darkened the door.  As it was Sunday, he appeared in his full-dress laced
coat, white waistcoat and breeches, and towering plume, the latter of
which he instantly lowered, as much from necessity as good manners, the
beam in the mill-house ceiling having a tendency to smash and ruin all
such head-gear without warning.

'John, we've been hoping you would come down,' said the miller, 'and so
we have kept the tay about on purpose.  Draw up, and speak to Mrs.
Matilda Johnson. . . . Ma'am, this is Robert's brother.'

'Your humble servant, ma'am,' said the trumpet-major gallantly.

As it was getting dusk in the low, small-paned room, he instinctively
moved towards Miss Johnson as he spoke, who sat with her back to the
window.  He had no sooner noticed her features than his helmet nearly
fell from his hand; his face became suddenly fixed, and his natural
complexion took itself off, leaving a greenish yellow in its stead.  The
young person, on her part, had no sooner looked closely at him than she
said weakly, 'Robert's brother!' and changed colour yet more rapidly than
the soldier had done.  The faintness, previously half counterfeit, seized
on her now in real earnest.

'I don't feel well,' she said, suddenly rising by an effort.  'This warm
day has quite upset me!'

There was a regular collapse of the tea-party, like that of the Hamlet
play scene.  Bob seized his sweetheart and carried her upstairs, the
miller exclaiming, 'Ah, she's terribly worn by the journey!  I thought
she was when I saw her nearly go off at the blare of the cow.  No woman
would have been frightened at that if she'd been up to her natural
strength.'

'That, and being so very shy of men, too, must have made John's handsome
regimentals quite overpowering to her, poor thing,' added Mrs. Garland,
following the catastrophic young lady upstairs, whose indisposition was
this time beyond question.  And yet, by some perversity of the heart, she
was as eager now to make light of her faintness as she had been to make
much of it two or three hours ago.

The miller and John stood like straight sticks in the room the others had
quitted, John's face being hastily turned towards a caricature of
Buonaparte on the wall that he had not seen more than a hundred and fifty
times before.

'Come, sit down and have a dish of tea, anyhow,' said his father at last.
'She'll soon be right again, no doubt.'

'Thanks; I don't want any tea,' said John quickly.  And, indeed, he did
not, for he was in one gigantic ache from head to foot.

The light had been too dim for anybody to notice his amazement; and not
knowing where to vent it, the trumpet-major said he was going out for a
minute.  He hastened to the bakehouse; but David being there, he went to
the pantry; but the maid being there, he went to the cart-shed; but a
couple of tramps being there, he went behind a row of French beans in the
garden, where he let off an ejaculation the most pious that he had
uttered that Sabbath day: 'Heaven! what's to be done!'

And then he walked wildly about the paths of the dusky garden, where the
trickling of the brooks seemed loud by comparison with the stillness
around; treading recklessly on the cracking snails that had come forth to
feed, and entangling his spurs in the long grass till the rowels were
choked with its blades.  Presently he heard another person approaching,
and his brother's shape appeared between the stubbard tree and the hedge.

'O, is it you?' said the mate.

'Yes.  I am--taking a little air.'

'She is getting round nicely again; and as I am not wanted indoors just
now, I am going into the village to call upon a friend or two I have not
been able to speak to as yet.'

John took his brother Bob's hand.  Bob rather wondered why.

'All right, old boy,' he said.  'Going into the village?  You'll be back
again, I suppose, before it gets very late?'

'O yes,' said Captain Bob cheerfully, and passed out of the garden.

John allowed his eyes to follow his brother till his shape could not be
seen, and then he turned and again walked up and down.

XVIII.  THE NIGHT AFTER THE ARRIVAL

John continued his sad and heavy pace till walking seemed too old and
worn-out a way of showing sorrow so new, and he leant himself against the
fork of an apple-tree like a log.  There the trumpet-major remained for a
considerable time, his face turned towards the house, whose ancient, many-
chimneyed outline rose against the darkened sky, and just shut out from
his view the camp above.  But faint noises coming thence from horses
restless at the pickets, and from visitors taking their leave, recalled
its existence, and reminded him that, in consequence of Matilda's
arrival, he had obtained leave for the night--a fact which, owing to the
startling emotions that followed his entry, he had not yet mentioned to
his friends.

While abstractedly considering how he could best use that privilege under
the new circumstances which had arisen, he heard Farmer Derriman drive up
to the front door and hold a conversation with his father.  The old man
had at last apparently brought the tin box of private papers that he
wished the miller to take charge of during Derriman's absence; and it
being a calm night, John could hear, though he little heeded, Uncle
Benjy's reiterated supplications to Loveday to keep it safe from fire and
thieves.  Then Uncle Benjy left, and John's father went upstairs to
deposit the box in a place of security, the whole proceeding reaching
John's preoccupied comprehension merely as voices during sleep.

The next thing was the appearance of a light in the bedroom which had
been assigned to Matilda Johnson.  This effectually aroused the trumpet-
major, and with a stealthiness unusual in him he went indoors.  No light
was in the lower rooms, his father, Mrs. Garland, and Anne having gone
out on the bridge to look at the new moon.  John went upstairs on tip-
toe, and along the uneven passage till he came to her door.  It was
standing ajar, a band of candlelight shining across the passage and up
the opposite wall.  As soon as he entered the radiance he saw her.  She
was standing before the looking-glass, apparently lost in thought, her
fingers being clasped behind her head in abstraction, and the light
falling full upon her face.

'I must speak to you,' said the trumpet-major.

She started, turned and grew paler than before; and then, as if moved by
a sudden impulse, she swung the door wide open, and, coming out, said
quite collectedly and with apparent pleasantness, 'O yes; you are my
Bob's brother!  I didn't, for a moment, recognize you.'

'But you do now?'

'As Bob's brother.'

'You have not seen me before?'

'I have not,' she answered, with a face as impassible as Talleyrand's.

'Good God!'

'I have not!' she repeated.

'Nor any of the --th Dragoons?  Captain Jolly, for instance?'

'No.'

'You mistake.  I'll remind you of particulars,' he said drily.  And he
did remind her at some length.

'Never!' she said desperately.

But she had miscalculated her staying powers, and her adversary's
character.  Five minutes after that she was in tears, and the
conversation had resolved itself into words, which, on the soldier's
part, were of the nature of commands, tempered by pity, and were a mere
series of entreaties on hers.

The whole scene did not last ten minutes.  When it was over, the trumpet-
major walked from the doorway where they had been standing, and brushed
moisture from his eyes.  Reaching a dark lumber-room, he stood still
there to calm himself, and then descended by a Flemish-ladder to the
bakehouse, instead of by the front stairs.  He found that the others,
including Bob, had gathered in the parlour during his absence and lighted
the candles.

Miss Johnson, having sent down some time before John re-entered the house
to say that she would prefer to keep her room that evening, was not
expected to join them, and on this account Bob showed less than his
customary liveliness.  The miller wishing to keep up his son's spirits,
expressed his regret that, it being Sunday night, they could have no
songs to make the evening cheerful; when Mrs. Garland proposed that they
should sing psalms which, by choosing lively tunes and not thinking of
the words, would be almost as good as ballads.

This they did, the trumpet-major appearing to join in with the rest; but
as a matter of fact no sound came from his moving lips.  His mind was in
such a state that he derived no pleasure even from Anne Garland's
presence, though he held a corner of the same book with her, and was
treated in a winsome way which it was not her usual practice to indulge
in.  She saw that his mind was clouded, and, far from guessing the reason
why, was doing her best to clear it.

At length the Garlands found that it was the hour for them to leave, and
John Loveday at the same time wished his father and Bob good-night, and
went as far as Mrs. Garland's door with her.

He had said not a word to show that he was free to remain out of camp,
for the reason that there was painful work to be done, which it would be
best to do in secret and alone.  He lingered near the house till its
reflected window-lights ceased to glimmer upon the mill-pond, and all
within the dwelling was dark and still.  Then he entered the garden and
waited there till the back door opened, and a woman's figure timorously
came forward.  John Loveday at once went up to her, and they began to
talk in low yet dissentient tones.

They had conversed about ten minutes, and were parting as if they had
come to some painful arrangement, Miss Johnson sobbing bitterly, when a
head stealthily arose above the dense hedgerow, and in a moment a shout
burst from its owner.

'Thieves! thieves!--my tin box!--thieves! thieves!'

Matilda vanished into the house, and John Loveday hastened to the hedge.
'For heaven's sake, hold your tongue, Mr. Derriman!' he exclaimed.

'My tin box!' said Uncle Benjy.  'O, only the trumpet-major!'

'Your box is safe enough, I assure you.  It was only'--here the trumpet-
major gave vent to an artificial laugh--'only a sly bit of courting, you
know.'

'Ha, ha, I see!' said the relieved old squireen.  'Courting Miss Anne!
Then you've ousted my nephew, trumpet-major!  Well, so much the better.
As for myself, the truth on't is that I haven't been able to go to bed
easy, for thinking that possibly your father might not take care of what
I put under his charge; and at last I thought I would just step over and
see if all was safe here before I turned in.  And when I saw your two
shapes my poor nerves magnified ye to housebreakers, and Boneys, and I
don't know what all.'

'You have alarmed the house,' said the trumpet-major, hearing the
clicking of flint and steel in his father's bedroom, followed in a moment
by the rise of a light in the window of the same apartment.  'You have
got me into difficulty,' he added gloomily, as his father opened the
casement.

'I am sorry for that,' said Uncle Benjy.  'But step back; I'll put it all
right again.'

'What, for heaven's sake, is the matter?' said the miller, his tasselled
nightcap appearing in the opening.

'Nothing, nothing!' said the farmer.  'I was uneasy about my few bonds
and documents, and I walked this way, miller, before going to bed, as I
start from home to-morrow morning.  When I came down by your
garden-hedge, I thought I saw thieves, but it turned out to be--to be--'

Here a lump of earth from the trumpet-major's hand struck Uncle Benjy in
the back as a reminder.

'To be--the bough of a cherry-tree a-waving in the wind.  Good-night.'

'No thieves are like to try my house,' said Miller Loveday.  'Now don't
you come alarming us like this again, farmer, or you shall keep your box
yourself, begging your pardon for saying so.  Good-night t' ye!'

'Miller, will ye just look, since I am here--just look and see if the box
is all right? there's a good man!  I am old, you know, and my poor
remains are not what my original self was.  Look and see if it is where
you put it, there's a good, kind man.'

'Very well,' said the miller good-humouredly.

'Neighbour Loveday! on second thoughts I will take my box home again,
after all, if you don't mind.  You won't deem it ill of me?  I have no
suspicion, of course; but now I think on't there's rivalry between my
nephew and your son; and if Festus should take it into his head to set
your house on fire in his enmity, 'twould be bad for my deeds and
documents.  No offence, miller, but I'll take the box, if you don't
mind.'

'Faith! I don't mind,' said Loveday.  'But your nephew had better think
twice before he lets his enmity take that colour.'  Receding from the
window, he took the candle to a back part of the room and soon reappeared
with the tin box.

'I won't trouble ye to dress,' said Derriman considerately; 'let en down
by anything you have at hand.'

The box was lowered by a cord, and the old man clasped it in his arms.
'Thank ye!' he said with heartfelt gratitude.  'Good-night!'

The miller replied and closed the window, and the light went out.

'There, now I hope you are satisfied, sir?' said the trumpet-major.

'Quite, quite!' said Derriman; and, leaning on his walking-stick, he
pursued his lonely way.

That night Anne lay awake in her bed, musing on the traits of the new
friend who had come to her neighbour's house.  She would not be critical,
it was ungenerous and wrong; but she could not help thinking of what
interested her.  And were there, she silently asked, in Miss Johnson's
mind and person such rare qualities as placed that lady altogether beyond
comparison with herself?  O yes, there must be; for had not Captain Bob
singled out Matilda from among all other women, herself included?  Of
course, with his world-wide experience, he knew best.

When the moon had set, and only the summer stars threw their light into
the great damp garden, she fancied that she heard voices in that
direction.  Perhaps they were the voices of Bob and Matilda taking a
lover's walk before retiring.  If so, how sleepy they would be next day,
and how absurd it was of Matilda to pretend she was tired!  Ruminating in
this way, and saying to herself that she hoped they would be happy, Anne
fell asleep.

XIX.  MISS JOHNSON'S BEHAVIOUR CAUSES NO LITTLE SURPRISE

Partly from the excitement of having his Matilda under the paternal roof,
Bob rose next morning as early as his father and the grinder, and, when
the big wheel began to patter and the little ones to mumble in response,
went to sun himself outside the mill-front, among the fowls of brown and
speckled kinds which haunted that spot, and the ducks that came up from
the mill-tail.

Standing on the worn-out mill-stone inlaid in the gravel, he talked with
his father on various improvements of the premises, and on the proposed
arrangements for his permanent residence there, with an enjoyment that
was half based upon this prospect of the future, and half on the
penetrating warmth of the sun to his back and shoulders.  Then the
different troops of horses began their morning scramble down to the mill-
pond, and, after making it very muddy round the edge, ascended the slope
again.  The bustle of the camp grew more and more audible, and presently
David came to say that breakfast was ready.

'Is Miss Johnson downstairs?' said the miller; and Bob listened for the
answer, looking at a blue sentinel aloft on the down.

'Not yet, maister,' said the excellent David.

'We'll wait till she's down,' said Loveday.  'When she is, let us know.'

David went indoors again, and Loveday and Bob continued their morning
survey by ascending into the mysterious quivering recesses of the mill,
and holding a discussion over a second pair of burr-stones, which had to
be re-dressed before they could be used again.  This and similar things
occupied nearly twenty minutes, and, looking from the window, the elder
of the two was reminded of the time of day by seeing Mrs. Garland's table-
cloth fluttering from her back door over the heads of a flock of pigeons
that had alighted for the crumbs.

