CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER IX.Two months of opening spring are past, and the forest is awaking. Up, all we who love such things; come and see more glorious doings than of man or angel. However hearts have been winter–bound with the nip of avarice, and the iron frost of selfishness, however minds have checked their sap in narrowness of ideal, let us all burst bands awhile before the bright sun, as leaves do. Heavenʼs young breath is stirring through crinkled bud and mossy crevice, peaceful spears of pensioned reeds, and flags all innocent of battle. Lo, where the wind goes, while we look, playing with and defying us, chasing the dip of a primrose–bank, and touching sweet lips with dalliance. Lifting first the shining tutsan, gently so, and apologizing, then after a tender whisper to the nodding milkwort, away to where the soft blue eyes of the periwinkle hesitate. Last, before he dies away, the sauntering ruffler looks and steps into a quiet tufted nook, overhungwith bank, and lintelled with the twisted oak–roots. Here, as in a niche of Sabbath, dwells the nervous soft wood–sorrel, feeding upon leaf–mould, quivering with its long–stalked cloves, pale of hue, and shunning touch, delicate wood–sorrel, coral–rooted, shamrock–leafed, loved and understood of few, except good Fra Angelico.Tut—we want stronger life than that; and here we have it overhead, with many a galling boss and buff, yet, on the whole, worth treeʼs exertion, and worth manʼs inspection. See the oak–leaves bursting out, crimped and crannied at their birth, with little nicks and serrate jags like “painted lady” chrysalids, or cowries pushing their tongues out, throwing off the hidesome tuck, and frilled with pellucid copper. See, as well, the fluted beech–leaves, started a full moon ago, offering out of fawn–skin gloves, and glossed with waterproof copal. Then the ash—but hold, I know not how the ash comes out, because it gives so little warning; or rather, it warns a long, long time, and then does it all of a sudden. Tush—what man cares now to glance at the yearly manuscript of God? Let the leaves go; they are notinscripti nomina regum.Yet the brook—though time flees faster, who can grudge one glance at brooklet? Where the mock–myrtle begins to dip, where the young agrimony comes up, and the early forget–me–not pushes its claim upon our remembrance, and the water–lily floats half–way up, quivering dusk in the clearness,like a trout upon the hover. Look how the little waves dance towards us, glancing and casting over, drawing a tongue with limpid creases from the broad pool above, then funnelling into a narrow neck over a shelf of gravel, and bubbling and babbling with petulant freaks into corners of calmer reflection. There an old tree leans solemnly over, with brows bent, and arms folded, turning the course of the brook with his feet, and shedding a crystal darkness.Below this, the yellow banks break away into a scoop on either side, where a green lane of the forest comes down and wades into the water. Here is a favourite crossing–place for the cattle of the woodland, and a favourite bower for cows to rest in, and chew the cud of soft contemplation. And here is a grey wooden bridge for the footpath, adding to rather than destroying the solitude of the scene, because it is plain that a pair of feet once in a week would astonish it. Yet in the depth of loneliness, and the quiet repose of shadow, all is hope, and reassurance, sense of thanks, and breath of praise. For is not the winter gone by, and forgotten, the fury and darkness and terror, the inclination of March to rave, and the April too given to weeping? Surely the time of sweet flowers is come, and the glory of summer approaching, the freedom of revelling in the sun, the vesture of the magnificent trees, and the singing of birds among them.Through the great Huntley Wood, and alongthe banks of the Millaford brook, this fine morning of the May, wander our Rosalind and Celia, Amy to wit, and Eoa. It is a long way from Nowelhurst, but they have brought their lunch, and mean to make a day of it in the forest, seeking balm for wounded hearts in good green leaf and buoyant air. Coming to the old plank–bridge, they sit upon a bank to watch the rising of the trout, for the stone–fly is on the water. Eoa has a great idea that she could catch a trout with a kidney–bean stick and a fly; but now she has not the heart for it; and Amy says it would be so cruel, and they are so pretty.“What a lovely place!” says Amy; “I could sit here all day long. How that crab–apple, clothed with scarlet, seems to rouge the water!”“It isnʼt scarlet, I tell you, Amy, any more than you are. Itʼs only a deep, deep pink. You never can tell colours.”“Well, never mind. It is very pretty. And so are you when you are good and not contradictory—ʼcontradictionary,’ as James Pottles calls Coræbus.”“Well, it does just as well. Whatʼs the good of being so particular? I am sure I am none the better for it; and I have not jumped the brook ever so long, and have thrown away my gaiters just because Uncle John said—oh, you are all alike in England.”“What did my father say, if you please, that possessed such odious sameness?”“There, there, I am so glad to see you in a passion, dear; because I thought you never could be. Uncle John only said that no doubt somebody would like me better, if I gave up all that, and stayed in–doors all day. And I have been trying hard to do it; but he is worse than he was before. I sat on a bench in the chase last Monday, and he went by and never noticed me, though I made quite a noise with my hat on the wood until I was nearly ashamed of myself. But I need not have been alarmed, for my lord went by without even looking.”“And what do you mean to do about it?” Amy took the deepest interest in Eoaʼs love–affair.“Oh, you need not smile, Amy. It is all very well for you, I dare say; but it makes me dreadfully angry. Just as if I were nobody! And after I have told Uncle Cradock of my intentions to settle.”“You premature little creature! But my father was quite right in his advice, as he always is; and not for that reason only. You belong to a well–known family, and, for their sake as well as your own, you are bound to be very nice, dear, and to do only what is nice, instead of making a tomboy of yourself.”“Tomboy, indeed! And nice! Nice things they did, didnʼt they—shooting one another?”Almost before she had uttered the words, she was thoroughly ashamed of herself, for she knew about Amy and Cradock from the maidenʼs ownconfession. Amy arose without reply, and, taking her little basket, turned into the homeward path, with a little quiet sigh. Eoa thought for a moment, and then, having conquered herself, darted after the outraged friend.“I wish to have no more to do with you. That is all,” cried Amy, with Eoaʼs strong arms round her waist.“But, indeed, you shall. You know what a brute I am. I canʼt help it; but I will try. I will bite my tongue off to be forgiven.”“I simply wish, Miss Nowell, to have nothing more to do with you.”“Then you are a great deal worse than I am; because you are unforgiving. I thought you were so wonderfully good; and now I am sorry for you, even more than for myself. I had better go back to the devilʼs people, if this is the way of Christians.”“Could you forgive any one in a moment who had wounded you most savagely?”“In a moment,—if they were sorry, and asked me.”“Are you quite sure of that?”“Sure, indeed! How could I help it?”“Then, Eoa, you cannot help being more like a Christian than I am. I am very persistent, and steadily bitter to any one who wrongs me. You are far better than I am, Eoa; because you cannot hate any one.”“I donʼt know about being better, Amy; I only know that I donʼt hate any one—with all my heart I mean—except Mrs. Nowell Corklemore.”Here Amy could not help laughing at Eoaʼs method of proving her rule; and the other took advantage of it to make her sit down, and kiss her, and beg her pardon a dozen times, because she was such a little savage; and then to open her own lunch–basket, and spread a white cloth, and cover it with slices of rusk and reindeerʼs tongue, and hearted lettuce, and lemonade, and a wing of cold duck at the corner.“I left it to Hoggy,” she cried in triumph, “and he has deserved my confidence. Beat that if you can now, my darling.”“Oh, I can beat that out and out,” said Amy, who still was crying, just a drop now and then, because her emotions were “persistent:” then she smiled, because she knew so well no old butler could touch her in catering; but I must not tell what Amy had, for fear of making people hungry. Only in justice it should be said that neither basket went home full; for both the young ladies were “hearty;” and they kissed one another in spite of the stuffing.“Oh, Amy, I do love you so, whenever you donʼt scold me. I am sure I was meant for a Christian. Hereʼs that nasty sneakʼs lawn handkerchief. I picked her pocket this morning. I do twice a week for practice. But I wonʼt wipe your pretty eyes with it, darling, because I do soloathe her. Now, if you please, no more crying, Amy. What a queer thing you are!”“Most truly may I return the compliment,” answered Amy, smiling through the sparkle of her tears. “But you donʼt mean to say that you keep what you steal?”“Oh no; it is not worth it. And I hate her too much to keep anything. Last week I lit the fire in my dressing–room, on purpose to burn her purse. You should have seen the money melting. I took good care, of course, not to leave it in the ashes, though. I am forming quite a collection of it; for I donʼt mind keeping it at all, when it has been through the fire. And you canʼt think how pretty it is, all strings and dots of white and yellow.”“Well! I never heard such a thing. Why, you might be transported, Eoa!”“Yes, I know, if they found me out; but they are much too stupid for that. Besides, it is such fun; the only fun I have now, since I left off jumping. You know the old thing is so stingy.”“Old thing, indeed! Why, she is not five–and–twenty!”“I donʼt care; she has got a child. She is as old as Methusalem in her heart, though she is so deucedly sentimental”—the old Colonelʼs daughter had not forgotten all her beloved papaʼs expressions—”I know I shall use what you call in this country ‘physical force,’ some day, with her. I must have done it long ago, only for picking herpocket. She would be but a baby in my hands, and she is quite aware of it. Look at my arm; itʼs no larger than yours, except above the elbow, and it is nearly as soft and delicate. Yet I could take you with one hand, Amy, and put you into the brook. If you like, Iʼll do it.”“Much obliged, dear; but I am quite content without the crucial test. I know your wonderful strength, which none would ever suspect, to look at you. I suppose it came to you from your mother.”“Yes, I believe. At any rate, I have heard my father say so; and I could hold both his hands most easily. But oh, she is such a screw, Amy, that sympathetic Georgie! She never gives any one sixpence; and it is so pleasant to hear her go on about her money, and handkerchiefs, and, most of all, her gloves. She is so proud of her nasty little velvet paws. She wonʼt get her gloves except in Southampton, and three toll–gates to pay, and I steal them as fast as she gets them. She grumbles about it all dinner–time, and I offered her eighteenpence for turnpikes—out of her own purse, of course—because she was so poor, I said. But she flew into such a rage that I was forced to pick her pocket again at breakfast–time next morning. And the lies she told about the amount of money in her purse! Between eight and nine pounds, she said the last time, and there was only two pounds twelve. Uncle Cradock made it good to her, because he guessed that I had done it, thoughhe was afraid to tell me so. But, thank God, I stole it again the next day when she went out walking; and that of course he had nothing to say to, because it did not occur in his house. Oh what a rage she was in! She begins to suspect me now, I think; but she never can catch me out.”“You consummate little thief! why, I shall be afraid to come near you.”“Oh, I would never do it to any one but her. And I should not do it to her so much, only she thinks me a clumsy stupid. Me who was called ‘Never–spot–the–dust!’ But I have got another thing of hers, and she had better take care, or Iʼll open it.”“Something else! Take care, Eoa, or I will go and tell.”“No, you know better than that. It is nothing but a letter she wrote, and was going to post at Burley. I knew by her tricks and suspicious ways that there was something in it; and she would not let it go in the post–bag. So I resolved to have it; and of course I did. And she has been in such a fright ever since; but I have not opened it yet.”“And I hope you never will. Either confess, or post it at once, or never call me your friend any more.”“Oh, you need not be hot, Amy; you donʼt understand the circumstances. I know that she is playing a nasty game; and I need not have anyscruples with her, after what I caught her doing. Twice she has been at my desk, my own new desk Uncle Cradock gave me, where I put all the letters and relics that were found on my dear, dear father.” Here Eoa burst out crying, and Amy came near again and kissed her.“Darling, I did not mean to be cross; if the wretch would do such a thing as that, it justifies almost anything.”“And what do you think I did?” said Eoa, half crying, and half laughing: “I set a fishhook with a spring to it, so that the moment she lifted the cover, the barb would go into her hand; and the next day she had a bad finger, and said that little Flore bit it by accident while she was feeling her tooth, which is loose. I should like to have seen her getting the barb out of her nasty little velvet paw.”“I am quite surprised,” cried Amy; “and we all call you so simple—a mere child of nature! If so, nature is up to much more than we give her credit for. And pray, what is your next device?”“Oh, nothing at all, till she does something. I am quits with her now; and I cannot scheme as she does.”Suddenly Amy put both her hands on Eoaʼs graceful shoulders, and poured the quick vigour of English eyes into the fathomless lustre of darkly–fringed Oriental orbs.“You will not tell me a story, dear, if I ask you very particularly?”“I never tell stories to any one; you might know that by this time. At any rate, not to my friends.”“No, I donʼt think you would. Now, do you think that Mrs. Corklemore is at the bottom of this vile thing?”“What vile thing? The viler it is, the more likely she is to have done it.”“Oh no, she cannot have done it, though she may have had something to do with it. I mean, of course, about poor Cradock.”“What about Cradock? I love Cousin Cradock, because he is so unlucky; and because you like him, dear.”“Donʼt you know it? You must have seen that I was in very poor spirits. And this made me feel it so much the more, when you said what you did. We have heard that an application has been made in London, at the Home Office, or somewhere, that a warrant should be issued against Cradock Nowell, and a reward be offered for him as——Oh, my Cradock, my Craddy!”“Put your head in here, darling. What a brute you must have thought me! Oh, I do so love you. Donʼt think twice about it, dear. I will take care that it all comes right. I will go to London to–day, dearest, and defy them to dare to do it. And Iʼll open that letter at once. It becomes a duty now; as that nasty beast always says, when she wants to do anything wrong.”“No, no!” sobbed Amy, “you have no right to open her letter, and you shall not do it, Eoa,unless my father says that it is right. Will you promise me that, dear? Oh, do promise me that.”“How can I promise that, when I would not have him know, for a lac of rupees, that I had ever stolen it? He would never perceive how right it was; and, though I donʼt know much about people, I am sure he would never forgive me. He is such a fidget. But I will promise you one thing, Amy—not to open it withoutyourleave.”Amy was obliged at last to be contented with this; though she said it was worse than nothing, for it forced the decision upon her; and, scrupulously honest and candid as she was, she would feel it right to settle the point against her own desires.“Old Biddy knows I have got it,” cried Eoa, changing her humour: “and she patted me on the back, and said, ‘Begorra, thin, you be the cliver one; hould on to that same, me darlint, and weʼll bate every bit of her, yit; the purtiest feet and ancles to you, and the best back legs, more than iver she got, and now you bate her in the stalinʼ. And plase, Miss, rade yer ould Biddy every consuminʼ word on it. Mullygaslooce, but weʼve toorned her, this time, and thank Donats for it.’”Eoa dramatised Biddy so cleverly, even to the form of her countenance, and her peculiar manner of standing, that Amy, with all those griefs upon her, could not help laughing heartily.“Come along, I canʼt mope any longer; when I have jumped the brook nine times, you may saysomething to me. What do you think of a bathe, Amy? I am up for it, if you are—and our tablecloths for towels. Nobody comes here once in a year; and if they did, they would run away again. What a lovely deep pool! I can swim like a duck; and you like a stone, I suppose.”Amy, of course, would not hear of it, and her lively friend, having paddled with her naked feet in the water, and found it colder—oh, ever so much—than the tributaries of the Ganges, was not so very sorry (self–willed though being) to keep upon the dry land, only she must go to Queenʼs Mead, and Amy must come with her, and run the entire distance, to get away from trouble.Amy was light enough of foot, when her heart was light; but Eoa could “run round her,” as the sporting phrase is, and she gave herself the rein at will that lovely afternoon; as a high–mettled filly does, when she gets out of Piccadilly. And she chatted as fast as she walked all the time, hoping so to divert her friend from this new distress.“I should not be one bit surprised, if we saw that—Bob, here somewhere. We are getting near one of his favourite places—not that I know anything about it; and he is always away now in Mark Ash Wood, or Puckpits, looking out for the arrival of honey–buzzards, or for a merlinʼs nest. Oh, of course we shall not see him.”“Now, you know you will,” replied Amy, laughing at Eoaʼs clumsiness; “and you have broughtme all this way for that very reason. Now, if we meet him, just leave him to me, and stay out of hearing. I will manage him so that he shall soon think you the best and the prettiest girl in the world.”“Well, I wish he would,” said Eoa, blushing beautifully; “wouldnʼt I torment him then?”“No doubt you would, and yourself as well. Now where do you think he will be?”“Oh, Amy, how can I possibly guess? But if I did guess at all, I should say there was just an atom of a chance of his being not far from the Queenʼs Mead.”“Suppose him to be there. What would bring him there? Not to see you, I should hope?”“As if he would go a yard for that! Oh no, he is come to look for—at least, perhaps he might, just possibly, I mean——”“Come to look for whom?” Amy was very angry, for she thought that it was herself, under Eoaʼs strategy.“A horrid little white mole.”“A white mole! Why, I had no idea that there was such a thing.”“Oh yes, there is: but it is very rare; and he has set his heart upon catching this one.”“That he shanʼt. Oh, I see exactly what to do. Come quickly, for fear he should catch it before we get there. Oh, I do hate such cruelty. Ah, there, I see him! Now, you keep out of sight.”In a sunny break of tufted sward, embayed among long waves of wood, young Bob Garnet sat, more happy than the king of all the world of fairies. At his side lay several implements of his own devising, and on his lap a favourite book with his open watch upon it. From time to time he glanced away at a chain of little hillocks about twenty yards in front of him, and among which he had stuck seven or eight stout hazel rods, and brought them down as benders. He was trying not only to catch his mole, but also to add another to his many observations as to the periods of molar exertion. Whether nature does enforce upon those clever miners any Three Hour Act, as the popular opinion is; or whether they are free to work and rest, at their own sweet will, as seems a world more natural.Amy walked into the midst of the benders, in her self–willed, characteristic manner, as if they were nothing at all. She made believe to see nought of Bob, who, on the other side of the path was fluttering and blushing, with a mixture of emotions. “Some very cruel person,” she exclaimed, in loud self–commune, “probably a cruel boy, has been setting mole–traps here, I see. And papa says the moles do more good than harm, except perhaps in my flower–beds. Now Iʼll let them all off very quietly. The boy will think he has caught a dozen; and then how the moles will laugh at him. He will think itʼs a witch, and leave off,very likely, for all cruel boys are ignorant. My pretty little darlings; so glossy, and so clever!”“Oh, please not to do that,” cried Bob, having tried in vain to contain himself, and now leaping up in agony; “I have taken so much trouble, and they are set so beautifully.”“What, Master Robert Garnet! Oh, have you seen my companion, Miss Nowell, about here?”“Look there, you have spoiled another! And theyʼll never set so well again. Oh, you canʼt know what they are, and the trouble I have had with them.”“Oh yes, Master Garnet, I know what they are; clumsy and cruel contrivances to catch my innocent moles.”“Yourmoles!” cried Bob, with great wrath arising, as she coolly destroyed two more traps; “why are theyyourmoles, I should like to know? I donʼt believe you have ever even heard of them before.”“Suppose I have not?” answered Amy, screwing up her lips, as she always did when resolved to have her own way.“Then how can they be your moles? Oh, if you havenʼt spoiled another!”“Well, Godʼs moles, if you prefer it, Master Garnet. At any rate, you have no right to catch them.”“But I only want to catch one, Amy; a white one, oh, such a beauty! I have heard of him sincehe was born, and had my eye on him down all the galleries; and now he must be full–grown, for he was born quite early in August.”“I hope heʼll live to be a hundred. And I will thank you, Master Garnet, to speak tomewith proper respect.”Up went another riser. There was only one left now, and that a most especial trap, which had cost a whole weekʼs cogitation.“I declare you are a most dreadful girl. You donʼt like anything I do. And I have thought so much of you.”“Then, once for all, I beg you never more to do so. I have often wished to speak with you upon that very subject.”“What—what subject, Miss Rosedew? I have no idea what you mean.”“That is altogether false. But I will tell you now. I mean the silly, ungentlemanly, and very childish manner, excusable only in such a boy, in which I have several times observed you loitering about in the forest.”Bob knew what she meant right well, although she would not more plainly express it—his tracking of her footsteps. He turned as red as meadow–sorrel, and stammered out what he could.“I am—very—very sorry. But I did not mean it. I mean—I could not help it.”“You will be kind enough to help it now, for once and for all. Otherwise, my father, who hasnot heard of it yet, shall speak to yours about it. Insufferable impudence in a boy just come from school!”Amy was obliged to turn away, for fear he should look up again, and see the laughter in her eyes. For all her wrath was feigned, inasmuch as to her Bob Garnet was far too silly a butterfly–boy to awake any real anger. But of late he had been intrusive, and it seemed high time to stop it.“If I have done anything wrong, Miss Rosedew, anything in any way unbecoming a gentleman——”“Yes, try to be a good boy again,” said Amy, very graciously; at the same time giving the stroke of grace to his masterpiece of mechanism, designed to catch the white mole alive; “now take up your playthings and go, if you please; for I expect a young lady here directly; and your little tools for cockchafer–spinning would barbarize the foreground of our sketch, besides being very ugly.”“Oh!” cried Bob, with a sudden access of his fathers readiness—”you spin a fellow worse than any cockchafer, and you do it in the name of humanity!”“Then think me no more a divinity,” answered Amy; because she must have the last word; and even Bob, young as he was, knew better than to paragogize the feminine termination. Utterly discomfited, as a boy is by a woman—and Amyʼs troublehad advanced her almost to that proud claim—Bob gathered up his traps and scuttled cleverly out of sight. She, on the other hand (laughing all the while at herself for her simple piece of acting, and doubting whether she had been right in doing even a little thing so much against her nature), there she sat, with her sketching–block ready, and hoped that Eoa would have the wit to come and meet her beloved Bob, now labouring under his fierce rebuff.But Eoa could not do it. She had wit enough, but too much heart. She had heard every word of Amyʼs insolence, and was very indignant at it. Was Bob to be talked to in that way? As if he knew nothing of science! As if he really had an atom of any sort of cruelty in him! Was Amy so very ignorant as not to know that all Bob did was done with the kindest consideration, and for the interest of the species, though the pins through the backs were unpleasant, perhaps? But that was over in a moment, and he always carried ether; and it was nothing to the Fakirs, or the martyrs of Christianity.Therefore Eoa crouched away, behind a tuft of thicket, because her maidenhood forbade her to come out and comfort him, to take advantage of his wrong, and let him know how she felt it. Therefore, too, she was very sharp with Amy all the homeward road; vindicating Bob, and snapping at all proffered softness; truth being that she had suspected his boyish whim for Amy, and nowwas sorry for him about it, and very angry with both of them.From that little touch of womanʼs nature she learned more dignity, more pride, more reservation, and self–respect, than she could have won from a score of governesses, or six seasons of “society.”CHAPTER X.“Not another minute to lose, and the sale again deferred! All the lots marked, and the handbills out, and the particulars and conditions ready; and then some paltry pettifogging, and another fortnight will be required to do ‘justice to my interests.’ Justice to my interests! How they do love round–mouthed rubbish! The only justice to me is, from a legal point of view, to string me up, and then quick–lime me; and the only justice to my interests is to rob my children, because I have robbed them already. Robbed them of their birth and name, their power to look men in the face, their chance of being allowed to do what God seems chiefly to want us for—to marry and have children, who may be worse than we are; though, thank Him, mine are not. Robbed them even of their chance to be met as Christians (though I have increased their right to it), in this wretched, money–seeking, servile, and contemptuous age. Butwho am I to find fault with any, after all my wasted life? A life which might, in its little way, have told upon the people round me, and moved, if not improved them. Which might, at least, have set them thinking, doubting, and believing. Oh the loss of energy, the loss of self–reliance, and the awful load of fear and anguish—I who might have been so different! Pearl is at the window there. I know quite well who loves her—an honest, upright, hearty man, with a true respect for women. But will he look at her when he knows——Oh God, my God, forsake me, but not my children!—Bob, what are you at with those cabbages?”“Why, they are clubbed, donʼt you see, father, beautifully clubbed already, and the leaves flag directly the sun shines. And I want to know whether it is the larva of acurculio, oranthomyia brassicæ; and I canʼt tell without pulling the plants up, and they canʼt come to any good, you know, with all this ambury in them.”“I know nothing of the sort, Bob. I know nothing at all about it. Go into the house to your sister. I canʼt bear the sight of you now.”Bob, without a single word, did as he was told. He knew that his father loved him, though he could not guess the depth of that love, being himself so different. And so he never took offence at his fatherʼs odd ways to him, but thought, “Better luck next time; the governor has got red spider this morning, and he wonʼt be right till dinner–time.”Bull Garnet smiled at his sonʼs obedience, with a mighty fount of pride in him; and then he sighed, because Bob was gone—and he never could have enough of him, for the little time remaining. He loved his son with a love surpassing that of woman, or that of man for woman. Men would call him a fool for it. But God knows how He has made us.Thinking none of this, but fretting over fierce heart–troubles, which now began to be too many even for his power of life—as a hundred wolves kill a lion—he turned again down the espalier–walk, where the apple–trees were in blossom. Pinky shells spread to the sun, with the little close tuft in the middle; some striped, some patched, some pinched with white, some streaking as the fruit would be, and glancing every gloss of blush—no two of them were quite alike, any more than two of us are. Yet the bees knew every one among the countless multitude, and never took the wrong one; even as the angels know which of us belongs to them, and who wants visitation.Bull Garnet, casting to and fro, and taking heed of nothing, not even of the weeds which once could not have lived before his eyes, began again in a vague loose manner (the weakness of which would have angered him, if he had been introspective) to drone about the lawʼs delays, and the folly of institution. He stood at last by his wicket gate, where the hedge of Irish yew was, and there carried on his grumbling.“Lawyers indeed! And cannot manage a simple thing of that sort! Thank God, I know nothing of law.”“Excuse me, Mr. Garnet. It is possible that you may want to know something of law, shortly.”“By what right, sir, dare you break in upon my privacy like this?”Pale as he was, and scorning himself for the way in which his blood shrunk back, Bull Garnet was far too strong and quick ever to be dumb–foundered. Chope looked at him, with some admiration breaking through the triumph of his small comprehensive eyes.