Kitabı oku: «Johnny Ludlow, Second Series», sayfa 24

“Like a bag of bones,” said the Squire.

“Ay. Some days he is so nervous and ill he can’t go to school. I never knew such a thing, for my part. I was for trying flogging, but his mother wouldn’t have it.”

“But—do you mean to tell us, Sanker, that he fancies he sees King’s ghost?” cried the Squire, in great amazement.

“Well, I suppose so,” answered the captain. “He fancies he sees him: and poor King, as far as this world’s concerned, can be nothing but a ghost now. The other evening, when Dan had been commanded to the head-master’s house for something connected with the studies and detained till after dark, he came rushing in with a white face and his hair all wet, saying he had met King under the elm-trees, as he was running back through the green towards Edgar Tower. How can you deal with such a case?”

“I should say flogging would be as good as anything,” said the Squire, decidedly.

“So I thought at first. He’s too ill for it now. There’s nothing, hardly, left of him to flog.”

“Captain Sanker, there is only one thing for you to do,” put in Mrs. Todhetley. “And that is, consult a clever medical man.”

“Why, my dear lady, we have taken him to pretty nearly all the medical men in Worcester,” cried the captain. “He goes regularly to Dr. Hastings.”

“And what do the doctors say?”

“They think that the catastrophe of King’s unhappy death has seized upon the lad’s mind, and brought on a sort of hypochondriacal affection. One of them said it was what the French would call a maladie des nerfs. Dan seems so full of self-reproach, too.”

“What for?”

“Well, for not having made more of King when he was living. And also, I think, for having suffered himself to fall asleep that afternoon on the bench outside the Well: he says had he kept awake he might have been with King, and so saved him. But, as I tell Dan, there’s nothing to reproach himself with in that: he could not foresee that King would meet with the accident. The doctors say now that he must have change of air, and be got away altogether. They recommend the sea.”

“The sea! Do you mean sea-air?”

“No; the sea itself; a voyage: and Dan’s wild to go. A less complete change than that, they think, will be of little avail, for his illness borders almost—almost upon lunacy. I’m sure, what with one thing and another, we seem to be in for a peck of misfortunes,” added the captain, rumpling his hair helplessly.

“And shall you let him go to sea?”

“Well, I don’t know. I stood out against it at first. Never meant to send a son of mine to sea; that has always been my resolution. Look at what I had to starve upon for ever so many years—a lieutenant’s half-pay—and to keep my wife and bring up my children upon it! You can’t imagine it, Squire; it’s cruel. Dan’s too old for the navy, however; and, if he does go, it must be into the merchant service. I don’t like that, either; we regular sailors never do like it, we hold ourselves above it; but there’s a better chance of getting on in it and of making money.”

“I’m sure I am very sorry for it altogether,” said Mrs. Todhetley. “A sailor cannot have any comfort.”

“I expect he’ll have to go,” said the captain, ruefully: “he must get these ideas out of his head. It’s such a thing, you see, for him to be always fancying he sees King.”

“It is a dreadful thing.”

“My wife had a brother once who was always seeing odd colours wherever he looked: colours and shadows and things. But that was not as bad as this. His doctor called it nerves: and I conclude Dan takes after him.”

“My dear, I think Dan takes after your side, not mine,” calmly put in Mrs Sanker, who had her light hair flowing and something black in it that looked like a feather. “He is so very passionate, you know: and I could not go into a passion if I tried.”

“I suppose he takes after us both,” returned Captain Sanker. “I know he never got his superstitious fancies from me, or from any one belonging to me. We may be of a passionate nature, we Sankers, but we don’t see ghosts.”

In a week or two’s time after that, Dan was off to sea. A large shipping firm, trading from London to India, took him as midshipman. The ship was called the Bangalore; a fine vessel of about fourteen hundred tons, bound for some port out there. When Captain Sanker came back from shipping him off, he was full of spirits, and said Dan was cured already. No sooner was Dan amidst the bustle of London, than his fears and fancies left him.

It was some time in the course of the next spring—getting on for summer, I think—that Captain Sanker gave up his house in Worcester, and went abroad, somewhere into Germany. Partly from motives of economy, for they had no idea of saving, and somehow spent more than their income; partly to see if change would get up Mrs. Sanker’s health, which was failing. After that, we heard nothing more of them: and a year or two went on.

“Please, sir, here’s a young man asking to see you.”

“A young man asking to see me,” cried the Squire—we were just finishing dinner. “Who is it, Thomas?”