'I suppose David can't find us,' he said, with a sense of hunger that was
not altogether strange to Bob.  He put out his head and shouted.

'The lady is not down yet,' said his man in reply.

'No hurry, no hurry,' said the miller, with cheerful emptiness.  'Bob, to
pass the time we'll look into the garden.'

'She'll get up sooner than this, you know, when she's signed articles and
got a berth here,' Bob observed apologetically.

'Yes, yes,' said Loveday; and they descended into the garden.

Here they turned over sundry flat stones and killed the slugs sheltered
beneath them from the coming heat of the day, talking of slugs in all
their branches--of the brown and the black, of the tough and the tender,
of the reason why there were so many in the garden that year, of the
coming time when the grass-walks harbouring them were to be taken up and
gravel laid, and of the relatively exterminatory merits of a pair of
scissors and the heel of the shoe.  At last the miller said, 'Well,
really, Bob, I'm hungry; we must begin without her.'

They were about to go in, when David appeared with haste in his motions,
his eyes wider vertically than crosswise, and his cheeks nearly all gone.

'Maister, I've been to call her; and as 'a didn't speak I rapped, and as
'a didn't answer I kicked, and not being latched the door opened,
and--she's gone!'

Bob went off like a swallow towards the house, and the miller followed
like the rather heavy man that he was.  That Miss Matilda was not in her
room, or a scrap of anything belonging to her, was soon apparent.  They
searched every place in which she could possibly hide or squeeze herself,
every place in which she could not, but found nothing at all.

Captain Bob was quite wild with astonishment and grief.  When he was
quite sure that she was nowhere in his father's house, he ran into Mrs.
Garland's, and telling them the story so hastily that they hardly
understood the particulars, he went on towards Comfort's house, intending
to raise the alarm there, and also at Mitchell's, Beach's,
Cripplestraw's, the parson's, the clerk's, the camp of dragoons, of
hussars, and so on through the whole county.  But he paused, and thought
it would be hardly expedient to publish his discomfiture in such a way.
If Matilda had left the house for any freakish reason he would not care
to look for her, and if her deed had a tragic intent she would keep aloof
from camp and village.

In his trouble he thought of Anne.  She was a nice girl and could be
trusted.  To her he went, and found her in a state of excitement and
anxiety which equalled his own.

''Tis so lonely to cruise for her all by myself!' said Bob
disconsolately, his forehead all in wrinkles, 'and I've thought you would
come with me and cheer the way?'

'Where shall we search?' said Anne.

'O, in the holes of rivers, you know, and down wells, and in quarries,
and over cliffs, and like that.  Your eyes might catch the loom of any
bit of a shawl or bonnet that I should overlook, and it would do me a
real service.  Please do come!'

So Anne took pity upon him, and put on her hat and went, the miller and
David having gone off in another direction.  They examined the ditches of
fields, Bob going round by one fence and Anne by the other, till they met
at the opposite side.  Then they peeped under culverts, into outhouses,
and down old wells and quarries, till the theory of a tragical end had
nearly spent its force in Bob's mind, and he began to think that Matilda
had simply run away.  However, they still walked on, though by this time
the sun was hot and Anne would gladly have sat down.

'Now, didn't you think highly of her, Miss Garland?' he inquired, as the
search began to languish.

'O yes,' said Anne, 'very highly.'

'She was really beautiful; no nonsense about her looks, was there?'

'None.  Her beauty was thoroughly ripe--not too young.  We should all
have got to love her.  What can have possessed her to go away?'

'I don't know, and, upon my life, I shall soon be drove to say I don't
care!' replied the mate despairingly.  'Let me pilot ye down over those
stones,' he added, as Anne began to descend a rugged quarry.  He stepped
forward, leapt down, and turned to her.

She gave him her hand and sprang down.  Before he relinquished his hold,
Captain Bob raised her fingers to his lips and kissed them.

'O, Captain Loveday!' cried Anne, snatching away her hand in genuine
dismay, while a tear rose unexpectedly to each eye.  'I never heard of
such a thing!  I won't go an inch further with you, sir; it is too
barefaced!'  And she turned and ran off.

'Upon my life I didn't mean it!' said the repentant captain, hastening
after.  'I do love her best--indeed I do--and I don't love you at all!  I
am not so fickle as that!  I merely just for the moment admired you as a
sweet little craft, and that's how I came to do it.  You know, Miss
Garland,' he continued earnestly, and still running after, ''tis like
this: when you come ashore after having been shut up in a ship for
eighteen months, women-folks seem so new and nice that you can't help
liking them, one and all in a body; and so your heart is apt to get
scattered and to yaw a bit; but of course I think of poor Matilda most,
and shall always stick to her.'  He heaved a sigh of tremendous
magnitude, to show beyond the possibility of doubt that his heart was
still in the place that honour required.

'I am glad to hear that--of course I am very glad!' said she, with quick
petulance, keeping her face turned from him.  'And I hope we shall find
her, and that the wedding will not be put off, and that you'll both be
happy.  But I won't look for her any more!  No; I don't care to look for
her--and my head aches.  I am going home!'

'And so am I,' said Robert promptly.

'No, no; go on looking for her, of course--all the afternoon, and all
night.  I am sure you will, if you love her.'

'O yes; I mean to.  Still, I ought to convoy you home first?'

'No, you ought not; and I shall not accept your company.  Good-morning,
sir!'  And she went off over one of the stone stiles with which the spot
abounded, leaving the friendly sailor standing in the field.

He sighed again, and, observing the camp not far off, thought he would go
to his brother John and ask him his opinion on the sorrowful case.  On
reaching the tents he found that John was not at liberty just at that
time, being engaged in practising the trumpeters; and leaving word that
he wished the trumpet-major to come down to the mill as soon as possible,
Bob went back again.

''Tis no good looking for her,' he said gloomily.  'She liked me well
enough, but when she came here and saw the house, and the place, and the
old horse, and the plain furniture, she was disappointed to find us all
so homely, and felt she didn't care to marry into such a family!'

His father and David had returned with no news.

'Yes, 'tis as I've been thinking, father,' Bob said.  'We weren't good
enough for her, and she went away in scorn!'

'Well, that can't be helped,' said the miller.  'What we be, we be, and
have been for generations.  To my mind she seemed glad enough to get hold
of us!'

'Yes, yes--for the moment--because of the flowers, and birds, and what's
pretty in the place,' said Bob tragically.  'But you don't know,
father--how should you know, who have hardly been out of Overcombe in
your life?--you don't know what delicate feelings are in a real refined
woman's mind.  Any little vulgar action unreaves their nerves like a
marline-spike.  Now I wonder if you did anything to disgust her?'

'Faith! not that I know of,' said Loveday, reflecting.  'I didn't say a
single thing that I should naturally have said, on purpose to give no
offence.'

'You was always very homely, you know, father.'

'Yes; so I was,' said the miller meekly.

'I wonder what it could have been,' Bob continued, wandering about
restlessly.  'You didn't go drinking out of the big mug with your mouth
full, or wipe your lips with your sleeve?'

'That I'll swear I didn't!' said the miller firmly.  'Thinks I, there's
no knowing what I may do to shock her, so I'll take my solid victuals in
the bakehouse, and only a crumb and a drop in her company for manners.'

'You could do no more than that, certainly,' said Bob gently.

'If my manners be good enough for well-brought-up people like the
Garlands, they be good enough for her,' continued the miller, with a
sense of injustice.

'That's true.  Then it must have been David.  David, come here!  How did
you behave before that lady?  Now, mind you speak the truth!'

'Yes, Mr. Captain Robert,' said David earnestly.  'I assure ye she was
served like a royal queen.  The best silver spoons wez put down, and yer
poor grandfer's silver tanket, as you seed, and the feather cushion for
her to sit on--'

'Now I've got it!' said Bob decisively, bringing down his hand upon the
window-sill.  'Her bed was hard!--and there's nothing shocks a true lady
like that.  The bed in that room always was as hard as the Rock of
Gibraltar!'

'No, Captain Bob!  The beds were changed--wasn't they maister?  We put
the goose bed in her room, and the flock one, that used to be there, in
yours.'

'Yes, we did,' corroborated the miller.  'David and I changed 'em with
our own hands, because they were too heavy for the women to move.'

'Sure I didn't know I had the flock bed,' murmured Bob.  'I slept on,
little thinking what I was going to wake to.  Well, well, she's gone; and
search as I will I shall never find another like her!  She was too good
for me.  She must have carried her box with her own hands, poor girl.  As
far as that goes, I could overtake her even now, I dare say; but I won't
entreat her against her will--not I.'

Miller Loveday and David, feeling themselves to be rather a desecration
in the presence of Bob's sacred emotions, managed to edge off by degrees,
the former burying himself in the most floury recesses of the mill, his
invariable resource when perturbed, the rumbling having a soothing effect
upon the nerves of those properly trained to its music.

Bob was so impatient that, after going up to her room to assure himself
once more that she had not undressed, but had only lain down on the
outside of the bed, he went out of the house to meet John, and waited on
the sunny slope of the down till his brother appeared.  John looked so
brave and shapely and warlike that, even in Bob's present distress, he
could not but feel an honest and affectionate pride at owning such a
relative.  Yet he fancied that John did not come along with the same
swinging step he had shown yesterday; and when the trumpet-major got
nearer he looked anxiously at the mate and waited for him to speak first.

'You know our great trouble, John?' said Robert, gazing stoically into
his brother's eyes.

'Come and sit down, and tell me all about it,' answered the
trumpet-major, showing no surprise.

They went towards a slight ravine, where it was easier to sit down than
on the flat ground, and here John reclined among the grasshoppers,
pointing to his brother to do the same.

'But do you know what it is?' said Robert.  'Has anybody told ye?'

'I do know,' said John.  'She's gone; and I am thankful!'

'What!' said Bob, rising to his knees in amazement.

'I'm at the bottom of it,' said the trumpet-major slowly.

'You, John?'

'Yes; and if you will listen I'll tell you all.  Do you remember what
happened when I came into the room last night?  Why, she turned colour
and nearly fainted away.  That was because she knew me.'

Bob stared at his brother with a face of pain and distrust.

'For once, Bob, I must say something that will hurt thee a good deal,'
continued John.  'She was not a woman who could possibly be your wife--and
so she's gone.'

'You sent her off?'

'Well, I did.'

'John!--Tell me right through--tell me!'

'Perhaps I had better,' said the trumpet-major, his blue eyes resting on
the far distant sea, that seemed to rise like a wall as high as the hill
they sat upon.

And then he told a tale of Miss Johnson and the --th Dragoons which wrung
his heart as much in the telling as it did Bob's to hear, and which
showed that John had been temporarily cruel to be ultimately kind.  Even
Bob, excited as he was, could discern from John's manner of speaking what
a terrible undertaking that night's business had been for him.  To
justify the course he had adopted the dictates of duty must have been
imperative; but the trumpet-major, with a becoming reticence which his
brother at the time was naturally unable to appreciate, scarcely dwelt
distinctly enough upon the compelling cause of his conduct.  It would,
indeed, have been hard for any man, much less so modest a one as John, to
do himself justice in that remarkable relation, when the listener was the
lady's lover; and it is no wonder that Robert rose to his feet and put a
greater distance between himself and John.

'And what time was it?' he asked in a hard, suppressed voice.

'It was just before one o'clock.'

'How could you help her to go away?'

'I had a pass.  I carried her box to the coach-office.  She was to follow
at dawn.'

'But she had no money.'

'Yes, she had; I took particular care of that.'  John did not add, as he
might have done, that he had given her, in his pity, all the money he
possessed, and at present had only eighteen-pence in the world.  'Well,
it is over, Bob; so sit ye down, and talk with me of old times,' he
added.

'Ah, Jack, it is well enough for you to speak like that,' said the
disquieted sailor; 'but I can't help feeling that it is a cruel thing you
have done.  After all, she would have been snug enough for me.  Would I
had never found out this about her!  John, why did you interfere?  You
had no right to overhaul my affairs like this.  Why didn't you tell me
fairly all you knew, and let me do as I chose?  You have turned her out
of the house, and it's a shame!  If she had only come to me!  Why didn't
she?'

'Because she knew it was best to do otherwise.'

'Well, I shall go after her,' said Bob firmly.

'You can do as you like,' said John; 'but I would advise you strongly to
leave matters where they are.'

'I won't leave matters where they are,' said Bob impetuously.  'You have
made me miserable, and all for nothing.  I tell you she was good enough
for me; and as long as I knew nothing about what you say of her history,
what difference would it have made to me?  Never was there a young woman
who was better company; and she loved a merry song as I do myself.  Yes,
I'll follow her.'

'O, Bob,' said John; 'I hardly expected this!'

'That's because you didn't know your man.  Can I ask you to do me one
kindness?  I don't suppose I can.  Can I ask you not to say a word
against her to any of them at home?'

'Certainly.  The very reason why I got her to go off silently, as she has
done, was because nothing should be said against her here, and no scandal
should be heard of.'

'That may be; but I'm off after her.  Marry that girl I will.'

'You'll be sorry.'

'That we shall see,' replied Robert with determination; and he went away
rapidly towards the mill.  The trumpet-major had no heart to follow--no
good could possibly come of further opposition; and there on the down he
remained like a graven image till Bob had vanished from his sight into
the mill.

Bob entered his father's only to leave word that he was going on a
renewed search for Matilda, and to pack up a few necessaries for his
journey.  Ten minutes later he came out again with a bundle in his hand,
and John saw him go diagonally across the lower fields towards the high-
road.

'And this is all the good I have done!' said John, musingly readjusting
his stock where it cut his neck, and descending towards the mill.

