He had used incredible effort to obtain suitable rhymes. In one verse he had—

Another ran—

Another, in doubtful grammar, ran—

“Ah,” said my father, “all Henry Frost thinks of in his innermost mind is that I should have a most expansive pocket, and that he may be able to get drunk on what he draws from it in reward for his poem.”

When Anne died, then a difficulty arose: under what name was she to be entered in the register? The parson insisted that he could not and he would not enter her as Anne Frost, for that was not her legal name. Then Henry was angry, and carried her off to be buried in another parish, where the parson was unacquainted with the circumstances. I must say that Anne proved an excellent “wife.” She was thrifty, clean, and managed a rough-tempered and rough-tongued man with great tact, and was generally respected. She died in or about 1843.

Much later than that there lived a publican some miles off, whom I knew very well; indeed he was the namesake of and first cousin to a carpenter in my constant employ. He bought his wife for a stone two-gallon jar of Plymouth gin, if I was informed aright. She had belonged to a stonecutter, but as he was dissatisfied with her, he put up a written notice in several public places to this effect—

In this case also I do not give the names, as the woman is, I believe, still alive. I believe—as I was told—that the foreman of the works remonstrated, and insisted that such a sale would be illegal. He was not, however, clear as to the points of law, and he asserted that it would be illegal unless the husband held an auctioneer’s license, and if money passed. This was rather a damper. However, the husband was very desirous to be freed from his wife, and he held the sale as he had advertised, making the woman stand on a table, and he armed himself with a little hammer. The biddings were to be in kind and not in money. One man offered a coat, but as he was a small man and the seller was stout, when he found that the coat would not fit him he refused it. Another offered a “phisgie,” i.e. a pick, but this also was refused, as the husband possessed a “phisgie” of his own. Finally the landlord offered a two-gallon jar of gin, and down fell the hammer with “gone.”

I knew the woman; she was not bad looking. The new husband drank, and treated her very roughly, and on one occasion when I was lunching at the inn she had a black eye. I asked her how she had hurt herself. She replied that she had knocked her face against the door, but I was told that this was a result of a domestic brawl. Now, the remarkable feature in these cases is that it is impossible to drive the idea out of the heads of those who thus deal in wives that such a transaction is not sanctioned by law and religion. In a parish register in my neighbourhood is the following entry—

In this instance there is no evidence of a sale, but we may be sure that money did pass and that the contractor of the new marriage believed it was a right and proper union, although perhaps irregular; and the first wife unquestionably believed that she was acting in observance of a legal right in transferring her husband to her sister. There are instances in which country people have gone before a local solicitor and have had a contract of sale drawn up for the disposal of their wives. The Birmingham police court in 1853 had to adjudicate on such a case, and the astounding thing in this instance was that a lawyer could be found to draw up the contract. It is no wonder that the magistrates administered a very severe reprimand. But there was a far earlier case than this—that of Sir William de Paganel. The lady stoutly and indignantly resisted the transfer, and appealed against the contract to the law, which declared the sale to be null and void.

In 1815 a man held a regular auction in the market-place at Pontefract, offering his wife at a minimum bidding of one shilling, but he managed to excite a competition, and she was finally knocked down for eleven shillings.

In 1820 a man named Brouchet led his wife, a decent, pleasant-looking woman, but with a tongue in her mouth, into the cattle-market at Canterbury from the neighbouring village of Broughton. He required a salesman to dispose of her, but the salesman replied that his dealings were with cattle only, and not with women. Brouchet, not to be beaten, thereupon hired a cattle-pen, paying sixpence for the hire, and led his wife into it by the halter that was round her neck. She did not fetch a high figure, being disposed of to a young man of Canterbury for five shillings.

In 1832, on 7th April, a farmer named Joseph Thomson came into Carlisle with his wife, to whom he had been married three years before; he sent the bellman round the town to announce a sale, and this attracted a great crowd. At noon the sale took place. Thomson placed his wife on a chair, with a rope of straw round her neck. He then said—according to the report in the “Annual Register,”—“Gentlemen, I have to offer to your notice, my wife, Mary Anne Thomson, otherwise Williams, whom I mean to sell to the highest and fairest bidder. Gentlemen, it is her wish as well as mine to part for ever. She has been to me only a born serpent. I took her for my comfort, and the good of my home; but she became my tormentor, a domestic curse. Gentlemen, I speak the truth from my heart when I say—may God deliver us from troublesome wives and frolicsome women! Avoid them as you would a mad dog, or a roaring lion, a loaded pistol, cholera morbus, Mount Etna, or any other pestilential thing in nature. Now I have shown you the dark side of my wife, and told you her faults and failings, I will introduce the bright and sunny side of her, and explain her qualifications and goodness. She can read novels and milk cows; she can laugh and weep with the same ease that you could take a glass of ale when thirsty. Indeed, gentlemen, she reminds me of what the poet says of women in general—

She can make butter and scold the maid; she can sing Moore’s melodies, and plait her frills and caps; she cannot make rum, gin, or whisky, but she is a good judge of the quality from long experience in tasting them. I therefore offer her with all her perfections and imperfections for the sum of fifty shillings.”

That this sermon was spoken by Thomson is most improbable—it is doubtless put into his mouth by the editor of the “Annual Register”; it was not to his interest to depreciate the article he desired to sell. After about an hour the woman was knocked down to one Henry Mears, for twenty shillings and a Newfoundland dog. They then parted company in perfect good-humour, each satisfied with his bargain; Mears and the woman went one way, and Thomson and the dog another.

