THE
 SECRET IN THE HILL

 BY
 BERNARD CAPES

 LONDON
 SMITH, ELDER & CO.,
 15, WATERLOO PLACE
 1903
 (_all rights reserved_)

 [DEDICATION.]

 To
 MISS PRECISION
 AND
 “YOUR AFFECNUT LITTLE FRIEND”
 _THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED_
 WITH DEFERENCE
 BY
 ITS AUTHOR AND THEIRS

 CONTENTS.

 PART I
  I. I first see Joshua Pilbrow
  II. A Great Loss and a Queer Equivalent
  III. Uncle Jenico
  IV. My First View of the Hill
  V. The Story Of The Earthquake
  VI. Mrs. Puddephatt and Fancy-Maria
  VII. Mr. Sant
  VIII. Treasure-Hunting
  IX. Harry Harrier
  X. Friends at Last
  XI. Mischief of Sorts
 PART II
  I. The Badger
  II. The Great Storm
  III. Open Sesame
  IV. The Secret in the Hill
  V. A Reappearance
  VI. An Odd Compact
  VII. “Facilis Descensus Averni”
  VIII. The Feast of Lanterns
  IX. The Weary Sands
  X. The Darkest Hour
  XI. Joshua Speaks
  XII. Rescue
  XIII. Rampick Speaks
  XIV. What the Letter said
  XV. Out of the Depths
  Conclusion

 THE SECRET IN THE HILL.
 PART I.

 CHAPTER I.
 I FIRST SEE JOSHUA PILBROW.

When I was a very little boy my mother died. I was too young to feel
her loss long, though I missed her badly at first; but the
compensation was that it brought my father nearer to me. He was a
barrister, a prodigal love of a man, dear bless him! And he felt his
bereavement so cruelly that for a time he seemed incapable of rallying
from the blow. But presently he plucked up heart, and went, for my
sake, to his business again.

He was more liked than lucky, I believe. I had evidence enough, at
least of the former; for after my mother’s death, not bearing that we
should be parted, he carried me with him on the last circuit he was
ever to go. Those were the days when Bench and Bar dined well, and sat
up late telling tales. Sometimes my father would slip me into his
pocket, so to speak, and from its shelter--when, to be candid, I had
been much better in bed--I heard fine stories related by the gentlemen
who put off gravity with the horsehair they wore all day. They were a
merry and irresponsible lot, rather like a strolling company of
actors; and, indeed, it was no less their business to play many parts.
There were types among them which I came to associate with certain
qualities: such as the lean vivacious ones, who ate and drank
hungrily, and presently grew incoherent and quarrelsome; such as the
rosy bald-headed ones, who always seemed to make most laughter; such
as the large, heavy-browed ones, who sulked when they were bettered in
argument. But my friend amongst them all, next to my father, was Mr.
Quayle, Q.C.

I fancied I had discovered, after much consideration, why he was
called Q.C. He was a little man, quite bald and round all over his
head and face except for a tuft of hair on his chin, and there was the
Q; and he wore a pouter-pigeon ruff under his chin like this, Q/C, and
there was the Q.C. I may have been wrong; but anyhow I had precedent
to justify me, for many of these jolly souls bore such characteristic
nicknames. There was Plain John, for instance, who had so christened
himself for ever during a dispute about the uses or abuses of multiple
titles. “Plain John” had been enough for him, he had said. Again,
there was Blind Fogle, so called from his favourite cross-examination
phrase. “I don’t quite see.” They were all boys together when off
duty, chaffing and horse-playing, and my father was the merriest and
most irrepressible of the crew.

There was one treat, however, of which he was persistent in baulking
me. Pray him as I might, he would never let me see or hear him in his
character of Counsel. The Court where he would be working by day was
forbidden ground to me, and for that very reason I longed, like
Bluebeard’s wife, to peep into it. This was not right, even in
thought, for I knew his wishes. But worse is to be confessed. I once
took an opportunity, which ought never to have been given me, to
disobey him; and dreadful were the consequences, as you shall hear.

We were travelling on what is called the Home Circuit, and one day we
came to Ipswich, a town to mark itself red in the annals of my young
life. On the second morning after our arrival I was playing at horses
with George, my father’s man, when Mr. Quayle looked in at our hotel,
and, dismissing George, took and sat me upon his knee.

“Dad gone to Court?” said he.

“Yes,” I answered; “just.”

He grunted, and rubbed his bald head, with a look half comical, half
aggravated. His eyes were rather blinky and red, and he seemed
confused in manner and at a loss for words.

“Dicky,” he said, suddenly, “did you live very well, very rich-like,
when mamma was alive?”

“Yes,” I answered; “’cept when mamma said we must retrench, and cried;
and by’m-by papa laughed, and threw the rice pudding into the fire,
and took us to dine at a palace.”

“And that was--very long before--hey?”

“It was a very little while before mamma went away for good,” I
murmured, and hung my head, inclined to whimper.

Mr. Quayle twitched at me compunctious.

“O, come!” he said, “we must all bear our losses like men. They teach
us the best in the world to stand square on our own toeses. There!
Shall I tell you a story--hey?”

I brightened at once. He knew some good ones. “Yes, please,” I said.

“O, lud!” he exclaimed, rubbing his nose with his eye-glasses. “I am
committed! Judex damnatur. Dicky, I sat up late last night, devouring
briefs, and they’ve given me an indigestion. Never sit up late, Dicky,
_or you’ll have to pay for it_!”

He said the last words with an odd emphasis, giving me a little shake.

“Is that the beginning of the story?” I asked, with reserve.

“O, the story!” he said. “H’m! ha! Dear take my fuddled caput! Well,
here goes:

“There were once two old twin brothers, booksellers, name of Pilbrow,
who kept shop together in a town, as it might be Ipswich. Now books,
young gentleman, should engender an atmosphere of reason and sympathy,
inasmuch as we talk of the Republic of letters, which signifies a sort
of a family tie between A, B, and C. But these fellows, though twins,
were so far from being united that they were always quarrelling. If
Joshua bought a book of a stranger, Abel would say he had given more
than its worth, and sell it at his own valuation; and if Abel attended
a sale, there was Joshua to bid against him. Naturally, under these
conditions, the business didn’t flourish. The brothers got poorer and
poorer, and the more they lost the worse they snapped and snarled,
till they took to threatening one another in public with dear knows
what reprisals. Well, one day, at an auction, after bidding each
against t’other thremenjus for a packet of old manuscripts and book
rubbish--which Abel ended by getting, by-the-by--they fastened
together like tom-cats, and had to be separated. The people laughed
and applauded; but the end was more serious than was expected. Abel
disappeared from the business, and a few days later the shop took
fire, and was burned to the ground.

“So far, so plain; and now, Mr. Dickycumbob, d’ye know what’s meant by
Insurance?”

“No, sir?”

“Well, look here. If I want to provide against my house, and the goods
in it, being lost to me by fire, I go to a gentleman, with a gold
watch-chain like a little ship’s cable to recommend him, and says
I:--‘If I give you so much pocket-money a year, will you undertake to
build up my house again for me in case it happens to be burned down?’
And the gentleman smiles, and says ‘Certainly.’ Then I say, ‘If I
double your pocket-money will you undertake to give me a thousand
pounds for the value of the goods in that house supposing they are
burned too?’ And the gentleman says, ‘Certainly; in case their value
really _is_ a thousand pounds at the time.’ So I go away, and
presently, strange to say, my house _is_ actually burned to the
ground. Then I ask the gentleman to fulfil his promise; but he says,
‘Not at all. The house I will rebuild as before, and for the goods I
will pay you; but not a thousand pounds, because I am given to believe
that they were worth nothing like that sum at the time of the fire?’
Now, what am I to do? Well, I will tell you what this Joshua did. He
insisted upon having the whole thousand pounds, and the gentleman
answered by saying that he believed Joshua had purposely set fire to
his own house in order to secure a thousand pounds for a lot of old
rubbish in it that wasn’t worth twopence ha’penny. D’yunderstand?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Very well, then, and listen to this. If the gentleman spoke true,
Joshua had fallen _in Scyllam cupiens vitare Charybdim_, which means
that he had jumped out of the frying-pan into the fire, or, in other
words had, in trying to catch the Insurance gentleman, been nabbed
himself by the law. For arson is arson, and fraud fraud, and the
gentleman with the watch-chain isn’t to be caught with a pinch of salt
on his tail. But that was not the worst. Human bones had been found
among the _débris_ of the building, and ugly rumours got about that
these bones were Abel’s bones--the bones of an unhappy victim of
Joshua’s murderous hate. The man had disappeared, the brothers’ deadly
quarrel was recalled; it was whispered that the fire might owe itself
to a double motive--that, in short, Joshua had designed, at one blow,
to secure the thousand pounds and destroy the evidences of a great
crime. Joshua, sir, was arrested and put upon his trial for murder and
arson.”

I was listening with all my eyes and ears.

“Who defended him?” I whispered, gulping; for I knew something of the
legal terms.

The answer took me like a smack.

“Your father, sir.”

“O!” I exclaimed, thrilling. And then, after a pause, with a pride of
loyalty: “He got him off, didn’t he?”

Mr. Quayle put me down, and yawned dyspeptically.

“What!” he said. “If any man can, papa will. I ask your pardon, Master
Dicky, I really do, for palming off fact instead of fiction on you.
But my poor brain wasn’t equal. The case is actually _sub
judice_--being tried at this moment. Yesterday began it, and to-day
will end. If you whisper to me to-night, I’ll whisper back the
result.”

The delay seemed insupportable. He had read and worked me up to the
last chapter of the story, and now proposed to leave me agonising for
the end. It was the first time I had ever been brought so close to the
living romance of the law, and my blood was on fire with the
excitement of it.

“O, I wish----” I began.

The barrister looked down at me oddly, and shook his head.

“Ah, you little rogue!” he chuckled.

I felt too guilty to speak. He knew all that was in my mind. Suddenly
he took my hand.

“Come along, then,” he said, “and let’s have a peep. Papa needn’t
know.”

He shouldn’t have tempted me, nor should I have succumbed. A murder
romance was no book for a child, though my father figured in it as a
Paladin championing the wronged and oppressed.

I hung back a moment, but the creature cooed and whistled to me. “Come
and see Joshua,” he said, “with his back to the wall, and papa in
front daring ’em all to come on.”

The picture was irresistible. I let myself be persuaded and run out,
tingling all over.

It was a dingy November morning. The old town seemed dull and uneasy,
and a tallow-faced clock on a church dawdled behind time, as if it had
stopped to let something unpleasant go by. That might have been a
posse of melancholy javelin-men, who, with a ludicrous little
strutting creature at their head--a sort of pocket drum-major, in
sword and cocked hat and with a long staff in his hand--went splashing
past at the moment. The court-house, what with the fog and drip, met
us like the mouth of a sewer, and I was half-inclined to cry off so
disenchanting an adventure, when my companion tossed me up in his arms
and carried me within. Through halls and passages, smelling of cold,
trodden mud, we were passed with deference, and suddenly were swung
and shut into a room where there were lights and a great foggy hush.

I saw before me the scarlet judge. I knew him well enough, but never
awful like this--a shrunk ferret with piercing eyes looking out of a
gray nest. I saw the wigs of the counsel; but their bobtails seemed
cocked with an unfamiliar viciousness. I saw the faces of the Jury,
set up in two rows like ghostly ninepins; and then I saw another, a
face by itself, a face like a little shrewd wicked gurgoyle, that hung
yellow and alone out of the mist of the court. And that face, I knew,
was the face of Joshua.

The terrible silence ticked itself away, and there suddenly was my
father standing up before them all, and talking in a quick impassioned
voice. My skin went cold and hot. If I reaped little of the dear
tones, I understood enough to know that he spoke impetuously for the
prisoner, heaping scorn upon the prosecution. Never, he said, in all
his experience had he known calumny visit a soul so spotless as the
one it was now his privilege to defend. The process would be laughably
easy, it was true, and he would only dwell upon what must be to the
jury a foregone conclusion--the accused’s innocence, that was to
say--with the object to crush with its own vicious fallacies a
_pro_secution which, indeed, he could not help remarking bore more the
appearance of a _per_secution.

Mr. Quayle at this point laughed a little under his breath and
whispered, “Bravo!” in my ear, as he eased his burden by resting my
feet on the back of a bench. As for me, I was burning and shooting all
over with pride, as my eyes went from my father to the poor little
ugly prisoner in the dock, and back again.

The accused, went on my father (in substance. I can only give the
briefest abstract of his speech), would not deny that there had been
differences between him and his brother. Indeed, it would be useless
to, in the face of some recent notorious evidence to the contrary. But
did not all history teach us the folly of jumping, on the strength of
an unguarded word, to fatal conclusions? Had not one of our own
monarchs (surnamed Fitz-Empress, as he need not remind the jury)
suffered a lifelong regret from the false interpretation put upon a
rash utterance of his? “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”
he had cried, in an unthinking moment. “You shall pay for this!” had
been Joshua Pilbrow’s threat to his brother, under a like aggravation,
in the sale-room. “Gentlemen,” said my father, “how deadly the seeming
import, how laughable the explanation in either case. King Henry cried
only distractedly for some one to persuade his importunate Chancellor
to leave him alone. Joshua Pilbrow meant no more than to insist that
his brother should ‘stand the whole racket’ of a purchase of which he
himself had disapproved. Hence, gentlemen, these tears!”

There was a little stir in court, and my companion chuckled
delightedly in my ear again.

My father then proceeded triumphantly to give the true facts of the
case. The packet of books had, it appeared when opened, revealed one
item of unexpected value, in the profits from which Joshua, as
partner, insisted upon sharing. To this, however, Abel, quoting his
own words against him, demurred. It was his--Abel’s purchase, Abel
contended, to do with as he chose. The dispute ran so high as to
threaten litigation; when all of a sudden one night Abel was found to
have taken himself off with the cherished volume. Joshua, at first
unable to credit such perfidy, bided his time, expecting his brother
to return. But when, at last, his suspicion of bereavement settled
into a conviction, he grew like one demented. He could not believe in
the reality of his loss; but, candle in hand, went hunting high and
low amongst the litter with which the premises were choked, hoping
somewhere to alight, in some forgotten corner where cupidity had
concealed it, on the coveted prize. Alas! it never rains but it pours.
He not only failed to trace the treasure, but, in his distracted hunt
for it, must accidentally have fired the stock, which, smouldering for
awhile, burst out presently into flame, and committed all to ruin.

