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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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"Johnny Ludlow" was the name used by Ellen Wood as the by-line for a series of 90 popular stories and serial novels published in the British monthly Argosy, which she bought in 1867 and edited under her married name, Mrs. Henry Wood. The first story signed by and featuring "Johnny Ludlow" appeared in January 1868, the last in January-June 1891.
Six collections of stories in the series were published in book form. The first story, "Shaving the Ponies' Tails," was not included in any of these collections, presumably because some elements of the narrative and characterization are atypical in comparison with the rest of the series. The 48th story, "Fred Temple's Warning," was also omitted.
—Roy Glashan
IT was early in August, and we were at Dyke Manor, for the Squire had let us go home from school for the Worcester races. We had joined him at Worcester the previous day, Tuesday, driving home with him in the evening. To-morrow, Thursday, he would drive us over to the course again; to- day, Wednesday, the horses would have rest; and on Friday we must return to school.
Breakfast was over, the Squire gone out, and the few minutes' Bible-reading to us—which Mrs. Todhetley never forgot, though Tod did not always stay in for it, but he did this morning—came to an end. Hannah appeared at the door as she closed the Book.
"Miss Barbary's come, ma'am," she said.
"Run, my dear," cried Mrs. Todhetley to Lena.
"I don't want to," said Lena, running to the open window instead, and nearly pitching head-foremost through it: upon which Hannah captured her and carried her off.
"Who on earth is Miss Barbary?" questioned Tod. "Any relation to the man at Caramel Cottage?"
"His daughter," said Mrs. Todhetley. "She comes to teach Lena French."
"Hope she's less of a shady character than her father!" was Tod's free comment.
A year or two before this, a stranger had made his appearance at Church Dykely, and put up at the Silver Bear. He was a gentlemanly-looking man of perhaps forty years, tall, slender, agile, with thin, distinguished features, an olive skin, black hair, and eyes of a peculiar shade of deep steel-blue. People went into raptures over his face, and called it beautiful. And so it was; but to my thinking it had a look in it that was the opposite of beautiful; any way, the opposite of good. They said it was my fancy at home: but Duffham owned to the same fancy. His name, as he wrote it down one day at the Silver Bear, was Pointz Barbary. After a week's stay at the inn, he, finding, I suppose, that the neighbourhood suited him, looked out for a little place to settle down upon, and met with it in Caramel Cottage, a small dwelling near to us, on the property called Caramel's Farm. The cottage was then to be let, and Mr. Barbary went into it.
Some items of his past history came out by degrees; it is hard to say how, for he told none himself. Now and then some former friend or other came to pay him a short visit; and it may be that these strangers talked about him.
Pointz Barbary, a gentleman by descent, and once of fairly good substance, had been a great traveller, had roved pretty nearly all over the world. The very few relatives he possessed lived in Canada—people of condition, it was said—and his own property (what was left of it) was also there. He had been married twice. First to a young lady in France; her friends (English) having settled there for economy's sake. She died at the end of the year, leaving him a little girl, that the mother's people at once took to. Next he married a Miss Reste, daughter of Colonel Reste, in her Majesty's service. A few years later she also died—died of consumption—leaving him a widower and childless. It's true he had his first wife's daughter, but she lived in France with her mother's sister, so he did not get much benefit from her.
Mr. Barbary was poor. No mistake about that. The interest of his first wife's money brought him in fifty-two pounds yearly, and this he would enjoy till his death, when it went to his daughter. Miss Reste had brought him several thousand pounds; but he and she had lived away, and not a stiver remained of it. His own means had also been spent lavishly; and, so far as was known, he had but the two and fifty pounds a year to live upon at Caramel Cottage, with a chance remittance from Canada now and again.
He made no acquaintance at Church Dykely, and none was made with him. Civilly courteous in a rather grand and haughty way when he met people, so far as a few remarks went, touching the weather or the crops, and similar safe topics, he yet kept the world at a distance. As the time went on it was thought there might be a reason for this. Whispers began to circulate that Mr. Barbary's doings were not orthodox. He was suspected of poaching, both in game and fish, and a strong feeling of shyness grew up against him.
Some few months prior to the present time—August—his daughter came to Caramel Cottage. Her aunt in France was dead, and she had no home henceforth but her father's. That I and Tod had not seen or heard of her until now, was owing to the midsummer holidays having been spent at Crabb Cot. The vacation over, and Mrs. Todhetley back at Dyke Manor, she found herself called upon by Miss Barbary. Hearing that Mrs. Todhetley wished her little girl to begin French, she had come to offer herself as teacher. The upshot was that she was engaged, and came for a couple of hours every morning to drill French into Lena.
"What's she like?" asked Tod of the mother, upon her explaining this. "Long and thin and dark, like Barbary, and disagreeable with a self-contained reticence?"
"She is not the least like him in any way," was Mrs. Todhetley's answer. "She is charmingly simple—good, I am sure, and one of the most open-natured girls I ever met. 'I wish to do it for the sake of earning a little money,' she said to me, when asking to come. 'My dear father is not rich, and if I can help him in ever so small a way I shall be thankful.' The tears almost came into her eyes as she spoke," added Mrs. Todhetley; "she quite won my heart."
"She seems to think great things of that respectable parent of hers!" commented Tod.
"Oh, yes. Whatever may be the truth as to his failings, she sees none in him. And, my dears, better that it should be so. She earns a little money of me, apart from teaching Lena," added Mrs. Todhetley.
"What at?" asked Tod. "Teaching you?"
The mother shook her head with a smile. "I found out, Joseph, that she is particularly skilful at mending old lace. I have some that needs repairing. She takes it home and does it at her leisure—and you cannot imagine how grateful she is."
"How old is she?"
"Nineteen—close upon twenty, I think she said," replied the mother. And there the conversation ended, for Mrs. Todhetley had to go to the kitchen to give the daily orders.
The morning wore on. We went to Church Dykely and were back again by twelve o'clock. Tod had got Don on the lawn, making him jump for biscuit, when the dog rushed off, barking, and we heard a scream. A young lady in a straw hat and a half-mourning cotton dress was running away from him, she and Lena having come out of the house together.
"Come here, Don," said Tod in his voice of authority, which the good Newfoundland dog never disobeyed. "How dare you, sir? Johnny, lad, I suppose that's Miss Barbary."
I had forgotten all about her. A charming girl, as the mother had said, slight and graceful, with a face like a peach blossom, dimpled cheeks, soft light-brown hair and dark-blue eyes. Not the hard, steel-blue eyes that her father had: sweet eyes, these, with a gentle, loving look in them.
"You need not be afraid of the dog," cried Tod, advancing to where she stood, behind the mulberry tree. "Miss Barbary, I believe?"—lifting his cap.
"Yes," she said in a frank tone, turning her frank face to him; "I am Katrine Barbary. It is a very large dog—and he barks at me."
Large he was, bigger than many a small donkey. A brave, faithful, good-tempered dog, he, and very handsome, his curly white coat marked out with black. Gentle to friends and respectable strangers, Don was at mortal enmity with tramps and beggars: we could not cure him of this, so he was chained up by day. At night he was unchained to roam the yard at will, but the gate was kept locked. Had he got out, he might have pinned the coat of any loose man he met, but I don't believe he would have bitten him. A good fright Don would give, but not mortal injury. At least, we had never yet known him to do that.
Lena ran up in her short pink frock, her light curls flying. "Miss Barbary is always afraid when she hears Don bark," she said to us. "She will not go near the yard; she thinks he'll bite her."
"I will teach you how to make friends with him," said Tod: "though he would never hurt you, Miss Barbary. Come here and pat his head whilst I hold him; call him by his name gently. Once he knows you, he would protect you from harm with his life."
She complied with ready obedience, though the roses left her cheeks. "There," said Tod, loosing the dog, and letting her pat him at leisure, "see how gentle he is; how affectionately he looks up at you!"
"Please not to think me very silly!" she pleaded earnestly, as though beseeching pardon for a sin. "I have never been used to dogs. We do not keep dogs in France. At least very few people do. Oh dear!"
Something that she carried in her left hand wrapped in paper had dropped on to the lawn. Don pounced upon it. "Oh, please take it from him! please, please!" she cried in terror. Tod laughed, and extricated the little parcel.
"It has some valuable old lace in it of Mrs. Todhetley's," she explained as she thanked him. "I am taking it home to mend."
"You mend old lace famously, I hear," said Tod, as we walked with her to the entrance gate.
"Yes, I think I do it nearly as well as the nuns who taught me."
"Have you been in a convent?"
"Only for my education. I was an externe—a daily pupil. My aunt lived next door to it. I went every morning at eight o'clock and returned home at six in the evening to supper."
"Did you get no dinner?" asked Tod.
She took the question literally. "I had dinner and collation at school; breakfast and supper at home. That was the way in our town with the externes at the convent. We were Protestants, you see, so my aunt liked me to be at home on Sundays. Thank you for teaching Don to know me: and now I will say good morning to you."
I was holding the gate open for her to pass out, when Ben Gibbon went by, a gun carelessly held over his shoulder. He touched his hat to us, and we gave him a slight nod in reply. Miss Barbary said "Good day, Mr. Gibbon."
Tod drew down his displeased lips. He had already taken a liking to the girl—so had I, for that matter—she was a true lady, and Mr. Ben Gibbon, a brother to the gamekeeper at Chavasse Grange, could not boast of a particularly shining character.
"Do you know him, Miss Barbary?" asked Tod. "Be quiet, Don!" he cried to the dog, which had begun to growl when he saw Gibbon.
"He comes to our house sometimes to see papa. Please pardon me for keeping you waiting," she added to me, as I still held back the gate. "That gun is pointed this way and it may go off."
Tod was amused. "You seem to dread guns as much as you dread dogs, Miss Barbary. I will walk home with you," he said, as she at last came through, the gun having got to a safe distance.
"Oh, but——" she was beginning, and then stopped in confusion, blushing hotly, and looking at both of us. "I should like it; but——would it be proper?"
"Proper!" echoed Tod, staring, and then bursting into a fit of laughter long and loud. "Oh dear! why, Miss Barbary, you must be French all over! Johnny, you can come, too. Lena, run back again; you have not any hat on."
Crossing the road to take the near field way, we went along the path that led beside the hedge, and soon came in view of Caramel Cottage; it was only a stone's throw, so to say, from our house. An uncommonly lonely look it had, buried there amidst many trees, with the denser trees of the Grove close beyond it. We asked her whether she did not find it dull here.
"At first I did, very; I do still a little: it is so different from the lively town I have lived in, where we knew all the people, and they knew us. But we shall soon be more lively," she resumed, after a pause. "A cousin is coming to stay with us."
"Indeed," said Tod. "Is it a lady or a gentleman?"
"Oh, it is a gentleman—Edgar Reste. He is not my cousin by kin; not really related to me; but papa says he will be as my cousin, as my brother even, and that he is very nice. Papa's last wife was Miss Reste, and he is her nephew. He is a barrister in London, and he has been much overworked, and he is coming here to-morrow for rest and country air."
Within the low green gate of the little front garden of Caramel Cottage stood Mr. Barbary, in his brown velveteen shooting coat and breeches of the same, that became him and his straight lithe limbs so well. Every time I saw him the beauty of his face struck me afresh; but so did the shifty expression of his eyes.
"There's papa!" exclaimed the girl, her dimples lighting up. "And—why, there's a gentleman with him—a stranger! I wonder who it is?"
I saw him as he came from the porch down the narrow garden-path. A slight, slender young man of middle height and distinguished air, with a pale, worn, nice-looking face, and laughing, luminous dark brown eyes. Yes, I saw Edgar Reste for the first time at this his entrance at Caramel Cottage, and it was a thing to be thankful for that I could not then foresee the nameless horror his departure from it (I may as well say his disappearance) was to shadow forth.
"How do you do?" said Mr. Barbary to us, courteously civil. "Katrine, here's a surprise for you: your cousin is come. Edgar, this is my little girl.—Mr. Reste," he added, by way of introduction generally.
Mr. Reste lifted his hat, bowed slightly, and then turned to Katrine with outstretched hand. She met it with a hot blush, as if strange young men did not shake hands with her every day.
"We did not expect you quite so soon," she gently said, to atone for her first surprise.
"True," he answered. "But I felt unusually out of sorts yesterday, and thought it would make no difference to Mr. Barbary whether I came to-day or to-morrow."
His voice had a musical ring; his manner was open and honest. He might be Pointz Barbary's nephew by marriage, but I am sure he was not by nature.
"They'll fall in love with one another, those two; you'll see," said Tod to me as we went home. "Did you mark his pleased face when he spoke to her, Johnny—and how she blushed?"
"Oh, come, Tod! they tell me I am fanciful. What are you?"
"Not fanciful with your fancies, lad. As to you, Mr. Don"—turning to the dog, which had done nothing but growl while we stood before Barbary's gate, "unless you mend your manners, you shall not come out again. What ails you, sir, to-day?"
IF love springs out of companionship, why then, little wonder that it found its way into Caramel Cottage. They were with each other pretty nearly all day and every day, that young man and that young woman; and so—what else was to be expected?