In 1835 a man led his wife by a halter, in precisely the same way, into the market at Birmingham, and sold her for fifteen pounds. She at once went home with the purchaser. She survived both buyer and seller, and then married again. Some property came to her in the course of years from her first husband; for notwithstanding claims put forth by his relatives she was able to maintain in a court of law that the sale did not and could not vitiate her rights as his widow.

Much astonishment was caused in 1837 in the West Riding of Yorkshire by a man being committed to prison for a month with hard labour for selling or attempting to sell his wife by auction in the manner already described. It was generally and firmly believed that he was acting within his rights.

In 1858, in a tavern at Little Horton, near Bradford, a man named Hartley Thomson put up his wife, who is described by the local journals as a pretty young woman, for sale by auction, and he had the sale previously announced by sending round the bellman. He led her into the market with a ribbon round her neck, which exhibits an advance in refinement over the straw halter; and again in 1859, a man at Dudley disposed of his wife in a somewhat similar manner for sixpence. A feature in all these instances is the docility with which the wife submits to be haltered and sold. She would seem to have been equally imbued with the idea that there was nothing to be ashamed of in the transaction, and that it was perfectly legal.

If we look to see whence originated the idea, we shall probably find it in the conception of marriage as a purchase. Among savage races, the candidate for marriage is expected to pay the father for his daughter. A marriageable girl is worth so many cows or so many reindeer. The man pays over a sum of money or its equivalent to the father, and in exchange receives the girl. If he desires to be separated from her he has no idea of giving her away, but receives what is calculated to be her market value from the man who is disposed to relieve him of her. In all dealings for cattle, or horses, or sheep, a handsel is paid, half-a-crown to clinch the bargain, and the transfer of coin constitutes a legal transfer of authority and property over the animal. This is applied to a woman, and when a coin, even a sixpence, is paid over and received, the receiver regards this as releasing him from all further possession of the wife, who at once passes under the hand of the purchaser. There is probably no trace in our laws of women having been thus regarded as negotiable properties, but it is unquestionable that at an early period, before Christianity invaded the island, such a view was held, and if here and there the rustic mind is unable to rise to a higher view of the marriage state, it shows how extremely slow it is for opinions to alter when education has been neglected.

MILK-MAIDS

MILK-MAIDS

It is a sad subject for reflection that, among the extinct animals, we should have to reckon the milk-maids of Old England—the theme of so much poetry, the subject of such charming pictures.

The dodo exists now solely in a few specimens preserved in glass cases in two or at the outside three museums. The mammoth is discovered rarely embedded in blocks of ice under the Arctic Circle. The gigantic moa of New Zealand is recovered only from its scattered bones. The Great Auk was last seen off the coast of Waterford in 1834. Her egg sells for about a hundred pounds. A species of the English milk-maid is said to exist on the High Alps, and is called the Sennerin, but is so unlike the milk-maid of English picture and story, that naturalists are disposed to dispute it as a species, and regard it as belonging to a different genus.

Again, those temperate and frugal beings who frequent the A.B.C. establishments in London, and get a drink of milk for a penny and sandwiches for twopence, will see there very interesting and even charming specimens of the modern milk-maid, but in build, in plumage, and in habit, totally unlike the milk-maid we knew from nursery rhyme, and from illustrations. The old milk-maid—save the mark! the milk-maid was never old, her youth was perennial—I mean the milk-maid who lived and flourished in Britain till about 1834, when she disappeared along with the alca impennis—was fresh faced, rosy cheeked, strongly built, wore light cotton gowns and white aprons; carried her arms bare, sang cheerily as she went about her work, and had a tendency to become “bouncing.” Her habitat was a country farm, and she was to be found frequenting the fields, the cowshed, and the dairy.

The specimens exhibited by the Aerated Bread Company, on the other hand, are pale complexioned, somewhat lily faced, of a willowy build, always with plumage that is black, except for a white apron, the arms are clothed in black save for neat white cuffs about the wrists; they move silently, and are never seen in country pastures, only in A.B.C. refreshment places in London, and such large towns as can maintain these useful establishments.

But the difference extends further. The milk-maid of olden time was not exactly a wading, web-footed being, but she had large feet and shoes of the most solid, broad description, very necessary, as she was constrained to make her way through farm-yards over ankles in mud, or to go through the task of milking cows in byres or linneys that were—well, the reverse of clean. As to the modern milk-maid, it suffices to look at her feet—like those described by Sir John Suckling,

to be quite satisfied that she is not descended from, nor is a true variant of the milk-maid of olden time. The same Sir John Suckling admirably portrays the latter—

It is obvious this does not describe the A.B.C. milk-lass. The latter is a banana, the former an apple.

No maids now go a-milking, that is why there are no true milk-maids. The old order changeth. Nowadays in the country it is the men who milk. Women cannot be found to do it. They object to the trudge through the dirt, and the planting of the three-legged peggy-stool, and their feet in the oozy substance that forms the cushion enveloping the floor of the cow stall. I do not blame them. It is a dirty place.

But the milking of the cows in the byre was itself a novelty. Formerly the operation took place in the meadows, where it was clean enough, and the feet were in the sweet grass. The milk-girl filled her pails, adjusted a hoop that they might not swing against and spill over her cotton dress, and carried the pails to the dairy, singing as she went. But the weather is not always bright, and it was not only unpleasant, but unsafe, to milk out of doors in the rain; so the cattle were driven under cover, and there the dirt speedily grew to be deep, and presently the girls found it intolerable to have to wade in mire, so the final stage was that they abandoned the milking to the men.

