Nature is always beautiful in her morning, evening, and noon-day dresses, her fits of rage, her languor of repose, her storms, her calms, her shadows, sunshine, tears, and smiles; but never perhaps are we so conscious of her charms, as when abroad before daybreak, in a mountainous country, we see her growing, line by line, out of darkness into day.
First, through the hush of night, there steals a cool, soft breath, like the sigh of some spirit of morning, longing for the dawn. Soon, swelling to a breeze, it stirs the cloud on the moor, the leaf in the copse. A bird awakes and twitters in its nest. Anon, in joyful chorus, answering notes pipe shrill and clear, through all the woodland, while a pale streak of light, low and level on the eastern ridges, peeps above the sky line. Great black masses stand out from the gloom, in deeper shadows and broader touches, soon to resolve themselves, as the eye masters their shapes, into rock and coombe, hill, valley, and hanging wood. But now the pale streak has changed to crimson, underlined with a yellow seam, the mountain puts on his crown of fire, and the highest tree-tops, in glade and valley, are tinged with flame, while, far and near, pointed peaks, rugged tors, purple heather, dusky moorland, all are tipped with gold. Then, in his blazing chariot, the lord of light comes up to run his course, and night is past and man goes forth to his labour until the evening, and the harbourer's day's work is done.
"Red Rube," if he worshipped the sun at all, worshipped him less in love than fear, dreading, above all things, that his beams should cause the dews to evaporate from the sward, and harden into an unimpressionable surface the yielding clay beneath each sheltering bank, or round each bubbling spring. Rube believed that, for beauty and majesty, no object in the world could vie with the beam, and branches, the "Brow Bay and Tray" of a warrantable deer, yet he had not been a nurse-child of Nature, in all her seasons and all her moods, without learning her lessons, and imbibing for his foster-mother an instinctive love, only the deeper that it was unconscious, unsuspected, and in spite of himself.
Is not this the secret of our attachment to field sports, and do not those which bring us face to face with Nature retain their fascination when every other pastime or excitement has palled on the satiated senses, the weary world-worn heart?
That noblest beast of chase, the wild stag, in the West of England, has a lordly habit of feasting during night, and seeking repose in the small hours towards dawn of day. Gliding, like a ghost, through cornfield and orchard, he travels many a league after sundown, feeding on the best that moorland soil and scanty harvests can afford, nibbling the half-ripened ears on one hill-farm at midnight, flinging the turnips overhead in wasteful profusion on another ten miles off, within an hour; seeking, before dawn, the shelter of some wooded coombe, in which he means to harbour, at an equal distance from both. Restless, wary, vigilant, he is always on the move, and habitually suspicious of an enemy. It is to master, by man's intellect, man's powers of observation, the superior speed, finer instinct, and craftier nature of the brute, that "Red Rube" has been "after the deer" from boyhood, acquiring in the experience of many seasons so intimate a knowledge of their haunts and habits, that, in spite of age, infirmity, and a confirmed tendency to drink, he has earned an unchallenged right to call himself the most skilful "Harbourer" in the West.
The ground must indeed be hard, and the "slot," or print of the animal's feet, many hours old to baffle Red Rube, who, stooping to the line like a blood-hound, reads off, as from a book, the size, sex, weight, and age of the passing deer, the pace at which it was travelling, its distance ahead, and the probability of its affording a run. Therefore it was his custom to be abroad long before daybreak, guiding his Exmoor pony, only less wise and wary than himself, through broken paths and winding tracks, by bog, boulder, and precipice, with an instinct, unerring as that of the wild animal he went to seek. In the first twilight of morning he would hobble the pony at the head of some remote coombe that bordered on the moor; and prowling stealthily down its windings, would begin his quest in the different haunts that he knew were frequented by deer. He seldom made a cast in vain. Ere the light was strong enough to distinguish it, he usually came upon the footprint of his game. Then he stopped, examined it carefully, pondered, and made up his mind. If the slot were three inches wide at the heel, after due allowance for nature of ground and rate of speed, it would be that of a six-year-old hart at least, carrying nine or ten branches on his two antlers, having, in forester's language, "his rights," and to be described therefore as "a warrantable deer." Such considerations would cause "Rube" to grin—he never laughed—and to take a pull at his flask.
Following up the track to some deep impervious woodland, in which it was again lost, he would make a circuit of many miles round its verge, with or without the pony, in order to make sure that his quarry had not gone on, and here an intimate acquaintance with its habits, and the passes through which it would be likely to emerge, saved him many an hour of fruitless search. Ere the sun was high he had so contracted the circle, by ascertaining where the stag was not, that he could point out the very copse, almost the very thicket, in which it lay ensconced. Again to use woodsman's language, he had fairly "harboured his deer."
Then Rube's responsibility was over, and his day's work done.
Thus, it fell out, that on a cool grey morning, late in harvest, our harbourer, stooping and prying over a level glade of turf by the water-side, in the deep shadows of Horner Wood, came to a stop; and, kneeling down, began to examine very closely a track that seemed to have crossed the stream, and broken into a gallop towards the hill. It was no cloven foot; and, consequently, neither deer nor devil, as Rube observed to himself, with a grim smile; but the hoof-mark of a horse, shod with iron, and going at speed, nor was this in any way remarkable, but that the shoes were forged by no West-country blacksmith, and Rube was far too practised a woodsman to pass such a slot without inquiry or remark.
"A horse," he muttered, "and a good one. Here's a stride of nigh six yards, and every foot down at once in a ring I could cover with my hat! And, here again, when the rider's hand turned him from that boggy bit, see how he cut the moss out of the bank, and sprang back to the turf as light as a brocket. But them shoes was never welded this side Taunton town. That's what beats me! Parson Gale? Well, the Parson it might be, only this is an up-country horse for sure. Up-country rider, too, or he would have turned into the wood 'stead of keeping the track. No. He's not heading for Exmoor, isn't this one. May be he'll double back before sunup, and I'll fresh find him here in the coombe, if I only keep quiet and lie close!"
So Rube put his ear to the ground, listened, grinned, took a suck at his flask, and coiled himself down, like some beast of prey, on the watch.
He did not wait long. His lair was hardly warm ere he started to his feet, at a crashing of branches within a hundred yards, a bounce, a splash, an oath in a man's voice, and the snorting of a horse, plunging and struggling through a bog.
In the solitudes of the West, as in the Arabian desert, every man you meet must be a friend or enemy; but in Somerset and Devon, till you have proved him the latter, you believe him to be the former. Rube ran to help, and saw the best nag he had ever set eyes on, up to its girths in a swamp, sinking deeper and deeper with every plunge.