"We must try and get you strong again," said Mr. Barbary to his guest, who at first, amidst other adverse symptoms, could eat nothing. No matter what dainty little dish old Joan prepared, Mr. Reste turned from it.
Mr. Barbary had taken to old Joan with the house. A little, dark, active woman, she, with bright eyes and a mob- cap of muslin. She was sixty years old; quick, capable, simple and kindly. We don't get many such servants now-a- days. One defect Joan had—deafness. When a voice was close to her, it was all right; at a distance she could not hear it at all.
"How long is it that you have been ailing, Cousin Edgar?" asked Miss Barbary, one day when they were sitting together.
"Oh, some few weeks, Cousin Katrine," he answered in a tone to imitate hers—and then laughed. "Look here, child, don't call me 'Cousin Edgar!' For pity's sake, don't!"
"I know you are not my true cousin," she said, blushing furiously.
"It's not that. If we were the nearest cousins that can be, it would still be silly." Objectionable, was the word he had all but used. "It is bad taste; has not a nice sound to cultivated ears—as I take it. I am Edgar, if you please; and you are Katrine."
"In France we say 'mon cousin,' or 'ma cousine,' when speaking to one," returned Katrine.
"But we are not French; we are English."
"Well," she resumed, as her face cooled down—"why did you not take rest before? and what is it that has made you ill?"
He shook his head thoughtfully. The parlour window, looking to the front, was thrown up before them. A light breeze tempered the summer heat, wafting in sweetness from the homely flowers and scented shrubs. The little garden was crowded with them, as all homely gardens were then. Roses, lilies, columbines, stocks, gillyflowers, sweet peas, sweet Williams, pinks white and red, tulips, pansies (or as they were then generally called, garden-gates), mignonette, bachelor's buttons, and lots of others, sweet or not sweet, that I can't stay to recall: and clusters of marjoram and lavender and "old-man" and sweet-briar, and jessamines white and yellow, and woodbine, and sweet syringa; and the tall hollyhock, and ever true but gaudy sunflower—each and all flourished there in their respective seasons. Amidst the grand "horticulture," as it is phrased, of these modern days, it is a pleasure to lose one's self in the memories of these dear old simple gardens. Sometimes I get wondering if we shall ever meet them again—say in Heaven.
They sat there at the open window enjoying the fragrance. Katrine had made a paper fan, and was gently fluttering it to and fro before her flushed young face.
"I have burnt the candle at both ends," continued Mr. Reste. "That is what's the matter with me."
"Y—es," hesitated she, not quite understanding.
"At law business all day, and at literary work the best part of the night, year in and year out—it has told upon me, Katrine."
"But why should you do both?" asked Katrine.
"Why? Oh, because—because my pocket is a shallow pocket, and has, moreover, a hole in it."
She laughed.
"Not getting briefs showered in upon me as one might hope my merits deserve—I know not any young barrister who does—I had to supplement my earnings in that line by something else, and I took to writing. That is up- hill work, too; but it brings in a few shillings now and again. One must pay one's way, you know, Katrine, if possible; and with some of us it is apt to be a rather extravagant way."
"Is it with you?" she asked, earnestly.
"It was. I squandered money too freely at first. My old uncle gave me a fair sum to set up with when my dinners were eaten and I was called; and I suppose I thought the sum would never come to an end. Ah! we buy our experience dearly."
"Will not the old uncle give you more?"
"Not a stiver—this long while past. He lives in India, and writing to ask him does no good. And he is the only relative left to me in the world."
"Except papa."
Edgar Reste lifted his eyebrows. "Your father is not my relative, young lady. His late wife was my aunt; my father's sister."
"Did your father leave you no money, when he died?"
"Not any. He was a clergyman with a good benefice, but he lived up to his income and did not save anything. No, I have only myself to lean on. Don't know whether it will turn out to be a broken reed."
"If I could only help you!" breathed Katrine.
"You are helping me more than I can say," he answered, impulsively. "When with you I have a feeling of rest—of peace. And that's what I want."
Which avowal brought a hot blush again to Miss Katrine's cheek and a curious thrill somewhere round about her heart.
Time went on. Before much of it had elapsed, they were in
love with one another for ever and for ever, with that first
love that comes but once in a lifetime. That is, in secret;
it was not betrayed or spoken of by either of them, or
intended to be. Mr. Reste, Barrister-at-law (and briefless),
could as soon have entertained thoughts of setting up a
coach-and-four, as of setting up a wife. He had not a ghost
of the means necessary at present, he saw not the smallest
chance yet of attaining them. Years and years and years
might go by before that desirable pinnacle in the social
race was reached; and it might never be reached at all. It
would be the height of dishonour, as he considered, to
persuade Katrine Barbary into an engagement, which might
never be fulfilled. How could he condemn her to wear out her
heart and her life and her days in loneliness, sighing for
him, never seeing him—he at one end of the world, she
at the other? for that's how, lover-like, he estimated the
distance between this and the metropolis. So he never let a
word of his love escape him, and he guarded his looks, and
treated Katrine as his little cousin.
And she? Be you sure, she was as reticent as he. An inexperienced young maiden, scrupulously and modestly brought up, she kept her secret zealously. It is true she could not help her blushes, or the tell-tale thrilling of her soft voice; but Edgar Reste was not obliged to read them correctly.
Likely enough he could penetrate, as the weeks wore on, some of the ins and outs in the private worth of Mr. Barbary. In fact, he did do so. He found that gentleman rather addicted to going abroad at night when reasonable people were in bed and asleep. Mr. Barbary gave him his views upon the subject. Poaching, he maintained, was a perfectly legitimate and laudable occupation. "It's one to be proud of, instead of the contrary," he asserted, one September day, when they were in the gun-room together. " Proud of, Edgar."
"For a gentleman?" laughed Mr. Reste, who invariably made light of the subject. And he glanced at his host curiously from between his long dark eyelashes and straight, fine eyebrows; at the dark, passive, handsome face, at the long slender fingers, busy over the lock of his favourite gun.
"For a gentleman certainly. Why should common men usurp all its benefit? The game laws are obnoxious laws, and it behoves us to set them at naught."
Another amused laugh from Mr. Reste.
"Who hesitates to do a bit of smuggling?" argued the speaker. "Answer me that, Reste. Nobody. Nobody, from a prince to a peasant, from poor Jack Tar to his superfine commander, but deems it meritorious to cheat the Customs. When a man lands here or yonder with a few contraband things about him, and gets them through safely, do his friends and acquaintances turn the cold shoulder upon him? Not a bit of it; they regard it as a fine feather in his cap."
"Oh, no doubt."
"Poaching is the same thing. It is also an amusement. Oh, it is grand fun, Edgar Reste, to be out on a fine night and dodge the keepers!" continued Mr. Barbary, with enthusiasm. "The spice of daring in it, of danger, if you choose to put it that way, stimulates the nerves like wine."
"Not quite orthodox, though, mon ami."
"Orthodox be hanged. Stolen pleasures are sweetest, as we all know. You shall go out with me some night, Edgar, and judge for yourself."
"Don't say but I will—just to look on—if you'll ensure my getting back in safety," said the barrister, in a tone that might be taken for jest or earnest, assent or refusal.
"Back in safety!" came the mocking echo, as if to get back in safety from midnight poaching were a thing as sure as the sun. "We'll let a week or two go on; when shooting first comes in the keepers are safe to be on the alert; and then I'll choose a night for you."
"All right. I suppose Katrine knows nothing of this?"
Mr. Barbary lodged his gun in the corner against the wainscot, and turned to look at the barrister. "Katrine!" he repeated, in surprised reproach. "Why, no. And take care that you don't tell her."
Mr. Reste nodded.
"She is the most unsuspicious, innocent child in regard to the ways of the naughty world that I've ever met with," resumed Barbary. "I don't think she as much as knows what poaching means."
"I wonder you should have her here," remarked the younger man, reflectively.
"How can I help it? There's nowhere else for her to be. She is too old to be put to school; and if she were not, I have not the means to pay for her. It does not signify; she will never suspect anything," concluded Mr. Barbary.
Please do not think Caramel Cottage grand enough to possess a regular "gun-room." Mr. Barbary called it so, because he kept his two guns in it, also his fishing-tackle and things of that sort. Entering at the outer porch and over the level door-sill, to the narrow house-passage, the parlour lay on the left, and was of pretty good size. The gun-room lay on the right; a little square room with bare boards, unfurnished save for a deal table, a chair or two, and a strong cupboard let into the wall, which the master of the house kept locked. Behind this room was the kitchen, which opened into the back yard. This yard, on the kitchen side, was bounded by dwarf wooden palings, having a low gate in their midst. Standing at the gate and looking sideways, you could see the chimneys of Dyke Manor. On the opposite side, the yard was enclosed by various small outbuildings and adjuncts belonging to a cottage homestead. A rain-water barrel stood in the corner by the house; an open shed next, in which knives were cleaned and garden tools kept; then came the pump; and lastly, a little room called the brewhouse, used for washing and brewing, and for cooking also during the worst heat of summer. A furnace was built beside the grate, and its floor was paved with square red bricks. Beyond this yard, quite open to it, lay a long garden, well filled with vegetables and fruit trees, and enclosed by a high hedge. Upstairs were three bed chambers. Mr. Barbary occupied the largest and best, which was over the parlour; the smaller one over the gun-room had been assigned to Edgar Reste, both of them looking front; whilst Katrine's room was above the kitchen, looking to the yard and the garden. Old Joan slept in a lean-to loft in the roof. There is a reason for explaining all this.
HE had looked like a ghost when we went to school after the races; he looked like a hale, hearty man when we got home from the holidays at Michaelmas and to eat the goose. Of course he had had pretty near eight weeks' spell of idleness and country air at Caramel Cottage. To say the truth, we felt surprised at his being there still.
"Well, it is longer than I meant to stay," Mr. Reste admitted, when Tod said something of this, "The air has done wonders for me."
"Why longer? The law courts do not open yet."
"I had thoughts of going abroad. However, that can stay over for next year."
"Have you had any shooting?"
"No. I don't possess a licence."
It was on the tip of Tod's tongue, as I could well see, to ask why he did not take out a licence, but he checked it. This little colloquy was held at the Manor gate on Saturday, the day after our return. Miss Barbary was leaving Lena at the usual time, and he had come strolling across the field to meet her. They went away together.
"What did I tell you, Johnny?" said Tod, turning to me, as soon as they were out of hearing. "It is a regular case of over-head-and-ears: cut and dried and pickled."
"I don't see what you judge by, Tod."
"Don't you! You'll be a muff to the end, lad. Fancy a fine young fellow like Reste, a man of the world, staying on at that pokey little place of Barbary's unless he had some strong motive to keep him there! I dare say he pays Barbary well for the accommodation."
"I dare say Barbary could not afford to entertain him unless he did."
"He stops there to make love to her. It must be a poor look-out, though, for Katrine, pretty little dimpled girl! As much chance of a wedding, I should say, as of a blue moon."
"Why not?"
"Why not! Want of funds. I'd start for London, if I were you, Johnny, and set the Thames on fire. A man must be uncommonly hard up when he lets all the birds go beside him for want of taking out a licence."
They were walking onwards slowly, Mr. Reste bending to talk to her. And of course it will be understood that a good deal of that which I have said, and am about to say, is only related from what came to my knowledge later on.
"Is it true that you had meant to go abroad this year?" Katrine was asking him.
"Yes, I once thought of it," he answered. "I have friends living at Dieppe, and they wanted me to go to them. But I have stayed on here instead. Another week of it, ten days perhaps, and then I must leave Worcestershire and you, Katrine."
"But why?"
"Why, to work, my dear little girl. That is getting in arrears shamefully. We are told that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy; but all play and no work would have worse results for Jack than dullness. Ah, Katrine, what a world this might be if we could only do as we like in it!"
"When shall you come again?"
"Perhaps never," he answered, incautiously.
"Never!" she repeated, her face turning white before she could hide it from him. It was a great shock.
"Katrine, my dear," he said with some emotion, his tones low and earnest, "I could stay at Caramel Cottage for my whole life and never wish to quit it, unless I carried somebody else away from it with me. But there are things which a poor man, a man without money in the present or prospect of it in the future, may not as much as glance at: he must put the temptation from him and hold it at arm's length. I had a dream the other night," he added, after a pause: "I thought I was a Q.C. and stood in my silk, haranguing a full bench of judges at Westminster—who listened to me with attentive suavity. When I awoke I burst out laughing."
"At the contrast it presented to reality?" she breathed.
"Just at that. If I were only making enough to set up a snug little nest of a home, though ever so small, it would be—something: but I am not. And so, Katrine, you see that many things I would do I cannot do; cannot even think of. And there it lies, and there it ends."
"Yes, I see, Edgar," she answered, softly sighing.
"Shall you miss me when I am gone?"
Some queer feeling took her throat; she could not speak. Mr. Reste stopped to pick a little pale blue-bell that grew under the hedge.
"I do not know how I shall bear with the loneliness then," she said in answer, seemingly more to herself than to him, or to the blue sky right before her, on which her eyes were fixed. "And I shall be more afraid when you are no longer in the house."