“Excuse me, Mr. Garnet. I forgot that a public man like you must have his private moments, even at his own gate. I am sorry to see you so hot, my dear sir; though I have heard that it is your character. That sort of thing leads to evil results, and many deplorable consequences. But I did not mean to be rude to you, or to disturb you so strangely.”“You have not disturbed me at all, sir.”“I am truly happy to hear it. All I meant, as to knowledge of law, was to give you notice that there is some heavy trouble brewing, and that you must be prepared to meet some horrible accusations.”“May I trespass further upon your kindness, to ask what their subject is?”“Oh, nothing more than a very rash and unfounded charge of murder.”Mr. Chope pronounced that last awful word in a deeply sepulchral manner, and riveted his little eyes into Bull Garnetʼs great ones. Mr. Garnet met his gaze as calmly as he would meet the sad clouded aspect of a dead rabbit, or hare, in a shop where he asked the price of them, and regarded their eyes as the test of their freshness. Chope could not tell what to make of it. The thing was beyond his experience.But all this time Bull Garnet felt that every minute was costing him a year of his natural life, even if he ever got any chance of living it out.“How does this concern me? Is it any one on our estates?”“Yes, and the heir to ‘your estates.’ Young Mr. Cradock Nowell.”Bull Garnet sighed very heavily; then he strode away, and came back again, with indignation swelling out the volume of his breast, and filling the deep dark channels of brow, and the turgid veins of his eyeballs.“Whoever has done this thing is a fool; or a rogue—which means the same.”“It may be so. It may be otherwise. We always hope for the best. Very likely he is innocent. Perhaps they are shooting at the pigeon in order to hit the crow.”“Perhaps you know best what their motives are. I see no use in canvassing them. You have heard, I suppose, the rumour that Mr. Cradock Nowell has left England?”“I know very little about it. I have nothing to do with the case; or it might have been managed differently. But I heard that the civil authorities, being called upon to act, discovered, without much trouble, that he had sailed, under a false name, in a ship called theTaprobane, bound direct for Ceylon. And that, of course, told against him rather heavily.”“Ah, he sailed for Ceylon, did he? A wonderful place for insects. I had an uncle who died there.”“Yes, Ceylon, where the flying foxes are. Not so cunning, perhaps, as our foxes of the Forest. And yet the fox is a passionate animal. Violent, hot, and hasty. Were you aware of that fact?”“Excuse me; my time is valuable. I will send for the gamekeeper, if you wish to have light thrown upon that question; or my son will be only too glad——”“Ah, your son! Poor fellow!”Those few short words, pronounced in a tone of real feeling, with no attempt at inquiry, quite overcame Bull Garnet. First extrinsic proof of that which he had so long foreseen with horror—the degradation of his son. He dropped his eyes, which had borne, till now, and returned the lawyerʼs gaze; and the sense of his own peril failed to keep the tears from moving. Up to this time Mr. Chope had doubted, and was even beginning to reject his shrewd and well–founded conclusion. Now he saw and knew everything. And even he was overcome.Passion is infectious; and lawyers are like the rest of us. Mr. Chope had loved his mother.Bull Garnet gave one quick strange glance at the eyes of Simon Chope, which now were turned away from him, and then he looked at the ground, and said,“Yes; I have wronged him bitterly.”Simon Chope drew back from him mechanically, instinctively, as our skin starts from cold iron in the arctic regions. He could not think, much less could he speak, though his mind had been prepared for it. To human nature it is so abhorrent to take the life of another: to usurp the rights of God. To stand in the presence of one who has done it, touches our pulse with death. We feel that he might have done it to us, or that we might have done it to him; and our love of ourselves is at once accelerated and staggered. And then we feel that “life for life” is such low revenge; the vendetta of a drunkard. Very slowly we are beginning to see the baseness of it.Bull Garnet was the first to speak, and now he spoke quite calmly.“You came with several purposes. One of them was, that I should break to Sir Cradock Nowell these tidings of new trouble; the news of the warrant which you and others have issued against his luckless son. I will see to it to–day, and I will try to tell him. Good God, he does not deserve it—I have watched him—he is no father. Oh, I wishyou had a son, Chope; then you could feel for me.”Mr. Chope had two sons, not to be freely discoursed of; whom he meant to take into the office, pseudonymously, some day; and he was rather inclined to like the poor littlenullius filii. First, because they were his own; secondly, because they had big heads; thirdly, because they had cheated all the other boys. Nevertheless, he was in no hurry to be confidential about them. Yet without his knowing it, or at least with only despising it, this little matter shaped its measure upon his present action. The lawyer lifted his hat to Bull Garnet in a very peculiar manner, conveying to the quick apprehension, what it would not have been safe to pronounce—to wit, that Mr. Chope quite understood all that had occurred; that he would not act upon his discovery until he had well considered the matter, for, after all, he had no evidence; lastly, that he was very sorry for Mr. Garnetʼs position, but would rather not shake hands with him.The steward watched him walking softly among the glad young leaves, and down the dell where the sunlight flashed on the merry leaps of the water. Long after the lawyer was out of sight, Bull Garnet stood there watching, as if the forest glades would show him the approaching destiny. Strong and firm as his nature was, he had suffered now such wearing, wearying agonies, that he almost wished the weak manʼs wish—to have the masterytaken from him, to have the issue settled without his own decision.“Poor Cradock sailed in theTaprobane! What an odd name,” he continued, with that childishness to which sometimes the overtaxed brain reverts, “tap, tap–root, tap–robin! Tush, what a fool I am! Oh God, that I could think! Oh God, that I could only learn whether my first duty is to you, or to my children. I will go in and pray.”In the passage he met his son, and kissed his forehead gently, as if to atone for the harshness with which he had sent him away.“Father,” said Bob, “shall you want me to–day? Or may I be from home till dark? I have so many things, most important things, to see to.”“Birds’ nests, I suppose, and grubs, field–mice, and tadpoles. Yes, my son, you are wise. Enjoy them while you can. And take your sister also for a good run, if you can. You may carry your dinner with you: I shall do well enough.”“Oh, itʼs no use asking Pearl; she never will come with me. And I am sure I donʼt want her. She does much more harm than good; she canʼt kill anything properly, nor even blow an egg. But Iʼll ask her, as you wish it, sir; because I know that she wonʼt come.”Mr. Garnet had not the heart to laugh at his childrenʼs fine sense of duty towards him; but he saw Bob start with all his tackle, in great hopes, and high spirits. The father looked sadly after him, wondering at his enjoyment, yet loving him themore, perhaps, for being so unlike himself. And as he gazed, he could not help saying to himself, “Very likely I shall never see him thus again—only look at him when he will not care to look on me. Yet he must know, in the end, and she, the poor thing, she must know how all my soul was on them. Now God in heaven, lead me aright. Half an hour shall settle it.”CHAPTER XI.Meanwhile, supposing the warrant to issue, let us see what chance there is of its ever being served. And it may be a pleasant change awhile to flit to southern latitudes from the troubles and the drizzle, and the weeping summer of England.Poor Cradock, as we saw him last, backed up by the ebony–tree, and with Wena crouching close to him, knew nothing of his lonely plight and miserable abandonment; until the sheets of plashing rain, and long howls of his little dog, awoke him to great wonderment. Then he arose, and rubbed his eyes, and thought that his sight was gone, and felt a heavy weight upon him, and a destiny to grope about, and a vain desire to scream, such as we have in nightmare. Meanwhile, he felt something pulling at him, always in the same direction, and he did not like to put his hand down, for he had some idea that it was Beelzebub. Suddenlya great flash of lightning, triple thrice repeated, lit up the whole of the wood, like day; and he saw black Wena tugging at him, to draw him into good shelter. He saw the shelter also, ere the gush of light was gone, an enormous and hollow mowana–tree, a little higher up the hill. Then all was blackest night again; and even Wena was swallowed up in it. But with both hands stretched out, to fend the blows of hanging branch or creeper, he committed himself to the little dogʼs care, and she took him to the mowana–tree. Then another great flash lit up all the hollow; and Wena was frightened and dropped her tail, but still held on to her master.Cradock neither knew, nor cared, what the name of the tree was, nor whether it possessed, as some trees do, especial attractions for lightning. “Any harbour in a storm,” was all he thought, if he thought at all; and he lay down very snugly, and felt for Amyʼs present to him, and then, in spite of the crashing thunder and the roaring wind, snugly he went off to sleep; and at his feet lay Wena.In the bright morning, the youth arose, and shook himself, and looked round, and felt rather jolly than otherwise. Travellers say that the baobab, or mowana–tree, is the hardest of all things to kill, and will grow along the ground, when uprooted, and not allowed to grow upright. Frenchmen have proved, to their own satisfaction, that some baobabs, now living, grew under the deluge of Noah, and not improbably had the great ark floating overtheir heads. Be that as it may, and though it is a Cadmeian job to cut down the baobab, for every root thereupon claims, and takes, a distinct existence; we can all of us tell the travellers of a thing yet harder to kill—the hope in the heart of a man. And, the better man he is, the more of hopeʼs spores are in him; and the quicker they grow again, after they have all been stamped upon. A mushroom in the egg likes well to have the ground beaten overhead with a paviourʼs rammer, and comes up all the bigger for it, and lifts a pave–stone of two hundred–weight. Shall then the pluck of an honest man fail, while his true conscience stirs in him, though the result be like a fleeting fungus, supposed to be born in an hour by those who know nothing about it, and who make it the type of an upstart—shall not his courage work and spread, although it be underground, as he grows less and less defiant; and rear, perhaps in the autumn of life, a genuine crop, and a good one?Cradock Nowell found his island not at all a bad one. There was plenty to eat at any rate, which is half the battle of life. Plenty to drink is the other half, in the judgment of many philosophers. But I think that plenty to look at it ought to be at least a third of it. The pride of the eyes, if not exercised on that vanishing point, oneself, is a pride legitimate, and condemned by no apostle. And here there was noble food for it; and it is a pride which, when duly fed, slumbers off into humility.Oh the glory of everything, the promise, and the brightness; the large leading views of sky and sea, and the crystal avenues onward. The manner in which a fellow expands, when he looks at such things—if he be capable of expanding, which surely all of us are—the way in which he wonders, and never dreams about wondering, and the feeling of grandeur growing within him, and how it repents him of littleness, and all his foes are forgiven; and then he sees that he has something himself to do with all the beauty of it—upon my word, I am a great fool, to attempt to tell of it.Cradock saw his lovely island, and was well content with it. It was not more than four miles long, and perhaps three miles across; but it was gifted with three grand things—beauty, health, and nourishment. It might have been ages, for all he saw then, since man had sworn or forsworn in it; perhaps none since the voyagers of Necho, whose grand truth was so incredible. There were no high hills, and no very deep holes; but a pleasant undulating place, ever full of leaves and breezes. And as for wild beasts, he had no fear; he knew that they would require more square miles than he owned. As for snakes, he was not so sure; and indeed there were some nasty ones, as we shall see by–and–by.Then he went to the shore, and looked far away, even after theTaprobane. The sea was yet heaving heavily, and tumbling back into itself with a roar, and some fishing eagles were very busy,stooping along the foam of it; but no ship was to be seen anywhere, and far away in the south and south–east the selvage of black clouds, lopping over the mist of the horizon, showed that still the typhoon was there, and no one could tell how bad it was.Cradock found a turtle, at which Wena looked first in mute wonder, with her eyes taking jumps from their orbits, and then, like all females, she found tongue, and ran away, and barked furiously. Presently she came back, sniffing along, and drawing her nose on the sand, yet determined to stick by her master, even if the turtle should eat him. But, to her immense satisfaction, the result was quite the converse: she and her master ate the turtle; beginning,ab ovo, that morning.For, although Crad could not quite eat the eggs raw (by–the–by, they are not so bad that way), and although he could not quite strike a light by twirling one stick in the back of another, he had long ago found reasonfor, and he rapidly found that excellent goddessin, the roasting of eggs. And for that, he had to thank Amy. Only see how thoughtful women are!—yes, a mark of astonishment.But the astonishment will subside, perhaps, when we come to know all about it; for then all the misogynes may declare that the thought was born of vanity. Let them do so. Facts are facts, I say.Amy had sent him a photograph of her faithfulself, beautifully done by Mr. Silvy, of Bayswater, and framed in a patent loverʼs box, I forget the proper name for it—something French, of course—so ingeniously contrived, that when a spring at the back was pressed, a little wax match would present itself, from a lining of asbestos, together with a groove to draw it in. Thus by night, as well as by day, the smile of the loved one might illumine the lonely heart of the lover.Now this device stood him in good stead—as doubtless it was intended to do by the practical mind of the giver—for it served to light the fire wherewith man roasteth roast, and is satisfied. And a fire once lit in the hollow heart of that vast mowana–tree (where twenty men might sit and smoke, when the rainy season came), if you only supplied some fuel daily, and cleared away the ashes weekly, there need be no fear of philanthropy making a trespasser of Prometheus. Cradock soon resolved to keep his head–quarters there, for the tree stood upon a little hill, overlooking land and sea, for many a league of solitude. And it was not long before he found that the soft bark of the baobab might easily be cut so as to make a winding staircase up it; and the work would be an amusement to him, as well as a great advantage.Master and dog having made a most admirable breakfast upon turtles’ eggs, “roasted very knowingly”—as Homer well expresses it—with a large pineapple to follow, started, before the heat of the day, in search of water, the indispensable. Shaddocks,and limes, and mangosteens, bananas—with their long leaves quilling—pineapples, mawas, and mamoshoes, cocoa–nuts, plantains, mangoes, palms, and palmyras, custard–apples, and gourds without end—besides fifty other ground–fruits, ay, and tree–fruits for that matter, quite unknown to Cradock, there was no fear of dying from drought; and yet the first thing to seek was pure water. If Cradock had thought much about the thing, very likely it would have struck him that some of the fruits which he saw are proof not so much of human cultivation, as of human presence, at some time.But he never thought about that; and indeed his mind was too full for thinking. So he cut himself a most tremendous bludgeon of camelthorn, as heavy and almost as hard as iron, and off he went whistling, with Wena wondering whether the stick would beat her.He certainly took things easily; more so than is quite in accord with human nature and reason. But the state of his mind was to blame for it; and the freshness of the island air, after the storm of the night.Even a rejected lover, or a disconsolate husband, gives a jerk to his knee–joints, and carries his elbows more briskly, when the bright spring morning shortens his shadow at every step. Cradock, moreover, felt quite sure that he would not be left too long there; that his friends on board theTaprobanewould come aside from their track tofind him, on their return–voyage from Ceylon; and so no doubt they would have done, if it had been in their power. But theTaprobane, as we shall see, never made her escape, in spite of weatherly helm and good seamanship, from the power of that typhoon. She was lost on the shoals of Benguela Bay, thirty miles south of Quicombo; and not a man ever reached the shore to tell the name of the ship. But a Portuguese half–caste, trading there, found the name on a piece of the taffrail, and a boat which was driven ashore.After all, we see then that Cradock was wonderfully lucky—at least, if it be luck to live—in having been left behind, that evening, on an uninhabited island. “Desolate” nobody could call it, for the gifts of life lay around in abundance, and he soon had proof that the feet of men, ay, of white men, trod it sometimes. Following the shore, a little further than the sailors had gone, he came on a pure narrow thread of crystal, a current of bright water dimpling and twinkling down the sand. Wena at once lay down and rolled, and wetted every bit of herself; and then began to lap the water wherein her own very active and industrious friends were drowning. That Wena was such a ladylike dog; she washed herself before drinking, and she never would wash in salt water. It made her hair so unbecoming.Cradock followed up that stream, and found quite a tidy little brook, when he got above the sand–ridge, full of fish, and fringed with trees, andedged with many a quaint bright bird, scissor–bills and avosets, demoiselles and flamingoes. Wena plunged in and went hunting blue–rats, and birds, and fishes, while her master stooped down, and drank, and thanked God for this discovery.A little way up the brook he found a rude shanty, a sort of wigwam, thatched with leaves and waterproof, backed by a low rock, but quite open in front and at both ends. Under the shelter were blocks of ebony, billets of bar–wood piled up to the roof, a dozen tusks of ivory, bales of dried bark, and piles of rough cylinders full of caoutchouc, and many other things which Cradock could not wait to examine. But he felt quite certain that this must be some traderʼs depôt for shipping: the only thing that surprised him was that the goods were left unprotected. For he knew that the West Africans are the biggest thieves in the world, while he did not understand the virtue of the hideous great Fetich, hanging there.It was made of a long dried codfish, with glass eyes, ground in the iris, and polished again in the pupil, and a glaring stripe of red over them, and the neck of a bottle fixed as for a tongue, and the body skewered open and painted bright blue, ribbed with white, like a skeleton, and the tail prolonged with two spinal columns, which rattled as it went round. The effect of the whole was greatly increased by the tattered cage of crinoline in which it was suspended, and which went creaking round, now and then, in the opposite direction.No nigger would dare to steal anything from such a noble idol. At least so thought the Yankee trader who knew a thing or two about them. He had left his things here in perfect faith, while he was travelling towards the Gaboon, to complete his cargo.Cradock was greatly astounded. He thought that it must be a white manʼs work; and soon he became quite certain, for he saw near a cask the clear mark of a boot, of civilized make, unquestionably. Then he prized out the head of the cask, after a deal of trouble, and found a store of ship–biscuit, a little the worse for weevil, but in very fair condition. He gave Wena one, but she would not touch it, for she set much store by her teeth, and had eaten a noble breakfast.Having made a rough examination of the deserted shed, and found no sort of clothing—which did not vex him much, except that he wanted shoes—he resolved to continue the circuit of his new dominions, and look out perhaps for another hut. He might meet a man at any time; so he carried his big stick ready, though none but cannibals could have any good reason to hurt him. As he went on, and struck inland to cut off the northern promontory, the lie of the land and the look of the woods brought to his mind more clearly and brightly his own beloved New Forest. He saw no quadruped larger than a beautiful little deer, lighter than a gazelle, and of a species quite unknown to him. They stood and looked at him prettily, withouteither fear or defiance, and Wena wanted to hunt them. But he did not allow her to indulge that evil inclination. He had made up his mind to destroy nothing, even for his own subsistence, except the cold–blooded creatures which seem to feel less of the death–pang. But he saw a foul snake, with a flat heavy head, which hissed at and frightened the doggie, and he felt sure that it was venomous: monkeys also of three varieties met him in his pilgrimage, and seemed disposed to be sociable; while birds of every tint and plumage fluttered, and flashed, and flitted. Then Wena ran up to him howling, and limping, and begging for help; and he found her clutched by the seed–vessels of the terrible uncaria. He could scarcely manage to get them off, for they seemed to be crawling upon her.When he had made nearly half his circuit, without any other discovery—except that the grapes were worthless—the heat of the noonday sun grew so strong, although it was autumn there—so far as they have any autumn—that Cradock lay down in the shade of a plantain; and, in a few seconds afterwards, was fast asleep and dreaming. Wena sat up on guard and snapped at the nasty poisonous flies, which came to annoy her master.How heavenly tropical life would be, in a beautiful country like that, but for those infernal insects! The mosquito, for instance,—and he is an angel, compared to some of those Beelzebubs,—must have made Adam swear at Eve, even before the fall.And then those awful spiders, whose hair tickles a man to madness, even if he survives the horror of seeing such devils. And then the tampan—but let us drop the subject, please, for fear of not sleeping to–night. Cradock awoke in furious pain, and spasms most unphilosophical. He had dreamed that he was playing football upon Cowley Green, and had kicked out nobly with his right foot into a marching line of red ants. Immediately they swarmed upon him, up him, over him, into him, biting with wild virulence, and twisting their heads and nippers round in every wound to exasperate it. Wena was rolling and yelling, for they attacked her too. Cradock thought they would kill him; although he did not know that even the python succumbs to them. He was as red all over, inside his clothes and outside, as if you had winnowed over him a bushel of fine rouge. Dancing, and stamping, and recalling, with heartfelt satisfaction, some strong words learned at Oxford, he caught up Wena, and away they went, two solid lumps of ants, headlong into the sea. Luckily he had not far to go; he lay down and rolled himself, clothes and all, and rolled poor Wena too in the waves, until he had the intense delight of knowing that he had drowned a million of them. Ah! and just now he had made up his mind to respect every form of life so.Oh, but I defy any fellow, even the sage Archbishop who reads novels to stop other people, tohave lectured us under the circumstances, or to have kept his oaths in, with those twenty thousand holes in him. The salt water went into Cradockʼs holes, and made him feel like a Cayenne peppercastor; and the little dog sat in the froth of the sea, and thought that even dogs are allowed a hell.After that there was nothing to do, except to go home mournfully—if a tree may be called a home, as no doubt it deserves to be—and then to dry the clothes, and wish that the wearer knew something of botany. Cradock had no doubt at all that around him grew whole stacks of leaves which would salve and soothe his desperate pain; but he had not the least idea which were balm and which were poison. How he wished that, instead of reading so hard for the scholarship of Dean Ireland, he had kept his eyes open in the New Forest, and learned just Natureʼs rudiments! Of course he would have other leaves to deal with; but certain main laws and principles hold good all the world over. Bob Garnet would have been quite at home, though he had never seen one of those plants before.We cannot follow him, day by day. It is too late in the tale for that, even if we wished it. Enough that he found no other trace of man upon the island, except the traderʼs hut, or store, with the hideous scarecrow hanging, and signs of human labour, in the growth of some few trees—about which he knew nothing—and in a rough piece of groundnear the shanty, cleared for a kitchen–garden. Cassavas, and yams, and kiobos, and pea–nuts, and some other things, grew there; which, as he made nothing of them, we must treat likewise. There had even been some cotton sown, but the soil seemed not to suit it. It was meant, perhaps, by the keen American, who thought himself lord of the island, for a little random experiment.When would he come back? That was the question Cradock asked, both of himself and Wena, twenty times a day. Of course poor Cradock knew not whether his lord of the manor were a Yankee or a Britisher, a Portuguese or a Dutchman; “Thebis nutritus an Argis.” Only he supposed and hoped that a white man came to that island sometimes, and brought other white men with him.By this time, he had cut a winding staircase up the walls of his castle, and added a great many rough devices to his rugged interior. Twice every day he clomb his tree, to seek all round the horizon; and at one time he saw a sail in the distance, making perhaps for Loanda. But that ship was even outside the expansive margin of hope. And now he divided his time between his grand mowana citadel and the storehouse, with whose contents he did not like to meddle much, because they were not his property.There he placed the shipʼs hydropult, which he had found lying on the beach; for the mate hadbrought it to meet the chance of finding shallow water, where the casks could not be stooped or the water bailed without fouling it; and the boatʼs crew, in their rush and flurry, had managed to leave it behind them. Cradock left it in the storehouse, because it was useless to him where he had no water, and it amused him sometimes to syringe Wena from the brook which flowed hard by. Moreover, he thought that if anything happened to prevent him from explaining things, the owner of the place, whoever he might be, would find in that implement more than the value of the biscuits which Cradock was eating, and getting on nicely with them, because they corrected the richness of turtle.Truly, his diet was glorious, both in quality and variety; and he very soon became quite a pomarian Apicius. Of all fruits, perhaps the mangosteen (Garcinia mangostana) is the most delicious, when you get the right sort of it—which I donʼt think they have in Brazil—neither is the lee chee a gift to be despised, nor the chirimoya, and several others of the Annona race; some of the Granadillas, too, and the sweet lime, and the plantains, and many another fount of beauty and delight—all of which, by skill and care, might be raised in this country, where we seem to rest content with our meagre hothouse catalogue.I do not say that all these fruits were natives of “Pomona Island,” as Cradock, appreciating itsdesserts, took the liberty of naming it; but most of them were discoverable in one part or another of it; some born from the breast of nature, others borne by man or tide. And almost all of them still would be greatly improved by cultivation.So the head gardener of the island, who left the sun to garden for him, enjoyed their exquisite coolness, and wondered how they could be so cool in the torrid sunshine; and though he did not know the name of one in fifty of them, he found out wonderfully soon which of them were the nicest. And soon he discovered another means of varying his diet, for he remembered having read that often, in such lonely waters, the swarming fish will leap on board of a boat floating down the river. Thereupon he made himself a broad flat tray of bark, with a shallow ledge around it, and holding a tow–rope, made also of bark, launched it upon the brook. Immediately a vast commotion arose among the finny ones; they hustled, and huddled, and darted about, and then paddled gravely and stared at it. Then, whether from confusion of mind, or the reproaches of their comrades, or the desire of novelty, half a dozen fine fellows made a rush, and carried the ship by boarding. Whereupon Cradock, laughing heartily, drew his barge ashore, and soon Wena and himself were deep in a discussion ichthyological.As may well be supposed, the pure sea breezes and wholesome diet, the peace and plenty, andmotherly influence of nature, the due exercise of the body, without undue stagnation of mind, the pleasure of finding knowledge expand every day, stomachically, while body and mind were girded alike, and the heart impressed with the diamond–studded belt of hope—all this, we may well suppose, was beginning to try severely the nasal joints of incessant woe.