 * * * * * *

Such was the outline of the story, and, for all that I understood of
it, I could have clapped my father to the echo, with the tears gulping
in my throat, for his noble vindication of a wronged man. There were
other points he made, such as that Joshua had himself escaped with the
utmost difficulty from the burning building (and did that look like
arson?); such as that he had instructed his lawyers, after committal,
to advertise strenuously, though vainly, for his brother’s whereabouts
(and did that look like murder?); such as that the bones found amongst
the ruins were the bones of anatomical specimens, in which the firm
was well known to have dealt. I need not insist on them, because the
end was what I knew it must be if men were not base and abominable
enough to close their ears wilfully to those ringing accents of truth.

The prosecution, poor thing! answered, and the judge summed up; and
still Mr. Quayle, quite absorbed in the case, did not offer to take me
away. I had my eyes on my father all the time. He had sunk back, as if
exhausted, after his speech, and sat in a corner of the bench, his
hand over his face. The jury gave their verdict without leaving their
places. I heard the demand and the answer. The cry, “Not Guilty,” rang
like a pæan in my ears; and still I kept my eyes on my father.

The prisoner, freed from the dock, had left the court, when suddenly
some people stirred, and a whisper went round. A barrister bent over
the resting figure, and arose hurriedly. In a moment there was a
springing up of heads everywhere, so that the dear form was blotted
from my sight. Mr. Quayle, looking over my shoulder, caught a word,
and gave a quick little gasp.

“Dicky,” he said, catching at me, “come out at once! We must get away
before--before----” and he left the sentence unfinished as he hurried
me into the street.

 CHAPTER II.
 A GREAT LOSS AND A QUEER EQUIVALENT.

I looked in Mr. Quayle’s face; but I asked him no question. The mud
we trod seemed colder, the houses we passed more frowning than before;
but I asked no question. I could not form one in my mind; only
suddenly and somehow I felt frightened, as if in dreams before a great
solitude. Then in a moment I was sobbing fast and thickly.

Ah, what is the use to skate round the memory! Let it clutch me for a
moment, and be faced and dismissed. My father, my dear, ardent, noble
father was dead--struck down in an instant--shaken out of life by the
poignant utterances of his own spirit. While the flower of his fervour
was blossoming and bearing fruit, the roots thereof were dead
already--smitten in their place in his heart. That, its work done, had
ceased beating. Sometimes afterwards in my desolation I recalled the
church clock, with its poised motionless hands, and thought what a
melancholy omen it had been.

Mr. Quayle was kindness itself to me in my utter terror and
loneliness. He took upon himself, provisionally, the whole conduct of
my affairs. One morning he came in, and drew me to him.

“Dicky--Dicky-bird, me jewl!” he said. “I’ve found the fine cuckoo
that’s to come and father the poor little orphaned nestling.”

I must observe that he had his own theories about this same “harbinger
of spring,” which, according to him, was the “bird that looked after
another bird’s young.” I remembered the occasion on which he had so
defined it, and the laughter which had greeted him; and his
alternative, “Well, then, ’tis the bird that doesn’t lay its own eggs,
and that’s all one!” But the first definition, it appeared, was the
one he kept faith in.

“D’you remember Mr. Paxton?” he said.

“Uncle Jenico?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Uncle Jenico Paxton, mamma’s own only brother. Poor papa, my
dear--always a wonder and an honour to his profession--has left, it
seems, a will, in which he bequeathes everything to Uncle Jenico in
trust for his little boy, Master Dicky Bowen. And Uncle Jenico has
been found, and is coming to take charge of little Dicky Bowen.”

Was I glad or sorry? I was too stunned, I think, to care one way or
the other. Any one would do to stop the empty place which none could
ever fill, and neither my sympathies nor my dislikes were active in
the case of Uncle Jenico. I had seen him only once or twice, when he
had come to spend a night or so with us in town. My memory was of a
stout, hoarse old man in spectacles, rather lame, with a little nose
and twinkling eyes. He had seemed always busy, always in a hurry. He
bore an important, mysterious reputation with us as a great inventive
genius, who carried a despatch-box with him choked with invaluable
patents, and always left something behind--a toothbrush or an
umbrella--when he left. Let it be Uncle Jenico as well as another.

While we were talking there was a flurry at the door of the room, and
a man, overcoming some resistance outside, forced his way in. I gave a
little cry, and stood staring. It was the acquitted prisoner, Joshua
Pilbrow. George appeared just behind him, flushed and truculent.

“He would do it, sir,” said the servant, “for all I warned him away.”

Mr. Quayle had put me from him and arisen. There was a bad look on his
face; but he motioned to George to go, and we were left alone.

The intruder stood shrugging his disordered clothes into place, and
looking the while with a sort of black stealth at the barrister. His
face held and haunted me. It was bleak and sallow, and grey in the
hollows, with fixed dark eyes--the face, I thought, of a malignant,
though injured, creature. But it did not so affect Mr. Quayle, it was
evident.

“The verdict was ‘Not guilty,’ sir,” said the man, quite suddenly and
vehemently.

Mr. Quayle gave an unpleasant laugh.

“Or else you wouldn’t be intrudin’ here,” he said shortly.

“I came to thank my benefactor,” said the man. “I had heard nothing
till this moment of the tragic sequel.”

“Well,” said the barrister, in the same cynical tone, “you have come
too late. The price of your acquittal is this little orphaned life.”

He put his arm about my shoulders. The stranger looked hard at me.

“His son?” he muttered.

“There are some verdicts,” said Mr. Quayle, “bought too dear.”

In a moment the man turned upon him in a sort of fierce concentrated
bitterness.

“With the inconsistency of your evil profession,” he cried, “you
discount your own conclusions. The law guarantees and grudges me my
innocence. A curse upon it, I say! Did he there sacrifice his life for
me? He sacrificed it for truth, sir, and it’s that which you, as a
lawyer, can’t forgive.”

“You will observe,” said Mr. Quayle, icily, “that I have not
questioned the truth.”

“Not directly,” answered the visitor. “I know, I know. You damn by
innuendo; it’s your trade.”

The little lawyer laughed again.

“You malign our benevolence,” he said. “The law, by its artless
verdict, has entitled you to sue on the insurance question. Think, Mr.
Pilbrow; it actually offers itself to witness to your right to the
thousand pounds.”

“And I shall force it to,” cried the other; “and would to heaven I
could make it bleed another thousand for the wrong it has done me. It
would, if equity were justice.”

“Equity _is_ justice,” said Mr. Quayle. “Good morning.”

The man did not move for a moment, but stood looking gloomily at me.

Now, I cannot define what was working in my little soul. The pinched,
shorn face was not lovely, the eyes in it were not good; yet there was
something there of loss and hopelessness that touched me cruelly. And
was not my father lying in the next room in solemn witness to its
innocence? Suddenly, before Mr. Quayle could stay me, I had run to the
visitor and plucked at his coat.

“You did not do it,” I cried. “My father said so!”

He gave a little gasp, and fluttered his hand across his eyes,
sweeping in a wonderful way the evil out of them.

“Ah!” he said, “if your father, young gentleman, would whisper to you
where Abel lies hidden! He knows now.”

He stepped back, with a strange, wintry smile on his lips, stopped,
seemed about to speak, waved his hand to me, and was gone.

“Dicky, Dicky,” cried Mr. Quayle, “you’re the son of your father; but,
dear me, not so good a lawyer!”

 CHAPTER III.
 UNCLE JENICO.

That same evening Uncle Jenico arrived. I was just put to bed at the
time, but he came and stood by me a little before I went to sleep and
dreamt of him. He was not the least grown from his place in my
memory--only, to my wonder, a little more shabby-looking than I seemed
to recollect. The round gold spectacles were there, and the big beaver
hat, and the blue frock coat, and the nankeen trousers, and the
limp--all but the first and last a trifle the worse for wear. His
smile, however, was as cherubic, his despatch-box as glossy, his
walking-stick as stout as ever; and he nodded at me like a benevolent
Mandarin.

“Only we two left, my boy,” he said. “Poor papa, dear papa! He’s
learnt by now the secret of perpetual motion.”

It was an odd introduction. I cried a little, and, moved by his
kindness, clung to him.

“There!” he said, soothing me. “That’s all right. We are going to be
famous friends, _we_ are. _We’ll_ invent things; _we’ll_ set the
Thames on fire, _we_ will.”

Whether from exhaustion or from the dreamy contemplation of this
amazing feat to be performed by us, I fell asleep in his arms, lulled
for the first time out of my grief, and did not awake till bright
morning. The fog was gone; the birds were singing to us to carry my
father to his rest under the blue sky.

By-and-by we set out, Uncle Jenico very grave, in black, with a long
weeper round his hat. Mr. Quayle, and one or two more, who had
lingered a day behind the Assizes to do honour to the dead, came with
us; and others, including the judge, sent flowers. It was a simple,
pathetic service, in a green corner of the churchyard. I felt more
than understood its beauty, and when once I caught a glimpse of Uncle
Jenico busily and stealthily writing something with a pencil on the
inside lining of his hat, I accepted the fact naturally as a detail of
the ceremony.

But it was on the way home in the carriage that he disillusioned me by
removing his hat, and showing me a little drawing of a gravestone he
had made therein.

“Just an idea that occurred to me,” he said, “to perpetuate the memory
of poor papa. We want to do something better than keep it _green_, you
see. The weather and the lichen pay us all _that_ compliment. So I
suggest having the inscription very small, on a stone something the
shape of a dining-room clock, and over it a magnifying glass boss,
like one of those paperweights, you know, that have a little view at
the back. The tooth of Time could never touch that. What do you think
now?”

I thought it a very pleasant and kind idea, and told him so, at which
he was obviously pleased. But it was never carried out, no more than
many another he developed; and in the end--but that was long
afterwards--a simple headstone, of my own design, commemorated my
beloved father’s virtues.

The few mourners returned with us to the hotel, where, in a private
room, we had cake and sherry wine. Afterwards Mr. Quayle, when all but
he were gone, asked the favour of a final word with Uncle Jenico.

He appeared to find it a word difficult of utterance, walking up and
down, and puffing, and getting a little red in the face, while Uncle
Jenico sat beaming in a chair, his legs crossed and finger-tips
bridged.

At length Mr. Quayle stopped before him.

“Mr. Paxton,” said he, “when time’s short formalities are best
eschewed, eh?”

Uncle Jenico nodded.

“Surely,” said he. “I ask nothing less.”

“Then,” said Mr. Quayle, stuttering a little, “you are prepared to
accept our friend’s trust, _for all it’s worth_?”

Uncle Jenico nodded again, though I thought his countenance fell a
trifle over the emphatic qualification. However, he recovered in an
instant, and rubbed his hands together gleefully.

“Capital, sir,” he said; “a little capital. That’s all Richard and I
need to make our fortunes.”

He spoke as if we had been long partners, but hampered by insufficient
means.

“Ah!” said Mr. Quayle, decisively; “but that’s just the point.”

“Just the point,” echoed Uncle Jenico, still nodding, but weakly, and
with a dew of perspiration on his forehead.

“Just the point,” repeated Mr. Quayle. “I stood close to our friend. I
know something of his affairs--and habits. He was--d’ye understand
French, Mr. Paxton?”

“Yes, certainly,” answered my uncle, proudly.

“Well, listen to this, then: ‘Il a été un joueur invétéré celui
là; c’est possible qu’il a mangé son blé en herbe.’”

He drew back, to let his words take effect.

“God bless me!” said Uncle Jenico, weakly. “You have reason to know?”

“My dear sir,” replied Mr. Quayle, “I know how some of us occupy our
time on circuit when we’d be better abed. I know a punter when I see
one. I may be right; I may be wrong; and for your sake I hope I’m
wrong. But the point is this: A good deal of our friend’s paper has
come my way; and I want to know if, supposing I take it to market with
bad results to the estate, you are going to swear off your trust?”

Then Uncle Jenico did an heroic thing; how heroic I could not realise
at the time, though even then I think a shadow of the truth was
penetrating my bewilderment. He got to his feet, looking like an
angel.

“Mr. Quayle,” he said, “you’ve spoken plainly, and I don’t conceal
your words are a disappointment. But if they are also a prophecy, rest
assured, sir, that Richard and I stand or fall together. We are the
surviving partners of an honourable firm, and there is that in there,
sir” (he pointed to his inseparable despatch-box), “to uphold our
credit with the world.”

Mr. Quayle seized his hand, with an immense expression of relief on
his face.

“You’re a good soul,” he said. “Without that assurance I should have
felt like robbing the orphan. I hope it may turn out better than we
suppose.”

“I hope so, too,” said Uncle Jenico, rather disconsolately.

 CHAPTER IV.
 MY FIRST VIEW OF THE HILL.

It turned out not so badly, yet pretty badly. Uncle Jenico took
cheap lodgings for us in the town, and for two or three months was
busy flitting between Ipswich and London winding up my father’s
estate. At the end, when the value of every lot, stick, and warrant
had been realised, and the creditors satisfied, a sum representing
perhaps £150 a year was secured to us, and with this, and the
despatch-box, we committed ourselves to the future.

It appeared that my Uncle Jenico’s inventions had always been more
creditable than profitable to him, and this for the reason that
unattainable capital was necessary to their working. Given a few
hundreds, he was confident that he could make thousands out of any one
of them. It was hard, for the lack of a little fuel, so to speak, to
have so much power spoiling on one’s hands. I would have had him, when
once I understood, invest our own capital in some of them; but, though
I could see he loved me for the suggestion, he had the better strength
of affection to keep loyal to his trust, which he administered
scrupulously according to the law. Afterwards, when I came to know him
better, I could not but be thankful that he had shown this superior
genius for honesty; for his faith in his own concerns was so complete,
and at the same time so naïve, that he might otherwise have lacked
nothing but the guilt to be a defaulter.