Do the cows like it as well? I trow not. Surely the woman’s hand is best for the process. A woman instinctively knows how to milk. All men cannot acquire the art, and cows are well aware as to which are skilful milkers and which are not. A man may be a good milker, a woman always is one. That is the difference. What a charming sketch that is of Caldecott’s of the “maid who milked the cow with the crumpled horn,” in his illustrated story of the House that Jack Built! When our children nowadays recite that nursery doggerel, the words concerning that maid who milked the cow are not understood by them. They are an anachronism; for as soon as they know anything they know that no maiden all forlorn or all smiles, no maiden whatever, does now milk cows. And to conceive the idea of a “man all tattered and torn” approach and kiss such a milk-maid as occupies a position in an Aerated Bread Company’s establishment, is to demand of their young intelligences something too preposterous.

Do you remember old Izaak Walton’s account of the milk-maid with her merry songs? How he asked her to sing to him. “What song was it?” she inquired. “I pray—was it ‘Come, shepherds, deck your heads’; or ‘As at noon Dulcina rested’; or ‘Philida flouts me’; or ‘Chevy Chace’; or ‘Johnny Armstrong’; or ‘Troy Town’?” The memories of the ancient milk-maids were storehouses of delightful old English ballads; now the only persons who know any are ancient silver-headed topers in taverns.

It was formerly the custom for the bonny milk-maids to dance before the houses of their customers in the month of May, to obtain a small gratuity; and there is a dear old English tune, “The merry milk-maids in green,” that was probably the one to which they were wont to dance. To be a milk-maid and to be merry were synonymous terms in the olden time.

Pepys, in his diary, 13th October 1662, says, “With my father took a melancholy walk to Portholme, seeing the country-maids milking their cows there, they being there now at grass; and to see with what mirth they come all home together in pomp with their milk, and sometimes they have music go before them.”

In Beaumont and Fletcher’s play, “The Coxcomb,” printed in 1647, two milk-maids are introduced, Nan and Madge, and the scene in which they are on the stage is so charming, that I venture to quote a good deal of it—the authors have so happily caught the kindliness, the simplicity, the joyousness of the English milk-maid of yore.

But one word I must premise. Viola, the heroine of the play is astray and wandering over the country seeking to conceal whence she is and who she is.

Viola wearied and lost sighs—

Then enter Nan and Madge with milk pails.

Then Viola entreats the two girls to find her where she may not only lodge, but also find work.

We learn that Princess Elizabeth, in Queen Mary’s reign, was closely guarded and only suffered to walk in the gardens of the palace, and not abroad. “In this situation,” says Holingshed, “no marvell if she, hearing upon a time out of her garden at Woodstock, a certain milk-maid singing pleasantlie, wished herself to be a milk-maid as she was; saying that her case was better, and life merrier.”

Sir Thomas Overbury in his “Character of a milk-maid,” in the reign of James I., says, “She dares go alone, and unfold her sheep in the night, and fears no manner of ill, because she means none: yet, to say truth, she is never alone, she is still accompanied with old songs, honest thoughts, and prayers, but short ones.”

There is still a reminiscence of the milk-maid that comes to us every spring, in the fresh flickering cuckoo-flower of the delicate lilac, like the pale cotton, of which the dresses of the girls were made. It is the Cardamine pratensis that bears both the name of “Milk-maids” and “Cuckoo-flower.” The latter name it obtains, says old Gerarde, because it “doth flower in April and Maie, when the cuckoo doth begin to sing her pleasant notes without stammering.” The same plant is also the “Lady’s Smock” of Shakespeare. I suppose it will retain the name of cuckoo-flower, for the cuckoo is still with us, but lose that of “milk-maids,” for, alas—milk-maids are no more.

The Alpine representative of the class is quite distinct. As soon as the high pastures are free from snow, the cattle are driven up the mountains and the women go with them. They remain at these high altitudes all the summer till the first frosts and snows come, when they, with the cattle, return. On the high Alps they have to milk the cows and make cheeses. They live in senn hüte (wooden hovels), and sleep in the lofts among the hay. Here is a description by a native of the Alps.

“The Sennerin is engaged through the summer with tubs and churns; she attends to the milking and the fodder. An Almbub, a little boy, is with her, and he has to look after the herds, drive the cattle to pasture, and bring them back at even. Both live on the boiled milk and some lard out of a pot. Then when darkness comes on they light the kichspan, a bit of firwood dipped in pitch that serves as a candle, and by its flare she mends his torn garments which must be made to last till they return in October; and the boy in turn takes between his knees her shoes which have been torn in the rocks, and sews the rents with waxed thread, and tells tales or sings songs.

“For the most part the sennerin is not under twenty. She is generally over forty, one who has spent her life in making butter, and understands the cows. And every summer she is aloft since she became old enough to be trusted. Young women, the farmer knows well, do not answer on the Alpine pastures exposed to every sort of climate and weather. And yet—sometimes, a young one is there aloft, and then romance steps in.”

These sennerins, old, withered, for the most part, in rusty and dark dresses, with storm and sun-tanned faces, wrinkled, eminently unpoetical objects, how can we consider them as of the same race as our recently extinct dairy-maids?

I will end with a couple of verses of Martin Parker’s ballad on the Milk-maids, composed in the reign of James I. or Charles I.