“I don’t know, sir,” replied old Thomas. “Some smart young fellow dressed as a sailor. I’ve showed him into your room, sir.”

“Go and see who it is, Johnny.”

It was summer-time, and we were at home at Dyke Manor. I went on to the little square room. You have been in it too. Opposite the Squire’s old bureau and underneath the map of Warwickshire on the wall, sat the sailor. He had good blue clothes on and a turned-down white collar, and held a straw hat in his hand. Where had I seen the face? A very red-brown honest face, with a mouth as wide as Molly’s rolling-pin. Wider, now that it was smiling.

He stood up, and turned his straw hat about a little nervously. “You’ve forgotten me, Master Johnny. Mark Ferrar, please, sir.”

Mark Ferrar it was, looking shorter and broader; and I put out my hand to him. I take my likes and dislikes, as you have already heard, and can’t help taking them; and Ferrar was one whom I had always liked.

“Please, sir, I’ve made bold to come over here,” he went on. “Captain Sanker’s left Worcester, they tell me, and I can’t hear where he is to be found: and the Teals, they have left. I’ve brought news to him from his son, Mr. Dan: and father said I had better come over here and tell it, and maybe Squire Todhetley might get it sent to the captain.”

“Have you seen anything of Mr. Dan, then?”

“I’ve been with him nearly all the time, Master Johnny. We served on the same ship: he as middy and I as working apprentice. Not but what the middies are apprenticed just as sure as we are. They don’t do our rough work, the cleaning and that, and they mess apart; but that’s pretty nigh all the difference.”

“And how are you getting on, Mark?”

“First-rate, sir. The captain and officers are satisfied with me, and when I’ve served my four years I shall go up to pass for second mate. I try to improve myself a bit in general learning at odd moments too, sir, seeing I didn’t have much. It may be of use to me if I ever get up a bit in life. Mr. Dan–”

“But look here, Ferrar,” I interrupted, the recollection striking me. “How came you and Mr. Dan to sail together? You were on a small home-coasting barque: he went in an Indiaman.”

“I was in the barque first of all, Master Johnny, and took a voyage to Spain and back. But our owners, hearing a good report of me, that I was likely to make a smart and steady sailor, put me on their big ship, the Bangalore. In a day or two Mr. Dan Sanker came on board.”

“And how is he getting on? Does he–”

“If you please, Master Johnny, I’d like to tell what I’ve got to tell about him to the Squire,” he interrupted. “It is for that, sir, I have come all the way over here.”

So I called the Squire in. The following was the condensed substance of Ferrar’s narrative. What with his way of telling it, and what with the Squire’s interruptions, it was rather long.

“Mr. Dan joined the Bangalore the day we sailed, sir. When he saw me as one of the sailors he started back as if I shocked him. But in a week or two, when he had got round from his sea-sickness, he grew friendly, and sometimes talked a bit. I used to bring up Master King’s death, and say how sorry I was for it—for you see, sir, I couldn’t bear that he should think it true that I had had a hand in it. But he seemed to hate the subject; he’d walk away if I began it, and at last he said he couldn’t stand the talking about King; so I let it be. Our voyage was a long one, for the ship went about from port to port. Mr. Dan–”

“What sort of a sailor did he make?” interrupted the Squire.

“Well, sir, he was a good smart sailor at his work, but he got to be looked upon as rather a queer kind of young man. He couldn’t bear to keep his night watches—it was too lonely, he said; and several times he fell into trouble for calling up the hands when there was nothing to call them up for. At Hong Kong he had a fever, and they shaved his head; but he got well again. One evening, after we had left Hong Kong and were on our way to San Francisco, I was on deck—almost dark it was—when Mr. Dan comes down the rigging all in a heap, just as if a wild-cat was after him. ‘There’s King up there,’ he says to me: and Mr. Conroy, do what he would, couldn’t get him up again. After that he went about the ship peeping and peering, always fancying King was hiding somewhere and going to pounce out upon him. The captain said his fever was coming back: Mr. Dan said it was not fever, it was King. I told him one day what I thought—that Master King had been flung down; that it was not an accident—I felt as sure of it as though I had seen it done; and what I said seemed to put him up, sir. Who did I fancy had done it, or would do it? he asked me all in anger: and I said I did not know who, but if ever I got back to Worcester I’d leave not a stone unturned to find out. Well, sir, he got worse: worse in his fancies, and worse as to sickness. He was seeing King always at night, and he had dysentery and ague, and grew so weak that he could hardly stand. One of the cabin-boys took sick and died on board. The night he lay below, dead, Mr. Dan burst into the saloon saying it was King who was below, and that he’d never be got out of the ship again. Mr. Conroy—he was the chief mate, sir—humoured him, telling him not to fear, that if it was King he would be buried deep in the sea on the morrow: but Mr. Dan said he’d not stop in the sea, any more than he had stopped in his grave in St. Peter’s churchyard at home; he’d be back in the ship again.”