As to the patents themselves, they represented a hundred phases of
craft, every one of which delighted and convinced me by its
originality. There was a design amongst them for an automatic
dairy-maid, a machine which, by exhausting the air in a number of
flexible tubes, could milk twenty cows at once. There was a design for
making little pearls large, by inserting them like setons in the
shells of living oysters. There was a plan for a ship to be driven by
a portable windmill, which set a turbine spinning under the stern.
Uncle Jenico’s contrivances were mostly on an heroic scale, and
covered every form of enterprise--from the pill which was to eliminate
dyspepsia from the land, to a scheme for liquidating the National Debt
by pawning all England for a term of years to an International Trust.
At the same time, there was no human need too mean for his
consideration. He was for ever striving to economise labour for the
betterment of his poorer fellow-creatures. His inventiveness was a
great charity, which did not even begin at home. His patents, from
being designed to improve any condition but his own, suffered the
neglect of a world to which selfishness is the first principle of
business competence. His “Napina,” a liquid composition from which old
clothes, after having been dipped therein, re-emerged as new, could
find no market. His “Labour-of-Love Spit,” which was turned by a
rocking-chair moving a treadle, like that on a knife-grinder’s
machine, so that the cook could roast her joint in great comfort while
dozing over her paper, could make no headway against the more
impersonal clock-work affair. And so it was with most of his designs,
but a few of which had been actually tested before being condemned on
insufficient evidence. What more ridiculous, for instance, than to
denounce his “Burglar’s Trap” on the score that one single idiot of a
householder had blundered into his own snare and been kept there while
the robbers were rifling his premises? What more scandalous than to
convict his Fire-Derrick--a noble invention, like a crane dangling a
little cabin, for saving life at conflagrations--because the first
time it was tested the box would not descend, but kept the insurance
gentlemen swinging in the air for an hour or two; or his Infallible
Lifebelt, which turned upside-down in the water for the single reason
that they tried it on a revenue officer who had lost his legs in an
explosion? No practical innovation was surely ever started without a
stumble. But Uncle Jenico had no luck. He sunk all his capital in his
own patents without convincing a soul, or--and this is the notable
thing--losing his temper. That one only of his possessions remained to
him, fresh and sound as when, as a little boy, he had invented a
flying top, which broke his grandmother’s windows. No neglect had
impaired it, nor adversity ruffled for more than a moment. If he had
patented it and nothing else, he could have made his fortune, I am
certain.

Still, when we came to be comrades--or partners, as he loved to call
us--his restless brain was busy as ever with ideas. Nothing was too
large or small for him to touch. He showed me, on an early occasion,
how his hat--not the black one he had worn at the funeral, but the big
beaver article that came over his eyes--explained its own proportions
in a number of little cupboards or compartments in the lining, which
were designed to carry one’s soap, toothbrush, razor, etc., when on a
short visit. He had the most delightful affection for his own
ingenuities, and the worldliest axioms for explaining the secret of
their success. On the afternoon when Mr. Quayle, after the kindest of
partings with me, had left us, and while he was yet on the stairs,
Uncle Jenico had bent to me and whispered: “Make it a business
principle, my boy, never to confess to insolvency. You heard the way I
assured the gentleman? Well, Richard, we may have in our despatch-box
there all Ophir lying fallow for the lack of a little cash to work it;
but we mustn’t tell our commercial friends so--no, no. We must let
them believe it is their privilege to back us. Necessity is a bad
recommendation.”

It may be. But I was not a commercial gent; and Uncle Jenico had all
my faith, and should have had all my capital if it had rested with me
to dispose of it as I liked.

During the time my uncle was engaged in London, George, good man,
remained at Ipswich to look after me, though we were forced
reluctantly to dismiss him as soon as things were settled. It was
impossible, however, on a hundred and fifty pounds a year to keep a
man-servant; and so presently he went, and with him my last connection
with the old life. Not more of the past than the clothes I stood in
now remained to me. It was as if I had been shipwrecked and adopted by
a stranger. But the final severance seemed a relief to Uncle Jenico,
who, when it was accomplished, drew a long breath, and adjusted his
glasses and looked at me rosily.

“Now, Richard,” he said, “with nobody any longer to admonish us, comes
the question of our home, and where to make it. Have you any choice?”

Dear me; what did I know of the world’s dwelling-places? I answered
that I left it all to him.

“Very well,” he said, with a happy sigh; “then I have an original
plan. Suppose we make it nowhere?”

He paused to note how the surprise struck home.

“You mean----” I began, hesitating.

“I mean,” said he, “supposing we have no fixed abode, but go from
place to place as it suits us?”

What boy would not have jumped at the suggestion? I was in ecstasies.

“You see,” said Uncle Jenico, “moving about, I get ideas; and in ideas
lies our future prosperity. Let’s look at the map.”

It was a lovely proposal. To enter, in actual being, the mysterious
regions of pictures-on-the-wall; to breathe the real atmosphere, so
long felt in romance, of tinted lithographs and coloured prints; to
find roads and commons and phantom distances, wistful, unattainable
dreams hitherto, made suddenly accessible to me--it was thrilling, it
was rapturous. My uncle humoured the thought so completely as to leave
to me the fanciful choice of our first resting-place.

“Only don’t let it be too far,” he said. “Just at present we must go
moderate, and until I can realise on the sale of a little patent,
which I am on the point of parting with for an inadequate though
considerable sum.”

I spent a delightful hour in poring over the county map. It was
patched with verdant places--big farms and gentlemen’s estates--and
reminded me somehow of those French green-frilled sugarplums which
crunch liqueur and are shaped like little vegetables. One could feel
the cosy shelter of the woods, marked in groves of things that looked
like tiny cabbages, and gaze down in imagination from the hills
meandering like furry caterpillars with a miniature windmill here and
there to turn them from their course. The yellow roads were rich in
suggestion of tootling coaches, and milestones, and inns revealing
themselves round corners, with troughs in front and sign-boards, and
perhaps a great elm shadowed with caves of leafiness at unattainable
heights. But the red spit of railway which came up from the bottom of
the picture as far as Colchester, and was thence extended, in a dotted
line only, to Ipswich, gave me a thrill of memory half sad and half
beautiful. For it was by that wonderful crimson track that my father
and I had travelled our last road together as far as the old Essex
town, where, since it ended there for the time being, we had taken
coach for Suffolk.

“Made up your mind?” asked Uncle Jenico, by-and-by, with a chuckle.

I flushed and wriggled, and came out with it.

“Can’t we--mayn’t we go to the sea? I’ve never been there yet; and
we’re so close; and papa promised.”

“The sea?” he echoed. “Why, to be sure. I’ve long had an idea that
seaweed might be used for water-proofing. It’s an inspiration,
Richard. We’ll beat Mr. Macintosh on his own ground. But whereabouts
to the sea, now?”

I could not suggest a direction, however; so he borrowed for me a
local guide-book, which dealt with places of interest round the coast,
and left me to study it while he went out for a walk to get ideas.

I had no great education; but I could read glibly enough for my eight
years. When Uncle Jenico returned in an hour or two, our choice, so
far as I was concerned, was made. I brought the book, and, laying it
before him, pointed to a certain description.

“Dunberry,” he read, skipping, so as to take the gist of it--“the
Sitomagus of the Roman occupation, and later the Dunmoc of East
Anglia. Population, 694. (H’m, h’m!) Disfranchised by the Reform Act
of ’32. (H’m!) Formerly a place of importance, owning a seaport,
fortifications, seven churches and an abbey. In the twelfth century
the sand, silting up, destroyed its harbour and admitted the
encroachments of the sea, from which date its prosperity was gradually
withdrawn. (H’m, h’m!) Since, century by century, made the devouring
sport of the ocean, until, at the present date, but a few crumbling
ruins, toppling towards their final extinction in the waves below,
remain the sole sad relics of an ancient glory which once proudly
dominated the element under which it was doomed later to lie
’whelmed.”

Uncle Jenico stopped reading, and looked up at me a little puzzled.

“There’s better to come,” I murmured, blushing.

He nodded, and went on--

“A hill, called the Abbot’s Mitre, as much from its associations,
perhaps, as from its peculiar conformation, overlooks the modern
village, and is crowned on its seaward edge by the remains of the
ancient foundation from which it takes its name. Some business is done
in the catching and curing of sprats and herrings. There is an annual
fair. Morant states that after violent storms, when the shingle-drifts
are overturned, bushels of coins, Roman and other, and many of
considerable value, may be picked up for the seeking.”

Uncle Jenico’s face came slowly round to stare into mine. His hair
seemed risen; his jaw was a little dropped.

“Richard!” he whispered, “our fortune is made.”

“Yes,” I thrilled back, delighted. “That’s why I chose it. I thought
you’d be pleased.”

He looked out the direction eagerly on the map. It was distant, by
road, some twenty-five miles north-east by north from Ipswich; by sea,
perhaps ten miles further. But the weather was fine, and
water-transport more suited to our finances. So two days later we had
started for Dunberry, in one of the little coasting ketches that ply
between Harwich and Yarmouth carrying farm produce and such chance
passengers as prefer paying cheap for a risk too dear for security.

It was lovely April weather, and a light wind blowing up the shores
from the south-east bowled us gaily on our way. I never so much as
thought of sickness, and if I had, Uncle Jenico, looking in his large
Panama hat like a benevolent planter, would have shamed me, with his
rubicund serenity, back to confidence again. Our sole property, for
all contingencies, was contained in the despatch-box and a single
carpet bag; and with no more sense of responsibility than these
engendered, we were committing ourselves to a future of ravishing
possibilities.

Throughout the pleasant journey we hugged the coast, never being more
than a mile or two distant from it, so that its features, wild or
civilized, were always plain to us. It showed ever harsher and more
desolate the farther we ran north, and the tearing and hollowing
effect of waves upon its sandy cliffs more evident. All the way it was
fretted, near and far, with towers--a land of churches. They stood
grey in the gaps of hills; brown and gaunt on solitary headlands.
Sometimes they were dismantled; and once, on a deserted shore, we saw
a belfry and part of a ruined chancel footing the tide itself. It was
backed by a great heaped billow of sand, which--so our skipper told
us--had stood between it and the sea till storms flung it all over and
behind, leaving the walls it had protected exposed to destruction.

As evening came on I must confess my early jubilation waned somewhat.
The thin, harsh air, the melancholy cry of the birds, the eternal
desolation of the coast, chilled me with a creeping terror of our
remoteness from all that friendly warmth and comfort we had rashly
deserted. Not a light greeted us from the shore but such as shone
ghastly in the lifeless wastes of foam. The last coast town, miles
behind, seemed to have passed us beyond the final bounds of
civilization. So that it was with something like a whimper of joy that
I welcomed the sudden picture of a hill notched oddly far ahead
against the darkening sky. I ran hurriedly to Uncle Jenico.

“Uncle!” I cried. “Uncle, look! The Abbot’s Mitre!”

The skipper heard me, and answered.

“Aye,” said he, “it’s the Mitre, sure enow,” and spat over the
taffrail.

There was something queer in his tone. He rolled his quid in his
cheek.

“And like enow, by all they say,” he added, looking at Uncle Jenico,
“to figure agen for godliness.”

“Eh?” said my uncle; “I beg your pardon?”

“Granted,” answered the skipper shortly; and that was all.

There was an uneasy atmosphere of enigma here. But we were abroad
after adventure, when all was said, and had no cause to complain.

I stood holding my uncle’s hand, while we ran our last knot for home
in the twilight. As we neared the hill its peculiar shape was
gradually lost, and instead, looking up from below, we saw the cap of
a broken tower showing over its swell. Then hill and ruin dropped
behind us, a shadowy bulk, and of a sudden we were come opposite a
sandy cleft cutting up into the cliff, and below on the shingle a
ghostly group of boats and shore-loafers, though still no light or
sign of houses.

We brought to, the sails flapping, and the skipper sent a long
melancholy boom sounding over the water from a horn. It awoke a stir
on the beach, and presently we saw a boat put off, and come curtseying
towards us. It was soon alongside, revealing three men, of whom the
one who sat steering was a little remarkable. He was immensely tall
and slouching, with a lank bristled jaw, a swarthy skin, and, in
spectral contrast, eye-places of such an odd sick pallor as to give
him the appearance, at least in this gloaming, of wearing huge
spectacles. However, he was the authoritative one of the three, and
welcomed us civilly enough for early visitors to Dunberry, hoping we
should favour the place.

“None so well as thee, Jole, since thy convarsion,” bellowed the
skipper, as we pushed off.

There followed a chuckle of laughter from the ketch, and I noticed
even that the two men pulling us creased their cheeks. Their
companion, unmoving, clipped out something like an oath, which he
gruffly and hastily coughed over.

“The Lord in His wrath visit not the scoffer,” he said aloud, “nor
waft him blindfold this night upon the Weary Sands!”

In a few minutes we slid up the beach on the comb of a breaker, and
half a dozen arms were stretched to help us out. One seized the
carpet-bag, another--our tall coxswain’s itself--the despatch-box; and
thereby, by that lank arm, hangs this tale. For my uncle, who was
jealous of nothing in the world but his box, in scrambling to resecure
it from its ravisher, slipped on the wet thwarts, and, falling with
his head against a corner of the article itself, rolled out bleeding
and half-stunned upon the sand.

I was terribly frightened, and for a moment general consternation
reigned. But my uncle was not long in recovering himself, though to
such a dazed condition that a strong arm was needed in addition to his
stick to help him towards the village. We started, a toilful
procession, up the sandy gully (Dunberry Gap its name), I carrying the
precious case, and presently, reaching the top, saw the village going
in a long gentle sweep below us, the scoop of the land covering it
seawards, which was the reason we had seen no lights.

It had been Uncle Jenico’s intention to look for reasonable lodgings;
but this being from his injury impracticable, we let ourselves be
conducted to the Flask Inn, the most important in the place, where we
were no sooner arrived than he consented to be put to bed, with me in
a little closet giving off his room. It was near dark by the time we
were settled, and feeling forlorn and bewildered I was glad enough,
after a hasty supper, to tuck my troubles between the sheets and
forget everything in sleep. But how little I guessed, as I did so,
that Uncle Jenico had, in falling, taken possession, like William the
Conqueror, of this new land of our adoption.

