After the first terror of the scene had passed, the men were for taking him to the infirmary. But Little interposed, eagerly, “No, no. I'll pay the doctor myself sooner. He shall be nursed at home, and have all that skill can do to save him. Oh, why, why would he not listen to me?”
A stretcher was got, and a mattress put on it, and they carried him through the streets, while one ran before to tell the unhappy wife, and Little took her address, and ran to Dr. Amboyne. The doctor went instantly to the sufferer.
Tucker assisted to carry the victim home. He then returned to Grotait, and told him the news. Dan was not so hardened but what he blubbered in telling it, and Grotait's eyes were moist with sympathy.
They neither of them spoke out, and said, “This upsets our design on Little.” Each waited to see whether that job was to go on. Each was ashamed to mention it now. So it came to a standstill.
As for Little, he was so shocked by this tragedy and so anxious about its victim, that he would not go out to Cairnhope. He came, in the evening to Dr. Amboyne, to inquire, “Can he live?”
“I can't say yet. He will never work again.”
Then, after a silence, he fixed his eyes on young Little, and said, “I am going to make a trial of your disposition. This is the man I suspected of blowing you up; and I'm of the same opinion still.”
“Then he has got his deserts,” were Henry's first words, after a pause of astonishment.
“Does that mean you forgive him, or you don't forgive him?”
“I dare say I should forgive the poor wretch, if he was to ask me.”
“And not without?”
“No. I might try and put it out of my head; but that is all I could do.”
“Is it true that you are the cause of his not being taken to the infirmary?”
“Yes, I said I'd pay out of my own pocket sooner; and I'm not the sort to go from my word. The man shall want for nothing, sir. But please don't ask me to love my enemies, and all that Rot. I scorn hypocrisy. Every man hates his enemies; he may hate 'em out like a man, or palaver 'em, and beg God to forgive 'em (and that means damn 'em), and hate 'em like a sneak; but he always hates 'em.”
The doctor laughed heartily. “Oh, how refreshing a thing it is to fall in with a fellow who speaks his real mind. However, I am not your enemy, am I?”
“No. You are the best friend I ever had—except my mother.”
“I am glad you think so; because I have a favor to ask you.”
“Granted, before ever you speak.”
“I want to know, for certain, whether Simmons was the man who blew you up; and I see but one way of learning it. You must visit him and be kind to him; and then my art tells me, he won't leave the world without telling you. Oblige me by taking him this bottle of wine, at once, and also this sedative, which you can administer if he is in violent pain, but not otherwise.”
“Doctor,” said the young man, “you always get your own way with me. And so you ought.”
Little stood by Simmons's bedside.
The man's eye was set, his cheek streaked with red, and his head was bandaged. He labored in breathing.
Young Little looked at him gravely, and wondered whether this battered figure was really the man who had so nearly destroyed him.
After some minutes of this contemplation, he said gravely “Simmons, I have brought you some wine.”
The man stared at him, and seemed confused. He made no reply.
“Give me a spoon,” said Henry.
Mrs. Simmons sat by the bedside rocking herself; she was stupefied with grief; but her sister, a handy girl, had come to her in her trouble: she brought Henry a spoon directly.
He poured out a little wine, and put it to the sufferer's lips. He drank it, and said it was rare good stuff. Henry gave him a little more.
Simmons then looked at him more intelligently and attentively, and gave a sort of shiver. “Who be you?”
“Henry Little; who advised you not to run that stone.”
“Ah!” said Simmons, “I thought it was you.” He seemed puzzled. But, after a while, he said, “I wish I had hearkened thee, lad. Give me some more of yonder stuff. What is it?”
“Port wine.” Then he turned to the girl, and gave her a sovereign, and sent her out for some mutton-chops. “Meat and wine are all the physic you are to have, my poor fellow.”
“It won't be for long, lad. And a good job too. For I'm a bad 'un. I'm a bad 'un.”