“Dan Sanker must have been mad,” observed the Squire.

“Yes, sir, I think he was; leastways not right. In a day or two he had to be fastened down in his berth with brain-fever, and Mr. Conroy said that as he had known me in the past days I had better be the one to sit with him, for he couldn’t be left. I was quite taken aback to hear what he said in his mutterings, and hoped it wasn’t true.”

“Did he get well again?”

“Just for a day or two, sir. The fever left him, but he was in the shockingest state of weakness you could imagine. The night before he died–”

The Squire started up. “Dan Sanker’s not dead, Ferrar!”

“Yes he is, sir. It’s what I have come to tell of.”

“Goodness bless me! Poor Dan dead! Only think of it, Johnny!”

But I was not surprised. From the moment Ferrar first spoke, an instinct had been upon me that it was so. He resumed.

“Everything was done for him that could be, sir. We had a doctor on board—a passenger going to California—but he could not save him. He said when it came to such awful weakness as that, there could be no saving. Mr. Conroy and the other officers were very kind to him—the skipper too; but they could do nothing. All his fears seemed to be gone then; we could hardly hear his whispers, but he was sensible and calm. He said he knew God had forgave him for what he did, and would blot his sin out, and King had forgave him too, and had come to tell him so: he had been to him in the night and talked and smiled happily and said over to him a verse of ‘Lord Bateman’–”

“And you say he was in his senses, Ferrar?”

“Yes, sir, that he was. That night he made a confession, Mr. Conroy and the doctor and me being by him. It was he that killed King.”

“Bless my heart!” cried the Squire.

“He had seen me sitting with King that afternoon at Malvern, and heard him saying the verses to me. It put his temper up frightful, sir, I being one of their enemies the Frogs; but he says if he’d known it was me that snatched King out of the fight on Saturday, he’d not have minded so much. It must have been him that King saw coming, Master Johnny,” added Ferrar, turning momentarily from the Squire to address me; “when he broke off in the midst of ‘Lord Bateman,’ and told me, all in a hurry, to go away. He waited till I was gone, and then rushed on to King and began abusing him and knocking him about. King was unsteady through his weak leg, and one of the knocks sent him over the bank. Dan says he was frightened almost to death; he caught up Dr. Teal’s green handkercher from a chair and ran to the Well with it; he was too frightened to go and see after King, thinking he had killed him; and he sat down outside the Well and made as if he went to sleep. He never meant to hurt King, he said; it was only passion; but he had drunk a lot of strong ale and some wine upon it, and hardly knew what he was about. He said there was never a minute since but what he had been sorry for it, and he had been always seeing King. He asked me to show him the verses that had been given to me, that King wrote out, ‘Lord Bateman’—for I had got them with me at sea, sir—and he kissed them and held them to him till he died.”

“Dear, dear!” sighed the Squire.

“And that’s all, sir,” concluded Ferrar. “Mr. Conroy wrote out a copy of his confession, which I brought along with me to Worcester. Mr. Dan charged me to tell his father, and my own folks, and any other friends I liked that had thought me guilty, and I promised him. He was as placid as a child all the day after that, and died at sundown, so happy and peaceful that it was almost like heaven.”

Ferrar broke off with a sob. Poor Dan!

And that was the final ending of the Day of Pleasure. He and King are together again.

XII.
MARGARET RYMER

They had gone through the snow to evening service at North Crabb, the Squire, Mrs. Todhetley, and Tod, leaving me at home with one of my splitting headaches. Thomas had come in to ask if I would have the lamp, but I told him I would rather be without it. So there I sat on alone, beside the fire, listening to Hannah putting the children to bed upstairs, and looking sleepily out at the snowy landscape.

As the fire became dim, sending the room into gloom, the light outside grew stronger. The moon was high; clear and bright as crystal; what with that, and the perfectly white snow that lay on everything, the night seemed nearly as light as day. The grass plat outside was a smooth white plain, the clustering shrubs beyond it being also white.