"Afraid!" he exclaimed, turning to her in blank surprise. "What are you afraid of, Katrine?"
"It—it is all so solitary for me.... Old Joan is too deaf to be talked to much; and papa is either at work in the garden or shut up in the gun-room, busy with his things. Please don't laugh at my childishness!"
She had paused, just to get over her embarrassment, the avowal having slipped from her unwittingly. The fact was, poor Katrine Barbary had been rudely awakened from her state of innocent security. Some days back, when in the cottage hut of Mary Standish, for Katrine liked to go about and make friends with the people, that ill-doing husband of Mary's, Jim, chanced to be at home. Jim had just been had up before the magistrates at Alcester on some suspicion connected with snares and gins, but there was no certain proof forthcoming, and he had to be discharged. Katrine remarked that if she were Jim she should leave off poaching, which must be a very dreadful thing, and frightfully hazardous. Mr. Jim replied that it was not a dreadful thing, nor hazardous either, for them that knew what they were about, and he referred her to her father for confirmation of this assertion. One word led to another. Jim Standish, his ideas loose and lawless, never thought to hurt the young lady by what he disclosed, for he was kind enough when he had no motive to be the contrary, but when Katrine left the hut, she carried with her the terrible knowledge that her father was as fond of poaching as the worst of them. Since then she had lived in a state of chronic terror.
"Yes, it must be very solitary for you," assented Mr. Reste in a grave tone, and he had no idea that her answer was an evasive one, or its lightness put on; "but I cannot help you, Katrine. Should you ever need counsel, or—or protection in any way, apply for it to your friends at Dyke Manor. They seem kind, good people, and would be strong to aid."
Turning in at the little side gate as he spoke, they saw Mr. Barbary at work in the garden. He was digging up a plot of ground some seven or eight feet square under the branches of the summer-apple tree, which grew at this upper end of the garden, nearly close to the yard.
"What is he going to plant there, I wonder?" listlessly spoke Mr. Reste, glancing at the freshness of the turned-up mould.
"Winter cabbages, perhaps; but I am sure I don't know," returned Katrine. "I do not understand the seasons for planting vegetables as papa does."
This, as I have just said, was on Saturday. We saw Mr. Reste and Katrine at church the next day: a place Barbary did not often trouble with his presence; and walked with them, on coming out, as far as the two ways lay. Our people liked the look of Edgar Reste, but had not put themselves forward to make much acquaintance with him, on account of Barbary. One Tuesday, when the Squire was driving to Alcester, he had overtaken Mr. Reste walking thither to have a look at the market, and he invited him to a seat in the carriage. They drove in and drove back together, and had between the times a snack of bread and cheese at the Angel. The Squire took quite a fancy to the young barrister, and openly said to him he wished he was staying anywhere but at Caramel Cottage.
"You are thinking of leaving soon, I hear," said the Squire, as we halted in a group when parting, on this same walk from church.
"In about a week," replied Mr. Reste. "I may go on Saturday next; certainly not later than the following Monday."
"Shall you like a drive to Evesham between this and then?" went on the Squire. "I am going over there one of these days."
"I shall like it very much indeed."
"Then I will let you know which day I go. Good-bye."
"Good-bye," answered Mr. Reste, lifting his hat in salute to us all, as he walked on with Katrine.
Am I lingering over these various trifling details? I suppose it will seem so. But the truth is, a dreadful part of the story is coming on (as poor Katrine said of the poaching) and my pen holds back from it.
A day or two had gone on. It was Tuesday morning, warm
and bright with sunshine. Katrine sat in the parlour at
Caramel Cottage, pouring out the coffee at the breakfast-
table.
"Will you take some ham, Katrine?"
"No, thank you, papa; I have no appetite."
"No appetite! nonsense!" and Mr. Barbary put a slice of ham on her plate. "Do you feel inclined for a walk as far as Church Leet this morning, Edgar?"
"I don't mind," said Mr. Reste. "About three miles, is it not?"
"Three miles across the fields as straight as the crow flies. I want to see a man who lives there. He—why, that's Pettipher coming here!—the postman," broke off Mr. Barbary. Letters were not written every day then, and very few found their way to Caramel Cottage.
Old Joan went to the door, and then came in. She was like a picture. A dark-blue linsey gown down to her ancles, neat black stockings and low, tied shoes, a check apron, and a bow of black ribbon perched in front behind the flapping border of her white muslin mob-cap.
"Pettipher says 'tis for the gentleman," said Joan, putting the letter, a thick one, on the table by Mr. Reste.
"Why, it is from Amphlett!" he exclaimed, as he took it up, looking at the great sprawling writing. "What on earth has he got to say?"
Opening the letter, a roll of bank-notes fell out. Mr. Reste stared at them with intense curiosity.
"Is it your ship come in?" asked Katrine gaily: for he was wont to say he would do this or that when "his ship came home."
"No, Katrine; not much chance of that. Let me see what he says."
"'Dear Reste,—I enclose you my debt at last. The other side have come to their senses, and given in, and paid over to me instalment the first. Thank you, old friend; you are a good fellow never to have bothered me. Let me know your movements when you write back; I ask it particularly. Ever yours, W. A.'
"Well, I never expected that," cried Mr. Reste, as he read the words aloud.
"Money lent by you, Edgar?" asked Mr. Barbary.
"Yes; three or four years ago. I had given it up as a bad job. Never thought he would gain his cause."
"What cause? Who is he?"
"Captain Amphlett, of the Artillery, and an old friend of mine. As to the cause, it was some injustice that his avaricious relatives involved him in, and he had no resource but to bring an action. I am glad he has gained it; he is an honest fellow, no match for them in cunning."
Mr. Reste was counting the notes while he spoke; six of them for ten pounds each. Katrine happened to look at her father, and was startled at the expression of his face—at the grasping, covetous, evil regard he had fixed upon the notes. She felt frightened, half sick, with some vague apprehension. Mr. Reste smoothed the notes out one by one, and laid them open on the breakfast cloth in a little stack. While doing this, he caught Mr. Barbary's covetous look.
"You'd like such a windfall yourself," he said laughingly to his host.
"I should. For that a man might be tempted to smother his grandmother."
Katrine instinctively shuddered, though the avowal was given in a half jesting tone. A prevision of evil seized her.
OCTOBER was setting in beautifully. Some people say it is the most lovely month in the year when the skies are blue and genial.
Seated at the breakfast-table at Caramel Cottage that Tuesday morning, with the window thrown open to the warm, pleasant air, the small party of three might have enjoyed that air, but for being preoccupied with their own reflections. Edgar Reste was thinking of the bank-notes which the postman had just brought him in Captain Amphlett's letter; Katrine Barbary sat shrinking from the vague fear imparted to her by the curious avowal her father had made in language not too choice, as his covetous eyes rested on the money: "For that, a man might be tempted to smother his grandmother." While Mr. Barbary had started instantly up and flung the window higher, as if in the silence that followed the words, they had struck back upon himself unpleasantly, and he sought to divert attention from them.
"A grand day for the outlying crops," he remarked, his lithe, slender form, his pale, perfect features showing out well in the light of the brilliant morning. "But most of the grain is in, I think. We shall have a charming walk to Church Leet, Edgar."
"Yes," assented Mr. Reste, as he folded the notes together and placed them in his pocket-book. There were six of them for £10 each.
Breakfast over, Katrine set off for Dyke Manor that morning as usual, to talk to Lena in French, and teach her to read it. She stayed luncheon with us. Chancing to say that her father and his guest were gone to Church Leet, Mrs. Todhetley kept her.
At four o'clock, when Katrine went home, she found they had returned, and were then shut up in the gun-room. Katrine could hear the hum of their voices, with now and again a burst of merry laughter from Edgar Reste.
"Have they had dinner?" she enquired of Joan.
"Ay, sure they have, Miss Katrine. They got back at two o'clock, and I prepared the dinner at once."
I had lent Katrine that afternoon the "Vicar of Wakefield,"—which she said she had never read; one could hardly believe such a thing of an English girl, but I suppose it was through her having lived over in France. Taking it into the back garden, she sat down on a rustic bench, one or two of which stood about. By-and-by Edgar Reste came out and sat down beside her.
"Had you a nice walk to-day?" she asked.
"Very," he answered. "What a quaint little village Church Leet is! Hardly to be called a village, though. Leet Hall is a fine old place."
"Yes, I have heard so. I have not seen it."
"Not seen it! Do you mean to say, Katrine, that you have never been to Church Leet?"
"Not yet. Nobody has ever invited me to go, and I cannot walk all that way by myself, you know."
He was sitting sideways, his left arm leaning on the elbow of the bench, his kindly, luminous brown eyes fixed on her fair pretty face, all blushes and dimples. Ah, if fortune had but smiled upon him!—if he might but have whispered to this young girl, who had become so dear to him, of the love that filled his whole heart!
"Suppose you walk over with me one of these fine days before I leave?" he continued. "It won't be too far for you, will it?"
"Oh no. I should like to go."
"There is the prettiest churchyard you ever saw, to rest in. And such a quaint little church, covered with ivy. The Rectory, standing by, is quite a grand mansion in comparison with the church."
"And the church has a history, I believe."
"Ay, as connected with the people of the Hall and the Rectory; and with its own chimes, that never played, I hear, but disaster followed. We will go then, Katrine, some afternoon between now and Saturday."
Her face fell; she turned it from him. " Must you leave on Saturday, Edgar?"
"My dear little cousin, yes. Cousins in name, you know we are, though not in reality."
"You did say you might stay until Monday."
"Ay, my will would be good to stay till Monday, and many a Monday after it: but you see, Katrine, I have neglected my work too long, and I cannot break into another week. So you must please make the most of me until Saturday," he added playfully, "when I shall take the evening train."
"You English do not care to travel on a Sunday, I notice."
"We English! Allow me to remind Mademoiselle that she is just as much English as are the rest of us."
Katrine smiled.
"My good mother instilled all kinds of old-world notions into me, Katrine. Amongst them was that of never doing week- day work on a Sunday unless compelled by necessity."
"Do you never work on a Sunday—at your reviews and writings, and all that?"
"Never. I am sure it would not bring me luck if I did. Suppose we fix Thursday for walking to Church Leet?"
"That will do nicely. Unless—Squire Todhetley invited you to go with him to Evesham one day, you know," broke off Katrine. "He may just fix upon Thursday."
"In that case we will take our walk on Friday."
A silence ensued. Their hearts were very full, and that makes speech reticent. Katrine glanced now and again at the pages of the "Vicar of Wakefield," which lay in her lap, but she did not read it. As to the barrister, he was looking at her; at the face that had become so dear to him. They might never meet again, nothing on earth might come of the present intimacy and the sweet burning longings, but he knew that he should remember her to the end of time. A verse of one of Moore's melodies passed through his mind: unconsciously he began to hum it:
"O, that hallowed form is ne'er forgot
Which first love traced;
Still it, lingering, haunts the greenest spot
On
memory's waste."
"Here comes Joan to say tea is ready," interrupted Katrine.
They strolled indoors slowly, side by side. The tea-tray waited in the parlour. Mr. Barbary came in from the gun- room, and they all sat down to the table.
After tea he went back to the gun-room, Mr. Reste with him, leaving Katrine alone. She had the candles lighted and began to mend a piece of Mrs. Todhetley's valuable old lace. Presently Joan came in to ask a question.
"Miss Katrine, is it the brace of partridges or the pheasants that are to be cooked for supper? Do you know?"
"No, that I don't," said Katrine. "But I can ask."
Putting down her work, she went to the gun-room and gently opened the door. Upon which, she heard these remarkable words from Mr. Reste:
"I wouldn't hesitate at all if it were not for the moon."
"The moon makes it all the safer," contended Mr. Barbary. "Foes can't rush upon one unawares when the moon's shining. I tell you this will be one of the best possible nights for you."
"Papa, papa," hurriedly broke in Katrine, speaking through the dusk of twilight, "is Joan to cook the pheasants or the partridges?"
"The pheasants," he answered sharply. "Shut the door."
So the pheasants were dressed for supper, and very nice they proved with their bread-sauce and rich gravy. Mr. Barbary especially seemed to enjoy them; his daughter did not.
Poor Katrine's senses were painfully alert that night, as she lay listening after getting to bed. The words she had overheard in the gun-room seemed to her to bear but one meaning—that not only was her father going abroad into the wilds of danger, but Edgar Reste also. They had gone to their respective rooms early, soon after she went to hers; but that might be meant as a blind and told nothing.
By-and-by, she caught a sound as of the stairs creaking. Mr. Reste and her father were both creeping down them. Katrine flew to her window and peeped behind the blind.
They went out together by the back door. The bright moonbeams lay full upon the yard. Mr. Reste seemed to be attired like her father, in high leggings and a large old shooting-coat, no doubt borrowed plumes. Each of them carried a gun, and they stole cautiously out at the little side gate.
"Oh," moaned the unhappy Katrine, "if papa would but take better care of himself! If he would but leave off doing this most dreadful and dangerous thing!"