The rider, already clear of his saddle, and imbedded over his boots in the green yielding slime, did his best to aid and encourage his horse by word and gesture, but the bog became only deeper and softer with every struggle, while to turn back seemed as difficult, and almost as hazardous as to charge through.
But that aid was near, a fossil man and horse, in perfect preservation, might have been found centuries hence in a stratum below the surface, puzzling the geologists of the future as to how they got there.
"Right hand, I tell'ee! push 'un to the right, man!" exclaimed Rube, springing eagerly from his lurking-place. "This patch o' flag be the only sound spot fur a landyard's round—Steady, lad! Let 'un catch wind theer a bit, and he'll come through."
Presence of mind, that essential quality of a horseman, was never wanting to John Garnet. Guiding Katerfelto to the little knot of rushes indicated, which, true to their nature, afforded foothold where they grew, he paused for a breathing-space, ere, patting his horse's neck with a word of endearment, he roused him to another effort, that, after a plunge or two, placed him in safety, with a bank of sound heather beneath his feet.
The grey trembled all over, his eye rolled, his nostril dilated; but, with a prolonged snort and a shake, he recovered his composure, rubbing his handsome head against his master, as though to congratulate him on their joint escape. "We'll never go there again, my boy!" said the rider, whom this treacherous surface had so deceived, adding, as though he did well to be angry, "why it looks like the best bit of gallopin' ground in the whole coombe!"
Red Rube grinned. To one born and bred on Exmoor, this was a jest that palled with no amount of repetition. These tempting islands of green sward, smooth and level as a lake, while affording, indeed, but little firmer support, seem designed by nature to lure a horseman from another country to his downfall. But was this a horseman from another country? The harbourer's keen grey eye had taken him in at a glance, just as it would have mastered the points, size, and weight of a warrantable deer in the brief second during which the creature bounded across a ride. From the lace on his hat to the spur on his soiled boot, Red Rube had reckoned up John Garnet, as it were, to the very counting of the buttons on his coat. From Katerfelto's taper muzzle, to the last hair in his tail, he had, in the same instant, so impressed the whole animal on his mind, that he could have sworn to its identity under any circumstances, at any future time. It struck him, even while man and horse were struggling in the bog, that they answered the description of that highwayman for whose capture so large a reward was offered in the hand-bills; and it was from no considerations of humanity or fair-play that the old man refrained from knocking the stranger on the head, when he had him at disadvantage, un-horsed and knee-deep in a slough.
His reasons were extremely practical. In the first place, he had no weapon with which he could hope to contend successfully against a younger and stronger man; in the second, he could not bring himself to believe that so experienced a West-country rider as Galloping Jack would have fallen into a trap like this. "A bog," as he said, "so black and ugly, that even Varmer Viall's cows, poor things, do have the sense to keep out!"
"Well, it might have been worse!" replied John Garnet, good-humouredly, while he swung himself into the saddle, and put a crown-piece in Red Rube's hand. "You halloaed in time, my friend, or I should have missed the rushes, and never got out at all. I am beholden to you, and I won't forget it. This is the best horse in England, and I wouldn't have done him a mischief for more money than you could count."
The old man's fingers closed readily on the silver. "You be making for Porlock!" said he. "You do seem strange hereabouts. My day's work is done, and I don't mind if I show you the way."
John Garnet laughed—"I know the way well enough," he answered. "But why should you have done work when most men are just going to begin?"
Red Rube's grey eye twinkled. He laid his horny hand on Katerfelto's mane and looked in the rider's face, with a cunning leer. "Every man to his trade," said he. "My business lies betwixt the dark and the daylight. Yours, may-be, takes you out of a warm bed when the moon's up. I've been backwards and forwards on the moor, fifty years or more, and no harm come of it yet. It's safer riding, may-be, than the road."
"Not with such cursed bogs as these about," replied the other, carelessly. "Bogs that would swallow a coach-and-six: only I don't suppose you ever saw a coach-and-six in this wild outlandish country!"
"You're a stranger may-be?" asked Rube, sorely perplexed, for how could this horseman so resemble Galloping Jack, yet betray such practical ignorance of the moor and its peculiarities? "A stranger from up the country, no doubt, though you do handle your horse prettily enough, and sit in your saddle like a rock. May-be you never heard of 'slotting' a stag, twenty score weight, with a back like a bullock, and all his rights fairly counted, into a lone quiet coombe, where you harboured him so close you could touch him with the top joint of a trout-rod? May-be you never saw an old black-and-tan twenty-six inch tufter, with long flapping ears and hanging jowl, as steady as a clock, and as wise as a bishop, snuffle and quest and traverse, till he owned the scent with a roar, deeper, louder, fuller of music than the organ I heard in Exeter fifty years ago, when I was a boy. May-be, I'm only wasting my breath. You up-country gentlemen know nothing of our sport on the moor."
The spark had caught. That strange enthusiasm common to all votaries of the chase brightened John Garnet's eye, while he continued the other's narrative of an imaginary stag hunt.
"Then, with a crash of broken twigs and leafy branches, up he starts from a brake of deep green hazels,—stares about him for half a minute, time enough to count his points, and look him over—turns his head from side to side, displaying his mighty neck and noble width of beam, lays his antlers back, and leaves the wood at a springing trot, too proud to hurry himself, and deliberating calmly where he shall go next. Presently we lose sight of him, to emerge a mile off on the open moor. When he treads heather he breaks into a gallop, and speeds away like an arrow from a bow. You have moved him fairly now. Take up your tufters and let us lay on the pack."
"Right you are!" exclaimed Rube, holding his breath in sheer excitement. "You've been there before, I'll wager a gallon!"
"Talk of music and the organ in Exeter Cathedral!" proceeded John Garnet, "thirty couple of such voices as these would silence a battery of cannon. They spread like a lady's fan; they swarm like a hive of bees. Soon they settle into their places and stream across the moor, like horses in stride and speed, like lions in strength and energy, and fierce desire for blood. Now's your time, old man. You sit down in your saddle and say to yourself, there is nothing on earth worth living for compared to such moments as these."
"My work is over when you come to that," said Rube, adding respectfully, "You're a true sportsman, sir. If I do know how to harbour a stag, you do know how to hunt him, I'll warrant. Yet I never saw you out with us on the moor here, as I can call to mind."
"Do you think there is no hunting but in the West?" replied John Garnet. "We have red deer in my country, and hounds that can set them up to bay. Horses, too, and men who dare ride them as straight as a bird of the air can fly. There's many a horn wound, and many a pair of spurs going from morning till night, all the season through, in the canny North."
