The Project Gutenberg eBook ofSea Mew AbbeyThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Sea Mew AbbeyAuthor: Florence WardenRelease date: November 10, 2023 [eBook #72089]Most recently updated: January 30, 2024Language: EnglishOriginal publication: NEW YORK: UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY, 1891Credits: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SEA MEW ABBEY ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Sea Mew AbbeyAuthor: Florence WardenRelease date: November 10, 2023 [eBook #72089]Most recently updated: January 30, 2024Language: EnglishOriginal publication: NEW YORK: UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY, 1891Credits: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer
Title: Sea Mew Abbey
Author: Florence Warden
Author: Florence Warden
Release date: November 10, 2023 [eBook #72089]Most recently updated: January 30, 2024
Language: English
Original publication: NEW YORK: UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY, 1891
Credits: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SEA MEW ABBEY ***
BYFLORENCE WARDENAUTHOR OF“THE HOUSE ON THE MARSH,” “NURSE REVEL’S MISTAKE,” “MISSING—AYOUNG GIRL,” ETC., ETC.
UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY,SUCCESSORS TOJOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY,142 TO 150 WORTH STREET, NEW YORK.
Copyright, 1891,BYUNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY
Chapter I.
Chapter II.
Chapter III.
Chapter IV.
Chapter V.
Chapter VI.
Chapter VII.
Chapter VIII.
Chapter IX.
Chapter X.
Chapter XI.
Chapter XII.
Chapter XIII.
Chapter XIV.
Chapter XV.
Chapter XVI.
Chapter XVII.
Chapter XVIII.
Chapter XIX.
Chapter XX.
Chapter XXI.
Chapter XXII.
Chapter XXIII.
Chapter XXIV.
Chapter XXV.
Chapter XXVI.
Chapter XXVII.
Chapter XXVIII.
Chapter XXIX.
Chapter XXX.
Chapter XXXI.
Chapter XXXII.
Chapter XXXIII.
Chapter XXXIV.
Abouta quarter of a century ago, under a bright May morning sun, the English Channel Squadron steamed into the harbour of the French town of Harbourg, with flags half-mast high. The Captain of one of the vessels had lost his young wife that morning.
Until the very hour of her death, the poor fellow had persisted in believing that she was getting better, that the weakness which had been growing for months on the fragile little lady, the paleness of her delicate cheeks, the feebleness of her sweet voice would pass away. And now they had indeed passed away—into waxen death, and the twenty-year-old wife lay peacefully in the little state cabin, while her husband, stunned by uncomprehending grief, stood beside her with her baby in his arms, not hearing its soft babble of inarticulate sounds, not seeing anything but that horrible, agonising, still image of the woman he had frantically loved.
“Speak to mamma, baby, wake her, wake her!” he had cried when, noticing how still and white his wife had grown, and refusing to own the truth, he had rushed out of the cabin, snatched the child from its nurse, and held out its little warm arms towards its mother. But the white, thin arms had lost their tenderness, and lay still; the cold mouth met that of the child with no loving kiss; and as the great brown eyes stared fixedly and without meaning at the ceiling, where the reflection of the sparkling blue water outside danced and shimmered, the man’s heart was torn by a pang of maddened comprehension, and a black pall was cast for ever, for him, upon the whole world.
Six hours later, when the sun was declining, and a fresh breeze was blowing from the sea, and the angelus was sounding from the chapel of the grey-walled convent, whose turrets rose up high upon the cliffs above the town, a stranger rang for admission at the convent-gate. The little sister who peeped at him through the wicket and then slowly opened the door, was rather alarmed by his appearance, and found the foreign accent in which he asked to see the Mother-Superior difficult to understand. But she would not have dared deny him admittance, for there was something in his curt tone and manner which would have made refusal of any demand of his impossible to the meek nun.
As the Gothic-pointed outer door clanged to behind them, and the stranger stepped in out of the shining sunlight into the darkness of the white-washed cloisters, a little cry rose up from the burden he carried in his arms, and the woman’s heart went out in an instant to the hidden morsel of humanity.
“Holy mother!” cried she, “it’s a child! Let me see it, monsieur.”
The stranger’s hard features did not soften, but a light came into his eyes as he drew aside the shawl which covered the child and showed a weird, pale little face, with great frightened dark eyes.
“She has no mother?” whispered the sister, with quick apprehension and sympathy.
“God help her! no,—unless,” and the man’s hoarse voice trembled,—“unless she finds one here.”
The sound of sweet singing from the little chapel began to be heard, muffled, through the cloister walls, and then it swelled louder as the chapel door opened, and another dark-robed woman peeped out, hearing the strange footsteps and a man’s voice.
“Come,” said the portress briskly, “this way, monsieur, you shall see the Mother-Superior yourself.”
The smell of the white lilac came in from the quiet garden as they passed through the cloister, and entered a great, square, bare-looking room, with a floor polished like glass, high white-washed walls, a round table, and a regiment of rush-bottomed chairs placed stiffly against the wainscoting. A very large plain bookcase containing brightly-bound religious and devotional works, a gloomy-looking oil-painting of a former Mother-Superior, and a black stove standing out from the wall, completed the furniture of the convent visitors’ room.
After some delay, the Mother-Superior came in. She was an elderly lady with a face of intellectual type, to which the habit of her Order gave a look of some severity. The stranger took in every detail of her appearance with a searching look, and opened his business abruptly.
“I am in great trouble, madam,” he began, in a harsh voice, “where to find a home for my little girl. And as I was wondering, down in the harbour there, what I should do with her, I saw your walls looking down over the water, and heard your bells, and I thought perhaps she might find a shelter here. I am a sailor, and I have—no one to trust her with.”
His voice got out of his control on the last words. The Superior looked perplexed, but not yielding. As he unfolded the shawl which was wrapped round the child, she gently shook her head.
“We couldn’t undertake the care of a child as young as that,” she said, not unkindly. “She can’t be more than two.”
“That’s all,” said her father.
“Her mother——” began the Superior gently.
“Died this morning,” said he hoarsely.
“Oh!” The lady uttered this exclamation in a low voice, and bent at once over the child, taking its little hand tenderly. “I am afraid my sombre robe may frighten her,” she said.
But the child did not draw back, only looked wonderingly at the lined face, at the snowy linen and the thick black veil.
“Is she of our religion?”
“No.”
“But you of course wish her to be brought up a Catholic?”
“No.”
The good Mother looked up in surprise.
“Then what induced you to bring her here?”
“Where women are I expected to find kindness and mercy for my motherless child.”
