He flicked off his cap—with a grin that showed, though against the flour, a set of perfect teeth—and in three strides was at the window, his eyes and huge white face above the level of the sill. Even in the instant, as if the former were a cypher momentarily isolated for my reading, I understood, and was stricken to stone.

“The graveyard!” whispered the pierrot in that instant: “be at the wall over against it at ten o’clock to-night”—and reeled away, to a pantomime of grins and pirouettes, as the lodge-keeper came raging round the corner in pursuit.

“O que nenni dà!” cried the intruder, twisting and turning and affecting to bend with laughter. “O, madame! O, fie! I am very honourable z’jentlemans. Wat, I say! I make you good proposals to marry. I display my parts, v’là!”

He contorted himself, with absurd coquetry. “Wat!” he protested, pausing; “madame declines of the ravishment? She does not move herself to fly with me? Vair well”— He pretended of a sudden to espy his pursuer, and pressing his cap to his breast, waltzed up to him.

“Hey, my little fellow,” he cried (the lodge-keeper was at least as big as Daniel Lambert), “it is for you, then. You know the best wat is good. I will not abduct madame: I will not marry at all. It is vair much satisfaction. You see me dance, hein? Come on, jolly garçon!—

When a man’s single he live at his is—you spik French, but yes?”

The lodge-keeper hawked up a glair of oaths, and discharged them. He swore by all his gods that he would cut off the intruder by the legs, unless he went out, and double quick, the way he had come. Then ensued a comical scene. The pierrot, affecting to retreat after a brief altercation, swerved suddenly and seated himself on the branch of a tree—

“O-ho!” he said, as the other came lumbering up, “it is vair well, but I make up my mind. I refuse madame, it is true. You know to marry, what it is? Listen, then—

The lodge-keeper, cursing, made a snatch at the man’s stilts; but, incredibly strong, he whipped them up out of reach, and held them so horizontal.

he sang.

The lodge-keeper swore and jumped, till he was running wet for all the cold; but he was too fat a fox for these grapes.

bawled the pierrot ferociously, and clashed the stilts like great castanets.

Then he settled himself firmly.

“‘One asks for bread,’” bellowed he; and suddenly flourishing his right stilt, caught the lodge-keeper a stinging smack across the head with it—

“‘Another for soup,’” he yelled, and gave such a counter blow with his left, that the lodge-keeper fairly reeled and went rolling over—

shouted the pierrot, and was up and out of sight in a moment, striding like Talus. The infuriate lodge-keeper rose, when he had recovered himself, to pursue; but he was too late. The pierrot had got clean away.

Not till all had been vanished many minutes did I awake from the stunned trance into which I had been thrown by those few whispered words. Then, still by the window, I sank upon the floor, and, simultaneously, into a very reel and passion of ecstasy.

How had he traced me? Whence devised this strange method of procuring speech? Ah! as to that, there were no doubt experiences in his past life still unrelated; and, after all, did he not always in a measure—strictly in a measure—walk on stilts? This was only to extend his wooden legs indefinitely. But after what secret practices, and suspicions averted? For I held him still the creature of his despicable master. My Gogo—for it was he! My Gogo, the great resourceful, affectionate, crippled giant! It was inexpressibly touching to me to know myself, the poor persecuted, wistful dupe of Fate, still the cynosure of this burning soul—not forgotten, schemed for, held the sacred object of its desire. All the time I had thought myself abandoned, he had been weaving a ladder for my despair. Good Gogo! Dear, kind, honest Caliban! He would save me yet—he would save me; and the tears flowed from my eyes. How was he such an actor? It was true I had known hitherto only one side of him—the saturnine—the shadow of the great fallen rock. Ah, he could show a lighter for my sake—little roguish sparklets twinkling in the sun of his hot yearning. I loved him at that moment, and my tears fell for him and myself.

But, stay! What had he whispered? I must remember. At ten o’clock—the wall over against the graveyard? Why had he so chosen—so nicely specified? Did he know nothing of the patrol? Yes, likely; but it was a desperate expedient, calculated upon a possible superstition, upon a presumptive avoidance of so haunted a spot. I pressed my hands to my wet forehead and tangled hair. He had dared and done all he could: the rest was for me, whom he knew and could trust. I would not be unworthy. I would answer to him wit for wit.

Half an hour later, serene and wicked as he could have wished, I took my way, singing, into the grounds, and, unaccosted, sought that remote quarter where the graveyard was situated. Still softly singing, I pushed between the trees, and came out into the waste interval against the boundary wall which was devoted to the watch. Stooping here to pick some chance berries, I had not to wait a minute before the local sentinel, as I had calculated, was upon me. I dropped my spray, with an aspect of alarm that struggled into piteousness.

“O, I am so sorry!” I said.

The man—he was personable enough to make my task the less nauseous—eyed me, insolent and masterful.

“All right,” he said. “Blow me if you ain’t done it now. Why, don’t you know as this here’s Prisoner’s Base, and you’re out of bounds?”

I went up to him fearlessly, and taking his hands, muffled in great hairy gloves, looked up into his face. I saw a spot of deeper colour come into his cheeks, and he breathed fast.

“Shall I confess,” I said, low and urgent, and glancing quickly about me, “that I wanted to be caught?”

“Ah!” he said, and showed his teeth in a twitching grin.

“Hush!” I whispered. “I am in great despair. You know perfectly well I am sane; I shall die if I am detained here longer.”

“O! will you?” he responded.

“Listen,” I said, flushing and hanging my head. “I offer you no money, which I have not got. But there are things—other things—sold here, which”—

I tore my hands away, and, putting them to my face, fell back from him.

“Hey!” he said, in a thick whisper, and pursued me. “Why do you pick me out for your favours, you little beauty?”

I did not answer.

“Why?” he insisted.

“If it has to be,” I muttered from my refuge, “you—O, don’t ask me!”

“Why?” he said.

“Well, of twenty evils, choose the best-looking.”

He gave a low chuckle.

“Come along, where we can be private,” said he, and put a hand on me; but I started back, affecting an agony of shame.

“O! what have I said—what promised? Let me go. Don’t think any more of it.”

“Won’t I?” he said; and added threateningly: “You’ve given your promise, remember.”

I looked about me, and again upon my twined fingers.

“To-night, then, at—at ten o’clock.”

“Where?”

“In the workshop.”

“You can get out?”

“Yes; I have a way.”

“That you have,” he said, coveting me with his eyes; “and a pretty one, my darling.”

I entreated him once more, in a passion of emotion—

“If—if I consent, you’ll hold to your part of the bargain?”

“Eh?” he questioned.

“Help me to escape?”

“No fear o’ my forgetting,” he answered. “You may lay to that.”

