CHAPTER XVIII.

CHAPTER XVIII.The rays of the level sun were nestling in the brown bosom of the beech–clump, and the fugitive light went undulating through the grey–arched portico, like a reedy river; when Cradock and Clayton Nowell met in the old hall of their childhood. With its deep embrasures, and fluted piers, high–corniced mantel of oak relieved with alabaster figures, and the stern array of pike, and steel–cap, battle–axe, and arquebus, which kept the stag–heads over against them nodding in perpetual fear, this old hall was so impressed upon their earliest memories, that they looked upon it, in some sort, as the entrance to their lives.As the twins drew near from opposite doors, each hung back for a moment: knowing all that had passed that day, how would his brother receive him? But in that moment each perceived how the otherʼs heart was; Cradock cried, “Hurrah, all right”! and Claytonʼs arms were round hisneck. Clayton sobbed hysterically—for he had always been woman–hearted—while Cradock coaxed him with his hand, as if he were ten years the elder. It was as though the days of childhood had returned once more, the days when the world came not between them, but they were the world to each other.“Crad, I wonʼt have a bit of it. Did you think I would be such a robber, Crad? And I donʼt believe one syllable of their humbugging nursery stories. Why, every fellow knows that youmustbe the eldest brother”.“Viley, my boy, I am so glad that it has turned out so. You know that I have always longed to fight my way in the world, and I am fitter for it than you are. And you are more the fellow for a baronet, and a big house, and all that sort of thing; and in the holidays I shall come every year to shoot with you, and to break your dogs, and all that; for you havenʼt got the least idea, Viley, of breaking a dog”.“Well, no, I suppose I havenʼt”, said Clayton, very submissively; at any other time he would have said, “Oh, havenʼt I”? for it was a moot point between them. “But, Craddy, youshallhave half, at any rate. I wonʼt touch it, unless you take half”.“Then the estates must go to the Queen, or to Mr. Nowell Corklemore, your especial friend, Viley”.Clayton was famed for his mimicry of the pompousMr. Corklemore, and he could not resist it now, though the tears were still in his eyes.“Haw, yes; I estimate so, sir. A mutually agreeable and unobjectionable arrangement, sir. Is that your opinion? Haw”! and Clayton stroked an imaginary beard, and closed one eye at the ceiling. Cradock laughed from habit; and Clayton laughed because Cradock did.Oh that somebody had come by to see them thus on the very best terms, as loving as when they whipped tops together, or practised Sir Roger de Coverley! They agreed to slip away that evening from the noise of the guests and the winebibbing, and have a quiet jug of ale in Cradockʼs little snuggery. There they would smoke their pipes together, and consider the laws of inheritance. Already they were beginning to laugh and joke about the matter; what odds about the change of position, if they only maintained the brotherhood? Unluckily no one came near them. The servants were gathered in their own hall, discussing the great discovery; Sir Cradock was gone to the Rectory to meet John Rosedew upon his return, and counsel how to manage things. Even the ubiquitous Dr. Hutton had his especialalibi. He had rushed away to catch Mr. Garnet and the illumination folk, that the necessary changes might be made in the bedizenment of the oak–tree.Suddenly Clayton exclaimed, “Oh, what a fool I am, Craddy! I forgot a most important thing, until it is nearly too late for it”.“What”? asked Cradock, eagerly, for he saw there was great news coming.“When I was out with the governor to–day, what do you think I saw”?“What, what, my boy? Out with it”.“Canʼt stop to make you guess. A woodcock, sir; a woodcock”.“A woodcock so early? Nonsense, man; it must have been a hawk or a night–jar”.“Think I donʼt know a woodcock yet? And Iʼll tell you who saw it, too. Glorious old Mark Stote; his eyes are as sharp as ever. We marked him down to a T, sir, just beyond the hoar–witheys at the head of Coffin Wood; and I should have been after him two hours ago if it had not been for this rumpus. I meant to have had such a laugh at you, for I would not have told you a word of it; but now you shall go snacks in him. Even the governor does not know it”.“Fancy killing a woodcock in the first week of October”! said Cradock, with equal excitement; “why, theyʼll put us in the paper, Viley”.“Not unless you look sharp. Heʼs sure to be off at dusk. Heʼs a traveller, as Mark Stote said: sailed on from the Wight, most likely, last night; heʼll be off for Dorset, this evening. Run for your gun, Crad, your pet Purday; Iʼll meet you here with my Lancaster in just two minutes’ time. Donʼt say a word to a soul. Mind, weʼll go quite alone”.“Yes; but you bring your little Wena, and Iʼlltake my Caldo, and work him as close as possible. I promised him a run this afternoon”.Away they ran, out of different doors, to get their guns and accoutre themselves; while the poor tired woodcock sitting on one leg, under a holly bush, was drawing up the thin quivering coverlet over his great black eyes.Cradock came back to the main hall first, with his gun on his arm, and his shot–belt across him, his broad chest shown by the shooting–jacket, and the light of hope and enterprise in his clear strong glance. Before you could have counted ten, Clayton was there to meet him; and none but a very ill–natured man could have helped admiring the pair of them. Honest, affectionate, simple fellows, true West Saxons as could be seen, of the same height and figure as nearly as could be, each with the pure bright Nowell complexion, and the straightforward Nowell gaze. The wide forehead, pointed chin, arched eyebrows, and delicate mouth of each boy resembled the otherʼs exactly, as two slices cut from one fern–root. Nevertheless, the expression—if I may say it without affectation, the mind—of the face was different. Clayton, too, was beginning to nurse a very short moustache, a silky bright brown tasselet; while Cradock exulted rationally in a narrow fringe of young whiskers. And Vileyʼs head was borne slightly on one side, Cradockʼs almost imperceptibly on the other.With a race to get to the door first, the twins went out together, and their merry laugh ranground the hall, and leaped along the passages. That hall shall not hear such a laugh, nor the passages repeat it, for many a winter night, I fear, unless the dead bear chorus.The moment they got to the kennel, which they did by a way of their own, avoiding all grooms and young lumbermen, fourteen dogs, of different races and a dozen languages, thundered, yelled, and yelped at the guns, some leaping madly and cracking their staples, some sitting up and begging dearly, with the muscles of their chest all quivering, some drawing along on their stomachs, as if they were thoroughly callous, and yawning for a bit of activity; but each in his several way entreating to be the chosen one, each protesting that he was truly the best dog for the purpose—whatever that might be—and swearing stoutly that he would “down–charge” without a hand being lifted, never run in upon any temptation, never bolt after a hare. All the while Caldo sat grimly apart; having trust in human nature, he knew that merit must make its way, and needed no self–assertion. As his master came to him he stood upon his hind–legs calmly, balanced by the chain–stretch, and bent his forearms as a mermaid or a kangaroo does. Then, suddenly, Cradock Nowell dropped the butt of his gun on his boot, and said, with his face quite altered:“Viley, I am very sorry; but, after all, I canʼt go with you”.“Not come with me, Craddy, and a woodcockmarked to a nicety! And you with your vamplets on, and all! What the deuce do you mean”?“I mean just what I say. Donʼt ask me the reason, my dear fellow; Iʼll tell you by–and–by, when we smoke our pipes together. Now I beg you, as an especial favour, donʼt lose a moment in arguing. Go direct to the mark yourself, and straight powder to you! Iʼll come and meet you in an hourʼs time in the spire–bed by the covert”.“Crad, itʼs no good to argue with you; that I have known for ages. Mind, the big–wigs donʼt dine till seven oʼclock, so you have plenty of time to come for me. But I am so sorry I shanʼt have you there to wipe my eye as usual. Nevertheless, Iʼll bring home Bill Woodcock; and what will you say to me then, my boy? Ta, ta; come along, Wena, wonʼt we astonish the natives? But I wish you were coming with me, Crad”.The brothers went out at the little gate, and there Cradock stopped and watched the light figure hurrying westward over the chase, taking a short cut for the coverts. Clayton would just carry down the spinney, where the head of the spring was, because the woodcock might have gone on there; and if ever a snipe was come back to his home yet, that was the place to meet him. Thence he would follow the runnel, for about a third of a mile, down to the spot in the Coffin Wood, where the hollies grew, and the hoar–witheys. When quit of that coppice, the little stream stole away down the valley,and so past Mr. Garnetʼs cottage to the Nowelhurst water beyond the church bridge. Now whether this were the self–same brook on whose marge we observed Master Clayton last week walking, not wholly in solitude, is a question of which I will say no more, except that it does not matter much. There are so many brooks in the New Forest; and after all, if you come to that, how can the most consistent of brooks be identical with the special brook which we heard talking yesterday? Isnʼt it running, running on, even as our love does? Join hands and keep your fingers tight; still it will slip through them.When Clayton was gone but a little way over the heather and hare–runs, his brother made off, with his gun uncharged, for the group still at work in the house–front. Bull Garnet was there, with Rufus Hutton sticking like a leech to him; no man ever was bored more sharply, or more bluntly expressed it. The veins of his temples and close–cropped head stood out like a beech–treeʼs stay roots; he was steaming all over with indignation, and could not find a vent for it. When Cradock came up, Bull saw in a glimpse that he was expected to say something; in fact, that he ought, as a gentleman, to show his interest, not his surprise. Nevertheless he would not do it, though he loved and admired Cradock; and for many reasons was cut to the heart by his paulo–postponement. So he left Craddy to begin, and presented no notch inhis swearing. His swearing was tremendous, for he hated change of orders.“Mr. Garnet”, said Cradock, at last, “I have heard a great deal of bad language, especially among the bargees at Oxford and the piermen at Southampton; and I donʼt pretend to split hairs myself, nor am I mealy–mouthed; but I trust you will excuse my observing, that up to the present moment I have never heard such blackguardly language as you are now employing”.Bull Garnet turned round and looked at him. If Cradock had shown any sign of fear, he would have gone to the earth at once, for his unripe strength would have had no chance with Garnetʼs prime in its fury. The eyes of each felt hot in the otherʼs, as in reciprocal crucibles; then Mr. Garnetʼs rolled away in a perfect blaze of tears. He dashed out his hand and shook Cradockʼs mightily, quite at the back of the oak–tree; then he patted him on the shoulders, to resume his superiority; and said:“My boy, I thank you”.“Well”, thought Cradock, “of all the extraordinary fellows I ever came across, you are the most extraordinary. And yet it is quite impossible to doubt your perfect sincerity, and almost impossible to call in question your sanity”.These reflections of Master Cradock were not so lucid as usual. At least he made a false antithesis. If it had been possible to doubt Mr. Garnetʼs sincerity,he would not have been by any means so extraordinary as he was.“Not much trouble, after all”, cried Rufus Hutton, rollicking up like a man of thrice his true cubic capacity; “ah, these things are simple enough for a man with a littleνοῦς. I shall explain the whole process to Mrs. Hutton, she is so fond of information. Never saw a firework before, sir—at least, I mean the machinery of them—and now I understand it thoroughly; much better, indeed, than the foreman does. Did not I hear you say so, George”?“Eh, my mon, I deed so”—the foreman was a shrewd, dry Scotchman—“in your own opeenion mainly. But ye havena peyed us yet, my mon, for the dustin’ o’ your shoon”.Rufus Hutton began, amid some laughter, to hunt his French purse for the siller, when the foreman leaped up as if he were shot, and dashed behind the oak–tree. “Awa, mon, awa, if ye value your life! Dinna ye see the glue–pot burstinʼ”?Rufus dropped the purse, and fled for his life, and threw himself flat, fifty yards away, that the explosion might pass over him. Even then, when the laugh was out, and Mr. Garnet had said to him, “Perhaps, sir, you will explain that process for the benefit of Mrs. Hutton”, instead of being disconcerted he was busier than ever, and took Mr. Garnet aside some little way down the chase.“They want to make a job of it, I can see thatwell enough. To charge for it, sir; to charge for it”.“Thank you for your advice, Dr. Hutton”, replied Bull Garnet, crustily; he was very morose that afternoon, and surly betwixt his violence; “but perhaps you had better leave them to me, for fear of the glue–pot bursting”.“Ah, I suppose I shall never hear the last of that most vulgar pleasantry. But I tell you they canʼt see it, or else it is they wonʼt. They are determined to do it all over again, and they need only change four letters, and the fixings all come in again. For the R they should put an L, for the D a Y—— Bless my soul, Mr. Garnet, what is it you see there”?No wonder Rufus Hutton asked what Mr. Garnet saw, for the stewardʼs eyes were fixed intently, wrathfully, ferociously, upon something not very far from the place where his home lay among the trees. His forehead rolled in three heavy furrows, deep and red at the bottom, his teeth were set hard, and the muscles of his shoulders swelled as he clenched his hands fast. Dr. Hutton, gazing in the same direction, could see only trees and heather. “What is it you see there, Mr. Garnet”? Rufus Hutton by this time was quivering with curiosity.“Iʼd advise you, sir, not to ask me”: then he added, in a different tone, “the most dastardly scoundrel poacher that ever wanted an ounce oflead, sir. Let us go back to the men, for I have little time to waste”.“Cool fellow”, thought Rufus; “waste of time to talk to me, is it? But what eyes the man must have”!And so he had, and ears too. Bull Garnet saw and heard every single thing that passed within the rim of his presence. No matter what he was doing, or to whom he was talking, no matter what was afoot, or what temper he was in, he saw and heard as clearly as if his whole attention were on it, every moving, breathing, speaking, or spoken thing, within the range of human antennæ. So a spider knows if even a midge or a brother spiderʼs gossamer floats in the dewy unwoven air beyond his octagonal subtlety. From this extraordinary gift of Bull Garnet, as well as from his appearance, and the force of his character, the sons of the forest were quite convinced that he was under league to the devil.In half an hourʼs time or less, when the dusk come down like wool, Cradock cast loose his favourite Caldo, and set out for the Coffin Wood. From habit more than forethought, and to give his dog some pleasure, there by the kennel he loaded his double–barrelled gun. He had made up his mind to shoot no more upon his fatherʼs land, until he had express permission from Sir Cradock Nowell. This was a whim, no doubt, and a piece of pride on his part; but the scene ofthat afternoon, and his fatherʼs bearing towards him, had left some bitter feeling, and a sense of alienation. This was the reason why he would not go with Clayton, much as he longed to do so. Now, with some dull uncertainty and vague depression clouding him, he loaded his gun in an absent manner; putting loose shot, No. 6, in one barrel, and a cartridge in the other. “Hie away, boy”! he cried to Caldo, who had crouched at his feet the while; then he struck off hot foot for the westward, with the gun upon his shoulder. But just as he started, one of the lads, who was often employed as a beater, ran up, and said, with his cap in his hand, in a manner most insinuating—“Take I ’long of ’ee, Meestur Craduck. Iʼll be rare and keerful, sir”.“No, thank you, Charley, not this time. I am not even going shooting, and I mean to go quite alone”.Poor Cradock, unlucky to the last. Almost everything he had done that day had been a great mistake; and now there was only one more to come, the deadliest error of all.Whistling a dreamy old tune, he hurried over the brown and tufted land, sometimes leaping a tussock of bed–furze, sometimes following a narrow hare–run, a soft green thread through the heather.The sun had been down for at least half an hour, and under the trees there was twilight; but here, in the open, a tempered brightness flowedfrom some yellow clouds still lingering in the west. You might still know a rabbit from a hare at fifty or sixty yards off. And in truth both bunnies and hares were about; the former hopping, and stopping, and peeping, and pricking their ears as the fern waved, and some sitting gravely upon a hillock, with their backs like a home–made loaf; the hares, on the other hand, lopping along, with their great ears drooping warily, and the spring of their haunches gathered up for a dash away any whither: but all alike come abroad to look for the great and kind God who feeds them. Then, from either side of the path, or the sandy brows of the gravel–pit, the diphthong cry of the partridge arose, the call that tells they are feeding. Convivial and good–hearted bird, who cannot eat without conversation, nor without it be duly eaten; no marvel that the Paphlagonians assign you a brace of hearts. The pheasants were flown to the coverts long ago (they are fearful of losing the way to bed), two or three brown owls were mousing about, and a horned fellow came sailing smoothly from the deep settlements of the thicket, as Cradock Nowell leaped up the hedge, a hedge overleaning, overtwisting, stubby, and crowded with ash, rose, and hazel, the fence of the Coffin Wood. Though Caldo had stood picturesquely at least a dozen times, and looked back at his master reproachfully, turning the white of his eye, and champing his under lip, and then dropped as if he himselfwere shot, when the game sped away with a whirr, Cradock, true to his resolution, had not pulled trigger yet. And though the repression was not entirely based upon motives humane, our Cradock felt a new delight in sparing the lives of those poor things who have no other life to look to. At least so we dare to restrict them. So merry and harmless to him they seemed, so glad that the dangerous day was done, so thankful for having been fed and saved by the great unknown, but felt, Feeder, Father, and Saviour.CHAPTER XIX.Meanwhile Sir Cradock Nowell had found, at the peaceful Rectory, a tumult nearly as bad as that which he had left in his own household. In a room which was called by others the book–room, by herself “the library”, Miss Eudoxia sat half choked, in a violent fit of hysterics, Amy and fat Jemima doing their utmost to console her and bring her round. Sir Cradock had little experience of women, and did the worst thing he could have done—that is to say, he stood gazing.“Amy”, groaned Miss Eudoxia—“Amy, if you donʼt want to kill me, get him out of the room, my child”.“Go, go, go”! cried Amy, in desperation. “Canʼt you see, godpapa, that we shall do better without you; oh, ever, ever so much”?Sir Cradock Nowell felt a longing to box pretty Amyʼs ears; he had always loved his godchild, Amy, and chastened her accordingly. He nowloved Amy best in the world, next to his pet son, Clayton. To tell the truth, he had bathed himself in the sunset–glow of match–making, all the way down the chase. Clayton, proclaimed the heir and all that, should marry Amy Rosedew; what could it matter to him about money, and where else would he find such a maiden? Then, in the course of a few more years—so soon as ever there were five, or, say at the most six children—he, Sir Cradock, would make over the management of the property; that is, if he felt tired of it, and they were both very steady. And what of Cradock, you planning father, what of your other son, Cradock? In faith, he must do for a parson.Sir Cradock retired in no small flurry, and went to the garden to look for Jem. Miss Eudoxia became at once unconscious, as she ought to have been long ago; and thenceforth she would never acknowledge that she had seen the intruder at all; or, indeed, that there had been one. However, it cured her, for a very long time, of those sad attacks of hysteria.This present attack was the natural result of a violent conflict with Amy, who was not going to be trampled upon, even by Aunt Doxy. It appears that, early in the afternoon, the good aunt began to wonder what on earth was become of her niece. Of course she could not be at the school, because Wednesday was a half–holiday; she was not in the library, nor in the back–kitchen, nor even out at Pincherʼs kennel. No, nor even in the garden,although she had a magnificent lot of bulbs to plant, for which she had saved up ever so much of her little pocket–money. “Well”, said Miss Eudoxia, who was thirsting for her gossip, which she always held after lunch—“well, I must say this ismostinconsiderate of her. And I promised John to take her to the park, and how am I to get ready? Girls are not what they used to be, though Amy is such a good girl. They read all sorts of trashy books, and then they go eloping”.That last idea sent the good aunt in hot haste to Amyʼs bedroom; and who should be there, sitting by the window, with a small book in her hand, but beautiful Amy herself.“Well”! cried Miss Eudoxia, heavily offended; “indeed, Iamsurprised. So this is what you prefer, is it, to your own auntʼs conversation? And, I declare, what a colour you have! And panting, as if you had asthma! Let me see that book this moment, miss”!“To be sure, Aunt Eudoxia”, said Amy, rather indignantly; “but you need not be in a pet, you know”.“Oh, neednʼt I, indeed, when you read such books as this! Oh, what will your poor father say? Andyouto have a class in the Sunday–school”!Of all the grisly horrors produced to make the travellerʼs hair creep, one of the most repulsive and glaring was in Amyʼs delicate hand. A hideous ape, with an open razor, was about to cut a young ladyʼs throat. Chuckling, he drew her fair neckto the blade by her dishevelled hair. At her feet lay an elderly woman, dead; while a man with a red cap was gazing complacently in at the window. The back of the volume was relieved by a ghost, a deathʼs head, and a pair of cross–bones.“Well”! said Miss Eudoxia. Her breath was gone for a long while, and she could say nothing more.“I know the cover is ugly, aunt, but the inside is so beautiful. Oh, and so very wonderful! I canʼt think how any one ever could imagine such splendid horrible things. Oh, so clever, Aunt Doxy; and full of things that make me tingle, as if my brain were gone to sleep. And I want to ask papa particularly about galvanizing the mummy”.“Indeed; yes, galvanizing! and pray does your father know of your having this horrible book”?“No; but I mean to tell him, the moment I have got to the end of it”.“Good child, and most dutiful! When you have swallowed the poison, youʼll tell us”.“Poison indeed, Aunt Eudoxia! How dare you talk to me like that? Do you dare to suppose that I would read a thing that was unfit for me”?“No, I donʼt think you would, knowingly. But you are not the proper judge. Why did you not ask your father or me, before you began this book”?“Because I thought you wouldnʼt let me read it”.“Well, that does beat everything. Candid impudence,I call that, perfectly candid insolence”! Aunt Doxyʼs throat began to swell; there was weak gorge in the family. Meanwhile, Miss Amy, who all the time had been jerking her shoulders and standing upright, in a manner peculiarly her own—Amy felt that her last words required some explanation. She had her fatherʼs strong sense of justice, though often pulled crooked by womanhood.“You know well enough what I mean, aunt, though you love to misrepresent me so. I mean that you would not let me read it, not because it was wrong (which it isnʼt), but for fear of making me nervous. And upon that subject, at least, I think I have a right to judge for myself”.