XX.  HOW THEY LESSENED THE EFFECT OF THE CALAMITY

Meanwhile Anne Garland had gone home, and, being weary with her ramble in
search of Matilda, sat silent in a corner of the room.  Her mother was
passing the time in giving utterance to every conceivable surmise on the
cause of Miss Johnson's disappearance that the human mind could frame, to
which Anne returned monosyllabic answers, the result, not of
indifference, but of intense preoccupation.  Presently Loveday, the
father, came to the door; her mother vanished with him, and they remained
closeted together a long time.  Anne went into the garden and seated
herself beneath the branching tree whose boughs had sheltered her during
so many hours of her residence here.  Her attention was fixed more upon
the miller's wing of the irregular building before her than upon that
occupied by her mother, for she could not help expecting every moment to
see some one run out with a wild face and announce some awful clearing up
of the mystery.

Every sound set her on the alert, and hearing the tread of a horse in the
lane she looked round eagerly.  Gazing at her over the hedge was Festus
Derriman, mounted on such an incredibly tall animal that he could see to
her very feet over the thick and broad thorn fence.  She no sooner
recognized him than she withdrew her glance; but as his eyes were fixed
steadily upon her this was a futile manoeuvre.

'I saw you look round!' he exclaimed crossly.  'What have I done to make
you behave like that?  Come, Miss Garland, be fair.  'Tis no use to turn
your back upon me.'  As she did not turn he went on--'Well, now, this is
enough to provoke a saint.  Now I tell you what, Miss Garland; here I'll
stay till you do turn round, if 'tis all the afternoon.  You know my
temper--what I say I mean.'  He seated himself firmly in the saddle,
plucked some leaves from the hedge, and began humming a song, to show how
absolutely indifferent he was to the flight of time.

'What have you come for, that you are so anxious to see me?' inquired
Anne, when at last he had wearied her patience, rising and facing him
with the added independence which came from a sense of the hedge between
them.

'There, I knew you would turn round!' he said, his hot angry face invaded
by a smile in which his teeth showed like white hemmed in by red at
chess.

'What do you want, Mr. Derriman?' said she.

'"What do you want, Mr. Derriman?"--now listen to that!  Is that my
encouragement?'

Anne bowed superciliously, and moved away.

'I have just heard news that explains all that,' said the giant, eyeing
her movements with somnolent irascibility.  'My uncle has been letting
things out.  He was here late last night, and he saw you.'

'Indeed he didn't,' said Anne.

'O, now!  He saw Trumpet-major Loveday courting somebody like you in that
garden walk; and when he came you ran indoors.'

'It is not true, and I wish to hear no more.'

'Upon my life, he said so!  How can you do it, Miss Garland, when I, who
have enough money to buy up all the Lovedays, would gladly come to terms
with ye?  What a simpleton you must be, to pass me over for him!  There,
now you are angry because I said simpleton!--I didn't mean simpleton, I
meant misguided--misguided rosebud!  That's it--run off,' he continued in
a raised voice, as Anne made towards the garden door.  'But I'll have you
yet.  Much reason you have to be too proud to stay with me.  But it won't
last long; I shall marry you, madam, if I choose, as you'll see.'

When he was quite gone, and Anne had calmed down from the not altogether
unrelished fear and excitement that he always caused her, she returned to
her seat under the tree, and began to wonder what Festus Derriman's story
meant, which, from the earnestness of his tone, did not seem like a pure
invention.  It suddenly flashed upon her mind that she herself had heard
voices in the garden, and that the persons seen by Farmer Derriman, of
whose visit and reclamation of his box the miller had told her, might
have been Matilda and John Loveday.  She further recalled the strange
agitation of Miss Johnson on the preceding evening, and that it occurred
just at the entry of the dragoon, till by degrees suspicion amounted to
conviction that he knew more than any one else supposed of that lady's
disappearance.

It was just at this time that the trumpet-major descended to the mill
after his talk with his brother on the down.  As fate would have it,
instead of entering the house he turned aside to the garden and walked
down that pleasant enclosure, to learn if he were likely to find in the
other half of it the woman he loved so well.

Yes, there she was, sitting on the seat of logs that he had repaired for
her, under the apple-tree; but she was not facing in his direction.  He
walked with a noisier tread, he coughed, he shook a bough, he did
everything, in short, but the one thing that Festus did in the same
circumstances--call out to her.  He would not have ventured on that for
the world.  Any of his signs would have been sufficient to attract her a
day or two earlier; now she would not turn.  At last, in his fond
anxiety, he did what he had never done before without an invitation, and
crossed over into Mrs. Garland's half of the garden, till he stood before
her.

When she could not escape him she arose, and, saying 'Good afternoon,
trumpet-major,' in a glacial manner unusual with her, walked away to
another part of the garden.

Loveday, quite at a loss, had not the strength of mind to persevere
further.  He had a vague apprehension that some imperfect knowledge of
the previous night's unhappy business had reached her; and, unable to
remedy the evil without telling more than he dared, he went into the
mill, where his father still was, looking doleful enough, what with his
concern at events and the extra quantity of flour upon his face through
sticking so closely to business that day.

'Well, John; Bob has told you all, of course?  A queer, strange,
perplexing thing, isn't it?  I can't make it out at all.  There must be
something wrong in the woman, or it couldn't have happened.  I haven't
been so upset for years.'

'Nor have I.  I wouldn't it should have happened for all I own in the
world,' said the dragoon.  'Have you spoke to Anne Garland to-day--or has
anybody been talking to her?'

'Festus Derriman rode by half-an-hour ago, and talked to her over the
hedge.'

John guessed the rest, and, after standing on the threshold in silence
awhile, walked away towards the camp.

All this time his brother Robert had been hastening along in pursuit of
the woman who had withdrawn from the scene to avoid the exposure and
complete overthrow which would have resulted had she remained.  As the
distance lengthened between himself and the mill, Bob was conscious of
some cooling down of the excitement that had prompted him to set out; but
he did not pause in his walk till he had reached the head of the river
which fed the mill-stream.  Here, for some indefinite reason, he allowed
his eyes to be attracted by the bubbling spring whose waters never failed
or lessened, and he stopped as if to look longer at the scene; it was
really because his mind was so absorbed by John's story.

The sun was warm, the spot was a pleasant one, and he deposited his
bundle and sat down.  By degrees, as he reflected, first on John's view
and then on his own, his convictions became unsettled; till at length he
was so balanced between the impulse to go on and the impulse to go back,
that a puff of wind either way would have been well-nigh sufficient to
decide for him.  When he allowed John's story to repeat itself in his
ears, the reasonableness and good sense of his advice seemed beyond
question.  When, on the other hand, he thought of his poor Matilda's
eyes, and her, to him, pleasant ways, their charming arrangements to
marry, and her probable willingness still, he could hardly bring himself
to do otherwise than follow on the road at the top of his speed.

This strife of thought was so well maintained that sitting and standing,
he remained on the borders of the spring till the shadows had stretched
out eastwards, and the chance of overtaking Matilda had grown
considerably less.  Still he did not positively go towards home.  At last
he took a guinea from his pocket, and resolved to put the question to the
hazard.  'Heads I go; tails I don't.'  The piece of gold spun in the air
and came down heads.

'No, I won't go, after all,' he said.  'I won't be steered by accidents
any more.'

He picked up his bundle and switch, and retraced his steps towards
Overcombe Mill, knocking down the brambles and nettles as he went with
gloomy and indifferent blows.  When he got within sight of the house he
beheld David in the road.

'All right--all right again, captain!', shouted that retainer.  'A
wedding after all!  Hurrah!'

'Ah--she's back again?' cried Bob, seizing David, ecstatically, and
dancing round with him.

'No--but it's all the same! it is of no consequence at all, and no harm
will be done!  Maister and Mrs. Garland have made up a match, and mean to
marry at once, that the wedding victuals may not be wasted!  They felt
'twould be a thousand pities to let such good things get blue-vinnied for
want of a ceremony to use 'em upon, and at last they have thought of
this.'

'Victuals--I don't care for the victuals!' bitterly cried Bob, in a tone
of far higher thought.  'How you disappoint me!' and he went slowly
towards the house.

His father appeared in the opening of the mill-door, looking more
cheerful than when they had parted.  'What, Robert, you've been after
her?' he said.  'Faith, then, I wouldn't have followed her if I had been
as sure as you were that she went away in scorn of us.  Since you told me
that, I have not looked for her at all.'

'I was wrong, father,' Bob replied gravely, throwing down his bundle and
stick.  'Matilda, I find, has not gone away in scorn of us; she has gone
away for other reasons.  I followed her some way; but I have come back
again.  She may go.'

'Why is she gone?' said the astonished miller.

Bob had intended, for Matilda's sake, to give no reason to a living soul
for her departure.  But he could not treat his father thus reservedly;
and he told.

'She has made great fools of us,' said the miller deliberately; 'and she
might have made us greater ones.  Bob, I thought th' hadst more sense.'

'Well, don't say anything against her, father,' implored Bob.  ''Twas a
sorry haul, and there's an end on't.  Let her down quietly, and keep the
secret.  You promise that?'

'I do.'  Loveday the elder remained thinking awhile, and then went
on--'Well, what I was going to say is this: I've hit upon a plan to get
out of the awkward corner she has put us in.  What you'll think of it I
can't say.'

'David has just given me the heads.'

'And do it hurt your feelings, my son, at such a time?'

'No--I'll bring myself to bear it, anyhow!  Why should I object to other
people's happiness because I have lost my own?' said Bob, with saintly
self-sacrifice in his air.

'Well said!' answered the miller heartily.  'But you may be sure that
there will be no unseemly rejoicing, to disturb ye in your present frame
of mind.  All the morning I felt more ashamed than I cared to own at the
thought of how the neighbours, great and small, would laugh at what they
would call your folly, when they knew what had happened; so I resolved to
take this step to stave it off, if so be 'twas possible.  And when I saw
Mrs. Garland I knew I had done right.  She pitied me so much for having
had the house cleaned in vain, and laid in provisions to waste, that it
put her into the humour to agree.  We mean to do it right off at once,
afore the pies and cakes get mouldy and the blackpot stale.  'Twas a good
thought of mine and hers, and I am glad 'tis settled,' he concluded
cheerfully.

'Poor Matilda!' murmured Bob.

'There--I was afraid 'twould hurt thy feelings,' said the miller, with
self-reproach: 'making preparations for thy wedding, and using them for
my own!'

'No,' said Bob heroically; 'it shall not.  It will be a great comfort in
my sorrow to feel that the splendid grub, and the ale, and your stunning
new suit of clothes, and the great table-cloths you've bought, will be
just as useful now as if I had married myself.  Poor Matilda!  But you
won't expect me to join in--you hardly can.  I can sheer off that day
very easily, you know.'

'Nonsense, Bob!' said the miller reproachfully.

'I couldn't stand it--I should break down.'

'Deuce take me if I would have asked her, then, if I had known 'twas
going to drive thee out of the house!  Now, come, Bob, I'll find a way of
arranging it and sobering it down, so that it shall be as melancholy as
you can require--in short, just like a funeral, if thou'lt promise to
stay?'

'Very well,' said the afflicted one.  'On that condition I'll stay.'

XXI.  'UPON THE HILL HE TURNED'

Having entered into this solemn compact with his son, the elder Loveday's
next action was to go to Mrs. Garland, and ask her how the toning down of
the wedding had best be done.  'It is plain enough that to make merry
just now would be slighting Bob's feelings, as if we didn't care who was
not married, so long as we were,' he said.  'But then, what's to be done
about the victuals?'

'Give a dinner to the poor folk,' she suggested.  'We can get everything
used up that way.'

'That's true' said the miller.  'There's enough of 'em in these times to
carry off any extras whatsoever.'

'And it will save Bob's feelings wonderfully.  And they won't know that
the dinner was got for another sort of wedding and another sort of
guests; so you'll have their good-will for nothing.'

The miller smiled at the subtlety of the view.  'That can hardly be
called fair,' he said.  'Still, I did mean some of it for them, for the
friends we meant to ask would not have cleared all.'

Upon the whole the idea pleased him well, particularly when he noticed
the forlorn look of his sailor son as he walked about the place, and
pictured the inevitably jarring effect of fiddles and tambourines upon
Bob's shattered nerves at such a crisis, even if the notes of the former
were dulled by the application of a mute, and Bob shut up in a distant
bedroom--a plan which had at first occurred to him.  He therefore told
Bob that the surcharged larder was to be emptied by the charitable
process above alluded to, and hoped he would not mind making himself
useful in such a good and gloomy work.  Bob readily fell in with the
scheme, and it was at once put in hand and the tables spread.

The alacrity with which the substituted wedding was carried out, seemed
to show that the worthy pair of neighbours would have joined themselves
into one long ago, had there previously occurred any domestic incident
dictating such a step as an apposite expedient, apart from their personal
wish to marry.

The appointed morning came, and the service quietly took place at the
cheerful hour of ten, in the face of a triangular congregation, of which
the base was the front pew, and the apex the west door.  Mrs. Garland
dressed herself in the muslin shawl like Queen Charlotte's, that Bob had
brought home, and her best plum-coloured gown, beneath which peeped out
her shoes with red rosettes.  Anne was present, but she considerately
toned herself down, so as not to too seriously damage her mother's
appearance.  At moments during the ceremony she had a distressing sense
that she ought not to be born, and was glad to get home again.

The interest excited in the village, though real, was hardly enough to
bring a serious blush to the face of coyness.  Neighbours' minds had
become so saturated by the abundance of showy military and regal incident
lately vouchsafed to them, that the wedding of middle-aged civilians was
of small account, excepting in so far that it solved the question whether
or not Mrs. Garland would consider herself too genteel to mate with a
grinder of corn.