I knew he meant to betray me in the double sense, and would have given more than I feigned to barter at that moment for the leave to beguile him to me, and slip a knife into his lying throat. But I tasted part of my revenge in the thought of his freezing alone there by and by, in the rendezvous to which my wits had decoyed him, while I went to my other undisturbed.

He was jealous of me, and suspicious still of so light a surrender. But the prize was worth the risking; and in the end he let me go, gloating over my stealthy retreat, as a cruel schoolmaster might watch the slinking away of a delinquent whom he had ordered up for punishment later.

That night fell a harder frost, with glittering stars but no moon. Early secured in my sanctum, I awaited the great moment in such an indescribable agony of mind as I have never felt before or since. Every step near my door was a tread upon a nerve. The stable clock, when it rang out, clear and sonorous, the last quarter after nine, seemed to brain me with its every stroke. I stole to the open window, took intent stock of the quiet, seated myself, poised to spring, on the sill, and passed my duck-stone at a little distance under my nostrils. The next instant I had alighted safely on my feet, and reeling against the wall beneath, stood a minute to recover. The next, I was round the angle of the house, and sped into the dark shrubberies, where were safety and concealment.

Going very softly in my stockinged feet, and careful of my knowledge not to penetrate the thicket until close upon the appointed place, I reached my goal upon the stroke of the hour.

“Well!” whispered a voice from the starlight. “I could trust you.”

He had been stretched recumbent on the wall top, and now rose cautiously to my view, no longer the whitened fool, but the true Gogo of my affections. I looked up at him as from a well; and he swung his long stilts over, as he sat, so that they rested on the ground beneath.

“Quick!” he muttered; “without a moment lost—swarm! I can’t bend.”

Heaven knows how I did it—with no better show of grace than Lady Sophia, I fear. But somehow I scrambled up, until he could reach my hands, and haul me with a mighty power beside him. Then, once more, swing went his legs, and there was the ladder for my descent on the other side.

I clung to him convulsively; I kissed his hands; I could not refrain from sobbing.

“O, Gogo!” I said; “what you have saved me from—O, Gogo, what!”

His breath caught like a wounded lion’s.

“Not yet,” he whispered. “There is far to go first!”

“Put me down, then,” I answered, alert in the stress of things.

“No,” he said. “On my back—quick!”

“You are going to carry me?”

“There are bloodhounds,” he replied. “There must be no tracks but the stilts’—no scent for them to follow.”

Then I understood the fulness of his plan; but still I lingered, amazed.

“I am not a child. What strength, though yours, could bear me so?”

He showed me a long staff that leaned to him against the outer wall.

“There is my third prop,” he said. “When I am driven, I can still seat you upon a branch, and save the scent. The ground is iron, and”—he struck his chest—“these ribs. Come, and let me wear my heart upon my sleeve.”

The next moment we were off. The great creature swayed beneath me like a tree; but he never staggered or faltered, save periodically to rest himself and me. The sweet night wind blew upon my face, cold and colder. I snuggled from it into the vast nape of his neck, which was like a mat for warmth. I had no idea or care whither he was taking me, and the knowledge only that it was by roads deserted at this silent hour. Still he held on, and, when frost and weariness threatened to numb my brain, could spare a strong hand to imprison both mine lest I fell. And still the flight endured, and I asked, could ask, no question, not even when I grew penetrated by a dull consciousness of ascent—of my comrade straining and toiling beneath me like a stricken Sisyphus—of the groaning of the giant spirit in him who would not be subdued. Then, at last, came a pause, and darkness and release; and I felt myself swung gently down to rest upon a mat of scented leaves, whose warmth and fragrance wooed me to such a sleep as I had never known before.

XV.
I BECOME AN INMATE OF “RUPERT’S FOLLY”

I awoke, flushed and happy as a dormouse from its winter bed of leaves. The world was good again, with all its potentialities of love and freedom; the sun was somewhere seeking me; there was no ache, but the sweet ache of memory, in my whole heart and body. Locality, I have said before, has never influenced my temper. I make the only reservation now of liberty to change it at my will.

I remained some time, with my hands beneath my head, taking stock motionlessly of my new surroundings. They were odd enough. I lay near the wall, it seemed, of a sort of circular ground chamber or cellar, roofed in at an inexplicable height above me. Twice, at intervals between, projecting corbels appeared to show the one-time existence of upper floors, which, having either rotted away or been removed, had left the chamber of a height quite disproportionate with its ground dimensions. In lieu of stairs, a make-shift ladder went up into the roof at a crazy angle, and disappeared through a trap; but it started from the ground so close to a rude fireplace in the wall, that its butt was scorched, and more than one of the lower rungs snapped in its socket.

Over the floor itself were scattered tokens of some late or present occupation—a common table, a rush chair or two, battered saucepans, a greasy gridiron, and, hanging on the walls, a frowzy account of clothes. A line, stretched across a segment of the room, had once held suspended a litter of foul-washed clouts; but the string had broken, and its filthy load been kicked aside or trodden into the floor, half brick half muck, which paved the apartment.

There were no windows, but, at irregular intervals, narrow loops such as one sees in old castles; and the single ground opening was a doorway, which let in just such a smear of daylight as served to emphasise the uncleanness.

Recognising in all this the reverse of familiar, I let my wondering eyes travel round to the parts more contiguous to my bed, and so gave a little pleased start and smile. There, like guardian posts to my slumber, were the long stilts leaned against the wall, their straps hanging loose; and pendent from a nail close by was the very clown’s dress of my memory. I could have drawn it to me and kissed it; but, contenting myself with conceding to it a sigh of affection, I sank back and closed my eyes. Lying thus deliciously, half-submerged in a very nest of dry fern, and with a heavy cloak for blanket over me, I would delay luxuriously the moment of revelation; but it was very evident, I thought, that Gogo had brought me to some wrecked and deserted mill.

Suddenly, unable to rest longer, I peeped. He was going softly about the hearth, preparing something at a little fire, whose every thicker waft of smoke he would jealously dissipate with his hands. He still feared observation, then! Watching him silently, my heart welled up with a gush of love for the dear, patient, faithful monster. “Gogo!” I said softly.

He started, looked across, and came to me at once, stumping over the floor in a rapture of response. He took a stool, and, sitting on it by me, gazed eagerly into my face, his own—animal, sinful, and divine—looking from a very burning bush of stubble.

Smiling, in a drowsy warmth, I put out a hand, and let him imprison it in his own. Ah, foolish little bird, so to commit thyself to the snare of the fowler! I thought he would have killed it, and tore it back fluttering and wounded.

“O, how could you?” I cried. “I was so happy; and you have hurt me!”

He leaned in a hoarse agony to me; his breath groaned in his chest.

“O, come to me!” he implored, “while I make one mouthful of you!”