Henry then turned to the poor woman, and tried to say something to console her, but the words stuck in his throat. She was evidently near her confinement; and there lay her husband, worse than in his grave. Little broke down himself, while trying to comfort her.
The sufferer heard him, and said, all of a sudden, “Hold a light here.”
Henry took the candle, and held it over him.
“Nay, nay, it is thy face I want to see.”
Henry was puzzled at the request, but did as he was asked.
Simmons gave a groan. “Ay,” said he, “thou'st all right. And I lie here. That seems queer.”
The sister now returned, and Henry wrote her his address, and conversed with her, and told her the whole story of the grindstone, and said that, as he had hindered Simmons from being taken to the infirmary, he felt bound to see he did not suffer by that interference. He gave her his address, and said, if anything was wanted, she must come to him, or to his mother if he should be out.
No doubt the women talked of his kindness by the sick bed, and Simmons heard it.
Early in the morning Eliza Watney called at Little's house, with her eyes very red, and said her brother-in-law wanted to speak to him.
He went with her directly; and, on the road, asked her what it was about.
“I'm ashamed to tell you,” said she, and burst out crying. “But I hope God will reward you; and forgive him: he is a very ignorant man.”
“Here I am, Simmons.”
“So I see.”
“Anything I can do for you?”
“No.”
“You sent for me.”
“Did I? Well, I dare say I did. But gi' me time. Gi' me time. It's noane so easy to look a man in the face, and tell him what I'm to tell thee. But I can't die with it on me. It chokes me, ever since you brought me yonder stuff, and the women set a-talking. I say—old lad—'twas I did thee yon little job at Cheetham's. But I knew no better.”
There was a dead silence. And then Henry spoke.
“Who set you on?”
“Nay, that's their business.”
“How did you do it?”
At this question—will it be believed?—the penitent's eye twinkled with momentary vanity. “I fastened a tea-cup to an iron rake, and filled the cup with powder; then I passed it in, and spilt the powder out of cup, and raked it in to the smithy slack, and so on, filling and raking in. But I did thee one good turn, lad; I put powder as far from bellows as I could. Eh, but I was a bad 'un to do the like to thee; and thou's a good 'un to come here. When I saw thee lie there, all scorched and shaking, I didn't like my work; and now I hate it. But I knew no better at the time. And, you see, I've got it worse myself. And cheap served too.”
“Oh, Mr. Little,” said Eliza Watney; “TRY and forgive him.”
“My girl,” said Henry, solemnly, “I thought I never could forgive the man who did that cruel deed to me, and I had never injured any one. But it is hard to know one's own mind, let alone another man's. Now I look at him lying pale and battered there, it seems all wiped out. I forgive you, my poor fellow, and I hope God will forgive you too.”
“Nay. He is not so soft as thou. This is how He forgives me. But I knew no better. Old gal, learn the young 'un to read, that's coming just as I'm going; it is sore against a chap if he can't read. Right and wrong d—n 'em, they are locked up in books, I think: locked away from a chap like me. I know a little better now. But, eh, dear, dear, it is come too late.” And now the poor wretch began to cry at a gleam of knowledge of right and wrong having come to him only just when he could no longer profit by it.
Henry left him at last, with the tears in his eyes. He promised them all to come every day.
He called on Dr. Amboyne, and said, “You are always right, doctor. Simmons was the man, he has owned it, and I forgave him.”
He then went and told Mr. Holdfast. That gentleman was much pleased at the discovery, and said, “Ah, but who employed him? That is what you must discover.”
“I will try,” said Henry. “The poor fellow had half a mind to make a clean breast; but I didn't like to worry him over it.”
Returning home he fell in with Grotait and Parkin. They were talking earnestly at the door of a public-house, and the question they were discussing was whether or not Little's affair should be revived.
They were both a good deal staggered by the fate of Simmons, Parkin especially, who was rather superstitious. He had changed sides, and was now inclined to connive, or, at all events to temporize; to abandon the matter till a more convenient time. Grotait, on the other hand, whose vanity the young man had irritated, was bent on dismounting his forge. But even he had cooled a little, and was now disinclined to violence. He suggested that it must be easy to drive a smith out of a church, by going to the parochial authorities; and they could also send Little an anonymous letter, to tell him the Trades had their eyes on him; by this double stroke, they would probably bring him to some reasonable terms.