“You are English, monsieur?”
“Yes.”
“And you would trust Catholics, Frenchwomen, as much as that?”
“I have been a traveller, madam, and I am no bigot.”
The Superior, with her face wrinkled up with deepest perplexity, looked from him to the child, who had stretched out her tiny fingers for the rosary.
“You see this omen. Does not that frighten you?”
The stranger hesitated, and looked down upon his little daughter, who was clasping the crucifix with delight. Like most sailors, of high and low degree, he was superstitious.
“One must risk something,” he said at last bluntly. “And if I’m ready to risk that, surely you might give way.”
“I would if I could. My heart yearns to the poor little creature. But she would be very unsuitably placed here. Have you no friends, no relations, who would take charge of her?”
He laughed shortly.
“Plenty. I am not a poor man, madam; I did not use that as an inducement to you, for it’s not money-bought kindness I want for my—my poor wife’s child. But you could name what sum you like for her keep, education, anything.”
“I had not thought of that, monsieur,” said the Superior, with more dignity. “We take older girls to educate, but——”
“But not my poor lame baby. Very well.”
He was wrapping the child up quickly, when the Superior stopped him by one word uttered in a different tone.
“Stop!”
The stranger, without pausing in his work, looked up.
“Lame, did you say?”
“Yes, I said lame,” he answered shortly. “I had forgotten that further disqualification. A d——, I mean a fool of a nurse dropped her on the deck when she was seven months old, and—and she’s lame, will always be so. Come, Freda, we’ll get out in the sunshine and warm ourselves again.”
The great room was cold, and the child’s lips and nails began to look blue. But before he could reach the door, he saw the black garments beside him again, and with a quick, strong, peremptory movement the child was taken out of his arms.
“Lame! Poor angel. You should have told me that before.”
The heavy veil drooped over the little one, and the father knew that she had found a home.
“God bless you, and all the saints too, madam, if it comes to that!” he said with a tremor in his voice. And he cleared his throat two or three times as, with uncertain, fumbling fingers, he searched for something in his pockets.
At last he drew out a soiled envelope, which he placed upon the table. It was directed simply “To the Mother-Superior, Convent of the Sacred Heart.” The lady read the direction with surprise.
“You were pretty sure of success in your mission, then, when you came up here?”
“Yes, madam, I have always believed I could succeed in everything—until—this morning.”
His harsh voice broke again.
“You will find in that envelope an address from which any communication will be forwarded to me. It is an old house on the Yorkshire coast, which has been shut up now for many years. But there is a caretaker who will send on letters.”
“And some day you will open the place again, and want your daughter to keep house for you?”
He shook his head.
“It’s a lonely place, and would frighten a girl. The birds build their nests about it. I believe the towns-folk have named it Sea-Mew Abbey. Good-bye, madam, and thank you for your goodness. Good-bye, Freda.”
He printed one hasty kiss on the pale baby face of his daughter, and the next moment his heavy footsteps were echoing down the cloister. The Mother-Superior heard the outer door clang behind him and shut him out into the world again, and then, still clasping the child in her arms, she opened the envelope which the stranger had left. It contained English bank-notes for fifty pounds, and a card with the following name and address on it:
“Captain Mulgrave, R. N.,“St. Edelfled’s, Presterby, Yorkshire.”
“Captain Mulgrave, R. N.,“St. Edelfled’s, Presterby, Yorkshire.”
As she read the words, the child in her arms began to cry. At the sound of the little one’s voice, one of the many doors of the room softly opened; and secure from observation, as they thought, two or three of the sombrely clad sisters peeped curiously in.
But the good Mother’s eyes had grown keen with long watchfulness; she saw the white-framed faces as the door hurriedly closed.
“Sister Monica, Sister Theresa!” she called, but in no stern voice.
And the two nuns, trembling and abashed, but not sorry to be on the point of having their curiosity satisfied even at the cost of a rebuke, came softly in.
“We have a new little inmate,” said the Superior in a solemn voice, “a tender young creature whom God, for His own all-wise purposes, has chastened by two severe misfortunes, even at this early age. She is lame, and she has lost her earthly mother.”
A soft murmur of sympathy, low, yet so full that it seemed as if other voices from the dim background took it up and prolonged it, formed a sweet chorus to the kindly-spoken words. The Superior went on:
“I have promised the father of this child that, so far as by the help of God and His blessed saints we may, we will supply the place of the blessings she has lost. Will you help me, all of you? Yes, all of you.”
And again the soft murmur “Yes, yes,” of the two nuns before her was taken up by a dimly-seen chorus.
“Come in, then, and kiss your little sister.”
They trooped in softly, the dark-robed nuns, their rosaries jangling on the bare boards as they knelt, one by one, and kissed the tiny soft face of the child in the Superior’s arms. Bending close to the baby in the dim twilight which had now fallen on convent and garden, until the snowy linen about their calm faces fell with cold touch on the tiny hands, they scanned the childish features lovingly, and rose up one by one, bound by holy promises of tenderness and sympathy to the little one.
And so, before the evening primroses in the convent garden had shut up their pale faces for the night, and the cattle had been driven to their sheds on the hill, Freda Mulgrave was no longer motherless.
Theyears rippled away so quietly at the convent that Freda Mulgrave shot up into a slender girl of eighteen while yet the remembrance of her romantic arrival was fresh in the minds of the good sisters. During all this time her father had given no sign of interest in her existence beyond the transmission of half-yearly cheques to the Mother-Superior for her maintenance and education. When, therefore, she declared her wish to become a nun, and Captain Mulgrave’s consent was asked as scarcely more than a matter of form, his reply, which came by telegraph, filled Freda and her companions with surprise.
This was the message:
“Send my daughter to me immediately. Train to Dieppe; boat to Newhaven; train to Victoria, London; cab to King’s Cross; train to Presterby.“John Mulgrave,“St. Edelfled’s.”
“Send my daughter to me immediately. Train to Dieppe; boat to Newhaven; train to Victoria, London; cab to King’s Cross; train to Presterby.
“John Mulgrave,
“St. Edelfled’s.”
From the moment Freda read the telegram until the bitterly cold afternoon on which she found herself approaching her new Yorkshire home, the train labouring heavily through the snow, she seemed to live in a wild dream. She sat back in her corner, growing drowsy in the darkness, as the train, going more and more slowly, wound its way through a narrow, rock-bound valley, and at last entered a cutting down the sides of which the snow was slipping in huge white masses. The snorting of the two engines sounded louder, every revolution of the wheels was like a great heart-beat shivering through the whole train. Then the expected moment came, the engine stopped.