Then, all in an instant, he was sobbing, and tearing at his short hair, and crying incoherently—

“What have I done?—to wound my dear! Ride me, flog me, use me, but trust me no more. Bitter, bitter are the gods, who make a man stiff-kneed for their sport! Not love or penance for me, never, never. Never to kneel—to lie prone only for a show! O, child! it seems a little thing not to kneel, but—ah, to see others pray and love, yourself forbidden—what pity, what pity! I am the Olympian fool; I am the ass and clown. Behold my livery!”

He pointed to the dress on the wall, and hung his head and arms in a very grief of despondency. But by now my hurt and little fright were gone, and my heart touched again to softness.

“Gogo,” I said, “give it me down, please.” And he looked up wondering, and stirred and obeyed.

“This, and this, and this,” I said, “in pledge of our one-day contract before Jove, or Jehovah, when the maimed shall be made whole.”

My tears dropped on it, as I kissed it three times and gave it back to him. He received it wonderingly first, then sadly, and held it drooping over his knees.

“Whole!” he muttered. “Ay, I don’t question I shall find my legs in Avalon; but can even Jove restore the rifled flower its honey?”

Suddenly he cast himself down beside me, groaning like a bull.

“O, little maid, little maid! I am a beggar, I am a beggar; but I want no reversion of a used estate. Though my own goes lame, I am proud. Give me new-minted money, that no man has worn in his pocket, or none at all.”

For a moment the great human urgency of the creature made me falter. I owed him so much! could the devotion of my life more than repay him? But, alas! it needed but a little reflection to see the fond ridiculous picture the caricature it was. Had I the right even to risk a new generation of Gogos? I saw myself in imagination walking abroad, the proud convoyer of an uncountable number of little shock-headed Dutch tumblers. Perhaps if our Sovereign King had received that Carpenters’ Petition, and brought wooden legs into fashion, I might have been tempted; but it was still the vogue to walk on one’s own feet.

I sat up, my lips twitching perilously near laughter.

“Dear Gogo,” I said, “I am so thankful to you, and so sorry; and I would not have said or done what I did, if I had known it would disturb you so. Won’t you let me get up?”

He scrambled to his feet—ah, fie upon the unmeant cruelty of the word!—and stood knotting his great hands, while his breast heaved stormily.

“Well, I think I was mad,” he roared suddenly. “Strike me! Stamp on me! Bind me to a pillar, and let the eternal remorse batten on my vitals! Whatever the spark at my tail, it started me up like a rocket: and behold me at the end, a blackened and empty case!”

He entreated me with his hands—

“Ah, the pagan sight of you! Ah, your wild hair, growing from the fern or melting into it! Ah, your face, the very flowering of a hamadryad! It wrought a frenzy in my brain. Forgive me, forgive me! And I will serve you seven times seven years, for the promise only to be godfather to your last—your Benjamin!”

He sank down on the stool, and, burying his face in his hands, was silent.

I thought a practical rescue of the situation best, and rising from my bed, went to bestir myself over the fire, which was burning redly. Moreover, a delectable odour had already reached my nostrils from the little caldron he had hung there, and whose contents were beginning to inspire me with a very lively curiosity.

I turned to the poor sufferer.

“Gogo, please, it is very sad; but if I am to go on being a hamadryad I must be fed. Gogo, what is in the pot?”

He lifted his head, with a sigh.

“Snipe,” he said, most tragically.

“Ah! What else?”

“A hare, a partridge, teal.”

“O!”

“Onions, potatoes, carrots.”

“O—o!”

“Larks, chestnuts”—

“Be quiet, lest I cry. You are the best of creatures, and I am the hungriest.”

“Eat what you will. It is my pot au feu—nothing finished before the next is added.”

“I can wait no longer. You are the hermit of hermits. Who is your commissariat-general?”

“Who but the child your little friend.”

“My”—

“Miss Grant.”

“Patty!”

He had arisen, and come across to me.

“She lays it in a hollow tree, twice a week, and twice a week I go down by night and fetch it.”

I stood gaping, staring at him.

“Gogo! Where are we?”

“In ‘Rupert’s Folly.’”

“In—!”

I gave a little cry. He seized me by the wrist, and dragged me towards the opened door.

“O, Gogo!” I choked, struggling and resisting, “we shall be seen.”

“What does it matter if we are,” he said fiercely, “since you loathe me?”

I wept and fondled him, in an agony of fear.

“I don’t loathe you. You are my one stay and comfort. Gogo! Will you give me back to that terror?”

He fell squatting at my feet—it was his substitute for kneeling—and clasped his arms about my skirt.

“Beast!” he groaned; “I neither meant nor could help it. To play upon your fears!—To taste love by deputy!—O, forgive me, forgive me!”

“Yes,” I said quietly, “for the second time and always, because of what you have done. But I fear for myself now, and shall go on fearing. Let me go—O, Gogo, let me escape into the woods, and break my heart on frost and hunger rather than wrong.”

Still clutching at me, with a look of horror, as if he felt the shadow of his last hope eluding him, he scrambled erect again.

“Hunger!” he said. “Think of the snipe and teal! Listen to me, Diana. Before God, I will not offend again. Base, black coward that I am! Before God, Diana!”

I gazed at him intently.

“Why have you brought me here, Gogo?”

“Because,” he answered, “there was no nearer and surer refuge.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Ah, child! But you have not heard the story.”

“Well,” I murmured, reassured, though still shy of him, “if you will keep your promise and be good, you shall tell it me by and by.”

He gave a great sigh, and, gently disengaging myself, I stole to the door, while he followed me with his agitated eyes, and peered out. It was Shole, indeed, and the familiar village green that I saw beneath me, looking down the long wintry slope. Quiet and deserted in the chill mists of dawn, no view apparently less tragic, less harmful, could have greeted me. I returned to my companion, who received me with a pathetic relief. He was quite pale and trembling.

“If my arms had the reach of my heart!” he said. “Well, you have come back; and so—for breakfast.”

“Patty’s pot,” said I merrily. “The dear shall put new heart into me, as her wont was.”

He had bread, and some bottles of wine, a little of which I drank mixed with water. It was the loveliest, most intoxicating meal; and, when it was over, full of a new grace I bid Gogo to my side.

“Now,” said I, “tell me your story.”

“Well, first,” he said with a grunt, “for your safety here. It was the astrologer’s, and now is ours. He was carried away in a thunderstorm, on a red cloud.”

“What do you mean, Gogo, please?”

“I repeat the common superstition. Anyhow, he is gone, and the place is haunted and avoided since. Not a clown but myself will come within a mile of it; and as for me, I have lived here for a month undisturbed already.”

“You? But I know where the poor wretch was taken, and where he died.”