It certainly was a most unfortunate thing that Little passed that way just then; unfortunate that Youth is so impetuous.
He crossed the street to speak to these two potentates, whom it was his interest to let alone—if he could only have known it.
“Well, gentlemen, have you seen Simmons?”
“No,” said Mr. Parkin.
“What, not been to see the poor fellow who owes his death to you?”
“He is not dead yet.”
“No, thank Heaven! He has got a good work to do first; some hypocrites, assassins, and cowards to expose.”
Parkin turned pale; Grotait's eye glistened like a snake's: he made Parkin a rapid signal to say nothing, but only listen.
“He has begun by telling me who it was that put gunpowder into my forge, and how it was done. I have forgiven him. He was only the tool of much worse villains; base, cowardly, sneaking villains. Those I shall not forgive. Oh, I shall know all about it before long. Good-morning.”
This information and threat, and the vindictive bitterness and resolution with which the young man had delivered it, struck terror into the gentle Parkin, and shook even Grotait. The latter, however, soon recovered himself, and it became a battle for life or death between him and Little.
He invited Parkin to his own place, and there the pair sat closeted.
Dan Tucker and Sam Cole were sent for.
Tucker came first. He was instantly dispatched to Simmons, with money from the Saw Grinders' box. He was to ascertain how much Simmons had let out, and to adjure him to be true to the Trade, and split on no man but himself. When he had been gone about twenty minutes, Sam Cole came in, and was instructed to get two other men in place of Simmons, and be in readiness to do Little.
By-and-by Tucker returned with news. Simmons had at present split only on himself; but the women were evidently in love with Little; said he was their only friend; and he, Tucker, foresaw that, with their co-operation, Simmons would be turned inside out by Little before he died.
Grotait struck his hand on the table. “The Unions are in danger,” said he. “There is but one way, Little must be made so that he can't leave Cairnhope while Simmons is alive.”
So important did the crisis appear to him, that he insisted on Parkin going with him at once to Cairnhope, to reconnoiter the ground.
Parkin had a gig and a fast horse: so, in ten minutes more, they were on the road.
They reached Cairnhope, put up at the village inn, and soon extracted some particulars about the church. They went up to it, and examined it, and Grotait gave Parkin a leg up, to peer through the window.
In this position they were nailed by old George.
“What be you at?”
“What is that to you?” said Grotait.
“It is plenty. You mustn't come trespassing here. Squire won't have it.”
“Trespassing in a churchyard! Why it belongs to all the world.”
“Nay, this one belongs to the Lord o' the manor.”
“Well, we won't hurt your church. Who keeps the key?”
“Squire Raby.”
Old George from this moment followed them about everywhere, grumbling at their heels, like a mastiff.
Grotait, however, treated him with cool contempt, and proceeded to make a sketch of the door, and a little map showing how the church could be approached from Hillsborough on foot without passing through Cairnhope village. This done, he went back with Parkin to the inn, and thence to Hillsborough.
It was old Christmas Eve. Henry was working at his forge, little dreaming of danger. Yet it was close at hand, and from two distinct quarters.
Four men, with crape masks, and provided with all manner of tools, and armed with bludgeons, were creeping about the churchyard, examining and listening. Their orders were to make Little so that he should not leave Cairnhope for a month. And that, in plain English, meant to beat him within an inch of his life, if not kill him.
At the same time, a body of nine men were stealing up the road, with designs scarcely less hostile to Little.
These assailants were as yet at a considerable distance, but more formidable in appearance than the others being most of them armed with swords, and led by a man with a double-barreled gun.
Grotait's men, having well surveyed the ground, now crept softly up to the porch, and examined the lock.
The key was inside, and they saw no means of forcing the lock without making a noise, and putting their victim on his guard.