CHAPTER IX.Two months of opening spring are past, and the forest is awaking. Up, all we who love such things; come and see more glorious doings than of man or angel. However hearts have been winter–bound with the nip of avarice, and the iron frost of selfishness, however minds have checked their sap in narrowness of ideal, let us all burst bands awhile before the bright sun, as leaves do. Heavenʼs young breath is stirring through crinkled bud and mossy crevice, peaceful spears of pensioned reeds, and flags all innocent of battle. Lo, where the wind goes, while we look, playing with and defying us, chasing the dip of a primrose–bank, and touching sweet lips with dalliance. Lifting first the shining tutsan, gently so, and apologizing, then after a tender whisper to the nodding milkwort, away to where the soft blue eyes of the periwinkle hesitate. Last, before he dies away, the sauntering ruffler looks and steps into a quiet tufted nook, overhungwith bank, and lintelled with the twisted oak–roots. Here, as in a niche of Sabbath, dwells the nervous soft wood–sorrel, feeding upon leaf–mould, quivering with its long–stalked cloves, pale of hue, and shunning touch, delicate wood–sorrel, coral–rooted, shamrock–leafed, loved and understood of few, except good Fra Angelico.Tut—we want stronger life than that; and here we have it overhead, with many a galling boss and buff, yet, on the whole, worth treeʼs exertion, and worth manʼs inspection. See the oak–leaves bursting out, crimped and crannied at their birth, with little nicks and serrate jags like “painted lady” chrysalids, or cowries pushing their tongues out, throwing off the hidesome tuck, and frilled with pellucid copper. See, as well, the fluted beech–leaves, started a full moon ago, offering out of fawn–skin gloves, and glossed with waterproof copal. Then the ash—but hold, I know not how the ash comes out, because it gives so little warning; or rather, it warns a long, long time, and then does it all of a sudden. Tush—what man cares now to glance at the yearly manuscript of God? Let the leaves go; they are notinscripti nomina regum.Yet the brook—though time flees faster, who can grudge one glance at brooklet? Where the mock–myrtle begins to dip, where the young agrimony comes up, and the early forget–me–not pushes its claim upon our remembrance, and the water–lily floats half–way up, quivering dusk in the clearness,like a trout upon the hover. Look how the little waves dance towards us, glancing and casting over, drawing a tongue with limpid creases from the broad pool above, then funnelling into a narrow neck over a shelf of gravel, and bubbling and babbling with petulant freaks into corners of calmer reflection. There an old tree leans solemnly over, with brows bent, and arms folded, turning the course of the brook with his feet, and shedding a crystal darkness.Below this, the yellow banks break away into a scoop on either side, where a green lane of the forest comes down and wades into the water. Here is a favourite crossing–place for the cattle of the woodland, and a favourite bower for cows to rest in, and chew the cud of soft contemplation. And here is a grey wooden bridge for the footpath, adding to rather than destroying the solitude of the scene, because it is plain that a pair of feet once in a week would astonish it. Yet in the depth of loneliness, and the quiet repose of shadow, all is hope, and reassurance, sense of thanks, and breath of praise. For is not the winter gone by, and forgotten, the fury and darkness and terror, the inclination of March to rave, and the April too given to weeping? Surely the time of sweet flowers is come, and the glory of summer approaching, the freedom of revelling in the sun, the vesture of the magnificent trees, and the singing of birds among them.Through the great Huntley Wood, and alongthe banks of the Millaford brook, this fine morning of the May, wander our Rosalind and Celia, Amy to wit, and Eoa. It is a long way from Nowelhurst, but they have brought their lunch, and mean to make a day of it in the forest, seeking balm for wounded hearts in good green leaf and buoyant air. Coming to the old plank–bridge, they sit upon a bank to watch the rising of the trout, for the stone–fly is on the water. Eoa has a great idea that she could catch a trout with a kidney–bean stick and a fly; but now she has not the heart for it; and Amy says it would be so cruel, and they are so pretty.“What a lovely place!” says Amy; “I could sit here all day long. How that crab–apple, clothed with scarlet, seems to rouge the water!”“It isnʼt scarlet, I tell you, Amy, any more than you are. Itʼs only a deep, deep pink. You never can tell colours.”“Well, never mind. It is very pretty. And so are you when you are good and not contradictory—ʼcontradictionary,’ as James Pottles calls Coræbus.”“Well, it does just as well. Whatʼs the good of being so particular? I am sure I am none the better for it; and I have not jumped the brook ever so long, and have thrown away my gaiters just because Uncle John said—oh, you are all alike in England.”“What did my father say, if you please, that possessed such odious sameness?”“There, there, I am so glad to see you in a passion, dear; because I thought you never could be. Uncle John only said that no doubt somebody would like me better, if I gave up all that, and stayed in–doors all day. And I have been trying hard to do it; but he is worse than he was before. I sat on a bench in the chase last Monday, and he went by and never noticed me, though I made quite a noise with my hat on the wood until I was nearly ashamed of myself. But I need not have been alarmed, for my lord went by without even looking.”“And what do you mean to do about it?” Amy took the deepest interest in Eoaʼs love–affair.“Oh, you need not smile, Amy. It is all very well for you, I dare say; but it makes me dreadfully angry. Just as if I were nobody! And after I have told Uncle Cradock of my intentions to settle.”“You premature little creature! But my father was quite right in his advice, as he always is; and not for that reason only. You belong to a well–known family, and, for their sake as well as your own, you are bound to be very nice, dear, and to do only what is nice, instead of making a tomboy of yourself.”“Tomboy, indeed! And nice! Nice things they did, didnʼt they—shooting one another?”Almost before she had uttered the words, she was thoroughly ashamed of herself, for she knew about Amy and Cradock from the maidenʼs ownconfession. Amy arose without reply, and, taking her little basket, turned into the homeward path, with a little quiet sigh. Eoa thought for a moment, and then, having conquered herself, darted after the outraged friend.“I wish to have no more to do with you. That is all,” cried Amy, with Eoaʼs strong arms round her waist.“But, indeed, you shall. You know what a brute I am. I canʼt help it; but I will try. I will bite my tongue off to be forgiven.”“I simply wish, Miss Nowell, to have nothing more to do with you.”“Then you are a great deal worse than I am; because you are unforgiving. I thought you were so wonderfully good; and now I am sorry for you, even more than for myself. I had better go back to the devilʼs people, if this is the way of Christians.”“Could you forgive any one in a moment who had wounded you most savagely?”“In a moment,—if they were sorry, and asked me.”“Are you quite sure of that?”“Sure, indeed! How could I help it?”“Then, Eoa, you cannot help being more like a Christian than I am. I am very persistent, and steadily bitter to any one who wrongs me. You are far better than I am, Eoa; because you cannot hate any one.”“I donʼt know about being better, Amy; I only know that I donʼt hate any one—with all my heart I mean—except Mrs. Nowell Corklemore.”Here Amy could not help laughing at Eoaʼs method of proving her rule; and the other took advantage of it to make her sit down, and kiss her, and beg her pardon a dozen times, because she was such a little savage; and then to open her own lunch–basket, and spread a white cloth, and cover it with slices of rusk and reindeerʼs tongue, and hearted lettuce, and lemonade, and a wing of cold duck at the corner.“I left it to Hoggy,” she cried in triumph, “and he has deserved my confidence. Beat that if you can now, my darling.”“Oh, I can beat that out and out,” said Amy, who still was crying, just a drop now and then, because her emotions were “persistent:” then she smiled, because she knew so well no old butler could touch her in catering; but I must not tell what Amy had, for fear of making people hungry. Only in justice it should be said that neither basket went home full; for both the young ladies were “hearty;” and they kissed one another in spite of the stuffing.“Oh, Amy, I do love you so, whenever you donʼt scold me. I am sure I was meant for a Christian. Hereʼs that nasty sneakʼs lawn handkerchief. I picked her pocket this morning. I do twice a week for practice. But I wonʼt wipe your pretty eyes with it, darling, because I do soloathe her. Now, if you please, no more crying, Amy. What a queer thing you are!”“Most truly may I return the compliment,” answered Amy, smiling through the sparkle of her tears. “But you donʼt mean to say that you keep what you steal?”“Oh no; it is not worth it. And I hate her too much to keep anything. Last week I lit the fire in my dressing–room, on purpose to burn her purse. You should have seen the money melting. I took good care, of course, not to leave it in the ashes, though. I am forming quite a collection of it; for I donʼt mind keeping it at all, when it has been through the fire. And you canʼt think how pretty it is, all strings and dots of white and yellow.”“Well! I never heard such a thing. Why, you might be transported, Eoa!”“Yes, I know, if they found me out; but they are much too stupid for that. Besides, it is such fun; the only fun I have now, since I left off jumping. You know the old thing is so stingy.”“Old thing, indeed! Why, she is not five–and–twenty!”“I donʼt care; she has got a child. She is as old as Methusalem in her heart, though she is so deucedly sentimental”—the old Colonelʼs daughter had not forgotten all her beloved papaʼs expressions—”I know I shall use what you call in this country ‘physical force,’ some day, with her. I must have done it long ago, only for picking herpocket. She would be but a baby in my hands, and she is quite aware of it. Look at my arm; itʼs no larger than yours, except above the elbow, and it is nearly as soft and delicate. Yet I could take you with one hand, Amy, and put you into the brook. If you like, Iʼll do it.”“Much obliged, dear; but I am quite content without the crucial test. I know your wonderful strength, which none would ever suspect, to look at you. I suppose it came to you from your mother.”“Yes, I believe. At any rate, I have heard my father say so; and I could hold both his hands most easily. But oh, she is such a screw, Amy, that sympathetic Georgie! She never gives any one sixpence; and it is so pleasant to hear her go on about her money, and handkerchiefs, and, most of all, her gloves. She is so proud of her nasty little velvet paws. She wonʼt get her gloves except in Southampton, and three toll–gates to pay, and I steal them as fast as she gets them. She grumbles about it all dinner–time, and I offered her eighteenpence for turnpikes—out of her own purse, of course—because she was so poor, I said. But she flew into such a rage that I was forced to pick her pocket again at breakfast–time next morning. And the lies she told about the amount of money in her purse! Between eight and nine pounds, she said the last time, and there was only two pounds twelve. Uncle Cradock made it good to her, because he guessed that I had done it, thoughhe was afraid to tell me so. But, thank God, I stole it again the next day when she went out walking; and that of course he had nothing to say to, because it did not occur in his house. Oh what a rage she was in! She begins to suspect me now, I think; but she never can catch me out.”“You consummate little thief! why, I shall be afraid to come near you.”“Oh, I would never do it to any one but her. And I should not do it to her so much, only she thinks me a clumsy stupid. Me who was called ‘Never–spot–the–dust!’ But I have got another thing of hers, and she had better take care, or Iʼll open it.”“Something else! Take care, Eoa, or I will go and tell.”“No, you know better than that. It is nothing but a letter she wrote, and was going to post at Burley. I knew by her tricks and suspicious ways that there was something in it; and she would not let it go in the post–bag. So I resolved to have it; and of course I did. And she has been in such a fright ever since; but I have not opened it yet.”“And I hope you never will. Either confess, or post it at once, or never call me your friend any more.”“Oh, you need not be hot, Amy; you donʼt understand the circumstances. I know that she is playing a nasty game; and I need not have anyscruples with her, after what I caught her doing. Twice she has been at my desk, my own new desk Uncle Cradock gave me, where I put all the letters and relics that were found on my dear, dear father.” Here Eoa burst out crying, and Amy came near again and kissed her.“Darling, I did not mean to be cross; if the wretch would do such a thing as that, it justifies almost anything.”“And what do you think I did?” said Eoa, half crying, and half laughing: “I set a fishhook with a spring to it, so that the moment she lifted the cover, the barb would go into her hand; and the next day she had a bad finger, and said that little Flore bit it by accident while she was feeling her tooth, which is loose. I should like to have seen her getting the barb out of her nasty little velvet paw.”“I am quite surprised,” cried Amy; “and we all call you so simple—a mere child of nature! If so, nature is up to much more than we give her credit for. And pray, what is your next device?”“Oh, nothing at all, till she does something. I am quits with her now; and I cannot scheme as she does.”Suddenly Amy put both her hands on Eoaʼs graceful shoulders, and poured the quick vigour of English eyes into the fathomless lustre of darkly–fringed Oriental orbs.“You will not tell me a story, dear, if I ask you very particularly?”“I never tell stories to any one; you might know that by this time. At any rate, not to my friends.”“No, I donʼt think you would. Now, do you think that Mrs. Corklemore is at the bottom of this vile thing?”“What vile thing? The viler it is, the more likely she is to have done it.”“Oh no, she cannot have done it, though she may have had something to do with it. I mean, of course, about poor Cradock.”“What about Cradock? I love Cousin Cradock, because he is so unlucky; and because you like him, dear.”“Donʼt you know it? You must have seen that I was in very poor spirits. And this made me feel it so much the more, when you said what you did. We have heard that an application has been made in London, at the Home Office, or somewhere, that a warrant should be issued against Cradock Nowell, and a reward be offered for him as——Oh, my Cradock, my Craddy!”“Put your head in here, darling. What a brute you must have thought me! Oh, I do so love you. Donʼt think twice about it, dear. I will take care that it all comes right. I will go to London to–day, dearest, and defy them to dare to do it. And Iʼll open that letter at once. It becomes a duty now; as that nasty beast always says, when she wants to do anything wrong.”“No, no!” sobbed Amy, “you have no right to open her letter, and you shall not do it, Eoa,unless my father says that it is right. Will you promise me that, dear? Oh, do promise me that.”“How can I promise that, when I would not have him know, for a lac of rupees, that I had ever stolen it? He would never perceive how right it was; and, though I donʼt know much about people, I am sure he would never forgive me. He is such a fidget. But I will promise you one thing, Amy—not to open it withoutyourleave.”Amy was obliged at last to be contented with this; though she said it was worse than nothing, for it forced the decision upon her; and, scrupulously honest and candid as she was, she would feel it right to settle the point against her own desires.“Old Biddy knows I have got it,” cried Eoa, changing her humour: “and she patted me on the back, and said, ‘Begorra, thin, you be the cliver one; hould on to that same, me darlint, and weʼll bate every bit of her, yit; the purtiest feet and ancles to you, and the best back legs, more than iver she got, and now you bate her in the stalinʼ. And plase, Miss, rade yer ould Biddy every consuminʼ word on it. Mullygaslooce, but weʼve toorned her, this time, and thank Donats for it.’”Eoa dramatised Biddy so cleverly, even to the form of her countenance, and her peculiar manner of standing, that Amy, with all those griefs upon her, could not help laughing heartily.“Come along, I canʼt mope any longer; when I have jumped the brook nine times, you may saysomething to me. What do you think of a bathe, Amy? I am up for it, if you are—and our tablecloths for towels. Nobody comes here once in a year; and if they did, they would run away again. What a lovely deep pool! I can swim like a duck; and you like a stone, I suppose.”Amy, of course, would not hear of it, and her lively friend, having paddled with her naked feet in the water, and found it colder—oh, ever so much—than the tributaries of the Ganges, was not so very sorry (self–willed though being) to keep upon the dry land, only she must go to Queenʼs Mead, and Amy must come with her, and run the entire distance, to get away from trouble.Amy was light enough of foot, when her heart was light; but Eoa could “run round her,” as the sporting phrase is, and she gave herself the rein at will that lovely afternoon; as a high–mettled filly does, when she gets out of Piccadilly. And she chatted as fast as she walked all the time, hoping so to divert her friend from this new distress.“I should not be one bit surprised, if we saw that—Bob, here somewhere. We are getting near one of his favourite places—not that I know anything about it; and he is always away now in Mark Ash Wood, or Puckpits, looking out for the arrival of honey–buzzards, or for a merlinʼs nest. Oh, of course we shall not see him.”“Now, you know you will,” replied Amy, laughing at Eoaʼs clumsiness; “and you have broughtme all this way for that very reason. Now, if we meet him, just leave him to me, and stay out of hearing. I will manage him so that he shall soon think you the best and the prettiest girl in the world.”“Well, I wish he would,” said Eoa, blushing beautifully; “wouldnʼt I torment him then?”“No doubt you would, and yourself as well. Now where do you think he will be?”“Oh, Amy, how can I possibly guess? But if I did guess at all, I should say there was just an atom of a chance of his being not far from the Queenʼs Mead.”“Suppose him to be there. What would bring him there? Not to see you, I should hope?”“As if he would go a yard for that! Oh no, he is come to look for—at least, perhaps he might, just possibly, I mean——”“Come to look for whom?” Amy was very angry, for she thought that it was herself, under Eoaʼs strategy.“A horrid little white mole.”“A white mole! Why, I had no idea that there was such a thing.”“Oh yes, there is: but it is very rare; and he has set his heart upon catching this one.”“That he shanʼt. Oh, I see exactly what to do. Come quickly, for fear he should catch it before we get there. Oh, I do hate such cruelty. Ah, there, I see him! Now, you keep out of sight.”In a sunny break of tufted sward, embayed among long waves of wood, young Bob Garnet sat, more happy than the king of all the world of fairies. At his side lay several implements of his own devising, and on his lap a favourite book with his open watch upon it. From time to time he glanced away at a chain of little hillocks about twenty yards in front of him, and among which he had stuck seven or eight stout hazel rods, and brought them down as benders. He was trying not only to catch his mole, but also to add another to his many observations as to the periods of molar exertion. Whether nature does enforce upon those clever miners any Three Hour Act, as the popular opinion is; or whether they are free to work and rest, at their own sweet will, as seems a world more natural.Amy walked into the midst of the benders, in her self–willed, characteristic manner, as if they were nothing at all. She made believe to see nought of Bob, who, on the other side of the path was fluttering and blushing, with a mixture of emotions. “Some very cruel person,” she exclaimed, in loud self–commune, “probably a cruel boy, has been setting mole–traps here, I see. And papa says the moles do more good than harm, except perhaps in my flower–beds. Now Iʼll let them all off very quietly. The boy will think he has caught a dozen; and then how the moles will laugh at him. He will think itʼs a witch, and leave off,very likely, for all cruel boys are ignorant. My pretty little darlings; so glossy, and so clever!”“Oh, please not to do that,” cried Bob, having tried in vain to contain himself, and now leaping up in agony; “I have taken so much trouble, and they are set so beautifully.”“What, Master Robert Garnet! Oh, have you seen my companion, Miss Nowell, about here?”“Look there, you have spoiled another! And theyʼll never set so well again. Oh, you canʼt know what they are, and the trouble I have had with them.”“Oh yes, Master Garnet, I know what they are; clumsy and cruel contrivances to catch my innocent moles.”“Yourmoles!” cried Bob, with great wrath arising, as she coolly destroyed two more traps; “why are theyyourmoles, I should like to know? I donʼt believe you have ever even heard of them before.”“Suppose I have not?” answered Amy, screwing up her lips, as she always did when resolved to have her own way.“Then how can they be your moles? Oh, if you havenʼt spoiled another!”“Well, Godʼs moles, if you prefer it, Master Garnet. At any rate, you have no right to catch them.”“But I only want to catch one, Amy; a white one, oh, such a beauty! I have heard of him sincehe was born, and had my eye on him down all the galleries; and now he must be full–grown, for he was born quite early in August.”“I hope heʼll live to be a hundred. And I will thank you, Master Garnet, to speak tomewith proper respect.”Up went another riser. There was only one left now, and that a most especial trap, which had cost a whole weekʼs cogitation.“I declare you are a most dreadful girl. You donʼt like anything I do. And I have thought so much of you.”“Then, once for all, I beg you never more to do so. I have often wished to speak with you upon that very subject.”“What—what subject, Miss Rosedew? I have no idea what you mean.”“That is altogether false. But I will tell you now. I mean the silly, ungentlemanly, and very childish manner, excusable only in such a boy, in which I have several times observed you loitering about in the forest.”Bob knew what she meant right well, although she would not more plainly express it—his tracking of her footsteps. He turned as red as meadow–sorrel, and stammered out what he could.“I am—very—very sorry. But I did not mean it. I mean—I could not help it.”“You will be kind enough to help it now, for once and for all. Otherwise, my father, who hasnot heard of it yet, shall speak to yours about it. Insufferable impudence in a boy just come from school!”Amy was obliged to turn away, for fear he should look up again, and see the laughter in her eyes. For all her wrath was feigned, inasmuch as to her Bob Garnet was far too silly a butterfly–boy to awake any real anger. But of late he had been intrusive, and it seemed high time to stop it.“If I have done anything wrong, Miss Rosedew, anything in any way unbecoming a gentleman——”“Yes, try to be a good boy again,” said Amy, very graciously; at the same time giving the stroke of grace to his masterpiece of mechanism, designed to catch the white mole alive; “now take up your playthings and go, if you please; for I expect a young lady here directly; and your little tools for cockchafer–spinning would barbarize the foreground of our sketch, besides being very ugly.”“Oh!” cried Bob, with a sudden access of his fathers readiness—”you spin a fellow worse than any cockchafer, and you do it in the name of humanity!”“Then think me no more a divinity,” answered Amy; because she must have the last word; and even Bob, young as he was, knew better than to paragogize the feminine termination. Utterly discomfited, as a boy is by a woman—and Amyʼs troublehad advanced her almost to that proud claim—Bob gathered up his traps and scuttled cleverly out of sight. She, on the other hand (laughing all the while at herself for her simple piece of acting, and doubting whether she had been right in doing even a little thing so much against her nature), there she sat, with her sketching–block ready, and hoped that Eoa would have the wit to come and meet her beloved Bob, now labouring under his fierce rebuff.But Eoa could not do it. She had wit enough, but too much heart. She had heard every word of Amyʼs insolence, and was very indignant at it. Was Bob to be talked to in that way? As if he knew nothing of science! As if he really had an atom of any sort of cruelty in him! Was Amy so very ignorant as not to know that all Bob did was done with the kindest consideration, and for the interest of the species, though the pins through the backs were unpleasant, perhaps? But that was over in a moment, and he always carried ether; and it was nothing to the Fakirs, or the martyrs of Christianity.Therefore Eoa crouched away, behind a tuft of thicket, because her maidenhood forbade her to come out and comfort him, to take advantage of his wrong, and let him know how she felt it. Therefore, too, she was very sharp with Amy all the homeward road; vindicating Bob, and snapping at all proffered softness; truth being that she had suspected his boyish whim for Amy, and nowwas sorry for him about it, and very angry with both of them.From that little touch of womanʼs nature she learned more dignity, more pride, more reservation, and self–respect, than she could have won from a score of governesses, or six seasons of “society.”