 CHAPTER V.
 THE STORY OF THE EARTHQUAKE.

Providence, I cannot but believe, had all this time humoured us
along a seeming “Road of Casualty,” which was, in truth, the direct
path to its own wonderful ends. We talk of luck and accident and
coincidence. They are, I am certain, but the veils with which It
blinds us to Its inexorable conclusions. My chance selection of our
destination, my uncle’s mishap--what were these but second and third
acts in the strange drama which had begun in the law courts of
Ipswich, where my father had given his life for a truth, which was to
be here, thirty miles away, proven and consummated. The _dénouement_
was distant yet, to be sure, for Providence, having all eternity to
plot in, works deliberately. Nevertheless, It never loses sight, I
think, of what we call the Unities of Art.

I awoke from a dreamless sleep, a restored and avid little giant. It
was bright morning. A clock on the stairs cleared its throat and sang
out six times. The house was still, save for a shuffling of drowsy
maids at their dusting below. I lay quiet, conscious of the most
unfamiliar atmosphere all about me--of whitewashed walls; of a smell
between wood-smoke and seaweed and the faint sourness of beer; of cold
boarded floors gritty with sand; of utter remoteness from the noise of
traffic habitual to a young denizen of towns. This little gap of time
had lifted me clean out of my accustomed conditions, and dumped me in
an outpost of civilization, amongst uncouth allies, friendlies in
name, but as foreign as foes to my experience.

I got up soon very softly, and washed and dressed and went out. I had
to pass, on my way, through my uncle’s room; and it relieved me to see
him slumbering peacefully on his pillow, though the white bandage
across his forehead gave me a momentary shock.

I emerged upon a landing, on a wall of which, papered with varnished
marble, hung a smoke-stained print of a hunt, with a case of stuffed
water-birds on a table beneath. No one accosted me as I descended the
little creaking flight of stairs. I passed out by the unlatched
private door of the tavern, and found myself at the sea-end of the
village street. It was a glowing morning. Not a soul appeared abroad,
and I turned to the path by which we had come the night before,
thrilling to possess the sea.

The ground went gently up by the way of a track that soon lost itself
in the thin grass of the cliffs. Not till I reached the verge did I
pause to reconnoitre, and then at once all was displayed about me. I
drew one deep delighted breath, and turned as my foremost duty to
examine the way I had come. The village, yawning from its chimneys
little early draughts of smoke, ran straight from the sea, perhaps for
a quarter of a mile, under the shelter of a low, long hill on which a
few sheep were folded. Beyond this hill, southwards, and divided from
it by a deepish gorge, whose end I could see like a cut trough in the
cliff edge, bulged another, the Abbot’s, the contour which gave it its
name but roughly distinguishable at these closer quarters. The ruins
we had passed overnight crowned this second slope near its marge; and
inland both hills dropped into pastures, whence the ground rose again
towards a rampart of thick woods which screened all Dunberry from the
world beyond.

It looked so endearing, such a happy valley of peace, one would
scarcely have credited the picture with a single evil significance;
yet--but I am not going to anticipate. Tingling with pleasure, I faced
round to the sea.

It was withdrawn a distance away, creaming at the ebb. All beyond was
a sheet of golden lustre fading into the bright mists of dawn. Right
under the rising sun, like a bar beneath a crest, stretched the line
of the Weary Sands, a perilous bank situate some five miles from
shore; and between bank and coast rode a solitary little two-masted
lugger, with shrouds of gossamer and hull of purple velvet, it seemed,
in the soft glow. Even while I looked, this shook out sails like
beetles’ wings, and, drawing away, revealed a tiny boat speeding
shorewards. I bent and peered over. Ten fathoms beneath me the gully
we had climbed in the dark discharged itself, a river of sand, upon
the beach; and tumbled at its mouth, as it might be _débris_, lay a
dozen pot-bellied fishing boats. Right and left the cliffs rose and
dropped in fantastic conformations, until they sank either way into
the horizon. It was a wonderful scene to the little town-bred boy.

Presently I looked for the rowing-boat again, and saw it close in
shore. In a minute it grated on the shingle, and there heaved himself
out of it the tall fisherman who had escorted us last night. I was
sure of him, and he also, it appeared, of me; for after staring up
some time, shading his eyes with his hand, he turned, as if convinced,
to haul his craft into safety. I watched him awhile, and was then once
more absorbed in the little vessel drawing seawards, when I started to
hear his voice suddenly address me close by. He must have come up the
gully as soft-footed as a cat.

His eyes were less like a marmoset’s by daylight; but they were still
a strange feature in his gaunt forbidding face. I felt friendly
towards every one; yet somehow this man’s expression chilled me, as he
stood smiling down ingratiatory without another word.

“Is that your little ship out there?” I asked, for lack of anything
better.

“Lor’ bless ’ee, no, sir,” he answered, heartily, but in a sort of
breathless way. “What makes ’ee think so?”

“Weren’t you coming from it?”

“Me!” He protested, with a panting chuckle. “Jole Rampick own that
_there_ little tender beauty! I’d skipped out _fur_ my morning dip,
sir--_if_ you must know. A wonderful bracing water this--_if_ folks
would only credit it.”

His unshorn dusky face was not, I could not help thinking, the best
testimony to its cleansing properties. But I kept my wisdom to myself,
and turned to go back to the inn. Mr. Rampick volunteered his company,
and on the way some instructive information.

“Aye,” he panted huskily; “man and boy _fur_ nigh on fifty year have I
known this here Abbot’s Dunberry, but never--_till_ three months
ago--the healing vartues of its brine.”

“Who told you of them?” I asked.

“The Lord,” he answered, showing the under-whites of his eyes a
moment. “The Lord, sir, _through_ his minister the parson--that’s Mr.
Sant. Benighted we were--_and_ ignorant--till the light was vouchsafed
us; and parson he revealed the Bethesda lying _at_ our very doors.”

“What’s Bethesda?” I had, I am sorry to say, to ask.

“A blessed watering-place,” he said--“I’m humbly surprised, sir; like
as parson calc’lates _to_ make of this here, if the Almighty will
condescend to convart our former wickedness _to_ our profit.”

“Were you wicked?”

“Bad, bad!” He answered, setting his lips, and shaking his head. “A
nest of smugglers _and_ forswearers, till He set His hand on us.”

“Mr. Rampick! How?”

“It tuk the form of an ’arthquake,” he said, with a little cough.

I jumped, and ejaculated: “O! Where?”

“Yonder, in the Mitre,” he said, waving his hand towards the hidden
bluff. “It’ll be fower months ago, won’t it, _as_ they run their last
contraband to ground _in_ the belly of that there hill. A cave, _it_
was supposed, sir; but few knew for sarten, and none will ever know
now till the day _when_ the Lord ‘shall judge the secrets of men.’
There was a way in, _as_ believed, known only to the few; and one
night, _as_ believed, them few entered by it, each man with his brace
o’ runlets--_and they never come out agen_!”

I gasped and knotted my fingers together. It did not occur to my
innocence to question the source of his knowledge, or conjecture.

“Why?” I whispered.

“Why?” he echoed in a sort of asthmatic fury. “Why, sir, because it
was a full cargo, and their iniquity according; and so the Lord He
spoke, _and_ the hill it closed upon ’em. In the dark, when we was all
abed, there come a roaring wind _from_ underground what turned our
hearts to water; and in the morning when we gathered to look, there
was the hill twisted _like_ a dead face out of knowledge, and the
Abbey--two-thirds of what was left--scrattled abroad.”

I could only stare up at him, breathing quick in face of this
wonderful romance. It had, I knew, been a year strangely prolific in
earth-shocks.

“Yes, sir,” he said soberly; “_if_ all what’s believed is Gospel true,
there at this moment lays those poor sinners, bedded like flints in
chalk--_and_ the hill fair reeking with Nantes brandy.”

He groaned hoarsely.

“Hallerloojer! It was a sign _and_ a warning. The shock of it carried
off th’ old vicar, and in a week or two arter Mr. Sant he come _to_
take his place. He found us a sober’d people, Hallerloojer! and soil
meet _fur_ the Lord’s planting. You be the fust fruits, sir; and we
favourably hope _as_ when you go away you’ll recommend us.”

Perhaps I vaguely understood by this something of the nature of our
welcome. Given an isolated fishing village skipped by tourists because
of its remoteness; given the sudden withdrawal from that village of
its natural advantages for an illicit trade; given a clerical
enthusiast, introduced at the right moment, to point out to a
depressed population it’s locality’s potentialities as a
watering-place, and to show the way for them to win an honest
prosperity out of the ruins of evil; given, to top all, a dressing of
local superstition, and the position was clear. Such deduction, no
doubt, was for the adult rather than the child; but though I could not
draw it at the time, it was there to _be_ drawn, I am sure.

As we talked we had reached the inn, and my companion, touching his
cap, passed on. But he came back before I had time to enter, and
addressed me breathlessly, as if on an after-thought.

“Begging _your_ pardon, sir--but you makes me laugh, you reely
does--about that there lugger belonging to poor Jole Rampick.” And he
went off chuckling, and looking, with his little head and slouching
shoulders and stilts of legs, like the hind-quarters of a pantomime
elephant.

I found my uncle sitting up in preparation to breakfast in bed. He was
very genial and happy; but, so it seemed to me, extraordinarily vague.
I told him about my adventure and the story of the earthquake, which
he seemed somehow unable to dissociate from his own accident.

“I knew it, Richard,” he said; “but it was taking rather a mean
advantage of a lame man, eh? There’s no security against it but
balloons--that I’ve often thought. You see, when the ground itself
gives underneath you, where are you to go? If one could only pump
oxygen into one’s own head, you know. I’ll think about it in the
course of the morning. I don’t fancy I shall get up just at present.
That despatch-box, now--it was a drastic way of impressing its claims
upon me, eh? Well, well!”

He laughed, rather wildly I thought.

“Uncle,” I said, “you’ve never told me--how did you get lame?”

“How did I get lame?” he murmured, pressing the bandage on his
forehead. “Why, to be sure, it was a parachute, Richard--a really
capital thing I invented. But the wires got involved--the merest
accident--and I came to the ground.”

He was interrupted by two young ladies, daughters of the inn, who came
themselves--out of curiosity, I think--to serve us breakfast. They
were over-dressed, all but for their trodden slippers, with large bows
of hair on their heads, and they giggled a good deal and answered
questions pertly.

“Well, my dears,” said Uncle Jenico, “how about the earthquake?”

They stared at him, and then at one another, and burst out laughing.

“O, there now!” said one; “earthquake yourself, old gentleman! Go
along with you!” And they ran out, and we heard them tittering all
down the stairs.

Uncle Jenico got clearer after his meal, though he was still
disinclined to move. I sat with him all the morning, while he showed
and explained to me more of the contents of his box; and about midday
a visitor, the Reverend Mr. Sant, was announced. I stood up expectant,
and saw a thin, dark young man, in clerical dress, enter the room at a
stride. He had the colourless face, large-boned nose, and burning eyes
of a zealot, and not an ounce of superfluous flesh anywhere about him.
Much athletic temperance had trimmed him down to frame and muscle, but
had not parched the sources of a very sweet smile, which was the only
emotional weakness he retained. He came up to the bed, took my uncle’s
hand, and introduced himself in a word.

“Permit me,” he said; “I heard of your accident. I know a trifle of
surgery, and our apothecary visits us but twice in the month. May I
look?”

He examined the hurt, and, saying he would send a salve for it,
settled down to talk.

Now, I could not follow the persuasive process; but all I know is that
within a quarter of an hour he had learned all my uncle’s and my
history, and the reason for our coming to Dunberry, and that, having
once mastered the details, he very ingeniously set himself to
appropriating them to the schemes of Providence.

“It is clear,” he said, “that you, free-lances of Destiny, were
inspired to select this, out of all the world, for your operations.
_We_ looked for visitors to report for us upon the attractions of the
place; _you_ for a quiet and healthful spot in which to develop your
schemes.”

“Very true,” said Uncle Jenico. “I’ve long had an idea for extracting
gold from sea-water.”

“You see?” cried Mr. Sant, greatly pleased. “It’s a clear
interposition of Providence. This coast is, I am sure, peculiarly
adapted, from the accessibility of its waters, to gold-seeking.”

I could not restrain my excitement.

“Please,” I said, “did-d-d the smugglers hide it there?”

Mr. Sant glanced at me sharply.

“Who told you about smugglers?” he demanded.

“Mr. Rampick,” I whispered, hanging my head.

“Ah!” he exclaimed, and turned to my uncle. “Old Joel Rampick, was it?
One of the most cherished of my converts, sir; a deeply religious man
at bottom, though circumstances long obscured the light in him. Old
Rampick, now! And talked about smuggling, did he? He’ll have drawn the
moral of it from his own experience, _I_ don’t doubt. Dunberry,
there’s no use concealing, has been a long thorn in the side of the
Revenue, though happily the earthquake has changed all that.”

“Ah, to be sure!” said my uncle; “the earthquake.”

“It was without question a Divine visitation,” said Mr. Sant,
resolutely.

“Do you think so?” said my uncle, his face falling. “My purpose in
coming here was really most harmless, sir.”

Mr. Sant looked puzzled; then went on, with a dry smack of his lips:

“I am afraid that my predecessor lacked a little the apostolic
fervour. He was old, and liked his ease, good man. Perhaps long
association with the place had blunted his prejudices. I must not play
the Pharisee to him, however. No doubt so circumstanced I should have
failed no less to sow the seed. Heaven sent me at a fruitful moment:
to Heaven be the credit and the glory! This little boy now--nephew
Dicky? He knows his catechism?”

“Ah!” said Uncle Jenico, with a cunning look; “does he?”

“Chit-chit!” protested the clergyman. “I hope not altogether ignorant
of it?”

He was decently shocked, and won an easy promise from my uncle that I
should come up to him for an hour’s instruction every day. Then he
rose to go.

“You’ll excuse me,” he said, bending his brows, “but I trust you are
satisfied with your quarters?”

“Well, yes,” answered my uncle, hesitating; “but--an inn, you see.
It’s a little more than we can--than we ought to--eh?”

Mr. Sant brightened immediately. We came to know afterwards that he
strongly disapproved of these flashy Miss Flemings, and had once
expressed in public some surprise that they had not been impounded as
skittish animals not under proper control.