After a long whispered consultation, they resolved to unscrew the hinges.
These hinges were of great length, and were nailed upon the door, but screwed into the door-post with four screws each.
Two men, with excellent tools, and masters of the business, went softly to work. One stood, and worked on the upper screws; the other kneeled, and unfastened the lower screws.
They made no more noise than a rat gnawing; yet, such was their caution, and determination to surprise their victim, that they timed all their work by Little's. Whenever the blows of his hammer intermitted, they left off; and began again when he did.
When all the screws were out but two, one above, one below, they beckoned the other two men, and these two drove large gimlets into the door, and so held it that it might not fall forward when the last screw should come out.
“Are all screws out?” whispered Cole, who was the leader.
“Ay,” was the whispered reply.
“Then put in two more gimlets.”
That was done.
“Now, men,” whispered Cole. “Lay the door softly down outside: then, up sticks—into church—and DO HIM!”
If Mr. Coventry, before he set all this mischief moving, could have seen the INSIDE of Grace Carden's letter to Henry Little!
“DEAR MR. LITTLE,—I do not know whether I ought to write to you at all, nor whether it is delicate of me to say what I am going; but you have saved my life, and I do so want to do all I can to atone for the pain I have given you, who have been so good to me. I am afraid you will never know happiness, if you waste your invaluable life longing after what is impossible. There is an impassable barrier between you and me. But you might be happy if you would condescend to take my advice, and let yourself see the beauty and the goodness of another. The person who bears this letter comes nearer to perfection than any other woman I ever saw. If you would trust my judgment (and, believe me, I am not to be mistaken in one of my own sex), if you could turn your heart toward her, she would make you very happy. I am sure she could love you devotedly, if she only heard those words from your lips, which every woman requires to hear before she surrenders her affections. Pray do not be angry with me; pray do not think it cost me little to give this strange but honest advice to one I admire so. But I feel it would be so weak and selfish in me to cling to that, which, sooner or later, I must resign, and to make so many persons unhappy, when all might be happy, except perhaps myself.
“Once more, forgive me. Do not think me blind; do not think me heartless; but say, this is a poor girl, who is sadly perplexed, and is trying very hard to be good and wise, and not selfish.
“One line, to say you will consider my advice, and never hate nor despise your grateful and unhappy friend.
“GRACE CARDEN.”
When she had dispatched this letter, she felt heroic.
The next day, she wished she had not written it, and awaited the reply with anxiety.
The next day, she began to wonder at Little's silence: and by-and-by she was offended at it. Surely what she had written with so great an effort was worth a reply.
Finally, she got it into her head that Little despised her. Upon this she was angry with him for not seeing what a sacrifice she had made, and for despising her, instead of admiring her a little, and pitying her ever so much. The old story in short—a girl vexed with a man for letting her throw dust in his eyes.
And, if she was vexed with Little for not appreciating her sacrifice, she was quite as angry with Coventry and Jael for being the causes of that unappreciated sacrifice. So then she was irritable and cross. But she could not be that long: so she fell into a languid, listless state: and then she let herself drift. She never sent Jael to the church again.
Mr. Coventry watched all her moods; and when she reached the listless stage, he came softly on again, and began to recover his lost ground.
On the fifth of January occurred a rather curious coincidence. In Hillsborough Dr. Amboyne offered his services to Mrs. Little to reconcile her and her brother. Mrs. Little feared the proposal came too late: but showed an inclination to be reconciled for Henry's sake. But Henry said he would never be reconciled to a man who had insulted his mother. He then reminded her she had sent him clandestinely into Raby Hall to see her picture. “And what did I see? Your picture was turned with its face to the wall, and insulting words written on the back—'Gone into trade.' I didn't mean to tell yell, mother; but you see I have. And, after that, you may be reconciled to the old scoundrel if you like; but don't ask me.” Mrs. Little was deeply wounded by this revelation. She tried to make light of it, but failed. She had been a beauty, and the affront was too bitter. Said she, “You mustn't judge him like other people: he was always so very eccentric. Turn my picture to the wall! My poor picture! Oh, Guy, Guy, could one mother have borne you and me?” Amboyne had not a word more to say; he was indignant himself.