“Oh, I dare say; you, indeed! And pray who lent you that book? Unless, indeed, in your self–assertion, you went to a railway and bought it”.“That is just the sort of thing I would rather die than tell, after all the fuss you have made about it”.“Thank you; I quite perceive. A young gentleman—not to be betrayed—scamp, whoever he is”. It was Clayton Nowell who had lent the book.“Is he indeed? I wish you were only half as upright and honourable”.Hereupon Miss Eudoxia, who had dragged her niece down to the book–room, with dialogue all down the stairs, muttered something about her will, that she had a little to leave, though not much, buthonestly her own—God knew—and down she went upon the chair, with both hands to her side. At the sequel, as we have seen, Sir Cradock Nowell assisted, and took little for his pains.After this, of course, there was a great reconciliation. For they loved each other thoroughly; and each was sure to be wild with herself for having been harsh to the other. They agreed that their eyes were much too red now to go and see the nascent fireworks.“A gentlemanʼs party to–night; my own sweet love, how glad I am! I ought to know better, Amy dearest; and they have never sent the goulard. I ought to know, my own lovey pet, that we can trust you in everything”.“No, aunty dear, you oughtnʼt. I am as obstinate as a pig sometimes; and I wish you would box my ears, aunt. I hope my hair wonʼt be right for a month, dearest aunt, where you pulled it; and as for the book, I have thrown it into the kitchen–fire long ago, though I do wish, darling aunt, you could have read about the descent into the Mäelstrom. I declare my head goes round ever since! What amazing command of language! And he knows a great deal about cooking”.James Pottles, groom and gardener, who even aspired to the hand, or at any rate, to the lips, of the plump and gaudy Jemima, was not at all the sort of fellow you would appreciate at the first interview. His wits were slow and mild, and hadnever yet been hurried, for his parents were unambitious. It took him a long time to consider, and a long time again to express himself, which he did with a roll of his tongue. None the less for that, Jem Pottles was quoted all over the village as a sayer of good things. No conclusion was thought quite safe, at least by the orthodox women, until it had been asked with a knowing look—“And what do Jem Pottles say of it”? Feeling thus his responsibility, and the gravity of his opinion, Jem grew slower than ever, and had lately contracted a habit of shutting one eye as he cogitated. As cause and effect always act and react, this added enormously to his repute, until Mark Stote the gamekeeper, and Reuben Cuff the constable, ached and itched with jealousy of that “cock–eyed, cock–headed boy”.Sir Cradock found Jem quite at his leisure, sweeping up some of the leaves in the shrubbery, and pleasantly cracking the filberts which he discovered among them. These he peeled very carefully, and put them in the pocket of his stable waistcoat, ready for Jemima by–and–by. He swished away very hard with the broom the moment he saw the old gentleman, and touched his hat in a way that showed he could scarcely spare time to do it.“What way, my lad, do you think it likely your master will come home to–day”?This was just the sort of question upon which Jem might commit himself, and lose a deal ofprestige; so he pretended not to hear it, and brushed the very ground up. These tactics, however, availed him not, for Sir Cradock repeated his inquiry in a tone of irritation. Jem leaned his chin on the broom–handle, and closed one eye deliberately.“Well, he maight perhaps come the haigher road, and again a maight come the lower wai, and Iʼve a knowed him crass the chase, sir, same as might be fram alongside of Meester Garnetʼs house. There never be no telling the wai, any more than the time of un. But itʼs never no odds to me”.“And which way do you think the most likely now”?“Not to say ‘now’, but bumbai laike. If so be a cooms arly, a maight come long of the haigher road as goes to the ‘Jolly Foresters;’ and if a comʼth middlin’ arly, you maight rackon may be on the town wai; but if he cometh unoosial late, and a heap of folks be sickenin’ or hisself hath pulled a book out, a maight goo round by Westacot, and come home by Squire Garnetʼs wai”. Rich in alternatives, Jem Pottles opened the closed eye, and shut the open one.“What a fool the fellow is”! said Sir Cradock to himself; “Iʼll try the first way, at any rate. For if John is so late, I could not stop for him, with all those people coming. How I wish we were free from strangers to–night, with all these events in the family! But perhaps, if we manage it well, it will carry it off all the better”.Sir Cradock Nowell was in high spirits as he started leisurely for a saunter along the higher road. This was the road which ran eastward, both from the Hall and the Rectory, into the depth of the forest. In all England there is no lovelier lane, if there be one to compare with it. Many of the forest roads are in fault, because they are too open. You see too far, you see too much, and you are not truly embowered. In a forest we do not want long views, except to rejoice in the amplitude. And a few of those, just here and there, enlarge the great enjoyment. What we want, as the main thing of all, as the staple feeling, is the deep, mysterious, wondering sense of being swallowed up, and knowing it: swallowed up, not as we are in catacombs, or wine–vaults, or any railway tunnel; but in our own motherʼs love, with God around us everywhere. To many of us, perhaps to most, so placed at fall of evening, there is a certain awe, a dread which overshades enjoyment. If so, it springs in part at least from our unnatural nature; that is to say, the education which teaches us so very little of the things around us.How the arches spring overhead, and the brown leaves flutter among them! In and out, and through and through, across and across, with delicacy, veining the very shadows. For miles we may wander beneath them, and see no two alike. How, for fear of wearying us, after infinite twists and turns—but none of them contortions—after playing across the heavens, and sweeping awaythe sunshine, now in this evening light they hover, and rustle like the skirts of death. Is there one of them with its lichen–mantle copied from its neighbourʼs? Is there one that has borrowed a line, a character, even a cast of complexion from its own brother rubbing against it? Their arms bend over us as we walk, we are in their odour and influence, we know that, like the Magi of old, they adore only God and His sun; and, when we come out from under them, we never ask why we are sad.CHAPTER XX.There is a long, mysterious thrill, a murmur rather felt than heard, a shudder of profundity, which traverses the woodland hollows at the sunʼs departure. In autumn most especially, when the glory of trees is saddening, and winter storms are in prospect, this dark disquietude moves the wood, this horror at the nightfall, and doubt of the coming hours. Touched as with a subtle stream, the pointlets of the oak–leaves rise, the crimped fans of the beech are fluttered, and lift their glossy ovals, the pendulous chains of the sycamore swing; while the poplar flickers its silver skirts, the tippets and ruffs of the ivy are ruffling, and even the three–lobed bramble–leaf cannot repress a shiver.Touched with a stream at least as subtle, we, who are wandering among the dark giants, shiver and shrink, we know not why; and our hearts beat faster, to feel how they beat. The cause is the same both for tree and for man. Earthlynature has not learned to count upon immortality. Therefore all her works, unaided, loathe to be undone.Whether it were this, or his craving for his dinner, that made Sir Cradock Nowell feel chilled, as he waited under the shuddering trees for his friend John Rosedew—far be it from me to say, because it may have been both, sir. And the other cause to which he always ascribed it—after the event—to wit, a divine afflatus of diabolical presentiment, is one we have no faith in, until we own to nightmare. Anyhow, there he was, for upwards of an hour; and no John Rosedew came up the hill, which Sir Cradock did not feel it at all his duty to descend, on the very safe presentiment of the distressrevocare gradum.Meanwhile John Rosedew was speeding merrily, according to his ideas of speed (which were relative to the last degree), along a narrow bridle–way, some two miles to the westward. It would be a serious insult—so the parson argued—to the understanding of any man who understood a horse, and now John Rosedew had owned Coræbus very nearly nine months, and though he had never owned a horse before, surely by this time he could set papers in thebarbara celarentof the most recondite horse–logic—or was it dialectics?—an insult it would be to that Hippicus who felt himself fit now to go to a fair and discuss many points with the jockeys, if anybody suggested to him that Coræbus ought to trot.“Trot, sir”! cried John Rosedew, to an imaginary Hippodamas, “hasnʼt he been trotting for nearly an hour to–day, sir? Quite anequus tolutarius. And upon my word, I only hope he is not so sore as I am”. Then he threw the reins over the ponyʼs neck, and let him crop some cytisus.“Coræbus, have no fear, my horse, you shall not be overworked. Or if Epirus or Mycenæ be thy home and birthplace—incertus ibidem sudor—thrice I have wiped it off, and no oaten particles in it;urit avenœ, so I suppose oats must dry the skin. ‘Ad terramque fluit devexo pondere cervix’, a line not to be rendered in English, even by my Cradock. How fine that whole description, but made up from alien sources! Oh how Lucretius would have done it! Most sad that he was not a Christian”.A believer was what John Rosedew meant. But by this time he was beginning to look upon all his classical friends as in some sort Christians, if they only believed in their own gods. Wherein, I fear, he was far astray from the text of one of the Articles.Cob Coræbus by this time knew his master thoroughly; and exercising his knowledge cleverly, made his shoes last longer. If the weather felt muggy and “trying”—from an equine view of probation—if the road was rough and against the grain, even if the forest–fly came abroad upon business, Coræbus used (in sporting parlance) to “shut up” immediately. This he did, not in a defiant tone, not in a mode to provoke antagonism;he was far too clever a horse for that; but with every appearance of a sad conviction that his master had no regard for him. At this earnest appeal to his feelings, John Rosedew would dismount in haste, and reflect with admiration upon the weeping steeds of Achilles, or the mourning horse of Mezentius, while he condemned with acrimony the moral conveyed by a song he had heard concerning the “donkey wot wouldnʼt go”. Then he would loosen the girths, and, remonstrating with Coræbus for his want of self–regard, carefully wipe with his yellow silk pocket–handkerchief first all the accessible parts of the cob that looked at all uncomfortable, and then his own capacious forehead. This being done, he would search around for a juicy mouthful of grass, or dive for an apple or slice of carrot—Coræbus at the same time diving nasally—into the depths of his black coat pocket, where he usually discovered his lunch, which he had altogether forgotten. While the horse was discussing this little refreshment, John would put his head on one side, and look at him very knowingly, revolving in his mind a question which very often presented itself, whether Coræbus were descended from Corytha or Hirpinus.However this may have been—and from his “staying qualities” one would have thought him rather a chip from the old block of Troy—he was the first horse good John Rosedew had ever called his own; and he loved and admired him none theless for certain calumnies spread by the envious about seedy–toes, splints, and spavins. Of these crimes, whatever they might be, the parson found no mention in Xenophon, Pliny, or Virgil, and he was more than half inclined to believe them clumsy modern figments. As for the incontestable fact that Coræbus began to whistle when irrationally stimulated beyond his six miles an hour, why, that John Rosedew looked upon as a classical accomplishment, and quoted a line from Theocritus. Very swift horses were gifted with this peculiar power, for the safety of those who would otherwise be the victims of their velocity, even as the express train always whistled past Brockenhurst station.After contemplating the animal till admiration was exhausted, and wondering why some horses have hairy, while others have smooth ankles, he would refresh himself with a reverie about the Numidian cavalry; then declaring that Jem Pottles was “impolitiæ notandus”, he would pass his arm through the bridle, and calling to mind the Pæon young lady who unduly astonished Darius, pull an old book from some inner pocket, and stroll on, with Coræbus sniffing now and then at his hat–brim.To any one who bears in mind what a punctual body Time is, this account of the rectorʼs doings will make it not incredible that he was often late for dinner. But he never lost reckoning altogether in his circumnavigation, because his leisure did not begin till he had passed the “Jolly Foresters”; forthere he must be by a certain hour, or Coræbus would feel aggrieved, and so would Mrs. Cripps, who always looked for him at or about 1.30 P.M. For some mighty fine company was to be had by a horse who could behave himself, in the stable of the “Jolly Foresters”, about middle–day on a Wednesday. Several high–stepping buggy–mares, one or two satirical Broughamites, even some nags who gave a decided tone to the neighbourhood, silver–hamed Clevelands, and champ–the–bit Clydesdales: even these were not too proud—that they left for vulgarian horses—to snort and blow hard at the “Forestersʼ” oats, and then eat them up like winking. To this select circle our own Coræbus had been admitted already, and his conversational powers admired, when he had produced an affidavit that his master was in no way connected with trade.Coræbus now bade fair to be spoiled by all this grand society. Every Wednesday he came home less natural, more coxcombical. He turned up his nose at many good horses, whom he had once respected, fellows who wandered about in the forest, and hung down their chins when the rain came! And then he became so affected and false, with an interesting languor, when Amy jumped out to caress him! Verily, friend Coræbus, thou shalt pay out for this! What call, pray, hast thou to become a humbug, from seeing how men do flourish?John Rosedew awoke quite suddenly to the lawsof time and season, as the hazel branches came over his head, and he could see to read no longer. The grey wood closed about him, to the right hand and to the left; the thick shoots of the alder, the dappled ash, and the osier, hustled among the taller trees whose tops had seen the sunset; tufts of grass, and blackberry–tangles, hipped dog–roses leaning over them, stubby clumps of buckthorn, brake–fern waving six feet high where the ground held moisture—who, but an absent man, would have wandered at dusk into such a labyrinth?“ʼActum est’ with my dinner”, exclaimed the parson aloud, when he awoke to the situation; “and what, perhaps, is more important to thee, at least, Coræbus, thine also is ‘pessum datum’. And there is no room to turn the horse round without scratching his eyes and his tail so. Nevertheless, this is a path, or at one time must have been so; ‘semita, callis, tramesʼ—that last word is the one for it, if it be derived from ‘traho’ (which, however, I do not believe)—for, lo! there has been a log of wood dragged here even during a post–diluvial period: we will follow this track to the uttermost; what says the cheerful philosopher:—‘παντοίην βιότοιο τάμοις ὁδόν’. Surely a gun, nay, two, or, more accurately, two explosions; now for some one to show us the way. Coræbus, be of good cheer, there is supper yet in thyφάτνῃ, notἐϋξέστῳ; advance then thy best foot. Why not?—seest thou anἔιδωλον? Come on, I say, mine horse—Great God!—— ” And he was silent.Tired as he was, Coræbus had leaped back from the leading rein, then cast up his head and snorted, and with a glare of terror stood trembling. What John Rosedew saw at that moment was stamped on his heart for ever. Across his narrow homeward path, clear in the grey light, and seeming to creep, was the corpse of Clayton Nowell, laid upon its left side, with one hand to the heart, the wan face stark and spread on the ground, the body stretched by the final throe. The pale light wandered over it, and showed it only a shadow. John Rosedewʼs nerves were stout and strong, as of a man who has injured none; he had buried hundreds of fellow–men, after seeing them die; but, for the moment, he was struck with a mortal horror. Back he fell, and drove back his horse; he could not look at the dead manʼs eyes fixed intently upon him. One minute he stood shivering, and the ash–leaves shivered over him. He was conscious somehow of another presence which he could not perceive. Then he ran up, like a son of God, to what God had left of his brother. The glaze (as of ground glass) in the eyes, the smile that has swooned for ever, the scarlet of the lips turned out with the chalky rim of death, the bulge of the broad breast, never again to rise or fall in breathing—is there one of these changes we do not know, having seen them in our own dearest ones?But a worse sight than of any dead man—dead, and gone home to his Father—met John Rosedewʼsquailing eyes, as he turned towards the opening. It was the sight of Cradock Nowell, clutching his gun with one hand, and clinging hard with the other, while he hung from the bank (which he had been leaping) as a winding–sheet hangs from a candle. The impulse of his leap had failed him, smitten back by horror; it was not in him to go back, nor to come one foot forward. The parson called him by his name, but he could not answer; only a shiver and a moan showed that he knew his baptism. The living was more startled, and more startling, than the dead.CHAPTER XXI.There was a little dog that crept and moaned by Claytonʼs body, a little dog that knew no better, never having been taught much. It was a small black Swedish spaniel, skilful only in woodcocks, and pretty well up to a snipe or two, but actually afraid of a pheasant on account of the dreadful noise he made. She knew not any more than the others why her name was “Wena”, and she was perfectly contented with it, though it must have been a corruption. The men said it ought to be “Winifred”; the maids, more romantic, “Rowena”; but very likely John Rosedew was right, being so strong in philology, when he maintained that the name was a syncopated form of “Wadstena”, and indicated her origin.However, she knew her masterʼs name better than her own. You had only to say “Clayton”, anywhere or anywhen, and she would lift her tangled ears in a moment, jerk her little whisk ofa tail, till you feared for its continuity, and trot about with a sprightly air, seeking all around for him. Now she was cuddled close into his bosom, moaning, and shivering, and licking him, staring wistfully at his eyes and the wound where the blood was welling. She would not let John Rosedew touch him, but snapped as he leaned over; and then she began to whimper softly, and nuzzle her head in closer. “Wena”, he said, in a very low voice—“pretty Wena, let me”. And then she understood that he meant well, and stood up, and watched him intently.John knew in a moment that all was over between this world and Clayton Nowell. He had felt it from the first glance indeed, but could not keep hope from fluttering. Afterwards he had no idea what he did, or how he did it, but the impression left by that short gaze was as stern as the death it noted. Full in the throat was the ghastly wound, and the charge had passed out at the back of the neck, through the fatal grape–cluster. Though the bright hair flowed in a pool of blood, and the wreck of life was pitiful, the face looked calm and unwrung by anguish, yet firm and staunch, with the courage summoned to ward death rather than meet it.John Rosedew, shy and diffident in so many little matters, was not a man to be dismayed when the soul is moving vehemently. Now he leaped straight to the one conclusion, fearful as it was.“Holy God, have mercy on those we loveso much! No accident is this, but a savage murder”.He fell upon his knees one moment, and prayed with a dead hand in his own. He knew, of course, that the soul was gone, a distance thought can never gaze; but prayer flies best in darkness.Then, with the tears all down his cheeks, he looked round once, as if to mark the things he would have to tell of. In front of the corpse lay the favourite gun, with the muzzle plunged into the bushes, as if the owner had fallen with the piece raised to his shoulder. The hammer of one barrel was cocked, of the other on half–cock only; both the nipples were capped, and, of course, both barrels loaded. The line of its fire was not towards Cradock, but commanded a little by–path leading into the heart of the wood.Meanwhile, Cradock had fallen forward from the steep brow of the hedge–bank; the branch to which he clung in that staggering way had broken. Slowly he rose from the ground, and still intent and horror–struck, unable to come nearer, looked more like one of the smitten trees which they call in the forest “dead men”, than a living and breathing body. John Rosedew, not knowing what he did, ran to the wretched fellow, and tried to take his hand, but the offer was quite unnoticed. With his eyes still fixed on his twin–brotherʼs corpse, the youth began fumbling clumsily in the pocket of his shooting–coat; he pulled out a powder–flask, and rapidly, never once lookingat it, dropped a charge into either barrel. John heard the click of the spring—one, two, as quick as he could have said it. Then the young man drew from his waistcoat–pocket two thick patent wads, and squeezed one into either cylinder. All at once it struck poor “Uncle John” what he was going to do. Preparing to shoot himself!“Cradock, my boy, is this all the fear of God I have taught you”?Cradock looked at him curiously, and nodded his head in acknowledgment. It was plain that his wits were wandering. The parson immediately seized the gun, and sowed the powder broadcast, then wrenched the flask away from him with a hand there was no resisting. Then for the first time he observed Caldo in the hedge, “down–charging”; the well–trained dog had never moved from the moment his master fired.“Come with me at once, come home, Cradock; boy, youshallcome home with me”!But the man of threescore was not quick enough for the young despair. Cradock was out of sight in the thicket, and Caldo galloped after him. Wild with himself for his slowness of wit, John Rosedew ran to poor Claytonʼs gun, for fear of his brother finding it. Then he took from the dead boyʼs pocket his new and burnished powder–flask, though it went to his heart to do it, and leaped upon the back of Coræbus, without a thought of Xenophon. Only Wena was left to keep her poor master company.How the rector got to the Hall I know not, neither has he any recollection; but he must have sat his horse like a Nimrod, and taken a hedge and two ditches. All we know is that he did get there, with Coræbus as frightened as he was, and returned to the place of disaster and death, with three men, of whom Dr. Hutton was one. Sir Cradock was not yet come back to his home, and the servants received proper orders.As the four men, walking in awe and sorrow, cast the light of a lamp through the bushes, they heard a quick rustle of underwood, and crackle of the dead twigs, but saw no one moving.“Some one has been here since I left”, exclaimed John Rosedew, trembling; “some one has lain beside the body, and put marks of blood on the forehead”.Each of the men knew, of course, what it was—Cradock embracing his brother!“A good job you took the gun away; wonder you had the sense, though”, said Rufus Hutton, sharply, to pretend he wasnʼt crying; “I only know what I should have done, if I had shot my brother so—blown out the remains of my brains, sir”!“Hush”! said John Rosedew, solemnly, and his deep voice made their hearts thrill; “it is not our own life to will or to do with. In the hands of the Lord are our life and our death”.They knelt around the pale corpse tenderly, shading the lamp from the eyes of it; even Rufuscould not handle it in a medical manner. One of the men, who always declared that he had saved Claytonʼs life in his childhood, fell flat on the ground, and sobbed fearfully. I cannot dwell on it any more; it makes a fellow cry to think of it. Only, thank God, that I am not bound to tell how they met his father.

