"All the same, I don't care for a man as hides behind hisself like that wool-stapler do. The Devil's got his corner in him, same as he have in every mother's son of us."
"He may have cast him out, however," ventured Putt.
"Cast him out at five-an'-thirty years of age—an' him a bachelor! No fey."
"Well, he ban't bound to belittle hisself before the likes of us," said Putt.
"Here he be, anyway," added Beer, for Grace and Peter now approached.
She was finishing the tragic history of Childe as she rode beside him.
"And so the monks of Tavistock found the poor frozen gentleman where this cross now stands, and they took him away that he might be buried in their town, for under his last will and testament those who buried him were to possess all his estates. Others sought then to gain the body; but the good monks were too clever for them, and inherited the lands of Plymstock."
"Ah! 'they must rise betime, or rather not go to bed at all, that will overreach monks in matters of profit,' as Fuller observes."
"The people hereabout call it 'Childe's Tomb,' yet it can only be a cenotaph, if the story is true."
"The whole thing is a legend, be sure. We shall never know the real use of this cross," answered Peter.
"But might easily find a new one," said Mr. Kekewich, who walked beside Grace on his way to the workers. "Them stepstones be just the very thing we're wanting to bridge the river here."
"Oh, Kek! how can you?" cried Grace.
"Pull down a cross? Tut, tut, iconoclast!" exclaimed Mr. Norcot.
"You may use wicked words, but stone be stone," answered the head man of Fox Tor Farm sulkily; "an' what was one way of marking a grave in the old time may very well stand for a bridge to-day. Look at they fools! What do they think they be doing?"
Woodman heard the question.
"We'm making a ford, and you'm the fool, not us," he replied stoutly.
"What did the master say? Tell me that," asked Kekewich.
"He said 'a bridge,' for I heard him," declared Norcot.
"Ess, he did, an' when he sez 'bridge' he don't mean 'ford'; an' when he sez 'steer' he don't mean 'heifer,' do he? A bridge has got to be builded. So the sooner you fetch gunpowder an' go 'pon the Moor to blast out a good slab of stone as'll go across here without a pier, the better."
"He don't always say what he mean, all the same," retorted Putt, who was in a fighting mood. "Yesterday he told me I was a pink-eyed rabbit, good for nought, an' this marning he called it back, an' said he was sorry he'd spoke it. That shows."
"That shows he can change his own mind; it don't show the likes of you can change it for him. Here he comes, anyway, an' what I say, I say: that thicky cross-steps would make a very tidy bridge, an' save a week's work."
"You'd touch that cross!" gasped Smallridge. "You—a foreigner from Exeter!"
"Us have a right to it."
"No man have a right to a stone once 'tis fashioned into a cross; an' if you was a Christian 'stead of a crook-backed heathen, you'd know it an' if a finger be laid against it, I'd not give a straw for the future of any man amongst us," cried Uncle Smallridge, rising to his feet in great agitation.
"Fright childer with your twaddle, not a growed-up soul," answered Kekewich. "But no call to shake your jaw an' bristle up your old mane like that. My word ban't law. Here the master cometh, an' you'm like to hear more than will be stomachable when he sees what you've been doing."
"The fault was mine, and I'll take the blame," answered Richard Beer. "You men bide quiet an' let his anger fall upon me."
Grace and Norcot, not desiring to see the labourers' discomfiture, rode away, and a moment later Maurice Malherb arrived upon the scene. His strong face, scarred with passion uncontrolled, grew dark again now, and the kindly look vanished from his eyes as the customary storm-cloud of black eyebrow settled upon them.
"What are you doing? What means this digging?" he asked.
"'Tis me as done it, your honour," answered Beer. "I thought as a ford——"
"A ford! What business have you to dare to think? I said a bridge."
"The stone——"
"Look round you, you lazy rascal! Stone—stone—curse the stone! Scratch the ground anywhere, and it grins at you with its granite teeth! Let that bridge be finished by sundown or clear out, the whole pack of ye! A ford! And had I said 'ford' you would have built a bridge!"
Mr. Beer grew pale behind his beard, but did not reply, and Mr. Woodman also kept his temper and addressed his son.
"Go an' harness two bullocks to a truckamuck,"[*] he said, "an' you, Putt, slip up to the shed an' get some irons as you'll find there."
[*]Truckamuck: A sort of sledge.
Then he turned to his master and spoke again—
"Us'll set to work this instant moment, your honour."
"That's well—by sundown, mind."
Malherb was riding off when old Smallridge addressed him, and the ancient man precipitated the very accident he feared.
"An' if it please you, your honour's goodness, I do pray as you won't let no hand touch this here holy tomb. Kekewich, as be grey enough to know better, have said that the stepstones would make a very tidy bridge an' save labour; but t'others tell me you never pay no heed to him, an' I hope your honour won't now."
The two old men glared at each other, and Malherb answered. What he heard was nearly true, but that he heard it from Uncle Smallridge instantly angered him. That the labourers should have perceived how Kekewich was ignored—that these hirelings should note their master's indifference to the wisdom of his servitor—again awoke Malherb's temper.
"They say I don't heed Kekewich? Then they lie. Kek's little finger holds more sense than all their stupid heads together."
Whereon Mr. Kekewich shone around him as the sun emerging from a cloud.
"That cross there—good wrought stone wasted," he explained. "They steps might have been made for the bridge we want. So I told 'em; an' all they did was to show the whites of their silly eyes."
The master reflected but a moment; then he issued a command. He spoke in the name of reason—a favourite expedient with the unreasonable.
"Good practical sense. Now we'll see if I run counter to Kekewich. He's right and you're wrong. Here are stones lying useless on my land, and I want even such for a purpose. Reason points to them, and I will use them. Pull down that cross and build my bridge."
"I'd rather take other stones and chance the extra work," said Richard Beer uneasily.
"Pull down that pile there and build my bridge before nightfall, or go your way—all of you," repeated Malherb. Then he departed and left the workers to make decision.
"An' the cross itself, if us knocks off one arm, will be just what we want for the pigs' house!" cried Kekewich triumphantly.
"For God's love throw down your tools and come away!" begged Smallridge, his ancient voice rising into a scream. "Turn your backs upon this place before it's too late."
"Hop off! Hop off an' croak somewhere else, you old raven!" replied Kek indignantly. "Let these men use their brains without your bleating. Ban't I old too? 'Tis vain growing old unless you grow artful with it. If they have got their intellects, they won't mind you."
"Nor you—you limb of the Devil," groaned Smallridge. "You—with his pitchfork in your forehead. I wish to God I'd never heard tell of you."
Kekewich turned from him to Harvey Woodman and the rest.
"'Tis up ten o'clock," he said, "an' you strong men in the prime of life have got to decide what you'll do about it, not this tootling old mumphead here. Use your sense an' say whether you'll look for a new master an' mistress an' seven shilling a week, or bide here with better money an' corn an' cider an' all the fatness of the earth. I'll speak no word; only I might remind you, Beer, an' you, Woodman, that you've got wives—that's all."