Now that very afternoon, as if by the influence of what they call a brain-wave, Grace Carden, who felt herself much stronger with Mr. Raby than when she first came, was moved to ask him, with many apologies, and no little inward tremor, whether she might see the other side of that very picture before she went.
“What for?”
“Don't be angry, uncle dear. Curiosity.”
“I do not like to refuse you anything, Grace. But—Well, if I lend you the key, will you satisfy your curiosity, and then replace the picture as it is?”
“Yes, I will.”
“And you shall do it when I am not in the room. It would only open wounds that time has skinned. I'll bring you down the key at dinner-time.” Then, assuming a lighter tone, “Your curiosity will be punished; you will see your rival in beauty. That will be new to you.”
Grace was half frightened at her own success, and I doubt whether she would ever have asked for the key again; but Raby's word was his bond; he handed her the key at dinner-time.
Her eyes sparkled when she got it; but she was not to open it before him; so she fell thinking: and she determined to get the gentlemen into the drawing-room as soon as she could, and then slip back and see this famous picture.
Accordingly she left the table rather earlier than usual, and sat down to her piano in the drawing-room.
But, alas, her little maneuver was defeated. Instead of the gentlemen leaving the dining-room, a servant was sent to recall her.
It was old Christmas Eve, and the Mummers were come.
Now, of all the old customs Mr. Raby had promised her, this was the pearl.
Accordingly, her curiosity took for the time another turn, and she was soon seated in the dining-room, with Mr. Raby and Mr. Coventry, awaiting the Mummers.
The servants then came in, and, when all was ready, the sound of a fiddle was heard, and a fiddler, grotesquely dressed, entered along with two clowns, one called the Tommy, dressed in chintz and a fox's skin over his shoulders and a fox's head for a cap; and one, called the Bessy, in a woman's gown and beaver hat.
This pair introduced the true dramatis personae, to the drollest violin accompaniment, consisting of chords till the end of each verse, and then a few notes of melody.
“Now the first that I call onIs George, our noble king,Long time he has been at war,Good tidings back he'll bring.Too-ral-loo.”
Thereupon in came a man, with black breeches and red stripes at the side, a white shirt decked with ribbons over his waistcoat, and a little hat with streamers, and a sword.
The clown walked round in a ring, and King George followed him, holding his sword upright.
Meantime the female clown chanted,—
“The next that we call on,He is a squire's son;He's like to lose his love,Because he is so young.Too-ral-loo.”
The Squire's Son followed King George round the ring; and the clowns, marching and singing at the head, introduced another, and then another sword-dancer, all attired like the first, until there were five marching round and round, each with his sword upright.
Then Foxey sang, to a violin accompaniment,
“Now, fiddler, then, take up thy fiddle,Play the lads their hearts' desire,Or else we'll break thy fiddle,And fling thee a-back o' the fire.”
On this the fiddler instantly played a dance-tune peculiar to this occasion, and the five sword-dancers danced by themselves in a ring, holding their swords out so as to form a cone.
Then a knot, prepared beforehand, was slipped over the swords, and all the swords so knotted were held aloft by the first dancer; he danced in the center awhile, under the connected swords, then deftly drew his own sword out and handed it to the second dancer; the second gave the third dancer his sword, and so on, in rotation, till all the swords were resumed.
Raby's eyes sparkled with delight at all this, and he whispered his comments on the verses and the dance.
“King George!” said he. “Bosh! This is the old story of St. George and the Dragon, overburdened with modern additions.” As to the dance, he assured her that, though danced in honor of old Christmas, it was older than Christianity, and came from the ancient Goths and Swedes.
These comments were interrupted by a man, with a white face, who burst into the assembly crying, “Will ye believe me now? Cairnhope old church is all afire!”