CHAPTER XVIII.The rays of the level sun were nestling in the brown bosom of the beech–clump, and the fugitive light went undulating through the grey–arched portico, like a reedy river; when Cradock and Clayton Nowell met in the old hall of their childhood. With its deep embrasures, and fluted piers, high–corniced mantel of oak relieved with alabaster figures, and the stern array of pike, and steel–cap, battle–axe, and arquebus, which kept the stag–heads over against them nodding in perpetual fear, this old hall was so impressed upon their earliest memories, that they looked upon it, in some sort, as the entrance to their lives.As the twins drew near from opposite doors, each hung back for a moment: knowing all that had passed that day, how would his brother receive him? But in that moment each perceived how the otherʼs heart was; Cradock cried, “Hurrah, all right”! and Claytonʼs arms were round hisneck. Clayton sobbed hysterically—for he had always been woman–hearted—while Cradock coaxed him with his hand, as if he were ten years the elder. It was as though the days of childhood had returned once more, the days when the world came not between them, but they were the world to each other.“Crad, I wonʼt have a bit of it. Did you think I would be such a robber, Crad? And I donʼt believe one syllable of their humbugging nursery stories. Why, every fellow knows that youmustbe the eldest brother”.“Viley, my boy, I am so glad that it has turned out so. You know that I have always longed to fight my way in the world, and I am fitter for it than you are. And you are more the fellow for a baronet, and a big house, and all that sort of thing; and in the holidays I shall come every year to shoot with you, and to break your dogs, and all that; for you havenʼt got the least idea, Viley, of breaking a dog”.“Well, no, I suppose I havenʼt”, said Clayton, very submissively; at any other time he would have said, “Oh, havenʼt I”? for it was a moot point between them. “But, Craddy, youshallhave half, at any rate. I wonʼt touch it, unless you take half”.“Then the estates must go to the Queen, or to Mr. Nowell Corklemore, your especial friend, Viley”.Clayton was famed for his mimicry of the pompousMr. Corklemore, and he could not resist it now, though the tears were still in his eyes.“Haw, yes; I estimate so, sir. A mutually agreeable and unobjectionable arrangement, sir. Is that your opinion? Haw”! and Clayton stroked an imaginary beard, and closed one eye at the ceiling. Cradock laughed from habit; and Clayton laughed because Cradock did.Oh that somebody had come by to see them thus on the very best terms, as loving as when they whipped tops together, or practised Sir Roger de Coverley! They agreed to slip away that evening from the noise of the guests and the winebibbing, and have a quiet jug of ale in Cradockʼs little snuggery. There they would smoke their pipes together, and consider the laws of inheritance. Already they were beginning to laugh and joke about the matter; what odds about the change of position, if they only maintained the brotherhood? Unluckily no one came near them. The servants were gathered in their own hall, discussing the great discovery; Sir Cradock was gone to the Rectory to meet John Rosedew upon his return, and counsel how to manage things. Even the ubiquitous Dr. Hutton had his especialalibi. He had rushed away to catch Mr. Garnet and the illumination folk, that the necessary changes might be made in the bedizenment of the oak–tree.Suddenly Clayton exclaimed, “Oh, what a fool I am, Craddy! I forgot a most important thing, until it is nearly too late for it”.“What”? asked Cradock, eagerly, for he saw there was great news coming.“When I was out with the governor to–day, what do you think I saw”?“What, what, my boy? Out with it”.“Canʼt stop to make you guess. A woodcock, sir; a woodcock”.“A woodcock so early? Nonsense, man; it must have been a hawk or a night–jar”.“Think I donʼt know a woodcock yet? And Iʼll tell you who saw it, too. Glorious old Mark Stote; his eyes are as sharp as ever. We marked him down to a T, sir, just beyond the hoar–witheys at the head of Coffin Wood; and I should have been after him two hours ago if it had not been for this rumpus. I meant to have had such a laugh at you, for I would not have told you a word of it; but now you shall go snacks in him. Even the governor does not know it”.“Fancy killing a woodcock in the first week of October”! said Cradock, with equal excitement; “why, theyʼll put us in the paper, Viley”.“Not unless you look sharp. Heʼs sure to be off at dusk. Heʼs a traveller, as Mark Stote said: sailed on from the Wight, most likely, last night; heʼll be off for Dorset, this evening. Run for your gun, Crad, your pet Purday; Iʼll meet you here with my Lancaster in just two minutes’ time. Donʼt say a word to a soul. Mind, weʼll go quite alone”.“Yes; but you bring your little Wena, and Iʼlltake my Caldo, and work him as close as possible. I promised him a run this afternoon”.Away they ran, out of different doors, to get their guns and accoutre themselves; while the poor tired woodcock sitting on one leg, under a holly bush, was drawing up the thin quivering coverlet over his great black eyes.Cradock came back to the main hall first, with his gun on his arm, and his shot–belt across him, his broad chest shown by the shooting–jacket, and the light of hope and enterprise in his clear strong glance. Before you could have counted ten, Clayton was there to meet him; and none but a very ill–natured man could have helped admiring the pair of them. Honest, affectionate, simple fellows, true West Saxons as could be seen, of the same height and figure as nearly as could be, each with the pure bright Nowell complexion, and the straightforward Nowell gaze. The wide forehead, pointed chin, arched eyebrows, and delicate mouth of each boy resembled the otherʼs exactly, as two slices cut from one fern–root. Nevertheless, the expression—if I may say it without affectation, the mind—of the face was different. Clayton, too, was beginning to nurse a very short moustache, a silky bright brown tasselet; while Cradock exulted rationally in a narrow fringe of young whiskers. And Vileyʼs head was borne slightly on one side, Cradockʼs almost imperceptibly on the other.With a race to get to the door first, the twins went out together, and their merry laugh ranground the hall, and leaped along the passages. That hall shall not hear such a laugh, nor the passages repeat it, for many a winter night, I fear, unless the dead bear chorus.The moment they got to the kennel, which they did by a way of their own, avoiding all grooms and young lumbermen, fourteen dogs, of different races and a dozen languages, thundered, yelled, and yelped at the guns, some leaping madly and cracking their staples, some sitting up and begging dearly, with the muscles of their chest all quivering, some drawing along on their stomachs, as if they were thoroughly callous, and yawning for a bit of activity; but each in his several way entreating to be the chosen one, each protesting that he was truly the best dog for the purpose—whatever that might be—and swearing stoutly that he would “down–charge” without a hand being lifted, never run in upon any temptation, never bolt after a hare. All the while Caldo sat grimly apart; having trust in human nature, he knew that merit must make its way, and needed no self–assertion. As his master came to him he stood upon his hind–legs calmly, balanced by the chain–stretch, and bent his forearms as a mermaid or a kangaroo does. Then, suddenly, Cradock Nowell dropped the butt of his gun on his boot, and said, with his face quite altered:“Viley, I am very sorry; but, after all, I canʼt go with you”.“Not come with me, Craddy, and a woodcockmarked to a nicety! And you with your vamplets on, and all! What the deuce do you mean”?“I mean just what I say. Donʼt ask me the reason, my dear fellow; Iʼll tell you by–and–by, when we smoke our pipes together. Now I beg you, as an especial favour, donʼt lose a moment in arguing. Go direct to the mark yourself, and straight powder to you! Iʼll come and meet you in an hourʼs time in the spire–bed by the covert”.“Crad, itʼs no good to argue with you; that I have known for ages. Mind, the big–wigs donʼt dine till seven oʼclock, so you have plenty of time to come for me. But I am so sorry I shanʼt have you there to wipe my eye as usual. Nevertheless, Iʼll bring home Bill Woodcock; and what will you say to me then, my boy? Ta, ta; come along, Wena, wonʼt we astonish the natives? But I wish you were coming with me, Crad”.The brothers went out at the little gate, and there Cradock stopped and watched the light figure hurrying westward over the chase, taking a short cut for the coverts. Clayton would just carry down the spinney, where the head of the spring was, because the woodcock might have gone on there; and if ever a snipe was come back to his home yet, that was the place to meet him. Thence he would follow the runnel, for about a third of a mile, down to the spot in the Coffin Wood, where the hollies grew, and the hoar–witheys. When quit of that coppice, the little stream stole away down the valley,and so past Mr. Garnetʼs cottage to the Nowelhurst water beyond the church bridge. Now whether this were the self–same brook on whose marge we observed Master Clayton last week walking, not wholly in solitude, is a question of which I will say no more, except that it does not matter much. There are so many brooks in the New Forest; and after all, if you come to that, how can the most consistent of brooks be identical with the special brook which we heard talking yesterday? Isnʼt it running, running on, even as our love does? Join hands and keep your fingers tight; still it will slip through them.When Clayton was gone but a little way over the heather and hare–runs, his brother made off, with his gun uncharged, for the group still at work in the house–front. Bull Garnet was there, with Rufus Hutton sticking like a leech to him; no man ever was bored more sharply, or more bluntly expressed it. The veins of his temples and close–cropped head stood out like a beech–treeʼs stay roots; he was steaming all over with indignation, and could not find a vent for it. When Cradock came up, Bull saw in a glimpse that he was expected to say something; in fact, that he ought, as a gentleman, to show his interest, not his surprise. Nevertheless he would not do it, though he loved and admired Cradock; and for many reasons was cut to the heart by his paulo–postponement. So he left Craddy to begin, and presented no notch inhis swearing. His swearing was tremendous, for he hated change of orders.“Mr. Garnet”, said Cradock, at last, “I have heard a great deal of bad language, especially among the bargees at Oxford and the piermen at Southampton; and I donʼt pretend to split hairs myself, nor am I mealy–mouthed; but I trust you will excuse my observing, that up to the present moment I have never heard such blackguardly language as you are now employing”.Bull Garnet turned round and looked at him. If Cradock had shown any sign of fear, he would have gone to the earth at once, for his unripe strength would have had no chance with Garnetʼs prime in its fury. The eyes of each felt hot in the otherʼs, as in reciprocal crucibles; then Mr. Garnetʼs rolled away in a perfect blaze of tears. He dashed out his hand and shook Cradockʼs mightily, quite at the back of the oak–tree; then he patted him on the shoulders, to resume his superiority; and said:“My boy, I thank you”.“Well”, thought Cradock, “of all the extraordinary fellows I ever came across, you are the most extraordinary. And yet it is quite impossible to doubt your perfect sincerity, and almost impossible to call in question your sanity”.These reflections of Master Cradock were not so lucid as usual. At least he made a false antithesis. If it had been possible to doubt Mr. Garnetʼs sincerity,he would not have been by any means so extraordinary as he was.“Not much trouble, after all”, cried Rufus Hutton, rollicking up like a man of thrice his true cubic capacity; “ah, these things are simple enough for a man with a littleνοῦς. I shall explain the whole process to Mrs. Hutton, she is so fond of information. Never saw a firework before, sir—at least, I mean the machinery of them—and now I understand it thoroughly; much better, indeed, than the foreman does. Did not I hear you say so, George”?“Eh, my mon, I deed so”—the foreman was a shrewd, dry Scotchman—“in your own opeenion mainly. But ye havena peyed us yet, my mon, for the dustin’ o’ your shoon”.Rufus Hutton began, amid some laughter, to hunt his French purse for the siller, when the foreman leaped up as if he were shot, and dashed behind the oak–tree. “Awa, mon, awa, if ye value your life! Dinna ye see the glue–pot burstinʼ”?Rufus dropped the purse, and fled for his life, and threw himself flat, fifty yards away, that the explosion might pass over him. Even then, when the laugh was out, and Mr. Garnet had said to him, “Perhaps, sir, you will explain that process for the benefit of Mrs. Hutton”, instead of being disconcerted he was busier than ever, and took Mr. Garnet aside some little way down the chase.“They want to make a job of it, I can see thatwell enough. To charge for it, sir; to charge for it”.“Thank you for your advice, Dr. Hutton”, replied Bull Garnet, crustily; he was very morose that afternoon, and surly betwixt his violence; “but perhaps you had better leave them to me, for fear of the glue–pot bursting”.“Ah, I suppose I shall never hear the last of that most vulgar pleasantry. But I tell you they canʼt see it, or else it is they wonʼt. They are determined to do it all over again, and they need only change four letters, and the fixings all come in again. For the R they should put an L, for the D a Y—— Bless my soul, Mr. Garnet, what is it you see there”?No wonder Rufus Hutton asked what Mr. Garnet saw, for the stewardʼs eyes were fixed intently, wrathfully, ferociously, upon something not very far from the place where his home lay among the trees. His forehead rolled in three heavy furrows, deep and red at the bottom, his teeth were set hard, and the muscles of his shoulders swelled as he clenched his hands fast. Dr. Hutton, gazing in the same direction, could see only trees and heather. “What is it you see there, Mr. Garnet”? Rufus Hutton by this time was quivering with curiosity.“Iʼd advise you, sir, not to ask me”: then he added, in a different tone, “the most dastardly scoundrel poacher that ever wanted an ounce oflead, sir. Let us go back to the men, for I have little time to waste”.“Cool fellow”, thought Rufus; “waste of time to talk to me, is it? But what eyes the man must have”!And so he had, and ears too. Bull Garnet saw and heard every single thing that passed within the rim of his presence. No matter what he was doing, or to whom he was talking, no matter what was afoot, or what temper he was in, he saw and heard as clearly as if his whole attention were on it, every moving, breathing, speaking, or spoken thing, within the range of human antennæ. So a spider knows if even a midge or a brother spiderʼs gossamer floats in the dewy unwoven air beyond his octagonal subtlety. From this extraordinary gift of Bull Garnet, as well as from his appearance, and the force of his character, the sons of the forest were quite convinced that he was under league to the devil.In half an hourʼs time or less, when the dusk come down like wool, Cradock cast loose his favourite Caldo, and set out for the Coffin Wood. From habit more than forethought, and to give his dog some pleasure, there by the kennel he loaded his double–barrelled gun. He had made up his mind to shoot no more upon his fatherʼs land, until he had express permission from Sir Cradock Nowell. This was a whim, no doubt, and a piece of pride on his part; but the scene ofthat afternoon, and his fatherʼs bearing towards him, had left some bitter feeling, and a sense of alienation. This was the reason why he would not go with Clayton, much as he longed to do so. Now, with some dull uncertainty and vague depression clouding him, he loaded his gun in an absent manner; putting loose shot, No. 6, in one barrel, and a cartridge in the other. “Hie away, boy”! he cried to Caldo, who had crouched at his feet the while; then he struck off hot foot for the westward, with the gun upon his shoulder. But just as he started, one of the lads, who was often employed as a beater, ran up, and said, with his cap in his hand, in a manner most insinuating—“Take I ’long of ’ee, Meestur Craduck. Iʼll be rare and keerful, sir”.“No, thank you, Charley, not this time. I am not even going shooting, and I mean to go quite alone”.Poor Cradock, unlucky to the last. Almost everything he had done that day had been a great mistake; and now there was only one more to come, the deadliest error of all.Whistling a dreamy old tune, he hurried over the brown and tufted land, sometimes leaping a tussock of bed–furze, sometimes following a narrow hare–run, a soft green thread through the heather.The sun had been down for at least half an hour, and under the trees there was twilight; but here, in the open, a tempered brightness flowedfrom some yellow clouds still lingering in the west. You might still know a rabbit from a hare at fifty or sixty yards off. And in truth both bunnies and hares were about; the former hopping, and stopping, and peeping, and pricking their ears as the fern waved, and some sitting gravely upon a hillock, with their backs like a home–made loaf; the hares, on the other hand, lopping along, with their great ears drooping warily, and the spring of their haunches gathered up for a dash away any whither: but all alike come abroad to look for the great and kind God who feeds them. Then, from either side of the path, or the sandy brows of the gravel–pit, the diphthong cry of the partridge arose, the call that tells they are feeding. Convivial and good–hearted bird, who cannot eat without conversation, nor without it be duly eaten; no marvel that the Paphlagonians assign you a brace of hearts. The pheasants were flown to the coverts long ago (they are fearful of losing the way to bed), two or three brown owls were mousing about, and a horned fellow came sailing smoothly from the deep settlements of the thicket, as Cradock Nowell leaped up the hedge, a hedge overleaning, overtwisting, stubby, and crowded with ash, rose, and hazel, the fence of the Coffin Wood. Though Caldo had stood picturesquely at least a dozen times, and looked back at his master reproachfully, turning the white of his eye, and champing his under lip, and then dropped as if he himselfwere shot, when the game sped away with a whirr, Cradock, true to his resolution, had not pulled trigger yet. And though the repression was not entirely based upon motives humane, our Cradock felt a new delight in sparing the lives of those poor things who have no other life to look to. At least so we dare to restrict them. So merry and harmless to him they seemed, so glad that the dangerous day was done, so thankful for having been fed and saved by the great unknown, but felt, Feeder, Father, and Saviour.