Whether Katrine fell asleep after that, or not, she could never decide: it appeared as though but a short time had elapsed, when she was startled by a sharp sound outside, close to the house. It might have been the report of a gun, but she was not sure. This was followed by some stir in the yard and covert talking.
"They are bringing in the game they have shot," thought Katrine, "but oh, I am thankful they have got back safely!" And she put the pillow over her head and ears, and lay shivering.
Squire Todhetley was as good and lenient a man at heart
as could be found in our two counties, Warwickshire and
Worcestershire; fonder of forgiving sins and sinners than of
bringing them to book, and you have not read of him all
these years without learning it. But there was one offence
that stirred his anger up to bubbling point, especially when
committed against himself. And that was poaching.
So that, when we got downstairs to breakfast at Dyke Manor on the following morning, Wednesday, and were greeted with the news that some poachers had been out on our land in the night, and had shot at the keepers, it was no wonder the Squire went into a state of commotion, and that the rest of us partook of it.
"Johnny, tell Mack to fetch Jones; to bring him here instantly," fumed he. "Those Standishes have been in this work!"
I went to carry the orders to Mack in the yard. In passing back, after giving them, I saw that the dog-kennel was empty and the chain lying loose.
"Where's Don?" I asked. "Who has taken him out?"
"Guess he have strayed out of hisself, Master Johnny," was Mack's answer. "He was gone when I come on this morning, sir, and the gate were standing wide open."
"Gone then?—and the gate open? Where's Giles?"
But, even as I put the question, I caught sight of Giles at the stable pump, plunging his head and face into a pail of water. So I knew what had been the matter with him. Giles was a first-rate groom and a good servant, and it was very seldom indeed that he took more than was good for him, but it did happen at intervals.
Old Jones arrived in obedience to the summons, and stood on his fat gouty legs in the hall while the Squire talked to him. The faith he put in that old constable was surprising, whose skill and discernment were about suited to the year One.
His tale of the night's doings, as confirmed by other tales, was not very clear. At least, much satisfaction could not be got out of it. Some poachers congregated on a plot of land called Dyke's Neck—why it should have been so named nobody understood—were surprised by the keepers early in the night. A few stray shots were interchanged, no damage being done on either side, and the poachers made off, escaping not only scot-free but unrecognised. This last fact bore the keenest sting of all, and the Squire paced the hall in a fury.
"You must unearth them," he said to Jones: "don't tell me. They can't have buried themselves, the villains!"
"No need to look far for 'em, Squire," protested Jones. "It's them jail-birds, the three Standishes. If it's not, I'll eat my head."
"Then why have you not taken up the three Standishes?" retorted the Squire. "Of course it is the Standishes."
"Well, your honour, because I can't get at 'em," said Jones helplessly. "Jim, he is off somewhere; and Dick, he swears through thick and thin that he was never out of his bed last night; and t'other, Tom, ain't apperiently at home at all just now. I looked in at their kitchen on my way here, and that was all I could get out of Mary."
It was at this juncture that Katrine arrived, preparatory to her morning's work with Lena. Old Jones and the Squire, still in the hall, were chanting a duet upon the poachers' iniquity, and she halted by me to listen. I was sitting on the elbow of the carved-oak settle. Katrine looked pale as a sheet.
Girls, thought I, do not like to hear of these things. For I knew nothing then of her fears that the offenders had been her father and Mr. Reste.
"If the poachers had been taken, sir—what then?" she said tremblingly to the Squire, in a temporary lull of the voices.
"What then, Miss Barbary? Why then they would have been lodged in gaol, and the neighbourhood well rid of them," was the impulsive answer.
"Snug and safe, miss," put in old Jones, shuffling on his gouty legs in his thick white stockings, "a-waiting to stand their trial next spring assizes at Worcester. Which it would be transportation for 'em, I hope—a using o' their guns indeed!"
"Were they known at all?" gasped Katrine. "And might not the gamekeepers have shot them? Perhaps have killed them?"
"Killed 'em or wounded 'em, like enough," assented Jones, "and it would be a good riddance of such varmint, as his worship says, miss. And a misfortin it is that they be not known. Which is an odd thing to my mind, sir, considering the lightness o' the night: and I'd like to find out whether them there keepers did their duty, or didn't do it."
"I can't see the dog anywhere, father," interrupted Tod, dashing in at this moment in a white heat, for he had been racing about in search of Don.
"What, is the dog off?" exclaimed old Jones.
"Yes, he is," said Tod. "And if those poachers have stolen him, I'll try and get them hanged."
Leaving us to our commotion, Katrine Barbary passed on to the nursery with Lena, where the lessons were taken. This straying away of Don made one of the small calamities of the day. Giles, put to the torture of confession, admitted that he remembered unchaining Don the past night as usual, but could not remember whether or not he locked the gate. Of course the probability was that he left it wide open, Mack having found it so in the morning. So that Mr. Don, finding himself at liberty, might have gone out promenading as early in the night as he pleased. Giles was ready to hang himself with vexation. The dog was a valuable animal; a prize for any tramp or poacher, for he could be sold at a high price.
We turned out on our different quests; old Jones after the poachers, I and Tod after Don: and the morning wore on.
Katrine went home at midday. This news of the night encounter between the keepers and the poachers had thrown her into a state of anxious pain—though of course the reader fully understands that I am, so far, writing of what I knew nothing about until later. That her father and Edgar Reste had been the poachers of the past night she could not doubt, and a dread of the discovery which might ensue lay upon her with a sick fear. The Standishes might have been included in the party; more than likely they were; Ben Gibbon also. Mr. Jim Standish had contrived to let Katrine believe that they were all birds of a feather, tarred with the same brush. But how could Edgar Reste have allowed himself to be drawn into it even for one night? She could not understand that.
Entering Caramel Cottage by its side gate, Katrine found Joan seated in the kitchen, slicing kidney beans for dinner. Her father was in his favourite den, the gun-room, Mr. Reste was out. When she left in the morning, neither of them had quitted his respective chamber, an entirely unusual thing.
"How late you are with those beans, Joan!" listlessly observed Katrine.
"The master sent me to the Silver Bear for a bottle of the best brandy, and it hindered me," explained Joan. "They were having a fine noise together when I got back," she added, dropping her voice.
"Who were?" quickly cried Katrine.
"The master and Mr. Reste. Talking sharply at one another, they were, like two savages. I could hear 'em through my deafness. Ben Gibbon was here when I went out, but he'd gone when I came in with the brandy."
What with one thing and another, Katrine felt more uncomfortable than an oyster out of its shell. Mr. Reste came in at dinner-time, and she saw nothing amiss then, except that he and her father were both unusually silent.
Afterwards they went out together, and Katrine hoped that the unpleasantness between them was at an end.
She was standing at the front gate late in the afternoon, looking up and down the solitary road, which was no better than a wide field path, when Tod and I shot out of the dark grove by Caramel's Farm, and made up to her.
"You look hot and tired," she said to us.
"So would you, Miss Barbary, if you had been scouring the fields in search of Don, as we have," answered Tod, who was in a desperate mood.
At that moment Mr. Barbary came swinging round the corner of the short lane that led to the high-road, his guest following him. They nodded to us and went in at the gate.
"You do not happen to have seen anything of our Newfoundland dog to-day, I suppose, Mr. Barbary?" questioned Tod.
"No, I have not," he answered. "My daughter mentioned to me that he had strayed away."
"Strayed away or been stolen," corrected Tod. "The dog was a favourite, and it has put my father out more than you'd believe. He thinks the Standishes may have got him: especially if it is they who were out in the night."
"Shouldn't wonder but they have," said Mr. Barbary.
Standing by in silence, I had been wondering what had come to Mr. Reste. He leaned against the porch, listening to this, arms folded, brow lowering, face dark, not a bit like his own pleasant self.
"I am about the neighbourhood a good deal; I'll not fail to keep a look-out," said Mr. Barbary, as we were turning away. "He was a fine dog, and might prove a temptation to the Standishes; but I should be inclined to think it more likely that he has strayed to a distance than that they have captured him. They might find a difficulty in concealing a large, powerful dog such as he is."
"Not they; they are deep enough for any wicked action," concluded Tod, as we went onwards.
It was tea-time then at Caramel Cottage, and they sat down to take it. Mr. Barbary was sociable and talked of this and that; Edgar Reste spoke hardly a word; Katrine busied herself with the teapot and cups. At dusk Ben Gibbon came in, and Katrine was sent to bear Joan company in the kitchen. Brandy and whisky were put upon the table, Joan being called to bring in hot and cold water. They sat drinking, as Katrine supposed, and talking together in covert tones for two hours, when Gibbon left; upon which Katrine was graciously told by her father she might return to the parlour. Her head ached badly, she felt ill at ease, and when supper was over went up to bed. But she could not get to sleep.
About eleven o'clock, as she judged it to be, loud and angry sounds arose. Her father and Mr. Reste had renewed their dispute—whatever its cause might be. By-and-by, when it was at its height, she heard Mr. Reste dash out at the back door; she heard her father dash after him. In the yard there seemed to be a scuffle, more hot words, and then a sudden silence. Katrine rose and stole to the window to look.
She could not see either of them. But a noise in the kitchen beneath, as if the fire-irons were thrown down, seemed to say they had come back indoors. Another minute and her father came out with a lighted lantern in his hand; she wondered why, as it was moonlight. He crossed the yard and went into the back kitchen, or brewhouse, as it was more often called, and Katrine, hoping the quarrel was over, got into bed again. Presently the back door was shut with a bang that shook the room, and footsteps were heard ascending the stairs, and afterwards all was quiet until morning.
As on the past morning, so it was on this. When Katrine got downstairs she found that neither her father nor Mr. Reste was up. She breakfasted alone, and set off for the Manor afterwards.
But, as it chanced, she was to have partial holiday that day. Lena complained of a sore throat; she was subject to sore throats; so Miss Barbary was released when the lesson was half over, and returned home.
Going to her room to take her bonnet off, she found Joan busy there. From the window she saw her father at work at the far end of the garden. This was Thursday, the day of the projected walk to Church Leet, and very lovely weather. But Mr. Reste had not said anything about it since the Tuesday afternoon.
"Is Mr. Reste gone out, Joan?"
"Mr. Reste is gone, Miss Katrine."
"Gone where?" asked she.
"Gone away; gone back to London," said Joan. Upon which Katrine, staring at the old woman, inquired what she meant.
It appeared that Mr. Barbary had left his chamber close upon Katrine's departure, and sat down to breakfast. When he had finished he called Joan to take the things away. She inquired whether they had not better be left for Mr. Reste. He answered that Mr. Reste was gone. "What, gone away back to London?" Joan cried, in surprise; and her master said, "Yes." "You might just have knocked me down with a feather, Miss Katrine, I was that took to," added Joan now, in relating this. "Never to say good-bye to me, nor anything!"
Katrine, thinking there was somebody else he had not said good-bye to, could hardly speak from amazement. "When did he go, Joan? Since breakfast? Or was he gone when I went out?"
"Well, I don't know," pondered Joan; "it seems all a moither in my head; as if I couldn't put this and that together. I never saw nor heard anything of him at all this morning, and I find his bed has not been slept in, which looks as if he went last night. It's odd, too, that he didn't say he was going, and it's odd he should start off to London at midnight. Your papa is in one of his short tempers, Miss Katrine, and I've not dared to ask him about it."
Katrine, as she listened, felt perfectly bewildered. Why had he taken his departure in this strange manner? What for? What had caused him to do it? Joan had told all she knew, and it was of no use questioning her further.
Mr. Reste's chamber door stood open; Katrine halted at it and looked in. Why! he seemed to have taken nothing with him! His coats were hanging up; trifles belonging to him lay about on chairs; on the side shelf stood his little portable desk—and she had heard him say that he never travelled without that desk, it went with him wherever he went. Opening a drawer or two, she saw his linen, his neckties, his handkerchiefs. What was the meaning of it all? Could he have been recalled to London in some desperate hurry? But no letter or summons of any kind had come to Caramel Cottage, so far as she knew, except the letter from Captain Amphlett on Tuesday morning, and that one had not recalled him.
"There be two pairs of his boots in the kitchen," said Joan. "He has took none with him but them he's got on."
"I must ask papa about it," cried the puzzled Katrine.
Mr. Barbary was at the bottom of the garden working away at the celery bed in his shirt sleeves; his coat lay across the cucumber-frame.
"What brings you home now?" he cried out, looking up as Katrine drew near.
"The little girl is not well. Papa," she added, her voice taking a timid, shrinking tone, she hardly knew why, "Joan says Mr. Reste is gone."
"Well?"
"But why has he left so suddenly, without saying anything about it?"
"He could do so if he pleased. He was at liberty to go or stay."
Katrine could not dispute that. She hardly liked to say more, her father's answers were so curt and cross.
"He must have gone unexpectedly, papa."
"Unexpectedly! Not at all. He has been talking of going all the week."
Katrine paused. "Is he coming back, papa?"
"Not that I know of."
"But he has not taken any of his things."
"I am going to pack his things and send them after him."
"But——when did he go, papa?"
