CHAPTER XXTHE PEDLAR’S STONETHEVicarage at Crishowell looked duller than ever, Isoline thought, as she and Mr. Lewis came round the corner of the church and faced its homely front. Howlie was at the door grinning affably, in her eyes a horrible travesty of the soft-mannered footman who had presided over their departure at the other end of their drive. A duck was quacking by the pond, and she would have liked to throw stones at the creature for the odious familiarity of its greeting, had she only known how to do so. She knew herself to be built for refinement, and, after two days of a ladyship’s society, it could hardly be expected of her to slip glibly into lower surroundings. Her face grew haughty as she perceived Howlie.The visit to Waterchurch had, perhaps, lacked something of the grandeur expected, and the discrepancy between her anticipations of Lady Harriet and the real woman were a little upsetting; but there had been compensations, for she suspected herself of having, in some ways, impressed her hostess. A woman who went out in a homespun skirt and thick boots could not fail to notice the difference between herself and a young lady who wore beflounced dresses and kid shoes even in the country.She had now no doubt of Harry’s feelings; he was deeply in love with her, and she looked to his coming visit as to a red-letter day. He would arrive next week “on his own business,” as he had said, and his business would be hers too. She was quite shrewd enough to foresee opposition on thepart of his family, but the game was worth the candle, and would be hers in the end. It was stimulating to think of a victory over Lady Harriet.Howlie and the maid-servant carried her box to her room, the former puffing loudly as he went up the staircase supporting the hinder end of the load.“Unlock it,” said Isoline, as it was set down in its place, tossing him her keys with the air of a duchess.He looked as impudently at her as he dared, and picking up the bunch, proceeded to make as much noise as he possibly could over the operation.“How dreadfully clumsy you are, Howell,” she exclaimed, annoyed, very naturally, by the superfluous rattling that was going on.He only sniffed, a habit he had when he found reply unnecessary.The rattling did not abate, till she darted across the room to snatch the keys from him, the hauteur of her deportment flying to the winds.“You stupid boy!” she exclaimed, “if you were at Waterchurch Court, where I have been, you would not be tolerated for a single day! Her ladyship would send you packing in a very short time!”He fixed his gaze upon her critically, and observed that, in taking off her hat, she had loosened some hairpins.“Yewre ’air’s coming down,” he remarked placidly.Her hand went up to it at once.“Oi can settle that for yew,” he continued, with pleasant good-nature, “for oi learned to plat up the ’orses’ tails proper when I was working i’ the yard at Jones’.”“You are impertinent as well as noisy,” said Miss Ridgeway angrily; “if you cannot unlock my box you had better go down-stairs. Why Mr. Lewis keeps you here at all is a wonder to me, mannerless, good-for-nothing boy that you are!”He gathered himself up from the floor on which he was kneeling by the box, and left the room. Isoline was stillruffled when she turned to her dressing-table, but Howlie was smiling as he made his way to the back premises. “Miss is crewell hoigh since she come back from Fenton’s,” he remarked to the maid-servant as he entered the kitchen. “She’s a settin’ her cap at the young general over there. Moy! but he’s a smart feller too,” he added, thinking of the half-crown.For a couple of days after her return the memory of Waterchurch buoyed up Isoline through the flatness of life at the Vicarage, and she spent many an hour anticipating Harry’s coming and its almost certain result. But, in spite of this, time was long, and the excitement in her mind made her restless, too restless to sit quietly in the house; she felt she must be out and moving about—a rather unusual thing with her.It was with a half-formed resolution that she put on her hat one afternoon, the Pedlar’s Stone in her mind. Harry was so much in her thoughts that she was a little unwilling to replace his visionary image by the reality of the person she was likely to find there, but, in spite of this, her feet seemed to carry her imperceptibly towards the way that had become so familiar. She found herself on the turf of the plateau almost before she had decided whether it would be pleasant to see Rhys or not.She was pretty certain that he would be waiting there, for, though he had made no actual declaration of love to her, she had seen plainly at their last meeting that he was on the high-road to doing so. Comparing him with Harry in her mind, she knew that he was the more attractive of the two, partly because of the mystery surrounding him, and partly because, as a man, he was a more imposing person. Harry was a boy. But what Harry lacked in personal importance was made up to him a thousandfold by his accessories; the actual man mattered little to her. She had hardly discovered more about Rhys than he had told her on the evening of their first meeting, for though she had tried to question him about himselfon