Mark suddenly said, roughly:
“Here; you don’t know our cliff: let me show you—”
Ralph was under the impression that he had left Mark Eden quite behind, and his surprise was the greater when he found that his enemy was offering him his arm, and ended by helping him down the remainder of the way to the river, where the injured lad gladly seated himself at the edge upon a stone, which enabled him to lave both feet at once in the clear cool current, to the great comfort and relief of his swollen ankles.
After a time he was able to use his feet, resume his hose and shoes, and rise to start back; but it was awkward to part without some word of thanks, and these were very difficult to say to one who stood by all the time, watching every action, with a mocking smile upon his lips.
But the words had to be said, and making an effort Ralph turned to speak. But before a sound had left his lips, Mark burst out with:
“Going now? Very well. Wait till we meet again. That way, sir. I dare say you know that you can cross the river there?”
Ralph bowed coldly, and took a few steps toward the shallows, before stopping short.
“I must go and thank him for what he has done,” he said to himself; and he turned to walk back, but Mark was not visible.
“Master Mark Eden,” he cried; but there was no reply, and he cried again, shouting as loud as he could, but there was still no response. And, sick at heart with pain and vexation, Ralph once more stumbled awkwardly along by the river, amongst stone, bramble, and fern, trying to make out where the deep chasm was down into which he had looked, but it was completely hidden by the trees; and, reaching the shallows, he slowly crossed to go homeward on the more open side, which was a far less difficult task, though it necessitated crossing the river again.
But as the lad disappeared among the trees, Mark Eden rose from where he had been hidden behind a pile of fallen blocks, to make his way into the chasm, and then upward to the castle on the Black Tor, frowning very fiercely, and feeling a good deal dissatisfied with himself, though brightening up a little as he began thinking of what was to happen the next time he and Ralph Darley met.
“One couldn’t do anything,” he said roughly, “till that old business had been put straight.”