The rays of the level sun were nestling in the brown bosom of the beech–clump, and the fugitive light went undulating through the grey–arched portico, like a reedy river; when Cradock and Clayton Nowell met in the old hall of their childhood. With its deep embrasures, and fluted piers, high–corniced mantel of oak relieved with alabaster figures, and the stern array of pike, and steel–cap, battle–axe, and arquebus, which kept the stag–heads over against them nodding in perpetual fear, this old hall was so impressed upon their earliest memories, that they looked upon it, in some sort, as the entrance to their lives.

As the twins drew near from opposite doors, each hung back for a moment: knowing all that had passed that day, how would his brother receive him? But in that moment each perceived how the otherʼs heart was; Cradock cried, “Hurrah, all right”! and Claytonʼs arms were round hisneck. Clayton sobbed hysterically—for he had always been woman–hearted—while Cradock coaxed him with his hand, as if he were ten years the elder. It was as though the days of childhood had returned once more, the days when the world came not between them, but they were the world to each other.

“Crad, I wonʼt have a bit of it. Did you think I would be such a robber, Crad? And I donʼt believe one syllable of their humbugging nursery stories. Why, every fellow knows that youmustbe the eldest brother”.

“Viley, my boy, I am so glad that it has turned out so. You know that I have always longed to fight my way in the world, and I am fitter for it than you are. And you are more the fellow for a baronet, and a big house, and all that sort of thing; and in the holidays I shall come every year to shoot with you, and to break your dogs, and all that; for you havenʼt got the least idea, Viley, of breaking a dog”.

“Well, no, I suppose I havenʼt”, said Clayton, very submissively; at any other time he would have said, “Oh, havenʼt I”? for it was a moot point between them. “But, Craddy, youshallhave half, at any rate. I wonʼt touch it, unless you take half”.

“Then the estates must go to the Queen, or to Mr. Nowell Corklemore, your especial friend, Viley”.

Clayton was famed for his mimicry of the pompousMr. Corklemore, and he could not resist it now, though the tears were still in his eyes.

“Haw, yes; I estimate so, sir. A mutually agreeable and unobjectionable arrangement, sir. Is that your opinion? Haw”! and Clayton stroked an imaginary beard, and closed one eye at the ceiling. Cradock laughed from habit; and Clayton laughed because Cradock did.

Oh that somebody had come by to see them thus on the very best terms, as loving as when they whipped tops together, or practised Sir Roger de Coverley! They agreed to slip away that evening from the noise of the guests and the winebibbing, and have a quiet jug of ale in Cradockʼs little snuggery. There they would smoke their pipes together, and consider the laws of inheritance. Already they were beginning to laugh and joke about the matter; what odds about the change of position, if they only maintained the brotherhood? Unluckily no one came near them. The servants were gathered in their own hall, discussing the great discovery; Sir Cradock was gone to the Rectory to meet John Rosedew upon his return, and counsel how to manage things. Even the ubiquitous Dr. Hutton had his especialalibi. He had rushed away to catch Mr. Garnet and the illumination folk, that the necessary changes might be made in the bedizenment of the oak–tree.

Suddenly Clayton exclaimed, “Oh, what a fool I am, Craddy! I forgot a most important thing, until it is nearly too late for it”.

“What”? asked Cradock, eagerly, for he saw there was great news coming.

“When I was out with the governor to–day, what do you think I saw”?

“What, what, my boy? Out with it”.

“Canʼt stop to make you guess. A woodcock, sir; a woodcock”.

“A woodcock so early? Nonsense, man; it must have been a hawk or a night–jar”.

“Think I donʼt know a woodcock yet? And Iʼll tell you who saw it, too. Glorious old Mark Stote; his eyes are as sharp as ever. We marked him down to a T, sir, just beyond the hoar–witheys at the head of Coffin Wood; and I should have been after him two hours ago if it had not been for this rumpus. I meant to have had such a laugh at you, for I would not have told you a word of it; but now you shall go snacks in him. Even the governor does not know it”.

“Fancy killing a woodcock in the first week of October”! said Cradock, with equal excitement; “why, theyʼll put us in the paper, Viley”.

“Not unless you look sharp. Heʼs sure to be off at dusk. Heʼs a traveller, as Mark Stote said: sailed on from the Wight, most likely, last night; heʼll be off for Dorset, this evening. Run for your gun, Crad, your pet Purday; Iʼll meet you here with my Lancaster in just two minutes’ time. Donʼt say a word to a soul. Mind, weʼll go quite alone”.

“Yes; but you bring your little Wena, and Iʼlltake my Caldo, and work him as close as possible. I promised him a run this afternoon”.

Away they ran, out of different doors, to get their guns and accoutre themselves; while the poor tired woodcock sitting on one leg, under a holly bush, was drawing up the thin quivering coverlet over his great black eyes.