"Then 'tis for us to decide," said Woodman solemnly—"us four: me, Beer, Putt, and you, Mark Bickford. Here us stands. Now you have your tell first, Thomas Putt, 'cause you'm the youngest."
"I'm a poor tool for such a job, an' I shan't say nothing," answered Putt. "I'll abide by what you men do."
"So much for you then," said Woodman. "Us knows you haven't got more sense than, please God, you should have, yet 'tis a question whether you did ought to let another man keep your conscience. Now, Bickford, what's your view?"
Mr. Bickford, a man of colourless mind in the affairs of life, showed sudden and unexpected strength of purpose.
"I guess I'll bide an' pull the cross down," he said. "Master do clapper-claw a bit, but he pays me eight shilling a week; an' where I gets such money as that 'tis my duty to stop. You may squeak," he added to Uncle Smallridge, who uttered an inarticulate exclamation of misery at his decision, "but I be keeping company; an' I also be keeping my old bed-lying mother out o' the poorhouse. An' I'd pull down fifty crosses afore I'd lose eight shilling a week. If there's a mischief in it, ban't of my brewing."
"Well, then, 'tis for me an' you, Harvey," proceeded Richard Beer. "An' since I'm the older man, I'll come last an' wind up on it when you've spoke your mind."
"A man like me with a wife an' son be in the worse fix of all," declared Woodman moodily. "If evil follows, I may be twisting a scourge for the next generation, whereas you that be childless can only catch it in your own case an' Dinah's. Still, to go back to peat-cutting after Fox Tor Farm is a great fall."
"The Devil's tempting you, Harvey!" cried Mr. Smallridge.
"Shut your mouth, or I'll hit 'e on it!" retorted Kekewich savagely. "Leave 'em to fight it out. They've got to do their duty, an' I'd like to know whenever the A'mighty punished any man for doing that?"
"There's my duty to my master an' my duty to my conscience. 'Tis our duty to our master to do what he pays us to do; and us be paid to work, not to think," argued Woodman.
"If evil's to be hatched, us won't catch it," declared Bickford. "When a man sets a rick on light, ban't the flint an' steel they has up for arsony, but the chap hisself. We'm no more than the flint an' steel in this matter."
"We've got immortal parts, however," argued Beer. "We may hide our bodies behind another chap; but can us hide our souls? What I want to know is the nature of the harm we'll do. What's the name of it?"
"'Tis insulting the Lord of Hosts," said Uncle Smallridge tremulously.
"Gammon!" answered Kekewich. "'Tis obeying them as the Lord have set in authority over you. We've got to do with a dead stone; an' the chap who be buried here found his way to heaven or hell long afore the Lord, in a weak moment, let your parents get a fool like you."
"'Tis the shape that shakes us, not the stone," explained Woodman; "an' I wish you'd decide an' have done with it, Richard Beer. We are ready to go by you, for 'tis well knowed that you've a conscience as works so active as your skin in harvest time."
"Well," replied Beer, "I can't see no flaw in what Bickford said. My conscience is allowed pretty peart, I believe; an it don't give me a twinge in this matter; though I'd much rather not do it all the same."
"Suppose the lightning struck us," suggested Putt, and Beer scanned the sky.
"Can't without a Bible miracle; an', good or bad, the size of this job be too small for that. What harm falls will most surely fall 'pon master, not us."
"If I thought Miss Grace would suffer, I'd see the stone rot to dust afore I'd touch it," declared Putt.
"Whether or no, we've got to pull down Childe's Tomb, an' make a bridge; an' my conscience, an' my wages, an' my common sense all point the same way, so here goes," summed up Mr. Beer.
"I'm with you," said Bickford.
"An' me too," added Putt; "an' come Judgment Day, if there's a sharp word said to me, I shall name your name, Dick Beer."
"An' you, Harvey?"
For answer Mr. Woodman turned to the sledge that his son had brought up. From this he took a rope and some long irons.
"Come on! Let's get it over. Once the cross be down, our minds will grow easier. 'Tis the shape, I tell you, as makes us so weak for a moment."
"God forgive you, souls!" cried Smallridge; "an' mind, when you'm wading waist-deep in trouble, that it weren't no fault of mine. Bide till I be out of sight, that's all. Then you an' this here crooked old Apollyon can go to your wicked work."
He looked at Kekewich, shook his head at the doomed monument, and hobbled away as fast as his legs would carry him.
"Us had better all spit over our left shoulders for luck," said Mr. Beer; "then we can begin. An' see that all four of us hang upon the rope together, so as the work an' the pay be equally divided."
Harvey Woodman's young son prepared to give assistance, but his father roughly bade him begone.
"You drop that rope an' get up to the farm to your mother," he said. "She'll find you a job. Us don't want you to-day."
The destruction of Childe's Tomb awoke no protest upon the county-side, for antiquaries had not yet turned their attention to the interesting and obscure relics of former ages scattered over Dartmoor. A few intelligent men mourned that another mediæval landmark had been sacrificed to the advance of civilisation; then the matter was forgotten, save at Fox Tor Farm, where great unrest still reigned among the workers.
The women exhibited chief concern; but while Annabel and Grace Malherb showed sentimental regret and the master laughed at them for their folly, Dinah Beer and Mary Woodman took a far more serious view of the incident, and reduced their husbands to the extremity of uneasiness. They foretold disaster upon all concerned; Mr. Kekewich they specially tormented, and declared that, as arch instigator of the outrage, upon him the first grief must fall. He cared nothing; but Richard, Harvey, and others went in growing fear. They longed for weeks and months to pass that they might be removed by time from the hour of their evil deed; then, as each uneventful day dwindled and each night passed by, they drew a little nearer toward peace of mind. After a month had passed they plucked up spirit and faced the unseen with steadier gaze.
"Another week gone an' nothing said," whispered Putt one morning to Harvey Woodman, where they worked at wall-building. He glanced sideways up to heaven as he spoke with a gesture of suspicion.
"No—the world goes on very easy. What did Peter Norcot give 'e for taking the pack-horse with his leather boxes back to Chaggyford?"
"There again—good luck surely. A crown I got by it; an' I ate my meat with Mason's mother an' sister who live there. Mason be Mr. Norcot's man, and his sister is called Tryphena. An' I be going over again, for she said, when I axed her, that pinky rims to the eyes didn't stand against a chap in her judgment. She thought 'twas a beauty, if anything. Her be a few year older'n me; but that often works very well, an' keeps down the family."
"You'd best to be careful, all the same," said Woodman. "The woman as you meets half-way, often makes you go t'other half afore you think you've started."
"I won't hear no word against that female from you or any man," declared Thomas Putt, growing very red.
"From me you certainly won't, seeing as I never heard tell of her afore this minute," replied Woodman calmly. "Only, as a married man, I say go slow. When a girl tells you such eyes as yourn be beautiful, she's getting to that state of mind when they put a home of their own afore truth and common sense an' everything."
Putt was about to answer rather warmly when Richard Beer appeared. His beard blew about him; his eyes were sunk into his head, and dull care stared from them.
"It's come!" he said. "I've held my peace these twenty-four hours; an' longer I will not. The ill luck have set in! There's no more doubt about it."