“In the asylum, eh? It is what I supposed; and the red earl comes to his own. Tell me about it.”

“By and by. I want to know first what brought you here.”

“The wish to lose myself and be lost, where I could devise a plan for your rescue.”

“You knew where I had been taken, then?”

“No perspicacity of mine. It was the common report. You had lost your head over love unrequited, and it had become necessary to confine you for a while.”

“O, indeed! Go on.”

“I hear your little white teeth clicking. Rest content. You are avenged: he has married her.”

I jumped to my feet.

“He! de Crespigny?”

“Yes.”

I burst into a shriek of laughter.

“They were reconciled, then? O, the dear particular lady! Does he wipe his boots on her? Did he take his love-potion very strong on the wedding night?”

“Very strong, no doubt,” said Gogo. And then suddenly he clasped my skirt, and buried his face in it.

“He would; it was his way,” he muttered. “O, girl, spare me and my unhappiness—my broken dreams! Did you not know? I had always a struggle to keep him from it. And now he will go down, down.”

“Yes,” I said, “while she clings to his legs, as fools drown together.”

“Would you not have had her try to save him?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“Ah! You are vindictive.”

“Don’t you hear me laughing?”

“Yes; like the devil.”

“Is it? I should be mad indeed if I could applaud her. Do you bear in mind what she has done to me? She is of the sort who make cruelty their pander—a frowsy, garterless Jezebel. O, how I hate prudery! For five years I longed to open the windows on it, and let the air in, and whatever wholesome little devils beside. I declare I loathe myself to be of her sex. Touch me, Gogo. Am I the same, or different? O, to be sure! I wish her joy of her bargain—and him.”

“She will pay. But for Noel, weak child of genius—leave me the sorrow of my broken hopes, Diana.”

“And nothing else? Why did he not meet me?”

“He had not the courage at the last moment.”

“And so, having cut the ground from under me, he stepped back, and instigated madam to her little coup de theâtre, I suppose, and helped her to push me over the precipice. And you—you sympathised with and abetted him?”

“Ay,” he said sorrowfully: “witness my long exile here, gnawing my fingers in the hungry moonlight.”

I sank upon the ground in a passion of tears, and he mingled his grief with mine.

“Child, I had loved him; and I had but to learn how he had abandoned you, to leave him. I cursed him—cursed de Crespigny. Will Jove forgive me? What matter, if I have saved you?”

I lifted my drowned eyes and agonised arms.

“Take me to Patty,” I cried, “and let me weep my soul out on her kind little heart.”

He shook his head.

“What!” I said; “you will not?”

“She must not even know,” he said. “I could not trust her anxious love. She must rest as she is, aware of my endless scheming, but not of its fruits. Some day, perhaps. And in the meanwhile my lady is gone honeymooning; there is no hope of appeal to her. A breath would redeliver you to your fate, and perhaps a worse. Come, and tell me all you have suffered, poor mistress.”

I crept to his feet, and in broken tones gave him the history of my misery, to the day, to the hour when he had appeared before me.

“And you have not told me,” I said, “how that was.”

“Once,” he answered, “after I had hidden and settled here, I was spying through the telescope above—(Ay,” he interrupted himself, to my exclamation, “they could be bold to capture the dying sorcerer, but to meddle with his tools was beyond their courage)—when I was witness of a characteristic little affaire on the green below. There were a stilt-walker and his wench—a couple of the wandering tribe—a long-legged bird of passage and his little cocotte of bright plumage. I could see her glitter where I stood—could see her spangles, and the ribbons float from her tambour as she danced. And then suddenly my lord viscount was on the scene. He had been sporting, and carried his gun. He had keepers with him (they were his own; not, as might have seemed apter to his wits, Dr. Peel’s); and his dogs ‘pointed’ at the gipsy, I suppose. Anyhow, there was an altercation; and the next I saw was the clown tipped up by his wooden heels, and lying prone. They carried off the girl—willing or unwilling, it would have needed a stronger telescope than the astrologer’s to discern—and presently the poor stunned fool came to his senses and sat up. I could see him try to gather his wits with his hand, plucking at his brow. He was alone, who had been in company. Where were the rest—his ravished mate, and the mob for whom she had tripped and sung? By and by I saw him, with many starts and delays, unbuckle his stilts, and, having shouldered them, hobble with slow, painful steps towards the village. He disappeared, and till night I sat thinking of him, and of the ‘Contrat Social,’ which M. Rousseau wrote for the angels, and which, therefore, you would not understand, Diana, though, for all my better sense, I adore you. About dark I descended into the woods at the back yonder; and there I came upon my stilt-walker seated dying against a tree. Yes, he was dying. His fall had shattered some ribs, and driven one into his lung, and death was already thawing the white snow on his face into patches of blue. I carried him up to the tower, and eased what I could of his agony, and received his last message to the world. It is a callous world, this world of ’87; a world of serf and Satan and Christianity crushed between. But I tell you I would rather give that message than receive it: would rather be Gogo, the clown and pariah, than the Viscount Salted with all his prospective acres. Well, he died, and I took a spade, and buried him at the foot of the tree where he had rested. Pray God it bears wholesome acorns, for why should he wish to poison the swine his brothers? Then I inherited his property; and a thought, an inspiration, occurred to me how I might use it. Was I not wont to stump the country, like a halting orator? I could stump it to higher purpose now—the purpose of your redemption. Sure the spirit of the dead clown would uphold me, for was it not privilege I fought? So, with no great practice necessary, I became a stilt-walker; and presently ventured afield, starting by night, reaping my little harvest of pence in the far villages by day, and under cover of dark returning. Gradually I contracted my circuit, hovering about your prison; and so, once upon a time, peering over the wall in a wintry evening, spied your figure come and go in the light of a high room. It might be yours! I must dare all, and cast the die. Well, Fortune favours—the fortunate.”

He ended, to a little silence.

“Poor Gogo,” I said softly. “It is true, I do believe, that I am her spoilt doll.”

“And I,” he said, “her Dutch tumbler.”

XVI.
I PUT AN END TO ONE FOLLY

Hanging and wiving go by Destiny, which must be my excuse for accepting the silken cord which was weaving for my neck all this time. I knew no more than patient Griselda about my impending fate; yet Destiny was not to be gainsaid because I seemed content to resolve upon Gogo for my present welfare and protection.

He, good monster, never alluded again, during all the days I was with him, to his unhappy passion. He was slavish in his loyalty to his word, and in his attentions to the poor creature so utterly in his power. And if I could not but understand the significance of his sighs and oglings and contortions, my feigned ignorance of those hieroglyphics was undoubtedly the most merciful of all the tortures I might have inflicted on him. Thinking of this, I find salve for certain bruises on my conscience, which, nevertheless, were, I am sure, quite unnecessarily self-inflicted. I acted for the best, and with great pain to myself. He has admitted this since, though confessing he was long in forgiving me.