Two months of opening spring are past, and the forest is awaking. Up, all we who love such things; come and see more glorious doings than of man or angel. However hearts have been winter–bound with the nip of avarice, and the iron frost of selfishness, however minds have checked their sap in narrowness of ideal, let us all burst bands awhile before the bright sun, as leaves do. Heavenʼs young breath is stirring through crinkled bud and mossy crevice, peaceful spears of pensioned reeds, and flags all innocent of battle. Lo, where the wind goes, while we look, playing with and defying us, chasing the dip of a primrose–bank, and touching sweet lips with dalliance. Lifting first the shining tutsan, gently so, and apologizing, then after a tender whisper to the nodding milkwort, away to where the soft blue eyes of the periwinkle hesitate. Last, before he dies away, the sauntering ruffler looks and steps into a quiet tufted nook, overhungwith bank, and lintelled with the twisted oak–roots. Here, as in a niche of Sabbath, dwells the nervous soft wood–sorrel, feeding upon leaf–mould, quivering with its long–stalked cloves, pale of hue, and shunning touch, delicate wood–sorrel, coral–rooted, shamrock–leafed, loved and understood of few, except good Fra Angelico.

Tut—we want stronger life than that; and here we have it overhead, with many a galling boss and buff, yet, on the whole, worth treeʼs exertion, and worth manʼs inspection. See the oak–leaves bursting out, crimped and crannied at their birth, with little nicks and serrate jags like “painted lady” chrysalids, or cowries pushing their tongues out, throwing off the hidesome tuck, and frilled with pellucid copper. See, as well, the fluted beech–leaves, started a full moon ago, offering out of fawn–skin gloves, and glossed with waterproof copal. Then the ash—but hold, I know not how the ash comes out, because it gives so little warning; or rather, it warns a long, long time, and then does it all of a sudden. Tush—what man cares now to glance at the yearly manuscript of God? Let the leaves go; they are notinscripti nomina regum.

Yet the brook—though time flees faster, who can grudge one glance at brooklet? Where the mock–myrtle begins to dip, where the young agrimony comes up, and the early forget–me–not pushes its claim upon our remembrance, and the water–lily floats half–way up, quivering dusk in the clearness,like a trout upon the hover. Look how the little waves dance towards us, glancing and casting over, drawing a tongue with limpid creases from the broad pool above, then funnelling into a narrow neck over a shelf of gravel, and bubbling and babbling with petulant freaks into corners of calmer reflection. There an old tree leans solemnly over, with brows bent, and arms folded, turning the course of the brook with his feet, and shedding a crystal darkness.

Below this, the yellow banks break away into a scoop on either side, where a green lane of the forest comes down and wades into the water. Here is a favourite crossing–place for the cattle of the woodland, and a favourite bower for cows to rest in, and chew the cud of soft contemplation. And here is a grey wooden bridge for the footpath, adding to rather than destroying the solitude of the scene, because it is plain that a pair of feet once in a week would astonish it. Yet in the depth of loneliness, and the quiet repose of shadow, all is hope, and reassurance, sense of thanks, and breath of praise. For is not the winter gone by, and forgotten, the fury and darkness and terror, the inclination of March to rave, and the April too given to weeping? Surely the time of sweet flowers is come, and the glory of summer approaching, the freedom of revelling in the sun, the vesture of the magnificent trees, and the singing of birds among them.