"Have it hit you?" asked Putt, his anger vanishing; "because if so, us ban't safe neither."
"Not directly. It strikes the farm. There's scores o' dozens o' moles in the meadow; and the rats have come to the pig-styes in an army."
"They be natural things," declared Putt. "You might expect 'em. Where there's pigs there's rats."
"Yes, but not like a plague. They've come up in a night, same as them frogs in Egypt."
"You'm down-daunted about nought," answered Woodman. "Read what some of they Bible heroes had to suffer. There's nought like dipping into the prophet Job when you'm out of heart with your luck. 'Twill make you very contented. My gran'faither always read Job slap through after he'd had a row wi' the Duchy."
"As for me, I shall bide wi' the man so long as he can pay wages," said Putt.
They passed to their work; and elsewhere Maurice Malherb, not ignorant of the verminous inroad upon fields and styes, was debating whether he should sink his pride and summon Leaman Cloberry. But while time passed by and he hesitated, there came a post and tidings so momentous that the rats and moles were forgotten.
Now, indeed, did trouble like an armed man break in on Fox Tor Farm; the light of the Malherbs vanished, and their hope set in lasting sorrow. Noel Malherb, serving under Sir Rowland Hill, with the right of Lord Wellington's army in the Peninsula, had fallen before Vittoria.
Annabel and her daughter took this grief into secrecy, and were hidden from the world through many weeks; Malherb fought it down, and concealed his emotion from all eyes. He laughed not less seldom, he fell into anger more often than of yore.
"Pharaoh cracked his heart when his first was took," said Woodman to Kekewich; "but this man——"
"His heart's hid in his breast, not open to your eye," answered the other. "His heart be cracked all right, though he don't come to us an' say so. But I know—by the voice of 'un, an' the long, lonely rides he takes all about nothing, an' his look when he stares at his darter—a miser's eyes—same as that old mully-grub Lovey Lee when she claws a bit of money."
"'Childe's Tomb' have done its work—Uncle Smallridge didn't lie."
"Seeing as this poor young gentleman was shot down and dust in his grave weeks an' weeks afore we touched the cussed cross—for I heard master say so—you'll allow you're talking foolishness."
"The Lord can work backwards so easy as he can work forwards. Miss Grace will be the next, you mark me."
"Norcot'll have her come presently," said Kekewich. "She've got to wipe her mother's tears for the present. This here cruel come-along-of-it have cut ten years off the life of Missis."
The ancient spoke truth, for Annabel Malherb's sufferings under her great trial proved terrible. They were more objective than her husband's. The family and the race were nothing to her; she only knew that a French bullet had taken the life of her firstborn, and she would never look into his brown eyes again or put her cheek against his. Even her boy's beloved dust was buried within the hecatombs of Spain, and her tears would never fall upon his grave. But Malherb, beside this present misfortune of his son's sacrifice for the country, had a deeper and more lasting pang of ambition blighted and hope for ever dead. He had toiled in vain; he had lifted this stout dwelling as a heritage for none. Presently his daughter would wed with Norcot, and no young eyes of his own race would see the larches and Scotch firs of his planting grow into trees; no heir would note the ebony and golden lichens write dignity and age upon his roof of slate, nor see the mosses mellow his granite walls. Aliens must follow and the name of Malherb would vanish, like the fragrant memory of last year's fern.
Then, within six weeks of the ill tidings, a great conceit suddenly flashed upon Malherb; and as the Witch of Endor called forth that awful shade of Samuel to her own admiration, so did this man raise the unexpected spirit of a thought. Suddenly, amidst the mean and familiar imaginings of life, uprising like a giant from among the dwarfish throng of practical and common notions, there stalked tremendous an Idea; and he stood astonished before it, appraised its magnitude and welcomed it for an inspiration from the Gods.
This fancy came to Malherb as he pursued the prosaic business of casting figures; and he threw down his pen, picked up his hat, and hastened into the little walled garden of the farm to find his wife. He longed to tell of this message that seemed to point to peace; but his impatience was not set at rest for the space of hours. Mrs. Malherb had ridden out on a pillion behind Mr. Beer, and Dinah could say nothing of their destination.
Irritated at the accident, Maurice himself strode on to the Moor, and proceeded towards Fox Tor, that he might note his wife returning and reach her as quickly as possible.
His way took him past a favourite haunt of his daughter's, and when he reached the broken stonework of the tor, Malherb surprised Grace in serious conversation with a young man.
The girl had gone out alone to pass her summer hours with mournful thoughts. The horizon of her life was clouded now, and already sorrow in the present and cares for the future robbed her young days of their former contentment. Her heart was warm—a delicious empty chamber that awaiteth one as yet unknown. Beyond the dark grief of her brother's death, another now lurked, and Time, that should have dawdled with her in these rosy hours of youth, while yet her heart had never throbbed to one loved name, raced fast and pitiless as the east wind. Down his closing avenues, outlined immediately ahead, stood one at the horizon of her life, appeared a man as the goal and crown of her maiden race. There beamed the neat, trim, and amiable apparition of Mr. Peter Norcot. It was no precocity that forced poor Grace into thinking so much of love, while yet she knew it not; but in her esteem, love and marriage embraced the same idea, and now she marvelled mutely to find not love, but a very active aversion reigning in her mind against the wool-stapler. Her father's attitude and repeated assurances that wed with Peter she must, had thus thrown her thoughts upon the affairs of womenkind, herself not yet a woman. But love haunted her, and wonder concerning it. The chance young squire, who visited Fox Tor Farm, had been fluttered to his green heart's core could he have seen what was in Grace's mind or behind her drooping lids. With interest she regarded the better-looking amongst her father's visitors, wondered who loved them beside their mothers, speculated as to what would happen if some sudden, invisible spark flashed from their bosoms and found fuel within her own.
One friend she had, and he was a boy even as she was a girl. John Lee belonged to the people, yet he revealed a different mien from them. The common speech was upon his tongue, the common clothes of earth-colour hid his shapely form; yet he had a way of speaking the one and wearing the other that set a mark of distinction upon him. This lad possessed more imagination than diligence; he knew the Moor with a different knowledge to that of Beer, or Woodman, or Leaman Cloberry. He had garnered its legends and its mysteries. He understood something of the spirit of the eternal hills; he loved
Their colours and their rainbows and their clouds,And their fierce winds and desolate liberty."
He could read, and owned a book or two hidden in the hay-loft where he dwelt outside his grandmother's cottage. He called the plants by their local names, and was skilled in the lore of wild things and the weather.
Grace found him very agreeable company and, upon first mentioning at home that she sometimes met and spoke with him, her father did not take it amiss.
"Get the boy to tell you where that old demon on the hill has hidden my amphora," he said.
"As if he knew!" murmured Mrs. Malherb, who was a woman of literal mind.
"The boy doubtless knows nothing," her husband answered; "but 'tis within the bounds of possibility that he might find out."
Henceforward Grace, holding herself at liberty to do so, often met John Lee and often made appointments to meet him. He taught her Dartmoor; he rode his pony by her side and gloried in the manifold virtues of her new hunter, the great and gallant 'Cæsar.'