"Like enough!" answered Rube. "But I'll always maintain that the moor is the moor. When your honour has once forded Badgeworthy water, you'll never want to follow hounds in any other country again."
"And that shall be before I am many days older," replied John Garnet, reflecting what an agreeable addition to the amusements of his retirement would be this favourite pursuit; and remembering also, no doubt, that Mistress Carew, on the wonderful white pony that fed in the orchard, was a keen votary of the chase. "Do you find a good stag, and, unless we get into a bog again, my grey horse and I will try to see him killed."
"I'll do my best," said Rube; and with a clumsy obeisance, turned back towards the moor, looking after John Garnet's figure as it disappeared amongst the giant stems of Horner Wood, with a puzzled expression on his quaint old face. This frank, well-spoken stranger was a riddle he could not read; "a slot," as he would have expressed it, that left him "at fault." The man might be a robber and an outlaw; but at any rate he rode to admiration, was cordial, open-handed, and a sportsman to the back-bone.
"And you never told me your life was in danger, never said that a careless word might ruin both of us at a blow. Dear heart, surely you might have trusted me."
It was Nelly Carew's voice, and her brow was pressed to John Garnet's shoulder, while she spoke. The red-cheeked apples hanging overhead in her grandfather's orchard had ripened less quickly under a hot harvest sun, than the love that a few short days brought to maturity in the maiden's heart. She could not believe that a month ago she had never so much as heard of the man whose presence now seemed a condition of existence, like the very air she breathed. Could she be the same Nelly Carew, whose whole being was once engrossed in grandfather's posset and the incubations of the speckled hen. Or was it all a dream. If a dream, she only prayed she might never wake again.
"Why should I have told you?" he asked. "It could but make you anxious and unhappy, dearest; we have surely enough of difficulty and vexation as it is. Besides," he added, in a higher tone, "how was I to know, Nelly, that you liked me well enough to care?"
There came a very kind look in the blue eyes—"Didn't you guess?" she whispered, softly. "Didn't you think it very strange of me, that day, when I gave you the posy out of the hedge?"
There is a pleasant fiction amongst lovers, that the tender passages to which they constantly refer, must have taken place in the remote past. Nelly spoke of that day as if the time since elapsed was to be counted by years, instead of hours.
"I thought you the dearest, and the best, and the loveliest girl on earth!" was the appropriate reply; "and now I could almost find it in my heart to wish we had never met. For your sake, Nelly, not for mine—not for mine."
They were the old conventional words which have probably been the prelude to every rupture of attachments since men grew weary and women false; yet it was impossible to look in John Garnet's face, or listen to the tone of his voice, and doubt that this was the outcry of an unselfish heart, so loving, that it longed for the happiness of another, rather than its own.
Nelly's eyes filled with tears. "I care for you," she said—"I care for you; that's enough! If you were to go to prison, I should go with you. If you were to die, dear heart, I should die too."
The girl spoke truth. Who shall account for these sudden overmastering passions, that take possession of humanity to defy all considerations of self-esteem, self-preservation, probability, fitness, and, especially, common sense? A man passes a shape in the street, catches the glance of an eye at a window, the turn of an ear in a playhouse, and straightway, as in the taking of an epidemic, his whole system becomes impregnated with a strange and subtle poison, for which there is no antidote, and but one remedy. The disease must run its course. In a few days the fever is at its height, the delirium paramount, liver deranged, appetite impaired, brain seriously affected, and the patient, to all intents and purposes, raving mad. He is haunted by delusions; an inevitable figure is always dancing before his eyes; he forgets his business and friends, his nearest and dearest; neglects his mother, sisters, aunts, cousins, and in some aggravated cases, even his wife. His sleep is broken, his eye wild, his speech incoherent. His fellows shun him like a leper, and he rejoices in this enforced isolation. He meets with no encouragement and little sympathy. Fresh constitutions, as yet unimpaired, and old battered patients who have recovered from the disease, shrug their shoulders and say, "Poor devil! he's in love;" but these observers entertain for him less of pity than contempt. The calamity is accepted as a dispensation, and nobody thinks it worth while to offer a syllable of comfort or advice, because experience has shown that the illness must at last be cured by indulgence, or die a lingering death in disappointment.
A woman, too, is liable to the same disorder, contracted even more unreasonably, and with less apparent cause. Her symptoms, if not so obtrusive, or troublesome to others, are none the less dangerous to herself. In some cases, happily but rare, they prove incurable. It is of men that the poet says: "They have died and worms have eaten them, but not for love."
Nelly Carew, whose life had hitherto flowed on in a calm unruffled stream, little thought the gentle, scarce perceptible pleasure she experienced in a stranger's society, on the memorable evening when she addressed him for the first time, to thank him for his courtesy, while he helped her grandfather home, must soon grow into a hunger of the heart, that nothing but absolute reciprocity could appease. The second time she saw him, she feared the third time, she admitted the fourth, she gloried in her enslavement. They had known each other barely a week, when Nelly discovered and confessed that henceforth, if life was to be passed apart from John Garnet, she would rather elect to die. He, too, surrendered at discretion, or rather without discretion, so soon as the blue eyes opened fire. Wilfully blind to his ruined prospects and his false position, he abandoned himself to the happiness of the hour, forgetting the past, ignoring the future—Waif, Katerfelto, Lord Bellinger, robbery, high treason, and Tyburn-hill, while he held Nelly Carew's hand, and looked lovingly in her delicate face under the apple-trees by Porlock Bay.
"I need not go to prison, and I need not die," he answered, lightly. "This is a secure hiding-place enough. I should like to stay here for the rest of my life."
"It must be very dull!" observed Nelly, plaiting the hem of her apron. "I wonder how long it would take for you to weary of us all?"
There could be but one answer to such an accusation, and he was ready with it before she could explain.
"Weary!" he repeated, "weary of Porlock! weary of you, Nelly, from whom I never mean to part! How can you say such things. You know you did not mean it!" And again Nelly's disclaimer was stifled on her lips.
"Besides," he added, gaily, "What can a man want to make him happy more than I have here? The sweetest girl in the world to walk with, and the best horse in England to ride. I gave him a ten-mile stretch on the moor this morning, while you were fast asleep and dreaming. Were you dreaming, Nelly?"
"Never mind my dreams," she answered, blushing. "If I did dream of somebody, I'm not going to say so. Tell me about your ride."