In the evening, Loveday's heart was made glad by seeing the baked and
boiled in rapid process of consumption by the kitchenful of people
assembled for that purpose.  Three-quarters of an hour were sufficient to
banish for ever his fears as to spoilt food.  The provisions being the
cause of the assembly, and not its consequence, it had been determined to
get all that would not keep consumed on that day, even if highways and
hedges had to be searched for operators.  And, in addition to the poor
and needy, every cottager's daughter known to the miller was invited, and
told to bring her lover from camp--an expedient which, for letting
daylight into the inside of full platters, was among the most happy ever
known.

While Mr. and Mrs. Loveday, Anne, and Bob were standing in the parlour,
discussing the progress of the entertainment in the next room, John, who
had not been down all day, entered the house and looked in upon them
through the open door.

'How's this, John?  Why didn't you come before?'

'Had to see the captain, and--other duties,' said the trumpet-major, in a
tone which showed no great zeal for explanations.

'Well, come in, however,' continued the miller, as his son remained with
his hand on the door-post, surveying them reflectively.

'I cannot stay long,' said John, advancing.  'The Route is come, and we
are going away.'

'Going away!  Where to?'

'To Exonbury.'

'When?'

'Friday morning.'

'All of you?'

'Yes; some to-morrow and some next day.  The King goes next week.'

'I am sorry for this,' said the miller, not expressing half his sorrow by
the simple utterance.  'I wish you could have been here to-day, since
this is the case,' he added, looking at the horizon through the window.

Mrs. Loveday also expressed her regret, which seemed to remind the
trumpet-major of the event of the day, and he went to her and tried to
say something befitting the occasion.  Anne had not said that she was
either sorry or glad, but John Loveday fancied that she had looked rather
relieved than otherwise when she heard his news.  His conversation with
Bob on the down made Bob's manner, too, remarkably cool, notwithstanding
that he had after all followed his brother's advice, which it was as yet
too soon after the event for him to rightly value.  John did not know why
the sailor had come back, never supposing that it was because he had
thought better of going, and said to him privately, 'You didn't overtake
her?'

'I didn't try to,' said Bob.

'And you are not going to?'

'No; I shall let her drift.'

'I am glad indeed, Bob; you have been wise,' said John heartily.

Bob, however, still loved Matilda too well to be other than dissatisfied
with John and the event that he had precipitated, which the elder brother
only too promptly perceived; and it made his stay that evening of short
duration.  Before leaving he said with some hesitation to his father,
including Anne and her mother by his glance, 'Do you think to come up and
see us off?'

The miller answered for them all, and said that of course they would
come.  'But you'll step down again between now and then?' he inquired.

'I'll try to.'  He added after a pause, 'In case I should not, remember
that Revalley will sound at half past five; we shall leave about eight.
Next summer, perhaps, we shall come and camp here again.'

'I hope so,' said his father and Mrs. Loveday.

There was something in John's manner which indicated to Anne that he
scarcely intended to come down again; but the others did not notice it,
and she said nothing.  He departed a few minutes later, in the dusk of
the August evening, leaving Anne still in doubt as to the meaning of his
private meeting with Miss Johnson.

John Loveday had been going to tell them that on the last night, by an
especial privilege, it would be in his power to come and stay with them
until eleven o'clock, but at the moment of leaving he abandoned the
intention.  Anne's attitude had chilled him, and made him anxious to be
off.  He utilized the spare hours of that last night in another way.

This was by coming down from the outskirts of the camp in the evening,
and seating himself near the brink of the mill-pond as soon as it was
quite dark; where he watched the lights in the different windows till one
appeared in Anne's bedroom, and she herself came forward to shut the
casement, with the candle in her hand.  The light shone out upon the
broad and deep mill-head, illuminating to a distinct individuality every
moth and gnat that entered the quivering chain of radiance stretching
across the water towards him, and every bubble or atom of froth that
floated into its width.  She stood for some time looking out, little
thinking what the darkness concealed on the other side of that wide
stream; till at length she closed the casement, drew the curtains, and
retreated into the room.  Presently the light went out, upon which John
Loveday returned to camp and lay down in his tent.

The next morning was dull and windy, and the trumpets of the --th sounded
Reveille for the last time on Overcombe Down.  Knowing that the Dragoons
were going away, Anne had slept heedfully, and was at once awakened by
the smart notes.  She looked out of the window, to find that the miller
was already astir, his white form being visible at the end of his garden,
where he stood motionless, watching the preparations.  Anne also looked
on as well as she could through the dim grey gloom, and soon she saw the
blue smoke from the cooks' fires creeping fitfully along the ground,
instead of rising in vertical columns, as it had done during the fine
weather season.  Then the men began to carry their bedding to the
waggons, and others to throw all refuse into the trenches, till the down
was lively as an ant-hill.  Anne did not want to see John Loveday again,
but hearing the household astir, she began to dress at leisure, looking
out at the camp the while.

When the soldiers had breakfasted, she saw them selling and giving away
their superfluous crockery to the natives who had clustered round; and
then they pulled down and cleared away the temporary kitchens which they
had constructed when they came.  A tapping of tent-pegs and wriggling of
picket-posts followed, and soon the cones of white canvas, now almost
become a component part of the landscape, fell to the ground.  At this
moment the miller came indoors and asked at the foot of the stairs if
anybody was going up the hill with him.

Anne felt that, in spite of the cloud hanging over John in her mind, it
would ill become the present moment not to see him off, and she went
downstairs to her mother, who was already there, though Bob was nowhere
to be seen.  Each took an arm of the miller, and thus climbed to the top
of the hill.  By this time the men and horses were at the place of
assembly, and, shortly after the mill-party reached level ground, the
troops slowly began to move forward.  When the trumpet-major, half buried
in his uniform, arms, and horse-furniture, drew near to the spot where
the Lovedays were waiting to see him pass, his father turned anxiously to
Anne and said, 'You will shake hands with John?'

Anne faintly replied 'Yes,' and allowed the miller to take her forward on
his arm to the trackway, so as to be close to the flank of the
approaching column.  It came up, many people on each side grasping the
hands of the troopers in bidding them farewell; and as soon as John
Loveday saw the members of his father's household, he stretched down his
hand across his right pistol for the same performance.  The miller gave
his, then Mrs. Loveday gave hers, and then the hand of the trumpet-major
was extended towards Anne.  But as the horse did not absolutely stop, it
was a somewhat awkward performance for a young woman to undertake, and,
more on that account than on any other, Anne drew back, and the gallant
trooper passed by without receiving her adieu.  Anne's heart reproached
her for a moment; and then she thought that, after all, he was not going
off to immediate battle, and that she would in all probability see him
again at no distant date, when she hoped that the mystery of his conduct
would be explained.  Her thoughts were interrupted by a voice at her
elbow: 'Thank heaven, he's gone!  Now there's a chance for me.'

She turned, and Festus Derriman was standing by her.

'There's no chance for you,' she said indignantly.

'Why not?'

'Because there's another left!'

The words had slipped out quite unintentionally, and she blushed quickly.
She would have given anything to be able to recall them; but he had
heard, and said, 'Who?'

Anne went forward to the miller to avoid replying, and Festus caught her
no more.

'Has anybody been hanging about Overcombe Mill except Loveday's son the
soldier?' he asked of a comrade.

'His son the sailor,' was the reply.

'O--his son the sailor,' said Festus slowly.  'Damn his son the sailor!'

XXII.  THE TWO HOUSEHOLDS UNITED

At this particular moment the object of Festus Derriman's fulmination was
assuredly not dangerous as a rival.  Bob, after abstractedly watching the
soldiers from the front of the house till they were out of sight, had
gone within doors and seated himself in the mill-parlour, where his
father found him, his elbows resting on the table and his forehead on his
hands, his eyes being fixed upon a document that lay open before him.

'What art perusing, Bob, with such a long face?'

Bob sighed, and then Mrs. Loveday and Anne entered.  ''Tis only a state-
paper that I fondly thought I should have a use for,' he said gloomily.
And, looking down as before, he cleared his voice, as if moved inwardly
to go on, and began to read in feeling tones from what proved to be his
nullified marriage licence:--

'"Timothy Titus Philemon, by permission Bishop of Bristol: To our well-
beloved Robert Loveday, of the parish of Overcombe, Bachelor; and Matilda
Johnson, of the same parish, Spinster.  Greeting."'

Here Anne sighed, but contrived to keep down her sigh to a mere nothing.

'Beautiful language, isn't it!' said Bob.  'I was never greeted like that
afore!'

'Yes; I have often thought it very excellent language myself,' said Mrs.
Loveday.

'Come to that, the old gentleman will greet thee like it again any day
for a couple of guineas,' said the miller.

'That's not the point, father!  You never could see the real meaning of
these things. . . .  Well, then he goes on: "Whereas ye are, as it is
alleged, determined to enter into the holy estate of matrimony--"  But
why should I read on?  It all means nothing now--nothing, and the
splendid words are all wasted upon air.  It seems as if I had been hailed
by some venerable hoary prophet, and had turned away, put the helm hard
up, and wouldn't hear.'

Nobody replied, feeling probably that sympathy could not meet the case,
and Bob went on reading the rest of it to himself, occasionally heaving a
breath like the wind in a ship's shrouds.

'I wouldn't set my mind so much upon her, if I was thee,' said his father
at last.

'Why not?'

'Well, folk might call thee a fool, and say thy brains were turning to
water.'

Bob was apparently much struck by this thought, and, instead of
continuing the discourse further, he carefully folded up the licence,
went out, and walked up and down the garden.  It was startlingly apt what
his father had said; and, worse than that, what people would call him
might be true, and the liquefaction of his brains turn out to be no
fable.  By degrees he became much concerned, and the more he examined
himself by this new light the more clearly did he perceive that he was in
a very bad way.

On reflection he remembered that since Miss Johnson's departure his
appetite had decreased amazingly.  He had eaten in meat no more than
fourteen or fifteen ounces a day, but one-third of a quartern pudding on
an average, in vegetables only a small heap of potatoes and half a York
cabbage, and no gravy whatever; which, considering the usual appetite of
a seaman for fresh food at the end of a long voyage, was no small index
of the depression of his mind.  Then he had waked once every night, and
on one occasion twice.  While dressing each morning since the gloomy day
he had not whistled more than seven bars of a hornpipe without stopping
and falling into thought of a most painful kind; and he had told none but
absolutely true stories of foreign parts to the neighbouring villagers
when they saluted and clustered about him, as usual, for anything he
chose to pour forth--except that story of the whale whose eye was about
as large as the round pond in Derriman's ewe-lease--which was like
tempting fate to set a seal for ever upon his tongue as a traveller.  All
this enervation, mental and physical, had been produced by Matilda's
departure.

He also considered what he had lost of the rational amusements of manhood
during these unfortunate days.  He might have gone to the neighbouring
fashionable resort every afternoon, stood before Gloucester Lodge till
the King and Queen came out, held his hat in his hand, and enjoyed their
Majesties' smiles at his homage all for nothing--watched the
picket-mounting, heard the different bands strike up, observed the staff;
and, above all, have seen the pretty town girls go trip-trip-trip along
the esplanade, deliberately fixing their innocent eyes on the distant
sea, the grey cliffs, and the sky, and accidentally on the soldiers and
himself.

'I'll raze out her image,' he said.  'She shall make a fool of me no
more.'  And his resolve resulted in conduct which had elements of real
greatness.

He went back to his father, whom he found in the mill-loft.  ''Tis true,
father, what you say,' he observed: 'my brains will turn to bilge-water
if I think of her much longer.  By the oath of a--navigator, I wish I
could sigh less and laugh more! She's gone--why can't I let her go, and
be happy?  But how begin?'

'Take it careless, my son,' said the miller, 'and lay yourself out to
enjoy snacks and cordials.'

'Ah--that's a thought!' said Bob.

'Baccy is good for't.  So is sperrits.  Though I don't advise thee to
drink neat.'

'Baccy--I'd almost forgot it!' said Captain Loveday.

He went to his room, hastily untied the package of tobacco that he had
brought home, and began to make use of it in his own way, calling to
David for a bottle of the old household mead that had lain in the cellar
these eleven years.  He was discovered by his father three-quarters of an
hour later as a half-invisible object behind a cloud of smoke.

The miller drew a breath of relief.  'Why, Bob,' he said, 'I thought the
house was a-fire!'

'I'm smoking rather fast to drown my reflections, father.  'Tis no use to
chaw.'

To tempt his attenuated appetite the unhappy mate made David cook an
omelet and bake a seed-cake, the latter so richly compounded that it
opened to the knife like a freckled buttercup.  With the same object he
stuck night-lines into the banks of the mill-pond, and drew up next
morning a family of fat eels, some of which were skinned and prepared for
his breakfast.  They were his favourite fish, but such had been his
condition that, until the moment of making this effort, he had quite
forgotten their existence at his father's back-door.

In a few days Bob Loveday had considerably improved in tone and vigour.
One other obvious remedy for his dejection was to indulge in the society
of Miss Garland, love being so much more effectually got rid of by
displacement than by attempted annihilation.  But Loveday's belief that
he had offended her beyond forgiveness, and his ever-present sense of her
as a woman who by education and antecedents was fitted to adorn a higher
sphere than his own, effectually kept him from going near her for a long
time, notwithstanding that they were inmates of one house.  The reserve
was, however, in some degree broken by the appearance one morning, later
in the season, of the point of a saw through the partition which divided
Anne's room from the Loveday half of the house.  Though she dined and
supped with her mother and the Loveday family, Miss Garland had still
continued to occupy her old apartments, because she found it more
convenient there to pursue her hobbies of wool-work and of copying her
father's old pictures.  The division wall had not as yet been broken
down.