While Peter Norcot was at Fox Tor Farm, young John kept clear of it. Indeed, he had plenty of work when he chose to work, and toiled by fits and starts at peat-cutting, lichen-gathering, or attending upon some military sportsman from the War Prison. But his desire and ambition at eighteen years of age was to win employment in the kennels of Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt. From such a position, if blessed by good luck, he trusted some day to rise and become a whipper-in. Of any higher destiny he did not dream. To be huntsman was a position in life that rose almost as much above his hopes as to be Master.
Now, some while before Maurice Malherb had entered on to the Moor, so that he might see and meet his wife returning home, John Lee, walking near a spot very well known to him as one of Grace's favourite haunts, found her there where the grass made pleasant cushions amid the granite boulders upon the southern slope of Fox Tor; where the music of a little waterfall rose and fell softly at the pleasure of the wind; and where the Beam's mighty shoulders basked under the sun and took a tremulousness of outline in the hot air which arose from off them.
Rising suddenly out of the hollows where the streamlet ran, John Lee appeared within thirty yards of Grace, and, to his dismay and concern, discovered that she wept. Some coincidence of thought with the solemn natural things about her; some clash or chime of sadness at the spectacle of her future and the vast and featureless mountain uplifted before her eyes, struck the emotional chord that loosens tears, and Grace suffered them to flow and carry away a little of her sorrow in the glittering drops. She was young, and hope her proper heritage, therefore she grew happier presently, and when the miser's grandson appeared, hesitated, and, with a rueful countenance, began to creep away, she called to him and bade him come.
"I'm only crying, John Lee. Hast never seen a girl cry before?"
He advanced upon this, and his handsome young face was all blushes.
"Never, Miss Grace; an' never want to. I would I could take your trouble on my own shoulders."
"Your grandmother never weeps?"
"Not she. A granite wall sweats more moisture than her eyes fall tears. But you—— The young gentleman, your brother, died like a hero. 'Tis a great and noble thing to be a hero."
"How can a word stand for his dear beautiful face and bright eyes and kind voice? Never a maid had such a brother as Noel. Hero! Hero!" She lifted her voice bitterly. "An empty-handed, senseless sound to take the place of a dear brother. Not one pang does it lessen—no, not even in my father's heart, though he says the syllables over and over again, like a parrot. Our hope and our glory gone—that is what his death means."
"I can't say nothing—I wish I could. I'd go and die to-morrow if 'twould bring him back," declared John earnestly. "You'll think 'tis easy to tell such things, but God's my Judge, I mean it."
"You are not unlike him in a way, John. He had your manner of holding up his neck, and your mouth and your neat ears."
"I'm an awful fuzz-poll—like they curly-haired coloured men at the War Prison."
She did not answer for a moment, then spoke again of her sorrows.
"My heart's an empty nest now—all my plans to live with Noel for ever and love his children are broken down. And I had a secret hope that he"—she stopped, then decided to finish the sentence—"that he might soften my father."
"Your father be stern enough, but not to you—sure never to you."
He spoke with conviction and Grace did not reply. A black-and-orange humble bee was working in the wild thyme at her feet. It tumbled and laboured from cluster to cluster of the flowers, pulled each tiny purple corolla to itself and dipped into each for the stores there hidden. It droned hither and thither, full of business, and at last, lifting itself heavily, flew away with a cheerful boom of thanksgiving. So near Grace's ear did it go, that she started, and Lee, though grave enough at heart, laughed.
"He won't hurt 'e. They bumbles have no spears, I believe—anyway they never use 'em."
"I hate Peter Norcot!" she said aloud, suddenly, and with such vehemence that John started and stared.
"I hate him—hate—hate—hate him! Hark at the echo. I've told the echo that many a time. And the echo always answers very wisely, 'Hate him!'"
"What have you got against him, if I may ax?"
"Nothing; and that's everything. He's perfect."
"An' do love your very shadow, so they say."
"I forgot that. There is reason enough for not liking him."
"Then you'll have to hate every man on the Moor. They all love you—even I dare to do it."
"Love me?"
"Ess fay! Be it uncivil in me to say so, Miss?"
"I should think it was, indeed!"
"Truth's truth. I can't help it. Never seed nothing like you. I'd go to the end of the world for you. I wish 'twas my happy lot to be your servant."
"Would you kill Mr. Norcot for me?"
He was silent; then he nodded.
"Well, John Lee, I had sooner you loved me than Mr. Norcot should."
"Don't say it even in fun. You don't know what it means to me. I'm up eighteen year old now—a man. But I hate Mr. Peter, too, for that matter."
"Because I do?"
"Yes, an' for another reason; because granny likes him. He gived her money once. She said afterwards that there was that in his face pleased her fancy, for he'd got a depth in it that would make rocks and water do his will."
"She's quite wrong there. He's a most superficial man and amiable to weakness. He is always making feeble jests and quoting the poets. He is a thing of shreds and patches. He put your grandmother into an old verse once. I laughed, though I hate him. He said:—
"'Through regions by wild men and cannibals haunted,Old Dame Lovey Lee goes alone and undaunted;But, bless you, the risk's not so great as it's reckoned;She's too plain for the first and too tough for the second!'"
"He may laugh at her," replied John Lee. "But she don't laugh at him. When he'd gone that day, she told me that he was the first man ever she clapped eyes on as could be her master if he liked; and I shivered to hear her say it."
"He's welcome to be her master; he never shall be mine," said Grace resolutely; and as she spoke, her father suddenly appeared before them.
John Lee touched his hat, while Grace rose and welcomed her father, who, still dominated by his Idea, proved in a very amiable mood.
"You grow fast—you'll be as tall as your grandmother at this rate. Not that you are like her," he said to the lad. John smiled and touched his hat again.
Malherb scanned the finely built youngster, and thought of his dead son. There was a resemblance, as Grace recently remarked to John himself, and the father, who had a picture of Noel Malherb painted lifelike upon memory, now perceived this similitude. For a moment he stared in silence, then turned to Grace.
"I seek your mother. Has she gone to visit Lady Tyrwhitt?"
"Yes, she is at Tor Royal, father. Indeed, she should be on her way home again by this time."
"Then we'll walk along to meet her. And you, John Lee, tell that old witch up there I'm not asleep. I shall have my amphora yet; and the reckoning, when it does come, will mean a halter for her."
"Your servant, sir; an' I'll be sure to speak the message."
As they proceeded together, Grace put a petition to her father, and he was about to decline it, but bethought him. The Idea entirely turned upon Grace herself, and he had no desire to cross her will in minor matters, though she still differed from him upon the great question of her own future.
"Father," she said, "I ought to have a groom."
"Why, that boy we have left is as good as a groom to you."
"In a way. But I feel there should be a little more distinction about the matter. In truth, John Lee's pony can't live with my beautiful 'Cæsar' and if he was better mounted he could show me the country that you and I are going to hunt in the winter. 'Twould be well for me to ride over it, and you are too busy to take me. Now Lee, if he had a horse and a livery—and how wonderfully well he rides."
"That's true. I had observed it. Better far than any man I have seen on the Moor—excepting Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt and myself. A splendid natural seat."