"I met a strange old man," he continued, "so weird-looking, that in the North we should have thought him something uncanny, a Brownie, at least, or a wandering spirit of the moor. Not that he was a jack-o'-lanthorn nor will-o'-the-wisp, for he showed me the way out, instead of luring me into a bog, or I should have been there now."
"You must never try to cross our moors without me," said Nelly, gravely, "or somebody who knows them well, to take care of you."
"Will you take care of me?" and "never mind, that is not the question now," were two necessary interpolations before John Garnet could proceed.
"The man knew his ground, every inch of it," he continued, "and offered to put me in the right way for home. His pony, he said, was hobbled at the head of the coombe, but he seemed to think very little of walking ten miles out of his road, and he looked between seventy and eighty."
"It must have been Red Rube!" exclaimed Nelly, joyfully. "Did he say there were deer in Horner Woods? Oh! how I long for a gallop over the moor after a stag, and—with you!"
John Garnet pondered. There would be little risk, he thought, in joining these West-country gentlemen in the hunting-field. Most of them were of his own way of thinking in politics, and for many, his ready audacity had preserved, at least temporarily, both life and lands. Even if recognised, it was unlikely he would be denounced; and then, the temptation! To ride Katerfelto far ahead of meaner steeds from ridge to ridge and coombe to coombe, sweeping over mountain and moor as though on the wings of an eagle, to hover at last alone in his glory above the dying deer, while a burst of music from the good hounds pealing louder than its roar, announced in a crash of triumph that here, under the deafening waterfall, they had set him up to bay!
Yes, he would have a ride, he resolved, in pursuit of the red deer, at any risk and at any cost!
"Who talked about dreaming?" she said, "and who is dreaming now? Where have your thoughts flown to all in a minute? They are miles and miles from Porlock. I can see it in your face."
She had already arrived at the stage of jealousy—jealousy, that was fain to be mistress of his thoughts, no less than of his words, deeds, looks, and actions. Truly, for Nelly, the pleasantest part of the whole delusion was even now at an end. To be on the brink is delightful, but to fall in love is more than uncomfortable; it is a process akin to pain. The fire looks bright and cheerful enough, but wisdom warms its hands thereat, while folly burns its fingers to the bone.
"I was thinking how comely you must look on the white pony with your hair blown about by the Exmoor breezes," said he; and Nelly seemed so pleased with his answer, that the rest of their conversation was carried on in whispers, too low to be overheard even by the "little bird on the green tree," but of which the purport may be gathered from a final sentence delivered by John Garnet in a louder tone, as of a man who resolves to carry his point in defiance of all obstacles.
"Then I may come up and speak to your grandfather this afternoon?"
She acquiesced with a timid little nod and a bright blush, that she stooped her head to hide, retiring with swift and noiseless steps towards her home.
But whatever passages of folly between these young people may have escaped notice from the "little bird on the green tree," whose own love-songs must seem to it so much more rational than "what he is saying, what answereth she," there crouched behind the hedge of the orchard one whose dark eye and tawny ear missed not the lowest whisper, the lightest gesture—whose tameless heart quivered and throbbed with every syllable, every caress, as at the stroke of a knife. If women are all jealous, even in the silks and satins and conventional fetters of civilized life, what must be the jealousy of a savage nature unreclaimed by education, untamed by principle, untaught by the selfishness that is so essential a constituent of respectability and good sense? It is possessed by a devil, who tears and rends it, refusing to be cast out.
Waif, or Thyra, as she was called by her own people, had journeyed with them into the West-country nothing loth, for she knew they were following in the track of the man she loved. Restored to her tribe after an absence of many years, her familiarity with the habits of the Gorgios rendered her an exceedingly valuable acquisition. She had the knack of dukkering, or telling fortunes, with a tact that brought in handfuls of silver, and many a "balanser" in red gold; therefore she came and went unquestioned in the tents; could be absent at all hours, and for as long as she pleased. Nor, so soon as she found herself within reach of John Garnet's retreat, was she slow to take advantage of her liberty.
A dozen miles afoot, across the moorland heather and along the sweet-scented Somersetshire lanes, was an easy journey to Waif's supple frame and light untiring tread. The honest carriers, leading their string of pack-horses, looked after her in open-mouthed admiration, with blessings, homely but sincere, on her strange swarthy beauty, so well set off by the short scarlet cloak and the gold in her raven hair. A house-wife possessing the old faith would cross herself perhaps, or her gossip, a Primitive Methodist, would mutter a charm against witchcraft as the dark girl passed; but the country-folk generally, though regarding her people with little favour, were not proof against Waif's flashing eyes and flattering tongue, while she returned their "good-morrow" and promised them good luck. One stout farmer, riding a half-broken colt, insisted on stopping to have his fortune told, crossing his broad palm with a silver shilling, and demanding in return a shilling's worth of her craft. "Three groats, uncle," said Waif, looking up in his jolly face with a roguish leer, while the colt fidgetted, and the rider, half pleased, half ashamed, hid his confusion in a "Woa! drat ye, stan' still!" and a sheepish laugh.
"Three is a lucky number, good gentleman.
"'Three silver groats,
Three women's lives,
Three cows, three calves,
Three scolding wives.
The first to lie at your side,
The second to lie at your feet,
The third a widow, a witch, and a bride,
To sew your winding-sheet.'"
The man, who had been twice married, and was not indisposed for another venture, rode on in no slight perplexity, pondering this mysterious doggrel, and more convinced than ever that the gipsy-folk, as he called them, possessed some dark and dreadful knowledge, unlimited in scope and embracing the future as the past.
With a beating heart, that yet danced in her bosom under a sense of her own happiness, Waif drew near the village of Porlock. She had decided to exercise the utmost caution in approaching John Garnet's refuge, lest her presence should in any way compromise his safety, or afford a clue to his hiding-place. For one of her race, this was no difficult task. Her gipsy experiences had taught her long ago to take advantage of every irregularity of surface, even in so open a plain as Marlborough Downs; and in such a country as West Somerset, with its narrow lanes, high tangled hedges, scattered brakes, impervious copses, valleys, coombes, and forests, rugged mountains, and broken moor, Waif could glide from point to point as secretly and almost as swiftly as the very wild deer, to which she bore some vague and fanciful resemblance. Since she told the farmer his fortune three leagues off, no mortal eye had rested on her form till she caught sight of the man she loved, within three hundred feet.
Why did her colour fade, her breath come quick, her blood run icy cold? There was a white dress by John Garnet's side, and that unaccountable intuition, swift and subtle as the electric spark—that instinct of the heart, which never hesitates and is never mistaken, told her the truth. This was the meeting for which she had so longed, to compass which she had cajoled Fin Cooper, deceived her people, and travelled afoot across the heather all these weary miles! Waif trembled and her knees shook; for the first time in her life she turned sick and faint.