“Ay, Squire,” said Abel Eaves, for he was the bearer of this strange news, “ye wouldn't believe ME, now come and see for yourself.”
This announcement set all staring; and George the blacksmith did but utter the general sentiment when, suddenly dropping his assumed character of King George, he said, “Bless us and save us! True Christmas Eve; and Cairnhope old church alight!”
Then there was a furious buzz of tongues, and, in the midst of it Mr. Raby disappeared, and the sword-dancers returned to the kitchen, talking over this strange matter as they went.
Grace retired to the drawing-room followed by Coventry.
She sat silent some time, and he watched her keenly.
“I wonder what has become of Mr. Raby?”
Mr. Coventry did not know.
“I hope he is not going out.”
“I should think not, it is a very cold night; clear, but frosty.”
“Surely he would never go to see.”
“Shall I inquire?”
“No; but that might put it into his head. But I wish I knew where he was.”
Presently a servant brought the tea in.
Miss Carden inquired after Mr. Raby.
“He is gone out, miss; but he won't be long, I was to tell you.”
Grace felt terribly uneasy and restless! rang the bell and asked for Jael Dence. The reply was that she had not been to the hall that day.
But, soon afterward, Jael came up from the village, and went into the kitchen of Raby. There she heard news, which soon took her into the drawing-room.
“Oh, miss,” said she, “do you know where the squire is?”
“Gone to the church?” asked Grace, trembling.
“Ay, and all the sword-dancers at his back.” And she stood there and wrung her hands with dismay.
The ancients had a proverb, “Better is an army of stags with a lion for their leader, than an army of lions with a stag for their leader.” The Cairnhope sword-dancers, though stout fellows and strong against a mortal foe, were but stags against the supernatural; yet, led by Guy Raby, they advanced upon the old church with a pretty bold front, only they kept twenty yards in their leader's rear. The order was to march in dead silence.
At the last turn in the road their leader suddenly halted, and, kneeling on one knee, waved to his men to keep quiet: he had seen several dark figures busy about the porch.
After many minutes of thrilling, yet chilling, expectation, he rose and told his men, in a whisper, to follow him again.
The pace was now expedited greatly, and still Mr. Raby, with his double-barreled gun in his hand, maintained a lead of some yards and his men followed as noiselessly as they could, and made for the church: sure enough it was lighted inside.
The young man who was thus beset by two distinct bands of enemies, deserved a very different fate at the hands of his fellow-creatures.
For, at this moment, though any thing but happy himself, he was working some hours every day for the good of mankind; and was every day visiting as a friend the battered saw-grinder who had once put his own life in mortal peril.
He had not fathomed the letter Grace had sent him. He was a young man and a straightforward; he did not understand the amiable defects of the female character. He studied every line of this letter, and it angered and almost disgusted him. It was the letter of a lady; but beneath the surface of gentleness and politeness lay a proposal which he considered mean and cold-blooded. It lowered his esteem for her.
His pride and indignation were roused, and battled with his love, and they were aided by the healthy invigorating habits into which Dr. Amboyne had at last inveigled him, and so he resisted: he wrote more than one letter in reply to Grace Carden; but, when he came to read them over and compare them with her gentle effusion, he was ashamed of his harshness, and would not send the letter.
He fought on; philanthropy in Hillsborough, forging in Cairnhope Church; and still he dreamed strange dreams now and then: for who can work, both night and day, as this man did—with impunity?
One night he dreamed that he was working at his forge, when suddenly the floor of the aisle burst, and a dead knight sprang from the grave with a single bound, and stood erect before him, in rusty armor: out of his helmet looked two eyes like black diamonds, and a nose like a falcon's. Yet, by one of the droll contradictions of a dream, this impetuous, warlike form no sooner opened its lips, than out issued a lackadaisical whine. “See my breastplate, good sir,” said he. “It was bright as silver when I made it—I was like you, I forged my own weapons, forged them with these hands. But now the damps of the grave have rusted it. Odsbodikins! is this a thing for a good knight to appear in before his judge? And to-morrow is doomsday, so they all say.”