"Let him be my servant and look after your hacks and the hunters. But only if you can afford it. I know you have had to spend a great deal lately."
"Yes, yes; we must spend to get; and Dartmoor wants a good deal of cash down in advance on a bargain. But I think I generally get the worth of my money. Well—he shall come. I like a livery or two about me, and poor Kekewich will never cut much of a figure in his. The boy is a fine up-standing boy, and civil. You shall have him. He may help me too—in the direction of the Malherb amphora."
"Thank you, thank you! Was there ever such a kind father?"
"I've only got you now," he said. "I'm not a talker, and it is a vile thing to see a man of quality show his feelings; but between father and daughter affection is natural, and may even be declared in reason. You're the apple of my eye."
"How well I know it!"
She kissed him and, occupied with his Idea, he took her hand. Thus they walked along until Mrs. Malherb appeared on her homeward way from Tor Royal. She sat behind Richard Beer on a pillion, for she was fearful of horses, and never rode alone.
Annabel described anémeuteat the War Prison.
"It seems," she said, "that the poor Americans are the chief danger there. They were sent up from the hulks at Plymouth, because they were always escaping from them; and now more than one has got clean away in a disturbance. They think that these Desperate men will presently be recaptured, or else lose their lives in the lonely desert wastes towards Cranmere Pool. They may, however, by good fortune get into touch with their fellow-countrymen on parole at Ashburton or Tavistock, and so make to the coast and escape to France from Dartmouth or Tor Quay."
"If I should meet a runaway!" cried Grace.
"You would ride him down, I should hope, unless he yielded and followed you," said her father.
Mrs. Malherb nearly dropped Richard's pillion-belt and fell to the ground.
"La! what sport for a young maid!" she cried.
That night after they had gone to rest, the master placed his great inspiration before Annabel, and her eyes grew round in the darkness. The blind was up, for Malherb allowed the daylight to waken him, and the seasons regulated the hour of his rising. Now Mrs. Malherb watched a star cross the eastern-facing casement; but only her eyes perceived that distant sun, for her mind was occupied with a closer matter.
"I have hit upon a thought which shows how I may still work to some purpose here and not make a place for strangers to enjoy when we are gone," he said. "A Malherb shall have all——"
"You cannot mean that you will forgive your nephews!" cried his wife in amazement.
"'Nephews'! No. Curse the pack of 'em—curs that disgrace the name. They're not even honest. And 'twas not I that quarrelled with them, but they with me. I am fifty-one. In a year I shall be fifty-two, and Grace will be marriageable. Eighteen's a very proper age. My grand-aunt, Sibella, was a famous beauty at sixteen, wedded with the Duke of Sampford on her seventeenth birthday, had a daughter upon her eighteenth, and was a grandmother when she was thirty-seven. By the time Grace is nineteen she will be the mother of a son."
"Good gracious, my love, how you run on!"
"Not at all. I'm simply stating the probable course of nature. A son, I say; and that son comes to us. When the lad is one-and-twenty I shall be but seventy or so. What is that? Nowadays, such a man as I am is merely middle-aged at seventy. We have the lad for our own. He must be given to us. By God, it shall be a condition of the match! And he shall be called Malherb, and shall found a line of 'em here instead of my boy, who is dead and gone. 'Tis but a jump of a generation."
The stars at the window laughed in their courses and tumbled before Mrs. Malherb's eyes. Her husband abounded in fantastic projects, but this scheme was egregious even for him. She felt the futility of it, not the humour. One objection specially beat upon her mother's heart, and that she uttered—
"You couldn't expect Grace to give up her first baby, my dear."
"Why not? Why not? Not to me? Not to her own father? 'Slife! Who should be better able than I to make a man of a young fellow? He would be my personal companion. He would be brought up from the cradle with this place in his eyes. He would understand that he was a Malherb and all that that means. 'Tis a very proper idea and, if the girl's not a fool, she'll be the first to see it. Whether she sees it or not, however, don't matter a button."
"For God's sake say no such thing to her!"
"Am I likely to? Do credit me with some understanding. All the same, it will have to be. My heart's on it. The high traditions of the family—Norcot will assent readily, I have little doubt. I can twist him round my finger."
"I fear Grace cares less and less for him."
"I know better. Even you will allow me some knowledge of human nature. Her indifference is assumed. She is deeply interested in him."
"Deeply interested? Yes; in how to escape him."
"Be that as it may, within six weeks of her eighteenth birthday she'll be Mrs. Peter Norcot; and her son will be called Maurice Malherb and come hither as soon as he is weaned. If ever I meant anything in my life, I mean that."
"The way you order human destinies!"
"It is the province of the strong man so to do," he answered calmly. "My son cannot fill my shoes, because he has fallen for his country; but my grandson can and shall. The rest of them may be Norcot's; the first is mine."
"To count your grandchildren before they are born!" murmured Mrs. Malherb.
"No such thing at all. Go to sleep, and don't be foolish. I do not count them. That is Heaven's work. I merely reserve the eldest to myself. The action may not be usual, but that weighs very little with me. I speak in a spirit both scientific and religious; and it shall be so, if the Devil himself said 'No!' so there's an end on it."
He turned over, and in ten minutes snored; but for long hours Annabel watched the twinkling sky, and marvelled as to what manner of planet reigned in heaven and lighted earth at the moment when her husband first drew breath.
At the War Prison, in a crisis now rapidly approaching, it was destined that the young man, Cecil Stark, should assume sudden prominence. Thousands of French and American prisoners were confined at Prince Town during this period; and with the latter were herded a company of coloured men who had been captured in the enemy's battleships or privateers. Bitterly was this circumstance resented by the Americans; but, worse than their slaves they found the presence of some seven hundred French, who shared the granite hospitality of Prison No. 4. These poor tatterdemalions had added to their necessary griefs by personal folly. They had gamed away their very shoes and blankets; and they were thrust hither by the hundred, and kept alive, like cattle, with scarcely a rag to cover their nakedness.
Many times the Americans protested with indignation against this wrong, and implored that these forlorn French might be removed from amongst them. But months elapsed before their reasonable complaints were heard, and the baser sort of soldier guards was wont to laugh and ask the Americans wherein their own fantastic and ridiculous habiliments presented a better appearance than the Frenchmen's skins.
Stark and certain of his companions were thus challenged on a day in autumn as they patrolled together along the exercise yard. Beside him walked Commodore Jonathan Miller, who had commanded the United States frigateMarbleheadwhen she was taken, while behind them followed one William Burnham, a junior officer on the same vessel, and James Knapps, sometime boatswain of theMarblehead. These four men, together with three others presently to be mentioned, formed a little community of friendship, and had entered into a compact to share their means, and make common cause against the hardships that encompassed them. They were known as "the Seven" and their companions held them in high esteem, for it happened that Stark was among the fortunate and obtained regular advances from home. With his money he did no little good, and not the Seven only, but many more who suffered from poverty or disease, had found him a willing friend.
A sentry perched before his box on the prison wall heard Stark grumble to William Burnham and made a jesting remark.