THE BRIDE’S WELL

THE BRIDE’S WELL

On what is locally called a Ramp, that is to say the refuse thrown out of a quarry, and left to decay or become covered with mould, was, in our quiet parish, a long white-washed cottage thatched. It was planted in a peculiar position: its back was against a dense oak wood, out of which shot up Scotch firs, and the portion of ramp it occupied was of very old standing, and was a good way from that part of the quarry on which workmen were engaged.

In front of the cottage was a garden, always well kept, and on the farther side of the garden, the inevitable pig-sty. But then—what would the garden have produced without the pig?

When I said that the cottage was on the ramp, I was not quite exact, it was on the slope of the hill, but ramp had been thrown up before it even to a level above the garden, so that the dwellers in the cottage were almost as much shut in as was Noah in his ark.

The ramp was not hideous, as new ramps are. It was so ancient that it was overgrown with trees, and moss, and fern. The crane’s-bill loved to ramble about it, and the wild strawberry covered it in June with a network of rubies.

The cottage was so closed about that every wind was shut out, but the sun flowed over it, frost rarely smote and killed the vegetables in the garden, and flowers came there earlier than elsewhere.

A great monthly rose was trained over the front of the house, and I believe that there were flowers on it all the year round.

Near the cottage stood a very ancient and wide-spreading oak, stunted and contorted, because growing in a minimum of soil and a maximum of slate rock. But in spite of disadvantages, the oak was very aged and bore innumerable acorns. Under the shade of the tree, rained over with shed acorns at the fall of the year, was a slab of rock, and it went by the name of the Conjuring Table. There was a certain Lady who was fondly believed, though dead for over a century, to haunt the parish. The story went that Seven Parsons met at this natural table to lay the Lady’s ghost. They would have succeeded but that one of the party was so tipsy that he said the wrong words and forgot the right.

But that which haunted the ramp was not a ghost, it was vipers, locally called “Long Cripples.” These creatures loved to lie in the sun on the hot slates, and they became so comatose in the heat, or perhaps with repletion from the number of flies and beetles they ate, that they were easily killed there by the village lads.

Now, although the cottage was in a lonely place, and was shut in from wind and from the sight of men, unless these latter came there purposely to see it, yet there was that in it which precluded its being out of mind, however much out of sight, and that was—an uncommonly pretty girl who lived in it with her father and mother.

Their name was Worden, and her Christian name was Prue, that is to say, Prudence.

Not only was she vastly pretty, but she was one of the happiest, brightest dispositioned girls in the place. The sun that loved the cottage seems to have been drunk in by her heart and to brim at her eyes.

Prue managed the beehives, of which there was a row in the garden, and she moved among the winged creatures without their attempting to sting her. “Talk to them, sing to them, and they become your friends,” she said.

They buzzed round her, as though she were a flower, as though they would light on her laughing lips, and she scolded them and away they flew—it was their fun, that was all, she explained. But it was not bees only that came about Prue. Village youths are not blind to female beauty, and hearts open at once to a bright spirit, as celandines open to the sun.

Prue had plenty of admirers, but her head was not turned; she laughingly kept them at a distance—that is to say, all but one, George Kennaway, and it soon became an understood thing that George also would not allow other young men to buzz about Prue. That flower was for his own sipping, not for another’s.

How this came about was as follows:—

The plank on which stood the beehives had become so rotten that Prue’s father, Roger Worden, purchased a good new Dantzic pine plank to replace that which was decayed.

The substitution must be made at night. So the plank was laid near the Conjuring Stone till the occasion came for its use. There were also there two or three short lengths of firbole, whereof to make props for the plank; as not only was Worden about to renew the old stand, but also to extend it, to sustain additional hives; until wanted, the plank was at Prue’s disposal, and she thus disposed it. She placed it across one of the logs and endeavoured to play at see-saw on it. This could only be effected by reducing the length of plank on her side to a couple of feet, and giving the other side a considerable extent. But this did not answer satisfactorily; it gave very little sway to the end on which Prue sat. She therefore tried another experiment. She rolled a big stone on to the farther end of the board, but here again the success was not great, as the stone tumbled off.

So engaged was Prue in endeavouring to obtain a ride by circumventing the difficulties that stood in her way, that she did not observe George Kennaway as he approached; and he startled her into dropping from the board when he said close to her, “You are a silly child. It takes two to play at see-saw.”

“Then you sit at the other end,” said Prue, picking herself up. She was flushed, and looked prettier than ever under the white cotton field bonnet.

“Certainly,” said the lad, “but b’aint it rather child’s play?”

“I never had brothers and sisters to play see-saw with me,” explained she.

“And are you so terrible fond of it?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t tried proper yet.”

“Come—you shall have a ride.”

So the young man sat at one end astride, and the girl at the other as on a chair, and up and down they went. When he was aloft she was down, and when she soared he was on the ground. She laughed for joy of heart—then suddenly jumped off, and down in an ignominious, precipitate, and ungraceful manner fell George, sprawling on the ground.

“I had forgot,” said Prue.

“I should think you had—to give me such a fall.”

“I don’t mean that—I mean the water.”

“What water?”

“Mother wanted the pitchers filled.”

“Immediately?”

“N—n—o, but I just remembered it, so sprang off.”

“And sent me down.”

“I am sorry—did I hurt you?”

“You might have hurt me badly.”

“Let me go fetch the water and then we’ll see-saw again.”

“But understand there must be two together—always, for that.”