Mr. Barbary, who had kept on working, drew himself bolt upright. Letting his hands rest on the handle of his spade, he looked sternly into Katrine's face.
"He went last night."
"He——he never told me he was going. He never said anything about it."
"And why should he tell you?" demanded Mr. Barbary. "It was enough that he told me. He thought he had been quite long enough away from his work, and that it was high time to go back to it. I thought the same. That's all, Katrine; you need not inquire further. And now you can go indoors."
She walked slowly up the narrow path, conscious that some mystery must lie behind this. Joan was standing in the yard, outside the back-kitchen door, trying to pull it open.
"This here back'us door's locked!" exclaimed Joan, in her country vernacular. "I want the spare jack out; t'other's given way at last."
"It can't be locked," dissented Katrine. "It never is."
"Well, I've never known the door locked afore; but 'tis now, Miss Katrine. I noticed it was shut to all day yesterday, but I didn't try it."
"It is only stuck," said Katrine, laying hold of the high old-fashioned bow handle which served to lift the latch inside; and she shook it well.
"What's that? What are you about?" called out Mr. Barbary, dashing up the path like a flash of lightning. "Let the door alone."
"Joan says it is locked, papa," said Katrine, frightened by his manner.
"And what if it is? I have locked up some—some wine there that came in. How dare you meddle with the places I choose to keep closed?"
"It's the other jack I want out, sir," said Joan, hearing imperfectly.
"You can't have the other jack."
"But, master, the old jack's broke clean in two, and it's time to put the lamb down."
"Cut it into chops," he cried, waving them both off, and standing, himself, before the door, as if to guard it, with a white, imperious, passionate face.
Single-minded old Joan went indoors, marvelling a little—such a bit of a trouble for him to have opened the back'us door and given her out the jack! Katrine followed, marvelling very much. She did not believe in the wine: felt sure no wine had come in; they never had any; what was it that was locked up there? All in a moment a thought flashed over her that it might be game: poached game: pheasants and partridges and hares. But, upon that thought came another: why should the spoil have been brought in on Tuesday night when it had never (as she believed) been brought before? Just a little came in for their own use, nothing more.
THAT day, Thursday, we had news of Don. And we had it in this way. Tobias Jellico—who had a small draper's shop at Evesham, and went about the country with a pack, out of which he seduced unwary ladies to buy finery, more particularly some of our ladies living in Piefinch Cut—was at Church Dykely to-day on one of his periodical visitations. We did not like the man or his trade; but that's neither here nor there. Hearing that the Squire's dog was lost, he at once said he had seen Dick Standish that morning in Bengeworth (a portion of Evesham) with a large Newfoundland dog. White-and-brown, he called it; which was a mistake, for Don was white and black; but Jellico might not know colours. It was Mr. Duffham who brought us this news in the afternoon: he had been sent for to Lena, whose throat was getting worse. Duffham heard it from Perkins the butcher, to whom Jellico told it.
I don't know which item pleased the Squire most: that Don was found, or that the guilt of Tuesday night was traced home to the Standishes; for the three brothers had in general a certain gentleman's own luck, and were rarely caught.
"Don went out roaming, through that villain Giles unloosing him and leaving the yard gate open," decided the Squire, in his excitement. "The dog must have sprung upon them; he has a mortal enmity to tramps and poachers, you know, Duffham; and the Standishes captured him. I'll send a message to the police at Evesham at once, to look after Mr. Dick, and go over myself in the morning."
"Anyway, I'm glad the dog's found," said Duffham. "But what an idiot Dick Standish must be to allow himself to be seen with the dog in the public streets."
"Johnny," said the Squire, turning to me as he was leaving the room to send a man galloping on horseback to the Evesham police, "you run over to Caramel Cottage. Make my compliments to young Reste; say that I am going to drive to Evesham to-morrow morning, and shall be happy to take him if he likes to accompany me. I offered to drive him over some day before he left, but this bother has caused me to delay it. Shall start at nine o'clock, tell him."
About the time the Squire was charging me with this message, Katrine Barbary was sitting in the homely garden at Caramel Cottage, amidst the fruit trees, the vegetables, and the late flowers. The October sunlight fell on her pretty face, that somehow put you in mind of a peach with its softest bloom upon it.
Katrine was striving to see daylight out of a mass of perplexity, of which I then knew nothing, and she could not discern a single ray. Why should that fine young barrister, Edgar Reste, staying with them so peacefully for several weeks past, and fully intending to stay this week out—why should he have run away by night, leaving behind him an atmosphere of mystery? This question would never leave Katrine's mind by night or by day.
Sitting there in the afternoon sun, she was running over mentally, for the tenth time or so, the details of the affair. One or two of them might have looked somewhat shady to a suspicious observer; to Katrine they presented only a web of perplexity. She felt sure that when she went to bed on the Wednesday night he had no thought of leaving; and yet it seemed that he did leave. When Joan rose in the early morning, he had disappeared—vanished, as may be said. The puzzle that Katrine could not solve was this: why had he gone away in haste so great that he could not take his clothes with him? and why had he gone at all in an unexpected, stealthy way, saying nothing to anybody?
"It looks just as though he had run away to escape some imminent danger, with not a minute to spare," mused Katrine.
At this moment Katrine met with an interruption to her thoughts in the shape of me. Catching a glimpse of her print frock through the hedge, I went straight in at the little side gate, without troubling the front door.
"Sit down, Johnny," she said, holding out her hand, and making room for me on the bench. And as I took the seat, I said what I had come for—to deliver the Squire's message to Mr. Reste.
"Mr. Reste has left us," said Katrine. "He went away last night."
"Went away last night!" I exclaimed, the news surprising me uncommonly. "What took him off so suddenly?"
Open-natured as the day, Katrine told me the particulars (which proved that she had no dark fears about it as yet), of course saying nothing about the poaching. And she did mention the quarrel.
"It is so strange that he should leave all his things behind him—don't you see that, Johnny?" she said. "Even that little desk, full of private papers, is left, and he never travels without it; his boots are left."
"He must have had some news to call him away. A letter perhaps."
"The only letter he has had lately came on Tuesday morning," returned Katrine. "It had a good deal of money in it in bank-notes; sixty pounds; but it did not call him away. Nothing called him away, that I can discover. You can't think how it is worrying me; it seems just a mystery."
"Look here, Katrine," I said, after mentally twisting the matter this way and that, "I've known the most unaccountable problems turn out to be the simplest on explanation. When you hear from him, as you most likely will in a day or two, I dare say he will tell you he was called away unexpectedly, and had to go at once. Does not Mr. Barbary know why he went?"
"Well, yes; I fancy he does: he is indoors now, packing Mr. Reste's things: but he does not tell me."
After talking a little longer, we strolled up the path together, and had reached the yard when Mr. Barbary suddenly opened the kitchen door to shake the dust from a coat that seemed covered with it. His handsome face took a haughty expression, and his slender, shapely form was drawn up in pride as he looked sternly at me, as much as to say, "What do you want here?"
I turned, on my way to the side gate, to explain: that Don had been seen at Evesham in the company of Dick Standish, that the Squire would be driving thither on the morrow, and had thought Mr. Reste might like to go with him.
"Very kind of Mr. Todhetley," drawled Barbary in his stand-off manner. "Tell him, with my compliments and thanks for his courtesy, that my nephew has left for London."
"Left for good, I suppose?" I said.
"For the present, at any rate. A pressing matter of business recalled him, and he had to attend to it without delay."
I glanced at Katrine: there was the explanation.
"So the dog is at Evesham!" remarked Mr. Barbary. "The Standishes are great rogues, all three of them, and Dick's the worst. But—I think—had you gone after him to-day, instead of delaying it until to-morrow, there might have been more certainty of finding him. Mr. Dick may give you leg-bail in the night."
"The police will see he does not do that; the Squire has sent a messenger to warn them," I replied. "I suppose you have not heard any more rumours about the poaching on Tuesday night, Mr. Barbary?"
"I've heard no more than was said at first—that the keepers reported some poachers were out, and they nearly came to an encounter with the rascals. Wish they had—and that I had seen the fun. Reste and I had walked to Church Leet and back that day; we were both tired and went upstairs betimes."
To hear him coolly assert this, to see his good-looking face raised unblushingly to the sun as he said it, must have been as a bitter farce to Katrine, who had believed him, until a few days back, to be next door to a saint for truth and goodness. I put faith in it, not being then behind the scenes.
Mr. Barbary did his packing leisurely. Tea was over, and dusk set in before the portmanteau was shut up and its direction fastened to it. Katrine read the card. "Edgar Reste, Esq., Euston Square Station, London. To be left till called for."
Very lonely felt Katrine, sitting by herself that evening, working a strip of muslin for a frill. He was not there to talk to her in his voice of music—for that's what she had grown to think it, like other girls in love. She wondered whether they should ever meet again—ever, ever? She wondered how long it would be before a letter came from him, and whether he would write to her.
Mr. Barbary appeared at supper-time, ate some cold lamb in silence, seeming to be buried in thought, and went back to the gun-room when he had finished. Katrine got to her work again, did a little, then put it away for the night, and turned to the book-shelf to get a book.
Standing to make a choice of one, Katrine was seized with consternation. On the lower shelf, staring her right in the face, was Mr. Reste's Bible. It had been given him by his dead father, and he set store by it. He must have left it downstairs the previous Sunday, and Joan had put it away on the shelves amongst the other books.
"I wonder if papa would mind opening the portmanteau again?" thought Katrine, as she hastened to the gun-room, and entered.
"Papa! papa! here's Mr. Reste's Bible left out," she cried, impulsively. "Can you put it into the portmanteau?"
Mr. Barbary stood by the small safe in the wall, the door of which was open. In his hand lay some bank-notes; he was holding them towards the candle on the deal table, and seemed to be counting them. Katrine, thinking of the Bible and of nothing else, went close to him, and her eye fell on the notes. He flung them into the cupboard in a covert manner, gave the door a slam, turned an angry face on Katrine, and a sharp tongue.
"Why do you come bursting in upon me in this boisterous fashion? I won't have it. What? Will I undo the portmanteau to put in a Bible? No, I won't. Keep it till he chooses to come for it."
She shrank away frightened, softly closing the door behind her. Those bank-notes belonged to Mr. Reste: they were the same she had seen him put into his pocket-book two days ago. Why had he not taken them with him?—what brought them in her father's possession? The advance shadow of the dark trouble, soon to come, crept into Katrine Barbary's heart.
In no mood for reading now, she went to bed, and lay trying to think it out. What did it all mean? Had her father conjured the pocket-book by sleight-of-hand out of Mr. Reste's keeping and stolen the notes? She strove to put the disgraceful thought away from her, and could not. The distress brought to her by the poaching seemed as nothing to this, bad though that was.—And would he venture abroad to-night again?
Joan's light foot-fall passed her door, going up to her bed in the roof. Once there, nothing ever disturbed the old servant or her deafness until getting-up time in the morning. Katrine lay on, no sleep in her eyes; half the night it would have seemed, but that she had learned how slowly time passes with the restless. Still, it was a good while past twelve, she thought, when curious sounds, as of digging, seemed to arise from the garden. Sounds too faint perhaps to have been heard in the day-time, but which penetrated to her ear unless she was mistaken, in the deep, uncanny, undisturbed silence of the night. She sat up in bed to listen.
There, it came again! What could it be? People did not dig up gardens at midnight. Slipping out of bed, she drew the blind aside and peeped out.
The night was light as day, with a bright, clear, beautiful moon: the hunters' moon. Underneath the summer- apple tree, close at this end of the garden, bent Mr. Barbary, digging away with all his might, his large iron spade turning up the earth swiftly and silently. Katrine's eyes grew wide with amazement. He had dug up that same plot of ground only a few days ago, in readiness to plant winter greens: she and Edgar Reste had stood looking on for a time, talking with him as to the sort of greens he meant to put in. Why was he digging up the same ground again?—and why was he doing it at this unearthly hour?
It appeared to be a hole that was being dug now, for he threw the spadefuls of mould up on each side pretty far. The ground seemed quite soft and pliant; owing perhaps to its having been so recently turned. As the hole grew larger; wider and longer and deeper; an idea flashed over Katrine that it looked just as though it were meant for a grave. Not that she thought it.
Putting a warm shawl on her shoulders and slippers on her feet, she sat down before the window, drew the blind up an inch or two, and kept looking out, her curiosity greatly excited. The moon shone steadily, the time passed, and the hole grew yet larger. Suddenly Mr. Barbary paused in his work, and held up his head as if to listen. Did he fear, or fancy, a noise in the field pathway outside, or in the dark grove to the right near Caramel's Farm? Apparently so: and that he must not be seen at his work. For he got out of the hole, left the spade in it, came with noiseless, swift, stealthy movement up the yard, and concealed himself in the dark tool-shed. Presently, he stole across to the little gate, looked well about him to the right and left, and then resumed his digging.
Quite six feet long it soon looked to Katrine, and three or more feet wide, and how deep she knew not. Was it for a grave? The apprehension really stole across her, and with a sick faintness. If so, if so—? A welcome ray of possibility dawned then. Had her father (warned by this stir that was going on, the search for poachers and their spoil) a lot of contraband game in his possession that must be hidden away out of sight? Perhaps so.