Through the great Huntley Wood, and alongthe banks of the Millaford brook, this fine morning of the May, wander our Rosalind and Celia, Amy to wit, and Eoa. It is a long way from Nowelhurst, but they have brought their lunch, and mean to make a day of it in the forest, seeking balm for wounded hearts in good green leaf and buoyant air. Coming to the old plank–bridge, they sit upon a bank to watch the rising of the trout, for the stone–fly is on the water. Eoa has a great idea that she could catch a trout with a kidney–bean stick and a fly; but now she has not the heart for it; and Amy says it would be so cruel, and they are so pretty.

“What a lovely place!” says Amy; “I could sit here all day long. How that crab–apple, clothed with scarlet, seems to rouge the water!”

“It isnʼt scarlet, I tell you, Amy, any more than you are. Itʼs only a deep, deep pink. You never can tell colours.”

“Well, never mind. It is very pretty. And so are you when you are good and not contradictory—ʼcontradictionary,’ as James Pottles calls Coræbus.”

“Well, it does just as well. Whatʼs the good of being so particular? I am sure I am none the better for it; and I have not jumped the brook ever so long, and have thrown away my gaiters just because Uncle John said—oh, you are all alike in England.”

“What did my father say, if you please, that possessed such odious sameness?”

“There, there, I am so glad to see you in a passion, dear; because I thought you never could be. Uncle John only said that no doubt somebody would like me better, if I gave up all that, and stayed in–doors all day. And I have been trying hard to do it; but he is worse than he was before. I sat on a bench in the chase last Monday, and he went by and never noticed me, though I made quite a noise with my hat on the wood until I was nearly ashamed of myself. But I need not have been alarmed, for my lord went by without even looking.”

“And what do you mean to do about it?” Amy took the deepest interest in Eoaʼs love–affair.

“Oh, you need not smile, Amy. It is all very well for you, I dare say; but it makes me dreadfully angry. Just as if I were nobody! And after I have told Uncle Cradock of my intentions to settle.”

“You premature little creature! But my father was quite right in his advice, as he always is; and not for that reason only. You belong to a well–known family, and, for their sake as well as your own, you are bound to be very nice, dear, and to do only what is nice, instead of making a tomboy of yourself.”

“Tomboy, indeed! And nice! Nice things they did, didnʼt they—shooting one another?”

Almost before she had uttered the words, she was thoroughly ashamed of herself, for she knew about Amy and Cradock from the maidenʼs ownconfession. Amy arose without reply, and, taking her little basket, turned into the homeward path, with a little quiet sigh. Eoa thought for a moment, and then, having conquered herself, darted after the outraged friend.

“I wish to have no more to do with you. That is all,” cried Amy, with Eoaʼs strong arms round her waist.

“But, indeed, you shall. You know what a brute I am. I canʼt help it; but I will try. I will bite my tongue off to be forgiven.”

“I simply wish, Miss Nowell, to have nothing more to do with you.”

“Then you are a great deal worse than I am; because you are unforgiving. I thought you were so wonderfully good; and now I am sorry for you, even more than for myself. I had better go back to the devilʼs people, if this is the way of Christians.”

“Could you forgive any one in a moment who had wounded you most savagely?”

“In a moment,—if they were sorry, and asked me.”

“Are you quite sure of that?”

“Sure, indeed! How could I help it?”

“Then, Eoa, you cannot help being more like a Christian than I am. I am very persistent, and steadily bitter to any one who wrongs me. You are far better than I am, Eoa; because you cannot hate any one.”

“I donʼt know about being better, Amy; I only know that I donʼt hate any one—with all my heart I mean—except Mrs. Nowell Corklemore.”

Here Amy could not help laughing at Eoaʼs method of proving her rule; and the other took advantage of it to make her sit down, and kiss her, and beg her pardon a dozen times, because she was such a little savage; and then to open her own lunch–basket, and spread a white cloth, and cover it with slices of rusk and reindeerʼs tongue, and hearted lettuce, and lemonade, and a wing of cold duck at the corner.

“I left it to Hoggy,” she cried in triumph, “and he has deserved my confidence. Beat that if you can now, my darling.”

“Oh, I can beat that out and out,” said Amy, who still was crying, just a drop now and then, because her emotions were “persistent:” then she smiled, because she knew so well no old butler could touch her in catering; but I must not tell what Amy had, for fear of making people hungry. Only in justice it should be said that neither basket went home full; for both the young ladies were “hearty;” and they kissed one another in spite of the stuffing.

“Oh, Amy, I do love you so, whenever you donʼt scold me. I am sure I was meant for a Christian. Hereʼs that nasty sneakʼs lawn handkerchief. I picked her pocket this morning. I do twice a week for practice. But I wonʼt wipe your pretty eyes with it, darling, because I do soloathe her. Now, if you please, no more crying, Amy. What a queer thing you are!”

“Most truly may I return the compliment,” answered Amy, smiling through the sparkle of her tears. “But you donʼt mean to say that you keep what you steal?”

“Oh no; it is not worth it. And I hate her too much to keep anything. Last week I lit the fire in my dressing–room, on purpose to burn her purse. You should have seen the money melting. I took good care, of course, not to leave it in the ashes, though. I am forming quite a collection of it; for I donʼt mind keeping it at all, when it has been through the fire. And you canʼt think how pretty it is, all strings and dots of white and yellow.”

“Well! I never heard such a thing. Why, you might be transported, Eoa!”

“Yes, I know, if they found me out; but they are much too stupid for that. Besides, it is such fun; the only fun I have now, since I left off jumping. You know the old thing is so stingy.”

“Old thing, indeed! Why, she is not five–and–twenty!”

“I donʼt care; she has got a child. She is as old as Methusalem in her heart, though she is so deucedly sentimental”—the old Colonelʼs daughter had not forgotten all her beloved papaʼs expressions—”I know I shall use what you call in this country ‘physical force,’ some day, with her. I must have done it long ago, only for picking herpocket. She would be but a baby in my hands, and she is quite aware of it. Look at my arm; itʼs no larger than yours, except above the elbow, and it is nearly as soft and delicate. Yet I could take you with one hand, Amy, and put you into the brook. If you like, Iʼll do it.”

“Much obliged, dear; but I am quite content without the crucial test. I know your wonderful strength, which none would ever suspect, to look at you. I suppose it came to you from your mother.”

“Yes, I believe. At any rate, I have heard my father say so; and I could hold both his hands most easily. But oh, she is such a screw, Amy, that sympathetic Georgie! She never gives any one sixpence; and it is so pleasant to hear her go on about her money, and handkerchiefs, and, most of all, her gloves. She is so proud of her nasty little velvet paws. She wonʼt get her gloves except in Southampton, and three toll–gates to pay, and I steal them as fast as she gets them. She grumbles about it all dinner–time, and I offered her eighteenpence for turnpikes—out of her own purse, of course—because she was so poor, I said. But she flew into such a rage that I was forced to pick her pocket again at breakfast–time next morning. And the lies she told about the amount of money in her purse! Between eight and nine pounds, she said the last time, and there was only two pounds twelve. Uncle Cradock made it good to her, because he guessed that I had done it, thoughhe was afraid to tell me so. But, thank God, I stole it again the next day when she went out walking; and that of course he had nothing to say to, because it did not occur in his house. Oh what a rage she was in! She begins to suspect me now, I think; but she never can catch me out.”

“You consummate little thief! why, I shall be afraid to come near you.”

“Oh, I would never do it to any one but her. And I should not do it to her so much, only she thinks me a clumsy stupid. Me who was called ‘Never–spot–the–dust!’ But I have got another thing of hers, and she had better take care, or Iʼll open it.”

“Something else! Take care, Eoa, or I will go and tell.”

“No, you know better than that. It is nothing but a letter she wrote, and was going to post at Burley. I knew by her tricks and suspicious ways that there was something in it; and she would not let it go in the post–bag. So I resolved to have it; and of course I did. And she has been in such a fright ever since; but I have not opened it yet.”

“And I hope you never will. Either confess, or post it at once, or never call me your friend any more.”

“Oh, you need not be hot, Amy; you donʼt understand the circumstances. I know that she is playing a nasty game; and I need not have anyscruples with her, after what I caught her doing. Twice she has been at my desk, my own new desk Uncle Cradock gave me, where I put all the letters and relics that were found on my dear, dear father.” Here Eoa burst out crying, and Amy came near again and kissed her.

“Darling, I did not mean to be cross; if the wretch would do such a thing as that, it justifies almost anything.”

“And what do you think I did?” said Eoa, half crying, and half laughing: “I set a fishhook with a spring to it, so that the moment she lifted the cover, the barb would go into her hand; and the next day she had a bad finger, and said that little Flore bit it by accident while she was feeling her tooth, which is loose. I should like to have seen her getting the barb out of her nasty little velvet paw.”

“I am quite surprised,” cried Amy; “and we all call you so simple—a mere child of nature! If so, nature is up to much more than we give her credit for. And pray, what is your next device?”

“Oh, nothing at all, till she does something. I am quits with her now; and I cannot scheme as she does.”

Suddenly Amy put both her hands on Eoaʼs graceful shoulders, and poured the quick vigour of English eyes into the fathomless lustre of darkly–fringed Oriental orbs.

“You will not tell me a story, dear, if I ask you very particularly?”

“I never tell stories to any one; you might know that by this time. At any rate, not to my friends.”

“No, I donʼt think you would. Now, do you think that Mrs. Corklemore is at the bottom of this vile thing?”

“What vile thing? The viler it is, the more likely she is to have done it.”

“Oh no, she cannot have done it, though she may have had something to do with it. I mean, of course, about poor Cradock.”

“What about Cradock? I love Cousin Cradock, because he is so unlucky; and because you like him, dear.”

“Donʼt you know it? You must have seen that I was in very poor spirits. And this made me feel it so much the more, when you said what you did. We have heard that an application has been made in London, at the Home Office, or somewhere, that a warrant should be issued against Cradock Nowell, and a reward be offered for him as——Oh, my Cradock, my Craddy!”

“Put your head in here, darling. What a brute you must have thought me! Oh, I do so love you. Donʼt think twice about it, dear. I will take care that it all comes right. I will go to London to–day, dearest, and defy them to dare to do it. And Iʼll open that letter at once. It becomes a duty now; as that nasty beast always says, when she wants to do anything wrong.”

“No, no!” sobbed Amy, “you have no right to open her letter, and you shall not do it, Eoa,unless my father says that it is right. Will you promise me that, dear? Oh, do promise me that.”

“How can I promise that, when I would not have him know, for a lac of rupees, that I had ever stolen it? He would never perceive how right it was; and, though I donʼt know much about people, I am sure he would never forgive me. He is such a fidget. But I will promise you one thing, Amy—not to open it withoutyourleave.”

Amy was obliged at last to be contented with this; though she said it was worse than nothing, for it forced the decision upon her; and, scrupulously honest and candid as she was, she would feel it right to settle the point against her own desires.

“Old Biddy knows I have got it,” cried Eoa, changing her humour: “and she patted me on the back, and said, ‘Begorra, thin, you be the cliver one; hould on to that same, me darlint, and weʼll bate every bit of her, yit; the purtiest feet and ancles to you, and the best back legs, more than iver she got, and now you bate her in the stalinʼ. And plase, Miss, rade yer ould Biddy every consuminʼ word on it. Mullygaslooce, but weʼve toorned her, this time, and thank Donats for it.’”

Eoa dramatised Biddy so cleverly, even to the form of her countenance, and her peculiar manner of standing, that Amy, with all those griefs upon her, could not help laughing heartily.

“Come along, I canʼt mope any longer; when I have jumped the brook nine times, you may saysomething to me. What do you think of a bathe, Amy? I am up for it, if you are—and our tablecloths for towels. Nobody comes here once in a year; and if they did, they would run away again. What a lovely deep pool! I can swim like a duck; and you like a stone, I suppose.”

Amy, of course, would not hear of it, and her lively friend, having paddled with her naked feet in the water, and found it colder—oh, ever so much—than the tributaries of the Ganges, was not so very sorry (self–willed though being) to keep upon the dry land, only she must go to Queenʼs Mead, and Amy must come with her, and run the entire distance, to get away from trouble.

Amy was light enough of foot, when her heart was light; but Eoa could “run round her,” as the sporting phrase is, and she gave herself the rein at will that lovely afternoon; as a high–mettled filly does, when she gets out of Piccadilly. And she chatted as fast as she walked all the time, hoping so to divert her friend from this new distress.

“I should not be one bit surprised, if we saw that—Bob, here somewhere. We are getting near one of his favourite places—not that I know anything about it; and he is always away now in Mark Ash Wood, or Puckpits, looking out for the arrival of honey–buzzards, or for a merlinʼs nest. Oh, of course we shall not see him.”

“Now, you know you will,” replied Amy, laughing at Eoaʼs clumsiness; “and you have broughtme all this way for that very reason. Now, if we meet him, just leave him to me, and stay out of hearing. I will manage him so that he shall soon think you the best and the prettiest girl in the world.”

“Well, I wish he would,” said Eoa, blushing beautifully; “wouldnʼt I torment him then?”

“No doubt you would, and yourself as well. Now where do you think he will be?”

“Oh, Amy, how can I possibly guess? But if I did guess at all, I should say there was just an atom of a chance of his being not far from the Queenʼs Mead.”

“Suppose him to be there. What would bring him there? Not to see you, I should hope?”

“As if he would go a yard for that! Oh no, he is come to look for—at least, perhaps he might, just possibly, I mean——”

“Come to look for whom?” Amy was very angry, for she thought that it was herself, under Eoaʼs strategy.

“A horrid little white mole.”

“A white mole! Why, I had no idea that there was such a thing.”

“Oh yes, there is: but it is very rare; and he has set his heart upon catching this one.”

“That he shanʼt. Oh, I see exactly what to do. Come quickly, for fear he should catch it before we get there. Oh, I do hate such cruelty. Ah, there, I see him! Now, you keep out of sight.”

In a sunny break of tufted sward, embayed among long waves of wood, young Bob Garnet sat, more happy than the king of all the world of fairies. At his side lay several implements of his own devising, and on his lap a favourite book with his open watch upon it. From time to time he glanced away at a chain of little hillocks about twenty yards in front of him, and among which he had stuck seven or eight stout hazel rods, and brought them down as benders. He was trying not only to catch his mole, but also to add another to his many observations as to the periods of molar exertion. Whether nature does enforce upon those clever miners any Three Hour Act, as the popular opinion is; or whether they are free to work and rest, at their own sweet will, as seems a world more natural.

Amy walked into the midst of the benders, in her self–willed, characteristic manner, as if they were nothing at all. She made believe to see nought of Bob, who, on the other side of the path was fluttering and blushing, with a mixture of emotions. “Some very cruel person,” she exclaimed, in loud self–commune, “probably a cruel boy, has been setting mole–traps here, I see. And papa says the moles do more good than harm, except perhaps in my flower–beds. Now Iʼll let them all off very quietly. The boy will think he has caught a dozen; and then how the moles will laugh at him. He will think itʼs a witch, and leave off,very likely, for all cruel boys are ignorant. My pretty little darlings; so glossy, and so clever!”

“Oh, please not to do that,” cried Bob, having tried in vain to contain himself, and now leaping up in agony; “I have taken so much trouble, and they are set so beautifully.”

“What, Master Robert Garnet! Oh, have you seen my companion, Miss Nowell, about here?”

“Look there, you have spoiled another! And theyʼll never set so well again. Oh, you canʼt know what they are, and the trouble I have had with them.”

“Oh yes, Master Garnet, I know what they are; clumsy and cruel contrivances to catch my innocent moles.”

“Yourmoles!” cried Bob, with great wrath arising, as she coolly destroyed two more traps; “why are theyyourmoles, I should like to know? I donʼt believe you have ever even heard of them before.”

“Suppose I have not?” answered Amy, screwing up her lips, as she always did when resolved to have her own way.

“Then how can they be your moles? Oh, if you havenʼt spoiled another!”

“Well, Godʼs moles, if you prefer it, Master Garnet. At any rate, you have no right to catch them.”

“But I only want to catch one, Amy; a white one, oh, such a beauty! I have heard of him sincehe was born, and had my eye on him down all the galleries; and now he must be full–grown, for he was born quite early in August.”

“I hope heʼll live to be a hundred. And I will thank you, Master Garnet, to speak tomewith proper respect.”

Up went another riser. There was only one left now, and that a most especial trap, which had cost a whole weekʼs cogitation.

“I declare you are a most dreadful girl. You donʼt like anything I do. And I have thought so much of you.”

“Then, once for all, I beg you never more to do so. I have often wished to speak with you upon that very subject.”

“What—what subject, Miss Rosedew? I have no idea what you mean.”

“That is altogether false. But I will tell you now. I mean the silly, ungentlemanly, and very childish manner, excusable only in such a boy, in which I have several times observed you loitering about in the forest.”

Bob knew what she meant right well, although she would not more plainly express it—his tracking of her footsteps. He turned as red as meadow–sorrel, and stammered out what he could.

“I am—very—very sorry. But I did not mean it. I mean—I could not help it.”

“You will be kind enough to help it now, for once and for all. Otherwise, my father, who hasnot heard of it yet, shall speak to yours about it. Insufferable impudence in a boy just come from school!”

Amy was obliged to turn away, for fear he should look up again, and see the laughter in her eyes. For all her wrath was feigned, inasmuch as to her Bob Garnet was far too silly a butterfly–boy to awake any real anger. But of late he had been intrusive, and it seemed high time to stop it.

“If I have done anything wrong, Miss Rosedew, anything in any way unbecoming a gentleman——”

“Yes, try to be a good boy again,” said Amy, very graciously; at the same time giving the stroke of grace to his masterpiece of mechanism, designed to catch the white mole alive; “now take up your playthings and go, if you please; for I expect a young lady here directly; and your little tools for cockchafer–spinning would barbarize the foreground of our sketch, besides being very ugly.”

“Oh!” cried Bob, with a sudden access of his fathers readiness—”you spin a fellow worse than any cockchafer, and you do it in the name of humanity!”

“Then think me no more a divinity,” answered Amy; because she must have the last word; and even Bob, young as he was, knew better than to paragogize the feminine termination. Utterly discomfited, as a boy is by a woman—and Amyʼs troublehad advanced her almost to that proud claim—Bob gathered up his traps and scuttled cleverly out of sight. She, on the other hand (laughing all the while at herself for her simple piece of acting, and doubting whether she had been right in doing even a little thing so much against her nature), there she sat, with her sketching–block ready, and hoped that Eoa would have the wit to come and meet her beloved Bob, now labouring under his fierce rebuff.

But Eoa could not do it. She had wit enough, but too much heart. She had heard every word of Amyʼs insolence, and was very indignant at it. Was Bob to be talked to in that way? As if he knew nothing of science! As if he really had an atom of any sort of cruelty in him! Was Amy so very ignorant as not to know that all Bob did was done with the kindest consideration, and for the interest of the species, though the pins through the backs were unpleasant, perhaps? But that was over in a moment, and he always carried ether; and it was nothing to the Fakirs, or the martyrs of Christianity.