Cradock came back to the main hall first, with his gun on his arm, and his shot–belt across him, his broad chest shown by the shooting–jacket, and the light of hope and enterprise in his clear strong glance. Before you could have counted ten, Clayton was there to meet him; and none but a very ill–natured man could have helped admiring the pair of them. Honest, affectionate, simple fellows, true West Saxons as could be seen, of the same height and figure as nearly as could be, each with the pure bright Nowell complexion, and the straightforward Nowell gaze. The wide forehead, pointed chin, arched eyebrows, and delicate mouth of each boy resembled the otherʼs exactly, as two slices cut from one fern–root. Nevertheless, the expression—if I may say it without affectation, the mind—of the face was different. Clayton, too, was beginning to nurse a very short moustache, a silky bright brown tasselet; while Cradock exulted rationally in a narrow fringe of young whiskers. And Vileyʼs head was borne slightly on one side, Cradockʼs almost imperceptibly on the other.

With a race to get to the door first, the twins went out together, and their merry laugh ranground the hall, and leaped along the passages. That hall shall not hear such a laugh, nor the passages repeat it, for many a winter night, I fear, unless the dead bear chorus.

The moment they got to the kennel, which they did by a way of their own, avoiding all grooms and young lumbermen, fourteen dogs, of different races and a dozen languages, thundered, yelled, and yelped at the guns, some leaping madly and cracking their staples, some sitting up and begging dearly, with the muscles of their chest all quivering, some drawing along on their stomachs, as if they were thoroughly callous, and yawning for a bit of activity; but each in his several way entreating to be the chosen one, each protesting that he was truly the best dog for the purpose—whatever that might be—and swearing stoutly that he would “down–charge” without a hand being lifted, never run in upon any temptation, never bolt after a hare. All the while Caldo sat grimly apart; having trust in human nature, he knew that merit must make its way, and needed no self–assertion. As his master came to him he stood upon his hind–legs calmly, balanced by the chain–stretch, and bent his forearms as a mermaid or a kangaroo does. Then, suddenly, Cradock Nowell dropped the butt of his gun on his boot, and said, with his face quite altered:

“Viley, I am very sorry; but, after all, I canʼt go with you”.

“Not come with me, Craddy, and a woodcockmarked to a nicety! And you with your vamplets on, and all! What the deuce do you mean”?

“I mean just what I say. Donʼt ask me the reason, my dear fellow; Iʼll tell you by–and–by, when we smoke our pipes together. Now I beg you, as an especial favour, donʼt lose a moment in arguing. Go direct to the mark yourself, and straight powder to you! Iʼll come and meet you in an hourʼs time in the spire–bed by the covert”.

“Crad, itʼs no good to argue with you; that I have known for ages. Mind, the big–wigs donʼt dine till seven oʼclock, so you have plenty of time to come for me. But I am so sorry I shanʼt have you there to wipe my eye as usual. Nevertheless, Iʼll bring home Bill Woodcock; and what will you say to me then, my boy? Ta, ta; come along, Wena, wonʼt we astonish the natives? But I wish you were coming with me, Crad”.

The brothers went out at the little gate, and there Cradock stopped and watched the light figure hurrying westward over the chase, taking a short cut for the coverts. Clayton would just carry down the spinney, where the head of the spring was, because the woodcock might have gone on there; and if ever a snipe was come back to his home yet, that was the place to meet him. Thence he would follow the runnel, for about a third of a mile, down to the spot in the Coffin Wood, where the hollies grew, and the hoar–witheys. When quit of that coppice, the little stream stole away down the valley,and so past Mr. Garnetʼs cottage to the Nowelhurst water beyond the church bridge. Now whether this were the self–same brook on whose marge we observed Master Clayton last week walking, not wholly in solitude, is a question of which I will say no more, except that it does not matter much. There are so many brooks in the New Forest; and after all, if you come to that, how can the most consistent of brooks be identical with the special brook which we heard talking yesterday? Isnʼt it running, running on, even as our love does? Join hands and keep your fingers tight; still it will slip through them.

When Clayton was gone but a little way over the heather and hare–runs, his brother made off, with his gun uncharged, for the group still at work in the house–front. Bull Garnet was there, with Rufus Hutton sticking like a leech to him; no man ever was bored more sharply, or more bluntly expressed it. The veins of his temples and close–cropped head stood out like a beech–treeʼs stay roots; he was steaming all over with indignation, and could not find a vent for it. When Cradock came up, Bull saw in a glimpse that he was expected to say something; in fact, that he ought, as a gentleman, to show his interest, not his surprise. Nevertheless he would not do it, though he loved and admired Cradock; and for many reasons was cut to the heart by his paulo–postponement. So he left Craddy to begin, and presented no notch inhis swearing. His swearing was tremendous, for he hated change of orders.

“Mr. Garnet”, said Cradock, at last, “I have heard a great deal of bad language, especially among the bargees at Oxford and the piermen at Southampton; and I donʼt pretend to split hairs myself, nor am I mealy–mouthed; but I trust you will excuse my observing, that up to the present moment I have never heard such blackguardly language as you are now employing”.

Bull Garnet turned round and looked at him. If Cradock had shown any sign of fear, he would have gone to the earth at once, for his unripe strength would have had no chance with Garnetʼs prime in its fury. The eyes of each felt hot in the otherʼs, as in reciprocal crucibles; then Mr. Garnetʼs rolled away in a perfect blaze of tears. He dashed out his hand and shook Cradockʼs mightily, quite at the back of the oak–tree; then he patted him on the shoulders, to resume his superiority; and said:

“My boy, I thank you”.

“Well”, thought Cradock, “of all the extraordinary fellows I ever came across, you are the most extraordinary. And yet it is quite impossible to doubt your perfect sincerity, and almost impossible to call in question your sanity”.

These reflections of Master Cradock were not so lucid as usual. At least he made a false antithesis. If it had been possible to doubt Mr. Garnetʼs sincerity,he would not have been by any means so extraordinary as he was.

“Not much trouble, after all”, cried Rufus Hutton, rollicking up like a man of thrice his true cubic capacity; “ah, these things are simple enough for a man with a littleνοῦς. I shall explain the whole process to Mrs. Hutton, she is so fond of information. Never saw a firework before, sir—at least, I mean the machinery of them—and now I understand it thoroughly; much better, indeed, than the foreman does. Did not I hear you say so, George”?

“Eh, my mon, I deed so”—the foreman was a shrewd, dry Scotchman—“in your own opeenion mainly. But ye havena peyed us yet, my mon, for the dustin’ o’ your shoon”.

Rufus Hutton began, amid some laughter, to hunt his French purse for the siller, when the foreman leaped up as if he were shot, and dashed behind the oak–tree. “Awa, mon, awa, if ye value your life! Dinna ye see the glue–pot burstinʼ”?

Rufus dropped the purse, and fled for his life, and threw himself flat, fifty yards away, that the explosion might pass over him. Even then, when the laugh was out, and Mr. Garnet had said to him, “Perhaps, sir, you will explain that process for the benefit of Mrs. Hutton”, instead of being disconcerted he was busier than ever, and took Mr. Garnet aside some little way down the chase.

“They want to make a job of it, I can see thatwell enough. To charge for it, sir; to charge for it”.

“Thank you for your advice, Dr. Hutton”, replied Bull Garnet, crustily; he was very morose that afternoon, and surly betwixt his violence; “but perhaps you had better leave them to me, for fear of the glue–pot bursting”.

“Ah, I suppose I shall never hear the last of that most vulgar pleasantry. But I tell you they canʼt see it, or else it is they wonʼt. They are determined to do it all over again, and they need only change four letters, and the fixings all come in again. For the R they should put an L, for the D a Y—— Bless my soul, Mr. Garnet, what is it you see there”?

No wonder Rufus Hutton asked what Mr. Garnet saw, for the stewardʼs eyes were fixed intently, wrathfully, ferociously, upon something not very far from the place where his home lay among the trees. His forehead rolled in three heavy furrows, deep and red at the bottom, his teeth were set hard, and the muscles of his shoulders swelled as he clenched his hands fast. Dr. Hutton, gazing in the same direction, could see only trees and heather. “What is it you see there, Mr. Garnet”? Rufus Hutton by this time was quivering with curiosity.

“Iʼd advise you, sir, not to ask me”: then he added, in a different tone, “the most dastardly scoundrel poacher that ever wanted an ounce oflead, sir. Let us go back to the men, for I have little time to waste”.

“Cool fellow”, thought Rufus; “waste of time to talk to me, is it? But what eyes the man must have”!

And so he had, and ears too. Bull Garnet saw and heard every single thing that passed within the rim of his presence. No matter what he was doing, or to whom he was talking, no matter what was afoot, or what temper he was in, he saw and heard as clearly as if his whole attention were on it, every moving, breathing, speaking, or spoken thing, within the range of human antennæ. So a spider knows if even a midge or a brother spiderʼs gossamer floats in the dewy unwoven air beyond his octagonal subtlety. From this extraordinary gift of Bull Garnet, as well as from his appearance, and the force of his character, the sons of the forest were quite convinced that he was under league to the devil.

In half an hourʼs time or less, when the dusk come down like wool, Cradock cast loose his favourite Caldo, and set out for the Coffin Wood. From habit more than forethought, and to give his dog some pleasure, there by the kennel he loaded his double–barrelled gun. He had made up his mind to shoot no more upon his fatherʼs land, until he had express permission from Sir Cradock Nowell. This was a whim, no doubt, and a piece of pride on his part; but the scene ofthat afternoon, and his fatherʼs bearing towards him, had left some bitter feeling, and a sense of alienation. This was the reason why he would not go with Clayton, much as he longed to do so. Now, with some dull uncertainty and vague depression clouding him, he loaded his gun in an absent manner; putting loose shot, No. 6, in one barrel, and a cartridge in the other. “Hie away, boy”! he cried to Caldo, who had crouched at his feet the while; then he struck off hot foot for the westward, with the gun upon his shoulder. But just as he started, one of the lads, who was often employed as a beater, ran up, and said, with his cap in his hand, in a manner most insinuating—

“Take I ’long of ’ee, Meestur Craduck. Iʼll be rare and keerful, sir”.

“No, thank you, Charley, not this time. I am not even going shooting, and I mean to go quite alone”.

Poor Cradock, unlucky to the last. Almost everything he had done that day had been a great mistake; and now there was only one more to come, the deadliest error of all.

Whistling a dreamy old tune, he hurried over the brown and tufted land, sometimes leaping a tussock of bed–furze, sometimes following a narrow hare–run, a soft green thread through the heather.

The sun had been down for at least half an hour, and under the trees there was twilight; but here, in the open, a tempered brightness flowedfrom some yellow clouds still lingering in the west. You might still know a rabbit from a hare at fifty or sixty yards off. And in truth both bunnies and hares were about; the former hopping, and stopping, and peeping, and pricking their ears as the fern waved, and some sitting gravely upon a hillock, with their backs like a home–made loaf; the hares, on the other hand, lopping along, with their great ears drooping warily, and the spring of their haunches gathered up for a dash away any whither: but all alike come abroad to look for the great and kind God who feeds them. Then, from either side of the path, or the sandy brows of the gravel–pit, the diphthong cry of the partridge arose, the call that tells they are feeding. Convivial and good–hearted bird, who cannot eat without conversation, nor without it be duly eaten; no marvel that the Paphlagonians assign you a brace of hearts. The pheasants were flown to the coverts long ago (they are fearful of losing the way to bed), two or three brown owls were mousing about, and a horned fellow came sailing smoothly from the deep settlements of the thicket, as Cradock Nowell leaped up the hedge, a hedge overleaning, overtwisting, stubby, and crowded with ash, rose, and hazel, the fence of the Coffin Wood. Though Caldo had stood picturesquely at least a dozen times, and looked back at his master reproachfully, turning the white of his eye, and champing his under lip, and then dropped as if he himselfwere shot, when the game sped away with a whirr, Cradock, true to his resolution, had not pulled trigger yet. And though the repression was not entirely based upon motives humane, our Cradock felt a new delight in sparing the lives of those poor things who have no other life to look to. At least so we dare to restrict them. So merry and harmless to him they seemed, so glad that the dangerous day was done, so thankful for having been fed and saved by the great unknown, but felt, Feeder, Father, and Saviour.