It seemed to be finished now. The moon had sailed ever so far across the sky by this time, but was still shining full upon it. Mr. Barbary crept again to the gate and stood listening and looking up and down in the silence of the night. Then he crossed to the brewhouse, took the key from his pocket, unlocked it, and went inside. Katrine could see the flash of the match as he struck a light.
When he emerged from the brewhouse he was dragging a weight along the ground with two strong cords. A huge, unshapely, heavy substance enveloped in what looked like matting or sacking. Dragging it straight over the yard to the grave, Mr. Barbary let it fall carefully in, cords and all, and began to shovel in the mould upon it with desperate haste.
Terror seized on Katrine. What was in that matting? All in an instant, a little corner of the veil—that had obscured from her understanding so much which had seemed mysterious and unfathomable—lifted itself, bringing to her an awful conviction. Was it Edgar Reste that was being put out of the way; buried for ever from the sight of man? Her father must have killed him; must have done it in a passion! Katrine Barbary cried out with a loud and bitter cry.
Fascinated by the sight of terror, she was unable to draw her eyes away. But the next moment they had caught sight of another object, bringing equal terror, though of a different nature: some one, who had apparently crept in at the gate unheard, was standing at the corner of the garden hedge, looking on. Was it an officer of the law, come to spy upon her father and denounce his crime? But, even as she gazed, the figure drew back to make its exit by the gate again, and to Katrine it seemed to take my form.
"It is Johnny Ludlow!" she gasped. "Oh, I pray that it may be! I think he would not betray him."
Katrine watched on. She saw the grave filled in; she saw her father stamp it down; she saw him carry the superfluous mould to a place under the wall, near the manure bed, and she saw him stamp that down, and then cover it loosely with some of the manure, so that it might look like a part of the heap. Then he seemed to be coming in, and Katrine thought it must be nearing the dawn.
Creeping into bed, she hid her face, that never again ought to show itself amidst honest men, under the clothes. Some covert stir yet seemed to be going on in the yard, as of pumping and scrubbing. Turning from hot to cold, from cold to hot, Katrine was seized with a shivering fit.
"And who really was it watching?" she moaned. "It looked like Johnny, yet I can't be sure; he stood in the shade."
But it was me, as the schoolboys say. And the reason of my being there at the small, unearthly hours of the morning, together with the conclusion of this appalling story, will be found in the next chapter.
WE have a saying in England, "It never rains but it pours," as applied, not to the rain, but to the occurrences of daily life. Dyke Manor was generally quiet enough, but on Thursday evening—the Thursday already told of—we were destined to have visitors. First of all, arrived Mr. Jacobson, our neighbour at Elm Farm, with his nephew, young Harry Dene; he had his gig put up, meaning to make an evening of it. It turned out to be a night, or nearly so, as you will soon find. Close upon that, Charles Stirling of the Court (my place) came in; and Mrs. Todhetley went to the kitchen to say that we should require supper. The stirring events of the week had brought them over—namely, the encounter on our land between the poachers and the keepers, and the flight of the valuable yard dog, Don, a Newfoundland.
That afternoon, Thursday, we had heard, as may be remembered, that Don was at Evesham, under the keeping of Mr. Dick Standish; and I had been told by Katrine Barbary that Mr. Reste had suddenly and unexpectedly disappeared from Caramel Cottage. Old Jacobson predicted that Dick Standish would come to be hanged; Charles Stirling said he ought to be transported.
"Of course you will prosecute him, Squire?" said Charles Stirling.
"Of course I shall," replied the Squire, warmly. "The police have him already safe enough if they've done their duty, and I shall be over at Evesham in the morning."
After a jolly supper they got to their pipes, and the time went by on wings. At least, that's what the master of Elm Farm said when the clocks struck eleven, and he asked leave to order his gig.
It was brought round by Giles, the groom; and we were all assembled in the hall to speed the departure, when old Jones, the constable, burst in upon us at the full speed of his gouty legs, his face in a white heat.
Private information had reached Jones half an hour ago that the poachers intended to be out again that night, but he could not learn in which direction.
Then commotion arose. The Squire and his friend Jacobson were like two demented wild Indians, uncertain what was best to be done to entrap the villains. The gig was ordered away again.
Some time passed in discussion. In these moments of excitement one cannot always bring one's keenest wits to the fore. Charles Stirling offered to go out and reconnoitre; we, you may be quite sure, were eager to second him. I went with Charles Stirling one way; Tod and Harry Dene went another—leaving the Squire and Mr. Jacobson at the gate, listening for shots, and conferring in whispers with old Jones.
How long we marched about under the bright moonlight, keeping under the shade of the trees and hedges, I cannot tell you; but when we all four met at Dyke Neck, which lay between the Manor and the Court, we had seen nothing. Mr. Stirling went straight home then, but we continued our ramblings. A schoolboy's ardour is not quickly damped.
Beating about fresh ground together for a little while, we then separated. I went across towards the village: the other two elsewhere. It was one of the loveliest of nights, the full moon bright as day, the air warm and soft. But I neither saw nor heard signs of any poachers, and I began to suspect that somebody had played a trick on the old constable.
I turned short back at the thought, and made, as the Americans say, tracks for home. My nearest way was through the dense grove of trees at the back of Caramel Farm, and I took it, though it was not the liveliest way by any means.
But no sooner was I beyond the grove than sounds struck on my ear in the stillness of the night. They seemed to come from the direction of Caramel Cottage. Darting under the side hedge, and then across the side lane, and so under the hedge again that bound the cottage, I stole on the grass as softly as a mouse. Poachers could not be at work there; but an idea flashed across me that somebody had got into Mr. Barbary's well-stocked garden, and was robbing it.
Peering through the hedge, I saw Barbary himself. He was coming out of the brewhouse, dragging behind him, with two cords, a huge sack of some kind, well-filled and heavy. Opposite the open door, on the furnace, shone a lighted horn lantern. Mr. Barbary pushed-to the door behind him, thereby shutting out the light, dragged his burden over the yard to the garden, and let it fall into what looked like—a freshly dug grave.
Astonishment kept me intensely still. What did it all mean? Hardly daring to breathe, I stole in at the gate and under the shade of the hedge. Whatever it might contain, that sacking lay perfectly quiet, and Mr. Barbary began to shovel in the spadefuls of earth upon it, as one does upon a coffin.
This was nothing for me to interfere with, and I went away silently. It looked like a mystery, and a dark one; any way it was being done in secret in the witching hours of the night. What the time might be I knew not, the Squire having ordered our watches taken off before starting: perhaps one, or two, or three o'clock.
Tod and Harry Dene reached the gate of Dyke Manor just as I did; and we were greeted, all three, with a storm of reproaches by the Squire and Mr. Jacobson. What did we mean by it?—scampering off like that for hours?—for hours!—Three times had the gig been brought out and put up again! Harry was bundled headforemost into the gig, and Mr. Jacobson drove off.
And it turned out that my suspicion touching old Jones was right. Some young men had played the trick upon him. I need not have mentioned it at all, but for seeing what I did see in Barbary's garden.
How Katrine Barbary passed that night you have seen: for, like many another story-teller, I have had to carry you back a few hours. Shivering and shaking, now hot, now cold, she lay, striving to reason with herself that it could not be; that so dreadful a thing was not possible; that she was the most wicked girl on earth for imagining it: and she strove in vain. All the events of the past day or two kept crowding into her mind one upon another in flaring colours, like the figures in some hideous phantasmagoria. The unexpected arrival of the bank-notes for Mr. Reste; her father's covetous look at them and his dreadful joke; their going out together that night poaching; their quarrelling together the next morning; their worse quarrelling at night, and their dashing out to the yard (as if in passion) one after the other. And, so far as Katrine could trace it, that was the very last seen or heard of Edgar Reste. The next morning he was gone; gone in a mysterious manner, leaving all his possessions behind him. Her father was reticent over it; would not explain. Then came the little episode of the locked-up brewhouse, which had never been locked before in Joan's memory. Mr. Barbary refused to unlock it, said he had put some wine there; told Joan she must do without the jack. What had really been hidden in that brewhouse? Katrine felt faint at the thought. Not wine. And the terrible farce of packing Mr. Reste's effects and addressing them to Euston Square Station, London! Would they lie there for ever—unclaimed? Alas, alas! The proofs were only too palpable. Edgar Reste had been put out of the world for ever. She had been the shivering witness to his secret burial.
"What's the matter, Katrine? Are you ill?"
The inquiry was made by Mr. Barbary next day at breakfast. Sick unto death she looked. The very bright night had given place to a showery morning, and the rain pattered against the window-panes.
"I have a headache," answered Katrine, faintly.
"Better send Joan to the Manor to say you cannot attend to-day."
"Oh, I would rather go; I must go," she said hastily. For this good girl had been schooling herself as well as she knew how; making up her mind to persevere in fulfilling the daily duties of her life in the best way she should be able; lest, if she fell short abruptly, suspicion might turn towards her father. She had wildly prayed Heaven to grant her strength and help to bear up on her course. Not from her must come the pointing finger of discovery. It is true that he—Edgar—was her first and dearest love; she should never love another as she had loved him; but she was her father's child, and held him sacred.
"Why must you go?" demanded Mr. Barbary, as, having finished a plate of broiled mushrooms, he began upon a couple of eggs with an appetite that the night's work did not seem to have spoiled.
"The air—the walk—may do me good."
"Well, you know best, child. I suppose Todhetley be off to Evesham after that dog of theirs," Mr. Barbary went on to remark. "Master Dick Standish must be a bold sinner to steal the dog one day and parade the open streets with it the next! If—— What is it now, Joan?"
For old Joan had come in with a face of surprise. "Sir," she cried, "has Tom Noah been at work here this morning?"
"Not that I know of," replied Mr. Barbary. Tom Noah, an industrious young fellow, son to Noah, the gardener, was occasionally employed by Mr. Barbary to clean up the yard and clear the garden of its superfluous rubbish.
"Our back'us has been scrubbed out this morning, sir," went on Joan, still in astonishment. "And it didn't want it. Who in the world can have come in and gone and done it?"
"Nonsense," said Mr. Barbary.
"But it has, master; scrubbed clean; the flags are all wet still. And the rain-water barrel's a'most empty, nearly every drop of water drawn out of it! I'd not say but the yard has had a bit of a scrubbing, too, near the garden, as well as the back'us."
"Nonsense!" repeated Mr. Barbary, his light tone becoming irritable. "You see it has been raining! the rain has drifted into the brewhouse, that's all; I left the door open last night. There! go back to your work."
Joan was a simple-natured woman, but she was neither silly nor blind, and she knew that what she said was true. Rapidly turning the matter over in her mind, she came to the conclusion that Tom Noah had been in "unbeknown to the master," and so left the subject.
"I suppose I may take out the spare jack now, sir?" she waited to say.
"Take out anything you like," replied Mr. Barbary.
Afraid of her tell-tale face, Katrine had moved to the window, apparently to look at the weather. Too well she knew who had scrubbed out the place, and why.
The rain had ceased when she set off on her short walk—for it was not much more than a stone's throw to the Manor; the sun was struggling from behind the clouds, blue sky could be seen. Alone with herself and the open country, Katrine gave vent to her pent-up spirit, which she had not dared to do indoors; sighs of anguish and of pain escaped her; she wondered whether it would be wrong if she prayed to die. But some one was advancing to meet her, and she composed her countenance.
It was Ben Gibbon. For the past week or so, since Katrine had been enlightened as to her father's poaching propensities, she had somehow feared this man. He was son to the late James Gibbon, the former gamekeeper at Chavasse Grange, and brother to the present keeper, Richard. Of course one might expect that Mr. Benjamin would protect game and gamekeepers; instead of which, he was known to do a little safe poaching on his own account, and to be an idle fellow altogether. Katrine did not like his intimacy with her father, and she could not forget that he had passed part of that fatal evening with him and Edgar Reste.
"Showery weather to-day, miss," was Ben Gibbon's salutation.
"Yes, it is," answered Katrine, with intense civility—for how could she tell what the man might know?
"I suppose I shall find Mr. Barbary at home?"
"Oh, yes," faintly spoke she, and passed on her way.
WE started for Evesham under a sharp shower, the Squire driving Bob and Blister in the large phaeton. Tod sat with him, I and the groom behind. Not a shadow of doubt lay on any one of us that we should bring back Don in triumph—leaving Dick Standish to be dealt with according to his merits. But, as the Squire remarked later, we were not a match for Dick in cunning.
"Keep your eyes open, lads," the Squire said to us as we approached the town. "And if you see Dick Standish, with or without the dog, jump out and pounce upon him. You hear, Giles?"
"No need to tell me to do it, sir," answered Giles humbly, clenching his fists; he had been eating humble pie ever since Tuesday night. "I am ready."
But Dick Standish was not seen. Leaving the carriage and Giles at the inn, we made our way to the police station. An officer named Brett attended to us. It was curious enough, but the first person we saw inside the station was Tobias Jellico, who had called in on some matter of business that concerned his shop.