I was in the tower, in all, but four days, which, nevertheless, might have been as many weeks for their tediousness. Gogo was an incomparable slave and henchman, only his devotion necessarily lacked the relish of publicity. If I could have had but one other to whom to boast it, I could have endured it longer. But to be Single-heart’s exclusive fetish, immured in his wigwam and appropriated to his sole company, was what never appealed to me. Nor do I believe that it does truthfully to any other. We are omnivorous; we can’t live on spoon-meat alone; and there is an end of it.

“Gogo,” I said once, “why are you so attached to me?”

“Why?” said he, throwing up his hands, after his fashion, with a sort of protesting groan to the powers that be. “Because I am a creature of surfaces and impressions; because, drawing my life from the great external of all, it is my doom to worship externals. We talk of our inheriting the world. Pooh! we are just an itch on the skin of this monster, whose dark internals are as remote from us as our own hated organs. Have we ever a thought of possessing our kingdom? Think with what terror we contemplate a living burial. We are the dust of contact between earth and sky; are bandied between space and matter, the dross of one or the scum of the other. Love itself is but the measure of our penetration. It is the propagation of superficies: it probes no farther: and all the time is breathing in the air like a swimmer. Are my eyes in my feet? Ask me why I hate the dark, and am attached to the light—to the brightest gnat of an hour flying within it.”

“Thank you, sir,” said I. “And that is me, I suppose?”

“That is you,” he said—“dancing on a window-pane, and wondering what fate keeps you from the garden beyond.”

“And you,” I said, “are the spider lurking in the window-corner, n’est ce pas, and wondering what fate keeps you from devouring me. Well, you are very complimentary; but, for my part, I would rather have an hour’s dancing on the surface than possess all the world that’s under.”

“Ay,” he answered, “and that’s why I covet you.”

Now, was he not an inexplicable creature, and, it must be said, a depressing? Moreover, for all his advocacy of my cause, I could never quite reconcile him to my view of madam.

“Remember the day of the picture,” he would say; “and how she rebuked us all by her attitude. If I testify to your martyrdom, Diana, I must testify to hers that preceded it.”

“She is welcome to the palm,” I cried. “And may she live long to flaunt her conquest.”

He did not answer; and so letting his dissent pass by default, put a bar between us that was never quite surmounted.

In the meanwhile, day followed day, and the frost held, and I was cold and ennuyée; and still he delayed our flight on the score of peril. I had come but poorly clad for the test, and I cried and shivered much in our dismal refuge, where what fire we could afford must be kept low from dread of the smoke betraying us. Present food we had, and some wine that helped a little to comfort our dejection; and on the Friday he was due, tramping fourteen miles thither and back over the hills, to claim his fresh dole of the tree above Wellcot, where faithful Patty—who was in his confidence as to his retreat, and the means towards my salvation he hoped to make of it—was wont to conceal it. Dear darling! How I longed to convey her a message; but he would not hear of it.

“Of all ephemera,” he said, “she is the very transparent-bodied fly, the secrets of whose own heart she cannot help but reveal.”

So I had to submit, and hold her sweet image in my arms o’ nights, when the wind came in at the door and the stars crackled with cold. But Gogo was right, I had to confess, when once from the deep woods beyond Shole we heard the clanging of bloodhounds, and knew that my enemies were vainly seeking the trail which had no existence. Then I cowered low, and felt a new gush of affection for the resourceful giant who was so wise in the singleness of his passion.

Often by day I would climb up the ladder to the loft where the astrologer’s telescope yet remained, commanding, like a disused cannon, the house and village he had fancied under its dominion, and there spend hours spying hungrily for what tokens of life the bitter season afforded. They were not many or inspiriting; but they served at least to keep me in touch with that world of my fellows that seemed eternally lost to me.

On the Friday I fell at Gogo’s feet.

“Safe or unsafe,” I cried, “take me away! I can stand this loneliness no longer.”

His face was full of a sorrowful ecstasy.

“And it was a garden to me,” he murmured; “blind that I am!”

“I shall die,” I cried terribly, “and you will lay me with the dead clown under the tree.”

“So would you be for ever mine,” he continued, in a sort of dream.

I shrunk from him, and seeing my look, he cast himself down on his face before me.

“Command me as you will,” he cried; “only never, never bid me from serving you.”

“You will go?” I sat back, eagerly canvassing him. “Why should I dream of parting with you? Are not our fortunes pledged together, even if I did not owe you the best of all gratitude? You are so wise and brave; you will find a plan and a direction. Only I can stop here no longer.—O, I can’t!—Gogo, take me away—to London—anywhere.”

He raised himself.

“Spare me this evening to forage,” he said, “so that to-morrow we can at least start provided.”

In deep night he left me, to go to the tree. It was the first time I had been abandoned to my sole self. So long as I could discern his figure, striding over the fields, like some unearthly goblin, on its high stilts, I stood by the door gazing into the starlight. Then, when I could see him no more, I sat down just within, my back to the vast emptiness, and hugged and cried to myself against the long panic of waiting.

Not many minutes had I sat thus, when something—a footstep, a shadow—seemed to fall upon my heart with a shock that stopped its beating. Too terrified for look or utterance, I crouched low, hoping the thing would pass, and leave me unobserved.

“I have come, madam, to invite you to a safer asylum,” said a low and musical voice.

I gave an irresistible cry, suppressing it instinctively, even in its emission, lest it should call back my faithful squire, from his long toil across the fields, to a need which these gentle tones were far from justifying. I struggled to my feet, and made myself as small as possible against the wall.

“Who are you?” I whispered.

“An outcast like yourself,” answered the shadow; “a fellow-sufferer at the hands of the very family to which you owe your misfortunes.”

“Who are you?” I could only whisper again.

“I am George Rowe,” it said. “Do you remember me? We have met once—an ineffaceable impression to me. I have followed your career since; unknown to you, have traced you by the flowers in your footsteps—yes, even to that wicked place, and your flight from it. I have watched you since from the woods below; have stood at this door at night and listened to your breathing till I maddened; have sorely bided my time, seeking to speak to you. I have tracked the honest tracker, your good servant and saviour; and, while I applaud his devotion, must warn you against the equivocal position in which your further acceptance of that devotion may place you.”

I could not see his face, but only the dusk of a comely form, as it stood now before me. Well could I recall, indeed, “the good-humoured gentleman in the grey coat,” who had once so espoused my childish cause, and earned thereby the hatred of his kinsmen. My confidence was returning to me with my wits.