CHAPTER XIX.Meanwhile Sir Cradock Nowell had found, at the peaceful Rectory, a tumult nearly as bad as that which he had left in his own household. In a room which was called by others the book–room, by herself “the library”, Miss Eudoxia sat half choked, in a violent fit of hysterics, Amy and fat Jemima doing their utmost to console her and bring her round. Sir Cradock had little experience of women, and did the worst thing he could have done—that is to say, he stood gazing.“Amy”, groaned Miss Eudoxia—“Amy, if you donʼt want to kill me, get him out of the room, my child”.“Go, go, go”! cried Amy, in desperation. “Canʼt you see, godpapa, that we shall do better without you; oh, ever, ever so much”?Sir Cradock Nowell felt a longing to box pretty Amyʼs ears; he had always loved his godchild, Amy, and chastened her accordingly. He nowloved Amy best in the world, next to his pet son, Clayton. To tell the truth, he had bathed himself in the sunset–glow of match–making, all the way down the chase. Clayton, proclaimed the heir and all that, should marry Amy Rosedew; what could it matter to him about money, and where else would he find such a maiden? Then, in the course of a few more years—so soon as ever there were five, or, say at the most six children—he, Sir Cradock, would make over the management of the property; that is, if he felt tired of it, and they were both very steady. And what of Cradock, you planning father, what of your other son, Cradock? In faith, he must do for a parson.Sir Cradock retired in no small flurry, and went to the garden to look for Jem. Miss Eudoxia became at once unconscious, as she ought to have been long ago; and thenceforth she would never acknowledge that she had seen the intruder at all; or, indeed, that there had been one. However, it cured her, for a very long time, of those sad attacks of hysteria.This present attack was the natural result of a violent conflict with Amy, who was not going to be trampled upon, even by Aunt Doxy. It appears that, early in the afternoon, the good aunt began to wonder what on earth was become of her niece. Of course she could not be at the school, because Wednesday was a half–holiday; she was not in the library, nor in the back–kitchen, nor even out at Pincherʼs kennel. No, nor even in the garden,although she had a magnificent lot of bulbs to plant, for which she had saved up ever so much of her little pocket–money. “Well”, said Miss Eudoxia, who was thirsting for her gossip, which she always held after lunch—“well, I must say this ismostinconsiderate of her. And I promised John to take her to the park, and how am I to get ready? Girls are not what they used to be, though Amy is such a good girl. They read all sorts of trashy books, and then they go eloping”.That last idea sent the good aunt in hot haste to Amyʼs bedroom; and who should be there, sitting by the window, with a small book in her hand, but beautiful Amy herself.“Well”! cried Miss Eudoxia, heavily offended; “indeed, Iamsurprised. So this is what you prefer, is it, to your own auntʼs conversation? And, I declare, what a colour you have! And panting, as if you had asthma! Let me see that book this moment, miss”!“To be sure, Aunt Eudoxia”, said Amy, rather indignantly; “but you need not be in a pet, you know”.“Oh, neednʼt I, indeed, when you read such books as this! Oh, what will your poor father say? Andyouto have a class in the Sunday–school”!Of all the grisly horrors produced to make the travellerʼs hair creep, one of the most repulsive and glaring was in Amyʼs delicate hand. A hideous ape, with an open razor, was about to cut a young ladyʼs throat. Chuckling, he drew her fair neckto the blade by her dishevelled hair. At her feet lay an elderly woman, dead; while a man with a red cap was gazing complacently in at the window. The back of the volume was relieved by a ghost, a deathʼs head, and a pair of cross–bones.“Well”! said Miss Eudoxia. Her breath was gone for a long while, and she could say nothing more.“I know the cover is ugly, aunt, but the inside is so beautiful. Oh, and so very wonderful! I canʼt think how any one ever could imagine such splendid horrible things. Oh, so clever, Aunt Doxy; and full of things that make me tingle, as if my brain were gone to sleep. And I want to ask papa particularly about galvanizing the mummy”.“Indeed; yes, galvanizing! and pray does your father know of your having this horrible book”?“No; but I mean to tell him, the moment I have got to the end of it”.“Good child, and most dutiful! When you have swallowed the poison, youʼll tell us”.“Poison indeed, Aunt Eudoxia! How dare you talk to me like that? Do you dare to suppose that I would read a thing that was unfit for me”?“No, I donʼt think you would, knowingly. But you are not the proper judge. Why did you not ask your father or me, before you began this book”?“Because I thought you wouldnʼt let me read it”.“Well, that does beat everything. Candid impudence,I call that, perfectly candid insolence”! Aunt Doxyʼs throat began to swell; there was weak gorge in the family. Meanwhile, Miss Amy, who all the time had been jerking her shoulders and standing upright, in a manner peculiarly her own—Amy felt that her last words required some explanation. She had her fatherʼs strong sense of justice, though often pulled crooked by womanhood.“You know well enough what I mean, aunt, though you love to misrepresent me so. I mean that you would not let me read it, not because it was wrong (which it isnʼt), but for fear of making me nervous. And upon that subject, at least, I think I have a right to judge for myself”.“Oh, I dare say; you, indeed! And pray who lent you that book? Unless, indeed, in your self–assertion, you went to a railway and bought it”.“That is just the sort of thing I would rather die than tell, after all the fuss you have made about it”.“Thank you; I quite perceive. A young gentleman—not to be betrayed—scamp, whoever he is”. It was Clayton Nowell who had lent the book.“Is he indeed? I wish you were only half as upright and honourable”.Hereupon Miss Eudoxia, who had dragged her niece down to the book–room, with dialogue all down the stairs, muttered something about her will, that she had a little to leave, though not much, buthonestly her own—God knew—and down she went upon the chair, with both hands to her side. At the sequel, as we have seen, Sir Cradock Nowell assisted, and took little for his pains.After this, of course, there was a great reconciliation. For they loved each other thoroughly; and each was sure to be wild with herself for having been harsh to the other. They agreed that their eyes were much too red now to go and see the nascent fireworks.“A gentlemanʼs party to–night; my own sweet love, how glad I am! I ought to know better, Amy dearest; and they have never sent the goulard. I ought to know, my own lovey pet, that we can trust you in everything”.“No, aunty dear, you oughtnʼt. I am as obstinate as a pig sometimes; and I wish you would box my ears, aunt. I hope my hair wonʼt be right for a month, dearest aunt, where you pulled it; and as for the book, I have thrown it into the kitchen–fire long ago, though I do wish, darling aunt, you could have read about the descent into the Mäelstrom. I declare my head goes round ever since! What amazing command of language! And he knows a great deal about cooking”.James Pottles, groom and gardener, who even aspired to the hand, or at any rate, to the lips, of the plump and gaudy Jemima, was not at all the sort of fellow you would appreciate at the first interview. His wits were slow and mild, and hadnever yet been hurried, for his parents were unambitious. It took him a long time to consider, and a long time again to express himself, which he did with a roll of his tongue. None the less for that, Jem Pottles was quoted all over the village as a sayer of good things. No conclusion was thought quite safe, at least by the orthodox women, until it had been asked with a knowing look—“And what do Jem Pottles say of it”? Feeling thus his responsibility, and the gravity of his opinion, Jem grew slower than ever, and had lately contracted a habit of shutting one eye as he cogitated. As cause and effect always act and react, this added enormously to his repute, until Mark Stote the gamekeeper, and Reuben Cuff the constable, ached and itched with jealousy of that “cock–eyed, cock–headed boy”.Sir Cradock found Jem quite at his leisure, sweeping up some of the leaves in the shrubbery, and pleasantly cracking the filberts which he discovered among them. These he peeled very carefully, and put them in the pocket of his stable waistcoat, ready for Jemima by–and–by. He swished away very hard with the broom the moment he saw the old gentleman, and touched his hat in a way that showed he could scarcely spare time to do it.“What way, my lad, do you think it likely your master will come home to–day”?This was just the sort of question upon which Jem might commit himself, and lose a deal ofprestige; so he pretended not to hear it, and brushed the very ground up. These tactics, however, availed him not, for Sir Cradock repeated his inquiry in a tone of irritation. Jem leaned his chin on the broom–handle, and closed one eye deliberately.“Well, he maight perhaps come the haigher road, and again a maight come the lower wai, and Iʼve a knowed him crass the chase, sir, same as might be fram alongside of Meester Garnetʼs house. There never be no telling the wai, any more than the time of un. But itʼs never no odds to me”.“And which way do you think the most likely now”?“Not to say ‘now’, but bumbai laike. If so be a cooms arly, a maight come long of the haigher road as goes to the ‘Jolly Foresters;’ and if a comʼth middlin’ arly, you maight rackon may be on the town wai; but if he cometh unoosial late, and a heap of folks be sickenin’ or hisself hath pulled a book out, a maight goo round by Westacot, and come home by Squire Garnetʼs wai”. Rich in alternatives, Jem Pottles opened the closed eye, and shut the open one.“What a fool the fellow is”! said Sir Cradock to himself; “Iʼll try the first way, at any rate. For if John is so late, I could not stop for him, with all those people coming. How I wish we were free from strangers to–night, with all these events in the family! But perhaps, if we manage it well, it will carry it off all the better”.Sir Cradock Nowell was in high spirits as he started leisurely for a saunter along the higher road. This was the road which ran eastward, both from the Hall and the Rectory, into the depth of the forest. In all England there is no lovelier lane, if there be one to compare with it. Many of the forest roads are in fault, because they are too open. You see too far, you see too much, and you are not truly embowered. In a forest we do not want long views, except to rejoice in the amplitude. And a few of those, just here and there, enlarge the great enjoyment. What we want, as the main thing of all, as the staple feeling, is the deep, mysterious, wondering sense of being swallowed up, and knowing it: swallowed up, not as we are in catacombs, or wine–vaults, or any railway tunnel; but in our own motherʼs love, with God around us everywhere. To many of us, perhaps to most, so placed at fall of evening, there is a certain awe, a dread which overshades enjoyment. If so, it springs in part at least from our unnatural nature; that is to say, the education which teaches us so very little of the things around us.How the arches spring overhead, and the brown leaves flutter among them! In and out, and through and through, across and across, with delicacy, veining the very shadows. For miles we may wander beneath them, and see no two alike. How, for fear of wearying us, after infinite twists and turns—but none of them contortions—after playing across the heavens, and sweeping awaythe sunshine, now in this evening light they hover, and rustle like the skirts of death. Is there one of them with its lichen–mantle copied from its neighbourʼs? Is there one that has borrowed a line, a character, even a cast of complexion from its own brother rubbing against it? Their arms bend over us as we walk, we are in their odour and influence, we know that, like the Magi of old, they adore only God and His sun; and, when we come out from under them, we never ask why we are sad.

Meanwhile Sir Cradock Nowell had found, at the peaceful Rectory, a tumult nearly as bad as that which he had left in his own household. In a room which was called by others the book–room, by herself “the library”, Miss Eudoxia sat half choked, in a violent fit of hysterics, Amy and fat Jemima doing their utmost to console her and bring her round. Sir Cradock had little experience of women, and did the worst thing he could have done—that is to say, he stood gazing.

“Amy”, groaned Miss Eudoxia—“Amy, if you donʼt want to kill me, get him out of the room, my child”.

“Go, go, go”! cried Amy, in desperation. “Canʼt you see, godpapa, that we shall do better without you; oh, ever, ever so much”?

Sir Cradock Nowell felt a longing to box pretty Amyʼs ears; he had always loved his godchild, Amy, and chastened her accordingly. He nowloved Amy best in the world, next to his pet son, Clayton. To tell the truth, he had bathed himself in the sunset–glow of match–making, all the way down the chase. Clayton, proclaimed the heir and all that, should marry Amy Rosedew; what could it matter to him about money, and where else would he find such a maiden? Then, in the course of a few more years—so soon as ever there were five, or, say at the most six children—he, Sir Cradock, would make over the management of the property; that is, if he felt tired of it, and they were both very steady. And what of Cradock, you planning father, what of your other son, Cradock? In faith, he must do for a parson.

Sir Cradock retired in no small flurry, and went to the garden to look for Jem. Miss Eudoxia became at once unconscious, as she ought to have been long ago; and thenceforth she would never acknowledge that she had seen the intruder at all; or, indeed, that there had been one. However, it cured her, for a very long time, of those sad attacks of hysteria.

This present attack was the natural result of a violent conflict with Amy, who was not going to be trampled upon, even by Aunt Doxy. It appears that, early in the afternoon, the good aunt began to wonder what on earth was become of her niece. Of course she could not be at the school, because Wednesday was a half–holiday; she was not in the library, nor in the back–kitchen, nor even out at Pincherʼs kennel. No, nor even in the garden,although she had a magnificent lot of bulbs to plant, for which she had saved up ever so much of her little pocket–money. “Well”, said Miss Eudoxia, who was thirsting for her gossip, which she always held after lunch—“well, I must say this ismostinconsiderate of her. And I promised John to take her to the park, and how am I to get ready? Girls are not what they used to be, though Amy is such a good girl. They read all sorts of trashy books, and then they go eloping”.

That last idea sent the good aunt in hot haste to Amyʼs bedroom; and who should be there, sitting by the window, with a small book in her hand, but beautiful Amy herself.

“Well”! cried Miss Eudoxia, heavily offended; “indeed, Iamsurprised. So this is what you prefer, is it, to your own auntʼs conversation? And, I declare, what a colour you have! And panting, as if you had asthma! Let me see that book this moment, miss”!

“To be sure, Aunt Eudoxia”, said Amy, rather indignantly; “but you need not be in a pet, you know”.

“Oh, neednʼt I, indeed, when you read such books as this! Oh, what will your poor father say? Andyouto have a class in the Sunday–school”!

Of all the grisly horrors produced to make the travellerʼs hair creep, one of the most repulsive and glaring was in Amyʼs delicate hand. A hideous ape, with an open razor, was about to cut a young ladyʼs throat. Chuckling, he drew her fair neckto the blade by her dishevelled hair. At her feet lay an elderly woman, dead; while a man with a red cap was gazing complacently in at the window. The back of the volume was relieved by a ghost, a deathʼs head, and a pair of cross–bones.

“Well”! said Miss Eudoxia. Her breath was gone for a long while, and she could say nothing more.

“I know the cover is ugly, aunt, but the inside is so beautiful. Oh, and so very wonderful! I canʼt think how any one ever could imagine such splendid horrible things. Oh, so clever, Aunt Doxy; and full of things that make me tingle, as if my brain were gone to sleep. And I want to ask papa particularly about galvanizing the mummy”.

“Indeed; yes, galvanizing! and pray does your father know of your having this horrible book”?

“No; but I mean to tell him, the moment I have got to the end of it”.

“Good child, and most dutiful! When you have swallowed the poison, youʼll tell us”.

“Poison indeed, Aunt Eudoxia! How dare you talk to me like that? Do you dare to suppose that I would read a thing that was unfit for me”?

“No, I donʼt think you would, knowingly. But you are not the proper judge. Why did you not ask your father or me, before you began this book”?

“Because I thought you wouldnʼt let me read it”.

“Well, that does beat everything. Candid impudence,I call that, perfectly candid insolence”! Aunt Doxyʼs throat began to swell; there was weak gorge in the family. Meanwhile, Miss Amy, who all the time had been jerking her shoulders and standing upright, in a manner peculiarly her own—Amy felt that her last words required some explanation. She had her fatherʼs strong sense of justice, though often pulled crooked by womanhood.

“You know well enough what I mean, aunt, though you love to misrepresent me so. I mean that you would not let me read it, not because it was wrong (which it isnʼt), but for fear of making me nervous. And upon that subject, at least, I think I have a right to judge for myself”.

“Oh, I dare say; you, indeed! And pray who lent you that book? Unless, indeed, in your self–assertion, you went to a railway and bought it”.

“That is just the sort of thing I would rather die than tell, after all the fuss you have made about it”.

“Thank you; I quite perceive. A young gentleman—not to be betrayed—scamp, whoever he is”. It was Clayton Nowell who had lent the book.

“Is he indeed? I wish you were only half as upright and honourable”.

Hereupon Miss Eudoxia, who had dragged her niece down to the book–room, with dialogue all down the stairs, muttered something about her will, that she had a little to leave, though not much, buthonestly her own—God knew—and down she went upon the chair, with both hands to her side. At the sequel, as we have seen, Sir Cradock Nowell assisted, and took little for his pains.

After this, of course, there was a great reconciliation. For they loved each other thoroughly; and each was sure to be wild with herself for having been harsh to the other. They agreed that their eyes were much too red now to go and see the nascent fireworks.

“A gentlemanʼs party to–night; my own sweet love, how glad I am! I ought to know better, Amy dearest; and they have never sent the goulard. I ought to know, my own lovey pet, that we can trust you in everything”.

“No, aunty dear, you oughtnʼt. I am as obstinate as a pig sometimes; and I wish you would box my ears, aunt. I hope my hair wonʼt be right for a month, dearest aunt, where you pulled it; and as for the book, I have thrown it into the kitchen–fire long ago, though I do wish, darling aunt, you could have read about the descent into the Mäelstrom. I declare my head goes round ever since! What amazing command of language! And he knows a great deal about cooking”.

James Pottles, groom and gardener, who even aspired to the hand, or at any rate, to the lips, of the plump and gaudy Jemima, was not at all the sort of fellow you would appreciate at the first interview. His wits were slow and mild, and hadnever yet been hurried, for his parents were unambitious. It took him a long time to consider, and a long time again to express himself, which he did with a roll of his tongue. None the less for that, Jem Pottles was quoted all over the village as a sayer of good things. No conclusion was thought quite safe, at least by the orthodox women, until it had been asked with a knowing look—“And what do Jem Pottles say of it”? Feeling thus his responsibility, and the gravity of his opinion, Jem grew slower than ever, and had lately contracted a habit of shutting one eye as he cogitated. As cause and effect always act and react, this added enormously to his repute, until Mark Stote the gamekeeper, and Reuben Cuff the constable, ached and itched with jealousy of that “cock–eyed, cock–headed boy”.

Sir Cradock found Jem quite at his leisure, sweeping up some of the leaves in the shrubbery, and pleasantly cracking the filberts which he discovered among them. These he peeled very carefully, and put them in the pocket of his stable waistcoat, ready for Jemima by–and–by. He swished away very hard with the broom the moment he saw the old gentleman, and touched his hat in a way that showed he could scarcely spare time to do it.

“What way, my lad, do you think it likely your master will come home to–day”?

This was just the sort of question upon which Jem might commit himself, and lose a deal ofprestige; so he pretended not to hear it, and brushed the very ground up. These tactics, however, availed him not, for Sir Cradock repeated his inquiry in a tone of irritation. Jem leaned his chin on the broom–handle, and closed one eye deliberately.

“Well, he maight perhaps come the haigher road, and again a maight come the lower wai, and Iʼve a knowed him crass the chase, sir, same as might be fram alongside of Meester Garnetʼs house. There never be no telling the wai, any more than the time of un. But itʼs never no odds to me”.

“And which way do you think the most likely now”?

“Not to say ‘now’, but bumbai laike. If so be a cooms arly, a maight come long of the haigher road as goes to the ‘Jolly Foresters;’ and if a comʼth middlin’ arly, you maight rackon may be on the town wai; but if he cometh unoosial late, and a heap of folks be sickenin’ or hisself hath pulled a book out, a maight goo round by Westacot, and come home by Squire Garnetʼs wai”. Rich in alternatives, Jem Pottles opened the closed eye, and shut the open one.

“What a fool the fellow is”! said Sir Cradock to himself; “Iʼll try the first way, at any rate. For if John is so late, I could not stop for him, with all those people coming. How I wish we were free from strangers to–night, with all these events in the family! But perhaps, if we manage it well, it will carry it off all the better”.