subsequent occasions, she had got at nothing new. To-night she resolved to find out something further.Dusk had fallen when she reached the Pedlar’s Stone; she knew nothing of its history nor the reason of its existence, and her curiosity about outdoor things was so small, that it had never occurred to her to ask him about it. She stood beside it looking round at the darkening landscape, never suspecting that, apart from the Pig-driver and a few of his dependents, she was almost the only person in Crishowell parish who would venture to do so. Had she known it, the idea would hardly have troubled her, for though not physically brave, she was too unimaginative to be upset by anything she could neither see nor feel. She stepped up on to the bank in which it was embedded, and looked through the straggling hazels for some sign of Rhys. Not a live thing was to be seen. She shuddered a little at the awful loneliness that hung around, and for a moment a kind of panic took her. It was almost as though the atmosphere of horror raised round the place by popular tradition had made itself tangible and leaped upon her. She turned quickly to come down the bank, screaming at the sudden apparition of Rhys’ figure. He stood a few paces off, with his arms folded, watching her.“How you startled me!” she exclaimed, half angry; “where did you come from?”“I have followed you for some way,” he replied, smiling as he took her hand.“I don’t like that,” she said pettishly; “it is horrid to think of some one walking behind one when one does not suspect it.”“Are you angry with me?” asked Rhys. “Don’t be unkind after I’ve waited for you every evening for the last four days.”“But I told you I should be away from Crishowell. I only came back the day before yesterday. I enjoyed myself very much too.”“I am glad of that,” said Rhys, in a voice which gave the lie to his words.“I was staying at such a delightful place,” she continued, pausing for the expected question.It came at once.“Where was that?”“A place called Waterchurch Court. Have you ever heard of it? It belongs to Mr. Fenton, who is very rich.”Rhys repressed an exclamation. “I know about him. He has a son, hasn’t he?”“Yes,” replied Isoline, looking conscious.“An’ I’ll be bound he paid you a sight of attention,” cried Walters, relapsing, as he sometimes did when excited, into the speech of his forefathers.“Let us go and sit down,” said Isoline, “I am getting tired.” She moved towards the great stone on which they usually sat.“You haven’t answered me,” he exclaimed, tormented by the thought of Harry.Isoline liked power. “Why should I?” she asked lightly.“I’ll tell you why,” he cried, his breath coming short through his hot lips; “because I love you, Isoline—I love you! I love you! I think of nothing but you, day and night!”She quickened her pace, her head turned away from him, yet her expression was not exactly one of displeasure. But he could not see that.“Ah, you don’t care, I suppose,” he went on, catching her hand again, “but you can’t stop me, Isoline. Do you hear that? I love you! Iwilllove you, whatever you may say. What do I care for anything in this world but you? Here I’ve sat, night after night, crying out in my heart for you, and longing all the days you have been away for a sight of your face! Hate me if you like, I can’t stop loving you.”“Let me alone, Mr. Kent,” faltered the girl, somewhat taken off her feet by his torrent of words. “Let me go, please; I cannot stay here if you go on in that way.”“Youshallhear me!” cried Walters, planting himself before her. “Why did you come here, making me forget everything, luck and trouble alike? Isoline! Isoline!”She was getting alarmed by his violence, and would have turned and fled, but his arms were round her and he was covering her face, her lips, her cheek, her hair, with furious kisses. She struggled angrily for a moment, and finding resistance useless, dropped her head upon his shoulder and began to cry. Rhys held her closer.“Don’t cry like that,” he said, almost in a whisper, frightened in his turn by the effect of his outburst.“Let me go,” she repeated. “I want to go home.”“Isoline, don’t say that—don’t go! Ah! how I love you! You must not go. Speak to me—tell me you like me a little, only to keep me from breaking my heart.”“Let me go,” she repeated again.He loosed his arms and she pushed him away. “How can you be so rough and frighten me so?” she exclaimed, drying her eyes with her handkerchief. “I will never come back here—never—never!”Rhys was half-mad with excitement and despair at her words. He turned away, striking his clenched hands together and walking to and fro like a creature in a cage. She watched him over her handkerchief; emotion was a thing new to her, and she did not like it.“Do stop,” she said petulantly, putting it back in her pocket. He turned round and stood humbly before her.“I have terrified you,” he said. “I am a brute beast, not fit to speak to you, not fit to love you.”Almost for the first time in his life he thought more of another than of himself. She was silent, the resentment in her face giving way to curiosity.“Why do you behave like that?” she asked at last.“Oh, Isoline, I am sorry. Only stay with me a little longer. I swear to you that I will be quiet, and not frighten you any more. I couldn’t help it, dear; I love you so.”