Freda heard the shouts of men as the passengers got out of the carriages, and then a rough-looking, broad-shouldered fellow climbed up to the door of her compartment, and called to her.
“Hallo! Hallo! Anybody here?” he cried, in a strange, uncouth accent. “Why, it’s t’ little lame lass, sewerly! Are ye all reeght?”
“Yes, thank you,” answered Freda. “An accident has happened, hasn’t it?”
“Ay, we’re snawed oop. Wheer were ye going to, missie? To Presterby?”
“Yes. Is it far?”
“A matter o’ nine mile or so.”
“And you don’t think we can get there to-night?”
“Noa. We’re fast. But there’s an inn nigh here, a little pleace, but better shelter nor this, an’ we could get food an’ foire theer. Ah’m afreed ye’ll find it rough getting through t’ snaw. But we must try an’ manage it, or ye’ll die o’ cawld.”
Freda hesitated.
“I suppose there’s no way of letting my father know!”
“Who is your father, missie?”
“Captain Mulgrave, of St. Edelfled’s, Presterby.”
The words were hardly out of her mouth when, as if by magic, a great change came over her companion. The hearty, good-natured, genial manner at once left him, and he became cold, cautious and quiet.
“Rough Jock’s daughter! Whew!” he whistled softly to himself.
“Rough Jock!” repeated Freda curiously. “That’s not my father’s name!”
“Noa, missie, but it’s what some folks calls him about here; leastways, so Ah’ve heerd tell,” he added cautiously. “Now,” he continued after a pause, “Ah’ll do what Ah can for ye. An’ ye’ll tell ‘Fox’—noa, Ah mean ye’ll tell Cap’n Mulgrave how ye were takken aht o’ t’ snaw-drift by Barnabas Ugthorpe.”
“Barnabas Ugthorpe!” softly repeated Freda, marvelling at the uncouth title.
“Ay, it’s not a very pretty neame, and it doan’t belong to a very pretty fellow,” said Barnabas, truly enough, “but to a honest,” he went on emphatically, with a large aspirate; “an’ me and my missis have ruled t’ roast at Curley Home Farm fifteen year coom next Martinmas, an’ my feyther and my grandfeyther and their feythers afore that, mebbe as long as t’ family o’ Captain Mulgrave has lived at Sea-Mew Abbey.”
Without further parley, the stout farmer opened the door; and taking the girl up, crutch and all, as if she had been a child, carried her along the line, up a steep path on to the snow-covered moor above, and across to a lonely-looking stone-built inn, into which the passengers from the snowed-up train were straggling in twos and threes.
The accommodation at the “Barley Mow” was of the most modest sort, and the proprietor, Josiah Kemm, a big, burly Yorkshireman, with a red face, seamed and crossed in all directions by shrewd, money-grabbing puckers, was at a loss where to stow this sudden influx of visitors. He opened the door of the little smoking-room, where the half-dozen travellers already penned up there made way for the lame girl beside the fire. One of them, a sturdily built middle-aged man, whose heart went out towards the fragile little lady, jumped up and said:
“Let me get you something hot to drink, and some biscuits.”
Freda’s new acquaintance was one of those men with “honest Englishman” writ large on bluff features and sturdy figure, whom you might dislike as aggressive and blunt in manner, but whom your instinct would impel you to trust. This little convent girl had no standard of masculine manners by which to judge the stranger, whose kindness opened her heart. He seemed to her very old, though in truth he was scarcely forty; and she babbled out all the circumstances of her life and journey to him with perfect confidence, in answer to the questions which he frankly and bluntly put to her.
“Mulgrave, Mulgrave!” he repeated to himself, when she had told him her name. “Of course, I remember Captain Mulgrave was the owner of the old ruin on the cliff at Presterby, popularly called ‘Sea-Mew Abbey.’ ”
“Yes, that’s it,” cried Freda, with much excitement. “That is my father. Oh, sir, what is he like? Do you know him?”
“Well, I can hardly say I know him, but I’ve met him. It’s years ago now though; I haven’t been in Yorkshire for nineteen years.”
“But what was he like then?”
“He was one of the smartest-looking fellows I ever saw. But he’s a good deal changed since then, so I’ve heard. I was only a youngster when I saw him, and he made a great impression upon me. Of course he was older than I, high up in his profession, while I hadn’t even entered upon mine.”
“And what is yours?” asked Freda simply.
“I have a situation under government,” he answered, smiling at her ingenuousness. “The way I came to hear of the change in Captain Mulgrave,” he went on, “was through a brother I have in the navy. Of course you have heard the circumstances: how Captain Mulgrave shot down four men in a mutiny——”
“What!” cried the girl in horror, “my father—killedfour men!”
“Oh, well, you are putting it too harshly—as the authorities did. Those who know best said that if only there had been one of our periodical war-scares on, a couple of shiploads of such fellows as he shot would have been better spared than a man of the stamp of Captain Mulgrave. But the affair ruined him.”
“My poor father!” whispered Freda tremulously.
“I believe you wouldn’t know him for the same man. But cheer up, little woman, perhaps your coming will waken up his interest in life again. I’m sure it ought to,” he added kindly.
“Oh,” she said in a low voice, “that is almost too good to hope; but I will pray that it may be so.”
She leant back wearily in her chair, her arms slipping down at her sides. Her friend rose and left the room, speedily returning with the landlady, an untidy, down-trodden looking woman, who shook her head at the suggestion that she should find a room for the lady upstairs.
“There’s a sofy in t’ kitchen wheer she can lie down if she’s tired. But there’s a rough lot in theer, Ah tell ye. And ye, mester, can bide here. They doan’t want for company yonder.”
The kitchen was a large, bare, stone-flagged room, with a wide, open fireplace and rough, greyish walls. From the centre-beam hung large pieces of bacon, tied up with string in the north-country fashion. On a bare deal table was a paraffin lamp with a smoke-blackened chimney. The only other light was that thrown by the wood-fire. Freda, therefore, could see very little of the occupants of the room. But their voices, and strong Yorkshire accent, told that they belonged to a different class from that of the travellers in the bar-parlor.
These men stood or sat in small groups talking low and eagerly. Mrs. Kemm upset Freda, rather than assisted her, on to the sofa, with a nod to her husband.
“She’s a soart o’ furreigner, and saft besides, by t’ looks on her. She’ll not mind ye.”