Therefore Eoa crouched away, behind a tuft of thicket, because her maidenhood forbade her to come out and comfort him, to take advantage of his wrong, and let him know how she felt it. Therefore, too, she was very sharp with Amy all the homeward road; vindicating Bob, and snapping at all proffered softness; truth being that she had suspected his boyish whim for Amy, and nowwas sorry for him about it, and very angry with both of them.

From that little touch of womanʼs nature she learned more dignity, more pride, more reservation, and self–respect, than she could have won from a score of governesses, or six seasons of “society.”

CHAPTER X.“Not another minute to lose, and the sale again deferred! All the lots marked, and the handbills out, and the particulars and conditions ready; and then some paltry pettifogging, and another fortnight will be required to do ‘justice to my interests.’ Justice to my interests! How they do love round–mouthed rubbish! The only justice to me is, from a legal point of view, to string me up, and then quick–lime me; and the only justice to my interests is to rob my children, because I have robbed them already. Robbed them of their birth and name, their power to look men in the face, their chance of being allowed to do what God seems chiefly to want us for—to marry and have children, who may be worse than we are; though, thank Him, mine are not. Robbed them even of their chance to be met as Christians (though I have increased their right to it), in this wretched, money–seeking, servile, and contemptuous age. Butwho am I to find fault with any, after all my wasted life? A life which might, in its little way, have told upon the people round me, and moved, if not improved them. Which might, at least, have set them thinking, doubting, and believing. Oh the loss of energy, the loss of self–reliance, and the awful load of fear and anguish—I who might have been so different! Pearl is at the window there. I know quite well who loves her—an honest, upright, hearty man, with a true respect for women. But will he look at her when he knows——Oh God, my God, forsake me, but not my children!—Bob, what are you at with those cabbages?”“Why, they are clubbed, donʼt you see, father, beautifully clubbed already, and the leaves flag directly the sun shines. And I want to know whether it is the larva of acurculio, oranthomyia brassicæ; and I canʼt tell without pulling the plants up, and they canʼt come to any good, you know, with all this ambury in them.”“I know nothing of the sort, Bob. I know nothing at all about it. Go into the house to your sister. I canʼt bear the sight of you now.”Bob, without a single word, did as he was told. He knew that his father loved him, though he could not guess the depth of that love, being himself so different. And so he never took offence at his fatherʼs odd ways to him, but thought, “Better luck next time; the governor has got red spider this morning, and he wonʼt be right till dinner–time.”Bull Garnet smiled at his sonʼs obedience, with a mighty fount of pride in him; and then he sighed, because Bob was gone—and he never could have enough of him, for the little time remaining. He loved his son with a love surpassing that of woman, or that of man for woman. Men would call him a fool for it. But God knows how He has made us.Thinking none of this, but fretting over fierce heart–troubles, which now began to be too many even for his power of life—as a hundred wolves kill a lion—he turned again down the espalier–walk, where the apple–trees were in blossom. Pinky shells spread to the sun, with the little close tuft in the middle; some striped, some patched, some pinched with white, some streaking as the fruit would be, and glancing every gloss of blush—no two of them were quite alike, any more than two of us are. Yet the bees knew every one among the countless multitude, and never took the wrong one; even as the angels know which of us belongs to them, and who wants visitation.Bull Garnet, casting to and fro, and taking heed of nothing, not even of the weeds which once could not have lived before his eyes, began again in a vague loose manner (the weakness of which would have angered him, if he had been introspective) to drone about the lawʼs delays, and the folly of institution. He stood at last by his wicket gate, where the hedge of Irish yew was, and there carried on his grumbling.“Lawyers indeed! And cannot manage a simple thing of that sort! Thank God, I know nothing of law.”“Excuse me, Mr. Garnet. It is possible that you may want to know something of law, shortly.”“By what right, sir, dare you break in upon my privacy like this?”Pale as he was, and scorning himself for the way in which his blood shrunk back, Bull Garnet was far too strong and quick ever to be dumb–foundered. Chope looked at him, with some admiration breaking through the triumph of his small comprehensive eyes.“Excuse me, Mr. Garnet. I forgot that a public man like you must have his private moments, even at his own gate. I am sorry to see you so hot, my dear sir; though I have heard that it is your character. That sort of thing leads to evil results, and many deplorable consequences. But I did not mean to be rude to you, or to disturb you so strangely.”“You have not disturbed me at all, sir.”“I am truly happy to hear it. All I meant, as to knowledge of law, was to give you notice that there is some heavy trouble brewing, and that you must be prepared to meet some horrible accusations.”“May I trespass further upon your kindness, to ask what their subject is?”“Oh, nothing more than a very rash and unfounded charge of murder.”Mr. Chope pronounced that last awful word in a deeply sepulchral manner, and riveted his little eyes into Bull Garnetʼs great ones. Mr. Garnet met his gaze as calmly as he would meet the sad clouded aspect of a dead rabbit, or hare, in a shop where he asked the price of them, and regarded their eyes as the test of their freshness. Chope could not tell what to make of it. The thing was beyond his experience.But all this time Bull Garnet felt that every minute was costing him a year of his natural life, even if he ever got any chance of living it out.“How does this concern me? Is it any one on our estates?”“Yes, and the heir to ‘your estates.’ Young Mr. Cradock Nowell.”Bull Garnet sighed very heavily; then he strode away, and came back again, with indignation swelling out the volume of his breast, and filling the deep dark channels of brow, and the turgid veins of his eyeballs.“Whoever has done this thing is a fool; or a rogue—which means the same.”“It may be so. It may be otherwise. We always hope for the best. Very likely he is innocent. Perhaps they are shooting at the pigeon in order to hit the crow.”“Perhaps you know best what their motives are. I see no use in canvassing them. You have heard, I suppose, the rumour that Mr. Cradock Nowell has left England?”“I know very little about it. I have nothing to do with the case; or it might have been managed differently. But I heard that the civil authorities, being called upon to act, discovered, without much trouble, that he had sailed, under a false name, in a ship called theTaprobane, bound direct for Ceylon. And that, of course, told against him rather heavily.”“Ah, he sailed for Ceylon, did he? A wonderful place for insects. I had an uncle who died there.”“Yes, Ceylon, where the flying foxes are. Not so cunning, perhaps, as our foxes of the Forest. And yet the fox is a passionate animal. Violent, hot, and hasty. Were you aware of that fact?”“Excuse me; my time is valuable. I will send for the gamekeeper, if you wish to have light thrown upon that question; or my son will be only too glad——”“Ah, your son! Poor fellow!”Those few short words, pronounced in a tone of real feeling, with no attempt at inquiry, quite overcame Bull Garnet. First extrinsic proof of that which he had so long foreseen with horror—the degradation of his son. He dropped his eyes, which had borne, till now, and returned the lawyerʼs gaze; and the sense of his own peril failed to keep the tears from moving. Up to this time Mr. Chope had doubted, and was even beginning to reject his shrewd and well–founded conclusion. Now he saw and knew everything. And even he was overcome.Passion is infectious; and lawyers are like the rest of us. Mr. Chope had loved his mother.Bull Garnet gave one quick strange glance at the eyes of Simon Chope, which now were turned away from him, and then he looked at the ground, and said,“Yes; I have wronged him bitterly.”Simon Chope drew back from him mechanically, instinctively, as our skin starts from cold iron in the arctic regions. He could not think, much less could he speak, though his mind had been prepared for it. To human nature it is so abhorrent to take the life of another: to usurp the rights of God. To stand in the presence of one who has done it, touches our pulse with death. We feel that he might have done it to us, or that we might have done it to him; and our love of ourselves is at once accelerated and staggered. And then we feel that “life for life” is such low revenge; the vendetta of a drunkard. Very slowly we are beginning to see the baseness of it.Bull Garnet was the first to speak, and now he spoke quite calmly.“You came with several purposes. One of them was, that I should break to Sir Cradock Nowell these tidings of new trouble; the news of the warrant which you and others have issued against his luckless son. I will see to it to–day, and I will try to tell him. Good God, he does not deserve it—I have watched him—he is no father. Oh, I wishyou had a son, Chope; then you could feel for me.”Mr. Chope had two sons, not to be freely discoursed of; whom he meant to take into the office, pseudonymously, some day; and he was rather inclined to like the poor littlenullius filii. First, because they were his own; secondly, because they had big heads; thirdly, because they had cheated all the other boys. Nevertheless, he was in no hurry to be confidential about them. Yet without his knowing it, or at least with only despising it, this little matter shaped its measure upon his present action. The lawyer lifted his hat to Bull Garnet in a very peculiar manner, conveying to the quick apprehension, what it would not have been safe to pronounce—to wit, that Mr. Chope quite understood all that had occurred; that he would not act upon his discovery until he had well considered the matter, for, after all, he had no evidence; lastly, that he was very sorry for Mr. Garnetʼs position, but would rather not shake hands with him.The steward watched him walking softly among the glad young leaves, and down the dell where the sunlight flashed on the merry leaps of the water. Long after the lawyer was out of sight, Bull Garnet stood there watching, as if the forest glades would show him the approaching destiny. Strong and firm as his nature was, he had suffered now such wearing, wearying agonies, that he almost wished the weak manʼs wish—to have the masterytaken from him, to have the issue settled without his own decision.“Poor Cradock sailed in theTaprobane! What an odd name,” he continued, with that childishness to which sometimes the overtaxed brain reverts, “tap, tap–root, tap–robin! Tush, what a fool I am! Oh God, that I could think! Oh God, that I could only learn whether my first duty is to you, or to my children. I will go in and pray.”In the passage he met his son, and kissed his forehead gently, as if to atone for the harshness with which he had sent him away.“Father,” said Bob, “shall you want me to–day? Or may I be from home till dark? I have so many things, most important things, to see to.”“Birds’ nests, I suppose, and grubs, field–mice, and tadpoles. Yes, my son, you are wise. Enjoy them while you can. And take your sister also for a good run, if you can. You may carry your dinner with you: I shall do well enough.”“Oh, itʼs no use asking Pearl; she never will come with me. And I am sure I donʼt want her. She does much more harm than good; she canʼt kill anything properly, nor even blow an egg. But Iʼll ask her, as you wish it, sir; because I know that she wonʼt come.”Mr. Garnet had not the heart to laugh at his childrenʼs fine sense of duty towards him; but he saw Bob start with all his tackle, in great hopes, and high spirits. The father looked sadly after him, wondering at his enjoyment, yet loving him themore, perhaps, for being so unlike himself. And as he gazed, he could not help saying to himself, “Very likely I shall never see him thus again—only look at him when he will not care to look on me. Yet he must know, in the end, and she, the poor thing, she must know how all my soul was on them. Now God in heaven, lead me aright. Half an hour shall settle it.”

“Not another minute to lose, and the sale again deferred! All the lots marked, and the handbills out, and the particulars and conditions ready; and then some paltry pettifogging, and another fortnight will be required to do ‘justice to my interests.’ Justice to my interests! How they do love round–mouthed rubbish! The only justice to me is, from a legal point of view, to string me up, and then quick–lime me; and the only justice to my interests is to rob my children, because I have robbed them already. Robbed them of their birth and name, their power to look men in the face, their chance of being allowed to do what God seems chiefly to want us for—to marry and have children, who may be worse than we are; though, thank Him, mine are not. Robbed them even of their chance to be met as Christians (though I have increased their right to it), in this wretched, money–seeking, servile, and contemptuous age. Butwho am I to find fault with any, after all my wasted life? A life which might, in its little way, have told upon the people round me, and moved, if not improved them. Which might, at least, have set them thinking, doubting, and believing. Oh the loss of energy, the loss of self–reliance, and the awful load of fear and anguish—I who might have been so different! Pearl is at the window there. I know quite well who loves her—an honest, upright, hearty man, with a true respect for women. But will he look at her when he knows——Oh God, my God, forsake me, but not my children!—Bob, what are you at with those cabbages?”

“Why, they are clubbed, donʼt you see, father, beautifully clubbed already, and the leaves flag directly the sun shines. And I want to know whether it is the larva of acurculio, oranthomyia brassicæ; and I canʼt tell without pulling the plants up, and they canʼt come to any good, you know, with all this ambury in them.”

“I know nothing of the sort, Bob. I know nothing at all about it. Go into the house to your sister. I canʼt bear the sight of you now.”

Bob, without a single word, did as he was told. He knew that his father loved him, though he could not guess the depth of that love, being himself so different. And so he never took offence at his fatherʼs odd ways to him, but thought, “Better luck next time; the governor has got red spider this morning, and he wonʼt be right till dinner–time.”

Bull Garnet smiled at his sonʼs obedience, with a mighty fount of pride in him; and then he sighed, because Bob was gone—and he never could have enough of him, for the little time remaining. He loved his son with a love surpassing that of woman, or that of man for woman. Men would call him a fool for it. But God knows how He has made us.

Thinking none of this, but fretting over fierce heart–troubles, which now began to be too many even for his power of life—as a hundred wolves kill a lion—he turned again down the espalier–walk, where the apple–trees were in blossom. Pinky shells spread to the sun, with the little close tuft in the middle; some striped, some patched, some pinched with white, some streaking as the fruit would be, and glancing every gloss of blush—no two of them were quite alike, any more than two of us are. Yet the bees knew every one among the countless multitude, and never took the wrong one; even as the angels know which of us belongs to them, and who wants visitation.

Bull Garnet, casting to and fro, and taking heed of nothing, not even of the weeds which once could not have lived before his eyes, began again in a vague loose manner (the weakness of which would have angered him, if he had been introspective) to drone about the lawʼs delays, and the folly of institution. He stood at last by his wicket gate, where the hedge of Irish yew was, and there carried on his grumbling.

“Lawyers indeed! And cannot manage a simple thing of that sort! Thank God, I know nothing of law.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Garnet. It is possible that you may want to know something of law, shortly.”

“By what right, sir, dare you break in upon my privacy like this?”

Pale as he was, and scorning himself for the way in which his blood shrunk back, Bull Garnet was far too strong and quick ever to be dumb–foundered. Chope looked at him, with some admiration breaking through the triumph of his small comprehensive eyes.

“Excuse me, Mr. Garnet. I forgot that a public man like you must have his private moments, even at his own gate. I am sorry to see you so hot, my dear sir; though I have heard that it is your character. That sort of thing leads to evil results, and many deplorable consequences. But I did not mean to be rude to you, or to disturb you so strangely.”

“You have not disturbed me at all, sir.”

“I am truly happy to hear it. All I meant, as to knowledge of law, was to give you notice that there is some heavy trouble brewing, and that you must be prepared to meet some horrible accusations.”

“May I trespass further upon your kindness, to ask what their subject is?”

“Oh, nothing more than a very rash and unfounded charge of murder.”

Mr. Chope pronounced that last awful word in a deeply sepulchral manner, and riveted his little eyes into Bull Garnetʼs great ones. Mr. Garnet met his gaze as calmly as he would meet the sad clouded aspect of a dead rabbit, or hare, in a shop where he asked the price of them, and regarded their eyes as the test of their freshness. Chope could not tell what to make of it. The thing was beyond his experience.

But all this time Bull Garnet felt that every minute was costing him a year of his natural life, even if he ever got any chance of living it out.

“How does this concern me? Is it any one on our estates?”

“Yes, and the heir to ‘your estates.’ Young Mr. Cradock Nowell.”

Bull Garnet sighed very heavily; then he strode away, and came back again, with indignation swelling out the volume of his breast, and filling the deep dark channels of brow, and the turgid veins of his eyeballs.

“Whoever has done this thing is a fool; or a rogue—which means the same.”

“It may be so. It may be otherwise. We always hope for the best. Very likely he is innocent. Perhaps they are shooting at the pigeon in order to hit the crow.”

“Perhaps you know best what their motives are. I see no use in canvassing them. You have heard, I suppose, the rumour that Mr. Cradock Nowell has left England?”

“I know very little about it. I have nothing to do with the case; or it might have been managed differently. But I heard that the civil authorities, being called upon to act, discovered, without much trouble, that he had sailed, under a false name, in a ship called theTaprobane, bound direct for Ceylon. And that, of course, told against him rather heavily.”

“Ah, he sailed for Ceylon, did he? A wonderful place for insects. I had an uncle who died there.”

“Yes, Ceylon, where the flying foxes are. Not so cunning, perhaps, as our foxes of the Forest. And yet the fox is a passionate animal. Violent, hot, and hasty. Were you aware of that fact?”

“Excuse me; my time is valuable. I will send for the gamekeeper, if you wish to have light thrown upon that question; or my son will be only too glad——”

“Ah, your son! Poor fellow!”

Those few short words, pronounced in a tone of real feeling, with no attempt at inquiry, quite overcame Bull Garnet. First extrinsic proof of that which he had so long foreseen with horror—the degradation of his son. He dropped his eyes, which had borne, till now, and returned the lawyerʼs gaze; and the sense of his own peril failed to keep the tears from moving. Up to this time Mr. Chope had doubted, and was even beginning to reject his shrewd and well–founded conclusion. Now he saw and knew everything. And even he was overcome.Passion is infectious; and lawyers are like the rest of us. Mr. Chope had loved his mother.

Bull Garnet gave one quick strange glance at the eyes of Simon Chope, which now were turned away from him, and then he looked at the ground, and said,

“Yes; I have wronged him bitterly.”

Simon Chope drew back from him mechanically, instinctively, as our skin starts from cold iron in the arctic regions. He could not think, much less could he speak, though his mind had been prepared for it. To human nature it is so abhorrent to take the life of another: to usurp the rights of God. To stand in the presence of one who has done it, touches our pulse with death. We feel that he might have done it to us, or that we might have done it to him; and our love of ourselves is at once accelerated and staggered. And then we feel that “life for life” is such low revenge; the vendetta of a drunkard. Very slowly we are beginning to see the baseness of it.

Bull Garnet was the first to speak, and now he spoke quite calmly.

“You came with several purposes. One of them was, that I should break to Sir Cradock Nowell these tidings of new trouble; the news of the warrant which you and others have issued against his luckless son. I will see to it to–day, and I will try to tell him. Good God, he does not deserve it—I have watched him—he is no father. Oh, I wishyou had a son, Chope; then you could feel for me.”

Mr. Chope had two sons, not to be freely discoursed of; whom he meant to take into the office, pseudonymously, some day; and he was rather inclined to like the poor littlenullius filii. First, because they were his own; secondly, because they had big heads; thirdly, because they had cheated all the other boys. Nevertheless, he was in no hurry to be confidential about them. Yet without his knowing it, or at least with only despising it, this little matter shaped its measure upon his present action. The lawyer lifted his hat to Bull Garnet in a very peculiar manner, conveying to the quick apprehension, what it would not have been safe to pronounce—to wit, that Mr. Chope quite understood all that had occurred; that he would not act upon his discovery until he had well considered the matter, for, after all, he had no evidence; lastly, that he was very sorry for Mr. Garnetʼs position, but would rather not shake hands with him.

The steward watched him walking softly among the glad young leaves, and down the dell where the sunlight flashed on the merry leaps of the water. Long after the lawyer was out of sight, Bull Garnet stood there watching, as if the forest glades would show him the approaching destiny. Strong and firm as his nature was, he had suffered now such wearing, wearying agonies, that he almost wished the weak manʼs wish—to have the masterytaken from him, to have the issue settled without his own decision.