“I think you have behaved very badly,” the girl said, pursing up her lips and quite self-possessed again. “It is impossible for me to stay. I am accustomed to gentlemen.”Rhys groaned.“I hope you are ashamed,” she said, with a fine ignorance of her own share in the situation.“I am, I am.”He stood silent while she smoothed her hair, which had become disarranged.“I suppose I may go a bit of the way with you,” he hazarded, when she had finished. “It’s dark, and I must see you as far as the place above the farm.”She did not move; she was looking at him with a faint curiosity.“I will stay a short time if you give me your word that you will not annoy me again,” she said, a little surprised at his submission.Certainly it was a strange state of mind for such a man as Rhys Walters. But many things had cropped up in his heart, unsuspected even by himself.“I don’t deserve it,” he said.“I do not wish to be too hard upon you,” she replied, judicially, as she seated herself in their usual place.Rhys’ depression was so great that Isoline soon began to get rather tired of his company, for he seemed quite incapable of entertaining her, and the little admiring speeches that had formerly fallen so glibly from his tongue would not come, charmed she never so wisely.In a short time she rose to go home, and he made no protest after he had extorted a reluctant promise that she would return again. Her reluctance did not go very deep.“Why have you told me so little about yourself?” she asked, as they went along the plateau. “I know your name, and I know that I must not speak of you to any one; but that is not much.”He was not embarrassed by these questions, for he had long ago foreseen them and prepared something to meet them with.“What are you doing here?” continued she. “Does no one ever see you?”“No one but you and one other. If I were seen I should have to leave this place at once. I am a Government agent on private business for the Crown.”He paused a moment, and Isoline’s eyes opened wide in her interest.“Yes,” she said, “go on.”“I’m employed by Government to watch some people who are thought to be doing wrong, and to do that, I have to keep myself out of sight.”“Who are they, and what are they doing?”“I can’t tell any one that, but it has to do with an estate.”The girl drank his words in. The little imagination she had was always attracted by a mystery, and the very vagueness of his story only served to impress her more.“Then is Kent your real name?” she asked.“No—no, it isn’t. But I have had to take it for business purposes. You haven’t forgotten that you promised to tell no one you had seen me. You will keep your word, Isoline?”“Oh, certainly,” she exclaimed fervently, “I should be afraid to say anything after what you have told me. I might get into trouble, mightn’t I?” she added naïvely.“And I might have to go to prison,” he said, speaking the exact truth. “You would be sorry for that, wouldn’t you, Isoline?”“Oh, really I should. How dreadful!” she exclaimed.At this his heart thrilled; he had no idea how the words “Crown” and “Government” had exalted him in her eyes. The pedestal upon which he had raised her was so high that he never supposed she could see down into the sordid world beneath her. Poor Rhys! the spiritual part of him was small, a feeble spark hidden deep in the darkness of selfishness, but Isoline had struck it with her little worthless hand, and it had flickered up.After leaving her he went back to the cottage in a state of rapture, for she had promised to return. Like Harry at Waterchurch, he was wakeful with thoughts of her, but, unlike him,he went out into the night, and spent it rambling among the shoulders of the mountain.It was dawning when he came home and locked himself in for the coming day, and the place was so cheerless that he almost missed George. He wondered what had become of him as he went down the ladder and threw himself on his bed. The underground room was now half filled with things which he had carried below after his companion had left him, and the mattress and other possessions belonging to the sheep-stealer furnished his prison, and made it a little more habitable. The impossibility of having a fire tried him in the cold weather, for the place was chilly with the damp of the surrounding earth, and he dared not during the day kindle the smallest flame in the fire-place, for fear that, by some fraction of a chance, some one might pass, and observe the uncommon spectacle of smoke issuing from an empty house.For some days after Williams had gone he had been in sore straits. There were few provisions in the cottage, and when they were finished, there was no means of getting more, as he dared not venture out. Fortunately, it wanted but a few days of the Pig-driver’s weekly visit, and he eked out his food till the old man should arrive, fighting his hunger as best he might, and blessing the clear mountain water which ran at the door. As he heard the sound of Bumpett’s squeaky voice one morning in the room above, he felt like a shipwrecked man who sees a sail. Had his visitor been an angel from heaven, instead of an exceedingly wicked old man, he could not have been more welcome.