As the saw worked its way downwards under her astonished gaze Anne jumped
up from her drawing; and presently the temporary canvasing and papering
which had sealed up the old door of communication was cut completely
through.  The door burst open, and Bob stood revealed on the other side,
with the saw in his hand.

'I beg your ladyship's pardon,' he said, taking off the hat he had been
working in, as his handsome face expanded into a smile.  'I didn't know
this door opened into your private room.'

'Indeed, Captain Loveday!'

'I am pulling down the division on principle, as we are now one family.
But I really thought the door opened into your passage.'

'It don't matter; I can get another room.'

'Not at all.  Father wouldn't let me turn you out.  I'll close it up
again.'

But Anne was so interested in the novelty of a new doorway that she
walked through it, and found herself in a dark low passage which she had
never seen before.

'It leads to the mill,' said Bob.  'Would you like to go in and see it at
work?  But perhaps you have already.'

'Only into the ground floor.'

'Come all over it.  I am practising as grinder, you know, to help my
father.'

She followed him along the dark passage, in the side of which he opened a
little trap, when she saw a great slimy cavern, where the long arms of
the mill-wheel flung themselves slowly and distractedly round, and
splashing water-drops caught the little light that strayed into the
gloomy place, turning it into stars and flashes.  A cold mist-laden puff
of air came into their faces, and the roar from within made it necessary
for Anne to shout as she said, 'It is dismal! let us go on.'

Bob shut the trap, the roar ceased, and they went on to the inner part of
the mill, where the air was warm and nutty, and pervaded by a fog of
flour.  Then they ascended the stairs, and saw the stones lumbering round
and round, and the yellow corn running down through the hopper.  They
climbed yet further to the top stage, where the wheat lay in bins, and
where long rays like feelers stretched in from the sun through the little
window, got nearly lost among cobwebs and timber, and completed their
course by marking the opposite wall with a glowing patch of gold.

In his earnestness as an exhibitor Bob opened the bolter, which was
spinning rapidly round, the result being that a dense cloud of flour
rolled out in their faces, reminding Anne that her complexion was
probably much paler by this time than when she had entered the mill.  She
thanked her companion for his trouble, and said she would now go down.  He
followed her with the same deference as hitherto, and with a sudden and
increasing sense that of all cures for his former unhappy passion this
would have been the nicest, the easiest, and the most effectual, if he
had only been fortunate enough to keep her upon easy terms.  But Miss
Garland showed no disposition to go further than accept his services as a
guide; she descended to the open air, shook the flour from her like a
bird, and went on into the garden amid the September sunshine, whose rays
lay level across the blue haze which the earth gave forth.  The gnats
were dancing up and down in airy companies, the nasturtium flowers shone
out in groups from the dark hedge over which they climbed, and the mellow
smell of the decline of summer was exhaled by everything.  Bob followed
her as far as the gate, looked after her, thought of her as the same girl
who had half encouraged him years ago, when she seemed so superior to
him; though now they were almost equal she apparently thought him beneath
her.  It was with a new sense of pleasure that his mind flew to the fact
that she was now an inmate of his father's house.

His obsequious bearing was continued during the next week.  In the busy
hours of the day they seldom met, but they regularly encountered each
other at meals, and these cheerful occasions began to have an interest
for him quite irrespective of dishes and cups.  When Anne entered and
took her seat she was always loudly hailed by Miller Loveday as he
whetted his knife; but from Bob she condescended to accept no such
familiar greeting, and they often sat down together as if each had a
blind eye in the direction of the other.  Bob sometimes told serious and
correct stories about sea-captains, pilots, boatswains, mates, able
seamen, and other curious fauna of the marine world; but these were
directly addressed to his father and Mrs. Loveday, Anne being included at
the clinching-point by a glance only.  He sometimes opened bottles of
sweet cider for her, and then she thanked him; but even this did not lead
to her encouraging his chat.

One day when Anne was paring an apple she was left at table with the
young man.  'I have made something for you,' he said.

She looked all over the table; nothing was there save the ordinary
remnants.

'O I don't mean that it is here; it is out by the bridge at the
mill-head.'

He arose, and Anne followed with curiosity in her eyes, and with her firm
little mouth pouted up to a puzzled shape.  On reaching the mossy mill-
head she found that he had fixed in the keen damp draught which always
prevailed over the wheel an AEolian harp of large size.  At present the
strings were partly covered with a cloth.  He lifted it, and the wires
began to emit a weird harmony which mingled curiously with the plashing
of the wheel.

'I made it on purpose for you, Miss Garland,' he said.

She thanked him very warmly, for she had never seen anything like such an
instrument before, and it interested her.  'It was very thoughtful of you
to make it,' she added.  'How came you to think of such a thing?'

'O I don't know exactly,' he replied, as if he did not care to be
questioned on the point.  'I have never made one in my life till now.'

Every night after this, during the mournful gales of autumn, the strange
mixed music of water, wind, and strings met her ear, swelling and sinking
with an almost supernatural cadence.  The character of the instrument was
far enough removed from anything she had hitherto seen of Bob's hobbies;
so that she marvelled pleasantly at the new depths of poetry this
contrivance revealed as existent in that young seaman's nature, and
allowed her emotions to flow out yet a little further in the old
direction, notwithstanding her late severe resolve to bar them back.

One breezy night, when the mill was kept going into the small hours, and
the wind was exactly in the direction of the water-current, the music so
mingled with her dreams as to wake her: it seemed to rhythmically set
itself to the words, 'Remember me! think of me!'  She was much impressed;
the sounds were almost too touching; and she spoke to Bob the next
morning on the subject.

'How strange it is that you should have thought of fixing that harp where
the water gushes!' she gently observed.  'It affects me almost painfully
at night.  You are poetical, Captain Bob.  But it is too--too sad!'

'I will take it away,' said Captain Bob promptly.  'It certainly is too
sad; I thought so myself.  I myself was kept awake by it one night.'

'How came you to think of making such a peculiar thing?'

'Well,' said Bob, 'it is hardly worth saying why.  It is not a good place
for such a queer noisy machine; and I'll take it away.'

'On second thoughts,' said Anne, 'I should like it to remain a little
longer, because it sets me thinking.'

'Of me?' he asked with earnest frankness.

Anne's colour rose fast.

'Well, yes,' she said, trying to infuse much plain matter-of-fact into
her voice.  'Of course I am led to think of the person who invented it.'

Bob seemed unaccountably embarrassed, and the subject was not pursued.
About half-an-hour later he came to her again, with something of an
uneasy look.

'There was a little matter I didn't tell you just now, Miss Garland,' he
said.  'About that harp thing, I mean.  I did make it, certainly, but it
was my brother John who asked me to do it, just before he went away.  John
is very musical, as you know, and he said it would interest you; but as
he didn't ask me to tell, I did not.  Perhaps I ought to have, and not
have taken the credit to myself.'

'O, it is nothing!' said Anne quickly.  'It is a very incomplete
instrument after all, and it will be just as well for you to take it away
as you first proposed.'

He said that he would, but he forgot to do it that day; and the following
night there was a high wind, and the harp cried and moaned so movingly
that Anne, whose window was quite near, could hardly bear the sound with
its new associations.  John Loveday was present to her mind all night as
an ill-used man; and yet she could not own that she had ill-used him.

The harp was removed next day.  Bob, feeling that his credit for
originality was damaged in her eyes, by way of recovering it set himself
to paint the summer-house which Anne frequented, and when he came out he
assured her that it was quite his own idea.

'It wanted doing, certainly,' she said, in a neutral tone.

'It is just about troublesome.'

'Yes; you can't quite reach up.  That's because you are not very tall; is
it not, Captain Loveday?'

'You never used to say things like that.'

'O, I don't mean that you are much less than tall!  Shall I hold the
paint for you, to save your stepping down?'

'Thank you, if you would.'

She took the paint-pot, and stood looking at the brush as it moved up and
down in his hand.

'I hope I shall not sprinkle your fingers,' he observed as he dipped.

'O, that would not matter!  You do it very well.'

'I am glad to hear that you think so.'

'But perhaps not quite so much art is demanded to paint a summer-house as
to paint a picture?'

Thinking that, as a painter's daughter, and a person of education
superior to his own, she spoke with a flavour of sarcasm, he felt humbled
and said--

'You did not use to talk like that to me.'

'I was perhaps too young then to take any pleasure in giving pain,' she
observed daringly.

'Does it give you pleasure?'

Anne nodded.

'I like to give pain to people who have given pain to me,' she said
smartly, without removing her eyes from the green liquid in her hand.

'I ask your pardon for that.'

'I didn't say I meant you--though I did mean you.'

Bob looked and looked at her side face till he was bewitched into putting
down his brush.

'It was that stupid forgetting of 'ee for a time!' he exclaimed.  'Well,
I hadn't seen you for so very long--consider how many years!  O, dear
Anne!' he said, advancing to take her hand, 'how well we knew one another
when we were children!  You was a queen to me then; and so you are now,
and always.'

Possibly Anne was thrilled pleasantly enough at having brought the truant
village lad to her feet again; but he was not to find the situation so
easy as he imagined, and her hand was not to be taken yet.

'Very pretty!' she said, laughing.  'And only six weeks since Miss
Johnson left.'

'Zounds, don't say anything about that!' implored Bob.  'I swear that I
never--never deliberately loved her--for a long time together, that is;
it was a sudden sort of thing, you know.  But towards you--I have more or
less honoured and respectfully loved you, off and on, all my life.  There,
that's true.'

Anne retorted quickly--

'I am willing, off and on, to believe you, Captain Robert.  But I don't
see any good in your making these solemn declarations.'

'Give me leave to explain, dear Miss Garland.  It is to get you to be
pleased to renew an old promise--made years ago--that you'll think o'
me.'

'Not a word of any promise will I repeat.'

'Well, well, I won't urge 'ee to-day.  Only let me beg of you to get over
the quite wrong notion you have of me; and it shall be my whole endeavour
to fetch your gracious favour.'

Anne turned away from him and entered the house, whither in the course of
a quarter of an hour he followed her, knocking at her door, and asking to
be let in.  She said she was busy; whereupon he went away, to come back
again in a short time and receive the same answer.

'I have finished painting the summer-house for you,' he said through the
door.

'I cannot come to see it.  I shall be engaged till supper-time.'

She heard him breathe a heavy sigh and withdraw, murmuring something
about his bad luck in being cut away from the starn like this.  But it
was not over yet.  When supper-time came and they sat down together, she
took upon herself to reprove him for what he had said to her in the
garden.

Bob made his forehead express despair.

'Now, I beg you this one thing,' he said.  'Just let me know your whole
mind.  Then I shall have a chance to confess my faults and mend them, or
clear my conduct to your satisfaction.'

She answered with quickness, but not loud enough to be heard by the old
people at the other end of the table--'Then, Captain Loveday, I will tell
you one thing, one fault, that perhaps would have been more proper to my
character than to yours.  You are too easily impressed by new faces, and
that gives me a _bad opinion_ of you--yes, a _bad opinion_.'

'O, that's it!' said Bob slowly, looking at her with the intense respect
of a pupil for a master, her words being spoken in a manner so precisely
between jest and earnest that he was in some doubt how they were to be
received.  'Impressed by new faces.  It is wrong, certainly, of me.'

The popping of a cork, and the pouring out of strong beer by the miller
with a view to giving it a head, were apparently distractions sufficient
to excuse her in not attending further to him; and during the remainder
of the sitting her gentle chiding seemed to be sinking seriously into his
mind.  Perhaps her own heart ached to see how silent he was; but she had
always meant to punish him.  Day after day for two or three weeks she
preserved the same demeanour, with a self-control which did justice to
her character.  And, on his part, considering what he had to put up
with--how she eluded him, snapped him off, refused to come out when he
called her, refused to see him when he wanted to enter the little parlour
which she had now appropriated to her private use, his patience testified
strongly to his good-humour.

XXIII.  MILITARY PREPARATIONS ON AN EXTENDED SCALE

Christmas had passed.  Dreary winter with dark evenings had given place
to more dreary winter with light evenings.  Rapid thaws had ended in
rain, rain in wind, wind in dust.  Showery days had come--the season of
pink dawns and white sunsets; and people hoped that the March weather was
over.

The chief incident that concerned the household at the mill was that the
miller, following the example of all his neighbours, had become a
volunteer, and duly appeared twice a week in a red, long-tailed military
coat, pipe-clayed breeches, black cloth gaiters, a heel-balled helmet-
hat, with a tuft of green wool, and epaulettes of the same colour and
material.  Bob still remained neutral.  Not being able to decide whether
to enrol himself as a sea-fencible, a local militia-man, or a volunteer,
he simply went on dancing attendance upon Anne.  Mrs. Loveday had become
awake to the fact that the pair of young people stood in a curious
attitude towards each other; but as they were never seen with their heads
together, and scarcely ever sat even in the same room, she could not be
sure what their movements meant.

Strangely enough (or perhaps naturally enough), since entering the
Loveday family herself, she had gradually grown to think less favourably
of Anne doing the same thing, and reverted to her original idea of
encouraging Festus; this more particularly because he had of late shown
such perseverance in haunting the precincts of the mill, presumably with
the intention of lighting upon the young girl.  But the weather had kept
her mostly indoors.

One afternoon it was raining in torrents.  Such leaves as there were on
trees at this time of year--those of the laurel and other
evergreens--staggered beneath the hard blows of the drops which fell upon
them, and afterwards could be seen trickling down the stems beneath and
silently entering the ground.  The surface of the mill-pond leapt up in a
thousand spirts under the same downfall, and clucked like a hen in the
rat-holes along the banks as it undulated under the wind.  The only dry
spot visible from the front windows of the mill-house was the inside of a
small shed, on the opposite side of the courtyard.  While Mrs. Loveday
was noticing the threads of rain descending across its interior shade,
Festus Derriman walked up and entered it for shelter, which, owing to the
lumber within, it but scantily afforded to a man who would have been a
match for one of Frederick William's Patagonians.