I knew the fire wanted replenishing: I knew that if I sat on much longer, I should fall asleep; but sit on I did, letting the fire go, too listless to move. My eyes were fixed dreamily on the plain of snow, with the still moonlight lying across it. The room grew darker, the landscape lighter.

And asleep, in another minute, I should inevitably have been, but for a circumstance that suddenly arose. All in a moment—I saw not how or whence it came—a dark figure appeared on the grass plat, close before the bank of shrubs, right in front of me; the figure of a man, wrapped in a big great-coat. He was standing still and gazing fixedly at the house. Gazing, as it seemed (though that was impossible) at me. I was wide awake at once, and sitting bolt upright in the chair.

Yes, there could be no mistake; and it was no delusion. The man appeared to be a tall man, strong and muscular, with a mass of hair on his face. What could he want? Was it a robber reconnoitring the premises; peering and peeping to ascertain whether all the world was at church, before he broke in to rifle the house?

No one, void of such an experience, can imagine how dark he looked standing there, amidst the whiteness of all the scene around. In one sense, he stood out plainer than he could have done by daylight, because the contrast was greater. But this sort of light did not show his features, which were shrouded in obscurity.

Presently he moved. Looking to right and left, he took a step forward. Evidently he was trying to see whether the parlour where I sat was empty or occupied. Should I go out to him? Or should I fling up the window and ask what he wanted? I was not frightened: don’t let any one think that: but watching him brought rather a creepy kind of sensation.

And, just then, as I left the chair quietly to open the window, I heard the catch of the garden-gate, and some one came whistling up the path. The man vanished as if by magic. Whilst I looked, he was gone. It seemed to me that I did not take my eyes off him; but where he went to, or what became of him, I knew not.

“Anybody at home?” called out Tom Coney, as he broke off his whistling and opened the hall-door.

“All right, Tom. Come along.”

And, to tell the truth, I was not sorry to see Tom’s hearty face. He had stayed away from evening service to sit with his mother.

“I say, Tom, did you see any fellow on the snow there, as you came in?”

“On the snow where?” asked Tom.

“There; just before the shrubs.” And I pointed the spot out to him, and told him what had happened. Tom, one of the most practical fellows living, more so, I think, than even Tod, and with less imagination than an ostrich, received the account with incredulity.

“You dropped asleep, Johnny, and fancied it.”

“I did not drop asleep, and I did not fancy it. When you came into the garden I was about to open the window and call to him.”

“Those headaches are downright stupefying things, Johnny. Jane has them, you know. One day I remember she fell asleep with a bad one, and woke up and said the sofa was on fire.”

“Tom, I tell you the man was there. A tall, strong-looking fellow, with a beard. He was staring at the house with all his might, at this room, as it seemed to me, wanting to come forward, I think, but afraid to. He kept close to the laurels, as if he did not wish to be seen, forgetting perhaps that they were white and betrayed him. When you opened the gate, he was there.”

“It’s odd, then, where he could have put himself,” said Tom Coney, not giving in an inch. “I’ll vow not a soul was there, man or woman, when I came up the path.”

“That’s true. He vanished in a moment. Whilst I was looking at him he disappeared.”

“Vanished! Disappeared! You talk as though you thought it a ghost, Johnny.”

“Ghost be hanged! It was some ill-doing tramp, I expect, trying to look if he might steal into the house.”

“Much you know of the ways of tramps, Johnny Ludlow! Tramps don’t come showing themselves on snow-lighted, open lawns, in the face and eyes of the front windows: they hide themselves in obscure hedges and byways. It’s a case of headachy sleep, young man, and nothing else.”

“Look here, Tom. If the man was there, his footprints will be there; if he was not, as you say, the snow will be smooth and level: come out and see.”

We went out at once, Tom catching up a stick in the hall, and crossed the lawn. I was right, and Tom wrong. Sure enough, there were the footprints, plenty of them, indented in the deep snow. Tom gave in then.

“I wish to goodness I had seen him! The fellow should not have got off scot-free, I can tell him that. What tremendous feet he must have! Just look at the size, Johnny. Regular crushers.”

“Don’t you go and say again I was asleep! He must have stepped back and got away through these laurels; yes, here are the marks. I say, Tom”—dropping my voice to a whisper—“perhaps he’s here now.”

“We’ll soon see that,” said Tom Coney, plunging amidst the laurels with a crash, and beating about with the stick.

But there was no trace of him. Tom came out presently, covered with the beaten snow, and we went indoors; he veering round partly to his first opinion, and a little incredulous, in spite of the footprints.