“There’s the widow Puddephatt, ripe and ready for visitors,” he said,
“and perfectly reasonable, I am sure. May I give you her address? It’s
No. 3, the Playstow.”

My uncle thanked him warmly; and, smitten with a sudden idea, caught
at his coat as he was leaving.

“O, by the way!” he said, “these coins to be picked up on the beach,
now. There are enough left to make it profitable, I suppose?”

Mr. Sant stared at him.

“The coins, Roman and other,” persisted Uncle Jenico, anxiously
scanning the clergyman’s face; “the antiques, which Morant tells us
litter the beach like shells after storms?”

Mr. Sant shook his head.

“I have heard nothing of them during _my_ time,” he said; “but I
should hardly think smuggling would have got such a hold here if it
were the Tom Tiddler’s ground your friend supposes it to be.”

Directly he was gone, Uncle Jenico turned to me, rubbing his hands,
with a most roguish smile puckering his mouth.

“Richard,” he said, “we are in plenty of time. The obtuseness of the
rustic is a thing astonishing beyond words! Here, with all Pactolus at
his feet, he needs a stranger to come and show him his opportunities.
But, mum, boy, mum! We’ll keep this little matter to ourselves.”

 CHAPTER VI.
 MRS. PUDDEPHATT AND FANCY-MARIA.

The following day my uncle was near himself again, and we left the
Flask inn and took lodging with the widow Puddephatt. The Playstow was
a little green, about half-way down the village, where the villagers
reared their may-pole on May-day, and built their fires on Midsummer’s
Eve, and caroused in September on the harvest-largesse won from
passers-by. Round about, in a little _square_, were cottages, detached
and exclusive, the _élite_ of Dunberry; and to one side was the
church--but now in process of completion--in whose porch the daring
would seat themselves on St. Mark’s eve to see, at midnight, the
wraiths of the year’s pre-doomed come and knock at the door. Mr. Sant
had, however, limited that custom, as well as some others less
reputable; and the fact that he was able to do so spoke volumes for
his persuasiveness. At the present time the villagers, under his
stimulus, were transferring, stone by stone, to the long unfinished
fabric and its adjoining school-house, the less sacred parts of the
ruined foundation on the hill.

Mrs. Puddephatt, though Dunberry-born, was a comparative acquisition
to the village, to which she had been summoned, and to her natural
succession in No. 3, the Playstow, through the death of an only sister
without encumbrances. She had, in fact, gone very young, a great many
years ago, into service in London, and had never set foot again in her
native place until this inheritance, now two years old, had called
her. She brought with her an ironic atmosphere of the great world, and
a disdainful tolerance towards the little, in which her lot was now to
vegetate. She had, in her high experience, “’tweenied,” “obliged,”
scullery-maided, kitchen-maided, house-maided, parlour-maided, and
old-maided; and she had somehow emerged from this five-fold chrysalis
of virginity the widow Puddephatt--no one knew by what warrant, other
than that of a sort of waspish charity-girl cap, with a knuckle-bone
frill round her face. But then her knowledge of men was so matrimonial
that it was admitted nothing but a husband could have inspired it. Her
dictums, in respect to this mystic experience, were _merum sal_ to the
wives of Dunberry.

“Look in the pot for your new gownd,” and “The way to a man’s purse is
through his mouth,” may be bracketed for utterances cryptic to the
“general,” but not to _their_ delighted understandings.

“A hopen ’and comes empty ’ome.”

“A man shuts his sweet’art’s mouth with a kiss, but his wife’s heyes.”

“Be careful of a Saturday morning to mend the ’ole in your man’s
pocket.”

“When your ’usband talks of his hage, be sure he means yours.”

Such and the like shrewd axioms served the widow Puddephatt at least
as well as marriage lines; and, if more were needed, her mastery of
the exact science of nagging and of the conquering resource of
hysterics supplied it. Sometimes, it was whispered, she was to be seen
in her front garden viciously dusting a man’s coat with a stick; and
on this moral implication alone, late tavern roysterers, lurching home
after closing-time past the little wicket where she was often to be
seen watching spectral and ironic, had been known to slink by, meanly
conscious of deserting, and surrendering into her gloating hands a
purely imaginary Puddephatt, their late boon companion.

This tremendous lady undertook the care of us with infinite
condescension, and, hearing that we were Londoners bred, gathered us
at once under the protection of her maternal and metropolitan wing.

“Lork, Fancy-Maria!” she would say, with an air of amused tolerance
towards the little Suffolk rawbones who “generalled” for her; “we
don’t breathe on the knives and polish ’em in our haprons in
_London_!” Or, “That won’t do, Fancy-Maria! We know better in London
than to dust the ’ot plates with our helbers.”

With this shibboleth of sarcastic comparison, she had won, not only
Fancy-Maria, but all feminine Dunberry to a perspiring emulation of
her gentility, so that in the course of her two years the social code
had grown quite elevated, and it was no longer fashionable to dine in
one’s shirt-sleeves.

Fancy-Maria was her adoring, but unable lieutenant. She tried hard,
and breathed _very_ hard; yet her fervour led to frequent disaster. It
was the management of trays that tested her most severely. If she rose
with one from the depths, she invariably struck it against the lintel
of the parlour door, and shot everything from it into the hall. If she
descended with one from the heights, she tripped at the corner where
the stairs turned, and tobogganed down on it the rest of the way,
preceded by an avalanche of cups and dishes. She always did her best
to keep the contents steady with her thumbs; but her thumbs, though
large, were not universal, and were generally occupied in holding
secure the bread and butter, for choice, on one side, and the fried
fish on the other. Some people make a point of leaving a little piece
on each dish “for manners.” We always cut out and left Fancy-Maria’s
thumb-marks for that mysterious retainer of our childhood.

It was not long before Uncle Jenico questioned Mrs. Puddephatt about
the earthquake. She turned up her nose at the first mention of it, and
tittered the shrillest sarcasm.

“Lork, sir!” she said, “you’ve never abin took hin by that stuff!
_And_ you a Londoner!”

“Stuff, is it?” said Uncle Jenico, genially. “And why, now?”

She cocked her head and folded her arms across her chest, like a
tricksy saint in an old woodcut.

“I wouldn’t a’ believed it of you,” she said; “no, not if you’d gone
and took me by the ears and battered my ’ed on the table.”

“But, my good woman,” began my uncle, “Mr. Sant----”

“Bless ’im for a hinnercent suckling-dove o’cooing among the
sarpints!” she interrupted, with a tight little laugh.

We looked at her quite bewildered, and Uncle Jenico was evidently at a
loss for an answer.

“What ’e wants, that ’e believes,” said Mrs. Puddephatt, nodding her
head many times. “But _he_ ain’t a Londoner, and _hi ham_!”

The advantage, one would have thought, lay with the untainted
clergyman.

“_Herthquake_, indeed!” exclaimed Mrs. Puddephatt, with withering
contempt. “And grace took hout of it? No, sir; not more than what
Elijah looked to find in his’n, and was deceived in the Almighty. A
fine show convert we’ve got in our Mr. Rampick, haven’t we? Ho, yes!
Tee-hee! And I ’opes as he makes it pay, sinst the loss of his
liveli’ood by the _herthquake_.”

The amount of scorn she got each time into the word was simply
blasting.

“He lost----” began my uncle, surprised.

“Ah! what would he lose, now?” interrupted the lady, acridly humorous.
“That’s just _hit_, sir. Talked of the wicked smugglers to Master
Bowen here, didn’t he? Well, supposin’ he were hisself the most
howtdacious of the lot? I don’t say he was, you know. I wouldn’t so
commit myself. I merely states as a curious fact that this Rampick, as
was formerly as warm and dangerous a man as the best in the place, is,
sinst the _herthquake_, become a loafer, without any visible means of
substance. Ho, yes! A pretty convert, I _don’t_ think!”

“You believe him to be at heart a smuggler still?” said my uncle.
“Now, now, Mrs. Puddephatt!”

“Sir,” she answered, with dignity, “I thank you for the himplication;
but whatever my apperient greenness, I wasn’t born yesterday. We may
have our faults in London, but to be Suffolk paunches isn’t among
them. Once a smuggler, sir, is halways a smuggler.”

“Indeed?” said Uncle Jenico, much abashed.

“Yes, sir,” said Mrs. Puddephatt; “just as to be born a gipsy is to
laugh at the rates. A ’ottentot, sir, isn’t ashamed of his own
nekkedness, nor a smuggler of his smugness. Reform, hindeed!”

“Well, well,” said Uncle Jenico. “But what makes you suppose it
_wasn’t_ an earthquake?”

The landlady laughed sarcastic.

“In London, sir,” she said, “_herthquakes_--as is p’raps beknownst to
you--sends out sulfurious perfumes, and not the heffluvium of brandy.”

“Good heavens!” exclaimed my uncle. “But what----?”

“I reveal nothing, Mr. Paxton,” she interrupted him, “but what my nose
tells me. You may smell it yet, sir, begging your pardon, about the
Mitre.”

“But----”

“I’ve ’eard tell, sir, of ile wells, but never of brandy. I may be
wrong; and halso I may be wrong in doubting that gunpowder forms of
itself in the ’oller places of the herth,” and with these enigmatic
words she left us.

But it must be said that, for all her withering gentility, she made us
an excellent landlady, as we had full opportunity of proving. For--I
may as well out with it at once--we had come to Dunberry to stay.

 CHAPTER VII.
 MR. SANT.

I think, perhaps, Uncle Jenico foresaw it no more than I. Without
doubt, at first, he would have laughed to scorn the idea of sinking
all his eager interests in this little Suffolk fishing village, whose
communications with any town of even fifth-rate importance, such as
Yokestone, were by seven miles at least of villainous roads. Our
settlement was gradual; our departure postponed, in the beginning,
week by week, probably like that of the man who went to Venice for a
fortnight and stayed for thirty years. The initiatory step towards our
continued residence was certainly my uncle’s acceptance of Mr. Sant’s
offer to instruct me. That was, as the French say, _le premier pas qui
coûte_. Afterwards, the offer--being extended, with infinite
consideration for our means, to one for my general tuition by the
clergyman--grew to confirm our attachment to the place, until it came
to be tacitly understood that Dunberry was to see me through my
education.

But there was another reason. Uncle Jenico seemed never _quite_ to
recover from the stun inflicted upon him at his landing. His
affection, his geniality, his inventiveness were no whit impaired; yet
somehow the last, one could have thought, had relapsed from the
practical upon the theoretic. He was a trifle less restless; a trifle
more inert. He appeared to bask in a sort of luminous placidity, and
more and more his concern in his patents diminished. I do not mean by
this to imply that his schemes for our enrichment were all forgotten.
On the contrary, they concentrated to an intensity as pathetic as it
was single in its object. I know at this date that Uncle Jenico was a
lovable failure. I recognize, moreover, as I hardly recognized then,
that a wistful realization of this fact--minus its qualifying
adjective--was beginning to dawn upon him, and that he was inclining
to consider his “lame and impotent conclusions” a right judgment upon
him for his self-seeking. God bless him, I say! He thought to atone
for this, his egotism, dear charitable soul, by devoting all his
remaining energies to the task of making the fortune of the little
trust committed to his care. He wrought, in fact, that he might die
content, leaving me rich; and, in the furtherance of this object, his
schemes were not, as I say, forgotten, but transferred. They were
consolidated, in short, into one, which in the end was to become an
obsession. But of that I will treat in its place.

As soon as we were settled, I began at once to go to Mr. Sant’s for my
daily lesson, the scope of which imperceptibly enlarged itself from
Catechism to the Classics. The rectory stood inland beyond the
Playstow, in a rather lonely position under the drop of the hill. It
was a dark, mossy old building, shrouded in trees, and a by-road went
past its gates up to the woods beyond, in the depths of whose shadows
lay the Court Manor-house and its bed-ridden old squire.

Mr. Sant was a bachelor, a tough militant Churchman and Church
reformer. He taught me the uses of my fists as well as of the
Decalogue. No doubt it was this constitution of his which made such
way with the villagers, for Englishmen respect piety the better for
its being knocked into them. I took my share of his excellent
influence, and I trust it helped to make a man of me. You shall hear
by-and-by about the first practical use to which I put it.

He had the motto from Cicero framed and hung over the mantelpiece in
his study. I will quote it to you, because it speaks the man more
perfectly than I can do. _Quidquid agas, agere pro viribus_! Whatever
you do, to do with your whole strength--that was it. It was a maxim
very apt to one whose own strength, both of will and body, was of
tempered steel.

One among his many characteristic innovations was “The Feast of
Lanterns,” as he called it. A lecture, to combine instruction with
amusement, would be called for delivery in the church after dark.
Whosoever listed might, on a single condition, attend this. He would
find set up, spectrally discernible in the chancel, which, like the
rest of the building, would be unlighted, a screen of white linen, on
which had been roughly sketched in crayon, by the courageous lecturer
himself, a number of objects--to become, in their turn,
subjects--which might range, say, from a leg of mutton to the dome of
St. Paul’s. The condition of attendance was simply that each comer
should bring his or her own lantern, with the natural consequence that
the greater the company the brighter the illumination. Now, with the
first arrival began hymns, and were so continued until sufficient
lights were congregated to reveal the drawings on the screen, a right
identification of any one of which, by any member of the audience, at
the close of any verse, put a period to the singing and started a
disquisition on the object named. It must be said that the
identification was not always accurate, in which case the singing was
continued. For religious and artistic fervour are not necessarily
associated, and the splendid daring which Mr. Sant put into his work
sometimes obscured its intentions, as when his bellows, designed to
introduce a dissertation on pulmonics, were taken for a ham. But the
vigour and resourcefulness of the lecturer neither allowed an
_impasse_, nor, while he was always quite ready to join in the
laughter over his own artistic shortcomings, permitted criticism to
degenerate into fooling. He did not object to laughter; on the
contrary (I am afraid it will scandalize some people), he credited the
Almighty with an almighty sense of humour, only he insisted upon its
being tempered to the sacredness of the place in which it was evoked.
And, for the rest, he had a fund of bright and ready information at
his constant disposal.