"Don't the Frenchmen's skins fit 'em as well as your clothes fit you?" he said.
Whereupon Burnham, a mere lad with red hair and a round freckled face, made such a fiery retort that the soldier scowled and fingered his musket.
"You ask that—you coarse-hearted lout? Their skins don't fit 'em. Count their ribs; look at the bones sticking out of their elbows and ankles. No prisoner's skin can fit him in this cursed country, for you starve us; your agents rob us; you strip your scarecrows to clothe us!"
They passed on, and Commodore Miller spoke.
"The Americans are treated better elsewhere, however," he remarked. "At Chatham, and at Stapleton too, they receive more considerate attention. There, at least, they obtain what the British Government is pleased to give them."
"And the markets shut agin us—that's consarned robbery," said James Knapps. "'Tis the loss of the market that angers me most past bearing."
"A very great injustice," answered Miller sadly. "It cannot be known. The French are permitted to trade with the people of the country. Farmers and farmers' wives are admitted into the great court and they barter regularly there. But we can only get our cheese, or butter, or eggs for our sick folk through the French, and they charge five-and-twenty per centum above the market prices."
"So we are robbed every way," said Knapps. He was a powerful, middle-aged man, of genial aspect and ordinary appearance; but another American who now approached and walked beside his friends, discovered a countenance that had called for second glances in any company. He was tall, extraordinarily thin and very high-shouldered. His eyes were of the palest grey, his high cheek-bones seemed nearly thrusting through the skin. He was almost bald, and his woollen cap came down over his ears. A flat nose and a fan-shaped tuft of hair upon his chin completed the man's physiognomy; and much bitterness usually sat upon these strange features.
"What say you, Leverett?" asked Stark of the new-comer.
David Leverett, who had been a carpenter on theMarblehead, and lost one hand in the engagement which ended that vessel's career, waved his stump to the sky.
"I say 'tis small wonder that some on us enlist in the King's service, damn his eyes! It's their dirty, devilish game ter make us. They torture us and starve us and freeze us, till narry a one but would Judas his own mother, if 'twas only for the sight of salt water again."
Cecil Stark nodded.
"That is what they mean, sure enough. Another batch came up yesterday from theHectorprison ship. Many, they say, have gone into the King's service."
"'Tis the refinement of cruelty to make a man turn against his motherland," mused Miller; "yet there were a few good Englishmen on theMarblehead."
"Then there's Blazey," continued Mr. Leverett, who seldom opened his mouth save to utter a grievance. "Call him an Agent! One of the carved stone turrets we are going ter fix on the church tower would be a better agent than him. I wish I had the handling of the skunk."
"Lordy! Have done with your growling," said Knapps. "What's the use of it? You only drive other hot-heads into the enemy's ships. I miss faces every day as it is."
"Many are true enough," replied young Burnham. "There's Mercer and Troubridge and our messmate, Caleb Carberry. You miss them because they are all sick in hospital."
"Troubridge is dead," said Cecil Stark shortly; "and Matthew Mercer is dying. I saw the doctor this morning. He said 'twas all over with him. He's unconscious."
Leverett lifted his ribs in a deep sigh.
"They are out of it. I most envy 'em. There's no escape from this cussed bowery except by way of the 'orspital."
None spoke; then upon their gloomy silence a black man burst, in the very extremity of excitement. He was a big, full-blooded negro—a splendid specimen of vigour, manhood and health. Now he waved his arms and rolled his great brown eyes and advanced upon them with a clumsy saltation.
"Waal, now, look at that black imp!" cried Knapps. "Come here, Sam Cuffee! What's happened to you? Has anybody left you a fortune, or a pair of wings?"
"Better dan dat, Jimmy Knapps! Good tings for all ob us, please de Lord. Him coming, Sars. Ha, ha, ha! Him coming!"
"Who's coming?" asked Leverett. "The Lord? Don't you think it, Sam. There's no God nowadays ter keep his weather eye lifting on the likes of us."
"'Tis vain to whine so, David Leverett," said Stark angrily. "I'm weary of your eternal grumbling. If you chose fighting for your business in life, you should expect hard knocks. You went to be carpenter in a ship of war, and——"
Here a shout from Burnham interrupted the speaker, for Mr. Cuffee had told his great news to the other officers.
"Yes, Sar—honour bright, Sar. Marse Jones, de turnkey, he tell me. Marse Blazey—him coming to put all right dis berry day, so I done run to tell you."
"Then you can call back your words, carpenter," said Commodore Miller. "There's a God yet—only He takes His own time—not ours."
"Blazey coming!" cried Knapps. "'Tis most too good to be true. Some on you gentlemen had best think what to say to him."
As he spoke, Captain Cottrell, Commandant of the War Prison, appeared and advanced with a guard into the midst of the patrol ground. A trumpeter blew a blast to summon the wandering throngs, and when they had crowded in a dense circle round him, the Commandant raised his voice and made a statement from the midst of the bristling bayonets that hemmed him about.
"I have to inform you, gentlemen, that your Agent, Mr. Blazey, from Plymouth, will visit Prison No. 4 at three o'clock of the afternoon to-day. Here in public he will meet you and hear all your grievances, but there must be no private intercourse."
He departed, and the Americans, with joy upon their faces, raised a cheer—not for Captain Cottrell, but his news. The black men, who were grouped together apart, also lifted a shout of satisfaction.
"One might think that peace was proclaimed rather than that a paid official is merely about to do his duty," said Cecil Stark with bitterness.
But Commodore Miller shook his head.
"Do not even assume so much, my lad. This man—well, a sluggard in duty can never be trusted. If he discharges his task reluctantly, he may also discharge it ill."
Great stir and bustle marked the next few hours. Light and air were let into every dark corner; broken hammocks were patched, and each granite ward was cleansed. Only the prisoners themselves remained unchanged. No power could instantly alter their thin, hungry faces or their disgraceful attire.
There came presently to Cecil Stark his friend and superior officer, the Commodore.
"As one not quite unknown to them, they have called upon me to be spokesman," he said.
"Of course, sir; you're the first man amongst us. Every American knows that."
"But I've no gift of words, Stark, and my nerve is not what it was. I declined the task; whereon they invited me to name a speaker likely to address this Blazey with force and judgment. I come to you. I hold it to be your duty. You must not shrink from it."
Cecil Stark was much taken aback by this proposal.
"Think better of it, sir. Who am I to voice so many older and wiser men than myself?"
"I wish you to do so. We must say much in little and hold the Agent's attention. Be off now and collect your thoughts and set your ideas in order," said the Commodore. "Look to it that you justify my choice, for I shall bear the blame if you fail."
"'Tis a very great responsibility, but I'll assume it, since you command, Commodore. Now let me meet the leaders."
After a brief conference with the prominent prisoners, Stark vanished and, until the important person named Reuben Blazey arrived at Prince Town, he secluded himself with certain papers and prison orders, that he might prepare his speech.
Then, towards evening, a trumpet announced the arrival of the Agent; the captives drew up in a dense double line, and Mr. Blazey, with his staff and a guard of red-coats, appeared. He was a short, stout man, clad in plum-colour, with a face of generous purple that matched his clothes. His little black eyes shot sharp glances everywhere as he advanced, hat in hand; his clean-shaven mouth was of a coarse pattern, yet it lacked not kindliness.