Then Henry pitied the poor simple knight (in his dream), and offered his services to polish the corslet up a bit against that great occasion. He pointed toward his forge, and the knight marched to it, in three wide steps that savored strongly of theatrical burlesque. But the moment he saw the specimens of Henry's work lying about, he drew back, and wheeled upon the man of the day with huge disdain. “What,” said he, “do you forge toys! Learn that a gentleman can only forge those weapons of war that gentlemen do use. And I took you for a Raby!”
With these bitter words he vanished, with flashing eyes and a look of magnificent scorn, and left his fiery, haughty features imprinted clearly on Henry's memory.
One evening, as he plied his hammer, he heard a light sound at a window, in an interval of his own noise. He looked hastily up, and caught a momentary sight of a face disappearing from the window. It was gone like a flash even as he caught sight of it.
Transient as the glance was, it shook him greatly. He heated a bar of iron white hot at one end, and sallied out into the night. But there was not a creature to be seen.
Then he called aloud, “Who's there?” No reply. “Jael, was it you?” Dead silence.
He returned to his work, and set the appearance down to an ocular illusion. But his dreams had been so vivid, that this really seemed only one step more into the realm of hallucination.
This was an unfortunate view of the matter.
On old Christmas Eve he lighted the fires in his mausoleum first, and at last succeeded in writing a letter to Grace Carden. He got out of the difficulty in the best way, by making it very short. He put it in an envelope, and addressed it, intending to give it to Jael Dence, from whom he was always expecting a second visit.
He then lighted his forge, and soon the old walls were ringing again with the blows of his hammer.
It was ten o'clock at night; a clear frosty night; but he was heated and perspiring with his ardent work, when, all of a sudden, a cold air seemed to come in upon him from a new quarter—the door. He left his forge, and took a few steps to where he could see the door. Instead of the door, he saw the blue sky.
He uttered an exclamation, and rubbed his eyes.
It was no hallucination. The door lay flat on the ground, and the stars glittered in the horizon.
Young Little ran toward the door; but, when he got near it, he paused, and a dire misgiving quelled him. A workman soon recognizes a workman's hand; and he saw Hillsborough cunning and skill in this feat, and Hillsborough cunning and cruelty lurking in ambush at the door.
He went back to his forge, and, the truth must be told, his knees felt weak under him with fears of what was to come.
He searched about for weapons, and could find nothing to protect him against numbers. Pistols he had: but, from a wretched over-security, he had never brought them to Cairnhope Church.
Oh, it was an era of agony that minute, in which, after avoiding the ambuscade that he felt sure awaited him at the door, he had nothing on earth he could do but wait and see what was to come next.
He knew that however small his chance of escape by fighting, it was his only one; and he resolved to receive the attack where he was. He blew his bellows and, cold at heart, affected to forge.
Dusky forms stole into the old church.
Little blew his coals to a white heat: then took his hammer into his left hand, and his little iron shovel, a weapon about two feet long, into his right.
Three assailants crept toward him, and his position was such that two at least could assail him front and rear. He counted on that, and measured their approach with pale cheek but glittering eye, and thrust his shovel deep into the white coals.
They crept nearer and nearer, and, at last, made an almost simultaneous rush on him back and front.
The man in the rear was a shade in advance of the other. Little, whose whole soul was in arms, had calculated on this, and turning as they came at him, sent a shovelful of fiery coals into that nearest assailant's face, then stepped swiftly out of the way of the other, who struck at him too immediately for him to parry; ere he could recover the wasted blow, Little's hot shovel came down in his head with tremendous force, and laid him senseless and bleeding on the hearth, with blood running from his ears.
Little ladled the coals right and left on the other two assailants, one of whom was already yelling with the pain of the first shovelful; then, vaulting suddenly over a pew, he ran for the door.