Such is an example of his methods, and, if any pious reactionaries
object, I can only say that in the result it was educational; that it
won tavern-loafers to at least one wholesome evening in the week;
that, in short, it attained such popularity, that any dissipated
seceder attempting to sneak out of the church, and thereby obscure the
light by so much as the loss of a taper, would be roughly grabbed back
by his fellows, and forced, willy-nilly, to hear the lecture out.

Mr. Sant, to sum him up, was a zealot without being a bigot, and a
devoted servant to his Master without prejudice to human nature. He
was also a capable boxer. I came to love as much as to respect him.

 CHAPTER VIII.
 TREASURE-HUNTING.

For a fortnight succeeding our arrival the weather remained calm and
bright, so that Uncle Jenico and I were able to explore the locality
with great comfort and satisfaction. The coast, which we followed up
both north and south for miles, was extremely desolate and unvisited,
though bearing at intervals all along it the traces of former
settlements. It would seem to have been quite thickly populated once,
during a period which dated probably from the incursions, first, of
the Roman legions, and, after, of those salt sea-wolves who preferred
squatting round the fringes of their conquered island--with the open
door of the sea beside them, and its smell in their briny nostrils--to
penetrating into the traps of the close-shut valleys. Later,
Christianity had come to fret these windy, foam-whipped settlements
with pinnacles, and monastic walls, and stone fanes with jewelled
windows and airy bell-towers, so that church might peal to church all
down this long front line of the position it had won. But corruption
creeping in with prosperity, and lawlessness with the tides, God had
withdrawn His countenance from the temples that abused His service,
and had permitted the ocean to break in their defences and one by one
devour them. The priest who had evaded his vows had ages ago tucked up
his cassock and fled; the parson who succeeded him, and to the
reversion of his benefices, could not so hoodwink Heaven by taking his
tithes of smuggled tobacco and brandy, as to stay for one season the
hunger of the gluttonous waters. Year by year, century by century, the
storms had fed on these devoted sand-built coasts, and were still
feeding when we came to know them. Towns and once-flourishing colonies
had disappeared as utterly as if they had never existed. Not only
they, but the very soil on which they had been planted, paved the
floor of the ocean for miles out. There were legends of foundered
bells rung by unseen mermen at incredible distances from shore. There
were stories of treasure chests and sculptured marbles revealed to
storm-belated fishermen in the deep troughs of monstrous,
bottom-scouring waves. So far away as the Weary Sands themselves, it
was said, traces of the ancient Dunberry could be spelt out, in calm
seasons, by those who gazed intently enough and long enough into the
green, deep waters. It was a fable, probably, in a land of fables; yet
it served to emphasize the wreck of time, and will show upon what a
haunted border-land of ghosts we had come to make our home. The modern
village itself was old. How ancient, then, those grey ruins on the
cliff, which had survived to see the last of the glory, of which they
had once been a part, claimed by the deep, and their own hoary
traditions engulfed into the pettier traditions of a little clan!

These same ruins consisted of the great tower of the abbey, with a
mass of tumbled and complicated masonry at its foot; of the line of
the nave, picked out in an avenue of shattered arches which ran
seawards until stopped by the upward and outward sweep of the cliff;
and, finally, of a maze of huge fragments, mostly on the inland side,
which marked the sites of monastic buildings, lazar house, boundary
walls, and so forth. Elsewhere were traces of aisles, cloisters and
supernumerary offices uncountable, the whole buttressed with ivy. But
the most significant ruin of all, to my thinking, was one which stood
under the cliff, and for three-fourths of its depth apart from it.
This was no other than the abbey well, which generations of storms had
gnawed out of its deep bed in the ground without being able to crunch
and devour the sturdy relic itself. There it stood, a Titan of the
vanished race, sprouting stubborn from the littered sand below,
cemented, as it seemed, by the very drift which was yearly flung upon
it to destroy. Exposed and isolated, choked with parching rubbish as
it was, how thrilling was the thought of the monks who had once drunk
from it; of the waters it had drained from the hill; of the hill
itself with its one-time springs lying under the salt sea! It was the
very gaunt dead monument to the desolation of this land, and as such,
it seemed, would endure when all else was vanished. The storms which
took the rest stone by stone, could do no more than stone by stone
reveal this; the earthquake, which at a blow had rent the massive
tower and tumbled half the remaining walls, had left this unshaken. It
was a wonderful and impressive relic.

The first time I had entered among the ruins was by myself. I climbed
the slope early on the morning before breakfast, and stood in the
midst of them, thrilled and awestricken. A little grassy valley
divided me from the hill which concealed the village, of which not so
much as a roof was visible from where I stood. I seemed entirely cut
off and alone, a pigmy in the stupendous shadows of these “ruined
choirs.” The ground swept in a steepish curve to the cliff edge, and
again, inland, in one slightly shallower. These were the “Old and New
Testaments” of the Mitre; and in the “Valley of Knowledge” that lay
between, was built the abbey, its monastery, chapter-house, refectory
and other buildings taking and topping the western slope, which, on
its further side, went shelving down to the _Cemeterium Fratrum_, and
the confines of the old grounds.

I poked about among the shattered stones with a feeling between fear
and curiosity. I could tell by the fresh edges of the rents, and the
way in which little avalanches of mortar were constantly falling with
a whispering sound, that much of the devastation was recent. The tower
had been breached by the earthquake all down its seaward front,
opening a monstrous gap from which a cataract of stones had thundered,
and piled themselves in foam, as it were, at the foot. In one place,
near the cliff slope, a mighty plinth had been heaved on to its side,
and I saw the mould on the under surface of it yet grooved with the
tracks of slugs and beetles. It had sunk, with the mass of masonry
cemented to it, two-thirds of its breadth into the earth, and all
about the ground was strangely wryed, and distorted, and cracked, and
bubbled up into mounds, as if here the underheaval had made itself
peculiarly felt. I was gazing on it half-fascinated, when, happening
to raise my eyes, I started to see other regarding me fixedly from a
face which seemed to have sprouted from the earth.

I gave a little cry and uttered Mr. Rampick’s name. At the word, the
man himself rose to his height, from the position in which it appeared
he had been crouching, and ascended the last steps of a cliff pathway,
of the existence of which I had not known. He came up to me, rubbing
the back of his bony hand across his mouth.

“Come to see _fur_ yourself, sir?” he said, in his breathless, fawning
way.

“Yes,” I answered. “It was here, wasn’t it?”

He stamped with his great foot.

“Here, or hereabouts,” he said, “they lays under--_as_ supposed--each
with his brace o’ runlets.”

It was a fearful but thrilling thought.

“Why don’t they dig for them?” I whispered.

He gazed at me a moment, breathing hard. His eyes seemed blacker, the
rims round them more livid than I had yet noticed.

“What!” he cried, so hoarsely that his voice cracked. “Displace these
here sacred ruins _fur_ the likes of they! The Lord, sir--begging
_your_ pardon--set His own trap for them _in_ His own way; and it
been’t fur us to rise His dead. _May_ I make so bold to axe _if_ your
uncle knows you’re out?”

I felt the insolence of the question, but was too young to resent it.

“No!” I exclaimed, surprised.

“Ah!” he said. “I lay he won’t be best pleased, sir, _with_ humility.
This here hill, sir, _if_ all what’s said is Gospel true--is risky
ground to walk fur them as knows it not, nor its toppling stones, sir,
_nor_ its hidden abscesses. I’d go home, sir, _if_ I was you, with
favour, sir.”

I was offended, but a little frightened also. Blushing scarlet, I
turned away, without a word, and ran down the slope homewards.

I told Uncle Jenico of my adventure and encounter. To my further
surprise he commended Mr. Rampick’s warning.

“What should I do, if anything happened to you, Richard, when I was
not by?” he pleaded.

There was a note of emotion in his voice which touched me, and I
promised I would never seek the Mitre again out of his company. I
meant it when I said it; but, alas! the venturesomeness of youth led
me later on, I am ashamed to confess, to disregard my promise.

That was not till long after, however; and in the meanwhile the
weather remaining fine, as I have said, we had plenty of opportunity
for exploring the district. Not a day was allowed to pass, moreover,
without our investigating at least once in the twelve hours, a section
of the coast. Uncle Jenico would prod all the way, with his thick
stick, into the moraine of shingle which ran along the shore above the
high tide mark. At these times he would be very absent-minded,
answering my questions at random, and I knew that he had Morant and
his golden bushels in his thoughts. He never found anything, however,
and each evening would look up at the sky and predict stormy weather
with a sham deprecation of the inconvenience it would be to us.

But at last the weather really did break, and dark evening settled in,
with a high wind and rising sea. It blew a gale all night and
throughout the following day, and Uncle Jenico bemoaned our detention
in the house with a gratified face.

It was not until the second morning that it had cleared sufficiently
to enable us to go out, which we did immediately after breakfast. The
sun was blinking waterily, and the surf pounding yellow as we came
down to the beach; but the wind had fallen and the rain ceased, which
was enough for us.

Uncle Jenico, with his blue coat fastened tightly across his chest,
was looking extraordinarily swollen, I thought, until the reason was
explained to me. We had not gone far, when--first glancing all about
him with an air of twinkling mystery--he cautiously unbuttoned, and
revealed, neatly folded upon his chest, a little bushel sack such as
they use for potatoes.

“Hush!” he whispered, though not a soul was in sight; “the difficulty
will be to avoid observation when we bring it back full. I dare say
they’re honest here, Richard; but it’s a wrong business principle to
presume upon a sentiment. We must dine and sup out--I’ve brought some
sandwiches with me, and Mr. Sant will excuse you for once--and return
with our booty after dark.”

“Do you expect to fill _that_, Uncle?” I said, aghast for all my
infancy.

“Well,” he answered, laughing joyously but privately, “I hope not
_quite_, or it would puzzle us to carry it. But, in common wisdom we
must make the best we can of this rare opportunity.”

He hung the sack over his arm, and we started off. The storm had
certainly overturned the shingle, and scattered much of it abroad in a
tangle of seaweed and dead dog-fish. For hours we hunted on, groping
sedulously among the litter; and at last, late in the afternoon, we
found a penny. At least, _I_ was convinced it was one, being
intimately acquainted, like most boys, with the coin. But Uncle Jenico
would not hear of it. He was shaking with excitement as he examined
it. It was so rubbed by the action of the waves as to exhibit nothing
but a near-obliterated bust, which I was sure was that of our late
lamented King. My uncle, however, pointed out to me distinct traces,
though I could not see them, of a Latin inscription, and was jubilant
over the find. It did not make much impression on the sack, it is
true; but he was careful to point out to me that the value of a
nugget, such as it would take two men to carry, might all be contained
in a diamond which one could slip into one’s waistcoat pocket. It was
not so much quantity we needed, he said, as quality; and he was quite
satisfied, entirely so, with the result of our day’s exploration.

I was glad of this, at least, being dog-tired long before the
sun-setting, as it justified us in going home to supper. But my faith
in Morant, I am afraid, was already sadly shaken.

 CHAPTER IX.
 HARRY HARRIER.

It was that obnoxious penny, I believe, which was responsible for my
uncle’s continued pursuit of his new Lobby, until the hobby itself
became an obsession. If we had come home that first day empty-handed,
I have little doubt but that his baulked imagination would have found
itself some other and more practical outlet. As it was, the discovery
was held by him to justify every proverb which values itself upon
small beginnings. He was so little cast down by its meagreness, that
there was no limit to the golden dreams of which he made it the basis.
Most crazes, I fancy, are so built upon a pennyworth of fact.

He did not take out the sack again, but replaced it by a sponge-bag,
and the bag, later, by a stout leathern purse. Finally, he decided
that his trouser-pockets would serve all our needs, with the
additional advantage that our hands would be freer thereby, and the
risk of comment on our proceedings avoided. It may have been, for it
had certainly little to feed upon. During those early weeks, beyond
some scraps of old iron, we found nothing.

At first, it must be said, Uncle Jenico was not so entirely possessed
by his infatuation, but he found time to experiment in other
directions. For days he made our lodgings almost uninhabitable by
boiling and decomposing seaweed, until Mrs. Puddephatt complained that
her reputation was suffering by the incessant “hodour of ’ot putrid
fish” which emanated from her premises.

The patent, upon which he had expected to realize, turned out, after
all, a disappointment, and had never, it appeared, been regarded as
other than a joke by the man who, he had supposed, had been going to
buy it. He was a little disconsolate at first, but soon brightened up
when he thought of the potential riches lying under the shingle.

“_We’ll_ laugh at ’em all by-and-by, Richard,” he said. “What a joke
it’ll be when we’ve got our own capital to work upon, and these
ninnies find out the good things they’ve missed. But we won’t be
relentless, my boy, and disinherit the honest labourer because of the
shortsightedness of his employer. Work for the good of mankind,
remember, and you work for your own.”

Fine weather, at this time, made him thoughtful and restless. It was
only when the wind blew and the waves rose that he cheered up and
became excited like a seagull. Then he would laugh aloud, and button
up his coat and, telling me to follow him when my lesson was over,
limp off to the beach, and there untiringly weave his ropes of sand,
growing more and more absorbed in his task the faster it melted
beneath his hands. The coins were there, he was convinced; and it only
needed patience and luck (and he plumed himself upon his being rather
a spoilt child of the latter) to hit upon the deposits.

In the meanwhile I was going to my daily lesson, and getting absorbed
in my own way. Mr. Sant was a delectable tutor, inspiring and
invigorating, and by-and-by, unconsciously to me, my hour extended
itself to two, and sometimes more. So months passed, and then a year,
and I was nine.

One morning I was on my way to the rectory when I made a notable
acquaintance. I had to pass, on my setting out, the new school, which
was now in full activity, and battling its first successful steps in
the moral and intellectual reformation of infant Dunberry. The
children were generally trooping to the bell-call as I started, and I
have no doubt that the sense of superiority my consciousness of
private tuition gave me made itself apparent to some of them in my air
and demeanour.