THEVicarage at Crishowell looked duller than ever, Isoline thought, as she and Mr. Lewis came round the corner of the church and faced its homely front. Howlie was at the door grinning affably, in her eyes a horrible travesty of the soft-mannered footman who had presided over their departure at the other end of their drive. A duck was quacking by the pond, and she would have liked to throw stones at the creature for the odious familiarity of its greeting, had she only known how to do so. She knew herself to be built for refinement, and, after two days of a ladyship’s society, it could hardly be expected of her to slip glibly into lower surroundings. Her face grew haughty as she perceived Howlie.
The visit to Waterchurch had, perhaps, lacked something of the grandeur expected, and the discrepancy between her anticipations of Lady Harriet and the real woman were a little upsetting; but there had been compensations, for she suspected herself of having, in some ways, impressed her hostess. A woman who went out in a homespun skirt and thick boots could not fail to notice the difference between herself and a young lady who wore beflounced dresses and kid shoes even in the country.
She had now no doubt of Harry’s feelings; he was deeply in love with her, and she looked to his coming visit as to a red-letter day. He would arrive next week “on his own business,” as he had said, and his business would be hers too. She was quite shrewd enough to foresee opposition on thepart of his family, but the game was worth the candle, and would be hers in the end. It was stimulating to think of a victory over Lady Harriet.
Howlie and the maid-servant carried her box to her room, the former puffing loudly as he went up the staircase supporting the hinder end of the load.
“Unlock it,” said Isoline, as it was set down in its place, tossing him her keys with the air of a duchess.
He looked as impudently at her as he dared, and picking up the bunch, proceeded to make as much noise as he possibly could over the operation.
“How dreadfully clumsy you are, Howell,” she exclaimed, annoyed, very naturally, by the superfluous rattling that was going on.
He only sniffed, a habit he had when he found reply unnecessary.
The rattling did not abate, till she darted across the room to snatch the keys from him, the hauteur of her deportment flying to the winds.
“You stupid boy!” she exclaimed, “if you were at Waterchurch Court, where I have been, you would not be tolerated for a single day! Her ladyship would send you packing in a very short time!”
He fixed his gaze upon her critically, and observed that, in taking off her hat, she had loosened some hairpins.
“Yewre ’air’s coming down,” he remarked placidly.
Her hand went up to it at once.
“Oi can settle that for yew,” he continued, with pleasant good-nature, “for oi learned to plat up the ’orses’ tails proper when I was working i’ the yard at Jones’.”
“You are impertinent as well as noisy,” said Miss Ridgeway angrily; “if you cannot unlock my box you had better go down-stairs. Why Mr. Lewis keeps you here at all is a wonder to me, mannerless, good-for-nothing boy that you are!”
He gathered himself up from the floor on which he was kneeling by the box, and left the room. Isoline was stillruffled when she turned to her dressing-table, but Howlie was smiling as he made his way to the back premises. “Miss is crewell hoigh since she come back from Fenton’s,” he remarked to the maid-servant as he entered the kitchen. “She’s a settin’ her cap at the young general over there. Moy! but he’s a smart feller too,” he added, thinking of the half-crown.
For a couple of days after her return the memory of Waterchurch buoyed up Isoline through the flatness of life at the Vicarage, and she spent many an hour anticipating Harry’s coming and its almost certain result. But, in spite of this, time was long, and the excitement in her mind made her restless, too restless to sit quietly in the house; she felt she must be out and moving about—a rather unusual thing with her.
It was with a half-formed resolution that she put on her hat one afternoon, the Pedlar’s Stone in her mind. Harry was so much in her thoughts that she was a little unwilling to replace his visionary image by the reality of the person she was likely to find there, but, in spite of this, her feet seemed to carry her imperceptibly towards the way that had become so familiar. She found herself on the turf of the plateau almost before she had decided whether it would be pleasant to see Rhys or not.
She was pretty certain that he would be waiting there, for, though he had made no actual declaration of love to her, she had seen plainly at their last meeting that he was on the high-road to doing so. Comparing him with Harry in her mind, she knew that he was the more attractive of the two, partly because of the mystery surrounding him, and partly because, as a man, he was a more imposing person. Harry was a boy. But what Harry lacked in personal importance was made up to him a thousandfold by his accessories; the actual man mattered little to her. She had hardly discovered more about Rhys than he had told her on the evening of their first meeting, for though she had tried to question him about himselfon subsequent occasions, she had got at nothing new. To-night she resolved to find out something further.