There he was encountered by Sam Cole, an accomplished cudgel-player, who parried his blows coolly, and gave him a severe rap on the head that dazzled him. But he fought on, till he heard footsteps coming behind him, and then rage and despair seized him, he drew back, shifted his hammer into his right hand and hurled it with all his force at Cole's breast, for he feared to miss his head. Had it struck him on the breast, delivered as it was, it would probably have smashed his breastbone, and killed him; but it struck him on his throat, which was, in some degree, protected by a muffler: it struck him and sent him flying like a feather: he fell on his back in the porch, yards from where he received that prodigious blow.
Henry was bounding out after him, when he was seized from behind, and the next moment another seized him too, and his right hand was now disarmed by throwing away the hammer.
He struggled furiously with them, and twice he shook them off, and struck them with his fist, and jobbed them with his shovel quick and short, as a horse kicking.
But one was cunning enough to make a feint at his face, and then fell down and lay hold of his knees: he was about to pulverize this fellow with one blow of his shovel, when the other flung his arms round him. It became a mere struggle. Such was his fury and his vigor, however, that they could not master him. He played his head like a snake, so that they could not seize him disadvantageously; and at last he dropped his shovel and got them both by the throat, and grasped them so fiercely that their faces were purple, and their eyes beginning to fix, when to his dismay, he received a violent blow on the right arm that nearly broke it: he let go, with a cry of pain, and with his left hand twisted the other man round so quickly, that he received the next blow of Cole's cudgel. Then he dashed his left fist into Cole's eye, who staggered, but still barred the way; so Little rushed upon him, and got him by the throat, and would soon have settled him: but the others recovered themselves ere he could squeeze all the wind out of Cole, and it became a struggle of three to one.
He dragged them all three about with him; he kicked, he hit, he did every thing that a man with one hand, and a lion's heart, could do.
But gradually they got the better of him; and at last it came to this, that two were struggling on the ground with him, and Cole standing over them all three, ready to strike.
“Now, hold him so, while I settle him,” cried Cole, and raised his murderous cudgel.
It came down on Little's shoulder, and only just missed his head.
Again it came down, and with terrible force.
Up to this time he had fought as mute as a fox. But now that it had come to mere butchery, he cried out, in his agony, “They'll kill me. My mother! Help! Murder! Help!”
“Ay! thou'lt never forge no more!” roared Cole, and thwack came down the crushing bludgeon.
“Help! Murder! Help!” screamed the victim, more faintly; and at the next blow more faintly still.
But again the murderous cudgel was lifted high, to descend upon his young head.
As the confederates held the now breathless and despairing victim to receive the blow, and the butcher, with one eye closed by Henry's fist, but the other gleaming savagely, raised the cudgel to finish him, Henry saw a huge tongue of flame pour out at them all, from outside the church, and a report, that sounded like a cannon, was accompanied by the vicious ping of shot. Cole screamed and yelled, and dropped his cudgel, and his face was covered with blood in a moment; he yelled, and covered his face with his hands; and instantly came another flash, another report, another cruel ping of shot, and this time his hands were covered with blood.
The others rolled yelling out of the line of fire, and ran up the aisle for their lives.
Cole, yelling, tried to follow; but Henry, though sick and weak with the blows, caught him, and clung to his knees, and the next moment the place was filled with men carrying torches and gleaming swords, and led by a gentleman, who stood over Henry, in evening dress, but with the haughty expanded nostrils, the brilliant black eyes, and all the features of that knight in rusty armor who had come to him in his dream and left him with scorn.
At this moment a crash was heard: two of the culprits, with desperate agility, had leaped on to the vestry chest, and from that on to the horse, and from him headlong out of the window.
Mr. Raby dispatched all his men but one in pursuit, with this brief order—“Take them, alive or dead—doesn't matter which—they are only cutlers; and cowards.”
His next word was to Cole. “What, three blackguards to one!—that's how Hillsborough fights, eh?”
“I'm not a blackguard,” said Henry, faintly.
“That remains to be proved, sir,” said Raby, grimly.
Henry made answer by fainting away.