That cruel pain of hers though was not of the kind to gain relief from insensibility. On the contrary, all her faculties seemed preternaturally sharpened, while she writhed her slim body like a snake through tufted grass and broad dock leaves, and all the luxuriant vegetation of the adjoining meadow, to a hedge that fenced the orchard, where, parting the tangled branches in her noiseless hands, she peered through, with the eager, hopeless gaze of an outcast spirit looking on the paradise it has lost. Not a smile, not a glance, not an unwise gesture of that fond, foolish pair escaped the watcher. When John Garnet stooped to kiss Nelly's brow, it seemed as if molten lead had dropped on her own and seared it to the brain. Then it was that the white teeth clenched to keep back a little piteous cry, and the nimble fingers stole to her knife, as though she must needs bury it in his breast, whom she loved, or hers, the rival's, whom she hated, or, better still, deep and quivering to the very haft, in her own!
But strong as is the passion of jealousy, it is not, especially in the female breast, without an element of curiosity that is stronger still.
To scream, to stab, to make any overt disturbance, would be to declare her presence and debar her from hearing more. Waif bit her lip till the blood came, and nerved herself to listen. Thus, as the lovers paced to and fro, taking short turns, after the manner of their kind, and stopping altogether in often-repeated pauses, for the interchange of superfluous endearments, she made herself mistress of their secret and overheard all their conversation. She learned, not without a bitter pang, how short was John Garnet's sojourn in this fatal vicinity, where she had been so soon and so easily forgotten. She learned the penalty that would be exacted for his late exploit, in which she had herself taken part, should his identity with the reputed highwayman be discovered by those who were already on his track. She learned in a brief period of eaves-dropping, that seemed an eternity of misery, more of his daring courage and good-humoured recklessness—of those very qualities she most admired and loved in him—than she ever knew before. And, lastly, she learned that the whole scaffolding on which she so unconsciously built the edifice of her future had crumbled into ruins and crushed her own heart in its collapse.
Waif had no God to whom she could pray in this agony of sorrow; but looking round in wild appeal to sea and sky and mountain as though they were sentient beings, her large dark eyes seemed to plead with Nature, the only mother she knew, and to demand, in mute upbraiding, why her punishment was greater than she could bear?
A thorough gipsy bred and born, Waif so far resembled a wild animal of the woods, that, when sore stricken, she instinctively sought her home. Scarce knowing how, she sped back to the encampment of her people, swift and straight as the red hind, that neither fails nor falters, though she carries a bullet in her breast. It was not because she expected to find comfort there, nor relief, nor even a moment's respite from pain, but she felt constrained to keep moving, always moving, at the utmost speed she could command, though as she flitted lightly from moor to moor, it seemed to her benumbed and dizzy brain that she herself stood still, while the acres of heather she traversed passed like running water beneath her feet.
Yet the sun was already down when she turned the head of a deep and lonely coombe, which her tribe had chosen for their resting-place, and caught sight of the little points of fire that dotted its heathery ridge, toned down to dusky purple under the crimson flushes of the evening sky. Kettles were already simmering before the brown, weather-worn tents, and that happy hour of food and rest had arrived which seems to recompense the gipsy for all the hardships of his wandering lot, to make amends for toil and risk, rough usage, and coarse fare, the frown of justice, the ban of society, an outlaw's life, and, too often, a felon's grave.
To-night, however, more than its usual tendency to revelry and rejoicing seemed to pervade the camp. In the first place, this particular tribe were honoured by the presence of their chief, a crafty old gentleman, who chose to call himself "Duke Michael of Egypt," doubtless in memory of that celebrated vagabond, who, early in the fifteenth century, led his ragged troop through Saxony and Switzerland, leaving behind him, if we may believe the old chroniclers, a better character than might have been expected for good behaviour and honesty—nay, paying in hard money for such articles as he required from the peasantry in the countries through which he passed; an example, it is hardly necessary to observe, scrupulously avoided by the Duke Michael with whom we have to do. This worthy made it a rule, no doubt, to deny himself nothing he wanted that might be had for the taking; and few matters, he often boasted, were too hot or too heavy for his conveyance, but he could not have been induced to give anything in exchange.
It was as natural for his Grace to steal as to shape a tent-peg, mend a kettle, or tell a lie. Yet in bearing and costume he varied probably but little from his predecessor of the Middle Ages, as that nobleman's likeness has been handed down in the rude woodcuts of the period. There was the battered hat with a coarse and dirty kerchief rolled round its brim, the pair of patched, ill-mended shoes, slashed at the toes and slippered at the heel, of leggings worn and stained with mud from every soil, the gaudy blanket rent and frayed to hide the greasy coat and fouler skin beneath, with many another token of dirt, vermin, and dishonesty to pervade the man from head to foot, and proclaim him an outcast from his kind. The lapse of more than three centuries had done but little to civilize or improve a Duke Michael of Egypt.
Yet the battered hat perched on those abundant locks, now white as snow, once black as the raven's wing, covered a brain that might have served a statesman, for its keen perception, cool audacity, quiet cunning—above all, for its administrative powers. That is no mean intellect which can reign with dignity and rule with force, though the palace be but a dingy tent, the subjects a gipsy tribe. Duke Michael possessed the secret of government; and to-night, being more drunk than usual, was better than ever assured of his authority and the loyalty of his people. So loud were the bursts of hilarity in and about the great man's tent, that Waif paused to listen on a ridge of moor overlooking the camp, and forgot in her surprise, for perhaps the space of a second, the pain gnawing at her heart. It was recalled ere she could be conscious of relief.
Fin Cooper's tall form, growing on her, as it were, in the twilight, was already at her side, his voice whispering in her ear—"I've watched for you, Thyra," said he, "since long before noon. The camp seems lonely and empty when you leave it for a day; and I often wonder now how we could do without you so many years! But what has been our sister's good luck? Has she returned with pockets full of gold? Has she deceived and fleeced the Gorgio, and stolen the very heart out of his breast?"
Waif smiled a bitter smile. "The Gorgio turns the tables sometimes, Fin," she answered. "When you deal out the cards to play, how can you tell who is to rise up winner?"
He looked sharply in her face. "You're tired," said he; "you that never used to be tired, no more than the wild deer in the forest, the wild bird in the air. Thyra! Thyra!" he added, and his voice came low and husky, as if an enemy's hand gripped his throat, "there's something dark come between you and me! Something that dims the light in your eye, and takes the colour out of your face. What is it? Speak, girl, and tell the truth. There's times when I could put my knife into you, and make an end of it once for all. I'll do it some day, I know; I feel like it now!"