“Ah tell tha,” one of the men was saying to Kemm, “Rough Jock’s not a mon to play tricks with, either; tha mun be squeer wi’ him, or leave him aloan. Ah’ it’s ma belief he wouldn’t ha’ quarrelled wi’ t’ Heritages, if t’ young chaps hadn’t thowt they could best him. An’ see wheer they’ll be if he dew break off wi’ ’em! It’ll be a bad deay for them if he dew!”
“Ah tell tha,” said Kemm, doggedly, “he has broke off wi’ ’em. As for them chaps, they weren’t smart enough to do wi’ a mon loike Rough Jock. That’s wheer t’ mischief lay. They shouldn’t nivver ha’ tuk on wi’ him.”
“Ah’m thinking if they hadn’t tuk on wi’ him, they’d ha’ tuk on wi’ t’ workhouse; and that’s what it’ll coom to neow, if Rough Jock leaves ’em in t’ lurch, wi’ their proide and their empty larder! An’ thur’ll be wigs on t’ green tew, for Bob Heritage is a nasty fellow when his blood’s oop. Have a care, Josiah, have a care!”
“Oh, ay, Ah’m not afraid o’ Bob Heritage, nor o’ Rough Jock either; an’ me an’ him are loike to coom to an unnerstanding.”
“Weel, ye mun knaw yer own business, Kemm; but Ah wouldn’t tak’ oop wi him mysen,” said the third man, who had scarcely spoken.
“Not till ye gotten t’ chance, eh, lad?” said Josiah stolidly. “Coom an’ have a soop o’ ale; it shall cost ye nowt.”
He led the way out of the room; and the rest, not all at once, but by twos and threes and very quietly, followed him, until Freda was left quite alone. As she leaned upon her elbow, trying to piece together the fragments she had understood of the talk, she heard in the passage, to her great relief, a voice she recognised. It was that of her farmer friend, Barnabas Ugthorpe, who looked in at the kitchen door the next moment.
“Weel, lass,” he said, cheerily, “How are ye gettin on? T’ night’s cleared a bit, an’ Ah can tak’ ye on to Owd Castle Farm. T’ fowks theer are very thick wi’ Capt’n Mulgrave. It isn’t more’n a moile from here.”
Within ten minutes a cart was at the door, and they were on their way. The road lying over a smooth expanse of moorland, and the moon giving a little more light; it was not long before a very curious building came in sight, on rising ground a little to the east of the road as it went northwards.
The front of the house, which faced south, was long and singularly irregular. At each end were the still solid-looking remains of a round tower built of great blocks of rough-hewn stone, roofed in with red tiles. Both were lighted by narrow, barred windows. Between the towers ran an outer wall of the same grey stone, much notched and ivy-grown at the top, and broken through here and there lower down to receive small square latticed windows greatly out of character with the structure. Into a breach in this wall a very plain farm-house building had been inserted, with rough white-washed surface and stone-flagged roof.
Barnabas got down, raised the knocker and gave three sounding raps.
In a few moments Freda heard rapid steps inside, and a woman’s voice, harsh and strident, saying in a whisper:
“That’s not the Captain, surely!”
Freda turned quickly to her companion.
“Who are these people? What is their name?”
“Their neame’s Heritage,” said Barnabas.
Freda started. It was the name she had heard at the “Barley Mow” as that of the family who had quarrelled with “Rough Jock.”
Fredawatched the opening of the farmhouse door with dread, as there peeped out a man’s face, pale, flat, puffy, with light eyes and colourless light eyelashes. Freda took an instantaneous dislike to him, and tried to draw her companion back by the sleeve.
“What do you want at this time of night?” asked, the man pompously.
And Freda knew, by his speech and manner, that he was a man-servant, and that he was not a Yorkshireman. He now opened the door wider, and she saw that he was dressed in very shabby livery, that he was short and stout, and that a lady was standing in the narrow entrance-hall behind him. Barnabas caught sight of her too, and he hailed her without ceremony.
“Hey theer, missus,” he cried cheerily, “can Ah have a word with ’ee?”
Rather under than above the middle height, dressed plainly in a black silk gown, Mrs. Heritage was a woman who had been very pretty, and who would have been so still but for a certain discontented, worried look, which seemed to have eaten untimely furrows into her handsome features.
“Well, Mr. Ugthorpe, and what do you want?”
“Here’s a young gentlewoman without a shelter for her head, an’ Ah thowt ye would be t’ person to give it her.”
“Young gentlewoman—without shelter!” echoed the lady in slow, solemn, strident tones. “Why, how’s that?”
“I was snowed up in the train, madam, on my way to my father’s. And we are very sorry to have troubled you. Good-night.”
Very proudly the girl uttered these last words, in the high, tremulous tones that tell of tears not far off. While Barnabas stopped at the door to argue and explain, Freda was hopping back through the snow towards the lane as fast as she could, with bitter mortification in her heart, and a weary numbness creeping through her limbs.
Suddenly through the night air there rang a cry in a deep, full, man’s voice, a voice that thrilled Freda to the heart, calling to something within her, stirring her blood.
“Aunt, she’s lame! Don’t you see she’s lame?”
She heard rapid footsteps in the snow. As she turned to see who it was that was pursuing her, and at the same time raised her hand to dash away the rising tears and clear her sight, her little crutch fell. She stooped to grope in the snow, and instantly felt a pair of strong arms around her. Not Barnabas Ugthorpe’s. There was no impetuous acting upon impulse about Barnabas. And in the pressure of these unknown arms there seemed to Freda to be a kindly, protecting warmth and comfort such as she had never felt before.
“Who is it? Who are you?” she cried tremulously.
“Never mind, I’ve been sent to take care of you,” answered the voice.
Again it thrilled Freda; and she was silent, rather frightened. She gave one feeble struggle, seeing nothing through her tears in the darkness, and her ungloved hand touched a man’s moustache. To the convent-bred girl this seemed a shocking accident: she was dumb from that moment with shame and confusion. The good-humoured remonstrance of the unseen one caused her the keenest anguish.
“Oh, you ungrateful little thing. You’ve scratched my face most horribly, and I don’t believe there’s a bit of sticking-plaster in the house. Next time I shall leave you to sleep in the snow.”
“I—I am sorry. I beg your pardon,” she faltered. “I did not see.”
“All right. I’ll forgive you this once. Not that I think you’ve apologised half enough.”
At first she took this as a serious reproach, and wondered what she could say to soothe his wounded feelings. But the next moment, being quick-witted, she began dimly to understand that she was being laughed at, and she resolved to hold her peace until she could see the face of this creature, who was evidently of a kind quite new to her experience, with puzzling manners and a way of looking at things which was not that of the nuns of the Sacred Heart.