It was an excellent opportunity for helping on her scheme.  Anne was in
the back room, and by asking him in till the rain was over she would
bring him face to face with her daughter, whom, as the days went on, she
increasingly wished to marry other than a Loveday, now that the romance
of her own alliance with the millet had in some respects worn off.  She
was better provided for than before; she was not unhappy; but the plain
fact was that she had married beneath her.  She beckoned to Festus
through the window-pane; he instantly complied with her signal, having in
fact placed himself there on purpose to be noticed; for he knew that Miss
Garland would not be out-of-doors on such a day.

'Good afternoon, Mrs. Loveday,' said Festus on entering.  'There now--if
I didn't think that's how it would be!'  His voice had suddenly warmed to
anger, for he had seen a door close in the back part of the room, a lithe
figure having previously slipped through.

Mrs. Loveday turned, observed that Anne was gone, and said, 'What is it?'
as if she did not know.

'O, nothing, nothing!' said Festus crossly.  'You know well enough what
it is, ma'am; only you make pretence otherwise.  But I'll bring her to
book yet.  You shall drop your haughty airs, my charmer!  She little
thinks I have kept an account of 'em all.'

'But you must treat her politely, sir,' said Mrs. Loveday, secretly
pleased at these signs of uncontrollable affection.

'Don't tell me of politeness or generosity, ma'am!  She is more than a
match for me.  She regularly gets over me.  I have passed by this house
five-and-fifty times since last Martinmas, and this is all my reward
for't!'

'But you will stay till the rain is over, sir?'

'No.  I don't mind rain.  I'm off again.  She's got somebody else in her
eye!'  And the yeoman went out, slamming the door.

Meanwhile the slippery object of his hopes had gone along the dark
passage, passed the trap which opened on the wheel, and through the door
into the mill, where she was met by Bob, who looked up from the flour-
shoot inquiringly and said, 'You want me, Miss Garland?'

'O no,' said she.  'I only want to be allowed to stand here a few
minutes.'

He looked at her to know if she meant it, and finding that she did,
returned to his post.  When the mill had rumbled on a little longer he
came back.

'Bob,' she said, when she saw him move, 'remember that you are at work,
and have no time to stand close to me.'

He bowed and went to his original post again, Anne watching from the
window till Festus should leave.  The mill rumbled on as before, and at
last Bob came to her for the third time.  'Now, Bob--' she began.

'On my honour, 'tis only to ask a question.  Will you walk with me to
church next Sunday afternoon?'

'Perhaps I will,' she said.  But at this moment the yeoman left the
house, and Anne, to escape further parley, returned to the dwelling by
the way she had come.

Sunday afternoon arrived, and the family was standing at the door waiting
for the church bells to begin.  From that side of the house they could
see southward across a paddock to the rising ground further ahead, where
there grew a large elm-tree, beneath whose boughs footpaths crossed in
different directions, like meridians at the pole.  The tree was old, and
in summer the grass beneath it was quite trodden away by the feet of the
many trysters and idlers who haunted the spot.  The tree formed a
conspicuous object in the surrounding landscape.

While they looked, a foot soldier in red uniform and white breeches came
along one of the paths, and stopping beneath the elm, took from his
pocket a paper, which he proceeded to nail up by the four corners to the
trunk.  He drew back, looked at it, and went on his way.  Bob got his
glass from indoors and levelled it at the placard, but after looking for
a long time he could make out nothing but a lion and a unicorn at the
top.  Anne, who was ready for church, moved away from the door, though it
was yet early, and showed her intention of going by way of the elm.  The
paper had been so impressively nailed up that she was curious to read it
even at this theological time.  Bob took the opportunity of following,
and reminded her of her promise.

'Then walk behind me not at all close,' she said.

'Yes,' he replied, immediately dropping behind.

The ludicrous humility of his manner led her to add playfully over her
shoulder, 'It serves you right, you know.'

'I deserve anything, but I must take the liberty to say that I hope my
behaviour about Matil--, in forgetting you awhile, will not make ye wish
to keep me _always_ behind?'

She replied confidentially, 'Why I am so earnest not to be seen with you
is that I may appear to people to be independent of you.  Knowing what I
do of your weaknesses I can do no otherwise.  You must be schooled into--'

'O, Anne,' sighed Bob, 'you hit me hard--too hard!  If ever I do win you
I am sure I shall have fairly earned you.'

'You are not what you once seemed to be,' she returned softly.  'I don't
quite like to let myself love you.'  The last words were not very
audible, and as Bob was behind he caught nothing of them, nor did he see
how sentimental she had become all of a sudden.  They walked the rest of
the way in silence, and coming to the tree read as follows:--

   ADDRESS TO ALL RANKS AND DESCRIPTIONS OF ENGLISHMEN.

   FRIENDS AND COUNTRYMEN,--The French are now assembling the largest
   force that ever was prepared to invade this Kingdom, with the
   professed purpose of effecting our complete Ruin and Destruction.  They
   do not disguise their intentions, as they have often done to other
   Countries; but openly boast that they will come over in such Numbers
   as cannot be resisted.

   Wherever the French have lately appeared they have spared neither Rich
   nor Poor, Old nor Young; but like a Destructive Pestilence have laid
   waste and destroyed every Thing that before was fair and flourishing.

   On this occasion no man's service is compelled, but you are invited
   voluntarily to come forward in defence of everything that is dear to
   you, by entering your Names on the Lists which are sent to the Tything-
   man of every Parish, and engaging to act either as _Associated
   Volunteers bearing Arms_, _as Pioneers and Labourers_, or as _Drivers
   of Waggons_.

   As Associated Volunteers you will be called out only once a week,
   unless the actual Landing of the Enemy should render your further
   Services necessary.

   As Pioneers or Labourers you will be employed in Breaking up Roads to
   hinder the Enemy's advance.

   Those who have Pickaxes, Spades, Shovels, Bill-hooks, or other Working
   Implements, are desired to mention them to the Constable or Tything-
   man of their Parish, in order that they may be entered on the Lists
   opposite their Homes, to be used if necessary. . . .

   It is thought desirable to give you this Explanation, that you may not
   be ignorant of the Duties to which you may be called.  But if the love
   of true Liberty and honest Fame has not ceased to animate the Hearts
   of Englishmen, Pay, though necessary, will be the least Part of your
   Reward.  You will find your best Recompense in having done your Duty
   to your King and Country by driving back or destroying your old and
   implacable Enemy, envious of your Freedom and Happiness, and therefore
   seeking to destroy them; in having protected your Wives and Children
   from Death, or worse than Death, which will follow the Success of such
   Inveterate Foes.

   ROUSE, therefore, and unite as one man in the best of Causes!  United
   we may defy the World to conquer us; but Victory will never belong to
   those who are slothful and unprepared. {207}

'I must go and join at once!' said Bob.

Anne turned to him, all the playfulness gone from her face.  'I wish we
lived in the north of England, Bob, so as to be further away from where
he'll land!' she murmured uneasily.

'Where we are would be Paradise to me, if you would only make it so.'

'It is not right to talk so lightly at such a serious time,' she
thoughtfully returned, going on towards the church.

On drawing near, they saw through the boughs of a clump of intervening
trees, still leafless, but bursting into buds of amber hue, a glittering
which seemed to be reflected from points of steel.  In a few moments they
heard above the tender chiming of the church bells the loud voice of a
man giving words of command, at which all the metallic points suddenly
shifted like the bristles of a porcupine, and glistened anew.

''Tis the drilling,' said Loveday.  'They drill now between the services,
you know, because they can't get the men together so readily in the week.
It makes me feel that I ought to be doing more than I am!'

When they had passed round the belt of trees, the company of recruits
became visible, consisting of the able-bodied inhabitants of the hamlets
thereabout, more or less known to Bob and Anne.  They were assembled on
the green plot outside the churchyard-gate, dressed in their common
clothes, and the sergeant who had been putting them through their drill
was the man who nailed up the proclamation.  He was now engaged in
untying a canvas money-bag, from which he drew forth a handful of
shillings, giving one to each man in payment for his attendance.

'Men, I dismissed ye too soon--parade, parade again, I say,' he cried.
'My watch is fast, I find.  There's another twenty minutes afore the
worship of God commences.  Now all of you that ha'n't got firelocks, fall
in at the lower end.  Eyes right and dress!'

As every man was anxious to see how the rest stood, those at the end of
the line pressed forward for that purpose, till the line assumed the form
of a bow.

'Look at ye now!  Why, you are all a crooking in!  Dress, dress!'

They dressed forthwith; but impelled by the same motive they soon resumed
their former figure, and so they were despairingly permitted to remain.

'Now, I hope you'll have a little patience,' said the sergeant, as he
stood in the centre of the arc, 'and pay strict attention to the word of
command, just exactly as I give it out to ye; and if I should go wrong, I
shall be much obliged to any friend who'll put me right again, for I have
only been in the army three weeks myself, and we are all liable to
mistakes.'

'So we be, so we be,' said the line heartily.

''Tention, the whole, then.  Poise fawlocks!  Very well done!'

'Please, what must we do that haven't got no firelocks!' said the lower
end of the line in a helpless voice.

'Now, was ever such a question!  Why, you must do nothing at all, but
think _how_ you'd poise 'em _if_ you had 'em.  You middle men, that are
armed with hurdle-sticks and cabbage-stumps just to make-believe, must of
course use 'em as if they were the real thing.  Now then, cock fawlocks!
Present!  Fire! (Pretend to, I mean, and the same time throw yer
imagination into the field o' battle.)  Very good--very good indeed;
except that some of you were a _little_ too soon, and the rest a _little_
too late.'

'Please, sergeant, can I fall out, as I am master-player in the choir,
and my bass-viol strings won't stand at this time o' year, unless they be
screwed up a little before the passon comes in?'

'How can you think of such trifles as churchgoing at such a time as this,
when your own native country is on the point of invasion?' said the
sergeant sternly.  'And, as you know, the drill ends three minutes afore
church begins, and that's the law, and it wants a quarter of an hour yet.
Now, at the word _Prime_, shake the powder (supposing you've got it) into
the priming-pan, three last fingers behind the rammer; then shut your
pans, drawing your right arm nimble-like towards your body.  I ought to
have told ye before this, that at _Hand your katridge_, seize it and
bring it with a quick motion to your mouth, bite the top well off, and
don't swaller so much of the powder as to make ye hawk and spet instead
of attending to your drill.  What's that man a-saying of in the rear
rank?'

'Please, sir, 'tis Anthony Cripplestraw, wanting to know how he's to bite
off his katridge, when he haven't a tooth left in 's head?'

'Man!  Why, what's your genius for war?  Hold it up to your right-hand
man's mouth, to be sure, and let him nip it off for ye.  Well, what have
you to say, Private Tremlett?  Don't ye understand English?'

'Ask yer pardon, sergeant; but what must we infantry of the awkward squad
do if Boney comes afore we get our firelocks?'

'Take a pike, like the rest of the incapables.  You'll find a store of
them ready in the corner of the church tower.  Now then--Shoulder--r--r--r--'

'There, they be tinging in the passon!' exclaimed David, Miller Loveday's
man, who also formed one of the company, as the bells changed from
chiming all three together to a quick beating of one.  The whole line
drew a breath of relief, threw down their arms, and began running off.

'Well, then, I must dismiss ye,' said the sergeant.  'Come back--come
back!  Next drill is Tuesday afternoon at four.  And, mind, if your
masters won't let ye leave work soon enough, tell me, and I'll write a
line to Gover'ment!  'Tention!  To the right--left wheel, I mean--no,
no--right wheel.  Mar--r--r--rch!'

Some wheeled to the right and some to the left, and some obliging men,
including Cripplestraw, tried to wheel both ways.

'Stop, stop; try again!  'Cruits and comrades, unfortunately when I'm in
a hurry I can never remember my right hand from my left, and never could
as a boy.  You must excuse me, please.  Practice makes perfect, as the
saying is; and, much as I've learnt since I 'listed, we always find
something new.  Now then, right wheel! march! halt!  Stand at ease!
dismiss!  I think that's the order o't, but I'll look in the Gover'ment
book afore Tuesday.' {211}

Many of the company who had been drilled preferred to go off and spend
their shillings instead of entering the church; but Anne and Captain Bob
passed in.  Even the interior of the sacred edifice was affected by the
agitation of the times.  The religion of the country had, in fact,
changed from love of God to hatred of Napoleon Buonaparte; and, as if to
remind the devout of this alteration, the pikes for the pikemen (all
those accepted men who were not otherwise armed) were kept in the church
of each parish.  There, against the wall, they always stood--a whole
sheaf of them, formed of new ash stems, with a spike driven in at one
end, the stick being preserved from splitting by a ferule.  And there
they remained, year after year, in the corner of the aisle, till they
were removed and placed under the gallery stairs, and thence ultimately
to the belfry, where they grew black, rusty, and worm-eaten, and were
gradually stolen and carried off by sextons, parish clerks, whitewashers,
window-menders, and other church servants for use at home as rake-stems,
benefit-club staves, and pick-handles, in which degraded situations they
may still occasionally be found.

But in their new and shining state they had a terror for Anne, whose eyes
were involuntarily drawn towards them as she sat at Bob's side during the
service, filling her with bloody visions of their possible use not far
from the very spot on which they were now assembled.  The sermon, too,
was on the subject of patriotism; so that when they came out she began to
harp uneasily upon the probability of their all being driven from their
homes.