“Poor Cradock sailed in theTaprobane! What an odd name,” he continued, with that childishness to which sometimes the overtaxed brain reverts, “tap, tap–root, tap–robin! Tush, what a fool I am! Oh God, that I could think! Oh God, that I could only learn whether my first duty is to you, or to my children. I will go in and pray.”

In the passage he met his son, and kissed his forehead gently, as if to atone for the harshness with which he had sent him away.

“Father,” said Bob, “shall you want me to–day? Or may I be from home till dark? I have so many things, most important things, to see to.”

“Birds’ nests, I suppose, and grubs, field–mice, and tadpoles. Yes, my son, you are wise. Enjoy them while you can. And take your sister also for a good run, if you can. You may carry your dinner with you: I shall do well enough.”

“Oh, itʼs no use asking Pearl; she never will come with me. And I am sure I donʼt want her. She does much more harm than good; she canʼt kill anything properly, nor even blow an egg. But Iʼll ask her, as you wish it, sir; because I know that she wonʼt come.”

Mr. Garnet had not the heart to laugh at his childrenʼs fine sense of duty towards him; but he saw Bob start with all his tackle, in great hopes, and high spirits. The father looked sadly after him, wondering at his enjoyment, yet loving him themore, perhaps, for being so unlike himself. And as he gazed, he could not help saying to himself, “Very likely I shall never see him thus again—only look at him when he will not care to look on me. Yet he must know, in the end, and she, the poor thing, she must know how all my soul was on them. Now God in heaven, lead me aright. Half an hour shall settle it.”

CHAPTER XI.Meanwhile, supposing the warrant to issue, let us see what chance there is of its ever being served. And it may be a pleasant change awhile to flit to southern latitudes from the troubles and the drizzle, and the weeping summer of England.Poor Cradock, as we saw him last, backed up by the ebony–tree, and with Wena crouching close to him, knew nothing of his lonely plight and miserable abandonment; until the sheets of plashing rain, and long howls of his little dog, awoke him to great wonderment. Then he arose, and rubbed his eyes, and thought that his sight was gone, and felt a heavy weight upon him, and a destiny to grope about, and a vain desire to scream, such as we have in nightmare. Meanwhile, he felt something pulling at him, always in the same direction, and he did not like to put his hand down, for he had some idea that it was Beelzebub. Suddenlya great flash of lightning, triple thrice repeated, lit up the whole of the wood, like day; and he saw black Wena tugging at him, to draw him into good shelter. He saw the shelter also, ere the gush of light was gone, an enormous and hollow mowana–tree, a little higher up the hill. Then all was blackest night again; and even Wena was swallowed up in it. But with both hands stretched out, to fend the blows of hanging branch or creeper, he committed himself to the little dogʼs care, and she took him to the mowana–tree. Then another great flash lit up all the hollow; and Wena was frightened and dropped her tail, but still held on to her master.Cradock neither knew, nor cared, what the name of the tree was, nor whether it possessed, as some trees do, especial attractions for lightning. “Any harbour in a storm,” was all he thought, if he thought at all; and he lay down very snugly, and felt for Amyʼs present to him, and then, in spite of the crashing thunder and the roaring wind, snugly he went off to sleep; and at his feet lay Wena.In the bright morning, the youth arose, and shook himself, and looked round, and felt rather jolly than otherwise. Travellers say that the baobab, or mowana–tree, is the hardest of all things to kill, and will grow along the ground, when uprooted, and not allowed to grow upright. Frenchmen have proved, to their own satisfaction, that some baobabs, now living, grew under the deluge of Noah, and not improbably had the great ark floating overtheir heads. Be that as it may, and though it is a Cadmeian job to cut down the baobab, for every root thereupon claims, and takes, a distinct existence; we can all of us tell the travellers of a thing yet harder to kill—the hope in the heart of a man. And, the better man he is, the more of hopeʼs spores are in him; and the quicker they grow again, after they have all been stamped upon. A mushroom in the egg likes well to have the ground beaten overhead with a paviourʼs rammer, and comes up all the bigger for it, and lifts a pave–stone of two hundred–weight. Shall then the pluck of an honest man fail, while his true conscience stirs in him, though the result be like a fleeting fungus, supposed to be born in an hour by those who know nothing about it, and who make it the type of an upstart—shall not his courage work and spread, although it be underground, as he grows less and less defiant; and rear, perhaps in the autumn of life, a genuine crop, and a good one?Cradock Nowell found his island not at all a bad one. There was plenty to eat at any rate, which is half the battle of life. Plenty to drink is the other half, in the judgment of many philosophers. But I think that plenty to look at it ought to be at least a third of it. The pride of the eyes, if not exercised on that vanishing point, oneself, is a pride legitimate, and condemned by no apostle. And here there was noble food for it; and it is a pride which, when duly fed, slumbers off into humility.Oh the glory of everything, the promise, and the brightness; the large leading views of sky and sea, and the crystal avenues onward. The manner in which a fellow expands, when he looks at such things—if he be capable of expanding, which surely all of us are—the way in which he wonders, and never dreams about wondering, and the feeling of grandeur growing within him, and how it repents him of littleness, and all his foes are forgiven; and then he sees that he has something himself to do with all the beauty of it—upon my word, I am a great fool, to attempt to tell of it.Cradock saw his lovely island, and was well content with it. It was not more than four miles long, and perhaps three miles across; but it was gifted with three grand things—beauty, health, and nourishment. It might have been ages, for all he saw then, since man had sworn or forsworn in it; perhaps none since the voyagers of Necho, whose grand truth was so incredible. There were no high hills, and no very deep holes; but a pleasant undulating place, ever full of leaves and breezes. And as for wild beasts, he had no fear; he knew that they would require more square miles than he owned. As for snakes, he was not so sure; and indeed there were some nasty ones, as we shall see by–and–by.Then he went to the shore, and looked far away, even after theTaprobane. The sea was yet heaving heavily, and tumbling back into itself with a roar, and some fishing eagles were very busy,stooping along the foam of it; but no ship was to be seen anywhere, and far away in the south and south–east the selvage of black clouds, lopping over the mist of the horizon, showed that still the typhoon was there, and no one could tell how bad it was.Cradock found a turtle, at which Wena looked first in mute wonder, with her eyes taking jumps from their orbits, and then, like all females, she found tongue, and ran away, and barked furiously. Presently she came back, sniffing along, and drawing her nose on the sand, yet determined to stick by her master, even if the turtle should eat him. But, to her immense satisfaction, the result was quite the converse: she and her master ate the turtle; beginning,ab ovo, that morning.For, although Crad could not quite eat the eggs raw (by–the–by, they are not so bad that way), and although he could not quite strike a light by twirling one stick in the back of another, he had long ago found reasonfor, and he rapidly found that excellent goddessin, the roasting of eggs. And for that, he had to thank Amy. Only see how thoughtful women are!—yes, a mark of astonishment.But the astonishment will subside, perhaps, when we come to know all about it; for then all the misogynes may declare that the thought was born of vanity. Let them do so. Facts are facts, I say.Amy had sent him a photograph of her faithfulself, beautifully done by Mr. Silvy, of Bayswater, and framed in a patent loverʼs box, I forget the proper name for it—something French, of course—so ingeniously contrived, that when a spring at the back was pressed, a little wax match would present itself, from a lining of asbestos, together with a groove to draw it in. Thus by night, as well as by day, the smile of the loved one might illumine the lonely heart of the lover.Now this device stood him in good stead—as doubtless it was intended to do by the practical mind of the giver—for it served to light the fire wherewith man roasteth roast, and is satisfied. And a fire once lit in the hollow heart of that vast mowana–tree (where twenty men might sit and smoke, when the rainy season came), if you only supplied some fuel daily, and cleared away the ashes weekly, there need be no fear of philanthropy making a trespasser of Prometheus. Cradock soon resolved to keep his head–quarters there, for the tree stood upon a little hill, overlooking land and sea, for many a league of solitude. And it was not long before he found that the soft bark of the baobab might easily be cut so as to make a winding staircase up it; and the work would be an amusement to him, as well as a great advantage.Master and dog having made a most admirable breakfast upon turtles’ eggs, “roasted very knowingly”—as Homer well expresses it—with a large pineapple to follow, started, before the heat of the day, in search of water, the indispensable. Shaddocks,and limes, and mangosteens, bananas—with their long leaves quilling—pineapples, mawas, and mamoshoes, cocoa–nuts, plantains, mangoes, palms, and palmyras, custard–apples, and gourds without end—besides fifty other ground–fruits, ay, and tree–fruits for that matter, quite unknown to Cradock, there was no fear of dying from drought; and yet the first thing to seek was pure water. If Cradock had thought much about the thing, very likely it would have struck him that some of the fruits which he saw are proof not so much of human cultivation, as of human presence, at some time.But he never thought about that; and indeed his mind was too full for thinking. So he cut himself a most tremendous bludgeon of camelthorn, as heavy and almost as hard as iron, and off he went whistling, with Wena wondering whether the stick would beat her.He certainly took things easily; more so than is quite in accord with human nature and reason. But the state of his mind was to blame for it; and the freshness of the island air, after the storm of the night.Even a rejected lover, or a disconsolate husband, gives a jerk to his knee–joints, and carries his elbows more briskly, when the bright spring morning shortens his shadow at every step. Cradock, moreover, felt quite sure that he would not be left too long there; that his friends on board theTaprobanewould come aside from their track tofind him, on their return–voyage from Ceylon; and so no doubt they would have done, if it had been in their power. But theTaprobane, as we shall see, never made her escape, in spite of weatherly helm and good seamanship, from the power of that typhoon. She was lost on the shoals of Benguela Bay, thirty miles south of Quicombo; and not a man ever reached the shore to tell the name of the ship. But a Portuguese half–caste, trading there, found the name on a piece of the taffrail, and a boat which was driven ashore.After all, we see then that Cradock was wonderfully lucky—at least, if it be luck to live—in having been left behind, that evening, on an uninhabited island. “Desolate” nobody could call it, for the gifts of life lay around in abundance, and he soon had proof that the feet of men, ay, of white men, trod it sometimes. Following the shore, a little further than the sailors had gone, he came on a pure narrow thread of crystal, a current of bright water dimpling and twinkling down the sand. Wena at once lay down and rolled, and wetted every bit of herself; and then began to lap the water wherein her own very active and industrious friends were drowning. That Wena was such a ladylike dog; she washed herself before drinking, and she never would wash in salt water. It made her hair so unbecoming.Cradock followed up that stream, and found quite a tidy little brook, when he got above the sand–ridge, full of fish, and fringed with trees, andedged with many a quaint bright bird, scissor–bills and avosets, demoiselles and flamingoes. Wena plunged in and went hunting blue–rats, and birds, and fishes, while her master stooped down, and drank, and thanked God for this discovery.A little way up the brook he found a rude shanty, a sort of wigwam, thatched with leaves and waterproof, backed by a low rock, but quite open in front and at both ends. Under the shelter were blocks of ebony, billets of bar–wood piled up to the roof, a dozen tusks of ivory, bales of dried bark, and piles of rough cylinders full of caoutchouc, and many other things which Cradock could not wait to examine. But he felt quite certain that this must be some traderʼs depôt for shipping: the only thing that surprised him was that the goods were left unprotected. For he knew that the West Africans are the biggest thieves in the world, while he did not understand the virtue of the hideous great Fetich, hanging there.It was made of a long dried codfish, with glass eyes, ground in the iris, and polished again in the pupil, and a glaring stripe of red over them, and the neck of a bottle fixed as for a tongue, and the body skewered open and painted bright blue, ribbed with white, like a skeleton, and the tail prolonged with two spinal columns, which rattled as it went round. The effect of the whole was greatly increased by the tattered cage of crinoline in which it was suspended, and which went creaking round, now and then, in the opposite direction.No nigger would dare to steal anything from such a noble idol. At least so thought the Yankee trader who knew a thing or two about them. He had left his things here in perfect faith, while he was travelling towards the Gaboon, to complete his cargo.Cradock was greatly astounded. He thought that it must be a white manʼs work; and soon he became quite certain, for he saw near a cask the clear mark of a boot, of civilized make, unquestionably. Then he prized out the head of the cask, after a deal of trouble, and found a store of ship–biscuit, a little the worse for weevil, but in very fair condition. He gave Wena one, but she would not touch it, for she set much store by her teeth, and had eaten a noble breakfast.Having made a rough examination of the deserted shed, and found no sort of clothing—which did not vex him much, except that he wanted shoes—he resolved to continue the circuit of his new dominions, and look out perhaps for another hut. He might meet a man at any time; so he carried his big stick ready, though none but cannibals could have any good reason to hurt him. As he went on, and struck inland to cut off the northern promontory, the lie of the land and the look of the woods brought to his mind more clearly and brightly his own beloved New Forest. He saw no quadruped larger than a beautiful little deer, lighter than a gazelle, and of a species quite unknown to him. They stood and looked at him prettily, withouteither fear or defiance, and Wena wanted to hunt them. But he did not allow her to indulge that evil inclination. He had made up his mind to destroy nothing, even for his own subsistence, except the cold–blooded creatures which seem to feel less of the death–pang. But he saw a foul snake, with a flat heavy head, which hissed at and frightened the doggie, and he felt sure that it was venomous: monkeys also of three varieties met him in his pilgrimage, and seemed disposed to be sociable; while birds of every tint and plumage fluttered, and flashed, and flitted. Then Wena ran up to him howling, and limping, and begging for help; and he found her clutched by the seed–vessels of the terrible uncaria. He could scarcely manage to get them off, for they seemed to be crawling upon her.When he had made nearly half his circuit, without any other discovery—except that the grapes were worthless—the heat of the noonday sun grew so strong, although it was autumn there—so far as they have any autumn—that Cradock lay down in the shade of a plantain; and, in a few seconds afterwards, was fast asleep and dreaming. Wena sat up on guard and snapped at the nasty poisonous flies, which came to annoy her master.How heavenly tropical life would be, in a beautiful country like that, but for those infernal insects! The mosquito, for instance,—and he is an angel, compared to some of those Beelzebubs,—must have made Adam swear at Eve, even before the fall.And then those awful spiders, whose hair tickles a man to madness, even if he survives the horror of seeing such devils. And then the tampan—but let us drop the subject, please, for fear of not sleeping to–night. Cradock awoke in furious pain, and spasms most unphilosophical. He had dreamed that he was playing football upon Cowley Green, and had kicked out nobly with his right foot into a marching line of red ants. Immediately they swarmed upon him, up him, over him, into him, biting with wild virulence, and twisting their heads and nippers round in every wound to exasperate it. Wena was rolling and yelling, for they attacked her too. Cradock thought they would kill him; although he did not know that even the python succumbs to them. He was as red all over, inside his clothes and outside, as if you had winnowed over him a bushel of fine rouge. Dancing, and stamping, and recalling, with heartfelt satisfaction, some strong words learned at Oxford, he caught up Wena, and away they went, two solid lumps of ants, headlong into the sea. Luckily he had not far to go; he lay down and rolled himself, clothes and all, and rolled poor Wena too in the waves, until he had the intense delight of knowing that he had drowned a million of them. Ah! and just now he had made up his mind to respect every form of life so.Oh, but I defy any fellow, even the sage Archbishop who reads novels to stop other people, tohave lectured us under the circumstances, or to have kept his oaths in, with those twenty thousand holes in him. The salt water went into Cradockʼs holes, and made him feel like a Cayenne peppercastor; and the little dog sat in the froth of the sea, and thought that even dogs are allowed a hell.After that there was nothing to do, except to go home mournfully—if a tree may be called a home, as no doubt it deserves to be—and then to dry the clothes, and wish that the wearer knew something of botany. Cradock had no doubt at all that around him grew whole stacks of leaves which would salve and soothe his desperate pain; but he had not the least idea which were balm and which were poison. How he wished that, instead of reading so hard for the scholarship of Dean Ireland, he had kept his eyes open in the New Forest, and learned just Natureʼs rudiments! Of course he would have other leaves to deal with; but certain main laws and principles hold good all the world over. Bob Garnet would have been quite at home, though he had never seen one of those plants before.We cannot follow him, day by day. It is too late in the tale for that, even if we wished it. Enough that he found no other trace of man upon the island, except the traderʼs hut, or store, with the hideous scarecrow hanging, and signs of human labour, in the growth of some few trees—about which he knew nothing—and in a rough piece of groundnear the shanty, cleared for a kitchen–garden. Cassavas, and yams, and kiobos, and pea–nuts, and some other things, grew there; which, as he made nothing of them, we must treat likewise. There had even been some cotton sown, but the soil seemed not to suit it. It was meant, perhaps, by the keen American, who thought himself lord of the island, for a little random experiment.When would he come back? That was the question Cradock asked, both of himself and Wena, twenty times a day. Of course poor Cradock knew not whether his lord of the manor were a Yankee or a Britisher, a Portuguese or a Dutchman; “Thebis nutritus an Argis.” Only he supposed and hoped that a white man came to that island sometimes, and brought other white men with him.By this time, he had cut a winding staircase up the walls of his castle, and added a great many rough devices to his rugged interior. Twice every day he clomb his tree, to seek all round the horizon; and at one time he saw a sail in the distance, making perhaps for Loanda. But that ship was even outside the expansive margin of hope. And now he divided his time between his grand mowana citadel and the storehouse, with whose contents he did not like to meddle much, because they were not his property.There he placed the shipʼs hydropult, which he had found lying on the beach; for the mate hadbrought it to meet the chance of finding shallow water, where the casks could not be stooped or the water bailed without fouling it; and the boatʼs crew, in their rush and flurry, had managed to leave it behind them. Cradock left it in the storehouse, because it was useless to him where he had no water, and it amused him sometimes to syringe Wena from the brook which flowed hard by. Moreover, he thought that if anything happened to prevent him from explaining things, the owner of the place, whoever he might be, would find in that implement more than the value of the biscuits which Cradock was eating, and getting on nicely with them, because they corrected the richness of turtle.Truly, his diet was glorious, both in quality and variety; and he very soon became quite a pomarian Apicius. Of all fruits, perhaps the mangosteen (Garcinia mangostana) is the most delicious, when you get the right sort of it—which I donʼt think they have in Brazil—neither is the lee chee a gift to be despised, nor the chirimoya, and several others of the Annona race; some of the Granadillas, too, and the sweet lime, and the plantains, and many another fount of beauty and delight—all of which, by skill and care, might be raised in this country, where we seem to rest content with our meagre hothouse catalogue.I do not say that all these fruits were natives of “Pomona Island,” as Cradock, appreciating itsdesserts, took the liberty of naming it; but most of them were discoverable in one part or another of it; some born from the breast of nature, others borne by man or tide. And almost all of them still would be greatly improved by cultivation.So the head gardener of the island, who left the sun to garden for him, enjoyed their exquisite coolness, and wondered how they could be so cool in the torrid sunshine; and though he did not know the name of one in fifty of them, he found out wonderfully soon which of them were the nicest. And soon he discovered another means of varying his diet, for he remembered having read that often, in such lonely waters, the swarming fish will leap on board of a boat floating down the river. Thereupon he made himself a broad flat tray of bark, with a shallow ledge around it, and holding a tow–rope, made also of bark, launched it upon the brook. Immediately a vast commotion arose among the finny ones; they hustled, and huddled, and darted about, and then paddled gravely and stared at it. Then, whether from confusion of mind, or the reproaches of their comrades, or the desire of novelty, half a dozen fine fellows made a rush, and carried the ship by boarding. Whereupon Cradock, laughing heartily, drew his barge ashore, and soon Wena and himself were deep in a discussion ichthyological.As may well be supposed, the pure sea breezes and wholesome diet, the peace and plenty, andmotherly influence of nature, the due exercise of the body, without undue stagnation of mind, the pleasure of finding knowledge expand every day, stomachically, while body and mind were girded alike, and the heart impressed with the diamond–studded belt of hope—all this, we may well suppose, was beginning to try severely the nasal joints of incessant woe.