In a few moments Freda heard the voice of Barnabas thanking Mrs. Heritage for her good cheer as he came out of the house. Then she found herself put gently down on her feet inside the doorway, while she heard the strident tones of the lady of the house, asking her not unkindly whether she was wet and cold. But even her kindness grated on Freda; it was hard, perfunctory, she thought. There was all the time, behind the thoughtful hospitality for her unexpected guest, some black care sitting, engrossing the best of her. Mrs. Heritage hurried on, through a labyrinth of rooms and passages, to an oaken door, old and worm-eaten, studded with rusty nails.
“This room,” she said, turning back as the door rolled slowly inwards, “is the one wreck of decent life on which we pride ourselves. It is the old banqueting-hall of the castle. We took it into use, after an hundred and fifty years’ neglect, when we were obliged to come and bury ourselves here.”
It was a long and lofty room with a roof of oak so ancient that many of the beams were eaten away by age. The walls were of rough stone, hung, to a height of six feet from the ground, with worn tapestry, neatly patched and mended. The hall was lighted by six Gothic windows on each side, all of them ten feet from the ground. The furniture, of shabby and worm-eaten oak, consisted chiefly of a number of presses and settles, quaintly shaped and heavy-looking, which lined the walls. On one end of a long table in the middle, supper was spread, while at the further end of the hall a log-fire burned in a large open fireplace.
“Where is Richard?” asked Mrs. Heritage solemnly, just as the door was pushed open, and three or four dogs bounded in, followed by a tall young man in knickerbockers and a Norfolk jacket, with a dog-whip sticking out of his pocket. It was Freda’s unknown friend.
“Let me introduce you,” said his aunt. “My nephew, Mr. Richard Heritage to—— What is your name, child?”
Freda hesitated. Then, with the blood surging in her head, she answered in a clear voice:
“Freda Mulgrave.”
She had expected to give them a surprise; but she had not reckoned upon giving such a shock to Mrs. Heritage as the announcement plainly caused her. Dick, whose careless glance had, for some reason which she did not understand, pained her, at once turned to her with interest.
“You know my father. What is he like?” she ventured presently, in a timid voice, to Mrs. Heritage, when she had explained how she came to be travelling alone to Presterby.
“He is a tall, dignified-looking gentleman, my dear, with a silver-grey beard and handsome eyes.”
“And does he live all by himself?”
“I believe his establishment consists of a housekeeper, and her husband, who was one of his crew.”
“And decidedly a rough-looking customer, as you will say when you see him, Miss Mulgrave,” chimed in Dick. “This Crispin Bean, who belonged to Captain Mulgrave’s ship at the time of the—the little difficulty which ended in his withdrawing from the Navy, has followed him like a dog ever since. It’s no ordinary man who can inspire such enthusiasm as that,” he went on, as he stood by the big fireplace, and kicked one of the burning logs into a fresh blaze. “You must have noticed,” he said presently, “that the discovery of your being your father’s daughter had some special interest for us?”
“Yes, I did think so,” said Freda.
“You see,” Dick went on, pulling his moustache and twisting up the ends ferociously, “we’re very poor, poor as rats. It’s Free Trade has done it. We—my cousin and I—have to farm our own land; and as we can’t afford the railway rates, we sell what we produce to our neighbours. If they left off buying we couldn’t live. Well, my cousin and your father have had a quarrel, and we’re afraid Captain Mulgrave won’t buy of us any more. You understand, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes,” said Freda slowly, struggling with her sleepy senses. “He has quarrelled with your cousin, and so you’re afraid he’ll buy what he wants not from you but from Josiah Kemm.”
Both her hearers started violently, and Freda perceived that she had let out something he had not known.
“I stayed for an hour at an inn called the ‘Barley Mow,’ ” she explained, “and I heard something there which I think must have had some meaning like that. But perhaps I am wrong. I am tired, confused—I——”
Her voice grew faint and drowsy. Dick glanced at Mrs. Heritage.
“Don’t trouble your head about it to-night,” said he. “You are tired. Aunt, take Miss Mulgrave to her room. Good-night.”
And poor Freda, sleepy, contrite, was hurried off to bed.
Next morning she was down early, but she saw nothing of Dick. The mistress of the house read prayers in a tone of command rather than of supplication; and, as the servants filed out afterwards, she called the butler, and asked:
“What is this I hear about Master Richard’s going off on ‘Roan Mary’ at this time in the morning?”
“It’s a telegram he wants to send to Master Robert; and he has to ride to Pickering because the snow’s broken down the wires on this side,” answered Blewitt sullenly. “I saw the message. It said: ‘He is on with Kemm. Call on your way back.’ ”
Freda caught the name “Kemm.” She felt very uncomfortable, but nobody noticed her, and she was suddenly startled by an outbreak of sobs and moans from Mrs. Heritage, who had begun to pace up and down the room.
“That’ll do,” said Blewitt sullenly, “I’m going to have a talk with you, ma’am. We’d best have things square before your precious son Robert comes back. I want to know when I’m to have my wages. I don’t mean my thirty-five pounds a year for waiting at table, but the wages I was promised for more important work.”
“I will speak to Mr. Robert as soon as he returns, Blewitt,” said Mrs. Heritage, who was evidently in a paroxysm of terror. “I am quite sure——”
“That I shall get no good out ofhim,” went on Blewitt, doggedly. “Do you think I don’t know Mr. Robert? Why, miss,” and the man turned, with a sudden change of manner to deprecating respect, to Freda, “your father, Captain Mulgrave, knows what Mr. Robert is, and that’s why he’s made up his mind, like the wise gentleman he is, not to have anything more to do with him. AndI’vemade upmymind,” he went on with vicious emphasis, heeding neither Mrs. Heritage’s spasmodic attempts to silence him, nor the young girl’s timid remonstrances, “either to have my due or to follow his example.”
Freda had crept up, with her little crutch, to Mrs. Heritage’s side, and was offering the mute comfort of a sympathetic hand thrust into that of the lady.
“Run away, my dear child, run away,” whispered the latter eagerly.
The man went on in a brutal tone:
“I’m not such a fool as Master Dick, to stay here and be made a catspaw of, while your precious son goes off to enjoy himself. Why should some do all the work, and others——”
The rest of his sentence was lost to Freda, who had got outside the door into a great bare apartment beyond. Here, lifting the latch of a little modern door which most inappropriately filled an old Gothic doorway, she found herself, as she had expected, in the courtyard.