“If any man was there, Johnny, how did he get away? I don’t see, for my part, what he could possibly want. A thief would have gone to work in a different manner.”

“Well, let it be so. I shall say nothing about it to them when they come home. Mrs. Todhetley’s timid, you know, she would fancy the man was outside still, and be lying awake all night, listening for the smashing in of doors and windows.”

Cracking the fire into a blaze; as much of a blaze, that is, as its dilapidated state allowed; I called Thomas to light the lamp and shut the shutters. When I told him of the affair, bidding him not mention it, he took a different view of it altogether, and put it down to the score of one of the younger maid-servants.

“They’ve got sweethearts, Master Johnny, the huzzies have; lots of sweethearts. One or the t’other of ’em is always a sidling sheepfaced up to the house, as though he didn’t dare to say his soul was his own.”

They came in from church before the fire had burnt up, and the Squire scolded me for letting it go so low. The coal we get in Worcestershire is the Staffordshire coal; it does not burn up in a minute as London coal does, but must have time.

Nothing of course was said about the man; I and Tom Coney—who stayed supper—held our tongues, as agreed upon. But I told Tod in going up to bed. He was sleepy, and did not think much of it. The fact was, as I could plainly perceive, that to any of them, when related, it did not seem to be much. They had not seen it as I had.

Timberdale Rectory, a cosy, old-fashioned house, its front walls covered with ivy, stood by itself amidst pasture-land, a field’s length from the church. Mrs. Todhetley sent me there on the Monday morning, to invite the Rector, Herbert Tanerton, and his wife to dine with us the next evening, for we had a prime codfish sent as a present from London. The Squire and Tod had gone out shooting. It was January weather; cold and bright, with a frosty sky. Icicles drooped from the trees, and the snow in Crabb Ravine was above my ankles. The mater had said to me, “I should go the road way, Johnny;” but I did not mind the snow.

In Timberdale I met Margaret Rymer. She had her black cloak on, and her natty little black bonnet; and the gentle and refined face under it, with its mild brown eyes, put me more than ever in mind of her dead father.

Does any one remember her? I told something about her and her people early in this volume. When Thomas Rymer died, partly of a broken heart, Benjamin had again gone off, and Margaret continued to keep the business going. She understood the drugs thoroughly. During all the months that had elapsed since, the son had not made his appearance at home. Timberdale would say, “Why does not Benjamin come back to carry on affairs in his father’s place?” but it had no satisfactory answer. Latterly, Timberdale had let Benjamin alone, and busied itself with Margaret.

Six months ago, the Reverend Isaac Sale had come to Timberdale as curate. He was a plain, dark little man of sterling worth, and some thirty years of age—older than the Rector. Margaret Rymer met him at the Sunday School, where she taught regularly, and he fell desperately in love with her—if it’s not wrong to say that of a parson. As a rule, men and women like contrasts; and perhaps the somewhat abrupt-mannered man with the plain and rugged features had been irresistibly attracted by the delicate face of Margaret, and by her singularly gentle ways. In position she was not his equal; but Mr. Sale made no secret of his attachment, or that he wanted Margaret to be his wife. Mrs. Rymer entirely opposed it: how was the business to be kept going without Margaret, she demanded; or herself, either?

Mr. Sale had taken the curacy as a temporary thing. He was waiting for some expected appointment abroad. When it fell to him, Margaret Rymer would have to choose between sailing with him as his wife, or staying at home and giving him up for good. So said Timberdale.

After standing to talk a bit with Margaret, who had come out on an errand for her mother, I ran on to the Rectory. Mr. Tanerton and his wife were in the snug little bow-windowed front-room. He, spare and colourless, young yet, with cold grey eyes and thin light whiskers, sat by the blazing fire of wood and coal, that went roaring and sparkling up the chimney. Somehow Herbert Tanerton gave you the idea of being always in a chill. Well meaning, and kind in the main, he was yet severe, taking too much note of offences, and expecting all the world, and especially his own flock, to be better than gold.

His wife, kind, genial, and open-hearted, sat at the window, stitching a wristband for one of her husband’s new shirts—he was as particular over them as he was over the parish sins—and glancing cheerfully out between whiles at the snowy landscape. When she was Grace Coney, and niece at the farm, we were very intimate; a nice, merry-hearted, capable girl, rather tall and slender, with bright dark hazel eyes, and a wide mouth that seemed always to be smiling to show its pretty white teeth. Seeing me coming, she ran to open the porch-door. As yet, she and Herbert had no children.