The cottage was supplied from a well that was some sixty to eighty feet below its level. From the oak and the Conjuring Stone a path descended to an old excavation, very deep, and so overhung with trees, and so limited in extent, that the sun never fell into it. At the bottom was deep bottle-green water—how deep none knew, and in it lived—so it was said—one enormous trout, too wary and well fed to allow himself to be caught. The slate sides of this abyss were hung with moss and fern and tendrils of creeping plants. A little way from this tremendous chasm, but only a few feet higher than the water’s edge was a well, that is to say a spring with the sides built up and a slab of slate covering it, in which was the coolest, most crystalline water. This spring never failed in the hottest summer, and its overflow trickled into the tarn that occupied the ancient, deserted quarry. It was a long way to go to get water for all requirements, but the water when got was most refreshing and delicious.

At least twice a day Prue had to descend to the well with empty pitchers, and toil up the ascent with them laden.

“And mind this, Prue,” said her mother repeatedly, “never you go no farther than the well, for the slate rock beyond by the water is that slippy you might fall in, and none ever hear you cry out.”

The whole way down was so thick with crane’s-bill that the air was strong with its geranium savour.

“No,” said George. “For once, Prue, I will fetch the water, and you bide here.”

Then the young man caught up the brown pitchers and descended the path. In ten minutes he was back with them brimming over.

“Now,” said Prue, “we will have another swing, only I will sit nearer the middle. I do not want to have a bad fall.”

“Why should you have a bad fall?”

“You might punish me for giving you one.”

“I am not like to do that.”

“I had rather not trust you.”

So they swayed up and down.

Then said Prue: “Why do you sit nearer the middle than I?”

“Because I am three times as heavy as you and must make the balance right.”

“It is still rather too much.”

“Then draw nearer.”

“But you will draw nearer still?”

“I must. I cannot help it. Now then—try how it feels in the middle.” He put out his arm and drew her to the midst above the fulcrum, and there they sat, side by side, gently rocking. The least displacement of balance set them swaying.

“Lovely, isn’t it?” asked George.

“Beautiful,” answered Prue.

“And I don’t see,” said George, “why we shouldn’t see-saw for always like this. I mean you and me together. It takes two, it does.”

“I don’t know.”

“I do. I have fifteen shillings a week, we might see-saw on that. And I’ve got strong arms, and a good cottage, and a large garden. We might see-saw on that. And—I love you with all my heart.”

“But is there to be see-saw in that?”

“None—fast as a nail. Will you?”

“Well, if it must be, it must.”

That is how it came about.

The banns had been called and the marriage day had arrived. The parson was to be at the church at ten o’clock.

“Mother,” said Prue the evening before. “There is my white confirmation gown and the veil the young ladies at the Hall gave me—I will wear that.”

“And you must have flowers.”

“Yes—white.”

Now it so fell out that just before the time came for going to church Mrs. Worden exclaimed—

“Lor’ a mussy! The water be forgot. There ain’t a drop in the house, and there’ll be folk coming, and there must be tea for some, and, I reckon, gin and water for others, and there is all the washing up after, and, dear life, one can get along without bread, but never without water. Whatever shall I do?”

“I’ll run to the well with the pitchers.”

“But, Prue, you’m in your white dress.”

“I shall not stain it. It will not take me ten minutes.”

“I’d go myself but for my leg as is so bad,” said Mrs. Worden.

Then Prue caught up the pitchers and tripped away, past the old gnarled oak and the Conjuring Rock, down the path to the old quarry pit.

Never shall I forget what ensued.

There was a cluster of people about the church gate. These were friends ready to pelt with rice. The parson was in waiting. The bridegroom and his best man had arrived. Prue had been a favourite at the Hall, and the squire’s daughters were there, all smiles, and they had brought with them a present which was to be put into Prue’s hand as she went blushing like a June hedge-rose down the church avenue. And the ringers were all there, without their coats, in the tower, waiting and not oblivious of the fact that after a merry peal they would be called to the cottage to refresh themselves.

The party waited, then became impatient. Some ran along the road to see whether the bride were coming in sight. But all they saw was a child running. Presently the child came up breathless. “Please—Mrs. Worden says you’re all to come—something has happened. She’s in that state, she couldn’t say all.” Still no suspicion of real evil occurred. Some little misfortune perhaps.

“It’s Prue. It’s something to Prue,” gasped the child. Then the tidings ran like lightning through all assembled. The last to hear it was George Kennaway, who was in the church; but when he did hear he ran and outstripped them all.

He first reached the cottage. Mrs. Worden was then in a condition of terror and distress that almost bereft her of her senses.

“Prue—” she said, “went to the well—after water—my poor legs—I couldn’t get down—but she went for the water—two pitchers. I—have—I——”

George Kennaway waited to hear no more. He ran down the steep descent, calling Prue. The answer came from the rocks, in a lower note, “Prue! Prue!” A jackdaw rushed out from the ivy.

Then he came to the well. She was not there, but he saw also at a glance why she was not there. During the preceding night a portion of the overhanging slate rock had fallen, not much, but just sufficient to crush in the top of the well, and render access to the water impossible without assistance from a crowbar.

The girl had consequently not been able to draw water where accustomed, and she had gone forward to the quarry pit. Here, as already said, the rock was slaty, inclined at a steep angle, and it was moist and slippery. She had stepped on to this, and had stooped, careful not to stain her white gown, with both pitchers in her hands, to dip for the water in the tarn, cold and crystal clear.

She had overbalanced, her feet had slipped on the smooth sloping slate, and she had fallen in. And there—floating on the bottle-green water she was seen—like a dead white swan.

I feel that it is beyond my power with pen to describe what followed, the despair of the poor young man, the distraction of the mother, the sorrow of the whole parish. And never was there such a funeral in the memory of man as that of the bride, her white pall borne by six girls all in white, and wearing white posies—and a whole parish—every one from the richest to the poorest, from the red-faced, fox-hunting squire to the old stone-breaker with a crippled leg—in floods of tears.