Fredacrossed the courtyard to one of the ruined corner-towers, and finding the staircase still practicable, continued her wanderings, with cautious steps, along the top of the broken castle-wall. She got along easily as far as the thatched roof of a big barn. But here her crutch slipped on the snow and went crashing through a tarpaulin-covered hole in the thatch, carrying its owner with it, into a loft half-filled with hay. There was no way of escape until somebody came by to rescue her. Freda therefore could do nothing but look down into the hazy light of the barn below; and presently, nursed into a comfortable warmth by the hay, she fell asleep.
She was awakened by being shaken pretty roughly, while a voice cried close to her ear:
“Now, then, I’ve got you; and if I let you get home with a whole bone in your little thievish body, you may think yourself jolly lucky, I can tell you.”
Having recognised the voice as Dick’s, Freda was not alarmed by the assumed ferocity of his tone. Besides, he had evidently mistaken her for somebody else. So she shook herself free from the hay, and sat up and looked at him. By that time he had got used to the gloom of the loft, and to her surprise, he drew back so quickly that he risked falling off the ladder. A little more contemplation, and then he murmured:
“Of course—it’s the hair!”
The net in which, in primitive fashion, she was accustomed to tuck away her hair, had been lost in her tumble through the roof, and her red-brown locks, which had a pretty, natural wave, had fallen about her ears and given to her pale face quite a new character. Dick, however, was not a young fellow looking idly at a pretty girl, but a man full of responsibilities and anxieties.
“You said last night,” he began abruptly, “that you had heard something at the ‘Barley Mow’ about us and your father. What was it?”
She answered in a low, modest voice, but without any fear.
“You say my father is quarrelling with you. You wish to find out all his movements. Then if I tell you about them, I am betraying my own father!”
“I warn you that your principles won’t agree with his any more than they do with mine. Do as youwould bedone by is what you were taught at the convent, I suppose. Do as youaredone by is the motto we live by here.”
“It seems very dreadful,” whispered Freda, “to do things that are wrong and not to mind!”
And the young man perceived that she had tears in her eyes.
“Don’t cry,” said he gently. “I shouldn’t have said what I have to you but that I wanted you to go back to your convent before you hear anything more to pain you. I want to take you to Presterby this afternoon, without your seeing my cousin Bob.”
“Ah!” cried Freda with a start. “Your cousin! Tell me, is he good to you? Are you fond of him?”
“Not particularly. That answer will do to both questions.”
“Then why do you stay here? Would it not be better for you to go away? They say—do they not say, that he makes you work for his advantage?”
He paused a few moments, and his face grew graver. Then he said abruptly: “Supposing I were to tell you that I am content to be taken advantage of, and that I’d rather live on here anyhow than like a prince anywhere else. I tell you,” he went on, with the ring of passion in his voice, “I love every foot of ground about here as you love your convent and your nuns; the stones of this old place are my religion. And so I shall live on here in some sort of hole-and-corner fashion, bringing grist to a mill that gives me neither honour nor profit, until——”
He stopped short. Freda was deeply moved; but she only asked him, in a constrained voice, if he would let her come down the ladder. He ran rapidly down, held the ladder firm for her, and gently assisted her as she came near the ground, taking her crutch and returning it to her when her feet touched the floor.
“Poor little lame girl!” said he softly, and the words brought sobs into her throat. “Why, you’re crying! I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
“No-o, no,” said Freda, drawing herself away. “Let me go, please.”
“Well, say that we’re friends first.”
Freda raised her eyes, but her glance passed Dick and remained fixed on a face that appeared at the window beyond. A young man, with sandy hair and moustache, was looking in with a cynical grin. Dick turned quickly, when he saw the change on the girl’s face. His own expression altered also.
“Bob! Back already!” he cried.
The young man had climbed in. Nodding at his cousin, with a glance at Freda which she found exceedingly offensive, he asked:
“Well, and who is the little girl?”
Perhaps the girl’s mind, having retained a child-like purity, was able at once to detect the taint in that of Robert Heritage; but certainly the persistent stare of his small grey eyes, which he honestly believed to be irresistible, affected her no more than the gleam of a couple of marbles; while every other feature of his face, from the obtrusively pointed nose to the thin-lipped mouth, seemed to her to betray ugly qualities, the names of which she scarcely knew. He, on his side, regarded her face with a bold, critical stare, which changed into contempt the moment he caught sight of her crutch. Dick grew red with anger.
“You didn’t get my telegram then?” he said shortly, interposing his person to shield the girl from his cousin’s impudent gaze.
“No, I got no telegram. What was it about?”
“Come into the house and I’ll tell you.”
He moved to the door. Robert would not let him open it.
“What! and interrupt your studies of the maim, the halt, and the blind?” he asked, in a low voice which, however, the girl’s quick ears caught.
Freda had been reprimanded at the convent for occasional outbursts of passion. But she had never yet felt the force of such a torrent of indignation as seemed to sweep through her frame at this, the first sneer at her infirmity she had ever heard. She scarcely noticed Dick’s angry remonstrance; but raising her flushed face to Robert, she said:
“You can sneer at me now. Perhaps you will not when I am in the house of my father, Captain Mulgrave.”
“Come, that’s rather strong, little girl,” he said coolly. “To be Mulgrave’s daughter—which you may be for anything I know—is one thing, but to live in his house is another. I can assure you he has made no preparations for your reception.”
His insolent tone stung Freda to a greater heat of passion.
“Perhaps you are not in my father’s confidence,” she said in a voice which shook a little. “If you had been, you might have known that he was going to visit Josiah Kemm.”
Without waiting to see the effect of her words, Freda ran out of the barn, across the court-yard, and up to the room she had slept in. There she put on her hat and cloak, and after waiting some time in fear lest she might be hunted out, stole out of the room and came, to her disgust, face to face with Blewitt. He had on a thick coat and riding-boots.
“I beg pardon, ma’am, but I was a-coming to inform you that I have been hordered by Mr. ’Eritage to go to the Abbey with a letter for your respected father, Captain Mulgrave. Now, ma’am, I should esteem it a honour to be sent to a gentleman like Captain Mulgrave on any hordinary errand. But knowing, as I happen to do, the himport of the letter, I feel it very different, I assure you, ma’am.”
Freda was too unsophisticated to guess by what simple means Blewitt had arrived at the knowledge he alluded to. But she was afraid he wanted to tell her something she ought not to hear, and she interrupted him hurriedly.
“Yes, I’m sure that all you say is quite—quite right,” she said nervously. “But I—I am going out, and I cannot——”
“You cannot stay under the roof of such people as them. Which I was sure, ma’am, that such would be your feelings. Barnabas Ugthorpe, the farmer, has been here with his cart a-inquiring after you; and I know where he is to be found now, if so be as you would like me to show you how to get out by a private door.”