In her exceeding misery, but for the last sentence she might have told him her secret then and there; but to threaten Waif was to throw stones into the air that would fall back perpendicularly on a man's head. The gipsy girl recovered her strength and courage in the drawing of a breath. "That's a game for two players!" she answered fiercely. "I've worn a knife, too, Fin, as long as I can remember, and I keep it sharper than yours, I daresay. But what's the use of you and me wrangling? I'm not bound to tell you where I've been—when I go out—and when I come in. You're not my master, brother; not yet!"
She was sufficiently a woman to put just such an emphasis on the last word as changed his mood like magic. In a moment he was her slave again, ready to do her bidding, obey her lightest wish, no less eagerly than when he went bird's-nesting for her in his boyhood, long years ago.
"But you'll tell me some day," he pleaded, bending his tall form to look in the girl's face. "You'll keep nothing from Fin, when we hang the kettle at our own tent-door in the camp of the Vardo-mescros, and my brothers troop in by scores to have a look at Fin Cooper's beautiful wife; you'll tell me all your secrets then, Thyra, won't you?
"Perhaps!" answered Waif. "In the meantime, will you tell me what makes this stir and noise amongst our people? They are swarming down yonder like bees about a hive."
"Duke Michael came in at noon," answered Fin, "and the kettles have been singing in the smoke ever since. He brought the cart and the donkey and both his wives from the cudgel-players' country" (Cornwall), "and never halted but once to do a bit of tinkering on a moorland farm, till he turned the head of the coombe here in our very midst. The women were so tired, that Lura would have fallen flat to the ground if I hadn't caught her in my arms, and lifted her out of the cart. Old Maggie was little better, though she boasts that the Bosvilles of the Border want neither food nor rest if they can get enough to drink; but the Duke tossed off a coro of brandy, pitched his tent, lit his fire, swung his kettle, and went into business at once, as if he were thirty years old, instead of getting on for ninety! There's been eating and drinking in plenty ever since. Not a Romany will lie down sober to-night, Thyra, but me, and I've you to thank for it!" He spoke in the plaintive tone of one who has sustained injury from a beloved hand, but relents and forgives.
A fresh burst of laughter, with the chorus of a song, led by stentorian lungs, reached them where they stood. On Waif's strung nerves and weary frame it jarred acutely; but Fin turned his head to listen with obvious approval. "That's the Gorgio!" he exclaimed; "the mellowest voice and the best man of his weight, this side Barnstaple, be the other who he may! If we'd known more about him, we'd never played him such a trick to bring him here!"
"What Gorgio?" asked the girl, for whom there was but one in the world, her foolish heart beating fast, with a wild hope that in some impossible manner John Garnet might even now be a visitor to the gipsies' camp.
"Why, the Parson, as they call him," answered Fin; "the jolly Exmoor parson, who can tail an otter, harbour a stag, ride a colt, sing a song, wrestle a fall, aye, and empty a pitcher, with the cleverest Romany lad of us all. I wouldn't undertake him myself, Thyra, single-handed, not if he was sober. We laid a trap for him, howsoever, and into it he fell; so, here he is! Thyra, what makes you tremble? Do you know anything of this roystering parson? I've heard strange stories of his doings on the country side. Girl! you'll make me kill you now before you've done!" His jealousy needed but a breath to fan it into flame, yet was to be appeased no less quickly than aroused.
"You're a fool, Fin!" she said with a laugh, which, though forced, seemed reassuring to her lover. "It's neither you nor this parson of yours that would make me tremble. Keep your hands off and behave yourself, or I'll go home this minute! I know the man you speak of, but I never heard any good of him. How did our people bring him into the camp, and why?"
Fin's brow cleared, while he answered her question with a laugh. "The Parson," he explained, "rears the best breed of fighting-cocks in the West of England. There was one in his pen this morning, good enough to take the crow out of the gamest chiriclo that ever wore spurs. He's safe in my tent now, with his head in a stocking to keep him quiet. This day week, at Devizes, he'll be worth ten, aye, twenty guineas in red gold. But the money would never have come my way, if little Ryley and me hadn't 'ticed the Parson here!"
"How so?" asked Waif listlessly, for her thoughts were travelling far away.
"When he means winning," said Fin, "he trains the birds himself; and it's a job, as I've been told, to get him away from them for an hour. It would take a better Romany than me, Thyra, or little Ryley either, to chore so much as a clout off a clothes-line if the Parson was within a mile of the place. So how do you think we worked it? Why, we got up a wrestling-match on the cross, you know, between Humpy Hearne and black James Lee, in honour of our old man's visit, and we 'ticed the Parson into the camp to see fair. He knows the rules of the ring and keeps them all in his head as plain as print. He's the sort that would sooner ride fifty miles to a fight than five to a prayer-meeting. So he up and puts the saddle on, and down the coombe he swings at a gallop, as if he'd a spare neck in each pocket, and leaps off before old Michael, with his shovel hat in his hand. 'It's not every day,' says he, 'in our West country, that a parson comes to visit a duke. Let's have a drink,' says he, 'deep enough to do credit to both!' and with that he empties a half-pint horn of brandy, and throws it over his left shoulder for luck. There was a cheer you might have heard at Taunton. Our old Duke wasn't to be bragged at such a game as that. He answered fair and honest, gill for gill; so down they sat on a blanket by the tent-door, and they've been at it ever since. In the meantime, little Ryley he slips round over the moor and brings the chiriclo back with him, coop and all. It's a beautiful bird, Thyra. I'll show it you to-morrow as soon as it's light; but if I'd known the Parson could sing so good a song, he should never have lost a feather out of its wing, for Ryley and me!"
Waif seemed thoughtful and preoccupied. Presently she looked up and said quietly, "I must go and show myself to our old Duke, Fin, before he's too far gone to see me. Will you come down to the tents? and, Fin, don't you speak unkindly, that's a good lad, and don't you take much notice of what I say and do. I've had a long walk in the hot harvest sun, and I'm not quite myself to-day, that's the truth!"
So she put her hand in his, and threading some half-score of tents, every one of which was deserted for the great attraction of the Duke's presence, soon reached an open space, where some thirty or forty gipsies, men, women, and children, crouched round a scanty fire, laughing, drinking, smoking, and all talking at once.