“You are very considerate for us,” I said deridingly. “Do you come as madam your sister’s emissary, since you are so particular for my character?”

“Alas!” he said, “you do well to doubt me, being so related. But I am an outlaw from all that house’s influence and consideration.”

“An outlaw—you!” I murmured.

“Ay,” he answered; “ruined, menaced, and driven forth to nurse my wrongs in hiding.”

“Why, where?” I asked.

“To the woods,” he answered, “like Robin Hood.”

“O, an attractive asylum, sir, for distressed ladies,” I said.

He replied, “Maid Marian thought so.”

“Perhaps she had an attachment there,” said I. “I miss the application to myself.”

He laughed softly.

“Whether we fly from fear, or fly to love, we fly,” he said. “You may hold your enemies too cheap, not knowing that my lord makes interest with his sister, and for his own purposes, to subsidise your Dr. Peel. For the sake of the secrets of the prison-house, he will not leave her solus to the hue and cry. You have planted two dragon-heads in place of the one you severed.”

I shrunk before him.

“What do you mean? How do you know?”

“By the token,” he said, “that he destined me to your fate, and I answered with the better part of valour, which you will be wise to imitate.”

“To-morrow,” I muttered; “we had already decided.”

“That is not all, nor enough,” he urged. “You may be Una, with a rhinoceros, and that is not enough. My lord rides a thunder-bolt. It is not enough to flee him; you must vanish—be no more.”

Now all of a sudden—I know not how—his words seemed to wake me to the fond illusion of my state. How, indeed, was I situated, with a legless Caliban to show me how to run? I had been blinded, by Gogo’s devotion, to the real nature of the presumption it had thought to justify. What honest right had he to have undertaken so responsible a deed, save he had provided for it to the last details? I felt suddenly very naked and forlorn—shiftless and crying, like some poor exposed child in the night. I clasped my fingers to the shadow, entreating it in a broken voice—

“What am I to do? Advise me, help me!”

It moved upon me, soft, and swift, and irresistible. I felt my hands imprisoned—seized as out of the grave into an assurance of human warmth and sympathy.

“For what else am I here?” demanded the fervent voice. “Have I not the prior claim? Have you never thought of me in all these years—of what you might be now, save for my interference?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “Indeed, indeed I am not one to forget.”

“Well,” he said, “I am just a vagabond at last, and desperate in romance; and you—your reason is forfeit, if not your life. Be under no delusion about it; nor about the real impotence of this good fellow to save you. Come with me, then, while there is time, and be my little sister. I am lonely in the deep woods.”

I did not move or speak, but I gazed up intently into the white bloom of his face. The strangest thought was struggling for expression in me—of some conscious gravitation, through all these years, towards an affinity which had been shadowed out to me at that first and only meeting. I felt no shyness, but only a restful confidence in his company. Was not that strange? To be brother and sister, one and indivisible in the candid sympathies of Nature. I recognised in a moment that it was that ideal relationship which had always appealed to me for the best and purest—that I could never be happy again divorced from it.

Suddenly the tears were in my eyes.

“If I could truly be your little sister,” I said, “and keep house for you, as Gretel did for the gentle shepherd who had plucked her when a flower.”

He heaved a long sigh, full of rapture.

“Quick, then! let me pluck my flower,” says he, “and run.”

But now, at that, for some reason, a revulsion of feeling took me. I sank down upon the ground away from him, and hid my face in my hands.

“No, no,” I cried—“not yet, not now. O, leave me, please!”

Perhaps he was wise to understand and temporise. Anyhow, he went, though no farther than the door.

For a moment I hated myself; for a moment I felt the basest thing on earth. What use to reflect that reason and kindness were on my side: that, since I could not cure a poor fond fool, it were no mercy, but the contrary, to submit him to the continued infection of my presence? I said so to myself, and saying it, saw his face returning—full of light and eagerness—to learn the damning truth! To be held accursed in that great heart! I could not, I could not! Poor Gogo! Had he not given up everything for me? I would not desert him. Why should he not come too? But no: I saw in the same instant that that was impossible, since he himself had no thought, no wish, to be my brother. And perhaps, if I went, I should never see him again. Well, would not that be the best for him? Let me nurse my grief eternal, so long as he found his cure in separation. It were better I should go. Freed of this incubus, he would have no longer need to crouch and starve. The world had no reason, so far as I knew, to identify him with my flight. And now every hour he remained with me was an added peril to his safety, his very existence!

Quite wild, I rose to my feet and went panting to the shadow.

“Take me away,” I said, “before he breaks my heart, returning.”

He took my hand tight in his, drew me under the starlight, and together we fled down the hill and into the woods.

XVII.
I AM CONSIGNED TO A GREEN GRAVE

To you, my dear Alcide, conscience is, I know, a disease, and virtue its relapse. I do not, then, ask your sympathy, but only your commiseration in that long struggle with my better self in which I was now to engage—a struggle which found me child, and left me woman—a struggle through whose intermittent deliriums moved ever the sorrowful figure of my poor lost Gogo.

Yet I must own that the oasis in which this destiny was to be fulfilled figured for a period the greenest in all my desert career. It was a dear time, in truth; a dear, abandoned, wonderful time, until the inevitable disenchantment came. Alas! to take profit of your own unselfishnesses is, with a stern Providence, to convert them into the plainest of worldly transactions!

No word passed between me and my companion as we hurried, deeper and deeper, into the fathomless woods. Sure of foot and, it seemed, of destination, he drew me unresisting by cloudy deeps of foliage, by starlit alleys, by ways so thronged and massed with trunks as to seem impenetrable. Often I shrunk before some imaginary charge of shadows; often cried out in the silent rush of woodland things across our path. There was no wind that could reach and buffet those packed desolations; no frost, save where in the clearings it could find space to bloom. And these, for precaution’s sake, we avoided, lest our footsteps should betray us. On and on we sped, till my heart was sick in my breast, and I cried out to rest and die. But he would not let me stop.

“Courage, little sister!” he cried; “we are within a cast of home.”

We mounted, after that, a long and gentle hill, from whose sides the trees fell away, till, on the summit, there was none. But here, sunk deep in the crest, was, as I could discern, an ancient gravel pit, whose slopes were rough with brake and brush to a giddy distance down.

“Come,” he whispered, and clasped my hand secure.

We descended by a path, that was no path to me, and, at the bottom, stooped under a very thicket of bush, and gained once more a sense of space and movement, but so deadly close-shut that for a little I dared not stir.

“Come,” whispered my companion again. “It is nothing but a cleft in the hill, but so overgrown above that no mortal would guess it there.”

Still I dared not move. When suddenly I felt his arm about me, and his lips on mine. Then I started to myself with a shock of anger.

“Is this to be a brother?” I cried.