The other day I went over the ramp to look at the ruined cottage. Years had passed since this took place, which I have described. After the death of their only child, the Wordens had left the cottage and it had fallen into ruin. None else would take it, owing to the difficulty about the water, the distance it had to be drawn, and the tragedy connected with the well.

As I stood musing, looking at the crumbling walls—no flowers, no bees there now—I noticed a man of middle age come up the steep path from the well.

The quarry had of late been again in activity, and the rubbish was being shot to fill up the old workings, but as yet the very oldest pit, that where the well was, had not been invaded.

I turned to speak to the man. He seemed a stranger. At least I did not know him.

“A picturesque spot,” said I, “to an artist quite a study.”

“I am not an artist,” he replied. “This spot is dear to me, inexpressibly dear through sad remembrances.”

I looked closer at him.

“Yes,” said he, “my name is George Kennaway. I—you know me now I see—well after that event I could not bear to be here; I went to Australia, and have done well there. I have come back now, after all these years—and——Well, sir, I have been to see the captain of the slate quarry, and I said to him: I will pay you almost what you like to ask, if you will spare the well and the old pit. Do not choke and bury them up—not whilst I live—for God’s sake—I could not bear it. I saw—that white girl floating there—no—let it remain as it was. Ask what you will.”

JACK HANNAFORD

JACK HANNAFORD

In one of the dips among the hills of the red land stands a cobb cottage, thatched, and facing the sun. The red land consists of rich loam of the colour of what artists call Indian red, overlying sandstone of the same warm colour. It is a soil of the most remarkable fertility. You have but to stick into it a slip of any shrub, and it starts growing at once and does not desist till it is a tree; sow in it any seed you like, and it springs up, and, like the corn in the Gospel, produces an hundredfold. For roses there is simply nothing in the round world equal to it. The grass that flourishes on it is the richest, most succulent, and the most emerald to be found and enjoyed anywhere. Indeed, the cows that consume the herbage on it have grown red as the soil itself, and if the sheep were not shorn annually they would produce fleeces of flame. Even the streams after rain run blood, so flush is this red land with the juices of life.

When a man wishes to build a house, he takes the clay, throws in straw, tramples it about for a while, and then builds it up into a wall; it sets, and will out-endure a structure of stone, if only kept covered on top. And a house thus constructed, for warmth, for cosiness, for healthiness, and for home comfort is simply not to be surpassed.

And, once again, on this red soil the cheeks of the girls and their kissable lips are a temptation to young men sheerly unavoidable.

The cottages on this red land and built of the red clay are low, with the windows of the “chambers,” i.e. bedrooms, peering out of the thatch, that is, with the latter just lifted like a pretty eyebrow arched over them, looking coquettishly, with a soft languor in them at the passers-by in the lane.

In the lane!—and what lanes these are, deep cut in the red rock, overarched with sycamores, elms, oaks, the rich sides oozing with ripeness, scrambled over by countless creepers, occupied on every ledge by a thousand ferns, studded in March with constellations first of golden celandine, then of pale primroses, crested with dense blue hyacinths intertwinkled with crimson robin, and later towered over by a fringe of gorgeous, purple-belled foxglove, with twenty, thirty, even to fifty flowers on one rod.

In the midst of such beauty, such plenty, such softness, humanity cannot be rough and harsh. It is not so. The simplest peasant has the courtesy of a noble, and the lowliest girl the grace of a princess. In that warm, soft, crumbling soil hearts are also warm, soft, and—well, we must admit it—crumbling too.

Where Nature does so much for man, man is perhaps not greatly inclined to do much for himself, and this applies especially to his intellectual faculties. What compulsory education may do I cannot tell—it may change all this; but till of late years—allow it frankly—there was astounding ignorance in this favoured land. And with ignorance goes credulity.

Now I am going to tell of the inmates of one of these cobb cottages in the paradisaical land of New Redsandstone, in which also paradisaical ignorance was to be found.

This cottage, the face of which was white-washed and crept over with monthly roses, was occupied by Richard Redlake and his wife Julia.

They were both young people. He between thirty and forty, she half-way between twenty and thirty. Julia had been quite the prettiest girl in a village where not a girl lived who was not pretty. She had dark hair, and the softest, largest, most melting eyes, like rich agate, a complexion transparent, pure, with the sweetest rose-flush in it; and her figure was slender and willowy.

Julia could neither read nor write. Possibly because she could neither read nor write she was a most neat and knowing housewife, who kept her cottage in beautiful order, and whitened her hearth-stone and threshold every day, and even twice a day, and burnished pans and candlesticks and old mustard tins on the chimney shelf till they shone as gold and silver. Most labourers’ wives possess the alchemical art of transforming soft, succulent meat over a fire into leather or indiarubber, and are peculiarly skilful in destroying the digestions of their husbands. But Julia, perhaps because unable to read and write, turned out a bit of steak, or the meat in a pasty, or a stew, soft and delicious.

I say that this was due to ignorance of the two principal R’s, because nowadays working-men’s wives are too much taken up with penny dreadfuls and writing letters on parochial gossip to be able to spare the time for such menial work as keeping their houses neat, their own persons clean, and cooking meals with all their attention devoted to the task.

With these good qualities there was a drawback—ignorance, abysmal ignorance. Although Julia could not read, she believed in printed matter as something indisputable. What stood, as she termed it, “on the paper” was to be accepted as gospel.