Bob assured her that with the sixty thousand regulars, the militia
reserve of a hundred and twenty thousand, and the three hundred thousand
volunteers, there was not much to fear.

'But I sometimes have a fear that poor John will be killed,' he continued
after a pause.  'He is sure to be among the first that will have to face
the invaders, and the trumpeters get picked off.'

'There is the same chance for him as for the others,' said Anne.

'Yes--yes--the same chance, such as it is.  You have never liked John
since that affair of Matilda Johnson, have you?'

'Why?' she quickly asked.

'Well,' said Bob timidly, 'as it is a ticklish time for him, would it not
be worth while to make up any differences before the crash comes?'

'I have nothing to make up,' said Anne, with some distress.  She still
fully believed the trumpet-major to have smuggled away Miss Johnson
because of his own interest in that lady, which must have made his
professions to herself a mere pastime; but that very conduct had in it
the curious advantage to herself of setting Bob free.

'Since John has been gone,' continued her companion, 'I have found out
more of his meaning, and of what he really had to do with that woman's
flight.  Did you know that he had anything to do with it?'

'Yes.'

'That he got her to go away?'

She looked at Bob with surprise.  He was not exasperated with John, and
yet he knew so much as this.

'Yes,' she said; 'what did it mean?'

He did not explain to her then; but the possibility of John's death,
which had been newly brought home to him by the military events of the
day, determined him to get poor John's character cleared.  Reproaching
himself for letting her remain so long with a mistaken idea of him, Bob
went to his father as soon as they got home, and begged him to get Mrs.
Loveday to tell Anne the true reason of John's objection to Miss Johnson
as a sister-in-law.

'She thinks it is because they were old lovers new met, and that he wants
to marry her,' he exclaimed to his father in conclusion.

'Then _that's_ the meaning of the split between Miss Nancy and Jack,'
said the miller.

'What, were they any more than common friends?' asked Bob uneasily.

'Not on her side, perhaps.'

'Well, we must do it,' replied Bob, painfully conscious that common
justice to John might bring them into hazardous rivalry, yet determined
to be fair.  'Tell it all to Mrs. Loveday, and get her to tell Anne.'

XXIV.  A LETTER, A VISITOR, AND A TIN BOX

The result of the explanation upon Anne was bitter self-reproach.  She
was so sorry at having wronged the kindly soldier that next morning she
went by herself to the down, and stood exactly where his tent had covered
the sod on which he had lain so many nights, thinking what sadness he
must have suffered because of her at the time of packing up and going
away.  After that she wiped from her eyes the tears of pity which had
come there, descended to the house, and wrote an impulsive letter to him,
in which occurred the following passages, indiscreet enough under the
circumstances:--

   'I find all justice, all rectitude, on your side, John; and all
   impertinence, all inconsiderateness, on mine.  I am so much convinced
   of your honour in the whole transaction, that I shall for the future
   mistrust myself in everything.  And if it be possible, whenever I
   differ from you on any point I shall take an hour's time for
   consideration before I say that I differ.  If I have lost your
   friendship, I have only myself to thank for it; but I sincerely hope
   that you can forgive.'

After writing this she went to the garden, where Bob was shearing the
spring grass from the paths.  'What is John's direction?' she said,
holding the sealed letter in her hand.

'Exonbury Barracks,' Bob faltered, his countenance sinking.

She thanked him and went indoors.  When he came in, later in the day, he
passed the door of her empty sitting-room and saw the letter on the
mantelpiece.  He disliked the sight of it.  Hearing voices in the other
room, he entered and found Anne and her mother there, talking to
Cripplestraw, who had just come in with a message from Squire Derriman,
requesting Miss Garland, as she valued the peace of mind of an old and
troubled man, to go at once and see him.

'I cannot go,' she said, not liking the risk that such a visit involved.

An hour later Cripplestraw shambled again into the passage, on the same
errand.

'Maister's very poorly, and he hopes that you'll come, Mis'ess Anne.  He
wants to see 'ee very particular about the French.'

Anne would have gone in a moment, but for the fear that some one besides
the farmer might encounter her, and she answered as before.

Another hour passed, and the wheels of a vehicle were heard.  Cripplestraw
had come for the third time, with a horse and gig; he was dressed in his
best clothes, and brought with him on this occasion a basket containing
raisins, almonds, oranges, and sweet cakes.  Offering them to her as a
gift from the old farmer, he repeated his request for her to accompany
him, the gig and best mare having been sent as an additional inducement.

'I believe the old gentleman is in love with you, Anne,' said her mother.

'Why couldn't he drive down himself to see me?' Anne inquired of
Cripplestraw.

'He wants you at the house, please.'

'Is Mr. Festus with him?'

'No; he's away to Budmouth.'

'I'll go,' said she.

'And I may come and meet you?' said Bob.

'There's my letter--what shall I do about that?' she said, instead of
answering him.  'Take my letter to the post-office, and you may come,'
she added.

He said yes and went out, Cripplestraw retreating to the door till she
should be ready.

'What letter is it?' said her mother.

'Only one to John,' said Anne.  'I have asked him to forgive my
suspicions.  I could do no less.'

'Do you want to marry _him_?' asked Mrs. Loveday bluntly.

'Mother!'

'Well; he will take that letter as an encouragement.  Can't you see that
he will, you foolish girl?'

Anne did see instantly.  'Of course!' she said.  'Tell Robert that he
need not go.'

She went to her room to secure the letter.  It was gone from the
mantelpiece, and on inquiry it was found that the miller, seeing it
there, had sent David with it to Budmouth hours ago.  Anne said nothing,
and set out for Oxwell Hall with Cripplestraw.

'William,' said Mrs. Loveday to the miller when Anne was gone and Bob had
resumed his work in the garden, 'did you get that letter sent off on
purpose?'

'Well, I did.  I wanted to make sure of it.  John likes her, and now
'twill be made up; and why shouldn't he marry her?  I'll start him in
business, if so be she'll have him.'

'But she is likely to marry Festus Derriman.'

'I don't want her to marry anybody but John,' said the miller doggedly.

'Not if she is in love with Bob, and has been for years, and he with
her?' asked his wife triumphantly.

'In love with Bob, and he with her?' repeated Loveday.

'Certainly,' said she, going off and leaving him to his reflections.

When Anne reached the hall she found old Mr. Derriman in his customary
chair.  His complexion was more ashen, but his movement in rising at her
entrance, putting a chair and shutting the door behind her, were much the
same as usual.

'Thank God you've come, my dear girl,' he said earnestly.  'Ah, you don't
trip across to read to me now!  Why did ye cost me so much to fetch you?
Fie!  A horse and gig, and a man's time in going three times.  And what I
sent ye cost a good deal in Budmouth market, now everything is so dear
there, and 'twould have cost more if I hadn't bought the raisins and
oranges some months ago, when they were cheaper.  I tell you this because
we are old friends, and I have nobody else to tell my troubles to.  But I
don't begrudge anything to ye since you've come.'

'I am not much pleased to come, even now,' said she.  'What can make you
so seriously anxious to see me?'

'Well, you be a good girl and true; and I've been thinking that of all
people of the next generation that I can trust, you are the best.  'Tis
my bonds and my title-deeds, such as they be, and the leases, you know,
and a few guineas in packets, and more than these, my will, that I have
to speak about.  Now do ye come this way.'

'O, such things as those!' she returned, with surprise.  'I don't
understand those things at all.'

'There's nothing to understand.  'Tis just this.  The French will be here
within two months; that's certain.  I have it on the best authority, that
the army at Boulogne is ready, the boats equipped, the plans laid, and
the First Consul only waits for a tide.  Heaven knows what will become o'
the men o' these parts!  But most likely the women will he spared.  Now
I'll show 'ee.'

He led her across the hall to a stone staircase of semi-circular plan,
which conducted to the cellars.

'Down here?' she said.

'Yes; I must trouble ye to come down here.  I have thought and thought
who is the woman that can best keep a secret for six months, and I say,
"Anne Garland."  You won't be married before then?'

'O no!' murmured the young woman.

'I wouldn't expect ye to keep a close tongue after such a thing as that.
But it will not be necessary.'

When they reached the bottom of the steps he struck a light from a tinder-
box, and unlocked the middle one of three doors which appeared in the
whitewashed wall opposite.  The rays of the candle fell upon the vault
and sides of a long low cellar, littered with decayed woodwork from other
parts of the hall, among the rest stair-balusters, carved finials,
tracery panels, and wainscoting.  But what most attracted her eye was a
small flagstone turned up in the middle of the floor, a heap of earth
beside it, and a measuring-tape.  Derriman went to the corner of the
cellar, and pulled out a clamped box from under the straw.  'You be
rather heavy, my dear, eh?' he said, affectionately addressing the box as
he lifted it.  'But you are going to be put in a safe place, you know, or
that rascal will get hold of ye, and carry ye off and ruin me.'  He then
with some difficulty lowered the box into the hole, raked in the earth
upon it, and lowered the flagstone, which he was a long time in fixing to
his satisfaction.  Miss Garland, who was romantically interested, helped
him to brush away the fragments of loose earth; and when he had scattered
over the floor a little of the straw that lay about, they again ascended
to upper air.

'Is this all, sir?' said Anne.

'Just a moment longer, honey.  Will you come into the great parlour?'

She followed him thither.

'If anything happens to me while the fighting is going on--it may be on
these very fields--you will know what to do,' he resumed.  'But first
please sit down again, there's a dear, whilst I write what's in my head.
See, there's the best paper, and a new quill that I've afforded myself
for't.'

'What a strange business!  I don't think I much like it, Mr. Derriman,'
she said, seating herself.

He had by this time begun to write, and murmured as he wrote--

'"Twenty-three and a half from N.W.  Sixteen and three-quarters from
N.E."--There, that's all.  Now I seal it up and give it to you to keep
safe till I ask ye for it, or you hear of my being trampled down by the
enemy.'

'What does it mean?' she asked, as she received the paper.

'Clk!  Ha! ha!  Why, that's the distance of the box from the two corners
of the cellar.  I measured it before you came.  And, my honey, to make
all sure, if the French soldiery are after ye, tell your mother the
meaning on't, or any other friend, in case they should put ye to death,
and the secret be lost.  But that I am sure I hope they won't do, though
your pretty face will be a sad bait to the soldiers.  I often have wished
you was my daughter, honey; and yet in these times the less cares a man
has the better, so I am glad you bain't.  Shall my man drive you home?'

'No, no,' she said, much depressed by the words he had uttered.  'I can
find my way.  You need not trouble to come down.'

'Then take care of the paper.  And if you outlive me, you'll find I have
not forgot you.'

XXV.  FESTUS SHOWS HIS LOVE

Festus Derriman had remained in the Royal watering-place all that day,
his horse being sick at stables; but, wishing to coax or bully from his
uncle a remount for the coming summer, he set off on foot for Oxwell
early in the evening.  When he drew near to the village, or rather to the
hall, which was a mile from the village, he overtook a slim, quick-eyed
woman, sauntering along at a leisurely pace.  She was fashionably dressed
in a green spencer, with 'Mameluke' sleeves, and wore a velvet Spanish
hat and feather.

'Good afternoon t'ye, ma'am,' said Festus, throwing a sword-and-pistol
air into his greeting.  'You are out for a walk?'

'I _am_ out for a walk, captain,' said the lady, who had criticized him
from the crevice of her eye, without seeming to do much more than
continue her demure look forward, and gave the title as a sop to his
apparent character.

'From the town?--I'd swear it, ma'am; 'pon my honour I would!'

'Yes, I am from the town, sir,' said she.

'Ah, you are a visitor!  I know every one of the regular inhabitants; we
soldiers are in and out there continually.  Festus Derriman, Yeomanry
Cavalry, you know.  The fact is, the watering-place is under our charge;
the folks will be quite dependent upon us for their deliverance in the
coming struggle.  We hold our lives in our hands, and theirs, I may say,
in our pockets.  What made you come here, ma'am, at such a critical
time?'

'I don't see that it is such a critical time?'

'But it is, though; and so you'd say if you was as much mixed up with the
military affairs of the nation as some of us.'

The lady smiled.  'The King is coming this year, anyhow,' said she.

'Never!' said Festus firmly.  'Ah, you are one of the attendants at court
perhaps, come on ahead to get the King's chambers ready, in case Boney
should not land?'

'No,' she said; 'I am connected with the theatre, though not just at the
present moment.  I have been out of luck for the last year or two; but I
have fetched up again.  I join the company when they arrive for the
season.'

Festus surveyed her with interest.  'Faith! and is it so?  Well, ma'am,
what part do you play?'

'I am mostly the leading lady--the heroine,' she said, drawing herself up
with dignity.

'I'll come and have a look at ye if all's well, and the landing is put
off--hang me if I don't!--Hullo, hullo, what do I see?'

His eyes were stretched towards a distant field, which Anne Garland was
at that moment hastily crossing, on her way from the hall to Overcombe.

'I must be off.  Good-day to ye, dear creature!' he exclaimed, hurrying
forward.

The lady said, 'O, you droll monster!' as she smiled and watched him
stride ahead.

Festus bounded on over the hedge, across the intervening patch of green,
and into the field which Anne was still crossing.  In a moment or two she
looked back, and seeing the well-known Herculean figure of the yeoman
behind her felt rather alarmed, though she determined to show no
difference in her outward carriage.  But to maintain her natural gait was
beyond her powers.  She spasmodically quickened her pace; fruitlessly,
however, for he gained upon her, and when within a few strides of her
exclaimed, 'Well, my darling!'  Anne started off at a run.

Festus was already out of breath, and soon found that he was not likely
to overtake her.  On she went, without turning her head, till an unusual
noise behind compelled her to look round.  His face was in the act of
falling back; he swerved on one side, and dropped like a log upon a
convenient hedgerow-bank which bordered the path.  There he lay quite
still.