Meanwhile, supposing the warrant to issue, let us see what chance there is of its ever being served. And it may be a pleasant change awhile to flit to southern latitudes from the troubles and the drizzle, and the weeping summer of England.

Poor Cradock, as we saw him last, backed up by the ebony–tree, and with Wena crouching close to him, knew nothing of his lonely plight and miserable abandonment; until the sheets of plashing rain, and long howls of his little dog, awoke him to great wonderment. Then he arose, and rubbed his eyes, and thought that his sight was gone, and felt a heavy weight upon him, and a destiny to grope about, and a vain desire to scream, such as we have in nightmare. Meanwhile, he felt something pulling at him, always in the same direction, and he did not like to put his hand down, for he had some idea that it was Beelzebub. Suddenlya great flash of lightning, triple thrice repeated, lit up the whole of the wood, like day; and he saw black Wena tugging at him, to draw him into good shelter. He saw the shelter also, ere the gush of light was gone, an enormous and hollow mowana–tree, a little higher up the hill. Then all was blackest night again; and even Wena was swallowed up in it. But with both hands stretched out, to fend the blows of hanging branch or creeper, he committed himself to the little dogʼs care, and she took him to the mowana–tree. Then another great flash lit up all the hollow; and Wena was frightened and dropped her tail, but still held on to her master.

Cradock neither knew, nor cared, what the name of the tree was, nor whether it possessed, as some trees do, especial attractions for lightning. “Any harbour in a storm,” was all he thought, if he thought at all; and he lay down very snugly, and felt for Amyʼs present to him, and then, in spite of the crashing thunder and the roaring wind, snugly he went off to sleep; and at his feet lay Wena.

In the bright morning, the youth arose, and shook himself, and looked round, and felt rather jolly than otherwise. Travellers say that the baobab, or mowana–tree, is the hardest of all things to kill, and will grow along the ground, when uprooted, and not allowed to grow upright. Frenchmen have proved, to their own satisfaction, that some baobabs, now living, grew under the deluge of Noah, and not improbably had the great ark floating overtheir heads. Be that as it may, and though it is a Cadmeian job to cut down the baobab, for every root thereupon claims, and takes, a distinct existence; we can all of us tell the travellers of a thing yet harder to kill—the hope in the heart of a man. And, the better man he is, the more of hopeʼs spores are in him; and the quicker they grow again, after they have all been stamped upon. A mushroom in the egg likes well to have the ground beaten overhead with a paviourʼs rammer, and comes up all the bigger for it, and lifts a pave–stone of two hundred–weight. Shall then the pluck of an honest man fail, while his true conscience stirs in him, though the result be like a fleeting fungus, supposed to be born in an hour by those who know nothing about it, and who make it the type of an upstart—shall not his courage work and spread, although it be underground, as he grows less and less defiant; and rear, perhaps in the autumn of life, a genuine crop, and a good one?

Cradock Nowell found his island not at all a bad one. There was plenty to eat at any rate, which is half the battle of life. Plenty to drink is the other half, in the judgment of many philosophers. But I think that plenty to look at it ought to be at least a third of it. The pride of the eyes, if not exercised on that vanishing point, oneself, is a pride legitimate, and condemned by no apostle. And here there was noble food for it; and it is a pride which, when duly fed, slumbers off into humility.

Oh the glory of everything, the promise, and the brightness; the large leading views of sky and sea, and the crystal avenues onward. The manner in which a fellow expands, when he looks at such things—if he be capable of expanding, which surely all of us are—the way in which he wonders, and never dreams about wondering, and the feeling of grandeur growing within him, and how it repents him of littleness, and all his foes are forgiven; and then he sees that he has something himself to do with all the beauty of it—upon my word, I am a great fool, to attempt to tell of it.

Cradock saw his lovely island, and was well content with it. It was not more than four miles long, and perhaps three miles across; but it was gifted with three grand things—beauty, health, and nourishment. It might have been ages, for all he saw then, since man had sworn or forsworn in it; perhaps none since the voyagers of Necho, whose grand truth was so incredible. There were no high hills, and no very deep holes; but a pleasant undulating place, ever full of leaves and breezes. And as for wild beasts, he had no fear; he knew that they would require more square miles than he owned. As for snakes, he was not so sure; and indeed there were some nasty ones, as we shall see by–and–by.

Then he went to the shore, and looked far away, even after theTaprobane. The sea was yet heaving heavily, and tumbling back into itself with a roar, and some fishing eagles were very busy,stooping along the foam of it; but no ship was to be seen anywhere, and far away in the south and south–east the selvage of black clouds, lopping over the mist of the horizon, showed that still the typhoon was there, and no one could tell how bad it was.

Cradock found a turtle, at which Wena looked first in mute wonder, with her eyes taking jumps from their orbits, and then, like all females, she found tongue, and ran away, and barked furiously. Presently she came back, sniffing along, and drawing her nose on the sand, yet determined to stick by her master, even if the turtle should eat him. But, to her immense satisfaction, the result was quite the converse: she and her master ate the turtle; beginning,ab ovo, that morning.

For, although Crad could not quite eat the eggs raw (by–the–by, they are not so bad that way), and although he could not quite strike a light by twirling one stick in the back of another, he had long ago found reasonfor, and he rapidly found that excellent goddessin, the roasting of eggs. And for that, he had to thank Amy. Only see how thoughtful women are!—yes, a mark of astonishment.

But the astonishment will subside, perhaps, when we come to know all about it; for then all the misogynes may declare that the thought was born of vanity. Let them do so. Facts are facts, I say.

Amy had sent him a photograph of her faithfulself, beautifully done by Mr. Silvy, of Bayswater, and framed in a patent loverʼs box, I forget the proper name for it—something French, of course—so ingeniously contrived, that when a spring at the back was pressed, a little wax match would present itself, from a lining of asbestos, together with a groove to draw it in. Thus by night, as well as by day, the smile of the loved one might illumine the lonely heart of the lover.

Now this device stood him in good stead—as doubtless it was intended to do by the practical mind of the giver—for it served to light the fire wherewith man roasteth roast, and is satisfied. And a fire once lit in the hollow heart of that vast mowana–tree (where twenty men might sit and smoke, when the rainy season came), if you only supplied some fuel daily, and cleared away the ashes weekly, there need be no fear of philanthropy making a trespasser of Prometheus. Cradock soon resolved to keep his head–quarters there, for the tree stood upon a little hill, overlooking land and sea, for many a league of solitude. And it was not long before he found that the soft bark of the baobab might easily be cut so as to make a winding staircase up it; and the work would be an amusement to him, as well as a great advantage.

Master and dog having made a most admirable breakfast upon turtles’ eggs, “roasted very knowingly”—as Homer well expresses it—with a large pineapple to follow, started, before the heat of the day, in search of water, the indispensable. Shaddocks,and limes, and mangosteens, bananas—with their long leaves quilling—pineapples, mawas, and mamoshoes, cocoa–nuts, plantains, mangoes, palms, and palmyras, custard–apples, and gourds without end—besides fifty other ground–fruits, ay, and tree–fruits for that matter, quite unknown to Cradock, there was no fear of dying from drought; and yet the first thing to seek was pure water. If Cradock had thought much about the thing, very likely it would have struck him that some of the fruits which he saw are proof not so much of human cultivation, as of human presence, at some time.

But he never thought about that; and indeed his mind was too full for thinking. So he cut himself a most tremendous bludgeon of camelthorn, as heavy and almost as hard as iron, and off he went whistling, with Wena wondering whether the stick would beat her.

He certainly took things easily; more so than is quite in accord with human nature and reason. But the state of his mind was to blame for it; and the freshness of the island air, after the storm of the night.

Even a rejected lover, or a disconsolate husband, gives a jerk to his knee–joints, and carries his elbows more briskly, when the bright spring morning shortens his shadow at every step. Cradock, moreover, felt quite sure that he would not be left too long there; that his friends on board theTaprobanewould come aside from their track tofind him, on their return–voyage from Ceylon; and so no doubt they would have done, if it had been in their power. But theTaprobane, as we shall see, never made her escape, in spite of weatherly helm and good seamanship, from the power of that typhoon. She was lost on the shoals of Benguela Bay, thirty miles south of Quicombo; and not a man ever reached the shore to tell the name of the ship. But a Portuguese half–caste, trading there, found the name on a piece of the taffrail, and a boat which was driven ashore.

After all, we see then that Cradock was wonderfully lucky—at least, if it be luck to live—in having been left behind, that evening, on an uninhabited island. “Desolate” nobody could call it, for the gifts of life lay around in abundance, and he soon had proof that the feet of men, ay, of white men, trod it sometimes. Following the shore, a little further than the sailors had gone, he came on a pure narrow thread of crystal, a current of bright water dimpling and twinkling down the sand. Wena at once lay down and rolled, and wetted every bit of herself; and then began to lap the water wherein her own very active and industrious friends were drowning. That Wena was such a ladylike dog; she washed herself before drinking, and she never would wash in salt water. It made her hair so unbecoming.

Cradock followed up that stream, and found quite a tidy little brook, when he got above the sand–ridge, full of fish, and fringed with trees, andedged with many a quaint bright bird, scissor–bills and avosets, demoiselles and flamingoes. Wena plunged in and went hunting blue–rats, and birds, and fishes, while her master stooped down, and drank, and thanked God for this discovery.

A little way up the brook he found a rude shanty, a sort of wigwam, thatched with leaves and waterproof, backed by a low rock, but quite open in front and at both ends. Under the shelter were blocks of ebony, billets of bar–wood piled up to the roof, a dozen tusks of ivory, bales of dried bark, and piles of rough cylinders full of caoutchouc, and many other things which Cradock could not wait to examine. But he felt quite certain that this must be some traderʼs depôt for shipping: the only thing that surprised him was that the goods were left unprotected. For he knew that the West Africans are the biggest thieves in the world, while he did not understand the virtue of the hideous great Fetich, hanging there.

It was made of a long dried codfish, with glass eyes, ground in the iris, and polished again in the pupil, and a glaring stripe of red over them, and the neck of a bottle fixed as for a tongue, and the body skewered open and painted bright blue, ribbed with white, like a skeleton, and the tail prolonged with two spinal columns, which rattled as it went round. The effect of the whole was greatly increased by the tattered cage of crinoline in which it was suspended, and which went creaking round, now and then, in the opposite direction.

No nigger would dare to steal anything from such a noble idol. At least so thought the Yankee trader who knew a thing or two about them. He had left his things here in perfect faith, while he was travelling towards the Gaboon, to complete his cargo.

Cradock was greatly astounded. He thought that it must be a white manʼs work; and soon he became quite certain, for he saw near a cask the clear mark of a boot, of civilized make, unquestionably. Then he prized out the head of the cask, after a deal of trouble, and found a store of ship–biscuit, a little the worse for weevil, but in very fair condition. He gave Wena one, but she would not touch it, for she set much store by her teeth, and had eaten a noble breakfast.

Having made a rough examination of the deserted shed, and found no sort of clothing—which did not vex him much, except that he wanted shoes—he resolved to continue the circuit of his new dominions, and look out perhaps for another hut. He might meet a man at any time; so he carried his big stick ready, though none but cannibals could have any good reason to hurt him. As he went on, and struck inland to cut off the northern promontory, the lie of the land and the look of the woods brought to his mind more clearly and brightly his own beloved New Forest. He saw no quadruped larger than a beautiful little deer, lighter than a gazelle, and of a species quite unknown to him. They stood and looked at him prettily, withouteither fear or defiance, and Wena wanted to hunt them. But he did not allow her to indulge that evil inclination. He had made up his mind to destroy nothing, even for his own subsistence, except the cold–blooded creatures which seem to feel less of the death–pang. But he saw a foul snake, with a flat heavy head, which hissed at and frightened the doggie, and he felt sure that it was venomous: monkeys also of three varieties met him in his pilgrimage, and seemed disposed to be sociable; while birds of every tint and plumage fluttered, and flashed, and flitted. Then Wena ran up to him howling, and limping, and begging for help; and he found her clutched by the seed–vessels of the terrible uncaria. He could scarcely manage to get them off, for they seemed to be crawling upon her.

When he had made nearly half his circuit, without any other discovery—except that the grapes were worthless—the heat of the noonday sun grew so strong, although it was autumn there—so far as they have any autumn—that Cradock lay down in the shade of a plantain; and, in a few seconds afterwards, was fast asleep and dreaming. Wena sat up on guard and snapped at the nasty poisonous flies, which came to annoy her master.

How heavenly tropical life would be, in a beautiful country like that, but for those infernal insects! The mosquito, for instance,—and he is an angel, compared to some of those Beelzebubs,—must have made Adam swear at Eve, even before the fall.And then those awful spiders, whose hair tickles a man to madness, even if he survives the horror of seeing such devils. And then the tampan—but let us drop the subject, please, for fear of not sleeping to–night. Cradock awoke in furious pain, and spasms most unphilosophical. He had dreamed that he was playing football upon Cowley Green, and had kicked out nobly with his right foot into a marching line of red ants. Immediately they swarmed upon him, up him, over him, into him, biting with wild virulence, and twisting their heads and nippers round in every wound to exasperate it. Wena was rolling and yelling, for they attacked her too. Cradock thought they would kill him; although he did not know that even the python succumbs to them. He was as red all over, inside his clothes and outside, as if you had winnowed over him a bushel of fine rouge. Dancing, and stamping, and recalling, with heartfelt satisfaction, some strong words learned at Oxford, he caught up Wena, and away they went, two solid lumps of ants, headlong into the sea. Luckily he had not far to go; he lay down and rolled himself, clothes and all, and rolled poor Wena too in the waves, until he had the intense delight of knowing that he had drowned a million of them. Ah! and just now he had made up his mind to respect every form of life so.

Oh, but I defy any fellow, even the sage Archbishop who reads novels to stop other people, tohave lectured us under the circumstances, or to have kept his oaths in, with those twenty thousand holes in him. The salt water went into Cradockʼs holes, and made him feel like a Cayenne peppercastor; and the little dog sat in the froth of the sea, and thought that even dogs are allowed a hell.

After that there was nothing to do, except to go home mournfully—if a tree may be called a home, as no doubt it deserves to be—and then to dry the clothes, and wish that the wearer knew something of botany. Cradock had no doubt at all that around him grew whole stacks of leaves which would salve and soothe his desperate pain; but he had not the least idea which were balm and which were poison. How he wished that, instead of reading so hard for the scholarship of Dean Ireland, he had kept his eyes open in the New Forest, and learned just Natureʼs rudiments! Of course he would have other leaves to deal with; but certain main laws and principles hold good all the world over. Bob Garnet would have been quite at home, though he had never seen one of those plants before.

We cannot follow him, day by day. It is too late in the tale for that, even if we wished it. Enough that he found no other trace of man upon the island, except the traderʼs hut, or store, with the hideous scarecrow hanging, and signs of human labour, in the growth of some few trees—about which he knew nothing—and in a rough piece of groundnear the shanty, cleared for a kitchen–garden. Cassavas, and yams, and kiobos, and pea–nuts, and some other things, grew there; which, as he made nothing of them, we must treat likewise. There had even been some cotton sown, but the soil seemed not to suit it. It was meant, perhaps, by the keen American, who thought himself lord of the island, for a little random experiment.

When would he come back? That was the question Cradock asked, both of himself and Wena, twenty times a day. Of course poor Cradock knew not whether his lord of the manor were a Yankee or a Britisher, a Portuguese or a Dutchman; “Thebis nutritus an Argis.” Only he supposed and hoped that a white man came to that island sometimes, and brought other white men with him.

By this time, he had cut a winding staircase up the walls of his castle, and added a great many rough devices to his rugged interior. Twice every day he clomb his tree, to seek all round the horizon; and at one time he saw a sail in the distance, making perhaps for Loanda. But that ship was even outside the expansive margin of hope. And now he divided his time between his grand mowana citadel and the storehouse, with whose contents he did not like to meddle much, because they were not his property.

There he placed the shipʼs hydropult, which he had found lying on the beach; for the mate hadbrought it to meet the chance of finding shallow water, where the casks could not be stooped or the water bailed without fouling it; and the boatʼs crew, in their rush and flurry, had managed to leave it behind them. Cradock left it in the storehouse, because it was useless to him where he had no water, and it amused him sometimes to syringe Wena from the brook which flowed hard by. Moreover, he thought that if anything happened to prevent him from explaining things, the owner of the place, whoever he might be, would find in that implement more than the value of the biscuits which Cradock was eating, and getting on nicely with them, because they corrected the richness of turtle.

Truly, his diet was glorious, both in quality and variety; and he very soon became quite a pomarian Apicius. Of all fruits, perhaps the mangosteen (Garcinia mangostana) is the most delicious, when you get the right sort of it—which I donʼt think they have in Brazil—neither is the lee chee a gift to be despised, nor the chirimoya, and several others of the Annona race; some of the Granadillas, too, and the sweet lime, and the plantains, and many another fount of beauty and delight—all of which, by skill and care, might be raised in this country, where we seem to rest content with our meagre hothouse catalogue.

I do not say that all these fruits were natives of “Pomona Island,” as Cradock, appreciating itsdesserts, took the liberty of naming it; but most of them were discoverable in one part or another of it; some born from the breast of nature, others borne by man or tide. And almost all of them still would be greatly improved by cultivation.

So the head gardener of the island, who left the sun to garden for him, enjoyed their exquisite coolness, and wondered how they could be so cool in the torrid sunshine; and though he did not know the name of one in fifty of them, he found out wonderfully soon which of them were the nicest. And soon he discovered another means of varying his diet, for he remembered having read that often, in such lonely waters, the swarming fish will leap on board of a boat floating down the river. Thereupon he made himself a broad flat tray of bark, with a shallow ledge around it, and holding a tow–rope, made also of bark, launched it upon the brook. Immediately a vast commotion arose among the finny ones; they hustled, and huddled, and darted about, and then paddled gravely and stared at it. Then, whether from confusion of mind, or the reproaches of their comrades, or the desire of novelty, half a dozen fine fellows made a rush, and carried the ship by boarding. Whereupon Cradock, laughing heartily, drew his barge ashore, and soon Wena and himself were deep in a discussion ichthyological.

As may well be supposed, the pure sea breezes and wholesome diet, the peace and plenty, andmotherly influence of nature, the due exercise of the body, without undue stagnation of mind, the pleasure of finding knowledge expand every day, stomachically, while body and mind were girded alike, and the heart impressed with the diamond–studded belt of hope—all this, we may well suppose, was beginning to try severely the nasal joints of incessant woe.

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