It was a wild scene. Every now and then a gipsy would throw on another faggot, and the pale flickering streaks of flame brought into shifting, shadowy relief the grotesque figures of which the circle was composed. In the background stood a common tinker's cart, though it seemed wonderful that anything on wheels could have arrived in safety at this remote and solitary nook, surrounded by leagues of moor; while the donkey that drew it, calmly browsed and meditated in the enjoyment of well-earned repose. Propping his back against the shaft, and raised some inches from the ground by his own and his wives' blankets doubled beneath him, Duke Michael of Egypt sat in state, with a short black pipe in his hand and a pewter measure containing gin and cider at his knee. Even Waif, accustomed as she was to many a strange sight amongst her strange people, marvelled as she gazed.
His dress, though ragged and filthy in the extreme, was made of costly materials and the brightest colours, his coat being of fine blue cloth dotted by spade-guineas instead of buttons; his waistcoat, faded scarlet, bound with tawdry gold-lace; the very link that fastened his stained flannel shirt at the throat was a gold seven-shilling piece! It was thus that he loved to display the riches, of which he was as proud as if they were the fruits of an honest calling. At one extremity of this magnificence, stockingless feet peeped through a pair of rent and clouted shoes; while, at the other, a woollen nightcap under a battered hat, crowned the snow-white poll that contrasted ludicrously with his swarthy face, tanned nearly black, and seamed with so many wrinkles that it looked more like morocco leather than a human skin.
Yet, even now, the dark eyes beneath their shaggy brows sparkled with intelligence and fire; the deep voice, in which he passed his jest or trolled his chorus, spoke of health and strength and vital energies unimpaired by age. He had removed the pipe from his mouth, and was pledging Parson Gale for the twentieth time, when Waif stepped into the firelight, bowed her head in a graceful obeisance, and stood silent before him with her arms crossed on her breast.
The old man stared at this beautiful apparition for some seconds without a word, obviously congratulating himself, the tribe, and the Romany people in general, on the possession of so favourable a specimen of their race. Presently he chuckled, took a pull at his flagon, and spoke out:
"Aye, aye," said he, "it's you, is it, my pretty lass? No need to tell me who you are, my rinkeny tawny, my delicate brown beauty! There's not such another face as that in the tribe, nor there hasn't been since Lura there tripped over the Border out of Cumberland to be an old man's wife, who had one too many already. And that's a score of years ago, and more. Parson Gale! Parson Gale, I say, can your Reverence show us such a pair of eyes in North Devon? I dare you to do it; or such a walk, such a shape, such a foot and ankle as that. We have but one Thyra in the tribe, Parson, and there she stands. Don't be shame-faced, man! look at her well."
But for an impatient tap of the little foot, Waif might have been a statue, so immovably did she retain a posture of humility that the etiquette of Duke Michael's court prescribed on a first presentation. Even among the gipsies there rose a murmur of admiration, called forth by her unusual beauty and assured bearing, suggestive of modesty and self-respect. The Parson, a veteran toper, was still sober enough, notwithstanding his potations, to recognise the girl he had seen and insulted at Katerfelto's door. He was also wise enough to reflect that here, amongst her friends and kinsmen, any allusion to that meeting would be injudicious and unsafe. The gipsies were ready with their knives, their blood was heated with drinking, the coombe was lonely and secluded; his horse stood tethered two hundred yards off, and he was a long way from home. He glanced respectfully, almost imploringly, in Waif's face, while he replied with a discretion for which he deserved some credit:
"There's many a likely lass in North Devon, my lord duke, though I won't say they come up to the beauty and wisdom of the Egyptians, but I'm no great judge of such matters myself. They don't belong to my cloth and my calling. I know a good dog when I see him, or a game-cock; I can tell the points of a pacing nag, or the slot of a warrantable deer; but when you talk of black eyes and blue, chestnut hair and brown, I'm at fault—that's where I am. No, no; I'm a far better judge of your strong ale."
"Well said, Parson!" exclaimed the duke, "you're one of my sort, I see; and a right good fellow, too. Ah! if your Reverence and I could make the world again, wouldn't we put fewer women in it, and more drink? Go your ways, my lass," he added, nodding to Waif; "you're black enough, and comely enough, to turn an older head than mine, and I guess I'm not very far from a hundred. My service to you, Parson, we'll trouble no more about the petticoats. The night is young, and that cask not half empty yet."
But Waif, while she retired, bestowed on Abner Gale a glance of such deep meaning as to puzzle him exceedingly. While he passed the cup and the jest with his entertainers, discussed the past wrestling-bout, of which he was good enough to express approval, and even condescended to sing a song in praise of that manly exercise, his thoughts persistently reverted to the tawny delicate face with its mournful beauty, the large dark eyes that looked into his own so sad and wistful, yet with fierce impatient longing, like those of some wild animal from whom men have taken away its young.
There were few better horses in the West of England than Parson Gale's black nag Cassock, a beast on which he had performed many surprising feats of speed and endurance for trifling wagers amongst his friends. It speaks well for the favourable impression made by their clerical guest on his entertainers that the gipsies allowed him to retain possession of so valuable a steed, when nothing would have been easier than to slip its halter, and convey it secretly out of the camp while its master was engaged in his debauch. These strange people, however, respected their own peculiar principles of justice and fair-dealing, even in a life of robbery and fraud. Holding somewhat stringent notions on the laws of hospitality, they were, moreover, much fascinated by the Parson's freedom of manners and great absorbent powers. Cassock, therefore, was liberally supplied with the best forage they had to give; and when at last, in spite of the duke's protestations and the entreaties of his court, Abner Gale declared his intention of departing at once to travel home by moonlight, a score of tawny hands were ready to adjust saddle and bridle, to hold the stirrup while he mounted, and to wave a good-speed after him as he rode away.
Only Fin Cooper, a born horse-dealer and horse-stealer, regretted the scruples of his tribe. "What was the use of plying the Gorgio with ale and brandy," he murmured, as he lay down to sleep in his tattered blanket, "if he is to leave the Romanies no poorer than he came to these tents? I could have chored that gry, that good black nag, aye, stolen it twenty times over, while they emptied their cask by the fire, and sold it back again, as likely as not, to the Parson himself fresh and sober at Barnstaple Fair before harvest was done. And now I should like to know how any one of us is the better for this visit? though he sings a good song, I'll not deny, and takes his drink as free as old Michael himself." Then, hearing the game-cock he had stolen stirring in its coop, Fin thought better of his grievances and dropped asleep, soothed by the reflection that the hospitality of his people had not been without some return, nor his own ingenuity wholly thrown away.