“Come in, Johnny! Is it not a lovely day? Herbert thinks it the coldest morning we have had; but I tell him that is because he does not feel very well. And he has been put out a little.”

“What about?” I asked, as the Rector turned in his chair to shake hands with me. For she had said all that in his hearing.

“Oh, there are one or two things. Sam Mullett–”

“Where’s the use of talking of the stupid old man, Grace?” cried the parson, crossly. “He is getting too old for his place.”

“And Mr. Sale is going to leave,” added Mrs. Tanerton, as I sat down by the table, after delivering the invitation. “The appointment he expected has been offered to him; it is a chaplaincy at the Bahama Islands. Mr. Sale has known of it for a week, and never told Herbert until yesterday.”

“He spoke to me in the vestry after morning service,” said the Rector, in an injured tone. “And he said at the same time that he was not sure he should accept it; it did not quite depend upon himself. I saw as clearly what he meant to imply as though he had avowed it; that it depended upon that girl, Margaret Rymer. It is a preposterous thing. The idea of a clergyman and a gentleman wanting to marry her! She keeps a chemist’s shop!”

“It was her father who kept it,” I said eagerly, for I liked Margaret Rymer, and did not care to hear her disparaged. “And he was a gentleman born.”

“What has that to do with it?” retorted the parson, who was in one of his most touchy humours. “Had her grandfather been a duke, it would make no difference to what she is. Look at the mother!”

“Margaret is a lady in mind, in looks, and in manners,” I persisted. “If I loved Margaret Rymer, I would marry her, though I were an archdeacon.”

“That’s just like you, Johnny Ludlow! you have no more sense than a child in some things,” said the parson, crustily. Grace glanced up from her work and laughed; and looked as if she would like to take part with me.

“I never could have suspected Sale of such folly,” went on the Rector, warming his hands over the blaze. “Grace, do you think that soup’s ready?”

“I will see,” answered Grace, putting the wristband on the little work-table; and she touched my shoulder playfully in passing.

Herbert Tanerton sat in silence; knitting his brow into lines. I took the chair on the other side the fireplace opposite to him, thinking of this and that, and fingering the tongs to help me: a habit I was often scolded for at home—that of fingering things.

“Look here, Mr. Tanerton. If they go all the way out to settle at the Bahamas, it will not signify there who Margaret has been here. Whether she may have helped in her father’s business, or whether she may have been—as you said—a duke’s granddaughter, and brought up accordingly, it will be all one to the Bahamas. Mr. Sale need not say to the Bahamas, ‘My wife used to sell pennyworths of rhubarb and magnesia.’”

“It is not that,” crossly responded the Rector—“what people will think or say; it is for Sale’s own sake that I object. He cannot like the connection. A clergyman should marry in his own sphere.”

“I suppose men are differently constituted, clergymen as well as others,” said I, with deprecation, remembering that I was a plain, inexperienced lad, and he was the Rector of Timberdale. “Some persons don’t care for social distinctions as others do, don’t even see them: perhaps Mr. Sale is one.”

“He cares for probity and honour—he would not choose to ally himself to crime, to disgrace,” sternly spoke the Rector. “And he would do that in marrying Margaret Rymer. Remember what the son did, that ill-doing Benjamin,” added he, dropping his voice. “You know all about it, Johnny. The affair of the bank-note, I mean.”

And if Herbert Tanerton had said to me the affair of the moon and planets, I could not have been more surprised. “How did you get to know of it?” I asked, when speech came to me.

“Mr. Rymer told me on his death-bed. I was attending him spiritually. Of course, I have never spoken of it, even to my wife—I should not think of speaking of it; but I consider that it lies in my duty to disclose the facts to Mr. Sale.”

“Oh no, don’t—don’t, please, Mr. Tanerton!” I cried out, starting up in a sort of distress, for the words seemed to take hold of me. “No one knows of it: no one but the Squire, and I, as you say, and Mrs. Rymer, and you, and Ben himself; Jelf’s dead, you know. It need never be brought up again in this world; and I dare say it never will be. Pray don’t tell Mr. Sale—for Margaret’s sake.”

“But I have said that I consider it my duty to tell him,” replied the parson, steadily. “Here he comes!”

I turned to the window, and saw Sale trudging up to the parsonage through the snowy field pathway, his black hair and red rugged face presenting a sort of contrast to the white glare around. Ugly, he might be called; but it was a face to be liked, for all that. And the ring of his voice was true and earnest.