Dusk had fallen when she reached the Pedlar’s Stone; she knew nothing of its history nor the reason of its existence, and her curiosity about outdoor things was so small, that it had never occurred to her to ask him about it. She stood beside it looking round at the darkening landscape, never suspecting that, apart from the Pig-driver and a few of his dependents, she was almost the only person in Crishowell parish who would venture to do so. Had she known it, the idea would hardly have troubled her, for though not physically brave, she was too unimaginative to be upset by anything she could neither see nor feel. She stepped up on to the bank in which it was embedded, and looked through the straggling hazels for some sign of Rhys. Not a live thing was to be seen. She shuddered a little at the awful loneliness that hung around, and for a moment a kind of panic took her. It was almost as though the atmosphere of horror raised round the place by popular tradition had made itself tangible and leaped upon her. She turned quickly to come down the bank, screaming at the sudden apparition of Rhys’ figure. He stood a few paces off, with his arms folded, watching her.
“How you startled me!” she exclaimed, half angry; “where did you come from?”
“I have followed you for some way,” he replied, smiling as he took her hand.
“I don’t like that,” she said pettishly; “it is horrid to think of some one walking behind one when one does not suspect it.”
“Are you angry with me?” asked Rhys. “Don’t be unkind after I’ve waited for you every evening for the last four days.”
“But I told you I should be away from Crishowell. I only came back the day before yesterday. I enjoyed myself very much too.”
“I am glad of that,” said Rhys, in a voice which gave the lie to his words.
“I was staying at such a delightful place,” she continued, pausing for the expected question.
It came at once.
“Where was that?”
“A place called Waterchurch Court. Have you ever heard of it? It belongs to Mr. Fenton, who is very rich.”
Rhys repressed an exclamation. “I know about him. He has a son, hasn’t he?”
“Yes,” replied Isoline, looking conscious.
“An’ I’ll be bound he paid you a sight of attention,” cried Walters, relapsing, as he sometimes did when excited, into the speech of his forefathers.
“Let us go and sit down,” said Isoline, “I am getting tired.” She moved towards the great stone on which they usually sat.
“You haven’t answered me,” he exclaimed, tormented by the thought of Harry.
Isoline liked power. “Why should I?” she asked lightly.
“I’ll tell you why,” he cried, his breath coming short through his hot lips; “because I love you, Isoline—I love you! I love you! I think of nothing but you, day and night!”
She quickened her pace, her head turned away from him, yet her expression was not exactly one of displeasure. But he could not see that.
“Ah, you don’t care, I suppose,” he went on, catching her hand again, “but you can’t stop me, Isoline. Do you hear that? I love you! Iwilllove you, whatever you may say. What do I care for anything in this world but you? Here I’ve sat, night after night, crying out in my heart for you, and longing all the days you have been away for a sight of your face! Hate me if you like, I can’t stop loving you.”
“Let me alone, Mr. Kent,” faltered the girl, somewhat taken off her feet by his torrent of words. “Let me go, please; I cannot stay here if you go on in that way.”
“Youshallhear me!” cried Walters, planting himself before her. “Why did you come here, making me forget everything, luck and trouble alike? Isoline! Isoline!”
She was getting alarmed by his violence, and would have turned and fled, but his arms were round her and he was covering her face, her lips, her cheek, her hair, with furious kisses. She struggled angrily for a moment, and finding resistance useless, dropped her head upon his shoulder and began to cry. Rhys held her closer.
“Don’t cry like that,” he said, almost in a whisper, frightened in his turn by the effect of his outburst.
“Let me go,” she repeated. “I want to go home.”
“Isoline, don’t say that—don’t go! Ah! how I love you! You must not go. Speak to me—tell me you like me a little, only to keep me from breaking my heart.”
“Let me go,” she repeated again.
He loosed his arms and she pushed him away. “How can you be so rough and frighten me so?” she exclaimed, drying her eyes with her handkerchief. “I will never come back here—never—never!”
Rhys was half-mad with excitement and despair at her words. He turned away, striking his clenched hands together and walking to and fro like a creature in a cage. She watched him over her handkerchief; emotion was a thing new to her, and she did not like it.
“Do stop,” she said petulantly, putting it back in her pocket. He turned round and stood humbly before her.
“I have terrified you,” he said. “I am a brute beast, not fit to speak to you, not fit to love you.”
Almost for the first time in his life he thought more of another than of himself. She was silent, the resentment in her face giving way to curiosity.
“Why do you behave like that?” she asked at last.