"We had your message yesterday, sir," said Brett to the Squire, "and we lost no time in seeing after Standish. But it is not your dog that he has with him."
"Not my dog!" repeated the Squire, up in arms at once. "Don't tell me that, Brett. Whose dog should it be but mine? Come!"
"Well, sir, I never saw your dog; but Tomkins, one of our men, who has often been on duty at Church Dykely, knows it well," rejoined Brett. "We had Standish and the dog up here, and Tomkins at once said it was not your dog at all, so we let the man go. Mr. Jellico also says it is not yours; I was talking to him about it now."
"What I said was this," put in Jellico, stepping forward, and speaking with meek deprecation. "If Squire Todhetley's dog has been described to me correctly, the dog I saw with Standish yesterday can't be the same. It is a great big ugly dog, with tan marks about his white coat——"
"Ugly!" retorted the Squire, resenting the aspersion, for he fully believed it to be Don.
"It is not at all an ugly dog, it's a handsome dog," spoke up Brett. "Perhaps Mr. Jellico does not like dogs."
"Not much," confessed Jellico.
"How came you to say yesterday at Church Dykely that it was the same dog?" Tod asked the man.
"If you please, sir, I didn't exactly say it was; I said I made no doubt of it," returned Jellico, mild as new milk. "It was in this way: Perkins the butcher was standing at his shop door as I passed down the street. We began talking, and he told me about the poachers having been out on the Tuesday night, and that Squire Todhetley had lost his fine Newfoundland dog; he said it was thought the Standishes were in both games. So then I said I had met Dick Standish with just such a dog that morning as I was a-coming out of Evesham. I had never seen the Squire's dog, you perceive, gentlemen; but neither Mr. Perkins nor me had any doubt it was his."
"And it must be mine," returned the Squire, hotly. "Send for the dog, Brett; I will see it. Send for Standish also."
"I'll send, sir," replied Brett, rather dubiously, "and get the man here if he is to be had. The chances are that with all this bother Standish has left the town and taken the dog with him."
Brett was a talkative man, with a mottled face and sandy hair. He despatched a messenger to see after Standish. Jellico went out at the same time, telling Brett that his business could wait till another day.
"I know it is my dog," affirmed the Squire to Brett while he waited. Nothing on earth, except actual sight, would have convinced him that it was not his. "Those loose men play all sorts of cunning tricks. Dick Standish is full of them. I shouldn't wonder but he has painted the dog; done his black marks over with brown paint—or green."
"We've a dyer in this town, Squire," related Brett; "he owns a little white curly dog, and he dyes him as an advertisement for his colours, and lets him run about on the pavement before the shop door. To-day the dog will be a delicate sky-blue, to-morrow a flaming scarlet; the next day he'll be a beautiful orange, with a green tail. The neighbours' dogs collect round and stand looking at him from a respectful distance, uncertain, I suppose, whether he is of the dog species, or not."
I laughed.
"Passing the shop the other day, I saw the dog sitting on the door-step," ran on Brett. "He was bright purple that time. An old lady, driving by in her chariot, caught sight of the dog and called to the coachman to pull up. There she sat, that old lady, entranced with amazement, staring through her eye-glass at what she took to be a phenomenon in nature. Five minutes, full, she stared, and couldn't tear herself away. It is true, gentlemen, I assure you."
Mr. Dick Standish was found, and brought before us. He looked rather more disreputable than usual, his old fustian coat out at elbows, a spotted red handkerchief twisted loosely round his neck. The dog was with him, and it was not ours. A large, fine dog, as already described, though much less handsome than Don, and out of condition, his curly coat a yellowish white, the marks on it of real tan colour, not painted.
Dick's account, after vehemently protesting he had nothing to do with the poaching affair on Tuesday night, was never for a minute out of his bed—was this: The dog belonged to one of the stable-helpers at Leet Hall; but the man had determined to have the dog shot, not being satisfied with him of late, for the animal had turned odd and uncertain in his behaviour. Dick Standish heard of this. Understanding dogs thoroughly, and believing that this dog only wanted a certain course of treatment to put him right, Standish walked to Church Leet on Wednesday morning last from Church Dykely, and asked the man, Brazer, to give him the dog—he would take him and run all risks. Brazer refused at first; but, after a bit, agreed to let Standish keep the dog for a time. If he cured the dog, Brazer was to have him back again, paying Standish for his keep and care; but if not satisfied with the dog, Standish might keep him for good. Standish brought the dog away, and took him straight to Evesham, walking the whole way and getting there about nine o'clock in the evening. He was doctoring the dog well, and hoped to cure him.
Whether this tale was true or whether it wasn't, none of us could contradict it. But there was an appearance of fear, of shuffling in the man's manner, which seemed to indicate that something lay behind.
"It's every word gospel, ain't it, Rove, and no lie nowhere," cried Standish, bending to pat the dog, while the corner of his eye was turned to regard the aspect of the company. "You've blown me up for many things before now, Squire Todhetley, but there's no call, sir, to accuse me this time."
"When did you hear about this dog of Brazer's, and who told you of it?" inquired Tod, in his haughty way.
"'Twas Bill Rimmer, sir; he telled me on Tuesday night," replied Dick. "And I said to him what a shame it was to talk of destroying that there fine dog, and that Brazer was a soft for thinking on't. And I said, young Mr. Todhetley, that I'd be over at Church Leet first thing the next morning, to see if he'd give the dog to me."
"It is not my dog, I see that," spoke the Squire, breaking the silence that followed Dick's speech; "and it may be the stableman's at Leet Hall; that's a thing readily ascertained. Do you know where my dog is, Dick Standish?"
"No, I don't know, sir," replied the man in a very eager tone; "and I never knowed at all, till fetched to this police station yesterday, that your dog was a-missing. I'll swear I didn't."
There was nothing more to be done, but to accept the failure, and leave the station, after privately charging the police to keep an eye on clever Mr. Dick Standish, his haunts, and his movements.
In the afternoon we drove back home, not best pleased with the day's work. A sense of having been done, in some way or other not at present explicable, lay on most of us.
It appeared that the groom shared this feeling strongly. In passing through the yard, I came upon him in his shirt sleeves, seated outside the stable door on an inverted bucket. His elbows on his knees and his face in his hands, he looked the image of despair. The picture arrested me. Mack was rubbing down the horses; a duty Giles rarely entrusted to anybody. He was fond of Don, and had been ready to hang himself ever since Tuesday night.
"Why, Giles! what's the matter?"
"Matter enough, Master Johnny, when a false villyan like that Dick Standish can take the master, and the police their-selves, and everybody else, in!" was his answer. "I felt as cock-sure, sir, that we should bring home Don as I am that the sky above us is shining out blue after the last shower."
"But it was not Don, you see, Giles."
"He wasn't; the dog Standish had to show," returned Giles, with a peculiar emphasis. "Dick had got up his tale all smooth and sleek, sir."
"How do you know he had?"
"Because he told it me over again—the one he said he had been telling at the police station, Master Johnny. I was standing outside the inn yard while you were all in at lunch, and Standish came by as bold as brass, Brazer's dog, Rover, leashed to his hand."
"I suppose it is Brazer's dog?"
"Oh, it's Brazer's dog, that'un be," said Giles, with a deep amount of scorn; "I know him well enough."
"Then how can it be Don? And we could not bring home another man's dog."
Giles paused. His eyes had a far-off look in them, as if seeking for something they could not find.
"Master Johnny," he said, "I can't rightly grasp things. All the way home I've been trying to put two and two together, I am trying at it still, and I can't do it anyhow. Don't it seem odd to you, sir, that Standish should have got Brazer's dog, Rover, into his hands just at the very time we are suspecting he has got Don into 'em?"
I did not know. I had not thought about it.
"He has that dog of Brazer's as a blind. A blind, and nothing else, sir. He has captured our dog, safe and sure, and is keeping him hid up somewhere till the first storm of the search is over, when he'll be able to dispose of him safely."
I could not see Giles's drift, or how the one dog could help to conceal the possession of the other.
"Well, sir, I can't explain it better," he answered; "I can't fit the pieces of the puzzle into one another in my mind yet. But I am positive it is so. Dick Standish has made up the farce about Brazer's dog and got him into his hands to throw dust in our eyes and keep us off the scent of Don."
I began to see the groom might be right; and that the Standishes, sly and crafty, were keeping Don in hiding.
Mrs. Todhetley had met us with a face of concern. Lena's throat was becoming very bad indeed, and Mr. Duffham did not like the look of it at all. He had already come twice that day.
"I think, Johnny," said the mother to me, "that we had better stop Miss Barbary's coming to-morrow; Mr. Duffham does not know but the malady may be getting infectious. Suppose you go now to the cottage and tell her."
So I went off to do so, and found her ill. On this same Friday afternoon, having occasion to ask some question of her father, who was in the garden, she found him planting greens on the plot of ground—the grave—under the summer-apple tree. Before she could speak, a shudder of terror seized her; she trembled from head to foot, turned back to the kitchen, and sat down on the nearest chair.
Old Joan pronounced it to be an attack of ague; Miss Katrine, she said, must have taken a chill. Perhaps she had. It was just then that I arrived and found her shivering in the kitchen. Joan ran up to her room in the garret to bring down some powder she kept there, said to be a grand remedy for ague.
It was getting dusk then; the sun had set. To me, Katrine seemed to be shaking with terror, not illness. Mr. Barbary, in full view of the window, was planting the winter greens under the summer-apple tree.
"What is it that you are frightened at?" I said, propping my back against the kitchen mantelpiece.
"I must ask you a question, Johnny Ludlow," she whispered, panting and shivering. "Was it you who came and stood inside the gate there in the middle of last night?"
"Yes it was. And I saw what Mr. Barbary was doing—there. I could not make it out."
Katrine left her chair and placed herself before me. Clasping her piteous hands, she besought me to be silent; to keep the secret for pity sake—to be true. All kinds of odd ideas stole across me. I would not listen to them; only promised her that I would tell nothing, would be true for ever and a day.
"It must have been an accident, you know," she pleaded; "it must have been an accident."
Joan came back, and I took my departure. What on earth could Katrine have meant? All kinds of fancies were troubling my brain, fit only for what in these later days are called the penny dreadfuls, and I did my best to drive them out of it.
The next morning Katrine was really ill. Her throat was parched, her body ached with fever. As to Lena, she was worse; and we, who ought to have gone back to school that day, were kept at home lest we should carry with us any infection.
"All right," said Tod. "It's an ill wind that blows nobody good." He did not believe in the infection; told me in private that Duffham was an old woman.
Can any one picture, I wonder, Katrine Barbary's distress of mind, the terrible dread that had taken possession of it? Shuddering dread, amounting to a panic: dread of the deed itself, dread for her father, dread of discovery.
On the following morning, Sunday, a letter was delivered at Caramel Cottage for Mr. Reste, the postmark being London, the writing in the same hand as the last—Captain Amphlett's. Mr. Barbary took it away to his gun-room; Katrine saw it, later in the day, lying on the deal-table there, unopened.
The next Thursday afternoon, Lena being then almost well—for children are dying to-day and running about again to-morrow—I called at the Cottage to ask after Katrine. We heard she had an attack of fever. The weather was lovely again; the October sky blue as in summer, the sun hot and bright.
Well, she did look ill! She sat in the parlour at the open window, a huge shawl on, and her poor face about half the size it was before. What had it been, I asked, and she said ague; but she was much better now and intended to be at the Manor again on Monday.
"Sit down please, Johnny. I suppose Lena has been glad of the holiday?"
"She just has. That young lady believes French was invented for her especial torment. Have you heard from Mr. Reste, Katrine?——What does he say about his impromptu flitting?"
She turned white as a ghost, never answering, looking at me strangely. I thought a spasm might have seized her.
"Not yet," she faintly said. "Papa thinks—thinks he may have gone abroad."
While I was digesting the words, some vehicle was heard rattling up the side lane; it turned the corner and stopped at the gate. "Why, Katrine," I said, "it is a railway fly from Evesham!"
A little fair man in a grey travelling-suit got out of the fly, came up the path, and knocked at the door. Old Joan answered it and showed him into the room. "Captain Amphlett," she said. Katrine looked ready to die.
"I must apologize for intruding," he began, with a pleasant voice and manner. "My friend Edgar Reste is staying here, I believe."
Katrine was taken with a shivering fit. The stranger looked at her with curiosity. I said she had been ill with ague, and was about to add that Edgar Reste had left, when Mr. Barbary came in. Captain Amphlett turned to him and went on to explain: he was on his way to spend a little time in one of the Midland shires, and had halted at Evesham for the purpose of looking up Edgar Reste—from whom he had been expecting to hear more than a week past; could not understand why he did not. Mr. Barbary, with all the courtesy of the finished gentleman, told him, in reply to this, that Edgar Reste had left Caramel Cottage a week ago.
"Dear me!" cried the stranger, evidently surprised. "And without writing to tell me. Was his departure unexpected?"