Sir Cradock Nowell was in high spirits as he started leisurely for a saunter along the higher road. This was the road which ran eastward, both from the Hall and the Rectory, into the depth of the forest. In all England there is no lovelier lane, if there be one to compare with it. Many of the forest roads are in fault, because they are too open. You see too far, you see too much, and you are not truly embowered. In a forest we do not want long views, except to rejoice in the amplitude. And a few of those, just here and there, enlarge the great enjoyment. What we want, as the main thing of all, as the staple feeling, is the deep, mysterious, wondering sense of being swallowed up, and knowing it: swallowed up, not as we are in catacombs, or wine–vaults, or any railway tunnel; but in our own motherʼs love, with God around us everywhere. To many of us, perhaps to most, so placed at fall of evening, there is a certain awe, a dread which overshades enjoyment. If so, it springs in part at least from our unnatural nature; that is to say, the education which teaches us so very little of the things around us.

How the arches spring overhead, and the brown leaves flutter among them! In and out, and through and through, across and across, with delicacy, veining the very shadows. For miles we may wander beneath them, and see no two alike. How, for fear of wearying us, after infinite twists and turns—but none of them contortions—after playing across the heavens, and sweeping awaythe sunshine, now in this evening light they hover, and rustle like the skirts of death. Is there one of them with its lichen–mantle copied from its neighbourʼs? Is there one that has borrowed a line, a character, even a cast of complexion from its own brother rubbing against it? Their arms bend over us as we walk, we are in their odour and influence, we know that, like the Magi of old, they adore only God and His sun; and, when we come out from under them, we never ask why we are sad.

CHAPTER XX.There is a long, mysterious thrill, a murmur rather felt than heard, a shudder of profundity, which traverses the woodland hollows at the sunʼs departure. In autumn most especially, when the glory of trees is saddening, and winter storms are in prospect, this dark disquietude moves the wood, this horror at the nightfall, and doubt of the coming hours. Touched as with a subtle stream, the pointlets of the oak–leaves rise, the crimped fans of the beech are fluttered, and lift their glossy ovals, the pendulous chains of the sycamore swing; while the poplar flickers its silver skirts, the tippets and ruffs of the ivy are ruffling, and even the three–lobed bramble–leaf cannot repress a shiver.Touched with a stream at least as subtle, we, who are wandering among the dark giants, shiver and shrink, we know not why; and our hearts beat faster, to feel how they beat. The cause is the same both for tree and for man. Earthlynature has not learned to count upon immortality. Therefore all her works, unaided, loathe to be undone.Whether it were this, or his craving for his dinner, that made Sir Cradock Nowell feel chilled, as he waited under the shuddering trees for his friend John Rosedew—far be it from me to say, because it may have been both, sir. And the other cause to which he always ascribed it—after the event—to wit, a divine afflatus of diabolical presentiment, is one we have no faith in, until we own to nightmare. Anyhow, there he was, for upwards of an hour; and no John Rosedew came up the hill, which Sir Cradock did not feel it at all his duty to descend, on the very safe presentiment of the distressrevocare gradum.Meanwhile John Rosedew was speeding merrily, according to his ideas of speed (which were relative to the last degree), along a narrow bridle–way, some two miles to the westward. It would be a serious insult—so the parson argued—to the understanding of any man who understood a horse, and now John Rosedew had owned Coræbus very nearly nine months, and though he had never owned a horse before, surely by this time he could set papers in thebarbara celarentof the most recondite horse–logic—or was it dialectics?—an insult it would be to that Hippicus who felt himself fit now to go to a fair and discuss many points with the jockeys, if anybody suggested to him that Coræbus ought to trot.“Trot, sir”! cried John Rosedew, to an imaginary Hippodamas, “hasnʼt he been trotting for nearly an hour to–day, sir? Quite anequus tolutarius. And upon my word, I only hope he is not so sore as I am”. Then he threw the reins over the ponyʼs neck, and let him crop some cytisus.“Coræbus, have no fear, my horse, you shall not be overworked. Or if Epirus or Mycenæ be thy home and birthplace—incertus ibidem sudor—thrice I have wiped it off, and no oaten particles in it;urit avenœ, so I suppose oats must dry the skin. ‘Ad terramque fluit devexo pondere cervix’, a line not to be rendered in English, even by my Cradock. How fine that whole description, but made up from alien sources! Oh how Lucretius would have done it! Most sad that he was not a Christian”.A believer was what John Rosedew meant. But by this time he was beginning to look upon all his classical friends as in some sort Christians, if they only believed in their own gods. Wherein, I fear, he was far astray from the text of one of the Articles.Cob Coræbus by this time knew his master thoroughly; and exercising his knowledge cleverly, made his shoes last longer. If the weather felt muggy and “trying”—from an equine view of probation—if the road was rough and against the grain, even if the forest–fly came abroad upon business, Coræbus used (in sporting parlance) to “shut up” immediately. This he did, not in a defiant tone, not in a mode to provoke antagonism;he was far too clever a horse for that; but with every appearance of a sad conviction that his master had no regard for him. At this earnest appeal to his feelings, John Rosedew would dismount in haste, and reflect with admiration upon the weeping steeds of Achilles, or the mourning horse of Mezentius, while he condemned with acrimony the moral conveyed by a song he had heard concerning the “donkey wot wouldnʼt go”. Then he would loosen the girths, and, remonstrating with Coræbus for his want of self–regard, carefully wipe with his yellow silk pocket–handkerchief first all the accessible parts of the cob that looked at all uncomfortable, and then his own capacious forehead. This being done, he would search around for a juicy mouthful of grass, or dive for an apple or slice of carrot—Coræbus at the same time diving nasally—into the depths of his black coat pocket, where he usually discovered his lunch, which he had altogether forgotten. While the horse was discussing this little refreshment, John would put his head on one side, and look at him very knowingly, revolving in his mind a question which very often presented itself, whether Coræbus were descended from Corytha or Hirpinus.However this may have been—and from his “staying qualities” one would have thought him rather a chip from the old block of Troy—he was the first horse good John Rosedew had ever called his own; and he loved and admired him none theless for certain calumnies spread by the envious about seedy–toes, splints, and spavins. Of these crimes, whatever they might be, the parson found no mention in Xenophon, Pliny, or Virgil, and he was more than half inclined to believe them clumsy modern figments. As for the incontestable fact that Coræbus began to whistle when irrationally stimulated beyond his six miles an hour, why, that John Rosedew looked upon as a classical accomplishment, and quoted a line from Theocritus. Very swift horses were gifted with this peculiar power, for the safety of those who would otherwise be the victims of their velocity, even as the express train always whistled past Brockenhurst station.After contemplating the animal till admiration was exhausted, and wondering why some horses have hairy, while others have smooth ankles, he would refresh himself with a reverie about the Numidian cavalry; then declaring that Jem Pottles was “impolitiæ notandus”, he would pass his arm through the bridle, and calling to mind the Pæon young lady who unduly astonished Darius, pull an old book from some inner pocket, and stroll on, with Coræbus sniffing now and then at his hat–brim.To any one who bears in mind what a punctual body Time is, this account of the rectorʼs doings will make it not incredible that he was often late for dinner. But he never lost reckoning altogether in his circumnavigation, because his leisure did not begin till he had passed the “Jolly Foresters”; forthere he must be by a certain hour, or Coræbus would feel aggrieved, and so would Mrs. Cripps, who always looked for him at or about 1.30 P.M. For some mighty fine company was to be had by a horse who could behave himself, in the stable of the “Jolly Foresters”, about middle–day on a Wednesday. Several high–stepping buggy–mares, one or two satirical Broughamites, even some nags who gave a decided tone to the neighbourhood, silver–hamed Clevelands, and champ–the–bit Clydesdales: even these were not too proud—that they left for vulgarian horses—to snort and blow hard at the “Forestersʼ” oats, and then eat them up like winking. To this select circle our own Coræbus had been admitted already, and his conversational powers admired, when he had produced an affidavit that his master was in no way connected with trade.Coræbus now bade fair to be spoiled by all this grand society. Every Wednesday he came home less natural, more coxcombical. He turned up his nose at many good horses, whom he had once respected, fellows who wandered about in the forest, and hung down their chins when the rain came! And then he became so affected and false, with an interesting languor, when Amy jumped out to caress him! Verily, friend Coræbus, thou shalt pay out for this! What call, pray, hast thou to become a humbug, from seeing how men do flourish?John Rosedew awoke quite suddenly to the lawsof time and season, as the hazel branches came over his head, and he could see to read no longer. The grey wood closed about him, to the right hand and to the left; the thick shoots of the alder, the dappled ash, and the osier, hustled among the taller trees whose tops had seen the sunset; tufts of grass, and blackberry–tangles, hipped dog–roses leaning over them, stubby clumps of buckthorn, brake–fern waving six feet high where the ground held moisture—who, but an absent man, would have wandered at dusk into such a labyrinth?“ʼActum est’ with my dinner”, exclaimed the parson aloud, when he awoke to the situation; “and what, perhaps, is more important to thee, at least, Coræbus, thine also is ‘pessum datum’. And there is no room to turn the horse round without scratching his eyes and his tail so. Nevertheless, this is a path, or at one time must have been so; ‘semita, callis, tramesʼ—that last word is the one for it, if it be derived from ‘traho’ (which, however, I do not believe)—for, lo! there has been a log of wood dragged here even during a post–diluvial period: we will follow this track to the uttermost; what says the cheerful philosopher:—‘παντοίην βιότοιο τάμοις ὁδόν’. Surely a gun, nay, two, or, more accurately, two explosions; now for some one to show us the way. Coræbus, be of good cheer, there is supper yet in thyφάτνῃ, notἐϋξέστῳ; advance then thy best foot. Why not?—seest thou anἔιδωλον? Come on, I say, mine horse—Great God!—— ” And he was silent.Tired as he was, Coræbus had leaped back from the leading rein, then cast up his head and snorted, and with a glare of terror stood trembling. What John Rosedew saw at that moment was stamped on his heart for ever. Across his narrow homeward path, clear in the grey light, and seeming to creep, was the corpse of Clayton Nowell, laid upon its left side, with one hand to the heart, the wan face stark and spread on the ground, the body stretched by the final throe. The pale light wandered over it, and showed it only a shadow. John Rosedewʼs nerves were stout and strong, as of a man who has injured none; he had buried hundreds of fellow–men, after seeing them die; but, for the moment, he was struck with a mortal horror. Back he fell, and drove back his horse; he could not look at the dead manʼs eyes fixed intently upon him. One minute he stood shivering, and the ash–leaves shivered over him. He was conscious somehow of another presence which he could not perceive. Then he ran up, like a son of God, to what God had left of his brother. The glaze (as of ground glass) in the eyes, the smile that has swooned for ever, the scarlet of the lips turned out with the chalky rim of death, the bulge of the broad breast, never again to rise or fall in breathing—is there one of these changes we do not know, having seen them in our own dearest ones?But a worse sight than of any dead man—dead, and gone home to his Father—met John Rosedewʼsquailing eyes, as he turned towards the opening. It was the sight of Cradock Nowell, clutching his gun with one hand, and clinging hard with the other, while he hung from the bank (which he had been leaping) as a winding–sheet hangs from a candle. The impulse of his leap had failed him, smitten back by horror; it was not in him to go back, nor to come one foot forward. The parson called him by his name, but he could not answer; only a shiver and a moan showed that he knew his baptism. The living was more startled, and more startling, than the dead.

There is a long, mysterious thrill, a murmur rather felt than heard, a shudder of profundity, which traverses the woodland hollows at the sunʼs departure. In autumn most especially, when the glory of trees is saddening, and winter storms are in prospect, this dark disquietude moves the wood, this horror at the nightfall, and doubt of the coming hours. Touched as with a subtle stream, the pointlets of the oak–leaves rise, the crimped fans of the beech are fluttered, and lift their glossy ovals, the pendulous chains of the sycamore swing; while the poplar flickers its silver skirts, the tippets and ruffs of the ivy are ruffling, and even the three–lobed bramble–leaf cannot repress a shiver.

Touched with a stream at least as subtle, we, who are wandering among the dark giants, shiver and shrink, we know not why; and our hearts beat faster, to feel how they beat. The cause is the same both for tree and for man. Earthlynature has not learned to count upon immortality. Therefore all her works, unaided, loathe to be undone.

Whether it were this, or his craving for his dinner, that made Sir Cradock Nowell feel chilled, as he waited under the shuddering trees for his friend John Rosedew—far be it from me to say, because it may have been both, sir. And the other cause to which he always ascribed it—after the event—to wit, a divine afflatus of diabolical presentiment, is one we have no faith in, until we own to nightmare. Anyhow, there he was, for upwards of an hour; and no John Rosedew came up the hill, which Sir Cradock did not feel it at all his duty to descend, on the very safe presentiment of the distressrevocare gradum.

Meanwhile John Rosedew was speeding merrily, according to his ideas of speed (which were relative to the last degree), along a narrow bridle–way, some two miles to the westward. It would be a serious insult—so the parson argued—to the understanding of any man who understood a horse, and now John Rosedew had owned Coræbus very nearly nine months, and though he had never owned a horse before, surely by this time he could set papers in thebarbara celarentof the most recondite horse–logic—or was it dialectics?—an insult it would be to that Hippicus who felt himself fit now to go to a fair and discuss many points with the jockeys, if anybody suggested to him that Coræbus ought to trot.

“Trot, sir”! cried John Rosedew, to an imaginary Hippodamas, “hasnʼt he been trotting for nearly an hour to–day, sir? Quite anequus tolutarius. And upon my word, I only hope he is not so sore as I am”. Then he threw the reins over the ponyʼs neck, and let him crop some cytisus.

“Coræbus, have no fear, my horse, you shall not be overworked. Or if Epirus or Mycenæ be thy home and birthplace—incertus ibidem sudor—thrice I have wiped it off, and no oaten particles in it;urit avenœ, so I suppose oats must dry the skin. ‘Ad terramque fluit devexo pondere cervix’, a line not to be rendered in English, even by my Cradock. How fine that whole description, but made up from alien sources! Oh how Lucretius would have done it! Most sad that he was not a Christian”.

A believer was what John Rosedew meant. But by this time he was beginning to look upon all his classical friends as in some sort Christians, if they only believed in their own gods. Wherein, I fear, he was far astray from the text of one of the Articles.

Cob Coræbus by this time knew his master thoroughly; and exercising his knowledge cleverly, made his shoes last longer. If the weather felt muggy and “trying”—from an equine view of probation—if the road was rough and against the grain, even if the forest–fly came abroad upon business, Coræbus used (in sporting parlance) to “shut up” immediately. This he did, not in a defiant tone, not in a mode to provoke antagonism;he was far too clever a horse for that; but with every appearance of a sad conviction that his master had no regard for him. At this earnest appeal to his feelings, John Rosedew would dismount in haste, and reflect with admiration upon the weeping steeds of Achilles, or the mourning horse of Mezentius, while he condemned with acrimony the moral conveyed by a song he had heard concerning the “donkey wot wouldnʼt go”. Then he would loosen the girths, and, remonstrating with Coræbus for his want of self–regard, carefully wipe with his yellow silk pocket–handkerchief first all the accessible parts of the cob that looked at all uncomfortable, and then his own capacious forehead. This being done, he would search around for a juicy mouthful of grass, or dive for an apple or slice of carrot—Coræbus at the same time diving nasally—into the depths of his black coat pocket, where he usually discovered his lunch, which he had altogether forgotten. While the horse was discussing this little refreshment, John would put his head on one side, and look at him very knowingly, revolving in his mind a question which very often presented itself, whether Coræbus were descended from Corytha or Hirpinus.

However this may have been—and from his “staying qualities” one would have thought him rather a chip from the old block of Troy—he was the first horse good John Rosedew had ever called his own; and he loved and admired him none theless for certain calumnies spread by the envious about seedy–toes, splints, and spavins. Of these crimes, whatever they might be, the parson found no mention in Xenophon, Pliny, or Virgil, and he was more than half inclined to believe them clumsy modern figments. As for the incontestable fact that Coræbus began to whistle when irrationally stimulated beyond his six miles an hour, why, that John Rosedew looked upon as a classical accomplishment, and quoted a line from Theocritus. Very swift horses were gifted with this peculiar power, for the safety of those who would otherwise be the victims of their velocity, even as the express train always whistled past Brockenhurst station.