“Oh, Isoline, I am sorry. Only stay with me a little longer. I swear to you that I will be quiet, and not frighten you any more. I couldn’t help it, dear; I love you so.”
“I think you have behaved very badly,” the girl said, pursing up her lips and quite self-possessed again. “It is impossible for me to stay. I am accustomed to gentlemen.”
Rhys groaned.
“I hope you are ashamed,” she said, with a fine ignorance of her own share in the situation.
“I am, I am.”
He stood silent while she smoothed her hair, which had become disarranged.
“I suppose I may go a bit of the way with you,” he hazarded, when she had finished. “It’s dark, and I must see you as far as the place above the farm.”
She did not move; she was looking at him with a faint curiosity.
“I will stay a short time if you give me your word that you will not annoy me again,” she said, a little surprised at his submission.
Certainly it was a strange state of mind for such a man as Rhys Walters. But many things had cropped up in his heart, unsuspected even by himself.
“I don’t deserve it,” he said.
“I do not wish to be too hard upon you,” she replied, judicially, as she seated herself in their usual place.
Rhys’ depression was so great that Isoline soon began to get rather tired of his company, for he seemed quite incapable of entertaining her, and the little admiring speeches that had formerly fallen so glibly from his tongue would not come, charmed she never so wisely.
In a short time she rose to go home, and he made no protest after he had extorted a reluctant promise that she would return again. Her reluctance did not go very deep.
“Why have you told me so little about yourself?” she asked, as they went along the plateau. “I know your name, and I know that I must not speak of you to any one; but that is not much.”
He was not embarrassed by these questions, for he had long ago foreseen them and prepared something to meet them with.
“What are you doing here?” continued she. “Does no one ever see you?”
“No one but you and one other. If I were seen I should have to leave this place at once. I am a Government agent on private business for the Crown.”
He paused a moment, and Isoline’s eyes opened wide in her interest.
“Yes,” she said, “go on.”
“I’m employed by Government to watch some people who are thought to be doing wrong, and to do that, I have to keep myself out of sight.”
“Who are they, and what are they doing?”
“I can’t tell any one that, but it has to do with an estate.”
The girl drank his words in. The little imagination she had was always attracted by a mystery, and the very vagueness of his story only served to impress her more.
“Then is Kent your real name?” she asked.
“No—no, it isn’t. But I have had to take it for business purposes. You haven’t forgotten that you promised to tell no one you had seen me. You will keep your word, Isoline?”
“Oh, certainly,” she exclaimed fervently, “I should be afraid to say anything after what you have told me. I might get into trouble, mightn’t I?” she added naïvely.
“And I might have to go to prison,” he said, speaking the exact truth. “You would be sorry for that, wouldn’t you, Isoline?”
“Oh, really I should. How dreadful!” she exclaimed.
At this his heart thrilled; he had no idea how the words “Crown” and “Government” had exalted him in her eyes. The pedestal upon which he had raised her was so high that he never supposed she could see down into the sordid world beneath her. Poor Rhys! the spiritual part of him was small, a feeble spark hidden deep in the darkness of selfishness, but Isoline had struck it with her little worthless hand, and it had flickered up.
After leaving her he went back to the cottage in a state of rapture, for she had promised to return. Like Harry at Waterchurch, he was wakeful with thoughts of her, but, unlike him,he went out into the night, and spent it rambling among the shoulders of the mountain.
It was dawning when he came home and locked himself in for the coming day, and the place was so cheerless that he almost missed George. He wondered what had become of him as he went down the ladder and threw himself on his bed. The underground room was now half filled with things which he had carried below after his companion had left him, and the mattress and other possessions belonging to the sheep-stealer furnished his prison, and made it a little more habitable. The impossibility of having a fire tried him in the cold weather, for the place was chilly with the damp of the surrounding earth, and he dared not during the day kindle the smallest flame in the fire-place, for fear that, by some fraction of a chance, some one might pass, and observe the uncommon spectacle of smoke issuing from an empty house.
For some days after Williams had gone he had been in sore straits. There were few provisions in the cottage, and when they were finished, there was no means of getting more, as he dared not venture out. Fortunately, it wanted but a few days of the Pig-driver’s weekly visit, and he eked out his food till the old man should arrive, fighting his hunger as best he might, and blessing the clear mountain water which ran at the door. As he heard the sound of Bumpett’s squeaky voice one morning in the room above, he felt like a shipwrecked man who sees a sail. Had his visitor been an angel from heaven, instead of an exceedingly wicked old man, he could not have been more welcome.