Mr. Barbary laughed lightly. That man would have retained his calmest presence of mind when going down in a wreck at sea. "Some matter of business called him away, I fancy," he replied.
"And to what part of England was he going?" asked Captain Amphlett, after a pause. "Did he say?"
Mr. Barbary appeared to have an impulsive answer on his lips, but closed them before he could speak it. He glanced at me, and then turned his head and glanced at Katrine, as if to see whether she was there, for he was sitting with his back to her. A thought struck me that we were in the way of his plain speaking.
"He went to London," said Mr. Barbary.
"To London!" echoed the Captain. "Why, that's strange. He has not come to London, I assure you."
"I can assure you it is where he told me he was going," said Mr. Barbary, smiling. "And it was to London his luggage was addressed."
"Well, it is altogether strange," repeated Captain Amphlett. "I went to his chambers in the Temple yesterday, and Farnham, the barrister who shares them with him, told me Reste was still in Worcestershire; he had not heard from him for some time, and supposed he might be returning any day now. Where in the world can he be hiding himself? Had he come to London, as you suppose, Mr. Barbary, he would have sought me out the first thing."
Whiter than any ghost ever seen or heard of, had grown Katrine as she listened. I could not take my eyes from her terrified face.
"I do not comprehend it," resumed Captain Amphlett, looking more helpless than a rudderless ship at sea. "Are you sure, sir, that there is no mistake; that he was really going to London?"
"Not at all sure; only that he said it," returned Mr. Barbary in a half mocking tone. "One does not inquire too closely, you know, into the private affairs of young men. We have not heard from him yet."
"I cannot understand it at all," persisted Captain Amphlett; "or why he has not written to me; or where he can have got to. He ought to have written."
"Ah, yes, no doubt," suavely remarked Mr. Barbary. "He was careless about letter-writing, I fancy. Can I offer you any refreshment?"
"None at all, thank you; I have no time to spare," said the other, rising to depart. "I suppose you do not chance to know whether Reste had a letter from me last Tuesday week?"
"Yes, he had one. It had some bank-notes in it. He opened it here at the breakfast table."
Quite a relief passed over Captain Amphlett's perplexed face at the answer. "I am glad to hear you say that, Mr. Barbary. By his not acknowledging receipt of the money, I feared it had miscarried."
Bidding us good afternoon, and telling Katrine (at whose sick state he had continued to glance curiously) that he wished her better, the stranger walked rapidly out to his fly, attended by Mr. Barbary.
"Katrine," I asked, preparing to take my own departure, "what was there in Captain Amphlett to frighten you?"
"It—it was the ague," she answered, bringing out the words with a jerk.
"Oh—ague! Well, I'd get rid of such an ague as that. Good-bye."
But it was not ague; it was sheer fear, as common sense told me, and I did not care to speculate upon it. An uneasy atmosphere seemed to be hanging over Caramel Cottage altogether; to have set in with Edgar Reste's departure.
A day or two later our people departed for Crabb Cot for change of air for Lena, and we returned to school, so that nothing more was seen or heard at present of the Barbarys.
DECEMBER weather, and snow on the ground, and Caramel Cottage looking cold and cheerless. Not so cheerless, though, as poor Katrine, who had a blue, pinched face and a bad cough.
"I can't get her to rouse herself, or to swallow hardly a morsel of food," lamented Joan to Mr. Duffham. "She sits like a statty all day long, sir, with her hands before her."
"Sits like a statue, does she?" returned Duffham, who could see it for himself, and for the hundredth time wondered what it was she had upon her mind. He did his best, no doubt, in the shape of tonics and lectures, but he could make nothing of his patient. Katrine vehemently denied that she was worrying herself over any sweetheart—for that's how Duffham delicately shaped his questions—and said it was the cold weather.
"The voyage will set her up, or—break her up," decided Duffham, who had never treated so unsatisfactory an invalid. "As to not having anything on her mind, why she may tell that to the moon."
Katrine was just dying of the trouble. The consciousness of what the garden could disclose filled her with horror, whilst the fear of discovery haunted her steps by day and her dreams by night. She could not sleep alone, and Joan had brought her mattress down to the room and lay on the floor. When the sun shone, Mr. Barbary would compel her to sit or walk in the garden; Katrine would turn sick and faint at sight of that plot of ground under the apple tree, and the winter greens growing there. At moments she thought her father must suspect the source of her illness; but he gave no sign of it. Since Captain Amphlett's visit, no further inquiry had been made after Edgar Reste. Katrine lived in daily dread of it. Now and then the neighbours would ask after him. Duffham had said one day in the course of conversation: "Where's that young Reste now?" "Oh, in London, working on for his silk gown," Mr. Barbary lightly answered. Katrine marvelled at his coolness.
Upon getting back to the Manor for Christmas we heard that Mr. Barbary was quitting Church Dykely for Canada. "And the voyage will either kill or cure the child," said Duffham, for it was he who gave us the news; "she is in a frightfully weak state."
"Is it ague still?" asked Mrs. Todhetley.
"It is more like nerves than ague," answered Duffham. "She seems to live in a chronic state of fear, starting and shrinking at every unexpected sound. I can't make her out, and that's the truth; she denies having received any shock.—So you have never found Don, Squire!" he broke off, leaving the other subject.
"No," said the Squire angrily. "Dick Standish has been too much for us this time. The fellow wants hanging. Give him rope enough, and he'll do it."
Brazer's dog was returned to him, safe and sound, but our dog had never come back to us, and the Squire was looking out for another. Dick Standish protested his innocence yet; but he had gone roving the country with that other dog, and no doubt had sold Don to somebody at a safe distance. Perhaps had dyed him a fine gold first; as the dyer dyed his dog at Evesham.
"Now, Miss Katrine, there's not a bit of sense in
it!"
It was Christmas Eve. Katrine was sitting in the twilight by the parlour fire, and Joan was scolding. She had brought in a tray of tea with some bread-and-butter; Katrine was glad enough of the tea, but said she could not eat; she always said so now.
"Be whipped if I can tell what has got into the child!" stormed Joan. "Do you want to starve yourself right out?—do you want to——"
"There's papa," interrupted Katrine, as the house door was heard to open. "You must bring in more tea now, Joan."
This door opened next, and some one stood looking in. Not Mr. Barbary. Katrine gazed with dilating eyes, as the firelight flickered on the intruder's face: and then she caught hold of Joan with an awful cry. For he who had come in bore the semblance of Edgar Reste.
"Why, Katrine, my dear, have you been ill?"
Katrine burst into hysterical tears as her terror passed. She had been taking it for Mr. Reste's apparition, you see, whereas it was Mr. Reste himself. Joan closed the shutters, stirred the fire, and went away to see what she could do for him in the shape of eatables after his journey. He sat down by Katrine, and took her poor wan face to his sheltering arms.
In the sobbing excitement of the moment, in the strangely wonderful relief his presence brought, Katrine breathed forth the truth; that she had seen him, as she believed, buried under the summer-apple tree; had believed it all this time, and that it had been slowly killing her. Mr. Reste laughed a little at the idea of his being buried, and cleared up matters in a few brief words.
"But why did you never write?" she asked.
"Being at issue with Mr. Barbary, I would not write to him: and I thought, Katrine, that the less you were reminded of me the better. I waited in London until my luggage came up, and then went straight to Dieppe, without having seen any one I knew; without having even shown myself at my Chambers——"
"But why not, Edgar?" she interrupted. Mr. Reste laughed.
"Well, I had reasons. I had left a few outstanding accounts there, and was not then prepared to pay them and I did not care to give a clue to my address to be bothered with letters."
"You did not even write to Captain Amphlett. He came here to see after you."
"I wrote to him from Dieppe; not quite at first, though. Buried under the apple-tree! that is a joke, Katrine!"
It was Christmas Eve, I have said. We had gone through the snow, with Mrs. Todhetley, to help the Miss Pages decorate the church, and the Squire was alone after dinner, when Mr. Reste was shown in.
"Is it you!" cried the Squire in hearty welcome. "So you have come down for Christmas!"
"Partly for that," answered Mr. Reste. "Partly, sir, to see you."
"To see me! You are very good. I hope you'll dine with us to-morrow, if Barbary will spare you."
"Ah! I don't know about that; I'm afraid not. Anyway, I have a tale to tell you first."
Sitting on the other side the fire, opposite the Squire, the wine and walnuts on the table between them, he told the tale of that past Tuesday night.
He had gone out with Barbary in a fit of foolishness, not intending to do any harm to the game or to join in any harm, though Barbary had insisted on his carrying a loaded gun. The moon was remarkably bright. Not long had they been out, going cautiously, when on drawing near Dyke Neck, they became aware that some poachers were already abroad, and that the keepers were tracking them; so there was nothing for it but to steal back again. They had nearly reached Caramel Cottage, and were making for the side gate, when a huge dog flew up, barking. Barbary called out that it was the Squire's dog, and——
"Bless me!" interjected the Squire at this.
"Yes, sir, your dog, Don," continued Mr. Reste. "Barbary very foolishly kicked the dog: he was in a panic, you see, lest the noise of its barking should bring up the keepers. That kick must have enraged Don, and he fastened savagely on Barbary's leg. I, fearing for Barbary's life, or some lesser injury, grew excited, and fired at the dog. It killed him."
The Squire drew a deep breath.
"Not daring to leave the dog at the gate, for it might have betrayed us, we drew him across the yard to the brewhouse, and locked the door upon him. But while doing this, Ben Gibbon passed, and thereby learnt what had happened. The next day, Barbary and I had some bickering together. I wanted to come to you and confess the truth openly; Barbary forbade it, saying it would ruin him: we could bury the dog that night or the next, he said, and nobody would ever be the wiser. In the evening, Gibbon came in; he was all for Barbary's opinion, and opposed mine. After he left, I and Barbary had a serious quarrel. I said I would leave there and then; he resented it, and followed me into the yard to try to keep me. But my temper was up, and I set off to walk to Evesham, telling him to send my traps after me, and to direct them to Euston Square Station. I took the first morning train that passed through Evesham for London, and made my mind up on the journey to go abroad for a week or two. Truth to confess," added the speaker, "I felt a bit of a coward about the dog, not knowing what proceedings you might take if it came to light, and I deemed it as well to be out of the way for a time. But I don't like being a coward, Mr. Todhetley, it is a role I have never been used to, and I came down to-day to confess all. Barbary is going away, so it will not damage him: besides, it was really I who killed the dog, not he. And now, sir, I throw myself upon your mercy. What do you say to me?"
"Well, I'm sure I don't know," said the Squire, who was in a rare good humour, and liked the young fellow besides. "It was a bad thing to do—poor faithful Don! But it's Christmas-tide, so I suppose we must say no more about it. Let bygones be bygones."
Edgar Reste grasped his hand.
"Barbary's off to Canada, we are told," said the Squire. "A better country for him than this. He has not been thought much of in this place, as you probably know. And it's to be hoped that poor little maiden of his will get up her health again, which seems, by all accounts, to be much shattered."
"I think she'll get that up now," said Mr. Reste, with a curious smile. "She is not going out with him, sir; she stays behind with me."
"With you!" cried the Squire, staring.
"I have just asked her to be my wife, and she says, Yes," said Mr. Reste. "An old uncle of mine over in India has died; he has left me a few hundreds a year, so that I can afford to marry."
"I'm sure I am glad to hear it," said the Squire, heartily. "Poor Don, though! And what did Barbary do with him?"
"Buried him in his back garden, under the summer-apple tree."
Coming home from our night's work at this juncture, we found, to our surprise, a great dog fastened to the strong iron garden bench.
"What a magnificent dog!" exclaimed Tod, while the mother sprang back in alarm. "It is something like Don."
It was very much like Don. Quite as large, and handsomer.
"I shall take it in, Johnny; the Pater would like to see it, There, mother, you go in first."
Tod unfastened the dog and took it into the dining-room, where sat Mr. Reste. The dog seemed a gentle creature, and went about looking at us all with his intelligent eyes. Mrs. Todhetley stroked him.
"Well, that is a nice dog!" cried the Squire. "Whose is it, lads?"
"It is yours, sir, if you will accept him from me," said Mr. Reste. "I came across him in London the other day, and thought you might like him in place of Don. I have taught him to answer to the same name."
"We'll call him 'Don the Second'—and I thank you heartily," said the Squire, with a beaming face. "Good Don! Good old fellow! You shall be made much of."
And that's the ending. He married Katrine without much
delay, taking her off to London to be nursed up; and Mr.
Barbary set sail for Canada. The bank-notes, you ask about?
Why, what Katrine saw in her father's hands were but
half the notes, for Mr. Reste divided them the day
they arrived, giving thirty pounds to his host, and keeping
thirty himself. And Dick Standish, for once, had not been in
the fight; and the Squire, meeting him in the turnip-field
on Christmas Day, gave him five shillings for a Christmas-
box. Which elated Dick beyond telling; and the Squire was
glad of it later, when poor Dick had gone away prematurely
to the Better Land.
And all the sympathy Katrine had from her father, when he came to hear about the summer-apple tree, was a sharp wish that she could have had her ridiculous ideas shaken out of her.
Roy Glashan's Library
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