“What else,” he murmured, “to give his little sister confidence.”

The low laugh with which he said it made my blood fire. I could have struck him in my fury.

“Go on!” I said, in a repressed voice. “I have come so far; I must follow, I suppose.”

“Will you not let me lead you?”

“No.”

“You may stumble in the dark.”

“Not to the fall you think.”

“I am sorry.”

“Very well. Go on.”

He went before, submissively. The gully cut straight, like a giant furrow, through the hill. It was narrow and pitch-dark, sodden here and there with dripping water, and always smelling like a vault. Not once in its entire length, so far as I could see, did the dense mat of overgrowth thin to that texture that a star of all the hosts above was visible.

At last he stopped so suddenly that I near fell against him.

“Hush!” he whispered, “we are at the end. Can you see enough to follow me?”

“Yes,” I said; “my eyes are opened now.”

He had hard work, I knew, to suppress a chuckle over my tragic tone.

“Well, keep them so,” said he; and, elbowing up a great pad of foliage, beckoned to me to pass. I obeyed, holding my skirts from him, and in a moment discovered myself in the open once more.

We had emerged, it seemed, high on the near perpendicular side of another pit, or cutting. Right beneath us, shouldering the very steep on which we were perched, was the thatched roof of a cottage, an open skylight in the midst gaping at us scarce ten feet below. So close did it invite us, in the bewildering starlight, that I was near springing, on the thought, to gain its shelter. But my companion restrained me.

“Wait,” he whispered drily. “A little of your discretion, please.”

Doubtful of me, he let go his hold reluctantly, and stooping once more under the curtain of foliage, dragged out a ladder, which was concealed behind, and which he now, with infinite precaution, lowered through the skylight till it rested.

“Now,” he said, “climb down, while I hold it firm.”

It was the rudest thing; just slats nailed across a pole—a ladder for bears, not men. But I was young and lithe, and quickly was down and through, and standing, trembling over this finish to my adventure, on the floor of a little dark, invisible room. And so, before I had time to collect myself, the other was descended in my footsteps, and the ladder hauled in and laid along the wall, and a little silence ensued.

“Well,” said his voice at length, “you are safe at last, little sister.”

Then, I don’t know how it was, the tears would come.

“Why, don’t you believe it?” he whispered, groping a step nearer.

“Have you given me reason to?” I answered, shrinking from his touch, and gulping down my sobs.

He drew away at once.

“The best reason in the world,” he said coldly, “since I have placed my life in your hands—since I leave you here the means to escape, if you will, and curry favour by betraying me.”

I could have cried out on his cruelty, but dared not.

“Understand, this is your sanctuary,” he went on, “prepared against your coming, and which none, in their turn, will betray. The path to it is sacred to me. No one will disturb you; you are secure as a bird in its nest. There is a bed in a corner; rushlight and holder and tinder-box on a table by. Light, and take possession. I must go and reassure Portlock.”

I heard him move softly over the floor; a trap opened somewhere, letting in a momentary weak film of light, and he was gone.

For a time I stood motionless, hearing the murmur of voices somewhere below; then, suddenly panic-struck, groped for the table and tinder, and shakily struck fire. The wick caught, flamed up and settled, and I saw my possession.

It was the tiniest, kindest little room, under a sloping roof, clean and friendly, with a white bed. I was dazed and weary beyond speculation. Leaving the light burning, I crept under the coverlet as I was, and fell into a profound sleep.

XVIII.
I BEGIN ANOTHER FOLLY

I opened my eyes to a sense of utter restfulness and peace. A feeling of green isolation, of a quiet and guarded security, such as not all Gogo’s watchfulness could accomplish for me in the tower, came instantly to comfort the first startled shock of my waking. Little demure clouds drifted over the skylight; I heard a faint twitter of birds on the hillside; there were woodland berries and flaming leaves in my room; pictures, too; and a dozen pretty attentions to reassure me. Sure he must have made very certain of his capture before he decorated the cage so handsomely. And for how long, pray, had he held his hand and aloof, biding his opportunity? He must have kept his secret well, at least, for I had never known a hint of his presence.

I smiled, and closed my eyes again. It was a most endearing thought, the thought of that brotherly haunting, while I had been bemoaning my abandonment by all the world. There was still that in me, then, to attract admiration, to ensure my affinity with the strong and shapely. I was sick to death of malformations, mental and bodily. What had become of him? I had not reached the end of my resentment, but I did not wish him to think it insurmountable; and I was certainly curious to learn how far my romantic memory of him was justified.

And, in the meantime, where was I? in what remote eyrie of the green forest? For all I could see, I might be imprisoned in a well.

I rose, and, after making my toilette, had paused undecided, wondering what was to come next, when I heard his voice, very mock-humble, at the trap—

“Little sister, will you come down to breakfast?”

The blood thrilled in my temples, but I hardened my heart, and answered “Yes,” as frigid as a nun.

He flung up the hatch at once, and for the first time I saw the ladder going down into candlelight, whence a smell of warm dust and tallow rose to my nostrils. He descended before me, and I followed, into the leanest of little cellars, with a rough board on trestles in it and a stool or two. The rafters were hung with cobwebs; there were a couple of dismal dips in horn sconces on the walls; a closed door showed dimly at the farther end, and that was all.

I turned in amazement upon my companion, to find him regarding me with a curious expression. But it sobered at once before my gaze. It was not, indeed, now I came to con him, quite the expression of my memory. The sweet humour of it had fallen, I could have thought, upon more mocking times. There was a look in his face as if he had got to love himself the better, the worse he had been depreciated by others; as if injustice had somewhat crooked the old lines of chivalry. But for the rest, he was as bronzed and comely as ever, as lithe and muscular; and the common woodman’s dress (coarse grogram jacket and leggings to the hips), which, whether for convenience or disguise, he had adopted, showed off his fine figure to perfection.

“Where is it, the breakfast?” I asked.

“Cooking, by Portlock,” said he. “I’m waiting to pull it through.”

He stood stooping, indeed, and holding a string in his hand, by what looked like a black gap at the foot of the wall beyond the table.

“To pull it through!” I cried out. “Are we to eat it here?”

He turned his head, as he leaned, to scan me.

“We can take it up under the skylight, if you like,” said he.

“My room!”

A violent retort was on my lips; but something in his face warned me, and it died unuttered. For all his affected humility, there was a masterfulness here I had not guessed. I realised on the instant that I did not know, had never known him. It was not altogether a disagreeable awakening.

I sat down, silent, on one of the stools; and he addressed me again quietly from his place—

“Little sister, you have committed yourself to my care—very properly, I think, and very properly trustful of an elder brother. Do you know my age? I am thirty-four—just double your seventeen; and at least worldly-wise enough to direct you.”