“Oh, yes, please show me out,” cried Freda piteously, delighted at the thought of seeing her rough friend, whom she hoped to persuade to take her on to the Abbey.
“I will do so, ma’am,” answered Blewitt, who by this promise forced her to listen to him. “And if you could say a good word to the Captain for me that would induce him for to take a hard-working man into his service, why, I could tell him a many little tales about the goings on in this house which would astonish him, and just show him how he misplaced his confidence in some people I could name.”
“How can you think my father could listen to such things!” Freda broke out indignantly.
“Well, ma’am, gentlemen’s ways is not always straight ways, when they wants pertic’ler to know things,” said Blewitt, drily though respectfully. “But the Captain’s a ’asty and ’aughty sort of gentleman as you don’t always quite know where to have him! and when he gets this letter, which threatens to do for him if he don’t give up all dealings with Josiah Kemm immediate, why he’ll be in such a taking that he’ll be more likely to do for me than to listen to anything what I can say.”
“Why do you take the letter then?”
The fact was that Mr. Blewitt did not wish to be off with the old love until he was quite sure of being on with the new. He put this to Freda, however, in a nobler light.
“You see, ma’am,” said he, “so long as I take Mr. ’Eritage’s wages, I must carry out his horders.”
“Yes, of course, of course,” said Freda, with almost a shriek of delight as Blewitt opened a little side-door and she found herself out of the house, standing in the snow under the grey old outer wall.
She found Barnabas just driving off from one of a group of cottages at the bottom of the lane. At her cry he stopped, waiting for her to come up.
“Barnabas!” she cried, quivering with anxiety, “won’t you drive me over to the Abbey? Oh, do, do! You will, won’t you?”
The farmer scratched his ear.
“Happen one o’ t’ young gentlemen ’ll droive ye over.”
“Oh no,” said Freda quickly. “I wouldn’t go back there for anything in the world!”
The farmer grinned, nodded, helped Freda into his cart, and started off at a much better pace than they had made with Josiah Kemm’s old mare the night before.
“Weel, lassie,” he said, as they jogged along, “ye’ve made a better conquest nor any scapegrace of a Heritage. That theer swell that was so kind to ye at t’ ‘Barley Mow,’ he’s gone clear creazed about ye. When Ah left ye at t’ farm last neght, Ah fahnd him on t’ road, mahnding for to get to Presterby. Ah towd him he couldn’t the neght, an’ Ah tuck him back; an’ t’ missus, when she’d satisfied herself he warn’t a woman in disguise, was moighty civil. An’ he said sooch things abaht yer having a sweet little feace, an’ he said he should call at t’ Abbey to see ye.”
“Barnabas,” said Freda suddenly, “why did you look so mysterious last night when I told you that he had something to do with the government?”
The farmer gave her an alarmed glance, as he had done the night before, and said in a cautious tone:
“Ye’ve gotten a pair of sharp ears, an’ they hear more’n there’s ony need. Ye didn’t reeghtly unnerstand, lass.”
After this there came a long pause, during which Freda puzzled herself as to what the inhabitants of this district had been doing, to have such a fear of the government. It was getting dark when Barnabas broke the long silence by saying, as he pointed with his whip to the summit of a hill they were about to ascend:
“T’ Abbey’s oop top o’ theer.”
Freda was too much agitated to answer except by a long-drawn breath. The Abbey! Her father’s home! A terrible presentiment, natural enough after the scant experience she had had of his care, told her that there was no welcome waiting. She crouched down in the cart and clung to the farmer’s arm.
“Barnabas,” she whispered, “I’m afraid to go on. Drive slowly; oh, do drive slowly!”
But the robust farmer only laughed and jogged on at the same pace. The road, however, grew in a few minutes so steep that they could only proceed very slowly, and Barnabas got down to lead the horse and lighten his burden as he ploughed his way up. Traffic between the little town of Presterby and its neighbours had been so much hindered by the blockade of snow, that there were no wheel-marks on the white mass before them.
“Soomun’s been riding oop a horseback, though,” said Barnabas, as he looked at the print of hoofs.
“Perhaps the man Blewitt from the farm,” suggested Freda. “He said he was going to ride to the Abbey.”
“Oh, ay,” said the farmer with interest. “If he was cooming, noa doubt it’s him. Hey,” he went on, in a different tone, “Ah think Ah hear his voice oop top theer! He’s fell aht wi’ soomun by t’ sounds, Ah fancy.”
He stopped the cart a moment to listen. Plainly both Freda and he could hear the voices of men in angry discussion, the one coarse and loud, the other lower and less distinguishable.
“My father!” cried Freda, trembling.
“A’ reeght, lass, a’ reeght; doan’t ye be afraid. We’ll be oop wi ’em in a breace o’ sheakes.”
“Barnabas! Make haste, make haste! They’re quarrelling, fighting perhaps!” cried the girl in passionate excitement.
“Weel, Ah’ll go and see,” answered the farmer who, knowing more than his little companion did of the reckless and violent character of the disputants, was in truth as much excited as she was.
“He’s carrying a letter which he said would enrage my father!” cried Freda in a tremulous voice to Barnabas, who was already some paces ahead, running up the hill as fast as he could.
The road lay between stone walls of fair height, and was full of curves and windings; so that it would have been impossible, even in broad daylight, for the farmer to see the two men until he was close upon them. He was not yet out of Freda’s sight when a sharp report, followed by a second, and then by a hoarse cry, broke upon their ears. There was silence for a moment, and then the sound of galloping hoofs upon the snow. A riderless horse, bearing a man’s saddle, came down the hill, with nostrils dilated and frightened eyes. Barnabas, who considered a horse as rather more a fellow-creature than a man, set to work to stop the animal before making his way to the human beings. This accomplished, he tied the horse to the gate of a field a few yards higher up, and quickening his pace again, reached the top of the hill.
Here, in the middle of the road, were two figures, the one prone on the ground, the other kneeling in the snow beside him.
The kneeling man started and rose to his feet as Barnabas came up. He held in his left hand an open letter, and in his right a revolver, which, without resistance, he allowed the farmer to take.
“Captain Mulgrave!”
The Captain only nodded. Barnabas went down in the snow beside the second figure. He was on his face, but Barnabas knew, even before he attempted to raise him, that it was Blewitt, the servant from Oldcastle Farm.
He was dead.