For a couple of years after they were married, old Jack Hannaford, her father, lived with the young couple. And see—here is another odd thing. I am going to tell you about him after he was dead and buried.

Hannaford had been a queer old file, cantankerous, cute in his way, scheming, but doing nothing with his plans, because he neither had the means nor the vigour to carry them out. Julia had believed implicitly in him, and “Alack a jimminy!” said she, “vayther were a wun’nerful clever man; if he’d only not been crippled, and had had a penny wi’ which he could speckerlate, he’d ha’ been a gem’man by now.”

Jack Hannaford had possessed a friend, a very knowing man named Eli Rattenbury, who lived about two miles off by himself. Eli had never been married. He did little jobs off and on for farmers, but was humorous, and at a word would leave his task and sulk and starve, rather than work for the man who had offended him. He was said to poach. He certainly gained a living by blessing wounds, “striking” tumours, and he possessed a “kenning stone,” with which he touched and healed inflamed and sore eyes. He was held to be a bit of a rogue. He possessed unbounded influence over the ignorant peasantry, even over the farmers, who dreaded offending him; and it was shrewdly suspected that, although he had no regular vocation and occupation, he had amassed a tidy sum of money. Food did not cost him much, for he either, as was surmised, took a rabbit when he wanted one, or if he coveted a duck or a piece of pork, had only to ask for it, and no one dared deny him what he desired, lest ill luck should befall the denier.

Eli Rattenbury had a wonderful faculty for finding out when a pig had been killed anywhere in the district beyond earshot of its squeals, and so surely as a porker had been slain and was being scalded, he appeared on the scene, and did not leave without a portion of the pig.

Now it happened that the Redlakes had been fattening up one of these animals, but instead of killing it, they sold it. They had a supply of bacon that would last them through the winter, and so did not require more for their personal consumption. Very soon after, when Richard was out at work, Eli Rattenbury appeared at the door, and without knocking came in.

“I don’t smell the pig in the sty,” said he.

“No; we’m rid us of him?”

“Killed? and not given me a spare-rib!”

“No, Eli; us sold ’n.”

“You don’t mean to say so! And what did he fetch?”

She told him, and added, “But, Eli, you shall have some nice salt bacon hanging yonder. We’ve sold our calf as well.”

“You’re lucky folk to be able to keep a cow.”

“Well, we are; and we can always dispose of our butter.”

“And you have fowls as well.”

“Yes; and the regrader takes them also. I’ll put you up some eggs in a basket.”

Old Eli considered.

“I thought you might have sent ’em, wi’out my havin’ to fetch ’em,” was his ungracious comment.

“I am very sorry, Eli.”

“You ort to be, considerin’ your father and me was like brothers. By the way, I ha’ had dreams—that is to say, visions—about he lately.”

“No, never! I hope all is well with old vayther.”

“Middlin’,” responded Eli.

Julia stood still, and some of her colour went.

“I hope he’s not gone——”

“Oh, no fear o’ that. He’s all right, so far. But you know, Julia, your poor vayther was never a church nor a chapel goin’ man.”

“’Cos o’ his legs,” explained Julia.

“Well, I don’t say nothin’ about the raysons, but you know so well as I do, he were not one as went to church or chapel.”

“No,” said the daughter.

“Well, then, how was he to find his way to where he ’ort to ha’ gone to when he left this world of woe? As a fact, he lost his way and got into Americay by mistake.”

“Well, now, I never!” exclaimed Mrs. Redlake.

“Yes, true; he told me so,” said Eli Rattenbury. “I don’t see as you can expect any other. What’d be your situation, missus, if you was to get sudden-like out o’ the train, and be told to find your way to Golconda—or the Transvaal. You’d go wanderin’ about, and ten to one find yourself in quite another place. ’Twas so wi’ your poor father. Hobblin’ on upon them there sticks, he came into the United States o’ North Americay. Well, I seed ’n there in a vision. I thought I were carried there.”

“You seed vayther?”

“For sure I did,” answered Rattenbury.

“Well, Eli, do tell me what he said, and how he did look.”

“‘Go and tell Julia,’ sez he, ‘that I seez my way clear to realisin’ a tremenjous fortune. I’ve talked it over with my Betsy.’”

“What—is mother there?”

“Certain; her wasn’t neither church nor chapel goer, and her were just as lost as he about the road, and so got to Americay.”

“Dear, now, to think it!”

“‘Well,’” said he, “tell my Julia that I’m goin’ to set up a bacon factory; I’m goin’ to grow pigs, and mother’ll salt’n—her does it beautiful.’”

“But where’s the money to come from?” asked the astonished woman.

“That’s it. ‘Julia,’ sez he, ‘will lend me the money to start the pigs on.’”

“There’s the money from the calf and the pig we sold,” mused Julia, “but Richard has put it away quite safe.”

“Where?”

“That I mayn’t tell,” she mused, and then said slowly, “I can’t do it wi’out axin’ Richard.”

“Your vayther laid it on me that you was on no account to speak of it to he. ‘Men,’ sez he, ‘have such tongues. Talk of women, they’re nothing to men. When they gits together in a sunny hedge eatin’ of their lunch—bless y’, they talk of everything you can think on.’”

“I don’t like to do it.”

“He said—he will return it in double.”

“How much does he want?”

“Say ten pounds, just to make a start.”

“And in a week——”

“You’ll have twenty, and Richard no wiser.”

“And how is that ten pounds to go to dear old vayther?”