After contemplating the animal till admiration was exhausted, and wondering why some horses have hairy, while others have smooth ankles, he would refresh himself with a reverie about the Numidian cavalry; then declaring that Jem Pottles was “impolitiæ notandus”, he would pass his arm through the bridle, and calling to mind the Pæon young lady who unduly astonished Darius, pull an old book from some inner pocket, and stroll on, with Coræbus sniffing now and then at his hat–brim.

To any one who bears in mind what a punctual body Time is, this account of the rectorʼs doings will make it not incredible that he was often late for dinner. But he never lost reckoning altogether in his circumnavigation, because his leisure did not begin till he had passed the “Jolly Foresters”; forthere he must be by a certain hour, or Coræbus would feel aggrieved, and so would Mrs. Cripps, who always looked for him at or about 1.30 P.M. For some mighty fine company was to be had by a horse who could behave himself, in the stable of the “Jolly Foresters”, about middle–day on a Wednesday. Several high–stepping buggy–mares, one or two satirical Broughamites, even some nags who gave a decided tone to the neighbourhood, silver–hamed Clevelands, and champ–the–bit Clydesdales: even these were not too proud—that they left for vulgarian horses—to snort and blow hard at the “Forestersʼ” oats, and then eat them up like winking. To this select circle our own Coræbus had been admitted already, and his conversational powers admired, when he had produced an affidavit that his master was in no way connected with trade.

Coræbus now bade fair to be spoiled by all this grand society. Every Wednesday he came home less natural, more coxcombical. He turned up his nose at many good horses, whom he had once respected, fellows who wandered about in the forest, and hung down their chins when the rain came! And then he became so affected and false, with an interesting languor, when Amy jumped out to caress him! Verily, friend Coræbus, thou shalt pay out for this! What call, pray, hast thou to become a humbug, from seeing how men do flourish?

John Rosedew awoke quite suddenly to the lawsof time and season, as the hazel branches came over his head, and he could see to read no longer. The grey wood closed about him, to the right hand and to the left; the thick shoots of the alder, the dappled ash, and the osier, hustled among the taller trees whose tops had seen the sunset; tufts of grass, and blackberry–tangles, hipped dog–roses leaning over them, stubby clumps of buckthorn, brake–fern waving six feet high where the ground held moisture—who, but an absent man, would have wandered at dusk into such a labyrinth?

“ʼActum est’ with my dinner”, exclaimed the parson aloud, when he awoke to the situation; “and what, perhaps, is more important to thee, at least, Coræbus, thine also is ‘pessum datum’. And there is no room to turn the horse round without scratching his eyes and his tail so. Nevertheless, this is a path, or at one time must have been so; ‘semita, callis, tramesʼ—that last word is the one for it, if it be derived from ‘traho’ (which, however, I do not believe)—for, lo! there has been a log of wood dragged here even during a post–diluvial period: we will follow this track to the uttermost; what says the cheerful philosopher:—‘παντοίην βιότοιο τάμοις ὁδόν’. Surely a gun, nay, two, or, more accurately, two explosions; now for some one to show us the way. Coræbus, be of good cheer, there is supper yet in thyφάτνῃ, notἐϋξέστῳ; advance then thy best foot. Why not?—seest thou anἔιδωλον? Come on, I say, mine horse—Great God!—— ” And he was silent.

Tired as he was, Coræbus had leaped back from the leading rein, then cast up his head and snorted, and with a glare of terror stood trembling. What John Rosedew saw at that moment was stamped on his heart for ever. Across his narrow homeward path, clear in the grey light, and seeming to creep, was the corpse of Clayton Nowell, laid upon its left side, with one hand to the heart, the wan face stark and spread on the ground, the body stretched by the final throe. The pale light wandered over it, and showed it only a shadow. John Rosedewʼs nerves were stout and strong, as of a man who has injured none; he had buried hundreds of fellow–men, after seeing them die; but, for the moment, he was struck with a mortal horror. Back he fell, and drove back his horse; he could not look at the dead manʼs eyes fixed intently upon him. One minute he stood shivering, and the ash–leaves shivered over him. He was conscious somehow of another presence which he could not perceive. Then he ran up, like a son of God, to what God had left of his brother. The glaze (as of ground glass) in the eyes, the smile that has swooned for ever, the scarlet of the lips turned out with the chalky rim of death, the bulge of the broad breast, never again to rise or fall in breathing—is there one of these changes we do not know, having seen them in our own dearest ones?

But a worse sight than of any dead man—dead, and gone home to his Father—met John Rosedewʼsquailing eyes, as he turned towards the opening. It was the sight of Cradock Nowell, clutching his gun with one hand, and clinging hard with the other, while he hung from the bank (which he had been leaping) as a winding–sheet hangs from a candle. The impulse of his leap had failed him, smitten back by horror; it was not in him to go back, nor to come one foot forward. The parson called him by his name, but he could not answer; only a shiver and a moan showed that he knew his baptism. The living was more startled, and more startling, than the dead.

CHAPTER XXI.There was a little dog that crept and moaned by Claytonʼs body, a little dog that knew no better, never having been taught much. It was a small black Swedish spaniel, skilful only in woodcocks, and pretty well up to a snipe or two, but actually afraid of a pheasant on account of the dreadful noise he made. She knew not any more than the others why her name was “Wena”, and she was perfectly contented with it, though it must have been a corruption. The men said it ought to be “Winifred”; the maids, more romantic, “Rowena”; but very likely John Rosedew was right, being so strong in philology, when he maintained that the name was a syncopated form of “Wadstena”, and indicated her origin.However, she knew her masterʼs name better than her own. You had only to say “Clayton”, anywhere or anywhen, and she would lift her tangled ears in a moment, jerk her little whisk ofa tail, till you feared for its continuity, and trot about with a sprightly air, seeking all around for him. Now she was cuddled close into his bosom, moaning, and shivering, and licking him, staring wistfully at his eyes and the wound where the blood was welling. She would not let John Rosedew touch him, but snapped as he leaned over; and then she began to whimper softly, and nuzzle her head in closer. “Wena”, he said, in a very low voice—“pretty Wena, let me”. And then she understood that he meant well, and stood up, and watched him intently.John knew in a moment that all was over between this world and Clayton Nowell. He had felt it from the first glance indeed, but could not keep hope from fluttering. Afterwards he had no idea what he did, or how he did it, but the impression left by that short gaze was as stern as the death it noted. Full in the throat was the ghastly wound, and the charge had passed out at the back of the neck, through the fatal grape–cluster. Though the bright hair flowed in a pool of blood, and the wreck of life was pitiful, the face looked calm and unwrung by anguish, yet firm and staunch, with the courage summoned to ward death rather than meet it.John Rosedew, shy and diffident in so many little matters, was not a man to be dismayed when the soul is moving vehemently. Now he leaped straight to the one conclusion, fearful as it was.“Holy God, have mercy on those we loveso much! No accident is this, but a savage murder”.He fell upon his knees one moment, and prayed with a dead hand in his own. He knew, of course, that the soul was gone, a distance thought can never gaze; but prayer flies best in darkness.Then, with the tears all down his cheeks, he looked round once, as if to mark the things he would have to tell of. In front of the corpse lay the favourite gun, with the muzzle plunged into the bushes, as if the owner had fallen with the piece raised to his shoulder. The hammer of one barrel was cocked, of the other on half–cock only; both the nipples were capped, and, of course, both barrels loaded. The line of its fire was not towards Cradock, but commanded a little by–path leading into the heart of the wood.Meanwhile, Cradock had fallen forward from the steep brow of the hedge–bank; the branch to which he clung in that staggering way had broken. Slowly he rose from the ground, and still intent and horror–struck, unable to come nearer, looked more like one of the smitten trees which they call in the forest “dead men”, than a living and breathing body. John Rosedew, not knowing what he did, ran to the wretched fellow, and tried to take his hand, but the offer was quite unnoticed. With his eyes still fixed on his twin–brotherʼs corpse, the youth began fumbling clumsily in the pocket of his shooting–coat; he pulled out a powder–flask, and rapidly, never once lookingat it, dropped a charge into either barrel. John heard the click of the spring—one, two, as quick as he could have said it. Then the young man drew from his waistcoat–pocket two thick patent wads, and squeezed one into either cylinder. All at once it struck poor “Uncle John” what he was going to do. Preparing to shoot himself!“Cradock, my boy, is this all the fear of God I have taught you”?Cradock looked at him curiously, and nodded his head in acknowledgment. It was plain that his wits were wandering. The parson immediately seized the gun, and sowed the powder broadcast, then wrenched the flask away from him with a hand there was no resisting. Then for the first time he observed Caldo in the hedge, “down–charging”; the well–trained dog had never moved from the moment his master fired.“Come with me at once, come home, Cradock; boy, youshallcome home with me”!But the man of threescore was not quick enough for the young despair. Cradock was out of sight in the thicket, and Caldo galloped after him. Wild with himself for his slowness of wit, John Rosedew ran to poor Claytonʼs gun, for fear of his brother finding it. Then he took from the dead boyʼs pocket his new and burnished powder–flask, though it went to his heart to do it, and leaped upon the back of Coræbus, without a thought of Xenophon. Only Wena was left to keep her poor master company.How the rector got to the Hall I know not, neither has he any recollection; but he must have sat his horse like a Nimrod, and taken a hedge and two ditches. All we know is that he did get there, with Coræbus as frightened as he was, and returned to the place of disaster and death, with three men, of whom Dr. Hutton was one. Sir Cradock was not yet come back to his home, and the servants received proper orders.As the four men, walking in awe and sorrow, cast the light of a lamp through the bushes, they heard a quick rustle of underwood, and crackle of the dead twigs, but saw no one moving.“Some one has been here since I left”, exclaimed John Rosedew, trembling; “some one has lain beside the body, and put marks of blood on the forehead”.Each of the men knew, of course, what it was—Cradock embracing his brother!“A good job you took the gun away; wonder you had the sense, though”, said Rufus Hutton, sharply, to pretend he wasnʼt crying; “I only know what I should have done, if I had shot my brother so—blown out the remains of my brains, sir”!“Hush”! said John Rosedew, solemnly, and his deep voice made their hearts thrill; “it is not our own life to will or to do with. In the hands of the Lord are our life and our death”.They knelt around the pale corpse tenderly, shading the lamp from the eyes of it; even Rufuscould not handle it in a medical manner. One of the men, who always declared that he had saved Claytonʼs life in his childhood, fell flat on the ground, and sobbed fearfully. I cannot dwell on it any more; it makes a fellow cry to think of it. Only, thank God, that I am not bound to tell how they met his father.

There was a little dog that crept and moaned by Claytonʼs body, a little dog that knew no better, never having been taught much. It was a small black Swedish spaniel, skilful only in woodcocks, and pretty well up to a snipe or two, but actually afraid of a pheasant on account of the dreadful noise he made. She knew not any more than the others why her name was “Wena”, and she was perfectly contented with it, though it must have been a corruption. The men said it ought to be “Winifred”; the maids, more romantic, “Rowena”; but very likely John Rosedew was right, being so strong in philology, when he maintained that the name was a syncopated form of “Wadstena”, and indicated her origin.

However, she knew her masterʼs name better than her own. You had only to say “Clayton”, anywhere or anywhen, and she would lift her tangled ears in a moment, jerk her little whisk ofa tail, till you feared for its continuity, and trot about with a sprightly air, seeking all around for him. Now she was cuddled close into his bosom, moaning, and shivering, and licking him, staring wistfully at his eyes and the wound where the blood was welling. She would not let John Rosedew touch him, but snapped as he leaned over; and then she began to whimper softly, and nuzzle her head in closer. “Wena”, he said, in a very low voice—“pretty Wena, let me”. And then she understood that he meant well, and stood up, and watched him intently.

John knew in a moment that all was over between this world and Clayton Nowell. He had felt it from the first glance indeed, but could not keep hope from fluttering. Afterwards he had no idea what he did, or how he did it, but the impression left by that short gaze was as stern as the death it noted. Full in the throat was the ghastly wound, and the charge had passed out at the back of the neck, through the fatal grape–cluster. Though the bright hair flowed in a pool of blood, and the wreck of life was pitiful, the face looked calm and unwrung by anguish, yet firm and staunch, with the courage summoned to ward death rather than meet it.

John Rosedew, shy and diffident in so many little matters, was not a man to be dismayed when the soul is moving vehemently. Now he leaped straight to the one conclusion, fearful as it was.

“Holy God, have mercy on those we loveso much! No accident is this, but a savage murder”.

He fell upon his knees one moment, and prayed with a dead hand in his own. He knew, of course, that the soul was gone, a distance thought can never gaze; but prayer flies best in darkness.

Then, with the tears all down his cheeks, he looked round once, as if to mark the things he would have to tell of. In front of the corpse lay the favourite gun, with the muzzle plunged into the bushes, as if the owner had fallen with the piece raised to his shoulder. The hammer of one barrel was cocked, of the other on half–cock only; both the nipples were capped, and, of course, both barrels loaded. The line of its fire was not towards Cradock, but commanded a little by–path leading into the heart of the wood.

Meanwhile, Cradock had fallen forward from the steep brow of the hedge–bank; the branch to which he clung in that staggering way had broken. Slowly he rose from the ground, and still intent and horror–struck, unable to come nearer, looked more like one of the smitten trees which they call in the forest “dead men”, than a living and breathing body. John Rosedew, not knowing what he did, ran to the wretched fellow, and tried to take his hand, but the offer was quite unnoticed. With his eyes still fixed on his twin–brotherʼs corpse, the youth began fumbling clumsily in the pocket of his shooting–coat; he pulled out a powder–flask, and rapidly, never once lookingat it, dropped a charge into either barrel. John heard the click of the spring—one, two, as quick as he could have said it. Then the young man drew from his waistcoat–pocket two thick patent wads, and squeezed one into either cylinder. All at once it struck poor “Uncle John” what he was going to do. Preparing to shoot himself!

“Cradock, my boy, is this all the fear of God I have taught you”?

Cradock looked at him curiously, and nodded his head in acknowledgment. It was plain that his wits were wandering. The parson immediately seized the gun, and sowed the powder broadcast, then wrenched the flask away from him with a hand there was no resisting. Then for the first time he observed Caldo in the hedge, “down–charging”; the well–trained dog had never moved from the moment his master fired.

“Come with me at once, come home, Cradock; boy, youshallcome home with me”!

But the man of threescore was not quick enough for the young despair. Cradock was out of sight in the thicket, and Caldo galloped after him. Wild with himself for his slowness of wit, John Rosedew ran to poor Claytonʼs gun, for fear of his brother finding it. Then he took from the dead boyʼs pocket his new and burnished powder–flask, though it went to his heart to do it, and leaped upon the back of Coræbus, without a thought of Xenophon. Only Wena was left to keep her poor master company.

How the rector got to the Hall I know not, neither has he any recollection; but he must have sat his horse like a Nimrod, and taken a hedge and two ditches. All we know is that he did get there, with Coræbus as frightened as he was, and returned to the place of disaster and death, with three men, of whom Dr. Hutton was one. Sir Cradock was not yet come back to his home, and the servants received proper orders.

As the four men, walking in awe and sorrow, cast the light of a lamp through the bushes, they heard a quick rustle of underwood, and crackle of the dead twigs, but saw no one moving.

“Some one has been here since I left”, exclaimed John Rosedew, trembling; “some one has lain beside the body, and put marks of blood on the forehead”.

Each of the men knew, of course, what it was—Cradock embracing his brother!

“A good job you took the gun away; wonder you had the sense, though”, said Rufus Hutton, sharply, to pretend he wasnʼt crying; “I only know what I should have done, if I had shot my brother so—blown out the remains of my brains, sir”!

“Hush”! said John Rosedew, solemnly, and his deep voice made their hearts thrill; “it is not our own life to will or to do with. In the hands of the Lord are our life and our death”.

They knelt around the pale corpse tenderly, shading the lamp from the eyes of it; even Rufuscould not handle it in a medical manner. One of the men, who always declared that he had saved Claytonʼs life in his childhood, fell flat on the ground, and sobbed fearfully. I cannot dwell on it any more; it makes a fellow cry to think of it. Only, thank God, that I am not bound to tell how they met his father.

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