"Great God!" he said to a clerk at his elbow, "this is the Valley of Bones; and they have come to life. But, indeed, I had not dreamed there were so many."
"There are some five or six hundred of 'em, I believe," answered Lieutenant Mainwaring, who escorted the visitor. Then he addressed the prisoners.
"Now who is to speak for the rest with Mr. Blazey?"
Stark instantly stepped forward and saluted.
"You!" exclaimed the soldier.
"Yes, my comrades honour me with this grave commission."
"Then be brief, young man," said Blazey, "for I don't want to ride over Dartmoor in the dark."
"'Be brief!'" echoed Stark, with fire flashing to his eye. "'Be brief!' Why, you——"
Here with an effort and in response to the murmur of warning voices behind him, he curbed his temper and made another answer.
"Our grievances can't be very briefly told, Mr. Reuben Blazey; but I will set them out in as few words as possible. First and worst, the scum and offscouring of the French prisons are poured in upon us to our terrible discomfort. Next we desire to tell you that our contractors are rogues. For five days in the week the law directs that we receive one and a half pounds of brown bread, one half-pound of beef, including bone—of which God knows we get our share—one-third of an ounce of barley and salt, one-third of an ounce of onions, and one pound of turnips. The residue of the week we have one pound of pickled fish and coals enough to cook it. These things are daily served by the contractors, and we have watched them scrimp weight cruelly to fill their pockets out of our starving bellies. Upon beef days we suffer most."
"Go on," said Mr. Blazey. He yawned, scratched under his wig, and turned to a clerk.
"You are making notes, Mr. Williams?"
"Yes, sir—full notes."
"Next," continued Stark, "the printed regulations delivered to us by Commandant Cottrell speak explicitly of what your Government has undertaken to do on our account. We are not criminals, but honest men. Why do not you understand that? We are allowed each a hammock, one blanket, one horse-rug, and a bed containing four pounds of flocks. Every eighteen months we are to receive one woollen cap for our heads, one yellow roundabout jacket, one pair of pantaloons, and a waistcoat such as you give your soldiers. We are further promised one shirt and one pair of shoes every nine months."
"And 'tis high time your tarnal thieves was delivered of them shoes. Look at our feet!" burst out a voice from the ranks of the captives.
"Silence!" cried Stark. Then he turned to Mr. Blazey.
"These things——"
"You have," interrupted the Agent. "Are you not attired in them, you who speak?"
"Look at me!" answered Stark. "Regard these scarecrows behind me and say if such a pandemonium of grotesque devils ever filled human eyes outside a nightmare. Heaven knows that we are thin enough, yet our yellow jackets might have been made for skeletons. Look!" He stretched up his arms. "Mine comes scarce below my elbows."
"You happen to be a giant," objected Blazey.
"Then why, in the name of God, don't you give him a giant's jacket?" roared Knapps from the rear. He was silenced and Stark proceeded.
"Our pantaloons you can study for yourself, Mr. Blazey. You can note the space visible between them and our waistcoats. But the shoes are still worse. They are made of wood and rotten yarn, and these granite floors knock them to pieces in a week. I pray you see to these things. Here surely are caricatures of men that would make England weep if she could see them."
"Have you done with your facts, sir?" inquired the Agent.
"Very nearly. Now there are certain offices, such as sweeping, shaving prisoners, cooking and the like, that receive payment; and those who can execute mechanic arts here may daily earn sixpence. Why are not our humbler folk allowed to share these privileges? The French receive all these offices, though the Americans are quite as deft as they. There is also the vital matter of the market. The French traffic weekly with the country people and so add fresh food to their store; we are not permitted to do so—a cruel embargo. To sum up, I pray for more food, more clothes, more generosity. We are men against whom the authorities can find no real fault. Our cachot is always empty. I was the last that occupied it. Our guards will tell you that we are courteous, obedient, and patient. Then pray, Mr. Blazey, help us. You know not the awful battle we have to fight here—a battle worse ten thousand times than any between man and man. We endure such cold as you have never endured, sir; we eat such food as you have never eaten; we suffer from such prison evils in shape of loathsome diseases as you will never know. We are very sick and we daily die. How can starving men battle with the reigning horror of smallpox? How can——"
But at the word "smallpox," Mr. Blazey's countenance assumed a pallor under its purple and he woke from indifference to extreme activity. His little eyes wandered wildly over the great sea of faces before him. Then he screamed to Lieutenant Mainwaring.
"Is this truth that the man utters?"
The young officer took pleasure in Mr. Blazey's terror, and oblivious of the prisoners or their welfare, made answer—
"True enough. The atmosphere you are breathing is pure poison. Half these men are infected."
It was a lie, but the Agent believed it, and made an instant bolt for the entrance.
"Then I should have been told. This is murder—deliberate, cold-blooded murder, and you shall smart for it! Let me out for the Lord's sake, before I've gulped any more of their filthy air!"
They made way and opened the gates. Then, before he vanished, Mr. Blazey turned and bawled a word or two towards Stark.
"I'll see what can be managed for ye. I'll do my best endeavours. But I've no power, and no funds neither. Besides, all exchange of prisoners is stopped for this year. So you'll do wisely to bide quiet, and trust in God and the Transport Board, not me."
He vanished, with his clerks and the soldiers after him; and then for a moment silence, dreadful and solemn, fell upon the captives. The haggard faces that had strained upon Blazey so long as he was visible, turned each to gaze into his neighbour's eyes; the gates fell to, the locks clashed, the sentries on the wall resumed their eternal tramp. Some men, wrought up to a pitch of mental excitement beyond their strength to conceal, shed tears and sneaked in corners to hide them. The boys—powder-monkeys out of captured ships—broke their ranks and went off whooping to leap-frog; the negroes chattered and blubbered apart; some Americans scowled and shook their fists at the blind doors; some cursed their spokesman for bungling the matter; others walked away mute, quite frozen by long suffering to a dead indifference. Many fell to quarrelling among themselves, and their leaders, including Commodore Miller and Stark, sat together and debated upon the failure of this—their forlorn hope. In the dark disappointment of the hour young Burnham lifted his voice against his motherland.
"They have forgotten us!" he said. "We have lived for the States, fought and bled for them; and now we are forgot."
"Nay, lad, don't think it," said Miller. "Your heart is low and time drags into a daily eternity here; but remember that it flies faster outside these walls than within them. Our country is busy."
"'Tis that cursed Agent," growled Leverett to Knapps. Then he scratched the red-grey wedge of hair upon his chin and turned to Stark.
"I asked Blazey as he came in whether he had got our letters and he nodded. He's in communication with both Governments.
"Thet 'ere man will hev the devil's toasting-fork in his guts afore he's much older," prophesied Knapps. "He's a traitor."
"Please Providence smallpox will clutch the swine; then an honester man may get his billet," said Leverett.