In the meantime Parson Gale, sitting rather loose in the saddle, was rounding the head of the coombe in which he had been so hospitably treated, with a wandering eye, flushed cheek, and brain dizzy, from the strength of his potations. A harvest moon, high in heaven, flooded the moor with light, so that the good horse picked his way through the heather, avoiding the level patches of bog as easily as at noon-day. Cassock had learned from a foal to mind his own footsteps, to look out for himself in the scanty pastures he shared with the mountain sheep or wild red-deer on the hills where he was bred, and could skim the rush-grown swamps around the Black Pits of Exmoor, safe and swift as the very bittern that flitted across those lonely haunts. Going freely from his shoulders, but collected and prepared for effort behind the saddle, with head low, ears pointed, and the froth flying lightly from his bit, as he swayed at every stride to the turn of his rider's hand, he could sweep along at a gallop over ground where an unaccustomed horse would have stuck fast up to its girths before it had gone fifty yards. That sense, too, which we call instinct in the brute, because of its superiority to the power we call reason in the man, forbade him to venture on any surface wholly incapable of affording foothold; and it would have required all the persuasions of consummate horsemanship from his rider to beguile Cassock into a real, unmitigated, fathomless Devonshire bog. The horse was bred on the moor, and on the moor had never yet met his match. To-night he seemed more careful than usual, edging from side to side under his burden, as though conscious that on him, the drinker of water, must devolve the duty of balancing his master, the drinker of ale! He knew his way home, too, and could have found it like a dog; nor would he have objected to increase the pace considerably had he received the slightest indication that his lord was inclined for a gallop.
The Parson, however, had fallen into a meditative mood; such a mood as might possess a rough imaginative nature amongst the fairest scenes in England on a mellow autumn night. He paced along the sheep-track Cassock had selected at a walk, now stroking his horse's neck with maudlin kindness, now looking about him over the moonlit heather in affable approval; anon sighing deeply, and raising his eyes to heaven, with a meaningless smile.
Yet was his brain busy too, busy with stirring memories, morbid fancies, wild speculations—all the grotesque ideas that crowd into a man's mind when imagination is stimulated and judgment warped by the influence of strong drink. He seemed lifted, as it were, out of himself, and incorporated with that external nature of which he was perhaps a more faithful worshipper than he knew. He felt as if he could ride the moonbeam with the fairies, join in its moan with the spirit of the waterfall, shout aloud with the spirit of the air, or chase over its mountain ridges the spirit of the moor. Speaking words of encouragement to Cassock, he started at the sound of his own voice. The brushing of his horse's legs, knee-deep in heather, made his blood run cold, for it seemed to him that some phantom rider was at his heels. What if the devil in person, on a coal-black steed, were to come alongside and accost him, daring him to some break-neck gallop over rocks and precipices, that his own dead body and his horse's might be found, crushed and mangled in their fall, when the sun rose? He had heard of such things, and said to himself he would scorn to refuse the challenge, and would defy the devil then and there, less in the confidence of a good conscience than in the evil courage of despair. He wished, though, that he had filled his flask down yonder before he left the gipsy-tents. A nip of brandy would do him a world of good just now, and keep out the night air. Then, with the inconsistency of his condition, he threw open his waistcoat and loosened the kerchief round his throat.
Presently the man within the man, the working partner in the firm, who never sleeps, never gets drunk, never loses his consciousness nor his identity, even when contusions or alcohol have numbed to insensibility his associate's weaker brain; the man who reproves us when we are wicked, who laughs at us when we are fools; to whom we make apologies for weakness, and excuses for crime, began to separate himself, as it were, from the corporeal Parson Gale, and take him to task with half-indulgent cynicism, for the shortcomings of which both inner and outer man were fully conscious. Said the one to the other, "See now, I knew how it would be! You are at your old tricks again, Abner Gale, though you promised me yourself, only last week after Mounsey Revel, it should be the last time till Martinmas! You're not ashamed of it—not a bit! You're a good fellow, you say, and cannot refuse a cup when it's offered in good fellowship. All very well, my friend, but respice finem! There's Latin for you. Ah! you knew a bit of Latin once; I don't think it ever did you much good; but keep your eye forward! You can do that still when you ride to hounds across the moor. Look to the result. Already your hand has begun to shake; you can scarce button the knees of your breeches till you've had your morning draught, and you couldn't tie a fly to save your life. Already you know what it is to hear a buzzing in your ears, and feel a shooting pain in your joints. The last time you wrestled a fall with little Tremaine, he threw you easily with a cross-buttock, and he is but a ten-stone man. It won't do, Abner Gale—it can't go on! You'll be losing your nerve next, and what is to become of you then? Cassock, my boy, you'll hardly know your master when he's afraid to ride! but it hasn't come to that yet. Take a pull, my lad, before it's too late. You've seen many a man as sober as a judge, who is as happy as a king! It wouldn't be such a bad life, after all, to shoot, and hunt, and fish, where you know every hazel in the copse, every tuft on the heather, every pebble in the stream; to look after your parish, speak a kind word to your poor, and come back at night, hungry and happy, to meet a loving welcome in your own home. Pull yourself together, Abner Gale; for all your reddened face and grizzled hair, there's many an older man than you goes wooing still. What more should a girl want than bone and muscle, a good heart, and an easy temper,—your temper is easy enough when you're not put out,—a joint at the kitchen fire, and a slate roof over her head? So why should the likeliest lass in all the West Country say nay? Abner Gale! Abner Gale! there was one chance left, and may-be you lost it to-day, getting drunk with a parcel of tinkers and gipsies on the open moor."
Then the outer man reined in his horse; and while Cassock cropped the luxuriant heather under his nose, looked long and wistfully over a waste of uplands to where the moonlight broke in glints of gold upon the Severn Sea. Below him yonder lay the sweep of Porlock Bay, and not a stone's-throw from its edge, lulled by the lap and ripple of the tide, slept the only woman on earth he wished to call his wife.
But was it too late? Each by each, he recapitulated, with a certain grim humour (for the night-air had not yet thoroughly sobered him), the advances he had hazarded, the rebuffs he had received. Were these not sufficiently explicit? Were those but the resources of maidenly reserve and shame?—Or was there somebody she liked better?
Bright and clear as the colouring of a picture came back the scene he had witnessed when he found the stranger, sitting on the rocks by her side. She had been more silent than common, he remembered, after the new visitor took his leave; but he never thought her so beautiful, never noted so deep a lustre in her eye, so rich a colour in her cheek. Was it possible? Such things had happened before. Could it be that she already loved this come-by-chance, and that he, Parson Gale, must be worsted in the one object of his life; must run second in the race he would barter his very soul to win?