A little beyond the Playstow the road to the rectory, and to the Court
on the hill, ran up obliquely through the village side, passing very
soon into privacy and loneliness. I had almost reached the rectory
palings when I saw a boy start out, at sight of me, from the shadow of
them and come swiftly on, as if to accost me while yet short of
shelter. He was about my own age or a little older, and had a round,
freckled face, with dark red hair curled as tight as astrakhan, and a
very fat little pug-nose. He was dressed in a brown velveteen jacket
and strong corduroy breeches and leathern gaiters, and he looked what,
in fact, he was, a miniature gamekeeper. I knew him well enough by
sight, having passed him for the last two or three weeks near the
school-house, and always, I verily believe, with an odd little tremor
of foreboding in my inside. He had proved, on inquiry, to be the only
child of Harrier, the squire’s gamekeeper, from whom, and that only on
his master’s initiative, a scowling consent to his son’s attending the
new school had been wrung by Mr. Sant. But the boy came, though near
as rebellious as his father, and had even, until this morning, arrived
punctual.

Now he advanced, swaggering and whistling, with his hands in his
breeches’ pockets, and a fine air of abstraction. I tried to dodge
him, but for all that, in spite of his pretended preoccupation, he
brought his shoulder smack against mine with a force that knocked me
sprawling, and, from the mere pain of it, drove the angry tears to my
eyes.

He wheeled round at once, as I gathered myself up, with a mock apology
so impudent that I longed to hit him, but was deterred by the front he
showed me. He stood square, balancing on his heels, as tight-knit a
young mischief as health and muscle could produce.

“Mighty!” he said, with a pretence of being scared. “What I done, Lor?
Blest if I ain’t knocked into the dirt the young gen’leman what treats
we for sich!”

Then my uneasy consciousness understood the nature of this
retaliation.

“You did it on purpose,” I said sullenly, trying not to whimper as I
dusted myself.

“_Me_!” he cried, in beautiful astonishment. “Why, howsomever can you
charge it to me, master, walking with your nose in the air?”

“It’s you that has your nose in the air,” I retaliated malevolently.

He flushed through his tan, and squared up to me.

“Say that agen!” he hissed, lifting his lip like a weasel.

“Once is enough,” I answered.

He danced about me, making play in the air with his fists.

“Is it!” he gasped, spasmodic. “O yus, o’ course!--I’ll larn you--you
dursen’t--foonk!--private poople--yah!--take your lickun, then!”

Something must have stirred in the garden at the moment, for he
suddenly flounced round and off, his mouth drawn down contemptuous,
and his chin stuck out. But I had not done with him by any means.

Mr. Sant received me that morning, I thought, oddly, and made no
allusion to my battered appearance. Neither did I, at which, perhaps,
he cleared a little.

The next morning Harry Harrier--for such was the young sportsman’s
name--met me as before. I gave him the path, though with anger in my
heart; and he openly jeered at me as he went by. The following day it
was the same, and for many days after. He would have risked, I
believe, ten times the punishment he deserved, and got, for being
late, rather than baulk himself of this recurrent treat. Presently he
altered his tactics in such a way as to eat his cake and have it, so
to speak. He did not pass me one day at the usual hour, and I confess
I breathed relief, for all my own inefficiency was gall to me. Mr.
Sant’s manner, as was usual now, was chilling almost to repulsion. I
was very unhappy. I had grown to brood on my grievance until it almost
choked me. Dunberry was becoming to me a miserable Siberia, and I
longed to be out of it, and hinted as much to my uncle. But, to my
dejection, he would not understand--could not, perhaps, as pride had
always prevented me from revealing my difficulty to him or to any of
my real friends. Moreover, the picking-up of some trumpery oddments on
the beach had by now established him unshakably in his craze, which
had been further confirmed by the action of certain unscrupulous
Dunberryites in palming off on him some faked-up coins, which I could
have sworn had never been minted out of my own generation.

The relief I enjoyed on this particular morning was, however,
delusive. The cunning little gamekeeper had got himself credited with
punctuality, only that he might descend upon me on his return journey
as I left the rectory. Nor was this the worst; for he came reinforced
by half a dozen schoolfellows, the dirty little parasites of his
corduroy lordship. I found them awaiting me at a quiet turn of the
road, and, before I knew it, was being hustled and insulted. I pushed
my way through, however, with a lump swelling in my throat, and was
trying to stifle the inclination to run, when a cry from Harrier
brought me to the roundabout with a scarlet face.

“Cowardy-cowardy-custard! Dursen’t peach to old Crazy, what broke his
leg a-kicking of yer!”

I rushed back and faced him.

“He broke his leg falling from a parryshoot. He isn’t crazy. I’m not
such a coward as you!” I blazed out in a breath. I was bristling and
tingling all over. The worm had turned at last.

Harry Harrier, whistling softly, took his hands from his pockets.

“Yus?” he said. “Anythink else?”

“You’re a liar!” I answered, boiling; “you’re a coward and liar!”

I was down and up again in a moment, and rushing blindly at him with a
cut lip and bloody mouth. He kept quite cool, and met me over and over
again with stunning blows. I didn’t care. I hardly felt them in my
rage; my long pent-up feelings had burst their bonds and I was quite
beside myself. In the midst I was caught in the leash of a sinewy hand
and torn away. For some moments I fought and screamed in my madness;
then suddenly desisted, gasping and trembling all over. Red seemed to
clear from my eyes, and I saw. The parasites were fled; Harry Harrier
stood opposite me, hanging his head and his twitching hands; and in
possession of us both was Mr. Sant.

A little silence followed; then suddenly the clergyman released me and
stepped aside.

“You’re a strong boy, Harrier,” he said, quietly. “You’ve had the
advantage of some training, too. This was hardly brave.”

“He called me a coward, sir,” muttered the boy.

“You’ve got to prove he was wrong, then.”

Harrier twitched his shoulders, and gave a defiant upward look.

“What!” said Mr. Sant. “Do you call it proving it to attack him six to
one?”

“I takes no count of that raff, sir,” said the boy. “’Twas him and me
fought.”

“But you used them to provoke him--not content with insulting him
yourself day by day as he came to his lesson. Yes; I know.”

I looked up amazed, and then down again. Certain tell-tale rustlings
that had reached my ears occasionally from the back of the rectory
palings occurred to me, so that I hung my head with shame.

“Well, your reverence,” said the boy, rather insolently, “pay me, and
get it over. I takes my capers with my mutton.”

“I shall pay you, sir,” said Mr. Sant, with, I could have thought, the
ghost of a grin, “as one gentleman pays another. You think, perhaps,
that Master Bowen here has told of your bullying him. He has not
breathed a word about it to anybody. Now that, I think, shows him to
be the better man of the two.”

The surprise, the gratification were so great, I could have cried out
to him like a silly girl.

The young gamekeeper grinned, incredulous and sarcastic.

“You think not?” said Mr. Sant. “Well, I’ll tell you what I’m going to
do--I’m going to back _my_ man to whop you by-and-by.”

The boy looked up at him, breathless now.

“You’ve all the advantage at present, you know,” went on the
clergyman. “You’ve got constitution, muscle, and a little of the
science--not so much as you think, but still a little. Now Master
Bowen isn’t your equal in any of these, as I suspect you knew, or you
wouldn’t have attacked him.”

“I would!” said the boy, furiously.

“Well,” said Mr. Sant, smiling, “I’ll take your word for it, because I
believe, after all, it’s an honest word. But the point is this. Muscle
and constitution are slow growers, and while my man was training to
improve his, you could be improving yours. Science, on the other hand,
can be taught, and I mean to teach him science until I consider he’s
your equal and better. When that comes about you shall fight again,
and I’ll umpire. Do you agree?”

“_Don’t_ I!” said the boy.

“Very well. Only I must have an understanding. You must leave him
unmolested in the mean time.”

“I’ll do it!” cried the lad. “I’ll do more. I’ll fight any one as
putts a finger on un.”

“The right spirit, that,” said Mr. Sant, with an approving face.
“We’ll agree to decide it, then--in a month’s time, say? I’d keep it
to myself if I were you. Good morning!”

The boy pulled his forelock, hesitated, mumbled with a blush and grin,
“You’re a gen’leman, sir,” and casting a saucy, triumphant glance at
me, retreated. Simultaneously, Mr. Sant took me by the shoulder, and,
hurrying me back to the rectory study, procured cold water and a
sponge, and shut himself in with me.

I felt half stupefied between the blows I had received and the
prospect of others yet to come, in the matter of which, it appeared, I
was to be allowed no choice. But there I was wrong. Mr. Sant, as he
sponged with great consideration my swollen places, took up the tale
at once.

“Now, Richard,” he said, “this is going to be, I think, the first
great test of your life. You can refuse it if you like, without any
loss of honour. You were bullied by a stronger boy, and you endured
your ill-treatment without telling tales. That was to be a gentleman.
You suffered insult--a little too long, perhaps--and only resented it
when directed against some one whom you very rightly love and respect.
Well, that was again to be a gentleman.”

I flushed crimson with pleasure, and he mopped hard away, talking all
the time.

“You heard the engagement I made for you? Well, I tell you, you can
decline quite honourably to stand by it. If you do, don’t think I
shall blame you. On the contrary, I will see that an effective end is
put to this tyranny. You have proved yourself, and that is enough.
Now, if you would like me to state the facts to your uncle, I will do
so at once.”

“Yes, please,” I stuttered through the sponge.

“Very well,” he answered, but dryly, I thought. “I could have trained
you, perhaps, to stand up to this young bruiser; but without doubt you
choose the Christian part. I will speak to Mr. Paxton.”

“Please, sir,” I said, “I don’t think he’d understand why I’ve _got_
to fight, unless you told him.”

His hand quite bumped my poor nose with the start he gave.

“You want it to come off, then, Richard? This is a little shocking,
I’m afraid; but perhaps I can’t altogether blame you. He’s a young
Samson, mind.”

“You said, sir, that science----” I began, but he plugged my mouth
hastily, and gave me no opportunity to speak more till he had cleaned
my wounds to his satisfaction. Then he put me up between his knees
and, while dabbing my face spasmodically with a towel, recited to me
the fable of the brass and the earthenware pots.

“The brass pot, you see, was the gentleman,” he said. “He illustrated
the Christian science of self-defence. He didn’t invite an encounter;
but, when it was forced upon him, his art got the better of the
coarser clay.”

He stretched out my arms and pinched their muscles.

“Well enough,” he said; “but that little Antaeus owes his to his
mother earth. He could lick you with one hand, Dicky--easy, he could.
Aren’t you afraid?”

“Yes, I am,” I said, honestly.

He nodded approvingly.

“Real courage, Dicky, doesn’t mean not being afraid. We must all be
afraid sometimes, when we are called upon to fight men or animals who
are much stronger and fiercer than we are. But when we know that wrong
or unjust things are being done to us by people who do these things
just _because_ they are stronger, then, if we fight them in spite of
our being afraid, that is the _real_ courage. On the other hand, it
isn’t brave to force people to fight who we know are much weaker than
we are. But when God has given us good health and strong arms, it is
noble to use them to help people who are weaker than we are, and to
punish the bullies who would take advantage of their weakness. That’s
what it is makes a true gentleman--not riches, nor titles, nor having
a tutor instead of a public teacher. The little boy who is just, and
very truthful, and who never does anything that he would be ashamed of
good people knowing, is on the way to be a gentleman, whether he lives
in a palace or a cottage. But if, added to these, he trains all his
faculties to oblige other people to repay him the truth and justice
and honour which he gives them, then he is a complete gentleman
already.”

He broke off to feel me all up and down.

“There’s good material here,” he said; “very good. We’ll use it to
counterbalance brute strength. That’s the fine moral of boxing, little
man--to see that the weak don’t go to the wall. Now, shall I confess a
secret? I love Harry Harrier pretty equal with you, sir. He’s got the
makings of a gentleman--my sort--in him; only no amount of persuasion
from me will educate him like a scientific licking from one less than
his own size. You don’t see that, perhaps; but, all the same, I look
to you to knock him into my fold for me. You are the Church’s
champion, Richard, and you shall gain me a new convert, or I’ll never
put faith in the gloves again. Now come along with me home.”

Uncle Jenico received us with surprise, and some consternation over my
appearance; nor did the recital of the affray much reassure him. Still
more was he confounded by the rector’s frank avowal of his object in
approaching him.

“He is a mere child, sir,” said my uncle.

“‘The childhood shows the man,’” quoted the other.

“To be sure. But, as he isn’t going to be a prize-fighter----”

“Every true Christian, sir, is a prize-fighter. He champions the right
in order to win heaven.”

“Well, where was the right here?”

“I regret to have to confess, sir, in an insulting expression about
you, which he very properly resented.”

“_Me_!” cried my uncle, amazed. Then suddenly he stumped across to
where I stood, and patted my shoulder rather tremulously. “Well,
well,” he said; “no doubt I’m a funny old fellow. So you stood up for
old Uncle Jenico, Dicky?”

His voice shook a little. I wriggled and flushed up crimson.

“It was a lie!” I cried, choking; “and I’m going to fight him and lick
him for it.”

Mr. Sant struck in.

“Broughton rules, sir, I pledge my word.”

“Eh?” said my uncle. “Who’s Broughton, and what does he rule?”

“I mean,” said Mr. Sant, “this little affair shall be conducted
strictly according to the regulations of Broughton, the famous boxer.”

“O!” exclaimed Uncle Jenico, palpably misled by the last word, and
proportionately relieved. “O, to be sure! ‘Mufflers,’ you call ’em, I
think?”

“Yes, yes!” said Mr. Sant, hastily. “A contest of science, sir; no
vulgar hammering;” and he repeated, with warm conviction, his little
dissertation on the true moral courage.

“If Richard, sir, don’t assert himself at the outset,” he ended with,
“I won’t answer for his life here remaining endurable.”

Perhaps this prospect of our moral banishment clinched the matter with
Uncle Jenico, whose attachment to the place was becoming quite morbid.
He stipulated only that the umpire should stop the fight the moment it
might appear I was getting the worst of it. More or less satisfied on
this point, he rubbed his hands, and rallied me on being the young
gamecock I was.

“I’ve given some thought, myself, to a new boxing-glove,” he
confessed; “one with a little gong inside to record the hits, you
know.”

Mr. Sant lost no time in taking me in hand. He fashioned me a little
pair of gloves out of some old ones of his own, and gave me half an
hour’s exercise with them every day after lessons. I am not going to
record the process. The result was the important thing.