Theunfortunate Blewitt had never, in his lifetime, excited the liking or respect of any one. Selfish and mean, he had been tolerated because he was useful to his employers, who mistrusted him, and feared and avoided by the rest of his neighbours. But these facts, so it seemed to Barnabas Ugthorpe, heightened the tragedy of the man-servant’s death. The honest farmer could not have expressed his thought in words, he but felt that the poor wretch whose body lay at his feet had somehow lost his chance forever.
As Barnabas stood there, considering the sight before him, Captain Mulgrave, who had not uttered a word, turned quickly, and was about to climb over the stone wall to the right, on his way back to the Abbey, when he felt a strong hand on his shoulder.
“Not quite so fast, Capt’n,” said Barnabas drily, “Ah want yer opinion o’ this metter.”
“My opinion is,” said Captain Mulgrave, shortly, “that this is the most d—d mysterious thing I ever saw. And I’ve seen a few queer things in my life too.”
“Aye,” said Barnabas, “it’s a bad job this.”
He continued to stare at the dead man, and never once raised his eyes to the face of his living companion.
“Well,” said the Captain, after a long silence, “you don’t ask me to tell you how I found him?”
“Noa, sir, Ah doan’t,” said Barnabas drily.
“Well, why not?”
“Weel,” said the farmer, scratching his ear, “Ah doan’t knaw as Ah should knaw so mooch more’n Ah did afore.”
“You wouldn’t take my word then?”
“Ah doan’t know as, oonder t’ circumstances, Ah’d tek t’ word o’ any gentleman.”
“You think I had a hand in this man’s death?”
Barnabas paused a long time, still looking at the body, still scratching his ear.
“Aye, sir, it dew look like it,” he admitted at last.
“Well, at first sight it, dew,” mimicked Captain Mulgrave in a lighter tone than the farmer thought becoming. “But I tell you it’s all d—d nonsense, I was coming down here to see what state the roads were in, and I heard men’s voices, and then two shots. I was half-way across that field. I ran, got over the wall, and found the fellow lying like this, with the revolver in his hand. I took it up, and found that two chambers had been discharged. I looked up and down the lane, but I couldn’t see any one.”
“Noa,” said Barnabas with a movement of the head, “Ah should suppose not.”
He bent down over the body again, examining it.
“He’s shot in t’ back. Did it hissen, most loike.”
“Now what reason have you for supposing I shot him?”
“Weel, sir, asking yer pardon, but to begin with, ye’ve gotten t’ name o’ being free wi’ them things.” And he raised the revolver, which he still held in his hand. “Then, sir, Ah happen to knaw as he came to bring ye a letter as were not loike to put ye into a good humour.”
He glanced at the letter which Captain Mulgrave held.
“I don’t know how you came to hear about this letter, but you’re quite right as far as that is concerned. Only the man did not give it me; I found it on his dead body.”
“Ye found it moighty quick then, Capt’n. That’s not t’ weay moast on us cooms nigh a dead mon, to begin rummaging in ’s pockets before he’s cawld.”
“As to that, I guessed he’d come on an errand to me and had some message about him. And why should I have more respect for the fellow dead than I had for him alive? His carcase has no more value in my eyes than that of a carrion crow.”
“It’ll have a deal more, though, in t’ eyes of a jury, Capt’n.”
“Do you mean to try to hang me then, honest Barnabas?”
“Ah mean to tell what Ah seen, an’ leave it to joodge an’ jury to seay what they thinks on it.”
“And knowing me for such a desperate character you dare to tell me this to my face?”
“Happen Ah shouldn’t be so bold, but Ah gotten t’ revolver mysen.”
And Barnabas glanced at the weapon in his hand.
Captain Mulgrave laughed a little, and both men stood silent considering.
“I can’t think who can have had such a grudge against the poor devil as to shoot him,” he said at last, as if to himself. “It must have been some one on foot, for there are no hoof-marks about but those of the horse he was riding.”
Barnabas said nothing. With one steady look at Captain Mulgrave as if to tell him that he hadn’t done with him yet, the farmer examined the footprints in the snow round about. There were marks neither of wheels nor of hoofs further than this point, but there were footprints both of men and children, for this was the high road between Presterby and Eastborough, the next important town southwards along the coast.
“Aye,” said the farmer, when he had finished his inspection, “it mun ha’ been some one afoot, Capt’n, as you say.”
Captain Mulgrave had been considering the aspect of the affair, and he looked more serious when Barnabas uttered these words.
“Barnabas,” he said at last, “I begin to see that these devils, with their confirmed prejudice against me, may make this a serious business.”
“Aye, so Ah’m thinking too.”
“Give a dog a bad name, you know. Because I shot down four rascals in self-defence, I’m considered capable of depopulating the county in cold blood.”
“Aye, that be so. Leastweays we knaw ye doan’t hawd human loife seacred.”
“Well, and that’s true enough,—I don’t. There are men whom I should consider it justifiable to exterminate like vermin.”
“Weel, sir, we moast on us thinks that in our seacret hearts, only we moightn’t knaw wheer to stop if we let ourselves begin. But when we foind a mon wi’ t’ courage o’ these opinions, we have to put a stop to his little games pretty quick. It’s not that Ah bear ye any ill-will, Capt’n, quoite t’ contrary: ye have t’ sympathy of all t’ coontry-soide, as ye knaw. But we must draw t’ loine soomwheer, an’ Ah draw it at murder.”
“You won’t take my word?”
“Can’t, Capt’n.”
“Will you take my money?”
“Noa, sir.”
“What are you going to do then? Go down into the town and set the police after me?”
Barnabas looked for a few moments puzzled and distressed. He would have given this high-handed gentleman into custody without a moment’s hesitation if it had not been for his little daughter, now on her way to her unknown home all unconscious of the tragedy which darkened it. On the other hand, he shrank from giving her into the care of a man whose hands were reeking with the guilt of a most cowardly murder. After pondering the matter, an idea struck him, and he raised his head with a clear countenance.
“Ah’ll haud my toongue aboot this business, if so be ye’re ready to mak’ a bargain.”
“Name your price then.”
“My price is that ye’ll give us yer room in these parts instead of yer coompany. Ye’ve gotten a yacht, Capt’n, an’ a rich mon’s weays o’ gettin’ aboot an’ makhin’ yerself comfortable. So Ah’m not droiving a hard bargain. But ye mun be aht of t’ Abbey by to-morrow, an’ all ye gotten to do is to mak’ soom provision for your little darter.”
Captain Mulgrave was more startled by the three last words than by all the rest of the farmer’s speech.
“My little daughter!” he repeated in a scoffing tone. “Yes, I’d forgotten her. But what do you know about her, eh?”