Eli Rattenbury hesitated, bethought himself, then said, “Jack Hannaford said as how you should have the money doubled. And he advised that you should take the ten pounds, wrapped up in rag and put in an old sardine tin, or an old jam pot, and if you takes my advice you will bury it under the headstone near the middle, no one observin’ you, four inches below the turf. And you was not to go and look at it for a week, but if you did so and found it gone, then don’t wonder at it, Jack Hannaford has took it and has laid it out in pigs. But you may look for it in a week, or better still a month, and sure as eggs be eggs, you’ll find there twenty pounds in gold.”

“Are you to go with me?”

“No. You do it yourself; folks might observe and wonder if they seed me wi’ you at the grave, but if you go, that’s nothin,’ they’ll think you’ve gone to weed it, or put flowers.”

“Well, I will do it,” said Julia.

“When?”

“To-day.”

“And mind, not a word to Richard.”

Then, precipitately, Eli Rattenbury departed, and about an hour later, from a secret place in the thatching, Julia drew some money, counted out ten sovereigns, wrapped them in rag, put them in a little pot, and hurried to the churchyard and buried the store exactly at the place she had been told by the old rogue to place it. Then she fled home.

Had she remained in hiding, and watched, she would have seen Rattenbury creep out from behind the church porch, go to the grave of Jack Hannaford, dig up the money and pocket it.

That same evening, on Richard Redlake’s return, he clapped his wife on the back, and said “Julia! news. I’ve arranged to take another field; and I’m going to buy another cow. I’ve seen her, half Jersey; ours runs dry at times, and we can’t supply our customers reg’lar as they likes. If we have two, why, then one will be yieldin’ whilst t’other’s dry. She’ll cost twenty-five pound, and I’ve bought her. I shall pay to-morrow. We have the money in the thatch.”

Here was a pretty kettle of fish! If Dick looked at the hoard he would discover that it was diminished. So Julia made the best of a bad business, and told him all.

“In a month when old vayther has turned it over, you’ll have it doubled,” said she.

“You are a fool! That old rascal has befooled you,” said her husband. He was very angry, but scolding would not bring back the money. He strode to the churchyard and of course found the gold gone. The jam pot was there—not its contents. What should Richard do? If he went to Rattenbury, the rogue would brazen it out. He had not been to the churchyard, he would protest. Let his pockets be turned out, his house searched, the money was not with him. If any one had taken the gold it must have been some one who had watched Julia surreptitiously, as she concealed it. No! there was nothing to be got that way. However, instead of returning home, Dick marched off to the cottage inhabited by Eli. The old fellow was there, and seemed alarmed as young Redlake came up.

“How do?” said Richard.

“Very well, I thank y’,” answered Eli in a restrained voice, and looked from side to side, as though for a place of escape.

“Julia has told me all,” said the young man, “and I always did think Jack Hannaford was a wun’nerful schemin’ man. That there is a clever idea of his. I’m sure he’ll succeed.”

Old Rattenbury breathed freely.

“Sure—cock sure,” said he.

“Now, look here, Eli,” continued Dick; “I ask your advice. I’ve saved a bit o’ money—in all some twenty-five pounds—a little more or less. Now, that wi’ the ten pound Julia has lent to the old gem’man makes thirty-five, and if it be doubled, as you say, it will be forty-five. Now, if I’d a matter of about a hundred pound, I’d take Yatton Farm, and would stock it; it ain’t a terrible big place, and I could manage it. What say you? would old Jack Hannaford double the twenty-five as well as the ten?”

“Sure he would.”

“Then I’ll risk it, and yet I’d like to be sure first. I think I’ll see if he doubles Julia’s loan. If he do that, then I’ll trust him in the same way with the rest—twenty-five. But you say I must wait a month.”

“Oh dear no, two days suffice. Pigs fatten, as dandelions blow, all of a night in Americay.”

“Well, I can but try.”

“Don’t go to the grave till Thursday, and we’ll be there together. We’ll see; maybe the money may then be doubled, maybe it won’t.”

“Very well, Thursday; I’d be afraid to go alone.”

On the following Thursday Eli Rattenbury appeared at the cottage door; Richard Redlake was awaiting him.

“Look here,” said he, pouring out a sack of gold on the table, “twenty-five sovereigns. Won’t somebody be pleased?”

“I believe you,” said Eli, “let’s make haste.”

So the two men went to the churchyard. No one was about—no one observed them.

“I don’t know where Julia put the money,” said Rattenbury.

“But I do,” said Dick. “Here in the middle, and sure enough, here is a jam pot, and something in it, on my word! Money—gold—Eli. Well, now, they do turn cash over up there pretty smart. How much is it? Twenty sovereigns, as I’m a man. By George, Eli, all this mine?”

“Certainly, it is the interest on the loan.”

“But for three days!”

“They’re wun’nerful generous over yonder, to Americay.”

“And I can take it in all honest conscience?”

“To be sure you may. If not yours, whose is it?”

“Then, Eli Rattenbury, I don’t think I’ll put any more out to interest. I’ve done so well with this that I’ll bide content.”

And Richard put the twenty sovereigns in with the twenty-five. Then he looked up into Rattenbury’s face.

“What’s the matter, man? got a stomach ache?”

“I ain’t well, I’ll go home. Don’t y’ think now ’twould be fitty to share with me?”

“Not at all, Eli; the loan was mine. The interest accordin’ is mine. Suppose you now go and put a little money under the turf and see if Jack Hannaford will treat you in the same way? You don’t look comfortable as I likes to see you, Eli; go home and sleep and dream again.”