Thus they uttered folly and went stormily to their rest; but upon the morning of the next day the Seven, strolling together, listened to reason and formulated a plan of action. Their sick mate, Caleb Carberry, was this day discharged cured from hospital, and he listened to Burnham, who narrated the events of the previous evening.
"We've done what we might by fair means. Now it remains for us to trust to our wits and our right arms," said Stark.
"The wall men have built, men can climb," declared Burnham. "What say you, Commodore?"
Miller gazed upward at the mighty ring of the inner circumvallation, scarlet-dotted with the sentries.
"I'm with you—over—or under. At Chatham eighteen brave lads escaped from the prison ship,Crown Prince, by cutting through the side of her. Well, oak or granite, 'tis all one."
"If we no fly, we burrow berry nice, gentlemen," declared Samuel Cuffee.
"Then 'tis our life's work from this hour to get out," said Carberry. "By hook or crook we'll do it. And with a boss like Commodore Miller, I lay the way will come clear."
"We don't want a lot o' poppy-cock talk, I reckon," added Leverett. "'Tis just a secret for the seven of us—though," he added under his breath to Carberry, "I'm consarned if I like to work with a slave."
Caleb Carberry was a thin, feeble-looking young man who had been cook's mate on theMarblehead. He glanced at Cuffee, to whom Leverett referred, and answered aside—
"Sam's all right. No smouch him. Besides, Mister Stark have had him for a servant ever since we sailed."
But Leverett shook his head.
"I don't trust no black man. I'm fearsome of him. He's always snooking around; and so like as not he'll end by busting on the show."
Despite the carpenter's distrust, however, a secret and desperate determination henceforth actuated every member of the Seven, Sam Cuffee included. What skill, energy and intrigue could do, they meant to do. Miller and Stark had personal friends quartered upon parole at Ashburton, some fifteen miles distant, and their purpose now was to escape from Prince Town, enter into communication with these Americans, and so win to the sea-coast and to France.
"Hunger will break through a stone wall," said the Commodore. "How much more may love of liberty do it!"
The result of their Agent's visit was manifested in various ways to the American prisoners at Prince Town. Some sank back upon despair and cursed each grey morning's light, as it awakened them from the blessed oblivion of sleep; many entered the British Service, and of these not a few were American only in name, for their birthplace was England and they had fought in the enemy's privateers, tempted thereto by handsome payment. Others, like the leaders of the Seven, to whom such surrender meant dishonour, dreamed of escape and occupied their energies with projects and plots toward liberty.
But practical good ultimately accrued to the prisoners from Mr. Reuben Blazey's brief appearance on Dartmoor. That gentleman, perhaps in thanksgiving upon the discovery that he had not taken smallpox, stirred himself to some purpose after all, and not a few of the grievances that Cecil Stark had set forth were presently redressed. The Transport Board sanctioned the renewal of the market in Prison No. 4; the place was entirely divided from its fellows for the greater comfort of those who dwelt there; the French outcasts were put into durance apart, and the negroes, with sole exception of Sam Cuffee, Stark's servant, were also removed from among the Americans.
More than one of the little band that had sworn to escape, now doubted whether, under this amelioration of circumstances, it would be wise or politic to exchange the inside of the prison for the outside. They held that Dartmoor rather than Prince Town made the real prison, and that the great unknown wilderness, with its morasses and precipices, its barren mountain-tops and dangerous tempests, would be but a poor exchange even for the misery of No. 4. But these doubtful ones were overruled by Stark, Commodore Miller and the youngster, Burnham. Carberry and Leverett most lacked courage; Knapps was indifferent and ready to follow any man; Cuffee took his master's view. That the negro should be permitted to join their secret association had occasioned some natural opposition; but Cecil Stark, whose ideas upon the subject were more than a century ahead of his time, won permission to include the servant; and Sam's personal fitness none questioned, for aboard theMarbleheadhe had proved himself faithful and courageous. It was the principle that awakened objections, not the man.
Soon the markets were again open, and finding that many of the American prisoners had more money than the French, discovering also that they spoke their own tongue and thereby rendered bargaining more easy, the native Moor folk crowded among them and opened a brisk traffic in fowls and eggs, cheese, bacon and butter. No small amount of intoxicating drink was also smuggled among them, though it generally paid duty to some turnkey or sentry before reaching the prisoners. The market stalls were arranged in a wide yard; the current market prices were cried out, so that all might understand, and none from the outer world were permitted to begin his business until he had been carefully searched. But as time went on, and the regular merchants became known to the guards, a little strictness relaxed and relations became friendly. The means of the prisoners varied much. Some were penniless, and made trinkets carved of bone or wood serve them in place of money; some received regular supplies from home, and these privileged ones, Cecil Stark and Burnham among the rest, shared their funds with less fortunate neighbours.
There came a day when, towards the close of the market hours, Leverett and Knapps were standing at one of the stalls and addressing the countrywoman who sat upon an upturned barrel behind it.
"Where's your grandson of late, Mrs. Lee? I ha'n't seen him with you for many a week."
"Nor won't no more," answered Lovey Lee. "He's gone into sarvice—groom to a farmer's darter."
"Waal now! Do your farmers' daughters hev grooms?"
"Not often. She's a lady. 'Tis a newtake farm 'pon Dartymoor, an' the man who started it has got more money than wits. Jack takes good wages, an' I have half of 'em, as I ought, seeing I brought him up."
Sam Cuffee came up at this minute.
"Missy Lovey Lee," he said, "you dun gib me my proper butter yesterday for Marse Stark. I swear 'twas light, ma'am."
The tall woman, whose head, though she sat on the barrel, was as high as that of Mr. Knapps where he stood beside her, stared at the negro with scorn in her ferocious eyes.
"Get along with you, you black idol! Ban't eighteen ounces to the pound good butter weight? You stole some yourself, I'll swear, to oil your ugly face."
"You's a berry imperent ole woman, and I dun take no notice ob your talk. Har come Marse Stark hisself, so you may just speak to him, ma'am," answered Cuffee.
Stark, carrying a tray, appeared with Burnham. This signal was concerted, and as soon as they saw him the other men moved away together.
"Look here, Mother Lee, these won't do, you know. I must take my custom elsewhere if you are not going to deal straight with me," began the sailor bluntly.
"Eggs—well, what of 'em?" asked Lovey.
"The less said of them the better. Here are six—the remnant of the last dozen I bought. Of the first six that Cuffee broke, I ate none. So the second six you have got to take back and give me six fresh ones from your basket."
But Lovey by no means saw the force of this suggestion.
"What next will you ax? To rob me right an' left be your pleasure always; but I've been weak as a fly with you afore, 'cause of your curly hair. You'd starve a poor woman to death."
"Take them back, or I'll never buy another thing from you. What's more, my friends shall not either," said Stark loudly. Then, before she could answer, he added under his breath, "Take 'em and look at the yelks!"
Lovey instantly perceived that more appeared than was spoken. She remembered also more than one conversation with Stark's friends. Struck by her intelligence, unusual education and extraordinary greed, Commodore Miller had called attention to the old woman as being a tool ripe for their hands. Now the preliminary approach promised well, for it was manifest that Mrs. Lee had caught the speaker's meaning.