Anne was somewhat alarmed; and after standing at gaze for two or three
minutes, drew nearer to him, a step and a half at a time, wondering and
doubting, as a meek ewe draws near to some strolling vagabond who flings
himself on the grass near the flock.

'He is in a swoon!' she murmured.

Her heart beat quickly, and she looked around.  Nobody was in sight; she
advanced a step nearer still and observed him again.  Apparently his face
was turning to a livid hue, and his breathing had become obstructed.

''Tis not a swoon; 'tis apoplexy!' she said, in deep distress.  'I ought
to untie his neck.'  But she was afraid to do this, and only drew a
little closer still.

Miss Garland was now within three feet of him, whereupon the senseless
man, who could hold his breath no longer, sprang to his feet and darted
at her, saying, 'Ha! ha! a scheme for a kiss!'

She felt his arm slipping round her neck; but, twirling about with
amazing dexterity, she wriggled from his embrace and ran away along the
field.  The force with which she had extricated herself was sufficient to
throw Festus upon the grass, and by the time that he got upon his legs
again she was many yards off.  Uttering a word which was not exactly a
blessing, he immediately gave chase; and thus they ran till Anne entered
a meadow divided down the middle by a brook about six feet wide.  A
narrow plank was thrown loosely across at the point where the path
traversed this stream, and when Anne reached it she at once scampered
over.  At the other side she turned her head to gather the probabilities
of the situation, which were that Festus Derriman would overtake her even
now.  By a sudden forethought she stooped, seized the end of the plank,
and endeavoured to drag it away from the opposite bank.  But the weight
was too great for her to do more than slightly move it, and with a
desperate sigh she ran on again, having lost many valuable seconds.

But her attempt, though ineffectual in dragging it down, had been enough
to unsettle the little bridge; and when Derriman reached the middle,
which he did half a minute later, the plank turned over on its edge,
tilting him bodily into the river.  The water was not remarkably deep,
but as the yeoman fell flat on his stomach he was completely immersed;
and it was some time before he could drag himself out.  When he arose,
dripping on the bank, and looked around, Anne had vanished from the mead.
Then Festus's eyes glowed like carbuncles, and he gave voice to fearful
imprecations, shaking his fist in the soft summer air towards Anne, in a
way that was terrible for any maiden to behold.  Wading back through the
stream, he walked along its bank with a heavy tread, the water running
from his coat-tails, wrists, and the tips of his ears, in silvery
dribbles, that sparkled pleasantly in the sun.  Thus he hastened away,
and went round by a by-path to the hall.

Meanwhile the author of his troubles was rapidly drawing nearer to the
mill, and soon, to her inexpressible delight, she saw Bob coming to meet
her.  She had heard the flounce, and, feeling more secure from her
pursuer, had dropped her pace to a quick walk.  No sooner did she reach
Bob than, overcome by the excitement of the moment, she flung herself
into his arms.  Bob instantly enclosed her in an embrace so very thorough
that there was no possible danger of her falling, whatever degree of
exhaustion might have given rise to her somewhat unexpected action; and
in this attitude they silently remained, till it was borne in upon Anne
that the present was the first time in her life that she had ever been in
such a position.  Her face then burnt like a sunset, and she did not know
how to look up at him.  Feeling at length quite safe, she suddenly
resolved not to give way to her first impulse to tell him the whole of
what had happened, lest there should be a dreadful quarrel and fight
between Bob and the yeoman, and great difficulties caused in the Loveday
family on her account, the miller having important wheat transactions
with the Derrimans.

'You seem frightened, dearest Anne,' said Bob tenderly.

'Yes,' she replied.  'I saw a man I did not like the look of, and he was
inclined to follow me.  But, worse than that, I am troubled about the
French.  O Bob! I am afraid you will be killed, and my mother, and John,
and your father, and all of us hunted down!'

'Now I have told you, dear little heart, that it cannot be.  We shall
drive 'em into the sea after a battle or two, even if they land, which I
don't believe they will.  We've got ninety sail of the line, and though
it is rather unfortunate that we should have declared war against Spain
at this ticklish time, there's enough for all.'  And Bob went into
elaborate statistics of the navy, army, militia, and volunteers, to
prolong the time of holding her.  When he had done speaking he drew
rather a heavy sigh.

'What's the matter, Bob?'

'I haven't been yet to offer myself as a sea-fencible, and I ought to
have done it long ago.'

'You are only one.  Surely they can do without you?'

Bob shook his head.  She arose from her restful position, her eye
catching his with a shamefaced expression of having given way at last.
Loveday drew from his pocket a paper, and said, as they slowly walked on,
'Here's something to make us brave and patriotic.  I bought it in
Budmouth.  Isn't it a stirring picture?'

It was a hieroglyphic profile of Napoleon.  The hat represented a maimed
French eagle; the face was ingeniously made up of human carcases, knotted
and writhing together in such directions as to form a physiognomy; a
band, or stock, shaped to resemble the English Channel, encircled his
throat, and seemed to choke him; his epaulette was a hand tearing a
cobweb that represented the treaty of peace with England; and his ear was
a woman crouching over a dying child. {225}

'It is dreadful!' said Anne.  'I don't like to see it.'

She had recovered from her emotion, and walked along beside him with a
grave, subdued face.  Bob did not like to assume the privileges of an
accepted lover and draw her hand through his arm; for, conscious that she
naturally belonged to a politer grade than his own, he feared lest her
exhibition of tenderness were an impulse which cooler moments might
regret.  A perfect Paul-and-Virginia life had not absolutely set in for
him as yet, and it was not to be hastened by force.  When they had passed
over the bridge into the mill-front they saw the miller standing at the
door with a face of concern.

'Since you have been gone,' he said, 'a Government man has been here, and
to all the houses, taking down the numbers of the women and children, and
their ages and the number of horses and waggons that can be mustered, in
case they have to retreat inland, out of the way of the invading army.'

The little family gathered themselves together, all feeling the crisis
more seriously than they liked to express.  Mrs. Loveday thought how
ridiculous a thing social ambition was in such a conjuncture as this, and
vowed that she would leave Anne to love where she would.  Anne, too,
forgot the little peculiarities of speech and manner in Bob and his
father, which sometimes jarred for a moment upon her more refined sense,
and was thankful for their love and protection in this looming trouble.

On going upstairs she remembered the paper which Farmer Derriman had
given her, and searched in her bosom for it.  She could not find it
there.  'I must have left it on the table,' she said to herself.  It did
not matter; she remembered every word.  She took a pen and wrote a
duplicate, which she put safely away.

But Anne was wrong.  She had, after all, placed the paper where she
supposed, and there it ought to have been.  But in escaping from Festus,
when he feigned apoplexy, it had fallen out upon the grass.  Five minutes
after that event, when pursuer and pursued were two or three fields
ahead, the gaily-dressed woman whom the yeoman had overtaken, peeped
cautiously through the stile into the corner of the field which had been
the scene of the scramble; and seeing the paper she climbed over, secured
it, loosened the wafer without tearing the sheet, and read the memorandum
within.  Unable to make anything of its meaning, the saunterer put it in
her pocket, and, dismissing the matter from her mind, went on by the by-
path which led to the back of the mill.  Here, behind the hedge, she
stood and surveyed the old building for some time, after which she
meditatively turned, and retraced her steps towards the Royal watering-
place.

XXVI.  THE ALARM

The night which followed was historic and memorable.  Mrs. Loveday was
awakened by the boom of a distant gun: she told the miller, and they
listened awhile.  The sound was not repeated, but such was the state of
their feelings that Mr. Loveday went to Bob's room and asked if he had
heard it.  Bob was wide awake, looking out of the window; he had heard
the ominous sound, and was inclined to investigate the matter.  While the
father and son were dressing they fancied that a glare seemed to be
rising in the sky in the direction of the beacon hill.  Not wishing to
alarm Anne and her mother, the miller assured them that Bob and himself
were merely going out of doors to inquire into the cause of the report,
after which they plunged into the gloom together.  A few steps' progress
opened up more of the sky, which, as they had thought, was indeed
irradiated by a lurid light; but whether it came from the beacon or from
a more distant point they were unable to clearly tell.  They pushed on
rapidly towards higher ground.

Their excitement was merely of a piece with that of all men at this
critical juncture.  Everywhere expectation was at fever heat.  For the
last year or two only five-and-twenty miles of shallow water had divided
quiet English homesteads from an enemy's army of a hundred and fifty
thousand men.  We had taken the matter lightly enough, eating and
drinking as in the days of Noe, and singing satires without end.  We
punned on Buonaparte and his gunboats, chalked his effigy on
stage-coaches, and published the same in prints.  Still, between these
bursts of hilarity, it was sometimes recollected that England was the
only European country which had not succumbed to the mighty little man
who was less than human in feeling, and more than human in will; that our
spirit for resistance was greater than our strength; and that the Channel
was often calm.  Boats built of wood which was greenly growing in its
native forest three days before it was bent as wales to their sides, were
ridiculous enough; but they might be, after all, sufficient for a single
trip between two visible shores.

The English watched Buonaparte in these preparations, and Buonaparte
watched the English.  At the distance of Boulogne details were lost, but
we were impressed on fine days by the novel sight of a huge army moving
and twinkling like a school of mackerel under the rays of the sun.  The
regular way of passing an afternoon in the coast towns was to stroll up
to the signal posts and chat with the lieutenant on duty there about the
latest inimical object seen at sea.  About once a week there appeared in
the newspapers either a paragraph concerning some adventurous English
gentleman who had sailed out in a pleasure-boat till he lay near enough
to Boulogne to see Buonaparte standing on the heights among his marshals;
or else some lines about a mysterious stranger with a foreign accent,
who, after collecting a vast deal of information on our resources, had
hired a boat at a southern port, and vanished with it towards France
before his intention could be divined.

In forecasting his grand venture, Buonaparte postulated the help of
Providence to a remarkable degree.  Just at the hour when his troops were
on board the flat-bottomed boats and ready to sail, there was to be a
great fog, that should spread a vast obscurity over the length and
breadth of the Channel, and keep the English blind to events on the other
side.  The fog was to last twenty-four hours, after which it might clear
away.  A dead calm was to prevail simultaneously with the fog, with the
twofold object of affording the boats easy transit and dooming our ships
to lie motionless.  Thirdly, there was to be a spring tide, which should
combine its manoeuvres with those of the fog and calm.

Among the many thousands of minor Englishmen whose lives were affected by
these tremendous designs may be numbered our old acquaintance Corporal
Tullidge, who sported the crushed arm, and poor old Simon Burden, the
dazed veteran who had fought at Minden.  Instead of sitting snugly in the
settle of the Old Ship, in the village adjoining Overcombe, they were
obliged to keep watch on the hill.  They made themselves as comfortable
as was possible in the circumstances, dwelling in a hut of clods and
turf, with a brick chimney for cooking.  Here they observed the nightly
progress of the moon and stars, grew familiar with the heaving of moles,
the dancing of rabbits on the hillocks, the distant hoot of owls, the
bark of foxes from woods further inland; but saw not a sign of the enemy.
As, night after night, they walked round the two ricks which it was their
duty to fire at a signal--one being of furze for a quick flame, the other
of turf, for a long, slow radiance--they thought and talked of old times,
and drank patriotically from a large wood flagon that was filled every
day.

Bob and his father soon became aware that the light was from the beacon.
By the time that they reached the top it was one mass of towering flame,
from which the sparks fell on the green herbage like a fiery dew; the
forms of the two old men being seen passing and repassing in the midst of
it.  The Lovedays, who came up on the smoky side, regarded the scene for
a moment, and then emerged into the light.

'Who goes there?' said Corporal Tullidge, shouldering a pike with his
sound arm.  'O, 'tis neighbour Loveday!'

'Did you get your signal to fire it from the east?' said the miller
hastily.

'No; from Abbotsea Beach.'

'But you are not to go by a coast signal!'

'Chok' it all, wasn't the Lord-Lieutenant's direction, whenever you see
Rainbarrow's Beacon burn to the nor'east'ard, or Haggardon to the
nor'west'ard, or the actual presence of the enemy on the shore?'

'But is he here?'

'No doubt o't!  The beach light is only just gone down, and Simon heard
the guns even better than I.'

'Hark, hark!  I hear 'em!' said Bob.

They listened with parted lips, the night wind blowing through Simon
Burden's few teeth as through the ruins of Stonehenge.  From far down on
the lower levels came the noise of wheels and the tramp of horses upon
the turnpike road.

'Well, there must be something in it,' said Miller Loveday gravely.  'Bob,
we'll go home and make the women-folk safe, and then I'll don my
soldier's clothes and be off.  God knows where our company will
assemble!'

They hastened down the hill, and on getting into the road waited and
listened again.  Travellers began to come up and pass them in vehicles of
all descriptions.  It was difficult to attract their attention in the dim
light, but by standing on the top of a wall which fenced the road Bob was
at last seen.

'What's the matter?' he cried to a butcher who was flying past in his
cart, his wife sitting behind him without a bonnet.

'The French have landed!' said the man, without drawing rein.

'Where?' shouted Bob.

'In West Bay; and all Budmouth is in uproar!' replied the voice, now
faint in the distance.

Bob and his father hastened on till they reached their own house.  As
they had expected, Anne and her mother, in common with most of the
people, were both dressed, and stood at the door bonneted and shawled,
listening to the traffic on the neighbouring highway, Mrs. Loveday having
secured what money and small valuables they possessed in a huge pocket
which extended all round her waist, and added considerably to her weight
and diameter.

''Tis true enough,' said the miller: 'he's come!  You and Anne and the
maid must be off to Cousin Jim's at King's-Bere, and when you get there
you must do as they do.  I must assemble with the company.'