During all this interval, with the single exception of the morning
following that of my encounter with Harry Harrier, I was left in peace
by the village boys. On that morning, however, I again found myself in
the midst of a little mob of them, who, emboldened by yesterday’s
sport, were come to waylay me after school hours. I was not yet so
proficient as to regard the situation with equanimity; when, behold!
my enemy resolved it for me. He appeared suddenly in the midst, his
knees and elbows in a lively state of agitation. One or two fell away,
protesting, their hands caressing their injured parts.

“Where be a coomen, ’ar-ree!” expostulated one boy, holding his palm
to his ear.

“Mighty!” exclaimed the young ruffler; “bain’t the road free to none
but yourself, Jarge? Here be a yoong gen’lman waiting to pass, now.”

They took it as aimed at me, and hedged in again. He clawed two by the
napes of their necks, and cracking their heads comfortably together,
flung both aside. His intentions were quite unmistakable, and his
strength a thing to regard. I was painfully conscious of it as I went
through the sullen lane the others, discomfited, made for me; but I
plucked up courage, as I passed, to express my gratitude.

“Thank you, Harry!” I said.

He was after me in a moment.

“It’s not a’going to make no differ’,” he whispered fiercely. “You
onderstand that?”

“It shan’t, anyhow, till after the fight,” I answered back in his ear,
and nodded and ran on.

At last the great day came. Mr. Sant, in order that my uncle might be
saved anxiety, and me the necessity of deception, had given me no
warning until the very moment was on me. He had manœuvred to hold me
a little longer than usual over my lessons; and suddenly returned to
me after a short absence from the room.

“Dick,” he said, “Harrier’s waiting for you in the garden.”

My heart gave a twist, and for a moment pulled the blood out of my
cheeks. Then I saw Mr. Sant looking at me, and was suddenly glowing
all over, as if after a cold douche.

“For the right, Dicky!” he said. “To win your spurs in Christendom!
Remember what I’ve taught you, and keep your head.”

It was all very well to say so, with that part of me like a bladder
full of hot air. But I followed him stoutly, trusting to the occasion
to inspire me with all the science which, for the moment, had clean
deserted me.

There was a little plat of lawn at the back, very snug and private
behind some trees; and here we found my adversary waiting, in charge
of Jacob, the gardener, a grizzled, comfortable old fellow in complete
Christian subjection to his master. Jacob was to second Harry, and Mr.
Sant me. The old fellow grinned and ducked as we appeared. There were
no other witnesses.

“Now,” said Mr. Sant, “when I say ‘Go!’ go; when I call ‘Time!’ stop.”

He fell back with the words, and we stood facing one another. I was
utterly bemused, at that instant, as to the processes by which I had
reached this situation. I could only grasp the one fact that I was put
up to batter, if I could (which seemed ridiculous), this confident,
taut little figure in the shirt and corduroy smalls and gaiters, who
held out, as if for my inspection, two bare brown arms, made all of
bone and whipcord; and that I must proceed to _try_ to do this,
without any present quarrel--but rather the reverse--to stimulate me.
It was so different to the circumstances of that other mad contest. I
could have laughed; I----

“Go!” said Mr. Sant.

Something cracked on my forehead, and I fell.

“Time!” cried Mr. Sant.

He pulled me to my feet.

“Get your wits, Dicky,” he said.

I had got them. The bladder seemed to have burst, and let out all the
hot air. I was quite cool, now, and pretty savage over this treatment.

“All right, sir,” I said; and I think he understood. He kept me
simmering, however, for the regulation three minutes.

I came up to time now, Broughton’s commendable pupil. The first round
had been, what we call in cricket, a trial ball. This that followed
was the game--muscle and a little science against science and a little
muscle. The brass pot, I am happy to say, prevailed, and sent the
earthenware spinning with a crack on its stubborn little nose. Jacob
mopped the vanquished, who could hardly be kept still to endure it. As
for me, I was cockahoop, crowing inside and out. My second laughed,
and let me go on, warning me only that the battle wasn’t won.

It was not, indeed. Our bloods were up, and the next round was a hot
test of our qualities. It was give and take, and take and give; until,
lunging under a loose defence, Harry hit me in the wind, and, while I
was gasping and staggering, levelled me to the ground with a blow on
my mouth. He was mad by now, and was rushing to pummel me, prostrate
as I was, when Jacob, with a howl, clutched him and bore him
struggling away.

“Law, ye little warmint!” cried the old man.

“No more of that, Harrier!” said Mr. Sant, from where he was kneeling,
nursing and reviving me; “or I take my man away. To hit one that’s
down, sir! That’s neither Christian nor professional.”

Then he whispered in my ear, “Three minutes, Dicky! Can you do it?
else I’m bound in honour to throw up the sponge.”

There was an agitation in his voice which he tried vainly to control.
I made a desperate effort, and rose as he began to count. I felt a
little sick and wild; but the lesson of over-confidence had gone home.
This time I played warily, tiring out my adversary. At last the moment
came. He struck out furiously, missed, and, as he recovered his guard,
I hit him with all my strength between the eyes. He staggered, gave a
little cry, and, quite blinded for the moment, began to grope
aimlessly with his fists.

“Noo, sir!” howled old Jacob, excited (I am afraid he was an
unsympathetic second); “noo, sir’s your time. Walk in and finish en!”

“I won’t,” I cried. “It isn’t fair. He can’t see.”

Trying to mark me by my voice, the boy let out a furious blow, and, as
his fist whizzed near me, I caught and clutched it in my own.

“Harry!” I said hurriedly, “let’s be friends!”

He tore his hand away, stood with his face quivering a moment, then
all of a sudden fell upon his knees, and, putting his arm across his
eyes, began to sob as if his heart were broken.

A silence and embarrassment fell upon us all. Then Mr. Sant walked
over to the boy and addressed some words to him. He turned a deaf ear,
repulsing him.

“You have fought like a man,” said the clergyman. “Come, take your
beating like one.”

The lad started and looked up. He could see again now, but
glimmeringly.

“Be the three minnuts past?” he said.

“I’m afraid so,” said the other.

The boy got to his feet, sniffing, and, without uttering a word, began
rolling down and buttoning his shirt sleeves.

“There’s a good hot dinner waiting for you inside,” said Mr. Sant.
“Come now, and do the man’s part by it and by us!”

Still he would not speak; but shook his head sullenly, and, fetching
his coat and cap, walked off.

“Humoursome, humoursome!” said old Jacob. “Let en go for a warmint.”

“No,” said Mr. Sant, rather wistfully. “He’s got the stuff in him.
We’ll have him on our side yet, Richard.”

 CHAPTER X.
 FRIENDS AT LAST.

When I had been washed, and my cuts and bruises salved, Mr. Sant
took me in to dinner, having already sent a message to my uncle that I
should be late. I was horribly stiff, with blubber lips, and knobs and
swellings everywhere; yet I would not for the world have missed one
pang which my jaws suffered in eating. For was not each twinge an
earnest to me that I was redeemed in my own eyes? The penance was as
gratifying as, I think, a Catholic’s must be after confession and
absolution given.

Before we were well finished Uncle Jenico came in, a little flurried
and apologetic over his intrusion. He had guessed pretty well the
reason of my detention, and his anxiety would not let him rest. His
hands trembled as he adjusted his spectacles to look at me, and
removed and wiped them, and put them on again for a second scrutiny.

“So you have conquered?” he said, “My poor boy; my poor, dear boy! Why
I had no idea boxing punished so. You should not have minded what they
said about me, Richard--a tough old rascal, and ready to take it all
in the day’s luck.”

“I don’t think Richard will agree with you, sir,” said Mr. Sant. “He
has won his spurs, and a convert, I hope. He has fought like a
gentleman and a Christian--by George, sir, it was poor Broughton and
the Norwich butcher over again--and you, I am sure, are as proud of
him as I am.”

“Eh?” said my uncle, half laughing and half crying; and then falling
suddenly grave. “If it’s to inculcate respect--the stitch in time, you
know--certainly. But I can’t help wondering, if this is the victor,
what is the state of the vanquished?”

“A state of grace, I hope,” said the clergyman, smiling. “But it’s a
very proper reflection, sir, and one which, I am sure, Richard will
take to heart.”

The reminder, nevertheless, was not out of place. It is well at the
feast of triumph to remember who pays the cost. I had been
self-glorifying a little overmuch; and here, of a sudden, was the
picture before me of my beaten enemy slinking away to hide his
battered face, at the very moment that I was crowing to everybody to
come and look at mine. Uncle Jenico was the true gentleman among us
all; and it was he who had been insulted.

I soon mended of my knocks, and the very next day was ruffling it to
my lessons with a new self-confidence that made nothing of possessing
the world. Dunberry was no longer a Siberia to me, but a conquered
country full of breezy possibilities. I should have welcomed the
prospect of an attack; but no one interfered with me. On the contrary,
awed and covert glances greeted me on my way past the school. I
dropped a book. An obsequious little courtier scurried to pick it up
for me. The news of the fight had got abroad, it was evident, and
Harry was no longer the cock of the walk. From this moment, with other
than the youth of Dunberry, I am afraid, my position was secured.

I hope I took no base advantage of the knowledge; yet I won’t say but
I might have if Mr. Sant had not been at my back to prevent it.

“Don’t forget you fought for a principle,” he would remind me. “It’s
no manner of Christian use to turn out a bully that you may usurp his
place.”

To prove to me that boxing was not the whole duty of a gentleman, and
to school me from presuming on any idea of indulgence because of my
victory, he rather put the screw on in my education, and for a time
was something of a martinet on questions of study and discipline. I
was hurt, and a little bit rebellious at first; but soon, having a
fair reason of my own, came to recognize his consistency.

During this time, and for some weeks after the fight, I saw next to
nothing of Harry Harrier. He kept out of my way, sulking and grieving,
though he attended school--with phenomenal punctuality, too, I
believe--regularly. His father, I heard from old Jacob, had been very
savage over his beating, and had dressed him well for it. I was
furious when I was told, and wanted Mr. Sant to complain to the
Squire; but, before he could do so, something happened which made any
complaint futile. A new steward, a Draco of a man, was appointed to
the Court, and one day, shortly after his arrival, lo and behold!
there was the gamekeeper handcuffed, and being carried off to Ipswich
gaol in a tax-cart by the officers of the law. It had been discovered
that for years he had been in collusion with a gang of poachers, and
in the end he had been watched, and caught _in flagranti delicto_. His
wife followed him to the county town, and devoted most of her savings,
poor woman, to his defence, but without avail. He was convicted and
transported, and I may as well say at once that that was the end of
him so far as his family was concerned, for he never turned up again.
While the trial was pending, Harry--it is not, under all the
circumstances, to be wondered at--gave the schoolhouse a wide berth;
but, after his father had been sentenced and their home broken up, to
the surprise of every one he put in an appearance there again, coming
dogged and punctual to a task which must have grown nothing less than
a perpetual ordeal to him. We did not, in truth, know the strength of
will of the desperate humbled little spirit--not any of us, that is to
say, but Mr. Sant. _He_ had gauged it, I am sure; and, having set his
heart on the boy’s reclamation, was watching with an anxious interest
the development of the odd little drama which he had helped to
engineer. He visited, of course, in virtue of his office, the
gamekeeper’s unhappy wife, who had been forced to betake herself to a
mean little tenement in the village, where she eked out the small
means remaining to her by washing for the rectory; and though, as yet,
the son would hardly notice or be civil to him, the mother did not
fail to acquaint him, with many fond tears, of her poor, wild little
fellow’s real love and resolution, and of the courage which was
determining him to train himself to take the place of the breadwinner
they had lost. All of which, I knew, made Mr. Sant the more eager to
have the lad recognize him for a friend; only pride stood in the way.
For, the truth is, poor Harry’s prestige was gone down to zero. Always
owing in some part to the local reputation of his father for a bully
and rowdy, the removal of that gentleman had finished what my victory
had begun. And now it was the case of the sick lion. The cowardly
little jackals who had formerly cringed to him, egged on by their more
cowardly elders taunted him with his disgrace. If he retaliated, they
overwhelmed him with numbers, or ran, squealing injured righteousness,
to appeal against him to their parents. His heart, swelling in his
plucky little breast, must often have had a business of it not to let
loose the tears; but he had an indomitable soul, and only time and
tact could find the way into it.

One day Mr. Sant and I, when walking together, came unnoticed upon the
rear of such a scene. The victim moved on in front, his head hanging a
little, though he would not force his pace an inch to accommodate his
tormentors, who followed behind, at a safe distance, hooting and
jeering at him.

“OO stole the pawtridges! When did ’ee last ’ear from the ’ulks! Why
don’t ’ee git your mawther to wash your dirty linen, ’ar-ree?” and
such-like insults they bawled.

I burned with indignation, and was running to retaliate on my enemy by
helping him as he had once helped me, when Mr. Sant seized me with a
determined hand, and bent to whisper in my ear--

“He will hate you, if you do. Leave him to fight his own battles.”

As he spoke the little wretches let fly a shower of small missiles,
and a stone struck the boy smartly on the neck. He leapt about at
once, and came rushing back with clenched fists and a blazing face.
The mob dispersed before his onset; but he cut off one panic-stricken
unit of it, and smote the lubberly coward with a thorny crash into the
hedge. His eyes looked red, his breast was heaving stormily; he would
have done some evil, I think, had not Mr. Sant run and put himself
between. Then he backed away, without a word; but his cheeks were
quite white now, and the wings of his nostrils going like a little
winded horse’s.

Consternation held the scattered enemy. They stood each where he had
been halted by the unexpected vision of their rector and me. The
assaulted one, sitting on spikes, stuffed his face into his elbow and
boo-hoo’d from stentorian lungs. Mr. Sant smiled with rather an ugly
look.

“Blubber away, Derrick,” he said. “You’ve been well served for a dirty
act.” Then he scowled abroad. “Are you English boys, to kick a downed
one! Not one of you, cowards, but if he passed this Harrier alone
would hug his fists in his pockets! It is no shame of his, but yours.
To bait him ten to one--O! what fine courageous fellows! But I’ll have
no more of it; d’ye hear? I’ll have no more of it!”