“That is all very well,” I said, half stifled; “but why have you brought me here?”

“Have I not told you?” he answered. “To save you from a wolf, who would have set his teeth in my little white lamb.”

“No, you have not told me,” I cried; “and I am no more lamb of yours than his; and anyhow, I had my shepherd already.”

“A poor shepherd,” he said. “Witness his watchfulness!”

I bit my lip, and said no more. For a moment I hated myself and him—his specious reasonings, which had led me to abandon my honest, good comrade and saviour. While I sat dumb, a low whistle sounded through the wall; and instantly he turned to me.

“You do not like your dining-parlour?” he said. “But, believe me, it has a thousand conveniences of privacy, of which here is not the least.”

And, with the word, drawing on the string he held in his hand, he brought a tray into light. It was packed with comestibles—bread, and honey, and collops of venison that smelt royally; but, when he transferred these to the table, I had no stomach for them, and pushed away the plate he offered me.

“What! You won’t eat?” he said.

“I can’t breakfast in a sewer.”

“Very well.”

He fell to himself, without further delay, and with plenty of appetite. I watched him out of the corners of my eyes, half maddened already by the abstinence I had imposed on myself. He was dressed like a forester, I have said; and now I observed that he affected the manners of a forester, consciously, it would seem, effacing in himself the more gentle observances. It may have been an effort to him; but, anyhow, he tore his bread and gnawed his bones with the air of one bred to the soil—with a set of perfect white teeth, too, it must be conceded. And, while he despatched, throwing his litter on the board, he continued talking to me fitfully.

“Yes,” he said, “it is very convenient for such as we, who desire not only to save our labour, but our lives certainly, and our self-respect if possible. You don’t ask me where we are?”

I shook my head in indifference.

“Well,” he said, “you must know some time, when you might be more curious; and short explanations suit me best. We are immured, child, in a wall; and so long as we don’t betray ourselves, nothing can betray us—not even into an acknowledgment of what one of us may owe to the other.”

“I am grateful to you,” I said coldly, and said no more. The truth is, I was hardly listening to him, so intense had grown my desire that he would coax me at last into eating something.

He laughed, and, pushing his plate away, settled his fists on his hips, and began, like a satisfied man, to troll a soft little song. I could stand it no longer.

“Give me a little piece,” I said, “and I will show you how collops should be eaten.”

“You mean,” he answered at once, “that you will show me how to behave. But I have done with all that hypocrisy.”

He rose with the words, having finished, and, to my anger and astonishment, cleared the board, piecemeal and deliberately, and, piling all on the tray, gave the signal for its withdrawal. It disappeared instantly. Then he returned to his stool, and, pulling out pipe and tobacco, began to smoke placidly. Fury overcame me.

“Have you not forgotten to ask my permission?” I cried.

“Punctilio in a sewer!” he answered, puffing; “that is hardly to be expected.”

I rose at once.

“I wish to be by myself,” I said.

He took his pipe from his lips.

“You know the way. If you object to mine, there is the ladder in your room—and the skylight—and all the forest to choose from”—and he began to smoke again.

I left him, without another word, and, ascending to my closet, dropped the trap with a slam. It was an outrage beyond endurance. I threw myself upon my bed, and wept tears of rage. What a fool I had been, what a fool, to commit my destinies to a savage! I had thought romance had come to find me, walking on two feet in the starlight, and all the time it had been leaving me, stumping sorrowfully away on its poor wooden legs. My soul gushed out in fresh mourning for the dear monster I had wronged.

More than once I rose, in the full determination to fly and rejoin him. As often, the hopelessness of my position cast me down again. I had no idea where I was; I dared not face the prospect of wandering, lost and alone, in those savage solitudes. The wretch had played his part well—and for what? Why for me.

The thought, at last, quieted my grief—brought me to a little reason. After all, I had been cold with him, something less than grateful. What had brought him to repudiate the customs of his caste? I fell into a fit of speculation. Perhaps it was in scorn of an order that had basely disinherited him. His words had seemed to imply so. Perhaps he had meant no more than to read me a lesson in feeling.

I sighed. I was wilful and imperious, I knew, I said to myself. I had been spoilt a little, perhaps, by admiration, and my better qualities obscured. It was a wonder he could have seen anything to covet in me. Was it my part to convince him of his mistake?

I sighed again, and then rose and walked about. Every detail of the tiny chamber was witness to the loving expectations he had formed of me. What was I to do? How climb down and keep my place in my own eyes?

He meant to leave me to resolve the question for myself, it appeared. All day I waited and hungered, and not a sound of his footstep approaching did I hear. At length, when it was dark, quite desperate I took my candle, and, softly opening the trap, listened a moment, and descended. The cellar was empty; only the board and stools, and nothing else. I went swiftly scanning it, holding the light overhead. I tried the door at the end; it was fast locked. Unless he had gone out that way, there was no accounting for his disappearance.

All at once I heard the thin mutter of voices—his and another’s, I was sure. Seeking to localise them, I came upon the low hole in the wall through which he had dragged the breakfast tray. I stooped, and hearing, I thought, the whisper clearer, sunk to my knees and looked through. Here was a passage, I found to my surprise, wide enough for a man to creep by; and, beyond, it seemed, a faintly lighted room. As I bent, I heard the chairs of the talkers drag, as if the two were rising, and, fearful of discovery, fled on tiptoe to my room once more, and, noiselessly closing the trap, stood panting and rigid by it. To what dark mystery was I being made the innocent and unconscious accessory? I felt suddenly bewildered and terrified. The light in my hand swayed and leaped, evoking gusty phantoms on the wall. A wind seemed to boom in my brain. I was really light-headed with hunger, I think. Presently, from sheer giddiness, I threw myself on my bed once more, and fell into a sort of waking stupor.

In the midst, after how long I know not, a voice reached me. He was summoning me, if I needed it, to supper. If I needed it! What cruelty! He would not give my pride a chance. Half in fear, half fury, I turned my face to the wall, and did not answer.

He wasted no time on me. I heard him withdraw in a moment, whistling. I had hoped he would think me escaped; would venture in, perhaps, panic-struck, to encounter the full torrent of my indignation. But he showed no concern whatever. He felt secure of his wretched little trapped bird, I supposed. And he was justified—was justified. Then I cried as I had never cried before. He might have had some patience, some consideration. At last, quite famished and exhausted, I fell asleep.

I awoke, in full day, to find him standing over and regarding me. I felt weak, and too utterly subdued to resent his presence as it deserved. There was no pity in his eyes even then. I closed my own, feeling my throat swell.

“I thought you might be hungry,” he said. “Are you?”

At that, for all my efforts, the tears came.

“Don’t you know?” I said. “But I suppose you think to starve me into submission.”